by Maxim Gorky
“What of it?”
“It is not particularly pleasant to begin again with one’s own people.”
“The beginning is the same anywhere.”
“All the same—”
They talked in such an amicably serious vein that the Tatar woman left off teasing them, and coming into the room, took her frock down from the wall in silence, and disappeared.
“She is young,” said Osip.
Ardalon glanced at him and without annoyance replied:
“Ephimushka is wrong-headed. He knows nothing, except about women. But the Tatar woman is joyous; she maddens us all.”
“Take care; you won’t be able to escape from her,” Osip warned him, and having eaten the walnut, took his leave.
On the way back I asked Osip:
“Why did you go to him?”
“Just to look at him. He is a man I have known a long time. I have seen ma-a-ny such cases. A man leads a decent life, and suddenly he behaves as if he had just escaped from prison.” He repeated what he had said before, “One should be on one’s guard against vodka.”
But after a minute he added:
“But life would be dull without it.”
“Without vodka?”
“Well, yes! When you drink, it is just as if you were in another world.”
Ardalon never came back for good. At the end of a few days he returned to work, but soon disappeared again, and in the spring I met him among the dock laborers; he was melting the ice round the barges in the harbor. We greeted each other in friendly fashion and went to a tavern for tea, after which he boasted:
“You remember what a workman I was, eh? I tell you straight, I was an expert at my own business! I could have earned hundreds.”
“However, you did not.”
“No, I didn’t earn them,” he cried proudly. “I spit upon work!”
He swaggered. The people in the tavern listened to his impassioned words and were impressed.
“You remember what that sly thief Petrucha used to say about work? For others stone houses; for himself a wooden coffin! Well, that’s true of all work!”
I said:
“Petrucha is ill. He is afraid of death.”
But Ardalon cried:
“I am ill, too; my heart is out of order.”
On holidays I often wandered out of the town to “Millioni Street,” where the dockers lived, and saw how quickly Ardalon had settled down among those uncouth ruffians. Only a year ago, happy and serious-minded, Ardalon had now become as noisy as any of them. He had acquired their curious, shambling walk, looked at people defiantly, as if he were inviting every one to fight with him, and was always boasting:
“You see how I am received; I am like a chieftain here!”
Never grudging the money he had earned, he liberally treated the dockers, and in fights he always took the part of the weakest. He often cried:
“That’s not fair, children! You’ve got to fight fair!”
And so they called him “Fairplay,” which delighted him.
I ardently studied these people, closely packed in that old and dirty sack of a street. All of them were people who had cut themselves off from ordinary life, but they seemed to have created a life of their own, independent of any master, and gay. Careless, audacious, they reminded me of grandfather’s stories about the bargemen who so easily transformed themselves into brigands or hermits. When there was no work, they were not squeamish about committing small thefts from the barges and steamers, but that did not trouble me, for I saw that life was sewn with theft, like an old coat with gray threads. At the same time I saw that these people never worked with enthusiasm, unsparing of their energies, as happened in cases of urgency, such as fires, or the breaking of the ice. And, as a rule, they lived more of a holiday life than any other people.
But Osip, having noticed my friendship with Ardalon, warned me in a fatherly way:
“Look here, my boy; why this close friendship with the folk of Millioni Street? Take care you don’t do yourself harm by it.”
I told him as well as I could how I liked these people who lived so gaily, without working.
“Birds of the air they are!” he interrupted me, laughing. “That’s what they are—idle, useless people; and work is a calamity to them!”
“What is work, after all? As they say, the labors of the righteous don’t procure them stone houses to live in!”
I said this glibly enough. I had heard the proverb so often, and felt the truth of it.
But Osip was very angry with me, and cried:
“Who says so? Fools, idlers! And you are a youngster; you ought not to listen to such things! Oh, you—! That is the nonsense which is uttered by the envious, the unsuccessful. Wait till your feathers are grown; then you can fly! And I shall tell your master about this friendship of yours.”
And he did tell. The master spoke to me about the matter.
“You leave the Millioni folk alone, Pyeshkov! They are thieves and prostitutes, and from there the path leads to the prison and the hospital. Let them alone!”
I began to conceal my visits to Millioni Street, but I soon had to give them up. One day I was sitting with Ardalon and his comrade, Robenok, on the roof of a shed in the yard of one of the lodging-houses. Robenok was relating to us amusingly how he had made his way on foot from Rostov, on the Don, to Moscow. He had been a soldier-sapper, a Geogrivsky horseman, and he was lame. In the war with Turkey he had been wounded in the knee. Of low stature, he had a terrible strength in his arms, a strength which was of no profit to him, for his lameness prevented him from working. He had had an illness which had caused the hair to fall from his head and face; his head was like that of a new-born infant.
With his brown eyes sparkling he said:
“Well, at Serpoukhov I saw a priest sitting in a sledge. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘give something to a Turkish hero.’”
Ardalon shook his head and said:
“That’s a lie!”
“Why should I lie?” asked Robenok, not in the least offended, and my friend growled in lazy reproof:
“You are incorrigible! You have the chance of becoming a watchman—they always put lame men to that job—and you stroll about aimlessly, and tell lies.”
“Well, I only do it to make people laugh. I lie just for the sake of amusement.”
“You ought to laugh at yourself.”
In the yard, which was dark and dirty although the weather was dry and sunny, a woman appeared and cried, waving some sort of a rag about her head:
“Who will buy a petticoat? Hi, friends!”
Women crept out from the hidden places of the house and gathered closely round the seller. I recognized her at once; it was the laundress, Natalia. I jumped down from the roof, but she, having given the petticoat to the first bidder, had already quietly left the yard.
“How do you do?” I greeted her joyfully as I caught her at the gate.
“What next, I wonder?” she exclaimed, glancing at me askance, and then she suddenly stood still, crying angrily: “God save us! What are you doing here?”
Her terrified exclamation touched and confused me. I realized that she was afraid for me; terror and amazement were shown so plainly in her intelligent face. I soon explained to her that I was not living in that street, but only went there sometimes to see what there was to see.
“See?” she cried angrily and derisively. “What sort of a place is this that you should want to see it? It’s the women you’re after.”
Her face was wrinkled, dark shadows lay under her eyes, and her lips drooped feebly.
Standing at the door of a tavern she said:
“Come in; I am going to have some tea! You are well-dressed, not like they dress here, yet I cannot believe what you say.”
But in the tavern she seemed to believe me,
and as she poured out tea, she began to tell me how she had only awakened from sleep an hour ago, and had not had anything to eat or drink yet.
“And when I went to bed last night I was as drunk as drunk. I can’t even remember where I had the drink, or with whom.”
I felt sorry for her, awkward in her presence, and I wanted to ask her where her daughter was. After she had drunk some vodka and hot tea, she began to talk in a familiar, lively way, coarsely, like all the women of that street, but when I asked about her daughter she was sobered at once, and cried:
“What do you want to know for? No, my boy, you won’t get hold of her; don’t think it!”
She drank more, and then she said:
“I have nothing to do with my daughter. What am I? A laundress! What sort of a mother for her? She is well brought up, educated. That she is, my brother! She left me to live with a rich friend, as a teacher, like—”
After a silence she said:
“That’s how it is! The laundress doesn’t please you, but the street-walker does?”
That she was a street-walker I had seen at once, of course. There was no other kind of woman in that street. But when she told me so herself, my eyes filled with tears of shame and pity for her. I felt as if she had burned me by making that admission,—she, who not long ago had been so brave, independent, and clever.
“Ekh! you!” she said, looking at me and sighing. “Go away from this place, I beg you! I urge you, don’t come here, or you will be lost!”
Then she began to speak softly and brokenly, as if she were talking to herself, bending over the table and drawing figures on the tray with her fingers.
“But what are my entreaties and my advice to you? When my own daughter would not listen to me I cried to her: ‘You can’t throw aside your own mother. What are you thinking of?’ And she—she said, ‘I shall strangle myself!’ And she went away to Kazan; she wants to learn to be a midwife. Good—good! But what about me? You see what I am now? What have I to cling to? And so I went on the streets.”
She fell Into a silence, and thought for a long time, soundlessly moving her lips. It was plain that she had forgotten me. The corners of her lips drooped; her mouth was curved like a sickle, and it was a torturing sight to see how her lips quivered, and how the wavering furrows on her face spoke without words. Her face was like that of an aggrieved child. Strands of hair had fallen from under her headkerchief, and lay on her cheek, or coiled behind her small ear. Her tears dropped into her cup of cold tea, and seeing this, she pushed the cup away and shut her eyes tightly, squeezing out two more tears. Then she wiped her face with her handkerchief. I could not bear to stay with her any longer. I rose quietly.
“Good-by!”
“Eh? Go—go to the devil!” She waved me away without looking at me; she had apparently forgotten who was with her.
I returned to Ardalon in the yard. He had meant to come with me to catch crabs, and I wanted to tell him about the woman. But neither he nor Robenok were on the roof of the shed; and while I was looking for him in the disorderly yard, there arose from the street the sound of one of those rows which were frequent there.
I went out through the gate and came into collision with Natalia, sobbing, wiping her bruised face with her headkerchief. Setting straight her disordered hair with her other hand, she went blindly along the footpath, and following her came Ardalon and Robenok. The latter was saying:
“Give her one more; come on!”
Ardalon overtook the woman, flourishing his fist. She turned her bosom full toward him; her face was terrible; her eyes blazed with hatred.
“Go on, hit me!” she cried.
I hung on to Ardalon’s arm; he looked at me in amazement.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Don’t touch her!” I just managed to say.
He burst out laughing.
“She is your lover? Aie, that Natashka, she has devoured our little monk.”
Robenok laughed, too, holding his sides, and for a long time they roasted me with their hot obscenity. It was unbearable! But while they were thus occupied, Natalia went away, and I, losing my temper at last, struck Robenok in the chest with my head, knocking him over, and ran away.
For a long time after that I did not go near Millioni Street. But I saw Ardalon once again; I met him on the ferry-boat.
“Where have you been hiding yourself?” he asked joyfully.
When I told him that it was repulsive to me to remember how he had knocked Natalia about and obscenely insulted me, Ardalon laughed good-naturedly.
“Did you take that seriously? We only rubbed it into you for a joke! As for her, why shouldn’t she be knocked about, a street-walker? People beat their wives, so they are certainly not going to have more mercy on such as that! Still, it was only a joke, the whole thing. I understand, you know, that the fist is no good for teaching!”
“What have you got to teach her? How are you better than she is?”
He put his hands on my shoulders and, shaking me, said banteringly:
“In our disgraceful state no one of us is better than another.”
Then he laughed and added boastfully:
“I understand everything from within and without, brother, everything! I am not wood!”
He was a little tipsy, at the jovial stage; he looked at me with the tender pity of a good master for an unintelligent pupil.
Sometimes I met Pavl Odintzov. He was livelier than ever, dressed like a dandy, and talked to me condescendingly and always reproachfully.
“You are throwing yourself away on that kind of work! They are nothing but peasants.”
Then he would sadly retail all the latest news from the workshop.
“Jikharev is still taken up with that cow. Sitanov is plainly fretting; he has begun to drink to excess. The wolves have eaten Golovev; he was coming home from Sviatka; he was drunk, and the wolves devoured him.” And bursting into a gay peal of laughter he comically added:
“They ate him and they all became drunk themselves! They were very merry and walked about the forests on their hind legs, like performing dogs. Then they fell to fighting and in twenty-fours hours they were all dead!”
I listened to him and laughed, too, but I felt that the workshop and all I had experienced in it was very far away from me now.
This was rather a melancholy reflection.
CHAPTER XIX
There was hardly any work in the market-square during the winter, and instead I had innumerable trivial duties to perform in the house. They swallowed up the whole day, but the evenings were left free. Once more I read to the household novels which were unpalatable to me, from the “Neva” and the “Moscow Gazette”; but at night I occupied myself by reading good books and by attempts at writing poetry.
One day when the women had gone out to vespers and my master was kept at home through indisposition, he asked me:
“Victor is making fun of you because he says you write poetry, Pyeshkov. Is that true? Well then, read it to me!”
It would have been awkward to refuse, and I read several of my poetical compositions. These evidently did not please him, but he said:
“Stick to it! Stick to it! You may become a Pushkin; have you read Pushkin?”
“‘Do the goblins have funeral rites?
Are the witches given in marriage?’”
In his time people still believed in goblins, but he did not believe in them himself. Of course he was just joking.
“Ye-es, brother,” he drawled thoughtfully, “you ought to have been taught, but now it is too late. The devil knows what will become of you! I should hide that note-book of yours more carefully, for if the women get hold of it, they will laugh at you. Women, brother, love to touch one on a weak spot.”
For some time past my master had been quiet and thoughtful; he had a trick of looking about
him cautiously, and the sound of the bell startled him. Sometimes he would give way to a painful irritability about trifles, would scold us all, and rush out of the house, returning drunk late at night. One felt that something had come into his life which was known only to himself, which had lacerated his heart; and that he was living not sensibly, or willingly, but simply by force of habit.
On Sundays from dinner-time till nine o’clock I was free to go out and about, and the evenings I spent at a tavern in Yamski Street. The host, a stout and always perspiring man, was passionately fond of singing, and the chorister’s of most of the churches knew this, and used to frequent his house. He treated them with vodka, beer, or tea, for their songs. The choristers were a drunken and uninteresting set of people; they sang unwillingly, only for the sake of the hospitality, and almost always it was church music. As certain of the pious drunkards did not consider that the tavern was the place for them, the host used to invite them to his private room, and I could only hear the singing through the door. But frequently peasants from the villages, and artisans came. The tavern-keeper himself used to go about the town inquiring for singers, asking the peasants who came in on market-days, and inviting them to his house.
The singer was always given a chair close to the bar, his back to a cask of vodka; his head was outlined against the bottom of the cask as if it were in a round frame.
The best singer of all—and they were always particularly good singers—was the small, lean harness-maker, Kleshtchkov, who looked as if he had been squeezed, and had tufts of red hair on his head. His little nose gleamed like that of a corpse; his benign, dreamy eyes were immovable.
Sometimes he closed his eyes, leaned the back of his head against the bottom of the cask, protruding his chest, and in his soft but all-conquering tenor voice sang the quick moving:
“Ekh! how the fog has fallen upon the clean fields already!
And has hidden the distant roads!”
Here he would stop, and resting his back against the bar, bending backwards, went on, with his face raised toward the ceiling:
“Ekh! where—where am I going?
Where shall I find the broad ro-oad?”
His voice was small like himself, but it was unwearied; he permeated the dark, dull room of the tavern with silvery chords, melancholy words. His groans and cries conquered every one; even the drunken ones became amazedly surprised, gazing down in silence at the tables in front of them. As for me, my heart was torn, and overflowed with those mighty feelings which good music always arouses as it miraculously touches the very depths of the soul.