The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  Petounnikoff shrugged his shoulders, as if regretting not being able to give more, and patted the soldier’s hairy hand with his large white one.

  They soon clinched the bargain now, for the soldier suddenly started with long strides to meet the terms of Petounnikoff, who remained implacably firm. When Vaviloff had received the hundred roubles, and signed the paper, he dashed the pen on the table, exclaiming, “That’s done! Now I’ll have to settle up with that band of tramps. They’ll bother the life out of me, the devils!”

  “You can tell them that I paid you all that you demanded in the summons,” suggested Petounnikoff, puffing out thin rings of smoke, and watching them rise and vanish.

  “They’ll never believe that! They are clever rogues; as sharp as”—

  Vaviloff stopped just in time, confused at the thought of the comparison which almost escaped from his lips, and glanced nervously at the merchant’s son. But this latter went on smoking, and seemed wholly engrossed with that occupation. He left soon after, promising Vaviloff, as he bade him good-bye, to destroy ere long this nest of noxious beings. Vaviloff watched him, sighing, and feeling a keen desire to shout something malicious and offensive at the man who walked with firm steps up the steep road, striding over the ruts and heaps of rubbish.

  That same evening the captain appeared at the vodka shop; his brows were knit severely, and his right hand was firmly clenched. Vaviloff glanced at him deprecatingly.

  “Well, you worthy descendant of Cain and of Judas! tell us all about it!”

  “It’s all settled!” said Vaviloff, sighing and dropping his eyes.

  “I don’t doubt it. How many shekels did you get?”

  “Four hundred roubles down!”

  “A lie! as sure as I live! Well, so much the better for me. Without any more talking, Jegorka, hand me over 10 per cent, for my discovery; twenty-five roubles for the schoolmaster for writing out the summons, and a gallon of vodka for the company, with grub to match. Hand the money over at once, and the vodka with the rest must be ready by eight o’clock!”

  Vaviloff turned green, and stared at Kouvalda with wide-open eyes.

  “Don’t you wish you may get it! That’s downright robbery! I’m not going to give it. Are you in your senses to suggest such a thing, Aristide Fomitch? You’ll have to keep your appetite till the next holiday comes round; things have changed, and I’m in a position not to be afraid of you now, I am!”

  Kouvalda glanced at the clock.

  “I give you, Jegor, ten minutes for your fool’s chatter! Then stop wagging your tongue and give me what I demand! If you don’t—then look out for yourself! Do you remember reading in the paper about that robbery at Bassoff’s? Well, ‘The End’ has been selling things to you—you understand? You shan’t have time to hide anything; we’ll see to that; and this very night, you understand?”

  “’Ristide Fomitch! Why are you so hard on me?” wailed the old soldier.

  “No more cackle! Have you understood? Yes or no?”

  Kouvalda, tall and grey-headed, frowning impressively, spoke in a low voice, whose hoarse bass resounded threateningly in the empty vodka shop. At the best of times Vaviloff was afraid of him as a man who had been once an officer, and as an individual who had now nothing to lose. But at this moment he beheld Kouvalda in a new light; unlike his usual manner, the captain spoke little, but his words were those of one who expected obedience, and in his voice there was an implied threat Vaviloff felt that the captain could, if he chose, destroy him with pleasure. He had to give way to force, but choking with rage, he tried once more to escape his punishment. He sighed deeply and began humbly—

  “It would seem the proverb is right which says, ‘You reap what you sow.’ ’Ristide Fomitch, I have lied to you! I wanted to make myself out cleverer than I really am. All I got was a hundred roubles.”

  “Well! what then?” asked Kouvalda curtly.

  “It wasn’t four hundred as I told you, and that means”—

  “It means nothing! How am I to know whether you were lying then or now? I mean to have sixty-five roubles out of you. That’s only reasonable, so now.”

  “Ah, my God! ’Ristide Fomitch. I have always paid you your due!”

  “Come! no more words, Jegorka, you descendant of Judas!”

  “I will give it to you, then, but God will punish you for this!”

  “Silence, you scab!” roared the captain, rolling his eyes savagely. “I am sufficiently punished by God already. He has placed me in a position in which I am obliged to see you and talk to you. I’ll crush you here on the spot like a fly.”

  And he shook his fist under Vaviloff’s nose, and gnashed his teeth.

  After he had left, Vaviloff smiled cunningly and blinked his eyes rapidly. Then two large tears rolled down his cheeks. They were hot and grimy, and as they disappeared into his beard, two others rolled down in their place. Then Vaviloff retired into the back room, and knelt in front of the eikons; he remained there for some time motionless, without wiping the tears from his wrinkled brown cheeks.

  Deacon Tarass, who had always a fancy for the open air, proposed to the outcasts they should go out into the fields, and there in one of the hollows, in the midst of nature’s beauties, and under the open sky, should drink Vaviloff’s vodka. But the captain and the others unanimously scouted the deacon’s ideas of nature, and decided to have their carouse in their own yard.

  “One, two, three,” reckoned Aristide Fomitch, “we are thirteen in all; the schoolmaster is missing, but some other waifs and strays are sure to turn up, so let’s say twenty. Two cucumbers and a half for each, a pound of bread and of meat—that’s not a bad allowance! As to vodka, there will be about a bottle each. There’s some sour cabbage, some apples, and three melons. What the devil do we want more? What do you say, mates? Let us therefore prepare to devour Jegor Vaviloff; for all this is his body and his blood!”

  They spread some ragged garments on the ground, on which they laid out their food and drink, and they crouched round in a circle, restraining with difficulty the thirst for drink which lurked in the eyes of each one of them.

  Evening was coming on, its shadows fell across the foul, untidy yard, and the last rays of the sun lit up the roof of the half-ruined house. The evening was cool and calm.

  “Let us fall to, brethren!” commanded the captain. “How many mugs have we? Only six, and there are thirteen of us. Alexai Maximovitch, pour out the drink! Make ready! Present! Fire!”

  “Ach—h!” They swallowed down great gulps, and then fell to eating.

  “But the schoolmaster isn’t here I I haven’t seen him for three days. Has anyone else seen him?” said Kouvalda.

  “No one.”

  “That’s not like him! Well, never mind, let’s have another drink I Let’s drink to the health of Aristide Kouvalda, my only friend, who, during all my lifetime has never once forsaken me; though, devil take it, if he had deprived me of his society sometimes I might have been the gainer.”

  “That’s well said,” cried “Scraps,” and cleared his throat.

  The captain, conscious of his superiority, looked round at his cronies, but said nothing, for he was eating.

  After drinking two glasses the company brightened up; for the measures were full ones. “Tarass and a half” humbly expressed a wish for a story, but the deacon was eagerly engaged discussing with “The Top” the superiority of thin women over fat ones, and took no notice of his friend’s words, defending his point of view with the eagerness and fervour of a man deeply convinced of the truth of his opinion. The naïve face of “The Meteor,” who was lying beside him on his stomach, expressed admiration and delight at the suggestive words of the disputants. Martianoff, hugging his knees with his huge, hairy hands, glanced gloomily and silently at the vodka bottle, while he constantly made attempts to catch his moustache with his tongue and gnaw it with his teeth.
“Scraps” was teasing Tiapa.

  “I know now where you hide your money, you old ogre!”

  “All the better for you!” hissed Tiapa in a hoarse voice.

  “I’ll manage to get hold of it some day!”

  “Do it if you can!”

  Kouvalda felt bored amongst this set of people; there was not one worthy to hear his eloquence, or capable of understanding it.

  “Where the devil can the schoolmaster be?” he said, expressing his thought aloud.

  Martianoff looked at him and said—

  “He will return.”

  “I am certain he will come back on foot, and not in a carriage! Let us drink to your future, you born convict. If you murder a man who has got some money, go shares with me. Then, old chap, I shall start for America, make tracks for those lampas—pampas—what do you call them? I shall go there, and rise at length to be President of the United States. Then I shall declare war against Europe, and won’t I give it them hot? As to an army, I shall buy mercenaries in Europe itself. I shall invite the French, the Germans, and the Turks, and the whole lot of them, and I shall use them to beat their own relations. Just as Ilia de Mouronetz conquered the Tartars with the Tartars. With money one can become even an Ilia, and destroy Europe, and hire Judah Petounnikoff as one’s servant. He’d work if one gave him a hundred roubles a month, that he would, I’m sure. But he’d be a bad servant; he’d begin by stealing.”

  “And besides, a thin woman is better than a fat one, because she costs less,” eagerly continued the deacon. “My first deaconess used to buy twelve yards for a dress, and the second one only ten. It’s the same with food.”

  “Tarass and a half” smiled deprecatingly, turned his face towards the deacon, fixed his one eye on him, and shyly suggested in an embarrassed tone—“I also had a wife once.”

  “That may happen to anybody,” observed Kouvalda. “Go on with your lies!”

  “She was thin, but she ate a great deal; it was even the cause of her death.”

  “You poisoned her, you one-eyed beggar!” said “Scraps,” with conviction.

  “No! on my word I didn’t; she ate too much pickled herring.”

  “And I tell you, you did! you poisoned her,” “Scraps” repeated, with further assurance.

  It was often his way, after having said some absurdity, to continue to repeat it, without bringing forward any grounds of confirmation; and beginning in a pettish, childish tone, he would gradually work himself up into a rage.

  The deacon took up the cudgels for his friend.

  “He couldn’t have poisoned her, he had no reason to do so.”

  “And I say he did poison her!” screamed “Scraps.”

  “Shut up!” shouted the captain in a threatening voice.

  His sense of boredom was gradually changing into suppressed anger. With savage eyes he glanced round at the company, and not finding anything in their already half-drunken faces that might serve as an excuse for his fury, he dropped his head on his breast, remained sitting thus for a few moments, and then stretched himself full length on the ground, with his face upwards. “The Meteor” was gnawing cucumbers; he would take one in his hand, without looking at it, thrust half of it into his mouth, and then suddenly bite it in two with his large yellow teeth, so that the salt juice oozed out on either side and wetted his cheeks. He was clearly not hungry, but this proceeding amused him. Martianoff remained motionless as a statue in the position he had taken, stretched on the ground and absorbed in gloomily watching the barrel of vodka, which was by this time more than half empty. Tiapa had his eyes fixed on the ground, whilst he masticated noisily the meat which would not yield to his old teeth. “Scraps” lay on his stomach, coughing from time to time, whilst convulsive movements shook all his small body. The rest of the silent dark figures sat or lay about in various positions, and these ragged objects were scarcely distinguishable in the twilight from the heaps of rubbish half overgrown with weeds which were strewn about the yard. Their bent, crouching forms, and their tatters gave them the look of hideous animals, created by some coarse and freakish power, in mockery of man.

  “There lived in Sousdal town

  A lady of small renown;

  She suffered from cramps and pains,

  And very disagreeable they were…”

  sang the deacon in a low voice, embracing Alexai Maximovitch, who smiled back stupidly in his face. “Tarass and a half” leered lasciviously.

  Night was coming on. Stars glittered in the sky; on the hill towards the town the lights began to show. The prolonged wail of the steamers’ whistles was heard from the river; the door of Vaviloff’s vodka shop opened with a creaking noise, and a sound of cracking glass. Two dark figures entered the yard and approached the group of men seated round the vodka barrel, one of them asking in a hoarse voice—

  “You are drinking?”

  Whilst the other figure exclaimed in a low tone, envy and delight in his voice—

  “What a set of lucky devils!”

  Then over the head of the deacon a hand was stretched out and seized the bottle; and the peculiar gurgling sound was heard of vodka being poured from the bottle into a glass. Then someone coughed loudly.

  “How dull you all are!” exclaimed the deacon. “Come, you one-eyed beggar, let’s recall old times and have a song! Let us sing By the waters of Babylon.”

  “Does he know it?” asked Simtzoff.

  “He? Why he was the soloist in the archbishop’s choir. Come now, begin! By—the—waters—of—Babylon.”

  The voice of the deacon was wild, hoarse, and broken, whilst his friend sang with a whining falsetto. The doss-house, shrouded in darkness, seemed either to have grown larger or to have moved its half-rotten mass nearer towards these people, who with their wild howlings had aroused its dull echoes. A thick, heavy cloud slowly moved across the sky over the house. One of the outcasts was already snoring; the rest, not yet quite drunk, were either eating or drinking, or talking in low voices with long pauses. All felt a strange sense of oppression after this unusually abundant feast of vodka and of food. For some reason or another it took longer than usual to arouse to-day the wild gaiety of the company, which generally came so easily when the dossers were engaged round the bottle.

  “Stop your howling for a minute, you dogs!” said the captain to the singers, raising his head from the ground, and listening. “Someone is coming, in a carriage!”

  A carriage in those parts at this time of night could not fail to arouse general attention. Who would risk leaving the town, to encounter the ruts and holes of such a street? Who? and for what purpose?

  All raised their heads and listened. In the silence of the night could be heard the grating of the wheels against the splashboards.

  The carriage drew nearer. A coarse voice was heard asking—

  “Well, where is it then?”

  Another voice answered—

  “It must be the house over there.”

  “I’m not going any farther!”

  “They must be coming here!” exclaimed the captain.

  An anxious murmur was heard: “The Police!” “In a carriage? You fools!” said Martianoff in a low voice.

  Kouvalda rose and went towards the entrance gates.

  “Scraps,” stretching his neck in the direction the captain had taken, was listening attentively.

  “Is this the doss-house?” asked someone in a cracked voice.

  “Yes, it is the house of Aristide Kouvalda,” replied the uninviting bass voice of the captain.

  “That’s it, that’s it! It’s here that the reporter Titoff lived, is it not?”

  “Ah! You have brought him back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Drunk?”

  “Ill.”

  “That means he’s very drunk. Now then, schoolmaster, out with you!”


  “Wait a minute. I’ll help you; he’s very bad. He’s been two nights at my house; take him under the arms. We’ve had the doctor, but he’s very bad.”

  Tiapa rose and went slowly towards the gates. “Scraps” sneered, and drank another glass.

  “Light up there!” ordered the captain.

  “The Meteor” went into the doss-house and lit a lamp, from which a long stream of light fell across the yard, and the captain, with the assistance of the stranger, led the schoolmaster into the doss-house. His head hung loose on his breast, and his feet dragged along the ground; his arms hung in the air as if they were broken. With Tiapa’s help they huddled him on to one of the bunks, where he stretched out his limbs, uttering suppressed groans, whilst shudders ran through his body.

  “We worked together on the same newspaper; he’s been very unlucky. I told him, ‘Stay at my house if you like; you won’t disturb me’; but he begged and implored me to take him home, got quite excited about it. I feared that worrying would do him more harm, so I have brought him—home; for this is where he meant, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps you think he’s got some other home?” asked Kouvalda in a coarse voice, watching his friend closely all the time. “Go, Tiapa, and fetch some cold water.”

  “Well now,” said the little man, fidgeting about shyly, “I suppose I can’t be of any further use to him.”

  “Who? You?”

  The captain scanned him contemptuously.

  The little man was dressed in a well-worn coat, carefully buttoned to the chin. His trousers were frayed out at the bottom. His hat was discoloured with age, and was as crooked and wrinkled as was his thin, starved face.

  “No, you can’t be of any further use. There are many like you here,” said the captain, turning away from the little man.

  “Well, good-bye then!”

  The little man went towards the door, and standing there said softly—

  “If anything happens let us know at the office; my name is Rijoff. I would write a short obituary notice. After all, you see, he was a journalist.”

  “H—m—m! an obituary notice, do you say? Twenty lines, forty kopecks. I’ll do something better, when he dies; I will cut off one of his legs, and send it to the office, addressed to you. That will be worth more to you than an obituary notice. It will last you at least three or four days; he has nice fat legs. I know all of you down there lived on him when he was alive, so you may as well live on him when he is dead.”