The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  When he was somewhat drunk, he liked to speak about women.

  “Nature,” he would say, “has kept us in an evil and heavy bondage through woman, its sweetest allurement; and had we not this carnal temptation, which saps out the best from the soul of man, he could have attained immortality.”

  Since Brother Misha had spoken about the same theme, though more heatedly, I was disgusted by this time with such thoughts. Misha had renounced woman with hatred and defamed her furiously; but Father Anthony adjudged her without any feelings and tiresomely.

  “Do you remember,” he said, “I once gave you a book? If you read it you must have seen how woman in her whole make-up is cunning and full of lies, and debauched to the very bottom.”

  It was strange, and it hurt me to hear man, born of woman and nourished with her life, besmirch and trample upon his own mother, denying her everything but the flesh; degrading her to a senseless animal. At times I expressed my thoughts to him, though vaguely; not so distinctly. He became outraged and shouted.

  “Idiot! Was I talking about my own mother?”

  “Every woman is a mother,” I answered.

  “There are some,” he shouted, “who are only loose women all their lives.”

  “Well,” I answered, “there are some who are hunchbacked; but that is not the law for all.”

  “Get out of here, fool!”

  Evidently the officer was not dead in him.

  Several times when I asked about God, we wrangled with each other. He angered me with his sly wit, and one evening I went at him with all my might. My character grew bad, for I passed through great suffering at this time. I circled around Anthony like a hungry man around a locked pantry; he smells the bread through the door, and it only tends to madden him. And the night to which I refer, his evasions enraged me. I caught up the knife from the table and cried:

  “Tell me everything you believe or I will cut my throat, come what may!”

  He became frightened, grabbed my hand, wrenched the knife from me and grew very much excited—not at all like himself.

  “You should be punished for this,” he said, “but no punishment ever helps fanaticism.”

  And then he added, and his words were like nails beaten into my head:

  “This is what I will tell you: only man exists. Everything else is an opinion. Your God is a dream of your soul. You can only know yourself, and even that not certainly.”

  His words shook me like a storm and ravaged me. He spoke for a long time, and though I did not understand everything, I felt that in this man was no sorrow or joy or fear, or sensitiveness, or pride. He was like an old church-yard priest, reading the mass for the dead, near a tomb. He knew the words well, but they did not touch his soul. His words were frightful to me at first, but later I understood that the doubt in them was without force, for they were dead.

  It was May, the window was open, and the night in the garden was filled with a warm perfume of flowers. The apple trees were like young girls going to communion—a delicate blue in the silver moonlight.

  The watchman beat the hours, and in the stillness the bronze resounded lugubriously.

  Before me sat a man with a face of stone, calmly emitting bloodless words—words which vanished and were gray like ashes. They were offensive and painful to me, for I saw brass where I had expected gold.

  “Go now,” said Anthony to me.

  I went into the garden, and when early mass was rung I entered the church, went into a dark corner and stood there, thinking, what need of God had a man who was half dead?

  The brothers assembled. One would say it was the moonlight which broke the shadows of night into a thousand fragments and which noiselessly crawled into the temple to hide.

  From this time something incomprehensible happened. Anthony began speaking to me in the tone of a gentleman, dry and crossly, and he never called me to him in a friendly way. All the books which he had given me to read he took away. One of them was a Russian history which had many surprises for me, but I got no chance to finish it. I tried to fathom in what way I had offended this gentleman of mine, but I could not.

  The beginning of his speech was engraven in my memory and lived uppermost in my mind, though not troubling my other thoughts: “God is the dream of your soul,” I repeated to myself. But I did not feel the necessity of debating this; it was an easy thought.

  Soon a woman came to him. It was late at night. Anthony rang for me and cried:

  “Quick—the samovar!”

  When I brought it in I saw a woman sitting on the divan, in a wide pink dress, blonde disheveled curls hanging over her shoulders, and a little pink face, like a doll’s, with light-blue eyes. She seemed to me modest and sad.

  I placed the dishes on the table, and Anthony hurried me all the while.

  “Do it quicker—hurry.”

  “He is aflame,” I said to myself.

  I liked his love affairs, for it was pleasant to see how skilful Anthony was even in love—a thing which is not very difficult.

  As for myself, love left me cold at this time, and the looseness of the monks kept me away from it. But what kind of a monk was Father Anthony?

  The woman was pretty in her way, a delicate little thing, like a new toy.

  In the morning I went into the room to set it to rights. But he was not there, having gone to the Abbot. She sat on the divan, her feet under her, uncombed and half dressed. She asked me what I was called. I told her. Then she asked me if I had been in the monastery a long time, and I answered that question also.

  “Don’t you get bored here?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “That’s strange—if it’s true.”

  “Why should it not be true?” I asked.

  “You are so young and good-looking.”

  “Is the monastery only for cripples?”

  She laughed and put out a bare foot from the divan. She looked at me and let herself be seen immodestly; exposed, her arms bare to the shoulder and her gown unfastened at the breast.

  “You do that in vain,” I thought. “You should keep your charms for your lover.”

  And the little fool asked me:

  “Don’t women bother you?”

  “I don’t see them,” I answered. “How can they bother me?”

  “What do you mean by ‘how’?” And she laughed.

  Anthony appeared in the door and asked angrily:

  “What is this, Zoia?”

  “Oh,” she cried, “he is so funny—that one!” And she began to chatter and tell how “funny” I was.

  But Anthony did not listen to her, and commanded me sternly:

  “Go and unpack the trunks and the bags. Then take part of the provisions to the Abbot.”

  Even before dinner both of them had taken enough wine, and in the evening, after tea, the woman was entirely drunk, and Anthony, too, seemed more drunk than usual. They drove me from one corner to the other—to bring this, to carry that; to heat the wine, then to cool it.

  I ran about like a waiter in a drinking place, and they became more and more free before me. The young lady was hot and took off some of her clothes, and the gentleman suddenly asked me:

  “Matvei, isn’t she pretty?”

  “Pretty enough,” I answered.

  “But look at her well.”

  She laughed, drunk.

  I wanted to go out, but Anthony called out, wildly:

  “Where are you going? Stay here! Zoiaka, show yourself naked!”

  I thought I had not heard rightly, but she pulled off a gown she had on and stood upon her feet, swaying. I looked at Anthony and he looked back at me. My heart beat loudly, for I pitied this man. Vulgarities did not quite fit him, and I was ashamed for the woman. Then he shouted:

  “Get out of here, you lout!”

  “You are a
lout yourself!” I retorted.

  He jumped up, overthrowing the bottles on the table. The dishes fell to the ground with a crash; something began to flow hastily, like a lonely stream. I went out into the garden and lay down. My heart ached like a bone that is frozen. In the stillness I heard Anthony cry out:

  “Out with you!”

  And a woman’s voice whined:

  “Don’t you dare, you fool!”

  Soon the harnessing of horses was heard in the courtyard, and their dissatisfied neighing and stampings on the dry earth. Doors were slammed, the wheels of a carriage rattled, and then the large gates creaked.

  Anthony walked through the garden, calling low:

  “Matvei, where are you?”

  His tall figure moved among the apple trees and he caught at the branches and let fall the perfumed snow of flowers, muttering:

  “Oh, the fool!”

  And behind him, dragging along the ground, was his thick, heavy shadow.

  I lay in the garden until morning, and then went to Father Isador.

  “Give me back my passport. I am going away.”

  He was so startled that he jumped up.

  “Why? Where?”

  “Somewhere—in the world. I don’t know where,” I answered.

  He began to question me.

  “I will not explain anything,” I said.

  I went out from his cell and sat down near it on the bench underneath the old pine tree. I sat there on purpose, for it was the bench on which those who were driven away, or went of their own free will, sat, as if to announce the fact of their departure.

  The brothers passed me, and looked at me sideways; some even spat at me. I forgot to say that there had been a rumor that Anthony had taken me as his lover. The Neophytes envied me and the monks envied that gentleman of mine. And they slandered both of us.

  The brothers passed, saying to each other:

  “Ah, they have driven him away; thanked be the Lord!”

  Father Assaf, a sly and malicious old man, who acted as the Abbot’s spy, and was known in the monastery as a half-witted hypocrite, attacked me with vile words, so that I said to him:

  “Go away, old man. If not I will take you by the ear and put you away.”

  Although he was half-witted, as I said, he understood my words.

  The head of the monastery called me to him and spoke in a friendly tone:

  “I told you, Matvei, my son, that it would have been better to have entered the office, and I was right. Old men always know more. Do you think with your obstinate nature that you could act as a servant? Here you have shamefully insulted the revered Father Anthony.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Who, then? You have not said anything.”

  “Did he tell you that he showed me a naked woman?”

  The Father Abbot made a cross over me from holy fright and said, shaking his hands:

  “What is the matter with you? What is the matter with you? God be with you! What kind of a woman? That is some dream of yours, coming from the flesh; a creation of the devil. Oh, oh, oh! You should think of your words. How can a woman be in a monastery of men?”

  I wanted to calm him.

  “Who, then, brought you the port wine, and the cheese, and the caviar last night?”

  “What are you saying? Christ save you. How can you think up such things?”

  It was disgusting and enough to drive one insane.

  CHAPTER XIV

  At noon I crossed the lake, sat down on the bank and gazed at the monastery where I had slaved for over two years.

  The wood spread out before me with its green wings and disclosed the monastery on its breast. The scalloped white walls, the blue head of the old church, the golden cupola of the new cathedral and the striped red roofs stood out clearly from the splendid green. The crosses glowed, shining and inviting, and above them the blue bell of heaven sounded the joyful peace of spring, while the sun rejoiced in its victory.

  In this beauty which inflated the soul with its keen splendor, black men in long garments hid themselves and rotted away, living empty days without love, without joy in senseless labor and in mire.

  I pitied them and myself, too, so that I almost wept. I arose and went on.

  Perfume was over all, the earth and all that lived sang, the sun drew forth the flowers in the field and they lifted themselves up toward the sky and made their obeisance to the sun. The young trees whispered and swayed, the birds twittered and love burned everywhere on the fruitful earth which was drunk with its own strength.

  I met a peasant and greeted him, but he hardly nodded. I met a woman and she evaded me. And all the time I had a great desire to speak with people, and I would have spoken to them with a friendly heart.

  I spent the first night of my freedom in the woods. I lay long, gazed up at the sky and sang low to myself and fell asleep. In the early morning I awoke from cold, and walked on, racing to meet my new life as if on wings. Each step took me farther away, and I was ready to outrun the distance.

  The people whom I met looked suspiciously at me and stepped aside. The black dress of the monk was disgusting and inimical to the peasants, but I could not take it off. My passport had expired, but the Abbot made a note under it which said that I was a novice of the monastery of Savateffsky and that I was on my way to visit holy places.

  So I directed my steps to these places together with those wanderers who fill our monastery by hundreds on holidays. The brothers were indifferent or hostile to them, calling them parasites and robbing them of every penny they had. They forced them to do the monastery work and imposed on them and treated them with contempt. I was always busied with my own affairs and seldom met the newcomers. I did not seek to meet them, for I considered myself something quite extraordinary and placed my own inner self above everything else.

  I saw gray figures with knapsacks on their backs and staffs in their hands creeping and swaying along the roads and paths, going not hurriedly but depressed, with heads bent low, walking humbly and thoughtfully, with credulous, opened hearts. They flowed together in one place, looked about them, prayed silently and worked a bit. If a wise and virtuous man happened to be there they talked with him low about something, and again spread out upon the paths going to other places with sad steps.

  They walked, old and young, women and children, as if one voice called them, and I felt from this crossing and recrossing of the earth a strength arise from the paths which caught me also, and alarmed me and promised to open my soul. This restless and humble wandering seemed strange to me after my motionless life.

  It was as if earth herself tore man from her breast and pushed him forth, ordering him imperiously, “Go, find out, learn.” And man goes obediently and carefully, seeks and looks and listens attentively, then goes on farther again. The earth resounds under the feet of the searchers and drives them farther over streams and mountains and through forests and over seas, still farther wherever the monasteries stand solitary, offering some miracle, and wherever a hope breathes of something other than this bitter, difficult and narrow life.

  The quiet agitation of the lonely souls surprised me and made me human, and I began to wonder,

  “What are these people seeking?” Everything about me swayed, frightened and wandering like myself.

  Many like myself sought God, but did not know where to go and strewed their souls on the paths of their seeking, and were going on only because they did not have strength enough to stop, acting like the seed of the dandelion in the wind, light and purposeless.

  Others unable to shake off their laziness carried it on their shoulders, lowering themselves and living by lies, while still others were enthralled by the desire to see everything, but had no strength in them to love.

  I saw many empty men and degraded rascals, shameless parasites, greedy like roaches. I sa
w many such, but they were only the dust behind the great crowd filled with the desire of finding God.

  Irresistibly this crowd dragged me along with it.

  And around it like gulls over the sea various winged people circled noisily and greedily, who astonished me with their monstrous deformities.

  Once in Bielo-ozer I saw a middle-aged man with a haughty mien. He was cleanly dressed and evidently a man of means.

  He had seated himself in the shade of a tree, and had pieces of cloth, a box of salve and a copper basin near him, and kept crying out:

  “Orthodox, those with sore feet from overstraining, come here; I will heal them. I heal free because of a vow I have taken upon myself in the name of the Lord.”

  It was a church holiday in Bielo-ozer and the pilgrims had flocked there in great numbers. They came up to him, sat down, unwound the wrappings on their feet, while he washed them, spread salve on the wounds and lectured them.

  “Eh, brother, you are not over-wise. Your sandal is too large for your foot. How can you walk like this?” The man with the large sandal answered in a low voice, “It was given to me in charity.”

  “He who gave it to you has pleased God, but that you should walk in it is your own foolishness, and there is nothing great about your deed. God will not count it to your credit.”

  Well, I thought, here is a man who knows God’s meanings.

  A woman came up to him, limping.

  “Oh, young one,” he called out, “you have no corn, but the French sickness, permit me to tell you. This, Orthodox, is a contagious disease. Whole families die from it, and it is hard to get rid of.” The woman became confused, rose and went away with her eyes lowered, and he continued calling:

  “Come here, Orthodox, in the name of St. Cyril.”

  People went up to him, unwound their feet and groaned, and said “Christ save you!” while he washed them.

  I noticed that his refined face twitched as in a cramp and his skilful hands trembled. Soon he closed up his pious shop and ran off somewhere quickly.