The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  Darkness descended, and the golden moon, covering the fields with shadows, peered curiously into the windows of the room from the sky, from amid ragged, dark-blue clouds.

  Soon a fine, drizzling rain began to beat upon the window-panes and the walls of the barracks—the forerunner of the interminable autumn rains which fill the soul with melancholy.

  The pendulum of the clock ticked off the seconds with equable beat, the raindrops lashed the panes. Hour after hour passed, and the rain still descended, and on the cot, the woman lay motionless and stared, with swollen eyes, at the ceiling. Her face was gloomy, stern, her teeth were tightly clenched, her cheek-bones stood out prominently, and in her eyes gleamed both terror and sadness. And the rain still rattled against the walls and the window-panes; it seemed as though it were whispering something wearisomely-monotonous, were trying to convince someone of something, but had not sufficient passion to do it quickly, handsomely, with force, and hoped to attain its end by a torturing, interminable, colorless sermon, which lacked the sincere pathos of faith.

  The rain continued and was still pouring when the sky became overcast with hues of approaching dawn, which presage an inclement day, and so resemble the color of a knife, which has been long in use, and has lost the gleam of its polish. But still Matréna could not sleep. In the monotonous murmur of the rain, she heard a question which was both anxious and alarming to her:

  “What will happen now? What will happen now?”

  It resounded importunately outside the windows, and an aching pain in all her being responded to it.

  “What will happen now?”

  The woman was afraid to answer herself, although the answer kept flashing up before her in the shape of a drunken husband, as fierce as any wild beast. But it was difficult to part with her dream of a calm, loving life; she had already got accustomed to this dream, and she banished from her a menacing foreboding. And at the same time, the consciousness flashed across her, that if this did happen—if Grigóry should take to drink again, she could no longer live with him. She saw him different, she herself had become a different person, and her former life aroused in her both fear and disgust—novel sensations, hitherto unknown to her. But she was a woman, and in the end, she began to upbraid herself for this breach with her husband.

  “And how did it come about?… O Lord!… It’s just as though I had torn myself off a hook …”

  In such contradictory, torturing reflections, another long hour passed by. Day dawned. A heavy fog was swirling over the plain, and the sky could not be seen through its gray mist.

  “Mrs. Orlóff! Time to go on duty.…”

  Mechanically obeying this summons, shouted through the door of her room, she slowly rose from her bed, washed herself in haste, and went to the barracks, feeling weak and half ill. In the barracks she evoked general surprise by the languor of her movements, and her gloomy face with its dull eyes.

  “Mrs. Orlóff! You seem to be ill?” one of the doctors said to her.

  “It’s nothing.…”

  “But tell me, don’t stand on ceremony! you know, we can get a substitute for you …”

  Matréna felt conscience-stricken, she did not wish to betray her pain and terror to this person who was kind, but still a stranger to her, nevertheless. And summoning up, from the depths of her tortured soul, the remnants of her courage, she said to the woman-doctor, with a smile:

  “It’s nothing! I have had a little quarrel with my husband… It will pass off…it isn’t the first time.…”

  “You poor thing!”—sighed the doctor, who knew about her life.

  Matréna wanted to fall down before her, bury her head in the doctor’s lap, and scream.… But she restrained herself, and only pressed her lips tightly together, and passed her hand over her throat, as though she were thrusting back into her breast the sobs which were on the point of bursting forth.

  When she was relieved from duty, she entered her room, and the first thing she did, was to look out of the window. Across the fields, to the barracks, a waggon was moving,—they must be bringing a sick person in it. Fine rain was sifting down from the gray storm-clouds. Nothing else was to be seen. Matréna turned away from the window, and with a heavy sigh, seated herself at the table, engrossed by the thought:

  “What will happen now?”—And her heart beat time to these words.

  For a long time she sat there, alone, in a heavy semi-doze, and every time the sound of footsteps in the corridor made her shudder, and rising from her chair, she looked out of the door.…

  But when, at last, the door opened, and Grigóry entered, she did not shudder, and did not rise, for she felt as though the autumnal storm-clouds had suddenly descended upon her, from the sky, with all their weight.

  Grigóry halted at the door, flung his wet cap on the floor, and stamping heavily with his feet, he approached his wife. He was streaming with water. His face was red, his eyes were dim, and his lips were stretched in a broad, stupid smile. As he walked, Matréna heard the water seeping in his boots. He was pitiful, and she had not imagined him in this aspect.

  “Good!”—she said softly.

  Grigóry waggled his head stupidly, and asked her:

  “Would you like to have me bow down to your feet?”

  She made no reply.

  “You wouldn’t? Well, that’s your affair.… But I’ve been thinking all the while: am I guilty toward you or not? It turns out—that I am. So now I say: do you want me to bow down to your f-feet?”

  She maintained silence, inhaling the odor of vódka which emanated from him, and a bitter feeling gnawed at her soul.

  “Now, see here, you—don’t you make faces! Take your chance while I’m peaceable.…” said Grigóry, raising his voice.—“Come, are you going to forgive me?”

  “You’re drunk,” said Matréna, with a sigh.… Go and sleep.…”

  “You lie, I’m not drunk, I’m tired, I’ve been walking and walking and thinking.… I’ve done a heap of thinking, brother…oh! You look out!”

  He menaced her with his finger, laughing with a wry grimace.

  “Why don’t you speak?”

  “I can’t talk with you.”

  “You can’t? Why not?”

  All at once, he flared up, and his voice grew firmer.

  “You screamed at me, you snarled at me yesterday…well, and now I’m asking your forgiveness. Understand that!”

  He said this in a very ominous way, his lips quivered, and his nostrils were inflated. Matréna knew what that meant, and the past rose up before her in vivid colors: the cellar, the Saturday fights, the anguish and suffocation of their life.

  “I understand!”—she said, sharply.—“I see that you are…turning into a beast again now…ekh, you disgusting creature!”

  “I’m turning into a beast? That…hasn’t anything to do with the case.… I say…will you forgive me? What are you thinking about? Do I need it—your forgiveness? I can get on capitally without it…but still, here, I want you to forgive me.… Understand?”

  “Go away from me, Grigóry!”…exclaimed the woman sadly, turning away from him.

  “Go away?”—laughed Grigóry maliciously.—“I’m to go away, so that you will remain at liberty? Come now, I wo-on’t! Have you seen this?”

  He seized her by the shoulder, dragged-her toward him, and flourished a knife in her face—a short, thick, sharp; piece of rusty iron.

  “We-ell?”

  “Ekh, if you would only cut my throat,”—said Matréna, with a deep sigh, and freeing herself from his grasp, she turned away from him again. Then he, also, staggered back from her, startled, not by her words, but by the tone of them. He had heard those words from her lips before, had heard them more than once—but she had never uttered them in that manner. And the fact that she had turned away from him without fearing the knife, also augmented his amazement and
discomfiture. Several seconds earlier it would have been easy for him to strike her, but now he could not do it, and did not wish to do it. Almost frightened by her indifference to his threat, he flung the knife on the table, and with dull wrath he asked his wife:

  “Devil! What is it you want?”

  “I don’t want anything!”—cried Matréna, sighing.—“And what do you want? Did you come to kill me? Well, then, kill me!”

  Grigóry looked at her, and held his peace, not knowing what he could do now, and seeing nothing clearly in his tangled thoughts. He had come with a definite intention to conquer his wife. On the preceding day, during their clash, she had been stronger than he; he was conscious of that, and it lowered him in his own eyes. It was imperatively necessary that she should submit to him, he did not understand why, but he did know solidly, that it was necessary. Passionate by nature, he had gone through a great deal and had thought a great deal about the matter during those four and twenty hours, and—being an ignorant man—he did not know how to single out of the chaos those feelings which had been aroused by the just accusation boldly hurled at him by his wife. He understood that this was a revolt against him, and he had brought the knife with him, in order to frighten Matréna; he would have killed her, but she offered a less passive resistance to his desire to subjugate her. But here she was in front of him, helpless, overwhelmed with grief and yet stronger than he. It angered him to perceive this, and this anger had a sobering effect upon him.

  “Listen!”—he said,—“and don’t you put on any conceited airs! You know that I, in downright earnest…will drive this into your ribs—and that’s the end of you! That will put an end to the whole matter!?.. It’s very simple.…”

  Conscious that he was not saying the proper thing, Grigóry paused. Matréna did not move, as she stood turned away from him. A feverishly-rapid reckoning up of all that she had gone through with her husband was in progress within her, and this imperative question throbbed in her heart:

  “What will happen now?”

  “Mótrya!”—Grigóry began suddenly and softly, propping himself with one hand on the table, and bending toward his wife.—“Am I to blame, if…everything isn’t.. if it isn’t as it should be?… This is very disgusting to me!”

  He twisted his head about and sighed.

  “I’m so sick of it! I’m so cramped here on earth! Is this life? Come, let’s take the cholera patients,—what are they? Are they a support to me? Some will die, and others will get well…and I must go on living again. How am I to live? it’s not life—only convulsions…isn’t that enough to make a man angry? I understand everything, you see, only it’s difficult for me to say that I can’t live so…but how I want to live…I don’t know! They heal those sick people yonder, and give them every attention—… but I’m healthy, and if my soul aches, am I any the less valuable than they? Just think of it—I’m worse off than a cholera patient.… I have convulsions in my heart—that’s what the trouble is!… And you shriek at me! Do you think I’m a wild beast? A drunkard, and—that’s the end of it? Ekh you…you woman! you wooden.…”

  He spoke quietly and persuasively, but she did not hear his speech well, busy as she was in reviewing the past.

  “Now you won’t speak.. said Gríshka, lending an ear to something new and powerful which was springing up within him.—“And why do you remain silent? What do you want?”

  “I want nothing from you!”—exclaimed Matréna …—“Why do you hammer away at me? Why do you torture me? What do you want?”

  “What? Why…that, of course…”

  But Orlóff became conscious that he could not tell his wife exactly what he wanted,—that everything should immediately become clear, so to speak, both to him and to her. He comprehended that something had formed between them which could not be removed by any words whatever …

  Then a wild anger flashed up suddenly and vividly within him. Flourishing his arm, he dealt his wife a blow with his fist on the nape of her neck, and roared, like a wild beast:

  “What are you about, you witch, hey? Why are you playing? I’ll kill you, you carrion!”

  The blow drove her, face down, upon the table, but she instantly sprang to her feet, and, looking straight in her husband’s face, with a gaze of hatred, she said firmly, loudly and curtly:

  “Beat away!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Beat! Well?”

  “Akh, you devil!”

  “Ho, Grigóry, there’s been enough of that. I won’t have any more of it.…”

  “Shut up!”

  “I won’t allow you to jeer at me.…”

  He gnashed his teeth, and retreated from her a pace—perhaps with the object of hitting her more conveniently.

  But, at that moment, the door opened, and Doctor Yáshtchenko made his appearance on the threshold.

  “Wha-at’s the meaning of this? Where are you, hey? What sort of a performance are you going through with?”

  His face was stem and astounded. Orlóff was not in the slightest degree abashed at the sight of him, and he even bowed to him, saying:

  “It’s—.. disinfection between husband and wife.”

  And he laughed convulsively in the doctor’s face.

  “Why didn’t you present yourself for duty?”—shouted the doctor sharply, incensed by the laugh.

  Gríshka shrugged his shoulders, and calmly declared:

  “I was busy…about my own affairs.…”

  “So…yes! And who was making that row here last night?”

  “We.…”

  “You? Very good.… You behave yourselves in domestic fashion…you prowl about without leave.…”

  “We’re not serfs, so.…”

  “Silence! You’ve turned this into a dram-shop…you beasts! I’ll show you where you are!”

  A flood of wild daring, of passionate longing to overturn everything, to tear the confusion out of his hunted soul, overwhelmed Gríshka, in a burning tide. It seemed to him that he would now do something unusual, and, at the same time, deliver his dark soul from the entanglements which now held it in bondage. He shuddered, felt an agreeable sensation of cold in his heart, and turning to the doctor with a sort of cat-like grimace, he said:

  “Don’t you bother your gullet, don’t yell.… I know where I am—in the exterminating house!”

  “Wha-at? What did you say?”—the astonished doctor bent toward him.

  Gríshka understood that he had uttered a savage word, but he did not cool down, for all that, but waxed all the hotter.

  “Never mind, it will pass off! Digest that!… Matréna! Get ready to go!”

  “No, my dear fellow, stop! You must answer me.…” uttered the doctor, with ominous composure.—“You scoundrel, I’ll give it to you for this.…”

  Gríshka stared point-blank at him, and began to talk, with the sensation that he was leaping off somewhere, and with every leap he breathed more and more freely.

  “Don’t you shout, Andréi Stepánovitch…don’t swear.… You think that, because there’s cholera, you can order me about. ’Tis a vain dream.… That you cure people, nobody needs to be told.—And what I said about extermination was, of course, an idle word, and I was angry.… But don’t you yell so much, all the same.…”

  “No, you lie!”—said the doctor calmly.… “I’ll give you a lesson…hey, there, come hither!”

  People were already standing in the corridor.… Gríshka screwed up his eyes, and set his teeth.

  “No, I’m not lying, and I’m not afraid…but if you want to give me a lesson, I’ll tell you for your convenience.”

  “We-ell? Say it.…”

  “I’ll go to the town, and I’ll spread the news: ‘My lads! Do you know how they cure the cholera?’”

  “Wha-at?”—and the doctor opened his eyes widely.

  “So when we had that di
sinfection there with limination .…”

  “What are you saying, devil take you!”—cried the doctor in a dull tone.—Irritation had given way in him to amazement in the presence of that young fellow whom he had known as an industrious, far from unintelligent workman, and who now, no one knew why, was foolishly and stupidly running his neck into the noose.…

  “What nonsense are you chattering, you fool?”

  “Fool!”—rang like an echo through Gríshka’s whole being. He understood that this verdict was just, and he became all the more angry.

  “What am I saying? I know…I don’t care .…” he said, with wildly flashing eyes.…—“Now I understand why the like of me never cares…and it’s utterly useless for us to restrain ourselves in our feelings.… Matréna, get ready!”

  “I won’t go!” announced Matréna firmly.

  The doctor stared at them with round eyes, and rubbed his brow, comprehending nothing.

  “You’re…either a drunken man or a crazy man! Do you understand what you are doing?” Gríshka would not, could not yield. In reply to the doctor, he said, ironically:

  “And how do you understand it? What are you doing? Disinfection, ha, ha! You heal the sick…while the well people die with the narrowness of their life.… Matréna! I’ll smash your pate! Go.…”

  “I won’t go with you!”

  She was pale, and unnaturally motionless, but her eyes gazed firmly and coldly into her husband’s face…Gríshka, despite all his heroic courage, turned away from her, and hanging his head, made no reply.

  “Faugh!” and the doctor spat.—“The devil himself couldn’t make out the meaning of this.… Here you! Begone! Take yourself off, and be thankful that I haven’t been severe with you…you ought to be arrested…you blockhead! Get out!”

  Grigóry glanced, in silence, at the doctor, and then dropped his head again. He would have felt better if they had thrashed him, or even sent him to the police-station.… But the doctor was a kind man, and perceived that Orlóff was almost irresponsible.

  “For the last time, I ask you, will you go?” Gríshka hoarsely asked his wife.

  “No, I will not go,”—she answered, and bent down a little, as though in expectation of a blow.