The Russian Masters: Works by Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev and More. Максим Горький

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СКАЧАТЬ it's hard for me to see this life? Don't you think I suffer myself? Give me your hand.

      SAVVA (pushing her hand away)

      He told you he would go to the Superior?

      LIPA

      But I didn't let him.

      SAVVA

      Has he got the machine?

      LIPA

      He'll give it back to you to-morrow. He was afraid to give it to me. Savva dear, don't look at me like that. I know it's unpleasant for you, but you have a lot of common sense. You can't help seeing that what you wanted to do was an absurdity, a piece of lunacy, a vagary that can come to one only in one's dreams at night. Don't I understand that life is hard? Am I not suffering from it myself? I understand even your comrades, the anarchists. It's not right to kill anybody; but still I understand them. They kill the bad.

      SAVVA

      They are not my comrades. I have no comrades.

      LIPA

      Aren't you an anarchist?

      SAVVA

      No.

      LIPA

      What are you then?

      TONY (raising his head)

      They are going, they are going. Do you hear?

      SAVVA (quietly, but ominously)

      They are going.

      LIPA

      There, you see. Who is going? Think of it. It's human misery that's going. And you wanted to take away from them their last hope, their last consolation. And to what purpose? In the name of what? In the name of some wild, ghastly dream about a "naked earth." (Peers with terror into the darkness of the room) A naked earth! It's terrible to think of it. A naked earth! How could a man, a human being, ever conceive such an idea? A naked earth! Nothing, nothing! Everything laid bare, everything annihilated. Everything that people worked for through all the years; everything they have created with so much toil, with so much pain. Unhappy people! There is among you a man who says that all this must be burned, must be consumed with fire.

      SAVVA

      You remember my words to perfection.

      LIPA

      You awakened me, Savva. When you told me all that, my eyes were suddenly opened, and I began to love everything. Do you understand? I began to love it all. These walls—formerly I didn't notice them; now I am sorry for them—so sorry, I could cry. And the books and everything—each brick, each piece of wood to which man has applied his labor. Let's admit that it's poor stuff. Who says it's good? But that's why I love it—for its defects, its imperfections, its crooked lines, its unfulfilled hopes. For the labor and the tears. And all who hear you talking, Savva, will feel as I do, and will begin to love all that is old and dear and human.

      SAVVA

      I have nothing to do with you.

      LIPA

      Nothing to do with us? With whom then have you to do? No, Savva, you don't love anyone. You love only yourself and your dreams. He who loves men will not take away from them all they have. He will not regard his own wishes more than their lives. Destroy everything! Destroy Golgotha! Consider: (with terror) destroy Golgotha! The brightest, the most glorious hope that ever was on earth! All right, you don't believe in Christ. But if you have a single drop of nobility in your nature, you must respect and honor His noble memory. He was also unhappy. He was crucified—crucified, Savva. You are silent? Have you nothing to say?

      SAVVA

      Nothing.

      LIPA

      I thought—I thought—if you succeeded in carrying out your plot—I thought I'd kill you—that I'd poison you like some noxious beast.

      SAVVA

      And if I don't succeed—

      LIPA

      You are still hoping?

      SAVVA

      And if I don't succeed, I'll kill you.

      LIPA (advancing a step toward him)

      Kill me! Kill me! Give me a chance to suffer for the sake of Christ.

       For the sake of Christ and for the sake of the people.

      SAVVA

      Yes. I'll kill you.

      LIPA

      Do you suppose I didn't think of it? Do you suppose I didn't think of it? Oh, Lord, to suffer for Thee! Is there higher happiness than that?

      SAVVA (with a contemptuous gesture, pointing at Lipa)

      And that's a human being! That's one counted among the best! That's the kind in which they take pride! Ah me, how poor you are in good people!

      LIPA

      Insult! Mock! That's the way it has always been. They have always heaped insults upon us before they killed us.

      SAVVA

      No, I don't mean to insult you. How can I insult you? You are simply a silly woman. There have been many such in the past. There are many such to-day. You are simply a foolish, insignificant creature. You are even innocent, like all insignificant persons. And if I mean to kill you, there is no reason to be proud of it. Don't think you are an object specially worthy of my indignation. No, it would merely make matters a little easier for me. When I was chopping wood, and the axe in my raised arm struck the threshold instead of the log of wood, the jar was not so hard as if someone had arrested the motion of my arm. A raised hand must fall on something.

      LIPA

      And to think that this beast is my brother!

      SAVVA

      Whose cradle you rocked and whose diapers you changed. Yes. But to me it doesn't seem in the least strange that you are my sister, or that this bundle there is my brother. No, Tony! They are going. (Tony turns his head and stares stupidly without making any answer) And it doesn't seem in the least strange to me that any insignificant chit and piece of nothingness calling itself my brother or my sister should go to the chemist's and buy a nickel's worth of arsenic on finding out who I am. You see, they have even attempted to poison me. The girl who left me tried to do it, but she lost her nerve. The point is that my sisters and brothers, among other things, have the characteristic of being cowards.

      LIPA

      I would have done it.

      SAVVA

      I don't doubt it. You are a little hysterical, and hysterical people are determined, unless they happen to burst into tears first.

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