The Mother

by Maxim Gorky

  “Do it! We’ll deliver everything. Write simply, so that the calves could understand!” Rybin was yelling.

  The door into the kitchen opened, and somebody came in.

  “It’s Yefim!” said Rybin, looking into the kitchen. “Come here, Yefim! This is Yefim, and this man’s name is Pavel, I was telling you about him.”

  With his hat in his hands and his grey eyes gazing at him from under his brows, standing before Pavel was a broad-faced lad with light-brown hair, wearing a short sheepskin jacket, well-proportioned and probably strong.

  “Good health!” he said in a rather husky voice and, after shaking Pavel’s hand, used both of his own to smooth down his straight hair. He looked around the room, and at once, slowly, as though stealing up on it, he went towards the shelf of books.

  “He’s seen!” said Rybin, winking at Pavel. Yefim turned, glanced at him and started examining the books, saying:

  “What a lot of reading you’ve got! But probably no time to read. There’s more time for that business in the country…”

  “But less desire?” asked Pavel.

  “Why? There’s the desire as well!” the lad replied, rubbing his chin. “The people’s brains have started stirring a bit. Geology – what’s that?”

  Pavel explained.

  “We don’t need that!” the lad replied, putting the book back onto the shelf.

  Rybin heaved a noisy sigh and remarked:

  “A peasant’s not interested in where the earth came from, but in how it was divided up, how the gentlemen pulled the earth out from under the people’s feet. Whether it’s standing still or spinning, that’s unimportant – hang it up on a string, if you want – as long as it provides food to eat; nail it to the sky, if you want, as long as it feeds people!…”

  “The History of Slavery,” Yefim read once more, then asked Pavel: “About us?”

  “There’s one about serfdom too!” said Pavel, giving him another book. Yefim took it, turned it in his hands and, setting it aside, said calmly:

  “That’s in the past!”

  “Do you have a landholding yourself?” Pavel enquired.

  “Us? We do! There’s three of us, brothers, and the holding is four desyatins.* Sand – it’s good for cleaning copper, but it’s useless land for corn!…”

  After a pause he continued:

  “I was liberated from the land – what’s the use of it? It doesn’t feed you, but it ties your hands. I’m in my fourth year as a farm labourer. And in autumn I’ll have to go and be a soldier. Uncle Mikhailo says: ‘Don’t go! Nowadays,’ he says, ‘they send soldiers to beat the people.’ But I think I will go. The troops used to beat the people in Stepan Razin’s time too, and in Pugachov’s.* It’s time it was stopped. What’s your opinion?” he asked, staring at Pavel.

  “It is time!” the latter replied with a smile. “Only it’s difficult! You need to know what to say to the soldiers and how to say it…”

  “If we learn how, we’ll manage!” said Yefim.

  “If the authorities catch you at it, they may have you shot!” Pavel concluded, looking at Yefim with curiosity.

  “They won’t forgive it!” the lad agreed calmly, and again began examining the books.

  “Drink your tea, Yefim – we’ve got to be going soon!” remarked Rybin.

  “In a moment!” the lad responded, then again asked: “Revolution – is that rebellion?”

  Andrei arrived, red, in a sweat and morose. He shook Yefim by the hand in silence, sat down next to Rybin and, after looking him over, grinned.

  “Why’re you looking so unhappy?” Rybin asked, slapping the palm of his hand on Andrei’s knee.

  “Oh, nothing,” the Ukrainian replied.

  “A worker too?” asked Yefim with a nod towards Andrei.

  “A worker!” Andrei replied. “What of it?”

  “It’s the first time he’s seen factory hands!” Rybin explained. “He says they’re a special sort of people…”

  “In what way?” asked Pavel.

  Yefim examined Andrei carefully and said:

  “You’ve got sharp bones. A peasant’s rounder in the bone…”

  “A peasant stands easier on his feet!” added Rybin. “He can feel the earth beneath him, even if he doesn’t own any of it, he can still feel it – earth! But a factory hand’s like a bird: no homeland, no home, here today, gone tomorrow! Even a woman can’t tie him down to one place, as soon as anything happens – farewell, my dear, and a fork in your side! And he’s off to look for somewhere better. But a peasant wants to make things around him better, right there on the spot. Here’s the mother come back!”

  Yefim went up to Pavel and asked:

  “Maybe you’d give me some sort of book?”

  “Certainly!” Pavel responded willingly.

  The lad’s eyes flashed greedily, and quickly he said:

  “I’ll return it! Our lads deliver tar near here, so they can bring it.”

  Rybin, already dressed to go, with his belt drawn tight, said to Yefim:

  “We’re off – it’s time!”

  “There, I’m going to be doing some reading!” exclaimed Yefim, indicating the books and smiling broadly.

  When they had gone, Pavel exclaimed animatedly, turning to Andrei:

  “Did you see those devils?…”

  “Ye-es!” the Ukrainian drawled slowly. “Like storm clouds…”

  “Mikhailo?” exclaimed the mother. “It’s as if he’d never been at the factory: he’s become a peasant through and through! And what a terrifying one!”

  “It’s a shame you weren’t here!” said Pavel to Andrei, who was sitting by the table looking glumly into his glass of tea. “You could have watched the heart at play – you’re always talking about the heart! Rybin really let me have it just now, knocked me over and crushed me!… I couldn’t even argue with him. He has so much mistrust in people, and he values them so little! What Mother says is true – that man has a terrifying power in him!…”

  “That I saw!” said the Ukrainian morosely. “The people have been poisoned! When they rise, they’ll overturn the lot, one thing after another! They need bare earth, and they’ll make it bare, they’ll wreck everything!”

  He spoke slowly, and it was clear he was thinking about something else. The mother touched him cautiously.

  “You should cheer up, Andryusha!”

  “Wait, my dear nenko!” the Ukrainian requested quietly and gently.

  And suddenly becoming excited, he banged his hand on the table and began speaking:

  “Yes, Pavel, the peasant will lay the earth bare for himself, if he gets to his feet! Like after plague, he’ll burn everything, so as to scatter in ash every trace of the injuries done him…”

  “And then he’ll stand in our way!” Pavel remarked quietly.

  “It’s our business not to allow it! Our business, Pavel, to restrain him! We’re closer to him than anyone else; he’ll trust us, he’ll follow us!”

  “Do you know, Rybin suggests we publish a newspaper for the countryside!”

  “And we should!”

  Pavel grinned and said:

  “I’m upset about not arguing with him!”

  Rubbing his head, the Ukrainian remarked calmly:

  “You will yet! You play your pipe, and anyone whose feet aren’t rooted in the ground will dance to your music! What Rybin said was true – we don’t feel the earth beneath us, and nor should we, and that’s why it’s been given to us to shake it up. We’ll shake it once, and people will be falling off; we’ll shake it again, and there’ll be more!”

  Smiling, the mother said:

  “Everything’s so simple for you, Andryusha!”

  “Well, yes!” said the Ukrainian. “Simple! Like life!”

  A few minutes later, he said:
<
br />   “I’m going out into the fields to walk for a bit…”

  “After the bathhouse? There’s a wind – it’ll blow right through you!” the mother warned.

  “That’s just what I need it to do!” he replied.

  “Watch out, or you’ll catch a cold!” said Pavel affectionately. “Better if you go to bed.”

  “No, I’m going out!”

  And after putting his things on, he left in silence…

  “He’s having a hard time!” the mother remarked with a sigh.

  “You know what?” Pavel said to her. “It’s a good thing you’ve been doing, starting to talk to him like a son after that business!”

  Glancing at him in surprise, she replied:

  “I didn’t even notice it had happened! He’s become so dear to me, I don’t even know how to put it!”

  “You have a good heart, Mother!” said Pavel quietly.

  “If I could only help you, help all of you, in some way or other! If only I could manage to do that!…”

  “Don’t worry, you will!…”

  She laughed quietly, saying:

  “But I don’t know how to stop worrying!”

  “All right, Mama! We’ll say no more!” said Pavel. “But you should know that I’m deeply, deeply grateful to you.”

  She went off into the kitchen so as not to embarrass him with her tears.

  The Ukrainian returned late in the evening, tired, and went to bed straight away, saying:

  “I think I’ve run about ten versts…”

  “Has it helped?” asked Pavel.

  “Don’t disturb me – I’m going to sleep!”

  And he fell silent, as though dead.

  After a certain time, Vesovshchikov arrived, ragged, dirty and discontented as always.

  “Have you heard who killed Isaika?” he asked Pavel, pacing clumsily around the room.

  “No!” Pavel responded tersely.

  “There’s someone about that wasn’t too squeamish! I was forever meaning to crush him myself. That’s the work for me, it’s what suits me best!”

  “Stop saying such things, Nikolai!” Pavel said to him amicably.

  “What’s this, indeed!” the mother joined in affectionately. “A soft heart, but there he is growling. Why do you do it?”

  It was nice for her to see Nikolai at that moment, and even his pockmarked face seemed more attractive.

  “I’m not suited to anything but that sort of work!” said Nikolai, shrugging his shoulders. “I think and think about where my place is. There is no place for me! I ought to talk to people, but I don’t know how! I see it all, I feel everyone’s injuries, but I can’t express it! A mute soul!”

  He went up to Pavel and, bowing his head and picking at the table with a finger, said in a way somehow childlike, in a way unlike him, plaintively:

  “Give me some kind of difficult job, brothers! I can’t live senselessly like this! You’re all at work, and I can see the work’s growing, but I’m standing aside! I deliver logs and planks. How can anyone live to do that? Give me a difficult job!”

  Pavel took him by the arm and drew him closer:

  “We will!…”

  But from behind the bed curtain came the voice of the Ukrainian:

  “Nikolai, I’ll teach you to how to set up letters and you can be our typesetter, all right?”

  Nikolai went over towards him, saying:

  “If you do that, I’ll give you my knife as a present…”

  “To hell with your knife!” the Ukrainian cried, and then suddenly burst out laughing.

  “It’s a good knife!” Nikolai insisted. Pavel burst out laughing too.

  Then Vesovshchikov stopped in the middle of the room and asked:

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Yes, we are!” the Ukrainian replied, jumping out of bed. “How about this – let’s go out into the fields for a walk. It’s a good, moonlit night. Shall we?”

  “Very well!” said Pavel.

  “I’ll come too!” declared Nikolai. “I like it when you laugh, Ukrainian…”

  “And I like it when you offer presents!” the Ukrainian replied with a grin.

  As he was putting his things on in the kitchen, the mother said to him querulously:

  “Dress up warm…”

  And when all three of them had left, after looking at them through the window, she glanced at the icons and quietly said:

  “Lord, help them!…”

  XXVI

  The days flew one after another at a speed that did not let the mother think about May Day. Only at night-time, when she went to bed, tired after the noisy, agitating bustle of the day, did her heart quietly moan:

  “If only it would come soon…”

  At dawn the factory siren would howl, her son and Andrei would hurriedly have tea and a bite to eat, and then go, leaving the mother a dozen tasks. And she would be like a squirrel on a treadmill all day, making dinner, making purple aspic and paste for proclamations; people of some sort would come thrusting notes to be passed on to Pavel at her, and then they would disappear, infecting her with their excitement.

  Leaflets appealing to the workers to celebrate May Day were pasted up on fences almost every night, they would appear even on the doors of the police station and they were found every day at the factory. In the mornings the police would go around the settlement cursing, ripping and scraping the purple sheets of paper from the fences, but at dinner time they would again be flying around in the street, getting under the feet of passers-by. Police spies were sent from town and, standing on the corners, they scanned the workers as, cheerful and animated, they passed by from the factory to dinner and back again. Everybody enjoyed seeing the impotence of the police, and even the older workers said to one another with a grin:

  “See what they’re doing, eh?”

  Small groups of people gathered everywhere, heatedly discussing the disturbing appeal. Life was on the boil, it was more interesting for everyone that spring, bringing something new to all: to some another reason to get irritated and angrily curse those spreading sedition; to others vague disquiet and hope; to others still, though they were in the minority, the acute joy of consciousness that they were the force that was rousing everyone.

  Pavel and Andrei scarcely slept at night and would come home just before the siren, tired, hoarse and pale. The mother knew they were organizing meetings in the wood or at the marsh, and it was known to her that mounted police patrols roamed outside the settlement at night and police spies crept around, seizing and searching individual workers, breaking up groups and at times arresting the one or the other. Realizing that both her son and Andrei might also be arrested any night, she all but wished it would happen – it seemed to her it would be better for them.

  The case of the timekeeper’s murder went strangely quiet. For two days the local police asked people about it, but after questioning a dozen men, they lost interest in the murder.

  In conversation with the mother, reflecting in her words the opinion of the police – with whom, as with everyone, she was on friendly terms – Maria Korsunova told her:

  “How are you going to be able to find the guilty man here? Maybe a hundred people saw Isai that morning, and ninety, if not more, could have given him a thump. In seven years he’d done everyone a bad turn…”

  There was a noticeable change in the Ukrainian. His face became pinched and his eyelids heavy, sinking over his protuberant eyes and half-closing them. Thin lines appeared on his face from the nostrils to the corners of his lips. He started speaking less about ordinary everyday things, but he would flare up more and more often and, getting into a euphoric state of rapture that intoxicated everyone, speak of the future, of the fine, bright celebration of the triumph of freedom and reason.

  When the case of Isai’s death went
quiet, he said with a sad, fastidious grin:

  “No one’s dear to them, not the people, nor even the men they set upon us like dogs. It’s not for their faithful Judas they feel regret: it’s for the pieces of silver…”

  “That’s enough about that, Andrei!” said Pavel firmly. And the mother added quietly:

  “Someone gave a bit of rotten wood a shove, and it fell apart!”

  “True, but that’s no comfort!” the Ukrainian responded gloomily.

  He often said those words, but they took on a special kind of meaning on his lips, all-embracing, bitter and caustic…

  … And then the day arrived, May Day.

  The siren began to roar, demanding and imperious as ever. The mother, who had not dropped off for a moment in the night, leapt up from her bed, put fire into the samovar, which had been prepared the evening before, and wanted to knock, as always, on her son and Andrei’s door, but, after some thought, she flapped a hand dismissively and sat down by the window, holding her hand to her face as though she had toothache.

  Drifting quickly across the pale-blue sky was a flock of pink-and-white clouds, like big birds in flight, frightened by the booming roar of steam. The mother looked at the clouds, paying close attention to her body. Her head was heavy, and her eyes, inflamed by the sleepless night, were dry. There was a strange calm in her breast, her heart was beating evenly and her thoughts were of simple things…

  “I’ve put the samovar on too early: it’ll boil dry! Let them sleep a little longer today. They’re both worn out…”

  Peeping in at the window and playing cheerfully was a youthful ray of sun; she put her hand out to it, and when it fell brightly onto the skin of her hand, she stroked it gently with her other hand, smiling pensively, tenderly. Then she stood up, trying not to make a noise, took the pipe from the samovar, washed and started praying, crossing herself religiously and moving her lips soundlessly. Her face brightened, and her right eyebrow would now rise slowly upwards, now drop suddenly down…

  The second siren cried out more quietly, not so confidently, with a quaver in the rich, moist sound. It seemed to the mother to be crying for longer than usual today.

  There rang out in the other room the Ukrainian’s clear, booming voice.