THE LOWER DEPTHS
A monologue from the
play by Maxim
Gorky
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from The Moscow Art Theatre Series of Plays. Ed. Oliver
M. Sayler. New York: Brantanos, 1922. |
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LUKA: Some one has to be kind, girl -- some one has
to pity people! Christ pitied everybody -- and he said to us:
"Go and do likewise!" I tell you -- if you pity a man
when he most needs it, good comes of it. Why -- I used to be
a watchman on the estate of an engineer near Tomsk -- all right
-- the house was right in the middle of a forest -- lonely place
-- winter came -- and I remained all by myself. Well -- one night
I heard a noise -- thieves creeping in! I took my gun -- I went
out. I looked and saw two of them opening a window -- and so
busy that they didn't even see me. I yell: "Hey there --
get out of here!" And they turn on me with their axes --
I warn them to stand back, or I'd shoot -- and as I speak, I
keep on covering them with my gun, first on the one, then the
other -- they go down on their knees, as if to implore me for
mercy. And by that time I was furious -- because of those axes,
you see -- and so I say to them: "I was chasing you, you
scoundrels -- and you didn't go. Now you go and break off some
stout branches!" -- and they did so -- and I say: "Now
-- one of you lie down and let the other one flog him!"
So they obey me and flog each other -- and then they began to
implore me again. "Grandfather," they say, "for
God's sake give us some bread! We're hungry!" There's thieves
for you, my dear! [Laughs.] And with an ax, too! Yes --
honest peasants, both of them! And I say to them, "You should
have asked for bread straight away!" And they say: "We
got tired of asking -- you beg and beg -- and nobody gives you
a crumb -- it hurts!" So they stayed with me all that winter
-- one of them, Stepan, would take my gun and go shooting in
the forest -- and the other, Yakoff, was ill most of the time
-- he coughed a lot . . . and so the three of us together looked
after the house . . . then spring came . . . "Good-bye,
grandfather," they said -- and they went away -- back home
to Russia . . . escaped convicts -- from a Siberian prison camp
. . . honest peasants! If I hadn't felt sorry for them -- they
might have killed me -- or maybe worse -- and then there would
have been a trial and prison and afterwards Siberia -- what's
the sense of it? Prison teaches no good -- and Siberia doesn't
either -- but another human being can . . . yes, a human being
can teach another one kindness -- very simply!
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MONOLOGUES BY MAXIM GORKY |
