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

A tall, stooping man came out of the woods into the glade, and walked slowly, firmly supporting himself on a cane. His heavy, raucous breathing was audible.

“There is Savely!” exclaimed Yakob.

“Here I am,” said the man hoarsely. He stopped, and began to cough.

A shabby coat hung over him down to his very heels. From under his round, crumpled hat straggled thin, limp tufts of dry, straight, yellowish hair. His light, sparse beard grew unevenly upon his yellow, bony face; his mouth stood half-open; his eyes were sunk deep beneath his forehead, and glittered feverishly in their dark hollows.

When Rybin introduced him to Sofya he said to her:

“I heard you brought books for the people.”

“I did.”

“Thank you in the name of the people. They themselves cannot yet understand the book of truth. They cannot yet thank; so I, who have learned to understand it, render you thanks in their behalf.” He breathed quickly, with short, eager breaths, strangely drawing in the air through his dry lips. His voice broke. The bony fingers of his feeble hands crept along his breast trying to button his coat.

“It’s bad for you to be in the woods so late; it’s damp and close here,” remarked Sofya.

“Nothing is good for me any more,” he answered, out of breath. “Only death!”

It was painful to listen to him. His entire figure inspired a futile pity that recognized its own powerlessness, and gave way to a sullen feeling of discomfort.

The wood pile blazed up; everything round about trembled and shook; the scorched shadows flung themselves into the woods in fright. The round face of Ignaty with its inflated cheeks shone over the fire. The flames died down, and the air began to smell of smoke. Again the trees seemed to draw close and unite with the mist on the glade, listening in strained attention to the hoarse words of the sick man.

“But as a witness of the crime, I can still bring good to the people. Look at me! I’m twenty-eight years old; but I’m dying. About ten years ago I could lift five hundred pounds on my shoulders without an effort. With such strength I thought I could go on for seventy years without dropping into the grave, and I’ve lived for only ten years, and can’t go on any more. The masters have robbed me; they’ve torn forty years of my life from me; they’ve stolen forty years from me.”

“There, that’s his song,” said Rybin dully.

The fire blazed up again, but now it was stronger and more vivid. Again the shadows leaped into the woods, and again darted back to the fire, quivering about it in a mute, astonished dance. The wood crackled, and the leaves of the trees rustled softly. Alarmed by the waves of the heated atmosphere, the merry, vivacious tongues of fire, yellow and red, in sportive embrace, soared aloft, sowing sparks. The burning leaves flew, and the stars in the sky smiled to the sparks, luring them up to themselves.

“That’s not MY song. Thousands of people sing it. But they sing it to themselves, not realizing what a salutary lesson their unfortunate lives hold for all. How many men, tormented to death by work, miserable cripples, maimed, die silently from hunger! It is necessary to shout it aloud, brothers, it is necessary to shout it aloud!” He fell into a fit of coughing, bending and all a-shiver.

“Why?” asked Yefim. “My misery is my own affair. Just look at my joy.”

“Don’t interrupt,” Rybin admonished.

“You yourself said a man mustn’t boast of his misfortune,” observed Yefim with a frown.

“That’s a different thing. Savely’s misfortune is a general affair, not merely his own. It’s very different,” said Rybin solemnly. “Here you have a man who has gone down to the depths and been suffocated. Now he shouts to the world, ‘Look out, don’t go there!’”

Yakob put a pail of cider on the table, dropped a bundle of green branches, and said to the sick man:

“Come, Savely, I’ve brought you some milk.”

Savely shook his head in declination, but Yakob took him under the arm, lifted him, and made him walk to the table.

“Listen,” said Sofya softly to Rybin. She was troubled and reproached him. “Why did you invite him here? He may die any minute.”

“He may,” retorted Rybin. “Let him die among people. That’s easier than to die alone. In the meantime let him speak. He lost his life for trifles. Let him suffer a little longer for the sake of the people. It’s all right!”

“You seem to take particular delight in it,” exclaimed Sofya.

“It’s the masters who take pleasure in Christ as he groans on the cross. But what we want is to learn from a man, and make you learn something, too.”

At the table the sick man began to speak again:

“They destroy lives with work. What for? They rob men of their lives. What for, I ask? My master—I lost my life in the textile mill of Nefidov—my master presented one prima donna with a golden wash basin. Every one of her toilet articles was gold. That basin holds my lifeblood, my very life. That’s for what my life went! A man killed me with work in order to comfort his mistress with my blood. He bought her a gold wash basin with my blood.”

“Man is created in the image of God,” said Yefim, smiling. “And that’s the use to which they put the image. Fine!”

“Well, then don’t be silent!” exclaimed Rybin, striking his palm on the table.

“Don’t suffer it,” added Yakob softly.

Ignaty laughed. The mother observed that all three spoke little, but listened with the insatiable attention of hungry souls, and every time that Rybin spoke they looked into his face with watchful eyes. Savely’s talk produced a strange, sharp smile on their faces. No feeling of pity for the sick man was to be detected in their manner.

Bending toward Sofya the mother whispered:

“Is it possible that what he says is true?”

Sofya answered aloud:

“Yes, it’s true. The newspapers tell about such gifts. It happened in Moscow.”

“And the man wasn’t executed for it?” asked Rybin dully. “But he should have been executed, he should have been led out before the people and torn to pieces. His vile, dirty flesh should have been thrown to the dogs. The people will perform great executions when once they arise. They’ll shed much blood to wash away their wrongs. This blood is theirs; it has been drained from their veins; they are its masters.”

“It’s cold,” said the sick man. Yakob helped him to rise, and led him to the fire.

The wood pile burned evenly and glaringly, and the faceless shadows quivered around it. Savely sat down on a stump, and stretched his dry, transparent hands toward the fire, coughing. Rybin nodded his head to one side, and said to Sofya in an undertone:

“That’s sharper than books. That ought to be known. When they tear a workingman’s hand in a machine or kill him, you can understand— the workingman himself is at fault. But in a case like this, when they suck a man’s blood out of him and throw him away like a carcass —that can’t be explained in any way. I can comprehend every murder; but torturing for mere sport I can’t comprehend. And why do they torture the people? To what purpose do they torture us all? For fun, for mere amusement, so that they can live pleasantly on the earth; so that they can buy everything with the blood of the people, a prima donna, horses, silver knives, golden dishes, expensive toys for their children. YOU work, work, work, work more and more, and I’LL hoard money by your labor and give my mistress a golden wash basin.”

The mother listened, looked, and once again, before her in the darkness, stretched the bright streak of the road that Pavel was going, and all those with whom he walked.

When they had concluded their supper, they sat around the fire, which consumed the wood quickly. Behind them hung the darkness, embracing forest and sky. The sick man with wide-open eyes looked into the fire, coughed incessantly, and shivered all over. The remnants of his life seemed to be tearing themselves from his bosom impatiently, hastening to forsake the dry body, drained by sickness.

“Maybe you’d better go into the shanty, Savely?” Yakob asked, bending over him.

“Why?” he answered with an effort. “I’ll sit here. I haven’t much time left to stay with people, very little time.” He paused, let his eyes rove about the entire group, then with a pale smile, continued: “I feel good when I’m with you. I look at you, and think, ‘Maybe you will avenge the wrongs of all who were robbed, of all the people destroyed because of greed.’”

No one replied, and he soon fell into a doze, his head limply hanging over his chest. Rybin looked at him, and said in a dull voice:

“He comes to us, sits here, and always speaks of the same thing, of this mockery of man. This is his entire soul; he feels nothing else.”

“What more do you want?” said the mother thoughtfully. “If people are killed by the thousands day after day working so that their masters may throw money away for sport, what else do you want?”

“It’s endlessly wearying to listen to him,” said Ignaty in a low voice. “When you hear this sort of thing once, you never forget it, and he keeps harping on it all the time.”

“But everything is crowded into this one thing. It’s his entire life, remember,” remarked Rybin sullenly.

The sick man turned, opened his eyes, and lay down on the ground. Yakob rose noiselessly, walked into the cabin, brought out two short overcoats, and wrapped them about his cousin. Then he sat down beside Sofya.

The merry, ruddy face of the fire smiled irritatingly as it illumined the dark figures about it; and the voices blended mournfully with the soft rustle and crackle of the flames.

Sofya began to tell about the universal struggle of the people for the right to life, about the conflicts of the German peasants in the olden times, about the misfortunes of the Irish, about the great exploits of the workingmen of France in their frequent battling for freedom.

In the forest clothed in the velvet of night, in the little glade bounded by the dumb trees, before the sportive face of the fire, the events that shook the world rose to life again; one nation of the earth after the other passed in review, drained of its blood, exhausted by combats; the names of the great soldiers for freedom and truth were recalled.

The somewhat dull voice of the woman seemed to echo softly from the remoteness of the past. It aroused hope, it carried conviction; and the company listened in silence to its music, to the great story of their brethren in spirit. They looked into her face, lean and pale, and smiled in response to the smile of her gray eyes. Before them the cause of all the people of the world, the endless war for freedom and equality, became more vivid and assumed a greater holiness. They saw their desires and thoughts in the distance, overhung with the dark, bloody curtain of the past, amid strangers unknown to them; and inwardly, both in mind and heart, they became united with the world, seeing in it friends even in olden times, friends who had unanimously resolved to obtain right upon the earth, and had consecrated their resolve with measureless suffering, and shed rivers of their own blood. With this blood, mankind dedicated itself to a new life, bright and cheerful. A feeling arose and grew of the spiritual nearness of each