The Mother

by Maxim Gorky

  Lending a sensitive ear to the lazy fluctuations in the drowsy quietness, the mother lay motionless, and before her in the darkness swayed Rybin’s face, bathed in blood…

  A muffled whispering could be heard on the sleeping platform.

  “You see the sort of people who’re taking it up? Already getting on, had their fill of woe, they’ve worked, and it’s time they had a rest, but there they are! And you, you’re young, intelligent – oh Styopa…”

  The man’s soft, rich voice replied:

  “You can’t take up a thing like this without thought…”

  “I’ve heard that before…”

  The sounds broke off and then rose again – Stepan’s voice began buzzing:

  “It’s got to be done like this: first have a talk with the men individually – there’s Alyosha Makov, spirited, literate, and he’s been upset by the authorities. Sergei Shorin, a peasant with intelligence too. Knyazev, an honest, brave man. That’s enough for the time being! I need to have a look at the people she was talking about. I’ll take my axe and go into town as if I’m chopping firewood, gone to make some money, like. I need to be careful here. She’s right when she says a man’s worth is what he does. Like that man. You could stand him even before God, and he wouldn’t give up… he’s dug in. And what about Nikitka, eh? Felt ashamed – it’s a miracle!”

  “A man’s being beaten in front of you, and you just gaped…”

  “Just wait! And thank God we didn’t beat him ourselves, that man, that’s what!”

  He was whispering for a long time, now lowering his voice so that the mother could barely hear his words, now all at once beginning to buzz in a voice rich and strong. Then the woman would stop him:

  “Quiet! You’ll wake her…”

  The mother fell into deep sleep – it came down upon her all at once like a stifling cloud, enveloped her and bore her away.

  Tatyana woke her up when the grey twilight of morning was still looking blindly into the windows of the hut, when floating sleepily and melting in the cold quiet above the village was the bronze sound of the church’s warning bell.

  “I’ve put the samovar on, have some tea, or else you’ll be cold on the journey straight from sleep…”

  Combing out his tangled beard, Stepan asked the mother in businesslike fashion how to find her in town, and it seemed to her that the peasant’s face had become better today, more complete. While having tea, he remarked with a grin:

  “It’s wonderful the way it’s happened!”

  “What?” asked Tatyana.

  “This meeting! Just like that…”

  The mother said pensively but with certainty:

  “There’s amazing simplicity in everything about this cause.”

  Her host and hostess were restrained in parting with her, spending words meanly, but generously displaying a host of little attentions to her comfort.

  Sitting in the britzka, the mother thought of how this peasant would start working cautiously, noiselessly, like a mole, and tirelessly. And the discontented voice of his wife would always be heard near to him, the burning lustre of her green eyes would be flashing and the vengeful, wolf-like anguish of a mother over her dead children would never die in her as long as she lived.

  She recalled Rybin, his blood, face, ardent eyes, his words, and her heart sank in a bitter sense of impotence in the face of brutes. And all the way to town, against the dull background of the grey day, there stood before the mother the strong figure of black-bearded Mikhaila, in a ripped shirt, with his hands tied behind his back and his hair dishevelled, clothed in wrath and faith in his truth. The mother thought about the countless villages that nestled timidly against the earth, about the people secretly waiting for the coming of the truth, and about the thousands of people who worked all their lives, unthinking and in silence, expecting nothing.

  Life presented itself as an unploughed rolling field, which, straining and dumb, waits for workmen and makes a silent promise to free, honest hands:

  “Impregnate me with the seeds of reason and truth, and I will repay you a hundredfold!”

  She remembered her success and, feeling deep in her breast a quiet quiver of joy, she modestly suppressed it.

  XIX

  At home, Nikolai opened the door to her, dishevelled and with a book in his hands.

  “Already?” he exclaimed joyfully. “You’ve been quick!”

  His eyes blinked behind his glasses, affectionate and lively; he helped her to take her things off and, looking into her face with an affectionate smile, said:

  “There was a search here in the night, you see, and I thought: ‘What can the reason be?’ Had something happened to you? But they hadn’t arrested you. After all, if they’d arrested you, then they wouldn’t have left me either!…”

  He led her into the dining room, continuing animatedly:

  “I shall be given the sack now, though. Not that it grieves me. I’m fed up with counting horseless peasants!”

  The room looked as if, in a silly, mischievous attack, someone strong had been pushing on the walls of the house from the outside until everything inside had been shaken up. The portraits were lying about on the floor, the wallpaper had been ripped away and was sticking out in tatters; in one spot a floorboard had been taken up, a window sill had been pulled loose and cinders had been spilt onto the floor by the stove. The mother shook her head at the appearance of the familiar scene and looked intently at Nikolai, sensing something new about him.

  On the table were the extinguished samovar, some unwashed crockery, sausage and cheese on a piece of paper instead of a plate, and there were bits of bread and crumbs lying around, books and charcoal for the samovar. The mother grinned. Nikolai, too, smiled in embarrassment.

  “I’m the one that added to the scene of devastation, but it’s all right, Nilovna, it’s all right! I think they’ll come again, and that’s why I haven’t cleared it all up. Well, how was your trip?”

  The question gave her a hard jolt in the chest – before her appeared Rybin, and she felt guilty about not having spoken of him at once. Leaning over on her chair, she moved towards Nikolai and, trying to keep calm, afraid of forgetting something, began her account.

  “He’s been seized…”

  Nikolai’s face winced.

  “Has he?”

  The mother stopped his question with a movement of her hand and carried on just as though she were sitting before justice itself, lodging a complaint about a man being tortured. Nikolai leant against the back of his chair, turned pale and listened, biting his lip. He slowly took off his glasses, put them onto the table and drew his hand across his face, as if wiping an invisible cobweb from it. His face had become sharp, his cheekbones protruded strangely and his nostrils quivered; the mother was seeing him like this for the first time, and he frightened her a little.

  When she had finished, he stood up and walked around the room in silence for a minute or so with his fists thrust deep into his pockets. Then he muttered through his teeth:

  “He must be an outstanding man. It’ll be hard for him in prison: people like him don’t feel well there!”

  He was pushing his hands deeper and deeper into his pockets to contain it, but his agitation could be sensed by the mother all the same and communicated itself to her. His eyes had become narrow like the points of knives. Pacing around the room again, he spoke coldly and furiously:

  “Just look how awful it is! A small group of stupid men, protecting their ruinous power over the people, beat, smother and crush everyone. Savagery grows, cruelty becomes the law of life, just think! Some beat people and are brutalized by their impunity; they’re infected with a voluptuous thirst for torture, the repulsive illness of slaves given the freedom to display all the power of their slavish feelings and bestial habits. Others are poisoned by vengeance, yet others, cowed to the point of stupefactio
n, become dumb and blind. The people are being corrupted, all the people!”

  He stopped and fell silent, clenching his teeth.

  “You become brutalized yourself, willy-nilly, in this brutal life!” he said quietly.

  But gaining control of his excitement, with a firm gleam in his eye he glanced almost calmly into the mother’s face, flooded with wordless tears.

  “However, we must lose no time, Nilovna! Let’s try and pull ourselves together, dear comrade…”

  Smiling sadly, he went up to her and, bending down and pressing her hand, asked:

  “Where’s your suitcase?”

  “In the kitchen!” she replied.

  “There are spies standing at our gates; we won’t be able to carry such a mass of paper out of the house unnoticed – there’s nowhere to hide it – and I think they’ll come again tonight. So whatever the regret over the work, we’ll burn it all.”

  “What?” the mother asked.

  “Everything in the suitcase.”

  She understood him, and no matter how sad she was, a feeling of pride in her success prompted a smile on her face.

  “There’s nothing there, not a single sheet!” she said, and gradually livening up, she began telling of her meeting with Chumakov. Nikolai listened to her, knitting his brows at first in disquiet, then with surprise, and finally, interrupting the account, he cried:

  “Listen, this is excellent! You’re an amazingly lucky person…” Squeezing her hand, he exclaimed quietly: “You’re so touching with your faith in people… truly, I love you like my own mother!…”

  Smiling, she watched him with curiosity, trying to understand why he had become so bright and lively.

  “Generally, things are wonderful!” he said, rubbing his hands and laughing a quiet, affectionate laugh. “You know, I’ve been enjoying myself terribly these last days, I’ve been with workers all the time, reading, talking, watching. And the things I’ve accumulated in my soul – they’re amazingly healthy and pure. What good people, Nilovna! I’m talking about young workers – strong, sensitive, full of the thirst to understand everything. You look at them and you can see that Russia’s going to be the earth’s brightest democracy!”

  He raised a hand in affirmation, as if he were taking an oath, and after a pause continued:

  “I’d been sitting here writing, and somehow or other I’d started moping, grown musty over the books and figures. Almost a year of such a life – it’s abnormal. After all, I’m accustomed to being among the working people, and when I lose touch with them, I start to feel awkward – you know, I’m stretching, I’m straining for that life. But now I can live freely again, I’ll be seeing them, working with them. You understand, I’ll be at the cradle of newborn ideas, in the presence of youthful creative energy. It’s amazingly simple, beautiful and terribly exciting; you become young and firm, and your life is rich!”

  He let out an embarrassed, merry laugh, and his joy, which she was able to understand, captured the mother’s heart.

  “And then you’re an awfully good person!” Nikolai exclaimed. “How brightly you sketch people, how well you see them!…”

  Nikolai sat down next to her, turning his joyous face aside in embarrassment and smoothing his hair, but soon he turned back and, gazing at the mother, listened greedily to her flowing, simple and bright account.

  “An amazing slice of luck!” he exclaimed. “You had every chance of going to prison, and suddenly! Yes, the peasant is evidently stirring a little – which is natural, by the way! That woman – I can see her amazingly clearly!… We need to get special people working on rural affairs. People! We don’t have enough of them… Life demands hundreds of hands…”

  “If only Pasha could be free. And Andryusha!” she said quietly.

  He glanced at her and lowered his head.

  “You see, Nilovna, this will be hard for you to hear, but I’ll say it anyway: I know Pavel well, and he isn’t going to escape from prison! He needs a trial, he needs to rise to his full stature – he isn’t going to turn that down. And nor should he! He’ll escape from Siberia.”

  The mother sighed and replied quietly:

  “Well, then. He knows what’s best…”

  “Hm!” said Nikolai the next minute, gazing at her through his glasses. “If only this peasant of yours would make haste to come and see us! You see, it’s essential to write a leaflet for the countryside about Rybin – it’ll do him no harm, as he’s behaving so boldly. I’ll write it today, and Lyudmila will print it promptly… But how will the leaflet get there?”

  “I’ll take it…”

  “No, thank you!” Nikolai exclaimed quickly. “I’m thinking, won’t Vesovshchikov do for this, eh?”

  “Shall I have a word with him?”

  “Yes, have a try. And give him some tips.”

  “And what am I going to do?”

  “Don’t you worry!”

  He sat down to write. She threw glances at him as she tidied up the table and saw the pen trembling in his hand as it covered the paper with rows of black words. Sometimes the skin on his neck would quiver, he would throw back his head, close his eyes and his chin would tremble. This disturbed her.

  “That’s it ready!” he said, standing up. “Hide this leaflet somewhere about your person. But be aware that, if the gendarmes come, they’ll search you too.”

  “To hell with them!” she answered calmly.

  In the evening, the doctor, Ivan Danilovich, came.

  “Why is it the authorities are suddenly so worried?” he said, rushing around the room. “There were seven searches in the night. Where’s the patient, eh?”

  “He’d already gone yesterday!” Nikolai replied. “Today, you see, is Saturday: he’s got his reading session and he can’t miss it…”

  “Well, that’s stupid, sitting at reading sessions with a cracked head…”

  “I tried to demonstrate that, but without success…”

  “He wants to show off in front of his comrades,” the mother remarked, “as if to say: ‘Look, I’ve already spilt my blood’…”

  The doctor glanced at her, pulled a savage face and, clenching his teeth, said:

  “Ooh, you’re a bloodthirsty one…”

  “Well, Ivan, there’s nothing for you to do here, and we’re expecting guests, so go away! Nilovna, give him the leaflet…”

  “Another leaflet?” the doctor exclaimed.

  “Here! Take it and pass it to the printing office.”

  “I’ve taken it. I’ll pass it on. Is that all?”

  “It is. There’s a spy at the gates.”

  “I saw. At my door too. Well, goodbye! Goodbye, you savage woman. And do you know, friends, the fight at the graveyard’s a good thing in the end! The whole town’s talking about it. Your leaflet on the matter’s very good, and it came at the right time. I’ve always said a good quarrel’s better than a bad peace…”

  “All right, off you go…”

  “Not very polite! Your hand, Nilovna! But the young lad acted stupidly all the same. Do you know where he lives?”

  Nikolai gave him the address.

  “I must go and see him tomorrow. He’s a fine young kid, eh?”

  “Very…”

  “He needs to be looked after – he has a healthy brain!” said the doctor as he left. “It’s from kids of precisely his sort that a truly proletarian intelligentsia has to grow to take our place when we go away to where there are probably no more class contradictions…”

  “You’ve started chattering a lot, Ivan…”

  “Well, I’m feeling cheerful, that’s why. So, you’re expecting prison? I hope you have a rest there.”

  “Thank you. I’m not tired.”

  The mother listened to their conversation and found their concern for the working man pleasant.

 
After seeing the doctor out, Nikolai and the mother started to have tea and a snack, talking quietly and awaiting the night’s guests. Nikolai spent a long time telling her about his comrades living in exile and about those who had already escaped from it and were continuing their work under false names. The bare walls of the room bounced the quiet sound of his voice back, as though astonished and mistrustful of these stories about modest heroes who had selflessly given their strength to the great cause of the world’s renewal. A warm shadow gently surrounded the woman, bringing heat to her heart and a feeling of love for these unknown people, who all joined together in her imagination, forming one huge man, full of inexhaustible, steadfast strength. Slowly, but tirelessly, he walks across the earth, using hands that love their labour to cleanse it of the age-old mould of lies, to lay bare before the eyes of men the simple and clear truth of life. And the great truth, rising again, calls with an identical welcome upon everyone to come to it, promising to everyone equally freedom from greed, malice and lies, the three monsters which have enslaved and cowed the entire world with their cynical power… This image evoked in her soul a feeling like the one with which she had once used to stand before an icon, ending with a joyous and grateful prayer any day which had seemed to her easier than the other days of her life. Now she had forgotten those days, but the feeling aroused by them had broadened, become lighter and more joyous, had grown deeper into her soul and, alive, flared up ever more brightly.

  “And the gendarmes haven’t come!” exclaimed Nikolai, suddenly interrupting his tale.

  The mother glanced at him and, after a pause, responded in annoyance:

  “They can go to hell!”

  “It goes without saying! But it’s time you went to sleep, Nilovna: you must be desperately tired, though you’re amazingly strong, it’s got to be said! So much agitation and anxiety, and you come through everything so easily! The only thing is, your hair’s turning grey quickly. Well, you go and rest.”

  XX

  The mother woke up, roused by a loud banging at the kitchen door. The banging was continuous and patiently dogged. It was still dark and quiet, and in the quietness the stubborn drumming sound of the knocking was alarming. Getting dressed in haste, the mother quickly went out into the kitchen and, standing by the door, asked: