The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  I wanted to weep. The tears seethed in my breast; my heart was overflowing with them. It was painful. But it would be shameful to cry, and I went to help the sailor Blyakhin wash the deck.

  Blyakhin was an insignificant-looking man. He had a withered, faded look about him, and always stowed himself away in corners, whence his small, bright eyes shone.

  “My proper surname is not Blyakhin, but——because, you see, my mother was a loose woman. I have a sister, and she also. That happened to be their destiny. Destiny, my brother, is an anchor for all of us. You want to go in one direction, but wait!”

  And now, as he swabbed the deck, he said softly to me:

  “You see what a lot of harm women do! There it is? Damp wood smolders for a long time and then bursts into flame. I don’t care for that sort of thing myself; it does not interest me. And if I had been born a woman, I should have drowned myself in a black pool. I should have been safe then with Holy Christ, and could do no one any harm. But while one is here there is always the chance of kindling a fire. Eunuchs are no fools, I assure you. They are clever people, they are good at divination, they put aside all small things and serve God alone—cleanly.”

  The captain’s wife passed us, holding her skirts high as she came through the pools of water. Tall and well built, she had a simple, bright face. I wanted to run after her and beg her from my heart:

  “Say something to me! Say something!”

  The boat drew slowly away from the pier. Blyakhin crossed himself and said:

  “We are off!”

  CHAPTER VI

  At Sarapulia, Maxim left the boat. He went away in silence, saying farewell to no one, serious and calm. Behind him, laughing, came the gay woman, and, following her, the girl, looking disheveled, with swollen eyes. Sergei was on his knees a long time before the captain’s cabin, kissing the panel of the door, knocking his forehead against it, and crying:

  “Forgive me! It was not my fault, but Maxim’s.”

  The sailors, the stewards, and even some of the passengers knew that he was lying, yet they advised:

  “Come, forgive him!”

  But the captain drove him away, and even kicked him with such force that he fell over. Notwithstanding, he forgave him, and Sergei at once rushed on deck, carrying a tray of tea-things, looking with inquiring, dog-like expression into the eyes of the passengers.

  In Maxim’s place came a soldier from Viatski, a bony man, with a small head and brownish red eyes. The assistant cook sent him first to kill some fowls. He killed a pair, but let the rest escape on deck. The passengers tried to catch them, but three hens flew overboard. Then the soldier sat on some wood near the fowl-house, and cried bitterly.

  “What’s the matter, you fool?” asked Smouri, angrily. “Fancy a soldier crying!”

  “I belong to the Home Defense Corps,” said the soldier in a low voice.

  That was his ruin. In half an hour every one on the boat was laughing at him. They would come quite close to him, fix their eyes on his face, and ask:

  “Is this the one?”

  And then they would go off into harsh, insulting, absurd laughter.

  At first the soldier did not see these people or hear their laughter; he was drying his tears with the sleeve of his old shirt, exactly as if he were hiding them up his sleeve. But soon his brown eyes flashed with rage, and he said in the quick speech of Viatski:

  “What are you staring at me for? Oi, may you be torn to bits!”

  But this only amused the passengers the more, and they began to snap their fingers at him, to pluck at his shirt, his apron, to play with him as if he had been a goat, baiting him cruelly until dinner-time. At dinner some one put a piece of squeezed lemon on the handle of a wooden spoon, and tied it behind his back by the strings of his apron. As he moved, the spoon waggled behind him, and every one laughed, but he was in a fluster, like an entrapped mouse, ignorant of what had aroused their laughter.

  Smouri sat behind him in silence. His face had become like a woman’s. I felt sorry for the soldier, and asked:

  “May I tell him about the spoon?”

  He nodded his head without speaking.

  When I explained to the soldier what they were laughing at, he hastily seized the spoon, tore it off, threw it on the floor, crushed it with his foot, and took hold of my hair with both hands. We began to fight, to the great satisfaction of the passengers, who made a ring round us at once.

  Smouri pushed the spectators aside, separated us, and, after boxing my ear, seized the soldier by the ear. When the passengers saw how the little man danced under the hand of the cook they roared with excitement, whistled, stamped their feet, split their sides with laughter.

  “Hurrah! Garrison! Butt the cook in the stomach!”

  This wild joy on the part of others made me feel that I wanted to throw myself upon them and hit their dirty heads with a lump of wood.

  Smouri let the soldier go, and with his hands behind his back turned upon the passengers like a wild boar, bristling, and showing his teeth terrifyingly.

  “To your places! March! March!”

  The soldier threw himself upon me again, but Smouri seized him round the body with one hand and carried him to the hatchway, where he began to pump water on his head, turning his frail body about as if he were a rag-doll.

  The sailors came running on the scene, with the boatswain and the captain’s mate. The passengers crowded about again. A head above the others stood the head-steward, quiet, dumb, as always.

  The soldier, sitting on some wood near the kitchen door, took off his boots and began to wring out his leggings, though they were not wet. But the water dripped from his greasy hair, which again amused the passengers.

  “All the same,” said the soldier, “I am going to kill that boy.”

  Taking me by the shoulder, Smouri said something to the captain’s mate. The sailors sent the passengers away, and when they had all dispersed, he asked the soldier:

  “What is to be done with you?”

  The latter was silent, looking at me with wild eyes, and all the while putting a strange restraint upon himself.

  “Be quiet, you devilskin!” said Smouri.

  “As you are not the piper, you can’t call the tune,” answered the soldier.

  I saw that the cook was confused. His blown-out cheeks became flabby; he spat, and went away, taking me with him. I walked after him, feeling foolish, with backward glances at the soldier. But Smouri muttered in a worried tone:

  “There’s a wild creature for you! What? What do you think of him?”

  Sergei overtook us and said in a whisper:

  “He is going to kill himself.”

  “Where is he?” cried Smouri, and he ran.

  The soldier was standing at the door of the steward’s cabin with a large knife in his hand. It was the knife which was used for cutting off the heads of fowls and for cutting up sticks for the stoves. It was blunt, and notched like a saw. In front of the cabin the passengers were assembled, looking at the funny little man with the wet head. His snub-nosed face shook like a jelly; his mouth hung wearily open; his lips twitched. He roared:

  “Tormentors! Tormentors!”

  Jumping up on something, I looked over the heads of people into their faces. They were smiling, giggling, and saying to one another:

  “Look! Look!”

  When he pushed his crumpled shirt down into his trousers with his skinny, childish hand, a good-looking man near me said:

  “He is getting ready to die, and he takes the trouble to hitch up his trousers.”

  The passengers all laughed loudly. It was perfectly plain that they did not think it probable that the soldier would really kill himself, nor did I think so; but Smouri, after one glance at him, pushed the people aside with his stomach, saying:

  “Get away, you fools!”


  He called them fools over and over again, and approaching one little knot of people, said:

  “To your place, fool!”

  This was funny; but, however, it seemed to-be true, for they had all been acting like one big fool from the first thing in the morning. When he had driven the passengers-off, he approached the soldier, and, holding out his hand, said:

  “Give me that knife.”

  “I don’t care,” said the soldier, holding out the handle of the knife.

  The cook gave the knife to me, and pushed the soldier into the cabin.

  “Lie down and go to sleep. What is the matter with you, eh?”

  The soldier sat on a hammock in silence.

  “He shall bring you something to eat and some vodka. Do you drink vodka?”

  “A little sometimes.”

  “But, look you, don’t you touch him. It was not he who made fun of you, do you hear? I tell you that it was not he.”

  “But why did they torment me?” asked the soldier, softly.

  Smouri answered gruffly after a pause:

  “How should I know?”

  As he came with me to the kitchen he muttered:

  “Well, they have fastened upon a poor wretch this time, and no mistake! You see what he is? There you are! My lad, people can be sent out of their minds; they can really. Stick to them like bugs, and the thing is done. In fact, there are some people here like bugs—worse than bugs!”

  When I took bread, meat, and vodka to the soldier he was still sitting in the hammock, rocking himself and crying softly, sobbing like a woman.

  I placed the plate on the table, saying:

  “Eat.”

  “Shut the door.”

  “That will make it dark.”

  “Shut it, or they will come crawling in here.”

  I went away. The sight of the soldier was unpleasant to me. He aroused my commiseration and pity and made me feel uncomfortable. Times without number grandmother had told me:

  “One must have pity on people. We are all unhappy. Life is hard for all of us.”

  “Did you take it to him?” asked the cook. “Well, how is he—the soldier?”

  “I feel sorry for him.”

  “Well, what’s the matter now, eh?”

  “One can’t help being sorry for people.”

  Smouri took me by the arm, drew me to him, and said:

  “You do not pity in vain, but it is waste of time to chatter about it. When you are not accustomed to mix jellies, you must teach yourself the way.”

  And pushing me away from him, he added gruffly: “This is no place for you. Here, smoke.”

  I was deeply distressed, quite crushed by the behavior of the passengers. There was something inexpressibly insulting and oppressive in the way they had worried the soldier and had laughed with glee when Smouri had him by the ear. What pleasure could they find in such a disgusting, pitiful affair? What was there to cause them to laugh so joyfully?

  There they were again, sitting or lying under the awning, drinking, making a buzz of talk, playing cards, conversing seriously and sensibly, looking at the river, just as if they had never whistled and hooted an hour ago. They were all as quiet and lazy as usual. From morning to night they sauntered about the boat like pieces of fluff or specks of dust in the sunbeams. In groups of ten they would stroll to the hatchway, cross themselves, and leave the boat at the landing-stage from which the same kind of people embarked as they landed, bending their backs under the same heavy wallets and trunks and dressed in the same fashion.

  This continual change of passengers did not alter the life on the boat one bit. The new passengers spoke of the same things as those who had left: the land, labor, God, women, and in the same words. “It is ordained by the Lord God that we should suffer; all we can do is to be patient. There is nothing else to be done. It is fate.”

  It was depressing to hear such words, and they exasperated me. I could not endure dirt, and I did not wish to endure evil, unjust, and insulting behavior toward myself. I was sure that I did not deserve such treatment. And the soldier had not deserved it, either. Perhaps he had meant to be funny.

  Maxim, a serious, good-hearted fellow, had been dismissed from the ship, and Sergei, a mean fellow, was left. And why did these people, capable of goading a man almost to madness, always submit humbly to the furious shouts of the sailors, and listen to their abuse without taking offense?

  “What are you rolling about on the deck for?” cried the boatswain, blinking his handsome, though malevolent, eyes. “If the boat heeled, it would be the end of you, you devils.”

  The “devils” went peaceably enough to the other deck, but they chased them away from there, too, as if they had been sheep.

  “Ah, accursed ones!”

  On hot nights, under the iron awning, which had been made red-hot by the sun during the day, it was suffocating. The passengers crawled over the deck like beetles, and lay where they happened to fall. The sailors awoke them at the landing-stages by prodding them with marlinespikes.

  “What are you sprawling in the way for? Go away to your proper place!”

  They would stand up, and move sleepily in the direction whither they were pushed. The sailors were of the same class as themselves, only they were dressed differently; but they ordered them about as if they were policemen. The first thing which I noticed about these people was that they were so quiet, so timid, so sadly meek. It was terrible when through that crust of meekness burst the cruel, thoughtless spirit of mischief, which had very little fun in it. It seemed to me that they did not know where they were being taken; it was a matter of indifference to them where they were landed from the boat. Wherever they went on shore they stayed for a short time, and then they embarked again on our boat or another, starting on a fresh journey. They all seemed to have strayed, to have no relatives, as if all the earth were strange to them. And every single one of them was senselessly cowardly.

  Once, shortly after midnight, something burst in the machinery and exploded like a report from a cannon. The deck was at once enveloped in a cloud of steam, which rose thickly from the engine-room and crept through every crevice. An invisible person shouted deafeningly:

  “Gavrilov, some red lead—and some felt!”

  I slept near the engine-room, on the table on which the dishes were washed up, and the explosion and shaking awoke me. It was quiet on deck. The engine uttered a hot, steamy whisper; a hammer sounded repeatedly. But in the course of a few minutes all the saloon passengers howled, roared with one voice, and suddenly a distressing scene was in progress.

  In a white fog which swiftly rarefied, women with their hair loose, disheveled men with round eyes like fishes’ eyes, rushed about, trampling one another, carrying bundles, bags, boxes, stumbling, falling, calling upon God and St. Nicholas, striking one another. It was very terrible, but at the same time it was interesting. I ran after them to see what they would do next.

  This was my first experience of a night alarm, yet I understood at once that the passengers had made a mistake. The boat had not slowed down. On the right hand, quite near, gleamed the life-belts. The night was light, the full moon stood high. But the passengers rushed wildly about the deck, and now those traveling in the other classes had come up, too. Some one jumped overboard. He was followed by another, and yet a third. Two peasants and a monk with heavy pieces of wood broke off a bench which was screwed to the desk. A large cage of fowls was thrown into the water from the stern. In the center of the deck, near the steps leading to the captain’s bridge, knelt a peasant who prostrated himself before the people as they rushed past him, and howled like a wolf:

  “I am Orthodox and a sinner—”

  “To the boats, you devils!” cried a fat gentleman who wore only trousers and no shirt, and he beat his breast with his fist.

  The sailors came running, seized people by
the collars, knocked their heads together, and threw them on the deck. Smouri approached heavily, wearing his overcoat over his night-clothes, addressed them all in a resounding voice:

  “Yes, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. What are you making all this fuss for? Has the steamer stopped, eh? Are we going slower? There is the shore. Those fools who jumped into the water have caught the life-belts, they have had to drag them out. There they are. Do you see? Two boats—”

  He struck the third-class passengers on the head with his fist, and they sank like sacks to the deck.

  The confusion was not yet hushed when a lady in a cloak flew to Smouri with a tablespoon in her hand, and, flourishing it in his face, cried:

  “How dare you?”

  A wet gentleman, restraining her, sucked his mustache and said irritably:

  “Let him alone, you imbecile!”

  Smouri, spreading out his hands, blinked with embarrassment, and asked me:

  “What’s the matter, eh? What does she want with me? This is nice, I must say! Why, I never saw her before in my life!”

  And a peasant, with his nose bleeding, cried:

  “Human beings, you call them? Robbers!”

  Before the summer I had seen two panics on board the steamboat, and on both occasions they were caused not by real danger, but by the mere possibility of it. On a third occasion the passengers caught two thieves, one of them was dressed like a foreigner, beat them for almost an hour, unknown to the sailors, and when the latter took their victims away from them, the passengers abused them.

  “Thieves shield thieves. That is plain. You are rogues yourselves, and you sympathize with rogues.”

  The thieves had been beaten into unconsciousness. They could not stand when they were handed over to the police at the next stopping-place.

  There were many other occasions on which my feelings were aroused to a high pitch, and I could not make up my mind as to whether people were bad or good, peaceful or mischief-making, and why they were so peculiarly cruel, lusting to work malevolence, and ashamed of being kind.

  I asked the cook about this, but he enveloped his face in a cloud of smoke, and said briefly in a tone of vexation: