by Maxim Gorky
“What? What’s that you said?”
And all four began to laugh in a friendly fashion, repeating:
“‘Strictly speaking,’—ah, Lord!”
Even the master said to me:
“You have thought that out badly, old fellow.” And for a long time after that they used to call me:
“Hi, ‘strictly speaking,’ come here and wipe up the floor after the baby, strictly speaking.”
This stupid banter did not offend, but it greatly surprised, me. I lived in a fog of stupefying grief, and I worked hard in order to fight against it. I did not feel my inefficiencies when I was at work. In the house were two young children. The nurses never pleased the mistresses, and were continually being changed. I had to wait upon the children, to wash baby-clothes every day, and every week I had to go to the Jandarmski Fountain to rinse the linen. Here I was derided by the washerwomen:
“Why are you doing women’s work?”
Sometimes they worked me up to such a pitch that I slapped them with the wet, twisted linen. They paid me back generously for this, but I found them merry and interesting.
The Jandarmski Fountain ran along the bottom of a deep causeway and fell into the Oka. The causeway cut the town off from the field which was called, from the name of an ancient god, Yarilo. On that field, near Semika, the inhabitants of the town had made a promenade. Grandmother had told me that in the days of her youth people still believed in Yarilo and offered sacrifices to him. They took a wheel, covered it with tarred tow, and let it roll down the hill with cries and songs, watching to see if the burning wheel would roll as far as the Oka. If it did, the god Yarilo had accepted the sacrifice; the summer would be sunny and happy.
The washerwomen were for the most part from Yarilo, bold, headstrong women who had the life of the town at their finger-ends. It was very interesting to hear their tales of the merchants, chinovniks, and officers for whom they worked. To rinse the linen in winter in the icy water of the river was work for a galley-slave. All the women had their hands so frost-bitten that the skin was broken. Bending over the stream, inclosed in a wooden trough, under an old penthouse full of crevices, which was no protection against either wind or snow, the women rinsed the linen. Their faces were flushed, pinched by the frost. The frost burned their wet fingers; they could not bend them. Tears trickled from their eyes, but they chatted all the time, telling one another different stories, bearing themselves with a peculiar bravery toward every one and everything.
The best of all the stories were told by Natalia Kozlovski, a woman of about thirty, fresh-faced, strong, with laughing eyes and a peculiarly facile and sharp tongue. All her companions had a high regard for her; she was consulted on all sorts of affairs, and much admired for her skill in work, for the neatness of her attire, and because she had been able to send her daughter to the high school. When, bending under the weight of two baskets of wet linen, she came down the hill on the slippery footpath, they greeted her gladly, and asked solicitously:
“Well, and how is the daughter?”
“Very well, thank you; she is learning well, thank God!”
“Look at that now! She will be a lady.”
“That’s why I am having her taught. Where do the ladies with the painted faces come from? They all come from us, from the black earth. And where else should they come from? He who has the most knowledge has the longest arms and can take more, and the one who takes the most has the honor and glory. God sends us into the world as stupid children and expects to take us back as wise old people, which means that we must learn!”
When she spoke every one was silent, listening attentively to her fluent, self-confident speech. They praised her to her face and behind her back, amazed at her cleverness, her intellect; but no one tried to imitate her. She had sewn brown leather from the leg of a boot, over the sleeve of her bodice which saved her from the necessity of baring her arms to the elbow, and prevented her sleeves from getting wet. They all said what a good idea it was, but not one of them followed her example. When I did so they laughed at me.
“Ekh, you? Letting a woman teach you!”
With reference to her daughter she said:
“That is an important affair. There will be one more young lady in the world. Is that a small thing? But of course she may not be able to finish her studies; she may die. And it is not an easy life for those who are students, you see. There was that daughter of the Bakhilovs. She studied and studied, and even became a teacher herself. Once you become a teacher, you know, you are settled for life.”
“Of course, if they marry, they can do without education; that is, if they have something else to recommend them.”
“A woman’s wit lies not in her head.”
It was strange and embarrassing to hear them speak about themselves with such lack of reticence. I knew how sailors, soldiers, and tillers of the soil spoke about women. I heard men always boasting among themselves of their skill in deceiving women, of cunning in their relations with them. I felt that their attitude toward “females” was hostile, but generally there was a ring of something in these boastings which led me to suppose that these stories were merely brag, inventions, and not the truth.
The washerwomen did not tell one another about their love adventures, but in whatever they said about men I detected an undercurrent of derision, of malice, and I thought it might be true that woman was strength.
“Even when they don’t go about among their fellows and make friends, they come to women, every one of them!” said Natalia one day, and an old woman cried to her in a rheumy voice:
“And to whom else should they go? Even from God monks and hermits come to us.”
These conversations amid the weeping splash of the water, the slapping of wet clothes on the ground, or against the dirty chinks, which not even the snow could hide with its clean cover—these shameless, malicious conversations about secret things, about that from which all races and peoples have sprung, roused in me a timid disgust, forced my thoughts and feelings to fix themselves on “the romances” which surrounded and irritated me. For me the understanding of the “romances” was closely intertwined with representations of obscure, immoral stories.
However, whether I was with the washerwomen, or in the kitchen with the orderlies or in cellars where lived the field laborers, I found it much more interesting than to be at home, where the stilted conversations were always on the same lines, where the same things happened over and over again, arousing nothing but a feeling of constraint and embittered boredom. My employers dwelt within the magic circle of food, illness, sleep, and the anxieties attendant on preparing for eating and sleeping. They spoke of sin and of death, of which they were much afraid. They rubbed against one another as grains of corn are rubbed against the grindstone, which they expect every moment to crush them. In my free time I used to go into the shed to chop wood, desiring to be alone. But that rarely happened. The orderlies used to come and talk about the news of the yard.
Ermokhin and Sidorov came more often than the others. The former was a long, bow-backed Kalougan, with thick, strong veins all over him, a small head, and dull eyes. He was lazy and irritatingly stupid; he moved slowly and clumsily, and when he saw a woman he blinked and bent forward, just as if he were going to throw himself at her feet. All the yard was amazed by his swift conquest of the cooks and the maids, and envied him. They were all afraid of his bear-like strength. Sidorov, a lean, bony native of Tula, was always sad, spoke softly, and loved to gaze into dark corners. He would relate some incident in a low voice, or sit in silence, looking into the darkest corner.
“What are you looking at?”
“I thought I saw a mouse running about. I love mice; they run to and fro so quietly.”
I used to write letters home for these orderlies—love-letters. I liked this, but it was pleasanter to write letters for Sidorov than for any of the others. Every Saturday regularly he sent a let
ter to his sister at Tula.
He invited me into his kitchen, sat down beside me at the table, and, rubbing his close-cropped hair hard, whispered in my ear:
“Well, go on. Begin it as it ought to be begun. ‘My dearest sister, may you be in good health for many years’—you know how it ought to go. And now write, ‘I received the ruble; only you need not have sent it. But I thank you. I want for nothing; we live well here.’ As a matter of fact, we do not live at all well, but like dogs; but there is no need to write that. Write that we live well. She is little, only fourteen years old. Why should she know? Now write by yourself, as you have been taught.”
He pressed upon me from the left side, breathing into my ear hotly and odorously, and whispered perseveringly:
“Write ‘if any one speaks tenderly to you, you are not to believe him. He wants to deceive you, and ruin you.’”
His face was flushed by his effort to keep back a cough. Tears stood in his eyes. He leaned on the table and pushed against me.
“You are hindering me!”
“It is all right; go on! ‘Above all, never believe gentlemen. They will lead a girl wrong the first time they see her. They know exactly what to say. And if you have saved any money, give it to the priest to keep for you, if he is a good man. But the best thing, is to bury it in the ground, and remember the spot.’”
It was miserable work trying to listen to this whisper, which was drowned by the squeaking of the tin ventilator in the fortochka. I looked at the blackened front of the stove, at the china cupboard covered with flies. The kitchen was certainly very dirty, overrun with bugs, redolent with an acrid smell of burnt fat, kerosene, and smoke. On the stove, among the sticks of wood, cockroaches crawled in and out. A sense of melancholy stole over my heart. I could have cried with pity for the soldier and his sister. Was it possible, was it right that people should live like this?
I wrote something, no longer listening to Sidorov’s whisper. I wrote of the misery and repulsiveness of life, and he said to me, sighing:
“You have written a lot; thank you. Now she will know what she has to be afraid of.”
“There is nothing for her to be afraid of,” I said angrily, although I was afraid of many things myself.
The soldier laughed, and cleared his throat.
“What an oddity you are! How is there nothing to be afraid of? What about gentlemen, and God? Isn’t that something?”
When he received a letter from his sister he said restlessly:
“Read it, please. Be quick!”
And he made me read the badly scrawled, insultingly short, and nonsensical letter three times.
He was good and kind, but he behaved toward women like all the others; that is, with the primitive coarseness of an animal. Willingly and unwillingly, as I observed these affairs, which often went on under my eyes, beginning and ending with striking and impure swiftness, I saw Sidorov arouse in the breast of a woman a kind feeling of pity for him in his soldier’s life, then intoxicate her with tender lies, and then tell Ermokhin of his conquest, frowning and spitting his disgust, just as if he had been taking some bitter medicine. This made my heart ache, and I angrily asked the soldiers why they all deceived women, lied to them, and then, jeering among themselves at the woman they had treated so, gave her away and often beat her.
One of them laughed softly, and said:
“It is not necessary for you to know anything about such things. It is all very bad; it is sin. You are young; it is too early for you.”
But one day I obtained a more definite answer, which I have always remembered.
“Do you think that she does not know that I am deceiving her?” he said, blinking and coughing. “She kno-o-ows. She wants to be deceived. Everybody lies in such affairs; they are a disgrace to all concerned. There is no love on either side; it is simply an amusement. It is a dreadful disgrace. Wait, and you will know for yourself. It was for that God drove them out of paradise, and from that all unhappiness has come.”
He spoke so well, so sadly, and so penitently that he reconciled me a little to these “romances.” I began to have a more friendly feeling toward him than towards Ermokhin, whom I hated, and seized every occasion of mocking and teasing. I succeeded in this, and he often pursued me across the yard with some evil design, which only his clumsiness prevented him from executing.
“It is forbidden,” went on Sidorov, speaking of women.
That it was forbidden I knew, but that it was the cause of human unhappiness I did not believe. I saw that people were unhappy, but I did not believe what he said, because I sometimes saw an extraordinary expression in the eyes of people in love, and was aware of a peculiar tenderness in those who loved. To witness this festival of the heart was always pleasant to me.
However, I remember that life seemed to me to grow more and more tedious, cruel, fixed for ever in those forms of it which I saw from day to day. I did not dream of anything better than that which passed interminably before my eyes.
But one day the soldiers told me a story which stirred me deeply. In one of the flats lived a cutter-out, employed by the best tailor in the town, a quiet, meek foreigner. He had a little, childless wife who read books all day long. Over the noisy yard, amid houses full of drunken people, these two lived, invisible and silent. They had no visitors, and never went anywhere themselves except to the theater in holiday-time.
The husband was engaged from early morning until late at night. The wife, who looked like an undersized girl, went to the library twice a week. I often saw her walking with a limp, as if she were slightly lame, as far as the dike, carrying books in a strap, like a school-girl. She looked unaffected, pleasant, new, clean, with gloves on her small hands. She had a face like a bird, with little quick eyes, and everything about her was pretty, like a porcelain figure on a mantel-shelf. The soldiers said that she had some ribs missing in her left side, and that was what made her sway so curiously as she walked; but I thought this very nice, and at once set her above all the other ladies in the yard—the officers’ wives. The latter, despite their loud voices, their variegated attire, and haut tournure, had a soiled look about them, as if they had been lying forgotten for a long time, in a dark closet among other unneeded things.
The little wife of the cutter-out was regarded in the yard as half witted. It was said that she had lost her senses over books, and had got into such a condition that she could not manage the housekeeping; that her husband had to go to the market himself in search of provisions, and order the dinner and supper of the cook, a great, huge foreign female. She had only one red eye, which was always moist, and a narrow pink crevice in place of the other. She was like her mistress, they said of her. She did not know how to cook a dish of fried veal and onions properly, and one day she ignominiously bought radishes, thinking she was buying parsley. Just think what a dreadful thing that was!
All three were aliens in the building, as if they had fallen by accident into one of the compartments of a large hen-house. They reminded me of a titmouse which, taking refuge from the frost, flies through the fortochka into a stifling and dirty habitation of man.
And then the orderlies told me how the officers had played an insulting and wicked trick on the tailor’s little wife. They took turns to write her a letter every day, declaring their love for her, speaking of their sufferings and of her beauty. She answered them, begging them to leave her in peace, regretting that she had been the cause of unhappiness to any one, and praying God that He would help them to give up loving her. When any one of them received a letter like that, they used to read it all together, and then make up another letter to her, signed by a different person.
When they told me this story, the orderlies laughed too, and abused the lady.
“She is a wretched fool, the crookback,” said Ermokhin in a bass voice, and Sidorov softly agreed with him.
“Whatever a woman is, she likes being dec
eived. She knows all about it.”
I did not believe that the wife of the cutter-out knew that they were laughing at her, and I resolved at once to tell her about it. I watched for the cook to go down into the cellar, and I ran up the dark staircase to the flat of the little woman, and slipped into the kitchen. It was empty. I went on to the sitting-room. The tailor’s wife was sitting at the table. In one hand she held a heavy gold cup, and in the other an open book. She was startled. Pressing the book to her bosom, she cried in a low voice:
“Who is that? Auguste! Who are you?”
I began to speak quickly and confusedly, expecting every minute that she would throw the book at me. She was sitting in a large, raspberry-colored armchair, dressed in a pale-blue wrap with a fringe at the hem and lace on the collar and sleeves over her shoulders was spread her flaxen, wavy hair. She looked like an angel from the gates of heaven. Leaning against the back of her chair, she looked at me with round eyes, at first angrily, then in smiling surprise.
When I had said what I wanted to say, and, losing my courage, turned to the door, she cried after me:
“Wait!”
Placing the cup on the tray, throwing the book on the table, and folding her hands, she said in a husky, grown-up voice:
“What a funny boy you are! Come closer!”
I approached very cautiously. She took me by the hand, and, stroking it with her cold, small fingers, said:
“Are you sure that no one sent you to tell me this? No? All right; I see that you thought of it yourself.”
Letting my hand go, she closed her eyes, and said softly and drawingly:
“So that is how the soldiers speak of me?”
“Leave this place,” I advised her earnestly.
“Why?”
“They will get the better of you.”
She laughed pleasantly. Then she asked:
“Do you study? Are you fond of books?”
“I have no time for reading.”
“If you were fond of it, you would find the time. Well, thank you.”