TThe little house at the edge of the village aroused attention. Its walls already felt the regard of scores of suspecting eyes. The motley wings of rumor hovered restlessly above them.
The little house at the edge of the village aroused attention. Its walls already felt the regard of scores of suspecting eyes. The motley wings of rumor hovered restlessly above them.
People tried to surprise the secret hidden within the house by the ravine. They peeped into the windows at night. Now and then somebody would rap on the pane, and quickly take to his heels in fright.
Once the tavern keeper stopped Vlasova on the street. He was a dapper old man, who always wore a black silk neckerchief around his red, flabby neck, and a thick, lilac-colored waistcoat of velvet around his body. On his sharp, glistening nose there always sat a pair of glasses with tortoise-shell rims, which secured him the sobriquet of "bony eyes."
In a single breath and without awaiting an answer, he plied Vlasova with dry, crackling words:
"How are you, Pelagueya Nilovna, how are you? How is your son? Thinking of marrying him off, hey? He's a youth full ripe for matrimony. The sooner a son is married off, the safer it is for his folks. A man with a family preserves himself better both in the spirit and the flesh. With a family he is like mushrooms in vinegar. If I were in your place I would marry him off. Our times require a strict watch over the animalcalled man; people are beginning to live in their brains. Men have run amuck with their thoughts, and they do things that are positively criminal. The church of God is avoided by the young folk; they shun the public places, and assemble in secret in out-of-the-way corners. They speak in whispers. Why speak in whispers, pray? All this they don't dare say before people in the tavern, for example. What is it, I ask? A secret? The secret place is our holy church, as old as the apostles. All the other secrets hatched in the corners are the offspring of delusions. I wish you good health."
Raising his hand in an affected manner, he lifted his cap, and waving it in the air, walked away, leaving the mother to her perplexity.
Vlasova's neighbor, Marya Korsunova, the blacksmith's widow, who sold food at the factory, on meeting the mother in the market place also said to her:
"Look out for your son, Pelagueya!"
"What's the matter?"
"They're talking!" Marya tendered the information in a hushed voice. "And they don't say any good, mother of mine! They speak as if he's getting up a sort of union, something like those Flagellants—sects, that's the name! They'll whip one another like the Flagellants——"
"Stop babbling nonsense, Marya! Enough!"
"I'm not babbling nonsense! I talk because I know."
The mother communicated all these conversations to her son. He shrugged his shoulders in silence, and the Little Russian laughed with his thick, soft laugh.
"The girls also have a crow to pick with you!" she said. "You'd make enviable bridegrooms for any of them; you're all good workers, and you don't drink—but you don't pay any attention to them. Besides, peopleare saying that girls of questionable character come to you."
"Well, of course!" exclaimed Pavel, his brow contracting in a frown of disgust.
"In the bog everything smells of rottenness!" said the Little Russian with a sigh. "Why don't you, mother, explain to the foolish girls what it is to be married, so that they shouldn't be in such a hurry to get their bones broken?"
"Oh, well," said the mother, "they see the misery in store for them, they understand, but what can they do? They have no other choice!"
"It's a queer way they have of understanding, else they'd find a choice," observed Pavel.
The mother looked into his austere face.
"Why don't you teach them? Why don't you invite some of the cleverer ones?"
"That won't do!" the son replied dryly.
"Suppose we try?" said the Little Russian.
After a short silence Pavel said:
"Couples will be formed; couples will walk together; then some will get married, and that's all."
The mother became thoughtful. Pavel's austerity worried her. She saw that his advice was taken even by his older comrades, such as the Little Russian; but it seemed to her that all were afraid of him, and no one loved him because he was so stern.
Once when she had lain down to sleep, and her son and the Little Russian were still reading, she overheard their low conversation through the thin partition.
"You know I like Natasha," suddenly ejaculated the Little Russian in an undertone.
"I know," answered Pavel after a pause.
"Yes!"
The mother heard the Little Russian rise and begin to walk. The tread of his bare feet sounded on the floor, and a low, mournful whistle was heard. Then he spoke again:
"And does she notice it?"
Pavel was silent.
"What do you think?" the Little Russian asked, lowering his voice.
"She does," replied Pavel. "That's why she has refused to attend our meetings."
The Little Russian dragged his feet heavily over the floor, and again his low whistle quivered in the room. Then he asked:
"And if I tell her?"
"What?" The brief question shot from Pavel like the discharge of a gun.
"That I am—" began the Little Russian in a subdued voice.
"Why?" Pavel interrupted.
The mother heard the Little Russian stop, and she felt that he smiled.
"Yes, you see, I consider that if you love a girl you must tell her about it; else there'll be no sense to it!"
Pavel clapped the book shut with a bang.
"And what sense do you expect?"
Both were silent for a long while.
"Well?" asked the Little Russian.
"You must be clear in your mind, Andrey, as to what you want to do," said Pavel slowly. "Let us assume that she loves you, too—I do not think so, but let us assume it. Well, you get married. An interesting union—the intellectual with the workingman! Children come along; you will have to work all by yourself and very hard. Your life will become the ordinary life of a strugglefor a piece of bread and a shelter for yourself and children. For the cause, you will become nonexistent, both of you!"
Silence ensued. Then Pavel began to speak again in a voice that sounded softer:
"You had better drop all this, Andrey. Keep quiet, and don't worry her. That's the more honest way."
"And do you remember what Alexey Ivanovich said about the necessity for a man to live a complete life—with all the power of his soul and body—do you remember?"
"That's not for us! How can you attain completion? It does not exist for you. If you love the future you must renounce everything in the present—everything, brother!"
"That's hard for a man!" said the Little Russian in a lowered voice.
"What else can be done? Think!"
The indifferent pendulum of the clock kept chopping off the seconds of life, calmly and precisely. At last the Little Russian said:
"Half the heart loves, and the other half hates! Is that a heart?"
"I ask you, what else can we do?"
The pages of a book rustled. Apparently Pavel had begun to read again. The mother lay with closed eyes, and was afraid to stir. She was ready to weep with pity for the Little Russian; but she was grieved still more for her son.
"My dear son! My consecrated one!" she thought.
Suddenly the Little Russian asked:
"So I am to keep quiet?"
"That's more honest, Andrey," answered Pavel softly.
"All right! That's the road we will travel." And in a few seconds he added, in a sad and subdued voice: "It will be hard for you, Pasha, when you get to that yourself."
"It is hard for me already."
"Yes?"
"Yes."
The wind brushed along the walls of the house, and the pendulum marked the passing time.
"Um," said the Little Russian leisurely, at last. "That's too bad."
The mother buried her head in the pillow and wept inaudibly.
In the morning Andrey seemed to her to be lower in stature and all the more winning. But her son towered thin, straight, and taciturn as ever. She had always called the Little Russian Andrey Stepanovich, in formal address, but now, all at once, involuntarily and unconsciously she said to him:
"Say, Andriusha, you had better get your boots mended. You are apt to catch cold."
"On pay day, mother, I'll buy myself a new pair," he answered, smiling. Then suddenly placing his long hand on her shoulder, he added: "You know, you are my real mother. Only you don't want to acknowledge it to people because I am so ugly."
She patted him on the hand without speaking. She would have liked to say many endearing things, but her heart was wrung with pity, and the words would not leave her tongue.
They spoke in the village about the socialists who distributed broadcast leaflets in blue ink. In these leaflets the conditions prevailing in the factory were trenchantlyand pointedly depicted, as well as the strikes in St. Petersburg and southern Russia; and the workingmen were called upon to unite and fight for their interests.
The staid people who earned good pay waxed wroth as they read the literature, and said abusively: "Breeders of rebellion! For such business they ought to get their eyes blacked." And they carried the pamphlets to the office.
The young people read the proclamations eagerly, and said excitedly: "It's all true!"
The majority, broken down with their work, and indifferent to everything, said lazily: "Nothing will come of it. It is impossible!"
But the leaflets made a stir among the people, and when a week passed without their getting any, they said to one another:
"None again to-day! It seems the printing must have stopped."
Then on Monday the leaflets appeared again; and again there was a dull buzz of talk among the workingmen.
In the taverns and the factory strangers were noticed, men whom no one knew. They asked questions, scrutinized everything and everybody; looked around, ferreted about, and at once attracted universal attention, some by their suspicious watchfulness, others by their excessive obtrusiveness.
The mother knew that all this commotion was due to the work of her son Pavel. She saw how all the people were drawn together about him. He was not alone, and therefore it was not so dangerous. But pride in her son mingled with her apprehension for his fate; it was his secret labors that discharged themselves in fresh currents into the narrow, turbid stream of life.
One evening Marya Korsunova rapped at the window from the street, and when the mother opened it, she said in a loud whisper:
"Now, take care, Pelagueya; the boys have gotten themselves into a nice mess! It's been decided to make a search to-night in your house, and Mazin's and Vyesovshchikov's——"
The mother heard only the beginning of the woman's talk; all the rest of the words flowed together in one stream of ill-boding, hoarse sounds.
Marya's thick lips flapped hastily one against the other. Snorts issued from her fleshy nose, her eyes blinked and turned from side to side as if on the lookout for somebody in the street.
"And, mark you, I do not know anything, and I did not say anything to you, mother dear, and did not even see you to-day, you understand?"
Then she disappeared.
The mother closed the window and slowly dropped on a chair, her strength gone from her, her brain a desolate void. But the consciousness of the danger threatening her son quickly brought her to her feet again. She dressed hastily, for some reason wrapped her shawl tightly around her head, and ran to Fedya Mazin, who, she knew, was sick and not working. She found him sitting at the window reading a book, and moving his right hand to and fro with his left, his thumb spread out. On learning the news he jumped up nervously, his lips trembled, and his face paled.
"There you are! And I have an abscess on my finger!" he mumbled.
"What are we to do?" asked Vlasova, wiping the perspiration from her face with a hand that trembled nervously.
"Wait a while! Don't be afraid," answered Fedya, running his sound hand through his curly hair.
"But you are afraid yourself!"
"I?" He reddened and smiled in embarrassment. "Yes—h-m— I had a fit of cowardice, the devil take it! We must let Pavel know. I'll send my little sister to him. You go home. Never mind! They're not going to beat us."
On returning home she gathered together all the books, and pressing them to her bosom walked about the house for a long time, looking into the oven, under the oven, into the pipe of the samovar, and even into the water vat. She thought Pavel would at once drop work and come home; but he did not come. Finally she sat down exhausted on the bench in the kitchen, putting the books under her; and she remained in that position, afraid to rise, until Pavel and the Little Russian returned from the factory.
"Do you know?" she exclaimed without rising.
"We know!" said Pavel with a composed smile. "Are you afraid?"
"Oh, I'm so afraid, so afraid!"
"You needn't be afraid," said the Little Russian. "That won't help anybody."
"Didn't even prepare the samovar," remarked Pavel.
The mother rose, and pointed to the books with a guilty air.
"You see, it was on account of them—all the time—I was——"
The son and the Little Russian burst into laughter; and this relieved her. Then Pavel picked out some books and carried them out into the yard to hide them, while the Little Russian remained to prepare the samovar.
"There's nothing terrible at all in this, mother. It'sonly a shame for people to occupy themselves with such nonsense. Grown-up men in gray come in with sabers at their sides, with spurs on their feet, and rummage around, and dig up and search everything. They look under the bed, and climb up to the garret; if there is a cellar they crawl down into it. The cobwebs get on their faces, and they puff and snort. They are bored and ashamed. That's why they put on the appearance of being very wicked and very mad with us. It's dirty work, and they understand it, of course they do! Once they turned everything topsy-turvy in my place, and went away abashed, that's all. Another time they took me along with them. Well, they put me in prison, and I stayed there with them for about four months. You sit and sit, then you're called out, taken to the street under an escort of soldiers, and you're asked certain questions. They're stupid people, they talk such incoherent stuff. When they're done with you, they tell the soldiers to take you back to prison. So they lead you here, and they lead you there—they've got to justify their salaries somehow. And then they let you go free. That's all."
"How you always do speak, Andriusha!" exclaimed the mother involuntarily.
Kneeling before the samovar he diligently blew into the pipe; but presently he turned his face, red with exertion, toward her, and smoothing his mustache with both hands inquired:
"And how do I speak, pray?"
"As if nobody had ever done you any wrong."
He rose, approached her, and shaking his head, said:
"Is there an unwronged soul anywhere in the wide world? But I have been wronged so much that I have ceased to feel wronged. What's to be done if peoplecannot help acting as they do? The wrongs I undergo hinder me greatly in my work. It is impossible to avoid them. But to stop and pay attention to them is useless waste of time. Such a life! Formerly I would occasionally get angry—but I thought to myself: all around me I see people broken in heart. It seemed as if each one were afraid that his neighbor would strike him, and so he tried to get ahead and strike the other first. Such a life it is, mother dear."
His speech flowed on serenely. He resolutely distracted her mind from alarm at the expected police search. His luminous, protuberant eyes smiled sadly. Though ungainly, he seemed made of stuff that bends but never breaks.
The mother sighed and uttered the warm wish:
"May God grant you happiness, Andriusha!"
The Little Russian stalked to the samovar with long strides, sat in front of it again on his heels, and mumbled:
"If he gives me happiness, I will not decline it; ask for it I won't, to seek it I have no time."
And he began to whistle.
Pavel came in from the yard and said confidently:
"They won't find them!" He started to wash himself. Then carefully rubbing his hands dry, he added: "If you show them, mother, that you are frightened, they will think there must be something in this house because you tremble. And we have done nothing as yet, nothing! You know that we don't want anything bad; on our side is truth, and we will work for it all our lives. This is our entire guilt. Why, then, need we fear?"
"I will pull myself together, Pasha!" she assured him. And the next moment, unable to repress her anxiety,she exclaimed: "I wish they'd come soon, and it would all be over!"
But they did not come that night, and in the morning, in anticipation of the fun that would probably be poked at her for her alarm, the mother began to joke at herself.
TThe searchers appeared at the very time they were not expected, nearly a month after this anxious night. Nikolay Vyesovshchikov was at Pavel's house talking with him and Andrey about their newspaper. It was late, about midnight. The mother was already in bed. Half awake, half asleep, she listened to the low, busy voices. Presently Andrey got up and carefully picked his way through and out of the kitchen, quietly shutting the door after him. The noise of the iron bucket was heard on the porch. Suddenly the door was flung wide open; the Little Russian entered the kitchen, and announced in a loud whisper:
The searchers appeared at the very time they were not expected, nearly a month after this anxious night. Nikolay Vyesovshchikov was at Pavel's house talking with him and Andrey about their newspaper. It was late, about midnight. The mother was already in bed. Half awake, half asleep, she listened to the low, busy voices. Presently Andrey got up and carefully picked his way through and out of the kitchen, quietly shutting the door after him. The noise of the iron bucket was heard on the porch. Suddenly the door was flung wide open; the Little Russian entered the kitchen, and announced in a loud whisper:
"I hear the jingling of spurs in the street!"
The mother jumped out of bed, catching at her dress with a trembling hand; but Pavel came to the door and said calmly:
"You stay in bed; you're not feeling well."
A cautious, stealthy sound was heard on the porch. Pavel went to the door and knocking at it with his hand asked:
"Who's there?"
A tall, gray figure tumultuously precipitated itself through the doorway; after it another; two gendarmes pushed Pavel back, and stationed themselves on either side of him, and a loud mocking voice called out:
"No one you expect, eh?"
The words came from a tall, lank officer, with a thin, black mustache. The village policeman, Fedyakin, appeared at the bedside of the mother, and, raising one hand to his cap, pointed the other at her face and, making terrible eyes, said:
"This is his mother, your honor!" Then, waving his hand toward Pavel: "And this is he himself."
"Pavel Vlasov?" inquired the officer, screwing up his eyes; and when Pavel silently nodded his head, he announced, twirling his mustache:
"I have to make a search in your house. Get up, old woman!"
"Who is there?" he asked, turning suddenly and making a dash for the door.
"Your name?" His voice was heard from the other room.
Two other men came in from the porch: the old smelter Tveryakov and his lodger, the stoker Rybin, a staid, dark-colored peasant. He said in a thick, loud voice:
"Good evening, Nilovna."
She dressed herself, all the while speaking to herself in a low voice, so as to give herself courage:
"What sort of a thing is this? They come at night. People are asleep and they come——"
The room was close, and for some reason smelled strongly of shoe blacking. Two gendarmes and the village police commissioner, Ryskin, their heavy tread resounding on the floor, removed the books from the shelves and put them on the table before the officer. Two others rapped on the walls with their fists, and looked under the chairs. One man clumsily clambered up on the stove in the corner. Nikolay's pockmarked face became covered with red patches, and his little gray eyes weresteadfastly fixed upon the officer. The Little Russian curled his mustache, and when the mother entered the room, he smiled and gave her an affectionate nod of the head.
Striving to suppress her fear, she walked, not sideways as always, but erect, her chest thrown out, which gave her figure a droll, stilted air of importance. Her shoes made a knocking sound on the floor, and her brows trembled.
The officer quickly seized the books with the long fingers of his white hand, turned over the pages, shook them, and with a dexterous movement of the wrist flung them aside. Sometimes a book fell to the floor with a light thud. All were silent. The heavy breathing of the perspiring gendarmes was audible; the spurs clanked, and sometimes the low question was heard: "Did you look here?"
The mother stood by Pavel's side against the wall. She folded her arms over her bosom, like her son, and both regarded the officer. The mother felt her knees trembling, and her eyes became covered with a dry mist.
Suddenly the piercing voice of Nikolay cut into the silence:
"Why is it necessary to throw the books on the floor?"
The mother trembled. Tveryakov rocked his head as if he had been struck on the back. Rybin uttered a peculiar cluck, and regarded Nikolay attentively.
The officer threw up his head, screwed up his eyes, and fixed them for a second upon the pockmarked, mottled, immobile face. His fingers began to turn the leaves of the books still more rapidly. His face was yellow and pale; he twisted his lips continually. At times he opened his large gray eyes wide, as if he suffered from an intolerablepain, and was ready to scream out in impotent anguish.
"Soldier!" Vyesovshchikov called out again. "Pick the books up!"
All the gendarmes turned their eyes on him, then looked at the officer. He again raised his head, and taking in the broad figure of Nikolay with a searching stare, he drawled:
"Well, well, pick up the books."
One gendarme bent down, and, looking slantwise at Vyesovshchikov, began to collect the books scattered on the floor.
"Why doesn't Nikolay keep quiet?" the mother whispered to Pavel. He shrugged his shoulders. The Little Russian drooped his head.
"What's the whispering there? Silence, please! Who reads the Bible?"
"I!" said Pavel.
"Aha! And whose books are all these?"
"Mine!" answered Pavel.
"So!" exclaimed the officer, throwing himself on the back of the chair. He made the bones of his slender hand crack, stretched his legs under the table, and adjusting his mustache, asked Nikolay: "Are you Andrey Nakhodka?"
"Yes!" answered Nikolay, moving forward. The Little Russian put out his hand, took him by the shoulder, and pulled him back.
"He made a mistake; I am Andrey!"
The officer raised his hand, and threatening Vyesovshchikov with his little finger, said:
"Take care!"
He began to search among his papers. From the street the bright, moonlit night looked on through thewindow with soulless eyes. Some one was loafing about outside the window, and the snow crunched under his tread.
"You, Nakhodka, you have been searched for political offenses before?" asked the officer.
"Yes, I was searched in Rostov and Saratov. Only there the gendarmes addressed me as 'Mr.'"
The officer winked his right eye, rubbed it, and showing his fine teeth, said:
"And do you happen to know,Mr.Nakhodka—yes, you,Mr.Nakhodka—who those scoundrels are who distribute criminal proclamations and books in the factory, eh?"
The Little Russian swayed his body, and with a broad smile on his face was about to say something, when the irritating voice of Nikolay again rang out:
"This is the first time we have seen scoundrels here!"
Silence ensued. There was a moment of breathless suspense. The scar on the mother's face whitened, and her right eyebrow traveled upward. Rybin's black beard quivered strangely. He dropped his eyes, and slowly scratched one hand with the other.
"Take this dog out of here!" said the officer.
Two gendarmes seized Nikolay under the arm and rudely pulled him into the kitchen. There he planted his feet firmly on the floor and shouted:
"Stop! I am going to put my coat on."
The police commissioner came in from the yard and said:
"There is nothing out there. We searched everywhere!"
"Well, of course!" exclaimed the officer, laughing. "I knew it! There's an experienced man here, it goes without saying."
The mother listened to his thin, dry voice, and looking with terror into the yellow face, felt an enemy in this man, an enemy without pity, with a heart full of aristocratic disdain of the people. Formerly she had but rarely seen such persons, and now she had almost forgotten they existed.
"Then this is the man whom Pavel and his friends have provoked," she thought.
"I place you,Mr.Andrey Onisimov Nakhodka, under arrest."
"What for?" asked the Little Russian composedly.
"I will tell you later!" answered the officer with spiteful civility, and turning to Vlasova, he shouted:
"Say, can you read or write?"
"No!" answered Pavel.
"I didn't ask you!" said the officer sternly, and repeated: "Say, old woman, can you read or write?"
The mother involuntarily gave way to a feeling of hatred for the man. She was seized with a sudden fit of trembling, as if she had jumped into cold water. She straightened herself, her scar turned purple, and her brow drooped low.
"Don't shout!" she said, flinging out her hand toward him. "You are a young man still; you don't know misery or sorrow——"
"Calm yourself, mother!" Pavel intervened.
"In this business, mother, you've got to take your heart between your teeth and hold it there tight," said the Little Russian.
"Wait a moment, Pasha!" cried the mother, rushing to the table and then addressing the officer: "Why do you snatch people away thus?"
"That does not concern you. Silence!" shouted the officer, rising.
"Bring in the prisoner Vyesovshchikov!" he commanded, and began to read aloud a document which he raised to his face.
Nikolay was brought into the room.
"Hats off!" shouted the officer, interrupting his reading.
Rybin went up to Vlasova, and patting her on the back, said in an undertone:
"Don't get excited, mother!"
"How can I take my hat off if they hold my hands?" asked Nikolay, drowning the reading.
The officer flung the paper on the table.
"Sign!" he said curtly.
The mother saw how everyone signed the document, and her excitement died down, a softer feeling taking possession of her heart. Her eyes filled with tears—burning tears of insult and impotence—such tears she had wept for twenty years of her married life, but lately she had almost forgotten their acid, heart-corroding taste.
The officer regarded her contemptuously. He scowled and remarked:
"You bawl ahead of time, my lady! Look out, or you won't have tears left for the future!"
"A mother has enough tears for everything, everything! If you have a mother, she knows it!"
The officer hastily put the papers into his new portfolio with its shining lock.
"How independent they all are in your place!" He turned to the police commissioner.
"An impudent pack!" mumbled the commissioner.
"March!" commanded the officer.
"Good-by, Andrey! Good-by, Nikolay!" said Pavel warmly and softly, pressing his comrades' hands.
"That's it! Until we meet again!" the officer scoffed.
Vyesovshchikov silently pressed Pavel's hands with his short fingers and breathed heavily. The blood mounted to his thick neck; his eyes flashed with rancor. The Little Russian's face beamed with a sunny smile. He nodded his head, and said something to the mother; she made the sign of the cross over him.
"God sees the righteous," she murmured.
At length the throng of people in the gray coats tumbled out on the porch, and their spurs jingled as they disappeared. Rybin went last. He regarded Pavel with an attentive look of his dark eyes and said thoughtfully: "Well, well—good-by!" and coughing in his beard he leisurely walked out on the porch.
Folding his hands behind his back, Pavel slowly paced up and down the room, stepping over the books and clothes tumbled about on the floor. At last he said somberly:
"You see how it's done! With insult—disgustingly—yes! They left me behind."
Looking perplexedly at the disorder in the room, the mother whispered sadly:
"They will take you, too, be sure they will. Why did Nikolay speak to them the way he did?"
"He got frightened, I suppose," said Pavel quietly. "Yes—It's impossible to speak to them, absolutely impossible! They cannot understand!"
"They came, snatched, and carried off!" mumbled the mother, waving her hands. As her son remained at home, her heart began to beat more lightly. Her mind stubbornly halted before one fact and refused to be moved. "How he scoffs at us, that yellow ruffian! How he threatens us!"
"All right, mamma!" Pavel suddenly said with resolution. "Let us pick all this up!"
He called her "mamma," the word he used only when he came nearer to her. She approached him, looked into his face, and asked softly:
"Did they insult you?"
"Yes," he answered. "That's—hard! I would rather have gone with them."
It seemed to her that she saw tears in his eyes, and wishing to soothe him, with an indistinct sense of his pain, she said with a sigh:
"Wait a while—they'll take you, too!"
"They will!" he replied.
After a pause the mother remarked sorrowfully:
"How hard you are, Pasha! If you'd only reassure me once in a while! But you don't. When I say something horrible, you say something worse."
He looked at her, moved closer to her, and said gently:
"I cannot, mamma! I cannot lie! You have to get used to it."
TThe next day they knew that Bukin, Samoylov, Somov, and five more had been arrested. In the evening Fedya Mazin came running in upon them. A search had been made in his house also. He felt himself a hero.
The next day they knew that Bukin, Samoylov, Somov, and five more had been arrested. In the evening Fedya Mazin came running in upon them. A search had been made in his house also. He felt himself a hero.
"Were you afraid, Fedya?" asked the mother.
He turned pale, his face sharpened, and his nostrils quivered.
"I was afraid the officer might strike me. He has a black beard, he's stout, his fingers are hairy, and he wears dark glasses, so that he looks as if he were without eyes. He shouted and stamped his feet. He said I'd rot in prison. And I've never been beaten either by my father or mother; they love me because I'm their only son. Everyone gets beaten everywhere, but I never!"
He closed his eyes for a moment, compressed his lips, tossed his hair back with a quick gesture of both hands, and looking at Pavel with reddening eyes, said:
"If anybody ever strikes me, I will thrust my whole body into him like a knife—I will bite my teeth into him—I'd rather he'd kill me at once and be done!"
"To defend yourself is your right," said Pavel. "But take care not to attack!"
"You are delicate and thin," observed the mother. "What do you want with fighting?"
"Iwillfight!" answered Fedya in a low voice.
When he left, the mother said to Pavel:
"This young man will go down sooner than all the rest."
Pavel was silent.
A few minutes later the kitchen door opened slowly and Rybin entered.
"Good evening!" he said, smiling. "Here I am again. Yesterday they brought me here; to-day I come of my own accord. Yes, yes!" He gave Pavel a vigorous handshake, then put his hand on the mother's shoulder, and asked: "Will you give me tea?"
Pavel silently regarded his swarthy, broad countenance, his thick, black beard, and dark, intelligent eyes. A certain gravity spoke out of their calm gaze; his stalwart figure inspired confidence.
The mother went into the kitchen to prepare the samovar. Rybin sat down, stroked his beard, and placing his elbows on the table, scanned Pavel with his dark look.
"That's the way it is," he said, as if continuing an interrupted conversation. "I must have a frank talk with you. I observed you long before I came. We live almost next door to each other. I see many people come to you, and no drunkenness, no carrying on. That's the main thing. If people don't raise the devil, they immediately attract attention. What's that? There you are! That's why all eyes are on me, because I live apart and give no offense."
His speech flowed along evenly and freely. It had a ring that won him confidence.
"So. Everybody prates about you. My masters call you a heretic; you don't go to church. I don't, either. Then the papers appeared, those leaflets. Was it you that thought them out?"
"Yes, I!" answered Pavel, without taking his eyes off Rybin's face. Rybin also looked steadily into Pavel's eyes.
"You alone!" exclaimed the mother, coming into the room. "It wasn't you alone."
Pavel smiled; Rybin also.
The mother sniffed, and walked away, somewhat offended because they did not pay attention to her words.
"Those leaflets are well thought out. They stir the people up. There were twelve of them, weren't there?"
"Yes."
"I have read them all! Yes, yes. Sometimes they are not clear, and some things are superfluous. But when a man speaks a great deal, it's natural he should occasionally say things out of the way."
Rybin smiled. His teeth were white and strong.
"Then the search. That won me over to you more than anything else. You and the Little Russian and Nikolay, you all got caught!" He paused for the right word and looked at the window, rapping the table with his fingers. "They discovered your resolve. You attend to your business, your honor, you say, and we'll attend to ours. The Little Russian's a fine fellow, too. The other day I heard how he speaks in the factory, and thinks I to myself: that man isn't going to be vanquished; it's only one thing will knock him out, and that's death! A sturdy chap! Do you trust me, Pavel?"
"Yes, I trust you!" said Pavel, nodding.
"That's right. Look! I am forty years old; I am twice as old as you, and I've seen twenty times as much as you. For three years long I wore my feet to the bone marching in the army. I have been married twice. I've been in the Caucasus, I know the Dukhobors. They're not masters of life, no, they aren't!"
The mother listened eagerly to his direct speech. It pleased her to have an older man come to her son and speak to him just as if he were confessing to him. But Pavel seemed to treat the guest too curtly, and the mother, to introduce a softer element, asked Rybin:
"Maybe you'll have something to eat."
"Thank you, mother! I've had my supper already. So then, Pavel, you think that life does not go as it should?"
Pavel arose and began to pace the room, folding his hands behind his back.
"It goes all right," he said. "Just now, for instance, it has brought you here to me with an open heart. We who work our whole life long—it unites us gradually and more and more every day. The time will come when we shall all be united. Life is arranged unjustly for us and is made a burden. At the same time, however, life itself is opening our eyes to its bitter meaning and is itself showing man the way to accelerate its pace. We all of us think just as we live."
"True. But wait!" Rybin stopped him. "Man ought to be renovated—that's what I think! When a man grows scabby, take him to the bath, give him a thorough cleaning, put clean clothes on him—and he will get well. Isn't it so? And if the heart grows scabby, take its skin off, even if it bleeds, wash it, and dress it up all afresh. Isn't it so? How else can you clean the inner man? There now!"
Pavel began to speak hotly and bitterly about God, about the Czar, about the government authorities, about the factory, and how in foreign countries the workingmen stand up for their rights. Rybin smiled occasionally; sometimes he struck a finger on the table as ifpunctuating a period. Now and then he cried out briefly: "So!" And once, laughing out, he said quietly: "You're young. You know people but little!"
Pavel stopping before him said seriously:
"Let's not talk of being old or being young. Let us rather see whose thoughts are truer."
"That is, according to you, we've been fooled about God also. So! I, too, think that our religion is false and injurious to us."
Here the mother intervened. When her son spoke about God and about everything that she connected with her faith in him, which was dear and sacred to her, she sought to meet his eyes, she wanted to ask her son mutely not to chafe her heart with the sharp, bitter words of his unbelief. And she felt that Rybin, an older man, would also be displeased and offended. But when Rybin calmly put his question to Pavel, she could no longer contain herself, and said firmly: "When you speak of God, I wish you were more careful. You can do whatever you like. You have your compensation in your work." Catching her breath she continued with still greater vehemence: "But I, an old woman, I will have nothing to lean upon in my distress if you take my God away from me."
Her eyes filled with tears. She was washing the dishes, and her fingers trembled.
"You did not understand us, mother!" Pavel said softly and kindly.
"Beg your pardon, mother!" Rybin added in a slow, thick voice. He looked at Pavel and smiled. "I forgot that you're too old to cut out your warts."
"I did not speak," continued Pavel, "about that good and gracious God in whom you believe, but about the God with whom the priests threaten us as with a stick,about the God in whose name they want to force all of us to the evil will of the few."
"That's it, right you are!" exclaimed Rybin, striking his fingers upon the table. "They have mutilated even our God for us, they have turned everything in their hands against us. Mark you, mother, God created man in his own image and after his own likeness. Therefore he is like man if man is like him. But we have become, not like God, but like wild beasts! In the churches they set up a scarecrow before us. We have got to change our God, mother; we must cleanse him! They have dressed him up in falsehood and calumny; they have distorted his face in order to destroy our souls!"
He talked composedly and very distinctly and intelligibly. Every word of his speech fell upon the mother's ears like a blow. And his face set in the frame of his black beard, his broad face attired, as it were, in mourning, frightened her. The dark gleam of his eyes was insupportable to her. He aroused in her a sense of anguish, and filled her heart with terror.
"No, I'd better go away," she said, shaking her head in negation. "It's not in my power to listen to this. I cannot!"
And she quickly walked into the kitchen followed by the words of Rybin:
"There you have it, Pavel! It begins not in the head, but in the heart. The heart is such a place that nothing else will grow in it."
"Only reason," said Pavel firmly, "only reason will free mankind."
"Reason does not give strength!" retorted Rybin emphatically. "The heart gives strength, and not the head, I tell you."
The mother undressed and lay down in bed withoutsaying her prayer. She felt cold and miserable. And Rybin, who at first seemed such a staid, wise man, now aroused in her a blind hostility.
"Heretic! Sedition-maker!" she thought, listening to his even voice flowing resonantly from his deep chest. He, too, had come—he was indispensable.
He spoke confidently and composedly:
"The holy place must not be empty. The spot where God dwells is a place of pain; and if he drops out from the heart, there will be a wound in it, mark my word! It is necessary, Pavel, to invent a new faith; it is necessary to create a God for all. Not a judge, not a warrior, but a God who shall be the friend of the people."
"You had one! There was Christ!"
"Wait a moment! Christ was not strong in spirit. 'Let the cup pass from me,' he said. And he recognized Cæsar. God cannot recognize human powers. He himself is the whole of power. He does not divide his soul saying: so much for the godly, so much for the human. If Christ came to affirm the divine he had no need for anything human. But he recognized trade, and he recognized marriage. And it was unjust of him to condemn the fig tree. Was it of its own will that it was barren of fruit? Neither is the soul barren of good of its own accord. Have I sown the evil in it myself? Of course not!"
The two voices hummed continuously in the room, as if clutching at each other and wrestling in exciting play. Pavel walked hurriedly up and down the room; the floor cracked under his feet. When he spoke all other sounds were drowned by his voice; but above the slow, calm flow of Rybin's dull utterance were heard the strokes of the pendulum and the low creaking of the frost, as of sharp claws scratching the walls of the house.
"I will speak to you in my own way, in the words of a stoker. God is like fire. He does not strengthen anything. He cannot. He merely burns and fuses when he gives light. He burns down churches, he does not raise them. He lives in the heart."
"And in the mind!" insisted Pavel.
"That's it! In the heart and in the mind. There's the rub. It's this that makes all the trouble and misery and misfortune. We have severed ourselves from our own selves. The heart was severed from the mind, and the mind has disappeared. Man is not a unit. It is God that makes him a unit, that makes him a round, circular thing. God always makes things round. Such is the earth and all the stars and everything visible to the eye. The sharp, angular things are the work of men."
The mother fell asleep and did not hear Rybin depart.
But he began to come often, and if any of Pavel's comrades were present, Rybin sat in a corner and was silent, only occasionally interjecting: "That's so!"
And once looking at everybody from his corner with his dark glance he said somberly:
"We must speak about that which is; that which will be is unknown to us. When the people have freed themselves, they will see for themselves what is best. Enough, quite enough of what they do not want at all has been knocked into their heads. Let there be an end of this! Let them contrive for themselves. Maybe they will want to reject everything, all life, and all knowledge; maybe they will see that everything is arranged against them. You just deliver all the books into their hands, and they will find an answer for themselves, depend upon it! Only let them remember that the tighter the collar round the horse's neck, the worse the work."
But when Pavel was alone with Rybin they at oncebegan an endless but always calm disputation, to which the mother listened anxiously, following their words in silence, and endeavoring to understand. Sometimes it seemed to her as if the broad-shouldered, black-bearded peasant and her well-built, sturdy son had both gone blind. In that little room, in the darkness, they seemed to be knocking about from side to side in search of light and an outlet, to be grasping out with powerful but blind hands; they seemed to fall upon the floor, and having fallen, to scrape and fumble with their feet. They hit against everything, groped about for everything, and flung it away, calm and composed, losing neither faith nor hope.
They got her accustomed to listen to a great many words, terrible in their directness and boldness; and these words had now ceased to weigh down on her so heavily as at first. She learned to push them away from her ears. And although Rybin still displeased her as before, he no longer inspired her with hostility.
Once a week she carried underwear and books to the Little Russian in prison. On one occasion they allowed her to see him and talk to him; and on returning home she related enthusiastically:
"He is as if he were at home there, too! He is good and kind to everybody; everybody jokes with him; just as if there were a holiday in his heart all the time. His lot is hard and heavy, but he does not want to show it."
"That's right! That's the way one should act," observed Rybin. "We are all enveloped in misery as in our skins. We breathe misery, we wear misery. But that's nothing to brag about. Not all people are blind; some close their eyes of their own accord, indeed! And if you are stupid you have to suffer for it."