The Maxim Gorky

by Maxim Gorky

He died slowly, and he grew very weary of it. He said with unfeigned vexation:

  “It seems that I can’t die, somehow; it is really a calamity!”

  His fearlessness in the face of death frightened Pavl very much. He awoke me in the night and whispered:

  “Maximich, he seems to be dying. Suppose he dies in the night, when we are lying beneath him—Oh, Lord! I am frightened of dead people.”

  Or he would say:

  “Why was he born? Not twenty-two years have passed over his head and he is dying.”

  Once, on a moonlight night he awoke, and gazing with wide-open, terrified eyes said:

  “Listen!”

  Davidov was croaking in the loft, saying quickly and clearly:

  “Give it to me—give—”

  Then he began to hiccup.

  “He is dying, by God he is; you see!” said Pavl agitatedly.

  I had been carrying snow from the yard into the fields all day, and I was very sleepy, but Pavl begged me:

  “Don’t go to sleep, please; for Christ’s sake don’t go to sleep!”

  And suddenly getting on to his knees, he cried frenziedly:

  “Get up! Davidov is dead!”

  Some of them awoke; several figures rose from the beds; angry voices were raised, asking questions.

  Kapendiukhin climbed up into the loft and said in a tone of amazement:

  “It is a fact; he is dead, although he is still warm.” It was quiet now. Jikharev crossed himself, and wrapping himself round in his blanket, said:

  “Well, he is in the Kingdom of Heaven now!” Some one suggested:

  “Let us carry him into the vestibule.”

  Kapendiukhin climbed down from the loft and glanced through the window.

  “Let him lie where he is till the morning; he never hurt any one while he was alive.”

  Pavl, hiding his head under the pillow, sobbed.

  But Sitanov did not even wake!

  CHAPTER XV

  The snow melted away from the fields; the wintry clouds in the sky passed away; wet snow and rain fell upon the earth; the sun was slower and slower in performing his daily journey; the air grew warmer; and it seemed that the joyful spring had already arrived, sportively hiding herself behind the fields, and would soon burst upon the town itself. In the streets there was brown mud; streams ran along the gutters; in the thawed places of Arestantski Square the sparrows hopped joyfully. And in human creatures, also, was apparent the same excitement as was shown by the sparrows. Above the sounds of spring, almost uninterruptedly from morning to night, rang out the Lenten bells, stirring one’s heart with their muffled strokes. In that sound, as in the speech of an old man, there was hidden something of displeasure, as if the bells had said with cold melancholy:

  “Has been, this has been, has been—”

  On my name-day the workmen gave me a small, beautifully painted image of Alexei, the man of God, and Jikharev made an impressive, long speech, which I remember very well.

  “What are you?” said he, with much play of finger and raising of eyebrows. “Nothing more than a small boy, an orphan, thirteen years old—and I, nearly four times your age, praise you and approve of you, because you always stand with your face to people and not sideways! Stand like that always, and you will be all right!”

  He spoke of the slaves of God, and of his people, but the difference between people and slaves I could never understand, and I don’t believe that he understood it himself. His speech was long-winded, the workshop was laughing at him, and I stood, with the image in my hand, very touched and very confused, not knowing what I ought to do. At length Kapendiukhin called out irritably:

  “Oh, leave off singing his praises; his ears are already turning blue!”

  Then clapping me on the shoulder, he began to praise me himself:

  “What is good in you is what you have in common with all human creatures, and not the fact that it is difficult to scold and beat you when you have given cause for it!”

  They all looked at me with kind eyes, making good-natured fun of my confusion. A little more and I believe I should have burst out crying from the unexpected joy of finding myself valued by these people. And that very morning the shopman had said to Petr Vassilich, nodding his head toward me:

  “An unpleasant boy that, and good for nothing!”

  As usual I had gone to the shop in the morning, but at noon the shopman had said to me:

  “Go home and clear the snow off the roof of the warehouse, and clean out the cellar.”

  That it was my name-day he did not know, and I had thought that no one knew it. When the ceremony of congratulations had finished in the workshop, I changed my clothes and climbed up to the roof of the shed to throw off the smooth, heavy snow which had accumulated during that winter. But being excited, I forgot to close the door of the cellar, and threw all the snow into it. When I jumped down to the ground, I saw my mistake, and set myself at once to get the snow away from the door. Being wet, it lay heavily; the wooden, spade moved it with difficulty; there was no iron one, and I broke the spade at the very moment when the shopman appeared at the yard-gate. The truth of the Russian proverb, “Sorrow follows on the heels of joy,” was proved to me.

  “So—o—o!” said the shopman derisively, “you are a fine workman, the devil take you! If I get hold of your senseless blockhead—” He flourished the blade of the shovel over me.

  I move away, saying angrily:

  “I wasn’t engaged as a yardman, anyhow.”

  He hurled the stick against my legs. I took up a snowball and threw it right in his face. He ran away snorting, and I left off working, and went into the workshop. In a few minutes his fiancée came running downstairs. She was an agile maiden, with pimples on her vacant face.

  “Maximich, you are to go upstairs!”

  “I am not going!” I said.

  Larionich asked in an amazed undertone:

  “What is this? You are not going?”

  I told him about the affair. With an anxious frown he went upstairs, muttering to me:

  “Oh, you impudent youngster—”

  The workshop resounded with abuse of the shopman, and Kapendiukhin said:

  “Well, they will kick you out this time!”

  This did not alarm me. My relations with the shopman had already become unbearable. His hatred of me was undisguised and became more and more acute, while, for my part, I could not endure him. But what I wanted to know was: why did he behave so absurdly to me? He would throw coins about the floor of the shop, and when I was sweeping, I found them, and laid them on the counter in the cup which contained the small money kept for beggars. When I guessed what these frequent finds meant I said to him:

  “You throw money about in my way on purpose!” He flew out at me and cried incautiously:

  “Don’t you dare to teach me! I know what I am doing!”

  But he corrected himself immediately:

  “And what do you mean by my throwing it about purposely? It falls about itself.”

  He forbade me to read the books in the shop, saying:

  “That is not for you to trouble your head about! What! Have you an idea of becoming a valuer, sluggard?”

  He did not cease his attempts to catch me in the theft of small money, and I realised that if, when I was sweeping the floor, the coin should roll into a crevice between the boards, he would declare that I had stolen it. Then I told him again that he had better give up that game, but that same day, when I returned from the tavern with the boiling water, I heard him suggesting to the newly engaged assistant in the neighboring shop:

  “Egg him on to steal psalters. We shall soon be having three hampers of them.”

  I knew that they were talking about me, for when I entered the shop they both looked confused; and besides these signs, I had grounds for suspectin
g them of a foolish conspiracy against me.

  This was not the first time that that assistant had been in the service of the man next door. He was accounted a clever salesman, but he suffered from alcoholism; in one of his drinking bouts the master had dismissed him, but had afterwards taken him back. He was an anaemic, feeble person, with cunning eyes. Apparently amiable and submissive to the slightest gesture of his master, he smiled a little, clever smile in his beard all the time, was fond of uttering sharp sayings, and exhaled the rotten smell which comes from people with bad teeth, although his own were white and strong.

  One day he gave me a terrible surprise; he came towards me smiling pleasantly, but suddenly seized my cap off my head and took hold of my hair. We began to struggle. He pushed me from the gallery into the shop, trying all the time to throw me against the large images which stood about on the floor. If he had succeeded in this, I should have broken the glass, or chipped the carving, and no doubt scratched some of the costly icons. He was very weak, and I soon overcame him; when to my great amazement the bearded man sat on the floor and cried bitterly, rubbing his bruised nose.

  The next morning when our masters had both gone out somewhere and we were alone, he said to me in a friendly manner, rubbing the lump on the bridge of his nose and under his eyes with his finger:

  “Do you think that it was of my own will or desire that I attacked you? I am not a fool, you know, and I knew that you would be more than a match for me. I am a man of little strength, a tippler. It was your master who told me to do it. ‘Lead him on,’ he said, ‘and get him to break something in the shop while he is fighting you. Let him damage something, anyhow!’ I should never have done it of my own accord; look how you have ornamented my phiz for me.”

  I believed him, and I began to be sorry for him. I knew that he lived, half-starved, with a woman who knocked him about. However, I asked him:

  “And if he told you to poison a person, I suppose you would do it?”

  “He might do that,” said the shopman with a pitiful smile; “he is capable of it.”

  Soon after this he asked me:

  “Listen, I have not a farthing; there is nothing to eat at home; my missus nags at me. Couldn’t you take an icon out of your stock and give it to me to sell, like a friend, eh? Will you? Or a breviary?”

  I remembered the boot-shop, and the beadle of the church, and I thought: “Will this man give me away?” But it was hard to refuse him, and I gave him an icon. To steal a breviary worth several rubles, that I could not do; it seemed, to me a great crime. What would you have? Arithmetic always lies concealed in ethics; the holy ingenuousness of “Regulations for the Punishment of Criminals” clearly gives away this little secret, behind which the great lie of property hides itself.

  When I heard my shopman suggesting that this miserable man should incite me to steal psalters I was afraid. It was clear that he knew how charitable I had been on the other’s behalf, and that the man from next door had told him about the icon.

  The abominableness of being charitable at another person’s expense, and the realization of the rotten trap that had been set for me—both these things aroused in me a feeling of indignation and disgust with myself and every one else. For several days I tormented myself cruelly, waiting for the arrival of the hamper with the books. At length they came, and when I was putting them away in the store-room, the shopman from next door came to me and asked me to give him a breviary.

  Then I asked him:

  “Did you tell my master about the icon?”

  “I did,” he answered in a melancholy voice; “I can keep nothing back, brother.”

  This utterly confounded me, and I sat on the floor staring at him stupidly, while he muttered hurriedly, confusedly, desperately miserable:

  “You see your man guessed—or rather, mine guessed and told yours—”

  I thought I was lost. These people had been conspiring against me, and now there was a place ready for me in the colony for youthful criminals! If that were so, nothing mattered! If one must drown, it is better to drown in a deep spot. I put a breviary into the hands of the shopman; he hid it in the sleeves of his greatcoat and went away. But he returned suddenly, the breviary fell at my feet, and the man strode away, saying:

  “I won’t take it! It would be all over with you.” I did not understand these words. Why should it be all over with me? But I was very glad that he had not taken the book. After this my little shopman began to regard me with more disfavor and suspicion than ever.

  I remembered all this when Larionich went upstairs. He did not stay there long, and came back more depressed and quiet than usual, but before supper he said to me privately:

  “I tried to arrange for you to be set free from the shop, and given over to the workshop, but it was no good. Kouzma would not have it. You are very much out of favor with him.”

  I had an enemy in the house, too—the shopman’s fiancée, an immoderately sportive damsel. All the young fellows in the workshop played about with her; they used to wait for her in the vestibule and embrace her. This did not offend her; she only squeaked like a little dog. She was chewing something from morning to night; her pockets were always full of gingerbread or buns; her jaws moved ceaselessly. To look at her vacant face with its restless gray eyes was unpleasant. She used to ask Pavl and me riddles which always concealed some coarse obscenity, and repeated catchwords which, being said very quickly, became improper words.

  One day one of the elderly workmen said to her:

  “You are a shameless hussy, my girl!”

  To which she answered swiftly, in the words of a ribald song:

  “If a maiden is too modest,

  She’ll never be a woman worth having.”

  It was the first time I had ever seen such a girl. She disgusted and frightened me with her coarse playfulness, and seeing that her antics were not agreeable to me, she became more and more spiteful toward me.

  Once when Pavl and I were in the cellar helping her to steam out the casks of kvass and cucumbers she suggested:

  “Would you like me to teach you how to kiss, boys?”

  “I know how to kiss better than you do,” Pavl answered, and I told her to go and kiss her future husband. I did not say it very politely, either.

  She was angry.

  “Oh, you coarse creature! A young lady makes herself agreeable to him and he turns up his nose. Well, I never! What a ninny!”

  And she added, shaking a threatening finger at me: “You just wait. I will remember that of you!” But Pavl said to her, taking my part:

  “Your young man would give you something if he knew about your behavior!”

  She screwed up her pimply face contemptuously.

  “I am not afraid of him! I have a dowry. I am much better than he is! A girl only has the time till she is married to amuse herself.”

  She began to play about with Pavl, and from that time I found in her an unwearying calumniator.

  My life in the shop became harder and harder. I read church books all the time. The disputes and conversations of the valuers had ceased to amuse me, for they were always talking over the same things in the same old way. Petr Vassilich alone still interested me, with his knowledge of the dark side of human life, and his power of speaking interestingly and enthusiastically. Sometimes I thought he must be the prophet Elias walking the earth, solitary and vindictive. But each time that I spoke to the old man frankly about people, or about my own thoughts, he repeated all that I had said to the shopman, who either ridiculed me offensively, or abused me angrily.

  One day I told the old man that I sometimes wrote his sayings in the note-book in which I had copied various poems taken out of books. This greatly alarmed the valuer, who limped towards me swiftly, asking anxiously:

  “What did you do that for? It is not worth while, my lad. So that you may remember? No; you just give it up. Wha
t a boy you are! Now you will give me what you have written, won’t you?”

  He tried long and earnestly to persuade me to either give him the notebook, or to burn it, and then he began to whisper angrily with the shopman.

  As we were going home, the latter said to me: “You have been taking notes? That has got to be’ stopped! Do you hear? Only detectives do that sort of thing!”

  Then I asked incautiously:

  “And what about Sitanov? He also takes notes.” “Also. That long fool?”

  He was silent for a long time, and then with unusual gentleness he said:

  “Listen; if you show me your note-book and Sitanov’s, too, I will give you half a ruble! Only do it on the quiet, so that Sitanov does not see.”

  No doubt he thought that I would carry out his wish, and without saying another word, he ran in front of me on his short legs.

  When I reached the house, I told Sitanov what the shopman had proposed to me. Evgen frowned.

  “You have been chattering purposely. Now he will give some one instructions to steal both our notebooks. Give me yours—I will hide it. And he will turn you out before long—you see!”

  I was convinced of that, too, and resolved to leave as soon as grandmother returned to the town. She had been living at Balakhania all the winter, invited by some one to teach young girls to make lace. Grandfather was again living in Kunavin Street, but I did not visit him, and when he came to the town, he never came to see me. One day we ran into each other in the street. He was walking along in a heavy racoon pelisse, importantly and slowly. I said “How do you do” to him. He lifted his hands to shade his eyes, looked at me from under them, and then said thoughtfully:

  “Oh, it is you; you are an image-painter now. Yes, yes; all right; get along with you.”

  Pushing me out of his way, he continued his walk, slowly and importantly.

  I saw grandmother seldom. She worked unweariedly to feed grandfather, who was suffering from the malady of old age—senile weakness—and had also taken upon herself the care of my uncle’s children.

  The one who caused her the most worry was Sascha, Mikhail’s son, a handsome lad, dreamy and book-loving. He worked in a dyer’s shop, frequently changed his employers, and in the intervals threw himself on grandmother’s shoulders, calmly waiting until she should find him another place. She had Sascha’s sister on her shoulders, too. She had made an unfortunate marriage with a drunken workman, who beat her and turned her out of his house.