Tears came rolling from her eyes once more, and with a sob she added: “You’re done for!”

He stood up, took a turn around the room, and then said:

“Well, now you know what I do, where I go – I’ve told you everything! I beg of you, Mother, if you love me, don’t stand in my way!…”

“My sweet!” she exclaimed. “Maybe it would be better for me not to know anything!”

He took her hand and squeezed it firmly in both of his.

She was shaken by the word “Mother”, which he had said with such heated power, and this pressing of her hand, new and strange.

“I shan’t do anything!” she said in a breaking voice. “Just take care of yourself, take care!”

Not knowing why care needed to be taken, she added miserably:

“You keep getting thinner…”

And embracing his strong, slim body with a warm, caressing gaze, she began speaking quietly and hurriedly:

“God keep you! Live as you want – I won’t stand in your way. I ask just one thing: don’t talk to people fearlessly! You need to beware of people – everyone hates everyone else! They live on greed, they live on envy. Everyone’s happy to do harm. As soon as you start to expose them and judge them, they’ll come to hate you and be your undoing!”

Her son stood in the doorway, listening to this miserable speech, and when his mother had finished, he said with a smile:

“People are bad, yes. But when I found out that there’s truth in the world, people became better!…”

He smiled again and continued:

“I don’t understand myself how it happened! From childhood I’d been afraid of everyone, I’d begun to grow up and started hating – some for their nastiness, some for I don’t know what, just because! But now everyone’s become different for me – am I sorry for everyone, or something? I can’t understand it, but my heart got softer when I found out that not everyone’s to blame for what’s dirty about them…”

He fell silent, as though listening to something inside him, and then said thoughtfully in a low voice:

“That’s what the truth does to you!”

She glanced at him and pronounced quietly:

“There’s a dangerous change in you, oh Lord!”

When he had gone to bed and fallen asleep, his mother got up cautiously from her bed and quietly went over to him. Pavel lay with his chest uppermost, and clearly drawn on the white pillow was his swarthy, stubborn, severe face. Pressing her hands to her breast, barefooted and in just her nightshirt, his mother stood by his bed, her lips moved without sound, and slowly and evenly, one after another, there came flowing from her eyes big, turbid tears.

And again they started living in silence, distant, yet close to each other.

V

One day in the middle of the week, a holiday, Pavel said to his mother as he was leaving the house:

“I’ll be having guests from town on Saturday.”

“From town?” his mother repeated, and then suddenly she let out a sob.

“Well, what’s that about, Mamasha?” Pavel exclaimed discontentedly.

Wiping her face with her apron, she answered with a sigh:

“I don’t know, it’s just…”

“Are you afraid?”

“Yes, I am,” she confessed.

He leant towards her face and, angrily, just like his father, said:

“It’s through fear that we’re all done for! And those who give us orders exploit our fear and make us even more frightened.”

His mother howled miserably:

“Don’t be angry! How can I not be afraid? I’ve lived in fear all my life, my soul’s all overgrown with fear!”

In a low voice, and more softly, he said:

“Forgive me – there’s no other way!”

And he left.

For three days her heart quaked, sinking every time she remembered there would be some strange, terrible people coming to the house. These were the ones who had shown her son the road down which he was going…

On Saturday, in the evening, Pavel came back from the factory, washed, changed and, going back out somewhere, said without looking at his mother:

“If they arrive, say I’ll be back soon. And please don’t be afraid…”

She sank onto a bench, powerless. Her son gave her a glum look and suggested:

“Perhaps you might… go out somewhere?”

This offended her. With a negative shake of the head she said:

“No. Why should I?”

It was the end of November. During the day, light, dry snow had fallen onto the frozen ground, and now it could be heard squeaking under the feet of her departing son. Dense darkness lay motionless against the window panes, inimically lying in wait for something. With her hands resting on the bench, the mother sat and waited, gazing at the door…

It seemed to her as if cautiously stealing towards the house from all directions in the darkness there were people, hunched over and looking all around, strangely dressed and wicked. Here was someone already walking around the house and running his hands over the wall.

Now the sound of whistling could be heard. It wound through the quietness in a slender little stream, sad and melodic, straying pensively through the wilderness of the darkness, seeking something, getting closer. And suddenly, by the window, it disappeared, as though it had sunk into the wood of the wall.

Someone’s feet started shuffling in the lobby; the mother gave a start and, raising her eyebrows tensely, stood up.

The door was opened. First a head in a big, shaggy hat was poked into the room, then, hunched over, a long body came slowly through, straightened up, unhurriedly raised its right hand and, with a noisy sigh, said in a rich, chesty voice:

“Good evening!”

The mother bowed silently.

“Is Pavel not at home?”

The man slowly removed his fur jacket, lifted one leg, knocked the snow off the boot with his hat, then did the same with the other leg, threw the hat into a corner and, swaying on his long legs, came into the room. He went up to a chair, examined it as though trying to convince himself of its solidity, finally sat down and, putting his hand over his mouth, yawned. His head was perfectly round, and the hair cut smooth, his cheeks were clean-shaven and the ends of his long moustache drooped down. After examining the room carefully with big, bulging grey eyes, he crossed his legs and, rocking on the chair, asked:

“And is this your hut, or are you renting?”

Sitting opposite him, the mother replied:

“Renting.”

“Not much of a hut!” he remarked.

“Pasha will soon be back – won’t you wait?” the mother asked him.

“I already am!” said the tall man serenely.

His serenity, soft voice and the simplicity of his face reassured the mother. The man looked at her openly and benevolently, there was a merry spark playing in the depths of his transparent eyes and there was something in his figure as a whole, angular and stooping with long legs, that was amusing and prepossessing. He was dressed in a blue shirt and black baggy trousers tucked into his boots. She wanted to ask him who he was, where he was from, if he had known her son long, but suddenly his entire body gave a lurch and he himself asked her:

“Who was it who gave your forehead a crack, nenko?”*

He asked gently, with a clear smile in his eyes, but this question offended the woman. She pursed her lips and, after a pause, enquired with cold politeness:

“And what is that to you, my dear sir?”

His entire body rocked towards her:

“Don’t you be cross now, will you! The reason I asked is because my foster-mother’s head was cracked too, just the same as yours. Hers, you see, was cracked by her lover, a cobbler, with a last. She was a laundress, and he a cobbler.