W. B. Yeats - "Stories of Red Hanrahan"

Maurice Maeterlinck - "The Life of the Bee"

William Morris - "Old French Romances"

Joseph Devlin - "How to Speak and Write Correctly"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Mother

M >> Maxim Gorky >> Mother




The officer stamped his feet and began to shout. Marya lowered her
eyes, and pleaded with the mother softly:

"Well, what can be done? You have to submit, Pelagueya Nilovna."

As she searched and felt the mother's dress, the blood mounting to
her face, she murmured:

"Oh, the dogs!"

"What are you jabbering about there?" the officer cried rudely,
looking into the corner where she was making the search.

"It's about women's affairs, your Honor," mumbled Marya, terrorized.

On his order to sign the search warrant the mother, with unskilled
hand, traced on the paper in printed shining letters:

"Pelagueya Nilovna, widow of a workingman."

They went away, and the mother remained standing at the window.
With her hands folded over her breast, she gazed into vacancy
without winking, her eyebrows raised. Her lips were compressed,
her jaws so tightly set that her teeth began to pain her. The oil
burned down in the lamp, the light flared up for a moment, and then
went out. She blew on it, and remained in the dark. She felt no
malice, she harbored no sense of injury in her heart. A dark, cold
cloud of melancholy settled on her breast, and impeded the beating
of her heart. Her mind was a void. She stood at the window a long
time; her feet and eyes grew weary. She heard Marya stop at the
window, and shout: "Are you asleep, Pelagueya? You unfortunate,
suffering woman, sleep! They abuse everybody, the heretics!" At
last she dropped into bed without undressing, and quickly fell into
a heavy sleep, as if she had plunged into a deep abyss.

She dreamed she saw a yellow sandy mound beyond the marsh on the
road to the city. At the edge, which descended perpendicularly to
the ditch, from which sand was being taken, stood Pavel singing
softly and sonorously with the voice of Andrey:

"Rise up, awake, you workingmen!"

She walked past the mound along the road to the city, and putting
her hand to her forehead looked at her son. His figure was clearly
and sharply outlined against the sky. She could not make up her
mind to go up to him. She was ashamed because she was pregnant.
And she held an infant in her arms, besides. She walked farther on.
Children were playing ball in the field. There were many of them,
and the ball was a red one. The infant threw himself forward out of
her arms toward them, and began to cry aloud. She gave him the
breast, and turned back. Now soldiers were already at the mound,
and they turned the bayonets against her. She ran quickly to the
church standing in the middle of the field, the white, light church
that seemed to be constructed out of clouds, and was immeasurably
high. A funeral was going on there. The coffin was wide, black,
and tightly covered with a lid. The priest and deacon walked around
in white canonicals and sang:

"Christ has arisen from the dead."

The deacon carried the incense, bowed to her, and smiled. His hair
was glaringly red, and his face jovial, like Samoylov's. From the
top of the dome broad sunbeams descended to the ground. In both
choirs the boys sang softly:

"Christ has arisen from the dead."

"Arrest them!" the priest suddenly cried, standing up in the middle
of the church. His vestments vanished from his body, and a gray,
stern mustache appeared on his face. All the people started to run,
and the deacon, flinging the censer aside, rushed forward, seizing
his head in his hands like the Little Russian. The mother dropped
the infant on the ground at the feet of the people. They ran to the
side of her, timidly regarding the naked little body. She fell on
her knees and shouted to them: "Don't abandon the child! Take it
with you!"

"Christ has arisen from the dead," the Little Russian sang, holding
his hands behind his back, and smiling. He bent down, took the
child, and put it on the wagon loaded with timber, at the side of
which Nikolay was walking slowly, shaking with laughter. He said:

"They have given me hard work."

The street was muddy, the people thrust their faces from the windows
of the houses, and whistled, shouted, waved their hands. The day
was clear, the sun shone brightly, and there was not a single shadow
anywhere.

"Sing, mother!" said the Little Russian. "Oh, what a life!"

And he sang, drowning all the other sounds with his kind, laughing
voice. The mother walked behind him, and complained:

"Why does he make fun of me?"

But suddenly she stumbled and fell in a bottomless abyss. Fearful
shrieks met her in her descent.

She awoke, shivering and yet perspiring. She put her ear, as it
were, to her own breast, and marveled at the emptiness that
prevailed there. The whistle blew insistently. From its sound she
realized that it was already the second summons. The room was all
in disorder; the books and clothes lay about in confusion;
everything was turned upside down, and dirt was trampled over the
entire floor.

She arose, and without washing or praying began to set the room in
order. In the kitchen she caught sight of the stick with the piece
of red cloth. She seized it angrily, and was about to throw it away
under the oven, but instead, with a sigh, removed the remnant of the
flag from the pole, folded it carefully, and put it in her pocket.
Then she began to wash the windows with cold water, next the floor,
and finally herself; then dressed herself and prepared the samovar.
She sat down at the window in the kitchen, and once more the question
came to her:

"What now? What am I to do now?"

Recollecting that she had not yet said her prayers, she walked up
to the images, and after standing before them for a few seconds,
she sat down again. Her heart was empty.

The pendulum, which always beat with an energy seeming to say: "I
must get to the goal! I must get to the goal!" slackened its hasty
ticking. The flies buzzed irresolutely, as if pondering a certain
plan of action.

Suddenly she recalled a picture she had once seen in the days of
her youth. In the old park of the Zansaylovs, there was a large
pond densely overgrown with water lilies. One gray day in the fall,
while walking along the pond, she had seen a boat in the middle of
it. The pond was dark and calm, and the boat seemed glued to the
black water, thickly strewn with yellow leaves. Profound sadness
and a vague sense of misfortune were wafted from that boat without a
rower and without oars, standing alone and motionless out there on
the dull water amid the dead leaves. The mother had stood a long
time at the edge of the pond meditating as to who had pushed the
boat from the shore and why. Now it seemed to her that she herself
was like that boat, which at the time had reminded her of a coffin
waiting for its dead. In the evening of the same day she had
learned that the wife of one of Zansaylov's clerks had been drowned
in the pond--a little woman with black disheveled hair, who always
walked at a brisk gait.

The mother passed her hands over her eyes as if to rub her
reminiscences away, and her thoughts fluttered like a varicolored
ribbon. Overcome by her impressions of the day before, she sat for
a long time, her eyes fixed upon the cup of tea grown cold. Gradually
the desire came to see some wise, simple person, speak to him, and
ask him many things.

As if in answer to her wish, Nikolay Ivanovich came in after dinner.
When she saw him, however, she was suddenly seized with alarm, and
failed to respond to his greeting.

"Oh, my friend," she said softly, "there was no use for you to come
here. If they arrest you here, too, then that will be the end of
Pasha altogether. It's very careless of you! They'll take you
without fail if they see you here."

He clasped her hand tightly, adjusted his glasses on his nose, and
bending his face close to her, explained to her in haste:

"I made an agreement with Pavel and Andrey, that if they were
arrested, I must see that you move over to the city the very next
day." He spoke kindly, but with a troubled air. "Did they make a
search in your house?"

"They did. They rummaged, searched, and nosed around. Those people
have no shame, no conscience!" exclaimed the mother indignantly.

"What do they need shame for?" said Nikolay with a shrug of his
shoulders, and explained to her the necessity of her going to the city.

His friendly, solicitous talk moved and agitated her. She looked
at him with a pale smile, and wondered at the kindly feeling of
confidence he inspired in her.

"If Pasha wants it, and I'll be no inconvenience to you----"

"Don't be uneasy on that score. I live all alone; my sister comes
over only rarely."

"I'm not going to eat my head off for nothing," she said, thinking aloud.

"If you want to work, you'll find something to do." Her conception
of work was now indissolubly connected with the work that her son,
Andrey, and their comrades were doing. She moved a little toward
Nikolay, and looking in his eyes, asked:

"Yes? You say work will be found for me?"

"My household is a small one, I am a bachelor----"

"I'm not talking about that, not about housework," she said quietly.
"I mean world work."

And she heaved a melancholy sigh, stung and repelled by his failure
to understand her. He rose, and bending toward her, with a smile in
his nearsighted eyes, he said thoughtfully, "You'll find a place for
yourself in the work world, too, if you want it."

Her mind quickly formulated the simple and clear thought: "Once I
was able to help Pavel; perhaps I will succeed again. The greater
the number of those who work for his cause, the clearer will his
truth come out before the people."

But these thoughts did not fully express the whole force and
complexity of her desire.

"What could I do?" she asked quietly.

He thought a while, and then began to explain the technical details
of the revolutionary work. Among other things, he said:

"If, when you go to see Pavel in prison, you tried to find out from
him the address of the peasant who asked for a newspaper----"

"I know it!" exclaimed the mother in delight. "I know where they
are, and who they are. Give me the papers, I'll deliver them. I'll
find the peasants, and do everything just as you say. Who will
think that I carry illegal books? I carried books to the factory.
I smuggled in more than a hundred pounds, Heaven be praised!"

The desire came upon her to travel along the road, through forests
and villages, with a birch-bark sack over her shoulders, and a
staff in her hand.

"Now, you dear, dear man, you just arrange it for me, arrange it so
that I can work in this movement. I'll go everywhere for you! I'll
keep going summer and winter, down to my very grave, a pilgrim for
the sake of truth. Why, isn't that a splendid lot for a woman like
me? The wanderer's life is a good life. He goes about through the
world, he has nothing, he needs nothing except bread, no one abuses
him, and so quietly, unnoticed, he roves over the earth. And so
I'll go, too; I'll go to Andrey, to Pasha, wherever they live."

She was seized with sadness when she saw herself homeless, begging
for alms, in the name of Christ, at the windows of the village cottages.

Nikolay took her hand gently, and stroked it with his warm hand.
Then, looking at the watch, he said:

"We'll speak about that later. You are taking a dangerous burden
upon your shoulders. You must consider very carefully what you
intend doing."

"My dear man, what have I to consider? What have I to live for
if not for this cause? Of what use am I to anybody? A tree grows,
it gives shade; it's split into wood, and it warms people. Even
a mere dumb tree is helpful to life, and I am a human being. The
children, the best blood of man, the best there is of our hearts,
give up their liberty and their lives, perish without pity for
themselves! And I, a mother--am I to stand by and do nothing?"

The picture of her son marching at the head of the crowd with the
banner in his hands flashed before her mind.

"Why should I lie idle when my son gives up his life for the sake
of truth? I know now--I know that he is working for the truth.
It's the fifth year now that I live beside the woodpile. My heart
has melted and begun to burn. I understand what you are striving
for. I see what a burden you all carry on your shoulders. Take me
to you, too, for the sake of Christ, that I may be able to help
my son! Take me to you!"

Nikolay's face grew pale; he heaved a deep sigh, and smiling, said,
looking at her with sympathetic attention:

"This is the first time I've heard such words."

"What can I say?" she replied, shaking her head sadly, and spreading
her hands in a gesture of impotence. "If I had the words to express
my mother's heart--" She arose, lifted by the power that waxed in
her breast, intoxicated her, and gave her the words to express her
indignation. "Then many and many a one would weep, and even the
wicked, the men without conscience would tremble! I would make them
taste gall, even as they made Christ drink of the cup of bitterness,
and as they now do our children. They have bruised a mother's heart!"

Nikolay rose, and pulling his little beard with trembling fingers,
he said slowly in an unfamiliar tone of voice:

"Some day you will speak to them, I think!"

He started, looked at his watch again, and asked in a hurry:

"So it's settled? You'll come over to me in the city?"

She silently nodded her head.

"When? Try to do it as soon as possible." And he added in a tender
voice: "I'll be anxious for you; yes, indeed!"

She looked at him in surprise. What was she to him? With bent
head, smiling in embarrassment, he stood before her, dressed in a
simple black jacket, stooping, nearsighted.

"Have you money?" he asked, dropping his eyes.

"No."

He quickly whipped his purse out of his pocket, opened it, and
handed it to her.

"Here, please take some."

She smiled involuntarily, and shaking her head, observed:

"Everything about all of you is different from other people. Even
money has no value for you. People do anything to get money; they
kill their souls for it. But for you money is so many little pieces
of paper, little bits of copper. You seem to keep it by you just
out of kindness to people."

Nikolay Ivanovich laughed softly.

"It's an awfully bothersome article, money is. Both to take it
and to give it is embarrassing."

He caught her hand, pressed it warmly, and asked again:

"So you will try to come soon, won't you?"

And he walked away quietly, as was his wont.

She got herself ready to go to him on the fourth day after his
visit. When the cart with her two trunks rolled out of the village
into the open country, she turned her head back, and suddenly had
the feeling that she was leaving the place forever--the place where
she had passed the darkest and most burdensome period of her life,
the place where that other varied life had begun, in which the next
day swallowed up the day before, and each was filled by an abundance
of new sorrows and new joys, new thoughts and new feelings.

The factory spread itself like a huge, clumsy, dark-red, spider,
raising its lofty smokestacks high up into the sky. The small
one-storied houses pressed against it, gray, flattened out on the
soot-covered ground, and crowded up in close clusters on the edge
of the marsh. They looked sorrowfully at one another with their
little dull windows. Above them rose the church, also dark red
like the factory. The belfry, it seemed to her, was lower than
the factory chimneys.

The mother sighed, and adjusted the collar of her dress, which
choked her. She felt sad, but it was a dry sadness like the dust
of the hot day.

"Gee!" mumbled the driver, shaking the reins over the horse. He was
a bow-legged man of uncertain height, with sparse, faded hair on his
face and head, and faded eyes. Swinging from side to side he walked
alongside the wagon. It was evidently a matter of indifference to
him whether he went to the right or the left.

"Gee!" he called in a colorless voice, with a comical forward stride
of his crooked legs clothed in heavy boots, to which clods of mud
were clinging. The mother looked around. The country was as bleak
and dreary as her soul.

"You'll never escape want, no matter where you go, auntie," the
driver said dully. "There's no road leading away from poverty;
all roads lead to it, and none out of it."

Shaking its head dejectedly the horse sank its feet heavily into the
deep sun-dried sand, which crackled softly under its tread. The
rickety wagon creaked for lack of greasing.



CHAPTER II


Nikolay Ivanovich lived on a quiet, deserted street, in a little
green wing annexed to a black two-storied structure swollen with
age. In front of the wing was a thickly grown little garden, and
branches of lilac bushes, acacias, and silvery young poplars looked
benignly and freshly into the windows of the three rooms occupied by
Nikolay. It was quiet and tidy in his place. The shadows trembled
mutely on the floor, shelves closely set with books stretched across
the walls, and portraits of stern, serious persons hung over them.

"Do you think you'll find it convenient here?" asked Nikolay,
leading the mother into a little room with one window giving on the
garden and another on the grass-grown yard. In this room, too, the
walls were lined with bookcases and bookshelves.

"I'd rather be in the kitchen," she said. "The little kitchen is
bright and clean."

It seemed to her that he grew rather frightened. And when she
yielded to his awkward and embarrassed persuasions to take the
room, he immediately cheered up.

There was a peculiar atmosphere pervading all the three rooms. It
was easy and pleasant to breathe in them; but one's voice involuntarily
dropped a note in the wish not to speak aloud and intrude upon the
peaceful thoughtfulness of the people who sent down a concentrated
look from the walls.

"The flowers need watering," said the mother, feeling the earth in
the flowerpots in the windows.

"Yes, yes," said the master guiltily. "I love them very much, but
I have no time to take care of them."

The mother noticed that Nikolay walked about in his own comfortable
quarters just as carefully and as noiselessly as if he were a
stranger, and as if all that surrounded him were remote from him.
He would pick up and examine some small article, such as a bust,
bring it close to his face, and scrutinize it minutely, adjusting
his glasses with the thin finger of his right hand, and screwing up
his eyes. He had the appearance of just having entered the rooms
for the first time, and everything seemed as unfamiliar and strange
to him as to the mother. Consequently, the mother at once felt
herself at home. She followed Nikolay, observing where each thing
stood, and inquiring about his ways and habits of life. He answered
with the guilty air of a man who knows he is all the time doing
things as they ought not to be done, but cannot help himself.

After she had watered the flowers and arranged the sheets of music
scattered in disorder over the piano, she looked at the samovar,
and remarked, "It needs polishing."

Nikolay ran his finger over the dull metal, then stuck the finger
close to his nose. He looked at the mother so seriously that she
could not restrain a good-natured smile.

When she lay down to sleep and thought of the day just past, she
raised her head from the pillow in astonishment and looked around.
For the first time in her life she was in the house of a stranger,
and she did not experience the least constraint. Her mind dwelt
solicitously on Nikolay. She had a distinct desire to do the best
she could for him, and to introduce more warmth into his lonely life.
She was stirred and affected by his embarrassed awkwardness and droll
ignorance, and smiled to herself with a sigh. Then her thoughts
leaped to her son and to Andrey. She recalled the high-pitched,
sparkling voice of Fedya, and gradually the whole day of the first
of May unrolled itself before her, clothed in new sounds, reflecting
new thoughts. The trials of the day were peculiar as the day itself.
They did not bring her head to the ground as with the dull, stunning
blow of the fist. They stabbed the heart with a thousand pricks, and
called forth in her a quiet wrath, opening her eyes and straightening
her backbone.

"Children go in the world," she thought as she listened to the
unfamiliar nocturnal sounds of the city. They crept through the
open window like a sigh from afar, stirring the leaves in the garden
and faintly expiring in the room.

Early in the morning she polished up the samovar, made a fire in it,
and filled it with water, and noiselessly placed the dishes on the
table. Then she sat down in the kitchen and waited for Nikolay to
rise. Presently she heard him cough. He appeared at the door,
holding his glasses in one hand, the other hand at his throat. She
responded to his greeting, and brought the samovar into the room. He
began to wash himself, splashing the water on the floor, dropping the
soap and his toothbrush, and grumbling in dissatisfaction at himself.

When they sat down to drink tea, he said to the mother:

"I am employed in the Zemstvo board--a very sad occupation. I see
the way our peasants are going to ruin."

And smiling he repeated guiltily: "It's literally so--I see!
People go hungry, they lie down in their graves prematurely, starved
to death, children are born feeble and sick, and drop like flies in
autumn--we know all this, we know the causes of this wretchedness,
and for observing it we receive a good salary. But that's all we
do, really; truly all we do."

"And what are you, a student?"

"No. I'm a village teacher. My father was superintendent in a mill
in Vyatka, and I became a teacher. But I began to give books to the
peasants in the village, and was put in prison for it. When I came
out of prison I became clerk in a bookstore, but not behaving
carefully enough I got myself into prison again, and was then exiled
to Archangel. There I also got into trouble with the governor, and
they sent me to the White Sea coast, where I lived for five years."

His talk sounded calm and even in the bright room flooded with
sunlight. The mother had already heard many such stories; but she
could never understand why they were related with such composure,
why no blame was laid on anybody for the suffering the people had
gone through, why these sufferings were regarded as so inevitable.

"My sister is coming to-day," he announced.

"Is she married?"

"She's a widow. Her husband was exiled to Siberia; but he escaped,
caught a severe cold on the way, and died abroad two years ago."

"Is she younger than you?"

"Six years older. I owe a great deal to her. Wait, and you'll
hear how she plays. That's her piano. There are a whole lot of
her things here, my books----"

"Where does she live?"

"Everywhere," he answered with a smile. "Wherever a brave soul is
needed, there's where you'll find her."

"Also in this movement?"

"Yes, of course."

He soon left to go to work, and the mother fell to thinking of
"that movement" for which the people worked, day in, day out,
calmly and resolutely. When confronting them she seemed to stand
before a mountain looming in the dark.

About noon a tall, well-built lady came. When the mother opened the
door for her she threw a little yellow valise on the floor, and
quickly seizing Vlasova's hand, asked:

"Are you the mother of Pavel Mikhaylovich?"

"Yes, I am," the mother replied, embarrassed by the lady's rich appearance.

"That's the way I imagined you," said the lady, removing her hat in
front of the mirror. "We have been friends of Pavel Mikhaylovich a
long time. He spoke about you often."

Her voice was somewhat dull, and she spoke slowly; but her movements
were quick and vigorous. Her large, limpid gray eyes smiled
youthfully; on her temples, however, thin radiate wrinkles were
already limned, and silver hairs glistened over her ears.

"I'm hungry; can I have a cup of coffee?"

"I'll make it for you at once." The mother took down the coffee
apparatus from the shelf and quietly asked:

"DID Pasha speak about me?"

"Yes, indeed, a great deal." The lady took out a little leather
cigarette case, lighted a cigarette, and inquired: "You're
extremely uneasy about him, aren't you?"

The mother smiled, watching the blue, quivering flame of the spirit
lamp. Her embarrassment at the presence of the lady vanished in the
depths of her joy.

"So he talks about me, my dear son!" she thought.

"You asked me whether I'm uneasy? Of course, it's not easy for me.
But it would have been worse some time ago; now I know that he's not
alone, and that even I am not alone." Looking into the lady's face,
she asked: "What is your name?"

"Sofya," the lady answered, and began to speak in a businesslike way.
"The most important thing is that they should not stay in prison long,
but that the trial should come off very soon. The moment they are
exiled, we'll arrange an escape for Pavel Mikhaylovich. There's
nothing for him to do in Siberia, and he's indispensable here."