The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “Your discussions with Brother Misha are known to me, and I cannot approve of them. Limit the boldness of your thought so that you do not fall into temptation, for the aimless thoughts which are not bound down by faith are the keenest weapons of the devil. The mind comes from the flesh; bold thoughts from the devil; but the strength of the soul is a part of the spirit of God, and open-heartedness is given the righteous through meditation.

  “Brother Misha, your superior, is a strict monk, a true ascetic and brother, beloved by all for his work. I will punish you with a penance. After your day’s labor is done read the Acathistus to Christ at the altar on the left in front of the Crucifixion, three times during the night, for ten successive nights.

  “Added to this, you will also have to have interviews with the penance monk, Mardarie. The time and the number will be told you later.

  “You were a clerk on an estate, were you not? Go in peace. I will think about you. It seems that you have no relatives on this earth. Well, go, I will pray for you. We will hope for the best.”

  I returned to the bakery and began to weigh his words in my mind. That was easily done. Perhaps the mind does become scattered in its search. Still, to live like a sheep is hardly worthy nor right for man. At that time I understood “meditation in prayer” as a sinking into the depths of my own soul, where all the roots lay, and from which thoughts strove to grow upward, as fruit trees. I could not find anything in my soul which was hostile or not to be understood. All that was not to be understood I felt was in God, and all that was hostile was in the world—that is—outside of me.

  That the brothers loved Misha I knew to be absolutely untrue, for although I kept myself apart from all and did not mix in their conversations, still I noticed everything and saw that the vested monks as well as the novices disliked Misha and feared him and abhorred him.

  I saw also that the monastery was laid out on a purely business basis. They sold wood, they rented land to peasants and the right to fish on the lake; they had a mill, vegetable gardens, large orchards, and sold apples, berries and cabbages. Seventy horses stood in the stables, and the brotherhood was composed of a little over fifty men, all strong and hard workers. There were a few old men—only for parade—to show off before the pilgrims. The monks drank wine and mixed much with women. The young ones spent their nights in the village; and women came to the cells of the older ones, ostensibly to wash the floors; and of course the pilgrims were made use of also.

  But all this was not my affair and I could not judge them. I saw no sin in it, only a disgusting lie.

  Many novices came to the monastery, but the tests were so difficult that they could not endure them and deserted. During the two years that I spent in this holy place, eleven brothers escaped. They remained one or two months and fled. It seemed the life in the monastery was too difficult.

  For the pilgrims who came to the monastery there were, of course, all kinds of attractions. There were the chains of the deceased pious brother Joseph, which were a cure for rheumatism, and his little cap which, when put on the head, cured headaches. And there was a very cold spring in the wood, whose water was good for sickness in general. An image of the Assumption of the Virgin contained all kinds of wonders for believers, and the pious penance brother, Mardarie, could foretell the future and comfort the unhappy. Everything was as it should be, and in the spring, in the month of May, the people streamed here in crowds.

  After my conversation with the Abbot, I wanted to find another monastery, which would be simpler and where I need not work so hard, and where the monks would stand nearer to their real task—the understanding of the sins of this world. But several things happened which kept me back.

  One day I made the acquaintance of a novice named Grisha, who was employed in the office of the monastery. I had noticed him before. He walked quickly and noisily among the brothers, wore smoked glasses, had an insignificant face, an under-sized body, and walked with his head bent forward, as if he wanted to see nothing but his own path.

  The day after my conversation with the Abbot, Grisha came into the bakery. Misha had just gone to the brother treasurer to give his accounts. Grisha came in, greeted me low, and asked:

  “You were at the Abbot’s, brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you talk with him?”

  “No.”

  “He sent you away?”

  “Why should he?”

  Grisha fixed his glasses, became confused and said.

  “I beg your pardon, in Christ’s name.”

  “Did he ever send you away?” I asked.

  He nodded affirmatively and sat down on the edge of the flour bin, bent forward, coughed dryly and beat the bin with a hook while I told him what the Abbot had said to me. Suddenly he jumped up, straightened to his full height as if on springs, and began to speak in his loud, plaintive, excited voice:

  “Why do they call this a place for the salvation of the soul when everything here is based upon money; when we live here for money, just as in the world outside? I fled to save myself from the sin of business, and again I fell upon business here. Where shall I flee now?”

  His whole body trembled, and he told me quickly the history of his life. He was the son of a merchant who owned a bakery, had graduated from a school of commerce, and was placed by his father in his business.

  “Were it some little nonsense,” he said, “then, perhaps, I could deal in it. But with bread it was unpleasant and shameful to me. Bread is indispensable to all. One should not own it to make it the means of trade for human need. Perhaps my father would have broken me had his avarice not broken him. I had a sister, an academy student, gay and proud, who read books and was friendly with all the students. Suddenly my father said to her:

  “Stop your studying, Elizabeth. I have found a husband for you.”

  ‘I don’t want him,’ she answered.

  “But my father pulled her hair until my little sister gave in. The bridegroom was the-son of a rich tea merchant—a cross-eyed, large man, vulgar and continually boasting of his wealth. Liza, next to him, looked like a mouse next to a dog. He disgusted her. But my father said:

  “‘You fool, he has shops in many cities on the Volga.’

  “Well, they were married, and during the wedding supper she went to her room and shot herself in the breast. I found her still living, and she said to me:

  “‘Good-by, Grisha. I want to live very much, but it is impossible! It is terrible! I can’t! I can’t!’” I remember that he talked very, very fast, as if he were running away from the past, while I listened and looked at the stove. Its brow was before me and it looked like some ancient and blind face whose black mouth licked with flames ate up the whistling and hissing wood. I saw Grisha’s sister in the fire and thought bitterly:

  “Why do people violate and destroy one another?”

  Grisha’s thick words fell one upon the other like dry leaves in autumn:

  “My father almost went out of his senses. He stamped his feet and cried: ‘She has insulted her parents! Her soul is lost.’ Only after the burial, when he saw that all of Kazan followed Liza’s body and laid wreaths upon her tomb, did he come to himself. ‘If all the people are for her,’ he said, ‘it means that I behaved like a scoundrel toward my child!’”

  Grisha wept and dried his glasses, and his hands trembled.

  “Even before this misfortune befell us I wanted to enter a monastery, and I had said to my father:

  “‘Let me.’

  “But he swore at me and beat me. Nevertheless, I said firmly:

  “‘I will not do business. Let me go.’

  “He was frightened by Liza’s death, and gave me freedom, and now, in these four years, I have lived in three monasteries, and everywhere there is barter, and I have no place for my soul. They sell God’s earth and God’s word, His honey and His miracles. I cannot stand it any
longer!”

  His story awoke my soul again, for I did little thinking while I lived in the monastery. I was so worn out by my labors, that my rebellious thought slumbered. Suddenly his words woke me. I asked Grisha:

  “Where, then, is our God? There is nothing around us but the arbitrary and mad foolishness of man; nothing but the petty deceptions from which misfortunes arise. Where, then, is God?”

  But here Misha appeared and drove us out. From that day Grisha came to me often, and I told him my thoughts, which horrified him, and he counseled humility:

  “But why do people suffer so?” I asked.

  “For their sins,” he answered.

  To him everything came from the hands of God—famine, fire, violent death and floods—everything.

  “Can it be that God is the sower of misfortune on earth?” I asked.

  “Remember Job, insane one,” he whispered to me.

  “Job has nothing to do with me,” I answered. “I in his place would have said to God, ‘Do not frighten me, but answer me clearly: Where is the way that leads to Thee? Am I not Thy son, made in Thy image? Don’t lower Thyself to repulse Thy child.’”

  Often Grisha wept at the foolishness of my audacity, and embracing me, he said:

  “My dear brother, I am frightened for you—terribly frightened. Your words and your reasonings are from the devil.”

  “I do not believe in the devil, for God is all-powerful.”

  Then he became even more excited. He was a pure and tender man, and I loved him.

  CHAPTER X

  It was at this time that I performed the penance.

  After my day’s work I went to the church, where Brother Nikodime opened the door for me and locked me in, disturbing the stillness of the temple with the loud rattle of iron. I waited at the door till the last reverberation died away on the flagstones, then walked up quietly to the Crucifix and sat down upon the floor before it, for I was too weak to stand. Every muscle in my body ached from toil, and I had no desire to read the Acathistus.

  I sat down, clasped my knees and gazed about me with sleepy eyes and thought about Grisha and about myself. It was summer, and the nights were hot and close, but here, in the semi-darkness of the church, it was pleasantly cool. The lamps under the holy pictures twinkled and winked at each other, and the little blue flames tugged upward as if they wished to fly toward the cupola, or higher still, to heaven itself, to the stars of the summer night. The quiet crackling of the wicks could be heard, each with its own peculiar sound, and half asleep, it seemed to me that the church was filled with a secret, unseen life, which, under the flickering of the lamps, held communion with itself. In the warm stillness and darkness the faces of the saints floated meditatively, as if something unsolved were before them. Ghost-like shadows passed before my face and the delicate, sweet odor of oil and cypress wood and incense surrounded me. The gold and the bronze of the holy images appeared duller and simpler, the silver shone warm and friendly, and everything melted and swam fusing into a torrent large and wide as in a dream.

  Like a thick, sweet-smelling cloud, the church swung and swam to the low whispering of an indistinct prayer. I swung with it in a row of shadows, until a soft drowsiness took me up from the ground.

  Before the ringing of the bell for early mass, the silent Brother Nikodime would enter and wake me, touching me lightly on the head.

  “Go, in God’s name,” he would say, and I would answer:

  “Pardon me, I have fallen asleep again.”

  Then I would go out swaying, and Nikodime would support me and say hardly audibly:

  “God will pardon you, my benefactor.”

  Nikodime was an insignificant looking little old man, who hid his face from all and called every one his “benefactor.” Once I asked him:

  “Say, Nikodimushke, are you silent because of a vow?”

  “No,” he answered; “but just so.” Then he sighed. “If I had anything to say, I would say it.” “Why did you leave the world?”

  “Because I left it.”

  If you questioned him further, he did not answer at all, but looked into jour face with guilty eyes, and said in a whisper:

  “I don’t know why, my benefactor.”

  At times I thought to myself: “Perhaps this man, also, had sought an answer at one time.”

  And I wanted to run away from the monastery.

  But here another gentleman appeared, starting up suddenly like a rubber ball against a fence. He was a strong, short, bold fellow, with round eyes like an owl’s, a bent nose, light curls, a bushy beard and teeth which shone in a continual smile. He amused all the monks with his jokes and his shameless stories about women. At night he had them come to the monastery, smuggled in vodka without end, and was marvelously handy at everything. I looked at him and said:

  “What do you seek in a monastery?”

  “I? Things to gobble.”

  “Bread is given to those who work.”

  “That,” he answered, “is a commandment from the peasants’ God, but I am a man from the town and have also served two years in the Council, and can count myself as one of the authorities.”

  I tried to understand this jester, for I had to see all the springs which moved different kinds of people.

  As I became more used to my work, Misha grew lazier, went off somewhere or other, and although it was more difficult for me alone, still it was more pleasant. People came freely to the bakery and we talked.

  Mostly we were three—Grisha, I and; oily Seraphim. Grisha would be excited and threatened me with his hands; Seraphim would whistle and shake his curls and smile. Once I asked him:

  “Seraphim, you vagabond, do you believe in God?”

  “I will tell you later,” he answered. “Wait about thirty years. When I am in my sixties, I suppose I will know exactly what I believe. At present I understand nothing and I don’t want to lie.”

  He would tell us about the sea. He spoke about it as about a great miracle, using marvelous words, now quiet and loud; now with fear, and with love. And he glowed all over with joy which made him look like a star. When we listened to him we were silent and even heavy at heart at his stories of this vast, live beauty.

  “The sea,” he said with passion, “is the blue eye of earth which looks out to the far heaven and meditates on infinite space. On its waves, which are as alive and sensitive as the soul, is reflected the play of the stars and their secret path; and if you watch for a long time the ebb and the flow of the sea, then the sky, too, appears like a far-off ocean, and the stars like islands.”

  Grisha listened, all pale, and smiled quietly, as if a moonbeam were playing on him, and he whispered sadly:

  “And before the countenance of this mystery and beauty we only barter—nothing more.”

  At other times Seraphim would tell us about the Caucasus. He pictured to us a land gloomy and exquisite, like a fairyland, where hell and heaven embraced, and were at peace, both equal and both proud in their majesty.

  “To see the Caucasus,” Seraphim said in ecstasy, “that means to see the pure countenance of the earth, on which without inconsistency there unite in a smile the delicate purity of the childlike soul and the proud audacity and wisdom of the devil. The Caucasus is the touchstone of man. Weak spirits are ground to dust there and tremble before the power of the earth; but the strong, on the other hand, feel their strength grow and become proud and exalted like the mountain whose diamond-studded summit sends down its rays into the depths of the celestial wilderness. And this summit is the throne of the thunder.”

  Grisha sighed and asked in a low voice:

  “And who points out the path to the soul? Should one be in the world or go away from it? What should one accept and what reject?”

  Seraphim smiled distractedly and luminously.

  “The glory of the sun is neither augmented n
or diminished because you do not look at the sky, Grisha. Don’t bother about that subject, my dear friend.”

  I understood Seraphim, but not entirely. I asked him, a little hurt:

  “And as to people—what do you think about them? Why are they here?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

  “People—are like weeds. There are various kinds among them. For those who are blind the sun is black; for those who are not happy with themselves, God is an enemy. Besides, people are young. To call three-year-old Jack, Mr. So-and-so is early a bit and doesn’t quite fit.”

  His mouth overflowed with such quotations. They dropped from his lips like leaves from an apple tree, just as with Savelko. If you asked him anything, he immediately overpowered you with his puns, as if he were strewing flowers on a child’s grave. His evasions made me angry, but he, the young devil, only laughed. At times I would say to him, irritated:

  “You are loafing here, you idle dog, eating bread for nothing.”

  “That is the way it is with us,” he answered. “He who eats his own bread remains hungry. Look at our peasants. All their life they sow wheat, yet dare not eat. You’re quite right. To work is not my specialty. You get sore bones from work, but never rich and healthy; just lie in bed and shirk and you get fat and wealthy. And even you, Matvei, would rather steal than forego a meal.”

  I argued with him, but toward the end I myself began to laugh.

  He was simple and straightforward, and that attracted me very much. He never made any pretensions, but said simply:

  “I am nothing but a little insect, and not very harmful at that. I only ask for bread that I be fed.”