Her Lover

by Maxim Gorky

A friend of mine once told me the following story.

When I was a student at Moscow I lived next door to a sex worker. She was a Pole and they called her Teresa. She was a tall, powerfully-built brown-haired woman, with black, bushy eyebrows and a large hard face. It looked like it was made with an axe. The animal look in her dark eyes, her deep voice and her great strength frightened me. I lived at the top of the stairs and her little room was opposite mine. I never left my door open when I knew that she was at home. But this was very unusual. Sometimes I met her on the stairs or in the garden and she smiled at me with a smile like a snake’s. Occasionally, I saw her drunk with red eyes, untidy hair and an especially unpleasant look. Then, she would speak to me:

"How are you, Mr. Student!" and her stupid laugh made me hate her more. I wanted to change my rooms to avoid seeing her, but my little place was nice and there was a good view from the window, and it was always so quiet in the street below – so I stayed.

And one morning I was lying on my sofa, trying to find an excuse for not going to my class, when the door opened and the deep voice of the hateful Teresa entered my room:

"Good morning, Mr. Student!"

"What do you want?" I said. I saw that her face was confused – a very unusual face for her.

"Sir! I want a favour from you. Will you do me a favour?"

I lay there silent, and thought to myself: "Courage, my boy!"

"I want to send a letter home, that's what it is," she said; her voice was soft and frightened.

I jumped up, sat down at my table, took some paper, and said:

"Come here, sit down, and tell me what you want to write!"

She came, sat down very carefully on a chair and looked at me.

"Well, who do you want to write to?"

"To Boleslav Kashput, in the town of Svieptziana."

"Well, start talking!"

"My Boles... my darling... my lovely boy. Why haven’t you written for such a long time to your sad little dove, Teresa?"

I very nearly laughed. "A sad little dove!" with fists like stone and as black a face as if the little dove had lived all its life in a chimney and never washed!

Stopping myself, I asked:

"Who is this Bolest?"

"Boles, Mr. Student," she said, like she was angry with me for getting his name wrong, "He’s Boles – my young man."

"Young man!"

"Why are you so surprised? Can’t a girl have a young man?"

Her? A girl? Well!

"Oh, why not?" I said. "Everything is possible. And has he been your young man long?"

"Six years."

"Oh!" I thought. "Well, let’s write your letter..."

"Thank-you so much for helping me," said Teresa to me. "Perhaps I can help you with something, eh?"

"No, thank-you all the same."

"Perhaps, your shirts or your trousers need mending?"

I was angry with her because I had made a mistake about what she wanted to say and I told her sharply that I didn’t need any help.

She left.

A week or two passed. It was evening. I was sitting at my window thinking about what I could do. I was bored. The weather was dirty. I didn't want to go out and, because I had nothing else to do, I started thinking about my life. This was boring work, but I didn't want to do anything else. Then the door opened. Thank God! Someone came in.

"Oh, Mr. Student, I hope you don’t have any really important business at the moment."

It was Teresa. Unfortunately.

"No. What is it?"

"I was going to ask you, sir, to write me another letter."

"Very well! To Boles, eh?"

"No, this time it is from him."

"What?"

"You must think I’m stupid. It’s not for me, Mr. Student. It’s for a friend of mine, that is to say, not a friend but someone I know – a man. He has a lover just like me. That's how it is. Will you, sir, write a letter to this Teresa?"

I looked at her – her face looked worried. I was a bit confused at first – and then I guessed.

"Look here," I said, "there are no Boleses and you've only told me lies. Don't come here again! Do you understand?"

And suddenly she grew very afraid and upset. She began to move from foot to foot without moving from where she was standing and looked as if she wanted to say something and couldn't. I waited to see what would happen, and I saw and felt that I had made a great mistake. She didn’t want to sleep with me. It was something very different.

"Mr. Student!" she began, but suddenly she turned to the door and went out. I had a terrible feeling. I listened. She closed her door very loudly and seemed very angry... I decided to go to her and invite her to come in and I would write everything she wanted.

I entered her apartment. I looked round. She was sitting at the table, with her head in her hands.

"Listen to me," I said.

She jumped from her seat, came towards me and put her hands on my shoulders. She began to whisper in her deep voice:

"Look now! It's like this. There's no Boles and there's no Teresa. But what's that to you? Is it a hard thing for you to write a letter? Eh? Ah, and you! You’re still a little blond boy! There's nobody at all, no Boles, no Teresa, only me!"

"Excuse me!" said I, very surprised. "What’s it all about? There's no Boles, you say?"

"No."

"And no Teresa either?"

"And no Teresa. I'm Teresa."

I didn't understand. I looked at her and tried to decide who was mad. But she went again to the table, looked for something, came back to me, and said:

"If it was so hard for you to write to Boles, look, there's your letter, take it! Other people can write for me."

I looked. In her hand was my letter to Boles.

"Listen, Teresa! What does all this mean? Why must you get other people to write for you when I have already written it and you haven't sent it?"

"Sent it where?"

"To Boles."

"There's no Boles."

Then she explained.

"There's no Boles, I tell you. But I wanted him ... Aren’t I human like everybody else? Yes, yes, I know, I know, of course ... But I didn’t hurt anybody by writing to him ..."

"Sorry, who were you writing to?"

"To Boles, of course."

"But he doesn't exist."

"He doesn't exist, but he might! I write to him and it looks as if he’s there. And he replies to me, and then I write to him again..."

I understood at last. And I felt so sick, so miserable. Next door to me, there was a woman who had nobody in the world and this human being had invented a friend for herself!

"Look! You wrote me a letter to Boles and I gave it to someone else to read it to me and when they read it to me I listened and I thought that Boles was there. And I asked you to write me a letter from Boles to Teresa – that is to me. When they write a letter for me and read it to me, I feel quite sure that Boles is there. And life gets easier for me because of him."

"God. I’m an idiot!" said I to myself when I heard this.

And from then on, regularly, twice a week, I wrote a letter to Boles, and an answer from Boles to Teresa. I wrote those answers well... She, of course, listened to them and cried in her low voice. And in return for my writing real letters from the imaginary Boles, she began to mend the holes I had in my socks, shirts, and other clothing. Later, about three months after this story began, they put her in prison for something. Probably by this time she is dead.

My friend shook the ash from his cigarette, looked up at the sky, and finished like this:

“Well, the more people taste bitter things, the more we’re hungry for the sweet things of life. And everything always finishes stupidly – and very cruelly. The 'fallen', we say. And who are the 'fallen', I would like to know? They are, first of all, people with the same skin and blood as we have. In reality, we are also 'fallen' and, so far as I can see, very deeply fallen. But enough of this! Nothing changes. Nothing’s new.