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

dare, I suppose?” the police commissioner drawled.

Again he waved his hand, aiming at Rybin’s head; Rybin ducked; the blow missed, and the police commissioner almost toppled over. Some one in the crowd gave a jeering snort, and the angry shout of Mikhail was heard:

“Don’t you dare to beat me, I say, you infernal devil! I’m no weaker than you! Look out!”

The police commissioner looked around. The people shut down on him in a narrower circle, advancing sullenly.

“Nikita!” the police commissioner called out, looking around. “Nikita, hey!” A squat peasant in a short fur overcoat emerged from the crowd. He looked on the ground, with his large disheveled head drooping.

“Nikita,” the police commissioner said deliberately, twirling his mustache, “give him a box on the ear—a good one!”

The peasant stepped forward, stopped in front of Rybin and raised his hand. Staring him straight in the face, Rybin stammered out heavily:

“Now look, people, how the beasts choke you with your own hands! Look! Look! Think! Why does he want to beat me—why? I ask.”

The peasant raised his hand and lazily struck Mikhail’s face.

“Ah, Nikita! don’t forget God!” subdued shouts came from the crowd.

“Strike, I say!” shouted the police commissioner, pushing the peasant on the back of his neck.

The peasant stepped aside, and inclining his head, said sullenly:

“I won’t do it again.”

“What?” The face of the police commissioner quivered. He stamped his feet, and, cursing, suddenly flung himself upon Rybin. The blow whizzed through the air; Rybin staggered and waved his arms; with the second blow the police commissioner felled him to the ground, and, jumping around with a growl, he began to kick him on his breast, his side, and his head.

The crowd set up a hostile hum, rocked, and advanced upon the police commissioner. He noticed it and jumped away, snatching his saber from its scabbard.

“So that’s what you’re up to! You’re rioting, are you?”

His voice trembled and broke; it had grown husky. And he lost his composure along with his voice. He drew his shoulders up about his head, bent over, and turning his blank, bright eyes on all sides, he fell back, carefully feeling the ground behind him with his feet. As he withdrew he shouted hoarsely in great excitement:

“All right; take him! I’m leaving! But now, do you know, you cursed dogs, that he is a political criminal; that he is going against our Czar; that he stirs up riots—do you know it?—against the Emperor, the Czar? And you protect him; you, too, are rebels. Aha—a–-”

Without budging, without moving her eyes, the strength of reason gone from her, the mother stood as if in a heavy sleep, overwhelmed by fear and pity. The outraged, sullen, wrathful shouts of the people buzzed like bees in her head.

“If he has done something wrong, lead him to court.”

“And don’t beat him!”

“Forgive him, your Honor!”

“Now, really, what does it mean? Without any law whatever!”

“Why, is it possible? If they begin to beat everybody that way, what’ll happen then?”

“The devils! Our torturers!”

The people fell into two groups—the one surrounding the police commissioner shouted and exhorted him; the other, less numerous, remained about the beaten man, humming and sullen. Several men lifted him from the ground. The policemen again wanted to bind his bands.

“Wait a little while, you devils!” the people shouted.

Rybin wiped the blood from his face and beard and looked about in silence. His gaze glided by the face of the mother. She started, stretched herself out to him, and instinctively waved her hand. He turned away; but in a few minutes his eyes again rested on her face. It seemed to her that he straightened himself and raised his head, that his blood-covered cheeks quivered.

“Did he recognize me? I wonder if he did?”

She nodded her head to him and started with a sorrowful, painful joy. But the next moment she saw that the blue-eyed peasant was standing near him and also looking at her. His gaze awakened her to the consciousness of the risk she was running.

“What am I doing? They’ll take me, too.”

The peasant said something to Rybin, who shook his head.

“Never mind!” he exclaimed, his voice tremulous, but clear and bold. “I’m not alone in the world. They’ll not capture all the truth. In the place where I was the memory of me will remain. That’s it! Even though they destroy the nest, aren’t there more friends and comrades there?”

“He’s saying this for me,” the mother decided quickly.

“The people will build other nests for the truth; and a day will come when the eagles will fly from them into freedom. The people will emancipate themselves.”

A woman brought a pail of water and, wailing and groaning, began to wash Rybin’s face. Her thin, piteous voice mixed with Mikhail’s words and hindered the mother from understanding them. A throng of peasants came up with the police commissioner in front of them. Some one shouted aloud:

“Come; I’m going to make an arrest! Who’s next?”

Then the voice of the police commissioner was heard. It had changed— mortification now evident in its altered tone.

“I may strike you, but you mayn’t strike me. Don’t you dare, you dunce!”

“Is that so? And who are you, pray? A god?”

A confused but subdued clamor drowned Rybin’s voice.

“Don’t argue, uncle. You’re up against the authorities.”

“Don’t be angry, your Honor. The man’s out of his wits.”

“Keep still, you funny fellow!”

“Here, they’ll soon take you to the city!”

“There’s more law there!”

The shouts of the crowd sounded pacificatory, entreating; they blended into a thick, indistinct babel, in which there was something hopeless and pitiful. The policemen led Rybin up the steps of the town hall and disappeared with him behind the doors. People began to depart in a hurry. The mother saw the blue-eyed peasant go across the square and look at her sidewise. Her legs trembled under her knees. A dismal feeling of impotence and loneliness gnawed at her heart sickeningly.

“I mustn’t go away,” she thought. “I mustn’t!” and holding on to the rails firmly, she waited.

The police commissioner walked up the steps of the town hall and said in a rebuking voice, which had assumed its former blankness and soullessness:

“You’re fools, you damned scoundrels! You don’t understand a thing, and poke your noses into an affair like this—a government affair. Cattle! You ought to thank me, fall on your knees before me for my goodness! If I were to say so, you would all be put to hard labor.”

About a score of peasants stood with bared heads and listened in silence. It began to grow dusk; the clouds lowered. The blue-eyed peasant walked up to the steps, and said with a sigh:

“That’s the kind of business we have here!”

“Ye-es,” the mother rejoined quietly.

He looked at her with an open gaze.

“What’s your occupation?” he asked after a pause.

“I buy lace from the women, and linen, too.”

The peasant slowly stroked his beard. Then looking up at the town hall he said gloomily and softly:

“You won’t, find anything of that kind here.”

The mother looked down on him, and waited for a more suitable moment to depart for the tavern. The peasant’s face was thoughtful and handsome and his eyes were sad. Broad-shouldered and tall, he was dressed in a patched-up coat, in a clean chintz shirt, and reddish homespun trousers. His feet were stockingless.

The mother for some reason drew a sigh of relief, and suddenly obeying an impulse from within, yielding to an instinct that got the better of her reason, she surprised herself by asking him:

“Can I stay in your house overnight?”

At the question everything in her muscles, her bones, tightened stiffly. She straightened herself, holding her breath, and fixed her eyes on the peasant. Pricking thoughts quickly flashed through her mind: “I’ll ruin everybody—Nikolay Ivanovich, Sonyushka—I’ll not see Pasha for a long time—they’ll kill him–-”

Looking on the ground, the peasant answered deliberately, folding his coat over his breast:

“Stay overnight? Yes, you can. Why not? Only my home is very poor!”

“Never mind; I’m not used to luxury,” the mother answered uncalculatingly.

“You can stay with me overnight,” the peasant repeated, measuring her with a searching glance.

It had already grown dark, and in the twilight his eyes shone cold, his face seemed very pale. The mother looked around, and as if dropping under distress, she said in an undertone:

“Then I’ll go at once, and you’ll take my valise.”

“All right!” He shrugged his shoulders, again folded his coat and said softly:

“There goes the wagon!”

In a few moments, after the crowd had begun to disperse, Rybin appeared again on the steps of the town hall. His hands were bound; his head and face were wrapped up in a gray cloth, and he was pushed into a waiting wagon.

“Farewell, good people!” his voice rang out in the cold evening twilight. “Search for the truth. Guard it! Believe the man who will bring you the clean word; cherish him. Don’t spare yourselves in the cause of truth!”

“Silence, you dog!” shouted the voice of the police commissioner. “Policeman, start the horses up, you fool!”

“What have you to be sorry for? What sort of life have you?”

The wagon started. Sitting in it with a policeman on either side, Rybin shouted dully:

“For the sake of what are you perishing—in hunger? Strive for freedom—it’ll give you bread and—truth. Farewell, good people!”

The hasty rumble of the wheels, the tramp of the horses, the shout of the police officer, enveloped his speech and muffled it.

“It’s done!” said the peasant, shaking his head. “You wait at the station a little while, and I’ll come soon.”