My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [2]
My little brother Maxim was dead, and lay on a table in the corner, wrapped in white and wound about with red tape. Climbing on to the bundles and trunks I looked out of the porthole, which seemed to me exactly like the eye of a horse. Muddy, frothy water streamed unceasingly down the pane. Once it dashed against the glass with such violence that it splashed me, and I involuntarily jumped back to the floor.
"Don't be afraid," said grandmother, and lifting me lightly in her kind arms, restored me to my place on the bundles.
A gray, moist fog brooded over the water; from time to time a shadowy land was visible in the distance, only to be obscured again by the fog and the foam. Everything about us seemed to vibrate, except my mother who, with her hands folded behind her head, leaned against the wall fixed and still, with a face that was grim and hard as iron, and as expressionless. Standing thus, mute, with closed eyes, she appeared to me as an absolute stranger. Her very frock was unfamiliar to me.
More than once grandmother said to her softly, "Varia, won't you have something to eat?"
My mother neither broke the silence nor stirred from her position.
Grandmother spoke to me in whispers, but to my mother she spoke aloud, and at the same time cautiously and timidly, and very seldom. I thought she was afraid of her, which was quite intelligible, and seemed to draw us closer together.
"Saratov!" loudly and fiercely exclaimed my mother with startling suddenness. "Where is the sailor?"
Strange, new words to me! Saratov? Sailor?
A broad-shouldered, gray-headed individual dressed in blue now entered, carrying a small box which grandmother took from him, and in which she proceeded to place the body of my brother. Having done this she bore the box and its burden to the door on her outstretched hands; but, alas! being so stout she could only get through the narrow doorway of the cabin sideways, and now halted before it in ludicrous uncertainty.
"Really, Mama!" exclaimed my mother impatiently, taking the tiny coffin from her. Then they both disappeared, while I stayed behind in the cabin regarding the man in blue.
"Well, mate, so the little brother has gone?" he said, bending down to me.
"Who are you?"
"I am a sailor."
"And who is Saratov?"
"Saratov is a town. Look out of the window. There it is!"
Observed from the window, the land seemed to oscillate; and revealing itself obscurely and in a fragmentary fashion, as it lay steaming in the fog, it reminded me of a large piece of bread just cut off a hot loaf.
"Where has grandmother gone to?"
"To bury her little grandson."
"Are they going to bury him in the ground?"
"Yes, of course they are."
I then told the sailor about the live frogs that had been buried with my father.
He lifted me up, and hugging and kissing me, cried, "Oh, my poor little fellow, you don't understand. It is not the frogs who are to be pitied, but your mother. Think how she is bowed down by her sorrow."
Then came a resounding howl overhead. Having already learned that it was the steamer which made this noise, I was not afraid; but the sailor hastily set me down on the floor and darted away, exclaiming, "I must run!"
The desire to escape seized me. I ventured out of the door. The dark, narrow space outside was empty, and not far away shone the brass on the steps of the staircase. Glancing upwards, I saw people with wallets and bundles in their hands, evidently going off the boat. This meant that I must go off too.
But when I appeared in front of the gangway, amidst the crowd of peasants, they all began to yell at me.
"Who does he belong to? Who do you belong to?"
No one knew.
For a long time they jostled and shook and poked me about, until the gray-haired sailor appeared and seized me, with the explanation:
"It is the Astrakhan boy from the cabin."
And he ran off with me to the cabin, deposited me on the bundles and went away, shaking his finger at me, as he threatened, "I 'll give you something!"
The noise