The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

  In the suffocating air hung a mighty moaning murmur and uproar, the blows of masons’ hammers on stone, the wheels of the barrows screeched dolefully, iron pile-drivers descended upon the wood of the piles, the ballad of “The Little Oaken Cudgel” wailed out, the axes tapped away as they rough-hewed the beams, and the dark, and gray, bustling little figures of men shouted in all tones.

  In one spot, a cluster of them, loudly chanting “heave-ho!”, were handling a huge fragment of rock, endeavoring to move it from its resting-place; in another spot, a heavy beam was being raised, and the men were shouting as they strained:

  “Ca-a-atch ho-old!”—And the mountain, furrowed with cracks, repeated dully: “Hold-old-old!”

  Along a broken line of boards, flung down here and there, moved a long file of men, bending low over their barrows loaded with stone, and coming slowly to meet them, with empty barrows, was another file, who were dragging out one minute of rest into two.… By one of the pile-drivers stood a dense, motley-hued throng of men, and one of them was singing in a long-drawn, plaintive voice:

  “Ee-ekhma, comrades,’tis awfully hot

  Ee-ekh! On us no one has pity!

  O-oi there, little oaken cu-ud ge-el,

  He-eave-ho-o!”

  The throng hummed mightily, as they hauled away on the cables, and the piece of cast-iron, flying up through the pipe of the pile-driver, fell thence, giving out a dull, groaning sound, and the whole pile-driver quivered.

  On every spot of the open space between the mountain and the sea tiny gray people hurried to and fro, filling the air with their shouts, with dust, and the sour odor of man. Among them overseers were walking about, clad in white duck coats with metal buttons, which shone in the sun like someone’s cold eyes. Over them were the cloudless, mercilessly-hot heaven, volumes of dust and waves of sounds— the symphony of toil, the only music which does not afford delight.

  The sea stretched out to the misty horizon, and softly plashed its transparent billows against the strand, so full of sound and movement. All gleaming in the sunlight, it seemed to be smiling, with the good-natured smile of a Gulliver, conscious that, if he so wished, with one movement he could cause all the work of the Lilliputians to disappear.

  There it lay, dazzling the eyes with its radiance—great, powerful, kind, and its mighty breath blew upon the beach, refreshing the weary men who were toiling to put a restraint upon the freedom of its waves, which now were so gently and musically caressing the disfigured shore. It seemed to feel sorry for them:—its centuries of existence had taught it to understand, that those who build are not the ones who cherish evil designs against it; it long ago found out that they are only slaves,-that their part is to wrestle with the elements face to face. And in this struggle, the vengeance of the elements awaits them. All they do is to build, they toil on forever, their sweat and blood are the cement of all the constructions on the earth; but they receive nothing for this, though they yield up all their forces to the eternal propensity to construct—a propensity which creates marvels on the earth, but, nevertheless, gives men no blood, and too little bread. They also are elementary forces, and that is why the sea gazes, not angrily but graciously, upon their labors from which they derive no profit. These gray little worms, who have thus excavated the mountain, are just the same thing as its drops, which are the first to fall upon the cold and inaccessible cliffs of the shore, in the eternal effort of the sea to extend its boundaries, and the first to perish as they are dashed in fragments against these crags. In the mass, too, these drops are nearly related to it, since they are exactly like the sea, as mighty as it, as inclined to destruction, so soon as the breath of the storm is wafted over them. In days of yore the sea also was acquainted with the slaves, who erected pyramids in the desert, and the slaves of Xerxes, that ridiculous man, who undertook to chastise the sea with three hundred lashes, because it had destroyed his toy bridges. Slaves have always been exactly alike, they have always been submissive, they have always been ill-fed, and they have always accomplished the great and the marvellous, sometimes enriching those who have set them to work, most frequently cursing them, rarely rising up in revolt against their masters …

  And, smiling with the calm smile of a Titan who is conscious of his strength, the sea fanned with its vivifying breath the earth, that Titan which is still spiritually blind, and enslaved and wofully riddled, instead of aspiring to affinity with heaven. The waves ran softly up the beach, sprinkled with a throng of men, engaged in constructing a stone barrier to their eternal motion, and as they ran they sang their ringing, gracious song about the past, about everything which, in the course of the ages, they have beheld on the shores of earth.…

  Among the laborers there were certain strange, spare, bronze figures, in scarlet turbans, in fezzes, in short blue jackets, and in trousers which were tight about the lower leg, but with full seats. These, as I afterward learned, were Turks from Anatolia. Their guttural speech mingled with the slow, drawling utterance of the men from Vyátka, with the strong, quick phrases of the Bulgarians, with the soft dialect of the Little Russians.

  In Russia people were dying of starvation, and the famine had driven hither representatives of nearly all the provinces which had been overtaken by this disaster. They had separated into little groups, in the endeavor of the natives of each place to cling together, and only the cosmopolitan tramps were immediately discernible by their independent aspect, and costumes, and their peculiar turn of speech, which was that of men who still remained under the dominion of the soil, having only temporarily severed their connection with it, who had been torn from it by hunger, and had not yet forgotten it. They were in all the groups: both among the Vyátkans and among the Little Russians they felt themselves at home, but the majority of them were assembled round the pile-driver, because the work there was light, in comparison with the work of the barrow-men and of the diggers.

  When I approached them, they were standing with their hands released from a hawser, waiting for the contractor to repair something connected with the pulley of the pile-driver, which, probably, was “eating into” the rope. He was poking about up aloft on the wooden tower, and every now and then he would shout down:

  “Give way!”

  Then they would tug lazily at the rope.

  “Stop!… Give way once more! Stop! Go ahead!”

  The leader of the singing,—a young fellow, long unshaved, with a pock-marked face and a soldierly air,—shrugged his shoulders, squinted his eyes to one side, cleared his throat, and started up:

  “Into the earth the pile-driver rams the stake.…”

  The verse which followed would not pass muster with even the most lenient censor, and evoked an unanimous burst of laughter, which, evidently, proved that it was an impromptu, composed on the spot by the singer, who, as his comrades laughed, twirled his mustache with the air of an artist who is accustomed to that sort of success with his audience.

  “Go a-he-ead!” roared the contractor fiercely from the summit of the pile-driver.—“Stop your neighing!…

  “Don’t gape, Mitritch,—you’ll burst!”—one of the workmen warned him.

  The voice was familiar to me, and somewhere or other I had seen before that tall, broad-shouldered figure, with the oval face, and large, blue eyes. Was it Konováloff? But Konováloff had not the scar running from the right temple to the bridge of the nose, which intersected the lofty brow of this young fellow; Konováloff’s hair was of a lighter hue, and did not crisp in such small curls as this fellow’s; Konováloff had a handsome, broad beard, but this man was clean-shaven as to his chin, and wore a thick mustache, whose ends drooped downward, in Little Russian fashion. Yet, nevertheless, there was something about him which I knew well. I made up my mind to enter into conversation with him, in particular, as the person to whom I should apply, in order to “get a job,” and assumed a waiting attitude, until they should have finished driving the pile.
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  “O-o-okh! O-o-okh!”—the crowd heaved a mighty sigh as they squatted down, hauled away on the ropes, and again swiftly straightened themselves up, as though on the point of tearing themselves from the ground, and taking flight through the air. The pile-driver steamed and quivered, above the heads of the crowd rose their bare, sun-burned, hairy arms, hauling in unison on the rope; their muscles swelled out like wens, but the piece of cast-iron, twenty puds in weight,35 flew upwards to a constantly lessening height, and its blow upon the wood sounded more and more faintly. Anyone watching this work might have thought that this was a throng of idolaters, engaged in prayer, uplifting their arms, in despair and ecstasy, to their silent God, and bowing down before him. Their faces, bathed in sweat, dirty, strained in expression, with dishevelled hair, which clung to their damp brows, their light-brown necks, their shoulders quivering with intensity of effort,—all those bodies, barely covered with tattered shirts and trousers of motley hues, filled the air roundabout them with their hot exhalations, and melting together in one heavy mass of muscles, moved restlessly about in the humid atmosphere, impregnated with the sultriness of the southland, and the dense odor of sweat.

  “Enough!”—shouted someone, in an angry, cracked voice.

  The hands of the workmen dropped the ropes, and they hung limply down the sides of the pile-driver, while the laborers sank down heavily, where they stood, upon the ground, wiping away the sweat, breathing hard, feeling of their shoulders, and filling the air with a dull murmur, which resembled the roaring of a huge, irritated wild beast.

  “Fellow-countryman!”—I addressed myself to the young fellow whom I had picked out.

  He turned indolently toward me, ran his eyes over my face, and puckering them up, stared intently at me.

  “Konováloff!”

  “Hold on.…” he thrust my head backward with his hand, exactly as though he were about to seize me by the throat, and suddenly lighted up all over with a joyful, kindly smile.

  “Maxím! Akh—curse you! My friend…hey? And so you have broken loose from your career? You have enlisted in the barefoot brigade? Well, that’s good! Now, it’s truly fine! A vagabond—and that’s all there is to it! Have you been so long? Where do you come from? Now you and I will tramp all over the earth! What a life…that there behind us, isn’t it? Downright misery, long drawn out; you don’t live, you rot! But I’ve been roaming the fair world ever since then, my boy. What places I’ve been in! What air I have breathed.… No, you’ve improved cleverly…one wouldn’t know you again: from your clothing, one would think you a soldier, from your phiz, a student! Well, what do you think of it, isn’t it fine to live so…moving from place to place? For, you see, I remember Sténka…and Tarás, and Pilá…everything.”

  He punched me in the ribs with his fist, slapped me on the shoulder with his broad palm, exactly as though he were preparing a beefsteak out of me. I could not interpose a single word into the volley of his questions, and only smiled,—very foolishly, in all probability,—as I gazed at his kind face, which was radiant with satisfaction over our meeting. I, also, was very glad to see him; this meeting with him recalled to me the beginning of my life, which, undoubtedly, was better than its continuation.

  At last, I managed, somehow, to ask my old friend, whence came that scar on his brow and those curls on his head.

  “Why that, you see…was a scrape. I undertook, with a couple of my chums, to make my way across the Roumanian frontier; we wanted to take a look at things in Roumania. Well, so we set out from Kalúga,—which is a small place in Bessarábia, close to the frontier. We went quietly on our way—by night, of course. All of a sudden: ‘Halt!’ The custom-house cordon had crawled straight down on it. Well, of course, we took to our heels! Then one insignificant little soldier hit me a whack over the pate. He didn’t strike very hard, but, nevertheless, I lay in hospital about a month. And what an affair it was! It turned out that the soldier was from the same part of the country as myself! We were both Muróm men.… He was brought to the hospital, too, not long after—a smuggler had spoiled him by sticking a knife into his belly. We made it up between us, and got things straightened out. The soldier asks me: ‘Did I slash you?’—’It must have been you, since you confess it.’—‘I had to,’ says he; ‘don’t you cherish a grudge,’ says he, ‘that’s part of our service. We thought you were travelling with smuggled goods. Here,’ says he, ‘this is the way they treated me—they ripped my belly open. It can’t be helped; life is a serious game.’—Well, and so he and I struck up a friendship. He was a good little soldier—was Yáshka Mázin.… And my curls? Curls? The curls, my boy, came after the typhoid fever. I’ve had the typhoid fever. They put me in jail in Kishinéff, with the intention of trying me for crossing the frontier illegally, and there I developed typhoid fever.… I lay there and lay there with it, and came near never getting up from it. And, in all probability, I shouldn’t have recovered, only the nurse took a great deal of pains with me. I was simply astonished, my boy—she fussed over me as though I were a baby, and what did she care about me? ‘Márya Petróvna,’ I used to say to her, ‘just drop that; I’m downright ashamed.’ But she only kept laughing. She was a nice girl.… She sometimes read me soul-saving books. ‘Well, now,’ says I, ‘aren’t there any books;’ says I, ‘like …’ you know the sort. She brought a book about an English sailor, who was saved from a shipwreck on an uninhabited island, and created a new life for himself there. It was interesting, awfully interesting! That book pleased me greatly; I’d have liked to go there, to him. You understand, what sort of a life it was? An island, the sea, the sky,—you live there alone by yourself, and you have everything and you are entirely free! There was a savage there, too. Well, I’d have drowned the savage—what the devil should I want him for, hey? I don’t get bored all alone. Have you read any such book?”

  “Wait. Well, and how did you get out of prison?”

  “They let me out. They tried me, acquitted me, and released me. It was very simple.… See here, I won’t work any more to-day, devil take it! It’s all right, I’ve rattled my arms round hard enough, and it’s time to stop. I have three rubles on hand, and for this half day’s work I shall get forty kopéks.36 See what a big capital! That means that you’re to come home to where we live. We’re not in the barracks, but yonder, in the vicinity of the town…there’s a hole there, so very convenient for human habitation.… Two of us have our quarters in it, but my chum is ailing…he’s bothered with fever.… Well, now, you sit here while I go to the contractor…I’ll be back soon!”

  He rose swiftly, and walked off just at the moment when the men who were driving piles took hold of the ropes, and began their work. I remained sitting on a stone, looking at the noisy bustle which reigned around me, and at the blue-green sea. Konováloff’s tall form, slipping swiftly among the laborers, the heaps of stone, lumber, and barrows, vanished in the distance. He walked, flourishing his hands, clad in a blue creton blouse, which was too short and too tight for him, crash drawers, and heavy boot-slippers. His cap of chestnut curls waved over his huge head. From time to time he turned round, and made some sort of signals to me with his hands. He was so entirely new, somehow, so animated, calmly confident, amiable, and powerful. Everywhere around him men were at work, wood was cracking, stone was being laid, barrows were screeching dolefully, clouds of dust were rising, something fell with a roar, and men were shouting and swearing, sighing and singing as though they were groaning. Amid all this confusion of sounds and movements, the handsome figure of my friend, as it retreated from it with firm strides, constantly tacking from side to side, stood out very sharply, and seemed to present a hint of something which explained Konováloff.

  Three hours after we met, he and I were lying in the “hole, very convenient for human habitation.” As a matter of fact, the “hole” was extremely convenient—stone had been taken out of the mountain at some distant period, and a large, rectangular niche had been hewn out,
in which four persons could have lodged with perfect comfort. But it was low-studded, and over its entrance hung a block of stone, which formed a sort of pent-house, so that, in order to get into the hole, one was forced to lie flat on the ground in front of it, and then shove himself in. It was seven feet in depth, but it was not necessary to crawl into it head foremost, and, indeed, this was risky, for the block of stone over the entrance might slide down, and completely bury us there. We did not wish this to happen, and managed in this way: we thrust our legs and bodies into the hole, where it was very cool, but left our heads out in the sun, in the opening of the hole, so that if the block of stone should take a notion to fall, it would crush only our skulls.

  The sick tramp had got the whole of himself out into the sun, and lay a couple of paces from us, so that we could hear his teeth chattering in a paroxysm of fever. He was a long, gaunt Little Russian: “from Piltáva, and, prehaps, from Kieff.…” he told me pensively.37

  “A man lives so much in the world, that it’s of no consequence if he does forget where he was born…and what difference does it make, anyway? It’s bad enough to be born, and knowing where.… doesn’t make it any the better!”

  He rolled about on the ground, in the endeavor to wrap himself as snugly as possible in a gray overcoat, patched together out of nothing but holes, and swore very picturesquely, when he perceived that all his efforts were futile—he swore, but continued to wrap himself up. He had small, black eyes, which were constantly puckered up, as though he were inspecting something very intently.

  The sun baked the backs of our necks intolerably, and Konováloff constructed from my military cloak something in the nature of a screen, driving sticks into the ground, and stretching my costume over them. Still, it was stifling. From afar there was wafted to us the dull roar of toil on the bay, but we did not see it; to the right of us, on the shore, lay the town in heavy masses of white houses, to our left—was the sea,—in front of us, the sea again, extending off into immeasurable distance, where marvellous, tender colors, never before beheld, which soothed the eye and the soul by the indescribable beauty of their tints, were intermingled, through soft half-tones, into a fantastic mirage.