The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  It was hard and tiresome for Yevsey to listen to his softened voice. He did not believe one word of the spy’s, and, as always, feared him. Klimkov felt relieved when he walked away, and went eagerly at his work, trying to use it as a shield against the recollection of Rayisa and all other troublesome thoughts. Something turned and bestirred itself within him that day. He felt he was standing on the eve of another life, and gazed after the Smokestack from the corners of his eyes. The old man bent over his table in a cloud of grey smoke. Yevsey involuntarily thought:

  “How everything happens at once. There she cut her throat, and now maybe I will—”

  He could not picture to himself what might be; in fact, he did not understand what he wanted, and impatiently awaited the evening, working quickly in an endeavor to shorten the time.

  In the evening as he walked along the street at the Smokestack’s side, he remarked that almost everybody noticed the old man, some even stopping to look at him. He walked not rapidly but in long strides, swinging his body and thrusting his head forward like a crane. He held his hands behind his back, and his open jacket spreading wide flapped against his sides like broken wings. In Klimkov’s eyes the attention the old man attracted seemed to sever him from the rest of the world.

  “What is your name?”

  “Yevsey.”

  “John is a good name,” observed the old man, arranging his crumpled hat with his long hand. “I had a son named John.”

  “Where is he?”

  “That doesn’t concern you,” answered the old man calmly. After taking several steps he added in the same tone, “If I say ‘had,’ that means I have him no longer, no longer.” He stuck out his lower lip, and pinched it with his little finger. “We shall see who will do whom.” Now he inclined his head on one side, and looked into Klimkov’s eyes. “Today a friend will come to me,” he said solemnly, shaking his finger. “I have a certain friend. What we speak about and what we do, does not concern you. What you know I do not know, and what you do I do not want to know. The same applies to you. Absolutely.”

  Yevsey nodded his head.

  “You must make this a general rule. Apply it to everybody. No one knows anything about you. That’s the way it should be. And you do not know anything about others. The path of human destruction is knowledge sown by the devil. Happiness is ignorance. That’s plain.”

  Yevsey listened attentively, looking into his face. The old man observed his regard, and grumbled:

  “There is something human in you. I noticed it.” He stopped unexpectedly, then went on, “But there’s something human even in a dog.”

  They climbed a narrow wooden stairway with several windings to a stifling garret, dark and smelling of dust. At the Smokestack’s request Yevsey held up burning matches while he fumbled a long time over opening the door. As Yevsey held up the matches, which scorched his fingers, a new hope flickered in his breast.

  At last the old man opened the door, covered with torn oilcloth and ragged felt, and they entered a long, narrow white room, with a ceiling resembling the roof of a tomb. Opposite the door a wide window gleamed dimly. In the corner to the right of the entrance stood a little stove, which was scarcely noticeable. The bed extended along the left wall, and opposite sprawled a sunken red sofa. The room smelled strongly of camphor and dried herbs. The old man opened the window, and heaved a noisy breath.

  “It’s good to have pure air. You will sleep on the sofa. What is your name? I’ve forgotten. Aleksey?”

  “Yevsey.”

  “Oh, yes.” He raised the lamp, and pointed to the wall. “There’s my son John.”

  A portrait made in thin pencil strokes and set in a narrow white frame hung inconspicuously upon the wall. It was a young but stern face, with a large forehead, a sharp nose, and stubbornly compressed lips. The lamp shook in the old man’s hands, the shade knocked against the chimney, filling the room with a gentle whining sound.

  “John,” he repeated, setting the lamp back on the table. “A man’s name means a great deal.”

  He thrust his head through the window, breathed in the cold air noisily, and without turning to Yevsey asked him to prepare the samovar.

  When Yevsey was busying himself around the oven, a hunch-backed man entered, removed his straw hat in silence, and fanned his face with it.

  “It’s close, even though it’s autumn already,” he said in a beautiful chest voice.

  “Aha, you here!” said the Smokestack.

  They began to converse in low tones while standing at the window. Yevsey realizing that they were speaking about him strained his ears to catch what they were saying. But he could not distinguish any words.

  The three then seated themselves at the table, and the Smokestack began to pour the tea. Yevsey from time to time stole a look at the guest. His face, shaven like the Smokestack’s, was bluish with a huge thin-lipped mouth and dark eyes sunk in two hollows under a high smooth forehead. His head, bald to the crown, was angular and large. He kept drumming quietly on the table with his long fingers.

  “Well, read,” said the Smokestack.

  “From the beginning?”

  “Yes.”

  The hunch-back pulled out a package of papers from his coat-pocket and opened it. “I’ll skip the titles. This is the way I’ve done it.” He coughed, and half closing his eyes began to read. “‘We people known to nobody and already arrived at a ripe age now fall slavishly at your feet with this distressing statement of grievances, which wells from the very depths of our hearts, our hearts shattered by life but not robbed of sacred faith in the grace and wisdom of Your Majesty.’ Well, is it good?”

  “Continue,” said the Smokestack.

  “‘For you are the father of the Russian people, the source of good counsel, and the only power on earth capable—’”

  “Better say, ‘the only power on earth endowed with authority,’” suggested the Smokestack.

  “Wait, wait. ‘The only power capable of restoring and maintaining order, justice—’ Here we must put in a third word for the sake of symmetry, but I don’t know what word.”

  “Be more careful in your choice of words,” said the Smokestack, sternly but not aloud. “Remember that they convey a different meaning to every man.”

  The hunchback looked at him, and adjusted his glasses.

  “Yes, that will come later. ‘Great Russia is falling into ruin. Evil is rampant in our country and horror prevails. People are oppressed by want. The heart has become perverted with envy. The patient and gentle Russian is perishing, and a heartless tribe ferocious with greed is being born, a race of wolves, cruel animals of prey. Faith is dissolved, and outside her fortress the people stand perturbed. Persons of depraved minds aim at the defenseless, take them captive with satanic shrewdness, and entice them onto the road of crime against all thy laws, Master of our lives.’”

  “‘Master?’ That’s for a bishop,” grumbled the Smokestack.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “No, we must make it different.”

  “How?”

  “We must tell him directly that a general revolt against life is stirring among the people, and that ‘therefore Thou, who art called by God—’”

  The hunchback shook his head disapprovingly.

  “We may point out. We have no right to advise.”

  “Who is our enemy, and what is his name? Atheist, Socialist, and Revolutionist, a trinity. The destroyer of the family, the robber of our children, the fore-runner of the anti-Christ.”

  “You and I don’t believe in the anti-Christ,” said the hunchback quietly.

  “That doesn’t matter. We are speaking of the masses. They believe in the anti-Christ. And we must point out the root of the main evil where we see it. In the doctrine of destruction—”

  “He knows it himself.”

  “How should he? Who would
tell him the truth? Nobody cast the noose of insanity around his children. And on what are their teachings based? On general poverty and discontent with poverty. And we ought to say to him straight out, ‘Thou art the father, and thou art rich. Then give the riches thou hast accumulated to thy people. Thus thou wilt cut off the root of the evil, and everything will have been saved by thy hand.’”

  The hunchback drew up his shoulders, and spread his mouth into a wide, thin crack.

  “They’ll send us to the mines for that.”

  Then he looked into Yevsey’s face and at the master.

  Klimkov listened to the reading and the conversation as to a fairytale, and felt that all the words entered his head and fixed themselves forever in his memory. With parted lips and popping eyes he looked now at one, now at the other, and did not drop his gaze even when the dark look of the hunchback fastened upon his face. He was fascinated by the proceedings.

  “Anyway,” said the hunchback, “this is inconvenient.”

  “What is it, Klimkov?” asked the Smokestack glumly.

  Yevsey’s throat grew dry, and he did not answer at once.

  “I am listening.”

  Suddenly he realized by their faces that they did not believe him, that they were afraid of him. He rose from the table, and said, getting his words mixed:

  “I won’t say anything to a soul—I need it myself. Please let me listen—why, I myself said to you, Kapiton Ivanovich, that things ought to be different.”

  “You see?” said the Smokestack crossly, pointing at Yevsey. “You see, Anton, what does it mean? Still a boy, a little boy, yet, he, too, says things should be different. That’s where they get their strength from.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the hunchback.

  Yevsey grew timid, and dropped back on his chair. The Smokestack, moving his eyelids, bent toward him.

  “I will tell you—we are writing a letter to the Czar. We ask him to take more rigorous measures against those who are under supervision for political infidelity. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Those people,” the hunchback began to say clearly and slowly, “are agents of foreign governments, chiefly of England. They receive huge salaries for stirring up the Russian people to revolt and for weakening the power of the government. The Englishmen do it so that we should not take India from them.”

  They spoke to Yevsey by turns. When one had finished, the other took up the word. He listened attentively trying to remember their strange, eloquent flow of language. Finally, however, he tired from the unusual exertion of his brain. It seemed to him he would soon understand something huge, which would illuminate the whole of life and all people, their entire misfortune and their malicious irritation. It was inexpressibly pleasant for him to recognize that two wise men spoke to him as to an adult, and he was powerfully gripped by a feeling of gratitude and respect for these men, poorly dressed and so preoccupied with deliberations upon the construction of a new life. But now, his head grown heavy, as if filled with lead, he involuntarily closed his eyes, oppressed by a painful sensation of fullness in his breast.

  “Go, lie down and sleep,” said the Smokestack.

  Klimkov rose obediently, undressed, and lay down on the sofa.

  The autumn night breathed warm fragrant moisture into the window. Thousands and thousands of bright stars quivered in the dark sky, flying up higher and higher. The fire of the lamp flickered, and likewise tore itself upward. The two men bending toward each other read and spoke gravely and quietly. Everything round about was mysterious, awe-inspiring. It lifted Yevsey upward pleasantly, to something new, to something good.

  CHAPTER XII

  When Yevsey had been living with Kapiton Ivanovich only a few days, he began to feel he was of some consequence. Formerly he had talked quietly and respectfully with the gendarmes who served in the chancery. Now, however, he called the old man Butenko to him in a stern voice, in order to administer a rebuke.

  “Look, flies in my inkstand! How can I write with flies in my ink?”

  The grey soldier covered with crosses and medals entered into his usual nonchalant, many-worded explanation.

  “There are all in all thirty-four inkstands here, and there are thousands of flies. All the flies want to drink. That’s why they crawl into the inkstands. What are they to do?”

  “Wash it, and put in fresh ink,” ordered Klimkov. Then he walked into the dressing-room, where he stationed himself before the looking-glass and carefully regarded his thin face, grey and angular, with its sharp little nose and narrow lips. He searched for signs of a mustache, looked into his watery and uncertain eyes.

  “I must get my hair cut,” he decided after failing to smooth the thin, light tufts of hair on his head. “And I ought to wear starched collars; my neck is too thin.”

  The very same evening he got his hair cut, bought two collars, and felt himself still more a man.

  The Smokestack was attentive and kind in his behavior toward Yevsey, but often a smile of derision gleamed in his eyes which somewhat disconcerted and awed the young fellow. Whenever the hunchback came, the old man’s face assumed a preoccupied expression, and his voice sounded stern. He cut short almost everything the other man said with an objection:

  “It’s not that—it’s not so—no, you’re no wiser than I am—your brain is like a poor gun, it scatters the thought on all sides. You ought to shoot so that the whole charge goes in the same direction.”

  The hunchback shook his head sadly, and answered in a thick voice:

  “Wait. Good work cannot be done in a day. You must keep at it.”

  “Time flies, the enemy grows.”

  “By the way, I noticed a man the other day,” said the hunchback, “who took lodgings not far from my place. He was tall, had a pointed beard and screwed-up eyes, and walked quickly. I asked the dvornik where he was working. He told me the man had come to look for a position. I immediately wrote a letter to the Department of Safety. You see?”

  The Smokestack interrupted his talk with a wide sweep of his arm.

  “That’s not important. The house is damp, that’s why there are roaches in it. You won’t get rid of them that way. The house must be made dry.”

  Another time in the course of the evening the Smokestack said:

  “I am a soldier. I commanded half a company, and I understand life. It is necessary for everybody to be thoroughly familiar with the laws and regulations. Such knowledge produces unanimity. What hinders knowledge of the law? Poverty and stupidity; stupidity in itself being a result of poverty. Why doesn’t he fight poverty? In want is the root of human folly and of hostility to him, the Czar.”

  Yevsey greedily swallowed the old man’s words, and believed them. The root of all human misfortune is poverty. That was clear and simple. Hence come envy, malice, cruelty. Hence also greed and the fear of life common to all people, the apprehension of one another. The Smokestack’s plan was also simple. The Czar was rich, the people poor; then let the Czar give the people his riches, and all would be contented and good.

  Yevsey’s attitude toward people changed. He remained as obliging as before, but became more self-assertive, and began to look upon others condescendingly, with the eyes of a man who understands the secret of life and can point out where the road lies to peace and calm.

  He felt the need for boasting of his knowledge; so once, when lunching in the café with Yakov Zarubin, he proudly expounded everything he had heard from the old man and his hunchback friend.

  Zarubin’s narrow eyes flashed. He fidgetted in his seat, and for some reason rumpled his hair by thrusting the fingers of both hands through it.

  “That’s true, by golly!” he exclaimed in an undertone. “What the devil—really! He has thousands of millions, and we are perishing here. Who taught you all that?”

  “Nobody,” said Yevsey firmly. “I tho
ught it out myself.”

  “No, tell me the truth. Where did you hear it?”

  “I tell you, I came to the conclusion myself.”

  Yakov looked at him with satisfaction.

  “If that’s so,” he said, “you haven’t a bad head. But you’re lying.”

  Yevsey felt affronted.

  “It’s all the same to me whether you believe me or not. It’s the worse for you if you don’t.”

  “For me?” asked Yakov, and for some reason burst out laughing, merrily and vigorously rubbing his hands.

  Two days later the assistant captain Komov and a grey-eyed gentleman with a round close-cropped head and a bored yellow face, came up to Yevsey’s table.

  “Klimkov, betake yourself to the Department of Safety,” said the captain clearly and ominously. “Is your desk locked?”

  “No.”

  Yevsey rose, but his legs trembled, and he dropped into his chair again. The crop-haired man drew nearer.

  “Permit me,” he said drily, then pulled out the table drawer and took out the papers.

  Weak and uncomprehending Klimkov recovered his senses in a half dark room at a desk covered with green felt. A wave of anguish rose and fell in his breast. The floor heaved and billowed under his feet, and the walls of the room, filled, as it were with green dusk, turned around steadily. Over the table rose a man’s white face framed in a thick black beard and spotted by gleaming blue eye-glasses. Yevsey kept his eyes fastened on the glass of the spectacles, on the blue bottomless darkness, which drew him like a magnet and seemed to suck the blood from his veins. Without waiting for a question Klimkov quietly told about the Smokestack and his hunchback friend. He had understood their talks well, and now spoke connectedly in great detail. He seemed to be removing a thin layer of skin from his heart.

  A high voice, which cut the ear, interrupted him.

  “So? So these jackasses say the emperor the Czar is the fault of everything?”