by Maxim Gorky
Quivering and singing in the mother’s breast was the echo of her memories. And somewhere away to one side there was a thought developing:
“Here people are, living amicably, calmly. They don’t quarrel, they don’t drink vodka, they don’t argue over a crust of bread… the way people who lead the hard life do…”
Sofia was smoking a cigarette. She smoked a lot, almost continually.
“It was Kostya’s favourite thing while he was alive!” she said, hurriedly inhaling smoke, and again she struck a soft, sad chord. “How I used to love playing for him. How sensitive he was and responsive to everything, full of everything…”
“She must be reminiscing about her husband,” the mother noted in passing. “Yet she’s smiling…”
“That man gave me so much happiness…” Sofia said quietly, accompanying her thoughts with the light sounds of the strings. “He knew so well how to live…”
“Ye-es!” said Nikolai, pulling at his beard. “A melodious soul!…”
Sofia threw away the cigarette she had started to smoke, turned to the mother and asked her:
“The noise I make doesn’t disturb you, no?”
The mother replied with a vexation she could not contain:
“Don’t ask me – I don’t understand a thing. I just sit and listen and think to myself…”
“No, you ought to understand!” said Sofia. “A woman can’t fail to understand music, especially if she’s sad…”
She struck the keys hard, and a loud cry rang out, as if someone had heard some news that was dreadful for them – it had struck them in the heart and torn out this stunning sound. Young voices trembled in fright and went rushing away in hurried confusion; a loud, wrathful voice cried out again, drowning everything. Some misfortune must have taken place, yet it had called to life not laments, but wrath. Then someone gentle and strong appeared and started to sing a simple, pretty song, persuading, appealing to be followed.
The mother’s heart filled with a desire to say something nice to these people. She was smiling, intoxicated by the music, and felt herself capable of doing something the brother and sister needed.
And after looking around to see what could be done, she quietly went into the kitchen to put on the samovar.
But her desire did not disappear, and while she was pouring the tea, smiling in embarrassment, and as though rubbing her heart with words of warm affection, given in equal measure to them and to herself, she said:
“We people of the hard life feel everything, but it’s hard for us to express it; we’re ashamed that, you know, we understand, but can’t say it. And because of the shame, we often get angry with our thoughts. Life’s battering and stinging us from all directions, and a rest would be nice, but our thoughts won’t allow it.”
Nikolai listened, wiping his glasses. Sofia looked on with her enormous eyes wide open, forgetting to smoke her cigarette, which was going out. She was sitting by the piano, half-turned towards it and gently touching the keys at times with the slender fingers of her right hand. A chord would cautiously be poured into the speech of the mother, who was hurriedly clothing her feelings in simple, heartfelt words.
“At least I’ll be able to say something about myself and other people now, because I’ve started to understand and I can compare things. The way I lived before, I had nothing to compare with. In our existence, everyone lives the same. But now I can see how others live, I remember the way I used to live myself, and I feel bitter, it’s hard for me!”
She lowered her voice and went on:
“Maybe I’m saying something wrong, and there’s no need to say it, because you know it all for yourselves…”
Tears began to ring in her voice and, looking at them with a smile in her eyes, she said:
“But I’d like to open up my heart to you so you can see how I wish you well, the very best!”
“We can see it!” said Nikolai quietly.
She was unable to sate her desire and told them again what had been new for her and had seemed to her inestimably important. She began telling them about her life of hurt and patient suffering, told them without anger, with a smile of regret on her lips, unrolling the grey scroll of sad days, enumerating her husband’s blows, and she was amazed herself at the insignificance of the grounds for those blows, surprised herself at her own inability to deflect them…
They listened to her in silence, overwhelmed by the profound meaning of the simple story of a person who had been considered a beast, and who had herself, for a long time, uncomplaining, felt she was the thing she was taken to be. Thousands of lives seemed to be speaking through her lips; everything in the way she had lived had been commonplace and simple, but a countless multitude of people had lived just as simply and ordinarily on this earth, and her story took on the significance of a symbol. Nikolai set his elbows on the table, rested his head on his palms and did not move, gazing at her through his glasses with tensely narrowed eyes. Sofia reclined against the back of her chair and would wince at times, shaking her head. Her face became even more thin and pale, and she did not smoke.
“I thought I was unfortunate once, it seemed to me that my life was a fever,” she said quietly, lowering her head. “That was in exile. A little provincial town, with nothing to do and nothing to think about except yourself. I was putting all my misfortunes together and weighing them up because of having nothing to do: so, I’d quarrelled with my father, whom I loved, I’d been expelled from grammar school and insulted, then prison, the treachery of a comrade who was dear to me, my husband’s arrest, prison again and exile, my husband’s death. And it seemed to me then that I was the most unfortunate of people. But all my misfortunes, and ten times more, aren’t the equal of a month of your life, Pelageya Nilovna… That daily torture over a period of years… Where do people draw the strength to suffer from?”
“They get used to it!” Vlasova replied with a sigh.
“I thought I knew life!” said Nikolai pensively. “But when it’s not a book talking about it, and not my scattered impressions of it, but life itself, like that – it’s fearful! And it’s the trivialities that are fearful, the insignificant things, the minutes that make up the years…”
The conversation flowed and grew, encompassing the hard life from every side, and the mother delved deep into her memories, extracting the daily injuries from the twilight of the past, and created a painful picture of the mute horror in which her youth had been lost. Finally she said:
“Oh dear, I’ve tired you out with my talking: it’s time you had a rest! Telling it all’s not possible…”
The brother and sister took their leave of her in silence. Nikolai seemed to her to bow lower than he always had before and to squeeze her hand tighter. And Sofia saw her to her room and, stopping in the doorway, said quietly:
“Have a rest, goodnight!”
There was warmth in her voice, and her grey eyes caressed the mother’s face softly…
She took Sofia’s hand and, squeezing it in her own, replied:
“Thank you!…”
IV
A few days later, the mother and Sofia appeared before Nikolai as poorly dressed townswomen in worn calico dresses and cardigans, with knapsacks over their shoulders and staffs in their hands. The costume reduced Sofia’s height and made her pale face even more severe.
Bidding his sister farewell, Nikolai squeezed her hand tight, and the mother again noted the simplicity and serenity of their relationship. These people had neither kisses nor affectionate words, but their attitude to one another was so sincere and solicitous. Where she lived, people did a lot of kissing, often used affectionate words and always bit one another like hungry dogs.
The women walked in silence through the streets of the town, went out into the open country and began striding shoulder to shoulder along a wide, well-trodden road between two rows of old birches.
“Won’t you get tired?” the mother asked Sofia.
“Do you think I’ve not done much walking? This is something I’m familiar with…”
Merrily, as if boasting of the pranks of her childhood, Sofia began telling the mother about her revolutionary work. She had had to live under an assumed name when using false documents, dress up in disguise while hiding from spies, carry poods of forbidden books around various different towns, arrange escapes for exiled comrades and accompany them abroad. A secret printing press had been set up in her apartment, and when the gendarmes, learning of this, had come to search it, she had left, managing to dress up as a maid a minute before their arrival, encountering her guests at the gates of the house, and with no outer clothing, with a light scarf on her head and a paraffin can in her hands, in winter, in a hard frost, she had walked through the entire town from one end to the other. Another time, she had arrived in a town not her own to see acquaintances and, when she was already on her way up the stairs to their apartment, had noticed there was a search going on there. It had been too late to turn back, so then she had boldly rung at a door a floor below her acquaintances’ apartment and, going in with her suitcase to strangers, had candidly explained her situation to them.
“You can give me up if you like, but I don’t think you’ll do that,” she had said confidently.
They had been very frightened and had not slept all night, expecting someone to come knocking at the door at any minute, but had been unable to bring themselves to give her up to the gendarmes and had joined her in the morning in laughing at themselves. Once, dressed up as a nun, she had travelled in the same train carriage and on the same bench as the spy who had been on her trail and who, boasting of his cunning, had told her how he did it. He had been certain she was travelling in the second-class carriage of the train, had got out at every stop and, on returning, had said to her:
“Nowhere to be seen – she must have gone to bed. They get tired too – it’s a hard life, just like ours!”
The mother listened to her stories, laughed and looked at her with caressing eyes. Tall and thin, Sofia strode down the road on her shapely legs with a firm, easy step. In her gait, her words, in the very sound of her voice, a little muffled, yet still bright, in the whole of her upright figure there was a great deal of spiritual health and cheerful boldness. She looked at everything with young eyes and everywhere saw something that gladdened her with its youthful joy.
“Look, what a splendid pine,” Sofia exclaimed, pointing a tree out to the mother. The mother stopped and looked, but the pine was no taller and no bushier than any other.
“It’s a nice tree!” she said with a smile. And she saw the way the wind played with the grey hairs above the woman’s ear.
“A skylark!” Sofia’s grey eyes burned with affection, and her body seemed to rise from the earth to meet the music that resounded unseen in the clear heights. At times, bending lithely, she would pick a wild flower and lovingly stroke the trembling petals with light touches of her quick, slender fingers. And softly and prettily she would sing something.
All of this moved the mother’s heart closer to the bright-eyed woman, and she unwittingly pressed up against her, trying to walk in step. But at times there would suddenly be something sharp in Sofia’s words, which would seem to the mother unnecessary and would arouse in her a wary thought:
“Mikhail isn’t going to like her…”
But a minute later Sofia would again be speaking simply and sincerely, and the mother would be looking into her eyes with a smile.
“How young you still are!” she said with a sigh.
“Oh, I’m already thirty-two!” Sofia exclaimed.
Vlasova smiled.
“That’s not what I mean – to look at, you might be thought older. But looking into your eyes and listening to you, it’s a real surprise, as if you were a girl. Your life’s restless and hard, dangerous, but your heart smiles.”
“I don’t feel things are hard for me, and I can’t imagine a better, more interesting life than this one… I’m going to call you Nilovna; Pelageya doesn’t suit you.”
“Call me whatever you like!” said the mother pensively. “Whatever you like, you call me it. I just keep looking at you, listening and thinking. It’s nice for me to see you know the ways to the human heart. Everything a person has inside opens up before you without shyness, without worries – their soul flies open of its own accord to greet you. And what I think about all of you is: they’re going to overcome the evil in life – they’re going to, for sure!”
“We’ll be victorious because we’re with the working people!” said Sofia in a loud, confident voice. “Everything possible is hidden away inside them, and with them all is achievable! We just have to awaken their consciousness, which isn’t given the freedom to grow…”
Her speech aroused a complicated feeling in the mother’s heart – for some reason she felt pity for Sofia, an inoffensive, friendly pity, and she wanted to hear different words from her, simpler ones.
“Who’s going to reward you for your labours?” she asked quietly and sadly.
Sofia replied, as it seemed to the mother, with pride:
“We’re already rewarded! We’ve found a life for ourselves that satisfies us, we live with all the strength of our soul – what more can you want?”
The mother glanced at her and lowered her head, as again she thought: “Mikhailo isn’t going to like her…”
Filling their breasts with the sweet air, they walked not at a fast, but at a good pace, and for the mother it was as if she were going on a pilgrimage. Her childhood came to mind, and the positive joy with which she had sometimes, on a holiday, walked from the village to a distant monastery to see its wonder-working icon.
Sometimes, in a low voice, but prettily, Sofia would sing some new songs about the sky or love, or she would suddenly start reciting verse about the fields and the forests or the Volga, and the mother would listen with a smile and unwittingly nod her head to the rhythm of the line, yielding to its music.
Inside her breast it was warm, quiet and pensive, as in a little old garden on a summer’s evening.
V
On the third day they arrived at the village, the mother asked a peasant working in the fields where the tar factory was, and soon they had gone down a steep woodland path, with the roots of trees lying across it like steps, to a small, round clearing, littered with charcoal and kindling and flooded in tar.
“Here we are then!” said the mother, looking around in disquiet.
Sitting, having dinner by a hut made of stakes and branches, at a table made of three rough planks set on trestles dug into the earth, were Rybin – completely black, in a shirt unbuttoned at the chest – Yefim and two other young lads. Rybin was the first to notice them, and putting the palm of his hand up to his eyes, he waited in silence.
“Hello, brother Mikhailo!” cried the mother while still at some distance.
He got up and, having recognized her, set off unhurriedly towards them, then stopped and, smiling, stroked his beard with a dark hand.
“We’re on a pilgrimage!” said the mother as she approached. “I thought: ‘Why don’t I drop in and visit my brother!’ This is my friend, Anna’s her name…”
Proud of her inventions, she threw a sidelong glance at Sofia’s face, serious and stern.
“Hello!” said Rybin with a gloomy grin; he shook her hand, bowed to Sofia and continued: “Don’t lie: this isn’t the town – lying’s not needed! We’re all friends here…”
Sitting at the table, Yefim was examining the wanderers keenly and saying something to his comrades in a buzzing voice. When the women came over to the table, he got up and bowed to them silently, while his comrades sat motionless, as though not noticing the guests.
“We live like monks here!” said Rybin, giving Vlasova a light pat on the shoulder. “No one comes to see
us, the master’s not in the village, the mistress has been taken to hospital and I’m a sort of manager. Do sit down at the table. I expect you’d like to eat? Yefim, you could get the milk out!”
Yefim went unhurriedly into the hut, the wanderers removed the knapsacks from their shoulders and one of the lads, tall and thin, got up from the table to help them, while the other, thickset and shaggy-haired, leant pensively on the table and looked at them, scratching his head and quietly humming a song.
The heavy aroma of tar, mingling with the stifling smell of rotting leaves, made their heads spin.
“This one’s name is Yakov,” said Rybin, indicating the tall lad, “and that’s Ignaty. Well, how’s your son?”
“In prison!” said the mother with a sigh.
“In prison again?” exclaimed Rybin. “He liked it there, didn’t he?”
Ignaty stopped singing. Yakov took the staff from the mother’s hand and said:
“Sit down!…”
“And what about you? Do sit down!” Rybin invited Sofia. She sat down silently on a tree stump, scrutinizing Rybin closely.
“When did they take him?” asked Rybin, settling down opposite the mother and exclaiming with a shake of the head: “You have no luck, Nilovna!”
“Never mind!” she said.
“Well? Are you getting used to it?”
“I’m not getting used to it, but I can see that it can’t be avoided!”
“Right!” said Rybin. “Well, tell us the story…”
Yefim brought a pot of milk, took a cup from the table, rinsed it out with water and, pouring milk into it, moved it towards Sofia while listening attentively to the mother’s story. He moved and did everything noiselessly and carefully. When the mother had finished her brief story, everyone was silent for a minute or so, and nobody looked at anyone else. Ignat, sitting at the table, was drawing some sort of pattern on the planks with a fingernail, Yefim was standing behind Rybin, resting an elbow on his shoulder, and Yakov, leaning against a tree trunk, had folded his arms over his chest and lowered his head. Sofia was examining the men from under her brows…