Life flowed quickly, the days were varied and had many faces. Each one brought with it something new, and that no longer alarmed the mother. In the evenings, ever more frequently did unfamiliar people appear who, preoccupied, conversed in low tones with Andrei and went away into the darkness late at night, cautiously, noiselessly, raising their collars and pulling their hats down low over their eyes. In each one could be sensed suppressed excitement; it seemed as if everyone wanted to laugh and sing, but they had no time, they were always in a hurry. Some sarcastic and serious, others cheerful and sparkling with the power of youth, still others pensively quiet, in the eyes of the mother they all had something equally insistent and certain, and although each had a face of their own, all their faces merged into one for her: a thin, calmly decisive, clear face with the deep gaze of dark eyes, loving and stern, like the gaze of Christ on the road to Emmaus.
The mother counted them as, in her mind, she gathered them in a crowd around Pavel – in that crowd he became inconspicuous to the eyes of enemies.
A lively, curly-haired girl came from town one day, bringing some sort of package for Andrei, and when leaving, with her cheerful eyes flashing, she said to Vlasova:
“Goodbye, comrade!”
“Farewell!” the mother replied, suppressing a smile.
And after seeing the girl off, she went up to the window and, laughing, watched her comrade going down the street with her little feet pattering rapidly, fresh as a spring flower and light as a butterfly.
“Comrade!” said the mother when her guest had disappeared. “Oh my dear girl! God grant you an honest comrade for the whole of your life!”
She often noticed something childlike in all the people from town and would smile condescendingly, but she was touched and joyfully surprised by their faith, the depth of which she sensed ever more clearly, and she was caressed and warmed by their dreams of the triumph of justice – listening to them, in mysterious sadness she would heave involuntary sighs. But she was especially touched by their simplicity and the beautiful, generous way they neglected themselves.
She already understood much of what they said about life, sensed that they had discovered the true source of all men’s unhappiness and had grown accustomed to agreeing with their ideas. But in the depths of her soul she did not believe that they could reshape life in the way they wanted, or that they would have the power to attract all working people to their light. Everyone wanted to be well fed today, no one wished to postpone their dinner, not even until tomorrow, if they could eat it now. Few would go down this long and difficult road, few eyes would see the fabulous realm of the brotherhood of man at its end. That was why these good people, despite their beards and, at times, tired faces, all seemed to her like children.
“Oh my dears!” she thought, shaking her head.
But even now they were all leading good, serious, wise lives, talking about goodness and, wanting to teach people what they knew, doing it without sparing themselves. She understood that such a life could be loved in spite of its danger, and, sighing, she would look back to where her past stretched out in a dark, narrow ribbon. Imperceptibly, she developed a serene consciousness that she herself was necessary for this new life – never before had she felt needed by anyone, but now she saw clearly that she was needed by many, and this was novel and pleasant, and lifted her head a little…
She regularly took leaflets to the factory, looked upon this as her duty and became a customary figure for the police spies, growing familiar to them. She was searched several times, but always the day after the leaflets had appeared at the factory. She knew how to arouse the suspicion of the spies and guards when she had nothing with her; they would seize and frisk her; she would pretend to be offended, argue with them and, having made them feel ashamed, leave, proud of her cunning. She enjoyed this game.
Vesovshchikov was not taken on at the factory and started working for a timber merchant, carrying logs, boards and firewood around the settlement. The mother saw him almost every day: a pair of black horses would be walking along, digging their trembling, straining legs hard into the ground, both of them old and bony with their heads shaking sadly and wearily and their dim eyes blinking in exhaustion. Juddering behind them stretched a long, wet log or a heap of planks with its ends banging noisily, and alongside, with the reins lowered, paced Nikolai, ragged and dirty, in heavy boots and with a hat on the back of his head, awkward, like a tree stump that has been wrenched out of the ground. He too shakes his head, looking down at his feet. His horses run blindly into oncoming carts and people, angry oaths swirl around him like bumblebees and the air is cut by furious cries. Without lifting his head or answering them, he lets out a sharp, deafening whistle and mutters to the horses in a muffled voice:
“Get on, then!”
Each time comrades gathered with Andrei for the reading of a new issue of a foreign newspaper or a pamphlet, Nikolai would come as well, he would sit down in a corner for an hour or two and listen in silence. When the reading was over, the youngsters would spend a long time arguing, but Vesovshchikov took no part in the arguments. He would stay longest of all and, one to one with Andrei, would ask him the gloomy question:
“And who’s most to blame?”
“The one to blame, you see, is the one who first said – this is mine! That man died several thousand years ago, and it’s not worth being angry with him!” said the Ukrainian in jest, but his eyes looked anxious.
“What about the rich? And those who stand up for them?”
The Ukrainian took his head in his hands, tugged at his moustache and talked for a long time in simple words about life and people. But the upshot of what he said was always that everyone in general seemed to be to blame, and that did not satisfy Nikolai. Tightly pursing his thick lips, he shook his head in denial and, declaring distrustfully that it was not so, left discontented and sombre.
One day he said:
“No, there must be people to blame – they’re here! I tell you, we have to plough up the whole of life like a field of weeds – without mercy!”
“That’s what Isai the timekeeper once said about you!” the mother recalled.
“Isai?” Vesovshchikov queried after a pause.
“Yes. He’s a malicious one! Snoops on everyone, interrogates people; he’s started walking up and down our street and peering in at our windows…”
“Peering in?” Nikolai repeated.
The mother was already lying in bed and could not see his face, but she realized she had said too much, because the Ukrainian began hastily saying in a conciliatory way:
“Well, let him walk and peer! He can take a stroll when he has the free time…”
“No, wait!” said Nikolai in a muffled voice. “There he is, the one to blame!”
“For what?” the Ukrainian asked quickly. “For being stupid?”
Vesovshchikov left without replying.
The Ukrainian paced slowly and wearily around the room, shuffling quietly on his thin, spidery legs. He had taken off his boots, always doing this so as not to make a clatter and disturb Vlasova. But she was not asleep and, when Nikolai had gone, she said anxiously:
“I’m afraid of him!”
“Ye-es!” the Ukrainian drawled slowly. “He’s an angry boy. Don’t talk to him about Isai, nenko – that Isai really is a spy.”
“That’s no wonder. He has a gendarme for a gossip!” the mother remarked.
“Nikolai may well give him a drubbing!” the Ukrainian continued apprehensively. ‘You see what feelings the gentlemen who command our lives have cultivated among the lower ranks? When people such as Nikolai come to feel their grievances and lose their patience, what’ll happen then? They’ll spatter the sky with blood, and the earth’ll be lathered in it, like soap…”
“It’s terrifying, Andryusha!” the mother exclaimed quietly.
“If they hadn’t swallowed any flies, they wouldn’t be sick!” said Andrei after a pause. “And after all, nenko, each drop of their blood is washed clean in advance by lakes of the people’s tears…”
He suddenly laughed quietly and added:
“It’s fair, but that’s no comfort!”