I feel sorry for Mama! She’s plain and simple, like you. A little thing, just like a mouse, runs just as quickly and is scared of everyone. Sometimes I so want to see her…”

“My poor girl!” said the mother, shaking her head sadly.

The girl quickly threw up her head and reached out an arm, as though pushing something away.

“Oh no! At times I feel such joy, such happiness!”

Her face turned pale, and her blue eyes flashed brightly. Putting her hands onto the mother’s shoulders, she said in a deep voice, quietly and impressively:

“If you only knew… if you only realized what a great deed we’re doing!…”

Something close to envy touched Vlasova’s heart. Rising from the floor, she said sadly:

“I’m too old for that now, illiterate…”

Pavel spoke more, and ever more frequently, argued ever more hotly and grew thinner. It seemed to his mother that, when he spoke with Natasha or looked at her, his stern eyes shone more softly, the sound of his voice was gentler, and he generally became plainer and simpler.

“Please, Lord!” she thought. And smiled.

Just as soon as arguments began to take on too heated and stormy a character at the gatherings, the Ukrainian would always stand up and, rocking back and forth like the clapper of a bell, say something simple and kind in his resonant, booming voice, which made everyone become calmer and more serious. Vesovshchikov was forever morosely hurrying everyone along somewhere, and he and the red-haired one, whose name was Samoilov, were the first to start all the arguments. In agreement with them was Ivan Bukin, round-headed and with hair so light it could have been washed in lye. Yakov Somov, smooth and clean, said little in his quiet, serious voice, and in arguments he and big-browed Fedya Mazin always sided with Pavel and the Ukrainian.

Sometimes, instead of Natasha, one Nikolai Ivanovich would come from town, a man in glasses with a small, light-coloured beard, a native of some distant province who spoke with a particular accent, emphasizing the letter O. He was generally rather distant overall. He would talk about simple things – family life, children, trade, the police, the price of bread and meat, everything that people live by day in, day out. And in everything he revealed falsity, muddle, something stupid or at times ridiculous, and something that was always obviously disadvantageous to people. It seemed to the mother that he had come from somewhere far away, from some other kingdom, and everyone there led an honest and easy life, while everything here was alien to him; he could not get used to this life or accept it as necessary, he disliked it, and it aroused in him a calm, stubborn desire to reshape everything after his own fashion. His face was yellowish, and around the eyes there were fine, radial wrinkles, his voice was quiet and his hands were always warm. When greeting Vlasova, he would embrace the whole of her hand with his strong fingers, and after such a handshake her heart would feel lighter and calmer.

Other people came from town too, and more often than the others a tall, shapely young lady with huge eyes in a thin, pale face. She was called Sashenka. There was something masculine about her gait and movements, she would knit her thick, dark brows angrily, and when she spoke, the fine nostrils of her straight nose would quiver.

Sashenka was the first to say loudly and sharply:

“We are socialists…”

When the mother heard this word, she stared into the young lady’s face in silent fright. She had heard that socialists had killed the Tsar.* That was in the days of her youth; it had been said then that some landowners, wanting to take revenge on the Tsar for his having liberated the peasants, had made a pledge not to cut their hair until they had killed him, and it was for that they had been called socialists. And now she could not understand why her son and his comrades were socialists.

When everyone had dispersed, she asked Pavel:

“Pavlusha, are you really a socialist?”

“Yes!” he said, standing before her, as always, upright and firm. “What of it?”

His mother heaved a heavy sigh and, lowering her eyes, asked:

“Is it so, Pavlusha? They’re against the Tsar, aren’t they? I mean, they’ve killed one before.”

Pavel paced up and down the room, stroked his cheek with his hand and said with a grin:

“We don’t need that!”

He spent a long time telling her something in a quiet, serious voice. She looked into his face and thought:

“He won’t do anything bad – he isn’t capable!”

But then the terrible word began to be repeated ever more often, its sharpness was worn away, and it became just as customary to her ear as dozens of other incomprehensible words. But she did not like Sashenka, and whenever she appeared, the mother felt anxious and awkward…

One day, discontentedly pursing her lips, she said to the Ukrainian:

“Sashenka really is very strict somehow! Always giving orders – you have to do this, you have to do that…”

The Ukrainian burst into loud laughter.

“Well spotted! You’ve hit the nail on the head, nenko! Eh, Pavel?”

And, winking at the mother, with a grin in his eyes he said:

“The gentry!”

Pavel remarked drily:

“She’s a good person.”

“That’s true!” the Ukrainian confirmed. “Only she doesn’t understand that she ‘has to’, whereas we ‘want to’ and ‘can’!”

And they began to argue about something incomprehensible.

The mother also noticed that Sashenka was strictest of all with Pavel and sometimes even shouted at him. Grinning, Pavel would look silently into the girl’s face with that same soft gaze with which he had previously looked into Natasha’s. The mother did not like this either.

Sometimes the mother was amazed by the mood of wild joy that would suddenly and simultaneously take hold of everyone. This was usually on those evenings when they read in the newspapers about working people abroad. Then everyone’s eyes would shine with joy, everyone would become strangely, somehow childishly happy, would laugh merry, clear laughter and slap one another affectionately on the shoulder.

“Well done, our German comrades!” someone cried, as though intoxicated by their merriment.

“Long live the workers of Italy!” they cried on another occasion.

And, sending these cries off somewhere into the distance, to friends who did not know them and could not understand their language, they seemed to be certain that these people who were unknown to them could hear and understand their delight.

The Ukrainian spoke with shining eyes, filled with a feeling of love that embraced everyone:

“It’d be good to write to them there, eh? So they know they have friends living in Russia who believe and confess the same religion as them, people living with the same aims and rejoicing in their victories!”

And dreamily, with smiles on their faces, everyone talked for a long time about the French, the English and the Swedes as their friends, as people close to their hearts whom they respected, living their joys, feeling their woe.

Being born in this cramped room was a sense of the spiritual kinship of the workers of the entire earth. This sense fused everyone into a single soul, exciting the mother too: although it was incomprehensible to her, still it straightened her up with its strength, joyous and youthful, intoxicating and full of hope.

“Just look at you!” she said to the Ukrainian once. “Everyone’s your comrades – the Armenians, the Jews, the Austrians – sadness and joy for all!”

“For all, my nenko, for all!” the Ukrainian exclaimed.