by Maxim Gorky
Yakov put a bucket of kvass* onto the table, threw down a bunch of spring onions and said to the sick man:
“Come, Savely, I’ve brought you some milk…”
Savely shook his head, but Yakov put an arm around him, stood him up and led him to the table.
“Listen,” said Sofia to Rybin in a quiet and reproachful voice, “why did you invite him here? He could die at any moment…”
“He could!” Rybin agreed. “But for the time being, let him talk. He ruined his life for the sake of trifles, let him endure a little more for the sake of men – it’s all right! There.”
“It’s as if you were gloating over something!” Sofia exclaimed.
Rybin glanced at her and replied morosely:
“It’s the gentlefolk who gloat over Christ, the way He groaned on the cross, whereas us, we’re learning from someone and would like you to do a bit of learning too…”
The mother raised an eyebrow fearfully and said to him:
“That’s enough from you!…”
At the table the sick man began speaking again:
“They destroy people with work – why? They steal a man’s life – why, I say? Our master – it was at Nefedov’s factory I lost my life – our master presented a singer with a gold washbasin, even with a gold chamberpot! My strength, my life was in that pot. That’s what it went on – a man killed me with work to amuse his lover with my blood – he bought her a gold chamberpot with my blood!”
“Man is created in the image and likeness of God,” said Yefim, grinning, “and that’s what he’s spent on…”
“Well, don’t be silent!” exclaimed Rybin, striking the palm of his hand on the table.
“Don’t put up with it!” Yakov added quietly.
Ignat grinned.
The mother noticed that the lads, all three of them, listened with the insatiable attention of hungry souls, and every time Rybin spoke, they looked into his face with watchful eyes. Savely’s speech brought strange, sharp grins to their faces. There was no pity for the sick man to be felt in them.
Leaning towards Sofia, the mother asked quietly:
“Is he really telling the truth?”
Sofia replied loudly:
“Yes, it’s the truth! It was in the newspapers about that present, it was in Moscow…”
“And there was no punishment for him, none at all!” said Rybin in a muffled voice. “And he ought to be punished, brought out in front of the people and hacked to pieces, and his rotten flesh should be thrown to the dogs. Great punishments will be carried out by the people when they rise. They’ll spill much blood to wash away their injuries. That blood is their blood, it was drunk from their veins, they are its owners.”
“I’m cold!” said the sick man.
Yakov helped him stand up and led him off towards the fire.
The campfire was burning brightly, and faceless shadows were flickering around it, observing in wonderment the merry play of the flames. Savely sat down on a tree stump and stretched his transparent, withered hands out towards them. Rybin nodded in his direction and said to Sofia:
“This is more dramatic than books! When a machine rips an arm off or kills a worker, the explanation is – his own fault. But when the blood’s sucked out of a man and he’s abandoned like carrion, there is no explanation. I can understand any killing, but torture, just for a joke, that I don’t! Why do they torture the people, why do they torment us all? For a joke, for fun, to make living on earth amusing, so that everything can be bought with blood – a singer, horses, silver knives, a gold basin, expensive toys for the kiddies. You work, work more, and through your labour I’ll accumulate money and present my lover with a golden pisspot.”
The mother listened and looked, and once again the path of Pavel and all those with whom he was marching shone out and lay like a bright band before her in the darkness.
After finishing dinner, everyone settled themselves around the campfire; before them burned the flames, hurriedly eating up the firewood, and behind them hung the darkness, which had enveloped the wood and the sky. The sick man looked into the flames with wide eyes, continually coughing, shaking all over; it seemed as if the remnants of his life were bursting impatiently out of his chest, in a rush to leave a body eaten away by disease. Reflections of the fire trembled on his face without bringing life to the dead skin. Only the eyes of the sick man burned with a dying flame.
“Maybe you should go inside the hut, Savely?” Yakov asked, bending over him.
“What for?” he replied with an effort. “I’ll sit here for a while – I’ve not got much time left to be with people!…”
He cast an eye over everyone, paused, and then with a pale grin continued:
“I like being with you. I look at you and think: perhaps they’ll avenge those who’ve been robbed, the people killed out of greed…”
He got no reply, and he soon dozed off with his head hanging impotently down on his chest. Rybin looked at him and began quietly:
“He comes to us, sits and tells always the same story about that insult to a man. The whole of his soul is in there, as though he’d had his eyes put out by it and can see nothing else.”
“What more do you actually want, then?” said the mother pensively. “If people are wearing themselves out in their thousands day after day at work so that their master can throw money away for a joke, what, then?…”
“It’s boring listening to him!” Ignat said quietly. “If you hear it just once you won’t forget it, and he always says the one thing!”
“Everything’s squeezed in there, into that one thing… the whole of life, you understand?” Rybin remarked morosely. “I’ve heard his fate ten times, and all the same, there are times you doubt it. You have good moments, when you don’t want to believe in man’s vileness, in his madness… when you feel sorry for everyone, the rich as well as the poor… the rich man’s gone astray too! One is blinded by hunger, the other by gold. ‘Oh people,’ you think, ‘oh brothers! Pull yourselves together, think honestly, think without sparing yourselves, think!’”
The sick man rocked, opened his eyes and lay down on the ground. Yakov got up noiselessly, went into the hut, brought out a sheepskin coat, put it on top of his cousin and sat down again next to Sofia.
Smiling fervently, the rosy face of the fire lit up the dark figures around it, and the voices of the people poured pensively into the quiet crackling and hissing of the flame.
Sofia talked about the people’s worldwide struggle for the right to live, about the battles of the peasants of Germany long ago, about the misfortunes of the Irish, about the great feats of the French workers in their frequent battles for freedom…
In the wood, dressed in the velvet of night, in the little clearing, fenced in by trees and covered by the dark sky, in the face of the fire, in a circle of inimically astonished shadows, events that had shaken the world of the replete and the greedy rose again, one after another, the peoples of the earth passed by, streaming with blood, exhausted by battles, and the names of fighters for freedom and justice were recalled.
Soft was the rather muffled sound of the woman’s voice. As though coming from out of the past, it awakened hopes and inspired confidence, and the people listened in silence to the tale of their brothers in spirit. They looked into the woman’s face, thin and pale, and illumined ever more brightly before them was the sacred cause of all the peoples of the world – the endless struggle for freedom. A man could see his desires and thoughts in a distant past, veiled by a dark, bloody curtain, amidst men of different tribes unknown to him, and inwardly, in mind and heart, he joined together with that world, seeing in it friends who had resolved long before, firmly and with a single mind, to achieve justice on earth, who had sanctified their resolve with innumerable sufferings, had spilt rivers of their blood for the sake of the triumph of a life that was new, bright and joyo
us. Arising and growing was a sense of spiritual intimacy with all; being born was a new heart for the earth, filled with an ardent aspiration to understand all, to unite all in itself.
“The day will come when the workers of all countries will raise their heads and say firmly – enough! We don’t want this life any more!” Sofia’s voice rang out confidently. “Then the illusory strength of those strong in their greed will crumble, the earth will slip away from under their feet and there’ll be nothing for them to lean on…”
“So it will be!” said Rybin, bowing his head. “Don’t spare yourself and you’ll overcome everything!”
The mother listened with one eyebrow raised and with a smile of joyous surprise frozen on her face. She saw that everything sharp, strident and sweeping, everything that had seemed to her excessive about Sofia, had now disappeared, had been drowned in the ardent, steady stream of her story. She liked the quietness of the night, the play of the fire, Sofia’s face, but most of all, the stern attention of the peasants. They sat motionless, trying not to disturb the serene flow of the story, afraid of cutting short the bright thread that linked them with the world. Only at times would one of them carefully add some wood to the flames, and whenever swarms of sparks and smoke rose from the campfire, someone would drive the sparks and smoke away from the women by waving a hand in the air.
Once Yakov stood up and requested quietly:
“Wait, before you carry on…”
He ran into the hut, brought out some clothes, and he and Ignat together silently wrapped them around the women’s legs and shoulders. Sofia spoke again, painting the day of victory, inspiring in the men a belief in their strength, awakening in them a consciousness of what they have in common with all who give their lives to fruitless labour for the stupid amusements of the satiated. The words did not excite the mother, but the great feeling aroused by Sofia’s story, a feeling that embraced them all, filled her breast, too, with a gratefully prayerful thought about the people who go amidst dangers to those who are shackled with the chains of labour and bring them gifts of honest reason, gifts of love of the truth.
“Help them, Lord!” she thought, closing her eyes.
At dawn, exhausted, Sofia fell silent and, smiling, looked around at the pensive, brightened faces around her.
“It’s time for us to go!” said the mother.
“It is!” said Sofia wearily.
One of the lads sighed heavily.
“It’s a shame you’re going!” said Rybin in an unusually soft voice. “You speak well! That’s a great thing, making people feel close to one another! When you know that millions want the same thing as we do, your heart becomes kinder. And there’s great strength in kindness!”
“You treat a man with kindness, and he treats you to blindness!” Yefim said quietly with a grin, and quickly leapt to his feet. “It’s time for them to leave, Uncle Mikhailo, before anyone sees them. We’ll give out the books, and the authorities will be searching for where they came from. Someone might remember there were those wanderers who were here…”
“Well, thank you, Mother, for your labours!” said Rybin, interrupting Yefim. “I keep on thinking of Pavel when I look at you – you’ve set out on a good path!”
Softened, he was smiling a broad, kind smile. It was fresh, but he stood in just his shirt with the collar unbuttoned and his chest bared down low. The mother looked his big figure over and advised him gently:
“You should put something on, it’s cold!”
“I’m warmed from within!” he replied.
The three lads were standing by the fire chatting, and at their feet lay the sick man, covered with sheepskin coats. The sky was turning pale, the shadows were melting, and the leaves were quivering as they waited for the sun.
“So, farewell then!” said Rybin, shaking Sofia’s hand. “How can you be found in town?”
“You look for me!” said the mother.
The lads went up to Sofia slowly, in a tight group, and pressed her hand in silence, awkwardly gentle. Clearly evident in each of them was secret contentment, grateful and friendly, and this feeling must have been troubling for them in its novelty. Smiling with eyes that were dry from the sleepless night, they looked silently into Sofia’s face and shifted from one foot to the other.
“Won’t you have some milk before setting off?” asked Yakov.
Smoothing his hair in embarrassment, Ignat announced:
“There isn’t any – I spilt it…”
And all three grinned.
They were talking about milk, but the mother sensed that they were thinking about something else, without words, wishing Sofia and her well, all the best. This visibly touched Sofia and provoked embarrassment in her too, a chaste modesty that allowed her to say nothing more than a quiet:
“Thank you, comrades!”
They exchanged glances, as though that last word had gently shaken them.
The sick man’s muffled cough rang out. The charcoal in the burning fire was extinguished.
“Farewell!” said the peasants in a low voice, and that sad word stayed with the women for a long time.
They walked unhurriedly down a woodland path in the pre-morning twilight, and the mother, striding behind Sofia, said:
“It’s good, all this, as if in a dream it’s so good! People want to know the truth, my dear, they do! And it’s like in church, before matins on a big holiday… the priest hasn’t arrived yet, it’s dark and quiet, it’s awesome in the church, but the people are already gathering… here a candle’s lit in front of an icon, one’s set burning there as well, and little by little they drive away the darkness, lighting up God’s house.”
“That’s right!” Sofia answered cheerfully. “Only here God’s house is the whole earth!”
“The whole earth!” the mother repeated pensively, shaking her head. “It’s so good, it’s hard even to believe it… And you spoke well, my dear, really well! And I was afraid they wouldn’t like you…”
After a pause, Sofia replied quietly and cheerlessly:
“With them you become more straightforward…”
They walked and talked about Rybin, about the sick man, about the lads who had been so attentively silent and had so awkwardly, and yet eloquently, expressed their feeling of grateful friendship through their little attentions to the women. They emerged into open country. The sun was rising to meet them. Not yet visible to the eye, it had spread a transparent fan of pink rays across the sky, and the dewdrops in the grass had begun to shine with multicoloured sparks of cheery, vernal joy. The birds were waking up, enlivening the morning with their merry pealing. Some fat crows were flying along, cawing busily and flapping their wings heavily, and somewhere there was an oriole whistling anxiously. The far distance was revealing itself, shedding the nocturnal shadows from its hills to meet the sun.
“Sometimes a person can talk and talk, but you don’t understand him till he manages to say some simple word to you, then it alone will suddenly throw light on everything!” the mother recounted thoughtfully. “That’s how it was with that sick man. I’ve heard about it, and I know for myself the way the workers are squeezed at factories and everywhere. But you get used to it from an early age, and it doesn’t sting your heart too much. And suddenly he told of such a hurtful, such a rotten thing. Lord! Do people really give up their whole lives to work so that their masters can permit themselves to mock them? That can’t be justified!”
The mother’s thoughts had fixed on the incident, and with its obtuse, brazen brilliance it was shedding light before her on a series of antics of the same kind about which she had once known, but had forgotten.
“They’ve clearly had their fill of everything and now they’re feeling sick! I know one land captain made the peasants bow to his horse when it was led through the village, and anyone who didn’t bow he’d put under arrest. Well, why did he need to do tha
t? It’s impossible to understand, impossible!”
In a low voice, Sofia began singing a song as cheery as the morning…
VII
The flow of Nilovna’s life was strangely serene. This serenity amazed her at times. Her son was in prison, and she knew a grave punishment awaited him, but every time she thought about this, her memory, irrespective of her will, summoned up before her Andrei, Fedya and a long row of other faces. Absorbing all those people who shared his fate, Pavel’s figure grew in her eyes and prompted a contemplative feeling, which involuntarily and imperceptibly extended her thoughts about him and sent them off in all directions. They spread out everywhere in slender, uneven rays, touching everything, and they sought to cast light on everything, to gather everything into a single picture, and they prevented her from fixing on any one thing, prevented her longing for her son and her fear for him taking firm shape.
Sofia soon went away somewhere, then appeared some five days later, cheerful and lively, but after a few hours she vanished again, appearing once more after a couple of weeks. She seemed to be rushing through life in wide circles, looking in occasionally on her brother to fill his apartment with her good cheer and music.
The music became pleasant for the mother. As she listened, she felt as if warm waves were beating her in the chest and pouring into her heart, which beat more evenly, and in which, like seeds in earth that is abundantly moistened and deeply ploughed, the waves of her thoughts grew quickly and boldly, and words bloomed easily and beautifully, awakened by the power of the sounds.
The mother found it hard to come to terms with Sofia’s untidiness, as she threw her things about everywhere, her cigarette butts and ash, but even more so with her sweeping speeches; the impression was all too painful beside Nikolai’s serene certainty and the invariable soft seriousness of his words. Sofia seemed to her like an adolescent in a hurry to pass herself off as a grown-up, who looks upon people as curious toys. She talked a lot about the sanctity of labour, yet senselessly increased that of the mother with her untidiness; she talked about freedom, yet the mother could see she inhibited everyone with her sharp impatience and continual arguments. There was a lot that was contradictory about her, and the mother, seeing this, treated her with tense caution and watchful attention, without the constant warmth in her heart that Nikolai elicited from her.