Orlóff and His Wife: Tales of the Barefoot Brigade. Maksim Gorky

      Grigóry halted at the door, flung his wet cap on the floor, and stamping heavily with his feet, he approached his wife. He was streaming with water. His face was red, his eyes were dim, and his lips were stretched in a broad, stupid smile. As he walked, Matréna heard the water seeping in his boots. He was pitiful, and she had not imagined him in this aspect.

      "Good!"—she said softly.

      Grigóry waggled his head stupidly, and asked her:

      "Would you like to have me bow down to your feet?"

      She made no reply.

      "You wouldn't? Well, that's your affair. … But I've been thinking all the while: am I guilty toward you or not? It turns out—that I am. So now I say: do you want me to bow down to your f-feet?"

      She maintained silence, inhaling the odor of vódka which emanated from him, and a bitter feeling gnawed at her soul.

      "Now, see here, you—don't you make faces! Take your chance while I'm peaceable. … " said Grigóry, raising his voice.—"Come, are you going to forgive me?"

      "You're drunk," said Matréna, with a sigh. … Go and sleep. … "

      "You lie, I'm not drunk, I'm tired, I've been walking and walking and thinking. … I've done a heap of thinking, brother … oh! You look out!"

      He menaced her with his finger, laughing with a wry grimace.

      "Why don't you speak?"

      "I can't talk with you."

      "You can't? Why not?"

      All at once, he flared up, and his voice grew firmer.

      "You screamed at me, you snarled at me yesterday … well, and now I'm asking your forgiveness. Understand that!"

      He said this in a very ominous way, his lips quivered, and his nostrils were inflated. Matréna knew what that meant, and the past rose up before her in vivid colors: the cellar, the Saturday fights, the anguish and suffocation of their life.

      "I understand!"—she said, sharply.—"I see that you are … turning into a beast again now … ekh, you disgusting creature!"

      "I'm turning into a beast? That … hasn't anything to do with the case. … I say … will you forgive me? What are you thinking about? Do I need it—your forgiveness? I can get on capitally without it … but still, here, I want you to forgive me. … Understand?"

      "Go away from me, Grigóry!" … exclaimed the woman sadly, turning away from him.

      "Go away?"—laughed Grigóry maliciously.—"I'm to go away, so that you will remain at liberty? Come now, I wo-on't! Have you seen this?"

      He seized her by the shoulder, dragged-her toward him, and flourished a knife in her face—a short, thick, sharp; piece of rusty iron.

      "We-ell?"

      "Ekh, if you would only cut my throat,"—said Matréna, with a deep sigh, and freeing herself from his grasp, she turned away from him again. Then he, also, staggered back from her, startled, not by her words, but by the tone of them. He had heard those words from her lips before, had heard them more than once—but she had never uttered them in that manner. And the fact that she had turned away from him without fearing the knife, also augmented his amazement and discomfiture. Several seconds earlier it would have been easy for him to strike her, but now he could not do it, and did not wish to do it. Almost frightened by her indifference to his threat, he flung the knife on the table, and with dull wrath he asked his wife:

      "Devil! What is it you want?"

      "I don't want anything!"—cried Matréna, sighing.—"And what do you want? Did you come to kill me? Well, then, kill me!"

      Grigóry looked at her, and held his peace, not knowing what he could do now, and seeing nothing clearly in his tangled thoughts. He had come with a definite intention to conquer his wife. On the preceding day, during their clash, she had been stronger than he; he was conscious of that, and it lowered him in his own eyes. It was imperatively necessary that she should submit to him, he did not understand why, but he did know solidly, that it was necessary. Passionate by nature, he had gone through a great deal and had thought a great deal about the matter during those four and twenty hours, and—being an ignorant man—he did not know how to single out of the chaos those feelings which had been aroused by the just accusation boldly hurled at him by his wife. He understood that this was a revolt against him, and he had brought the knife with him, in order to frighten Matréna; he would have killed her, but she offered a less passive resistance to his desire to subjugate her. But here she was in front of him, helpless, overwhelmed with grief and yet stronger than he. It angered him to perceive this, and this anger had a sobering effect upon him.

      "Listen!"—he said—"and don't you put on any conceited airs! You know that I, in downright earnest … will drive this into your ribs—and that's the end of you! That will put an end to the whole matter!?.. It's very simple. … "

      Conscious that he was not saying the proper thing, Grigóry paused. Matréna did not move, as she stood turned away from him. A feverishly-rapid reckoning up of all that she had gone through with her husband was in progress within her, and this imperative question throbbed in her heart:

      "What will happen now?"

      "Mótrya!"—Grigóry began suddenly and softly, propping himself with one hand on the table, and bending toward his wife.—"Am I to blame, if … everything isn't.. if it isn't as it should be? … This is very disgusting to me!"

      He twisted his head about and sighed.

      "I'm so sick of it! I'm so cramped here on earth! Is this life? Come, let's take the cholera patients—what are they? Are they a support to me? Some will die, and others will get well, … and I must go on living again. How am I to live? it's not life—only convulsions … isn't that enough to make a man angry? I understand everything, you see, only it's difficult for me to say that I can't live so … but how I want to live … I don't know! They heal those sick people yonder, and give them every attention— … but I'm healthy, and if my soul aches, am I any the less valuable than they? Just think of it—I'm worse off than a cholera patient. … I have convulsions in my heart—that's what the trouble is! … And you shriek at me! Do you think I'm a wild beast? A drunkard, and—that's the end of it? Ekh you … you woman! you wooden. … "

      He spoke quietly and persuasively, but she did not hear his speech well, busy as she was in reviewing the past.

      "Now you won't speak.. said Gríshka, lending an ear to something new and powerful which was springing up within him.—"And why do you remain silent? What do you want?"

      "I want nothing from you!"—exclaimed Matréna … —"Why do you hammer away at me? Why do you torture me? What do you want?"

      "What? Why … that, of course … "

      But Orlóff became conscious that he could not tell his wife exactly what he wanted—that everything should immediately become clear, so to speak, both to him and to her. He comprehended that something had formed between them which could not be removed by any words whatever …

      Then a wild anger flashed up suddenly and vividly within him. Flourishing his arm, he dealt his wife a blow with his fist on the nape of her neck, and roared, like a wild beast:

      "What are you about, you witch, hey? Why are you playing? I'll kill you, you carrion!"

      The blow drove her, face down, upon the table, but she instantly sprang to her feet, and, looking straight in her husband's face, with a gaze of hatred, she said firmly, loudly and curtly:

      "Beat away!"

      "Shut up!"

      "Beat! Well?"

      "Akh, you devil!"

      "Ho, Grigóry, there's been enough of that. I won't have any more of it. … "

      "Shut up!"

      "I won't allow you