Mother. Maksim Gorky

emptied the glass of tea at one gulp, and continued his narrative. He enumerated the years and months he had passed in prison and in exile, told of various accidents and misfortunes, of the slaughters in prisons, and of hunger in Siberia. The mother looked at him, listened with wonderment to the simple way in which he spoke of this life, so full of suffering, of persecution, of wrong, and abuse of men.

      "Well, let's get down to business!"

      His voice changed, and his face grew more serious. He asked questions about the way in which the mother intended to smuggle the literature into the factory, and she marveled at his clear knowledge of all the details.

      Then they returned to reminiscences of their native village. He joked, and her mind roved thoughtfully through her past. It seemed to her strangely like a quagmire uniformly strewn with hillocks, which were covered with poplars trembling in constant fear; with low firs, and with white birches straying between the hillocks. The birches grew slowly, and after standing for five years on the unstable, putrescent soil, they dried up, fell down, and rotted away. She looked at this picture, and a vague feeling of insufferable sadness overcame her. The figure of a girl with a sharp, determined face stood before her. Now the figure walks somewhere in the darkness amid the snowflakes, solitary, weary. And her son sits in a little cell, with iron gratings over the window. Perhaps he is not yet asleep, and is thinking. But he is thinking not of his mother. He has one nearer to him than herself. Heavy, chaotic thoughts, like a tangled mass of clouds, crept over her, and encompassed her and oppressed her bosom.

      "You are tired, granny! Let's go to bed!" said Yegor, smiling.

      She bade him good night, and sidled carefully into the kitchen, carrying away a bitter, caustic feeling in her heart.

      In the morning, after breakfast, Yegor asked her:

      "Suppose they catch you and ask you where you got all these heretical books from. What will you say?"

      "I'll say, 'It's none of your business!'" she answered, smiling.

      "You'll never convince them of that!" Yegor replied confidently. "On the contrary, they are profoundly convinced that this is precisely their business. They will question you very, very diligently, and very, very long!"

      "I won't tell, though!"

      "They'll put you in prison!"

      "Well, what of it? Thank God that I am good at least for that," she said with a sigh. "Thank God! Who needs me? Nobody!"

      "H'm!" said Yegor, fixing his look upon her. "A good person ought to take care of himself."

      "I couldn't learn that from you, even if I were good," the mother replied, laughing.

      Yegor was silent, and paced up and down the room; then he walked up to her and said: "This is hard, countrywoman! I feel it, it's very hard for you!"

      "It's hard for everybody," she answered, with a wave of her hand. "Maybe only for those who understand, it's easier. But I understand a little, too. I understand what it is the good people want."

      "If you do understand, granny, then it means that everybody needs you, everybody!" said Yegor earnestly and solemnly.

      She looked at him and laughed without saying anything.

CHAPTER XI

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