My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [101]
I remember with perfect clearness how I said to her that I would kill my stepfather and myself too. And I think I should have done it; at any rate I should have made the attempt. Even now I can see that contemptible long leg, in braided trousers, flung out into the air, and kicking a woman's breast. Many years later that unfortunate Maximov died before my eyes in a hospital. I had then become strangely attached to him, and I wept to see the light in his beautiful, roving eyes grow dim, and finally go out altogether; but even in that sad moment, although my heart was full of a great grief, I could not forget that he had kicked my mother.
As I remember these oppressive horrors of our wild V Russian life, I ask myself often whether it is worth while to speak of them. And then, with restored confidence, I answer myself--"It is worth while because it is actual, vile fact, which has not died out, even in these days--a fact which must be traced to its origin, and pulled up by the root from the memories, the souls of the people, and from our narrow, sordid lives."
And there is another and more important reason impelling me to describe these horrors. Although they are so disgusting, although they oppress us and crush many beautiful souls to death, yet the Russian is still so healthy and young in heart that he can and does rise above them. For in this amazing life of ours not only does the animal side of our nature flourish and grow fat, but with this animalism there has grown up, triumphant in spite of it, bright, healthful and creative --a type of humanity which inspires us to look forward to our regeneration, to the time when we shall all live peacefully and humanely.
CHAPTER XIII
ONCE more I found myself at grandfather's. "Well, robber, what do you want?" were his words of greeting; and he accompanied them by rapping his fingers on the table. "I am not going to feed you any longer; let your grandmother do it."
"And so I will," said grandmother. "Ekh! what ill-luck. Just think of it."
"All right, feed him if you want to," cried grandfather; then growing calmer, he explained to me:
"She and I live quite separately now; we have nothing to do with each other."
Grandmother, sitting under the window, was making lace with swift movements; the shuttle snapped gaily, and the pillow, thickly sewn with copper pins, shone like a golden hedgehog in the spring sunlight. And grandmother herself--one would think she had been cast in copper--was unchanged. But grandfather was more wizened, more wrinkled; his sandy hair had grown gray, and his calm, self-important manner had given way to a fuming fussiness; his green eyes had grown dim, and had a suspicious expression. Laughingly, grandmother told me of the division of property
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which had taken place between herself and grandfather; he had given her all the pots and pans and crockery ware, saying:
"Here is your little lot, and don't you ask me for anything else."
Thereupon he took all her old clothes and things, including a cloak of fox fur, and sold them for seven hundred roubles, and put the money out at interest to his Jew godson, the fruit merchant. Finally the malady of avarice fastened upon him, and he became lost to shame; he began to go about amongst his old acquaintances, his former colleagues, rich merchants, and complaining that he had been ruined by his children, would ask for money to help him in his poverty. He profited by their regard for him, for they gave to him generously--large sums in notes which he flourished boastfully in grandmother's face, taunting her, like a child:
"Look, fool, they won't give you a hundredth part of that."
The money which he obtained in this way he put out at interest with a new friend of his--a tall, bald furrier called, in the village, Khlist (a horsewhip), and his sister, a shopkeeper--a fat, red-cheeked woman with brown eyes, dark and sweet like virgin-honey.
All expenses in the house were carefully divided: one day the dinner was prepared by grandmother from provisions bought with her own money; and the next day it