The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  “Sténka died. So they set one man free,” said Konováloff slowly.—“And yet, in those days, a man could live. Life was free. There was somewhere to go, a man could divert his spirit. Now we have silence, and peaceableness…order…if you look at it so, from one side, life has now even become perfectly peaceful. Books, reading and writing.… And, nevertheless, a man lives without protection, and there is no sort of guardianship over him. He sins in a forbidden way, but it is impossible not to sin.… For there is order in the streets, but in the soul there is—confusion. And nobody can understand anybody.”

  “Sásha! On what terms are you with Kapitólina?” I asked.

  “Hey?” He bristled up.—“With Kápa? Enough!”…He waved his hand with decision.

  “That means—you have made an end of it?”

  “I? No—she herself has made an end of it.”

  “How?”

  “Very simply. She insisted on her point of view, and wouldn’t see any others whatever.… Just as before. Only, formerly, she did not drink, and now she has taken to drinking.… Take the bread out while I get some sleep.”

  Silence reigned in the bakery. The lamp smoked, the oven-door cracked from time to time, and the crusts of baked bread on the shelves cracked also, in drying. In the street, opposite our windows, the night-watchmen were chatting. And still another sound, a strange sound, reached the ear, now and then, from the street, like a sign-board creaking somewhere, or someone groaning.

  I took out the bread, and lay down to sleep, but I could not get to sleep, and I lent an ear to all the nocturnal sounds, as I lay there, with half-shut eyes. All at once, I beheld Konováloff rise noiselessly from the floor, go to the shelf, take from it Kostomároff’s book, open it, and hold it up to his eyes. His thoughtful face was clearly visible to me, and I watched him draw his fingers along the lines, shake his head, turn over a leaf, and again stare intently at it, and then transfer his eyes to me. There was an odd, strained, and interrogative expression on his pensive, sunken face, and this face—an entirely new one to me—he kept turned toward me for a long time.

  I could not restrain my curiosity, and asked him what he was doing.

  “Ah, I thought you were asleep.…” he answered in confusion; then he approached me, holding the book in his hand, sat down beside me, and said, hesitatingly: “You see, I want to ask you about something…Isn’t there some book or other about the rules of life? That is to say, instruction as to how a man ought to live? I want to have my deeds explained to me—which are injurious, and which are of no consequence…You see, I am troubled about my deeds.… A deed which seems to me good at the start, turns out bad in the end. Now, in that matter of Kápa” He drew a long breath, and went on with an effort, and inquiringly: “So, won’t you search, and see if there isn’t a little book about deeds? And read it to me.”

  Several minutes of silence.

  “Maxím!” …

  “What?”

  “How black Kapitólina did paint me!”

  “That’s all right, now.… Say no more about it.…”

  “Of course, it’s no matter now.… But, tell me…was she right?”

  This was a ticklish question, but, on reflection, I replied to it in the affirmative.

  “There, that’s just what I think myself.… She was right…yes.…” drawled Konováloff, sadly, and fell silent.

  He fidgeted about for a long time on his mat, which was laid flat on the floor, rose to his feet several times, smoked, sat down by the window, and again lay down.

  Then I fell asleep, and when I awoke he was no longer in the bakery, and made his appearance only toward nightfall. He turned out to be covered all over with some sort of dust, and in his clouded eyes a fixed expression had congealed. Flinging his cap on a shelf he heaved a sigh, and seated himself by my side.

  “Where have you been?”

  “I went to take a look at Kápka.”

  “Well, and what of it?”

  “Stop that, brother! Didn’t I tell you.…”

  “Evidently, you can’t do anything with those people,” I said, in the endeavor to dispel his mood, and began to talk about the mighty power of habit, and about everything else which seemed appropriate to the occasion. Konováloff remained obstinately mute, and stared at the floor.

  “No, there’s no u-use! It is too much for me! I’m simply a man who spreads infection.… I have not long to live in this world.… Such a woful, poisonous breath emanates from me. And just as soon as I go near a man, he immediately catches the infection from me. And woe is all that I can bring to anyone …? For, when you come to think of it, to whom have I ever brought any satisfaction all my life long? To no one! And I’ve had dealings with a great many people, too.… I’m a rotting man.”

  “That’s nonsense.…”

  “No, it’s true!…” and he nodded his head with conviction.

  I tried to convince him of the contrary, but from my remarks he drew still greater certainty as to his unfitness for life.

  Altogether, he had begun to undergo a swift, sharp change from the moment of the affair with Kápka. He became meditative, lost his interest in books, did not work with his previous ardor, became taciturn and reserved.

  During the intervals of freedom from work, he lay down on the floor, and stared fixedly at the vault of the ceiling. His face grew thin, his eyes lost their clear, childlike brilliancy.

  “Sásha, what’s the matter with you?” I asked him.

  “My drunken spree is coming on,” he explained simply.—“I shall soon let myself loose…that is, I shall begin to gulp down vódka.… I’m all on fire inside, already…like a burn, you know.… The time has come…if it hadn’t been for that same story, I might have been able to hold out a little longer. But that affair is eating me up.… How so? I wanted to do good to a person, and—all of a sudden—it turns out entirely wrong! Yes, brother, a rule for one’s deeds is very necessary in life.… And couldn’t such a set of rules be invented, so that all men might act like one, and everyone might understand the others? For it is utterly impossible to live at such a distance from one another! Don’t the wise people understand, that order must be established on the earth, and men must be brought to a clear knowledge?… E-ekhma!”

  Absorbed in these thoughts as to the indispensability of a rule of life, he did not listen to my remarks. I even noticed that he seemed to hold somewhat aloof from me. One day, after listening for the hundredth time to my project for reorganizing life, he appeared to become enraged with me.

  “Well, devil take you.… I’ve heard of that before.… The point doesn’t lie in life, but in man. The first thing is…the man…do you understand? Well, and there’s nothing more to it.… So, according to you, it appears, that until all this has been made over, man, all the same, must remain just as he is now. Also.… No, you make him over first, show him his way.… Let things be bright and not cramped for him on the earth—that’s what you must seek after for man. Teach him to find his path.… But that stuff of yours is…mere fiction.”

  I retorted, he waxed hot or grew surly, and exclaimed weariedly:

  “Eh, do stop!”

  One day it chanced that he went away in the evening, and did not return at night to work, nor the following day. In his place, the proprietor made his appearance with a troubled face, and announced:

  “Our Leksákha has gone off on a carouse. He’s sitting in ‘The Little Wall.’ We must hunt up a new baker.…”

  “But perhaps he will recover himself?!”

  “Well, of course, just wait…I know him.…”

  I went to “The Little Wall”—a dram-shop cleverly constructed in a stone wall. It was distinguished by the peculiarity that it had no windows, and that the light fell into it through a hole in the ceiling. As a matter of fact, it was a square pit, excavated in the ground, and covered overhead with boards. An earthy odor f
orever reigned within it, along with cheap, domestic tobacco, and wódka grown bitter with age—a symphony of odors which made one’s head ache horribly after half an hour’s sojourn among them. But the steady patrons of this den were accustomed to it—they were shady people, with no definite occupations—as they became accustomed to a mass of things which are intolerable to a man. And there they stuck, for whole days at a time, waiting for some artisan on a spree, that they might ply him with drink until he was stark naked.

  Konováloff was sitting at a large table in the centre of the dram-shop, surrounded by a circle of six gentlemen, in fantastically-tattered costumes, with faces like those of the heroes of Hoffmann’s “Tales,” who were listening to him with respectful and flattering attention.

  They were drinking beer and vódka together, and eating something which resembled dry lumps of clay.

  “Drink, my lads, drink, each one as much as he can. I have money and clothing.… They’ll last three days in all. I’ll drink up everything and…enough! I don’t want to work any more, and I don’t want to live here.”

  “It’s the nastiest sort of a town,” remarked someone, who looked like Sir John Falstaff.

  “Work?” inquired another, with a surprised and interrogative stare at the ceiling.—“And was man born into this world for that?”

  Then all of them began to yell at once, demonstrating to Konováloff his right to drink up everything, and even elevating that right to the rank of an express obligation—to drink away his all precisely with them.

  “Ah, Maxím,” jested Konováloff, on catching sight of me.—“Come on, now, you book-reader and pharisee, take your whack! I’ve jumped the track for good, my lad. Don’t say a word! I mean to drink until I haven’t a stitch of clothes to my back.… When nothing is left on my body but the hair, I’ll stop. Pitch in, too, won’t you?”

  He was not drunk, as yet, but his blue eyes flashed with desperate excitement and sorrow, and his luxuriant beard, which fell over his chest in a silky fan, kept moving to and fro, because his lower lip was twitching with a nervous quiver. His shirt-collar was unbuttoned, tiny drops of perspiration gleamed on his forehead, and the hand which he stretched out to me with a glass of liquor shook.

  “Drop it, Sásha, let’s leave this place together,” I said, laying my hand on his shoulder.

  “Drop it?.…” he burst out laughing.—“If you had come to me ten years ago and said that…perhaps I would have dropped it. But now it’s better for me not to drop it.… What else is there for me to do? What? You see, I feel, I feel every movement of life…but I can’t understand anything, and I don’t know my way…I feel…and I drink, because there’s nothing else I can do.… Have a drink!”

  His companions stared at me with open disapproval, and all twelve of their eyes surveyed my figure with anything but a conciliatory air.

  The poor fellows were afraid that I would carry off Konováloff,—and the treat, which they had been awaiting, perhaps, for a whole week.

  “Brethren! This is my chum…a learned fellow, devil take him! Maxím, can you read to us here about Sténka?… Akh, comrades, what books there are in the world! About Pilá?… Hey, Maxím!… Comrades, it isn’t a book, but blood and tears. But, you know, Pilá…that’s myself? Maxím!… And Sysóika, I…By God! How it’s plain to me!”

  He stared at me with widely-opened eyes, in which lay terror, and his lower lip quivered strangely. The company, not very willingly, made room for me at the table. I sat down beside Konováloff, just at the moment when he seized a glass of beer and vódka, half and half.

  Evidently, he wished to stun himself as speedily as possible with this mixture. After taking a drink, he picked up from his plate a piece of the stuff which looked like clay, but was really boiled meat, inspected it, and flung it over his shoulder against the wall of the dram-shop.

  The company grumbled in an undertone, like a pack of hungry dogs over a bone.

  “I’m a lost man.… Why did my mother and father bring me into the world? Nothing is known…Darkness! Stifling closeness! That’s all.… Goodbye, Maxím, if you won’t drink with me. I won’t go to the bakery. I have some money owing me from the boss—get it, and give it to me, I’ll spend it for liquor.… No! Take it yourself, for books.… Will you take it? You don’t want to? Then don’t.… But won’t you take it? You’re a pig, if that’s the case.… Get away from me! G-go a-way!”

  He was getting intoxicated, and his eyes gleamed fiercely. The company was quite ready to fling me out from among them by the scruff of the neck, and I, not caring to wait for that, took myself off.

  Three hours later I was again in “The Little Wall.” Konováloff’s party had been augmented by two men. They were all drunk, he—the least of all. He was drinking with his elbows resting on the table, and staring at the sky through the opening in the ceiling. The drunken men were listening to him, in various attitudes, and several of them were hiccoughing.

  * * * *

  Konováloff was singing in a baritone voice, which passed into a falsetto on the high notes, as is the case with all artisan singers. Supporting his cheek on his hand, he was feelingly producing mournful roulades, and his face was pale with emotion, his eyes were half closed, his throat was curved forward. Eight drunken, senseless, crimson faces were gazing at him, and only from time to time did the muttering and hiccoughing make themselves heard. Konováloff’s voice vibrated and wept, and moaned, and it was a sight pitiful to the verge of tears, to behold this magnificent fellow singing his melancholy lay.

  The heavy smell, the sweaty, drunken, ugly faces, two smoking kerosene lamps and the planks which formed the walls of the dram-shop, black with dirt and soot, its earthen floor and the twilight which filled that pit—all these things were gloomy and painfully fantastic. It seemed as though men who had been buried alive were banqueting in a sepulchre, and one of them was singing, for the last time, before his death, and bidding farewell to the sky. Hopeless sadness, calm despair, everlasting anguish resounded in my comrade’s song.

  “Is Maxím here? Do you want to come with me as my assistant officer of bandits? Go, my friend!—--” he said, breaking off his elegy, as he offered me his hand.… “I’m all ready, my lad!… I’ve collected a gang for myself…here it is…there’ll be more men later on.… We’ll find them! This is n-nothing! We’ll call ourselves Pilá and Sysóika.… And we’ll feed them every day on buckwheat groats and roast beef…isn’t that good? Will you go? Take your books with you…you shall read about Sténka and about other people.… Friend! Akh, I’m disgusted, I’m disgusted…dis-gus-ted!…”

  He banged his fist down on the table, with all his might. The glasses and bottle rattled, and the company, recovering its senses, immediately filled the dram-shop with an uproar which was frightful in its indecency.

  “Drink, my lads!” shouted Konováloff. “Drink! Ease your hearts…do your uttermost!”

  I retreated from them, stood in the door which opened on the street, listened to Konováloff orating with a twisting tongue, and when he began to sing again, I went off to the bakery, and his uncouth, drunken song moaned and wept after me for a long time in the nocturnal stillness.

  Two days later, Konováloff vanished from the town.

  I happened to encounter him again.

  * * * *

  A man must have been born in cultured society, in order to find within himself the patience necessary to live out the whole of his life in the midst of it, and never once desire to escape somewhere, away from the sphere of all those oppressive conventions, legalized by custom, of petty, malicious lies, from the sphere of sickly self-conceit, of sectarianism of ideas, of all sorts of insincerity,—in a word, from all that vanity of vanities which chills the emotions, and perverts the mind. I was born and reared outside that circle of society, and for that reason—a very agreeable one to me—I cannot take in its culture in large doses, without a downright necessity of
getting out of its framework cropping up in me, and of refreshing myself, in some measure, after the extreme intricacy and unhealthy refinement of that existence.

  In the country it is almost as intolerably tedious and dull as it is among educated people. The best thing one can do is to betake himself to the dives of the towns, where, although everything is filthy, it is still simple and sincere, or to set out for a walk over the fields and roads of his native land, which is extremely curious, affords great refreshment, and requires no outfit except good legs with plenty of endurance.

  Five years ago I undertook precisely that sort of a trip, and as I tramped across holy Russia, without any definite plan of march, I chanced to reach Feodósia. At that time they were beginning to build the jetty there, and, in the expectation of earning a little money for my journey, I betook myself to the spot where construction was under way.

  Being desirous of taking a look at the work first, as a picture, I climbed a hill and seated myself there, gazing down upon the boundless, mighty sea, and the tiny men who were forging fetters for it.

  An extensive picture of man’s labor was spread out before me:—the whole rocky shore along the bay was dug up, there were holes and piles of stone and lumber everywhere, wheelbarrows, strips of iron, pile-drivers, and some other constructions of beams, and among all these things men were hastening to and fro in every direction. After having ripped up the mountain with dynamite, they were breaking it into small pieces with pickaxes, clearing a space for a line of railway, they were mixing cement in vast mortar-pits, and making out of it stones almost a fathom in cubic measurement, lowering them into the sea, erecting upon them a rampart against the titanic strength of its turbulent waves. They seemed as tiny as worms against the background of the dark-brown hill, disfigured by their hands, and like worms they swarmed busily about among the heaps of rubbish, and bits of wood in fragment of stone dust, and in the sultry heat, reaching to thirty degrees34 of the southern day. The chaos around them, and the red-hot sky above them, imparted to them the appearance of being engaged in burrowing into the hill, trying to escape into its bosom from the fervor of the sun and the melancholy picture of destruction which surrounded them.