by Maxim Gorky
“Who is it?”
“Me!” replied an unfamiliar voice.
“Who?”
“Open up!” came the quiet, pleading response from behind the door.
The mother lifted the hook and gave the door a push with her foot, and in came Ignat, saying joyfully:
“Well, I wasn’t wrong!”
He was splattered with mud up to his waist, his face was grey, his eyes were sunken and only his curly hair stuck out wildly in all directions, bursting out from under his hat.
“We’ve had a misfortune!” he pronounced in a whisper, locking the door.
“I know…”
This surprised the lad. Blinking his eyes, he asked:
“How?”
Briefly and hurriedly she told him.
“And did they take the other two? Your comrades?”
“They weren’t there. They’d gone to report as recruits! They took five men, including Uncle Mikhail…”
He drew the air in through his nose and said with a grin:
“And I was left. They must be looking for me.”
“How ever did you remain at liberty?” the mother asked. The door from the other room quietly opened a little way.
“Me?” exclaimed Ignat, sitting on a bench and looking around. “The forester came running a minute before them, he knocks at the window and says: ‘Watch it, lads: they’re coming to get you’…”
He laughed quietly, wiped his face with the tail of his kaftan and continued:
“Well, even with a hammer you can’t stun Uncle Mikhail. He says to me at once: ‘Ignat, quick, to the town! Remember a woman getting on in years?’ And he’s scribbling a note. ‘Here, go!…’ I’m crawling through the bushes and I can hear them coming! There are lots of them, making a noise on every side, the devils! In a noose around the tar factory. I lay down in the bushes, and they went by! At that point I got up, and it was get walking and keep going! I was walking for a whole day and two nights without rest.”
It was evident that he was pleased with himself – there was a smile shining in his brown eyes, and his big red lips were quivering.
“I’ll give you some tea to drink at once!” said the mother hurriedly, seizing the samovar.
“Have the note…”
He lifted a foot with some difficulty and, frowning and crying out, set it down on the bench.
Nikolai appeared in the doorway.
“Hello, comrade!” he said, screwing up his eyes. “Let me help you.”
And bending down, he started quickly unwinding the dirty puttee.
“Well,” the lad quietly exclaimed, jerking his leg, and, blinking his eyes in amazement, he looked at the mother.
Not noticing his look, she said:
“I need to massage his feet with vodka…”
“Of course!” said Nikolai.
Ignat snorted in embarrassment.
Nikolai found the note, smoothed it out and, bringing the piece of crumpled grey paper close to his face, he read:
“‘Don’t turn your attention from the cause, Mother – tell the tall lady not to forget us and to write more about our affairs, please. Farewell, Rybin.’”
Nikolai slowly let the hand with the note drop and said in a low voice:
“That’s magnificent!…”
Ignat looked at them, gently moving the dirty toes of his swollen foot; the mother, hiding her face, which was wet with tears, went up to him with a basin of water, sat down on the floor and reached her hands out to his foot; he quickly shoved it under the bench, exclaiming in fright:
“What are you doing?”
“Give me your foot, quickly…”
“I’ll bring the spirit at once,” said Nikolai.
The lad was shoving his foot farther and farther under the bench and mumbling:
“What are you doing? Are we in hospital, or something?…”
Then she began taking the puttee off the other foot.
Ignat sniffed loudly and, moving his neck awkwardly, looked down at her, relaxing his lips in a funny way.
“Do you know,” she began in a quavering voice, “they gave Mikhail Ivanovich a beating…”
“What?” the lad exclaimed, quietly and fearfully.
“Yes. He’d been beaten up when they brought him in, and in Nikolskoye the village constable hit him, and the district superintendent too – in the face – and he kicked him… till he bled!”
“They know how to do that!” the lad responded, knitting his brows. His shoulders shuddered. “That’s to say, I’m scared of them, like the devil! And did the peasants beat him?”
“One did hit him – the superintendent ordered him to. But the others, no, they even took his part – you shouldn’t beat him, they said…”
“Ye-es, the peasants are beginning to realize who stands where and why.”
“They have reasonable people there too…”
“Where don’t they? It’s need! They’re everywhere, but hard to find.”
Nikolai brought a bottle of spirit, put some charcoal in the samovar and left in silence. After following him with curious eyes, Ignat asked the mother quietly:
“Is the gentleman a doctor?”
“There are no gentlefolk in this work, all are comrades…”
“It’s odd for me!” said Ignat, smiling distrustfully and in bewilderment.
“What’s odd?”
“Oh, nothing. At one end faces get hit, at the other feet get washed, and what’s in the middle?”
The door from the other room swung open, and Nikolai, standing on the threshold, said:
“And in the middle are the people who lick the hands of the ones hitting the faces and sucking the blood of the ones whose faces are being hit – that’s the middle!”
Ignat glanced at him respectfully and, after a pause, said:
“That’s about right!”
The lad stood up, stepped from one foot to the other, pressing them hard against the floor, and remarked:
“Like new again! Thank you…”
Then they sat in the dining room having tea, and Ignat told them in a strong voice:
“I used to deliver the newspaper – I’m a really good one for walking.”
“Do a lot of the people read?” asked Nikolai.
“All that are literate, even the rich ones, read, but they don’t take ours, of course… After all, they understand that the peasants are going to wash the earth out from under the gentlemen and rich folk with their blood, and then they’ll divide it up themselves too, and they’ll divide it up in such a way that, of course, there’ll be no more masters and workmen! Why else get into a fight, if not for that!”
He even seemed to be offended, looking at Nikolai distrustfully, enquiringly. Nikolai smiled in silence.
“And if the whole world fought today, and we won, but tomorrow one’s rich again and another’s poor, then no, thank you! We understand very well that wealth’s like quicksand, it doesn’t lie still, it starts flowing all over the place again! No, what ever do we want that for!”
“Don’t get angry!” joked the mother.
Nikolai exclaimed pensively:
“How can we get a leaflet out there quickly about Rybin’s arrest?”
Ignat pricked up his ears.
“And is there a leaflet?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Give it to me – I’ll take it!” the lad offered, rubbing his hands.
The mother laughed quietly, not looking at him.
“But you’re tired, aren’t you, and afraid, you said?”
Smoothing down his curly hair with the broad palm of his hand, in a calm, businesslike voice Ignat said:
“Fear’s one thing, the cause is another! What are you laughing about? Look at you too!”
&nbs
p; “Oh dear, what a child!” the mother involuntarily exclaimed, giving in to the feeling of joy that he evoked. Embarrassed, he smirked:
“How about that – a child!”
Examining the lad with genially narrowed eyes, Nikolai began:
“You’re not going to go back there…”
“What, then? Where am I going?” Ignat asked uneasily.
“Someone else will go instead of you, and you’ll tell them in detail what needs to be done and how – very well?”
“All right!” said Ignat, not at once and reluctantly.
“And we’ll get you a good passport and fix you up as a forester.”
The lad threw his head up quickly and, worried, asked:
“And if the peasants come taking firewood, or else… in general, what’ll I do? Tie them up? That won’t suit me…”
The mother laughed, and Nikolai too, and this embarrassed and aggrieved the lad again.
“Don’t worry!” Nikolai comforted him. “You won’t have to tie up any peasants, believe me!…”
“Well, there!” said Ignat, relaxing and smiling merrily. “I’d like to go to the factory – they say there are some quite intelligent fellows there…”
The mother rose from the table and, gazing pensively out of the window, said:
“Oh, what a life! You have a laugh five times a day, you have a cry five times! Well, have you finished, Ignaty? Go and sleep…”
“But I don’t want to…”
“Go on, go on…”
“It’s strict here! Well, I’m going… Thanks for the tea and sugar, and your kindness…”
Lying down on the mother’s bed and scratching his head, he muttered:
“Everything’ll be stinking of tar here now… oh dear! There’s no need for all this… I don’t feel sleepy… The way he latched on to that about the middle… The devils…”
And letting out a sudden loud snore, he fell asleep, with his eyebrows raised and his mouth half-open.
XXI
In the evening, he was sitting on a chair opposite Vesovshchikov in a little room on a basement floor and, in a lowered voice, with furrowed brows, was telling him:
“Four times on the middle window…”
“Four?” Nikolai repeated anxiously.
“First of all three, like this!”
And he struck the table with a bent finger, counting:
“One, two, three. Then, after waiting a moment, once more.”
“I get it.”
“A red-haired peasant will open up and ask if you’ve come for the midwife. You’ll say yes, from the factory owner! No more – he’ll already understand!”
Both thickset and firm, they were sitting with their heads bent together and talking in restrained voices, while the mother stood by a table with her arms crossed over her breast, scrutinizing them. All these secret knocks and prearranged questions and answers made her smile inwardly, and she thought:
“They’re still children…”
A lamp was burning on the wall, casting light on battered buckets and scraps of roofing iron on the floor. The room was filled with the smell of rust, oil paint and damp.
Ignat was wearing a thick autumn coat of shaggy material, and he liked it; the mother saw how lovingly he stroked the sleeve with the palm of his hand, the way he examined himself, twisting his strong neck awkwardly. And there was a soft beating in her breast.
“Children! My dear ones…”
“There!” said Ignat, getting up. “So remember: first to Muratov and ask for Granddad…”
“Got it!” replied Vesovshchikov.
But Ignat evidently did not believe him and repeated afresh all the knocks, words and signs, then finally reached out a hand.
“Give them my greetings! They’re good people – you’ll see…”
He looked himself over contentedly, stroked the coat with both hands and asked the mother:
“Shall I go?”
“Will you find your way?”
“Of course I will… Goodbye then, comrades!”
And he left, lifting his shoulders high, sticking out his chest, with a new hat tilted to one side and his hands thrust confidently into his pockets. His light curls shook cheerily on his temples.
“Well, now I’ve got a job to do too!” said Vesovshchikov, softly going up to the mother. “I was already getting bored… I’d slipped out of prison, and what for? I’m just hiding. Whereas there I was studying, Pavel put such pressure on my brains there, it was a real pleasure! Well then, Nilovna, what have they decided about escaping?”
“I don’t know!” she replied with an involuntary sigh.
Putting a heavy hand on her shoulder and moving his face up close to her, Nikolai said:
“You tell them – they’ll listen to you – it’s really easy! You look for yourself, here’s the prison wall, by it there’s a streetlamp. Opposite is wasteland, to the left there’s the graveyard, to the right – streets, the town. A lamplighter comes up to the streetlamp during the day to clean the lamps, puts his ladder against the wall, climbs up, fixes the hooks of a rope ladder onto the top of the wall, lowers it into the prison yard, and off you go! There, inside the wall, they know what time it’s going to be done and they’ll ask the criminals to make a noise, or else they’ll make it themselves, and at that moment, those who have to will be up the ladder and over the wall – one, two, three and it’s done!”
He waved his arms in front of the mother’s face as he sketched out his plan, and everything, according to him, was simple, clear and clever. She knew him as difficult and clumsy. Nikolai’s eyes had looked at everything with sullen anger and distrust before, but now it was as if they had been cut anew: they shone with an even, warm light, convincing the mother and exciting her…
“Just think, I mean, it’ll be in the daytime!… It has to be in the daytime. Who’d imagine that a prisoner would risk escaping in the daytime, in front of the whole prison?…”
“What if they shoot them!” said the woman with a shudder.
“Who? There are no soldiers, and the jailers use their revolvers to hammer nails in…”
“Everything’s ever so simple…”
“You’ll see, it’s true! No, you have a word with them. I’ve got everything ready – the rope ladder, the hooks for it – the owner of this place’ll be the lamplighter…”
Someone was moving around and coughing outside the door, and there was the clatter of iron.
“There he is!” said Nikolai.
A tin bath was pushed through the open door, and a hoarse voice muttered:
“Get in, you devil…”
Then a round, grey-haired, hatless head with bulging eyes appeared, moustachioed and genial.
Nikolai helped drag in the bath, and through the door strode a tall, stooping man, who coughed, puffing out his clean-shaven cheeks, spat and gave a hoarse greeting:
“Good health…”
“Now, ask him!” exclaimed Nikolai.
“Me? What about?”
“About escaping…”
“Aah!” said the owner, wiping his moustache with black fingers.
“Now, she doesn’t believe it’s simple, Yakov Vasilyevich.”
“Hm, doesn’t believe it? That means she doesn’t want to. But you and I want to, and so we do believe it!” he said calmly, and then, suddenly bending in half, launched into muffled coughing. He cleared his throat, then stood in the middle of the room for a long time rubbing his chest, wheezing and scrutinizing the mother with wide-open eyes.
“It’s up to Pasha and his comrades to decide,” said Nilovna.
Nikolai lowered his head in thought.
“Who’s Pasha?” asked the owner, sitting down.
“My son.”
“What’s his surname?”
“Vlasov.”
He nodded, got out his tobacco pouch, took out his pipe and, filling it with tobacco, said jerkily:
“Heard of him. My nephew knows him. He’s in prison too, my nephew – Yevchenko, heard of him? My name’s Gobun. They’ll have locked up all the young ones in prison soon; us old ones’ll have our freedom then! One of the gendarmes promises me he’ll even send my nephew to Siberia. And he will, the dog!”
After lighting up, and with frequent spitting onto the floor, he turned to Nikolai:
“So she doesn’t want to? Her business. Man’s free, and if you’re tired of sitting – walk, tired of walking – sit. Been robbed – keep quiet, getting hit – put up with it, been killed – lie still. That’s all obvious. But I’ll get Savka out. I will.”
His short, barked phrases made the mother feel bewildered, but the final words aroused envy.
Walking down the street into a cold wind and rain, she thought about Nikolai:
“The way he is now – who’d have imagined it?”
And remembering Gobun, almost as if in prayer she pondered:
“I’m obviously not the only one that’s living anew!…”
And following this, a thought about her son grew in her heart:
“If only he’d agree!”
XXII
On Sunday, when saying goodbye to Pavel in the prison office, she felt a little ball of paper in her hand. With a start, as though he had burnt the skin of her palm, she glanced into her son’s face, requesting and enquiring, but found no reply. Pavel’s blue eyes were smiling the usual smile she knew, calm and firm.
“Farewell!” she said, sighing.
Her son reached his hand out to her again, and something gentle flickered in his face.
“Farewell, Mother!”
She waited, not releasing his hand.
“Don’t worry, don’t be angry!” he said.
These words and the stubborn line on his forehead gave her his answer.
“What do you mean?” she murmured, lowering her head. “Why should I?…”