by Maxim Gorky
“Ye-es!” drawled Rybin slowly and morosely. “There you have it – in the open!…”
“If we organized a parade like that here,” said Yefim with a gloomy grin, “the peasants’d beat us to death!”
“They will that!” Ignat confirmed, nodding his head. “No, I’m going away to the factory: it’s better there…”
“You say they’re going to put Pavel on trial?” Rybin asked. “So what will the punishment be? Have you heard?”
“Penal servitude or permanent exile in Siberia…” she replied quietly.
The three lads immediately looked at her, while Rybin lowered his head and slowly asked:
“And when he was organizing this business, did he know what he was threatened with?”
“Yes, he did!” said Sofia loudly.
Everyone fell silent and was motionless, as if frozen in a single, cold thought.
“Right!” Rybin continued in a severe and important voice. “I think he knew too. Looks before he leaps, a serious man. See that, lads? The man knew he might be bayonetted, or else he’d be treated to penal servitude, but off he went. If his mother had lain down in his path, he’d have stepped right over her. Would he have gone over you, Nilovna?”
“He would!” said the mother, looking around with a shudder and a heavy sigh. Sofia stroked her arm in silence and stared straight at Rybin with knitted brows.
“That is a man!” he said in a low voice, casting his dark eyes over everyone. And the six people were silent once again. Slender rays of sunlight hung in the air like golden ribbons. Somewhere a crow was cawing with conviction. The mother looked around, upset by memories of May Day and her anguish for her son and Andrei. There were tar barrels lying about in the cramped little clearing, which was bristling with uprooted tree stumps. The oaks and birches crowding densely around the clearing were imperceptibly advancing on it from all sides and, bound together by the quietness, immobile, were throwing warm, dark shadows onto the earth.
Suddenly Yakov started away from the tree, took a step to one side, stopped and, throwing up his head, asked in a dry, loud voice:
“Is it against such men that Yefim and I’ll be set?”
“And who do you think it’ll be?” Rybin answered with a morose question. “They strangle us with our very own hands – that’s the whole trick!”
“I’m going to be a soldier anyway!” Yefim declared stubbornly in a low voice.
“Who’s trying to talk you out of it?” exclaimed Ignat. “You go!”
And staring straight at Yefim, he said with a grin:
“Only when you’re shooting at me, aim at the head… don’t cripple me, kill me outright!”
“I’ve heard that before!” cried Yefim sharply.
“Wait, lads!” said Rybin, examining them, and with an unhurried movement he raised an arm. “Here’s a woman!” he said, pointing at the mother. “Her son’s probably done for now…”
“Why do you say that?” the mother asked in a low, melancholy voice.
“It’s got to be done!” he replied morosely. “It’s got to be done, so that your hair doesn’t turn grey for nothing. Well, and has it killed her, what they’ve done? Nilovna, have you brought us some books?”
The mother glanced at him and, after a pause, replied:
“Yes, I have…”
“Right!” said Rybin, slapping the palm of his hand down onto the table. “I realized it straight away, as soon as I saw you – why should you come here, if not for that? See? The son’s been knocked out of the ranks, and the mother’s taken his place!”
Shaking his fist ominously, he uttered an obscenity.
The mother took fright at his cry, looked at him and saw that Mikhail’s face was greatly changed – it had grown thinner, the beard had become uneven and the bones of his cheeks could be sensed beneath it. Slender red veins had appeared on the bluish whites of his eyes, as though he had not slept for a long time, and his nose had become gristlier, predatorily hooked. The open collar of his once red shirt, impregnated with tar, revealed his thin collarbones and the dense black fur on his chest, and in his figure as a whole there was now even more of the gloomy and funereal. The dry lustre of his inflamed eyes illuminated his dark face with the fire of rage. Sofia had turned pale and was silent, and she did not take her eyes off the men. Ignat, with his eyes narrowed, was giving his head an occasional shake, while Yakov, standing by the hut once more, was angrily picking the bark off a stake with his dark fingers. Behind the mother’s back Yefim was slowly pacing the length of the table.
“The other day,” Rybin continued, “I was summoned by the Land Captain, and he says to me: ‘What did you say to the priest, you swine?’ – ‘Why am I a swine? I earn my crust by my own toil, and I’ve done nothing bad to anyone,’ I say, ‘there!’ He started yelling and gave me one in the teeth… I was held under arrest for three days. That’s the way you talk to the people, is it? Don’t expect forgiveness, you devil! If it’s not me, it’ll be someone else, and if it’s not you, then it’s your children who’ll have my injury taken out on them – remember that! You’ve ploughed up the breasts of the people with iron claws, you’ve sown anger in them – so don’t you expect mercy, devils of ours that you are! There.”
He was totally full of seething malice, and quivering in his voice were sounds that frightened the mother.
“And what had I said to the priest?” he continued more calmly. “After the assembly in the village, he’s sitting outside with the peasants and telling them: ‘People are a flock, and they always need a shepherd’ – right! And I joked: ‘When the fox is appointed Governor in the forest, there’ll be plenty of feathers, but no birds!’ He gave me a dirty look and started talking about the people needing to be patient and pray to God for him to grant the strength for patience. And I said: ‘The people pray a lot, but God clearly hasn’t got any time – he doesn’t hear!’ There. He started pestering me about what prayers I say. I says: ‘Just the one all my life, like all the people: “Lord, teach me the tricks of taking the gentlemen bricks, of eating rocks and spitting out logs!”’ He didn’t even let me finish. Are you a gentlewoman?” Rybin asked Sofia suddenly, cutting his story short.
“Why should I be a gentlewoman?” she asked him quickly, giving a start at the unexpectedness.
“Why?” Rybin grinned. “It’s fate, it’s the way you were born! There. Do you think you can hide the sin of nobility from people by wearing a cheap calico headscarf? We can recognize a priest even in a hempen shirt. You put your elbow in something wet on the table, and you winced and pulled a face. And your back’s too straight for a working person…”
Fearing he would offend Sofia with his hard voice, his grin and his words, the mother started speaking hurriedly and sternly:
“She’s my friend, Mikhailo Ivanych, she’s a good person, and she’s turned her hair grey in the cause. You’re not very…”
Rybin sighed deeply.
“Saying something hurtful, am I?”
Sofia glanced at him and asked drily:
“Did you want to tell me something?”
“Me? Yes! A new man appeared here recently, Yakov’s cousin. He’s sick, consumptive. Can I invite him here?”
“All right, do!” Sofia replied.
Rybin glanced at her with narrowed eyes and, lowering his voice, said:
“Yefim, you might go and tell him to be here by nightfall – there.”
Yefim put on his cap and, in silence, looking at no one, disappeared unhurriedly into the wood. Rybin nodded his head in his wake, saying in a muffled voice:
“He’s in torment! He’s to be a soldier, him and Yakov here. Yakov says simply: ‘I can’t,’ and he can’t either, but he wants to go… Thinks he can stir up the soldiers. I reckon it’s no use beating your head against a wall… There they are, bayonets in hand, and off they go. Ye-es, he’s in tor
ment! And Ignaty torments his soul too, unfairly!”
“Not unfairly at all!” said Ignat gloomily, without looking at Rybin. “They’ll win him round there, and he’ll start shooting no worse than the rest of them…”
“Unlikely!” Rybin responded pensively. “But of course, it’s better to escape it. Russia’s a big country; where are you going to find anyone? Get hold of a passport and go round the villages…”
“That’s what I’m going to do!” remarked Ignat, knocking a piece of kindling against his leg. “If we’ve made up our mind to go against things, we should keep on going!”
The conversation stopped short. Bees and wasps circled solicitously, ringing in the quietness and adding shade to it. Birds were chirping, and somewhere far off were the sounds of a song, straying across the fields. After a pause, Rybin said:
“Well, we need to work… Perhaps you’d like a rest? There are plank beds there, in the hut. Gather some dry leaves for them, Yakov… And you give me the books, Mother…”
The mother and Sofia started to untie their knapsacks. Rybin bent down over them and, contented, said:
“Look at that, brought quite a lot! Been doing this business long – what’s your name?” he turned to Sofia.
“Anna Ivanovna!” she replied. “Twelve years… What of it?”
“Nothing. Been to prison, I expect?”
“I have.”
“You see?” said the mother in a low voice, reproachfully. “And you were being rude about her…”
He was silent for a while, and then, taking a pile of books into his arms, he bared his teeth and said:
“Don’t be offended by me! A peasant with gentlefolk’s like pitch with water – they don’t get on together, they don’t mix!”
“I’m not gentlefolk, I’m a person!” Sofia objected, smiling gently.
“That’s as may be!” Rybin responded. “They say dogs used to be wolves. I’ll go and hide this.”
Ignat and Yakov went up to him, reaching out their hands.
“Give them to us!” said Ignat.
“Are they all the same?” Rybin asked Sofia.
“No, they’re different. There’s a newspaper here…”
“Oh?”
The three of them went away hurriedly into the hut.
“The man’s on fire!” the mother said quietly, following them with a thoughtful gaze.
“Yes,” Sofia responded quietly. “Never before have I seen a face such as his – like some sort of great martyr! Let’s go in there too, I want to take a look at them…”
“Don’t be cross with him for being stern…” the mother said quietly.
Sofia grinned:
“How nice you are, Nilovna…”
When they appeared in the doorway, Ignat raised his head, threw a passing glance at them and, sinking his fingers into his curly hair, bent over the newspaper lying on his knees; Rybin, standing, had caught a ray of sun that, penetrating the hut through a crack in the roof, was falling onto the newspaper, which he shifted about beneath it, moving his lips as he read; Yakov, kneeling, had leant his chest against the edge of a plank bed, and he was reading too.
Going over into a corner of the hut, the mother sat down there, while Sofia, with her arm around the mother’s shoulders, looked on in silence.
“Uncle Mikhailo, they’re criticizing us peasants!” said Yakov, under his breath and without turning around. Rybin did turn around, glanced at him and answered with a grin:
“Lovingly!”
After an intake of breath, Ignat raised his head and, closing his eyes, said:
“It says here: ‘The peasant has ceased to be a person’ – of course he has!”
Across his simple, open face slid a shadow of hurt.
“All right then, come and put yourself in my skin, spend a bit of time in it, and I’ll see what you’ll be like, know-it-all!”
“I’m going to lie down!” the mother said quietly to Sofia. “I’m a little tired after all, and my head’s spinning from the smell. What about you?”
“I don’t want to.”
The mother stretched out on a plank bed and began to doze. Sofia sat over her, observing the readers, and whenever a wasp or a bumblebee circled above the mother’s face, she solicitously drove it away. With her eyes half-closed, the mother saw this, and she found Sofia’s attention pleasing.
Rybin came over and asked in a booming whisper:
“Is she asleep?”
“Yes.”
He paused, looked intently into the mother’s face, sighed and said quietly:
“She may be the first woman to have followed her son down his road, the first!”
“Let’s not disturb her, come away!” Sofia suggested.
“Yes, we’ve got to work. I’d like to have a talk, but it can wait till this evening! Come on, lads…”
All three went, leaving Sofia by the hut. And the mother thought:
“Well, that’s all right, thank God! They’re friends…”
And she peacefully fell asleep, breathing in the heady smell of the wood and the tar.
VI
The tar workers came back happy to have finished work.
Woken by their voices, the mother emerged from the hut, yawning and smiling.
“You’ve been working, while I’ve been sleeping like a fine lady!” she said, examining everyone with affectionate eyes.
“You’re forgiven!” responded Rybin. He was calmer, as tiredness had swallowed up his excess of excitement.
“Ignat,” he said, “could you see about some tea! We take turns with the domestic chores here – it’s Ignaty feeding and watering us today!”
“I’m prepared to give up my turn!” Ignat remarked, but began collecting kindling and branches for a fire while listening.
“Guests are interesting for everyone!” said Yefim, settling down next to Sofia.
“I’ll help you, Ignat!” said Yakov quietly, going off into the hut. Out of it he brought a cottage loaf, which he began cutting into pieces, laying them out around the table.
“Hark!” Yefim exclaimed quietly. “He’s coughing…”
Rybin listened and, nodding his head, said:
“Yes, he’s coming…”
And turning to Sofia, he explained:
“In a minute he’ll be here, a witness. I’d like to take him from town to town and stand him in the squares for the people to listen to him. He always says the same thing, but everyone ought to hear it…”
The quiet and the gloom were becoming denser, the men’s voices sounding softer. Sofia and the mother observed the peasants: they all moved slowly, heavily, with a strange sort of care, and they watched the women too.
Out of the wood into the clearing came a tall, stooping man; he walked slowly, leaning heavily on a stick, and his hoarse breathing was clearly audible.
“Here I am!” he said, and began coughing.
He was dressed in a long, worn coat that reached his heels, and from under a round, crumpled hat his straggly strands of straight yellowish hair hung down listlessly. A light little beard grew on his bony yellow face, his mouth was half open and his eyes had sunk in deep beneath his forehead, from where they shone feverishly out of dark pits.
When Rybin introduced him to Sofia, he said to her:
“I’ve heard you’ve brought some books?”
“I have.”
“Thank you… on behalf of the people! They can’t yet understand the truth themselves… and so I, who have understood… say thank you on their behalf.”
He breathed rapidly, snatching in the air in short, greedy breaths. His voice broke, and the bony fingers of his powerless hands crept over his chest, trying to do up the buttons of his coat.
“Being in the wood so late is bad for you. The wood’s deciduous: it’s damp a
nd sultry!” Sofia remarked.
“Nothing’s good for me any more!” he replied, panting. “Only death’s good for me…”
It was hard to listen to his voice, and his figure as a whole prompted that superfluous pity that is aware of its impotence and causes morose annoyance. He sat down on a barrel, bending his knees so cautiously it was as if he were afraid his legs would break, and he wiped his sweaty forehead. His hair was dry, dead.
The campfire flared up, everything around flickered and began to quaver, the scorched shadows rushed fearfully into the wood and there was a glimpse above the flames of Ignat’s round face with its cheeks puffed up. The fire went out. There was the smell of smoke, and again the quietness and gloom closed in on the clearing, ears pricked and listening to the sick man’s hoarse words.
“And I can do some good for the people as a witness to a crime as well… Here, take a look at me… I’m twenty-eight, but I’m dying! Whereas ten years ago I could lift twelve poods onto my shoulders without straining – it was nothing! ‘With health like this,’ I thought, ‘I’ll go seventy years without stumbling.’ But I’ve lived for ten and can manage no more. My masters have robbed me, stolen forty years of my life, forty years!”
“Here it comes, his song!” said Rybin in a muffled voice.
The fire flared up afresh, but stronger, brighter now, and again the shadows darted towards the wood, then once more they flooded back towards the flames and began to tremble around the campfire in a silent, hostile dance. Damp branches crackled and moaned in the flames. The foliage of the trees whispered and rustled, disturbed by a wave of heated air. There was the play of cheerful, lively tongues of flame, embracing one another, yellow and red, and rising upwards, scattering sparks; a burning leaf flew, and the stars in the sky smiled at the sparks, enticing them closer.
“It isn’t my song: thousands of folk sing it without understanding the curative lesson there is for the people in their unhappy lives. How many cripples worn out by work die silently of hunger…” He started to cough, bending over and shuddering.