At noon, calmly and in a businesslike way she put the books around her
bosom, and so skillfully and snugly that Yegor announced, smacking his
lips with satisfaction:
"_Sehr gut!_ as the German says when he has drunk a keg of beer.
Literature has not changed you, granny. You still remain the good, tall,
portly, elderly woman. May all the numberless gods grant you their
blessings on your enterprise!"
Within half an hour she stood at the factory gate, bent with the weight
of her burden, calm and assured. Two guards, irritated by the oaths and
raillery of the workingmen, examined all who entered the gate, handling
them roughly and swearing at them. A policeman and a thin-legged man
with a red face and alert eyes stood at one side. The mother, shifting
the rod resting on her shoulders, with a pail suspended from either end
of it, watched the man from the corner of her eye. She divined that he
was a spy.
A tall, curly-headed fellow with his hat thrown back over his neck,
cried to the guardsmen who searched him:
"Search the head and not the pockets, you devils!"
"There is nothing but lice on your head," retorted one of the guardsmen.
"Catching lice is an occupation more suited to you than hunting human
game!" rejoined the workman. The spy scanned him with a rapid glance.
"Will you let me in?" asked the mother. "See, I'm bent double with my
heavy load. My back is almost breaking."
"Go in! Go in!" cried the guard sullenly. "She comes with arguments,
too."
The mother walked to her place, set her pails on the ground, and wiping
the perspiration from her face looked around her.
The Gusev brothers, the locksmiths, instantly came up to her, and the
older of them, Vasily, asked aloud, knitting his eyebrows:
"Got any pirogs?"
"I'll bring them to-morrow," she answered.
This was the password agreed upon. The faces of the brothers brightened.
Ivan, unable to restrain himself, exclaimed:
"Oh, you jewel of a mother!"
Vasily squatted down on his heels, looked into the pot, and a bundle of
books disappeared into his bosom.
"Ivan!" he said aloud. "Let's not go home, let's get our dinner here
from her!" And he quickly shoved the books into the legs of his boots.
"We must give our new peddler a lift, don't you think so?"
"Yes, indeed!" Ivan assented, and laughed aloud.
The mother looked carefully about her, and called out:
"Sour cabbage soup! Hot vermicelli soup! Roast meat!"
Then deftly and secretly taking out one package of books after the
other, she shoved them into the hands of the brothers. Each time a
bundle disappeared from her hands, the sickly, sneering face of the
officer of gendarmes flashed up before her like a yellow stain, like the
flame of a match in a dark room, and she said to him in her mind, with a
feeling of malicious pleasure:
"Take this, sir!" And when she handed over the last package she added
with an air of satisfaction: "And here is some more, take it!"
[Illustration: "Taking out one package of books after the other, she
shoved them into the hands of the brothers."]
Workmen came up to her with cups in their hands, and when they were near
Ivan and Vasily, they began to laugh aloud. The mother calmly suspended
the transfer of the books, and poured sour soup and vermicelli soup,
while the Gusevs joked her.
"How cleverly Nilovna does her work!"
"Necessity drives one even to catching mice," remarked a stoker
somberly. "They have snatched away your breadgiver, the scoundrels!
Well, give us three cents' worth of vermicelli. Never mind, mother!
You'll pull through!"
"Thanks for the good word!" she returned, smiling.
He walked off to one side and mumbled, "It doesn't cost me much to say a
good word!"
"But there's no one to say it to!" observed a blacksmith, with a smile,
and shrugging his shoulders in surprise added: "There's a life for you,
fellows! There's no one to say a good word to; no one is worth it. Yes,
sir!"
Vasily Gusev rose, wrapped his coat tightly around him, and exclaimed:
"What I ate was hot, and yet I feel cold."
Then he walked away. Ivan also rose, and ran off whistling merrily.
Cheerful and smiling, Nilovna kept on calling her wares:
"Hot! Hot! Sour soup! Vermicelli soup! Porridge!"
She thought of how she would tell her son about her first experience;
and the yellow face of the officer was still standing before her,
perplexed and spiteful. His black mustache twitched uneasily, and his
upper lip turned up nervously, showing the gleaming white enamel of his
clenched teeth. A keen joy beat and sang in her heart like a bird, her
eyebrows quivered, and continuing deftly to serve her customers she
muttered to herself:
"There's more! There's more!"
Through the whole day she felt a sensation of delightful newness which
embraced her heart as with a fondling caress. And in the evening, when
she had concluded her work at Marya's house, and was drinking tea, the
splash of horses' hoofs in the mud was heard, and the call of a familiar
voice. She jumped up, hurried into the kitchen, and made straight for
the door. Somebody walked quickly through the porch; her eyes grew dim,
and leaning against the doorpost, she pushed the door open with her
foot.
"Good evening, mother!" a familiar, melodious voice rang out, and a pair
of dry, long hands were laid on her shoulders.
The joy of seeing Andrey was mingled in her bosom with the sadness of
disappointment; and the two contrary feelings blended into one burning
sensation which embraced her like a hot wave. She buried her face in
Andrey's bosom. He pressed her tightly to himself, his hands trembled.
The mother wept quietly without speaking, while he stroked her hair, and
spoke in his musical voice:
"Don't cry, mother. Don't wring my heart. Upon my honest word, they will
let him out soon! They haven't a thing against him; all the boys will
keep quiet as cooked fish."
Putting his long arm around the mother's shoulders he led her into the
room, and nestling up against him with the quick gesture of a squirrel,
she wiped the tears from her face, while her heart greedily drank in his
tender words.
"Pavel sends you his love. He is as well and cheerful as can be. It's
very crowded in the prison. They have thrown in more than a hundred of
our people, both from here and from the city. Three and four persons
have been put into one cell. The prison officials are rather a good set.
They are exhausted with the quantity of work the gendarmes have been
giving them. The prison authorities are not extremely rigorous, they
don't order you about roughly. They simply say: 'Be quiet as you can,
gentlemen. Don't put us in an awkward position!' So everything goes
well. We talk with one another, we give books to one another, and we
share our food. It's a good prison! Old and dirty, but so soft and so
light. The criminals are also nice people; they help us a good deal.
Bukin, four others, and myself were released. It got too crowded.
They'll let Pavel go soon, too. I'm telling you the truth, believe me.
Vyesovshchikov will be detained the longest. They are very angry at him.
He scolds and swears at everybody all the time. The gendarmes can't bear
to look at him. I guess he'll get himself into court, or receive a sound
thrashing some day. Pavel tries to dissuade him. 'Stop, Nikolay!' he
says to him. 'Your swearing won't reform them.' But he bawls: 'Wipe them
off the face of the earth like a pest!' Pavel conducts himself finely
out there; he treats all alike, and is as firm as a rock! They'll soon
let him go."
"Soon?" said the mother, relieved now and smiling. "I know he'll be let
out soon!"
"Well, if you know, it's all right! Give me tea, mother. Tell me how
you've been, how you've passed your time."
He looked at her, smiling all over, and seemed so near to her, such a
splendid fellow. A loving, somewhat melancholy gleam flashed from the
depths of his round, blue eyes.
"I love you dearly, Andriusha!" the mother said, heaving a deep sigh, as
she looked at his thin face grotesquely covered with tufts of hair.
"People are satisfied with little from me! I know you love me; you are
capable of loving everybody; you have a great heart," said the Little
Russian, rocking in his chair, his eyes straying about the room.
"No, I love you very differently!" insisted the mother. "If you had a
mother, people would envy her because she had such a son."
The Little Russian swayed his head, and rubbed it vigorously with both
hands.
"I have a mother, somewhere!" he said in a low voice.
"Do you know what I did to-day?" she exclaimed, and reddening a little,
her voice choking with satisfaction, she quickly recounted how she had
smuggled literature into the factory.
For a moment he looked at her in amazement with his eyes wide open; then
he burst out into a loud guffaw, stamped his feet, thumped his head with
his fingers, and cried joyously:
"Oho! That's no joke any more! That's business! Won't Pavel be glad,
though! Oh, you're a trump. That's good, mother! You have no idea _how_
good it is! Both for Pavel and all who were arrested with him!"
He snapped his fingers in ecstasy, whistled, and fairly doubled over,
all radiant with joy. His delight evoked a vigorous response from the
mother.
"My dear, my Andriusha!" she began, as if her heart had burst open, and
gushed over merrily with a limpid stream of living words full of serene
joy. "I've thought all my life, 'Lord Christ in heaven! what did I live
for?' Beatings, work! I saw nothing except my husband. I knew nothing
but fear! And how Pasha grew I did not see, and I hardly know whether I
loved him when my husband was alive. All my concerns, all my thoughts
were centered upon one thing--to feed my beast, to propitiate the master
of my life with enough food, pleasing to his palate, and served on time,
so as not to incur his displeasure, so as to escape the terrors of a
beating, to get him to spare me but once! But I do not remember that he
ever did spare me. He beat me so--not as a wife is beaten, but as one
whom you hate and detest. Twenty years I lived like that, and what was
up to the time of my marriage I do not recall. I remember certain
things, but I see nothing! I am as a blind person. Yegor Ivanovich was
here--we are from the same village--and he spoke about this and about
that. I remember the houses, the people, but how they lived, what they
spoke about, what happened to this one and what to that one--I forget, I
do not see! I remember fires--two fires. It seems that everything has
been beaten out of me, that my soul has been locked up and sealed tight.
It's grown blind, it does not hear!"
Her quick-drawn breath was almost a sob. She bent forward, and continued
in a lowered voice: "When my husband died I turned to my son; but he
went into this business, and I was seized with a pity for him, such a
yearning pity--for if he should perish, how was I to live alone? What
dread, what fright I have undergone! My heart was rent when I thought of
his fate.
"Our woman's love is not a pure love! We love that which we need. And
here are you! You are grieving about your mother. What do you want her
for? And all the others go and suffer for the people, they go to prison,
to Siberia, they die for them, many are hung. Young girls walk alone at
night, in the snow, in the mud, in the rain. They walk seven versts from
the city to our place. Who drives them? Who pursues them? They love! You
see, theirs is pure love! They believe! Yes, indeed, they believe,
Andriusha! But here am I--I can't love like that! I love my own, the
near ones!"
"Yes, you can!" said the Little Russian, and turning away his face from
her, he rubbed his head, face, and eyes vigorously as was his wont.
"Everybody loves those who are near," he continued. "To a large heart,
what is far is also near. You, mother, are capable of a great deal. You
have a large capacity of motherliness!"
"God grant it!" she said quietly. "I feel that it is good to live like
that! Here are you, for instance, whom I love. Maybe I love you better
than I do Pasha. He is always so silent. Here he wants to get married to
Sashenka, for example, and he never told me, his mother, a thing about
it."
"That's not true," the Little Russian retorted abruptly. "I know it
isn't true. It's true he loves her, and she loves him. But marry? No,
they are not going to marry! She'd want to, but Pavel--he can't! He
doesn't want to!"
"See how you are!" said the mother quietly, and she fixed her eyes sadly
and musingly on the Little Russian's face. "You see how you are! You
offer up your own selves!"
"Pavel is a rare man!" the Little Russian uttered in a low voice. "He is
a man of iron!"
"Now he sits in prison," continued the mother reflectively. "It's awful,
it's terrible! It's not as it used to be before! Life altogether is not
as it used to be, and the terror is different from the old terror. You
feel a pity for everybody, and you are alarmed for everybody! And the
heart is different. The soul has opened its eyes, it looks on, and is
sad and glad at the same time. There's much I do not understand, and I
feel so bitter and hurt that you do not believe in the Lord God. Well, I
guess I can't help that! But I see and know that you are good people.
And you have consecrated yourselves to a stern life for the sake of the
people, to a life of hardship for the sake of truth. The truth you stand
for, I comprehend: as long as there will be the rich, the people will
get nothing, neither truth nor happiness, nothing! Indeed, that's so,
Andriusha! Here am I living among you, while all this is going on.
Sometimes at night my thoughts wander off to my past. I think of my
youthful strength trampled under foot, of my young heart torn and
beaten, and I feel sorry for myself and embittered. But for all that I
live better now, I see myself more and more, I feel myself more."
The Little Russian arose, and trying not to scrape with his feet, began
to walk carefully up and down the room, tall, lean, absorbed in thought.
"Well said!" he exclaimed in a low voice. "Very well! There was a young
Jew in Kerch who wrote verses, and once he wrote:
"And the innocently slain,
Truth will raise to life again.
"He himself was killed by the police in Kerch, but that's not the point.
He knew the truth and did a great deal to spread it among the people. So
here you are one of the innocently slain. He spoke the truth!"
"There, I am talking now," the mother continued. "I talk and do not hear
myself, don't believe my own ears! All my life I was silent, I always
thought of one thing--how to live through the day apart, how to pass it
without being noticed, so that nobody should touch me! And now I think
about everything. Maybe I don't understand your affairs so very well;
but all are near me, I feel sorry for all, and I wish well to all. And
to you, Andriusha, more than all the rest."
He took her hand in his, pressed it tightly, and quickly turned aside.
Fatigued with emotion and agitation, the mother leisurely and silently
washed the cups; and her breast gently glowed with a bold feeling that
warmed her heart.
Walking up and down the room the Little Russian said:
"Mother, why don't you sometimes try to befriend Vyesovshchikov and be
kind to him? He is a fellow that needs it. His father sits in prison--a
nasty little old man. Nikolay sometimes catches sight of him through the
window and he begins to swear at him. That's bad, you know. He is a good
fellow, Nikolay is. He is fond of dogs, mice, and all sorts of animals,
but he does not like people. That's the pass to which a man can be
brought."
"His mother disappeared without a trace, his father is a thief and a
drunkard," said Nilovna pensively.
When Andrey left to go to bed, the mother, without being noticed, made
the sign of the cross over him, and after about half an hour, she asked
quietly, "Are you asleep, Andriusha?"
"No. Why?"
"Nothing! Good night!"
"Thank you, mother, thank you!" he answered gently.