The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “There, you see! The people wanted it, and everything is up. If the people want it, they will take everything into their own hands. They’re a power, the people are. Remember this—don’t let what you have obtained slip from your grasp. Take care! More than everything, guard against the cunning of various gentlemen. Away with them. Drive them off! If they dispute, beat them to death.”

  When Klimkov heard this, he thought:

  “For such talk people used to be put in prison. What numbers have been put in prison! And now they speak that way themselves.”

  He wandered about in the crowd alone from morning until late at night. Sometimes he had an irresistible yearning to speak; but as soon as he felt the desire coming upon him, he immediately walked off into empty by-streets and dark corners.

  “If I speak, they’ll recognize me,” he thought with importunate dread. And he comforted himself by reflecting, “No hurry. I’ll have time enough yet to speak.”

  One night while walking along the street, he saw Maklakov hidden in a gateway, looking up to a lighted window on the opposite side of the street like a hungry dog waiting for a sop.

  “Keeps at his work,” thought Yevsey, then said to Maklakov: “Do you want me to take your place, Timofey Vasilyevich?”

  “You, me, Yevsey?” exclaimed the spy in a subdued voice, and Klimkov felt that something was wrong, for it was the first time that the spy had ever addressed him by the first name. Moreover Maklakov’s voice was not his own. “No, go,” he said.

  The spy always so smooth and decorous now had a shabby appearance. His hair, as a rule carefully and prettily combed behind his ears, lay in disorder over his forehead and temples. He smelt of whiskey.

  “Good-by,” said Yevsey raising his hat and walking off slowly. He had taken only a few steps, however, when he heard a call behind him.

  “Listen!”

  Yevsey turned back noiselessly, and stood beside Maklakov.

  “Let’s walk together.”

  “He must be very drunk,” thought Yevsey.

  “Do you know who lives in that house?” asked Maklakov, looking back.

  “No.”

  “Mironov, the writer. Do you remember him?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, I should think you would. He made you out a fool so simply.”

  “Yes,” agreed Yevsey.

  They walked slowly with noiseless tread. The narrow street was quiet, deserted, and cold.

  “Let’s go back,” continued Maklakov. Then he adjusted his hat on his head, buttoned his overcoat, and declared thoughtfully, “Brother, I am going away—to Argentine. That’s in America.”

  Klimkov heard something hopeless, dismal in his words, and he, too, began to feel gloomy and awkward.

  “Why—so far?”

  “I must.”

  Maklakov again stopped opposite the illuminated window, and looked up to it silently. Like a huge, solitary eye on the black face of the house, it cast a peaceful beam of light into the darkness—a small island amid black and heavy waters.

  “That’s his window, Mironov’s,” said Maklakov quietly. “That’s the way he sits at night all by himself and writes. Come.”

  Some people advanced toward them singing softly:

  “It comes, it comes, the last decisive fight!”

  “We ought to cross to the other side,” Yevsey proposed in a whisper.

  “Are you afraid?” asked Maklakov, though he was the first to step from the pavement to cross the frozen dirt of the middle of the street. “No reason to be afraid. These fellows with their songs of war and all such things are peaceful people. The wild beasts are not among them, no. It would be good to sit down now in some warm place, in a café, but everything is closed, everything is suspended, brother.”

  “Come home,” Klimkov suggested.

  “Home? No thank you. You can go if you want to.”

  Yevsey remained, submissively yielding to the sad expectation of something inevitable. From the other side of the street came the sound of the people’s talk.

  “Misha, is it possible you don’t believe?” one asked in a ringing, joyous voice.

  A soft bass answered:

  “I do believe, but I say it won’t happen so soon.”

  “Listen! What the devil of a spy are you, eh?” Maklakov suddenly demanded nudging Yevsey with his elbow. “I’ve been watching you a long time. Your face always looks as if you had just taken an emetic.”

  Yevsey grew glad at the possibility of speaking about himself openly.

  “I am going away, Timofey Vasilyevich,” he quickly mumbled. “Just as soon as everything is arranged, I am going away. I’ll gradually settle myself in business, and I’m going to live quietly by myself—”

  “As soon as what is arranged?”

  “Why, all this about the new life. When the people start out all for themselves.”

  “Eh, eh,” drawled the spy, waving his hand and smiling. His smile robbed Yevsey of the desire to speak about himself.

  They walked in silence again, and turned again. Both were gloomy.

  “There, now,” Maklakov exclaimed with unexpected roughness and acerbity as they once more approached the author’s house. “I’m really going away, forever, entirely from Russia. Do you understand? And I must hand over some papers to this—this author. You see this package?”

  He waved a white parcel before Yevsey’s face, and continued quickly, in a low growl. “I won’t go to him myself. This is the second day I’ve been on the watch for him, waiting for him to come out. But he’s sick, and he won’t come out. I would have given it to him in the street. I can’t send it by mail. His letters are opened and stolen in the Post Office and given over to the Department of Safety. And it’s absolutely impossible for me to go to him myself. Do you understand?”

  The spy pressing the package to his breast bent his head to look into Yevsey’s eyes.

  “My life is in this package. I have written about myself—my story—who I am, and why. I want him to read it—he loves people.”

  Taking Yevsey’s shoulder in a vigorous clutch the spy shook him, and commanded:

  “You go and give it to him, into his own hands—go, tell him that one—” Maklakov broke off, and continued after a pause—“tell him that a certain agent of the Department of Safety sent him these papers, and begs him most humbly—tell him that way, ‘begs him most humbly’ to read them. I’ll wait here for you, on the street. Go. But look out, don’t tell him I’m here. If he asks, say I’ve escaped, went to Argentine. Repeat what I’ve told you.”

  “Went to Argentine.”

  “And don’t forget, ‘begs most humbly.’”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Go on, quick!”

  Giving Klimkov a gentle shove on the back he escorted him to the door of the house, walked away, and stopped to observe him.

  Yevsey agitated and seized with a fine tremor, lost consciousness of his own personality crushed by the commanding words of Maklakov. He pushed the electric button, and felt ready to crawl through the door in the desire to hide himself from the spy as quickly as possible. He struck it with his knee, and it opened. A dark figure loomed in the light, a voice asked testily:

  “What do you want?”

  “The writer, Mr. Mironov—him personally. I have been told to deliver a package into his own hands. Please, quick!” said Yevsey, involuntarily imitating the rapid and incoherent talk of Maklakov. Everything became confused in his brain. But the words of the spy lay there, white and cold as dead bones. And when a somewhat dull voice reached him, “What can I do for you, young man?” Yevsey said in an apathetic voice, like an automaton, “A certain agent of the Department of Safety sent you these papers, and begs you most humbly to read them. He has gone off to Argentine.” The strange name embarrassed Yevsey, and he added in a lower
voice, “Argentine, which is in America.”

  “Yes, but where are the papers?”

  The voice sounded kind. Yevsey raised his head, and recognized the soldierly face with the reddish mustache. He pulled the package from his pocket, and handed it to him.

  “Sit down.”

  Klimkov seated himself, keeping his head bowed. The sound of the tearing of the wrapping made him start. Without raising his head, he looked at the writer warily from under lowered lids. Mironov stood before him regarding the package, his mustache quivering.

  “You say he’s gone off?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you yourself are also an agent?”

  “Yes,” said Yevsey quietly, and thought, “Now, he’ll scold me.”

  “Your face seems familiar to me.”

  Yevsey tried not to look at him. But he felt the writer was smiling.

  “Yes, I suppose it is familiar to you,” said Yevsey sighing.

  “Have you, too, been tracking me?”

  “Once. You saw me from the window. You came out into the street, and gave me a letter.”

  “Yes, yes. I remember. The devil! So that was you? Well, excuse me, my dear man. I think I must have offended you, eh?”

  Yevsey rose from the chair, looked into his laughing face incredulously, and glanced around.

  “That’s nothing,” he said.

  He felt unbearably awkward as he listened to the somewhat rude yet kindly voice. He was afraid that after all the writer would abuse him and drive him out.

  “There, you see how strangely we meet this time, eh?”

  “Nothing else?” asked Yevsey confused.

  “Nothing else. But I believe you are tired. Sit down. Rest.”

  “I must be going.”

  “Very well. As you please. Well, thank you. Good-by.”

  He extended his large hand with reddish wool on the fingers. Yevsey touched it cautiously.

  “Permit me also to tell you my life,” he requested unexpectedly to himself. The instant he had distinctly uttered these words, he thought, “This is the very man to whom I ought to speak, if Timofey Vasilyevich himself, such a wise person and better than everybody, respects him.” Recalling Maklakov, Yevsey looked at the window, and for a moment grew anxious.

  “No matter,” he said to himself. “It’s not the first time he’s had to freeze.”

  “Well, why not? Tell me, if you want to. Won’t you take off your overcoat? And perhaps you will have a glass of tea. It’s cold.”

  Yevsey wanted to smile, but he restrained himself. In a few minutes, his eyes half closed, he told the writer monotonously and minutely about the village, about Yakov, and about the blacksmith. He spoke in the same voice in which he reported his observations in the Department of Safety.

  The writer, whom Yevsey observed from under his lashes, was sitting on a broad, heavy taborette, his elbows on the table, over which he bent, twirling his mustache with a quick movement of his fingers. His eyes gazed sharply and seriously into the distance above Klimkov’s head.

  “He doesn’t hear me,” thought Yevsey, and raised his voice a little, continuing to examine the room without himself being observed, and jealously watching the face of the author.

  The room was dark and gloomy. The shelves crammed with books, which increased the thickness of the walls, apparently kept out the sounds of the street. Between the shelves the glass of the windows glistened dully, pasted over with the cold darkness of the night, and the white narrow stain of the door obtruded itself on the eye. In the middle of the room was a table, whose covering of grey cloth seemed to lend a dark grey tone to everything around it.

  Yevsey was ensconced in a corner of a chair covered with a smooth skin. For some reason he propped his head hard against its high back, then slid down a little. The flames of the candles disturbed him; the yellow tongues slowly inclining toward each other, seemed to be holding a conversation. They trembled, and straightened themselves out, struggling upward. Back of the author over the sofa, hung a large portrait, from which a yellow face with a sharp little beard looked out sternly.

  The author began to twirl his mustache more slowly, but his look as before travelled beyond the confines of the room. All this disturbed Yevsey, breaking the thread of his recollections. He be-thought himself of closing his eyes. When he did so, and darkness closely enveloped him, he sighed lightly. Suddenly he beheld himself divided in two—the man who had lived, and the other being who was able to tell about the first as about a stranger. His speech flowed on more easily, his voice grew stronger, and the events of his life drew themselves connectedly one after the other, unrolling easily like a ball of grey thread. They freed the little feeble soul from the dirty and cumbersome rags of its experiences. It was pleasant to Yevsey to tell about himself. He listened to his own voice with quiet astonishment. He spoke truthfully, and clearly saw that he had not been guilty of anything, for he had lived all his days not as he had wanted to, but as he had been compelled to do; and he had been compelled to do what was unpleasant and unnecessary to him. Filled with a sense of sincere self-pity, he was almost ready to weep and to fall in love with himself.

  Whenever the author asked him a question, which Yevsey did not understand, he would say without opening his eyes, sternly and quietly:

  “Wait, I’m telling it in order.”

  He spoke without wearying, but when he came to the moment of his meeting with Maklakov, he suddenly stopped as before a pit. He opened his eyes, and saw at the window the dull look of the autumn morning, the cold grey depth of the sky. Heaving a deep sigh, he straightened himself up. He felt washed within, unusually light, unpleasantly empty. His heart was ready submissively to receive new orders, fresh violence.

  The author rose noisily from his seat, tall and strong. He pressed his hands together, cracking his fingers disagreeably.

  “What do you think of doing now?” he asked, as he turned to the window without looking at Klimkov.

  Yevsey also rose, and repeated with assurance what he had told Maklakov.

  “As soon as the new life is arranged, I’ll quietly go into some business—I’ll go to another city—I’ve saved about one hundred and fifty rubles.”

  The author turned to him slowly.

  “So?” he said. “You have no other desire whatsoever?”

  Klimkov thought, and answered:

  “No.”

  “And you believe in the new life? You think it will arrange itself?”

  “Of course. How else? If all the people want it. Why won’t it arrange itself?”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  Mironov keeping silent turned to the window again, and straightened out his mustache with both hands. Yevsey stood motionless, awaiting something and listening to the emptiness in his breast.

  “Tell me,” said the writer softly and slowly, “aren’t you sorry for those people, that girl, your cousin, and his comrade?”

  Klimkov bowed his head, and drew the skirts of his coat together.

  “You found out that they were right, didn’t you?”

  “At first I was sorry for them. I must have been ashamed, I suppose. But now I’m not sorry any more.”

  “No? Why not?”

  Klimkov did not answer at once. At the end of a few moments he said:

  “Well, they are good people, and they attained to what they wanted.”

  “And didn’t it occur to you that you were in a bad business?”

  Yevsey sighed.

  “Why, I don’t like it. I do what I’m told to do.”

  The author stepped up to him, then turned aside. Klimkov saw the door through which he had entered, saw it because the author’s glance was turned to it.

  “I ought to go,” he thought.

  “Do you want to ask me anything?” inquired the author.
<
br />   “No, I am going.”

  “Good-by.” And the host moved to let him pass. Yevsey walking on tip-toe went into the ante-chamber, where he began to put on his overcoat. From the door of the room he heard a question:

  “Listen, why did you tell me about yourself?”

  Squeezing his hat in his hands Yevsey thought, and answered:

  “Just so. Timofey Vasilyevich respects you very much, the one who sent me.”

  The writer smiled.

  “Aha! Is that all?”

  “Why did I tell him?” Klimkov suddenly wondered. Blinking his eyes, he looked fixedly into the author’s face.

  “Well, good-by,” said the host, rubbing his hands. He moved away from his visitor.

  Yevsey nodded to him politely.

  “Good-by.”

  When he came out of the house, he looked around, and immediately observed the black figure of a man at the end of the street in the grey twilight of the morning. The man was quietly striding along the pavement holding his head bent.

  “He’s waiting,” Klimkov thought. He shrank back. “He’ll scold me. He’ll say it was too long.”

  The spy must have heard the resonant sound of steps on the frozen paving in the stillness of the morning. He raised his head, and fairly ran to meet Yevsey.

  “Did you give it to him? Yes?”

  “I did.”

  “Why were you so long? Did he speak to you? What did he ask?”

  Maklakov shivered. His cheeks were blue, his nose red. He seized the lapels of Yevsey’s overcoat, and instantly released him, blew on his fingers, as if he had burned them, and began to tramp his feet on the ground. Thus, chilled through and through, and pitiful, he was not awe-inspiring.

  “I, too, told him all my life,” Yevsey declared aloud. It was pleasant to tell Maklakov about it.

  “Well, didn’t he ask about me?”

  “He asked whether you had gone away.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said you had.”

  “Yes. Nothing else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, let’s go. I’m frozen, brother.” Maklakov darted forward, thrusting his hands in his overcoat pockets, and hunching his back. “So you told him your life?”