Her son said to her gently:

“You’ve put the samovar on? Well, thank you!”

“Maybe I should buy some vodka?” she suggested, not knowing how to express to him her gratitude for something she did not yet understand.

“No, that’s not necessary!” responded Pavel, giving her a friendly smile.

It suddenly occurred to her that her son had deliberately exaggerated the danger of the gathering in order to play a trick on her.

“And is this them – the forbidden people?” she asked quietly.

“The very ones!” Pavel answered, going through into the other room.

“Oh dear!…” Her gentle exclamation followed him, and to herself she thought condescendingly: “Still a child!”

VI

The samovar came to the boil, and the mother carried it into the other room. The guests were sitting in a tight little circle by the table, but Natasha, with a book in her hands, had found herself a place in the corner, underneath the lamp.

“In order to understand why people live so badly—” Natasha was saying.

“And why they are bad themselves,” the Ukrainian put in.

“—it’s necessary to look at how they began their lives—”

“You look, my dears, you look!” murmured the mother, brewing the tea.

Everyone fell silent.

“What do you want, Mamasha?” asked Pavel, knitting his brows.

“Me?” She looked around and, seeing that everyone was looking at her, explained in embarrassment: “I was just talking to myself, saying: ‘You look!’”

Natasha laughed, and Pavel grinned, but the Ukrainian said:

“Thank you, nenko, for the tea!”

“Haven’t drunk it yet, but already grateful!” she responded and, with a glance at her son, asked: “I won’t be in the way, will I?”

Natasha answered: “How can you, the hostess, be in the way of your guests?” And in a childishly plaintive voice she begged: “Give me some tea, dear, quickly! I’m shaking all over and my feet are frozen something terrible!”

“Right away, right away!” the mother hurriedly exclaimed.

After drinking a cup of tea, Natasha sighed noisily, tossed her plait over her shoulder and began reading an illustrated book in a yellow binding. Trying not to make a noise with the crockery as she poured the tea, the mother listened closely to the girl’s flowing speech. The sonorous voice merged with the thin, pensive song of the samovar, and there wound through the room in a beautiful ribbon a story of savage people who lived in caves and killed wild beasts with stones.* It was like a fairy tale, and the mother glanced several times at her son, wanting to ask him what it was about this story that was forbidden. But soon she grew weary of following the story and started scrutinizing the guests, unnoticed by her son or by them.

Pavel was sitting next to Natasha, and he was the most handsome of all. Natasha, bent low over the book, was often putting her hair back in place as it slipped down onto her temples. Raising her head and lowering her voice, she would at times say something of her own, not looking at the book, but with her eyes sliding gently over the faces of her audience. The Ukrainian leant his broad chest against the corner of the table and squinted in his efforts to scrutinize the frayed ends of his moustache. Vesovshchikov sat upright on his chair as though made of wood, his palms pressing on his knees and his pockmarked face with no eyebrows and thin lips motionless, like a mask. Without blinking his narrow eyes, he stared at his own face, reflected in the shining copper of the samovar, and did not seem to be breathing. Little Fedya moved his lips soundlessly as he listened to the reading, as though he were repeating the words of the book to himself, while his comrade was hunched over with his elbows on his knees and, his palms propping up his cheekbones, was smiling pensively. One of the lads who had arrived with Pavel had curly red hair and cheerful green eyes, and he must have wanted to say something, because he moved around impatiently; the other, with closely cropped fair hair, stroked his head with his hand and looked at the floor, so his face could not be seen. It was particularly pleasant in the room somehow. The mother could sense this particularity that was unfamiliar to her, and to the murmur of Natasha’s voice she reminisced about the noisy parties of her youth, the coarse words of the lads, who always reeked of vodka, their cynical jokes. She reminisced, and felt her heart quietly touched by an aching sense of self-pity.

She remembered her late husband’s courtship. He had caught her in a dark lobby at one of their parties and, with his entire body pressing her against the wall, had asked in a muffled, angry voice:

“Marry me, will you?”

She had been hurt and offended, but he had kneaded her breasts painfully, wheezing heavily, his breath hot and moist in her face. She had tried to extricate herself from his arms, jerking sideways.

“Where are you going!” he had growled. “Answer, you – well?”

Choking from the shame and the hurt, she had been silent.

Someone had opened the door into the lobby, and he had unhurriedly released her, saying:

“I’ll send the matchmaker on Sunday.”

And he had.

The mother closed her eyes with a heavy sigh.

“I don’t need to know all that – how people used to live – but how people ought to live!” Vesovshchikov’s discontented voice rang out in the room.

“Exactly!” the red-haired one supported him, standing up.

“I don’t agree!” cried Fedya.

An argument flared up, and words began sparkling like tongues of flame in a bonfire. The mother did not understand what the shouting was about. All their faces began to glow with a flush of excitement, but no one grew angry or used the sharp words with which she was familiar.

“They’re holding back because of the young lady!” she decided.

She liked Natasha’s serious face, observing everyone attentively as though these lads were children for her.

“Wait, comrades!” she said suddenly. And, gazing at her, they all fell silent.

“Those who say we ought to know everything are right. We need to ignite ourselves with the light of reason, so that people living in darkness can see us, we need to answer everything honestly and correctly. We need to know the whole truth, the whole deceit…”

The Ukrainian listened and nodded his head in time with her words. Vesovshchikov, the red-haired one and the factory hand brought by Pavel stood in a tight group, all three of them, and for some reason the mother did not like them.

When Natasha fell silent, Pavel stood up and asked calmly:

“Do we just want to be properly fed? No!” he answered his own question, gazing firmly in the direction of the trio. “We must show those who are a millstone around our necks and covering our eyes that we can see everything – we’re not stupid, not animals, we don’t just want to eat, we want to live as is worthy of people! We must show our enemies that this life of hard labour which they’ve thrust upon us doesn’t stop us being their equals in intelligence or even outdoing them!…”

His mother listened to him, and pride quivered in her breast – hear how coherently he spoke!

“There are lots that are well fed, but there are none that are honest!” said the Ukrainian. “We have to build a bridge over the swamp of this rotten life to the future kingdom of heartfelt goodness – that’s our cause, comrades!”

“The time has come to fight, so there’s no time to get treatment for our hands!” Vesovshchikov retorted in a muffled voice.

It was already past midnight when they began to disperse. First to go were Vesovshchikov and the red-haired one, and again the mother did not like this.

“Look what a hurry they’re in!” she thought, bowing to them in unfriendly fashion.

“Will you see me back, Nakhodka?” asked Natasha.

“What do you think?” the Ukrainian replied.

As Natasha was putting her things on in the kitchen, the mother said to her:

“Your stockings are too thin for such a time! Won’t you let me knit you some woollen ones?”

“Thank you, Pelageya Nilovna! But they’re scratchy, woollen ones!” replied Natasha, laughing.

“Well, I’ll knit you ones that aren’t scratchy!” said Vlasova.

Natasha looked at her with her eyes slightly narrowed, and this intent gaze embarrassed the mother.

“Do forgive my foolishness – I meant well, you know!” she added quietly.

“How nice you are!” Natasha responded in a low voice too, giving her hand a quick squeeze.

“Goodnight, nenko!” said the Ukrainian, looking her in the eye, then he hunched over and followed Natasha out into the lobby.

The mother looked at her son – he was standing by the door into the other room and smiling.

“What are you laughing at?” she asked, embarrassed.

“Nothing, just feeling cheerful!”

“Of course, I’m old and foolish, but even I can understand a good thing!” she remarked, a little offended.

“Well, that’s splendid!” he responded. “You should go to bed: it’s time!…”

“I will in a minute!”

She bustled around the table, clearing away the crockery, contented, even sweating in her pleasant agitation; she was glad everything had gone so well and ended so peacefully.

“That was a good idea you had, Pavlusha!” she said. “The Ukrainian’s very nice! And the young lady – my, what a clever girl! Who is she?”

“A teacher!” replied Pavel tersely, pacing up and down the room.

“Well, there you are, the poor thing! Badly dressed, ever so badly! It’s so easy to catch cold! Where are her parents?”

“Moscow!” said Pavel, and, stopping opposite his mother, he began in a serious, low voice:

“Look here: her father’s rich, he trades in iron, has several houses. He threw her out for going down this path.