It’s forbidden to read them because they tell the truth about our life, the life of workers… They’re printed on the quiet, secretly, and if they’re found in my possession, I’ll be put in prison, in prison for wanting to know the truth. Do you understand?”

She suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Opening her eyes wide, she looked at her son, and he seemed a stranger to her. He had a different voice – deeper, richer, more resonant. His fingers were plucking at his fine, downy moustache, and he was looking strangely, from under his brows, somewhere into the corner. She began to feel frightened for her son and sorry for him.

“But why are you doing it, Pasha?” she said.

He raised his head, looked at her and, in a low voice, calmly replied:

“I want to know the truth.”

The sound of his voice was quiet, but firm, and his eyes shone stubbornly. She understood with her heart that her son had condemned himself for ever to something secret and frightening. Everything in life seemed to her inevitable, she was accustomed to submitting without thinking, and now she just started quietly crying, finding no words in her heart, which was tight with woe and anguish.

“Don’t cry!” said Pavel quietly and lovingly, and it seemed to her he was saying goodbye. “Just think, what sort of life do we lead? You’re forty – and have you really lived? My father beat you – and now I understand it was his woe he was venting on your sides, the woe of his life; it was crushing him, but he didn’t understand where it came from. He worked for thirty years, he began working when the whole factory fitted into just two blocks, and now there are seven of them!”

She listened to him in terror, greedily. Her son’s eyes were burning, beautiful and bright; leaning his chest against the table, he moved closer to her and, straight into her face, wet with tears, made his first speech about the truth he had understood. With all the power of youth and the ardour of a disciple, proud of his knowledge and believing religiously in its truth, he spoke of what was clear to him, spoke not so much for his mother as to test himself. At times he would stop, lost for words, and then he would see before him a distressed face, shining dimly, in which there were kind eyes, misted over with tears. The look in them was of terror and bewilderment. He felt sorry for his mother and started speaking again, but now of her, of her life.

“What joys have you known?” he asked. “How are you to remember what you’ve lived through?”

She listened and sadly shook her head, sensing something new, unknown to her, mournful and joyous, and it softly caressed her aching heart. She was hearing such speeches about herself, about her life, for the first time, and they awakened within her long-slumbering, unclear thoughts and gently fanned extinguished feelings of vague discontent with life – the thoughts and feelings of her distant youth. She had talked about life with the girls who were her friends, had talked for a long time about everything, but everyone, and she herself, had only ever complained – no one had explained why life was so hard and difficult. But now here before her sat her son, and what his eyes, face and words were saying, all of it touched her heart, filling it with a sense of pride in the son who had a true understanding of his mother’s life, was telling her about her sufferings and pitied her.

Mothers get no pity.

That she knew. All her son was saying about a woman’s life was the bitter, familiar truth, and quietly quivering in her breast was a tangle of sensations which warmed her more and more with its unfamiliar caress.

“And what do you want to do?” she asked, interrupting his speech.

“Study, and then – teach others. We workers must study. We need to find out, need to understand, why life is so hard for us.”

It was sweet for her to see that his blue eyes, always serious and severe, were burning now so softly and lovingly. A contented, quiet smile appeared on her lips, though tears still trembled in the wrinkles on her cheeks. Wavering inside her was an ambivalent feeling of pride in the son who saw the woe of life so well, yet she could not forget about his youth or the fact that he did not talk like everyone else, that he alone had decided to take issue with this life that was customary for all, and for her too. She felt like saying to him: “What can you do, dear?”

But she was afraid of hindering her admiration of the son who was suddenly revealed before her as so wise… albeit a little foreign to her.

Pavel saw the smile on his mother’s lips, the attention on her face, the love in her eyes, and it seemed to him that he had forced her to understand his truth, and youthful pride in the power of the word increased his faith in himself. Gripped by excitement, he spoke, now smiling, now knitting his brows, and at times in his words there was the sound of hatred, and when his mother heard its tough, ringing words, she shook her head in fright and asked her son quietly:

“Is it so, Pasha?”

“It is!” he replied, firm and strong. And he told her of those who, wishing the people well, sowed the truth among them, and how the enemies of life hunted them because of it like wild animals, put them in prison, sent them into penal servitude…

“I’ve seen such people!” he exclaimed hotly. “They’re the best people on earth!”

In her these people aroused fear, and again she wanted to ask her son: “Is it so?”

But she could not bring herself to do it and, with her heart standing still, she listened to stories about the people she could not understand, who had taught her son to talk and think in a manner so dangerous for him. Finally she said to him:

“It’ll soon be getting light, you should go to bed, go to sleep!”

“Yes, I will in a minute!” he agreed. And, leaning towards her, he asked: “Do you understand me?”

“I do!” she replied with a sigh.