MAXIM GORKY

BY

ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1901

CONTENTS Orlóff and His Wife (1897)[] 3 Konováloff (1896) 95 The Khan and His Son (1896) 177 The Exorcism (1896) 189 Men with Pasts (1897) 195 The Insolent Man (1897) 293 Várenka Ólesoff (1897) 323 Comrades (1897) 465 [] Date of first publication.

[Pg 3]

ORLÓFF AND HIS WIFE

Almost every Saturday, just before the All-Night Vigil Service,[1] from two windows in the cellar of merchant Petúnnikoff's old and filthy house, opening on the narrow court-yard encumbered with various utensils, and built up with wooden servants'-quarters ricketty with age, broke forth the vehement shrieks of a woman:

[1] The evening service, composed of Vespers and Matins, which is used on Saturdays, and on the Eves of most other Feast-days. Sunday begins with sunset on Saturday, in the Holy Catholic Orthodox Church of the East, and the appointed evening service is obligatory before the Liturgy can be celebrated on Sunday morning.—Translator.

"Stop! Stop, you drunken devil!" the woman cried in a low contralto voice.

"Let go!" replied a man's tenor voice.

"I won't, I won't. I'll give it to you, you monster!"

"You li-ie! You will let me go!"

"You may kill me—but I won't!"

"You? You li-ie, you heretic!"

"Heavens! He has murdered me ... he-eavens!"

"Will you let go?!"

"Beat away, you wild beast, beat me to death!"

"You can wait.... I won't do it all at once!"

At the first words of this dialogue, Sénka Tchízhik, the apprentice of house-painter Sutchkóff, who ground paint whole days together in one of the small sheds in the court-yard,[Pg 4] flew headlong thence, his little eyes, black as those of a mouse, sparkling, yelling at the top of his voice:

"Shoemaker Orlóff and his wife are fighting! My eye! what a lively time they're having!"

Tchízhik, who was passionately fond of all possible sorts of events, rushed to the windows of the Orlóffs' lodgings, flung himself on the ground on his stomach, and hanging down his shaggy, saucy head, with its bold, thin face streaked with ochre and reddish-brown paint, he gazed down with eager eyes into the dark, damp hole, which reeked of mould, shoemakers' wax and musty leather. There, at the bottom of it, two figures were jerking about in a fury, screaming hoarsely, groaning and cursing.

"You'll kill me...." warned the woman, with a sigh.

"N-ne-ever m-mind!"—her husband soothed her confidently, and with concentrated venom.

Dull, heavy blows on some soft object resounded, sighs, piercing screams, the strained groaning of a man who is moving about a heavy weight.

"Oh my! I-is-n't he just giving it to her with the last!" said Tchízhik with a lisp, illustrating the course of events in the cellar, while the audience which had gathered around him—tailors, messenger of the courts Levtchénko, Kislyakóff the accordeon-player, and others who were fond of gratuitous entertainments—kept asking Sénka, pulling, in their impatience, at his legs and little breeches all impregnated with greasy paints:

"Well? What's going on now? What's he doing to her?"

"He's sitting astride of her, and banging her snout against the floor," reported Sénka, curling up voluptuously with the impressions which he was experiencing.

[Pg 5]

The spectators bent over also, to the Orlóffs' windows, being seized with a burning desire to see all the details of the fight for themselves; and although they had long known the ways which Grísha[2] Orlóff employed in his war with his wife, still they expressed surprise:

[2] Grísha and Gríshka are the diminutives of Grigóry.—Translator.

"Akh, the devil! Has he smashed her up?"

"Her nose is all bloody ... and he keeps on banking her!" reported Sénka, choking with delight.

"Akh, Lord my God!" cried the women.—"Akh, the tormenting-monster!"

The men judged more objectively.

"Without fail, he'll beat her to death!" said they.

And the accordeon-player announced in the tone of a seer:

"Remember my words—he'll disembowel her with a knife! One of these days he'll get tired of cutting up in this fashion, and he'll put an end to the music at one blow!"

"He's done!" reported Sénka, springing up from the ground, and bounding away like a ball from the windows, to one side, to a nook where he took up another post of observation, being aware that Grísha Orlóff would immediately emerge into the court-yard.

The spectators rapidly dispersed, as they did not care to fall under the eye of the savage shoemaker; now that the battle was over, he had lost all interest in their eyes, and he was decidedly dangerous, to boot.

And generally, there was not a living soul in the courtyard except Sénka, when Orlóff made his appearance from his cellar. Breathing heavily, in a torn shirt, with his hair rumpled all over his head, with scratches on his perspiring and excited face, he scrutinized the court-yard with[Pg 6] a sidelong glance, with eyes suffused with blood, and clasping his hands behind his back, he walked slowly to an old carrier's sledge, which lay with runners upward, against the wall of the wood-shed. Sometimes he whistled valiantly as he did so, and stared about in all directions exactly as though he had the intention of challenging the entire population of the Petúnnikoff house to a fight. Then he seated himself on the runners of the sledge, wiped the blood and sweat from his face with his shirt-sleeve, and fell into a fatigued attitude, gazing dully at the wall of the house, which was dirty with peeling stucco and decorated with motley-hued stripes of paint,—as Sutchkóf's painters, on their return from work, had a habit of cleaning their brushes against that part of the wall.

Orlóff was about thirty years of age. His bronzed, nervous face, with delicate features, was adorned with a small, dark mustache, which sharply shaded his full, red lips. His eyebrows almost met above his large, cartilaginous nose; from beneath them gazed black eyes which always blazed uneasily. His curly hair, tangled in front, fell behind over a sinewy, light-brown neck. Of medium stature, and somewhat round-shouldered from his work, muscular and ardent, he sat for a long time on the sledge, in a sort of benumbed condition, and surveyed the paint-bedaubed wall, breathing deeply with his healthy, swarthy breast.

The sun had already set, but it was stifling in the courtyard; it smelled of oil-paints, tar, sour cabbage, and something rotten. From all the windows in both stories of the house which opened on the court-yard, poured songs and scolding; from time to time someone's intoxicated countenance inspected Orlóff for a minute, being thrust forth from behind a window-jamb and withdrawn with a laugh.

The painters made their appearance from their work;[Pg 7] as they passed Orlóff they cast furtive glances at him, exchanging winks among themselves, and filling the courtyard with the lively dialect of Kostromá, they made ready to go out, some to the bath, some to the pot-house. From above, from the second story, tailors crept out into the court—a half-clad, consumptive and bow-legged lot of men—and began to make fun of the Kostromá painters for their mode of speech, which rattled about like peas. The whole court was filled with noise, with daring, lively laughter, with jests.... Orlóff sat in his corner and maintained silence, not even casting a glance at anyone. No one approached him, and no one could make up his mind to ridicule him, for everyone knew that now he was—a raging wild beast.

He sat there, the prey to a dull and heavy wrath, which oppressed his breast, made breathing difficult, and his nostrils quivered rapaciously from time to time while his lips curled in a snarl, laying bare two rows of large, strong, yellow teeth. Within him something dark and formless was springing up, red, turbid spots swam before his eyes, grief and a thirst for vódka sucked at his entrails. He knew that he would feel better when he had had a drink, but it was still daylight, and it mortified him to go to the dram-shop in such a tattered and disreputable condition through the street where everybody knew him, Grigóry Orlóff.

He knew his own value, and did not wish to go out as a general laughing-stock, but neither could he go home to wash and dress himself. There, on the floor, lay his wife whom he had unmercifully beaten, and now she was repulsive to him in every way.

She was groaning there, and he felt that she was a martyr, and that she was right, so far as he was concerned—[Pg 8]he knew that. He knew, also, that she was really in the right, and he was to blame, but this still further augmented his hatred toward her, because, along with this consciousness a dark, evil feeling was seething in his soul, and it was more powerful than the consciousness. Everything within him was heavy and confused, and, without any exertion of his will, he gave himself over to the weight of his inward sensations, unable to disentangle them, and knowing that nothing but half a bottle of vódka would afford him relief.

Now Kislyakóff the accordeon-player comes along. He is clad in a sleeveless cotton-velvet jacket, over a red silk shirt, with voluminous trousers tucked into dandified boots. Under his arm is his accordeon in a green bag, the ends of his small black mustache are twisted into arrows, his cap is set dashingly on one side, and his whole countenance is beaming with audacity and jollity. Orlóff loves him for his audacity, for his playing, and for his merry character, and envies him his easy, care-free life.

"Congratulations, Grísha,[3] on your vi-ic-to-ory, And on your well-scra-a-atched cheek!"

[3] See footnote, p. 5.

Orlóff did not fly into a rage with him for this joke, although he had already heard it fifty times, and besides, the accordeon-player did not say it out of malice, but simply because he was fond of joking.

"What now, brother! Had another Plevna?"—asked Kislyakóff, halting for a minute in front of the shoemaker.

"Ekh, Grísha, you're a ripe melon! You ought to go where the road for all of us lies.... You and I might have a bite together..[Pg 9]..'

"I'm coming soon...." said Orlóff, without raising his head.

"I'll wait and suffer for you...."

And before long, Orlóff went off after him.

Then, from the cellar emerged a small, plump woman, clinging to the wall as she went. Her head wad closely enveloped in a kerchief, and from the aperture over the face, only one eye, and a bit of the cheek and forehead peeped out. She walked, staggering, across the court, and seated herself on the same spot where her husband had been sitting not long before. Her appearance surprised no one—they had got used to it, and everybody knew that there she would sit until Grísha, intoxicated and in a repentant mood, should make his appearance from the dram-shop. She came out into the court, because it was suffocating in the cellar, and for the purpose of leading drunken Grísha down the stairs. The staircase was half-decayed, and steep; Grísha had tumbled down it one day, and had sprained his wrist, so that he had not worked for a fortnight, and, during that time, they had pawned nearly all their chattels to feed themselves.

From that time forth, Matréna had kept watch for him.

Now and then someone from the court would sit down beside her. Most frequently of all, the person who did so was Levtchénko, a mustached non-commissioned officer on the retired list, an argumentative and sedate Little Russian, with close-cut hair and a blue nose. He would seat himself, and inquire, with a yawn:

"Been banging each other round again?"

"What's that to you?" said Matréna, in a hostile and irritable manner.

"Oh, nothing!" explained the Little Russian, and after that, neither of them spoke again for a long time.

[Pg 10]

Matryóna breathed heavily, and there was a rattling in her chest.

"Why are you always fighting? What scores have you to settle?"—the Little Russian would begin to argue.

"That's our affair...." said Matréna Orlóff curtly.

"That's so, it is your affair...." assented Levtchénko, and he even nodded his head in confirmation of what had been said.

"Then what are you poking your nose into my business for?" argued Mrs. Orlóff[4] logically.

[4] "Mrs. Orlóff" is rather a stiff rendering of the feminine form "Orlóva," minus all prefix, which is not at all disrespectful in Russian, but is somewhat confusing in English.—Translator.

"Phew ... what a touchy woman you are! One can't say a word to you! As I look at it—you and Grísha are a well-matched pair! He ought to give you a good drubbing with a club every day—morning and night—that's what he ought! Then neither of you would be such hedge-hogs...."

And off he went, in a towering rage, which thoroughly pleased her:—for a long time past, a rumor had been going the rounds of the court-yard, to the effect that the Little Russian was not making up to her for nothing, and she was angry with him, with him and with all people who intruded themselves on other folks' affairs. But the Little Russian walked off to the corner of the court with his upright, soldierly gait, alert and strong despite his forty years.

Then Tchízhik bobbed up under his feet from somewhere or other.

"She's a bitter radish too, that Aunty Orlíkha!" he confided to Levtchénko, in an undertone, with a sly wink in the direction where Matréna was sitting.

"Well, I'll prescribe that sort of a radish for you, when[Pg 11] you need one!" threatened the Little Russian, laughing behind his mustache. He was fond of impudent Tchízhik, and listened attentively to him, being aware that all the secrets of the court-yard were known to Tchízhik.

"You can't do any fishing round her,"—explained Tchízhik, paying no attention to the threat.—"Maxím the painter tried it, and bang! she let fly such a slap in the face at him! I heard it myself ... a healthy whack! Straight in his ugly face ... just as though it had been a drum!"

Half-child, half-man, in spite of his fifteen years, lively and impressionable, he eagerly absorbed, like a sponge, the dirt of the life around him, and on his brow there was a thin wrinkle, which showed that Sénka Tchízhik was given to thinking.

... It was dark in the court-yard. Above it shone a quadrangular bit of blue sky, all glittering with stars, and surrounded by lofty roofs, so that the court seemed to be a deep pit, when one looked up out of it. In one corner of this pit sat a tiny female form, resting after her beating, and awaiting her drunken husband....

*

The Orlóffs had been married three years. They had had a child, but after living for about a year and a half, it died; neither of them mourned it long, being consoled with the hope that they would have another. The cellar, in which they had taken up their abode, was a large, long, dark room with a vaulted ceiling. Directly at the door stood a huge Russian stove, facing the windows; between it and the wall a narrow passage led into a square space, lighted by two windows, which opened on the court-yard. The light fell through them into the cellar in slanting, turbid streaks, and the atmosphere in the room was damp,[Pg 12] dull, dead life pulsated somewhere, tar away, up above, but only faint, ill-defined sounds of it were wafted hither, and fell, together with the dust, into the Orlóffs' hole, in a sort of formless, colorless flakes. Opposite the stove, against the wall, stood a wooden double-bed, with print curtains of a cinnamon-brown dotted with pink flowers; opposite the bed, against the other wall, was a table, on

which they drank tea and dined; and between the bed and the wall, the husband and wife worked, in the two streaks of light.

Cockroaches travelled indolently over the walls, feeding on the bread-crumbs with which various little pictures from old newspapers were stuck to the plaster; melancholy flies flitted about everywhere, buzzing tiresomely, and the little pictures, which they had covered with specks, stood out like dark spots against the dirty-gray background of the walls.

The Orlóffs' day began after this fashion: at six o'clock in the morning, Matréna awoke, washed herself, and prepared the samovár, which had more than once been crippled in the heat of battle, and was covered all over with patches of lead. While the samovár was coming to a boil, she put the room in order, went to the shop,[5] then roused her husband; he rose, washed himself, and the samovár was already standing on the table, hissing and purring. They sat down to drink tea, with white bread, of which, together, they ate a pound.

[5] In Russian towns, people go or send, every morning, to the shops for bread, cream, butter.—Translator.

Grigóry worked well, and he always had work; after tea he portioned it out. He did the fine work, which required the hand of a master, his wife prepared the waxed ends, pasted in the linings, put on the outside layer on the heels,[Pg 13] and did other trifling jobs of that sort. After tea, they discussed their dinner. In winter, when it was necessary to eat more, this was a tolerably interesting question; in summer, from economy, they heated the oven only on feast-days, and not always then, feeding themselves chiefly on a cold dish made of kvas,[6] with the addition of onions, salt-fish, sometimes of meat, boiled in the oven of someone in the court-yard. When they had finished their tea, they sat down to work: Grigóry on a small kneading-trough, covered with leather, and with a crack in the side, his wife by his side, on a low bench.

[6] A tart, non-intoxicating, liquor—thin beer—made by fermenting sour rye bread, or rye meal. Sometimes raisins, straw or watermelon juice are used to flavor it.—Translator.

At first they worked in silence,—what had they to talk about? They exchanged a couple of words about their work, and maintained silence for half an hour, or more, at a stretch. The hammer tapped, the waxed-ends hissed, as they were drawn through the leather. Grigóry yawned from time to time, and invariably concluded his yawn with a prolonged roar or howl. Matréna sighed and held her peace. Sometimes Orlóff started a song. He had a sharp voice, with a metallic ring, but he knew how to sing. The words of the song were arranged in a swift, plaintive recitative, and now burst impetuously from Grigóry's breast, as though afraid to finish what they wished to say, now, all of a sudden, lengthened out into mournful sighs, or—with a wail of "ekh!"—flew in loud, melancholy strains, through the windows into the court. Matréna sang an accompaniment to her husband, with her soft contralto. The faces of both grew pensive, and sad, Grísha's dark eyes became dimmed with moisture. His wife, absorbed in the sounds, seemed

to grow stupid, and sat as though[Pg 14] half-dozing, swaying from side to side, and sometimes the song seemed to choke her, and she broke off in the middle of a note, and then went on with it, in harmony with her husband. Neither of them was conscious of the presence of the other while they were singing, and striving to pour forth in the words of others the emptiness and dulness of their gloomy life; perhaps they wished to give expression, in these words, to the half-conscious thoughts and sensations, which sprang into life in their souls.

At times Gríshka improvised:

"E-okh, thou life,... ekh, yea, thou, my thrice-accursed life.... And thou, oh grief! Ekh, and thou, my cursed grief, Maledictions on thee, gri-i-ief!..."

Matréna did not like these improvisations, and, on such occasions, she generally asked him:

"Why are you howling, like a dog before a corpse?"

For some reason, he instantly flew into a rage with her:

"You blunt-snouted pig! What can you understand? You marsh-spectre!"

"He howled, and howled, and now he has taken to barking...."

"Your business is to hold your tongue! Who am I—your foreman, I'd like to know, that you meddle and read me lectures, hey?.... Just so!"