Mother

by Maxim Gorky

  The wind was spinning around and rushing about, as though rejoicing at something, bearing ragged, confused cries and whistling to the woman’s ears… This chaos gladdened the mother, and she started striding quicker, thinking:

  “So he could’ve as well!”

  Suddenly from around the corner of the fence there raced out towards her a pair of policemen.

  “Stop!” cried one, breathing hard. “A man with a beard – have you seen him?”

  She pointed a hand at the allotments and answered calmly:

  “He ran that way – what is it?”

  “Yegorov! Blow your whistle!”

  She set off for home. She felt sorry about something, and there was something bitter and disappointing weighing on her heart. As she was entering a street from the field, a cab cut across her path. Raising her head, she caught sight of a young man with a fair moustache and a pale, tired face inside the vehicle. He looked at her too. He was sitting crookedly, and probably because of this his right shoulder was higher than his left.

  Nikolai greeted her joyfully.

  “Well, how was it?”

  “It seemed to be a success…”

  Trying to recreate all the minor details in her memory, she started telling him about the escape and spoke as if relaying somebody else’s story, while doubting the truth of it.

  “We’re in luck!” said Nikolai, rubbing his hands. “But how afraid I was for you! The devil knows how afraid! You know, Nilovna, take my friendly advice – don’t be afraid of the trial! The sooner it is, the nearer Pavel’s freedom, believe me! Perhaps he’ll get away on the road. And the trial’s a thing more or less like this…”

  He started drawing a picture of a court session for her, and she listened and understood that he was afraid of something and wanted to reassure her.

  “Maybe you think I’m going to say something to the judges,” she suddenly said. “Ask them for something?”

  He leapt up, started waving his arms at her and cried in an offended tone:

  “Not at all!”

  “I’m afraid, it’s true! What I’m afraid of, I don’t know!…” She paused with her eyes roaming the room.

  “Sometimes I think they’ll start being offensive to Pasha, scoffing at him. ‘You common fellow, you,’ they’ll say, ‘you son of a common man! What have you dreamt up?’ And Pasha’s proud – he’ll give them such an answer! Or Andrei’ll jeer at them. All of them there are hot-headed. And so you think: ‘What if he can’t endure it?’… And they’ll give him such a sentence you’ll never ever see him again!”

  Nikolai was glumly silent, tugging at his little beard.

  “You can’t get these ideas out of your head!” the mother said quietly. “It’s a fearful thing, a trial! When they start looking into everything and weighing it up! It’s really fearful! It’s not the punishment that’s fearful, but the trial. I don’t know how to put it…”

  She sensed that Nikolai did not understand her, and this hampered her desire to talk about her fear even more.

  XXIV

  This fear grew in her breast like mould, constraining her breathing with its heavy dampness, and, when the day of the trial came, she carried with her into the courtroom a heavy, dark load that bent her back and neck.

  Outside, acquaintances from the settlement said hello to her, and she bowed in silence as she made her way through the sullen crowd. In the corridors of the courthouse and in the courtroom she was met by relatives of the defendants, and they too said things in lowered voices. The words seemed to her unnecessary, and she did not understand them. All the people were gripped by one and the same mournful feeling, and this was communicated to the mother and dispirited her still more.

  “Sit next to me!” said Sizov, moving up on a bench.

  She sat down obediently, straightened her dress and glanced around. Streaks of green and crimson and blotches of some sort started floating around together in front of her eyes, and some slender yellow threads began to sparkle.

  “Your son’s been the undoing of our Grisha!” said the woman sitting next to her in a quiet voice.

  “Shut up, Natalya!” Sizov answered sullenly.

  The mother looked at the woman: it was Samoilova, and further along sat her husband, a bald man of good appearance with a big red beard. His face was bony; he was looking straight ahead with narrowed eyes, and his beard was trembling.

  Through tall windows the courtroom was evenly filled with a dull light, and outside the snow slid down the window panes. Between the windows hung a large portrait of the Tsar in a wide, richly shining gold frame, and the straight folds of heavy crimson curtains were covering the side edges of the frame. In front of the portrait a table covered in heavy green cloth stretched almost the entire width of the room; behind a rail by the wall to the right stood two wooden benches, and to the left there were two rows of crimson chairs. Running noiselessly around the room were officials with green collars and gold buttons on their chests and stomachs. A quiet whispering roamed timidly through the murky air, and there was the mixed smell of a pharmacy. All of this – the colours, the shiny spots, the sounds and the smells – put pressure on her eyes and invaded her breast along with her breath, filling her ravaged heart with the inert, mottled murk of despondent fear.

  Suddenly one of the people said something in a loud voice; the mother gave a start, everyone stood up and, grabbing Sizov’s arm, she rose as well.

  In the left-hand corner of the courtroom a tall door opened, and from it there emerged, swaying, a little old man in glasses. Shaking on his small grey face were sparse white sideburns, his shaved upper lip had collapsed into his mouth, his sharp cheekbones and chin were resting on the high collar of his uniform coat and there seemed to be no neck beneath the collar. His arm was being supported from behind by a tall young man with a porcelain face, round and rosy, and moving slowly in their wake were three more men in uniform coats with gold embroidery and three in civilian dress.

  They were busy at the table for a long time, settling into their chairs, and when they had sat down, one of them, a man in an unbuttoned uniform coat with a lazy, clean-shaven face, began saying something to the little old man, moving his plump lips heavily and soundlessly. The little old man listened, sitting strangely straight and motionless, and behind the lenses of his glasses the mother saw two small colourless dots.

  By a lectern at the end of the table stood a tall, rather bald man, who coughed from time to time and rustled some papers.

  The little old man lurched forward and began to speak. The first words he pronounced clearly, but those following seemed to come unravelled on his thin grey lips.

  “I am opening… Bring in…”

  “Look!” Sizov whispered, nudging the mother gently and standing up.

  A door had opened in the wall behind the rail, from which came a soldier with a drawn sabre over his shoulder, and behind him there appeared Pavel, Andrei, Fedya Mazin, both of the Gusevs, Samoilov, Bukin, Somov and another half a dozen youngsters not known to the mother by name. Pavel was smiling gently, as was Andrei, baring his teeth and nodding his head; the courtroom became lighter and somehow more ordinary thanks to their smiles, their animated faces and the movement they brought into the strained, stiff silence. The rich shine of the gold on the uniform coats grew dull, became softer, and a current of cheerful certainty, a breath of vital strength touched the mother’s heart, awakening it. And on the benches behind her, where hitherto the people had been waiting dispiritedly, there now arose a low hum in response.

  “They’re not scared!” she heard Sizov’s whisper, while Samoilov’s mother to the right let out a quiet sob.

  “Be quiet!” a stern cry rang out.

  “I’m warning…” said the little old man.

  Pavel and Andrei sat down next to one another, and with them on the front bench sat Mazin, Samoilov and one of the Guse
vs. Andrei had shaved off his beard, but his moustache had grown and drooped down, giving his round head a resemblance to the head of a cat. Something new had appeared on his face, sharp and caustic in the lines of his mouth, dark in his eyes. Two little stripes showed black on Mazin’s upper lip, and his face had become fuller. Samoilov was just as curly as before, and Ivan Gusev grinned just as broadly.

  “Oh Fedka, Fedka!” whispered Sizov, lowering his head.

  The mother listened to the little old man’s incomprehensible questions, which he asked without looking at the defendants, with his head resting motionless on the collar of his uniform coat, and she heard her son’s calm, brief replies. It seemed to her that the senior judge and all his colleagues could not be evil, cruel people. Examining the faces of the judges closely and trying to make some prediction, she quietly sensed the growth of new hope in her breast.

  The porcelain man was reading out a document with indifference, his even voice filled the courtroom with boredom and the people it washed over sat motionless, as though frozen. Four barristers were conversing quietly but animatedly with the defendants, all of them made quick, powerful movements and were reminiscent of big black birds.

  On one side of the little old man was a fat, chubby judge with small, swollen eyes whose body filled his chair, and on the other was a round-shouldered one with a gingery moustache on a pale face. He had reclined his head wearily against the back of his chair and was thinking about something with half-closed eyes. The Procurator’s face, too, was exhausted and bored. Behind the judges sat the Mayor, a plump, solid man, stroking his cheek pensively, the Marshal of the Nobility, a grey-haired, big-bearded, red-faced man with large, kind eyes, and the volost elder in a tight-fitting peasant’s coat with a huge belly that clearly embarrassed him – he kept trying to conceal it with the tail of his coat, which would then keep slipping down again.

  “There are no criminals here, no judges,” Pavel’s firm voice rang out, “here there are only captives and victors…”

  It became quiet, and for several seconds the mother’s ear heard only the high-pitched, hasty scratching of a pen on paper and the beating of her own heart.

  And the senior judge, as though listening to something closely too, waited. His colleagues stirred. Then he said:

  “Mm, yes, Andrei Nakhodka! Do you plead…”

  Andrei slowly half-rose, straightened up and, tugging at his moustache, looked at the little old man from under his brows.

  “What can I plead guilty to?” the Ukrainian began in a melodious, unhurried voice, as always, shrugging his shoulders. “I haven’t killed or stolen – I simply don’t agree with an order of life in which people are compelled to rob and kill one another…”

  “Answer more briefly,” said the old man with an effort, but clearly.

  On the benches behind her the mother sensed animation, people were quietly whispering about something and moving, as though freeing themselves from the porcelain man’s web of grey words.

  “Hear the way they answer?” whispered Sizov.

  “Fyodor Mazin, answer…”

  “I don’t want to!” Fedya said clearly, leaping to his feet. His face was flushed with excitement, his eyes sparkling, and for some reason he kept his hands hidden behind his back.

  Sizov gasped quietly; the mother widened her eyes in amazement.

  “I’ve refused any defence, I’m going to say nothing, I consider your trial unlawful! Who are you? Did the people give you the right to try us? No, they didn’t! I don’t recognize you!”

  He sat down and hid his flaming face behind Andrei’s shoulder.

  The fat judge inclined his head towards the senior one and whispered something. The judge with the pale face lifted his eyelids, squinted at the defendants, reached a hand out to the table and scribbled something with a pencil on the paper lying in front of him. The volost elder shook his head, cautiously changed the position of his feet, put his belly down on his lap and covered it with his arms. Without moving his head, the little old man turned his trunk towards the red-haired judge and spoke with him soundlessly, while the latter heard him out with his head bowed. The Marshal of the Nobility exchanged whispers with the Procurator, and the Mayor listened to them, rubbing his cheek. The dull speech of the senior judge was heard once again.

  “How about that for telling them? Simply better than anyone!” Sizov whispered in amazement in the mother’s ear.

  The mother was smiling in perplexity. All that had been happening had at first seemed to her a superfluous and tedious foreword to some fearful thing that would appear and immediately overwhelm everyone with cold horror. But the calm words of Pavel and Andrei had sounded so fearless and firm, it was as though they had been spoken in the little house in the settlement and not in front of a court. Fedya’s fervent outburst had enlivened her. There was something bold growing in the courtroom, and the mother guessed from the movement of the people behind her that she was not alone in sensing it.

  “Your opinion?” said the little old man.

  The rather bald Procurator stood up and, holding on to the lectern with one hand, quickly began to speak, quoting some figures. There was nothing fearful about his voice.

  But at the same time there was a dry, prickly coating to it that irritated and alarmed the mother’s heart – she had a vague sense of something that was hostile to her. It did not threaten, did not shout out, but was developing invisibly, imperceptibly. It was oscillating in a lazy, obtuse way somewhere around the judges, as though shrouding them in an impenetrable cloud, through which nothing from without could reach them. She looked at the judges, and all of them were incomprehensible to her. They were not angry with Pavel or Fedya as she had expected, they did not use words that would offend them, but everything they asked about seemed to her unnecessary to them; they seemed to ask reluctantly, to hear out the replies with difficulty, to know everything in advance and to be interested in nothing.

  Here was a gendarme standing before them, speaking in a bass voice:

  “Everyone named Pavel Vlasov as the main ringleader…”

  “And Nakhodka?” the fat judge asked lazily in a low voice.

  “And him too…”

  One of the barristers stood up, saying:

  “May I?”

  The little old man asks someone:

  “Do you have no objection?”

  All the judges seemed to the mother unhealthy men. Morbid weariness told in their poses and voices and lay on their faces, morbid weariness and tiresome, grey boredom. All of this was evidently difficult and uncomfortable for them – the uniform coats, the courtroom, the gendarmes, the barristers, the duty to sit in those chairs, ask questions and listen.

  Standing before them was the familiar yellow-faced officer, drawing out his words in a loud, pompous voice as he talked about Pavel, about Andrei. Listening to him, the mother involuntarily thought:

  “How little you know.”

  And she could already look at the men behind the rail without fear for them and without pity for them: pity did not suit them, all of them elicited from her amazement and love alone, love that embraced her heart warmly; the amazement was calm, the love joyously clear. Young and strong, they sat to one side by the wall, barely intervening in the monotonous talk of the witnesses and judges or the arguments of the barristers with the Procurator. At times someone would grin contemptuously and say something to his comrades, and mocking smiles would flit across their faces too. Andrei and Pavel spent almost all of the time conversing quietly with one of the defence counsels – the mother had seen him the day before at Nikolai’s. Their conversation was listened to attentively by Mazin, more animated and mobile than the others. Samoilov would at times say something to Ivan Gusev, and the mother could see that every time, as he imperceptibly pushed his comrade away, Ivan was barely able to contain his laughter, his face would redden, his cheeks would puff out and
he would bow his head. A couple of times he did actually snort, but after that he sat puffed up for several minutes, trying to be more demure. And in each of them, one way or another, youth was bubbling, easily overcoming their efforts to contain its lively ferment.

  Sizov touched her lightly on the elbow, and she turned towards him: his face was contented and a little anxious. He whispered:

  “Look at how much stronger they’ve got, these mummy’s boys, eh? Barons, eh?”

  The talking in the courtroom was being done by the witnesses, hurriedly and in colourless voices, and by the judges, reluctantly and apathetically. The fat judge yawned, covering his mouth with a plump hand, and the one with the ginger moustache had turned even paler; sometimes he would raise a hand and, pressing a finger tightly on the bone of his temple, look blindly at the ceiling with plaintively widened eyes. The Procurator would occasionally scribble with a pencil on a piece of paper, then resume a soundless conversation with the Marshal of the Nobility, while the latter, stroking his grey beard, opened his huge, handsome eyes wide and smiled, bending his neck self-importantly. The Mayor sat with his legs crossed and drummed his fingers noiselessly on his knee, observing their movements with great concentration. Only the volost elder, having established his belly firmly on his lap and supporting it solicitously with his hands, sat with his head bowed and seemed to be alone in listening closely to the monotonous murmur of voices, while the little old man, stuck into his chair, poked up out of it motionless, like a weathervane on a windless day. It continued for a long time, and the torpor of boredom blinded people once more.