The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  Then he smiled kindly and said:

  “You are very persevering, devil take you! Never mind; it is a good thing. Anyhow, give up books. When the New Year comes, I will order a good paper, and you can read that.”

  And so in the evenings, from tea-time till supper-time, I read aloud to my employers “The Moscow Gazette,” the novels of Bashkov, Rokshnin, Rudinskovski, and other literature, for the nourishment of people who suffered from deadly dullness.

  I did not like reading aloud, for it hindered me from understanding what I read. But my employers listened attentively, with a sort of reverential eagerness, sighing, amazed at the villainy of the heroes, and saying proudly to one another:

  “And we live so quietly, so peacefully; we know nothing of such things, thank God!”

  They mixed up the incidents, ascribed the deeds of the famous brigand Churkin to the post-boy Thoma Kruchin, and mixed the names. When I corrected their mistakes they were surprised.

  “What a memory he has!”

  Occasionally the poems of Leonide Grave appeared in “The Moscow Gazette.” I was delighted with them. I copied several of them into a note-book, but my employers said of the poet:

  “He is an old man, you know; so he writes poetry.” “A drunkard or an imbecile, it is all the same.”

  I liked the poetry of Strujkin, and the Count Memento Mori, but both the women said the verses were clumsy.

  “Only the Petrushki or actors talk in verse.”

  It was a hard life for me on winter evenings, under the eyes of my employers, in that close, small room. The dead night lay outside the window, now and again the ice cracked. The others sat at the table in silence, like frozen fish. A snow-storm would rattle the windows and beat against the walls, howl down the chimney, and shake the flue-plate. The children cried in the nursery. I wanted to sit by myself in a dark corner and howl like a wolf.

  At one end of the table sat the women, knitting socks or sewing. At the other sat Victorushka, stooping, copying plans unwillingly, and from time to time calling out:

  “Don’t shake the table! Goats, dogs, mice!”

  At the side, behind an enormous embroidery-frame, sat the master, sewing a tablecloth in cross-stitch. Under his fingers appeared red lobsters, blue fish, yellow butterflies, and red autumn leaves. He had made the design himself, and had sat at the work for three winters. He had grown very tired of it, and often said to me in the daytime, when I had some spare time:

  “Come along, Pyeshkov; sit down to the tablecloth and do some of it!”

  I sat down, and began to work with the thick needle. I was sorry for my master, and always did my best to help him. I had an idea that one day he would give up drawing plans, sewing, and playing at cards, and begin doing something quite different, something interesting, about which he often thought, throwing his work aside and gazing at it with fixed, amazed eyes, as at something unfamiliar to him. His hair fell over his forehead and cheeks; he looked like a laybrother in a monastery.

  “What are you thinking of?” his wife would ask him.

  “Nothing in particular,” he would reply, returning to his work.

  I listened in dumb amazement. Fancy asking a man what he was thinking of. It was a question which could not be answered. One’s thoughts were always sudden and many, about all that passed before one’s eyes, of what one saw yesterday or a year ago. It was all mixed up together, elusive, constantly moving and changing.

  The serial in “The Moscow Gazette” was not enough to last the evening, and I went on to read the journals which were put away under the bed in the bedroom. The young mistress asked suspiciously:

  “What do you find to read there? It is all pictures.”

  But under the bed, besides the “Painting Review,” lay also “Flames,” and so we read “Count Tyatin-Baltiski,” by Saliass. The master took a great fancy to the eccentric hero of the story, and laughed mercilessly, till the tears ran down his cheeks, at the melancholy adventures of the hero, crying:

  “Really, that is most amusing!”

  “Piffle!” said the mistress to show her independence of mind.

  The literature under the bed did me a great service. Through it, I had obtained the right to read the papers in the kitchen, and thus made it possible to read at night.

  To my joy, the old woman went to sleep in the nursery for the nurse had a drunken fit. Victorushka did not interfere with me. As soon as the household was asleep, he dressed himself quietly, and disappeared somewhere till morning. I was not allowed to have a light, for they took the candles into the bedrooms, and I had no money to buy them for myself; so I began to collect the tallow from the candlesticks on the quiet, and put it in a sardine tin, into which I also poured lamp oil, and, making a wick with some thread, was able to make a smoky light. This I put on the stove for the night.

  When I turned the pages of the great volumes, the bright red tongue of flame quivered agitatedly, the wick was drowned in the burning, evil-smelling fat, and the smoke made my eyes smart. But all this unpleasantness was swallowed up in the enjoyment with which I looked at the illustrations and read the description of them. These illustrations opened up before me a world which increased daily in breadth—a world adorned with towns, just like the towns of story-land. They showed me lofty hills and lovely seashores. Life developed wonderfully for me. The earth became more fascinating, rich in people, abounding in towns and all kinds of things. Now when I gazed into the distance beyond the Volga, I knew that it was not space which lay beyond, but before that, when I had looked, it used to make me feel oddly miserable. The meadows lay flat, bushes grew in clumps, and where the meadows ended, rose the indented black wall of the forest. Above the meadows it was dull, cold blue. The earth seemed an empty, solitary place. And my heart also was empty. A gentle sorrow nipped it; all desires had departed, and I thought of nothing. All I wanted was to shut my eyes. This melancholy emptiness promised me nothing, and sucked out of my heart all that there was in it.

  The description of the illustrations told me in language which I could understand about other countries, other peoples. It spoke of various incidents of the past and present, but there was a lot which I did not understand, and that worried me. Sometimes strange words stuck in my brain, like “metaphysics,” “chiliasm,” “chartist.” They were a source of great anxiety to me, and seemed to grow into monsters obstructing my vision. I thought that I should never understand anything. I did not succeed in finding out the meaning of those words. In fact, they stood like sentries on the threshold of all secret knowledge. Often whole phrases stuck in my memory for a long time, like a splinter in my finger, and hindered me from thinking of anything else.

  I remembered reading these strange verses:

  “All clad in steel, through the unpeopled land,

  Silent and gloomy as the grave,

  Rides the Czar of the Huns, Attilla.

  Behind him comes a black mass of warriors, crying,

  ‘Where, then, is Rome; where is Rome the mighty?’”

  That Rome was a city, I knew; but who on earth were the Huns? I simply had to find that out. Choosing a propitious moment, I asked my master. “The Huns?” he cried in amazement. “The devil knows who they are. Some trash, I expect.”

  And shaking his head disapprovingly, he said:

  “That head of yours is full of nonsense. That is very bad, Pyeshkov.”

  Bad or good, I wanted to know.

  I had an idea that the regimental chaplain, Soloviev, ought to know who the Huns were, and when I caught him in the yard, I asked him. The pale, sickly, always disagreeable man, with red eyes, no eyebrows, and a yellow beard, pushing his black staff into the earth, said to me:

  “And what is that to do with you, eh?”

  Lieutenant Nesterov answered my question by a ferocious:

  “What-a-t?”

  Then I concluded that
the right person to ask about the Huns was the dispenser at the chemist’s. He always looked at me kindly. He had a clever face, and gold glasses on his large nose.

  “The Huns,” said the dispenser, “were a nomad race, like the people of Khirgiz. There are no more of these people now. They are all dead.”

  I felt sad and vexed, not because the Huns were dead, but because the meaning of the word that had worried me for so long was quite simple, and was also of no use to me.

  But I was grateful to the Huns after my collision with the word ceased to worry me so much, and thanks to Attilla, I made the acquaintance of the dispenser Goldberg.

  This man knew the literal meaning of all words of wisdom. He had the keys to all knowledge. Setting his glasses straight with two fingers, he looked fixedly into my eyes and said, as if he were driving small nails into my forehead:

  “Words, my dear boy, are like leaves on a tree. If we want to find out why the leaves take one form instead of another, we must learn how the tree grows. We must study books, my dear boy. Men are like a good garden in which everything grows, both pleasant and profitable.”

  I often had to run to the chemist’s for soda-water and magnesia for the adults of the family, who were continually suffering from heartburn, and for castor-oil and purgatives for the children.

  The short instructions which the dispenser gave me instilled into my mind a still deeper regard for books. They gradually became as necessary to me as vodka to the drunkard. They showed me a new life, a life of noble sentiments and strong desires which incite people to deeds of heroism and crimes. I saw that the people about me were fitted for neither heroism nor crime. They lived apart from everything that I read about in books, and it was hard to imagine what they found interesting in their lives. I had no desire to live such a life. I was quite decided on that point. I would not.

  From the letterpress which accompanied the drawings I had learned that in Prague, London, and Paris there are no open drains in the middle of the city, or dirty gulleys choked with refuse. There were straight, broad streets, and different kinds of houses and churches. There they did not have a six-months-long winter, which shuts people up in their houses, and no great fast, when only fermenting cabbage, pickled mushrooms, oatmeal, and potatoes cooked in disgusting vegetable oil can be eaten. During the great fast books are forbidden, and they took away the “Review of Painting” from me, and that empty, meager life again closed about me. Now that I could compare it with the life pictured in books, it seemed more wretched and ugly than ever. When I could read I felt well and strong; I worked well and quickly, and had an object in life. The sooner I was finished, the more time I should have for reading. Deprived of books, I became lazy, and drowsy, and became a victim to forgetfulness, to which I had been a stranger before.

  I remember that even during those dull days something mysterious happened. One evening when we had all gone to bed the bell of the cathedral suddenly rang out, arousing every one in the house at once. Half-dressed people rushed to the windows, asking one another:

  “Is it a fire? Is that the alarm-bell?”

  In the other flats one could hear the same bustle going on. Doors slammed; some one ran across the yard with a horse ready saddled. The old mistress shrieked that the cathedral had been robbed, but the master stopped her.

  “Not so loud, Mamasha! Can’t you hear that that is not an alarm-bell?”

  “Then the archbishop is dead.”

  Victorushka climbed down from the loft, dressed himself, and muttered:

  “I know what has happened. I know!”

  The master sent me to the attic to see if the sky was red. I ran up-stairs and climbed to the roof through the dormer-window. There was no red light in the sky. The bell tolled slowly in the quiet frosty air. The town lay sleepily on the earth. In the darkness invisible people ran about, scrunching the snow under their feet. Sledges squealed, and the bell wailed ominously. I returned to the sitting-room.

  “There is no red light in the sky.”

  “Foo, you! Good gracious!” said the master, who had on his greatcoat and cap. He pulled up his collar and began to put his feet into his goloshes undecidedly.

  The mistress begged him:

  “Don’t go out! Don’t go out!”

  “Rubbish!”

  Victorushka, who was also dressed, teased them all.

  “I know what has happened.”

  When the brothers went out into the street the women, having sent me to get the samovar ready, rushed to the window. But the master rang the street door-bell almost directly, ran up the steps silently, shut the door, and said thickly:

  “The Czar has been murdered!”

  “How murdered?” exclaimed the old lady.

  “He has been murdered. An officer told me so. What will happen now?”

  Victorushka rang, and as he unwillingly took off his coat said angrily:

  “And I thought it was war!”

  Then they all sat down to drink tea, and talked together calmly, but in low voices and cautiously. The streets were quiet now, the bells had given up tolling. For two days they whispered together mysteriously, and went to and fro. People also came to see them, and related some event in detail. I tried hard to understand what had happened, but they hid the newspapers from me. When I asked Sidorov why they had killed the Czar he answered, softly:

  “It is forbidden to speak of it.”

  But all this soon wore away. The old empty life was resumed, and I soon had a very unpleasant experience.

  On one of those Sundays when the household had gone to early mass I set the samovar ready and turned my attention to tidying the rooms. While I was so occupied the eldest child rushed into the kitchen, removed the tap from the samovar, and set himself under the table to play with it. There was a lot of charcoal in the pipe of the samovar, and when the water had all trickled away from it, it came unsoldered. While I was doing the other rooms, I heard an unusual noise. Going into the kitchen, I saw with horror that the samovar was all blue. It was shaking, as if it wanted to jump from the floor. The broken handle of the tap was drooping miserably, the lid was all on one side, the pewter was melted and running away drop by drop. In fact the purplish blue samovar looked as if it had drunken shivers. I poured water over it. It hissed, and sank sadly in ruins on the floor.

  The front door-bell rang. I went to open the door. In answer to the old lady’s question as to whether the samovar was ready, I replied briefly:

  “Yes; it is ready.”

  These words, spoken, of course, in my confusion and terror, were taken for insolence. My punishment was doubled. They half killed me. The old lady beat me with a bunch of fir-twigs, which did not hurt much, but left under the skin of my back a great many splinters, driven in deeply. Before night my back was swollen like a pillow, and by noon the next day the master was obliged to take me to the hospital.

  When the doctor, comically tall and thin, examined me, he said in a calm, dull voice:

  “This is a case of cruelty which will have to be investigated.”

  My master blushed, shuffled his feet, and said something in a low voice to the doctor, who looked over his head and said shortly:

  “I can’t. It is impossible.”

  Then he asked me:

  “Do you want to make a complaint?”

  I was in great pain, but I said:

  “No, make haste and cure me.”

  They took me into another room, laid me on a table, and the doctor pulled out the splinters with pleasantly cold pincers. He said, jestingly:

  “They have decorated your skin beautifully, my friend; now you will be waterproof.”

  When he had finished his work of pricking me unmercifully, he said:

  “Forty-two splinters have been taken out, my friend. Remember that. It is something to boast of! Come back at the same time to-morrow to have the dres
sing replaced. Do they often beat you?”

  I thought for a moment, then said:

  “Not so often as they used to.”

  The doctor burst into a hoarse laugh.

  “It is all for the best, my friend, all for the best.” When he took me back to my master he said to him:

  “I hand him over to you; he is repaired. Bring him back to-morrow without fail. I congratulate you. He is a comical fellow you have there.”

  When we were in the cab my master said to me:

  “They used to beat me too, Pyeshkov. What do you think of that? They did beat me, my lad! And you have me to pity you; but I had no one, no one. People are very hard everywhere; but one gets no pity—no, not from any one. Ekh! Wild fowl!”

  He grumbled all the way home. I was very sorry for him, and grateful to him for treating me like a man.

  They welcomed me at the house as if it had been my name-day. The women insisted on hearing in detail how the doctor had treated me and what he had said. They listened and sighed, then kissed me tenderly, wrinkling their brows. This intense interest in illness, pain, and all kinds of unpleasantness always amazed me.

  I saw that they were pleased with me for not complaining of them, and I took advantage of the moment to ask if I might have some books from the tailor’s wife. They did not have the heart to refuse me. Only the old lady cried in surprise:

  “What a demon he is!”

  The next day I stood before the tailor’s wife, who said to me kindly:

  “They told me that you were ill, and that you had been taken to hospital. You see what stories get about.”

  I was silent. I was ashamed to tell her the truth. Why should she know of such sad and coarse things? It was nice to think that she was different from other people.

  Once more I read the thick books of Dumas père, Ponson de Terraille, Montepaine, Zakonier, Gaboriau, and Bourgobier. I devoured all these books quickly, one after the other, and I was happy. I felt myself to be part of a life which was out of the ordinary, which stirred me sweetly and aroused my courage. Once more I burned my improvised candle, and read all through the night till the morning, so that my eyes began to hurt me a little. The old mistress said to me kindly: