19 - Her Lover, Maxim Gorky.

19 - Her Lover, Maxim Gorky.  
In this collection of Russian stories, editor and compiler Thomas Seltzer selects from a range of the best examples of 19th and early 20th century Russian literature. As a survey of famous authors at the height of the powers, as well as some writers who have been unjustly neglected, this anthology is indispensable.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter nineteen of Best Russian Short Stories. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina.

(00:22):
Best Russian Short Stories, edited and compiled by Thomas Seltzer.
Chapter nineteen, entitled Her Lover by Maxim Gorky, an acquaintance
of mine once told me the following story. When I
was a student at Moscow, I happened to live alongside

(00:43):
one of those ladies whose repute is questionable. She was
a pole and they called her Teresa. She was a tallish,
powerfully built brunette with black, bushy eyebrows and a large,
coarse face, as if carved out by a hatchet. The
best you'll gleam of her dark eyes, her thick bass voice,

(01:04):
her cabman like gait, and her immense muscular vigor worthy
of a fishwife inspired me with horror. I lived on
the top flight, and her garret was opposite to mine.
I never left my door open when I knew her
to be at home, But this, after all, was a
very rare occurrence. Sometimes I chanced to meet her on

(01:25):
the staircase or in the yard, and she would smile
upon me with a smile which seemed to me to
be sly and cynical. Occasionally I saw her drunk, with
bleary eyes, tousled hair, and a particularly hideous grin. On
such occasions she would speak to me, how do you do,
mister student, and her stupid laugh would still further intensify

(01:49):
my loathing of her. I should have liked to have
changed my quarters in order to have avoided such encounters
and greetings. But my little chamber was a nice one,
and there was such a wide view from the window,
and it was always so quiet in the street below.
So I endured. And one morning I was sprawling on
my couch, trying to find some sort of excuse for

(02:12):
not attending my class, when the door opened and the
bass voice of Teresa the loathsome resounded from my threshold.
Good health to you, mister student. What do you want?
I said? I saw that her face was confused and supplicatory.
It was a very unusual sort of face for her. Sir,

(02:35):
I want to beg a favor of you, Will you
grant it me? I lay there, silent, and thought to myself,
gracious courage, my boy, I want to send a letter home.
That's what it is. She said. Her voice was beseeching, soft, timid, deuce,

(02:57):
take you, I thought, but up, I jump ump, sat
down at my table, took a sheet of paper and said,
come here, sit down and dictate. She came sat down
very gingerly on a chair and looked at me with
a guilty look. Well, to whom do you want to
write to? Bolislav Kashput at the town of siveet Pitziana

(03:21):
on the Warsaw Road. Well, fire away, my dear Bolis,
my darling, my faithful lover. May the Mother of God
protect thee thou heart of gold. Why hast thou not
written for such a long time to thy sorrowing little dove, Teresa?

(03:44):
I very nearly burst out laughing, a sorrowing little dove
more than five feet high, with fists a stone and
more in weight, and as black a face, as if
the little dove had lived all its life in a
chimney and had never once washed itself. Restraining myself somehow,
I asked, who is this bolust bolus, mister student, She said,

(04:10):
as if offended with me, for blundering over the name.
He is Bolus, my young man, young man. Why are
you so surprised, sir? Cannot I a girl have a
young man? She a girl? Well? Oh why not? I said,

(04:31):
All things are possible. And has he been your young
man long six years? Oh? I thought, well, let us
write your letter. And I tell you plainly that I
would willingly have changed places with this Bolus if his
fair correspondent had been not Terresa but something less than she.

(04:55):
I thank you most heartily, sir for your kind services,
said to to me with a courtesy. Perhaps I can
show you some service. Eh No, I most humbly thank
you all the same. Perhaps, sir, your shirts or your
trousers may want a little mending. I felt that this

(05:17):
mastodon in petticoat said made me grow quite red with shame.
And I told her pretty sharply that I had no
need whatever of her services. She departed. A week or
two passed away. It was evening. I was sitting at
my window, whistling and thinking of some expedient for enabling
me to get away from myself. I was bored, the

(05:39):
weather was dirty. I didn't want to go out and
out of sheer unwi. I began a course of self
analysis and reflection. This also was dull enough work, but
I didn't care about doing anything else. Then the door opened,
have him be praised? Some one came in. Oh, mister student,

(06:00):
you have no pressing business. I hope it was Teressa. Humph, No,
what is it? I was going to ask you, sir
to write me another letter, very well, tobolss eh. No
this time it is from him. What stupid that I am?

(06:24):
It is not for me, mister student. I beg your pardon.
It is for a friend of mine, that is to say,
not a friend, but an acquaintance, a man acquaintance. He
has a sweetheart just like me. Here, Teressa. That's how
it is. Will you, sir, write a letter to this Teressa.

(06:44):
I looked at her. Her face was troubled, her fingers
were trembling. I was a bit fogged at first, and
then I guessed how it was. Look here, my lady,
I said, there are no boluses or to dresses at all,
and you've been telling me a pack of lies. Don't
you come sneaking about me any longer. I have no

(07:07):
wish whatever to cultivate your acquaintance, do you understand? And
suddenly she grew strangely terrified and distraught. She began to
shift from foot to foot without moving from the place,
and spluttered comically, as if she wanted to say something
and couldn't. I waited to see what would come of
all this, and I saw and felt that apparently I

(07:31):
had made a great mistake in suspecting her of wishing
to draw me from the path of righteousness. It was
evidently something very different, mister student, she began, and suddenly,
waving her hand, she turned abruptly towards the door and
went out. I remained with a very unpleasant feeling in

(07:51):
my mind. I listened. Her door was flung violently, too plainly.
The poor Wench was very angry. I thought it over
and resolved to go to her, and inviting her to
come in here write everything she wanted. I entered her apartment.
I looked round. She was sitting at the table, leaning

(08:13):
on her elbows, with her head in her hands. Listen
to me, I said, Now, whenever I come to this
point in my story, I always feel horribly awkward and idiotic. Well, well,
listen to me, I said. She leaped from her seat,

(08:33):
came towards me with flashing eyes, and laying her hands
on my shoulders, began to whisper rather to hum in
her peculiar bass voice. Look you, now, it's like this.
There's no Bullis at all, and there's no Teressa either.
But what's that to you? Is it a hard thing

(08:54):
for you to draw your pen over paper? Eh? Ah?
And you who too? Still such a little fair haired boy.
There's nobody at all, neither Bolis nor Teressa, only me.
There you have it, and much good may it? Do you?

(09:15):
Pardon me? Said I, altogether flabbergasted by such a reception.
What is it all about? There's no Bolis, you say, no,
so it is, and no Teressa either, and no Teressa.
I'm Teressa. I didn't understand it at all. I fixed

(09:38):
my eyes upon her and tried to make out which
of us was taking leave of his or her senses.
But she went again to the table, searched about for something,
came back to me and said, in an offended tone,
if it was so hard for you to write to Bolis,
look there's your letter. Take it. Others will write for me.

(10:01):
I looked in her hand was my letter to Bolis. Phew, listen, Teresa,
what is the meaning of all this? Why must you
get others to write for you? When I have already
written it and you haven't sent it? Sent it? Where?
Why to this Bolis? There's no such person. I absolutely

(10:27):
did not understand it. There was nothing for me but
to spit and go. Then she explained, what is it?
She said, still offended. There's no such person, I tell you,
and she extended her arms as if she herself did
not understand why there should be no such person. But

(10:47):
I wanted him to be am I then, not a
human creature like the rest of them. Yes, yes, I know,
I know, of course. Yet no harm was done to
any one by my writing to him that I can see.
Pardon me to whom? To Bolus? Of course, but he

(11:10):
doesn't exist, alas, alas, But what if he doesn't? He
doesn't exist, but he might. I write to him, and
it looks as if he did exist, And Teressa, that's me,
And he replies to me, and that I write to
him again. I understood at last, and I felt so sick,

(11:37):
so miserable, so ashamed. Somehow, alongside of me, not three
yards away, lived a human creature who had nobody in
the world to treat her kindly affectionately, and this human
being had invented a friend for herself. Look now, you
wrote me a letter to Bolis, and I gave it

(11:58):
to someone else to read it to me. And when
they read it to me, I listened and fancied that
Bullis was there. And I asked you to write me
a letter from Bullis to Teressa, that is to me.
When they write such a letter for me and read
it to me, I feel quite sure that Bollis is there,

(12:20):
and life grows easier for me. In consequence, Deuce, take
you for a blockhead, said I to myself when I
heard this, And from thenceforth, regularly, twice a week I
wrote a letter to Bullis and an answer from Bullis
to Teressa. I wrote those answers well. She of course

(12:43):
listened to them and wept like anything roared, I should say,
with her bass voice, and in return from my thus
moving her to tears by real letters from the imaginary Bollis,
she began to mend the holes I had in my socks, shirts,
and other articles of clothing. Subsequently, about three months after

(13:04):
this history, began, they put her in prison for something
or other. No doubt by this time she is dead.
My acquaintance shook the ash from his cigarette, looked pensively
up at the sky, and thus concluded, well, well, the
more a human creature has tasted of bitter things, the

(13:25):
more it hungers after the sweet things of life. And we,
wrapped round in the rags of our virtues and regarding
others through the midst of our self sufficiency, and persuaded
of our universal impeccability, do not understand this. And the
whole thing turns out pretty stupidly and very cruelly. The

(13:48):
falling classes, we say, And who are the falling classes?
I should like to know? They are, first of all,
people with the same bones, flesh, and blood and nerves
as ourselves. We have been told this day after day
for ages, and we actually listen. And the devil only

(14:09):
knows how hideous the whole thing is, or are we
completely depraved by the loud sermonizing of humanism. In reality,
we also are fallen folks, and so far as I
can see, very deeply fallen into the abyss of self
sufficiency and the conviction of our own superiority. But enough

(14:32):
of this. It is all as old as the hills,
so old that it is a shame to speak of it.
Very old indeed, yes, that's what it is. And of
her lover by Maxim Gorky