Mother | Page 4

of
steam, people poured out of little gray houses into the street. With
somber faces they hastened forward like frightened roaches, their
muscles stiff from insufficient sleep. In the chill morning twilight they
walked through the narrow, unpaved street to the tall stone cage that
waited for them with cold assurance, illumining their muddy road with
scores of greasy, yellow, square eyes. The mud plashed under their feet
as if in mocking commiseration. Hoarse exclamations of sleepy voices

were heard; irritated, peevish, abusive language rent the air with malice;
and, to welcome the people, deafening sounds floated about--the heavy
whir of machinery, the dissatisfied snort of steam. Stern and somber,
the black chimneys stretched their huge, thick sticks high above the
village.
In the evening, when the sun was setting, and red rays languidly
glimmered upon the windows of the houses, the factory ejected its
people like burned-out ashes, and again they walked through the streets,
with black, smoke-covered faces, radiating the sticky odor of machine
oil, and showing the gleam of hungry teeth. But now there was
animation in their voices, and even gladness. The servitude of hard toil
was over for the day. Supper awaited them at home, and respite.
The day was swallowed up by the factory; the machine sucked out of
men's muscles as much vigor as it needed. The day was blotted out
from life, not a trace of it left. Man made another imperceptible step
toward his grave; but he saw close before him the delights of rest, the
joys of the odorous tavern, and he was satisfied.
On holidays the workers slept until about ten o'clock. Then the staid
and married people dressed themselves in their best clothes and, after
duly scolding the young folks for their indifference to church, went to
hear mass. When they returned from church, they ate pirogs, the
Russian national pastry, and again lay down to sleep until the evening.
The accumulated exhaustion of years had robbed them of their
appetites, and to be able to eat they drank, long and deep, goading on
their feeble stomachs with the biting, burning lash of vodka.
In the evening they amused themselves idly on the street; and those
who had overshoes put them on, even if it was dry, and those who had
umbrellas carried them, even if the sun was shining. Not everybody has
overshoes and an umbrella, but everybody desires in some way,
however small, to appear more important than his neighbor.
Meeting one another they spoke about the factory and the machines,
had their fling against their foreman, conversed and thought only of
matters closely and manifestly connected with their work. Only rarely,

and then but faintly, did solitary sparks of impotent thought glimmer in
the wearisome monotony of their talk. Returning home they quarreled
with their wives, and often beat them, unsparing of their fists. The
young people sat in the taverns, or enjoyed evening parties at one
another's houses, played the accordion, sang vulgar songs devoid of
beauty, danced, talked ribaldry, and drank.
Exhausted with toil, men drank swiftly, and in every heart there awoke
and grew an incomprehensible, sickly irritation. It demanded an outlet.
Clutching tenaciously at every pretext for unloading themselves of this
disquieting sensation, they fell on one another for mere trifles, with the
spiteful ferocity of beasts, breaking into bloody quarrels which
sometimes ended in serious injury and on rare occasions even in
murder.
This lurking malice steadily increased, inveterate as the incurable
weariness in their muscles. They were born with this disease of the soul
inherited from their fathers. Like a black shadow it accompanied them
to their graves, spurring on their lives to crime, hideous in its aimless
cruelty and brutality.
On holidays the young people came home late at night, dirty and dusty,
their clothes torn, their faces bruised, boasting maliciously of the blows
they had struck their companions, or the insults they had inflicted upon
them; enraged or in tears over the indignities they themselves had
suffered; drunken and piteous, unfortunate and repulsive. Sometimes
the boys would be brought home by the mother or the father, who had
picked them up in the street or in a tavern, drunk to insensibility. The
parents scolded and swore at them peevishly, and beat their spongelike
bodies, soaked with liquor; then more or less systematically put them to
bed, in order to rouse them to work early next morning, when the
bellow of the whistle should sullenly course through the air.
They scolded and beat the children soundly, notwithstanding the fact
that drunkenness and brawls among young folk appeared perfectly
legitimate to the old people. When they were young they, too, had
drunk and fought; they, too, had been beaten by their mothers and
fathers. Life had always been like that. It