The Mother Read online

  “Him?” the mother thought with hostility, and she was very surprised to see Natasha offering him her hand with joy and affection.

  Then came two lads, little more than boys. One of them the mother knew – this was Fyodor, the nephew of the old factory hand Sizov, sharp-faced, with a high forehead and curly hair. The other, shy and with his hair combed flat, was unfamiliar to her, but not frightening either. Finally Pavel appeared, and with him two young men – she knew them; they were both from the factory. Her son said to her gently:

  “You’ve put the samovar on? Well, thank you!”

  “Maybe I should buy some vodka?” she suggested, not knowing how to express to him her gratitude for something she did not yet understand.

  “No, that’s not necessary!” responded Pavel, giving her a friendly smile.

  It suddenly occurred to her that her son had deliberately exaggerated the danger of the gathering in order to play a trick on her.

  “And is this them – the forbidden people?” she asked quietly.

  “The very ones!” Pavel answered, going through into the other room.

  “Oh dear!…” Her gentle exclamation followed him, and to herself she thought condescendingly: “Still a child!”

  VI

  The samovar came to the boil, and the mother carried it into the other room. The guests were sitting in a tight little circle by the table, but Natasha, with a book in her hands, had found herself a place in the corner, underneath the lamp.

  “In order to understand why people live so badly—” Natasha was saying.

  “And why they are bad themselves,” the Ukrainian put in.

  “—it’s necessary to look at how they began their lives—”

  “You look, my dears, you look!” murmured the mother, brewing the tea.

  Everyone fell silent.

  “What do you want, Mamasha?” asked Pavel, knitting his brows.

  “Me?” She looked around and, seeing that everyone was looking at her, explained in embarrassment: “I was just talking to myself, saying: ‘You look!’”

  Natasha laughed, and Pavel grinned, but the Ukrainian said:

  “Thank you, nenko, for the tea!”

  “Haven’t drunk it yet, but already grateful!” she responded and, with a glance at her son, asked: “I won’t be in the way, will I?”

  Natasha answered: “How can you, the hostess, be in the way of your guests?” And in a childishly plaintive voice she begged: “Give me some tea, dear, quickly! I’m shaking all over and my feet are frozen something terrible!”

  “Right away, right away!” the mother hurriedly exclaimed.

  After drinking a cup of tea, Natasha sighed noisily, tossed her plait over her shoulder and began reading an illustrated book in a yellow binding. Trying not to make a noise with the crockery as she poured the tea, the mother listened closely to the girl’s flowing speech. The sonorous voice merged with the thin, pensive song of the samovar, and there wound through the room in a beautiful ribbon a story of savage people who lived in caves and killed wild beasts with stones.* It was like a fairy tale, and the mother glanced several times at her son, wanting to ask him what it was about this story that was forbidden. But soon she grew weary of following the story and started scrutinizing the guests, unnoticed by her son or by them.

  Pavel was sitting next to Natasha, and he was the most handsome of all. Natasha, bent low over the book, was often putting her hair back in place as it slipped down onto her temples. Raising her head and lowering her voice, she would at times say something of her own, not looking at the book, but with her eyes sliding gently over the faces of her audience. The Ukrainian leant his broad chest against the corner of the table and squinted in his efforts to scrutinize the frayed ends of his moustache. Vesovshchikov sat upright on his chair as though made of wood, his palms pressing on his knees and his pockmarked face with no eyebrows and thin lips motionless, like a mask. Without blinking his narrow eyes, he stared at his own face, reflected in the shining copper of the samovar, and did not seem to be breathing. Little Fedya moved his lips soundlessly as he listened to the reading, as though he were repeating the words of the book to himself, while his comrade was hunched over with his elbows on his knees and, his palms propping up his cheekbones, was smiling pensively. One of the lads who had arrived with Pavel had curly red hair and cheerful green eyes, and he must have wanted to say something, because he moved around impatiently; the other, with closely cropped fair hair, stroked his head with his hand and looked at the floor, so his face could not be seen. It was particularly pleasant in the room somehow. The mother could sense this particularity that was unfamiliar to her, and to the murmur of Natasha’s voice she reminisced about the noisy parties of her youth, the coarse words of the lads, who always reeked of vodka, their cynical jokes. She reminisced, and felt her heart quietly touched by an aching sense of self-pity.

  She remembered her late husband’s courtship. He had caught her in a dark lobby at one of their parties and, with his entire body pressing her against the wall, had asked in a muffled, angry voice:

  “Marry me, will you?”

  She had been hurt and offended, but he had kneaded her breasts painfully, wheezing heavily, his breath hot and moist in her face. She had tried to extricate herself from his arms, jerking sideways.

  “Where are you going!” he had growled. “Answer, you – well?”

  Choking from the shame and the hurt, she had been silent.

  Someone had opened the door into the lobby, and he had unhurriedly released her, saying:

  “I’ll send the matchmaker on Sunday.”

  And he had.

  The mother closed her eyes with a heavy sigh.

  “I don’t need to know all that – how people used to live – but how people ought to live!” Vesovshchikov’s discontented voice rang out in the room.

  “Exactly!” the red-haired one supported him, standing up.

  “I don’t agree!” cried Fedya.

  An argument flared up, and words began sparkling like tongues of flame in a bonfire. The mother did not understand what the shouting was about. All their faces began to glow with a flush of excitement, but no one grew angry or used the sharp words with which she was familiar.

  “They’re holding back because of the young lady!” she decided.

  She liked Natasha’s serious face, observing everyone attentively as though these lads were children for her.

  “Wait, comrades!” she said suddenly. And, gazing at her, they all fell silent.

  “Those who say we ought to know everything are right. We need to ignite ourselves with the light of reason, so that people living in darkness can see us, we need to answer everything honestly and correctly. We need to know the whole truth, the whole deceit…”

  The Ukrainian listened and nodded his head in time with her words. Vesovshchikov, the red-haired one and the factory hand brought by Pavel stood in a tight group, all three of them, and for some reason the mother did not like them.

  When Natasha fell silent, Pavel stood up and asked calmly:

  “Do we just want to be properly fed? No!” he answered his own question, gazing firmly in the direction of the trio. “We must show those who are a millstone around our necks and covering our eyes that we can see everything – we’re not stupid, not animals, we don’t just want to eat, we want to live as is worthy of people! We must show our enemies that this life of hard labour which they’ve thrust upon us doesn’t stop us being their equals in intelligence or even outdoing them!…”

  His mother listened to him, and pride quivered in her breast – hear how coherently he spoke!

  “There are lots that are well fed, but there are none that are honest!” said the Ukrainian. “We have to build a bridge over the swamp of this rotten life to the future kingdom of heartfelt goodness – that’s our cause, comrades!”

 
“The time has come to fight, so there’s no time to get treatment for our hands!” Vesovshchikov retorted in a muffled voice.

  It was already past midnight when they began to disperse. First to go were Vesovshchikov and the red-haired one, and again the mother did not like this.

  “Look what a hurry they’re in!” she thought, bowing to them in unfriendly fashion.

  “Will you see me back, Nakhodka?” asked Natasha.

  “What do you think?” the Ukrainian replied.

  As Natasha was putting her things on in the kitchen, the mother said to her:

  “Your stockings are too thin for such a time! Won’t you let me knit you some woollen ones?”

  “Thank you, Pelageya Nilovna! But they’re scratchy, woollen ones!” replied Natasha, laughing.

  “Well, I’ll knit you ones that aren’t scratchy!” said Vlasova.

  Natasha looked at her with her eyes slightly narrowed, and this intent gaze embarrassed the mother.

  “Do forgive my foolishness – I meant well, you know!” she added quietly.

  “How nice you are!” Natasha responded in a low voice too, giving her hand a quick squeeze.

  “Goodnight, nenko!” said the Ukrainian, looking her in the eye, then he hunched over and followed Natasha out into the lobby.

  The mother looked at her son – he was standing by the door into the other room and smiling.

  “What are you laughing at?” she asked, embarrassed.

  “Nothing, just feeling cheerful!”

  “Of course, I’m old and foolish, but even I can understand a good thing!” she remarked, a little offended.

  “Well, that’s splendid!” he responded. “You should go to bed: it’s time!…”

  “I will in a minute!”

  She bustled around the table, clearing away the crockery, contented, even sweating in her pleasant agitation; she was glad everything had gone so well and ended so peacefully.

  “That was a good idea you had, Pavlusha!” she said. “The Ukrainian’s very nice! And the young lady – my, what a clever girl! Who is she?”

  “A teacher!” replied Pavel tersely, pacing up and down the room.

  “Well, there you are, the poor thing! Badly dressed, ever so badly! It’s so easy to catch cold! Where are her parents?”

  “Moscow!” said Pavel, and, stopping opposite his mother, he began in a serious, low voice:

  “Look here: her father’s rich, he trades in iron, has several houses. He threw her out for going down this path. She was brought up in the warm, indulged with whatever she wanted, but now she’ll walk seven versts* at night, alone…”

  This amazed his mother. She stood in the middle of the room and, with her eyebrows shifting in surprise, looked at her son in silence. Then she asked quietly:

  “Will she be walking into town?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh dear! And she isn’t afraid?”

  “That’s just it – she isn’t!” said Pavel, smiling.

  “But why? She could have spent the night here – could have come to bed with me!”

  “Too awkward! She might be seen here tomorrow morning, and that we don’t need.”

  With a pensive glance out of the window, the mother asked quietly:

  “I don’t understand, Pasha, what is it that’s dangerous or forbidden about this? I mean, it’s nothing bad, is it?”

  She was uncertain of this and wanted to hear confirmation from her son in reply. Looking her calmly in the eye, he declared firmly:

  “Bad – no. But all the same, prison lies ahead for each of us. You ought to know that…”

  Her hands shook. In a dejected voice she said:

  “But perhaps, God willing, things will somehow turn out all right?…”

  “No!” her son said gently. “I’m not going to deceive you. They won’t!”

  He smiled.

  “Go to bed – you’re tired, aren’t you? Goodnight!”

  Left alone, she went up to the window and stood in front of it, gazing into the street. Outside the window it was cold and murky. The wind was playing, blowing the snow down off the roofs of the sleepy little houses, beating against the walls and saying something in a hurried whisper, falling to the ground and chasing white clouds of dry snowflakes down the street.

  “Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us!” the mother whispered quietly.

  There were tears coming to the boil in her heart, and fluttering blindly and mournfully like a moth was the expectation of the woe of which her son had spoken with such calm and certainty. There rose before her eyes a flat, snowy plain. With a cold, thin whistling, the wind, white and shaggy, is rushing and speeding along. In the midst of the plain, swaying and lonely, walks the small, dark figure of a girl. The wind gets caught in her legs, blows her skirt about, throws prickly snowflakes into her face. Walking is difficult, and her little legs sink into the snow. It is cold and frightening. The girl is bent forward and is like a blade of grass in the midst of the murky plain, in the frisky play of the autumn wind. To her right, in the marsh, stands the dark wall of the forest, and from there comes the doleful noise of the thin, bare birches and aspens. Somewhere far ahead is the dull flicker of the lights of the town…

  “Lord, have mercy!” whispered the mother, with a shudder of fear…

  VII

  The days slipped by, one after another, like the beads of a rosary, adding together into weeks and months. Every Saturday, Pavel’s comrades would come and visit him, and every gathering was one step in a long, gently rising staircase leading to somewhere in the distance and slowly taking people higher.

  New people would appear. The Vlasovs’ little room would get cramped and stuffy. Natasha would arrive, frozen through and tired, but always inexhaustibly cheerful and lively. The mother knitted stockings for her and put them on her little legs herself. At first Natasha laughed, but then suddenly fell silent, fell into thought and said quietly:

  “I used to have a nanny who was astonishingly kind as well! How strange it is, Pelageya Nilovna – working people lead such hard, such painful lives, and yet they have more heart, more kindness than others have!”

  And she waved a hand, pointing to somewhere in the distance, very far away from her.

  “See the way you are!” said Vlasova. “Deprived of your parents and everything…” But she did not know how to finish her thought, and she sighed and fell silent, gazing into Natasha’s face and feeling grateful to her for something. She was sitting on the floor in front of her, and the girl was smiling pensively with her head bowed.

  “Deprived of my parents?” she repeated. “That’s not a problem! My father is so rude, and my brother too. And he’s a drunk. My elder sister is unfortunate… She married a man much older than her… Very rich, boring, greedy. I feel sorry for Mama! She’s plain and simple, like you. A little thing, just like a mouse, runs just as quickly and is scared of everyone. Sometimes I so want to see her…”

  “My poor girl!” said the mother, shaking her head sadly.

  The girl quickly threw up her head and reached out an arm, as though pushing something away.

  “Oh no! At times I feel such joy, such happiness!”

  Her face turned pale, and her blue eyes flashed brightly. Putting her hands onto the mother’s shoulders, she said in a deep voice, quietly and impressively:

  “If you only knew… if you only realized what a great deed we’re doing!…”

  Something close to envy touched Vlasova’s heart. Rising from the floor, she said sadly:

  “I’m too old for that now, illiterate…”

  Pavel spoke more, and ever more frequently, argued ever more hotly and grew thinner. It seemed to his mother that, when he spoke with Natasha or looked at her, his stern eyes shone more softly, the sound of his voice was gentler, and he generally became plainer an
d simpler.

  “Please, Lord!” she thought. And smiled.

  Just as soon as arguments began to take on too heated and stormy a character at the gatherings, the Ukrainian would always stand up and, rocking back and forth like the clapper of a bell, say something simple and kind in his resonant, booming voice, which made everyone become calmer and more serious. Vesovshchikov was forever morosely hurrying everyone along somewhere, and he and the red-haired one, whose name was Samoilov, were the first to start all the arguments. In agreement with them was Ivan Bukin, round-headed and with hair so light it could have been washed in lye. Yakov Somov, smooth and clean, said little in his quiet, serious voice, and in arguments he and big-browed Fedya Mazin always sided with Pavel and the Ukrainian.

  Sometimes, instead of Natasha, one Nikolai Ivanovich would come from town, a man in glasses with a small, light-coloured beard, a native of some distant province who spoke with a particular accent, emphasizing the letter O. He was generally rather distant overall. He would talk about simple things – family life, children, trade, the police, the price of bread and meat, everything that people live by day in, day out. And in everything he revealed falsity, muddle, something stupid or at times ridiculous, and something that was always obviously disadvantageous to people. It seemed to the mother that he had come from somewhere far away, from some other kingdom, and everyone there led an honest and easy life, while everything here was alien to him; he could not get used to this life or accept it as necessary, he disliked it, and it aroused in him a calm, stubborn desire to reshape everything after his own fashion. His face was yellowish, and around the eyes there were fine, radial wrinkles, his voice was quiet and his hands were always warm. When greeting Vlasova, he would embrace the whole of her hand with his strong fingers, and after such a handshake her heart would feel lighter and calmer.

  Other people came from town too, and more often than the others a tall, shapely young lady with huge eyes in a thin, pale face. She was called Sashenka. There was something masculine about her gait and movements, she would knit her thick, dark brows angrily, and when she spoke, the fine nostrils of her straight nose would quiver.