The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  I remained silent. I liked to see a man who was not afraid to defend his right. He sat down, damp and red in the face, and breathed heavily. I saw that there were tears in his eyes, and this surprised me, for whenever my former teachers were offended with me they did not shed tears. He cried out:

  “Listen, and I will tell you about the Russian people.”

  “You had better rest,” I said.

  “Keep still,” he said to me, threatening me with his hand. “Keep still, or I will kill you.”

  I could hardly contain myself, and laughed outright.

  “Dear grandfather,” I said, “you are an unspeakably marvelous old man. Pardon me, in Christ’s name, if I have offended you.”

  “You fool! How could you offend me? But you have spoken badly about the great people, you unhappy soul. It is advantageous for the nobles to slander the people. They have to stifle their conscience, for they are strangers on this earth. But you—who are you?”

  CHAPTER XX

  It was good to look at him when he talked thus. He became dignified and even stern. His voice grew calmer and deeper, and he spoke evenly and in cadences, as if he were reading from the Apostles. His face was turned upward, his eyes were round and big, and he was on his knees, but he seemed taller to me than when he stood. At first I listened to his words with an incredulous smile, but soon I remembered the Russian history which Anthony gave me, and it again opened before my eyes. He recited the marvelous fairy tale to me, and I compared this fairy tale with the book. The words tallied, but the sense was different. He came to the decline of the Kiev government.

  “Have you heard it?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Well, then, know that those heroes never existed; that it was the people themselves who incarnated their exploits into characters by which to remember their great labor in the building up of the Russian soil.” Then he continued talking about the Sudzalsky land.

  I remember that somewhere behind the mountains the sun rose and the night hid itself in the woods and woke the birds. Rosy masses of clouds hung over us and we lay on the dewy grass of the rock, one resuscitating the past, the other astonished, counting up the immeasurable labors of men and hardly believing the tale about the conquest of the hostile woody soil.

  The old man seemed to see everything. He heard the hammering of heavy axes in strong hands; he saw the people drain the swamps and build up cities and monasteries; he saw them go ever farther along the cold rivers, into the depths of the thick forests; he saw them conquer the savage earth; he saw them render it beautiful. The princes, the lords of the people, cut and minced this earth into little pieces and fought against each other with the fists of the people whom they afterward robbed. Then from the steppes came the Tartars, but there was no defender of the people’s liberty to arise from among the princes. There was no honor, no strength, no mind. They sold the people and made merchandise of them with the Khans as if they were cattle, and they bought princely power with the blood of the peasants, to have power over these same peasants. Later, when they had taught the Tartars how to govern, they sent each other to the Khans for slaughter.

  The night around us was friendly and wise like an elder sister. The voice of the old man gave out from weariness. The sun saw him, but he went still farther into the past, and showed me the truth with flaming words.

  “Do you see,” he asked me, “what the people have done and what they have suffered up to the very day, when you abused them with your stupid words? I have told you mostly of that which they did through another’s will, but after I am rested I will tell you on what their souls have lived and how they have sought God.”

  He coiled up on the rock and fell asleep like a little child. I could not sleep, but sat there as if surrounded by burning coals.

  It was already morning. The sun was high and the birds were singing, full-throated. The wood bathed in the dew and rustled, meeting the day friendly and green. People walked along the road; ordinary, every-day people. They walked with bowed heads and I could not see anything new in them. They had not grown in any way in my eyes. My instructor slept and snored and I sat next to him lost in thought. Men passed by one after the other, looked askance at us and did not even bow their heads to my salute.

  “Is it possible,” I asked myself, “that these are the offspring of those righteous ones, those builders of the earth about whom I have just heard?”

  The dream and the reality became confused in my head, yet I understood that this meeting meant very much for me. The old man’s words about God, the Son of the spirit of the people, disturbed me, and I could not reconcile myself to them, not knowing any other spirit except that one which was living in me. I racked my mind for all the peasants and the people I had known and tried to remember their words. They had many sayings, but their thoughts were poor. On the other hand I saw the dark exile of life, the bitter toil for bread, the winters of famine, the everlasting sadness of empty days, all the degradation which man has suffered and every outrage against his soul. Where could God be in this life? Where was there room for Him?

  The old man slept. I wanted to wake him and shout “Speak!”

  Soon he awoke, blinked his eyes and smiled.

  “Ah,” he said, “the sun is already near noon. It is time for me to go.”

  “Where will you go in such heat?” I asked. “We have bread, tea and sugar. Besides, I can’t let you go. You must give me what you have promised.”

  Then he became thoughtful and said:

  “Matvei, you should drop your wandering. It is too late, or perhaps too early for you. You have to learn. It is time for you to learn.”

  “Is it not too late?”

  “Look at me,” he answered. “I am fifty-three years old, and up to this day I learn from some little children.”

  “Whose children?” I asked.

  “They are some children I know. You should live with them a year or two. You ought to go to the factory. It is not very far from here, about a hundred versts, where I have good friends.”

  “First tell me what you wanted to say, and then I shall think where I am to go.”

  We walked together on the path alongside the road and again I heard his clear voice and his strange words.

  “Christ was the first true people’s God, born from the soul of the people like the phoenix from the flames.”

  He trembled all over and waved his hands before his face as if he wanted to catch new words from the air, and continued shouting:

  “For a long time the people carried various men on their shoulders. Without question they gave them of their labor and their freedom, placed them above themselves and waited humbly for them to see from their height the paths of righteousness on earth. But these chosen ones of the people, when they reached the height, became drunk and degraded by their power and remained above, forgetting who placed them there, and became a heavy burden on the earth instead of a joy. When the people saw that the children who were fed by their blood were their enemies, they lost their faith in them and abandoned these powerful ones, who had to fall and the power and the strength of their government decayed. The people understood that the law was not that one from a family should be raised and after having fed him on their liberty that they should live by his mind, but that the true law was that all should be raised to one height and that each one should look upon the paths of life with his own eyes; and the day when the consciousness of the inevitable equality of man arose in the people, that day was the birth of Christ.

  “Many people have tried to realize their dreams of justice by creating one live being, a common lord over all, and more than once various people, urged on by this common thought, have tried to bind it with strong words that it might live forever. And when all these thoughts were mustered in one, a living God arose for them, the beloved child of the people, Jesus Christ.”

  That which he said about Ch
rist, the Son of God, was near to me; but about the people giving birth to Christ I could not understand. I told him that, and he answered:

  “If you wish to know, you will understand. If you wish to believe, you will know.”

  We tramped together for three days, going slowly; he, teaching me all the time and explaining the past to me. He recited the whole history of the people from the beginning up to the present day; he told me of the troubled times when the churches persecuted the jesters and of the merry men who awakened the people’s memory with their jokes and sowed truth by them.

  “Do you understand,” he asked me, “who this Savelko of yours was?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Remember that small things come from large and that the large is made up from small pieces.”

  We came to Stephan Verkhatour. The old man said to me:

  “We must part here. My road lies with you no longer.”

  I did not want to go away from him, but I understood that it was necessary. My thoughts troubled me. I was agitated to the very depths and my soul was furrowed as with a plow.

  “Why have you become thoughtful?” he asked me. “Go to the factory. Work there and mix with my friends. It will be no loss to you, I assure you. The people are intelligent. I learned from them, and you see I am no fool.”

  He wrote a little note and gave it to me.

  “Go there. I wish you no harm, believe me. The people are new-born and alive. Don’t you believe me?”

  “Our small eyes can see much,” I answered, “but is that when they see the truth?”

  “Look with all your might,” he cried, “with all your heart, with all your soul! Did I tell you to believe? I told you to learn and know.”

  We kissed and he went away. He walked lightly, like a youth of twenty, and as if some happiness awaited him. I became sad when I looked back at this bird flying away from me, Heaven knows where, to sing his song in new parts. My head was heavy; my thoughts raced like Little Russians at market in the early morning, sleepy, awkward, slow, and in no way able to make order. Everything became strangely confused. To my thoughts there was another’s conclusion and to this other’s conclusion my own beginning. It hurt me, yet it was funny, and I seemed all changed within.

  When I went away from Verkhotour, I asked where the road led to, and they answered to the Isetsky factory. That was where the old man had wanted me to go, but I took a side road; I did not wish to go there. I wanted to go to the villages and look around me.

  The people were gloomy and haughty and seemed to wish to speak with no one. They looked about cautiously, as if they were afraid some one would rob them.

  “Here are the God-creators,” I said to myself, looking at some pock-marked peasants. “I will ask them where this road leads to.”

  “To the Isetsky factory.”

  “What is it? Do all roads lead to that factory?” I asked myself, and wandered through villages and woods, crawling like a beetle through the grass, and seeing the factory from a distance. It smoked, but it did not lure me. I felt as if I had lost half of myself and I did not understand what I wanted. I was unhappy. A gray, idle pain filled my soul and evil laughter and a great desire to insult everybody and myself arose in me. Suddenly, without noticing it myself, I made up my mind: “I’ll enter the factory, damn it!”

  CHAPTER XXI

  I came into a filthy hell. In a hollow between mountains which were covered with stumps of felled trees, buildings arose on the earth, from the roofs of which tongues of flame shot forth. Tall chimney-stacks rose toward the sky, from which smoke and steam poured out, staining the earth with soot. There was a deafening noise of hammers, and a roar and a wild squeaking and creaking of saws shot through the smoke-laden air. Everywhere there was iron, wood, coal, smoke, steam, stench; and in this pit, filled with every kind of miscellaneous thing, men worked black as coal.

  “Thank you, old man,” I said to myself, “you have sent me to a nice place.”

  It was the first time I had seen a factory near-to. I was deafened by the extraordinary noise, and I breathed with difficulty. I went through the streets seeking for the locksmith, Peter Jagikh. Everyone I asked snarled back at me as if they had all quarreled with each other in the morning and had not yet succeeded in calming themselves. “God-creators!” I cried out to myself.

  I came upon a man who looked like a bear; dirty from head to foot. His oily clothes shone with dirt in the sun, and I asked him if he knew the locksmith, Peter Jagikh.

  “Who?”

  “Peter Jagikh.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see him.”

  “Well, I am he.”

  “How do you do?”

  “Well, how do you do? What do you want?”

  “I have a note to you.”

  The man was taller than I, with a large beard, broad shoulders, and heavily set. His face was sooty and his small, gray eyes could hardly be seen from under his thick eyebrows. His cap was set far back on his head and his hair was cut short. He looked like a peasant, yet not entirely so. Evidently he read with great difficulty. His face was all wrinkled and his mustache trembled. Suddenly his face cleared, his white teeth shone, he opened his good, childish eyes and the skin in his checks smoothed out.

  “Ah,” he cried, “he is alive, God’s bird! That’s good. Go, my dear, to the end of this street and turn to the left toward the wood. At the foot of the mountain there is a house with green shutters. Ask for the teacher. He is called Mikhail. He is my nephew. Show him the note. I will come soon.”

  He spoke like a soldier, giving his signal on a bugle. He made the speech, waved his hand and went away.

  “He is kind and funny,” I thought to myself. At the house an angular boy in a cotton shirt and an apron, met me. His sleeves were rolled up; his hands were white and thin. He read through the note and asked me:

  “Is Father Juna well?”

  “Yes, thank God.”

  “Did he tell you when he will come to see us?”

  “He didn’t say. Is he called Juna?”

  The young man looked at me suspiciously and began to read the note again.

  “How then?” he asked me.

  “He said his name was Jehudiel.”

  The young fellow smiled. “That is a nickname which I gave him.”

  “Oh, the devil,” I thought.

  His hair was straight and long like a deacons’, his face pale. His eyes were a watery blue and he looked as if he did not spring from this dirty spot.

  He walked up and down the room and measured me with his eyes as if I were a piece of cloth; and I did not like it.

  “Have you known Juna a long time?” he asked me.

  “Four days.”

  “Four days,” he repeated. “That’s good.”

  “Why good?” I asked.

  “Just so,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders. “Why do you wear an apron?”

  “I am binding books,” he said. “Soon my uncle will return and we will have supper. Perhaps you would like to wash yourself after your trip?”

  I felt like teasing him. He was much too serious for his age.

  “Do people wash here?” I asked.

  He frowned. “How then?”

  “I have not seen any washed ones yet,” I answered.

  He half closed his eyes, looked at me and answered calmly:

  “People do not idle here. They work; and there is no time to wash often.”

  I saw that I had struck the wrong man. I wanted to answer, but he turned on his heel and went away. I felt foolish, sat down and looked about me.

  The room was large and clean. In the corner there was a table set for supper, and on the walls there were shelves with books. The books were mostly secular, but there was also a Bible, the gospels and an old Slavic psalm-book.

 
I went out into the court and washed myself. The uncle entered, his cap still farther back on his head, and he swung his arms and held his head forward like a bull.

  “Well, I will wash myself,” he said. “Pump some water for me.”

  His voice was like that of a trumpet and both his hands together were as large as a big soup tureen. When he had washed some of the soot off his face, I saw that he had high cheek-bones and a skin like copper.

  We sat down to supper. They ate, talked about their own affairs and did not ask me who I was or why I came. Still they offered me things hospitably and looked at me in a friendly way. There was something very solid about them, as if the earth was firm under their feet. I felt like shaking it for them—why were they better than I?

  “Are you Old Believers?” I asked.

  “We?” the uncle replied. “No.”

  “Then you are orthodox?”

  The nephew frowned and the uncle shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

  “Perhaps we have to show him our passports, Mikhail.”

  I understood that I had acted foolishly, but I did not want to stop.

  “I did not want to see your passports,” I said. “I wanted to see your thoughts.”

  “Thoughts? Right away, Your Excellency. Thoughts, forward!” And he laughed like a stallion.

  Mikhail, who was making the tea, said calmly:

  “I know why you came. You are not the first one whom Juna has sent us. He knows people and never sends empty men.”

  The uncle felt my forehead with his palm and laughed:

  “Please look more gay. Don’t show your trumps right away, or you may lose.”

  They evidently considered themselves men rich in soul and that I was a beggar compared to them. They did not hurry to quench my hungry heart with their wisdom. I became angry and wanted to quarrel, but I could find no reason; and that angered me still more. I asked at random:

  “What do you mean by an empty man?”

  The uncle answered: “A man who can fill up with anything you wish.”

  Suddenly Mikhail went up quietly to me and said, in a soft voice: