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

the table with both hands, and straightening himself said with an air that seemed to augur ill:

“Those–-” —here he flung out a terrible oath— “those people don’t know what their blind hands are sowing. They WILL know when our power is complete and we begin to mow down their cursed grass. They’ll know it then!”

The mother was frightened. She looked at him, and saw that Mikhail’s face had changed greatly. He had grown thinner; his beard was roughened, and his cheek bones seemed to have sharpened. The bluish whites of his eyes were threaded with thin red fibers, as if he had gone without sleep for a long time. His nose, less fleshy than formerly, had acquired a rapacious crook. His open, tar-saturated collar, attached to a shirt that had once been red, exposed his dry collar bones and the thick black hair on his breast. About his whole figure there was something more tragic than before. Red sparks seemed to fly from his inflamed eyes and light the lean, dark face with the fire of unconquerable, melancholy rage. Sofya paled and was silent, her gaze riveted on the peasant. Ignaty shook his head and screwed up his eyes, and Yakob, standing at the wall again, angrily tore splinters from the boards with his blackened fingers. Yefim, behind the mother, slowly paced up and down along the length of the table.

“The other day,” continued Rybin, “a government official called me up, and, says he, ‘You blackguard, what did you say to the priest?’ ‘Why am I a blackguard?’ I say. ‘I earn my bread in the sweat of my brow, and I don’t do anything bad to people.’ That’s what I said. He bawled out at me, and hit me in the face. For three days and three nights I sat in the lockup.” Rybin grew infuriated. “That’s the way you speak to the people, is it?” he cried. “Don’t expect pardon, you devils. My wrong will be avenged, if not by me, then by another, if not on you, then on your children. Remember! The greed in your breasts has harrowed the people with iron claws. You have sowed malice; don’t expect mercy!”

The wrath in Rybin seethed and bubbled; his voice shook with sounds that frightened the mother.

“And what had I said to the priest?” he continued in a lighter tone. “After the village assembly he sits with the peasants in the street, and tells them something. ‘The people are a flock,’ says he, ‘and they always need a shepherd.’ And I joke. ‘If,’ I say, ‘they make the fox the chief in the forest, there’ll be lots of feathers but no birds.’ He looks at me sidewise and speaks about how the people ought to be patient and pray more to God to give them the power to be patient. And I say that the people pray, but evidently God has no time, because he doesn’t listen to them. The priest begins to cavil with me as to what prayers I pray. I tell him I use one prayer, like all the people, ‘O Lord, teach the masters to carry bricks, eat stones, and spit wood.’ He wouldn’t even let me finish my sentence. —Are you a lady?” Rybin asked Sofya, suddenly breaking off his story.

“Why do you think I’m a lady?” she asked quickly, startled by the unexpectedness of his question.

“Why?” laughed Rybin. “That’s the star under which you were born. That’s why. You think a chintz kerchief can conceal the blot of the nobleman from the eyes of the people? We’ll recognize a priest even if he’s wrapped in sackcloth. Here, for instance, you put your elbows on a wet table, and you started and frowned. Besides, your back is too straight for a working woman.”

Fearing he would insult Sofya with his heavy voice and his raillery, the mother said quickly and sternly:

“She’s my friend, Mikhail Ivanovich. She’s a good woman. Working in this movement has turned her hair gray. You’re not very–-”

Rybin fetched a deep breath.

“Why, was what I said insulting?”

Sofya looked at him dryly and queried:

“You wanted to say something to me?”

“I? Not long ago a new man came here, a cousin of Yakob. He’s sick with consumption; but he’s learned a thing or two. Shall we call him?”

“Call him! Why not?” answered Sofya.

Rybin looked at her, screwing up his eyes.

“Yefim,” he said in a lowered voice, “you go over to him, and tell him to come here in the evening.”

Yefim went into the shack to get his cap; then silently, without looking at anybody, he walked off at a leisurely pace and disappeared in the woods. Rybin nodded his bead in the direction he was going, saying dully:

“He’s suffering torments. He’s stubborn. He has to go into the army, he and Yakob, here. Yakob simply says, ‘I can’t.’ And that fellow can’t either; but he wants to; he has an object in view. He thinks he can stir the soldiers. My opinion is, you can’t break through a wall with your forehead. Bayonets in their hands, off they go—where? They don’t see—they’re going against themselves. Yes, he’s suffering. And Ignaty worries him uselessly.”

“No, not at all!” said Ignaty. He knit his eyebrows, and kept his eyes turned away from Rybin. “They’ll change him, and he’ll become just like all the other soldiers.”

“No, hardly,” Rybin answered meditatively. “But, of course, it’s better to run away from the army. Russia is large. Where will you find the fellow? He gets himself a passport, and goes from village to village.”

“That’s what I’m going to do, too,” remarked Yakob, tapping his foot with a chip of wood. “Once you’ve made up your mind to go against the government, go straight.”

The conversation dropped off. The bees and wasps circled busily around humming in the stifling atmosphere. The birds chirped, and somewhere at a distance a song was heard straying through the fields. After a pause Rybin said:

“Well, we’ve got to get to work. Do you want to rest? There are boards inside the shanty. Pick up some dry leaves for them, Yakob. And you, mother, give us the books. Where are they?”

The mother and Sofya began to untie their sacks. Rybin bent down over them, and said with satisfaction:

“That’s it! Well, well—not a few, I see. Have you been in this business a long time? What’s your name?” he turned toward Sofya.

“Anna Ivanovna. Twelve years. Why?”

“Nothing.”

“Have you been in prison?”

“I have.”

He was silent, taking a pile of books in his hand, and said to her, showing his teeth:

“Don’t take offense at the way I speak. A peasant and a nobleman are like tar and water. It’s hard for them to mix. They jump away from each other.”

“I’m not a lady. I’m a human being,” Sofya retorted with a quiet laugh.

“That may be. It’s hard for me to believe it; but they say it happens. They say that a dog was once a wolf. Now I’ll hide these books.”

Ignaty and Yakob walked up to him, and both stretched out their hands.

“Give us some.”

“Are they all the same?” Rybin asked of Sofya.

“No, they’re different. There’s a newspaper here, too.”

“Oh!”

The three men quickly walked into the shack.

“The peasant is on fire,” said the mother in a low voice, looking after Rybin thoughtfully.

“Yes,” answered Sofya. “I’ve never seen such a face as his—such a martyrlike face. Let’s go inside, too. I want to look at them.”

When the women reached the door they found the men already engrossed in the newspapers. Ignaty was sitting on the board, the newspaper spread on his knees, and his fingers run through his hair. He raised his head, gave the women a rapid glance, and bent over his paper again. Rybin was standing to let the ray of sun that penetrated a chink in the roof fall on his paper. He moved his lips as he read. Ignaty read kneeling, with his breast against the edge of the board.

Sofya felt the eagerness of the men for the word of truth. Her face brightened with a joyful smile. Walking carefully over to a corner, she sat down next to the mother, her arm on the mother’s shoulder, and gazed about silently.

“Uncle Mikhail, they’re rough on us peasants,” muttered Yakob without turning.

Rybin looked around at him, and answered with a smile:

“For love of us. He who loves does not insult, no matter what he says.”

Ignaty drew a deep breath, raised his head, smiled satirically, and closing his eyes said with a scowl:

“Here it says: ‘The peasant has ceased to be a human being.’ Of course he has.” Over his simple, open face glided a shadow of offense. “Well, try to wear my skin for a day or so, and turn around in it, and then we’ll see what you’ll be like, you wiseacre, you!”

“I’m going to lie down,” said the mother quietly. “I got tired, after all. My head is going around. And you?” she asked Sofya.

“I don’t want to.”

The mother stretched herself on the board and soon fell asleep. Sofya sat over her looking at the people reading. When the bees buzzed about the mother’s face, she solicitously drove them away.

Rybin came up and asked:

“Is she asleep?”

“Yes.”

He was silent for a moment, looked fixedly at the calm sleeping face, and said softly:

“She is probably the first mother who has followed in the footsteps of her son—the first.”

“Let’s not disturb her; let’s go away,” suggested Sofya.

“Well, we have to work. I’d like to have a chat with you; but we’ll put it off until evening. Come, boys.”