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

She silently nodded her head and smiled, satisfied that her son had spoken so bravely, perhaps still more satisfied that he had finished. The thought darted through her mind that the speech was likely to increase the dangers threatening Pavel; but her heart palpitated with pride, and his words seemed to settle in her bosom.

Andrey arose, swung his body forward, looked at the judges sidewise, and said:

“Gentlemen of the defense–-”

“The court is before you, and not the defense!” observed the judge of the sickly face angrily and loudly. By Andrey’s expression the mother perceived that he wanted to tease them. His mustache quivered. A cunning, feline smirk familiar to her lighted up his eyes. He stroked his head with his long hands, and fetched a breath.

“Is that so?” he said, swinging his head. “I think not. That you are not the judges, but only the defendants–-”

“I request you to adhere to what directly pertains to the case,” remarked the old man dryly.

“To what directly pertains to the case? Very well! I’ve already compelled myself to think that you are in reality judges, independent people, honest–-”

“The court has no need of your characterization.”

“It has no need of SUCH a characterization? Hey? Well, but after all I’m going to continue. You are men who make no distinction between your own and strangers. You are free people. Now, here two parties stand before you; one complains, ‘He robbed me and did me up completely’; and the other answers, ‘I have a right to rob and to do up because I have arms’–-”

“Please don’t tell anecdotes.”

“Why, I’ve heard that old people like anecdotes—naughty ones in particular.”

“I’ll prohibit you from speaking. You may say something about what directly pertains to the case. Speak, but without buffoonery, without unbecoming sallies.”

The Little Russian looked at the judges, silently rubbing his head.

“About what directly pertains to the case?” he asked seriously. “Yes; but why should I speak to you about what directly pertains to the case? What you need to know my comrade has told you. The rest will be told you; the time will come, by others–-”

The old judge rose and declared:

“I forbid you to speak. Vasily Samoylov!”

Pressing his lips together firmly the Little Russian dropped down lazily on the bench, and Samoylov arose alongside of him, shaking his curly hair.

“The prosecuting attorney called my comrades and me ‘savages,’ ‘enemies of civilization’–-”

“You must speak only about that which pertains to your case.”

“This pertains to the case. There’s nothing which does not pertain to honest men, and I ask you not to interrupt me. I ask you what sort of a thing is your civilization?”

“We are not here for discussions with you. To the point!” said the old judge, showing his teeth.

Andrey’s demeanor had evidently changed the conduct of the judges; his words seemed to have wiped something away from them. Stains appeared on their gray faces. Cold, green sparks burned in their eyes. Pavel’s speech had excited but subdued them; it restrained their agitation by its force, which involuntarily inspired respect. The Little Russian broke away this restraint and easily bared what lay underneath. They looked at Samoylov, and whispered to one another with strange, wry faces. They also began to move extremely quickly for them. They gave the impression of desiring to seize him and howl while torturing his body with voluptuous ecstasy.

“You rear spies, you deprave women and girls, you put men in the position which forces them to thievery and murder; you corrupt them with whisky—international butchery, universal falsehood, depravity, and savagery—that’s your civilization! Yes, we are enemies of this civilization!”

“Please!” shouted the old judge, shaking his chin; but Samoylov, all red, his eyes flashing, also shouted:

“But we respect and esteem another civilization, the creators of which you have persecuted, you have allowed to rot in dungeons, you have driven mad–-”

“I forbid you to speak! Hm— Fedor Mazin!”

Little Mazin popped up like a cork from a champagne bottle, and said in a staccato voice:

“I—I swear!—I know you have convicted me–-”

He lost breath and paled; his eyes seemed to devour his entire face. He stretched out his hand and shouted:

“I—upon my honest word! Wherever you send me—I’ll escape—I’ll return—I’ll work always—all my life! Upon my honest word!”

Sizov quacked aloud. The entire public, overcome by the mounting wave of excitement, hummed strangely and dully. One woman cried, some one choked and coughed. The gendarmes regarded the prisoners with dull surprise, the public with a sinister look. The judges shook, the old man shouted in a thin voice:

“Ivan Gusev!”

“I don’t want to speak.”

“Vasily Gusev!”

“Don’t want to.”

“Fedor Bukin!”

The whitish, faded fellow lifted himself heavily, and shaking his head slowly said in a thick voice:

“You ought to be ashamed. I am a heavy man, and yet I understand— justice!” He raised his hand higher than his head and was silent, half-closing his eyes as if looking at something at a distance.

“What is it?” shouted the old judge in excited astonishment, dropping back in his armchair.

“Oh, well, what’s the use?”

Bukin sullenly let himself down on the bench. There was something big and serious in his dark eyes, something somberly reproachful and naive. Everybody felt it; even the judges listened, as if waiting for an echo clearer than his words. On the public benches all commotion died down immediately; only a low weeping swung in the air. Then the prosecuting attorney, shrugging his shoulders, grinned and said something to the marshal of the nobility, and whispers gradually buzzed again excitedly through the hall.

Weariness enveloped the mother’s body with a stifling faintness. Small drops of perspiration stood on her forehead. Samoylov’s mother stirred on the bench, nudging her with her shoulder and elbow, and said to her husband in a subdued whisper:

“How is this, now? Is it possible?”

“You see, it’s possible.”

“But what is going to happen to him, to Vasily?”

“Keep still. Stop.”

The public was jarred by something it did not understand. All blinked in perplexity with blinded eyes, as if dazzled by the sudden blazing up of an object, indistinct in outline, of unknown meaning, but with horrible drawing power. And since the people did not comprehend this great thing dawning on them, they contracted its significance into something small, the meaning of which was, evident and clear to them. The elder Bukin, therefore, whispered aloud without constraint:

“Say, please, why don’t they permit them to talk? The prosecuting attorney can say everything, and as much as he wants to–-”

A functionary stood at the benches, and waving his hands at the people, said in a half voice:

“Quiet, quiet!”

The father of Samoylov threw himself back, and ejaculated broken words behind his wife’s ear:

“Of course—let us say they are guilty—but you’ll let them explain. What is it they have gone against? Against everything—I wish to understand—I, too, have my interest.” And suddenly: “Pavel says the truth, hey? I want to understand. Let them speak.”

“Keep still!” exclaimed the functionary, shaking his finger at him.

Sizov nodded his head sullenly.

But the mother kept her gaze fastened unwaveringly on the judges, and saw that they got more and more excited, conversing with one another in indistinct voices. The sound of their words, cold and tickling, touched her face, puckering the skin on it, and filling her mouth with a sickly, disgusting taste. The mother somehow conceived that they were all speaking of the bodies of her son and his comrades, their vigorous bare bodies, their muscles, their youthful limbs full of hot blood, of living force. These bodies kindled in the judges the sinister, impotent envy of the rich by the poor, the unwholesome greed felt by wasted and sick people for the strength of the healthy. Their mouths watered regretfully for these bodies, capable of working and enriching, of rejoicing and creating. The youths produced in the old judges the revengeful, painful excitement of an enfeebled beast which sees the fresh prey, but no longer has the power to seize it, and howls dismally at its powerlessness.

This thought, rude and strange, grew more vivid the more attentively the mother scrutinized the judges. They seemed not to conceal their excited greed—the impotent vexation of the hungry who at one time had been able to consume in abundance. To her, a woman and a mother, to whom after all the body of her son is always dearer than that in him which is