“I’ve been thinking about my life, Lord Jesus Christ! I mean, what have I lived for? Beatings… work… I’ve seen nothing but my husband, known nothing but fear! And I never saw Pasha growing up, and whether I loved him when my husband was alive, I don’t know! All my worries, all my thoughts were about one thing – giving my beast nice, tasty food, pleasing him in good time so that he wouldn’t get sullen or frighten me with blows, so that he’d take pity on me just for once. I don’t remember him ever taking pity. He beat me as if it wasn’t his wife he was beating, but everyone he had a grudge against. I lived like that for twenty years, and what went on before my marriage I don’t remember! I try to, but, like a blind woman, I can’t see a thing! Yegor Ivanovich was here – we come from the same village – and he says this and that, and I remember the houses, I remember the people – but how the people lived, what they said, what happened to who – I’ve forgotten! I remember the fires, two fires. Everything’s evidently been beaten out of me, my soul’s been boarded up tight, it’s gone blind and can’t hear…”

She gasped for breath and, gulping at the air greedily, like a fish pulled out of water, she leant forward and continued, lowering her voice:

“My husband died, I clutched at my son – and he set off on all this business. And then I began to feel bad, and sorry for him… If he’s lost to me, how am I to live? I’ve been through so much fear and anxiety, my heart would break apart when I thought about his fate…”

She fell silent, and then, shaking her head quietly, said in a meaningful voice:

“It’s not pure, our women’s love!… We love what we need. But now I look at you, and you’re pining for your mother – what do you want her for? And all the others, suffering for the people, they’re going to prison and to Siberia; they’re dying… Young girls walk about at night, alone, through the mud, through the snow, into the rain; they walk seven versts to us out here from town. Who’s driving them on, who’s pushing them? They have love! Now theirs is pure love! They believe! They believe, Andryusha! But I don’t know how to be like that! I love what’s my own, what’s close to me!”

“You can do it!” said the Ukrainian and, turning his face away from her, he rubbed his head, cheek and eyes hard, as always, with his hands. “Everyone loves what’s close to them, but in a big heart, what’s far away is close to you too. You can do a lot. The maternal instinct is strong in you…”

“God grant!” she said quietly. “I can sense, you know, that it’s good to live that way! Now, I love you, and maybe I love you more than I do Pasha. He’s private… There he is, wanting to marry Sashenka, but he hasn’t told me, his mother, about it…”

“That’s not true!” the Ukrainian objected. “I know it. It’s not true. He loves her and she him – that’s true. But marrying – it’s not going to happen, no! She’d like to, but Pavel doesn’t want to…”

“Is that how it is?” the mother said quietly and pensively, and her eyes came sadly to a halt on the Ukrainian’s face. “Yes. Is that how it is? People denying themselves…”

“Pavel’s a rare man!” the Ukrainian pronounced quietly. “A man of iron…”

“And now he’s in prison!” the mother continued thoughtfully. “It’s worrying, it’s frightening, but not excessively so! Life as a whole’s not the same, and the fear’s different – I’m worried for everyone. And my heart’s different – my soul’s opened its eyes and it’s looking: it feels sad and joyous. There’s a lot I don’t understand, and I feel so hurt, so bitter that you don’t believe in the Lord God! Well, there’s nothing to be done about that! But I can see that you’re good people, yes! And you’ve condemned yourselves to a hard life for the people, to a difficult life for the truth. I’ve understood your truth as well: while the rich are still there, the people will get nothing, neither truth, nor joy, nothing! Here am I, living among you, and sometimes in the night I remember what there was before, my strength trampled underfoot, my young heart downtrodden, and I feel sorry for myself, and bitter! But all the same, my life’s become better. More and more I can see myself…”

The Ukrainian stood up and, trying not to shuffle his feet, began carefully walking around the room – tall, thin and pensive.

“You put it well!” he exclaimed quietly. “Well. There was a young Jew in Kerch who wrote verse, and one day he wrote this:

“Those who’re innocently slaughtered
Truth’s power shall resurrect!…

“He himself was killed by the police there in Kerch, but that’s unimportant! He knew the truth and sowed a lot of it among the people. Well, and you’re a person innocently slaughtered…”

“I talk now,” the mother continued. “I talk and listen to myself, and I can’t believe myself. All my life I thought about one thing, how to give the day a wide berth, to live it unnoticed, just so that nobody touched me.