And she left in a hurry, without looking at him, so as not to betray her emotion with the tears in her eyes and the trembling of her lips. On the way home, there seemed to her to be an ache in the bones of the hand in which she was tightly squeezing her son’s answer, and the whole arm had become heavy, as if from a blow on the shoulder. At home, thrusting the note into Nikolai’s hand, she stood in front of him and, waiting for him to smooth out the tightly rolled-up piece of paper, again felt a tremor of hope. But Nikolai said:
“Of course! All that he writes is: ‘We’re not going to leave, comrades, we can’t. None of us. We’d lose all respect for ourselves. Turn your attention to the peasant who was arrested recently. He’s deserving of your trouble, worthy of the expenditure of effort. It’s too hard for him here. Daily clashes with the authorities. He’s already had twenty-four hours of solitary. They’ll wear him down. We’re all asking for him to be helped. Comfort and be kind to my mother. Tell her – she’ll understand everything.’”
The mother raised her head and quietly, in a quavering voice, said:
“Why the need to tell me? I understand!”
Nikolai quickly turned aside, took out a handkerchief, blew his nose loudly and muttered:
“I’ve picked up a cold, you see…”
Then, after covering his eyes with his hands to adjust his glasses, pacing up and down the room, he began:
“You see, we wouldn’t have had time anyway…”
“Never mind! Let them try him!” said the mother, furrowing her brows, but her breast was filling with raw, dull anguish.
“Yes, I’ve received a letter from a comrade in St Petersburg…”
“After all, he can escape from Siberia too… can’t he?”
“Of course! The comrade writes that the case will soon be arranged, and the sentence is known: deportation for everyone. You see? These petty cheats are turning their trial into the most vulgar comedy. You understand – the sentence is drawn up in St Petersburg before the trial…”
“You can stop that, Nikolai Ivanovich!” the mother said resolutely. “There’s no need to comfort me, no need to explain. Pasha will do no wrong; he won’t torment either himself or other people for nothing! And he loves me, yes! You see – he thinks about me. ‘Explain,’ he writes, ‘comfort her,’ eh?…”
Her heart was thudding fast, and her head was spinning from her agitation.
“Your son is a fine man!” exclaimed Nikolai uncharacteristically loudly. “I respect him greatly!”
“D’you know what? Let’s think about Rybin!” she suggested.
She wanted to do something immediately, go somewhere, walk until she was tired out.
“Yes, very well!” Nikolai replied, pacing up and down the room. “We could do with Sashenka…”
“She’ll be here. She always comes on the days I see Pasha…”
Lowering his head pensively, biting his lips and twisting his beard, Nikolai sat down on the sofa next to the mother.
“It’s a pity my sister’s not here…”
“It’ll be good to arrange it now, while Pasha’s there – it’ll make him happy!” said the mother.
They were silent for a while, then suddenly, slowly and quietly the mother said:
“I don’t understand why he doesn’t want to…”
Nikolai leapt to his feet, but then there was the sound of the bell. They glanced at one another straight away.
“It’s Sasha, hm!” Nikolai pronounced quietly.
“How will you tell her?” asked the mother, just as quietly.
“Ye-es, you know…”
“I feel very sorry for her…”
The ringing was repeated less loudly, as though the person outside the door could not make their mind up either. Nikolai and the mother stood up and set off together, but by the door into the kitchen Nikolai stepped aside, saying:
“Better if you…”
“Does he not agree?” the girl asked firmly when the mother opened the door to her.
“No.”
“I knew it!” said Sasha simply, but her face turned pale. She undid the buttons of her coat and, having done two up again, tried to take it off her shoulders. She had no success. Then she said:
“Rain, wind – it’s horrible! Is he well?”
“Yes.”
“Well and cheerful,” said Sasha in a low voice, examining her hand.
“He writes that Rybin should be freed!” the mother announced, not looking at the girl.
“Really? It seems to me we ought to use that plan,” the girl said slowly.
“I think so too!” said Nikolai, appearing in the doorway. “Hello, Sasha!”
Reaching her hand out, the girl asked:
“So what’s the matter? Everyone agrees the plan’s a good one?…”
“But who’s going to organize it? Everyone’s busy…”
“Let me!” said Sasha quickly, getting to her feet. “I have the time.”
“Do it! But you need to ask the others…”
“Very well, I will! I’ll go straight away.”
And she started doing up the buttons of her coat again with confident movements of her slim fingers.
“You should have a rest!” the mother suggested.
She smiled gently and, softening her voice, replied:
“Don’t worry: I’m not tired…”
And after shaking their hands in silence, she went away, cold and stern once more.
Going up to the window, the mother and Nikolai watched the girl cross the yard and disappear through the gates. Nikolai began quietly whistling, sat down at the table and started to write something.
“She’ll get to work on this business and then she’ll find it easier!” said the mother in a quiet, pensive voice.
“Yes, of course!” Nikolai responded and, turning to the mother, with a smile on his quiet face asked: “And you, Nilovna, did that cup pass you by* – did you not know longing for a loved one?”
“Oh, come on!” she exclaimed with a wave of a hand. “What longing could there have been! There was fear, fear of being married off to this one or that one.”
“And there was no one you were fond of?”
She had a think and answered:
“I don’t remember, my dear. How could there not have been?… I must have been fond of someone, only I don’t remember!”
She looked at him and simply, with calm sadness, concluded:
“My husband beat me a lot, and everything that was before him has somehow been wiped from my memory.”
He turned away to the table, and she left the room for a minute, and when she returned, Nikolai began to talk, throwing her affectionate glances, gently and lovingly caressing his memories with his words:
“Well I, you see, I had an experience like Sasha’s too! I loved a girl – she was an amazing person, wonderful. I met her at about twenty and I’ve loved her ever since – I love her now, to tell the truth! I love her just the same, with all my soul, gratefully and for ever…”
Standing next to him, the mother could see his eyes light up with a warm, clear light. Putting his arms onto the back of his chair, and onto them his head, he looked somewhere far away, and his whole body, thin and lean, but strong, seemed to be thrusting forward, like the stem of a plant towards the light of the sun.
“What was the mater with you? You should have married!” the mother advised.
“Oh, she’s already been married five years…”
“But what about earlier on?”
After some thought he replied:
“That was the way it all turned out somehow, you see: she’s in prison and I’m at large, I’m at large and she’s in prison or in exile.* It’s very similar to Sasha’s situation, truly! Finally she was exiled to Siberia for ten years, terribly far away! I even wanted to go after he
r. But both she and I were conscience-stricken. And there she met another man, a comrade of mine, a very good lad! Then they escaped together, and now they’re living abroad, yes…”
Nikolai stopped speaking, took off his glasses, wiped them, looked at the lenses against the light and began wiping them again.
“Oh, my dear!” the woman exclaimed lovingly, shaking her head. She felt sorry for him, and at the same time there was something about him that made her smile a warm, maternal smile. But he altered his pose, took his pen in his hand again and started to speak, marking the rhythm of his speech with strokes of the pen:
“Family life reduces a revolutionary’s energy – it always does! There’s children, a lack of means, the necessity to do a lot of work for one’s bread, whereas a revolutionary has to develop his energy tirelessly, ever deeper and wider. The time demands it, we always have to march ahead of everyone, because we are the workers summoned by the force of history to destroy the old world and create a new life. And if we fall behind, giving in to tiredness or carried away by the imminent possibility of some small gain, that’s wrong, that’s all but a betrayal of the cause! There’s no one we could walk alongside without perverting our faith, and we should never forget that our mission isn’t small gains, but only complete victory.”
His voice had become strong, his face had turned pale, and blazing in his eyes was the usual restrained and steady power. Again there was a loud ring, cutting Nikolai’s speech short – it was Lyudmila, who had come in a coat too light for the time of year and with cheeks red from the cold. Taking off her ripped galoshes, she said in an angry voice:
“The trial’s been arranged for a week’s time!”
“Is that certain?” called Nikolai from the next room.
The mother went to him quickly, not understanding whether he was agitated by fear or joy. Walking next to her, Lyudmila said ironically in her deep voice:
“It is! In the courthouse they’re saying quite openly that the sentence is already prepared. But what does that mean? Is the government afraid that its officials will be soft on its enemies? After corrupting its servants for so long, so diligently, is it still not certain of their readiness to be dishonourable?…”
Lyudmila sat down on the sofa, rubbing her thin cheeks with the palms of her hands, and burning in her dull eyes was scorn, while her voice filled more and more with fury.
“You’re wasting your breath, Lyudmila!” said Nikolai soothingly. “They can’t hear you, can they?…”
The mother strained to listen carefully to her speech, but did not understand a thing, involuntarily repeating to herself one and the same words:
“The trial, the trial in a week’s time?”
She suddenly sensed the approach of something implacable and inhumanly severe.
XXIII
Thus, in this cloud of bewilderment and despondency, beneath the weight of melancholy expectations, she lived in silence for one day, two, but on the third day Sasha came and said to Nikolai:
“Everything’s prepared! Today at one o’clock…”
“Already prepared?” he asked in surprise.
“But why not, though? I only had to get a place and clothing for Rybin; Gobun took everything else upon himself. Rybin will have to walk just one block. He’ll be met in the street by Vesovshchikov, disguised, of course; he’ll throw a coat over him, give him a hat and show him the route. I’ll be waiting for him, I’ll give him a change of clothes and take him away.”
“Not bad! And who’s Gobun?” asked Nikolai.
“You’ve seen him. It was in his apartment you had classes with the metal workers.”
“Ah! I remember. A rather eccentric old man…”
“He’s a retired soldier, a roof-maker. A man of little education with an inexhaustible hatred for all violence… A bit of a philosopher,” said Sasha pensively, looking out of the window. The mother listened to her in silence, and slowly ripening inside her was something still unclear.
“Gobun wants to free his nephew – you remember, Yevchenko, you liked him, that foppish, immaculate one?”
Nikolai nodded his head.
“He has everything well organized,” Sasha continued, “but I’m beginning to have doubts about it succeeding. Exercise is taken by everyone together; when the prisoners see the ladder, I think a lot are going to want to escape…”
Closing her eyes, she paused, and the mother moved closer to her.
“And they’ll get in each other’s way…”
All three of them were standing in front of the window, the mother behind Nikolai and Sasha. Their rapid talk was stirring up a troubled feeling in her heart…
“I’m going to go there!” she said suddenly.
“Why?” asked Sasha.
“Don’t go, dear! You might somehow get caught! Don’t do it!” Nikolai advised.
The mother looked at him and repeated, more quietly, but more insistently:
“No, I’m going to go…”
They quickly exchanged glances, and Sasha, shrugging her shoulders, said:
“It’s to be understood…”
Turning to the mother, she took her by the arm, swayed towards her and said in a voice that was simple and dear to the mother’s heart:
“I’ll tell you all the same that there’s no point in your expecting…”
“Sweetheart!” the mother exclaimed, pressing the girl against her with a trembling hand. “Take me along – I won’t get in the way! I need this. I don’t believe it’s possible – escaping!”
“She’s coming!” the girl said to Nikolai.
“It’s your affair!” he answered, bowing his head.
“We can’t be together. You go into the fields, to the allotments. The wall of the prison can be seen from there. But what if you’re asked what you’re doing there?”
Gladdened, the mother replied confidently:
“I’ll think of something to say!…”
“Don’t forget that you’re known to the prison warders!” said Sasha. “And if they see you there…”
“They won’t!” the mother exclaimed.
Hope that had been smouldering unnoticed all the time suddenly flared up painfully bright in her breast and enlivened her…
“And maybe he too…” she thought, hurriedly putting on her things.
An hour later the mother was in the field behind the prison. A sharp wind was flying around her, blowing her dress out, beating against the frozen earth, shaking the ramshackle fence of the allotment she was passing and striking the low wall of the prison with all its might. After toppling over the wall, it swept some men’s cries up from the yard, scattered them through the air and carried them off into the sky. There the clouds were scudding quickly, opening little apertures up into the blue heights.
Behind the mother was an allotment, in front of her the graveyard, and to the right, about ten sazhens* away, the prison. There was a soldier lunging a horse by the graveyard, while another standing next to him was stamping his feet noisily on the ground, shouting, whistling and laughing. There was no one else anywhere near the prison.
She went slowly on past them towards the graveyard fence, throwing stealthy glances backwards and to the right. And suddenly she felt that her feet had grown cold and heavy, as though they had frozen to the ground: out from around the corner of the prison, walking hurriedly, as lamplighters always do, came a stooping man with a ladder on his shoulder. Blinking in fright, the mother glanced quickly at the soldiers: they were marking time, while the horse was running around them; she looked at the man with the ladder: he had already set it against the wall and was climbing up unhurriedly. After waving a hand into the yard, he quickly descended and disappeared around the corner. The mother’s heart was beating hurriedly, but the seconds were passing slowly. Against the dark wall of the prison, the line of the ladder was hardly noticeab
le amid patches of dirt and brick laid bare by fallen plaster. And suddenly above the wall there was a black head, up grew a body, which rolled over the wall and slid down it. Another head appeared in a shaggy hat, a black shape rolled down onto the ground and vanished quickly around the corner. Mikhailo straightened up, looked around and tossed his head.
“Run, run!” whispered the mother, stamping her foot.
There was a humming in her ears, and loud cries were reaching her, and then there was a third head above the wall. Clutching her hands to her breast, the mother watched, rooted to the spot. A blond head without a beard surged up, as though wanting to break free, but then it suddenly vanished behind the wall. The shouting was ever louder and wilder, and the wind carried the shrill trills of whistles through the air. Mikhailo was walking beside the wall, and then he was already beyond it and crossing the open space between the prison and the buildings of the town. It seemed to her that he was walking too slowly and should not have his head lifted so high – anyone who looked into his face would remember it for ever. She whispered:
“Quickly… quickly…”
Something behind the prison wall made a dry banging noise, and the tinkling of broken glass was heard. Digging his feet into the ground, the soldier with the horse was pulling it towards him; the other, with his fist held up to his mouth, was shouting something in the direction of the prison, and when he had finished, he turned his head side on to the prison and cocked his ear.
The mother was straining and twisting her neck in all directions, and her eyes, seeing everything, believed nothing – too simple and quick had been the accomplishment of what she had imagined would be fearful and complicated, and that speed, having stunned her, was lulling her consciousness. Rybin was no longer to be seen in the street: there was some tall man in a long coat walking along and a little girl running. Out from around the corner of the prison sped three jailers running close to one another, each with his right hand stretched out in front of him. One of the soldiers rushed towards them, while the other ran around the horse, trying to mount it, but it was jumping about, being uncooperative, and everything around was bobbing up and down with it as well. Whistles cut through the air incessantly, choking on their noise. And their alarming, desperate cries awakened the consciousness of danger in the woman; giving a start, she set off alongside the fence of the graveyard, following the jailers, but they and the soldiers ran around the other corner of the prison and disappeared. Running the same way in their wake went the Assistant Prison Governor in an unbuttoned tunic. From somewhere the police appeared, and ordinary people came running.