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

“You’re not like yourself to-day, Sasha.”

“Perhaps,” she laughed happily.

The mother looked at her in mute remonstrance, and Sofya observed in a tone of admonishment:

“And we were talking about Yegor Ivanovich.”

“What a wonderful fellow, isn’t he?” she exclaimed. “Modest, proof against doubt, he probably never yielded to sorrow. I have never seen him without a joke on his lips; and what a worker! He is an artist of the revolution, a great master, who skillfully manipulates revolutionary thoughts. With what simplicity and power he always draws his pictures of falsehood, violence and untruth! And what a capacity he has for tempering the horrible with his gay humor which does not diminish the force of facts but only the more brightly illumines his inner thought! Always droll! I am greatly indebted to him, and I shall never forget his merry eyes, his fun. And I shall always feel the effect of his ideas upon me in the time of my doubts—I love him!”

She spoke in a moderated voice, with a melancholy smile in her eyes. But the incomprehensible fire of her gaze was not extinguished; her exultation was apparent to everybody.

People love their own feelings—sometimes the very feelings that are harmful to them—are enamored of them, and often derive keen pleasure even from grief, a pleasure that corrodes the heart. Nikolay, the mother, and Sofya were unwilling to let the sorrowful mood produced by the death of their comrade give way to the joy brought in by Sasha. Unconsciously defending their melancholy right to feed on their sadness, they tried to impose their feelings on the girl.

“And now he’s dead,” announced Sofya, watching her carefully.

Sasha glanced around quickly, with a questioning look. She knit her eyebrows and lowered her head. She was silent for a short time, smoothing her hair with slow strokes of her hand.

“He’s dead?” She again cast a searching glance into their faces. “It’s hard for me to reconcile myself to the idea.”

“But it’s a fact,” said Nikolay with a smile.

Sasha arose, walked up and down the room, and suddenly stopping, said in a strange voice:

“What does ‘to die’ signify? What died? Did my respect for Yegor die? My love for him, a comrade? The memory of his mind’s labor? Did that labor die? Did all our impressions of him as of a hero disappear without leaving a trace? Did all this die? This best in him will never die out of me, I know. It seems to me we’re in too great a hurry to say of a man ‘he’s dead.’ That’s the reason we too soon forget that a man never dies if we don’t wish our impressions of his manhood, his self-denying toil for the triumph of truth and happiness to disappear. We forget that everything should always be alive in living hearts. Don’t be in a hurry to bury the eternally alive, the ever luminous, along with a man’s body. The church is destroyed, but God is immortal.”

Carried away by her emotions she sat down, leaning her elbows on the table, and continued more thoughtfully in a lower voice, looking smilingly through mist-covered eyes at the faces of the comrades:

“Maybe I’m talking nonsense. But life intoxicates me by its wonderful complexity, by the variety of its phenomena, which at times seem like a miracle to me. Perhaps we are too sparing in the expenditure of our feelings. We live a great deal in our thoughts, and that spoils us to a certain extent. We estimate, but we don’t feel.”

“Did anything good happen to you?” asked Sofya with a smile.

“Yes,” said Sasha, nodding her head. “I had a whole night’s talk with Vyesovshchikov. I didn’t use to like him. He seemed rude and dull. Undoubtedly that’s what he was. A dark, immovable irritation at everybody lived in him. He always used to place himself, as it were, like a dead weight in the center of things, and wrathfully say, ‘I, I, I.’ There was something bourgeois in this, low, and exasperating.” She smiled, and again took in everybody with her burning look.

“Now he says: ‘Comrades’—and you ought to hear how he says it, with what a stirring, tender love. He has grown marvelously simple and open-hearted, and possessed with a desire to work. He has found himself, he has measured his power, and knows what he is not. But the main thing is, a true comradely feeling has been born in him, a broad, loving comradeship, which smiles in the face of every difficulty in life.”

Vlasova listened to Sasha attentively. She was glad to see this girl, always so stern, now softened, cheerful, and happy. Yet from some deeps of her soul arose the jealous thought: “And how about Pasha?”

“He’s entirely absorbed in thoughts of the comrades,” continued Sasha. “And do you know of what he assures me? Of the necessity of arranging an escape for them. He says it’s a very simple, easy matter.”

Sofya raised her head, and said animatedly:

“And what do YOU think, Sasha? Is it feasible?”

The mother trembled as she set a cup of tea on the table. Sasha knit her brows, her animation gone from her. After a moment’s silence, she said in a serious voice, but smiling in joyous confusion:

“HE’S convinced. If everything is really as he says, we ought to try. It’s our duty.” She blushed, dropped into a chair, and lapsed into silence.

“My dear, dear girl!” the mother thought, smiling. Sofya also smiled, and Nikolay, looking tenderly into Sasha’s face, laughed quietly. The girl raised her head with a stern glance for all. Then she paled, and her eyes flashed, and she said dryly, the offense she felt evident in her voice:

“You’re laughing. I understand you. You consider me personally interested in the case, don’t you?”

“Why, Sasha?” asked Sofya, rising and going over to her.

Agitated, pale, the girl continued:

“But I decline. I’ll not take any part in deciding the question if you consider it.”

“Stop, Sasha,” said Nikolay calmly.

The mother understood the girl. She went to her and kissed her silently on her head. Sasha seized her hand, leaned her cheek on it, and raised her reddened face, looking into the mother’s eyes, troubled and happy. The mother silently stroked her hair. She felt sad at heart. Sofya seated herself at Sasha’s side, her arm over her shoulder, and said, smiling into the girl’s eyes:

“You’re a strange person.”

“Yes, I think I’ve grown foolish,” Sasha acknowledged. “But I don’t like shadows.”

“That’ll do,” said Nikolay seriously, but immediately followed up the admonition by the businesslike remark: “There can’t be two opinions as to the escape, if it’s possible to arrange it. But before everything, we must know whether the comrades in prison want it.”

Sasha drooped her head. Sofya, lighting a cigarette, looked at her brother, and with a broad sweep of her arm dropped the match in a corner.

“How is it possible they should not want it?” asked the mother with a sigh. Sofya nodded to her, smiling, and walked over to the window. The mother could not understand the failure of the others to respond, and looked at them in perplexity. She wanted so much to hear more about the possibility of an escape.

“I must see Vyesovshchikov,” said Nikolay.

“All right. To-morrow I’ll tell you when and where,” replied Sasha.

“What is he going to do?” asked Sofya, pacing through the room.

“It’s been decided to make him compositor in a new printing place. Until then he’ll stay with the forester.”

Sasha’s brow lowered. Her face assumed its usual severe expression. Her voice sounded caustic. Nikolay walked up to the mother, who was washing cups, and said to her:

“You’ll see Pasha day after to-morrow. Hand him a note when you’re there. Do you understand? We must know.”

“I understand. I understand,” the mother answered quickly. “I’ll deliver it to him all right. That’s my business.”

“I’m going,” Sasha announced, and silently shook hands with everybody. She strode away, straight and dry-eyed, with a peculiarly heavy tread.

“Poor girl!” said Sofya softly.

“Ye-es,” Nikolay drawled. Sofya put her hand on the mother’s shoulder and gave her a gentle little shake as she sat in the chair.

“Would you love such a daughter?” and Sofya looked into the mother’s face.

“Oh! If I could see them together, if only for one day!” exclaimed Nilovna, ready to weep.

“Yes, a bit of happiness is good for everybody.”

“But there are no people who want only a bit of happiness,” remarked Nikolay; “and when there’s much of it, it becomes cheap.”

Sofya sat herself at the piano, and began to play something low and doleful.