by Maxim Gorky
“My sweet!” whispered the mother.
Lyudmila walked slowly away from the bed, stopped by the window and, gazing into space in front of her, said in an unusually loud voice that Vlasova did not recognize:
“He’s dead…”
She bent down, put her elbows on the window sill and suddenly, as if she had been hit on the head, dropped powerless to her knees, hid her face in her hands and let out a muffled moan.
After settling Yegor’s heavy arms on his chest and straightening his strangely heavy head on the pillow, wiping her tears, the mother went across to Lyudmila, leant over her and gently stroked her thick hair. The woman turned to her slowly; her matt eyes morbidly widened, she got to her feet and whispered with trembling lips:
“We walked into exile and lived there together; we were in all sorts of different prisons… At times it was unbearable, repulsive – many lost heart…”
Loud, dry sobbing choked her, but she overcame it and, bringing her face up close to the mother’s, a face softened by gentle, sad emotion that made it look younger, she continued in a rapid whisper, sobbing tearlessly:
“But he was always inexhaustibly cheerful, he joked and laughed, manfully concealing his suffering… he tried to encourage the weak. Kind, sensitive, sweet… There, in Siberia, the idleness corrupts people, it often calls to life bad feelings – but he could battle with them so well!… What a comrade he was, if only you knew! His private life was difficult, agonizing, but nobody ever heard him complain, nobody! I was his close friend, I owe much to his heart; he gave me everything he could from his mind and, alone and tired, never asked for either affection or attention in return…”
She went over to Yegor, bent down and, kissing his hand, said in a low, mournful voice:
“Comrade, my dear sweet man, I thank you, thank you with all my heart – farewell! I shall work like you, tirelessly, without doubts, all my life!… Farewell!”
There were sobs shaking her body and, gasping for breath, she laid her head on the bed at Yegor’s feet. The mother shed abundant tears in silence. For some reason she tried to contain them, she wanted to give Lyudmila a special, powerful sort of affection, she wanted to talk about Yegor with kind words of love and sorrow. Through her tears she looked into his sunken face and eyes, drowsily covered by lowered lids, at his lips, dark and set in a slight smile. It was quiet and miserably light…
Ivan Danilovich came in with hurried little steps, as always, came in, stopped suddenly in the middle of the room and, thrusting his hands with a quick gesture into his pockets, asked in a nervous, loud voice:
“Some time ago?”
He got no reply. Quietly rocking on his feet and wiping his brow, he went up to Yegor, gave his hand a squeeze and stepped aside.
“It’s not surprising, with his heart it ought to have happened six months ago… at least…”
His high, inappropriately loud, forcibly calm voice suddenly broke. Leaning his back against the wall, he twisted his little beard with rapid fingers and, blinking frequently, watched the group by the bed.
“Yet another one!” he said quietly.
Lyudmila stood up, moved away to the window and opened it. A minute later, all three of them were standing by the window, pressing up close to one another and looking into the gloomy face of the autumnal night. Twinkling above the black tops of the trees were the stars, extending interminably the depths of the heavens…
Lyudmila took the mother by the arm and pressed up in silence against her shoulder. The doctor, with his head bowed low, was cleaning his pince-nez with a handkerchief. In the quietness outside the window, the evening noise of the town was sighing wearily, the cold wafted into their faces and stirred the hair on their heads. Lyudmila was shuddering, and a tear flowed down her cheek. Flying about in the hospital corridor were jaded, frightened sounds, the hurried shuffling of feet, groans, a doleful whispering. The people standing motionless by the window looked into the darkness and were silent.
The mother felt she was superfluous and, after carefully freeing her arm, with a bow to Yegor she went towards the door.
“Are you leaving?” the doctor asked quietly without looking round.
“Yes…”
Out in the street she thought about Lyudmila and recalled her miserable tears:
“She doesn’t even know how to cry…”
Yegor’s final words elicited a quiet sigh from her. Pacing slowly down the street, she recalled his lively eyes, his jokes, his stories about life.
“Living is hard for a good person, but dying is easy… How am I going to die?…”
Then she imagined Lyudmila and the doctor by the window in the white, excessively light room, with Yegor’s dead eyes behind them, and, gripped by an oppressive sense of pity for people, she heaved a heavy sigh and started walking faster – a vague feeling of some sort hurried her along.
“I have to make haste!” she thought, submitting to the sad yet lively force that was pushing her gently on from within.
XI
The mother was busy arranging the funeral the whole of the following day, and in the evening, when she, Nikolai and Sofia were having tea, Sashenka appeared, strangely loud and animated. There was a flush burning on her cheeks, her eyes shone merrily and she seemed to the mother to be absolutely full of some sort of joyous hope. Her mood intruded sharply and stormily upon the sad tone of reminiscence about the dead man and, in failing to blend with it, was troubling for everyone and dazzling, like a fire that flares up unexpectedly in darkness. Tapping a finger pensively on the table, Nikolai said:
“You’re not yourself today, Sasha…”
“Really? Maybe not!” she replied, and laughed a happy laugh.
The mother looked at her in silent reproach, while Sofia remarked in a tone of reminder:
“We were talking about Yegor Ivanovich…”
“Such a wonderful man, wasn’t he?” exclaimed Sasha. “I never saw him without a smile on his face, without a joke. And how he worked! He was an artist of revolution, he had a great master’s command of revolutionary thought. He always drew pictures of falsehood, violence and untruth with such simplicity and power.”
She spoke in a low voice with a pensive smile in her eyes, but that smile could not extinguish the fire in her gaze, the fire of exultation that no one understood, but that was clearly evident to all.
They did not want to cede their mood of sorrow for a comrade to the feeling of joy introduced by Sasha and, unconsciously defending their sad right to live off grief, unwittingly tried to draw the girl into the circle of their own mood…
“And now he’s dead!” Sofia insisted, gazing at her attentively.
Sasha cast a quick, enquiring glance over all of them, and her brows knit in a frown. Lowering her head, she fell silent, putting her hair in place with a slow gesture.
“Dead?” she said loudly after a pause, and looked at everyone again with defiant eyes. “What does ‘dead’ mean? What’s ‘dead’? Is my respect for Yegor dead, my love for him, a comrade, the memory of the work of his thought, is that work dead? Have the feelings he aroused in my heart disappeared? Is my image of him as a steadfast, honest man shattered? Is all that dead? It’ll never be dead for me, I know. It seems to me we’re in too much of a hurry to say of a man: ‘he’s dead’. ‘His lips are dead, but may his word live on for ever in the hearts of the living!’”
Agitated, she sat down at the table again, leant her elbows on it and continued more quietly, more thoughtfully, gazing at her comrades with a smile in her clouded eyes:
“Maybe what I’m saying’s silly, but I believe, comrades, in the immortality of honest people, the immortality of those who’ve granted me the good fortune of leading the splendid life that I do, one that makes me joyously drunk with its amazing complexity, the variety of things in it and the growth of ideas as dear to me as my heart is. We’re perhaps
too thrifty in the expenditure of our feelings; we do a lot of our living through ideas, and that rather twists us; we evaluate, but we don’t feel…”
“Has something good happened to you?” asked Sofia with a smile.
“Yes!” said Sasha, nodding her head. “Very good, I think! I was talking to Vesovshchikov all night. I didn’t like him before: he seemed to me coarse and ignorant. And that’s what he was, undoubtedly. There was a fixed, ignorant irritation with everyone about him, he was somehow always putting himself at the centre of everything in a dreadfully difficult way, being rude and bitter, saying: ‘Me, me, me!’ There was something bourgeois, something irritating about it…”
She smiled, and again cast a radiant gaze over everyone.
“Now he says ‘comrades’! And you should hear the way he says it. With an embarrassed, gentle sort of love – you can’t convey it in words! He’s become amazingly straightforward and sincere, and he’s completely overflowing with desire for work. He’s found himself, he can see his strength, knows what he hasn’t got; and the main thing is that a truly comradely feeling has been born in him…”
Vlasova listened to Sasha’s speech, and it was nice for her to see this severe girl softened and joyous. But at the same time, somewhere deep in her soul, a jealous thought arose:
“And what about Pasha?…”
“He’s completely gripped,” Sasha continued, “by thoughts of his comrades, and do you know what he’s trying to convince me of? The need to organize their escape, yes! He says it’s really very easy…”
Sofia raised her head and said animatedly:
“And what do you think, Sasha? That’s an idea!”
The cup of tea in the mother’s hand started trembling. Sasha knitted her brows, containing her animation, paused, and then, in a serious voice, but smiling joyously, she said uncertainly:
“If everything really is as he says, we ought to try! It’s our duty!…”
She blushed, sank onto a chair and fell silent.
“My dear, dear girl!” thought the mother, smiling. Sofia smiled too, and Nikolai, gazing gently into Sasha’s face, quietly laughed. Then the girl raised her head, looked sternly at everyone and, pale, with flashing eyes, said drily with hurt in her voice:
“You laugh, and I understand why… You think I have a personal interest?”
“Why, Sasha?” asked Sofia slyly, getting up and going over to her. This question seemed to the mother unnecessary and hurtful for the girl; she sighed and, raising her eyebrows, looked at Sofia reproachfully.
“But I reject it!” Sasha exclaimed. “I’ll take no part in deciding the question if you look at it…”
“Stop it, Sasha!” said Nikolai calmly.
The mother went over to her, too, and, bending, cautiously stroked her head. Sasha seized her hand and, raising her own flushed face, glanced in confusion into the mother’s. The latter smiled and, finding no words to say to Sasha, sighed sadly. But Sofia sat down on a chair beside Sasha, put an arm around her shoulders and, peering into her eyes with a curious smile, said:
“You’re a funny girl!…”
“Yes, I think I’ve made a fool of myself…”
“How could you have thought…” Sofia continued. But Nikolai interrupted her in a serious, businesslike way:
“If an escape’s possible, there can’t be two opinions about organizing it. First and foremost, we need to know whether it’s what our imprisoned comrades want…”
Sasha lowered her head.
Lighting a cigarette, Sofia glanced at her brother and, with a grand gesture, threw the match away into a corner.
“But how could they not want it?” said the mother with a sigh. “Only I don’t believe it’s possible…”
Everyone was silent, and she so wanted to hear something more about the possibility of an escape!
“I need to see Vesovshchikov!” said Sofia.
“I’ll tell you when and where tomorrow!” Sasha replied in a low voice.
“What’s he going to do?” asked Sofia, pacing around the room.
“It’s been decided to get him working as a typesetter at the new printing office. Until then he’ll be staying with the forest warden.”
Sasha’s brows had knit in a frown, her face had taken on its usual severe expression and her voice sounded dry. Nikolai went up to the mother as she was washing the cups and said to her:
“You’re going on a visit the day after tomorrow, so Pavel needs to be given a message. You see, we need to know…”
“I understand, I do!” she hastened to respond. “I’ll be sure to give it to him…”
“I’m going!” Sasha announced and, after shaking everyone by the hand in silence, left quickly, erect and dry, with a tread that was somehow especially firm.
Sofia put her hands on the mother’s shoulders and, rocking her on her chair, asked with a smile:
“Would you love such a daughter, Nilovna?…”
“Oh Lord! If I could just see them together for a day!” Vlasova exclaimed, ready to burst into tears.
“Yes, a little happiness is good for all of us,” Nikolai remarked in a low voice. “But there isn’t anyone who’d wish for just a little happiness. And when there’s a lot of it, it’s cheap…”
Sofia sat down at the piano and started playing something sad.
XII
Next morning, several dozen men and women were standing by the hospital gates waiting for their comrade’s coffin to be brought out into the street. Circling around them cautiously were spies, catching the odd exclamation with their sharp ears, memorizing faces, manners and words and watching them from the other side of the street was a group of policemen with revolvers at their belts. The effrontery of the spies, the mocking smiles of the police and their readiness to show their strength irritated the crowd. Some, concealing their irritation, made jokes, others looked dolefully at the ground, trying not to notice the insults, yet others did not bother to contain their fury and laughed ironically at the administration that was afraid of people armed only with words. The pale-blue sky of autumn looked brightly into the street paved with round, grey stones and dotted with yellow foliage, while the wind swept the leaves up into the air, then dropped them back down under people’s feet.
The mother stood in the crowd and, watching familiar faces, thought with sadness:
“There are so few of you, so few! And hardly any working people…”
The gates opened, and the lid of the coffin was carried out into the street bearing wreaths decorated with red ribbons. The people removed their hats in unison, and it was as if a flock of black birds had flown up above their heads. A tall police officer with thick black whiskers on his red face was moving quickly into the crowd, and striding behind him, unceremoniously shoving people aside, were soldiers who stamped their heavy boots noisily on the stones. In a husky, commanding voice, the officer said:
“Remove the ribbons, please!”
He was surrounded by a tight circle of men and women who were saying something to him, waving their arms, getting agitated and pushing one another away. Flashing before the mother’s eyes were pale, excited faces with shaking lips, and rolling down the face of one woman were tears of hurt…
“Down with violence!” someone’s young voice cried out, then was lost on its own in the noise of the argument.
The mother, too, felt bitterness in her heart, and, turning to her neighbour, a poorly dressed young man, she said indignantly:
“They won’t even let a man be buried the way his comrades want – what ever’s going on?”
Animosity was growing, the coffin lid swayed above the people’s heads, the wind played with the ribbons, wrapping them round heads and faces, and there was the dry, nervous, rustling sound of silk.
The mother was enveloped by fear of a possible clash, and in a hurried, low voice she sai
d to right and left:
“So be it – if that’s how they want it, remove the ribbons! Let them have it their way, why not?…”
A loud, sharp voice rang out, drowning the noise:
“We demand that we are not prevented from seeing off on his final journey a man you harassed…”
Someone started singing in a high, thin voice:
“A victim, you fell in battle…”
“Remove the ribbons, please! Yakovlev, cut them off!”
There was the clang of a sabre being drawn. The mother closed her eyes, expecting a cry. But it grew quieter, people growled and snapped like wolves brought to bay. Then, with their heads bowed low, they silently moved forward, filling the street with the sound of their shuffling footsteps.
Up in front, the plundered coffin lid with its crumpled wreaths floated in the air, and policemen on horseback rocked from side to side. The mother was walking on the pavement and could not see the coffin in the dense crowd that, packed tightly around it, had imperceptibly grown and filled the entire width of the street. The grey figures of horsemen towered up at the rear of the crowd too, while at the sides, keeping their hands on their sabres, strode policemen on foot, and to be glimpsed everywhere, scanning people’s faces, were the sharp eyes of the spies the mother knew well.
“Farewell, our comrade, farewell…”
two beautiful voices began to sing sadly.
“None of that!” a cry rang out. “We’ll remain silent, gentlemen!”
There was something stern and impressive about that cry. The sorrowful song broke off, the sound of voices became quieter and only the firm thudding of feet on stones filled the street with a steady, muffled noise. It rose above the people’s heads, floating away into the transparent sky, and shook the air like the echo of the first thunder of a still-distant storm. The cold wind, ever strengthening, bore the dust and litter of the town streets inimically on towards the people, blowing their clothes and hair about, blinding their eyes, beating into their chests and getting caught up in their legs…