The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “Then pray for the peace of their souls.”

  “Maybe they are still alive.”

  She wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at me with a pitying smile. Then again she began shaking her head and continued in her singsong:

  “The Lord God is good; He is righteous toward all and covers all with His rich bounty.”

  “That is just what I doubt,” I said.

  I saw that she started, her arms sank, and she remained silent, while her eyes continued to sparkle. Then she controlled herself and sang on, quite low:

  “Remember that prayers have wings which fly even faster than birds and reach the throne of the Lord. No one has yet entered heaven on his own horse.”

  This much I understood: that she represented God to herself as some noble lord, good natured and lovable, but still, according to her opinion, bound by no law. She expressed all her thoughts in allegories which, to my disappointment, I could not understand. I bowed and went my way.

  “Here they have broken the Lord God into many pieces,” I thought to myself, “each one to his own need. One makes Him good-natured, the other stern and dark. And the priests have hired Him as their clerk and pay Him with the smoke of incense for His support. Only Larion had an infinite God.”

  Several nuns passed me, drawing a sleigh full of snow, and tittered. My heart was heavy and I did not know what to do. I went out from the gate. All without was still. The snow sparkled and shone, the frost-covered trees stood motionless, and heaven and earth seemed sunk in thought and looked in a friendly manner at the quiet monastery. A fear arose in me lest I break this stillness with my cries.

  The bells called to vespers—what sweet chimes! They were soft and coaxing, but I had no desire to enter the church. I felt as if my head were full of sharp little nails. Suddenly I made the resolution:

  “I shall enter a monastery with severe regulations. There I shall live alone in a solitary cell; will reflect and read books, and perhaps I shall in this loneliness become the master of my scattered soul.”

  A week later I found myself before the Abbot of the small monastery of Sabateieff. I liked the Abbot. He was a good-looking man, gray headed and bald, with red, firm cheeks and a promising look in his eyes.

  “Why do you flee the world, my son?” he asked me.

  I explained to him that the death of Olga disturbed the peace of my soul, but further I did not dare say anything. Something seemed to hold me back from speaking.

  He pulled at his beard, looked at me searchingly and said:

  “Can you pay the initiation fee?”

  “I have about a hundred rubles with me.”

  “Give them to me. Now go into the guest room. To-morrow, after the noonday service, I will speak to you.”

  The care of strangers fell to the lot of Father Nifont, and him, too, I liked.

  “Everything is very simple in our monastery,” he said. “It is democratic. We all work equally in serving God, not as in other places. True, we have a gentleman here, but he does not mix with any one or bother us in any way. You can find peace and rest for your soul here and attain blessedness.”

  By the following day I had examined the monastery well. In former times it must have stood in the center of the wood, but now everything around it was hewn down. Only here and there in front of the gates a few tree trunks stood out from the ground. Toward the side the wood reached up to the very walls of the monastery and embraced, as with two black wings, the blue-domed church and the monastery. Nearby lay Blue Lake under its ice cover, formed like a half moon. It was nine versts from end to end and four versts wide. Behind it one could see the land on the other side, and the three churches of Kudejaroff, and the golden cupola of St. Nicholas of Tolokontzeff. On our side of the lake, not far from the monastery, was the hamlet of Kudejaroff, with its three and twenty little huts, and around it lay the mighty forests.

  All was beautiful, and a quiet peace filled my soul. Here I would hold communion with the Lord; would unfold before Him my innermost soul, and would ask Him with humble insistence to show me the way to the knowledge of His holy laws.

  In the evening I attended vespers. The mass was said severely and according to rule, and with ardor. But the singing did not please me; good voices were lacking.

  “O Lord, forgive me if my thoughts about Thee were too bold,” I prayed. “I did not do it out of lack of faith, but because of love and passion for the truth, as you know, O Omniscient One!”

  Suddenly the monk who stood near me turned and smiled at me. Evidently I had spoken my repentant words too loud. As he smiled I looked at him. Such a handsome face! I let my head sink and closed my eyes. Never, either before or since, have I seen so handsome a face. I stepped lightly forward, placed myself next to him and looked into his wonderful countenance. It was as white as milk and framed in a black beard sprinkled here and there with gray. His eyes were large, and they had a soft mellow light and a bright expression. His figure was well built and tall; his nose a little bent like an eagle’s, and his whole bearing was distinguished and noble. He made so deep an impression on me that even at night he stood before me in my dreams.

  Early in the morning Father Nifont woke me.

  “The Abbot has assigned you some test work. Go to the bakery. This worthy brother here will take you there. He will be your superior in the future. Here, take your cloistral robes.”

  I put on a monk’s garb. They fitted me well, but were worn and dirty and the sole from one boot was loose.

  I looked at my superior. He was broad-shouldered and awkward, with his forehead and cheeks full of pimples and pockmarks, from which sprouted little bunches of gray hair; his whole face looked as if it were covered with sheep’s wool; he would have been laughable were it not for the deep folds on his forehead, his compressed lip and his little, dark, blinking eyes.

  “Hurry up!” he said to me.

  His voice was harsh and cracked, like a broken bell.

  “This is Brother Misha.” Father Nifont introduced him, smiling. “Well, go, and God be with you.”

  We walked out into the court. It was dark. Misha stumbled over something and swore horribly. Then he asked me:

  “Can you knead dough?”

  “I have seen the women knead,” I answered.

  “Women!” he muttered. “You’re always thinking about women! Always women! On account of them the world is accursed, don’t you forget that!”

  “The mother of God was a woman,” I said.

  “Well?”

  “And also there are very many virtuous women.”

  “If you speak like that the devil will surely drag you to hell.”

  “Anyway, he is a serious man,” I thought to myself.

  We arrived at the bakery and he made the fire. There were two large kneading troughs covered with sacks, a large flour bin nearby, a big sack of rye and a bag of wheat. Everything was dirty and filthy, and cobwebs and gray dust lay over all. Misha tore the sack off from one of the troughs, threw it on the earth, and commanded:

  “Well, come and learn! Here is the dough. Do you see those bubbles? That means it is ready—it has already risen.”

  He took a sack of flour as if it were a three-year-old youngster, bent it over the edge of the trough, cut it open with his knife and cried as though at a fire:

  “Pour four pails of water here and then knead!”

  He was white like a tree with hoarfrost.

  I threw off my cassock and rolled up my sleeves. He shouted:

  “Not that way! Take off your trousers! With your feet!”

  “I haven’t taken a bath for a long time,” I said.

  “Who asked you about that?”

  “How can I, then, with dirty feet?”

  “Am I your pupil,” he roared, “or are you mine?”

  He had a large mouth, and strong, broad teeth,
and long arms, which he waved angrily in the air.

  “Well,” I thought, “the devil take you; I don’t care.”

  I wiped my feet with a wet cloth, stepped into the kneading trough and began to work the dough, while my teacher ran here and there, grumbling.

  “I will teach you to bend, my little mother’s son. I will teach you humility and obedience!”

  I kneaded one trough, began another, and when that was done, started on the wheat, which is kneaded with the hands. I was a strong fellow, but was not used to the work. The flour filled my nose, my mouth, my ears and eyes, so that I became deaf and blind; and the sweat kept dropping from my forehead into the dough.

  “Haven’t you a piece of cloth,” I asked, “to wipe the sweat off?”

  Misha became raging mad. “We will get you velvet towels. The monastery has been standing 230 years, and has only been waiting for your new orders.”

  I had to laugh, unwillingly. “I am not kneading the dough for myself,” I said. “There are others who have to eat the bread.”

  He walked up to me, bristling like a porcupine and every part of him trembling.

  “Take a sack and wipe yourself, if you are so tender. But I will tell the Abbot about your impudence.”

  I was so surprised at this man that I could not be angry at him. He worked unceasingly, and the heavy two-hundred sacks were like little pillows in his hands. He was covered with flour, grumbled, swore and urged me on continually.

  “Hurry! Hurry!”

  I hurried till my head swam.

  CHAPTER IX

  The first days of my cloistral novitiate were not easy. The bakery was in the cellar under the refectory; the ceiling was low and vaulted, and its one window was nailed tightly. The air was suffocating. The dust from the flour hung in the cellar like a thick mist, in which Misha trotted back and forth like a bear on a chain. The flame in the oven burned unclearly; it was a nightmare, not work.

  Only we two were down there, for it was seldom that any one was sent as a punishment to help us.

  There was no time even to attend religious services.

  Day after day Misha preached his sermon to me, and I felt as if I were being bound with stout ropes. He was all aflame and burned with wrath against the world, while I breathed in his words and I felt that my inmost heart was covered with soot.

  “You have nothing more to do with man,” he said. “They continue to commit sins out there in the world, but you have left the world forever. If you separated from it with your body, then you must also flee it in spirit. You must forget it. If you think of man, you think unwillingly of woman. And through woman the world has sunk into darkness and sin and is bound eternally.”

  I wanted to say something, but no sooner did I open my mouth than he shouted at me:

  “Keep still! Listen attentively to what an experienced man has to say, and respect your elders! I know you were going to blab something about the mother of God again. But it was just on account of her that Christ died on the crucifix—because He was born of woman, and did not descend holy and pure from heaven. He was altogether too good to that nasty woman all his life, and he should have pushed the Samaritan into the well instead of conversing with her. And He should have been the first to throw a stone at the sinner. Then the world would have been free.”

  “That is not a church thought,” I said.

  “Again I tell you, keep still. The church is entirely in the hands of a pale clergy, who are slaves to all sorts of debauchery and who themselves go around in silk clothes like women in petticoats. They are all heretics. They should dance quadrilles, not dictate religious laws. Moreover, is it possible for a man with a wife to think upon God-like things with a pure heart? No, he cannot, for he is committing the terrible sin on account of which the Lord drove him out of the Garden of Eden. And because of this sin we are damned to eternal punishment; sentenced to howl and to gnash our teeth, and we are blinded by it so that we cannot see the countenance of God from one eternity to another. The clergy themselves help spread this sin, for they have children with women and encourage the world to follow their bad example. And thus they change all the laws of God to justify their violations of them.”

  This man made me feel as if I were surrounded by a stone wall, which came closer and closer around me. He brought the roof of the cellar sinking upon my head. I was oppressed and stifled by the dust of his words.

  “But,” I said, “did not the Lord say, ‘Multiply and increase’?”

  Here my superior became blue in the face, stamped his feet on the ground, and roared like a beast:

  “He said! He said! How do you know what he meant by it, you blockhead? He said: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and people the earth. I leave to you the power of Satan, and may you be damned now, and forever and through all eternity.’ That is what he said. And these cursed debauchees who call themselves the servants of God turned these words into a law of God. Do you understand their deceit and their vileness?”

  He fell on me like a mountain which crushed me and darkened everything about me. I could not believe him, yet I could not contradict his bigotry, and he confused me by the violence of his attacks. If I quoted a passage from the Scriptures he quoted three others and disarmed me. The Scriptures are like a field of many-colored flowers. If you desire red flowers you can find red ones; if white, they, too, are to be had.

  I remained silent, oppressed by his torrent of words, while he triumphed and his eyes glowed like a wolf’s. And all the time we toiled hard at our work. I kneaded and he rolled the dough, pushed the loaves into the oven, and took them out when they were ready. But I had to put them on the shelves, which burned my hands.

  I was all sticky with dough and covered with flour; I was blind and deaf and did not understand from sheer weariness what was said to me.

  Sometimes the monks came to visit us, said something mockingly and laughed. Misha barked at them all angrily, and drove them out of the bakery, and I felt scorched. I was wretched, for I did not like this being together with Misha, whom I not only did not love, but even feared. Many times he asked me:

  “Do you see naked women in your dreams?”

  “No,” I answered, “never.”

  “You’re lying! Why do you lie?”

  He became enraged, showed his teeth and threatened me with his fist.

  “You’re a liar and a rascal,” he shouted.

  I was only astonished. What is he saying there about naked women? A man works from three o’clock in the morning till ten at night and then lies down to sleep with bones aching like a beggar’s in winter—and he talks of women. Such were my thoughts.

  Once I went into the ante-room for yeast. It was a dark room in the cellar, opposite the bakery. I found the door unlocked and a lantern burning. I opened the door and saw Misha crawling on the ground on his stomach, and crying out:

  “Send them away, I implore Thee, Lord! Send them away! Deliver me!”

  Of course, I immediately went out, but I could not guess what it was about.

  He always spoke hatefully and insultingly about women, called all womankind vulgar and in real peasant fashion spat at them, clutching the air with his fingers as if in his mind’s eye he were tearing and pulling a woman’s body apart.

  I could not bear to hear him talk. I remembered my own wife and our happy tears the first night of our marriage, and the quiet, inner wonder with each other, and our great joy. Is it not Thy sweet gift to man, O Lord? I remembered Tatiana’s good heart and her simplicity, and I was hurt to tears for womankind. I thought to myself:

  “When the Abbot will call me for an interview, I shall tell him everything.”

  But he did not call me. The days passed one after another, like blind people in a wood along a narrow path, each one stumbling upon the other, and still the Abbot did not call me. Darkness was within me. At that time, in my twenty-second year,
my first gray hair came.

  I wanted to speak with the handsome monk, but I saw him rarely and only for an instant. Now and then his proud countenance came before me and then vanished and my longing for him followed him like an invisible shadow. I asked Misha about him.

  “Oh,” Misha cried, “that one! That animal! He was sent away from the military for gambling in cards and from the seminary for his scandals with women. A learned one, yes! He fell into the seminary from the military, cheated all the monks in the monastery of Chudoff; then came here, bought himself in with seven and a half thousand rubles, donated land and so won great respect. Here, too; they play cards. The Abbot, the steward and the treasurer, they all play with him. There is a girl who visits him—oh, the pigs! He has a separate apartment, and there he lives just as he pleases. The great filth of it!”

  I did not believe him; I could not. One day I asked the steward, Father Isador, to help me gain an interview with the Abbot.

  “An interview about what?”

  “About faith.”

  “What do you mean, ‘about faith’?”

  “I have various questions.”

  He looked me over from head to toe. He was a head taller than I, thin, angular, with wise, smiling eyes, a long, crooked nose and a pointed beard.

  “Speak plainly; your flesh masters you?”

  Always of the flesh! Though I did not want to, nevertheless I told him of some of my doubts in a few words. He frowned, then smiled.

  “For this, my son, you should pray. By means of prayer you can heal the suffering of your soul. Still, in consideration of your love for labor, and because your request is so unusual, I will place the matter before the Abbot. Wait.”

  The word “unusual” surprised me. I felt that the expression was frivolous and there was hostility in it toward me.

  Then I was summoned to come before the Father Abbot, and he looked at me sternly as I bowed before him. He said in a tone of authority:

  “Father Isador told me of your desire to discuss the faith with me.”

  “I did not mean to argue,” I said.

  “Do not interrupt the speech of your elders. Every discussion which two people have about a subject is an argument, and every question is a seducer of thought, unless, of course, it is a subject which concerns itself with the daily life of the brotherhood—: some commonplace subject. Here we have a working community. We work to subjugate the flesh, so that the soul, which lives in it temporarily, may devote itself wholly to the Lord, and thus pray and receive His mercy for the sins of the world. Our lot is not to gain cleverness, but to work. Cleverness is not necessary to us, only simplicity of soul.