by Maxim Gorky
A familiar wave of cheerful excitement was rising in her breast, filling her heart with images and ideas. She sat up on the bed, hurriedly clothing her thoughts in words.
“Everything’s moving, moving towards one thing… There’s a lot that’s difficult, you know! People suffer, they’re beaten, beaten cruelly, and many joys are forbidden them, and that’s very difficult!”
Lifting her head quickly, Lyudmila threw the look of an embrace at her and remarked:
“You’re not talking about yourself!”
The mother looked at her, got up from the bed and, as she dressed, said:
“Well, how can you set yourself to one side when you love this one, and that one’s dear to you, and you’re frightened for all of them, sorry for each one, and everything’s jostling in your heart… How can you step aside?”
Standing half-dressed in the middle of the room, for a moment she fell into thought. It seemed to her that she was no more the person who had lived through alarms and fear for her son, through thoughts about the preservation of his body, she was now no more, she had broken away and gone to some distant place, or perhaps had burnt away completely on the fire of agitation, and this had lightened and purified her soul, had renewed her heart with new strength. She harkened to herself, wanting to look inside her heart, but afraid of reawakening something old and alarming there.
“What are you thinking about?” her hostess asked affectionately, going up to her.
“I don’t know!” the mother replied.
They paused, looking at one another, both smiled, then Lyudmila went out of the room, saying:
“Now, what’s my samovar doing?”
The mother looked out of the window; a cold, strong day was shining outside, and it was bright inside her breast too, but hot. She felt like talking about everything, talking a lot, joyously, with a vague feeling of gratitude to someone unknown for all that had descended into her soul and was glowing there with the light of evening before the sunset. She was troubled by a desire to pray, something that had not arisen for a long time. Somebody’s young face came to mind, and a resonant voice cried out in her memory: “That’s Pavel Vlasov’s mother!…” Sasha’s eyes sparkled, joyous and tender, the dark figure of Rybin arose, the firm, bronze face of her son smiled, Nikolai blinked in embarrassment – and suddenly it all stirred in a deep, easy sigh, became merged and mixed in a transparent, many-coloured cloud that enveloped all of her thoughts in a feeling of peace.
“Nikolai was right!” said Lyudmila, coming in. “He’s been arrested. I sent a boy there as you said. There were police outside, he said, and he saw a policeman hiding outside the gates. And there are police spies roaming around, the boy knows them.”
“Right!” said the mother, nodding her head. “Oh, the poor man…”
She sighed, but without sadness, and at this she quietly wondered.
“He’s been doing a lot of reading recently amongst the town’s workers, and all in all it was his time to come unstuck!” Lyudmila remarked glumly and calmly. “There were comrades telling him to leave! But he wouldn’t listen! My view is, in cases like that you have to make people go, not try and persuade them…”
In the doorway there appeared a black-haired, rosy-cheeked boy with handsome blue eyes and a hooked nose.
“Shall I bring in the samovar?” he asked in a resonant voice.
“Yes please, Seryozha! My foster-son.”
It seemed to the mother that Lyudmila was different today, more straightforward and closer to her. In the lithe swaying of her shapely body there was a great deal of beauty and strength, which somewhat softened her stern, pale face. The rings under her eyes had got bigger in the course of the night. And there was intense effort to be sensed in her, a tautly stretched string inside her soul.
The boy brought in the samovar.
“Seryozha, this is Pelageya Nilovna, the mother of the worker who was sentenced yesterday.”
Seryozha bowed silently, shook the mother’s hand, went out, brought in some rolls and sat down at the table. Pouring the tea, Lyudmila tried to convince the mother not to go home until it became clear who the police were waiting for there.
“It may be you! They’re probably going to question you…”
“Let them!” the mother responded. “And let them arrest me – it’s not the end of the world. Only I’d like to send Pasha’s speech out first.”
“It’s already set. Tomorrow it’ll be possible to have it for the town and the settlement… Do you know Natasha?”
“Of course!”
“You’ll take it to her…”
The boy was reading the newspaper and did not seem to hear anything, but at times his eyes would look out from behind the sheet of paper into the mother’s face, and she found it pleasant when she met their lively gaze, and she smiled. Lyudmila again recalled Nikolai without regret over his arrest, but her tone seemed perfectly natural to the mother. The time was passing quicker than on other days, and when they had finished having tea it was already about noon.
“Well I never!” Lyudmila exclaimed.
And at the same moment there was a hurried knocking. The boy got up and, narrowing his eyes, glanced enquiringly at Lyudmila.
“Open the door, Seryozha. Who could it be?”
And with a calm movement she lowered her hand into the pocket of her skirt, saying to the mother:
“If it’s the gendarmes, you stand here, Pelageya Nilovna, in this corner. And you, Seryozha…”
“I know!” the boy answered quietly as he disappeared.
The mother smiled. These preparations did not worry her – she had no premonition of misfortune.
In came the little doctor. Hurriedly he said:
“Firstly, Nikolai’s been arrested. Aha, you’re here, Nilovna? You weren’t there at the time of the arrest?”
“He’d sent me here.”
“Hm, I don’t think that’s good for you!… Secondly, last night various young people printed some five hundred copies of the speech on hectographs. I’ve seen them, and they’re not badly done, sharp and clear. They want to scatter them around the town this evening. I’m against it – printed leaflets are better for the town, while these should be sent away somewhere.”
“I’ll take them to Natasha!” the mother exclaimed animatedly. “Let me have them!”
She was at once terribly keen to distribute Pavel’s speech, to sow her son’s words all over the earth, and she looked into the doctor’s face with eyes that awaited an answer, prepared to beg.
“The devil knows how easy it’ll be for you to take that on now!” said the doctor uncertainly, pulling out his watch. “It’s eleven forty-three now; the train’s at five past two. The journey there takes five hours fifteen minutes. You’ll arrive in the evening, but not late enough. And that isn’t the point…”
“It isn’t!” Lyudmila repeated, knitting her brows.
“What is the point?” asked the mother, moving closer to them. “Only that the job should be done well…”
Lyudmila cast an intent gaze at her and, rubbing her forehead, remarked:
“You’re in danger…”
“Why?” the mother exclaimed in a heated, demanding tone.
“This is why!” began the doctor, quickly and jerkily. “You’ve vanished from the house an hour before Nikolai’s arrest. You’ve left for the factory where people know you as the teacher’s aunt. After your arrival at the factory pernicious leaflets have appeared. It all gets lashed in a noose around your neck.”
“No one will notice me there!” the mother argued, becoming heated. “And when I get back, they’ll arrest me and ask where I’ve been…”
Pausing for a second, she exclaimed:
“I know what to say! From there I’ll go straight to the settlement – I’ve got an acquaintance there, Sizov, so I’ll say I we
nt to see him straight from court, that I was taken there by my grief. And he has something to grieve about too: his nephew’s been convicted. He’ll give the same story. You see?”
Sensing they were yielding to the strength of her desire, and seeking to spur them on to do so quickly, she spoke ever more insistently. And yield they did.
“All right, go!” the doctor reluctantly agreed.
Lyudmila was silent, pensively pacing the room. Her face had become dull and pinched, and she was holding her head with a noticeable tensing of the muscles of her neck, as though her head had become heavy all of a sudden and was involuntarily drooping onto her breast. The mother noticed this.
“You’re always looking after me!” she said, smiling. “You don’t look after yourselves…”
“That’s not true!” the doctor replied. “We do look after ourselves – we have to! And we’re highly critical of anyone who expends their strength pointlessly, yes indeed! Now, listen to me: you’ll get the speech at the station…”
He explained to her the way it would be done, then looked her in the face and said:
“Well, I wish you success!”
And he left, unhappy about something anyway. When the door had closed behind him, Lyudmila went up to the mother, laughing soundlessly.
“I understand you…”
Taking her by the arm, she again started quietly pacing the room.
“I have a son too. He’s already thirteen, but he lives with his father. My husband’s an Assistant Procurator. And the boy’s with him. ‘What will become of him?’ I often think…”
Her rich voice faltered, but then her speech began to flow quietly and pensively once more.
“He’s being raised by a conscious enemy of the people who are close to me and whom I consider the best people on earth. My son may grow up to be my enemy. He can’t live with me, as I’m living under a false name. I haven’t seen him for eight years – that’s a long time, eight years!”
Stopping by the window, she looked into the pale, desolate sky and continued:
“If he were with me, I’d be stronger, and I wouldn’t have the wound in my heart that’s always aching. And if he even died, it’d be easier for me…”
“My darling!” the mother said quietly, feeling compassion scorching her heart.
“You’re lucky!” said Lyudmila with a smile. “It’s magnificent, a mother and her son beside one another, that’s rare!”
To her own surprise, Vlasova exclaimed:
“Yes, it’s good!” And, as though imparting a secret, she lowered her voice and continued: “Everyone, you, Nikolai Ivanovich, all people of truth are beside one another too! People have suddenly become dear to me; I understand everyone. I don’t understand their words, but everything else, I do!”
“Is that so?” said Lyudmila. “Is that so?…”
The mother put her hand on Lyudmila’s chest and, pushing her gently, said almost in a whisper, and as though herself meditating on what she was saying:
“Our children are marching through the world! That’s what I understand – our children are marching through the world, across the entire earth, all of them, from everywhere, and to one end! The best hearts are marching, people of honest mind, advancing steadily on all that’s evil, they’re marching, trampling on lies with their strong legs. Young and healthy, they’re taking their invincible strength always to one end – to justice! They’re marching to the conquest of all human grief, they’ve risen in arms for the destruction of all the earth’s misfortunes, they’re marching to overcome all that’s ugly, and overcome it they will! ‘We’ll light a new sun,’ one of them said to me, and they will! ‘We’ll unite all broken hearts in one!’ – and they will!”
The words of forgotten prayers came to mind and, igniting them with new faith, she tossed them out of her heart like sparks.
“The children marching down the roads of truth and reason bring love to everything and enrobe everything in new skies, illuminate everything with incorruptible fire from the soul. A new life is being accomplished in the flame of our children’s love for all the world. And who will extinguish that love, who? What power is greater than this one, who will subdue it? The earth has given birth to it, and the whole of life wants its victory, the whole of life!”
She staggered back away from Lyudmila, exhausted by her agitation, and sat down, breathing hard. Lyudmila moved away too, soundlessly, cautiously, as though afraid of destroying something. She moved lithely around the room, looking ahead with the profound gaze of her matt eyes, and seemed to have become even taller, more erect, more slender. Her thin, stern face was focused, and her lips nervously compressed. The quietness in the room quickly calmed the mother; noticing Lyudmila’s mood, she asked guiltily in a low voice:
“Maybe I said something wrong?…”
Lyudmila turned quickly, glanced at her as if in fright and began speaking hurriedly, stretching out her arms towards the mother as if wanting to stop something.
“Everything was right, right! But let’s not talk about this any more. Let it remain as it was said.” And more calmly she continued: “You’ll need to be going soon – it’s a long way, after all!”
“Yes, soon! Oh, how glad I am, if only you knew! I’ll be taking the word of my son, the word of my blood! That’s like your own soul, isn’t it?”
She was smiling, but her smile was not reflected clearly on Lyudmila’s face. The mother felt Lyudmila was cooling her joy with her restraint, and there suddenly arose in her a stubborn desire to pour her own fire into that severe soul, to ignite it – let it too sound in accord with the tune of her heart, which was full of joy. She took Lyudmila’s hands and squeezed them tight, saying:
“My dear woman! How good it is when you know there is already light in life for all people and, when the time comes, they’ll see it and embrace it with their souls.”
Her big, kind face was shuddering, her eyes were smiling radiantly and above them her brows were trembling, as though lending wings to their lustre. Big ideas were intoxicating her, she was putting into them all that made her heart burn, all she had managed to experience, and was compressing her thoughts into hard, capacious crystals of bright words. They were being born ever more strongly in her autumnal heart; illuminated by the creative power of the sun of spring, they were blossoming and glowing in it ever more vividly.
“I mean, it’s as if a new god was to be born to people! Everything for everyone, everyone for everything! That’s the way I understand you all. Truly, all of you are comrades, all are family, all are children of one mother – truth!”
Swamped once again by the wave of her own excitement, she stopped, caught her breath and, spreading her arms in a broad gesture, as if for an embrace, said:
“And when I say that word – comrades! – to myself, I can hear with my heart that they’re coming!”
She had achieved what she wanted: Lyudmila’s face had flushed in surprise, her lips were trembling and big transparent tears were rolling out of her eyes.
The mother hugged her tight and laughed soundlessly, taking gentle pride in the victory of her heart.
As they were saying goodbye, Lyudmila looked her in the face and asked quietly:
“Do you know that it’s good to be with you?”
XXIX
Outside, the frosty air enveloped her body drily and firmly, penetrated her throat, tickled her nose and for a second compressed the breath in her chest. Stopping, the mother looked around: close to her, on the corner, stood a cabman in a shaggy hat, farther away there was a man of some sort walking along, hunched over and with his head drawn down into his shoulders, while skipping along in front of him and rubbing his ears was a soldier.
“That soldier boy must have been sent to the shop!” she thought as she set off, listening with pleasure to the youthful, resonant way the snow was squeaking beneath her feet. She arri
ved at the station early, and her train was not yet ready, but in the dirty, smoke-begrimed third-class waiting room a lot of people had already gathered; the cold had driven some railway workers inside, and some cabmen and poorly dressed homeless people had come in to get warm. There were passengers too: several peasants, a fat merchant in a raccoon coat, a priest with a pockmarked young woman, his daughter, half a dozen soldiers and some fidgety townsfolk. People were smoking, talking, drinking tea and vodka. Someone at the buffet counter was letting out peals of laughter, and waves of smoke rolled around overhead. The door squealed as it opened, and its glass panes trembled and rang when it was noisily slammed shut. An oppressive smell of tobacco and salted fish assailed the nose.
The mother sat down by the entrance, where she could be seen, and waited. Whenever the door opened, a cloud of cold air would fly in at her, which she found pleasant, and she would breathe it in deeply, filling her chest. People came in with bundles in their hands and, heavily dressed, would get clumsily stuck in the door, would curse and, with a croak, dropping their things onto the floor or a bench, would brush the dry hoar frost from the collars and sleeves of their coats and rub it off their beards and moustaches.
In came a young man with a yellow suitcase in his hand; he looked around quickly and went straight up to the mother.
“Going to Moscow?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes. To see Tanya.”
“Here!”
He put the suitcase down on the bench beside her, quickly took out a cigarette, lit up and, raising his hat, silently went away towards the other door. The mother stroked the cold leather of the suitcase with her hand, leant an elbow on it and, content, began examining the other people. A minute later she got up and went towards another bench nearer to the exit onto the platform. The suitcase was not a large one, and she held it lightly in her hand; she walked with her head up, examining the faces that flashed before her.