The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “Evidently lost again at cards,” thought Yevsey gloomily.

  CHAPTER XX

  The next day Sasha learned of Yevsey’s success. He questioned him in detail. After reflecting awhile he smiled his putrid smile, and gave Klimkov instructions.

  “Wait a little. Then you’ll tell him in a careful way that you have gotten a position as clerk in a printing office, do you hear? Ask as few questions as possible, let them speak for themselves. Very likely they’ll ask you whether you can’t get them type. Tell them you can, but learn to say it simply, so that they should see it’s all the same to you whether you get it or don’t get it. Don’t ask what for, behave like a little fool, as you actually are. Only I want you to know that if you botch this matter, it will be bad for you. After every meeting report to me what you have heard.”

  In intercourse with Sasha Yevsey felt like a little dog on a strap. He looked at the spy’s pimply yellow face, and thought of nothing but the moment when he would be permitted to depart from the cloud of disgusting odors, which nauseated him and ate into the skin of his face and hands.

  He went to meet Yakov as empty as a pipe. But when he saw his cousin with a cigarette between his teeth and his hat cocked to one side, he gave him a pleasant smile, while something unpleasant stirred within him.

  “How’s business?” shouted Yakov merrily.

  “So, so.”

  “Gotten a job?”

  “Yes.” The next instant Yevsey thought, “I said it too soon.”

  “What?”

  “Clerk in a printing office.”

  Yakov whistled.

  “Capital! What do you get?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “In a printing office? Indeed!” said Yakov thoughtfully, then suddenly became animated. “What do you say—I’ll take you to pay a visit this evening. Good company, coz. Two girls, one a milliner, the other a spool girl in a thread factory. There’ll be a locksmith there, too, a young fellow. He sings and plays the guitar. Two more, also good people. All people are good, only they have no time to pay attention to themselves.”

  Yakov spoke quickly, and his eyes smiled joyously at everything he saw. He stopped in front of the shop-windows, and examined their contents with the gaze of a man to whom all articles are pleasant, and everything is interesting.

  “Look, what a dress! Ha! If you were to put such a thing on our Olya, she’d get tangled up in it. Books—that little one there, yellow, you see it? I’ve read it. ‘Primitive Man.’ Interesting. Read it, and you’ll see how people grew up. Books are very interesting. They at once open up to you all the cunning of life. Those thick books are awkward to read. By the time you get to the middle you forget what happened at the beginning, and at the end you forget the beginning also. The devil take them! Why don’t they write shorter books?”

  The next minute he pointed out a gun, and cried ecstatically:

  “Revolvers, eh? Just like toys.”

  Giving himself over to Yakov’s mood, Yevsey looked at the various articles with the wandering look of empty eyes, and smiled, astounded, as if for the first time seeing the pretty, alluring multitude of brilliant materials and vari-colored books, the blinding gleam of colors and metals. He was pleased to hear the young voice still in the state of change; the rapid talk steeped in the joy of life was agreeable to him. It lightly penetrated the dark void of Klimkov’s soul, and allowed him to forget himself for a moment.

  “You’re a jolly fellow,” he said approvingly.

  “Very. I learned to dance from the Cossacks. A score of Cossacks are stationed in our factory. Did you hear that the men in our factory wanted to rise? You didn’t? How’s that? The newspapers wrote about it. Yes, so I learned to dance from the Cossacks. Wait, you’ll see. Nobody can beat me.”

  “Why did they want to rise?” asked Yevsey, provoked by the simplicity with which Yakov spoke of a revolt.

  “Why? They wrong us workingmen. What, then, are we to do?”

  “And you would have done it, too?”

  “What? Rebel? Of course. What else? Our people are good, they’re solid.”

  “And how about the Cossacks?”

  “The Cossacks? So, so. They are people, too. At first they thought they would officer it over us, but then they said, ‘Comrades, give us leaflets.’”

  Yakov suddenly broke off and looked into Yevsey’s face. For a minute he walked in silence with knit brows.

  The mention of the leaflets recalled his duty to Yevsey. He wrinkled his forehead painfully. Wishing to push something away from himself and his cousin, he said quietly:

  “I read those leaflets.”

  “Well?” asked Yakov, slackening his gait.

  “I don’t understand them. What are they for?”

  “You read some more.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just so.”

  “They’re not interesting to you?”

  “No, they’re not.”

  For a while they walked in silence. Yakov sniffed meditatively, and gave a hasty look into his cousin’s face. Yevsey felt he had not succeeded in shoving away the unpleasant and dangerous theme.

  “These leaflets are a precious matter. It’s necessary for us to read them. All the slaves of labor ought to read them,” Yakov began heartily, but in a modulated voice. “We, cousin, are slaves, chained to everlasting work. They have made us captives of capitalists, and we live poor in body and in soul. Isn’t it so? Now the leaflets eat at our chains, the way rust eats iron, and they liberate our human minds.”

  Klimkov walked more quickly. He did not want to hear the smooth talk. The desire even darted through his mind to say:

  “Don’t speak to me about such things, please.”

  But Yakov himself interrupted his speech.

  “There’s the zoo!”

  They drank a bottle of beer in the bar-room, and listened to the playing of a military band.

  “Good?” Yakov asked, nudging Yevsey’s side with his elbow. On the cessation of the playing Yakov sighed. “That was Faust they played. An opera. I saw it three times. Beautiful, very! The story is stupid, but the music is good. And the songs, too. Come, let’s look at the monkeys.”

  On the way to the monkey-house he told Yevsey the story of Faust and the devil Mephistopheles. He even attempted to sing something, but not succeeding he burst out laughing. “I can’t,” he declared. “It’s hard. Besides I’ve forgotten it. Do you know—the singer who plays the devil gets a thousand rubles every time he sings. The devil take him, let him get ten thousand rubles, because it’s good. When it’s good, I don’t grudge anybody anything. I’d give my life,—there, take it, eat! Isn’t it so?”

  “Yes,” replied Yevsey, looking around.

  Yakov’s account of the opera, the pretty women’s faces, the laughter and talk of the crowds of people in holiday attire, and over all the spring sky bathed in sunlight—all this intoxicated Klimkov and expanded his heart.

  “What a young fellow he is!” he thought in amazement, as he looked at Yakov. “So brave! And he knows everything. Yet he’s the same age I am.”

  Now it seemed to Yevsey that his cousin was leading him somewhere far off, and was quickly opening up before him a long row of little doors, behind each of which the sound and the light grew pleasanter and pleasanter. He looked around, absorbing the new impressions, and at times opening his eyes wide in anxiety. It seemed to him that the familiar face of a spy was darting about in the crowd.

  The two youths stood before the monkey cage. Yakov with a kind smile in his eyes said:

  “I love these wise animals. In fact I love every living thing. Just look! Wherein are they less than human beings? Isn’t it so? Eyes, chins, how bright all their features are, eh? Their hands—” He suddenly broke off to listen to something. “Wait a minute, th
ere go our folks.” He disappeared, and in a minute returned leading a girl and a young man up to Yevsey. The young man wore a sleeveless jacket. Yakov cried out joyously:

  “You said you weren’t coming here, you deceivers. Well, all right. This is my cousin Yevsey Klimkov. I told you about him. This is Olya—Olga Konstantinova, and this is Aleksey Stepanovich Makarov.”

  Klimkov bowed clumsily and silently pressed the hands of his new acquaintances.

  “There, he’s going to ‘noose’ me in,” he thought. “It’s better for me to go away.”

  But he did not go away, though he looked around again, fearful lest he see one of the spies. He saw none, however.

  “He’s not a very free sort of a fellow,” said Yakov to the girl. “He’s not a pair to me, sinner that I am. He’s a quiet fellow.”

  “You needn’t feel constrained with us. We are simple people,” said Olga.

  She was taller than Yevsey by an entire head, and her size was heightened by her luxuriant glossy hair, which she wore combed high. Her grey-blue eyes smiled serenely in a pale oval face.

  The expression of the man in the sleeveless jacket was intelligent and kind. His eyes were screwed up and his ears large. His motions were slow. In walking he moved his apparently powerful body with a peculiar sort of unconcern.

  “Are we going to wander about here long, like unrepentant sinners?” he asked in a soft bass.

  “What else should we do?” asked Yakov.

  “Let’s sit down somewhere.”

  Olga bent her head to look into Klimkov’s face.

  “Have you ever been here before?”

  “No. This is the first time.”

  “Do you find it interesting?”

  “Yes, I like it.”

  He walked to her side trying for some reason to lift his feet higher; by which walking became awkward. They sat down at a table, and called for beer. Yakov made jokes, while Makarov whistled softly and regarded the public with his screwed-up eyes.

  “Have you any companions?” asked Olga.

  “No, not one.”

  “That’s what I thought at once. I thought you were a solitary person,” she said smiling. “Lonely people have a peculiar gait. Altogether there’s something noticeable about them. How old are you?”

  “I’ll soon be nineteen.”

  “Look, there’s a spy!” Makarov exclaimed quietly.

  Yevsey jumped to his feet, but quickly resumed his seat, and looked at Olga to see if she had observed his involuntary movement of alarm. He could not make out, however. She was silently and attentively examining Melnikov’s dark figure, which slowly moved through the passageway between the tables as if with an effort. Melnikov walked with bent neck and eyes fastened on the ground. His arms hung at his side as if dislocated.

  “He walks like Judas to the aspen tree,” said Yakov in a subdued voice.

  “He must be drunk,” observed Makarov.

  “No, he’s always like that,” was on the tip of Yevsey’s tongue. He fidgetted in his chair.

  Melnikov pushed himself through the crowd like a black stone, and was soon lost in its gaily colored stream.

  “Did you notice how he walked?” Olga asked Klimkov.

  Yevsey nodded his head.

  “Of course he’s a mean man, but he must be unhappy and lonely.”

  Yevsey raised his head, and looked at her attentively, with expectation.

  “Do you know I think that for a weak man loneliness is the most horrible thing. It can drive him to anything.”

  “Yes,” said Klimkov in a whisper, comprehending something. He looked into the girl’s face gratefully, and repeated in a louder tone, “Yes.”

  “I knew him four years ago,” Makarov recounted. Makarov’s face seemed suddenly to have lengthened and dried up. His bones became visible, his eyes opened and darkened and looked firmly into the distance. “He delivered over one student, who gave us books to read, and a workingman, Tikhonov. The student was exiled, Tikhonov stayed in prison about a year, then died of typhus.”

  “Are you afraid of spies?” Olga suddenly asked Klimkov.

  “Why?” Yevsey returned dully.

  “You started so when you saw him.”

  Yevsey rubbing his throat vigorously answered without looking at her:

  “That was—because I know him, too.”

  “Aha!” Makarov drawled, smiling.

  “Ah, and such a quiet fellow!” exclaimed Yakov.

  All now moved more closely around Klimkov as if desiring to hide him from somebody’s eyes. He did not understand their exclamations, nor their movements and kind looks. He endeavored to keep quiet, fearing that against his will he would say words that would at once destroy the anxious yet pleasant half-dream of these minutes.

  The fresh spring evening approached quietly and benignly, softening sounds and colors. There was a red flush in the sky, and the brass instruments sang a soft pensive strain.

  “Well,” said Makarov, “are we going to stay here, or are we going home?”

  “What will they give here?” asked Olga.

  “Chorus singing, tight-rope dancing, and all sorts of similar nonsense.”

  They decided to go home. On the way Olga asked Klimkov:

  “Have you ever been in prison?”

  “Yes,” he answered, but in an instant added, “Not for long.”

  They took the tramway to their place of destination. Yevsey found himself in a little room with blue paper on the walls. It was close and stifling, now merry, now gloomy. Makarov played the guitar and sang songs which Yevsey had never before heard. Yakov boldly discussed everything in the world, laughing at the rich and swearing at the officials. Then he danced, filling the whole room with the tread of his feet and the cries and the whistling that accompany the dances. The guitar tinkled the measure of the dance, and Makarov encouraged Yakov with popular sayings and shouts.

  “Go ahead, Yasha! Heigho! Who with merriment is blessed, Frightens sorrow from his breast.”

  Olga looked on serenely and contentedly.

  “Good, isn’t it?” she asked Klimkov occasionally, smiling at him.

  Drunk with a quiet joy unknown to him Klimkov smiled in response. He forgot about himself, and felt the obstinate pricks within him only rarely, for a few seconds at a time. Before his consciousness was able to transform them into clear thought, they disappeared, without recalling his life to him.

  It was not until he had reached his home that he remembered his work, his obligation to deliver these merry people into the hands of the gendarmes. On recalling this duty he was seized with cold anguish. He stopped in the middle of the room, his brain a void. Breathing became difficult, and he passed his dry tongue over his lips. He drew off his clothes quickly, and clad in nothing but his underwear seated himself at the window. After several minutes of numbness he thought:

  “I will tell them—her—Olga.”

  But that very minute he heard in his memory the angry and contemptuous shouts of the joiner, “Vermin!” Klimkov shook his head in repudiation of the idea. “I’ll write to her. ‘Take care,’ I’ll say—and I’ll write about myself.”

  This thought cheered him. The next minute, however, he reasoned:

  “They’ll find my letter when they make the search. They’ll recognize my handwriting, and then I’m ruined.”

  Someone within him commanded imperiously:

  “You can’t do anything of yourself. Do that which you have been bidden to do.”

  He sat at the window almost until daybreak. It seemed to him that his entire body shrivelled up and collapsed within him like a rubber ball from which the air is expelled. Within grief relentlessly sucked at his heart; without the darkness pressed upon him, full of faces lying in wait. Amid them, like a red ball, lowered the sinister face of Sasha. Klimkov crouched on his
seat unable to think. Finally he rose cautiously, and quietly hid himself under the blanket of the bed.

  CHAPTER XXI

  Life, like a horse that has stood idle too long, began to caper strangely, refusing to surrender to the will of those who wanted to control it—who wanted to control it just as senselessly, just as cruelly as before.

  Every evening the people connected with the Department of Safety, who were utterly at a loss, spoke more and more alarmingly of the increasing signs of universal excitement, of the secret league of peasants, who had resolved to take the land by force from the landowners, of the gatherings of workingmen who began to censure the administration openly, of the power of the revolutionists, which clearly was growing from day to day. Filip Filippovich, without abating, continued to scratch the agents of the Department of Safety with his sharp-edged, irritating voice. He overwhelmed everybody with reproaches for inactivity. And Yasnogursky, smacking his lips, made tragic appeals to the agents while pressing his hands to his bosom.

  “My children, exert yourselves. Remember that service in behalf of the Czar is not wasted.”

  But when Krasavin inquired gloomily, “What are we to do?” he merely waved his hand, and stood for a long time with his deep black mouth gaping strangely, unable to find a reply.

  “Catch them!” he finally shouted.

  Yevsey, who listened to everything, heard the dapper Leontyev cough drily, and say to Sasha:

  “Apparently our old methods of war upon the rebels are no good in these days of universal madness.”

  “Ye-e-e-es, you can’t put out fire with spittle,” hissed Sasha, a smile distorting his face.

  Everybody was vexed and complained and shouted. Sasha drew up his long legs, and cried in mocking derision:

  “Aha! The gentlemen revolutionists are getting the better of us, eh?”

  He laughed, and his laugh irritated everybody. Yevsey felt that this man was not afraid of anything, and he endeavored not to hear his talk.

  The spies tossed about the streets day and night, and every evening brought long reports of their observations. They spoke to one another mournfully: