Mother Page 8

  “A request for you: go into town and hand over this note…”

  “Is it dangerous?” she asked.

  “Yes. They print a newspaper for us there. It’s vital that the matter of the copeck gets into this issue…”

  “All right!” she responded. “Just a minute…”

  This was the first errand her son had given her. She was glad he had told her frankly what it was about.

  “This I can understand, Pasha!” she said, putting her things on. “They really are just stealing! What’s the man’s name – Yegor Ivanovich?”

  She returned late in the evening, tired but pleased.

  “I saw Sashenka!” she told her son. “She sends her regards. And that Yegor Ivanovich is such a plain and simple man, a real joker! He talks funny.”

  “I’m glad you like them!” said Pavel quietly.

  “Plain and simple people, Pasha! It’s good when people are plain and simple! And they all respect you…”

  Pavel did not go to work again on the Monday, as he had a headache. But at lunchtime Fedya Mazin came running, excited and happy, and, panting with fatigue, reported:

  “Come on! The whole factory’s up in arms. They sent me to fetch you. Sizov and Makhotin say you can explain things best of all. Such doings!”

  Pavel began putting his things on in silence.

  “The women came running – they’re screaming!”

  “I’m coming too!” announced the mother. “What are they getting up to there? I’m coming!”

  “Come on!” said Pavel.

  They went down the street quickly and in silence. The mother was gasping for breath in her agitation and sensed something important was coming. At the factory gates stood a crowd of women, grumbling and shrill. When the three of them slipped through into the yard, they immediately found themselves in a dense black crowd that was buzzing with excitement. The mother saw that all heads were turned in the same direction, towards the wall of the blacksmith’s shop, where, waving their arms, on a pile of old iron and against a background of red brick, stood Sizov, Makhotin, Vyalov and another half-dozen older, influential workers.

  “Vlasov’s coming!” someone shouted.

  “Vlasov? Let’s have him here…”

  “Quiet!” men immediately shouted in several places.

  And somewhere nearby, Rybin’s even voice was ringing out:

  “It’s not the copeck we need to stand up for, it’s justice – there! It’s not our copeck that’s dear to us; it’s no more round than any other, but it is heavier: there’s more human blood in it than in the director’s rouble – there! And it’s not the copeck we prize, it’s blood and the truth – there!”

  His words fell upon the crowd and wrung out heated exclamations:

  “True, Rybin!”

  “That’s right, stoker!”

  “Vlasov’s here!”

  Drowning out the heavy din of machinery, the hard sighs of steam and the hissing of wires, the voices merged into a noisy vortex. People came running in haste from everywhere, waving their arms, inflaming one another with heated, caustic words. The irritation that was always lurking drowsily in tired breasts was awakening, demanding an outlet, flying triumphantly through the air, spreading its dark wings ever wider, gripping the men ever more strongly, enticing them to follow it, bringing them together, being reborn as flaming anger. Above the crowd billowed a cloud of soot and dust, sweat-soaked faces burned, the skin of cheeks cried black tears. Eyes glittered in dark faces and teeth shone.

  Pavel appeared where Sizov and Makhotin were standing, and his cry rang out:

  “Comrades!”

  His mother saw that his face had turned pale and his lips were trembling; she involuntarily moved forward, pushing the crowd aside. People said to her irritably:

  “Where d’you think you’re going?”

  She was pushed, but this did not stop the mother; shouldering and elbowing people apart, she slowly shoved her way through, ever closer to her son, obeying her desire to stand alongside him.

  And Pavel, having ejected from his chest the word in which it was his wont to invest profound and important meaning, felt his throat had been constricted by a spasm of joie de guerre;* he was gripped by a desire to throw his heart to the people, alight with the fire of his dream of truth.

  “Comrades!” he repeated, drawing rapture and strength from this word. “We are the people who build churches and factories, who forge chains and money, we are the living force that feeds and entertains everyone from the cradle to the grave…”

  “There!” cried Rybin.

  “Always and everywhere we are first when it comes to work, but in last place in life. Who worries about us? Who wants to do well by us? Who thinks of us as people? Nobody!”

  “Nobody!” someone’s voice responded like an echo.

  Regaining his self-control, Pavel began speaking more simply and calmly, and the crowd moved slowly towards him, joining together to form a dark, thousand-headed body. It looked into his face with hundreds of attentive eyes and sucked in his words.

  “We won’t achieve a better lot until we feel ourselves to be comrades, a family of friends, firmly bound by one desire, the desire to fight for our rights.”

  “Get to the point!” came a rude cry from somewhere near the mother.

  “Don’t interrupt!” two low exclamations rang out in different places.

  Smoke-blackened faces frowned mistrustfully, sullenly; dozens of eyes looked seriously and thoughtfully into Pavel’s face.

  “A socialist, but no fool!” someone remarked.

  “My! That’s bold talk!” said a tall, one-eyed worker, pushing into the mother’s shoulder.

  “It’s time we understood, comrades, that no one but ourselves is going to help us! One for all and all for one – that’s our law, if we want to overcome the enemy!”

  “He’s talking sense, lads!” cried Makhotin.

  And with a sweeping swing of the arm, he shook his fist in the air.

  “The director must be called out!” Pavel continued.

  This hit the crowd like a whirlwind. It began to sway, and immediately dozens of voices cried:

  “Get the director here!”

  “Send delegates to fetch him!”

  The mother pushed forward and looked up at her son from below, full of pride. Pavel was standing in the midst of old, respected workers, everyone was listening to him and agreeing with him. She liked the fact that he was not getting angry or cursing, as others were.

  Abrupt exclamations, curses and angry words poured down like hail on iron. Pavel looked at the people from on high, searching for something among them with wide-open eyes.

  “Delegates!”

  “Sizov!”

  “Vlasov!”

  “Rybin! He’s got terrifying teeth!”

  Suddenly, low exclamations rang out in the crowd.

  “The man himself is coming!…”

  “The director!…”

  The crowd parted, letting through a tall man with a sharp little beard and a long face.

  “Permit me!” he was saying, moving the workers aside from his path with a gesture of his hand, but not actually touching them. His eyes were narrowed, and with the gaze of an experienced master of men he searchingly probed the workers’ faces. They removed their hats before him, they bowed to him, and he walked without replying to their bows, sowing quietness, embarrassment and confused smiles among the crowd, and low exclamations too, in which could already be heard the repentance of children conscious of having been naughty.

  Now he passed by the mother, his stern eyes sliding over her face, and stopped in front of the heap of iron. Someone reached out a hand to him from above, but he did not take it, and, with a powerful movement of his body, he easily climbed up to the top, to a position in front of Pav
el and Sizov, asking:

  “What’s this mob? Why have you stopped work?”

  For several seconds it was quiet. People’s heads nodded a little, like ears of corn. Sizov, waving his cap in the air, shifted his shoulders about and lowered his head.

  “I’m asking a question!” cried the director.

  Pavel moved alongside him and said loudly, pointing to Sizov and Rybin:

  “The three of us have been authorized by our comrades to demand that you rescind your order to deduct one copeck…”

  “Why?” asked the director, without looking at Pavel.

  “We don’t think such a tax on us is fair,” said Pavel loudly.

  “What, do you see in my intention to drain the marsh only a desire to exploit the workers, and not concern for the improvement of their daily existence? Yes?”

  “Yes!” replied Pavel.

  “And you too?” the director asked Rybin.

  “All equally!” answered Rybin.

  “And you, my good man?” The director turned to Sizov.

  “And I’m asking you too: you leave that copeck with us!” And bowing his head again, Sizov smiled guiltily.

  The director slowly ran his eyes over the crowd and shrugged his shoulders. Then he gave Pavel a searching glance and remarked to him:

  “You seem to be quite an educated man – do you, too, really fail to understand the benefit of this measure?”

  Pavel replied loudly:

  “If the factory drains the marsh at its own expense, everyone will understand it!”

  “The factory isn’t concerned with philanthropy!” the director remarked drily. “I order everyone to get back to work immediately!”

  And he began to climb down, treading cautiously over the iron and not looking at anyone.

  A discontented humming became audible in the crowd.

  “What?” asked the director, stopping.

  Everyone fell silent, and only from somewhere in the distance did a solitary voice ring out:

  “Do some work yourself!…”

  “If you don’t start work in fifteen minutes, I shall order that everyone be fined!” replied the director, drily and distinctly.

  He set off through the crowd again, but now a muffled grumbling rose up behind him, and the deeper his figure went into the crowd, the higher the cries rose.

  “Try talking to him!”

  “There’s your rights for you! Oh, what a fate…”

  People turned to Pavel, calling to him:

  “Hey, lawyer, what do we do now?”

  “You talked and talked, but then he arrived and wiped it all out!”

  “Come on, Vlasov, what are we to do?”

  When the cries became more insistent, Pavel declared:

  “I propose, comrades, refusing to work until he gives up the copeck.”

  Words began leaping excitedly.

  “D’you think we’re stupid?”

  “A strike?”

  “Over a copeck?”

  “What of it? All right, a strike!”

  “Everyone’ll be out on their ear…”

  “But then who’ll do the work?”

  “Some will!”

  “Judases?”

  XIII

  Pavel climbed down and stood next to his mother.

  Everyone around began humming, arguing with one another, getting agitated, crying out.

  “You won’t get a strike together!” said Rybin, coming over to Pavel. “The men may be greedy, but they’re cowardly too. Three hundred or so’ll side with you, no more. You can’t pick up such a heap of manure with one pitchfork…”

  Pavel was silent. The huge black face of the crowd was heaving before him and looking him demandingly in the eye. His heart was beating in alarm. It seemed to Vlasov as if his words had disappeared without trace among the men, like rare drops of rain that have fallen onto earth exhausted by long drought.

  He went home sad and tired. Behind him walked his mother and Sizov, while beside him strode Rybin, booming in his ear:

  “You speak well, but not to the heart – there! You need to throw a spark into the heart, into its very depths. You won’t win people over with reason; the shoe doesn’t fit: it’s too small, too narrow!”

  Sizov said to the mother:

  “It’s time we old ones were off to the graveyard, Nilovna! A new period’s beginning. How have we lived? We crawled on our knees and were always bowing down. Whereas people now, they’ve either come to their senses or else they’re even more mistaken, but they’re not like us. Them, the youngsters, they talk to the director as to an equal… ye-es! Goodby-ee, Pavel Mikhailov, you stand up for people well, brother! God grant, maybe you’ll learn all the ins and outs, God grant!”

  He went away.

  “Yes, go on and die!” muttered Rybin. “You’re not men any more now, but putty – you’re for covering up cracks. Pavel, did you see who was shouting for you to be a delegate? Those who say you’re a socialist and a troublemaker, it was them! Thinking: ‘If they give him the sack, then he had it coming to him.’”

  “In their own way, they’re right!” said Pavel.

  “Just as the wolves are right when they rip their comrade apart…”

  Rybin’s face was doleful and his voice had an unusual quaver.

  “People won’t believe the naked word – suffering’s needed, the word has to be washed in blood…”

  Pavel went around all day gloomy, tired and strangely disquieted; his eyes burned and seemed to be looking for something. Noticing this, his mother asked cautiously: “What’s the matter, Pasha, eh?”

  “I’ve got a headache,” he said pensively.

  “You should go to bed, and I’ll get the doctor…”

  He glanced at her and answered hurriedly:

  “No, there’s no need!”

  And he suddenly began speaking quietly:

  “I’m young and feeble, that’s the thing! They had no faith in me, they didn’t follow my truth, and that means I didn’t manage to explain it!… I feel bad, unhappy with myself!”

  Gazing into his gloomy face and wanting to console him, she said quietly: “You have to wait! They didn’t understand you today, but tomorrow they will…”

  “They should understand!” he exclaimed.

  “After all, even I can see your truth…”

  Pavel went up to her.

  “You’re a good person, Mother…”

  And he turned away from her. She gave a start, as though scorched by his quiet words, put a hand to her heart and went away, carefully carrying his kindness inside her.

  In the night, when she was asleep and he was lying in bed reading a book, the gendarmes came and began angrily rummaging everywhere, in the yard, in the attic. The yellow-faced officer behaved as he had the first time – offensively, mockingly, taking pleasure in his taunts, trying to cut to the heart. The mother sat silent in a corner and never took her eyes off her son’s face. He tried not to betray his agitation, but whenever the officer laughed, his fingers stirred strangely, and she sensed it was hard for him not to answer back to the gendarme, difficult to bear his jokes. She was not as frightened now as during the first search: she felt more hatred for these grey, nocturnal guests with spurs on their feet, and the hatred swallowed up her anxiety.

  Pavel managed to whisper to her:

  “They’re going to take me…”

  She bowed her head and answered quietly:

  “I understand…”

  She understood that he would be put in prison for what he had said that day to the workers. But everyone had agreed with what he had said and they all ought to stand up for him, so they would not hold him for long…

  She wanted to embrace him, to burst into tears, but the officer was standing next to her and looking at her t
hrough narrowed eyes. His lips were quivering, his moustache twitching, and it seemed to Vlasova that this man was just waiting for her tears, complaints and pleas. Summoning all her strength and trying not to speak very much, she squeezed her son’s hand and, holding her breath, said slowly and quietly:

  “Goodbye, Pasha. Have you got everything you need?”

  “Yes. Don’t feel lonely…”

  “Christ be with you…”

  When he had been taken away, she sat down on a bench and, closing her eyes, started quietly howling. Leaning her back against the wall, as her husband used to do, tightly bound by anguish and the hurtful consciousness of her own impotence, she threw back her head and howled in a monotone for a long time, pouring out in those sounds the pain of her wounded heart. And before her, like a motionless stain, was the yellow face with the sparse moustache, and the narrowed eyes watched her contentedly. Coiling in her breast was a black ball of bitterness and anger at such men who take a son away from his mother because that son is searching for the truth.

  It was cold, rain knocked on the window panes and it seemed as if grey figures with wide, red, eyeless faces and long arms were walking around the house in the night, lying in wait. Walking and, just audibly, jangling their spurs.

  “They should have taken me too,” she thought.

  The siren howled, demanding that people get to work. Today its howl was muffled, low and uncertain. The door opened and in came Rybin. He stood in front of her and, wiping drops of rain from his beard with the palm of his hand, asked:

  “Did they take him away?”

  “They did – curse them!” she answered with a sigh.

  “That’s how it is!” said Rybin with a grin. “I got it too – they searched, frisked me, ye-es. Gave me abuse… Well, but they didn’t do me any harm. So they took Pavel away! The director winked, the gendarme nodded – and the man’s gone! They’re good pals. One lot milks the people, the other holds them by the horns…”

  “You ought to stand up for Pavel!” the mother exclaimed, getting to her feet. “He went on behalf of everyone, after all.”

  “Who ought to?” asked Rybin.