by Maxim Gorky
“Mm, yes!” said the mother, moving away from him, and she involuntarily blinked when her gaze met his narrow, sharp eyes.
“And how’s Fedya Mazin?” shouted the Ukrainian from the kitchen. “Is he writing poetry?”
“Yes, he is. I don’t understand that!” said Nikolai, shaking his head. “What is he – a siskin? They put him in a cage and he sings! One thing I do understand – I don’t feel like going home…”
“Well, what is there for you there, at your house?” said the mother pensively. “It’s empty, the stove isn’t on, everything’s gone cold…”
He was silent, and his eyes narrowed. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, lit up unhurriedly and, gazing at the grey cloud of smoke that was melting away in front of his face, he grinned the grin of a doleful dog.
“Yes, it’s bound to be cold. Frozen cockroaches lying around on the floor. And the mice frozen too. Let me stay the night with you, Pelageya Nilovna – can I do that?” he asked in a muffled voice without looking at her.
“Why, of course, sir!” the mother said quickly. She felt awkward, uncomfortable with him.
“The way times are now, children are ashamed of their parents…”
“What?” asked the mother with a start.
He glanced at her, closed his eyes, and his pockmarked face became blind.
“Children have started being ashamed of their parents, I say!” he repeated, and heaved a noisy sigh. “Pavel will never be ashamed of you. But me, I’m ashamed of my father. And I won’t be going to that house of his any more. I have no father… and no home! I’ve been put under police supervision, otherwise I’d go away to Siberia… There I’d liberate exiles, organize escapes for them…”
The mother understood with her sensitive heart that things were hard for this man, but his pain aroused no compassion in her.
“Yes, if that’s how it is… then the best thing is to go!” she said, so as not to offend him with silence.
Out of the kitchen came Andrei and, laughing, said:
“What are you preaching about, eh?”
The mother stood up, saying: “I need to get something ready to eat…”
Vesovshchikov looked intently at the Ukrainian and suddenly declared:
“I assume there are people who need to be killed!”
“Oho! And why?” asked the Ukrainian.
“To get rid of them…”
Tall and thin, the Ukrainian stood in the middle of the room, rocking on his heels with his hands thrust into his pockets, and looked down on Nikolai, while Nikolai sat firmly on his chair, surrounded by clouds of smoke, with red blotches standing out on his grey face.
“I’m going to tear Isai Gorbov’s block off – you’ll see!”
“Why?” asked the Ukrainian.
“Don’t be a spy, don’t be an informer. It’s because of him my father’s ruined, because of him he’s aiming to be a police spy now,” said Vesovshchikov, gazing at Andrei with sullen hostility.
“So that’s how it is!” the Ukrainian exclaimed. “But who’s going to blame you for that? Foolish folk!…”
“The foolish and the wise are both cut from the same cloth!” said Nikolai firmly. “Now you’re wise, and Pavel too, but am I the same sort of man for you as Fedka Mazin, or Samoilov, or as the two of you are for each other? Don’t lie – I won’t believe you all the same… and all of you set me apart in a separate place…”
“Your soul’s in pain, Nikolai!” the Ukrainian said quietly and affectionately, sitting down next to him.
“It is. And so’s yours… Only your sore spots seem nobler to you than mine do. We’re all swine to one another, that’s what I say. And what can you say to me? Well?”
His sharp eyes stared into Andrei’s face, and he waited with his teeth bared. His mottled face was motionless, but a tremor ran across his thick lips, as though he had burnt them with something hot.
“I’m not going to say anything to you!” the Ukrainian began, warmly caressing Vesovshchikov’s hostile gaze with the sad smile of his blue eyes. “I know to argue with someone at such a time, when all the scratches in his heart are bleeding, is only to offend him; I know it, brother!”
“It’s impossible to argue with me, I don’t know how to do it!” Nikolai mumbled, lowering his eyes.
“I think each of us has walked barefoot over broken glass,” the Ukrainian continued, “each of us in a dark hour has breathed just the way you are…”
“You can’t say anything to me!” said Vesovshchikov slowly. “My soul’s howling!…”
“And I don’t want to! But I know this will pass. Maybe not completely, but it will pass!”
He smiled and, giving Nikolai a pat on the shoulder, continued:
“It’s a children’s illness, brother, like measles. We all get it – the strong a little less, the weak a little more. It overcomes the likes of us when a man’s found himself, but doesn’t yet see life or his place in it. It seems to you as if you’re the only cucumber on earth that’s as good as this, and everyone wants to eat you. Then a little time passes, and you see that the bit that’s good in your soul is no worse in other breasts either, and you feel better. And it’s a little embarrassing – why were you climbing up that bell tower when your bell’s so small it can’t even be heard during the holy-day peal? Later on you see how your ringing can be heard in the chorus, while the old bells drown it in their booming on its own, like a fly in oil. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Maybe I do!” said Nikolai with a nod of his head. “Only I don’t believe it!”
The Ukrainian laughed, leapt to his feet and began running around noisily.
“I didn’t believe it either. Oh, you wagon!”
“Why wagon?” Nikolai grinned gloomily, gazing at the Ukrainian.
“It’s what you look like!”
Vesovshchikov suddenly opened his mouth wide and let out a loud laugh.
“What is it?” asked the Ukrainian in surprise, stopping opposite him.
“I just thought anyone who offended you would be a fool!” Nikolai declared, moving his head about.
“And how are you going to offend me?” the Ukrainian pronounced, shrugging his shoulders.
“I don’t know!” said Vesovshchikov, baring his teeth, either in geniality or condescension. “I’m simply saying that a man must really feel very ashamed after he’s offended you.”
“So that’s the direction you’re going!” said the Ukrainian, laughing.
“Andryusha!” the mother called from the kitchen.
Andrei went away.
Left alone, Vesovshchikov glanced around, stretched out a leg in a heavy boot, looked at it, bent down and felt his fat calf with his hand. He raised the hand to his face, examined the palm carefully and then turned it over. The hand was fat, with short fingers and covered in yellow fur. He waved it in the air and stood up.
When Andrei brought in the samovar, Vesovshchikov was standing in front of the mirror and greeted him with these words:
“It’s been a long time since I last saw my mug…” He gave a smirk and, shaking his head, added: “It’s ugly, my mug!”
“And what’s that to you?” asked Andrei, throwing him a curious glance.
“Well, Sashenka says your face is the mirror of your soul!” Nikolai pronounced slowly.
“And it’s not true!” the Ukrainian exclaimed. “She’s got a hooked nose, and her cheekbones are like scissors, but her soul’s like a star.”
Vesovshchikov glanced at him and grinned.
They sat down to have tea.
Vesovshchikov took a large potato, liberally salted a piece of bread and calmly, slowly, like an ox, began chewing.
“And how are things here?” he asked with his mouth full.
And when Andrei told him cheerfully about the increa
se in propaganda at the factory, he remarked in a muffled voice, gloomy once more:
“It’s taking a long time, all this, a long time! It’s got to be quicker…”
The mother looked at him, and quietly in her breast there stirred a feeling of hostility towards this man.
“Life isn’t a horse: you can’t beat it with a whip!” said Andrei.
Vesovshchikov tossed his head stubbornly.
“It’s a long time! I haven’t got the patience! What am I to do?”
He spread his hands helplessly, gazing into the Ukrainian’s face, and fell silent, awaiting a reply.
“We all need to study and to teach others – that’s our job!” said Andrei, lowering his head.
Vesovshchikov asked:
“And when are we going to fight?”
“We’re going to be beaten more than once before then – that I know!” the Ukrainian replied with a grin. “And I don’t know when we’ll have to wage war! I think we need to arm our heads first, you see, and our hands later…”
Nikolai began eating again. Unnoticed, from under her brows, the mother examined his broad face, trying to find in it something that would reconcile her with Vesovshchikov’s heavy, square figure.
And meeting the piercing gaze of his little eyes, she twitched her eyebrows timidly. Andrei was behaving restlessly – he would suddenly begin talking, would laugh and, all of a sudden cutting short his speech, whistle.
It seemed to the mother that she understood his anxiety. But Nikolai sat silent, and whenever the Ukrainian asked him about anything, he replied briefly, with clear reluctance.
The little room was becoming stuffy and cramped for its two inhabitants and, first one, then the other, they threw quick glances at the guest.
Finally he got up and said:
“I fancy going to bed. I was inside a long time, then suddenly they let me go and off I went. I’m tired.”
When he had gone into the kitchen and, after a little bustling about, suddenly seemed almost to have died there, the mother listened carefully to the quietness and then whispered to Andrei:
“He’s thinking of terrible things…”
“He’s a difficult lad!” the Ukrainian agreed, shaking his head. “But it’ll pass! I used to be like that. When your heart doesn’t burn bright, a lot of soot builds up inside it. Well, you go to bed, nenko, and I’ll sit a bit longer and read.”
She went off into the corner where the bed stood, hidden behind a calico bed curtain, and for a long time, sitting by the table, Andrei could hear the warm murmur of her prayers and sighs. Flipping quickly through the pages of a book, he wiped his forehead excitedly, twisted his moustache with his long fingers and shuffled his feet. The pendulum of the clock tapped, and outside the window the wind sighed.
The mother’s quiet voice rang out:
“Oh Lord! There are so many people in the world, and everyone in his own way is groaning. And where are the ones that are joyful?”
“There are such people already, there are!” the Ukrainian responded. “And soon there’ll be many of them, oh so many!”
XXI
Life flowed quickly, the days were varied and had many faces. Each one brought with it something new, and that no longer alarmed the mother. In the evenings, ever more frequently did unfamiliar people appear who, preoccupied, conversed in low tones with Andrei and went away into the darkness late at night, cautiously, noiselessly, raising their collars and pulling their hats down low over their eyes. In each one could be sensed suppressed excitement; it seemed as if everyone wanted to laugh and sing, but they had no time, they were always in a hurry. Some sarcastic and serious, others cheerful and sparkling with the power of youth, still others pensively quiet, in the eyes of the mother they all had something equally insistent and certain, and although each had a face of their own, all their faces merged into one for her: a thin, calmly decisive, clear face with the deep gaze of dark eyes, loving and stern, like the gaze of Christ on the road to Emmaus.
The mother counted them as, in her mind, she gathered them in a crowd around Pavel – in that crowd he became inconspicuous to the eyes of enemies.
A lively, curly-haired girl came from town one day, bringing some sort of package for Andrei, and when leaving, with her cheerful eyes flashing, she said to Vlasova:
“Goodbye, comrade!”
“Farewell!” the mother replied, suppressing a smile.
And after seeing the girl off, she went up to the window and, laughing, watched her comrade going down the street with her little feet pattering rapidly, fresh as a spring flower and light as a butterfly.
“Comrade!” said the mother when her guest had disappeared. “Oh my dear girl! God grant you an honest comrade for the whole of your life!”
She often noticed something childlike in all the people from town and would smile condescendingly, but she was touched and joyfully surprised by their faith, the depth of which she sensed ever more clearly, and she was caressed and warmed by their dreams of the triumph of justice – listening to them, in mysterious sadness she would heave involuntary sighs. But she was especially touched by their simplicity and the beautiful, generous way they neglected themselves.
She already understood much of what they said about life, sensed that they had discovered the true source of all men’s unhappiness and had grown accustomed to agreeing with their ideas. But in the depths of her soul she did not believe that they could reshape life in the way they wanted, or that they would have the power to attract all working people to their light. Everyone wanted to be well fed today, no one wished to postpone their dinner, not even until tomorrow, if they could eat it now. Few would go down this long and difficult road, few eyes would see the fabulous realm of the brotherhood of man at its end. That was why these good people, despite their beards and, at times, tired faces, all seemed to her like children.
“Oh my dears!” she thought, shaking her head.
But even now they were all leading good, serious, wise lives, talking about goodness and, wanting to teach people what they knew, doing it without sparing themselves. She understood that such a life could be loved in spite of its danger, and, sighing, she would look back to where her past stretched out in a dark, narrow ribbon. Imperceptibly, she developed a serene consciousness that she herself was necessary for this new life – never before had she felt needed by anyone, but now she saw clearly that she was needed by many, and this was novel and pleasant, and lifted her head a little…
She regularly took leaflets to the factory, looked upon this as her duty and became a customary figure for the police spies, growing familiar to them. She was searched several times, but always the day after the leaflets had appeared at the factory. She knew how to arouse the suspicion of the spies and guards when she had nothing with her; they would seize and frisk her; she would pretend to be offended, argue with them and, having made them feel ashamed, leave, proud of her cunning. She enjoyed this game.
Vesovshchikov was not taken on at the factory and started working for a timber merchant, carrying logs, boards and firewood around the settlement. The mother saw him almost every day: a pair of black horses would be walking along, digging their trembling, straining legs hard into the ground, both of them old and bony with their heads shaking sadly and wearily and their dim eyes blinking in exhaustion. Juddering behind them stretched a long, wet log or a heap of planks with its ends banging noisily, and alongside, with the reins lowered, paced Nikolai, ragged and dirty, in heavy boots and with a hat on the back of his head, awkward, like a tree stump that has been wrenched out of the ground. He too shakes his head, looking down at his feet. His horses run blindly into oncoming carts and people, angry oaths swirl around him like bumblebees and the air is cut by furious cries. Without lifting his head or answering them, he lets out a sharp, deafening whistle and mutters to the horses in a muffled voice:
“Get on, then!�
�
Each time comrades gathered with Andrei for the reading of a new issue of a foreign newspaper or a pamphlet, Nikolai would come as well, he would sit down in a corner for an hour or two and listen in silence. When the reading was over, the youngsters would spend a long time arguing, but Vesovshchikov took no part in the arguments. He would stay longest of all and, one to one with Andrei, would ask him the gloomy question:
“And who’s most to blame?”
“The one to blame, you see, is the one who first said – this is mine! That man died several thousand years ago, and it’s not worth being angry with him!” said the Ukrainian in jest, but his eyes looked anxious.
“What about the rich? And those who stand up for them?”
The Ukrainian took his head in his hands, tugged at his moustache and talked for a long time in simple words about life and people. But the upshot of what he said was always that everyone in general seemed to be to blame, and that did not satisfy Nikolai. Tightly pursing his thick lips, he shook his head in denial and, declaring distrustfully that it was not so, left discontented and sombre.
One day he said:
“No, there must be people to blame – they’re here! I tell you, we have to plough up the whole of life like a field of weeds – without mercy!”
“That’s what Isai the timekeeper once said about you!” the mother recalled.
“Isai?” Vesovshchikov queried after a pause.
“Yes. He’s a malicious one! Snoops on everyone, interrogates people; he’s started walking up and down our street and peering in at our windows…”
“Peering in?” Nikolai repeated.
The mother was already lying in bed and could not see his face, but she realized she had said too much, because the Ukrainian began hastily saying in a conciliatory way:
“Well, let him walk and peer! He can take a stroll when he has the free time…”
“No, wait!” said Nikolai in a muffled voice. “There he is, the one to blame!”
“For what?” the Ukrainian asked quickly. “For being stupid?”