MOTHER (Russian Literature Classic). Максим Горький
granny! You here already, Sashenka?"
His hoarse voice filled the little kitchen. He slowly removed his heavy ulster, talking all the time.
"Here, granny, is a girl who is a thorn in the flesh of the police! Insulted by the overseer of the prison, she declared that she would starve herself to death if he did not ask her pardon. And for eight days she went without eating, and came within a hair's breadth of dying. It's not bad! She must have a mighty strong little stomach."
"Is it possible you took no food for eight days in succession?" asked the mother in amazement.
"I had to get him to beg my pardon," answered the girl with a stoical shrug of her shoulders. Her composure and her stern persistence seemed almost like a reproach to the mother.
"And suppose you had died?" she asked again.
"Well, what can one do?" the girl said quietly. "He did beg my pardon after all. One ought never to forgive an insult, never!"
"Ye-es!" responded the mother slowly. "Here are we women who are insulted all our lives long."
"I have unloaded myself!" announced Yegor from the other room. "Is the samovar ready? Let me take it in!"
He lifted the samovar and talked as he carried it.
"My own father used to drink not less than twenty glasses of tea a day, wherefor his days upon earth were long, peaceful, and strong; for he lived to be seventy-three years old, never having suffered from any ailment whatsoever. In weight he reached the respectable figure of three hundred and twenty pounds, and by profession he was a sexton in the village of Voskresensk."
"Are you Ivan's son?" exclaimed the mother.
"I am that very mortal. How did you know his name?"
"Why, I am a Voskresenskian myself!"
"A fellow countrywoman! Who were your people?"
"Your neighbors. I am a Sereguin."
"Are you a daughter of Nil the Lame? I thought your face was familiar! Why, I had my ears pulled by him many and many a time!"
They stood face to face plying each other with questions and laughing. Sashenka looked at them and smiled, and began to prepare the tea. The clatter of the dishes recalled the mother to the realities of the present.
"Oh, excuse me! I quite forgot myself, talking about old times. It is so sweet to recall your youth."
"It's I who ought to beg your pardon for carrying on like this in your house!" said Sashenka. "But it is eleven o'clock already, and I have so far to go."
"Go where? To the city?" the mother asked in surprise.
"Yes."
"What are you talking about! It's dark and wet, and you are so tired. Stay here overnight. Yegor Ivanovich will sleep in the kitchen, and you and I here."
"No, I must go," said the girl simply.
"Yes, countrywoman, she must go. The young lady must disappear. It would be bad if she were to be seen on the street to-morrow."
"But how can she go? By herself?"
"By herself," said Yegor, laughing.
The girl poured tea for herself, took a piece of rye bread, salted it, and started to eat, looking at the mother contemplatively.
"How can you go that way? Both you and Natasha. I wouldn't. I'm afraid!"
"She's afraid, too," said Yegor. "Aren't you afraid, Sasha?"
"Of course!"
The mother looked at her, then at Yegor, and said in a low voice, "What strange——"
"Give me a glass of tea, granny," Yegor interrupted her.
When Sashenka had drunk her glass of tea, she pressed Yegor's hand in silence, and walked out into the kitchen. The mother followed her. In the kitchen Sashenka said:
"When you see Pavel, give him my regards, please." And taking hold of the latch, she suddenly turned around, and asked in a low voice: "May I kiss you?"
The mother embraced her in silence, and kissed her warmly.
"Thank you!" said the girl, and nodding her head, walked out.
Returning to the room, the mother peered anxiously through the window. Wet flakes of snow fluttered through the dense, moist darkness.
"And do you remember Prozorov, the storekeeper?" asked Yegor. "He used to sit with his feet sprawling, and blow noisily into his glass of tea. He had a red, satisfied, sweet-covered face."
"I remember, I remember," said the mother, coming back to the table. She sat down, and looking at Yegor with a mournful expression in her eyes, she spoke pityingly: "Poor Sashenka! How will she ever get to the city?"
"She will be very much worn out," Yegor agreed. "The prison has shaken her health badly. She was stronger before. Besides, she has had a delicate bringing up. It seems to me she has already ruined her lungs. There is something in her face that reminds one of consumption."
"Who is she?"
"The daughter of a landlord. Her father is a rich man and a big scoundrel, according to what she says. I suppose you know, granny, that they want to marry?"
"Who?"
"She and Pavel. Yes, indeed! But so far they have not yet been able. When he is free, she is in prison, and vice versa." Yegor laughed.
"I didn't know it!" the mother replied after a pause. "Pasha never speaks about himself."
Now she felt a still greater pity for the girl, and looking at her guest with involuntary hostility, she said:
"You ought to have seen her home."
"Impossible!" Yegor answered calmly. "I have a heap of work to do here, and the whole day to-morrow, from early morning, I shall have to walk and walk and walk. No easy job, considering my asthma."
"She's a fine girl!" said the mother, vaguely thinking of what Yegor had told her. She felt hurt that the news should have come to her, not from her son, but from a stranger, and she pressed her lips together tightly, and lowered her eyebrows.
"Yes, a fine girl!" Yegor nodded assent. "There's a bit of the noblewoman in her yet, but it's growing less and less all the time. You are sorry for her, I see. What's the use? You won't find heart enough, if you start to grieve for all of us rebels, granny dear. Life is not made very easy for us, I admit. There, for instance, is the case of a friend of mine who returned a short while ago from exile. When he went through Novgorod, his wife and child awaited him in Smolensk, and when he arrived in Smolensk, they were already in prison in Moscow. Now it's the wife's turn to go to Siberia. To be a revolutionary and to be married is a very inconvenient arrangement—inconvenient for the husband, inconvenient for the wife and in the end for the cause also! I, too, had a wife, an excellent woman, but five years of this kind of life landed her in the grave."
He emptied the glass of tea at one gulp, and continued his narrative. He enumerated the years and months he had passed in prison and in exile, told of various accidents and misfortunes, of the slaughters in prisons, and of hunger in Siberia. The mother looked at him, listened with wonderment to the simple way in which he spoke of this life, so full of suffering, of persecution, of wrong, and abuse of men.
"Well, let's get down to business!"
His voice changed, and his face grew more serious. He asked questions about the way in which the mother intended to smuggle the literature into the factory, and she marveled at his clear knowledge of all the details.
Then they returned to reminiscences of their native village. He joked, and her mind roved thoughtfully through her past. It seemed to her strangely like a quagmire uniformly strewn with hillocks, which were covered with poplars trembling in constant fear; with low firs, and with white birches straying between the hillocks.