Mother

by Maxim Gorky

  This silent funeral without any priests or heart-rending singing, the pensive faces and knitted brows elicited an eerie feeling in the mother, and her thought, circling slowly, clad her impressions in sad words:

  “There are so few of you who’re for the truth…”

  She strode with her head lowered, and it seemed to her they were burying not Yegor, but something else, something she was used to, that was dear to her, that she needed. She felt melancholy and ill at ease. Her heart was filling with an indistinct, anxious feeling of disagreement with these people seeing Yegor off.

  “Of course,” she thought, “Yegorushka didn’t believe in God, and they, too, are all…”

  But she had no desire to complete her thought and sighed, wanting to shift the weight from her soul.

  “Oh Lord, Lord Jesus Christ! Surely it won’t be like this for me too…”

  They came to the graveyard and spent a long time going round and round down the narrow paths between the graves, until they came out onto an open space, sprinkled with short white crosses. They crowded about the grave and fell silent. The stern silence of the living amidst the graves augured something terrible, making the mother’s heart shudder and stand still in expectation. The wind whistled and howled between the crosses, and the crumpled flowers trembled sorrowfully on the lid of the coffin…

  The police stood to attention, on their guard, gazing at their chief. Into position over the grave stepped a tall young man, hatless, long-haired, black-browed and pale. And at the same moment the husky voice of the police chief rang out:

  “Gentlemen…”

  “Comrades!” the black-browed man began in a voice loud and sonorous.

  “Permit me!” cried the policeman. “I have to announce that I cannot allow any speeches…”

  “I’m going to say just a few words!” the young man declared calmly. “Comrades! Over the grave of our teacher and friend, let us swear that we shall never forget his bidding, that each of us will tirelessly, all his life, go on digging a grave for the source of all our motherland’s calamities, for the evil force that oppresses it, the autocracy!”

  “Arrest him!” cried the policeman, but his voice was drowned by a discordant outburst of shouting:

  “Down with the autocracy!”

  Pushing the crowd apart, the policemen rushed towards the orator, while he, surrounded on all sides by a tight circle, waved an arm in the air and shouted:

  “Long live freedom!”

  The mother was pushed to one side, and there she leant against a cross in terror and, expecting a blow, closed her eyes. A turbulent whirlwind of discordant sounds was deafening her, the earth was rocking beneath her feet and the wind and her terror were making it hard to breathe. The whistling of policemen flew alarmingly through the air, a rough, commanding voice rang out, women were screaming hysterically, the wood of fences was cracking and there was the muffled, heavy tramping of feet over dry earth. This lasted a long time, and standing with her eyes shut became unbearably frightening for her.

  She took a look and rushed forward with a cry, reaching out her arms. Not far away from her, on a narrow path amidst the graves, some policemen who had surrounded the long-haired man were fighting off the crowd, which was attacking them from all sides. Flashing in the air, white and cold, were bared sabres, flying up above people’s heads and falling quickly down. Canes were flashing, and bits of fences, and circling in a wild dance were the cries of grappling men, raised up high was the pale face of the young man, and over the storm of malicious irritation his strong voice boomed:

  “Comrades! What are you wasting yourselves on?…”

  He was winning. One after another, people were dropping their sticks and jumping back, but the mother kept on making her way forward, carried along by an insuperable force, and she saw Nikolai, with his hat pushed onto the back of his head, shoving people intoxicated with malice aside, and heard his reproachful voice:

  “You’ve gone mad! Calm down!…”

  One of his hands seemed to her to be red.

  “Nikolai Ivanovich, come away!” she cried, rushing up to him.

  “Where are you going? You’ll be hit there…”

  Standing next to her and seizing her shoulder was Sofia, hatless, with dishevelled hair, supporting a young lad, almost a boy. He was wiping his battered, bloodied face with his hand and murmuring with trembling lips:

  “Let me go – it’s all right…”

  “Look after him, take him to our place! Here’s a handkerchief: bandage his face!…” said Sofia quickly, and, putting the lad’s hand into the mother’s, she ran off, saying: “Quickly, go away – you’ll be arrested!…”

  People were dispersing in all directions through the graveyard, and striding heavily after them between the graves were the policemen, getting clumsily entangled in the skirts of their greatcoats, cursing and brandishing their sabres. The lad followed them with his gaze like a wolf.

  “Quick, let’s go!” the mother cried quietly, wiping his face with the handkerchief.

  Spitting out blood, he murmured:

  “Don’t worry: it doesn’t hurt. He hit me with the sabre handle… Well, and I gave him one too, with a stick! He even started howling!…”

  And shaking a bloodied fist, with his voice breaking, he concluded:

  “Just wait, you’ve seen nothing yet. We’ll crush you without a fight when we rise, all the working people!”

  “Quickly!” the mother hurried him, striding rapidly towards a small gate in the graveyard fence. She thought the police had hidden and would be waiting for them out there in the open field, beyond the fence, and as soon as they went out, the police would rush at them and start beating them. But when she cautiously opened the door and glanced out into the field, clad in the grey cloth of autumnal twilight, the quietness and the absence of people at once reassured her.

  “Let me bandage your face,” she said.

  “There’s no need: I’m not ashamed to be like this! It was an honest fight: he hit me, I hit him…”

  The mother hurriedly bandaged the wound. The sight of the blood filled her breast with pity, and when her fingers felt the moist warmth, she was racked by a tremor of horror. Rapidly and silently she led the casualty across the field, holding him by the hand. Freeing his mouth, he said with a smirk in his voice:

  “Where is it you’re dragging me, comrade? I can walk by myself!…”

  But she could feel him staggering, his legs were shaky as he walked and his hand was trembling. He spoke in a weakening voice and, without waiting for any reply, said to her:

  “I’m Ivan, a tinsmith – who are you? There were three of us in Yegor Ivanovich’s group, three tinsmiths… but eleven people in all. We were very fond of him, God rest his soul! Though I don’t believe in God…”

  On one of the streets the mother hired a cab and, helping Ivan into the carriage, she whispered to him: “Now be quiet!” and cautiously muffled his mouth with the handkerchief.

  He raised a hand to his face but could no longer free his mouth, and the hand fell powerless onto his lap. Yet he continued to mutter through the handkerchief all the same:

  “I won’t forget those blows of yours, my dears… And before him there was a student, Titovich, working with us… on political economy… Then he was arrested…”

  The mother put her arm around Ivan and laid his head on her breast; suddenly the lad’s whole body grew heavy, and he fell silent. Paralysed by fright, she looked from side to side from under her brows, thinking policemen were about to come running out from somewhere around a corner, spot Ivan’s bandaged head, seize and kill him.

  “Been drinking, has he?” asked the cabman, turning around on the box and smiling genially.

  “Had a real skinful!” the mother replied with a sigh.

  “Your son?”

  “Yes, he’s a cobbler. An
d I work as a cook…”

  “You’re kept busy. Ri-ight…”

  After waving his whip at the horse, the cabman turned around again and continued in a quieter voice:

  “There’s just been a fight at the graveyard, d’you hear?… They was burying some politician, right, one of those who’s against the bosses… they’ve got their arguments with the bosses, they have. More of the same was burying him, friends of his, they must have been. And so they started shouting: ‘Down with the bosses,’ they says, ‘they’re bringing the people to ruin…’ So the police are beating them! They say some was hacked to death. Well, and the police had to take it too…” He fell silent and then, shaking his head in distress, in a strange voice he said: “Disturbing the dead, waking the dead men!”

  The cab rattled as it bounced over the stones, Ivan’s head pushed softly against the mother’s breast and the cabman, sitting half-turned around, muttered pensively:

  “There’s agitation among the people, disorder’s rising from the earth, it is! Last night the gendarmes came to our neighbours and they was busy doing something right through till morning, then in the morning they took this blacksmith with them, led him away. They say he’ll be taken to the river at night and drowned in secret. And the blacksmith was all right, he was…”

  “What was his name?” the mother asked.

  “The blacksmith? Savel, and his surname’s Yevchenko. Still young, but already understood a lot. Understanding’s forbidden, it seems! He’d come, he would, and he’d say: ‘What sort of life do you cabmen have?’ – ‘That’s right,’ we says, ‘our life’s worse than a dog’s.’”

  “Stop!” said the mother.

  The jolt made Ivan come round, and he gave a quiet groan.

  “The lad’s in a daze!” the cabman remarked. “Oh dear, vodka, vodka…”

  Moving his legs with difficulty and with his whole body swaying, Ivan walked across the yard, saying:

  “It’s all right, I can manage…”

  XIII

  Sofia was already home, and she greeted the mother with a cigarette between her teeth, fussing and excited.

  Laying the casualty down on the sofa, she deftly removed the handkerchief from his head and issued instructions, screwing up her eyes at the cigarette smoke.

  “Ivan Danilovich, they’re here! Are you tired, Nilovna? You were frightened, yes? Well, you have a rest. Nikolai, a glass of port for Nilovna!”

  Stunned by what she had experienced, breathing heavily and with a painful pricking sensation in her chest, the mother murmured:

  “Don’t you worry about me…”

  And yet with the whole of her being she was tremulously looking for some attention, some reassuring affection.

  In from the next room came Nikolai, with a bandaged hand, and the doctor, Ivan Danilovich, all dishevelled and bristling like a hedgehog. He quickly went up to Ivan and bent over him, saying:

  “Water, lots of water, clean linen cloths, cotton wool!”

  The mother started off towards the kitchen, but Nikolai took her by the arm with his left hand and, leading her into the dining room, said gently:

  “That wasn’t addressed to you, but to Sofia. You’re very agitated, you dear thing, yes?”

  The mother met his intent, sympathetic gaze and, with sobbing she could not contain, exclaimed:

  “What was going on, my sweet! They were hacking at people, hacking!”

  “I saw!” said Nikolai, giving her the wine and nodding his head. “Both sides got a little heated. But don’t worry, they were using the flats of their swords, and it seems only one person’s seriously wounded. I saw him being struck, and I was the one who pulled him out of the mêlée…”

  Nikolai’s face and voice and the warmth and light in the room calmed Vlasova. Glancing at him gratefully, she asked:

  “And you were struck too?”

  “I seem to have carelessly caught my hand on something myself and torn the skin. Have some tea – it’s cold, and you’re lightly dressed…”

  She reached her hand out towards the cup and saw that her fingers were covered in spots of dried blood; with an involuntary movement she dropped the hand onto her lap – her skirt was damp. Opening her eyes wide and raising her eyebrows, she threw a sidelong glance at her fingers; her head was spinning and there was a thumping in her heart:

  “The same thing could happen to Pasha too!”

  Ivan Danilovich came in without his jacket and with his shirtsleeves rolled up, and to Nikolai’s silent question he said in his thin voice:

  “An insignificant wound to the face, but the skull’s fractured, though not badly either – he’s a strong lad! He has lost a lot of blood, however. Do we send him to hospital?”

  “What for? Let him stay here!” Nikolai exclaimed.

  “That’s all right today, well, and maybe tomorrow, but then it’ll be more convenient for me if he’s admitted to hospital. I haven’t the time to make house calls! Are you going to write a leaflet about the incident at the graveyard?”

  “Of course!” Nikolai replied.

  The mother got up quietly and went into the kitchen.

  “Where are you going, Nilovna?” He stopped her, worried. “Sonya can cope by herself!”

  She glanced at him and, shuddering, replied with a strange smile:

  “I’ve got blood on me…”

  Getting changed in her own room, she once again fell into thought about the calmness of these people, about their ability to get over terrible things quickly. This sobered her, driving the fear from her heart. When she entered the room where the casualty was lying, Sofia was bending over him and saying:

  “Nonsense, comrade!”

  “But I’ll be in your way!” he objected in a weak voice.

  “You just keep quiet – it’s better for you…”

  The mother stood behind Sofia and, putting her hands on her shoulder and looking with a smile into the casualty’s pale face, she began to recount, laughing, how he had been delirious in the cab and had frightened her with his incautious words. Ivan listened, his eyes burning feverishly, and he smacked his lips, exclaiming quietly in embarrassment:

  “Oh dear… what an idiot!”

  “Well, we’ll leave you alone!” declared Sofia, straightening the blanket on top of him. “You rest!”

  They went away into the dining room and there spent a long time talking about the day’s incident. And they already treated the drama as something distant, looking confidently into the future and discussing the plan of action for the following day. Their faces were weary, but their thoughts were lively and, in talking about their cause, these people did not conceal their dissatisfaction with themselves. Shifting nervously on his chair and making an effort to take the edge off his thin, sharp voice, the doctor said:

  “Propaganda, propaganda! It’s not enough now – the young workers are right! Agitation needs to be spread wider – the workers are right, I say…”

  Nikolai responded gloomily and in tune with him:

  “Complaints are coming in from everywhere about a shortage of literature, and we’re still unable to set up a good printing office. Lyudmila’s wearing herself out, and she’s going to be taken ill if we don’t give her some assistants…”

  “What about Vesovshchikov?” asked Sofia.

  “He can’t stay in town. He’ll only take on the work in a new printing office, and we’re still one person short for it…”

  “Will I do?” the mother asked quietly.

  All three glanced at her and were silent for several seconds.

  “Good idea!” exclaimed Sofia.

  “No, it’d be difficult for you, Nilovna!” said Nikolai drily. “You’d have to live out of town, stop visiting Pavel and generally…”

  Sighing, she objected:

  “That’s no great loss for Pasha, an
d those visits are only heart-rending for me as well! You can’t talk about anything. You stand opposite your son like an idiot, and they hang on your every word, waiting for you to say something you shouldn’t…”

  The events of recent days had wearied her, and now, hearing of an opportunity for her to live out of town, far from all these dramas, she snatched at that opportunity greedily.

  But Nikolai changed the subject.

  “What are you thinking about, Ivan?” he turned to the doctor.

  Raising his head, which was hanging low over the table, the doctor replied dolefully:

  “There aren’t enough of us, that’s what! It’s essential to work more energetically… and it’s essential to convince Pavel and Andrei to escape, they’re both too valuable to be sitting doing nothing…”

  Nikolai knitted his brows and shook his head doubtfully, throwing a passing glance at the mother. She realized they felt awkward talking about her son in front of her and she went off to her room, bearing in her breast a quiet resentment towards these people for having been so inattentive to her wishes. Lying in bed with her eyes open, to the accompaniment of quietly whispering voices she surrendered to the power of her anxieties.

  The day that had elapsed was gloomily incomprehensible and full of ominous hints, but she found it hard to think about it and, pushing her doleful impressions aside, she fell to thinking about Pavel. She wanted to see him at large, yet at the same time this frightened her; she felt that everything around her was becoming more strained and threatened some sharp clashes. People’s silent patience was disappearing, giving way to tense expectation, irritation was growing markedly, sharp words were to be heard, and there was a breath of something exciting coming from everywhere… Every proclamation provoked animated talk at the market, in shops, among servants and artisans, every arrest in town awakened a fearful, perplexed and sometimes unconsciously sympathetic echo of opinions about the reasons for the arrest. More and more often she was hearing words that had once frightened her from ordinary people: revolt, socialists, politics; they were uttered derisively, but clumsily concealed behind the derision was an inquisitive question; they were uttered with malice, behind which could be heard fear; they were uttered pensively, with hope and menace. Slowly, but in wide circles, agitation was spreading through stagnant, ignorant life, sleepy thought was waking and the customary relaxed attitude to the content of the day was wavering. She saw all this more clearly than the others, for she knew life’s doleful face better than they did, and now, seeing lines of reflection and irritation upon it, she was both joyous and frightened. Joyous, because she considered this the work of her son, afraid, knowing that, if he came out of prison, he would take up his position in front of them all, in the most dangerous place. And would perish.