by Maxim Gorky
But bird-catching amused me greatly; I liked it. It gave me my independence and inconvenienced no one but the birds. I provided myself with good implements. Conversations with old bird-catchers taught me a lot. I went alone nearly three versts to catch birds: to the forest of Kstocski, on the banks of the Volga, where in the tall fir-trees lived and bred crossbills, and most valuable to collectors, the Apollyon titmouse, a long-tailed, white bird of rare beauty.
Sometimes I started in the evening and stayed out all night, wandering about on the Kasanski high-road, and sometimes in the autumn rains and through deep mud. On my back I carried an oilskin bag in which were cages, with food to entice the birds. In my hand was a solid cane of walnut wood. It was cold and terrifying in the autumn darkness, very terrifying. There stood by the side of the road old lightning-riven birches; wet branches brushed across my head. On the left under the hill, over the black Volga, floated rare lights on the masts of the last boats and barges, looking as if they were in an unfathomable abyss. The wheels splashed in the water, the sirens shrieked.
From the hard ground rose the huts of the road-side villages. Angry, hungry dogs ran in circles round my legs. The watchman collided with me, and cried in terror:
“Who is that? He whom the devils carry does not come out till night, they say.”
I was very frightened lest my tackle should be taken from me, and I used to take five-copeck pieces with me to give to the watchmen. The watchman of the village of Thokinoi made friends with me, and was always groaning over me.
“What, out again? O you fearless, restless night-bird, eh?”
His name was Niphront. He was small and gray, like a saint. He drew out from his breast a turnip, an apple, a handful of peas, and placed them in my hand, saying:
“There you are, friend. There is a little present for you. Eat and enjoy it.” And conducting me to the bounds of the village, he said, “Go, and God be with you!”
I arrived at the forest before dawn, laid my traps, and spreading out my coat, lay on the edge of the forest and waited for the day to come. It was still. Everything was wrapped in the deep autumn sleep. Through the gray mist the broad meadows under the hill were hardly visible. They were cut in two by the Volga, across which they met and separated again, melting away in the fog. In the distance, behind the forest on the same side as the meadows, rose without hurry the bright sun. On the black mane of the forest lights flashed out, and my heart began to stir strangely, poignantly. Swifter and swifter the fog rose from the meadows, growing silver in the rays of the sun, and, following it, the bushes, trees, and hayricks rose from the ground. The meadows were simply flooded with the sun’s rays and flowed on each side, red-gold. The sun just glanced at the still water by the bank, and it seemed as if the whole river moved toward the sun as it rose higher and higher, joyfully blessed and warmed the denuded, chilled earth, which gave forth the sweet smell of autumn. The transparent air made the earth look enormous, boundlessly wide. Everything seemed to be floating in the distance, and to be luring one to the farthest ends of the world. I saw the sunrise ten times during those months, and each time a new world was born before my eyes, with a new beauty.
I loved the sun so much that its very name delighted me. The sweet sound of it was like a bell hidden in it. I loved to close my eyes and place my face right in the way of its hot rays to catch it in my hands when it came, like a sword, through the chinks of the fence or through the branches. Grandfather had read over and over again “Prince Mikhail Chemigovski and the Lady Theodora who would not Worship the Sun,” and my idea of these people was that they were black, like Gipsies, harsh, malignant, and always had bad eyes, like poor Mordovans. When the sun rose over the meadows I involuntarily smiled with joy.
Over me murmured the forest of firs, shaking off the drops of dew with its green paws. In the shadows and on the fern-leaves glistened, like silver brocade, the rime of the morning frost. The reddening grass was crushed by the rain; immovable stalks bowed their heads to the ground: but when the sun’s rays fell on them a slight stir was noticeable among the herbs, as if, may be, it was the last effort of their lives.
The birds awoke. Like gray balls of down, they fell from bough to bough. Flaming crossbills pecked with their crooked beaks the knots on the tallest firs. On the end of the fir-branches sang a white Apollyon titmouse, waving its long, rudder-like tail, looking askance suspiciously with its black, beady eyes at the net which I had spread. And suddenly the whole forest, which a minute ago had been solemnly pensive, was filled with the sound of a thousand bird-voices, with the bustle of living beings, the purest on the earth. In their image, man, the father of earthly beauty, created for his own consolation, elves, cherubim, and seraphim, and all the ranks of angels.
I was rather sorry to catch the little songsters, and had scruples about squeezing them into cages. I would rather have merely looked at them; but the hunter’s passion and the desire to earn money drove away my pity.
The birds mocked me with their artfulness. The blue titmouse, after a careful examination of the trap, understood her danger, and, approaching sidewise without running any risk, helped herself to some seed between the sticks of the trap. Titmouses are very clever, but they are very curious, and that is their undoing. The proud bullfinches are stupid, and flocks of them fall into the nets, like over-fed citizens into a church. When they find themselves shut up, they are very astonished, roll their eyes, and peck my fingers with their stout beaks. The crossbill entered the trap calmly and seriously. This grasping, ignorant bird, unlike all the others, used to sit for a long time before the net, stretching out his long beak, and leaning on his thick tail. He can run up the trunk of trees like the woodpecker, always escorting the titmouse. About this smoke-gray singing-bird there is something unpleasant. No one loves it. And it loves no one. Like the magpie, it likes to steal and hide bright things.
Before noon I had finished my catch, and went home through the forest. If I had gone by the high-road past the villages, the boys and young men would have taken my cages away from me and broken up my tackle. I had already experienced that once.
I arrived home in the evening tired and hungry, but I felt that I had grown older, had learned something new, and had gained strength during that day. This new strength gave me the power to listen calmly and without resentment to grandfather’s jeers; seeing which, grandfather began to speak sensibly and seriously.
“Give up this useless business! Give it up! No one ever got on through birds. Such a thing has never happened that I know of. Go and find another place, and let your intelligence grow up there. Man has not been given life for nothing; he is God’s grain, and he must produce an ear of corn. Man is like a ruble; put out at good interest it produces three rubles. You think life is easy to live? No, it is not all easy. The world of men is like a dark night, but every man must make his own light. To every person is given enough for his ten fingers to hold, but every one wants to grasp by handfuls. One should be strong, but if one is weak, one must be artful. He who has little strength is weak, and he is neither in heaven nor in hell. Live as if you are with others, but remember that you are alone. Whatever happens, never trust any one. If you believe your own eyes, you will measure crookedly. Hold your tongue. Neither town or house was built by the tongue, but rubles are made by the ax. You are neither a fool nor a Kalmuck, to whom all riches are like lice on sheep.”
He could talk like this all the evening, and I knew his words by heart. The words pleased me, but I distrusted their meaning. From what he said it was plain that two forces hindered man from doing as he wished, God and other people.
Seated at the window, grandmother wound the cotton for her lace. The spindle hummed under her skilful hands. She listened for a long time to grandfather’s speech in silence, then she suddenly spoke.
“It all depends upon whether the Mother of God smiles upon us.”
“What’s that?” cried grandfather. “God! I
have not forgotten about God. I know all about God. You old fool, has God sown fools on the earth, eh?”
* * * *
In my opinion the happiest people on earth were Cossacks and soldiers. Their lives were simple and gay. On fine mornings they appeared in the hollow near our house quite early. Scattering over the bare fields like white mushrooms, they began a complicated, interesting game. Agile and strong in their white blouses, they ran about the field with guns in their hands, disappeared in the hollow, and suddenly, at the sound of the bugle, again spread themselves over the field with shouts of “Hurrah!” accompanied by the ominous sounds of the drum. They ran straight at our house with fixed bayonets, and they looked as if they would knock it down and sweep it away, like a hayrick, in a minute. I cried “Hurrah!” too, and ran with them, quite carried away. The wicked rattle of the drum aroused in me a passionate desire to destroy something, to break down the fence, to hit other boys. When they were resting, the soldiers used to give me a treat by teaching me how to signal and by showing me their heavy guns. Sometimes one of them would stick his bayonet into my stomach and cry, with a pretense of anger:
“Stick the cockroach!”
The bayonet gleamed; it looked as if it were alive, and seemed to wind about like a snake about to coil itself up. It was rather terrifying, but more pleasant.
The Mordovan drummer taught me to strike the drum with my fingers. At first he used to take me by the wrist, and, moving them so that he hurt me, would thrust the sticks into my crushed fingers.
“Hit it—one, two-one-tw-o-o! Rum te—tum! Beat it—left—softly, right—loudly, rum te—!” he shouted threateningly, opening wide his bird-like eyes.
I used to run about the field with the soldiers, almost to the end of the drill, and after it was finished, I used to escort them across the town to the barracks, listening to their loud songs, looking into their kind faces, all as new as five-ruble pieces just coined. The close-packed mass of happy men passing up the streets in one united body aroused a feeling of friendliness in me, a desire to throw myself in among them as into a river, to enter into them as into a forest. These men were frightened of nothing; they could conquer anything; they were capable of anything; they could do anything they liked; and they were all simple and good.
But one day during the time they were resting a young non-commissioned officer gave me a fat cigarette.
“Smoke this! I would not give them to any one. In fact I hardly like to give you one, my dear boy, they are so good.”
I smoked it. He moved away a few steps, and suddenly a red flame blinded me, burning my fingers, my nose, my eyebrows. A gray, acrid smoke made me splutter and cough. Blinded, terrified, I stamped on the ground, and the soldiers, who had formed a ring around me, laughed loudly and heartily. I ran away home. Whistles and laughter followed me; something cracked like a shepherd’s whip. My burned fingers hurt me, my face smarted, tears flowed from my eyes; but it was not the pain which oppressed me, only a heavy, dull amazement. Why should this amuse these good fellows?
When I reached home I climbed up to the attic and sat there a long time brooding over this inexplicable cruelty which stood so repulsively in my path. I had a peculiarly clear and vivid memory of the little soldier from Sarapulia standing before me, as large as life, and saying:
“Well, do you understand?”
Soon I had to go through something still more depressing and disgusting.
I had begun to run about in the barracks of the Cossacks, which stood near the Pecherski Square. The Cossacks seemed different from the soldiers, not because they rode so skilfully oh horseback and were dressed more beautifully, but because they spoke in a different way, sang different songs, and danced beautifully. In the evening, after they had seen to their horses, they used to gather in a ring near the stables, and a little red-haired Cossack, shaking his tufts of hair, sang softly in a high-pitched voice, like a trumpet. The long-drawn-out, sad song flowed out upon the Don and the blue Dounia. His eyes were closed, like the eyes of a linnet, which often sings till it falls dead from the branch to the ground. The collar of his Cossack shirt was undone. His collar-bone was visible, looking like a copper band. In fact, he was altogether metallic, coppery. Swaying on his thin legs, as if the earth under him were rocking, spreading out his hands, he seemed sightless, but full of sound. He, as it were, ceased to be a man, and became a brass instrument. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was falling, that he would fall on his back to the ground, and die like the linnet, because he put into the song all his soul and all his strength.
With their hands in their pockets or behind their broad backs, his comrades stood round in a ring, sternly looking at his brassy face. Beating time with their hands, softly spitting into space, they joined in earnestly, softly, as if they were in the choir in church. All of them, bearded and shaven, looked like icons, stern and set apart from other people. The song was long, like a long street, and as level, as broad and as wide. When I listened to him I forgot everything else, whether it was day or night upon the earth, whether I was an old man or a little boy. Everything else was forgotten. The voice of the singer died away. The sighs of the horses were audible as they grieved for their native steppes, and gently, but surely, the autumn night crept up from the fields. My heart swelled and almost burst with a multitude of extraordinary feelings, and a great, speechless love for human creatures and the earth.
The little copper-colored Cossack seemed to me to be no man, but something much more significant—a legendary being, better and on a higher plane than ordinary people. I could not talk to him. When he asked me a question I smiled blissfully and remained shyly silent. I was ready to follow him anywhere, silently and humbly, like a dog. All I wanted was to see him often, and to hear him sing.
CHAPTER VIII
When the snows came, grandfather once more took me to grandmother’s sister.
“It will do you no harm,” he said to me.
I seemed to have had a wonderful lot of experience during the summer. I felt that I had grown older and cleverer, and the dullness of my master’s house seemed worse than ever. They fell ill as often as ever, upsetting their stomachs with offensive poisons, and giving one another detailed accounts of the progress of their illnesses. The old woman prayed to God in the same terrible and malignant way. The young mistress had grown thin, but she moved about just as pompously and slowly as when she was expecting her child. When she stitched at the baby-clothes she always sang the same song softly to herself:
“Spiria, Spiria, Spiridon,
Spiria, my little brother,
I will sit in the sledge myself
And Spiria on the foot-board.”
If any one went into the room she left off singing at once and cried angrily:
“What do you want?”
I fully believed that she knew no other song but that.
In the evenings they used to call me into the sitting-room, and the order was given:
“Now tell us how you lived on the boat.”
I sat on a chair near the door and spoke. I liked to recall a different life from this which I was forced to lead against my will. I was so interested that I forgot my audience, but not for long.
The women, who had never been on a boat, asked me:
“But it was very alarming, wasn’t it?”
I did not understand. Why should it be alarming?
“Why, the boat might go down any moment, and every one would be drowned.”
The master burst out laughing, and I, although I knew that boats did not sink just because there were deep places, could not convince the women. The old woman was certain that the boat did not float on the water, but went along on wheels on the bottom of the river, like a cart on dry land.
“If they are made of iron, how can they float? An ax will not float; no fear!”
“But a scoop does not sink in the water.”
&nbs
p; “There’s a comparison to make! A scoop is a small thing, nothing to speak of.”
When I spoke of Smouri and his books they regarded me with contempt. The old lady said that only fools and heretics wrote books.
“What about the Psalms and King David?”
“The Psalms are sacred writings, and King David prayed God to forgive him for writing the Psalms.”
“Where does it say so?”
“In the palms of my hands; that’s where! When I get hold of you by the neck you will learn where.”
She knew everything; she spoke on all subjects with conviction and always savagely.
“A Tatar died on the Pechorka, and his soul came out of his mouth as black as tar.”
“Soul? Spirit?” I said, but she cried contemptuously:
“Of a Tatar! Fool!”
The young mistress was afraid of books, too.
“It is very injurious to read books, and especially when you are young,” she said. “At home, at Grebeshka, there was a young girl of good family who read and read, and the end of it was that she fell in love with the deacon, and the deacon’s wife so shamed her that it was terrible to see. In the street, before everybody.”
Sometimes I used words out of Smouri’s books, in one of which, one without beginning or end, was written, “Strictly speaking, no one person really invented powder; as is always the case, it appeared at the end of a long series of minor observations and discoveries.” I do not know why I remembered these words so well. What I liked best of all was the joining of two phrases, “strictly speaking, no one person really invented powder.” I was aware of force underlying them; but they brought me sorrow, ludicrous sorrow. It happened thus.
One day when my employers proposed that I should tell them about something which had happened on the boat I answered:
“I haven’t anything left to tell, strictly speaking.” This amazed them. They cried: