by Maxim Gorky
“Widowed!” the mother replied sadly.
“And that’s why he’s brave!” said Tatyana in a low, deep voice. “A married man won’t go down such a road – he’ll be too scared…”
“What about me? I’m married and everything,” exclaimed Pyotr.
“That’s enough, gossip!” the woman said, not looking at him and curling her lips. “I mean, who are you? You just talk, and occasionally you’ll read a book. There’s little benefit for people from you and Stepan whispering in corners.”
“Lots of people hear me, mate!” retorted the peasant in a quiet and offended voice. “I’m like the yeast here – you’re wrong to say that…”
Stepan glanced silently at his wife and then lowered his head again.
“And why do men marry?” Tatyana asked. “They need a woman to work for them, they say, why do any work?”
“Not finished yet?” Stepan interjected in a muffled voice.
“What’s the sense of working? You live half-starved from one day to the next all the same. Children are born, and there’s no time to look after them, because of work that brings no bread.”
She went up to the mother and sat down next to her, speaking insistently, without complaint or sadness…
“I had two. One, a two-year-old, got scalded with boiling water and died, the other was premature and stillborn, all because of this accursed work! Joy for me? I say men do wrong to marry, they’re only tying their own hands; they should live freely, trying to achieve the order we need, they should go out for truth directly, like that man! Is what I say right, Ma?…”
“It is!” said the mother. “It is, dear, otherwise life won’t be overcome…”
“Do you have a husband?”
“He died. I’ve got a son…”
“And where’s he? Living with you?”
“He’s in prison!” the mother replied.
And she felt these words, along with the customary sadness they always provoked, filling her breast with serene pride.
“They’ve put him away for a second time, and all because he understood God’s truth and was openly sowing it… He’s young, handsome and wise! He thought up the newspaper, and it was him that set Mikhail Ivanovich on the path, even if Mikhailo is twice his age! And now they’re going to put my son on trial for it, and he’ll be condemned, and he’ll go away to Siberia and do his work again…”
She spoke, and the proud feeling kept on growing in her breast, and creating the image of a hero; it demanded words for itself and made her throat tight. It was essential for her to counterbalance with something bright and reasonable all the gloomy things she had seen that day that were crushing her head with their senseless horror and shameless cruelty. Unconsciously submitting to this demand of a healthy soul, she gathered everything light and pure she had seen into a single fire, which dazzled her with its pure burning…
“Many such people have already been born, more and more of them are being born, and all of them will stand up for freedom for the people and truth until they die…”
She had forgotten caution, and although she did not name names, she recounted everything she knew about the secret work for the liberation of the people from the chains of greed. Drawing images dear to her heart, she invested her words with all the strength, all the abundance of her love, awakened in her breast so late by life’s alarming shocks, and she herself feasted her eyes with ardent joy upon the people who arose in her memory, illuminated and ornamented by her feeling.
“Common work is going on all over the earth, in every town, and there’s no measuring or counting the strength of good people; it keeps on growing and will continue to do so until the hour of our victory…”
Her voice poured out evenly as she found the words easily, quickly stringing them like multicoloured beads onto the strong thread of her desire to cleanse her heart of the blood and dirt of that day. She saw that the men had seemingly taken root in the spots where her speech had found them, that they were not stirring, but were looking her seriously in the face, and she heard the irregular breathing of the woman sitting next to her, and it all increased the strength of her faith in what she was saying and promising to people…
“Everyone who has a hard life, who is oppressed by need and lawlessness, who has been overcome by the rich and their underlings, everyone, the people as a whole, must go to meet those who are perishing in prisons and suffering death pangs on their behalf. With no thought of gain for themselves, they’ll explain where the path to happiness for all people lies, they’ll say without deceit that the path’s a difficult one, and they won’t take anyone with them by force, but once you’ve stood beside them, you’ll never leave them, you’ll see it’s all true, this road, and no other!”
It was nice for her to realize her long-held desire – here she was, talking to people about the truth herself!
“The people can march with the likes of them; they won’t be satisfied with just a little; they won’t stop until they’ve overcome all the deceit, all the malice and greed; they won’t give up until the people as a whole have merged into a single soul, until they say in a single voice: ‘I’m the master: I myself will construct laws equal for all!’…”
Tired, she fell silent and looked around. Serenely into her breast came the certainty that her words would not go to waste. The men were looking at her, waiting for something more. Pyotr had crossed his arms over his chest, narrowed his eyes, and a smile was trembling on his mottled face. With one elbow on the table, Stepan had thrust his entire body forward, stretching out his neck and seemingly listening still. A shadow lay on his face, and that made it look more finished. His wife, sitting next to the mother, had bent over, putting her elbows on her knees, and was looking down at her feet.
“Well, then!” said Pyotr in a whisper, sitting down carefully on a bench and shaking his head.
Stepan slowly straightened up, looked at his wife and spread his arms in the air, as if wanting to embrace something…
“If you’re to take this cause on,” he began in a pensive, low voice, “then it really has got to be wholeheartedly…”
Pyotr interjected shyly:
“Yes, no looking back!…”
“It’s a big venture!” Stepan continued.
“Covering the entire earth!” Pyotr added again.
XVIII
The mother leant her back against the wall and, lifting her head up high, listened to their words as they softly weighed things up. Tatyana rose, looked around and then sat down again. Her green eyes shone drily as she looked at the men with discontent and disdain on her face.
“You’ve clearly suffered a great deal of woe,” she said suddenly, turning to the mother.
“That’s so!” the mother responded.
“You speak well – the heart’s drawn along by your speech. ‘Lord!’ you think. ‘If I could just look through a chink at people like that and at life. What are you living for? You’re a sheep!’ I’m literate, me, I read books and think a lot, sometimes I can’t even sleep at night for thinking. But what’s the point? If I don’t think, I’ll wither away for nothing, and if I do, it’ll be for nothing as well.”
She spoke with a smile in her eyes, and at times it was as if she were suddenly biting her speech off like a thread. The men were silent. The wind was stroking the window panes, rustling the straw on the roof and humming quietly in the chimney. A dog was howling. And reluctant, occasional raindrops tapped on the window. The light in the lamp flickered and dimmed, but a second later flared up again, even and bright.
“I’ve listened to your speeches, and so that’s what people live for! And it’s so wonderful, I’m listening to you and I can see that I know it, don’t I? But before you I never heard anything of the sort and never had such ideas…”
“We need to have something to eat, Tatyana, and to put the light out!” Stepan said slowly and gl
oomily. “People will notice there was a light burning for a long time at the Chumakovs’. It’s not important for us, but it might turn out badly for our guest…”
Tatyana stood up and went to the stove.
“Ye-es!” said Pyotr quietly and with a smile. “Keep a sharp lookout now, gossip! When a newspaper appears amongst the people…”
“I’m not talking about myself. If I get arrested, that’s no great loss!” said Stepan.
His wife went up to the table and said:
“Out of the way…”
He got up, stepped aside and, watching her laying the table, declared with a grin:
“The value of the likes of us is five copecks a bunch, and even that’s only when there’s a hundred to the bunch…”
The mother suddenly began to feel sorry for him – she now liked him more and more. After her speech she felt rested from the dirty weight of the day, she was pleased with herself and wished everyone good things, wished them well.
“Your judgement’s wrong!” she said. “A man doesn’t have to agree with the way he’s valued by other people who need nothing from him but his blood. You should put your own value on yourselves, from within, and not for your enemies, but for your friends…”
“What friends do we have?” the peasant exclaimed quietly. “Until they get their bit…”
“And I’m telling you the people do have friends…”
“They do, yes, but not here, that’s the thing!” Stepan responded pensively.
“Well, make friends here.”
Stepan had a think and said quietly:
“Yes, we should…”
“Do sit down at the table!” said Tatyana.
Over dinner, Pyotr, who had been dispirited by the mother’s speeches and had seemed bewildered, was again talking quickly and animatedly:
“Mamasha, to go unnoticed, so to speak, you need to leave here good and early. And ride to the next station, not into town – take post horses…”
“Why? I’ll take her,” said Stepan.
“No, don’t! If anything happens, they’ll ask if she spent the night. ‘Yes, she did.’ – ‘And where did she get to?’ – ‘I took her away!’ – ‘Aha, you took her away? Off you go to jail!’ Understand? And why hurry off to jail? Everything in its turn: when his time is nigh, the Tsar too has to die, as they say. Whereas this is straightforward – she spent the night, hired horses and left! All sorts spend the night with different people. Travellers are always passing through the village…”
“Where was it you learnt to be afraid, Pyotr?” Tatyana asked sarcastically.
“You need to know everything, gossip!” exclaimed Pyotr, slapping himself on the knee. “Know how to be afraid and know how to be brave! Remember the hard time the Land Captain gave Vaganov over that newspaper? You can’t persuade Vaganov to pick a book up now, not for any money! Believe you me, Mamasha, when it comes to some things I’m an absolute rogue, everyone knows that very well. I’ll scatter books and papers for you in the very best way, as many as you like. The people here aren’t very literate, of course, and they’re fearful, but the times are squeezing their ribs so hard that, willy-nilly, a man goggles and asks what’s going on? And a book gives him a perfectly simple answer: this is what – think, try and understand! There are examples of an illiterate understanding more than a literate man, especially if the literate one’s well fed! I go everywhere around here and I see a lot – it’s all right! You can survive, but brains are needed and a good deal of cunning to avoid getting into trouble at once. The authorities, their nose can sense it too, if there seems to be a bit of a chill blowing from a peasant, if he’s not smiling much and not at all amiably, and generally wants to try doing without the authorities! The other day in Smolyakovo, a little village not far from here, they arrived to beat the taxes out of people, but the men kicked up a fuss and went for their clubs! The district superintendent says straight out: ‘Oh, you sons of bitches! This is against the Tsar, you know!’ There was one man there, Spivakin, and he says: ‘You can go to the devil with your Tsar! What sort of Tsar is he when he’s dragging the last shirt off your back?…’ That’s what it’s come to, Mamasha! Of course, Spivakin was seized and taken off to jail, but his word remains, and even the little boys know it – it cries out, it lives!”
He did not eat, but kept on talking in a rapid whisper, with his dark, roguish eyes shining cheerfully, generously scattering countless observations about the life of the countryside like copper coins from a purse before the mother.
Stepan said to him a couple of times:
“You should have a bite to eat…”
Pyotr would grab a piece of bread and a spoon, but again he would be spilling out his stories like a young goldfinch his song. Finally, after dinner, leaping to his feet, he declared:
“Well, time I went home!…”
He stopped in front of the mother and, nodding his head, shook her hand and said:
“Farewell, Mamasha! Maybe we’ll never meet again! I have to tell you that it’s very good, all this! Meeting you and hearing your speeches is very good! Is there anything else in your little suitcase, apart from printed matter? A woollen shawl? Wonderful, a woollen shawl, Stepan, remember that! He’ll bring you your suitcase in just a moment! Let’s go, Stepan! Farewell! All the best!…”
When they had gone, you could hear the cockroaches rustling, the wind playing noisily over the roof and banging the chimney door, and light rain beating monotonously against the window. Tatyana was preparing a bed for the mother, pulling clothing down off the stove and the raised sleeping platform and laying it out on a bench.
“He’s a lively man!” the mother remarked.
Glancing at her from under her brows, her hostess replied:
“He makes a lot of din, but you can only hear it close by.”
“And how’s your husband?” the mother asked.
“All right. He’s a good man, doesn’t drink, we get on well – he’s all right! But he’s weak in character…”
She straightened up and, after a pause, asked:
“I mean, what should happen now – should the people revolt? Of course! Everyone’s thinking about it, only it’s each one separately, to himself. When what’s needed is for people to start talking out loud… and, to begin with, some one person has to make up their mind…”
She sat down on a bench and suddenly asked:
“Tell me – do young gentlewomen do this too, go round seeing workers, reading? They’re not squeamish, not afraid?”
And after listening carefully to the mother’s reply, she heaved a deep sigh. Then, lowering her eyelids and bending her head, she began again:
“In one book I read the words ‘a senseless life’. I understood that very well, straight away! I know that sort of life, when there are ideas, but they’re not linked, and they wander like sheep without a shepherd – there’s no way, no one to gather them… That’s what a senseless life is. I’d run away from it and wouldn’t look back – there’s such anguish when you understand something!”
The mother saw that anguish in the dry lustre of the woman’s green eyes, on her thin face, and she heard it in her voice. She felt a desire to comfort her, to be nice to her.
“You understand what to do, dear—”
Tatyana quietly interrupted her:
“You have to know how to do it. It’s ready for you – go to bed!”
She moved away towards the stove and stood there in silence, upright, stern, focused. The mother went to bed without undressing, felt an aching tiredness in her bones and let out a quiet groan. Tatyana put out the lamp, and when the hut was tightly packed with darkness, her low, even voice rang out. It sounded as if it were wiping something from the flat face of the stifling darkness.
“You don’t pray. I don’t think there’s a God either. And there are no miracles.”
The mother turned uneasily on the bench; looking straight at her through the window was bottomless darkness, and creeping insistently into the quietness was a barely audible swishing and rustling. Fearfully, and almost in a whisper, she began:
“I don’t know about God, but I do believe in Christ… And I believe His words – love thy neighbour as thyself* – I believe in that!…”
Tatyana was silent. In the darkness, the mother could see the faint contour of her erect figure, grey against the black background of the stove. She stood motionless. The mother closed her eyes in anguish.
Suddenly a cold voice rang out:
“I can’t forgive either God or men for the deaths of my children – not ever!…”
Nilovna half-rose uneasily, as her heart understood the strength of the pain that had prompted those words.
“You’re young: there’ll be other children,” she said gently.
The woman replied in a whisper, and not at once:
“No! I’m damaged, the doctor says – I’ll never give birth again…”
A mouse ran across the floor. Something gave a loud, dry crack, tearing the immobility of the quietness apart with an invisible lightning flash of sound. And again the swishings and rustlings of the autumn rain on the thatch of the roof became clearly audible, they ran through it like someone’s frightened, slender fingers. And drops of water fell dejectedly onto the ground, marking the slow progress of the autumn night…
Through deep drowsiness the mother heard muffled footsteps, outside and in the lobby. The door opened cautiously, and a quiet call rang out:
“Tatyana, in bed, are you?”
“No.”
“Is she asleep?”
“Apparently, yes.”
A flame flared up, began to quiver and drowned in darkness. A man approached the mother’s bed, straightened a sheepskin coat and tucked up her feet. This kindness touched the mother gently with its simplicity, and closing her eyes again, she smiled. Stepan undressed in silence and climbed onto the sleeping platform. It grew quiet.