The Mother by Maxim Gorky

Author:Maxim Gorky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alma Books
Published: 2017-07-07T15:42:18+00:00

III

Nikolai appeared towards evening. They had dinner, and over dinner Sofia recounted, laughing, how she had met and hidden the man who had escaped from exile, how she had been afraid of spies, seeing them in everyone, and how funnily the fugitive had behaved. There was something in her tone that reminded the mother of the bragging of a worker who had done some difficult job well and was happy.

She was now dressed in a light, loose dress, the colour of steel. She seemed taller in this dress, and it was as if her eyes had darkened and her movements become more serene.

“You’re going to have to take on another job, Sofia,” began Nikolai after dinner. “You know we’ve planned a newspaper for the countryside, but the link with the people out there has been lost thanks to the latest arrests. Pelageya Nilovna’s the only one who can show us how to find the man who’s going to take on the distribution of the newspaper. You go there with her. It needs to be done soon.”

“Very well,” said Sofia, puffing at her cigarette. “Shall we go, Pelageya Nilovna?”

“All right, let’s…”

“Is it far?”

“Eighty versts or so…”

“Marvellous! And now I shall play a little. Can you put up with some music, Pelageya Nilovna?”

“Don’t ask me – act as though I’m not here!” said the mother, settling down in a corner of the sofa. She could see that the brother and sister did not seem to be paying her any attention, yet at the same time it turned out that, like it or not, at their imperceptible instigation she was constantly intruding in their conversation.

“Now listen, Nikolai! This is Grieg.* I brought it today… Shut the windows.”

She opened up the music and struck the keys lightly with her left hand. The singing of the strings began, lush and full. With a deep sigh, another note, rich in sound, flowed to join them. Ringing brightly from beneath the fingers of the right hand, there flew from the strings an anxious flock of strangely transparent cries which began to sway and beat like frightened birds against the dark background of the low notes.

At first the mother was untouched by these sounds; she heard in their flow only ringing chaos. Her ear was unable to catch the melody in the complex quivering of the mass of notes. Half-asleep, she watched Nikolai sitting with his legs folded beneath him at the other end of the long sofa, she scrutinized Sofia’s severe profile and her head, covered in a heavy mass of golden hair. At first a ray of sun cast a warm light onto Sofia’s head and shoulder, and then it fell onto the keys of the piano and began to quiver under the woman’s fingers, embracing them. The music was filling the room up ever more tightly and, imperceptibly for the mother, rousing her heart.

And for some reason, from the dark pit of the past there arose before her an injury long forgotten, but now coming back to life with bitter clarity.

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