Books: Mother
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Maxim Gorky >> Mother
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"People with well-filled stomachs are, after all, not a few, but
honest people there are none," said the little Russian. "We ought
to build a bridge across the bog of this rotten life to a future
of soulful goodness. That's our task, that's what we have to do,
comrades!"
"When the time is come to fight, it's not the time to cure the
finger," said Vyesovshchikov dully.
"There will be enough breaking of our bones before we get to
fighting!" the Little Russian put in merrily.
It was already past midnight when the group began to break up.
The first to go were Vyesovshchikov and the red-haired man--which
again displeased the mother.
"Hm! How they hurry!" she thought, nodding them a not very friendly
farewell.
"Will you see me home, Nakhodka?" asked Natasha.
"Why, of course," answered the Little Russian.
When Natasha put on her wraps in the kitchen, the mother said to
her: "Your stockings are too thin for this time of the year. Let
me knit some woolen ones for you, will you, please?"
"Thank you, Pelagueya Nilovna. Woolen stockings scratch," Natasha
answered, smiling.
"I'll make them so they won't scratch."
Natasha looked at her rather perplexedly, and her fixed serious
glance hurt the mother.
"Pardon me my stupidity; like my good will, it's from my heart,
you know," she added in a low voice.
"How kind you are!" Natasha answered in the same voice, giving her
a hasty pressure of the hand and walking out.
"Good night, mother!" said the Little Russian, looking into her
eyes. His bending body followed Natasha out to the porch.
The mother looked at her son. He stood in the room at the door
and smiled.
"The evening was fine," he declared, nodding his head energetically.
"It was fine! But now I think you'd better go to bed; it's time."
"And it's time for you, too. I'm going in a minute."
She busied herself about the table gathering the dishes together,
satisfied and even glowing with a pleasurable agitation. She was
glad that everything had gone so well and had ended peaceably.
"You arranged it nicely, Pavlusha. They certainly are good people.
The Little Russian is such a hearty fellow. And the young lady,
what a bright, wise girl she is! Who is she?"
"A teacher," answered Pavel, pacing up and down the room.
"Ah! Such a poor thing! Dressed so poorly! Ah, so poorly! It
doesn't take long to catch a cold. And where are her relatives?"
"In Moscow," said Pavel, stopping before his mother. "Look! her
father is a rich man; he is in the hardware business, and owns much
property. He drove her out of the house because she got into this
movement. She grew up in comfort and warmth, she was coddled and
indulged in everything she desired--and now she walks four miles
at night all by herself."
The mother was shocked. She stood in the middle of the room, and
looked mutely at her son. Then she asked quietly:
"Is she going to the city?"
"Yes."
"And is she not afraid?"
"No," said Pavel smiling.
"Why did she go? She could have stayed here overnight, and slept
with me."
"That wouldn't do. She might have been seen here to-morrow morning,
and we don't want that; nor does she."
The mother recollected her previous anxieties, looked thoughtfully
through the window, and asked:
"I cannot understand, Pasha, what there is dangerous in all this,
or illegal. Why, you are not doing anything bad, are you?"
She was not quite assured of the safety and propriety of his
conduct, and was eager for a confirmation from her son. But he
looked calmly into her eyes, and declared in a firm voice:
"There is nothing bad in what we're doing, and there's not going
to be. And yet the prison is awaiting us all. You may as well
know it."
Her hands trembled. "Maybe God will grant you escape somehow,"
she said with sunken voice.
"No," said the son kindly, but decidedly. "I cannot lie to you.
We will not escape." He smiled. "Now go to bed. You are tired.
Good night."
Left alone, she walked up to the window, and stood there looking
into the street. Outside it was cold and cheerless. The wind
howled, blowing the snow from the roofs of the little sleeping
houses. Striking against the walls and whispering something,
quickly it fell upon the ground and drifted the white clouds of
dry snowflakes across the street.
"O Christ in heaven, have mercy upon us!" prayed the mother.
The tears began to gather in her eyes, as fear returned persistently
to her heart, and like a moth in the night she seemed to see fluttering
the woe of which her son spoke with such composure and assurance.
Before her eyes as she gazed a smooth plain of snow spread out in
the distance. The wind, carrying white, shaggy masses, raced over
the plain, piping cold, shrill whistles. Across the snowy expanse
moved a girl's figure, dark and solitary, rocking to and fro. The
wind fluttered her dress, clogged her footsteps, and drove pricking
snowflakes into her face. Walking was difficult; the little feet
sank into the snow. Cold and fearful the girl bent forward, like a
blade of grass, the sport of the wanton wind. To the right of her
on the marsh stood the dark wall of the forest; the bare birches
and aspens quivered and rustled with a mournful cry. Yonder in
the distance, before her, the lights of the city glimmered dimly.
"Lord in heaven, have mercy!" the mother muttered again, shuddering
with the cold and horror of an unformed fear.
CHAPTER IV
The days glided by one after the other, like the beads of a rosary,
and grew into weeks and months. Every Saturday Pavel's friends
gathered in his house; and each meeting formed a step up a long
stairway, which led somewhere into the distance, gradually lifting
the people higher and higher. But its top remained invisible.
New people kept coming. The small room of the Vlasovs became
crowded and close. Natasha arrived every Saturday night, cold and
tired, but always fresh and lively, in inexhaustible good spirits.
The mother made stockings, and herself put them on the little feet.
Natasha laughed at first; but suddenly grew silent and thoughtful,
and said in a low voice to the mother:
"I had a nurse who was also ever so kind. How strange, Pelagueya
Nilovna! The workingmen live such a hard, outraged life, and yet
there is more heart, more goodness in them than in--those!" And
she waved her hand, pointing somewhere far, very far from herself.
"See what sort of a person you are," the older woman answered. "You
have left your own family and everything--" She was unable to
finish her thought, and heaving a sigh looked silently into Natasha's
face with a feeling of gratitude to the girl for she knew not what.
She sat on the floor before Natasha, who smiled and fell to musing.
"I have abandoned my family?" she repeated, bending her head down.
"That's nothing. My father is a stupid, coarse man--my brother
also--and a drunkard, besides. My oldest sister--unhappy, wretched
thing--married a man much older than herself, very rich, a bore and
greedy. But my mother I am sorry for! She's a simple woman like
you, a beaten-down, frightened creature, so tiny, like a little
mouse--she runs so quickly and is afraid of everybody. And sometimes
I want to see her so--my mother!"
"My poor thing!" said the mother sadly, shaking her head.
The girl quickly threw up her head and cried out:
"Oh, no! At times I feel such joy, such happiness!"
Her face paled and her blue eyes gleamed. Placing her hands on the
mother's shoulders she said with a deep voice issuing from her very
heart, quietly as if in an ecstasy:
"If you knew--if you but understood what a great, joyous work we
are doing! You will come to feel it!" she exclaimed with conviction.
A feeling akin to envy touched the heart of the mother. Rising
from the floor she said plaintively:
"I am too old for that--ignorant and old."
Pavel spoke more and more often and at greater length, discussed
more and more hotly, and--grew thinner and thinner. It seemed to
his mother that when he spoke to Natasha or looked at her his eyes
turned softer, his voice sounded fonder, and his entire bearing
became simpler.
"Heaven grant!" she thought; and imagining Natasha as her
daughter-in-law, she smiled inwardly.
Whenever at the meetings the disputes waxed too hot and stormy,
the Little Russian stood up, and rocking himself to and fro like
the tongue of a bell, he spoke in his sonorous, resonant voice
simple and good words which allayed their excitement and recalled
them to their purpose. Vyesovshchikov always kept hurrying everybody
on somewhere. He and the red-haired youth called Samoylov were the
first to begin all disputes. On their side were always Ivan Bukin,
with the round head and the white eyebrows and lashes, who looked
as if he had been hung out to dry, or washed out with lye; and the
curly-headed, lofty-browed Fedya Mazin. Modest Yakob Somov, always
smoothly combed and clean, spoke little and briefly, with a quiet,
serious voice, and always took sides with Pavel and the Little Russian.
Sometimes, instead of Natasha, Alexey Ivanovich, a native of some
remote government, came from the city. He wore eyeglasses, his
beard was shiny, and he spoke with a peculiar singing voice. He
produced the impression of a stranger from a far-distant land.
He spoke about simple matters--about family life, about children,
about commerce, the police, the price of bread and meat--about
everything by which people live from day to day; and in everything
he discovered fraud, confusion, and stupidity, sometimes setting
these matters in a humorous light, but always showing their decided
disadvantage to the people.
To the mother, too, it seemed that he had come from far away, from
another country, where all the people lived a simple, honest, easy
life; and that here everything was strange to him, that he could not
get accustomed to this life and accept it as inevitable, that it
displeased him, and that it aroused in him a calm determination to
rearrange it after his own model. His face was yellowish, with
thin, radiate wrinkles around his eyes, his voice low, and his hands
always warm. In greeting the mother he would enfold her entire hand
in his long, powerful fingers, and after such a vigorous hand clasp
she felt more at ease and lighter of heart.
Other people came from the city, oftenest among them a tall,
well-built young girl with large eyes set in a thin, pale face.
She was called Sashenka. There was something manly in her walk
and movements; she knit her thick, dark eyebrows in a frown, and
when she spoke the thin nostrils of her straight nose quivered.
She was the first to say, "We are socialists!" Her voice when she
said it was loud and strident.
When the mother heard this word, she stared in dumb fright into
the girl's face. But Sashenka, half closing her eyes, said sternly
and resolutely: "We must give up all our forces to the cause of
the regeneration of life; we must realize that we will receive no
recompense."
The mother understood that the socialists had killed the Czar. It
had happened in the days of her youth; and people had then said
that the landlords, wishing to revenge themselves on the Czar for
liberating the peasant serfs, had vowed not to cut their hair until
the Czar should be killed. These were the persons who had been
called socialists. And now she could not understand why it was
that her son and his friends were socialists.
When they had all departed, she asked Pavel:
"Pavlusha, are you a socialist?"
"Yes," he said, standing before her, straight and stalwart as
always. "Why?"
The mother heaved a heavy sigh, and lowering her eyes, said:
"So, Pavlusha? Why, they are against the Czar; they killed one."
Pavel walked up and down the room, ran his hand across his face,
and, smiling, said:
"We don't need to do that!"
He spoke to her for a long while in a low, serious voice. She
looked into his face and thought:
"He will do nothing bad; he is incapable of doing bad!"
And thereafter the terrible word was repeated with increasing
frequency; its sharpness wore off, and it became as familiar to
her ear as scores of other words unintelligible to her. But Sashenka
did not please her, and when she came the mother felt troubled and
ill at ease.
Once she said to the Little Russian, with an expression of
dissatisfaction about the mouth:
"What a stern person this Sashenka is! Flings her commands around!
--You must do this and you must do that!"
The Little Russian laughed aloud.
"Well said, mother! You struck the nail right on the head! Hey, Pavel?"
And with a wink to the mother, he said with a jovial gleam in his eyes:
"You can't drain the blue blood out of a person even with a pump!"
Pavel remarked dryly:
"She is a good woman!" His face glowered.
"And that's true, too!" the Little Russian corroborated. "Only she
does not understand that she ought to----"
They started up an argument about something the mother did not
understand. The mother noticed, also, that Sashenka was most stern
with Pavel, and that sometimes she even scolded him. Pavel smiled,
was silent, and looked in the girl's face with that soft look he
had formerly given Natasha. This likewise displeased the mother.
The gatherings increased in number, and began to be held twice a
week; and when the mother observed with what avidity the young
people listened to the speeches of her son and the Little Russian,
to the interesting stories of Sashenka, Natasha, Alexey Ivanovich,
and the other people from the city, she forgot her fears and shook
her head sadly as she recalled the days of her youth.
Sometimes they sang songs, the simple, familiar melodies, aloud and
merrily. But often they sang new songs, the words and music in
perfect accord, sad and quaint in tune. These they sang in an
undertone, pensively and seriously as church hymns are chanted.
Their faces grew pale, yet hot, and a mighty force made itself felt
in their ringing words.
"It is time for us to sing these songs in the street," said
Vyesovshchikov somberly.
And sometimes the mother was struck by the spirit of lively,
boisterous hilarity that took sudden possession of them. It was
incomprehensible to her. It usually happened on the evenings when
they read in the papers about the working people in other countries.
Then their eyes sparkled with bold, animated joy; they became
strangely, childishly happy; the room rang with merry peals of
laughter, and they struck one another on the shoulder affectionately.
"Capital fellows, our comrades the French!" cried some one, as if
intoxicated with his own mirth.
"Long live our comrades, the workingmen of Italy!" they shouted
another time.
And sending these calls into the remote distance to friends who
did not know them, who could not have understood their language,
they seemed to feel confident that these people unknown to them
heard and comprehended their enthusiasm and their ecstasy.
The Little Russian spoke, his eyes beaming, his love larger than
the love of the others:
"Comrades, it would be well to write to them over there! Let them
know that they have friends living in far-away Russia, workingmen
who confess and believe in the same religion as they, comrades who
pursue the same aims as they, and who rejoice in their victories!"
And all, with smiles on their faces dreamily spoke at length of
the Germans, the Italians, the Englishmen, and the Swedes, of the
working people of all countries, as of their friends, as of people
near to their hearts, whom without seeing they loved and respected,
whose joys they shared, whose pain they felt.
In the small room a vast feeling was born of the universal kinship
of the workers of the world, at the same time its masters and its
slaves, who had already been freed from the bondage of prejudice
and who felt themselves the new masters of life. This feeling
blended all into a single soul; it moved the mother, and, although
inaccessible to her, it straightened and emboldened her, as it were,
with its force, with its joys, with its triumphant, youthful vigor,
intoxicating, caressing, full of hope.
"What queer people you are!" said the mother to the Little Russian
one day. "All are your comrades--the Armenians and the Jews and
the Austrians. You speak about all as of your friends; you grieve
for all, and you rejoice for all!"
"For all, mother dear, for all! The world is ours! The world is
for the workers! For us there is no nation, no race. For us there
are only comrades and foes. All the workingmen are our comrades;
all the rich, all the authorities are our foes. When you see how
numerous we workingmen are, how tremendous the power of the spirit
in us, then your heart is seized with such joy, such happiness, such
a great holiday sings in your bosom! And, mother, the Frenchman
and the German feel the same way when they look upon life, and the
Italian also. We are all children of one mother--the great,
invincible idea of the brotherhood of the workers of all countries
over all the earth. This idea grows, it warms us like the sun;
it is a second sun in the heaven of justice, and this heaven resides
in the workingman's heart. Whoever he be, whatever his name, a
socialist is our brother in spirit now and always, and through all
the ages forever and ever!"
This intoxicated and childish joy, this bright and firm faith came
over the company more and more frequently; and it grew ever stronger,
ever mightier.
And when the mother saw this, she felt that in very truth a great
dazzling light had been born into the world like the sun in the sky
and visible to her eyes.
On occasions when his father had stolen something again and was in
prison, Nikolay would announce to his comrades: "Now we can hold
our meetings at our house. The police will think us thieves, and
they love thieves!"
Almost every evening after work one of Pavel's comrades came to his
house, read with him, and copied something from the books. So greatly
occupied were they that they hardly even took the time to wash.
They ate their supper and drank tea with the books in their hands;
and their talks became less and less intelligible to the mother.
"We must have a newspaper!" Pavel said frequently.
Life grew ever more hurried and feverish; there was a constant
rushing from house to house, a passing from one book to another,
like the flirting of bees from flower to flower.
"They are talking about us!" said Vyesovshchikov once. "We must
get away soon."
"What's a quail for but to be caught in the snare?" retorted the
Little Russian.
Vlasova liked the Little Russian more and more. When he called
her "mother," it was like a child's hand patting her on the cheek.
On Sunday, if Pavel had no time, he chopped wood for her; once he
came with a board on his shoulder, and quickly and skillfully
replaced the rotten step on the porch. Another time he repaired
the tottering fence with just as little ado. He whistled as he
worked. It was a beautifully sad and wistful whistle.
Once the mother said to the son:
"Suppose we take the Little Russian in as a boarder. It will be
better for both of you. You won't have to run to each other so much!"
"Why need you trouble and crowd yourself?" asked Pavel, shrugging
his shoulders.
"There you have it! All my life I've had trouble for I don't know
what. For a good person it's worth the while."
"Do as you please. If he comes I'll be glad."
And the Little Russian moved into their home.
CHAPTER V
The little house at the edge of the village aroused attention.
Its walls already felt the regard of scores of suspecting eyes.
The motley wings of rumor hovered restlessly above them.
People tried to surprise the secret hidden within the house by the
ravine. They peeped into the windows at night. Now and then somebody
would rap on the pane, and quickly take to his heels in fright.
Once the tavern keeper stopped Vlasova on the street. He was a
dapper old man, who always wore a black silk neckerchief around his
red, flabby neck, and a thick, lilac-colored waistcoat of velvet
around his body. On his sharp, glistening nose there always sat a
pair of glasses with tortoise-shell rims, which secured him the
sobriquet of "bony eyes."
In a single breath and without awaiting an answer, he plied Vlasova
with dry, crackling words:
"How are you, Pelagueya Nilovna, how are you? How is your son?
Thinking of marrying him off, hey? He's a youth full ripe for
matrimony. The sooner a son is married off, the safer it is for his
folks. A man with a family preserves himself better both in the
spirit and the flesh. With a family he is like mushrooms in
vinegar. If I were in your place I would marry him off. Our times
require a strict watch over the animal called man; people are
beginning to live in their brains. Men have run amuck with their
thoughts, and they do things that are positively criminal. The
church of God is avoided by the young folk; they shun the public
places, and assemble in secret in out-of-the-way corners. They
speak in whispers. Why speak in whispers, pray? All this they
don't dare say before people in the tavern, for example. What is
it, I ask? A secret? The secret place is our holy church, as old
as the apostles. All the other secrets hatched in the corners are
the offspring of delusions. I wish you good health."
Raising his hand in an affected manner, he lifted his cap, and waving
it in the air, walked away, leaving the mother to her perplexity.
Vlasova's neighbor, Marya Korsunova, the blacksmith's widow, who
sold food at the factory, on meeting the mother in the market place
also said to her:
"Look out for your son, Pelagueya!"
"What's the matter?"
"They're talking!" Marya tendered the information in a hushed
voice. "And they don't say any good, mother of mine! They speak
as if he's getting up a sort of union, something like those
Flagellants--sects, that's the name! They'll whip one another like
the Flagellants----"
"Stop babbling nonsense, Marya! Enough!"
"I'm not babbling nonsense! I talk because I know."
The mother communicated all these conversations to her son. He
shrugged his shoulders in silence, and the Little Russian laughed
with his thick, soft laugh.
"The girls also have a crow to pick with you!" she said. "You'd
make enviable bridegrooms for any of them; you're all good workers,
and you don't drink--but you don't pay any attention to them.
Besides, people are saying that girls of questionable character come
to you."
"Well, of course!" exclaimed Pavel, his brow contracting in a frown
of disgust.
"In the bog everything smells of rottenness!" said the Little Russian
with a sigh. "Why don't you, mother, explain to the foolish girls
what it is to be married, so that they shouldn't be in such a hurry
to get their bones broken?"
"Oh, well," said the mother, "they see the misery in store for them,
they understand, but what can they do? They have no other choice!"
"It's a queer way they have of understanding, else they'd find a
choice," observed Pavel.
The mother looked into his austere face.
"Why don't you teach them? Why don't you invite some of the
cleverer ones?"
"That won't do!" the son replied dryly.
"Suppose we try?" said the Little Russian.
After a short silence Pavel said:
"Couples will be formed; couples will walk together; then some will
get married, and that's all."
The mother became thoughtful. Pavel's austerity worried her. She
saw that his advice was taken even by his older comrades, such as
the Little Russian; but it seemed to her that all were afraid of
him, and no one loved him because he was so stern.
Once when she had lain down to sleep, and her son and the Little
Russian were still reading, she overheard their low conversation
through the thin partition.
"You know I like Natasha," suddenly ejaculated the Little Russian
in an undertone.
"I know," answered Pavel after a pause.
"Yes!"
The mother heard the Little Russian rise and begin to walk. The
tread of his bare feet sounded on the floor, and a low, mournful
whistle was heard. Then he spoke again:
"And does she notice it?"
Pavel was silent.
"What do you think?" the Little Russian asked, lowering his voice.
"She does," replied Pavel. "That's why she has refused to attend
our meetings."
The Little Russian dragged his feet heavily over the floor, and
again his low whistle quivered in the room. Then he asked:
"And if I tell her?"
"What?" The brief question shot from Pavel like the discharge of a gun.
"That I am--" began the Little Russian in a subdued voice.
"Why?" Pavel interrupted.
The mother heard the Little Russian stop, and she felt that he smiled.
"Yes, you see, I consider that if you love a girl you must tell her
about it; else there'll be no sense to it!"
Pavel clapped the book shut with a bang.
"And what sense do you expect?"
Both were silent for a long while.
"Well?" asked the Little Russian.
"You must be clear in your mind, Andrey, as to what you want to do,"
said Pavel slowly. "Let us assume that she loves you, too--I do
not think so, but let us assume it. Well, you get married. An
interesting union--the intellectual with the workingman! Children
come along; you will have to work all by yourself and very hard.
Your life will become the ordinary life of a struggle for a piece
of bread and a shelter for yourself and children. For the cause,
you will become nonexistent, both of you!"
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