Mother | Page 6

will feed you now."
"And you will drink up everything?" she ventured to ask.
"None of your business, dirty vermin!" From that time, for three years,
until his death, he did not notice, and did not speak to his son.
Vlasov had a dog as big and shaggy as himself. She accompanied him
to the factory every morning, and every evening she waited for him at
the gate. On holidays Vlasov started off on his round of the taverns. He
walked in silence, and stared into people's faces as if looking for
somebody. His dog trotted after him the whole day long. Returning
home drunk he sat down to supper, and gave his dog to eat from his
own bowl. He never beat her, never scolded, and never petted her.
After supper he flung the dishes from the table--if his wife was not
quick enough to remove them in time--put a bottle of whisky before
him, and leaning his back against the wall, began in a hoarse voice that
spread anguish about him to bawl a song, his mouth wide open and his
eyes closed. The doleful sounds got entangled in his mustache,
knocking off the crumbs of bread. He smoothed down the hair of his
beard and mustache with his thick fingers and sang-- sang unintelligible

words, long drawn out. The melody recalled the wintry howl of wolves.
He sang as long as there was whisky in the bottle, then he dropped on
his side upon the bench, or let his head sink on the table, and slept in
this way until the whistle began to blow. The dog lay at his side.
When he died, he died hard. For five days, turned all black, he rolled in
his bed, gnashing his teeth, his eyes tightly closed. Sometimes he
would say to his wife: "Give me arsenic. Poison me."
She called a physician. He ordered hot poultices, but said an operation
was necessary and the patient must be taken at once to the hospital.
"Go to the devil! I will die by myself, dirty vermin!" said Michael.
And when the physician had left, and his wife with tears in her eyes
began to insist on an operation, he clenched his fists and announced
threateningly:
"Don't you dare! It will be worse for you if I get well."
He died in the morning at the moment when the whistle called the men
to work. He lay in the coffin with open mouth, his eyebrows knit as if
in a scowl. He was buried by his wife, his son, the dog, an old drunkard
and thief, Daniel Vyesovshchikov, a discharged smelter, and a few
beggars of the suburb. His wife wept a little and quietly; Pavel did not
weep at all. The villagers who met the funeral in the street stopped,
crossed themselves, and said to one another: "Guess Pelagueya is glad
he died!" And some corrected: "He didn't die; he rotted away like a
beast."
When the body was put in the ground, the people went away, but the
dog remained for a long time, and sitting silently on the fresh soil, she
sniffed at the grave.
CHAPTER II
Two weeks after the death of his father, on a Sunday, Pavel came home
very drunk. Staggering he crawled to a corner in the front of the room,

and striking his fist on the table as his father used to do, shouted to his
mother:
"Supper!"
The mother walked up to him, sat down at his side, and with her arm
around her son, drew his head upon her breast. With his hand on her
shoulder he pushed her away and shouted:
"Mother, quick!"
"You foolish boy!" said the mother in a sad and affectionate voice,
trying to overcome his resistance.
"I am going to smoke, too. Give me father's pipe," mumbled Pavel
indistinctly, wagging his tongue heavily.
It was the first time he had been drunk. The alcohol weakened his body,
but it did not quench his consciousness, and the question knocked at his
brain: "Drunk? Drunk?"
The fondling of his mother troubled him, and he was touched by the
sadness in her eyes. He wanted to weep, and in order to overcome this
desire he endeavored to appear more drunk than he actually was.
The mother stroked his tangled hair, and said in a low voice:
"Why did you do it? You oughtn't to have done it."
He began to feel sick, and after a violent attack of nausea the mother
put him to bed, and laid a wet towel over his pale forehead. He sobered
a little, but under and around him everything seemed to be rocking; his
eyelids grew heavy; he felt a bad, sour taste in his mouth; he looked
through his eyelashes on his mother's large face,