Their desires evidently take a multitude of forms, and have the most diverse shades; but the greatest number of them are impatient for extraordinary happenings, eager for exploits. Some of them declare that they would be willing to throw themselves on a hundred knives if humanity could be relieved by their doing so. But simple daily activity, even if it is useful, does not satisfy them.
The shoemaker Orlov leaves his cellar, as he calls it, and accepts a position in the hospital where they are taking care of cholera patients. His devotion makes him an "indispensable man;" he is reborn, and, according to his own words, he is "ripe for life." It seems as if his end were going to be attained. But not so. Restlessness seizes him again. Orlov questions the value of his work. He saves sick people from the cholera. Is he doing good? The greatest care is taken of these people, but how many people are there outside of the hospitals, one hundred times as many as there are inside, who are just as unfortunate, but, in spite of that fact, are not helped by any one?
"While you live," he declares, "no one will refuse to give you a drink of water. And if you are near death, not only will they not allow you to die, but they will go to some expense to stop you. They organize hospitals.... They give you wine at 'six and a half rubles a bottle.' The sick man gets well, the doctors are happy, and Orlov would like to share their joy; but he cannot, for he knows that, on leaving the threshold of the hospital, a life 'worse than the convulsions of the cholera' awaits the convalescent...." And again he is seized by the desire to drink, and to be a vagabond, and by a wish to experience new sensations.
These, then, are the vagabonds whom we can class in the category of the "restless." After these, come those whom the author terms the "ex-men," and whom he studies, under this title, in one of his longest stories. The ex-men are closely related to the "restless;" however, they differ from them in that they push their opinions to an extreme, for they are, more than the others, miserable and at bay against society.
"What difference would it make if it all went to the devil," one of them philosophizes—"I should like to see the earth go to pieces suddenly, provided that I should perish the last, after having seen the others die.... I'm an ex-man, am I not? I am a pariah, then, estranged from all bonds and duties.... I can spit on everything!"
Thomas Gordeyev's father develops another thesis; a rich and rational bourgeois, he tries to inculcate in his son from his infancy—a son who later augments the ranks of the "restless"—the most perfect spirit of egotism.
"You must pity people," he says, "but do it with discernment. First, look at a man, see what good you can get out of him, and see what he is good for. If you think he is a strong man, capable of work, help him. But if you think him weak and little suited for work, abandon him without pity. Remember this: two boards have fallen into the mud, one of them is worm-eaten, the other is sound. What are you going to do? Pay no attention to the worm-eaten plank, but take out the sound one and dry it in the sun. It may be of service to you or to some one else...."
The reader will note the absolute egotism in all of Gorky's types. The "restless" are interested only in their own misery, and they think that all men are like them; nor do they try to stop or bridle their passions.
Strong passions are one of the most precious privileges of mankind. This truth is well shown in the story: "Once More About the Devil."[7] Here, the men have become shabby and insignificant since there has been propagated among them, with a new strength, the gospel of individual perfection. The demon stifles, in the heart of Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, all the passions that can agitate a human soul,—ambition, pity, evil, and anger; this operation makes Ivan an absolutely perfect being. On his face there appears that beatitude which words cannot express. The devil has crushed all "substance" out of him, and he is completely "empty."