Mother (38 page)

"You've been in prison half a year already!"

They spoke to each other about matters of no significance to either. The mother saw Pavel's eyes look into her face softly and lovingly. Even and calm as before, he had not changed, save that his wrists were whiter, and his beard, grown long, made him look older. The mother experienced a strong desire to do something pleasant for him--tell him about Vyesovshchikov, for instance. So, without changing her tone, she continued in the same voice in which she spoke of the needless and uninteresting things.

"I saw your godchild." Pavel fixed a silent questioning look on her eyes. She tapped her fingers on her cheeks to picture to him the pockmarked face of Vyesovshchikov.

"He's all right! The boy is alive and well. He'll soon get his position--you remember how he always asked for hard work?"

Pavel understood, and gratefully nodded his head. "Why, of course I remember!" he answered, with a cheery smile in his eyes.

"Very well!" the mother uttered in a satisfied tone, content with herself and moved by his joy.

On parting with her he held her hand in a firm clasp.

"Thank you, mamma!" The joyous feeling of hearty nearness to him mounted to her head like a strong drink. Powerless to answer in words, she merely pressed his hand.

At home she found Sasha. The girl usually came to Nilovna on the days when the mother had visited Pavel.

"Well, how is he?"

"He's well."

"Did you hand him the note?"

"Of course! I stuck it into his hands very cleverly."

"Did he read it?"

"On the spot? How could he?"

"Oh, yes; I forgot! Let us wait another week, one week longer. Do you think he'll agree to it?"

"I don't know--I think he will," the mother deliberated. "Why shouldn't he if he can do so without danger?"

Sasha shook her head.

"Do you know what the sick man is allowed to eat? He's asked for
some food."

"Anything at all. I'll get him something at once." The mother walked into the kitchen, slowly followed by Sasha.

"Can I help you?"

"Thank you! Why should you?"

The mother bent at the oven to get a pot. The girl said in a low
voice:

"Wait!"

Her face paled, her eyes opened sadly and her quivering lips whispered hotly with an effort:

"I want to beg you--I know he will not agree--try to persuade him. He's needed. Tell him he's essential, absolutely necessary for the cause--tell him I fear he'll get sick. You see the date of the trial hasn't been set yet, and six months have already passed--I beg of you!"

It was apparent that she spoke with difficulty. She stood up straight, in a tense attitude, and looked aside. Her voice sounded uneven, like the snapping of a taut string. Her eyelids drooping wearily, she bit her lips, and the fingers of her compressed hand cracked.

The mother was ruffled by her outburst; but she understood it, and a sad emotion took possession of her. Softly embracing Sasha, she answered:

"My dear, he will never listen to anybody except himself--never!"

For a short while they were both silent in a close embrace. Then Sasha carefully removed the mother's hands from her shoulders.

"Yes, you're right," she said in a tremble. "It's all stupidity and nerves. One gets so tired." And, suddenly growing serious, she concluded: "Anyway, let's give the sick man something to eat."

In an instant she was sitting at Ivan's bed, kindly and solicitously inquiring, "Does your head ache badly?"

"Not very. Only everything is muddled up, and I'm weak," answered Ivan in embarrassment. He pulled the blanket up to his chin, and screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by too brilliant a light. Noticing that she embarrassed him by her presence and that he could not make up his mind to eat, Sasha rose and walked away. Then Ivan sat up in bed and looked at the door through which she had left.

"Be-au-tiful!" he murmured.

His eyes were bright and merry; his teeth fine and compact; his young voice was not yet steady as an adult's.

"How old are you?" the mother asked thoughtfully.

"Seventeen years."

"Where are your parents?"

"In the village. I've been here since I was ten years old. I got through school and came here. And what is your name, comrade?"

This word, when applied to her, always brought a smile to the mother's face and touched her.

"Why do you want to know?"

The youth, after an embarrassed pause, explained:

"You see, a student of our circle, that is, a fellow who used to read to us, told us about Pavel's mother--a workingman, you know-- and about the first of May demonstration."

She nodded her head and pricked up her ears.

"He was the first one who openly displayed the banner of our party," the youth declared with pride--a pride which found a response in the mother's heart.

"I wasn't present; we were then thinking of making our own demonstration here in the city, but it fizzled out; we were too few of us then. But this year we will--you'll see!"

He choked from agitation, having a foretaste of the future event. Then waving his spoon in the air, he continued:

"So Vlasova--the mother, as I was telling you--she, too, got into the party after that. They say she's a wonder of an old woman."

The mother smiled broadly. It was pleasant for her to hear the boy's enthusiastic praise--pleasant, yet embarrassing. She even had to restrain herself from telling him that she was Vlasova, and she thought sadly, in derision of herself: "Oh, you old fool!"

"Eat more! Get well sooner for the sake of the cause!" She burst out all of a sudden, in agitation, bending toward him: "It awaits powerful young hands, clean hearts, honest minds. It lives by these forces! With them it holds aloof everything evil, everything mean!"

The door opened, admitting a cold, damp, autumn draught. Sofya entered, bold, a smile on her face, reddened by the cold.

"Upon my word, the spies are as attentive to me as a bridegroom to a rich bride! I must leave this place. Well, how are you, Vanya? All right? How's Pavel, Nilovna? What! is Sasha here?"

Lighting a cigarette, she showered questions without waiting for answers, caressing the mother and the youth with merry glances of her gray eyes. The mother looked at her and smiled inwardly. "What good people I'm among!" she thought. She bent over Ivan again and gave him back his kindness twofold:

"Get well! Now I must give you wine." She rose and walked into the dining room, where Sofya was saying to Sasha:

"She has three hundred copies prepared already. She'll kill herself working so hard. There's heroism for you! Unseen, unnoticed, it finds its reward and its praise in itself. Do you know, Sasha, it's the greatest happiness to live among such people, to be their comrade, to work with them?"

"Yes," answered the girl softly.

In the evening at tea Sofya said to the mother:

"Nilovna, you have to go to the village again."

"Well, what of it? When?"

"It would be good if you could go to-morrow. Can you?"

"Yes."

"Ride there," advised Nikolay. "Hire post horses, and please take a different route from before--across the district of Nikolsk." Nikolay's somber expression was alarming.

"The way by Nikolsk is long, and it's expensive if you hire horses."

"You see, I'm against this expedition in general. It's already begun to be unquiet there--some arrests have been made, a teacher was taken. Rybin escaped, that's certain. But we must be more careful. We ought to have waited a little while still."

"That can't be avoided," said Nilovna.

Sofya, tapping her fingers on the table, remarked:

"It's important for us to keep spreading literature all the time. You're not afraid to go, are you, Nilovna?"

The mother felt offended. "When have I ever been afraid? I was without fear even the first time. And now all of a sudden--" She drooped her head. Each time she was asked whether she was afraid, whether the thing was convenient for her, whether she could do this or that--she detected an appeal to her which placed her apart from the comrades, who seemed to behave differently toward her than toward one another. Moreover, when fuller days came, although at first disquieted by the commotion, by the rapidity of events, she soon grew accustomed to the bustle and responded, as it were, to the jolts she received from her impressions. She became filled with a zealous greed for work. This was her condition to-day; and, therefore, Sofya's question was all the more displeasing to her.

"There's no use for you to ask me whether or not I'm afraid and various other things," she sighed. "I've nothing to be afraid of. Those people are afraid who have something. What have I? Only a son. I used to be afraid for him, and I used to fear torture for his sake. And if there is no torture--well, then?"

"Are you offended?" exclaimed Sofya.

"No. Only you don't ask each other whether you're afraid."

Nikolay removed his glasses, adjusted them to his nose again, and looked fixedly at his sister's face. The embarrassed silence that followed disturbed the mother. She rose guiltily from her seat, wishing to say something to them, but Sofya stroked her hand, and said quietly:

"Forgive me! I won't do it any more."

The mother had to laugh, and in a few minutes the three were speaking busily and amicably about the trip to the village.

The next day, early in the morning, the mother was seated in the post chaise, jolting along the road washed by the autumn rain. A damp wind blew on her face, the mud splashed, and the coachman on the box, half-turned toward her, complained in a meditative snuffle:

"I say to him--my brother, that is--let's go halves. We began to divide"--he suddenly whipped the left horse and shouted angrily: "Well, well, play, your mother is a witch."

The stout autumn crows strode with a businesslike air through the bare fields. The wind whistled coldly, and the birds caught its buffets on their backs. It blew their feathers apart, and even lifted them off their feet, and, yielding to its force, they lazily flapped their wings and flew to a new spot.

"But he cheated me; I see I have nothing----"

The mother listened to the coachman's words as in a dream. A dumb thought grew in her heart. Memory brought before her a long series of events through which she had lived in the last years. On an examination of each event, she found she had actively participated in it. Formerly, life used to happen somewhere in the distance, remote from where she was, uncertain for whom and for what. Now, many things were accomplished before her eyes, with her help. The result in her was a confused feeling, compounded of distrust of herself, complacency, perplexity, and sadness.

The scenery about her seemed to be slowly moving. Gray clouds floated in the sky, chasing each other heavily; wet trees flashed along the sides of the road, swinging their bare tops; little hills appeared and swam asunder. The whole turbid day seemed to be hastening to meet the sun--to be seeking it.

The drawling voice of the coachman, the sound of the bells, the humid rustle and whistle of the wind, blended in a trembling, tortuous stream, which flowed on with a monotonous force, and roused the wind.

"The rich man feels crowded, even in Paradise. That's the way it is. Once he begins to oppress, the government authorities are his friends," quoth the coachman, swaying on his seat.

While unhitching the horses at the station he said to the mother
in a hopeless voice:

"If you gave me only enough for a drink----"

She gave him a coin, and tossing it in the palm of his hand, he informed her in the same hopeless tone:

"I'll take a drink for three coppers, and buy myself bread for two."

In the afternoon the mother, shaken up by the ride and chilled, reached the large village of Nikolsk. She went to a tavern and asked for tea. After placing her heavy valise under the bench, she sat at a window and looked out into an open square, covered with yellow, trampled grass, and into the town hall, a long, old building with an overhanging roof. Swine were straggling about in the square, and on the steps of the town hail sat a bald, thin-bearded peasant smoking a pipe. The clouds swam overhead in dark masses, and piled up, one absorbing the other. It was dark, gloomy, and tedious. Life seemed to be in hiding.

Suddenly the village sergeant galloped up to the square, stopped his sorrel at the steps of the town hall, and waving his whip in the air, shouted to the peasant. The shouts rattled against the window panes, but the words were indistinguishable. The peasant rose and stretched his hand, pointing to something. The sergeant jumped to the ground, reeled, threw the reins to the peasant, and seizing the rails with his hands, lifted himself heavily up the steps, and disappeared behind the doors of the town hall.

Quiet reigned again. Only the horse struck the soft earth with the
iron of his shoes.

A girl came into the room. A short yellow braid lay on her neck, her face was round, and her eyes kind. She bit her lips with the effort of carrying a ragged-edged tray, with dishes, in her outstretched hands. She bowed, nodding her head.

"How do you do, my good girl?" said the mother kindly.

"How do you do?"

Putting the plates and the china dishes on the table, she announced
with animation:

"They've just caught a thief. They're bringing him here."

"Indeed? What sort of a thief?"

"I don't know."

"What did he do?"

"I don't know. I only heard that they caught him. The watchman of the town hall ran off for the police commissioner, and shouted: 'They've caught him. They're bringing him here.'"

The mother looked through the window. Peasants gathered in the square; some walked slowly, some quickly, while buttoning their overcoats. They stopped at the steps of the town hall, and all looked to the left. It was strangely quiet. The girl also went to the window to see the street, and then silently ran from the room, banging the door after her. The mother trembled, pushed her valise farther under the bench, and throwing her shawl over her head, hurried to the door. She had to restrain a sudden, incomprehensible desire to run.