Hours Spent in Prison

Front matter

Hours spent in

Prison

BY

Maxym Gorky

MAXYM GORKY.

MAXYM GORKY.

His real name is Alexy Pieschkov, but he is only known by his nom-de-plume: Gorky (bitter). Bitter indeed were the days of his childhood.

He was born in 1869, in the town of Nijni-Novogrod, in the workshop of a painter-varnisher.

His grandfather was an officer in one of the regiments in Siberia, and treated the soldiers so cruelly, that even the Tsar, Nicolae I.—who was notorious for severity—dismissed the veteran from the service.

By his action this tyrant forced Gorky’s father to leave the parental home in Tobolsk.

Arriving at Nijni-Novogrod he occupied himself with a trade, and afterwards married the daughter of a rich merchant, who was the grandfather of Gorky on his mother’s side.

Gorky’s maternal grandfather was formerly a common “burlak” (a workman drawing the vessels on the river Volga). By wit and a strong will he became possessed of a fortune, which facts Gorky records in his novel “Tom Gordiejev.” But soon afterwards his grandfather lost the whole of his fortune; while Gorky’s parents themselves remained without a roof. They took their son away from the school, where he had passed only five months, and subsequently apprenticed him to a shoemaker, with whom, he did not however, long remain, and finally the instinct of rambling and the pains of poverty drove him to the Volga, which river, from this time, exerted an influence on the whole of his life, as well as on his imaginative powers.

His first venture was as a kitchen-boy on a vessel. During the voyages he manifested a liking for books, and it happened that the cook, his superior, had a big box full of volumes. This chef (Smurij) and Gorky used to read together these books. This anomalous study served to feed Gorky’s romantic and poetic tastes, while practical life accustomed him to realism.

When Gorky was sixteen years old, he wished to study, and, having left the marine service, went to Kazan, where, however, in consequence of the many difficult conditions imposed on the means of instruction in Russia, he could not enter any school.

Having no employment he found himself very soon among barefooted tramps, the outcasts, and scum of mankind, who often had no home. These wretched people were ready to do anything in order to earn money. Such then were for the time being Gorky’s teachers, with them he suffered hunger, frost and poverty.

Later on, he engaged himself to a baker. His master was fond of books, thus resembling the cook (Smurij). With his employer he used to read and meditate, looking up to heaven! Gorky has immortalised this baker in his novel “Konovalov.”

Accompanying him Gorky walked in the fields, and both of them would often enter a cottage, where different kinds of poor men, tramps, and burlaki gathered together. They, after having been treated with vodka (whisky), would commence narrating the events of their own lives, for the most part a summary of what they had seen and heard in the wide world. These reminiscences rent the hearts of the listeners more than printed stories could ever have done.

Gorky carefully collected all these materials, and made good use of them in his book “White People.”

At one of these gatherings all present were arrested by the police and placed in the police cells; where young Gorky made the acquaintance of some students, who had been irregularly arrested and who afterwards sought his society. In university circles he imbibed different ideas and thoughts from those fermenting in the hearts and brains of his former associates.

While sheltered in the cottage with these miserable people he had been given vodka (whisky) to drink, and now ushered into these higher circles he was fed by abstractions. It is easy to understand the awe reigning in his young mind, when, after some philosophical meeting, he had to take refuge at night in the dark cellars of the bakery.

Finally, his brain half turned, and his heart torn with so many longings which he failed to gratify, our hero decided to take away his life. He was but nineteen years old when he tried to blow out his brains with a revolver. “I am revived,” he says with humour, “and have decided to sell apples.”

Soon after this experience literary zeal began to awake within him.

In 1892 he published in the provincial newspapers his first narrative, which attracted the attention of Korolenko, who took an interest in the author.

Thanks to Korolenko the newspapers opened their columns for Gorky. During the first six years he was almost entirely unknown. Criticism began to occupy itself with him only in the year 1898, when appeared his “Narratione.”

At first critics received him doubtfully, but afterwards burst into panegyrics. In the year 1899 Gorky arrived at St. Petersburg, and in that capital a banquet was given in his honour, and when he appeared on the platform his audience quite lost all self-control, and at the close made him a great ovation, covering him with flowers.

POGROM.

This took place some fifteen years ago in one of the towns situated on the banks of the Volga.

One hot June morning I was by the river occupied in covering a ferry-boat with tar.

The dinner-hour was approaching, when I heard from a retired part of the suburbs a deafening sound, like thunder, and after that a noise like roaring of bulls enraged by hunger. Feeling hungry myself I wished to finish my work as quickly as possible, so I did not pay any more attention to these sounds, which seemed to me to be far off. However, they grew louder and increased every minute, like the smoke which rises above a conflagration.

Over the suburb hung a thick cloud of dust, slowly spreading itself out in the hot air. I looked in that direction, and it seemed to me that the atmosphere was teeming with different sounds, which, broken into atoms, moved and danced together with the dust, growing more and more thick and voluminous. These noises gradually came nearer, so that now I could easily distinguish in the general chaos voices, and finally an indistinct picture appeared, my heart began to beat rapidly, and I felt a presentiment of the approaching tornado of destruction.

I abandoned my work and climbed on the sandy elevated strand; from there I saw men running out of houses in a great hurry, and in dreadful fright and disorder filling the street, and this mob directed its steps towards the interior of the suburb. The crowd was accompanied by children and dogs voiceless out of perplexity; the pigeons were hovering above their heads, the hens entangled underfoot.

Attracted by this running stream of people, I began to run along with them.

“They beat on the Ekaterininskaya Street!” somebody cried.

In the front of the crowd some driver urged on his horse with the reins, sending him forward at full gallop in the unpaved street, and shouting loudly:

“They are murdering us.”

I turned into a narrow, silent street, and there I halted. It was so filled and barricaded with different kinds of rubbish that its appearance reminded me of a torn bag of corn. From the distance continually came howlings and terrible noises which pierced to the marrow of one’s bones; window-panes were being broken, then came heavy thuds like those of falling bodies, and a dreadful cracking sound of breaking things. These sounds occurred at intervals and then together, joining with the pulses in the air like a terrible autumn storm.

“They are murdering the Jews!” an old man with a pleasant expression on his face was saying with satisfaction. Saying this, he rubbed his small, dry hands, and added:

“They are doing well.”

I went towards this side from where came the cries, obedient to their fatal power, which now had influence over me. I was not the only person affected in this way. I noticed that this noise re-acted upon the crowd surrounding me, exciting it to such degree that it seemed to be a storm-tossed sea. The faces surrounding me expressed rage and brutality, and their eyes I saw glittered wildly, and the whole of this moving mob threw itself forward in a compact mass, ready to shatter and destroy anything which happened to stand in its way. All these men without hesitation trampled down those who were before them, trying to press forward over their bodies, carried away by the wave of rage and destruction.

I succeeded in reaching the court-yard of one of the houses in this street through the fence of planks which divided it from the court-yard of the neighbouring house.

From this I went on to the next, and so on, until I found myself in the densest part of the crowd. The earth seemed to shake under the feet of the falling and maddened mob, which filled the court yard of a large house, which had others like it adjoining.

With lifted heads these men invaded the houses; their faces were wild; in their open mouths their shining, sharply pointed teeth gleamed. They pushed each other’s sides with fists, and climbed and threw themselves upon the roofs of the adjoining houses. Despite the different gestures of everyone of these men, they all had some common work of similarity; they were separate parts of a giant body, moved by one titanic power.

Looking from above, this whole mob seemed to express a moving hatred; at that moment it was directed against an emaciated Jew, who, mad with terror, hid himself upon the top of the house, with his whole poor and trembling body clinging to the prominent chimney. With shaking crooked figures he tore out one brick after another and threw it down with a sharp shrill cry like the voice of a mew pursued by an eagle. His long, white beard was quivering on his chest and his white trousers were covered with bloody stains.

Each time he threw a brick, the screams grew louder.

“Throw these at him!”

“Hand me the gun! Throw stones at him!”

“Shoot him! We must climb on the roof!”

At the windows of the house appeared and disappeared dark silhouettes of people, who having reached the interior seized and destroyed all that they found there. With clashing noise the breaking panes of glass were falling. A boy with a flat face and curly hair was carrying a big looking-glass, and having approached the hole in the wooden fence, dropped it in the adjoining court-yard shouting:

“Heigh, there, hold it!”

The looking-glass disappeared in the distance, glittering in the sun. Some man leant out of the window and watched it disappear. His broad face expressed grief and sorrow, but I did not notice any hatred in it.

A peasant with a black beard appeared at another window, holding a cushion. In a moment he tore the cushion open and feathers rilled the court-yard.

“It snows! Just look! Your noses will be frozen!” he was shouting, looking at the white down, which was covering the heads of the crowd. The mob cried:

“Come here! Little Jews are found in the nest!”

“Break their heads against the wall!”

“Heigh there! Old Jew! Come down quickly; they are going to torture your little ones!”

“Hurry up! If not, then we shall kill all your offspring.”

A heart-breaking childish cry pierced the air—a terrible cry, which was all too soon drowned in the infuriated roar of the crowd, passing like lightning through a sky covered with clouds. Though for one moment it seemed that the crowd was calming down, someone shouted:

“Leave him alone!”

“Do not touch the children!”

“Torment the old men!”

Again the childish voice cut the air. Weak, but penetrating, it tore my heart, and sounded for a long time in my ears, moving me far more than the mighty roar.

“Ah, devil!” cried someone madly above the deafening noise, which was raging everywhere.

“Knock him on the head!”

“He broke my legs….”

“You clumsy old devil.”

“Will you ever drive away that old Jew?”

Pushing and forcing their way through the crowd, two stoutly-built men were approaching the fence surrounding the house, and trying to climb on to the roof. At one of the windows again appeared the figure of a young boy with an ugly red face. Presently he tried to throw out a cupboard through the window, shouting:

“Take the dishes! Hide the valuables!”

The cupboard was too big to go through the window, therefore he pushed it inside, and disappearing himself for one moment he returned again with another piece of furniture. He was showing his teeth like a wolf, and shouting incessantly—

“Take it! Catch! Hold! Here!”

A heap of plates fell out of the window, and after them came something shining like a tea-urn (samovar). The mob moved back, covering their heads with their hands, laughing and shouting.

A red-haired young man of robust appearance seized this rolling and crooked tea-urn, trampled it under his feet, and bent it more than ever.

The almost unearthly weeping again resounded in the air.

All heads were lifted, all eyes directed to the place from whence it came. A sound of rattling iron was heard. And suddenly on the surface of the roof appeared a bent crouched figure. It hung for a moment moaning… after that was heard a pitiful complaint, after that snoring… and finally a short, heavy stroke, filling the heart with dread.

By main force I pushed through the mob, and leaving the court-yard I heard behind me the cries of triumph, and the joyful roars of the enraged mob.

“Ah! ah!”

“Ah! a——a!”

At last they had reached him.

In the street the crowd smashed chairs and tables to pieces, emptied chests of drawers, and laughing madly here and there flung different garments in all directions. The feathers flew in the air. They threw cushions and mattresses through the window; the various articles of furniture fell at the feet of the crowd, creating a terrible picture of destruction, because all that came into the hands of this gang was broken, torn to pieces.

Two untidy looking women with red and perspiring faces were quarrelling about a big box; each trying to draw it towards herself. Feathers and down were flying above their heads. It could be seen by their faces and their open mouths that they were quarrelling, but their voices were lost in the general noise of the enraged crowd, and in the sounds of despair and grief coming from the windows of the house. An enormously tall peasant, bareheaded and dressed in a torn shirt, passed by me. His hair was wild and unkept, and down his perspiring cheeks flowed thick drops of blood, almost black. He was gesticulating, and smiling stupidly. He reminded me of a satisfied old animal. He stopped at a lamp-post, throwing his arms around it, trying to tear it out of the ground with his muscular hands. The lamp-post quivered, and began to sway.

“Long life to strength!” cried another peasant. He also began to shake the wavering pole.

A young girl was trying to force her way through the mob; she was covered with feathers, and looked something like a pigeon. Her hair was dishevelled; her dress was torn to pieces. She lifted her head, and from her pale face shone eyes widened by extreme perplexity.

“Seize the Jewess!” cried someone; the girl instantaneously disappeared into the roaring mob; the moving wave of bodies rose above her, clenched fists beat the air. Threatening, grumbling, gnashing of teeth, cynical jokes, curses, and hisses were heard, forming together a hellish noise.

“Move aside! Give place for Salman!”

A band of men were shouting this, dragging something behind them. This thing was a man, or rather a corpse, half naked, with dried up flesh, bruised and bleeding, covered with mud and feathers. The legs were tied with a cord. The men drew it along the street, and it marked the path behind them with a pool of black blood. The skinny arms of this miserable remnant of a man were bathed in blood, and between them, where the shoulder-blades meet, a terrible shapeless ball full of holes was bumping on the stones—it was the head of the dead man. A boy began to tread upon this body; his feet went through to the bowels of the murdered man, and, sticking there, overpowered he fell with his face upon the terribly disfigured head.

Salman had been a rich speculator. I had met him before, very often. But what I saw now did not only remind me of Salman, but was not like a human shape in any way.

Driven mad with what I saw, and covered with dust, I was carried on by the crowd, like powder swept away by the wind. The picture before my eyes surpassed in its horror anything I had ever seen before, and seemed to be some dreadful nightmare. A woman in a white skirt was hanging on the projecting end of the spouting. An old woman stand-on tip-toe, and lifting her bony black arms, tried to drag her down. Around her were heaped dishevelled wigs entangled in velvet waistcoats. The children stepped on the old people’s feet, gathering up pieces of glass; sometimes jumped up, trying to catch the feathers which were flying in the air. A police man arrived, his sabre clattering; the cries and moans increased.

“Catch him! Hold him!”

Someone carrying out the booty dropped it under the feet of a passer-by, causing him to fall at full length. A loud laugh rang out.

I saw on the ground a bleeding corpse, the face of which was completely covered by the hair.

“Holla, boys! here!”

This cry came from the interior of the court-yard, and immediately the crowd ran shouting in that direction. Curses filled the air. Somebody roared:

“Death! Death!”

A man on the second floor knocked down the wall between the windows with an iron pole. The lime and rubbish poured down together, raising clouds of white dust. A tray thrown out of the window hit the head of a stout old woman, who screamed and crowed shrilly:

“Cossacks!”

“Let us run!”

“The Cossacks are coming!”

Now the horses’ heads and Cossacks’ white caps appeared in the distance; their whips whistled in the air, and a loud yet melodious voice commanded:

“Go forward, three abreast!”

The heap of broken things rolled about in the street. The front of the house was destroyed, and through the hole could be seen an immense wardrobe which swayed to and fro continually, and which, after having made the opening larger, fell with a terrible crash on the pavement. The noise grew louder and louder. It seemed like the thunder of breaking waves, covered with angry foam, leaving behind in their passage the victims of cruelty on the sandy waste.

The crowd ran forward, dispersed by the whips of Cossacks and the coming of horses. They ran in confusion and disorder, like a flock of scattered sheep.

It was possible to conceal oneself in the court-yard by jumping through the fence, but no one thought of that; all ran in the same direction, in spite of the lashes of the Cossacks’ whips, which fell on their heads and backs. A corpulent peasant, with curled hair, halted, and suddenly turning back, struck one horse with his fist. He soon disappeared be tween the compact rows of Cossacks. A woman, half naked and bleeding, threw herself under the horses’ feet. After a moment she appeared again, as if springing up from the earth, grasping the feet of a Cossack who thrust her aside; again she disappeared uttering her last cry.

“Run!”

“Stop!”

The crowd, screaming and running, went on like a stony mountain avalanche. The sound of feet, the crash of horses’ hoofs against the stones, was audible in the general din. The animals wounded themselves against projecting pieces of wood and iron, until, finally met by insurmountable obstacles, they reared up on their hind legs. The crowd halted too, addressing the Cossacks.

Auxiliary troops are arriving!

The crowd was waiting. Behind it, at the end of the street, Cossacks and policemen on foot were approaching. Now the mob began to climb the wall, and so invaded the court-yards. The Cossacks surrounded the flying crowd. A few moments ago these men had been mercilessly tormenting and killing wretched men, human beings like themselves. In a few seconds the same murderers had become nothing more than frightened trembling cowards, who were trying to escape over any wall that was possible, in order to avoid the lashes of the Cossacks’ knouts, which cut them cruelly, and without any sign of pity.

In the evening of the same day, passing through one of the public places of the suburb where the Cossacks’ quarter was, I heard one saying to another:

“That crowd killed fourteen Jews!”

The other answered nothing, but calmly went on smoking his pipe.

THE SONG ABOUT A HAWK.

The sea dozes!

The wide sea, idly groaning here on the beach, appears in the distance to be already asleep, and lies immovable—like a mirror—in the blue light of the moon. A black surface of water, brilliant like crystal, meets yonder sapphire sky of the southern shore, and, fast asleep, reflects the transparent web of the light, motionless clouds, which do not hide the light of the stars. The sky seems to lower more and more over the sea, as if wishing to understand what the unquiet waves murmur while sleepily creeping towards the beach. The mountains, overgrown with trees which are fantastically twisted by the north-east winds, with mighty summits, rise towards the sky into azure immensity above them. Their rough sharp contours become rounded, and embraced by the warm light mists of the southern night, are plunged in a deep musing. They cast upon the pale green surface of the waves long black shadows, as if they wished to keep still all movement, and to deafen the uninterrupted splash of the waters and sound of the foam, murmurs which still disturb the mysterious silence of the night that reigns over all, with the spreading blue-silver light of the moon hidden behind the summit of the mountains.

“A-alla-ah-a-akbar,” sighs, in a low voice, Nadyr-Bahim-Ogly, a tall, thin, sun-burnt, and wise old man from the Crimea, who is always low-spirited.

I am lying on the sand with him near a large stone, torn off from its native rock, which was overgrown with moss, and now looks sad and gloomy.

On its side, turned to the sea, the waves throw out the slime and seaweed. This stone, so pasted over with them, seems to be hung on to the narrow sandy tract of land which divides the sea from the mountains. The flames of our hearth illumine it, and when the flames flicker upon the old stone, wrinkled with a net of deep cracks, the shadows play upon it.

One could say: This stone thinks and feels.

We both, with Bahim, are cooking the soup, composed of small fish, only just caught, and both are in that special humour when all seems to be fantastical, when the heart feels itself so clear, so light, that, except the wish to be thoughtful, there is no other desire in it.

The sea clings close to the shore, and the murmur is so melancholy, so gentle, as if it asked for the permission to warm itself at our hearth.

Sometimes in a general harmony of the murmuring waves, one can catch some more highly-pitched tunes, or one frolicsome joy; then a bolder wave creeps near to us. Rahim compares such a wave with a woman who desires unexpectedly to embrace and kiss.

Rahim lies with his chest on the sand, his head turned to the sea, and looks musingly into the far distance, leaning on his elbows, and putting his head on his palms, his shaggy cap of lamb’s wool slipped down on the back of his head, and the fresh wind from the sea blowing upon his high forehead, which is covered with small wrinkles.

He lies and philosophises, not caring if I listen to him, and not paying the slightest attention to me, as if he were talking with the sea: “A man who is faithful to God, goes to paradise. But he who does not serve God and His prophet does not go there. Perhaps He is now looking at this foam. In these silver spots on the water He may be, perhaps. Who can know?”

The dark widely-spread sea shines; somewhere appear on it carelessly-thrown gleams of the moon. She shows herself from behind nappy-looking summits of mountains, and reflects her brightness on the sea, which softly sighs to her.

“Rahim, tell me a tale,” I ask the old man.

“Why?” asks Rahim, without looking at me.

“Well—well, I like to listen to your tales.”

“I have already told you all; I don’t know any more.”

That means that I must ask him again; then I repeat my request.

“If you wish it I will sing you an old song.” Finally Rahim yields.

Certainly I accept, and Rahim commences his monotonous and slow recitative, as if endeavouring to imitate the peculiar melody of a desert song, and yet at the same time dreadfully mangling the Russian speech, he begins to sing:—

I.

High in the mountains in the cleft of a rock a snake rolled itself up, and looked at the sea.

High in the sky shone the sun, and the mountains with glowing fire heaved into the sky, and below the waves struck against the shore.

In the cleft, through deep darkness tending to the sea, runs a swift stream dashing through the stones.

Covered with foam, strong and alert, it cuts through the mountain, and roaring ragingly falls into the sea.

Suddenly into the cleft, where the snake was resting, a hawk fell from the sky, with torn breast, and much wounded.

With a broken cry he fell upon the ground, and in a great fury dashed his breast against some hard stones.

The snake, being frightened, crept away, but soon understood that the bird could only live a few minutes.

Then he crept near him, and looking into his eyes hissed loudly:

“What is the matter with you, are you dying?”

“It matters not that I die,” answers the hawk, sighing heavily. “But I have been living beautifully. I have experienced great happiness! I have fought manfully! I have seen the sky. You will not see the sky so near as I did. I pity you very much!”

“What has the sky for me? It is only the vacuity. Upon what could I creep there? I am also very comfortable here! Warm, wet.”

In such a manner the free snake answered the bird, laughing inwardly at the hawk’s nonsense.

Then he thought: “To fly, or creep—the end is the same: we all shall die, we all shall turn again to dust.”

But the bold hawk shook himself suddenly, hovered around, and looked sad.

In the dark ravine upon the grey stones, water was running, and its freshness took away the odour of putrefaction.

The hawk, having gathered its strength again, cried out with pain, and yearning:

“Oh, if I could still once more rise aloft, towards the sky! To conquer the tyrant-enemy in the fight. He should press the wounds of my breast, until he should swallow some of my heart’s blood! Oh, the happiness of the struggle! Fierce war, for the sake of liberty!”

Then after a while, the snake thought: “Perhaps it is well to be in the sky, if this hawk yearns so much after it.”

Then he gave the hawk the following advice:

“Come nearer to the edge of the rock, and then throw thyself down. Perhaps thy wings will lift thee, then at least one moment thou wilt live as thou likest in thy element.”

The hawk started up, uttered a weak groan, and slowly approached the gaping beach, over the slippery stones.

He drew near, spread his pompous wings, breathed freely, and his eyes glittered, and finally he fell down the precipice. With great force he struck himself against the rock and fell swiftly, breaking his wings and losing his feathers.

The waves below soon seized him, washed off his blood, covered him with foam, and carried him off to the sea.

The awful waves with mournful roar were striking against the rock. And the dead body of the hawk was lost without trace at the foot of the precipice.

II.

Lying in the cleft of the rock, the snake was thinking for some time of the bird’s death, and of his yearning skyward.

Then he looked into the far distance, which eternally deludes us by the illusion of happiness.

What did he see, this dead hawk, in that endless space? And why do such as he torment their souls with the desire of soaring upwards to the sky? What attracts them there? I could also know everything if I would only soar for a while to the sky, he said, and straightway tried to accomplish it. Having rolled himself up, he jumped upwards and, like a ribbon, glittered in the sun . But those who are created for creeping only cannot soar upwards! He forgot that fact, and fell upon the rocks, but did not kill himself. He only laughed!

Now, I already know the whole delight of soaring upward to the sky! It is the fall! These birds are ridiculous! Without knowing the earthly longing for something, they think about the sky, looking for life in a hot desert, but finding only emptiness. There is a great deal of light, but lack of food, and lack of any support for living creatures. Why then this pride? Why then this disdain?