Gubin / Maxim Gorky

The place where I first saw him was a tavern wherein, ensconced

in the chimney-corner, and facing a table, he was exclaiming

stutteringly, "Oh, I know the truth about you all! Yes, I know

the truth about you!" while standing in a semicircle in front

of him, and unconsciously rendering him more and more excited

with their sarcastic interpolations, were some tradesmen of the

superior sort--five in number. One of them remarked indifferently:

"How should you NOT know the truth about us, seeing that you do

nothing but slander us?"

The Icebreaker / Maxim Gorky

On a frozen river near a certain Russian town, a gang of seven

carpenters were hastily repairing an icebreaker which the

townsfolk had stripped for firewood.

That year spring happened to be late in arriving, and youthful

March looked more like October, and only at noon, and that not

on every day, did the pale, wintry sun show himself in the

overcast heavens, or, glimmering in blue spaces between clouds,

contemplate the earth with a squinting, malevolent eye.

The Birth of a Man / Maxim Gorky

The year was the year '92-- the year of leanness--the scene a

spot between Sukhum and Otchenchiri, on the river Kodor, a spot

so near to the sea that amid the joyous babble of a sparkling

rivulet the ocean's deep-voiced thunder was plainly

distinguishable.

Also, the season being autumn, leaves of wild laurel were

glistening and gyrating on the white foam of the Kodor like a

quantity of mercurial salmon fry. And as I sat on some rocks

overlooking the river there occurred to me the thought that, as

likely as not, the cause of the gulls' and cormorants' fretful

cries where the surf lay moaning behind a belt of trees to the

right was that, like myself, they kept mistaking the leaves for

fish, and as often finding themselves disappointed.

One Autumn Night / Maxim Gorky

Once in the autumn I happened to be in a very unpleasant and inconvenient position. In the town where I had just arrived and where I knew not a soul, I found myself without a farthing in my pocket and without a night's lodging.

Having sold during the first few days every part of my costume without which it was still possible to go about, I passed from the town into the quarter called "Yste," where were the steamship wharves--a quarter which during the navigation season fermented with boisterous, laborious life, but now was silent and deserted, for we were in the last days of October.

Her Lover / Maxim Gorky

An acquaintance of mine once told me the following story.

When I was a student at Moscow I happened to live alongside 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 bestial gleam of her dark eyes, her thick bass voice, her cabman-like gait and her immense muscular vigour, 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 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.