Mother by Maxim Gorky (bookstand for reading .TXT) 📖

Little Russian drawled. “He’s an irascible boy. I wouldn’t talk to him about Isay, mother. That fellow Isay is really spying and getting paid for it, too.”

“What’s so strange in that? His godfather is a gendarme,” observed the mother.

“Well, Nikolay will give him a dressing. What of it?” the Little Russian continued uneasily. “See what hard feelings the rulers of our life have produced in the rank and file? When such people as Nikolay come to recognize their wrong and lose their patience, what will happen then? The sky will be sprinkled with blood, and the earth will froth and foam with it like the suds of soap water.”

“It’s terrible, Andriusha!” the mother exclaimed in a low voice.

“They have swallowed flies, and have to vomit them now!” said Andrey after a pause. “And after all, mother, every drop of their blood that may be shed will have been washed in seas of the people’s tears.”

Suddenly he broke into a low laugh and added:

“That’s true; but it’s no comfort!”

Once on a holiday the mother, on returning home from a store, opened the door of the porch, and remained fixed to the spot, suddenly bathed in the sunshine of joy. From the room she heard the sound of Pavel’s voice.

“There she is!” cried the Little Russian.

The mother saw Pavel turn about quickly, and saw how his face lighted up with a feeling that held out the promise of something great to her.

“There you are—come home!” she mumbled, staggered by the unexpectedness of the event. She sat down.

He bent down to her with a pale face, little tears glistened brightly in the corners of his eyes, and his lips trembled. For a moment he was silent. The mother looked at him, and was silent also.

The Little Russian, whistling softly, passed by them with bent head and walked out into the yard.

“Thank you, mother,” said Pavel in a deep, low voice, pressing her hand with his trembling fingers. “Thank you, my dear, my own mother!”

Rejoiced at the agitated expression of her son’s face and the touching sound of his voice, she stroked his hair and tried to restrain the palpitation of her heart. She murmured softly:

“Christ be with you! What have I done for you? It isn’t I who have made you what you are. It’s you yourself–-”

“Thank you for helping our great cause!” he said. “When a man can call his mother his own in spirit also—that’s rare fortune!”

She said nothing, and greedily swallowed his words. She admired her son as he stood before her so radiant and so near.

“I was silent, mother dear. I saw that many things in my life hurt you. I was sorry for you, and yet I could not help it. I was powerless! I thought you could never get reconciled to us, that you could never adopt our ideas as yours, but that you would suffer in silence as you had suffered all your life long. It was hard.”

“Andriusha made me understand many things!” she declared, in her desire to turn her son’s attention to his comrade.

“Yes, he told me about you,” said Pavel, laughing.

“And Yegor, too! He is a countryman of mine, you know. Andriusha wanted to teach me to read, also.”

“And you got offended, and began to study by yourself in secret.”

“Oh, so he found me out!” she exclaimed in embarrassment. Then troubled by this abundance of joy which filled her heart she again suggested to Pavel:

“Shan’t we call him in? He went out on purpose, so as not to disturb us. He has no mother.”

“Andrey!” shouted Pavel, opening the door to the porch. “Where are you?”

“Here. I want to chop some wood.”

“Never mind! There’s time enough! Come here!”

“All right! I’m coming!”

But he did not come at once; and on entering the kitchen he said in a housekeeper-like fashion:

“We must tell Nikolay to bring us wood. We have very little wood left. You see, mother, how well Pavel looks? Instead of punishing the rebels, the government only fattens them.”

The mother laughed. Her heart was still leaping with joy. She was fairly intoxicated with happiness. But a certain, cautious, chary feeling already called forth in her the wish to see her son calm as he always was. She wanted this first joy in her life to remain fixed in her heart forever as live and strong as at first. In order to guard against the diminution of her happiness; she hastened to hide it, as a fowler secrets some rare bird that has happened to fall into his hands.

“Let’s have dinner! Pasha, haven’t you had anything to eat yet?” she asked with anxious haste.

“No. I learned yesterday from the warden that I was to be released, and I couldn’t eat or drink anything to-day.”

“The first person I met here was Sizov,” Pavel communicated to Andrey. “He caught sight of me and crossed the street to greet me. I told him that he ought to be more careful now, as I was a dangerous man under the surveillance of the police. But he said: ‘Never mind!’ and you ought to have heard him inquire about his nephew! ‘Did Fedor conduct himself properly in prison?’ I wanted to know what is meant by proper behavior in prison, and he declared: ‘Well, did he blab anything he shouldn’t have against his comrades?’ And when I told him that Fedya was an honest and wise young man, he stroked his beard and declared proudly: ‘We, the Sizovs, have no trash in our family.’”

“He’s a brainy old man!” said the Little Russian, nodding his head. “We often have talks with him. He’s a fine peasant. Will they let Fedya out soon?”

“Yes, one of these days, I suppose. They’ll let out all, I think. They have no evidence except Isay’s, and what can he say?”

The mother walked up and down the room, and looked at her son. Andrey stood at the window with his hands clasped behind his back, listening to Pavel’s narrative. Pavel also paced up and down the room. His beard had grown, and small ringlets of thin, dark hair curled in a dense growth around his cheeks, softening the swarthy color of his face. His dark eyes had their stern expression.

“Sit down!” said the mother, serving a hot dish.

At dinner Andrey told Pavel about Rybin. When he had concluded Pavel exclaimed regretfully:

“If I had been home, I would not have let him go that way. What did he take along with him? A feeling of discontent and a muddle in his head!”

“Well,” said Andrey, laughing, “when a man’s grown to the age of forty and has fought so long with the bears in his heart, it’s hard to make him over.”

Pavel looked at him sternly and asked:

“Do you think it’s impossible for enlightenment to destroy all the rubbish that’s been crammed into a man’s brains?”

“Don’t fly up into the air at once, Pavel! Your flight will knock you up against the belfry tower and break your wings,” said the Little Russian in admonition.

And they started one of those discussions in which words were used that were unintelligible to the mother. The dinner was already at an end, but they still continued a vehement debate, flinging at each other veritable rattling hailstones of big words. Sometimes their language was simpler:

“We must keep straight on our path, turning neither to the right nor to the left!” Pavel asserted firmly.

“And run headlong into millions of people who will regard us as their enemies!”

“You can’t avoid that!”

“And what, my dear sir, becomes of your enlightenment?”

The mother listened to the dispute, and understood that Pavel did not care for the peasants, but that the Little Russian stood up for them, and tried to show that the peasants, too, must be taught to comprehend the good. She understood Andrey better, and he seemed to her to be in the right; but every time he spoke she waited with strained ears and bated breath for her son’s answer to find out whether the Little Russian had offended Pavel. But although they shouted at the top of their voices, they gave each other no offense.

Occasionally the mother asked:

“Is it so, Pavel?”

And he answered with a smile:

“Yes, it’s so.”

“Say, my dear sir,” the Little Russian said with a good-natured sneer, “you have eaten well, but you have chewed your food up badly, and a piece has remained sticking in your throat. You had better gargle.”

“Don’t go fooling now!” said Pavel.

“I am as solemn as a funeral.”

The mother laughed quietly and shook her head.