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

was his wont, slowly and scrupulously mixed the sugar in the glass with his spoon, and accurately salted his favorite crust from the end of the loaf. The Little Russian moved his feet under the table—he never could at once settle his feet comfortably—and looked at the rays of sunlight playing on the wall and ceiling.

“When I was a youngster of ten years,” he recounted, “I wanted to catch the sun in a glass. So I took the glass, stole to the wall, and bang! I cut my hand and got a licking to boot. After the licking I went out in the yard and saw the sun in a puddle. So I started to trample the mud with my feet. I covered myself with mud, and got another drubbing. What was I to do? I screamed to the sun: ‘It doesn’t hurt me, you red devil; it doesn’t hurt me!’ and stuck out my tongue at him. And I felt comforted.”

“Why did the sun seem red to you?” Pavel asked, laughing.

“There was a blacksmith opposite our house, with fine red cheeks, and a huge red beard. I thought the sun resembled him.”

The mother lost patience and said:

“You’d better talk about your arrangements for the procession.”

“Everything’s been arranged,” said Pavel.

“No use talking of things once decided upon. It only confuses the mind,” the Little Russian added. “If we are all arrested, Nikolay Ivanovich will come and tell you what to do. He will help you in every way.”

“All right,” said the mother with a heavy sigh.

“Let’s go out,” said Pavel dreamily.

“No, rather stay indoors,” replied Andrey. “No need to annoy the eyes of the police so often. They know you well enough.”

Fedya Mazin came running in, all aglow, with red spots on his cheeks, quivering with youthful joy. His animation dispelled the tedium of expectation for them.

“It’s begun!” he reported. “The people are all out on the street, their faces sharp as the edge of an ax. Vyesovshchikov, the Gusevs, and Samoylov have been standing at the factory gates all the time, and have been making speeches. Most of the people went back from the factory, and returned home. Let’s go! It’s just time! It’s ten o’clock already.”

“I’m going!” said Pavel decidedly.

“You’ll see,” Fedya assured them, “the whole factory will rise up after dinner.”

And he hurried away, followed by the quiet words of the mother:

“Burning like a wax candle in the wind.”

She rose and went into the kitchen to dress.

“Where are you going, mother?”

“With you,” she said.

Andrey looked at Pavel pulling his mustache. Pavel arranged his hair with a quick gesture, and went to his mother.

“Mother, I will not tell you anything; and don’t you tell me anything, either. Right, mother?”

“All right, all right! God bless you!” she murmured.

When she went out and heard the holiday hum of the people’s voices— an anxious and expectant hum—when she saw everywhere, at the gates and windows, crowds of people staring at Andrey and her son, a blur quivered before her eyes, changes from a transparent green to a muddy gray.

People greeted them—there was something peculiar in their greetings. She caught whispered, broken remarks:

“Here they are, the leaders!”

“We don’t know who the leaders are!”

“Why, I didn’t say anything wrong.”

At another place some one in a yard shouted excitedly:

“The police will get them, and that’ll be the end them!”

“What if they do?” retorted another voice.

Farther on a crying woman’s voice leaped frightened the window to the street:

“Consider! Are you a single man, are you? They are bachelors and don’t care!”

When they passed the house of Zosimov, the man without legs, who received a monthly allowance from the factory because of his mutilation, he stuck his head through, the window and cried out:

“Pavel, you scoundrel, they’ll wring your head off for your doings, you’ll see!”

The mother trembled and stopped. The exclamation aroused in her a sharp sensation of anger. She looked up at the thick, bloated face of the cripple, and he hid himself, cursing. Then she quickened her pace, overtook her son, and tried not to fall behind again. He and Andrey seemed not to notice anything; not to hear the outcries that pursued them. They moved calmly, without haste, and talked loudly about commonplaces. They were stopped by Mironov, a modest, elderly man, respected by everybody for his clean, sober life.

“Not working either, Daniil Ivanovich?” Pavel asked.

“My wife is going to be confined. Well, and such an exciting day, too,” Mironov responded, staring fixedly at the comrades. He said to them in an undertone:

“Boys, I hear you’re going to make an awful row—smash the superintendent’s windows.”

“Why, are we drunk?” exclaimed Pavel.

“We are simply going to march along the streets with flags, and sing songs,” said the Little Russian. “You’ll have a chance to hear our songs. They’re our confession of faith.”

“I know your confession of faith,” said Mironov thoughtfully. “I read your papers. You, Nilovna,” he exclaimed, smiling at the mother with knowing eyes, “are you going to revolt, too?”

“Well, even if it’s only before death, I want to walk shoulder to shoulder with the truth.”

“I declare!” said Mironov. “I guess they were telling the truth when they said you carried forbidden books to the factory.”

“Who said so?” asked Pavel.

“Oh, people. Well, good-by! Behave yourselves!”

The mother laughed softly; she was pleased to hear that such things were said of her. Pavel smilingly turned to her:

“Oh, you’ll get into prison, mother!”

“I don’t mind,” she murmured.

The sun rose higher, pouring warmth into the bracing freshness of the spring day. The clouds floated more slowly, their shadows grew thinner and more transparent, and crawled gently over the streets and roofs. The bright sunlight seemed to clean the village, to wipe the dust and dirt from the walls and the tedium from the faces. Everything assumed a more cheerful aspect; the voices sounded louder, drowning the far-off rumble and heavings of the factory machines.

Again, from all sides, from the windows and the yards, different words and voices, now uneasy and malicious, now thoughtful and gay, found their way to the mother’s ears. But this time she felt a desire to retort, to thank, to explain, to participate in the strangely variegated life of the day.

Off a corner of the main thoroughfare, in a narrow by-street, a crowd of about a hundred people had gathered, and from its depths resounded Vyesovshchikov’s voice:

“They squeeze our blood like juice from huckleberries.” His words fell like hammer blows on the people.

“That’s true!” the resonant cry rang out simultaneously from a number of throats.

“The boy is doing his best,” said the Little Russian. “I’ll go help him.” He bent low and before Pavel had time to stop him he twisted his tall, flexible body into the crowd like a corkscrew into a cork, and soon his singing voice rang out:

“Comrades! They say there are various races on the earth—Jews and Germans, English and Tartars. But I don’t believe it. There are only two nations, two irreconcilable tribes—the rich and the poor. People dress differently and speak differently; but look at the rich Frenchman, the rich German, or the rich Englishman, you’ll see that they are all Tartars in the way they treat their workingman—a plague on them!”

A laugh broke out in the crowd.

“On the other hand, we can see the French workingmen, the Tartar workingmen, the Turkish workingmen, all lead the same dog’s life, as we—we, the Russian workingmen.”

More and more people joined the crowd; one after the other they thronged into the by-street, silent, stepping on tiptoe, and craning their necks. Andrey raised his voice:

“The workingmen of foreign countries have already learned this simple truth, and to-day, on this bright first of May, the foreign working people fraternize with one another. They quit their work, and go out into the streets to look at themselves, to take stock of their immense power. On this day, the workingmen out there throb with one heart; for all hearts are lighted with the consciousness of the might of the working people; all hearts beat with comradeship, each and every one of them is ready to lay down his life in the war for the happiness of all, for freedom and truth to all—comrades!”

“The police!” some one shouted.