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[Illustration: "With somber faces ... their muscles stiff from
insufficient sleep."]
MOTHER
by
MAXIM GORKY
With Eight Illustrations by Sigmund De Ivanowski
New York and London
D. Appleton and Company
1911
Copyright, 1906, 1907, by
D. Appleton and Company
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
"With somber faces ... their muscles stiff with insufficient
sleep" _Frontispiece_
"The mother ... strained her untrained mind to listen" 34
"It seemed to Vlasova that the officer was but waiting for
her tears" 92
"Taking out one package of books after the other, she
shoved them into the hands of the brothers" 116
"The mother's heart quivered with impatience" 142
"'Listen, for the sake of Christ'" 232
"The men listened in silence" 296
"'Run, run!' whispered the mother" 428
PART I
CHAPTER I
Every day the factory whistle bellowed forth its shrill, roaring,
trembling noises into the smoke-begrimed and greasy atmosphere of the
workingmen's suburb; and obedient to the summons of the power of steam,
people poured out of little gray houses into the street. With somber
faces they hastened forward like frightened roaches, their muscles stiff
from insufficient sleep. In the chill morning twilight they walked
through the narrow, unpaved street to the tall stone cage that waited
for them with cold assurance, illumining their muddy road with scores of
greasy, yellow, square eyes. The mud plashed under their feet as if in
mocking commiseration. Hoarse exclamations of sleepy voices were heard;
irritated, peevish, abusive language rent the air with malice; and, to
welcome the people, deafening sounds floated about--the heavy whir of
machinery, the dissatisfied snort of steam. Stern and somber, the black
chimneys stretched their huge, thick sticks high above the village.
In the evening, when the sun was setting, and red rays languidly
glimmered upon the windows of the houses, the factory ejected its people
like burned-out ashes, and again they walked through the streets, with
black, smoke-covered faces, radiating the sticky odor of machine oil,
and showing the gleam of hungry teeth. But now there was animation in
their voices, and even gladness. The servitude of hard toil was over for
the day. Supper awaited them at home, and respite.
The day was swallowed up by the factory; the machine sucked out of men's
muscles as much vigor as it needed. The day was blotted out from life,
not a trace of it left. Man made another imperceptible step toward his
grave; but he saw close before him the delights of rest, the joys of the
odorous tavern, and he was satisfied.
On holidays the workers slept until about ten o'clock. Then the staid
and married people dressed themselves in their best clothes and, after
duly scolding the young folks for their indifference to church, went to
hear mass. When they returned from church, they ate pirogs, the Russian
national pastry, and again lay down to sleep until the evening. The
accumulated exhaustion of years had robbed them of their appetites, and
to be able to eat they drank, long and deep, goading on their feeble
stomachs with the biting, burning lash of vodka.
In the evening they amused themselves idly on the street; and those who
had overshoes put them on, even if it was dry, and those who had
umbrellas carried them, even if the sun was shining. Not everybody has
overshoes and an umbrella, but everybody desires in some way, however
small, to appear more important than his neighbor.
Meeting one another they spoke about the factory and the machines, had
their fling against their foreman, conversed and thought only of matters
closely and manifestly connected with their work. Only rarely, and then
but faintly, did solitary sparks of impotent thought glimmer in the
wearisome monotony of their talk. Returning home they quarreled with
their wives, and often beat them, unsparing of their fists. The young
people sat in the taverns, or enjoyed evening parties at one another's
houses, played the accordion, sang vulgar songs devoid of beauty,
danced, talked ribaldry, and drank.
Exhausted with toil, men drank swiftly, and in every heart there awoke
and grew an incomprehensible, sickly irritation. It demanded an outlet.
Clutching tenaciously at every pretext for unloading themselves of this
disquieting sensation, they fell on one another for mere trifles, with
the spiteful ferocity of beasts, breaking into bloody quarrels which
sometimes ended in serious injury and on rare occasions even in murder.
This lurking malice steadily increased, inveterate as the incurable
weariness in their muscles. They were born with this disease of the soul
inherited from their fathers. Like a black shadow it accompanied them to
their graves, spurring on their lives to crime, hideous in its aimless
cruelty and brutality.
On holidays the young people came home late at night, dirty and dusty,
their clothes torn, their faces bruised, boasting maliciously of the
blows they had struck their companions, or the insults they had
inflicted upon them; enraged or in tears over the indignities they
themselves had suffered; drunken and piteous, unfortunate and repulsive.
Sometimes the boys would be brought home by the mother or the father,
who had picked them up in the street or in a tavern, drunk to
insensibility. The parents scolded and swore at them peevishly, and beat
their spongelike bodies, soaked with liquor; then more or less
systematically put them to bed, in order to rouse them to work early
next morning, when the bellow of the whistle should sullenly course
through the air.
They scolded and beat the children soundly, notwithstanding the fact
that drunkenness and brawls among young folk appeared perfectly
legitimate to the old people. When they were young they, too, had drunk
and fought; they, too, had been beaten by their mothers and fathers.
Life had always been like that. It flowed on monotonously and slowly
somewhere down the muddy, turbid stream, year after year; and it was all
bound up in strong ancient customs and habits that led them to do one
and the same thing day in and day out. None of them, it seemed, had
either the time or the desire to attempt to change this state of life.
Once in a long while a stranger would come to the village. At first he
attracted attention merely because he was a stranger. Then he aroused a
light, superficial interest by the stories of the places where he had
worked. Afterwards the novelty wore off, the people got used to him, and
he remained unnoticed. From his stories it was clear that the life of
the workingmen was the same everywhere. And if so, then what was there
to talk about?
Occasionally, however, some stranger spoke curious things never heard of
in the suburb. The men did not argue with him, but listened to his odd
speeches with incredulity. His words aroused blind irritation in some,
perplexed alarm in others, while still others were disturbed by a
feeble, shadowy glimmer of the hope of something, they knew not what.
And they all began to drink more in order to drive away the unnecessary,
meddlesome excitement.
Noticing in the stranger something unusual, the villagers cherished it
long against him and treated the man who was not like them with
unaccountable apprehension. It was as if they feared he would throw
something into their life which would disturb its straight, dismal
course. Sad and difficult, it was yet even in its tenor. People were
accustomed to the fact that life always oppressed them with the same
power. Unhopeful of any turn for the better, they regarded every change
as capable only of increasing their burden.
And the workingmen of the suburb tacitly avoided people who spoke
unusual things to them. Then these people disappeared again, going off
elsewhere, and those who remained in the factory lived apart, if they
could not blend and make one whole with the monotonous mass in the
village.
Living a life like that for some fifty years, a workman died.
* * * * *
Thus also lived Michael Vlasov, a gloomy, sullen man, with little eyes
which looked at everybody from under his thick eyebrows suspiciously,
with a mistrustful, evil smile. He was the best locksmith in the
factory, and the strongest man in the village. But he was insolent and
disrespectful toward the foreman and the superintendent, and therefore
earned little; every holiday he beat somebody, and everyone disliked and
feared him.
More than one attempt was made to beat him in turn, but without success.
When Vlasov found himself threatened with attack, he caught a stone in
his hand, or a piece of wood or iron, and spreading out his legs stood
waiting in silence for the enemy. His face overgrown with a dark beard
from his eyes to his neck, and his hands thickly covered with woolly
hair, inspired everybody with fear. People were especially afraid of his
eyes. Small and keen, they seemed to bore through a man like steel
gimlets, and everyone who met their gaze felt he was confronting a
beast, a savage power, inaccessible to fear, ready to strike
unmercifully.
"Well, pack off, dirty vermin!" he said gruffly. His coarse, yellow
teeth glistened terribly through the thick hair on his face. The men
walked off uttering coward abuse.
"Dirty vermin!" he snapped at them, and his eyes gleamed with a smile
sharp as an awl. Then holding his head in an attitude of direct
challenge, with a short, thick pipe between his teeth, he walked behind
them, and now and then called out: "Well, who wants death?"
No one wanted it.
He spoke little, and "dirty vermin" was his favorite expression. It was
the name he used for the authorities of the factory, and the police, and
it was the epithet with which he addressed his wife: "Look, you dirty
vermin, don't you see my clothes are torn?"
When Pavel, his son, was a boy of fourteen, Vlasov was one day seized
with the desire to pull him by the hair once more. But Pavel grasped a
heavy hammer, and said curtly:
"Don't touch me!"
"What!" demanded his father, bending over the tall, slender figure of
his son like a shadow on a birch tree.
"Enough!" said Pavel. "I am not going to give myself up any more."
And opening his dark eyes wide, he waved the hammer in the air.
His father looked at him, folded his shaggy hands on his back, and,
smiling, said:
"All right." Then he drew a heavy breath and added: "Ah, you dirty
vermin!"
Shortly after this he said to his wife:
"Don't ask me for money any more. Pasha will feed you now."
"And you will drink up everything?" she ventured to ask.
"None of your business, dirty vermin!" From that time, for three years,
until his death, he did not notice, and did not speak to his son.
Vlasov had a dog as big and shaggy as himself. She accompanied him to
the factory every morning, and every evening she waited for him at the
gate. On holidays Vlasov started off on his round of the taverns. He
walked in silence, and stared into people's faces as if looking for
somebody. His dog trotted after him the whole day long. Returning home
drunk he sat down to supper, and gave his dog to eat from his own bowl.
He never beat her, never scolded, and never petted her. After supper he
flung the dishes from the table--if his wife was not quick enough to
remove them in time--put a bottle of whisky before him, and leaning his
back against the wall, began in a hoarse voice that spread anguish about
him to bawl a song, his mouth wide open and his eyes closed. The doleful
sounds got entangled in his mustache, knocking off the crumbs of bread.
He smoothed down the hair of his beard and mustache with his thick
fingers and sang--sang unintelligible words, long drawn out. The melody
recalled the wintry howl of wolves. He sang as long as there was whisky
in the bottle, then he dropped on his side upon the bench, or let his
head sink on the table, and slept in this way until the whistle began to
blow. The dog lay at his side.
When he died, he died hard. For five days, turned all black, he rolled
in his bed, gnashing his teeth, his eyes tightly closed. Sometimes he
would say to his wife: "Give me arsenic. Poison me."
She called a physician. He ordered hot poultices, but said an operation
was necessary and the patient must be taken at once to the hospital.
"Go to the devil! I will die by myself, dirty vermin!" said Michael.
And when the physician had left, and his wife with tears in her eyes
began to insist on an operation, he clenched his fists and announced
threateningly:
"Don't you dare! It will be worse for you if I get well."
He died in the morning at the moment when the whistle called the men to
work. He lay in the coffin with open mouth, his eyebrows knit as if in a
scowl. He was buried by his wife, his son, the dog, an old drunkard and
thief, Daniel Vyesovshchikov, a discharged smelter, and a few beggars of
the suburb. His wife wept a little and quietly; Pavel did not weep at
all. The villagers who met the funeral in the street stopped, crossed
themselves, and said to one another: "Guess Pelagueya is glad he died!"
And some corrected: "He didn't die; he rotted away like a beast."
When the body was put in the ground, the people went away, but the dog
remained for a long time, and sitting silently on the fresh soil, she
sniffed at the grave.