Mother | Page 5

flowed on monotonously and

slowly somewhere down the muddy, turbid stream, year after year; and
it was all bound up in strong ancient customs and habits that led them
to do one and the same thing day in and day out. None of them, it
seemed, had either the time or the desire to attempt to change this state
of life.
Once in a long while a stranger would come to the village. At first he
attracted attention merely because he was a stranger. Then he aroused a
light, superficial interest by the stories of the places where he had
worked. Afterwards the novelty wore off, the people got used to him,
and he remained unnoticed. From his stories it was clear that the life of
the workingmen was the same everywhere. And if so, then what was
there to talk about?
Occasionally, however, some stranger spoke curious things never heard
of in the suburb. The men did not argue with him, but listened to his
odd speeches with incredulity. His words aroused blind irritation in
some, perplexed alarm in others, while still others were disturbed by a
feeble, shadowy glimmer of the hope of something, they knew not what.
And they all began to drink more in order to drive away the
unnecessary, meddlesome excitement.
Noticing in the stranger something unusual, the villagers cherished it
long against him and treated the man who was not like them with
unaccountable apprehension. It was as if they feared he would throw
something into their life which would disturb its straight, dismal course.
Sad and difficult, it was yet even in its tenor. People were accustomed
to the fact that life always oppressed them with the same power.
Unhopeful of any turn for the better, they regarded every change as
capable only of increasing their burden.
And the workingmen of the suburb tacitly avoided people who spoke
unusual things to them. Then these people disappeared again, going off
elsewhere, and those who remained in the factory lived apart, if they
could not blend and make one whole with the monotonous mass in the
village.
Living a life like that for some fifty years, a workman died.

Thus also lived Michael Vlasov, a gloomy, sullen man, with little eyes
which looked at everybody from under his thick eyebrows suspiciously,
with a mistrustful, evil smile. He was the best locksmith in the factory,
and the strongest man in the village. But he was insolent and
disrespectful toward the foreman and the superintendent, and therefore
earned little; every holiday he beat somebody, and everyone disliked
and feared him.
More than one attempt was made to beat him in turn, but without
success. When Vlasov found himself threatened with attack, he caught
a stone in his hand, or a piece of wood or iron, and spreading out his
legs stood waiting in silence for the enemy. His face overgrown with a
dark beard from his eyes to his neck, and his hands thickly covered
with woolly hair, inspired everybody with fear. People were especially
afraid of his eyes. Small and keen, they seemed to bore through a man
like steel gimlets, and everyone who met their gaze felt he was
confronting a beast, a savage power, inaccessible to fear, ready to strike
unmercifully.
"Well, pack off, dirty vermin!" he said gruffly. His coarse, yellow teeth
glistened terribly through the thick hair on his face. The men walked
off uttering coward abuse.
"Dirty vermin!" he snapped at them, and his eyes gleamed with a smile
sharp as an awl. Then holding his head in an attitude of direct challenge,
with a short, thick pipe between his teeth, he walked behind them, and
now and then called out: "Well, who wants death?"
No one wanted it.
He spoke little, and "dirty vermin" was his favorite expression. It was
the name he used for the authorities of the factory, and the police, and it
was the epithet with which he addressed his wife: "Look, you dirty
vermin, don't you see my clothes are torn?"
When Pavel, his son, was a boy of fourteen, Vlasov was one day seized
with the desire to pull him by the hair once more. But Pavel grasped a
heavy hammer, and said curtly:

"Don't touch me!"
"What!" demanded his father, bending over the tall, slender figure of
his son like a shadow on a birch tree.
"Enough!" said Pavel. "I am not going to give myself up any more."
And opening his dark eyes wide, he waved the hammer in the air.
His father looked at him, folded his shaggy hands on his back, and,
smiling, said:
"All right." Then he drew a heavy breath and added: "Ah, you dirty
vermin!"
Shortly after this he said to his wife:
"Don't ask me for money any more. Pasha