Maksim Gorky

“ A woman sits before me, her number is legion and she has awakened in my soul feelings hitherto unknown to me. As an equal she speaks to me and she does not ask, she demands. I see and understand why this woman is so powerful: she loves and love helped her to recognise that her child is the spark of life from which a flame may spring that will burn for many centuries. Have not all prophets been children, and all heroes been weak? O Jihangir, the light of my eyes, perhaps it was thy lot to warm the earth, to sow happiness on it: I have covered it well with blood and made it fertile. ”

“ Along a road leading to a large town walks a little boy. He walks and hastens not.
The town lies prostrate; the heavy mass of its buildings presses against the earth. And it groans, this town, and sends forth a murmurous sound. From afar it looks as if it had just burned out, for over it the blood-red flame of the sunset still lingers, and the crosses of its churches, its spires and vanes, seem red-hot.
The edges of the black clouds are also on fire, angular roofs of tall buildings stand out ominously against the red patches, window-panes like deep wounds glisten here and there. ”

“ The young man sang quietly and sadly:
"Oh, sun!"
"Yes, yes," said the old man suddenly, shaking his head, "a small happiness is more honest, but a great happiness is better. Poor people are better-looking, but the rich are stronger. It is always so."
The waves rock and splash. Blue wreaths of smoke float, like nymphs, above the heads of the two men. The young man rises to his feet and sings quietly, his cigar stuck in a corner of his mouth. He leans his shoulder against the grey side of the rock, folds his arms across his chest, and looks out to sea with the eyes of a dreamer. ”

“ In another two or three hours the steamer will enter the narrow harbour of the marble town of Genoa.
The sun climbs higher and higher, promising a hot day.
The stewards run up on to the deck; one of them is young, thin, and quick in his movements, like a Neapolitan, with an ever-changing expression on his mobile face; the other is a man of medium height, with a grey moustache, black eyebrows, and silvery bristles on his round skull. He has an aquiline nose and serious, intelligent eyes. Laughing and joking they quickly lay the table for breakfast and depart. ”

“ At last he said:
"I, Timur, slave of God, say what I must. Let three hundred horsemen go to all the four corners of my kingdom and let them find this woman's son. She shall wait here and I will wait with her. Happy shall he be who returns with the child on his saddle. Woman, is that right?"
She tossed her black hair from her face, smiled at him and, nodding, answered:
"Quite right, O king!"
Then the terrible old man rose and bowed to her in silence, but the merry poet Kermani sang joyfully like a child:
"What is more delightful than a song of flowers and stars? ”

“ For everything was fantastic there, dear signor: we men were so puny, while the mountain, into whose belly we were boring, reached up to the sky. One must see in order to understand it. It is necessary to see the black gaping mouth cut by us, tiny people, who entered it at sunset—and how sadly the sun looks after those who desert him and go into the bowels of the earth! It is necessary to see our machines and the grim face of the mountain, and to hear the dark rumblings in it and the blasts, like the wild laughter of a madman. ”

“ THE FREAK
It is a quiet sultry day, and life seems to have come to a standstill in the serene calm; the sky looks affably down at the earth, with a limpid eye of which the sun is the fiery iris.
The sea has been hammered smooth out of some blue metal, the coloured boats of the fishermen are as motionless as if they were soldered into the semicircle of the bay, which is as clear as the sky overhead. A seagull flies past, lazily flapping its wings; out of the water comes another bird, whiter yet and more beautiful than the one in the air. ”

“ The father's corpse was never found, but the mother had been killed in the moment of the collision. Her body was recovered and laid in a coffin, looking as lean and brittle as the dead branch of an old tree—just as she had looked when she was alive.
"Now you and I are left alone," the sister said to her brother sternly, but in a mournful voice, after the mother's funeral; and the cold look in her grey eyes daunted him. "It will be hard for us: we are ignorant of the world and may lose much. What a pity it is that I cannot get married at once."
"Oh!" exclaimed the hunchback. ”

“ In a deep wrinkle on the old man's cheek glistened a tear of happiness; he threw back his head and laughed noiselessly, pawing his old throat and the flabby skin of his face; his arms were as restless as a child's.
"Oh, signors, signors!" said he, laughing and catching his breath. "On our wedding morn we had everything that was wanted for a home—a statue of the Madonna, crockery, linen, furniture—everything, I swear! Ida wept and laughed, and so did I, and everybody laughed—it is not the thing to weep on one's wedding day, and they all laughed at us! ”

“ Near a pile of stones sits a workman, like some dark coloured beetle; on his breast is a medal; his face is serious, bold, but kindly.
Placing his sunburnt hands on his knees and looking up into the face of a passer-by who has stopped in the shade of a chestnut-tree, he says:
"This is the Simplon, signor, and this is a medal for working in the Simplon tunnel,"
And lowering his eyes to his breast he smiles fondly at the bright piece of metal.
"Oh, every kind of work is hard for a time, until you get used to it, and then it grows upon you and becomes easy. ”

“ To us it seems more terrible than death!"
"Yes," she said; "it is more terrible."
They opened the gate for her, and let her out of the town. For a long time they watched her from the wall as she made her way over this native soil, sodden now with blood shed by her son. She walked slowly, dragging her feet painfully through the mire, bowing her head before the corpses of the defenders of the town and repugnantly spurning the pieces of broken weapons that lay in her path—for mothers hate the instruments of destruction, believing only in that which preserves life. ”

“ But the town lives and is possessed by an anxious longing to see itself beautiful and upraised proudly before the sun. It murmurs in a fever of many-sided desire for happiness, it is excited by a passionate will to live. Slow waves of muffled sound issue into the dark silence of the surrounding fields, and the black bowl of the sky is gradually filled with a dull, languishing light. ”

“ One can detect no trembling of the deck and the mast, pointing towards the clear sky, strains and quivers ever so slightly. The rigging, taut as the strings of an instrument, hums gently, but one has grown used to the vibration, and does not notice it, and it seems as if the steamer—white and graceful as a swan—were motionless on the smooth water. To perceive the motion one must look over the gunwale, where a greenish wave retreats from the white side of the steamer. It seems to fall away in broad soft folds, rolling and glistening like quicksilver and splashing dreamily. ”

“ They walk across the terrace through the hotel doorway, looking like people out of a picture of Hogarth's—sad, ugly, grotesque, unlike anything else under the sun. Everything seems to grow dark and dim in their presence.
They are Dutch people, brother and sister, the children of a diamond merchant and banker. Their life has been full of strange events if one may believe what is lightly said of them.
As a child, the hunchback was quiet, self-contained, always musing, and not fond of toys. ”

“ From the dark mountain-tops clouds descended into the valley, and like winged coursers sped upon the doomed town.
"Perhaps we shall make an attack to-night," said her son, "if the night is dark enough! It is not easy to kill when the sun looks into one's eyes and the glitter of the weapons blinds one—many blows are wasted then," said he, examining his sword. ”

“ Others have struggled for cities and for kingdoms, but none has so striven for a man. Men had no value in my eyes; I cared not who they were nor why they were in my way. It was I, Timur, who said to Bayazet when I had defeated him: 'O Bayazet, it seems that kingdoms are nothing before God; you see that He gives them into the hands of people like us—you who are a cripple and me who am lame!' I said this to him when he was led up to me in chains, groaning under their weight. I looked upon his misfortune and felt that love was bitter as wormwood, the weed that grows on ruins. ”

“ The town itself no longer seems to be consumed by fire and reeking in blood—the broken lines of the roofs and walls have the appearance now of something magical, fantastic, but yet of something incomplete, not properly finished, as if he who planned this great town for men had suddenly grown tired and fallen asleep, or had lost faith, and, casting everything aside in his disappointment, had gone away, or died. ”

“ Here we shall tell of the Iron Timur-Lenk, the Lame Lynx—of Sahib-Kiran, the lucky conqueror—of Tamerlane, as the Infidels have named him—of the man who sought to destroy the whole world.
For fifty years he scoured the earth, his iron heel crushing towns and states as an elephant's foot crushes ant-hills. Red rivers of blood flowed in his tracks wherever he went. He built high towers of the bones of conquered peoples; he destroyed Life, vying with the might of Death, on whom he took revenge for having robbed him of his son Jihangir. ”

“ You will see: when we bore into the mountain as far as the heart, when we touch the heart, it will burn us up, it will hurl fire upon us, because the earth's heart is fiery—everybody knows that! To cultivate the soil means to help it to give birth—we are bidden to do that; but now we are spoiling its physiognomy, its form. Behold! The farther we dig into the mountain the hotter the air becomes and the harder it is to breathe.'"
The man laughed quietly and curled the ends of his moustache with both hands. ”

“ From afar comes the soft murmur of the sea.
"Well, my good Vincenzo," said the locksmith, with a broad smile. "Tell me in verse how I became a socialist. Do you know how it happened?"
"No," said the painter, filling the glasses with wine and smiling at the red stream. "You have never told me. This skin fits your bones so well that I thought you were born in it!"
"I was born naked and stupid, like you and everybody else; in my youth I dreamed of a rich wife; when I was a soldier I studied in order to pass the examination for an officer's rank. ”

“ It is better still to feel that they are 'yours,' near and dear to you, your kindred, for whom your life is no joking matter, your happiness no plaything! And the wedding took place! It was a great day. The whole commune turned out to see us, and everybody came to our shed, which had become a rich house, as in a fairy-tale. We had everything: wine and fruit, meat and bread, and all ate and were merry. There is no greater happiness, signors, than to do good to others; believe me, there is nothing more beautiful or more joyful.
"And we had a priest. ”

“ But when a man is over twenty-five he is a poor lyric poet."
He threw away the crumpled flower, picked another and, looking round, continued quietly:
"When one has covered the road from mother's breast to the breast of one's sweetheart, one must go on to another kind of happiness."
The locksmith became silent, tilting his wine in the glass.
Below them the sea murmurs softly; in the hot air above the vineyards floats the perfume of flowers.
"It is the sun that makes us so lazy and good-for-nothing," murmured the locksmith.
"I don't seem to be able to manage lyric verse satisfactorily now. ”

“ Sometimes, in the torchlight, the water became red and my father told me that we had wounded the earth and that she would drown us, would burn us all up with her blood—'you will live to see it!' It was all fancy, like enough, but when one hears such words deep in the bowels of the earth—in the damp and suffocating darkness, amid the plaintive splashing of water and the grinding of iron against stone—one forgets for the moment how much is fantasy. ”

“ Then, inclining his bald bronzed skull to one side, he said with emphasis:
"It is all true, dear signor! People are just as you like to see them; look at them with kind eyes and all will be well with you, and with them, too; it will make them still better, and you too! It is very simple!"
The wind freshens considerably, the waves become higher, sharper and whiter, birds appear on the sea and fly swiftly away, disappearing in the distance. ”

“ All is quiet, save for the twitter of the birds in the garden and the humming of the bees as they hover over the flowers. From the vineyards on the mountain-side the sounds of a song float on the hot air and reach the ear: the singers are a man and a woman. Each verse is separated from the others by a moment's pause, and this interval of silence lends a special expression to the song, giving it something of the character of a prayer. ”

“ THE SOCIALIST
Before the door of a white canteen hidden among the thick vines of an old vineyard, in the shade of a canopy of vine branches interspersed with morning glory and small Chinese roses, at a table on which stood a decanter of wine, sat Vincenzo, a painter, with Giovanni, a locksmith. The painter is a small man, thin and dark; his eyes are lit with the soft, musing smile of a dreamer. His upper lip and cheeks have the appearance of having been recently shaved, but his smile makes him look very young, almost childlike. ”

“ Her profile is the very picture of sternness: her nose is aquiline and on the end of her sharp chin grows a large grey wart; her rounded forehead projects over dark hollows where, in a network of wrinkles, her eyes are hidden. They are hidden so deep that the woman appears almost blind.
On the steps behind her, swaying from side to side like a duck, appears noiselessly the square body of a hunchback with a large, heavy, forward-hanging head, covered with a grey soft hat. ”