Books: Mother

M >> Maxim Gorky >> Mother

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Pavel silently regarded his swarthy, broad countenance, his thick,
black beard, and dark, intelligent eyes. A certain gravity spoke
out of their calm gaze; his stalwart figure inspired confidence.

The mother went into the kitchen to prepare the samovar. Rybin sat
down, stroked his beard, and placing his elbows on the table,
scanned Pavel with his dark look.

"That's the way it is," he said, as if continuing an interrupted
conversation. "I must have a frank talk with you. I observed you
long before I came. We live almost next door to each other. I see
many people come to you, and no drunkenness, no carrying on. That's
the main thing. If people don't raise the devil, they immediately
attract attention. What's that? There you are! That's why all
eyes are on me, because I live apart and give no offense."

His speech flowed along evenly and freely. It had a ring that won
him confidence.

"So. Everybody prates about you. My masters call you a heretic;
you don't go to church. I don't, either. Then the papers appeared,
those leaflets. Was it you that thought them out?"

"Yes, I!" answered Pavel, without taking his eyes off Rybin's face.
Rybin also looked steadily into Pavel's eyes.

"You alone!" exclaimed the mother, coming into the room. "It wasn't
you alone."

Pavel smiled; Rybin also.

The mother sniffed, and walked away, somewhat offended because they
did not pay attention to her words.

"Those leaflets are well thought out. They stir the people up.
There were twelve of them, weren't there?"

"Yes."

"I have read them all! Yes, yes. Sometimes they are not clear,
and some things are superfluous. But when a man speaks a great deal,
it's natural he should occasionally say things out of the way."

Rybin smiled. His teeth were white and strong.

"Then the search. That won me over to you more than anything else.
You and the Little Russian and Nikolay, you all got caught!" He
paused for the right word and looked at the window, rapping the
table with his fingers. "They discovered your resolve. You attend
to your business, your honor, you say, and we'll attend to ours.
The Little Russian's a fine fellow, too. The other day I heard how
he speaks in the factory, and thinks I to myself: that man isn't
going to be vanquished; it's only one thing will knock him out,
and that's death! A sturdy chap! Do you trust me, Pavel?"

"Yes, I trust you!" said Pavel, nodding.

"That's right. Look! I am forty years old; I am twice as old as
you, and I've seen twenty times as much as you. For three years
long I wore my feet to the bone marching in the army. I have been
married twice. I've been in the Caucasus, I know the Dukhobors.
They're not masters of life, no, they aren't!"

The mother listened eagerly to his direct speech. It pleased her to
have an older man come to her son and speak to him just as if he
were confessing to him. But Pavel seemed to treat the guest too
curtly, and the mother, to introduce a softer element, asked Rybin:

"Maybe you'll have something to eat."

"Thank you, mother! I've had my supper already. So then, Pavel,
you think that life does not go as it should?"

Pavel arose and began to pace the room, folding his hands behind
his back.

"It goes all right," he said. "Just now, for instance, it has
brought you here to me with an open heart. We who work our whole
life long--it unites us gradually and more and more every day. The
time will come when we shall all be united. Life is arranged
unjustly for us and is made a burden. At the same time, however,
life itself is opening our eyes to its bitter meaning and is itself
showing man the way to accelerate its pace. We all of us think just
as we live."

"True. But wait!" Rybin stopped him. "Man ought to be renovated--
that's what I think! When a man grows scabby, take him to the bath,
give him a thorough cleaning, put clean clothes on him--and he will
get well. Isn't it so? And if the heart grows scabby, take its
skin off, even if it bleeds, wash it, and dress it up all afresh.
Isn't it so? How else can you clean the inner man? There now!"

Pavel began to speak hotly and bitterly about God, about the Czar,
about the government authorities, about the factory, and how in
foreign countries the workingmen stand up for their rights. Rybin
smiled occasionally; sometimes he struck a finger on the table as
if punctuating a period. Now and then he cried out briefly: "So!"
And once, laughing out, he said quietly: "You're young. You know
people but little!"

Pavel stopping before him said seriously:

"Let's not talk of being old or being young. Let us rather see
whose thoughts are truer."

"That is, according to you, we've been fooled about God also. So!
I, too, think that our religion is false and injurious to us."

Here the mother intervened. When her son spoke about God and about
everything that she connected with her faith in him, which was dear
and sacred to her, she sought to meet his eyes, she wanted to ask
her son mutely not to chafe her heart with the sharp, bitter words
of his unbelief. And she felt that Rybin, an older man, would also
be displeased and offended. But when Rybin calmly put his question
to Pavel, she could no longer contain herself, and said firmly:
"When you speak of God, I wish you were more careful. You can do
whatever you like. You have your compensation in your work."
Catching her breath she continued with still greater vehemence:
"But I, an old woman, I will have nothing to lean upon in my distress
if you take my God away from me."

Her eyes filled with tears. She was washing the dishes, and her
fingers trembled.

"You did not understand us, mother!" Pavel said softly and kindly.

"Beg your pardon, mother!" Rybin added in a slow, thick voice. He
looked at Pavel and smiled. "I forgot that you're too old to cut
out your warts."

"I did not speak," continued Pavel, "about that good and gracious
God in whom you believe, but about the God with whom the priests
threaten us as with a stick, about the God in whose name they want
to force all of us to the evil will of the few."

"That's it, right you are!" exclaimed Rybin, striking his fingers
upon the table. "They have mutilated even our God for us, they have
turned everything in their hands against us. Mark you, mother, God
created man in his own image and after his own likeness. Therefore
he is like man if man is like him. But we have become, not like
God, but like wild beasts! In the churches they set up a scarecrow
before us. We have got to change our God, mother; we must cleanse
him! They have dressed him up in falsehood and calumny; they have
distorted his face in order to destroy our souls!"

He talked composedly and very distinctly and intelligibly. Every
word of his speech fell upon the mother's ears like a blow. And his
face set in the frame of his black beard, his broad face attired, as
it were, in mourning, frightened her. The dark gleam of his eyes
was insupportable to her. He aroused in her a sense of anguish, and
filled her heart with terror.

"No, I'd better go away," she said, shaking her head in negation.
"It's not in my power to listen to this. I cannot!"

And she quickly walked into the kitchen followed by the words of
Rybin:

"There you have it, Pavel! It begins not in the head, but in the
heart. The heart is such a place that nothing else will grow in it."

"Only reason," said Pavel firmly, "only reason will free mankind."

"Reason does not give strength!" retorted Rybin emphatically. "The
heart gives strength, and not the head, I tell you."

The mother undressed and lay down in bed without saying her prayer.
She felt cold and miserable. And Rybin, who at first seemed such a
staid, wise man, now aroused in her a blind hostility.

"Heretic! Sedition-maker!" she thought, listening to his even voice
flowing resonantly from his deep chest. He, too, had come--he was
indispensable.

He spoke confidently and composedly:

"The holy place must not be empty. The spot where God dwells is a
place of pain; and if he drops out from the heart, there will be a
wound in it, mark my word! It is necessary, Pavel, to invent a new
faith; it is necessary to create a God for all. Not a judge, not a
warrior, but a God who shall be the friend of the people."

"You had one! There was Christ!"

"Wait a moment! Christ was not strong in spirit. 'Let the cup pass
from me,' he said. And he recognized Caesar. God cannot recognize
human powers. He himself is the whole of power. He does not divide
his soul saying: so much for the godly, so much for the human. If
Christ came to affirm the divine he had no need for anything human.
But he recognized trade, and he recognized marriage. And it was
unjust of him to condemn the fig tree. Was it of its own will that
it was barren of fruit? Neither is the soul barren of good of its
own accord. Have I sown the evil in it myself? Of course not!"

The two voices hummed continuously in the room, as if clutching at
each other and wrestling in exciting play. Pavel walked hurriedly
up and down the room; the floor cracked under his feet. When he
spoke all other sounds were drowned by his voice; but above the
slow, calm flow of Rybin's dull utterance were heard the strokes of
the pendulum and the low creaking of the frost, as of sharp claws
scratching the walls of the house.

"I will speak to you in my own way, in the words of a stoker. God
is like fire. He does not strengthen anything. He cannot. He
merely burns and fuses when he gives light. He burns down churches,
he does not raise them. He lives in the heart."

"And in the mind!" insisted Pavel.

"That's it! In the heart and in the mind. There's the rub. It's
this that makes all the trouble and misery and misfortune. We have
severed ourselves from our own selves. The heart was severed from
the mind, and the mind has disappeared. Man is not a unit. It is
God that makes him a unit, that makes him a round, circular thing.
God always makes things round. Such is the earth and all the stars
and everything visible to the eye. The sharp, angular things are
the work of men."

The mother fell asleep and did not hear Rybin depart.

But he began to come often, and if any of Pavel's comrades were
present, Rybin sat in a corner and was silent, only occasionally
interjecting: "That's so!"

And once looking at everybody from his corner with his dark glance
he said somberly:

"We must speak about that which is; that which will be is unknown
to us. When the people have freed themselves, they will see for
themselves what is best. Enough, quite enough of what they do not
want at all has been knocked into their heads. Let there be an end
of this! Let them contrive for themselves. Maybe they will want to
reject everything, all life, and all knowledge; maybe they will see
that everything is arranged against them. You just deliver all the
books into their hands, and they will find an answer for themselves,
depend upon it! Only let them remember that the tighter the collar
round the horse's neck, the worse the work."

But when Pavel was alone with Rybin they at once began an endless
but always calm disputation, to which the mother listened anxiously,
following their words in silence, and endeavoring to understand.
Sometimes it seemed to her as if the broad-shouldered, black-bearded
peasant and her well-built, sturdy son had both gone blind. In that
little room, in the darkness, they seemed to be knocking about from
side to side in search of light and an outlet, to be grasping out
with powerful but blind hands; they seemed to fall upon the floor,
and having fallen, to scrape and fumble with their feet. They hit
against everything, groped about for everything, and flung it away,
calm and composed, losing neither faith nor hope.

They got her accustomed to listen to a great many words, terrible in
their directness and boldness; and these words had now ceased to
weigh down on her so heavily as at first. She learned to push them
away from her ears. And although Rybin still displeased her as
before, he no longer inspired her with hostility.

Once a week she carried underwear and books to the Little Russian
in prison. On one occasion they allowed her to see him and talk to
him; and on returning home she related enthusiastically:

"He is as if he were at home there, too! He is good and kind to
everybody; everybody jokes with him; just as if there were a holiday
in his heart all the time. His lot is hard and heavy, but he does
not want to show it."

"That's right! That's the way one should act," observed Rybin.
"We are all enveloped in misery as in our skins. We breathe misery,
we wear misery. But that's nothing to brag about. Not all people
are blind; some close their eyes of their own accord, indeed! And
if you are stupid you have to suffer for it."

CHAPTER VIII

The little old gray house of the Vlasovs attracted the attention of
the village more and more; and although there was much suspicious
chariness and unconscious hostility in this notice, yet at the same
time a confiding curiosity grew up also. Now and then some one
would come over, and looking carefully about him would say to Pavel:
"Well, brother, you are reading books here, and you know the laws.
Explain to me, then----"

And he would tell Pavel about some injustice of the police or the
factory administration. In complicated cases Pavel would give the
man a note to a lawyer friend in the city, and when he could, he
would explain the case himself.

Gradually people began to look with respect upon this young, serious
man, who spoke about everything simply and boldly, and almost never
laughed, who looked at everybody and listened to everybody with an
attention which searched stubbornly into every circumstance, and
always found a certain general and endless thread binding people
together by a thousand tightly drawn knots.

Vlasova saw how her son had grown up; she strove to understand his
work, and when she succeeded, she rejoiced with a childlike joy.

Pavel rose particularly in the esteem of the people after the
appearance of his story about the "Muddy Penny."

Back of the factory, almost encircling it with a ring of putrescence,
stretched a vast marsh grown over with fir trees and birches. In
the summer it was covered with thick yellow and green scum, and
swarms of mosquitoes flew from it over the village, spreading fever
in their course. The marsh belonged to the factory, and the new
manager, wishing to extract profit from it, conceived the plan of
draining it and incidentally gathering in a fine harvest of peat.
Representing to the workingmen how much this measure would contribute
to the sanitation of the locality and the improvement of the general
condition of all, the manager gave orders to deduct a kopeck from
every ruble of their earnings, in order to cover the expense of
draining the marsh. The workingmen rebelled; they especially resented
the fact that the office clerks were exempted from paying the new tax.

Pavel was ill on the Saturday when posters were hung up announcing
the manager's order in regard to the toll. He had not gone to work
and he knew nothing about it. The next day, after mass, a dapper
old man, the smelter Sizov, and the tall, vicious-looking locksmith
Makhotin, came to him and told him of the manager's decision.

"A few of us older ones got together," said Sizov, speaking
sedately, "talked the matter over, and our comrades, you see, sent
us over to you, as you are a knowing man among us. Is there such a
law as gives our manager the right to make war upon mosquitoes with
our kopecks?"

"Think!" said Makhotin, with a glimmer in his narrow eyes. "Three
years ago these sharpers collected a tax to build a bath house.
Three thousand eight hundred rubles is what they gathered in. Where
are those rubles? And where is the bath house?"

Pavel explained the injustice of the tax, and the obvious advantage
of such a procedure to the factory owners; and both of his visitors
went away in a surly mood.

The mother, who had gone with them to the door, said, laughing:

"Now, Pasha, the old people have also begun to come to seek wisdom
from you."

Without replying, Pavel sat down at the table with a busy air and
began to write. In a few minutes he said to her: "Please go to the
city immediately and deliver this note."

"Is it dangerous?" she asked.

"Yes! A newspaper is being published for us down there! That
'Muddy Penny' story must go into the next issue."

"I'll go at once," she replied, beginning hurriedly to put on her wraps.

This was the first commission her son had given her. She was happy
that he spoke to her so openly about the matter, and that she might
be useful to him in his work.

"I understand all about it, Pasha," she said. "It's a piece of
robbery. What's the name of the man? Yegor Ivanovich?"

"Yes," said Pavel, smiling kindly.

She returned late in the evening, exhausted but contented.

"I saw Sashenka," she told her son. "She sends you her regards.
And this Yegor Ivanovich is such a simple fellow, such a joker!
He speaks so comically."

"I'm glad you like them," said Pavel softly.

"They are simple people, Pasha. It's good when people are simple.
And they all respect you."

Again, Monday, Pavel did not go to work. His head ached. But at
dinner time Fedya Mazin came running in, excited, out of breath,
happy, and tired.

"Come! The whole factory has arisen! They've sent for you. Sizov
and Makhotin say you can explain better than anybody else. My!
What a hullabaloo!"

Pavel began to dress himself silently.

"A crowd of women are gathered there; they are screaming!"

"I'll go, too," declared the mother. "You're not well, and--what
are they doing? I'm going, too."

"Come," Pavel said briefly.

They walked along the street quickly and silently. The mother panted
with the exertion of the rapid gait and her excitement. She felt that
something big was happening. At the factory gates a throng of women
were discussing the affair in shrill voices. When the three pushed
into the yard, they found themselves in the thick of a crowd buzzing
and humming in excitement. The mother saw that all heads were turned
in the same direction, toward the blacksmith's wall, where Sizov,
Makhotin, Vyalov, and five or six influential, solid workingmen were
standing on a high pile of old iron heaped on the red brick paving of
the court, and waving their hands.

"Vlasov is coming!" somebody shouted.

"Vlasov? Bring him along!"

Pavel was seized and pushed forward, and the mother was left alone.

"Silence!" came the shout from various directions. Near by the
even voice of Rybin was heard:

"We must make a stand, not for the kopeck, but for justice. What
is dear to us is not our kopeck, because it's no rounder than any
other kopeck; it's only heavier; there's more human blood in it
than in the manager's ruble. That's the truth!"

The words fell forcibly on the crowd and stirred the men to hot
responses:

"That's right! Good, Rybin!"

"Silence! The devil take you!"

"Vlasov's come!"

The voices mingled in a confused uproar, drowning the ponderous whir
of the machinery, the sharp snorts of the steam, and the flapping
of the leather belts. From all sides people came running, waving
their hands; they fell into arguments, and excited one another with
burning, stinging words. The irritation that had found no vent,
that had always lain dormant in tired breasts, had awakened, demanded
an outlet, and burst from their mouths in a volley of words. It
soared into the air like a great bird spreading its motley wings
ever wider and wider, clutching people and dragging them after it,
and striking them against one another. It lived anew, transformed
into flaming wrath. A cloud of dust and soot hung over the crowd;
their faces were all afire, and black drops of sweat trickled down
their cheeks. Their eyes gleamed from darkened countenances;
their teeth glistened.

Pavel appeared on the spot where Sizov and Makhotin were standing,
and his voice rang out:

"Comrades!"

The mother saw that his face paled and his lips trembled; she
involuntarily pushed forward, shoving her way through the crowd.

"Where are you going, old woman?"

She heard the angry question, and the people pushed her, but she
would not stop, thrusting the crowd aside with her shoulders and
elbows. She slowly forced her way nearer to her son, yielding to
the desire to stand by his side. When Pavel had thrown out the word
to which he was wont to attach a deep and significant meaning, his
throat contracted in a sharp spasm of the joy of fight. He was
seized with an invincible desire to give himself up to the strength
of his faith; to throw his heart to the people. His heart kindled
with the dream of truth.

"Comrades!" he repeated, extracting power and rapture from the word.
"We are the people who build churches and factories, forge chains
and coin money, make toys and machines. We are that living force
which feeds and amuses the world from the cradle to the grave."

"There!" Rybin exclaimed.

"Always and everywhere we are first in work but last in life. Who
cares for us? Who wishes us good? Who regards us as human beings?
No one!"

"No one!" echoed from the crowd.

Pavel, mastering himself, began to talk more simply and calmly;
the crowd slowly drew about him, blending into one dark, thick,
thousand-headed body. It looked into his face with hundreds of
attentive eyes; it sucked in his words in silent, strained attention.

"We will not attain to a better life until we feel ourselves as
comrades, as one family of friends firmly bound together by one
desire--the desire to fight for our rights."

"Get down to business!" somebody standing near the mother shouted rudely.

"Don't interrupt!" "Shut up!" The two muffled exclamations were
heard in different places. The soot-covered faces frowned in sulky
incredulity; scores of eyes looked into Pavel's face thoughtfully
and seriously.

"A socialist, but no fool!" somebody observed.

"I say, he does speak boldly!" said a tall, crippled workingman,
tapping the mother on the shoulder.

"It is time, comrades, to take a stand against the greedy power that
lives by our labor. It is time to defend ourselves; we must all
understand that no one except ourselves will help us. One for all
and all for one--this is our law, if we want to crush the foe!"

"He's right, boys!" Makhotin shouted. "Listen to the truth!" And,
with a broad sweep of his arm, he shook his fist in the air.

"We must call out the manager at once," said Pavel. "We must ask him."

As if struck by a tornado, the crowd rocked to and fro; scores of
voices shouted:

"The manager! The manager! Let him come! Let him explain!"

"Send delegates for him! Bring him here!"

"No, don't; it's not necessary!"

The mother pushed her way to the front and looked up at her son.
She was filled with pride. Her son stood among the old, respected
workingmen; all listened to him and agreed with him! She was
pleased that he was so calm and talked so simply; not angrily, not
swearing, like the others. Broken exclamations, wrathful words and
oaths descended like hail on iron. Pavel looked down on the people
from his elevation, and with wide-open eyes seemed to be seeking
something among them.

"Delegates!"

"Let Sizov speak!"

"Vlasov!"

"Rybin! He has a terrible tongue!"

Finally Sizov, Rybin, and Pavel were chosen for the interview with
the manager. When just about to send for the manager, suddenly low
exclamations were heard in the crowd:

"Here he comes himself!"

"The manager?"

"Ah!"

The crowd opened to make way for a tall, spare man with a pointed
beard, an elongated face and blinking eyes.

"Permit me," he said, as he pushed the people aside with a short
motion of his hand, without touching them. With the experienced
look of a ruler of people, he scanned the workingmen's faces with a
searching gaze. They took their hats off and bowed to him. He
walked past them without acknowledging their greetings. His
presence silenced and confused the crowd, and evoked embarrassed
smiles and low exclamations, as of repentant children who had
already come to regret their prank.

Now he passed, by the mother, casting a stern glance at her face,
and stopped before the pile of iron. Somebody from above extended a
hand to him; he did not take it, but with an easy, powerful movement
of his body he clambered up and stationed himself in front of Pavel
and Sizov. Looking around the silent crowd, he asked:

"What's the meaning of this crowd? Why have you dropped your work?"

For a few seconds silence reigned. Sizov waved his cap in the air,
shrugged his shoulders, and dropped his head.

"I am asking you a question!" continued the manager.

Pavel moved alongside of him and said in a low voice, pointing to
Sizov and Rybin:

"We three are authorized by all the comrades to ask you to revoke
your order about the kopeck discount."

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