The Mother

by Maxim Gorky

  A young man of some sort in a short coat with a raised collar bumped into her and jumped back in silence, throwing a hand up to his head. It seemed to her there was something familiar about him, and she looked back to see that he was looking at her from behind his collar with one light-coloured eye. This attentive eye pricked her, the hand in which she was holding the suitcase gave a shudder, and her load became suddenly heavier.

  “I’ve seen him somewhere!” she thought, using the thought to smother the unpleasant, troubled sensation in her breast, not allowing other words to define the feeling that was gradually, but imperiously constricting her heart with cold. But it was growing and rising to her throat, filling her mouth with a dry, bitter taste; she had an unbearable urge to turn and take another glance. She did so: cautiously shifting from one foot to the other, the man was standing in the same spot, seemingly wanting something, but unable to make up his mind. His right hand was thrust in between the buttons of his coat, the other he kept in his pocket, and that made his right shoulder seem higher than the left.

  She approached the bench unhurriedly and sat down carefully, slowly, as if afraid of doing herself some internal damage. Her memory, aroused by a sharp premonition of misfortune, set this man before her twice: once in the field outside of town after Rybin’s escape, the second time in court. There beside him stood that neighbourhood watchman to whom she had given a false indication of where Rybin had gone. She was known, she was being watched, that was clear.

  “Have they got me?” she asked herself. But the next instant she replied with a shudder:

  “Maybe not yet…”

  Then straight away, forcing herself, she said sternly:

  “They’ve got me!”

  She looked around and saw nothing, but thoughts were flaring up one after another in her brain, like sparks, and then going out.

  “Should I leave the suitcase and go?”

  But another spark flashed out more brightly:

  “Abandon my son’s word? To hands like those…”

  She pressed the suitcase against her.

  “Should I go with the case?… Run for it…”

  These thoughts seemed to her like someone else’s, as though someone had forced them into her from without. They burnt her, and their burns pricked her brain painfully and lashed at her heart like fiery threads. And in causing pain, they offended the woman, driving her away from herself, from Pavel and everything that had by now knitted together with her heart. She felt she was being insistently squeezed by a hostile force, it was pressing down on her shoulders and chest, humiliating her, immersing her in deathly fear; the veins on her temples began beating hard and the roots of her hair grew warm.

  Then, with one big, abrupt effort of her heart, which seemed to shake her through and through, she extinguished all these sly, weak little lights, saying to herself commandingly:

  “For shame!”

  She immediately felt better and was fully strengthened after adding:

  “Don’t you go shaming your son! No one’s afraid!”

  Her eyes met someone else’s morose, timid gaze. Then there was a glimpse of Rybin’s face in her memory. A few seconds of wavering seemed to make everything inside her firm. Her heart started beating more calmly.

  “What’s going to happen now?” she thought as she watched.

  The spy called a station guard over and whispered something to him, indicating her with his eyes. The guard looked him over and backed away. Another guard went over, listened intently and knitted his brows. He was an old man, big, grey-haired and unshaven. Now he nodded his head to the spy and set off towards the bench where the mother was sitting, while the spy quickly disappeared somewhere.

  The old man was striding unhurriedly, examining her face carefully with angry eyes. She moved further back on the bench.

  “As long as they don’t hit me…”

  He stopped next to her, paused, and then asked sternly in a low voice:

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Aha, a thief! An old one, but no better than any other!”

  It seemed to her as though his words had struck her across the face, one, two; vicious and hoarse, they hurt as though they had torn her cheeks, whipped out her eyes…

  “Me? I’m not a thief, you’re lying!” she cried with all that was in her chest, and everything in front of her began spinning in the whirlwind of her indignation, intoxicating her heart with the bitterness of her hurt. She tugged at the suitcase and it came open.

  “Look! Look, everyone!” she cried, standing up and waving above her head the sheaf of proclamations she had pulled out. Through the noise in her ears she heard the exclamations of the people who were coming running, and she saw them running quicker, everyone, from everywhere.

  “What’s going on?”

  “There, a police spy…”

  “What is it?”

  “He says she’s stolen it…”

  “And so elderly, dear oh dear!”

  “I’m not a thief!” the mother said at the top of her voice, becoming a little calmer at the sight of the people pressing tightly around her on all sides.

  “Some political prisoners were being tried yesterday, and my son was there, Vlasov; he made a speech, and here it is! I’m taking it to people so that they can read it and think about the truth…”

  Somebody cautiously drew the documents out of her hands, and she threw them up in the air, tossing them into the crowd.

  “No one’ll praise you for doing that either!” exclaimed somebody’s timid voice.

  The mother saw the documents being grabbed, hidden away inside clothing and in pockets, and this made her firm on her feet once again. Calmer and stronger, straining her whole body, and feeling her awakened pride growing within her and her suppressed joy flaring up, she pulled sheaves of paper out from the suitcase and tossed them to left and right into people’s quick, greedy hands, saying:

  “What did they try my son and all who were with him for, do you know? I’ll tell you, and you can believe a mother’s heart and her grey hair: people were tried yesterday for bringing all of you the truth! I learnt yesterday that that truth… No one can argue with it, no one!”

  The crowd fell silent and continued to grow, becoming ever more solid, surrounding the woman in the continuous ring of a living body.

  “Poverty, hunger and illness, that’s what people are given by their work. Everything’s against us, we’re dying all our lives, working day after day, always in dirt, always deceived, while others through our labours amuse themselves and eat their fill and keep us like dogs on a chain in ignorance – we know nothing – and in fear – we’re afraid of everything! Our life is night, a dark night!”

  “Right!” came a muffled reply.

  “Shut her mouth for her!”

  At the back of the crowd the mother noticed the spy and two gendarmes, and she hurried to give away the final sheaves, but when her hand went down into the suitcase, there it encountered someone else’s hand.

  “Take them, take them!” she said, bending down.

  “Disperse!” the gendarmes were shouting, pushing people aside. The people gave way to the pushing reluctantly, blocking the gendarmes’ way with their mass, hindering them without, perhaps, even wanting to. They were powerfully attracted to the grey-haired woman with the big, honest eyes in a kind face, and, disconnected by life, detached from one another, they were now merging into something whole, warmed by the fire of the word for which many hearts, injured by the unfairness of life, had perhaps long been looking and thirsting. Those nearest stood in silence, and the mother could see their hungrily attentive eyes and feel warm breath on her face.

  “Go away, old woman!”

  “They’ll take you in a minute!…”

  “My, she’s a bold one!”

  “M
ove away! Disperse!” the gendarmes’ cries rang out ever closer. The people in front of the mother were swaying on their feet, grabbing hold of one another.

  It seemed to her as if everyone was ready to understand her, to believe her, and she was in a hurry, wanting to tell the people all that she knew, all of the ideas whose power she could feel. They were floating up easily from the depths of her heart and forming into a song, but she sensed with resentment that she did not have the voice: it was hoarse, shaky and breaking.

  “My son’s word is the pure word of a working man, an incorruptible soul! Recognize what’s incorruptible by its courage!”

  Someone’s youthful eyes were looking into her face with rapture and with fear.

  She was pushed in the chest, she rocked and sat down on the bench. The gendarmes’ hands could be glimpsed above the people’s heads as they grabbed at collars and shoulders, hurled bodies aside, tore hats off, throwing them far away. Everything went black and started rocking in the mother’s eyes, but, vanquishing her tiredness, she went on shouting with the remains of her voice:

  “Gather your strength together, people, into a single force!”

  A gendarme grabbed her by the collar with a big, red hand and shook her.

  “Shut up!”

  The back of her head struck against the wall, for a second her heart was clothed in the acrid smoke of fear, but then it flared up brightly once more, dispelling the smoke.

  “Go away!” said the gendarme.

  “Don’t be afraid of anything! There’s no torment more bitter than the one you breathe for the whole of your lives…”

  “Silence, I say!” One gendarme took her by the arm and gave her a tug. The other seized the other arm, and with long strides they started leading the mother away.

  “…that gnaws at your heart every day and sucks your breast dry!”

  The spy ran forward and, waving his fist in her face, cried shrilly:

  “Silence, you scum!”

  Her eyes widened and flashed, and her jaw started trembling. Bracing her legs on the slippery stone of the floor, she cried:

  “A resurrected soul cannot be killed!”

  “Bitch!”

  With a short swing of his arm the spy struck her in the face.

  “Serves her right, the old cow!” a gloating cry rang out.

  Something black and red blinded the mother’s eyes for an instant, and the salty taste of blood filled her mouth.

  A vivid, staccato explosion of cries enlivened her.

  “Don’t you dare hit her!”

  “Lads!”

  “Oh you bastard!”

  “Give him one!”

  “They can’t drown reason with blood!”

  She was pushed in the neck and back, hit on the shoulders and head, and everything began spinning, revolving in a dark whirl, in cries, howling and whistling; something dense and deafening was getting into her ears, forcing itself into her throat, stifling her, the floor was caving in and rocking beneath her feet, her legs were buckling, her body was shuddering in burning pain, it had become heavy and was swaying, powerless. But her eyes did not dim, and she saw many other eyes burning with a bold, sharp flame that was familiar to her, a flame that was dear to her heart.

  She was pushed through the doors.

  She tore an arm free and took hold of the doorpost.

  “Seas of blood won’t extinguish the truth…”

  Someone struck her hand.

  “You’ll only store up anger, you madmen! And it will come down upon you!”

  A gendarme grabbed her by the throat and started throttling her.

  She was croaking.

  “Unfortunate wretches…”

  Somebody answered her with a loud sobbing.

  – 1907

  Note on the Text

  The text used for this translation is that found in all standard Soviet editions, in this instance in volume 4 of Sobranie sochinenii v 18-i tomakh, published by Goslitizdat (Moscow, 1960).

  Notes

  p.12, kovsh: A traditional Russian drinking vessel, varying greatly in size, made of wood or metal in roughly the shape of a boat and with a single handle.

  p.15, It’s the risen Christ going to Emmaus: See Luke 24:13–32.

  p.23, Nenko: An affectionate Ukrainian term meaning “mother”.

  p.23, Would you be a Tatar… Not yet: The frequency with which Tatars made a living as rag-and-bone-men by the end of the nineteenth century meant that the name of the ethnic group became a synonym for such traders.

  p.27, a story of savage people… killed wild beasts with stones: A popular brochure by Dmitry Nikolayevich Kudryavsky (1867–1920), How People Lived in Days of Old: Sketches of Primitive Culture (1894), was commonly read in workers’ revolutionary circles and is probably the work alluded to here.

  p.31, seven versts: A verst was a Russian measure of length approximately equivalent to a kilometre.

  p.34, She had heard that socialists had killed the Tsar: The Emperor Alexander II was assassinated by members of the revolutionary organization People’s Will in St Petersburg in 1881.

  p.37, One of the new songs… agitated the woman: The song referred to is ‘The Workers’ Marseillaise’, with words composed by Pyotr Lavrovich Lavrov (1823–1900) in 1875, sung to the tune of the French national anthem. It was very popular during the 1905 Revolution and became the Russian national anthem for almost a year following the February Revolution of 1917.

  p.40, About him organizing a sort of artel, like the flagellants: The flagellants were one of the numerous heretical sects still thriving in nineteenth-century Russia, here incongruously associated with a workers’ cooperative organization (artel).

  p.56, I know the Dukhobors: The Dukhobors or Spirit Wrestlers were an oft-persecuted religious sect who preached equality and were opposed to all authority – spiritual or secular – that was in conflict with their conscience.

  p.58, Take away this cup from me: See Matthew 26:39, Mark 14:36 and Luke 22:42.

  p.58, He recognized Caesar: See Matthew 22:21 and Mark 12:17.

  p.58, And he was wrong to curse the fig tree: See Mark 11:12–14.

  p.59, God is the Word: See John 1:1.

  p.64, joie de guerre: “Joy of war” (French).

  p.81, poods: A pood was a Russian unit of weight equivalent to approximately sixteen kilograms.

  p.85, Sehr gut: “Very good!” (German).

  p.98, And have you heard… a new ear of corn: See John 12:24.

  p.143, and the holding is four desyatins: A desyatin was a Russian unit of land measurement equivalent to a little over one hectare.

  p.143, The troops used to beat the people in Stepan Razin’s time too, and in Pugachov’s: Stepan (Stenka) Timofeyevich Razin (1630–71) and Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachov (1726–75) were Cossack leaders of popular revolts put down by Russian governmental forces.

  p.151, Stand up now, arise, working people: See note to p. 37. More lines from the song are quoted hereafter with minor variations on the original lyric.

  p.155, all of them are Bashi-Bazouks for the working man: Bashi-Bazouks were irregular soldiers of the Ottoman army, renowned for their brutality and indiscipline.

  p.163, A victim, you fell: The song being sung here is ‘The Revolutionary Requiem’, adopted as a funeral march by the Russian revolutionary movement and based on two poems of the late 1870s and early 1880s by A. Arkhangelsky, the pseudonym of Anton Alexandrovich Amosov (1854–1915).

  p.169, the Way of the Cross: The stages of Christ’s progress to His crucifixion.

  p.184, the zemstvo board: A zemstvo was an elected district or provincial assembly with certain administrative powers which were carried out by an executive board.

  p.186, Is the coffee ready: This is an apparent example of an authorial oversight
in the text, as Sofia has already been drinking coffee.

  p.188, This is Grieg: Edvard Hagerup Grieg (1843–1907), Norwegian composer.

  p.208, kvass: A mildly alcoholic drink made from rye bread.

  p.259, volost: A volost was an administrative unit consisting of a number of neighbouring villages whose affairs were run by a volost board.

  p.289, And I believe His words – love they neighbour as thyself: See Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31 and Luke 10:27.

  p.312, And you, Nilovna, did that cup pass you by: See first note to p. 58.

  p.313, she’s in prison and I’m at large, I’m at large and she’s in prison: This tautology would appear to be another example of an authorial oversight.

  p.316, sazhens: A sazhen was a Russian measure of length equivalent to approximately two metres.