In the evening, when the Ukrainian went out, she lit the lamp and sat down at the table to knit a stocking. But she soon got up, paced around the room indecisively, went out into the kitchen, put the latch down on the door and, twitching her eyebrows urgently, returned to the other room. She lowered the blinds at the windows and, taking a book from the shelf, sat down again at the table, looked around, bent over the book, and her lips began to stir. When there was noise coming from the street, she would give a start and cover the book with her palm, listening keenly… And then again, now closing her eyes, now opening them, she would whisper:
“L I – li, F, E…”
There was a knock at the door, and the mother leapt up, thrust the book onto the shelf and asked in alarm:
“Who’s there?”
“Me…”
In came Rybin and, stroking his beard sedately, he remarked:
“You used to let people in without asking. Are you alone? Right. I thought the Ukrainian was at home. I saw him today… Prison does a man no harm.”
He sat down and said to the mother:
“Let’s have a talk…”
His gaze was meaningful, mysterious, and inspired in the mother a vague disquiet.
“Everything costs money!” he began in his heavy voice. “You’re not born for nothing, and don’t die for nothing – there. And booklets and leaflets cost money. Do you know where the money for the booklets comes from?”
“No, I don’t,” the mother said quietly, sensing something dangerous.
“Right. I don’t either. The second thing – who puts the books together?”
“Scholars…”
“Gentlefolk!” said Rybin, and his bearded face tensed and reddened. “So it’s gentlefolk that put the books together and them that distribute them. And written in those booklets are things against gentlefolk. Now, you tell me, what’s the benefit to them of spending money to raise the people against them?”
Blinking, the mother cried out fearfully: “What are you thinking?…”
“Aha!” said Rybin, and he began turning slowly on his chair. “There. Me too, when I arrived at that thought – I turned cold.”
“Have you discovered anything?”
“Deceit!” Rybin replied. “I can sense deceit. I don’t know anything, but there is deceit. There. The gentlefolk are doing something cunning. And I need the truth. And I’ve understood the truth. And I won’t go with gentlefolk. When they need to, they’ll push me over, and they’ll stride on ahead across my bones, as though they were a bridge…”
It was as if he were binding the mother’s heart with his morose words.
“Lord!” the mother exclaimed in anguish. “Doesn’t Pasha understand? And everyone that…”
Before her flashed the serious, honest faces of Yegor, Nikolai Ivanovich, Sashenka, and her heart began beating faster.
“No, no!” she said, shaking her head in denial. “I can’t believe it. They’re people of conscience.”
“Who are you talking about?” asked Rybin pensively.
“All of them… all of them that I’ve seen, every last one!”
“You’re looking in the wrong place, mother – look further afield!” said Rybin, lowering his head. “Those who’ve come close to us, maybe they know nothing themselves. They believe it’s the way it should be! But maybe there are others behind them who just want some profit? A man won’t go against himself for nothing…”
And with the heavy conviction of a peasant he added:
“There’ll never be anything good coming from gentlefolk!”
“What have you got in mind?” the mother asked, once again gripped by doubt.
“Me?” Rybin glanced at her, paused and repeated: “You need to steer well clear of gentlefolk. There.”
Then he paused again, morose.
“I wanted to join myself to the lads, to be with them. I’m suited to this cause; I know what needs to be said to people. There. Well, but now I’m going away. I can’t believe, so I have to go away.”
He lowered his head and had a think.
“I’m going to go around the villages and hamlets by myself. I’m going to rouse the people to revolt. The people themselves need to take it up. If they can understand, they’ll open up paths for themselves. So I’m going to try and get them to understand that they have no hope apart from themselves; they have no reason but their own. That’s the way of it!”
She began to feel sorry for this man; she felt fear for him. She had always found him unpleasant, but now he had suddenly come closer somehow; quietly she said:
“They’ll catch you…”
Rybin looked at her and answered calmly:
“They’ll catch me, then they’ll release me. And I’ll do it again…”
“The peasants themselves’ll tie you up. And you’ll do time in prison…”
“I’ll do time, then I’ll come out. And I’ll go again. And as for the peasants, they’ll tie me up once, twice, and then they’ll understand they don’t need to tie me up, but to listen. I’ll tell them: ‘Don’t believe me – just listen.’ And if they do listen, they’ll believe!”
He spoke slowly, as though groping for every word before saying it.
“I’ve swallowed a lot here recently. Understood a thing or two…”
“You’ll be done for, Mikhailo Ivanovich!” she said, shaking her head sadly.
He looked at her with dark, deep eyes, questioning and waiting. His strong body had bent forward, his hands were resting on the seat of the chair and his swarthy face seemed pale in the black frame of his beard.
“And have you heard what Christ said about the grain? If you don’t die, you won’t rise again in a new ear of corn.* I have a long way to go until death. I’m a sly one!”
He began shifting about on the chair and, without haste, stood up.
“I’ll go to the inn and sit there for a while in company. The Ukrainian’s not coming for some reason. Has he started to get busy?”
“Yes!” said the mother with a smile.
“So he should. You tell him about me…”
Shoulder to shoulder, they set off slowly into the kitchen and exchanged brief words without looking at one another:
“Well, goodbye!”
“Goodbye. When are you giving notice?…”
“I’ve given it.”
“And when are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow. Early in the morning. Goodbye!”
Rybin stooped and, reluctantly, awkwardly, clambered out into the lobby. The mother stood in front of the door for a minute or so, listening to his heavy footsteps, and doubts awakened in her breast. Then she turned quietly, went through into the other room and, raising the blind a little, looked out of the window. Beyond the glass the black darkness was motionless.
“I live in the night-time!” she thought.
She felt sorry for the solid peasant – he was so broad and strong.
Andrei came back animated and cheerful.
When she told him about Rybin, he exclaimed:
“Well, let him go around the villages, gossiping about truth and rousing the people. It’s hard for him with us. His own peasant’s ideas have grown up in his head, and there’s no room there for ours…”
“What he was saying about gentlefolk – there’s something in that!” the mother remarked cautiously. “I hope they won’t deceive you!”
“Does that worry you?” cried the Ukrainian, laughing. “Oh, nenko, money! If only we had some! We still continue to live at the expense of others. Nikolai Ivanovich, he gets seventy-five roubles a month and gives fifty to us. Others are the same. And hungry students sometimes send the little they’ve got together, copeck by copeck. And, of course, you find different sorts of gentlefolk. Some’ll deceive you, others’ll drop away, but the best’ll go on with us…”
He clapped his hands and continued strongly:
“The eagle won’t be joining our celebration, but we’re going to organize a little one anyway, on the first of May! It’ll be fun!”
His animation was pushing the anxiety sown by Rybin aside. The Ukrainian walked around the room, rubbing his head with one hand, and, gazing at the floor, said:
“Do you know, sometimes there’s something astonishing that lives in your heart! It seems as if everywhere, wherever you go, your comrades are all burning with the same fire, they’re all cheerful, good and fine. They understand one another without words… They all live in chorus, yet each heart sings its own song. All the songs, like streams, they run, they pour into a single river, and the river flows wide and free into the sea of bright joys of a new life.”
The mother tried not to move, so as not to stop him, not to interrupt his speeches. She always listened to him with greater attention than she did to the others – he spoke simplest of all, and his words touched the heart more powerfully. Pavel never talked about what he saw up ahead. Whereas a part of this man’s heart, it seemed to her, was always there, and ringing out in his speeches was a magical tale of a future time of celebration for everyone on earth. For the mother, this tale shed light on the meaning of the life and work of her son and all his comrades.
“And you come to,” said the Ukrainian, with a shake of his head, “you look around, and it’s cold and dirty! Everyone’s grown tired and angry…”
With deep sadness he continued:
“It’s painful, but you mustn’t trust a man, you have to fear him, even hate him! You get split in two! You might just want to love him, but how can you? How can you forgive a man if he’s coming at you like a wild beast, doesn’t recognize you as a living soul and puts the boot into your human face? You can’t forgive! It’s not for yourself you can’t – I can bear any injury for myself – but I don’t want to indulge the bullies; I don’t want them using my back to learn how to beat others.”
Now his eyes flared up with a cold light, he bowed his head stubbornly and spoke more firmly:
“I shouldn’t forgive anything harmful, even if it isn’t harmful to me. I’m not alone on earth! Today I allow myself to be hurt, and I may only laugh at the hurt – it doesn’t wound me – and then tomorrow, after trying out his strength on me, the one who hurt me will go and skin someone else. And you have to look at people in different ways, you have to keep your heart stern, sort people out: these are our kind; those are different. It’s fair – but that’s no comfort!”
For some reason the mother remembered the officer and Sashenka. Sighing, she said: “What sort of bread do you get from unsieved flour, now!…”
“That’s the trouble!” the Ukrainian exclaimed.
“Ye-es!” said the mother. In her memory now stood the figure of her husband, sullen, heavy, like a big rock overgrown with moss. She imagined the Ukrainian as Natasha’s husband and her son married to Sashenka.
“But why?” asked the Ukrainian, becoming heated. “It’s so easy to see, it’s even funny. Only because people are unequal. So let’s make everyone equal! We’ll divide up equally everything that’s done by reason, everything that’s made by hand! We won’t keep each other in the slavery of fear and envy, in the captivity of greed and stupidity!…”
They began to talk like this often.
Nakhodka was taken on again at the factory; he gave her all his earnings, and she took the money just as easily as she had taken it from Pavel’s hands.
Sometimes, with a smile in his eyes, Andrei would suggest to the mother:
“Shall we do some reading, nenko, eh?”
With a joke, but stubbornly, she would refuse; she was troubled by that smile and, a little hurt, would think:
“If you’re laughing, then what’s the point?”
And ever more frequently she would ask him the meaning of some bookish word or other that was alien to her. She would look away when asking, and her voice would sound indifferent. He guessed she was studying little by little on her own, understood her bashfulness and stopped suggesting she read with him. Soon she declared to him:
“My eyes are getting weak, Andryusha. I could do with glasses.”
“All right!” he responded. “I’ll go into town with you on Sunday, show you to the doctor, and then you’ll have your glasses…”