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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Yama (The Pit), by Alexandra Kuprin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Yama (The Pit)
+
+Author: Alexandra Kuprin
+
+Translator: Bernard Guilbert Guerney
+
+Release Date: March 5, 2002 [eBook #4706]
+[Most recently updated: March 15, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YAMA (THE PIT) ***
+
+
+
+
+YAMA [THE PIT]
+
+Of this edition, intended for private circulation only, and printed
+from type on Berkeley Antique laid paper, 950 copies have been printed
+for America, and 550 for Great Britain. Also, 55 unnumbered copies, for
+the press.
+
+This copy is Number 223
+
+YAMA [THE PIT]
+
+
+A NOVEL IN THREE PARTS
+
+BY ALEXANDRA KUPRIN
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
+
+BY BERNARD GUILBERT GUERNEY
+
+“All the horror is in just this, that there is no horror ...”
+
+
+AUTHOR’S DEDICATION
+
+I know that many will find this novel immoral and indecent;
+nevertheless, I dedicate it with all my heart to MOTHERS AND YOUTHS—A.
+K.
+
+TRANSLATOR’S DEDICATION
+
+I dedicate the labour of translation, in all humility and sincerity, to
+K. ANDRAE. B. G. G.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+INTRODUCTION
+TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
+PART ONE
+CHAPTER I
+CHAPTER II
+CHAPTER III
+CHAPTER IV
+CHAPTER V
+CHAPTER VI
+CHAPTER VII
+CHAPTER VIII
+CHAPTER IX
+CHAPTER X
+CHAPTER XI
+CHAPTER XII
+PART TWO
+CHAPTER I
+CHAPTER II
+CHAPTER III
+CHAPTER IV
+CHAPTER V
+CHAPTER VI
+CHAPTER VII
+CHAPTER VIII
+CHAPTER IX
+CHAPTER X
+CHAPTER XI
+CHAPTER XII
+CHAPTER XIII
+CHAPTER XIV
+CHAPTER XV
+CHAPTER XVI
+CHAPTER XVII
+PART THREE
+CHAPTER I
+CHAPTER II
+CHAPTER III
+CHAPTER IV
+CHAPTER V
+CHAPTER VI
+CHAPTER VII
+CHAPTER VIII
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+
+ INTRODUCTION
+
+“With us, you see,” Kuprin makes the reporter Platonov, his mouthpiece,
+say in Yama, “they write about detectives, about lawyers, about
+inspectors of the revenue, about pedagogues, about attorneys, about the
+police, about officers, about sensual ladies, about engineers, about
+baritones—and really, by God, altogether well—cleverly, with finesse
+and talent. But, after all, all these people are rubbish, and their
+life is not life, but some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary
+delirium of world culture. But there are two singular realities—ancient
+as humanity itself: the prostitute and the moujik. And about them we
+know nothing, save some tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions in
+literature...”
+
+Tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions... Let us consider some of
+the ways in which this monstrous reality has been approached by various
+writers. There is, first, the purely sentimental: Prevost’s _Manon
+Lescaut_. Then there is the slobberingly sentimental: Dumas’ _Dame aux
+Camélias_. A third is the necrophilically romantic: Louys’ _Aphrodite_.
+The fertile Balzac has given us no less than two: the purely romantic,
+in his fascinating portraits of the Fair Imperia; and the romantically
+realistic, in his _Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes_. Reade’s _Peg
+Woffington_ may be called the literary parallel of the costume drama;
+Defoe’s _Moll Flanders_ is honestly realistic; Zola’s _Nana_ is rabidly
+so.
+
+There is one singular fact that must be noted in connection with the
+vast majority of such depictions. Punk or bona roba, lorette or
+drab—put her before an artist in letters, and, lo and behold ye! such
+is the strange allure emanating from the hussy, that the resultant
+portrait is either that of a martyred Magdalene, or, at the very least,
+has all the enigmatic piquancy of a Monna Lisa... Not a slut, but what
+is a hetaera; and not a hetaera, but what is well-nigh Kypris herself!
+I know of but one depiction in all literature that possesses the
+splendour of implacable veracity as well as undiminished artistry;
+where the portrait is that of a prostitute, despite all her tirings and
+trappings; a depiction truly deserving to be designated a portrait: the
+portrait supreme of the harlot eternal—Shakespeare’s Cleopatra.
+
+Furthermore, it will be observed that such depictions, for the most
+part, are primarily portraits of prostitutes, and not pictures of
+prostitution. It is also a singular fact that war, another scourge has
+met with similar treatment. We have the pretty, spotless grenadiers and
+cuirassiers of Meissonier in plenty; Vereshchagin is still alone in the
+grim starkness of his wind-swept, snow-covered battle-fields, with
+black crows wheeling over the crumpled masses of gray...
+
+And, curiously enough, it is another great Russian, Kuprin, who is
+supreme—if not unique—as a painter of the universal scourge of
+prostitution, per se; and not as an incidental background for
+portraits. True, he may not have entirely escaped the strange allure,
+aforementioned, of the femininity he paints; for femininity—even though
+fallen, corrupt, abased, is still femininity, one of the miracles of
+life, to Kuprin, the lover of life. But, even if he may be said to have
+used too much of the oil of sentimentality in mixing his colours for
+the portraits, his portraits are subordinate to the background; and
+there his eye is true and keen, his hand steady and unflinching, his
+colours and brushwork unimpeachable. Whether, like his own Platonov—who
+may be called to some extent an autobiographical figure, and many of
+whose experiences are Kuprin’s own—“came upon the brothel” and gathered
+his material unconsciously, “without any ulterior thoughts of writing,”
+we do not know, nor need we rummage in his dirty linen, as he puts it.
+Suffice it to say here—to cite but two instances—that almost anyone
+acquainted with Russia will tell you the full name of the rich, gay,
+southern port city of K—; that any Odessite will tell you that
+Treppel’s is merely transplanted, for fictional reasons, from his own
+city to K—...
+
+Alexandre I. Kuprin was born in 1870; 1909 marked the twenty-fifth
+anniversary of his literary activity. He attained his fame only upon
+the publication of his amazing, epical novel, “The Duel”—which, just
+like “YAMA,” is an arraignment; an arraignment of militaristic
+corruption. Russian criticism has styled him the poet of life. If
+Chekhov was the Wunderkind of Russian letters, Kuprin is its enfant
+terrible. His range of subjects is enormous; his power of observation
+and his versatility extraordinary. Gambrinus alone would justify his
+place among the literary giants of Europe. Some of his picaresques,
+“THE INSULT,” “HORSE-THIEVES,” and “OFF THE STREET”—the last in the
+form of a monologue—are sheer tours de force. “Olessiya” is possessed
+of a weird, unearthly beauty; “The Shulamite” is a prose-poem of
+antiquity. He deals with the life of the moujik in “Back-woods” and
+“The Swamp”; of the Jews, in “The Jewess” and “The Coward”; of the
+soldiers, in “The Cadets,” “The Interrogation,” “The Night Watch,”
+“Delirium”; of the actors, in “How I Was an Actor” and “In Retirement.”
+We have circus life in “‘Allez!’” “In The Circus,” “Lolly,” “The
+Clown”—the last a one-act playlet; factory life, in “Moloch”;
+provincial life, in “Small Fry”; bohemian life, in “Captain Ribnicov”
+and “The River of Life”—which no one but Kuprin could have written.
+There are animal stories and flower stories; stories for children—and
+for neuropaths; one story is dedicated to a jockey; another to a circus
+clown; a third, if I remember rightly, to a race-horse... “Yama”
+created an enormous sensation upon the publication of the first part in
+volume three of the “Sbornik Zemliya”—“The Earth Anthology”—in 1909;
+the second part appeared in volume fifteen, in 1914; the third, in
+volume sixteen, in 1915. Both the original parts and the last revised
+edition have been followed in this translation. The greater part of the
+stories listed above are available in translations, under various
+titles; the list, of course, is merely a handful from the vast bulk of
+the fecund Kuprin’s writings, nor is any group of titles exhaustive of
+its kind. “The Star of Solomon,” his latest collection of stories,
+bears the imprint of Helsingfors, 1920.
+
+It must not be thought, despite its locale, that Kuprin’s “Yama” is a
+picture of Russian prostitution solely; it is intrinsically universal.
+All that is necessary is to change the kopecks into cents, pennies,
+sous or pfennings; compute the versts into miles or metres; Jennka may
+be Eugenie or Jeannette; and for Yama, simply read Whitechapel,
+Montmartre, or the Barbary Coast. That is why “Yama” is a “tremendous,
+staggering, and truthful book—a terrific book.” It has been called
+notorious, lurid—even oleographic. So are, perhaps, the picaresques of
+Murillo, the pictorial satires of Hogarth, the bizarreries of Goya...
+
+The best introduction to “Yama,” however, can be given in Kuprin’s own
+words, as uttered by the reporter Platonov. “They do write,” he says,
+“... but it is all either a lie, or theatrical effects for children of
+tender years, or else a cunning symbolism, comprehensible only to the
+sages of the future. But the life itself no one as yet has touched...
+
+“But the material here is in reality tremendous, downright crushing,
+terrible... And not at all terrible are the loud phrases about the
+traffic in women’s flesh, about the white slaves, about prostitution
+being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on, and so on... an
+old hurdy-gurdy of which all have tired! No, horrible are the everyday,
+accustomed trifles; these business-like, daily, commercial reckonings;
+this thousand-year-old science of amatory practice; this prosaic usage,
+determined by the ages. In these unnoticeable nothings are completely
+dissolved such feelings as resentment, humiliation, shame. There
+remains a dry profession, a contract, an agreement, a well-nigh honest
+petty trade, no better, no worse than, say, the trade in groceries. Do
+you understand, gentlemen, that all the horror is in just this—that
+there is no horror! Bourgeois work days—and that is all...
+
+“More awful than all awful words, a hundredfold more awful—is some such
+little prosaic stroke or other as will suddenly knock you all in a
+heap, like a blow on the forehead...”
+
+It is in such little prosaic strokes; everyday, accustomed,
+characteristic trifles; minute particles of life, that Kuprin excels.
+The detailism which crowds his pages is like the stippling of Whistler;
+or the enumerations of the Bible; or the chiselling of Rodin, that
+endows the back of the Thinker with meaning.
+
+“We all pass by these characteristic trifles indifferently, like the
+blind, as though not seeing them scattered about under our feet. But an
+artist will come, and he will look over them carefully, and he will
+pick them up. And suddenly he will so skillfully turn in the sun a
+minute particle of life, that we shall all cry out: ’Oh, my God! But I
+myself—myself!—have seen this with my own eyes. Only it simply did not
+enter my head to turn my close attention upon it.’ But our Russian
+artists of the word—the most conscientious and sincere artists in the
+whole world—for some reason have up to this time passed over
+prostitution and the brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me to
+answer that. Perhaps because of squeamishness, perhaps out of
+pusillanimity, out of fear of being signalized as a pornographic
+writer; finally from the apprehension that our gossiping criticism will
+identify the artistic work of the writer with his personal life and
+will start rummaging in his dirty linen. Or perhaps they can find
+neither the time, nor the self-denial, nor the self-possession to
+plunge in head first into this life and to watch it right up close,
+without prejudice, without sonorous phrases, without a sheepish pity,
+in all its monstrous simplicity and everyday activity... That
+material... is truly unencompassable in its significance and
+weightiness... The words of others do not suffice—even though they be
+the most exact—even observations, made with a little note-book and a
+bit of pencil, do not suffice. One must grow accustomed to this life,
+without being cunningly wise...”
+
+“I believe, that not now, not soon—after fifty years or so—but there
+will come a writer of genius, and precisely a Russian one, who will
+absorb within himself all the burdens and all the abominations of this
+life and will cast them forth to us in the form of simple, fine, and
+deathlessly—caustic images. And we shall all say: ’Why, now, we
+ourselves have seen and known all this, but we could not even suppose
+that this is so horrible! In this coming artist I believe with all my
+heart.”
+
+Kuprin is too sincere, too big, to have written this with himself in
+mind; yet no reader of the scathing, searing arraignment called “Yama,”
+will question that the great, the gigantic Kuprin has shown “the
+burdens and abominations” of prostitution, in “simple, fine, and
+deathlessly-caustic images”; has shown that “all the horror is in just
+this—that there is no horror...” For it is as a pitiless reflection of
+a “singular,” sinister reality that “Yama” stands unsurpassed.
+
+B. G. GUERNEY.
+New York City, January, 1922.
+
+ TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
+
+A word must be said of Kuprin’s style. He is by no means a purist; his
+pages bristle with neologisms and foreign—or, rather, outlandish—words;
+nor has he any hesitancy in adapting and Russianizing such words. He
+coins words; he is, at times, actually Borrowesque, and not only does
+he resort to colloquialisms and slang, but to dialect, cant, and even
+actual argot. Therein is his glory—and, perhaps, his weakness.
+Therefore, an attempt has been made, wherever corruptions, slang, and
+so forth, appear in the original, to render them through the nearest
+English equivalents. While this has its obvious dubieties and
+disadvantages, any other course would have smacked of prettification—a
+fate which such a book as “Yama” surely does not deserve.
+
+
+
+
+ PART ONE
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+
+
+A long, long time ago, long before the railroads, the
+stage-drivers—both government and private—used to live, from generation
+to generation, at the very farthest confine of a large southern city.
+And that is why the entire region was called the Yamskaya Sloboda—the
+Stage-drivers’ Borough; or simply Yamskaya, or Yamkas—Little Ditches,
+or, shorter still, Yama—The Pit. In the course of time, when hauling by
+steam killed off transportation by horses, the mettlesome tribe of the
+stage-drivers little by little lost its boisterous ways and its brave
+customs, went over into other occupations, fell apart and scattered.
+But for many years—even up to this time—a shady renown has remained to
+Yama, as of a place exceedingly gay, tipsy, brawling, and in the
+night-time not without danger.
+
+Somehow it came about of itself, that on the ruins of those ancient,
+long-warmed nests, where of yore the rosy-cheeked, sprightly wives of
+the soldiery and the plump widows of Yama, with their black eyebrows,
+had secretly traded in vodka and free love, there began to spring up
+wide-open brothels, permitted by the authorities, regulated by official
+supervision and subject to express, strict rules. Towards the end of
+the nineteenth century both streets of Yama—Great Yamskaya and Little
+Yamskaya—proved to be entirely occupied, on one side of the street as
+well as the other, exclusively with houses of ill-fame.[1] Of the
+private houses no more than five or six were left, but even they were
+taken up by public houses, beer halls, and general stores, catering to
+the needs of Yama prostitution.
+
+[1] “Houses of Suffrance”—i.e., Houses of the Necessary Evil.—Trans.
+
+
+The course of life, the manners and customs, are almost identical in
+all the thirty-odd establishments; the difference is only in the
+charges exacted for the briefly-timed love, and consequently in certain
+external minutiae as well: in the assortment of more or less handsome
+women, in the comparative smartness of the costumes, in the
+magnificence of the premises and the luxuriousness of the furnishings.
+
+The most chic establishment is that of Treppel, the first house to the
+left upon entering Great Yamskaya. This is an old firm. Its present
+owner bears an entirely different name, and fills the post of an
+elector in the city council and is even a member of the city board. The
+house is of two stories, green and white, built in the debauched
+pseudo-Russian style a la Ropetovsky, with little horses, carved
+facings, roosters, and wooden towels bordered with lace-also of wood; a
+carpet with a white runner on the stairs; in the front hall a stuffed
+bear, holding a wooden platter for visiting cards in his out-stretched
+paws; a parquet floor in the ballroom, heavy raspberry silk curtains
+and tulle on the windows, along the walls white and gold chairs and
+mirrors with gilt frames; there are two private cabinets with carpets,
+divans, and soft satin puffs; in the bedrooms blue and rose lanterns,
+blankets of raw silk stuff and clean pillows; the inmates are clad in
+low-cut ball gowns, bordered with fur, or in expensive masquerade
+costumes of hussars, pages, fisher lasses, school-girls; and the
+majority of them are Germans from the Baltic provinces—large, handsome
+women, white of body and with ample breasts. At Treppel’s three roubles
+are taken for a visit, and for the whole night, ten.
+
+Three of the two-rouble establishments—Sophie Vassilievna’s, The Old
+Kiev, and Anna Markovna’s—are somewhat worse, somewhat poorer. The
+remaining houses on Great Yamskaya are rouble ones; they are furnished
+still worse. While on Little Yamskaya, which is frequented by soldiers,
+petty thieves, artisans, and drab folk In general, and where fifty
+kopecks or less are taken for time, things are altogether filthy and
+poor-the floor in the parlor is crooked, warped, and full of splinters,
+the windows are hung with pieces of red fustian; the bedrooms, just
+like stalls, are separated by thin partitions, which do not reach to
+the ceiling, and on the beds, on top of the shaken down hay-mattresses,
+are scattered torn, spotted bed-sheets and flannel blankets, dark from
+time, crumpled any old way, full of holes; the air is sour and full of
+fumes, with a mixture of alcohol vapours and the smell of human
+emanations; the women, dressed in rags of coloured printed calico or in
+sailor costumes, are for the greater part hoarse or snuffling, with
+noses half fallen through, with faces preserving traces of yesterday’s
+blows and scratches and naively bepainted with the aid of a red
+cigarette box moistened with spit.
+
+All the year round, every evening—with the exception of the last three
+days of Holy Week and the night before Annunciation, when no bird
+builds its nest and a shorn wench does not plait her braid—when it
+barely grows dark out of doors, hanging red lanterns are lit before
+every house, above the tented, carved street doors. It is just like a
+holiday out on the street—like Easter. All the windows are brightly lit
+up, the gay music of violins and pianos floats out through the panes,
+cabmen drive up and drive off without cease. In all the houses the
+entrance doors are opened wide, and through them one may see from the
+street a steep staircase with a narrow corridor on top, and the white
+flashing of the many-facetted reflector of the lamp, and the green
+walls of the front hall, painted over with Swiss landscapes. Till the
+very morning hundreds and thousands of men ascend and descend these
+staircases. Here everybody frequents: half-shattered, slavering
+ancients, seeking artificial excitements, and boys-military cadets and
+high-school lads—almost children; bearded paterfamiliases; honourable
+pillars of society, in golden spectacles; and newly-weds, and enamoured
+bridegrooms, and honourable professors with renowned names; and
+thieves, and murderers, and liberal lawyers; and strict guardians of
+morals—pedagogues, and foremost writers—the authors of fervent,
+impassioned articles on the equal rights of women; and catchpoles, and
+spies, and escaped convicts, and officers, and students, and Social
+Democrats, and hired patriots; the timid and the brazen, the sick and
+the well, those knowing woman for the first time, and old libertines
+frayed by all species of vice; clear-eyed, handsome fellows and
+monsters maliciously distorted by nature, deaf-mutes, blind men, men
+without noses, with flabby, pendulous bodies, with malodorous breath,
+bald, trembling, covered with parasites—pot-bellied, hemorrhoidal apes.
+They come freely and simply, as to a restaurant or a depot; they sit,
+smoke, drink, convulsively pretend to be merry; they dance, executing
+abominable movements of the body imitative of the act of sexual love.
+At times attentively and long, at times with gross haste, they choose
+any woman they like and know beforehand that they will never meet
+refusal. Impatiently they pay their money in advance, and on the public
+bed, not yet grown cold after the body of their predecessor, aimlessly
+commit the very greatest and most beautiful of all universal
+mysteries—the mystery of the conception of new life. And the women with
+indifferent readiness, with uniform words, with practiced professional
+movements, satisfy their desires, like machines—only to receive, right
+after them, during the same night, with the very same words, smiles and
+gestures, the third, the fourth, the tenth man, not infrequently
+already biding his turn in the waiting room.
+
+So passes the entire night. Towards daybreak Yama little by little
+grows quiet, and the bright morning finds it depopulated, spacious,
+plunged into sleep, with doors shut tightly, with shutters fixed on the
+windows. But toward evening the women awaken and get ready for the
+following night.
+
+And so without end, day after day, for months and years, they live a
+strange, incredible life in their public harems, outcast by society,
+accursed by the family, victims of the social temperament, cloacas for
+the excess of the city’s sensuality, the guardians of the honour of the
+family—four hundred foolish, lazy, hysterical, barren women.
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+
+Two in the afternoon. In the second-rate, two-rouble establishment of
+Anna Markovna everything is plunged in sleep. The large square parlor
+with mirrors in gilt frames, with a score of plush chairs placed
+decorously along the walls, with oleograph pictures of Makovsky’s Feast
+of the Russian Noblemen, and Bathing, with a crystal lustre in the
+middle, is also sleeping, and in the quiet and semi-darkness it seems
+unwontedly pensive, austere, strangely sad. Yesterday here, as on every
+evening, lights burned, the most rollicking of music rang out, blue
+tobacco smoke swirled, men and women careered in couples, shaking their
+hips and throwing their legs on high. And the entire street shone on
+the outside with the red lanterns over the street doors and with the
+light from the windows, and it seethed with people and carriages until
+morning.
+
+Now the street is empty. It is glowing triumphantly and joyously in the
+glare of the summer sun. But in the parlor all the window curtains are
+lowered, and for that reason it is dark within, cool, and as peculiarly
+uninviting as the interiors of empty theatres, riding academies and
+court buildings usually are in the middle of the day.
+
+The pianoforte glimmers dully with its black, bent, glossy side; the
+yellow, old, time-eaten, broken, gap-toothed keys glisten faintly. The
+stagnant, motionless air still retains yesterday’s odour; it smells of
+perfumes, tobacco, the sour dampness of a large uninhabited room, the
+perspiration of unclean and unhealthy feminine flesh, face-powder,
+boracic-thymol soap, and the dust of the yellow mastic with which the
+parquet floor had been polished yesterday. And with a strange charm the
+smell of withering swamp grass is blended with these smells. To-day is
+Trinity. In accordance with an olden custom, the chambermaids of the
+establishment, while their ladies were still sleeping, had bought a
+whole waggon of sedge on the market, and had strewn its long, thick
+blades, that crunch underfoot, everywhere about—in the corridors, in
+the private cabinets, in the drawing room. They, also, had lit the
+lamps before all the images. The girls, by tradition, dare not do this
+with their hands, which have been denied during the night.
+
+And the house-porter has adorned the house-entrance, which is carved in
+the Russian style, with two little felled birch-trees. And so with all
+the houses—the thin white trunks with their scant dying verdure adorn
+the exterior near the stoops, bannisters and doors.
+
+The entire house is quiet, empty and drowsy. The chopping of cutlets
+for dinner can be heard from the kitchen. Liubka, one of the girls,
+barefooted, in her shift, with bare arms, not good-looking, freckled,
+but strong and fresh of body, has come out into the inner court.
+Yesterday she had had but six guests on time, but no one had remained
+for the night with her, and because of that she had slept her
+fill—splendidly, delightfully, all alone, upon a wide bed. She had
+risen early, at ten o’clock, and had with pleasure helped the cook
+scrub the floor and the tables in the kitchen. Now she is feeding the
+chained dog Amour with the sinews and cuttings of the meat. The big,
+rusty hound, with long glistening hair and black muzzle, jumps up on
+the girl—with his front paws, stretching the chain tightly and rattling
+in the throat from shortness of breath, then, with back and tail
+undulating all over, bends his head down to the ground, wrinkles his
+nose, smiles, whines and sneezes from the excitement. But she, teasing
+him with the meat, shouts at him with pretended severity:
+
+“There, you—stupid! I’ll—I’ll give it to you! How dare you?”
+
+But she rejoices with all her soul over the tumult and caresses of
+Amour and her momentary power over the dog, and because she had slept
+her fill, and passed the night without a man, and because of the
+Trinity, according to dim recollections of her childhood, and because
+of the sparkling sunny day, which it so seldom befalls her to see.
+
+All the night guests have already gone their ways. The most
+business-like, quiet and workaday hour is coming on.
+
+They are drinking coffee in the room of the proprietress. The company
+consists of five people. The proprietress herself, in whose name the
+house is registered, is Anna Markovna. She is about sixty. She is very
+small of stature, but dumpy: she may be visualized by imagining, from
+the bottom up, three soft, gelatinous globes—large, medium and small,
+pressed into each other without any interstices; this—her skirt, torso
+and head. Strange, her eyes are a faded blue, girlish, even childish,
+but the mouth is that of an old person, with a moist lower lip of a
+raspberry colour, impotently hanging down. Her husband—Isaiah
+Savvich—is also small, a grayish, quiet, silent little old man. He is
+under his wife’s thumb; he was doorkeeper in this very house even at
+the time when Anna Markovna served here as housekeeper. In order to be
+useful in some way, he has learned, through self-instruction, to play
+the fiddle, and now at night plays dance tunes, as well as a funeral
+march for shopmen far gone on a spree and craving some maudlin tears.
+
+Then, there are the two housekeepers—senior and junior. The senior is
+Emma Edwardovna. She is a tall, full woman of forty-six, with chestnut
+hair, and a fat goitre of three chins. Her eyes are encircled with
+black rings of hemorrhoidal origin. The face broadens out like a pear
+from the forehead down to the cheeks, and is of an earthen colour; the
+eyes are small, black; the nose humped, the lips sternly pursed; the
+expression of the face calmly authoritative. It is no mystery to anyone
+in the house that in a year or two Anna Markovna will go into
+retirement, and sell her the establishment with all its rights and
+furnishings, when she will receive part in cash, and part on terms—by
+promissory note. Because of this the girls honour her equally with the
+proprietress and fear her somewhat. Those who fall into error she beats
+with her own hands, beats cruelly, coolly, and calculatingly, without
+changing the calm expression of her face. Among the girls there is
+always a favourite of hers, whom she tortures with her exacting love
+and fantastic jealousy. And this is far harder than her beatings.
+
+The other one is called Zociya. She has just struggled out of the ranks
+of the common girls. The girls, as yet, call her impersonally,
+flatteringly and familiarly, “little housekeeper.” She is spare, spry,
+just a trifle squinting, with a rosy complexion, and hair dressed in a
+little curly pompadour; she adores actors—preferably stout comedians.
+Toward Emma Edwardovna she is ingratiating.
+
+The fifth person, finally, is the local district inspector, Kerbesh.
+This is an athletic man; he is kind of bald, has a red beard like a
+fan, vividly blue slumbrous eyes, and a thin, slightly hoarse, pleasant
+voice. Everybody knows that he formerly served in the secret service
+division and was the terror of crooks, thanks to his terrible physical
+strength and cruelty in interrogations.
+
+He has several shady transactions on his conscience. The whole town
+knows that two years back he married a rich old woman of seventy, and
+that last year he strangled her; however, he was somehow successful in
+hushing up this affair. But for that matter, the remaining four have
+also seen a thing or two in their chequered life. But, just as the
+bretteurs of old felt no twinges of conscience at the recollection of
+their victims, even so do these people regard the dark and bloody
+things in their past, as the unavoidable little unpleasantness of their
+professions.
+
+They are drinking coffee with rich, boiled cream—the inspector with
+Benedictine. But he, strictly speaking, is not drinking, but merely
+conveying the impression that he is doing it to oblige.
+
+“Well, what is it to be, Phoma Phornich?” asks the proprietress
+searchingly. “This business isn’t worth an empty eggshell, now... Why,
+you have only to say a word...”
+
+Kerbesh slowly draws in half a wine-glass of liqueur, works the oily,
+strong, pungent liquid slightly with his tongue over the roof of his
+mouth, swallows it, chases it down, without hurrying, with coffee, and
+then passes the ring finger of his left hand over his moustaches, to
+the right and left.
+
+“Think it over for yourself, Madam Shoibes,” he says, looking down at
+the table, spreading out his hands and screwing up his eyes. “Think of
+the risk to which I’m exposed! The girl through means of deception was
+enticed into this... what-you-may-call-it... well, in a word, into a
+house of ill-fame, to express it in lofty style. Now the parents are
+searching for her through the police. Ve-ery well. She gets into one
+place after another, from the fifth into the tenth... Finally the trail
+is picked up with you, and most important of all—think of it!—in my
+district! What can I do?”
+
+“Mr. Kerbesh, but she is of age,” says the proprietress.
+
+“They are of age,” confirms Isaiah Savvich. “They gave an
+acknowledgment, that it was of their own will...”
+
+Emma Edwardovna pronounces in a bass, with cool assurance:
+
+“Honest to God, she’s the same here as an own daughter.”
+
+“But that’s not what I am talking about,” the inspector frowns in
+vexation. “Just consider my position... Why, this is duty. Lord,
+there’s no end of unpleasantnesses without that!”
+
+The proprietress suddenly arises, shuffles in her slippers to the door,
+and says, winking to the inspector with a sleepy, expressionless eye of
+faded blue:
+
+“Mr. Kerbesh, I would ask you to have a look at our alterations. We
+want to enlarge the place a bit.”
+
+“A-ah! With pleasure...”
+
+After ten minutes both return, without looking at each other. Kerbesh’s
+hand is crunching a brand-new hundred rouble note in his pocket. The
+conversation about the seduced girl is not renewed. The inspector,
+hastily finishing his Benedictine, complains of the present decline in
+manners.
+
+“I have a son, now, a schoolboy—Paul. He comes to me, the scoundrel,
+and declares: ’Papa, the pupils swear at me, because you are a
+policeman, and because you serve on Yamskaya, and because you take
+bribes from brothels.’ Well, tell me, for God’s sake, Madam Shoibes, if
+that isn’t effrontery?”
+
+“Ai, ai, ai! ... And what bribes can there be? Now with me...”
+
+“I say to him: ’Go, you good-for-nothing, and let the principal know,
+that there should be no more of this, otherwise papa will inform on all
+of you to the governor.’ And what do you think? He comes to me and
+says: ’I am no longer a son to you—seek another son for yourself.’ What
+an argument! Well, I gave him enough to last till the first of the
+month! Oho-ho! Now he doesn’t want to speak with me. Well, I’ll show
+him yet!”
+
+“Ah, you don’t have to tell us,” sighs Anna Markovna, letting her
+lower, raspberry-coloured lip hang down and with a mist coming over her
+faded eyes. “We keep our Birdie—she is in Fleisher’s high school—we
+purposely keep her in town, in a respectable family. You understand, it
+is awkward, after all. And all of a sudden she brings such words and
+expressions from the high school that I just simply turned all red.”
+
+“Honest to God, Annochka turned all red,” confirms Isaiah Savvich.
+
+“You’ll turn red, all right!” warmly agrees the inspector. “Yes, yes,
+yes, I understand you fully. But, my God, where are we going! Where are
+we only going? I ask you, what are these revolutionaries and all these
+various students, or... what-you-may-call-’ems? ... trying to attain?
+And let them put the blame on none but themselves. Corruption is
+everywhere, morality is falling, there is no respect for parents. They
+ought to be shot.”
+
+“Well, now, the day before yesterday we had a case,” Zociya mixes in
+bustlingly. “A certain guest came, a stout man...”
+
+“Drop it!” Emma Edwardovna, who was listening to the inspector, piously
+nodding with her head bowed to one side, cuts her short in the jargon
+of the brothels. “You’d better go and see about breakfast for the young
+ladies.”
+
+“And not a single person can be relied upon,” continues the
+proprietress grumblingly. “Not a servant but what she’s a stiff, a
+faker. And all the girls ever think about is their lovers. Just so’s
+they may have their own pleasure. But about their duties they don’t
+even think.”
+
+There is an awkward silence. Some one knocks on the door. A thin,
+feminine voice speaks on the other side of the door:
+
+“Housekeeper, dear, take the money and be kind enough to give me the
+stamps. Pete’s gone.”
+
+The inspector gets up and adjusts his sabre.
+
+“Well, it’s time I was going to work. Best regards, Anna Markovna. Best
+wishes, Isaiah Savvich.”
+
+“Perhaps you’ll have one more little glass for a stirrup cup?” the
+nearly blind Isaiah Savvich thrusts himself over the table.
+
+“Tha-ank you. I can’t. Full to the gills. Honoured, I’m sure! ...”
+
+“Thanks for your company. Drop in some time.”
+
+“Always glad to be your guest, sir. Au revoir!”
+
+But in the doorway he stops for a minute and says significantly:
+
+“But still, my advice to you is—you’d better pass this girl on to some
+place or other in good time. Of course, it’s your affair, but as a good
+friend of yours I give you warning.”
+
+He goes away. When his steps are abating on the stairs and the front
+door bangs to behind him, Emma Edwardovna snorts through her nose and
+says contemptuously:
+
+“Stool-pigeon! He wants to take money both here and there...”
+
+Little by little they all crawl apart out of the room. It is dark in
+the house. It smells sweetly of the half-withered sedge. Quiet reigns.
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+
+Until dinner, which is served at six in the evening, the time drags
+endlessly long and with intolerable monotony. And, in general, this
+daily interval is the heaviest and emptiest in the life of the house.
+It remotely resembles in its moods those slothful, empty hours which
+are lived through during the great holidays in scholastic institutes
+and other private institutions for females, when all the friends have
+dispersed, when there is much leisure and much indolence, and a
+radiant, agreeable tedium reigns the whole day. In only their
+petticoats and white shifts, with bare arms, sometimes barefooted, the
+women aimlessly ramble from room to room, all of them unwashed,
+uncombed; lazily strike the keys of the old pianoforte with the index
+finger, lazily lay out cards to tell their fortune, lazily exchange
+curses, and with a languishing irritation await the evening.
+
+Liubka, after breakfast, had carried out the leavings of bread and the
+cuttings of ham to Amour, but the dog had soon palled upon her.
+Together with Niura she had bought some barberry bon-bons and sunflower
+seeds, and now both are standing behind the fence separating the house
+from the street, gnawing the seeds, the shells of which remain on their
+chins and bosoms, and speculate indifferently about those who pass on
+the street: about the lamp-lighter, pouring kerosene into the street
+lamps, about the policeman with the daily registry book under his arm,
+about the housekeeper from somebody else’s establishment, running
+across the road to the general store.
+
+Niura is a small girl, with goggle-eyes of blue; she has white, flaxen
+hair and little blue veins on her temples. In her face there is
+something stolid and innocent, reminiscent of a white sugar lamb on a
+Paschal cake. She is lively, bustling, curious, puts her nose into
+everything, agrees with everybody, is the first to know the news, and,
+when she speaks, she speaks so much and so rapidly that spray flies out
+of her mouth and bubbles effervescence on the red lips, as in children.
+
+Opposite, out of the dram-shop, a servant pops out for a minute—a
+curly, besotted young fellow with a cast in his eye—and runs into the
+neighbouring public house.
+
+“Prokhor Ivanovich, oh Prokhor Ivanovich,” shouts Niura, “don’t you
+want some?—I’ll treat you to some sunflower seeds!”
+
+“Come on in and pay us a visit,” Liubka chimes in.
+
+Niura snorts and adds through the laughter which suffocates her:
+
+“Warm your feet for a while!”
+
+But the front door opens; in it appears the formidable and stern figure
+of the senior housekeeper.
+
+“Pfui![2] What sort of indecency is this!” she cries commandingly. “How
+many times must it be repeated to you, that you must not jump out on
+the street during the day, and also—pfui!—only in your underwear. I
+can’t understand how you have no conscience yourselves. Decent girls,
+who respect themselves, must not demean themselves that way in public.
+It seems, thank God, that you are not in an establishment catering to
+soldiers, but in a respectable house. Not in Little Yamskaya.”
+
+[2] A German exclamation of disgust or contempt, corresponding to the
+English fie.—Trans.
+
+
+The girls return into the house, get into the kitchen, and for a long
+time sit there on tabourets, contemplating the angry cook Prascoviya,
+swinging their legs and silently gnawing the sunflower seeds.
+
+In the room of Little Manka, who is also called Manka the Scandaliste
+and Little White Manka, a whole party has gathered. Sitting on the edge
+of the bed, she and another girl—Zoe, a tall handsome girl, with arched
+eyebrows, with grey, somewhat bulging eyes, with the most typical,
+white, kind face of the Russian prostitute—are playing at cards,
+playing at “sixty-six.” Little Manka’s closest friend, Jennie, is lying
+behind their backs on the bed, prone on her back, reading a tattered
+book, The Queen’s Necklace, the work of Monsieur Dumas, and smoking. In
+the entire establishment she is the only lover of reading and reads
+intoxicatingly and without discrimination. But, contrary to
+expectation, the forced reading of novels of adventure has not at all
+made her sentimental and has not vitiated her imagination. Above all,
+she likes in novels a long intrigue, cunningly thought out and deftly
+disentangled; magnificent duels, before which the viscount unties the
+laces of his shoes to signify that he does not intend to retreat even a
+step from his position,[3] and after which the marquis, having spitted
+the count through, apologizes for having made an opening in his
+splendid new waistcoat; purses, filled to the full with gold,
+carelessly strewn to the left and right by the chief heroes; the love
+adventures and witticisms of Henry IV—in a word, all this spiced
+heroism, in gold and lace, of the past centuries of French history. In
+everyday life, on the contrary, she is sober of mind, jeering,
+practical and cynically malicious. In her relation to the other girls
+of the establishment she occupies the same place that in private
+educational institutions is accorded to the first strong man, the man
+spending a second year in the same grade, the first beauty in the
+class—tyrannizing and adored. She is a tall, thin brunette, with
+beautiful hazel eyes, a small proud mouth, a little moustache on the
+upper lip and with a swarthy, unhealthy pink on her cheeks.
+
+[3] Probably a sly dig at Gautier’s Captain Fracasse.—Trans.
+
+
+Without letting the cigarette out of her mouth and screwing up her eyes
+from the smoke, all she does is to turn the pages constantly with a
+moistened finger. Her legs are bare to the knees; the enormous balls of
+the feet are of the most vulgar form; below the big toes stand out
+pointed, ugly, irregular tumours.
+
+Here also, with her legs crossed, slightly bent, with some sewing, sits
+Tamara—a quiet, easy-going, pretty girl, slightly reddish, with that
+dark and shining tint of hair which is to be found on the back of a fox
+in winter. Her real name is Glycera, or Lukeria, as the common folk say
+it. But it is already an ancient usage of the houses of ill-fame to
+replace the uncouth names of the Matrenas, Agathas, Cyclitinias with
+sonorous, preferably exotic names. Tamara had at one time been a nun,
+or, perhaps, merely a novice in a convent, and to this day there have
+been preserved on her face timidity and a pale puffiness—a modest and
+sly expression, which is peculiar to young nuns. She holds herself
+aloof in the house, does not chum with any one, does not initiate any
+one into her past life. But in her case there must have been many more
+adventures besides having been a nun: there is something mysterious,
+taciturn and criminal in her unhurried speech, in the evasive glance of
+her deep and dark-gold eyes from under the long, lowered eyelashes, in
+her manners, her sly smiles and intonations of a modest but wanton
+would-be saint. There was one occurrence when the girls, with well-nigh
+reverent awe, heard that Tamara could talk fluently in French and
+German. She has within her some sort of an inner, restrained power.
+Notwithstanding her outward meekness and complaisance, all in the
+establishment treat her with respect and circumspection—the
+proprietress, and her mates, and both housekeepers, and even the
+doorkeeper, that veritable sultan of the house of ill-fame, that
+general terror and hero.
+
+“I’ve covered it,” says Zoe and turns over the trump which had been
+lying under the pack, wrong side up. “I’m going with forty, going with
+an ace of spades—a ten-spot, Mannechka, if you please. I’m through.
+Fifty-seven, eleven, sixty-eight. How much have you?”
+
+“Thirty,” says Manka in an offended tone, pouting her lips; “oh, it’s
+all very well for you—you remember all the plays. Deal ... Well, what’s
+after that, Tamarochka?” she turns to her friend. “You talk on—I’m
+listening.”
+
+Zoe shuffles the old, black, greasy cards, allows Manya to cut, then
+deals, having first spat upon her fingers.
+
+Tamara in the meanwhile is narrating to Manya in a quiet voice, without
+dropping her sewing.
+
+“We embroidered with gold, in flat embroidery—altar covers, palls,
+bishops’ vestments... With little grasses, with flowers, little
+crosses. In winter, you’d be sitting near a casement; the panes are
+small, with gratings, there isn’t much light, it smells of lamp oil,
+incense, cypress; you mustn’t talk—the mother superior was strict. Some
+one from weariness would begin droning a pre-Lenten first verse of a
+hymn ... ‘When I consider thy heavens ...’ We sang fine, beautifully,
+and it was such a quiet life, and the smell was so fine; you could see
+the flaky snow out the windows—well, now, just like in a dream...”
+
+Jennie puts the tattered novel down on her stomach, throws the
+cigarette over Zoe’s head, and says mockingly:
+
+“We know all about your quiet life. You chucked the infants into
+toilets. The Evil One is always snooping around your holy places.”
+
+“I call forty. I had forty-six. Finished!” Little Manka exclaims
+excitedly and claps her palms. “I open with three.”
+
+Tamara, smiling at Jennie’s words, answers with a scarcely perceptible
+smile, which barely distends her lips, but makes little, sly, ambiguous
+depressions at their corners, altogether as with Monna Lisa in the
+portrait by Leonardo da Vinci.
+
+“Lay folk say a lot of things about nuns ... Well, even if there had
+been sin once in a while ...”
+
+“If you don’t sin—you don’t repent,” Zoe puts in seriously, and wets
+her finger in her mouth.
+
+“You sit and sew, the gold eddies before your eyes, while from standing
+in the morning at prayer your back just aches, and your legs ache. And
+at evening there is service again. You knock at the door of the mother
+superior’s cell: ‘Through prayers of Thy saints, oh Lord, our Father,
+have mercy upon us.’ And the mother superior would answer from the
+cell, in a little bass-like ‘A-men.’”
+
+Jennie looks at her intently for some time, shakes her head and says
+with great significance:
+
+“You’re a queer girl, Tamara. Here I’m looking at you and wondering.
+Well, now, I can understand how these fools, on the manner of Sonka,
+play at love. That’s what they’re fools for. But you, it seems, have
+been roasted on all sorts of embers, have been washed in all sorts of
+lye, and yet you allow yourself foolishness of that sort. What are you
+embroidering that shirt for?”
+
+Tamara, without haste, with a pin refastens the fabric more
+conveniently on her knee, smooths the seam down with the thimble, and
+speaks, without raising the narrowed eyes, her head bent just a trifle
+to one side:
+
+“One’s got to be doing something. It’s wearisome just so. I don’t play
+at cards, and I don’t like them.”
+
+Jennie continues to shake her head.
+
+“No, you’re a queer girl, really you are. You always have more from the
+guests than all of us get. You fool, instead of saving money, what do
+you spend it on? You buy perfumes at seven roubles the bottle. Who
+needs it? And now you have bought fifteen roubles’ worth of silk. Isn’t
+this for your Senka, now?”
+
+“Of course, for Sennechka.”
+
+“What a treasure you’ve found, to be sure! A miserable thief. He rides
+up to this establishment like some general. How is it he doesn’t beat
+you yet? The thieves—they like that. And he plucks you, have no fear?”
+
+“More than I want to, I won’t give,” meekly answers Tamara and bites
+the thread in two.
+
+“Now that is just what I wonder at. With your mind, your beauty, I
+would put such rings-around-a-rosie about a guest like that, that he’d
+take me and set me up. I’d have horses of my own, and diamonds.”
+
+“Everyone to his tastes, Jennechka. You too, now, are a very pretty and
+darling girl, and your character is so independent and brave, and yet
+you and I have gotten stuck in Anna Markovna’s.”
+
+Jennie flares up and answers with unsimulated bitterness:
+
+“Yes! Why not! All things come your way! ...You have all the very best
+guests. You do what you want with them, but with me it’s always either
+old men or suckling babies. I have no luck. The ones are snotty, the
+others have yellow around the mouth. More than anything else, now, I
+dislike the little boys. He comes, the little varmint; he’s cowardly,
+he hurries, he trembles, but having done the business, he doesn’t know
+what to do with his eyes for shame. He’s all squirming from disgust. I
+just feel like giving him one in the snout. Before giving you the
+rouble, he holds it in his pocket in his fist, and that rouble’s all
+hot, even sweaty. The milksop! His mother gives him a ten kopeck piece
+for a French roll with sausage, but he’s economized out of that for a
+wench. I had one little cadet in the last few days. So just on purpose,
+to spite him, I say: ‘Here, my dearie, here’s a little caramel for you
+on your way; when you’re going back to your corps, you’ll suck on it.’
+So at first he got offended, but afterwards took it. Later I looked
+from the stoop, on purpose; just as soon as he walked out, he looked
+around, and right away into his mouth with the caramel. The little
+swine!”
+
+“But with old men it’s still worse,” says Little Manka in a tender
+voice, and slyly looks at Zoe. “What do you think, Zoinka?”
+
+Zoe, who had already finished playing, and was just about to yawn, now
+cannot in any way give rein to her yawns. She does not know whether she
+wants to be angry or to laugh. She has a steady visitor, some little
+old man in a high station, with perverted erotic habits. The entire
+establishment makes fun of his visits to her.
+
+Zoe at last succeeds in yawning.
+
+“To the devil’s dam with all of you,” she says, with her voice hoarse
+after the yawn; “may he be damned, the old anathema!”
+
+“But still, the worst of all,” Jennie continues to discourse, “worse
+than your director, Zoinka, worse than my cadet, the worst of all—are
+your lovers. What can there be joyous in this: he comes drunk, poses,
+makes sport of you, wants to pretend there’s something in him—only
+nothing comes of it all. Wha-at a lad-die, to be sure! The scummiest of
+the scum, dirty, beaten-up, stinking, his whole body in scars, there’s
+only one glory about him: the silk shirt which Tamarka will embroider
+for him. He curses one’s mother, the son of a bitch, always aching for
+a fight. Ugh! No!” she suddenly exclaimed in a merry provoking voice,
+“The one I love truly and surely, for ever and ever, is my Mannechka,
+Manka the white, little Manka, my Manka-Scandalistochka.”
+
+And unexpectedly, having embraced Manya by the shoulders and bosom, she
+drew her toward herself, threw her down on the bed, and began to kiss
+deeply and vigorously her hair, eyes, lips. Manka with difficulty tore
+herself away from her, with dishevelled, bright, fine, downy hair, all
+rosy from the resistance, and with eyes downcast and moist from shame
+and laughter.
+
+“Leave off, Jennechka, leave off. Well, now, what are you doing? Let me
+go!”
+
+Little Manya is the meekest and quietest girl in the entire
+establishment. She is kind, yielding, can never refuse anybody’s
+request, and involuntarily everybody treats her with great gentleness.
+She blushes over every trifle, and at such time becomes especially
+attractive, as only very tender blondes with a sensitive skin can be
+attractive. But it is sufficient for her to drink three or four glasses
+of Liqueur Benedictine, of which she is very fond, for her to become
+unrecognizable and to create brawls, such, that there is always
+required the intervention of the housekeepers, the porter, at times
+even the police. It is nothing for her to hit a guest in the face or to
+throw in his face a glass filled with wine, to overturn the lamp, to
+curse out the proprietress, Jennie treats her with some strange, tender
+patronage and rough adoration.
+
+“Ladies, to dinner! To dinner, ladies!” calls Zociya the housekeeper,
+running along the corridor. On the run she opens the door into Manya’s
+room and drops hurriedly:
+
+“To dinner, to dinner, ladies!”
+
+They go again to the kitchen, all still in their underwear, all
+unwashed, in slippers and barefoot. A tasty vegetable soup of pork
+rinds and tomatoes, cutlets, and pastry-cream rolls are served. But no
+one has any appetite, thanks to the sedentary life and irregular sleep,
+and also because the majority of the girls, just like school-girls on a
+holiday, had already managed during the day to send to the store for
+halvah, nuts, rakkat loukoum (Turkish Delight), dill-pickles and
+molasses candy, and had through this spoiled their appetites. Only Nina
+alone—a small, pug-nosed, snuffling country girl, seduced only two
+months ago by a travelling salesman, and (also by him) sold into a
+brothel—eats for four. The inordinate, provident appetite of a woman of
+the common people has not yet disappeared in her.
+
+Jennie, who has only picked fastidiously at her cutlet and eaten half
+her cream roll, speaks to her in a tone of hypocritical solicitude:
+
+“Really, Pheclusha, you might just as well eat my cutlet, too. Eat, my
+dear, eat; don’t be bashful—you ought to be gaining in health. But do
+you know what I’ll tell you, ladies?” she turns to her mates, “Why, our
+Pheclusha has a tape-worm, and when a person has a tape-worm, he always
+eats for two: half for himself, half for the worm.”
+
+Nina sniffs angrily and answers in a bass which comes as a surprise
+from one of her stature, and through her nose:
+
+“There are no tape-worms in me. It’s you that has the tape-worms,
+that’s why you are so skinny.”
+
+And she imperturbably continues to eat, and after dinner feels herself
+sleepy, like a boa constrictor, eructs loudly, drinks water, hiccups,
+and, by stealth, if no one sees her, makes the sign of the cross over
+her mouth, through an old habit.
+
+But already the ringing voice of Zociya can be heard through the
+corridors and rooms:
+
+“Get dressed, ladies, get dressed. There’s no use in sitting
+around...To work...”
+
+After a few minutes in all the rooms of the establishment there are
+smells of singed hair, boric-thymol soap, cheap eau-de-cologne. The
+girls are dressing for the evening.
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+
+The late twilight came on, and after it the warm, dark night, but for
+long, until very midnight, did the deep crimson glow of the sky still
+smoulder. Simeon, the porter of the establishment, has lit all the
+lamps along the walls of the drawing room, and the lustre, as well as
+the red lantern over the stoop. Simeon was a spare, stocky, taciturn
+and harsh man, with straight, broad shoulders, dark-haired,
+pock-marked, with little bald spots on his eye-brows and moustaches
+from small-pox, and with black, dull, insolent eyes. By day he was free
+and slept, while at night he sat without absenting himself in the front
+hall under the reflector, in order to help the guests with their coats
+and to be ready in case of any disorder.
+
+The pianist came—a tall, elegant young man, with white eyebrows and
+eyelashes, and a cataract in his right eye. The while there were no
+guests, he and Isaiah Savvich quietly rehearsed Pas d’Espagne, at that
+time coming into fashion. For every dance ordered by the guests, they
+received thirty kopecks for an easy dance, and a half rouble for a
+quadrille. But one-half of this price was taken out by the
+proprietress, Anna Markovna; the other, however, the musicians divided
+evenly. In this manner the pianist received only a quarter of the
+general earnings, which, of course, was unjust, since Isaiah Savvich
+played as one self-taught and was distinguished for having no more ear
+for music than a piece of wood. The pianist was constantly compelled to
+drag him on to new tunes, to correct and cover his mistakes with loud
+chords. The girls said of their pianist to the guests, with a certain
+pride, that he had been in the conservatory and always ranked as the
+first pupil, but since he is a Jew, and in addition to that his eyes
+had begun to trouble him, he had not succeeded in completing the
+course. They all treated him carefully and considerately, with some
+sort of solicitous, somewhat mawkish, commiseration, which chimes so
+well with the inner, backstage customs of houses of ill-fame, where
+underneath the outer coarseness and the flaunting of obscene words
+dwells the same sweetish, hysterical sentimentality as in female
+boarding schools, and, so they say, in penal institutions.
+
+In the house of Anna Markovna everybody was already dressed and ready
+for the reception of the guests, and languishing from inaction and
+expectation. Despite the fact that the majority of the women
+experienced toward men—with the exception of their lovers—a complete,
+even somewhat squeamish, indifference, before every evening dim hopes
+came to life and stirred within their souls; it was unknown who would
+choose them, whether something unusual, funny and alluring might not
+happen, whether a guest would not astonish with his generosity, whether
+there would not be some miracle which would overturn the whole
+life...In these presentiments and hopes was something akin to those
+emotions which the accustomed gamester experiences when counting his
+ready money before starting out for his club. Besides that, despite
+their asexuality, they still had not lost the chiefest instinctive
+aspiration of women—to please.
+
+And, in truth, altogether curious personages came into the house at
+times and ludicrous, motley events arose. The police would appear
+suddenly together with disguised detectives and arrest some seemingly
+respectable, irreproachable gentlemen and lead them off, pushing them
+along with blows in the neck. At times brawls would spring up between
+the drunken, trouble-making company and the porters of all the
+establishments, who had gathered on the run for the relief of a fellow
+porter—a brawl, during which the window-panes and the decks of
+grand-pianos were broken, when the legs of the plush chairs were
+wrenched out for weapons, blood ran over the parquet floor of the
+drawing room and the steps of the stairs, and people with pierced sides
+and broken heads fell down into the dirt near the street entrance, to
+the feral, avid delight of Jennka, who, with burning eyes, with happy
+laughter, went into the thickest of the melee, slapped herself on the
+hips, swore and sicked them on, while her mates were squealing from
+fear and hiding under the beds.
+
+There were occurrences when there would arrive, with a pack of
+parasites, some member of a workingmen’s association or a cashier, long
+since far gone in an embezzlement of many thousands through gambling at
+cards and hideous orgies, and now, in a drunken, senseless delirium,
+tossing the last money after the other, before suicide or the
+prisoner’s box. Then the doors and windows of the house would be
+tightly closed, and for two days and nights at a stretch a Russian orgy
+would go on—nightmarish, tedious, savage, with screams and tears, with
+revilement over the body of woman; paradisaical nights were gotten up,
+during which naked, drunken, bow-legged, hairy, pot-bellied men, and
+women with flabby, yellow, pendulous thin bodies hideously grimaced to
+the music; they drank and guzzled like swine, on the beds and on the
+floor, amidst the stifling atmosphere, permeated with spirits, befouled
+with human respiration and the exhalations of unclean skins.
+
+Occasionally, there would appear a circus athlete, creating in the
+low-ceiled quarters a strangely cumbersome impression, somewhat like
+that of a horse led into a room; a Chinaman in a blue blouse, white
+stockings, and with a queue; a negro from a cabaret, in a tuxedo coat
+and checked pantaloons, with a flower in his button-hole, and with
+starched linen, which, to the amazement of the girls, not only did not
+soil from the black skin, but appeared still more dazzlingly white.
+
+These rare people fomented the satiated imagination of the prostitutes,
+excited their exhausted sensuality and professional curiosity, and all
+of them, almost enamoured, would walk in their steps, jealous and
+bickering with one another.
+
+There was one incident when Simeon had let into the room an elderly
+man, dressed like a bourgeois. There was nothing exceptional about him;
+he had a stern, thin face, with bony, evil-looking cheek-bones,
+protruding like tumours, a low forehead, a beard like a wedge, bushy
+eyebrows, one eye perceptibly higher than the other. Having entered, he
+raised his fingers, folded for the sign of the cross, to his forehead,
+but having searched the corners with his eyes and finding no image, he
+did not in the least grow confused, put down his hand, and at once with
+a business-like air walked up to the fattest girl in the
+establishment—Kitty.
+
+“Let’s go!” he commanded curtly, and with determination nodded his head
+in the direction of the door.
+
+During the entire period of her absence the omniscious Simeon, with a
+mysterious, and even somewhat proud air, managed to inform Niura, at
+that time his mistress, while she, in a whisper, with horror in her
+rounded eyes, told her mates, in secret, that the name of the bourgeois
+was Dyadchenko, and that last fall he had volunteered, owing to the
+absence of the hangman, to carry out the execution of eleven rioters,
+and with his own hands had hung them in two mornings. And—monstrous as
+it may be—at that hour there was not in the establishment a single girl
+who did not feel envy toward the fat Kitty, and did not experience a
+painful, keen, vertiginous curiosity. When Dyadchenko was going away
+half an hour later—with his sedate and stern air, all the women
+speechlessly, with their mouths gaping, escorted him to the street door
+and afterwards watched him from the windows as he walked along the
+street. Then they rushed into the room of the dressing Kitty and
+overwhelmed her with interrogations. They looked with a new feeling,
+almost with astonishment, at her bare, red, thick arms, at the bed,
+still crumpled, at the old, greasy, paper rouble, which Kitty showed
+them, having taken it out of her stocking. Kitty could tell them
+nothing. “A man like any man, like all men,” she said with a calm
+incomprehension; but when she found out who her visitor had been, she
+suddenly burst into tears, without herself knowing why.
+
+This man, the outcast of outcasts, fallen as low as the fancy of man
+can picture, this voluntary headsman, had treated her without rudeness,
+but with such absence of even a hint at endearment, with such disdain
+and wooden indifference, as no human being is treated; not even a dog
+or a horse, and not even an umbrella, overcoat or hat, but like some
+dirty, unclean object, for which a momentary, unavoidable need arises,
+but which, at the passing of its needfulness, becomes foreign, useless,
+and disgusting. The entire horror of this thought the fat Kate could
+not embrace with her brain of a fattened turkey hen, and because of
+that cried—as it seemed even to her—without cause and reason.
+
+There were also other happenings, which stirred up the turbid, foul
+life of these poor, sick, silly, unfortunate women. There were cases of
+savage, unbridled jealousy with pistol shots and poisoning;
+occasionally, very rarely, a tender, flaming and pure love would
+blossom out upon this dung; occasionally the women even abandoned an
+establishment with the help of the loved man, but almost always came
+back. Two or three times it happened that a woman from a brothel would
+suddenly prove pregnant—and this always seemed, on the face of it,
+laughable and disgraceful, but touching in the profundity of the event.
+
+And no matter what may have happened, every evening brought with it
+such an irritating, strained, spicy expectation of adventures that
+every other life, after that in a house of ill-fame, would have seemed
+flat and humdrum to these lazy women of no will power.
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+
+The windows are opened wide to the fragrant darkness of the evening,
+and the tulle curtains stir faintly back and forth from the
+imperceptible movement of the air. It smells of dewy grass from the
+consumptive little garden in front of the house, and just the least wee
+bit of lilac and the withering birch leaves of the little trees placed
+near the entrance because of the Trinity. Liuba, in a blue velvet
+blouse with low cut bosom, and Niura, dressed as a “baby,” in a pink,
+wide sacque to the knees, with her bright hair loose and with little
+curls on her forehead, are lying embraced on the window-sill, and are
+singing in a low voice a song about the hospital, which song is the
+rage of the day and exceedingly well known among prostitutes. Niura,
+through her nose, leads in a high voice.
+
+Liuba seconds her with a stifled alto:
+
+“Monday now is come again,
+They’re supposed to get me out;
+Doctor Krasov won’t let me out ...”
+
+
+In all the houses the windows are brightly lit, while hanging lanterns
+are burning before the entrances. To both girls the interior in the
+establishment of Sophia Vasilievna, which is directly opposite, is
+distinctly visible—the shining yellow parquet, draperies of a dark
+cherry colour on the doors, caught up with cords, the end of a black
+grand-piano, a pier glass in a gilt frame, and the figures of women in
+gorgeous dresses, now flashing at the windows, now disappearing, and
+their reflections in the mirrors. The carved stoop of Treppel, to the
+right, is brightly illuminated by a bluish electric light in a big
+frosted globe.
+
+The evening is calm and warm. Somewhere far, far away, beyond the line
+of the railroads, beyond some black roofs and the thin black trunks of
+trees, down low over the dark earth in which the eye does not see but
+rather senses the mighty green tone of spring, reddens with a scarlet
+gold the narrow, long streak of the sunset glow, which has pierced the
+dove-coloured mist. And in this indistinct, distant light, in the
+caressing air, in the scents of the oncoming night, was some secret,
+sweet, conscious mournfulness, which usually is so gentle in the
+evenings between spring and summer. The indistinct noise of the city
+floated in, the dolorous, snuffling air of an accordeon, the mooing of
+cows could be heard; somebody’s soles were scraping dryly and a
+ferruled cane rapped resoundingly on the flags of the pavement; lazily
+and irregularly the wheels of a cabman’s victoria, rolling at a pace
+through Yama, would rumble by, and all these sounds mingled with a
+beauty and softness in the pensive drowsiness of the evening. And the
+whistles of the locomotives on the line of the railroad, which was
+marked out in the darkness with green and red lights, sounded with a
+quiet, singing caution.
+
+“Now the nurse is co-oming in,
+Bringing sugar and a roll,
+Bringing sugar and a roll,
+Deals them equally to all.”
+
+
+“Prokhor Ivanich!” Niura suddenly calls after the curly waiter from the
+dram-shop, who, a light black silhouette, is running across the road.
+“Oh, Prokhor Ivanich!”
+
+“Oh, bother you!” the other snarls hoarsely. “What now?”
+
+“A friend of yours sent you his regards. I saw him today.”
+
+“What sort of friend?”
+
+“Such a little good-looker! An attractive little brunet ...No, but
+you’d better ask—where did I see him?”
+
+“Well, where?” Prokhor Ivanovich comes to a stop for a minute.
+
+“And here’s where: nailed over there, on the fifth shelf with old hats,
+where we keep all dead cats.”
+
+“Scat! You darn fool!”
+
+Niura laughs shrilly over all Yama, and throws herself down on the
+sill, kicking her legs in high black stockings. Afterward, having
+ceased laughing, she all of a sudden makes round astonished eyes and
+says in a whisper:
+
+“But do you know, girlie—why, he cut a woman’s throat the year before
+last—that same Prokhor. Honest to God!”
+
+“Is that so? Did she die?”
+
+“No, she didn’t. She got by,” says Niura, as though with regret. “But
+just the same she lay for two months in the Alexandrovskaya Hospital.
+The doctors said, that if it were only this teen-weeny bit higher—then
+it would have been all over. Bye-bye!”
+
+“Well, what did he do that to her for?”
+
+“How should I know? Maybe she hid money from him or wasn’t true to him.
+He was her lover—her pimp.”
+
+“Well, and what did he get for it?”
+
+“Why, nothing. There was no evidence of any kind. There had been a
+free-for-all mix-up. About a hundred people were fighting. She also
+told the police that she had no suspicions of any sort. But Prokhor
+himself boasted afterwards: ‘I,’ says he, ‘didn’t do for Dunka that
+time, but I’ll finish her off another time. She,’ says he, ‘won’t get
+by my hands. I’m going to give her the works.’”
+
+A shiver runs all the way down Liuba’s back.
+
+“They’re desperate fellows, these pimps!” she pronounces quietly, with
+horror in her voice.
+
+“Something terrible! I, you know, played at love with our Simeon for a
+whole year. Such a Herod, the skunk! I didn’t have a whole spot on me.
+I always went about in black and blue marks. And it wasn’t for any
+reason at all, but just simply so—he’d go in the morning into a room
+with me, lock himself in, and start in to torture me. He’d wrench my
+arms, pinch my breasts, grab my throat and begin to strangle me. Or
+else he’d be kissing, kissing, and then he’d bite the lips so that the
+blood would just spurt out ... I’d start crying—but that’s all he was
+looking for. Then he’d just pounce an me like a beast—simply shivering
+all over. And he’d take all my money away—well, now, to the very last
+little copper. There wasn’t anything to buy ten cigarettes with. He’s
+stingy, this here Simeon, that’s what, always into the bank-book with
+it, always putting it away into the bank-book... Says when he gets a
+thousand roubles together—he’ll go into a monastery.”
+
+“Go on!”
+
+“Honest to God. You look into his little room: the twenty-four hours
+round, day and night, the little holy lamp burns before the images.
+He’s very strong for God ... Only I think that he’s that way because
+there’s heavy sins upon him. He’s a murderer.”
+
+“What are you saying?”
+
+“Oh, let’s drop talking about him, Liubochka. Well, let’s go on
+further:
+
+“I’ll go to the drug store, buy me some poison, And I will poison then
+meself.”
+
+Niura starts off in a very high, thin voice.
+
+Jennie walks back and forth in the room, with arms akimbo, swaying as
+she walks, and looking at herself in all the mirrors. She has on a
+short orange satin dress, with straight deep pleats in the skirt, which
+vacillates evenly to the left and right from the movement of her hips.
+Little Manka, a passionate lover of card games, ready to play from
+morning to morning, without stopping, is playing away at “sixty-six”
+with Pasha, during which both women, for convenience in dealing, have
+left an empty chair between them, while they gather their tricks into
+their skirts, spread out between their knees. Manka has on a brown,
+very modest dress, with black apron and pleated black bib; this dress
+is very becoming to her dainty, fair little head and small stature; it
+makes her younger and gives her the appearance of a high-school
+undergraduate.
+
+Her partner Pasha is a very queer and unhappy girl. She should have
+been, long ago, not in a house of ill-fame, but in a psychiatric ward,
+because of an excruciating nervous malady, which compels her to give
+herself up, frenziedly, with an unwholesome avidity, to any man
+whatsoever who may choose her, even the most repulsive. Her mates make
+sport of her and despise her somewhat for this vice, just as though for
+some treason to their corporate enmity toward men. Niura, with very
+great versimilitude, mimics her sighs, groans, outcries and passionate
+words, from which she can never refrain in the moments of ecstasy and
+which are to be heard in the neighbouring rooms through two or three
+partitions. There is a rumour afloat about Pasha, that she got into a
+brothel not at all through necessity or temptation or deception, but
+had gone into it her own self, voluntarily, following her horrible,
+insatiable instinct. But the proprietress of the house and both the
+housekeepers indulge Pasha in every way and encourage her insane
+weakness, because, thanks to it, Pasha is in constant demand and earns
+four, five times as much as any one of the remaining girls—earns so
+much, that on busy gala days she is not brought out to the more drab
+guests at all, or else refused them under the pretext of Pasha’s
+illness, because the steady, paying guests are offended if they are
+told that the girl they know is busy with another. And of such steady
+guests Pasha has a multitude; many are with perfect sincerity, even
+though bestially, in love with her, and even not so long ago two,
+almost at the same time, offered to set her up: a Georgian—a clerk in a
+store of Cakhetine wines, and some railroad agent, a very proud and
+very poor nobleman, with shirt cuffs the colour of a cabbage rose, and
+with an eye which had been replaced by a black circle on an elastic.
+Pasha, passive in everything save her impersonal sensuality, would go
+with anybody who might call her, but the administration of the house
+vigilantly guards its interests in her. A near insanity already flits
+over her lovely face, in her half-closed eyes, always smiling with some
+heady, blissful, meek, bashful and unseemly smile, in her languorous,
+softened, moist lips, which she is constantly licking; in her short,
+quiet laugh—the laugh of an idiot. Yet at the same time she—this
+veritable victim of the social temperament—in everyday life is very
+good-natured, yielding, entirely uncovetous and is very much ashamed of
+her inordinate passion. Toward her mates she is tender, likes very much
+to kiss and embrace them and sleep in the same bed with them, but still
+everybody has a little aversion for her, it would seem.
+
+“Mannechka, sweetie, dearie,” says Pasha lightly touching Manya’s hand
+with emotion, “tell my fortune, my precious little child.”
+
+“We-ell,” Manya pouts her lips just like a child, “let’s play a little
+more.”
+
+“Mannechka, my little beauty, you little good-looker, my precious, my
+own, my dear...”
+
+Manya gives in and lays out the pack on her knees. A suit of hearts
+comes out, a small monetary interest and a meeting in the suit of
+spades with a large company in the king of clubs.
+
+Pasha claps her hands joyously:
+
+“Ah, it’s my Levanchik! Well, yes, he promised to come to-day. Of
+course, it’s Levanchik.”
+
+“That’s your Georgian!”
+
+“Yes, yes, my little Georgian. Oh, how nice he is. I’d just love never
+to let him go away from me. Do you know what he told me the last time?
+‘If you’ll go on living in a sporting house, then I’ll make both you
+dead, and make me dead.’ And he flashed his eyes at me so!”
+
+Jennie, who had stopped near, listens to her words and asks haughtily:
+
+“Who was it said that?”
+
+“Why, my little Georgian, Levan. ‘Both for you death and for me
+death.’”
+
+“Fool! He isn’t any little Georgian at all, but simply a common
+Armenian. You’re a crazy fool.”
+
+“Oh no, he isn’t—he’s a Georgian. And it is quite strange on your
+part...”
+
+“I’m telling you—a common Armenian. I can tell better. Fool!”
+
+“What are you cursing for, Jennie? I didn’t start cursing you first
+off, did I?”
+
+“You just try and be the first to start cursing! Fool! Isn’t it all the
+same to you what he is? Are you in love with him, or what?”
+
+“Well, I am in love with him!”
+
+“Well, and you’re a fool. And the one with the badge in his cap, the
+lame one—are you in love with him too?”
+
+“Well, what of it? I respect him very much. He is very respectable.”
+
+“And with Nicky the Book-keeper? And with the contractor? And with
+Antoshka-Kartoshka?[4] And with the fat actor? Oo-ooh, you shameless
+creature!” Jennie suddenly cries out. “I can’t look at you without
+disgust. You’re a bitch! In your place, if I was such a miserable
+thing, I’d rather lay hands on myself, strangle myself with a cord from
+my corset. You vermin!”
+
+[4] Tony the Potato.—Trans.
+
+
+Pasha silently lowers her eyelashes over her tear-filled eyes. Manya
+tries to defend her.
+
+“Really, what are you carrying on like that for, Jennechka? What are
+you down on her like that for...”
+
+“Eh, all of you are fine!” Jennie sharply cuts her short. “No
+self-respect of any sort! Some scum comes along, buys you like a piece
+of meat, hires you like a cabby, at a fixed rate, for love for an hour,
+but you go all to pieces: ‘Ah, my little lover! Ah, what unearthly
+passion!’ Ugh!” she spat in disgust.
+
+She wrathfully turns her back upon them and continues to promenade on a
+diagonal through the room, swinging her hips and blinking at herself in
+every mirror.
+
+During this time Isaac Davidovich, the piano player, is still
+struggling with the refractory violinist.
+
+“Not that way, not that way, Isaiah Savvich. You throw the fiddle away
+for one little minute. Listen a little to me. Here is the tune.”
+
+He plays with one finger and hums in that horrible goatish voice that
+all musical directors—for which calling he had been at one time
+preparing—possess.
+
+“Ess-tam, ess-tam, ess-tiam-tiam. Well, now, repeat after me the first
+part, first time off..... Well..... ein, zwei...”
+
+Their rehearsal is being attentively watched by the grey-eyed,
+round-faced, arch-browed Zoe, mercilessly bedaubed with cheap rouges
+and whiteners, leaning with her elbows on the pianoforte, and the
+slight Vera, with drink-ravaged face, in the costume of a jockey—in a
+round little cap with straight brim, in a little silk jacket, striped
+blue and white, in tightly stretched trunks and in little patent
+leather boots with yellow facings. And really, Vera does resemble a
+jockey, with her narrow face, in which the exceedingly sparkling blue
+eyes, under a smart bob coming down on the forehead, are set too near
+the humped, nervous, very handsome nose. When, at last, after long
+efforts the musicians agree, the somewhat small Verka walks up to the
+large Zoe, in that mincing, tethered walk, the hind part sticking out,
+and elbows spread as though for flight, with which only women in male
+costume can walk, and makes a comical masculine bow to her, spreading
+her arms wide and lowering them. And, with great enjoyment, they begin
+careering over the room.
+
+The nimble Niura, always the first to announce all the news, suddenly
+jumps down from the window sill, and calls out, spluttering from the
+excitement and hurry:
+
+“A swell carriage...has driven up...to Treppel ...with electricity...
+Oi, goils...may I die on the spot...there’s electricity on the shafts.”
+
+All the girls, save the proud Jennie, thrust themselves out of the
+windows. A driver with a fine carriage is indeed standing near the
+Treppel entrance. His brand-new, dashing victoria glistens with new
+lacquer; at the ends of the shafts two tiny electric lights burn with a
+yellow light; the tall white horse, with a bare pink spot on the septum
+of its nose, shakes its handsome head, shifts its feet on the same
+spot, and pricks up its thin ears; the bearded, stout driver himself
+sits on the coach-box like a carven image, his arms stretched out
+straight along his knees.
+
+“Oh, for a ride!” squeals Niura. “Oh, uncle! Oh you swell coachman!”
+she cries out, hanging over the window sill. “Give a poor little girlie
+a ride... Give us a ride for love.”
+
+But the swell coachman laughs, makes a scarcely noticeable movement
+with his fingers, and immediately the white horse, as though it had
+been waiting just for that, starts from its place at a goodly trot,
+handsomely turns around and with measured speed floats away into the
+darkness together with the victoria and the broad back of the coachman.
+
+“Pfui! What indecency!” the indignant voice of Emma Edwardovna sounds
+in the room. “Well, where did you see that respectable girls should
+allow themselves to climb out of the windows and holler all over the
+street. O, scandal! And it’s all Niura, and it’s always this horrible
+Niura!”
+
+She is majestic in her black dress, with her yellow flabby face, with
+the dark pouches under her eyes, with the three pendulous, quivering
+chins. The girls, like boarding school misses, staidly seat themselves
+on the chairs along the walls, except Jennie, who continues to
+contemplate herself in all the mirrors. Two more cabbies drive up
+opposite, to the house of Sophia Vasilievna. Yama is beginning to liven
+up. At last one more victoria rattles along the paved road and its
+noise is cut short abruptly at the entrance to Anna Markovna’s.
+
+The porter Simeon helps someone take off his things in the front hall.
+Jennie looks in there, holding on with both hands to the door jambs,
+but immediately turns back, and as she walks shrugs her shoulders and
+shakes her head negatively.
+
+“Don’t know him, someone who’s an entire stranger,” she says in a low
+voice. “He has never been in our place. Some daddy or other, fat, in
+gold eye-glasses and a uniform.”
+
+Emma Edwardovna commands in a voice which sounds like a summoning
+cavalry trumpet:
+
+“Ladies, into the drawing room! Into the drawing room, ladies!”
+
+One after the other, with haughty gaits, into the drawing room enter:
+Tamara, with bare white arms and bared neck, wound with a string of
+artificial pearls; fat Kitty with her fleshy, quadrangular face and low
+forehead—she, too, is in decollete, but her skin is red and in
+goose-pimples; Nina, the very newest one, pug-nosed and clumsy, in a
+dress the colour of a green parrot; another Manka—Big Manka, or Manka
+the Crocodile, as they call her, and—the last—Sonka the Rudder, a
+Jewess, with an ugly dark face and an extraordinarily large nose,
+precisely for which she has received her nickname, but with such
+magnificent large eyes, at the same time meek and sad, burning and
+humid, as, among the women of all the terrestrial globe, are to be
+found only among the Jewesses.
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+
+The elderly guest in the uniform of the Department of Charity walked in
+with slow, undecided steps, at each step bending his body a little
+forward and rubbing his palms with a circular motion, as though washing
+them. Since all the women were pompously silent, as though not noticing
+him, he traversed the drawing room and let himself down on a chair
+alongside of Liuba, who, in accordance with etiquette, only gathered up
+her skirt a little, preserving the abstracted and independent air of a
+girl from a respectable house.
+
+“How do you do, miss?” he said.
+
+“How do you do?” answered Liuba abruptly.
+
+“How are you getting along?”
+
+“Thanks—thank you. Treat me to a smoke.”
+
+“Pardon me—I don’t smoke.”
+
+“So that’s how. A man—and he doesn’t smoke, just like that. Well, then,
+treat me to some Lafitte with lemonade. I am terribly fond of Lafitte
+with lemonade.”
+
+He let that pass in silence.
+
+“Ooh, what a stingy daddy! Where do you work, now? Are you one of the
+government clerks?”
+
+“No, I’m a teacher. I teach the German language.”
+
+“But I have seen you somewhere, daddy. Your physiognomy is familiar to
+me. Where have I met you before?”
+
+“Well, now, I don’t know, really. Unless it was on the street.”
+
+“It might have been on the street, likely as not... You ought to treat
+me to an orange, at least. May I ask for an orange?”
+
+He again grew quiet, looking about him. His face began to glisten and
+the pimples on his forehead became red. He was mentally appraising all
+the women, choosing a likely one for himself, and was at the same time
+embarrassed by his silence. There was nothing at all to talk about;
+besides that the indifferent importunity of Liuba irritated him. Fat
+Katie pleased him with her large, bovine body, but she must be—he
+decided in his mind—very frigid in love, like all stout women, and in
+addition to that not handsome of face. Vera also excited him, with her
+appearance of a little boy, and her firm thighs, closely enveloped by
+the white tights; and Little White Manya, looking so like an innocent
+school-girl; and Jennie with her energetic, swarthy, handsome face. For
+one minute he was all ready to stop at Jennie, but only started in his
+chair and did not venture—by her easy, inaccessible and negligent air,
+and because she in all sincerity did not pay him the least attention,
+he surmised that she was the most spoilt of all the girls in the
+establishment, accustomed to having the visitors spend more money on
+her than on the others. But the pedagogue was a calculating man,
+burthened with a large family and an exhausted wife, destroyed by his
+masculine demands and suffering from a multiplicity of female ills.
+Teaching in a female high school and in an institute, he lived
+constantly in a sort of secret sensual delirium, and only his German
+training, stinginess and cowardice helped him to hold his constantly
+aroused desires in check. But two or three times a year, with
+incredible privations, he would cut five or ten roubles out of his
+beggarly budget, denying himself in his beloved evening mug of beer and
+contriving to save on the street cars, which necessitated his making
+enormous distances on foot through the town. This money he set aside
+for women and spent it slowly, with gusto, trying to prolong and
+cheapen down the enjoyment as much as possible. And for his money he
+wanted a very great deal, almost the impossible; his German sentimental
+soul dimly thirsted after innocence, timidity, poesy, in the flaxen
+image of Gretchen; but as a man he dreamt, desired, and demanded that
+his caresses should bring a woman into rapture and palpitation and into
+a sweet exhaustion.
+
+However, all the men strove for the very same thing—even the most
+wretched, monstrous, misshapen and impotent of them—and ancient
+experience had long ago taught the women to imitate with voice and
+movements the most flaming passion, retaining in the most tempestuous
+minutes the fullest sang froid.
+
+“You might at least order the musicians to play a polka. Let the girls
+dance a little,” asked Liuba grumblingly.
+
+That suited him. Under cover of the music, amid the jostling of the
+dances, it was far more convenient to get up courage, arise, and lead
+one of the girls out of the drawing room, than to do it amid the
+general silence and the finical immobility.
+
+“And how much does that cost?” he asked cautiously.
+
+“A quadrille is half a rouble; but ordinary dances are thirty kopecks.
+Is it all right then?”
+
+“Well, of course...if you please...I don’t begrudge it,” he agreed,
+pretending to be generous...
+
+“Whom do you speak to?”
+
+“Why, over there—to the musicians.”
+
+“Why not? ... I’ll do it with pleasure...Mister musician, something in
+the light dances, if you please,” he said, laying down his silver on
+the pianoforte.
+
+“What will you order?” asked Isaiah Savvich, putting the money away in
+his pocket. “Waltz, polka, polka-mazourka?”
+
+“Well...Something sort of...”
+
+“A waltz, a waltz!” Vera, a great lover of dancing, shouted from her
+place.
+
+“No, a polka! ... A waltz! ... A vengerka! ... A waltz!” demanded
+others.
+
+“Let them play a polka,” decided Liuba in a capricious tone. “Isaiah
+Savvich, play a little polka, please. This is my husband, and he is
+ordering fox me,” she added, embracing the pedagogue by the neck.
+“Isn’t that true, daddy?”
+
+But he freed himself from under her arm, drawing his head in like a
+turtle, and she without the least offence went to dance with Niura.
+Three other couples were also whirling about. In the dances all the
+girls tried to hold the waist as straight as possible, and the head as
+immobile as possible, with a complete unconcern in their faces, which
+constituted one of the conditions of the good taste of the
+establishment. Under cover of the slight noise the teacher walked up to
+Little Manka.
+
+“Let’s go?” he said, offering her his bent arm.
+
+“Let’s go,” answered she, laughing.
+
+She brought him into her room, gotten up with all the coquettishness of
+a bedroom in a brothel of the medium sort, with a bureau, covered with
+a knit scarf, and upon it a mirror, a bouquet of paper flowers, a few
+empty bonbonierres, a powder box, a faded photograph of a young man
+with white eyebrows and eyelashes and a haughtily astonished face, as
+well as several visiting cards. Above the bed, which is covered with a
+pink pique blanket, along the wall, is nailed up a rug with a
+representation of a Turkish sultan luxuriating in his harem, a narghili
+in his mouth; on the walls, several more photographs of dashing men of
+the waiter and actor type; a pink lantern hangs down from the ceiling
+by chains; there are also a round table under a carpet cover, three
+vienna chairs, and an enameled bowl with a pitcher of the same sort in
+the corner on a tabouret, behind the bed.
+
+“Darling, treat me to Lafitte with lemonade,” in accordance with
+established usage asked Little Manka, unbuttoning her corsage.
+
+“Afterwards,” austerely answered the pedagogue. “It will all depend
+upon yourself. And then—what sort of Lafitte can you have here? Some
+muddy brew or other?”
+
+“We have good Lafitte,” contradicted the girl touchily. “Two roubles a
+bottle. But if you are so stingy, then buy me beer at least. All
+right?”
+
+“Well, beer is all right...”
+
+“And for me lemonade and oranges. Yes?”
+
+“A bottle of lemonade, yes; but oranges, no. Later, maybe, I will treat
+you to champagne even. It will all depend on you. If you’ll exert
+yourself.”
+
+“Then, daddy, I’ll ask for four bottles of beer and two bottles of
+lemonade? Yes? And for me just a little cake of chocolate. All right?
+Yes?”
+
+“Two bottles of beer, a bottle of lemonade, and nothing more. I don’t
+like when I’m bargained with. If need be, I’ll order myself.”
+
+“And may I invite a friend of mine?”
+
+“No, let it be without any friends, if you please.”
+
+Manka leaned out of the door into the corridor and called out
+resoundingly:
+
+“Housekeeper, dear! Two bottles of beer and a bottle of lemonade for
+me.”
+
+Simeon came with a tray and began with an accustomed rapidity to uncork
+the bottles. Following him came Zociya, the housekeeper.
+
+“There, now, how well you’ve made yourself at home here. Here’s to your
+lawful marriage!” she congratulated them.
+
+“Daddy, treat the little housekeeper with beer,” begged Manka. “Drink,
+housekeeper dear.”
+
+“Well, in that case here’s to your health, mister. Somehow, your face
+seems kind of familiar to me?”
+
+The German drank his beer, sucking and licking his moustache, and
+impatiently waited for the housekeeper to go away. But she, having put
+down her glass and thanked him, said:
+
+“Let me get the money coming from you, mister. As much as is coming for
+the beer and the time. That’s both better for you and more convenient
+for us.”
+
+The demand for the money went against the grain of the teacher, because
+it completely destroyed the sentimental part of his intentions. He
+became angry:
+
+“What sort of boorishness is this, anyway! It doesn’t look as if I were
+preparing to run away from here. And besides, can’t you discriminate
+between people at all? You can see that a man of respectability, in a
+uniform, has come to you, and not some tramp. What sort of importunity
+is this!”
+
+The housekeeper gave in a little.
+
+“Now, don’t get offended, mister. Of course, you’ll pay the young lady
+yourself for the visit. I don’t think you will do her any wrong, she’s
+a fine girl among us. But I must trouble you to pay for the beer and
+lemonade. I, too, have to give an account to the proprietress. Two
+bottles at fifty is a rouble and the lemonade thirty—a rouble thirty.”
+
+“Good Lord, a bottle of beer fifty kopecks!” the German waxed
+indignant. “Why, I will get it in any beer-shop for twelve kopecks.”
+
+“Well, then, go to a beer-shop if it’s cheaper there,” Zociya became
+offended. “But if you’ve come to a respectable establishment, the
+regular price is half a rouble. We don’t take anything extra. There,
+that’s better. Twenty kopecks change coming to you?”
+
+“Yes, change, without fail,” firmly emphasized the German teacher. “And
+I would request of you that nobody else should enter.”
+
+“No, no, no, what are you saying,” Zociya began to bustle near the
+door. “Dispose yourself as you please, to your heart’s content. A
+pleasant appetite to you.”
+
+Manka locked the door on a hook after her and sat down on the German’s
+knee, embracing him with her bare arm.
+
+“Are you here long?” he asked, sipping his beer. He felt dimly that
+that imitation of love which must immediately take place demanded some
+sort of psychic propinquity, a more intimate acquaintance, and on that
+account, despite his impatience, began the usual conversation, which is
+carried on by almost all men—when alone with prostitutes, and which
+compels the latter to lie almost mechanically, to lie without
+mortification, enthusiasm or malice, according to a single, very
+ancient stencil.
+
+“Not long, only the third month.”
+
+“And how old are you?”
+
+“Sixteen,” fibbed Little Manka, taking five years off her age.
+
+“O, such a young one!” the German wondered, and began, bending down and
+grunting, to take off his boots. “Then how did you get here?”
+
+“Well, a certain officer deprived me of my innocence there...near his
+birthplace. And it’s terrible how strict my mamma is. If she was to
+find out, she’d strangle me with her own hands. Well, so then I ran
+away from home and got in here...”
+
+“And did you love that same officer, the one who was the first one,
+now?”
+
+“If I hadn’t loved him, I wouldn’t have gone to him. He promised to
+marry me, the scoundrel, but then managed to get what he was after, and
+abandoned me.”
+
+“Well, and were you ashamed the first time?”
+
+“Of course, you’d be ashamed...How do you like it, daddy, with light or
+without light? I’ll turn, down the lantern a little. All right?”
+
+“Well, and aren’t you bored here? What do they call you?”
+
+“Manya. To be sure I’m bored. What sort of a life is ours!”
+
+The German kissed her hard on her lips and again asked:
+
+“And do you love the men? Are there men who please you? Who afford you
+pleasure?”
+
+“How shouldn’t there be?” Manka started laughing. “I love the ones like
+you especially, such nice little fatties.”
+
+“You love them? Eh? Why do you love them?”
+
+“Oh, I love them just so. You’re nice, too.”
+
+The German meditated for a few seconds, pensively sipping away at his
+beer. Then he said that which every man tells a prostitute in these
+moments preceding the casual possession of her body:
+
+“Do you know, Marichen, you also please me very much. I would willingly
+take you and set you up.”
+
+“You’re married,” the girl objected, touching his ring.
+
+“Yes, but, you understand, I don’t live with my wife; she isn’t well,
+she can’t fulfill her conjugal duties.”
+
+“The poor thing! If she were to find out where you go, daddy, she would
+cry for sure.”
+
+“Let’s drop that. So, you know, Mary, I am always looking out for such
+a girl as you for myself, so modest and pretty. I am a man of means, I
+would find a flat with board for you, with fuel and light. And forty
+roubles a month pin money. Would you go?”
+
+“Why not go—I’d go.”
+
+He kissed her violently, but a secret apprehension glided swiftly
+through his cowardly heart.
+
+“But are you healthy?” he asked in an inimical, quavering voice.
+
+“Why, yes, I am healthy. There’s a doctor’s inspection every Saturday
+in our place.”
+
+After five minutes she went away from him, as she walked putting away
+in her stocking the earned money, on which, as on the first handsel,
+she had first spat, after a superstitious custom. There had been no
+further speech either about maintenance or natural liking. The German
+was left unsatisfied with the frigidity of Manka and ordered the
+housekeeper to be summoned to him.
+
+“Housekeeper dear, my husband demands your presence!” said Manya,
+coming into the drawing room and fixing her hair before a mirror.
+
+Zociya went away, then returned afterwards and called Pasha out into
+the corridor. Later she came back into the drawing room, but alone.
+
+“How is it, Manka, that you haven’t pleased your cavalier?” she asked
+with laughter. “He complains about you: ‘This,’ he says, ‘is no woman,
+but some log of wood, a piece of ice.’ I sent him Pashka.”
+
+“Eh, what a disgusting man!” Manka puckered up her face and spat aside.
+“Butts in with his conversations. Asks: ‘Do you feel when I kiss you?
+Do you feel a pleasant excitement?’ An old hound. ‘I’ll take you,’ he
+says, ‘and set you up!’”
+
+“They all say that,” remarked Zoe indifferently.
+
+But Jennie, who since morning has been in an evil mood, suddenly flared
+up.
+
+“Oh, the sneak, the big, miserable sneak that he is!” she exclaimed,
+turning red and energetically putting her hands to her sides. “Why, I
+would take him, the old, dirty little beast, by the ear, then lead him
+up to the mirror and show him his disgusting snout. What? Good-looking,
+aren’t you? And how much better you’ll be when the spit will be running
+out of your mouth, and you’ll cross your eyes, and begin to choke and
+rattle in the throat, and to snort right in the face of the woman. And
+for your damned rouble you want me to go all to pieces before you like
+a pancake, and that from your nasty love my eyes should pop out onto my
+forehead? Why, hit him in the snout, the skunk, in the snout! Until
+there’s blood!”
+
+“O, Jennie! Stop it now! PFUI!” the susceptible Emma Edwardovna, made
+indignant by her tone, stopped her.
+
+“I won’t stop!” she cut her short abruptly. But she grew quiet by
+herself and wrathfully walked away with distending nostrils and with
+fire in the darkened, handsome eyes.
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+
+Little by little the drawing room was filling. There came Roly-Poly,
+long known to all Yama—a tall, thin, red-nosed, gray old man, in the
+uniform of a forest ranger, in high boots, with a wooden yard-stick
+always sticking out of his side-pocket. He passed whole days and
+evenings as a habitue of the billiard parlor in the tavern, always
+half-tipsy, shedding his little jokes, jingles and little sayings,
+acting familiarly with the porters, with the housekeepers and the
+girls. In the houses everybody from the proprietress to the
+chamber-maids—treated him with a bit of derision—careless, a trifle
+contemptuous, but without malice. At times he was even not without use:
+he could transmit notes from the girls to their lovers, and run over to
+the market or to the drug-store. Not infrequently, thanks to his
+loosely hung tongue and long extinguished self respect, he would worm
+himself into a gathering of strangers and increase their expenditures,
+nor did he carry elsewhere the money gotten as “loans” on such
+occasions, but spent it right here for women—unless, indeed, he left
+himself some change for cigarettes. And, out of habit, he was
+good-naturedly tolerated.
+
+“And here’s Roly-Poly arrived,” announced Niura, when he, having
+already managed to shake hands amicably with Simeon the porter, stopped
+in the doorway of the drawing room, lanky, in a uniform cap knocked at
+a brave slant over one side of his head. “Well, now, Roly-Poly, fire
+away!”
+
+“I have the honour to present myself,” Roly-Poly immediately commenced
+to grimace, putting his hand up to his brim in military fashion, “a
+right honourable privy frequenter of the local agreeable
+establishments, Prince Bottlekin, Count Liquorkin, Baron
+Whoatinkevich-Giddapkovski—Mister Beethoven! Mister Chopin!” he greeted
+the musicians. “Play me something from the opera The Brave and Charming
+General Anisimov, or, A Hubbub in the Coolidor. My regards to the
+little political economist Zociya.[5] A-ha! Then you kiss only at
+Easter? We shall write that down. Ooh-you, my Tomalachka, my pitty-itty
+tootsicums!”
+
+[5] An untranslatable pun on Economochka, a diminutive for
+“housekeeper.”—Trans.
+
+
+And so with jests and with pinches he went the round of all the girls
+and at last sat down alongside of the fat Katie, who put her fat leg
+upon his, leant with her elbow upon her knee, while upon the palm she
+laid her chin, and began to watch indifferently and closely the
+surveyor rolling a cigarette for himself.
+
+“And how is it that you don’t ever get tired of it, Roly-Poly? You’re
+forever rolling a coffin nail.”
+
+Roly-Poly at once commenced to move his eye-brows and the skin of his
+scalp and began to speak in verse:
+
+“Dear cigarette, my secret mate,
+How can I help loving thee?
+Not through mere whim, prompted by fate,
+All have started smoking thee.”
+
+
+“Why, Roly-Poly, but you are going to croak soon,” said Kitty
+indifferently.
+
+“And a very simple matter, that.”
+
+“Roly-Poly, say something still funnier, in verse,” begged Verka.
+
+And at once, obediently, having placed himself in a funny pose, he
+began to declaim:
+
+“Many stars are in the bright sky,
+But to count them there’s no way.
+Yes, the wind whispers there can be,
+But there really is no way.
+Blossoming now are burdocks,
+Now sing out the birds called cocks.”
+
+
+Playing the tom-fool in this manner, Roly-Poly would sit whole evenings
+and nights through in the drawing rooms of the establishments. And
+through some strange psychic fellow feeling the girls counted him
+almost as one of their own; occasionally rendered him little temporary
+services and even bought him beer and vodka at their expense.
+
+Some time after Roly-Poly a large company of hairdressers, who were
+that day free from work, tumbled in. They were noisy, gay, but even
+here, in a brothel, did not cease their petty reckonings and
+conversations about closed and open theatrical benefits, about the
+bosses, about the wives of the bosses. All these were people corrupt to
+a sufficient degree, liars, with great hopes for the future—such as,
+for example, entering the service of some countess as a kept lover.
+They wanted to utilize to the widest possible extent their rather
+hard-earned money, and on that account decided to make a review of
+absolutely all the houses of Yama; only Treppel’s they could not
+resolve to enter, as that was too swell for them. But at Anna
+Markovna’s they at once ordered a quadrille and danced it, especially
+the fifth figure, where the gents execute a solo, perfectly, like real
+Parisians, even putting their thumbs in the arm holes of their vests.
+But they did not want to remain with the girls; instead, they promised
+to come later, when they had wound up the complete review of the
+brothels.
+
+And there also came and went government clerks of some sort; crisp
+young people in patent leather boots; several students; several
+officers, who were horribly afraid of losing their dignity in the eyes
+of the proprietress and the guests of the brothel. Little by little in
+the drawing room was created such a noisy, fumy setting that no one
+there any longer felt ill at ease. There came a steady visitor, the
+lover of Sonka the Rudder, who came almost every day and sat whole
+hours through near his beloved, gazed upon her with languishing
+oriental eyes, sighed, grew faint and created scenes for her because
+she lives in a brothel, because she sins against the Sabbath, because
+she eats meat not prepared in the orthodox Hebrew manner, and because
+she has strayed from the family and the great Hebrew church.
+
+As a usual thing—and this happened often—Zociya the housekeeper would
+walk up to him under cover of the hubbub and would say, twisting her
+lips:
+
+“Well, what are you sitting there for mister? Warming your behind? You
+might go and pass the time with the young lady.”
+
+Both of them, the Jew and the Jewess, were by birth from Homel, and
+must have been created by God himself for a tender, passionate, mutual
+love; but many circumstances—as, for example, the pogrom which took
+place in their town, impoverishment, a complete confusion, fright—had
+for a time parted them. However, love was so great that the junior drug
+clerk Neiman, with great difficulty, efforts, and humiliations,
+contrived to find for himself the place of a junior in one of the local
+pharmacies, and had searched out the girl he loved. He was a real,
+orthodox Hebrew, almost fanatical. He knew that Sonka had been sold by
+her very mother to one of the buyers-up of live merchandise, knew many
+humiliating, hideous particulars of how she had been resold from hand
+to hand, and his pious, fastidious, truly Hebraic soul writhed and
+shuddered at these thoughts, but nevertheless love was above all. And
+every evening he would appear in the drawing room of Anna Markovna. If
+he was successful, at an enormous deprivation, in cutting out of his
+beggarly income some chance rouble, he would take Sonka into her room,
+but this was not at all a joy either for him or for her: after a
+momentary happiness—the physical possession of each other—they cried,
+reproached each other, quarreled with characteristic Hebraic,
+theatrical gestures, and always after these visits Sonka the Rudder
+would return into the drawing room with swollen, reddened eyelids.
+
+But most frequently of all he had no money, and would sit whole
+evenings through near his mistress, patiently and jealously awaiting
+her when Sonka through chance was taken by some guest. And when she
+would return and sit down beside him, he would, without being
+perceived, overwhelm her with reproaches, trying not to turn the
+general attention upon himself and without turning his head in her
+direction. And in her splendid, humid, Hebraic eyes during these
+conversations there was always a martyr-like but meek expression.
+
+There arrived a large company of Germans, employed in an optical shop;
+there also arrived a party of clerks from the fish and gastronomical
+store of Kereshkovsky, and two young people very well known in the
+Yamas—both bald, with sparse, soft, delicate hairs around the bald
+spots: Nicky the Book-keeper and Mishka the Singer—so were they both
+called in the houses. They also were met very cordially, just like Karl
+Karlovich of the optical shop and Volodka of the fish store—with
+raptures, cries and kisses, flattering to their self-esteem. The spry
+Niurka would jump out into the foyer, and, having informed herself as
+to who had come, would report excitedly, after her wont:
+
+“Jennka, your husband has come!”
+
+
+Or:
+
+“Little Manka, your lover has come!”
+
+
+And Mishka the Singer, who was no singer at all, but the owner of a
+drug warehouse, at once, upon entering, sang out in a vibrating,
+quavering, goatish voice:
+
+“They fe-e-e-l the tru-u-u-u-uth!
+Come thou daw-aw-aw-aw-ning...”
+
+
+which he perpetrated at every visit of his to Anna Markovna.
+
+Almost incessantly they played the quadrille, waltz, polka, and danced.
+There also arrived Senka—the lover of Tamara—but, contrary to his wont,
+he did not put on airs, did not go in for “ruination,” did not order a
+funeral march from Isaiah Savvich, and did not treat the girls to
+chocolate ... For some reason he was gloomy, limped on his right leg,
+and sought to attract as little attention as possible—probably his
+professional affairs were at this time in a bad way. With a single
+motion of his head, while walking, he called Tamara out of the drawing
+room and vanished with her into her room. And there also arrived
+Egmont-Lavretzki the actor, clean-shaven, tall, resembling a court
+flunky with his vulgar and insolently contemptuous face.
+
+The clerks from the gastronomical store danced with all the ardour of
+youth and with all the decorum recommended by Herman Hoppe, the
+self-instructor of good manners. In this regard the girls also
+responded to their intentions. Both with these and with the others it
+was accounted especially decorous and well-bred to dance as rigidly as
+possible, keeping the arms hanging down, while the heads were raised
+high and inclined to one side with a certain proud, and, at the same
+time, tired and enervated air. In the intermissions, between the
+figures of the dance, it was necessary to fan one’s self with a
+handkerchief, with a bored and negligent air ... In a word, they all
+made believe that they belonged to the choicest society, and that if
+they do dance, they only do it out of condescension, as a little
+comradely turn. But still they danced so ardently that the perspiration
+rolled down in streams from the clerks of Kereshkovsky.
+
+Two or three rows had already happened in different houses. Some man,
+all in blood, whose face in the pale light of the moon’s crescent
+seemed black from the blood, was running around in the street, cursing,
+and, without paying the least attention to his wounds, was searching
+for his cap which had been lost in the brawl. On Little Yamskaya some
+government scribes had had a fight with a ship’s company. The tired
+pianists and musicians played as in a delirium, in a doze, through
+mechanical habit. This was towards the waning of the night.
+
+Altogether unexpectedly, seven students, a sub-professor, and a local
+reporter walked into the establishment of Anna Markovna.
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+
+They had all, except the reporter, passed the whole day together, from
+the very morning, celebrating May Day with some young women of their
+acquaintance. They had rowed in boats on the Dnieper, had cooked field
+porridge on the other side of the river, in the thick, bitter-smelling
+underbrush; had bathed—men and women by turns—in the rapid, warm water;
+had drunk home-made spiced brandy, sung sonorous songs of Little
+Russia, and had returned to town only late in the evening, when the
+dark, broad, running river so eerily and merrily plashed against the
+sides of their boats, playing with the reflections of the stars, the
+silvery shimmering paths of the electric lamps, and the bowing lights
+of the can-buoys. And when they had stepped out on the shore, the palms
+of each burned from the oars, the muscles of the arms and legs ached
+pleasantly, and suffusing the whole body was a blissful, healthy
+fatigue.
+
+Then they had escorted the young women to their homes and at the
+garden-gates and entrances had taken leave of them long and cordially,
+with laughter and with such swinging hand-shakes as if they were
+working the lever of a pump.
+
+The whole day had passed in gaiety and noise, even a trifle
+clamorously, and just the least wee bit tiresomely, but with youth-like
+continence; without intoxication, and, which happens especially rarely,
+without the least shadow of mutual affronts, or jealousy, or unvoiced
+mortifications. Of course, such a benign mood had been helped by the
+sun, the fresh river breeze, the sweet exhalations of the grasses and
+the water, the joyous sensation of the strength and alertness of one’s
+body while bathing and rowing, and the restraining influence of the
+clever, kind, pure and handsome girls from families they were
+acquainted with. But, almost without the knowledge of their
+consciousness, their sensuousness—not imagination, but the simple,
+healthy, instinctive sensuousness of young playful males—kindled from
+chance encounters of their hands with feminine hands and from comradely
+obliging embraces, when the occasion arose to help the young ladies
+enter a boat or jump out on shore; from the tender odour of maiden
+apparel, warmed by the sun; from the feminine cries of coquettish
+fright on the river; from the sight of feminine figures, negligently
+half-reclining with a naive immodesty on the green grass around the
+samovar—from all these innocent liberties, which are so usual and
+unavoidable on picnics, country outings and river excursions, when
+within man, in the infinite depth of his soul, secretly awakens from
+the care-free contact with earth, grasses, water and sun, the
+beast-ancient, splendid, free, but disfigured and intimidated of men.
+
+And for that reason, at two o’clock in the night, when THE SPARROWS, a
+cozy students’ restaurant, had barely closed, and all the eight,
+excited by alcohol and the plentiful food, had come out of the smoky,
+fumy underground place into the street, into the sweet, disquieting
+darkness of the night, with its beckoning fires in the sky and on the
+earth, with its warm, heady air, from which the nostrils dilate avidly,
+with its aromas, gliding from unseen gardens and flower-beds,—the head
+of each one of them was aflame and the heart quietly and languishingly
+yearning from vague desires. It was joyous and arrogant to sense after
+the rest the new, fresh strength in all the sinews, the deep breathing
+of the lungs, the red, resilient blood in the veins, the supple
+obedience of all the members. And—without words, without thoughts,
+without consciousness—one was drawn on this night to be running without
+raiment in the somnolent forest, to be sniffing hurriedly the tracks of
+some one’s feet on the dewy grass, with a loud call to be summoning a
+female unto one’s self.
+
+But to separate was now very difficult. The whole day, passed together,
+had shaken them into an accustomed, tenacious herd. It seemed that if
+even one were to go away from the company, a certain attained
+equilibrium would be disturbed and could not be restored afterwards.
+And so they dallied and stamped upon the sidewalk, near the exit of the
+tavern’s underground vault, interfering with the progress of the
+infrequent passers-by. They discussed hypocritically where else they
+might go to wind up the night. It proved to be too far to the Tivoli
+Garden, and in addition to that one also had to pay for admission
+tickets, and the prices in the buffet were outrageous, and the program
+had ended long ago. Volodya Pavlov proposed going to him—he had a dozen
+of beer and a little cognac home. But it seemed a bore to all of them
+to go in the middle of the night to a family apartment, to enter on
+tiptoes up the stairs and to talk in whispers all the time.
+
+“Tell you what, brethren ... Let’s better ride to the girlies, that
+will be nearer the mark,” said peremptorily Lichonin, an old student, a
+tall, stooping, morose and bearded fellow. By convictions he was an
+anarchist—theoretic, but by avocation a passionate gambler at
+billiards, races and cards—a gambler with a very broad, fatalistic
+sweep. Only the day before he had won a thousand roubles at macao in
+the Merchants’ Club, and this money was still burning a hole in his
+pockets.
+
+“And why not? Right-o!” somebody sustained him. “Let’s go, comrades?”
+
+“Is it worth while? Why, this is an all night affair ...” spoke another
+with a false prudence and an insincere fatigue.
+
+And a third said through a feigned yawn:
+
+“Let’s better go home, gentlemen ... a-a-a ... go bye-bye ... That’s
+enough for to-day.”
+
+“You won’t work any wonders when you’re asleep,” Lichonin remarked
+sneeringly. “Herr professor, are you coming?”
+
+But the sub-professor Yarchenko was obstinate and seemed really
+angered, although, perhaps, he himself did not know what was lurking
+within him, in some dark cranny of his soul.
+
+“Leave me in peace, Lichonin. As I see it, gentlemen, this is downright
+and plain swinishness—that which you are about to do. We have passed
+the time so wonderfully, amiably and simply, it seems,—but no, you
+needs must, like drunken cattle, clamber into a cesspool. I won’t go.”
+
+“Still, if my memory does not play me false,” said Lichonin, with calm
+causticity, “I recollect that no further back than past autumn we with
+a certain future Mommsen were pouring in some place or other a jug of
+ice into a pianoforte, delineating a Bouratian god, dancing the
+belly-dance, and all that sort of thing?”
+
+Lichonin spoke the truth. In his student days, and later, being
+retained at the university, Yarchenko had led the most wanton and
+crack-brained life. In all the taverns, cabarets, and other places of
+amusement his small, fat, roundish little figure, his rosy cheeks,
+puffed out like those of a painted cupid, and the shining, humid kindly
+eyes were well known, his hurried, spluttering speech and shrill
+laughter remembered.
+
+His comrades could never fathom where he found the time to employ in
+study, but nevertheless he went through all examinations and prescribed
+work with distinction and from the first course the professors had him
+in view. Now Yarchenko was beginning little by little to quit his
+former comrades and bottle companions. He had just established the
+indispensable connections with the professorial circle; the reading of
+lectures in Roman history for the coming year had been offered him, and
+not infrequently in conversation he would use the expression current
+among the sub-professors: “We, the learned ones!” The student
+familiarity, the compulsory companionship, the obligatory participation
+in all meetings, protests and demonstrations, were becoming
+disadvantageous to him, embarrassing, and even simply tedious. But he
+knew the value of popularity among the younger element, and for that
+reason could not decide to sever relations abruptly with his former
+circle. Lichonin’s words, however, provoked him.
+
+“Oh, my God, what does it matter what we did when we were youngsters?
+We stole sugar, soiled our panties, tore the wings off beetles,”
+Yarchenko began to speak, growing heated, and spluttering. “But there
+is a limit and a mean to all this. I, gentlemen, do not presume, of
+course, to give you counsels and to teach you, but one must be
+consistent. We are all agreed that prostitution is one of the greatest
+calamities of humanity, and are also agreed, that in this evil not the
+women are guilty, but we, men, because the demand gives birth to the
+offer. And therefore if, having drunk a glass of wine too much, I
+still, notwithstanding my convictions, go to the prostitutes, I am
+committing a triple vileness: before the unfortunate, foolish woman,
+whom I subject to the most degrading form of slavery for my filthy
+rouble; before humanity, because, hiring a public woman for an hour or
+two for my abominable lust, I through this justify and uphold
+prostitution; and finally, this is a vileness before one’s own
+conscience and mind. And before logic.”
+
+“Phew-ew!” Lichonin let out a long-drawn whistle and chanted in a thin,
+dismal voice, nodding in time with his head hanging down to one side:
+“The philosopher is off on our usual stuff: ‘A rope—is a common cord.’”
+
+“Of course, there’s nothing easier than to play the tom-fool,”
+responded Yarchenko. “But in my opinion there is not in the sorrowful
+life of Russia a more mournful phenomenon than this lackadaisicalness
+and vitiation of thought. To-day we will say to ourselves: Eh! It’s all
+the same, whether I go to a brothel or whether I do not go, from this
+one time things will get neither worse nor better. And after five years
+we will be saying: Undoubtedly a bribe is a horribly nasty bit of
+business, but you know—children ... the family ... And just the same
+way after ten years we, having remained fortuitous Russian liberals,
+will be sighing about personal freedom and bowing low before worthless
+scoundrels, whom we despise, and will be cooling our heels in their
+ante-rooms. ‘Because, don’t you know,’ we will say, tittering, ‘when
+you live with wolves, you must howl like a wolf.’ By God, it wasn’t in
+vain that some minister called the Russian students future
+head-clerks!”
+
+“Or professors,” Lichonin put in.
+
+“But most important of all,” continued Yarchenko, letting this pointed
+remark pass by, “most important of all is this, that I have seen all of
+you to-day on the river and afterwards there ... on the other shore ...
+with these charming, fine girls. How attentive, well-bred, obliging you
+all were—but scarcely have you taken leave of them, when you are drawn
+to public women. Let each one of you imagine for a moment, that we all
+had been visiting his sisters and straight from them had driven to Yama
+... What? Is such a supposition pleasant?”
+
+“Yes, but there must exist some valves for the passions of society,”
+pompously remarked Boris Sobashnikov, a tall, somewhat supercilious and
+affected young man, upon whom the short, white summer uniform jacket,
+which scarcely covered his fat posteriors, the modish trousers, of a
+military cut, the PINCE-NEZ on a broad, black ribbon, and a cap after a
+Prussian model, all bestowed the air of a coxcomb. “Surely, it isn’t
+more respectable to enjoy the caresses of your chambermaid, or to carry
+on an intrigue on the side with another man’s wife? What am I to do if
+woman is indispensable to me!”
+
+“Eh, very indispensable indeed!” said Yarchenko with vexation and
+feebly made a despondent gesture.
+
+But here a student who was called Ramses in the friendly coterie
+intervened. This was a yellowish-swarthy, hump-nosed man of small
+stature; his clean-shaven face seemed triangular, thanks to a broad
+forehead, beginning to get bald, with two wedge-like bald spots at the
+temples, fallen-in cheeks and a sharp chin. He led a mode of life
+sufficiently queer for a student. While his colleagues employed
+themselves by turns with politics, love, the theatre, and a little in
+study, Ramses had withdrawn entirely into the study of all conceivable
+suits and claims, into the chicane subtleties of property, hereditary,
+land and other business law-suits, into the memorizing and logical
+analysis of quashed decisions. Perfectly of his own will, without in
+the least needing the money, he served for a year as a clerk at a
+notary’s for another as a secretary to a justice of the peace, while
+all of the past year, being in the last term, he had conducted in a
+local newspaper the reports of the city council and had borne the
+modest duty of an assistant to a secretary in the management of a
+syndicate of sugar manufacturers. And when this same syndicate
+commenced the well-known suit against one of its members, Colonel
+Baskakov, who had put up the surplus sugar for sale contrary to
+agreement, Ramses from the very beginning guessed beforehand and very
+subtly engineered, precisely that decision which the senate
+subsequently handed down in this suit.
+
+Despite his comparative youth, rather well-known jurists gave heed to
+his opinions—true, a little loftily. None of those who knew Ramses
+closely doubted that he would make a brilliant career, and even Ramses
+himself did not conceal his confidence in that toward thirty-five he
+would knock together a million, exclusively through his practice as a
+civil lawyer. His comrades not infrequently elected him chairman of
+meetings and head of the class, but this honour Ramses invariably
+declined, excusing himself with lack of time. But still he did not
+avoid participation in his comrades’ trials by arbitration, and his
+arguments—always incontrovertibly logical—were possessed of an amazing
+virtue in ending the trials with peace, to the mutual satisfaction of
+the litigating parties. He, as well as Yarchenko, knew well the value
+of popularity among the studying youths, and even if he did look upon
+people with a certain contempt, from above, still he never, by as much
+as a single movement of his thin, clever, energetical lips, showed
+this.
+
+“Well, Gavrila Petrovich, no one is necessarily dragging you into
+committing a fall from grace,” said Ramses in a conciliatory manner,
+“What is all this pathos and melancholy for, when the matter as it
+stands is altogether simple? A company of young Russian gentlemen
+wishes to pass the remnant of the night modestly and amicably, to make
+merry, to sing a little, and to take internally several gallons of wine
+and beer. But everything is closed now, except these very same houses.
+ERGO! ...”
+
+“Consequently, we will go merry-making to women who are for sale? To
+prostitutes? Into a brothel?” Yarchenko interrupted him, mockingly and
+inimically.
+
+“And even so? A certain philosopher, whom it was desired to humiliate,
+was given a seat at dinner near the musicians. But he, sitting down,
+said: ‘Here is a sure means of making the last place the first.’ And
+finally I repeat: If your conscience does not allow you, as you express
+yourself, to buy a woman, then you can go there and come away,
+preserving your innocence in all its blossoming inviolability.”
+
+“You overdo it, Ramses,” objected Yarchenko with displeasure. “You
+remind me of those bourgeois, who, while it is still dark, have
+gathered to gape at an execution and who say: we have nothing to do
+with this, we are against capital punishment, this is all the
+prosecuting attorney’s and the executioner’s doing.”
+
+“Superbly said and partly true, Gavrila Petrovich. But to us,
+precisely, this comparison may not even apply. One cannot, you see,
+treat some malignant disease while absent, without seeing the sufferer
+in person. And yet all of us, who are now standing here in the street
+and interfering with the passers-by, will be obliged at some time in
+our work to run up against the terrible problem of prostitution, and
+what a prostitution at that—the Russian! Lichonin, I, Borya Sobashnikov
+and Pavlov as jurists, Petrovsky and Tolpygin as medicos. True, Veltman
+has a distinct specialty—mathematics. But then, he will be a pedagogue,
+a guide of youth, and, deuce take it, even a father! And if you are
+going to scare with a bugaboo, it is best to look upon it one’s self
+first. And finally, you yourself, Gavrila Petrovich—expert of dead
+languages and future luminary of grave digging—is the comparison, then,
+of the contemporary brothels, say, with some Pompeian lupanaria, or the
+institution of sacred prostitution in Thebes and Nineveh, not important
+and instructive to you? ...”
+
+“Bravo, Ramses, magnificent!” roared Lichonin. “And what’s there to
+talk so much about, fellows? Take the professor under the gills and put
+him in a cab!”
+
+The students, laughing and jostling, surrounded Yarchenko, seized him
+under the arms, caught him around the waist. All of them were equally
+drawn to the women, but none, save Lichonin, had enough courage to take
+the initiative upon himself. But now all this complicated, unpleasant
+and hypocritical business was happily resolved into a simple, easy joke
+upon the older comrade. Yarchenko resisted, and was angry, and
+laughing, trying to break away. But at this moment a tall,
+black-moustached policeman, who had long been eyeing them keenly and
+inimically, walked up to the uproarious students.
+
+“I’d ask you stewdent gents not to congregate. It’s not allowed! Keep
+on going!”
+
+They moved on in a throng. Yarchenka was beginning to soften little by
+little.
+
+“Gentlemen, I am ready to go with you, if you like ... Do not think,
+however, that the sophistries of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses have
+convinced me ... No, I simply would be sorry to break up the party ...
+But I make one stipulation: we will drink a little there, gab a little,
+laugh a little, and so forth ... but let there be nothing more, no
+filth of any kind ... It is shameful and painful to think that we, the
+flower and glory—of the Russian intelligentzia, will go all to pieces
+and let our mouths water at the sight of the first skirt that comes our
+way.”
+
+“I swear it!” said Lichonin, putting up his hand.
+
+“I can vouch for myself,” said Ramses.
+
+“And I! And I! By God, gentlemen, let’s pledge our words ... Yarchenko
+is right,” others took up.
+
+They seated themselves in twos and threes in the cabs—the drivers of
+which had been long since following them in a file, grinning and
+cursing each other—and rode off. Lichonin, for the sake of assurance,
+sat down beside the sub-professor, having embraced him around the waist
+and seated him on his knees and those of his neighbour, the little
+Tolpygin, a rosy, pleasant-faced boy on whose face, despite his
+twenty-three years, the childish white down—soft and light—still
+showed.
+
+“The station is at Doroshenko’s!” called out Lichonin after the cabbies
+driving off. “The stop is at Doroshenko’s,” he repeated, turning
+around.
+
+They all stopped at Doroshenko’s restaurant, entered the general room,
+and crowded about the bar. All were satiated and no one wanted either
+to drink or to have a bite. But in the soul of each one still remained
+a dark trace of the consciousness that right now they were getting
+ready to commit something needlessly shameful, getting ready to take
+part in some convulsive, artificial, and not at all a merry merriment.
+And in each one was the yearning to bring himself through intoxication
+to that misty and rainbow condition when nothing makes any difference,
+and when the head does not know what the arms and legs are doing, and
+what the tongue is babbling. And, probably, not the students alone, but
+all the casual and constant visitors of Yama experienced in greater or
+lesser degree the friction of this inner psychic heart-sore, because
+Doroshenko did business only late in the evening and night, and no one
+lingered long in his place but only turned in in passing, half-way on
+the journey.
+
+While the students were drinking cognac, beer and vodka, Ramses was
+constantly and intently looking into the farthest corner of the
+restaurant hall, where two men were sitting—a tattered, gray, big old
+man, and, opposite him, his back to the bar, with his elbows spread out
+upon the table and his chin resting on the fists folded upon each
+other, some hunched up, stout, closely-propped gentleman in a gray
+suit. The old man was picking upon a dulcimer lying before him and
+quietly singing, in a hoarse but pleasing voice:
+
+“Oh my valley, my little valley,
+Bro-o-o-o-o-oad land of plenty.”
+
+
+“Excuse me, but that is a co-worker of ours,” said Ramses, and went to
+greet the gentleman in the gray suit. After a minute he led him up to
+the bar and introduced him to his comrades.
+
+“Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you my companion in arms in the
+newspaper game, Sergei Ivanovich Platonov. The laziest and most
+talented of newspaper workers.”
+
+They all introduced themselves, indistinctly muttering out their names.
+
+“And therefore, let’s have a drink,” said Uchonin, while Yarchenko
+asked with the refined amiability which never forsook him:
+
+“Pardon me, pardon me, but I am acquainted with you a little, even
+though not personally. Weren’t you in the university when Professor
+Priklonsky defended the doctor’s dissertation?”
+
+“It was I,” answered the reporter.
+
+“Ah, that’s very nice,” smiled Yarchenko charmingly, and for some
+reason once more pressed Platonov’s hand vigorously. “I read your
+report afterwards: very exactly, circumstantially and skillfully put
+together ... Won’t you favor me? ... To your health!”
+
+“Then allow me, too,” said Platonov. “Onuphriy Zakharich, pour out for
+us again ... one ... two, three, four ... nine glasses of cognac...”
+
+“Oh no, you can’t do that ... you are our guest, colleague,”
+remonstrated Lichonin.
+
+“Well, now, what sort of colleague am I to you?” good-naturedly laughed
+the reporter. “I was only in the first class and then only for half a
+year—as an unmatriculated student. Here you are, Onuphriy Zakharich.
+Gentlemen, I beg you...”
+
+The upshot of it was that after half an hour Lichonin and Yarchenko did
+not under any consideration want to part with the reporter and dragged
+him with them to Yama. However, he did not resist.
+
+“If I am not a burden to you, I would be very glad,” he said simply.
+“All the more since I have easy money to-day. THE DNIEPER WORD has paid
+me an honorarium, and this is just as much of a miracle as winning two
+hundred thousand on a check from a theatre coat room. Pardon me, I’ll
+be right back...”
+
+He walked up to the old man with whom he had been sitting before,
+shoved some money into his hand, and gently took leave of him.
+
+“Where I’m going, grandpa, there you mustn’t go—to-morrow we will meet
+in the same place as to-day. Good-bye!”
+
+They all walked out of the restaurant. At the door Borya Sobashnikov,
+always a little finical and unnecessarily supercilious, stopped
+Lichonin and called him to one side.
+
+“I’m surprised at you, Lichonin,” he said squeamishly. “We have
+gathered together in our own close company, yet you must needs drag in
+some vagabond. The devil knows who he is!”
+
+“Quit that, Borya,” answered Lichonin amicably. “He’s a warm-hearted
+fellow.”
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+
+“Well now, gentlemen, this isn’t fit for pigs,” Yarchenko was saying,
+grumblingly, at the entrance of Anna Markovna’s establishment. “If we
+finally have gone, we might at least have chosen a decent place, and
+not some wretched hole. Really, gentlemen, let’s better go to Treppel’s
+alongside; there it’s clean and light, at any rate.”
+
+“If you please, if you please, signior,” insisted Lichonin, opening the
+door before the sub-professor with courtly urbanity, bowing and
+spreading his arms before him. “If you please.”
+
+“But this is an abomination ... At Treppel’s the women are
+better-looking, at least.”
+
+Ramses, walking behind, burst into dry laughter.
+
+“So, so, Gavrila Petrovich. Let us continue in the same spirit. Let us
+condemn the hungry, petty thief who has stolen a five-kopeck loaf out
+of a tray, but if the director of a bank has squandered somebody else’s
+million on race horses and cigars, let us mitigate his lot.”
+
+“Pardon me, but I do not understand this comparison,” answered
+Yarchenko with restraint. “However, it’s all the same to me; let’s go.”
+
+“And all the more so,” said Lichonin, letting the subprofessor pass
+ahead; “all the more so, since this house guards within it so many
+historical traditions. Comrades! Decades of student generations gaze
+upon us from the heights of the coat-hooks, and, besides that, through
+the power of the usual right, children and students pay half here, as
+in a panopticon. Isn’t that so, citizen Simeon?”
+
+Simeon did not like to have people come in large parties—this always
+smacked of scandal in the not distant future; moreover, he despised
+students in general for their speech, but little comprehensible to him,
+for their propensity towards frivolous jokes, for their godlessness,
+and chiefly because they were in constant revolt against officialdom
+and order. It was not in vain that on the day when on the Bessarabian
+Square the cossacks, meat-sellers, flour dealers and fish mongers were
+massacring the students, Simeon having scarce found it out had jumped
+into a fine carriage passing by, and, standing just like a chief of
+police in the victoria, tore off to the scene of the fray in order to
+take part in it. He esteemed people who were sedate, stout and elderly,
+who came singly, in secret, peeped in cautiously from the ante-room
+into the drawing room, fearing to meet with acquaintances, and very
+soon and with great haste went away, tipping him generously. Such he
+always styled “Your Excellency.”
+
+And so, while taking the light grey overcoat off Yarchenko, he sombrely
+and with much significance snarled back in answer to Lichonin’s banter:
+
+“I am no citizen here, but the bouncer.”
+
+“Upon which I have the honour to congratulate you,” answered Lichonin
+with a polite bow.
+
+There were many people in the drawing room. The clerks, having danced
+their fill, were sitting, red and wet, near their ladies, rapidly
+fanning themselves with their handkerchiefs; they smelt strongly of old
+goats’ wool. Mishka the Singer and his friend the Book-keeper, both
+bald, with soft, downy hairs around the denuded skulls, both with
+turbid, nacreous, intoxicated eyes, were sitting opposite each other,
+leaning with their elbows on a little marble table, and were constantly
+trying to start singing in unison with such quavering and galloping
+voices as though some one was very, very often striking them in the
+cervical vertebrae:
+
+“They fe-e-e-l the tru-u-u-u-uth!”
+
+
+while Emma Edwardovna and Zociya with all their might were exhorting
+them not to behave indecently. Roly-Poly was peacefully slumbering on a
+chair, his head hanging down, having laid one long leg over the other
+and grasped the sharp knee with his clasped hands.
+
+The girls at once recognized some of the students and ran to meet them.
+
+“Tamarochka, your husband has come—Volodenka. And my husband
+too!—Mishka!” cried Niura piercingly, hanging herself on the neck of
+the lanky, big-nosed, solemn Petrovsky. “Hello, Mishenka. Why haven’t
+you come for so long? I grew weary of waiting for you.”
+
+Yarchenko with a feeling of awkwardness was looking about him on all
+sides.
+
+“We’d like to have in some way ... don’t you know ... a little private
+room,” he said with delicacy to Emma Edwardovna who had approached.
+“And give us some sort of red wine, please ... And then, some coffee as
+well ... You know yourself.”
+
+Yarchenko always instilled confidence in servants and MAITRES D’HOTEL,
+with his dashing clothes and polite but seigniorial ways. Emma
+Edwardovna started nodding her head willingly, just like an old, fat
+circus horse.
+
+“It can be done ... it can be done ... Pass this way, gentlemen, into
+the parlor. It can be done, it can be done ... What liqueur? We have
+only Benedictine ... Benedictine, then? It can be done, it can be done
+... And will you allow the young ladies to come in?”
+
+“Well, if that is so indispensable?” Yarchenko spread out his hands
+with a sigh.
+
+And at once the girls one after the other straggled into the parlor
+with its gray plush furniture and blue lantern. They entered, extended
+to every one in turn their unbending palms, unused to hand-clasps, gave
+their names abruptly in a low voice—Manya, Katie, Liuba ... They sat
+down on somebody’s knees, embraced him around the neck, and, as usual,
+began to importune:
+
+“Little student, you’re such a little good-looker. May I ask for
+oranzes?”
+
+“Volodenka, buy me some candy! All right?”
+
+“And me chocolate!”
+
+“Fatty,” Vera, dressed as a jockey, wheedled the sub-professor,
+clambering up on his knees, “I have a friend, only she’s sick and can’t
+come out into the drawing room. I’ll carry her some apples and
+chocolate. Will you let me?”
+
+“Well, now, those are all just stories about a friend! But above all,
+don’t be thrusting your tenderness at me. Sit as smart children sit,
+right here alongside, on the arm chair, just so. And fold your little
+hands.”
+
+“Ah, but what if I can’t!” writhed Vera in coquetry, rolling her eyes
+up under her upper lids ... “When you are so nice.”
+
+But Lichonin, in answer to this professional beggary, only nodded his
+head gravely and good-naturedly, just like Emma Edwardovna, and
+repeated over and over again, mimicking her German accent:
+
+“Itt can pe done, itt can pe done, itt can pe done...”
+
+“Then I will tell the waiter, honey, to carry my friend some sweets and
+apples?” pestered Vera.
+
+Such importunity entered the round of their tacit duties. There even
+existed among the girls some captious, childish, strange rivalry as to
+the ability to “ease a guest of his money”—strange enough because they
+did not derive any profit out of this, unless, indeed, a certain
+affection from the housekeeper or a word of approbation from the
+proprietress. But in their petty, monotonous, habitually frivolous life
+there was, in general, a great deal of semi-puerile, semi-hysterical
+play.
+
+Simeon brought a coffee pot, cups, a squatty bottle of Benedictine,
+fruits and bon-bons in glass vases, and gaily and easily began making
+the corks of the beer and wine pop.
+
+“But why don’t you drink?” Yarchenko turned to the reporter Platonov.
+“Allow me ... I do not mistake? Sergei Ivanovich, I believe?”
+
+“Right.”
+
+“Allow me to offer you a cup of coffee, Sergei Ivanovich. It’s
+refreshing. Or perhaps, let’s drink this same dubious Lafitte?”
+
+“No, you really must allow me to refuse. I have a drink of my own ...
+Simeon, give me...”
+
+“Cognac!” cried out Niura hurriedly.
+
+“And with a pear!” Little White Manka caught up just as fast.
+
+“I heard you, Sergei Ivanich—right away,” unhurriedly but respectfully
+responded Simeon, and, bending down and letting out a grunt,
+resoundingly drew the cork out of the neck of the bottle.
+
+“It’s the first time I hear of cognac being served in Yama,” uttered
+Lichonin with amazement. “No matter how much I asked, they always
+refused me.”
+
+“Perhaps Sergei Ivanich knows some sort of magic word,” jested Ramses.
+
+“Or is held here in an especially honoured state?” Boris Sobashnikov
+put in pointedly, with emphasis.
+
+The reporter listlessly, without turning his head, looked askance at
+Sobashnikov, at the lower row of buttons on his short, foppish, white
+summer uniform jacket, and answered with a drawl:
+
+“There is nothing honourable in that I can drink like a horse and never
+get drunk; but then, I also do not quarrel with anyone or pick upon
+anybody. Evidently, these good sides of my character are sufficiently
+known here, and because of that confidence is shown me.”
+
+“Good for you, old fellow!” joyously exclaimed Lichonin, who was
+delighted by a certain peculiar, indolent negligence—of few words, yet
+at the same time self-confident—in the reporter. “Will you share the
+cognac with me also?”
+
+“Very, very gladly,” affably answered Platonov and suddenly looked at
+Lichonin with a radiant, almost child-like smile, which beautified his
+plain face with the prominent cheek-bones. “You, too, appealed to me
+from the first. And even when I saw you there, at Doroshenko’s, I at
+once thought that you are not at all as rough as you seem.”
+
+“Well, now, we have exchanged pleasantries,” laughed Lichonin. “But
+it’s amazing that we haven’t met once just here. Evidently, you come to
+Anna Markovna’s quite frequently?”
+
+“Even too much so.”
+
+“Sergei Ivanich is our most important guest!” naively shrieked Niura.
+“Sergei Ivanich is a sort of brother among us!”
+
+“Fool!” Tamara stopped her.
+
+“That seems strange to me,” continued Lichonin. “I, too, am a habitue.
+In any case, one can only envy everybody’s cordiality toward you.”
+
+“The local chieftain!” said Boris Sobashnikov, curling his lips
+downward, but said it so low that Platanov, if he chose to, could
+pretend that he had not heard anything distinctly. This reporter had
+for long aroused in Boris some blind and prickling irritation. That he
+was not one of his own herd really meant nothing. But Boris, like many
+students (and also officers, junkers, and high-school boys) had grown
+accustomed to the fact that the outside “civilian” people, who
+accidentally fell into a company of students on a spree, should hold
+themselves somewhat subordinately and with servility in it, flatter the
+studying youths, be struck with its daring, laugh at its jokes, admire
+its self-admiration, recall their own student years with a sigh of
+suppressed envy. But in Platonov there not only was none of this
+customary wagging of the tail before youth, but, on the contrary, there
+was to be felt a certain abstracted, calm and polite indifference.
+
+Besides that, Sobashnikov was angered—and angered with a petty, jealous
+vexation—by that simple and yet anticipatory attention which was shown
+to the reporter by everybody in the establishment, beginning with the
+porter and ending with the fleshy, taciturn Katie. This attention was
+shown in the way he was listened to, in that triumphal carefulness with
+which Tamara filled his glass, and in the way Little White Manka pared
+a pear for him solicitously, and in the delight of Zoe, who had caught
+the case skillfully thrown to her across the table by the reporter,
+when she had vainly asked for a cigarette from her two neighbors, who
+were lost in conversation; and in the way none of the girls begged
+either chocolate or fruits from him, in the lively gratitude for his
+little services and his treating. “Pimp!” Sobashkinov had almost
+decided mentally with malice, but did not believe it even himself—the
+reporter was altogether too homely and too carelessly dressed, and
+moreover he bore himself with great dignity.
+
+Platonov again made believe that he had not heard the insolent remark
+made by the student. He only nervously crumpled a napkin in his fingers
+and lightly threw it aside from him. And again his eyelids quivered in
+the direction of Boris Sobashnikov.
+
+“Yes, true, I am one of the family here,” he continued calmly, moving
+his glass in slow circles on the table. “Just think, I dined in this
+very house, day after day, for exactly four months.”
+
+“No? Seriously?” Yarchenko wondered and laughed.
+
+“In all seriousness. The table here isn’t at all bad, by the way. The
+food is filling and savory, although exceedingly greasy.”
+
+“But how did you ever...”
+
+“Why, just because I was tutoring for high school a daughter of Anna
+Markovna, the lady of this hospitable house. Well, I stipulated that
+part of my monthly pay should be deducted for my dinners.”
+
+“What a strange fancy!” said Yarchenko. “And did you do this of your
+own will? Or ... Pardon me, I am afraid of seeming indiscreet to you
+... Perhaps at that time ... extreme necessity? ...”
+
+“Not at all. Anna Markovna soaked me three times as much as it would
+have cost in a student’s dining room. I simply wanted to live here a
+while on a somewhat nearer, closer footing, to enter intimately into
+this little world, so to speak.”
+
+“A-ah! It seems I am beginning to understand!” beamed Yarchenko. “Our
+new friend—pardon me for the little familiarity—is, apparently,
+gathering material from life? And, perhaps, in a few years we will have
+the pleasure of reading ...”
+
+“A t-r-ragedy out of a brothel!” Boris Sobashnikov put in loudly, like
+an actor.
+
+While the reporter had been answering Yarchenko, Tamara quietly got up
+from her place, walked around the table, and, bending down over
+Sobashnikov, spoke in a whisper in his ear:
+
+“Dearie, sweetie, you’d better not touch this gentleman. Honest to God,
+it will be better for you, even.”
+
+“Wass that?” the student looked at her superciliously, fixing his
+PINCE-NEZ with two spread fingers. “Is he your lover? Your pimp?”
+
+“I swear by anything you want that not once in his life has he stayed
+with any one of us. But, I repeat, don’t pick on him.”
+
+“Why, yes! Why, of course!” retorted Sobashnikov, grimacing scornfully.
+“He has such a splendid defense as the entire brothel. And it’s a sure
+thing that all the bouncers on Yamskaya are his near friends and
+cronies.”
+
+“No, not that,” retorted Tamara in a kind whisper. “Only he’ll take you
+by the collar and throw you out of the window, like a puppy. I’ve
+already seen such an aerial flight. God forbid its happening to anyone.
+It’s disgraceful, and bad for the health.”
+
+“Get out of here, you filth!” yelled Sobashnikov, swinging his elbow at
+her.
+
+“I’m going, dearie,” meekly answered Tamara, and walked away from him
+with her light step.
+
+Everybody for an instant turned toward the student.
+
+“Behave yourself, barberry!” Lichonin threatened him with his finger.
+“Well, well, go on,” he begged the reporter; “all that you’re saying is
+so interesting.”
+
+“No, I’m not gathering anything,” continued the reporter calmly and
+seriously. “But the material here is in reality tremendous, downright
+crushing, terrible ... And not at all terrible are the loud phrases
+about the traffic in women’s flesh, about the white slaves, about
+prostitution being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on, and
+so on ... an old hurdy-gurdy of which all have tired! No, horrible are
+the everyday, accustomed trifles, these business-like, daily,
+commercial reckonings, this thousand year old science of amatory
+practice, this prosaic usage, determined by the ages. In these
+unnoticeable nothings are completely dissolved such feelings as
+resentment, humiliation, shame. There remains a dry profession, a
+contract, an agreement, a well-nigh honest petty trade, no better, no
+worse than, say, the trade in groceries. Do you understand, gentlemen,
+that all the horror is in just this, that there is no horror! Bourgeois
+work days—and that is all. And also an after taste of an exclusive
+educational institution, with its NAIVETE, harshness, sentimentality
+and imitativeness.”
+
+“That’s right,” confirmed Lichonin, while the reporter continued,
+gazing pensively into his glass:
+
+“We read in the papers, in leading articles, various wailings of
+anxious souls. And the women-physicians are also endeavouring in this
+matter, and endeavouring disgustingly enough. ‘Oh, dear, regulation!
+Oh, dear, abolition! Oh, dear, live merchandise! A condition of
+slavery! The mesdames, these greedy haeterae! These heinous degenerates
+of humanity, sucking the blood of prostitutes!’ ... But with clamour
+you will scare no one and will affect no one. You know, there’s a
+little saying: much cry, little wool. More awful than all awful words—a
+hundredfold more awful—is some such little prosaic stroke or other as
+will suddenly knock you all in a heap, like a blow on the forehead.
+Take even Simeon, the porter here. It would seem, according to you,
+there is no sinking lower—a bouncer in a brothel, a brute, almost
+certainly a murderer, he plucks the prostitutes, gives them “black
+eyes,” to use a local expression—that is, just simply beats them. But,
+do you know on what grounds he and I came together and became friendly?
+On the magnificent details of the divine service of the prelate, on the
+canon of the honest Andrew, pastor of Crete, on the works of the most
+beatific father, John the Damascene. He is religious—unusually so! I
+used to lead him on, and he would sing to me with tears in his eyes:
+‘Come ye brethren, and we will give the last kiss to him who has gone
+to his rest...’ From the ritual of the burial of laymen. No, just
+think: it is only in the Russian soul alone that such contradictions
+may dwell together!”
+
+“Yes. A fellow like that will pray, and pray, then cut a throat, and
+then wash his hands and put a candle before an image,” said Ramses.
+
+“Just so. I know of nothing more uncanny than this fusion of fully
+sincere devoutness with an innate leaning toward crime. Shall I confess
+to you? I, when I talk all alone to Simeon—and we talk with each other
+long and leisurely, for hours—I experience at moments a genuine terror.
+A superstitious terror! Just as though, for instance, I am standing in
+the dusk upon a shaking little board, bending over some dark,
+malodorous well, and just barely distinguish how there, at the bottom,
+reptiles are stirring. And yet, he is devout in a real way, and I am
+sure will some time join the monks and will be a great faster and sayer
+of prayers, and the devil knows how, in what monstrous fashion, a real
+religious ecstasy will entwine in his soul with blasphemy, with
+scoffing at sacred things, with some repulsive passion or other, with
+sadism or something else of that nature!”
+
+“However, you do not spare the object of your observations,” said
+Yarchenko, and carefully indicated the girls with his eyes.
+
+“Eh, it’s all the same. Our relations are cool now.”
+
+“How so?” asked Volodya Pavlov, who had caught the end of the
+conversation.
+
+“Just so ... It isn’t even worth the telling...” smiled the reporter
+evasively. “A trifle ... Let’s have your glass here, Mr. Yarchenko.”
+
+But the precipitate Niura, who could never keep her tongue behind her
+teeth, suddenly shot oat in rapid patter:
+
+“It’s because Sergei Ivanich gave him one in the snout ... On account
+of Ninka. A certain old man came to Ninka ... And stayed for the night
+... And Ninka had the flowers ... And the old man was torturing her all
+the time ... So Ninka started crying and ran away.”[6]
+
+[6] The Russian expression is “the red flag.”—TRANS.
+
+
+“Drop it, Niura; it’s boring,” said Platonov with a wry face.
+
+“Can it!” (leave off) ordered Tamara severely, in the jargon of houses
+of prostitution.
+
+But it was impossible to stop Niura, who had gotten a running start.
+
+“But Ninka says: ‘I,’ she says, ‘won’t stay with him for anything,
+though you cut me all to pieces ... He,’ she says, ‘has made me all wet
+with his spit.’ Well, the old man complained to the porter, to be sure,
+and the porter starts in to beat up Ninka, to be sure. And Sergei
+Ivanich at this time was writing for me a letter home, to the province,
+and when he heard that Ninka was hollering...”
+
+“Zoe, shut her mouth!” said Platonov.
+
+“He just jumped up at once and ... app! ...” and Niura’s torrent
+instantly broke off, stopped up by Zoe’s palm.
+
+Everybody burst out laughing, only Boris Sobashnikov muttered under
+cover of the noise with a contemptuous look:
+
+“OH, CHEVALIER SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE!”
+
+He was already pretty far gone in drink, stood leaning against the
+wall, in a provoking pose, and was nervously chewing a cigarette.
+
+“Which Ninka is this?” asked Yarchenko with curiosity. “Is she here?”
+
+“No, she isn’t here. Such a small, pug-nosed little girl. Naive and
+very angry.” The reporter suddenly and sincerely burst into laughter.
+“Excuse me ... It’s just so ... over my thoughts,” explained he through
+laughter. “I recalled this old man very vividly just now, as he was
+running along the corridor in fright, having grabbed his outer clothing
+and shoes ... Such a respectable ancient, with the appearance of an
+apostle, I even know where he serves. Why, all of you know him. But the
+funniest of all was when he, at last, felt himself out of danger in the
+drawing room. You understand—he is sitting on a chair, putting on his
+pantaloons, can’t put his foot where it ought to go, by any means, and
+bawls all over the house: ‘It’s an outrage! This is an abominable dive!
+I’ll show you up! ... To-morrow I’ll give you twenty-four hours to
+clear out! ... Do you know, this combination of pitiful helplessness
+with the threatening cries was so killing that even the gloomy Simeon
+started laughing ... Well, now, apropos of Simeon ... I say, that life
+dumfounds, with its wondrous muddle and farrago, makes one stand
+aghast. You can utter a thousand sonorous words against souteneurs, but
+just such a Simeon you will never think up. So diverse and motley is
+life! Or else take Anna Markovna, the proprietress of this place. This
+blood-sucker, hyena, vixen and so on ... is the tenderest mother
+imaginable. She has one daughter—Bertha, she is now in the fifth grade
+of high school. If you could only see how much careful attention, how
+much tender care Anna Markovna expends that her daughter may not
+somehow, accidentally, find out about her profession. And everything is
+for Birdie, everything is for the sake of Birdie. And she herself dare
+not even converse before her, is afraid of her lexicon of a bawd and an
+erstwhile prostitute, looks into her eyes, holds herself servilely,
+like an old servant, like a foolish, doting nurse, like an old,
+faithful, mange-eaten poodle. It is long since time for her to retire
+to rest, because she has money, and because her occupation is both
+arduous and troublesome, and because her years are already venerable.
+But no and no; one more extra thousand is needed, and then more and
+more—everything for Birdie. And so Birdie has horses, Birdie has an
+English governess, Birdie is every year taken abroad, Birdie has
+diamonds worth forty thousand—the devil knows whose they are, these
+diamonds? And it isn’t that I am merely convinced, but I know well,
+that for the happiness of this same Birdie, nay, not even for her
+happiness, but, let us suppose that Birdie gets a hangnail on her
+little finger—well then, in order that this hangnail might pass
+away—imagine for a second the possibility of such a state of
+things!—Anna Markovna, without the quiver of an eyelash, will sell into
+corruption our sisters and daughters, will infect all of us and our
+sons with syphilis. What? A monster, you will say? But I will say that
+she is moved by the same grand, unreasoning, blind, egoistical love for
+which we call our mothers sainted women.”
+
+“Go easy around the curves!” remarked Boris Sobashnikov through his
+teeth.
+
+“Pardon me: I was not comparing people, but merely generalizing on the
+first source of emotion. I might have brought out as an example the
+self-denying love of animal-mothers as well. But I see that I have
+started on a tedious matter. Better let’s drop it.”
+
+“No, you finish,” protested Lichonin. “I feel that you have a massive
+thought.”
+
+“And a very simple one. The other day a professor asked me if I am not
+observing the life here with some literary aims. And all I wanted to
+say was, that I can see, but precisely can not observe. Here I have
+given you Simeon and the bawd for example. I do not know myself why,
+but I feel that in them lurks some terrible, insuperable actuality of
+life, but either to tell it, or to show it, I can not. Here is
+necessary the great ability to take some picayune trifle, an
+insignificant, paltry little stroke, and then will result a dreadful
+truth, from which the reader, aghast, will forget that his mouth is
+agape. People seek the terrible in words, in cries, in gestures. Well,
+now, for example, I am reading a description of some pogrom or of a
+slaughter in jail, or of a riot being put down. Of course, the
+policemen are described, these servants of arbitrariness, these
+lifeguards of contemporaneousness, striding up to their knees in blood,
+or how else do they write in such cases? Of course, it is revolting and
+it hurts, and is disgusting, but all this is felt by the mind, and not
+the heart. But here I am walking along Lebyazhia Street, and see that a
+crowd has collected, a girl of five years in the centre—she has lagged
+behind the mother and has strayed, or it may be that the mother had
+abandoned her. And before the girl, squatting down on his heels, is a
+roundsman. He is interrogating her, how she is called, and where is she
+from, and how do they call papa, and how do they call mamma. He has
+broken out into sweat, the poor fellow, from the effort, the cap is at
+the back of his neck, the whiskered face is such a kindly and woeful
+and helpless one, while the voice is gentle, so gentle. At last, what
+do you think? As the girl has become all excited, and has already grown
+hoarse from tears, and is shy of everybody—he, this same ‘roundsman on
+the beat,’ stretches out two of his black, calloused fingers, the index
+and the little, and begins to imitate a nanny goat for the girl and
+reciting an appropriate nursery rhyme! ... And so, when I looked upon
+this charming scene and thought that half an hour later at the station
+house this same patrolman will be beating with his feet the face and
+chest of a man whom he had not till that time seen once, and whose
+crime he is entirely ignorant of—then—you understand!—I began to feel
+inexpressibly eerie and sad. Not with the mind, but the heart. Such a
+devilish muddle is this life. Shall we drink some cognac, Lichonin?”
+
+“What do you say to calling each other thou?” suddenly proposed
+Lichonin.
+
+“All right. Only, really, without any of this business of kissing, now.
+Here’s to your health, old man ... Or here is another instance ... I
+read a certain French classic, describing the thoughts and sensations
+of a man condemned to capital punishment. He describes it all
+sonorously, powerfully, brilliantly, but I read and ... well, there is
+no impression of any sort; neither emotion nor indignation—just ENNUI.
+But then, within the last few days I come across a brief newspaper
+notice of a murderer’s execution somewhere in France. The Procureur,
+who was present at the last toilet of the criminal, sees that he is
+putting on his shoes on his bare feet, and—the blockhead!—reminds him:
+‘What about the socks?’ But the other gives him a look and says, sort
+of thoughtfully: ‘Is it worth while?’ Do you understand, these two
+remarks, so very short, struck me like a blow on the skull! At once all
+the horror and all the stupidity of unnatural death were revealed to me
+... Or here is something else about death ... A certain friend of mine
+died, a captain in the infantry—a drunkard, a vagabond, and the finest
+soul in the world. For some reason we called him the Electrical
+Captain. I was in the vicinity, and it fell to me to dress him for the
+last parade. I took his uniform and began to attach the epaulettes to
+it. There’s a cord, you know, that’s drawn through the shank of the
+epaulette buttons, and after that the two ends of this cord are shoved
+through two little holes under the collar, and on the inside—the
+lining—are tied together. Well, I go through all this business, and tie
+the cord with a slipknot, and, you know, the loop won’t come out,
+nohow—either it’s too loosely tied, or else one end’s too short. I am
+fussing over this nonsense, and suddenly into my head comes the most
+astonishingly simple thought, that it’s far simpler and quicker to tie
+it in a knot—for after all, it’s all the same, NO ONE IS GOING TO UNTIE
+IT. And immediately I felt death with all my being. Until that time I
+had seen the captain’s eyes, grown glassy, had felt his cold forehead,
+and still somehow had not sensed death to the full, but I thought of
+the knot—and I was all transpierced, and the simple and sad realization
+of the irrevocable, inevitable perishing of all our words, deeds, and
+sensations, of the perishing of all the apparent world, seemed to bow
+me down to the earth ... And I could bring forward a hundred such small
+but staggering trifles ... Even, say, about what people experienced in
+the war ... But I want to lead my thought up to one thing. We all pass
+by these characteristic trifles indifferently, like the blind, as
+though not seeing them scattered about under our feet. But an artist
+will come, and he will look over them carefully, and he will pick them
+up. And suddenly he will so skillfully turn in the sun a minute bit of
+life that we shall all cry out: ‘Oh, my God! But I myself—myself—have
+seen this with my own eyes. Only it simply did not enter my head to
+turn my close attention upon it.’ But our Russian artists of the
+word—the most conscientious and sincere artists in the whole world—for
+some reason have up to this time passed over prostitution and the
+brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me to answer that. Perhaps
+because of squeamishness, perhaps because of pusillanimity, out of fear
+of being signalized as a pornographic writer; finally, from the
+apprehension that our gossiping criticism will identify the artistic
+work of the writer with his personal life and will start rummaging in
+his dirty linen. Or perhaps they can find neither the time, nor the
+self-denial, nor the self-possession to plunge in head first into this
+life and to watch it right up close, without prejudice, without
+sonorous phrases, without a sheepish pity, in all its monstrous
+simplicity and every-day activity. Oh, what a tremendous, staggering
+and truthful book would result!”
+
+“But they do write!” unwillingly remarked Ramses.
+
+“They do write,” wearily repeated Platonov in the same tone as he. “But
+it is all either a lie, or theatrical effects for children of tender
+years, or else a cunning symbolism, comprehensible only to the sages of
+the future. But the life itself no one as yet has touched. One big
+writer—a man with a crystal-pure soul and a remarkable talent for
+delineation—once approached this theme,[7] and then all that could
+catch the eye of an outsider was reflected in his soul, as in a
+wondrous mirror. But he could not decide to lie to and to frighten
+people. He only looked upon the coarse hair of the porter, like that of
+a dog, and reflected: ‘But, surely, even he had a mother.’ He passed
+with his wise, exact gaze over the faces of the prostitutes and
+impressed them on his mind. But that which he did not know he did not
+dare to write. It is remarkable, that this same writer, enchanting with
+his honesty and truthfulness, has looked at the moujik as well, more
+than once. But he sensed that both the tongue and the turn of mind, as
+well as the soul of the people, were for him dark and incomprehensible
+... And he, with an amazing tact, modestly went around the soul of the
+people, but refracted all his fund of splendid observation through the
+eyes of townsfolk. I have brought this up purposely. With us, you see,
+they write about detectives, about lawyers, about inspectors of the
+revenue, about pedagogues, about attorneys, about the police, about
+officers, about sensual ladies, about engineers, about baritones—and
+really, by God, altogether well—cleverly, with finesse and talent. But,
+after all, all these people, are rubbish, and their life is not life
+but some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of world
+culture. But there are two singular realities—ancient as humanity
+itself: the prostitute and the moujik. And about them we know nothing
+save some tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions in literature. I
+ask you: what has Russian literature extracted out of all the nightmare
+of prostitution? Sonechka Marmeladova alone.[8]
+
+What has it given us about the moujik save odious, false, nationalistic
+pastorals? One, altogether but one, but then, in truth, the greatest
+work in all the world—a staggering tragedy, the truthfulness of which
+takes the breath away and makes the hair stand on end. You know what I
+am speaking of ...”
+
+[7] The reference here is most probably to Chekhov.—TRANS.
+
+
+[8] The heroine of Dostoievsky’s “Crime and Punishment.”—Trans.
+
+
+“‘The little claw is sunk in...’”[9] quietly prompted Lichonin.
+
+[9] “The little claw is sunk in, the whole bird is bound to perish”—a
+folk proverb used by Tolstoi as a sub-title to his “The Power of
+Darkness.”—Trans.
+
+
+“Yes,” answered the reporter, and looked kindly at the student with
+gratefulness.
+
+“But as regards Sonechka—why, this is an abstract type,” remarked
+Yarchenko with assurance. “A psychological scheme, so to speak...”
+
+Platonov, who up to now had been speaking as though unwillingly, at a
+slow rate, suddenly grew heated:
+
+“A hundred times have I heard this opinion, a hundred times! And it is
+entirely an untruth. Underneath the coarse and obscene profession,
+underneath the foulest oaths—about one’s mother—underneath the drunken,
+hideous exterior—Sonechka Marmeladova still lives! The fate of the
+Russian prostitute—oh, what a tragic, piteous, bloody, ludicrous and
+stupid path it is! Here everything has been juxtaposed: the Russian
+God, Russian breadth and unconcern, Russian despair in a fall, Russian
+lack of culture, Russian naivete, Russian patience, Russian
+shamelessness. Why, all of them, whom you take into bedrooms,—look upon
+them, look upon them well,—why, they are all children; why, each of
+them is but eleven years old. Fate has thrust them upon prostitution
+and since then they live in some sort of a strange, fairy-like, toy
+existence, without developing, without being enriched by experience,
+naive, trusting, capricious, not knowing what they will say and do half
+an hour later—altogether like children. This radiant and ludicrous
+childishness I have seen in the very oldest wenches, fallen as low as
+low can be, broken-winded and crippled like a cabby’s nags. And never
+does this impotent pity, this useless commiseration toward human
+suffering die within them ... For example...”
+
+Platonov looked over all the persons sitting with a slow gaze, and
+suddenly, waving his hand despondently, said in a tired voice:
+
+“However ... The devil take it all! To-day I have spoken enough for ten
+years ... And all of it to no purpose.”
+
+“But really, Sergei Ivanich, why shouldn’t you try to describe all this
+yourself?” asked Yarchenko. “Your attention is so vitally concentrated
+on this question.”
+
+“I did try!” answered Platonov with a cheerless smile. “But nothing
+came of it. I started writing and at once became entangled in various
+‘whats,’ ‘which’s,’ ‘was’s.’ The epithets prove flat. The words grow
+cold on the page. It’s all a cud of some sort. Do you know, Terekhov
+was here once, while passing through ... You know ... The well-known
+one ... I came to him and started in telling him lots and lots about
+the life here, which I do not tell you for fear of boring you. I begged
+him to utilize my material. He heard me out with great attention, and
+this is what he said, literally: ‘Don’t get offended, Platonov, if I
+tell you that there’s almost not a single person of those I have met
+during my life, who wouldn’t thrust themes for novels and stories upon
+me, or teach me as to what ought to be written up. That material which
+you have just communicated to me is truly unencompassable in its
+significance and weightiness. But what shall I do with it? In order to
+write a colossal book such as the one you have in mind, the words of
+others do not suffice—even though they be the most exact—even
+observations, made with a little note-book and a bit of pencil, do not
+suffice. One must grow accustomed to this life, without being cunningly
+wise, without any ulterior thoughts of writing. Then a terrific book
+will result.’
+
+“His words discouraged me and at the same time gave me wings. Since
+that time I believe, that now, not soon—after fifty years or so—but
+there will come a writer of genius, and precisely a Russian one, who
+will absorb within himself all the burdens and all the abominations of
+this life and will cast them forth to us in the form of simple, fine,
+and deathlessly-caustic images. And we shall all say: ‘Why, now, we,
+ourselves, have seen and known all this, but we could not even suppose
+that this is so horrible!’ In this coming artist I believe with all my
+heart.”
+
+“Amen!” said Lichonin seriously. “Let us drink to him.”
+
+“But, honest to God,” suddenly declared Little Manka, “If some one
+would only write the truth about the way we live here, miserable w—that
+we are...”
+
+There was a knock at the door, and at once Jennie entered in her
+resplendent orange dress.
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+
+She greeted all the men without embarrassment, with the independent
+bearing of the first personage in the house, and sat down near Sergei
+Ivanich, behind his chair. She had just gotten free from that same
+German in the uniform of the benevolent organization, who early in the
+evening had made Little White Manka his choice, but had afterwards
+changed her, at the recommendation of the housekeeper, for Pasha. But
+the provoking and self-assured beauty of Jennie must have smitten
+deeply his lecherous heart, for, having prowled some three hours
+through certain beer emporiums and restaurants, and having there
+gathered courage, he had again returned into the house of Anna
+Markovna, had waited until her time-guest—Karl Karlovich, from the
+optical store—had gone away from Jennie, and had taken her into a room.
+
+To the silent question in Tamara’s eyes Jennie made a wry face of
+disgust, shivered with her back and nodded her head affirmatively.
+
+“He’s gone... Brrr! ...”
+
+Platonov was looking at Jennie with extraordinary attentiveness. He
+distinguished her from the rest of the girls and almost respected her
+for her abrupt, refractory, and impudently mocking character. And now,
+turning around occasionally, by her flaming, splendid eyes, by the
+vividly and unevenly glowing unhealthy red of her cheeks, by the much
+bitten parched lips, he felt that her great, long ripening rancour was
+heavily surging within the girl and suffocating her. And it was then
+that he thought (and subsequently often recalled this) that he had
+never yet seen Jennie so radiantly beautiful as on this night. He also
+noticed, that all the men present in the private cabinet, with the
+exception of Lichonin, were looking at her—some frankly, others by
+stealth and as though in passing—with curiosity and furtive desire. The
+beauty of this woman, together with the thought of her altogether easy
+accessibility, at any minute, agitated their imagination.
+
+“There’s something working upon you, Jennie,” said Platonov quietly.
+
+Caressingly, she just barely drew her fingers over his arm.
+
+“Don’t pay any attention. Just so ... our womanish affairs ... It won’t
+be interesting to you.”
+
+But immediately, turning to Tamara, she passionately and rapidly began
+saying something in an agreed jargon, which presented a wild mixture
+out of the Hebrew, Tzigani and Roumanian tongues and the cant words of
+thieves and horse-thieves.
+
+“Don’t try to put anything over on the fly guy, the fly guy is next,”
+Tamara cut her short and with a smile indicated the reporter with her
+eyes.
+
+Platonov had, in fact, understood. Jennie was telling with indignation
+that during this day and night, thanks to the influx of a cheap public,
+the unhappy Pashka had been taken into a room more than ten times—and
+all by different men. Only just now she had had a hysterical fit,
+ending in a faint. And now, scarcely having brought Pashka back to
+consciousness and braced her up on valerian drops in a glass of
+spirits, Emma Edwardovna had again sent her into the drawing room.
+Jennie had attempted to take the part of her comrade, but the
+house-keeper had cursed the intercessor out and had threatened her with
+punishment.
+
+“What is it all about?” asked Yarchenko in perplexity, raising high his
+eyebrows.
+
+“Don’t trouble yourself ... nothing out of the way...” answered Jennie
+in a still agitated voice. “Just so ... our little family trifles ...
+Sergei Ivanich, may I have some of your wine?”
+
+She poured out half a glass for herself and drank the cognac off at a
+draught, distending her thin nostrils wide.
+
+Platonov got up in silence and went toward the door.
+
+“It’s not worth while, Sergei Ivanich. Drop it...” Jennie stopped him.
+
+“Oh no, why not?” objected the reporter. “I shall do a very simple and
+innocent thing, take Pasha here, and if need be—pay for her, even. Let
+her lie down here for a while on the divan and rest, even though a
+little ... Niura, run for a pillow quick!”
+
+Scarcely had the door shut behind his broad, ungainly figure in its
+gray clothes, when Boris Sobashnikov at once commenced speaking with a
+contemptuous bitterness:
+
+“Gentlemen, what the devil for have we dragged into our company this
+peach off the street? We must needs tie up with all sorts of riff-raff?
+The devil knows what he is—perhaps he’s even a dinny? Who can vouch for
+him? And you’re always like that, Lichonin.”
+
+“It isn’t Lichonin but I who introduced him to everybody,” said Ramses.
+“I know him for a fully respectable person and a good companion.”
+
+“Eh! Nonsense! A good companion to drink at some one else’s expense.
+Why, don’t you see for yourselves that this is the most ordinary type
+of habitue attached to a brothel, and, most probably, he is simply the
+pimp here, to whom a percentage is paid for the entertainment into
+which he entices the visitors.”
+
+“Leave off, Borya. It’s foolish,” remarked Yarchenko reproachfully.
+
+But Borya could not leave off. He had an unfortunate
+peculiarity—intoxication acted neither upon his legs nor his tongue,
+but put him in a morose, touchy frame of mind and egged him on into
+quarrels. And Platonov had already for a long time irritated him with
+his negligently sincere, assured and serious bearing, so little
+suitable to the private cabinet of a brothel. But the seeming
+indifference with which the reporter let pass the malicious remarks
+which he interposed into the conversation angered Sobashnikov still
+more.
+
+“And then, the tone in which he permits himself to speak in our
+company!” Sobashnikov continued to seethe. “A certain aplomb,
+condescension, a professorial tone ... The scurvy penny-a-liner! The
+free-lunch grafter!”
+
+Jennie, who had all the time been looking intently at the student,
+gaily and maliciously flashing with her sparkling dark eyes, suddenly
+began to clap her hands.
+
+“That’s the way! Bravo, little student! Bravo, bravo, bravo! ... That’s
+the way, give it to him good! ... Really, what sort of a disgrace is
+this! When he’ll come, now, I’ll repeat everything to him.”
+
+“I—if you please! A—as much as you like!” Sobashnikov drawled out like
+an actor, making superciliously squeamish creases about his mouth. “I
+shall repeat the very same things myself.”
+
+“There’s a fine fellow, now,—I love you for that!” exclaimed Jennie
+joyously and maliciously, striking her fist on the table. “You can tell
+an owl at once by its flight, a good man by his snot!”
+
+Little White Manya and Tamara looked at Jennie with wonder, but, noting
+the evil little lights leaping in her eyes and her nervously quivering
+nostrils, they both understood and smiled.
+
+Little White Manya, laughing, shook her head reproachfully. Jennie
+always had such a face when her turbulent soul sensed that a scandal
+was nearing which she herself had brought on.
+
+“Don’t get your back up, Borinka,” said Lichonin. “Here all are equal.”
+
+Niura came with a pillow and laid it down on the divan.
+
+“And what’s that for?” Sobashnikov yelled at her. “Git! take it away at
+once. This isn’t a lodging house.”
+
+“Now, leave her be, honey. What’s that to you?” retorted Jennie in a
+sweet voice and hid the pillow behind Tamara’s back. “Wait, sweetie,
+I’d better sit with you for a while.”
+
+She walked around the table, forced Boris to sit on a chair, and
+herself got up on his knees. Twining his neck with her arm, she pressed
+her lips to his mouth, so long and so vigorously that the student
+caught his breath. Right up close to his eyes he saw the eyes of the
+woman—strangely large, dark, luminous, indistinct and unmoving. For a
+quarter of a second or so, for an instant, it seemed to him that in
+these unliving eyes was impressed an expression of keen, mad hate; and
+the chill of terror, some vague premonition of an ominous, inevitable
+calamity flashed through the student’s brain. With difficulty tearing
+the supple arms of Jennie away from him, and pushing her away, he said,
+laughing, having turned red and breathing hard:
+
+“There’s a temperament for you! Oh, you Messalina Paphnutievna! ...
+They call you Jennka, I think? You’re a good-looking little rascal.”
+
+Platonov returned with Pasha. Pasha was pitiful and revolting to look
+at. Her face was pale, with, a bluish cast as though the blood had run
+off; the glazed, half-closed eyes were smiling with a faint, idiotic
+smile; the parted lips seemed to resemble two frayed, red, wet rags,
+and she walked with a sort of timid, uncertain step, just as though
+with one foot she were making a large step, and with the other a small
+one. She walked with docility up to the divan and with docility laid
+her head down on the pillow, without ceasing to smile faintly and
+insanely. Even at a distance it was apparent that she was cold.
+
+“Pardon me, gentlemen, I am going to undress,” said Lichonin, and
+taking his coat off he threw it over the shoulders of the prostitute.
+“Tamara, give her chocolate and wine.”
+
+Boris Sobashnikov again stood up picturesquely in the corner, in a
+leaning position, one leg in front of the other and his head held high.
+Suddenly he spoke amid the general silence, addressing Platonov
+directly, in a most foppish tone:
+
+“Eh ... Listen ... what’s your name? ... This, then, must be your
+mistress? Eh?” And with the tip of his boot he pointed in the direction
+of the recumbent Pasha.
+
+“Wha-at?” asked Platonov in a drawl, knitting his eyebrows.
+
+“Or else you are her lover—it’s all one ... What do they call this duty
+here? Well, now, these same people for whom the women embroider shirts
+and with whom they divide their honest earnings? ... Eh? ...”
+
+Platonov looked at him with a heavy, intent gaze through his narrowed
+lids.
+
+“Listen,” he said quietly, in a hoarse voice, slowly and ponderously
+separating his words. “This isn’t the first time that you’re trying to
+pick a quarrel with me. But, in the first place, I see that despite
+your sober appearance you are exceedingly and badly drunk; and, in the
+second place, I spare you for the sake of your comrades. However, I
+warn you, that if you think of talking that way to me again, take your
+eyeglasses off.”
+
+“What’s this stuff?” exclaimed Boris, raising his shoulders high and
+snorting through his nose. “What eyeglasses? Why eyeglasses?” But
+mechanically, with two extended fingers, he fixed the bow of the
+PINCE-NEZ on the bridge of his nose.
+
+“Because I’m going to hit you, and the pieces may get in your eye,”
+said the reporter unconcernedly.
+
+Despite the unexpectedness of such a turn of the quarrel, nobody
+started laughing. Only Little White Manka oh’d in astonishment and
+clapped her hands. Jennie, with avid impatience, shifted her eyes from
+one to the other.
+
+“Well, now! I’ll give you change back myself so’s you won’t like it!”
+roughly, altogether boyishly, cried out Sobashnikov. “Only it’s not
+worth while mussing one’s hands with every ...” he wanted to add a new
+invective, but decided not to, “with every ... And besides, comrades, I
+do not intend to stay here any longer. I am too well brought up to be
+hail-fellow-well-met with such persons.”
+
+He rapidly and haughtily walked to the door.
+
+It was necessary for him to pass almost right up against Platonov, who,
+out of the corner of his eye, animal-like, was watching his every
+movement. For a moment in the mind of the student flashed a desire to
+strike Platonov unexpectedly, from the side, and jump away—the comrades
+would surely part them and not allow a fight. But immediately, almost
+without looking at the reporter, with some sort of deep, unconscious
+instinct, he saw and sensed those broad hands, lying quietly on the
+table, that obdurately bowed head with its broad forehead, and all the
+ungainly, alert, powerful body of his foe, so neligently hunched up and
+spread out on the chair, but ready at any second for a quick and
+terrific blow. And Sobashnikov walked out into the corridor, loudly
+banging the door after him.
+
+“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” said Jennie after him in a mocking
+patter. “Tamarochka, pour me out some more cognac.”
+
+But the lanky student Petrovsky got up from his place and considered it
+necessary to defend Sobashnikov.
+
+“Just as you wish, gentlemen; this is a matter of your personal view,
+but out of principle I go together with Boris. Let him be not right and
+so on, we can express censure to him in our own intimate company, but
+when an insult has been rendered our comrade—I can’t remain here. I am
+going away.”
+
+“Oh, my God!” And Lichonin nervously and vexedly scratched his temple.
+“Boris behaved himself all the time in the highest degree vulgarly,
+rudely and foolishly. What sort of corporate honour do you think this
+is? A collective walk-out from editorial offices, from political
+meetings, from brothels. We aren’t officers to screen the foolishness
+of each comrade.”
+
+“All the same, just as you wish, but I am going away out of a sense of
+solidarity!” said Petrovsky importantly and walked out.
+
+“May the earth be as down upon you!” Jennie sent after him.
+
+But how tortuous and dark the ways of the human soul! Both of
+them—Sobashnikov as well as Petrovsky—acted in their indignation rather
+sincerely, but the first only half so, while the second only a quarter
+in all. Sobashnikov, despite his intoxication and wrath, still had
+knocking at the door of his mind the alluring thought that now it would
+be more convenient and easier before his comrades to call out Jennka on
+the quiet and to be alone with her. While Petrovsky, with exactly the
+same aim, went after Sobashnikov in order to make a loan of three
+roubles from him. In the general drawing room they made things up
+between them, and after ten minutes Zociya, the housekeeper, shoved in
+her little, squinting, pink, cunning face through the half-open door of
+the private room.
+
+“Jennechka,” she called, “go, they have brought your linen, go count
+it. And you, Niura, the actor begs to come for just a minute, to drink
+some champagne. He’s with Henrietta and Big Manya.”
+
+The precipitate and incongruous quarrel of Platonov and Sobashnikov
+long served as a subject of conversation. The reporter, in cases like
+this, always felt shame, uneasiness, regret and the torments of
+conscience. And despite the fact that all those who remained were on
+his side, he was speaking with weariness in his voice:
+
+“By God, gentlemen! I’ll go away, best of all. Why should I disrupt
+your circle? We were both at fault. I’ll go away. Don’t bother about
+the bill. I’ve already paid Simeon, when I was going after Pasha.”
+
+Lichonin suddenly rumpled up his hair and stood up
+
+“Oh, no, the devil take it! I’ll go and drag him here. Upon my word of
+honour, they’re both fine fellows—Boris as well as Vaska. But they’re
+young yet, and bark at their own tails. I’m going after them, and I
+warrant that Boris will apologize.”
+
+He went away, but came back after five minutes.
+
+“They repose,” said he, sombrely, and made a hopeless gesture with his
+hand. “Both of them.”
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+
+At this moment Simeon walked into the cabinet with a tray upon which
+stood two goblets of a bubbling golden wine and lay a large visiting
+card.
+
+“May I ask which of you here might be Mister Gavrila Petrovich
+Yarchenko?” he said, looking over all those sitting.
+
+“I,” responded Yarchenko.
+
+“If youse please. The actor gent sent this.”
+
+Yarchenko took the visiting card and read aloud:
+
+Eumenii Poluectovich
+EGMONT—LAVRETZKI
+Dramatic Artist of Metropolitan Theatres
+
+
+“It’s remarkable,” said Volodya Pavlov, “that all the Russian Garricks
+bear such queer names, on the style of Chrysantov, Thetisov, Mamontov
+and Epimhakov.”
+
+“And besides that, the best known of them must needs either speak
+thickly, or lisp, or stammer,” added the reporter.
+
+“Yes, but most remarkable of all is the fact that I do not at all have
+the honour of knowing this artist of the metropolitan theatres.
+However, there’s something else written on the reverse of this card.
+Judging by the handwriting, it was written by a man greatly drunk and
+little lettered.
+
+“‘I dreenk’—not drink, but dreenk,” explained Yarchenko. “‘I dreenk to
+the health of the luminary of Russian science, Gavrila Petrovich
+Yarchenko, whom I saw by chance when I was passing by through the
+collidor. Would like to clink glasses together personally. If you do
+not remember, recollect the National Theatre, Poverty Is No Disgrace,
+and the humble artist who played African.’ Yes, that’s right,” said
+Yarchenko. “Once, somehow, they saddled me with the arrangement of this
+benefit performance in the National Theatre. Also, there dimly glimmers
+some clean-shaven haughty visage, but ... What shall it be, gentlemen?”
+
+Lichonin answered good-naturedly:
+
+“Why, drag him here. Perhaps he’s funny.”
+
+“And you?” the sub-professor turned to Platonov.
+
+“It’s all the same to me. I know him slightly. At first he’ll shout:
+‘KELLNER, champagne!’ then burst into tears about his wife, who is an
+angel, then deliver a patriotic speech and finally raise a row over the
+bill, but none too loudly. All in all he’s entertaining.”
+
+“Let him come,” said Volodya, from behind the shoulder of Katie, who
+was sitting on his knees, swinging her legs.
+
+“And you, Veltman?”
+
+“What?” the student came to with a start. He was sitting on the divan
+with his back to his companions, near the reclining Pasha, bending over
+her, and already for a long time, with the friendliest appearance of
+sympathy, had been stroking her, now on the shoulder, now on the hair
+at the nape of the neck, while she was smiling at him with her shyly
+shameless and senselessly passionate smile through half-closed and
+trembling eyelashes. “What? What’s it all about? Oh yes,—is it all
+right to let the actor in? I’ve nothing against it. Please do ...”
+
+Yarchenko sent an invitation through Simeon, and the actor came and
+immediately commenced the usual actor’s play. In the door he paused, in
+his long frock coat, shining with its silk lapels, with a glistening
+opera hat, which he held with his arm in the middle of his chest, like
+an actor portraying in the theatre an elderly worldly lion or a bank
+director. And approximately these persons he was inwardly picturing to
+himself.
+
+“May I be permitted, gentlemen, to intrude into your intimate company?”
+he asked in an unctuous, kindly voice, with a half-bow done somewhat to
+one side.
+
+They asked him in, and he began to introduce himself. Shaking hands, he
+stuck out his elbow forward and raised it so high that the hand proved
+to be far lower. Now it was no longer a bank director, but such a
+clever, splendid fellow, a sportsman and a rake of the golden youths.
+But his face—with rumpled, wild eyebrows and with denuded lids without
+lashes—was the vulgar, harsh and low face of a typical alcoholic,
+libertine, and pettily cruel man. Together with him came two of his
+ladies: Henrietta the eldest girl in years in the establishment of Anna
+Markovna, experienced, who had seen everything and had grown accustomed
+to everything, like an old horse on the tether of a threshing machine,
+the possessor of a thick bass, but still a handsome woman; and Big
+Manka, or Manka the Crocodile. Henrietta since still the preceding
+night had not parted from the actor, who had taken her from the house
+to a hotel.
+
+Having seated himself alongside of Yarchenko, he straight off began to
+play a new role—he became something on the order of an old good soul of
+a landed proprietor, who had at one time been at a university himself,
+and now can not look upon the students without a quiet, fatherly
+emotion.
+
+“Believe me, gentlemen, that one’s soul rests from all these worldly
+squabbles in the midst of youth,” he was saying, imparting to his
+depraved and harsh face an actor-like, exaggerated and improbable
+expression of being moved. “This faith in a high ideal, these honest
+impulses! ... What can be loftier and purer than our Russian students
+as a body? ... KELLNER! Chompa-a-agne!” he yelled deafeningly all of a
+sudden, and dealt a heavy blow on the table with his fist.
+
+Lichonin and Yarchenka did not wish to remain in debt to him. A spree
+began. God knows in what manner Mishka the Singer and Nicky the
+Book-keeper soon found themselves in the cabinet, and at once began
+singing in their galloping voices:
+
+“They fe-e-e-el the tru-u-u-uth,
+Come thou daw-aw-aw-awning quicker ...”
+
+
+There also appeared Roly-Poly, who had awakened. Letting his head drop
+touchingly to one side and having made little narrowed, lachrymose,
+sweet eyes in his wrinkled old face of a Don Quixote, he was speaking
+in a persuasively begging tone:
+
+“Gentlemen students ... you ought to treat a little old man. I love
+education, by God! ... Allow me!”
+
+Lichonin was glad to see everybody, but Yarchenko in the
+beginning—until the champagne had mounted to his head—only raised high
+his small, short eyebrows with a timorous, wondering and naive air. It
+suddenly became crowded, smoky, noisy and close in the cabinet. Simeon,
+with rattling, closed the blinds with bolts on the outside. The women,
+just having gotten done with a visit or in the interim between dances,
+walked into the room, sat on somebody’s knees, smoked, sang
+disjointedly, drank wine, kissed and again went away, and again came.
+The clerks of Kereshkovsky, offended because the damsels bestowed more
+attention upon the cabinet than the drawing room, did start a row and
+tried to enter into a provoking explanation with the students, but
+Simeon in a moment quelled them with two or three authoritative words,
+thrown out as though in passing.
+
+Niura came back from her room and a little later Petrovsky followed
+her. Petrovsky with an extremely serious air declared that he had been
+walking on the street all this time, thinking over the incident which
+had taken place and in the end had come to the conclusion that comrade
+Boris was in reality not in the right, but that there also was a
+circumstance in extenuation of his fault—intoxication. Also, Jennie
+came later, but alone—Sobashnikov had fallen asleep in her room. The
+actor proved to have no end of talents. He very faithfully imitated the
+buzzing of a fly which an intoxicated man is catching on a window-pane,
+and the sounds of a saw; drolly performed, standing with his face in
+the corner, the conversation of a nervous lady over the telephone;
+imitated the singing of a phonograph record, and in the end, with
+exceeding likeness to life, showed a little Persian lad with a little
+trained monkey. Holding on with his hand to an imaginary small chain
+and at the same time baring his teeth, squatting like a monkey, winking
+his eyelids often, and scratching now his posteriors, now the hair on
+his head, he sang through his nose, in a monotonous and sad voice,
+distorting the words:
+
+“The i-young cissack to the war has went,
+The i-young ladee underneath the fence lies spraw-aw-ling.
+AINA, AINA, AI-NA-NA-NA, AI-NA NA-NA-NA.”
+
+
+In conclusion he took Little White Manka in his arms, wrapped her up in
+the skirts of his frock and, stretching out his hand and making a
+tearful face, began to nod his head, bent to one side, as is done by
+little swarthy, dirty, oriental lads who roam over all Russia in long,
+old, soldiers’ overcoats, with bared chest of a bronze colour, holding
+a coughing, moth-eaten little monkey in their bosom.
+
+“And who may you be?” severely asked fat Kate, who knew and loved this
+joke.
+
+“Me Serbian, lady-y-y,” piteously moaned the actor through his nose.
+“Give me somethin’, lady-y-y.”
+
+“And what do they call your little monkey?”
+
+“Matreshka-a-a ... Him ’ungry-y-y, lady ... him want eat...”
+
+“And have you got a passport?”
+
+“We Serbia-a-an. Gimme something lady-y-y...”
+
+The actor proved not superfluous on the whole. He created at once a
+great deal of noise and raised the spirits of the company, which were
+beginning to be depressing. And every minute he cried out in a
+stentorian voice:
+
+“KELLNER! Chompa-a-agne!”—although Simeon, who was accustomed to his
+manner paid very little attention to these cries.
+
+There began a truly Russian hubbub, noisy and senseless. The rosy,
+flaxen-haired, pleasing Tolpygin was playing LA SEGUIDILLE from CARMEN
+on the piano, while Roly-Poly was dancing a Kamarinsky peasant dance to
+its tune. His narrow shoulders hunched up, twisted all to one side, the
+fingers of his hanging hands widely spread, he intricately hopped on
+one spot from one long, thin leg to the other, then suddenly letting
+out a piercing grunt, would throw himself upward and shout out in time
+to his wild dance:
+
+“Ugh! Dance on, Matthew,
+Don’t spare your boots, you! ...”
+
+
+“Eh, for one stunt like that a quartern of brandy isn’t enough!” he
+would add, shaking his long, graying hair.
+
+“They fee-ee-eel! the tru-u-u-uth!” roared the two friends, raising
+with difficulty their underlids, grown heavy, beneath dull, bleary
+eyes.
+
+The actor commenced to tell obscene anecdotes, pouring them out as from
+a bag, and the women squealed from delight, bent in two from laughter
+and threw themselves against the backs of their chairs. Veltman, who
+had long been whispering with Pasha, inconspicuously, in the hubbub,
+slipped out of the cabinet, while a few minutes after him Pasha also
+went away, smiling with her quiet, insane and bashful smile.
+
+But all of the remaining students as well, save Lichonin, one after the
+other, some on the quiet, some under one pretext or another, vanished
+from the cabinet and did not return for long periods. Volodya Pavlov
+experienced a desire to look at the dancing; Tolpygin’s head began to
+ache badly, and he asked Tamara to lead him somewhere where he might
+wash up; Petrovski, having “touched” Lichonin for three roubles on the
+quiet, went out into the corridor and only from there despatched the
+housekeeper Zociya for Little White Manka. Even the prudent and
+fastidious Ramses could not cope with that spicy feeling which to-day’s
+strange, vivid and unwholesome beauty of Jennie excited in him. It
+proved that he had some important, undeferrable business this morning;
+it was necessary to go home and snatch a bit of sleep if only for a
+couple of hours. But, having told good-bye to his companions, he,
+before going out of the cabinet, rapidly and with deep significance
+pointed the door out to Jennie with his eyes. She understood, slowly,
+scarcely perceptibly, lowered her eyelashes as a sign of consent, and,
+when she again raised them, Platonov, who almost without looking had
+seen this silent dialogue, was struck by that expression of malice and
+menace in her eyes which she sped the back of the departing Ramses.
+Having waited for five minutes she got up, said “Excuse me, I’ll be
+right back,” and went out, swinging her short orange skirt.
+
+“Well, now? Is it your turn, Lichonin?” asked the reporter banteringly.
+
+“No, brother, you’re mistaken!” said Lichonin and clacked his tongue.
+“And I’m not doing it out of conviction or on principle, either ... No!
+I, as an anarchist, proclaim the gospel that the worse things are, the
+better ... But, fortunately, I am a gambler and spend all my
+temperament on gaming; on that account simple squeamishness speaks
+louder within me than this same unearthly feeling. But it’s amazing our
+thoughts coincided. I just wanted to ask you about the same thing.”
+
+“I—no. Sometimes, if I become very much tired out, I sleep here over
+night. I take from Isaiah Savvich the key to his little room and sleep
+on the divan. But all the girls here are already used to the fact that
+I am a being of the third sex.”
+
+“And really ... never? ...”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Well, what’s right is right!” exclaimed Nhira. “Sergei Ivanich is like
+a holy hermit.”
+
+“Previously, some five years ago, I experienced this also,” continued
+Platonov. “But, do you know, it’s really too tedious and disgusting.
+Something on the nature of these flies which the actor gentleman just
+represented. They’re stuck together on the window sill, and then in
+some sort of fool wonder scratch their backs with their little hind
+legs and fly apart forever. And to play at love here? ... Well, for
+that I’m no hero out of their sort of novel. I’m not handsome, am shy
+with women, uneasy, and polite. While here they thirst for savage
+passions, bloody jealousy, tears, poisonings, beatings, sacrifices,—in
+a word, hysterical romanticism. And it’s easy to understand why. The
+heart of woman always wants love, while they are told of love every day
+with various sour, drooling words. Involuntarily one wants pepper in
+one’s love. One no longer wants words of passion, but
+tragically-passionate deeds. And for that reason thieves, murderers,
+souteners and other riff-raff will always be their lovers.”
+
+“And most important of all,” added Platonov, “that would at once spoil
+for me all the friendly relations which have been so well built up.”
+
+“Enough of joking!” incredulously retorted Lichonin. “Then what compels
+you to pass days and nights here? Were you a writer—it would be a
+different matter. It’s easy to find an explanation; well, you’re
+gathering types or something ... observing life ... After the manner of
+that German professor who lived for three years with monkeys, in order
+to study closely their language and manners. But you yourself said that
+you don’t indulge in writing?”
+
+“It isn’t that I don’t indulge, but I simply don’t know how—I can’t.”
+
+“We’ll write that down. Now let’s suppose another thing—that you come
+here as an apostle of a better, honest life, in the nature of a, now,
+saviour of perishing souls. You know, as in the dawn of Christianity
+certain holy fathers instead of standing on a column for thirty years
+or living in a cave in the woods, went to the market places, into
+houses of mirth, to the harlots and scaramuchios. But you aren’t
+inclined that way.”
+
+“I’m not.”
+
+“Then why, the devil take it, do you hang around here? I can see very
+well that a great deal here is revolting and oppressive and painful to
+your own self. For example, this fool quarrel with Boris or this flunky
+who beats a woman, and—, in general, the constant contemplation of
+every kind of filth, lust, bestiality, vulgarity, drunkenness. Well,
+now, since you say so—I believe that you don’t give yourself up to
+lechery. But then, still more incomprehensible to me is your MODUS
+VIVENDI, to express myself in the style of leading articles.”
+
+The reporter did not answer at once:
+
+“You see,” he began speaking slowly, with pauses, as though for the
+first time lending ear to his thoughts and weighing them. “You see, I’m
+attracted and interested in this life by its ... how shall I express
+it? ... its fearful, stark truth. Do you understand, it’s as though all
+the conventional coverings were ripped off it. There is no falsehood,
+no hypocrisy, no sanctimoniousness, there are no compromises of any
+sort, neither with public opinion, nor with the importunate authority
+of our forefathers, nor with one’s own conscience. No illusions of any
+kind, nor any kind of embellishments! Here she is—‘I! A public woman, a
+common vessel, a cloaca for the drainage of the city’s surplus lust.
+Come to me any one who wills—thou shalt meet no denial, therein is my
+service. But for a second of this sensuality in haste—thou shalt pay in
+money, revulsion, disease and ignominy.’ And that is all. There is not
+a single phase of human life where the basic main truth should shine
+with such a monstrous, hideous, stark clearness, without any shade of
+human prevarication or self-whitewashing.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know! These women lie like the very devil. You just go and
+talk with her a bit about her first fall. She’ll spin you such a yarn!”
+
+“Well, don’t you ask then. What business is that of yours? But even if
+they do lie, they lie altogether like children. But then, you know
+yourself that children are the foremost, the most charming fibsters,
+and at the same time the sincerest people on earth. And it’s
+remarkable, that both they and the others—that is, both prostitutes and
+children—lie only to us—men—and grown-ups. Among themselves they don’t
+lie—they only inspiredly improvise. But they lie to us because we
+ourselves demand this of them, because we clamber into their souls,
+altogether foreign to us, with our stupid tactics and questionings,
+because they regard us in secret as great fools and senseless
+dissemblers. But if you like, I shall right now count off on my fingers
+all the occasions when a prostitute is sure to lie, and you yourself
+will be convinced that man incites her to lying.”
+
+“Well, well, we shall see.” “First: she paints herself mercilessly, at
+times even in detriment to herself. Why? Because every pimply military
+cadet, who is so distressed by his sexual maturity that he grows stupid
+in the spring, like a wood-cock on a drumming-log; or some sorry petty
+government clerk or other from the department of the parish, the
+husband of a pregnant woman and the father of nine infants—why, they
+both come here not at all with the prudent and simple purpose of
+leaving here the surplus of their passion. He, the good for nothing,
+has come to enjoy himself; he needs beauty, d’you see—aesthete that he
+is! But all these girls, these daughters of the simple, unpretentious,
+great Russian people—how do they regard aesthetics? ‘What’s sweet,
+that’s tasty; what’s red, that’s handsome.’ And so, there you are,
+receive, if you please, a beauty of antimony, white lead and rouge.
+
+“That’s one. Secondly, his desire for beauty isn’t enough for this
+resplendent cavalier—no, he must in addition be served with a
+similitude of love, so that from his caresses there should kindle in
+the woman this same ‘fa-hire of in-sane pahass-ssion!’ which is sung
+about In idiotical ballads. Ah! Then THAT is what you want? There
+y’are! And the woman lies to him with countenance, voice, sighs, moans,
+movements of the body. And even he himself in the depths of his soul
+knows about this professional deception, but—go along with you!—still
+deceives himself: ‘Ah, what a handsome man I am! Ah, how the women love
+me! Ah, into what an ecstasy I bring them ...’ You know, there are
+cases when a man with the most desperate brazenness, in the most
+unlikely manner, is flattered to his face, and he himself sees and
+knows it very plainly, but—the devil take it!—despite everything a
+delightful feeling of some sort lubricates his soul. And so here.
+Query: whose is the initiative in the lie?
+
+“And here’s a third point for you, Lichonin. You prompted it yourself.
+They lie most of all when they are asked: ‘How did you come to such a
+life?’ But what right have you to ask her about that, may the devil
+take you! For she does not push her way into your intimate life? She
+doesn’t interest herself with your first, ‘holy’ love or the virtue of
+your sisters and your bride. Aha! You pay money? Splendid! The bawd and
+the bouncer, and the police, and medicine, and the city government,
+watch over your interests. Polite and seemly conduct on the part of the
+prostitute hired by you for love is guaranteed you, and your
+personality is immune ... even though in the most direct sense, in the
+sense of a slap in the face, which you, of course, deserve through your
+aimless, and perhaps tormenting interrogations. But you desire truth as
+well for your money? Well, that you are never to discount and to
+control. They will tell you just such a conventionalized history as
+you—yourself a man of conventionality and a vulgarian—will digest
+easiest of all. Because by itself life is either exceedingly humdrum
+and tedious to you, or else as exceedingly improbable as only life can
+be improbable. And so you have the eternal mediocre history about an
+officer, about a shop clerk, about a baby and a superannuated father,
+who there, in the provinces, bewails his strayed daughter and implores
+her to return home. But mark you, Lichonin, all that I’m saying doesn’t
+apply to you; in you, upon my word of honour, I sense a sincere and
+great soul ... Let’s drink to your health?”
+
+They drank.
+
+“Shall I speak on?” continued Platonov undecidedly.
+
+“Are you bored?”
+
+“No, no, I beg of you, speak on.”
+
+“They also lie, and lie especially innocently, to those who preen
+themselves before them on political hobby horses. Here they agree with
+anything you want. I shall tell her to-day: Away with the modern
+bourgeois order! Let us destroy with bombs and daggers the capitalists,
+landed proprietors, and the bureaucracy! She’ll warmly agree with me.
+But to-morrow the hanger-on Nozdrunov will yell that it’s necessary to
+string up all the socialists, to beat up all the students and massacre
+all the sheenies, who partake of communion in Christian blood. And
+she’ll gleefully agree with him as well. But if in addition to that
+you’ll also inflame her imagination, make her fall in love with
+yourself, then she’ll go with you everywhere you may wish—on a pogrom,
+on a barricade, on a theft, on a murder. But then, children also are
+yielding. And they, by God, are children, my dear Lichonin...
+
+“At fourteen years she was seduced, and at sixteen she became a patent
+prostitute, with a yellow ticket and a venereal disease. And here is
+all her life, surrounded and fenced off from the universe with a sort
+of a bizarre, impenetrable and dead wall. Turn your attention to her
+everyday vocabulary—thirty or forty words, no more—altogether as with a
+baby or a savage: to eat, to drink, to sleep, man, bed, the madam,
+rouble, lover, doctor, hospital, linen, policeman—and that’s all. And
+so her mental development, her experience, her interests, remain on an
+infantile plane until her very death, exactly as in the case of a gray
+and naive lady teacher who has not crossed over the threshold of a
+female institute since she was ten, as in the case of a nun given as a
+child into a convent. In a word, picture to yourself a tree of a
+genuinely great species, but raised in a glass bell, in a jar from jam.
+And precisely to this childish phase of their existence do I attribute
+their compulsory lying—so innocent, purposeless and habitual ... But
+then, how fearful, stark, unadorned with anything the frank truth in
+this business-like dickering about the price of a night; in these ten
+men in an evening; in these printed rules, issued by the city fathers,
+about the use of a solution of boric acid and about maintaining one’s
+self in cleanliness; in the weekly doctors’ inspections; in the nasty
+diseases, which are looked upon as lightly and facetiously, just as
+simply and without suffering, as a cold would be; in the deep revulsion
+of these women to men—so deep, that they all, without conception,
+compensate for it in the Lesbian manner and do not even in the least
+conceal it. All their incongruous life is here, on the palm of my hand,
+with all its cynicism, monstrous and coarse injustice; but there is in
+it none of that falsehood and that hypocrisy before people and before
+one’s self, which enmesh all humanity from top to bottom. Consider, my
+dear Lichonin, how much nagging, drawn out, disgusting deception, how
+much hate, there is in any marital cohabitation in ninety-nine cases
+out of a hundred. How much blind, merciless cruelty—precisely not
+animal, but human, reasoned, far-sighted, calculated cruelty—there is
+in the sacred maternal instinct—and behold, with what tender colours
+this instinct is adorned! Then what about all these unnecessary,
+tom-fool professions, invented by cultured man for the safeguarding of
+my nest, my bit of meat, my woman, my child, these different overseers,
+controllers, inspectors, judges, attorneys, jailers, advocates, chiefs,
+bureaucrats, generals, soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of titles
+more. They all subserve human greed, cowardice, viciousness, servility,
+legitimised sensuality, laziness-beggarliness!—yes, that is the real
+word!—human beggarliness. But what magnificent words we have! The altar
+of the fatherland, Christian compassion for our neighbor, progress,
+sacred duty, sacred property, holy love. Ugh! I do not believe in a
+single fine word now, and I am nauseated to infinity with these petty
+liars, these cowards and gluttons! Beggar women! ... Man is born for
+great joy, for ceaseless creation, in which he is God; for a broad,
+free love, unhindered by anything,—love for everything: for a tree, for
+the sky, for man, for a dog, for the dear, benign, beautiful earth,—oh,
+especially for the earth with its beatific motherhood, with its
+mornings and nights, with its magnificent everyday miracles. But man
+has lied himself out so, has become such an importunate beggar, and has
+sunk so low! ... Ah, Lichonin, but I am weary!”
+
+“I, as an anarchist, partly understand you,” said Lichonin
+thoughtfully. It was as though he heard and yet did not hear the
+reporter. Some thought was with difficulty, for the first time, being
+born in his mind. “But one thing I can not comprehend. If humanity has
+become so malodorous to you, then how do you stand—and for so long,
+too,—all this,—” Lichonin took in the whole table with a circular
+motion of his hand,—“the basest thing that mankind could invent?”
+
+“Well, I don’t even know myself,” said Platonov with artlessness. “You
+see, I am a vagabond, and am passionately in love with life. I have
+been a turner, a compositor; I have sown and sold tobacco—the cheap
+Silver Makhorka kind—have sailed as a stoker on the Azov Sea, have been
+a fisherman on the Black—on the Dubinin fisheries; I have loaded
+watermelons and bricks on the Dnieper, have ridden with a circus, have
+been an actor—I can’t even recall everything. And never did need drive
+me. No, only an immeasurable thirst for life and an insupportable
+curiosity. By God, I would like for a few days to become a horse, a
+plant, or a fish, or to be a woman and experience childbirth; I would
+like to live with the inner life, and to look upon the universe with
+the eyes of every human being I meet. And so I wander care-free over
+towns and hamlets, bound by nothing; know and love tens of trades and
+joyously float wherever it suits fate to set my sail... And so it was
+that I came upon the brothel, and the more I look at it, the more there
+grows within me alarm, incomprehension, and very great anger. But even
+this will soon be at an end. When things get well into autumn—away
+again! I’ll get into a rail-rolling mill. I’ve a certain friend, he’ll
+manage it ... Wait, wait, Lichonin ... Listen to the actor ... That’s
+the third act.”
+
+Egmont-Lavretzki, who until this had been very successfully imitating
+now a shoat which is being put into a bag, now the altercation of a cat
+with a dog, was beginning little by little to wilt and droop. Upon him
+was already advancing the stage of self-revelation, next in order, in
+the paroxysm of which he several times attempted to kiss Yarchenko’s
+hand. His lids had become red; around the shaven, prickly lips had
+deepened the tearful wrinkles that gave him an appearance of weeping;
+and it could be heard by his voice that his nose and throat were
+already overflowing with tears.
+
+“I serve in a farce!” he was saying, smiting himself on the breast with
+his fist. “I disport myself in striped trunks for the sport of the
+sated mob! I have put out my torch, have hid my talent in the earth,
+like the slothful servant! But fo-ormerly!” he began to bray
+tragically, “Fo-ormerly-y-y! Ask in Novocherkassk, ask in Tvier, in
+Ustejne, in Zvenigorodok, in Krijopole.[10] What a Zhadov and Belugin I
+was! How I played Max! What a figure I created of Veltishchev—that was
+my crowning ro-ole ... Nadin-Perekopski was beginning with me at
+Sumbekov’s! With Nikiphorov-Pavlenko did I serve. Who made the name for
+Legunov-Pochainin? I! But no-ow ...”
+
+[10] All provincial towns.—Trans.
+
+
+He sniveled, and sought to kiss the sub-professor.
+
+“Yes! Despise me, brand me, ye honest folk. I play the tom-fool. I
+drink ... I have sold and spilt the sacred ointment! I sit in a dive
+with vendable merchandise. While my wife ... she is a saint, and pure,
+my little dove! ... Oh, if she knew, if she only knew! she works hard,
+she runs a modiste’s shop; her fingers—the fingers of an angel—are
+pricked with the needle, but I! Oh, sainted woman! And I—the
+scoundrel!—whom do I exchange thee for! Oh, horror!” The actor seized
+his hair. “Professor, let me, I’ll kiss your scholarly hand. You alone
+understand me. Let us go, I’ll introduce you, you’ll see what an angel
+this is! ... She awaits me, she does not sleep nights, she folds the
+tiny hands of my little ones and together with them whispers: ‘Lord,
+save and preserve papa.’”
+
+“You’re lying about it all, you ham!” said the drunken Little White
+Manka suddenly, looking with hatred upon Egmont-Lavretzki. “She isn’t
+whispering anything, but most peacefully sleeping with a man in your
+bed.”
+
+“Be still, you w—!” vociferated the actor beside himself; and seizing a
+bottle by the neck raised it high over his head. “Hold me, or else I’ll
+brain this carrion. Don’t you dare besmirch with your foul tongue...”
+
+“My tongue isn’t foul—I take communion,” impudently replied the woman.
+“But you, you fool, wear horns. You go traipsing around with
+prostitutes yourself, and yet want your wife not to play you false. And
+look where the dummy’s found a place to slaver, till he looks like he
+had reins in his mouth. And what did you mix the children in for, you
+miserable papa you! Don’t you roll your eyes and gnash your teeth at
+me. You won’t frighten me! W—yourself!”
+
+It required many efforts and much eloquence on the part of Yarchenko in
+order to quiet the actor and Little White Manka, who always after
+Benedictine ached for a row. The actor in the end burst into copious
+and unbecoming tears and blew his nose, like an old man; he grew weak,
+and Henrietta led him away to her room.
+
+Fatigue had already overcome everybody. The students, one after
+another, returned from the bedrooms; and separately from them, with an
+indifferent air, came their chance mistresses. And truly, both these
+and the others resembled flies, males and females, just flown apart on
+the window pane. They yawned, stretched, and for a long time an
+involuntary expression of wearisomeness and aversion did not leave
+their faces, pale from sleeplessness, unwholesomely glossy. And when
+they, before going their ways, said good-bye to each other, in their
+eyes twinkled some kind of an inimical feeling, just as with the
+participants of one and the same filthy and unnecessary crime.
+
+“Where are you going right now?” Lichonin asked the reporter in a low
+voice.
+
+“Well, really, I don’t know myself. I did want to spend the night in
+the cabinet of Isaiah Savvich, but it’s a pity to lose such a splendid
+morning. I’m thinking of taking a bath, and then I’ll get on a steamer
+and ride to the Lipsky monastery to a certain tippling black friar I
+know. But why?”
+
+“I would ask you to remain a little while and sit the others out. I
+must have a very important word or two with you.”
+
+“It’s a go.”
+
+Yarchenko was the last to go. He averred a headache and fatigue. But
+scarcely had he gone out of the house when the reporter seized Lichonin
+by the hand and quickly dragged him into the glass vestibule of the
+entrance.
+
+“Look!” he said, pointing to the street.
+
+And through the orange glass of the little coloured window Lichonin saw
+the sub-professor, who was ringing at Treppel’s. After a minute the
+door opened and Yarchenko disappeared through it.
+
+“How did you find out?” asked Lichonin with astonishment.
+
+“A mere trifle! I saw his face, and saw his hands smoothing Verka’s
+tights. The others were less restrained. But this fellow is bashful.”
+
+“Well, now, let’s go,” said Lichonin. “I won’t detain you long.”
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+
+Of the girls only two remained in the cabinet-Jennie, who had come in
+her night blouse, and Liuba, who had long been sleeping under cover of
+the conversation, curled up into a ball in the large plush armchair.
+The fresh, freckled face of Liuba had taken on a meek, almost
+childlike, expression, while the lips, just as they had smiled in
+sleep, had preserved the light imprint of a radiant, peaceful and
+tender smile. It was blue and biting in the cabinet from the dense
+tobacco smoke; guttered, warty little streams had congealed on the
+candles in the candelabras; the table, flooded with coffee and wine,
+scattered all over with orange peels, seemed hideous.
+
+Jennie was sitting on the divan, her knees clasped around with her
+arms. And again was Platonov struck by the sombre fire in her deep
+eyes, that seemed fallen in underneath the dark eyebrows, formidably
+contracted downward, toward the bridge of the nose.
+
+“I’ll put out the candles,” said Lichonin.
+
+The morning half-light, watery and drowsy, filled the room through the
+slits of the blinds. The extinguished wicks of the candles smoked with
+faint streams. The tobacco smoke swirled in blue, layered shrouds, but
+a ray of sunlight that had cut its way through the heart-shaped hollow
+in a window shutter, transpierced the cabinet obliquely with a joyous,
+golden sword of dust, and in liquid, hot gold splashed upon the paper
+on the wall.
+
+“That’s better,” said Lichonin, sitting down. “The conversation will be
+short, but ... the devil knows ... how to approach it.”
+
+He looked at Jennie in abstraction.
+
+“Shall I go away, then?” said she indifferently.
+
+“No, you sit a while,” the reporter answered for Lichonin. “She won’t
+be in the way,” he turned to the student and slightly smiled. “For the
+conversation will be about prostitution? Isn’t that so?”
+
+“Well, yes... sort of...”
+
+“Very well, then. You listen to her carefully. Her opinions happen to
+be of an unusually cynical nature, but at times of exceeding weight.”
+
+Lichonin vigorously rubbed and kneaded his face with his palms, then
+intertwined his fingers and nervously cracked them twice. It was
+apparent that he was agitated and was himself constrained about that
+which he was getting ready to say.
+
+“Oh, but isn’t it all the same!” he suddenly exclaimed angrily. “You
+were to-day speaking about these women ... I listened... True, you
+haven’t told me anything new. But-strangely-I, for some reason, as
+though for the first time in my loose life, have looked upon this
+question with open eyes... I ask you, what is prostitution in the end?
+What is it? The extravagant delirium of large cities, or an eternal
+historical phenomenon? Will it cease some time? Or will it die only
+with the death of all mankind? Who will answer me that?”
+
+Platonov was looking at him intently, narrowing his eyes slightly,
+through habit. He wanted to know what main thought was inflicting such
+sincere torture on Lichonin.
+
+“When it will cease, none will tell you. Perhaps when the magnificent
+Utopias of the socialists and anarchists will materialize, when the
+world will become everyone’s and no one’s, when love will be absolutely
+free and subject only to its own unlimited desires, while mankind will
+fuse into one happy family, wherein will perish the distinction between
+mine and thine, and there will come a paradise upon earth, and man will
+again become naked, glorified and without sin. Perhaps it may be
+then...”
+
+“But now? Now?” asks Lichonin with growing agitation. “Shall I look on,
+with my little hands folded? ‘It’s none of my affair?’ Tolerate it as
+an unavoidable evil? Put up with it, and wash my hands of it? Shall I
+pronounce a benediction upon it?”
+
+“This evil is not unavoidable, but insuperable. But isn’t it all the
+same to you?” asked Platonov with cold wonder. “For you’re an
+anarchist, aren’t you?”
+
+“What the devil kind of an anarchist am I! Well, yes, I am an
+anarchist, because my reason, when I think of life, always leads me
+logically to the anarchistic beginning. And I myself think in theory:
+let men beat, deceive, and fleece men, like flocks of sheep—let
+them!—violence will breed rancour sooner or later. Let them violate the
+child, let them trample creative thought under foot, let there be
+slavery, let there be prostitution, let them thieve, mock, spill
+blood...Let them! The worse, the better, the nearer the end. There is a
+great law, I think, the same for inanimate objects as well as for all
+the tremendous and many-millioned human life: the power of effort is
+equal to the power of resistance. The worse, the better. Let evil and
+vindictiveness accumulate in mankind, let them grow and ripen like a
+monstrous abscess—an abscess the size of the whole terrestrial sphere.
+For it will burst some time! And let there be terror and insufferable
+pain. Let the pus deluge all the universe. But mankind will either
+choke in it and perish, or, having gone through the illness, will be
+regenerated to a new, beautiful life.”
+
+Lichonin avidly drank off a cup of cold black coffee and continued
+vehemently:
+
+“Yes. Just so do I and many others theorize, sitting in our rooms, over
+tea with white bread and cooked sausage, when the value of each
+separate human life is so-so, an infinitesimally small numeral in a
+mathematical formula. But let me see a child abused, and the red blood
+will rush to my head from rage. And when I look and look upon the
+labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown into hysterics for shame
+at my algebraic calculations. There is—the devil take it!—there is
+something incongruous, altogether illogical, but which at this time is
+stronger than human reason. Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this
+minute as though I had robbed a sleeping man or deceived a
+three-year-old child, or hit a bound person? And why does it seem to me
+to-day that I myself am guilty of the evil of prostitution—guilty in my
+silence, my indifference, my indirect permission? What am I to do,
+Platonov!” exclaimed the student with grief in his voice.
+
+Platonov kept silent, squinting at him with his little narrow eyes. But
+Jennie unexpectedly said in a caustic tone:
+
+“Well, you do as one Englishwoman did ... A certain red-haired
+clodhopper came to us here. She must have been important, because she
+came with a whole retinue ... all some sort of officials ... But before
+her had come the assistant of the commissioner, with the precinct
+inspector Kerbesh. And the assistant directly forewarned us, just like
+that: ‘If you stiffs, and so on and so on, will let out even one little
+rude word, or something, then I won’t leave one stone upon another of
+your establishment, while I’ll flog all the wenches soundly in the
+station-house and make ’em rot in jail!’ Well, at last this galoot
+came. She gibbered and she gibbered something in a foreign language,
+all the time pointed to heaven with her hand, and then distributed a
+five-kopeck Testament to every one of us and rode away. Now you ought
+to do the same, dearie.”
+
+Platonov burst into loud laughter. But seeing the naive and sad face of
+Lichonin, who did not seem to understand, nor even suspect mockery, he
+restrained his laughter and said seriously:
+
+“You won’t accomplish anything, Lichonin. While there will be property,
+there will also be poverty. While marriage exists, prostitution also
+will not die. Do you know who will always sustain and nourish
+prostitution? It is the so-called decent people, the noble
+paterfamiliases, the irreproachable husbands, the loving brothers. They
+will always find a seemly motive to legitimize, normalize and put a
+wrapper all around paid libertinage, because they know very well that
+otherwise it would rush in a torrent into their bedrooms and nurseries.
+Prostitution is for them a deflection of the sensuousness of others
+from their personal, lawful alcove. And even the respectable
+paterfamilias himself is not averse to indulge in a love debauch in
+secret. And really, it is palling to have always the one and the same
+thing the wife, the chambermaid, and the lady on the side. Man, as a
+matter of fact, is a poly—and exceedingly so—a polygamous animal. And
+to his rooster-like amatory instincts it will always be sweet to unfold
+in such a magnificent nursery garden, A LA Treppel’s or Anna
+Markovna’s. Oh, of course, a well-balanced spouse or the happy father
+of six grown-up daughters will always be clamouring about the horror of
+prostitution. He will even arrange with the help of a lottery and an
+amateur entertainment a society for the saving of fallen women, or an
+asylum in the name of St. Magdalene. But the existence of prostitution
+he will bless and sustain.”
+
+“Magdalene asylums!” with quiet laughter, full of an ancient hatred the
+ache of which had not yet healed, repeated Jennie.
+
+“Yes, I know that all these false measures undertaken are stuff and a
+total mockery,” cut in Lichonin. “But let me be ridiculous and stupid,
+yet I do not wish to remain a commiserating spectator, who sits on a
+warm ledge, gazes upon a conflagration, and is saying all the time:
+‘Oh, my, but it’s burning ... by God, it is burning! Perhaps there are
+even people burning!’—but for his part merely laments and slaps his
+thighs.”
+
+“Well, now,” said Platonov harshly, “would you take a child’s syringe
+and go to put out the fire with it?”
+
+“No!” heatedly exclaimed Lichonin ... “Perhaps—who knows?—perhaps I’ll
+succeed in saving at least one living soul? It was just this that I
+wanted to ask you about, Platonov, and you must help me ... Only, I
+implore you, without jeers, without cooling off ...”
+
+“You want to take a girl out of here? To save her?” asked Platonov,
+looking at him attentively. He now understood the drift of this entire
+conversation.
+
+“Yes ... I don’t know ... I’ll try ...” answered Lichonin uncertainly.
+
+“She’ll come back,” said Platonov.
+
+“She will,” Jennie repeated with conviction.
+
+Lichonin walked up to her, took her by the hands and began to speak in
+a trembling whisper:
+
+“Jennechka ... Perhaps you ... eh? For I don’t call you as a mistress
+... but a friend ... It’s all a trifle, half a year of rest ... and
+then we’ll master some trade or other ... we’ll read...”
+
+Jennie snatched her hands out of his with vexation.
+
+“Oh, into a bog with you!” she almost shouted. “I know you! Want me to
+darn socks for you? Cook on a kerosene stove? Pass nights without
+sleeping on account of you when you’ll be chitter-chattering with your
+short-haired friends? But when you get to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a
+government clerk, then it’s me will get a knee in the back: ‘Out on the
+street with you, now, you public hide, you’ve ruined my young life. I
+want to marry a decent girl, pure, and innocent! ...”
+
+“I meant it as a brother ... I meant it without that ...” mumbled
+Lichonin in confusion.
+
+“I know that kind of brothers. Until the first night ... Leave off and
+don’t talk nonsense to me! It makes me tired to listen to it!”
+
+“Wait, Lichonin!” began the reporter seriously. “Why, you will pile a
+load beyond your strength upon yourself as well. I’ve known idealists,
+among the populists, who married peasant girls out of principle. This
+is just the way they thought—nature, black-loam, untapped forces. ...
+But this black-loam after a year turned into the fattest of women, who
+lies the whole day in bed and chews cookies, or studs her fingers with
+penny rings, spreads them out and admires them. Or else sits in the
+kitchen, drinks sweet liquor with the coachman and carries on a natural
+romance with him. Look out, here it will be worse!”
+
+All three became silent. Lichonin was pale and was wiping his moist
+forehead with a handkerchief.
+
+“No, the devil take it!” he cried out suddenly with obstinacy. “I don’t
+believe you! I don’t want to believe! Liuba” he called loudly the girl
+who had fallen asleep. “Liubochka!”
+
+The girl awoke, passed her palm over her lips, first to one side, then
+the other, yawned, and smiled, in a funny, child-like manner.
+
+“I wasn’t sleeping, I heard everything,” she said. “I only dozed off
+for a teeny-weeny bit.”
+
+“Liuba, do you want to go away from here with me?” asked Lichonin and
+took her by the hand. “But entirely, forever, to go away so’s never to
+return either to a brothel or the street?”
+
+Liuba questioningly, with perplexity, looked at Jennie, as though
+seeking from her an explanation of this jest.
+
+“That’s enough for you,” she said slyly. “You’re still studying
+yourself. Where do you come in, then, to take a girl and set her up?”
+
+“Not to set you up, Liuba ... I simply want to help you ... For it
+isn’t very sweet for you in a brothel, is it now!”
+
+“Naturally, it isn’t all sugar! If I was as proud as Jennechka, or so
+enticing like Pasha ... but I won’t get used to things here for
+anything ...”
+
+“Well, then, let’s go, let’s go! ...” entreated Lichonin. “Surely, you
+know some manual work—well, now, sewing something, embroidering,
+cutting?”
+
+“I don’t know anything!” answered Liuba bashfully and started laughing
+and turned red, covering her mouth with the elbow of her free arm.
+“What’s asked of us in the village, that I know, but anything more I
+don’t know. I can cook a little ... I lived at the priest’s—cooked for
+him.”
+
+“That’s splendid! That’s excellent!” Lichonin grew joyous. “I will
+assist you, you’ll open a dining room ... A cheap dining room, you
+understand ... I’ll advertise it for you ... The students will come!
+That’s magnificent! ...”
+
+“That’s enough of making fun of me!” retorted Liuba, a bit offended,
+and again looked askance and questioningly at Jennie.
+
+“He’s not joking,” answered Jennie with a voice which quavered
+strangely. “He’s in earnest, seriously.”
+
+“Here’s my word of honour that I’m serious! Honest to God, now!” the
+student caught her up with warmth and for some reason even made the
+sign of the cross in the direction of the empty corner.
+
+“And really,” said Jennie, “take Liubka. That’s not the same thing as
+taking me. I’m like an old dragoon’s nag, and used to it. You can’t
+make me over, neither with hay nor a stick. But Liubka is a simple girl
+and a kind one. And she hasn’t grown used to our life yet. What are you
+popping your eyes out at me for, you ninny? Answer when you’re asked.
+Well? Do you want to or don’t you want to?”
+
+“And why not? If they ain’t laughing, but for real ... And you,
+Jennechka, what would you advise me ...”
+
+“Oh, you’re such wood!” Jennie grew angry. “What’s better according to
+you—to rot on straw with a nose fallen through? To croak under the
+fence like a dog? Or to turn honest? Fool! You ought to kiss his hands;
+but no, you’re getting particular.”
+
+The naive Liuba did, in fact, extend her lips toward Lichonin’s hand,
+and this movement made everybody laugh, and touched them just the least
+trifle.
+
+“And that’s very good! It’s like magic!” bustled the overjoyed
+Lichonin. “Go and notify the proprietress at once that you’re going
+away from here forever. And take the most necessary things; it isn’t as
+it used to be; now a girl can go away from a brothel whenever she wants
+to.”
+
+“No, it can’t be done that way,” Jennie stopped him; “she can go away,
+that’s so, but you’ll have no end of unpleasantness and hullabaloo.
+Here’s what you do, student. You won’t regret ten roubles?”
+
+“Of course, of course ... if you please.”
+
+“Let Liuba tell the housekeeper that you’re taking her to your rooms
+for to-day. That’s the fixed rate—ten roubles. And afterwards, well,
+even to-morrow—come after the ticket and things. That’s nothing; we’ll
+work this thing roundly. And after that you must go to the police with
+her ticket and declare, that Liubka So-and-so has hired herself to you
+as chambermaid, and that you desire to exchange her blank for a real
+passport. Well, Liubka, lively! Take the money and march. And, look
+out, be as quick as possible with the housekeeper, or else she, the
+bitch, will read it in your eyes. And also don’t forget,” she cried,
+now after Liuba, “wipe the rouge off your puss, now. Or else the
+drivers will be pointing their fingers at you.”
+
+After half an hour Liuba and Lichonin were getting on a cab at the
+entrance. Jennie and the reporter were standing on the sidewalk.
+
+“You’re committing a great folly, Lichonin,” Platonov was saying
+listlessly, “but I honour and respect the fine impulse within you.
+Here’s the thought—and here’s the deed. You’re a brave and a splendid
+fellow.”
+
+“Here’s to your commencement!” laughed Jennie. “Look out, don’t forget
+to send for me to the christening.”
+
+“You won’t see it, no matter how long you wait for it!” laughed
+Lichonin, waving his cap about.
+
+They rode off. The reporter looked at Jennie, and with astonishment saw
+tears in her softened eyes.
+
+“God grant it, God grant it,” she was whispering.
+
+“What has been the matter with you to-day, Jennie?” he asked kindly.
+“What? Are you oppressed? Can’t I do anything?”
+
+She turned her back to him and leaned over the bent balustrade of the
+stoop.
+
+“How shall I write to you, if need be?” she asked in a stifled voice.
+
+“Why, it’s simple. Editorial rooms of Echoes. So-and-so. They’ll pass
+it on to me pretty fast.”
+
+“I ... I ... I ...” Jennie just began, but suddenly burst into loud,
+passionate sobs and covered her face with her hands, “I’ll write you
+...”
+
+And without taking her hands away from her face, her shoulders
+quivering, she ran up the stoop and disappeared in the house, loudly
+banging the door after her.
+
+
+
+
+ PART TWO
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Even to this day, after a lapse of ten years, the erstwhile inhabitants
+of the Yamkas recall that year, abounding in unhappy, foul, bloody
+events, which began with a series of trifling, small affrays, but
+terminated in the administration’s, one fine day, taking and destroying
+completely the ancient, long-warmed nest of legalized prostitution,
+which nest it had itself created—scattering its remains over the
+hospitals, jails and streets of the big city. Even to this day a few of
+the former proprietresses who have remained alive and have reached the
+limit of decrepitude, and quondam housekeepers, fat and hoarse, like
+pug-dogs grown old, recall this common destruction with sorrow, horror,
+and stolid perplexity.
+
+Just like potatoes out of a sack, brawls, robberies, diseases, murders
+and suicides began to pour down, and, it seemed, no one was to blame
+for this. All these misfortunes just simply began to be more frequent
+of their own accord, to pile one upon the other, to expand and grow;
+just as a small lump of snow, pushed by the feet of urchins, becomes
+constantly bigger and bigger by itself from the thawing snow sticking
+to it, grows bigger than the stature of a man, and, finally, with one
+last, small effort is precipitated into a ravine and rolls down as an
+enormous avalanche. The old proprietresses and housekeepers, of course,
+had never heard of fatality; but inwardly, with the soul, they sensed
+its mysterious presence in the inevitable calamities of that terrible
+year.
+
+And, truly, everywhere in life where people are bound by common
+interests, blood relationship, or the benefits of a profession into
+close, individualized groups—there inevitably can be observed this
+mysterious law of sudden accumulation, of a piling up, of events; their
+epidemicity, their strange succession and connectedness, their
+incomprehensible lingering. This occurs, as popular wisdom has long ago
+noted, in isolated families, where disease or death suddenly falls upon
+the near ones in an inevitable, enigmatic order. “Misfortune does not
+come alone.” “Misfortune without waits—open wide the gates.” This is to
+be noticed also in monasteries, banks, governmental departments,
+regiments, places of learning and other public institutions, where for
+a long time, almost for decades, life flows evenly, like a marshy
+river; and, suddenly, and after some altogether insignificant incident
+or other, there begin transfers, changes in positions, expulsions from
+service, losses, sicknesses. The members of society, just as though
+they had conspired, die, go insane, are caught thieving, shoot or hang
+themselves; vacancy after vacancy is freed; promotions follow
+promotions, new elements flow in, and, behold, after two years there is
+not a one of the previous people on the spot; everything is new, if
+only the institution has not fallen into pieces completely, has not
+crept apart. And is it not the same astounding destiny which overtakes
+enormous social, universal organizations—cities, empires, nations,
+countries, and, who knows, perhaps whole planetary worlds?
+
+Something resembling this incomprehensible fatality swept over the
+Yamaskya Borough as well, bringing it to a rapid and scandalous
+destruction. Now in place of the boisterous Yamkas is left a peaceful,
+humdrum outskirt, in which live truck-farmers, cat’s-meat men, Tartars,
+swineherds and butchers from the near-by slaughterhouses. At the
+petition of these worthy people even the designation of Yamaskya
+Borough itself, as disgracing the inhabitants with its past, has been
+named over into Golubovka, in honour of the merchant Golubov, owner of
+a shop dealing in groceries and delicacies, and warden of the local
+church.
+
+The first subterranean shocks of this catastrophe began in the heat of
+summer, at the time of the annual summer fair, which this year was
+unbelievably brilliant. Many circumstances contributed to its
+extraordinary success, multitudes, and the stupendousness of the deals
+concluded during it: the building in the vicinity of three new sugar
+refineries, and the unusually abundant crop of wheat, and, in
+particular, of sugar beets; the commencement of work in the laying of
+an electric trolley and of canalization; the building of a new road to
+the distance of 750 versts; but mainly, the fever of building which
+seized the whole town, all the banks and financial institutions, and
+all the houseowners. Factories for making brick sprang up on the
+outskirts of the town like mushrooms. A grandiose agricultural
+exposition opened. Two new steamer lines came into being, and they,
+together with the previously established ones, frenziedly competed with
+each other, transporting freight and pilgrims. In competition they
+reached such a state, that they lowered their passenger rates for the
+third class from seventy-five kopecks to five, three, two, and even one
+kopeck. In the end, ready to fall from exhaustion in the unequal
+struggle, one of the steamship companies offered a free passage to all
+the third-class passengers. Then its competitor at once added to the
+free passage half a loaf of white bread as well. But the biggest and
+most significant enterprise of this city was the engineering of the
+extensive river port, which had attracted to it hundreds of thousands
+of labourers and which cost God knows what money.
+
+It must also be added, that the city was at this time celebrating the
+millennial anniversary of its famous abbey, the most honoured and the
+richest among all the monasteries of Russia. From all the ends of
+Russia, out of Siberia, from the shores of the Frozen Ocean, from the
+extreme south—the Black and Caspian Seas—countless pilgrims had
+gathered for the worship of the local sanctities: the abbey’s saints,
+reposing deep underground in calcareous caverns. Suffice it to say,
+that the monastery gave shelter, and food of a sort, to forty thousand
+people daily; while those for whom there was not enough room lay, at
+night, side by side, like logs, in the extensive yards and lanes of the
+abbey.
+
+This was a summer out of some fairy-tale. The population of the city
+increased well-nigh fourfold through every sort of newly-come people.
+Stone-masons, carpenters, painters, engineers, technicians, foreigners,
+agriculturists, brokers, shady business men, river navigators,
+unoccupied knaves, tourists, thieves, card sharpers—they all overflowed
+the city, and not in a single hotel, the most dirty and dubious one,
+was there a vacant room. Insane prices were paid for quarters. The
+stock exchange gambled on a grand scale, as never before or since that
+summer. Money in millions simply flowed from hands to hands, and thence
+to a third pair. In one hour colossal riches were created, but then
+many former firms burst, and yesterday’s men of wealth turned into
+beggars. The commonest of labourers bathed and warmed themselves in
+this golden flood. Stevedores, draymen, street porters, roustabouts,
+hod carriers and ditch diggers still remember to this day what money
+they earned by the day during this mad summer. Any tramp received no
+less than four of five roubles a day at the unloading of barges laden
+with watermelons. And all this noisy, foreign band, locoed by the easy
+money, intoxicated with the sensual beauty of the ancient, seductive
+city, enchanted by the delightful warmth of the southern nights, made
+drunk by the insidious fragrance of the white acacias—these hundreds of
+thousands of insatiable, dissolute beasts in the image of men, with all
+their massed will clamoured: “Give us woman!”
+
+In a single month new amusement enterprises—chic Tivolis, CHATEAUX DES
+FLEURES, Olympias, Alcazars, etc., with a chorus and an operetta; many
+restaurants and beerhouses, with little summer gardens, and common
+little taverns—sprang up by the score in the city, in the vicinity of
+the building port. On every crossing new “violet-wine” houses were
+opened every day—little booths of boards, in each of which, under the
+pretext of selling bread-cider, old wenches trafficked in themselves by
+twos and threes, right alongside behind a partition of deal, and to
+many mothers and fathers is this summer painful and memorable through
+the degrading diseases of their sons—schoolboys and military cadets.
+For the casual arrivals servants were demanded, and thousands of
+peasant girls started out from the surrounding villages toward the
+city. It was inevitable that the demand on prostitution should become
+unusually high. And so, from Warsaw, from Lodz, from Odessa, from
+Moscow, and even from St. Petersburg, even from abroad, flocked
+together an innumerable multitude of foreign women; cocottes of Russian
+fabrication, the most ordinary prostitutes of the rank and file, and
+chic Frenchwomen and Viennese. Imperiously told the corrupting
+influence of the hundreds of millions of easy money. It was as though
+this cascade of gold had lashed down upon, had set to whirling and
+deluged within it, the whole city. The number of thefts and murders
+increased with astounding rapidity. The police, collected in augmented
+proportions, lost its head and was swept off its feet. But it must also
+be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful bribes, it resembled
+a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and listless. People were killed for
+anything and nothing, just so. It happened that men would walk up to a
+person in broad daylight somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask:
+“What’s your name?” “Fedorov.” “Aha, Federov? Then take this!” and they
+would slit his belly with a knife. They nicknamed these blades just
+that in the city—“rippers”; and there were among them names of which
+the city news seemed actually proud: the two brothers Polishchuk (Mitka
+and Dundas), Volodka the Greek, Fedor Miller, Captain Dmitriev,
+Sivocho, Dobrovolski, Shpachek, and many others.
+
+Both day and night on the main streets of the frenzied city stood,
+moved, and yelled the mob, as though at a fire. It would be almost
+impossible to describe what went on in the Yamkas then. Despite the
+fact that the madams had increased the staff of their patients to more
+than double and increased their prices trebly, their poor demented
+girls could not catch up in satisfying the demands of the drunken,
+crazed public, which threw money around like chips. It happened that in
+the drawing room, filled to overflowing with people, each girl would be
+awaited for by some seven, eight, at times even ten, men. It was,
+truly, some kind of a mad, intoxicated, convulsive time!
+
+And from that very time began all the misfortunes of the Yamkas, which
+brought them to ruin. And together with the Yamkas perished also the
+house, familiar to us, of the stout, old, pale-eyed Anna Markovna.
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+
+The passenger train sped merrily from the south to the north,
+traversing golden fields of wheat and beautiful groves of oak,
+careering with rumbling upon iron bridges over bright rivers, leaving
+behind it whirling clouds of smoke.
+
+In the COUPE of the second class, even with open windows, there was a
+fearful stuffiness, and it was hot. The smell of sulphurous smoke
+irritated the throat. The rocking and the heat had completely tired out
+the passengers, save one, a merry, energetic, mobile Hebrew, splendidly
+dressed, accommodating, sociable and talkative. He was travelling with
+a young woman, and it was at once apparent, especially through her,
+that they were newly-weds; so often did her face flare up with an
+unexpected colour at every tenderness of her husband, even the least.
+And when she raised her eyelashes to look upon him, her eyes would
+shine like stars, and grow humid. And her face was as beautiful as only
+the faces of young Hebrew maidens in love can be beautiful—all tenderly
+rosy, with rosy lips, rounded out in beautiful innocence, and with eyes
+so black that their pupils could not be distinguished from the irises.
+
+Unabashed by the presence of three strange people, he showered his
+caresses upon his companion every minute, and, it must be said,
+sufficiently coarse ones. With the unceremoniousness of an owner, with
+that especial egoism of one in love, who, it would seem, is saying to
+the whole universe: “See, how happy we are—this makes you happy also,
+isn’t that so?”—he would now pass his hand over her leg, which
+resiliently and in relief stood out beneath her dress, now pinch her on
+the cheek, now tickle her neck with his stiff, black, turned-up
+moustache ... But, even though he did sparkle with delight, there was
+still something rapacious, wary, uneasy to be glimpsed in his
+frequently winking eyes, in the twitching of the upper lip, and in the
+harsh outline of his shaved, square chin, jutting out, with a scarcely
+noticeable dent in the middle.
+
+Opposite this infatuated couple were placed three passengers—a retired
+general, a spare, neat little old man, with pomade on his hair, with
+curls combed forward to the temples; a stout land-owner, who had taken
+off his starched collar, but was still gasping from the heat and
+mopping his face every minute with a wet handkerchief; and a young
+infantry officer. The endless talkativeness of Simon Yakovlevich (the
+young man had already managed to inform his neighbours that he was
+called Simon Yakovlevich Horizon) tired and irritated the passengers a
+trifle, just like the buzzing of a fly, that on a sultry summer day
+rhythmically beats against a window pane of a closed, stuffy room. But
+still, he knew how to raise their spirits: he showed tricks of magic;
+told Hebrew anecdotes, full of a fine humour of their own. When his
+wife would go out on the platform to refresh herself, he would tell
+such things that the general would melt into a beatific smile, the
+land-owner would neigh, rocking his black-loam stomach, while the
+sub-lieutenant, a smooth-faced boy, only a year out of school, scarcely
+controlling his laughter and curiosity, would turn away to one side,
+that his neighbours might not see him turning red.
+
+His wife tended Horizon with a touching, naive attention; she wiped his
+face with a handkerchief, waved upon him with a fan, adjusted his
+cravat every minute. And his face at these times became laughably
+supercilious and stupidly self-conceited.
+
+“But allow me to ask,” asked the spare little general, coughing
+politely, “allow me to ask, my dear sir, what occupation might you
+pursue?”
+
+“Ah, my God!” with a charming frankness retorted Simon Yakovlevich.
+“Well, what can a poor Jew do in our time? It’s a bit of a travelling
+salesman and a commission broker by me. At the present time I’m far
+from business. You—he! he! he!—understand yourselves, gentlemen. A
+honeymoon—don’t turn red, Sarochka—it don’t repeat itself three times
+in a year. But afterwards I’ll have to travel and work a great deal.
+Here we’ll come with Sarochka to town, will pay the visits to her
+relatives, and then again on the road. On my first trip I’m thinking of
+taking my wife. You know, sort of a wedding journey. I’m a
+representative from Sidris and two English firms. Wouldn’t you like to
+have a look? Here are the samples with me ...”
+
+He very rapidly took out of a small, elegant case of yellow leather a
+few long cardboard folding books, and with the dexterity of a tailor
+began to unfold them, holding one end, from which their folds fell
+downward with a light crackling.
+
+“Look, what splendid samples: they don’t give in to foreign ones at
+all. Please notice. Here, for instance, is Russian and here English
+tricot, or here, cangan and cheviot. Compare, feel it, and you’ll be
+convinced that the Russian samples almost don’t give in to the foreign.
+Why, that speaks of progress, of the growth of culture. So it’s
+absolutely for nothing that Europe counts us Russians such barbarians.
+
+“And so we’ll pay our family visits, will look at the fair, pay a visit
+to the CHATEAU DES FLEURS, enjoy ourselves a little, stroll a bit, and
+then to the Volga down to Tzaritzin, to the Black Sea, and then again
+home to our native Odessa.”
+
+“That’s a fine journey,” said the sub-lieutenant modestly.
+
+“I should say it’s fine,” agreed Simon Yakovlevich; “but there are no
+roses without thorns. The work of a travelling salesman is exceedingly
+difficult and requires many kinds of knowledge, and not so much the
+knowledge of business as the knowledge of—how shall I say it?—the
+knowledge of the human soul. Another man may not even want to give an
+order, but you must work like an elephant to convince him, and argue
+until he feels the clearness and justice of your words. Because I take
+only absolutely clean lines exclusively, of which there can be no
+doubts. A fake or a bad line I will not take, although they should
+offer me millions for it. Ask wherever you like, in any store which
+deals in cloths or suspenders GLOIRE—I’m also a representative from
+this firm—or buttons HELIOS—you just ask who Simon Yakovlevich Horizon
+is, and everyone will answer you: ‘Simon Yakovlevich is not a man, but
+gold; this is a disinterested man, as honest as a diamond.’” And
+Horizon was already unpacking long boxes with patented suspenders, and
+was showing the glistening leaves of cardboard, covered with regular
+rows of vari-coloured buttons.
+
+“There happen great unpleasantnesses, when the place has been worked
+out, when a lot of travelling salesmen have appeared before you. Here
+you can’t do anything; they absolutely won’t listen to you, only wave
+their arms. But that’s only for others. I am Horizon! I can talk him
+over, the same like a camel from a menagerie. But it happens still more
+unpleasant, when two competitors in one and the same line come together
+in the same town. And it happens even worse when it’s some chimney
+sweep and can’t do business himself and spoils business for you too.
+Here you go to all sorts of tricks: let him drink till he’s drunk or
+let him go off somewhere on a false track. Not an easy trade! Besides
+that, I have one more line—that’s false eyes and teeth. But it ain’t a
+profitable line. I want to drop it. And besides I’m thinking of leaving
+all this business. I understand, it’s all right for a young man, in the
+bloom of his powers, to flutter around like a moth, but once you have a
+wife, and may be a whole family even ...” he playfully patted the woman
+on the knee, from which she became scarlet and looked uncommonly
+better. “For the Lord has blessed us Jews with fecundity for all our
+misfortunes ... Then you want to have some business of your own, you
+want, you understand, to become settled in one place, so’s there should
+be a shack of your own, and your own furniture, and your own bedroom,
+and kitchen ... Isn’t that so, your excellency?”
+
+“Yes ... Yes ... eh—eh ... Yes, of course, of course,” condescendingly
+responded the general.
+
+“And so I took with Sarochka a little dowry. What do I mean, a little
+dowry? Such money that Rothschild would not even want to look at it are
+in my hands a whole capital already. But it must be said that there are
+some savings by me, too. The firms I know will give me credit. If God
+grant it, we shall still eat a piece of bread and a little butter—and
+on the Sabbaths the tasty GEFILTEH FISCH.”
+
+“That’s fine fish: pike the way the sheenies make it!” said the gasping
+land-owner.
+
+“We shall open up for ourselves the firm of ‘Horizon and Son.’ Isn’t
+that true, Sarochka—‘and Son?’ And you, I hope, will honour me with
+your esteemed orders? When you see the sign, ‘Horizon and Son,’ then
+straight off recollect that you once rode in a car together with a
+young man, who had grown as foolish as hell from love and from
+happiness.”
+
+“Ab-solutely!” said the land-owner.
+
+And Simon Yakovlevich at once turned to him:
+
+“But I also work by commission broking. To sell an estate, to buy an
+estate, to arrange a second mortgage—you won’t find a better specialist
+than me, and such a cheap one at that. I can be of service to you,
+should the need arise,” and he extended his visiting card to the
+land-owner with a bow, and, by the way, handed a card each to his two
+neighbours as well.
+
+The land-owner dived into a side pocket and also dragged out a card.
+
+“Joseph Ivanovich Vengjenovski,” Simon Yakovlevich read out loud.
+“Very, very pleased! And so, should you need me ...”
+
+“Why not? It’s possible ...” said the land-owner meditatively. “Why,
+yes: perhaps, indeed, a favourable chance has brought us together! Why,
+I’m just journeying to K——about the sale of a certain forest country
+house. Suppose you do that, then,—drop in to see me. I always stop at
+the Grand Hotel. Perhaps we may be able to strike up a deal.”
+
+“Oh, I’m already almost sure, my dearest Joseph Ivanovich!” exclaimed
+the rejoicing Horizon, and slightly, with the very tips of his fingers,
+patted Vengjenovski’s kneecap carefully. “You just rest assured; if
+Horizon has undertaken anything, then you’ll be thanking him like your
+own father, no more, no less.”
+
+Half an hour later Simon Yakovlevich and the smooth-faced
+sub-lieutenant were standing on the platform of the car and smoking.
+
+“Do you often visit K——, mister sub-lieutenant?” asked Horizon.
+
+“Only for the first time—just imagine! Our regiment is stationed at
+Chernobob. I was born in Moscow, myself.”
+
+“AI, AI, AI! How’d you come to get into such a faraway place?”
+
+“Well, it just fell out so. There was no other vacancy when I was let
+out.”
+
+“But then—Chernobob is a hole! The worst little town in all Podolia.”
+
+“That’s true, but it just fell out so.”
+
+“That means, then, that the young officer gent is going to K——to divert
+himself a little?”
+
+“Yes. I’m thinking of stopping there for two or three days. I’m
+travelling to Moscow, really. I have received a two months’ leave, but
+it would be interesting to look over the city on the way. It’s very
+beautiful, they say.”
+
+“Oh, what are you trying to tell me? A remarkable city! Well,
+absolutely a European city. If you only knew, what streets,
+electricity, trolleys, theatres! And if you only knew what cabarets!
+You’ll lick your own fingers. Positively, positively, I advise you,
+young man, to pay a visit to the CHATEAU DES FLEURS, to the Tivoli, and
+also to ride out to the island. That’s something special. What women,
+wha-a-at women!”
+
+The lieutenant turned red, took his eyes away, and asked in a voice
+that quavered:
+
+“Yes, I’ve happened to hear that. Is it possible that they’re really so
+handsome?”
+
+“Oi! Strike me God! Believe me, there are no handsome women there at
+all.”
+
+“But—how’s that?”
+
+“Why, this way: there are only raving beauties there. You
+understand—what a happy blending of bloods! Polish, Little Russian, and
+Hebrew. How I envy you, young man, that you’re free and alone. In my
+time I sure would have shown myself! And what’s most remarkable of all,
+they’re unusually passionate women! Well, just like fire! And do you
+know something else?” he asked in a whisper of great significance.
+
+“What?” asked the sub-lieutenant in a fright.
+
+“It’s remarkable, that nowheres, neither in Paris, nor in
+London—believe me, this was told me by people who had seen the whole
+wide world—never, nowhere, will you meet with such exquisite ways of
+making love as in this town. That’s something especial, as us little
+Jews say. They think up such things that no imagination can picture to
+itself. It’s enough to drive you crazy!”
+
+“But is that possible?” quietly spoke the sub-lieutenant, whose breath
+had been cut off.
+
+“Well, strike me God! But permit me, young man, by the way! You
+understand yourself. I was single, and of course, every man is liable
+to sin ... It’s different now, of course. I’ve had myself written in
+with the invalids. But from the former days a remarkable collection has
+remained to me. Just wait, I’ll show it to you right away. Only,
+please, be as careful as possible in looking at it.”
+
+Horizon with trepidation looked around to the right and left and
+extracted from his pocket a long, narrow little box of morocco, in the
+style of those in which playing cards are usually kept, and extended it
+to the sub-lieutenant.
+
+“Here you are, have a look. Only, I beg of you, be very careful.”
+
+The sub-lieutenant applied himself to picking out, one after the other,
+the cards of plain and coloured photography, in which in all possible
+aspects was depicted in the most beastly ways, in the most impossible
+positions, the external side of love which at times makes man
+immeasurably lower and viler than a baboon. Horizon would look over his
+shoulder, nudge him with his elbow, and whisper:
+
+“Tell me, ain’t that swell, now? Why, this is genuine Parisian and
+Viennese chic!”
+
+The sub-lieutenant looked through the whole collection from the
+beginning to the end. When he was giving back the little box, his hand
+was shaking, his temples and forehead were moist, his eyes had dimmed,
+and over his cheeks had mantled a blush, mottled like marble.
+
+“But do you know what?” Horizon exclaimed gaily, all of a sudden. “It’s
+all the same to me—the Indian sign has been put upon me. I, as they
+used to say in the olden times, have burned my ships ... I have burned
+all that I used to adore before. For a long time already I’ve been
+looking for an opportunity to pass these cards on to some one. I ain’t
+especially chasing after a price. You wish to acquire them, mister
+officer?”
+
+“Well, now ... I,—that is ... Why not? ... Let’s ...”
+
+“That’s fine! On account of such a pleasant acquaintanceship, I’ll take
+fifty kopecks apiece. What, is that expensive? Well, what’s the
+difference, God be with you! I see you’re a travelling man, I don’t
+want to rob you; let it go at thirty, then. What? That ain’t cheap
+either? Well, shake hands on it! Twenty-five kopecks apiece. OI! What
+an intractable fellow you are! At twenty! You’ll thank me yourself
+later! And then, do you know what else? When I come to K—, I always
+stop at the Hotel Hermitage. You can very easily find me there either
+very early in the morning, or about eight o’clock in the evening. I
+know an awful lot of the finest little ladies. So I’ll introduce you.
+And, you understand, not for money. Oh, no. It’s just simply nice and
+gay for them to pass the time with a young, healthy, handsome man of
+your sort. There’s absolutely no money of any kind necessary. And for
+that matter—they themselves will willingly pay for wine, for a bottle
+of champagne! So remember then; The Hermitage, Horizon. And if it isn’t
+that, remember it anyway! Maybe I can be of use to you. And the cards
+are such a thing, such a thing, that it will never lay on the shelf by
+you. Those who like that sort of thing give three roubles for each
+specimen. But these, of course, are rich people, little old men. And
+then, you know”—Horizon bent over to the officer’s very ear, winked one
+eye, and pronounced in a sly whisper—“you know, many ladies adore these
+cards. Why, you’re a young man, and handsome; how many romances you
+will have yet!”
+
+Having received the money and counted it over painstakingly, Horizon
+had the brazenness to extend his hand in addition, and to shake the
+hand of the sub-lieutenant, who did not dare to lift up his eyes to
+him; and, having left him on the platform, went back into the
+passageway of the car, as though nothing had happened.
+
+This was an unusually communicative man. On the way to his COUPE he
+came to a stop before a beautiful little girl of three years, with whom
+he had for some time been flirting at a distance and making all sorts
+of funny grimaces at. He squatted down on his heels before her, began
+to imitate a nanny goat for her, and questioned her in a lisping voice:
+
+“May I athk where the young lady ith going? OI, OI, OI! Thuch a big
+girl! Travelling alone, without mamma? Bought a ticket all by herthelf
+and travelth alone! AI! What a howwid girl! And where ith the girl’th
+mamma?” At this moment a tall, handsome, self-assured woman appeared
+from the COUPE and said calmly:
+
+“Get away from the child. What a despicable thing to annoy strange
+children!”
+
+Horizon jumped up on his feet and began to bustle:
+
+“Madam! I could not restrain myself ... Such a wonderful, such a
+magnificent and swell child! A regular cupid! You must understand,
+madam, I am a father myself—I have children of my own ... I could not
+restrain myself from delight! ...”
+
+But the lady turned her back upon him, took the girl by the hand and
+went with her into the COUPE, leaving Horizon shuffling his feet and
+muttering his compliments and apologies.
+
+Several times during the twenty-four hours Horizon would go into the
+third class, of two cars, separated from each other by almost the
+entire train. In one care were sitting three handsome women, in the
+society of a black-bearded, taciturn, morose man. Horizon and he would
+exchange strange phrases in some special jargon. The women looked at
+him uneasily, as though wishing, yet not daring, to ask him about
+something. Only once, toward noon, did one of them allow herself to
+utter:
+
+“Then that’s the truth? That which you said about the place? ... You
+understand—I’m somewhat uneasy at heart!”
+
+“Ah, what do you mean, Margarita Ivanovna? If I said it, then it’s
+right, just like by the National Bank. Listen, Lazer,” he turned to him
+of the beard. “There will be a station right away. Buy the girls all
+sorts of sandwiches, whichever they may desire. The train stops here
+for twenty-five minutes.”
+
+“I’d like to have bouillon,” hesitatingly uttered a little blonde, with
+hair like ripened rye, and with eyes like corn-flowers.
+
+“My dear Bella, anything you please! At the station I’ll go and see
+that they bring you bouillon with meat and even stuffed dumplings.
+Don’t you trouble yourself, Lazer, I’ll do all that myself.”
+
+In another car he had a whole nursery garden of women, twelve or
+fifteen people, under the leadership of an old, stout woman, with
+enormous, awesome, black eyebrows. She spoke in a bass, while her fat
+chins, breasts, and stomachs swayed under a broad morning dress in time
+to the shaking of the car, just like apple jelly. Neither the old woman
+nor the young women left the least doubts as to their profession.
+
+The women were lolling on the benches, smoking, playing cards—at
+“sixty-six,”—drinking beer. Frequently the male public of the car
+provoked them, and they swore back in unceremonious language, in hoarse
+voices. The young people treated them with wine and cigarettes.
+
+Horizon was here altogether unrecognizable; he was majestically
+negligent and condescendingly jocose. On the other hand, cringing
+ingratiation sounded in every word addressed to him by his female
+clients. But he, having looked over all of them—this strange mixture of
+Roumanians, Jewesses, Poles and Russians—and having assured himself
+that all was in order, gave orders about the sandwiches and
+majestically withdrew. At these moments he very much resembled a
+drover, who is transporting by railroad cattle for slaughter, and at a
+station drops in to look it over and to feed it. After that he would
+return to his COUPE and again begin to toy with his wife, and Hebrew
+anecdotes just poured from his mouth.
+
+At the long stops he would go out to the buffet only to see about his
+lady clients. But he himself said to his neighbours:
+
+“You know, it’s all the same to me if it’s TREIF or KOSHER. I don’t
+recognize any difference. But what can I do with my stomach! The devil
+knows what stuff they’ll feed you sometimes at these stations. You’ll
+pay some three or four roubles, and then you’ll spend a hundred roubles
+on the doctors curing yourself. But maybe you, now, Sarochka”—he would
+turn to his wife—“maybe you’ll get off at the station to eat something?
+Or shall I send it up to you here?”
+
+Sarochka, happy over his attention, would turn red, beam upon him with
+grateful eyes, and refuse.
+
+“You’re very kind, Senya, only I don’t want to. I’m full.”
+
+Then Horizon would reach out of a travelling hamper a chicken, boiled
+meat, cucumbers, and a bottle of Palestine wine; have a snack, without
+hurrying, with appetite; regale his wife, who ate very genteelly,
+sticking out the little fingers of her magnificent white hands; then
+painstakingly wrap up the remnants in paper and, without hurrying, lay
+them away accurately in the hamper.
+
+In the distance, far ahead of the locomotive, the cupolas and belfries
+were already beginning to sparkle with fires of gold. Through the COUPE
+passed the conductor and made some imperceptible sign to Horizon. He
+immediately followed the conductor out to the platform.
+
+“The inspector will pass through right away,” said the conductor, “so
+you’ll please be so kind as to stand for a while here on the platform
+of the third class with your spouse.”
+
+“NU, NU, NU!” concurred Horizon.
+
+“And the money as agreed, if you please.”
+
+“How much is coming to you, then?”
+
+“Well, just as we agreed; half the extra charge, two roubles eighty
+kopecks.”
+
+“What?” Horizon suddenly boiled over. “Two roubles eighty kopecks? You
+think you got it a crazy one in me, what? Here’s a rouble for you and
+thank God for that!”
+
+“Pardon me, sir. This is even absurd—didn’t you and I agree?”
+
+“Agree, agree! ... Here’s a half more, and not a thing besides. What
+impudence! I’ll tell the inspector yet that you carry people without
+tickets. Don’t you think it, brother—you ain’t found one of that sort
+here!”
+
+The conductor’s eyes suddenly widened, became blood-shot.
+
+“O-oh! You sheeny!” he began to roar. “I ought to take a skunk like you
+and under the train with you!”
+
+But Horizon at once flew at him like a cock.
+
+“What? Under the train? But do you know what’s done for words like
+that? A threat by action! Here, I’ll go right away and will yell
+‘help!’ and will turn the signal handle,” and he seized the door-knob
+with such an air of resolution that the conductor just made a gesture
+of despair with his hand and spat.
+
+“May you choke with my money, you mangy sheeny!”
+
+Horizon called his wife out of the COUPE:
+
+“Sarochka! Let’s go out on the platform for a look; one can see better
+there. Well, it’s so beautiful—just like on a picture!”
+
+Sarah obediently went after him, holding up with an unskilled hand the
+new dress, in all probability put on for the first time, bending out
+and as though afraid of touching the door or the wall.
+
+In the distance, in the rosy gala haze of the evening glow, shone the
+golden cupolas and crosses. High up on the hill the white, graceful
+churches seemed to float in this flowery, magic mirage. Curly woods and
+coppices had run down from above and had pushed on over the very
+ravine. And the sheer, white precipice which bathed its foot in the
+blue river, was all furrowed over with occasional young woods, just
+like green little veins and warts. Beautiful as in a fairy tale, the
+ancient town appeared as though it were itself coming to meet the
+train.
+
+When the train stopped, Horizon ordered three porters to carry the
+things into the first class, and told his wife to follow him. But he
+himself lingered at the exit in order to let through both his parties.
+To the old woman looking after the dozen women he threw briefly in
+passing:
+
+“So remember, madam Berman! Hotel America, Ivanukovskaya, twenty-two!”
+
+While to the black-bearded man he said:
+
+“Don’t forget, Lazer, to feed the girls at dinner and to bring them
+somewhere to a movie show. About eleven o’clock at night wait for me.
+I’ll come for a talk. But if some one will be calling for me extra,
+then you know my address—The Hermitage. Ring me up. But if I’m not
+there for some reason, then run into Reiman’s cafe, or opposite, into
+the Hebrew dining room. I’ll be eating GEFILTEH FISCH there. Well, a
+lucky journey!”
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+
+All the stories of Horizon about his commercial travelling were simply
+brazen and glib lying. All the samples of drapers’ goods, suspenders
+gloire and buttons helios, the artificial teeth and insertible eyes,
+served only as a shield, screening his real activity—to wit, the
+traffic in the body of woman. True, at one time, some ten years ago, he
+had travelled over Russia as the representative for the dubious wines
+of some unknown firm; and this activity had imparted to his tongue that
+free-and-easy unconstraint for which, in general, travelling salesmen
+are distinguished. This former activity had, as well, brought him up
+against his real profession. In some way, while going to
+Rostov-on-the-Don, he had contrived to make a very young sempstress
+fall in love with him. This girl had not as yet succeeded in getting on
+the official lists of the police, but upon love and her body she looked
+without any lofty prejudices. Horizon, at that time altogether a green
+youth, amorous and light-minded, dragged the sempstress after him on
+his wanderings, full of adventures and unexpected things. After half a
+year she palled upon him dreadfully. She, just like a heavy burden,
+like a millstone, hung around the neck of this man of energy, motion
+and aggressiveness. In addition to that, there were the eternal scenes
+of jealousy, mistrust, the constant control and tears ... the
+inevitable consequences of long living together ... Then he began
+little by little to beat his mate. At the first time she was amazed,
+but from the second time quieted down, became tractable. It is known,
+that “women of love” never know a mean in love relations. They are
+either hysterical liars, deceivers, dissemblers, with a
+coolly-perverted mind and a sinuous dark soul; or else unboundedly
+self-denying, blindly devoted, foolish, naive animals, who know no
+bounds either in concessions or loss of self-esteem. The sempstress
+belonged to the second category, and Horizon was soon successful,
+without great effort, in persuading her to go out on the street to
+traffic in herself. And from that very evening, when his mistress
+submitted to him and brought home the first five roubles earned,
+Horizon experienced an unbounded loathing toward her. It is remarkable,
+that no matter how many women Horizon met after this—and several
+hundred of them had passed through his hands—this feeling of loathing
+and masculine contempt toward them would never forsake him. He derided
+the poor woman in every way, and tortured her morally, seeking out the
+most painful spots. She would only keep silent, sigh, weep, and getting
+down on her knees before him, kiss his hands. And this wordless
+submission irritated Horizon still more. He drove her away from him.
+She would not go away. He would push her out into the street; but she,
+after an hour or two, would come back shivering from cold, in a soaked
+hat, in the turned-up brims of which the rain-water splashed as in
+waterspouts. Finally, some shady friend gave Simon Yakovlevich the
+harsh and crafty counsel which laid a mark on all the rest of his life
+activity—to sell his mistress into a brothel. To tell the truth, in
+going into this enterprise, Horizon almost disbelieved at soul in its
+success. But contrary to his expectation, the business could not have
+adjusted itself better. The proprietress of an establishment (this was
+in Kharkov) willingly met his proposition half-way. She had known long
+and well Simon Yakovlevich, who played amusingly on the piano, danced
+splendidly, and set the whole drawing room laughing with his pranks;
+but chiefly, could, with unusually unabashed dexterity, make any
+carousing party “shell out the coin.” It only remained to convince the
+mate of his life, and this proved the most difficult of all. She did
+not want to detach herself from her beloved for anything; threatened
+suicide, swore that she would burn his eyes out with sulphuric acid,
+promised to go and complain to the chief of police—and she really did
+know a few dirty little transactions of Simon Yakovlevich’s that
+smacked of capital punishment. Thereupon Horizon changed his tactics.
+He suddenly became a tender, attentive friend, an indefatigable lover.
+Then suddenly he fell into black melancholy. The uneasy questionings of
+the woman he let pass in silence; at first let drop a word as though by
+chance; hinted in passing at some mistake of his life; and then began
+to lie desperately and with inspiration. He said that the police were
+watching him; that he could not get by the jail, and, perhaps, even
+hard labour and the gallows; that it was necessary for him to disappear
+abroad for several months. But mainly, what he persisted in especially
+strongly, was some tremendous fantastic business, in which he stood to
+make several hundred thousands of roubles. The sempstress believed and
+became alarmed with that disinterested, womanly, almost holy alarm, in
+which, with every woman, there is so much of something maternal. It was
+not at all difficult now to convince her that for Horizon to travel
+together with her presented a great danger for him; and that it would
+be better for her to remain here and to bide the time until the affairs
+of her lover would adjust themselves fortuitously. After that to talk
+her into hiding, as in the most trustworthy retreat, in a brothel,
+where she would be in full safety from the police and the detectives,
+was a mere nothing. One morning Horizon ordered her to dress a little
+better, curl her hair, powder herself, put a little rouge on her
+cheeks, and carried her off to a den, to his acquaintance. The girl
+made a favourable impression there, and that same day her passport was
+changed by the police to a so-called yellow ticket. Having parted with
+her, after long embraces and tears, Horizon went into the room of the
+proprietress and received his payment, fifty roubles (although he had
+asked for two hundred). But he did not grieve especially over the low
+price; the main thing was, that he had found his calling at last, all
+by himself, and had laid the cornerstone of his future welfare.
+
+Of course, the woman sold by him just remained forever so in the
+tenacious hands of the brothel. Horizon forgot her so thoroughly that
+after only a year he could not even recall her face. But who knows ...
+perhaps he merely pretended?
+
+Now he was one of the chief speculators in the body of woman in all the
+south of Russia. He had transactions with Constantinople and with
+Argentine; he transported, in whole parties, girls from the brothels of
+Odessa into Kiev; those from Kiev he brought over into Kharkov; and
+those from Kharkov into Odessa. He it was also who stuck away over
+second rate capital cities, and those districts which were somewhat
+richer, the goods which had been rejected or had grown too noticeable
+in the big cities. He had struck up an enormous clientele, and in the
+number of his consumers Horizon could have counted not a few people
+with a prominent social position: lieutenant governors, colonels of the
+gendarmerie, eminent advocates, well-known doctors, rich land-owners,
+carousing merchants. All the shady world—the proprietresses of
+brothels, cocottes solitaires, go-betweens, madams of houses of
+assignation, souteneurs, touring actresses and chorus girls—was as
+familiar to him as the starry sky to an astronomer. His amazing memory,
+which permitted him prudently to avoid notebooks, held in mind
+thousands of names, family names, nicknames, addresses,
+characteristics. He knew to perfection the tastes of all his highly
+placed consumers: some of them liked unusually odd depravity, others
+paid mad sums for innocent girls, for others still it was necessary to
+seek out girls below age. He had to satisfy both the sadistic and the
+masochistic inclinations of his clients, and at times to cater to
+altogether unnatural sexual perversions, although it must be said that
+the last he undertook only in rare instances which promised a large,
+undoubted profit. Two or three times he had to sit in jail, but these
+sessions went to his benefit; he not only did not lose his rapacious
+high-handedness and springy energy in his transactions, but with every
+year became more daring, inventive, and enterprising. With the years to
+his brazen impetuousness was joined a tremendous worldly business
+wisdom.
+
+Fifteen times, during this period, he had managed to marry and every
+time had contrived to take a decent dowry. Having possessed himself of
+his wife’s money, he, one fine day, would suddenly vanish without a
+trace, and, if there was a possibility, he would sell his wife
+profitably into a secret house of depravity or into a chic public
+establishment. It would happen that the parents of the deluded victim
+would search for him through the police. But while inquiries would be
+carried on everywhere about him as Shperling, he would already be
+travelling from town to town under the name of Rosenblum. During the
+time of his activity, in despite of an enviable memory, he had changed
+so many names that he had not only forgotten what year he had been
+Nathanielson, and during what Bakalyar, but even his own name was
+beginning to seem to him one of his pseudonyms.
+
+It was remarkable, that he did not find in his profession anything
+criminal or reprehensible. He regarded it just as though he were
+trading in herrings, lime, flour, beef or lumber. In his own fashion he
+was pious. If time permitted, he would with assiduity visit the
+synagogue of Fridays. The Day of Atonement, Passover, and the Feast of
+the Tabernacles were invariably and reverently observed by him
+everywhere wherever fate might have cast him. His mother, a little old
+woman, and a hunch-backed sister, were left to him in Odessa, and he
+undeviatingly sent them now large, now small sums of money, not
+regularly but pretty frequently, from all towns from Kursk to Odessa
+and from Warsaw to Samara. Considerable savings of money had already
+accumulated to him in the Credit Lyonnaise, and he gradually increased
+them, never touching the interest. But to greed or avarice he was
+almost a stranger. He was attracted to the business rather by its tang,
+risk and a professional self-conceit. To the women he was perfectly
+indifferent, although he understood and could value them, and in this
+respect resembled a good chef, who together with a fine understanding
+of the business, suffers from a chronic absence of appetite. To induce,
+to entice a woman, to compel her to do all that he wanted, did not
+require any efforts on his part; they came of themselves to his call
+and became in his hands passive, obedient and yielding. In his
+treatment of them a certain firm, unshakable, self-assured aplomb had
+been worked out, to which they submitted just as a refractory horse
+submits instinctively to the voice, glance, stroking of an experienced
+horseman.
+
+He drank very moderately, and without company never drank. Toward
+eating he was altogether indifferent. But, of course, as with every
+man, he had a little weakness of his own: he was inordinately fond of
+dress and spent no little money on his toilet. Modish collars of all
+possible fashions, cravats, diamond cuff links, watch charms, the
+underwear of a dandy, and chic footwear constituted his main
+distractions.
+
+From the depot he went straight to The Hermitage. The hotel porters, in
+blue blouses and uniform caps, carried his things into the vestibule.
+Following them, he too entered, arm in arm with his wife; both smartly
+attired, imposing, but he just simply magnificent, in his wide,
+bell-shaped English overcoat, in a new broad-brimmed panama, holding
+negligently in his hand a small cane with a silver handle in the form
+of a naked woman.
+
+“You ain’t supposed to be here without a permit for your residence,”
+said an enormous, stout doorkeeper, looking down upon him from above
+and preserving on his face a sleepy and immovably-frigid expression.
+
+“Ach, Zachar! Again ‘you ain’t supposed to!’” merrily exclaimed
+Horizon, and patted the giant on his shoulder. “What does it mean, ‘you
+ain’t supposed to’? Every time you shove this same ‘you ain’t supposed
+to’ at me. I must be here for three days in all. Soon as I conclude the
+rent agreement with Count Ipatiev, right away I go away. God be with
+you! Live even all by yourself in all your rooms. But you just give a
+look, Zachar, what a toy I brought you from Odessa! You’ll be just
+tickled with it!”
+
+With a careful, deft, accustomed movement he thrust a gold piece into
+the doorkeeper’s hand, who was already holding it behind his back,
+ready and folded in the form of a little boat.
+
+The first thing that Horizon did upon installing himself in the large,
+spacious room with an alcove, was to put out into the corridor at the
+door of the room six pairs of magnificent shoes, saying to the bell-hop
+who ran up in answer to the bell:
+
+“Immediately all should be cleaned! So it should shine like a mirror!
+They call you Timothy, I think? Then you should know me—if you work by
+me it will never go for nothing. So it should shine like a mirror!”
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+
+Horizon lived at the Hotel Hermitage for not more than three days and
+nights, and during this time he managed to see some three hundred
+people. His arrival seemed to enliven the big, gay port city. To him
+came the keepers of employment offices for servants, the proprietresses
+of cheap hotels, and old, experienced go-betweens, grown gray in the
+trade in women. Not so much out of an interest in booty as out of
+professional pride, Horizon tried, at all costs, to bargain for as much
+profit as possible, to buy a woman as cheaply as possible. Of course,
+to receive ten, fifteen roubles more was not the reason for him, but
+the mere thought that competitor Yampolsky would receive at the sale
+more than he brought him into a frenzy.
+
+After his arrival, the next day, he set off to Mezer the photographer,
+taking with him the straw-like girl Bella, and had pictures taken in
+various poses together with her; at which for every negative he
+received three roubles, while he gave the woman a rouble. After that he
+rode off to Barsukova.
+
+This was a woman, or, speaking more correctly, a retired wench, whose
+like can be found only in the south of Russia; neither a Pole nor a
+Little Russian; already sufficiently old and rich in order to allow
+herself the luxury of maintaining a husband (and together with him a
+cabaret), a handsome and kindly little Pole. Horizon and Barsukova met
+like old friends. They had, it seemed, no fear, no shame, no conscience
+when they conversed with each other.
+
+“Madam Barsukova! I can offer you something special! Three women: one a
+large brunette, very modest; another a little one, a blonde, but who,
+you understand, is ready for everything; the third is a woman of
+mystery, who merely smiles and doesn’t say anything, but promises much
+and is a beauty!”
+
+Madam Barsukova was gazing at him with mistrust, shaking her head.
+
+“Mister Horizon! What are you trying to fill my head with? Do you want
+to do the same with me that you did last time?”
+
+“By God, I should live so, how I want to deceive you! But that’s not
+the main thing. I’m also offering you a perfectly educated woman. Do
+with her what you like. In all probability you’ll find a connoisseur.”
+
+Barsukova smiled artfully and asked:
+
+“Again a wife?”
+
+“No. But she’s of the nobility.”
+
+“Then that means unpleasantnesses with the police again?”
+
+“Ach! My God! I don’t take big money from you; all the three for a
+lousy thousand roubles.”
+
+“Well, let’s talk frankly; five hundred. I don’t want to buy a cat in a
+bag.”
+
+“It seems, Madam Barsukova, that it isn’t the first time you and I have
+done business together, I won’t deceive you and will bring her here
+right away. Only I beg you not to forget that you’re my aunt, and
+please work in that direction. I won’t be more than three days here in
+the city.”
+
+Madam Barsukova, with all her breasts, bellies and chins, began to sway
+merrily.
+
+“We won’t dicker over trifles. All the more so since you don’t deceive
+me, nor I you. There’s a great demand for women now. What would you
+say, Mister Horizon, if I offered you some red wine?”
+
+“Thank you, Madam Barsukova, with pleasure.”
+
+“Let’s talk a while like old friends. Tell me, how much do you make a
+year?”
+
+“Ach, madam, what shall I say? Twelve, twenty thousand, approximately.
+But think what tremendous expenses there are in constantly travelling.”
+
+“Do you put away a little?”
+
+“Well, that’s trifles; some two or three thousand a year.”
+
+“I thought ten, twenty ...”
+
+Horizon grew wary. He sensed that he was beginning to be drawn out and
+asked insidiously:
+
+“But why does this interest you?”
+
+Anna Michailovna pressed the button of an electric bell and ordered the
+dressy maid to bring coffee with steamed cream and a bottle of
+Chambertaine. She knew the tastes of Horizon. Then she asked:
+
+“Do you know Mr. Shepsherovich?”
+
+Horizon simply pounced upon her.
+
+“My God! Who don’t know Shepsherovich! This is a god, this is a
+genius!”
+
+And, having become animated, forgetting that he was being dragged into
+a trap, he began speaking exaltedly:
+
+“Just imagine what Shepsherovich did last year! He carried to Argentine
+thirty women from Kovno, Vilno, Zhitomir. Each one of them he sold at a
+thousand roubles—a total, madam—count it—of thirty thousand! Do you
+think Shepsherovich calmed down with this? For this money, in order to
+repay his expenses on the steamer, he bought several negresses and
+stuck them about in Moscow, Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov. But,
+you know, madam, this isn’t a man, but an eagle. There’s a man who can
+do business!”
+
+Barsukova caressingly laid her hand on his knee. She had been waiting
+for this moment and said to him amicably:
+
+“And so I propose to you, Mr.——however, I don’t know how you are called
+now...”
+
+“Horizon, let’s say...”
+
+“So I propose to you, Mr. Horizon—could you find some innocent girls
+among yours? There’s an enormous demand for them now. I’m playing an
+open hand with you. We won’t stop at money. Now it’s in fashion.
+Notice, Horizon, your lady clients will be returned to you in exactly
+the same state in which they were. This, you understand, is a little
+depravity, which I can in no way make out...”
+
+Horizon cast down his eyes, rubbed his head, and said:
+
+“You see, I’ve a wife ... You’ve almost guessed it.”
+
+“So. But why almost?”
+
+“I’m ashamed to confess, that she—how shall I say it ... she is my
+bride ...”
+
+Barsukova gaily burst into laughter.
+
+“You know, Horizon, I couldn’t at all expect that you’re such a nasty
+villain! Let’s have your wife, it’s all the same. But is it possible
+that you’ve really refrained?”
+
+“A thousand?” asked Horizon seriously.
+
+“Ah! What trifles; a thousand let’s say. But tell me, will I be able to
+manage her?”
+
+“Nonsense!” said Horizon self-assuredly. “Let’s again suppose that
+you’re my aunt, and I leave my wife with you. Just imagine, Madam
+Barsukova, that this woman is in love with me like a cat. And if you’ll
+tell her, that for my good she must do so and so and thus and thus—then
+there won’t be no arguments!”
+
+Apparently, there was nothing more for them to talk over. Madam
+Barsukova brought out a promissory note, whereon she with difficulty
+wrote her name, her father’s name, and her last name. The promissory
+note, of course, was fantastic; but there is a tie, a welding, an
+honour among thieves. In such deals people do not deceive. Death
+threatens otherwise. It is all the same, whether in prison, or on the
+street, or in a brothel.
+
+Right after that, just like an apparition out of a trapdoor, appeared
+the friend of her heart, the master of the cabaret, a young little
+Pole, with moustaches twirled high. They drank some wine, talked a bit
+about the fair, about the exposition, complained a little about bad
+business. After that Horizon telephoned to his room in the hotel, and
+called out his wife. He introduced her to his aunt and his aunt’s
+second cousin, and said that mysterious political reasons were calling
+him out of town. He tenderly kissed Sarah, shed a tear, and rode away.
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+
+With the arrival of Horizon (however, God knows how he was called:
+Gogolevich, Gidalevich, Okunev, Rosmitalsky), in a word, with the
+arrival of this man everything changed on Yamskaya Street. Enormous
+shufflings commenced. From Treppel girls were transferred to Anna
+Markovna, from Anna Markovna into a rouble establishment, and from the
+rouble establishment into a half-rouble one. There were no promotions:
+only demotions. At each change of place Horizon earned from five to a
+hundred roubles. Verily, he was possessed of an energy equal,
+approximately, to the waterfall of Imatra! Sitting in the daytime at
+Anna Markovna’s, he was saying, squinting from the smoke of the
+cigarette, and swinging one leg crossed over the other:
+
+“The question is ... What do you need this same Sonka for? It’s no
+place for her in a decent establishment. If we’ll float her down the
+stream, then you’ll make a hundred roubles for yourself, I twenty-five
+for myself. Tell me frankly, she isn’t in demand, is she, now?”
+
+“Ah, Mr. Shatzky! You can always talk a person over! But just imagine,
+I’m sorry for her. Such a nice girl ...”
+
+Horizon pondered for a moment. He was seeking an appropriate citation
+and suddenly let out:
+
+“‘Give the falling a shove!’[11] And I’m convinced, Madam Shaibes, that
+there’s no demand of any sort for her.”
+
+[11] Horizon is quoting a Nietzscheism of Gorky’s.—TRANS.
+
+
+Isaiah Savvich, a little, sickly, touchy old man, but in moments of
+need very determined, supported Horizon:
+
+“And that’s very simple. There is really no demand of any sort for her.
+Think it over for yourself, Annechka; her outfit costs fifty roubles,
+Mr. Shatzky will receive twenty-five roubles, fifty roubles will be
+left for you and me. And, glory be to God, we have done with her! At
+least, she won’t be compromising our establishment.”
+
+In such a way Sonka the Rudder, avoiding a rouble establishment, was
+transferred into a half-rouble one, where all kinds of riff-raff made
+sport of the girls at their own sweet will, whole nights through. There
+tremendous health and great nervous force were requisite. Sonka once
+began shivering from terror, in the night, when Thekla, a mountain of a
+woman of some two hundred pounds, jumped out into the yard to fulfill a
+need of nature, and cried out to the housekeeper who was passing by
+her:
+
+“Housekeeper, dear! Listen—the thirty-sixth man! ... Don’t forget!”
+
+Fortunately, Sonka was not disturbed much; even in this establishment
+she was too homely. No one paid any attention to her splendid eyes, and
+they took her only in those instances when there was no other at hand.
+The pharmacist sought her out and came every evening to her. But
+cowardice, or a special Hebrew fastidiousness, or, perhaps, even
+physical aversion, would not permit him to take the girl and carry her
+away with him from the house. He would sit whole nights through near
+her, and, as of yore, patiently waited until she would return from a
+chance guest; created scenes of jealousy for her and yet loved her
+still, and, sticking in the daytime behind the counter in his drug
+store and rolling some stinking pills or other, ceaselessly thought of
+her and yearned.
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+
+Immediately at the entrance to a suburban cabaret an artificial flower
+bed shone with vari-colored lights, with electric bulbs instead of
+flowers; and just such another fiery alley of wide, half-round arches,
+narrowing toward the end, led away from it into the depths of the
+garden. Further on was a broad, small square, strewn with yellow sand;
+to the left an open stage, a theatre, and a shooting gallery; straight
+ahead a stand for the military band (in the form of a seashell) and
+little booths with flowers and beer; to the right the long terrace of
+the restaurant. Electric globes from their high masts illuminated the
+small square with a pale, dead-white brightness. Against their frosted
+glass, with wire nets stretched over them, beat clouds of night moths,
+whose shadows—confused and large—hovered below, on the ground. Hungry
+women, too lightly, dressily, and fancifully attired, preserving on
+their faces an expression of care-free merriment or haughty, offended
+unapproachability, strolled back and forth in pairs, with a walk
+already tired and dragging.
+
+All the tables in the restaurant were taken—and over them floated the
+continuous noise of knives upon plates and a motley babel, galloping in
+waves. It smelt of rich and pungent kitchen fumes. In the middle of the
+restaurant, upon a stand, Roumanians in red frocks were playing; all
+swarthy, white-toothed, with the faces of whiskered, pomaded apes, with
+their hair licked down. The director of the orchestra, bending forward
+and affectedly swaying, was playing upon a violin and making unseemly
+sweet eyes at the public—the eyes of a man-prostitute. And everything
+together—this abundance of tiresome electric lights, the exaggeratedly
+bright toilettes of the ladies, the odours of modish, spicy perfumes,
+this ringing music, with willful slowings up of the tempo, with
+voluptuous swoonings in the transitions, with the tempestuous passages
+screwed up—everything fitted the one to the other, forming a general
+picture of insane and stupid luxury, a setting for an imitation of a
+gay, unseemly carouse.
+
+Above, around the entire hall, ran open galleries, upon which, as upon
+little balconies, opened the doors of the private cabinets. In one of
+these cabinets four were sitting—two ladies and two men; an artiste
+known to all Russia, the cantatrice Rovinskaya, a large, handsome
+woman, with long, green, Egyptian eyes, and a long, red, sensuous
+mouth, the lips of which were rapaciously drooping at the corners; the
+baroness Tefting, little, exquisite, pale—she was everywhere seen with
+the artiste; the famous lawyer Ryazanov; and Volodya Chaplinsky, a rich
+young man of the world, a composer-dilettante, the author of several
+darling little ballads and many witticisms upon the topics of the day,
+which circulated all over town.
+
+The walls of the cabinet were red, with a gold design. On the table,
+among the lighted candelabra, two white, tarred necks of bottles stuck
+up out of an electroplated vase, which had sweated from the cold, and
+the light in a tenuous gold played in the shallow goblets of wine.
+Outside, near the doors, a waiter was on duty, leaning against the
+wall; while the stout, tall, important maitre d’hotel, on whose right
+little finger, always sticking out, sparkled a huge diamond, would
+frequently stop at these doors, and attentively listen with one ear to
+what was going on in the cabinet.
+
+The baroness, with a bored, pale face, was listlessly gazing through a
+lorgnette down at the droning, chewing, swarming crowd. Among the red,
+white, blue and straw-coloured feminine dresses the uniform figures of
+the men resembled large, squat, black beetles. Rovinskaya negligently,
+yet at the same time intently as well, was looking down upon the stand
+and the spectators, and her face expressed fatigue, ennui, and perhaps
+also that satiation with all spectacles, which are such matters of
+course to celebrities. The splendid, long, slender fingers of her left
+hand were lying upon the crimson velvet of the box-seat. Emeralds of a
+rare beauty hung upon them so negligently that it seemed as though they
+would fall off at any second, and suddenly she began laughing.
+
+“Look” she said; “what a funny figure, or, to put it more correctly,
+what a funny profession! There, there, that one who’s playing on a
+‘syrinx of seven reeds.’”
+
+Everyone looked in the direction of her hand. And really, the picture
+was funny enough. Behind the Roumanian orchestra was sitting a stout,
+whiskered man, probably the father, and perhaps even the grandfather,
+of a numerous family, and with all his might was whistling into seven
+little pipes glued together. As it was difficult for him, probably, to
+move this instrument between his lips, he therefore, with an unusual
+rapidity, turned his head now to the left, now to the right.
+
+“An amazing occupation,” said Rovinskaya. “Well now, Chaplinsky, you
+try to toss your head about like that.”
+
+Volodya Chaplinsky, secretly and hopelessly in love with the artiste,
+immediately began obediently and zealously to do this, but after half a
+minute desisted.
+
+“It’s impossible,” he said, “either long training, or, perhaps,
+hereditary abilities, are necessary for this.”
+
+The baroness during this time was tearing away the petals of her rose
+and throwing them into a goblet; then, with difficulty suppressing a
+yawn, she said, making just the least bit of a wry face:
+
+“But, my God, how drearily they divert themselves in our K—! Look: no
+laughter, no singing, no dances. Just like some herd that’s been driven
+here, in order to be gay on purpose!”
+
+Ryazanov listlessly took his goblet, sipped it a little, and answered
+apathetically in his enchanting voice:
+
+“Well, and is it any gayer in your Paris, or Nice? Why, it must be
+confessed—mirth, youth and laughter have vanished forever out of human
+life, and it is scarcely possible that they will ever return. One must
+regard people with more patience, it seems to me. Who knows, perhaps
+for all those sitting here, below, the present evening is a rest, a
+holiday?”
+
+“The speech for the defense,” put in Chaplinsky in his calm manner.
+
+But Rovinskaya quickly turned around to the men, and her long emerald
+eyes narrowed. And this with her served as a sign of wrath, from which
+even crowned personages committed follies at times. However, she
+immediately restrained herself and continued languidly:
+
+“I don’t understand what you are talking about. I don’t understand even
+what we came here for. For there are no longer any spectacles in the
+world. Now I, for instance, have seen bull-fights in Seville, Madrid
+and Marseilles—an exhibition which does not evoke anything save
+loathing. I have also seen boxing and wrestling nastiness and
+brutality. I also happened to participate in a tiger hunt, at which I
+sat under a baldachin on the back of a big, wise white elephant ... in
+a word, you all know this well yourselves. And out of all my great,
+chequered, noisy life, from which I have grown old ...”
+
+“Oh, what are you saying, Ellena Victorovna!” said Chaplinsky with a
+tender reproach.
+
+“Abandon compliments, Volodya! I know myself that I’m still young and
+beautiful of body, but, really, it seems to me at times that I am
+ninety. So worn out has my soul become. I continue. I say, that during
+all my life only three strong impressions have sunk into my soul. The
+first, while still a girl, when I saw a cat stealing upon a
+cock-sparrow, and I with horror and with interest watched its movements
+and the vigilant gaze of the bird. Up to this time I don’t know myself
+which I sympathized with more: the skill of the cat or the slipperiness
+of the sparrow. The cock-sparrow proved the quicker. In a moment he
+flew up on a tree and began from there to pour down upon the cat such
+sparrow swearing that I would have turned red for shame if I had
+understood even one word. While the cat, as though it had been wronged,
+stuck up its tail like a chimney and tried to pretend to itself that
+nothing out of the way had taken place. Another time I had to sing in
+an opera a duet with a certain great artist ...”
+
+“With whom?” asked the baroness quickly.
+
+“Isn’t it all the same? Of what need names? And so, when he and I were
+singing, I felt all of me in the sway of genius. How wonderfully, into
+what a marvelous harmony, did our voices blend! Ah! It is impossible to
+describe this impression. Probably, it happens but once in a lifetime.
+According to the role, I had to weep, and I wept with sincere, genuine
+tears. And when, after the curtain, he walked up to me and patted my
+hair with his big warm hand and with his enchanting, radiant smile
+said, ‘Splendid! for the first time in my life have I sung so’ ... and
+so I—and I am a very proud being—I kissed his hand. And the tears were
+still standing in my eyes ...”
+
+“And the third?” asked the baroness, and her eyes lit up with the evil
+sparks of jealousy.
+
+“Ah, the third,” answered the artiste sadly, “the third is as simple as
+simple can be. During the last season I lived at Nice, and so I saw
+Carmen on the open stage at Frejus with the anticipation of Cecile
+Ketten, who is now,” the artiste earnestly made the sign of the cross,
+“dead—I don’t really know, fortunately or unfortunately for herself?”
+
+Suddenly, in a moment, her magnificent eyes filled with tears and began
+to shine with a magic green light, such as the evening star gives
+forth, on warm summer twilights. She turned her face around to the
+stage, and for some time her long, nervous fingers convulsively
+squeezed the upholstery of the barrier of the box. But when she again
+turned around to her friends, her eyes were already dry, and the
+enigmatic, vicious and wilful lips were resplendent with an
+unconstrained smile.
+
+Then Ryazanov asked her politely, in a tender but purposely calm tone:
+
+“But then, Ellena Victorovna, your tremendous fame, admirers, the roar
+of the mob ... finally, that delight which you afford to your
+spectators. Is it possible that even this does not titillate your
+nerves?”
+
+“No, Ryazanov,” she answered in a tired voice. “You know no less than
+myself what this is worth. A brazen interviewer, who needs passes for
+his friends, and, by the way, twenty-five roubles in an envelope. High
+school boys and girls, students and young ladies attending courses, who
+beg you for autographed photographs. Some old blockhead with a
+general’s rank, who hums loudly with me during my aria. The eternal
+whisper behind you, when you pass by: ‘there she is, that same famous
+one!’ Anonymous letters, the brazenness of back-stage habitues ... why,
+you can’t enumerate everything! But surely, you yourself are often
+beset by female psychopathics of the court-room?”
+
+“Yes,” said Ryazanov decisively.
+
+“That’s all there is to it. But add to that the most terrible thing,
+that every time I have come to feel a genuine inspiration, I
+tormentingly feel on the spot the consciousness that I’m pretending and
+grimacing before people ... And the fear of the success of your rival?
+And the eternal dread of losing your voice, of straining it or catching
+a cold? The eternal tormenting bother of throat bandages? No, really,
+it is heavy to bear renown on one’s shoulders.”
+
+“But the artistic fame?” retorted the lawyer. “The might of genius!
+This, verily, is a true moral might, which is above the might of any
+king on earth!”
+
+“Yes, yes, of course you’re right, my dear. But fame, celebrity, are
+sweet only at a distance, when you only dream about them. But when you
+have attained them you feel only their thorns. But then, with what
+anguish you feel every dram of their decrease. And I have forgotten to
+say something else. Why, we artists undergo a sentence at hard labour.
+In the morning, exercises; in the daytime, rehearsals; and then there’s
+scarcely time for dinner and you’re due for the performance. An hour or
+so for reading or such diversion as you and I are having now, may be
+snatched only by a miracle. And even so... the diversion is altogether
+of the mediocre...”
+
+She negligently and wearily made a slight gesture with the fingers of
+the hand lying on the barrier.
+
+Volodya Chaplinsky, agitated by this conversation, suddenly asked:
+
+“Yes, but tell me, Ellena Victorovna, what would you want to distract
+your imagination and ennui?”
+
+She looked at him with her enigmatic eyes and answered quietly, even a
+trifle shyly, it seemed:
+
+“Formerly, people lived more gaily and did not know prejudices of any
+sort. Well, it seems to me that then I would have been in my place and
+would have lived with a full life. O, ancient Rome!”
+
+No one understood her, save Ryazanov, who, without looking at her,
+slowly pronounced in his velvety voice, like that of an actor, the
+classical, universally familiar, Latin phrase:
+
+“Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!”
+
+“Precisely! I love you very much, Ryazanov, because you are a clever
+child. You will always catch a thought in its flight; although, I must
+say, that this isn’t an especially high property of the mind. And
+really, two beings come together, the friends of yesterday, who had
+conversed with each other and eaten at the same table, and this day one
+of them must perish. You understand depart from life forever. But they
+have neither malice nor fear. There is the most real, magnificent
+spectacle, which I can only picture to myself!”
+
+“How much cruelty there is in you,” said the baroness meditatively.
+
+“Well, nothing can be done about it now! My ancestors were cavaliers
+and robbers. However, shan’t we go away now?”
+
+They all went out of the garden. Volodya Chaplinsky ordered his
+automobile called. Ellena Victorovna was leaning upon his arm. And
+suddenly she asked:
+
+“Tell me, Volodya, where do you usually go when you take leave of
+so-called decent women?”
+
+Volodya hemmed and hawed. However, he knew positively that he could not
+lie to Rovinskaya.
+
+“M-m-m ... I’m afraid of offending your hearing. To the Tzigani, for
+instance ... to night cabarets ...”
+
+“And somewhere else? Worse?”
+
+“Really, you put me in an awkward position. From the time that I’ve
+become so madly in love with you ...”
+
+“Leave out the romancing!”
+
+“Well, how shall I say it?” murmured Volodya, feeling that he was
+turning red, not only in the face, but with his body, his back. “Well,
+of course, to the women. Now, of course, this does not occur with me
+personally ...”
+
+Rovinskaya maliciously pressed Chaplinsky’s elbow to her side.
+
+“To a brothel?”
+
+Volodya did not answer anything. Then she said:
+
+“And so, you’ll carry us at once over there in the automobile and
+acquaint us with this existence, which is foreign to me. But remember,
+that I rely upon your protection.”
+
+The remaining two agreed to this, unwillingly, in all probability; but
+there was no possibility of opposing Ellena Victorovna. She always did
+everything that she wanted to. And then they had all heard and knew
+that in Petersburg carousing worldly ladies, and even girls, permit
+themselves, out of a modish snobbism, pranks far worse than the one
+which Rovinskaya had proposed.
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+
+On the way to Yamskaya Street Rovinskaya said to Chaplinsky:
+
+“You’ll bring me at first into the most luxurious place, then into a
+medium one, and then into the filthiest.”
+
+“My dear Ellena Victorovna,” warmly retorted Chaplinsky, “I’m ready to
+do everything for you. It is without false boasting when I say that I
+would give my life away at your order, ruin my career and position at a
+mere sign of yours ... But I dare not bring you to these houses.
+Russian manners are coarse, and often simply inhuman manners. I’m
+afraid that you will be insulted by some pungent, unseemly word, or
+that a chance visitor will play some senseless prank before you ...”
+
+“Ah, my God,” impatiently interrupted Rovinskaya; “when I was singing
+in London, there were many at that time paying court to me, and I did
+not hesitate to go and see the filthiest dens of Whitechapel in a
+choice company. I will say, that I was treated there very carefully and
+anticipatingly. I will also say, that there were with me at that time
+two English aristocrats; lords, both sportsmen, both people unusually
+strong physically and morally, who, of course, would never have allowed
+a woman to be offended. However, perhaps you, Volodya, are of the race
+of cowards?”
+
+Chaplinsky flared up:
+
+“Oh, no, no, Ellena Victorovna. I forewarned you only out of love for
+you. But if you command, then I’m ready to go where you will. Not only
+on this dubious undertaking, but even very death itself.”
+
+By this time they had already driven up to the most luxurious
+establishment in the Yamkas—Treppel’s. Ryazanov the lawyer said,
+smiling with his usual ironic smile:
+
+“And so, the inspection of the menagerie begins.”
+
+They were led into a cabinet with crimson wall paper, and on the wall
+paper was repeated, in the “empire” style, a golden design in the form
+of small laurel wreaths. And at once Rovinskaya recognized, with the
+keen memory of an artiste, that exactly the same paper had also been in
+that cabinet in which they had just been sitting.
+
+Four German women from the Baltic provinces came out. All of them
+stout, full-breasted, blonde, powdered, very important and respectful.
+The conversation did not catch on at first. The girls sat immovable,
+like carvings of stone, in order to pretend with all their might that
+they were respectable ladies. Even the champagne, which Ryazanov called
+for, did not improve the mood. Rovinskaya was the first to come to the
+aid of the party. Turning to the stoutest, fairest German of all, who
+resembled a loaf, she asked politely in German:
+
+“Tell me, where were you born? Germany, in all probability?”
+
+“No, gnadige Frau, I am from Riga.”
+
+“What compels you to serve here, then? Not poverty, I hope?”
+
+“Of course not, gnadige Frau. But, you understand, my bridegroom, Hans,
+works as a kellner in a restaurant-automat, and we are too poor to be
+married now. I bring my savings to a bank, and he does the same. When
+we have saved the ten thousand roubles we need, we will open our own
+beer-hall, and, if God will bless us, then we shall allow ourselves the
+luxury of having children. Two children. A boy and a girl.”
+
+“But, listen to me, mein Fraulein!” Rovinskaya was amazed. “You are
+young, handsome, know two languages ...”
+
+“Three, madam,” proudly put in the German. “I know Esthonian as well. I
+finished the municipal school and three classes of high school.”
+
+“Well, then, you see, you see ...” Rovinskaya became heated. “With such
+an education you could always find a place with everything found, and
+about thirty roubles. Well, in the capacity of a housekeeper, bonne,
+senior clerk in a good store, a cashier, let’s say ... And if your
+future bridegroom ... Fritz ...”
+
+“Hans, madam ...”
+
+“If Hans proved to be an industrious and thrifty man, then it would not
+be at all hard for you to get up on your feet altogether, after three
+or four years. What do you think?”
+
+“Ah, madam, you are a little mistaken. You have overlooked that, in the
+very best of positions, I, even denying myself in everything, will not
+be able to put aside more than fifteen, twenty roubles a month; whereas
+here, with a prudent economy, I gain up to a hundred roubles and at
+once carry them away with a book into the savings bank. And besides
+that, just imagine, gnadige Frau, what a humiliating position to be the
+servant in a house! Always to depend on the caprice or the disposition
+of the spirits of the masters! And the master always pesters you with
+foolishness. Pfui! .. And the mistress is jealous, picks, and scolds.”
+
+“No ... I don’t understand ...” meditatively drawled Rovinskaya,
+without looking the German in the eyes, but casting hers on the floor.
+“I’ve heard a great deal of your life here, in these ... what do you
+call them? .. these houses. They say it is something horrible. That
+you’re forced to love the most repulsive, old and hideous men, that you
+are plucked and exploited in the most cruel manner ...”
+
+“Oh, never, madam ... Each one of us has an account book, wherein is
+written accurately the income and expense. During last month I earned a
+little more than five hundred roubles. As always, two-thirds went to
+the proprietress for board, quarters, fuel, light, linen ... There
+remains to me more than a hundred and fifty, it is not so? Fifty I
+spent on costumes and all sorts of trifles. A hundred I save. What
+exploitation is it, then, madam, I ask you? And if I do not like a man
+at all—true, there are some who are exceedingly nasty—I can always say
+I am sick, and instead of me will go one of the newest girls ...”
+
+“But then ... pardon me, I do not know your name ...”
+
+“Elsa.”
+
+“They say, that you’re treated very roughly ... beaten at times ...
+compelled to do that which you don’t want to and which is repulsive to
+you?”
+
+“Never, madam!” dropped Elsa haughtily. “We all live here as a friendly
+family of our own. We are all natives of the same land or relatives,
+and God grant that many should live so in their own families as we live
+here. True, on Yamskaya Street there happen various scandals and fights
+and misunderstandings. But that’s there ... in these ... in the rouble
+establishments. The Russian girls drink a lot and always have one
+lover. And they do not think at all of their future.”
+
+“You are prudent, Elsa,” said Rovinskaya in an oppressed tone. “All
+this is well. But, what of the chance disease? Infection? Why, that is
+death? And how can you guess?”
+
+“And again—no, madam. I won’t let a man into my bed before I make a
+detailed medical inspection of him ... I am guaranteed, at the least,
+against seventy-five per cent.”
+
+“The devil!” suddenly exclaimed Rovinskaya with heat and hit the table
+with her fist. “But, then, what of your Albert ...”
+
+“Hans,” the German corrected her meekly.
+
+“Pardon me ... Your Hans surely does not rejoice greatly over the fact
+that you are living here, and that you betray him every day?”
+
+Elsa looked at her with sincere, lively amazement.
+
+“But gnadige Frau ... I have never yet betrayed him! It is other lost
+wenches, especially Russian, who have lovers for themselves, on whom
+they spend their hard-earned money. But that I should ever let myself
+go as far as that? Pfui!”
+
+“A greater fall I have not imagined!” said Rovinskaya loudly and with
+aversion, getting up. “Pay gentlemen, and let’s go on from here.”
+
+When they had gone out into the street, Volodya took her arm and said
+in an imploring voice:
+
+“For God’s sake, isn’t one experiment enough for you?”
+
+“Oh, what vulgarity! What vulgarity!”
+
+“That’s why I’m saying, let’s drop this experiment.”
+
+“No, in any case I am going through with it to the finish. Show me
+something simpler, more of the medium.”
+
+Volodya Chaplinsky, who was all the time in a torment over Ellena
+Victorovna, offered the most likely thing—to drop into the
+establishment of Anna Markovna, which was only ten steps away.
+
+But it was just here that strong impressions awaited them. Simeon did
+not want to let them in, and only several gold pieces, which Ryazanov
+gave him, softened him. They took up a cabinet, almost the same as at
+Treppel’s, only somewhat shabbier and more faded. At the command of
+Emma Edwardovna, the girls were herded into the cabinet. But it was the
+same as letting a goat into a truck-garden or mixing soda and acid. The
+main mistake, however, was that they let Jennka in there as
+well—wrathful, irritated, with impudent fires in her eyes. The modest,
+quiet Tamara was the last to walk in, with her shy and depraved smile
+of a Monna Lisa. In the end, almost the entire personnel of the
+establishment gathered in the cabinet. Rovinskaya no longer risked
+asking “How did you come to this life?” But it must be said, that the
+inmates of the house met her with an outward hospitality. Ellena
+Victorovna asked them to sing their usual canonical songs, and they
+willingly sang:
+
+Monday now is come again,
+They’re supposed to get me out;
+Doctor Krassov won’t let me out,
+Well, the devil take him then.
+
+
+And further:
+
+Poor little, poor little, poor little me,
+The public house is closed,
+My head’s aching me...
+
+
+The love of a loafer
+Is spice, is spice;
+But the prostitute
+Is as cold as ice.
+Ha-ha-ha!
+
+
+They came together
+Matched as well as might be,
+She is a prostitute,
+A pickpocket he.
+Ha-ha-ha!
+
+
+Now morning has come,
+He is planning a theft;
+While she lies in her bed
+And laughs like she’s daft.
+Ha-ha-ha!
+
+
+Comes morning, the laddie
+Is led to the pen;
+But for the prostitute
+His pals await then.
+Ha-ha-ha! ...
+
+
+[12] While there can be but little doubt that these four stanzas are an
+actual transcript from life, Heinrich Heine’s “Ein Weib” is such a
+striking parallel that it may be reproduced here as a matter of
+interest. The translation is by Mr. Louis Untermeyer.—Trans.
+
+
+A WOMAN
+
+
+They loved each other beyond belief—
+She was a strumpet, he was a thief;
+Whenever she thought of his tricks, thereafter
+She’d throw herself on the bed with laughter.
+
+
+The day was spent with a reckless zest;
+At night she lay upon his breast.
+So when they took him, a while thereafter
+She watched at the window—with laughter.
+
+
+He sent word pleading “Oh come to me,
+I need you, need you bitterly,
+Yes, here and in the hereafter.”
+Her little head shook with laughter.
+
+
+At six in the morning they swung him high;
+At seven the turf on his grave was dry;
+At eight, however, she quaffed her
+Red wine and sang with laughter!
+
+
+And still further a convict song:
+
+I’m a ruined laddie,
+Ruined for alway;
+While year after year
+The days go away.
+
+
+And also:
+
+Don’t you cry, my Mary,
+You’ll belong to me;
+When I’ve served the army
+I will marry thee.
+
+
+But here suddenly, to the general amazement, the stout Kitty, usually
+taciturn, burst into laughter. She was a native of Odessa.
+
+“Let me sing one song, too. It’s sung by thieves and badger queens in
+the drink shops on our Moldavanka and Peresip.”
+
+And in a horrible bass, in a rusty and unyielding voice, she began to
+sing, making the most incongruous gestures, but, evidently, imitating
+some cabaret cantatrice of the third calibre that she had sometime
+seen:
+
+“Ah, I’ll go to Dukovka,
+Sit down at the table,
+Now I throw my hat off,
+Toss it under table.
+Then I athk my dearie,
+‘What will you drink, sweet?’
+But all the answer that she makes:
+‘My head aches fit to split.’
+‘I ain’t a-athking you
+What your ache may be,
+But I am a-athking you
+What your drink may be:
+Will it be beer, or for wine shall I call,
+Or for violet wine, or nothing else at all?’”
+
+
+And all would have turned out well, if suddenly Little White Manka, in
+only her chemise and in white lace drawers, had not burst into the
+cabinet. Some merchant, who the night before had arranged a
+paradisaical night, was carousing with her, and the ill-fated
+Benedictine, which always acted upon the girl with the rapidity of
+dynamite, had brought her into the usual quarrelsome condition. She was
+no longer “Little Manka” and “Little White Manka,” but she was “Manka
+the Scandaliste.” Having run into the cabinet, she suddenly, from
+unexpectedness, fell down on the floor, and, lying on her back, burst
+into such sincere laughter that all the rest burst out laughing as
+well. Yes. But this laughter was not prolonged ... Manka suddenly sat
+up on the floor and began to shout:
+
+“Hurrah! new wenches have joined our place!”
+
+This was altogether an unexpected thing. The baroness did a still
+greater tactlessness. She said:
+
+“I am a patroness of a convent for fallen girls, and therefore, as a
+part of my duty, I must gather information about you.”
+
+But here Jennka instantly flared up:
+
+“Get out of here right away, you old fool! You rag! You floor mop! ...
+Your Magdalene asylums—they’re worse than a prison. Your secretaries
+use us, like dogs carrion. Your fathers, husbands, and brothers come to
+us, and we infect them with all sorts of diseases ... Purposely ... And
+they in their turn infect you. Your female superintendents live with
+the drivers, janitors and policemen, while we are put in a cell if we
+happen to laugh or joke a little among ourselves. And so, if you’ve
+come here as to a theatre, then you must hear the truth out, straight
+to your face.”
+
+But Tamara calmly stopped her:
+
+“Stop, Jennie, I will tell them myself ... Can it be that you really
+think, baroness, that we are worse than the so-called respectable
+women? A man comes to me, pays me two roubles for a visit or five
+roubles for a night, and I don’t in the least conceal this, from any
+one in the world ... But tell me, baroness, do you possibly know even
+one married lady with a family who isn’t in secret giving herself up
+either for the sake of passion to a young man, or for the sake of money
+to an old one? I know very well that fifty percent of you are kept by
+lovers, while the remaining fifty, of those who are older, keep young
+lads. I also know that many—ah, how many!—of you cohabit with your
+fathers, brothers, and even sons, but these secrets you hide in some
+sort of a hidden casket. And that’s all the difference between us. We
+are fallen, but we don’t lie and don’t pretend, but you all fall, and
+lie to boot. Think it over for yourself; now—in whose favour is this
+difference?”
+
+“Bravo, Tamarochka, that’s the way to serve them!” shouted Manka,
+without getting up from the floor; dishevelled, fair, curly, resembling
+at this moment a thirteen-year-old girl.
+
+“Now, now!” urged Jennka as well, flashing with her flaming eyes.
+
+“Why not, Jennechka? I’ll go further than that. Out of us scarcely,
+scarcely one in a thousand has committed abortion. But all of you
+several times over. What? Or isn’t that the truth? And those of you
+who’ve done this, did it not out of desperation or cruel poverty, but
+you simply were afraid of spoiling your figure and beauty—that’s your
+sole capital! Or else you’ve been seeking only beastly carnal pleasure,
+while pregnancy and feeding interfered with your giving yourself up to
+it!”
+
+Rovinskaya became confused and uttered in a quick whisper:
+
+“Faites attention, baronne, que dans sa position cette demoiselle est
+instruite.”[13]
+
+[13] “Pay attention, baroness, the girl is rather educated for one of
+her position.”
+
+
+“Figurez-vous, que moi, j’ai aussi remarque cet etrange visage. Comme
+si je l’ai deja vu ... est-ce en reve? ... en demi-delire? Ou dans sa
+petite enfance?”[14]
+
+[14] “Just imagine, I, too, have remarked this strange face. But where
+have I seen it ... was it in a dream? ... in semi-delirium? Or in her
+early infancy?”
+
+
+“Ne vous donnez pas la peine de chercher dans vos souvenirs, baronne,”
+Tamara suddenly interposed insolently. “Je puis de suite vous venir
+aide. Rappelez-vous seulement Kharkoff, et la chambre d’hotel de
+Koniakine, l’entrepreneur Solovieitschik, et le tenor di grazzia ... A
+ce moment vous n’etiez pas encore m-me la baronne de ... [15] However,
+let’s drop the French tongue ... You were a common chorus girl and
+served together with me.”
+
+[15] “Don’t trouble to strain your memory, baroness. I will come to
+your aid at once. Just recall Kharkov, a room in Koniakine’s hotel, the
+theatrical manager, Solovieitschik, and a certain lyrical tenor ... At
+that time you were not yet baroness de ...”
+
+
+“Mais, dites-moi, au nom de dieu, comment vous trouvez vous ici,
+Mademoiselle Marguerite.”[16]
+
+[16] “But tell me, in God’s name, how you have come to be here,
+Mademoiselle Marguerite?”
+
+
+“Oh, they ask us about that every day. I just up and came to be here
+...”
+
+And with an inimitable cynicism she asked:
+
+“I trust you will pay for the time which we have passed with you?”
+
+“No, may the devil take you!” suddenly shouted out Little White Manka,
+quickly getting up from the rug.
+
+And suddenly, pulling two gold pieces out of her stocking, she flung
+them upon the table.
+
+“There, you! .. I’m giving you that for a cab. Go away right now,
+otherwise I’ll break up all the mirrors and bottles here...”
+
+Rovinskaya got up and said with sincere, warm tears in her eyes:
+
+“Of course, we’ll go away, and the lesson of Mlle. Marguerite will
+prove of benefit to us. Your time will be paid for—take care of it,
+Volodya. Still, you sang so much for us, that you must allow me to sing
+for you as well.”
+
+Rovinskaya went up to the piano, took a few chords, and suddenly began
+to sing the splendid ballad of Dargomyzhsky:
+
+“We parted then with pride—
+Neither with sighs nor words
+Proffered I thee reproach of jealousy ...
+We went apart for aye,
+Yet only if with thee
+I might but chance to meet! ..
+Ah, that with thee I might but chance to meet!
+
+
+“I weep not nor complain—
+To fate I bend my knee...
+I know not, if you loved,
+So greatly wronging me?
+Yet only if with thee
+I might but chance to meet! ...
+Ah, that with thee I might but chance to meet!”
+
+
+This tender and passionate ballad, executed by a great artiste,
+suddenly reminded all these women of their first love; of their first
+fall; of a late leave-taking at a dawn in the spring, in the chill of
+the morning, when the grass is gray from the dew, while the red sky
+paints the tips of the birches a rosy colour; of last embraces, so
+closely entwined, and of the unerring heart’s mournful whispers: “No,
+this will not be repeated, this will not be repeated!” And the lips
+were then cold and dry, while the damp mist of the morning lay upon the
+hair.
+
+Silence seized Tamara; silence seized Manka the Scandaliste; and
+suddenly Jennka, the most untamable of all the girls, ran up to the
+artiste, fell down on her knees, and began to sob at her feet.
+
+And Rovinskaya, touched herself, put her arms around her head and said:
+
+“My sister, let me kiss you!”
+
+Jennka whispered something into her ear.
+
+“Why, that’s a silly trifle,” said Rovinskaya. “A few months of
+treatment and it will all go away.”
+
+“No, no, no ... I want to make all of them diseased. Let them all rot
+and croak.”
+
+“Ah, my dear,” said Rovinskaya, “I would not do that in your place.”
+
+And now Jennka, the proud Jennka began kissing the knees and hands of
+the artiste and was saying:
+
+“Then why have people wronged me so? ... Why have they wronged me so?
+Why? Why? Why?”
+
+Such is the might of genius!
+
+The only might which takes into its beautiful hands not the abject
+reason, but the warm soul of man! The self-respecting Jennka was hiding
+her face in Rovinskaya’s dress; Little White Manka was sitting meekly
+on a chair, her face covered with a handkerchief; Tamara, with elbow
+propped on her knee and head bowed on the palm of her hand, was
+intently looking down, while Simeon the porter, who had been looking in
+against any emergency, only opened his eyes wide in amazement.
+
+Rovinskaya was quietly whispering into Jennka’s very ear:
+
+“Never despair. Sometimes things fall out so badly that there’s nothing
+for it but to hang one’s self—but, just look, to-morrow life has
+changed abruptly. My dear, my sister, I am now a world celebrity. But
+if you only knew what seas of humiliation and vileness I have had to
+wade through! Be well, then, my dear, and believe in your star.”
+
+She bent down to Jennka and kissed her on the forehead. And never
+afterwards could Volodya Chaplinsky, who had been watching this scene
+with a painful tension, forget those warm and beautiful rays, which at
+this moment kindled in the green, long, Egyptian eyes of the artiste.
+
+The party departed gloomily, but Ryazanov lingered behind for a minute.
+
+He walked up to Jennka, respectfully and gently kissed her hand, and
+said:
+
+“If possible, forgive our prank ... This, of course, will not be
+repeated. But if you ever have need of me, I am always at your service.
+Here is my visiting card. Don’t stick it out on your bureau; but
+remember, that from this evening on I am your friend.”
+
+And, having kissed Jennka’s hand once more, he was the last to go down
+the stairs.
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+
+On Thursday, since very morning, a ceaseless, fine drizzle had begun to
+fall, and so the leaves of the chestnuts, acacias, and poplars had at
+once turned green. And, suddenly, it became somehow dreamily quiet and
+protractedly tedious. Pensive and monotonous.
+
+During this all the girls had gathered, as usual, in Jennka’s room. But
+something strange was going on within her. She did not utter
+witticisms, did not laugh, did not read, as always, her usual
+yellow-back novel which was now lying aimlessly either on her breast or
+stomach; but was vicious, wrapped up in sadness, and in her eyes blazed
+a yellow fire that spoke of hatred. In vain did Little White Manka,
+Manka the Scandaliste, who adored her, try to turn her attention to
+herself—Jennka seemed not to notice her, and the conversation did not
+at all get on. It was depressing. But it may have been that the August
+drizzle, which had steadily set in for several weeks running, reacted
+upon all of them. Tamara sat down on Jennka’s bed, gently embraced her,
+and, having put her mouth near her very ear, said in a whisper:
+
+“What’s the matter, Jennechka? I’ve seen for a long time that something
+strange is going on in you. And Manka feels that too. Just see, how
+she’s wasted without your caressing. Tell me. Perhaps I’ll be able to
+help you in some way?”
+
+Jennka closed her eyes and shook her head in negation. Tamara moved
+away from her a little, but continued to stroke her shoulder gently.
+
+“It’s your affair, Jennechka. I daren’t butt into your soul. I only
+asked because you’re the only being who...”
+
+Jennka with decision suddenly jumped out of bed, seized Tamara by the
+hand and said abruptly and commandingly:
+
+“All right! Let’s get out of here for a minute. I’ll tell you
+everything. Girls, wait for us a little while.”
+
+In the light corridor Jennka laid her hands on the shoulders of her
+mate and with a distorted, suddenly blanched face, said:
+
+“Well, then, listen here: some one has infected me with syphilis.”
+
+“Oh, my poor darling. Long?”
+
+“Long. Do you remember, when the students were here? The same ones who
+started a row with Platonov? I found out about it for the first time
+then. I found out in the daytime.”
+
+“Do you know,” quietly remarked Tamara, “I almost guessed about this,
+and particularly then, when you went down on your knees before the
+singer and talked quietly about something with her. But still, my dear
+Jennechka, you must attend to yourself.”
+
+Jennka wrathfully stamped her foot and tore in half the batiste
+handkerchief which she had been nervously crumpling in her hands.
+
+“No! Not for anything! I won’t infect any one of you. You may have
+noticed yourself, that during the last weeks I don’t dine at the common
+table, and that I wash and wipe the dishes myself. That’s why I’m
+trying to break Manka away from me, whom, you know, I love sincerely,
+in the real way. But these two-legged skunks I infect purposely, infect
+every evening, ten, fifteen of them. Let them rot, let them carry the
+syphilis on to their wives, mistresses, mothers—yes, yes, their mothers
+also, and their fathers, and their governesses, and even their
+grand-grandmothers. Let them all perish, the honest skunks!”
+
+Tamara carefully and tenderly stroked Jennka’s head. “Can it be that
+you’ll go the limit, Jennechka?”
+
+“Yes. And without any mercy. All of you, however, don’t have to be
+afraid of me. I choose the man myself. The stupidest, the handsomest,
+the richest and the most important, but not to one of you will I let
+them go afterward. Oh! I make believe I’m so passionate before them,
+that you’d burst out laughing if you saw. I bite them, I scratch, I cry
+and shiver like an insane woman. They believe it, the pack of fools.”
+
+“It’s your affair, it’s your affair, Jennechka,” meditatively uttered
+Tamara, looking down. “Perhaps you’re right, at that. Who knows? But
+tell me, how did you get away from the doctor?”
+
+Jennka suddenly turned away from her, pressed her face against the
+angle of the window frame and suddenly burst into bitter, searing
+tears—the tears of wrath and vengefulness—and at the same time she
+spoke, gasping and quivering:
+
+“Because ... because ... Because God has sent me especial luck: I am
+sick there where, in all probability, no doctor can see. And ours,
+besides that, is old and stupid...”
+
+And suddenly, with some unusual effort of the will Jennka stopped her
+tears just as unexpectedly as she had started crying.
+
+“Come to me, Tamarochka,” she said. “Of course, you won’t chatter too
+much?”
+
+“Of course not.”
+
+And they returned into Jennka’s room, both of them calm and restrained.
+
+Simeon walked into the room. He, contrary to his usual brazenness,
+always bore himself with a shade of respect toward Jennka. Simeon said:
+
+“Well, now, Jennechka, their Excellency has come to Vanda. Allow her to
+go away for ten minutes.”
+
+Vanda, a blue-eyed, light blonde, with a large red mouth, with the
+typical face of a Lithuanian, looked imploringly at Jennka. If Jennka
+had said “No” she would have remained in the room, but Jennka did not
+say anything and even shut her eyes deliberately. Vanda obediently went
+out of the room.
+
+This general came accurately twice a month, every two weeks (just as to
+Zoe, another girl, came daily another honoured guest, nicknamed the
+Director in the house).
+
+Jennka suddenly threw the old, tattered book behind her. Her brown eyes
+flared up with a real golden fire.
+
+“You’re wrong in despising this general,” said she. “I’ve known worse
+Ethiopians. I had a certain guest once—a real blockhead. He couldn’t
+make love to me otherwise than ... otherwise than ... well, let’s say
+it plainly: he pricked me with pins in the breast ... While in Vilno a
+Polish Catholic priest used to come to me. He would dress me all in
+white, compel me to powder myself, lay me down on the bed. He’d light
+three candles near me. And then, when I seemed to him altogether like a
+dead woman, he’d throw himself upon me.”
+
+Little White Manka suddenly exclaimed:
+
+“It’s the truth you’re telling, Jennka! I had a certain old bugger,
+too. He made me pretend all the time that I was an innocent girl, so’s
+I’d cry and scream. But, Jennechka, though you’re the smartest one of
+us, yet I’ll bet you won’t guess who he was ...”
+
+“The warden of a prison?”
+
+“A fire chief.”
+
+Suddenly Katie burst into laughter in her bass:
+
+“Well, now, I had a certain teacher. He taught some kind of arithmetic,
+I disremember which. He always made me believe, that I was the man, and
+he the woman, and that I should do it to him ... by force ... And what
+a fool! Just imagine, girls, he’d yell all the time: ‘I’m your woman!
+I’m all yours! Take me! Take me!’”
+
+“Loony!” said the blue-eyed, spry Verka in a positive and unexpectedly
+contralto voice: “Loony.”
+
+“No, why?” suddenly retorted the kindly and modest Tamara. “Not crazy
+at all, but simply, like all men, a libertine. At home it’s tiresome
+for him, while here for his money he can receive whatever pleasure he
+desires. That’s plain, it seems?”
+
+Jennka, who had been silent up to now, suddenly, with one quick
+movement sat up in bed.
+
+“You’re all fools!” she cried. “Why do you forgive them all this?
+Before I used to be foolish myself, too, but now I compel them to walk
+before me on all fours, compel them to kiss my soles, and they do this
+with delight ... You all know, girlies, that I don’t love money, but I
+pluck the men in whatever way I can. They, the nasty beasts, present me
+with the portraits of their wives, brides, mothers, daughters ...
+However, you’ve seen, I think, the photographs in our water-closet? But
+now, just think of it, my children ... A woman loves only once, but for
+always, while a man loves like a he-greyhound... That he’s unfaithful
+is nothing; but he never has even the commonest feeling of gratitude
+left either for the old, or the new, mistress. I’ve heard it said, that
+now there are many clean boys among the young people. I believe this,
+though I haven’t seen, haven’t met them, myself. But all those I have
+seen are all vagabonds, nasty brutes and skunks. Not so long ago I read
+some novel of our miserable life. It’s almost the same thing as I’m
+telling you now.”
+
+Vanda came back. She slowly, carefully, sat down on the edge of
+Jennka’s bed; there, where the shadow of the lamp fell. Out of that
+deep, though deformed psychical delicacy, which is peculiar to people
+sentenced to death, prisoners at hard labour, and prostitutes, none had
+the courage to ask her how she had passed this hour and a half.
+Suddenly she threw upon the table twenty-five roubles and said:
+
+“Bring me white wine and a watermelon.”
+
+And, burying her face in her arms, which had sunk on the table, she
+began to sob inaudibly. And again no one took the liberty of putting
+any question to her. Only Jennka grew pale from wrath and bit her lower
+lip so that a row of white spots was left upon it.
+
+“Yes,” she said; “here, now, I understand Tamara. You hear, Tamara, I
+apologize before you. I’ve often laughed over your being in love with
+your thief Senka. But here, now, I’ll say that of all the men the most
+decent is a thief or a murderer. He doesn’t hide the fact that he loves
+a girlie, and, if need be, will commit a crime for her—a theft or a
+murder. But these—the rest of them! All lying, falsehood, petty
+cunning, depravity on the sly. The nasty beast has three families, a
+wife and five children. A governess and two children abroad. The eldest
+daughter from the first marriage, and a child by her. And this
+everybody, everybody in town knows, save his little children. And even
+they, perhaps, guess it and whisper among themselves. And, just
+imagine, he’s a respected person, honoured by the whole world ... My
+children, it seems we’ve never had occasion to enter into confidences
+with each other, and yet I’ll tell you, that I when I was ten and a
+half, was sold by my own mother in the city of Zhitomir to Doctor
+Tarabukin. I kissed his hands, implored him to spare me, I cried out to
+him: ‘I’m little!’ But he’d answer me: ‘That’s nothing, that’s nothing:
+you’ll grow up.’ Well, of course, there was pain, aversion, nastiness
+... And he afterwards spread it around as a current anecdote. The
+desperate cry of my soul.”
+
+“Well, as long as we do speak, let’s speak to the end,” suddenly and
+calmly said Zoe, and smiled negligently and sadly. “I was deprived of
+innocence by a teacher in the ministerial school, Ivan Petrovich Sus.
+He simply called me over to his rooms, and his wife at that time had
+gone to market for a suckling pig—it was Christmas. Treated me with
+candies, and then said it was going to be one of two things: either I
+must obey him in everything, or he’d at once expel me out of school for
+bad conduct. But then you know yourselves, girls, how we feared the
+teachers. Here they aren’t terrible to us, because we do with them
+whatever we want—but at that time! For then he seemed to us greater
+than Czar and God.”
+
+“And me a stewdent. He was teaching the master’s boys in our place.
+There, where I was a servant ...”
+
+“No, but I ...” exclaimed Niura, but, turning around unexpectedly,
+remained as she was with her mouth open. Looking in the direction of
+her gaze, Jennka had to wring her hands. In the doorway stood Liubka,
+grown thin, with dark rings under her eyes, and, just like a
+somnambulist, was searching with her hand for the door-knob, as a point
+of support.
+
+“Liubka, you fool, what’s the matter with you?” yelled Jennka loudly.
+“What is it?”
+
+“Well, of course, what: he took and chased me out.”
+
+No one said a word. Jennka hid her eyes with her hands and started
+breathing hard, and it could be seen how under the skin of her cheeks
+the taut muscles of the jaws were working.
+
+“Jennechka, all my hope is only in you,” said Liubka with a deep
+expression of weary helplessness. “Everybody respects you so. Talk it
+over, dearie, with Anna Markovna or with Simeon ... Let them take me
+back.”
+
+Jennka straightened up on the bed, fixed Liubka with her dry, burning,
+yet seemingly weeping eyes, and asked brokenly:
+
+“Have you eaten anything to-day?”
+
+“No. Neither yesterday, nor to-day. Nothing.”
+
+“Listen, Jennechka,” asked Vanda quietly, “suppose I give her some
+white wine? And Verka meanwhile will run to the kitchen for meat?
+What?”
+
+“Do as you know best. Of course, that’s all right. And give a look,
+girlies, why, she’s all wet. Oh, what a booby! Well! Lively! Undress
+yourself! Little White Manka, or you, Tamarochka, give her dry drawers,
+warm stockings and slippers. Well, now,” she turned to Liubka, “tell
+us, you idiot, all that happened to you!”
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+
+On that early morning when Lichonin so suddenly, and, perhaps,
+unexpectedly even to himself, had carried off Liubka from the gay
+establishment of Anna Markovna it was the height of summer. The trees
+still remained green, but in the scent of the air, the leaves, and the
+grass there was already to be felt, as though from afar, the tender,
+melancholy, and at the same time bewitching scent of the nearing
+autumn. With wonder the student gazed at the trees, so clean, innocent
+and quiet, as though God, imperceptibly to men, had planted them about
+here at night; and the trees themselves were looking around with wonder
+upon the calm blue water, that still seemed slumbering in the pools and
+ditches and under the wooden bridge thrown across the shallow river;
+upon the lofty, as though newly washed sky, which had just awakened,
+and, in the glow of dawn, half asleep, was smiling with a rosy, lazy,
+happy smile in greeting to the kindling sun.
+
+The heart of the student expanded and quivered; both from the beauty of
+the beatific morning, and from the joy of existence, and from the sweet
+air, refreshing his lungs after the night, passed without sleep, in a
+crowded and smoke-filled compartment. But the beauty and loftiness of
+his own action moved him still more.
+
+Yes, he had acted like a man, like a real man, in the highest sense of
+that word! Even now he is not repenting of what he had done. It’s all
+right for them (to whom this “them” applied, Lichonin did not properly
+understand even himself), it’s all right for them to talk about the
+horrors of prostitution; to talk, sitting at tea, with rolls and
+sausage, in the presence of pure and cultured girls. But had any one of
+his colleagues taken some actual step toward liberating a woman from
+perdition? Eh, now? And then there is also—the sort that will come to
+this same Sonechka Marmeladova, will tell her all sorts of taradiddles,
+describe all kinds of horrors to her, butt into her soul, until he
+brings her to tears; and right off will start in crying himself and
+begin to console her, embrace her, pat her on the head, kiss her at
+first on the cheek, then on the lips; well, and everybody knows what
+happens next! Faugh! But with him, with Lichonin, the word and the deed
+were never at odds.
+
+He clasped Liubka around the waist, and looked at her with kindly,
+almost loving, eyes; although, the very same minute, he himself thought
+that he was regarding her as a father or a brother.
+
+Sleep was fearfully besetting Liubka; her eyes would close, and she
+with an effort would open them wide, so as not to fall asleep again;
+while on her lips lay the same naive, childish, tired smile, which
+Lichonin had noticed still there, in the cabinet. And out of one corner
+of her mouth ran a thin trickle of saliva.
+
+“Liubka, my dear! My darling, much-suffering woman! Behold how fine it
+is all around! Lord! Here it’s five years that I haven’t seen the
+sunrise. Now play at cards, now drinking, now I had to hurry to the
+university. Behold, my dearest, over there the dawn has burst into
+bloom. The sun is near! This is your dawn, Liubochka! This is your new
+life beginning. You will fearlessly lean upon my strong arm. I shall
+lead you out upon the road of honest toil, on the way to a brave combat
+with life, face to face with it!”
+
+Liubka eyed him askance. “There, the fumes are still playing in his
+head,” she thought kindly. “But that’s nothing—he’s kind and a good
+sort. Only a trifle homely.” And, having smiled with a half-sleepy
+smile, she said in a tone of capricious reproach:
+
+“Ye—es! You’ll fool me, never fear. All of you men are like that. You
+just gain yours at first, to get your pleasure, and then—no attention
+whatsoever!”
+
+“I? Oh? That I should do this!” Lichonin exclaimed warmly and even
+smote himself on the chest with his free hand. “Then you know me very
+badly! I’m too honest a man to be deceiving a defenseless girl. No!
+I’ll exert all my powers and all my soul to educate your mind, to widen
+your outlook, to compel your poor heart, which has suffered so, to
+forget all the wounds and wrongs which life has inflicted upon it. I
+will be a father and a brother to you! I shall safeguard your every
+step! And if you will come to love somebody with a truly pure, holy
+love, then I shall bless that day and hour when I had snatched you out
+of this Dantean hell!”
+
+During the continuation of this flaming tirade the old cabby with great
+significance, although silently, began laughing, and from this
+inaudible laughter his back shook. Old cabbies hear very many things,
+because to the cabby, sitting in front, everything is readily audible,
+which is not at all suspected by the conversing fares; and many things
+do the old cabbies know of that which takes place among people. Who
+knows, perhaps he had heard more than once even more disordered, more
+lofty speeches?
+
+It seemed to Liubka for some reason that Lichonin had grown angry at
+her, or that he was growing jealous beforehand of some imaginary rival.
+He was declaiming with entirely too much noise and agitation. She
+became perfectly awake, turned her face to Lichonin with wide open,
+uncomprehending, and at the same time submissive eyes, and slightly
+touched his right hand, lying on her waist, with her fingers.
+
+“Don’t get angry, my sweetie. I’ll never exchange you for another.
+Here’s my word of honour, honest to God! My word of honour, that I
+never will! Don’t you think I feel you’re wanting to take care of me?
+Do you think I don’t understand? Why, you’re such an attractive, nice
+little young fellow. There, now, if you were an old man and homely...”
+
+“Ah! You haven’t got the right idea!” shouted Lichonin, and again in
+high-flown style began to tell her about the equal rights of women,
+about the sacredness of toil, about human justice, about freedom, about
+the struggle against reigning evil.
+
+Of all his words Liubka understood exactly not a one. She still felt
+herself guilty of something and somehow shrank all up, grew sad, bowed
+her head and became quiet. A little more and she, in all probability,
+would have burst out crying in the middle of the street; but
+fortunately, they by this time had driven up to the house where
+Lichonin was staying.
+
+“Well, here we are at home,” said the student. “Stop, driver!”
+
+And when he had paid him, he could not refrain from declaiming with
+pathos, his hand extended theatrically straight before him:
+
+“And into my house, calm and fearless,
+As its full mistress walk thou in!”
+
+
+And again the unfathomable, prophetic smile wrinkled the aged brown
+face of the cabby.
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+
+The room in which Lichonin lived was situated on the fifth story and a
+half. And a half, because there are such five, six, and seven-story
+profitable houses, packed to overflowing and cheap, on top of which are
+erected still other sorry bug-breeders of roof iron, something in the
+nature of mansards; or more exactly, bird-houses, in which it is
+fearfully cold in winter, while in the summer time it is just as torrid
+as in the tropics. Liubka with difficulty clambered upward. It seemed
+to her that now, now, two steps more, and she would drop straight down
+on the steps and fall into a sleep from which nothing would be able to
+wake her. But Lichonin was saying all the time:
+
+“My dear! I can see you are tired. But that’s nothing. Lean upon me. We
+are going upwards all the time! Always higher and higher! Is this not a
+symbol of all human aspirations? My comrade, my sister, lean upon my
+arm!”
+
+Here it became still worse for poor Liubka. As it was, she could barely
+go up alone, but here she also had to drag in tow Lichonin, who had
+grown extremely heavy. And his weight would not really have mattered;
+his wordiness, however, was beginning to irritate her little by little.
+So irritates at times the ceaseless, wearisome crying, like a
+toothache, of an infant at breast; the piercing whimpering of a canary;
+or someone whistling without pause and out of tune in an adjoining
+room.
+
+Finally, they reached Lichonin’s room. There was no key in the door.
+And, as a rule, it was never even locked with a key. Lichonin pushed
+the door and they entered. It was dark in the room, because the window
+curtains were lowered. It smelt of mice, kerosene, yesterday’s
+vegetable soup, long-.used bed linen, stale tobacco smoke. In the
+half-dusk some one who could not be seen was snoring deafeningly and
+with variations.
+
+Lichonin raised the shade. There were the usual furnishings of a poor
+student: a sagging, unmade bed with a crumpled blanket; a lame table,
+and on it a candlestick without a candle; several books on the floor
+and on the table; cigarette stubs everywhere; and opposite the bed,
+along the other wall, an old, old divan, upon which at the present
+moment was sleeping and snoring, with mouth wide open, some young man
+with black hair and moustache. The collar of his shirt was unbuttoned
+and through its opening could be seen the chest and black hair, the
+like of which for thickness and curliness could be found only on
+Persian lambs.
+
+“Nijeradze! Hey, Nijeradze, get up!” cried Lichonin and prodded the
+sleeper in the ribs. “Prince!”
+
+“M-m-m...”
+
+“May your race be even accursed in the person of your ancestors and
+descendants! May they even be exiled from the heights of the beauteous
+Caucasus! May they even never behold the blessed Georgia! Get up, you
+skunk! Get up you Aravian dromedary! Kintoshka! ...”
+
+But suddenly, unexpectedly for Lichonin, Liubka intervened. She took
+him by the arm and said timidly:
+
+“Darling, why torture him? Maybe he wants to sleep, maybe he’s tired?
+Let him sleep a bit. I’d better go home. Will you give me a half for a
+cabby? To-morrow you’ll come to me again. Isn’t that so, sweetie?”
+
+Lichonin was abashed. So strange did the intervention of this silent,
+apparently sleepy girl, appear to him. Of course, he did not grasp that
+she was actuated by an instinctive, unconscious pity for a man who had
+not had enough sleep; or, perhaps, a professional regard for the sleep
+of other people. But the astonishment was only momentary. For some
+reason he became offended. He raised the hand of the recumbent man,
+which hung down to the floor, with the extinguished cigarette still
+remaining between its fingers, and, shaking it hard, he said in a
+serious, almost severe voice:
+
+“Listen, now, Nijeradze, I’m asking you seriously. Understand, now, may
+the devil take you that I’m not alone, but with a woman. Swine!”
+
+It was as though a miracle had happened: the lying man suddenly jumped
+up, as though some spring of unusual force had instantaneously unwound
+under him. He sat down on the divan, rapidly rubbed with his palms his
+eyes, forehead, temples; saw the woman, became confused at once, and
+muttered, hastily buttoning his blouse:
+
+“Is that you, Lichonin? And here I was waiting and waiting for you and
+fell asleep. Request the unknown comrade to turn away for just a
+minute.”
+
+He hastily pulled on his gray, everyday student’s coat, and rumpled up
+with all the fingers of both his hands his luxuriant black curls.
+Liubka, with the coquetry natural to all women, no matter in what years
+or situation they find themselves, walked up to the sliver of a mirror
+hanging on the wall, to fix her hair-dress. Nijeradze askance,
+questioningly, only with the movement of his eyes, indicated her to
+Lichonin.
+
+“Never mind. Don’t pay any attention,” answered the other aloud. “But
+let’s get out of here, however. I’ll tell you everything right away.
+Excuse me, Liubochka, it’s only for a minute. I’ll come back at once,
+fix you up, and then evaporate, like smoke.”
+
+“But don’t trouble yourself,” replied Liubka: “it’ll be all right for
+me here, right on this divan. And you fix yourself up on the bed.”
+
+“No, that’s no longer like a model, my angel! I have a colleague here.
+And so I’ll go to him to sleep. I’ll return in just a minute.”
+
+Both students went out into the corridor.
+
+“What meaneth this dream?” asked Nijeradze, opening wide his oriental,
+somewhat sheepish eyes. “Whence this beauteous child, this comrade in a
+petticoat?”
+
+Lichonin shook his head with great significance and made a wry face.
+Now, when the ride, the fresh air, the morning, and the business-like,
+everyday, accustomed setting had entirely sobered him, he was beginning
+to experience within his soul an indistinct feeling of a certain
+awkwardness, needlessness of this sudden action; and at the same time
+something in the nature of an unconscious irritation both against
+himself and the woman he had carried off. He already had a presentiment
+of the onerousness of living together, of a multiplicity of cares,
+unpleasantnesses and expenses; of the equivocal smiles or even simply
+the unceremonious questionings of comrades; finally, of the serious
+hindrance during the time of government examinations. But, having
+scarcely begun speaking with Nijeradze, he at once became ashamed of
+his pusillanimity, and having started off listlessly, towards the end
+he again began to prance on his heroic steed.
+
+“Do you see, prince,” he said, in his confusion twisting a button of
+his comrade’s coat and without looking in his eyes, “you’ve made a
+mistake. This isn’t a comrade in a petticoat, but ... simply, I was
+just now with my colleagues ... that is, I wasn’t, but just dropped in
+for a minute with my friends into the Yamkas, to Anna Markovna ...”
+
+“With whom?” asked Nijeradze, becoming animated.
+
+“Well, isn’t it all the same to you, prince? There was Tolpygin,
+Ramses, a certain sub-professor—Yarchenko—Borya Sobashnikov, and others
+... I don’t recall. We had been boat-riding the whole evening, then
+dived into a publican’s, and only after that, like swine, started for
+the Yamkas. I, you know, am a very abstemious man. I only sat and
+soaked up cognac, like a sponge, with a certain reporter I know. Well,
+all the others fell from grace however. And so, toward morning, for
+some reason or other, I went all to pieces. I got so sad and full of
+pity from looking at these unhappy women. I also thought, now, of how
+our sisters enjoy our regard, love, protection; how our mothers are
+surrounded with reverent adoration. Just let some one say one rude word
+to them, shove them, offend them; we are ready to chew his throat off!
+Isn’t that the truth?”
+
+“M-m? ...” drawled out the Georgian, half questioningly, half
+expectantly, and squinted his eyes to one side.
+
+“Well, then I thought: why, now, any blackguard, any whippersnapper,
+any shattered ancient can take any one of these women to himself for a
+minute or for a night, as a momentary whim; and indifferently, one
+superfluous time more—the thousand and first—profane and defile in her
+that which is the most precious in a human being—love... Do you
+understand—revile, trample it underfoot, pay for the visit and walk
+away in peace, his hands in his pockets, whistling. But the most
+horrible of all is that all this has come to be a habit with them; it’s
+all one to her, and it’s all one to him. The feelings have dulled, the
+soul has dimmed. That’s so, isn’t it? And yet, in every one of them
+perishes both a splendid sister and a sainted mother. Eh? Isn’t that
+the truth?”
+
+“N-na? ....” mumbled Nijeradze and again shifted his eyes to one side.
+
+“And so I thought: wherefore words and superfluous exclamations! To the
+devil with hypocritical speeches during conventions. To the devil with
+abolition, regulation (suddenly, involuntarily, the recent words of the
+reporter came to his mind), Magdalene asylums and all these
+distributions of holy books in the establishments! Here, I’ll up and
+act as a really honest man, snatch a girl out of this slough, implant
+her in real firm soil, calm her, encourage her, treat her kindly.”
+
+“H-hm!” grunted Nijeradze with a grin.
+
+“Eh, prince! You always have salacious things on your mind. For you
+understand that I’m not talking about a woman, but about a human being;
+not about flesh, but about a soul.”
+
+“All right, all right, me soul, go on!”
+
+“Futhermore, as I thought, so did I act. I took her to-day from Anna
+Markovna’s and brought her for the present to me. And later—whatever
+God may grant. I’ll teach her in the beginning to read, and write; then
+open up for her a little cook-shop, or a grocery store, let’s say. I
+think that the comrades won’t refuse to help me. The human heart,
+prince, my brother—every heart—is in need of cordiality, of warmth. And
+lo and behold! in a year, in two, I will return to society a good,
+industrious, worthy member, with a virgin soul, open to all sorts of
+great possibilities... For she has given only her body, while her soul
+is pure and innocent.”
+
+“Tse, tse, tse,” the prince smacked his tongue.
+
+“What does this mean, you Tifflissian he-mule?”
+
+“And will you buy her a sewing machine?”
+
+“Why a sewing machine, in particular? I don’t understand.”
+
+“It’s always that way in the novels, me soul. Just as soon as the hero
+has saved the poor, but lost, creature, he at once sets up a sewing
+machine for her.”
+
+“Stop talking nonsense,” Lichonin waved him away angrily with his hand.
+“Clown!”
+
+The Georgian suddenly grew heated, his black eyes began to sparkle, and
+immediately Caucasian intonations could be heard in his voice.
+
+“No, not nonsense, me soul. It’s one of two things here, and it’ll all
+end in one and the same result. Either you’ll get together with her and
+after five months chuck her out on the street; and she’ll return to the
+brothel or take to walking the street. That’s a fact! Or else you won’t
+get together with her, but will begin to load her up with manual or
+mental labours and will try to develop her ignorant, dark mind; and she
+from tedium will run away from you, and will again find herself either
+walking the street, or in a brothel. That’s a fact, too! However, there
+is still a third combination. You’ll be vexing yourself about her like
+a brother, like the knight Lancelot, but she, secretly from you, will
+fall in love with another. Me soul, believe me, that wooman, when she
+is a wooman, is always—a wooman. And the other will play a bit with her
+body, and after three months chuck her out into the street or into a
+brothel.”
+
+Lichonin sighed deeply. Somewhere deep—not in his mind, but in the
+hidden, almost unseizable secret recesses of his
+consciousness—something resembling the thought that Nijeradze was right
+flashed through him. But he quickly gained control of himself, shook
+his head, and, stretching out his hand to the prince, uttered
+triumphantly:
+
+“I promise you, that after half a year you’ll take your words back, and
+as a mark of apology, you Erivanian billy goat, you Armavirian
+egg-plant, you’ll stand me to a dozen of Cakhetine wine.”
+
+“Va! That’s a go!” the prince struck Lichonin’s hand with his palm with
+all his might. “With pleasure. But if it comes out as I say—then you do
+it.”
+
+“Then I do it. However, AU REVOIR, prince. Whom are you lodging with?”
+
+“Right here, in this corridor, at Soloviev’s. But you, of course, like
+a mediaeval knight, will lay a two-edged sword between yourself and the
+beauteous Rosamond? Yes?”
+
+“Nonsense! I did want to pass the night at Soloviev’s myself. But now
+I’ll go and wander about the streets a bit and turn in into somebody’s;
+to Zaitzevich or Strump. Farewell, prince!”
+
+“Wait, wait!” Nijeradze called him, when he had gone a few steps. “I
+have forgotten to tell you the main thing: Partzan has tripped up!”
+
+“So that’s how?” wondered Lichonin, and at once yawned long, deeply and
+with enjoyment.
+
+“Yes. But there’s nothing dreadful; only the possession of some illegal
+brochures and stuff. He won’t have to sit for more than a year.”
+
+“That’s nothing; he’s a husky lad, he can stand it.”
+
+“He’s husky, all right” confirmed the prince.
+
+“Farewell!”
+
+“AU REVOIR, knight Grunwaldus!”
+
+“AU REVOIR, you Carbidinian stallion.”
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+
+Lichonin was left alone. In the half-dark corridor it smelt of kerosene
+fumes from the guttering little tin lamp, and of the odour of stagnant
+bad tobacco. The daylight dully penetrated only near the top, from two
+small glass frames, let in the roof at both ends of the corridor.
+
+Lichonin found himself in that simultaneously weakened and elevated
+mood which is so familiar to every man who has happened to be
+thoroughly sleepless for a long time. It was as though he had gone out
+of the limitations of everyday human life, and this life had become to
+him distant and of indifference; but at the same time his thoughts and
+emotions obtained a certain peaceful clarity and apathetic
+distinctness, and there was a tedious and languishing allurement in
+this crystal Nirvanah.
+
+He stood near his room, leaning against the wall, and seemed to see,
+feel, and hear how near him and below him were sleeping several score
+of people; sleeping with the last, fast morning sleep, with open
+mouths, with measured deep breathing, with a wilted pallor on their
+faces, glistening from sleep; and through his head flashed the thought,
+remote yet familiar since childhood, of how horrible sleeping people
+are—far more horrible than dead people. Then he remembered about
+Liubka. His subterranean, submerged, mysterious “I” rapidly, rapidly
+whispered that he ought to drop into the room, and see if the girl were
+all right, as well as make certain dispositions about tea in the
+morning; but he made believe to himself that he was not at all even
+thinking of this, and walked out into the street.
+
+He walked, looking closely at everything that met his eyes, with an
+idle and exact curiosity new to him; and every feature was drawn for
+him in relief to such a degree that it seemed to him as though he were
+feeling it with his fingers... There a peasant woman passed by. Over
+her shoulder is a yoke staff, while at each end of the yoke is a large
+pail of milk; her face is not young, with a net of fine wrinkles on the
+temples and with two deep furrows from the nostrils to the corners of
+the mouth; but her cheeks are rosy, and, probably, hard to the touch,
+while her hazel eyes radiate a sprightly peasant smile. From the
+movement of the heavy yoke and from the smooth walk her hips sway
+rhythmically now to the left, now to the right, and in their wave-like
+movements there is a coarse, sensual beauty.
+
+“A mischievous dame, and she’s lived through a checkered life,”
+reflected Lichonin. And suddenly, unexpectedly to himself, he had a
+feeling for, and irresistibly desired, this woman, altogether unknown
+to him, homely and not young; in all probability dirty and vulgar, but
+still resembling, as it seemed to him, a large Antonovka[17] apple
+which had fallen to the ground-somewhat bored by a worm, and which had
+lain just a wee bit too long, but which has still preserved its bright
+colour and its fragrant, winey aroma.
+
+[17] Somewhat like a Spitzbergen, but a trifle rounder.—Trans.
+
+
+Getting ahead of her, an empty, black, funereal catafalque whirled by;
+with two horses in harness, and two tied behind to the little rear
+columns. The torch-bearers and grave-diggers, already drunk since
+morning, with red, brutish faces, with rusty opera hats on their heads,
+were sitting in a disorderly heap on their uniform liveries, on the
+reticular horse-blankets, on the mourning lanterns; and with rusty,
+hoarse voices were roaring out some incoherent song. “They must be
+hurrying to a funeral procession; or, perhaps, have even finished it
+already,” reflected Lichonin; “merry fellows!” On the boulevard he came
+to a stop and sat down on a small wooden bench, painted green. Two rows
+of mighty centenarian chestnuts went away into the distance, merging
+together somewhere afar into one straight green arrow. The prickly
+large nuts were already hanging on the trees. Lichonin suddenly
+recalled that at the very beginning of the spring he had been sitting
+on this very boulevard, and at this very same spot. Then it had been a
+calm, gentle evening of smoky purple, soundlessly falling into slumber,
+just like a smiling, tired maiden. Then the stalwart chestnuts, with
+their foliage—broad at the bottom and narrow toward the top—had been
+strewn all over with clusters of blossoms, growing with bright, rosy,
+thin cones straight to the sky; just as though some one by mistake had
+taken and fastened upon all the chestnuts, as upon lustres, pink
+Christmas-tree candles. And suddenly, with extraordinary
+poignancy—every man sooner or later passes through this zone of inner
+emotion—Lichonin felt, that here are the nuts ripening already, while
+then there had been little pink blossoming candles, and that there
+would be many more springs and many blossoms, but the one which had
+passed no one and nothing had the power to bring back. Sadly gazing
+into the depths of the retreating dense alley, he suddenly noticed that
+sentimental tears were making his eyes smart.
+
+He got up and went on farther, looking closely at everything that he
+met with an incessant, sharpened, and at the same time calm attention,
+just as though he were looking at the God-created world for the first
+time. A gang of stone masons went past him on the pavement, and all of
+them were reflected in his inner vision with an exaggerated vividness
+and brilliance of colour, just as though on the frosted glass of a
+camera obscura. The foreman, with a red beard, matted to one side, and
+with blue austere eyes; and a tremendous young fellow, whose left eye
+was swollen, and who had a spot of a dark-blue colour spreading from
+the forehead to the cheekbone and from the nose to the temple; and a
+young boy with a naive, country face, with a gaping mouth like a
+fledgling’s, weak, moist; and an old man who, having come late, was
+running after the gang at a funny, goat-like trot; and their clothes,
+soiled with lime, their aprons and their chisels—all this flickered
+before him in an inanimate file—a colourful, motley, but dead
+cinematographic film.
+
+He had to cut across the New Kishenevsky Market. Suddenly the savoury,
+greasy odour of something roasted compelled him to distend his
+nostrils. Lichonin recalled that he had not eaten anything since noon
+yesterday, and at once felt hunger. He turned to the right, into the
+centre of the market.
+
+In the days of his starvings—and he had had to experience them more
+than once—he would come here to the market, and for the pitiful
+coppers, gotten with difficulty, would buy himself bread and fried
+sausage. This was in winter, oftenest of all. The huckstress, wrapped
+up in a multiplicity of clothes, usually sat upon a pot of coals for
+warmth; while before her, on the iron dripping-pan, hissed and crackled
+the thick, home-made sausage, cut into pieces a quarter of a yard in
+length, plentifully seasoned with garlic. A piece of sausage usually
+cost ten kopecks, the bread two kopecks.
+
+There were very many folk at market to-day. Even at a distance, edging
+his way to the familiar, loved stall, Lichonin heard the sounds of
+music. Having made his way through the crowd, which in a solid ring
+surrounded one of the stalls, he saw a naive and endearing sight, which
+may be seen only in the blessed south of Russia. Ten or fifteen
+huckstresses, during ordinary times gossips of evil tongue and addicted
+to unrestrainable swearing, inexhaustible in its verbal diversity, but
+now, evidently, flattering and tender cronies, had started celebrating
+even since last evening; had caroused the whole night through and now
+had carried their noisy merrymaking out to the market. The hired
+musicians—two fiddles, a first and a second, and a tambourine—were
+strumming a monotonous but a lively, bold, daring and cunning tune.
+Some of the wives were clinking glasses and kissing each other, pouring
+vodka over one another; others poured it out into glasses and over the
+tables; others still, clapping their palms in time with the music,
+oh’d, squealed, and danced, squatting in one place. And in the middle
+of the ring, upon the cobbles of the pavement, a stout woman of about
+forty-five, but still handsome, with red, fleshy lips, with humid,
+intoxicated, seemingly unctuous eyes, merrily sparkling from under the
+high bows of black, regular, Little Russian eyebrows, was whirling
+around and stamping out a tattoo on one spot. All the beauty and all
+the art of her dance consisted in that she would now bow her little
+head and look out provokingly from under her eyebrows, then suddenly
+toss it back and let her eyelashes down and spread her hands out at her
+sides; and also in that in measure with the dance her enormous breasts
+swayed and quivered under her red calico waist. During the dance she
+was singing, now shuffling her heels, now the toes, of her goat-skin
+shoes:
+
+“The fiddle’s playing on the street,
+You can hear its bass so sweet;
+My mother has me locked up neat,
+My waitin’ dearie I can’t meet.”
+
+
+That was the very country-wife whom Lichonin knew; the self-same who
+not only had had him for a client during hard times, but had even
+extended him credit. She suddenly recognized Lichonin, darted to him,
+embraced him, squeezed him to her bosom and kissed him straight on his
+lips with her moist, warm, thick lips. Then she spread her arms out
+wide, smote one palm against the other, intertwined her fingers, and
+sweetly, as only Podolian wives can do it, began to coo:
+
+“My little master, my little silver gold trove, my lovie! You forgive a
+drunken wife like me, now. Well, what of it? I’ve gone op a spree!” She
+then darted at him in an attempt to kiss his hand. “But then, I know
+you ain’t proud, like other gentry. Well, give me your hand,
+dearie-dear; why, I want to kiss your little hand! No, no, no! I athk,
+I athk you! ...” “Well, now, that’s nonsense, Aunt Glycera!” Linchonin
+interrupted her, unexpectedly becoming animated. “Let’s best kiss just
+so, now. Your lips are just too sweet!”
+
+“Ah, my little sweetheart! My little bright sun, my little apple of
+paradise, you,” Glycera waxed tender, “give me your lips, then! Give me
+your little lips to buss, then! ...”
+
+She pressed him warmly to her gigantean bosom and again slavered over
+him with her moist, warm, Hottentot lips. After that, she seized him by
+his sleeve, brought him out into the middle of the ring, and began to
+walk around him with a stately, mincing step, having bent her waist
+coquettishly and vociferating:
+
+“Oh, each to his taste, I want Paraska more,
+For I’ve a divel in my pants
+Her skirt holds somethin’ for!”
+
+
+And then suddenly she passed on, sustained by the musicians, to a most
+rollicking, Little Russian, thumping GOPAK dance:
+
+“Oh, Chook, that is too much,
+You have soiled your apron too much.
+Well, Prisko, don’t you fret,
+Wipe it off, then, if you’re wet!
+TRALALA, TRALALA ...
+
+
+Sleeps, Khima, and won’t stir
+That a Kossack sleeps with her,
+You feel all, Khima—why deceive?
+Just to yourself you make believe.
+TAI, TAI, TRALALAI...”
+
+
+Lichonin, completely grown merry, suddenly began jumping like a goat
+about her, just like a satellite around a whirling planet—long-legged,
+long-armed, stooping and altogether incongruous. His entrance was
+greeted by a general but pretty friendly neighing. He was made to sit
+down at the table, was helped to vodka and sausage. He, for his part,
+sent a tramp he knew after beer, and, glass in hand, delivered three
+absurd speeches: one about the self-determination of Ukraine; another
+about the goodness of Little Russian sausage, in connection with the
+beauty and domesticity of the women of Little Russia; and the third,
+for some reason, about trade and industry in the south of Russia.
+Sitting alongside of Lukeriya, he was all the time trying to embrace
+her around the waist, and she did not oppose this. But even his long
+arms could not encompass her amazing waist. However, she clasped his
+hand powerfully under the table, until it hurt, with her enormous, soft
+hand, as hot as fire.
+
+At this moment among the huckstresses, who up to now had been tenderly
+kissing, certain old, unsettled quarrels and grievances flickered up.
+Two of the wives, bending toward each other just like roosters ready to
+enter battle, their arms akimbo, were pouring upon each other the most
+choice, out-of-the-way oaths:
+
+“Fool, stiff, daughter of a dog!” one was yelling. “Youse ain’t fit to
+kiss me right here.” And, turning her back around to her foe, she
+loudly slapped herself below the spine. “Right here! Here!”
+
+While the other, infuriated, squealed in answer:
+
+“You lie, you slut, for I am fit, I am fit!”
+
+Lichonin utilized the minute. As though he had just recalled something,
+he hurriedly jumped up from the bench and called out:
+
+“Wait for me, Aunty Luckeriya, I’ll come in three minutes!” and dived
+through the living ring of spectators.
+
+“Master! Master!” his neighbour cried after him: “Come back the
+quickest you can, now! I’ve one little word to say to you.”
+
+Having turned the corner, he for some time racked his head trying to
+recall what it was that he absolutely had to do, now, this very minute.
+And again, in the very depths of his soul, he knew just what he had to
+do, but he procrastinated confessing this to his own self. It was
+already a clear, bright day, about nine or ten o’clock. Janitors were
+watering the streets with rubber hose. Flower girls were sitting on the
+squares and near the gates of the boulevards, with roses,
+stock-gillyflowers and narcissi. The radiant, gay, rich southern town
+was beginning to get animated. Over the pavement jolted an iron cage
+filled with dogs of every possible colour, breed, and age. On the coach
+box were sitting two dog-catchers, or, as they deferentially style
+themselves, “the king’s dog-catchers”—i. e., hunters of stray
+dogs—returning home with this morning’s catch.
+
+“She must be awake by now,” Lichonin’s secret thought finally took
+form; “but if she isn’t yet awake, then I’ll quietly lie down on the
+divan and sleep a little.”
+
+In the corridor the dying kerosene lamp emitted a dim light and smoked
+as before, and the watery, murky half-light penetrated into the narrow,
+long box. The door of the room had remained unlocked, after all.
+Lichonin opened it without a sound and entered.
+
+The faint, blue half-light poured in through the interstices between
+the blinds and the windows. Lichonin stopped in the middle of the room
+and with an intensified avidity heard the quiet, sleeping breathing of
+Liubka. His lips became so hot and dry that he had to lick them
+incessantly. His knees began to tremble.
+
+“Ask if she needs anything,” suddenly darted through his head.
+
+Like a drunkard, breathing hard, with mouth open, staggering on his
+shaking legs, he walked up to the bed.
+
+Liubka was sleeping on her back, with one bare arm stretched out along
+the body, and the other on her breast. Lichonin bent nearer, to her
+very face. She was breathing evenly and deeply. This breathing of her
+young, healthy body was, despite sleep, pure and almost aromatic. He
+cautiously ran his fingers over her bare arm and stroked her breast a
+little below the clavicle. “What am I doing?” his reason suddenly cried
+out within him in terror; but some one else answered for Lichonin: “But
+I’m not doing anything. I only want to ask if she’s sleeping
+comfortably, and whether she doesn’t want some tea.”
+
+But Liubka suddenly awoke, opened her eyes, blinked them for a moment
+and opened them again. She gave a long, long stretch, and with a
+kindly, not yet fully reasoning smile, encircled Lichonin’s neck with
+her warm, strong arm.
+
+“Sweetie! Darling!” caressingly uttered the woman in a crooning voice,
+somewhat hoarse from sleep. “Why, I was waiting for you and waiting,
+and even became angry. And after that I fell asleep and all night long
+saw you in my sleep. Come to me, my baby, my lil’ precious!” She drew
+him to her, breast against breast.
+
+Lichonin almost did not resist; he was all atremble, as from a chill,
+and meaninglessly repeating in a galloping whisper with chattering
+teeth:
+
+“No, now, Liuba, don’t ... Really, don’t do that, Liuba ... Ah, let’s
+drop this, Liuba ... Don’t torture me. I won’t vouch for myself ... Let
+me alone, now, Liuba, for God’s sake! ...”
+
+“My-y little silly!” she exclaimed in a laughing, joyous voice. “Come
+to me, my joy!”—and, overcoming the last, altogether insignificant
+opposition, she pressed his mouth to hers and kissed him hard and
+warmly—kissed him sincerely, perhaps for the first and last time in her
+life.
+
+“Oh, you scoundrel! What am I doing?” declaimed some honest, prudent,
+and false body in Lichonin.
+
+“Well, now? Are you eased up a bit?” asked Liubka kindly, kissing
+Lichonin’s lips for the last time. “Oh, you, my little student! ...”
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+
+With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and Liubka,
+and, it would seem, toward all the world, Lichonin without undressing
+flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even gnashed
+his teeth from the smarting shame. Sleep would not come to him, while
+his thoughts revolved around this fool action—as he himself called the
+carrying off of Liubka,—in which an atrocious vaudeville had been so
+disgustingly intertwined with a deep drama. “It’s all one,” he
+stubbornly repeated to himself. “Once I have given my promise, I’ll see
+the business through to the end. And, of course, that which has
+occurred just now will never, never be repeated! My God, who hasn’t
+fallen, giving in to a momentary laxity of the nerves? Some philosopher
+or other has expressed a deep, remarkable truth, when he affirmed that
+the value of the human soul may be known by the depth of its fall and
+the height of its flight. But still, the devil take the whole of this
+idiotical day and that equivocal reasoner—the reporter Platonov, and
+his own—Lichonin’s—absurd outburst of chivalry! Just as though, in
+reality, this had not taken place in real life, but in Chernishevski’s
+novel, What’s to be done? And how, devil take it, with what eyes will I
+look upon her tomorrow?”
+
+His head was on fire; his eyelids were smarting, his lips dry. He was
+nervously smoking a cigarette and frequently got up from the divan to
+take the decanter of water off the table, and avidly, straight from its
+mouth, drink several big draughts. Then, by some accidental effort of
+the will, he succeeded in tearing his thoughts away from the past
+night, and at once a heavy sleep, without any visions and images,
+enveloped him as though in black cotton.
+
+He awoke long past noon, at two or three o’clock; at first could not
+come to himself for a long while; smacked his lips and looked around
+the room with glazed, heavy eyes. All that had happened during the
+night seemed to have flown out of his memory. But when he saw Liubka,
+who was quietly and motionlessly sitting on the bed, with head lowered
+and hands crossed on her knees, he began to groan and grunt from
+vexation and confusion. Now he recalled everything. And at that minute
+he experienced in his own person how heavy it is to see in the morning,
+with one’s own eyes, the results of folly committed the night before.
+
+“Are you awake, sweetie?” asked Liubka kindly.
+
+She got up from the bed, walked up to the divan, sat down at Lichonin’s
+feet, and cautiously patted his blanket-covered leg.
+
+“Why, I woke up long ago and was sitting all the while; I was afraid to
+wake you up. You were sleeping so very soundly!”
+
+She stretched toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Lichonin made a
+wry face and gently pushed her away from him.
+
+“Wait, Liubochka! Wait; that’s not necessary. Do you
+understand—absolutely, never necessary. That which took place
+yesterday—well, that’s an accident. My weakness, let’s say. Even more,
+a momentary baseness, perhaps. But, by God, believe me, I didn’t at all
+want to make a mistress out of you. I want to see you my friend, my
+sister, my comrade ... Well, that’s nothing, then; everything will
+adjust itself, grow customary. Only one mustn’t fall in spirit. And in
+the meanwhile, my dear, go to the window and look out of it a bit; I
+just want to put myself in order.”
+
+Liubka slightly pouted her lips and walked off to the window, turning
+her back on Lichonin. All these words about friendship, brotherhood and
+comradeship she could not understand with her brain of a hen and her
+simple peasant soul. That a student—after all, not just anybody, but an
+educated man, who could learn to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a
+judge—had taken her for maintenance flattered her imagination far more
+... And here, now, it turned out that he had just fulfilled his
+caprice, had gotten what he wanted, and was now trying to back out.
+They are all like that, the men!
+
+Lichonin hastily got up, splashed a few handfuls of water in his face,
+and dried himself with an old napkin. Then he raised the blinds and
+threw open both window shutters. The golden sunlight, the azure sky,
+the rumble of the city, the foliage of the thick linden trees and the
+chestnuts, the bells of the horse trams, the dry smell of the hot,
+dusty street—all this at once burst into the tiny garret room. Lichonin
+walked up to Liubka and amicably patted her on the shoulder.
+
+“Never mind, my joy ... What’s done can’t be undone, but it’s a lesson
+for the future. You haven’t yet asked tea for yourself, Liubochka?”
+
+“No, I was waiting for you all the while. Besides, I didn’t know who to
+ask. And you’re all right, too. Why, I heard you, after you went off
+with your friend, come back and stand a while near the door. But you
+never even said good-bye to me. Is that right?”
+
+“The first family quarrel,” thought Lichonin, but thought it without
+malice, in jest.
+
+The wash-up, the beauty of the gold and blue southern sky, and the
+naive, partly submissive, partly displeased face of Liubka, as well as
+the consciousness that after all he was a man, and that he and not she
+had to answer for the porridge he had cooked—all this together braced
+up his nerves and compelled him to take himself in hand. He opened the
+door and roared into the darkness of the stinking corridor:
+
+“Al-lexa-andra! A samova-ar! Two lo-oaves, bu-utter, and sausage! And a
+small bottle of vo-odka!”
+
+The patter of slippers was heard in the corridor, and an aged voice,
+even from afar, began to speak thickly:
+
+“What are you bawling for? What are you bawling for, eh? Ho, ho, ho!
+Like a stallion in a stall. You ain’t little, to look at you; you’re
+grown up already, yet you carry on like a street boy! Well, what do you
+want?”
+
+Into the room walked a little old woman, with red-lidded eyes, like
+little narrow cracks, and with a face amazingly like parchment, upon
+which a long, sharp nose stuck downward, morosely and ominously. This
+was Alexandra, the servant of old of the student bird-houses; the
+friend and creditor of all the students; a woman of sixty-five,
+argumentative, and a grumbler.
+
+Lichonin repeated his order to her and gave her a rouble note. But the
+old woman would not go away; shuffled in one place, snorted, chewed
+with her lips and looked inimically at the girl sitting—with her back
+to the light.
+
+“What’s the matter with you now, Alexandra, that you seem ossified?”
+asked Lichonin, laughing. “Or are you lost in admiration? Well, then,
+know: this is my cousin, my first cousin, that is—Liubov...”[18] he was
+confused for only a second, but immediately fired away: “Liubov
+Vasilievna, but for me—simply Liubochka. I’ve known her when she was
+only that high,” he showed a quarter of a yard off the table. “And I
+pulled her ears and slapped her for her caprices over the place where
+the legs grow from. And then ... I caught all sorts of bugs for her ...
+But, however ... However, you go on, go on, you Egyptian mummy, you
+fragment of former ages! Let one leg be here and the other there!”
+
+[18] Love.—Trans.
+
+
+But the old woman lingered. Stamping all around herself, she barely,
+barely turned to the door and kept a keen, spiteful, sidelong glance on
+Liubka. And at the same time she muttered with her sunken mouth:
+
+“First cousin! We know these first cousins! There’s lots of them
+walking around Kashtanovaya Street. There, these he-dogs can never get
+enough!”
+
+“Well, you old barque! Lively and don’t growl!” Lichonin shouted after
+her. “Or else, like your friend, the student Triassov, I’ll take and
+lock you up in the dressing room for twenty-four hours!”
+
+Alexandra went away, and for a long time her aged, flapping steps and
+indistinct muttering could be heard in the corridor. She was inclined,
+in her austere, grumbling kindliness, to forgive a great deal to the
+studying youths, whom she had served for nigh unto forty years. She
+forgave drunkenness, card playing, scandals, loud singing, debts; but,
+alas! she was a virgin, and there was only one thing her continent soul
+could not abide—libertinage.
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+
+“And that’s splendid ... And fine and charming,” Lichonin was saying,
+bustling about the lame table and without need shifting the tea things
+from one place to another. “For a long time, like an old crocodile, I
+haven’t drunk tea as it should be drunk, in a Christian manner, in a
+domestic setting. Sit down, Liuba, sit down, my dear, right here on the
+divan, and keep house. Vodka, in all probability, you don’t drink of a
+morning, but I, with your permission, will drink some ... This braces
+up the nerves right off. Make mine a little stronger, please, with a
+piece of lemon. Ah, what can taste better than a glass of hot tea,
+poured out by charming feminine hands?”
+
+Liubka listened to his chatter, a trifle too noisy to seem fully
+natural; and her smile, in the beginning mistrusting, wary, was
+softening and brightening. But she did not get on with the tea
+especially well. At home, in the backwoods village, where this beverage
+was still held a rarity, the dainty luxury of well-to-do families, to
+be brewed only for honored guests and on great holidays—there over the
+pouring of the tea officiated the eldest man of the family. Later, when
+Liubka served with “all found” in the little provincial capital city,
+in the beginning at a priest’s, and later with an insurance agent (who
+had been the first to put her on the road of prostitution)—she was
+usually left some strained, tepid tea, which had already been drunk
+off, with a bit of gnawn sugar, by the mistress herself—the thin,
+jaundiced, malicious wife of the priest; or the wife of the agent, a
+fat, old, wrinkled, malignant, greasy, jealous and stingy common woman.
+Therefore, the simple business of preparing the tea was now as
+difficult for her as it is difficult for all of us in childhood to
+distinguish the left hand from the right, or to tie a rope in a small
+noose. The bustling Lichonin only hindered her and threw her into
+confusion.
+
+“My dear, the art of brewing tea is a great art. It ought to be studied
+at Moscow. At first a dry teapot is slightly warmed up. Then the tea is
+put into it and is quickly scalded with boiling water. The first liquid
+must at once be poured off into the slop-bowl—the tea thus becomes
+purer and more aromatic; and by the way, it’s also known that Chinamen
+are pagans and prepare their herb very filthily. After that the tea-pot
+must be filled anew, up to a quarter of its volume; left on the tray,
+covered over with a towel and kept so for three and a half minutes.
+Afterwards pour in more boiling water almost up to the top, cover it
+again, let it stay just a bit, and you have ready, my dear, a divine
+beverage; fragrant, refreshing, and strengthening.”
+
+The homely, but pleasant-looking face of Liubka, all spotted from
+freckles, like a cuckoo’s egg, lengthened and paled a little.
+
+“Well, for God’s sake, don’t you be angry at me ... You’re called
+Vassil Vassilich, isn’t that so? Don’t get angry, darling Vassil
+Vassilich. Really, now, I’ll learn fast, I’m quick. And why do you say
+you and you[19] to me all the time? It seems that we aren’t strangers
+now?”
+
+[19] In contradistinction to “thou,” as used to familiars and inferiors
+in Russia.—Trans.
+
+
+She looked at him kindly. And truly, she had this morning, for the
+first time in all her brief but distorted life, given her body to a
+man—even though without enjoyment but more out of gratitude and pity,
+yet voluntarily—not for money, not under compulsion, not under threat
+of dismissal and scandal. And her feminine heart, always unwithering,
+always drawn to love, like a sunflower to the sun, was at this moment
+pure and inclined to tenderness.
+
+But Lichonin suddenly felt a prickling, shameful awkwardness and
+something inimical toward this woman, yesterday unknown to him, now—his
+chance mistress. “The charms of the family hearth have begun,” he
+thought involuntarily; still, he got up from his chair, walked up to
+Liubka, and having taken her by the hand, drew her to him and patted
+her on the head.
+
+“My dear, my darling sister,” he said touchingly and falsely; “that
+which has happened to-day must never more be repeated. In everything
+only I alone am guilty, and, if you desire, I am ready to beg
+forgiveness of you on my knees. Understand—oh, understand, that all
+this came about against my will, somehow elementally, suddenly,
+unexpectedly. And I myself didn’t think that it would be like that! You
+understand, for a very long time ... I have not known woman intimately
+... A repulsive, unbridled beast awoke within me ... and ... But, Lord,
+is my fault so great, then? Holy people, anchorites, recluses,
+ascetics, stylites, hermits in deserts, are no match for me in
+fortitude of spirit—yet even they fell in the struggle with the
+temptation of the diabolical flesh. But then, I swear by whatever you
+wish, that this won’t be repeated any more ... Isn’t that so?”
+
+Liubka was stubbornly trying to pull his hand away from hers. Her lips
+had become a little stuck out and the lowered lids began to wink
+frequently.
+
+“Ye-es,” she drawled, like a child that stubbornly refuses to “make
+up.” “Well, I can see that I don’t please you. Well, then, you’d best
+tell me so straight and give me a little for a cab, and some more, now;
+as much as you want ... The money for the night is paid anyway, and I
+only have to ride up to ... there.”
+
+Lichonin seized his hair, flung himself about the room and began to
+declaim:
+
+“Ah, not that, not that, not that! Just understand me, Liuba! To go on
+with that which happened in the morning—that’s ... that’s swinishness,
+bestiality, and unworthy of a man who respects himself. Love! Love—this
+is a full blending of minds, thoughts, souls, interests, and not of the
+bodies alone. Love is a tremendous, great emotion, mighty as the
+universe, and not the sprawling in bed. There’s no such love between
+us, Liubochka. If it’ll come, it will be wonderful happiness both for
+you and for me. But in the meantime—I’m your friend, your faithful
+comrade, on the path of life. And that’s enough, and that will do ...
+And though I’m no stranger to human frailties, still, I count myself an
+honest man.”
+
+Liubka seemed to wilt. “He thinks I want him to marry me. And I
+absolutely don’t need that,” she thought sadly. “It’s possible to live
+just so. There are others, now, living on maintenance. And, they say,
+far better than if they had twirled around an altar. What’s so bad
+about that? Peaceful, quiet, genteel ... I’d darn socks for him, wash
+floors, cook ... the plainer dishes. Of course, he’ll be in line to get
+married to a rich girl some time. Well, now, to be sure, he wouldn’t
+throw me out in the street just so, mother-naked. Although he’s a
+little simpleton, and chatters a lot, still it’s easy to tell he’s a
+decent man. He’ll provide for me with something, somehow. And, perhaps,
+he’ll get to like me, will get used to me? I’m a simple girl, modest,
+and would never consent to be false to him. For, they say, things do
+fall out that way ... Only I mustn’t let him see anything. But that
+he’ll come again into my bed, and will come this very night—that’s as
+sure as God is holy.”
+
+And Lichonin also fell into thought, grew quiet and sad; he was already
+feeling the weight of a great deed which he had undertaken beyond his
+powers. That was why he was even glad when some one knocked on the
+door, and to his answer, “Come in!”, two students entered: Soloviev,
+and Nijeradze, who had slept that night at his place.
+
+Soloviev, well-grown and already obese, with a broad, ruddy Volga face
+and a light, scandent little beard, belonged to those kindly, merry and
+simple fellows, of which there are sufficiently many in any university.
+He divided his leisure—and of leisure he had twenty-four hours in the
+day—between the beer-shop and rambling over the boulevards; among
+billiards, whist, the theatre, reading of newspapers and novels, and
+the spectacles of circus wrestling; while the short intervals in
+between he used for eating, sleeping, the home repair of his wardrobe,
+with the aid of thread, cardboard, pins and ink; and for succinct, most
+realistic love with the chance woman from the kitchen, the anteroom or
+the street. Like all the youths of his circle, he deemed himself a
+revolutionary, although he was oppressed by political disputes,
+dissensions, and mutual reproaches; and not being able to stand the
+reading of revolutionary brochures and journals, was almost a complete
+ignoramus in the work For that reason he had not attained even the very
+least party initiation; although at times there were given him
+instructions of a sort, not at all of a safe nature, the meaning of
+which was not made clear to him. And not in vain was his steadfast
+faithfulness relied upon; he carried out everything rapidly,
+exactly,—with a courageous faith in the universal importance of the
+work; with a care-free smile and with a broad contempt of possible
+destruction. He concealed outlawed comrades, guarded forbidden
+literature and printing types, transmitted passports and money. He had
+a great deal of physical strength, black-loam amiability and elemental
+simple-heartedness. Not infrequently he would receive from home,
+somewheres in the depth of the Simbirskaya or Ufimskaya province, sums
+of money sufficiently large for a student; but in two days he scattered
+and dispersed it everywhere, with the carelessness of a French grandee
+of the seventeenth century, while he himself remained during winter in
+only his everyday coat, with boots restored by his own devices.
+
+Beside all these naive, touching, laughable, lofty and shiftless
+qualities of the old Russian student, passing—and God knows if for the
+better?—into the realm of historical memories, he possessed still
+another amazing ability—to invent money and arrange for credit in
+little restaurants and cook-shops. All the employees of pawnshops and
+loan offices, secret and manifest usurers, and old-clo’-men were on
+terms of the closest friendship with him.
+
+But if for certain reasons he could not resort to them, then even here
+Soloviev remained at the height of his resourcefulness. At the head of
+a knot of impoverished friends, and weighed down with his usual
+business responsibility, he would at times be illumined by an inner
+inspiration; make at a distance, across the street, a mysterious sign
+to a Tartar passing with his bundle behind his shoulders, and for a few
+seconds would disappear with him into the nearest gates. He would
+quickly return without his everyday coat, only in his blouse with the
+skirts outside, belted with a thin cord; or, in winter, without his
+overcoat, in the thinnest of small suits; or instead of the new, just
+purchased uniform cap—in a tiny jockey cap, holding by a miracle on the
+crown of his head.
+
+Everybody loved him: comrades, servants, women, children. And all were
+familiar with him. He enjoyed especial good-will from his bosom
+cronies, the Tartars, who, apparently, deemed him a little innocent.
+They would sometimes, in the summer, bring as a present the strong,
+intoxicating KOUMYSS in big quartern bottles, while at Bairam they
+would invite him to eat a suckling colt with them. No matter how
+improbable it may seem, still, Soloviev at critical moments gave away
+for safe-keeping certain books and brochures to the Tartars. He would
+say at this with the most simple and significant air: “That which I am
+giving you is a Great Book. It telleth, that Allah Akbar, and that
+Mahomet is his prophet, that there is much evil and poverty on earth,
+and that men must be merciful and just to each other.”
+
+He also had two other abilities: he read aloud very well; and played at
+chess amazingly, like a master, like a downright genius, defeating
+first-class players in jest. His attack was always impetuous and
+rigorous; his defense wise and cautious, preferably in an oblique
+direction; his concessions to his opponent full of refined, far-sighted
+calculation and murderous craftiness. With this, he made moves as
+though under the influence of some inner instinct, or inspiration; not
+pondering for more than four or five seconds and resolutely despising
+the respected traditions.
+
+He was not willingly played with; his manner of play was held
+barbarous, but still they played, sometimes for large sums of money;
+which, invariably winning, Soloviev readily laid down upon the altar of
+his comrades’ needs. But he steadfastly declined from participation in
+competitions, which could have created for him the position of a star
+in the world of chess: “There is in my nature neither love for this
+nonsense, nor respect,” he would say. “I simply possess some sort of a
+mechanical ability of the mind, some sort of a psychic deformity. Well,
+now, just as there are lefties. And for that reason I’ve no
+professional self-respect, nor pride at victory, nor spleen at losing.”
+
+Such was the generously built student Soloviev. And Nijeradze filled
+the post of his closest comrade; which did not hinder them both,
+however, from jeering at each other, disputing, and swearing, from
+morning till night. God knows, wherewithal and how the Georgian prince
+existed. He said of himself, that he possessed the ability of a camel,
+of nourishing himself for the future, for several weeks ahead; and then
+eating nothing for a month. From home, from his blessed Georgia, he
+received very little; and then, for the most part, in victuals. At
+Christmas, at Easter, or on his birthday (in August) he was sent—and
+inevitably through arriving fellow-countrymen—whole cargoes of hampers
+with mutton, grapes, goat-flesh, sausages, dried hawthorn berries,
+RAKHAT LOUKOUM, egg-plants, and very tasty cookies; as well as leathern
+bottles of excellent home-made wine, strong and aromatic, but giving
+off just the least bit of sheep-skin. Then the prince would summon
+together to one of his comrades (he never had quarters of his own) all
+his near friends and fellow-countrymen; and arranged such a magnificent
+festival—TOI in Caucasian—that at it were extirpated to the last shreds
+the gifts of fertile Georgia. Georgian songs were sung, the first
+place, of course, being given to MRAVOL-DJAMIEM and EVERY GUEST IS SENT
+DOWN TO US FROM HEAVEN BY GOD, NO MATTER OF WHAT COUNTRY HE BE; the
+LEZGINKA was danced without tiring, with table knives brandished wildly
+in the air; and the TULUMBASH (or, perhaps, he is called TOMADA?) spoke
+his improvisations; for the greater part Nijeradze himself spoke.
+
+He was a great hand at talking and could, when he warmed up, pronounce
+about three hundred words a minute. His style was distinguished for
+mettle, pomp, and imagery; and his Caucasian accent with characteristic
+lisping and throaty sounds, resembling now the hawking of a woodcock,
+now the clucking of an eagle, not only did not hinder his discourse,
+but somehow even strangely adorned it. And no matter of what he spoke,
+he always led up the monologue to the most beautiful, most fertile, the
+very foremost, most chivalrous, and at the same time the most injured
+country—Georgia. And invariably he cited lines from THE PANTHER’S SKIN
+of the Georgian poet Rustavelli; with assurances, that this poem was a
+thousand times above all of Shakespeare, multiplied by Homer.
+
+Even though he was hot-headed, he was not spiteful; and in his
+demeanour femininely soft, gentle, engaging, without losing his native
+pride ... One thing only did his comrades dislike in him—some
+exaggerated, exotic love of women. He was unshakably, unto sacredness
+or folly, convinced that he was irresistibly splendid of person; that
+all men envied him, all women were in love with him, while husbands
+were jealous ... This self-conceited, obtrusive dangling after women
+did not forsake him for a minute, probably not even in his sleep.
+Walking along the street he would every minute nudge Lichonin, Soloviev
+or some other companion with his elbow, and would say, smacking his
+lips and jerking his head backward at a woman who had passed by: “TSE,
+TSE, TSE... VAI-VAI! A ree-markable wooman! What a look she gave me. If
+I wish it, she’ll be mine! ...”
+
+This funny shortcoming about him was known; this trait of his was
+ridiculed good-naturedly and unceremoniously, but willingly forgiven
+for the sake of that independent comradely obligingness and
+faithfulness to his word, given to a man (oaths to women did not
+count), of which he was so naturally possessed. However, it must be
+said that he did in reality enjoy great success with women.
+Sempstresses, modistes, chorus girls, girls in candy stores, and
+telephone girls melted from the intense gaze of his heavy, soft, and
+languishing dark-blue eyes.
+
+“Un-to this house and all those righteously, peacefully and without sin
+inhabiting it ...” Soloviev started in to vociferate like an
+arch-deacon and suddenly missed fire. “Father-prelates,” he began to
+murmur in astonishment, trying to continue the unsuccessful jest. “Why,
+but this is ... This is ... ah, the devil ... this is Sonya, no, my
+mistake, Nadya ... Well, yes! Liubka from Anna Markovna’s ...”
+
+Liubka blushed hotly, to the verge of tears, and covered her face with
+her palms. Lichonin noticed this, understood, sensed the thoroughly
+agitated soul of the girl, and came to her aid. He sternly, almost
+rudely, stopped Soloviev.
+
+“Perfectly correct, Soloviev. As in a directory. Liubka from the
+Yamkas. Formerly a prostitute. Even more, still yesterday a prostitute.
+But from to-day—my friend, my sister. And so let everyone, who respects
+me to any extent, regard her. Otherwise...”
+
+The ponderous Soloviev hurriedly, sincerely, and powerfully embraced
+and rumpled Lichonin.
+
+“Well, dear fellow, well, that’s enough ... I committed a stupidity in
+the flurry. It won’t be repeated any more. Hail, my pale-faced sister.”
+He extended his hand with a broad sweep across the table to Liubka, and
+squeezed her listless, small and short fingers with gnawed, tiny nails.
+“It’s fine—your coming into our modest wigwam. This will refresh us and
+implant in our midst quiet and decent customs. Alexandra! Be-er!” he
+began to call loudly. “We’ve grown wild, coarse; have become mired in
+foul speech, drunkenness, laziness and other vices. And all because we
+were deprived of the salutary, pacifying influence of feminine society.
+Once again I press your hand. Your charming, little hand. Beer!”
+
+“Coming,” the displeased voice of Alexandra could be heard on the other
+side of the door. “I’m coming. What you yelling for? How much do you
+want?”
+
+Soloviev went out into the corridor to explain. Lichonin smiled after
+him gratefully; while the Georgian on his way slapped him benignly on
+the back, between his shoulder blades. Both understood and appreciated
+the belated, somewhat coarse delicacy of Soloviev.
+
+“Now,” said Soloviev, coming back into the room and sitting down
+cautiously upon an ancient chair, “now let’s come to the order of the
+day. Can I be of service to you in any way? If you’ll give me half an
+hour’s time, I’ll run down to the coffee house for a minute and lick
+the guts out of the very best chess player there. In a word—I’m at your
+disposal!”
+
+“What a funny fellow you are!” said Liubka, ill at ease and laughing.
+She did not understand the jocose and unusual style of speech of the
+student, but something drew her simple heart to him.
+
+“Well, that’s not at all necessary,” Lichonin put in. “I am as yet
+beastly rich. I think we’ll all go together to some little tavern
+somewhere. I must have your advice about some things. After all, you’re
+the people closest to me; and of course not as stupid and inexperienced
+as you seem at first glance. After that, I’ll go and try to arrange
+about her ... about Liuba’s passport. You wait for me. That won’t take
+long ... In a word, you understand what this whole business consists
+of, and won’t be lavish of any superfluous jokes. I,”—his voice
+quivered sentimentally and falsely—“I desire that you take upon
+yourselves a part of my care. Is that a go?”
+
+“VA! It’s a go!” exclaimed the prince (it sounded like “idiot,” when he
+said it[20]), and for some reason looked significantly at Liubka and
+twirled his moustache. Lichonin gave him a sidelong look. As for
+Soloviev, he said simple-heartedly:
+
+[20] The Russian phrase is “Eedet!”—Trans.
+
+
+“That’s the way. You’ve begun something big and splendid, Lichonin. The
+prince told me about it during the night. Well, what of it, that’s what
+youth is for—to commit sacred follies. Give me the bottle, Alexandra,
+I’ll open it myself, or else you’ll rupture yourself and burst a vein.
+To a new life, Liubochka, pardon me ... Liubov ... Liubov ...”
+
+“Nikonovna. But call me just as it comes ... Liuba.”
+
+“Well, yes, Liuba. Prince, ALLAHVERDI!”
+
+“YAKSHI-OL,” answered Nijeradze and clinked his glass of beer with him.
+
+“And I’ll also say, that I rejoice over you, friend Lichonin,”
+continued Soloviev, setting down his glass and licking his moustache.
+“Rejoice, and bow before you. It’s precisely you, only, who are capable
+of such a genuinely Russian heroism, expressed simply, modestly,
+without superfluous words.”
+
+“Drop it ... Well, where’s the heroism?” Lichonin made a wry face.
+
+“That’s true, too,” confirmed Nijeradze. “You’re reproaching me all the
+time that I chatter a lot, but see what nonsense you’re spouting
+yourself.”
+
+“That makes no difference!” retorted Soloviev. “It may be even
+grandiloquent, but still that makes no difference! As an elder of our
+garret commune, I declare Liuba an honourable member with full rights!”
+He got up, made a sweeping gesture with his hand, and uttered with
+pathos:
+
+“And into our house, free and fearless,
+Its charming mistress walk thou in!”
+
+
+Lichonin recalled vividly, that to-day at dawn he had spoken the very
+same phrase, like an actor; and even blinked his eyes from shame.
+
+“That’s enough of tom-foolery. Let’s go, gentlemen. Dress yourself,
+Liuba.”
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+
+It was not far to The Sparrows restaurant; some two hundred steps. On
+the way Liuba, unnoticed, took Lichonin by the sleeve and pulled him
+toward her. In this wise they lagged a few steps behind Soloviev and
+Nijeradze, who were walking ahead.
+
+“Then you mean it seriously, my darling Vassil Vassilich?” she asked,
+looking up at him with her kindly, dark eyes. “You’re not playing a
+joke on me?”
+
+“What jokes can there be here, Liubochka! I’d be the lowest of men if I
+permitted myself such jokes. I repeat, that to you I am more than a
+friend, brother, comrade. And let’s not talk about it any more. And
+that which happened to-day toward morning, that, you may be sure, won’t
+be repeated. And I’ll rent a separate room for you this very day.”
+
+Liubka sighed. Not that she was offended by the chaste resolution of
+Lichonin, in which, to tell the truth, she believed but badly; but
+somehow her dark, narrow mind could not even theoretically picture any
+other attitude of a man toward a woman than the sensual. Besides that,
+she experienced the ancient discontent of a preferred or rejected
+female; a feeling strongly intrenched in the house of Anna Markovna, in
+the form of boastful rivalry, but now dulled; yet still angry and
+sincere. And for some reason she believed Lichonin but illy,
+unconsciously seizing much of the assumed, not altogether sincere, in
+his words. Soloviev, now—although he did speak incomprehensively, like
+the rest of the majority of the students known to her, when they joked
+among themselves or with the young ladies in the general room (by
+themselves, in the room, all the men without an exception—all as
+one—said and did one and the same thing)—she would rather believe
+Soloviev, far more readily and willingly. A certain simplicity shone in
+his merry, sparkling gray eyes, placed widely apart.
+
+At THE SPARROWS Lichonin was esteemed for his sedateness, kind
+disposition, and accuracy in money matters. Because of that he was at
+once assigned a little private room—an honour of which but very few
+students could boast. The gas burned all day in this room, because
+light penetrated only through the narrow bottom of a window, cut short
+by the ceiling. Only the boots, shoes, umbrellas and canes of the
+people walking by on the sidewalk could be seen through this window.
+
+They had to let still another student, Simanovsky (whom they ran
+against near the coat room), join the party. “What does he mean, by
+leading me around as though for a show?” thought Liubka: “it looks like
+he’s showing off before them.” And, snatching a free moment, she
+whispered to Lichonin, who had bent over her:
+
+“But why are there so many people, dearie? For I’m so bashful. I can’t
+hold my own in company.”
+
+“That’s nothing, that’s nothing, my dear Liubochka,” Lichonin whispered
+rapidly, tarrying at the door of the cabinet. “That’s nothing, my
+sister; these are all fine people, good comrades. They’ll help you,
+help us both. Don’t mind their having fun at times and their silly
+lying. But their hearts are of gold.”
+
+“But it’s so very awkward for me; I’m ashamed. All of them already know
+where you took me from.”
+
+“Well, that’s nothing, that’s nothing! Why, let ’em know!” warmly
+contradicted Lichonin. “Why be embarrassed with your past, why try to
+pass it by in silence? In a year you’ll look bravely and directly in
+the eyes of every man and you’ll say: ‘He who has never fallen, has
+never gotten up.’ Come on, come on, Liubochka!”
+
+While the inelaborate appetizers were being served, and each one was
+ordering the meal, everybody, save Simanovsky, felt ill at ease and
+somehow constrained. And Simanovsky himself was partly the reason for
+this; he was a clean-shaven man, with pince-nez and long hair, with
+head proudly thrown back and with a contemptuous expression on the
+tight lips, drooping at the corners. He had no intimate, hearty friends
+among his comrades; but his opinions and judgments had a considerable
+authoritativeness among them. It is doubtful whether any one of them
+could explain to himself whence this influence came; whether from his
+self-assured appearance, his ability to seize and express in general
+words the dismembered and indistinct things which are dimly sought and
+desired by the majority, or because he always saved his conclusions for
+the most appropriate moment. Among any society there are many of this
+sort of people: some of them act upon their circle through sophistries;
+others through adamant, unalterable stead-fastness of convictions; a
+third group with a loud mouth; a fourth, through a malicious sneer; a
+fifth, simply by silence, which compels the supposition of profound
+thought behind it; a sixth, through a chattering, outward erudition;
+others still through a slashing sneer at everything that is said ...
+many with the terrible Russian word YERUNDA:
+“Fiddlesticks!”—“Fiddlesticks!” they say contemptuously in reply to the
+warm, sincere, probably truthful but clumsily put word. “But why
+fiddlesticks?” “Because it’s twaddle, nonsense,” answer they, shrugging
+their shoulders; and it is as though they did for a man by hitting him
+with a stone over the head. There are many more sorts of such people,
+bearing the bell at the head of the meek, the shy, the nobly modest,
+and often even the big minds; and to their number did Simanovsky
+belong.
+
+However, toward the middle of the dinner everybody’s tongue became
+loosened—except Liubka’s, who kept silent, answered “yes” and “no”, and
+left her food practically untouched. Lichonin, Soloviev, and Nijeradze
+talked most of all. The first, in a decisive and business-like manner,
+trying to hide under the solicitous words something real, inward,
+prickling and inconvenient. Soloviev, with a puerile delight, with the
+most sweeping of gestures, hitting the table with his fist. Nijeradze,
+with a slight doubtfulness and with unfinished phrases, as though he
+knew that which must be said, but concealed it. The queer fate of the
+girl, however, had seemingly engrossed, interested them all; and each
+one, in expressing his opinion, for some reason inevitably turned to
+Simanovsky. But he kept his counsel for the most part, and looked at
+each one from under the glasses of his pince-nez, raising his head high
+to do so.
+
+“So, so, so,” he said at last, drumming with his fingers upon the
+table. “What Lichonin has done is splendid and brave. And that the
+prince and Soloviev are going to meet him half-way is also very good.
+I, for my part, am ready to co-operate with your beginnings with
+whatever lies in my power. But will it not be better, if we lead our
+friend along the path of her natural inclinations and abilities, so to
+speak? Tell me, my dear,” he turned to Liubka, “what do you know, what
+can you do? Well, now, some kind of work, or something. Sewing,
+knitting, embroidering or something.”
+
+“I don’t know anything,” said Liubka in a whisper, letting her eyes
+drop low, all red, squeezing her fingers under the table. “I don’t
+understand anything of this.”
+
+“And really, now,” interposed Lichonin; “why, we haven’t begun the
+business from the right end. By talking about her in her presence we
+merely place her in an awkward position. Just see—even her tongue
+doesn’t move from confusion. Let’s go, Liubka, I’ll escort you home for
+just a little while, and return in ten minutes. And in the meanwhile
+we’ll think over ways and means here, without you. All right?”
+
+“As for me, I don’t mind,” almost inaudibly answered Liubka. “I’ll do
+just as you like, Vassil Vassilich. Only I wouldn’t like to go home.”
+
+“Why so?”
+
+“It’s awkward for me there alone. I’d best wait for you on the
+boulevard, at the very entrance, on a bench.”
+
+“Ah, yes!” Lichonin recollected: “It’s Alexandra who has inspired her
+with such a terror. My, but I’ll make it hot for this old lizard! Well,
+let’s go, Liubochka.”
+
+She timidly, in some sidelong way, put out her hand to each one,
+folding it like a little spade; and walked out under the escort of
+Lichonin.
+
+After several minutes he returned and sat down at his place. He felt
+that something had been said about him during his absence, and he ran
+his eyes uneasily over his comrades. Then, putting his hands on the
+table, he began:
+
+“Gentlemen, I know that you’re all good, close friends,” he gave a
+quick and sidelong look at Simanovsky, “and responsive people. I
+heartily beg of you to come to my aid. The deed was done by me in a
+hurry—this I must confess—but done through a sincere, pure inclination
+of the heart.”
+
+“And that’s the main thing,” put in Soloviev.
+
+“It’s absolutely all one to me what acquaintances and strangers will
+begin saying about me; but from my intention to save—pardon the fool
+word, which slipped out—to encourage, to sustain this girl, I will not
+decline. Of course, I’m able to rent an inexpensive, small room for
+her; to give her something for board at first; but what’s to be done
+further—that’s what presents difficulties to me. The matter, of course,
+isn’t one of money, which I’d always find for her; but, then, to compel
+her to eat, drink, and with all that to do nothing—that would mean to
+condemn her to idleness, indifference, apathy; and you know what the
+end will be then. Therefore, we must think of some occupation for her.
+And that’s the very matter which we must exert our brains about. Make
+an effort, gentlemen; advise something.”
+
+“We must know what she’s fitted for,” said Simanovsky. “For she must
+have been doing something before getting into the house.”
+
+Lichonin, with an air of hopelessness, spread out his hands.
+
+“Almost nothing. She can sew just the least bit, just like any country
+lass. Why, she wasn’t fifteen when some government clerk led her
+astray. She can sweep up a room, wash a little, and, if you will, cook
+cabbage soup and porridge. Nothing more, it seems.”
+
+“Rather little,” said Simanovsky, and clacked his tongue.
+
+“And in addition to that, she’s illiterate as well.”
+
+“But that’s not at all important!” warmly defended Soloviev. “If we had
+to do with a well-educated girl, or, worse still, with a half-educated
+one, then only nonsense would result out of all that we’re preparing to
+do, a mere soap-bubble; while here before us is maiden ground,
+untouched virgin soil.”
+
+“He-ee!” Nijeradze started neighing equivocally.
+
+Soloviev, now no longer joking, but with real wrath, pounced upon him:
+
+“Listen, prince! Every holy thought, every good deed, can be made
+disgusting, obscene. There’s nothing clever or worthy in that. If you
+regard that which we’re preparing to do so like a stallion, then
+there’s the door and God be with you. Go away from us!”
+
+“Yes, but you yourself just now in the room ...” retorted the prince in
+confusion.
+
+“Yes, I too,” Soloviev at once softened and cooled down. “I popped out
+with a stupidity and I regret it. But now I willingly admit that
+Lichonin is a fine fellow and a splendid man; and I’m ready to do
+everything, for my part. And I repeat, that knowledge of reading and
+writing is a secondary matter. It is easy to attain it in play. For
+such an untouched mind to learn reading, writing, counting, and
+especially without school, of one’s free will, is like biting a nut in
+two. And as far as a manual trade is concerned, through which it would
+be possible to live and earn one’s keep, then there are hundreds of
+trades, which can be easily mastered in two weeks.”
+
+“For instance?” asked the prince.
+
+“Well, for instance ... for instance ... well, now, for instance,
+making artificial flowers. Yes, and still better, to get a place as a
+flower clerk. A charming business, clean and nice.”
+
+“Taste is necessary,” Simanovsky dropped carelessly.
+
+“There are no inborn tastes, as well as abilities. Otherwise talents
+would be born only in refined, highly educated society; while artists
+would be born only to artists, and singers to singers; but we don’t see
+this. However, I won’t argue. Well, if not a flower girl, then
+something else. I, for instance, saw not long ago in a store show
+window a miss sitting, and some sort of a little machine with
+foot-power before her.”
+
+“V-VA! Again a little machine!” said the prince, smiling and looking at
+Lichonin.
+
+“Stop it, Nijeradze,” answered Lichonin, quietly but sternly. “You
+ought to be ashamed.”
+
+“Blockhead!” Soloviev threw at him, and continued.
+
+“So, then, the machine moves back and forth, while upon it, on a square
+frame, is stretched a thin canvas, and really, I don’t know how it’s
+contrived, I didn’t grasp it; only the miss guides some metallic
+thingamajig over the screen, and there comes out a fine drawing in
+vari-coloured silks. Just imagine, a lake, all grown over with
+pond-lilies with their white corollas and yellow stamens, and great
+green leaves all around. And on the water two white swans are floating
+toward each other, and in the background is a dark park with an alley;
+and all this shows finely, distinctly, as on a picture from life. And I
+became so interested that I went in on purpose to find out how much it
+costs. It proved to be just the least bit dearer than an ordinary
+sewing machine, and it’s sold on terms. And any one who can sew a
+little on a common machine can learn this art in an hour. And there’s a
+great number of charming original designs. And the main thing is that
+such work is very readily taken for fire-screens, albums, lamp-shades,
+curtains and other rubbish, and the pay is decent.”
+
+“After all, that’s a sort of a trade, too,” agreed Lichonin, and
+stroked his beard in meditation. “But, to confess, here’s what I wanted
+to do. I wanted to open up for her ... to open up a little cook-shop or
+dining room, the very tiniest to start with, of course, but one in
+which all the food is cheap, clean and tasty. For it’s absolutely all
+the same to many students where they dine and what they eat. There are
+almost never enough places to go round in the students’ dining room.
+And so we may succeed, perhaps, in pulling in all our acquaintances and
+friends, somehow.”
+
+“That’s true,” said the prince, “but impractical as well; we’ll begin
+to board on credit. And you know what accurate payers we are. A
+practical man, a knave, is needed for such an undertaking; and if a
+woman, then one with a pike’s teeth; and even then a man must
+absolutely stick right at her back. Really, it’s not for Lichonin to
+stand at the counter and to watch that somebody shouldn’t suddenly wine
+and dine and slip away.”
+
+Lichonin looked straight at him, insolently, but only set his jaws and
+let it pass in silence.
+
+Simanovsky began in his measured, incontrovertible tone, toying with
+the glasses of his PINCE-NEZ:
+
+“Your intention is splendid, gentlemen, beyond dispute. But have you
+turned your attention to a certain shady aspect, so to speak? For to
+open a dining room, to start some business—all this in the beginning
+demands money, assistance—somebody else’s back, so to speak. The money
+is not grudged—that is true, I agree with Lichonin; but then, does not
+such a beginning of an industrious life, when every step is provided
+for—does it not lead to inevitable laxity and negligence, and, in the
+very end, to an indifferent disdain for business? Even a child does not
+learn to walk until it has flopped down some fifty times. No; if you
+really want to help this poor girl, you must give her a chance of
+getting on her feet at once, like a toiling being, and not like a
+drone. True, there is a great temptation here—the burden of labour,
+temporary need; but then, if she will surmount this, she will surmount
+the rest as well.”
+
+“What, then, according to you, is she to become—a dish-washer?” asked
+Soloviev with unbelief.
+
+“Well, yes,” calmly retorted Simanovsky. “A dish-washer, a laundress, a
+cook. All toil elevates a human being.”
+
+Lichonin shook his head.
+
+“Words of gold. Wisdom itself speaks with your lips, Simanovsky.
+Dish-washer, cook, maid, housekeeper ... but, in the first place, it’s
+doubtful if she’s capable for that; in the second place, she has
+already been a maid and has tasted all the sweets of masters’ bawlings
+out, and masters’ pinches behind doors, in the corridor. Tell me, is it
+possible you don’t know that ninety per cent, of prostitution is
+recruited from the number of female servants? And, therefore, poor
+Liuba, at the very first injustice, at the first rebuff, will the more
+easily and readily go just there where I have gotten her out of; if not
+even worse, because for her that’s customary and not so frightful; and,
+perhaps, it will even seem desirable after the masters’ treatment. And
+besides that, is it worth while for me—that is, I want to say—is it
+worth while for all of us, to go to so much trouble, to try so hard and
+put ourselves out so, if, after having saved a being from one slavery,
+we only plunge her into another?”
+
+“Right,” confirmed Soloviev.
+
+“Just as you wish,” drawled Simanovsky with a disdainful air.
+
+“But as far as I’m concerned,” said the prince, “I’m ready, as a friend
+and a curious man, to be present at this experiment and to participate
+in it. But even this morning I warned you, that there have been such
+experiments before and that they have always ended in ignominious
+failure, at least those of which we know personally; while those of
+which we know only by hearsay are dubious as regards authenticity. But
+you have begun the business—and go on with it. We are your helpers.”
+
+Lichonin struck the table with his palm.
+
+“No!” he exclaimed stubbornly. “Simanovsky is partly right concerning
+the great danger of a person’s being led in leading strings. But I
+don’t see any other way out. In the beginning I’ll help her with room
+and board... find some easy work, buy the necessary accessories for
+her. Let be what may! And let us do everything in order to educate her
+mind a little; and that her heart and soul are beautiful, of that I am
+sure. I’ve no grounds for the faith, but I am sure, I almost know.
+Nijeradze! Don’t clown!” he cried abruptly, growing pale, “I’ve
+restrained myself several times already at your fool pranks. I have
+until now held you as a man of conscience and feeling. One more
+inappropriate witticism, and I’ll change my opinion of you; and know,
+that it’s forever.”
+
+“Well, now, I didn’t mean anything... Really, I... Why go all up in the
+air, me soul? You don’t like that I’m a gay fellow, well, I’ll be
+quiet. Give me your hand, Lichonin, let’s drink!”
+
+“Well, all right, get away from me. Here’s to your health! Only don’t
+behave like a little boy, you Ossetean ram. Well, then, I continue,
+gentlemen. If we find anything which might satisfy the just opinion of
+Simanovsky about the dignity of independent toil, unsustained by
+anything, then I shall stick to my system: to teach Liuba whatever is
+possible, to take her to the theatre, to expositions, to popular
+lectures, to museums; to read aloud to her, give her the possibility of
+hearing music—comprehensible music, of course. It’s understood, I alone
+won’t be able to manage all this. I expect help from you; and after
+that, whatever God may will.”
+
+“Oh, well,” said Simanovsky, “the work is new, not threadbare; and how
+can we know the unknowable—perhaps you, Lichonin, will become the
+spiritual father of a good being. I, too, offer my services.”
+
+“And I! And I!” the other two seconded; and right there, without
+getting up from the table, the four students worked out a very broad
+and very wondrous program of education and enlightenment for Liubka.
+
+Soloviev took upon himself to teach the girl grammar and writing. In
+order not to tire her with tedious lessons, and as a reward for
+successes, he would read aloud for her artistic fiction, Russian and
+foreign, easy of comprehension. Lichonin left for himself the teaching
+of arithmetic, geography and history.
+
+While the prince said simple-heartedly, without his usual facetiousness
+this time:
+
+“I, my children, don’t know anything; while that which I do know, I
+know very badly. But I’ll read to her the remarkable production of the
+great Georgian poet Rustavelli, and translate it line by line. I
+confess to you, that I’m not much of a pedagogue: I tried to be a
+tutor, but they politely chased me out after only the second lesson.
+Still, no one can teach better playing on a guitar, mandolin, and the
+bagpipes!”
+
+Nijeradze was speaking with perfect seriousness, and for that reason
+Lichonin with Soloviev good-naturedly started laughing; but with entire
+unexpectedness, to the general amazement of all, Simanovsky sustained
+him.
+
+“The prince speaks common sense. To have the mastery of an instrument
+elevates the aesthetic sense, in any case; and is even a help in life.
+And I, for my part, gentlemen ... I propose to read with the young
+person the CAPITAL of Marx, and the history of human culture. And to
+take up chemistry and physics with her, besides.”
+
+If it were not for the customary authority of Simanovsky and the
+importance with which he spoke, the remaining three would have burst
+into laughter in his face. They only stared at him, with eyes popping
+out.
+
+“Well, yes,” continued Simanovsky imperturbably, “I’ll show her a whole
+series of chemical and physical experiments, which it is possible to
+carry on at home; which are always amusing and beneficial to the mind;
+and which eradicate prejudices. Incidentally, I’ll explain something of
+the structure of the world, of the properties of matter. And as far as
+Karl Marx is concerned, just remember, that great books are equally
+accessible to the understanding both of a scholar and an unlettered
+peasant, if only comprehensibly presented. And every great thought is
+simple.”
+
+Lichonin found Liubka at the place agreed upon, on a bench of the
+boulevard. She went home with him very unwillingly. Just as Lichonin
+had supposed, meeting the grumbling Alexandra was a fearful thing to
+her, who had long since grown unused to every-day actuality; harsh, and
+plentiful with all sorts of unpleasantnesses. And besides that, the
+fact that Lichonin did not want to conceal her past acted oppressively
+upon her. But she, who had long ago lost her will in the establishment
+of Anna Markovna, deprived of her personality, ready to follow after
+the call of every stranger, did not tell him a word and walked after
+him.
+
+The crafty Alexandra had already managed during this time to run to the
+superintendent of the houses and to complain to him, that, now,
+Lichonin had come with some miss, had passed the night with her in the
+room; but who she is, that Alexandra don’t know; that Lichonin says she
+is his first cousin, like; but did not present a passport. It was
+necessary to explain things at great length, diffusedly and tiresomely,
+to the superintendent, a coarse and insolent man, who bore himself to
+all the tenants in the house as toward a conquered city; and feared
+only the students slightly, because they gave him a severe rebuff at
+times. Lichonin propitiated him only when he rented on the spot another
+room, several rooms away from his, for Liubka; under the very slope of
+the roof, so that it represented on the inside a sharply cut-off, low,
+four-sided pyramid, with one little window.
+
+“But still, Mr. Lichonin, just you present the passport to-morrow
+without fail,” said the superintendent insistently at parting. “Since
+you’re a respectable man, hard-working, and you and I are long
+acquainted, also you pay punctually, I am willing to do it only for
+you. You know yourself what hard times these are. If some one tells on
+me, they’ll not only fire me, but they can put me out of town as well.
+They’re strict now.”
+
+In the evening Lichonin strolled with Liubka through Prince Park,
+listened to the music playing in the aristocratic club, and returned
+home early. He escorted Liubka to the door of her room and at once took
+leave of her; kissing her, however, tenderly on the brow, like a
+father. But after ten minutes, when he was already lying in bed
+undressed and reading the statutes of state, Liubka, having scratched
+on his door like a cat, suddenly entered his room.
+
+“Darling, sweetie! Excuse me for troubling you. Haven’t you a needle
+and thread? But don’t get angry at me; I’ll go away at once.”
+
+“Liuba! I beg of you to go away not at once, but this second. Finally,
+I demand it!”
+
+“My dearie, my pretty,” Liubka began to intone laughably and piteously,
+“well, what are you yelling at me for all the time?” and, in a moment,
+having blown upon the candle, she nestled up to him in the darkness,
+laughing and crying.
+
+“No, Liuba, this must not be. It’s impossible to go on like this,”
+Lichonin was saying ten minutes later, standing at the door, wrapped up
+in his blanket, like a Spanish hidalgo in a cape. “To-morrow at the
+latest I’ll rent a room for you in another house. And, in general,
+don’t let this occur! God be with you, and good night! Still, you must
+give me your word of honour that our relations will be merely
+friendly.”
+
+“I give it, dearie, I give it, I give it, I give it!” she began to
+prattle, smiling; and quickly smacked him first on the lips and then on
+his hand.
+
+The last action was altogether instinctive; and, perhaps, unexpected
+even to Liubka herself. Never yet in her life had she kissed any man’s
+hand, save a priest’s. Perhaps she wanted to express through this her
+gratitude to Lichonin, and a prostration before him as before a higher
+being.
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+
+Among Russian intelligents, as has already been noted by many, there is
+a decent quantity of wonderful people; true children of the Russian
+land and culture, who would be able heroically, without the quivering
+of a single muscle, to look straight in the face of death; who are
+capable for the sake of an idea of bearing unconceivable privations and
+sufferings, equal to torture; but then, these people are lost before
+the haughtiness of a doorman; shrink from the yelling of a laundress;
+while into a police station they enter in an insufferable and timid
+distress. And precisely such a one was Lichonin. On the following day
+(yesterday it had been impossible on account of a holiday and the
+lateness), having gotten up very early and recollecting that to-day he
+had to take care of Liubka’s passport, he felt just as bad as when in
+former times, as a high-school boy, he went to an examination, knowing
+that he would surely fall through. His head ached, while his arms and
+legs somehow seemed another’s; in addition, a drizzling and seemingly
+dirty rain had been falling on the street since morning. “Always, now,
+when there’s some unpleasantness in store, there is inevitably a rain
+falling,” reflected Lichonin, dressing slowly.
+
+It was not especially far from his street to the Yamskaya, not more
+than two-thirds of a mile. In general, he was not infrequently in those
+parts, but he had never had occasion to go there in the daytime; and on
+the way it seemed to him all the time that every one he met, every
+cabby and policeman, was looking at him with curiosity, with reproach,
+or with disdain, as though surmising the destination of his journey. As
+always on a nasty and muggy morning, all the faces that met his eyes
+seemed pale, ugly, with monstrously underlined defects. Scores of times
+he imagined all that he would say in the beginning at the house; and
+later at the station house; and every time the outcome was different.
+Angry at himself for this premature rehearsal, he would at times stop
+himself:
+
+“Ah! You mustn’t think, you mustn’t presuppose what you’re going to
+say. It always turns out far better when it’s done right off...”
+
+And then again imaginary dialogues would run through his head:
+
+“You have no right to hold this girl against her wish.”
+
+“Yes, but let her herself give notice about going away.”
+
+“I act at her instruction.”
+
+“All right; but how can you prove this?” and again he would mentally
+cut himself short.
+
+The city common began, on which cows were browsing; a board sidewalk
+along a fence; shaky little bridges over little brooklets and ditches.
+Then he turned into the Yamskaya. In the house of Anna Markovna all the
+windows were closed with shutters, with openings, in the form of
+hearts, cut out in the middle. And all of the remaining houses on the
+deserted street, desolated as though after a pestilence, were closed as
+well. With a contracting heart Lichonin pulled the bell-handle.
+
+A maid, barefooted, with skirt caught up, with a wet rag in her hand,
+with face striped from dirt, answered the bell—she had just been
+washing the floor.
+
+“I’d like to see Jennka,” timidly requested Lichonin.
+
+“Well, now, the young lady is busy with a guest. They haven’t waked up
+yet.”
+
+“Well, Tamara then.”
+
+The maid looked at him mistrustfully.
+
+“Miss Tamara—I don’t know... I think she’s busy too. But what you
+want—to pay a visit, or what?”
+
+“Ah, isn’t it all the same! A visit, let’s say.”
+
+“I don’t know. I’ll go and look. Wait a while.”
+
+She went away, leaving Lichonin in the half-dark drawing room. The blue
+pillars of dust, coming from the openings in the shutters, pierced the
+heavy obscurity in all directions. Like hideous spots stood out of the
+gray murkiness the bepainted furniture and the sweetish oleographs on
+the walls. It smelt of yesterday’s tobacco, of dampness, sourness; and
+of something else peculiar, indeterminate, uninhabited, of which places
+that are lived in only temporarily always smell in the morning—such as
+empty theatres, dance-halls, auditoriums. Far off in the city a droshky
+rumbled intermittently. The wall-clock monotonously ticked behind the
+wall. In a strange agitation Lichonin walked back and forth through the
+drawing room and rubbed and kneaded his trembling hands, and for some
+reason was stooping and felt cold.
+
+“I shouldn’t have started all this false comedy,” he thought with
+irritation. “It goes without saying that I’ve now become the by-word of
+the entire university. The devil nudged me! And even during the day
+yesterday it wasn’t too late, when she was saying that she was ready to
+go back. All I had to do was to give her for a cabby and a little pin
+money, and she’d have gone, and all would have been fine; and I would
+be independent now, free, and wouldn’t be undergoing this tormenting
+and ignominious state of spirits. But it’s too late to retreat now.
+To-morrow it’ll be still later, and the day after to-morrow—still more.
+Having pulled off one fool stunt, it must be immediately put a stop to;
+but on the other hand, if you don’t do that in time, it draws two
+others after it, and they—twenty new ones. Or, perhaps, it’s not too
+late now? Why, she’s silly, undeveloped, and, probably, a hysteric,
+like the rest of them. She’s an animal, fit only for stuffing herself
+and for the bed. Oh! The devil!” Lichonin forcefully squeezed his
+cheeks and his forehead between his hands and shut his eyes. “And if I
+had but held out against the common, coarse, physical temptation!
+There, you see for yourself, this has happened twice already; and then
+it’ll go on and on ...”
+
+But side by side with these ran other thoughts, opposed to them:
+
+“But then, I’m a man. I am master of my word. For that which urged me
+on to this deed was splendid, noble, lofty. I remember very well that
+rapture which seized me when my thought transpired into action! That
+was a pure, tremendous feeling. Or was it simply an extravagance of the
+mind, whipped up by alcohol; the consequence of a sleepless night,
+smoking, and long, abstract conversations?”
+
+And immediately Liubka would appear before him, appear at a distance,
+as though out of the misty depths of time; awkward, timid, with her
+homely and endearing face, which had at once come to seem of infinitely
+close kinship; long, long familiar, and at the same time
+unpleasant—unjustly, without cause.
+
+“Can it be that I’m a coward and a rag?” cried Lichonin inwardly and
+wrung his hands. “What am I afraid of, before whom am I embarrassed?
+Have I not always prided myself upon being sole master of my life?
+Let’s suppose, even, that the phantasy, the extravagance, of making a
+psychological experiment upon a human soul—a rare experiment,
+unsuccessful in ninety-nine percent—has entered my head. Is it possible
+that I must render anybody an account in this, or fear anybody’s
+opinion? Lichonin! Look down upon mankind from above!”
+
+Jennie walked into the room, dishevelled, sleepy, in a night jacket on
+top of a white underskirt.
+
+“A-a!” she yawned, extending her hand to Lichonin. “How d’you do, my
+dear student! How does your Liubochka feel herself in the new place?
+Call me in as a guest some time. Or are you spending your honeymoon on
+the quiet? Without any outside witnesses?”
+
+“Drop the silly stuff, Jennechka. I came about the passport.”
+
+“So-o. About the passport,” Jennka went into thought. “That is, there’s
+no passport here, but you must take a blank from the housekeeper. You
+understand, our usual prostitute’s blank; and then they’ll exchange it
+for you for a real book at the station house. Only you see, my dear, I
+will be but ill help to you in this business. They are as like as not
+to beat me up if I come near a housekeeper or a porter. But here’s what
+you do. You’d best send the maid for the housekeeper; tell her to say
+that a certain guest, now, a steady one, has come on business; that
+it’s very urgent to see her personally. But you must excuse me—I’m
+going to back out, and don’t you be angry, please. You know
+yourself—charity begins at home. But why should you hang around by
+yourself in this here darkness? You’d better go into the cabinet. If
+you want to, I’ll send you beer there. Or, perhaps you want coffee? Or
+else,” and her eyes sparkled slyly, “or else a girlie, perhaps? Tamara
+is busy, but may be Niura or Verka will do?”
+
+“Stop it, Jennie! I came about a serious and important matter, but you
+...”
+
+“Well, well, I won’t, I won’t! I said it just so. I see that you
+observe faithfulness. That’s very noble on your part. Let’s go, then.”
+
+She led him into the cabinet, and, opening the inner bolt of the
+shutter, threw it wide open. The daylight softly and sadly splashed
+against the red and gold walls, over the candelabra, over the soft red
+velveteen furniture.
+
+“Right here it began,” reflected Lichonin with sad regret.
+
+“I am going,” said Jennka. “Don’t you knuckle down too much before her,
+and Simeon too. Abuse them for all you’re worth. It’s daytime now, and
+they won’t dare do anything to you. If anything happens, tell them
+straight that, now, you’re going to the governor immediately and are
+going to tell on them. Tell ’em, that they’ll be closed up and put out
+of town in twenty-four hours. Bawl ’em out and they get like silk.
+Well, now, I wish you success.”
+
+She went away. After ten minutes had passed, into the cabinet floated
+Emma Edwardovna, the housekeeper, in a blue satin PEGNOIR; corpulent,
+with an important face, broadening from the forehead down to the
+cheeks, just like a monstrous squash; with all her massive chins and
+breasts; with small, keen eyes, without eyelashes; with thin,
+malicious, compressed lips. Lichonin, arising, pressed the puffy hand
+extended to him, studded with rings, and suddenly thought with
+aversion:
+
+“The devil take it! If this vermin had a soul, if it were possible to
+read this soul—then how many direct and indirect murders are lurking
+hidden within it!”
+
+It must be said, that in starting out for the Yamkas, Lichonin, besides
+money, had fetched a revolver along with him; and on the road, while
+walking, he had frequently shoved his hand into his pocket and had
+there felt the chill contact of the metal. He expected affront,
+violence, and was prepared to meet them in a suitable manner. But, to
+his amazement, all that he had presupposed and had feared proved a
+timorous, fantastic fiction. The business was far more simple, more
+wearisome and more prosaic, and at the same time more unpleasant.
+
+“JA, MEIN HERR,” said the housekeeper indifferently and somewhat
+loftily, settling into a low chair and lighting a cigarette. “You pay
+for one night and instead of that took already the girl for one more
+night and one more day. ALSO, you owe twenty-five more roubles yet.
+When we let off a girlie for a night we take ten roubles, and for the
+twenty-four hours twenty-five roubles. That’s a tax, like. Don’t you
+want a smoke, young man?” she stretched out her case, and Lichonin,
+without himself knowing why, took a cigarette.
+
+“I wanted to talk with you about something else entirely.”
+
+“O! Don’t trouble yourself to speak: I understand everything very well.
+Probably the young man wants to take these girl, those Liubka,
+altogether to himself to set her up, or in order to—how do you Russians
+call it?—in order to safe her? Yes, yes, yes, that happens. Twenty-two
+years I live in a brothel, and I know, that this happens with very
+foolish young peoples. But only I assure you, that from this will come
+nothing out.”
+
+“Whether it will come out or whether it won’t come out—that is already
+my affair,” answered Lichonin dully, looking down at his fingers,
+trembling on his knees.
+
+“O, of course, it’s your affair, my young student,” and the flabby
+cheeks and majestic chins of Emma Edwardovna began to jump from
+inaudible laughter. “From my soul I wish for you love and friendship;
+but only trouble yourself to tell this nasty creature, this Liubka,
+that she shouldn’t dare to show even her nose here, when you throw her
+out into the street like a little doggie. Let her croak from hunger
+under a fence, or go into a half-rouble establishment for the
+soldiers!”
+
+“Believe me, she won’t return. I ask you merely to give me her
+certificate, without delay.”
+
+“The certificate? ACH, if you please! Even this very minute. Only I
+will first trouble you to pay for everything that she took here on
+credit. Have a look, here is her account book. I took it along with me
+on purpose. I knew already with what our conversation would end.” She
+took out of the slit of her PEGNOIR—showing Lichonin for just a minute
+her fat, full-fleshed, yellow, enormous breast—a little book in a black
+cover, with the heading: ACCOUNT OF MISS IRENE VOSCHHENKOVA IN THE
+HOUSE OF ILL-FAME, MAINTAINED BY ANNA MARKOVNA SHAIBES, ON YAM-SKAYA
+STREET, NO. SO-AND-SO, and extended it to him across the table.
+Lichonin turned over the first page and read through four or five
+paragraphs of the printed rules. There dryly and briefly it was stated
+that the account book consists of two copies, of which one is kept by
+the proprietress while the other remains with the prostitute; that all
+income and expense were entered into both books; that by agreement the
+prostitute receives board, quarters, heat, light, bed linen, baths and
+so forth, and for this pays out to the proprietress in no case more
+than two-thirds of her earnings; while out of the remaining money she
+is bound to dress neatly and decently, having no less than two dresses
+for going out. Further, mention was made of the fact that payment was
+made with the help of stamps, which the proprietress gives out to the
+prostitute upon receipt of money from her; while the account is drawn
+up at the end of every month. And, finally, that the prostitute can at
+any time leave the house of prostitution, even if there does remain a
+debt of hers, which, however, she binds herself to cancel on the basis
+of general civil laws.
+
+Lichonin prodded the last point with his finger, and, having turned the
+face of the book to the housekeeper, said triumphantly:
+
+“Aha! There, you see: she has the right to leave the house at any time.
+Consequently, she can at any time quit your abominable dive of
+violence, baseness, and depravity, in which you ...” Lichonin began
+rattling off, but the housekeeper calmly cut him short:
+
+“O! I have no doubt of this. Let her go away. Let her only pay the
+money.”
+
+“What about promissory notes? She can give promissory notes.”
+
+“Pst! Promissory notes! In the first place, she’s illiterate; while in
+the second, what are her promissory notes worth? A spit and no more.
+Let her find a surety who would be worthy of trust, and then I have
+nothing against it.”
+
+“But, then, there’s nothing said in the rules about sureties.”
+
+“There’s many a thing not said! In the rules it also does not say that
+it’s permitted to carry a girlie out of the house, without giving
+warning to the owners.”
+
+“But in any case you’ll have to give me her blank.”
+
+“I will never do such a foolishness! Come here with some respectable
+person and with the police; and let the police certify that this friend
+of yours is a man of means; and let this man stand surety for you; and
+let, besides that, the police certify that you are not taking the girl
+in order to trade in her, or to sell her over to another
+stablishment—then as you please! Hand and foot!”
+
+“The devil!” exclaimed Lichonin. “But if that surety will be I, I
+myself! If I’ll sign your promissory notes right away ...”
+
+“Young man! I don’t know what you are taught in your different
+universities, but is it possible that you reckon me such a positive
+fool? God grant, that you have, besides those which are on you, still
+some other pants! God grant, that you should even the day after have
+for dinner the remnants of sausages from the sausage shop, and yet you
+say—a promissory note! What are you bothering my head for?”
+
+Lichonin grew completely angry. He drew his wallet out of his pocket
+and slapped it down on the table.
+
+“In that case I pay in cash and immediately!”
+
+“ACH, that’s a business of another kind,” sweetly, but still with
+mistrust, the housekeeper intoned. “I will trouble you to turn the
+page, and see what the bill of your beloved is.”
+
+“Keep still, you carrion!”
+
+“I’m still, you fool,” calmly responded the housekeeper.
+
+On the small ruled pages on the left side was designated the income, on
+the right were the expenses.
+
+“Received in stamps, 15th of April,” read Lichonin, “10 roubles; 16th—4
+roubles; 17th—12 roubles; 18th—sick; 19th—sick; 20th—6 roubles; 21st—24
+roubles.”
+
+“My God!” with loathing, with horror, reflected Lichonin. “Twelve men
+in one night!”
+
+At the end of the month stood:
+
+“Total 330 roubles.”
+
+“Lord! Why, this is some sort of delirium! One hundred and sixty-five
+visits,” thought Lichonin, having mechanically calculated it, and still
+continued turning the pages. Then he went over to the columns on the
+right.
+
+“Made, a red dress of silk with lace 84 roubles Dressmaker Eldokimova.
+Dressing sack of lace 35 roubles Dressmaker Eldokimova. Silk stockings
+6 pair 36 roubles,” &c., &c. “Given for cab-fare, given for candy,
+perfumes bought,” &c., &c. “Total 205 roubles.” After that from the 330
+roubles were deducted 220 roubles—the share of the proprietress for
+board and lodging. The figure of 110 roubles resulted. The end of the
+monthly account declared:
+
+“Total after the payment to the dressmaker and for other articles, of
+110 roubles, a debt of ninety-five (95) roubles remains for Irene
+Voschhenkova and with the four hundred and eighteen roubles remaining
+from last year—five hundred and thirteen (513) roubles.”
+
+Lichonin’s spirits fell. He did try, at first, to be indignant at the
+expensiveness of the materials supplied; but the housekeeper retorted
+with SANG FROID that that did not concern her at all; that the
+establishment demanded only that the girl dress decently, as becomes a
+girl from a decent, genteel house; while it did not concern itself with
+the rest. The establishment merely extended her credit in paying her
+expenses.
+
+“But this is a vixen, a spider in human shape—this dressmaker of
+yours!” yelled Lichonin beside himself. “Why, she’s in a conspiracy
+with you, cupping glass that you are, you abominable tortoise!
+Scuttlefish! Where’s your conscience?”
+
+The more agitated he grew, the more calm and jeering Emma Edwardovna
+became.
+
+“Again I repeat: that is not my business. And you, young man, don’t
+express yourself like that, because I will call the porter, and he will
+throw you out of the door.”
+
+Lichonin was compelled to bargain with the cruel woman long, brutally,
+till he grew hoarse, before she agreed, in the end, to take two hundred
+and fifty roubles in cash, and two hundred roubles in promissory notes.
+And even that only when Lichonin with his half-yearly certificate
+proved to her that he was finishing this year and would become a
+lawyer.
+
+The housekeeper went after the ticket, while Lichonin took to pacing
+the cabinet back and forth. He had already looked over all the pictures
+on the walls: Leda with the swan, and the bathing on the shore of the
+sea, and the odalisque in a harem, and the satyr, bearing a naked nymph
+in his arms; but suddenly a small printed placard, framed and behind
+glass, half covered by a portiere, attracted his attention. It was the
+first time that it had come across Lichonin’s eyes, and the student
+with amazement and aversion read these lines, expressed in the dead,
+official language of police stations. There with shameful, businesslike
+coldness, were mentioned all possible measures and precautions against
+infections; the intimacies of feminine toilet; the weekly medical
+inspections and all the adaptations for them. Lichonin also read that
+no establishment was to be situated nearer than a hundred steps from
+churches, places of learning, and court buildings; that only persons of
+the female sex may maintain houses of prostitution; that only her
+relatives, and even then of the female sex exclusively, and none older
+than seven years, may live with the proprietress; and that the
+proprietors and the owners of the house, as well as the girls, must in
+their relations among themselves and the guests as well, observe
+politeness, quiet, civility and decency, by no means allowing
+themselves drunkenness, swearing and brawls. And also that the
+prostitute must not allow herself the caresses of love when in an
+intoxicated condition or with an intoxicated man; and in addition to
+that, during the time of certain functions. Here also the prostitutes
+were most strictly forbidden to commit abortions. “What a serious and
+moral view of things!” reflected Lichonin with a malicious sneer.
+
+Finally the business with Emma Edwarodvna was concluded. Having taken
+the money and written out a receipt, she stretched it out to Lichonin
+together with the blank, while he stretched out the money to her; at
+which, during the time of the operation, they both looked at each
+other’s eyes and hands intently and warily. It was apparent that they
+both felt no especially great mutual trust. Lichonin put the documents
+away in his wallet and was preparing to depart. The housekeeper
+escorted him to the very stoop, and when the student was already
+standing in the street, she, remaining on the steps, leaned out and
+called after him:
+
+“Student! Hey! Student!”
+
+He stopped and turned around.
+
+“What now?”
+
+“And here’s another thing. Now I must tell you, that your Liubka is
+trash, a thief, and sick with syphilis! None of our good guests wanted
+to take her; and anyway, if you had not taken her, then we would have
+thrown her out to-morrow! I will also tell you, that she had to do with
+the porter, with policemen, with janitors, and with petty thieves.
+Congratulations on your lawful marriage!”
+
+“Oo-ooh! Vermin!” Lichonin roared back at her.
+
+“You green blockhead!” called out the housekeeper and banged the door.
+
+Lichonin went to the station house in a cab. On the way he recalled
+that he had not had time to look at the blank properly, at this
+renowned “yellow ticket,” of which he had heard so much. This was an
+ordinary small white sheet, no larger than a postal envelope. On one
+side, in the proper column, were written out the name, father’s name,
+and family name of Liubka, and her profession—“Prostitute”; and on the
+other side, concise extracts from the paragraphs of that placard which
+he had just read through—infamous, hypocritical rules about behaviour
+and external and internal cleanliness. “Every visitor.” he read, “has
+the right to demand from the prostitute the written certificate of the
+doctor who has inspected her the last time.” And again sentimental pity
+overcame the heart of Lichonin.
+
+“Poor women!” he reflected with grief. “What only don’t they do with
+you, how don’t they abuse you, until you grow accustomed to everything,
+just like blind horses on a treadmill!” In the station house he was
+received by the district inspector, Kerbesh. He had spent the night on
+duty, had not slept his fill, and was angry. His luxurious, fan-shaped
+red beard was crumpled. The right half of the ruddy face was still
+crimsonly glowing from lying long on the uncomfortable oilcloth pillow.
+But the amazing, vividly blue eyes, cold and luminous, looked clear and
+hard, like blue porcelain. Having ended interrogating, recording, and
+cursing out with obscenities the throng of ragamuffins, taken in during
+the night for sobering up and now being sent out over their own
+districts, he threw himself against the back of the divan, put his
+hands behind his neck, and stretched with all his enormous, heroic body
+so hard that all his ligaments and joints cracked. He looked at
+Lichonin just as at a thing, and asked:
+
+“And what will you have, Mr. Student?”
+
+Lichonin stated his business briefly.
+
+“And so I want,” he concluded, “to take her to me ... how is this
+supposed to be done with you? ... in the capacity of a servant, or, if
+you want, a relative, in a word ... how is it done? ...”
+
+“Well, in the capacity of a kept mistress or a wife, let’s say,”
+indifferently retorted Kerbesh and twirled in his hands a silver cigar
+case with monograms and little figures. “I can do absolutely nothing
+for you ... at least right now. If you desire to marry her, present a
+suitable permit from your university authorities. But if you’re taking
+her on maintenance—then just think, where’s the logic in that? You’re
+taking a girl out of a house of depravity, in order to live with her in
+depraved cohabitation.”
+
+“A servant, finally,” Lichonin put in.
+
+“And even a servant. I’d trouble you to present an affidavit from your
+landlord—for, I hope, you’re not a houseowner? Very well, then, an
+affidavit from your landlord, as to your being in a position to keep a
+servant; and besides that, all the documents, testifying that you’re
+that very person you give yourself out to be; an affidavit, for
+instance, from your district and from the university, and all that sort
+of thing. For you, I hope, are registered? Or, perhaps, you are now,
+eh? ... Of the illegal ones?
+
+“No, I am registered!” retorted Lichonin, beginning to lose patience.
+
+“And that’s splendid. But the young lady, about whom you’re troubling
+yourself?”
+
+“No, she’s not registered as yet. But I have her blank in my
+possession, which, I hope, you’ll exchange for a real passport for me,
+and then I’ll register her at once.”
+
+Kerbesh spread his arms out wide, then again began toying with the
+cigar case.
+
+“Can’t do anything for you, Mr. Student, just nothing at all, until you
+present all the papers required. As far as the girl’s concerned, why,
+she, as one not having the right of residence, will be sent to the
+police without delay, and there detained; unless she personally desires
+to go there, where you’ve taken her from. I’ve the honour of wishing
+you good day.”
+
+Lichonin abruptly pulled his hat over his eyes and went toward the
+door. But suddenly an ingenious thought flashed through his head, from
+which, however, he himself became disgusted. And feeling nausea in the
+pit of his stomach, with clammy, cold hands, experiencing a sickening
+pinching in his toes, he again walked up to the table and said as
+though carelessly, but with a catch in his voice:
+
+“Pardon me, inspector. I’ve forgotten the most important thing; a
+certain mutual acquaintance of ours has instructed me to transmit to
+you a small debt of his.”
+
+“Hm! An acquaintance?” asked Kerbesh, opening wide his magnificent
+azure eyes. “And who may he be?”
+
+“Bar ... Barbarisov.”
+
+“Ah, Barbarisov? So, so, so, I recollect, I recollect!”
+
+“So then, won’t you please accept these ten roubles?”
+
+Kerbesh shook his head, but did not take the bit of paper.
+
+“Well, but this Barbarisov of yours—that is, ours—is a swine. It isn’t
+ten roubles he owes me at all, but a quarter of a century. What a
+scoundrel! Twenty-five roubles and some small change besides. Well, the
+small change, of course, I won’t count up to him. God be with him!
+This, you see, is a billiard debt. I must say that he’s a blackguard,
+plays crookedly ... And so, young man, dig up fifteen more.”
+
+“Well, but you are a knave, Mr. Inspector!” said Lichonin, getting out
+the money.
+
+“Oh, mercy!” by now altogether good-naturedly retorted Kerbesh. “A
+wife, children ... You know yourself what our salary is ... Receive the
+little passport, young man. Sign your receipt. Best wishes.”
+
+A queer thing! The consciousness that the passport was, finally, in his
+pocket, for some reason suddenly calmed and again braced up and
+elevated Lichonin’s nerves.
+
+“Oh, well!” he thought, walking quickly along the street, “the very
+beginning has been laid down, the most difficult part has been done.
+Hold fast, now, Lichonin, and don’t fall in spirit! What you’ve done is
+splendid and lofty. Let me be even a victim of this deed—it’s all one!
+It’s a shame, having done a good deed, to expect rewards for it right
+away. I’m not a little circus dog, and not a trained camel, and not the
+first pupil of a young ladies’ genteel institute. Only it was useless
+for me to let loose yesterday before these bearers of enlightenment. It
+all turned out to be silly, tactless, and, in any case, premature. But
+everything in life is reparable. A person will sustain the heaviest,
+most disgraceful things; but, time passes, and they are recalled as
+trifles ...”
+
+To his amazement, Liubka was not especially struck, and did not at all
+become overjoyed when he triumphantly showed her the passport. She was
+only glad to see Lichonin again. Perhaps, this primitive, naive soul
+had already contrived to cleave to its protector? She did throw herself
+upon his neck, but he stopped her, and quietly, almost in her ear,
+asked her:
+
+“Liubka, tell me ... don’t be afraid to tell the truth, no matter what
+it may be ... They told me just now, there in the house, that you’re
+sick with a certain disease ... you know, that which is called the evil
+sickness. If you believe in me even to some extent, tell me, my
+darling, tell me, is that so or not?”
+
+She turned red, covered her face with her hands, fell down on the divan
+and burst into tears.
+
+“My dearie! Vassil Vassilich! Vasinka! Honest to God! Honest to God,
+now, there never was anything of the kind! I always was so careful! I
+was awfully afraid of this. I love you so! I would have told you
+without fail.” She caught his hands, pressed them to her wet face and
+continued to assure him with the absurd and touching sincerity of an
+unjustly accused child.
+
+And he at once believed her in his soul.
+
+“I believe you, my child,” he said quietly, stroking her hair. “Don’t
+excite yourself, don’t cry. Only let us not again give in to our
+weakness. Well, it has happened—let it have happened; but let us not
+repeat it any more.’
+
+“As you wish,” prattled the girl, kissing now his hands, now the cloth
+of his coat. “If I displease you so, then, of course, let it be as you
+wish.”
+
+However, this evening also the temptation was again repeated, and kept
+on repeating until the falls from grace ceased to arouse a burning
+shame in Lichonin, and turned into a habit, swallowing and
+extinguishing remorse.
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Justice must be rendered to Lichonin; he did everything to create for
+Liubka a quiet and secure existence. Since he knew that they would have
+to leave their mansard anyway—this bird house, rearing above the whole
+city—leave it not so much on account of its inconvenience and lack of
+space as on account of the old woman Alexandra, who with every day
+became more ferocious, captious and scolding—he resolved to rent a
+little bit of a flat, consisting of two rooms and a kitchen, on the
+Borschhagovka, at the edge of the town. He came upon an inexpensive
+one, for nine roubles a month, without fuel. True, Lichonin had to run
+very far from there to his pupils, but he relied firmly upon his
+endurance and health, and would often say:
+
+“My legs are my own. I don’t have to be sparing of them.”
+
+And, truly, he was a great master at walking. Once, for the sake of a
+joke, having put a pedometer in his vest pocket, he towards evening
+counted up twenty versts; which, taking into consideration the unusual
+length of his legs, equalled some twenty-five versts.[21] And he did
+have to run about quite a bit, because the fuss about Liubka’s passport
+and the acquisition of household furnishings of a sort had eaten up all
+his accidental winnings at cards. He did try to take up playing again,
+on a small scale at first, but was soon convinced that his star at
+cards had now entered upon a run of fatal ill luck.
+
+[21] A verst is equal to two-thirds of a mile.—Trans.
+
+
+By now, of course, the real character of his relations with Liubka was
+a mystery to none of his comrades; but he still continued in their
+presence to act out the comedy of friendly and brotherly relations with
+the girl. For some reason he could not, or did not want to, realize
+that it would have been far wiser and more advantageous for him not to
+lie, not to be false, and not to pretend. Or, perhaps, although he did
+know this, he still could not change the established tone. As for the
+intimate relations, he inevitably played a secondary, passive role. The
+initiative, in the form of tenderness, caressing, always had to come
+from Liubka (she had remained Liubka, after all, and Lichonin had
+somehow entirely forgotten that he himself had read her real
+name—Irene—in the passport).
+
+She, who had so recently given her body up impassively—or, on the
+contrary, with an imitation of burning passion—to tens of people in a
+day, to hundreds in a month, had become attached to Lichonin with all
+her feminine being, loving and jealous; had grown attached to him with
+body, feeling, thoughts. The prince was funny and entertaining to her,
+and the expansive Soloviev interestingly amusing; toward the crushing
+authoritativeness of Simanovsky she felt a supernatural terror; but
+Lichonin was for her at the same time a sovereign, and a divinity; and,
+which is the most horrible of all, her property and bodily joy.
+
+It has long ago been observed, that a man who has lived his fill, has
+been worn out, gnawed and chewed by the jaws of amatory passions, will
+never again love with a strong and only love, simultaneously
+self-denying, pure, and passionate. But for a woman there are neither
+laws nor limitations in this respect. This observation was especially
+confirmed in Liubka. She was ready to crawl before Lichonin with
+delight, to serve him as a slave; but, at the same time, desired that
+he belong to her more than a table, than a little dog, than a night
+blouse. And he always proved wanting, always failing before the
+onslaught of this sudden love, which from a modest little stream had so
+rapidly turned into a river and had over-flowed its banks. And not
+infrequently he thought to himself, with bitterness and a sneer:
+
+“Every evening I play the role of the beauteous Joseph; still, he at
+least managed to tear himself away, leaving his underwear in the hands
+of the ardent lady; but when will I at last get free of my yoke?”
+
+And a secret enmity for Liubka was already gnawing him. All the more
+and more frequently various crafty plans of liberation came into his
+head. And some of them were to such an extent dishonest, that, after a
+few hours, or the next day, Lichonin squirmed inwardly from shame,
+recalling them.
+
+“I am falling, morally and mentally!” he would at times think with
+horror. “It’s not in vain that I read somewhere, or heard from some
+one, that the connection of a cultured man with a woman of little
+intellect will never elevate her to the level of the man, but, on the
+contrary, will bow him down and sink him to the mental and moral
+outlook of the woman.”
+
+And after two weeks she ceased to excite his imagination entirely. He
+gave in, as to violence, to the long-continued caresses, entreaties,
+and often even to pity.
+
+Yet at the same time Liubka, who had rested and felt living, real soil
+under her, began to improve in looks with unusual rapidity, just as a
+flower bud, that but yesterday was almost dying, suddenly unfolds after
+a plentiful and warm rain. The freckles ran off her soft face, and the
+uncomprehending, troubled expression, like that of a young jackdaw, had
+disappeared from the dark eyes, and they had grown brighter and had
+begun to sparkle. The body grew stronger and filled out; the lips grew
+red. But Lichonin, seeing Liubka every day, did not notice this and did
+not believe those compliments which were showered upon her by his
+friends. “Fool jokes,” he reflected, frowning. “The boys are spoofing.”
+
+As the lady of the house, Liubka proved to be less than mediocre. True,
+she could cook fat stews, so thick that the spoon stood upright in
+them; prepare enormous, unwieldy, formless cutlets; and under the
+guidance of Lichonin familiarized herself pretty rapidly with the great
+art of brewing tea (at seventy-five kopecks a pound); but further than
+that she did not go, probably because for each art and for each being
+there are extreme limitations of their own, which cannot in any way be
+surmounted. But then, she loved to wash floors very much; and carried
+out this occupation so often and with such zeal, that dampness soon set
+in in the flat and multipedes appeared.
+
+Tempted once by a newspaper advertisement, Lichonin procured a stocking
+knitting machine for her, on terms. The art, the mastery of this
+instrument—promising, to judge by the advertisement, three roubles of
+clear profit a day—proved to be so uncomplicated that Lichonin,
+Soloviev, and Nijeradze easily mastered it in a few hours; while
+Lichonin even contrived to knit a whole stocking of uncommon
+durability, and of such dimensions that it would have proven big even
+for the feet of Minin and Pozharsky, whose statues are in Moscow, on
+Krasnaya Square. Only Liubka alone could not master this trade. At
+every mistake or tangle she was forced to turn to the co-operation of
+the men. But then, she learned pretty rapidly to make artificial
+flowers and, despite the opinion of Simanovsky, made them very
+exquisitely, and with great taste; so that after a month the hat
+specialty stores began to buy her work. And, what is most amazing, she
+had taken only two lessons in all from a specialist, while the rest she
+learned through a self-instructor, guiding herself only by the drawings
+supplemental to it. She did not contrive to make more than a rouble’s
+worth of flowers in a week; but this money was her pride, and for the
+very first half-rouble that she made she bought Lichonin a mouthpiece
+for smoking.
+
+Several years later Lichonin confessed to himself at soul, with regret
+and with a quiet melancholy, that this period of time was the most
+quiet, peaceful and comfortable one of all his life in the university
+and as a lawyer. This unwieldy, clumsy, perhaps even stupid Liubka,
+possessed some instinctive domesticity, some imperceptible ability of
+creating a bright and easy quietude around her. It was precisely she
+who attained the fact that Lichonin’s quarters very soon became a
+charming, quiet centre; where all the comrades of Lichonin, who, as
+well as the majority of the students of that time, were forced to
+sustain a bitter struggle with the harsh conditions of life, felt
+somehow at ease, as though in a family; and rested at soul after heavy
+tribulations, need, and starvation. Lichonin recalled with grateful
+sadness her friendly complaisance, her modest and attentive silence, on
+those evenings around the samovar, when so much had been spoken, argued
+and dreamt.
+
+In learning, things went with great difficulty. All these self-styled
+cultivators, collectively and separately, spoke of the fact that the
+education of the human mind, and the upbringing of the human soul must
+flow out of individual motives; but in reality they stuffed Liubka with
+just that which seemed to them the most necessary and indispensable,
+and tried to overcome together with her those scientific obstacles,
+which, without any loss, might have been left aside.
+
+Thus, for example, Lichonin did not want, under any conditions, to
+become reconciled, in teaching her arithmetic, to her queer, barbarous,
+savage, or, more correctly, childish, primitive method of counting. She
+counted exclusively in ones, twos, threes and fives. Thus, for example,
+twelve to her was two times two threes; nineteen—three fives and two
+twos; and, it must be said, that through her system she with the
+rapidity of a counting board operated almost up to a hundred. To go
+further she dared not; and besides she had no practical need of this.
+In vain did Lichonin try to transfer her to a digital system. Nothing
+came of this, save that he flew into a rage, yelled at Liubka; while
+she would look at him in silence, with astonished, widely open and
+guilty eyes, the lashes of which stuck into long black arrows from
+tears. Also, through a capricious turn of her mind, she began to master
+addition and multiplication with comparative ease, but subtraction and
+division were for her an impenetrable wall. But then, she could, with
+amazing speed and wit, solve all possible jocose oral head-breaking
+riddles, and even remembered very many of them herself from the
+thousand year old usage of the village. Toward geography she was
+perfectly dull. True, she could orientate herself as to the four
+cardinal points on the street, in the garden, and in the room; hundreds
+of times better than Lichonin—the ancient peasant instinct in her
+asserted itself—but she stubbornly denied the sphericity of the earth
+and did not recognize the horizon; and when she was told that the
+terrestrial globe moves in space, she only snorted from laughter.
+Geographical maps to her were always an incomprehensible daubing in
+several colours; but separate figures she memorized exactly and
+quickly. “Where’s Italy?” Lichonin would ask her. “Here it is, a boot,”
+Liubka would say and triumphantly jabbed the Apennine Peninsula.
+“Sweden and Norway?” “This dog, which is jumping off a roof.” “The
+Baltic Sea?” “A widow standing on her knees.” “The Black Sea?” “A
+shoe.” “Spain?” “A fatty in a cap” ... &c. With history matters went no
+better; Lichonin did not take into consideration the fact that she,
+with her childlike soul thirsting for fiction, would have easily become
+familiarized with historic events through various funny and heroically
+touching anecdotes; but he, accustomed to pulling through examinations
+and tutoring high-school boys of the fourth or fifth grade, starved her
+on names and dates. Besides that, he was very impatient, unrestrained,
+irascible; grew fatigued soon, and a secret—usually concealed but
+constantly growing—hatred for the girl who had so suddenly and
+incongruously warped all his life, more and more frequently and
+unjustly broke forth during the time of these lessons.
+
+A far greater success as a pedagogue enjoyed Nijeradze. His guitar and
+mandolin always hung in the dining room, secured to the nails with
+ribbons. The guitar, with its soft, warm sounds, drew Liubka more than
+the irritating, metallic bleating of the mandolin. When Nijeradze would
+come to them as a guest (three or four times a week, in the evening),
+she herself would take the guitar down from the wall, painstakingly
+wipe it off with a handkerchief, and hand it over to him. He, having
+fussed for some time with the tuning, would clear his throat, put one
+leg over the other, negligently throw himself against the back of the
+chair, and begin in a throaty little tenor, a trifle hoarse, but
+pleasant and true:
+
+“The trea-cha-rous sa-ound av akissing
+Resahounds through the quiet night air;
+Tuh all fla-ming hearts it is pleasing,
+And given tuh each lovin’ pair.
+
+
+For a single mohoment of mee-ting ...”
+
+
+And at this he would pretend to swoon away from his own singing, shut
+his eyes, toss his head in the passionate passages or during the
+pauses, tearing his right hand away from the strings; would suddenly
+turn to stone, and for a second would pierce Liubka’s eyes with his
+languorous, humid, sheepish eyes. He knew an endless multitude of
+ballads, catches, and old-fashioned, jocose little pieces. Most of all
+pleased Liubka the universally familiar Armenian couplets about
+Karapet:
+
+“Karapet has a buffet,
+On the buffet’s a confet,
+On the confet’s a portret—
+That’s the self-same Karapet.”
+
+
+[22] Anglice, “confet” is a bon-bon; “portret,” a portrait.—Trans.
+
+
+Of these couplets (in the Caucasus they are called kinto-uri—the song
+of the peddlers) the prince knew an infinite many, but the absurd
+refrain was always one and the same:
+
+“Bravo, bravo, Katenka,
+Katerin Petrovna,
+Don’t you kiss me on the cheek—a,
+Kiss the backs of my head.”
+
+
+These couplets Nijeradze always sang in a diminished voice, preserving
+on his face an expression of serious astonishment about Karapet; while
+Liubka laughed until it hurt, until tears came, until she had nervous
+spasms. Once, carried away, she could not restrain herself and began to
+chime in with him, and their singing proved to be very harmonious.
+Little by little, when she had by degrees completely ceased to be
+embarrassed before the prince, they sang together more and more
+frequently. Liubka proved to have a very soft and low contralto, even
+though thin, on which her past life with its colds, drinking, and
+professional excesses had left absolutely no traces. And mainly—which
+was already a curious gift of God—she possessed an instinctive,
+inherent ability very exactly, beautifully, and always originally, to
+carry on the second voice. There came a time toward the end of their
+acquaintance, when Liubka did not beg the prince, but the prince
+Liubka, to sing some one of the beloved songs of the people, of which
+she knew a multitude. And so, putting her elbow on the table, and
+propping up her head with her palm, like a peasant woman, she would
+start off to the cautious, painstaking, quiet accompaniment:
+
+“Oh, the nights have grown tiresome to me, and wearisome;
+To be parted from my dearie, from my mate!
+Oh, haven’t I myself, woman-like, done a foolish thing—
+Have stirred up the wrath of my own darling:
+When I did call him a bitter drunkard! ...”
+
+
+“Bitter drunkard!” the prince would repeat the last words together with
+her, and would forlornly toss his curly head, inclined to one side; and
+they both tried to end the song so that the scarcely seizable quivering
+of the guitar strings and the voice might by degrees grow quiet, and
+that it might not be possible to note when the sound ended and the
+silence came.
+
+But then, in the matter of THE PANTHER’S SKIN, the work of the famous
+Georgian poet Rustavelli, prince Nijeradze fell down completely. The
+beauty of the poem, of course, consisted in the way it sounded in the
+native tongue; but scarcely would he begin to read in sing-song his
+throaty, sibilant, hawking phrases, when Liubka would at first shake
+for a long time from irresistible laughter; then, finally, burst into
+laughter, filling the whole room with explosive, prolonged peals. Then
+Nijeradze in wrath would slam shut the little tome of the adored
+writer, and swear at Liubka, calling her a mule and a camel. However,
+they soon made up.
+
+There were times when fits of goatish, mischievous merriment would come
+upon Nijeradze. He would pretend that he wanted to embrace Liubka,
+would roll exaggeratedly passionate eyes at her, and would utter with a
+theatrically languishing whisper:
+
+“Me soul! The best rosa in the garden of Allah! Honey and milk are upon
+thy lips, and thy breath is better than the aroma of kabob. Give me to
+drink the bliss of Nirvanah from the goblet of thy lips, O thou, my
+best Tifflissian she-goat!”
+
+But she would laugh, get angry, strike his hands, and threaten to
+complain to Lichonin.
+
+“V-va!” the prince would spread out his hands. “What is Lichonin?
+Lichonin is my friend, my brother, and bosom crony. But then, does he
+know what loffe is? Is it possible that you northern people understand
+loffe? It’s we, Georgians, who are created for loffe. Look, Liubka!
+I’ll show you right away what loffe is!” He would clench his fists,
+bend his body forward, and would start rolling his eyes so ferociously,
+gnash his teeth and roar with a lion’s voice so, that a childish terror
+would encompass Liubka, despite the fact that she knew this to be a
+joke, and she would dash off running into another room.
+
+It must be said, however, that for this lad, in general unrestrained in
+the matter of light, chance romances, existed special firm moral
+prohibitions, sucked in with the milk of his mother Georgian; the
+sacred adates concerning the wife of a friend. And then, probably he
+understood—and it must be said that these oriental men, despite their
+seeming naiveness—and, perhaps, even owing to it—possess, when they
+wish to, a fine psychic intuition—he understood, that having made
+Liubka his mistress for even one minute, he would be forever deprived
+of this charming, quiet, domestic evening comfort, to which he had
+grown so used. For he, who was on terms of thou-ing with almost the
+whole university, nevertheless felt himself so lonely in a strange city
+and in a country still strange to him!
+
+These studies afforded the most pleasure of all to Soloviev. This big,
+strong, and negligent man somehow involuntarily, imperceptibly even to
+himself, began to submit to that hidden, unseizable, exquisite witchery
+of femininity; which not infrequently lurks under the coarsest
+covering, in the harshest, most gnarled environment. The pupil
+dominated, the teacher obeyed. Through the qualities of a primitive,
+but on the other hand a fresh, deep, and original soul, Liubka was
+inclined not to obey the method of another, but to seek out her own
+peculiar, strange processes. Thus, for example, she—like many children,
+however,—learned writing before reading. Not she herself, meek and
+yielding by nature, but some peculiar quality of her mind, obstinately
+refused in reading to harness a vowel alongside of a consonant, or vice
+versa; in writing, however, she would manage this. For penmanship along
+slanted rulings she, despite the general wont of beginners, felt a
+great inclination; she wrote bending low over the paper; blew on the
+paper from exertion, as though blowing off imaginary dust; licked her
+lips and stuck out with the tongue, from the inside, now one cheek, now
+the other. Soloviev did not thwart her, and followed after, along those
+ways which her instinct laid down. And it must be said, that during
+this month and a half he had managed to become attached with all his
+huge, broad, mighty soul to this chance, weak, transitory being. This
+was the circumspect, droll, magnanimous, somewhat wondering love, and
+the careful concern, of a kind elephant for a frail, helpless,
+yellow-downed chick.
+
+The reading was a delectation for both of them, and here again the
+choice of works was directed by the taste of Liubka, while Soloviev
+only followed its current and its sinuosities. Thus, for example,
+Liubka did not overcome Don Quixote, tired, and, finally, turning away
+from him, with pleasure heard Robinson Crusoe through, and wept with
+especial copiousness over the scene of his meeting with his relatives.
+She liked Dickens, and very easily grasped his radiant humour; but the
+features of English manners were foreign to her and incomprehensible.
+They also read Chekhov more than once, and Liubka very freely, without
+difficulty, penetrated the beauty of his design, his smile and his
+sadness. Stories for children moved her, touched her to such a degree
+that it was laughable and joyous to look at her. Once Soloviev read to
+her Chekhov’s story, The Fit, in which, as it is known, a student for
+the first time finds himself in a brothel; and afterwards, on the next
+day, writhes about, as in a fit, in the spasms of a keen psychic
+suffering and the consciousness of common guilt. Soloviev himself did
+not expect that tremendous impression which this narrative would make
+upon her. She cried, swore, wrung her hands, and exclaimed all the
+while:
+
+“Lord! Where does he take all that stuff from, and so skillfully! Why,
+it’s every bit just the way it is with us!”
+
+Once he brought with him a book entitled THE HISTORY OF MANON LESCAUT
+AND THE CHEVALIER DE GRIEUX, the work of Abbe Prevost. It must be said
+that Soloviev himself was reading this remarkable book for the first
+time. But still, Liubka appraised it far more deeply and finely. The
+absence of a plot, the naiveness of the telling, the surplus of
+sentimentality, the olden fashion of the style—all this taken together
+cooled Soloviev; whereas Liubka received the joyous, sad, touching and
+flippant details of this quaint immortal novel not only through her
+ears, but as though with her eyes and with all her naively open heart.
+
+“‘Our intention of espousal was forgotten at St. Denis,’” Soloviev was
+reading, bending his tousled, golden-haired head, illuminated by the
+shade of the lamp, low over the book; “‘we transgressed against the
+laws of the church and, without thinking of it, became espoused.’”
+
+“What are they at? Of their own will, that is? Without a priest? Just
+so?” asked Liubka in uneasiness, tearing herself away from her
+artificial flowers.
+
+“Of course. And what of it? Free love, and that’s all there is to it.
+Like you and Lichonin, now.”
+
+“Oh, me! That’s an entirely different matter. You know yourself where
+he took me from. But she’s an innocent and genteel young lady. That’s a
+low-down thing for him to do. And, believe me, Soloviev, he’s sure to
+leave her later. Ah, the poor girl. Well, well, well, read on.”
+
+But already after several pages all the sympathies and commiserations
+of Liubka went over to the side of the deceived chevalier.
+
+“‘However, the visits and departures by thefts of M. de B. threw me
+into confusion. I also recollected the little purchases of Manon, which
+exceeded our means. All this smacked of the generosity of a new lover.
+“But no, no,” I repeated, “it is impossible that Manon should deceive
+me! She is aware, that I live only for her, she is exceedingly well
+aware that I adore her.”’”
+
+“Ah, the little fool, the little fool!” exclaimed Liubka. “Why, can’t
+you see right off that she’s being kept by this rich man. Ah, trash
+that she is!”
+
+And the further the novel unfolded, the more passionate and lively an
+interest did Liubka take in it. She had nothing against Manon’s
+fleecing her subsequent patrons with the help of her lover and her
+brother, while de Grieux occupied himself with sharping at the club;
+but her every new betrayal brought Liubka into a rage, while the
+sufferings of the gallant chevalier evoked her tears. Once she asked:
+
+“Soloviev, dearie, who was he—this author?”
+
+“He was a certain French priest.”
+
+“He wasn’t a Russian?”
+
+“No, a Frenchman, I’m telling you. See, he’s got everything so—the
+towns are French and the people have French names.”
+
+“Then he was a priest, you say? Where did he know all this from, then?”
+
+“Well, he knew it, that’s all. Because he was an ordinary man of the
+world, a nobleman, and only became a monk afterwards. He had seen a lot
+in his life. Then he again left the monks. But, however, here’s
+everything about him written in detail in front of this book.”
+
+He read the biography of Abbe Prevost to her. Liubka heard it through
+attentively, shaking her head with great significance; asked over again
+about that which she did not understand in certain places, and when he
+had finished she thoughtfully drawled out:
+
+“Then that’s what he is! He’s written it up awfully good. Only why is
+she so low down? For he loves her so, with all his life; but she’s
+playing him false all the time.”
+
+“Well, Liubochka, what can you do? For she loved him too. Only she’s a
+vain hussy, and frivolous. All she wants is only rags, and her own
+horses, and diamonds.”
+
+Liubka flared up and hit one fist against the other.
+
+“I’d rub her into powder, the low-down creature? So that’s called her
+having loved, too! If you love a man, then all that comes from him must
+be dear to you. He goes to prison, and you go with him to prison. He’s
+become a thief, well, you help him. He’s a beggar, but still you go
+with him. What is there out of the way, that there’s only a crust of
+black bread, so long as there’s love? She’s low down, and she’s low
+down, that’s what! But I, in his place, would leave her; or, instead of
+crying, give her such a drubbing that she’d walk around in bruises for
+a whole month, the varmint!”
+
+The end of the novel she could not manage to hear to the finish for a
+long time, and always broke out into sincere warm tears, so that it was
+necessary to interrupt the reading; and the last chapter they overcame
+only in four doses.
+
+The calamities and misadventures of the lovers in prison, the
+compulsory despatch of Manon to America and the self-denial of de
+Grieux in voluntarily following her, so possessed the imagination of
+Liubka and shook her soul, that she even forgot to make her remarks.
+Listening to the story of the quiet, beautiful death of Manon in the
+midst of the desert plain, she, without stirring, with hands clasped on
+her breast, looked at the light; and the tears ran and ran out of her
+staring eyes and fell, like a shower, on the table. But when the
+Chevalier de Grieux, who had lain two days near the corpse of his dear
+Manon, finally began to dig a grave with the stump of his sword—Liubka
+burst into sobbing so that Soloviev became scared and dashed after
+water. But even having calmed down a little, she still sobbed for a
+long time with her trembling, swollen lips and babbled:
+
+“Ah! Their life was so miserable! What a bitter lot that was! And is it
+possible that it’s always like that, darling Soloviev; that just as
+soon as a man and a woman fall in love with each other, in just the way
+they did, then God is sure to punish them? Dearie, but why is that?
+Why?”
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+
+But if the Georgian and the kind-souled Soloviev served as a palliating
+beginning against the sharp thorns of great worldly wisdom, in the
+curious education of the mind and soul of Liubka; and if Liubka forgave
+the pedantism of Lichonin for the sake of a first sincere and limitless
+love for him, and forgave just as willingly as she would have forgiven
+curses, beatings, or a heavy crime—the lessons of Simanovsky, on the
+other hand, were a downright torture and a constant, prolonged burden
+for her. For it must be said that he, as though in spite, was far more
+accurate and exact in his lessons than any pedagogue working out his
+weekly stipulated tutorings.
+
+With the incontrovertibility of his opinions, the assurance of his tone
+and the didacticism of his presentation he took away the will of poor
+Liubka and paralyzed her soul; in the same way that he sometimes,
+during university gatherings or at mass meetings, influenced the timid
+and bashful minds of newcomers. He was an orator at meetings; he was a
+prominent member in the organization of students’ mess halls; he took
+part in the recording, lithographing and publication of lectures; he
+was chosen the head of the course; and, finally, took a very great
+interest in the students’ treasury. He was of that number of people
+who, after they leave the student auditoriums, become the leaders of
+parties, the unrestrained arbiters of pure and self-denying conscience;
+serve out their political stage somewhere in Chukhlon, directing the
+keen attention of all Russia to their heroically woeful situation; and
+after that, beautifully leaning on their past, make a career for
+themselves, thanks to a solid advocacy, a deputation, or else a
+marriage joined with a goodly piece of black loam land and provincial
+activity. Unnoticeably to themselves and altogether unnoticeably, of
+course, to the casual glance, they cautiously right themselves; or,
+more correctly, fade until they grow a belly unto themselves, and
+acquire podagra and diseases of the liver. Then they grumble at the
+whole world; say that they were not understood, that their time was the
+time of sacred ideals. While in the family they are despots and not
+infrequently give money out at usury.
+
+The path of the education of Liubka’s mind and soul was plain to him,
+as was plain and incontrovertible everything that he conceived; he
+wanted at the start to interest Liubka in chemistry and physics.
+
+“The virginally feminine mind,” he pondered, “will be astounded, then I
+shall gain possession of her attention, and from trifles, from
+hocus-pocus, I shall pass on to that which will lead her to the centre
+of universal knowledge, where there is no superstition, no prejudices;
+where there is only a broad field for the testing of nature.”
+
+It must be said that he was inconsistent in his lessons. He dragged in
+all that came to his hand for the astonishment of Liubka. Once he
+brought along for her a large self-made serpent—a long cardboard hose,
+filled with gunpowder, bent in the form of a harmonica, and tied
+tightly across with a cord. He lit it, and the serpent for a long time
+with crackling jumped over the dining room and the bedroom, filling the
+place with smoke and stench. Liubka was scarcely amazed and said that
+this was simply fireworks, that she had already seen this, and that you
+couldn’t astonish her with that. She asked, however, permission to open
+the window. Then he brought a large phial, tinfoil, rosin and a cat’s
+tail, and in this manner contrived a Leyden jar. The discharge,
+although weak, was produced, however.
+
+“Oh, the unclean one take you, Satan!” Liubka began to cry out, having
+felt the dry fillip in her little finger.
+
+Then, out of heated peroxide of manganese, mixed with sand, with the
+help of a druggist’s vial, the gutta-percha end of a syringe, a basin
+filled with water, and a jam jar—oxygen was derived. The red-hot cork,
+coal and phosphorus burnt in the jar so blindingly that it pained the
+eyes. Liubka clapped her palms and squealed out in delight:
+
+“Mister Professor, more! Please, more, more! ...”
+
+But when, having united the oxygen with the hydrogen brought in an
+empty champagne bottle, and having wrapped up the bottle for precaution
+in a towel, Simanovsky ordered Liubka to direct its neck toward a
+burning candle, and when the explosion broke out, as though four
+cannons had been fired off at once—an explosion through which the
+plastering fell down from the ceiling—then Liubka grew timorous, and,
+only getting to rights with difficulty, pronounced with trembling lips,
+but with dignity: “You must excuse me now, but since I have a flat of
+my own, and I’m not at all a wench any longer, but a decent woman, I’d
+ask you therefore not to misbehave in my place. I thought you, like a
+smart and educated man, would do everything nice and genteel, but you
+busy yourself with silly things. They can even put one in jail for
+that.”
+
+Subsequently, much, much later, she told how she had a student friend,
+who made dynamite before her.
+
+It must have been, after all, that Simanovsky, this enigmatic man, so
+influential in his youthful society, where he had to deal with theory
+for the most part, and so incoherent when a practical experiment with a
+living soul had come into his hands—was just simply stupid, but could
+skillfully conceal this sole sincere quality of his.
+
+Having suffered failure in applied sciences, he at once passed on to
+metaphysics. Once he very self-assuredly, and in a tone such that after
+it no refutation was possible, announced to Liubka that there is no
+God, and that he would undertake to prove this during five minutes.
+Whereupon Liubka jumped up from her place, and told him firmly that
+she, even though a quondam prostitute, still believed in God and would
+not allow Him to be offended in her presence; and if he would continue
+such nonsense, then she would complain to Vassil Vassilich.
+
+“I will also tell him,” she added in a weeping voice, “that you,
+instead of teaching me, only rattle off all kinds of stuff and all that
+sort of nastiness, while you yourself hold your hand on my knees. And
+that’s even not at all genteel.” And for the first time during all
+their acquaintanceship she, who had formerly been so timorous and
+constrained, sharply moved away from her teacher.
+
+However, having suffered a few failures, Simanovsky still obstinately
+continued to act upon the mind and imagination of Liubka. He tried to
+explain to her the theory of the origin of species, beginning with an
+amoeba and ending with Napoleon. Liubka listened to him attentively,
+and during this there was an imploring expression in her eyes: “When
+will you stop at last?” She yawned into a handkerchief and then
+guiltily explained: “Excuse me, that’s from my nerves.” Marx also had
+no success goods, supplementary value, the manufacturer and the worker,
+which had become algebraic formulas, were for Liubka merely empty
+sounds, vibrating the air; and she, very sincere at soul, always jumped
+up with joy from her place, when hearing that, apparently, the
+vegetable soup had boiled up, or the samovar was getting ready to boil
+over.
+
+It cannot be said that Simanovsky did not have success with women. His
+aplomb and his weighty, decisive tone always acted upon simple souls,
+especially upon fresh, naive, trusting souls. Out of protracted ties he
+always got out very easily; either he was dedicated to a tremendously
+responsible call, before which domestic love relations were nothing; or
+he pretended to be a superman, to whom all is permitted (O, thou,
+Nietszche, so long ago and so disgracefully misconstrued for
+high-school boys!). The passive, almost imperceptible, but firmly
+evasive resistance of Liubka irritated and excited him. What
+particularly incensed him was the fact that she, who had formerly been
+so accessible to all, ready to yield her love in one day to several
+people in succession, to each one for two roubles, was now all of a
+sudden playing at some pure and disinterested inamoration!
+
+“Nonsense,” he thought. “This can’t be. She’s making believe, and,
+probably, I don’t strike the right tone with her.”
+
+And with every day he became more exacting, captious, and stern. Hardly
+consciously, more probably through habit, he relied on his usual
+influence, intimidating the thought and subduing the will, which rarely
+betrayed him.
+
+Once Liubka complained about him to Lichonin:
+
+“He’s too strict with me, now, Vassil Vassilievich; and I don’t
+understand anything he says, and I don’t want to take lessons with him
+any more.”
+
+Somehow or other, Lichonin lamely quieted her down; but still he had an
+explanation with Simanovsky. The other answered him with sang froid:
+
+“Just as you wish, my dear fellow; if my method displeases you or
+Liubka, then I’m even ready to resign. My problem consists only of
+bringing in a genuine element of discipline into her education. If she
+does not understand anything, then I compel her to learn it by heart,
+aloud. With time this will cease. That is unavoidable. Recall,
+Lichonin, how difficult the transition from arithmetic to algebra was
+for us, when we were compelled to replace common numerals with letters,
+and did not know why this was done. Or why did they teach us grammar,
+instead of simply advising us to write tales and verses?”
+
+And on the very next day, bending down low under the hanging shade of
+the lamp over Liubka’s body, and sniffing all over her breast and under
+her arm pits, he was saying to her:
+
+“Draw a triangle... Well, yes, this way and this way. On top I write
+‘Love.’ Write simply the letter L, and below M and W. That will be: the
+Love of Man and Woman.”
+
+With the air of an oracle, unshakable and austere, he spoke all sorts
+of erotic balderdash and almost unexpectedly concluded:
+
+“And so look, Liuba. The desire to love—it’s the same as the desire to
+eat, to drink, and to breathe the air.” He would squeeze her thigh
+hard, considerably above the knee; and she again, becoming confused and
+not wishing to offend him, would try almost imperceptibly to move her
+leg away gradually.
+
+“Tell me, would it be offensive, now, for your sister, mother, or for
+your husband, that you by chance had not dined at home, but had gone
+into a restaurant or a cook-shop, and had there satisfied your hunger?
+And so with love. No more, no less. A physiological enjoyment. Perhaps
+more powerful, more keen, than all others, but that’s all. Thus, for
+example, now: I want you as a woman. While you ...”
+
+“Oh, drop it, Mister,” Liubka cut him short with vexation. “Well, what
+are you harping on one and the same thing for all the time? Change your
+act. You’ve been told: no and no. Don’t you think I see what you’re
+trying to get at? But only I’ll never agree to unfaithfulness, seeing
+as how Vasilli Vasillievich is my benefactor, and I adore him with all
+my soul... And you’re even pretty disgusting to me with your nonsense.”
+
+Once he caused Liubka a great and scandalous hurt, and all because of
+his theoretical first principles. As at the university they were
+already for a long time talking about Lichonin’s having saved a girl
+from such and such a house; and that now he is taken up with her moral
+regeneration; that rumour, naturally, also reached the studying girls,
+who frequented the student circles. And so, none other than Simanovsky
+once brought to Liubka two female medicos, one historian, and one
+beginning poetess, who, by the way, was already writing critical essays
+as well. He introduced them in the most serious and fool-like manner.
+
+“Here,” he said, stretching out his hand, now in the direction of the
+guests, now of Liubka, “here, comrades, get acquainted. You, Liuba,
+will find in them real friends, who will help you on your radiant path;
+while you—comrades, Liza, Nadya, Sasha and Rachel—you will regard as
+elder sisters a being who has just struggled out of that horrible
+darkness into which the social structure places the modern woman.”
+
+He spoke not exactly so, perhaps; but in any case, approximately in
+that manner. Liubka turned red, extended her hand, with all the fingers
+clumsily folded together, to the young ladies in coloured blouses and
+in leather belts; regaled them with tea and jam; promptly helped them
+with lights for cigarettes; but, despite all invitations, did not want
+to sit down for anything. She would say: “Yes-ss, n-no, as you wish.”
+And when one of the young ladies dropped a handkerchief on the floor,
+she hurriedly made a dash to pick it up.
+
+One of the maidens, red, stout, and with a bass voice, whose face, all
+in all, consisted of only a pair of red cheeks, out of which
+mirth-provokingly peeped out a hint at an upturned nose, and with a
+pair of little black eyes, like tiny raisins, sparkling out of their
+depths, was inspecting Liubka from head to feet, as though through an
+imaginary lorgnette; directing over her a glance which said nothing,
+but was contemptuous. “Why, I haven’t been getting anybody away from
+her,” thought Liubka guiltily. But another was so tactless, that
+she—perhaps for the first time for her, but the hundredth for
+Liubka—began a conversation about: how had she happened upon the path
+of prostitution? This was a bustling young lady, pale, very pretty,
+ethereal; all in little light curls, with the air of a spoiled kitten
+and even a little pink cat’s bow on her neck.
+
+“But tell me, who was this scoundrel, now ... who was the first to ...
+well, you understand? ...”
+
+In the mind of Liubka quickly flashed the images of her former mates,
+Jennka and Tamara, so proud, so brave and resourceful—oh, far brainier
+than these maidens—and she, almost unexpectedly for herself, suddenly
+said sharply:
+
+“There was a lot of them. I’ve already forgotten. Kolka, Mitka,
+Volodka, Serejka, Jorjik, Troshka, Petka, and also Kuzka and Guska with
+a party. But why are you interested?”
+
+“Why... no... that is, I ask as a person who fully sympathizes with
+you.”
+
+“But have you a lover?”
+
+“Pardon me, I don’t understand what you’re saying. People, it’s time we
+were going.”
+
+“That is, what don’t you understand? Have you ever slept with a man?”
+
+“Comrade Simanovsky, I had not presupposed that you would bring us to
+such a person. Thank you. It was exceedingly charming of you!”
+
+It was difficult for Liubka to surmount the first step. She was of
+those natures which endure long, but tear loose rapidly; and she,
+usually so timorous, was unrecognizable at this moment.
+
+“But I know!” she was screaming in wrath. “I know, that you’re the very
+same as I! But you have a papa, a mamma; you’re provided for, and if
+you have to, then you’ll even commit abortion—many do so. But if you
+were in my place, when there’s nothing to stuff your mouth with, and a
+girlie doesn’t understand anything yet, because she can’t read or
+write; while all around the men are shoving like he-dogs—then you’d be
+in a sporting house too. It’s a shame to put on airs before a poor
+girl—that’s what!”
+
+Simanovsky, who had gotten into trouble, said a few general consolatory
+words in a judicious bass, such as the noble fathers used in olden
+comedies, and led his ladies off.
+
+But he was fated to play one more very shameful, distressing, and final
+role in the free life of Liubka. She had already complained to Lichonin
+for a long time that the presence of Simanovsky was oppressive to her;
+but Lichonin paid no attention to womanish trifles: the vacuous,
+fictitious, wordy hypnosis of this man of commands was strong within
+him. There are influences, to get rid of which is difficult, almost
+impossible. On the other hand, he was already for a long time feeling
+the burden of co-habitation with Liubka. Frequently he thought to
+himself: “She is spoiling my life; I am growing common, foolish; I have
+become dissolved in fool benevolence; it will end up in my marrying
+her, entering the excise or the assay office, or getting in among
+pedagogues; I’ll be taking bribes, will gossip, and become an
+abominable provincial morel. And where are my dreams of the power of
+thought, the beauty of life, of love and deeds for all humanity?” he
+would say, at times even aloud, and pull his hair. And for that reason,
+instead of attentively going into Liubka’s complaints, he would lose
+his temper, yell, stamp his feet, and the patient, meek Liubka would
+grow quiet and retire into the kitchen, to have a good cry there.
+
+Now more and more frequently, after family quarrels, in the minutes of
+reconciliation he would say to Liubka:
+
+“My dear Liuba, you and I do not suit each other, comprehend that.
+Look: here are a hundred roubles for you, ride home. Your relatives
+will receive you as their own. Live there a while, look around you. I
+will come for you after half a year; you’ll have become rested, and, of
+course, all that’s filthy, nasty, that has been grafted upon you by the
+city, will go away, will die off. And you’ll begin a new life
+independently, without any assistance, alone and proud!”
+
+But then, can anything be done with a woman who has come to love for
+the first, and, of course, as it seems to her, for the last time? Can
+she be convinced of the necessity for parting? Does logic exist for
+her?
+
+Always reverent before the firmness of the words and decisions of
+Simanovsky, Lichonin, however, surmised and by instinct understood his
+real relation to Liubka; and in his desire to free himself, to shake
+off a chance load beyond his strength, he would catch himself in a
+nasty little thought: “She pleases Simanovsky; and as for her, isn’t it
+all the same if it’s he or I or a third? Guess I’ll make a clean breast
+of it, explain things to him and yield Liubka up to him like a comrade.
+But then, the fool won’t go. Will raise a rumpus.”
+
+“Or just to come upon the two of them together, somehow,” he would
+ponder further, “in some decisive pose... to raise a noise, make a
+row... A noble gesture... a little money and... a getaway.”
+
+He now frequently, for several days, would not return home; and
+afterwards, having come, would undergo torturesome hours of feminine
+interrogations, scenes, tears, even hysterical fits. Liubka would at
+times watch him in secret, when he went out of the house; would stop
+opposite the entrance that he went into, and for hours would await his
+return in order to reproach him and to cry in the street. Not being
+able to read, she intercepted his letters and, not daring to turn to
+the aid of the prince or Soloviev, would save them up in her little
+cupboard together with sugar, tea, lemon and all sorts of other trash.
+She had even reached the stage when, in minutes of anger, she
+threatened him with sulphuric acid.
+
+“May the devil take her,” Lichonin would ponder during the minutes of
+his crafty plans. “It’s all one, let there even be nothing between
+them. But I’ll take and make a fearful scene for him, and her.”
+
+And he would declaim to himself:
+
+“Ah, so! ... I have warmed you in my bosom, and what do I see now? You
+are paying me with black ingratitude. ... And you, my best comrade, you
+have attempted my sole happiness! ... O, no, no, remain together; I go
+hence with tears in my eyes. I see, that I am one too many! I do not
+wish to oppose your love, etc., etc.”
+
+And precisely these dreams, these hidden plans, such momentary, chance,
+and, at bottom, vile ones—of those to which people later do not confess
+to themselves—were suddenly fulfilled. It was the turn of Soloviev’s
+lesson. To his great happiness, Liubka had at last read through almost
+without faltering: “A good plough has Mikhey, and a good one has Sisoi
+as well... a swallow... a swing ... the children love God...” And as a
+reward for this Soloviev read aloud to her Of the Merchant Kalashnikov
+and of Kiribeievich, Life-guardsman of Czar Ivan the Fourth. Liubka
+from delight bounced in her armchair, clapped her hands. The beauty of
+this monumental, heroic work had her in its grasp. But she did not have
+a chance to express her impressions in full. Soloviev was hurrying to a
+business appointment. And immediately, coming to meet Soloviev, having
+barely exchanged greetings with him in the doorway, came Simanovsky.
+Liubka’s face sadly lengthened and her lips pouted. For this pedantic
+teacher and coarse male had become very repugnant to her of late.
+
+This time he began a lecture on the theme that for man there exist no
+laws, no rights, no duties, no honour, no vileness; and that man is a
+quantity self-sufficient, independent of anyone and anything.
+
+“It’s possible to be a God, possible to be an intestinal worm, a tape
+worm—it’s all the same.”
+
+He already wanted to pass on to the theory of amatory emotions; but, it
+is to be regretted, he hurried a trifle from impatience: he embraced
+Liubka, drew her to him and began to squeeze her roughly. “She’ll
+become intoxicated from caressing. She’ll give in!” thought the
+calculating Simanovsky. He sought to touch her mouth with his lips for
+a kiss, but she screamed and snorted spit at him. All the assumed
+delicacy had left her.
+
+“Get out, you mangy devil, fool, swine, dirt! I’ll smash your snout for
+you! ...”
+
+All the lexicon of the establishment had come back to her; but
+Simanovsky, having lost his pince-nez, his face distorted, was looking
+at her with blurred eyes and jabbering whatever came into his head:
+
+“My dear ... It’s all the same ... a second of enjoyment! ... You and I
+will blend in enjoyment! ... No one will find out! ... Be mine! ...”
+
+It was just at this very minute that Lichonin walked into the room.
+
+Of course, at soul he did not admit to himself that this minute he
+would commit a vileness; but only somehow from the side, at a distance,
+reflected that his face was pale, and that his immediate words would be
+tragic and of great significance.
+
+“Yes!” he said dully, like an actor in the fourth act of a drama; and,
+letting his hands drop impotently, began to shake his chin, which had
+fallen upon his breast. “I expected everything, only not this. You I
+excuse, Liuba—you are a cave being; but you, Simanovsky ... I esteemed
+you ... however, I still esteem you a decent man. But I know, that
+passion is at times stronger than the arguments of reason. Right here
+are fifty roubles—I am leaving them for Liuba; you, of course, will
+return them to me later, I have no doubt of that. Arrange her destiny
+... You are a wise, kind, honest man, while I am ... (“A skunk!”
+somebody’s distinct voice flashed through his head.) I am going away,
+because I will not be able to bear this torture any more. Be happy.”
+
+He snatched out of his pocket and with effect threw his wallet on the
+table; then seized his hair and ran out of the room.
+
+Still, this was the best way out for him. And the scene had been played
+out precisely as he had dreamt of it.
+
+
+
+
+ PART THREE
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+
+
+All this Liubka told at length and disjointedly, sobbing on Jennka’s
+shoulder. Of course, in her personal elucidation this tragi-comical
+history proved altogether unlike what it had been in reality.
+
+Lichonin, according to her words, had taken her to him only to entice,
+to tempt her; to have as much use as possible out of her foolishness,
+and then to abandon her. But she, the fool, had in truth fallen in
+love—with him, and since she was very jealous about him and all these
+tousled girls in leather belts, he had done a low-down thing: had sent
+up his comrade on purpose, had framed it up with him, and the other had
+begun to hug Liubka, and Vasska came in, saw it, and kicked up a great
+row, and chased Liubka out into the street.
+
+Of course, in her version there were two almost equal parts of truth
+and untruth; but so, at least, all this had appeared to her.
+
+She also told with great details how, having found herself without
+masculine support or without anybody’s powerful extraneous influence,
+she had hired a room In a rather bad little hotel, on a retired street;
+how even from the first day the boots, a tough bird, a hard-boiled egg,
+had attempted to trade in her, without even having and Vasska came in,
+saw it, and kicked up a great row, the hotel to a private room, but
+even there had been overtaken by an experienced old woman go-between,
+with whose like the houses inhabited by poverty swarm.
+
+Therefore, even with quiet living, there was in the face, in the
+conversation, and in the entire manner of Liubka something peculiar,
+specific to the casual eye; perhaps even entirely imperceptible, but
+for the business scent as plain and as irrefutable as the day.
+
+But the chance, brief, sincere love had given her the strength to
+oppose the inevitability of a second fall. In her heroic courage she
+even went so far as putting in a few notices in the newspapers, that
+she was seeking a place with “all found.” However, she had no
+recommendation of any sort. In addition, she had to do exclusively with
+women when it came to the hiring; and they also, with some sort of an
+inner, infallible instinct, surmised in her their ancient foe—the
+seductress of their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons.
+
+There was neither sense nor use in going home. Her native Vassilkovsky
+district is distant only fifteen versts from the state capital; and the
+rumour that she had entered that sort of an establishment had long
+since penetrated, by means of her fellow-villagers, into the village.
+This was written of in letters, and transmitted verbally, by those
+village neighbours who had seen her both on the street and at Anna
+Markovna’s place itself—porters and bell-hops of hotels, waiters at
+small restaurants, cabbies, small contractors. She knew what odour this
+fame would give off if she were to return to her native haunts. It were
+better to hang one’s self than to endure this.
+
+She was as uneconomical and impractical in money matters as a
+five-year-old child, and in a short while was left without a kopeck;
+while to go back to the brothel was fearful and shameful. But the
+temptations of street prostitution turned up of themselves, and at
+every step begged to be seized. In the evenings, on the main street,
+old hardened street prostitutes at once unerringly guessed her former
+profession. Ever and anon one of them, having come alongside of her,
+would begin in a sweet, ingratiating voice:
+
+“How is it, young lady, that you’re walking alone? Let’s be mates.
+Let’s walk together. That’s always more convenient. Whenever men want
+to pass the time pleasantly with girls, they always love to start a
+party of four.”
+
+And right here the experienced, tried recruiting agent, at first
+casually, but after that warmly, with all her heart, would begin to
+praise up all the conveniences of living at your own landlady’s—the
+tasty food, full freedom of going out, the possibility of always
+concealing from the landlady of your rooms the surplus over the agreed
+pay. Here also much of the malicious and the offensive was said, by the
+way, against the women of the private houses, who were called
+“government hides,” “government stuff,” “genteel maidens” and
+“institutes.” Liubka knew the value of these sneers, because the
+dwellers in brothels also bear themselves with the greatest contempt
+toward street prostitutes, calling them “bimmies” and “venereals.”
+
+To be sure, in the very end that happened which had to happen. Seeing
+in perspective a whole series of hungry days, and in the very depth of
+them the dark horror of an unknown future, Liubka consented to a very
+civil invitation of some respectable little old man; important,
+grayish, well-dressed and correct. For this ignominy Liubka received a
+rouble, but did not dare to protest: the previous life in the house had
+entirely eaten away her personal initiative, mobility and energy.
+Later, several times running, he even did not pay her anything at all.
+
+One young man, easy of manner and handsome, in a cap with a flattened
+brim, put on at a brave slant over one ear, in a silk blouse, girdled
+by a cord with tassels, also led her with him into a hotel, asked for
+wine and a snack; for a long time lied to Liubka about his being an
+earl’s son on the wrong side of the blanket, and that he was the first
+billiardist in the whole city; that all the wenches like him and that
+he would make a swell Jane out of Liubka as well. Then he went out of
+the room for just one minute, as though on business of his own, and
+vanished forever. The stern, cross-eyed porter beat her with
+contentment, long, in silence, with a business-like air; breathing hard
+and covering up Liubka’s mouth with his hand. But in the end, having
+become convinced, probably, that the fault was not hers, but the
+guest’s, he took her purse, in which was a rouble with some small
+change, away from her; and took as security her rather cheap little hat
+and small outer jacket.
+
+Another man of forty-five years, not at all badly dressed, having
+tortured the girl for some two hours, paid for the room and gave her 80
+kopecks; but when she started to complain, he with a ferocious face put
+an enormous red-haired fist up to her very nose, the first thing, and
+said decisively:
+
+“You just snivel a bit more to me... I’ll snivel you... I’ll yell for
+the police, now, and say that you robbed me when I was sleeping. Want
+me to? Is it long since you’ve been in a station house?”
+
+And went away.
+
+And of such cases there were many.
+
+On that day, when her landlords—a boatman and his wife—had refused to
+let her have a room and just simply threw her things out into the yard;
+and when she had wandered the night through on the streets, without
+sleep, under the rain, hiding from the policemen—only then, with
+aversion and shame, did she resolve to turn to Lichonin’s aid. But
+Lichonin was no longer in town pusillanimously, he had gone away the
+very same day when the unjustly wronged and disgraced Liubka had run
+away from the flat. And it was in the morning that there came into her
+head the desperate thought of returning into the brothel and begging
+forgiveness there.
+
+“Jennechka, you’re so clever, so brave, so kind; beg Emma Edwardovna
+for me—the little housekeeper will listen to you,” she implored Jennka
+and kissed her bare shoulders and wetted them with tears.
+
+“She won’t listen to anybody,” gloomily answered Jennka. “And you did
+have to tie up with a fool and a low-down fellow like that.”
+
+“Jennechka, but you yourself advised me to,” timidly retorted Liubka.
+
+“I advised you? ... I didn’t advise you anything. What are you lying on
+me for, just as though I was dead... Well, all right then—let’s go.”
+
+Emma Edwardovna had already known for a long while about the return of
+Liubka; and had even seen her at that moment when she had passed
+through the yard of the house, looking all around her. At soul she was
+not at all against taking Liubka back. It must be said, that she had
+even let her go only because she had been tempted by the money,
+one-half of which she had appropriated for herself. And in addition to
+that, she had reckoned that with the present seasonal influx of new
+prostitutes she would have a large choice; in which, however, she had
+made a mistake, because the season had terminated abruptly. But in any
+case, she had firmly resolved to take Liubka. Only it was necessary,
+for the preservation and rounding out of prestige, to give her a scare
+befittingly.
+
+“Wha-at?” she began to yell at Liubka, scarcely having heard her out,
+babbling in confusion. “You want to be taken on again? ... You wallowed
+the devil knows with whom in the streets, under the fences; and now,
+you scum, you’re again shoving your way into a respectable, decent
+establishment! ... Pfui, you Russian swine! Out! ...”
+
+Liubka was catching her hands, aiming to kiss them, but the housekeeper
+roughly snatched them away. Then, suddenly paling, with a distorted
+face, biting her trembling, twisted lower lip, Emma calculatingly and
+with good aim struck Liubka on her cheek, with all her might; from
+which the other went down on her knees, but got up right away, gasping
+for breath and stammering from the sobs.
+
+“Darlingest, don’t beat me... Oh my dear, don’t beat me...”
+
+And again fell down, this time flat upon the floor.
+
+And this systematic, malignant slaughter, in cold blood, continued for
+some two minutes. Jennka, who had at first been looking on with her
+customary malicious, disdainful air, suddenly could not stand it; she
+began to squeal savagely, threw herself upon the housekeeper, clutched
+her by the hair, tore off her chignon and began to vociferate in a real
+hysterical fit:
+
+“Fool! ... Murderer! ... Low-down go-between! ... Thief! ...”
+
+All the three women vociferated together, and at once enraged wails
+resounded through all the corridors and rooms of the establishment.
+This was that general fit of grand hysterics, which takes possession of
+those confined in prisons, or that elemental insanity (raptus), which
+envelops unexpectedly and epidemically an entire lunatic asylum, from
+which even experienced psychiatrists grow pale.
+
+Only after the lapse of an hour was order restored by Simeon and two
+comrades by profession who had come to his aid. All the thirteen girls
+got it hot; but Jennka, who had gone into a real frenzy, more than the
+others. The beaten-up Liubka kept on crawling before the housekeeper
+until she was taken back. She knew that Jennka’s outbreak would sooner
+or later be reflected upon her in a cruel repayment. Jennka sat on her
+bed until the very night, her legs crossed Turkish fashion; refused
+dinner, and chased out all her mates who went in to her. Her eye was
+bruised, and she assiduously applied a five-kopeck copper to it. From
+underneath the torn shirt a long, transversal scratch reddened on the
+neck, just like a mark from a rope. That was where Simeon had torn off
+her skin in the struggle. She sat thus, alone, with eyes that glowed in
+the dark like a wild beast’s, with distended nostrils, with
+spasmodically moving cheek-bones, and whispered wrathfully:
+
+“Just you wait... Watch out, you damned things—I’ll show you... You’ll
+see yet... Ooh-ooh, you man-eaters...”
+
+But when the lights had been lit, and the junior housekeeper, Zociya,
+knocked on her door with the words: “Miss, get dressed! ... Into the
+drawing room!” she rapidly washed herself, dressed, put some powder on
+the bruise, smeared the scratch over with CREME DE SIMON and pink
+powder, and went out into the drawing room, pitiful but proud;
+beaten-up, but her eyes flaming with an unbearable wrathfulness and a
+beauty not human.
+
+Many people, who have happened to see suicides a few hours before their
+horrible death, say that in their visages in those fateful hours before
+death they have noticed some enigmatic, mysterious, incomprehensible
+allurement. And all who saw Jennka on this night, and on the next day
+for a few hours, for long, intently and in wonder, kept their gaze upon
+her.
+
+And strangest of all (this was one of the sombre wiles of fate) was the
+fact that the indirect culprit of her death, the last grain of sand
+which draws down the pan of the scales, appeared none other than the
+dear, most kind, military cadet Kolya Gladishev.
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+
+Kolya Gladishev was a fine, merry, bashful young lad, with a large
+head; pink-cheeked, with a funny little white, bent line, as though
+from milk, upon his upper lip, under the light down of the moustache,
+sprouting through for the first time; with gray, naive eyes, placed far
+apart; and so closely cropped, that from underneath his flaxen little
+bristles the skin glistened through, just as with a thoroughbred
+Yorkshire suckling pig. It was precisely he with whom Jennka during the
+past winter had played either at maternal relations, or at dolls; and
+thrust upon him a little apple or a couple of bon-bons on his way, when
+he would be going away from the house of ill repute, squirming from
+shame.
+
+This time, when he came, there could at once be felt in him, after long
+living in camps, that rapid change in age, which so often imperceptibly
+and rapidly transforms a boy into a youth. He had already finished the
+cadet academy and with pride counted himself a junker; although he
+still walked around in a cadet’s uniform, with aversion. He had grown
+taller, had become better formed and more adroit; the camp life had
+done him good. He spoke in a bass, and during these months to his most
+great pride the nipples of his breast had hardened; the most
+important—he already knew about this—and undeniable sign of virile
+maturity. Now, in the meanwhile, until the eyes-front severities of a
+military school, he had a period of alluring freedom. Already he was
+permitted to smoke at home, in the presence of grown-ups; and even his
+father had himself presented him with a leather cigar case with his
+monogram, and also, in the elevation of family joy, had assigned him
+fifteen roubles monthly salary.
+
+And it was just here—at Anna Markovna’s—that he had come to know woman
+for the first time—the very same Jennka.
+
+The fall of innocent souls in houses of ill-fame, or with street
+solitaries, is fulfilled far more frequently than it is usually
+thought. When not green youths only, but even honourable men of fifty,
+almost grandfathers, are interrogated about this ticklish matter, they
+will tell you, sure enough, the ancient stencilled lie of how they had
+been seduced by a chambermaid or a governess. But this is one of those
+lingering, queer lies, going back into the depth of past decades, which
+are almost never noticed by a single one of the professional observers,
+and in any case are not described by any one.
+
+If each one of us will try, to put it pompously, to put his hand on his
+heart, then every one will catch himself in the fact, that having once
+in childhood said some sort of boastful or touching fiction, which had
+success, and having repeated it for that reason two and five and ten
+times more—he afterwards cannot get rid of it all his life, and repeats
+with entire firmness by now a history which had never been; a firmness
+such that in the very end he believes the story. With time Kolya also
+narrated to his comrades how his aunt once removed, a young woman of
+the world had seduced him. It must be said, however, that the intimate
+proximity to this lady—a large, dark-eyed, white faced, sweetly
+fragrant southern woman—did really exist; but existed only in Kolya’s
+imagination, in those sad, tragic and timid minutes of solitary sexual
+enjoyments, through which pass if not a hundred percent of all men,
+then ninety-nine, in any case.
+
+Having experienced mechanical sexual excitements very early,
+approximately since nine or nine years and a half, Kolya did not at all
+have the least understanding of the significance of that end of being
+in love or of courtship, which is so horrible on the face of it, if it
+be looked at impartially, or if it be explained scientifically.
+Unfortunately, there was at that time near him not a one of the present
+progressive and learned ladies who, having turned away the neck of the
+classic stork, and torn up by the roots the cabbage underneath which
+children are found, recommend that the great mystery of love and
+generation be explained to children in lectures, through comparisons
+and assimilations, mercilessly and in a well-nigh graphic manner.
+
+It must be said, that at that remote time of which we are speaking, the
+private institutions—male PENSIONS and institutes, as well as academies
+for cadets—represented some sort of hot-house nurseries. The care of
+the mind and morality they tried to entrust as much as possible to
+educators who were bureaucrats-formalists; and in addition impatient,
+captious, capricious in their sympathies and hysterical, just like old
+maid lady teachers. Now it is otherwise. But at that time the boys were
+left to themselves. Barely snatched away, speaking figuratively, from
+the maternal breast; from the care of devoted nurses; from morning and
+evening caresses, quiet and sweet; even though they were ashamed of
+every manifestation of tenderness as “womanishness,” they were still
+irresistibly and sweetly drawn to kisses, contacts, conversations
+whispered in the ear.
+
+Of course, attentive, solicitous treatment, bathing, exercises in the
+open air—precisely not gymnastics, but voluntary exercises, each to his
+own taste—could have always put off the coming of this climacteric
+period or soften and make it understandable.
+
+I repeat—then there was nothing of this.
+
+The longing for family endearment, the endearment of mother, sister,
+nurse, so roughly and unexpectedly cut short, turned into deformed
+forms of courting (every whit like the “crushes” in a female institute)
+of good-looking boys, of “fairies”; they loved to whisper in corners
+and, walking arm in arm, or embracing in dark corridors, to tell in
+each other’s ears improbable histories of adventures with women. This
+was partly both childhood’s need of the fairy-tale element and partly
+awakening sensuality as well. Not infrequently some fifteen-year-old
+chubby, for whom it was just the proper time to be playing at popular
+tennis or to be greedily putting away buckwheat porridge with milk,
+would be telling, having read up, of course, on certain cheap novels,
+of how every Saturday, now, when it is leave, he goes to a certain,
+handsome widow millionairess; and of how she is passionately enamored
+of him; and how near their couch always stand fruits and precious wine;
+and how furiously and passionately she makes love to him.
+
+Here, by the bye, came along the inevitable run of prolonged reading,
+like hard drinking, which, of course, every boy and girl has undergone.
+No matter how strict in this respect the class surveillance may be, the
+striplings did read, are reading, and will read just that which is not
+permitted them. Here is a special passion, CHIC, the allurement of the
+forbidden. Already in the third class went from hand to hand the
+manuscript transcripts of Barkov; of a spurious Pushkin; the youthful
+sins of Lermontov and others: “THE FIRST NIGHT,” “THE CHERRY,” “LUCAS,”
+“THE FESTIVAL AT PETERHOF,” “THE SHE UHLAN, GRIEF THROUGH WISDOM,” “THE
+PRIEST,” &c.
+
+But no matter how strange, fictitious or paradoxical this may seem,
+still, even these compositions, and drawings, and obscene photographic
+cards, did not arouse a delightful curiosity. They were looked upon as
+a prank, a lark, and the allurement of contraband risk. In the cadets’
+library were chaste excerpts from Pushkin and Lermontov; all of
+Ostrovsky, who only made you laugh; and almost all of Turgenev, who was
+the very one that played a chief and cruel role in Kolya’s life. As it
+is known, love with the late great Turgenev is always surrounded with a
+tantalizing veil; some sort of crepe, unseizable, forbidden, but
+tempting: his maidens have forebodings of love and are agitated at its
+approach, and are ashamed beyond all measure, and tremble, and turn
+red. Married women or widows travel this tortuous path somewhat
+differently: they struggle for a long time with their duty, or with
+respectability, or with the opinion of the world; and, in the
+end—oh!—fall with tears; or—oh!—begin to brave it; or, which is still
+more frequent, the implacable fate cuts short her or his life at the
+most—oh!—necessary moment, when it only lacks a light puff of wind for
+the ripened fruit to fall. And yet all of his personages still thirst
+after this shameful love; weep radiantly and laugh joyously from it;
+and it shuts out all the world for them. But since boys think entirely
+differently than we grown-ups, and since everything that is forbidden,
+everything not said fully, or said in secret, has in their eyes an
+enormous, not only twofold but threefold interest—it is therefore
+natural that out of reading they drew the hazy thought that the
+grown-ups were concealing something from them.
+
+And it must be mentioned—had not Kolya (like the majority of those of
+his age) seen the chambermaid Phrociya—so rosy-cheeked, always merry,
+with legs of the hardness of steel (at times he, in the heat of
+playing, had slapped her on the back), had he not seen her once, when
+Kolya had by accident walked quickly into papa’s cabinet, scurry out of
+there with all her might, covering her face with her apron; and had he
+not seen that during this time papa’s face was red, with a dark blue,
+seemingly lengthened nose? And Kolya had reflected: “Papa looks like a
+turkey.” Had not Kolya—partly through the fondness for pranks and the
+mischievousness natural to all boys, partly through tedium—accidentally
+discovered in an unlocked drawer of papa’s writing table an enormous
+collection of cards, whereon was represented just that which shop
+clerks call the crowning of love, and worldly nincompoops—the unearthly
+passion?
+
+And had he not seen, that every time before the visit of the
+sweet-scented and bestarched Paul Edwardovich, some ninny with some
+embassy, with whom mamma, in imitation of the fashionable St.
+Petersburg promenades to the Strelka, used to ride to the Dnieper to
+contemplate the sun setting on the other side of the river, in the
+Chernigovskaya district—had he not seen how mamma’s bosom went, and how
+her cheeks glowed under the powder; had he not detected at these
+moments many new and strange things; had he not heard her voice, an
+altogether unknown voice, like an actor’s; nervously breaking off,
+mercilessly malicious to those of the family and the servants, and
+suddenly soft, like velvet, like a green meadow under the sun, when
+Paul Edwardovich would arrive? Ah, if we people who have been made wise
+by experience would know how much, and even too much, the urchins and
+little girls surrounding us know, of whom we usually say:
+
+“Well, why mind Volodya (or Petie, or Katie)? ... Why, they are little.
+They don’t understand anything! ...”
+
+So also not in vain passed for Gladishev the history of his elder
+brother, who had just come out of a military school into one of the
+conspicuous grenadier regiments; and, being on leave until such time
+when it would be possible for him to spread his wings, lived in two
+separate rooms with his family. At that time Niusha, a chambermaid, was
+in their service; at times they jestingly called her signorita Anita—a
+seductive black-haired girl, who, if she were to change costumes, could
+in appearance be taken for a dramatic actress, or a princess of the
+royal blood, or a political worker. Kolya’s mother manifestly
+countenanced the fact that Kolya’s brother, half in jest, half in
+earnest, was allured by this girl. Of course, she had only the sole,
+holy, maternal calculation: If it were destined, after all, for her
+Borenka to fall, then let him give his purity, his innocence, his first
+physical inclination, not to a prostitute, not to a street-walker, not
+to a seeker of adventures, but to a pure girl. Of course, only a
+disinterested, unreasoning, truly-maternal feeling guided her. Kolya at
+that time was living through the epoch of llanos, pampases, Apaches,
+track-finders, and a chief by the name of “Black Panther”; and, of
+course, attentively kept track of the romance of his brother, and made
+his own syllogisms; at times only too correct, at times fantastic.
+After six months, from behind a door, he was the witness—or more
+correctly the auditor—of an outrageous scene. The wife of the general,
+always so respectable and restrained, was yelling in her boudoir at
+signorita Anita, and cursing in the words of a cab-driver: the
+signorita was in the fifth month of pregnancy. If she had not cried,
+then, probably, they would simply have given her smart-money, and she
+would have gone away in peace; but she was in love with the young
+master, did not demand anything, and for that reason they drove her
+away with the aid of the police.
+
+In the fifth or sixth class many of Kolya’s comrades had already tasted
+of the tree of knowledge of evil. At that time it was considered in
+their corpus an especial, boastful masculine chic to call all secret
+things by their own names. Arkasha Shkar contracted a disease, not
+dangerous, but still venereal; and he became for three whole months the
+object of worship of all the seniors—at that time there were no squads
+yet. And many of them visited brothels; and, really, about their sprees
+they spoke far more handsomely and broadly than the hussars of the time
+of Denis Davidov.[23] These debauches were esteemed by them the last
+word in valour and maturity.
+
+[23] A Russian ban vivant, wit and poet (1781-1839), the overwhelming
+majority of whose lyrics deals with military exploits and
+debauches.—Trans.
+
+
+And so it happened once, that they did not exactly persuade Gladishev
+to go to Anna Markovna, but rather he himself had begged to go, so
+weakly had he resisted temptation. This evening he always recalled with
+horror, with aversion; and dimly, just like some heavy dream. With
+difficulty he recalled, how in the cab, to get up courage, he had drunk
+rum, revoltingly smelling of real bedbugs; how qualmish this beastly
+drink made him feel; how he had walked into the big hall, where the
+lights of the lustres and the candelabra on the walls were turning
+round in fiery wheels; where the women moved as fantastic pink, blue,
+violet splotches, and the whiteness of their necks, bosoms and arms
+flashed with a blinding, spicy, victorious splendour. Some one of the
+comrades whispered something in the ear of one of these fantastic
+figures. She ran up to Kolya and said:
+
+“Listen, you good-looking little cadet, your comrades are saying, now,
+that you’re still innocent ... Let’s go ... I’ll teach you everything.”
+
+The phrase was said in a kindly manner; but this phrase the walls of
+Anna Markovna’s establishment had already heard several thousand times.
+Further, that took place which it was so difficult and painful to
+recall, that in the middle of his recollections Kolya grew tired, and
+with an effort of the will turned back the imagination to something
+else. He only remembered dimly the revolving and spreading circles from
+the light of the lamp; persistent kisses; disconcerting contacts—then a
+sudden sharp pain, from which one wanted both to die in enjoyment and
+to cry out in terror; and then with wonder he saw his pale shaking
+hands, which could not, somehow, button his clothes.
+
+Of course, all men have experienced this primordial tristia post
+coitus; but this great moral pain, very serious in its significance and
+depth, passes very rapidly, remaining, however, with the majority for a
+long time—sometimes for all life—in the form of wearisomeness and
+awkwardness after certain moments. In a short while Kolya became
+accustomed to it; grew bolder, became familiarized with woman, and
+rejoiced very much over the fact that when he came into the
+establishment, all the girls, and Verka before all, would call out:
+
+“Jennechka, your lover has come!”
+
+It was pleasant, in relating this to his comrades, to be plucking at an
+imaginary moustache.
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+
+It was still early—about nine—of a rainy August evening. The
+illuminated drawing room in the house of Anna Markovna was almost
+empty. Only near the very doors a young telegraph clerk was sitting,
+his legs shyly and awkwardly squeezed under his chair, and was trying
+to start with the thick-fleshed Katie that worldly, unconstrained
+conversation which is laid down as the proper thing in polite society
+at quadrille, during the intermissions between the figures of the
+dance. And, also, the long-legged, aged Roly-Poly wandered over the
+room, sitting down now next one girl, now another, and entertaining
+them all with his fluent chatter.
+
+When Kolya Gladishev walked into the front hall, the first to recognize
+him was the round-eyed Verka, dressed in her usual jockey costume. She
+began to twirl round and round, to clap her palms, and called out:
+
+“Jennka, Jennka, come quicker, your little lover has come to you ...
+The little cadet ... And what a handsome little fellow!”
+
+But Jennka was not in the drawing room at this time; a stout
+head-conductor had already managed to get hold of her.
+
+This elderly, sedate, and majestic man was a very convenient guest,
+because he never lingered in the house for more than twenty minutes,
+fearing to let his train go by; and, even so, glanced at his watch all
+the while. During this time he regularly drank down four bottles of
+beer, and, going away, infallibly gave the girl half a rouble for candy
+and Simeon twenty kopecks for drink-money.
+
+Kolya Gladishev was not alone, but with a comrade of the same school,
+Petrov, who was stepping over the threshold of a brothel for the first
+time, having given in to the tempting persuasions of Gladishev.
+Probably, during these minutes, he found himself in the same wild,
+absurd, feverish state which Kolya himself had gone through a year and
+a half ago, when his legs had shook, his mouth had grown dry, and the
+lights of the lamps had danced before him in revolving wheels.
+
+Simeon took their great-coats from them and hid them separately, on the
+side, that the shoulder straps and the buttons might not be seen.
+
+It must be said, that this stern man, who did not approve of students
+because of their free-and-easy facetiousness and incomprehensible style
+in conversation, also did not like when just such boys in uniform
+appeared in the establishment.
+
+“Well, what’s the good of it?” he would at times say sombrely to his
+colleagues by profession. “What if a whippersnapper like that comes,
+and runs right up nose to nose against his superiors? Smash, and
+they’ve closed up the establishment! There, like Lupendikha’s three
+years back. Of course, it’s nothing that they closed it up—she
+transferred it in another name right off; and when they sentenced her
+to sit in jail for a year and a half, why, it came to a pre-etty penny
+for her. She had to shell out four hundred for Kerbesh alone ... And
+then it also happens: a little pig of that kind will cook up some sort
+of disease for himself and start in whining: ‘Oh, papa! Oh, mamma! I am
+dying!’ ‘Tell me, you skunk, where you got it?’ ‘There and there ...’
+Well, and so they haul you over the coals again; judge me, thou
+unrighteous judge!”
+
+“Pass on, pass on,” said he to the cadets sternly.
+
+The cadets entered, blinking from the bright light. Petrov, who had
+been drinking to get up courage, swayed and was pale. They sat down
+beneath the picture of the Feast of the Russian Noblemen, and
+immediately two of the young ladies—Verka and Tamara—joined them on
+both sides.
+
+“Treat me to a smoke, you beautiful little brunet!” Verka turned to
+Petrov; and as though by accident put against his leg her strong, warm
+thigh, closely drawn over with white tights. “What an agreeable little
+fellow you are!”
+
+“But where’s Jennie?” Gladishev asked of Tamara. “Is she busy with
+anybody?”
+
+Tamara looked him in the eyes intently—looked so fixedly, that the boy
+even began to feel uncomfortable, and turned away.
+
+“No. Why should she be busy? Only the whole day to-day her head ached;
+she was walking through the corridor, and at that time the housekeeper
+opened the door quickly and accidentally struck her in the forehead—and
+so her head started in to ache. The poor thing, she’s lying the whole
+day with a cold pack. But why? Or can’t you hold out? Wait a while,
+she’ll come out in five minutes. You’ll remain very much satisfied with
+her.”
+
+Verka pestered Petrov:
+
+“Sweetie, dearie, what a tootsie-wootsicums you are! I adore such pale
+brunets; they are jealous and very fiery in love.”
+
+And suddenly she started singing in a low voice:
+
+“He’s kind of brown,
+My light, my own,
+Won’t sell me out, and won’t deceive.
+He suffers madly,
+Pants and coat gladly
+All for a woman he will give.”
+
+
+“How do they call you, ducky dear?”
+
+“George,” answered Petrov in a hoarse, cadet’s bass.
+
+“Jorjik Jorochka! Ah, how very nice!”
+
+She suddenly drew near to his ear and whispered with a cunning face:
+
+“Jorochka, come to me.”
+
+Petrov was abashed and forlornly let out in a bass:
+
+“I don’t know ... It all depends on what the comrade says, now...”
+
+Verka burst into loud laughter:
+
+“There’s a case for you! Say, what an infant it is! Such as you,
+Jorochka, in a little village would long since have been married; but
+he says: ‘It all depends on the comrade!’ You ought to ask a nurse or a
+wet nurse yet! Tamara, my angel, just imagine: I’m calling him to go
+sleeping, but he says: ‘It all depends on the comrade.’ What about you,
+mister friend, are you his bringer up?”
+
+“Don’t be pestering, you devil!” clumsily, altogether like a cadet
+before a quarrel, grumbled out Petrov in a bass.
+
+The lanky, ricketty Roly-Poly, grown still grayer, walked up to the
+cadets, and, inclining his long, narrow head to one side, and having
+made a touching grimace, began to patter:
+
+“Messieurs cadets, highly educated young people; the flower, so to
+speak, of the intelligentzia; future masters of ordnance, will you not
+lend to a little old man, an aborigine of these herbiferous regions,
+one good old cigarette? I be poor. Omnia mea mecum porto. But I do
+adore the weed.”
+
+And, having received a cigarette, suddenly, without delay, he got into
+a free-and-easy, unconstrained pose; put forward the bent right leg,
+put his hand to his side, and began to sing in a wizened falsetto:
+
+“It used to be that I gave dinners,
+In rivers flowed the champagne wine;
+But now I have not even bread crusts,
+Nor for a split, oh brother mine.
+
+
+It used to be—in the Saratov
+The doorman rushed, and was so fine;
+But now all drive me in the neck,
+Give for a split, oh brother mine.”
+
+
+“Gentlemen!” suddenly exclaimed Roly-Poly with pathos, cutting short
+his singing and smiting himself on the chest. “Here I behold you, and
+know that you are the future generals Skobelev and Gurko; but I, too,
+in a certain respect, am a military hound. In my time, when I was
+studying for a forest ranger, all our department of woods and forests
+was military; and for that reason, knocking at the diamond-studded,
+golden doors of your hearts, I beg of you—donate toward the raising for
+an ensign of taxation of a wee measure of spiritus vini, which same is
+taken of the monks also.”
+
+“Roly!” cried the stout Kitty from the other end, “show the young
+officers the lightning; or else, look you, you’re taking the money only
+for nothing, you good-for-nothing camel.”
+
+“Right away!” merrily responded Roly-Poly. “Most illustrious
+benefactors, turn your attention this way. Living Pictures. Thunder
+Storm on a Summer Day in June. The work of the unrecognized
+dramaturgist who concealed himself under the pseudonym of Roly-Poly.
+The first picture.
+
+“‘It was a splendid day in June. The scorching rays of the sun
+illumined the blossoming meadows and environs ...’”
+
+Roly-Poly’s Don Quixotic phiz spread into a wrinkled, sweetish smile;
+and the eyes narrowed into half-circles.
+
+“‘... But now in the distance the first clouds have appeared upon the
+horizon. They grew, piled upon each other like crags, covering little
+by little the blue vault of the sky.”
+
+By degrees the smile was coming off Roly-Poly’s face, and it grew more
+and more serious and austere.
+
+“‘At last the clouds have overcast the sun ... An ominous darkness has
+fallen ...’”
+
+Roly-Poly made his physiognomy altogether ferocious.
+
+“‘The first drops of the rain fell ...’”
+
+Roly-Poly began to drum his fingers on the back of a chair.
+
+“‘... In the distance flashed the first lightning ... ’”
+
+Roly-Poly’s eye winked quickly, and the left corner of his mouth gave a
+twitch.
+
+“‘... Whereupon the rain began to pour down in torrents, and there came
+a sudden, blinding flash of lightning...’”
+
+And with unusual artistry and rapidity Roly-Poly, with a successive
+movement of his eyebrows, eyes, nose, the upper and the lower lip,
+portrayed a lightning zig-zag.
+
+“‘... A jarring thunder clap burst out—trrroo-oo. An oak that had stood
+through the ages fell down to earth, as though it were a frail reed
+...’”
+
+And Roly-Poly with an ease and daring not to be expected from one of
+his years, bending neither the knees nor the back, only drawing down
+his head, instantaneously fell down; straight, like a statue, with his
+back to the floor, but at once deftly sprang up on his feet.
+
+“‘But now the thunder storm is gradually abating. The lightning flashes
+less and less often. The thunder sounds duller, just like a satiated
+beast—oooooo-oooooo ... The clouds scurry away. The first rays of the
+blessed sun have peeped out ...’”
+
+Roly-Poly made a wry smile.
+
+“‘... And now, the luminary of day has at last begun to shine anew over
+the bathed earth ...’”
+
+And the silliest of beatific smiles spread anew over the senile face of
+Roly-Poly.
+
+The cadets gave him a twenty-kopeck piece each. He laid them on his
+palm, made a pass in the air with the other hand, said: ein, zwei,
+drei, snapped two of his fingers, and the coins vanished.
+
+“Tamarochka, this isn’t honest,” he said reproachfully. “Aren’t you
+ashamed to take the last money from a poor retired almost-head-officer?
+Why have you hidden them here?”
+
+And, having snapped his fingers again, he drew the coins out of
+Tamara’s ear.
+
+“I shall return at once, don’t be bored without me,” he reassured the
+young people; “but if you can’t wait for me, then I won’t have any
+special pretensions about it. I have the honour! ...”
+
+“Roly-Poly!” Little White Manka cried after him, “Won’t you buy me
+candy for fifteen kopecks... Turkish Delight, fifteen kopecks’ worth.
+There, grab!”
+
+Roly-Poly neatly caught in its flight the thrown fifteen-kopeck piece;
+made a comical curtsey and, pulling down the uniform cap with the green
+edging at a slant over his eyes, vanished.
+
+The tall, old Henrietta walked up to the cadets, also asked for a smoke
+and, having yawned, said:
+
+“If only you young people would dance a bit—for as it is the young
+ladies sit and sit, just croaking from weariness.”
+
+“If you please, if you please!” agreed Kolya. “Play a waltz and
+something else of the sort.”
+
+The musicians began to play. The girls started to whirl around with one
+another, ceremoniously as usual, with stiffened backs and with eyes
+modestly cast down.
+
+Kolya Gladishev, who was very fond of dancing, could not hold out and
+invited Tamara; he knew even from the previous winter that she danced
+more lightly and skillfully than the rest. While he was twirling in the
+waltz, the stout head-conductor, skillfully making his way between the
+couples, slipped away unperceived through the drawing room. Kolya did
+not have a chance to notice him.
+
+No matter how Verka pressed Petrov, she could not, in any way, drag him
+off his place. The recent light intoxication had by now gone entirely
+out of his head; and more and more horrible, and unrealizable, and
+monstrous did that for which he had come here seem to him. He might
+have gone away, saying that not a one here pleased him; have put the
+blame on a headache, or something; but he knew that Gladishev would not
+let him go; and mainly—it seemed unbearably hard to get up from his
+place and to walk a few steps by himself. And, besides that, he felt
+that he had not the strength to start talking of this with Kolya.
+
+They finished dancing. Tamara and Gladishev again sat down side by
+side.
+
+“Well, really, how is it that Jennechka isn’t coming by now?” asked
+Kolya impatiently.
+
+Tamara quickly gave Verka a look with a question, incomprehensible to
+the uninitiated, in her eyes. Verka quickly lowered her eyelashes. This
+signified: yes, he is gone.
+
+“I’ll go right away and call her,” said Tamara.
+
+“But what are you so stuck on your Jennka for,” said Henrietta. “You
+might take me.”
+
+“All right, another time,” answered Kolya and nervously began to smoke.
+
+Jennka was not even beginning to dress yet. She was sitting before the
+mirror and powdering her face.
+
+“What is it, Tamarochka?” she asked.
+
+“Your little cadet has come to you. He’s waiting.”
+
+“Ah, that’s the little baby of last year... Well, the devil with him!”
+
+“And that’s right, too. But how healthy and handsome the lad has grown,
+and how tall... It’s a delight, that’s all! So if you don’t want to,
+I’ll go myself.”
+
+Tamara saw in the mirror how Jennka contracted her eyebrows.
+
+“No, you wait a while, Tamara, don’t. I’ll see. Send him here to me.
+Say that I’m not well, that my head aches.”
+
+“I have already told him, anyway, that Zociya had opened the door
+unsuccessfully and hit you on the head; and that you’re lying down with
+a cold pack. But the only thing is, is it worth while, Jennechka?”
+
+“Whether it’s worth while or not, that’s not your business, Tamara,”
+answered Jennka rudely.
+
+Tamara asked cautiously:
+
+“Is it possible, then, that you aren’t at all, at all sorry?”
+
+“But for me you aren’t sorry?” and she passed her hand over the red
+stripe that slashed her throat. “And for yourself you aren’t sorry? And
+not sorry for this Liubka, miserable as she is? And not sorry for
+Pashka? You’re huckleberry jelly, and not a human being!”
+
+Tamara smiled craftily and haughtily:
+
+“No, when it comes to a real matter, I’m not jelly. Perhaps you’ll see
+this soon, Jennechka. Only let’s better not quarrel—as it is it isn’t
+any too sweet to live. All right, I’ll go at once and send him to you.”
+
+When she had gone away, Jennka lowered the light in the little hanging
+blue lantern, put on her night blouse, and lay down. A minute later
+Gladishev walked in; and after him Tamara, dragging Petrov by the hand,
+who resisted and kept his head down. And in the rear was thrust in the
+pink, sharp, foxy little phiz of the cross-eyed housekeeper Zociya.
+
+“And that’s fine, now,” the housekeeper commenced to bustle. “It’s just
+sweet to look at; two handsome gents and two swell dames. A regular
+bouquet. What shall I treat you with, young people? Will you order beer
+or wine?”
+
+Gladishev had a great deal of money in his pocket, as much as he never
+had before during all his brief life—all of twenty-five roubles; and he
+wanted to go on a splurge. Beer he drank only out of bravado, but could
+not bear its bitter taste, and wondered himself how others could ever
+drink it. And for that reason, squeamishly, like an old rake, sticking
+out his lower lip, he said mistrustfully:
+
+“But then, you surely must have some awful stuff?”
+
+“What do you mean, what do you mean, good-looking! The very best
+gentlemen approve of it. Of the sweet, there are Cagore, church wine,
+Teneriffe; while of the French there’s Lafitte. You can get port wine
+also. The girls just simply adore Lafitte with lemonade.”
+
+“And what are the prices?”
+
+“No dearer than money. As is the rule in all good establishments—a
+bottle of Lafitte five roubles, four bottles of lemonade at a half
+each, that’s two roubles, and only seven in all...”
+
+“That’ll do you, Zociya,” Jennka stopped her indifferently, “it’s a
+shame to take advantage of boys. Even five is enough. You can see these
+are decent people, and not just anybody...”
+
+But Gladishev turned red, and with a negligent air threw a ten rouble
+note on the table.
+
+“Oh, what’s the use of talking about it. All right, bring it.”
+
+“Whilst I’m at it, I’ll take the money for the visit as well. What
+about you, young people—are you on time or for the night? You know the
+rates yourself: on time, at two roubles; for the night, at five.”
+
+“All right, all right. On time,” interrupted Jennka, flaring up. “Trust
+us in that, at least.”
+
+The wine was brought. Tamara through importunity got pastry, besides.
+Jennka asked for permission to call in Little White Manka. Jennka
+herself did not drink, did not get up from the bed, and all the time
+muffled herself up in a gray shawl of Orenburg[24] manufacture,
+although it was hot in the room. She looked fixedly, without tearing
+her eyes away, at the handsome, sunburned face of Gladishev, which had
+become so manly.
+
+[24] Orenburg has as high a reputation for woolens as Sheffield has for
+steel.—Trans.
+
+
+“What’s the matter with you, dearie?” asked Gladishev, sitting down on
+her bed and stroking her hand.
+
+“Nothing special... Head aches a little... I hit myself.”
+
+“Well, don’t you pay any attention.”
+
+“Well, here I’ve seen you, and already I feel better. How is it you
+haven’t been here for so long?”
+
+“I couldn’t snatch away the time, nohow-camping. You know yourself...
+We had to put away twenty-five versts a day. The whole day drilling and
+drilling: field, formation, garrison. With a full pack. Used to get so
+fagged out from morning to night that towards evening you couldn’t feel
+your legs under you... We were at the manoeuvres also... It isn’t
+sweet...”
+
+“Oh, you poor little things!” Little White Manka suddenly clasped her
+hands. “And what do they torture you for, angels that you are? If I was
+to have a brother like you, or a son—my heart would just simply bleed.
+Here’s to your health, little cadet!”
+
+They clinked glasses. Jennka was just as attentively scrutinizing
+Gladishev.
+
+“And you, Jennechka?” he asked, extending a glass.
+
+“I don’t want to,” she answered listlessly, “but, however, ladies,
+you’ve drunk some wine, chatted a bit—don’t wear the welcome off the
+mat.”
+
+“Perhaps you’ll stay with me the whole night?” she asked Gladishev,
+when the others had gone away. “Don’t you be afraid, dearie; if you
+won’t have enough money, I’ll pay the difference for you. You see, how
+good-looking you are, that a wench does not grudge even money for you?”
+she began laughing.
+
+Gladishev turned around to her; even his unobserving ear was struck by
+Jennka’s strange tone—neither sad, nor kindly, nor yet mocking.
+
+“No, sweetie, I’d be very glad to; I’d like to remain myself, but I
+can’t possibly; I promised to be home toward ten o’clock.”
+
+“That’s nothing, dear, they’ll wait; you’re altogether a grown-up man
+now. Is it possible that you have to listen to anybody? ... But,
+however, as you wish. Shall I put out the light entirely, perhaps; or
+is it all right the way it is? Which do you want—the outside or near
+the wall?”
+
+“It’s immaterial to me,” he answered in a quavering voice; and, having
+embraced with his arm the hot, dry body of Jennka, he stretched with
+his lips toward her face. She slightly repulsed him.
+
+“Wait, bear a while, sweetheart—we have time enough to kiss our fill
+yet. Just lie still for one little minute... So, now... quiet,
+peaceful... don’t stir...”
+
+These words, passionate and imperious, acted like hypnosis upon
+Gladishev. He submitted to her and lay down on his back, putting his
+hands underneath his head. She raised herself a little, leant upon her
+elbow, and placing her head upon the bent hand, silently, in the faint
+half-light, was looking his body over—so white, strong, muscular; with
+a high and broad pectoral cavity; with well-made ribs; with a narrow
+pelvis; and with mighty, bulging thighs. The dark tan of the face and
+the upper half of the neck was divided by a sharp line from the
+whiteness of the shoulders and breast.
+
+Gladishev blinked for a second. It seemed to him that he was feeling
+upon himself, upon his face, upon his entire body, this intensely fixed
+gaze, which seemed to touch his face and tickle it, like the cobwebby
+contact of a comb, which you first rub against a cloth—the sensation of
+a thin, imponderous, living matter.
+
+He opened his eyes and saw altogether near him the large, dark, uncanny
+eyes of the woman, who seemed to him now an entire stranger.
+
+“What are you looking at, Jennie?” he asked quietly. “What are you
+thinking of?”
+
+“My dear little boy! ...They call you Kolya: isn’t that so?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Don’t be angry at me, carry out a certain caprice of mine, please:
+shut your eyes again... no, even tighter, tighter... I want to turn up
+the light and have a good look at you. There now, so... If you only
+knew how beautiful you are now... right now... this second. Later you
+will become coarse, and you will begin giving off a goatish smell; but
+now you give off an odour of fur and milk... and a little of some wild
+flower. But shut them—shut your eyes!”
+
+She added light, returned to her place, and sat down in her favourite
+pose—Turkish fashion. Both kept silent. In the distance, several rooms
+away, a broken-down grand piano was tinkling; somebody’s vibrating
+laughter floated in; while from the other side—a little song, and
+rapid, merry talking. The words could not be heard. A cabby was
+rumbling by somewhere through the distant street...
+
+“And now I will infect him right away, just like all the others,”
+pondered Jennka, gliding with a deep gaze over his well-made legs, his
+handsome torso of a future athlete, and over his arms, thrown back,
+upon which, above the bend of the elbow, the muscles tautened—bulging,
+firm. “Why, then, am I so sorry for him? Or is it because he is such a
+good-looking little fellow? No. I am long since a stranger to such
+feelings. Or is it because he is a boy? Why, only a little over a year
+ago I shoved apples in his pocket, when he was going away from me at
+night. Why have I not told him then that which, I can, and dare, tell
+him now? Or would he not have believed me, anyway? Would have grown
+angry? Would have gone to another? For sooner or later this turn awaits
+every man... And that he bought me for money—can that be forgiven? Or
+did he act just as all of them do—blindly? ...”
+
+“Kolya!” she said quietly, “Open your eyes.”
+
+He obeyed, opened his eyes, turned to her; entwined her neck with his
+arm, drew her a little to him, and wanted to kiss her in the opening of
+her chemise—on the breast. She again tenderly but commandingly repulsed
+him.
+
+“No, wait a while, wait a while—hear me out... one little minute more.
+Tell me, boy, why do you come here to us—to the women?”
+
+Kolya quietly and hoarsely began laughing.
+
+“How silly you are! Well, what do they all come for? Am I not also a
+man? For, it seems, I’m at that age when in every man ripens... well, a
+certain need... for woman. For I’m not going to occupy myself with all
+sorts of nastiness!”
+
+“Need? Only need? That means, just as for that chamber which stands
+under my bed?”
+
+“No, why so?” retorted Kolya, with a kindly laugh. “I liked you very
+much... From the very first time... If you will, I’m even... a little
+in love with you... at least, I never stayed with any of the others.”
+
+“Well, all right! But then, the first time, could it possibly have been
+need?”
+
+“No, perhaps, it wasn’t need even; but somehow, vaguely, I wanted
+woman... My friends talked me into it... Many had already gone here
+before me... So then, I too...”
+
+“But, now, weren’t you ashamed the first time?”
+
+Kolya became confused; all this interrogation was to him unpleasant,
+oppressive. He felt, that this was not the empty, idle bed talk, so
+well known to him, out of his small experience; but something else, of
+more import.
+
+“Let’s say... not that I was ashamed... well, but still I felt kind of
+awkward. I drank that time to get up courage.”
+
+Jennie again lay down on her side; leaned upon her elbow, and again
+looked at him from time to time, near at hand and intently.
+
+“But tell me, sweetie,” she asked, in a barely audible voice, so that
+the cadet with difficulty made out her words, “tell me one thing more;
+but the fact of your paying money, these filthy two roubles—do you
+understand?—paying them for love, so that I might caress, kiss you,
+give all my body to you—didn’t you feel ashamed to pay for that?
+Never?”
+
+“Oh, my God! What strange questions you put to me to-day! But then they
+all pay money! Not I, then some one else would have paid—isn’t it all
+the same to you?”
+
+“And have you been in love with any one, Kolya? Confess! Well, now, if
+not in real earnest, then just so... at soul... Have you done any
+courting? Brought little flowers of some sort... Strolled arm-in-arm
+with her under the moon? Wasn’t that so?”
+
+“Well, yes,” said Koiya in a sedate bass. “What follies don’t happen in
+one’s youth! It’s a matter anyone can understand...”
+
+“Some sort of a little first cousin? An educated young lady? A boarding
+school miss? A high school girl? ... There has been, hasn’t there?”
+
+“Well, yes, of course—everybody has them.”
+
+“Why, you wouldn’t have touched her, would you? ... You’d have spared
+her? Well, if she had only said to you: take me, but only give me two
+roubles—what would you have said to her?”
+
+“I don’t understand you, Jennka!” Gladishev suddenly grew angry. “What
+are you putting on airs for! What sort of comedy are you trying to put
+over! Honest to God, I’ll dress myself at once and go away.”
+
+“Wait a while, wait a while, Kolya! One more, one more, the last, the
+very, very last question.”
+
+“Oh, you!” growled Kolya displeased.
+
+“And could you never imagine... well, imagine it right now, even for a
+second... that your family has suddenly grown poor, become ruined.
+You’d have to earn your bread by copying papers; or, now, let’s say,
+through carpenter or blacksmith work; and your sister was to go wrong,
+like all of us... yes, yes, yours, your own sister... if some blockhead
+seduced her and she was to go travelling... from hand to hand... what
+would you say then?”
+
+“Bosh! ... That can’t be...” Kolya cut her short curtly. “But, however,
+that’s enough—I’m going away!”
+
+“Go away, do me that favour! I’ve ten roubles lying there, near the
+mirror, in a little box from chocolates—take them for yourself. I don’t
+need them, anyway. Buy with them a tortoise powder box with a gold
+setting for your mamma; and if you have a little sister, buy her a good
+doll. Say: in memory from a certain wench that died. Go on, little
+boy!”
+
+Kolya, with a frown, angry, with one shove of a well-knit body jumped
+off the bed, almost without touching it. Now he was standing on the
+little mat near the bed, naked, well-formed, splendid in all the
+magnificence of his blooming, youthful body.
+
+“Kolya!” Jennka called him quietly, insistently and caressingly.
+“Kolechka!”
+
+He turned around to her call, and drew in the air in a short, jerky
+gust, as though he had gasped: he had never yet in his life met
+anywhere, even in pictures, such a beautiful expression of tenderness,
+sorrow, and womanly silent reproach, as the one he was just now
+beholding in the eyes of Jennka, filled with tears. He sat down on the
+edge of the bed, and impulsively embraced her around the bared, swarthy
+arms.
+
+“Let’s not quarrel, then, Jennechka,” he said tenderly.
+
+And she twined herself around him, placed her arms on his neck, while
+her head she pressed against his breast. They kept silent so for
+several seconds.
+
+“Kolya,” Jennie suddenly asked dully, “but were you never afraid of
+becoming infected?”
+
+Kolya shivered. Some chill, loathsome horror stirred and glided through
+within his soul. He did not answer at once.
+
+“Of course, that would be horrible... horrible... God save me! But then
+I go only to you alone, only to you! You’d surely have told me? ...”
+
+“Yes, I’d have told you,” she uttered meditatively. And at once
+rapidly, consciously, as though having weighed the significance of her
+words: “Yes, of course, of course, I would have told you! But haven’t
+you ever heard what sort of a thing is that disease called syphilis?”
+
+“Of course, I’ve heard... The nose falls through...”
+
+“No, Kolya, not only the nose! The person becomes all diseased: his
+bones, sinews, brains grow diseased... Some doctors say such nonsense
+as that it’s possible to be cured of this disease. Bosh! You’ll never
+cure yourself! A person rots ten, twenty, thirty years. Every second
+paralysis can strike him down, so that the right side of the face, the
+right arm, the right leg die—it isn’t a human being that’s living, but
+some sort of a little half. Half-man-half-corpse. The majority of them
+go out of their minds. And each understands... every person... each one
+so infected understands, that if he eats, drinks, kisses, simply even
+breathes—he can’t be sure that he won’t immediately infect some one of
+those around him, the very nearest—sister, wife, son... To all
+syphilitics the children are born monsters, abortions, goitrous,
+consumptives, idiots. There, Kolya, is what this disease means. And
+now,” Jennka suddenly straightened up quickly, seized Kolya fast by his
+bare shoulders, turned his face to her, so that he was almost blinded
+by the flashing of her sorrowful, sombre, extraordinary eyes, “and now,
+Kolya, I will tell you that for more than a month I am sick with this
+filth. And that’s just why I haven’t allowed you to kiss me...”
+
+“You’re joking! ... You’re teasing me on purpose, Jennie!” muttered
+Gladishev, wrathful, frightened, and out of his wits.
+
+“Joking? ...Come here!”
+
+She abruptly compelled him to get up on his feet, lit a match and said:
+
+“Now look closely at what I’m going to show you...”
+
+She opened her mouth wide and placed the light so that it would
+illumine her larynx. Kolya looked and staggered back.
+
+“Do you see these white spots? This is syphilis, Kolya! Do you
+understand?—syphilis in the most fearful, the most serious stage. Now
+dress yourself and thank God.”
+
+He, silently and without looking around at Jennka, began to dress
+hurriedly, missing his clothes when he tried to put his legs through.
+His hands were shaking, and his under jaw jumped so that the lower
+teeth knocked against the upper; while Jennka was speaking with bowed
+head:
+
+“Listen, Kolya, it’s your good fortune that you’ve run across an honest
+woman; another wouldn’t have spared you. Do you hear that? We, whom you
+deprive of innocence and then drive out of your home, while later you
+pay us two roubles a visit, we always—do you understand?”—she suddenly
+raised her head—“we always hate you and never have any pity for you!”
+
+The half-clad Kolya suddenly dropped his dressing, sat down on the bed
+near Jennka and, covering his face with his palms, burst into tears;
+sincerely, altogether like a child...
+
+“Lord, Lord,” he whispered, “why this is the truth! ... What a vile
+thing this really is! ... We, also, we had this happen: we had a
+chambermaid, Niusha...a chambermaid... they also called her signorita
+Anita...a pretty little girl...and my brother lived with her...my elder
+brother...an officer...and when he went away, she proved pregnant and
+mother drove her out...well, yes—drove her out...threw her out of the
+house, like a floor mop...Where is she now? And father...father...he
+also with a cham...chambermaid.”
+
+And the half-naked Jennka, this Jennka, the atheist, swearer, and
+brawler, suddenly got up from the bed, stood before the cadet, and
+slowly, almost solemnly, made the sign of the cross over him.
+
+“And may God preserve you my boy!” she said with an expression of deep
+tenderness and gratitude.
+
+And at once she ran to the door, opened it and called out:
+“Housekeeper!”
+
+“Tell you what, housekeeper dear,” Jennka directed, “go and find out,
+please, which one of them is free—Tamara or Little White Manka. And the
+one that’s free send here.”
+
+Kolya growled out something in the back, but Jennka purposely did not
+listen to him.
+
+“And please make it as quick as possible, housekeeper dear, won’t you
+be so kind?”
+
+“Right away, right away, miss.”
+
+“Why, why do you do this, Jennie?” asked Gladishev with anguish. “Well,
+what’s that for? ...Is it possible that you want to tell about it? ...”
+
+“Wait awhile, that’s not your business...Wait a while, I won’t do
+anything unpleasant for you.”
+
+After a minute Little White Manka came in her brown, smooth,
+deliberately modest dress of a high school girl.
+
+“What did you call me for, Jennie? Or have you quarreled?”
+
+“No, we haven’t quarreled, Mannechka, but my head aches very much,”
+answered Jennka calmly, “and for that reason my little friend finds me
+very cold. Be a friend, Mannechka, stay with him, take my place!”
+
+“That’s enough, Jennie, stop it, darling!” in a tone of sincere
+suffering retorted Kolya. “I understand everything, everything, it’s
+not necessary now ... Don’t be finishing me off, then! ...”
+
+“I don’t understand anything of what’s happened,” the frivolous Manka
+spread out her hands. “Maybe you’ll treat a poor little girl to
+something?”
+
+“Well, go on, go on!” Jennka sent her away gently. “I’ll come right
+away. We just played a joke.”
+
+Already dressed, they stood for long in the open door between the
+bedroom and the corridor; and without words sadly looked at each other.
+And Kolya did not understand, but sensed, that at this moment in his
+soul was taking place one of those tremendous crises which tell
+imperiously upon the entire life.
+
+Then he pressed Jennie’s hand hard and said:
+
+“Forgive! ... Will you forgive me, Jennie? Will you forgive? ...”
+
+“Yes, my boy! ... Yes, my fine one! ... Yes...yes...”
+
+She tenderly, softly, like a mother, stroked his closely cropped harsh
+head and gave him, a slight shove into the corridor.
+
+“Where are you bound now?” she sent after him, half opening her door.
+
+“I’ll take my comrade right away, and then home.”
+
+“As you know best! ... God bless you, dearie!”
+
+“Forgive me! ... Forgive me! ...” once more repeated Kolya, stretching
+out his hands to her.
+
+“I’ve already told you, my splendid boy...And you forgive me too...For
+we won’t see each other anymore!”
+
+And she, having closed the door, was left alone.
+
+In the corridor Gladishev hesitated, because he did not know how to
+find the room to which Petrov had retired with Tamara. But the
+housekeeper Zociya helped him, running past him very quickly, and with
+a very anxious, alarmed air.
+
+“Oh, I haven’t time to bother with you now!” she snarled back at
+Gladishev’s question. “Third door to the left.”
+
+Kolya walked up to the door indicated and knocked. Some sort of bustle
+and whispering sounded in the room. He knocked once more.
+
+“Kerkovius, open! This is me—Soliterov.”
+
+Among the cadets, setting out on expeditions of this sort, it was
+always agreed upon to call each other by fictitious names. It was not
+so much a conspiracy or a shift against the vigilance of those in
+authority, or fear of compromising one’s self before a chance
+acquaintance of the family, but rather a play, of its own kind, at
+mysteriousness and disguise—a play tracing its beginning from those
+times when the young people were borne away by Gustave Aimard, Mayne
+Reid, and the detective Lecocq.
+
+“You can’t come in!” the voice of Tamara came from behind the door.
+“You can’t come in. We are busy.”
+
+But the bass voice of Petrov immediately cut her short:
+
+“Nonsense! She’s lying. Come in. It’s all right.”
+
+Kolya opened the door.
+
+Petrov was sitting on a chair dressed, but all red, morose, with lips
+pouting like a child’s, with downcast eyes.
+
+“Well, what a friend you’ve brought—I must say!” Tamara began speaking
+sneeringly and wrathfully. “I thought he was a man in earnest, but this
+is only some sort of a little girl! He’s sorry to lose his innocence,
+if you please. What a treasure you’ve found, to be sure! But take back,
+take back your two roubles!” she suddenly began yelling at Petrov and
+tossed two coins on the table. “You’ll give them away to some poor
+chambermaid or other! Or else save them for gloves for yourself, you
+marmot!”
+
+“But what are you cursing for?” grumbled Petrov, without raising his
+eyes. “I’m not cursing you, am I? Then why do you curse first? I have a
+full right to act as I want to. But I have passed some time with you,
+and so take them. But to be forced, I don’t want to. And on your part,
+Gladishev—that is, Soliterov—this isn’t at all nice. I thought she was
+a nice girl, but she’s trying to kiss all the time, and does God knows
+what...”
+
+Tamara, despite her wrath, burst into laughter.
+
+“Oh, you little stupid, little stupid! Well, don’t be angry—I’ll take
+your money. Only watch: this very evening you’ll be sorry, you’ll be
+crying. Well, don’t be angry, don’t be angry, angel, let’s make up. Put
+your hand out to me, as I’m doing to you.”
+
+“Let’s go, Kerkovius,” said Gladishev. “Au revoir, Tamara!”
+
+Tamara let the money down into her stocking, through the habit of all
+prostitutes, and went to show the boys the way.
+
+Even at the time that they were passing through the corridor Gladishev
+was struck by the strange, silent, tense bustle in the drawing room;
+the trampling of feet and some muffled, low-voiced, rapid
+conversations.
+
+Near that place where they had just been sitting below the picture, all
+the inmates of Anna Markovna’s house and several outsiders had
+gathered. They were standing in a close knot, bending down. Kolya
+walked up with curiosity, and, wedging his way through a little, looked
+in between the heads: on the floor, sideways, somehow unnaturally drawn
+up, was lying Roly-Poly. His face was blue, almost black. He did not
+move, and was lying strangely small, shrunken, with legs bent. One arm
+was squeezed in under his breast, while the other was flung back.
+
+“What’s the matter with him?” asked Gladishev in a fright.
+
+Niurka answered him, starting to speak in a rapid, jerky whisper:
+
+“Roly-Poly just came here...Gave Manka the candy, and then started in
+to put Armenian riddles to us...’Of a blue colour, hangs in the parlor
+and whistles’...We couldn’t guess nohow, but he says: ‘A
+herring’...Suddenly he started laughing, had a coughing spell, and
+began falling sideways; and then—bang on the ground and don’t
+move...They sent for the police...Lord, there’s doings for you! ... I’m
+horribly afraid of corpseses!”
+
+“Wait!” Gladishev stopped her. “It’s necessary to feel his forehead; he
+may be alive yet...”
+
+He did try to thrust himself forward, but Simeon’s fingers, just like
+iron pincers, seized him above the elbows and dragged him back.
+
+“There’s nothing, there’s nothing to be inspecting,” sternly ordered
+Simeon, “go on, now, young gents, out of here! This is no place for
+you: the police will come, will summon you as witnesses—then it’s scat!
+to the devil’s dam! for you out of the military high school! Better go
+while you’re good and healthy!”
+
+He escorted them to the entrance hall, shoved the great-coats into
+their hands and added still more sternly:
+
+“Well, now—go at a run...Lively! So’s there won’t be even a whiff of
+you left. And if you come another time, then I won’t let youse in at
+all. You are wise guys, you are! You gave the old hound money for
+whiskey—so now he’s gone and croaked.”
+
+“Well, don’t you get too smart, now!” Gladishev flew at him, all
+ruffled up.
+
+“What d’you mean, don’t get smart? ...” Simeon suddenly began to yell
+infuriatedly, and his black eyes without lashes and brows became so
+terrible that the cadets shrank back. “I’ll soak you one on the snout
+so hard you’ll forget how to say papa and mamma! Git, this second! Or
+else I’ll bust you in the neck!”
+
+The boys went down the steps.
+
+At this time two men were going up, in cloth caps on the sides of their
+heads; one in a blue, the other in a red blouse, with the skirts
+outside, under the unbuttoned, wide open jackets—evidently, Simeon’s
+comrades in the profession.
+
+“What?” one of them called out gaily from below, addressing Simeon, “Is
+it bye-bye for Roly-Poly?”
+
+“Yes, it must be the finish,” answered Simeon. “We’ve got to throw him
+out into the street in the meantime, fellows, or else the spirits will
+start haunting. The devil with him, let ’em think that he drank himself
+full and croaked on the road.”
+
+“But you didn’t ... well, now? ... You didn’t do for him?”
+
+“Well, now, there’s foolish talk! If there’d only been some reason. He
+was a harmless fellow. Altogether like a little lamb. It must be just
+that his turn came.”
+
+“And didn’t he find a place where to die! Couldn’t he have thought up
+something worse?” said the one who was in the red shirt.
+
+“Right you are, there!” seconded the other. “Lived to grin and died in
+sin. Well, let’s go, mate, what?”
+
+The cadets ran with all their might. Now, in the darkness, the figure
+of Roly-Poly drawn up on the floor, with his blue face, appeared before
+them in all the horror that the dead possess for early youth; and
+especially if recalled at night, in the dark.
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+
+A fine rain, like dust, obstinate and tedious, had been drizzling since
+morning. Platonov was working in the port at the unloading of
+watermelons. At the mill, where he had since the very summer proposed
+to establish himself, luck had turned against him; after a week he had
+already quarreled, and almost had a fight, with the foreman, who was
+extremely brutal with the workers. About a month Sergei Ivanovich had
+struggled along somehow from hand to mouth, somewheres in the
+back-yards of Temnikovskaya Street, dragging into the editorial rooms
+of The Echoes, from time to time, notes of street accidents or little
+humorous scenes from the court rooms of the justices of the peace. But
+the hard newspaper game had long ago grown distasteful to him. He was
+always drawn to adventures, to physical labour in the fresh air, to
+life completely devoid of even the least hint at comfort; to care-free
+vagabondage, in which a man, having cast from him all possible external
+conditions, does not know himself what is going to be with him on the
+morrow. And for that reason, when from the lower stretches of the
+Dnieper the first barges with watermelons started coming in, he
+willingly entered a gang of labourers, in which he was known even from
+last year, and loved for his merry nature, for his comradely spirit,
+and for his masterly ability of keeping count.
+
+This labour was carried on with good team work and with skill. Four
+parties, each of five men, worked on each barge. Number one would reach
+for a watermelon and pass it on to the second, who was standing on the
+side of the barge. The second cast it to the third, standing already on
+the wharf; the third threw it over to the fourth; while the fourth
+handed it up to the fifth, who stood on a horse cart and laid the
+watermelons away—now dark-green, now white, now striped—into even
+glistening rows. This work is clean, lively, and progresses rapidly.
+When a good party is gotten up, it is a pleasure to see how the
+watermelons fly from hand to hand, are caught with a circus-like
+quickness and success, and anew, and anew, without a break, fly, in
+order to fill up the dray. It is only difficult for the novices, that
+have not as yet gained the skill, have not caught on to that especial
+sense of the tempo. And it is not as difficult to catch a watermelon as
+to be able to throw it.
+
+Platonov remembered well his first experiences of last year. What
+swearing—virulent, mocking, coarse—poured down upon him when for the
+third or fourth time he had been gaping and had slowed up the passing:
+two watermelons, not thrown in time, had smashed against the pavement
+with a succulent crunch, while the completely lost Platonov dropped the
+one which he was holding in his hands as well. The first time they
+treated him gently; on the second day, however, for every mistake they
+began to deduct from him five kopecks per watermelon out of the common
+share. The following time when this happened, they threatened to throw
+him out of the party at once, without any reckoning. Platonov even now
+still remembered how a sudden fury seized him: “Ah, so? The devil take
+you!” he had thought. “And yet you want me to be chary of your
+watermelons? So then, here you are, here you are! ...” This flare-up
+helped him as though instantaneously. He carelessly caught the
+watermelons, just as carelessly threw them over, and to his amazement
+suddenly felt that precisely just now he had gotten into the real swing
+of the work with all his muscles, sight, and breathing; and understood,
+that the most important thing was not to think at all of the
+watermelons representing some value, and that then everything went
+well. When he, finally, had fully mastered this art, it served him for
+a long time as a pleasant and entertaining athletic game of its own
+kind. But that, too, passed away. He reached, in, the end, the stage
+where he felt himself a will-less, mechanical wheel in a general
+machine consisting of five men and an endless chain of flying
+watermelons.
+
+Now he was number two. Bending downward rhythmically, he, without
+looking, received with both hands the cold, springy, heavy watermelon;
+swung it to the right; and, also almost without looking, or looking
+only out of the corner of his eye, tossed it downward, and immediately
+once again bent down for the next watermelon. And his ear seized at
+this time how smack-smack ...smack-smack...the caught watermelons
+slapped in the hands; and immediately bent downwards and again threw,
+letting the air out of himself noisily—ghe...ghe...
+
+The present work was very profitable; their gang, consisting of forty
+men, had taken on the work, thanks to the great rush, not by the day
+but by the amount of work done, by the waggon load. Zavorotny, the
+head—an enormous, mighty Poltavian—had succeeded with extreme deftness
+in getting around the owner; a young man, and, to boot, in all
+probability not very experienced as yet. The owner, it is true, came to
+his senses later and wanted to change the stipulations; but experienced
+melon growers dissuaded him from it in time: “Drop it. They’ll kill
+you,” they told him simply and firmly. And so, through this very stroke
+of good luck every member of the gang was now earning up to four
+roubles a day. They all worked with unusual ardour, even with some sort
+of vehemence; and if it had been possible to measure with some
+apparatus the labour of each one of them, then, in all probability, the
+number of units of energy created would have equalled the work of a
+large Voronezhian train horse.
+
+However, Zavorotny was not satisfied even with this—he hurried and
+hurried his lads on all the time. Professional ambition was speaking
+within him; he wanted to bring the daily earnings of every member of
+the gang up to five roubles per snout. And gaily, with unusual ease,
+twinkled from the harbour to the waggon, twirling and flashing, the wet
+green and white watermelons; and their succulent plashing resounded
+against accustomed palms.
+
+But now a long blast sounded on the dredging machine in the port. A
+second, a third, responded to it on the river; a few more on shore; and
+for a long time they roared together in a mighty chorus of different
+voices.
+
+“Ba-a-a-st-a-a!” hoarsely and thickly, exactly like a locomotive blast,
+Zavorotny started roaring.
+
+And now the last smack-smack—and the work stopped instantaneously.
+
+Platonov with enjoyment straightened out his back and bent it backward,
+and spread out his swollen arms. With pleasure he thought of having
+already gotten over that first pain in all the muscles, which tells so
+during the first days, when one is just getting back into the work
+after disuse. While up to this day, awaking in the mornings in his lair
+on Temnikovskaya—also to the sound of a factory blast agreed upon—he
+would during the first minutes experience such fearful pains in his
+neck, back, in his arms and legs, that it seemed to him as if only a
+miracle would be able to compel him to get up and make a few steps.
+
+“Go-o-o and e-at,” Zavorotny began to clamour again.
+
+The stevedores went down to the water; got down on their knees or laid
+down flat on the gangplank or on the rafts; and, scooping up the water
+in handfuls, washed their wet, heated faces and arms. Right here, too,
+on the shore, to one side, where a little grass had been left yet, they
+disposed themselves for dinner: placed in a circle ten of the most ripe
+watermelons, black bread, and twenty dried porgies. Gavriushka the
+Bullet was already running with a half-gallon bottle to the pot-house
+and was singing as he went the soldiers’ signal for dinner:
+
+“Drag spoon and mess-kit out,
+If there’s no bread, eat without.”
+
+
+A bare-footed urchin, dirty and so ragged that there was more of his
+bare body than clothes upon him, ran up to the gang.
+
+“Which one of you here is Platonov?” he asked, quickly running over
+them with his thievish eyes.
+
+“I’m Platonov, and by what name do they tease you?”
+
+“Around the corner here, behind the church, some sort of a young lady
+is waiting for you...Here’s a note for you.”
+
+The whole gang neighed deeply.
+
+“What d’you open up your mouths for, you pack of fools!” said Platonov
+calmly. “Give me the note here.”
+
+This was a letter from Jennka, written in a round, naive, rolling,
+childish handwriting, and not very well spelt.
+
+“Sergei Ivanich. Forgive me that I disturbe you. I must talk over a
+very, very important matter with you. I would not be troubling you if
+it was Trifles. For only 10 minutes in all. Jennka, whom you know, from
+Anna Markovna’s.”
+
+Platonov got up.
+
+“I’m going away for a little while,” he said to Zavorotny. “When you
+begin, I’ll be in my place.”
+
+“Now you’ve found somethin’ to do,” lazily and contemptuously said the
+head of the gang. “There’s the night for that business...Go ahead, go
+ahead, who’s holding you. But only if you won’t be here when we begin
+work, then this day don’t count. I’ll take any tramp. And as many
+watermelons as he busts—that’s out of your share, too...I didn’t think
+it of you, Platonov—that you’re such a he-dog...”
+
+Jennka was waiting for him in the tiny little square, sheltered between
+a church and the wharf, and consisting of ten sorry poplars. She had on
+a gray, one-piece street dress; a simple, round, straw hat with a small
+black ribbon. “And yet, even though she has dressed herself simply,”
+reflected Platonov, looking at her from a distance with his habitually
+puckered eyes, “and yet, every man will walk past, give a look, and
+inevitably look back three or four times; he’ll feel the especial tone
+at once.”
+
+“Howdy do, Jennka! Very glad to see you,” he said cordially, squeezing
+the girl’s hand. “There, now, I didn’t expect it!”
+
+Jennka was reserved, sad, and apparently troubled over something.
+Platonov at once understood and sensed this.
+
+“You excuse me, Jennechka, I must have dinner right away,” said he,
+“so, perhaps, you’ll go together with me and tell me what’s the matter,
+while I’ll manage to eat at the same time. There’s a modest little inn
+not far from here. At this time there are no people there at all, and
+there’s even a tiny little stall, a sort of a private room; that will
+be just the thing for you and me. Let’s go! Perhaps you’ll also have a
+bite of something.”
+
+“No. I won’t eat,” answered Jennka hoarsely, “and I won’t detain you
+for long...a few minutes. I have to talk things over, have some
+advice—but I haven’t anybody.”
+
+“Very well...Let’s go then! In whatever way I can, I’m always at your
+service, in everything. I love you very much, Jennka!”
+
+She looked at him sadly and gratefully.
+
+“I know this, Serge Ivanovich; that’s why I’ve come.”
+
+“You need money, perhaps? Just say so. I haven’t got much with me,
+myself; but the gang will trust me with an advance.”
+
+“No, thanks...it isn’t that at all. I’ll tell everything at once,
+there, where we’re going now.”
+
+In the dim, low-ceiled little inn, the customary haunt of petty
+thieves, where business was carried on only in the evening, until very
+far into the night, Platonov took the little half-dark cubby hole.
+
+“Give me boiled meat, cucumbers, a large glass of vodka, and bread,” he
+ordered the waiter.
+
+The waiter—a young fellow with a dirty face; pugnosed; as dirty and
+greasy in all his person as though he had just been pulled out of a
+cesspool, wiped his lips and asked hoarsely:
+
+“How many kopecks’ bread?” “As much as it comes to.” Then he started
+laughing:
+
+“Bring as much as possible—we’ll reckon it up later... and some bread
+cider!”
+
+“Well, Jennie, say what your trouble is...I can already see by your
+face that there’s trouble, or something distasteful in general...Go
+ahead and tell it!”
+
+Jennka for a long time plucked her handkerchief and looked at the tips
+of her slippers, as though, gathering her strength. Timorousness had
+taken possession of her—the necessary and important words would not
+come into her mind, for anything. Platonov came to her aid: “Don’t be
+embarrassed, my dear Jennie, tell all there is! For you know that I’m
+like one of the family, and will never give you away. And perhaps I may
+really give you some worth-while advice. Well, dive off with a splash
+into the water—begin!”
+
+“That’s just it, I don’t know how to begin,” said Jennka irresolutely.
+“Here’s what, Sergei Ivanovich, I’m a sick woman...Understand?—sick in
+a bad way...With the most nasty disease...Do you know which?”
+
+“Go on!” said Platonov, nodding his head.
+
+“And I’ve been that way for a long time...more than a month...a month
+and a half, maybe...Yes, more than a month, because I found out about
+this on the Trinity...”
+
+Platonov quickly rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Wait a while, I’ve
+recalled it...This was that day I was there together with the
+students...isn’t that so?”
+
+“That’s right, Sergei Ivanovich, that’s so...”
+
+“Ah, Jennka,” said Platonov reproachfully and with regret. “For do you
+know, that after this two of the students got sick...Wasn’t it from
+you?”
+
+Jennka wrathfully and disdainfully flashed her eyes.
+
+“Perhaps even from me...How should I know? There were a lot of them...I
+remember there was this one, now, who was even trying to pick a fight
+with you all the time ...A tall sort of fellow, fair-haired, in
+pince-nez...”
+
+“Yes, yes...That’s Sobashnikov. They passed the news to me...That’s
+he...that one was nothing—a little coxcomb! But then the other—him I’m
+sorry for. Although I’ve known him long, somehow I never made the right
+inquiries about his name...I only remember that he comes from some city
+or other—Poliyansk...Zvenigorodsk... His comrades called him
+Ramses...When the physicians—he turned to several physicians—when they
+told him irrevocably that he had the lues, he went home and shot
+himself...And in the note that he wrote there were amazing things,
+something like this: I supposed all the meaning of life to be in the
+triumph of mind, beauty and good; with this disease I am not a man, but
+junk, rottenness, carrion; a candidate for a progressive paralytic. My
+human dignity cannot reconcile itself to this. But guilty in all that
+has happened, and therefore in my death as well, am I alone; for that
+I, obeying a momentary bestial inclination, took a woman without love,
+for money. For that reason have I earned the punishment which I myself
+lay upon me...”
+
+“I am sorry for him...” added Platonov quietly.
+
+Jennka dilated her nostrils.
+
+“But I, now, not the very least bit.”
+
+“That’s wrong...You go away now, young fellow. When I’ll need you I’ll
+call out,” said Platonov to the serving-man “Absolutely wrong,
+Jennechka! This was an unusually big and forceful man. Such come only
+one to the hundreds of thousands. I don’t respect suicides. Most
+frequent of all, these are little boys, who shoot and hang themselves
+over trifles, like a child that has not been given a piece of candy,
+and hits itself against the wall to spite those around it. But before
+his death I reverently and with sorrow bow my head. He was a wise,
+generous, kindly man, attentive to all; and, as you see, too strict to
+himself.”
+
+“But to me this is absolutely all one,” obstinately contradicted
+Jennka, “wise or foolish, honest or dishonest, old or young—I have come
+to hate them all. Because—look upon me—what am I? Some sort of
+universal spittoon, cesspool, privy. Think of it, Platonov; why,
+thousands, thousands of people have taken me, clutched me; grunted,
+snorted over me; and all those who were, and all those who might yet
+have been on my bed—oh, how I hate them all! If I only could, I would
+sentence them to torture by fire and iron! ... I would order...”
+
+“You are malicious and proud, Jennie,” said Platonov quietly.
+
+“I was neither malicious nor proud...It’s only now. I wasn’t ten yet
+when my own mother sold me; and since that time I’ve been travelling
+from hand to hand... If only some one had seen a human being in me! No!
+... I am vermin, refuse, worse than a beggar, worse than a thief, worse
+than a murderer! ... Even a hangman...we have even such coming to the
+establishment—and even he would have treated me loftily, with loathing:
+I am nothing; I am a public wench! Do you understand, Sergei Ivanovich,
+what a horrible word this is? Pub-lic! ... This means nobody’s: not
+papa’s, not mamma’s, not Russian, not Riyazan, but simply—public! And
+not once did it enter anybody’s head to walk up to me and think: why,
+now, this is a human being too; she has a heart and a brain; she thinks
+of something, feels something; for she’s not made out of wood, and
+isn’t stuffed with straw, small hay, or excelsior! And yet, only I feel
+this. I, perhaps, am the only one out of all of them who feels the
+horror of her position; this black, stinking, filthy pit. But then, all
+the girls with whom I have met, and with whom I am living right
+now—understand, Platonov, understand me!—why, they don’t realize
+anything... Talking, walking pieces of meat! And this is even worse
+than my malice! ...”
+
+“You are right!” said Platonov quietly. “And this is one of those
+questions where you’ll always run up against a wall. No one will help
+you...”
+
+“No one, no one! ...” passionately exclaimed Jennka. “Do you
+remember—this was while you were there: a student carried away our
+Liubka...”
+
+“Why, certainly, I remember well! ... Well, and what then?”
+
+“And this is what, that yesterday she came back tattered,
+wet...Crying...Left her, the skunk! ... Played a while at kindliness,
+and then away with her! ‘You,’ he says, ‘are a sister.’ ‘I,’ he says,
+‘will save you, make a human being of you...’”
+
+“Is that possible?”
+
+“Just so! ... One man I did see, kindly, indulgent, without the designs
+of a he-dog—that’s you. But then, you’re altogether different. You’re
+somehow queer. You’re always wandering somewhere, seeking
+something...You forgive me, Sergei Ivanovich, you’re some sort of a
+little innocent! ... And that’s just why I’ve come to you, to you
+alone! ...”
+
+“Speak on, Jennechka...”
+
+“And so, when I found out that I was sick, I almost went out of my mind
+from wrath; I choked from wrath ...I thought: and here’s the end;
+therefore, there’s no more use in pitying, there’s nothing to grieve
+about, nothing to expect...The lid! ... But for all that I have
+borne—can it be that there’s no paying back for it? Can it be that
+there’s no justice in the world? Can it be that I can’t even feast
+myself with revenge?—for that I have never known love; that of family
+life I know only by hearsay; that, like a disgustin’, nasty little dog,
+they call me near, pat me and then with a boot over the head—get
+out!—that they made me over, from a human being, equal to all of them,
+no more foolish than all those I’ve met; made me over into a floor mop,
+some sort of a sewer pipe for their filthy pleasures? ...Ugh! ... Is it
+possible that for all of this I must take even such a disease with
+gratitude as well? ... Or am I a slave? ... A dumb object? ... A pack
+horse? ... And so, Platonov, it was just then that I resolved to infect
+them all: young, old, poor, rich, handsome, hideous—all, all, all! ...”
+
+Platonov, who had already long since put his plate away from him, was
+looking at her with astonishment, and even more—almost with horror. He,
+who had seen in life much of the painful, the filthy, at times even of
+the bloody—he grew frightened with an animal fright before this
+intensity of enormous, unvented hatred. Coming to himself, he said:
+
+“One great writer tells of such a case. The Prussians conquered the
+French and lorded it over them in every possible way: shot the men,
+violated the women, pillaged the houses, burned down the fields...And
+so one handsome woman—a Frenchwoman, very handsome,—having become
+infected, began out of spite to infect all the Germans who happened to
+fall into her embraces. She made ill whole hundreds, perhaps even
+thousands...And when she was dying in a hospital, she recalled this
+with joy and with pride...[25] But then, those were enemies, trampling
+upon her fatherland and slaughtering her brothers...But you, you,
+Jennechka! ...”
+
+[25] This story is Lit. No. 29, by Guy de Maupassant.—Trans.
+
+
+“But I—all, just all! Tell me, Sergei Ivanovich, only tell me on your
+conscience: if you were to find in the street a child, whom some one
+had dishonoured, had abused...well, let’s say, had stuck its eyes out,
+cut its ears off—and then you were to find out that this man is at this
+minute walking past you, and that only God alone, if only He exists, is
+looking at you this minute from heaven—what would you do?”
+
+“Don’t know,” answered Platonov, dully and downcast; but he paled, and
+his fingers underneath the table convulsively clenched into fists,
+“Perhaps I would kill him...”
+
+“Not ‘perhaps,’ but certainly! I know you, I sense you. Well, and now
+think: every one of us has been abused so, when we were children! ...
+Children! ...” passionately moaned out Jennka and covered her eyes for
+a moment with her palm. “Why, it comes to me, you also spoke of this at
+one time, in our place—wasn’t it on that same evening before the
+Trinity? ... Yes, children—foolish, trusting, blind, greedy,
+frivolous...And we cannot tear ourselves out of our harness...where are
+we to go? what are we to do? ... And please, don’t you think it, Sergei
+Ivanovich—that the spite within me is strong only against those who
+wronged just me, me personally...No, against all our guests in general;
+all these cavaliers, from little to big...Well, and so I have resolved
+to avenge myself and my sisters. Is that good or no? ...”
+
+“Jehnechka, really I don’t know...I can’t...I dare not say anything...I
+don’t understand.”
+
+“But even that’s not the main thing...For the main thing is this: I
+infected them, and did not feel anything—no pity, no remorse, no guilt
+before God or my fatherland. Within me was only joy, as in a hungry
+wolf that has managed to get at blood...But yesterday something
+happened which even I can’t understand. A cadet came to me, altogether
+a little bit of a lad, silly, with yellow around his mouth...He used to
+come to me from still last winter...And then suddenly I had pity on
+him... Not because he was very handsome and very young; and not because
+he had always been very polite—even tender, if you will...No, both the
+one and the other had come to me, but I did not spare them: with
+enjoyment I marked them off, just like cattle, with a red-hot brand
+...But this one I suddenly pitied...I myself don’t understand—why? I
+can’t make it out. It seemed to me, that it would be all the same as
+stealing money from a little simpleton, a little idiot; or hitting a
+blind man, or cutting a sleeper’s throat...if he only were some
+dried-up marasmus or a nasty little brute, or a lecherous old fellow, I
+would not have stopped. But he was healthy, robust, with chest and arms
+like a statue’s...and I could not... I gave him his money back, showed
+him my disease; in a word, I acted like a fool among fools. He went
+away from me...burst into tears...And now since last evening I haven’t
+slept. I walk around as in a fog...Therefore—I’m thinking right
+now—therefore, that which, I meditated; my dream to infect them all; to
+infect their fathers, mothers, sisters, brides—even all the
+world—therefore, all this was folly, an empty fantasy, since I have
+stopped? ... Once again, I don’t understand anything ...Sergei
+Ivanovich, you are so wise, you have seen so much of life—help me,
+then, to find myself now!...”
+
+“I don’t know, Jennechka!” quietly pronounced Platonov. “Not that I
+fear telling you, or advising you, but I know absolutely nothing. This
+is above my reason... above conscience...”
+
+Jennie crossed her fingers and nervously cracked them.
+
+“And I, too, don’t know...Therefore, that which I thought—is not the
+truth. Therefore, there is but one thing left me...This thought came
+into my head this morning...”
+
+“Don’t, don’t do it, Jennechka! ... Jennie! ...” Platonov quickly
+interrupted her.
+
+“There’s one thing: to hang myself...”
+
+“No, no, Jennie, only not that! ... If there were other circumstances,
+unsurmountable, I would, believe me, tell you boldly: well, it’s no
+use, Jennie; it’s time to close up shop... But what you need isn’t that
+at all... If you wish, I can suggest one way out to you, no less
+malicious and merciless; but which, perhaps, will satiate your wrath a
+hundredfold...”
+
+“What’s that?” asked Jennie, wearily, as though suddenly wilted after
+her flare-up.
+
+“Well, this is it ... You’re still young, and I’ll tell you the truth,
+you are very handsome; that is, you can be, if you only want to,
+unusually stunning ... That’s even more than beauty. But you’ve never
+yet known the bounds and the power of your appearance; and, mainly, you
+don’t know to what a degree such natures as yours are bewitching, and
+how mightily they enchain men to them, and make out of them more than
+slaves and brutes ... You are proud, you are brave, you are
+independent, you are a clever woman. I know—you have read a great deal,
+let’s presuppose even trashy books, but still you have read, you have
+an entirely different speech from the others. With a successful turn of
+life, you can cure yourself, you can get out of these ‘Yamkas,’ these
+‘Little Ditches,’ into freedom. You have only to stir a finger, in
+order to see at your feet hundreds of men; submissive, ready for your
+sake for vileness, for theft, for embezzlement ... Lord it over them
+with tight reins, with a cruel whip in your hands! ... Ruin them, make
+them go out of their minds, as long as your desire and energy hold out!
+... Look, my dear Jennie, who manages life now if not women!
+Yesterday’s chambermaid, laundress, chorus girl goes through estates
+worth millions, the way a country-woman of Tver cracks sunflower seeds.
+A woman scarcely able to sign her name, at times affects the destiny of
+an entire kingdom through a man. Hereditary princes marry the
+street-walkers, the kept mistresses of yesterday... Jennechka, there is
+the scope for your unbridled vengeance; while I will admire you from a
+distance... For you—you are made of this stuff—you are a bird of prey,
+a spoliator... Perhaps not with such a broad sweep—but you will cast
+them down under your feet.”
+
+“No,” faintly smiled Jennka. “I thought of this before ... But
+something of the utmost importance has burned out within me. There are
+no forces within me, there is no will within me, no desires ... I am
+somehow all empty inside, rotted ... Well, now, you know, there’s a
+mushroom like that—white, round,—you squeeze it, and snuff pours out of
+it. And the same way with me. This life has eaten out everything within
+me save malice. And I am flabby, and my malice is flabby ... I’ll see
+some little boy again, will have pity on him, will be punishing myself
+again ... No, it’s better ... better so! ...”
+
+She became silent. And Platonov did not know what to say. It became
+oppressive and awkward for both. Finally, Jennka got up, and, without
+looking at Platonov, extended her cold, feeble hand to him.
+
+“Good-bye, Sergei Ivanovich! Excuse me, that I took up your time ...
+Oh, well, I can see myself that you’d help me, if you only could ...
+But, evidently, there’s nothing to be done here ... Good-bye!”
+
+“Only don’t do anything foolish, Jennechka! I implore you! ...”
+
+“Oh, that’s all right!” said she and made a tired gesture with her
+hand.
+
+Having come out of the square, they parted; but, having gone a few
+steps, Jennka suddenly called after him:
+
+“Sergei Ivanovich, oh Sergei Ivanovich! ...”
+
+He stopped, turned around, walked back to her.
+
+“Roly-Poly croaked last evening in our drawing room. He jumped and he
+jumped, and then suddenly plumped down ... Oh, well, it’s an easy death
+at least! And also I forgot to ask you, Sergei Ivanovich ... This is
+the last, now ... Is there a God or no?”
+
+Platonov knit his eyebrows.
+
+“What answer can I make? I don’t know. I think that there is, but not
+such as we imagine Him. He is more wise, more just...”
+
+“And future life? There, after death? Is there, now, as they tell us, a
+paradise or hell? Is that the truth? Or is there just nothing at all? A
+barren void? A sleep without a dream? A dark basement?”
+
+Platonov kept silent, trying not to look at Jennka. He felt oppressed
+and frightened.
+
+“I don’t know,” said he, finally, with an effort. “I don’t want to lie
+to you.”
+
+Jennka sighed, and smiled with a pitiful, twisted smile.
+
+“Well, thanks, my dear. And thanks for even that much ... I wish you
+happiness. With all my soul. Well, good-bye...”
+
+She turned away from him and began slowly, with a wavering walk, to
+climb up the hill.
+
+Platonov returned to work just in the nick of time. The gathering of
+tramps, scratching, yawning, working out their accustomed dislocations,
+were getting into their places. Zavorotny, at a distance, with his keen
+eyes caught sight of Platonov and began to yell over the whole port:
+
+“You did manage to get here in time, you round-shouldered devil ... But
+I was already wanting to take you by the tail and chase you out of the
+gang ... Well, get in your place! ...”
+
+“Well, but I did get a he-dog in you, Serejka! ...” he added, in a
+kindly manner. “If only it was night; but no,—look you, he starts in
+playing ring-around-a-rosie in broad daylight...”
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+
+Saturday was the customary day of the doctor’s inspection, for which
+they prepared very carefully and with quaking in all the houses; as,
+however, even society ladies prepare themselves, when getting ready for
+a visit to a physician-specialist; they diligently made their intimate
+toilet and inevitably put on clean underthings, even as dressy as
+possible. The windows toward the street were closed with shutters,
+while at one of those windows, which gave out upon the yard, was put a
+table with a hard bolster to put under the back.
+
+All the girls were agitated ... “And what if there’s a disease, which I
+haven’t noticed myself? ... And then the despatch to a hospital;
+disgrace; the tedium of hospital life; bad food; the hard course of
+treatment...”
+
+Only Big Manka—or otherwise Manka the Crocodile—Zoe, and Henrietta—all
+thirty years old, and, therefore, in the reckoning of Yama, already old
+prostitutes, who had seen everything, had grown inured to everything,
+grown indifferent to their trade, like white, fat circus
+horses—remained imperturbably calm. Manka the Crocodile even often said
+of herself:
+
+“I have gone through fire and water and pipes of brass ... Nothing will
+stick to me any more.”
+
+Jennka, since morning, was meek and pensive. She presented to Little
+White Manka a golden bracelet; a medallion upon a thin little chain
+with her photograph; and a silver neck crucifix. Tamara she moved
+through entreaty into taking two rings for remembrance: one of silver,
+in three hoops, that could be moved apart, with a heart in the middle,
+and under it two hands that clasped one another when all the three
+parts of the ring were joined; while the other was of thin gold wire
+with an almandine.
+
+“As for my underwear, Tamarochka—you give it to Annushka, the
+chambermaid. Let her wash it out well and wear it in good health, in
+memory of me.”
+
+The two of them were sitting in Tamara’s room. Jennka had in the very
+morning sent after cognac; and now slowly, as though lazily, was
+imbibing wine-glass after wine-glass, eating lemon and a piece of sugar
+after drinking. Tamara was observing this for the first time and
+wondered, because Jennka had always disliked wine, and drank very
+rarely; and then only at the constraint of guests.
+
+“What are you giving stuff away so to-day?” asked Tamara. “Just as
+though you’d gotten ready to die, or to go into a convent?”
+
+“Yes, and I will go away,” answered Jennka listlessly. “I am weary,
+Tamarochka! ...”
+
+“Well, which one of us has a good time?”
+
+“Well, no! ... It isn’t so much that I’m weary; but somehow
+everything—everything is all the same ... I look at you, at the table,
+at the bottle; at my hands and feet; and I’m thinking, that all this is
+alike and everything is to no purpose ... There’s no sense in anything
+... Just like on some old, old picture. Look there—there’s a soldier
+walking on the street, but it’s all one to me, as though they had wound
+up a doll, and it’s moving ... And that he’s wet under the ram, is also
+all one to me ... And that he’ll die, and I’ll die, and you, Tamara,
+will die—in this also I see nothing frightful, nothing amazing... So
+simple and wearisome is everything to me...”
+
+Jennka was silent for a while; drank one more wine-glass; sucked the
+sugar, and, still looking out at the street, suddenly asked:
+
+“Tell me, please, Tamara, I’ve never asked you about it—from where did
+you get in here, into the house? You don’t at all resemble all of us;
+you know everything; for everything that turns up you have a good,
+clever remark ... Even French, now—how well you spoke it that time! But
+none of us knows anything at all about you ... Who are you?”
+
+“Darling Jennechka, really, it’s not worth while ... A life like any
+life ... I went to boarding school; was a governess; sang in a choir;
+then kept a shooting gallery in a summer garden; and then got mixed up
+with a certain charlatan and taught myself to shoot with a Winchester
+... I traveled with circuses—I represented an American Amazon. I used
+to shoot splendidly ... Then I found myself in a monastery. There I
+passed two years ... I’ve been through a lot ... Can’t recall
+everything ... I used to steal...”
+
+“You’ve lived through a great deal ... Checkered-like.”
+
+“But then, my years are not a few. Well, what do you think—how many?”
+
+“Twenty-two, twenty-four? ...”
+
+“No, my angel! It just struck thirty-two a week ago. I, if you like, am
+older than all of you here in Anna Markovna’s. Only I didn’t wonder at
+anything, didn’t take anything near to heart. As you see, I never drink
+... I occupy myself very carefully with the care of my body; and the
+main thing, the very main thing—I don’t allow myself ever to be carried
+away with men...”
+
+“Well, but what about your Senka? ...”
+
+“Senka—that’s a horse of another colour; the heart of woman is foolish,
+inconsistent ... Can it possibly live without love? And even so, I
+don’t love him, but just so ... a self-deception ... But, however, I
+shall be in very great need of Senka soon.”
+
+Jennka suddenly grew animated and looked at her friend with curiosity.
+
+“But how did you come to get stuck right here, in this hole? So clever,
+handsome, sociable...”
+
+“I’d have to take a long time in telling it ... And then I’m too lazy
+... I got in here out of love; I got mixed up with a certain young man
+and went into a revolution with him. For we always act so, we women:
+where the dearie is looking, there we also look; what the dearie sees,
+that we also see ... I didn’t believe at soul in his work, but I went.
+A flattering man he was; smart, a good talker, a good looker ... Only
+he proved to be a skunk and a traitor afterwards. He played at
+revolution; while he himself gave his comrades away to the gendarmes. A
+stool-pigeon, he was. When they had killed and shown him up, then all
+the foolishness left me. However, it was necessary to conceal myself
+... I changed my passport. Then they advised me, that the easiest thing
+of all was to screen myself with a yellow ticket ... And then the fun
+began! ... And even here I’m on a sort of pasture ground; when the time
+comes, the successful moment arrives—I’ll go away!”
+
+“Where?” asked Jennie with impatience.
+
+“The world is large ... And I love life! ... There, now, I was the same
+way in the convent: I lived on and I lived on; sang antiphonies and
+dulias, until I had rested up, and had finally grown weary of it; and
+then all at once—hop! and into a cabaret ... Wasn’t that some jump? The
+same way out of here ... I’ll get into a theatre, into a circus, into a
+corps de ballet ... but do you know, Jennechka, I’m drawn to the
+thieving trade the most, after all ... Daring, dangerous, hard, and
+somehow intoxicating ... It’s drawing me! ... Don’t you mind that I’m
+so respectable and modest, and can appear an educated young lady. I’m
+entirely, entirely different.”
+
+Her eyes suddenly blazed up, vividly and gaily.
+
+“There’s a devil dwells in me!”
+
+“It’s all very well for you,” pensively and with weariness pronounced
+Jennie. “You at least desire something, but my soul is some sort of
+carrion ... I’m twenty-five years old, now; but my soul is like that of
+an old woman, shrivelled up, smelling of the earth ... And if I had
+only lived sensibly! ... Ugh! ... There was only some sort of slush.”
+
+“Drop it, Jennka; you’re talking foolishly. You’re smart, you’re
+original; you have that special power before which men crawl and creep
+so willingly. You go away from here, too. Not with me, of course—I’m
+always single—but go away all by your own self.”
+
+Jennka shook her head and quietly, without tears, hid her face in her
+palms.
+
+“No,” she responded dully, after a long silence, “no, this won’t work
+out with me: fate has chewed me all up! ... I’m not a human being any
+more, but some sort of dirty cud ... Eh!” she suddenly made a gesture
+of despair. ‘Let’s better drink some cognac, Jennechka,’” she addressed
+herself, “‘and let’s suck the lemon a little! ...’ Brr ... what nasty
+stuff! ... And where does Annushka always get such abominable stuff? If
+you smear a dog’s wool with it, it will fall off ... And always, the
+low-down thing, she’ll take an extra half. Once I somehow ask her—‘What
+are you hoarding money for?’ ‘Well, I,’ she says, ‘am saving it up for
+a wedding. What sort,’ she says, ‘of joy will it be for my husband,
+that I’ll offer him up my innocence alone! I must earn a few hundreds
+in addition.’ She’s happy! ... I have here, Tamara, a little money in
+the little box under the mirror; you pass it on to her, please...”
+
+“And what are you about, you fool; do you want to die, or what?”
+sharply, with reproach, said Tamara.
+
+“No, I’m saying it just so, if anything happens ... Take it, now, take
+the money! Maybe they’ll take me off to the hospital ... And how do you
+know what’s going to take place there? I left myself some small change,
+if anything happens ... And supposing that I wanted to do something to
+myself in downright earnest, Tamarochka—is it possible that you’d
+interfere with me?”
+
+Tamara looked at her fixedly, deeply, and calmly. Jennie’s eyes were
+sad, and as though vacant. The living fire had become extinguished in
+them, and they seemed turbid, just as though faded, with whites like
+moonstone.
+
+“No,” Tamara said at last, quietly but firmly. “If it was on account of
+love, I’d interfere; if it was on account of money, I’d talk you out of
+it: but there are cases where one must not interfere. I wouldn’t help,
+of course; but I also wouldn’t seize you and interfere with you.”
+
+At this moment the quick-limbed housekeeper Zociya whirled through the
+corridor with an outcry:
+
+“Ladies, get dressed! The doctor has arrived ... Ladies, get dressed!
+... Lively, ladies! ...”
+
+“Well, go on, Tamara, go on,” said Jennka tenderly, getting up. “I’ll
+run into my room for just a minute—I haven’t changed my dress yet,
+although, to tell the truth, this also is all one. When they’ll be
+calling out for me, and I don’t come in time, call out, run in after
+me.”
+
+And, going out of Tamara’s room, she embraced her by the shoulder, as
+though by chance, and stroked it tenderly.
+
+Doctor Klimenko—the official city doctor—was preparing in the parlor
+everything indispensable for an inspection—vaseline, a solution of
+sublimate, and other things—and was placing them on a separate little
+table. Here also were arranged for him the white blanks of the girls,
+replacing their passports, as well as a general alphabetical list. The
+girls, dressed only in their chemises, stockings, and slippers, were
+standing and sitting at a distance. Nearer the table was standing the
+proprietress herself—Anna Markovna—while a little behind her were Emma
+Edwardovna and Zociya.
+
+The doctor—aged, disheartened, slovenly; a man indifferent to
+everything—put the pince-nez crookedly upon his nose, looked at the
+list, and called out:
+
+“Alexandra Budzinskaya! ...”
+
+The frowning, little, pug-nosed Nina stepped out. Preserving on her
+face an angry expression, and breathing heavily from shame, from the
+consciousness of her own awkwardness, and from the exertions, she
+clumsily climbed up on the table. The doctor, squinting through his
+pince-nez and dropping it every minute, carried out the inspection.
+
+“Go ahead! ... You’re sound.”
+
+And on the reverse side of the blank he marked off: “Twenty-eighth of
+August. Sound” and put down a curly-cue. And when he had not even
+finished writing called out:
+
+“Voshchenkova, Irene! ...”
+
+Now it was the turn of Liubka. She, during the past month and a half of
+comparative freedom, had had time to grow unaccustomed to the
+inspections of every week; and when the doctor turned up the chemise
+over her breast, she suddenly turned as red as only very bashful women
+can—even with her back and breast.
+
+After her was the turn of Zoe; then of Little White Manka; after that
+of Tamara and Niurka—the last, the doctor found, had gonorrhoea, and
+ordered her to be sent off to a hospital.
+
+The doctor carried out the inspection with amazing rapidity. It was now
+nearly twenty years that every week, on Saturdays, he had to inspect in
+such a manner several hundred girls; and he had worked out that
+habitual technical dexterity and rapidity, a calm carelessness of
+movements, which is; frequently to be found in circus artists, in card
+sharpers, in furniture movers and packers, and in other professionals.
+And he carried out his manipulations with the same calmness with which
+a drover or a veterinary inspects several hundred head of cattle in a
+day.
+
+Did he ever think that before him were living people; or that he
+appeared as the last and most important link of that fearful chain
+which is called legalized prostitution?
+
+No! And even if he did experience this, then it must have been in the
+very beginning of his career. Now before him were only naked abdomens,
+naked backs, and opened mouths. Not one exemplar of all this faceless
+herd of every Saturday would he have recognized subsequently on the
+street. The main thing was the necessity of finishing as soon as
+possible the inspection in one establishment, in order to pass on to
+another, to a third, a ninth, a twentieth...
+
+“Susannah Raitzina!” the doctor finally called out.
+
+No one walked up to the table.
+
+All the inmates of the house began to exchange glances and to whisper.
+
+“Jennka ... Where’s Jennka? ...”
+
+But she was not among the girls.
+
+Then Tamara, just released by the doctor, moved a little forward and
+said:
+
+“She isn’t here. She hasn’t had a chance to get herself ready yet.
+Excuse me, Mr. Doctor, I’ll go right away and call her.”
+
+She ran into the corridor and did not return for a long time. After her
+went, at first Emma Edwardovna, then Zociya, several girls, and even
+Anna Markovna herself.
+
+“PFUI! What indecency is this! ...” the majestic Emma Edwardovna was
+saying in the corridor, making an indignant face. “And eternally this
+Jennka! ... Always this Jennka! ... It seems my patience has already
+burst ...”
+
+But Jennka was nowhere—neither in her room, nor in Tamara’s. They
+looked into other chambers, in all the out-of-the-way corners ... But
+she did not prove to be even there.
+
+“We must look in the water-closet ... Perhaps she’s there?” surmised
+Zoe.
+
+But this institution was locked from the inside with a bolt. Emma
+Edwardovna knocked on the door with her fist.
+
+“Jennie, do come out at last! What foolishness is this?”
+
+And, raising her voice, she cried out impatiently and threateningly:
+
+“Do you hear, you swine? ... Come out this minute—the doctor’s
+waiting!”
+
+But there was no answer of any sort.
+
+All exchanged glances with fear in their eyes, with one and the same
+thought in mind.
+
+Emma Edwardovna shook the door by the brass knob, but the door did not
+yield.
+
+“Go after Simeon!” Anna Markovna directed.
+
+Simeon was called ... He came, sleepy and morose, as was his wont. By
+the distracted faces of the girls and the housekeepers, he already saw
+that some misunderstanding or other had occurred, in which his
+professional cruelty and strength were required. When they explained to
+him what the matter was, he silently took the door-knob with both
+hands, braced himself against the wall, and gave a yank.
+
+The knob remained in his hands; and he himself, staggering backward,
+almost fell to the floor on his back.
+
+“A-a, hell!” he began to growl in a stifled voice. “Give me a table
+knife.”
+
+Through the crack of the door he felt the inner bolt with the table
+knife; whittled away with the blade the edges of the crack, and widened
+it so that he could at last push the end of the knife through it, and
+began gradually to scrape back the bolt. Only the grating of metal
+against metal could be heard.
+
+Finally Simeon threw the door wide open.
+
+Jennka was hanging in the middle of the water-closet on a tape from her
+corset, fastened to the lamphook. Her body, already motionless after an
+unprolonged agony, was slowly swinging in the air, and describing
+scarcely perceptible turns to the right and left around its vertical
+axis. Her face was bluishly-purple, and the tip of the tongue was
+thrust out between clenched and bared teeth. The lamp which had been
+taken off was also here, sprawling on the floor.
+
+Some one began to squeal hysterically, and all the girls, like a
+stampeded herd, crowding and jostling each other in the narrow
+corridor, vociferating and choking with hysterical sobbings, started in
+to run.
+
+The doctor came upon hearing the outcries... Came, precisely, and not
+ran. Seeing what the matter was, he did not become amazed or excited;
+during his practice as an official city doctor, he had had his fill of
+seeing such things, so that he had already grown benumbed and hardened
+to human sufferings, wounds and death. He ordered Simeon to lift the
+corpse of Jennka a bit upward, and himself getting up on the seat, cut
+through the tape. Proforma, he ordered Jennka’s body to be borne away
+into the room that had been hers, and tried with the help of the same
+Simeon to produce artificial respiration; but after five minutes gave
+it up as a bad job, fixed the pince-nez, which had become crooked, on
+his nose, and said:
+
+“Call the police in to make a protocol.”
+
+Again Kerbesh came, again whispered for a long time with the
+proprietress in her little bit of a cabinet, and again crunched in his
+pocket a new hundred-rouble bill.
+
+The protocol was made in five minutes; and Jennka, just as half-naked
+as she had hung herself, was carted away in a hired wagon into an
+anatomical theatre, wrapped up in and covered with two straw mats.
+
+Emma Edwardovna was the first to find the note that Jennka had left on
+her night table. On a sheet, torn out of the income-expense book,
+compulsory for every prostitute, in pencil, in a naive, rounded,
+childish handwriting—by which, however, it could be judged that the
+hands of the suicide had not trembled during the last minutes—was
+written:
+
+“I beg that no one be blamed for my death. I am dying because I have
+become infected, and also because all people are scoundrels and it is
+very disgusting to live. How to divide my things—Tamara knows about
+that. I told her in detail.”
+
+Emma Edwardovna turned around upon Tamara, who was right on the spot
+among a number of other girls, and with eyes filled with a cold, green
+hatred, hissed out:
+
+“Then you knew, you low-down thing, what she was preparing to do? ...
+You knew, you vermin? ... You knew and didn’t tell? ...”
+
+She already had swung back, in order, as was her wont, to hit Tamara
+cruelly and calculatingly; but suddenly stopped just as she was, with
+gaping mouth and with eyes wide open. It was just as though she was
+seeing, for the first time, Tamara, who was looking at her with a firm,
+wrathful, unbearable gaze, and slowly, slowly was raising from below,
+and at last brought up to the level of the housekeeper’s face, a small
+object, glistening with white metal.
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+
+That very same day, at evening, a very important event took place in
+the house of Anna Markovna: the whole institution—with land and house,
+with live and inanimate stock—passed into the hands of Emma Edwardovna.
+
+They had been speaking of this, on and off, for a long time in the
+establishment; but when the rumours so unexpectedly, immediately right
+after the death of Jennka, turned into realities, the misses could not
+for a long time come to themselves for amazement and fear. They knew
+well, having experienced the sway of the German upon themselves, her
+cruel, implacable pedantism; her greed, arrogance, and, finally, her
+perverted, exacting, repulsive love, now for one, now for another
+favorite. Besides that, it was no mystery to any one, that out of the
+fifteen thousand which Emma Edwardovna had to pay the former
+proprietress for the firm and for the property, one third belonged to
+Kerbesh, who had, for a long time already, been carrying on
+half-friendly, half-business relations with the fat housekeeper. From
+the union of two such people, shameless, pitiless, and covetous, the
+girls could expect all sorts of disasters for themselves.
+
+Anna Markovna had to let the house go so cheaply not simply because
+Kerbesh, even if he had not known about certain shady little
+transactions to her credit, could still at any time he liked trip her
+up and eat her up without leaving anything. Of pretexts and cavils for
+this even a hundred could be found every day; and certain ones of them
+not merely threatened the shutting down of the house alone, but, if you
+like, even with the court.
+
+But, dissembling, oh-ing and sighing, bewailing her poverty, her
+maladies and orphanhood, Anna Markovna at soul was glad of even such a
+settlement. And then it must be said: she was already for a long time
+feeling the approach of senile infirmity, together with all sorts of
+ailments and the thirst for complete, benevolent rest, undisturbed by
+anything. All, of which she had not even dared dream in her early
+youth, when she herself had yet been a prostitute of the rank and
+file—all had now come to her of itself, one in addition to the other:
+peaceful old age, a house—a brimming cup on one of the quiet, cozy
+streets, almost in the centre of the city,—the adored daughter Birdie,
+who—if not to-day then tomorrow—must marry a respected man, an
+engineer, a house-owner, and member of the city-council; provided for
+as she was with a respectable dowry and magnificent valuables ... Now
+it was possible peacefully, without hurrying, with gusto, to dine and
+sup on sweet things, for which Anna Markovna had always nourished a
+great weakness; to drink after dinner good, home-made, strong
+cherry-brandy; and of evenings to play a bit at “preference,” for
+kopeck stakes, with esteemed elderly ladies of her acquaintance, who,
+even although they never as much as let it appear that they knew the
+real trade of the little old woman, did in reality know it very well;
+and not only did not condemn her business but even bore themselves with
+respect toward those enormous percentages which she earned upon her
+capital. And these charming friends, the joy and consolation of an
+untroubled old age, were: one—the keeper of a loan office; another—the
+proprietress of a lively hotel near the railroad; the third—the owner
+of a jewelry shop, not large, but all the go and well known among the
+big thieves, &c. And about them, in her turn, Anna Markovna knew and
+could tell several shady and not especially flattering anecdotes; but
+in their society it was not customary to talk of the sources of the
+family well-being—only cleverness, daring, success, and decent manners
+were esteemed.
+
+But, even besides that, Anna Markovna, sufficiently limited in mind and
+not especially developed, had some sort of an amazing inner intuition,
+which during all her life permitted her instinctively but
+irreproachably to avoid unpleasantnesses, and to find prudent paths in
+time. And so now, after the sudden death of Roly-Poly, and the suicide
+of Jennka which followed the next day, she, with her
+unconsciously—penetrating soul foreguessed that fate—which had been
+favouring her house of ill-fame, sending her good fortunes, turning
+away all under-water shoals—was now getting ready to turn its back upon
+her. And she was the first to retreat.
+
+They say, that not long before a fire in a house, or before the wreck
+of a ship, the wise, nervous rats in droves make their way into another
+place. And Anna Markovna was directed by the same rat-like, animal,
+prophetic intuition. And she was right: immediately right after the
+death of Jennka some fearful curse seemed to hang over the house,
+formerly Anna Markovna Shaibes’, but now Emma Edwardovna Titzner’s:
+deaths, misfortunes, scandals just simply descended upon it
+ceaselessly, becoming constantly more frequent, on the manner of bloody
+events in Shakespeare’s tragedies; as, however, was the case at all the
+remaining houses of the Yamas as well.
+
+And one of the first to die, a week after the liquidation of the
+business, was Anna Markovna herself. However, this frequently happens
+with people put out of their accustomed rut of thirty years: so die war
+heroes, who have gone into retirement—people of insuperable health and
+iron will; so quickly go off the stage former stock brokers, who have
+happily gone away to rest, but have been deprived of the burning
+allurement of risk and hazard; so, too, age rapidly, droop, and grow
+decrepit, the great artists who leave the stage ... Her death was the
+death of the just. Once at a game of cards she felt herself unwell;
+begged them to wait a while for her; said that she would lie down for
+just a minute; lay down in the bedroom on a bed; sighed deeply, and
+passed on into another world—with a calm face, with a peaceful, senile
+smile upon her lips. Isaiah Savvich—her faithful comrade on the path of
+life, a trifle downtrodden, who had always played a secondary,
+subordinate role—survived her only a month.
+
+Birdie was left sole heiress. She very successfully turned the cozy
+house into money, as well as the land somewheres at the edge of the
+town; married, as it had been presupposed, very happily; and up to this
+time is convinced that her father carried on a great commercial
+business in the export of wheat through Odessa and Novorossiysk into
+Asia Minor.
+
+On the evening of the day when Jennie’s corpse had been carried away to
+an anatomical theatre; at an hour when not even a chance guest appears
+on Yamskaya Street, all the girls, at the insistence of Emma
+Edwardovna, assembled in the drawing room. Not one of them dared murmur
+against the fact that on this distressing day, when they had not yet
+recovered from the impression of Jennka’s horrible death, they would be
+compelled to dress up, as usual, in wildly festive finery, and to go
+into the brightly illuminated drawing room, in order to dance, sing,
+and to entice lecherous men with their denuded bodies.
+
+And at last into the drawing room walked Emma Edwardovna herself. She
+was more majestic than she had ever been—clad in a black silk gown,
+from which, just like battlements, her enormous breasts jutted out,
+upon which descended two fat chins; in black silk mittens; with an
+enormous gold chain wound thrice around her neck, and terminating in a
+ponderous medallion hanging upon the very abdomen.
+
+“Ladies! ...” she began impressively, “I must ... Stand up!” she
+suddenly called out commandingly. “When I speak, you must hear me out
+standing.”
+
+They all exchanged glances with perplexity: such an order was a novelty
+in the establishment. However, the girls got up one after another,
+irresolutely, with eyes and mouths gasping.
+
+“Sie sollen ... you must from this day show me that respect which you
+are bound to show to your mistress,” importantly and weightily began
+Emma Edwardovna. “Beginning from to-day, the establishment in a legal
+manner has passed from our good and respected Anna Markovna to me, Emma
+Edwardovna Titzner. I hope that we will not quarrel, and that you will
+behave yourselves like sensible, obedient, and well-brought-up girls. I
+will be to you like in place of your own mother, but only remember,
+that I will not stand for laziness, or drunkenness, or notions of any
+sort; or any kind of disorder. The kind Madam Shaibes, it must be said,
+held you in too loose reins. O—o, I will be far more strict. Discipline
+uber alles ... before everything. It’s a great pity, that the Russian
+people are lazy, dirty and stoopid, do not understand this rule; but
+don’t you trouble yourself, I will teach you this for your own good. I
+say ‘for your own good,’ because my main thought is to kill the
+competition of Treppel. I want that my client should be a man of
+substance, and not some charlatan and ragamuffin, some kind of student,
+now, or ham actor. I want that my ladies should be the most beautiful,
+best brought-up, the healthiest and gayest in the whole city. I won’t
+spare any money in order to set up swell furnishings; and you will have
+rooms with silk furniture and with genuine, beautiful rugs. Your guests
+will no longer be demanding beer, but only genteel Bordeaux and
+Burgundy wines and champagne. Remember, that a rich, substantial,
+elderly man never likes your common, ordinary, coarse love. He requires
+Cayenne pepper; he requires not a trade, but an art, and you will soon
+acquire this. At Treppel’s they take three roubles for a visit and ten
+roubles for a night ... I will establish it so, that you will receive
+five roubles for a visit and twenty-five for a night. They will present
+you with gold and diamonds. I will contrive it so, that you won’t have
+to pass on into establishments of a lower sort, und so weiter ... right
+down to the soldiers’ filthy den. No! Deposits will be put away and
+saved with me for each one of you every month; and will be put away in
+your name in a banker’s office, where there will increase interest upon
+them, and interest upon interest. And then, if a girl feels herself
+tired, or wants to marry a respectable man, there will always be at her
+disposal not a large, but a sure capital. So is it done in the best
+establishments in Riga, and everywhere abroad. Let no one say about me,
+that Emma Edwardovna is a spider, a vixen, a cupping glass. But for
+disobedience, for laziness, for notions, for lovers on the side, I will
+punish cruelly and, like nasty weeds, will throw out—on the street, or
+still worse. Now I have said all that I had to. Nina, come near me. And
+all the rest of you come up in turn.”
+
+Ninka irresolutely walked right up to Emma Edwardovna—and even
+staggered back in amazement: Emma Edwardovna was extending her right
+hand to her, with the fingers lowered downward, and slowly nearing it
+to Ninka’s lips.
+
+“Kiss it! ...” impressively and firmly pronounced Emma Edwardovna,
+narrowing her eyes and with head thrown back, in the magnificent pose
+of a princess ascending her throne.
+
+Ninka was so bewildered that her right arm gave a jerk in order to make
+the sign of the cross; but she corrected herself, loudly smacked the
+extended hand, and stepped aside. Following her Zoe, Henrietta, Vanda
+and others stepped up also. Tamara alone continued to stand near the
+wall with her back to the mirror; that mirror into which Jennka so
+loved to gaze, in gone-by times, admiring herself as she walked back
+and forth through the drawing room.
+
+Emma Edwardovna let the imperious, obstinate gaze of a boa-constrictor
+rest upon her; but the hypnosis did not work. Tamara bore this gaze
+without turning away, without flinching; but without any expression on
+her face. Then the new proprietress put down her hand, produced on her
+face something resembling a smile, and said hoarsely:
+
+“And with you, Tamara, I must have a little talk separately, eye to
+eye. Let’s go!”
+
+“I hear you, Emma Edwardovna!” calmly answered Tamara.
+
+Emma Edwardovna came to the little bit of a cabinet, where formerly
+Anna Markovna loved to drink coffee with clotted cream; sat down on the
+divan and pointed out a place opposite her to Tamara. For some time the
+women kept silent; searchingly, mistrustfully eyeing each other.
+
+“You acted rightly, Tamara,” said Emma Edwardovna finally. “You did
+wisely in not stepping up, on the manner of those sheep, to kiss my
+hand. But just the same, I would not have let you come to that. I
+wanted right there, in the presence of all, when you walked up to me,
+to press your hand and to offer you the place of first housekeeper—you
+understand?—my chief assistant—and on terms very advantageous to
+you...”
+
+“I thank you ...”
+
+“No, wait a while, don’t interrupt me. I will have my say to the end,
+and then you will express your pros and cons. But will you explain to
+me, please, when yesterday you were aiming at me out of a revolver,
+what did you want? Can it possibly be, to kill me?”
+
+“On the contrary, Emma Edwardovna,” retorted Tamara respectfully, “on
+the contrary; it seemed to me that you wanted to strike me.”
+
+“PJUI! What do you mean, Tamarochka! ... Have you paid no attention to
+the fact that during all the time of our acquaintance I never permitted
+myself, not only to hit you, but even to address you with a rude word?
+... What do you mean, what do you mean? ... I don’t confuse you with
+this poor Russian trash ... Glory be to God, I am an experienced person
+and one who knows people well. I can very well see that you are a
+genuinely cultured young lady; far more educated, for example, than I
+myself. You are refined, elegant, smart. I am convinced of the fact
+that you even know music not at all badly. Finally, if I were to
+confess, I was a little ... how shall I put it to you? ... I always was
+a little in love with you. And now you wanted to shoot me! Me, a person
+who could be a very good friend to you! Well, what will you say to
+that?”
+
+“Well ... nothing at all, Emma Edwardovna,” retorted Tamara in the
+meekest and most plausible tone. “Everything was very simple. Even
+before that I found the revolver under Jennka’s pillow and brought it,
+in order to give it over to you. I did not want to interfere, when you
+were reading the letter; but then you turned around to me—I stretched
+the revolver out to you and wanted to say: ‘See, Emma Edwardovna, what
+I found’—for, don’t you see, it surprised me awfully how the late
+Jennie, having a revolver at her disposal, preferred such a horrible
+death as hanging? And that’s all.”
+
+The bushy, frightful eyebrows of Emma Edwardovna rose upward; the eyes
+widened joyously; and a real, uncounterfeited smile spread over her
+cheeks of a behemoth. She quickly extended both hands to Tamara.
+
+“And is this all? O, MEIN KIND? And I thought ... God knows what I
+imagined! Give me your hands, Tamara, your little charming white hands,
+and allow me to press them auf mein Herz, upon my heart, and to kiss
+you.”
+
+The kiss was so long, that Tamara with great difficulty and with
+aversion barely freed herself from the embraces of Emma Edwardovna.
+
+“Well, and now to business. And so, here are my terms: you will be
+housekeeper, I give you fifteen percent, out of the clear gain. Mind
+you, Tamara, fifteen percent. And, besides that, a small salary—thirty,
+forty, well, if you like, fifty roubles a month. Splendid terms—isn’t
+that the truth? I am deeply convinced, that none other than just you
+will help me to raise the house to a real height, and make it the
+swellest not only in our city, but in all the south of Russia as well.
+You have taste, and an understanding of things! ... Besides that, you
+will always be able to entertain, and to stir up the most exacting, the
+most unyielding guests. In rare instances, when a very rich and
+distinguished gentleman—in Russian they call it one “sun-fish,” while
+with us, ein Freier,[26]—when he becomes infatuated with you—for you
+are so handsome, Tamarochka,” (the proprietress looked at her with
+misty, humid eyes), “then I do not at all forbid you to pass the time
+with him gaily; only to bear down always upon the fact that you have no
+right, owing to your duty, your position, Und so weiter, und so weiter
+... aber sagen sie bitte, do you easily make yourself understood in
+German?”
+
+[26] In English, a “toff”; in American, a “swell.”—trans.
+
+
+“Die Deutsche Sprache beherrsche ich in geringerem Grade als die
+franzosische; indes kann ich stets in einer Salon-Plauderei
+mitmachen.”[27]
+
+[27] “My mastery of the German language is a trifle worse than that of
+the French, but I can always keep up my end in parlor small talk.”
+
+
+“O, wunderbar! sie haben eine entzuckende Rigaer Aussprache, die beste
+alter deutschen Aussprachen. Und also—fahren wir in unserer Sprache
+fort. Sie klingt viel susser meinem Ohr, die Muttersprache. Schon?”[28]
+
+[28] O, splendid! ... You have a bewitching Riga enunciation, the most
+correct of all the German ones. And so, let us continue in my tongue.
+That is far sweeter to my ear—my mother tongue. All right?”
+
+
+“SCHON.”[29]
+
+[29] “All right.”
+
+
+“Zuletzt werden Sie nachgeben, dem Anschein nach ungern, unwillkurlich,
+van der Laune des Augenblicks hingerissen—und, was die Hauptsache ist,
+lautlos, heimlich vor mir. Sie verstehen? Dafur zahlen Narren ein
+schweres Geld. Ubrigens brauche ich Sie wohl nicht zu lernen.”[30]
+
+[30] “In the very end you will give in, as though unwillingly, as
+though against your will, as though from infatuation, a momentary
+caprice, and—which is the main thing—as though on the sly from me. You
+understand? For this the fools pay enormous money. However, it seems I
+will not have to teach you.”
+
+
+“Ja, gnadige Frau. Sie sprechen gar kluge Dinge. Doch das ist schon
+keine Plauderei mehr, sondern eine ernste unterhaltung. Yes, my dear
+madam. You say very wise things. But this is no longer small talk; it
+is, rather, serious conversation ... And for that reason it is more
+convenient for me, if you will revert to the Russian language ... I am
+ready to obey you.”
+
+“Furthermore! ... I was just now talking about a lover. I dare not
+forbid you this pleasure, but let us be prudent: let him not appear
+here, or appear as rarely as possible. I will give you days for going
+out, when you will be perfectly free. But it’s best if you would get
+along without him entirely. It will serve your benefit too. This is
+only a drag and a yoke. I am telling you this from my own personal
+experience. Wait a while; after three or four years we will expand this
+business so, that you will have substantial money already, and then I
+vill take you into the business as a partner with full rights. After
+ten years you will still be young and handsome, and then take and buy
+men as much as you want to. By that time romantic follies will go out
+of your head entirely, and it will not be you who will be chosen
+already, but you who will be choosing with sense and with feeling, as a
+connoisseur picks out precious stones. Do you agree with me?”
+
+Tamara cast down her eyes, and smiled just the least trifle.
+
+“You speak golden truths, Emma Edwardovna. I will drop mine, but not at
+once. For that I will need some two weeks. I will try not to have him
+appear here. I accept your proposition.”
+
+“And that’s splendid!” said Emma Edwardovna, get ting up. “Now let us
+conclude our agreement with one good, sweet kiss.”
+
+And she again embraced and took to kissing Tamara hard; who, with her
+downcast eyes and naive, tender face, seemed now altogether a little
+girl. But, having freed herself, finally, from the proprietress, she
+asked in Russian:
+
+“You see, Emma Edwardovna, that I agree in everything with you, but for
+that I beg you to fulfill one request of mine. It will not cost you
+anything. Namely, I hope that you will allow me and the other girls to
+escort the late Jennie to the cemetery.”
+
+Emma Edwardovna made a wry face.
+
+“Oh, if you want to, my darling Tamara, I have nothing against your
+whim. Only what for? This will not help the dead person and will not
+make her alive. Only sentimentalism alone will come out of it ... But
+very well! Only, however, you know yourself that in accordance with
+your law suicides are not buried, or—I don’t know with certainty—it
+seems they throw them into some dirty hole beyond the cemetery.”
+
+“No, do allow me to do as I want to myself. Let it be my whim, but
+concede it to me, my darling, dear, bewitching Emma Edwardovna! But
+then, I promise you that this will be my last whim. After this I will
+be like a wise and obedient soldier at the disposal of a talented
+general.”
+
+“IS’ GUT!” Emma Edwardovna gave in with a sigh. “I can not deny you in
+anything, my child. Let me press your hand. Let us toil and labour
+together for the common good.”
+
+And, having opened the door, she called out across the drawing room
+into the entrance-hall: “Simeon!” And when Simeon appeared in the room,
+she ordered him weightily and triumphantly:
+
+“Bring us a bottle of champagne here, but the real thing—Rederer demi
+sec, and as cool as possible. Step lively!” she ordered the porter, who
+was gaping at her with popping eyes. “We will drink with you, Tamara,
+to the new business, to our brilliant and beautiful future.”
+
+They say that dead people bring luck. If there is any foundation at all
+in this superstition, then on this Saturday it could not have told
+plainer: the influx of visitors was out of the ordinary, even for a
+Saturday night. True, the girls, passing through the corridor or past
+the room that had been Jennka’s increased their steps; timorously
+glanced at it sidelong, out of the corner of the eye; while others even
+crossed themselves. But late in the night the fear of death somehow
+subsided, grew bearable. All the rooms were occupied, while in the
+drawing room a new violinist was trilling without cease—a
+free-and-easy, clean-shaven young man, whom the pianist with the
+cataract had searched out somewhere and brought with him.
+
+The appointment of Tamara as housekeeper was received with cold
+perplexity, with taciturn dryness. But, having bided her time, Tamara
+managed to whisper to Little White Manka:
+
+“Listen, Manya! You tell them all that they shouldn’t pay any attention
+to the fact that I’ve been chosen housekeeper. It’s got to be so. But
+let them do as they wish, only don’t let them trip me up. I am as
+before—their friend and intercessor ... And further on we’ll see.”
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+
+On the next day, on Sunday, Tamara had a multitude of cares. She had
+become possessed by a firm and undeviating thought to bury her friend
+despite all circumstances, in the way that nearest friends are
+buried—in a Christian manner, with all the sad solemnity of the burial
+of secular persons.
+
+She belonged to the number of those strange persons who underneath an
+external indolent calmness, careless taciturnity, egotistical
+withdrawal into one’s self, conceal within them unusual energy; always
+as though slumbering with half an eye, guarding itself from unnecessary
+expenditure; but ready in one moment to become animated and to rush
+forward without reckoning the obstacles.
+
+At twelve o’clock she descended in a cab into the old town; rode
+through it into a little narrow street giving out upon a square where
+fairs were held; and stopped near a rather dirty tea-room, having
+ordered the cabby to wait. In the room she made inquiries of a boy,
+red-haired, with a badger hair-cut and the parting slicked down with
+butter, if Senka the Depot had not come here? The serving lad, who,
+judging by his refined and gallant readiness, had already known Tamara
+for a long time, answered that “Nohow, ma’am; they—Semen Ignatich—had
+not been in yet, and probably would not be here soon seein’ as how
+yesterday they had the pleasure of going on a spree at the Transvaal,
+and had played at billiards until six in the morning; and that now
+they, in all probabilities, are at home, in the Half Way House rooms,
+and if the young lady will give the word, then it’s possible to hop
+over to them this here minute.”
+
+Tamara asked for paper and pencil, and wrote a few words right on the
+spot. Then she gave the note to the waiter, together with a half-rouble
+piece for a tip, and rode away.
+
+The following visit was to the artiste Rovinskaya, living, as Tamara
+had known even before, in the city’s most aristocratic
+hotel—Europe—where she occupied several rooms in a consecutive suite.
+To obtain an interview with the singer was not very easy: the doorman
+below said that it looked as if Ellena Victorovna was not at home;
+while her own personal maid, who came out in answer to Tamara’s
+knocking, declared that madam had a headache, and that she was not
+receiving any one. Again Tamara was compelled to write on a piece of
+paper:
+
+“I come to you from her who once, in a house which is not spoken of
+loudly, cried, standing before you on her knees, after you had sung the
+ballad of Dargomyzhsky. Your kind treatment of her was so splendid. Do
+you remember? Do not fear—she has no need of any one’s help now:
+yesterday she died. But you can do one very important deed in her
+memory, which will be almost no trouble to you at all. While I—am that
+very person who permitted herself to say a few bitter truths to the
+baroness T—, who was then with you; for which truths I am remorseful
+and apologize even now.”
+
+“Hand this over!” she ordered the chambermaid.
+
+She returned after two minutes.
+
+“The madam requests you. They apologize very much that they will
+receive you not fully dressed.”
+
+She escorted Tamara, opened a door before her and quietly shut it.
+
+The great artiste was lying upon an enormous ottoman, covered with a
+beautiful Tekin rug and a multitude of little silk pillows, and soft
+cylindrical bolsters of tapestry. Her feet were wrapped up in silvery,
+soft fur. Her fingers, as usual, were adorned by a multiplicity of
+rings with emeralds, attracting the eyes by their deep and tender
+green.
+
+The artiste was having one of her evil, black days to-day. Yesterday
+morning some misunderstandings with the management had arisen; while in
+the evening the public had received her not as triumphantly as she
+would have desired, or, perhaps, this had simply appeared so to her;
+while to-day in the newspaper the fool of a reviewer, who understood
+just as much of art as a cow does of astronomy, had praised up her
+rival, Titanova, in a big article. And so Ellena Victorovna had
+persuaded herself that her head was aching; that there was a nervous
+tic in her temples; and that her heart, time and again, seemed suddenly
+to fall through somewheres.
+
+“How do you do, my dear!” she said, a trifle nasally, in a weak, wan
+voice, with pauses, as heroines on the stage speak when dying from love
+and from consumption. “Sit down here ... I am glad to see you ... Only
+don’t be angry—I am almost dying from migraine, and from my miserable
+heart. Pardon my speaking with difficulty. I think I sang too much and
+tired my voice ...”
+
+Rovinskaya, of course, had recalled both the mad escapade of that
+evening; and the striking, unforgettable face of Tamara; but now, in a
+bad mood, in the wearisome, prosaic light of an autumn day, this
+adventure appeared to her as unnecessary bravado; something artificial,
+imagined, and poignantly shameful. But she was equally sincere on that
+strange, night-marish evening when she, through the might of talent,
+had prostrated the proud Jennka at her feet, as well as now, when she
+recalled it with fatigue, indolence, and artistic disdain. She, as well
+as many distinguished artists, was always playing a role; was always
+not her own self, and always regarded her words, movements, actions, as
+though looking at herself from a distance with the eyes and feelings of
+the spectators.
+
+She languidly raised from the pillow her narrow, slender, beautiful
+hand, and applied it to her forehead; and the mysterious, deep emeralds
+stirred as though alive and began to flash with a warm, deep sparkle.
+
+“I just read in your note that this poor ... pardon me, her name has
+vanished out of my head...”
+
+“Jennie.”
+
+“Yes, yes, thank you! I recall it now. She died? But from what?”
+
+“She hanged herself ... yesterday morning, during the doctor’s
+inspection...”
+
+The eyes of the artiste, so listless, seemingly faded, suddenly opened,
+and, as through a miracle, grew animated and became shining and green,
+just like her emeralds; and in them were reflected curiosity, fear and
+aversion.
+
+“Oh, my God! Such a dear, so original, handsome, so fiery ... Oh, the
+poor, poor soul! ... And the reason for this was? ...”
+
+“You know ... the disease. She told you.”
+
+“Yes, yes ... I remember, I remember ... But to hang one’s self! ...
+What horror! ... Why, I advised her to treat herself then. Medicine
+works miracles now. I myself know several people who absolutely ...
+well, absolutely cured themselves. Everybody in society knows this and
+receives them ... Ah, the poor little thing, the poor little thing!
+...”
+
+“And so I’ve come to you, Ellena Victorovna. I wouldn’t have dared to
+disturb you, but I seem to be in a forest, and have no one to turn to.
+You were so kind then, so touchingly attentive, so tender to us ... I
+need only your advice and, perhaps, a little of your influence, your
+protection...”
+
+“Oh, please, my dear! ... All I can do, I will ... Oh, my poor head!
+And then this horrible news. Tell me, in what way can I be of
+assistance to you?”
+
+“To confess, I don’t know even myself yet,” answered Tamara. “You see,
+they carried her away to an anatomical theatre ... But until they had
+made the protocol, until they made the journey—then the time for
+receiving had gone by also—in general I think that they have not had a
+chance to dissect her yet ... I’d like, if it’s only possible, that she
+should not be touched. To-day is Sunday; perhaps they’ll postpone it
+until to-morrow, and in the meanwhile something may be done for her...”
+
+“I can’t tell you, dear ... Wait! ... Haven’t I some friend among the
+professors, in the medical world? ... I will look later in my
+memo-books. Perhaps we will succeed in doing something.”
+
+“Besides that,” continued Tamara, “I want to bury her ... At my expense
+... I was attached to her with all my heart during her life.”
+
+“I will help you with pleasure in this, materially...”
+
+“No, no! ... A thousand thanks! ... I’ll do everything myself. I would
+not hesitate to have recourse to your kind heart, but this ... —you
+will understand me— ... this is something in the nature of a vow, that
+a person gives to one’s self and to the memory of a friend. The main
+difficulty is in how we may manage to bury her with Christian rites.
+She was, it seems, an unbeliever, or believed altogether poorly. And
+it’s only by chance that I, also, will cross my forehead. But I don’t
+want them to bury her just like a dog, somewhere beyond the enclosure
+of the cemetery; in silence, without words, without singing ... I don’t
+know, will they permit burying her properly—with choristers, with
+priests? For that reason I’m asking you to assist me with your advice.
+Or, perhaps, you will direct me somewhere? ...”
+
+Now the artiste had little by little become interested and was already
+beginning to forget about her fatigue, and migraine, and the
+consumptive heroine dying in the fourth act. She was already picturing
+the role of an intercessor, the beautiful figure of genius merciful to
+a fallen woman. This was original, extravagant, and at the same time so
+theatrically touching! Rovinskaya, like many of her confreres, did not
+let one day pass by—and, if it were possible, she would not have let
+pass even one hour—without standing out from the crowd, without
+compelling people to talk about her: to-day she would participate in a
+pseudo-patriotic manifestation, while to-morrow she would read from a
+platform, for the benefit of revolutionaries exiled to Siberia,
+inciting verses, full of fire and vengeance. She loved to sell flowers
+at carnivals, in riding academies; and to sell champagne at large
+balls. She would think up her little bon mots beforehand, which on the
+morrow would be caught up by the whole town. She desired that
+everywhere and always the crowd should look only at her, repeat her
+name, love her Egyptian, green eyes, her rapacious and sensuous mouth;
+her emeralds on the slender and nervous hands.
+
+“I can’t grasp it all properly at once,” said she after a silence. “But
+if a person wants anything hard, he will attain it, and I want to
+fulfill your wish with all my soul. Stay, stay! ... I think a glorious
+thought is coming into my head ... For then, on that evening, if I
+mistake not, there was with us, beside the baroness and me...”
+
+“I don’t know them ... One of them walked out of the cabinet later than
+all of you. He kissed Jennie’s hand and said, that if she should ever
+need him, he was always at her service; and gave her his card, but
+asked her not to show it to any strangers. But later all this passed
+off somehow and was forgotten. In some way I never found the time to
+ask Jennie who this man was; while yesterday I searched for the card
+but couldn’t find it...”
+
+“Allow me, allow me! ... I have recalled it!” the artiste suddenly
+became animated. “Aha!” exclaimed she, rapidly getting off the ottoman.
+“It was Ryazanov... Yes, yes, yes... The advocate Ernst Andreievich
+Ryazanov. We will arrange everything right away. That’s a splendid
+thought!”
+
+She turned to the little table upon which the telephone apparatus was
+standing, and rang:
+
+“Central—18-35 please ... Thank you ... Hello! ... Ask Ernst
+Andreievich to the telephone ... The artiste Rovinskaya ... Thank you
+... Hello! ... Is this you, Ernst Andreievich? Very well, very well,
+but now it isn’t a matter of little hands. Are you free? ... Drop the
+nonsense! ... The matter is serious. Couldn’t you come up to me for a
+quarter of an hour? ...No, no ... Yes ... Only as a kind and a clever
+man. You slander yourself ... Well, that’s splendid, really ... Well, I
+am not especially well-dressed, but I have a justification—a fearful
+headache. No, a lady, a girl ... You will see for yourself, come as
+soon as possible ... Thanks! Au revior! ...”
+
+“He will come right away,” said Rovinskaya, hanging up the receiver.
+“He is a charming and awfully clever man. Everything is possible to
+him, even the almost impossible to man ... But in the meantime ...
+pardon me—your name?”
+
+Tamara was abashed, but then smiled at herself:
+
+“Oh, it isn’t worth your disturbing yourself, Ellena Victorovna! Mon
+nomme de guerre is Tamara but just so—Anastasia Nikolaevna. It’s all
+the same—call me even Tamara ... I am more used to it...”
+
+“Tamara! ... That is so beautiful! ... So now, Mile. Tamara, perhaps
+you will not refuse to breakfast with me? Perhaps Ryazanov will also do
+so with us...”
+
+“I have no time, forgive me.”
+
+“That’s a great pity! ... I hope, some other time ... But, perhaps you
+smoke,” and she moved toward her a gold case, adorned with an enormous
+letter E out of the same emeralds she adored.
+
+Ryazanov came very soon.
+
+Tamara, who had not examined him properly on that evening, was struck
+by his appearance. Tall of stature, almost of an athletic build, with a
+broad brow, like Beethoven’s, tangled with artistically negligent
+black, grizzled hair; with the large fleshy mouth of the passionate
+orator; with clear, expressive, clever, mocking eyes—he had such an
+appearance as catches one’s eyes among thousands—the appearance of a
+vanquisher of souls and a conqueror of hearts; deeply ambitious, not
+yet oversated with life; still fiery in love and never retreating
+before a beautiful indiscretion ... “If fate had not broken me up so,”
+reflected Tamara, watching his movements with enjoyment, “then here’s a
+man to whom I’d throw my life; jestingly, with delight, with a smile,
+as a plucked rose is thrown to the beloved...”
+
+Ryazanov kissed Rovinskaya’s hand, then with unconstrained simplicity
+exchanged greetings with Tamara and said:
+
+“We are acquainted even from that mad evening, when you dumbfounded all
+of us with your knowledge of the French language, and when you spoke.
+That which you said was, between us, paradoxical; but then, how it was
+said! ... To this day I remember the tone of your voice, so warm,
+expressive ... And so, Ellena Victorovna,” he turned to Rovinskaya
+again, sitting down on a small, low chair without a back, “in what can
+I be of use to you? I am at your disposal.”
+
+Rovinskaya, with a languid air, again applied the tips of her fingers
+to her temples.
+
+“Ah, really, I am so upset, my dear Ryazanov,” said she, intentionally
+extinguishing the sparkle of her magnificent eyes, “and then, my
+miserable head ... May I trouble you to pass me the pyramidon what-not
+from that table ... Let Mile. Tamara tell you everything ... I can not,
+I am not able to ... This is so horrible! ...”
+
+Tamara briefly, lucidly, narrated to Ryazanov all the sad history of
+Jennka’s death; recalled also about the card left with Jennie; and also
+how the deceased had reverently preserved this card; and—in
+passing—about his promise to help in case of need.
+
+“Of course, of course!” exclaimed Ryanzanov, when she had finished; and
+at once began pacing the room back and forth with big steps, ruffling
+and tossing back his picturesque hair through habit. “You are
+performing a magnificent, sincere, comradely action! That is good! ...
+That is very good! ... I am yours ... You say—a permit for the funeral
+... Hm ... God grant me memory!...”
+
+He rubbed his forehead with his palm.
+
+“Hm ... hm ... If I’m not mistaken—Monocanon, rule one hundred seventy
+... one hundred seventy ... eight ... Pardon me, I think I remember it
+by heart ... Pardon me! ... Yes, so! ‘If a man slayeth himself, he
+shall not be chanted over, nor shall a mass be said for him, unless he
+were greatly astonied, that is, to wit, out of his mind’... Hm ... See
+St. Timothy Alexandrine ... And so, my dear miss, the first thing ...
+You say, that she was taken down from the noose by your doctor—i.e.,
+the official city doctor ... His name? ...”
+
+“Klimenko.”
+
+“It seems I’ve met him somewheres ... All right ... Who is the district
+inspector in your precinct station?”
+
+“Kerbesh.”
+
+“Aha, I know ... Such a strong, virile fellow, with a red beard in a
+fan ... Yes?”
+
+“Yes, that is he.”
+
+“I know him very well! There, now, is somebody that a sentence to hard
+labour is hankering after ... Some ten times he fell into my hands; and
+always, the skunk, gave me the slip somehow. Slippery, just like an
+eel-pout ... We will have to slip him a little present. Well, now! And
+then the anatomical theatre ... When do you want to bury her?”
+
+“Really, I don’t know ... I would like to do it as soon as possible ...
+if possible, to-day.”
+
+“Hm ... To-day ... I don’t vouch for it—we will hardly manage it ...
+But here is my memorandum book. Well, take even this page, where are my
+friends under the letter T—just write the very same way: Tamara, and
+your address. In two hours I will give you an answer. Does that suit
+you? But I repeat again, that probably you will have to postpone the
+burial till to-morrow ... Then—pardon my unceremoniousness—is money
+needed, perhaps?”
+
+“No, thank you!” refused Tamara. “I have money. Thanks for your
+interest! ... It’s time for me to be going. I thank you with all my
+heart, Ellen Victorovna! ...”
+
+“Then expect it in two hours,” repeated Ryazanov, escorting her to the
+door.
+
+Tamara did not at once ride away to the house. She turned into a little
+coffee-house on Catholicheskaya Street on the way. There Senka the
+Depot was waiting for her—a gay fellow with the appearance of a
+handsome Tzigan; not black—but blue-haired; black-eyed, with yellow
+whites; resolute and daring in his work; the pride of local thieves—a
+great celebrity in their world, the first leader of experience, and a
+constant, all-night gamester.
+
+He stretched out his hand to her, without getting up. But in the way in
+which he so carefully, with a certain force, seated her in her place
+could be seen a broad, good-natured endearment.
+
+“How do you do, Tamarochka! Haven’t seen you in a long time—I grew
+weary ... Do you want coffee?”
+
+“No! Business first ... To-morrow we bury Jennka ... She hanged
+herself...” “Yes, I read it in a newspaper,” carelessly drawled out
+Senka through his teeth. “What’s the odds? ...”
+
+“Get fifty roubles for me at once.”
+
+“Tamarochka, my sweetheart—I haven’t a kopeck! ...”
+
+“I’m telling you—get them!” ordered Tamara, imperiously, but without
+getting angry.
+
+“Oh, my Lord! ... Yours, now, I didn’t touch, like I promised; but
+then, it’s Sunday ... The savings banks are closed...”
+
+“Let them! ... Hock the savings book! In general, it’s up to you!”
+
+“Why do you need this, my dearie?”
+
+“Isn’t it all the same to you, you fool? ... For the funeral.”
+
+“Oh! Well, all right then!” sighed Senka. “Then I’d best bring it to
+you myself in the evening ... Right, Tamarochka? ... It’s so very hard
+for me to stand it without you! Oh, my dearie, how I’d kiss and kiss
+you; I wouldn’t let you close your eyes! ... Shan’t I come? ...”
+
+“No, no! ... You do as I ask you, Senechka ... Give in to me. But you
+mustn’t come—I’m housekeeper now.”
+
+“Well, what d’you know about that! ...” drawled out the astonished
+Senka and even whistled.
+
+“Yes. And don’t you come to me in the meantime. But afterwards,
+afterwards, sweetheart, whatever you desire ... There will be an end to
+everything soon!”
+
+“Oh, if you wouldn’t make me suffer so! Wind things up as soon as you
+can!”
+
+“And I will wind ’em up! Wait one little week more, dearie! Did you get
+the powders?”
+
+“The powders are a trifle!” discontentedly answered Senka. “And it
+isn’t powders at all, but pills.”
+
+“And you’re sure when you say that they’ll dissolve at once in water?”
+
+“Sure, I saw it myself.”
+
+“But he won’t die? Listen, Senya: he won’t die? Is that right?...”
+
+“Nothing will happen to him ... He’ll only snooze for a while ... Oh,
+Tamara!” exclaimed he in a passionate whisper; and even suddenly
+stretched himself hard from an unbearable emotion, so that his joints
+cracked. “Finish it, for God’s sake, as soon as possible! ... Let’s do
+the trick and—bye-bye! Wherever you want to go to, sweet-heart! I am
+all at your will: if you want to, we start off for Odessa; if you want
+to—abroad. Finish it up as soon as possible! ...”
+
+“Soon, soon...”
+
+“You just wink at me, and I’m all ready ... with powders, with
+instruments, with passports ... And then—choo-choo! The machine is off!
+Tamarochka! My angel! ... My precious, my sparkler! ...”
+
+And he, always restrained, having forgotten that he could be seen by
+strangers, already wanted to embrace and hug Tamara to himself.
+
+“Now, now!” ... rapidly and deftly, like a cat, Tamara jumped off the
+chair. “Afterwards ... afterwards, Senechka, afterwards, little dearie!
+... I’ll be all yours—there won’t be any denial, nor forbiddance. I’ll
+myself make you weary of me ... Good-bye, my little silly!”
+
+And with a quick movement of her hand having rumpled up his black
+curls, she hastily went out of the coffee-house.
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+
+On the next day, on Monday, toward ten o’clock in the morning, almost
+all the inmates of the house—formerly Madam Shaibes’, but now Emma
+Edwardovna Titzner’s—rode off in cabs to the centre of the city, to the
+anatomical theatre—all, except the far-sighted, much-experienced
+Henrietta; the cowardly and insensible Ninka; and the feeble-minded
+Pashka, who for two days now had not gotten up from her bed, kept
+silent, and to questions directed at her answered by a beatific,
+idiotical smile and with some sort of inarticulate animal lowing. If
+she were not given to eat, she would not even ask; but if food were
+brought, she would eat with greediness, right with her hands. She
+became so slovenly and forgetful, that it was necessary to remind her
+of certain necessary functions in order to avoid unpleasantness. Emma
+Edwardovna did not send out Pashka to her steady guests, who asked for
+Pashka every day. Even before, she had had such periods of a detriment
+of consciousness; however, they had not lasted long, and Emma
+Edwardovna in any case determined to tide it over: Pashka was a
+veritable treasure for the establishment, and its truly horrible
+victim.
+
+The anatomical theatre represented a long, one-storied, dark-gray
+building, with white frames around the windows and doors. There was in
+its very exterior something low, pressed down, receding into the
+ground, almost weird. The girls one after the other stopped near the
+gates and timidly passed through the yard into the chapel; nestled down
+at the other end of the yard, in a corner, painted over in the same
+dark gray colour, with white frame-work.
+
+The door was locked. It was necessary to go after the watchman. Tamara
+with difficulty sought out a bald, ancient old man, grown over as
+though with bog moss by entangled gray bristles; with little rheumy
+eyes and an enormous, reddish, dark-blue granulous nose, on the manner
+of a cookie.
+
+He unlocked the enormous hanging lock, pushed away the bolt and opened
+the rusty, singing door. The cold, damp air together with the mixed
+smell of the dampness of stones, frankincense, and dead flesh breathed
+upon the girls. They fell back, huddling closely into a timorous flock.
+Tamara alone went after the watchman without wavering.
+
+It was almost dark in the chapel. The autumn light penetrated scantily
+through the little, narrow prison-like window, barred with an iron
+grating. Two or three images without chasubles, dark and without
+visages, hung upon the walls. Several common board coffins were
+standing right on the floor, upon wooden carrying shafts. One in the
+middle was empty, and the taken-off lid was lying alongside.
+
+“What sort is yours, now?” asked the watchman hoarsely and took some
+snuff. “Do you know her face or not?”
+
+“I know her.”
+
+“Well, then, look! I’ll show them all to you. Maybe this one? ...”
+
+And he took the lid off one of the coffins, not yet fastened down with
+nails. A wrinkled old woman, dressed any old way in her tatters, with a
+swollen blue face, was lying there. Her left eye was closed; while the
+right was staring and gazing immovably and frightfully, having already
+lost its sparkle and resembling mica that had lain for a long time.
+
+“Not this one, you say? Well, look ... Here’s more for you!” said the
+watchman; and one after the other, opening the lids, exhibited the
+decedents—all, probably, the poorest of the poor: picked up on the
+streets, intoxicated, crushed, maimed and mutilated, beginning to
+decompose. Certain ones had already begun to show on their hands and
+faces bluish-green spots, resembling mould—signs of putrefaction. One
+man, without a nose, with an upper hare-lip cloven in two, had worms,
+like little white dots, swarming upon his sore-eaten face. A woman who
+had died from hydropsy, reared like a whole mountain from her board
+couch, bulging out the lid.
+
+All of them had been hastily sewn up after autopsy, repaired, and
+washed by the moss-covered watchman and his mates. What affair was it
+of theirs if, at times, the brain got into the stomach; while the skull
+was stuffed with the liver and rudely joined with the help of sticking
+plaster to the head? The watchmen had grown used to everything during
+their night-marish, unlikely, drunken life; and, by the bye, almost
+never did their voiceless clients prove to have either relatives or
+acquaintances...
+
+A heavy odour of carrion—thick, cloying, and so viscid that to Tamara
+it seemed as though it was covering all the living pores of her body
+just like glue—stood in the chapel.
+
+“Listen, watchman,” asked Tamara, “what’s this crackling under my feet
+all the time?”
+
+“Crack-ling?” the watchman questioned her over again, and scratched
+himself, “why, lice, it must be,” he said indifferently. “It’s fierce
+how these beasties do multiply on the corpseses! ... But who you
+lookin’ for—man or woman?”
+
+“A woman,” answered Tamara.
+
+“And that means that all these ain’t yours?”
+
+“No, they’re all strangers.”
+
+“There, now! ... That means I have to go to the morgue. When did they
+bring her, now?”
+
+“On Saturday, grandpa,” and Tamara at this got out her purse.
+“Saturday, in the daytime. There’s something for tobacco for you, my
+dear sir!”
+
+“That’s the way! Saturday, you say in the daytime? And what did she
+have on?”
+
+“Well, almost nothing; a little night blouse, an underskirt ... both
+the one and the other white.”
+
+“So-o! That must be number two hundred and seventeen ... How is she
+called, now? ...”
+
+“Susannah Raitzina.”
+
+“I’ll go and see—maybe she’s there. Well, now, mam’selles,” he turned
+to the young ladies, who were dully huddling in the doorway,
+obstructing the light. “Which of you are the braver? If your friend
+came the day before yesterday, then that means that she’s now lying in
+the manner that the Lord God has created all mankind—that is, without
+anything ... Well, who of you will be the bolder? Which two of you will
+come? She’s got to be dressed...”
+
+“Well, now, you go, Manka,” Tamara ordered her mate, who, grown chill
+and pale from horror and aversion, was staring at the dead with widely
+open, limpid eyes. “Don’t be afraid, you fool—I’ll go with you! Who’s
+to go, if not you?
+
+“Well, am I ... well, am I? ...” babbled Little White Manka with barely
+moving lips. “Let’s go. It’s all the same to me...”
+
+The morgue was right here, behind the chapel—a low, already entirely
+dark basement, into which one had to descend by six steps.
+
+The watchman ran off somewhere, and returned with a candle-end and a
+tattered book. When he had lit the candle, the girls saw a score of
+corpses that were lying directly on the stone floor in regular
+rows—extended, yellow, with faces distorted by pre-mortal convulsions,
+with skulls split open, with clots of blood on their faces, with
+grinning teeth.
+
+“Right away ... right away...” the watchman was saying, guiding his
+finger over the headings. “The day before yesterday ... that means, on
+Saturday ... on Saturday ... What did you say her name was, now?”
+
+“Raitzina, Susannah,” answered Tamara.
+
+“Rai-tzina Susannah ...” said the watchman, just as though he were
+singing, “Raitzina, Susannah. Just as I said. Two hundred seventeen.”
+Bending over the dead and illuminating them with the guttered and
+dripping candle-end, he passed from one to another. Finally he stopped
+before a corpse, upon whose foot was written in ink, in large black
+figures: 217.
+
+“Here’s the very same one! Let me, I’ll carry her out into the little
+corridor and run after her stuff ... Wait a while! ...”
+
+Grunting, but still with an ease amazing in one of his age, he lifted
+up the corpse of Jennka by the feet, and threw it upon his back with
+the head down, as though it were a carcass of meat, or a bag of
+potatoes.
+
+It was a trifle lighter in the corridor; and, when the watchman had
+lowered his horrible burden to the floor, Tamara for a moment covered
+her face with her hands, while Manka turned away and began to cry.
+
+“If you need anything, say so,” the watchman was instructing them. “If
+you want to dress the deceased as is fitting, then we can get
+everything that’s required—cloth of gold, a little wreath, a little
+image, a shroud, gauze—we keep everything ... You can buy a thing or
+two in, clothing ... Slippers, too, now...”
+
+Tamara gave him money and went out into the air, letting Manka go in
+front of her.
+
+After some time two wreaths were brought; one from Tamara, of asters
+and georginas with an inscription in black letters upon a white ribbon:
+“To Jennie from a friend;” the other was from Ryazanov, all of red
+flowers; upon its red ribbon stood in gold characters: “Through
+suffering shall we be purified.” He also sent a short little note,
+expressing commiseration and apologizing for not being able to come, as
+he was occupied with an undeferrable business meeting.
+
+Then came the singers who had been invited by Tamara—fifteen men from
+the very best choir in the city.
+
+The precentor, in a gray overcoat and a gray hat, all gray, somehow, as
+though covered with dust, but with long, straight moustaches, like a
+military person’s, recognized Verka; opened his eyes wide in
+astonishment, smiled slightly and winked at her. Two or three times a
+month, and sometimes even oftener, he visited Yamskaya Street with
+ecclesiastical academicians of his acquaintance, just the same
+precentors as he, and some psalmists; and having usually made a full
+review of all the establishments, always wound up with the house of
+Anna Markovna, where he invariably chose Verka.
+
+He was a merry and sprightly man; danced in a lively manner, in a
+frenzy; and executed such figures during the dances that all those
+present just melted from laughter.
+
+Following the singers came the two-horsed catafalque, that Tamara had
+hired; black, with white plumes, and seven torch-bearers along with it.
+They also brought a white, glazed brocade coffin; and a pedestal for
+it, stretched over with black calico. Without hurrying, with habitually
+deft movements, they put away the deceased into the coffin; covered her
+face with gauze; curtained off the corpse with cloth of gold, and lit
+the candles—one at the head and two at the feet.
+
+Now, in the yellow, trembling light of the candles, the face of Jennka
+became more clearly visible. The lividness had almost gone off it,
+remaining only here and there on the temples, on the nose, and between
+the eyes, in party-coloured, uneven, serpentine spots. Between the
+parted dark lips slightly glimmered the whiteness of the teeth, and the
+tip of the bitten tongue was still visible. Out of the open collar of
+the neck, which had taken on the colour of old parchment, showed two
+stripes: one dark—the mark of the rope; another red—the sign of the
+scratch, inflicted by Simeon during the encounter—just like two fearful
+necklaces. Tamara approached and with a safety pin pinned together the
+lace on the collar, at the very chin.
+
+The clergy came: a little gray priest in gold spectacles, in a
+skull-cap; a lanky, tall, thin-haired deacon with a sickly, strangely
+dark and yellow face, as though of terra-cotta; and a sprightly,
+long-skirted psalmist, animatedly exchanging on his way some gay,
+mysterious signs with his friends among the singers.
+
+Tamara walked up to the priest:
+
+“Father,” she asked, “how will you perform the funeral service; all
+together or each one separate?”
+
+“We perform the funeral service for all of them conjointly,” answered
+the priest, kissing the stole, and extricating his beard and hair out
+of its slits. “Usually, that is. But by special request, and by special
+agreement, it’s also possible to do it separately. What death did the
+deceased undergo?”
+
+“She’s a suicide, father.”
+
+“Hm ... a suicide? ... But do you know, young person, that by the
+canons of the church there isn’t supposed to be any funeral service ...
+there ought not to be any? Of course, there are exceptions—by special
+intercession...”
+
+“Right here, father, I have certificates from the police and from the
+doctor ... She wasn’t in her right mind ... in a fit of insanity...”
+
+Tamara extended to the priest two papers, sent her the evening before
+by Ryazanov, and on top of them three bank-notes of ten roubles each.
+“I would beg of you, father, to do everything fitting—Christian like.
+She was a splendid being, and suffered a very great deal. And won’t you
+be so kind—go along with her to the cemetery, and there hold one more
+little mass...”
+
+“It’s all right for me to go along with her to the cemetery, but in the
+cemetery itself I have no right to hold service—there is a clergy of
+their own ... And also here’s how, young person; in view of the fact
+that I’ll have to return once more after the rest, won’t you, now ...
+add another little ten-spot.”
+
+And having taken the money from Tamara’s hand, the priest blessed the
+thurible, which had been brought up by the psalmist, and began to walk
+around the body of the deceased with thurification. Then, having
+stopped at her head, he in a meek, wontedly sad voice, uttered:
+
+“Blessed is our God. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
+be, world without end!”
+
+The psalmist began pattering: Holy God, Most Holy Trinity and Our
+Father poured out like peas.
+
+Quietly, as though confiding some deep, sad, occult mystery, the
+singers began in a rapid, sweet recitative: “With Thy blessed saints in
+glory everlasting, the soul of this Thy servant save, set at rest;
+preserving her in the blessed life, as Thou hast loving kindness for
+man.”
+
+The psalmist distributed the candles; and they with warm, soft, living
+little flames, one after the other, were lit in the heavy, murky air,
+tenderly and transparently illuminating the faces of the women.
+
+Harmoniously the mournful melody flowed forth, and like the sighs of
+aggrieved angels sounded the great words:
+
+“Rest, oh God, this Thy servant and establish her in Heaven, wherein
+the faces of the just and the saints of the Lord shine like unto
+lights; set at rest this Thy servant who hath fallen asleep, contemning
+all her trespasses.”
+
+Tamara was listening intently to the long familiar, but now long
+unheard words, and was smiling bitterly. The passionate, mad words of
+Jennka came back to her, full of such inescapable despair and unbelief
+... Would the all-merciful, all-gracious Lord forgive or would He not
+forgive her foul, fumy, embittered, unclean life? All-Knowing—can it be
+that Thou wouldst repulse her—the pitiful rebel, the involuntary
+libertine; a child that had uttered blasphemies against Thy radiant,
+holy name? Thou—Benevolence, Thou—our Consolation!
+
+A dull, restrained wailing, suddenly passing into a scream, resounded
+in the chapel. “Oh, Jennechka!” This was Little White Manka, standing
+on her knees and stuffing her mouth with her handkerchief, beating
+about in tears. And the remaining mates, following her, also got down
+upon their knees; and the chapel was filled with sighs, stifled
+lamentations and sobbings ...
+
+“Thou alone art deathless, Who hast created and made man; out of the
+dust of the earth were we made, and unto the same dust shall we return;
+as Thou hast ordained me, creating me and saying unto me, dust thou art
+and unto dust shalt thou return.”
+
+Tamara was standing motionless and with an austere face that seemed
+turned to stone. The light of the candle in thin gold spirals shone in
+her bronze-chestnut hair; while she could not tear her eyes away from
+the lines of Jennka’s moist, yellow forehead and the tip of her nose,
+which were visible to Tamara from her place.
+
+“Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return ...” she was mentally
+repeating the words of the canticles. “Could it be that that would be
+all; only earth alone and nothing more? And which is better: nothing,
+or even anything at all—even the most execrable—but merely to be
+existing?”
+
+And the choir, as though affirming her thoughts, as though taking away
+from her the last consolation, was uttering forlornly:
+
+“And all mankind may go...”
+
+
+They sang Eternal Memory through, blew out the candles, and the little
+blue streams spread in the air, blue from frankincense. The priest read
+through the farewell prayer; and afterwards, in the general silence,
+scooped up some sand with the little shovel handed to him by the
+psalmist, and cast it cross-wise upon the corpse, on top of the gauze.
+And at this he was uttering great words, filled with the austere, sad
+inevitability of a mysterious universal law: “The world is the Lord’s,
+and its fulfillment the universe, and all that dwelleth therein.”
+
+The girls escorted their dead mate to the very cemetery. The road
+thither intersected the very entrance to Yamskaya Street. It would have
+been possible to turn to the left through it, and that would have been
+almost half as short; but dead people were not usually carried through
+Yamskaya.
+
+Nevertheless, out of almost all the doors their inmates poured out
+towards the cross roads, in whatever they had on: in slippers upon bare
+feet, in night gowns, with kerchiefs upon their heads; they crossed
+themselves, sighed, wiped their eyes with their handkerchiefs and the
+edges of their jackets.
+
+The weather cleared up ... The cold sun shone brightly from a cold sky
+of radiant blue enamel; the last grass showed its green, the withered
+leaves on the trees glowed, showing their pink and gold ... And in the
+crystal clear, cold air solemnly, and mournfully reverberated the
+sonorous sounds: “Holy God, Holy Almighty, Holy Everliving, have mercy
+upon us!” And with what flaming thirst for life, not to be satiated by
+aught; with what longing for the momentary—transient like unto a
+dream—joy and beauty of being; with what horror before the eternal
+silence of death, sounded the ancient refrain of John Damascene!
+
+Then a brief requiem at the grave, the dull thud of the earth against
+the lid of the coffin ... a small fresh hillock ...
+
+“And here’s the end!” said Tamara to her comrades, when they were left
+alone. “Oh, well, girls—an hour earlier, an hour later! ... I’m sorry
+for Jennka! ... Horribly sorry! ... We won’t ever find such another.
+And yet, my children, it’s far better for her in her pit than for us in
+ours ... Well, let’s cross ourselves for the last time—and home! ...”
+
+And when they all were already nearing their house, Tamara suddenly
+uttered pensively the strange, ominous words:
+
+“And we won’t be long together without her: soon we will be scattered,
+by the wind far and wide. Life is good! ... Look: there’s the sun, the
+blue sky ... How pure the air is ... Cobwebs are floating—it’s Indian
+summer ... How good it is in this world! ... Only we alone—we
+wenches—are wayside rubbish.”
+
+The girls started off on their journey. But suddenly from somewhere on
+the side, from behind a monument, a tall sturdy student detached
+himself. He caught up with Liubka and softly touched her sleeve. She
+turned around and beheld Soloviev. Her face instantaneously turned
+pale, her eyes opened wide and her lips began to tremble.
+
+“Go away!” she said quietly, with infinite hatred.
+
+“Liuba ... Liubochka ...” Soloviev began to mumble. “I searched ...
+searched for you ... I ... Honest to God, I’m not like that one ...
+like Lichonin ... I’m in earnest ... even right now, even to-day.
+
+“Go away!” still more quietly pronounced Liubka.
+
+“I’m serious ... I’m serious ... I’m not trifling, I want to marry...”
+
+“Oh, you creature!” suddenly squealed out Liubka, and quickly, hard,
+peasant-like, hit Soloviev on the cheek with her palm.
+
+Soloviev stood a little while, slightly swaying. His eyes were like
+those of a martyr ... The mouth half-open, with mournful creases at the
+sides.
+
+“Go away! Go away! I can’t bear to look at all of you!” Liubka was
+screaming with rage. “Hangmen, swine!”
+
+Soloviev unexpectedly covered his face with his palms and went back,
+without knowing his way, with uncertain steps, like one drunk.
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+
+And in reality, the words of Tamara proved to be prophetic: since the
+funeral of Jennie not more than two weeks had passed, but during this
+brief space of time so many events burst over the house of Emma
+Edwardovna as do not befall sometimes even in half a decade.
+
+On the very next day they had to send off to a charitable
+institution—into a lunatic asylum—the unfortunate Pashka, who had
+fallen completely into feeble-mindedness. The doctors said that there
+was no hope of her ever improving. And in reality, as they had placed
+her in the hospital on the floor, upon a straw mattress, so did she
+remain upon it without getting up from it to her very death; submerging
+more and more into the black, bottomless abyss of quiet
+feeble-mindedness; but she died only half a year later, from bed-sores
+and infection of the blood.
+
+The next turn was Tamara’s.
+
+For about half a month she fulfilled the duties of a housekeeper, was
+all the time unusually active, energetic; and somehow unwontedly wound
+up with that inner something of her own, which was so strongly
+fomenting within her. On a certain evening she vanished, and did not
+return at all to the establishment...
+
+The matter of fact was, that in the city she had carried on a
+protracted romance with a certain notary—an elderly man, sufficiently
+rich, but exceedingly niggardly. Their acquaintance had been scraped up
+yet a year back, when they had been by chance travelling together on
+the same steamer to a suburban monastery, and had begun a conversation.
+The clever, handsome Tamara; her enigmatic, depraved smile; her
+entertaining conversation; her modest manner of deporting herself, had
+captivated the notary. She had even then marked down for herself this
+elderly man with picturesque gray hair, with seigniorial manners; an
+erstwhile jurisconsult and a man of good family. She did not tell him
+about her profession—it pleased her rather to mystify him. She only
+hazily, in a few words, hinted at the fact that she was a married lady
+of the middle class; that she was unfortunate in domestic life, since
+her husband was a gambler and a despot; and that even by fate she was
+denied such a consolation as children. At parting she refused to pass
+an evening with the notary, and did not want to meet him; but then she
+allowed him to write to her—general delivery, under a fictitious name.
+A correspondence commenced between them, in which the notary flaunted
+his style and the ardency of his feelings, worthy of the heroes of Paul
+Bourget. She maintained the same withdrawn, mysterious tone.
+
+Then, being touched by the entreaties of the notary for a meeting, she
+made an appointment in Prince Park; was charming, witty, and
+languishing; but refused to go with him anywhere.
+
+So she tortured her adorer and skillfully inflamed within him the last
+passion, which at times is stronger and more dangerous than first love.
+Finally, this summer, when the family of the notary had gone abroad,
+she decided to visit his rooms; and here for the first time gave
+herself up to him with tears, with twinges of her conscience, and at
+the same time with such ardour and tenderness, that the poor secretary
+lost his head completely—was plunged entirely into that senile love,
+which no longer knows either reason or retrospect; which compels a man
+to lose the last thing—the fear of appearing ridiculous.
+
+Tamara was very sparing of her meetings. This inflamed her impatient
+friend still more. She consented to receiving from him bouquets of
+flowers, a modest breakfast in a suburban restaurant; but indignantly
+refused all expensive presents, and bore herself so skillfully and
+subtly, that the notary never got up the courage to offer her money.
+When he once stammered out something about a separate apartment and
+other conveniences, she looked him in the eyes so intently, haughtily,
+and sternly, that he, like a boy, turned red in his picturesque gray
+hairs, and kissed her hands, babbling incoherent apologies.
+
+So did Tamara play with him, and feel the ground more and more under
+her. She already knew now on what days the notary kept in his fireproof
+iron safe especially large sums. However, she did not hurry, fearing to
+spoil the business through clumsiness or prematurity.
+
+And so right now this long expected day arrived; a great contractors’
+fair had just ended, and all the notaries’ offices were transacting
+deals for enormous suras every day. Tamara knew that the notary usually
+carried off the money to the bank on Saturdays, in order to be
+perfectly free on Sunday. And for that reason on Friday the notary
+received the following letter:
+
+“My dear, my adored King Solomon! Thy Shoilamite, thy girl of the
+vineyard, greets thee with burning kisses ... Dear, to-day is a holiday
+for me, and I am infinitely happy. To-day I am free, as well as you. HE
+has gone away to Homel for twenty-four hours on business matters, and I
+want to pass all the evening and ALL the night in your place. Ah, my
+beloved! All my life I am ready to pass on my knees before thee. I do
+not want to go anywhere. The suburban road-houses and cabarets have
+bored me long ago. I want you, only you ... you ... you alone. Await
+me, then, in the evening, my joy, about ten-eleven-o’clock! Prepare a
+great quantity of cold white wine, a canteloupe, and sugared chestnuts.
+I am burning, I am dying from desire! It seems to me, I will tire you
+out! I can not wait! My head is spinning around, my face burning, and
+my hands as cold as ice. I embrace you. Thy Valentina.”
+
+That very same evening, about eleven o’clock, she artfully, through
+conversation, led the notary into showing her his fireproof safe;
+playing upon his odd, pecuniary vanity. Rapidly gliding with her glance
+over the shelves and the movable boxes, Tamara turned away with a
+skillfully executed yawn and said:
+
+“Fie, what a bore!”
+
+And, having embraced the notary’s neck, she whispered with her lips at
+his very ears, burning him with her hot breath:
+
+“Lock up this nastiness, my treasure! Let’s go! .... Let’s go! ...”
+
+And she was the first to go out into the dining room.
+
+“Come here, now, Volodya!” she cried out from there. “Come quicker! I
+want wine and after that love, love, love without end! ... No! Drink it
+all, to the very bottom! Just as we will drain our love to the very
+bottom today!”
+
+The notary clinked glasses with her and at one gulp drank off his
+glass. Then he drew in his lips and remarked:
+
+“Strange ... The wine seems to be sort of bitter to-day.”
+
+“Yes!” agreed Tamara and looked attentively at her lover. “This wine is
+always the least bit bitter. For such is the nature of Rhine wines...”
+
+“But to-day it’s especially strong,” said the notary. “No, thanks, my
+dear—I don’t want any more!”
+
+After five minutes he fell asleep, sitting in his chair; his head
+thrown back against its back, and his lower jaw hanging down. Tamara
+waited for some time and started to awaken him. He was without motion.
+Then she took the lit candle, and, having placed it on the window sill
+giving out upon the street, went out into the entrance hall and began
+to listen, until she heard light steps on the stairs. Almost without a
+sound she opened the door and let in Senka, dressed like a real
+gentleman, with a brand new leather hand-bag in his hands.
+
+“Ready?” asked the thief in a whisper.
+
+“He’s sleeping,” answered Tamara, just as quietly. “Look and here are
+the keys.”
+
+They passed together into the study with the fireproof safe. Having
+looked over the lock with the aid of a flashlight, Senka swore in a low
+voice:
+
+“The devil take him, the old animal! ... I just knew that it would be a
+lock with a combination. Here you’ve got to know the letters ... It’s
+got to be melted with electricity, and the devil knows how much time
+it’ll take.”
+
+“It’s not necessary,” retorted Tamara hurriedly. “I know the word ...
+Pick it out: m-o-r-t-g-a-g-. Without the e.”
+
+After ten minutes they descended the steps together; went in purposely
+broken lines through several streets, hiring a cab to the depot only in
+the old city; and rode out of the city with irreproachable passports of
+citizens and landed proprietors—the Stavnitzkys, man and wife. For a
+long time nothing was heard of them until, a year later, Senka was
+caught in Moscow in a large theft, and gave Tamara away during the
+interrogation. They were both tried and sentenced to imprisonment.
+
+Following Tamara came the turn of the naive, trusting, and amorous
+Verka. For a long time already she had been in love with a
+semi-military man, who called himself a civic clerk in the military
+department. His name was Dilectorsky. In their relations Verka was the
+adoring party; while he, like an important idol, condescendingly
+received the worship and the proffered gifts. Even from the end of
+summer Verka noticed that her beloved was becoming more and more cold
+and negligent; and, talking with her, was dwelling in thought somewhere
+far, far away. She tortured herself, was jealous, questioned him, but
+always received in answer some indeterminate phrases, some ominous
+hints at a near misfortune, at a premature grave ...
+
+In the beginning of September he finally confessed to her, that he had
+embezzled official money, big money, something around three thousand;
+and that after five days he would be checked up, and that he,
+Dilectorsky, was threatened with disgrace, the court, and finally, hard
+labour ... Here the civic clerk of the military department burst into
+sobs, clasping his head, and exclaimed:
+
+“My poor mother! ... What will become of her? She will not be able to
+sustain this degradation ... No! Death is a thousand times better than
+these hellish tortures of a being guilty of naught.”
+
+Although he was expressing himself, as always, in the style of the dime
+novels (in which way he had mainly enticed the trusting Verka), still,
+the theatrical thought of suicide, once arisen, no longer forsook him.
+
+Somehow one day he was promenading for a long time with Verka in Prince
+Park. Already greatly devastated by autumn, this wonderful ancient park
+glistened and played with the magnificent tones of the foliage,
+blossoming out into colours: crimson, purple, lemon, orange and the
+deep cherry colour of old, settled wine; and it seemed that the cold
+air was diffusing sweet odours, like precious wine. And yet, a fine
+impress, a tender aroma of death, was wafted from the bushes, from the
+grass, from the trees.
+
+Dilectorsky waxed tender; gave his feelings a free rein, was moved over
+himself, and began to weep. Verka wept a bit with him, too.
+
+“To-day I will kill myself!” said Dilectorsky finally. “All is over!
+...”
+
+“My own, don’t! ... My precious, don’t! ...”
+
+“It’s impossible,” answered Dilectorsky sombrely. “The cursed money!
+... Which is dearer—honour or life?!”
+
+“My dear...”
+
+“Don’t speak, don’t speak, Annetta!” (He, for some reason, preferred to
+the common name of Verka the aristocratic Annetta, thought up by
+himself.) “Don’t speak. This is decided!”
+
+“Oh, if only I could help you!” exclaimed Verka woefully. “Why, I’d
+give my life away ... Every drop of blood! ...”
+
+“What is life?” Dilectorsky shook his head with an actor’s despondence.
+“Farewell, Annetta! ... Farewell! ...”
+
+The girl desperately began to shake her head:
+
+“I don’t want it! ... I don’t want it! ... I don’t want it! ... Take
+me! ... I’ll go with you too! ...”
+
+Late in the evening Dilectorsky took a room in an expensive hotel. He
+knew, that within a few hours, perhaps minutes, he and Verka would be
+corpses; and for that reason, although he had in his pocket only eleven
+kopecks, all in all, he gave orders sweepingly, like a habitual,
+downright prodigal; he ordered sturgeon stew, double snipes, and
+fruits; and, in addition to all this, coffee, liqueurs and two bottles
+of frosted champagne. And he was in reality convinced that he would
+shoot himself; but thought of it somehow affectedly, as though
+admiring, a trifle from the side, his tragic role; and enjoying
+beforehand the despair of his relatives and the amazement of his fellow
+clerks. While Verka, when she had suddenly said that she would commit
+suicide with her beloved, had been immediately strengthened in this
+thought. And there was nothing fearful to Verka in this impending
+death. “Well, now, is it better to croak just so, under a fence? But
+here it’s together with your dearie! At least a sweet death! ...” And
+she frantically kissed her clerk, laughed, and with dishevelled, curly
+hair, with sparkling eyes, was prettier than she had ever been.
+
+The final triumphal moment arrived at last.
+
+“You and I have both enjoyed ourselves, Annetta ... We have drained the
+cup to the bottom and now, to use an expression of Pushkin’s, must
+shatter the goblet!” said Dilectorsky. “You do not repent, oh, my dear?
+...”
+
+“No, no! ...”
+
+“Are you ready?”
+
+“Yes!” whispered she and smiled.
+
+“Then turn away to the wall and shut your eyes!”
+
+“No, no, my dearest, I don’t want it so! ... I don’t want it! Come to
+me! There, so! Nearer, nearer.. Give me your eyes, I will be gazing
+into them. Give me your lips—I will be kissing you, while you... I am
+not afraid! ... Be braver! ... Kiss me harder! ...”
+
+He killed her; and when he looked upon the horrible deed of his hands,
+he then suddenly felt a loathsome, abominable, abject fear. The
+half-naked body of Verka was still quivering on the bed. The legs of
+Dilectorsky gave in from horror; but the reason of a hypocrite, coward
+and blackguard kept vigil: he did still have spirit sufficient to
+stretch away at his side the skin over his ribs, and to shoot through
+it. And when he was falling, frantically crying out from pain, from
+fright, and from the thunder of the shot, the last convulsion was
+running through the body of Verka.
+
+While two weeks after the death of Verka, the naive, sportful, meek,
+brawling Little White Manka perished as well. During one of the
+general, clamourous brawls, usual in the Yamkas, in an enormous affray,
+some one killed her, hitting her with a heavy empty bottle over the
+head. And the murderer remained undiscovered to the last.
+
+So rapidly did events take place in the Yamkas, in the house of Emma
+Edwardovna; and well nigh not a one of its inmates escaped a bloody,
+foul or disgraceful doom.
+
+The final, most grandiose, and at the same time most bloody calamity
+was the devastation committed on the Yamkas by soldiers.
+
+Two dragoons had been short-changed in a rouble establishment, beaten
+up, and thrown out at night into the street. Tom to pieces, in blood,
+they returned to the barracks, where their comrades, having begun in
+the morning, were still finishing up their regimental holiday. And so,
+not half an hour passed, when a hundred soldiers burst into the Yamkas
+and began to wreck house after house. They were joined by an
+innumerable mob that gathered on the run—men of the golden squad[31],
+ragamuffins, tramps, crooks, souteneurs. The panes were broken in all
+the houses, and the grand pianos smashed to smithereens. The feather
+beds were ripped open and the down thrown out into the street; and yet
+for a long while after—for some two days—the countless bits of down
+flew and whirled over the Yamkas, like flakes of snow. The wenches,
+bare-headed, perfectly naked, were driven out into the street. Three
+porters were beaten to death. The rabble shattered, befouled, and rent
+into pieces all the silk and plush furniture of Treppel. They also
+smashed up all the neighbouring taverns and drink-shops, while they
+were at it.
+
+[31] Zolotorotzi—a subtle euphemism for cleaners of cesspools and
+carters of the wealth contained therein.—trans.
+
+
+The drunken, bloody, hideous slaughter continued for some three hours;
+until the arrayed military authorities, together with the fire company,
+finally succeeded in repulsing and scattering the infuriated mob. Two
+half-rouble establishments were set on fire, but the fire was soon put
+out. However, on the next day the tumult again flared up; this time
+already over the whole city and its environs. Altogether unexpectedly
+it took on the character of a Jewish pogrom, which lasted for three
+days, with all its horrors and miseries.
+
+And a week after followed the order of the governor-general about the
+immediate shutting down of houses of prostitution, on the Yamkas as
+well as other streets of the city. The proprietresses were given only a
+week’s time for the settlement of matters in connection with their
+property.
+
+Annihilated, crushed, plundered; having lost all the glamour of their
+former grandeur; ludicrous and pitiful, the aged, faded proprietresses
+and fat-faced, hoarse housekeepers were hastily packing up their
+things. And a month after only the name reminded one of merry Yamskaya
+Street; of the riotous, scandalous, horrible Yamkas.
+
+However, even the name of the street was soon replaced by another, more
+respectable one, in order to efface even the memory of the former
+unpardonable times.
+
+And all these Henriettas-Horses, Fat Kitties, Lelkas-Polecats and other
+women—always naive and foolish, often touching and amusing, in the
+majority of cases deceived and perverted children,—spread through the
+big city, were dissolved within it. Out of them was born a new stratum
+of society—a stratum of the strolling, street prostitutes—solitaries.
+And about their life, just as pitiful and incongruous, but tinged by
+other interests and customs, the author of this novel—which he still
+dedicates to youths and mothers—will some time tell.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Yama (The Pit), by Alexandra Kuprin</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
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+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Yama (The Pit)</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Alexandra Kuprin</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Translator: Bernard Guilbert Guerney</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 5, 2002 [eBook #4706]<br />
+[Most recently updated: March 15, 2023]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YAMA (THE PIT) ***</div>
+
+<h3>YAMA [THE PIT]</h3>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Of this edition, intended for private circulation only, and printed from type
+on Berkeley Antique laid paper, 950 copies have been printed for America, and
+550 for Great Britain. Also, 55 unnumbered copies, for the press.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This copy is Number 223
+</p>
+
+<h1>
+YAMA [THE PIT]
+</h1>
+
+<h3>
+A NOVEL IN THREE PARTS
+</h3>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">BY ALEXANDRA KUPRIN</h2>
+
+<h4>TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
+<br/>
+BY BERNARD GUILBERT GUERNEY</h4>
+
+<h5>“All the horror is in just this, that there is no horror ...”</h5>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h3>AUTHOR’S DEDICATION</h3>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+I know that many will find this novel immoral and indecent; nevertheless, I
+dedicate it with all my heart to MOTHERS AND YOUTHS—A. K.
+</p>
+
+<h3>TRANSLATOR’S DEDICATION</h3>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+I dedicate the labour of translation, in all humility and sincerity, to K.
+ANDRAE. B. G. G.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#intro">INTRODUCTION</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#translator">TRANSLATOR’S NOTE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>PART ONE</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0101">CHAPTER I</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0102">CHAPTER II</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0103">CHAPTER III</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0104">CHAPTER IV</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0105">CHAPTER V</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0106">CHAPTER VI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0107">CHAPTER VII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0108">CHAPTER VIII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0109">CHAPTER IX</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0110">CHAPTER X</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0111">CHAPTER XI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0112">CHAPTER XII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>PART TWO</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0201">CHAPTER I</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0202">CHAPTER II</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0203">CHAPTER III</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0204">CHAPTER IV</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0205">CHAPTER V</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0206">CHAPTER VI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0207">CHAPTER VII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0208">CHAPTER VIII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0209">CHAPTER IX</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0210">CHAPTER X</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0211">CHAPTER XI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0212">CHAPTER XII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0213">CHAPTER XIII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0214">CHAPTER XIV</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0215">CHAPTER XV</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0216">CHAPTER XVI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0217">CHAPTER XVII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>PART THREE</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0301">CHAPTER I</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0302">CHAPTER II</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0303">CHAPTER III</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0304">CHAPTER IV</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0305">CHAPTER V</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0306">CHAPTER VI</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0307">CHAPTER VII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0308">CHAPTER VIII</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#chap0309">CHAPTER IX</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<h3><a name="intro"></a> INTRODUCTION</h3>
+
+<p>
+“With us, you see,” Kuprin makes the reporter Platonov, his mouthpiece, say in
+Yama, “they write about detectives, about lawyers, about inspectors of the
+revenue, about pedagogues, about attorneys, about the police, about officers,
+about sensual ladies, about engineers, about baritones—and really, by God,
+altogether well—cleverly, with finesse and talent. But, after all, all these
+people are rubbish, and their life is not life, but some sort of conjured up,
+spectral, unnecessary delirium of world culture. But there are two singular
+realities—ancient as humanity itself: the prostitute and the moujik. And about
+them we know nothing, save some tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions in
+literature...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions... Let us consider some of the ways
+in which this monstrous reality has been approached by various writers. There
+is, first, the purely sentimental: Prevost’s <i>Manon Lescaut</i>. Then there
+is the slobberingly sentimental: Dumas’ <i>Dame aux Camélias</i>. A third is
+the necrophilically romantic: Louys’ <i>Aphrodite</i>. The fertile Balzac has
+given us no less than two: the purely romantic, in his fascinating portraits of
+the Fair Imperia; and the romantically realistic, in his <i>Splendeurs et
+Misères des Courtisanes</i>. Reade’s <i>Peg Woffington</i> may be called the
+literary parallel of the costume drama; Defoe’s <i>Moll Flanders</i> is
+honestly realistic; Zola’s <i>Nana</i> is rabidly so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is one singular fact that must be noted in connection with the vast
+majority of such depictions. Punk or bona roba, lorette or drab—put her before
+an artist in letters, and, lo and behold ye! such is the strange allure
+emanating from the hussy, that the resultant portrait is either that of a
+martyred Magdalene, or, at the very least, has all the enigmatic piquancy of a
+Monna Lisa... Not a slut, but what is a hetaera; and not a hetaera, but what is
+well-nigh Kypris herself! I know of but one depiction in all literature that
+possesses the splendour of implacable veracity as well as undiminished
+artistry; where the portrait is that of a prostitute, despite all her tirings
+and trappings; a depiction truly deserving to be designated a portrait: the
+portrait supreme of the harlot eternal—Shakespeare’s Cleopatra.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Furthermore, it will be observed that such depictions, for the most part, are
+primarily portraits of prostitutes, and not pictures of prostitution. It is
+also a singular fact that war, another scourge has met with similar treatment.
+We have the pretty, spotless grenadiers and cuirassiers of Meissonier in
+plenty; Vereshchagin is still alone in the grim starkness of his wind-swept,
+snow-covered battle-fields, with black crows wheeling over the crumpled masses
+of gray...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, curiously enough, it is another great Russian, Kuprin, who is supreme—if
+not unique—as a painter of the universal scourge of prostitution, per se; and
+not as an incidental background for portraits. True, he may not have entirely
+escaped the strange allure, aforementioned, of the femininity he paints; for
+femininity—even though fallen, corrupt, abased, is still femininity, one of the
+miracles of life, to Kuprin, the lover of life. But, even if he may be said to
+have used too much of the oil of sentimentality in mixing his colours for the
+portraits, his portraits are subordinate to the background; and there his eye
+is true and keen, his hand steady and unflinching, his colours and brushwork
+unimpeachable. Whether, like his own Platonov—who may be called to some extent
+an autobiographical figure, and many of whose experiences are Kuprin’s
+own—“came upon the brothel” and gathered his material unconsciously, “without
+any ulterior thoughts of writing,” we do not know, nor need we rummage in his
+dirty linen, as he puts it. Suffice it to say here—to cite but two
+instances—that almost anyone acquainted with Russia will tell you the full name
+of the rich, gay, southern port city of K—; that any Odessite will tell you
+that Treppel’s is merely transplanted, for fictional reasons, from his own city
+to K—...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alexandre I. Kuprin was born in 1870; 1909 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary
+of his literary activity. He attained his fame only upon the publication of his
+amazing, epical novel, “The Duel”—which, just like “YAMA,” is an arraignment;
+an arraignment of militaristic corruption. Russian criticism has styled him the
+poet of life. If Chekhov was the Wunderkind of Russian letters, Kuprin is its
+enfant terrible. His range of subjects is enormous; his power of observation
+and his versatility extraordinary. Gambrinus alone would justify his place
+among the literary giants of Europe. Some of his picaresques, “THE INSULT,”
+“HORSE-THIEVES,” and “OFF THE STREET”—the last in the form of a monologue—are
+sheer tours de force. “Olessiya” is possessed of a weird, unearthly beauty;
+“The Shulamite” is a prose-poem of antiquity. He deals with the life of the
+moujik in “Back-woods” and “The Swamp”; of the Jews, in “The Jewess” and “The
+Coward”; of the soldiers, in “The Cadets,” “The Interrogation,” “The Night
+Watch,” “Delirium”; of the actors, in “How I Was an Actor” and “In Retirement.”
+We have circus life in “‘Allez!’” “In The Circus,” “Lolly,” “The Clown”—the
+last a one-act playlet; factory life, in “Moloch”; provincial life, in “Small
+Fry”; bohemian life, in “Captain Ribnicov” and “The River of Life”—which no one
+but Kuprin could have written. There are animal stories and flower stories;
+stories for children—and for neuropaths; one story is dedicated to a jockey;
+another to a circus clown; a third, if I remember rightly, to a race-horse...
+“Yama” created an enormous sensation upon the publication of the first part in
+volume three of the “Sbornik Zemliya”—“The Earth Anthology”—in 1909; the second
+part appeared in volume fifteen, in 1914; the third, in volume sixteen, in
+1915. Both the original parts and the last revised edition have been followed
+in this translation. The greater part of the stories listed above are available
+in translations, under various titles; the list, of course, is merely a handful
+from the vast bulk of the fecund Kuprin’s writings, nor is any group of titles
+exhaustive of its kind. “The Star of Solomon,” his latest collection of
+stories, bears the imprint of Helsingfors, 1920.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must not be thought, despite its locale, that Kuprin’s “Yama” is a picture
+of Russian prostitution solely; it is intrinsically universal. All that is
+necessary is to change the kopecks into cents, pennies, sous or pfennings;
+compute the versts into miles or metres; Jennka may be Eugenie or Jeannette;
+and for Yama, simply read Whitechapel, Montmartre, or the Barbary Coast. That
+is why “Yama” is a “tremendous, staggering, and truthful book—a terrific book.”
+It has been called notorious, lurid—even oleographic. So are, perhaps, the
+picaresques of Murillo, the pictorial satires of Hogarth, the bizarreries of
+Goya...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The best introduction to “Yama,” however, can be given in Kuprin’s own words,
+as uttered by the reporter Platonov. “They do write,” he says, “... but it is
+all either a lie, or theatrical effects for children of tender years, or else a
+cunning symbolism, comprehensible only to the sages of the future. But the life
+itself no one as yet has touched...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But the material here is in reality tremendous, downright crushing,
+terrible... And not at all terrible are the loud phrases about the traffic in
+women’s flesh, about the white slaves, about prostitution being a corroding
+fester of large cities, and so on, and so on... an old hurdy-gurdy of which all
+have tired! No, horrible are the everyday, accustomed trifles; these
+business-like, daily, commercial reckonings; this thousand-year-old science of
+amatory practice; this prosaic usage, determined by the ages. In these
+unnoticeable nothings are completely dissolved such feelings as resentment,
+humiliation, shame. There remains a dry profession, a contract, an agreement, a
+well-nigh honest petty trade, no better, no worse than, say, the trade in
+groceries. Do you understand, gentlemen, that all the horror is in just
+this—that there is no horror! Bourgeois work days—and that is all...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“More awful than all awful words, a hundredfold more awful—is some such little
+prosaic stroke or other as will suddenly knock you all in a heap, like a blow
+on the forehead...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is in such little prosaic strokes; everyday, accustomed, characteristic
+trifles; minute particles of life, that Kuprin excels. The detailism which
+crowds his pages is like the stippling of Whistler; or the enumerations of the
+Bible; or the chiselling of Rodin, that endows the back of the Thinker with
+meaning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We all pass by these characteristic trifles indifferently, like the blind, as
+though not seeing them scattered about under our feet. But an artist will come,
+and he will look over them carefully, and he will pick them up. And suddenly he
+will so skillfully turn in the sun a minute particle of life, that we shall all
+cry out: ’Oh, my God! But I myself—myself!—have seen this with my own eyes.
+Only it simply did not enter my head to turn my close attention upon it.’ But
+our Russian artists of the word—the most conscientious and sincere artists in
+the whole world—for some reason have up to this time passed over prostitution
+and the brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me to answer that. Perhaps
+because of squeamishness, perhaps out of pusillanimity, out of fear of being
+signalized as a pornographic writer; finally from the apprehension that our
+gossiping criticism will identify the artistic work of the writer with his
+personal life and will start rummaging in his dirty linen. Or perhaps they can
+find neither the time, nor the self-denial, nor the self-possession to plunge
+in head first into this life and to watch it right up close, without prejudice,
+without sonorous phrases, without a sheepish pity, in all its monstrous
+simplicity and everyday activity... That material... is truly unencompassable
+in its significance and weightiness... The words of others do not suffice—even
+though they be the most exact—even observations, made with a little note-book
+and a bit of pencil, do not suffice. One must grow accustomed to this life,
+without being cunningly wise...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe, that not now, not soon—after fifty years or so—but there will come
+a writer of genius, and precisely a Russian one, who will absorb within himself
+all the burdens and all the abominations of this life and will cast them forth
+to us in the form of simple, fine, and deathlessly—caustic images. And we shall
+all say: ’Why, now, we ourselves have seen and known all this, but we could not
+even suppose that this is so horrible! In this coming artist I believe with all
+my heart.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kuprin is too sincere, too big, to have written this with himself in mind; yet
+no reader of the scathing, searing arraignment called “Yama,” will question
+that the great, the gigantic Kuprin has shown “the burdens and abominations” of
+prostitution, in “simple, fine, and deathlessly-caustic images”; has shown that
+“all the horror is in just this—that there is no horror...” For it is as a
+pitiless reflection of a “singular,” sinister reality that “Yama” stands
+unsurpassed.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+B. G. GUERNEY.<br/>
+New York City, January, 1922.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="translator"></a> TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.</h3>
+
+<p>
+A word must be said of Kuprin’s style. He is by no means a purist; his pages
+bristle with neologisms and foreign—or, rather, outlandish—words; nor has he
+any hesitancy in adapting and Russianizing such words. He coins words; he is,
+at times, actually Borrowesque, and not only does he resort to colloquialisms
+and slang, but to dialect, cant, and even actual argot. Therein is his
+glory—and, perhaps, his weakness. Therefore, an attempt has been made, wherever
+corruptions, slang, and so forth, appear in the original, to render them
+through the nearest English equivalents. While this has its obvious dubieties
+and disadvantages, any other course would have smacked of prettification—a fate
+which such a book as “Yama” surely does not deserve.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap0101"></a> PART ONE</h2>
+
+<h3> CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<p>
+A long, long time ago, long before the railroads, the stage-drivers—both
+government and private—used to live, from generation to generation, at the very
+farthest confine of a large southern city. And that is why the entire region
+was called the Yamskaya Sloboda—the Stage-drivers’ Borough; or simply Yamskaya,
+or Yamkas—Little Ditches, or, shorter still, Yama—The Pit. In the course of
+time, when hauling by steam killed off transportation by horses, the mettlesome
+tribe of the stage-drivers little by little lost its boisterous ways and its
+brave customs, went over into other occupations, fell apart and scattered. But
+for many years—even up to this time—a shady renown has remained to Yama, as of
+a place exceedingly gay, tipsy, brawling, and in the night-time not without
+danger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow it came about of itself, that on the ruins of those ancient,
+long-warmed nests, where of yore the rosy-cheeked, sprightly wives of the
+soldiery and the plump widows of Yama, with their black eyebrows, had secretly
+traded in vodka and free love, there began to spring up wide-open brothels,
+permitted by the authorities, regulated by official supervision and subject to
+express, strict rules. Towards the end of the nineteenth century both streets
+of Yama—Great Yamskaya and Little Yamskaya—proved to be entirely occupied, on
+one side of the street as well as the other, exclusively with houses of
+ill-fame.[1] Of the private houses no more than five or six were left, but even
+they were taken up by public houses, beer halls, and general stores, catering
+to the needs of Yama prostitution.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] “Houses of Suffrance”—i.e., Houses of the Necessary Evil.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The course of life, the manners and customs, are almost identical in all the
+thirty-odd establishments; the difference is only in the charges exacted for
+the briefly-timed love, and consequently in certain external minutiae as well:
+in the assortment of more or less handsome women, in the comparative smartness
+of the costumes, in the magnificence of the premises and the luxuriousness of
+the furnishings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most chic establishment is that of Treppel, the first house to the left
+upon entering Great Yamskaya. This is an old firm. Its present owner bears an
+entirely different name, and fills the post of an elector in the city council
+and is even a member of the city board. The house is of two stories, green and
+white, built in the debauched pseudo-Russian style a la Ropetovsky, with little
+horses, carved facings, roosters, and wooden towels bordered with lace-also of
+wood; a carpet with a white runner on the stairs; in the front hall a stuffed
+bear, holding a wooden platter for visiting cards in his out-stretched paws; a
+parquet floor in the ballroom, heavy raspberry silk curtains and tulle on the
+windows, along the walls white and gold chairs and mirrors with gilt frames;
+there are two private cabinets with carpets, divans, and soft satin puffs; in
+the bedrooms blue and rose lanterns, blankets of raw silk stuff and clean
+pillows; the inmates are clad in low-cut ball gowns, bordered with fur, or in
+expensive masquerade costumes of hussars, pages, fisher lasses, school-girls;
+and the majority of them are Germans from the Baltic provinces—large, handsome
+women, white of body and with ample breasts. At Treppel’s three roubles are
+taken for a visit, and for the whole night, ten.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three of the two-rouble establishments—Sophie Vassilievna’s, The Old Kiev, and
+Anna Markovna’s—are somewhat worse, somewhat poorer. The remaining houses on
+Great Yamskaya are rouble ones; they are furnished still worse. While on Little
+Yamskaya, which is frequented by soldiers, petty thieves, artisans, and drab
+folk In general, and where fifty kopecks or less are taken for time, things are
+altogether filthy and poor-the floor in the parlor is crooked, warped, and full
+of splinters, the windows are hung with pieces of red fustian; the bedrooms,
+just like stalls, are separated by thin partitions, which do not reach to the
+ceiling, and on the beds, on top of the shaken down hay-mattresses, are
+scattered torn, spotted bed-sheets and flannel blankets, dark from time,
+crumpled any old way, full of holes; the air is sour and full of fumes, with a
+mixture of alcohol vapours and the smell of human emanations; the women,
+dressed in rags of coloured printed calico or in sailor costumes, are for the
+greater part hoarse or snuffling, with noses half fallen through, with faces
+preserving traces of yesterday’s blows and scratches and naively bepainted with
+the aid of a red cigarette box moistened with spit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the year round, every evening—with the exception of the last three days of
+Holy Week and the night before Annunciation, when no bird builds its nest and a
+shorn wench does not plait her braid—when it barely grows dark out of doors,
+hanging red lanterns are lit before every house, above the tented, carved
+street doors. It is just like a holiday out on the street—like Easter. All the
+windows are brightly lit up, the gay music of violins and pianos floats out
+through the panes, cabmen drive up and drive off without cease. In all the
+houses the entrance doors are opened wide, and through them one may see from
+the street a steep staircase with a narrow corridor on top, and the white
+flashing of the many-facetted reflector of the lamp, and the green walls of the
+front hall, painted over with Swiss landscapes. Till the very morning hundreds
+and thousands of men ascend and descend these staircases. Here everybody
+frequents: half-shattered, slavering ancients, seeking artificial excitements,
+and boys-military cadets and high-school lads—almost children; bearded
+paterfamiliases; honourable pillars of society, in golden spectacles; and
+newly-weds, and enamoured bridegrooms, and honourable professors with renowned
+names; and thieves, and murderers, and liberal lawyers; and strict guardians of
+morals—pedagogues, and foremost writers—the authors of fervent, impassioned
+articles on the equal rights of women; and catchpoles, and spies, and escaped
+convicts, and officers, and students, and Social Democrats, and hired patriots;
+the timid and the brazen, the sick and the well, those knowing woman for the
+first time, and old libertines frayed by all species of vice; clear-eyed,
+handsome fellows and monsters maliciously distorted by nature, deaf-mutes,
+blind men, men without noses, with flabby, pendulous bodies, with malodorous
+breath, bald, trembling, covered with parasites—pot-bellied, hemorrhoidal apes.
+They come freely and simply, as to a restaurant or a depot; they sit, smoke,
+drink, convulsively pretend to be merry; they dance, executing abominable
+movements of the body imitative of the act of sexual love. At times attentively
+and long, at times with gross haste, they choose any woman they like and know
+beforehand that they will never meet refusal. Impatiently they pay their money
+in advance, and on the public bed, not yet grown cold after the body of their
+predecessor, aimlessly commit the very greatest and most beautiful of all
+universal mysteries—the mystery of the conception of new life. And the women
+with indifferent readiness, with uniform words, with practiced professional
+movements, satisfy their desires, like machines—only to receive, right after
+them, during the same night, with the very same words, smiles and gestures, the
+third, the fourth, the tenth man, not infrequently already biding his turn in
+the waiting room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So passes the entire night. Towards daybreak Yama little by little grows quiet,
+and the bright morning finds it depopulated, spacious, plunged into sleep, with
+doors shut tightly, with shutters fixed on the windows. But toward evening the
+women awaken and get ready for the following night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so without end, day after day, for months and years, they live a strange,
+incredible life in their public harems, outcast by society, accursed by the
+family, victims of the social temperament, cloacas for the excess of the city’s
+sensuality, the guardians of the honour of the family—four hundred foolish,
+lazy, hysterical, barren women.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0102"></a> CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Two in the afternoon. In the second-rate, two-rouble establishment of Anna
+Markovna everything is plunged in sleep. The large square parlor with mirrors
+in gilt frames, with a score of plush chairs placed decorously along the walls,
+with oleograph pictures of Makovsky’s Feast of the Russian Noblemen, and
+Bathing, with a crystal lustre in the middle, is also sleeping, and in the
+quiet and semi-darkness it seems unwontedly pensive, austere, strangely sad.
+Yesterday here, as on every evening, lights burned, the most rollicking of
+music rang out, blue tobacco smoke swirled, men and women careered in couples,
+shaking their hips and throwing their legs on high. And the entire street shone
+on the outside with the red lanterns over the street doors and with the light
+from the windows, and it seethed with people and carriages until morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the street is empty. It is glowing triumphantly and joyously in the glare
+of the summer sun. But in the parlor all the window curtains are lowered, and
+for that reason it is dark within, cool, and as peculiarly uninviting as the
+interiors of empty theatres, riding academies and court buildings usually are
+in the middle of the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pianoforte glimmers dully with its black, bent, glossy side; the yellow,
+old, time-eaten, broken, gap-toothed keys glisten faintly. The stagnant,
+motionless air still retains yesterday’s odour; it smells of perfumes, tobacco,
+the sour dampness of a large uninhabited room, the perspiration of unclean and
+unhealthy feminine flesh, face-powder, boracic-thymol soap, and the dust of the
+yellow mastic with which the parquet floor had been polished yesterday. And
+with a strange charm the smell of withering swamp grass is blended with these
+smells. To-day is Trinity. In accordance with an olden custom, the chambermaids
+of the establishment, while their ladies were still sleeping, had bought a
+whole waggon of sedge on the market, and had strewn its long, thick blades,
+that crunch underfoot, everywhere about—in the corridors, in the private
+cabinets, in the drawing room. They, also, had lit the lamps before all the
+images. The girls, by tradition, dare not do this with their hands, which have
+been denied during the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the house-porter has adorned the house-entrance, which is carved in the
+Russian style, with two little felled birch-trees. And so with all the
+houses—the thin white trunks with their scant dying verdure adorn the exterior
+near the stoops, bannisters and doors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The entire house is quiet, empty and drowsy. The chopping of cutlets for dinner
+can be heard from the kitchen. Liubka, one of the girls, barefooted, in her
+shift, with bare arms, not good-looking, freckled, but strong and fresh of
+body, has come out into the inner court. Yesterday she had had but six guests
+on time, but no one had remained for the night with her, and because of that
+she had slept her fill—splendidly, delightfully, all alone, upon a wide bed.
+She had risen early, at ten o’clock, and had with pleasure helped the cook
+scrub the floor and the tables in the kitchen. Now she is feeding the chained
+dog Amour with the sinews and cuttings of the meat. The big, rusty hound, with
+long glistening hair and black muzzle, jumps up on the girl—with his front
+paws, stretching the chain tightly and rattling in the throat from shortness of
+breath, then, with back and tail undulating all over, bends his head down to
+the ground, wrinkles his nose, smiles, whines and sneezes from the excitement.
+But she, teasing him with the meat, shouts at him with pretended severity:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There, you—stupid! I’ll—I’ll give it to you! How dare you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she rejoices with all her soul over the tumult and caresses of Amour and
+her momentary power over the dog, and because she had slept her fill, and
+passed the night without a man, and because of the Trinity, according to dim
+recollections of her childhood, and because of the sparkling sunny day, which
+it so seldom befalls her to see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the night guests have already gone their ways. The most business-like,
+quiet and workaday hour is coming on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They are drinking coffee in the room of the proprietress. The company consists
+of five people. The proprietress herself, in whose name the house is
+registered, is Anna Markovna. She is about sixty. She is very small of stature,
+but dumpy: she may be visualized by imagining, from the bottom up, three soft,
+gelatinous globes—large, medium and small, pressed into each other without any
+interstices; this—her skirt, torso and head. Strange, her eyes are a faded
+blue, girlish, even childish, but the mouth is that of an old person, with a
+moist lower lip of a raspberry colour, impotently hanging down. Her
+husband—Isaiah Savvich—is also small, a grayish, quiet, silent little old man.
+He is under his wife’s thumb; he was doorkeeper in this very house even at the
+time when Anna Markovna served here as housekeeper. In order to be useful in
+some way, he has learned, through self-instruction, to play the fiddle, and now
+at night plays dance tunes, as well as a funeral march for shopmen far gone on
+a spree and craving some maudlin tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, there are the two housekeepers—senior and junior. The senior is Emma
+Edwardovna. She is a tall, full woman of forty-six, with chestnut hair, and a
+fat goitre of three chins. Her eyes are encircled with black rings of
+hemorrhoidal origin. The face broadens out like a pear from the forehead down
+to the cheeks, and is of an earthen colour; the eyes are small, black; the nose
+humped, the lips sternly pursed; the expression of the face calmly
+authoritative. It is no mystery to anyone in the house that in a year or two
+Anna Markovna will go into retirement, and sell her the establishment with all
+its rights and furnishings, when she will receive part in cash, and part on
+terms—by promissory note. Because of this the girls honour her equally with the
+proprietress and fear her somewhat. Those who fall into error she beats with
+her own hands, beats cruelly, coolly, and calculatingly, without changing the
+calm expression of her face. Among the girls there is always a favourite of
+hers, whom she tortures with her exacting love and fantastic jealousy. And this
+is far harder than her beatings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other one is called Zociya. She has just struggled out of the ranks of the
+common girls. The girls, as yet, call her impersonally, flatteringly and
+familiarly, “little housekeeper.” She is spare, spry, just a trifle squinting,
+with a rosy complexion, and hair dressed in a little curly pompadour; she
+adores actors—preferably stout comedians. Toward Emma Edwardovna she is
+ingratiating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fifth person, finally, is the local district inspector, Kerbesh. This is an
+athletic man; he is kind of bald, has a red beard like a fan, vividly blue
+slumbrous eyes, and a thin, slightly hoarse, pleasant voice. Everybody knows
+that he formerly served in the secret service division and was the terror of
+crooks, thanks to his terrible physical strength and cruelty in interrogations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He has several shady transactions on his conscience. The whole town knows that
+two years back he married a rich old woman of seventy, and that last year he
+strangled her; however, he was somehow successful in hushing up this affair.
+But for that matter, the remaining four have also seen a thing or two in their
+chequered life. But, just as the bretteurs of old felt no twinges of conscience
+at the recollection of their victims, even so do these people regard the dark
+and bloody things in their past, as the unavoidable little unpleasantness of
+their professions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They are drinking coffee with rich, boiled cream—the inspector with
+Benedictine. But he, strictly speaking, is not drinking, but merely conveying
+the impression that he is doing it to oblige.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, what is it to be, Phoma Phornich?” asks the proprietress searchingly.
+“This business isn’t worth an empty eggshell, now... Why, you have only to say
+a word...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kerbesh slowly draws in half a wine-glass of liqueur, works the oily, strong,
+pungent liquid slightly with his tongue over the roof of his mouth, swallows
+it, chases it down, without hurrying, with coffee, and then passes the ring
+finger of his left hand over his moustaches, to the right and left.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Think it over for yourself, Madam Shoibes,” he says, looking down at the
+table, spreading out his hands and screwing up his eyes. “Think of the risk to
+which I’m exposed! The girl through means of deception was enticed into this...
+what-you-may-call-it... well, in a word, into a house of ill-fame, to express
+it in lofty style. Now the parents are searching for her through the police.
+Ve-ery well. She gets into one place after another, from the fifth into the
+tenth... Finally the trail is picked up with you, and most important of
+all—think of it!—in my district! What can I do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mr. Kerbesh, but she is of age,” says the proprietress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They are of age,” confirms Isaiah Savvich. “They gave an acknowledgment, that
+it was of their own will...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Emma Edwardovna pronounces in a bass, with cool assurance:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Honest to God, she’s the same here as an own daughter.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But that’s not what I am talking about,” the inspector frowns in vexation.
+“Just consider my position... Why, this is duty. Lord, there’s no end of
+unpleasantnesses without that!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The proprietress suddenly arises, shuffles in her slippers to the door, and
+says, winking to the inspector with a sleepy, expressionless eye of faded blue:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mr. Kerbesh, I would ask you to have a look at our alterations. We want to
+enlarge the place a bit.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A-ah! With pleasure...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After ten minutes both return, without looking at each other. Kerbesh’s hand is
+crunching a brand-new hundred rouble note in his pocket. The conversation about
+the seduced girl is not renewed. The inspector, hastily finishing his
+Benedictine, complains of the present decline in manners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have a son, now, a schoolboy—Paul. He comes to me, the scoundrel, and
+declares: ’Papa, the pupils swear at me, because you are a policeman, and
+because you serve on Yamskaya, and because you take bribes from brothels.’
+Well, tell me, for God’s sake, Madam Shoibes, if that isn’t effrontery?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ai, ai, ai! ... And what bribes can there be? Now with me...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I say to him: ’Go, you good-for-nothing, and let the principal know, that
+there should be no more of this, otherwise papa will inform on all of you to
+the governor.’ And what do you think? He comes to me and says: ’I am no longer
+a son to you—seek another son for yourself.’ What an argument! Well, I gave him
+enough to last till the first of the month! Oho-ho! Now he doesn’t want to
+speak with me. Well, I’ll show him yet!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, you don’t have to tell us,” sighs Anna Markovna, letting her lower,
+raspberry-coloured lip hang down and with a mist coming over her faded eyes.
+“We keep our Birdie—she is in Fleisher’s high school—we purposely keep her in
+town, in a respectable family. You understand, it is awkward, after all. And
+all of a sudden she brings such words and expressions from the high school that
+I just simply turned all red.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Honest to God, Annochka turned all red,” confirms Isaiah Savvich.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll turn red, all right!” warmly agrees the inspector. “Yes, yes, yes, I
+understand you fully. But, my God, where are we going! Where are we only going?
+I ask you, what are these revolutionaries and all these various students, or...
+what-you-may-call-’ems? ... trying to attain? And let them put the blame on
+none but themselves. Corruption is everywhere, morality is falling, there is no
+respect for parents. They ought to be shot.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, the day before yesterday we had a case,” Zociya mixes in
+bustlingly. “A certain guest came, a stout man...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Drop it!” Emma Edwardovna, who was listening to the inspector, piously nodding
+with her head bowed to one side, cuts her short in the jargon of the brothels.
+“You’d better go and see about breakfast for the young ladies.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And not a single person can be relied upon,” continues the proprietress
+grumblingly. “Not a servant but what she’s a stiff, a faker. And all the girls
+ever think about is their lovers. Just so’s they may have their own pleasure.
+But about their duties they don’t even think.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is an awkward silence. Some one knocks on the door. A thin, feminine
+voice speaks on the other side of the door:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Housekeeper, dear, take the money and be kind enough to give me the stamps.
+Pete’s gone.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The inspector gets up and adjusts his sabre.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, it’s time I was going to work. Best regards, Anna Markovna. Best wishes,
+Isaiah Savvich.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps you’ll have one more little glass for a stirrup cup?” the nearly blind
+Isaiah Savvich thrusts himself over the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tha-ank you. I can’t. Full to the gills. Honoured, I’m sure! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thanks for your company. Drop in some time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Always glad to be your guest, sir. Au revoir!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in the doorway he stops for a minute and says significantly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But still, my advice to you is—you’d better pass this girl on to some place or
+other in good time. Of course, it’s your affair, but as a good friend of yours
+I give you warning.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He goes away. When his steps are abating on the stairs and the front door bangs
+to behind him, Emma Edwardovna snorts through her nose and says contemptuously:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stool-pigeon! He wants to take money both here and there...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little by little they all crawl apart out of the room. It is dark in the house.
+It smells sweetly of the half-withered sedge. Quiet reigns.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0103"></a> CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Until dinner, which is served at six in the evening, the time drags endlessly
+long and with intolerable monotony. And, in general, this daily interval is the
+heaviest and emptiest in the life of the house. It remotely resembles in its
+moods those slothful, empty hours which are lived through during the great
+holidays in scholastic institutes and other private institutions for females,
+when all the friends have dispersed, when there is much leisure and much
+indolence, and a radiant, agreeable tedium reigns the whole day. In only their
+petticoats and white shifts, with bare arms, sometimes barefooted, the women
+aimlessly ramble from room to room, all of them unwashed, uncombed; lazily
+strike the keys of the old pianoforte with the index finger, lazily lay out
+cards to tell their fortune, lazily exchange curses, and with a languishing
+irritation await the evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka, after breakfast, had carried out the leavings of bread and the cuttings
+of ham to Amour, but the dog had soon palled upon her. Together with Niura she
+had bought some barberry bon-bons and sunflower seeds, and now both are
+standing behind the fence separating the house from the street, gnawing the
+seeds, the shells of which remain on their chins and bosoms, and speculate
+indifferently about those who pass on the street: about the lamp-lighter,
+pouring kerosene into the street lamps, about the policeman with the daily
+registry book under his arm, about the housekeeper from somebody else’s
+establishment, running across the road to the general store.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Niura is a small girl, with goggle-eyes of blue; she has white, flaxen hair and
+little blue veins on her temples. In her face there is something stolid and
+innocent, reminiscent of a white sugar lamb on a Paschal cake. She is lively,
+bustling, curious, puts her nose into everything, agrees with everybody, is the
+first to know the news, and, when she speaks, she speaks so much and so rapidly
+that spray flies out of her mouth and bubbles effervescence on the red lips, as
+in children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Opposite, out of the dram-shop, a servant pops out for a minute—a curly,
+besotted young fellow with a cast in his eye—and runs into the neighbouring
+public house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Prokhor Ivanovich, oh Prokhor Ivanovich,” shouts Niura, “don’t you want
+some?—I’ll treat you to some sunflower seeds!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come on in and pay us a visit,” Liubka chimes in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Niura snorts and adds through the laughter which suffocates her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Warm your feet for a while!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the front door opens; in it appears the formidable and stern figure of the
+senior housekeeper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pfui![2] What sort of indecency is this!” she cries commandingly. “How many
+times must it be repeated to you, that you must not jump out on the street
+during the day, and also—pfui!—only in your underwear. I can’t understand how
+you have no conscience yourselves. Decent girls, who respect themselves, must
+not demean themselves that way in public. It seems, thank God, that you are not
+in an establishment catering to soldiers, but in a respectable house. Not in
+Little Yamskaya.”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] A German exclamation of disgust or contempt, corresponding to the English
+fie.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girls return into the house, get into the kitchen, and for a long time sit
+there on tabourets, contemplating the angry cook Prascoviya, swinging their
+legs and silently gnawing the sunflower seeds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the room of Little Manka, who is also called Manka the Scandaliste and
+Little White Manka, a whole party has gathered. Sitting on the edge of the bed,
+she and another girl—Zoe, a tall handsome girl, with arched eyebrows, with
+grey, somewhat bulging eyes, with the most typical, white, kind face of the
+Russian prostitute—are playing at cards, playing at “sixty-six.” Little Manka’s
+closest friend, Jennie, is lying behind their backs on the bed, prone on her
+back, reading a tattered book, The Queen’s Necklace, the work of Monsieur
+Dumas, and smoking. In the entire establishment she is the only lover of
+reading and reads intoxicatingly and without discrimination. But, contrary to
+expectation, the forced reading of novels of adventure has not at all made her
+sentimental and has not vitiated her imagination. Above all, she likes in
+novels a long intrigue, cunningly thought out and deftly disentangled;
+magnificent duels, before which the viscount unties the laces of his shoes to
+signify that he does not intend to retreat even a step from his position,[3]
+and after which the marquis, having spitted the count through, apologizes for
+having made an opening in his splendid new waistcoat; purses, filled to the
+full with gold, carelessly strewn to the left and right by the chief heroes;
+the love adventures and witticisms of Henry IV—in a word, all this spiced
+heroism, in gold and lace, of the past centuries of French history. In everyday
+life, on the contrary, she is sober of mind, jeering, practical and cynically
+malicious. In her relation to the other girls of the establishment she occupies
+the same place that in private educational institutions is accorded to the
+first strong man, the man spending a second year in the same grade, the first
+beauty in the class—tyrannizing and adored. She is a tall, thin brunette, with
+beautiful hazel eyes, a small proud mouth, a little moustache on the upper lip
+and with a swarthy, unhealthy pink on her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[3] Probably a sly dig at Gautier’s Captain Fracasse.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without letting the cigarette out of her mouth and screwing up her eyes from
+the smoke, all she does is to turn the pages constantly with a moistened
+finger. Her legs are bare to the knees; the enormous balls of the feet are of
+the most vulgar form; below the big toes stand out pointed, ugly, irregular
+tumours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here also, with her legs crossed, slightly bent, with some sewing, sits
+Tamara—a quiet, easy-going, pretty girl, slightly reddish, with that dark and
+shining tint of hair which is to be found on the back of a fox in winter. Her
+real name is Glycera, or Lukeria, as the common folk say it. But it is already
+an ancient usage of the houses of ill-fame to replace the uncouth names of the
+Matrenas, Agathas, Cyclitinias with sonorous, preferably exotic names. Tamara
+had at one time been a nun, or, perhaps, merely a novice in a convent, and to
+this day there have been preserved on her face timidity and a pale puffiness—a
+modest and sly expression, which is peculiar to young nuns. She holds herself
+aloof in the house, does not chum with any one, does not initiate any one into
+her past life. But in her case there must have been many more adventures
+besides having been a nun: there is something mysterious, taciturn and criminal
+in her unhurried speech, in the evasive glance of her deep and dark-gold eyes
+from under the long, lowered eyelashes, in her manners, her sly smiles and
+intonations of a modest but wanton would-be saint. There was one occurrence
+when the girls, with well-nigh reverent awe, heard that Tamara could talk
+fluently in French and German. She has within her some sort of an inner,
+restrained power. Notwithstanding her outward meekness and complaisance, all in
+the establishment treat her with respect and circumspection—the proprietress,
+and her mates, and both housekeepers, and even the doorkeeper, that veritable
+sultan of the house of ill-fame, that general terror and hero.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve covered it,” says Zoe and turns over the trump which had been lying under
+the pack, wrong side up. “I’m going with forty, going with an ace of spades—a
+ten-spot, Mannechka, if you please. I’m through. Fifty-seven, eleven,
+sixty-eight. How much have you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thirty,” says Manka in an offended tone, pouting her lips; “oh, it’s all very
+well for you—you remember all the plays. Deal ... Well, what’s after that,
+Tamarochka?” she turns to her friend. “You talk on—I’m listening.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Zoe shuffles the old, black, greasy cards, allows Manya to cut, then deals,
+having first spat upon her fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara in the meanwhile is narrating to Manya in a quiet voice, without
+dropping her sewing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We embroidered with gold, in flat embroidery—altar covers, palls, bishops’
+vestments... With little grasses, with flowers, little crosses. In winter,
+you’d be sitting near a casement; the panes are small, with gratings, there
+isn’t much light, it smells of lamp oil, incense, cypress; you mustn’t talk—the
+mother superior was strict. Some one from weariness would begin droning a
+pre-Lenten first verse of a hymn ... ‘When I consider thy heavens ...’ We sang
+fine, beautifully, and it was such a quiet life, and the smell was so fine; you
+could see the flaky snow out the windows—well, now, just like in a dream...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie puts the tattered novel down on her stomach, throws the cigarette over
+Zoe’s head, and says mockingly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We know all about your quiet life. You chucked the infants into toilets. The
+Evil One is always snooping around your holy places.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I call forty. I had forty-six. Finished!” Little Manka exclaims excitedly and
+claps her palms. “I open with three.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara, smiling at Jennie’s words, answers with a scarcely perceptible smile,
+which barely distends her lips, but makes little, sly, ambiguous depressions at
+their corners, altogether as with Monna Lisa in the portrait by Leonardo da
+Vinci.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lay folk say a lot of things about nuns ... Well, even if there had been sin
+once in a while ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you don’t sin—you don’t repent,” Zoe puts in seriously, and wets her finger
+in her mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You sit and sew, the gold eddies before your eyes, while from standing in the
+morning at prayer your back just aches, and your legs ache. And at evening
+there is service again. You knock at the door of the mother superior’s cell:
+‘Through prayers of Thy saints, oh Lord, our Father, have mercy upon us.’ And
+the mother superior would answer from the cell, in a little bass-like ‘A-men.’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie looks at her intently for some time, shakes her head and says with great
+significance:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re a queer girl, Tamara. Here I’m looking at you and wondering. Well, now,
+I can understand how these fools, on the manner of Sonka, play at love. That’s
+what they’re fools for. But you, it seems, have been roasted on all sorts of
+embers, have been washed in all sorts of lye, and yet you allow yourself
+foolishness of that sort. What are you embroidering that shirt for?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara, without haste, with a pin refastens the fabric more conveniently on her
+knee, smooths the seam down with the thimble, and speaks, without raising the
+narrowed eyes, her head bent just a trifle to one side:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One’s got to be doing something. It’s wearisome just so. I don’t play at
+cards, and I don’t like them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie continues to shake her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, you’re a queer girl, really you are. You always have more from the guests
+than all of us get. You fool, instead of saving money, what do you spend it on?
+You buy perfumes at seven roubles the bottle. Who needs it? And now you have
+bought fifteen roubles’ worth of silk. Isn’t this for your Senka, now?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course, for Sennechka.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What a treasure you’ve found, to be sure! A miserable thief. He rides up to
+this establishment like some general. How is it he doesn’t beat you yet? The
+thieves—they like that. And he plucks you, have no fear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“More than I want to, I won’t give,” meekly answers Tamara and bites the thread
+in two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now that is just what I wonder at. With your mind, your beauty, I would put
+such rings-around-a-rosie about a guest like that, that he’d take me and set me
+up. I’d have horses of my own, and diamonds.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Everyone to his tastes, Jennechka. You too, now, are a very pretty and darling
+girl, and your character is so independent and brave, and yet you and I have
+gotten stuck in Anna Markovna’s.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie flares up and answers with unsimulated bitterness:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes! Why not! All things come your way! ...You have all the very best guests.
+You do what you want with them, but with me it’s always either old men or
+suckling babies. I have no luck. The ones are snotty, the others have yellow
+around the mouth. More than anything else, now, I dislike the little boys. He
+comes, the little varmint; he’s cowardly, he hurries, he trembles, but having
+done the business, he doesn’t know what to do with his eyes for shame. He’s all
+squirming from disgust. I just feel like giving him one in the snout. Before
+giving you the rouble, he holds it in his pocket in his fist, and that rouble’s
+all hot, even sweaty. The milksop! His mother gives him a ten kopeck piece for
+a French roll with sausage, but he’s economized out of that for a wench. I had
+one little cadet in the last few days. So just on purpose, to spite him, I say:
+‘Here, my dearie, here’s a little caramel for you on your way; when you’re
+going back to your corps, you’ll suck on it.’ So at first he got offended, but
+afterwards took it. Later I looked from the stoop, on purpose; just as soon as
+he walked out, he looked around, and right away into his mouth with the
+caramel. The little swine!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But with old men it’s still worse,” says Little Manka in a tender voice, and
+slyly looks at Zoe. “What do you think, Zoinka?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Zoe, who had already finished playing, and was just about to yawn, now cannot
+in any way give rein to her yawns. She does not know whether she wants to be
+angry or to laugh. She has a steady visitor, some little old man in a high
+station, with perverted erotic habits. The entire establishment makes fun of
+his visits to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Zoe at last succeeds in yawning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To the devil’s dam with all of you,” she says, with her voice hoarse after the
+yawn; “may he be damned, the old anathema!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But still, the worst of all,” Jennie continues to discourse, “worse than your
+director, Zoinka, worse than my cadet, the worst of all—are your lovers. What
+can there be joyous in this: he comes drunk, poses, makes sport of you, wants
+to pretend there’s something in him—only nothing comes of it all. Wha-at a
+lad-die, to be sure! The scummiest of the scum, dirty, beaten-up, stinking, his
+whole body in scars, there’s only one glory about him: the silk shirt which
+Tamarka will embroider for him. He curses one’s mother, the son of a bitch,
+always aching for a fight. Ugh! No!” she suddenly exclaimed in a merry
+provoking voice, “The one I love truly and surely, for ever and ever, is my
+Mannechka, Manka the white, little Manka, my Manka-Scandalistochka.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And unexpectedly, having embraced Manya by the shoulders and bosom, she drew
+her toward herself, threw her down on the bed, and began to kiss deeply and
+vigorously her hair, eyes, lips. Manka with difficulty tore herself away from
+her, with dishevelled, bright, fine, downy hair, all rosy from the resistance,
+and with eyes downcast and moist from shame and laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Leave off, Jennechka, leave off. Well, now, what are you doing? Let me go!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Manya is the meekest and quietest girl in the entire establishment. She
+is kind, yielding, can never refuse anybody’s request, and involuntarily
+everybody treats her with great gentleness. She blushes over every trifle, and
+at such time becomes especially attractive, as only very tender blondes with a
+sensitive skin can be attractive. But it is sufficient for her to drink three
+or four glasses of Liqueur Benedictine, of which she is very fond, for her to
+become unrecognizable and to create brawls, such, that there is always required
+the intervention of the housekeepers, the porter, at times even the police. It
+is nothing for her to hit a guest in the face or to throw in his face a glass
+filled with wine, to overturn the lamp, to curse out the proprietress, Jennie
+treats her with some strange, tender patronage and rough adoration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ladies, to dinner! To dinner, ladies!” calls Zociya the housekeeper, running
+along the corridor. On the run she opens the door into Manya’s room and drops
+hurriedly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To dinner, to dinner, ladies!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They go again to the kitchen, all still in their underwear, all unwashed, in
+slippers and barefoot. A tasty vegetable soup of pork rinds and tomatoes,
+cutlets, and pastry-cream rolls are served. But no one has any appetite, thanks
+to the sedentary life and irregular sleep, and also because the majority of the
+girls, just like school-girls on a holiday, had already managed during the day
+to send to the store for halvah, nuts, rakkat loukoum (Turkish Delight),
+dill-pickles and molasses candy, and had through this spoiled their appetites.
+Only Nina alone—a small, pug-nosed, snuffling country girl, seduced only two
+months ago by a travelling salesman, and (also by him) sold into a brothel—eats
+for four. The inordinate, provident appetite of a woman of the common people
+has not yet disappeared in her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie, who has only picked fastidiously at her cutlet and eaten half her cream
+roll, speaks to her in a tone of hypocritical solicitude:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really, Pheclusha, you might just as well eat my cutlet, too. Eat, my dear,
+eat; don’t be bashful—you ought to be gaining in health. But do you know what
+I’ll tell you, ladies?” she turns to her mates, “Why, our Pheclusha has a
+tape-worm, and when a person has a tape-worm, he always eats for two: half for
+himself, half for the worm.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nina sniffs angrily and answers in a bass which comes as a surprise from one of
+her stature, and through her nose:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There are no tape-worms in me. It’s you that has the tape-worms, that’s why
+you are so skinny.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she imperturbably continues to eat, and after dinner feels herself sleepy,
+like a boa constrictor, eructs loudly, drinks water, hiccups, and, by stealth,
+if no one sees her, makes the sign of the cross over her mouth, through an old
+habit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But already the ringing voice of Zociya can be heard through the corridors and
+rooms:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Get dressed, ladies, get dressed. There’s no use in sitting around...To
+work...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a few minutes in all the rooms of the establishment there are smells of
+singed hair, boric-thymol soap, cheap eau-de-cologne. The girls are dressing
+for the evening.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0104"></a> CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The late twilight came on, and after it the warm, dark night, but for long,
+until very midnight, did the deep crimson glow of the sky still smoulder.
+Simeon, the porter of the establishment, has lit all the lamps along the walls
+of the drawing room, and the lustre, as well as the red lantern over the stoop.
+Simeon was a spare, stocky, taciturn and harsh man, with straight, broad
+shoulders, dark-haired, pock-marked, with little bald spots on his eye-brows
+and moustaches from small-pox, and with black, dull, insolent eyes. By day he
+was free and slept, while at night he sat without absenting himself in the
+front hall under the reflector, in order to help the guests with their coats
+and to be ready in case of any disorder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pianist came—a tall, elegant young man, with white eyebrows and eyelashes,
+and a cataract in his right eye. The while there were no guests, he and Isaiah
+Savvich quietly rehearsed Pas d’Espagne, at that time coming into fashion. For
+every dance ordered by the guests, they received thirty kopecks for an easy
+dance, and a half rouble for a quadrille. But one-half of this price was taken
+out by the proprietress, Anna Markovna; the other, however, the musicians
+divided evenly. In this manner the pianist received only a quarter of the
+general earnings, which, of course, was unjust, since Isaiah Savvich played as
+one self-taught and was distinguished for having no more ear for music than a
+piece of wood. The pianist was constantly compelled to drag him on to new
+tunes, to correct and cover his mistakes with loud chords. The girls said of
+their pianist to the guests, with a certain pride, that he had been in the
+conservatory and always ranked as the first pupil, but since he is a Jew, and
+in addition to that his eyes had begun to trouble him, he had not succeeded in
+completing the course. They all treated him carefully and considerately, with
+some sort of solicitous, somewhat mawkish, commiseration, which chimes so well
+with the inner, backstage customs of houses of ill-fame, where underneath the
+outer coarseness and the flaunting of obscene words dwells the same sweetish,
+hysterical sentimentality as in female boarding schools, and, so they say, in
+penal institutions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the house of Anna Markovna everybody was already dressed and ready for the
+reception of the guests, and languishing from inaction and expectation. Despite
+the fact that the majority of the women experienced toward men—with the
+exception of their lovers—a complete, even somewhat squeamish, indifference,
+before every evening dim hopes came to life and stirred within their souls; it
+was unknown who would choose them, whether something unusual, funny and
+alluring might not happen, whether a guest would not astonish with his
+generosity, whether there would not be some miracle which would overturn the
+whole life...In these presentiments and hopes was something akin to those
+emotions which the accustomed gamester experiences when counting his ready
+money before starting out for his club. Besides that, despite their asexuality,
+they still had not lost the chiefest instinctive aspiration of women—to please.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, in truth, altogether curious personages came into the house at times and
+ludicrous, motley events arose. The police would appear suddenly together with
+disguised detectives and arrest some seemingly respectable, irreproachable
+gentlemen and lead them off, pushing them along with blows in the neck. At
+times brawls would spring up between the drunken, trouble-making company and
+the porters of all the establishments, who had gathered on the run for the
+relief of a fellow porter—a brawl, during which the window-panes and the decks
+of grand-pianos were broken, when the legs of the plush chairs were wrenched
+out for weapons, blood ran over the parquet floor of the drawing room and the
+steps of the stairs, and people with pierced sides and broken heads fell down
+into the dirt near the street entrance, to the feral, avid delight of Jennka,
+who, with burning eyes, with happy laughter, went into the thickest of the
+melee, slapped herself on the hips, swore and sicked them on, while her mates
+were squealing from fear and hiding under the beds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were occurrences when there would arrive, with a pack of parasites, some
+member of a workingmen’s association or a cashier, long since far gone in an
+embezzlement of many thousands through gambling at cards and hideous orgies,
+and now, in a drunken, senseless delirium, tossing the last money after the
+other, before suicide or the prisoner’s box. Then the doors and windows of the
+house would be tightly closed, and for two days and nights at a stretch a
+Russian orgy would go on—nightmarish, tedious, savage, with screams and tears,
+with revilement over the body of woman; paradisaical nights were gotten up,
+during which naked, drunken, bow-legged, hairy, pot-bellied men, and women with
+flabby, yellow, pendulous thin bodies hideously grimaced to the music; they
+drank and guzzled like swine, on the beds and on the floor, amidst the stifling
+atmosphere, permeated with spirits, befouled with human respiration and the
+exhalations of unclean skins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Occasionally, there would appear a circus athlete, creating in the low-ceiled
+quarters a strangely cumbersome impression, somewhat like that of a horse led
+into a room; a Chinaman in a blue blouse, white stockings, and with a queue; a
+negro from a cabaret, in a tuxedo coat and checked pantaloons, with a flower in
+his button-hole, and with starched linen, which, to the amazement of the girls,
+not only did not soil from the black skin, but appeared still more dazzlingly
+white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These rare people fomented the satiated imagination of the prostitutes, excited
+their exhausted sensuality and professional curiosity, and all of them, almost
+enamoured, would walk in their steps, jealous and bickering with one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was one incident when Simeon had let into the room an elderly man,
+dressed like a bourgeois. There was nothing exceptional about him; he had a
+stern, thin face, with bony, evil-looking cheek-bones, protruding like tumours,
+a low forehead, a beard like a wedge, bushy eyebrows, one eye perceptibly
+higher than the other. Having entered, he raised his fingers, folded for the
+sign of the cross, to his forehead, but having searched the corners with his
+eyes and finding no image, he did not in the least grow confused, put down his
+hand, and at once with a business-like air walked up to the fattest girl in the
+establishment—Kitty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let’s go!” he commanded curtly, and with determination nodded his head in the
+direction of the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the entire period of her absence the omniscious Simeon, with a
+mysterious, and even somewhat proud air, managed to inform Niura, at that time
+his mistress, while she, in a whisper, with horror in her rounded eyes, told
+her mates, in secret, that the name of the bourgeois was Dyadchenko, and that
+last fall he had volunteered, owing to the absence of the hangman, to carry out
+the execution of eleven rioters, and with his own hands had hung them in two
+mornings. And—monstrous as it may be—at that hour there was not in the
+establishment a single girl who did not feel envy toward the fat Kitty, and did
+not experience a painful, keen, vertiginous curiosity. When Dyadchenko was
+going away half an hour later—with his sedate and stern air, all the women
+speechlessly, with their mouths gaping, escorted him to the street door and
+afterwards watched him from the windows as he walked along the street. Then
+they rushed into the room of the dressing Kitty and overwhelmed her with
+interrogations. They looked with a new feeling, almost with astonishment, at
+her bare, red, thick arms, at the bed, still crumpled, at the old, greasy,
+paper rouble, which Kitty showed them, having taken it out of her stocking.
+Kitty could tell them nothing. “A man like any man, like all men,” she said
+with a calm incomprehension; but when she found out who her visitor had been,
+she suddenly burst into tears, without herself knowing why.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This man, the outcast of outcasts, fallen as low as the fancy of man can
+picture, this voluntary headsman, had treated her without rudeness, but with
+such absence of even a hint at endearment, with such disdain and wooden
+indifference, as no human being is treated; not even a dog or a horse, and not
+even an umbrella, overcoat or hat, but like some dirty, unclean object, for
+which a momentary, unavoidable need arises, but which, at the passing of its
+needfulness, becomes foreign, useless, and disgusting. The entire horror of
+this thought the fat Kate could not embrace with her brain of a fattened turkey
+hen, and because of that cried—as it seemed even to her—without cause and
+reason.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were also other happenings, which stirred up the turbid, foul life of
+these poor, sick, silly, unfortunate women. There were cases of savage,
+unbridled jealousy with pistol shots and poisoning; occasionally, very rarely,
+a tender, flaming and pure love would blossom out upon this dung; occasionally
+the women even abandoned an establishment with the help of the loved man, but
+almost always came back. Two or three times it happened that a woman from a
+brothel would suddenly prove pregnant—and this always seemed, on the face of
+it, laughable and disgraceful, but touching in the profundity of the event.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And no matter what may have happened, every evening brought with it such an
+irritating, strained, spicy expectation of adventures that every other life,
+after that in a house of ill-fame, would have seemed flat and humdrum to these
+lazy women of no will power.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0105"></a> CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The windows are opened wide to the fragrant darkness of the evening, and the
+tulle curtains stir faintly back and forth from the imperceptible movement of
+the air. It smells of dewy grass from the consumptive little garden in front of
+the house, and just the least wee bit of lilac and the withering birch leaves
+of the little trees placed near the entrance because of the Trinity. Liuba, in
+a blue velvet blouse with low cut bosom, and Niura, dressed as a “baby,” in a
+pink, wide sacque to the knees, with her bright hair loose and with little
+curls on her forehead, are lying embraced on the window-sill, and are singing
+in a low voice a song about the hospital, which song is the rage of the day and
+exceedingly well known among prostitutes. Niura, through her nose, leads in a
+high voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liuba seconds her with a stifled alto:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Monday now is come again,<br/>
+They’re supposed to get me out;<br/>
+Doctor Krasov won’t let me out ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In all the houses the windows are brightly lit, while hanging lanterns are
+burning before the entrances. To both girls the interior in the establishment
+of Sophia Vasilievna, which is directly opposite, is distinctly visible—the
+shining yellow parquet, draperies of a dark cherry colour on the doors, caught
+up with cords, the end of a black grand-piano, a pier glass in a gilt frame,
+and the figures of women in gorgeous dresses, now flashing at the windows, now
+disappearing, and their reflections in the mirrors. The carved stoop of
+Treppel, to the right, is brightly illuminated by a bluish electric light in a
+big frosted globe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The evening is calm and warm. Somewhere far, far away, beyond the line of the
+railroads, beyond some black roofs and the thin black trunks of trees, down low
+over the dark earth in which the eye does not see but rather senses the mighty
+green tone of spring, reddens with a scarlet gold the narrow, long streak of
+the sunset glow, which has pierced the dove-coloured mist. And in this
+indistinct, distant light, in the caressing air, in the scents of the oncoming
+night, was some secret, sweet, conscious mournfulness, which usually is so
+gentle in the evenings between spring and summer. The indistinct noise of the
+city floated in, the dolorous, snuffling air of an accordeon, the mooing of
+cows could be heard; somebody’s soles were scraping dryly and a ferruled cane
+rapped resoundingly on the flags of the pavement; lazily and irregularly the
+wheels of a cabman’s victoria, rolling at a pace through Yama, would rumble by,
+and all these sounds mingled with a beauty and softness in the pensive
+drowsiness of the evening. And the whistles of the locomotives on the line of
+the railroad, which was marked out in the darkness with green and red lights,
+sounded with a quiet, singing caution.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Now the nurse is co-oming in,<br/>
+Bringing sugar and a roll,<br/>
+Bringing sugar and a roll,<br/>
+Deals them equally to all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Prokhor Ivanich!” Niura suddenly calls after the curly waiter from the
+dram-shop, who, a light black silhouette, is running across the road. “Oh,
+Prokhor Ivanich!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, bother you!” the other snarls hoarsely. “What now?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A friend of yours sent you his regards. I saw him today.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What sort of friend?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Such a little good-looker! An attractive little brunet ...No, but you’d better
+ask—where did I see him?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, where?” Prokhor Ivanovich comes to a stop for a minute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And here’s where: nailed over there, on the fifth shelf with old hats, where
+we keep all dead cats.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Scat! You darn fool!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Niura laughs shrilly over all Yama, and throws herself down on the sill,
+kicking her legs in high black stockings. Afterward, having ceased laughing,
+she all of a sudden makes round astonished eyes and says in a whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But do you know, girlie—why, he cut a woman’s throat the year before last—that
+same Prokhor. Honest to God!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is that so? Did she die?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, she didn’t. She got by,” says Niura, as though with regret. “But just the
+same she lay for two months in the Alexandrovskaya Hospital. The doctors said,
+that if it were only this teen-weeny bit higher—then it would have been all
+over. Bye-bye!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, what did he do that to her for?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How should I know? Maybe she hid money from him or wasn’t true to him. He was
+her lover—her pimp.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, and what did he get for it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, nothing. There was no evidence of any kind. There had been a free-for-all
+mix-up. About a hundred people were fighting. She also told the police that she
+had no suspicions of any sort. But Prokhor himself boasted afterwards: ‘I,’
+says he, ‘didn’t do for Dunka that time, but I’ll finish her off another time.
+She,’ says he, ‘won’t get by my hands. I’m going to give her the works.’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A shiver runs all the way down Liuba’s back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They’re desperate fellows, these pimps!” she pronounces quietly, with horror
+in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Something terrible! I, you know, played at love with our Simeon for a whole
+year. Such a Herod, the skunk! I didn’t have a whole spot on me. I always went
+about in black and blue marks. And it wasn’t for any reason at all, but just
+simply so—he’d go in the morning into a room with me, lock himself in, and
+start in to torture me. He’d wrench my arms, pinch my breasts, grab my throat
+and begin to strangle me. Or else he’d be kissing, kissing, and then he’d bite
+the lips so that the blood would just spurt out ... I’d start crying—but that’s
+all he was looking for. Then he’d just pounce an me like a beast—simply
+shivering all over. And he’d take all my money away—well, now, to the very last
+little copper. There wasn’t anything to buy ten cigarettes with. He’s stingy,
+this here Simeon, that’s what, always into the bank-book with it, always
+putting it away into the bank-book... Says when he gets a thousand roubles
+together—he’ll go into a monastery.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go on!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Honest to God. You look into his little room: the twenty-four hours round, day
+and night, the little holy lamp burns before the images. He’s very strong for
+God ... Only I think that he’s that way because there’s heavy sins upon him.
+He’s a murderer.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What are you saying?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, let’s drop talking about him, Liubochka. Well, let’s go on further:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll go to the drug store, buy me some poison, And I will poison then meself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Niura starts off in a very high, thin voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie walks back and forth in the room, with arms akimbo, swaying as she
+walks, and looking at herself in all the mirrors. She has on a short orange
+satin dress, with straight deep pleats in the skirt, which vacillates evenly to
+the left and right from the movement of her hips. Little Manka, a passionate
+lover of card games, ready to play from morning to morning, without stopping,
+is playing away at “sixty-six” with Pasha, during which both women, for
+convenience in dealing, have left an empty chair between them, while they
+gather their tricks into their skirts, spread out between their knees. Manka
+has on a brown, very modest dress, with black apron and pleated black bib; this
+dress is very becoming to her dainty, fair little head and small stature; it
+makes her younger and gives her the appearance of a high-school undergraduate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her partner Pasha is a very queer and unhappy girl. She should have been, long
+ago, not in a house of ill-fame, but in a psychiatric ward, because of an
+excruciating nervous malady, which compels her to give herself up, frenziedly,
+with an unwholesome avidity, to any man whatsoever who may choose her, even the
+most repulsive. Her mates make sport of her and despise her somewhat for this
+vice, just as though for some treason to their corporate enmity toward men.
+Niura, with very great versimilitude, mimics her sighs, groans, outcries and
+passionate words, from which she can never refrain in the moments of ecstasy
+and which are to be heard in the neighbouring rooms through two or three
+partitions. There is a rumour afloat about Pasha, that she got into a brothel
+not at all through necessity or temptation or deception, but had gone into it
+her own self, voluntarily, following her horrible, insatiable instinct. But the
+proprietress of the house and both the housekeepers indulge Pasha in every way
+and encourage her insane weakness, because, thanks to it, Pasha is in constant
+demand and earns four, five times as much as any one of the remaining
+girls—earns so much, that on busy gala days she is not brought out to the more
+drab guests at all, or else refused them under the pretext of Pasha’s illness,
+because the steady, paying guests are offended if they are told that the girl
+they know is busy with another. And of such steady guests Pasha has a
+multitude; many are with perfect sincerity, even though bestially, in love with
+her, and even not so long ago two, almost at the same time, offered to set her
+up: a Georgian—a clerk in a store of Cakhetine wines, and some railroad agent,
+a very proud and very poor nobleman, with shirt cuffs the colour of a cabbage
+rose, and with an eye which had been replaced by a black circle on an elastic.
+Pasha, passive in everything save her impersonal sensuality, would go with
+anybody who might call her, but the administration of the house vigilantly
+guards its interests in her. A near insanity already flits over her lovely
+face, in her half-closed eyes, always smiling with some heady, blissful, meek,
+bashful and unseemly smile, in her languorous, softened, moist lips, which she
+is constantly licking; in her short, quiet laugh—the laugh of an idiot. Yet at
+the same time she—this veritable victim of the social temperament—in everyday
+life is very good-natured, yielding, entirely uncovetous and is very much
+ashamed of her inordinate passion. Toward her mates she is tender, likes very
+much to kiss and embrace them and sleep in the same bed with them, but still
+everybody has a little aversion for her, it would seem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mannechka, sweetie, dearie,” says Pasha lightly touching Manya’s hand with
+emotion, “tell my fortune, my precious little child.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We-ell,” Manya pouts her lips just like a child, “let’s play a little more.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mannechka, my little beauty, you little good-looker, my precious, my own, my
+dear...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Manya gives in and lays out the pack on her knees. A suit of hearts comes out,
+a small monetary interest and a meeting in the suit of spades with a large
+company in the king of clubs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pasha claps her hands joyously:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, it’s my Levanchik! Well, yes, he promised to come to-day. Of course, it’s
+Levanchik.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s your Georgian!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, yes, my little Georgian. Oh, how nice he is. I’d just love never to let
+him go away from me. Do you know what he told me the last time? ‘If you’ll go
+on living in a sporting house, then I’ll make both you dead, and make me dead.’
+And he flashed his eyes at me so!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie, who had stopped near, listens to her words and asks haughtily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who was it said that?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, my little Georgian, Levan. ‘Both for you death and for me death.’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fool! He isn’t any little Georgian at all, but simply a common Armenian.
+You’re a crazy fool.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no, he isn’t—he’s a Georgian. And it is quite strange on your part...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m telling you—a common Armenian. I can tell better. Fool!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What are you cursing for, Jennie? I didn’t start cursing you first off, did
+I?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You just try and be the first to start cursing! Fool! Isn’t it all the same to
+you what he is? Are you in love with him, or what?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, I am in love with him!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, and you’re a fool. And the one with the badge in his cap, the lame
+one—are you in love with him too?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, what of it? I respect him very much. He is very respectable.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And with Nicky the Book-keeper? And with the contractor? And with
+Antoshka-Kartoshka?[4] And with the fat actor? Oo-ooh, you shameless creature!”
+Jennie suddenly cries out. “I can’t look at you without disgust. You’re a
+bitch! In your place, if I was such a miserable thing, I’d rather lay hands on
+myself, strangle myself with a cord from my corset. You vermin!”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[4] Tony the Potato.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pasha silently lowers her eyelashes over her tear-filled eyes. Manya tries to
+defend her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really, what are you carrying on like that for, Jennechka? What are you down
+on her like that for...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh, all of you are fine!” Jennie sharply cuts her short. “No self-respect of
+any sort! Some scum comes along, buys you like a piece of meat, hires you like
+a cabby, at a fixed rate, for love for an hour, but you go all to pieces: ‘Ah,
+my little lover! Ah, what unearthly passion!’ Ugh!” she spat in disgust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wrathfully turns her back upon them and continues to promenade on a
+diagonal through the room, swinging her hips and blinking at herself in every
+mirror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During this time Isaac Davidovich, the piano player, is still struggling with
+the refractory violinist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not that way, not that way, Isaiah Savvich. You throw the fiddle away for one
+little minute. Listen a little to me. Here is the tune.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He plays with one finger and hums in that horrible goatish voice that all
+musical directors—for which calling he had been at one time preparing—possess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ess-tam, ess-tam, ess-tiam-tiam. Well, now, repeat after me the first part,
+first time off..... Well..... ein, zwei...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their rehearsal is being attentively watched by the grey-eyed, round-faced,
+arch-browed Zoe, mercilessly bedaubed with cheap rouges and whiteners, leaning
+with her elbows on the pianoforte, and the slight Vera, with drink-ravaged
+face, in the costume of a jockey—in a round little cap with straight brim, in a
+little silk jacket, striped blue and white, in tightly stretched trunks and in
+little patent leather boots with yellow facings. And really, Vera does resemble
+a jockey, with her narrow face, in which the exceedingly sparkling blue eyes,
+under a smart bob coming down on the forehead, are set too near the humped,
+nervous, very handsome nose. When, at last, after long efforts the musicians
+agree, the somewhat small Verka walks up to the large Zoe, in that mincing,
+tethered walk, the hind part sticking out, and elbows spread as though for
+flight, with which only women in male costume can walk, and makes a comical
+masculine bow to her, spreading her arms wide and lowering them. And, with
+great enjoyment, they begin careering over the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nimble Niura, always the first to announce all the news, suddenly jumps
+down from the window sill, and calls out, spluttering from the excitement and
+hurry:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A swell carriage...has driven up...to Treppel ...with electricity... Oi,
+goils...may I die on the spot...there’s electricity on the shafts.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the girls, save the proud Jennie, thrust themselves out of the windows. A
+driver with a fine carriage is indeed standing near the Treppel entrance. His
+brand-new, dashing victoria glistens with new lacquer; at the ends of the
+shafts two tiny electric lights burn with a yellow light; the tall white horse,
+with a bare pink spot on the septum of its nose, shakes its handsome head,
+shifts its feet on the same spot, and pricks up its thin ears; the bearded,
+stout driver himself sits on the coach-box like a carven image, his arms
+stretched out straight along his knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, for a ride!” squeals Niura. “Oh, uncle! Oh you swell coachman!” she cries
+out, hanging over the window sill. “Give a poor little girlie a ride... Give us
+a ride for love.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the swell coachman laughs, makes a scarcely noticeable movement with his
+fingers, and immediately the white horse, as though it had been waiting just
+for that, starts from its place at a goodly trot, handsomely turns around and
+with measured speed floats away into the darkness together with the victoria
+and the broad back of the coachman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pfui! What indecency!” the indignant voice of Emma Edwardovna sounds in the
+room. “Well, where did you see that respectable girls should allow themselves
+to climb out of the windows and holler all over the street. O, scandal! And
+it’s all Niura, and it’s always this horrible Niura!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She is majestic in her black dress, with her yellow flabby face, with the dark
+pouches under her eyes, with the three pendulous, quivering chins. The girls,
+like boarding school misses, staidly seat themselves on the chairs along the
+walls, except Jennie, who continues to contemplate herself in all the mirrors.
+Two more cabbies drive up opposite, to the house of Sophia Vasilievna. Yama is
+beginning to liven up. At last one more victoria rattles along the paved road
+and its noise is cut short abruptly at the entrance to Anna Markovna’s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The porter Simeon helps someone take off his things in the front hall. Jennie
+looks in there, holding on with both hands to the door jambs, but immediately
+turns back, and as she walks shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head
+negatively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t know him, someone who’s an entire stranger,” she says in a low voice.
+“He has never been in our place. Some daddy or other, fat, in gold eye-glasses
+and a uniform.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Emma Edwardovna commands in a voice which sounds like a summoning cavalry
+trumpet:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ladies, into the drawing room! Into the drawing room, ladies!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One after the other, with haughty gaits, into the drawing room enter: Tamara,
+with bare white arms and bared neck, wound with a string of artificial pearls;
+fat Kitty with her fleshy, quadrangular face and low forehead—she, too, is in
+decollete, but her skin is red and in goose-pimples; Nina, the very newest one,
+pug-nosed and clumsy, in a dress the colour of a green parrot; another
+Manka—Big Manka, or Manka the Crocodile, as they call her, and—the last—Sonka
+the Rudder, a Jewess, with an ugly dark face and an extraordinarily large nose,
+precisely for which she has received her nickname, but with such magnificent
+large eyes, at the same time meek and sad, burning and humid, as, among the
+women of all the terrestrial globe, are to be found only among the Jewesses.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0106"></a> CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The elderly guest in the uniform of the Department of Charity walked in with
+slow, undecided steps, at each step bending his body a little forward and
+rubbing his palms with a circular motion, as though washing them. Since all the
+women were pompously silent, as though not noticing him, he traversed the
+drawing room and let himself down on a chair alongside of Liuba, who, in
+accordance with etiquette, only gathered up her skirt a little, preserving the
+abstracted and independent air of a girl from a respectable house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you do, miss?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you do?” answered Liuba abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How are you getting along?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thanks—thank you. Treat me to a smoke.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon me—I don’t smoke.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So that’s how. A man—and he doesn’t smoke, just like that. Well, then, treat
+me to some Lafitte with lemonade. I am terribly fond of Lafitte with lemonade.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He let that pass in silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ooh, what a stingy daddy! Where do you work, now? Are you one of the
+government clerks?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I’m a teacher. I teach the German language.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I have seen you somewhere, daddy. Your physiognomy is familiar to me.
+Where have I met you before?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, I don’t know, really. Unless it was on the street.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It might have been on the street, likely as not... You ought to treat me to an
+orange, at least. May I ask for an orange?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He again grew quiet, looking about him. His face began to glisten and the
+pimples on his forehead became red. He was mentally appraising all the women,
+choosing a likely one for himself, and was at the same time embarrassed by his
+silence. There was nothing at all to talk about; besides that the indifferent
+importunity of Liuba irritated him. Fat Katie pleased him with her large,
+bovine body, but she must be—he decided in his mind—very frigid in love, like
+all stout women, and in addition to that not handsome of face. Vera also
+excited him, with her appearance of a little boy, and her firm thighs, closely
+enveloped by the white tights; and Little White Manya, looking so like an
+innocent school-girl; and Jennie with her energetic, swarthy, handsome face.
+For one minute he was all ready to stop at Jennie, but only started in his
+chair and did not venture—by her easy, inaccessible and negligent air, and
+because she in all sincerity did not pay him the least attention, he surmised
+that she was the most spoilt of all the girls in the establishment, accustomed
+to having the visitors spend more money on her than on the others. But the
+pedagogue was a calculating man, burthened with a large family and an exhausted
+wife, destroyed by his masculine demands and suffering from a multiplicity of
+female ills. Teaching in a female high school and in an institute, he lived
+constantly in a sort of secret sensual delirium, and only his German training,
+stinginess and cowardice helped him to hold his constantly aroused desires in
+check. But two or three times a year, with incredible privations, he would cut
+five or ten roubles out of his beggarly budget, denying himself in his beloved
+evening mug of beer and contriving to save on the street cars, which
+necessitated his making enormous distances on foot through the town. This money
+he set aside for women and spent it slowly, with gusto, trying to prolong and
+cheapen down the enjoyment as much as possible. And for his money he wanted a
+very great deal, almost the impossible; his German sentimental soul dimly
+thirsted after innocence, timidity, poesy, in the flaxen image of Gretchen; but
+as a man he dreamt, desired, and demanded that his caresses should bring a
+woman into rapture and palpitation and into a sweet exhaustion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, all the men strove for the very same thing—even the most wretched,
+monstrous, misshapen and impotent of them—and ancient experience had long ago
+taught the women to imitate with voice and movements the most flaming passion,
+retaining in the most tempestuous minutes the fullest sang froid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You might at least order the musicians to play a polka. Let the girls dance a
+little,” asked Liuba grumblingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That suited him. Under cover of the music, amid the jostling of the dances, it
+was far more convenient to get up courage, arise, and lead one of the girls out
+of the drawing room, than to do it amid the general silence and the finical
+immobility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And how much does that cost?” he asked cautiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A quadrille is half a rouble; but ordinary dances are thirty kopecks. Is it
+all right then?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, of course...if you please...I don’t begrudge it,” he agreed, pretending
+to be generous...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Whom do you speak to?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, over there—to the musicians.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not? ... I’ll do it with pleasure...Mister musician, something in the
+light dances, if you please,” he said, laying down his silver on the
+pianoforte.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What will you order?” asked Isaiah Savvich, putting the money away in his
+pocket. “Waltz, polka, polka-mazourka?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well...Something sort of...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A waltz, a waltz!” Vera, a great lover of dancing, shouted from her place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, a polka! ... A waltz! ... A vengerka! ... A waltz!” demanded others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let them play a polka,” decided Liuba in a capricious tone. “Isaiah Savvich,
+play a little polka, please. This is my husband, and he is ordering fox me,”
+she added, embracing the pedagogue by the neck. “Isn’t that true, daddy?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he freed himself from under her arm, drawing his head in like a turtle, and
+she without the least offence went to dance with Niura. Three other couples
+were also whirling about. In the dances all the girls tried to hold the waist
+as straight as possible, and the head as immobile as possible, with a complete
+unconcern in their faces, which constituted one of the conditions of the good
+taste of the establishment. Under cover of the slight noise the teacher walked
+up to Little Manka.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let’s go?” he said, offering her his bent arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let’s go,” answered she, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She brought him into her room, gotten up with all the coquettishness of a
+bedroom in a brothel of the medium sort, with a bureau, covered with a knit
+scarf, and upon it a mirror, a bouquet of paper flowers, a few empty
+bonbonierres, a powder box, a faded photograph of a young man with white
+eyebrows and eyelashes and a haughtily astonished face, as well as several
+visiting cards. Above the bed, which is covered with a pink pique blanket,
+along the wall, is nailed up a rug with a representation of a Turkish sultan
+luxuriating in his harem, a narghili in his mouth; on the walls, several more
+photographs of dashing men of the waiter and actor type; a pink lantern hangs
+down from the ceiling by chains; there are also a round table under a carpet
+cover, three vienna chairs, and an enameled bowl with a pitcher of the same
+sort in the corner on a tabouret, behind the bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Darling, treat me to Lafitte with lemonade,” in accordance with established
+usage asked Little Manka, unbuttoning her corsage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Afterwards,” austerely answered the pedagogue. “It will all depend upon
+yourself. And then—what sort of Lafitte can you have here? Some muddy brew or
+other?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have good Lafitte,” contradicted the girl touchily. “Two roubles a bottle.
+But if you are so stingy, then buy me beer at least. All right?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, beer is all right...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And for me lemonade and oranges. Yes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A bottle of lemonade, yes; but oranges, no. Later, maybe, I will treat you to
+champagne even. It will all depend on you. If you’ll exert yourself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then, daddy, I’ll ask for four bottles of beer and two bottles of lemonade?
+Yes? And for me just a little cake of chocolate. All right? Yes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Two bottles of beer, a bottle of lemonade, and nothing more. I don’t like when
+I’m bargained with. If need be, I’ll order myself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And may I invite a friend of mine?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, let it be without any friends, if you please.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Manka leaned out of the door into the corridor and called out resoundingly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Housekeeper, dear! Two bottles of beer and a bottle of lemonade for me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simeon came with a tray and began with an accustomed rapidity to uncork the
+bottles. Following him came Zociya, the housekeeper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There, now, how well you’ve made yourself at home here. Here’s to your lawful
+marriage!” she congratulated them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Daddy, treat the little housekeeper with beer,” begged Manka. “Drink,
+housekeeper dear.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, in that case here’s to your health, mister. Somehow, your face seems
+kind of familiar to me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The German drank his beer, sucking and licking his moustache, and impatiently
+waited for the housekeeper to go away. But she, having put down her glass and
+thanked him, said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let me get the money coming from you, mister. As much as is coming for the
+beer and the time. That’s both better for you and more convenient for us.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The demand for the money went against the grain of the teacher, because it
+completely destroyed the sentimental part of his intentions. He became angry:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What sort of boorishness is this, anyway! It doesn’t look as if I were
+preparing to run away from here. And besides, can’t you discriminate between
+people at all? You can see that a man of respectability, in a uniform, has come
+to you, and not some tramp. What sort of importunity is this!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The housekeeper gave in a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now, don’t get offended, mister. Of course, you’ll pay the young lady yourself
+for the visit. I don’t think you will do her any wrong, she’s a fine girl among
+us. But I must trouble you to pay for the beer and lemonade. I, too, have to
+give an account to the proprietress. Two bottles at fifty is a rouble and the
+lemonade thirty—a rouble thirty.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good Lord, a bottle of beer fifty kopecks!” the German waxed indignant. “Why,
+I will get it in any beer-shop for twelve kopecks.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, then, go to a beer-shop if it’s cheaper there,” Zociya became offended.
+“But if you’ve come to a respectable establishment, the regular price is half a
+rouble. We don’t take anything extra. There, that’s better. Twenty kopecks
+change coming to you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, change, without fail,” firmly emphasized the German teacher. “And I would
+request of you that nobody else should enter.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, no, no, what are you saying,” Zociya began to bustle near the door.
+“Dispose yourself as you please, to your heart’s content. A pleasant appetite
+to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Manka locked the door on a hook after her and sat down on the German’s knee,
+embracing him with her bare arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you here long?” he asked, sipping his beer. He felt dimly that that
+imitation of love which must immediately take place demanded some sort of
+psychic propinquity, a more intimate acquaintance, and on that account, despite
+his impatience, began the usual conversation, which is carried on by almost all
+men—when alone with prostitutes, and which compels the latter to lie almost
+mechanically, to lie without mortification, enthusiasm or malice, according to
+a single, very ancient stencil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not long, only the third month.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And how old are you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sixteen,” fibbed Little Manka, taking five years off her age.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“O, such a young one!” the German wondered, and began, bending down and
+grunting, to take off his boots. “Then how did you get here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, a certain officer deprived me of my innocence there...near his
+birthplace. And it’s terrible how strict my mamma is. If she was to find out,
+she’d strangle me with her own hands. Well, so then I ran away from home and
+got in here...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And did you love that same officer, the one who was the first one, now?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I hadn’t loved him, I wouldn’t have gone to him. He promised to marry me,
+the scoundrel, but then managed to get what he was after, and abandoned me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, and were you ashamed the first time?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course, you’d be ashamed...How do you like it, daddy, with light or without
+light? I’ll turn, down the lantern a little. All right?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, and aren’t you bored here? What do they call you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Manya. To be sure I’m bored. What sort of a life is ours!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The German kissed her hard on her lips and again asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And do you love the men? Are there men who please you? Who afford you
+pleasure?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How shouldn’t there be?” Manka started laughing. “I love the ones like you
+especially, such nice little fatties.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You love them? Eh? Why do you love them?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I love them just so. You’re nice, too.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The German meditated for a few seconds, pensively sipping away at his beer.
+Then he said that which every man tells a prostitute in these moments preceding
+the casual possession of her body:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you know, Marichen, you also please me very much. I would willingly take
+you and set you up.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re married,” the girl objected, touching his ring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, but, you understand, I don’t live with my wife; she isn’t well, she can’t
+fulfill her conjugal duties.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The poor thing! If she were to find out where you go, daddy, she would cry for
+sure.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let’s drop that. So, you know, Mary, I am always looking out for such a girl
+as you for myself, so modest and pretty. I am a man of means, I would find a
+flat with board for you, with fuel and light. And forty roubles a month pin
+money. Would you go?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not go—I’d go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kissed her violently, but a secret apprehension glided swiftly through his
+cowardly heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But are you healthy?” he asked in an inimical, quavering voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, yes, I am healthy. There’s a doctor’s inspection every Saturday in our
+place.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After five minutes she went away from him, as she walked putting away in her
+stocking the earned money, on which, as on the first handsel, she had first
+spat, after a superstitious custom. There had been no further speech either
+about maintenance or natural liking. The German was left unsatisfied with the
+frigidity of Manka and ordered the housekeeper to be summoned to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Housekeeper dear, my husband demands your presence!” said Manya, coming into
+the drawing room and fixing her hair before a mirror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Zociya went away, then returned afterwards and called Pasha out into the
+corridor. Later she came back into the drawing room, but alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How is it, Manka, that you haven’t pleased your cavalier?” she asked with
+laughter. “He complains about you: ‘This,’ he says, ‘is no woman, but some log
+of wood, a piece of ice.’ I sent him Pashka.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh, what a disgusting man!” Manka puckered up her face and spat aside. “Butts
+in with his conversations. Asks: ‘Do you feel when I kiss you? Do you feel a
+pleasant excitement?’ An old hound. ‘I’ll take you,’ he says, ‘and set you
+up!’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They all say that,” remarked Zoe indifferently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Jennie, who since morning has been in an evil mood, suddenly flared up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, the sneak, the big, miserable sneak that he is!” she exclaimed, turning
+red and energetically putting her hands to her sides. “Why, I would take him,
+the old, dirty little beast, by the ear, then lead him up to the mirror and
+show him his disgusting snout. What? Good-looking, aren’t you? And how much
+better you’ll be when the spit will be running out of your mouth, and you’ll
+cross your eyes, and begin to choke and rattle in the throat, and to snort
+right in the face of the woman. And for your damned rouble you want me to go
+all to pieces before you like a pancake, and that from your nasty love my eyes
+should pop out onto my forehead? Why, hit him in the snout, the skunk, in the
+snout! Until there’s blood!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“O, Jennie! Stop it now! PFUI!” the susceptible Emma Edwardovna, made indignant
+by her tone, stopped her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I won’t stop!” she cut her short abruptly. But she grew quiet by herself and
+wrathfully walked away with distending nostrils and with fire in the darkened,
+handsome eyes.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0107"></a> CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Little by little the drawing room was filling. There came Roly-Poly, long known
+to all Yama—a tall, thin, red-nosed, gray old man, in the uniform of a forest
+ranger, in high boots, with a wooden yard-stick always sticking out of his
+side-pocket. He passed whole days and evenings as a habitue of the billiard
+parlor in the tavern, always half-tipsy, shedding his little jokes, jingles and
+little sayings, acting familiarly with the porters, with the housekeepers and
+the girls. In the houses everybody from the proprietress to the
+chamber-maids—treated him with a bit of derision—careless, a trifle
+contemptuous, but without malice. At times he was even not without use: he
+could transmit notes from the girls to their lovers, and run over to the market
+or to the drug-store. Not infrequently, thanks to his loosely hung tongue and
+long extinguished self respect, he would worm himself into a gathering of
+strangers and increase their expenditures, nor did he carry elsewhere the money
+gotten as “loans” on such occasions, but spent it right here for women—unless,
+indeed, he left himself some change for cigarettes. And, out of habit, he was
+good-naturedly tolerated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And here’s Roly-Poly arrived,” announced Niura, when he, having already
+managed to shake hands amicably with Simeon the porter, stopped in the doorway
+of the drawing room, lanky, in a uniform cap knocked at a brave slant over one
+side of his head. “Well, now, Roly-Poly, fire away!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have the honour to present myself,” Roly-Poly immediately commenced to
+grimace, putting his hand up to his brim in military fashion, “a right
+honourable privy frequenter of the local agreeable establishments, Prince
+Bottlekin, Count Liquorkin, Baron Whoatinkevich-Giddapkovski—Mister Beethoven!
+Mister Chopin!” he greeted the musicians. “Play me something from the opera The
+Brave and Charming General Anisimov, or, A Hubbub in the Coolidor. My regards
+to the little political economist Zociya.[5] A-ha! Then you kiss only at
+Easter? We shall write that down. Ooh-you, my Tomalachka, my pitty-itty
+tootsicums!”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[5] An untranslatable pun on Economochka, a diminutive for
+“housekeeper.”—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so with jests and with pinches he went the round of all the girls and at
+last sat down alongside of the fat Katie, who put her fat leg upon his, leant
+with her elbow upon her knee, while upon the palm she laid her chin, and began
+to watch indifferently and closely the surveyor rolling a cigarette for
+himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And how is it that you don’t ever get tired of it, Roly-Poly? You’re forever
+rolling a coffin nail.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roly-Poly at once commenced to move his eye-brows and the skin of his scalp and
+began to speak in verse:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Dear cigarette, my secret mate,<br/>
+How can I help loving thee?<br/>
+Not through mere whim, prompted by fate,<br/>
+All have started smoking thee.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, Roly-Poly, but you are going to croak soon,” said Kitty indifferently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And a very simple matter, that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Roly-Poly, say something still funnier, in verse,” begged Verka.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at once, obediently, having placed himself in a funny pose, he began to
+declaim:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Many stars are in the bright sky,<br/>
+But to count them there’s no way.<br/>
+Yes, the wind whispers there can be,<br/>
+But there really is no way.<br/>
+Blossoming now are burdocks,<br/>
+Now sing out the birds called cocks.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Playing the tom-fool in this manner, Roly-Poly would sit whole evenings and
+nights through in the drawing rooms of the establishments. And through some
+strange psychic fellow feeling the girls counted him almost as one of their
+own; occasionally rendered him little temporary services and even bought him
+beer and vodka at their expense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some time after Roly-Poly a large company of hairdressers, who were that day
+free from work, tumbled in. They were noisy, gay, but even here, in a brothel,
+did not cease their petty reckonings and conversations about closed and open
+theatrical benefits, about the bosses, about the wives of the bosses. All these
+were people corrupt to a sufficient degree, liars, with great hopes for the
+future—such as, for example, entering the service of some countess as a kept
+lover. They wanted to utilize to the widest possible extent their rather
+hard-earned money, and on that account decided to make a review of absolutely
+all the houses of Yama; only Treppel’s they could not resolve to enter, as that
+was too swell for them. But at Anna Markovna’s they at once ordered a quadrille
+and danced it, especially the fifth figure, where the gents execute a solo,
+perfectly, like real Parisians, even putting their thumbs in the arm holes of
+their vests. But they did not want to remain with the girls; instead, they
+promised to come later, when they had wound up the complete review of the
+brothels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there also came and went government clerks of some sort; crisp young people
+in patent leather boots; several students; several officers, who were horribly
+afraid of losing their dignity in the eyes of the proprietress and the guests
+of the brothel. Little by little in the drawing room was created such a noisy,
+fumy setting that no one there any longer felt ill at ease. There came a steady
+visitor, the lover of Sonka the Rudder, who came almost every day and sat whole
+hours through near his beloved, gazed upon her with languishing oriental eyes,
+sighed, grew faint and created scenes for her because she lives in a brothel,
+because she sins against the Sabbath, because she eats meat not prepared in the
+orthodox Hebrew manner, and because she has strayed from the family and the
+great Hebrew church.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a usual thing—and this happened often—Zociya the housekeeper would walk up
+to him under cover of the hubbub and would say, twisting her lips:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, what are you sitting there for mister? Warming your behind? You might go
+and pass the time with the young lady.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both of them, the Jew and the Jewess, were by birth from Homel, and must have
+been created by God himself for a tender, passionate, mutual love; but many
+circumstances—as, for example, the pogrom which took place in their town,
+impoverishment, a complete confusion, fright—had for a time parted them.
+However, love was so great that the junior drug clerk Neiman, with great
+difficulty, efforts, and humiliations, contrived to find for himself the place
+of a junior in one of the local pharmacies, and had searched out the girl he
+loved. He was a real, orthodox Hebrew, almost fanatical. He knew that Sonka had
+been sold by her very mother to one of the buyers-up of live merchandise, knew
+many humiliating, hideous particulars of how she had been resold from hand to
+hand, and his pious, fastidious, truly Hebraic soul writhed and shuddered at
+these thoughts, but nevertheless love was above all. And every evening he would
+appear in the drawing room of Anna Markovna. If he was successful, at an
+enormous deprivation, in cutting out of his beggarly income some chance rouble,
+he would take Sonka into her room, but this was not at all a joy either for him
+or for her: after a momentary happiness—the physical possession of each
+other—they cried, reproached each other, quarreled with characteristic Hebraic,
+theatrical gestures, and always after these visits Sonka the Rudder would
+return into the drawing room with swollen, reddened eyelids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But most frequently of all he had no money, and would sit whole evenings
+through near his mistress, patiently and jealously awaiting her when Sonka
+through chance was taken by some guest. And when she would return and sit down
+beside him, he would, without being perceived, overwhelm her with reproaches,
+trying not to turn the general attention upon himself and without turning his
+head in her direction. And in her splendid, humid, Hebraic eyes during these
+conversations there was always a martyr-like but meek expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There arrived a large company of Germans, employed in an optical shop; there
+also arrived a party of clerks from the fish and gastronomical store of
+Kereshkovsky, and two young people very well known in the Yamas—both bald, with
+sparse, soft, delicate hairs around the bald spots: Nicky the Book-keeper and
+Mishka the Singer—so were they both called in the houses. They also were met
+very cordially, just like Karl Karlovich of the optical shop and Volodka of the
+fish store—with raptures, cries and kisses, flattering to their self-esteem.
+The spry Niurka would jump out into the foyer, and, having informed herself as
+to who had come, would report excitedly, after her wont:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Jennka, your husband has come!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Or:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Little Manka, your lover has come!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mishka the Singer, who was no singer at all, but the owner of a drug
+warehouse, at once, upon entering, sang out in a vibrating, quavering, goatish
+voice:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“They fe-e-e-l the tru-u-u-u-uth!<br/>
+Come thou daw-aw-aw-aw-ning...”
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+which he perpetrated at every visit of his to Anna Markovna.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Almost incessantly they played the quadrille, waltz, polka, and danced. There
+also arrived Senka—the lover of Tamara—but, contrary to his wont, he did not
+put on airs, did not go in for “ruination,” did not order a funeral march from
+Isaiah Savvich, and did not treat the girls to chocolate ... For some reason he
+was gloomy, limped on his right leg, and sought to attract as little attention
+as possible—probably his professional affairs were at this time in a bad way.
+With a single motion of his head, while walking, he called Tamara out of the
+drawing room and vanished with her into her room. And there also arrived
+Egmont-Lavretzki the actor, clean-shaven, tall, resembling a court flunky with
+his vulgar and insolently contemptuous face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clerks from the gastronomical store danced with all the ardour of youth and
+with all the decorum recommended by Herman Hoppe, the self-instructor of good
+manners. In this regard the girls also responded to their intentions. Both with
+these and with the others it was accounted especially decorous and well-bred to
+dance as rigidly as possible, keeping the arms hanging down, while the heads
+were raised high and inclined to one side with a certain proud, and, at the
+same time, tired and enervated air. In the intermissions, between the figures
+of the dance, it was necessary to fan one’s self with a handkerchief, with a
+bored and negligent air ... In a word, they all made believe that they belonged
+to the choicest society, and that if they do dance, they only do it out of
+condescension, as a little comradely turn. But still they danced so ardently
+that the perspiration rolled down in streams from the clerks of Kereshkovsky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two or three rows had already happened in different houses. Some man, all in
+blood, whose face in the pale light of the moon’s crescent seemed black from
+the blood, was running around in the street, cursing, and, without paying the
+least attention to his wounds, was searching for his cap which had been lost in
+the brawl. On Little Yamskaya some government scribes had had a fight with a
+ship’s company. The tired pianists and musicians played as in a delirium, in a
+doze, through mechanical habit. This was towards the waning of the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Altogether unexpectedly, seven students, a sub-professor, and a local reporter
+walked into the establishment of Anna Markovna.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0108"></a> CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+<p>
+They had all, except the reporter, passed the whole day together, from the very
+morning, celebrating May Day with some young women of their acquaintance. They
+had rowed in boats on the Dnieper, had cooked field porridge on the other side
+of the river, in the thick, bitter-smelling underbrush; had bathed—men and
+women by turns—in the rapid, warm water; had drunk home-made spiced brandy,
+sung sonorous songs of Little Russia, and had returned to town only late in the
+evening, when the dark, broad, running river so eerily and merrily plashed
+against the sides of their boats, playing with the reflections of the stars,
+the silvery shimmering paths of the electric lamps, and the bowing lights of
+the can-buoys. And when they had stepped out on the shore, the palms of each
+burned from the oars, the muscles of the arms and legs ached pleasantly, and
+suffusing the whole body was a blissful, healthy fatigue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they had escorted the young women to their homes and at the garden-gates
+and entrances had taken leave of them long and cordially, with laughter and
+with such swinging hand-shakes as if they were working the lever of a pump.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole day had passed in gaiety and noise, even a trifle clamorously, and
+just the least wee bit tiresomely, but with youth-like continence; without
+intoxication, and, which happens especially rarely, without the least shadow of
+mutual affronts, or jealousy, or unvoiced mortifications. Of course, such a
+benign mood had been helped by the sun, the fresh river breeze, the sweet
+exhalations of the grasses and the water, the joyous sensation of the strength
+and alertness of one’s body while bathing and rowing, and the restraining
+influence of the clever, kind, pure and handsome girls from families they were
+acquainted with. But, almost without the knowledge of their consciousness,
+their sensuousness—not imagination, but the simple, healthy, instinctive
+sensuousness of young playful males—kindled from chance encounters of their
+hands with feminine hands and from comradely obliging embraces, when the
+occasion arose to help the young ladies enter a boat or jump out on shore; from
+the tender odour of maiden apparel, warmed by the sun; from the feminine cries
+of coquettish fright on the river; from the sight of feminine figures,
+negligently half-reclining with a naive immodesty on the green grass around the
+samovar—from all these innocent liberties, which are so usual and unavoidable
+on picnics, country outings and river excursions, when within man, in the
+infinite depth of his soul, secretly awakens from the care-free contact with
+earth, grasses, water and sun, the beast-ancient, splendid, free, but
+disfigured and intimidated of men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And for that reason, at two o’clock in the night, when THE SPARROWS, a cozy
+students’ restaurant, had barely closed, and all the eight, excited by alcohol
+and the plentiful food, had come out of the smoky, fumy underground place into
+the street, into the sweet, disquieting darkness of the night, with its
+beckoning fires in the sky and on the earth, with its warm, heady air, from
+which the nostrils dilate avidly, with its aromas, gliding from unseen gardens
+and flower-beds,—the head of each one of them was aflame and the heart quietly
+and languishingly yearning from vague desires. It was joyous and arrogant to
+sense after the rest the new, fresh strength in all the sinews, the deep
+breathing of the lungs, the red, resilient blood in the veins, the supple
+obedience of all the members. And—without words, without thoughts, without
+consciousness—one was drawn on this night to be running without raiment in the
+somnolent forest, to be sniffing hurriedly the tracks of some one’s feet on the
+dewy grass, with a loud call to be summoning a female unto one’s self.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to separate was now very difficult. The whole day, passed together, had
+shaken them into an accustomed, tenacious herd. It seemed that if even one were
+to go away from the company, a certain attained equilibrium would be disturbed
+and could not be restored afterwards. And so they dallied and stamped upon the
+sidewalk, near the exit of the tavern’s underground vault, interfering with the
+progress of the infrequent passers-by. They discussed hypocritically where else
+they might go to wind up the night. It proved to be too far to the Tivoli
+Garden, and in addition to that one also had to pay for admission tickets, and
+the prices in the buffet were outrageous, and the program had ended long ago.
+Volodya Pavlov proposed going to him—he had a dozen of beer and a little cognac
+home. But it seemed a bore to all of them to go in the middle of the night to a
+family apartment, to enter on tiptoes up the stairs and to talk in whispers all
+the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell you what, brethren ... Let’s better ride to the girlies, that will be
+nearer the mark,” said peremptorily Lichonin, an old student, a tall, stooping,
+morose and bearded fellow. By convictions he was an anarchist—theoretic, but by
+avocation a passionate gambler at billiards, races and cards—a gambler with a
+very broad, fatalistic sweep. Only the day before he had won a thousand roubles
+at macao in the Merchants’ Club, and this money was still burning a hole in his
+pockets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And why not? Right-o!” somebody sustained him. “Let’s go, comrades?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it worth while? Why, this is an all night affair ...” spoke another with a
+false prudence and an insincere fatigue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a third said through a feigned yawn:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let’s better go home, gentlemen ... a-a-a ... go bye-bye ... That’s enough for
+to-day.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You won’t work any wonders when you’re asleep,” Lichonin remarked sneeringly.
+“Herr professor, are you coming?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the sub-professor Yarchenko was obstinate and seemed really angered,
+although, perhaps, he himself did not know what was lurking within him, in some
+dark cranny of his soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Leave me in peace, Lichonin. As I see it, gentlemen, this is downright and
+plain swinishness—that which you are about to do. We have passed the time so
+wonderfully, amiably and simply, it seems,—but no, you needs must, like drunken
+cattle, clamber into a cesspool. I won’t go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Still, if my memory does not play me false,” said Lichonin, with calm
+causticity, “I recollect that no further back than past autumn we with a
+certain future Mommsen were pouring in some place or other a jug of ice into a
+pianoforte, delineating a Bouratian god, dancing the belly-dance, and all that
+sort of thing?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin spoke the truth. In his student days, and later, being retained at the
+university, Yarchenko had led the most wanton and crack-brained life. In all
+the taverns, cabarets, and other places of amusement his small, fat, roundish
+little figure, his rosy cheeks, puffed out like those of a painted cupid, and
+the shining, humid kindly eyes were well known, his hurried, spluttering speech
+and shrill laughter remembered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His comrades could never fathom where he found the time to employ in study, but
+nevertheless he went through all examinations and prescribed work with
+distinction and from the first course the professors had him in view. Now
+Yarchenko was beginning little by little to quit his former comrades and bottle
+companions. He had just established the indispensable connections with the
+professorial circle; the reading of lectures in Roman history for the coming
+year had been offered him, and not infrequently in conversation he would use
+the expression current among the sub-professors: “We, the learned ones!” The
+student familiarity, the compulsory companionship, the obligatory participation
+in all meetings, protests and demonstrations, were becoming disadvantageous to
+him, embarrassing, and even simply tedious. But he knew the value of popularity
+among the younger element, and for that reason could not decide to sever
+relations abruptly with his former circle. Lichonin’s words, however, provoked
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my God, what does it matter what we did when we were youngsters? We stole
+sugar, soiled our panties, tore the wings off beetles,” Yarchenko began to
+speak, growing heated, and spluttering. “But there is a limit and a mean to all
+this. I, gentlemen, do not presume, of course, to give you counsels and to
+teach you, but one must be consistent. We are all agreed that prostitution is
+one of the greatest calamities of humanity, and are also agreed, that in this
+evil not the women are guilty, but we, men, because the demand gives birth to
+the offer. And therefore if, having drunk a glass of wine too much, I still,
+notwithstanding my convictions, go to the prostitutes, I am committing a triple
+vileness: before the unfortunate, foolish woman, whom I subject to the most
+degrading form of slavery for my filthy rouble; before humanity, because,
+hiring a public woman for an hour or two for my abominable lust, I through this
+justify and uphold prostitution; and finally, this is a vileness before one’s
+own conscience and mind. And before logic.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Phew-ew!” Lichonin let out a long-drawn whistle and chanted in a thin, dismal
+voice, nodding in time with his head hanging down to one side: “The philosopher
+is off on our usual stuff: ‘A rope—is a common cord.’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course, there’s nothing easier than to play the tom-fool,” responded
+Yarchenko. “But in my opinion there is not in the sorrowful life of Russia a
+more mournful phenomenon than this lackadaisicalness and vitiation of thought.
+To-day we will say to ourselves: Eh! It’s all the same, whether I go to a
+brothel or whether I do not go, from this one time things will get neither
+worse nor better. And after five years we will be saying: Undoubtedly a bribe
+is a horribly nasty bit of business, but you know—children ... the family ...
+And just the same way after ten years we, having remained fortuitous Russian
+liberals, will be sighing about personal freedom and bowing low before
+worthless scoundrels, whom we despise, and will be cooling our heels in their
+ante-rooms. ‘Because, don’t you know,’ we will say, tittering, ‘when you live
+with wolves, you must howl like a wolf.’ By God, it wasn’t in vain that some
+minister called the Russian students future head-clerks!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Or professors,” Lichonin put in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But most important of all,” continued Yarchenko, letting this pointed remark
+pass by, “most important of all is this, that I have seen all of you to-day on
+the river and afterwards there ... on the other shore ... with these charming,
+fine girls. How attentive, well-bred, obliging you all were—but scarcely have
+you taken leave of them, when you are drawn to public women. Let each one of
+you imagine for a moment, that we all had been visiting his sisters and
+straight from them had driven to Yama ... What? Is such a supposition
+pleasant?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, but there must exist some valves for the passions of society,” pompously
+remarked Boris Sobashnikov, a tall, somewhat supercilious and affected young
+man, upon whom the short, white summer uniform jacket, which scarcely covered
+his fat posteriors, the modish trousers, of a military cut, the PINCE-NEZ on a
+broad, black ribbon, and a cap after a Prussian model, all bestowed the air of
+a coxcomb. “Surely, it isn’t more respectable to enjoy the caresses of your
+chambermaid, or to carry on an intrigue on the side with another man’s wife?
+What am I to do if woman is indispensable to me!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh, very indispensable indeed!” said Yarchenko with vexation and feebly made a
+despondent gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here a student who was called Ramses in the friendly coterie intervened.
+This was a yellowish-swarthy, hump-nosed man of small stature; his clean-shaven
+face seemed triangular, thanks to a broad forehead, beginning to get bald, with
+two wedge-like bald spots at the temples, fallen-in cheeks and a sharp chin. He
+led a mode of life sufficiently queer for a student. While his colleagues
+employed themselves by turns with politics, love, the theatre, and a little in
+study, Ramses had withdrawn entirely into the study of all conceivable suits
+and claims, into the chicane subtleties of property, hereditary, land and other
+business law-suits, into the memorizing and logical analysis of quashed
+decisions. Perfectly of his own will, without in the least needing the money,
+he served for a year as a clerk at a notary’s for another as a secretary to a
+justice of the peace, while all of the past year, being in the last term, he
+had conducted in a local newspaper the reports of the city council and had
+borne the modest duty of an assistant to a secretary in the management of a
+syndicate of sugar manufacturers. And when this same syndicate commenced the
+well-known suit against one of its members, Colonel Baskakov, who had put up
+the surplus sugar for sale contrary to agreement, Ramses from the very
+beginning guessed beforehand and very subtly engineered, precisely that
+decision which the senate subsequently handed down in this suit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Despite his comparative youth, rather well-known jurists gave heed to his
+opinions—true, a little loftily. None of those who knew Ramses closely doubted
+that he would make a brilliant career, and even Ramses himself did not conceal
+his confidence in that toward thirty-five he would knock together a million,
+exclusively through his practice as a civil lawyer. His comrades not
+infrequently elected him chairman of meetings and head of the class, but this
+honour Ramses invariably declined, excusing himself with lack of time. But
+still he did not avoid participation in his comrades’ trials by arbitration,
+and his arguments—always incontrovertibly logical—were possessed of an amazing
+virtue in ending the trials with peace, to the mutual satisfaction of the
+litigating parties. He, as well as Yarchenko, knew well the value of popularity
+among the studying youths, and even if he did look upon people with a certain
+contempt, from above, still he never, by as much as a single movement of his
+thin, clever, energetical lips, showed this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, Gavrila Petrovich, no one is necessarily dragging you into committing a
+fall from grace,” said Ramses in a conciliatory manner, “What is all this
+pathos and melancholy for, when the matter as it stands is altogether simple? A
+company of young Russian gentlemen wishes to pass the remnant of the night
+modestly and amicably, to make merry, to sing a little, and to take internally
+several gallons of wine and beer. But everything is closed now, except these
+very same houses. ERGO! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Consequently, we will go merry-making to women who are for sale? To
+prostitutes? Into a brothel?” Yarchenko interrupted him, mockingly and
+inimically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And even so? A certain philosopher, whom it was desired to humiliate, was
+given a seat at dinner near the musicians. But he, sitting down, said: ‘Here is
+a sure means of making the last place the first.’ And finally I repeat: If your
+conscience does not allow you, as you express yourself, to buy a woman, then
+you can go there and come away, preserving your innocence in all its blossoming
+inviolability.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You overdo it, Ramses,” objected Yarchenko with displeasure. “You remind me of
+those bourgeois, who, while it is still dark, have gathered to gape at an
+execution and who say: we have nothing to do with this, we are against capital
+punishment, this is all the prosecuting attorney’s and the executioner’s
+doing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Superbly said and partly true, Gavrila Petrovich. But to us, precisely, this
+comparison may not even apply. One cannot, you see, treat some malignant
+disease while absent, without seeing the sufferer in person. And yet all of us,
+who are now standing here in the street and interfering with the passers-by,
+will be obliged at some time in our work to run up against the terrible problem
+of prostitution, and what a prostitution at that—the Russian! Lichonin, I,
+Borya Sobashnikov and Pavlov as jurists, Petrovsky and Tolpygin as medicos.
+True, Veltman has a distinct specialty—mathematics. But then, he will be a
+pedagogue, a guide of youth, and, deuce take it, even a father! And if you are
+going to scare with a bugaboo, it is best to look upon it one’s self first. And
+finally, you yourself, Gavrila Petrovich—expert of dead languages and future
+luminary of grave digging—is the comparison, then, of the contemporary
+brothels, say, with some Pompeian lupanaria, or the institution of sacred
+prostitution in Thebes and Nineveh, not important and instructive to you? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bravo, Ramses, magnificent!” roared Lichonin. “And what’s there to talk so
+much about, fellows? Take the professor under the gills and put him in a cab!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The students, laughing and jostling, surrounded Yarchenko, seized him under the
+arms, caught him around the waist. All of them were equally drawn to the women,
+but none, save Lichonin, had enough courage to take the initiative upon
+himself. But now all this complicated, unpleasant and hypocritical business was
+happily resolved into a simple, easy joke upon the older comrade. Yarchenko
+resisted, and was angry, and laughing, trying to break away. But at this moment
+a tall, black-moustached policeman, who had long been eyeing them keenly and
+inimically, walked up to the uproarious students.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d ask you stewdent gents not to congregate. It’s not allowed! Keep on
+going!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They moved on in a throng. Yarchenka was beginning to soften little by little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gentlemen, I am ready to go with you, if you like ... Do not think, however,
+that the sophistries of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses have convinced me ... No, I
+simply would be sorry to break up the party ... But I make one stipulation: we
+will drink a little there, gab a little, laugh a little, and so forth ... but
+let there be nothing more, no filth of any kind ... It is shameful and painful
+to think that we, the flower and glory—of the Russian intelligentzia, will go
+all to pieces and let our mouths water at the sight of the first skirt that
+comes our way.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I swear it!” said Lichonin, putting up his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can vouch for myself,” said Ramses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I! And I! By God, gentlemen, let’s pledge our words ... Yarchenko is
+right,” others took up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They seated themselves in twos and threes in the cabs—the drivers of which had
+been long since following them in a file, grinning and cursing each other—and
+rode off. Lichonin, for the sake of assurance, sat down beside the
+sub-professor, having embraced him around the waist and seated him on his knees
+and those of his neighbour, the little Tolpygin, a rosy, pleasant-faced boy on
+whose face, despite his twenty-three years, the childish white down—soft and
+light—still showed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The station is at Doroshenko’s!” called out Lichonin after the cabbies driving
+off. “The stop is at Doroshenko’s,” he repeated, turning around.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all stopped at Doroshenko’s restaurant, entered the general room, and
+crowded about the bar. All were satiated and no one wanted either to drink or
+to have a bite. But in the soul of each one still remained a dark trace of the
+consciousness that right now they were getting ready to commit something
+needlessly shameful, getting ready to take part in some convulsive, artificial,
+and not at all a merry merriment. And in each one was the yearning to bring
+himself through intoxication to that misty and rainbow condition when nothing
+makes any difference, and when the head does not know what the arms and legs
+are doing, and what the tongue is babbling. And, probably, not the students
+alone, but all the casual and constant visitors of Yama experienced in greater
+or lesser degree the friction of this inner psychic heart-sore, because
+Doroshenko did business only late in the evening and night, and no one lingered
+long in his place but only turned in in passing, half-way on the journey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the students were drinking cognac, beer and vodka, Ramses was constantly
+and intently looking into the farthest corner of the restaurant hall, where two
+men were sitting—a tattered, gray, big old man, and, opposite him, his back to
+the bar, with his elbows spread out upon the table and his chin resting on the
+fists folded upon each other, some hunched up, stout, closely-propped gentleman
+in a gray suit. The old man was picking upon a dulcimer lying before him and
+quietly singing, in a hoarse but pleasing voice:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Oh my valley, my little valley,<br/>
+Bro-o-o-o-o-oad land of plenty.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Excuse me, but that is a co-worker of ours,” said Ramses, and went to greet
+the gentleman in the gray suit. After a minute he led him up to the bar and
+introduced him to his comrades.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you my companion in arms in the newspaper
+game, Sergei Ivanovich Platonov. The laziest and most talented of newspaper
+workers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all introduced themselves, indistinctly muttering out their names.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And therefore, let’s have a drink,” said Uchonin, while Yarchenko asked with
+the refined amiability which never forsook him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon me, pardon me, but I am acquainted with you a little, even though not
+personally. Weren’t you in the university when Professor Priklonsky defended
+the doctor’s dissertation?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was I,” answered the reporter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, that’s very nice,” smiled Yarchenko charmingly, and for some reason once
+more pressed Platonov’s hand vigorously. “I read your report afterwards: very
+exactly, circumstantially and skillfully put together ... Won’t you favor me?
+... To your health!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then allow me, too,” said Platonov. “Onuphriy Zakharich, pour out for us again
+... one ... two, three, four ... nine glasses of cognac...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no, you can’t do that ... you are our guest, colleague,” remonstrated
+Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, what sort of colleague am I to you?” good-naturedly laughed the
+reporter. “I was only in the first class and then only for half a year—as an
+unmatriculated student. Here you are, Onuphriy Zakharich. Gentlemen, I beg
+you...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The upshot of it was that after half an hour Lichonin and Yarchenko did not
+under any consideration want to part with the reporter and dragged him with
+them to Yama. However, he did not resist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I am not a burden to you, I would be very glad,” he said simply. “All the
+more since I have easy money to-day. THE DNIEPER WORD has paid me an
+honorarium, and this is just as much of a miracle as winning two hundred
+thousand on a check from a theatre coat room. Pardon me, I’ll be right back...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked up to the old man with whom he had been sitting before, shoved some
+money into his hand, and gently took leave of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where I’m going, grandpa, there you mustn’t go—to-morrow we will meet in the
+same place as to-day. Good-bye!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all walked out of the restaurant. At the door Borya Sobashnikov, always a
+little finical and unnecessarily supercilious, stopped Lichonin and called him
+to one side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m surprised at you, Lichonin,” he said squeamishly. “We have gathered
+together in our own close company, yet you must needs drag in some vagabond.
+The devil knows who he is!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quit that, Borya,” answered Lichonin amicably. “He’s a warm-hearted fellow.”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0109"></a> CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+<p>
+“Well now, gentlemen, this isn’t fit for pigs,” Yarchenko was saying,
+grumblingly, at the entrance of Anna Markovna’s establishment. “If we finally
+have gone, we might at least have chosen a decent place, and not some wretched
+hole. Really, gentlemen, let’s better go to Treppel’s alongside; there it’s
+clean and light, at any rate.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you please, if you please, signior,” insisted Lichonin, opening the door
+before the sub-professor with courtly urbanity, bowing and spreading his arms
+before him. “If you please.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But this is an abomination ... At Treppel’s the women are better-looking, at
+least.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ramses, walking behind, burst into dry laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So, so, Gavrila Petrovich. Let us continue in the same spirit. Let us condemn
+the hungry, petty thief who has stolen a five-kopeck loaf out of a tray, but if
+the director of a bank has squandered somebody else’s million on race horses
+and cigars, let us mitigate his lot.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon me, but I do not understand this comparison,” answered Yarchenko with
+restraint. “However, it’s all the same to me; let’s go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And all the more so,” said Lichonin, letting the subprofessor pass ahead; “all
+the more so, since this house guards within it so many historical traditions.
+Comrades! Decades of student generations gaze upon us from the heights of the
+coat-hooks, and, besides that, through the power of the usual right, children
+and students pay half here, as in a panopticon. Isn’t that so, citizen Simeon?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simeon did not like to have people come in large parties—this always smacked of
+scandal in the not distant future; moreover, he despised students in general
+for their speech, but little comprehensible to him, for their propensity
+towards frivolous jokes, for their godlessness, and chiefly because they were
+in constant revolt against officialdom and order. It was not in vain that on
+the day when on the Bessarabian Square the cossacks, meat-sellers, flour
+dealers and fish mongers were massacring the students, Simeon having scarce
+found it out had jumped into a fine carriage passing by, and, standing just
+like a chief of police in the victoria, tore off to the scene of the fray in
+order to take part in it. He esteemed people who were sedate, stout and
+elderly, who came singly, in secret, peeped in cautiously from the ante-room
+into the drawing room, fearing to meet with acquaintances, and very soon and
+with great haste went away, tipping him generously. Such he always styled “Your
+Excellency.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so, while taking the light grey overcoat off Yarchenko, he sombrely and
+with much significance snarled back in answer to Lichonin’s banter:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am no citizen here, but the bouncer.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Upon which I have the honour to congratulate you,” answered Lichonin with a
+polite bow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were many people in the drawing room. The clerks, having danced their
+fill, were sitting, red and wet, near their ladies, rapidly fanning themselves
+with their handkerchiefs; they smelt strongly of old goats’ wool. Mishka the
+Singer and his friend the Book-keeper, both bald, with soft, downy hairs around
+the denuded skulls, both with turbid, nacreous, intoxicated eyes, were sitting
+opposite each other, leaning with their elbows on a little marble table, and
+were constantly trying to start singing in unison with such quavering and
+galloping voices as though some one was very, very often striking them in the
+cervical vertebrae:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“They fe-e-e-l the tru-u-u-u-uth!”
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+while Emma Edwardovna and Zociya with all their might were exhorting them not
+to behave indecently. Roly-Poly was peacefully slumbering on a chair, his head
+hanging down, having laid one long leg over the other and grasped the sharp
+knee with his clasped hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girls at once recognized some of the students and ran to meet them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tamarochka, your husband has come—Volodenka. And my husband too!—Mishka!”
+cried Niura piercingly, hanging herself on the neck of the lanky, big-nosed,
+solemn Petrovsky. “Hello, Mishenka. Why haven’t you come for so long? I grew
+weary of waiting for you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yarchenko with a feeling of awkwardness was looking about him on all sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’d like to have in some way ... don’t you know ... a little private room,”
+he said with delicacy to Emma Edwardovna who had approached. “And give us some
+sort of red wine, please ... And then, some coffee as well ... You know
+yourself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yarchenko always instilled confidence in servants and MAITRES D’HOTEL, with his
+dashing clothes and polite but seigniorial ways. Emma Edwardovna started
+nodding her head willingly, just like an old, fat circus horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It can be done ... it can be done ... Pass this way, gentlemen, into the
+parlor. It can be done, it can be done ... What liqueur? We have only
+Benedictine ... Benedictine, then? It can be done, it can be done ... And will
+you allow the young ladies to come in?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, if that is so indispensable?” Yarchenko spread out his hands with a
+sigh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at once the girls one after the other straggled into the parlor with its
+gray plush furniture and blue lantern. They entered, extended to every one in
+turn their unbending palms, unused to hand-clasps, gave their names abruptly in
+a low voice—Manya, Katie, Liuba ... They sat down on somebody’s knees, embraced
+him around the neck, and, as usual, began to importune:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Little student, you’re such a little good-looker. May I ask for oranzes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Volodenka, buy me some candy! All right?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And me chocolate!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fatty,” Vera, dressed as a jockey, wheedled the sub-professor, clambering up
+on his knees, “I have a friend, only she’s sick and can’t come out into the
+drawing room. I’ll carry her some apples and chocolate. Will you let me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, those are all just stories about a friend! But above all, don’t be
+thrusting your tenderness at me. Sit as smart children sit, right here
+alongside, on the arm chair, just so. And fold your little hands.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, but what if I can’t!” writhed Vera in coquetry, rolling her eyes up under
+her upper lids ... “When you are so nice.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Lichonin, in answer to this professional beggary, only nodded his head
+gravely and good-naturedly, just like Emma Edwardovna, and repeated over and
+over again, mimicking her German accent:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Itt can pe done, itt can pe done, itt can pe done...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then I will tell the waiter, honey, to carry my friend some sweets and
+apples?” pestered Vera.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such importunity entered the round of their tacit duties. There even existed
+among the girls some captious, childish, strange rivalry as to the ability to
+“ease a guest of his money”—strange enough because they did not derive any
+profit out of this, unless, indeed, a certain affection from the housekeeper or
+a word of approbation from the proprietress. But in their petty, monotonous,
+habitually frivolous life there was, in general, a great deal of semi-puerile,
+semi-hysterical play.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simeon brought a coffee pot, cups, a squatty bottle of Benedictine, fruits and
+bon-bons in glass vases, and gaily and easily began making the corks of the
+beer and wine pop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why don’t you drink?” Yarchenko turned to the reporter Platonov. “Allow me
+... I do not mistake? Sergei Ivanovich, I believe?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Right.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Allow me to offer you a cup of coffee, Sergei Ivanovich. It’s refreshing. Or
+perhaps, let’s drink this same dubious Lafitte?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, you really must allow me to refuse. I have a drink of my own ... Simeon,
+give me...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Cognac!” cried out Niura hurriedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And with a pear!” Little White Manka caught up just as fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I heard you, Sergei Ivanich—right away,” unhurriedly but respectfully
+responded Simeon, and, bending down and letting out a grunt, resoundingly drew
+the cork out of the neck of the bottle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s the first time I hear of cognac being served in Yama,” uttered Lichonin
+with amazement. “No matter how much I asked, they always refused me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps Sergei Ivanich knows some sort of magic word,” jested Ramses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Or is held here in an especially honoured state?” Boris Sobashnikov put in
+pointedly, with emphasis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reporter listlessly, without turning his head, looked askance at
+Sobashnikov, at the lower row of buttons on his short, foppish, white summer
+uniform jacket, and answered with a drawl:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is nothing honourable in that I can drink like a horse and never get
+drunk; but then, I also do not quarrel with anyone or pick upon anybody.
+Evidently, these good sides of my character are sufficiently known here, and
+because of that confidence is shown me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good for you, old fellow!” joyously exclaimed Lichonin, who was delighted by a
+certain peculiar, indolent negligence—of few words, yet at the same time
+self-confident—in the reporter. “Will you share the cognac with me also?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very, very gladly,” affably answered Platonov and suddenly looked at Lichonin
+with a radiant, almost child-like smile, which beautified his plain face with
+the prominent cheek-bones. “You, too, appealed to me from the first. And even
+when I saw you there, at Doroshenko’s, I at once thought that you are not at
+all as rough as you seem.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, we have exchanged pleasantries,” laughed Lichonin. “But it’s
+amazing that we haven’t met once just here. Evidently, you come to Anna
+Markovna’s quite frequently?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Even too much so.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sergei Ivanich is our most important guest!” naively shrieked Niura. “Sergei
+Ivanich is a sort of brother among us!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fool!” Tamara stopped her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That seems strange to me,” continued Lichonin. “I, too, am a habitue. In any
+case, one can only envy everybody’s cordiality toward you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The local chieftain!” said Boris Sobashnikov, curling his lips downward, but
+said it so low that Platanov, if he chose to, could pretend that he had not
+heard anything distinctly. This reporter had for long aroused in Boris some
+blind and prickling irritation. That he was not one of his own herd really
+meant nothing. But Boris, like many students (and also officers, junkers, and
+high-school boys) had grown accustomed to the fact that the outside “civilian”
+people, who accidentally fell into a company of students on a spree, should
+hold themselves somewhat subordinately and with servility in it, flatter the
+studying youths, be struck with its daring, laugh at its jokes, admire its
+self-admiration, recall their own student years with a sigh of suppressed envy.
+But in Platonov there not only was none of this customary wagging of the tail
+before youth, but, on the contrary, there was to be felt a certain abstracted,
+calm and polite indifference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides that, Sobashnikov was angered—and angered with a petty, jealous
+vexation—by that simple and yet anticipatory attention which was shown to the
+reporter by everybody in the establishment, beginning with the porter and
+ending with the fleshy, taciturn Katie. This attention was shown in the way he
+was listened to, in that triumphal carefulness with which Tamara filled his
+glass, and in the way Little White Manka pared a pear for him solicitously, and
+in the delight of Zoe, who had caught the case skillfully thrown to her across
+the table by the reporter, when she had vainly asked for a cigarette from her
+two neighbors, who were lost in conversation; and in the way none of the girls
+begged either chocolate or fruits from him, in the lively gratitude for his
+little services and his treating. “Pimp!” Sobashkinov had almost decided
+mentally with malice, but did not believe it even himself—the reporter was
+altogether too homely and too carelessly dressed, and moreover he bore himself
+with great dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov again made believe that he had not heard the insolent remark made by
+the student. He only nervously crumpled a napkin in his fingers and lightly
+threw it aside from him. And again his eyelids quivered in the direction of
+Boris Sobashnikov.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, true, I am one of the family here,” he continued calmly, moving his glass
+in slow circles on the table. “Just think, I dined in this very house, day
+after day, for exactly four months.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No? Seriously?” Yarchenko wondered and laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In all seriousness. The table here isn’t at all bad, by the way. The food is
+filling and savory, although exceedingly greasy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But how did you ever...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, just because I was tutoring for high school a daughter of Anna Markovna,
+the lady of this hospitable house. Well, I stipulated that part of my monthly
+pay should be deducted for my dinners.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What a strange fancy!” said Yarchenko. “And did you do this of your own will?
+Or ... Pardon me, I am afraid of seeming indiscreet to you ... Perhaps at that
+time ... extreme necessity? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not at all. Anna Markovna soaked me three times as much as it would have cost
+in a student’s dining room. I simply wanted to live here a while on a somewhat
+nearer, closer footing, to enter intimately into this little world, so to
+speak.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A-ah! It seems I am beginning to understand!” beamed Yarchenko. “Our new
+friend—pardon me for the little familiarity—is, apparently, gathering material
+from life? And, perhaps, in a few years we will have the pleasure of reading
+...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A t-r-ragedy out of a brothel!” Boris Sobashnikov put in loudly, like an
+actor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the reporter had been answering Yarchenko, Tamara quietly got up from her
+place, walked around the table, and, bending down over Sobashnikov, spoke in a
+whisper in his ear:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dearie, sweetie, you’d better not touch this gentleman. Honest to God, it will
+be better for you, even.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wass that?” the student looked at her superciliously, fixing his PINCE-NEZ
+with two spread fingers. “Is he your lover? Your pimp?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I swear by anything you want that not once in his life has he stayed with any
+one of us. But, I repeat, don’t pick on him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, yes! Why, of course!” retorted Sobashnikov, grimacing scornfully. “He has
+such a splendid defense as the entire brothel. And it’s a sure thing that all
+the bouncers on Yamskaya are his near friends and cronies.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, not that,” retorted Tamara in a kind whisper. “Only he’ll take you by the
+collar and throw you out of the window, like a puppy. I’ve already seen such an
+aerial flight. God forbid its happening to anyone. It’s disgraceful, and bad
+for the health.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Get out of here, you filth!” yelled Sobashnikov, swinging his elbow at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m going, dearie,” meekly answered Tamara, and walked away from him with her
+light step.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everybody for an instant turned toward the student.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Behave yourself, barberry!” Lichonin threatened him with his finger. “Well,
+well, go on,” he begged the reporter; “all that you’re saying is so
+interesting.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I’m not gathering anything,” continued the reporter calmly and seriously.
+“But the material here is in reality tremendous, downright crushing, terrible
+... And not at all terrible are the loud phrases about the traffic in women’s
+flesh, about the white slaves, about prostitution being a corroding fester of
+large cities, and so on, and so on ... an old hurdy-gurdy of which all have
+tired! No, horrible are the everyday, accustomed trifles, these business-like,
+daily, commercial reckonings, this thousand year old science of amatory
+practice, this prosaic usage, determined by the ages. In these unnoticeable
+nothings are completely dissolved such feelings as resentment, humiliation,
+shame. There remains a dry profession, a contract, an agreement, a well-nigh
+honest petty trade, no better, no worse than, say, the trade in groceries. Do
+you understand, gentlemen, that all the horror is in just this, that there is
+no horror! Bourgeois work days—and that is all. And also an after taste of an
+exclusive educational institution, with its NAIVETE, harshness, sentimentality
+and imitativeness.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s right,” confirmed Lichonin, while the reporter continued, gazing
+pensively into his glass:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We read in the papers, in leading articles, various wailings of anxious souls.
+And the women-physicians are also endeavouring in this matter, and endeavouring
+disgustingly enough. ‘Oh, dear, regulation! Oh, dear, abolition! Oh, dear, live
+merchandise! A condition of slavery! The mesdames, these greedy haeterae! These
+heinous degenerates of humanity, sucking the blood of prostitutes!’ ... But
+with clamour you will scare no one and will affect no one. You know, there’s a
+little saying: much cry, little wool. More awful than all awful words—a
+hundredfold more awful—is some such little prosaic stroke or other as will
+suddenly knock you all in a heap, like a blow on the forehead. Take even
+Simeon, the porter here. It would seem, according to you, there is no sinking
+lower—a bouncer in a brothel, a brute, almost certainly a murderer, he plucks
+the prostitutes, gives them “black eyes,” to use a local expression—that is,
+just simply beats them. But, do you know on what grounds he and I came together
+and became friendly? On the magnificent details of the divine service of the
+prelate, on the canon of the honest Andrew, pastor of Crete, on the works of
+the most beatific father, John the Damascene. He is religious—unusually so! I
+used to lead him on, and he would sing to me with tears in his eyes: ‘Come ye
+brethren, and we will give the last kiss to him who has gone to his rest...’
+From the ritual of the burial of laymen. No, just think: it is only in the
+Russian soul alone that such contradictions may dwell together!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. A fellow like that will pray, and pray, then cut a throat, and then wash
+his hands and put a candle before an image,” said Ramses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just so. I know of nothing more uncanny than this fusion of fully sincere
+devoutness with an innate leaning toward crime. Shall I confess to you? I, when
+I talk all alone to Simeon—and we talk with each other long and leisurely, for
+hours—I experience at moments a genuine terror. A superstitious terror! Just as
+though, for instance, I am standing in the dusk upon a shaking little board,
+bending over some dark, malodorous well, and just barely distinguish how there,
+at the bottom, reptiles are stirring. And yet, he is devout in a real way, and
+I am sure will some time join the monks and will be a great faster and sayer of
+prayers, and the devil knows how, in what monstrous fashion, a real religious
+ecstasy will entwine in his soul with blasphemy, with scoffing at sacred
+things, with some repulsive passion or other, with sadism or something else of
+that nature!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“However, you do not spare the object of your observations,” said Yarchenko,
+and carefully indicated the girls with his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh, it’s all the same. Our relations are cool now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How so?” asked Volodya Pavlov, who had caught the end of the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just so ... It isn’t even worth the telling...” smiled the reporter evasively.
+“A trifle ... Let’s have your glass here, Mr. Yarchenko.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the precipitate Niura, who could never keep her tongue behind her teeth,
+suddenly shot oat in rapid patter:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s because Sergei Ivanich gave him one in the snout ... On account of Ninka.
+A certain old man came to Ninka ... And stayed for the night ... And Ninka had
+the flowers ... And the old man was torturing her all the time ... So Ninka
+started crying and ran away.”[6]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[6] The Russian expression is “the red flag.”—TRANS.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Drop it, Niura; it’s boring,” said Platonov with a wry face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can it!” (leave off) ordered Tamara severely, in the jargon of houses of
+prostitution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was impossible to stop Niura, who had gotten a running start.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But Ninka says: ‘I,’ she says, ‘won’t stay with him for anything, though you
+cut me all to pieces ... He,’ she says, ‘has made me all wet with his spit.’
+Well, the old man complained to the porter, to be sure, and the porter starts
+in to beat up Ninka, to be sure. And Sergei Ivanich at this time was writing
+for me a letter home, to the province, and when he heard that Ninka was
+hollering...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Zoe, shut her mouth!” said Platonov.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He just jumped up at once and ... app! ...” and Niura’s torrent instantly
+broke off, stopped up by Zoe’s palm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everybody burst out laughing, only Boris Sobashnikov muttered under cover of
+the noise with a contemptuous look:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“OH, CHEVALIER SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was already pretty far gone in drink, stood leaning against the wall, in a
+provoking pose, and was nervously chewing a cigarette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Which Ninka is this?” asked Yarchenko with curiosity. “Is she here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, she isn’t here. Such a small, pug-nosed little girl. Naive and very
+angry.” The reporter suddenly and sincerely burst into laughter. “Excuse me ...
+It’s just so ... over my thoughts,” explained he through laughter. “I recalled
+this old man very vividly just now, as he was running along the corridor in
+fright, having grabbed his outer clothing and shoes ... Such a respectable
+ancient, with the appearance of an apostle, I even know where he serves. Why,
+all of you know him. But the funniest of all was when he, at last, felt himself
+out of danger in the drawing room. You understand—he is sitting on a chair,
+putting on his pantaloons, can’t put his foot where it ought to go, by any
+means, and bawls all over the house: ‘It’s an outrage! This is an abominable
+dive! I’ll show you up! ... To-morrow I’ll give you twenty-four hours to clear
+out! ... Do you know, this combination of pitiful helplessness with the
+threatening cries was so killing that even the gloomy Simeon started laughing
+... Well, now, apropos of Simeon ... I say, that life dumfounds, with its
+wondrous muddle and farrago, makes one stand aghast. You can utter a thousand
+sonorous words against souteneurs, but just such a Simeon you will never think
+up. So diverse and motley is life! Or else take Anna Markovna, the proprietress
+of this place. This blood-sucker, hyena, vixen and so on ... is the tenderest
+mother imaginable. She has one daughter—Bertha, she is now in the fifth grade
+of high school. If you could only see how much careful attention, how much
+tender care Anna Markovna expends that her daughter may not somehow,
+accidentally, find out about her profession. And everything is for Birdie,
+everything is for the sake of Birdie. And she herself dare not even converse
+before her, is afraid of her lexicon of a bawd and an erstwhile prostitute,
+looks into her eyes, holds herself servilely, like an old servant, like a
+foolish, doting nurse, like an old, faithful, mange-eaten poodle. It is long
+since time for her to retire to rest, because she has money, and because her
+occupation is both arduous and troublesome, and because her years are already
+venerable. But no and no; one more extra thousand is needed, and then more and
+more—everything for Birdie. And so Birdie has horses, Birdie has an English
+governess, Birdie is every year taken abroad, Birdie has diamonds worth forty
+thousand—the devil knows whose they are, these diamonds? And it isn’t that I am
+merely convinced, but I know well, that for the happiness of this same Birdie,
+nay, not even for her happiness, but, let us suppose that Birdie gets a
+hangnail on her little finger—well then, in order that this hangnail might pass
+away—imagine for a second the possibility of such a state of things!—Anna
+Markovna, without the quiver of an eyelash, will sell into corruption our
+sisters and daughters, will infect all of us and our sons with syphilis. What?
+A monster, you will say? But I will say that she is moved by the same grand,
+unreasoning, blind, egoistical love for which we call our mothers sainted
+women.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go easy around the curves!” remarked Boris Sobashnikov through his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon me: I was not comparing people, but merely generalizing on the first
+source of emotion. I might have brought out as an example the self-denying love
+of animal-mothers as well. But I see that I have started on a tedious matter.
+Better let’s drop it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, you finish,” protested Lichonin. “I feel that you have a massive thought.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And a very simple one. The other day a professor asked me if I am not
+observing the life here with some literary aims. And all I wanted to say was,
+that I can see, but precisely can not observe. Here I have given you Simeon and
+the bawd for example. I do not know myself why, but I feel that in them lurks
+some terrible, insuperable actuality of life, but either to tell it, or to show
+it, I can not. Here is necessary the great ability to take some picayune
+trifle, an insignificant, paltry little stroke, and then will result a dreadful
+truth, from which the reader, aghast, will forget that his mouth is agape.
+People seek the terrible in words, in cries, in gestures. Well, now, for
+example, I am reading a description of some pogrom or of a slaughter in jail,
+or of a riot being put down. Of course, the policemen are described, these
+servants of arbitrariness, these lifeguards of contemporaneousness, striding up
+to their knees in blood, or how else do they write in such cases? Of course, it
+is revolting and it hurts, and is disgusting, but all this is felt by the mind,
+and not the heart. But here I am walking along Lebyazhia Street, and see that a
+crowd has collected, a girl of five years in the centre—she has lagged behind
+the mother and has strayed, or it may be that the mother had abandoned her. And
+before the girl, squatting down on his heels, is a roundsman. He is
+interrogating her, how she is called, and where is she from, and how do they
+call papa, and how do they call mamma. He has broken out into sweat, the poor
+fellow, from the effort, the cap is at the back of his neck, the whiskered face
+is such a kindly and woeful and helpless one, while the voice is gentle, so
+gentle. At last, what do you think? As the girl has become all excited, and has
+already grown hoarse from tears, and is shy of everybody—he, this same
+‘roundsman on the beat,’ stretches out two of his black, calloused fingers, the
+index and the little, and begins to imitate a nanny goat for the girl and
+reciting an appropriate nursery rhyme! ... And so, when I looked upon this
+charming scene and thought that half an hour later at the station house this
+same patrolman will be beating with his feet the face and chest of a man whom
+he had not till that time seen once, and whose crime he is entirely ignorant
+of—then—you understand!—I began to feel inexpressibly eerie and sad. Not with
+the mind, but the heart. Such a devilish muddle is this life. Shall we drink
+some cognac, Lichonin?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you say to calling each other thou?” suddenly proposed Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right. Only, really, without any of this business of kissing, now. Here’s
+to your health, old man ... Or here is another instance ... I read a certain
+French classic, describing the thoughts and sensations of a man condemned to
+capital punishment. He describes it all sonorously, powerfully, brilliantly,
+but I read and ... well, there is no impression of any sort; neither emotion
+nor indignation—just ENNUI. But then, within the last few days I come across a
+brief newspaper notice of a murderer’s execution somewhere in France. The
+Procureur, who was present at the last toilet of the criminal, sees that he is
+putting on his shoes on his bare feet, and—the blockhead!—reminds him: ‘What
+about the socks?’ But the other gives him a look and says, sort of
+thoughtfully: ‘Is it worth while?’ Do you understand, these two remarks, so
+very short, struck me like a blow on the skull! At once all the horror and all
+the stupidity of unnatural death were revealed to me ... Or here is something
+else about death ... A certain friend of mine died, a captain in the infantry—a
+drunkard, a vagabond, and the finest soul in the world. For some reason we
+called him the Electrical Captain. I was in the vicinity, and it fell to me to
+dress him for the last parade. I took his uniform and began to attach the
+epaulettes to it. There’s a cord, you know, that’s drawn through the shank of
+the epaulette buttons, and after that the two ends of this cord are shoved
+through two little holes under the collar, and on the inside—the lining—are
+tied together. Well, I go through all this business, and tie the cord with a
+slipknot, and, you know, the loop won’t come out, nohow—either it’s too loosely
+tied, or else one end’s too short. I am fussing over this nonsense, and
+suddenly into my head comes the most astonishingly simple thought, that it’s
+far simpler and quicker to tie it in a knot—for after all, it’s all the same,
+NO ONE IS GOING TO UNTIE IT. And immediately I felt death with all my being.
+Until that time I had seen the captain’s eyes, grown glassy, had felt his cold
+forehead, and still somehow had not sensed death to the full, but I thought of
+the knot—and I was all transpierced, and the simple and sad realization of the
+irrevocable, inevitable perishing of all our words, deeds, and sensations, of
+the perishing of all the apparent world, seemed to bow me down to the earth ...
+And I could bring forward a hundred such small but staggering trifles ... Even,
+say, about what people experienced in the war ... But I want to lead my thought
+up to one thing. We all pass by these characteristic trifles indifferently,
+like the blind, as though not seeing them scattered about under our feet. But
+an artist will come, and he will look over them carefully, and he will pick
+them up. And suddenly he will so skillfully turn in the sun a minute bit of
+life that we shall all cry out: ‘Oh, my God! But I myself—myself—have seen this
+with my own eyes. Only it simply did not enter my head to turn my close
+attention upon it.’ But our Russian artists of the word—the most conscientious
+and sincere artists in the whole world—for some reason have up to this time
+passed over prostitution and the brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me
+to answer that. Perhaps because of squeamishness, perhaps because of
+pusillanimity, out of fear of being signalized as a pornographic writer;
+finally, from the apprehension that our gossiping criticism will identify the
+artistic work of the writer with his personal life and will start rummaging in
+his dirty linen. Or perhaps they can find neither the time, nor the
+self-denial, nor the self-possession to plunge in head first into this life and
+to watch it right up close, without prejudice, without sonorous phrases,
+without a sheepish pity, in all its monstrous simplicity and every-day
+activity. Oh, what a tremendous, staggering and truthful book would result!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But they do write!” unwillingly remarked Ramses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They do write,” wearily repeated Platonov in the same tone as he. “But it is
+all either a lie, or theatrical effects for children of tender years, or else a
+cunning symbolism, comprehensible only to the sages of the future. But the life
+itself no one as yet has touched. One big writer—a man with a crystal-pure soul
+and a remarkable talent for delineation—once approached this theme,[7] and then
+all that could catch the eye of an outsider was reflected in his soul, as in a
+wondrous mirror. But he could not decide to lie to and to frighten people. He
+only looked upon the coarse hair of the porter, like that of a dog, and
+reflected: ‘But, surely, even he had a mother.’ He passed with his wise, exact
+gaze over the faces of the prostitutes and impressed them on his mind. But that
+which he did not know he did not dare to write. It is remarkable, that this
+same writer, enchanting with his honesty and truthfulness, has looked at the
+moujik as well, more than once. But he sensed that both the tongue and the turn
+of mind, as well as the soul of the people, were for him dark and
+incomprehensible ... And he, with an amazing tact, modestly went around the
+soul of the people, but refracted all his fund of splendid observation through
+the eyes of townsfolk. I have brought this up purposely. With us, you see, they
+write about detectives, about lawyers, about inspectors of the revenue, about
+pedagogues, about attorneys, about the police, about officers, about sensual
+ladies, about engineers, about baritones—and really, by God, altogether
+well—cleverly, with finesse and talent. But, after all, all these people, are
+rubbish, and their life is not life but some sort of conjured up, spectral,
+unnecessary delirium of world culture. But there are two singular
+realities—ancient as humanity itself: the prostitute and the moujik. And about
+them we know nothing save some tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions in
+literature. I ask you: what has Russian literature extracted out of all the
+nightmare of prostitution? Sonechka Marmeladova alone.[8]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What has it given us about the moujik save odious, false, nationalistic
+pastorals? One, altogether but one, but then, in truth, the greatest work in
+all the world—a staggering tragedy, the truthfulness of which takes the breath
+away and makes the hair stand on end. You know what I am speaking of ...”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[7] The reference here is most probably to Chekhov.—TRANS.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[8] The heroine of Dostoievsky’s “Crime and Punishment.”—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘The little claw is sunk in...’”[9] quietly prompted Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[9] “The little claw is sunk in, the whole bird is bound to perish”—a folk
+proverb used by Tolstoi as a sub-title to his “The Power of Darkness.”—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” answered the reporter, and looked kindly at the student with
+gratefulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But as regards Sonechka—why, this is an abstract type,” remarked Yarchenko
+with assurance. “A psychological scheme, so to speak...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov, who up to now had been speaking as though unwillingly, at a slow
+rate, suddenly grew heated:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A hundred times have I heard this opinion, a hundred times! And it is entirely
+an untruth. Underneath the coarse and obscene profession, underneath the
+foulest oaths—about one’s mother—underneath the drunken, hideous
+exterior—Sonechka Marmeladova still lives! The fate of the Russian
+prostitute—oh, what a tragic, piteous, bloody, ludicrous and stupid path it is!
+Here everything has been juxtaposed: the Russian God, Russian breadth and
+unconcern, Russian despair in a fall, Russian lack of culture, Russian naivete,
+Russian patience, Russian shamelessness. Why, all of them, whom you take into
+bedrooms,—look upon them, look upon them well,—why, they are all children; why,
+each of them is but eleven years old. Fate has thrust them upon prostitution
+and since then they live in some sort of a strange, fairy-like, toy existence,
+without developing, without being enriched by experience, naive, trusting,
+capricious, not knowing what they will say and do half an hour later—altogether
+like children. This radiant and ludicrous childishness I have seen in the very
+oldest wenches, fallen as low as low can be, broken-winded and crippled like a
+cabby’s nags. And never does this impotent pity, this useless commiseration
+toward human suffering die within them ... For example...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov looked over all the persons sitting with a slow gaze, and suddenly,
+waving his hand despondently, said in a tired voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“However ... The devil take it all! To-day I have spoken enough for ten years
+... And all of it to no purpose.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But really, Sergei Ivanich, why shouldn’t you try to describe all this
+yourself?” asked Yarchenko. “Your attention is so vitally concentrated on this
+question.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I did try!” answered Platonov with a cheerless smile. “But nothing came of it.
+I started writing and at once became entangled in various ‘whats,’ ‘which’s,’
+‘was’s.’ The epithets prove flat. The words grow cold on the page. It’s all a
+cud of some sort. Do you know, Terekhov was here once, while passing through
+... You know ... The well-known one ... I came to him and started in telling
+him lots and lots about the life here, which I do not tell you for fear of
+boring you. I begged him to utilize my material. He heard me out with great
+attention, and this is what he said, literally: ‘Don’t get offended, Platonov,
+if I tell you that there’s almost not a single person of those I have met
+during my life, who wouldn’t thrust themes for novels and stories upon me, or
+teach me as to what ought to be written up. That material which you have just
+communicated to me is truly unencompassable in its significance and
+weightiness. But what shall I do with it? In order to write a colossal book
+such as the one you have in mind, the words of others do not suffice—even
+though they be the most exact—even observations, made with a little note-book
+and a bit of pencil, do not suffice. One must grow accustomed to this life,
+without being cunningly wise, without any ulterior thoughts of writing. Then a
+terrific book will result.’
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“His words discouraged me and at the same time gave me wings. Since that time I
+believe, that now, not soon—after fifty years or so—but there will come a
+writer of genius, and precisely a Russian one, who will absorb within himself
+all the burdens and all the abominations of this life and will cast them forth
+to us in the form of simple, fine, and deathlessly-caustic images. And we shall
+all say: ‘Why, now, we, ourselves, have seen and known all this, but we could
+not even suppose that this is so horrible!’ In this coming artist I believe
+with all my heart.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Amen!” said Lichonin seriously. “Let us drink to him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, honest to God,” suddenly declared Little Manka, “If some one would only
+write the truth about the way we live here, miserable w—that we are...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a knock at the door, and at once Jennie entered in her resplendent
+orange dress.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0110"></a> CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+<p>
+She greeted all the men without embarrassment, with the independent bearing of
+the first personage in the house, and sat down near Sergei Ivanich, behind his
+chair. She had just gotten free from that same German in the uniform of the
+benevolent organization, who early in the evening had made Little White Manka
+his choice, but had afterwards changed her, at the recommendation of the
+housekeeper, for Pasha. But the provoking and self-assured beauty of Jennie
+must have smitten deeply his lecherous heart, for, having prowled some three
+hours through certain beer emporiums and restaurants, and having there gathered
+courage, he had again returned into the house of Anna Markovna, had waited
+until her time-guest—Karl Karlovich, from the optical store—had gone away from
+Jennie, and had taken her into a room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the silent question in Tamara’s eyes Jennie made a wry face of disgust,
+shivered with her back and nodded her head affirmatively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He’s gone... Brrr! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov was looking at Jennie with extraordinary attentiveness. He
+distinguished her from the rest of the girls and almost respected her for her
+abrupt, refractory, and impudently mocking character. And now, turning around
+occasionally, by her flaming, splendid eyes, by the vividly and unevenly
+glowing unhealthy red of her cheeks, by the much bitten parched lips, he felt
+that her great, long ripening rancour was heavily surging within the girl and
+suffocating her. And it was then that he thought (and subsequently often
+recalled this) that he had never yet seen Jennie so radiantly beautiful as on
+this night. He also noticed, that all the men present in the private cabinet,
+with the exception of Lichonin, were looking at her—some frankly, others by
+stealth and as though in passing—with curiosity and furtive desire. The beauty
+of this woman, together with the thought of her altogether easy accessibility,
+at any minute, agitated their imagination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s something working upon you, Jennie,” said Platonov quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Caressingly, she just barely drew her fingers over his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t pay any attention. Just so ... our womanish affairs ... It won’t be
+interesting to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But immediately, turning to Tamara, she passionately and rapidly began saying
+something in an agreed jargon, which presented a wild mixture out of the
+Hebrew, Tzigani and Roumanian tongues and the cant words of thieves and
+horse-thieves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t try to put anything over on the fly guy, the fly guy is next,” Tamara
+cut her short and with a smile indicated the reporter with her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov had, in fact, understood. Jennie was telling with indignation that
+during this day and night, thanks to the influx of a cheap public, the unhappy
+Pashka had been taken into a room more than ten times—and all by different men.
+Only just now she had had a hysterical fit, ending in a faint. And now,
+scarcely having brought Pashka back to consciousness and braced her up on
+valerian drops in a glass of spirits, Emma Edwardovna had again sent her into
+the drawing room. Jennie had attempted to take the part of her comrade, but the
+house-keeper had cursed the intercessor out and had threatened her with
+punishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it all about?” asked Yarchenko in perplexity, raising high his
+eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t trouble yourself ... nothing out of the way...” answered Jennie in a
+still agitated voice. “Just so ... our little family trifles ... Sergei
+Ivanich, may I have some of your wine?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She poured out half a glass for herself and drank the cognac off at a draught,
+distending her thin nostrils wide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov got up in silence and went toward the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s not worth while, Sergei Ivanich. Drop it...” Jennie stopped him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no, why not?” objected the reporter. “I shall do a very simple and innocent
+thing, take Pasha here, and if need be—pay for her, even. Let her lie down here
+for a while on the divan and rest, even though a little ... Niura, run for a
+pillow quick!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scarcely had the door shut behind his broad, ungainly figure in its gray
+clothes, when Boris Sobashnikov at once commenced speaking with a contemptuous
+bitterness:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gentlemen, what the devil for have we dragged into our company this peach off
+the street? We must needs tie up with all sorts of riff-raff? The devil knows
+what he is—perhaps he’s even a dinny? Who can vouch for him? And you’re always
+like that, Lichonin.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It isn’t Lichonin but I who introduced him to everybody,” said Ramses. “I know
+him for a fully respectable person and a good companion.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh! Nonsense! A good companion to drink at some one else’s expense. Why, don’t
+you see for yourselves that this is the most ordinary type of habitue attached
+to a brothel, and, most probably, he is simply the pimp here, to whom a
+percentage is paid for the entertainment into which he entices the visitors.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Leave off, Borya. It’s foolish,” remarked Yarchenko reproachfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Borya could not leave off. He had an unfortunate peculiarity—intoxication
+acted neither upon his legs nor his tongue, but put him in a morose, touchy
+frame of mind and egged him on into quarrels. And Platonov had already for a
+long time irritated him with his negligently sincere, assured and serious
+bearing, so little suitable to the private cabinet of a brothel. But the
+seeming indifference with which the reporter let pass the malicious remarks
+which he interposed into the conversation angered Sobashnikov still more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And then, the tone in which he permits himself to speak in our company!”
+Sobashnikov continued to seethe. “A certain aplomb, condescension, a
+professorial tone ... The scurvy penny-a-liner! The free-lunch grafter!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie, who had all the time been looking intently at the student, gaily and
+maliciously flashing with her sparkling dark eyes, suddenly began to clap her
+hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s the way! Bravo, little student! Bravo, bravo, bravo! ... That’s the
+way, give it to him good! ... Really, what sort of a disgrace is this! When
+he’ll come, now, I’ll repeat everything to him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I—if you please! A—as much as you like!” Sobashnikov drawled out like an
+actor, making superciliously squeamish creases about his mouth. “I shall repeat
+the very same things myself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s a fine fellow, now,—I love you for that!” exclaimed Jennie joyously
+and maliciously, striking her fist on the table. “You can tell an owl at once
+by its flight, a good man by his snot!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little White Manya and Tamara looked at Jennie with wonder, but, noting the
+evil little lights leaping in her eyes and her nervously quivering nostrils,
+they both understood and smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little White Manya, laughing, shook her head reproachfully. Jennie always had
+such a face when her turbulent soul sensed that a scandal was nearing which she
+herself had brought on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t get your back up, Borinka,” said Lichonin. “Here all are equal.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Niura came with a pillow and laid it down on the divan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And what’s that for?” Sobashnikov yelled at her. “Git! take it away at once.
+This isn’t a lodging house.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now, leave her be, honey. What’s that to you?” retorted Jennie in a sweet
+voice and hid the pillow behind Tamara’s back. “Wait, sweetie, I’d better sit
+with you for a while.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked around the table, forced Boris to sit on a chair, and herself got up
+on his knees. Twining his neck with her arm, she pressed her lips to his mouth,
+so long and so vigorously that the student caught his breath. Right up close to
+his eyes he saw the eyes of the woman—strangely large, dark, luminous,
+indistinct and unmoving. For a quarter of a second or so, for an instant, it
+seemed to him that in these unliving eyes was impressed an expression of keen,
+mad hate; and the chill of terror, some vague premonition of an ominous,
+inevitable calamity flashed through the student’s brain. With difficulty
+tearing the supple arms of Jennie away from him, and pushing her away, he said,
+laughing, having turned red and breathing hard:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s a temperament for you! Oh, you Messalina Paphnutievna! ... They call
+you Jennka, I think? You’re a good-looking little rascal.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov returned with Pasha. Pasha was pitiful and revolting to look at. Her
+face was pale, with, a bluish cast as though the blood had run off; the glazed,
+half-closed eyes were smiling with a faint, idiotic smile; the parted lips
+seemed to resemble two frayed, red, wet rags, and she walked with a sort of
+timid, uncertain step, just as though with one foot she were making a large
+step, and with the other a small one. She walked with docility up to the divan
+and with docility laid her head down on the pillow, without ceasing to smile
+faintly and insanely. Even at a distance it was apparent that she was cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon me, gentlemen, I am going to undress,” said Lichonin, and taking his
+coat off he threw it over the shoulders of the prostitute. “Tamara, give her
+chocolate and wine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Boris Sobashnikov again stood up picturesquely in the corner, in a leaning
+position, one leg in front of the other and his head held high. Suddenly he
+spoke amid the general silence, addressing Platonov directly, in a most foppish
+tone:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh ... Listen ... what’s your name? ... This, then, must be your mistress?
+Eh?” And with the tip of his boot he pointed in the direction of the recumbent
+Pasha.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wha-at?” asked Platonov in a drawl, knitting his eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Or else you are her lover—it’s all one ... What do they call this duty here?
+Well, now, these same people for whom the women embroider shirts and with whom
+they divide their honest earnings? ... Eh? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov looked at him with a heavy, intent gaze through his narrowed lids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Listen,” he said quietly, in a hoarse voice, slowly and ponderously separating
+his words. “This isn’t the first time that you’re trying to pick a quarrel with
+me. But, in the first place, I see that despite your sober appearance you are
+exceedingly and badly drunk; and, in the second place, I spare you for the sake
+of your comrades. However, I warn you, that if you think of talking that way to
+me again, take your eyeglasses off.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s this stuff?” exclaimed Boris, raising his shoulders high and snorting
+through his nose. “What eyeglasses? Why eyeglasses?” But mechanically, with two
+extended fingers, he fixed the bow of the PINCE-NEZ on the bridge of his nose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because I’m going to hit you, and the pieces may get in your eye,” said the
+reporter unconcernedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Despite the unexpectedness of such a turn of the quarrel, nobody started
+laughing. Only Little White Manka oh’d in astonishment and clapped her hands.
+Jennie, with avid impatience, shifted her eyes from one to the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now! I’ll give you change back myself so’s you won’t like it!” roughly,
+altogether boyishly, cried out Sobashnikov. “Only it’s not worth while mussing
+one’s hands with every ...” he wanted to add a new invective, but decided not
+to, “with every ... And besides, comrades, I do not intend to stay here any
+longer. I am too well brought up to be hail-fellow-well-met with such persons.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rapidly and haughtily walked to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was necessary for him to pass almost right up against Platonov, who, out of
+the corner of his eye, animal-like, was watching his every movement. For a
+moment in the mind of the student flashed a desire to strike Platonov
+unexpectedly, from the side, and jump away—the comrades would surely part them
+and not allow a fight. But immediately, almost without looking at the reporter,
+with some sort of deep, unconscious instinct, he saw and sensed those broad
+hands, lying quietly on the table, that obdurately bowed head with its broad
+forehead, and all the ungainly, alert, powerful body of his foe, so neligently
+hunched up and spread out on the chair, but ready at any second for a quick and
+terrific blow. And Sobashnikov walked out into the corridor, loudly banging the
+door after him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” said Jennie after him in a mocking patter.
+“Tamarochka, pour me out some more cognac.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the lanky student Petrovsky got up from his place and considered it
+necessary to defend Sobashnikov.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just as you wish, gentlemen; this is a matter of your personal view, but out
+of principle I go together with Boris. Let him be not right and so on, we can
+express censure to him in our own intimate company, but when an insult has been
+rendered our comrade—I can’t remain here. I am going away.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my God!” And Lichonin nervously and vexedly scratched his temple. “Boris
+behaved himself all the time in the highest degree vulgarly, rudely and
+foolishly. What sort of corporate honour do you think this is? A collective
+walk-out from editorial offices, from political meetings, from brothels. We
+aren’t officers to screen the foolishness of each comrade.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All the same, just as you wish, but I am going away out of a sense of
+solidarity!” said Petrovsky importantly and walked out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“May the earth be as down upon you!” Jennie sent after him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But how tortuous and dark the ways of the human soul! Both of them—Sobashnikov
+as well as Petrovsky—acted in their indignation rather sincerely, but the first
+only half so, while the second only a quarter in all. Sobashnikov, despite his
+intoxication and wrath, still had knocking at the door of his mind the alluring
+thought that now it would be more convenient and easier before his comrades to
+call out Jennka on the quiet and to be alone with her. While Petrovsky, with
+exactly the same aim, went after Sobashnikov in order to make a loan of three
+roubles from him. In the general drawing room they made things up between them,
+and after ten minutes Zociya, the housekeeper, shoved in her little, squinting,
+pink, cunning face through the half-open door of the private room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jennechka,” she called, “go, they have brought your linen, go count it. And
+you, Niura, the actor begs to come for just a minute, to drink some champagne.
+He’s with Henrietta and Big Manya.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The precipitate and incongruous quarrel of Platonov and Sobashnikov long served
+as a subject of conversation. The reporter, in cases like this, always felt
+shame, uneasiness, regret and the torments of conscience. And despite the fact
+that all those who remained were on his side, he was speaking with weariness in
+his voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By God, gentlemen! I’ll go away, best of all. Why should I disrupt your
+circle? We were both at fault. I’ll go away. Don’t bother about the bill. I’ve
+already paid Simeon, when I was going after Pasha.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin suddenly rumpled up his hair and stood up
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, no, the devil take it! I’ll go and drag him here. Upon my word of honour,
+they’re both fine fellows—Boris as well as Vaska. But they’re young yet, and
+bark at their own tails. I’m going after them, and I warrant that Boris will
+apologize.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went away, but came back after five minutes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They repose,” said he, sombrely, and made a hopeless gesture with his hand.
+“Both of them.”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0111"></a> CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+
+<p>
+At this moment Simeon walked into the cabinet with a tray upon which stood two
+goblets of a bubbling golden wine and lay a large visiting card.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“May I ask which of you here might be Mister Gavrila Petrovich Yarchenko?” he
+said, looking over all those sitting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I,” responded Yarchenko.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If youse please. The actor gent sent this.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yarchenko took the visiting card and read aloud:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Eumenii Poluectovich<br/>
+EGMONT—LAVRETZKI<br/>
+Dramatic Artist of Metropolitan Theatres
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s remarkable,” said Volodya Pavlov, “that all the Russian Garricks bear
+such queer names, on the style of Chrysantov, Thetisov, Mamontov and
+Epimhakov.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And besides that, the best known of them must needs either speak thickly, or
+lisp, or stammer,” added the reporter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, but most remarkable of all is the fact that I do not at all have the
+honour of knowing this artist of the metropolitan theatres. However, there’s
+something else written on the reverse of this card. Judging by the handwriting,
+it was written by a man greatly drunk and little lettered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘I dreenk’—not drink, but dreenk,” explained Yarchenko. “‘I dreenk to the
+health of the luminary of Russian science, Gavrila Petrovich Yarchenko, whom I
+saw by chance when I was passing by through the collidor. Would like to clink
+glasses together personally. If you do not remember, recollect the National
+Theatre, Poverty Is No Disgrace, and the humble artist who played African.’
+Yes, that’s right,” said Yarchenko. “Once, somehow, they saddled me with the
+arrangement of this benefit performance in the National Theatre. Also, there
+dimly glimmers some clean-shaven haughty visage, but ... What shall it be,
+gentlemen?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin answered good-naturedly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, drag him here. Perhaps he’s funny.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you?” the sub-professor turned to Platonov.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s all the same to me. I know him slightly. At first he’ll shout: ‘KELLNER,
+champagne!’ then burst into tears about his wife, who is an angel, then deliver
+a patriotic speech and finally raise a row over the bill, but none too loudly.
+All in all he’s entertaining.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let him come,” said Volodya, from behind the shoulder of Katie, who was
+sitting on his knees, swinging her legs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you, Veltman?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” the student came to with a start. He was sitting on the divan with his
+back to his companions, near the reclining Pasha, bending over her, and already
+for a long time, with the friendliest appearance of sympathy, had been stroking
+her, now on the shoulder, now on the hair at the nape of the neck, while she
+was smiling at him with her shyly shameless and senselessly passionate smile
+through half-closed and trembling eyelashes. “What? What’s it all about? Oh
+yes,—is it all right to let the actor in? I’ve nothing against it. Please do
+...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yarchenko sent an invitation through Simeon, and the actor came and immediately
+commenced the usual actor’s play. In the door he paused, in his long frock
+coat, shining with its silk lapels, with a glistening opera hat, which he held
+with his arm in the middle of his chest, like an actor portraying in the
+theatre an elderly worldly lion or a bank director. And approximately these
+persons he was inwardly picturing to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“May I be permitted, gentlemen, to intrude into your intimate company?” he
+asked in an unctuous, kindly voice, with a half-bow done somewhat to one side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They asked him in, and he began to introduce himself. Shaking hands, he stuck
+out his elbow forward and raised it so high that the hand proved to be far
+lower. Now it was no longer a bank director, but such a clever, splendid
+fellow, a sportsman and a rake of the golden youths. But his face—with rumpled,
+wild eyebrows and with denuded lids without lashes—was the vulgar, harsh and
+low face of a typical alcoholic, libertine, and pettily cruel man. Together
+with him came two of his ladies: Henrietta the eldest girl in years in the
+establishment of Anna Markovna, experienced, who had seen everything and had
+grown accustomed to everything, like an old horse on the tether of a threshing
+machine, the possessor of a thick bass, but still a handsome woman; and Big
+Manka, or Manka the Crocodile. Henrietta since still the preceding night had
+not parted from the actor, who had taken her from the house to a hotel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having seated himself alongside of Yarchenko, he straight off began to play a
+new role—he became something on the order of an old good soul of a landed
+proprietor, who had at one time been at a university himself, and now can not
+look upon the students without a quiet, fatherly emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Believe me, gentlemen, that one’s soul rests from all these worldly squabbles
+in the midst of youth,” he was saying, imparting to his depraved and harsh face
+an actor-like, exaggerated and improbable expression of being moved. “This
+faith in a high ideal, these honest impulses! ... What can be loftier and purer
+than our Russian students as a body? ... KELLNER! Chompa-a-agne!” he yelled
+deafeningly all of a sudden, and dealt a heavy blow on the table with his fist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin and Yarchenka did not wish to remain in debt to him. A spree began.
+God knows in what manner Mishka the Singer and Nicky the Book-keeper soon found
+themselves in the cabinet, and at once began singing in their galloping voices:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“They fe-e-e-el the tru-u-u-uth,<br/>
+Come thou daw-aw-aw-awning quicker ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There also appeared Roly-Poly, who had awakened. Letting his head drop
+touchingly to one side and having made little narrowed, lachrymose, sweet eyes
+in his wrinkled old face of a Don Quixote, he was speaking in a persuasively
+begging tone:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gentlemen students ... you ought to treat a little old man. I love education,
+by God! ... Allow me!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin was glad to see everybody, but Yarchenko in the beginning—until the
+champagne had mounted to his head—only raised high his small, short eyebrows
+with a timorous, wondering and naive air. It suddenly became crowded, smoky,
+noisy and close in the cabinet. Simeon, with rattling, closed the blinds with
+bolts on the outside. The women, just having gotten done with a visit or in the
+interim between dances, walked into the room, sat on somebody’s knees, smoked,
+sang disjointedly, drank wine, kissed and again went away, and again came. The
+clerks of Kereshkovsky, offended because the damsels bestowed more attention
+upon the cabinet than the drawing room, did start a row and tried to enter into
+a provoking explanation with the students, but Simeon in a moment quelled them
+with two or three authoritative words, thrown out as though in passing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Niura came back from her room and a little later Petrovsky followed her.
+Petrovsky with an extremely serious air declared that he had been walking on
+the street all this time, thinking over the incident which had taken place and
+in the end had come to the conclusion that comrade Boris was in reality not in
+the right, but that there also was a circumstance in extenuation of his
+fault—intoxication. Also, Jennie came later, but alone—Sobashnikov had fallen
+asleep in her room. The actor proved to have no end of talents. He very
+faithfully imitated the buzzing of a fly which an intoxicated man is catching
+on a window-pane, and the sounds of a saw; drolly performed, standing with his
+face in the corner, the conversation of a nervous lady over the telephone;
+imitated the singing of a phonograph record, and in the end, with exceeding
+likeness to life, showed a little Persian lad with a little trained monkey.
+Holding on with his hand to an imaginary small chain and at the same time
+baring his teeth, squatting like a monkey, winking his eyelids often, and
+scratching now his posteriors, now the hair on his head, he sang through his
+nose, in a monotonous and sad voice, distorting the words:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“The i-young cissack to the war has went,<br/>
+The i-young ladee underneath the fence lies spraw-aw-ling.<br/>
+AINA, AINA, AI-NA-NA-NA, AI-NA NA-NA-NA.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In conclusion he took Little White Manka in his arms, wrapped her up in the
+skirts of his frock and, stretching out his hand and making a tearful face,
+began to nod his head, bent to one side, as is done by little swarthy, dirty,
+oriental lads who roam over all Russia in long, old, soldiers’ overcoats, with
+bared chest of a bronze colour, holding a coughing, moth-eaten little monkey in
+their bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And who may you be?” severely asked fat Kate, who knew and loved this joke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Me Serbian, lady-y-y,” piteously moaned the actor through his nose. “Give me
+somethin’, lady-y-y.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And what do they call your little monkey?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Matreshka-a-a ... Him ’ungry-y-y, lady ... him want eat...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And have you got a passport?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We Serbia-a-an. Gimme something lady-y-y...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The actor proved not superfluous on the whole. He created at once a great deal
+of noise and raised the spirits of the company, which were beginning to be
+depressing. And every minute he cried out in a stentorian voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“KELLNER! Chompa-a-agne!”—although Simeon, who was accustomed to his manner
+paid very little attention to these cries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There began a truly Russian hubbub, noisy and senseless. The rosy,
+flaxen-haired, pleasing Tolpygin was playing LA SEGUIDILLE from CARMEN on the
+piano, while Roly-Poly was dancing a Kamarinsky peasant dance to its tune. His
+narrow shoulders hunched up, twisted all to one side, the fingers of his
+hanging hands widely spread, he intricately hopped on one spot from one long,
+thin leg to the other, then suddenly letting out a piercing grunt, would throw
+himself upward and shout out in time to his wild dance:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Ugh! Dance on, Matthew,<br/>
+Don’t spare your boots, you! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh, for one stunt like that a quartern of brandy isn’t enough!” he would add,
+shaking his long, graying hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They fee-ee-eel! the tru-u-u-uth!” roared the two friends, raising with
+difficulty their underlids, grown heavy, beneath dull, bleary eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The actor commenced to tell obscene anecdotes, pouring them out as from a bag,
+and the women squealed from delight, bent in two from laughter and threw
+themselves against the backs of their chairs. Veltman, who had long been
+whispering with Pasha, inconspicuously, in the hubbub, slipped out of the
+cabinet, while a few minutes after him Pasha also went away, smiling with her
+quiet, insane and bashful smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But all of the remaining students as well, save Lichonin, one after the other,
+some on the quiet, some under one pretext or another, vanished from the cabinet
+and did not return for long periods. Volodya Pavlov experienced a desire to
+look at the dancing; Tolpygin’s head began to ache badly, and he asked Tamara
+to lead him somewhere where he might wash up; Petrovski, having “touched”
+Lichonin for three roubles on the quiet, went out into the corridor and only
+from there despatched the housekeeper Zociya for Little White Manka. Even the
+prudent and fastidious Ramses could not cope with that spicy feeling which
+to-day’s strange, vivid and unwholesome beauty of Jennie excited in him. It
+proved that he had some important, undeferrable business this morning; it was
+necessary to go home and snatch a bit of sleep if only for a couple of hours.
+But, having told good-bye to his companions, he, before going out of the
+cabinet, rapidly and with deep significance pointed the door out to Jennie with
+his eyes. She understood, slowly, scarcely perceptibly, lowered her eyelashes
+as a sign of consent, and, when she again raised them, Platonov, who almost
+without looking had seen this silent dialogue, was struck by that expression of
+malice and menace in her eyes which she sped the back of the departing Ramses.
+Having waited for five minutes she got up, said “Excuse me, I’ll be right
+back,” and went out, swinging her short orange skirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now? Is it your turn, Lichonin?” asked the reporter banteringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, brother, you’re mistaken!” said Lichonin and clacked his tongue. “And I’m
+not doing it out of conviction or on principle, either ... No! I, as an
+anarchist, proclaim the gospel that the worse things are, the better ... But,
+fortunately, I am a gambler and spend all my temperament on gaming; on that
+account simple squeamishness speaks louder within me than this same unearthly
+feeling. But it’s amazing our thoughts coincided. I just wanted to ask you
+about the same thing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I—no. Sometimes, if I become very much tired out, I sleep here over night. I
+take from Isaiah Savvich the key to his little room and sleep on the divan. But
+all the girls here are already used to the fact that I am a being of the third
+sex.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And really ... never? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, what’s right is right!” exclaimed Nhira. “Sergei Ivanich is like a holy
+hermit.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Previously, some five years ago, I experienced this also,” continued Platonov.
+“But, do you know, it’s really too tedious and disgusting. Something on the
+nature of these flies which the actor gentleman just represented. They’re stuck
+together on the window sill, and then in some sort of fool wonder scratch their
+backs with their little hind legs and fly apart forever. And to play at love
+here? ... Well, for that I’m no hero out of their sort of novel. I’m not
+handsome, am shy with women, uneasy, and polite. While here they thirst for
+savage passions, bloody jealousy, tears, poisonings, beatings, sacrifices,—in a
+word, hysterical romanticism. And it’s easy to understand why. The heart of
+woman always wants love, while they are told of love every day with various
+sour, drooling words. Involuntarily one wants pepper in one’s love. One no
+longer wants words of passion, but tragically-passionate deeds. And for that
+reason thieves, murderers, souteners and other riff-raff will always be their
+lovers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And most important of all,” added Platonov, “that would at once spoil for me
+all the friendly relations which have been so well built up.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Enough of joking!” incredulously retorted Lichonin. “Then what compels you to
+pass days and nights here? Were you a writer—it would be a different matter.
+It’s easy to find an explanation; well, you’re gathering types or something ...
+observing life ... After the manner of that German professor who lived for
+three years with monkeys, in order to study closely their language and manners.
+But you yourself said that you don’t indulge in writing?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It isn’t that I don’t indulge, but I simply don’t know how—I can’t.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’ll write that down. Now let’s suppose another thing—that you come here as
+an apostle of a better, honest life, in the nature of a, now, saviour of
+perishing souls. You know, as in the dawn of Christianity certain holy fathers
+instead of standing on a column for thirty years or living in a cave in the
+woods, went to the market places, into houses of mirth, to the harlots and
+scaramuchios. But you aren’t inclined that way.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m not.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then why, the devil take it, do you hang around here? I can see very well that
+a great deal here is revolting and oppressive and painful to your own self. For
+example, this fool quarrel with Boris or this flunky who beats a woman, and—,
+in general, the constant contemplation of every kind of filth, lust,
+bestiality, vulgarity, drunkenness. Well, now, since you say so—I believe that
+you don’t give yourself up to lechery. But then, still more incomprehensible to
+me is your MODUS VIVENDI, to express myself in the style of leading articles.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reporter did not answer at once:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You see,” he began speaking slowly, with pauses, as though for the first time
+lending ear to his thoughts and weighing them. “You see, I’m attracted and
+interested in this life by its ... how shall I express it? ... its fearful,
+stark truth. Do you understand, it’s as though all the conventional coverings
+were ripped off it. There is no falsehood, no hypocrisy, no sanctimoniousness,
+there are no compromises of any sort, neither with public opinion, nor with the
+importunate authority of our forefathers, nor with one’s own conscience. No
+illusions of any kind, nor any kind of embellishments! Here she is—‘I! A public
+woman, a common vessel, a cloaca for the drainage of the city’s surplus lust.
+Come to me any one who wills—thou shalt meet no denial, therein is my service.
+But for a second of this sensuality in haste—thou shalt pay in money,
+revulsion, disease and ignominy.’ And that is all. There is not a single phase
+of human life where the basic main truth should shine with such a monstrous,
+hideous, stark clearness, without any shade of human prevarication or
+self-whitewashing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I don’t know! These women lie like the very devil. You just go and talk
+with her a bit about her first fall. She’ll spin you such a yarn!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, don’t you ask then. What business is that of yours? But even if they do
+lie, they lie altogether like children. But then, you know yourself that
+children are the foremost, the most charming fibsters, and at the same time the
+sincerest people on earth. And it’s remarkable, that both they and the
+others—that is, both prostitutes and children—lie only to us—men—and grown-ups.
+Among themselves they don’t lie—they only inspiredly improvise. But they lie to
+us because we ourselves demand this of them, because we clamber into their
+souls, altogether foreign to us, with our stupid tactics and questionings,
+because they regard us in secret as great fools and senseless dissemblers. But
+if you like, I shall right now count off on my fingers all the occasions when a
+prostitute is sure to lie, and you yourself will be convinced that man incites
+her to lying.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, well, we shall see.” “First: she paints herself mercilessly, at times
+even in detriment to herself. Why? Because every pimply military cadet, who is
+so distressed by his sexual maturity that he grows stupid in the spring, like a
+wood-cock on a drumming-log; or some sorry petty government clerk or other from
+the department of the parish, the husband of a pregnant woman and the father of
+nine infants—why, they both come here not at all with the prudent and simple
+purpose of leaving here the surplus of their passion. He, the good for nothing,
+has come to enjoy himself; he needs beauty, d’you see—aesthete that he is! But
+all these girls, these daughters of the simple, unpretentious, great Russian
+people—how do they regard aesthetics? ‘What’s sweet, that’s tasty; what’s red,
+that’s handsome.’ And so, there you are, receive, if you please, a beauty of
+antimony, white lead and rouge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s one. Secondly, his desire for beauty isn’t enough for this resplendent
+cavalier—no, he must in addition be served with a similitude of love, so that
+from his caresses there should kindle in the woman this same ‘fa-hire of
+in-sane pahass-ssion!’ which is sung about In idiotical ballads. Ah! Then THAT
+is what you want? There y’are! And the woman lies to him with countenance,
+voice, sighs, moans, movements of the body. And even he himself in the depths
+of his soul knows about this professional deception, but—go along with
+you!—still deceives himself: ‘Ah, what a handsome man I am! Ah, how the women
+love me! Ah, into what an ecstasy I bring them ...’ You know, there are cases
+when a man with the most desperate brazenness, in the most unlikely manner, is
+flattered to his face, and he himself sees and knows it very plainly, but—the
+devil take it!—despite everything a delightful feeling of some sort lubricates
+his soul. And so here. Query: whose is the initiative in the lie?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And here’s a third point for you, Lichonin. You prompted it yourself. They lie
+most of all when they are asked: ‘How did you come to such a life?’ But what
+right have you to ask her about that, may the devil take you! For she does not
+push her way into your intimate life? She doesn’t interest herself with your
+first, ‘holy’ love or the virtue of your sisters and your bride. Aha! You pay
+money? Splendid! The bawd and the bouncer, and the police, and medicine, and
+the city government, watch over your interests. Polite and seemly conduct on
+the part of the prostitute hired by you for love is guaranteed you, and your
+personality is immune ... even though in the most direct sense, in the sense of
+a slap in the face, which you, of course, deserve through your aimless, and
+perhaps tormenting interrogations. But you desire truth as well for your money?
+Well, that you are never to discount and to control. They will tell you just
+such a conventionalized history as you—yourself a man of conventionality and a
+vulgarian—will digest easiest of all. Because by itself life is either
+exceedingly humdrum and tedious to you, or else as exceedingly improbable as
+only life can be improbable. And so you have the eternal mediocre history about
+an officer, about a shop clerk, about a baby and a superannuated father, who
+there, in the provinces, bewails his strayed daughter and implores her to
+return home. But mark you, Lichonin, all that I’m saying doesn’t apply to you;
+in you, upon my word of honour, I sense a sincere and great soul ... Let’s
+drink to your health?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They drank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I speak on?” continued Platonov undecidedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you bored?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, no, I beg of you, speak on.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They also lie, and lie especially innocently, to those who preen themselves
+before them on political hobby horses. Here they agree with anything you want.
+I shall tell her to-day: Away with the modern bourgeois order! Let us destroy
+with bombs and daggers the capitalists, landed proprietors, and the
+bureaucracy! She’ll warmly agree with me. But to-morrow the hanger-on Nozdrunov
+will yell that it’s necessary to string up all the socialists, to beat up all
+the students and massacre all the sheenies, who partake of communion in
+Christian blood. And she’ll gleefully agree with him as well. But if in
+addition to that you’ll also inflame her imagination, make her fall in love
+with yourself, then she’ll go with you everywhere you may wish—on a pogrom, on
+a barricade, on a theft, on a murder. But then, children also are yielding. And
+they, by God, are children, my dear Lichonin...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At fourteen years she was seduced, and at sixteen she became a patent
+prostitute, with a yellow ticket and a venereal disease. And here is all her
+life, surrounded and fenced off from the universe with a sort of a bizarre,
+impenetrable and dead wall. Turn your attention to her everyday
+vocabulary—thirty or forty words, no more—altogether as with a baby or a
+savage: to eat, to drink, to sleep, man, bed, the madam, rouble, lover, doctor,
+hospital, linen, policeman—and that’s all. And so her mental development, her
+experience, her interests, remain on an infantile plane until her very death,
+exactly as in the case of a gray and naive lady teacher who has not crossed
+over the threshold of a female institute since she was ten, as in the case of a
+nun given as a child into a convent. In a word, picture to yourself a tree of a
+genuinely great species, but raised in a glass bell, in a jar from jam. And
+precisely to this childish phase of their existence do I attribute their
+compulsory lying—so innocent, purposeless and habitual ... But then, how
+fearful, stark, unadorned with anything the frank truth in this business-like
+dickering about the price of a night; in these ten men in an evening; in these
+printed rules, issued by the city fathers, about the use of a solution of boric
+acid and about maintaining one’s self in cleanliness; in the weekly doctors’
+inspections; in the nasty diseases, which are looked upon as lightly and
+facetiously, just as simply and without suffering, as a cold would be; in the
+deep revulsion of these women to men—so deep, that they all, without
+conception, compensate for it in the Lesbian manner and do not even in the
+least conceal it. All their incongruous life is here, on the palm of my hand,
+with all its cynicism, monstrous and coarse injustice; but there is in it none
+of that falsehood and that hypocrisy before people and before one’s self, which
+enmesh all humanity from top to bottom. Consider, my dear Lichonin, how much
+nagging, drawn out, disgusting deception, how much hate, there is in any
+marital cohabitation in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. How much blind,
+merciless cruelty—precisely not animal, but human, reasoned, far-sighted,
+calculated cruelty—there is in the sacred maternal instinct—and behold, with
+what tender colours this instinct is adorned! Then what about all these
+unnecessary, tom-fool professions, invented by cultured man for the
+safeguarding of my nest, my bit of meat, my woman, my child, these different
+overseers, controllers, inspectors, judges, attorneys, jailers, advocates,
+chiefs, bureaucrats, generals, soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of titles
+more. They all subserve human greed, cowardice, viciousness, servility,
+legitimised sensuality, laziness-beggarliness!—yes, that is the real
+word!—human beggarliness. But what magnificent words we have! The altar of the
+fatherland, Christian compassion for our neighbor, progress, sacred duty,
+sacred property, holy love. Ugh! I do not believe in a single fine word now,
+and I am nauseated to infinity with these petty liars, these cowards and
+gluttons! Beggar women! ... Man is born for great joy, for ceaseless creation,
+in which he is God; for a broad, free love, unhindered by anything,—love for
+everything: for a tree, for the sky, for man, for a dog, for the dear, benign,
+beautiful earth,—oh, especially for the earth with its beatific motherhood,
+with its mornings and nights, with its magnificent everyday miracles. But man
+has lied himself out so, has become such an importunate beggar, and has sunk so
+low! ... Ah, Lichonin, but I am weary!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I, as an anarchist, partly understand you,” said Lichonin thoughtfully. It was
+as though he heard and yet did not hear the reporter. Some thought was with
+difficulty, for the first time, being born in his mind. “But one thing I can
+not comprehend. If humanity has become so malodorous to you, then how do you
+stand—and for so long, too,—all this,—” Lichonin took in the whole table with a
+circular motion of his hand,—“the basest thing that mankind could invent?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, I don’t even know myself,” said Platonov with artlessness. “You see, I
+am a vagabond, and am passionately in love with life. I have been a turner, a
+compositor; I have sown and sold tobacco—the cheap Silver Makhorka kind—have
+sailed as a stoker on the Azov Sea, have been a fisherman on the Black—on the
+Dubinin fisheries; I have loaded watermelons and bricks on the Dnieper, have
+ridden with a circus, have been an actor—I can’t even recall everything. And
+never did need drive me. No, only an immeasurable thirst for life and an
+insupportable curiosity. By God, I would like for a few days to become a horse,
+a plant, or a fish, or to be a woman and experience childbirth; I would like to
+live with the inner life, and to look upon the universe with the eyes of every
+human being I meet. And so I wander care-free over towns and hamlets, bound by
+nothing; know and love tens of trades and joyously float wherever it suits fate
+to set my sail... And so it was that I came upon the brothel, and the more I
+look at it, the more there grows within me alarm, incomprehension, and very
+great anger. But even this will soon be at an end. When things get well into
+autumn—away again! I’ll get into a rail-rolling mill. I’ve a certain friend,
+he’ll manage it ... Wait, wait, Lichonin ... Listen to the actor ... That’s the
+third act.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Egmont-Lavretzki, who until this had been very successfully imitating now a
+shoat which is being put into a bag, now the altercation of a cat with a dog,
+was beginning little by little to wilt and droop. Upon him was already
+advancing the stage of self-revelation, next in order, in the paroxysm of which
+he several times attempted to kiss Yarchenko’s hand. His lids had become red;
+around the shaven, prickly lips had deepened the tearful wrinkles that gave him
+an appearance of weeping; and it could be heard by his voice that his nose and
+throat were already overflowing with tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I serve in a farce!” he was saying, smiting himself on the breast with his
+fist. “I disport myself in striped trunks for the sport of the sated mob! I
+have put out my torch, have hid my talent in the earth, like the slothful
+servant! But fo-ormerly!” he began to bray tragically, “Fo-ormerly-y-y! Ask in
+Novocherkassk, ask in Tvier, in Ustejne, in Zvenigorodok, in Krijopole.[10]
+What a Zhadov and Belugin I was! How I played Max! What a figure I created of
+Veltishchev—that was my crowning ro-ole ... Nadin-Perekopski was beginning with
+me at Sumbekov’s! With Nikiphorov-Pavlenko did I serve. Who made the name for
+Legunov-Pochainin? I! But no-ow ...”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[10] All provincial towns.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sniveled, and sought to kiss the sub-professor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes! Despise me, brand me, ye honest folk. I play the tom-fool. I drink ... I
+have sold and spilt the sacred ointment! I sit in a dive with vendable
+merchandise. While my wife ... she is a saint, and pure, my little dove! ...
+Oh, if she knew, if she only knew! she works hard, she runs a modiste’s shop;
+her fingers—the fingers of an angel—are pricked with the needle, but I! Oh,
+sainted woman! And I—the scoundrel!—whom do I exchange thee for! Oh, horror!”
+The actor seized his hair. “Professor, let me, I’ll kiss your scholarly hand.
+You alone understand me. Let us go, I’ll introduce you, you’ll see what an
+angel this is! ... She awaits me, she does not sleep nights, she folds the tiny
+hands of my little ones and together with them whispers: ‘Lord, save and
+preserve papa.’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re lying about it all, you ham!” said the drunken Little White Manka
+suddenly, looking with hatred upon Egmont-Lavretzki. “She isn’t whispering
+anything, but most peacefully sleeping with a man in your bed.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Be still, you w—!” vociferated the actor beside himself; and seizing a bottle
+by the neck raised it high over his head. “Hold me, or else I’ll brain this
+carrion. Don’t you dare besmirch with your foul tongue...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My tongue isn’t foul—I take communion,” impudently replied the woman. “But
+you, you fool, wear horns. You go traipsing around with prostitutes yourself,
+and yet want your wife not to play you false. And look where the dummy’s found
+a place to slaver, till he looks like he had reins in his mouth. And what did
+you mix the children in for, you miserable papa you! Don’t you roll your eyes
+and gnash your teeth at me. You won’t frighten me! W—yourself!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It required many efforts and much eloquence on the part of Yarchenko in order
+to quiet the actor and Little White Manka, who always after Benedictine ached
+for a row. The actor in the end burst into copious and unbecoming tears and
+blew his nose, like an old man; he grew weak, and Henrietta led him away to her
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fatigue had already overcome everybody. The students, one after another,
+returned from the bedrooms; and separately from them, with an indifferent air,
+came their chance mistresses. And truly, both these and the others resembled
+flies, males and females, just flown apart on the window pane. They yawned,
+stretched, and for a long time an involuntary expression of wearisomeness and
+aversion did not leave their faces, pale from sleeplessness, unwholesomely
+glossy. And when they, before going their ways, said good-bye to each other, in
+their eyes twinkled some kind of an inimical feeling, just as with the
+participants of one and the same filthy and unnecessary crime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where are you going right now?” Lichonin asked the reporter in a low voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, really, I don’t know myself. I did want to spend the night in the
+cabinet of Isaiah Savvich, but it’s a pity to lose such a splendid morning. I’m
+thinking of taking a bath, and then I’ll get on a steamer and ride to the
+Lipsky monastery to a certain tippling black friar I know. But why?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I would ask you to remain a little while and sit the others out. I must have a
+very important word or two with you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s a go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yarchenko was the last to go. He averred a headache and fatigue. But scarcely
+had he gone out of the house when the reporter seized Lichonin by the hand and
+quickly dragged him into the glass vestibule of the entrance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Look!” he said, pointing to the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And through the orange glass of the little coloured window Lichonin saw the
+sub-professor, who was ringing at Treppel’s. After a minute the door opened and
+Yarchenko disappeared through it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How did you find out?” asked Lichonin with astonishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A mere trifle! I saw his face, and saw his hands smoothing Verka’s tights. The
+others were less restrained. But this fellow is bashful.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, let’s go,” said Lichonin. “I won’t detain you long.”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0112"></a> CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Of the girls only two remained in the cabinet-Jennie, who had come in her night
+blouse, and Liuba, who had long been sleeping under cover of the conversation,
+curled up into a ball in the large plush armchair. The fresh, freckled face of
+Liuba had taken on a meek, almost childlike, expression, while the lips, just
+as they had smiled in sleep, had preserved the light imprint of a radiant,
+peaceful and tender smile. It was blue and biting in the cabinet from the dense
+tobacco smoke; guttered, warty little streams had congealed on the candles in
+the candelabras; the table, flooded with coffee and wine, scattered all over
+with orange peels, seemed hideous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie was sitting on the divan, her knees clasped around with her arms. And
+again was Platonov struck by the sombre fire in her deep eyes, that seemed
+fallen in underneath the dark eyebrows, formidably contracted downward, toward
+the bridge of the nose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll put out the candles,” said Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The morning half-light, watery and drowsy, filled the room through the slits of
+the blinds. The extinguished wicks of the candles smoked with faint streams.
+The tobacco smoke swirled in blue, layered shrouds, but a ray of sunlight that
+had cut its way through the heart-shaped hollow in a window shutter,
+transpierced the cabinet obliquely with a joyous, golden sword of dust, and in
+liquid, hot gold splashed upon the paper on the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s better,” said Lichonin, sitting down. “The conversation will be short,
+but ... the devil knows ... how to approach it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at Jennie in abstraction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I go away, then?” said she indifferently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, you sit a while,” the reporter answered for Lichonin. “She won’t be in the
+way,” he turned to the student and slightly smiled. “For the conversation will
+be about prostitution? Isn’t that so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, yes... sort of...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well, then. You listen to her carefully. Her opinions happen to be of an
+unusually cynical nature, but at times of exceeding weight.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin vigorously rubbed and kneaded his face with his palms, then
+intertwined his fingers and nervously cracked them twice. It was apparent that
+he was agitated and was himself constrained about that which he was getting
+ready to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, but isn’t it all the same!” he suddenly exclaimed angrily. “You were
+to-day speaking about these women ... I listened... True, you haven’t told me
+anything new. But-strangely-I, for some reason, as though for the first time in
+my loose life, have looked upon this question with open eyes... I ask you, what
+is prostitution in the end? What is it? The extravagant delirium of large
+cities, or an eternal historical phenomenon? Will it cease some time? Or will
+it die only with the death of all mankind? Who will answer me that?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov was looking at him intently, narrowing his eyes slightly, through
+habit. He wanted to know what main thought was inflicting such sincere torture
+on Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When it will cease, none will tell you. Perhaps when the magnificent Utopias
+of the socialists and anarchists will materialize, when the world will become
+everyone’s and no one’s, when love will be absolutely free and subject only to
+its own unlimited desires, while mankind will fuse into one happy family,
+wherein will perish the distinction between mine and thine, and there will come
+a paradise upon earth, and man will again become naked, glorified and without
+sin. Perhaps it may be then...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But now? Now?” asks Lichonin with growing agitation. “Shall I look on, with my
+little hands folded? ‘It’s none of my affair?’ Tolerate it as an unavoidable
+evil? Put up with it, and wash my hands of it? Shall I pronounce a benediction
+upon it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This evil is not unavoidable, but insuperable. But isn’t it all the same to
+you?” asked Platonov with cold wonder. “For you’re an anarchist, aren’t you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What the devil kind of an anarchist am I! Well, yes, I am an anarchist,
+because my reason, when I think of life, always leads me logically to the
+anarchistic beginning. And I myself think in theory: let men beat, deceive, and
+fleece men, like flocks of sheep—let them!—violence will breed rancour sooner
+or later. Let them violate the child, let them trample creative thought under
+foot, let there be slavery, let there be prostitution, let them thieve, mock,
+spill blood...Let them! The worse, the better, the nearer the end. There is a
+great law, I think, the same for inanimate objects as well as for all the
+tremendous and many-millioned human life: the power of effort is equal to the
+power of resistance. The worse, the better. Let evil and vindictiveness
+accumulate in mankind, let them grow and ripen like a monstrous abscess—an
+abscess the size of the whole terrestrial sphere. For it will burst some time!
+And let there be terror and insufferable pain. Let the pus deluge all the
+universe. But mankind will either choke in it and perish, or, having gone
+through the illness, will be regenerated to a new, beautiful life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin avidly drank off a cup of cold black coffee and continued vehemently:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. Just so do I and many others theorize, sitting in our rooms, over tea
+with white bread and cooked sausage, when the value of each separate human life
+is so-so, an infinitesimally small numeral in a mathematical formula. But let
+me see a child abused, and the red blood will rush to my head from rage. And
+when I look and look upon the labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown
+into hysterics for shame at my algebraic calculations. There is—the devil take
+it!—there is something incongruous, altogether illogical, but which at this
+time is stronger than human reason. Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this
+minute as though I had robbed a sleeping man or deceived a three-year-old
+child, or hit a bound person? And why does it seem to me to-day that I myself
+am guilty of the evil of prostitution—guilty in my silence, my indifference, my
+indirect permission? What am I to do, Platonov!” exclaimed the student with
+grief in his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov kept silent, squinting at him with his little narrow eyes. But Jennie
+unexpectedly said in a caustic tone:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, you do as one Englishwoman did ... A certain red-haired clodhopper came
+to us here. She must have been important, because she came with a whole retinue
+... all some sort of officials ... But before her had come the assistant of the
+commissioner, with the precinct inspector Kerbesh. And the assistant directly
+forewarned us, just like that: ‘If you stiffs, and so on and so on, will let
+out even one little rude word, or something, then I won’t leave one stone upon
+another of your establishment, while I’ll flog all the wenches soundly in the
+station-house and make ’em rot in jail!’ Well, at last this galoot came. She
+gibbered and she gibbered something in a foreign language, all the time pointed
+to heaven with her hand, and then distributed a five-kopeck Testament to every
+one of us and rode away. Now you ought to do the same, dearie.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov burst into loud laughter. But seeing the naive and sad face of
+Lichonin, who did not seem to understand, nor even suspect mockery, he
+restrained his laughter and said seriously:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You won’t accomplish anything, Lichonin. While there will be property, there
+will also be poverty. While marriage exists, prostitution also will not die. Do
+you know who will always sustain and nourish prostitution? It is the so-called
+decent people, the noble paterfamiliases, the irreproachable husbands, the
+loving brothers. They will always find a seemly motive to legitimize, normalize
+and put a wrapper all around paid libertinage, because they know very well that
+otherwise it would rush in a torrent into their bedrooms and nurseries.
+Prostitution is for them a deflection of the sensuousness of others from their
+personal, lawful alcove. And even the respectable paterfamilias himself is not
+averse to indulge in a love debauch in secret. And really, it is palling to
+have always the one and the same thing the wife, the chambermaid, and the lady
+on the side. Man, as a matter of fact, is a poly—and exceedingly so—a
+polygamous animal. And to his rooster-like amatory instincts it will always be
+sweet to unfold in such a magnificent nursery garden, A LA Treppel’s or Anna
+Markovna’s. Oh, of course, a well-balanced spouse or the happy father of six
+grown-up daughters will always be clamouring about the horror of prostitution.
+He will even arrange with the help of a lottery and an amateur entertainment a
+society for the saving of fallen women, or an asylum in the name of St.
+Magdalene. But the existence of prostitution he will bless and sustain.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Magdalene asylums!” with quiet laughter, full of an ancient hatred the ache of
+which had not yet healed, repeated Jennie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I know that all these false measures undertaken are stuff and a total
+mockery,” cut in Lichonin. “But let me be ridiculous and stupid, yet I do not
+wish to remain a commiserating spectator, who sits on a warm ledge, gazes upon
+a conflagration, and is saying all the time: ‘Oh, my, but it’s burning ... by
+God, it is burning! Perhaps there are even people burning!’—but for his part
+merely laments and slaps his thighs.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now,” said Platonov harshly, “would you take a child’s syringe and go to
+put out the fire with it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No!” heatedly exclaimed Lichonin ... “Perhaps—who knows?—perhaps I’ll succeed
+in saving at least one living soul? It was just this that I wanted to ask you
+about, Platonov, and you must help me ... Only, I implore you, without jeers,
+without cooling off ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You want to take a girl out of here? To save her?” asked Platonov, looking at
+him attentively. He now understood the drift of this entire conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes ... I don’t know ... I’ll try ...” answered Lichonin uncertainly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She’ll come back,” said Platonov.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She will,” Jennie repeated with conviction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin walked up to her, took her by the hands and began to speak in a
+trembling whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jennechka ... Perhaps you ... eh? For I don’t call you as a mistress ... but a
+friend ... It’s all a trifle, half a year of rest ... and then we’ll master
+some trade or other ... we’ll read...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie snatched her hands out of his with vexation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, into a bog with you!” she almost shouted. “I know you! Want me to darn
+socks for you? Cook on a kerosene stove? Pass nights without sleeping on
+account of you when you’ll be chitter-chattering with your short-haired
+friends? But when you get to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a government clerk,
+then it’s me will get a knee in the back: ‘Out on the street with you, now, you
+public hide, you’ve ruined my young life. I want to marry a decent girl, pure,
+and innocent! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I meant it as a brother ... I meant it without that ...” mumbled Lichonin in
+confusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know that kind of brothers. Until the first night ... Leave off and don’t
+talk nonsense to me! It makes me tired to listen to it!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait, Lichonin!” began the reporter seriously. “Why, you will pile a load
+beyond your strength upon yourself as well. I’ve known idealists, among the
+populists, who married peasant girls out of principle. This is just the way
+they thought—nature, black-loam, untapped forces. ... But this black-loam after
+a year turned into the fattest of women, who lies the whole day in bed and
+chews cookies, or studs her fingers with penny rings, spreads them out and
+admires them. Or else sits in the kitchen, drinks sweet liquor with the
+coachman and carries on a natural romance with him. Look out, here it will be
+worse!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All three became silent. Lichonin was pale and was wiping his moist forehead
+with a handkerchief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, the devil take it!” he cried out suddenly with obstinacy. “I don’t believe
+you! I don’t want to believe! Liuba” he called loudly the girl who had fallen
+asleep. “Liubochka!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl awoke, passed her palm over her lips, first to one side, then the
+other, yawned, and smiled, in a funny, child-like manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wasn’t sleeping, I heard everything,” she said. “I only dozed off for a
+teeny-weeny bit.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Liuba, do you want to go away from here with me?” asked Lichonin and took her
+by the hand. “But entirely, forever, to go away so’s never to return either to
+a brothel or the street?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liuba questioningly, with perplexity, looked at Jennie, as though seeking from
+her an explanation of this jest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s enough for you,” she said slyly. “You’re still studying yourself. Where
+do you come in, then, to take a girl and set her up?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not to set you up, Liuba ... I simply want to help you ... For it isn’t very
+sweet for you in a brothel, is it now!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Naturally, it isn’t all sugar! If I was as proud as Jennechka, or so enticing
+like Pasha ... but I won’t get used to things here for anything ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, then, let’s go, let’s go! ...” entreated Lichonin. “Surely, you know
+some manual work—well, now, sewing something, embroidering, cutting?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know anything!” answered Liuba bashfully and started laughing and
+turned red, covering her mouth with the elbow of her free arm. “What’s asked of
+us in the village, that I know, but anything more I don’t know. I can cook a
+little ... I lived at the priest’s—cooked for him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s splendid! That’s excellent!” Lichonin grew joyous. “I will assist you,
+you’ll open a dining room ... A cheap dining room, you understand ... I’ll
+advertise it for you ... The students will come! That’s magnificent! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s enough of making fun of me!” retorted Liuba, a bit offended, and again
+looked askance and questioningly at Jennie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He’s not joking,” answered Jennie with a voice which quavered strangely. “He’s
+in earnest, seriously.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here’s my word of honour that I’m serious! Honest to God, now!” the student
+caught her up with warmth and for some reason even made the sign of the cross
+in the direction of the empty corner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And really,” said Jennie, “take Liubka. That’s not the same thing as taking
+me. I’m like an old dragoon’s nag, and used to it. You can’t make me over,
+neither with hay nor a stick. But Liubka is a simple girl and a kind one. And
+she hasn’t grown used to our life yet. What are you popping your eyes out at me
+for, you ninny? Answer when you’re asked. Well? Do you want to or don’t you
+want to?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And why not? If they ain’t laughing, but for real ... And you, Jennechka, what
+would you advise me ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, you’re such wood!” Jennie grew angry. “What’s better according to you—to
+rot on straw with a nose fallen through? To croak under the fence like a dog?
+Or to turn honest? Fool! You ought to kiss his hands; but no, you’re getting
+particular.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The naive Liuba did, in fact, extend her lips toward Lichonin’s hand, and this
+movement made everybody laugh, and touched them just the least trifle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that’s very good! It’s like magic!” bustled the overjoyed Lichonin. “Go
+and notify the proprietress at once that you’re going away from here forever.
+And take the most necessary things; it isn’t as it used to be; now a girl can
+go away from a brothel whenever she wants to.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, it can’t be done that way,” Jennie stopped him; “she can go away, that’s
+so, but you’ll have no end of unpleasantness and hullabaloo. Here’s what you
+do, student. You won’t regret ten roubles?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course, of course ... if you please.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let Liuba tell the housekeeper that you’re taking her to your rooms for
+to-day. That’s the fixed rate—ten roubles. And afterwards, well, even
+to-morrow—come after the ticket and things. That’s nothing; we’ll work this
+thing roundly. And after that you must go to the police with her ticket and
+declare, that Liubka So-and-so has hired herself to you as chambermaid, and
+that you desire to exchange her blank for a real passport. Well, Liubka,
+lively! Take the money and march. And, look out, be as quick as possible with
+the housekeeper, or else she, the bitch, will read it in your eyes. And also
+don’t forget,” she cried, now after Liuba, “wipe the rouge off your puss, now.
+Or else the drivers will be pointing their fingers at you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After half an hour Liuba and Lichonin were getting on a cab at the entrance.
+Jennie and the reporter were standing on the sidewalk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re committing a great folly, Lichonin,” Platonov was saying listlessly,
+“but I honour and respect the fine impulse within you. Here’s the thought—and
+here’s the deed. You’re a brave and a splendid fellow.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here’s to your commencement!” laughed Jennie. “Look out, don’t forget to send
+for me to the christening.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You won’t see it, no matter how long you wait for it!” laughed Lichonin,
+waving his cap about.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They rode off. The reporter looked at Jennie, and with astonishment saw tears
+in her softened eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“God grant it, God grant it,” she was whispering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What has been the matter with you to-day, Jennie?” he asked kindly. “What? Are
+you oppressed? Can’t I do anything?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned her back to him and leaned over the bent balustrade of the stoop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How shall I write to you, if need be?” she asked in a stifled voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, it’s simple. Editorial rooms of Echoes. So-and-so. They’ll pass it on to
+me pretty fast.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I ... I ... I ...” Jennie just began, but suddenly burst into loud, passionate
+sobs and covered her face with her hands, “I’ll write you ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And without taking her hands away from her face, her shoulders quivering, she
+ran up the stoop and disappeared in the house, loudly banging the door after
+her.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap0201"></a> PART TWO</h2>
+
+<h3> CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Even to this day, after a lapse of ten years, the erstwhile inhabitants of the
+Yamkas recall that year, abounding in unhappy, foul, bloody events, which began
+with a series of trifling, small affrays, but terminated in the
+administration’s, one fine day, taking and destroying completely the ancient,
+long-warmed nest of legalized prostitution, which nest it had itself
+created—scattering its remains over the hospitals, jails and streets of the big
+city. Even to this day a few of the former proprietresses who have remained
+alive and have reached the limit of decrepitude, and quondam housekeepers, fat
+and hoarse, like pug-dogs grown old, recall this common destruction with
+sorrow, horror, and stolid perplexity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just like potatoes out of a sack, brawls, robberies, diseases, murders and
+suicides began to pour down, and, it seemed, no one was to blame for this. All
+these misfortunes just simply began to be more frequent of their own accord, to
+pile one upon the other, to expand and grow; just as a small lump of snow,
+pushed by the feet of urchins, becomes constantly bigger and bigger by itself
+from the thawing snow sticking to it, grows bigger than the stature of a man,
+and, finally, with one last, small effort is precipitated into a ravine and
+rolls down as an enormous avalanche. The old proprietresses and housekeepers,
+of course, had never heard of fatality; but inwardly, with the soul, they
+sensed its mysterious presence in the inevitable calamities of that terrible
+year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, truly, everywhere in life where people are bound by common interests,
+blood relationship, or the benefits of a profession into close, individualized
+groups—there inevitably can be observed this mysterious law of sudden
+accumulation, of a piling up, of events; their epidemicity, their strange
+succession and connectedness, their incomprehensible lingering. This occurs, as
+popular wisdom has long ago noted, in isolated families, where disease or death
+suddenly falls upon the near ones in an inevitable, enigmatic order.
+“Misfortune does not come alone.” “Misfortune without waits—open wide the
+gates.” This is to be noticed also in monasteries, banks, governmental
+departments, regiments, places of learning and other public institutions, where
+for a long time, almost for decades, life flows evenly, like a marshy river;
+and, suddenly, and after some altogether insignificant incident or other, there
+begin transfers, changes in positions, expulsions from service, losses,
+sicknesses. The members of society, just as though they had conspired, die, go
+insane, are caught thieving, shoot or hang themselves; vacancy after vacancy is
+freed; promotions follow promotions, new elements flow in, and, behold, after
+two years there is not a one of the previous people on the spot; everything is
+new, if only the institution has not fallen into pieces completely, has not
+crept apart. And is it not the same astounding destiny which overtakes enormous
+social, universal organizations—cities, empires, nations, countries, and, who
+knows, perhaps whole planetary worlds?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something resembling this incomprehensible fatality swept over the Yamaskya
+Borough as well, bringing it to a rapid and scandalous destruction. Now in
+place of the boisterous Yamkas is left a peaceful, humdrum outskirt, in which
+live truck-farmers, cat’s-meat men, Tartars, swineherds and butchers from the
+near-by slaughterhouses. At the petition of these worthy people even the
+designation of Yamaskya Borough itself, as disgracing the inhabitants with its
+past, has been named over into Golubovka, in honour of the merchant Golubov,
+owner of a shop dealing in groceries and delicacies, and warden of the local
+church.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first subterranean shocks of this catastrophe began in the heat of summer,
+at the time of the annual summer fair, which this year was unbelievably
+brilliant. Many circumstances contributed to its extraordinary success,
+multitudes, and the stupendousness of the deals concluded during it: the
+building in the vicinity of three new sugar refineries, and the unusually
+abundant crop of wheat, and, in particular, of sugar beets; the commencement of
+work in the laying of an electric trolley and of canalization; the building of
+a new road to the distance of 750 versts; but mainly, the fever of building
+which seized the whole town, all the banks and financial institutions, and all
+the houseowners. Factories for making brick sprang up on the outskirts of the
+town like mushrooms. A grandiose agricultural exposition opened. Two new
+steamer lines came into being, and they, together with the previously
+established ones, frenziedly competed with each other, transporting freight and
+pilgrims. In competition they reached such a state, that they lowered their
+passenger rates for the third class from seventy-five kopecks to five, three,
+two, and even one kopeck. In the end, ready to fall from exhaustion in the
+unequal struggle, one of the steamship companies offered a free passage to all
+the third-class passengers. Then its competitor at once added to the free
+passage half a loaf of white bread as well. But the biggest and most
+significant enterprise of this city was the engineering of the extensive river
+port, which had attracted to it hundreds of thousands of labourers and which
+cost God knows what money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must also be added, that the city was at this time celebrating the
+millennial anniversary of its famous abbey, the most honoured and the richest
+among all the monasteries of Russia. From all the ends of Russia, out of
+Siberia, from the shores of the Frozen Ocean, from the extreme south—the Black
+and Caspian Seas—countless pilgrims had gathered for the worship of the local
+sanctities: the abbey’s saints, reposing deep underground in calcareous
+caverns. Suffice it to say, that the monastery gave shelter, and food of a
+sort, to forty thousand people daily; while those for whom there was not enough
+room lay, at night, side by side, like logs, in the extensive yards and lanes
+of the abbey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a summer out of some fairy-tale. The population of the city increased
+well-nigh fourfold through every sort of newly-come people. Stone-masons,
+carpenters, painters, engineers, technicians, foreigners, agriculturists,
+brokers, shady business men, river navigators, unoccupied knaves, tourists,
+thieves, card sharpers—they all overflowed the city, and not in a single hotel,
+the most dirty and dubious one, was there a vacant room. Insane prices were
+paid for quarters. The stock exchange gambled on a grand scale, as never before
+or since that summer. Money in millions simply flowed from hands to hands, and
+thence to a third pair. In one hour colossal riches were created, but then many
+former firms burst, and yesterday’s men of wealth turned into beggars. The
+commonest of labourers bathed and warmed themselves in this golden flood.
+Stevedores, draymen, street porters, roustabouts, hod carriers and ditch
+diggers still remember to this day what money they earned by the day during
+this mad summer. Any tramp received no less than four of five roubles a day at
+the unloading of barges laden with watermelons. And all this noisy, foreign
+band, locoed by the easy money, intoxicated with the sensual beauty of the
+ancient, seductive city, enchanted by the delightful warmth of the southern
+nights, made drunk by the insidious fragrance of the white acacias—these
+hundreds of thousands of insatiable, dissolute beasts in the image of men, with
+all their massed will clamoured: “Give us woman!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a single month new amusement enterprises—chic Tivolis, CHATEAUX DES FLEURES,
+Olympias, Alcazars, etc., with a chorus and an operetta; many restaurants and
+beerhouses, with little summer gardens, and common little taverns—sprang up by
+the score in the city, in the vicinity of the building port. On every crossing
+new “violet-wine” houses were opened every day—little booths of boards, in each
+of which, under the pretext of selling bread-cider, old wenches trafficked in
+themselves by twos and threes, right alongside behind a partition of deal, and
+to many mothers and fathers is this summer painful and memorable through the
+degrading diseases of their sons—schoolboys and military cadets. For the casual
+arrivals servants were demanded, and thousands of peasant girls started out
+from the surrounding villages toward the city. It was inevitable that the
+demand on prostitution should become unusually high. And so, from Warsaw, from
+Lodz, from Odessa, from Moscow, and even from St. Petersburg, even from abroad,
+flocked together an innumerable multitude of foreign women; cocottes of Russian
+fabrication, the most ordinary prostitutes of the rank and file, and chic
+Frenchwomen and Viennese. Imperiously told the corrupting influence of the
+hundreds of millions of easy money. It was as though this cascade of gold had
+lashed down upon, had set to whirling and deluged within it, the whole city.
+The number of thefts and murders increased with astounding rapidity. The
+police, collected in augmented proportions, lost its head and was swept off its
+feet. But it must also be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful
+bribes, it resembled a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and listless. People
+were killed for anything and nothing, just so. It happened that men would walk
+up to a person in broad daylight somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask:
+“What’s your name?” “Fedorov.” “Aha, Federov? Then take this!” and they would
+slit his belly with a knife. They nicknamed these blades just that in the
+city—“rippers”; and there were among them names of which the city news seemed
+actually proud: the two brothers Polishchuk (Mitka and Dundas), Volodka the
+Greek, Fedor Miller, Captain Dmitriev, Sivocho, Dobrovolski, Shpachek, and many
+others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both day and night on the main streets of the frenzied city stood, moved, and
+yelled the mob, as though at a fire. It would be almost impossible to describe
+what went on in the Yamkas then. Despite the fact that the madams had increased
+the staff of their patients to more than double and increased their prices
+trebly, their poor demented girls could not catch up in satisfying the demands
+of the drunken, crazed public, which threw money around like chips. It happened
+that in the drawing room, filled to overflowing with people, each girl would be
+awaited for by some seven, eight, at times even ten, men. It was, truly, some
+kind of a mad, intoxicated, convulsive time!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And from that very time began all the misfortunes of the Yamkas, which brought
+them to ruin. And together with the Yamkas perished also the house, familiar to
+us, of the stout, old, pale-eyed Anna Markovna.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0202"></a> CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The passenger train sped merrily from the south to the north, traversing golden
+fields of wheat and beautiful groves of oak, careering with rumbling upon iron
+bridges over bright rivers, leaving behind it whirling clouds of smoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the COUPE of the second class, even with open windows, there was a fearful
+stuffiness, and it was hot. The smell of sulphurous smoke irritated the throat.
+The rocking and the heat had completely tired out the passengers, save one, a
+merry, energetic, mobile Hebrew, splendidly dressed, accommodating, sociable
+and talkative. He was travelling with a young woman, and it was at once
+apparent, especially through her, that they were newly-weds; so often did her
+face flare up with an unexpected colour at every tenderness of her husband,
+even the least. And when she raised her eyelashes to look upon him, her eyes
+would shine like stars, and grow humid. And her face was as beautiful as only
+the faces of young Hebrew maidens in love can be beautiful—all tenderly rosy,
+with rosy lips, rounded out in beautiful innocence, and with eyes so black that
+their pupils could not be distinguished from the irises.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unabashed by the presence of three strange people, he showered his caresses
+upon his companion every minute, and, it must be said, sufficiently coarse
+ones. With the unceremoniousness of an owner, with that especial egoism of one
+in love, who, it would seem, is saying to the whole universe: “See, how happy
+we are—this makes you happy also, isn’t that so?”—he would now pass his hand
+over her leg, which resiliently and in relief stood out beneath her dress, now
+pinch her on the cheek, now tickle her neck with his stiff, black, turned-up
+moustache ... But, even though he did sparkle with delight, there was still
+something rapacious, wary, uneasy to be glimpsed in his frequently winking
+eyes, in the twitching of the upper lip, and in the harsh outline of his
+shaved, square chin, jutting out, with a scarcely noticeable dent in the
+middle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Opposite this infatuated couple were placed three passengers—a retired general,
+a spare, neat little old man, with pomade on his hair, with curls combed
+forward to the temples; a stout land-owner, who had taken off his starched
+collar, but was still gasping from the heat and mopping his face every minute
+with a wet handkerchief; and a young infantry officer. The endless
+talkativeness of Simon Yakovlevich (the young man had already managed to inform
+his neighbours that he was called Simon Yakovlevich Horizon) tired and
+irritated the passengers a trifle, just like the buzzing of a fly, that on a
+sultry summer day rhythmically beats against a window pane of a closed, stuffy
+room. But still, he knew how to raise their spirits: he showed tricks of magic;
+told Hebrew anecdotes, full of a fine humour of their own. When his wife would
+go out on the platform to refresh herself, he would tell such things that the
+general would melt into a beatific smile, the land-owner would neigh, rocking
+his black-loam stomach, while the sub-lieutenant, a smooth-faced boy, only a
+year out of school, scarcely controlling his laughter and curiosity, would turn
+away to one side, that his neighbours might not see him turning red.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His wife tended Horizon with a touching, naive attention; she wiped his face
+with a handkerchief, waved upon him with a fan, adjusted his cravat every
+minute. And his face at these times became laughably supercilious and stupidly
+self-conceited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But allow me to ask,” asked the spare little general, coughing politely,
+“allow me to ask, my dear sir, what occupation might you pursue?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, my God!” with a charming frankness retorted Simon Yakovlevich. “Well, what
+can a poor Jew do in our time? It’s a bit of a travelling salesman and a
+commission broker by me. At the present time I’m far from business. You—he! he!
+he!—understand yourselves, gentlemen. A honeymoon—don’t turn red, Sarochka—it
+don’t repeat itself three times in a year. But afterwards I’ll have to travel
+and work a great deal. Here we’ll come with Sarochka to town, will pay the
+visits to her relatives, and then again on the road. On my first trip I’m
+thinking of taking my wife. You know, sort of a wedding journey. I’m a
+representative from Sidris and two English firms. Wouldn’t you like to have a
+look? Here are the samples with me ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He very rapidly took out of a small, elegant case of yellow leather a few long
+cardboard folding books, and with the dexterity of a tailor began to unfold
+them, holding one end, from which their folds fell downward with a light
+crackling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Look, what splendid samples: they don’t give in to foreign ones at all. Please
+notice. Here, for instance, is Russian and here English tricot, or here, cangan
+and cheviot. Compare, feel it, and you’ll be convinced that the Russian samples
+almost don’t give in to the foreign. Why, that speaks of progress, of the
+growth of culture. So it’s absolutely for nothing that Europe counts us
+Russians such barbarians.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so we’ll pay our family visits, will look at the fair, pay a visit to the
+CHATEAU DES FLEURS, enjoy ourselves a little, stroll a bit, and then to the
+Volga down to Tzaritzin, to the Black Sea, and then again home to our native
+Odessa.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s a fine journey,” said the sub-lieutenant modestly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should say it’s fine,” agreed Simon Yakovlevich; “but there are no roses
+without thorns. The work of a travelling salesman is exceedingly difficult and
+requires many kinds of knowledge, and not so much the knowledge of business as
+the knowledge of—how shall I say it?—the knowledge of the human soul. Another
+man may not even want to give an order, but you must work like an elephant to
+convince him, and argue until he feels the clearness and justice of your words.
+Because I take only absolutely clean lines exclusively, of which there can be
+no doubts. A fake or a bad line I will not take, although they should offer me
+millions for it. Ask wherever you like, in any store which deals in cloths or
+suspenders GLOIRE—I’m also a representative from this firm—or buttons
+HELIOS—you just ask who Simon Yakovlevich Horizon is, and everyone will answer
+you: ‘Simon Yakovlevich is not a man, but gold; this is a disinterested man, as
+honest as a diamond.’” And Horizon was already unpacking long boxes with
+patented suspenders, and was showing the glistening leaves of cardboard,
+covered with regular rows of vari-coloured buttons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There happen great unpleasantnesses, when the place has been worked out, when
+a lot of travelling salesmen have appeared before you. Here you can’t do
+anything; they absolutely won’t listen to you, only wave their arms. But that’s
+only for others. I am Horizon! I can talk him over, the same like a camel from
+a menagerie. But it happens still more unpleasant, when two competitors in one
+and the same line come together in the same town. And it happens even worse
+when it’s some chimney sweep and can’t do business himself and spoils business
+for you too. Here you go to all sorts of tricks: let him drink till he’s drunk
+or let him go off somewhere on a false track. Not an easy trade! Besides that,
+I have one more line—that’s false eyes and teeth. But it ain’t a profitable
+line. I want to drop it. And besides I’m thinking of leaving all this business.
+I understand, it’s all right for a young man, in the bloom of his powers, to
+flutter around like a moth, but once you have a wife, and may be a whole family
+even ...” he playfully patted the woman on the knee, from which she became
+scarlet and looked uncommonly better. “For the Lord has blessed us Jews with
+fecundity for all our misfortunes ... Then you want to have some business of
+your own, you want, you understand, to become settled in one place, so’s there
+should be a shack of your own, and your own furniture, and your own bedroom,
+and kitchen ... Isn’t that so, your excellency?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes ... Yes ... eh—eh ... Yes, of course, of course,” condescendingly
+responded the general.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so I took with Sarochka a little dowry. What do I mean, a little dowry?
+Such money that Rothschild would not even want to look at it are in my hands a
+whole capital already. But it must be said that there are some savings by me,
+too. The firms I know will give me credit. If God grant it, we shall still eat
+a piece of bread and a little butter—and on the Sabbaths the tasty GEFILTEH
+FISCH.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s fine fish: pike the way the sheenies make it!” said the gasping
+land-owner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We shall open up for ourselves the firm of ‘Horizon and Son.’ Isn’t that true,
+Sarochka—‘and Son?’ And you, I hope, will honour me with your esteemed orders?
+When you see the sign, ‘Horizon and Son,’ then straight off recollect that you
+once rode in a car together with a young man, who had grown as foolish as hell
+from love and from happiness.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ab-solutely!” said the land-owner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Simon Yakovlevich at once turned to him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I also work by commission broking. To sell an estate, to buy an estate, to
+arrange a second mortgage—you won’t find a better specialist than me, and such
+a cheap one at that. I can be of service to you, should the need arise,” and he
+extended his visiting card to the land-owner with a bow, and, by the way,
+handed a card each to his two neighbours as well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The land-owner dived into a side pocket and also dragged out a card.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Joseph Ivanovich Vengjenovski,” Simon Yakovlevich read out loud. “Very, very
+pleased! And so, should you need me ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not? It’s possible ...” said the land-owner meditatively. “Why, yes:
+perhaps, indeed, a favourable chance has brought us together! Why, I’m just
+journeying to K——about the sale of a certain forest country house. Suppose you
+do that, then,—drop in to see me. I always stop at the Grand Hotel. Perhaps we
+may be able to strike up a deal.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I’m already almost sure, my dearest Joseph Ivanovich!” exclaimed the
+rejoicing Horizon, and slightly, with the very tips of his fingers, patted
+Vengjenovski’s kneecap carefully. “You just rest assured; if Horizon has
+undertaken anything, then you’ll be thanking him like your own father, no more,
+no less.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Half an hour later Simon Yakovlevich and the smooth-faced sub-lieutenant were
+standing on the platform of the car and smoking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you often visit K——, mister sub-lieutenant?” asked Horizon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only for the first time—just imagine! Our regiment is stationed at Chernobob.
+I was born in Moscow, myself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“AI, AI, AI! How’d you come to get into such a faraway place?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, it just fell out so. There was no other vacancy when I was let out.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But then—Chernobob is a hole! The worst little town in all Podolia.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s true, but it just fell out so.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That means, then, that the young officer gent is going to K——to divert himself
+a little?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. I’m thinking of stopping there for two or three days. I’m travelling to
+Moscow, really. I have received a two months’ leave, but it would be
+interesting to look over the city on the way. It’s very beautiful, they say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, what are you trying to tell me? A remarkable city! Well, absolutely a
+European city. If you only knew, what streets, electricity, trolleys, theatres!
+And if you only knew what cabarets! You’ll lick your own fingers. Positively,
+positively, I advise you, young man, to pay a visit to the CHATEAU DES FLEURS,
+to the Tivoli, and also to ride out to the island. That’s something special.
+What women, wha-a-at women!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lieutenant turned red, took his eyes away, and asked in a voice that
+quavered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I’ve happened to hear that. Is it possible that they’re really so
+handsome?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oi! Strike me God! Believe me, there are no handsome women there at all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But—how’s that?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, this way: there are only raving beauties there. You understand—what a
+happy blending of bloods! Polish, Little Russian, and Hebrew. How I envy you,
+young man, that you’re free and alone. In my time I sure would have shown
+myself! And what’s most remarkable of all, they’re unusually passionate women!
+Well, just like fire! And do you know something else?” he asked in a whisper of
+great significance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” asked the sub-lieutenant in a fright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s remarkable, that nowheres, neither in Paris, nor in London—believe me,
+this was told me by people who had seen the whole wide world—never, nowhere,
+will you meet with such exquisite ways of making love as in this town. That’s
+something especial, as us little Jews say. They think up such things that no
+imagination can picture to itself. It’s enough to drive you crazy!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But is that possible?” quietly spoke the sub-lieutenant, whose breath had been
+cut off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, strike me God! But permit me, young man, by the way! You understand
+yourself. I was single, and of course, every man is liable to sin ... It’s
+different now, of course. I’ve had myself written in with the invalids. But
+from the former days a remarkable collection has remained to me. Just wait,
+I’ll show it to you right away. Only, please, be as careful as possible in
+looking at it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horizon with trepidation looked around to the right and left and extracted from
+his pocket a long, narrow little box of morocco, in the style of those in which
+playing cards are usually kept, and extended it to the sub-lieutenant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here you are, have a look. Only, I beg of you, be very careful.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sub-lieutenant applied himself to picking out, one after the other, the
+cards of plain and coloured photography, in which in all possible aspects was
+depicted in the most beastly ways, in the most impossible positions, the
+external side of love which at times makes man immeasurably lower and viler
+than a baboon. Horizon would look over his shoulder, nudge him with his elbow,
+and whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell me, ain’t that swell, now? Why, this is genuine Parisian and Viennese
+chic!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sub-lieutenant looked through the whole collection from the beginning to
+the end. When he was giving back the little box, his hand was shaking, his
+temples and forehead were moist, his eyes had dimmed, and over his cheeks had
+mantled a blush, mottled like marble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But do you know what?” Horizon exclaimed gaily, all of a sudden. “It’s all the
+same to me—the Indian sign has been put upon me. I, as they used to say in the
+olden times, have burned my ships ... I have burned all that I used to adore
+before. For a long time already I’ve been looking for an opportunity to pass
+these cards on to some one. I ain’t especially chasing after a price. You wish
+to acquire them, mister officer?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now ... I,—that is ... Why not? ... Let’s ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s fine! On account of such a pleasant acquaintanceship, I’ll take fifty
+kopecks apiece. What, is that expensive? Well, what’s the difference, God be
+with you! I see you’re a travelling man, I don’t want to rob you; let it go at
+thirty, then. What? That ain’t cheap either? Well, shake hands on it!
+Twenty-five kopecks apiece. OI! What an intractable fellow you are! At twenty!
+You’ll thank me yourself later! And then, do you know what else? When I come to
+K—, I always stop at the Hotel Hermitage. You can very easily find me there
+either very early in the morning, or about eight o’clock in the evening. I know
+an awful lot of the finest little ladies. So I’ll introduce you. And, you
+understand, not for money. Oh, no. It’s just simply nice and gay for them to
+pass the time with a young, healthy, handsome man of your sort. There’s
+absolutely no money of any kind necessary. And for that matter—they themselves
+will willingly pay for wine, for a bottle of champagne! So remember then; The
+Hermitage, Horizon. And if it isn’t that, remember it anyway! Maybe I can be of
+use to you. And the cards are such a thing, such a thing, that it will never
+lay on the shelf by you. Those who like that sort of thing give three roubles
+for each specimen. But these, of course, are rich people, little old men. And
+then, you know”—Horizon bent over to the officer’s very ear, winked one eye,
+and pronounced in a sly whisper—“you know, many ladies adore these cards. Why,
+you’re a young man, and handsome; how many romances you will have yet!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having received the money and counted it over painstakingly, Horizon had the
+brazenness to extend his hand in addition, and to shake the hand of the
+sub-lieutenant, who did not dare to lift up his eyes to him; and, having left
+him on the platform, went back into the passageway of the car, as though
+nothing had happened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was an unusually communicative man. On the way to his COUPE he came to a
+stop before a beautiful little girl of three years, with whom he had for some
+time been flirting at a distance and making all sorts of funny grimaces at. He
+squatted down on his heels before her, began to imitate a nanny goat for her,
+and questioned her in a lisping voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“May I athk where the young lady ith going? OI, OI, OI! Thuch a big girl!
+Travelling alone, without mamma? Bought a ticket all by herthelf and travelth
+alone! AI! What a howwid girl! And where ith the girl’th mamma?” At this moment
+a tall, handsome, self-assured woman appeared from the COUPE and said calmly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Get away from the child. What a despicable thing to annoy strange children!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horizon jumped up on his feet and began to bustle:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madam! I could not restrain myself ... Such a wonderful, such a magnificent
+and swell child! A regular cupid! You must understand, madam, I am a father
+myself—I have children of my own ... I could not restrain myself from delight!
+...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the lady turned her back upon him, took the girl by the hand and went with
+her into the COUPE, leaving Horizon shuffling his feet and muttering his
+compliments and apologies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Several times during the twenty-four hours Horizon would go into the third
+class, of two cars, separated from each other by almost the entire train. In
+one care were sitting three handsome women, in the society of a black-bearded,
+taciturn, morose man. Horizon and he would exchange strange phrases in some
+special jargon. The women looked at him uneasily, as though wishing, yet not
+daring, to ask him about something. Only once, toward noon, did one of them
+allow herself to utter:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then that’s the truth? That which you said about the place? ... You
+understand—I’m somewhat uneasy at heart!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, what do you mean, Margarita Ivanovna? If I said it, then it’s right, just
+like by the National Bank. Listen, Lazer,” he turned to him of the beard.
+“There will be a station right away. Buy the girls all sorts of sandwiches,
+whichever they may desire. The train stops here for twenty-five minutes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d like to have bouillon,” hesitatingly uttered a little blonde, with hair
+like ripened rye, and with eyes like corn-flowers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear Bella, anything you please! At the station I’ll go and see that they
+bring you bouillon with meat and even stuffed dumplings. Don’t you trouble
+yourself, Lazer, I’ll do all that myself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In another car he had a whole nursery garden of women, twelve or fifteen
+people, under the leadership of an old, stout woman, with enormous, awesome,
+black eyebrows. She spoke in a bass, while her fat chins, breasts, and stomachs
+swayed under a broad morning dress in time to the shaking of the car, just like
+apple jelly. Neither the old woman nor the young women left the least doubts as
+to their profession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women were lolling on the benches, smoking, playing cards—at
+“sixty-six,”—drinking beer. Frequently the male public of the car provoked
+them, and they swore back in unceremonious language, in hoarse voices. The
+young people treated them with wine and cigarettes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horizon was here altogether unrecognizable; he was majestically negligent and
+condescendingly jocose. On the other hand, cringing ingratiation sounded in
+every word addressed to him by his female clients. But he, having looked over
+all of them—this strange mixture of Roumanians, Jewesses, Poles and
+Russians—and having assured himself that all was in order, gave orders about
+the sandwiches and majestically withdrew. At these moments he very much
+resembled a drover, who is transporting by railroad cattle for slaughter, and
+at a station drops in to look it over and to feed it. After that he would
+return to his COUPE and again begin to toy with his wife, and Hebrew anecdotes
+just poured from his mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the long stops he would go out to the buffet only to see about his lady
+clients. But he himself said to his neighbours:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know, it’s all the same to me if it’s TREIF or KOSHER. I don’t recognize
+any difference. But what can I do with my stomach! The devil knows what stuff
+they’ll feed you sometimes at these stations. You’ll pay some three or four
+roubles, and then you’ll spend a hundred roubles on the doctors curing
+yourself. But maybe you, now, Sarochka”—he would turn to his wife—“maybe you’ll
+get off at the station to eat something? Or shall I send it up to you here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sarochka, happy over his attention, would turn red, beam upon him with grateful
+eyes, and refuse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re very kind, Senya, only I don’t want to. I’m full.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Horizon would reach out of a travelling hamper a chicken, boiled meat,
+cucumbers, and a bottle of Palestine wine; have a snack, without hurrying, with
+appetite; regale his wife, who ate very genteelly, sticking out the little
+fingers of her magnificent white hands; then painstakingly wrap up the remnants
+in paper and, without hurrying, lay them away accurately in the hamper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the distance, far ahead of the locomotive, the cupolas and belfries were
+already beginning to sparkle with fires of gold. Through the COUPE passed the
+conductor and made some imperceptible sign to Horizon. He immediately followed
+the conductor out to the platform.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The inspector will pass through right away,” said the conductor, “so you’ll
+please be so kind as to stand for a while here on the platform of the third
+class with your spouse.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“NU, NU, NU!” concurred Horizon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And the money as agreed, if you please.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How much is coming to you, then?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, just as we agreed; half the extra charge, two roubles eighty kopecks.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” Horizon suddenly boiled over. “Two roubles eighty kopecks? You think
+you got it a crazy one in me, what? Here’s a rouble for you and thank God for
+that!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon me, sir. This is even absurd—didn’t you and I agree?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Agree, agree! ... Here’s a half more, and not a thing besides. What impudence!
+I’ll tell the inspector yet that you carry people without tickets. Don’t you
+think it, brother—you ain’t found one of that sort here!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The conductor’s eyes suddenly widened, became blood-shot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“O-oh! You sheeny!” he began to roar. “I ought to take a skunk like you and
+under the train with you!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Horizon at once flew at him like a cock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What? Under the train? But do you know what’s done for words like that? A
+threat by action! Here, I’ll go right away and will yell ‘help!’ and will turn
+the signal handle,” and he seized the door-knob with such an air of resolution
+that the conductor just made a gesture of despair with his hand and spat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“May you choke with my money, you mangy sheeny!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horizon called his wife out of the COUPE:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sarochka! Let’s go out on the platform for a look; one can see better there.
+Well, it’s so beautiful—just like on a picture!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sarah obediently went after him, holding up with an unskilled hand the new
+dress, in all probability put on for the first time, bending out and as though
+afraid of touching the door or the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the distance, in the rosy gala haze of the evening glow, shone the golden
+cupolas and crosses. High up on the hill the white, graceful churches seemed to
+float in this flowery, magic mirage. Curly woods and coppices had run down from
+above and had pushed on over the very ravine. And the sheer, white precipice
+which bathed its foot in the blue river, was all furrowed over with occasional
+young woods, just like green little veins and warts. Beautiful as in a fairy
+tale, the ancient town appeared as though it were itself coming to meet the
+train.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the train stopped, Horizon ordered three porters to carry the things into
+the first class, and told his wife to follow him. But he himself lingered at
+the exit in order to let through both his parties. To the old woman looking
+after the dozen women he threw briefly in passing:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So remember, madam Berman! Hotel America, Ivanukovskaya, twenty-two!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While to the black-bearded man he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t forget, Lazer, to feed the girls at dinner and to bring them somewhere
+to a movie show. About eleven o’clock at night wait for me. I’ll come for a
+talk. But if some one will be calling for me extra, then you know my
+address—The Hermitage. Ring me up. But if I’m not there for some reason, then
+run into Reiman’s cafe, or opposite, into the Hebrew dining room. I’ll be
+eating GEFILTEH FISCH there. Well, a lucky journey!”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0203"></a> CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<p>
+All the stories of Horizon about his commercial travelling were simply brazen
+and glib lying. All the samples of drapers’ goods, suspenders gloire and
+buttons helios, the artificial teeth and insertible eyes, served only as a
+shield, screening his real activity—to wit, the traffic in the body of woman.
+True, at one time, some ten years ago, he had travelled over Russia as the
+representative for the dubious wines of some unknown firm; and this activity
+had imparted to his tongue that free-and-easy unconstraint for which, in
+general, travelling salesmen are distinguished. This former activity had, as
+well, brought him up against his real profession. In some way, while going to
+Rostov-on-the-Don, he had contrived to make a very young sempstress fall in
+love with him. This girl had not as yet succeeded in getting on the official
+lists of the police, but upon love and her body she looked without any lofty
+prejudices. Horizon, at that time altogether a green youth, amorous and
+light-minded, dragged the sempstress after him on his wanderings, full of
+adventures and unexpected things. After half a year she palled upon him
+dreadfully. She, just like a heavy burden, like a millstone, hung around the
+neck of this man of energy, motion and aggressiveness. In addition to that,
+there were the eternal scenes of jealousy, mistrust, the constant control and
+tears ... the inevitable consequences of long living together ... Then he began
+little by little to beat his mate. At the first time she was amazed, but from
+the second time quieted down, became tractable. It is known, that “women of
+love” never know a mean in love relations. They are either hysterical liars,
+deceivers, dissemblers, with a coolly-perverted mind and a sinuous dark soul;
+or else unboundedly self-denying, blindly devoted, foolish, naive animals, who
+know no bounds either in concessions or loss of self-esteem. The sempstress
+belonged to the second category, and Horizon was soon successful, without great
+effort, in persuading her to go out on the street to traffic in herself. And
+from that very evening, when his mistress submitted to him and brought home the
+first five roubles earned, Horizon experienced an unbounded loathing toward
+her. It is remarkable, that no matter how many women Horizon met after this—and
+several hundred of them had passed through his hands—this feeling of loathing
+and masculine contempt toward them would never forsake him. He derided the poor
+woman in every way, and tortured her morally, seeking out the most painful
+spots. She would only keep silent, sigh, weep, and getting down on her knees
+before him, kiss his hands. And this wordless submission irritated Horizon
+still more. He drove her away from him. She would not go away. He would push
+her out into the street; but she, after an hour or two, would come back
+shivering from cold, in a soaked hat, in the turned-up brims of which the
+rain-water splashed as in waterspouts. Finally, some shady friend gave Simon
+Yakovlevich the harsh and crafty counsel which laid a mark on all the rest of
+his life activity—to sell his mistress into a brothel. To tell the truth, in
+going into this enterprise, Horizon almost disbelieved at soul in its success.
+But contrary to his expectation, the business could not have adjusted itself
+better. The proprietress of an establishment (this was in Kharkov) willingly
+met his proposition half-way. She had known long and well Simon Yakovlevich,
+who played amusingly on the piano, danced splendidly, and set the whole drawing
+room laughing with his pranks; but chiefly, could, with unusually unabashed
+dexterity, make any carousing party “shell out the coin.” It only remained to
+convince the mate of his life, and this proved the most difficult of all. She
+did not want to detach herself from her beloved for anything; threatened
+suicide, swore that she would burn his eyes out with sulphuric acid, promised
+to go and complain to the chief of police—and she really did know a few dirty
+little transactions of Simon Yakovlevich’s that smacked of capital punishment.
+Thereupon Horizon changed his tactics. He suddenly became a tender, attentive
+friend, an indefatigable lover. Then suddenly he fell into black melancholy.
+The uneasy questionings of the woman he let pass in silence; at first let drop
+a word as though by chance; hinted in passing at some mistake of his life; and
+then began to lie desperately and with inspiration. He said that the police
+were watching him; that he could not get by the jail, and, perhaps, even hard
+labour and the gallows; that it was necessary for him to disappear abroad for
+several months. But mainly, what he persisted in especially strongly, was some
+tremendous fantastic business, in which he stood to make several hundred
+thousands of roubles. The sempstress believed and became alarmed with that
+disinterested, womanly, almost holy alarm, in which, with every woman, there is
+so much of something maternal. It was not at all difficult now to convince her
+that for Horizon to travel together with her presented a great danger for him;
+and that it would be better for her to remain here and to bide the time until
+the affairs of her lover would adjust themselves fortuitously. After that to
+talk her into hiding, as in the most trustworthy retreat, in a brothel, where
+she would be in full safety from the police and the detectives, was a mere
+nothing. One morning Horizon ordered her to dress a little better, curl her
+hair, powder herself, put a little rouge on her cheeks, and carried her off to
+a den, to his acquaintance. The girl made a favourable impression there, and
+that same day her passport was changed by the police to a so-called yellow
+ticket. Having parted with her, after long embraces and tears, Horizon went
+into the room of the proprietress and received his payment, fifty roubles
+(although he had asked for two hundred). But he did not grieve especially over
+the low price; the main thing was, that he had found his calling at last, all
+by himself, and had laid the cornerstone of his future welfare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, the woman sold by him just remained forever so in the tenacious
+hands of the brothel. Horizon forgot her so thoroughly that after only a year
+he could not even recall her face. But who knows ... perhaps he merely
+pretended?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now he was one of the chief speculators in the body of woman in all the south
+of Russia. He had transactions with Constantinople and with Argentine; he
+transported, in whole parties, girls from the brothels of Odessa into Kiev;
+those from Kiev he brought over into Kharkov; and those from Kharkov into
+Odessa. He it was also who stuck away over second rate capital cities, and
+those districts which were somewhat richer, the goods which had been rejected
+or had grown too noticeable in the big cities. He had struck up an enormous
+clientele, and in the number of his consumers Horizon could have counted not a
+few people with a prominent social position: lieutenant governors, colonels of
+the gendarmerie, eminent advocates, well-known doctors, rich land-owners,
+carousing merchants. All the shady world—the proprietresses of brothels,
+cocottes solitaires, go-betweens, madams of houses of assignation, souteneurs,
+touring actresses and chorus girls—was as familiar to him as the starry sky to
+an astronomer. His amazing memory, which permitted him prudently to avoid
+notebooks, held in mind thousands of names, family names, nicknames, addresses,
+characteristics. He knew to perfection the tastes of all his highly placed
+consumers: some of them liked unusually odd depravity, others paid mad sums for
+innocent girls, for others still it was necessary to seek out girls below age.
+He had to satisfy both the sadistic and the masochistic inclinations of his
+clients, and at times to cater to altogether unnatural sexual perversions,
+although it must be said that the last he undertook only in rare instances
+which promised a large, undoubted profit. Two or three times he had to sit in
+jail, but these sessions went to his benefit; he not only did not lose his
+rapacious high-handedness and springy energy in his transactions, but with
+every year became more daring, inventive, and enterprising. With the years to
+his brazen impetuousness was joined a tremendous worldly business wisdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fifteen times, during this period, he had managed to marry and every time had
+contrived to take a decent dowry. Having possessed himself of his wife’s money,
+he, one fine day, would suddenly vanish without a trace, and, if there was a
+possibility, he would sell his wife profitably into a secret house of depravity
+or into a chic public establishment. It would happen that the parents of the
+deluded victim would search for him through the police. But while inquiries
+would be carried on everywhere about him as Shperling, he would already be
+travelling from town to town under the name of Rosenblum. During the time of
+his activity, in despite of an enviable memory, he had changed so many names
+that he had not only forgotten what year he had been Nathanielson, and during
+what Bakalyar, but even his own name was beginning to seem to him one of his
+pseudonyms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was remarkable, that he did not find in his profession anything criminal or
+reprehensible. He regarded it just as though he were trading in herrings, lime,
+flour, beef or lumber. In his own fashion he was pious. If time permitted, he
+would with assiduity visit the synagogue of Fridays. The Day of Atonement,
+Passover, and the Feast of the Tabernacles were invariably and reverently
+observed by him everywhere wherever fate might have cast him. His mother, a
+little old woman, and a hunch-backed sister, were left to him in Odessa, and he
+undeviatingly sent them now large, now small sums of money, not regularly but
+pretty frequently, from all towns from Kursk to Odessa and from Warsaw to
+Samara. Considerable savings of money had already accumulated to him in the
+Credit Lyonnaise, and he gradually increased them, never touching the interest.
+But to greed or avarice he was almost a stranger. He was attracted to the
+business rather by its tang, risk and a professional self-conceit. To the women
+he was perfectly indifferent, although he understood and could value them, and
+in this respect resembled a good chef, who together with a fine understanding
+of the business, suffers from a chronic absence of appetite. To induce, to
+entice a woman, to compel her to do all that he wanted, did not require any
+efforts on his part; they came of themselves to his call and became in his
+hands passive, obedient and yielding. In his treatment of them a certain firm,
+unshakable, self-assured aplomb had been worked out, to which they submitted
+just as a refractory horse submits instinctively to the voice, glance, stroking
+of an experienced horseman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drank very moderately, and without company never drank. Toward eating he was
+altogether indifferent. But, of course, as with every man, he had a little
+weakness of his own: he was inordinately fond of dress and spent no little
+money on his toilet. Modish collars of all possible fashions, cravats, diamond
+cuff links, watch charms, the underwear of a dandy, and chic footwear
+constituted his main distractions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the depot he went straight to The Hermitage. The hotel porters, in blue
+blouses and uniform caps, carried his things into the vestibule. Following
+them, he too entered, arm in arm with his wife; both smartly attired, imposing,
+but he just simply magnificent, in his wide, bell-shaped English overcoat, in a
+new broad-brimmed panama, holding negligently in his hand a small cane with a
+silver handle in the form of a naked woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You ain’t supposed to be here without a permit for your residence,” said an
+enormous, stout doorkeeper, looking down upon him from above and preserving on
+his face a sleepy and immovably-frigid expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ach, Zachar! Again ‘you ain’t supposed to!’” merrily exclaimed Horizon, and
+patted the giant on his shoulder. “What does it mean, ‘you ain’t supposed to’?
+Every time you shove this same ‘you ain’t supposed to’ at me. I must be here
+for three days in all. Soon as I conclude the rent agreement with Count
+Ipatiev, right away I go away. God be with you! Live even all by yourself in
+all your rooms. But you just give a look, Zachar, what a toy I brought you from
+Odessa! You’ll be just tickled with it!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a careful, deft, accustomed movement he thrust a gold piece into the
+doorkeeper’s hand, who was already holding it behind his back, ready and folded
+in the form of a little boat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first thing that Horizon did upon installing himself in the large, spacious
+room with an alcove, was to put out into the corridor at the door of the room
+six pairs of magnificent shoes, saying to the bell-hop who ran up in answer to
+the bell:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Immediately all should be cleaned! So it should shine like a mirror! They call
+you Timothy, I think? Then you should know me—if you work by me it will never
+go for nothing. So it should shine like a mirror!”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0204"></a> CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Horizon lived at the Hotel Hermitage for not more than three days and nights,
+and during this time he managed to see some three hundred people. His arrival
+seemed to enliven the big, gay port city. To him came the keepers of employment
+offices for servants, the proprietresses of cheap hotels, and old, experienced
+go-betweens, grown gray in the trade in women. Not so much out of an interest
+in booty as out of professional pride, Horizon tried, at all costs, to bargain
+for as much profit as possible, to buy a woman as cheaply as possible. Of
+course, to receive ten, fifteen roubles more was not the reason for him, but
+the mere thought that competitor Yampolsky would receive at the sale more than
+he brought him into a frenzy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After his arrival, the next day, he set off to Mezer the photographer, taking
+with him the straw-like girl Bella, and had pictures taken in various poses
+together with her; at which for every negative he received three roubles, while
+he gave the woman a rouble. After that he rode off to Barsukova.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a woman, or, speaking more correctly, a retired wench, whose like can
+be found only in the south of Russia; neither a Pole nor a Little Russian;
+already sufficiently old and rich in order to allow herself the luxury of
+maintaining a husband (and together with him a cabaret), a handsome and kindly
+little Pole. Horizon and Barsukova met like old friends. They had, it seemed,
+no fear, no shame, no conscience when they conversed with each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madam Barsukova! I can offer you something special! Three women: one a large
+brunette, very modest; another a little one, a blonde, but who, you understand,
+is ready for everything; the third is a woman of mystery, who merely smiles and
+doesn’t say anything, but promises much and is a beauty!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madam Barsukova was gazing at him with mistrust, shaking her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mister Horizon! What are you trying to fill my head with? Do you want to do
+the same with me that you did last time?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By God, I should live so, how I want to deceive you! But that’s not the main
+thing. I’m also offering you a perfectly educated woman. Do with her what you
+like. In all probability you’ll find a connoisseur.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Barsukova smiled artfully and asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Again a wife?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. But she’s of the nobility.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then that means unpleasantnesses with the police again?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ach! My God! I don’t take big money from you; all the three for a lousy
+thousand roubles.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, let’s talk frankly; five hundred. I don’t want to buy a cat in a bag.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It seems, Madam Barsukova, that it isn’t the first time you and I have done
+business together, I won’t deceive you and will bring her here right away. Only
+I beg you not to forget that you’re my aunt, and please work in that direction.
+I won’t be more than three days here in the city.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madam Barsukova, with all her breasts, bellies and chins, began to sway
+merrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We won’t dicker over trifles. All the more so since you don’t deceive me, nor
+I you. There’s a great demand for women now. What would you say, Mister
+Horizon, if I offered you some red wine?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you, Madam Barsukova, with pleasure.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let’s talk a while like old friends. Tell me, how much do you make a year?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ach, madam, what shall I say? Twelve, twenty thousand, approximately. But
+think what tremendous expenses there are in constantly travelling.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you put away a little?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, that’s trifles; some two or three thousand a year.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought ten, twenty ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horizon grew wary. He sensed that he was beginning to be drawn out and asked
+insidiously:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why does this interest you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anna Michailovna pressed the button of an electric bell and ordered the dressy
+maid to bring coffee with steamed cream and a bottle of Chambertaine. She knew
+the tastes of Horizon. Then she asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you know Mr. Shepsherovich?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horizon simply pounced upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My God! Who don’t know Shepsherovich! This is a god, this is a genius!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, having become animated, forgetting that he was being dragged into a trap,
+he began speaking exaltedly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just imagine what Shepsherovich did last year! He carried to Argentine thirty
+women from Kovno, Vilno, Zhitomir. Each one of them he sold at a thousand
+roubles—a total, madam—count it—of thirty thousand! Do you think Shepsherovich
+calmed down with this? For this money, in order to repay his expenses on the
+steamer, he bought several negresses and stuck them about in Moscow,
+Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov. But, you know, madam, this isn’t a man,
+but an eagle. There’s a man who can do business!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Barsukova caressingly laid her hand on his knee. She had been waiting for this
+moment and said to him amicably:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so I propose to you, Mr.——however, I don’t know how you are called now...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Horizon, let’s say...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So I propose to you, Mr. Horizon—could you find some innocent girls among
+yours? There’s an enormous demand for them now. I’m playing an open hand with
+you. We won’t stop at money. Now it’s in fashion. Notice, Horizon, your lady
+clients will be returned to you in exactly the same state in which they were.
+This, you understand, is a little depravity, which I can in no way make out...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horizon cast down his eyes, rubbed his head, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You see, I’ve a wife ... You’ve almost guessed it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So. But why almost?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m ashamed to confess, that she—how shall I say it ... she is my bride ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Barsukova gaily burst into laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know, Horizon, I couldn’t at all expect that you’re such a nasty villain!
+Let’s have your wife, it’s all the same. But is it possible that you’ve really
+refrained?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A thousand?” asked Horizon seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! What trifles; a thousand let’s say. But tell me, will I be able to manage
+her?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nonsense!” said Horizon self-assuredly. “Let’s again suppose that you’re my
+aunt, and I leave my wife with you. Just imagine, Madam Barsukova, that this
+woman is in love with me like a cat. And if you’ll tell her, that for my good
+she must do so and so and thus and thus—then there won’t be no arguments!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Apparently, there was nothing more for them to talk over. Madam Barsukova
+brought out a promissory note, whereon she with difficulty wrote her name, her
+father’s name, and her last name. The promissory note, of course, was
+fantastic; but there is a tie, a welding, an honour among thieves. In such
+deals people do not deceive. Death threatens otherwise. It is all the same,
+whether in prison, or on the street, or in a brothel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Right after that, just like an apparition out of a trapdoor, appeared the
+friend of her heart, the master of the cabaret, a young little Pole, with
+moustaches twirled high. They drank some wine, talked a bit about the fair,
+about the exposition, complained a little about bad business. After that
+Horizon telephoned to his room in the hotel, and called out his wife. He
+introduced her to his aunt and his aunt’s second cousin, and said that
+mysterious political reasons were calling him out of town. He tenderly kissed
+Sarah, shed a tear, and rode away.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0205"></a> CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+<p>
+With the arrival of Horizon (however, God knows how he was called: Gogolevich,
+Gidalevich, Okunev, Rosmitalsky), in a word, with the arrival of this man
+everything changed on Yamskaya Street. Enormous shufflings commenced. From
+Treppel girls were transferred to Anna Markovna, from Anna Markovna into a
+rouble establishment, and from the rouble establishment into a half-rouble one.
+There were no promotions: only demotions. At each change of place Horizon
+earned from five to a hundred roubles. Verily, he was possessed of an energy
+equal, approximately, to the waterfall of Imatra! Sitting in the daytime at
+Anna Markovna’s, he was saying, squinting from the smoke of the cigarette, and
+swinging one leg crossed over the other:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The question is ... What do you need this same Sonka for? It’s no place for
+her in a decent establishment. If we’ll float her down the stream, then you’ll
+make a hundred roubles for yourself, I twenty-five for myself. Tell me frankly,
+she isn’t in demand, is she, now?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, Mr. Shatzky! You can always talk a person over! But just imagine, I’m
+sorry for her. Such a nice girl ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horizon pondered for a moment. He was seeking an appropriate citation and
+suddenly let out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘Give the falling a shove!’[11] And I’m convinced, Madam Shaibes, that there’s
+no demand of any sort for her.”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[11] Horizon is quoting a Nietzscheism of Gorky’s.—TRANS.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Isaiah Savvich, a little, sickly, touchy old man, but in moments of need very
+determined, supported Horizon:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that’s very simple. There is really no demand of any sort for her. Think
+it over for yourself, Annechka; her outfit costs fifty roubles, Mr. Shatzky
+will receive twenty-five roubles, fifty roubles will be left for you and me.
+And, glory be to God, we have done with her! At least, she won’t be
+compromising our establishment.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In such a way Sonka the Rudder, avoiding a rouble establishment, was
+transferred into a half-rouble one, where all kinds of riff-raff made sport of
+the girls at their own sweet will, whole nights through. There tremendous
+health and great nervous force were requisite. Sonka once began shivering from
+terror, in the night, when Thekla, a mountain of a woman of some two hundred
+pounds, jumped out into the yard to fulfill a need of nature, and cried out to
+the housekeeper who was passing by her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Housekeeper, dear! Listen—the thirty-sixth man! ... Don’t forget!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fortunately, Sonka was not disturbed much; even in this establishment she was
+too homely. No one paid any attention to her splendid eyes, and they took her
+only in those instances when there was no other at hand. The pharmacist sought
+her out and came every evening to her. But cowardice, or a special Hebrew
+fastidiousness, or, perhaps, even physical aversion, would not permit him to
+take the girl and carry her away with him from the house. He would sit whole
+nights through near her, and, as of yore, patiently waited until she would
+return from a chance guest; created scenes of jealousy for her and yet loved
+her still, and, sticking in the daytime behind the counter in his drug store
+and rolling some stinking pills or other, ceaselessly thought of her and
+yearned.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0206"></a> CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Immediately at the entrance to a suburban cabaret an artificial flower bed
+shone with vari-colored lights, with electric bulbs instead of flowers; and
+just such another fiery alley of wide, half-round arches, narrowing toward the
+end, led away from it into the depths of the garden. Further on was a broad,
+small square, strewn with yellow sand; to the left an open stage, a theatre,
+and a shooting gallery; straight ahead a stand for the military band (in the
+form of a seashell) and little booths with flowers and beer; to the right the
+long terrace of the restaurant. Electric globes from their high masts
+illuminated the small square with a pale, dead-white brightness. Against their
+frosted glass, with wire nets stretched over them, beat clouds of night moths,
+whose shadows—confused and large—hovered below, on the ground. Hungry women,
+too lightly, dressily, and fancifully attired, preserving on their faces an
+expression of care-free merriment or haughty, offended unapproachability,
+strolled back and forth in pairs, with a walk already tired and dragging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the tables in the restaurant were taken—and over them floated the
+continuous noise of knives upon plates and a motley babel, galloping in waves.
+It smelt of rich and pungent kitchen fumes. In the middle of the restaurant,
+upon a stand, Roumanians in red frocks were playing; all swarthy,
+white-toothed, with the faces of whiskered, pomaded apes, with their hair
+licked down. The director of the orchestra, bending forward and affectedly
+swaying, was playing upon a violin and making unseemly sweet eyes at the
+public—the eyes of a man-prostitute. And everything together—this abundance of
+tiresome electric lights, the exaggeratedly bright toilettes of the ladies, the
+odours of modish, spicy perfumes, this ringing music, with willful slowings up
+of the tempo, with voluptuous swoonings in the transitions, with the
+tempestuous passages screwed up—everything fitted the one to the other, forming
+a general picture of insane and stupid luxury, a setting for an imitation of a
+gay, unseemly carouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above, around the entire hall, ran open galleries, upon which, as upon little
+balconies, opened the doors of the private cabinets. In one of these cabinets
+four were sitting—two ladies and two men; an artiste known to all Russia, the
+cantatrice Rovinskaya, a large, handsome woman, with long, green, Egyptian
+eyes, and a long, red, sensuous mouth, the lips of which were rapaciously
+drooping at the corners; the baroness Tefting, little, exquisite, pale—she was
+everywhere seen with the artiste; the famous lawyer Ryazanov; and Volodya
+Chaplinsky, a rich young man of the world, a composer-dilettante, the author of
+several darling little ballads and many witticisms upon the topics of the day,
+which circulated all over town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The walls of the cabinet were red, with a gold design. On the table, among the
+lighted candelabra, two white, tarred necks of bottles stuck up out of an
+electroplated vase, which had sweated from the cold, and the light in a tenuous
+gold played in the shallow goblets of wine. Outside, near the doors, a waiter
+was on duty, leaning against the wall; while the stout, tall, important maitre
+d’hotel, on whose right little finger, always sticking out, sparkled a huge
+diamond, would frequently stop at these doors, and attentively listen with one
+ear to what was going on in the cabinet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baroness, with a bored, pale face, was listlessly gazing through a
+lorgnette down at the droning, chewing, swarming crowd. Among the red, white,
+blue and straw-coloured feminine dresses the uniform figures of the men
+resembled large, squat, black beetles. Rovinskaya negligently, yet at the same
+time intently as well, was looking down upon the stand and the spectators, and
+her face expressed fatigue, ennui, and perhaps also that satiation with all
+spectacles, which are such matters of course to celebrities. The splendid,
+long, slender fingers of her left hand were lying upon the crimson velvet of
+the box-seat. Emeralds of a rare beauty hung upon them so negligently that it
+seemed as though they would fall off at any second, and suddenly she began
+laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Look” she said; “what a funny figure, or, to put it more correctly, what a
+funny profession! There, there, that one who’s playing on a ‘syrinx of seven
+reeds.’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everyone looked in the direction of her hand. And really, the picture was funny
+enough. Behind the Roumanian orchestra was sitting a stout, whiskered man,
+probably the father, and perhaps even the grandfather, of a numerous family,
+and with all his might was whistling into seven little pipes glued together. As
+it was difficult for him, probably, to move this instrument between his lips,
+he therefore, with an unusual rapidity, turned his head now to the left, now to
+the right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“An amazing occupation,” said Rovinskaya. “Well now, Chaplinsky, you try to
+toss your head about like that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Volodya Chaplinsky, secretly and hopelessly in love with the artiste,
+immediately began obediently and zealously to do this, but after half a minute
+desisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s impossible,” he said, “either long training, or, perhaps, hereditary
+abilities, are necessary for this.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baroness during this time was tearing away the petals of her rose and
+throwing them into a goblet; then, with difficulty suppressing a yawn, she
+said, making just the least bit of a wry face:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, my God, how drearily they divert themselves in our K—! Look: no laughter,
+no singing, no dances. Just like some herd that’s been driven here, in order to
+be gay on purpose!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ryazanov listlessly took his goblet, sipped it a little, and answered
+apathetically in his enchanting voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, and is it any gayer in your Paris, or Nice? Why, it must be
+confessed—mirth, youth and laughter have vanished forever out of human life,
+and it is scarcely possible that they will ever return. One must regard people
+with more patience, it seems to me. Who knows, perhaps for all those sitting
+here, below, the present evening is a rest, a holiday?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The speech for the defense,” put in Chaplinsky in his calm manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Rovinskaya quickly turned around to the men, and her long emerald eyes
+narrowed. And this with her served as a sign of wrath, from which even crowned
+personages committed follies at times. However, she immediately restrained
+herself and continued languidly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t understand what you are talking about. I don’t understand even what we
+came here for. For there are no longer any spectacles in the world. Now I, for
+instance, have seen bull-fights in Seville, Madrid and Marseilles—an exhibition
+which does not evoke anything save loathing. I have also seen boxing and
+wrestling nastiness and brutality. I also happened to participate in a tiger
+hunt, at which I sat under a baldachin on the back of a big, wise white
+elephant ... in a word, you all know this well yourselves. And out of all my
+great, chequered, noisy life, from which I have grown old ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, what are you saying, Ellena Victorovna!” said Chaplinsky with a tender
+reproach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Abandon compliments, Volodya! I know myself that I’m still young and beautiful
+of body, but, really, it seems to me at times that I am ninety. So worn out has
+my soul become. I continue. I say, that during all my life only three strong
+impressions have sunk into my soul. The first, while still a girl, when I saw a
+cat stealing upon a cock-sparrow, and I with horror and with interest watched
+its movements and the vigilant gaze of the bird. Up to this time I don’t know
+myself which I sympathized with more: the skill of the cat or the slipperiness
+of the sparrow. The cock-sparrow proved the quicker. In a moment he flew up on
+a tree and began from there to pour down upon the cat such sparrow swearing
+that I would have turned red for shame if I had understood even one word. While
+the cat, as though it had been wronged, stuck up its tail like a chimney and
+tried to pretend to itself that nothing out of the way had taken place. Another
+time I had to sing in an opera a duet with a certain great artist ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“With whom?” asked the baroness quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Isn’t it all the same? Of what need names? And so, when he and I were singing,
+I felt all of me in the sway of genius. How wonderfully, into what a marvelous
+harmony, did our voices blend! Ah! It is impossible to describe this
+impression. Probably, it happens but once in a lifetime. According to the role,
+I had to weep, and I wept with sincere, genuine tears. And when, after the
+curtain, he walked up to me and patted my hair with his big warm hand and with
+his enchanting, radiant smile said, ‘Splendid! for the first time in my life
+have I sung so’ ... and so I—and I am a very proud being—I kissed his hand. And
+the tears were still standing in my eyes ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And the third?” asked the baroness, and her eyes lit up with the evil sparks
+of jealousy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, the third,” answered the artiste sadly, “the third is as simple as simple
+can be. During the last season I lived at Nice, and so I saw Carmen on the open
+stage at Frejus with the anticipation of Cecile Ketten, who is now,” the
+artiste earnestly made the sign of the cross, “dead—I don’t really know,
+fortunately or unfortunately for herself?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly, in a moment, her magnificent eyes filled with tears and began to
+shine with a magic green light, such as the evening star gives forth, on warm
+summer twilights. She turned her face around to the stage, and for some time
+her long, nervous fingers convulsively squeezed the upholstery of the barrier
+of the box. But when she again turned around to her friends, her eyes were
+already dry, and the enigmatic, vicious and wilful lips were resplendent with
+an unconstrained smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Ryazanov asked her politely, in a tender but purposely calm tone:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But then, Ellena Victorovna, your tremendous fame, admirers, the roar of the
+mob ... finally, that delight which you afford to your spectators. Is it
+possible that even this does not titillate your nerves?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, Ryazanov,” she answered in a tired voice. “You know no less than myself
+what this is worth. A brazen interviewer, who needs passes for his friends,
+and, by the way, twenty-five roubles in an envelope. High school boys and
+girls, students and young ladies attending courses, who beg you for autographed
+photographs. Some old blockhead with a general’s rank, who hums loudly with me
+during my aria. The eternal whisper behind you, when you pass by: ‘there she
+is, that same famous one!’ Anonymous letters, the brazenness of back-stage
+habitues ... why, you can’t enumerate everything! But surely, you yourself are
+often beset by female psychopathics of the court-room?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Ryazanov decisively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s all there is to it. But add to that the most terrible thing, that every
+time I have come to feel a genuine inspiration, I tormentingly feel on the spot
+the consciousness that I’m pretending and grimacing before people ... And the
+fear of the success of your rival? And the eternal dread of losing your voice,
+of straining it or catching a cold? The eternal tormenting bother of throat
+bandages? No, really, it is heavy to bear renown on one’s shoulders.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But the artistic fame?” retorted the lawyer. “The might of genius! This,
+verily, is a true moral might, which is above the might of any king on earth!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, yes, of course you’re right, my dear. But fame, celebrity, are sweet only
+at a distance, when you only dream about them. But when you have attained them
+you feel only their thorns. But then, with what anguish you feel every dram of
+their decrease. And I have forgotten to say something else. Why, we artists
+undergo a sentence at hard labour. In the morning, exercises; in the daytime,
+rehearsals; and then there’s scarcely time for dinner and you’re due for the
+performance. An hour or so for reading or such diversion as you and I are
+having now, may be snatched only by a miracle. And even so... the diversion is
+altogether of the mediocre...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She negligently and wearily made a slight gesture with the fingers of the hand
+lying on the barrier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Volodya Chaplinsky, agitated by this conversation, suddenly asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, but tell me, Ellena Victorovna, what would you want to distract your
+imagination and ennui?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him with her enigmatic eyes and answered quietly, even a trifle
+shyly, it seemed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Formerly, people lived more gaily and did not know prejudices of any sort.
+Well, it seems to me that then I would have been in my place and would have
+lived with a full life. O, ancient Rome!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No one understood her, save Ryazanov, who, without looking at her, slowly
+pronounced in his velvety voice, like that of an actor, the classical,
+universally familiar, Latin phrase:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Precisely! I love you very much, Ryazanov, because you are a clever child. You
+will always catch a thought in its flight; although, I must say, that this
+isn’t an especially high property of the mind. And really, two beings come
+together, the friends of yesterday, who had conversed with each other and eaten
+at the same table, and this day one of them must perish. You understand depart
+from life forever. But they have neither malice nor fear. There is the most
+real, magnificent spectacle, which I can only picture to myself!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How much cruelty there is in you,” said the baroness meditatively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, nothing can be done about it now! My ancestors were cavaliers and
+robbers. However, shan’t we go away now?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all went out of the garden. Volodya Chaplinsky ordered his automobile
+called. Ellena Victorovna was leaning upon his arm. And suddenly she asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell me, Volodya, where do you usually go when you take leave of so-called
+decent women?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Volodya hemmed and hawed. However, he knew positively that he could not lie to
+Rovinskaya.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M-m-m ... I’m afraid of offending your hearing. To the Tzigani, for instance
+... to night cabarets ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And somewhere else? Worse?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really, you put me in an awkward position. From the time that I’ve become so
+madly in love with you ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Leave out the romancing!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, how shall I say it?” murmured Volodya, feeling that he was turning red,
+not only in the face, but with his body, his back. “Well, of course, to the
+women. Now, of course, this does not occur with me personally ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rovinskaya maliciously pressed Chaplinsky’s elbow to her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To a brothel?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Volodya did not answer anything. Then she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so, you’ll carry us at once over there in the automobile and acquaint us
+with this existence, which is foreign to me. But remember, that I rely upon
+your protection.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The remaining two agreed to this, unwillingly, in all probability; but there
+was no possibility of opposing Ellena Victorovna. She always did everything
+that she wanted to. And then they had all heard and knew that in Petersburg
+carousing worldly ladies, and even girls, permit themselves, out of a modish
+snobbism, pranks far worse than the one which Rovinskaya had proposed.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0207"></a> CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+<p>
+On the way to Yamskaya Street Rovinskaya said to Chaplinsky:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll bring me at first into the most luxurious place, then into a medium
+one, and then into the filthiest.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear Ellena Victorovna,” warmly retorted Chaplinsky, “I’m ready to do
+everything for you. It is without false boasting when I say that I would give
+my life away at your order, ruin my career and position at a mere sign of yours
+... But I dare not bring you to these houses. Russian manners are coarse, and
+often simply inhuman manners. I’m afraid that you will be insulted by some
+pungent, unseemly word, or that a chance visitor will play some senseless prank
+before you ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, my God,” impatiently interrupted Rovinskaya; “when I was singing in
+London, there were many at that time paying court to me, and I did not hesitate
+to go and see the filthiest dens of Whitechapel in a choice company. I will
+say, that I was treated there very carefully and anticipatingly. I will also
+say, that there were with me at that time two English aristocrats; lords, both
+sportsmen, both people unusually strong physically and morally, who, of course,
+would never have allowed a woman to be offended. However, perhaps you, Volodya,
+are of the race of cowards?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chaplinsky flared up:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, no, no, Ellena Victorovna. I forewarned you only out of love for you. But
+if you command, then I’m ready to go where you will. Not only on this dubious
+undertaking, but even very death itself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time they had already driven up to the most luxurious establishment in
+the Yamkas—Treppel’s. Ryazanov the lawyer said, smiling with his usual ironic
+smile:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so, the inspection of the menagerie begins.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were led into a cabinet with crimson wall paper, and on the wall paper was
+repeated, in the “empire” style, a golden design in the form of small laurel
+wreaths. And at once Rovinskaya recognized, with the keen memory of an artiste,
+that exactly the same paper had also been in that cabinet in which they had
+just been sitting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four German women from the Baltic provinces came out. All of them stout,
+full-breasted, blonde, powdered, very important and respectful. The
+conversation did not catch on at first. The girls sat immovable, like carvings
+of stone, in order to pretend with all their might that they were respectable
+ladies. Even the champagne, which Ryazanov called for, did not improve the
+mood. Rovinskaya was the first to come to the aid of the party. Turning to the
+stoutest, fairest German of all, who resembled a loaf, she asked politely in
+German:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell me, where were you born? Germany, in all probability?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, gnadige Frau, I am from Riga.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What compels you to serve here, then? Not poverty, I hope?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course not, gnadige Frau. But, you understand, my bridegroom, Hans, works
+as a kellner in a restaurant-automat, and we are too poor to be married now. I
+bring my savings to a bank, and he does the same. When we have saved the ten
+thousand roubles we need, we will open our own beer-hall, and, if God will
+bless us, then we shall allow ourselves the luxury of having children. Two
+children. A boy and a girl.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, listen to me, mein Fraulein!” Rovinskaya was amazed. “You are young,
+handsome, know two languages ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Three, madam,” proudly put in the German. “I know Esthonian as well. I
+finished the municipal school and three classes of high school.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, then, you see, you see ...” Rovinskaya became heated. “With such an
+education you could always find a place with everything found, and about thirty
+roubles. Well, in the capacity of a housekeeper, bonne, senior clerk in a good
+store, a cashier, let’s say ... And if your future bridegroom ... Fritz ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hans, madam ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If Hans proved to be an industrious and thrifty man, then it would not be at
+all hard for you to get up on your feet altogether, after three or four years.
+What do you think?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, madam, you are a little mistaken. You have overlooked that, in the very
+best of positions, I, even denying myself in everything, will not be able to
+put aside more than fifteen, twenty roubles a month; whereas here, with a
+prudent economy, I gain up to a hundred roubles and at once carry them away
+with a book into the savings bank. And besides that, just imagine, gnadige
+Frau, what a humiliating position to be the servant in a house! Always to
+depend on the caprice or the disposition of the spirits of the masters! And the
+master always pesters you with foolishness. Pfui! .. And the mistress is
+jealous, picks, and scolds.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No ... I don’t understand ...” meditatively drawled Rovinskaya, without
+looking the German in the eyes, but casting hers on the floor. “I’ve heard a
+great deal of your life here, in these ... what do you call them? .. these
+houses. They say it is something horrible. That you’re forced to love the most
+repulsive, old and hideous men, that you are plucked and exploited in the most
+cruel manner ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, never, madam ... Each one of us has an account book, wherein is written
+accurately the income and expense. During last month I earned a little more
+than five hundred roubles. As always, two-thirds went to the proprietress for
+board, quarters, fuel, light, linen ... There remains to me more than a hundred
+and fifty, it is not so? Fifty I spent on costumes and all sorts of trifles. A
+hundred I save. What exploitation is it, then, madam, I ask you? And if I do
+not like a man at all—true, there are some who are exceedingly nasty—I can
+always say I am sick, and instead of me will go one of the newest girls ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But then ... pardon me, I do not know your name ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Elsa.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They say, that you’re treated very roughly ... beaten at times ... compelled
+to do that which you don’t want to and which is repulsive to you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never, madam!” dropped Elsa haughtily. “We all live here as a friendly family
+of our own. We are all natives of the same land or relatives, and God grant
+that many should live so in their own families as we live here. True, on
+Yamskaya Street there happen various scandals and fights and misunderstandings.
+But that’s there ... in these ... in the rouble establishments. The Russian
+girls drink a lot and always have one lover. And they do not think at all of
+their future.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are prudent, Elsa,” said Rovinskaya in an oppressed tone. “All this is
+well. But, what of the chance disease? Infection? Why, that is death? And how
+can you guess?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And again—no, madam. I won’t let a man into my bed before I make a detailed
+medical inspection of him ... I am guaranteed, at the least, against
+seventy-five per cent.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The devil!” suddenly exclaimed Rovinskaya with heat and hit the table with her
+fist. “But, then, what of your Albert ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hans,” the German corrected her meekly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon me ... Your Hans surely does not rejoice greatly over the fact that you
+are living here, and that you betray him every day?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Elsa looked at her with sincere, lively amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But gnadige Frau ... I have never yet betrayed him! It is other lost wenches,
+especially Russian, who have lovers for themselves, on whom they spend their
+hard-earned money. But that I should ever let myself go as far as that? Pfui!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A greater fall I have not imagined!” said Rovinskaya loudly and with aversion,
+getting up. “Pay gentlemen, and let’s go on from here.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they had gone out into the street, Volodya took her arm and said in an
+imploring voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For God’s sake, isn’t one experiment enough for you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, what vulgarity! What vulgarity!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s why I’m saying, let’s drop this experiment.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, in any case I am going through with it to the finish. Show me something
+simpler, more of the medium.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Volodya Chaplinsky, who was all the time in a torment over Ellena Victorovna,
+offered the most likely thing—to drop into the establishment of Anna Markovna,
+which was only ten steps away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was just here that strong impressions awaited them. Simeon did not want
+to let them in, and only several gold pieces, which Ryazanov gave him, softened
+him. They took up a cabinet, almost the same as at Treppel’s, only somewhat
+shabbier and more faded. At the command of Emma Edwardovna, the girls were
+herded into the cabinet. But it was the same as letting a goat into a
+truck-garden or mixing soda and acid. The main mistake, however, was that they
+let Jennka in there as well—wrathful, irritated, with impudent fires in her
+eyes. The modest, quiet Tamara was the last to walk in, with her shy and
+depraved smile of a Monna Lisa. In the end, almost the entire personnel of the
+establishment gathered in the cabinet. Rovinskaya no longer risked asking “How
+did you come to this life?” But it must be said, that the inmates of the house
+met her with an outward hospitality. Ellena Victorovna asked them to sing their
+usual canonical songs, and they willingly sang:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Monday now is come again,<br/>
+They’re supposed to get me out;<br/>
+Doctor Krassov won’t let me out,<br/>
+Well, the devil take him then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And further:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Poor little, poor little, poor little me,<br/>
+The public house is closed,<br/>
+My head’s aching me...
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+The love of a loafer<br/>
+Is spice, is spice;<br/>
+But the prostitute<br/>
+Is as cold as ice.<br/>
+Ha-ha-ha!
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+They came together<br/>
+Matched as well as might be,<br/>
+She is a prostitute,<br/>
+A pickpocket he.<br/>
+Ha-ha-ha!
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Now morning has come,<br/>
+He is planning a theft;<br/>
+While she lies in her bed<br/>
+And laughs like she’s daft.<br/>
+Ha-ha-ha!
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Comes morning, the laddie<br/>
+Is led to the pen;<br/>
+But for the prostitute<br/>
+His pals await then.<br/>
+Ha-ha-ha! ...
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[12] While there can be but little doubt that these four stanzas are an actual
+transcript from life, Heinrich Heine’s “Ein Weib” is such a striking parallel
+that it may be reproduced here as a matter of interest. The translation is by
+Mr. Louis Untermeyer.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+A WOMAN
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+They loved each other beyond belief—<br/>
+She was a strumpet, he was a thief;<br/>
+Whenever she thought of his tricks, thereafter<br/>
+She’d throw herself on the bed with laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+The day was spent with a reckless zest;<br/>
+At night she lay upon his breast.<br/>
+So when they took him, a while thereafter<br/>
+She watched at the window—with laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+He sent word pleading “Oh come to me,<br/>
+I need you, need you bitterly,<br/>
+Yes, here and in the hereafter.”<br/>
+Her little head shook with laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+At six in the morning they swung him high;<br/>
+At seven the turf on his grave was dry;<br/>
+At eight, however, she quaffed her<br/>
+Red wine and sang with laughter!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And still further a convict song:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+I’m a ruined laddie,<br/>
+Ruined for alway;<br/>
+While year after year<br/>
+The days go away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And also:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Don’t you cry, my Mary,<br/>
+You’ll belong to me;<br/>
+When I’ve served the army<br/>
+I will marry thee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here suddenly, to the general amazement, the stout Kitty, usually taciturn,
+burst into laughter. She was a native of Odessa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let me sing one song, too. It’s sung by thieves and badger queens in the drink
+shops on our Moldavanka and Peresip.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in a horrible bass, in a rusty and unyielding voice, she began to sing,
+making the most incongruous gestures, but, evidently, imitating some cabaret
+cantatrice of the third calibre that she had sometime seen:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Ah, I’ll go to Dukovka,<br/>
+Sit down at the table,<br/>
+Now I throw my hat off,<br/>
+Toss it under table.<br/>
+Then I athk my dearie,<br/>
+‘What will you drink, sweet?’<br/>
+But all the answer that she makes:<br/>
+‘My head aches fit to split.’<br/>
+‘I ain’t a-athking you<br/>
+What your ache may be,<br/>
+But I am a-athking you<br/>
+What your drink may be:<br/>
+Will it be beer, or for wine shall I call,<br/>
+Or for violet wine, or nothing else at all?’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all would have turned out well, if suddenly Little White Manka, in only her
+chemise and in white lace drawers, had not burst into the cabinet. Some
+merchant, who the night before had arranged a paradisaical night, was carousing
+with her, and the ill-fated Benedictine, which always acted upon the girl with
+the rapidity of dynamite, had brought her into the usual quarrelsome condition.
+She was no longer “Little Manka” and “Little White Manka,” but she was “Manka
+the Scandaliste.” Having run into the cabinet, she suddenly, from
+unexpectedness, fell down on the floor, and, lying on her back, burst into such
+sincere laughter that all the rest burst out laughing as well. Yes. But this
+laughter was not prolonged ... Manka suddenly sat up on the floor and began to
+shout:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hurrah! new wenches have joined our place!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was altogether an unexpected thing. The baroness did a still greater
+tactlessness. She said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am a patroness of a convent for fallen girls, and therefore, as a part of my
+duty, I must gather information about you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here Jennka instantly flared up:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Get out of here right away, you old fool! You rag! You floor mop! ... Your
+Magdalene asylums—they’re worse than a prison. Your secretaries use us, like
+dogs carrion. Your fathers, husbands, and brothers come to us, and we infect
+them with all sorts of diseases ... Purposely ... And they in their turn infect
+you. Your female superintendents live with the drivers, janitors and policemen,
+while we are put in a cell if we happen to laugh or joke a little among
+ourselves. And so, if you’ve come here as to a theatre, then you must hear the
+truth out, straight to your face.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Tamara calmly stopped her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stop, Jennie, I will tell them myself ... Can it be that you really think,
+baroness, that we are worse than the so-called respectable women? A man comes
+to me, pays me two roubles for a visit or five roubles for a night, and I don’t
+in the least conceal this, from any one in the world ... But tell me, baroness,
+do you possibly know even one married lady with a family who isn’t in secret
+giving herself up either for the sake of passion to a young man, or for the
+sake of money to an old one? I know very well that fifty percent of you are
+kept by lovers, while the remaining fifty, of those who are older, keep young
+lads. I also know that many—ah, how many!—of you cohabit with your fathers,
+brothers, and even sons, but these secrets you hide in some sort of a hidden
+casket. And that’s all the difference between us. We are fallen, but we don’t
+lie and don’t pretend, but you all fall, and lie to boot. Think it over for
+yourself; now—in whose favour is this difference?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bravo, Tamarochka, that’s the way to serve them!” shouted Manka, without
+getting up from the floor; dishevelled, fair, curly, resembling at this moment
+a thirteen-year-old girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now, now!” urged Jennka as well, flashing with her flaming eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not, Jennechka? I’ll go further than that. Out of us scarcely, scarcely
+one in a thousand has committed abortion. But all of you several times over.
+What? Or isn’t that the truth? And those of you who’ve done this, did it not
+out of desperation or cruel poverty, but you simply were afraid of spoiling
+your figure and beauty—that’s your sole capital! Or else you’ve been seeking
+only beastly carnal pleasure, while pregnancy and feeding interfered with your
+giving yourself up to it!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rovinskaya became confused and uttered in a quick whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Faites attention, baronne, que dans sa position cette demoiselle est
+instruite.”[13]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[13] “Pay attention, baroness, the girl is rather educated for one of her
+position.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Figurez-vous, que moi, j’ai aussi remarque cet etrange visage. Comme si je
+l’ai deja vu ... est-ce en reve? ... en demi-delire? Ou dans sa petite
+enfance?”[14]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[14] “Just imagine, I, too, have remarked this strange face. But where have I
+seen it ... was it in a dream? ... in semi-delirium? Or in her early infancy?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ne vous donnez pas la peine de chercher dans vos souvenirs, baronne,” Tamara
+suddenly interposed insolently. “Je puis de suite vous venir aide.
+Rappelez-vous seulement Kharkoff, et la chambre d’hotel de Koniakine,
+l’entrepreneur Solovieitschik, et le tenor di grazzia ... A ce moment vous
+n’etiez pas encore m-me la baronne de ... [15] However, let’s drop the French
+tongue ... You were a common chorus girl and served together with me.”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[15] “Don’t trouble to strain your memory, baroness. I will come to your aid at
+once. Just recall Kharkov, a room in Koniakine’s hotel, the theatrical manager,
+Solovieitschik, and a certain lyrical tenor ... At that time you were not yet
+baroness de ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mais, dites-moi, au nom de dieu, comment vous trouvez vous ici, Mademoiselle
+Marguerite.”[16]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[16] “But tell me, in God’s name, how you have come to be here, Mademoiselle
+Marguerite?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, they ask us about that every day. I just up and came to be here ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with an inimitable cynicism she asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I trust you will pay for the time which we have passed with you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, may the devil take you!” suddenly shouted out Little White Manka, quickly
+getting up from the rug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And suddenly, pulling two gold pieces out of her stocking, she flung them upon
+the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There, you! .. I’m giving you that for a cab. Go away right now, otherwise
+I’ll break up all the mirrors and bottles here...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rovinskaya got up and said with sincere, warm tears in her eyes:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course, we’ll go away, and the lesson of Mlle. Marguerite will prove of
+benefit to us. Your time will be paid for—take care of it, Volodya. Still, you
+sang so much for us, that you must allow me to sing for you as well.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rovinskaya went up to the piano, took a few chords, and suddenly began to sing
+the splendid ballad of Dargomyzhsky:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“We parted then with pride—<br/>
+Neither with sighs nor words<br/>
+Proffered I thee reproach of jealousy ...<br/>
+We went apart for aye,<br/>
+Yet only if with thee<br/>
+I might but chance to meet! ..<br/>
+Ah, that with thee I might but chance to meet!
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“I weep not nor complain—<br/>
+To fate I bend my knee...<br/>
+I know not, if you loved,<br/>
+So greatly wronging me?<br/>
+Yet only if with thee<br/>
+I might but chance to meet! ...<br/>
+Ah, that with thee I might but chance to meet!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This tender and passionate ballad, executed by a great artiste, suddenly
+reminded all these women of their first love; of their first fall; of a late
+leave-taking at a dawn in the spring, in the chill of the morning, when the
+grass is gray from the dew, while the red sky paints the tips of the birches a
+rosy colour; of last embraces, so closely entwined, and of the unerring heart’s
+mournful whispers: “No, this will not be repeated, this will not be repeated!”
+And the lips were then cold and dry, while the damp mist of the morning lay
+upon the hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silence seized Tamara; silence seized Manka the Scandaliste; and suddenly
+Jennka, the most untamable of all the girls, ran up to the artiste, fell down
+on her knees, and began to sob at her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Rovinskaya, touched herself, put her arms around her head and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My sister, let me kiss you!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka whispered something into her ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, that’s a silly trifle,” said Rovinskaya. “A few months of treatment and
+it will all go away.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, no, no ... I want to make all of them diseased. Let them all rot and
+croak.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, my dear,” said Rovinskaya, “I would not do that in your place.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now Jennka, the proud Jennka began kissing the knees and hands of the
+artiste and was saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then why have people wronged me so? ... Why have they wronged me so? Why? Why?
+Why?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such is the might of genius!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only might which takes into its beautiful hands not the abject reason, but
+the warm soul of man! The self-respecting Jennka was hiding her face in
+Rovinskaya’s dress; Little White Manka was sitting meekly on a chair, her face
+covered with a handkerchief; Tamara, with elbow propped on her knee and head
+bowed on the palm of her hand, was intently looking down, while Simeon the
+porter, who had been looking in against any emergency, only opened his eyes
+wide in amazement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rovinskaya was quietly whispering into Jennka’s very ear:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never despair. Sometimes things fall out so badly that there’s nothing for it
+but to hang one’s self—but, just look, to-morrow life has changed abruptly. My
+dear, my sister, I am now a world celebrity. But if you only knew what seas of
+humiliation and vileness I have had to wade through! Be well, then, my dear,
+and believe in your star.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bent down to Jennka and kissed her on the forehead. And never afterwards
+could Volodya Chaplinsky, who had been watching this scene with a painful
+tension, forget those warm and beautiful rays, which at this moment kindled in
+the green, long, Egyptian eyes of the artiste.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The party departed gloomily, but Ryazanov lingered behind for a minute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked up to Jennka, respectfully and gently kissed her hand, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If possible, forgive our prank ... This, of course, will not be repeated. But
+if you ever have need of me, I am always at your service. Here is my visiting
+card. Don’t stick it out on your bureau; but remember, that from this evening
+on I am your friend.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, having kissed Jennka’s hand once more, he was the last to go down the
+stairs.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0208"></a> CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+<p>
+On Thursday, since very morning, a ceaseless, fine drizzle had begun to fall,
+and so the leaves of the chestnuts, acacias, and poplars had at once turned
+green. And, suddenly, it became somehow dreamily quiet and protractedly
+tedious. Pensive and monotonous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During this all the girls had gathered, as usual, in Jennka’s room. But
+something strange was going on within her. She did not utter witticisms, did
+not laugh, did not read, as always, her usual yellow-back novel which was now
+lying aimlessly either on her breast or stomach; but was vicious, wrapped up in
+sadness, and in her eyes blazed a yellow fire that spoke of hatred. In vain did
+Little White Manka, Manka the Scandaliste, who adored her, try to turn her
+attention to herself—Jennka seemed not to notice her, and the conversation did
+not at all get on. It was depressing. But it may have been that the August
+drizzle, which had steadily set in for several weeks running, reacted upon all
+of them. Tamara sat down on Jennka’s bed, gently embraced her, and, having put
+her mouth near her very ear, said in a whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s the matter, Jennechka? I’ve seen for a long time that something strange
+is going on in you. And Manka feels that too. Just see, how she’s wasted
+without your caressing. Tell me. Perhaps I’ll be able to help you in some way?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka closed her eyes and shook her head in negation. Tamara moved away from
+her a little, but continued to stroke her shoulder gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s your affair, Jennechka. I daren’t butt into your soul. I only asked
+because you’re the only being who...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka with decision suddenly jumped out of bed, seized Tamara by the hand and
+said abruptly and commandingly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right! Let’s get out of here for a minute. I’ll tell you everything.
+Girls, wait for us a little while.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the light corridor Jennka laid her hands on the shoulders of her mate and
+with a distorted, suddenly blanched face, said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, then, listen here: some one has infected me with syphilis.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my poor darling. Long?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Long. Do you remember, when the students were here? The same ones who started
+a row with Platonov? I found out about it for the first time then. I found out
+in the daytime.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you know,” quietly remarked Tamara, “I almost guessed about this, and
+particularly then, when you went down on your knees before the singer and
+talked quietly about something with her. But still, my dear Jennechka, you must
+attend to yourself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka wrathfully stamped her foot and tore in half the batiste handkerchief
+which she had been nervously crumpling in her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No! Not for anything! I won’t infect any one of you. You may have noticed
+yourself, that during the last weeks I don’t dine at the common table, and that
+I wash and wipe the dishes myself. That’s why I’m trying to break Manka away
+from me, whom, you know, I love sincerely, in the real way. But these
+two-legged skunks I infect purposely, infect every evening, ten, fifteen of
+them. Let them rot, let them carry the syphilis on to their wives, mistresses,
+mothers—yes, yes, their mothers also, and their fathers, and their governesses,
+and even their grand-grandmothers. Let them all perish, the honest skunks!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara carefully and tenderly stroked Jennka’s head. “Can it be that you’ll go
+the limit, Jennechka?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. And without any mercy. All of you, however, don’t have to be afraid of
+me. I choose the man myself. The stupidest, the handsomest, the richest and the
+most important, but not to one of you will I let them go afterward. Oh! I make
+believe I’m so passionate before them, that you’d burst out laughing if you
+saw. I bite them, I scratch, I cry and shiver like an insane woman. They
+believe it, the pack of fools.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s your affair, it’s your affair, Jennechka,” meditatively uttered Tamara,
+looking down. “Perhaps you’re right, at that. Who knows? But tell me, how did
+you get away from the doctor?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka suddenly turned away from her, pressed her face against the angle of the
+window frame and suddenly burst into bitter, searing tears—the tears of wrath
+and vengefulness—and at the same time she spoke, gasping and quivering:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because ... because ... Because God has sent me especial luck: I am sick there
+where, in all probability, no doctor can see. And ours, besides that, is old
+and stupid...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And suddenly, with some unusual effort of the will Jennka stopped her tears
+just as unexpectedly as she had started crying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come to me, Tamarochka,” she said. “Of course, you won’t chatter too much?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course not.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And they returned into Jennka’s room, both of them calm and restrained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simeon walked into the room. He, contrary to his usual brazenness, always bore
+himself with a shade of respect toward Jennka. Simeon said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, Jennechka, their Excellency has come to Vanda. Allow her to go away
+for ten minutes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vanda, a blue-eyed, light blonde, with a large red mouth, with the typical face
+of a Lithuanian, looked imploringly at Jennka. If Jennka had said “No” she
+would have remained in the room, but Jennka did not say anything and even shut
+her eyes deliberately. Vanda obediently went out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This general came accurately twice a month, every two weeks (just as to Zoe,
+another girl, came daily another honoured guest, nicknamed the Director in the
+house).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka suddenly threw the old, tattered book behind her. Her brown eyes flared
+up with a real golden fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re wrong in despising this general,” said she. “I’ve known worse
+Ethiopians. I had a certain guest once—a real blockhead. He couldn’t make love
+to me otherwise than ... otherwise than ... well, let’s say it plainly: he
+pricked me with pins in the breast ... While in Vilno a Polish Catholic priest
+used to come to me. He would dress me all in white, compel me to powder myself,
+lay me down on the bed. He’d light three candles near me. And then, when I
+seemed to him altogether like a dead woman, he’d throw himself upon me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little White Manka suddenly exclaimed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s the truth you’re telling, Jennka! I had a certain old bugger, too. He
+made me pretend all the time that I was an innocent girl, so’s I’d cry and
+scream. But, Jennechka, though you’re the smartest one of us, yet I’ll bet you
+won’t guess who he was ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The warden of a prison?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A fire chief.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly Katie burst into laughter in her bass:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, I had a certain teacher. He taught some kind of arithmetic, I
+disremember which. He always made me believe, that I was the man, and he the
+woman, and that I should do it to him ... by force ... And what a fool! Just
+imagine, girls, he’d yell all the time: ‘I’m your woman! I’m all yours! Take
+me! Take me!’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Loony!” said the blue-eyed, spry Verka in a positive and unexpectedly
+contralto voice: “Loony.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, why?” suddenly retorted the kindly and modest Tamara. “Not crazy at all,
+but simply, like all men, a libertine. At home it’s tiresome for him, while
+here for his money he can receive whatever pleasure he desires. That’s plain,
+it seems?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka, who had been silent up to now, suddenly, with one quick movement sat up
+in bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re all fools!” she cried. “Why do you forgive them all this? Before I used
+to be foolish myself, too, but now I compel them to walk before me on all
+fours, compel them to kiss my soles, and they do this with delight ... You all
+know, girlies, that I don’t love money, but I pluck the men in whatever way I
+can. They, the nasty beasts, present me with the portraits of their wives,
+brides, mothers, daughters ... However, you’ve seen, I think, the photographs
+in our water-closet? But now, just think of it, my children ... A woman loves
+only once, but for always, while a man loves like a he-greyhound... That he’s
+unfaithful is nothing; but he never has even the commonest feeling of gratitude
+left either for the old, or the new, mistress. I’ve heard it said, that now
+there are many clean boys among the young people. I believe this, though I
+haven’t seen, haven’t met them, myself. But all those I have seen are all
+vagabonds, nasty brutes and skunks. Not so long ago I read some novel of our
+miserable life. It’s almost the same thing as I’m telling you now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vanda came back. She slowly, carefully, sat down on the edge of Jennka’s bed;
+there, where the shadow of the lamp fell. Out of that deep, though deformed
+psychical delicacy, which is peculiar to people sentenced to death, prisoners
+at hard labour, and prostitutes, none had the courage to ask her how she had
+passed this hour and a half. Suddenly she threw upon the table twenty-five
+roubles and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bring me white wine and a watermelon.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, burying her face in her arms, which had sunk on the table, she began to
+sob inaudibly. And again no one took the liberty of putting any question to
+her. Only Jennka grew pale from wrath and bit her lower lip so that a row of
+white spots was left upon it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she said; “here, now, I understand Tamara. You hear, Tamara, I apologize
+before you. I’ve often laughed over your being in love with your thief Senka.
+But here, now, I’ll say that of all the men the most decent is a thief or a
+murderer. He doesn’t hide the fact that he loves a girlie, and, if need be,
+will commit a crime for her—a theft or a murder. But these—the rest of them!
+All lying, falsehood, petty cunning, depravity on the sly. The nasty beast has
+three families, a wife and five children. A governess and two children abroad.
+The eldest daughter from the first marriage, and a child by her. And this
+everybody, everybody in town knows, save his little children. And even they,
+perhaps, guess it and whisper among themselves. And, just imagine, he’s a
+respected person, honoured by the whole world ... My children, it seems we’ve
+never had occasion to enter into confidences with each other, and yet I’ll tell
+you, that I when I was ten and a half, was sold by my own mother in the city of
+Zhitomir to Doctor Tarabukin. I kissed his hands, implored him to spare me, I
+cried out to him: ‘I’m little!’ But he’d answer me: ‘That’s nothing, that’s
+nothing: you’ll grow up.’ Well, of course, there was pain, aversion, nastiness
+... And he afterwards spread it around as a current anecdote. The desperate cry
+of my soul.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, as long as we do speak, let’s speak to the end,” suddenly and calmly
+said Zoe, and smiled negligently and sadly. “I was deprived of innocence by a
+teacher in the ministerial school, Ivan Petrovich Sus. He simply called me over
+to his rooms, and his wife at that time had gone to market for a suckling
+pig—it was Christmas. Treated me with candies, and then said it was going to be
+one of two things: either I must obey him in everything, or he’d at once expel
+me out of school for bad conduct. But then you know yourselves, girls, how we
+feared the teachers. Here they aren’t terrible to us, because we do with them
+whatever we want—but at that time! For then he seemed to us greater than Czar
+and God.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And me a stewdent. He was teaching the master’s boys in our place. There,
+where I was a servant ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, but I ...” exclaimed Niura, but, turning around unexpectedly, remained as
+she was with her mouth open. Looking in the direction of her gaze, Jennka had
+to wring her hands. In the doorway stood Liubka, grown thin, with dark rings
+under her eyes, and, just like a somnambulist, was searching with her hand for
+the door-knob, as a point of support.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Liubka, you fool, what’s the matter with you?” yelled Jennka loudly. “What is
+it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, of course, what: he took and chased me out.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No one said a word. Jennka hid her eyes with her hands and started breathing
+hard, and it could be seen how under the skin of her cheeks the taut muscles of
+the jaws were working.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jennechka, all my hope is only in you,” said Liubka with a deep expression of
+weary helplessness. “Everybody respects you so. Talk it over, dearie, with Anna
+Markovna or with Simeon ... Let them take me back.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka straightened up on the bed, fixed Liubka with her dry, burning, yet
+seemingly weeping eyes, and asked brokenly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you eaten anything to-day?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. Neither yesterday, nor to-day. Nothing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Listen, Jennechka,” asked Vanda quietly, “suppose I give her some white wine?
+And Verka meanwhile will run to the kitchen for meat? What?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do as you know best. Of course, that’s all right. And give a look, girlies,
+why, she’s all wet. Oh, what a booby! Well! Lively! Undress yourself! Little
+White Manka, or you, Tamarochka, give her dry drawers, warm stockings and
+slippers. Well, now,” she turned to Liubka, “tell us, you idiot, all that
+happened to you!”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0209"></a> CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+<p>
+On that early morning when Lichonin so suddenly, and, perhaps, unexpectedly
+even to himself, had carried off Liubka from the gay establishment of Anna
+Markovna it was the height of summer. The trees still remained green, but in
+the scent of the air, the leaves, and the grass there was already to be felt,
+as though from afar, the tender, melancholy, and at the same time bewitching
+scent of the nearing autumn. With wonder the student gazed at the trees, so
+clean, innocent and quiet, as though God, imperceptibly to men, had planted
+them about here at night; and the trees themselves were looking around with
+wonder upon the calm blue water, that still seemed slumbering in the pools and
+ditches and under the wooden bridge thrown across the shallow river; upon the
+lofty, as though newly washed sky, which had just awakened, and, in the glow of
+dawn, half asleep, was smiling with a rosy, lazy, happy smile in greeting to
+the kindling sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The heart of the student expanded and quivered; both from the beauty of the
+beatific morning, and from the joy of existence, and from the sweet air,
+refreshing his lungs after the night, passed without sleep, in a crowded and
+smoke-filled compartment. But the beauty and loftiness of his own action moved
+him still more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, he had acted like a man, like a real man, in the highest sense of that
+word! Even now he is not repenting of what he had done. It’s all right for them
+(to whom this “them” applied, Lichonin did not properly understand even
+himself), it’s all right for them to talk about the horrors of prostitution; to
+talk, sitting at tea, with rolls and sausage, in the presence of pure and
+cultured girls. But had any one of his colleagues taken some actual step toward
+liberating a woman from perdition? Eh, now? And then there is also—the sort
+that will come to this same Sonechka Marmeladova, will tell her all sorts of
+taradiddles, describe all kinds of horrors to her, butt into her soul, until he
+brings her to tears; and right off will start in crying himself and begin to
+console her, embrace her, pat her on the head, kiss her at first on the cheek,
+then on the lips; well, and everybody knows what happens next! Faugh! But with
+him, with Lichonin, the word and the deed were never at odds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He clasped Liubka around the waist, and looked at her with kindly, almost
+loving, eyes; although, the very same minute, he himself thought that he was
+regarding her as a father or a brother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sleep was fearfully besetting Liubka; her eyes would close, and she with an
+effort would open them wide, so as not to fall asleep again; while on her lips
+lay the same naive, childish, tired smile, which Lichonin had noticed still
+there, in the cabinet. And out of one corner of her mouth ran a thin trickle of
+saliva.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Liubka, my dear! My darling, much-suffering woman! Behold how fine it is all
+around! Lord! Here it’s five years that I haven’t seen the sunrise. Now play at
+cards, now drinking, now I had to hurry to the university. Behold, my dearest,
+over there the dawn has burst into bloom. The sun is near! This is your dawn,
+Liubochka! This is your new life beginning. You will fearlessly lean upon my
+strong arm. I shall lead you out upon the road of honest toil, on the way to a
+brave combat with life, face to face with it!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka eyed him askance. “There, the fumes are still playing in his head,” she
+thought kindly. “But that’s nothing—he’s kind and a good sort. Only a trifle
+homely.” And, having smiled with a half-sleepy smile, she said in a tone of
+capricious reproach:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ye—es! You’ll fool me, never fear. All of you men are like that. You just gain
+yours at first, to get your pleasure, and then—no attention whatsoever!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I? Oh? That I should do this!” Lichonin exclaimed warmly and even smote
+himself on the chest with his free hand. “Then you know me very badly! I’m too
+honest a man to be deceiving a defenseless girl. No! I’ll exert all my powers
+and all my soul to educate your mind, to widen your outlook, to compel your
+poor heart, which has suffered so, to forget all the wounds and wrongs which
+life has inflicted upon it. I will be a father and a brother to you! I shall
+safeguard your every step! And if you will come to love somebody with a truly
+pure, holy love, then I shall bless that day and hour when I had snatched you
+out of this Dantean hell!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the continuation of this flaming tirade the old cabby with great
+significance, although silently, began laughing, and from this inaudible
+laughter his back shook. Old cabbies hear very many things, because to the
+cabby, sitting in front, everything is readily audible, which is not at all
+suspected by the conversing fares; and many things do the old cabbies know of
+that which takes place among people. Who knows, perhaps he had heard more than
+once even more disordered, more lofty speeches?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to Liubka for some reason that Lichonin had grown angry at her, or
+that he was growing jealous beforehand of some imaginary rival. He was
+declaiming with entirely too much noise and agitation. She became perfectly
+awake, turned her face to Lichonin with wide open, uncomprehending, and at the
+same time submissive eyes, and slightly touched his right hand, lying on her
+waist, with her fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t get angry, my sweetie. I’ll never exchange you for another. Here’s my
+word of honour, honest to God! My word of honour, that I never will! Don’t you
+think I feel you’re wanting to take care of me? Do you think I don’t
+understand? Why, you’re such an attractive, nice little young fellow. There,
+now, if you were an old man and homely...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! You haven’t got the right idea!” shouted Lichonin, and again in high-flown
+style began to tell her about the equal rights of women, about the sacredness
+of toil, about human justice, about freedom, about the struggle against
+reigning evil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of all his words Liubka understood exactly not a one. She still felt herself
+guilty of something and somehow shrank all up, grew sad, bowed her head and
+became quiet. A little more and she, in all probability, would have burst out
+crying in the middle of the street; but fortunately, they by this time had
+driven up to the house where Lichonin was staying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, here we are at home,” said the student. “Stop, driver!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when he had paid him, he could not refrain from declaiming with pathos, his
+hand extended theatrically straight before him:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“And into my house, calm and fearless,<br/>
+As its full mistress walk thou in!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And again the unfathomable, prophetic smile wrinkled the aged brown face of the
+cabby.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0210"></a> CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+<p>
+The room in which Lichonin lived was situated on the fifth story and a half.
+And a half, because there are such five, six, and seven-story profitable
+houses, packed to overflowing and cheap, on top of which are erected still
+other sorry bug-breeders of roof iron, something in the nature of mansards; or
+more exactly, bird-houses, in which it is fearfully cold in winter, while in
+the summer time it is just as torrid as in the tropics. Liubka with difficulty
+clambered upward. It seemed to her that now, now, two steps more, and she would
+drop straight down on the steps and fall into a sleep from which nothing would
+be able to wake her. But Lichonin was saying all the time:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear! I can see you are tired. But that’s nothing. Lean upon me. We are
+going upwards all the time! Always higher and higher! Is this not a symbol of
+all human aspirations? My comrade, my sister, lean upon my arm!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here it became still worse for poor Liubka. As it was, she could barely go up
+alone, but here she also had to drag in tow Lichonin, who had grown extremely
+heavy. And his weight would not really have mattered; his wordiness, however,
+was beginning to irritate her little by little. So irritates at times the
+ceaseless, wearisome crying, like a toothache, of an infant at breast; the
+piercing whimpering of a canary; or someone whistling without pause and out of
+tune in an adjoining room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally, they reached Lichonin’s room. There was no key in the door. And, as a
+rule, it was never even locked with a key. Lichonin pushed the door and they
+entered. It was dark in the room, because the window curtains were lowered. It
+smelt of mice, kerosene, yesterday’s vegetable soup, long-.used bed linen,
+stale tobacco smoke. In the half-dusk some one who could not be seen was
+snoring deafeningly and with variations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin raised the shade. There were the usual furnishings of a poor student:
+a sagging, unmade bed with a crumpled blanket; a lame table, and on it a
+candlestick without a candle; several books on the floor and on the table;
+cigarette stubs everywhere; and opposite the bed, along the other wall, an old,
+old divan, upon which at the present moment was sleeping and snoring, with
+mouth wide open, some young man with black hair and moustache. The collar of
+his shirt was unbuttoned and through its opening could be seen the chest and
+black hair, the like of which for thickness and curliness could be found only
+on Persian lambs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nijeradze! Hey, Nijeradze, get up!” cried Lichonin and prodded the sleeper in
+the ribs. “Prince!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M-m-m...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“May your race be even accursed in the person of your ancestors and
+descendants! May they even be exiled from the heights of the beauteous
+Caucasus! May they even never behold the blessed Georgia! Get up, you skunk!
+Get up you Aravian dromedary! Kintoshka! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But suddenly, unexpectedly for Lichonin, Liubka intervened. She took him by the
+arm and said timidly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Darling, why torture him? Maybe he wants to sleep, maybe he’s tired? Let him
+sleep a bit. I’d better go home. Will you give me a half for a cabby? To-morrow
+you’ll come to me again. Isn’t that so, sweetie?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin was abashed. So strange did the intervention of this silent,
+apparently sleepy girl, appear to him. Of course, he did not grasp that she was
+actuated by an instinctive, unconscious pity for a man who had not had enough
+sleep; or, perhaps, a professional regard for the sleep of other people. But
+the astonishment was only momentary. For some reason he became offended. He
+raised the hand of the recumbent man, which hung down to the floor, with the
+extinguished cigarette still remaining between its fingers, and, shaking it
+hard, he said in a serious, almost severe voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Listen, now, Nijeradze, I’m asking you seriously. Understand, now, may the
+devil take you that I’m not alone, but with a woman. Swine!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as though a miracle had happened: the lying man suddenly jumped up, as
+though some spring of unusual force had instantaneously unwound under him. He
+sat down on the divan, rapidly rubbed with his palms his eyes, forehead,
+temples; saw the woman, became confused at once, and muttered, hastily
+buttoning his blouse:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is that you, Lichonin? And here I was waiting and waiting for you and fell
+asleep. Request the unknown comrade to turn away for just a minute.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hastily pulled on his gray, everyday student’s coat, and rumpled up with all
+the fingers of both his hands his luxuriant black curls. Liubka, with the
+coquetry natural to all women, no matter in what years or situation they find
+themselves, walked up to the sliver of a mirror hanging on the wall, to fix her
+hair-dress. Nijeradze askance, questioningly, only with the movement of his
+eyes, indicated her to Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never mind. Don’t pay any attention,” answered the other aloud. “But let’s get
+out of here, however. I’ll tell you everything right away. Excuse me,
+Liubochka, it’s only for a minute. I’ll come back at once, fix you up, and then
+evaporate, like smoke.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But don’t trouble yourself,” replied Liubka: “it’ll be all right for me here,
+right on this divan. And you fix yourself up on the bed.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, that’s no longer like a model, my angel! I have a colleague here. And so
+I’ll go to him to sleep. I’ll return in just a minute.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both students went out into the corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What meaneth this dream?” asked Nijeradze, opening wide his oriental, somewhat
+sheepish eyes. “Whence this beauteous child, this comrade in a petticoat?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin shook his head with great significance and made a wry face. Now, when
+the ride, the fresh air, the morning, and the business-like, everyday,
+accustomed setting had entirely sobered him, he was beginning to experience
+within his soul an indistinct feeling of a certain awkwardness, needlessness of
+this sudden action; and at the same time something in the nature of an
+unconscious irritation both against himself and the woman he had carried off.
+He already had a presentiment of the onerousness of living together, of a
+multiplicity of cares, unpleasantnesses and expenses; of the equivocal smiles
+or even simply the unceremonious questionings of comrades; finally, of the
+serious hindrance during the time of government examinations. But, having
+scarcely begun speaking with Nijeradze, he at once became ashamed of his
+pusillanimity, and having started off listlessly, towards the end he again
+began to prance on his heroic steed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you see, prince,” he said, in his confusion twisting a button of his
+comrade’s coat and without looking in his eyes, “you’ve made a mistake. This
+isn’t a comrade in a petticoat, but ... simply, I was just now with my
+colleagues ... that is, I wasn’t, but just dropped in for a minute with my
+friends into the Yamkas, to Anna Markovna ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“With whom?” asked Nijeradze, becoming animated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, isn’t it all the same to you, prince? There was Tolpygin, Ramses, a
+certain sub-professor—Yarchenko—Borya Sobashnikov, and others ... I don’t
+recall. We had been boat-riding the whole evening, then dived into a
+publican’s, and only after that, like swine, started for the Yamkas. I, you
+know, am a very abstemious man. I only sat and soaked up cognac, like a sponge,
+with a certain reporter I know. Well, all the others fell from grace however.
+And so, toward morning, for some reason or other, I went all to pieces. I got
+so sad and full of pity from looking at these unhappy women. I also thought,
+now, of how our sisters enjoy our regard, love, protection; how our mothers are
+surrounded with reverent adoration. Just let some one say one rude word to
+them, shove them, offend them; we are ready to chew his throat off! Isn’t that
+the truth?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“M-m? ...” drawled out the Georgian, half questioningly, half expectantly, and
+squinted his eyes to one side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, then I thought: why, now, any blackguard, any whippersnapper, any
+shattered ancient can take any one of these women to himself for a minute or
+for a night, as a momentary whim; and indifferently, one superfluous time
+more—the thousand and first—profane and defile in her that which is the most
+precious in a human being—love... Do you understand—revile, trample it
+underfoot, pay for the visit and walk away in peace, his hands in his pockets,
+whistling. But the most horrible of all is that all this has come to be a habit
+with them; it’s all one to her, and it’s all one to him. The feelings have
+dulled, the soul has dimmed. That’s so, isn’t it? And yet, in every one of them
+perishes both a splendid sister and a sainted mother. Eh? Isn’t that the
+truth?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“N-na? ....” mumbled Nijeradze and again shifted his eyes to one side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so I thought: wherefore words and superfluous exclamations! To the devil
+with hypocritical speeches during conventions. To the devil with abolition,
+regulation (suddenly, involuntarily, the recent words of the reporter came to
+his mind), Magdalene asylums and all these distributions of holy books in the
+establishments! Here, I’ll up and act as a really honest man, snatch a girl out
+of this slough, implant her in real firm soil, calm her, encourage her, treat
+her kindly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“H-hm!” grunted Nijeradze with a grin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh, prince! You always have salacious things on your mind. For you understand
+that I’m not talking about a woman, but about a human being; not about flesh,
+but about a soul.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right, all right, me soul, go on!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Futhermore, as I thought, so did I act. I took her to-day from Anna Markovna’s
+and brought her for the present to me. And later—whatever God may grant. I’ll
+teach her in the beginning to read, and write; then open up for her a little
+cook-shop, or a grocery store, let’s say. I think that the comrades won’t
+refuse to help me. The human heart, prince, my brother—every heart—is in need
+of cordiality, of warmth. And lo and behold! in a year, in two, I will return
+to society a good, industrious, worthy member, with a virgin soul, open to all
+sorts of great possibilities... For she has given only her body, while her soul
+is pure and innocent.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tse, tse, tse,” the prince smacked his tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What does this mean, you Tifflissian he-mule?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And will you buy her a sewing machine?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why a sewing machine, in particular? I don’t understand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s always that way in the novels, me soul. Just as soon as the hero has
+saved the poor, but lost, creature, he at once sets up a sewing machine for
+her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stop talking nonsense,” Lichonin waved him away angrily with his hand.
+“Clown!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Georgian suddenly grew heated, his black eyes began to sparkle, and
+immediately Caucasian intonations could be heard in his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, not nonsense, me soul. It’s one of two things here, and it’ll all end in
+one and the same result. Either you’ll get together with her and after five
+months chuck her out on the street; and she’ll return to the brothel or take to
+walking the street. That’s a fact! Or else you won’t get together with her, but
+will begin to load her up with manual or mental labours and will try to develop
+her ignorant, dark mind; and she from tedium will run away from you, and will
+again find herself either walking the street, or in a brothel. That’s a fact,
+too! However, there is still a third combination. You’ll be vexing yourself
+about her like a brother, like the knight Lancelot, but she, secretly from you,
+will fall in love with another. Me soul, believe me, that wooman, when she is a
+wooman, is always—a wooman. And the other will play a bit with her body, and
+after three months chuck her out into the street or into a brothel.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin sighed deeply. Somewhere deep—not in his mind, but in the hidden,
+almost unseizable secret recesses of his consciousness—something resembling the
+thought that Nijeradze was right flashed through him. But he quickly gained
+control of himself, shook his head, and, stretching out his hand to the prince,
+uttered triumphantly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I promise you, that after half a year you’ll take your words back, and as a
+mark of apology, you Erivanian billy goat, you Armavirian egg-plant, you’ll
+stand me to a dozen of Cakhetine wine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Va! That’s a go!” the prince struck Lichonin’s hand with his palm with all his
+might. “With pleasure. But if it comes out as I say—then you do it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then I do it. However, AU REVOIR, prince. Whom are you lodging with?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Right here, in this corridor, at Soloviev’s. But you, of course, like a
+mediaeval knight, will lay a two-edged sword between yourself and the beauteous
+Rosamond? Yes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nonsense! I did want to pass the night at Soloviev’s myself. But now I’ll go
+and wander about the streets a bit and turn in into somebody’s; to Zaitzevich
+or Strump. Farewell, prince!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait, wait!” Nijeradze called him, when he had gone a few steps. “I have
+forgotten to tell you the main thing: Partzan has tripped up!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So that’s how?” wondered Lichonin, and at once yawned long, deeply and with
+enjoyment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. But there’s nothing dreadful; only the possession of some illegal
+brochures and stuff. He won’t have to sit for more than a year.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s nothing; he’s a husky lad, he can stand it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He’s husky, all right” confirmed the prince.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Farewell!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“AU REVOIR, knight Grunwaldus!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“AU REVOIR, you Carbidinian stallion.”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0211"></a> CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin was left alone. In the half-dark corridor it smelt of kerosene fumes
+from the guttering little tin lamp, and of the odour of stagnant bad tobacco.
+The daylight dully penetrated only near the top, from two small glass frames,
+let in the roof at both ends of the corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin found himself in that simultaneously weakened and elevated mood which
+is so familiar to every man who has happened to be thoroughly sleepless for a
+long time. It was as though he had gone out of the limitations of everyday
+human life, and this life had become to him distant and of indifference; but at
+the same time his thoughts and emotions obtained a certain peaceful clarity and
+apathetic distinctness, and there was a tedious and languishing allurement in
+this crystal Nirvanah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood near his room, leaning against the wall, and seemed to see, feel, and
+hear how near him and below him were sleeping several score of people; sleeping
+with the last, fast morning sleep, with open mouths, with measured deep
+breathing, with a wilted pallor on their faces, glistening from sleep; and
+through his head flashed the thought, remote yet familiar since childhood, of
+how horrible sleeping people are—far more horrible than dead people. Then he
+remembered about Liubka. His subterranean, submerged, mysterious “I” rapidly,
+rapidly whispered that he ought to drop into the room, and see if the girl were
+all right, as well as make certain dispositions about tea in the morning; but
+he made believe to himself that he was not at all even thinking of this, and
+walked out into the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked, looking closely at everything that met his eyes, with an idle and
+exact curiosity new to him; and every feature was drawn for him in relief to
+such a degree that it seemed to him as though he were feeling it with his
+fingers... There a peasant woman passed by. Over her shoulder is a yoke staff,
+while at each end of the yoke is a large pail of milk; her face is not young,
+with a net of fine wrinkles on the temples and with two deep furrows from the
+nostrils to the corners of the mouth; but her cheeks are rosy, and, probably,
+hard to the touch, while her hazel eyes radiate a sprightly peasant smile. From
+the movement of the heavy yoke and from the smooth walk her hips sway
+rhythmically now to the left, now to the right, and in their wave-like
+movements there is a coarse, sensual beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A mischievous dame, and she’s lived through a checkered life,” reflected
+Lichonin. And suddenly, unexpectedly to himself, he had a feeling for, and
+irresistibly desired, this woman, altogether unknown to him, homely and not
+young; in all probability dirty and vulgar, but still resembling, as it seemed
+to him, a large Antonovka[17] apple which had fallen to the ground-somewhat
+bored by a worm, and which had lain just a wee bit too long, but which has
+still preserved its bright colour and its fragrant, winey aroma.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[17] Somewhat like a Spitzbergen, but a trifle rounder.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Getting ahead of her, an empty, black, funereal catafalque whirled by; with two
+horses in harness, and two tied behind to the little rear columns. The
+torch-bearers and grave-diggers, already drunk since morning, with red, brutish
+faces, with rusty opera hats on their heads, were sitting in a disorderly heap
+on their uniform liveries, on the reticular horse-blankets, on the mourning
+lanterns; and with rusty, hoarse voices were roaring out some incoherent song.
+“They must be hurrying to a funeral procession; or, perhaps, have even finished
+it already,” reflected Lichonin; “merry fellows!” On the boulevard he came to a
+stop and sat down on a small wooden bench, painted green. Two rows of mighty
+centenarian chestnuts went away into the distance, merging together somewhere
+afar into one straight green arrow. The prickly large nuts were already hanging
+on the trees. Lichonin suddenly recalled that at the very beginning of the
+spring he had been sitting on this very boulevard, and at this very same spot.
+Then it had been a calm, gentle evening of smoky purple, soundlessly falling
+into slumber, just like a smiling, tired maiden. Then the stalwart chestnuts,
+with their foliage—broad at the bottom and narrow toward the top—had been
+strewn all over with clusters of blossoms, growing with bright, rosy, thin
+cones straight to the sky; just as though some one by mistake had taken and
+fastened upon all the chestnuts, as upon lustres, pink Christmas-tree candles.
+And suddenly, with extraordinary poignancy—every man sooner or later passes
+through this zone of inner emotion—Lichonin felt, that here are the nuts
+ripening already, while then there had been little pink blossoming candles, and
+that there would be many more springs and many blossoms, but the one which had
+passed no one and nothing had the power to bring back. Sadly gazing into the
+depths of the retreating dense alley, he suddenly noticed that sentimental
+tears were making his eyes smart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got up and went on farther, looking closely at everything that he met with
+an incessant, sharpened, and at the same time calm attention, just as though he
+were looking at the God-created world for the first time. A gang of stone
+masons went past him on the pavement, and all of them were reflected in his
+inner vision with an exaggerated vividness and brilliance of colour, just as
+though on the frosted glass of a camera obscura. The foreman, with a red beard,
+matted to one side, and with blue austere eyes; and a tremendous young fellow,
+whose left eye was swollen, and who had a spot of a dark-blue colour spreading
+from the forehead to the cheekbone and from the nose to the temple; and a young
+boy with a naive, country face, with a gaping mouth like a fledgling’s, weak,
+moist; and an old man who, having come late, was running after the gang at a
+funny, goat-like trot; and their clothes, soiled with lime, their aprons and
+their chisels—all this flickered before him in an inanimate file—a colourful,
+motley, but dead cinematographic film.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had to cut across the New Kishenevsky Market. Suddenly the savoury, greasy
+odour of something roasted compelled him to distend his nostrils. Lichonin
+recalled that he had not eaten anything since noon yesterday, and at once felt
+hunger. He turned to the right, into the centre of the market.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the days of his starvings—and he had had to experience them more than
+once—he would come here to the market, and for the pitiful coppers, gotten with
+difficulty, would buy himself bread and fried sausage. This was in winter,
+oftenest of all. The huckstress, wrapped up in a multiplicity of clothes,
+usually sat upon a pot of coals for warmth; while before her, on the iron
+dripping-pan, hissed and crackled the thick, home-made sausage, cut into pieces
+a quarter of a yard in length, plentifully seasoned with garlic. A piece of
+sausage usually cost ten kopecks, the bread two kopecks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were very many folk at market to-day. Even at a distance, edging his way
+to the familiar, loved stall, Lichonin heard the sounds of music. Having made
+his way through the crowd, which in a solid ring surrounded one of the stalls,
+he saw a naive and endearing sight, which may be seen only in the blessed south
+of Russia. Ten or fifteen huckstresses, during ordinary times gossips of evil
+tongue and addicted to unrestrainable swearing, inexhaustible in its verbal
+diversity, but now, evidently, flattering and tender cronies, had started
+celebrating even since last evening; had caroused the whole night through and
+now had carried their noisy merrymaking out to the market. The hired
+musicians—two fiddles, a first and a second, and a tambourine—were strumming a
+monotonous but a lively, bold, daring and cunning tune. Some of the wives were
+clinking glasses and kissing each other, pouring vodka over one another; others
+poured it out into glasses and over the tables; others still, clapping their
+palms in time with the music, oh’d, squealed, and danced, squatting in one
+place. And in the middle of the ring, upon the cobbles of the pavement, a stout
+woman of about forty-five, but still handsome, with red, fleshy lips, with
+humid, intoxicated, seemingly unctuous eyes, merrily sparkling from under the
+high bows of black, regular, Little Russian eyebrows, was whirling around and
+stamping out a tattoo on one spot. All the beauty and all the art of her dance
+consisted in that she would now bow her little head and look out provokingly
+from under her eyebrows, then suddenly toss it back and let her eyelashes down
+and spread her hands out at her sides; and also in that in measure with the
+dance her enormous breasts swayed and quivered under her red calico waist.
+During the dance she was singing, now shuffling her heels, now the toes, of her
+goat-skin shoes:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“The fiddle’s playing on the street,<br/>
+You can hear its bass so sweet;<br/>
+My mother has me locked up neat,<br/>
+My waitin’ dearie I can’t meet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was the very country-wife whom Lichonin knew; the self-same who not only
+had had him for a client during hard times, but had even extended him credit.
+She suddenly recognized Lichonin, darted to him, embraced him, squeezed him to
+her bosom and kissed him straight on his lips with her moist, warm, thick lips.
+Then she spread her arms out wide, smote one palm against the other,
+intertwined her fingers, and sweetly, as only Podolian wives can do it, began
+to coo:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My little master, my little silver gold trove, my lovie! You forgive a drunken
+wife like me, now. Well, what of it? I’ve gone op a spree!” She then darted at
+him in an attempt to kiss his hand. “But then, I know you ain’t proud, like
+other gentry. Well, give me your hand, dearie-dear; why, I want to kiss your
+little hand! No, no, no! I athk, I athk you! ...” “Well, now, that’s nonsense,
+Aunt Glycera!” Linchonin interrupted her, unexpectedly becoming animated.
+“Let’s best kiss just so, now. Your lips are just too sweet!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, my little sweetheart! My little bright sun, my little apple of paradise,
+you,” Glycera waxed tender, “give me your lips, then! Give me your little lips
+to buss, then! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pressed him warmly to her gigantean bosom and again slavered over him with
+her moist, warm, Hottentot lips. After that, she seized him by his sleeve,
+brought him out into the middle of the ring, and began to walk around him with
+a stately, mincing step, having bent her waist coquettishly and vociferating:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Oh, each to his taste, I want Paraska more,<br/>
+For I’ve a divel in my pants<br/>
+Her skirt holds somethin’ for!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then suddenly she passed on, sustained by the musicians, to a most
+rollicking, Little Russian, thumping GOPAK dance:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Oh, Chook, that is too much,<br/>
+You have soiled your apron too much.<br/>
+Well, Prisko, don’t you fret,<br/>
+Wipe it off, then, if you’re wet!<br/>
+TRALALA, TRALALA ...
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Sleeps, Khima, and won’t stir<br/>
+That a Kossack sleeps with her,<br/>
+You feel all, Khima—why deceive?<br/>
+Just to yourself you make believe.<br/>
+TAI, TAI, TRALALAI...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin, completely grown merry, suddenly began jumping like a goat about her,
+just like a satellite around a whirling planet—long-legged, long-armed,
+stooping and altogether incongruous. His entrance was greeted by a general but
+pretty friendly neighing. He was made to sit down at the table, was helped to
+vodka and sausage. He, for his part, sent a tramp he knew after beer, and,
+glass in hand, delivered three absurd speeches: one about the
+self-determination of Ukraine; another about the goodness of Little Russian
+sausage, in connection with the beauty and domesticity of the women of Little
+Russia; and the third, for some reason, about trade and industry in the south
+of Russia. Sitting alongside of Lukeriya, he was all the time trying to embrace
+her around the waist, and she did not oppose this. But even his long arms could
+not encompass her amazing waist. However, she clasped his hand powerfully under
+the table, until it hurt, with her enormous, soft hand, as hot as fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment among the huckstresses, who up to now had been tenderly kissing,
+certain old, unsettled quarrels and grievances flickered up. Two of the wives,
+bending toward each other just like roosters ready to enter battle, their arms
+akimbo, were pouring upon each other the most choice, out-of-the-way oaths:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fool, stiff, daughter of a dog!” one was yelling. “Youse ain’t fit to kiss me
+right here.” And, turning her back around to her foe, she loudly slapped
+herself below the spine. “Right here! Here!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the other, infuriated, squealed in answer:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You lie, you slut, for I am fit, I am fit!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin utilized the minute. As though he had just recalled something, he
+hurriedly jumped up from the bench and called out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait for me, Aunty Luckeriya, I’ll come in three minutes!” and dived through
+the living ring of spectators.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Master! Master!” his neighbour cried after him: “Come back the quickest you
+can, now! I’ve one little word to say to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having turned the corner, he for some time racked his head trying to recall
+what it was that he absolutely had to do, now, this very minute. And again, in
+the very depths of his soul, he knew just what he had to do, but he
+procrastinated confessing this to his own self. It was already a clear, bright
+day, about nine or ten o’clock. Janitors were watering the streets with rubber
+hose. Flower girls were sitting on the squares and near the gates of the
+boulevards, with roses, stock-gillyflowers and narcissi. The radiant, gay, rich
+southern town was beginning to get animated. Over the pavement jolted an iron
+cage filled with dogs of every possible colour, breed, and age. On the coach
+box were sitting two dog-catchers, or, as they deferentially style themselves,
+“the king’s dog-catchers”—i. e., hunters of stray dogs—returning home with this
+morning’s catch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She must be awake by now,” Lichonin’s secret thought finally took form; “but
+if she isn’t yet awake, then I’ll quietly lie down on the divan and sleep a
+little.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the corridor the dying kerosene lamp emitted a dim light and smoked as
+before, and the watery, murky half-light penetrated into the narrow, long box.
+The door of the room had remained unlocked, after all. Lichonin opened it
+without a sound and entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The faint, blue half-light poured in through the interstices between the blinds
+and the windows. Lichonin stopped in the middle of the room and with an
+intensified avidity heard the quiet, sleeping breathing of Liubka. His lips
+became so hot and dry that he had to lick them incessantly. His knees began to
+tremble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ask if she needs anything,” suddenly darted through his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like a drunkard, breathing hard, with mouth open, staggering on his shaking
+legs, he walked up to the bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka was sleeping on her back, with one bare arm stretched out along the
+body, and the other on her breast. Lichonin bent nearer, to her very face. She
+was breathing evenly and deeply. This breathing of her young, healthy body was,
+despite sleep, pure and almost aromatic. He cautiously ran his fingers over her
+bare arm and stroked her breast a little below the clavicle. “What am I doing?”
+his reason suddenly cried out within him in terror; but some one else answered
+for Lichonin: “But I’m not doing anything. I only want to ask if she’s sleeping
+comfortably, and whether she doesn’t want some tea.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Liubka suddenly awoke, opened her eyes, blinked them for a moment and
+opened them again. She gave a long, long stretch, and with a kindly, not yet
+fully reasoning smile, encircled Lichonin’s neck with her warm, strong arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sweetie! Darling!” caressingly uttered the woman in a crooning voice, somewhat
+hoarse from sleep. “Why, I was waiting for you and waiting, and even became
+angry. And after that I fell asleep and all night long saw you in my sleep.
+Come to me, my baby, my lil’ precious!” She drew him to her, breast against
+breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin almost did not resist; he was all atremble, as from a chill, and
+meaninglessly repeating in a galloping whisper with chattering teeth:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, now, Liuba, don’t ... Really, don’t do that, Liuba ... Ah, let’s drop
+this, Liuba ... Don’t torture me. I won’t vouch for myself ... Let me alone,
+now, Liuba, for God’s sake! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My-y little silly!” she exclaimed in a laughing, joyous voice. “Come to me, my
+joy!”—and, overcoming the last, altogether insignificant opposition, she
+pressed his mouth to hers and kissed him hard and warmly—kissed him sincerely,
+perhaps for the first and last time in her life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, you scoundrel! What am I doing?” declaimed some honest, prudent, and false
+body in Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now? Are you eased up a bit?” asked Liubka kindly, kissing Lichonin’s
+lips for the last time. “Oh, you, my little student! ...”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0212"></a> CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+
+<p>
+With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and Liubka, and, it
+would seem, toward all the world, Lichonin without undressing flung himself
+upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even gnashed his teeth from the
+smarting shame. Sleep would not come to him, while his thoughts revolved around
+this fool action—as he himself called the carrying off of Liubka,—in which an
+atrocious vaudeville had been so disgustingly intertwined with a deep drama.
+“It’s all one,” he stubbornly repeated to himself. “Once I have given my
+promise, I’ll see the business through to the end. And, of course, that which
+has occurred just now will never, never be repeated! My God, who hasn’t fallen,
+giving in to a momentary laxity of the nerves? Some philosopher or other has
+expressed a deep, remarkable truth, when he affirmed that the value of the
+human soul may be known by the depth of its fall and the height of its flight.
+But still, the devil take the whole of this idiotical day and that equivocal
+reasoner—the reporter Platonov, and his own—Lichonin’s—absurd outburst of
+chivalry! Just as though, in reality, this had not taken place in real life,
+but in Chernishevski’s novel, What’s to be done? And how, devil take it, with
+what eyes will I look upon her tomorrow?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His head was on fire; his eyelids were smarting, his lips dry. He was nervously
+smoking a cigarette and frequently got up from the divan to take the decanter
+of water off the table, and avidly, straight from its mouth, drink several big
+draughts. Then, by some accidental effort of the will, he succeeded in tearing
+his thoughts away from the past night, and at once a heavy sleep, without any
+visions and images, enveloped him as though in black cotton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He awoke long past noon, at two or three o’clock; at first could not come to
+himself for a long while; smacked his lips and looked around the room with
+glazed, heavy eyes. All that had happened during the night seemed to have flown
+out of his memory. But when he saw Liubka, who was quietly and motionlessly
+sitting on the bed, with head lowered and hands crossed on her knees, he began
+to groan and grunt from vexation and confusion. Now he recalled everything. And
+at that minute he experienced in his own person how heavy it is to see in the
+morning, with one’s own eyes, the results of folly committed the night before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you awake, sweetie?” asked Liubka kindly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She got up from the bed, walked up to the divan, sat down at Lichonin’s feet,
+and cautiously patted his blanket-covered leg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, I woke up long ago and was sitting all the while; I was afraid to wake
+you up. You were sleeping so very soundly!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stretched toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Lichonin made a wry face
+and gently pushed her away from him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait, Liubochka! Wait; that’s not necessary. Do you understand—absolutely,
+never necessary. That which took place yesterday—well, that’s an accident. My
+weakness, let’s say. Even more, a momentary baseness, perhaps. But, by God,
+believe me, I didn’t at all want to make a mistress out of you. I want to see
+you my friend, my sister, my comrade ... Well, that’s nothing, then; everything
+will adjust itself, grow customary. Only one mustn’t fall in spirit. And in the
+meanwhile, my dear, go to the window and look out of it a bit; I just want to
+put myself in order.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka slightly pouted her lips and walked off to the window, turning her back
+on Lichonin. All these words about friendship, brotherhood and comradeship she
+could not understand with her brain of a hen and her simple peasant soul. That
+a student—after all, not just anybody, but an educated man, who could learn to
+be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a judge—had taken her for maintenance flattered
+her imagination far more ... And here, now, it turned out that he had just
+fulfilled his caprice, had gotten what he wanted, and was now trying to back
+out. They are all like that, the men!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin hastily got up, splashed a few handfuls of water in his face, and
+dried himself with an old napkin. Then he raised the blinds and threw open both
+window shutters. The golden sunlight, the azure sky, the rumble of the city,
+the foliage of the thick linden trees and the chestnuts, the bells of the horse
+trams, the dry smell of the hot, dusty street—all this at once burst into the
+tiny garret room. Lichonin walked up to Liubka and amicably patted her on the
+shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never mind, my joy ... What’s done can’t be undone, but it’s a lesson for the
+future. You haven’t yet asked tea for yourself, Liubochka?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I was waiting for you all the while. Besides, I didn’t know who to ask.
+And you’re all right, too. Why, I heard you, after you went off with your
+friend, come back and stand a while near the door. But you never even said
+good-bye to me. Is that right?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The first family quarrel,” thought Lichonin, but thought it without malice, in
+jest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wash-up, the beauty of the gold and blue southern sky, and the naive,
+partly submissive, partly displeased face of Liubka, as well as the
+consciousness that after all he was a man, and that he and not she had to
+answer for the porridge he had cooked—all this together braced up his nerves
+and compelled him to take himself in hand. He opened the door and roared into
+the darkness of the stinking corridor:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Al-lexa-andra! A samova-ar! Two lo-oaves, bu-utter, and sausage! And a small
+bottle of vo-odka!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The patter of slippers was heard in the corridor, and an aged voice, even from
+afar, began to speak thickly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What are you bawling for? What are you bawling for, eh? Ho, ho, ho! Like a
+stallion in a stall. You ain’t little, to look at you; you’re grown up already,
+yet you carry on like a street boy! Well, what do you want?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Into the room walked a little old woman, with red-lidded eyes, like little
+narrow cracks, and with a face amazingly like parchment, upon which a long,
+sharp nose stuck downward, morosely and ominously. This was Alexandra, the
+servant of old of the student bird-houses; the friend and creditor of all the
+students; a woman of sixty-five, argumentative, and a grumbler.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin repeated his order to her and gave her a rouble note. But the old
+woman would not go away; shuffled in one place, snorted, chewed with her lips
+and looked inimically at the girl sitting—with her back to the light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s the matter with you now, Alexandra, that you seem ossified?” asked
+Lichonin, laughing. “Or are you lost in admiration? Well, then, know: this is
+my cousin, my first cousin, that is—Liubov...”[18] he was confused for only a
+second, but immediately fired away: “Liubov Vasilievna, but for me—simply
+Liubochka. I’ve known her when she was only that high,” he showed a quarter of
+a yard off the table. “And I pulled her ears and slapped her for her caprices
+over the place where the legs grow from. And then ... I caught all sorts of
+bugs for her ... But, however ... However, you go on, go on, you Egyptian
+mummy, you fragment of former ages! Let one leg be here and the other there!”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[18] Love.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the old woman lingered. Stamping all around herself, she barely, barely
+turned to the door and kept a keen, spiteful, sidelong glance on Liubka. And at
+the same time she muttered with her sunken mouth:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“First cousin! We know these first cousins! There’s lots of them walking around
+Kashtanovaya Street. There, these he-dogs can never get enough!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, you old barque! Lively and don’t growl!” Lichonin shouted after her. “Or
+else, like your friend, the student Triassov, I’ll take and lock you up in the
+dressing room for twenty-four hours!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alexandra went away, and for a long time her aged, flapping steps and
+indistinct muttering could be heard in the corridor. She was inclined, in her
+austere, grumbling kindliness, to forgive a great deal to the studying youths,
+whom she had served for nigh unto forty years. She forgave drunkenness, card
+playing, scandals, loud singing, debts; but, alas! she was a virgin, and there
+was only one thing her continent soul could not abide—libertinage.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0213"></a> CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+<p>
+“And that’s splendid ... And fine and charming,” Lichonin was saying, bustling
+about the lame table and without need shifting the tea things from one place to
+another. “For a long time, like an old crocodile, I haven’t drunk tea as it
+should be drunk, in a Christian manner, in a domestic setting. Sit down, Liuba,
+sit down, my dear, right here on the divan, and keep house. Vodka, in all
+probability, you don’t drink of a morning, but I, with your permission, will
+drink some ... This braces up the nerves right off. Make mine a little
+stronger, please, with a piece of lemon. Ah, what can taste better than a glass
+of hot tea, poured out by charming feminine hands?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka listened to his chatter, a trifle too noisy to seem fully natural; and
+her smile, in the beginning mistrusting, wary, was softening and brightening.
+But she did not get on with the tea especially well. At home, in the backwoods
+village, where this beverage was still held a rarity, the dainty luxury of
+well-to-do families, to be brewed only for honored guests and on great
+holidays—there over the pouring of the tea officiated the eldest man of the
+family. Later, when Liubka served with “all found” in the little provincial
+capital city, in the beginning at a priest’s, and later with an insurance agent
+(who had been the first to put her on the road of prostitution)—she was usually
+left some strained, tepid tea, which had already been drunk off, with a bit of
+gnawn sugar, by the mistress herself—the thin, jaundiced, malicious wife of the
+priest; or the wife of the agent, a fat, old, wrinkled, malignant, greasy,
+jealous and stingy common woman. Therefore, the simple business of preparing
+the tea was now as difficult for her as it is difficult for all of us in
+childhood to distinguish the left hand from the right, or to tie a rope in a
+small noose. The bustling Lichonin only hindered her and threw her into
+confusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear, the art of brewing tea is a great art. It ought to be studied at
+Moscow. At first a dry teapot is slightly warmed up. Then the tea is put into
+it and is quickly scalded with boiling water. The first liquid must at once be
+poured off into the slop-bowl—the tea thus becomes purer and more aromatic; and
+by the way, it’s also known that Chinamen are pagans and prepare their herb
+very filthily. After that the tea-pot must be filled anew, up to a quarter of
+its volume; left on the tray, covered over with a towel and kept so for three
+and a half minutes. Afterwards pour in more boiling water almost up to the top,
+cover it again, let it stay just a bit, and you have ready, my dear, a divine
+beverage; fragrant, refreshing, and strengthening.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The homely, but pleasant-looking face of Liubka, all spotted from freckles,
+like a cuckoo’s egg, lengthened and paled a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, for God’s sake, don’t you be angry at me ... You’re called Vassil
+Vassilich, isn’t that so? Don’t get angry, darling Vassil Vassilich. Really,
+now, I’ll learn fast, I’m quick. And why do you say you and you[19] to me all
+the time? It seems that we aren’t strangers now?”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[19] In contradistinction to “thou,” as used to familiars and inferiors in
+Russia.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him kindly. And truly, she had this morning, for the first time
+in all her brief but distorted life, given her body to a man—even though
+without enjoyment but more out of gratitude and pity, yet voluntarily—not for
+money, not under compulsion, not under threat of dismissal and scandal. And her
+feminine heart, always unwithering, always drawn to love, like a sunflower to
+the sun, was at this moment pure and inclined to tenderness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Lichonin suddenly felt a prickling, shameful awkwardness and something
+inimical toward this woman, yesterday unknown to him, now—his chance mistress.
+“The charms of the family hearth have begun,” he thought involuntarily; still,
+he got up from his chair, walked up to Liubka, and having taken her by the
+hand, drew her to him and patted her on the head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear, my darling sister,” he said touchingly and falsely; “that which has
+happened to-day must never more be repeated. In everything only I alone am
+guilty, and, if you desire, I am ready to beg forgiveness of you on my knees.
+Understand—oh, understand, that all this came about against my will, somehow
+elementally, suddenly, unexpectedly. And I myself didn’t think that it would be
+like that! You understand, for a very long time ... I have not known woman
+intimately ... A repulsive, unbridled beast awoke within me ... and ... But,
+Lord, is my fault so great, then? Holy people, anchorites, recluses, ascetics,
+stylites, hermits in deserts, are no match for me in fortitude of spirit—yet
+even they fell in the struggle with the temptation of the diabolical flesh. But
+then, I swear by whatever you wish, that this won’t be repeated any more ...
+Isn’t that so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka was stubbornly trying to pull his hand away from hers. Her lips had
+become a little stuck out and the lowered lids began to wink frequently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ye-es,” she drawled, like a child that stubbornly refuses to “make up.” “Well,
+I can see that I don’t please you. Well, then, you’d best tell me so straight
+and give me a little for a cab, and some more, now; as much as you want ... The
+money for the night is paid anyway, and I only have to ride up to ... there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin seized his hair, flung himself about the room and began to declaim:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, not that, not that, not that! Just understand me, Liuba! To go on with
+that which happened in the morning—that’s ... that’s swinishness, bestiality,
+and unworthy of a man who respects himself. Love! Love—this is a full blending
+of minds, thoughts, souls, interests, and not of the bodies alone. Love is a
+tremendous, great emotion, mighty as the universe, and not the sprawling in
+bed. There’s no such love between us, Liubochka. If it’ll come, it will be
+wonderful happiness both for you and for me. But in the meantime—I’m your
+friend, your faithful comrade, on the path of life. And that’s enough, and that
+will do ... And though I’m no stranger to human frailties, still, I count
+myself an honest man.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka seemed to wilt. “He thinks I want him to marry me. And I absolutely
+don’t need that,” she thought sadly. “It’s possible to live just so. There are
+others, now, living on maintenance. And, they say, far better than if they had
+twirled around an altar. What’s so bad about that? Peaceful, quiet, genteel ...
+I’d darn socks for him, wash floors, cook ... the plainer dishes. Of course,
+he’ll be in line to get married to a rich girl some time. Well, now, to be
+sure, he wouldn’t throw me out in the street just so, mother-naked. Although
+he’s a little simpleton, and chatters a lot, still it’s easy to tell he’s a
+decent man. He’ll provide for me with something, somehow. And, perhaps, he’ll
+get to like me, will get used to me? I’m a simple girl, modest, and would never
+consent to be false to him. For, they say, things do fall out that way ... Only
+I mustn’t let him see anything. But that he’ll come again into my bed, and will
+come this very night—that’s as sure as God is holy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Lichonin also fell into thought, grew quiet and sad; he was already feeling
+the weight of a great deed which he had undertaken beyond his powers. That was
+why he was even glad when some one knocked on the door, and to his answer,
+“Come in!”, two students entered: Soloviev, and Nijeradze, who had slept that
+night at his place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soloviev, well-grown and already obese, with a broad, ruddy Volga face and a
+light, scandent little beard, belonged to those kindly, merry and simple
+fellows, of which there are sufficiently many in any university. He divided his
+leisure—and of leisure he had twenty-four hours in the day—between the
+beer-shop and rambling over the boulevards; among billiards, whist, the
+theatre, reading of newspapers and novels, and the spectacles of circus
+wrestling; while the short intervals in between he used for eating, sleeping,
+the home repair of his wardrobe, with the aid of thread, cardboard, pins and
+ink; and for succinct, most realistic love with the chance woman from the
+kitchen, the anteroom or the street. Like all the youths of his circle, he
+deemed himself a revolutionary, although he was oppressed by political
+disputes, dissensions, and mutual reproaches; and not being able to stand the
+reading of revolutionary brochures and journals, was almost a complete
+ignoramus in the work For that reason he had not attained even the very least
+party initiation; although at times there were given him instructions of a
+sort, not at all of a safe nature, the meaning of which was not made clear to
+him. And not in vain was his steadfast faithfulness relied upon; he carried out
+everything rapidly, exactly,—with a courageous faith in the universal
+importance of the work; with a care-free smile and with a broad contempt of
+possible destruction. He concealed outlawed comrades, guarded forbidden
+literature and printing types, transmitted passports and money. He had a great
+deal of physical strength, black-loam amiability and elemental
+simple-heartedness. Not infrequently he would receive from home, somewheres in
+the depth of the Simbirskaya or Ufimskaya province, sums of money sufficiently
+large for a student; but in two days he scattered and dispersed it everywhere,
+with the carelessness of a French grandee of the seventeenth century, while he
+himself remained during winter in only his everyday coat, with boots restored
+by his own devices.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beside all these naive, touching, laughable, lofty and shiftless qualities of
+the old Russian student, passing—and God knows if for the better?—into the
+realm of historical memories, he possessed still another amazing ability—to
+invent money and arrange for credit in little restaurants and cook-shops. All
+the employees of pawnshops and loan offices, secret and manifest usurers, and
+old-clo’-men were on terms of the closest friendship with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But if for certain reasons he could not resort to them, then even here Soloviev
+remained at the height of his resourcefulness. At the head of a knot of
+impoverished friends, and weighed down with his usual business responsibility,
+he would at times be illumined by an inner inspiration; make at a distance,
+across the street, a mysterious sign to a Tartar passing with his bundle behind
+his shoulders, and for a few seconds would disappear with him into the nearest
+gates. He would quickly return without his everyday coat, only in his blouse
+with the skirts outside, belted with a thin cord; or, in winter, without his
+overcoat, in the thinnest of small suits; or instead of the new, just purchased
+uniform cap—in a tiny jockey cap, holding by a miracle on the crown of his
+head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everybody loved him: comrades, servants, women, children. And all were familiar
+with him. He enjoyed especial good-will from his bosom cronies, the Tartars,
+who, apparently, deemed him a little innocent. They would sometimes, in the
+summer, bring as a present the strong, intoxicating KOUMYSS in big quartern
+bottles, while at Bairam they would invite him to eat a suckling colt with
+them. No matter how improbable it may seem, still, Soloviev at critical moments
+gave away for safe-keeping certain books and brochures to the Tartars. He would
+say at this with the most simple and significant air: “That which I am giving
+you is a Great Book. It telleth, that Allah Akbar, and that Mahomet is his
+prophet, that there is much evil and poverty on earth, and that men must be
+merciful and just to each other.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He also had two other abilities: he read aloud very well; and played at chess
+amazingly, like a master, like a downright genius, defeating first-class
+players in jest. His attack was always impetuous and rigorous; his defense wise
+and cautious, preferably in an oblique direction; his concessions to his
+opponent full of refined, far-sighted calculation and murderous craftiness.
+With this, he made moves as though under the influence of some inner instinct,
+or inspiration; not pondering for more than four or five seconds and resolutely
+despising the respected traditions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not willingly played with; his manner of play was held barbarous, but
+still they played, sometimes for large sums of money; which, invariably
+winning, Soloviev readily laid down upon the altar of his comrades’ needs. But
+he steadfastly declined from participation in competitions, which could have
+created for him the position of a star in the world of chess: “There is in my
+nature neither love for this nonsense, nor respect,” he would say. “I simply
+possess some sort of a mechanical ability of the mind, some sort of a psychic
+deformity. Well, now, just as there are lefties. And for that reason I’ve no
+professional self-respect, nor pride at victory, nor spleen at losing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was the generously built student Soloviev. And Nijeradze filled the post
+of his closest comrade; which did not hinder them both, however, from jeering
+at each other, disputing, and swearing, from morning till night. God knows,
+wherewithal and how the Georgian prince existed. He said of himself, that he
+possessed the ability of a camel, of nourishing himself for the future, for
+several weeks ahead; and then eating nothing for a month. From home, from his
+blessed Georgia, he received very little; and then, for the most part, in
+victuals. At Christmas, at Easter, or on his birthday (in August) he was
+sent—and inevitably through arriving fellow-countrymen—whole cargoes of hampers
+with mutton, grapes, goat-flesh, sausages, dried hawthorn berries, RAKHAT
+LOUKOUM, egg-plants, and very tasty cookies; as well as leathern bottles of
+excellent home-made wine, strong and aromatic, but giving off just the least
+bit of sheep-skin. Then the prince would summon together to one of his comrades
+(he never had quarters of his own) all his near friends and fellow-countrymen;
+and arranged such a magnificent festival—TOI in Caucasian—that at it were
+extirpated to the last shreds the gifts of fertile Georgia. Georgian songs were
+sung, the first place, of course, being given to MRAVOL-DJAMIEM and EVERY GUEST
+IS SENT DOWN TO US FROM HEAVEN BY GOD, NO MATTER OF WHAT COUNTRY HE BE; the
+LEZGINKA was danced without tiring, with table knives brandished wildly in the
+air; and the TULUMBASH (or, perhaps, he is called TOMADA?) spoke his
+improvisations; for the greater part Nijeradze himself spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a great hand at talking and could, when he warmed up, pronounce about
+three hundred words a minute. His style was distinguished for mettle, pomp, and
+imagery; and his Caucasian accent with characteristic lisping and throaty
+sounds, resembling now the hawking of a woodcock, now the clucking of an eagle,
+not only did not hinder his discourse, but somehow even strangely adorned it.
+And no matter of what he spoke, he always led up the monologue to the most
+beautiful, most fertile, the very foremost, most chivalrous, and at the same
+time the most injured country—Georgia. And invariably he cited lines from THE
+PANTHER’S SKIN of the Georgian poet Rustavelli; with assurances, that this poem
+was a thousand times above all of Shakespeare, multiplied by Homer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even though he was hot-headed, he was not spiteful; and in his demeanour
+femininely soft, gentle, engaging, without losing his native pride ... One
+thing only did his comrades dislike in him—some exaggerated, exotic love of
+women. He was unshakably, unto sacredness or folly, convinced that he was
+irresistibly splendid of person; that all men envied him, all women were in
+love with him, while husbands were jealous ... This self-conceited, obtrusive
+dangling after women did not forsake him for a minute, probably not even in his
+sleep. Walking along the street he would every minute nudge Lichonin, Soloviev
+or some other companion with his elbow, and would say, smacking his lips and
+jerking his head backward at a woman who had passed by: “TSE, TSE, TSE...
+VAI-VAI! A ree-markable wooman! What a look she gave me. If I wish it, she’ll
+be mine! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This funny shortcoming about him was known; this trait of his was ridiculed
+good-naturedly and unceremoniously, but willingly forgiven for the sake of that
+independent comradely obligingness and faithfulness to his word, given to a man
+(oaths to women did not count), of which he was so naturally possessed.
+However, it must be said that he did in reality enjoy great success with women.
+Sempstresses, modistes, chorus girls, girls in candy stores, and telephone
+girls melted from the intense gaze of his heavy, soft, and languishing
+dark-blue eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Un-to this house and all those righteously, peacefully and without sin
+inhabiting it ...” Soloviev started in to vociferate like an arch-deacon and
+suddenly missed fire. “Father-prelates,” he began to murmur in astonishment,
+trying to continue the unsuccessful jest. “Why, but this is ... This is ... ah,
+the devil ... this is Sonya, no, my mistake, Nadya ... Well, yes! Liubka from
+Anna Markovna’s ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka blushed hotly, to the verge of tears, and covered her face with her
+palms. Lichonin noticed this, understood, sensed the thoroughly agitated soul
+of the girl, and came to her aid. He sternly, almost rudely, stopped Soloviev.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perfectly correct, Soloviev. As in a directory. Liubka from the Yamkas.
+Formerly a prostitute. Even more, still yesterday a prostitute. But from
+to-day—my friend, my sister. And so let everyone, who respects me to any
+extent, regard her. Otherwise...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ponderous Soloviev hurriedly, sincerely, and powerfully embraced and
+rumpled Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, dear fellow, well, that’s enough ... I committed a stupidity in the
+flurry. It won’t be repeated any more. Hail, my pale-faced sister.” He extended
+his hand with a broad sweep across the table to Liubka, and squeezed her
+listless, small and short fingers with gnawed, tiny nails. “It’s fine—your
+coming into our modest wigwam. This will refresh us and implant in our midst
+quiet and decent customs. Alexandra! Be-er!” he began to call loudly. “We’ve
+grown wild, coarse; have become mired in foul speech, drunkenness, laziness and
+other vices. And all because we were deprived of the salutary, pacifying
+influence of feminine society. Once again I press your hand. Your charming,
+little hand. Beer!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Coming,” the displeased voice of Alexandra could be heard on the other side of
+the door. “I’m coming. What you yelling for? How much do you want?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soloviev went out into the corridor to explain. Lichonin smiled after him
+gratefully; while the Georgian on his way slapped him benignly on the back,
+between his shoulder blades. Both understood and appreciated the belated,
+somewhat coarse delicacy of Soloviev.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now,” said Soloviev, coming back into the room and sitting down cautiously
+upon an ancient chair, “now let’s come to the order of the day. Can I be of
+service to you in any way? If you’ll give me half an hour’s time, I’ll run down
+to the coffee house for a minute and lick the guts out of the very best chess
+player there. In a word—I’m at your disposal!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What a funny fellow you are!” said Liubka, ill at ease and laughing. She did
+not understand the jocose and unusual style of speech of the student, but
+something drew her simple heart to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, that’s not at all necessary,” Lichonin put in. “I am as yet beastly
+rich. I think we’ll all go together to some little tavern somewhere. I must
+have your advice about some things. After all, you’re the people closest to me;
+and of course not as stupid and inexperienced as you seem at first glance.
+After that, I’ll go and try to arrange about her ... about Liuba’s passport.
+You wait for me. That won’t take long ... In a word, you understand what this
+whole business consists of, and won’t be lavish of any superfluous jokes.
+I,”—his voice quivered sentimentally and falsely—“I desire that you take upon
+yourselves a part of my care. Is that a go?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“VA! It’s a go!” exclaimed the prince (it sounded like “idiot,” when he said
+it[20]), and for some reason looked significantly at Liubka and twirled his
+moustache. Lichonin gave him a sidelong look. As for Soloviev, he said
+simple-heartedly:
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[20] The Russian phrase is “Eedet!”—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s the way. You’ve begun something big and splendid, Lichonin. The prince
+told me about it during the night. Well, what of it, that’s what youth is
+for—to commit sacred follies. Give me the bottle, Alexandra, I’ll open it
+myself, or else you’ll rupture yourself and burst a vein. To a new life,
+Liubochka, pardon me ... Liubov ... Liubov ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nikonovna. But call me just as it comes ... Liuba.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, yes, Liuba. Prince, ALLAHVERDI!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“YAKSHI-OL,” answered Nijeradze and clinked his glass of beer with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I’ll also say, that I rejoice over you, friend Lichonin,” continued
+Soloviev, setting down his glass and licking his moustache. “Rejoice, and bow
+before you. It’s precisely you, only, who are capable of such a genuinely
+Russian heroism, expressed simply, modestly, without superfluous words.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Drop it ... Well, where’s the heroism?” Lichonin made a wry face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s true, too,” confirmed Nijeradze. “You’re reproaching me all the time
+that I chatter a lot, but see what nonsense you’re spouting yourself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That makes no difference!” retorted Soloviev. “It may be even grandiloquent,
+but still that makes no difference! As an elder of our garret commune, I
+declare Liuba an honourable member with full rights!” He got up, made a
+sweeping gesture with his hand, and uttered with pathos:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“And into our house, free and fearless,<br/>
+Its charming mistress walk thou in!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin recalled vividly, that to-day at dawn he had spoken the very same
+phrase, like an actor; and even blinked his eyes from shame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s enough of tom-foolery. Let’s go, gentlemen. Dress yourself, Liuba.”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0214"></a> CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+
+<p>
+It was not far to The Sparrows restaurant; some two hundred steps. On the way
+Liuba, unnoticed, took Lichonin by the sleeve and pulled him toward her. In
+this wise they lagged a few steps behind Soloviev and Nijeradze, who were
+walking ahead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then you mean it seriously, my darling Vassil Vassilich?” she asked, looking
+up at him with her kindly, dark eyes. “You’re not playing a joke on me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What jokes can there be here, Liubochka! I’d be the lowest of men if I
+permitted myself such jokes. I repeat, that to you I am more than a friend,
+brother, comrade. And let’s not talk about it any more. And that which happened
+to-day toward morning, that, you may be sure, won’t be repeated. And I’ll rent
+a separate room for you this very day.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka sighed. Not that she was offended by the chaste resolution of Lichonin,
+in which, to tell the truth, she believed but badly; but somehow her dark,
+narrow mind could not even theoretically picture any other attitude of a man
+toward a woman than the sensual. Besides that, she experienced the ancient
+discontent of a preferred or rejected female; a feeling strongly intrenched in
+the house of Anna Markovna, in the form of boastful rivalry, but now dulled;
+yet still angry and sincere. And for some reason she believed Lichonin but
+illy, unconsciously seizing much of the assumed, not altogether sincere, in his
+words. Soloviev, now—although he did speak incomprehensively, like the rest of
+the majority of the students known to her, when they joked among themselves or
+with the young ladies in the general room (by themselves, in the room, all the
+men without an exception—all as one—said and did one and the same thing)—she
+would rather believe Soloviev, far more readily and willingly. A certain
+simplicity shone in his merry, sparkling gray eyes, placed widely apart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At THE SPARROWS Lichonin was esteemed for his sedateness, kind disposition, and
+accuracy in money matters. Because of that he was at once assigned a little
+private room—an honour of which but very few students could boast. The gas
+burned all day in this room, because light penetrated only through the narrow
+bottom of a window, cut short by the ceiling. Only the boots, shoes, umbrellas
+and canes of the people walking by on the sidewalk could be seen through this
+window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had to let still another student, Simanovsky (whom they ran against near
+the coat room), join the party. “What does he mean, by leading me around as
+though for a show?” thought Liubka: “it looks like he’s showing off before
+them.” And, snatching a free moment, she whispered to Lichonin, who had bent
+over her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why are there so many people, dearie? For I’m so bashful. I can’t hold my
+own in company.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s nothing, that’s nothing, my dear Liubochka,” Lichonin whispered
+rapidly, tarrying at the door of the cabinet. “That’s nothing, my sister; these
+are all fine people, good comrades. They’ll help you, help us both. Don’t mind
+their having fun at times and their silly lying. But their hearts are of gold.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But it’s so very awkward for me; I’m ashamed. All of them already know where
+you took me from.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, that’s nothing, that’s nothing! Why, let ’em know!” warmly contradicted
+Lichonin. “Why be embarrassed with your past, why try to pass it by in silence?
+In a year you’ll look bravely and directly in the eyes of every man and you’ll
+say: ‘He who has never fallen, has never gotten up.’ Come on, come on,
+Liubochka!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the inelaborate appetizers were being served, and each one was ordering
+the meal, everybody, save Simanovsky, felt ill at ease and somehow constrained.
+And Simanovsky himself was partly the reason for this; he was a clean-shaven
+man, with pince-nez and long hair, with head proudly thrown back and with a
+contemptuous expression on the tight lips, drooping at the corners. He had no
+intimate, hearty friends among his comrades; but his opinions and judgments had
+a considerable authoritativeness among them. It is doubtful whether any one of
+them could explain to himself whence this influence came; whether from his
+self-assured appearance, his ability to seize and express in general words the
+dismembered and indistinct things which are dimly sought and desired by the
+majority, or because he always saved his conclusions for the most appropriate
+moment. Among any society there are many of this sort of people: some of them
+act upon their circle through sophistries; others through adamant, unalterable
+stead-fastness of convictions; a third group with a loud mouth; a fourth,
+through a malicious sneer; a fifth, simply by silence, which compels the
+supposition of profound thought behind it; a sixth, through a chattering,
+outward erudition; others still through a slashing sneer at everything that is
+said ... many with the terrible Russian word YERUNDA:
+“Fiddlesticks!”—“Fiddlesticks!” they say contemptuously in reply to the warm,
+sincere, probably truthful but clumsily put word. “But why fiddlesticks?”
+“Because it’s twaddle, nonsense,” answer they, shrugging their shoulders; and
+it is as though they did for a man by hitting him with a stone over the head.
+There are many more sorts of such people, bearing the bell at the head of the
+meek, the shy, the nobly modest, and often even the big minds; and to their
+number did Simanovsky belong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, toward the middle of the dinner everybody’s tongue became
+loosened—except Liubka’s, who kept silent, answered “yes” and “no”, and left
+her food practically untouched. Lichonin, Soloviev, and Nijeradze talked most
+of all. The first, in a decisive and business-like manner, trying to hide under
+the solicitous words something real, inward, prickling and inconvenient.
+Soloviev, with a puerile delight, with the most sweeping of gestures, hitting
+the table with his fist. Nijeradze, with a slight doubtfulness and with
+unfinished phrases, as though he knew that which must be said, but concealed
+it. The queer fate of the girl, however, had seemingly engrossed, interested
+them all; and each one, in expressing his opinion, for some reason inevitably
+turned to Simanovsky. But he kept his counsel for the most part, and looked at
+each one from under the glasses of his pince-nez, raising his head high to do
+so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So, so, so,” he said at last, drumming with his fingers upon the table. “What
+Lichonin has done is splendid and brave. And that the prince and Soloviev are
+going to meet him half-way is also very good. I, for my part, am ready to
+co-operate with your beginnings with whatever lies in my power. But will it not
+be better, if we lead our friend along the path of her natural inclinations and
+abilities, so to speak? Tell me, my dear,” he turned to Liubka, “what do you
+know, what can you do? Well, now, some kind of work, or something. Sewing,
+knitting, embroidering or something.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know anything,” said Liubka in a whisper, letting her eyes drop low,
+all red, squeezing her fingers under the table. “I don’t understand anything of
+this.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And really, now,” interposed Lichonin; “why, we haven’t begun the business
+from the right end. By talking about her in her presence we merely place her in
+an awkward position. Just see—even her tongue doesn’t move from confusion.
+Let’s go, Liubka, I’ll escort you home for just a little while, and return in
+ten minutes. And in the meanwhile we’ll think over ways and means here, without
+you. All right?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As for me, I don’t mind,” almost inaudibly answered Liubka. “I’ll do just as
+you like, Vassil Vassilich. Only I wouldn’t like to go home.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s awkward for me there alone. I’d best wait for you on the boulevard, at
+the very entrance, on a bench.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, yes!” Lichonin recollected: “It’s Alexandra who has inspired her with such
+a terror. My, but I’ll make it hot for this old lizard! Well, let’s go,
+Liubochka.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She timidly, in some sidelong way, put out her hand to each one, folding it
+like a little spade; and walked out under the escort of Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After several minutes he returned and sat down at his place. He felt that
+something had been said about him during his absence, and he ran his eyes
+uneasily over his comrades. Then, putting his hands on the table, he began:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gentlemen, I know that you’re all good, close friends,” he gave a quick and
+sidelong look at Simanovsky, “and responsive people. I heartily beg of you to
+come to my aid. The deed was done by me in a hurry—this I must confess—but done
+through a sincere, pure inclination of the heart.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that’s the main thing,” put in Soloviev.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s absolutely all one to me what acquaintances and strangers will begin
+saying about me; but from my intention to save—pardon the fool word, which
+slipped out—to encourage, to sustain this girl, I will not decline. Of course,
+I’m able to rent an inexpensive, small room for her; to give her something for
+board at first; but what’s to be done further—that’s what presents difficulties
+to me. The matter, of course, isn’t one of money, which I’d always find for
+her; but, then, to compel her to eat, drink, and with all that to do
+nothing—that would mean to condemn her to idleness, indifference, apathy; and
+you know what the end will be then. Therefore, we must think of some occupation
+for her. And that’s the very matter which we must exert our brains about. Make
+an effort, gentlemen; advise something.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We must know what she’s fitted for,” said Simanovsky. “For she must have been
+doing something before getting into the house.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin, with an air of hopelessness, spread out his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Almost nothing. She can sew just the least bit, just like any country lass.
+Why, she wasn’t fifteen when some government clerk led her astray. She can
+sweep up a room, wash a little, and, if you will, cook cabbage soup and
+porridge. Nothing more, it seems.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rather little,” said Simanovsky, and clacked his tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And in addition to that, she’s illiterate as well.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But that’s not at all important!” warmly defended Soloviev. “If we had to do
+with a well-educated girl, or, worse still, with a half-educated one, then only
+nonsense would result out of all that we’re preparing to do, a mere
+soap-bubble; while here before us is maiden ground, untouched virgin soil.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He-ee!” Nijeradze started neighing equivocally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soloviev, now no longer joking, but with real wrath, pounced upon him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Listen, prince! Every holy thought, every good deed, can be made disgusting,
+obscene. There’s nothing clever or worthy in that. If you regard that which
+we’re preparing to do so like a stallion, then there’s the door and God be with
+you. Go away from us!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, but you yourself just now in the room ...” retorted the prince in
+confusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I too,” Soloviev at once softened and cooled down. “I popped out with a
+stupidity and I regret it. But now I willingly admit that Lichonin is a fine
+fellow and a splendid man; and I’m ready to do everything, for my part. And I
+repeat, that knowledge of reading and writing is a secondary matter. It is easy
+to attain it in play. For such an untouched mind to learn reading, writing,
+counting, and especially without school, of one’s free will, is like biting a
+nut in two. And as far as a manual trade is concerned, through which it would
+be possible to live and earn one’s keep, then there are hundreds of trades,
+which can be easily mastered in two weeks.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For instance?” asked the prince.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, for instance ... for instance ... well, now, for instance, making
+artificial flowers. Yes, and still better, to get a place as a flower clerk. A
+charming business, clean and nice.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Taste is necessary,” Simanovsky dropped carelessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There are no inborn tastes, as well as abilities. Otherwise talents would be
+born only in refined, highly educated society; while artists would be born only
+to artists, and singers to singers; but we don’t see this. However, I won’t
+argue. Well, if not a flower girl, then something else. I, for instance, saw
+not long ago in a store show window a miss sitting, and some sort of a little
+machine with foot-power before her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“V-VA! Again a little machine!” said the prince, smiling and looking at
+Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stop it, Nijeradze,” answered Lichonin, quietly but sternly. “You ought to be
+ashamed.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Blockhead!” Soloviev threw at him, and continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So, then, the machine moves back and forth, while upon it, on a square frame,
+is stretched a thin canvas, and really, I don’t know how it’s contrived, I
+didn’t grasp it; only the miss guides some metallic thingamajig over the
+screen, and there comes out a fine drawing in vari-coloured silks. Just
+imagine, a lake, all grown over with pond-lilies with their white corollas and
+yellow stamens, and great green leaves all around. And on the water two white
+swans are floating toward each other, and in the background is a dark park with
+an alley; and all this shows finely, distinctly, as on a picture from life. And
+I became so interested that I went in on purpose to find out how much it costs.
+It proved to be just the least bit dearer than an ordinary sewing machine, and
+it’s sold on terms. And any one who can sew a little on a common machine can
+learn this art in an hour. And there’s a great number of charming original
+designs. And the main thing is that such work is very readily taken for
+fire-screens, albums, lamp-shades, curtains and other rubbish, and the pay is
+decent.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“After all, that’s a sort of a trade, too,” agreed Lichonin, and stroked his
+beard in meditation. “But, to confess, here’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to
+open up for her ... to open up a little cook-shop or dining room, the very
+tiniest to start with, of course, but one in which all the food is cheap, clean
+and tasty. For it’s absolutely all the same to many students where they dine
+and what they eat. There are almost never enough places to go round in the
+students’ dining room. And so we may succeed, perhaps, in pulling in all our
+acquaintances and friends, somehow.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s true,” said the prince, “but impractical as well; we’ll begin to board
+on credit. And you know what accurate payers we are. A practical man, a knave,
+is needed for such an undertaking; and if a woman, then one with a pike’s
+teeth; and even then a man must absolutely stick right at her back. Really,
+it’s not for Lichonin to stand at the counter and to watch that somebody
+shouldn’t suddenly wine and dine and slip away.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin looked straight at him, insolently, but only set his jaws and let it
+pass in silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simanovsky began in his measured, incontrovertible tone, toying with the
+glasses of his PINCE-NEZ:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your intention is splendid, gentlemen, beyond dispute. But have you turned
+your attention to a certain shady aspect, so to speak? For to open a dining
+room, to start some business—all this in the beginning demands money,
+assistance—somebody else’s back, so to speak. The money is not grudged—that is
+true, I agree with Lichonin; but then, does not such a beginning of an
+industrious life, when every step is provided for—does it not lead to
+inevitable laxity and negligence, and, in the very end, to an indifferent
+disdain for business? Even a child does not learn to walk until it has flopped
+down some fifty times. No; if you really want to help this poor girl, you must
+give her a chance of getting on her feet at once, like a toiling being, and not
+like a drone. True, there is a great temptation here—the burden of labour,
+temporary need; but then, if she will surmount this, she will surmount the rest
+as well.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, then, according to you, is she to become—a dish-washer?” asked Soloviev
+with unbelief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, yes,” calmly retorted Simanovsky. “A dish-washer, a laundress, a cook.
+All toil elevates a human being.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Words of gold. Wisdom itself speaks with your lips, Simanovsky. Dish-washer,
+cook, maid, housekeeper ... but, in the first place, it’s doubtful if she’s
+capable for that; in the second place, she has already been a maid and has
+tasted all the sweets of masters’ bawlings out, and masters’ pinches behind
+doors, in the corridor. Tell me, is it possible you don’t know that ninety per
+cent, of prostitution is recruited from the number of female servants? And,
+therefore, poor Liuba, at the very first injustice, at the first rebuff, will
+the more easily and readily go just there where I have gotten her out of; if
+not even worse, because for her that’s customary and not so frightful; and,
+perhaps, it will even seem desirable after the masters’ treatment. And besides
+that, is it worth while for me—that is, I want to say—is it worth while for all
+of us, to go to so much trouble, to try so hard and put ourselves out so, if,
+after having saved a being from one slavery, we only plunge her into another?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Right,” confirmed Soloviev.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just as you wish,” drawled Simanovsky with a disdainful air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But as far as I’m concerned,” said the prince, “I’m ready, as a friend and a
+curious man, to be present at this experiment and to participate in it. But
+even this morning I warned you, that there have been such experiments before
+and that they have always ended in ignominious failure, at least those of which
+we know personally; while those of which we know only by hearsay are dubious as
+regards authenticity. But you have begun the business—and go on with it. We are
+your helpers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin struck the table with his palm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No!” he exclaimed stubbornly. “Simanovsky is partly right concerning the great
+danger of a person’s being led in leading strings. But I don’t see any other
+way out. In the beginning I’ll help her with room and board... find some easy
+work, buy the necessary accessories for her. Let be what may! And let us do
+everything in order to educate her mind a little; and that her heart and soul
+are beautiful, of that I am sure. I’ve no grounds for the faith, but I am sure,
+I almost know. Nijeradze! Don’t clown!” he cried abruptly, growing pale, “I’ve
+restrained myself several times already at your fool pranks. I have until now
+held you as a man of conscience and feeling. One more inappropriate witticism,
+and I’ll change my opinion of you; and know, that it’s forever.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, I didn’t mean anything... Really, I... Why go all up in the air, me
+soul? You don’t like that I’m a gay fellow, well, I’ll be quiet. Give me your
+hand, Lichonin, let’s drink!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, all right, get away from me. Here’s to your health! Only don’t behave
+like a little boy, you Ossetean ram. Well, then, I continue, gentlemen. If we
+find anything which might satisfy the just opinion of Simanovsky about the
+dignity of independent toil, unsustained by anything, then I shall stick to my
+system: to teach Liuba whatever is possible, to take her to the theatre, to
+expositions, to popular lectures, to museums; to read aloud to her, give her
+the possibility of hearing music—comprehensible music, of course. It’s
+understood, I alone won’t be able to manage all this. I expect help from you;
+and after that, whatever God may will.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, well,” said Simanovsky, “the work is new, not threadbare; and how can we
+know the unknowable—perhaps you, Lichonin, will become the spiritual father of
+a good being. I, too, offer my services.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I! And I!” the other two seconded; and right there, without getting up
+from the table, the four students worked out a very broad and very wondrous
+program of education and enlightenment for Liubka.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soloviev took upon himself to teach the girl grammar and writing. In order not
+to tire her with tedious lessons, and as a reward for successes, he would read
+aloud for her artistic fiction, Russian and foreign, easy of comprehension.
+Lichonin left for himself the teaching of arithmetic, geography and history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the prince said simple-heartedly, without his usual facetiousness this
+time:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I, my children, don’t know anything; while that which I do know, I know very
+badly. But I’ll read to her the remarkable production of the great Georgian
+poet Rustavelli, and translate it line by line. I confess to you, that I’m not
+much of a pedagogue: I tried to be a tutor, but they politely chased me out
+after only the second lesson. Still, no one can teach better playing on a
+guitar, mandolin, and the bagpipes!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nijeradze was speaking with perfect seriousness, and for that reason Lichonin
+with Soloviev good-naturedly started laughing; but with entire unexpectedness,
+to the general amazement of all, Simanovsky sustained him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The prince speaks common sense. To have the mastery of an instrument elevates
+the aesthetic sense, in any case; and is even a help in life. And I, for my
+part, gentlemen ... I propose to read with the young person the CAPITAL of
+Marx, and the history of human culture. And to take up chemistry and physics
+with her, besides.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it were not for the customary authority of Simanovsky and the importance
+with which he spoke, the remaining three would have burst into laughter in his
+face. They only stared at him, with eyes popping out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, yes,” continued Simanovsky imperturbably, “I’ll show her a whole series
+of chemical and physical experiments, which it is possible to carry on at home;
+which are always amusing and beneficial to the mind; and which eradicate
+prejudices. Incidentally, I’ll explain something of the structure of the world,
+of the properties of matter. And as far as Karl Marx is concerned, just
+remember, that great books are equally accessible to the understanding both of
+a scholar and an unlettered peasant, if only comprehensibly presented. And
+every great thought is simple.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin found Liubka at the place agreed upon, on a bench of the boulevard.
+She went home with him very unwillingly. Just as Lichonin had supposed, meeting
+the grumbling Alexandra was a fearful thing to her, who had long since grown
+unused to every-day actuality; harsh, and plentiful with all sorts of
+unpleasantnesses. And besides that, the fact that Lichonin did not want to
+conceal her past acted oppressively upon her. But she, who had long ago lost
+her will in the establishment of Anna Markovna, deprived of her personality,
+ready to follow after the call of every stranger, did not tell him a word and
+walked after him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The crafty Alexandra had already managed during this time to run to the
+superintendent of the houses and to complain to him, that, now, Lichonin had
+come with some miss, had passed the night with her in the room; but who she is,
+that Alexandra don’t know; that Lichonin says she is his first cousin, like;
+but did not present a passport. It was necessary to explain things at great
+length, diffusedly and tiresomely, to the superintendent, a coarse and insolent
+man, who bore himself to all the tenants in the house as toward a conquered
+city; and feared only the students slightly, because they gave him a severe
+rebuff at times. Lichonin propitiated him only when he rented on the spot
+another room, several rooms away from his, for Liubka; under the very slope of
+the roof, so that it represented on the inside a sharply cut-off, low,
+four-sided pyramid, with one little window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But still, Mr. Lichonin, just you present the passport to-morrow without
+fail,” said the superintendent insistently at parting. “Since you’re a
+respectable man, hard-working, and you and I are long acquainted, also you pay
+punctually, I am willing to do it only for you. You know yourself what hard
+times these are. If some one tells on me, they’ll not only fire me, but they
+can put me out of town as well. They’re strict now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening Lichonin strolled with Liubka through Prince Park, listened to
+the music playing in the aristocratic club, and returned home early. He
+escorted Liubka to the door of her room and at once took leave of her; kissing
+her, however, tenderly on the brow, like a father. But after ten minutes, when
+he was already lying in bed undressed and reading the statutes of state,
+Liubka, having scratched on his door like a cat, suddenly entered his room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Darling, sweetie! Excuse me for troubling you. Haven’t you a needle and
+thread? But don’t get angry at me; I’ll go away at once.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Liuba! I beg of you to go away not at once, but this second. Finally, I demand
+it!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dearie, my pretty,” Liubka began to intone laughably and piteously, “well,
+what are you yelling at me for all the time?” and, in a moment, having blown
+upon the candle, she nestled up to him in the darkness, laughing and crying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, Liuba, this must not be. It’s impossible to go on like this,” Lichonin was
+saying ten minutes later, standing at the door, wrapped up in his blanket, like
+a Spanish hidalgo in a cape. “To-morrow at the latest I’ll rent a room for you
+in another house. And, in general, don’t let this occur! God be with you, and
+good night! Still, you must give me your word of honour that our relations will
+be merely friendly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I give it, dearie, I give it, I give it, I give it!” she began to prattle,
+smiling; and quickly smacked him first on the lips and then on his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last action was altogether instinctive; and, perhaps, unexpected even to
+Liubka herself. Never yet in her life had she kissed any man’s hand, save a
+priest’s. Perhaps she wanted to express through this her gratitude to Lichonin,
+and a prostration before him as before a higher being.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0215"></a> CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Among Russian intelligents, as has already been noted by many, there is a
+decent quantity of wonderful people; true children of the Russian land and
+culture, who would be able heroically, without the quivering of a single
+muscle, to look straight in the face of death; who are capable for the sake of
+an idea of bearing unconceivable privations and sufferings, equal to torture;
+but then, these people are lost before the haughtiness of a doorman; shrink
+from the yelling of a laundress; while into a police station they enter in an
+insufferable and timid distress. And precisely such a one was Lichonin. On the
+following day (yesterday it had been impossible on account of a holiday and the
+lateness), having gotten up very early and recollecting that to-day he had to
+take care of Liubka’s passport, he felt just as bad as when in former times, as
+a high-school boy, he went to an examination, knowing that he would surely fall
+through. His head ached, while his arms and legs somehow seemed another’s; in
+addition, a drizzling and seemingly dirty rain had been falling on the street
+since morning. “Always, now, when there’s some unpleasantness in store, there
+is inevitably a rain falling,” reflected Lichonin, dressing slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not especially far from his street to the Yamskaya, not more than
+two-thirds of a mile. In general, he was not infrequently in those parts, but
+he had never had occasion to go there in the daytime; and on the way it seemed
+to him all the time that every one he met, every cabby and policeman, was
+looking at him with curiosity, with reproach, or with disdain, as though
+surmising the destination of his journey. As always on a nasty and muggy
+morning, all the faces that met his eyes seemed pale, ugly, with monstrously
+underlined defects. Scores of times he imagined all that he would say in the
+beginning at the house; and later at the station house; and every time the
+outcome was different. Angry at himself for this premature rehearsal, he would
+at times stop himself:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! You mustn’t think, you mustn’t presuppose what you’re going to say. It
+always turns out far better when it’s done right off...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then again imaginary dialogues would run through his head:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have no right to hold this girl against her wish.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, but let her herself give notice about going away.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I act at her instruction.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right; but how can you prove this?” and again he would mentally cut
+himself short.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The city common began, on which cows were browsing; a board sidewalk along a
+fence; shaky little bridges over little brooklets and ditches. Then he turned
+into the Yamskaya. In the house of Anna Markovna all the windows were closed
+with shutters, with openings, in the form of hearts, cut out in the middle. And
+all of the remaining houses on the deserted street, desolated as though after a
+pestilence, were closed as well. With a contracting heart Lichonin pulled the
+bell-handle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A maid, barefooted, with skirt caught up, with a wet rag in her hand, with face
+striped from dirt, answered the bell—she had just been washing the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d like to see Jennka,” timidly requested Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, the young lady is busy with a guest. They haven’t waked up yet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, Tamara then.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid looked at him mistrustfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Miss Tamara—I don’t know... I think she’s busy too. But what you want—to pay a
+visit, or what?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, isn’t it all the same! A visit, let’s say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know. I’ll go and look. Wait a while.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went away, leaving Lichonin in the half-dark drawing room. The blue pillars
+of dust, coming from the openings in the shutters, pierced the heavy obscurity
+in all directions. Like hideous spots stood out of the gray murkiness the
+bepainted furniture and the sweetish oleographs on the walls. It smelt of
+yesterday’s tobacco, of dampness, sourness; and of something else peculiar,
+indeterminate, uninhabited, of which places that are lived in only temporarily
+always smell in the morning—such as empty theatres, dance-halls, auditoriums.
+Far off in the city a droshky rumbled intermittently. The wall-clock
+monotonously ticked behind the wall. In a strange agitation Lichonin walked
+back and forth through the drawing room and rubbed and kneaded his trembling
+hands, and for some reason was stooping and felt cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shouldn’t have started all this false comedy,” he thought with irritation.
+“It goes without saying that I’ve now become the by-word of the entire
+university. The devil nudged me! And even during the day yesterday it wasn’t
+too late, when she was saying that she was ready to go back. All I had to do
+was to give her for a cabby and a little pin money, and she’d have gone, and
+all would have been fine; and I would be independent now, free, and wouldn’t be
+undergoing this tormenting and ignominious state of spirits. But it’s too late
+to retreat now. To-morrow it’ll be still later, and the day after
+to-morrow—still more. Having pulled off one fool stunt, it must be immediately
+put a stop to; but on the other hand, if you don’t do that in time, it draws
+two others after it, and they—twenty new ones. Or, perhaps, it’s not too late
+now? Why, she’s silly, undeveloped, and, probably, a hysteric, like the rest of
+them. She’s an animal, fit only for stuffing herself and for the bed. Oh! The
+devil!” Lichonin forcefully squeezed his cheeks and his forehead between his
+hands and shut his eyes. “And if I had but held out against the common, coarse,
+physical temptation! There, you see for yourself, this has happened twice
+already; and then it’ll go on and on ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But side by side with these ran other thoughts, opposed to them:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But then, I’m a man. I am master of my word. For that which urged me on to
+this deed was splendid, noble, lofty. I remember very well that rapture which
+seized me when my thought transpired into action! That was a pure, tremendous
+feeling. Or was it simply an extravagance of the mind, whipped up by alcohol;
+the consequence of a sleepless night, smoking, and long, abstract
+conversations?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And immediately Liubka would appear before him, appear at a distance, as though
+out of the misty depths of time; awkward, timid, with her homely and endearing
+face, which had at once come to seem of infinitely close kinship; long, long
+familiar, and at the same time unpleasant—unjustly, without cause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can it be that I’m a coward and a rag?” cried Lichonin inwardly and wrung his
+hands. “What am I afraid of, before whom am I embarrassed? Have I not always
+prided myself upon being sole master of my life? Let’s suppose, even, that the
+phantasy, the extravagance, of making a psychological experiment upon a human
+soul—a rare experiment, unsuccessful in ninety-nine percent—has entered my
+head. Is it possible that I must render anybody an account in this, or fear
+anybody’s opinion? Lichonin! Look down upon mankind from above!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie walked into the room, dishevelled, sleepy, in a night jacket on top of a
+white underskirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A-a!” she yawned, extending her hand to Lichonin. “How d’you do, my dear
+student! How does your Liubochka feel herself in the new place? Call me in as a
+guest some time. Or are you spending your honeymoon on the quiet? Without any
+outside witnesses?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Drop the silly stuff, Jennechka. I came about the passport.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So-o. About the passport,” Jennka went into thought. “That is, there’s no
+passport here, but you must take a blank from the housekeeper. You understand,
+our usual prostitute’s blank; and then they’ll exchange it for you for a real
+book at the station house. Only you see, my dear, I will be but ill help to you
+in this business. They are as like as not to beat me up if I come near a
+housekeeper or a porter. But here’s what you do. You’d best send the maid for
+the housekeeper; tell her to say that a certain guest, now, a steady one, has
+come on business; that it’s very urgent to see her personally. But you must
+excuse me—I’m going to back out, and don’t you be angry, please. You know
+yourself—charity begins at home. But why should you hang around by yourself in
+this here darkness? You’d better go into the cabinet. If you want to, I’ll send
+you beer there. Or, perhaps you want coffee? Or else,” and her eyes sparkled
+slyly, “or else a girlie, perhaps? Tamara is busy, but may be Niura or Verka
+will do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stop it, Jennie! I came about a serious and important matter, but you ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, well, I won’t, I won’t! I said it just so. I see that you observe
+faithfulness. That’s very noble on your part. Let’s go, then.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She led him into the cabinet, and, opening the inner bolt of the shutter, threw
+it wide open. The daylight softly and sadly splashed against the red and gold
+walls, over the candelabra, over the soft red velveteen furniture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Right here it began,” reflected Lichonin with sad regret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am going,” said Jennka. “Don’t you knuckle down too much before her, and
+Simeon too. Abuse them for all you’re worth. It’s daytime now, and they won’t
+dare do anything to you. If anything happens, tell them straight that, now,
+you’re going to the governor immediately and are going to tell on them. Tell
+’em, that they’ll be closed up and put out of town in twenty-four hours. Bawl
+’em out and they get like silk. Well, now, I wish you success.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went away. After ten minutes had passed, into the cabinet floated Emma
+Edwardovna, the housekeeper, in a blue satin PEGNOIR; corpulent, with an
+important face, broadening from the forehead down to the cheeks, just like a
+monstrous squash; with all her massive chins and breasts; with small, keen
+eyes, without eyelashes; with thin, malicious, compressed lips. Lichonin,
+arising, pressed the puffy hand extended to him, studded with rings, and
+suddenly thought with aversion:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The devil take it! If this vermin had a soul, if it were possible to read this
+soul—then how many direct and indirect murders are lurking hidden within it!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must be said, that in starting out for the Yamkas, Lichonin, besides money,
+had fetched a revolver along with him; and on the road, while walking, he had
+frequently shoved his hand into his pocket and had there felt the chill contact
+of the metal. He expected affront, violence, and was prepared to meet them in a
+suitable manner. But, to his amazement, all that he had presupposed and had
+feared proved a timorous, fantastic fiction. The business was far more simple,
+more wearisome and more prosaic, and at the same time more unpleasant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“JA, MEIN HERR,” said the housekeeper indifferently and somewhat loftily,
+settling into a low chair and lighting a cigarette. “You pay for one night and
+instead of that took already the girl for one more night and one more day.
+ALSO, you owe twenty-five more roubles yet. When we let off a girlie for a
+night we take ten roubles, and for the twenty-four hours twenty-five roubles.
+That’s a tax, like. Don’t you want a smoke, young man?” she stretched out her
+case, and Lichonin, without himself knowing why, took a cigarette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wanted to talk with you about something else entirely.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“O! Don’t trouble yourself to speak: I understand everything very well.
+Probably the young man wants to take these girl, those Liubka, altogether to
+himself to set her up, or in order to—how do you Russians call it?—in order to
+safe her? Yes, yes, yes, that happens. Twenty-two years I live in a brothel,
+and I know, that this happens with very foolish young peoples. But only I
+assure you, that from this will come nothing out.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Whether it will come out or whether it won’t come out—that is already my
+affair,” answered Lichonin dully, looking down at his fingers, trembling on his
+knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“O, of course, it’s your affair, my young student,” and the flabby cheeks and
+majestic chins of Emma Edwardovna began to jump from inaudible laughter. “From
+my soul I wish for you love and friendship; but only trouble yourself to tell
+this nasty creature, this Liubka, that she shouldn’t dare to show even her nose
+here, when you throw her out into the street like a little doggie. Let her
+croak from hunger under a fence, or go into a half-rouble establishment for the
+soldiers!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Believe me, she won’t return. I ask you merely to give me her certificate,
+without delay.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The certificate? ACH, if you please! Even this very minute. Only I will first
+trouble you to pay for everything that she took here on credit. Have a look,
+here is her account book. I took it along with me on purpose. I knew already
+with what our conversation would end.” She took out of the slit of her
+PEGNOIR—showing Lichonin for just a minute her fat, full-fleshed, yellow,
+enormous breast—a little book in a black cover, with the heading: ACCOUNT OF
+MISS IRENE VOSCHHENKOVA IN THE HOUSE OF ILL-FAME, MAINTAINED BY ANNA MARKOVNA
+SHAIBES, ON YAM-SKAYA STREET, NO. SO-AND-SO, and extended it to him across the
+table. Lichonin turned over the first page and read through four or five
+paragraphs of the printed rules. There dryly and briefly it was stated that the
+account book consists of two copies, of which one is kept by the proprietress
+while the other remains with the prostitute; that all income and expense were
+entered into both books; that by agreement the prostitute receives board,
+quarters, heat, light, bed linen, baths and so forth, and for this pays out to
+the proprietress in no case more than two-thirds of her earnings; while out of
+the remaining money she is bound to dress neatly and decently, having no less
+than two dresses for going out. Further, mention was made of the fact that
+payment was made with the help of stamps, which the proprietress gives out to
+the prostitute upon receipt of money from her; while the account is drawn up at
+the end of every month. And, finally, that the prostitute can at any time leave
+the house of prostitution, even if there does remain a debt of hers, which,
+however, she binds herself to cancel on the basis of general civil laws.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin prodded the last point with his finger, and, having turned the face of
+the book to the housekeeper, said triumphantly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Aha! There, you see: she has the right to leave the house at any time.
+Consequently, she can at any time quit your abominable dive of violence,
+baseness, and depravity, in which you ...” Lichonin began rattling off, but the
+housekeeper calmly cut him short:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“O! I have no doubt of this. Let her go away. Let her only pay the money.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What about promissory notes? She can give promissory notes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pst! Promissory notes! In the first place, she’s illiterate; while in the
+second, what are her promissory notes worth? A spit and no more. Let her find a
+surety who would be worthy of trust, and then I have nothing against it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, then, there’s nothing said in the rules about sureties.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s many a thing not said! In the rules it also does not say that it’s
+permitted to carry a girlie out of the house, without giving warning to the
+owners.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But in any case you’ll have to give me her blank.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will never do such a foolishness! Come here with some respectable person and
+with the police; and let the police certify that this friend of yours is a man
+of means; and let this man stand surety for you; and let, besides that, the
+police certify that you are not taking the girl in order to trade in her, or to
+sell her over to another stablishment—then as you please! Hand and foot!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The devil!” exclaimed Lichonin. “But if that surety will be I, I myself! If
+I’ll sign your promissory notes right away ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Young man! I don’t know what you are taught in your different universities,
+but is it possible that you reckon me such a positive fool? God grant, that you
+have, besides those which are on you, still some other pants! God grant, that
+you should even the day after have for dinner the remnants of sausages from the
+sausage shop, and yet you say—a promissory note! What are you bothering my head
+for?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin grew completely angry. He drew his wallet out of his pocket and
+slapped it down on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In that case I pay in cash and immediately!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“ACH, that’s a business of another kind,” sweetly, but still with mistrust, the
+housekeeper intoned. “I will trouble you to turn the page, and see what the
+bill of your beloved is.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Keep still, you carrion!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m still, you fool,” calmly responded the housekeeper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the small ruled pages on the left side was designated the income, on the
+right were the expenses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Received in stamps, 15th of April,” read Lichonin, “10 roubles; 16th—4
+roubles; 17th—12 roubles; 18th—sick; 19th—sick; 20th—6 roubles; 21st—24
+roubles.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My God!” with loathing, with horror, reflected Lichonin. “Twelve men in one
+night!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of the month stood:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Total 330 roubles.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lord! Why, this is some sort of delirium! One hundred and sixty-five visits,”
+thought Lichonin, having mechanically calculated it, and still continued
+turning the pages. Then he went over to the columns on the right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Made, a red dress of silk with lace 84 roubles Dressmaker Eldokimova. Dressing
+sack of lace 35 roubles Dressmaker Eldokimova. Silk stockings 6 pair 36
+roubles,” &amp;c., &amp;c. “Given for cab-fare, given for candy, perfumes
+bought,” &amp;c., &amp;c. “Total 205 roubles.” After that from the 330 roubles
+were deducted 220 roubles—the share of the proprietress for board and lodging.
+The figure of 110 roubles resulted. The end of the monthly account declared:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Total after the payment to the dressmaker and for other articles, of 110
+roubles, a debt of ninety-five (95) roubles remains for Irene Voschhenkova and
+with the four hundred and eighteen roubles remaining from last year—five
+hundred and thirteen (513) roubles.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin’s spirits fell. He did try, at first, to be indignant at the
+expensiveness of the materials supplied; but the housekeeper retorted with SANG
+FROID that that did not concern her at all; that the establishment demanded
+only that the girl dress decently, as becomes a girl from a decent, genteel
+house; while it did not concern itself with the rest. The establishment merely
+extended her credit in paying her expenses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But this is a vixen, a spider in human shape—this dressmaker of yours!” yelled
+Lichonin beside himself. “Why, she’s in a conspiracy with you, cupping glass
+that you are, you abominable tortoise! Scuttlefish! Where’s your conscience?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The more agitated he grew, the more calm and jeering Emma Edwardovna became.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Again I repeat: that is not my business. And you, young man, don’t express
+yourself like that, because I will call the porter, and he will throw you out
+of the door.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin was compelled to bargain with the cruel woman long, brutally, till he
+grew hoarse, before she agreed, in the end, to take two hundred and fifty
+roubles in cash, and two hundred roubles in promissory notes. And even that
+only when Lichonin with his half-yearly certificate proved to her that he was
+finishing this year and would become a lawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The housekeeper went after the ticket, while Lichonin took to pacing the
+cabinet back and forth. He had already looked over all the pictures on the
+walls: Leda with the swan, and the bathing on the shore of the sea, and the
+odalisque in a harem, and the satyr, bearing a naked nymph in his arms; but
+suddenly a small printed placard, framed and behind glass, half covered by a
+portiere, attracted his attention. It was the first time that it had come
+across Lichonin’s eyes, and the student with amazement and aversion read these
+lines, expressed in the dead, official language of police stations. There with
+shameful, businesslike coldness, were mentioned all possible measures and
+precautions against infections; the intimacies of feminine toilet; the weekly
+medical inspections and all the adaptations for them. Lichonin also read that
+no establishment was to be situated nearer than a hundred steps from churches,
+places of learning, and court buildings; that only persons of the female sex
+may maintain houses of prostitution; that only her relatives, and even then of
+the female sex exclusively, and none older than seven years, may live with the
+proprietress; and that the proprietors and the owners of the house, as well as
+the girls, must in their relations among themselves and the guests as well,
+observe politeness, quiet, civility and decency, by no means allowing
+themselves drunkenness, swearing and brawls. And also that the prostitute must
+not allow herself the caresses of love when in an intoxicated condition or with
+an intoxicated man; and in addition to that, during the time of certain
+functions. Here also the prostitutes were most strictly forbidden to commit
+abortions. “What a serious and moral view of things!” reflected Lichonin with a
+malicious sneer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally the business with Emma Edwarodvna was concluded. Having taken the money
+and written out a receipt, she stretched it out to Lichonin together with the
+blank, while he stretched out the money to her; at which, during the time of
+the operation, they both looked at each other’s eyes and hands intently and
+warily. It was apparent that they both felt no especially great mutual trust.
+Lichonin put the documents away in his wallet and was preparing to depart. The
+housekeeper escorted him to the very stoop, and when the student was already
+standing in the street, she, remaining on the steps, leaned out and called
+after him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Student! Hey! Student!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped and turned around.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What now?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And here’s another thing. Now I must tell you, that your Liubka is trash, a
+thief, and sick with syphilis! None of our good guests wanted to take her; and
+anyway, if you had not taken her, then we would have thrown her out to-morrow!
+I will also tell you, that she had to do with the porter, with policemen, with
+janitors, and with petty thieves. Congratulations on your lawful marriage!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oo-ooh! Vermin!” Lichonin roared back at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You green blockhead!” called out the housekeeper and banged the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin went to the station house in a cab. On the way he recalled that he had
+not had time to look at the blank properly, at this renowned “yellow ticket,”
+of which he had heard so much. This was an ordinary small white sheet, no
+larger than a postal envelope. On one side, in the proper column, were written
+out the name, father’s name, and family name of Liubka, and her
+profession—“Prostitute”; and on the other side, concise extracts from the
+paragraphs of that placard which he had just read through—infamous,
+hypocritical rules about behaviour and external and internal cleanliness.
+“Every visitor.” he read, “has the right to demand from the prostitute the
+written certificate of the doctor who has inspected her the last time.” And
+again sentimental pity overcame the heart of Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Poor women!” he reflected with grief. “What only don’t they do with you, how
+don’t they abuse you, until you grow accustomed to everything, just like blind
+horses on a treadmill!” In the station house he was received by the district
+inspector, Kerbesh. He had spent the night on duty, had not slept his fill, and
+was angry. His luxurious, fan-shaped red beard was crumpled. The right half of
+the ruddy face was still crimsonly glowing from lying long on the uncomfortable
+oilcloth pillow. But the amazing, vividly blue eyes, cold and luminous, looked
+clear and hard, like blue porcelain. Having ended interrogating, recording, and
+cursing out with obscenities the throng of ragamuffins, taken in during the
+night for sobering up and now being sent out over their own districts, he threw
+himself against the back of the divan, put his hands behind his neck, and
+stretched with all his enormous, heroic body so hard that all his ligaments and
+joints cracked. He looked at Lichonin just as at a thing, and asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And what will you have, Mr. Student?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin stated his business briefly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so I want,” he concluded, “to take her to me ... how is this supposed to
+be done with you? ... in the capacity of a servant, or, if you want, a
+relative, in a word ... how is it done? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, in the capacity of a kept mistress or a wife, let’s say,” indifferently
+retorted Kerbesh and twirled in his hands a silver cigar case with monograms
+and little figures. “I can do absolutely nothing for you ... at least right
+now. If you desire to marry her, present a suitable permit from your university
+authorities. But if you’re taking her on maintenance—then just think, where’s
+the logic in that? You’re taking a girl out of a house of depravity, in order
+to live with her in depraved cohabitation.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A servant, finally,” Lichonin put in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And even a servant. I’d trouble you to present an affidavit from your
+landlord—for, I hope, you’re not a houseowner? Very well, then, an affidavit
+from your landlord, as to your being in a position to keep a servant; and
+besides that, all the documents, testifying that you’re that very person you
+give yourself out to be; an affidavit, for instance, from your district and
+from the university, and all that sort of thing. For you, I hope, are
+registered? Or, perhaps, you are now, eh? ... Of the illegal ones?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I am registered!” retorted Lichonin, beginning to lose patience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that’s splendid. But the young lady, about whom you’re troubling
+yourself?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, she’s not registered as yet. But I have her blank in my possession, which,
+I hope, you’ll exchange for a real passport for me, and then I’ll register her
+at once.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kerbesh spread his arms out wide, then again began toying with the cigar case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can’t do anything for you, Mr. Student, just nothing at all, until you present
+all the papers required. As far as the girl’s concerned, why, she, as one not
+having the right of residence, will be sent to the police without delay, and
+there detained; unless she personally desires to go there, where you’ve taken
+her from. I’ve the honour of wishing you good day.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin abruptly pulled his hat over his eyes and went toward the door. But
+suddenly an ingenious thought flashed through his head, from which, however, he
+himself became disgusted. And feeling nausea in the pit of his stomach, with
+clammy, cold hands, experiencing a sickening pinching in his toes, he again
+walked up to the table and said as though carelessly, but with a catch in his
+voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon me, inspector. I’ve forgotten the most important thing; a certain
+mutual acquaintance of ours has instructed me to transmit to you a small debt
+of his.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hm! An acquaintance?” asked Kerbesh, opening wide his magnificent azure eyes.
+“And who may he be?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bar ... Barbarisov.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, Barbarisov? So, so, so, I recollect, I recollect!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So then, won’t you please accept these ten roubles?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kerbesh shook his head, but did not take the bit of paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, but this Barbarisov of yours—that is, ours—is a swine. It isn’t ten
+roubles he owes me at all, but a quarter of a century. What a scoundrel!
+Twenty-five roubles and some small change besides. Well, the small change, of
+course, I won’t count up to him. God be with him! This, you see, is a billiard
+debt. I must say that he’s a blackguard, plays crookedly ... And so, young man,
+dig up fifteen more.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, but you are a knave, Mr. Inspector!” said Lichonin, getting out the
+money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, mercy!” by now altogether good-naturedly retorted Kerbesh. “A wife,
+children ... You know yourself what our salary is ... Receive the little
+passport, young man. Sign your receipt. Best wishes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A queer thing! The consciousness that the passport was, finally, in his pocket,
+for some reason suddenly calmed and again braced up and elevated Lichonin’s
+nerves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, well!” he thought, walking quickly along the street, “the very beginning
+has been laid down, the most difficult part has been done. Hold fast, now,
+Lichonin, and don’t fall in spirit! What you’ve done is splendid and lofty. Let
+me be even a victim of this deed—it’s all one! It’s a shame, having done a good
+deed, to expect rewards for it right away. I’m not a little circus dog, and not
+a trained camel, and not the first pupil of a young ladies’ genteel institute.
+Only it was useless for me to let loose yesterday before these bearers of
+enlightenment. It all turned out to be silly, tactless, and, in any case,
+premature. But everything in life is reparable. A person will sustain the
+heaviest, most disgraceful things; but, time passes, and they are recalled as
+trifles ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To his amazement, Liubka was not especially struck, and did not at all become
+overjoyed when he triumphantly showed her the passport. She was only glad to
+see Lichonin again. Perhaps, this primitive, naive soul had already contrived
+to cleave to its protector? She did throw herself upon his neck, but he stopped
+her, and quietly, almost in her ear, asked her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Liubka, tell me ... don’t be afraid to tell the truth, no matter what it may
+be ... They told me just now, there in the house, that you’re sick with a
+certain disease ... you know, that which is called the evil sickness. If you
+believe in me even to some extent, tell me, my darling, tell me, is that so or
+not?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned red, covered her face with her hands, fell down on the divan and
+burst into tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dearie! Vassil Vassilich! Vasinka! Honest to God! Honest to God, now, there
+never was anything of the kind! I always was so careful! I was awfully afraid
+of this. I love you so! I would have told you without fail.” She caught his
+hands, pressed them to her wet face and continued to assure him with the absurd
+and touching sincerity of an unjustly accused child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he at once believed her in his soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe you, my child,” he said quietly, stroking her hair. “Don’t excite
+yourself, don’t cry. Only let us not again give in to our weakness. Well, it
+has happened—let it have happened; but let us not repeat it any more.’
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As you wish,” prattled the girl, kissing now his hands, now the cloth of his
+coat. “If I displease you so, then, of course, let it be as you wish.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, this evening also the temptation was again repeated, and kept on
+repeating until the falls from grace ceased to arouse a burning shame in
+Lichonin, and turned into a habit, swallowing and extinguishing remorse.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0216"></a> CHAPTER XVI.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Justice must be rendered to Lichonin; he did everything to create for Liubka a
+quiet and secure existence. Since he knew that they would have to leave their
+mansard anyway—this bird house, rearing above the whole city—leave it not so
+much on account of its inconvenience and lack of space as on account of the old
+woman Alexandra, who with every day became more ferocious, captious and
+scolding—he resolved to rent a little bit of a flat, consisting of two rooms
+and a kitchen, on the Borschhagovka, at the edge of the town. He came upon an
+inexpensive one, for nine roubles a month, without fuel. True, Lichonin had to
+run very far from there to his pupils, but he relied firmly upon his endurance
+and health, and would often say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My legs are my own. I don’t have to be sparing of them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, truly, he was a great master at walking. Once, for the sake of a joke,
+having put a pedometer in his vest pocket, he towards evening counted up twenty
+versts; which, taking into consideration the unusual length of his legs,
+equalled some twenty-five versts.[21] And he did have to run about quite a bit,
+because the fuss about Liubka’s passport and the acquisition of household
+furnishings of a sort had eaten up all his accidental winnings at cards. He did
+try to take up playing again, on a small scale at first, but was soon convinced
+that his star at cards had now entered upon a run of fatal ill luck.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[21] A verst is equal to two-thirds of a mile.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By now, of course, the real character of his relations with Liubka was a
+mystery to none of his comrades; but he still continued in their presence to
+act out the comedy of friendly and brotherly relations with the girl. For some
+reason he could not, or did not want to, realize that it would have been far
+wiser and more advantageous for him not to lie, not to be false, and not to
+pretend. Or, perhaps, although he did know this, he still could not change the
+established tone. As for the intimate relations, he inevitably played a
+secondary, passive role. The initiative, in the form of tenderness, caressing,
+always had to come from Liubka (she had remained Liubka, after all, and
+Lichonin had somehow entirely forgotten that he himself had read her real
+name—Irene—in the passport).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She, who had so recently given her body up impassively—or, on the contrary,
+with an imitation of burning passion—to tens of people in a day, to hundreds in
+a month, had become attached to Lichonin with all her feminine being, loving
+and jealous; had grown attached to him with body, feeling, thoughts. The prince
+was funny and entertaining to her, and the expansive Soloviev interestingly
+amusing; toward the crushing authoritativeness of Simanovsky she felt a
+supernatural terror; but Lichonin was for her at the same time a sovereign, and
+a divinity; and, which is the most horrible of all, her property and bodily
+joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It has long ago been observed, that a man who has lived his fill, has been worn
+out, gnawed and chewed by the jaws of amatory passions, will never again love
+with a strong and only love, simultaneously self-denying, pure, and passionate.
+But for a woman there are neither laws nor limitations in this respect. This
+observation was especially confirmed in Liubka. She was ready to crawl before
+Lichonin with delight, to serve him as a slave; but, at the same time, desired
+that he belong to her more than a table, than a little dog, than a night
+blouse. And he always proved wanting, always failing before the onslaught of
+this sudden love, which from a modest little stream had so rapidly turned into
+a river and had over-flowed its banks. And not infrequently he thought to
+himself, with bitterness and a sneer:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Every evening I play the role of the beauteous Joseph; still, he at least
+managed to tear himself away, leaving his underwear in the hands of the ardent
+lady; but when will I at last get free of my yoke?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a secret enmity for Liubka was already gnawing him. All the more and more
+frequently various crafty plans of liberation came into his head. And some of
+them were to such an extent dishonest, that, after a few hours, or the next
+day, Lichonin squirmed inwardly from shame, recalling them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am falling, morally and mentally!” he would at times think with horror.
+“It’s not in vain that I read somewhere, or heard from some one, that the
+connection of a cultured man with a woman of little intellect will never
+elevate her to the level of the man, but, on the contrary, will bow him down
+and sink him to the mental and moral outlook of the woman.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And after two weeks she ceased to excite his imagination entirely. He gave in,
+as to violence, to the long-continued caresses, entreaties, and often even to
+pity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet at the same time Liubka, who had rested and felt living, real soil under
+her, began to improve in looks with unusual rapidity, just as a flower bud,
+that but yesterday was almost dying, suddenly unfolds after a plentiful and
+warm rain. The freckles ran off her soft face, and the uncomprehending,
+troubled expression, like that of a young jackdaw, had disappeared from the
+dark eyes, and they had grown brighter and had begun to sparkle. The body grew
+stronger and filled out; the lips grew red. But Lichonin, seeing Liubka every
+day, did not notice this and did not believe those compliments which were
+showered upon her by his friends. “Fool jokes,” he reflected, frowning. “The
+boys are spoofing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the lady of the house, Liubka proved to be less than mediocre. True, she
+could cook fat stews, so thick that the spoon stood upright in them; prepare
+enormous, unwieldy, formless cutlets; and under the guidance of Lichonin
+familiarized herself pretty rapidly with the great art of brewing tea (at
+seventy-five kopecks a pound); but further than that she did not go, probably
+because for each art and for each being there are extreme limitations of their
+own, which cannot in any way be surmounted. But then, she loved to wash floors
+very much; and carried out this occupation so often and with such zeal, that
+dampness soon set in in the flat and multipedes appeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tempted once by a newspaper advertisement, Lichonin procured a stocking
+knitting machine for her, on terms. The art, the mastery of this
+instrument—promising, to judge by the advertisement, three roubles of clear
+profit a day—proved to be so uncomplicated that Lichonin, Soloviev, and
+Nijeradze easily mastered it in a few hours; while Lichonin even contrived to
+knit a whole stocking of uncommon durability, and of such dimensions that it
+would have proven big even for the feet of Minin and Pozharsky, whose statues
+are in Moscow, on Krasnaya Square. Only Liubka alone could not master this
+trade. At every mistake or tangle she was forced to turn to the co-operation of
+the men. But then, she learned pretty rapidly to make artificial flowers and,
+despite the opinion of Simanovsky, made them very exquisitely, and with great
+taste; so that after a month the hat specialty stores began to buy her work.
+And, what is most amazing, she had taken only two lessons in all from a
+specialist, while the rest she learned through a self-instructor, guiding
+herself only by the drawings supplemental to it. She did not contrive to make
+more than a rouble’s worth of flowers in a week; but this money was her pride,
+and for the very first half-rouble that she made she bought Lichonin a
+mouthpiece for smoking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Several years later Lichonin confessed to himself at soul, with regret and with
+a quiet melancholy, that this period of time was the most quiet, peaceful and
+comfortable one of all his life in the university and as a lawyer. This
+unwieldy, clumsy, perhaps even stupid Liubka, possessed some instinctive
+domesticity, some imperceptible ability of creating a bright and easy quietude
+around her. It was precisely she who attained the fact that Lichonin’s quarters
+very soon became a charming, quiet centre; where all the comrades of Lichonin,
+who, as well as the majority of the students of that time, were forced to
+sustain a bitter struggle with the harsh conditions of life, felt somehow at
+ease, as though in a family; and rested at soul after heavy tribulations, need,
+and starvation. Lichonin recalled with grateful sadness her friendly
+complaisance, her modest and attentive silence, on those evenings around the
+samovar, when so much had been spoken, argued and dreamt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In learning, things went with great difficulty. All these self-styled
+cultivators, collectively and separately, spoke of the fact that the education
+of the human mind, and the upbringing of the human soul must flow out of
+individual motives; but in reality they stuffed Liubka with just that which
+seemed to them the most necessary and indispensable, and tried to overcome
+together with her those scientific obstacles, which, without any loss, might
+have been left aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus, for example, Lichonin did not want, under any conditions, to become
+reconciled, in teaching her arithmetic, to her queer, barbarous, savage, or,
+more correctly, childish, primitive method of counting. She counted exclusively
+in ones, twos, threes and fives. Thus, for example, twelve to her was two times
+two threes; nineteen—three fives and two twos; and, it must be said, that
+through her system she with the rapidity of a counting board operated almost up
+to a hundred. To go further she dared not; and besides she had no practical
+need of this. In vain did Lichonin try to transfer her to a digital system.
+Nothing came of this, save that he flew into a rage, yelled at Liubka; while
+she would look at him in silence, with astonished, widely open and guilty eyes,
+the lashes of which stuck into long black arrows from tears. Also, through a
+capricious turn of her mind, she began to master addition and multiplication
+with comparative ease, but subtraction and division were for her an
+impenetrable wall. But then, she could, with amazing speed and wit, solve all
+possible jocose oral head-breaking riddles, and even remembered very many of
+them herself from the thousand year old usage of the village. Toward geography
+she was perfectly dull. True, she could orientate herself as to the four
+cardinal points on the street, in the garden, and in the room; hundreds of
+times better than Lichonin—the ancient peasant instinct in her asserted
+itself—but she stubbornly denied the sphericity of the earth and did not
+recognize the horizon; and when she was told that the terrestrial globe moves
+in space, she only snorted from laughter. Geographical maps to her were always
+an incomprehensible daubing in several colours; but separate figures she
+memorized exactly and quickly. “Where’s Italy?” Lichonin would ask her. “Here
+it is, a boot,” Liubka would say and triumphantly jabbed the Apennine
+Peninsula. “Sweden and Norway?” “This dog, which is jumping off a roof.” “The
+Baltic Sea?” “A widow standing on her knees.” “The Black Sea?” “A shoe.”
+“Spain?” “A fatty in a cap” ... &amp;c. With history matters went no better;
+Lichonin did not take into consideration the fact that she, with her childlike
+soul thirsting for fiction, would have easily become familiarized with historic
+events through various funny and heroically touching anecdotes; but he,
+accustomed to pulling through examinations and tutoring high-school boys of the
+fourth or fifth grade, starved her on names and dates. Besides that, he was
+very impatient, unrestrained, irascible; grew fatigued soon, and a
+secret—usually concealed but constantly growing—hatred for the girl who had so
+suddenly and incongruously warped all his life, more and more frequently and
+unjustly broke forth during the time of these lessons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A far greater success as a pedagogue enjoyed Nijeradze. His guitar and mandolin
+always hung in the dining room, secured to the nails with ribbons. The guitar,
+with its soft, warm sounds, drew Liubka more than the irritating, metallic
+bleating of the mandolin. When Nijeradze would come to them as a guest (three
+or four times a week, in the evening), she herself would take the guitar down
+from the wall, painstakingly wipe it off with a handkerchief, and hand it over
+to him. He, having fussed for some time with the tuning, would clear his
+throat, put one leg over the other, negligently throw himself against the back
+of the chair, and begin in a throaty little tenor, a trifle hoarse, but
+pleasant and true:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“The trea-cha-rous sa-ound av akissing<br/>
+Resahounds through the quiet night air;<br/>
+Tuh all fla-ming hearts it is pleasing,<br/>
+And given tuh each lovin’ pair.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+For a single mohoment of mee-ting ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at this he would pretend to swoon away from his own singing, shut his eyes,
+toss his head in the passionate passages or during the pauses, tearing his
+right hand away from the strings; would suddenly turn to stone, and for a
+second would pierce Liubka’s eyes with his languorous, humid, sheepish eyes. He
+knew an endless multitude of ballads, catches, and old-fashioned, jocose little
+pieces. Most of all pleased Liubka the universally familiar Armenian couplets
+about Karapet:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Karapet has a buffet,<br/>
+On the buffet’s a confet,<br/>
+On the confet’s a portret—<br/>
+That’s the self-same Karapet.”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[22] Anglice, “confet” is a bon-bon; “portret,” a portrait.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of these couplets (in the Caucasus they are called kinto-uri—the song of the
+peddlers) the prince knew an infinite many, but the absurd refrain was always
+one and the same:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Bravo, bravo, Katenka,<br/>
+Katerin Petrovna,<br/>
+Don’t you kiss me on the cheek—a,<br/>
+Kiss the backs of my head.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These couplets Nijeradze always sang in a diminished voice, preserving on his
+face an expression of serious astonishment about Karapet; while Liubka laughed
+until it hurt, until tears came, until she had nervous spasms. Once, carried
+away, she could not restrain herself and began to chime in with him, and their
+singing proved to be very harmonious. Little by little, when she had by degrees
+completely ceased to be embarrassed before the prince, they sang together more
+and more frequently. Liubka proved to have a very soft and low contralto, even
+though thin, on which her past life with its colds, drinking, and professional
+excesses had left absolutely no traces. And mainly—which was already a curious
+gift of God—she possessed an instinctive, inherent ability very exactly,
+beautifully, and always originally, to carry on the second voice. There came a
+time toward the end of their acquaintance, when Liubka did not beg the prince,
+but the prince Liubka, to sing some one of the beloved songs of the people, of
+which she knew a multitude. And so, putting her elbow on the table, and
+propping up her head with her palm, like a peasant woman, she would start off
+to the cautious, painstaking, quiet accompaniment:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Oh, the nights have grown tiresome to me, and wearisome;<br/>
+To be parted from my dearie, from my mate!<br/>
+Oh, haven’t I myself, woman-like, done a foolish thing—<br/>
+Have stirred up the wrath of my own darling:<br/>
+When I did call him a bitter drunkard! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bitter drunkard!” the prince would repeat the last words together with her,
+and would forlornly toss his curly head, inclined to one side; and they both
+tried to end the song so that the scarcely seizable quivering of the guitar
+strings and the voice might by degrees grow quiet, and that it might not be
+possible to note when the sound ended and the silence came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But then, in the matter of THE PANTHER’S SKIN, the work of the famous Georgian
+poet Rustavelli, prince Nijeradze fell down completely. The beauty of the poem,
+of course, consisted in the way it sounded in the native tongue; but scarcely
+would he begin to read in sing-song his throaty, sibilant, hawking phrases,
+when Liubka would at first shake for a long time from irresistible laughter;
+then, finally, burst into laughter, filling the whole room with explosive,
+prolonged peals. Then Nijeradze in wrath would slam shut the little tome of the
+adored writer, and swear at Liubka, calling her a mule and a camel. However,
+they soon made up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were times when fits of goatish, mischievous merriment would come upon
+Nijeradze. He would pretend that he wanted to embrace Liubka, would roll
+exaggeratedly passionate eyes at her, and would utter with a theatrically
+languishing whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Me soul! The best rosa in the garden of Allah! Honey and milk are upon thy
+lips, and thy breath is better than the aroma of kabob. Give me to drink the
+bliss of Nirvanah from the goblet of thy lips, O thou, my best Tifflissian
+she-goat!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she would laugh, get angry, strike his hands, and threaten to complain to
+Lichonin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“V-va!” the prince would spread out his hands. “What is Lichonin? Lichonin is
+my friend, my brother, and bosom crony. But then, does he know what loffe is?
+Is it possible that you northern people understand loffe? It’s we, Georgians,
+who are created for loffe. Look, Liubka! I’ll show you right away what loffe
+is!” He would clench his fists, bend his body forward, and would start rolling
+his eyes so ferociously, gnash his teeth and roar with a lion’s voice so, that
+a childish terror would encompass Liubka, despite the fact that she knew this
+to be a joke, and she would dash off running into another room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must be said, however, that for this lad, in general unrestrained in the
+matter of light, chance romances, existed special firm moral prohibitions,
+sucked in with the milk of his mother Georgian; the sacred adates concerning
+the wife of a friend. And then, probably he understood—and it must be said that
+these oriental men, despite their seeming naiveness—and, perhaps, even owing to
+it—possess, when they wish to, a fine psychic intuition—he understood, that
+having made Liubka his mistress for even one minute, he would be forever
+deprived of this charming, quiet, domestic evening comfort, to which he had
+grown so used. For he, who was on terms of thou-ing with almost the whole
+university, nevertheless felt himself so lonely in a strange city and in a
+country still strange to him!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These studies afforded the most pleasure of all to Soloviev. This big, strong,
+and negligent man somehow involuntarily, imperceptibly even to himself, began
+to submit to that hidden, unseizable, exquisite witchery of femininity; which
+not infrequently lurks under the coarsest covering, in the harshest, most
+gnarled environment. The pupil dominated, the teacher obeyed. Through the
+qualities of a primitive, but on the other hand a fresh, deep, and original
+soul, Liubka was inclined not to obey the method of another, but to seek out
+her own peculiar, strange processes. Thus, for example, she—like many children,
+however,—learned writing before reading. Not she herself, meek and yielding by
+nature, but some peculiar quality of her mind, obstinately refused in reading
+to harness a vowel alongside of a consonant, or vice versa; in writing,
+however, she would manage this. For penmanship along slanted rulings she,
+despite the general wont of beginners, felt a great inclination; she wrote
+bending low over the paper; blew on the paper from exertion, as though blowing
+off imaginary dust; licked her lips and stuck out with the tongue, from the
+inside, now one cheek, now the other. Soloviev did not thwart her, and followed
+after, along those ways which her instinct laid down. And it must be said, that
+during this month and a half he had managed to become attached with all his
+huge, broad, mighty soul to this chance, weak, transitory being. This was the
+circumspect, droll, magnanimous, somewhat wondering love, and the careful
+concern, of a kind elephant for a frail, helpless, yellow-downed chick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reading was a delectation for both of them, and here again the choice of
+works was directed by the taste of Liubka, while Soloviev only followed its
+current and its sinuosities. Thus, for example, Liubka did not overcome Don
+Quixote, tired, and, finally, turning away from him, with pleasure heard
+Robinson Crusoe through, and wept with especial copiousness over the scene of
+his meeting with his relatives. She liked Dickens, and very easily grasped his
+radiant humour; but the features of English manners were foreign to her and
+incomprehensible. They also read Chekhov more than once, and Liubka very
+freely, without difficulty, penetrated the beauty of his design, his smile and
+his sadness. Stories for children moved her, touched her to such a degree that
+it was laughable and joyous to look at her. Once Soloviev read to her Chekhov’s
+story, The Fit, in which, as it is known, a student for the first time finds
+himself in a brothel; and afterwards, on the next day, writhes about, as in a
+fit, in the spasms of a keen psychic suffering and the consciousness of common
+guilt. Soloviev himself did not expect that tremendous impression which this
+narrative would make upon her. She cried, swore, wrung her hands, and exclaimed
+all the while:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lord! Where does he take all that stuff from, and so skillfully! Why, it’s
+every bit just the way it is with us!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once he brought with him a book entitled THE HISTORY OF MANON LESCAUT AND THE
+CHEVALIER DE GRIEUX, the work of Abbe Prevost. It must be said that Soloviev
+himself was reading this remarkable book for the first time. But still, Liubka
+appraised it far more deeply and finely. The absence of a plot, the naiveness
+of the telling, the surplus of sentimentality, the olden fashion of the
+style—all this taken together cooled Soloviev; whereas Liubka received the
+joyous, sad, touching and flippant details of this quaint immortal novel not
+only through her ears, but as though with her eyes and with all her naively
+open heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘Our intention of espousal was forgotten at St. Denis,’” Soloviev was reading,
+bending his tousled, golden-haired head, illuminated by the shade of the lamp,
+low over the book; “‘we transgressed against the laws of the church and,
+without thinking of it, became espoused.’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What are they at? Of their own will, that is? Without a priest? Just so?”
+asked Liubka in uneasiness, tearing herself away from her artificial flowers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course. And what of it? Free love, and that’s all there is to it. Like you
+and Lichonin, now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, me! That’s an entirely different matter. You know yourself where he took
+me from. But she’s an innocent and genteel young lady. That’s a low-down thing
+for him to do. And, believe me, Soloviev, he’s sure to leave her later. Ah, the
+poor girl. Well, well, well, read on.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But already after several pages all the sympathies and commiserations of Liubka
+went over to the side of the deceived chevalier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘However, the visits and departures by thefts of M. de B. threw me into
+confusion. I also recollected the little purchases of Manon, which exceeded our
+means. All this smacked of the generosity of a new lover. “But no, no,” I
+repeated, “it is impossible that Manon should deceive me! She is aware, that I
+live only for her, she is exceedingly well aware that I adore her.”’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, the little fool, the little fool!” exclaimed Liubka. “Why, can’t you see
+right off that she’s being kept by this rich man. Ah, trash that she is!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the further the novel unfolded, the more passionate and lively an interest
+did Liubka take in it. She had nothing against Manon’s fleecing her subsequent
+patrons with the help of her lover and her brother, while de Grieux occupied
+himself with sharping at the club; but her every new betrayal brought Liubka
+into a rage, while the sufferings of the gallant chevalier evoked her tears.
+Once she asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Soloviev, dearie, who was he—this author?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He was a certain French priest.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He wasn’t a Russian?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, a Frenchman, I’m telling you. See, he’s got everything so—the towns are
+French and the people have French names.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then he was a priest, you say? Where did he know all this from, then?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, he knew it, that’s all. Because he was an ordinary man of the world, a
+nobleman, and only became a monk afterwards. He had seen a lot in his life.
+Then he again left the monks. But, however, here’s everything about him written
+in detail in front of this book.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He read the biography of Abbe Prevost to her. Liubka heard it through
+attentively, shaking her head with great significance; asked over again about
+that which she did not understand in certain places, and when he had finished
+she thoughtfully drawled out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then that’s what he is! He’s written it up awfully good. Only why is she so
+low down? For he loves her so, with all his life; but she’s playing him false
+all the time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, Liubochka, what can you do? For she loved him too. Only she’s a vain
+hussy, and frivolous. All she wants is only rags, and her own horses, and
+diamonds.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka flared up and hit one fist against the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d rub her into powder, the low-down creature? So that’s called her having
+loved, too! If you love a man, then all that comes from him must be dear to
+you. He goes to prison, and you go with him to prison. He’s become a thief,
+well, you help him. He’s a beggar, but still you go with him. What is there out
+of the way, that there’s only a crust of black bread, so long as there’s love?
+She’s low down, and she’s low down, that’s what! But I, in his place, would
+leave her; or, instead of crying, give her such a drubbing that she’d walk
+around in bruises for a whole month, the varmint!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The end of the novel she could not manage to hear to the finish for a long
+time, and always broke out into sincere warm tears, so that it was necessary to
+interrupt the reading; and the last chapter they overcame only in four doses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The calamities and misadventures of the lovers in prison, the compulsory
+despatch of Manon to America and the self-denial of de Grieux in voluntarily
+following her, so possessed the imagination of Liubka and shook her soul, that
+she even forgot to make her remarks. Listening to the story of the quiet,
+beautiful death of Manon in the midst of the desert plain, she, without
+stirring, with hands clasped on her breast, looked at the light; and the tears
+ran and ran out of her staring eyes and fell, like a shower, on the table. But
+when the Chevalier de Grieux, who had lain two days near the corpse of his dear
+Manon, finally began to dig a grave with the stump of his sword—Liubka burst
+into sobbing so that Soloviev became scared and dashed after water. But even
+having calmed down a little, she still sobbed for a long time with her
+trembling, swollen lips and babbled:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah! Their life was so miserable! What a bitter lot that was! And is it
+possible that it’s always like that, darling Soloviev; that just as soon as a
+man and a woman fall in love with each other, in just the way they did, then
+God is sure to punish them? Dearie, but why is that? Why?”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0217"></a> CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+
+<p>
+But if the Georgian and the kind-souled Soloviev served as a palliating
+beginning against the sharp thorns of great worldly wisdom, in the curious
+education of the mind and soul of Liubka; and if Liubka forgave the pedantism
+of Lichonin for the sake of a first sincere and limitless love for him, and
+forgave just as willingly as she would have forgiven curses, beatings, or a
+heavy crime—the lessons of Simanovsky, on the other hand, were a downright
+torture and a constant, prolonged burden for her. For it must be said that he,
+as though in spite, was far more accurate and exact in his lessons than any
+pedagogue working out his weekly stipulated tutorings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the incontrovertibility of his opinions, the assurance of his tone and the
+didacticism of his presentation he took away the will of poor Liubka and
+paralyzed her soul; in the same way that he sometimes, during university
+gatherings or at mass meetings, influenced the timid and bashful minds of
+newcomers. He was an orator at meetings; he was a prominent member in the
+organization of students’ mess halls; he took part in the recording,
+lithographing and publication of lectures; he was chosen the head of the
+course; and, finally, took a very great interest in the students’ treasury. He
+was of that number of people who, after they leave the student auditoriums,
+become the leaders of parties, the unrestrained arbiters of pure and
+self-denying conscience; serve out their political stage somewhere in Chukhlon,
+directing the keen attention of all Russia to their heroically woeful
+situation; and after that, beautifully leaning on their past, make a career for
+themselves, thanks to a solid advocacy, a deputation, or else a marriage joined
+with a goodly piece of black loam land and provincial activity. Unnoticeably to
+themselves and altogether unnoticeably, of course, to the casual glance, they
+cautiously right themselves; or, more correctly, fade until they grow a belly
+unto themselves, and acquire podagra and diseases of the liver. Then they
+grumble at the whole world; say that they were not understood, that their time
+was the time of sacred ideals. While in the family they are despots and not
+infrequently give money out at usury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The path of the education of Liubka’s mind and soul was plain to him, as was
+plain and incontrovertible everything that he conceived; he wanted at the start
+to interest Liubka in chemistry and physics.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The virginally feminine mind,” he pondered, “will be astounded, then I shall
+gain possession of her attention, and from trifles, from hocus-pocus, I shall
+pass on to that which will lead her to the centre of universal knowledge, where
+there is no superstition, no prejudices; where there is only a broad field for
+the testing of nature.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must be said that he was inconsistent in his lessons. He dragged in all that
+came to his hand for the astonishment of Liubka. Once he brought along for her
+a large self-made serpent—a long cardboard hose, filled with gunpowder, bent in
+the form of a harmonica, and tied tightly across with a cord. He lit it, and
+the serpent for a long time with crackling jumped over the dining room and the
+bedroom, filling the place with smoke and stench. Liubka was scarcely amazed
+and said that this was simply fireworks, that she had already seen this, and
+that you couldn’t astonish her with that. She asked, however, permission to
+open the window. Then he brought a large phial, tinfoil, rosin and a cat’s
+tail, and in this manner contrived a Leyden jar. The discharge, although weak,
+was produced, however.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, the unclean one take you, Satan!” Liubka began to cry out, having felt the
+dry fillip in her little finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, out of heated peroxide of manganese, mixed with sand, with the help of a
+druggist’s vial, the gutta-percha end of a syringe, a basin filled with water,
+and a jam jar—oxygen was derived. The red-hot cork, coal and phosphorus burnt
+in the jar so blindingly that it pained the eyes. Liubka clapped her palms and
+squealed out in delight:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mister Professor, more! Please, more, more! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when, having united the oxygen with the hydrogen brought in an empty
+champagne bottle, and having wrapped up the bottle for precaution in a towel,
+Simanovsky ordered Liubka to direct its neck toward a burning candle, and when
+the explosion broke out, as though four cannons had been fired off at once—an
+explosion through which the plastering fell down from the ceiling—then Liubka
+grew timorous, and, only getting to rights with difficulty, pronounced with
+trembling lips, but with dignity: “You must excuse me now, but since I have a
+flat of my own, and I’m not at all a wench any longer, but a decent woman, I’d
+ask you therefore not to misbehave in my place. I thought you, like a smart and
+educated man, would do everything nice and genteel, but you busy yourself with
+silly things. They can even put one in jail for that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Subsequently, much, much later, she told how she had a student friend, who made
+dynamite before her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must have been, after all, that Simanovsky, this enigmatic man, so
+influential in his youthful society, where he had to deal with theory for the
+most part, and so incoherent when a practical experiment with a living soul had
+come into his hands—was just simply stupid, but could skillfully conceal this
+sole sincere quality of his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having suffered failure in applied sciences, he at once passed on to
+metaphysics. Once he very self-assuredly, and in a tone such that after it no
+refutation was possible, announced to Liubka that there is no God, and that he
+would undertake to prove this during five minutes. Whereupon Liubka jumped up
+from her place, and told him firmly that she, even though a quondam prostitute,
+still believed in God and would not allow Him to be offended in her presence;
+and if he would continue such nonsense, then she would complain to Vassil
+Vassilich.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will also tell him,” she added in a weeping voice, “that you, instead of
+teaching me, only rattle off all kinds of stuff and all that sort of nastiness,
+while you yourself hold your hand on my knees. And that’s even not at all
+genteel.” And for the first time during all their acquaintanceship she, who had
+formerly been so timorous and constrained, sharply moved away from her teacher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, having suffered a few failures, Simanovsky still obstinately continued
+to act upon the mind and imagination of Liubka. He tried to explain to her the
+theory of the origin of species, beginning with an amoeba and ending with
+Napoleon. Liubka listened to him attentively, and during this there was an
+imploring expression in her eyes: “When will you stop at last?” She yawned into
+a handkerchief and then guiltily explained: “Excuse me, that’s from my nerves.”
+Marx also had no success goods, supplementary value, the manufacturer and the
+worker, which had become algebraic formulas, were for Liubka merely empty
+sounds, vibrating the air; and she, very sincere at soul, always jumped up with
+joy from her place, when hearing that, apparently, the vegetable soup had
+boiled up, or the samovar was getting ready to boil over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It cannot be said that Simanovsky did not have success with women. His aplomb
+and his weighty, decisive tone always acted upon simple souls, especially upon
+fresh, naive, trusting souls. Out of protracted ties he always got out very
+easily; either he was dedicated to a tremendously responsible call, before
+which domestic love relations were nothing; or he pretended to be a superman,
+to whom all is permitted (O, thou, Nietszche, so long ago and so disgracefully
+misconstrued for high-school boys!). The passive, almost imperceptible, but
+firmly evasive resistance of Liubka irritated and excited him. What
+particularly incensed him was the fact that she, who had formerly been so
+accessible to all, ready to yield her love in one day to several people in
+succession, to each one for two roubles, was now all of a sudden playing at
+some pure and disinterested inamoration!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nonsense,” he thought. “This can’t be. She’s making believe, and, probably, I
+don’t strike the right tone with her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with every day he became more exacting, captious, and stern. Hardly
+consciously, more probably through habit, he relied on his usual influence,
+intimidating the thought and subduing the will, which rarely betrayed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once Liubka complained about him to Lichonin:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He’s too strict with me, now, Vassil Vassilievich; and I don’t understand
+anything he says, and I don’t want to take lessons with him any more.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow or other, Lichonin lamely quieted her down; but still he had an
+explanation with Simanovsky. The other answered him with sang froid:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just as you wish, my dear fellow; if my method displeases you or Liubka, then
+I’m even ready to resign. My problem consists only of bringing in a genuine
+element of discipline into her education. If she does not understand anything,
+then I compel her to learn it by heart, aloud. With time this will cease. That
+is unavoidable. Recall, Lichonin, how difficult the transition from arithmetic
+to algebra was for us, when we were compelled to replace common numerals with
+letters, and did not know why this was done. Or why did they teach us grammar,
+instead of simply advising us to write tales and verses?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And on the very next day, bending down low under the hanging shade of the lamp
+over Liubka’s body, and sniffing all over her breast and under her arm pits, he
+was saying to her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Draw a triangle... Well, yes, this way and this way. On top I write ‘Love.’
+Write simply the letter L, and below M and W. That will be: the Love of Man and
+Woman.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the air of an oracle, unshakable and austere, he spoke all sorts of erotic
+balderdash and almost unexpectedly concluded:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so look, Liuba. The desire to love—it’s the same as the desire to eat, to
+drink, and to breathe the air.” He would squeeze her thigh hard, considerably
+above the knee; and she again, becoming confused and not wishing to offend him,
+would try almost imperceptibly to move her leg away gradually.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell me, would it be offensive, now, for your sister, mother, or for your
+husband, that you by chance had not dined at home, but had gone into a
+restaurant or a cook-shop, and had there satisfied your hunger? And so with
+love. No more, no less. A physiological enjoyment. Perhaps more powerful, more
+keen, than all others, but that’s all. Thus, for example, now: I want you as a
+woman. While you ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, drop it, Mister,” Liubka cut him short with vexation. “Well, what are you
+harping on one and the same thing for all the time? Change your act. You’ve
+been told: no and no. Don’t you think I see what you’re trying to get at? But
+only I’ll never agree to unfaithfulness, seeing as how Vasilli Vasillievich is
+my benefactor, and I adore him with all my soul... And you’re even pretty
+disgusting to me with your nonsense.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once he caused Liubka a great and scandalous hurt, and all because of his
+theoretical first principles. As at the university they were already for a long
+time talking about Lichonin’s having saved a girl from such and such a house;
+and that now he is taken up with her moral regeneration; that rumour,
+naturally, also reached the studying girls, who frequented the student circles.
+And so, none other than Simanovsky once brought to Liubka two female medicos,
+one historian, and one beginning poetess, who, by the way, was already writing
+critical essays as well. He introduced them in the most serious and fool-like
+manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here,” he said, stretching out his hand, now in the direction of the guests,
+now of Liubka, “here, comrades, get acquainted. You, Liuba, will find in them
+real friends, who will help you on your radiant path; while you—comrades, Liza,
+Nadya, Sasha and Rachel—you will regard as elder sisters a being who has just
+struggled out of that horrible darkness into which the social structure places
+the modern woman.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke not exactly so, perhaps; but in any case, approximately in that
+manner. Liubka turned red, extended her hand, with all the fingers clumsily
+folded together, to the young ladies in coloured blouses and in leather belts;
+regaled them with tea and jam; promptly helped them with lights for cigarettes;
+but, despite all invitations, did not want to sit down for anything. She would
+say: “Yes-ss, n-no, as you wish.” And when one of the young ladies dropped a
+handkerchief on the floor, she hurriedly made a dash to pick it up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the maidens, red, stout, and with a bass voice, whose face, all in all,
+consisted of only a pair of red cheeks, out of which mirth-provokingly peeped
+out a hint at an upturned nose, and with a pair of little black eyes, like tiny
+raisins, sparkling out of their depths, was inspecting Liubka from head to
+feet, as though through an imaginary lorgnette; directing over her a glance
+which said nothing, but was contemptuous. “Why, I haven’t been getting anybody
+away from her,” thought Liubka guiltily. But another was so tactless, that
+she—perhaps for the first time for her, but the hundredth for Liubka—began a
+conversation about: how had she happened upon the path of prostitution? This
+was a bustling young lady, pale, very pretty, ethereal; all in little light
+curls, with the air of a spoiled kitten and even a little pink cat’s bow on her
+neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But tell me, who was this scoundrel, now ... who was the first to ... well,
+you understand? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the mind of Liubka quickly flashed the images of her former mates, Jennka
+and Tamara, so proud, so brave and resourceful—oh, far brainier than these
+maidens—and she, almost unexpectedly for herself, suddenly said sharply:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There was a lot of them. I’ve already forgotten. Kolka, Mitka, Volodka,
+Serejka, Jorjik, Troshka, Petka, and also Kuzka and Guska with a party. But why
+are you interested?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why... no... that is, I ask as a person who fully sympathizes with you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But have you a lover?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pardon me, I don’t understand what you’re saying. People, it’s time we were
+going.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is, what don’t you understand? Have you ever slept with a man?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Comrade Simanovsky, I had not presupposed that you would bring us to such a
+person. Thank you. It was exceedingly charming of you!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was difficult for Liubka to surmount the first step. She was of those
+natures which endure long, but tear loose rapidly; and she, usually so
+timorous, was unrecognizable at this moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I know!” she was screaming in wrath. “I know, that you’re the very same as
+I! But you have a papa, a mamma; you’re provided for, and if you have to, then
+you’ll even commit abortion—many do so. But if you were in my place, when
+there’s nothing to stuff your mouth with, and a girlie doesn’t understand
+anything yet, because she can’t read or write; while all around the men are
+shoving like he-dogs—then you’d be in a sporting house too. It’s a shame to put
+on airs before a poor girl—that’s what!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simanovsky, who had gotten into trouble, said a few general consolatory words
+in a judicious bass, such as the noble fathers used in olden comedies, and led
+his ladies off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he was fated to play one more very shameful, distressing, and final role in
+the free life of Liubka. She had already complained to Lichonin for a long time
+that the presence of Simanovsky was oppressive to her; but Lichonin paid no
+attention to womanish trifles: the vacuous, fictitious, wordy hypnosis of this
+man of commands was strong within him. There are influences, to get rid of
+which is difficult, almost impossible. On the other hand, he was already for a
+long time feeling the burden of co-habitation with Liubka. Frequently he
+thought to himself: “She is spoiling my life; I am growing common, foolish; I
+have become dissolved in fool benevolence; it will end up in my marrying her,
+entering the excise or the assay office, or getting in among pedagogues; I’ll
+be taking bribes, will gossip, and become an abominable provincial morel. And
+where are my dreams of the power of thought, the beauty of life, of love and
+deeds for all humanity?” he would say, at times even aloud, and pull his hair.
+And for that reason, instead of attentively going into Liubka’s complaints, he
+would lose his temper, yell, stamp his feet, and the patient, meek Liubka would
+grow quiet and retire into the kitchen, to have a good cry there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now more and more frequently, after family quarrels, in the minutes of
+reconciliation he would say to Liubka:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear Liuba, you and I do not suit each other, comprehend that. Look: here
+are a hundred roubles for you, ride home. Your relatives will receive you as
+their own. Live there a while, look around you. I will come for you after half
+a year; you’ll have become rested, and, of course, all that’s filthy, nasty,
+that has been grafted upon you by the city, will go away, will die off. And
+you’ll begin a new life independently, without any assistance, alone and
+proud!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But then, can anything be done with a woman who has come to love for the first,
+and, of course, as it seems to her, for the last time? Can she be convinced of
+the necessity for parting? Does logic exist for her?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Always reverent before the firmness of the words and decisions of Simanovsky,
+Lichonin, however, surmised and by instinct understood his real relation to
+Liubka; and in his desire to free himself, to shake off a chance load beyond
+his strength, he would catch himself in a nasty little thought: “She pleases
+Simanovsky; and as for her, isn’t it all the same if it’s he or I or a third?
+Guess I’ll make a clean breast of it, explain things to him and yield Liubka up
+to him like a comrade. But then, the fool won’t go. Will raise a rumpus.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Or just to come upon the two of them together, somehow,” he would ponder
+further, “in some decisive pose... to raise a noise, make a row... A noble
+gesture... a little money and... a getaway.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He now frequently, for several days, would not return home; and afterwards,
+having come, would undergo torturesome hours of feminine interrogations,
+scenes, tears, even hysterical fits. Liubka would at times watch him in secret,
+when he went out of the house; would stop opposite the entrance that he went
+into, and for hours would await his return in order to reproach him and to cry
+in the street. Not being able to read, she intercepted his letters and, not
+daring to turn to the aid of the prince or Soloviev, would save them up in her
+little cupboard together with sugar, tea, lemon and all sorts of other trash.
+She had even reached the stage when, in minutes of anger, she threatened him
+with sulphuric acid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“May the devil take her,” Lichonin would ponder during the minutes of his
+crafty plans. “It’s all one, let there even be nothing between them. But I’ll
+take and make a fearful scene for him, and her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he would declaim to himself:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, so! ... I have warmed you in my bosom, and what do I see now? You are
+paying me with black ingratitude. ... And you, my best comrade, you have
+attempted my sole happiness! ... O, no, no, remain together; I go hence with
+tears in my eyes. I see, that I am one too many! I do not wish to oppose your
+love, etc., etc.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And precisely these dreams, these hidden plans, such momentary, chance, and, at
+bottom, vile ones—of those to which people later do not confess to
+themselves—were suddenly fulfilled. It was the turn of Soloviev’s lesson. To
+his great happiness, Liubka had at last read through almost without faltering:
+“A good plough has Mikhey, and a good one has Sisoi as well... a swallow... a
+swing ... the children love God...” And as a reward for this Soloviev read
+aloud to her Of the Merchant Kalashnikov and of Kiribeievich, Life-guardsman of
+Czar Ivan the Fourth. Liubka from delight bounced in her armchair, clapped her
+hands. The beauty of this monumental, heroic work had her in its grasp. But she
+did not have a chance to express her impressions in full. Soloviev was hurrying
+to a business appointment. And immediately, coming to meet Soloviev, having
+barely exchanged greetings with him in the doorway, came Simanovsky. Liubka’s
+face sadly lengthened and her lips pouted. For this pedantic teacher and coarse
+male had become very repugnant to her of late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time he began a lecture on the theme that for man there exist no laws, no
+rights, no duties, no honour, no vileness; and that man is a quantity
+self-sufficient, independent of anyone and anything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s possible to be a God, possible to be an intestinal worm, a tape worm—it’s
+all the same.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He already wanted to pass on to the theory of amatory emotions; but, it is to
+be regretted, he hurried a trifle from impatience: he embraced Liubka, drew her
+to him and began to squeeze her roughly. “She’ll become intoxicated from
+caressing. She’ll give in!” thought the calculating Simanovsky. He sought to
+touch her mouth with his lips for a kiss, but she screamed and snorted spit at
+him. All the assumed delicacy had left her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Get out, you mangy devil, fool, swine, dirt! I’ll smash your snout for you!
+...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the lexicon of the establishment had come back to her; but Simanovsky,
+having lost his pince-nez, his face distorted, was looking at her with blurred
+eyes and jabbering whatever came into his head:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear ... It’s all the same ... a second of enjoyment! ... You and I will
+blend in enjoyment! ... No one will find out! ... Be mine! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was just at this very minute that Lichonin walked into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, at soul he did not admit to himself that this minute he would commit
+a vileness; but only somehow from the side, at a distance, reflected that his
+face was pale, and that his immediate words would be tragic and of great
+significance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes!” he said dully, like an actor in the fourth act of a drama; and, letting
+his hands drop impotently, began to shake his chin, which had fallen upon his
+breast. “I expected everything, only not this. You I excuse, Liuba—you are a
+cave being; but you, Simanovsky ... I esteemed you ... however, I still esteem
+you a decent man. But I know, that passion is at times stronger than the
+arguments of reason. Right here are fifty roubles—I am leaving them for Liuba;
+you, of course, will return them to me later, I have no doubt of that. Arrange
+her destiny ... You are a wise, kind, honest man, while I am ... (“A skunk!”
+somebody’s distinct voice flashed through his head.) I am going away, because I
+will not be able to bear this torture any more. Be happy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He snatched out of his pocket and with effect threw his wallet on the table;
+then seized his hair and ran out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, this was the best way out for him. And the scene had been played out
+precisely as he had dreamt of it.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap0301"></a> PART THREE</h2>
+
+<h3> CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<p>
+All this Liubka told at length and disjointedly, sobbing on Jennka’s shoulder.
+Of course, in her personal elucidation this tragi-comical history proved
+altogether unlike what it had been in reality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lichonin, according to her words, had taken her to him only to entice, to tempt
+her; to have as much use as possible out of her foolishness, and then to
+abandon her. But she, the fool, had in truth fallen in love—with him, and since
+she was very jealous about him and all these tousled girls in leather belts, he
+had done a low-down thing: had sent up his comrade on purpose, had framed it up
+with him, and the other had begun to hug Liubka, and Vasska came in, saw it,
+and kicked up a great row, and chased Liubka out into the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, in her version there were two almost equal parts of truth and
+untruth; but so, at least, all this had appeared to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She also told with great details how, having found herself without masculine
+support or without anybody’s powerful extraneous influence, she had hired a
+room In a rather bad little hotel, on a retired street; how even from the first
+day the boots, a tough bird, a hard-boiled egg, had attempted to trade in her,
+without even having and Vasska came in, saw it, and kicked up a great row, the
+hotel to a private room, but even there had been overtaken by an experienced
+old woman go-between, with whose like the houses inhabited by poverty swarm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Therefore, even with quiet living, there was in the face, in the conversation,
+and in the entire manner of Liubka something peculiar, specific to the casual
+eye; perhaps even entirely imperceptible, but for the business scent as plain
+and as irrefutable as the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the chance, brief, sincere love had given her the strength to oppose the
+inevitability of a second fall. In her heroic courage she even went so far as
+putting in a few notices in the newspapers, that she was seeking a place with
+“all found.” However, she had no recommendation of any sort. In addition, she
+had to do exclusively with women when it came to the hiring; and they also,
+with some sort of an inner, infallible instinct, surmised in her their ancient
+foe—the seductress of their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was neither sense nor use in going home. Her native Vassilkovsky district
+is distant only fifteen versts from the state capital; and the rumour that she
+had entered that sort of an establishment had long since penetrated, by means
+of her fellow-villagers, into the village. This was written of in letters, and
+transmitted verbally, by those village neighbours who had seen her both on the
+street and at Anna Markovna’s place itself—porters and bell-hops of hotels,
+waiters at small restaurants, cabbies, small contractors. She knew what odour
+this fame would give off if she were to return to her native haunts. It were
+better to hang one’s self than to endure this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was as uneconomical and impractical in money matters as a five-year-old
+child, and in a short while was left without a kopeck; while to go back to the
+brothel was fearful and shameful. But the temptations of street prostitution
+turned up of themselves, and at every step begged to be seized. In the
+evenings, on the main street, old hardened street prostitutes at once
+unerringly guessed her former profession. Ever and anon one of them, having
+come alongside of her, would begin in a sweet, ingratiating voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How is it, young lady, that you’re walking alone? Let’s be mates. Let’s walk
+together. That’s always more convenient. Whenever men want to pass the time
+pleasantly with girls, they always love to start a party of four.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And right here the experienced, tried recruiting agent, at first casually, but
+after that warmly, with all her heart, would begin to praise up all the
+conveniences of living at your own landlady’s—the tasty food, full freedom of
+going out, the possibility of always concealing from the landlady of your rooms
+the surplus over the agreed pay. Here also much of the malicious and the
+offensive was said, by the way, against the women of the private houses, who
+were called “government hides,” “government stuff,” “genteel maidens” and
+“institutes.” Liubka knew the value of these sneers, because the dwellers in
+brothels also bear themselves with the greatest contempt toward street
+prostitutes, calling them “bimmies” and “venereals.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To be sure, in the very end that happened which had to happen. Seeing in
+perspective a whole series of hungry days, and in the very depth of them the
+dark horror of an unknown future, Liubka consented to a very civil invitation
+of some respectable little old man; important, grayish, well-dressed and
+correct. For this ignominy Liubka received a rouble, but did not dare to
+protest: the previous life in the house had entirely eaten away her personal
+initiative, mobility and energy. Later, several times running, he even did not
+pay her anything at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One young man, easy of manner and handsome, in a cap with a flattened brim, put
+on at a brave slant over one ear, in a silk blouse, girdled by a cord with
+tassels, also led her with him into a hotel, asked for wine and a snack; for a
+long time lied to Liubka about his being an earl’s son on the wrong side of the
+blanket, and that he was the first billiardist in the whole city; that all the
+wenches like him and that he would make a swell Jane out of Liubka as well.
+Then he went out of the room for just one minute, as though on business of his
+own, and vanished forever. The stern, cross-eyed porter beat her with
+contentment, long, in silence, with a business-like air; breathing hard and
+covering up Liubka’s mouth with his hand. But in the end, having become
+convinced, probably, that the fault was not hers, but the guest’s, he took her
+purse, in which was a rouble with some small change, away from her; and took as
+security her rather cheap little hat and small outer jacket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another man of forty-five years, not at all badly dressed, having tortured the
+girl for some two hours, paid for the room and gave her 80 kopecks; but when
+she started to complain, he with a ferocious face put an enormous red-haired
+fist up to her very nose, the first thing, and said decisively:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You just snivel a bit more to me... I’ll snivel you... I’ll yell for the
+police, now, and say that you robbed me when I was sleeping. Want me to? Is it
+long since you’ve been in a station house?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And went away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And of such cases there were many.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On that day, when her landlords—a boatman and his wife—had refused to let her
+have a room and just simply threw her things out into the yard; and when she
+had wandered the night through on the streets, without sleep, under the rain,
+hiding from the policemen—only then, with aversion and shame, did she resolve
+to turn to Lichonin’s aid. But Lichonin was no longer in town pusillanimously,
+he had gone away the very same day when the unjustly wronged and disgraced
+Liubka had run away from the flat. And it was in the morning that there came
+into her head the desperate thought of returning into the brothel and begging
+forgiveness there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jennechka, you’re so clever, so brave, so kind; beg Emma Edwardovna for me—the
+little housekeeper will listen to you,” she implored Jennka and kissed her bare
+shoulders and wetted them with tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She won’t listen to anybody,” gloomily answered Jennka. “And you did have to
+tie up with a fool and a low-down fellow like that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jennechka, but you yourself advised me to,” timidly retorted Liubka.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I advised you? ... I didn’t advise you anything. What are you lying on me for,
+just as though I was dead... Well, all right then—let’s go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Emma Edwardovna had already known for a long while about the return of Liubka;
+and had even seen her at that moment when she had passed through the yard of
+the house, looking all around her. At soul she was not at all against taking
+Liubka back. It must be said, that she had even let her go only because she had
+been tempted by the money, one-half of which she had appropriated for herself.
+And in addition to that, she had reckoned that with the present seasonal influx
+of new prostitutes she would have a large choice; in which, however, she had
+made a mistake, because the season had terminated abruptly. But in any case,
+she had firmly resolved to take Liubka. Only it was necessary, for the
+preservation and rounding out of prestige, to give her a scare befittingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wha-at?” she began to yell at Liubka, scarcely having heard her out, babbling
+in confusion. “You want to be taken on again? ... You wallowed the devil knows
+with whom in the streets, under the fences; and now, you scum, you’re again
+shoving your way into a respectable, decent establishment! ... Pfui, you
+Russian swine! Out! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Liubka was catching her hands, aiming to kiss them, but the housekeeper roughly
+snatched them away. Then, suddenly paling, with a distorted face, biting her
+trembling, twisted lower lip, Emma calculatingly and with good aim struck
+Liubka on her cheek, with all her might; from which the other went down on her
+knees, but got up right away, gasping for breath and stammering from the sobs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Darlingest, don’t beat me... Oh my dear, don’t beat me...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And again fell down, this time flat upon the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And this systematic, malignant slaughter, in cold blood, continued for some two
+minutes. Jennka, who had at first been looking on with her customary malicious,
+disdainful air, suddenly could not stand it; she began to squeal savagely,
+threw herself upon the housekeeper, clutched her by the hair, tore off her
+chignon and began to vociferate in a real hysterical fit:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fool! ... Murderer! ... Low-down go-between! ... Thief! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the three women vociferated together, and at once enraged wails resounded
+through all the corridors and rooms of the establishment. This was that general
+fit of grand hysterics, which takes possession of those confined in prisons, or
+that elemental insanity (raptus), which envelops unexpectedly and epidemically
+an entire lunatic asylum, from which even experienced psychiatrists grow pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only after the lapse of an hour was order restored by Simeon and two comrades
+by profession who had come to his aid. All the thirteen girls got it hot; but
+Jennka, who had gone into a real frenzy, more than the others. The beaten-up
+Liubka kept on crawling before the housekeeper until she was taken back. She
+knew that Jennka’s outbreak would sooner or later be reflected upon her in a
+cruel repayment. Jennka sat on her bed until the very night, her legs crossed
+Turkish fashion; refused dinner, and chased out all her mates who went in to
+her. Her eye was bruised, and she assiduously applied a five-kopeck copper to
+it. From underneath the torn shirt a long, transversal scratch reddened on the
+neck, just like a mark from a rope. That was where Simeon had torn off her skin
+in the struggle. She sat thus, alone, with eyes that glowed in the dark like a
+wild beast’s, with distended nostrils, with spasmodically moving cheek-bones,
+and whispered wrathfully:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just you wait... Watch out, you damned things—I’ll show you... You’ll see
+yet... Ooh-ooh, you man-eaters...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when the lights had been lit, and the junior housekeeper, Zociya, knocked
+on her door with the words: “Miss, get dressed! ... Into the drawing room!” she
+rapidly washed herself, dressed, put some powder on the bruise, smeared the
+scratch over with CREME DE SIMON and pink powder, and went out into the drawing
+room, pitiful but proud; beaten-up, but her eyes flaming with an unbearable
+wrathfulness and a beauty not human.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many people, who have happened to see suicides a few hours before their
+horrible death, say that in their visages in those fateful hours before death
+they have noticed some enigmatic, mysterious, incomprehensible allurement. And
+all who saw Jennka on this night, and on the next day for a few hours, for
+long, intently and in wonder, kept their gaze upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And strangest of all (this was one of the sombre wiles of fate) was the fact
+that the indirect culprit of her death, the last grain of sand which draws down
+the pan of the scales, appeared none other than the dear, most kind, military
+cadet Kolya Gladishev.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0302"></a> CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Kolya Gladishev was a fine, merry, bashful young lad, with a large head;
+pink-cheeked, with a funny little white, bent line, as though from milk, upon
+his upper lip, under the light down of the moustache, sprouting through for the
+first time; with gray, naive eyes, placed far apart; and so closely cropped,
+that from underneath his flaxen little bristles the skin glistened through,
+just as with a thoroughbred Yorkshire suckling pig. It was precisely he with
+whom Jennka during the past winter had played either at maternal relations, or
+at dolls; and thrust upon him a little apple or a couple of bon-bons on his
+way, when he would be going away from the house of ill repute, squirming from
+shame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time, when he came, there could at once be felt in him, after long living
+in camps, that rapid change in age, which so often imperceptibly and rapidly
+transforms a boy into a youth. He had already finished the cadet academy and
+with pride counted himself a junker; although he still walked around in a
+cadet’s uniform, with aversion. He had grown taller, had become better formed
+and more adroit; the camp life had done him good. He spoke in a bass, and
+during these months to his most great pride the nipples of his breast had
+hardened; the most important—he already knew about this—and undeniable sign of
+virile maturity. Now, in the meanwhile, until the eyes-front severities of a
+military school, he had a period of alluring freedom. Already he was permitted
+to smoke at home, in the presence of grown-ups; and even his father had himself
+presented him with a leather cigar case with his monogram, and also, in the
+elevation of family joy, had assigned him fifteen roubles monthly salary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it was just here—at Anna Markovna’s—that he had come to know woman for the
+first time—the very same Jennka.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fall of innocent souls in houses of ill-fame, or with street solitaries, is
+fulfilled far more frequently than it is usually thought. When not green youths
+only, but even honourable men of fifty, almost grandfathers, are interrogated
+about this ticklish matter, they will tell you, sure enough, the ancient
+stencilled lie of how they had been seduced by a chambermaid or a governess.
+But this is one of those lingering, queer lies, going back into the depth of
+past decades, which are almost never noticed by a single one of the
+professional observers, and in any case are not described by any one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If each one of us will try, to put it pompously, to put his hand on his heart,
+then every one will catch himself in the fact, that having once in childhood
+said some sort of boastful or touching fiction, which had success, and having
+repeated it for that reason two and five and ten times more—he afterwards
+cannot get rid of it all his life, and repeats with entire firmness by now a
+history which had never been; a firmness such that in the very end he believes
+the story. With time Kolya also narrated to his comrades how his aunt once
+removed, a young woman of the world had seduced him. It must be said, however,
+that the intimate proximity to this lady—a large, dark-eyed, white faced,
+sweetly fragrant southern woman—did really exist; but existed only in Kolya’s
+imagination, in those sad, tragic and timid minutes of solitary sexual
+enjoyments, through which pass if not a hundred percent of all men, then
+ninety-nine, in any case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having experienced mechanical sexual excitements very early, approximately
+since nine or nine years and a half, Kolya did not at all have the least
+understanding of the significance of that end of being in love or of courtship,
+which is so horrible on the face of it, if it be looked at impartially, or if
+it be explained scientifically. Unfortunately, there was at that time near him
+not a one of the present progressive and learned ladies who, having turned away
+the neck of the classic stork, and torn up by the roots the cabbage underneath
+which children are found, recommend that the great mystery of love and
+generation be explained to children in lectures, through comparisons and
+assimilations, mercilessly and in a well-nigh graphic manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must be said, that at that remote time of which we are speaking, the private
+institutions—male PENSIONS and institutes, as well as academies for
+cadets—represented some sort of hot-house nurseries. The care of the mind and
+morality they tried to entrust as much as possible to educators who were
+bureaucrats-formalists; and in addition impatient, captious, capricious in
+their sympathies and hysterical, just like old maid lady teachers. Now it is
+otherwise. But at that time the boys were left to themselves. Barely snatched
+away, speaking figuratively, from the maternal breast; from the care of devoted
+nurses; from morning and evening caresses, quiet and sweet; even though they
+were ashamed of every manifestation of tenderness as “womanishness,” they were
+still irresistibly and sweetly drawn to kisses, contacts, conversations
+whispered in the ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, attentive, solicitous treatment, bathing, exercises in the open
+air—precisely not gymnastics, but voluntary exercises, each to his own
+taste—could have always put off the coming of this climacteric period or soften
+and make it understandable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I repeat—then there was nothing of this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The longing for family endearment, the endearment of mother, sister, nurse, so
+roughly and unexpectedly cut short, turned into deformed forms of courting
+(every whit like the “crushes” in a female institute) of good-looking boys, of
+“fairies”; they loved to whisper in corners and, walking arm in arm, or
+embracing in dark corridors, to tell in each other’s ears improbable histories
+of adventures with women. This was partly both childhood’s need of the
+fairy-tale element and partly awakening sensuality as well. Not infrequently
+some fifteen-year-old chubby, for whom it was just the proper time to be
+playing at popular tennis or to be greedily putting away buckwheat porridge
+with milk, would be telling, having read up, of course, on certain cheap
+novels, of how every Saturday, now, when it is leave, he goes to a certain,
+handsome widow millionairess; and of how she is passionately enamored of him;
+and how near their couch always stand fruits and precious wine; and how
+furiously and passionately she makes love to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, by the bye, came along the inevitable run of prolonged reading, like hard
+drinking, which, of course, every boy and girl has undergone. No matter how
+strict in this respect the class surveillance may be, the striplings did read,
+are reading, and will read just that which is not permitted them. Here is a
+special passion, CHIC, the allurement of the forbidden. Already in the third
+class went from hand to hand the manuscript transcripts of Barkov; of a
+spurious Pushkin; the youthful sins of Lermontov and others: “THE FIRST NIGHT,”
+“THE CHERRY,” “LUCAS,” “THE FESTIVAL AT PETERHOF,” “THE SHE UHLAN, GRIEF
+THROUGH WISDOM,” “THE PRIEST,” &amp;c.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But no matter how strange, fictitious or paradoxical this may seem, still, even
+these compositions, and drawings, and obscene photographic cards, did not
+arouse a delightful curiosity. They were looked upon as a prank, a lark, and
+the allurement of contraband risk. In the cadets’ library were chaste excerpts
+from Pushkin and Lermontov; all of Ostrovsky, who only made you laugh; and
+almost all of Turgenev, who was the very one that played a chief and cruel role
+in Kolya’s life. As it is known, love with the late great Turgenev is always
+surrounded with a tantalizing veil; some sort of crepe, unseizable, forbidden,
+but tempting: his maidens have forebodings of love and are agitated at its
+approach, and are ashamed beyond all measure, and tremble, and turn red.
+Married women or widows travel this tortuous path somewhat differently: they
+struggle for a long time with their duty, or with respectability, or with the
+opinion of the world; and, in the end—oh!—fall with tears; or—oh!—begin to
+brave it; or, which is still more frequent, the implacable fate cuts short her
+or his life at the most—oh!—necessary moment, when it only lacks a light puff
+of wind for the ripened fruit to fall. And yet all of his personages still
+thirst after this shameful love; weep radiantly and laugh joyously from it; and
+it shuts out all the world for them. But since boys think entirely differently
+than we grown-ups, and since everything that is forbidden, everything not said
+fully, or said in secret, has in their eyes an enormous, not only twofold but
+threefold interest—it is therefore natural that out of reading they drew the
+hazy thought that the grown-ups were concealing something from them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it must be mentioned—had not Kolya (like the majority of those of his age)
+seen the chambermaid Phrociya—so rosy-cheeked, always merry, with legs of the
+hardness of steel (at times he, in the heat of playing, had slapped her on the
+back), had he not seen her once, when Kolya had by accident walked quickly into
+papa’s cabinet, scurry out of there with all her might, covering her face with
+her apron; and had he not seen that during this time papa’s face was red, with
+a dark blue, seemingly lengthened nose? And Kolya had reflected: “Papa looks
+like a turkey.” Had not Kolya—partly through the fondness for pranks and the
+mischievousness natural to all boys, partly through tedium—accidentally
+discovered in an unlocked drawer of papa’s writing table an enormous collection
+of cards, whereon was represented just that which shop clerks call the crowning
+of love, and worldly nincompoops—the unearthly passion?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And had he not seen, that every time before the visit of the sweet-scented and
+bestarched Paul Edwardovich, some ninny with some embassy, with whom mamma, in
+imitation of the fashionable St. Petersburg promenades to the Strelka, used to
+ride to the Dnieper to contemplate the sun setting on the other side of the
+river, in the Chernigovskaya district—had he not seen how mamma’s bosom went,
+and how her cheeks glowed under the powder; had he not detected at these
+moments many new and strange things; had he not heard her voice, an altogether
+unknown voice, like an actor’s; nervously breaking off, mercilessly malicious
+to those of the family and the servants, and suddenly soft, like velvet, like a
+green meadow under the sun, when Paul Edwardovich would arrive? Ah, if we
+people who have been made wise by experience would know how much, and even too
+much, the urchins and little girls surrounding us know, of whom we usually say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, why mind Volodya (or Petie, or Katie)? ... Why, they are little. They
+don’t understand anything! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So also not in vain passed for Gladishev the history of his elder brother, who
+had just come out of a military school into one of the conspicuous grenadier
+regiments; and, being on leave until such time when it would be possible for
+him to spread his wings, lived in two separate rooms with his family. At that
+time Niusha, a chambermaid, was in their service; at times they jestingly
+called her signorita Anita—a seductive black-haired girl, who, if she were to
+change costumes, could in appearance be taken for a dramatic actress, or a
+princess of the royal blood, or a political worker. Kolya’s mother manifestly
+countenanced the fact that Kolya’s brother, half in jest, half in earnest, was
+allured by this girl. Of course, she had only the sole, holy, maternal
+calculation: If it were destined, after all, for her Borenka to fall, then let
+him give his purity, his innocence, his first physical inclination, not to a
+prostitute, not to a street-walker, not to a seeker of adventures, but to a
+pure girl. Of course, only a disinterested, unreasoning, truly-maternal feeling
+guided her. Kolya at that time was living through the epoch of llanos,
+pampases, Apaches, track-finders, and a chief by the name of “Black Panther”;
+and, of course, attentively kept track of the romance of his brother, and made
+his own syllogisms; at times only too correct, at times fantastic. After six
+months, from behind a door, he was the witness—or more correctly the auditor—of
+an outrageous scene. The wife of the general, always so respectable and
+restrained, was yelling in her boudoir at signorita Anita, and cursing in the
+words of a cab-driver: the signorita was in the fifth month of pregnancy. If
+she had not cried, then, probably, they would simply have given her
+smart-money, and she would have gone away in peace; but she was in love with
+the young master, did not demand anything, and for that reason they drove her
+away with the aid of the police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the fifth or sixth class many of Kolya’s comrades had already tasted of the
+tree of knowledge of evil. At that time it was considered in their corpus an
+especial, boastful masculine chic to call all secret things by their own names.
+Arkasha Shkar contracted a disease, not dangerous, but still venereal; and he
+became for three whole months the object of worship of all the seniors—at that
+time there were no squads yet. And many of them visited brothels; and, really,
+about their sprees they spoke far more handsomely and broadly than the hussars
+of the time of Denis Davidov.[23] These debauches were esteemed by them the
+last word in valour and maturity.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[23] A Russian ban vivant, wit and poet (1781-1839), the overwhelming majority
+of whose lyrics deals with military exploits and debauches.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it happened once, that they did not exactly persuade Gladishev to go to
+Anna Markovna, but rather he himself had begged to go, so weakly had he
+resisted temptation. This evening he always recalled with horror, with
+aversion; and dimly, just like some heavy dream. With difficulty he recalled,
+how in the cab, to get up courage, he had drunk rum, revoltingly smelling of
+real bedbugs; how qualmish this beastly drink made him feel; how he had walked
+into the big hall, where the lights of the lustres and the candelabra on the
+walls were turning round in fiery wheels; where the women moved as fantastic
+pink, blue, violet splotches, and the whiteness of their necks, bosoms and arms
+flashed with a blinding, spicy, victorious splendour. Some one of the comrades
+whispered something in the ear of one of these fantastic figures. She ran up to
+Kolya and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Listen, you good-looking little cadet, your comrades are saying, now, that
+you’re still innocent ... Let’s go ... I’ll teach you everything.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The phrase was said in a kindly manner; but this phrase the walls of Anna
+Markovna’s establishment had already heard several thousand times. Further,
+that took place which it was so difficult and painful to recall, that in the
+middle of his recollections Kolya grew tired, and with an effort of the will
+turned back the imagination to something else. He only remembered dimly the
+revolving and spreading circles from the light of the lamp; persistent kisses;
+disconcerting contacts—then a sudden sharp pain, from which one wanted both to
+die in enjoyment and to cry out in terror; and then with wonder he saw his pale
+shaking hands, which could not, somehow, button his clothes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, all men have experienced this primordial tristia post coitus; but
+this great moral pain, very serious in its significance and depth, passes very
+rapidly, remaining, however, with the majority for a long time—sometimes for
+all life—in the form of wearisomeness and awkwardness after certain moments. In
+a short while Kolya became accustomed to it; grew bolder, became familiarized
+with woman, and rejoiced very much over the fact that when he came into the
+establishment, all the girls, and Verka before all, would call out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jennechka, your lover has come!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was pleasant, in relating this to his comrades, to be plucking at an
+imaginary moustache.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0303"></a> CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<p>
+It was still early—about nine—of a rainy August evening. The illuminated
+drawing room in the house of Anna Markovna was almost empty. Only near the very
+doors a young telegraph clerk was sitting, his legs shyly and awkwardly
+squeezed under his chair, and was trying to start with the thick-fleshed Katie
+that worldly, unconstrained conversation which is laid down as the proper thing
+in polite society at quadrille, during the intermissions between the figures of
+the dance. And, also, the long-legged, aged Roly-Poly wandered over the room,
+sitting down now next one girl, now another, and entertaining them all with his
+fluent chatter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Kolya Gladishev walked into the front hall, the first to recognize him was
+the round-eyed Verka, dressed in her usual jockey costume. She began to twirl
+round and round, to clap her palms, and called out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jennka, Jennka, come quicker, your little lover has come to you ... The little
+cadet ... And what a handsome little fellow!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Jennka was not in the drawing room at this time; a stout head-conductor had
+already managed to get hold of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This elderly, sedate, and majestic man was a very convenient guest, because he
+never lingered in the house for more than twenty minutes, fearing to let his
+train go by; and, even so, glanced at his watch all the while. During this time
+he regularly drank down four bottles of beer, and, going away, infallibly gave
+the girl half a rouble for candy and Simeon twenty kopecks for drink-money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kolya Gladishev was not alone, but with a comrade of the same school, Petrov,
+who was stepping over the threshold of a brothel for the first time, having
+given in to the tempting persuasions of Gladishev. Probably, during these
+minutes, he found himself in the same wild, absurd, feverish state which Kolya
+himself had gone through a year and a half ago, when his legs had shook, his
+mouth had grown dry, and the lights of the lamps had danced before him in
+revolving wheels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simeon took their great-coats from them and hid them separately, on the side,
+that the shoulder straps and the buttons might not be seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must be said, that this stern man, who did not approve of students because
+of their free-and-easy facetiousness and incomprehensible style in
+conversation, also did not like when just such boys in uniform appeared in the
+establishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, what’s the good of it?” he would at times say sombrely to his colleagues
+by profession. “What if a whippersnapper like that comes, and runs right up
+nose to nose against his superiors? Smash, and they’ve closed up the
+establishment! There, like Lupendikha’s three years back. Of course, it’s
+nothing that they closed it up—she transferred it in another name right off;
+and when they sentenced her to sit in jail for a year and a half, why, it came
+to a pre-etty penny for her. She had to shell out four hundred for Kerbesh
+alone ... And then it also happens: a little pig of that kind will cook up some
+sort of disease for himself and start in whining: ‘Oh, papa! Oh, mamma! I am
+dying!’ ‘Tell me, you skunk, where you got it?’ ‘There and there ...’ Well, and
+so they haul you over the coals again; judge me, thou unrighteous judge!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pass on, pass on,” said he to the cadets sternly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cadets entered, blinking from the bright light. Petrov, who had been
+drinking to get up courage, swayed and was pale. They sat down beneath the
+picture of the Feast of the Russian Noblemen, and immediately two of the young
+ladies—Verka and Tamara—joined them on both sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Treat me to a smoke, you beautiful little brunet!” Verka turned to Petrov; and
+as though by accident put against his leg her strong, warm thigh, closely drawn
+over with white tights. “What an agreeable little fellow you are!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But where’s Jennie?” Gladishev asked of Tamara. “Is she busy with anybody?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara looked him in the eyes intently—looked so fixedly, that the boy even
+began to feel uncomfortable, and turned away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. Why should she be busy? Only the whole day to-day her head ached; she was
+walking through the corridor, and at that time the housekeeper opened the door
+quickly and accidentally struck her in the forehead—and so her head started in
+to ache. The poor thing, she’s lying the whole day with a cold pack. But why?
+Or can’t you hold out? Wait a while, she’ll come out in five minutes. You’ll
+remain very much satisfied with her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Verka pestered Petrov:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sweetie, dearie, what a tootsie-wootsicums you are! I adore such pale brunets;
+they are jealous and very fiery in love.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And suddenly she started singing in a low voice:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“He’s kind of brown,<br/>
+My light, my own,<br/>
+Won’t sell me out, and won’t deceive.<br/>
+He suffers madly,<br/>
+Pants and coat gladly<br/>
+All for a woman he will give.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do they call you, ducky dear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“George,” answered Petrov in a hoarse, cadet’s bass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jorjik Jorochka! Ah, how very nice!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She suddenly drew near to his ear and whispered with a cunning face:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jorochka, come to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Petrov was abashed and forlornly let out in a bass:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know ... It all depends on what the comrade says, now...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Verka burst into loud laughter:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s a case for you! Say, what an infant it is! Such as you, Jorochka, in a
+little village would long since have been married; but he says: ‘It all depends
+on the comrade!’ You ought to ask a nurse or a wet nurse yet! Tamara, my angel,
+just imagine: I’m calling him to go sleeping, but he says: ‘It all depends on
+the comrade.’ What about you, mister friend, are you his bringer up?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t be pestering, you devil!” clumsily, altogether like a cadet before a
+quarrel, grumbled out Petrov in a bass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lanky, ricketty Roly-Poly, grown still grayer, walked up to the cadets,
+and, inclining his long, narrow head to one side, and having made a touching
+grimace, began to patter:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Messieurs cadets, highly educated young people; the flower, so to speak, of
+the intelligentzia; future masters of ordnance, will you not lend to a little
+old man, an aborigine of these herbiferous regions, one good old cigarette? I
+be poor. Omnia mea mecum porto. But I do adore the weed.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, having received a cigarette, suddenly, without delay, he got into a
+free-and-easy, unconstrained pose; put forward the bent right leg, put his hand
+to his side, and began to sing in a wizened falsetto:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“It used to be that I gave dinners,<br/>
+In rivers flowed the champagne wine;<br/>
+But now I have not even bread crusts,<br/>
+Nor for a split, oh brother mine.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+It used to be—in the Saratov<br/>
+The doorman rushed, and was so fine;<br/>
+But now all drive me in the neck,<br/>
+Give for a split, oh brother mine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gentlemen!” suddenly exclaimed Roly-Poly with pathos, cutting short his
+singing and smiting himself on the chest. “Here I behold you, and know that you
+are the future generals Skobelev and Gurko; but I, too, in a certain respect,
+am a military hound. In my time, when I was studying for a forest ranger, all
+our department of woods and forests was military; and for that reason, knocking
+at the diamond-studded, golden doors of your hearts, I beg of you—donate toward
+the raising for an ensign of taxation of a wee measure of spiritus vini, which
+same is taken of the monks also.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Roly!” cried the stout Kitty from the other end, “show the young officers the
+lightning; or else, look you, you’re taking the money only for nothing, you
+good-for-nothing camel.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Right away!” merrily responded Roly-Poly. “Most illustrious benefactors, turn
+your attention this way. Living Pictures. Thunder Storm on a Summer Day in
+June. The work of the unrecognized dramaturgist who concealed himself under the
+pseudonym of Roly-Poly. The first picture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘It was a splendid day in June. The scorching rays of the sun illumined the
+blossoming meadows and environs ...’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roly-Poly’s Don Quixotic phiz spread into a wrinkled, sweetish smile; and the
+eyes narrowed into half-circles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘... But now in the distance the first clouds have appeared upon the horizon.
+They grew, piled upon each other like crags, covering little by little the blue
+vault of the sky.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By degrees the smile was coming off Roly-Poly’s face, and it grew more and more
+serious and austere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘At last the clouds have overcast the sun ... An ominous darkness has fallen
+...’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roly-Poly made his physiognomy altogether ferocious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘The first drops of the rain fell ...’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roly-Poly began to drum his fingers on the back of a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘... In the distance flashed the first lightning ... ’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roly-Poly’s eye winked quickly, and the left corner of his mouth gave a twitch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘... Whereupon the rain began to pour down in torrents, and there came a
+sudden, blinding flash of lightning...’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with unusual artistry and rapidity Roly-Poly, with a successive movement of
+his eyebrows, eyes, nose, the upper and the lower lip, portrayed a lightning
+zig-zag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘... A jarring thunder clap burst out—trrroo-oo. An oak that had stood through
+the ages fell down to earth, as though it were a frail reed ...’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Roly-Poly with an ease and daring not to be expected from one of his years,
+bending neither the knees nor the back, only drawing down his head,
+instantaneously fell down; straight, like a statue, with his back to the floor,
+but at once deftly sprang up on his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘But now the thunder storm is gradually abating. The lightning flashes less
+and less often. The thunder sounds duller, just like a satiated
+beast—oooooo-oooooo ... The clouds scurry away. The first rays of the blessed
+sun have peeped out ...’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roly-Poly made a wry smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘... And now, the luminary of day has at last begun to shine anew over the
+bathed earth ...’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the silliest of beatific smiles spread anew over the senile face of
+Roly-Poly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cadets gave him a twenty-kopeck piece each. He laid them on his palm, made
+a pass in the air with the other hand, said: ein, zwei, drei, snapped two of
+his fingers, and the coins vanished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tamarochka, this isn’t honest,” he said reproachfully. “Aren’t you ashamed to
+take the last money from a poor retired almost-head-officer? Why have you
+hidden them here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, having snapped his fingers again, he drew the coins out of Tamara’s ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall return at once, don’t be bored without me,” he reassured the young
+people; “but if you can’t wait for me, then I won’t have any special
+pretensions about it. I have the honour! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Roly-Poly!” Little White Manka cried after him, “Won’t you buy me candy for
+fifteen kopecks... Turkish Delight, fifteen kopecks’ worth. There, grab!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roly-Poly neatly caught in its flight the thrown fifteen-kopeck piece; made a
+comical curtsey and, pulling down the uniform cap with the green edging at a
+slant over his eyes, vanished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tall, old Henrietta walked up to the cadets, also asked for a smoke and,
+having yawned, said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If only you young people would dance a bit—for as it is the young ladies sit
+and sit, just croaking from weariness.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you please, if you please!” agreed Kolya. “Play a waltz and something else
+of the sort.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The musicians began to play. The girls started to whirl around with one
+another, ceremoniously as usual, with stiffened backs and with eyes modestly
+cast down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kolya Gladishev, who was very fond of dancing, could not hold out and invited
+Tamara; he knew even from the previous winter that she danced more lightly and
+skillfully than the rest. While he was twirling in the waltz, the stout
+head-conductor, skillfully making his way between the couples, slipped away
+unperceived through the drawing room. Kolya did not have a chance to notice
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No matter how Verka pressed Petrov, she could not, in any way, drag him off his
+place. The recent light intoxication had by now gone entirely out of his head;
+and more and more horrible, and unrealizable, and monstrous did that for which
+he had come here seem to him. He might have gone away, saying that not a one
+here pleased him; have put the blame on a headache, or something; but he knew
+that Gladishev would not let him go; and mainly—it seemed unbearably hard to
+get up from his place and to walk a few steps by himself. And, besides that, he
+felt that he had not the strength to start talking of this with Kolya.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They finished dancing. Tamara and Gladishev again sat down side by side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, really, how is it that Jennechka isn’t coming by now?” asked Kolya
+impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara quickly gave Verka a look with a question, incomprehensible to the
+uninitiated, in her eyes. Verka quickly lowered her eyelashes. This signified:
+yes, he is gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll go right away and call her,” said Tamara.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what are you so stuck on your Jennka for,” said Henrietta. “You might take
+me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right, another time,” answered Kolya and nervously began to smoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka was not even beginning to dress yet. She was sitting before the mirror
+and powdering her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it, Tamarochka?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your little cadet has come to you. He’s waiting.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, that’s the little baby of last year... Well, the devil with him!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that’s right, too. But how healthy and handsome the lad has grown, and how
+tall... It’s a delight, that’s all! So if you don’t want to, I’ll go myself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara saw in the mirror how Jennka contracted her eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, you wait a while, Tamara, don’t. I’ll see. Send him here to me. Say that
+I’m not well, that my head aches.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have already told him, anyway, that Zociya had opened the door
+unsuccessfully and hit you on the head; and that you’re lying down with a cold
+pack. But the only thing is, is it worth while, Jennechka?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Whether it’s worth while or not, that’s not your business, Tamara,” answered
+Jennka rudely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara asked cautiously:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it possible, then, that you aren’t at all, at all sorry?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But for me you aren’t sorry?” and she passed her hand over the red stripe that
+slashed her throat. “And for yourself you aren’t sorry? And not sorry for this
+Liubka, miserable as she is? And not sorry for Pashka? You’re huckleberry
+jelly, and not a human being!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara smiled craftily and haughtily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, when it comes to a real matter, I’m not jelly. Perhaps you’ll see this
+soon, Jennechka. Only let’s better not quarrel—as it is it isn’t any too sweet
+to live. All right, I’ll go at once and send him to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she had gone away, Jennka lowered the light in the little hanging blue
+lantern, put on her night blouse, and lay down. A minute later Gladishev walked
+in; and after him Tamara, dragging Petrov by the hand, who resisted and kept
+his head down. And in the rear was thrust in the pink, sharp, foxy little phiz
+of the cross-eyed housekeeper Zociya.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that’s fine, now,” the housekeeper commenced to bustle. “It’s just sweet
+to look at; two handsome gents and two swell dames. A regular bouquet. What
+shall I treat you with, young people? Will you order beer or wine?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gladishev had a great deal of money in his pocket, as much as he never had
+before during all his brief life—all of twenty-five roubles; and he wanted to
+go on a splurge. Beer he drank only out of bravado, but could not bear its
+bitter taste, and wondered himself how others could ever drink it. And for that
+reason, squeamishly, like an old rake, sticking out his lower lip, he said
+mistrustfully:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But then, you surely must have some awful stuff?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you mean, what do you mean, good-looking! The very best gentlemen
+approve of it. Of the sweet, there are Cagore, church wine, Teneriffe; while of
+the French there’s Lafitte. You can get port wine also. The girls just simply
+adore Lafitte with lemonade.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And what are the prices?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No dearer than money. As is the rule in all good establishments—a bottle of
+Lafitte five roubles, four bottles of lemonade at a half each, that’s two
+roubles, and only seven in all...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’ll do you, Zociya,” Jennka stopped her indifferently, “it’s a shame to
+take advantage of boys. Even five is enough. You can see these are decent
+people, and not just anybody...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Gladishev turned red, and with a negligent air threw a ten rouble note on
+the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, what’s the use of talking about it. All right, bring it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Whilst I’m at it, I’ll take the money for the visit as well. What about you,
+young people—are you on time or for the night? You know the rates yourself: on
+time, at two roubles; for the night, at five.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right, all right. On time,” interrupted Jennka, flaring up. “Trust us in
+that, at least.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wine was brought. Tamara through importunity got pastry, besides. Jennka
+asked for permission to call in Little White Manka. Jennka herself did not
+drink, did not get up from the bed, and all the time muffled herself up in a
+gray shawl of Orenburg[24] manufacture, although it was hot in the room. She
+looked fixedly, without tearing her eyes away, at the handsome, sunburned face
+of Gladishev, which had become so manly.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[24] Orenburg has as high a reputation for woolens as Sheffield has for
+steel.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s the matter with you, dearie?” asked Gladishev, sitting down on her bed
+and stroking her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing special... Head aches a little... I hit myself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, don’t you pay any attention.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, here I’ve seen you, and already I feel better. How is it you haven’t
+been here for so long?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I couldn’t snatch away the time, nohow-camping. You know yourself... We had to
+put away twenty-five versts a day. The whole day drilling and drilling: field,
+formation, garrison. With a full pack. Used to get so fagged out from morning
+to night that towards evening you couldn’t feel your legs under you... We were
+at the manoeuvres also... It isn’t sweet...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, you poor little things!” Little White Manka suddenly clasped her hands.
+“And what do they torture you for, angels that you are? If I was to have a
+brother like you, or a son—my heart would just simply bleed. Here’s to your
+health, little cadet!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They clinked glasses. Jennka was just as attentively scrutinizing Gladishev.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you, Jennechka?” he asked, extending a glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t want to,” she answered listlessly, “but, however, ladies, you’ve drunk
+some wine, chatted a bit—don’t wear the welcome off the mat.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps you’ll stay with me the whole night?” she asked Gladishev, when the
+others had gone away. “Don’t you be afraid, dearie; if you won’t have enough
+money, I’ll pay the difference for you. You see, how good-looking you are, that
+a wench does not grudge even money for you?” she began laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gladishev turned around to her; even his unobserving ear was struck by Jennka’s
+strange tone—neither sad, nor kindly, nor yet mocking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, sweetie, I’d be very glad to; I’d like to remain myself, but I can’t
+possibly; I promised to be home toward ten o’clock.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s nothing, dear, they’ll wait; you’re altogether a grown-up man now. Is
+it possible that you have to listen to anybody? ... But, however, as you wish.
+Shall I put out the light entirely, perhaps; or is it all right the way it is?
+Which do you want—the outside or near the wall?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s immaterial to me,” he answered in a quavering voice; and, having embraced
+with his arm the hot, dry body of Jennka, he stretched with his lips toward her
+face. She slightly repulsed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait, bear a while, sweetheart—we have time enough to kiss our fill yet. Just
+lie still for one little minute... So, now... quiet, peaceful... don’t stir...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These words, passionate and imperious, acted like hypnosis upon Gladishev. He
+submitted to her and lay down on his back, putting his hands underneath his
+head. She raised herself a little, leant upon her elbow, and placing her head
+upon the bent hand, silently, in the faint half-light, was looking his body
+over—so white, strong, muscular; with a high and broad pectoral cavity; with
+well-made ribs; with a narrow pelvis; and with mighty, bulging thighs. The dark
+tan of the face and the upper half of the neck was divided by a sharp line from
+the whiteness of the shoulders and breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gladishev blinked for a second. It seemed to him that he was feeling upon
+himself, upon his face, upon his entire body, this intensely fixed gaze, which
+seemed to touch his face and tickle it, like the cobwebby contact of a comb,
+which you first rub against a cloth—the sensation of a thin, imponderous,
+living matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He opened his eyes and saw altogether near him the large, dark, uncanny eyes of
+the woman, who seemed to him now an entire stranger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What are you looking at, Jennie?” he asked quietly. “What are you thinking
+of?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear little boy! ...They call you Kolya: isn’t that so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t be angry at me, carry out a certain caprice of mine, please: shut your
+eyes again... no, even tighter, tighter... I want to turn up the light and have
+a good look at you. There now, so... If you only knew how beautiful you are
+now... right now... this second. Later you will become coarse, and you will
+begin giving off a goatish smell; but now you give off an odour of fur and
+milk... and a little of some wild flower. But shut them—shut your eyes!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She added light, returned to her place, and sat down in her favourite
+pose—Turkish fashion. Both kept silent. In the distance, several rooms away, a
+broken-down grand piano was tinkling; somebody’s vibrating laughter floated in;
+while from the other side—a little song, and rapid, merry talking. The words
+could not be heard. A cabby was rumbling by somewhere through the distant
+street...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And now I will infect him right away, just like all the others,” pondered
+Jennka, gliding with a deep gaze over his well-made legs, his handsome torso of
+a future athlete, and over his arms, thrown back, upon which, above the bend of
+the elbow, the muscles tautened—bulging, firm. “Why, then, am I so sorry for
+him? Or is it because he is such a good-looking little fellow? No. I am long
+since a stranger to such feelings. Or is it because he is a boy? Why, only a
+little over a year ago I shoved apples in his pocket, when he was going away
+from me at night. Why have I not told him then that which, I can, and dare,
+tell him now? Or would he not have believed me, anyway? Would have grown angry?
+Would have gone to another? For sooner or later this turn awaits every man...
+And that he bought me for money—can that be forgiven? Or did he act just as all
+of them do—blindly? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Kolya!” she said quietly, “Open your eyes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He obeyed, opened his eyes, turned to her; entwined her neck with his arm, drew
+her a little to him, and wanted to kiss her in the opening of her chemise—on
+the breast. She again tenderly but commandingly repulsed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, wait a while, wait a while—hear me out... one little minute more. Tell me,
+boy, why do you come here to us—to the women?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kolya quietly and hoarsely began laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How silly you are! Well, what do they all come for? Am I not also a man? For,
+it seems, I’m at that age when in every man ripens... well, a certain need...
+for woman. For I’m not going to occupy myself with all sorts of nastiness!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Need? Only need? That means, just as for that chamber which stands under my
+bed?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, why so?” retorted Kolya, with a kindly laugh. “I liked you very much...
+From the very first time... If you will, I’m even... a little in love with
+you... at least, I never stayed with any of the others.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, all right! But then, the first time, could it possibly have been need?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, perhaps, it wasn’t need even; but somehow, vaguely, I wanted woman... My
+friends talked me into it... Many had already gone here before me... So then, I
+too...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, now, weren’t you ashamed the first time?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kolya became confused; all this interrogation was to him unpleasant,
+oppressive. He felt, that this was not the empty, idle bed talk, so well known
+to him, out of his small experience; but something else, of more import.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let’s say... not that I was ashamed... well, but still I felt kind of awkward.
+I drank that time to get up courage.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie again lay down on her side; leaned upon her elbow, and again looked at
+him from time to time, near at hand and intently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But tell me, sweetie,” she asked, in a barely audible voice, so that the cadet
+with difficulty made out her words, “tell me one thing more; but the fact of
+your paying money, these filthy two roubles—do you understand?—paying them for
+love, so that I might caress, kiss you, give all my body to you—didn’t you feel
+ashamed to pay for that? Never?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my God! What strange questions you put to me to-day! But then they all pay
+money! Not I, then some one else would have paid—isn’t it all the same to you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And have you been in love with any one, Kolya? Confess! Well, now, if not in
+real earnest, then just so... at soul... Have you done any courting? Brought
+little flowers of some sort... Strolled arm-in-arm with her under the moon?
+Wasn’t that so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, yes,” said Koiya in a sedate bass. “What follies don’t happen in one’s
+youth! It’s a matter anyone can understand...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Some sort of a little first cousin? An educated young lady? A boarding school
+miss? A high school girl? ... There has been, hasn’t there?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, yes, of course—everybody has them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, you wouldn’t have touched her, would you? ... You’d have spared her?
+Well, if she had only said to you: take me, but only give me two roubles—what
+would you have said to her?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t understand you, Jennka!” Gladishev suddenly grew angry. “What are you
+putting on airs for! What sort of comedy are you trying to put over! Honest to
+God, I’ll dress myself at once and go away.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait a while, wait a while, Kolya! One more, one more, the last, the very,
+very last question.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, you!” growled Kolya displeased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And could you never imagine... well, imagine it right now, even for a
+second... that your family has suddenly grown poor, become ruined. You’d have
+to earn your bread by copying papers; or, now, let’s say, through carpenter or
+blacksmith work; and your sister was to go wrong, like all of us... yes, yes,
+yours, your own sister... if some blockhead seduced her and she was to go
+travelling... from hand to hand... what would you say then?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bosh! ... That can’t be...” Kolya cut her short curtly. “But, however, that’s
+enough—I’m going away!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go away, do me that favour! I’ve ten roubles lying there, near the mirror, in
+a little box from chocolates—take them for yourself. I don’t need them, anyway.
+Buy with them a tortoise powder box with a gold setting for your mamma; and if
+you have a little sister, buy her a good doll. Say: in memory from a certain
+wench that died. Go on, little boy!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kolya, with a frown, angry, with one shove of a well-knit body jumped off the
+bed, almost without touching it. Now he was standing on the little mat near the
+bed, naked, well-formed, splendid in all the magnificence of his blooming,
+youthful body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Kolya!” Jennka called him quietly, insistently and caressingly. “Kolechka!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned around to her call, and drew in the air in a short, jerky gust, as
+though he had gasped: he had never yet in his life met anywhere, even in
+pictures, such a beautiful expression of tenderness, sorrow, and womanly silent
+reproach, as the one he was just now beholding in the eyes of Jennka, filled
+with tears. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and impulsively embraced her
+around the bared, swarthy arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let’s not quarrel, then, Jennechka,” he said tenderly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she twined herself around him, placed her arms on his neck, while her head
+she pressed against his breast. They kept silent so for several seconds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Kolya,” Jennie suddenly asked dully, “but were you never afraid of becoming
+infected?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kolya shivered. Some chill, loathsome horror stirred and glided through within
+his soul. He did not answer at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course, that would be horrible... horrible... God save me! But then I go
+only to you alone, only to you! You’d surely have told me? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I’d have told you,” she uttered meditatively. And at once rapidly,
+consciously, as though having weighed the significance of her words: “Yes, of
+course, of course, I would have told you! But haven’t you ever heard what sort
+of a thing is that disease called syphilis?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course, I’ve heard... The nose falls through...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, Kolya, not only the nose! The person becomes all diseased: his bones,
+sinews, brains grow diseased... Some doctors say such nonsense as that it’s
+possible to be cured of this disease. Bosh! You’ll never cure yourself! A
+person rots ten, twenty, thirty years. Every second paralysis can strike him
+down, so that the right side of the face, the right arm, the right leg die—it
+isn’t a human being that’s living, but some sort of a little half.
+Half-man-half-corpse. The majority of them go out of their minds. And each
+understands... every person... each one so infected understands, that if he
+eats, drinks, kisses, simply even breathes—he can’t be sure that he won’t
+immediately infect some one of those around him, the very nearest—sister, wife,
+son... To all syphilitics the children are born monsters, abortions, goitrous,
+consumptives, idiots. There, Kolya, is what this disease means. And now,”
+Jennka suddenly straightened up quickly, seized Kolya fast by his bare
+shoulders, turned his face to her, so that he was almost blinded by the
+flashing of her sorrowful, sombre, extraordinary eyes, “and now, Kolya, I will
+tell you that for more than a month I am sick with this filth. And that’s just
+why I haven’t allowed you to kiss me...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re joking! ... You’re teasing me on purpose, Jennie!” muttered Gladishev,
+wrathful, frightened, and out of his wits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Joking? ...Come here!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She abruptly compelled him to get up on his feet, lit a match and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now look closely at what I’m going to show you...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She opened her mouth wide and placed the light so that it would illumine her
+larynx. Kolya looked and staggered back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you see these white spots? This is syphilis, Kolya! Do you
+understand?—syphilis in the most fearful, the most serious stage. Now dress
+yourself and thank God.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He, silently and without looking around at Jennka, began to dress hurriedly,
+missing his clothes when he tried to put his legs through. His hands were
+shaking, and his under jaw jumped so that the lower teeth knocked against the
+upper; while Jennka was speaking with bowed head:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Listen, Kolya, it’s your good fortune that you’ve run across an honest woman;
+another wouldn’t have spared you. Do you hear that? We, whom you deprive of
+innocence and then drive out of your home, while later you pay us two roubles a
+visit, we always—do you understand?”—she suddenly raised her head—“we always
+hate you and never have any pity for you!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The half-clad Kolya suddenly dropped his dressing, sat down on the bed near
+Jennka and, covering his face with his palms, burst into tears; sincerely,
+altogether like a child...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lord, Lord,” he whispered, “why this is the truth! ... What a vile thing this
+really is! ... We, also, we had this happen: we had a chambermaid, Niusha...a
+chambermaid... they also called her signorita Anita...a pretty little
+girl...and my brother lived with her...my elder brother...an officer...and when
+he went away, she proved pregnant and mother drove her out...well, yes—drove
+her out...threw her out of the house, like a floor mop...Where is she now? And
+father...father...he also with a cham...chambermaid.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the half-naked Jennka, this Jennka, the atheist, swearer, and brawler,
+suddenly got up from the bed, stood before the cadet, and slowly, almost
+solemnly, made the sign of the cross over him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And may God preserve you my boy!” she said with an expression of deep
+tenderness and gratitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at once she ran to the door, opened it and called out: “Housekeeper!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell you what, housekeeper dear,” Jennka directed, “go and find out, please,
+which one of them is free—Tamara or Little White Manka. And the one that’s free
+send here.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kolya growled out something in the back, but Jennka purposely did not listen to
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And please make it as quick as possible, housekeeper dear, won’t you be so
+kind?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Right away, right away, miss.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, why do you do this, Jennie?” asked Gladishev with anguish. “Well, what’s
+that for? ...Is it possible that you want to tell about it? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait awhile, that’s not your business...Wait a while, I won’t do anything
+unpleasant for you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a minute Little White Manka came in her brown, smooth, deliberately
+modest dress of a high school girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What did you call me for, Jennie? Or have you quarreled?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, we haven’t quarreled, Mannechka, but my head aches very much,” answered
+Jennka calmly, “and for that reason my little friend finds me very cold. Be a
+friend, Mannechka, stay with him, take my place!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s enough, Jennie, stop it, darling!” in a tone of sincere suffering
+retorted Kolya. “I understand everything, everything, it’s not necessary now
+... Don’t be finishing me off, then! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t understand anything of what’s happened,” the frivolous Manka spread
+out her hands. “Maybe you’ll treat a poor little girl to something?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, go on, go on!” Jennka sent her away gently. “I’ll come right away. We
+just played a joke.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Already dressed, they stood for long in the open door between the bedroom and
+the corridor; and without words sadly looked at each other. And Kolya did not
+understand, but sensed, that at this moment in his soul was taking place one of
+those tremendous crises which tell imperiously upon the entire life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he pressed Jennie’s hand hard and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Forgive! ... Will you forgive me, Jennie? Will you forgive? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, my boy! ... Yes, my fine one! ... Yes...yes...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tenderly, softly, like a mother, stroked his closely cropped harsh head and
+gave him, a slight shove into the corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where are you bound now?” she sent after him, half opening her door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll take my comrade right away, and then home.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As you know best! ... God bless you, dearie!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Forgive me! ... Forgive me! ...” once more repeated Kolya, stretching out his
+hands to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve already told you, my splendid boy...And you forgive me too...For we won’t
+see each other anymore!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she, having closed the door, was left alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the corridor Gladishev hesitated, because he did not know how to find the
+room to which Petrov had retired with Tamara. But the housekeeper Zociya helped
+him, running past him very quickly, and with a very anxious, alarmed air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I haven’t time to bother with you now!” she snarled back at Gladishev’s
+question. “Third door to the left.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kolya walked up to the door indicated and knocked. Some sort of bustle and
+whispering sounded in the room. He knocked once more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Kerkovius, open! This is me—Soliterov.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the cadets, setting out on expeditions of this sort, it was always agreed
+upon to call each other by fictitious names. It was not so much a conspiracy or
+a shift against the vigilance of those in authority, or fear of compromising
+one’s self before a chance acquaintance of the family, but rather a play, of
+its own kind, at mysteriousness and disguise—a play tracing its beginning from
+those times when the young people were borne away by Gustave Aimard, Mayne
+Reid, and the detective Lecocq.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You can’t come in!” the voice of Tamara came from behind the door. “You can’t
+come in. We are busy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the bass voice of Petrov immediately cut her short:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nonsense! She’s lying. Come in. It’s all right.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kolya opened the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Petrov was sitting on a chair dressed, but all red, morose, with lips pouting
+like a child’s, with downcast eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, what a friend you’ve brought—I must say!” Tamara began speaking
+sneeringly and wrathfully. “I thought he was a man in earnest, but this is only
+some sort of a little girl! He’s sorry to lose his innocence, if you please.
+What a treasure you’ve found, to be sure! But take back, take back your two
+roubles!” she suddenly began yelling at Petrov and tossed two coins on the
+table. “You’ll give them away to some poor chambermaid or other! Or else save
+them for gloves for yourself, you marmot!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what are you cursing for?” grumbled Petrov, without raising his eyes. “I’m
+not cursing you, am I? Then why do you curse first? I have a full right to act
+as I want to. But I have passed some time with you, and so take them. But to be
+forced, I don’t want to. And on your part, Gladishev—that is, Soliterov—this
+isn’t at all nice. I thought she was a nice girl, but she’s trying to kiss all
+the time, and does God knows what...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara, despite her wrath, burst into laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, you little stupid, little stupid! Well, don’t be angry—I’ll take your
+money. Only watch: this very evening you’ll be sorry, you’ll be crying. Well,
+don’t be angry, don’t be angry, angel, let’s make up. Put your hand out to me,
+as I’m doing to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let’s go, Kerkovius,” said Gladishev. “Au revoir, Tamara!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara let the money down into her stocking, through the habit of all
+prostitutes, and went to show the boys the way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even at the time that they were passing through the corridor Gladishev was
+struck by the strange, silent, tense bustle in the drawing room; the trampling
+of feet and some muffled, low-voiced, rapid conversations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Near that place where they had just been sitting below the picture, all the
+inmates of Anna Markovna’s house and several outsiders had gathered. They were
+standing in a close knot, bending down. Kolya walked up with curiosity, and,
+wedging his way through a little, looked in between the heads: on the floor,
+sideways, somehow unnaturally drawn up, was lying Roly-Poly. His face was blue,
+almost black. He did not move, and was lying strangely small, shrunken, with
+legs bent. One arm was squeezed in under his breast, while the other was flung
+back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s the matter with him?” asked Gladishev in a fright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Niurka answered him, starting to speak in a rapid, jerky whisper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Roly-Poly just came here...Gave Manka the candy, and then started in to put
+Armenian riddles to us...’Of a blue colour, hangs in the parlor and
+whistles’...We couldn’t guess nohow, but he says: ‘A herring’...Suddenly he
+started laughing, had a coughing spell, and began falling sideways; and
+then—bang on the ground and don’t move...They sent for the police...Lord,
+there’s doings for you! ... I’m horribly afraid of corpseses!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait!” Gladishev stopped her. “It’s necessary to feel his forehead; he may be
+alive yet...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did try to thrust himself forward, but Simeon’s fingers, just like iron
+pincers, seized him above the elbows and dragged him back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s nothing, there’s nothing to be inspecting,” sternly ordered Simeon,
+“go on, now, young gents, out of here! This is no place for you: the police
+will come, will summon you as witnesses—then it’s scat! to the devil’s dam! for
+you out of the military high school! Better go while you’re good and healthy!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He escorted them to the entrance hall, shoved the great-coats into their hands
+and added still more sternly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now—go at a run...Lively! So’s there won’t be even a whiff of you left.
+And if you come another time, then I won’t let youse in at all. You are wise
+guys, you are! You gave the old hound money for whiskey—so now he’s gone and
+croaked.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, don’t you get too smart, now!” Gladishev flew at him, all ruffled up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What d’you mean, don’t get smart? ...” Simeon suddenly began to yell
+infuriatedly, and his black eyes without lashes and brows became so terrible
+that the cadets shrank back. “I’ll soak you one on the snout so hard you’ll
+forget how to say papa and mamma! Git, this second! Or else I’ll bust you in
+the neck!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boys went down the steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this time two men were going up, in cloth caps on the sides of their heads;
+one in a blue, the other in a red blouse, with the skirts outside, under the
+unbuttoned, wide open jackets—evidently, Simeon’s comrades in the profession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” one of them called out gaily from below, addressing Simeon, “Is it
+bye-bye for Roly-Poly?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, it must be the finish,” answered Simeon. “We’ve got to throw him out into
+the street in the meantime, fellows, or else the spirits will start haunting.
+The devil with him, let ’em think that he drank himself full and croaked on the
+road.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you didn’t ... well, now? ... You didn’t do for him?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, there’s foolish talk! If there’d only been some reason. He was a
+harmless fellow. Altogether like a little lamb. It must be just that his turn
+came.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And didn’t he find a place where to die! Couldn’t he have thought up something
+worse?” said the one who was in the red shirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Right you are, there!” seconded the other. “Lived to grin and died in sin.
+Well, let’s go, mate, what?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cadets ran with all their might. Now, in the darkness, the figure of
+Roly-Poly drawn up on the floor, with his blue face, appeared before them in
+all the horror that the dead possess for early youth; and especially if
+recalled at night, in the dark.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0304"></a> CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<p>
+A fine rain, like dust, obstinate and tedious, had been drizzling since
+morning. Platonov was working in the port at the unloading of watermelons. At
+the mill, where he had since the very summer proposed to establish himself,
+luck had turned against him; after a week he had already quarreled, and almost
+had a fight, with the foreman, who was extremely brutal with the workers. About
+a month Sergei Ivanovich had struggled along somehow from hand to mouth,
+somewheres in the back-yards of Temnikovskaya Street, dragging into the
+editorial rooms of The Echoes, from time to time, notes of street accidents or
+little humorous scenes from the court rooms of the justices of the peace. But
+the hard newspaper game had long ago grown distasteful to him. He was always
+drawn to adventures, to physical labour in the fresh air, to life completely
+devoid of even the least hint at comfort; to care-free vagabondage, in which a
+man, having cast from him all possible external conditions, does not know
+himself what is going to be with him on the morrow. And for that reason, when
+from the lower stretches of the Dnieper the first barges with watermelons
+started coming in, he willingly entered a gang of labourers, in which he was
+known even from last year, and loved for his merry nature, for his comradely
+spirit, and for his masterly ability of keeping count.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This labour was carried on with good team work and with skill. Four parties,
+each of five men, worked on each barge. Number one would reach for a watermelon
+and pass it on to the second, who was standing on the side of the barge. The
+second cast it to the third, standing already on the wharf; the third threw it
+over to the fourth; while the fourth handed it up to the fifth, who stood on a
+horse cart and laid the watermelons away—now dark-green, now white, now
+striped—into even glistening rows. This work is clean, lively, and progresses
+rapidly. When a good party is gotten up, it is a pleasure to see how the
+watermelons fly from hand to hand, are caught with a circus-like quickness and
+success, and anew, and anew, without a break, fly, in order to fill up the
+dray. It is only difficult for the novices, that have not as yet gained the
+skill, have not caught on to that especial sense of the tempo. And it is not as
+difficult to catch a watermelon as to be able to throw it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov remembered well his first experiences of last year. What
+swearing—virulent, mocking, coarse—poured down upon him when for the third or
+fourth time he had been gaping and had slowed up the passing: two watermelons,
+not thrown in time, had smashed against the pavement with a succulent crunch,
+while the completely lost Platonov dropped the one which he was holding in his
+hands as well. The first time they treated him gently; on the second day,
+however, for every mistake they began to deduct from him five kopecks per
+watermelon out of the common share. The following time when this happened, they
+threatened to throw him out of the party at once, without any reckoning.
+Platonov even now still remembered how a sudden fury seized him: “Ah, so? The
+devil take you!” he had thought. “And yet you want me to be chary of your
+watermelons? So then, here you are, here you are! ...” This flare-up helped him
+as though instantaneously. He carelessly caught the watermelons, just as
+carelessly threw them over, and to his amazement suddenly felt that precisely
+just now he had gotten into the real swing of the work with all his muscles,
+sight, and breathing; and understood, that the most important thing was not to
+think at all of the watermelons representing some value, and that then
+everything went well. When he, finally, had fully mastered this art, it served
+him for a long time as a pleasant and entertaining athletic game of its own
+kind. But that, too, passed away. He reached, in, the end, the stage where he
+felt himself a will-less, mechanical wheel in a general machine consisting of
+five men and an endless chain of flying watermelons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now he was number two. Bending downward rhythmically, he, without looking,
+received with both hands the cold, springy, heavy watermelon; swung it to the
+right; and, also almost without looking, or looking only out of the corner of
+his eye, tossed it downward, and immediately once again bent down for the next
+watermelon. And his ear seized at this time how smack-smack
+...smack-smack...the caught watermelons slapped in the hands; and immediately
+bent downwards and again threw, letting the air out of himself
+noisily—ghe...ghe...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The present work was very profitable; their gang, consisting of forty men, had
+taken on the work, thanks to the great rush, not by the day but by the amount
+of work done, by the waggon load. Zavorotny, the head—an enormous, mighty
+Poltavian—had succeeded with extreme deftness in getting around the owner; a
+young man, and, to boot, in all probability not very experienced as yet. The
+owner, it is true, came to his senses later and wanted to change the
+stipulations; but experienced melon growers dissuaded him from it in time:
+“Drop it. They’ll kill you,” they told him simply and firmly. And so, through
+this very stroke of good luck every member of the gang was now earning up to
+four roubles a day. They all worked with unusual ardour, even with some sort of
+vehemence; and if it had been possible to measure with some apparatus the
+labour of each one of them, then, in all probability, the number of units of
+energy created would have equalled the work of a large Voronezhian train horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, Zavorotny was not satisfied even with this—he hurried and hurried his
+lads on all the time. Professional ambition was speaking within him; he wanted
+to bring the daily earnings of every member of the gang up to five roubles per
+snout. And gaily, with unusual ease, twinkled from the harbour to the waggon,
+twirling and flashing, the wet green and white watermelons; and their succulent
+plashing resounded against accustomed palms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now a long blast sounded on the dredging machine in the port. A second, a
+third, responded to it on the river; a few more on shore; and for a long time
+they roared together in a mighty chorus of different voices.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ba-a-a-st-a-a!” hoarsely and thickly, exactly like a locomotive blast,
+Zavorotny started roaring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now the last smack-smack—and the work stopped instantaneously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov with enjoyment straightened out his back and bent it backward, and
+spread out his swollen arms. With pleasure he thought of having already gotten
+over that first pain in all the muscles, which tells so during the first days,
+when one is just getting back into the work after disuse. While up to this day,
+awaking in the mornings in his lair on Temnikovskaya—also to the sound of a
+factory blast agreed upon—he would during the first minutes experience such
+fearful pains in his neck, back, in his arms and legs, that it seemed to him as
+if only a miracle would be able to compel him to get up and make a few steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go-o-o and e-at,” Zavorotny began to clamour again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The stevedores went down to the water; got down on their knees or laid down
+flat on the gangplank or on the rafts; and, scooping up the water in handfuls,
+washed their wet, heated faces and arms. Right here, too, on the shore, to one
+side, where a little grass had been left yet, they disposed themselves for
+dinner: placed in a circle ten of the most ripe watermelons, black bread, and
+twenty dried porgies. Gavriushka the Bullet was already running with a
+half-gallon bottle to the pot-house and was singing as he went the soldiers’
+signal for dinner:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Drag spoon and mess-kit out,<br/>
+If there’s no bread, eat without.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A bare-footed urchin, dirty and so ragged that there was more of his bare body
+than clothes upon him, ran up to the gang.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Which one of you here is Platonov?” he asked, quickly running over them with
+his thievish eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m Platonov, and by what name do they tease you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Around the corner here, behind the church, some sort of a young lady is
+waiting for you...Here’s a note for you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole gang neighed deeply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What d’you open up your mouths for, you pack of fools!” said Platonov calmly.
+“Give me the note here.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a letter from Jennka, written in a round, naive, rolling, childish
+handwriting, and not very well spelt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sergei Ivanich. Forgive me that I disturbe you. I must talk over a very, very
+important matter with you. I would not be troubling you if it was Trifles. For
+only 10 minutes in all. Jennka, whom you know, from Anna Markovna’s.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov got up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m going away for a little while,” he said to Zavorotny. “When you begin,
+I’ll be in my place.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now you’ve found somethin’ to do,” lazily and contemptuously said the head of
+the gang. “There’s the night for that business...Go ahead, go ahead, who’s
+holding you. But only if you won’t be here when we begin work, then this day
+don’t count. I’ll take any tramp. And as many watermelons as he busts—that’s
+out of your share, too...I didn’t think it of you, Platonov—that you’re such a
+he-dog...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka was waiting for him in the tiny little square, sheltered between a
+church and the wharf, and consisting of ten sorry poplars. She had on a gray,
+one-piece street dress; a simple, round, straw hat with a small black ribbon.
+“And yet, even though she has dressed herself simply,” reflected Platonov,
+looking at her from a distance with his habitually puckered eyes, “and yet,
+every man will walk past, give a look, and inevitably look back three or four
+times; he’ll feel the especial tone at once.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Howdy do, Jennka! Very glad to see you,” he said cordially, squeezing the
+girl’s hand. “There, now, I didn’t expect it!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka was reserved, sad, and apparently troubled over something. Platonov at
+once understood and sensed this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You excuse me, Jennechka, I must have dinner right away,” said he, “so,
+perhaps, you’ll go together with me and tell me what’s the matter, while I’ll
+manage to eat at the same time. There’s a modest little inn not far from here.
+At this time there are no people there at all, and there’s even a tiny little
+stall, a sort of a private room; that will be just the thing for you and me.
+Let’s go! Perhaps you’ll also have a bite of something.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. I won’t eat,” answered Jennka hoarsely, “and I won’t detain you for
+long...a few minutes. I have to talk things over, have some advice—but I
+haven’t anybody.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well...Let’s go then! In whatever way I can, I’m always at your service,
+in everything. I love you very much, Jennka!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him sadly and gratefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know this, Serge Ivanovich; that’s why I’ve come.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You need money, perhaps? Just say so. I haven’t got much with me, myself; but
+the gang will trust me with an advance.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, thanks...it isn’t that at all. I’ll tell everything at once, there, where
+we’re going now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the dim, low-ceiled little inn, the customary haunt of petty thieves, where
+business was carried on only in the evening, until very far into the night,
+Platonov took the little half-dark cubby hole.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Give me boiled meat, cucumbers, a large glass of vodka, and bread,” he ordered
+the waiter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The waiter—a young fellow with a dirty face; pugnosed; as dirty and greasy in
+all his person as though he had just been pulled out of a cesspool, wiped his
+lips and asked hoarsely:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How many kopecks’ bread?” “As much as it comes to.” Then he started laughing:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bring as much as possible—we’ll reckon it up later... and some bread cider!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, Jennie, say what your trouble is...I can already see by your face that
+there’s trouble, or something distasteful in general...Go ahead and tell it!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka for a long time plucked her handkerchief and looked at the tips of her
+slippers, as though, gathering her strength. Timorousness had taken possession
+of her—the necessary and important words would not come into her mind, for
+anything. Platonov came to her aid: “Don’t be embarrassed, my dear Jennie, tell
+all there is! For you know that I’m like one of the family, and will never give
+you away. And perhaps I may really give you some worth-while advice. Well, dive
+off with a splash into the water—begin!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s just it, I don’t know how to begin,” said Jennka irresolutely. “Here’s
+what, Sergei Ivanovich, I’m a sick woman...Understand?—sick in a bad way...With
+the most nasty disease...Do you know which?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go on!” said Platonov, nodding his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I’ve been that way for a long time...more than a month...a month and a
+half, maybe...Yes, more than a month, because I found out about this on the
+Trinity...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov quickly rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Wait a while, I’ve
+recalled it...This was that day I was there together with the students...isn’t
+that so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s right, Sergei Ivanovich, that’s so...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, Jennka,” said Platonov reproachfully and with regret. “For do you know,
+that after this two of the students got sick...Wasn’t it from you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka wrathfully and disdainfully flashed her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps even from me...How should I know? There were a lot of them...I
+remember there was this one, now, who was even trying to pick a fight with you
+all the time ...A tall sort of fellow, fair-haired, in pince-nez...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, yes...That’s Sobashnikov. They passed the news to me...That’s he...that
+one was nothing—a little coxcomb! But then the other—him I’m sorry for.
+Although I’ve known him long, somehow I never made the right inquiries about
+his name...I only remember that he comes from some city or
+other—Poliyansk...Zvenigorodsk... His comrades called him Ramses...When the
+physicians—he turned to several physicians—when they told him irrevocably that
+he had the lues, he went home and shot himself...And in the note that he wrote
+there were amazing things, something like this: I supposed all the meaning of
+life to be in the triumph of mind, beauty and good; with this disease I am not
+a man, but junk, rottenness, carrion; a candidate for a progressive paralytic.
+My human dignity cannot reconcile itself to this. But guilty in all that has
+happened, and therefore in my death as well, am I alone; for that I, obeying a
+momentary bestial inclination, took a woman without love, for money. For that
+reason have I earned the punishment which I myself lay upon me...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am sorry for him...” added Platonov quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka dilated her nostrils.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I, now, not the very least bit.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s wrong...You go away now, young fellow. When I’ll need you I’ll call
+out,” said Platonov to the serving-man “Absolutely wrong, Jennechka! This was
+an unusually big and forceful man. Such come only one to the hundreds of
+thousands. I don’t respect suicides. Most frequent of all, these are little
+boys, who shoot and hang themselves over trifles, like a child that has not
+been given a piece of candy, and hits itself against the wall to spite those
+around it. But before his death I reverently and with sorrow bow my head. He
+was a wise, generous, kindly man, attentive to all; and, as you see, too strict
+to himself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But to me this is absolutely all one,” obstinately contradicted Jennka, “wise
+or foolish, honest or dishonest, old or young—I have come to hate them all.
+Because—look upon me—what am I? Some sort of universal spittoon, cesspool,
+privy. Think of it, Platonov; why, thousands, thousands of people have taken
+me, clutched me; grunted, snorted over me; and all those who were, and all
+those who might yet have been on my bed—oh, how I hate them all! If I only
+could, I would sentence them to torture by fire and iron! ... I would order...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are malicious and proud, Jennie,” said Platonov quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was neither malicious nor proud...It’s only now. I wasn’t ten yet when my
+own mother sold me; and since that time I’ve been travelling from hand to
+hand... If only some one had seen a human being in me! No! ... I am vermin,
+refuse, worse than a beggar, worse than a thief, worse than a murderer! ...
+Even a hangman...we have even such coming to the establishment—and even he
+would have treated me loftily, with loathing: I am nothing; I am a public
+wench! Do you understand, Sergei Ivanovich, what a horrible word this is?
+Pub-lic! ... This means nobody’s: not papa’s, not mamma’s, not Russian, not
+Riyazan, but simply—public! And not once did it enter anybody’s head to walk up
+to me and think: why, now, this is a human being too; she has a heart and a
+brain; she thinks of something, feels something; for she’s not made out of
+wood, and isn’t stuffed with straw, small hay, or excelsior! And yet, only I
+feel this. I, perhaps, am the only one out of all of them who feels the horror
+of her position; this black, stinking, filthy pit. But then, all the girls with
+whom I have met, and with whom I am living right now—understand, Platonov,
+understand me!—why, they don’t realize anything... Talking, walking pieces of
+meat! And this is even worse than my malice! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are right!” said Platonov quietly. “And this is one of those questions
+where you’ll always run up against a wall. No one will help you...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No one, no one! ...” passionately exclaimed Jennka. “Do you remember—this was
+while you were there: a student carried away our Liubka...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, certainly, I remember well! ... Well, and what then?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And this is what, that yesterday she came back tattered, wet...Crying...Left
+her, the skunk! ... Played a while at kindliness, and then away with her!
+‘You,’ he says, ‘are a sister.’ ‘I,’ he says, ‘will save you, make a human
+being of you...’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is that possible?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just so! ... One man I did see, kindly, indulgent, without the designs of a
+he-dog—that’s you. But then, you’re altogether different. You’re somehow queer.
+You’re always wandering somewhere, seeking something...You forgive me, Sergei
+Ivanovich, you’re some sort of a little innocent! ... And that’s just why I’ve
+come to you, to you alone! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Speak on, Jennechka...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so, when I found out that I was sick, I almost went out of my mind from
+wrath; I choked from wrath ...I thought: and here’s the end; therefore, there’s
+no more use in pitying, there’s nothing to grieve about, nothing to
+expect...The lid! ... But for all that I have borne—can it be that there’s no
+paying back for it? Can it be that there’s no justice in the world? Can it be
+that I can’t even feast myself with revenge?—for that I have never known love;
+that of family life I know only by hearsay; that, like a disgustin’, nasty
+little dog, they call me near, pat me and then with a boot over the head—get
+out!—that they made me over, from a human being, equal to all of them, no more
+foolish than all those I’ve met; made me over into a floor mop, some sort of a
+sewer pipe for their filthy pleasures? ...Ugh! ... Is it possible that for all
+of this I must take even such a disease with gratitude as well? ... Or am I a
+slave? ... A dumb object? ... A pack horse? ... And so, Platonov, it was just
+then that I resolved to infect them all: young, old, poor, rich, handsome,
+hideous—all, all, all! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov, who had already long since put his plate away from him, was looking
+at her with astonishment, and even more—almost with horror. He, who had seen in
+life much of the painful, the filthy, at times even of the bloody—he grew
+frightened with an animal fright before this intensity of enormous, unvented
+hatred. Coming to himself, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One great writer tells of such a case. The Prussians conquered the French and
+lorded it over them in every possible way: shot the men, violated the women,
+pillaged the houses, burned down the fields...And so one handsome woman—a
+Frenchwoman, very handsome,—having become infected, began out of spite to
+infect all the Germans who happened to fall into her embraces. She made ill
+whole hundreds, perhaps even thousands...And when she was dying in a hospital,
+she recalled this with joy and with pride...[25] But then, those were enemies,
+trampling upon her fatherland and slaughtering her brothers...But you, you,
+Jennechka! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[25] This story is Lit. No. 29, by Guy de Maupassant.—Trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I—all, just all! Tell me, Sergei Ivanovich, only tell me on your
+conscience: if you were to find in the street a child, whom some one had
+dishonoured, had abused...well, let’s say, had stuck its eyes out, cut its ears
+off—and then you were to find out that this man is at this minute walking past
+you, and that only God alone, if only He exists, is looking at you this minute
+from heaven—what would you do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t know,” answered Platonov, dully and downcast; but he paled, and his
+fingers underneath the table convulsively clenched into fists, “Perhaps I would
+kill him...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not ‘perhaps,’ but certainly! I know you, I sense you. Well, and now think:
+every one of us has been abused so, when we were children! ... Children! ...”
+passionately moaned out Jennka and covered her eyes for a moment with her palm.
+“Why, it comes to me, you also spoke of this at one time, in our place—wasn’t
+it on that same evening before the Trinity? ... Yes, children—foolish,
+trusting, blind, greedy, frivolous...And we cannot tear ourselves out of our
+harness...where are we to go? what are we to do? ... And please, don’t you
+think it, Sergei Ivanovich—that the spite within me is strong only against
+those who wronged just me, me personally...No, against all our guests in
+general; all these cavaliers, from little to big...Well, and so I have resolved
+to avenge myself and my sisters. Is that good or no? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jehnechka, really I don’t know...I can’t...I dare not say anything...I don’t
+understand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But even that’s not the main thing...For the main thing is this: I infected
+them, and did not feel anything—no pity, no remorse, no guilt before God or my
+fatherland. Within me was only joy, as in a hungry wolf that has managed to get
+at blood...But yesterday something happened which even I can’t understand. A
+cadet came to me, altogether a little bit of a lad, silly, with yellow around
+his mouth...He used to come to me from still last winter...And then suddenly I
+had pity on him... Not because he was very handsome and very young; and not
+because he had always been very polite—even tender, if you will...No, both the
+one and the other had come to me, but I did not spare them: with enjoyment I
+marked them off, just like cattle, with a red-hot brand ...But this one I
+suddenly pitied...I myself don’t understand—why? I can’t make it out. It seemed
+to me, that it would be all the same as stealing money from a little simpleton,
+a little idiot; or hitting a blind man, or cutting a sleeper’s throat...if he
+only were some dried-up marasmus or a nasty little brute, or a lecherous old
+fellow, I would not have stopped. But he was healthy, robust, with chest and
+arms like a statue’s...and I could not... I gave him his money back, showed him
+my disease; in a word, I acted like a fool among fools. He went away from
+me...burst into tears...And now since last evening I haven’t slept. I walk
+around as in a fog...Therefore—I’m thinking right now—therefore, that which, I
+meditated; my dream to infect them all; to infect their fathers, mothers,
+sisters, brides—even all the world—therefore, all this was folly, an empty
+fantasy, since I have stopped? ... Once again, I don’t understand anything
+...Sergei Ivanovich, you are so wise, you have seen so much of life—help me,
+then, to find myself now!...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know, Jennechka!” quietly pronounced Platonov. “Not that I fear
+telling you, or advising you, but I know absolutely nothing. This is above my
+reason... above conscience...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennie crossed her fingers and nervously cracked them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I, too, don’t know...Therefore, that which I thought—is not the truth.
+Therefore, there is but one thing left me...This thought came into my head this
+morning...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t, don’t do it, Jennechka! ... Jennie! ...” Platonov quickly interrupted
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s one thing: to hang myself...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, no, Jennie, only not that! ... If there were other circumstances,
+unsurmountable, I would, believe me, tell you boldly: well, it’s no use,
+Jennie; it’s time to close up shop... But what you need isn’t that at all... If
+you wish, I can suggest one way out to you, no less malicious and merciless;
+but which, perhaps, will satiate your wrath a hundredfold...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s that?” asked Jennie, wearily, as though suddenly wilted after her
+flare-up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, this is it ... You’re still young, and I’ll tell you the truth, you are
+very handsome; that is, you can be, if you only want to, unusually stunning ...
+That’s even more than beauty. But you’ve never yet known the bounds and the
+power of your appearance; and, mainly, you don’t know to what a degree such
+natures as yours are bewitching, and how mightily they enchain men to them, and
+make out of them more than slaves and brutes ... You are proud, you are brave,
+you are independent, you are a clever woman. I know—you have read a great deal,
+let’s presuppose even trashy books, but still you have read, you have an
+entirely different speech from the others. With a successful turn of life, you
+can cure yourself, you can get out of these ‘Yamkas,’ these ‘Little Ditches,’
+into freedom. You have only to stir a finger, in order to see at your feet
+hundreds of men; submissive, ready for your sake for vileness, for theft, for
+embezzlement ... Lord it over them with tight reins, with a cruel whip in your
+hands! ... Ruin them, make them go out of their minds, as long as your desire
+and energy hold out! ... Look, my dear Jennie, who manages life now if not
+women! Yesterday’s chambermaid, laundress, chorus girl goes through estates
+worth millions, the way a country-woman of Tver cracks sunflower seeds. A woman
+scarcely able to sign her name, at times affects the destiny of an entire
+kingdom through a man. Hereditary princes marry the street-walkers, the kept
+mistresses of yesterday... Jennechka, there is the scope for your unbridled
+vengeance; while I will admire you from a distance... For you—you are made of
+this stuff—you are a bird of prey, a spoliator... Perhaps not with such a broad
+sweep—but you will cast them down under your feet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” faintly smiled Jennka. “I thought of this before ... But something of the
+utmost importance has burned out within me. There are no forces within me,
+there is no will within me, no desires ... I am somehow all empty inside,
+rotted ... Well, now, you know, there’s a mushroom like that—white, round,—you
+squeeze it, and snuff pours out of it. And the same way with me. This life has
+eaten out everything within me save malice. And I am flabby, and my malice is
+flabby ... I’ll see some little boy again, will have pity on him, will be
+punishing myself again ... No, it’s better ... better so! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She became silent. And Platonov did not know what to say. It became oppressive
+and awkward for both. Finally, Jennka got up, and, without looking at Platonov,
+extended her cold, feeble hand to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-bye, Sergei Ivanovich! Excuse me, that I took up your time ... Oh, well,
+I can see myself that you’d help me, if you only could ... But, evidently,
+there’s nothing to be done here ... Good-bye!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only don’t do anything foolish, Jennechka! I implore you! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, that’s all right!” said she and made a tired gesture with her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having come out of the square, they parted; but, having gone a few steps,
+Jennka suddenly called after him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sergei Ivanovich, oh Sergei Ivanovich! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stopped, turned around, walked back to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Roly-Poly croaked last evening in our drawing room. He jumped and he jumped,
+and then suddenly plumped down ... Oh, well, it’s an easy death at least! And
+also I forgot to ask you, Sergei Ivanovich ... This is the last, now ... Is
+there a God or no?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov knit his eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What answer can I make? I don’t know. I think that there is, but not such as
+we imagine Him. He is more wise, more just...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And future life? There, after death? Is there, now, as they tell us, a
+paradise or hell? Is that the truth? Or is there just nothing at all? A barren
+void? A sleep without a dream? A dark basement?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov kept silent, trying not to look at Jennka. He felt oppressed and
+frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” said he, finally, with an effort. “I don’t want to lie to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka sighed, and smiled with a pitiful, twisted smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, thanks, my dear. And thanks for even that much ... I wish you happiness.
+With all my soul. Well, good-bye...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned away from him and began slowly, with a wavering walk, to climb up
+the hill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Platonov returned to work just in the nick of time. The gathering of tramps,
+scratching, yawning, working out their accustomed dislocations, were getting
+into their places. Zavorotny, at a distance, with his keen eyes caught sight of
+Platonov and began to yell over the whole port:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You did manage to get here in time, you round-shouldered devil ... But I was
+already wanting to take you by the tail and chase you out of the gang ... Well,
+get in your place! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, but I did get a he-dog in you, Serejka! ...” he added, in a kindly
+manner. “If only it was night; but no,—look you, he starts in playing
+ring-around-a-rosie in broad daylight...”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0305"></a> CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+<p>
+Saturday was the customary day of the doctor’s inspection, for which they
+prepared very carefully and with quaking in all the houses; as, however, even
+society ladies prepare themselves, when getting ready for a visit to a
+physician-specialist; they diligently made their intimate toilet and inevitably
+put on clean underthings, even as dressy as possible. The windows toward the
+street were closed with shutters, while at one of those windows, which gave out
+upon the yard, was put a table with a hard bolster to put under the back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the girls were agitated ... “And what if there’s a disease, which I haven’t
+noticed myself? ... And then the despatch to a hospital; disgrace; the tedium
+of hospital life; bad food; the hard course of treatment...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only Big Manka—or otherwise Manka the Crocodile—Zoe, and Henrietta—all thirty
+years old, and, therefore, in the reckoning of Yama, already old prostitutes,
+who had seen everything, had grown inured to everything, grown indifferent to
+their trade, like white, fat circus horses—remained imperturbably calm. Manka
+the Crocodile even often said of herself:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have gone through fire and water and pipes of brass ... Nothing will stick
+to me any more.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka, since morning, was meek and pensive. She presented to Little White
+Manka a golden bracelet; a medallion upon a thin little chain with her
+photograph; and a silver neck crucifix. Tamara she moved through entreaty into
+taking two rings for remembrance: one of silver, in three hoops, that could be
+moved apart, with a heart in the middle, and under it two hands that clasped
+one another when all the three parts of the ring were joined; while the other
+was of thin gold wire with an almandine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As for my underwear, Tamarochka—you give it to Annushka, the chambermaid. Let
+her wash it out well and wear it in good health, in memory of me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two of them were sitting in Tamara’s room. Jennka had in the very morning
+sent after cognac; and now slowly, as though lazily, was imbibing wine-glass
+after wine-glass, eating lemon and a piece of sugar after drinking. Tamara was
+observing this for the first time and wondered, because Jennka had always
+disliked wine, and drank very rarely; and then only at the constraint of
+guests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What are you giving stuff away so to-day?” asked Tamara. “Just as though you’d
+gotten ready to die, or to go into a convent?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, and I will go away,” answered Jennka listlessly. “I am weary, Tamarochka!
+...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, which one of us has a good time?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, no! ... It isn’t so much that I’m weary; but somehow
+everything—everything is all the same ... I look at you, at the table, at the
+bottle; at my hands and feet; and I’m thinking, that all this is alike and
+everything is to no purpose ... There’s no sense in anything ... Just like on
+some old, old picture. Look there—there’s a soldier walking on the street, but
+it’s all one to me, as though they had wound up a doll, and it’s moving ... And
+that he’s wet under the ram, is also all one to me ... And that he’ll die, and
+I’ll die, and you, Tamara, will die—in this also I see nothing frightful,
+nothing amazing... So simple and wearisome is everything to me...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka was silent for a while; drank one more wine-glass; sucked the sugar,
+and, still looking out at the street, suddenly asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell me, please, Tamara, I’ve never asked you about it—from where did you get
+in here, into the house? You don’t at all resemble all of us; you know
+everything; for everything that turns up you have a good, clever remark ...
+Even French, now—how well you spoke it that time! But none of us knows anything
+at all about you ... Who are you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Darling Jennechka, really, it’s not worth while ... A life like any life ... I
+went to boarding school; was a governess; sang in a choir; then kept a shooting
+gallery in a summer garden; and then got mixed up with a certain charlatan and
+taught myself to shoot with a Winchester ... I traveled with circuses—I
+represented an American Amazon. I used to shoot splendidly ... Then I found
+myself in a monastery. There I passed two years ... I’ve been through a lot ...
+Can’t recall everything ... I used to steal...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ve lived through a great deal ... Checkered-like.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But then, my years are not a few. Well, what do you think—how many?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Twenty-two, twenty-four? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, my angel! It just struck thirty-two a week ago. I, if you like, am older
+than all of you here in Anna Markovna’s. Only I didn’t wonder at anything,
+didn’t take anything near to heart. As you see, I never drink ... I occupy
+myself very carefully with the care of my body; and the main thing, the very
+main thing—I don’t allow myself ever to be carried away with men...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, but what about your Senka? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Senka—that’s a horse of another colour; the heart of woman is foolish,
+inconsistent ... Can it possibly live without love? And even so, I don’t love
+him, but just so ... a self-deception ... But, however, I shall be in very
+great need of Senka soon.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka suddenly grew animated and looked at her friend with curiosity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But how did you come to get stuck right here, in this hole? So clever,
+handsome, sociable...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d have to take a long time in telling it ... And then I’m too lazy ... I got
+in here out of love; I got mixed up with a certain young man and went into a
+revolution with him. For we always act so, we women: where the dearie is
+looking, there we also look; what the dearie sees, that we also see ... I
+didn’t believe at soul in his work, but I went. A flattering man he was; smart,
+a good talker, a good looker ... Only he proved to be a skunk and a traitor
+afterwards. He played at revolution; while he himself gave his comrades away to
+the gendarmes. A stool-pigeon, he was. When they had killed and shown him up,
+then all the foolishness left me. However, it was necessary to conceal myself
+... I changed my passport. Then they advised me, that the easiest thing of all
+was to screen myself with a yellow ticket ... And then the fun began! ... And
+even here I’m on a sort of pasture ground; when the time comes, the successful
+moment arrives—I’ll go away!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where?” asked Jennie with impatience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The world is large ... And I love life! ... There, now, I was the same way in
+the convent: I lived on and I lived on; sang antiphonies and dulias, until I
+had rested up, and had finally grown weary of it; and then all at once—hop! and
+into a cabaret ... Wasn’t that some jump? The same way out of here ... I’ll get
+into a theatre, into a circus, into a corps de ballet ... but do you know,
+Jennechka, I’m drawn to the thieving trade the most, after all ... Daring,
+dangerous, hard, and somehow intoxicating ... It’s drawing me! ... Don’t you
+mind that I’m so respectable and modest, and can appear an educated young lady.
+I’m entirely, entirely different.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes suddenly blazed up, vividly and gaily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s a devil dwells in me!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s all very well for you,” pensively and with weariness pronounced Jennie.
+“You at least desire something, but my soul is some sort of carrion ... I’m
+twenty-five years old, now; but my soul is like that of an old woman,
+shrivelled up, smelling of the earth ... And if I had only lived sensibly! ...
+Ugh! ... There was only some sort of slush.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Drop it, Jennka; you’re talking foolishly. You’re smart, you’re original; you
+have that special power before which men crawl and creep so willingly. You go
+away from here, too. Not with me, of course—I’m always single—but go away all
+by your own self.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka shook her head and quietly, without tears, hid her face in her palms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” she responded dully, after a long silence, “no, this won’t work out with
+me: fate has chewed me all up! ... I’m not a human being any more, but some
+sort of dirty cud ... Eh!” she suddenly made a gesture of despair. ‘Let’s
+better drink some cognac, Jennechka,’” she addressed herself, “‘and let’s suck
+the lemon a little! ...’ Brr ... what nasty stuff! ... And where does Annushka
+always get such abominable stuff? If you smear a dog’s wool with it, it will
+fall off ... And always, the low-down thing, she’ll take an extra half. Once I
+somehow ask her—‘What are you hoarding money for?’ ‘Well, I,’ she says, ‘am
+saving it up for a wedding. What sort,’ she says, ‘of joy will it be for my
+husband, that I’ll offer him up my innocence alone! I must earn a few hundreds
+in addition.’ She’s happy! ... I have here, Tamara, a little money in the
+little box under the mirror; you pass it on to her, please...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And what are you about, you fool; do you want to die, or what?” sharply, with
+reproach, said Tamara.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I’m saying it just so, if anything happens ... Take it, now, take the
+money! Maybe they’ll take me off to the hospital ... And how do you know what’s
+going to take place there? I left myself some small change, if anything happens
+... And supposing that I wanted to do something to myself in downright earnest,
+Tamarochka—is it possible that you’d interfere with me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara looked at her fixedly, deeply, and calmly. Jennie’s eyes were sad, and
+as though vacant. The living fire had become extinguished in them, and they
+seemed turbid, just as though faded, with whites like moonstone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” Tamara said at last, quietly but firmly. “If it was on account of love,
+I’d interfere; if it was on account of money, I’d talk you out of it: but there
+are cases where one must not interfere. I wouldn’t help, of course; but I also
+wouldn’t seize you and interfere with you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment the quick-limbed housekeeper Zociya whirled through the corridor
+with an outcry:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ladies, get dressed! The doctor has arrived ... Ladies, get dressed! ...
+Lively, ladies! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, go on, Tamara, go on,” said Jennka tenderly, getting up. “I’ll run into
+my room for just a minute—I haven’t changed my dress yet, although, to tell the
+truth, this also is all one. When they’ll be calling out for me, and I don’t
+come in time, call out, run in after me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, going out of Tamara’s room, she embraced her by the shoulder, as though by
+chance, and stroked it tenderly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Doctor Klimenko—the official city doctor—was preparing in the parlor everything
+indispensable for an inspection—vaseline, a solution of sublimate, and other
+things—and was placing them on a separate little table. Here also were arranged
+for him the white blanks of the girls, replacing their passports, as well as a
+general alphabetical list. The girls, dressed only in their chemises,
+stockings, and slippers, were standing and sitting at a distance. Nearer the
+table was standing the proprietress herself—Anna Markovna—while a little behind
+her were Emma Edwardovna and Zociya.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor—aged, disheartened, slovenly; a man indifferent to everything—put
+the pince-nez crookedly upon his nose, looked at the list, and called out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alexandra Budzinskaya! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The frowning, little, pug-nosed Nina stepped out. Preserving on her face an
+angry expression, and breathing heavily from shame, from the consciousness of
+her own awkwardness, and from the exertions, she clumsily climbed up on the
+table. The doctor, squinting through his pince-nez and dropping it every
+minute, carried out the inspection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go ahead! ... You’re sound.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And on the reverse side of the blank he marked off: “Twenty-eighth of August.
+Sound” and put down a curly-cue. And when he had not even finished writing
+called out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Voshchenkova, Irene! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now it was the turn of Liubka. She, during the past month and a half of
+comparative freedom, had had time to grow unaccustomed to the inspections of
+every week; and when the doctor turned up the chemise over her breast, she
+suddenly turned as red as only very bashful women can—even with her back and
+breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After her was the turn of Zoe; then of Little White Manka; after that of Tamara
+and Niurka—the last, the doctor found, had gonorrhoea, and ordered her to be
+sent off to a hospital.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor carried out the inspection with amazing rapidity. It was now nearly
+twenty years that every week, on Saturdays, he had to inspect in such a manner
+several hundred girls; and he had worked out that habitual technical dexterity
+and rapidity, a calm carelessness of movements, which is; frequently to be
+found in circus artists, in card sharpers, in furniture movers and packers, and
+in other professionals. And he carried out his manipulations with the same
+calmness with which a drover or a veterinary inspects several hundred head of
+cattle in a day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Did he ever think that before him were living people; or that he appeared as
+the last and most important link of that fearful chain which is called
+legalized prostitution?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No! And even if he did experience this, then it must have been in the very
+beginning of his career. Now before him were only naked abdomens, naked backs,
+and opened mouths. Not one exemplar of all this faceless herd of every Saturday
+would he have recognized subsequently on the street. The main thing was the
+necessity of finishing as soon as possible the inspection in one establishment,
+in order to pass on to another, to a third, a ninth, a twentieth...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Susannah Raitzina!” the doctor finally called out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No one walked up to the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the inmates of the house began to exchange glances and to whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jennka ... Where’s Jennka? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she was not among the girls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Tamara, just released by the doctor, moved a little forward and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She isn’t here. She hasn’t had a chance to get herself ready yet. Excuse me,
+Mr. Doctor, I’ll go right away and call her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She ran into the corridor and did not return for a long time. After her went,
+at first Emma Edwardovna, then Zociya, several girls, and even Anna Markovna
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“PFUI! What indecency is this! ...” the majestic Emma Edwardovna was saying in
+the corridor, making an indignant face. “And eternally this Jennka! ... Always
+this Jennka! ... It seems my patience has already burst ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Jennka was nowhere—neither in her room, nor in Tamara’s. They looked into
+other chambers, in all the out-of-the-way corners ... But she did not prove to
+be even there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We must look in the water-closet ... Perhaps she’s there?” surmised Zoe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this institution was locked from the inside with a bolt. Emma Edwardovna
+knocked on the door with her fist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jennie, do come out at last! What foolishness is this?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, raising her voice, she cried out impatiently and threateningly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you hear, you swine? ... Come out this minute—the doctor’s waiting!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was no answer of any sort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All exchanged glances with fear in their eyes, with one and the same thought in
+mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Emma Edwardovna shook the door by the brass knob, but the door did not yield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go after Simeon!” Anna Markovna directed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simeon was called ... He came, sleepy and morose, as was his wont. By the
+distracted faces of the girls and the housekeepers, he already saw that some
+misunderstanding or other had occurred, in which his professional cruelty and
+strength were required. When they explained to him what the matter was, he
+silently took the door-knob with both hands, braced himself against the wall,
+and gave a yank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The knob remained in his hands; and he himself, staggering backward, almost
+fell to the floor on his back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A-a, hell!” he began to growl in a stifled voice. “Give me a table knife.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the crack of the door he felt the inner bolt with the table knife;
+whittled away with the blade the edges of the crack, and widened it so that he
+could at last push the end of the knife through it, and began gradually to
+scrape back the bolt. Only the grating of metal against metal could be heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally Simeon threw the door wide open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jennka was hanging in the middle of the water-closet on a tape from her corset,
+fastened to the lamphook. Her body, already motionless after an unprolonged
+agony, was slowly swinging in the air, and describing scarcely perceptible
+turns to the right and left around its vertical axis. Her face was
+bluishly-purple, and the tip of the tongue was thrust out between clenched and
+bared teeth. The lamp which had been taken off was also here, sprawling on the
+floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some one began to squeal hysterically, and all the girls, like a stampeded
+herd, crowding and jostling each other in the narrow corridor, vociferating and
+choking with hysterical sobbings, started in to run.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor came upon hearing the outcries... Came, precisely, and not ran.
+Seeing what the matter was, he did not become amazed or excited; during his
+practice as an official city doctor, he had had his fill of seeing such things,
+so that he had already grown benumbed and hardened to human sufferings, wounds
+and death. He ordered Simeon to lift the corpse of Jennka a bit upward, and
+himself getting up on the seat, cut through the tape. Proforma, he ordered
+Jennka’s body to be borne away into the room that had been hers, and tried with
+the help of the same Simeon to produce artificial respiration; but after five
+minutes gave it up as a bad job, fixed the pince-nez, which had become crooked,
+on his nose, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Call the police in to make a protocol.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Kerbesh came, again whispered for a long time with the proprietress in
+her little bit of a cabinet, and again crunched in his pocket a new
+hundred-rouble bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The protocol was made in five minutes; and Jennka, just as half-naked as she
+had hung herself, was carted away in a hired wagon into an anatomical theatre,
+wrapped up in and covered with two straw mats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Emma Edwardovna was the first to find the note that Jennka had left on her
+night table. On a sheet, torn out of the income-expense book, compulsory for
+every prostitute, in pencil, in a naive, rounded, childish handwriting—by
+which, however, it could be judged that the hands of the suicide had not
+trembled during the last minutes—was written:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I beg that no one be blamed for my death. I am dying because I have become
+infected, and also because all people are scoundrels and it is very disgusting
+to live. How to divide my things—Tamara knows about that. I told her in
+detail.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Emma Edwardovna turned around upon Tamara, who was right on the spot among a
+number of other girls, and with eyes filled with a cold, green hatred, hissed
+out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then you knew, you low-down thing, what she was preparing to do? ... You knew,
+you vermin? ... You knew and didn’t tell? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She already had swung back, in order, as was her wont, to hit Tamara cruelly
+and calculatingly; but suddenly stopped just as she was, with gaping mouth and
+with eyes wide open. It was just as though she was seeing, for the first time,
+Tamara, who was looking at her with a firm, wrathful, unbearable gaze, and
+slowly, slowly was raising from below, and at last brought up to the level of
+the housekeeper’s face, a small object, glistening with white metal.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0306"></a> CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+<p>
+That very same day, at evening, a very important event took place in the house
+of Anna Markovna: the whole institution—with land and house, with live and
+inanimate stock—passed into the hands of Emma Edwardovna.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had been speaking of this, on and off, for a long time in the
+establishment; but when the rumours so unexpectedly, immediately right after
+the death of Jennka, turned into realities, the misses could not for a long
+time come to themselves for amazement and fear. They knew well, having
+experienced the sway of the German upon themselves, her cruel, implacable
+pedantism; her greed, arrogance, and, finally, her perverted, exacting,
+repulsive love, now for one, now for another favorite. Besides that, it was no
+mystery to any one, that out of the fifteen thousand which Emma Edwardovna had
+to pay the former proprietress for the firm and for the property, one third
+belonged to Kerbesh, who had, for a long time already, been carrying on
+half-friendly, half-business relations with the fat housekeeper. From the union
+of two such people, shameless, pitiless, and covetous, the girls could expect
+all sorts of disasters for themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anna Markovna had to let the house go so cheaply not simply because Kerbesh,
+even if he had not known about certain shady little transactions to her credit,
+could still at any time he liked trip her up and eat her up without leaving
+anything. Of pretexts and cavils for this even a hundred could be found every
+day; and certain ones of them not merely threatened the shutting down of the
+house alone, but, if you like, even with the court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, dissembling, oh-ing and sighing, bewailing her poverty, her maladies and
+orphanhood, Anna Markovna at soul was glad of even such a settlement. And then
+it must be said: she was already for a long time feeling the approach of senile
+infirmity, together with all sorts of ailments and the thirst for complete,
+benevolent rest, undisturbed by anything. All, of which she had not even dared
+dream in her early youth, when she herself had yet been a prostitute of the
+rank and file—all had now come to her of itself, one in addition to the other:
+peaceful old age, a house—a brimming cup on one of the quiet, cozy streets,
+almost in the centre of the city,—the adored daughter Birdie, who—if not to-day
+then tomorrow—must marry a respected man, an engineer, a house-owner, and
+member of the city-council; provided for as she was with a respectable dowry
+and magnificent valuables ... Now it was possible peacefully, without hurrying,
+with gusto, to dine and sup on sweet things, for which Anna Markovna had always
+nourished a great weakness; to drink after dinner good, home-made, strong
+cherry-brandy; and of evenings to play a bit at “preference,” for kopeck
+stakes, with esteemed elderly ladies of her acquaintance, who, even although
+they never as much as let it appear that they knew the real trade of the little
+old woman, did in reality know it very well; and not only did not condemn her
+business but even bore themselves with respect toward those enormous
+percentages which she earned upon her capital. And these charming friends, the
+joy and consolation of an untroubled old age, were: one—the keeper of a loan
+office; another—the proprietress of a lively hotel near the railroad; the
+third—the owner of a jewelry shop, not large, but all the go and well known
+among the big thieves, &amp;c. And about them, in her turn, Anna Markovna knew
+and could tell several shady and not especially flattering anecdotes; but in
+their society it was not customary to talk of the sources of the family
+well-being—only cleverness, daring, success, and decent manners were esteemed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, even besides that, Anna Markovna, sufficiently limited in mind and not
+especially developed, had some sort of an amazing inner intuition, which during
+all her life permitted her instinctively but irreproachably to avoid
+unpleasantnesses, and to find prudent paths in time. And so now, after the
+sudden death of Roly-Poly, and the suicide of Jennka which followed the next
+day, she, with her unconsciously—penetrating soul foreguessed that fate—which
+had been favouring her house of ill-fame, sending her good fortunes, turning
+away all under-water shoals—was now getting ready to turn its back upon her.
+And she was the first to retreat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They say, that not long before a fire in a house, or before the wreck of a
+ship, the wise, nervous rats in droves make their way into another place. And
+Anna Markovna was directed by the same rat-like, animal, prophetic intuition.
+And she was right: immediately right after the death of Jennka some fearful
+curse seemed to hang over the house, formerly Anna Markovna Shaibes’, but now
+Emma Edwardovna Titzner’s: deaths, misfortunes, scandals just simply descended
+upon it ceaselessly, becoming constantly more frequent, on the manner of bloody
+events in Shakespeare’s tragedies; as, however, was the case at all the
+remaining houses of the Yamas as well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And one of the first to die, a week after the liquidation of the business, was
+Anna Markovna herself. However, this frequently happens with people put out of
+their accustomed rut of thirty years: so die war heroes, who have gone into
+retirement—people of insuperable health and iron will; so quickly go off the
+stage former stock brokers, who have happily gone away to rest, but have been
+deprived of the burning allurement of risk and hazard; so, too, age rapidly,
+droop, and grow decrepit, the great artists who leave the stage ... Her death
+was the death of the just. Once at a game of cards she felt herself unwell;
+begged them to wait a while for her; said that she would lie down for just a
+minute; lay down in the bedroom on a bed; sighed deeply, and passed on into
+another world—with a calm face, with a peaceful, senile smile upon her lips.
+Isaiah Savvich—her faithful comrade on the path of life, a trifle downtrodden,
+who had always played a secondary, subordinate role—survived her only a month.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Birdie was left sole heiress. She very successfully turned the cozy house into
+money, as well as the land somewheres at the edge of the town; married, as it
+had been presupposed, very happily; and up to this time is convinced that her
+father carried on a great commercial business in the export of wheat through
+Odessa and Novorossiysk into Asia Minor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the evening of the day when Jennie’s corpse had been carried away to an
+anatomical theatre; at an hour when not even a chance guest appears on Yamskaya
+Street, all the girls, at the insistence of Emma Edwardovna, assembled in the
+drawing room. Not one of them dared murmur against the fact that on this
+distressing day, when they had not yet recovered from the impression of
+Jennka’s horrible death, they would be compelled to dress up, as usual, in
+wildly festive finery, and to go into the brightly illuminated drawing room, in
+order to dance, sing, and to entice lecherous men with their denuded bodies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at last into the drawing room walked Emma Edwardovna herself. She was more
+majestic than she had ever been—clad in a black silk gown, from which, just
+like battlements, her enormous breasts jutted out, upon which descended two fat
+chins; in black silk mittens; with an enormous gold chain wound thrice around
+her neck, and terminating in a ponderous medallion hanging upon the very
+abdomen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ladies! ...” she began impressively, “I must ... Stand up!” she suddenly
+called out commandingly. “When I speak, you must hear me out standing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all exchanged glances with perplexity: such an order was a novelty in the
+establishment. However, the girls got up one after another, irresolutely, with
+eyes and mouths gasping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sie sollen ... you must from this day show me that respect which you are bound
+to show to your mistress,” importantly and weightily began Emma Edwardovna.
+“Beginning from to-day, the establishment in a legal manner has passed from our
+good and respected Anna Markovna to me, Emma Edwardovna Titzner. I hope that we
+will not quarrel, and that you will behave yourselves like sensible, obedient,
+and well-brought-up girls. I will be to you like in place of your own mother,
+but only remember, that I will not stand for laziness, or drunkenness, or
+notions of any sort; or any kind of disorder. The kind Madam Shaibes, it must
+be said, held you in too loose reins. O—o, I will be far more strict.
+Discipline uber alles ... before everything. It’s a great pity, that the
+Russian people are lazy, dirty and stoopid, do not understand this rule; but
+don’t you trouble yourself, I will teach you this for your own good. I say ‘for
+your own good,’ because my main thought is to kill the competition of Treppel.
+I want that my client should be a man of substance, and not some charlatan and
+ragamuffin, some kind of student, now, or ham actor. I want that my ladies
+should be the most beautiful, best brought-up, the healthiest and gayest in the
+whole city. I won’t spare any money in order to set up swell furnishings; and
+you will have rooms with silk furniture and with genuine, beautiful rugs. Your
+guests will no longer be demanding beer, but only genteel Bordeaux and Burgundy
+wines and champagne. Remember, that a rich, substantial, elderly man never
+likes your common, ordinary, coarse love. He requires Cayenne pepper; he
+requires not a trade, but an art, and you will soon acquire this. At Treppel’s
+they take three roubles for a visit and ten roubles for a night ... I will
+establish it so, that you will receive five roubles for a visit and twenty-five
+for a night. They will present you with gold and diamonds. I will contrive it
+so, that you won’t have to pass on into establishments of a lower sort, und so
+weiter ... right down to the soldiers’ filthy den. No! Deposits will be put
+away and saved with me for each one of you every month; and will be put away in
+your name in a banker’s office, where there will increase interest upon them,
+and interest upon interest. And then, if a girl feels herself tired, or wants
+to marry a respectable man, there will always be at her disposal not a large,
+but a sure capital. So is it done in the best establishments in Riga, and
+everywhere abroad. Let no one say about me, that Emma Edwardovna is a spider, a
+vixen, a cupping glass. But for disobedience, for laziness, for notions, for
+lovers on the side, I will punish cruelly and, like nasty weeds, will throw
+out—on the street, or still worse. Now I have said all that I had to. Nina,
+come near me. And all the rest of you come up in turn.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ninka irresolutely walked right up to Emma Edwardovna—and even staggered back
+in amazement: Emma Edwardovna was extending her right hand to her, with the
+fingers lowered downward, and slowly nearing it to Ninka’s lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Kiss it! ...” impressively and firmly pronounced Emma Edwardovna, narrowing
+her eyes and with head thrown back, in the magnificent pose of a princess
+ascending her throne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ninka was so bewildered that her right arm gave a jerk in order to make the
+sign of the cross; but she corrected herself, loudly smacked the extended hand,
+and stepped aside. Following her Zoe, Henrietta, Vanda and others stepped up
+also. Tamara alone continued to stand near the wall with her back to the
+mirror; that mirror into which Jennka so loved to gaze, in gone-by times,
+admiring herself as she walked back and forth through the drawing room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Emma Edwardovna let the imperious, obstinate gaze of a boa-constrictor rest
+upon her; but the hypnosis did not work. Tamara bore this gaze without turning
+away, without flinching; but without any expression on her face. Then the new
+proprietress put down her hand, produced on her face something resembling a
+smile, and said hoarsely:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And with you, Tamara, I must have a little talk separately, eye to eye. Let’s
+go!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I hear you, Emma Edwardovna!” calmly answered Tamara.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Emma Edwardovna came to the little bit of a cabinet, where formerly Anna
+Markovna loved to drink coffee with clotted cream; sat down on the divan and
+pointed out a place opposite her to Tamara. For some time the women kept
+silent; searchingly, mistrustfully eyeing each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You acted rightly, Tamara,” said Emma Edwardovna finally. “You did wisely in
+not stepping up, on the manner of those sheep, to kiss my hand. But just the
+same, I would not have let you come to that. I wanted right there, in the
+presence of all, when you walked up to me, to press your hand and to offer you
+the place of first housekeeper—you understand?—my chief assistant—and on terms
+very advantageous to you...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thank you ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, wait a while, don’t interrupt me. I will have my say to the end, and then
+you will express your pros and cons. But will you explain to me, please, when
+yesterday you were aiming at me out of a revolver, what did you want? Can it
+possibly be, to kill me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“On the contrary, Emma Edwardovna,” retorted Tamara respectfully, “on the
+contrary; it seemed to me that you wanted to strike me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“PJUI! What do you mean, Tamarochka! ... Have you paid no attention to the fact
+that during all the time of our acquaintance I never permitted myself, not only
+to hit you, but even to address you with a rude word? ... What do you mean,
+what do you mean? ... I don’t confuse you with this poor Russian trash ...
+Glory be to God, I am an experienced person and one who knows people well. I
+can very well see that you are a genuinely cultured young lady; far more
+educated, for example, than I myself. You are refined, elegant, smart. I am
+convinced of the fact that you even know music not at all badly. Finally, if I
+were to confess, I was a little ... how shall I put it to you? ... I always was
+a little in love with you. And now you wanted to shoot me! Me, a person who
+could be a very good friend to you! Well, what will you say to that?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well ... nothing at all, Emma Edwardovna,” retorted Tamara in the meekest and
+most plausible tone. “Everything was very simple. Even before that I found the
+revolver under Jennka’s pillow and brought it, in order to give it over to you.
+I did not want to interfere, when you were reading the letter; but then you
+turned around to me—I stretched the revolver out to you and wanted to say:
+‘See, Emma Edwardovna, what I found’—for, don’t you see, it surprised me
+awfully how the late Jennie, having a revolver at her disposal, preferred such
+a horrible death as hanging? And that’s all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bushy, frightful eyebrows of Emma Edwardovna rose upward; the eyes widened
+joyously; and a real, uncounterfeited smile spread over her cheeks of a
+behemoth. She quickly extended both hands to Tamara.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And is this all? O, MEIN KIND? And I thought ... God knows what I imagined!
+Give me your hands, Tamara, your little charming white hands, and allow me to
+press them auf mein Herz, upon my heart, and to kiss you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The kiss was so long, that Tamara with great difficulty and with aversion
+barely freed herself from the embraces of Emma Edwardovna.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, and now to business. And so, here are my terms: you will be housekeeper,
+I give you fifteen percent, out of the clear gain. Mind you, Tamara, fifteen
+percent. And, besides that, a small salary—thirty, forty, well, if you like,
+fifty roubles a month. Splendid terms—isn’t that the truth? I am deeply
+convinced, that none other than just you will help me to raise the house to a
+real height, and make it the swellest not only in our city, but in all the
+south of Russia as well. You have taste, and an understanding of things! ...
+Besides that, you will always be able to entertain, and to stir up the most
+exacting, the most unyielding guests. In rare instances, when a very rich and
+distinguished gentleman—in Russian they call it one “sun-fish,” while with us,
+ein Freier,[26]—when he becomes infatuated with you—for you are so handsome,
+Tamarochka,” (the proprietress looked at her with misty, humid eyes), “then I
+do not at all forbid you to pass the time with him gaily; only to bear down
+always upon the fact that you have no right, owing to your duty, your position,
+Und so weiter, und so weiter ... aber sagen sie bitte, do you easily make
+yourself understood in German?”
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[26] In English, a “toff”; in American, a “swell.”—trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Die Deutsche Sprache beherrsche ich in geringerem Grade als die franzosische;
+indes kann ich stets in einer Salon-Plauderei mitmachen.”[27]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[27] “My mastery of the German language is a trifle worse than that of the
+French, but I can always keep up my end in parlor small talk.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“O, wunderbar! sie haben eine entzuckende Rigaer Aussprache, die beste alter
+deutschen Aussprachen. Und also—fahren wir in unserer Sprache fort. Sie klingt
+viel susser meinem Ohr, die Muttersprache. Schon?”[28]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[28] O, splendid! ... You have a bewitching Riga enunciation, the most correct
+of all the German ones. And so, let us continue in my tongue. That is far
+sweeter to my ear—my mother tongue. All right?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“SCHON.”[29]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[29] “All right.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Zuletzt werden Sie nachgeben, dem Anschein nach ungern, unwillkurlich, van der
+Laune des Augenblicks hingerissen—und, was die Hauptsache ist, lautlos,
+heimlich vor mir. Sie verstehen? Dafur zahlen Narren ein schweres Geld.
+Ubrigens brauche ich Sie wohl nicht zu lernen.”[30]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[30] “In the very end you will give in, as though unwillingly, as though
+against your will, as though from infatuation, a momentary caprice, and—which
+is the main thing—as though on the sly from me. You understand? For this the
+fools pay enormous money. However, it seems I will not have to teach you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ja, gnadige Frau. Sie sprechen gar kluge Dinge. Doch das ist schon keine
+Plauderei mehr, sondern eine ernste unterhaltung. Yes, my dear madam. You say
+very wise things. But this is no longer small talk; it is, rather, serious
+conversation ... And for that reason it is more convenient for me, if you will
+revert to the Russian language ... I am ready to obey you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Furthermore! ... I was just now talking about a lover. I dare not forbid you
+this pleasure, but let us be prudent: let him not appear here, or appear as
+rarely as possible. I will give you days for going out, when you will be
+perfectly free. But it’s best if you would get along without him entirely. It
+will serve your benefit too. This is only a drag and a yoke. I am telling you
+this from my own personal experience. Wait a while; after three or four years
+we will expand this business so, that you will have substantial money already,
+and then I vill take you into the business as a partner with full rights. After
+ten years you will still be young and handsome, and then take and buy men as
+much as you want to. By that time romantic follies will go out of your head
+entirely, and it will not be you who will be chosen already, but you who will
+be choosing with sense and with feeling, as a connoisseur picks out precious
+stones. Do you agree with me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara cast down her eyes, and smiled just the least trifle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You speak golden truths, Emma Edwardovna. I will drop mine, but not at once.
+For that I will need some two weeks. I will try not to have him appear here. I
+accept your proposition.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that’s splendid!” said Emma Edwardovna, get ting up. “Now let us conclude
+our agreement with one good, sweet kiss.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she again embraced and took to kissing Tamara hard; who, with her downcast
+eyes and naive, tender face, seemed now altogether a little girl. But, having
+freed herself, finally, from the proprietress, she asked in Russian:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You see, Emma Edwardovna, that I agree in everything with you, but for that I
+beg you to fulfill one request of mine. It will not cost you anything. Namely,
+I hope that you will allow me and the other girls to escort the late Jennie to
+the cemetery.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Emma Edwardovna made a wry face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, if you want to, my darling Tamara, I have nothing against your whim. Only
+what for? This will not help the dead person and will not make her alive. Only
+sentimentalism alone will come out of it ... But very well! Only, however, you
+know yourself that in accordance with your law suicides are not buried, or—I
+don’t know with certainty—it seems they throw them into some dirty hole beyond
+the cemetery.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, do allow me to do as I want to myself. Let it be my whim, but concede it
+to me, my darling, dear, bewitching Emma Edwardovna! But then, I promise you
+that this will be my last whim. After this I will be like a wise and obedient
+soldier at the disposal of a talented general.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“IS’ GUT!” Emma Edwardovna gave in with a sigh. “I can not deny you in
+anything, my child. Let me press your hand. Let us toil and labour together for
+the common good.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, having opened the door, she called out across the drawing room into the
+entrance-hall: “Simeon!” And when Simeon appeared in the room, she ordered him
+weightily and triumphantly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bring us a bottle of champagne here, but the real thing—Rederer demi sec, and
+as cool as possible. Step lively!” she ordered the porter, who was gaping at
+her with popping eyes. “We will drink with you, Tamara, to the new business, to
+our brilliant and beautiful future.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They say that dead people bring luck. If there is any foundation at all in this
+superstition, then on this Saturday it could not have told plainer: the influx
+of visitors was out of the ordinary, even for a Saturday night. True, the
+girls, passing through the corridor or past the room that had been Jennka’s
+increased their steps; timorously glanced at it sidelong, out of the corner of
+the eye; while others even crossed themselves. But late in the night the fear
+of death somehow subsided, grew bearable. All the rooms were occupied, while in
+the drawing room a new violinist was trilling without cease—a free-and-easy,
+clean-shaven young man, whom the pianist with the cataract had searched out
+somewhere and brought with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The appointment of Tamara as housekeeper was received with cold perplexity,
+with taciturn dryness. But, having bided her time, Tamara managed to whisper to
+Little White Manka:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Listen, Manya! You tell them all that they shouldn’t pay any attention to the
+fact that I’ve been chosen housekeeper. It’s got to be so. But let them do as
+they wish, only don’t let them trip me up. I am as before—their friend and
+intercessor ... And further on we’ll see.”
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0307"></a> CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+<p>
+On the next day, on Sunday, Tamara had a multitude of cares. She had become
+possessed by a firm and undeviating thought to bury her friend despite all
+circumstances, in the way that nearest friends are buried—in a Christian
+manner, with all the sad solemnity of the burial of secular persons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She belonged to the number of those strange persons who underneath an external
+indolent calmness, careless taciturnity, egotistical withdrawal into one’s
+self, conceal within them unusual energy; always as though slumbering with half
+an eye, guarding itself from unnecessary expenditure; but ready in one moment
+to become animated and to rush forward without reckoning the obstacles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At twelve o’clock she descended in a cab into the old town; rode through it
+into a little narrow street giving out upon a square where fairs were held; and
+stopped near a rather dirty tea-room, having ordered the cabby to wait. In the
+room she made inquiries of a boy, red-haired, with a badger hair-cut and the
+parting slicked down with butter, if Senka the Depot had not come here? The
+serving lad, who, judging by his refined and gallant readiness, had already
+known Tamara for a long time, answered that “Nohow, ma’am; they—Semen
+Ignatich—had not been in yet, and probably would not be here soon seein’ as how
+yesterday they had the pleasure of going on a spree at the Transvaal, and had
+played at billiards until six in the morning; and that now they, in all
+probabilities, are at home, in the Half Way House rooms, and if the young lady
+will give the word, then it’s possible to hop over to them this here minute.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara asked for paper and pencil, and wrote a few words right on the spot.
+Then she gave the note to the waiter, together with a half-rouble piece for a
+tip, and rode away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following visit was to the artiste Rovinskaya, living, as Tamara had known
+even before, in the city’s most aristocratic hotel—Europe—where she occupied
+several rooms in a consecutive suite. To obtain an interview with the singer
+was not very easy: the doorman below said that it looked as if Ellena
+Victorovna was not at home; while her own personal maid, who came out in answer
+to Tamara’s knocking, declared that madam had a headache, and that she was not
+receiving any one. Again Tamara was compelled to write on a piece of paper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I come to you from her who once, in a house which is not spoken of loudly,
+cried, standing before you on her knees, after you had sung the ballad of
+Dargomyzhsky. Your kind treatment of her was so splendid. Do you remember? Do
+not fear—she has no need of any one’s help now: yesterday she died. But you can
+do one very important deed in her memory, which will be almost no trouble to
+you at all. While I—am that very person who permitted herself to say a few
+bitter truths to the baroness T—, who was then with you; for which truths I am
+remorseful and apologize even now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hand this over!” she ordered the chambermaid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She returned after two minutes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The madam requests you. They apologize very much that they will receive you
+not fully dressed.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She escorted Tamara, opened a door before her and quietly shut it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The great artiste was lying upon an enormous ottoman, covered with a beautiful
+Tekin rug and a multitude of little silk pillows, and soft cylindrical bolsters
+of tapestry. Her feet were wrapped up in silvery, soft fur. Her fingers, as
+usual, were adorned by a multiplicity of rings with emeralds, attracting the
+eyes by their deep and tender green.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The artiste was having one of her evil, black days to-day. Yesterday morning
+some misunderstandings with the management had arisen; while in the evening the
+public had received her not as triumphantly as she would have desired, or,
+perhaps, this had simply appeared so to her; while to-day in the newspaper the
+fool of a reviewer, who understood just as much of art as a cow does of
+astronomy, had praised up her rival, Titanova, in a big article. And so Ellena
+Victorovna had persuaded herself that her head was aching; that there was a
+nervous tic in her temples; and that her heart, time and again, seemed suddenly
+to fall through somewheres.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you do, my dear!” she said, a trifle nasally, in a weak, wan voice,
+with pauses, as heroines on the stage speak when dying from love and from
+consumption. “Sit down here ... I am glad to see you ... Only don’t be angry—I
+am almost dying from migraine, and from my miserable heart. Pardon my speaking
+with difficulty. I think I sang too much and tired my voice ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rovinskaya, of course, had recalled both the mad escapade of that evening; and
+the striking, unforgettable face of Tamara; but now, in a bad mood, in the
+wearisome, prosaic light of an autumn day, this adventure appeared to her as
+unnecessary bravado; something artificial, imagined, and poignantly shameful.
+But she was equally sincere on that strange, night-marish evening when she,
+through the might of talent, had prostrated the proud Jennka at her feet, as
+well as now, when she recalled it with fatigue, indolence, and artistic
+disdain. She, as well as many distinguished artists, was always playing a role;
+was always not her own self, and always regarded her words, movements, actions,
+as though looking at herself from a distance with the eyes and feelings of the
+spectators.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She languidly raised from the pillow her narrow, slender, beautiful hand, and
+applied it to her forehead; and the mysterious, deep emeralds stirred as though
+alive and began to flash with a warm, deep sparkle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I just read in your note that this poor ... pardon me, her name has vanished
+out of my head...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jennie.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, yes, thank you! I recall it now. She died? But from what?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She hanged herself ... yesterday morning, during the doctor’s inspection...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eyes of the artiste, so listless, seemingly faded, suddenly opened, and, as
+through a miracle, grew animated and became shining and green, just like her
+emeralds; and in them were reflected curiosity, fear and aversion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my God! Such a dear, so original, handsome, so fiery ... Oh, the poor,
+poor soul! ... And the reason for this was? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know ... the disease. She told you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, yes ... I remember, I remember ... But to hang one’s self! ... What
+horror! ... Why, I advised her to treat herself then. Medicine works miracles
+now. I myself know several people who absolutely ... well, absolutely cured
+themselves. Everybody in society knows this and receives them ... Ah, the poor
+little thing, the poor little thing! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so I’ve come to you, Ellena Victorovna. I wouldn’t have dared to disturb
+you, but I seem to be in a forest, and have no one to turn to. You were so kind
+then, so touchingly attentive, so tender to us ... I need only your advice and,
+perhaps, a little of your influence, your protection...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, please, my dear! ... All I can do, I will ... Oh, my poor head! And then
+this horrible news. Tell me, in what way can I be of assistance to you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To confess, I don’t know even myself yet,” answered Tamara. “You see, they
+carried her away to an anatomical theatre ... But until they had made the
+protocol, until they made the journey—then the time for receiving had gone by
+also—in general I think that they have not had a chance to dissect her yet ...
+I’d like, if it’s only possible, that she should not be touched. To-day is
+Sunday; perhaps they’ll postpone it until to-morrow, and in the meanwhile
+something may be done for her...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t tell you, dear ... Wait! ... Haven’t I some friend among the
+professors, in the medical world? ... I will look later in my memo-books.
+Perhaps we will succeed in doing something.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Besides that,” continued Tamara, “I want to bury her ... At my expense ... I
+was attached to her with all my heart during her life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will help you with pleasure in this, materially...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, no! ... A thousand thanks! ... I’ll do everything myself. I would not
+hesitate to have recourse to your kind heart, but this ... —you will understand
+me— ... this is something in the nature of a vow, that a person gives to one’s
+self and to the memory of a friend. The main difficulty is in how we may manage
+to bury her with Christian rites. She was, it seems, an unbeliever, or believed
+altogether poorly. And it’s only by chance that I, also, will cross my
+forehead. But I don’t want them to bury her just like a dog, somewhere beyond
+the enclosure of the cemetery; in silence, without words, without singing ... I
+don’t know, will they permit burying her properly—with choristers, with
+priests? For that reason I’m asking you to assist me with your advice. Or,
+perhaps, you will direct me somewhere? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the artiste had little by little become interested and was already
+beginning to forget about her fatigue, and migraine, and the consumptive
+heroine dying in the fourth act. She was already picturing the role of an
+intercessor, the beautiful figure of genius merciful to a fallen woman. This
+was original, extravagant, and at the same time so theatrically touching!
+Rovinskaya, like many of her confreres, did not let one day pass by—and, if it
+were possible, she would not have let pass even one hour—without standing out
+from the crowd, without compelling people to talk about her: to-day she would
+participate in a pseudo-patriotic manifestation, while to-morrow she would read
+from a platform, for the benefit of revolutionaries exiled to Siberia, inciting
+verses, full of fire and vengeance. She loved to sell flowers at carnivals, in
+riding academies; and to sell champagne at large balls. She would think up her
+little bon mots beforehand, which on the morrow would be caught up by the whole
+town. She desired that everywhere and always the crowd should look only at her,
+repeat her name, love her Egyptian, green eyes, her rapacious and sensuous
+mouth; her emeralds on the slender and nervous hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t grasp it all properly at once,” said she after a silence. “But if a
+person wants anything hard, he will attain it, and I want to fulfill your wish
+with all my soul. Stay, stay! ... I think a glorious thought is coming into my
+head ... For then, on that evening, if I mistake not, there was with us, beside
+the baroness and me...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know them ... One of them walked out of the cabinet later than all of
+you. He kissed Jennie’s hand and said, that if she should ever need him, he was
+always at her service; and gave her his card, but asked her not to show it to
+any strangers. But later all this passed off somehow and was forgotten. In some
+way I never found the time to ask Jennie who this man was; while yesterday I
+searched for the card but couldn’t find it...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Allow me, allow me! ... I have recalled it!” the artiste suddenly became
+animated. “Aha!” exclaimed she, rapidly getting off the ottoman. “It was
+Ryazanov... Yes, yes, yes... The advocate Ernst Andreievich Ryazanov. We will
+arrange everything right away. That’s a splendid thought!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned to the little table upon which the telephone apparatus was standing,
+and rang:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Central—18-35 please ... Thank you ... Hello! ... Ask Ernst Andreievich to the
+telephone ... The artiste Rovinskaya ... Thank you ... Hello! ... Is this you,
+Ernst Andreievich? Very well, very well, but now it isn’t a matter of little
+hands. Are you free? ... Drop the nonsense! ... The matter is serious. Couldn’t
+you come up to me for a quarter of an hour? ...No, no ... Yes ... Only as a
+kind and a clever man. You slander yourself ... Well, that’s splendid, really
+... Well, I am not especially well-dressed, but I have a justification—a
+fearful headache. No, a lady, a girl ... You will see for yourself, come as
+soon as possible ... Thanks! Au revior! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He will come right away,” said Rovinskaya, hanging up the receiver. “He is a
+charming and awfully clever man. Everything is possible to him, even the almost
+impossible to man ... But in the meantime ... pardon me—your name?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara was abashed, but then smiled at herself:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, it isn’t worth your disturbing yourself, Ellena Victorovna! Mon nomme de
+guerre is Tamara but just so—Anastasia Nikolaevna. It’s all the same—call me
+even Tamara ... I am more used to it...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tamara! ... That is so beautiful! ... So now, Mile. Tamara, perhaps you will
+not refuse to breakfast with me? Perhaps Ryazanov will also do so with us...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have no time, forgive me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s a great pity! ... I hope, some other time ... But, perhaps you smoke,”
+and she moved toward her a gold case, adorned with an enormous letter E out of
+the same emeralds she adored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ryazanov came very soon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara, who had not examined him properly on that evening, was struck by his
+appearance. Tall of stature, almost of an athletic build, with a broad brow,
+like Beethoven’s, tangled with artistically negligent black, grizzled hair;
+with the large fleshy mouth of the passionate orator; with clear, expressive,
+clever, mocking eyes—he had such an appearance as catches one’s eyes among
+thousands—the appearance of a vanquisher of souls and a conqueror of hearts;
+deeply ambitious, not yet oversated with life; still fiery in love and never
+retreating before a beautiful indiscretion ... “If fate had not broken me up
+so,” reflected Tamara, watching his movements with enjoyment, “then here’s a
+man to whom I’d throw my life; jestingly, with delight, with a smile, as a
+plucked rose is thrown to the beloved...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ryazanov kissed Rovinskaya’s hand, then with unconstrained simplicity exchanged
+greetings with Tamara and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are acquainted even from that mad evening, when you dumbfounded all of us
+with your knowledge of the French language, and when you spoke. That which you
+said was, between us, paradoxical; but then, how it was said! ... To this day I
+remember the tone of your voice, so warm, expressive ... And so, Ellena
+Victorovna,” he turned to Rovinskaya again, sitting down on a small, low chair
+without a back, “in what can I be of use to you? I am at your disposal.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rovinskaya, with a languid air, again applied the tips of her fingers to her
+temples.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, really, I am so upset, my dear Ryazanov,” said she, intentionally
+extinguishing the sparkle of her magnificent eyes, “and then, my miserable head
+... May I trouble you to pass me the pyramidon what-not from that table ... Let
+Mile. Tamara tell you everything ... I can not, I am not able to ... This is so
+horrible! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara briefly, lucidly, narrated to Ryazanov all the sad history of Jennka’s
+death; recalled also about the card left with Jennie; and also how the deceased
+had reverently preserved this card; and—in passing—about his promise to help in
+case of need.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course, of course!” exclaimed Ryanzanov, when she had finished; and at once
+began pacing the room back and forth with big steps, ruffling and tossing back
+his picturesque hair through habit. “You are performing a magnificent, sincere,
+comradely action! That is good! ... That is very good! ... I am yours ... You
+say—a permit for the funeral ... Hm ... God grant me memory!...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rubbed his forehead with his palm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hm ... hm ... If I’m not mistaken—Monocanon, rule one hundred seventy ... one
+hundred seventy ... eight ... Pardon me, I think I remember it by heart ...
+Pardon me! ... Yes, so! ‘If a man slayeth himself, he shall not be chanted
+over, nor shall a mass be said for him, unless he were greatly astonied, that
+is, to wit, out of his mind’... Hm ... See St. Timothy Alexandrine ... And so,
+my dear miss, the first thing ... You say, that she was taken down from the
+noose by your doctor—i.e., the official city doctor ... His name? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Klimenko.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It seems I’ve met him somewheres ... All right ... Who is the district
+inspector in your precinct station?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Kerbesh.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Aha, I know ... Such a strong, virile fellow, with a red beard in a fan ...
+Yes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, that is he.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know him very well! There, now, is somebody that a sentence to hard labour
+is hankering after ... Some ten times he fell into my hands; and always, the
+skunk, gave me the slip somehow. Slippery, just like an eel-pout ... We will
+have to slip him a little present. Well, now! And then the anatomical theatre
+... When do you want to bury her?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really, I don’t know ... I would like to do it as soon as possible ... if
+possible, to-day.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hm ... To-day ... I don’t vouch for it—we will hardly manage it ... But here
+is my memorandum book. Well, take even this page, where are my friends under
+the letter T—just write the very same way: Tamara, and your address. In two
+hours I will give you an answer. Does that suit you? But I repeat again, that
+probably you will have to postpone the burial till to-morrow ... Then—pardon my
+unceremoniousness—is money needed, perhaps?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, thank you!” refused Tamara. “I have money. Thanks for your interest! ...
+It’s time for me to be going. I thank you with all my heart, Ellen Victorovna!
+...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then expect it in two hours,” repeated Ryazanov, escorting her to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara did not at once ride away to the house. She turned into a little
+coffee-house on Catholicheskaya Street on the way. There Senka the Depot was
+waiting for her—a gay fellow with the appearance of a handsome Tzigan; not
+black—but blue-haired; black-eyed, with yellow whites; resolute and daring in
+his work; the pride of local thieves—a great celebrity in their world, the
+first leader of experience, and a constant, all-night gamester.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stretched out his hand to her, without getting up. But in the way in which
+he so carefully, with a certain force, seated her in her place could be seen a
+broad, good-natured endearment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you do, Tamarochka! Haven’t seen you in a long time—I grew weary ... Do
+you want coffee?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No! Business first ... To-morrow we bury Jennka ... She hanged herself...”
+“Yes, I read it in a newspaper,” carelessly drawled out Senka through his
+teeth. “What’s the odds? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Get fifty roubles for me at once.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tamarochka, my sweetheart—I haven’t a kopeck! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m telling you—get them!” ordered Tamara, imperiously, but without getting
+angry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my Lord! ... Yours, now, I didn’t touch, like I promised; but then, it’s
+Sunday ... The savings banks are closed...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let them! ... Hock the savings book! In general, it’s up to you!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why do you need this, my dearie?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Isn’t it all the same to you, you fool? ... For the funeral.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! Well, all right then!” sighed Senka. “Then I’d best bring it to you myself
+in the evening ... Right, Tamarochka? ... It’s so very hard for me to stand it
+without you! Oh, my dearie, how I’d kiss and kiss you; I wouldn’t let you close
+your eyes! ... Shan’t I come? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, no! ... You do as I ask you, Senechka ... Give in to me. But you mustn’t
+come—I’m housekeeper now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, what d’you know about that! ...” drawled out the astonished Senka and
+even whistled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. And don’t you come to me in the meantime. But afterwards, afterwards,
+sweetheart, whatever you desire ... There will be an end to everything soon!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, if you wouldn’t make me suffer so! Wind things up as soon as you can!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I will wind ’em up! Wait one little week more, dearie! Did you get the
+powders?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The powders are a trifle!” discontentedly answered Senka. “And it isn’t
+powders at all, but pills.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you’re sure when you say that they’ll dissolve at once in water?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sure, I saw it myself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But he won’t die? Listen, Senya: he won’t die? Is that right?...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing will happen to him ... He’ll only snooze for a while ... Oh, Tamara!”
+exclaimed he in a passionate whisper; and even suddenly stretched himself hard
+from an unbearable emotion, so that his joints cracked. “Finish it, for God’s
+sake, as soon as possible! ... Let’s do the trick and—bye-bye! Wherever you
+want to go to, sweet-heart! I am all at your will: if you want to, we start off
+for Odessa; if you want to—abroad. Finish it up as soon as possible! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Soon, soon...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You just wink at me, and I’m all ready ... with powders, with instruments,
+with passports ... And then—choo-choo! The machine is off! Tamarochka! My
+angel! ... My precious, my sparkler! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he, always restrained, having forgotten that he could be seen by strangers,
+already wanted to embrace and hug Tamara to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now, now!” ... rapidly and deftly, like a cat, Tamara jumped off the chair.
+“Afterwards ... afterwards, Senechka, afterwards, little dearie! ... I’ll be
+all yours—there won’t be any denial, nor forbiddance. I’ll myself make you
+weary of me ... Good-bye, my little silly!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with a quick movement of her hand having rumpled up his black curls, she
+hastily went out of the coffee-house.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0308"></a> CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+<p>
+On the next day, on Monday, toward ten o’clock in the morning, almost all the
+inmates of the house—formerly Madam Shaibes’, but now Emma Edwardovna
+Titzner’s—rode off in cabs to the centre of the city, to the anatomical
+theatre—all, except the far-sighted, much-experienced Henrietta; the cowardly
+and insensible Ninka; and the feeble-minded Pashka, who for two days now had
+not gotten up from her bed, kept silent, and to questions directed at her
+answered by a beatific, idiotical smile and with some sort of inarticulate
+animal lowing. If she were not given to eat, she would not even ask; but if
+food were brought, she would eat with greediness, right with her hands. She
+became so slovenly and forgetful, that it was necessary to remind her of
+certain necessary functions in order to avoid unpleasantness. Emma Edwardovna
+did not send out Pashka to her steady guests, who asked for Pashka every day.
+Even before, she had had such periods of a detriment of consciousness; however,
+they had not lasted long, and Emma Edwardovna in any case determined to tide it
+over: Pashka was a veritable treasure for the establishment, and its truly
+horrible victim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The anatomical theatre represented a long, one-storied, dark-gray building,
+with white frames around the windows and doors. There was in its very exterior
+something low, pressed down, receding into the ground, almost weird. The girls
+one after the other stopped near the gates and timidly passed through the yard
+into the chapel; nestled down at the other end of the yard, in a corner,
+painted over in the same dark gray colour, with white frame-work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door was locked. It was necessary to go after the watchman. Tamara with
+difficulty sought out a bald, ancient old man, grown over as though with bog
+moss by entangled gray bristles; with little rheumy eyes and an enormous,
+reddish, dark-blue granulous nose, on the manner of a cookie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He unlocked the enormous hanging lock, pushed away the bolt and opened the
+rusty, singing door. The cold, damp air together with the mixed smell of the
+dampness of stones, frankincense, and dead flesh breathed upon the girls. They
+fell back, huddling closely into a timorous flock. Tamara alone went after the
+watchman without wavering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was almost dark in the chapel. The autumn light penetrated scantily through
+the little, narrow prison-like window, barred with an iron grating. Two or
+three images without chasubles, dark and without visages, hung upon the walls.
+Several common board coffins were standing right on the floor, upon wooden
+carrying shafts. One in the middle was empty, and the taken-off lid was lying
+alongside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What sort is yours, now?” asked the watchman hoarsely and took some snuff. “Do
+you know her face or not?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, then, look! I’ll show them all to you. Maybe this one? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he took the lid off one of the coffins, not yet fastened down with nails. A
+wrinkled old woman, dressed any old way in her tatters, with a swollen blue
+face, was lying there. Her left eye was closed; while the right was staring and
+gazing immovably and frightfully, having already lost its sparkle and
+resembling mica that had lain for a long time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not this one, you say? Well, look ... Here’s more for you!” said the watchman;
+and one after the other, opening the lids, exhibited the decedents—all,
+probably, the poorest of the poor: picked up on the streets, intoxicated,
+crushed, maimed and mutilated, beginning to decompose. Certain ones had already
+begun to show on their hands and faces bluish-green spots, resembling
+mould—signs of putrefaction. One man, without a nose, with an upper hare-lip
+cloven in two, had worms, like little white dots, swarming upon his sore-eaten
+face. A woman who had died from hydropsy, reared like a whole mountain from her
+board couch, bulging out the lid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All of them had been hastily sewn up after autopsy, repaired, and washed by the
+moss-covered watchman and his mates. What affair was it of theirs if, at times,
+the brain got into the stomach; while the skull was stuffed with the liver and
+rudely joined with the help of sticking plaster to the head? The watchmen had
+grown used to everything during their night-marish, unlikely, drunken life;
+and, by the bye, almost never did their voiceless clients prove to have either
+relatives or acquaintances...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A heavy odour of carrion—thick, cloying, and so viscid that to Tamara it seemed
+as though it was covering all the living pores of her body just like glue—stood
+in the chapel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Listen, watchman,” asked Tamara, “what’s this crackling under my feet all the
+time?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Crack-ling?” the watchman questioned her over again, and scratched himself,
+“why, lice, it must be,” he said indifferently. “It’s fierce how these beasties
+do multiply on the corpseses! ... But who you lookin’ for—man or woman?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A woman,” answered Tamara.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that means that all these ain’t yours?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, they’re all strangers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There, now! ... That means I have to go to the morgue. When did they bring
+her, now?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“On Saturday, grandpa,” and Tamara at this got out her purse. “Saturday, in the
+daytime. There’s something for tobacco for you, my dear sir!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s the way! Saturday, you say in the daytime? And what did she have on?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, almost nothing; a little night blouse, an underskirt ... both the one
+and the other white.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So-o! That must be number two hundred and seventeen ... How is she called,
+now? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Susannah Raitzina.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll go and see—maybe she’s there. Well, now, mam’selles,” he turned to the
+young ladies, who were dully huddling in the doorway, obstructing the light.
+“Which of you are the braver? If your friend came the day before yesterday,
+then that means that she’s now lying in the manner that the Lord God has
+created all mankind—that is, without anything ... Well, who of you will be the
+bolder? Which two of you will come? She’s got to be dressed...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, now, you go, Manka,” Tamara ordered her mate, who, grown chill and pale
+from horror and aversion, was staring at the dead with widely open, limpid
+eyes. “Don’t be afraid, you fool—I’ll go with you! Who’s to go, if not you?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, am I ... well, am I? ...” babbled Little White Manka with barely moving
+lips. “Let’s go. It’s all the same to me...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The morgue was right here, behind the chapel—a low, already entirely dark
+basement, into which one had to descend by six steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The watchman ran off somewhere, and returned with a candle-end and a tattered
+book. When he had lit the candle, the girls saw a score of corpses that were
+lying directly on the stone floor in regular rows—extended, yellow, with faces
+distorted by pre-mortal convulsions, with skulls split open, with clots of
+blood on their faces, with grinning teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Right away ... right away...” the watchman was saying, guiding his finger over
+the headings. “The day before yesterday ... that means, on Saturday ... on
+Saturday ... What did you say her name was, now?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Raitzina, Susannah,” answered Tamara.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rai-tzina Susannah ...” said the watchman, just as though he were singing,
+“Raitzina, Susannah. Just as I said. Two hundred seventeen.” Bending over the
+dead and illuminating them with the guttered and dripping candle-end, he passed
+from one to another. Finally he stopped before a corpse, upon whose foot was
+written in ink, in large black figures: 217.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here’s the very same one! Let me, I’ll carry her out into the little corridor
+and run after her stuff ... Wait a while! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grunting, but still with an ease amazing in one of his age, he lifted up the
+corpse of Jennka by the feet, and threw it upon his back with the head down, as
+though it were a carcass of meat, or a bag of potatoes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a trifle lighter in the corridor; and, when the watchman had lowered his
+horrible burden to the floor, Tamara for a moment covered her face with her
+hands, while Manka turned away and began to cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you need anything, say so,” the watchman was instructing them. “If you want
+to dress the deceased as is fitting, then we can get everything that’s
+required—cloth of gold, a little wreath, a little image, a shroud, gauze—we
+keep everything ... You can buy a thing or two in, clothing ... Slippers, too,
+now...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara gave him money and went out into the air, letting Manka go in front of
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After some time two wreaths were brought; one from Tamara, of asters and
+georginas with an inscription in black letters upon a white ribbon: “To Jennie
+from a friend;” the other was from Ryazanov, all of red flowers; upon its red
+ribbon stood in gold characters: “Through suffering shall we be purified.” He
+also sent a short little note, expressing commiseration and apologizing for not
+being able to come, as he was occupied with an undeferrable business meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then came the singers who had been invited by Tamara—fifteen men from the very
+best choir in the city.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The precentor, in a gray overcoat and a gray hat, all gray, somehow, as though
+covered with dust, but with long, straight moustaches, like a military
+person’s, recognized Verka; opened his eyes wide in astonishment, smiled
+slightly and winked at her. Two or three times a month, and sometimes even
+oftener, he visited Yamskaya Street with ecclesiastical academicians of his
+acquaintance, just the same precentors as he, and some psalmists; and having
+usually made a full review of all the establishments, always wound up with the
+house of Anna Markovna, where he invariably chose Verka.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a merry and sprightly man; danced in a lively manner, in a frenzy; and
+executed such figures during the dances that all those present just melted from
+laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Following the singers came the two-horsed catafalque, that Tamara had hired;
+black, with white plumes, and seven torch-bearers along with it. They also
+brought a white, glazed brocade coffin; and a pedestal for it, stretched over
+with black calico. Without hurrying, with habitually deft movements, they put
+away the deceased into the coffin; covered her face with gauze; curtained off
+the corpse with cloth of gold, and lit the candles—one at the head and two at
+the feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, in the yellow, trembling light of the candles, the face of Jennka became
+more clearly visible. The lividness had almost gone off it, remaining only here
+and there on the temples, on the nose, and between the eyes, in party-coloured,
+uneven, serpentine spots. Between the parted dark lips slightly glimmered the
+whiteness of the teeth, and the tip of the bitten tongue was still visible. Out
+of the open collar of the neck, which had taken on the colour of old parchment,
+showed two stripes: one dark—the mark of the rope; another red—the sign of the
+scratch, inflicted by Simeon during the encounter—just like two fearful
+necklaces. Tamara approached and with a safety pin pinned together the lace on
+the collar, at the very chin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clergy came: a little gray priest in gold spectacles, in a skull-cap; a
+lanky, tall, thin-haired deacon with a sickly, strangely dark and yellow face,
+as though of terra-cotta; and a sprightly, long-skirted psalmist, animatedly
+exchanging on his way some gay, mysterious signs with his friends among the
+singers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara walked up to the priest:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father,” she asked, “how will you perform the funeral service; all together or
+each one separate?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We perform the funeral service for all of them conjointly,” answered the
+priest, kissing the stole, and extricating his beard and hair out of its slits.
+“Usually, that is. But by special request, and by special agreement, it’s also
+possible to do it separately. What death did the deceased undergo?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She’s a suicide, father.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hm ... a suicide? ... But do you know, young person, that by the canons of the
+church there isn’t supposed to be any funeral service ... there ought not to be
+any? Of course, there are exceptions—by special intercession...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Right here, father, I have certificates from the police and from the doctor
+... She wasn’t in her right mind ... in a fit of insanity...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara extended to the priest two papers, sent her the evening before by
+Ryazanov, and on top of them three bank-notes of ten roubles each. “I would beg
+of you, father, to do everything fitting—Christian like. She was a splendid
+being, and suffered a very great deal. And won’t you be so kind—go along with
+her to the cemetery, and there hold one more little mass...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s all right for me to go along with her to the cemetery, but in the
+cemetery itself I have no right to hold service—there is a clergy of their own
+... And also here’s how, young person; in view of the fact that I’ll have to
+return once more after the rest, won’t you, now ... add another little
+ten-spot.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And having taken the money from Tamara’s hand, the priest blessed the thurible,
+which had been brought up by the psalmist, and began to walk around the body of
+the deceased with thurification. Then, having stopped at her head, he in a
+meek, wontedly sad voice, uttered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Blessed is our God. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
+world without end!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The psalmist began pattering: Holy God, Most Holy Trinity and Our Father poured
+out like peas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quietly, as though confiding some deep, sad, occult mystery, the singers began
+in a rapid, sweet recitative: “With Thy blessed saints in glory everlasting,
+the soul of this Thy servant save, set at rest; preserving her in the blessed
+life, as Thou hast loving kindness for man.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The psalmist distributed the candles; and they with warm, soft, living little
+flames, one after the other, were lit in the heavy, murky air, tenderly and
+transparently illuminating the faces of the women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harmoniously the mournful melody flowed forth, and like the sighs of aggrieved
+angels sounded the great words:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rest, oh God, this Thy servant and establish her in Heaven, wherein the faces
+of the just and the saints of the Lord shine like unto lights; set at rest this
+Thy servant who hath fallen asleep, contemning all her trespasses.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara was listening intently to the long familiar, but now long unheard words,
+and was smiling bitterly. The passionate, mad words of Jennka came back to her,
+full of such inescapable despair and unbelief ... Would the all-merciful,
+all-gracious Lord forgive or would He not forgive her foul, fumy, embittered,
+unclean life? All-Knowing—can it be that Thou wouldst repulse her—the pitiful
+rebel, the involuntary libertine; a child that had uttered blasphemies against
+Thy radiant, holy name? Thou—Benevolence, Thou—our Consolation!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dull, restrained wailing, suddenly passing into a scream, resounded in the
+chapel. “Oh, Jennechka!” This was Little White Manka, standing on her knees and
+stuffing her mouth with her handkerchief, beating about in tears. And the
+remaining mates, following her, also got down upon their knees; and the chapel
+was filled with sighs, stifled lamentations and sobbings ...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thou alone art deathless, Who hast created and made man; out of the dust of
+the earth were we made, and unto the same dust shall we return; as Thou hast
+ordained me, creating me and saying unto me, dust thou art and unto dust shalt
+thou return.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara was standing motionless and with an austere face that seemed turned to
+stone. The light of the candle in thin gold spirals shone in her
+bronze-chestnut hair; while she could not tear her eyes away from the lines of
+Jennka’s moist, yellow forehead and the tip of her nose, which were visible to
+Tamara from her place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return ...” she was mentally repeating
+the words of the canticles. “Could it be that that would be all; only earth
+alone and nothing more? And which is better: nothing, or even anything at
+all—even the most execrable—but merely to be existing?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the choir, as though affirming her thoughts, as though taking away from her
+the last consolation, was uttering forlornly:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“And all mankind may go...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sang Eternal Memory through, blew out the candles, and the little blue
+streams spread in the air, blue from frankincense. The priest read through the
+farewell prayer; and afterwards, in the general silence, scooped up some sand
+with the little shovel handed to him by the psalmist, and cast it cross-wise
+upon the corpse, on top of the gauze. And at this he was uttering great words,
+filled with the austere, sad inevitability of a mysterious universal law: “The
+world is the Lord’s, and its fulfillment the universe, and all that dwelleth
+therein.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girls escorted their dead mate to the very cemetery. The road thither
+intersected the very entrance to Yamskaya Street. It would have been possible
+to turn to the left through it, and that would have been almost half as short;
+but dead people were not usually carried through Yamskaya.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, out of almost all the doors their inmates poured out towards the
+cross roads, in whatever they had on: in slippers upon bare feet, in night
+gowns, with kerchiefs upon their heads; they crossed themselves, sighed, wiped
+their eyes with their handkerchiefs and the edges of their jackets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The weather cleared up ... The cold sun shone brightly from a cold sky of
+radiant blue enamel; the last grass showed its green, the withered leaves on
+the trees glowed, showing their pink and gold ... And in the crystal clear,
+cold air solemnly, and mournfully reverberated the sonorous sounds: “Holy God,
+Holy Almighty, Holy Everliving, have mercy upon us!” And with what flaming
+thirst for life, not to be satiated by aught; with what longing for the
+momentary—transient like unto a dream—joy and beauty of being; with what horror
+before the eternal silence of death, sounded the ancient refrain of John
+Damascene!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then a brief requiem at the grave, the dull thud of the earth against the lid
+of the coffin ... a small fresh hillock ...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And here’s the end!” said Tamara to her comrades, when they were left alone.
+“Oh, well, girls—an hour earlier, an hour later! ... I’m sorry for Jennka! ...
+Horribly sorry! ... We won’t ever find such another. And yet, my children, it’s
+far better for her in her pit than for us in ours ... Well, let’s cross
+ourselves for the last time—and home! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when they all were already nearing their house, Tamara suddenly uttered
+pensively the strange, ominous words:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And we won’t be long together without her: soon we will be scattered, by the
+wind far and wide. Life is good! ... Look: there’s the sun, the blue sky ...
+How pure the air is ... Cobwebs are floating—it’s Indian summer ... How good it
+is in this world! ... Only we alone—we wenches—are wayside rubbish.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girls started off on their journey. But suddenly from somewhere on the
+side, from behind a monument, a tall sturdy student detached himself. He caught
+up with Liubka and softly touched her sleeve. She turned around and beheld
+Soloviev. Her face instantaneously turned pale, her eyes opened wide and her
+lips began to tremble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go away!” she said quietly, with infinite hatred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Liuba ... Liubochka ...” Soloviev began to mumble. “I searched ... searched
+for you ... I ... Honest to God, I’m not like that one ... like Lichonin ...
+I’m in earnest ... even right now, even to-day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go away!” still more quietly pronounced Liubka.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m serious ... I’m serious ... I’m not trifling, I want to marry...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, you creature!” suddenly squealed out Liubka, and quickly, hard,
+peasant-like, hit Soloviev on the cheek with her palm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soloviev stood a little while, slightly swaying. His eyes were like those of a
+martyr ... The mouth half-open, with mournful creases at the sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go away! Go away! I can’t bear to look at all of you!” Liubka was screaming
+with rage. “Hangmen, swine!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soloviev unexpectedly covered his face with his palms and went back, without
+knowing his way, with uncertain steps, like one drunk.
+</p>
+
+<h3><a name="chap0309"></a> CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+<p>
+And in reality, the words of Tamara proved to be prophetic: since the funeral
+of Jennie not more than two weeks had passed, but during this brief space of
+time so many events burst over the house of Emma Edwardovna as do not befall
+sometimes even in half a decade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the very next day they had to send off to a charitable institution—into a
+lunatic asylum—the unfortunate Pashka, who had fallen completely into
+feeble-mindedness. The doctors said that there was no hope of her ever
+improving. And in reality, as they had placed her in the hospital on the floor,
+upon a straw mattress, so did she remain upon it without getting up from it to
+her very death; submerging more and more into the black, bottomless abyss of
+quiet feeble-mindedness; but she died only half a year later, from bed-sores
+and infection of the blood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next turn was Tamara’s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For about half a month she fulfilled the duties of a housekeeper, was all the
+time unusually active, energetic; and somehow unwontedly wound up with that
+inner something of her own, which was so strongly fomenting within her. On a
+certain evening she vanished, and did not return at all to the establishment...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The matter of fact was, that in the city she had carried on a protracted
+romance with a certain notary—an elderly man, sufficiently rich, but
+exceedingly niggardly. Their acquaintance had been scraped up yet a year back,
+when they had been by chance travelling together on the same steamer to a
+suburban monastery, and had begun a conversation. The clever, handsome Tamara;
+her enigmatic, depraved smile; her entertaining conversation; her modest manner
+of deporting herself, had captivated the notary. She had even then marked down
+for herself this elderly man with picturesque gray hair, with seigniorial
+manners; an erstwhile jurisconsult and a man of good family. She did not tell
+him about her profession—it pleased her rather to mystify him. She only hazily,
+in a few words, hinted at the fact that she was a married lady of the middle
+class; that she was unfortunate in domestic life, since her husband was a
+gambler and a despot; and that even by fate she was denied such a consolation
+as children. At parting she refused to pass an evening with the notary, and did
+not want to meet him; but then she allowed him to write to her—general
+delivery, under a fictitious name. A correspondence commenced between them, in
+which the notary flaunted his style and the ardency of his feelings, worthy of
+the heroes of Paul Bourget. She maintained the same withdrawn, mysterious tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, being touched by the entreaties of the notary for a meeting, she made an
+appointment in Prince Park; was charming, witty, and languishing; but refused
+to go with him anywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she tortured her adorer and skillfully inflamed within him the last passion,
+which at times is stronger and more dangerous than first love. Finally, this
+summer, when the family of the notary had gone abroad, she decided to visit his
+rooms; and here for the first time gave herself up to him with tears, with
+twinges of her conscience, and at the same time with such ardour and
+tenderness, that the poor secretary lost his head completely—was plunged
+entirely into that senile love, which no longer knows either reason or
+retrospect; which compels a man to lose the last thing—the fear of appearing
+ridiculous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tamara was very sparing of her meetings. This inflamed her impatient friend
+still more. She consented to receiving from him bouquets of flowers, a modest
+breakfast in a suburban restaurant; but indignantly refused all expensive
+presents, and bore herself so skillfully and subtly, that the notary never got
+up the courage to offer her money. When he once stammered out something about a
+separate apartment and other conveniences, she looked him in the eyes so
+intently, haughtily, and sternly, that he, like a boy, turned red in his
+picturesque gray hairs, and kissed her hands, babbling incoherent apologies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So did Tamara play with him, and feel the ground more and more under her. She
+already knew now on what days the notary kept in his fireproof iron safe
+especially large sums. However, she did not hurry, fearing to spoil the
+business through clumsiness or prematurity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so right now this long expected day arrived; a great contractors’ fair had
+just ended, and all the notaries’ offices were transacting deals for enormous
+suras every day. Tamara knew that the notary usually carried off the money to
+the bank on Saturdays, in order to be perfectly free on Sunday. And for that
+reason on Friday the notary received the following letter:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear, my adored King Solomon! Thy Shoilamite, thy girl of the vineyard,
+greets thee with burning kisses ... Dear, to-day is a holiday for me, and I am
+infinitely happy. To-day I am free, as well as you. HE has gone away to Homel
+for twenty-four hours on business matters, and I want to pass all the evening
+and ALL the night in your place. Ah, my beloved! All my life I am ready to pass
+on my knees before thee. I do not want to go anywhere. The suburban road-houses
+and cabarets have bored me long ago. I want you, only you ... you ... you
+alone. Await me, then, in the evening, my joy, about ten-eleven-o’clock!
+Prepare a great quantity of cold white wine, a canteloupe, and sugared
+chestnuts. I am burning, I am dying from desire! It seems to me, I will tire
+you out! I can not wait! My head is spinning around, my face burning, and my
+hands as cold as ice. I embrace you. Thy Valentina.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That very same evening, about eleven o’clock, she artfully, through
+conversation, led the notary into showing her his fireproof safe; playing upon
+his odd, pecuniary vanity. Rapidly gliding with her glance over the shelves and
+the movable boxes, Tamara turned away with a skillfully executed yawn and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fie, what a bore!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, having embraced the notary’s neck, she whispered with her lips at his very
+ears, burning him with her hot breath:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lock up this nastiness, my treasure! Let’s go! .... Let’s go! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she was the first to go out into the dining room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come here, now, Volodya!” she cried out from there. “Come quicker! I want wine
+and after that love, love, love without end! ... No! Drink it all, to the very
+bottom! Just as we will drain our love to the very bottom today!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The notary clinked glasses with her and at one gulp drank off his glass. Then
+he drew in his lips and remarked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Strange ... The wine seems to be sort of bitter to-day.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes!” agreed Tamara and looked attentively at her lover. “This wine is always
+the least bit bitter. For such is the nature of Rhine wines...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But to-day it’s especially strong,” said the notary. “No, thanks, my dear—I
+don’t want any more!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After five minutes he fell asleep, sitting in his chair; his head thrown back
+against its back, and his lower jaw hanging down. Tamara waited for some time
+and started to awaken him. He was without motion. Then she took the lit candle,
+and, having placed it on the window sill giving out upon the street, went out
+into the entrance hall and began to listen, until she heard light steps on the
+stairs. Almost without a sound she opened the door and let in Senka, dressed
+like a real gentleman, with a brand new leather hand-bag in his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ready?” asked the thief in a whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He’s sleeping,” answered Tamara, just as quietly. “Look and here are the
+keys.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They passed together into the study with the fireproof safe. Having looked over
+the lock with the aid of a flashlight, Senka swore in a low voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The devil take him, the old animal! ... I just knew that it would be a lock
+with a combination. Here you’ve got to know the letters ... It’s got to be
+melted with electricity, and the devil knows how much time it’ll take.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s not necessary,” retorted Tamara hurriedly. “I know the word ... Pick it
+out: m-o-r-t-g-a-g-. Without the e.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After ten minutes they descended the steps together; went in purposely broken
+lines through several streets, hiring a cab to the depot only in the old city;
+and rode out of the city with irreproachable passports of citizens and landed
+proprietors—the Stavnitzkys, man and wife. For a long time nothing was heard of
+them until, a year later, Senka was caught in Moscow in a large theft, and gave
+Tamara away during the interrogation. They were both tried and sentenced to
+imprisonment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Following Tamara came the turn of the naive, trusting, and amorous Verka. For a
+long time already she had been in love with a semi-military man, who called
+himself a civic clerk in the military department. His name was Dilectorsky. In
+their relations Verka was the adoring party; while he, like an important idol,
+condescendingly received the worship and the proffered gifts. Even from the end
+of summer Verka noticed that her beloved was becoming more and more cold and
+negligent; and, talking with her, was dwelling in thought somewhere far, far
+away. She tortured herself, was jealous, questioned him, but always received in
+answer some indeterminate phrases, some ominous hints at a near misfortune, at
+a premature grave ...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the beginning of September he finally confessed to her, that he had
+embezzled official money, big money, something around three thousand; and that
+after five days he would be checked up, and that he, Dilectorsky, was
+threatened with disgrace, the court, and finally, hard labour ... Here the
+civic clerk of the military department burst into sobs, clasping his head, and
+exclaimed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My poor mother! ... What will become of her? She will not be able to sustain
+this degradation ... No! Death is a thousand times better than these hellish
+tortures of a being guilty of naught.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although he was expressing himself, as always, in the style of the dime novels
+(in which way he had mainly enticed the trusting Verka), still, the theatrical
+thought of suicide, once arisen, no longer forsook him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow one day he was promenading for a long time with Verka in Prince Park.
+Already greatly devastated by autumn, this wonderful ancient park glistened and
+played with the magnificent tones of the foliage, blossoming out into colours:
+crimson, purple, lemon, orange and the deep cherry colour of old, settled wine;
+and it seemed that the cold air was diffusing sweet odours, like precious wine.
+And yet, a fine impress, a tender aroma of death, was wafted from the bushes,
+from the grass, from the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dilectorsky waxed tender; gave his feelings a free rein, was moved over
+himself, and began to weep. Verka wept a bit with him, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To-day I will kill myself!” said Dilectorsky finally. “All is over! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My own, don’t! ... My precious, don’t! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s impossible,” answered Dilectorsky sombrely. “The cursed money! ... Which
+is dearer—honour or life?!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t speak, don’t speak, Annetta!” (He, for some reason, preferred to the
+common name of Verka the aristocratic Annetta, thought up by himself.) “Don’t
+speak. This is decided!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, if only I could help you!” exclaimed Verka woefully. “Why, I’d give my
+life away ... Every drop of blood! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is life?” Dilectorsky shook his head with an actor’s despondence.
+“Farewell, Annetta! ... Farewell! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl desperately began to shake her head:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t want it! ... I don’t want it! ... I don’t want it! ... Take me! ...
+I’ll go with you too! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Late in the evening Dilectorsky took a room in an expensive hotel. He knew,
+that within a few hours, perhaps minutes, he and Verka would be corpses; and
+for that reason, although he had in his pocket only eleven kopecks, all in all,
+he gave orders sweepingly, like a habitual, downright prodigal; he ordered
+sturgeon stew, double snipes, and fruits; and, in addition to all this, coffee,
+liqueurs and two bottles of frosted champagne. And he was in reality convinced
+that he would shoot himself; but thought of it somehow affectedly, as though
+admiring, a trifle from the side, his tragic role; and enjoying beforehand the
+despair of his relatives and the amazement of his fellow clerks. While Verka,
+when she had suddenly said that she would commit suicide with her beloved, had
+been immediately strengthened in this thought. And there was nothing fearful to
+Verka in this impending death. “Well, now, is it better to croak just so, under
+a fence? But here it’s together with your dearie! At least a sweet death! ...”
+And she frantically kissed her clerk, laughed, and with dishevelled, curly
+hair, with sparkling eyes, was prettier than she had ever been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The final triumphal moment arrived at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You and I have both enjoyed ourselves, Annetta ... We have drained the cup to
+the bottom and now, to use an expression of Pushkin’s, must shatter the
+goblet!” said Dilectorsky. “You do not repent, oh, my dear? ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, no! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you ready?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes!” whispered she and smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then turn away to the wall and shut your eyes!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, no, my dearest, I don’t want it so! ... I don’t want it! Come to me!
+There, so! Nearer, nearer.. Give me your eyes, I will be gazing into them. Give
+me your lips—I will be kissing you, while you... I am not afraid! ... Be
+braver! ... Kiss me harder! ...”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He killed her; and when he looked upon the horrible deed of his hands, he then
+suddenly felt a loathsome, abominable, abject fear. The half-naked body of
+Verka was still quivering on the bed. The legs of Dilectorsky gave in from
+horror; but the reason of a hypocrite, coward and blackguard kept vigil: he did
+still have spirit sufficient to stretch away at his side the skin over his
+ribs, and to shoot through it. And when he was falling, frantically crying out
+from pain, from fright, and from the thunder of the shot, the last convulsion
+was running through the body of Verka.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While two weeks after the death of Verka, the naive, sportful, meek, brawling
+Little White Manka perished as well. During one of the general, clamourous
+brawls, usual in the Yamkas, in an enormous affray, some one killed her,
+hitting her with a heavy empty bottle over the head. And the murderer remained
+undiscovered to the last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So rapidly did events take place in the Yamkas, in the house of Emma
+Edwardovna; and well nigh not a one of its inmates escaped a bloody, foul or
+disgraceful doom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The final, most grandiose, and at the same time most bloody calamity was the
+devastation committed on the Yamkas by soldiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two dragoons had been short-changed in a rouble establishment, beaten up, and
+thrown out at night into the street. Tom to pieces, in blood, they returned to
+the barracks, where their comrades, having begun in the morning, were still
+finishing up their regimental holiday. And so, not half an hour passed, when a
+hundred soldiers burst into the Yamkas and began to wreck house after house.
+They were joined by an innumerable mob that gathered on the run—men of the
+golden squad[31], ragamuffins, tramps, crooks, souteneurs. The panes were
+broken in all the houses, and the grand pianos smashed to smithereens. The
+feather beds were ripped open and the down thrown out into the street; and yet
+for a long while after—for some two days—the countless bits of down flew and
+whirled over the Yamkas, like flakes of snow. The wenches, bare-headed,
+perfectly naked, were driven out into the street. Three porters were beaten to
+death. The rabble shattered, befouled, and rent into pieces all the silk and
+plush furniture of Treppel. They also smashed up all the neighbouring taverns
+and drink-shops, while they were at it.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[31] Zolotorotzi—a subtle euphemism for cleaners of cesspools and carters of
+the wealth contained therein.—trans.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The drunken, bloody, hideous slaughter continued for some three hours; until
+the arrayed military authorities, together with the fire company, finally
+succeeded in repulsing and scattering the infuriated mob. Two half-rouble
+establishments were set on fire, but the fire was soon put out. However, on the
+next day the tumult again flared up; this time already over the whole city and
+its environs. Altogether unexpectedly it took on the character of a Jewish
+pogrom, which lasted for three days, with all its horrors and miseries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a week after followed the order of the governor-general about the immediate
+shutting down of houses of prostitution, on the Yamkas as well as other streets
+of the city. The proprietresses were given only a week’s time for the
+settlement of matters in connection with their property.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Annihilated, crushed, plundered; having lost all the glamour of their former
+grandeur; ludicrous and pitiful, the aged, faded proprietresses and fat-faced,
+hoarse housekeepers were hastily packing up their things. And a month after
+only the name reminded one of merry Yamskaya Street; of the riotous,
+scandalous, horrible Yamkas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, even the name of the street was soon replaced by another, more
+respectable one, in order to efface even the memory of the former unpardonable
+times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all these Henriettas-Horses, Fat Kitties, Lelkas-Polecats and other
+women—always naive and foolish, often touching and amusing, in the majority of
+cases deceived and perverted children,—spread through the big city, were
+dissolved within it. Out of them was born a new stratum of society—a stratum of
+the strolling, street prostitutes—solitaries. And about their life, just as
+pitiful and incongruous, but tinged by other interests and customs, the author
+of this novel—which he still dedicates to youths and mothers—will some time
+tell.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE END
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YAMA (THE PIT) ***</div>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Yama (The Pit), by Alexandra Kuprin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Yama (The Pit)
+
+Author: Alexandra Kuprin
+
+Translator: Bernard Guilbert Guerney
+
+Posting Date: March 3, 2010 [EBook #4706]
+Release Date: December, 2003
+First Posted: March 5, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YAMA (THE PIT) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+YAMA [THE PIT]
+
+
+Of this edition, intended for private circulation only, and printed
+from type on Berkeley Antique laid paper, 950 copies have been printed
+for America, and 550 for Great Britain. Also, 55 unnumbered copies, for
+the press.
+
+This copy is Number 223
+
+
+
+
+
+YAMA [THE PIT]
+
+A NOVEL IN THREE PARTS
+
+BY ALEXANDRA KUPRIN
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
+
+BY BERNARD GUILBERT GUERNEY
+
+"All the horror is in just this, that there is no horror ..."
+
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S DEDICATION
+
+
+I know that many will find this novel immoral and indecent;
+nevertheless, I dedicate it with all my heart to MOTHERS AND YOUTHS--A.
+K.
+
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S DEDICATION
+
+
+I dedicate the labour of translation, in all humility and sincerity, to
+K. ANDRAE. B. G. G.
+
+
+JTABLE 2 2 1
+
+JTABLE 6 12 1
+
+JTABLE 6 17 1
+
+JTABLE 6 9 1
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+"With us, you see," Kuprin makes the reporter Platonov, his mouthpiece,
+say in Yama, "they write about detectives, about lawyers, about
+inspectors of the revenue, about pedagogues, about attorneys, about the
+police, about officers, about sensual ladies, about engineers, about
+baritones--and really, by God, altogether well--cleverly, with finesse
+and talent. But, after all, all these people are rubbish, and their
+life is not life, but some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary
+delirium of world culture. But there are two singular
+realities--ancient as humanity itself: the prostitute and the moujik.
+And about them we know nothing, save some tinsel, gingerbread,
+debauched depictions in literature..."
+
+Tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions... Let us consider some of
+the ways in which this monstrous reality has been approached by various
+writers. There is, first, the purely sentimental: Prevost's Manon Les
+caut. Then there is the slobberingly sentimental: Dumas' Dame aux
+Camelias. A third is the necrophilically romantic: Louys' Aphrodite.
+The fertile Balzac has given us no less than two: the purely romantic,
+in his fascinating portraits of the Fair Imperia; and the romantically
+realistic, in his Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes. Reade's Peg
+Woffington may be called the literary parallel of the costume drama;
+Defoe's Moll Flanders is honestly realistic; Zola's Nana is rabidly so.
+
+There is one singular fact that must be noted in connection with the
+vast majority of such depictions. Punk or bona roba, lorette or
+drab--put her before an artist in letters, and, lo and behold ye! such
+is the strange allure emanating from the hussy, that the resultant
+portrait is either that of a martyred Magdalene, or, at the very least,
+has all the enigmatic piquancy of a Monna Lisa... Not a slut, but what
+is a hetaera; and not a hetaera, but what is well-nigh Kypris herself!
+I know of but one depiction in all literature that possesses the
+splendour of implacable veracity as well as undiminished artistry;
+where the portrait is that of a prostitute, despite all her tirings and
+trappings; a depiction truly deserving to be designated a portrait: the
+portrait supreme of the harlot eternal--Shakespeare's Cleopatra.
+
+Furthermore, it will be observed that such depictions, for the most
+part, are primarily portraits of prostitutes, and not pictures of
+prostitution. It is also a singular fact that war, another scourge has
+met with similar treatment. We have the pretty, spotless grenadiers and
+cuirassiers of Meissonier in plenty; Vereshchagin is still alone in the
+grim starkness of his wind-swept, snow-covered battle-fields, with
+black crows wheeling over the crumpled masses of gray...
+
+And, curiously enough, it is another great Russian, Kuprin, who is
+supreme--if not unique--as a painter of the universal scourge of
+prostitution, per se; and not as an incidental background for
+portraits. True, he may not have entirely escaped the strange allure,
+aforementioned, of the femininity he paints; for femininity--even
+though fallen, corrupt, abased, is still femininity, one of the
+miracles of life, to Kuprin, the lover of life. But, even if he may be
+said to have used too much of the oil of sentimentality in mixing his
+colours for the portraits, his portraits are subordinate to the
+background; and there his eye is true and keen, his hand steady and
+unflinching, his colours and brushwork unimpeachable. Whether, like his
+own Platonov--who may be called to some extent an autobiographical
+figure, and many of whose experiences are Kuprin's own--"came upon the
+brothel" and gathered his material unconsciously, "without any ulterior
+thoughts of writing," we do not know, nor need we rummage in his dirty
+linen, as he puts it. Suffice it to say here--to cite but two
+instances--that almost anyone acquainted with Russia will tell you the
+full name of the rich, gay, southern port city of K--; that any
+Odessite will tell you that Treppel's is merely transplanted, for
+fictional reasons, from his own city to K--...
+
+Alexandre I. Kuprin was born in 1870; 1909 marked the twenty-fifth
+anniversary of his literary activity. He attained his fame only upon
+the publication of his amazing, epical novel, "The Duel"--which, just
+like "YAMA," is an arraignment; an arraignment of militaristic
+corruption. Russian criticism has styled him the poet of life. If
+Chekhov was the Wunderkind of Russian letters, Kuprin is its enfant
+terrible. His range of subjects is enormous; his power of observation
+and his versatility extraordinary. Gambrinus alone would justify his
+place among the literary giants of Europe. Some of his picaresques,
+"THE INSULT," "HORSE-THIEVES," and "OFF THE STREET"--the last in the
+form of a monologue--are sheer tours de force. "Olessiya" is possessed
+of a weird, unearthly beauty; "The Shulamite" is a prose-poem of
+antiquity. He deals with the life of the moujik in "Back-woods" and
+"The Swamp"; of the Jews, in "The Jewess" and "The Coward"; of the
+soldiers, in "The Cadets," "The Interrogation," "The Night Watch,"
+"Delirium"; of the actors, in "How I Was an Actor" and "In Retirement."
+We have circus life in "'Allez!'" "In The Circus," "Lolly," "The
+Clown"--the last a one-act playlet; factory life, in "Moloch";
+provincial life, in "Small Fry"; bohemian life, in "Captain Ribnicov"
+and "The River of Life"--which no one but Kuprin could have written.
+There are animal stories and flower stories; stories for children--and
+for neuropaths; one story is dedicated to a jockey; another to a circus
+clown; a third, if I remember rightly, to a race-horse... "Yama"
+created an enormous sensation upon the publication of the first part in
+volume three of the "Sbornik Zemliya"--"The Earth Anthology"--in 1909;
+the second part appeared in volume fifteen, in 1914; the third, in
+volume sixteen, in 1915. Both the original parts and the last revised
+edition have been followed in this translation. The greater part of the
+stories listed above are available in translations, under various
+titles; the list, of course, is merely a handful from the vast bulk of
+the fecund Kuprin's writings, nor is any group of titles exhaustive of
+its kind. "The Star of Solomon," his latest collection of stories,
+bears the imprint of Helsingfors, 1920.
+
+It must not be thought, despite its locale, that Kuprin's "Yama" is a
+picture of Russian prostitution solely; it is intrinsically universal.
+All that is necessary is to change the kopecks into cents, pennies,
+sous or pfennings; compute the versts into miles or metres; Jennka may
+be Eugenie or Jeannette; and for Yama, simply read Whitechapel,
+Montmartre, or the Barbary Coast. That is why "Yama" is a "tremendous,
+staggering, and truthful book--a terrific book." It has been called
+notorious, lurid--even oleographic. So are, perhaps, the picaresques of
+Murillo, the pictorial satires of Hogarth, the bizarreries of Goya...
+
+The best introduction to "Yama," however, can be given in Kuprin's own
+words, as uttered by the reporter Platonov. "They do write," he says,
+"... but it is all either a lie, or theatrical effects for children of
+tender years, or else a cunning symbolism, comprehensible only to the
+sages of the future. But the life itself no one as yet has touched...
+
+"But the material here is in reality tremendous, downright crushing,
+terrible... And not at all terrible are the loud phrases about the
+traffic in women's flesh, about the white slaves, about prostitution
+being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on, and so on... an
+old hurdy-gurdy of which all have tired! No, horrible are the everyday,
+accustomed trifles; these business-like, daily, commercial reckonings;
+this thousand-year-old science of amatory practice; this prosaic usage,
+determined by the ages. In these unnoticeable nothings are completely
+dissolved such feelings as resentment, humiliation, shame. There
+remains a dry profession, a contract, an agreement, a well-nigh honest
+petty trade, no better, no worse than, say, the trade in groceries. Do
+you understand, gentlemen, that all the horror is in just this--that
+there is no horror! Bourgeois work days--and that is all...
+
+"More awful than all awful words, a hundredfold more awful--is some
+such little prosaic stroke or other as will suddenly knock you all in a
+heap, like a blow on the forehead..."
+
+It is in such little prosaic strokes; everyday, accustomed,
+characteristic trifles; minute particles of life, that Kuprin excels.
+The detailism which crowds his pages is like the stippling of Whistler;
+or the enumerations of the Bible; or the chiselling of Rodin, that
+endows the back of the Thinker with meaning.
+
+"We all pass by these characteristic trifles indifferently, like the
+blind, as though not seeing them scattered about under our feet. But an
+artist will come, and he will look over them carefully, and he will
+pick them up. And suddenly he will so skillfully turn in the sun a
+minute particle of life, that we shall all cry out: 'Oh, my God! But I
+myself--myself!--have seen this with my own eyes. Only it simply did
+not enter my head to turn my close attention upon it.' But our Russian
+artists of the word--the most conscientious and sincere artists in the
+whole world--for some reason have up to this time passed over
+prostitution and the brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me to
+answer that. Perhaps because of squeamishness, perhaps out of
+pusillanimity, out of fear of being signalized as a pornographic
+writer; finally from the apprehension that our gossiping criticism will
+identify the artistic work of the writer with his personal life and
+will start rummaging in his dirty linen. Or perhaps they can find
+neither the time, nor the self-denial, nor the self-possession to
+plunge in head first into this life and to watch it right up close,
+without prejudice, without sonorous phrases, without a sheepish pity,
+in all its monstrous simplicity and everyday activity... That
+material... is truly unencompassable in its significance and
+weightiness... The words of others do not suffice--even though they be
+the most exact--even observations, made with a little note-book and a
+bit of pencil, do not suffice. One must grow accustomed to this life,
+without being cunningly wise..."
+
+"I believe, that not now, not soon--after fifty years or so--but there
+will come a writer of genius, and precisely a Russian one, who will
+absorb within himself all the burdens and all the abominations of this
+life and will cast them forth to us in the form of simple, fine, and
+deathlessly--caustic images. And we shall all say: 'Why, now, we
+ourselves have seen and known all this, but we could not even suppose
+that this is so horrible! In this coming artist I believe with all my
+heart."
+
+Kuprin is too sincere, too big, to have written this with himself in
+mind; yet no reader of the scathing, searing arraignment called "Yama,"
+will question that the great, the gigantic Kuprin has shown "the
+burdens and abominations" of prostitution, in "simple, fine, and
+deathlessly-caustic images"; has shown that "all the horror is in just
+this--that there is no horror..." For it is as a pitiless reflection of
+a "singular," sinister reality that "Yama" stands unsurpassed.
+
+B. G. GUERNEY.
+
+New York City, January, 1922.
+
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
+
+
+A word must be said of Kuprin's style. He is by no means a purist; his
+pages bristle with neologisms and foreign--or, rather,
+outlandish--words; nor has he any hesitancy in adapting and
+Russianizing such words. He coins words; he is, at times, actually
+Borrowesque, and not only does he resort to colloquialisms and slang,
+but to dialect, cant, and even actual argot. Therein is his glory--and,
+perhaps, his weakness. Therefore, an attempt has been made, wherever
+corruptions, slang, and so forth, appear in the original, to render
+them through the nearest English equivalents. While this has its
+obvious dubieties and disadvantages, any other course would have
+smacked of prettification--a fate which such a book as "Yama" surely
+does not deserve.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+A long, long time ago, long before the railroads, the
+stage-drivers--both government and private--used to live, from
+generation to generation, at the very farthest confine of a large
+southern city. And that is why the entire region was called the
+Yamskaya Sloboda--the Stage-drivers' Borough; or simply Yamskaya, or
+Yamkas--Little Ditches, or, shorter still, Yama--The Pit. In the course
+of time, when hauling by steam killed off transportation by horses, the
+mettlesome tribe of the stage-drivers little by little lost its
+boisterous ways and its brave customs, went over into other
+occupations, fell apart and scattered. But for many years--even up to
+this time--a shady renown has remained to Yama, as of a place
+exceedingly gay, tipsy, brawling, and in the night-time not without
+danger.
+
+Somehow it came about of itself, that on the ruins of those ancient,
+long-warmed nests, where of yore the rosy-cheeked, sprightly wives of
+the soldiery and the plump widows of Yama, with their black eyebrows,
+had secretly traded in vodka and free love, there began to spring up
+wide-open brothels, permitted by the authorities, regulated by official
+supervision and subject to express, strict rules. Towards the end of
+the nineteenth century both streets of Yama--Great Yamskaya and Little
+Yamskaya--proved to be entirely occupied, on one side of the street as
+well as the other, exclusively with houses of ill-fame.[1] Of the
+private houses no more than five or six were left, but even they were
+taken up by public houses, beer halls, and general stores, catering to
+the needs of Yama prostitution.
+
+
+[1] "Houses of Suffrance"--i.e., Houses of the Necessary Evil.--Trans.
+
+
+The course of life, the manners and customs, are almost identical in
+all the thirty-odd establishments; the difference is only in the
+charges exacted for the briefly-timed love, and consequently in certain
+external minutiae as well: in the assortment of more or less handsome
+women, in the comparative smartness of the costumes, in the
+magnificence of the premises and the luxuriousness of the furnishings.
+
+The most chic establishment is that of Treppel, the first house to the
+left upon entering Great Yamskaya. This is an old firm. Its present
+owner bears an entirely different name, and fills the post of an
+elector in the city council and is even a member of the city board. The
+house is of two stories, green and white, built in the debauched
+pseudo-Russian style a la Ropetovsky, with little horses, carved
+facings, roosters, and wooden towels bordered with lace-also of wood; a
+carpet with a white runner on the stairs; in the front hall a stuffed
+bear, holding a wooden platter for visiting cards in his out-stretched
+paws; a parquet floor in the ballroom, heavy raspberry silk curtains
+and tulle on the windows, along the walls white and gold chairs and
+mirrors with gilt frames; there are two private cabinets with carpets,
+divans, and soft satin puffs; in the bedrooms blue and rose lanterns,
+blankets of raw silk stuff and clean pillows; the inmates are clad in
+low-cut ball gowns, bordered with fur, or in expensive masquerade
+costumes of hussars, pages, fisher lasses, school-girls; and the
+majority of them are Germans from the Baltic provinces--large, handsome
+women, white of body and with ample breasts. At Treppel's three roubles
+are taken for a visit, and for the whole night, ten.
+
+Three of the two-rouble establishments--Sophie Vassilievna's, The Old
+Kiev, and Anna Markovna's--are somewhat worse, somewhat poorer. The
+remaining houses on Great Yamskaya are rouble ones; they are furnished
+still worse. While on Little Yamskaya, which is frequented by soldiers,
+petty thieves, artisans, and drab folk In general, and where fifty
+kopecks or less are taken for time, things are altogether filthy and
+poor-the floor in the parlor is crooked, warped, and full of splinters,
+the windows are hung with pieces of red fustian; the bedrooms, just
+like stalls, are separated by thin partitions, which do not reach to
+the ceiling, and on the beds, on top of the shaken down hay-mattresses,
+are scattered torn, spotted bed-sheets and flannel blankets, dark from
+time, crumpled any old way, full of holes; the air is sour and full of
+fumes, with a mixture of alcohol vapours and the smell of human
+emanations; the women, dressed in rags of coloured printed calico or in
+sailor costumes, are for the greater part hoarse or snuffling, with
+noses half fallen through, with faces preserving traces of yesterday's
+blows and scratches and naively bepainted with the aid of a red
+cigarette box moistened with spit.
+
+All the year round, every evening--with the exception of the last three
+days of Holy Week and the night before Annunciation, when no bird
+builds its nest and a shorn wench does not plait her braid--when it
+barely grows dark out of doors, hanging red lanterns are lit before
+every house, above the tented, carved street doors. It is just like a
+holiday out on the street--like Easter. All the windows are brightly
+lit up, the gay music of violins and pianos floats out through the
+panes, cabmen drive up and drive off without cease. In all the houses
+the entrance doors are opened wide, and through them one may see from
+the street a steep staircase with a narrow corridor on top, and the
+white flashing of the many-facetted reflector of the lamp, and the
+green walls of the front hall, painted over with Swiss landscapes. Till
+the very morning hundreds and thousands of men ascend and descend these
+staircases. Here everybody frequents: half-shattered, slavering
+ancients, seeking artificial excitements, and boys-military cadets and
+high-school lads--almost children; bearded paterfamiliases; honourable
+pillars of society, in golden spectacles; and newly-weds, and enamoured
+bridegrooms, and honourable professors with renowned names; and
+thieves, and murderers, and liberal lawyers; and strict guardians of
+morals--pedagogues, and foremost writers--the authors of fervent,
+impassioned articles on the equal rights of women; and catchpoles, and
+spies, and escaped convicts, and officers, and students, and Social
+Democrats, and hired patriots; the timid and the brazen, the sick and
+the well, those knowing woman for the first time, and old libertines
+frayed by all species of vice; clear-eyed, handsome fellows and
+monsters maliciously distorted by nature, deaf-mutes, blind men, men
+without noses, with flabby, pendulous bodies, with malodorous breath,
+bald, trembling, covered with parasites--pot-bellied, hemorrhoidal
+apes. They come freely and simply, as to a restaurant or a depot; they
+sit, smoke, drink, convulsively pretend to be merry; they dance,
+executing abominable movements of the body imitative of the act of
+sexual love. At times attentively and long, at times with gross haste,
+they choose any woman they like and know beforehand that they will
+never meet refusal. Impatiently they pay their money in advance, and on
+the public bed, not yet grown cold after the body of their predecessor,
+aimlessly commit the very greatest and most beautiful of all universal
+mysteries--the mystery of the conception of new life. And the women
+with indifferent readiness, with uniform words, with practiced
+professional movements, satisfy their desires, like machines--only to
+receive, right after them, during the same night, with the very same
+words, smiles and gestures, the third, the fourth, the tenth man, not
+infrequently already biding his turn in the waiting room.
+
+So passes the entire night. Towards daybreak Yama little by little
+grows quiet, and the bright morning finds it depopulated, spacious,
+plunged into sleep, with doors shut tightly, with shutters fixed on the
+windows. But toward evening the women awaken and get ready for the
+following night.
+
+And so without end, day after day, for months and years, they live a
+strange, incredible life in their public harems, outcast by society,
+accursed by the family, victims of the social temperament, cloacas for
+the excess of the city's sensuality, the guardians of the honour of the
+family--four hundred foolish, lazy, hysterical, barren women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Two in the afternoon. In the second-rate, two-rouble establishment of
+Anna Markovna everything is plunged in sleep. The large square parlor
+with mirrors in gilt frames, with a score of plush chairs placed
+decorously along the walls, with oleograph pictures of Makovsky's Feast
+of the Russian Noblemen, and Bathing, with a crystal lustre in the
+middle, is also sleeping, and in the quiet and semi-darkness it seems
+unwontedly pensive, austere, strangely sad. Yesterday here, as on every
+evening, lights burned, the most rollicking of music rang out, blue
+tobacco smoke swirled, men and women careered in couples, shaking their
+hips and throwing their legs on high. And the entire street shone on
+the outside with the red lanterns over the street doors and with the
+light from the windows, and it seethed with people and carriages until
+morning.
+
+Now the street is empty. It is glowing triumphantly and joyously in the
+glare of the summer sun. But in the parlor all the window curtains are
+lowered, and for that reason it is dark within, cool, and as peculiarly
+uninviting as the interiors of empty theatres, riding academies and
+court buildings usually are in the middle of the day.
+
+The pianoforte glimmers dully with its black, bent, glossy side; the
+yellow, old, time-eaten, broken, gap-toothed keys glisten faintly. The
+stagnant, motionless air still retains yesterday's odour; it smells of
+perfumes, tobacco, the sour dampness of a large uninhabited room, the
+perspiration of unclean and unhealthy feminine flesh, face-powder,
+boracic-thymol soap, and the dust of the yellow mastic with which the
+parquet floor had been polished yesterday. And with a strange charm the
+smell of withering swamp grass is blended with these smells. To-day is
+Trinity. In accordance with an olden custom, the chambermaids of the
+establishment, while their ladies were still sleeping, had bought a
+whole waggon of sedge on the market, and had strewn its long, thick
+blades, that crunch underfoot, everywhere about--in the corridors, in
+the private cabinets, in the drawing room. They, also, had lit the
+lamps before all the images. The girls, by tradition, dare not do this
+with their hands, which have been denied during the night.
+
+And the house-porter has adorned the house-entrance, which is carved in
+the Russian style, with two little felled birch-trees. And so with all
+the houses--the thin white trunks with their scant dying verdure adorn
+the exterior near the stoops, bannisters and doors.
+
+The entire house is quiet, empty and drowsy. The chopping of cutlets
+for dinner can be heard from the kitchen. Liubka, one of the girls,
+barefooted, in her shift, with bare arms, not good-looking, freckled,
+but strong and fresh of body, has come out into the inner court.
+Yesterday she had had but six guests on time, but no one had remained
+for the night with her, and because of that she had slept her
+fill--splendidly, delightfully, all alone, upon a wide bed. She had
+risen early, at ten o'clock, and had with pleasure helped the cook
+scrub the floor and the tables in the kitchen. Now she is feeding the
+chained dog Amour with the sinews and cuttings of the meat. The big,
+rusty hound, with long glistening hair and black muzzle, jumps up on
+the girl--with his front paws, stretching the chain tightly and
+rattling in the throat from shortness of breath, then, with back and
+tail undulating all over, bends his head down to the ground, wrinkles
+his nose, smiles, whines and sneezes from the excitement. But she,
+teasing him with the meat, shouts at him with pretended severity:
+
+"There, you--stupid! I'll--I'll give it to you! How dare you?"
+
+But she rejoices with all her soul over the tumult and caresses of
+Amour and her momentary power over the dog, and because she had slept
+her fill, and passed the night without a man, and because of the
+Trinity, according to dim recollections of her childhood, and because
+of the sparkling sunny day, which it so seldom befalls her to see.
+
+All the night guests have already gone their ways. The most
+business-like, quiet and workaday hour is coming on.
+
+They are drinking coffee in the room of the proprietress. The company
+consists of five people. The proprietress herself, in whose name the
+house is registered, is Anna Markovna. She is about sixty. She is very
+small of stature, but dumpy: she may be visualized by imagining, from
+the bottom up, three soft, gelatinous globes--large, medium and small,
+pressed into each other without any interstices; this--her skirt, torso
+and head. Strange, her eyes are a faded blue, girlish, even childish,
+but the mouth is that of an old person, with a moist lower lip of a
+raspberry colour, impotently hanging down. Her husband--Isaiah
+Savvich--is also small, a grayish, quiet, silent little old man. He is
+under his wife's thumb; he was doorkeeper in this very house even at
+the time when Anna Markovna served here as housekeeper. In order to be
+useful in some way, he has learned, through self-instruction, to play
+the fiddle, and now at night plays dance tunes, as well as a funeral
+march for shopmen far gone on a spree and craving some maudlin tears.
+
+Then, there are the two housekeepers--senior and junior. The senior is
+Emma Edwardovna. She is a tall, full woman of forty-six, with chestnut
+hair, and a fat goitre of three chins. Her eyes are encircled with
+black rings of hemorrhoidal origin. The face broadens out like a pear
+from the forehead down to the cheeks, and is of an earthen colour; the
+eyes are small, black; the nose humped, the lips sternly pursed; the
+expression of the face calmly authoritative. It is no mystery to anyone
+in the house that in a year or two Anna Markovna will go into
+retirement, and sell her the establishment with all its rights and
+furnishings, when she will receive part in cash, and part on terms--by
+promissory note. Because of this the girls honour her equally with the
+proprietress and fear her somewhat. Those who fall into error she beats
+with her own hands, beats cruelly, coolly, and calculatingly, without
+changing the calm expression of her face. Among the girls there is
+always a favourite of hers, whom she tortures with her exacting love
+and fantastic jealousy. And this is far harder than her beatings.
+
+The other one is called Zociya. She has just struggled out of the ranks
+of the common girls. The girls, as yet, call her impersonally,
+flatteringly and familiarly, "little housekeeper." She is spare, spry,
+just a trifle squinting, with a rosy complexion, and hair dressed in a
+little curly pompadour; she adores actors--preferably stout comedians.
+Toward Emma Edwardovna she is ingratiating.
+
+The fifth person, finally, is the local district inspector, Kerbesh.
+This is an athletic man; he is kind of bald, has a red beard like a
+fan, vividly blue slumbrous eyes, and a thin, slightly hoarse, pleasant
+voice. Everybody knows that he formerly served in the secret service
+division and was the terror of crooks, thanks to his terrible physical
+strength and cruelty in interrogations.
+
+He has several shady transactions on his conscience. The whole town
+knows that two years back he married a rich old woman of seventy, and
+that last year he strangled her; however, he was somehow successful in
+hushing up this affair. But for that matter, the remaining four have
+also seen a thing or two in their chequered life. But, just as the
+bretteurs of old felt no twinges of conscience at the recollection of
+their victims, even so do these people regard the dark and bloody
+things in their past, as the unavoidable little unpleasantness of their
+professions.
+
+They are drinking coffee with rich, boiled cream--the inspector with
+Benedictine. But he, strictly speaking, is not drinking, but merely
+conveying the impression that he is doing it to oblige.
+
+"Well, what is it to be, Phoma Phornich?" asks the proprietress
+searchingly. "This business isn't worth an empty eggshell, now... Why,
+you have only to say a word..."
+
+Kerbesh slowly draws in half a wine-glass of liqueur, works the oily,
+strong, pungent liquid slightly with his tongue over the roof of his
+mouth, swallows it, chases it down, without hurrying, with coffee, and
+then passes the ring finger of his left hand over his moustaches, to
+the right and left.
+
+"Think it over for yourself, Madam Shoibes," he says, looking down at
+the table, spreading out his hands and screwing up his eyes. "Think of
+the risk to which I'm exposed! The girl through means of deception was
+enticed into this... what-you-may-call-it... well, in a word, into a
+house of ill-fame, to express it in lofty style. Now the parents are
+searching for her through the police. Ve-ery well. She gets into one
+place after another, from the fifth into the tenth... Finally the trail
+is picked up with you, and most important of all--think of it!--in my
+district! What can I do?"
+
+"Mr. Kerbesh, but she is of age," says the proprietress.
+
+"They are of age," confirms Isaiah Savvich. "They gave an
+acknowledgment, that it was of their own will..."
+
+Emma Edwardovna pronounces in a bass, with cool assurance:
+
+"Honest to God, she's the same here as an own daughter."
+
+"But that's not what I am talking about," the inspector frowns in
+vexation. "Just consider my position... Why, this is duty. Lord,
+there's no end of unpleasantnesses without that!"
+
+The proprietress suddenly arises, shuffles in her slippers to the door,
+and says, winking to the inspector with a sleepy, expressionless eye of
+faded blue:
+
+"Mr. Kerbesh, I would ask you to have a look at our alterations. We
+want to enlarge the place a bit."
+
+"A-ah! With pleasure..."
+
+After ten minutes both return, without looking at each other. Kerbesh's
+hand is crunching a brand-new hundred rouble note in his pocket. The
+conversation about the seduced girl is not renewed. The inspector,
+hastily finishing his Benedictine, complains of the present decline in
+manners.
+
+"I have a son, now, a schoolboy--Paul. He comes to me, the scoundrel,
+and declares: 'Papa, the pupils swear at me, because you are a
+policeman, and because you serve on Yamskaya, and because you take
+bribes from brothels.' Well, tell me, for God's sake, Madam Shoibes, if
+that isn't effrontery?"
+
+"Ai, ai, ai! ... And what bribes can there be? Now with me..."
+
+"I say to him: 'Go, you good-for-nothing, and let the principal know,
+that there should be no more of this, otherwise papa will inform on all
+of you to the governor.' And what do you think? He comes to me and
+says: 'I am no longer a son to you--seek another son for yourself.'
+What an argument! Well, I gave him enough to last till the first of the
+month! Oho-ho! Now he doesn't want to speak with me. Well, I'll show
+him yet!"
+
+"Ah, you don't have to tell us," sighs Anna Markovna, letting her
+lower, raspberry-coloured lip hang down and with a mist coming over her
+faded eyes. "We keep our Birdie--she is in Fleisher's high school--we
+purposely keep her in town, in a respectable family. You understand, it
+is awkward, after all. And all of a sudden she brings such words and
+expressions from the high school that I just simply turned all red."
+
+"Honest to God, Annochka turned all red," confirms Isaiah Savvich.
+
+"You'll turn red, all right!" warmly agrees the inspector. "Yes, yes,
+yes, I understand you fully. But, my God, where are we going! Where are
+we only going? I ask you, what are these revolutionaries and all these
+various students, or... what-you-may-call-'ems? ... trying to attain?
+And let them put the blame on none but themselves. Corruption is
+everywhere, morality is falling, there is no respect for parents. They
+ought to be shot."
+
+"Well, now, the day before yesterday we had a case," Zociya mixes in
+bustlingly. "A certain guest came, a stout man..."
+
+"Drop it!" Emma Edwardovna, who was listening to the inspector, piously
+nodding with her head bowed to one side, cuts her short in the jargon
+of the brothels. "You'd better go and see about breakfast for the young
+ladies."
+
+"And not a single person can be relied upon," continues the
+proprietress grumblingly. "Not a servant but what she's a stiff, a
+faker. And all the girls ever think about is their lovers. Just so's
+they may have their own pleasure. But about their duties they don't
+even think."
+
+There is an awkward silence. Some one knocks on the door. A thin,
+feminine voice speaks on the other side of the door:
+
+"Housekeeper, dear, take the money and be kind enough to give me the
+stamps. Pete's gone."
+
+The inspector gets up and adjusts his sabre.
+
+"Well, it's time I was going to work. Best regards, Anna Markovna. Best
+wishes, Isaiah Savvich."
+
+"Perhaps you'll have one more little glass for a stirrup cup?" the
+nearly blind Isaiah Savvich thrusts himself over the table.
+
+"Tha-ank you. I can't. Full to the gills. Honoured, I'm sure! ..."
+
+"Thanks for your company. Drop in some time."
+
+"Always glad to be your guest, sir. Au revoir!"
+
+But in the doorway he stops for a minute and says significantly:
+
+"But still, my advice to you is--you'd better pass this girl on to some
+place or other in good time. Of course, it's your affair, but as a good
+friend of yours I give you warning."
+
+He goes away. When his steps are abating on the stairs and the front
+door bangs to behind him, Emma Edwardovna snorts through her nose and
+says contemptuously:
+
+"Stool-pigeon! He wants to take money both here and there..."
+
+Little by little they all crawl apart out of the room. It is dark in
+the house. It smells sweetly of the half-withered sedge. Quiet reigns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Until dinner, which is served at six in the evening, the time drags
+endlessly long and with intolerable monotony. And, in general, this
+daily interval is the heaviest and emptiest in the life of the house.
+It remotely resembles in its moods those slothful, empty hours which
+are lived through during the great holidays in scholastic institutes
+and other private institutions for females, when all the friends have
+dispersed, when there is much leisure and much indolence, and a
+radiant, agreeable tedium reigns the whole day. In only their
+petticoats and white shifts, with bare arms, sometimes barefooted, the
+women aimlessly ramble from room to room, all of them unwashed,
+uncombed; lazily strike the keys of the old pianoforte with the index
+finger, lazily lay out cards to tell their fortune, lazily exchange
+curses, and with a languishing irritation await the evening.
+
+Liubka, after breakfast, had carried out the leavings of bread and the
+cuttings of ham to Amour, but the dog had soon palled upon her.
+Together with Niura she had bought some barberry bon-bons and sunflower
+seeds, and now both are standing behind the fence separating the house
+from the street, gnawing the seeds, the shells of which remain on their
+chins and bosoms, and speculate indifferently about those who pass on
+the street: about the lamp-lighter, pouring kerosene into the street
+lamps, about the policeman with the daily registry book under his arm,
+about the housekeeper from somebody else's establishment, running
+across the road to the general store.
+
+Niura is a small girl, with goggle-eyes of blue; she has white, flaxen
+hair and little blue veins on her temples. In her face there is
+something stolid and innocent, reminiscent of a white sugar lamb on a
+Paschal cake. She is lively, bustling, curious, puts her nose into
+everything, agrees with everybody, is the first to know the news, and,
+when she speaks, she speaks so much and so rapidly that spray flies out
+of her mouth and bubbles effervescence on the red lips, as in children.
+
+Opposite, out of the dram-shop, a servant pops out for a minute--a
+curly, besotted young fellow with a cast in his eye--and runs into the
+neighbouring public house.
+
+"Prokhor Ivanovich, oh Prokhor Ivanovich," shouts Niura, "don't you
+want some?--I'll treat you to some sunflower seeds!"
+
+"Come on in and pay us a visit," Liubka chimes in.
+
+Niura snorts and adds through the laughter which suffocates her:
+
+"Warm your feet for a while!"
+
+But the front door opens; in it appears the formidable and stern figure
+of the senior housekeeper.
+
+"Pfui![2] What sort of indecency is this!" she cries commandingly. "How
+many times must it be repeated to you, that you must not jump out on
+the street during the day, and also--pfui!--only in your underwear. I
+can't understand how you have no conscience yourselves. Decent girls,
+who respect themselves, must not demean themselves that way in public.
+It seems, thank God, that you are not in an establishment catering to
+soldiers, but in a respectable house. Not in Little Yamskaya."
+
+
+[2] A German exclamation of disgust or contempt, corresponding to the
+English fie.--Trans.
+
+
+The girls return into the house, get into the kitchen, and for a long
+time sit there on tabourets, contemplating the angry cook Prascoviya,
+swinging their legs and silently gnawing the sunflower seeds.
+
+In the room of Little Manka, who is also called Manka the Scandaliste
+and Little White Manka, a whole party has gathered. Sitting on the edge
+of the bed, she and another girl--Zoe, a tall handsome girl, with
+arched eyebrows, with grey, somewhat bulging eyes, with the most
+typical, white, kind face of the Russian prostitute--are playing at
+cards, playing at "sixty-six." Little Manka's closest friend, Jennie,
+is lying behind their backs on the bed, prone on her back, reading a
+tattered book, The Queen's Necklace, the work of Monsieur Dumas, and
+smoking. In the entire establishment she is the only lover of reading
+and reads intoxicatingly and without discrimination. But, contrary to
+expectation, the forced reading of novels of adventure has not at all
+made her sentimental and has not vitiated her imagination. Above all,
+she likes in novels a long intrigue, cunningly thought out and deftly
+disentangled; magnificent duels, before which the viscount unties the
+laces of his shoes to signify that he does not intend to retreat even a
+step from his position,[3] and after which the marquis, having spitted
+the count through, apologizes for having made an opening in his
+splendid new waistcoat; purses, filled to the full with gold,
+carelessly strewn to the left and right by the chief heroes; the love
+adventures and witticisms of Henry IV--in a word, all this spiced
+heroism, in gold and lace, of the past centuries of French history. In
+everyday life, on the contrary, she is sober of mind, jeering,
+practical and cynically malicious. In her relation to the other girls
+of the establishment she occupies the same place that in private
+educational institutions is accorded to the first strong man, the man
+spending a second year in the same grade, the first beauty in the
+class--tyrannizing and adored. She is a tall, thin brunette, with
+beautiful hazel eyes, a small proud mouth, a little moustache on the
+upper lip and with a swarthy, unhealthy pink on her cheeks.
+
+
+[3] Probably a sly dig at Gautier's Captain Fracasse.--Trans.
+
+
+Without letting the cigarette out of her mouth and screwing up her eyes
+from the smoke, all she does is to turn the pages constantly with a
+moistened finger. Her legs are bare to the knees; the enormous balls of
+the feet are of the most vulgar form; below the big toes stand out
+pointed, ugly, irregular tumours.
+
+Here also, with her legs crossed, slightly bent, with some sewing, sits
+Tamara--a quiet, easy-going, pretty girl, slightly reddish, with that
+dark and shining tint of hair which is to be found on the back of a fox
+in winter. Her real name is Glycera, or Lukeria, as the common folk say
+it. But it is already an ancient usage of the houses of ill-fame to
+replace the uncouth names of the Matrenas, Agathas, Cyclitinias with
+sonorous, preferably exotic names. Tamara had at one time been a nun,
+or, perhaps, merely a novice in a convent, and to this day there have
+been preserved on her face timidity and a pale puffiness--a modest and
+sly expression, which is peculiar to young nuns. She holds herself
+aloof in the house, does not chum with any one, does not initiate any
+one into her past life. But in her case there must have been many more
+adventures besides having been a nun: there is something mysterious,
+taciturn and criminal in her unhurried speech, in the evasive glance of
+her deep and dark-gold eyes from under the long, lowered eyelashes, in
+her manners, her sly smiles and intonations of a modest but wanton
+would-be saint. There was one occurrence when the girls, with well-nigh
+reverent awe, heard that Tamara could talk fluently in French and
+German. She has within her some sort of an inner, restrained power.
+Notwithstanding her outward meekness and complaisance, all in the
+establishment treat her with respect and circumspection--the
+proprietress, and her mates, and both housekeepers, and even the
+doorkeeper, that veritable sultan of the house of ill-fame, that
+general terror and hero.
+
+"I've covered it," says Zoe and turns over the trump which had been
+lying under the pack, wrong side up. "I'm going with forty, going with
+an ace of spades--a ten-spot, Mannechka, if you please. I'm through.
+Fifty-seven, eleven, sixty-eight. How much have you?"
+
+"Thirty," says Manka in an offended tone, pouting her lips; "oh, it's
+all very well for you--you remember all the plays. Deal ... Well,
+what's after that, Tamarochka?" she turns to her friend. "You talk
+on--I'm listening."
+
+Zoe shuffles the old, black, greasy cards, allows Manya to cut, then
+deals, having first spat upon her fingers.
+
+Tamara in the meanwhile is narrating to Manya in a quiet voice, without
+dropping her sewing.
+
+"We embroidered with gold, in flat embroidery--altar covers, palls,
+bishops' vestments... With little grasses, with flowers, little
+crosses. In winter, you'd be sitting near a casement; the panes are
+small, with gratings, there isn't much light, it smells of lamp oil,
+incense, cypress; you mustn't talk--the mother superior was strict.
+Some one from weariness would begin droning a pre-Lenten first verse of
+a hymn ... 'When I consider thy heavens ...' We sang fine, beautifully,
+and it was such a quiet life, and the smell was so fine; you could see
+the flaky snow out the windows--well, now, just like in a dream..."
+
+Jennie puts the tattered novel down on her stomach, throws the
+cigarette over Zoe's head, and says mockingly:
+
+"We know all about your quiet life. You chucked the infants into
+toilets. The Evil One is always snooping around your holy places."
+
+"I call forty. I had forty-six. Finished!" Little Manka exclaims
+excitedly and claps her palms. "I open with three."
+
+Tamara, smiling at Jennie's words, answers with a scarcely perceptible
+smile, which barely distends her lips, but makes little, sly, ambiguous
+depressions at their corners, altogether as with Monna Lisa in the
+portrait by Leonardo da Vinci.
+
+"Lay folk say a lot of things about nuns ... Well, even if there had
+been sin once in a while ..."
+
+"If you don't sin--you don't repent," Zoe puts in seriously, and wets
+her finger in her mouth.
+
+"You sit and sew, the gold eddies before your eyes, while from standing
+in the morning at prayer your back just aches, and your legs ache. And
+at evening there is service again. You knock at the door of the mother
+superior's cell: 'Through prayers of Thy saints, oh Lord, our Father,
+have mercy upon us.' And the mother superior would answer from the
+cell, in a little bass-like 'A-men.'"
+
+Jennie looks at her intently for some time, shakes her head and says
+with great significance:
+
+"You're a queer girl, Tamara. Here I'm looking at you and wondering.
+Well, now, I can understand how these fools, on the manner of Sonka,
+play at love. That's what they're fools for. But you, it seems, have
+been roasted on all sorts of embers, have been washed in all sorts of
+lye, and yet you allow yourself foolishness of that sort. What are you
+embroidering that shirt for?"
+
+Tamara, without haste, with a pin refastens the fabric more
+conveniently on her knee, smooths the seam down with the thimble, and
+speaks, without raising the narrowed eyes, her head bent just a trifle
+to one side:
+
+"One's got to be doing something. It's wearisome just so. I don't play
+at cards, and I don't like them."
+
+Jennie continues to shake her head.
+
+"No, you're a queer girl, really you are. You always have more from the
+guests than all of us get. You fool, instead of saving money, what do
+you spend it on? You buy perfumes at seven roubles the bottle. Who
+needs it? And now you have bought fifteen roubles' worth of silk. Isn't
+this for your Senka, now?"
+
+"Of course, for Sennechka."
+
+"What a treasure you've found, to be sure! A miserable thief. He rides
+up to this establishment like some general. How is it he doesn't beat
+you yet? The thieves--they like that. And he plucks you, have no fear?"
+
+"More than I want to, I won't give," meekly answers Tamara and bites
+the thread in two.
+
+"Now that is just what I wonder at. With your mind, your beauty, I
+would put such rings-around-a-rosie about a guest like that, that he'd
+take me and set me up. I'd have horses of my own, and diamonds."
+
+"Everyone to his tastes, Jennechka. You too, now, are a very pretty and
+darling girl, and your character is so independent and brave, and yet
+you and I have gotten stuck in Anna Markovna's."
+
+Jennie flares up and answers with unsimulated bitterness:
+
+"Yes! Why not! All things come your way! ...You have all the very best
+guests. You do what you want with them, but with me it's always either
+old men or suckling babies. I have no luck. The ones are snotty, the
+others have yellow around the mouth. More than anything else, now, I
+dislike the little boys. He comes, the little varmint; he's cowardly,
+he hurries, he trembles, but having done the business, he doesn't know
+what to do with his eyes for shame. He's all squirming from disgust. I
+just feel like giving him one in the snout. Before giving you the
+rouble, he holds it in his pocket in his fist, and that rouble's all
+hot, even sweaty. The milksop! His mother gives him a ten kopeck piece
+for a French roll with sausage, but he's economized out of that for a
+wench. I had one little cadet in the last few days. So just on purpose,
+to spite him, I say: 'Here, my dearie, here's a little caramel for you
+on your way; when you're going back to your corps, you'll suck on it.'
+So at first he got offended, but afterwards took it. Later I looked
+from the stoop, on purpose; just as soon as he walked out, he looked
+around, and right away into his mouth with the caramel. The little
+swine!"
+
+"But with old men it's still worse," says Little Manka in a tender
+voice, and slyly looks at Zoe. "What do you think, Zoinka?"
+
+Zoe, who had already finished playing, and was just about to yawn, now
+cannot in any way give rein to her yawns. She does not know whether she
+wants to be angry or to laugh. She has a steady visitor, some little
+old man in a high station, with perverted erotic habits. The entire
+establishment makes fun of his visits to her.
+
+Zoe at last succeeds in yawning.
+
+"To the devil's dam with all of you," she says, with her voice hoarse
+after the yawn; "may he be damned, the old anathema!"
+
+"But still, the worst of all," Jennie continues to discourse, "worse
+than your director, Zoinka, worse than my cadet, the worst of all--are
+your lovers. What can there be joyous in this: he comes drunk, poses,
+makes sport of you, wants to pretend there's something in him--only
+nothing comes of it all. Wha-at a lad-die, to be sure! The scummiest of
+the scum, dirty, beaten-up, stinking, his whole body in scars, there's
+only one glory about him: the silk shirt which Tamarka will embroider
+for him. He curses one's mother, the son of a bitch, always aching for
+a fight. Ugh! No!" she suddenly exclaimed in a merry provoking voice,
+"The one I love truly and surely, for ever and ever, is my Mannechka,
+Manka the white, little Manka, my Manka-Scandalistochka."
+
+And unexpectedly, having embraced Manya by the shoulders and bosom, she
+drew her toward herself, threw her down on the bed, and began to kiss
+deeply and vigorously her hair, eyes, lips. Manka with difficulty tore
+herself away from her, with dishevelled, bright, fine, downy hair, all
+rosy from the resistance, and with eyes downcast and moist from shame
+and laughter.
+
+"Leave off, Jennechka, leave off. Well, now, what are you doing? Let me
+go!"
+
+Little Manya is the meekest and quietest girl in the entire
+establishment. She is kind, yielding, can never refuse anybody's
+request, and involuntarily everybody treats her with great gentleness.
+She blushes over every trifle, and at such time becomes especially
+attractive, as only very tender blondes with a sensitive skin can be
+attractive. But it is sufficient for her to drink three or four glasses
+of Liqueur Benedictine, of which she is very fond, for her to become
+unrecognizable and to create brawls, such, that there is always
+required the intervention of the housekeepers, the porter, at times
+even the police. It is nothing for her to hit a guest in the face or to
+throw in his face a glass filled with wine, to overturn the lamp, to
+curse out the proprietress, Jennie treats her with some strange, tender
+patronage and rough adoration.
+
+"Ladies, to dinner! To dinner, ladies!" calls Zociya the housekeeper,
+running along the corridor. On the run she opens the door into Manya's
+room and drops hurriedly:
+
+"To dinner, to dinner, ladies!"
+
+They go again to the kitchen, all still in their underwear, all
+unwashed, in slippers and barefoot. A tasty vegetable soup of pork
+rinds and tomatoes, cutlets, and pastry-cream rolls are served. But no
+one has any appetite, thanks to the sedentary life and irregular sleep,
+and also because the majority of the girls, just like school-girls on a
+holiday, had already managed during the day to send to the store for
+halvah, nuts, rakkat loukoum (Turkish Delight), dill-pickles and
+molasses candy, and had through this spoiled their appetites. Only Nina
+alone--a small, pug-nosed, snuffling country girl, seduced only two
+months ago by a travelling salesman, and (also by him) sold into a
+brothel--eats for four. The inordinate, provident appetite of a woman
+of the common people has not yet disappeared in her.
+
+Jennie, who has only picked fastidiously at her cutlet and eaten half
+her cream roll, speaks to her in a tone of hypocritical solicitude:
+
+"Really, Pheclusha, you might just as well eat my cutlet, too. Eat, my
+dear, eat; don't be bashful--you ought to be gaining in health. But do
+you know what I'll tell you, ladies?" she turns to her mates, "Why, our
+Pheclusha has a tape-worm, and when a person has a tape-worm, he always
+eats for two: half for himself, half for the worm."
+
+Nina sniffs angrily and answers in a bass which comes as a surprise
+from one of her stature, and through her nose:
+
+"There are no tape-worms in me. It's you that has the tape-worms,
+that's why you are so skinny."
+
+And she imperturbably continues to eat, and after dinner feels herself
+sleepy, like a boa constrictor, eructs loudly, drinks water, hiccups,
+and, by stealth, if no one sees her, makes the sign of the cross over
+her mouth, through an old habit.
+
+But already the ringing voice of Zociya can be heard through the
+corridors and rooms:
+
+"Get dressed, ladies, get dressed. There's no use in sitting
+around...To work..."
+
+After a few minutes in all the rooms of the establishment there are
+smells of singed hair, boric-thymol soap, cheap eau-de-cologne. The
+girls are dressing for the evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The late twilight came on, and after it the warm, dark night, but for
+long, until very midnight, did the deep crimson glow of the sky still
+smoulder. Simeon, the porter of the establishment, has lit all the
+lamps along the walls of the drawing room, and the lustre, as well as
+the red lantern over the stoop. Simeon was a spare, stocky, taciturn
+and harsh man, with straight, broad shoulders, dark-haired,
+pock-marked, with little bald spots on his eye-brows and moustaches
+from small-pox, and with black, dull, insolent eyes. By day he was free
+and slept, while at night he sat without absenting himself in the front
+hall under the reflector, in order to help the guests with their coats
+and to be ready in case of any disorder.
+
+The pianist came--a tall, elegant young man, with white eyebrows and
+eyelashes, and a cataract in his right eye. The while there were no
+guests, he and Isaiah Savvich quietly rehearsed Pas d'Espagne, at that
+time coming into fashion. For every dance ordered by the guests, they
+received thirty kopecks for an easy dance, and a half rouble for a
+quadrille. But one-half of this price was taken out by the
+proprietress, Anna Markovna; the other, however, the musicians divided
+evenly. In this manner the pianist received only a quarter of the
+general earnings, which, of course, was unjust, since Isaiah Savvich
+played as one self-taught and was distinguished for having no more ear
+for music than a piece of wood. The pianist was constantly compelled to
+drag him on to new tunes, to correct and cover his mistakes with loud
+chords. The girls said of their pianist to the guests, with a certain
+pride, that he had been in the conservatory and always ranked as the
+first pupil, but since he is a Jew, and in addition to that his eyes
+had begun to trouble him, he had not succeeded in completing the
+course. They all treated him carefully and considerately, with some
+sort of solicitous, somewhat mawkish, commiseration, which chimes so
+well with the inner, backstage customs of houses of ill-fame, where
+underneath the outer coarseness and the flaunting of obscene words
+dwells the same sweetish, hysterical sentimentality as in female
+boarding schools, and, so they say, in penal institutions.
+
+In the house of Anna Markovna everybody was already dressed and ready
+for the reception of the guests, and languishing from inaction and
+expectation. Despite the fact that the majority of the women
+experienced toward men--with the exception of their lovers--a complete,
+even somewhat squeamish, indifference, before every evening dim hopes
+came to life and stirred within their souls; it was unknown who would
+choose them, whether something unusual, funny and alluring might not
+happen, whether a guest would not astonish with his generosity, whether
+there would not be some miracle which would overturn the whole
+life...In these presentiments and hopes was something akin to those
+emotions which the accustomed gamester experiences when counting his
+ready money before starting out for his club. Besides that, despite
+their asexuality, they still had not lost the chiefest instinctive
+aspiration of women--to please.
+
+And, in truth, altogether curious personages came into the house at
+times and ludicrous, motley events arose. The police would appear
+suddenly together with disguised detectives and arrest some seemingly
+respectable, irreproachable gentlemen and lead them off, pushing them
+along with blows in the neck. At times brawls would spring up between
+the drunken, trouble-making company and the porters of all the
+establishments, who had gathered on the run for the relief of a fellow
+porter--a brawl, during which the window-panes and the decks of
+grand-pianos were broken, when the legs of the plush chairs were
+wrenched out for weapons, blood ran over the parquet floor of the
+drawing room and the steps of the stairs, and people with pierced sides
+and broken heads fell down into the dirt near the street entrance, to
+the feral, avid delight of Jennka, who, with burning eyes, with happy
+laughter, went into the thickest of the melee, slapped herself on the
+hips, swore and sicked them on, while her mates were squealing from
+fear and hiding under the beds.
+
+There were occurrences when there would arrive, with a pack of
+parasites, some member of a workingmen's association or a cashier, long
+since far gone in an embezzlement of many thousands through gambling at
+cards and hideous orgies, and now, in a drunken, senseless delirium,
+tossing the last money after the other, before suicide or the
+prisoner's box. Then the doors and windows of the house would be
+tightly closed, and for two days and nights at a stretch a Russian orgy
+would go on--nightmarish, tedious, savage, with screams and tears, with
+revilement over the body of woman; paradisaical nights were gotten up,
+during which naked, drunken, bow-legged, hairy, pot-bellied men, and
+women with flabby, yellow, pendulous thin bodies hideously grimaced to
+the music; they drank and guzzled like swine, on the beds and on the
+floor, amidst the stifling atmosphere, permeated with spirits, befouled
+with human respiration and the exhalations of unclean skins.
+
+Occasionally, there would appear a circus athlete, creating in the
+low-ceiled quarters a strangely cumbersome impression, somewhat like
+that of a horse led into a room; a Chinaman in a blue blouse, white
+stockings, and with a queue; a negro from a cabaret, in a tuxedo coat
+and checked pantaloons, with a flower in his button-hole, and with
+starched linen, which, to the amazement of the girls, not only did not
+soil from the black skin, but appeared still more dazzlingly white.
+
+These rare people fomented the satiated imagination of the prostitutes,
+excited their exhausted sensuality and professional curiosity, and all
+of them, almost enamoured, would walk in their steps, jealous and
+bickering with one another.
+
+There was one incident when Simeon had let into the room an elderly
+man, dressed like a bourgeois. There was nothing exceptional about him;
+he had a stern, thin face, with bony, evil-looking cheek-bones,
+protruding like tumours, a low forehead, a beard like a wedge, bushy
+eyebrows, one eye perceptibly higher than the other. Having entered, he
+raised his fingers, folded for the sign of the cross, to his forehead,
+but having searched the corners with his eyes and finding no image, he
+did not in the least grow confused, put down his hand, and at once with
+a business-like air walked up to the fattest girl in the
+establishment--Kitty.
+
+"Let's go!" he commanded curtly, and with determination nodded his head
+in the direction of the door.
+
+During the entire period of her absence the omniscious Simeon, with a
+mysterious, and even somewhat proud air, managed to inform Niura, at
+that time his mistress, while she, in a whisper, with horror in her
+rounded eyes, told her mates, in secret, that the name of the bourgeois
+was Dyadchenko, and that last fall he had volunteered, owing to the
+absence of the hangman, to carry out the execution of eleven rioters,
+and with his own hands had hung them in two mornings. And--monstrous as
+it may be--at that hour there was not in the establishment a single
+girl who did not feel envy toward the fat Kitty, and did not experience
+a painful, keen, vertiginous curiosity. When Dyadchenko was going away
+half an hour later--with his sedate and stern air, all the women
+speechlessly, with their mouths gaping, escorted him to the street door
+and afterwards watched him from the windows as he walked along the
+street. Then they rushed into the room of the dressing Kitty and
+overwhelmed her with interrogations. They looked with a new feeling,
+almost with astonishment, at her bare, red, thick arms, at the bed,
+still crumpled, at the old, greasy, paper rouble, which Kitty showed
+them, having taken it out of her stocking. Kitty could tell them
+nothing. "A man like any man, like all men," she said with a calm
+incomprehension; but when she found out who her visitor had been, she
+suddenly burst into tears, without herself knowing why.
+
+This man, the outcast of outcasts, fallen as low as the fancy of man
+can picture, this voluntary headsman, had treated her without rudeness,
+but with such absence of even a hint at endearment, with such disdain
+and wooden indifference, as no human being is treated; not even a dog
+or a horse, and not even an umbrella, overcoat or hat, but like some
+dirty, unclean object, for which a momentary, unavoidable need arises,
+but which, at the passing of its needfulness, becomes foreign, useless,
+and disgusting. The entire horror of this thought the fat Kate could
+not embrace with her brain of a fattened turkey hen, and because of
+that cried--as it seemed even to her--without cause and reason.
+
+There were also other happenings, which stirred up the turbid, foul
+life of these poor, sick, silly, unfortunate women. There were cases of
+savage, unbridled jealousy with pistol shots and poisoning;
+occasionally, very rarely, a tender, flaming and pure love would
+blossom out upon this dung; occasionally the women even abandoned an
+establishment with the help of the loved man, but almost always came
+back. Two or three times it happened that a woman from a brothel would
+suddenly prove pregnant--and this always seemed, on the face of it,
+laughable and disgraceful, but touching in the profundity of the event.
+
+And no matter what may have happened, every evening brought with it
+such an irritating, strained, spicy expectation of adventures that
+every other life, after that in a house of ill-fame, would have seemed
+flat and humdrum to these lazy women of no will power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The windows are opened wide to the fragrant darkness of the evening,
+and the tulle curtains stir faintly back and forth from the
+imperceptible movement of the air. It smells of dewy grass from the
+consumptive little garden in front of the house, and just the least wee
+bit of lilac and the withering birch leaves of the little trees placed
+near the entrance because of the Trinity. Liuba, in a blue velvet
+blouse with low cut bosom, and Niura, dressed as a "baby," in a pink,
+wide sacque to the knees, with her bright hair loose and with little
+curls on her forehead, are lying embraced on the window-sill, and are
+singing in a low voice a song about the hospital, which song is the
+rage of the day and exceedingly well known among prostitutes. Niura,
+through her nose, leads in a high voice.
+
+Liuba seconds her with a stifled alto:
+
+    "Monday now is come again,
+    They're supposed to get me out;
+    Doctor Krasov won't let me out ..."
+
+In all the houses the windows are brightly lit, while hanging lanterns
+are burning before the entrances. To both girls the interior in the
+establishment of Sophia Vasilievna, which is directly opposite, is
+distinctly visible--the shining yellow parquet, draperies of a dark
+cherry colour on the doors, caught up with cords, the end of a black
+grand-piano, a pier glass in a gilt frame, and the figures of women in
+gorgeous dresses, now flashing at the windows, now disappearing, and
+their reflections in the mirrors. The carved stoop of Treppel, to the
+right, is brightly illuminated by a bluish electric light in a big
+frosted globe.
+
+The evening is calm and warm. Somewhere far, far away, beyond the line
+of the railroads, beyond some black roofs and the thin black trunks of
+trees, down low over the dark earth in which the eye does not see but
+rather senses the mighty green tone of spring, reddens with a scarlet
+gold the narrow, long streak of the sunset glow, which has pierced the
+dove-coloured mist. And in this indistinct, distant light, in the
+caressing air, in the scents of the oncoming night, was some secret,
+sweet, conscious mournfulness, which usually is so gentle in the
+evenings between spring and summer. The indistinct noise of the city
+floated in, the dolorous, snuffling air of an accordeon, the mooing of
+cows could be heard; somebody's soles were scraping dryly and a
+ferruled cane rapped resoundingly on the flags of the pavement; lazily
+and irregularly the wheels of a cabman's victoria, rolling at a pace
+through Yama, would rumble by, and all these sounds mingled with a
+beauty and softness in the pensive drowsiness of the evening. And the
+whistles of the locomotives on the line of the railroad, which was
+marked out in the darkness with green and red lights, sounded with a
+quiet, singing caution.
+
+    "Now the nurse is co-oming in,
+    Bringing sugar and a roll,
+    Bringing sugar and a roll,
+    Deals them equally to all."
+
+"Prokhor Ivanich!" Niura suddenly calls after the curly waiter from the
+dram-shop, who, a light black silhouette, is running across the road.
+"Oh, Prokhor Ivanich!"
+
+"Oh, bother you!" the other snarls hoarsely. "What now?"
+
+"A friend of yours sent you his regards. I saw him today."
+
+"What sort of friend?"
+
+"Such a little good-looker! An attractive little brunet ...No, but
+you'd better ask--where did I see him?"
+
+"Well, where?" Prokhor Ivanovich comes to a stop for a minute.
+
+"And here's where: nailed over there, on the fifth shelf with old hats,
+where we keep all dead cats."
+
+"Scat! You darn fool!"
+
+Niura laughs shrilly over all Yama, and throws herself down on the
+sill, kicking her legs in high black stockings. Afterward, having
+ceased laughing, she all of a sudden makes round astonished eyes and
+says in a whisper:
+
+"But do you know, girlie--why, he cut a woman's throat the year before
+last--that same Prokhor. Honest to God!"
+
+"Is that so? Did she die?"
+
+"No, she didn't. She got by," says Niura, as though with regret. "But
+just the same she lay for two months in the Alexandrovskaya Hospital.
+The doctors said, that if it were only this teen-weeny bit higher--then
+it would have been all over. Bye-bye!"
+
+"Well, what did he do that to her for?"
+
+"How should I know? Maybe she hid money from him or wasn't true to him.
+He was her lover--her pimp."
+
+"Well, and what did he get for it?"
+
+"Why, nothing. There was no evidence of any kind. There had been a
+free-for-all mix-up. About a hundred people were fighting. She also
+told the police that she had no suspicions of any sort. But Prokhor
+himself boasted afterwards: 'I,' says he, 'didn't do for Dunka that
+time, but I'll finish her off another time. She,' says he, 'won't get
+by my hands. I'm going to give her the works.'"
+
+A shiver runs all the way down Liuba's back.
+
+"They're desperate fellows, these pimps!" she pronounces quietly, with
+horror in her voice.
+
+"Something terrible! I, you know, played at love with our Simeon for a
+whole year. Such a Herod, the skunk! I didn't have a whole spot on me.
+I always went about in black and blue marks. And it wasn't for any
+reason at all, but just simply so--he'd go in the morning into a room
+with me, lock himself in, and start in to torture me. He'd wrench my
+arms, pinch my breasts, grab my throat and begin to strangle me. Or
+else he'd be kissing, kissing, and then he'd bite the lips so that the
+blood would just spurt out ... I'd start crying--but that's all he was
+looking for. Then he'd just pounce an me like a beast--simply shivering
+all over. And he'd take all my money away--well, now, to the very last
+little copper. There wasn't anything to buy ten cigarettes with. He's
+stingy, this here Simeon, that's what, always into the bank-book with
+it, always putting it away into the bank-book... Says when he gets a
+thousand roubles together--he'll go into a monastery."
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"Honest to God. You look into his little room: the twenty-four hours
+round, day and night, the little holy lamp burns before the images.
+He's very strong for God ... Only I think that he's that way because
+there's heavy sins upon him. He's a murderer."
+
+"What are you saying?"
+
+"Oh, let's drop talking about him, Liubochka. Well, let's go on further:
+
+"I'll go to the drug store, buy me some poison, And I will poison then
+meself."
+
+Niura starts off in a very high, thin voice.
+
+Jennie walks back and forth in the room, with arms akimbo, swaying as
+she walks, and looking at herself in all the mirrors. She has on a
+short orange satin dress, with straight deep pleats in the skirt, which
+vacillates evenly to the left and right from the movement of her hips.
+Little Manka, a passionate lover of card games, ready to play from
+morning to morning, without stopping, is playing away at "sixty-six"
+with Pasha, during which both women, for convenience in dealing, have
+left an empty chair between them, while they gather their tricks into
+their skirts, spread out between their knees. Manka has on a brown,
+very modest dress, with black apron and pleated black bib; this dress
+is very becoming to her dainty, fair little head and small stature; it
+makes her younger and gives her the appearance of a high-school
+undergraduate.
+
+Her partner Pasha is a very queer and unhappy girl. She should have
+been, long ago, not in a house of ill-fame, but in a psychiatric ward,
+because of an excruciating nervous malady, which compels her to give
+herself up, frenziedly, with an unwholesome avidity, to any man
+whatsoever who may choose her, even the most repulsive. Her mates make
+sport of her and despise her somewhat for this vice, just as though for
+some treason to their corporate enmity toward men. Niura, with very
+great versimilitude, mimics her sighs, groans, outcries and passionate
+words, from which she can never refrain in the moments of ecstasy and
+which are to be heard in the neighbouring rooms through two or three
+partitions. There is a rumour afloat about Pasha, that she got into a
+brothel not at all through necessity or temptation or deception, but
+had gone into it her own self, voluntarily, following her horrible,
+insatiable instinct. But the proprietress of the house and both the
+housekeepers indulge Pasha in every way and encourage her insane
+weakness, because, thanks to it, Pasha is in constant demand and earns
+four, five times as much as any one of the remaining girls--earns so
+much, that on busy gala days she is not brought out to the more drab
+guests at all, or else refused them under the pretext of Pasha's
+illness, because the steady, paying guests are offended if they are
+told that the girl they know is busy with another. And of such steady
+guests Pasha has a multitude; many are with perfect sincerity, even
+though bestially, in love with her, and even not so long ago two,
+almost at the same time, offered to set her up: a Georgian--a clerk in
+a store of Cakhetine wines, and some railroad agent, a very proud and
+very poor nobleman, with shirt cuffs the colour of a cabbage rose, and
+with an eye which had been replaced by a black circle on an elastic.
+Pasha, passive in everything save her impersonal sensuality, would go
+with anybody who might call her, but the administration of the house
+vigilantly guards its interests in her. A near insanity already flits
+over her lovely face, in her half-closed eyes, always smiling with some
+heady, blissful, meek, bashful and unseemly smile, in her languorous,
+softened, moist lips, which she is constantly licking; in her short,
+quiet laugh--the laugh of an idiot. Yet at the same time she--this
+veritable victim of the social temperament--in everyday life is very
+good-natured, yielding, entirely uncovetous and is very much ashamed of
+her inordinate passion. Toward her mates she is tender, likes very much
+to kiss and embrace them and sleep in the same bed with them, but still
+everybody has a little aversion for her, it would seem.
+
+"Mannechka, sweetie, dearie," says Pasha lightly touching Manya's hand
+with emotion, "tell my fortune, my precious little child."
+
+"We-ell," Manya pouts her lips just like a child, "let's play a little
+more."
+
+"Mannechka, my little beauty, you little good-looker, my precious, my
+own, my dear..."
+
+Manya gives in and lays out the pack on her knees. A suit of hearts
+comes out, a small monetary interest and a meeting in the suit of
+spades with a large company in the king of clubs.
+
+Pasha claps her hands joyously:
+
+"Ah, it's my Levanchik! Well, yes, he promised to come to-day. Of
+course, it's Levanchik."
+
+"That's your Georgian!"
+
+"Yes, yes, my little Georgian. Oh, how nice he is. I'd just love never
+to let him go away from me. Do you know what he told me the last time?
+'If you'll go on living in a sporting house, then I'll make both you
+dead, and make me dead.' And he flashed his eyes at me so!"
+
+Jennie, who had stopped near, listens to her words and asks haughtily:
+
+"Who was it said that?"
+
+"Why, my little Georgian, Levan. 'Both for you death and for me death.'"
+
+"Fool! He isn't any little Georgian at all, but simply a common
+Armenian. You're a crazy fool."
+
+"Oh no, he isn't--he's a Georgian. And it is quite strange on your
+part..."
+
+"I'm telling you--a common Armenian. I can tell better. Fool!"
+
+"What are you cursing for, Jennie? I didn't start cursing you first
+off, did I?"
+
+"You just try and be the first to start cursing! Fool! Isn't it all the
+same to you what he is? Are you in love with him, or what?"
+
+"Well, I am in love with him!"
+
+"Well, and you're a fool. And the one with the badge in his cap, the
+lame one--are you in love with him too?"
+
+"Well, what of it? I respect him very much. He is very respectable."
+
+"And with Nicky the Book-keeper? And with the contractor? And with
+Antoshka-Kartoshka?[4] And with the fat actor? Oo-ooh, you shameless
+creature!" Jennie suddenly cries out. "I can't look at you without
+disgust. You're a bitch! In your place, if I was such a miserable
+thing, I'd rather lay hands on myself, strangle myself with a cord from
+my corset. You vermin!"
+
+
+[4] Tony the Potato.--Trans.
+
+
+Pasha silently lowers her eyelashes over her tear-filled eyes. Manya
+tries to defend her.
+
+"Really, what are you carrying on like that for, Jennechka? What are
+you down on her like that for..."
+
+"Eh, all of you are fine!" Jennie sharply cuts her short. "No
+self-respect of any sort! Some scum comes along, buys you like a piece
+of meat, hires you like a cabby, at a fixed rate, for love for an hour,
+but you go all to pieces: 'Ah, my little lover! Ah, what unearthly
+passion!' Ugh!" she spat in disgust.
+
+She wrathfully turns her back upon them and continues to promenade on a
+diagonal through the room, swinging her hips and blinking at herself in
+every mirror.
+
+During this time Isaac Davidovich, the piano player, is still
+struggling with the refractory violinist.
+
+"Not that way, not that way, Isaiah Savvich. You throw the fiddle away
+for one little minute. Listen a little to me. Here is the tune."
+
+He plays with one finger and hums in that horrible goatish voice that
+all musical directors--for which calling he had been at one time
+preparing--possess.
+
+"Ess-tam, ess-tam, ess-tiam-tiam. Well, now, repeat after me the first
+part, first time off..... Well..... ein, zwei..."
+
+Their rehearsal is being attentively watched by the grey-eyed,
+round-faced, arch-browed Zoe, mercilessly bedaubed with cheap rouges
+and whiteners, leaning with her elbows on the pianoforte, and the
+slight Vera, with drink-ravaged face, in the costume of a jockey--in a
+round little cap with straight brim, in a little silk jacket, striped
+blue and white, in tightly stretched trunks and in little patent
+leather boots with yellow facings. And really, Vera does resemble a
+jockey, with her narrow face, in which the exceedingly sparkling blue
+eyes, under a smart bob coming down on the forehead, are set too near
+the humped, nervous, very handsome nose. When, at last, after long
+efforts the musicians agree, the somewhat small Verka walks up to the
+large Zoe, in that mincing, tethered walk, the hind part sticking out,
+and elbows spread as though for flight, with which only women in male
+costume can walk, and makes a comical masculine bow to her, spreading
+her arms wide and lowering them. And, with great enjoyment, they begin
+careering over the room.
+
+The nimble Niura, always the first to announce all the news, suddenly
+jumps down from the window sill, and calls out, spluttering from the
+excitement and hurry:
+
+"A swell carriage...has driven up...to Treppel ...with electricity...
+Oi, goils...may I die on the spot...there's electricity on the shafts."
+
+All the girls, save the proud Jennie, thrust themselves out of the
+windows. A driver with a fine carriage is indeed standing near the
+Treppel entrance. His brand-new, dashing victoria glistens with new
+lacquer; at the ends of the shafts two tiny electric lights burn with a
+yellow light; the tall white horse, with a bare pink spot on the septum
+of its nose, shakes its handsome head, shifts its feet on the same
+spot, and pricks up its thin ears; the bearded, stout driver himself
+sits on the coach-box like a carven image, his arms stretched out
+straight along his knees.
+
+"Oh, for a ride!" squeals Niura. "Oh, uncle! Oh you swell coachman!"
+she cries out, hanging over the window sill. "Give a poor little girlie
+a ride... Give us a ride for love."
+
+But the swell coachman laughs, makes a scarcely noticeable movement
+with his fingers, and immediately the white horse, as though it had
+been waiting just for that, starts from its place at a goodly trot,
+handsomely turns around and with measured speed floats away into the
+darkness together with the victoria and the broad back of the coachman.
+
+"Pfui! What indecency!" the indignant voice of Emma Edwardovna sounds
+in the room. "Well, where did you see that respectable girls should
+allow themselves to climb out of the windows and holler all over the
+street. O, scandal! And it's all Niura, and it's always this horrible
+Niura!"
+
+She is majestic in her black dress, with her yellow flabby face, with
+the dark pouches under her eyes, with the three pendulous, quivering
+chins. The girls, like boarding school misses, staidly seat themselves
+on the chairs along the walls, except Jennie, who continues to
+contemplate herself in all the mirrors. Two more cabbies drive up
+opposite, to the house of Sophia Vasilievna. Yama is beginning to liven
+up. At last one more victoria rattles along the paved road and its
+noise is cut short abruptly at the entrance to Anna Markovna's.
+
+The porter Simeon helps someone take off his things in the front hall.
+Jennie looks in there, holding on with both hands to the door jambs,
+but immediately turns back, and as she walks shrugs her shoulders and
+shakes her head negatively.
+
+"Don't know him, someone who's an entire stranger," she says in a low
+voice. "He has never been in our place. Some daddy or other, fat, in
+gold eye-glasses and a uniform."
+
+Emma Edwardovna commands in a voice which sounds like a summoning
+cavalry trumpet:
+
+"Ladies, into the drawing room! Into the drawing room, ladies!"
+
+One after the other, with haughty gaits, into the drawing room enter:
+Tamara, with bare white arms and bared neck, wound with a string of
+artificial pearls; fat Kitty with her fleshy, quadrangular face and low
+forehead--she, too, is in decollete, but her skin is red and in
+goose-pimples; Nina, the very newest one, pug-nosed and clumsy, in a
+dress the colour of a green parrot; another Manka--Big Manka, or Manka
+the Crocodile, as they call her, and--the last--Sonka the Rudder, a
+Jewess, with an ugly dark face and an extraordinarily large nose,
+precisely for which she has received her nickname, but with such
+magnificent large eyes, at the same time meek and sad, burning and
+humid, as, among the women of all the terrestrial globe, are to be
+found only among the Jewesses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The elderly guest in the uniform of the Department of Charity walked in
+with slow, undecided steps, at each step bending his body a little
+forward and rubbing his palms with a circular motion, as though washing
+them. Since all the women were pompously silent, as though not noticing
+him, he traversed the drawing room and let himself down on a chair
+alongside of Liuba, who, in accordance with etiquette, only gathered up
+her skirt a little, preserving the abstracted and independent air of a
+girl from a respectable house.
+
+"How do you do, miss?" he said.
+
+"How do you do?" answered Liuba abruptly.
+
+"How are you getting along?"
+
+"Thanks--thank you. Treat me to a smoke."
+
+"Pardon me--I don't smoke."
+
+"So that's how. A man--and he doesn't smoke, just like that. Well,
+then, treat me to some Lafitte with lemonade. I am terribly fond of
+Lafitte with lemonade."
+
+He let that pass in silence.
+
+"Ooh, what a stingy daddy! Where do you work, now? Are you one of the
+government clerks?"
+
+"No, I'm a teacher. I teach the German language."
+
+"But I have seen you somewhere, daddy. Your physiognomy is familiar to
+me. Where have I met you before?"
+
+"Well, now, I don't know, really. Unless it was on the street."
+
+"It might have been on the street, likely as not... You ought to treat
+me to an orange, at least. May I ask for an orange?"
+
+He again grew quiet, looking about him. His face began to glisten and
+the pimples on his forehead became red. He was mentally appraising all
+the women, choosing a likely one for himself, and was at the same time
+embarrassed by his silence. There was nothing at all to talk about;
+besides that the indifferent importunity of Liuba irritated him. Fat
+Katie pleased him with her large, bovine body, but she must be--he
+decided in his mind--very frigid in love, like all stout women, and in
+addition to that not handsome of face. Vera also excited him, with her
+appearance of a little boy, and her firm thighs, closely enveloped by
+the white tights; and Little White Manya, looking so like an innocent
+school-girl; and Jennie with her energetic, swarthy, handsome face. For
+one minute he was all ready to stop at Jennie, but only started in his
+chair and did not venture--by her easy, inaccessible and negligent air,
+and because she in all sincerity did not pay him the least attention,
+he surmised that she was the most spoilt of all the girls in the
+establishment, accustomed to having the visitors spend more money on
+her than on the others. But the pedagogue was a calculating man,
+burthened with a large family and an exhausted wife, destroyed by his
+masculine demands and suffering from a multiplicity of female ills.
+Teaching in a female high school and in an institute, he lived
+constantly in a sort of secret sensual delirium, and only his German
+training, stinginess and cowardice helped him to hold his constantly
+aroused desires in check. But two or three times a year, with
+incredible privations, he would cut five or ten roubles out of his
+beggarly budget, denying himself in his beloved evening mug of beer and
+contriving to save on the street cars, which necessitated his making
+enormous distances on foot through the town. This money he set aside
+for women and spent it slowly, with gusto, trying to prolong and
+cheapen down the enjoyment as much as possible. And for his money he
+wanted a very great deal, almost the impossible; his German sentimental
+soul dimly thirsted after innocence, timidity, poesy, in the flaxen
+image of Gretchen; but as a man he dreamt, desired, and demanded that
+his caresses should bring a woman into rapture and palpitation and into
+a sweet exhaustion.
+
+However, all the men strove for the very same thing--even the most
+wretched, monstrous, misshapen and impotent of them--and ancient
+experience had long ago taught the women to imitate with voice and
+movements the most flaming passion, retaining in the most tempestuous
+minutes the fullest sang froid.
+
+"You might at least order the musicians to play a polka. Let the girls
+dance a little," asked Liuba grumblingly.
+
+That suited him. Under cover of the music, amid the jostling of the
+dances, it was far more convenient to get up courage, arise, and lead
+one of the girls out of the drawing room, than to do it amid the
+general silence and the finical immobility.
+
+"And how much does that cost?" he asked cautiously.
+
+"A quadrille is half a rouble; but ordinary dances are thirty kopecks.
+Is it all right then?"
+
+"Well, of course...if you please...I don't begrudge it," he agreed,
+pretending to be generous...
+
+"Whom do you speak to?"
+
+"Why, over there--to the musicians."
+
+"Why not? ... I'll do it with pleasure...Mister musician, something in
+the light dances, if you please," he said, laying down his silver on
+the pianoforte.
+
+"What will you order?" asked Isaiah Savvich, putting the money away in
+his pocket. "Waltz, polka, polka-mazourka?"
+
+"Well...Something sort of..."
+
+"A waltz, a waltz!" Vera, a great lover of dancing, shouted from her
+place.
+
+"No, a polka! ... A waltz! ... A vengerka! ... A waltz!" demanded
+others.
+
+"Let them play a polka," decided Liuba in a capricious tone. "Isaiah
+Savvich, play a little polka, please. This is my husband, and he is
+ordering fox me," she added, embracing the pedagogue by the neck.
+"Isn't that true, daddy?"
+
+But he freed himself from under her arm, drawing his head in like a
+turtle, and she without the least offence went to dance with Niura.
+Three other couples were also whirling about. In the dances all the
+girls tried to hold the waist as straight as possible, and the head as
+immobile as possible, with a complete unconcern in their faces, which
+constituted one of the conditions of the good taste of the
+establishment. Under cover of the slight noise the teacher walked up to
+Little Manka.
+
+"Let's go?" he said, offering her his bent arm.
+
+"Let's go," answered she, laughing.
+
+She brought him into her room, gotten up with all the coquettishness of
+a bedroom in a brothel of the medium sort, with a bureau, covered with
+a knit scarf, and upon it a mirror, a bouquet of paper flowers, a few
+empty bonbonierres, a powder box, a faded photograph of a young man
+with white eyebrows and eyelashes and a haughtily astonished face, as
+well as several visiting cards. Above the bed, which is covered with a
+pink pique blanket, along the wall, is nailed up a rug with a
+representation of a Turkish sultan luxuriating in his harem, a narghili
+in his mouth; on the walls, several more photographs of dashing men of
+the waiter and actor type; a pink lantern hangs down from the ceiling
+by chains; there are also a round table under a carpet cover, three
+vienna chairs, and an enameled bowl with a pitcher of the same sort in
+the corner on a tabouret, behind the bed.
+
+"Darling, treat me to Lafitte with lemonade," in accordance with
+established usage asked Little Manka, unbuttoning her corsage.
+
+"Afterwards," austerely answered the pedagogue. "It will all depend
+upon yourself. And then--what sort of Lafitte can you have here? Some
+muddy brew or other?"
+
+"We have good Lafitte," contradicted the girl touchily. "Two roubles a
+bottle. But if you are so stingy, then buy me beer at least. All right?"
+
+"Well, beer is all right..."
+
+"And for me lemonade and oranges. Yes?"
+
+"A bottle of lemonade, yes; but oranges, no. Later, maybe, I will treat
+you to champagne even. It will all depend on you. If you'll exert
+yourself."
+
+"Then, daddy, I'll ask for four bottles of beer and two bottles of
+lemonade? Yes? And for me just a little cake of chocolate. All right?
+Yes?"
+
+"Two bottles of beer, a bottle of lemonade, and nothing more. I don't
+like when I'm bargained with. If need be, I'll order myself."
+
+"And may I invite a friend of mine?"
+
+"No, let it be without any friends, if you please."
+
+Manka leaned out of the door into the corridor and called out
+resoundingly:
+
+"Housekeeper, dear! Two bottles of beer and a bottle of lemonade for
+me."
+
+Simeon came with a tray and began with an accustomed rapidity to uncork
+the bottles. Following him came Zociya, the housekeeper.
+
+"There, now, how well you've made yourself at home here. Here's to your
+lawful marriage!" she congratulated them.
+
+"Daddy, treat the little housekeeper with beer," begged Manka. "Drink,
+housekeeper dear."
+
+"Well, in that case here's to your health, mister. Somehow, your face
+seems kind of familiar to me?"
+
+The German drank his beer, sucking and licking his moustache, and
+impatiently waited for the housekeeper to go away. But she, having put
+down her glass and thanked him, said:
+
+"Let me get the money coming from you, mister. As much as is coming for
+the beer and the time. That's both better for you and more convenient
+for us."
+
+The demand for the money went against the grain of the teacher, because
+it completely destroyed the sentimental part of his intentions. He
+became angry:
+
+"What sort of boorishness is this, anyway! It doesn't look as if I were
+preparing to run away from here. And besides, can't you discriminate
+between people at all? You can see that a man of respectability, in a
+uniform, has come to you, and not some tramp. What sort of importunity
+is this!"
+
+The housekeeper gave in a little.
+
+"Now, don't get offended, mister. Of course, you'll pay the young lady
+yourself for the visit. I don't think you will do her any wrong, she's
+a fine girl among us. But I must trouble you to pay for the beer and
+lemonade. I, too, have to give an account to the proprietress. Two
+bottles at fifty is a rouble and the lemonade thirty--a rouble thirty."
+
+"Good Lord, a bottle of beer fifty kopecks!" the German waxed
+indignant. "Why, I will get it in any beer-shop for twelve kopecks."
+
+"Well, then, go to a beer-shop if it's cheaper there," Zociya became
+offended. "But if you've come to a respectable establishment, the
+regular price is half a rouble. We don't take anything extra. There,
+that's better. Twenty kopecks change coming to you?"
+
+"Yes, change, without fail," firmly emphasized the German teacher. "And
+I would request of you that nobody else should enter."
+
+"No, no, no, what are you saying," Zociya began to bustle near the
+door. "Dispose yourself as you please, to your heart's content. A
+pleasant appetite to you."
+
+Manka locked the door on a hook after her and sat down on the German's
+knee, embracing him with her bare arm.
+
+"Are you here long?" he asked, sipping his beer. He felt dimly that
+that imitation of love which must immediately take place demanded some
+sort of psychic propinquity, a more intimate acquaintance, and on that
+account, despite his impatience, began the usual conversation, which is
+carried on by almost all men--when alone with prostitutes, and which
+compels the latter to lie almost mechanically, to lie without
+mortification, enthusiasm or malice, according to a single, very
+ancient stencil.
+
+"Not long, only the third month."
+
+"And how old are you?"
+
+"Sixteen," fibbed Little Manka, taking five years off her age.
+
+"O, such a young one!" the German wondered, and began, bending down and
+grunting, to take off his boots. "Then how did you get here?"
+
+"Well, a certain officer deprived me of my innocence there...near his
+birthplace. And it's terrible how strict my mamma is. If she was to
+find out, she'd strangle me with her own hands. Well, so then I ran
+away from home and got in here..."
+
+"And did you love that same officer, the one who was the first one,
+now?"
+
+"If I hadn't loved him, I wouldn't have gone to him. He promised to
+marry me, the scoundrel, but then managed to get what he was after, and
+abandoned me."
+
+"Well, and were you ashamed the first time?"
+
+"Of course, you'd be ashamed...How do you like it, daddy, with light or
+without light? I'll turn, down the lantern a little. All right?"
+
+"Well, and aren't you bored here? What do they call you?"
+
+"Manya. To be sure I'm bored. What sort of a life is ours!"
+
+The German kissed her hard on her lips and again asked:
+
+"And do you love the men? Are there men who please you? Who afford you
+pleasure?"
+
+"How shouldn't there be?" Manka started laughing. "I love the ones like
+you especially, such nice little fatties."
+
+"You love them? Eh? Why do you love them?"
+
+"Oh, I love them just so. You're nice, too."
+
+The German meditated for a few seconds, pensively sipping away at his
+beer. Then he said that which every man tells a prostitute in these
+moments preceding the casual possession of her body:
+
+"Do you know, Marichen, you also please me very much. I would willingly
+take you and set you up."
+
+"You're married," the girl objected, touching his ring.
+
+"Yes, but, you understand, I don't live with my wife; she isn't well,
+she can't fulfill her conjugal duties."
+
+"The poor thing! If she were to find out where you go, daddy, she would
+cry for sure."
+
+"Let's drop that. So, you know, Mary, I am always looking out for such
+a girl as you for myself, so modest and pretty. I am a man of means, I
+would find a flat with board for you, with fuel and light. And forty
+roubles a month pin money. Would you go?"
+
+"Why not go--I'd go."
+
+He kissed her violently, but a secret apprehension glided swiftly
+through his cowardly heart.
+
+"But are you healthy?" he asked in an inimical, quavering voice.
+
+"Why, yes, I am healthy. There's a doctor's inspection every Saturday
+in our place."
+
+After five minutes she went away from him, as she walked putting away
+in her stocking the earned money, on which, as on the first handsel,
+she had first spat, after a superstitious custom. There had been no
+further speech either about maintenance or natural liking. The German
+was left unsatisfied with the frigidity of Manka and ordered the
+housekeeper to be summoned to him.
+
+"Housekeeper dear, my husband demands your presence!" said Manya,
+coming into the drawing room and fixing her hair before a mirror.
+
+Zociya went away, then returned afterwards and called Pasha out into
+the corridor. Later she came back into the drawing room, but alone.
+
+"How is it, Manka, that you haven't pleased your cavalier?" she asked
+with laughter. "He complains about you: 'This,' he says, 'is no woman,
+but some log of wood, a piece of ice.' I sent him Pashka."
+
+"Eh, what a disgusting man!" Manka puckered up her face and spat aside.
+"Butts in with his conversations. Asks: 'Do you feel when I kiss you?
+Do you feel a pleasant excitement?' An old hound. 'I'll take you,' he
+says, 'and set you up!'"
+
+"They all say that," remarked Zoe indifferently.
+
+But Jennie, who since morning has been in an evil mood, suddenly flared
+up.
+
+"Oh, the sneak, the big, miserable sneak that he is!" she exclaimed,
+turning red and energetically putting her hands to her sides. "Why, I
+would take him, the old, dirty little beast, by the ear, then lead him
+up to the mirror and show him his disgusting snout. What? Good-looking,
+aren't you? And how much better you'll be when the spit will be running
+out of your mouth, and you'll cross your eyes, and begin to choke and
+rattle in the throat, and to snort right in the face of the woman. And
+for your damned rouble you want me to go all to pieces before you like
+a pancake, and that from your nasty love my eyes should pop out onto my
+forehead? Why, hit him in the snout, the skunk, in the snout! Until
+there's blood!"
+
+"O, Jennie! Stop it now! PFUI!" the susceptible Emma Edwardovna, made
+indignant by her tone, stopped her.
+
+"I won't stop!" she cut her short abruptly. But she grew quiet by
+herself and wrathfully walked away with distending nostrils and with
+fire in the darkened, handsome eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Little by little the drawing room was filling. There came Roly-Poly,
+long known to all Yama--a tall, thin, red-nosed, gray old man, in the
+uniform of a forest ranger, in high boots, with a wooden yard-stick
+always sticking out of his side-pocket. He passed whole days and
+evenings as a habitue of the billiard parlor in the tavern, always
+half-tipsy, shedding his little jokes, jingles and little sayings,
+acting familiarly with the porters, with the housekeepers and the
+girls. In the houses everybody from the proprietress to the
+chamber-maids--treated him with a bit of derision--careless, a trifle
+contemptuous, but without malice. At times he was even not without use:
+he could transmit notes from the girls to their lovers, and run over to
+the market or to the drug-store. Not infrequently, thanks to his
+loosely hung tongue and long extinguished self respect, he would worm
+himself into a gathering of strangers and increase their expenditures,
+nor did he carry elsewhere the money gotten as "loans" on such
+occasions, but spent it right here for women--unless, indeed, he left
+himself some change for cigarettes. And, out of habit, he was
+good-naturedly tolerated.
+
+"And here's Roly-Poly arrived," announced Niura, when he, having
+already managed to shake hands amicably with Simeon the porter, stopped
+in the doorway of the drawing room, lanky, in a uniform cap knocked at
+a brave slant over one side of his head. "Well, now, Roly-Poly, fire
+away!"
+
+"I have the honour to present myself," Roly-Poly immediately commenced
+to grimace, putting his hand up to his brim in military fashion, "a
+right honourable privy frequenter of the local agreeable
+establishments, Prince Bottlekin, Count Liquorkin, Baron
+Whoatinkevich-Giddapkovski--Mister Beethoven! Mister Chopin!" he
+greeted the musicians. "Play me something from the opera The Brave and
+Charming General Anisimov, or, A Hubbub in the Coolidor. My regards to
+the little political economist Zociya.[5] A-ha! Then you kiss only at
+Easter? We shall write that down. Ooh-you, my Tomalachka, my pitty-itty
+tootsicums!"
+
+
+[5] An untranslatable pun on Economochka, a diminutive for
+"housekeeper."--Trans.
+
+
+And so with jests and with pinches he went the round of all the girls
+and at last sat down alongside of the fat Katie, who put her fat leg
+upon his, leant with her elbow upon her knee, while upon the palm she
+laid her chin, and began to watch indifferently and closely the
+surveyor rolling a cigarette for himself.
+
+"And how is it that you don't ever get tired of it, Roly-Poly? You're
+forever rolling a coffin nail."
+
+Roly-Poly at once commenced to move his eye-brows and the skin of his
+scalp and began to speak in verse:
+
+    "Dear cigarette, my secret mate,
+    How can I help loving thee?
+    Not through mere whim, prompted by fate,
+    All have started smoking thee."
+
+"Why, Roly-Poly, but you are going to croak soon," said Kitty
+indifferently.
+
+"And a very simple matter, that."
+
+"Roly-Poly, say something still funnier, in verse," begged Verka.
+
+And at once, obediently, having placed himself in a funny pose, he
+began to declaim:
+
+    "Many stars are in the bright sky,
+    But to count them there's no way.
+    Yes, the wind whispers there can be,
+    But there really is no way.
+    Blossoming now are burdocks,
+    Now sing out the birds called cocks."
+
+Playing the tom-fool in this manner, Roly-Poly would sit whole evenings
+and nights through in the drawing rooms of the establishments. And
+through some strange psychic fellow feeling the girls counted him
+almost as one of their own; occasionally rendered him little temporary
+services and even bought him beer and vodka at their expense.
+
+Some time after Roly-Poly a large company of hairdressers, who were
+that day free from work, tumbled in. They were noisy, gay, but even
+here, in a brothel, did not cease their petty reckonings and
+conversations about closed and open theatrical benefits, about the
+bosses, about the wives of the bosses. All these were people corrupt to
+a sufficient degree, liars, with great hopes for the future--such as,
+for example, entering the service of some countess as a kept lover.
+They wanted to utilize to the widest possible extent their rather
+hard-earned money, and on that account decided to make a review of
+absolutely all the houses of Yama; only Treppel's they could not
+resolve to enter, as that was too swell for them. But at Anna
+Markovna's they at once ordered a quadrille and danced it, especially
+the fifth figure, where the gents execute a solo, perfectly, like real
+Parisians, even putting their thumbs in the arm holes of their vests.
+But they did not want to remain with the girls; instead, they promised
+to come later, when they had wound up the complete review of the
+brothels.
+
+And there also came and went government clerks of some sort; crisp
+young people in patent leather boots; several students; several
+officers, who were horribly afraid of losing their dignity in the eyes
+of the proprietress and the guests of the brothel. Little by little in
+the drawing room was created such a noisy, fumy setting that no one
+there any longer felt ill at ease. There came a steady visitor, the
+lover of Sonka the Rudder, who came almost every day and sat whole
+hours through near his beloved, gazed upon her with languishing
+oriental eyes, sighed, grew faint and created scenes for her because
+she lives in a brothel, because she sins against the Sabbath, because
+she eats meat not prepared in the orthodox Hebrew manner, and because
+she has strayed from the family and the great Hebrew church.
+
+As a usual thing--and this happened often--Zociya the housekeeper would
+walk up to him under cover of the hubbub and would say, twisting her
+lips:
+
+"Well, what are you sitting there for mister? Warming your behind? You
+might go and pass the time with the young lady."
+
+Both of them, the Jew and the Jewess, were by birth from Homel, and
+must have been created by God himself for a tender, passionate, mutual
+love; but many circumstances--as, for example, the pogrom which took
+place in their town, impoverishment, a complete confusion, fright--had
+for a time parted them. However, love was so great that the junior drug
+clerk Neiman, with great difficulty, efforts, and humiliations,
+contrived to find for himself the place of a junior in one of the local
+pharmacies, and had searched out the girl he loved. He was a real,
+orthodox Hebrew, almost fanatical. He knew that Sonka had been sold by
+her very mother to one of the buyers-up of live merchandise, knew many
+humiliating, hideous particulars of how she had been resold from hand
+to hand, and his pious, fastidious, truly Hebraic soul writhed and
+shuddered at these thoughts, but nevertheless love was above all. And
+every evening he would appear in the drawing room of Anna Markovna. If
+he was successful, at an enormous deprivation, in cutting out of his
+beggarly income some chance rouble, he would take Sonka into her room,
+but this was not at all a joy either for him or for her: after a
+momentary happiness--the physical possession of each other--they cried,
+reproached each other, quarreled with characteristic Hebraic,
+theatrical gestures, and always after these visits Sonka the Rudder
+would return into the drawing room with swollen, reddened eyelids.
+
+But most frequently of all he had no money, and would sit whole
+evenings through near his mistress, patiently and jealously awaiting
+her when Sonka through chance was taken by some guest. And when she
+would return and sit down beside him, he would, without being
+perceived, overwhelm her with reproaches, trying not to turn the
+general attention upon himself and without turning his head in her
+direction. And in her splendid, humid, Hebraic eyes during these
+conversations there was always a martyr-like but meek expression.
+
+There arrived a large company of Germans, employed in an optical shop;
+there also arrived a party of clerks from the fish and gastronomical
+store of Kereshkovsky, and two young people very well known in the
+Yamas--both bald, with sparse, soft, delicate hairs around the bald
+spots: Nicky the Book-keeper and Mishka the Singer--so were they both
+called in the houses. They also were met very cordially, just like Karl
+Karlovich of the optical shop and Volodka of the fish store--with
+raptures, cries and kisses, flattering to their self-esteem. The spry
+Niurka would jump out into the foyer, and, having informed herself as
+to who had come, would report excitedly, after her wont:
+
+    "Jennka, your husband has come!"
+
+Or:
+
+    "Little Manka, your lover has come!"
+
+And Mishka the Singer, who was no singer at all, but the owner of a
+drug warehouse, at once, upon entering, sang out in a vibrating,
+quavering, goatish voice:
+
+    "They fe-e-e-l the tru-u-u-u-uth!
+    Come thou daw-aw-aw-aw-ning..."
+
+which he perpetrated at every visit of his to Anna Markovna.
+
+Almost incessantly they played the quadrille, waltz, polka, and danced.
+There also arrived Senka--the lover of Tamara--but, contrary to his
+wont, he did not put on airs, did not go in for "ruination," did not
+order a funeral march from Isaiah Savvich, and did not treat the girls
+to chocolate ... For some reason he was gloomy, limped on his right
+leg, and sought to attract as little attention as possible--probably
+his professional affairs were at this time in a bad way. With a single
+motion of his head, while walking, he called Tamara out of the drawing
+room and vanished with her into her room. And there also arrived
+Egmont-Lavretzki the actor, clean-shaven, tall, resembling a court
+flunky with his vulgar and insolently contemptuous face.
+
+The clerks from the gastronomical store danced with all the ardour of
+youth and with all the decorum recommended by Herman Hoppe, the
+self-instructor of good manners. In this regard the girls also
+responded to their intentions. Both with these and with the others it
+was accounted especially decorous and well-bred to dance as rigidly as
+possible, keeping the arms hanging down, while the heads were raised
+high and inclined to one side with a certain proud, and, at the same
+time, tired and enervated air. In the intermissions, between the
+figures of the dance, it was necessary to fan one's self with a
+handkerchief, with a bored and negligent air ... In a word, they all
+made believe that they belonged to the choicest society, and that if
+they do dance, they only do it out of condescension, as a little
+comradely turn. But still they danced so ardently that the perspiration
+rolled down in streams from the clerks of Kereshkovsky.
+
+Two or three rows had already happened in different houses. Some man,
+all in blood, whose face in the pale light of the moon's crescent
+seemed black from the blood, was running around in the street, cursing,
+and, without paying the least attention to his wounds, was searching
+for his cap which had been lost in the brawl. On Little Yamskaya some
+government scribes had had a fight with a ship's company. The tired
+pianists and musicians played as in a delirium, in a doze, through
+mechanical habit. This was towards the waning of the night.
+
+Altogether unexpectedly, seven students, a sub-professor, and a local
+reporter walked into the establishment of Anna Markovna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+They had all, except the reporter, passed the whole day together, from
+the very morning, celebrating May Day with some young women of their
+acquaintance. They had rowed in boats on the Dnieper, had cooked field
+porridge on the other side of the river, in the thick, bitter-smelling
+underbrush; had bathed--men and women by turns--in the rapid, warm
+water; had drunk home-made spiced brandy, sung sonorous songs of Little
+Russia, and had returned to town only late in the evening, when the
+dark, broad, running river so eerily and merrily plashed against the
+sides of their boats, playing with the reflections of the stars, the
+silvery shimmering paths of the electric lamps, and the bowing lights
+of the can-buoys. And when they had stepped out on the shore, the palms
+of each burned from the oars, the muscles of the arms and legs ached
+pleasantly, and suffusing the whole body was a blissful, healthy
+fatigue.
+
+Then they had escorted the young women to their homes and at the
+garden-gates and entrances had taken leave of them long and cordially,
+with laughter and with such swinging hand-shakes as if they were
+working the lever of a pump.
+
+The whole day had passed in gaiety and noise, even a trifle
+clamorously, and just the least wee bit tiresomely, but with youth-like
+continence; without intoxication, and, which happens especially rarely,
+without the least shadow of mutual affronts, or jealousy, or unvoiced
+mortifications. Of course, such a benign mood had been helped by the
+sun, the fresh river breeze, the sweet exhalations of the grasses and
+the water, the joyous sensation of the strength and alertness of one's
+body while bathing and rowing, and the restraining influence of the
+clever, kind, pure and handsome girls from families they were
+acquainted with. But, almost without the knowledge of their
+consciousness, their sensuousness--not imagination, but the simple,
+healthy, instinctive sensuousness of young playful males--kindled from
+chance encounters of their hands with feminine hands and from comradely
+obliging embraces, when the occasion arose to help the young ladies
+enter a boat or jump out on shore; from the tender odour of maiden
+apparel, warmed by the sun; from the feminine cries of coquettish
+fright on the river; from the sight of feminine figures, negligently
+half-reclining with a naive immodesty on the green grass around the
+samovar--from all these innocent liberties, which are so usual and
+unavoidable on picnics, country outings and river excursions, when
+within man, in the infinite depth of his soul, secretly awakens from
+the care-free contact with earth, grasses, water and sun, the
+beast-ancient, splendid, free, but disfigured and intimidated of men.
+
+And for that reason, at two o'clock in the night, when THE SPARROWS, a
+cozy students' restaurant, had barely closed, and all the eight,
+excited by alcohol and the plentiful food, had come out of the smoky,
+fumy underground place into the street, into the sweet, disquieting
+darkness of the night, with its beckoning fires in the sky and on the
+earth, with its warm, heady air, from which the nostrils dilate avidly,
+with its aromas, gliding from unseen gardens and flower-beds,--the head
+of each one of them was aflame and the heart quietly and languishingly
+yearning from vague desires. It was joyous and arrogant to sense after
+the rest the new, fresh strength in all the sinews, the deep breathing
+of the lungs, the red, resilient blood in the veins, the supple
+obedience of all the members. And--without words, without thoughts,
+without consciousness--one was drawn on this night to be running
+without raiment in the somnolent forest, to be sniffing hurriedly the
+tracks of some one's feet on the dewy grass, with a loud call to be
+summoning a female unto one's self.
+
+But to separate was now very difficult. The whole day, passed together,
+had shaken them into an accustomed, tenacious herd. It seemed that if
+even one were to go away from the company, a certain attained
+equilibrium would be disturbed and could not be restored afterwards.
+And so they dallied and stamped upon the sidewalk, near the exit of the
+tavern's underground vault, interfering with the progress of the
+infrequent passers-by. They discussed hypocritically where else they
+might go to wind up the night. It proved to be too far to the Tivoli
+Garden, and in addition to that one also had to pay for admission
+tickets, and the prices in the buffet were outrageous, and the program
+had ended long ago. Volodya Pavlov proposed going to him--he had a
+dozen of beer and a little cognac home. But it seemed a bore to all of
+them to go in the middle of the night to a family apartment, to enter
+on tiptoes up the stairs and to talk in whispers all the time.
+
+"Tell you what, brethren ... Let's better ride to the girlies, that
+will be nearer the mark," said peremptorily Lichonin, an old student, a
+tall, stooping, morose and bearded fellow. By convictions he was an
+anarchist--theoretic, but by avocation a passionate gambler at
+billiards, races and cards--a gambler with a very broad, fatalistic
+sweep. Only the day before he had won a thousand roubles at macao in
+the Merchants' Club, and this money was still burning a hole in his
+pockets.
+
+"And why not? Right-o!" somebody sustained him. "Let's go, comrades?"
+
+"Is it worth while? Why, this is an all night affair ..." spoke another
+with a false prudence and an insincere fatigue.
+
+And a third said through a feigned yawn:
+
+"Let's better go home, gentlemen ... a-a-a ... go bye-bye ... That's
+enough for to-day."
+
+"You won't work any wonders when you're asleep," Lichonin remarked
+sneeringly. "Herr professor, are you coming?"
+
+But the sub-professor Yarchenko was obstinate and seemed really
+angered, although, perhaps, he himself did not know what was lurking
+within him, in some dark cranny of his soul.
+
+"Leave me in peace, Lichonin. As I see it, gentlemen, this is downright
+and plain swinishness--that which you are about to do. We have passed
+the time so wonderfully, amiably and simply, it seems,--but no, you
+needs must, like drunken cattle, clamber into a cesspool. I won't go."
+
+"Still, if my memory does not play me false," said Lichonin, with calm
+causticity, "I recollect that no further back than past autumn we with
+a certain future Mommsen were pouring in some place or other a jug of
+ice into a pianoforte, delineating a Bouratian god, dancing the
+belly-dance, and all that sort of thing?"
+
+Lichonin spoke the truth. In his student days, and later, being
+retained at the university, Yarchenko had led the most wanton and
+crack-brained life. In all the taverns, cabarets, and other places of
+amusement his small, fat, roundish little figure, his rosy cheeks,
+puffed out like those of a painted cupid, and the shining, humid kindly
+eyes were well known, his hurried, spluttering speech and shrill
+laughter remembered.
+
+His comrades could never fathom where he found the time to employ in
+study, but nevertheless he went through all examinations and prescribed
+work with distinction and from the first course the professors had him
+in view. Now Yarchenko was beginning little by little to quit his
+former comrades and bottle companions. He had just established the
+indispensable connections with the professorial circle; the reading of
+lectures in Roman history for the coming year had been offered him, and
+not infrequently in conversation he would use the expression current
+among the sub-professors: "We, the learned ones!" The student
+familiarity, the compulsory companionship, the obligatory participation
+in all meetings, protests and demonstrations, were becoming
+disadvantageous to him, embarrassing, and even simply tedious. But he
+knew the value of popularity among the younger element, and for that
+reason could not decide to sever relations abruptly with his former
+circle. Lichonin's words, however, provoked him.
+
+"Oh, my God, what does it matter what we did when we were youngsters?
+We stole sugar, soiled our panties, tore the wings off beetles,"
+Yarchenko began to speak, growing heated, and spluttering. "But there
+is a limit and a mean to all this. I, gentlemen, do not presume, of
+course, to give you counsels and to teach you, but one must be
+consistent. We are all agreed that prostitution is one of the greatest
+calamities of humanity, and are also agreed, that in this evil not the
+women are guilty, but we, men, because the demand gives birth to the
+offer. And therefore if, having drunk a glass of wine too much, I
+still, notwithstanding my convictions, go to the prostitutes, I am
+committing a triple vileness: before the unfortunate, foolish woman,
+whom I subject to the most degrading form of slavery for my filthy
+rouble; before humanity, because, hiring a public woman for an hour or
+two for my abominable lust, I through this justify and uphold
+prostitution; and finally, this is a vileness before one's own
+conscience and mind. And before logic."
+
+"Phew-ew!" Lichonin let out a long-drawn whistle and chanted in a thin,
+dismal voice, nodding in time with his head hanging down to one side:
+"The philosopher is off on our usual stuff: 'A rope--is a common cord.'"
+
+"Of course, there's nothing easier than to play the tom-fool,"
+responded Yarchenko. "But in my opinion there is not in the sorrowful
+life of Russia a more mournful phenomenon than this lackadaisicalness
+and vitiation of thought. To-day we will say to ourselves: Eh! It's all
+the same, whether I go to a brothel or whether I do not go, from this
+one time things will get neither worse nor better. And after five years
+we will be saying: Undoubtedly a bribe is a horribly nasty bit of
+business, but you know--children ... the family ... And just the same
+way after ten years we, having remained fortuitous Russian liberals,
+will be sighing about personal freedom and bowing low before worthless
+scoundrels, whom we despise, and will be cooling our heels in their
+ante-rooms. 'Because, don't you know,' we will say, tittering, 'when
+you live with wolves, you must howl like a wolf.' By God, it wasn't in
+vain that some minister called the Russian students future head-clerks!"
+
+"Or professors," Lichonin put in.
+
+"But most important of all," continued Yarchenko, letting this pointed
+remark pass by, "most important of all is this, that I have seen all of
+you to-day on the river and afterwards there ... on the other shore ...
+with these charming, fine girls. How attentive, well-bred, obliging you
+all were--but scarcely have you taken leave of them, when you are drawn
+to public women. Let each one of you imagine for a moment, that we all
+had been visiting his sisters and straight from them had driven to Yama
+... What? Is such a supposition pleasant?"
+
+"Yes, but there must exist some valves for the passions of society,"
+pompously remarked Boris Sobashnikov, a tall, somewhat supercilious and
+affected young man, upon whom the short, white summer uniform jacket,
+which scarcely covered his fat posteriors, the modish trousers, of a
+military cut, the PINCE-NEZ on a broad, black ribbon, and a cap after a
+Prussian model, all bestowed the air of a coxcomb. "Surely, it isn't
+more respectable to enjoy the caresses of your chambermaid, or to carry
+on an intrigue on the side with another man's wife? What am I to do if
+woman is indispensable to me!"
+
+"Eh, very indispensable indeed!" said Yarchenko with vexation and
+feebly made a despondent gesture.
+
+But here a student who was called Ramses in the friendly coterie
+intervened. This was a yellowish-swarthy, hump-nosed man of small
+stature; his clean-shaven face seemed triangular, thanks to a broad
+forehead, beginning to get bald, with two wedge-like bald spots at the
+temples, fallen-in cheeks and a sharp chin. He led a mode of life
+sufficiently queer for a student. While his colleagues employed
+themselves by turns with politics, love, the theatre, and a little in
+study, Ramses had withdrawn entirely into the study of all conceivable
+suits and claims, into the chicane subtleties of property, hereditary,
+land and other business law-suits, into the memorizing and logical
+analysis of quashed decisions. Perfectly of his own will, without in
+the least needing the money, he served for a year as a clerk at a
+notary's for another as a secretary to a justice of the peace, while
+all of the past year, being in the last term, he had conducted in a
+local newspaper the reports of the city council and had borne the
+modest duty of an assistant to a secretary in the management of a
+syndicate of sugar manufacturers. And when this same syndicate
+commenced the well-known suit against one of its members, Colonel
+Baskakov, who had put up the surplus sugar for sale contrary to
+agreement, Ramses from the very beginning guessed beforehand and very
+subtly engineered, precisely that decision which the senate
+subsequently handed down in this suit.
+
+Despite his comparative youth, rather well-known jurists gave heed to
+his opinions--true, a little loftily. None of those who knew Ramses
+closely doubted that he would make a brilliant career, and even Ramses
+himself did not conceal his confidence in that toward thirty-five he
+would knock together a million, exclusively through his practice as a
+civil lawyer. His comrades not infrequently elected him chairman of
+meetings and head of the class, but this honour Ramses invariably
+declined, excusing himself with lack of time. But still he did not
+avoid participation in his comrades' trials by arbitration, and his
+arguments--always incontrovertibly logical--were possessed of an
+amazing virtue in ending the trials with peace, to the mutual
+satisfaction of the litigating parties. He, as well as Yarchenko, knew
+well the value of popularity among the studying youths, and even if he
+did look upon people with a certain contempt, from above, still he
+never, by as much as a single movement of his thin, clever, energetical
+lips, showed this.
+
+"Well, Gavrila Petrovich, no one is necessarily dragging you into
+committing a fall from grace," said Ramses in a conciliatory manner,
+"What is all this pathos and melancholy for, when the matter as it
+stands is altogether simple? A company of young Russian gentlemen
+wishes to pass the remnant of the night modestly and amicably, to make
+merry, to sing a little, and to take internally several gallons of wine
+and beer. But everything is closed now, except these very same houses.
+ERGO! ..."
+
+"Consequently, we will go merry-making to women who are for sale? To
+prostitutes? Into a brothel?" Yarchenko interrupted him, mockingly and
+inimically.
+
+"And even so? A certain philosopher, whom it was desired to humiliate,
+was given a seat at dinner near the musicians. But he, sitting down,
+said: 'Here is a sure means of making the last place the first.' And
+finally I repeat: If your conscience does not allow you, as you express
+yourself, to buy a woman, then you can go there and come away,
+preserving your innocence in all its blossoming inviolability."
+
+"You overdo it, Ramses," objected Yarchenko with displeasure. "You
+remind me of those bourgeois, who, while it is still dark, have
+gathered to gape at an execution and who say: we have nothing to do
+with this, we are against capital punishment, this is all the
+prosecuting attorney's and the executioner's doing."
+
+"Superbly said and partly true, Gavrila Petrovich. But to us,
+precisely, this comparison may not even apply. One cannot, you see,
+treat some malignant disease while absent, without seeing the sufferer
+in person. And yet all of us, who are now standing here in the street
+and interfering with the passers-by, will be obliged at some time in
+our work to run up against the terrible problem of prostitution, and
+what a prostitution at that--the Russian! Lichonin, I, Borya
+Sobashnikov and Pavlov as jurists, Petrovsky and Tolpygin as medicos.
+True, Veltman has a distinct specialty--mathematics. But then, he will
+be a pedagogue, a guide of youth, and, deuce take it, even a father!
+And if you are going to scare with a bugaboo, it is best to look upon
+it one's self first. And finally, you yourself, Gavrila
+Petrovich--expert of dead languages and future luminary of grave
+digging--is the comparison, then, of the contemporary brothels, say,
+with some Pompeian lupanaria, or the institution of sacred prostitution
+in Thebes and Nineveh, not important and instructive to you? ..."
+
+"Bravo, Ramses, magnificent!" roared Lichonin. "And what's there to
+talk so much about, fellows? Take the professor under the gills and put
+him in a cab!"
+
+The students, laughing and jostling, surrounded Yarchenko, seized him
+under the arms, caught him around the waist. All of them were equally
+drawn to the women, but none, save Lichonin, had enough courage to take
+the initiative upon himself. But now all this complicated, unpleasant
+and hypocritical business was happily resolved into a simple, easy joke
+upon the older comrade. Yarchenko resisted, and was angry, and
+laughing, trying to break away. But at this moment a tall,
+black-moustached policeman, who had long been eyeing them keenly and
+inimically, walked up to the uproarious students.
+
+"I'd ask you stewdent gents not to congregate. It's not allowed! Keep
+on going!"
+
+They moved on in a throng. Yarchenka was beginning to soften little by
+little.
+
+"Gentlemen, I am ready to go with you, if you like ... Do not think,
+however, that the sophistries of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses have
+convinced me ... No, I simply would be sorry to break up the party ...
+But I make one stipulation: we will drink a little there, gab a little,
+laugh a little, and so forth ... but let there be nothing more, no
+filth of any kind ... It is shameful and painful to think that we, the
+flower and glory--of the Russian intelligentzia, will go all to pieces
+and let our mouths water at the sight of the first skirt that comes our
+way."
+
+"I swear it!" said Lichonin, putting up his hand.
+
+"I can vouch for myself," said Ramses.
+
+"And I! And I! By God, gentlemen, let's pledge our words ... Yarchenko
+is right," others took up.
+
+They seated themselves in twos and threes in the cabs--the drivers of
+which had been long since following them in a file, grinning and
+cursing each other--and rode off. Lichonin, for the sake of assurance,
+sat down beside the sub-professor, having embraced him around the waist
+and seated him on his knees and those of his neighbour, the little
+Tolpygin, a rosy, pleasant-faced boy on whose face, despite his
+twenty-three years, the childish white down--soft and light--still
+showed.
+
+"The station is at Doroshenko's!" called out Lichonin after the cabbies
+driving off. "The stop is at Doroshenko's," he repeated, turning around.
+
+They all stopped at Doroshenko's restaurant, entered the general room,
+and crowded about the bar. All were satiated and no one wanted either
+to drink or to have a bite. But in the soul of each one still remained
+a dark trace of the consciousness that right now they were getting
+ready to commit something needlessly shameful, getting ready to take
+part in some convulsive, artificial, and not at all a merry merriment.
+And in each one was the yearning to bring himself through intoxication
+to that misty and rainbow condition when nothing makes any difference,
+and when the head does not know what the arms and legs are doing, and
+what the tongue is babbling. And, probably, not the students alone, but
+all the casual and constant visitors of Yama experienced in greater or
+lesser degree the friction of this inner psychic heart-sore, because
+Doroshenko did business only late in the evening and night, and no one
+lingered long in his place but only turned in in passing, half-way on
+the journey.
+
+While the students were drinking cognac, beer and vodka, Ramses was
+constantly and intently looking into the farthest corner of the
+restaurant hall, where two men were sitting--a tattered, gray, big old
+man, and, opposite him, his back to the bar, with his elbows spread out
+upon the table and his chin resting on the fists folded upon each
+other, some hunched up, stout, closely-propped gentleman in a gray
+suit. The old man was picking upon a dulcimer lying before him and
+quietly singing, in a hoarse but pleasing voice:
+
+     "Oh my valley, my little valley,
+     Bro-o-o-o-o-oad land of plenty."
+
+"Excuse me, but that is a co-worker of ours," said Ramses, and went to
+greet the gentleman in the gray suit. After a minute he led him up to
+the bar and introduced him to his comrades.
+
+"Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you my companion in arms in the
+newspaper game, Sergei Ivanovich Platonov. The laziest and most
+talented of newspaper workers."
+
+They all introduced themselves, indistinctly muttering out their names.
+
+"And therefore, let's have a drink," said Uchonin, while Yarchenko
+asked with the refined amiability which never forsook him:
+
+"Pardon me, pardon me, but I am acquainted with you a little, even
+though not personally. Weren't you in the university when Professor
+Priklonsky defended the doctor's dissertation?"
+
+"It was I," answered the reporter.
+
+"Ah, that's very nice," smiled Yarchenko charmingly, and for some
+reason once more pressed Platonov's hand vigorously. "I read your
+report afterwards: very exactly, circumstantially and skillfully put
+together ... Won't you favor me? ... To your health!"
+
+"Then allow me, too," said Platonov. "Onuphriy Zakharich, pour out for
+us again ... one ... two, three, four ... nine glasses of cognac..."
+
+"Oh no, you can't do that ... you are our guest, colleague,"
+remonstrated Lichonin.
+
+"Well, now, what sort of colleague am I to you?" good-naturedly laughed
+the reporter. "I was only in the first class and then only for half a
+year--as an unmatriculated student. Here you are, Onuphriy Zakharich.
+Gentlemen, I beg you..."
+
+The upshot of it was that after half an hour Lichonin and Yarchenko did
+not under any consideration want to part with the reporter and dragged
+him with them to Yama. However, he did not resist.
+
+"If I am not a burden to you, I would be very glad," he said simply.
+"All the more since I have easy money to-day. THE DNIEPER WORD has paid
+me an honorarium, and this is just as much of a miracle as winning two
+hundred thousand on a check from a theatre coat room. Pardon me, I'll
+be right back..."
+
+He walked up to the old man with whom he had been sitting before,
+shoved some money into his hand, and gently took leave of him.
+
+"Where I'm going, grandpa, there you mustn't go--to-morrow we will meet
+in the same place as to-day. Good-bye!"
+
+They all walked out of the restaurant. At the door Borya Sobashnikov,
+always a little finical and unnecessarily supercilious, stopped
+Lichonin and called him to one side.
+
+"I'm surprised at you, Lichonin," he said squeamishly. "We have
+gathered together in our own close company, yet you must needs drag in
+some vagabond. The devil knows who he is!"
+
+"Quit that, Borya," answered Lichonin amicably. "He's a warm-hearted
+fellow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+"Well now, gentlemen, this isn't fit for pigs," Yarchenko was saying,
+grumblingly, at the entrance of Anna Markovna's establishment. "If we
+finally have gone, we might at least have chosen a decent place, and
+not some wretched hole. Really, gentlemen, let's better go to Treppel's
+alongside; there it's clean and light, at any rate."
+
+"If you please, if you please, signior," insisted Lichonin, opening the
+door before the sub-professor with courtly urbanity, bowing and
+spreading his arms before him. "If you please."
+
+"But this is an abomination ... At Treppel's the women are
+better-looking, at least."
+
+Ramses, walking behind, burst into dry laughter.
+
+"So, so, Gavrila Petrovich. Let us continue in the same spirit. Let us
+condemn the hungry, petty thief who has stolen a five-kopeck loaf out
+of a tray, but if the director of a bank has squandered somebody else's
+million on race horses and cigars, let us mitigate his lot."
+
+"Pardon me, but I do not understand this comparison," answered
+Yarchenko with restraint. "However, it's all the same to me; let's go."
+
+"And all the more so," said Lichonin, letting the subprofessor pass
+ahead; "all the more so, since this house guards within it so many
+historical traditions. Comrades! Decades of student generations gaze
+upon us from the heights of the coat-hooks, and, besides that, through
+the power of the usual right, children and students pay half here, as
+in a panopticon. Isn't that so, citizen Simeon?"
+
+Simeon did not like to have people come in large parties--this always
+smacked of scandal in the not distant future; moreover, he despised
+students in general for their speech, but little comprehensible to him,
+for their propensity towards frivolous jokes, for their godlessness,
+and chiefly because they were in constant revolt against officialdom
+and order. It was not in vain that on the day when on the Bessarabian
+Square the cossacks, meat-sellers, flour dealers and fish mongers were
+massacring the students, Simeon having scarce found it out had jumped
+into a fine carriage passing by, and, standing just like a chief of
+police in the victoria, tore off to the scene of the fray in order to
+take part in it. He esteemed people who were sedate, stout and elderly,
+who came singly, in secret, peeped in cautiously from the ante-room
+into the drawing room, fearing to meet with acquaintances, and very
+soon and with great haste went away, tipping him generously. Such he
+always styled "Your Excellency."
+
+And so, while taking the light grey overcoat off Yarchenko, he sombrely
+and with much significance snarled back in answer to Lichonin's banter:
+
+"I am no citizen here, but the bouncer."
+
+"Upon which I have the honour to congratulate you," answered Lichonin
+with a polite bow.
+
+There were many people in the drawing room. The clerks, having danced
+their fill, were sitting, red and wet, near their ladies, rapidly
+fanning themselves with their handkerchiefs; they smelt strongly of old
+goats' wool. Mishka the Singer and his friend the Book-keeper, both
+bald, with soft, downy hairs around the denuded skulls, both with
+turbid, nacreous, intoxicated eyes, were sitting opposite each other,
+leaning with their elbows on a little marble table, and were constantly
+trying to start singing in unison with such quavering and galloping
+voices as though some one was very, very often striking them in the
+cervical vertebrae:
+
+    "They fe-e-e-l the tru-u-u-u-uth!"
+
+while Emma Edwardovna and Zociya with all their might were exhorting
+them not to behave indecently. Roly-Poly was peacefully slumbering on a
+chair, his head hanging down, having laid one long leg over the other
+and grasped the sharp knee with his clasped hands.
+
+The girls at once recognized some of the students and ran to meet them.
+
+"Tamarochka, your husband has come--Volodenka. And my husband
+too!--Mishka!" cried Niura piercingly, hanging herself on the neck of
+the lanky, big-nosed, solemn Petrovsky. "Hello, Mishenka. Why haven't
+you come for so long? I grew weary of waiting for you."
+
+Yarchenko with a feeling of awkwardness was looking about him on all
+sides.
+
+"We'd like to have in some way ... don't you know ... a little private
+room," he said with delicacy to Emma Edwardovna who had approached.
+"And give us some sort of red wine, please ... And then, some coffee as
+well ... You know yourself."
+
+Yarchenko always instilled confidence in servants and MAITRES D'HOTEL,
+with his dashing clothes and polite but seigniorial ways. Emma
+Edwardovna started nodding her head willingly, just like an old, fat
+circus horse.
+
+"It can be done ... it can be done ... Pass this way, gentlemen, into
+the parlor. It can be done, it can be done ... What liqueur? We have
+only Benedictine ... Benedictine, then? It can be done, it can be done
+... And will you allow the young ladies to come in?"
+
+"Well, if that is so indispensable?" Yarchenko spread out his hands
+with a sigh.
+
+And at once the girls one after the other straggled into the parlor
+with its gray plush furniture and blue lantern. They entered, extended
+to every one in turn their unbending palms, unused to hand-clasps, gave
+their names abruptly in a low voice--Manya, Katie, Liuba ... They sat
+down on somebody's knees, embraced him around the neck, and, as usual,
+began to importune:
+
+"Little student, you're such a little good-looker. May I ask for
+oranzes?"
+
+"Volodenka, buy me some candy! All right?"
+
+"And me chocolate!"
+
+"Fatty," Vera, dressed as a jockey, wheedled the sub-professor,
+clambering up on his knees, "I have a friend, only she's sick and can't
+come out into the drawing room. I'll carry her some apples and
+chocolate. Will you let me?"
+
+"Well, now, those are all just stories about a friend! But above all,
+don't be thrusting your tenderness at me. Sit as smart children sit,
+right here alongside, on the arm chair, just so. And fold your little
+hands."
+
+"Ah, but what if I can't!" writhed Vera in coquetry, rolling her eyes
+up under her upper lids ... "When you are so nice."
+
+But Lichonin, in answer to this professional beggary, only nodded his
+head gravely and good-naturedly, just like Emma Edwardovna, and
+repeated over and over again, mimicking her German accent:
+
+"Itt can pe done, itt can pe done, itt can pe done..."
+
+"Then I will tell the waiter, honey, to carry my friend some sweets and
+apples?" pestered Vera.
+
+Such importunity entered the round of their tacit duties. There even
+existed among the girls some captious, childish, strange rivalry as to
+the ability to "ease a guest of his money"--strange enough because they
+did not derive any profit out of this, unless, indeed, a certain
+affection from the housekeeper or a word of approbation from the
+proprietress. But in their petty, monotonous, habitually frivolous life
+there was, in general, a great deal of semi-puerile, semi-hysterical
+play.
+
+Simeon brought a coffee pot, cups, a squatty bottle of Benedictine,
+fruits and bon-bons in glass vases, and gaily and easily began making
+the corks of the beer and wine pop.
+
+"But why don't you drink?" Yarchenko turned to the reporter Platonov.
+"Allow me ... I do not mistake? Sergei Ivanovich, I believe?"
+
+"Right."
+
+"Allow me to offer you a cup of coffee, Sergei Ivanovich. It's
+refreshing. Or perhaps, let's drink this same dubious Lafitte?"
+
+"No, you really must allow me to refuse. I have a drink of my own ...
+Simeon, give me..."
+
+"Cognac!" cried out Niura hurriedly.
+
+"And with a pear!" Little White Manka caught up just as fast.
+
+"I heard you, Sergei Ivanich--right away," unhurriedly but respectfully
+responded Simeon, and, bending down and letting out a grunt,
+resoundingly drew the cork out of the neck of the bottle.
+
+"It's the first time I hear of cognac being served in Yama," uttered
+Lichonin with amazement. "No matter how much I asked, they always
+refused me."
+
+"Perhaps Sergei Ivanich knows some sort of magic word," jested Ramses.
+
+"Or is held here in an especially honoured state?" Boris Sobashnikov
+put in pointedly, with emphasis.
+
+The reporter listlessly, without turning his head, looked askance at
+Sobashnikov, at the lower row of buttons on his short, foppish, white
+summer uniform jacket, and answered with a drawl:
+
+"There is nothing honourable in that I can drink like a horse and never
+get drunk; but then, I also do not quarrel with anyone or pick upon
+anybody. Evidently, these good sides of my character are sufficiently
+known here, and because of that confidence is shown me."
+
+"Good for you, old fellow!" joyously exclaimed Lichonin, who was
+delighted by a certain peculiar, indolent negligence--of few words, yet
+at the same time self-confident--in the reporter. "Will you share the
+cognac with me also?"
+
+"Very, very gladly," affably answered Platonov and suddenly looked at
+Lichonin with a radiant, almost child-like smile, which beautified his
+plain face with the prominent cheek-bones. "You, too, appealed to me
+from the first. And even when I saw you there, at Doroshenko's, I at
+once thought that you are not at all as rough as you seem."
+
+"Well, now, we have exchanged pleasantries," laughed Lichonin. "But
+it's amazing that we haven't met once just here. Evidently, you come to
+Anna Markovna's quite frequently?"
+
+"Even too much so."
+
+"Sergei Ivanich is our most important guest!" naively shrieked Niura.
+"Sergei Ivanich is a sort of brother among us!"
+
+"Fool!" Tamara stopped her.
+
+"That seems strange to me," continued Lichonin. "I, too, am a habitue.
+In any case, one can only envy everybody's cordiality toward you."
+
+"The local chieftain!" said Boris Sobashnikov, curling his lips
+downward, but said it so low that Platanov, if he chose to, could
+pretend that he had not heard anything distinctly. This reporter had
+for long aroused in Boris some blind and prickling irritation. That he
+was not one of his own herd really meant nothing. But Boris, like many
+students (and also officers, junkers, and high-school boys) had grown
+accustomed to the fact that the outside "civilian" people, who
+accidentally fell into a company of students on a spree, should hold
+themselves somewhat subordinately and with servility in it, flatter the
+studying youths, be struck with its daring, laugh at its jokes, admire
+its self-admiration, recall their own student years with a sigh of
+suppressed envy. But in Platonov there not only was none of this
+customary wagging of the tail before youth, but, on the contrary, there
+was to be felt a certain abstracted, calm and polite indifference.
+
+Besides that, Sobashnikov was angered--and angered with a petty,
+jealous vexation--by that simple and yet anticipatory attention which
+was shown to the reporter by everybody in the establishment, beginning
+with the porter and ending with the fleshy, taciturn Katie. This
+attention was shown in the way he was listened to, in that triumphal
+carefulness with which Tamara filled his glass, and in the way Little
+White Manka pared a pear for him solicitously, and in the delight of
+Zoe, who had caught the case skillfully thrown to her across the table
+by the reporter, when she had vainly asked for a cigarette from her two
+neighbors, who were lost in conversation; and in the way none of the
+girls begged either chocolate or fruits from him, in the lively
+gratitude for his little services and his treating. "Pimp!" Sobashkinov
+had almost decided mentally with malice, but did not believe it even
+himself--the reporter was altogether too homely and too carelessly
+dressed, and moreover he bore himself with great dignity.
+
+Platonov again made believe that he had not heard the insolent remark
+made by the student. He only nervously crumpled a napkin in his fingers
+and lightly threw it aside from him. And again his eyelids quivered in
+the direction of Boris Sobashnikov.
+
+"Yes, true, I am one of the family here," he continued calmly, moving
+his glass in slow circles on the table. "Just think, I dined in this
+very house, day after day, for exactly four months."
+
+"No? Seriously?" Yarchenko wondered and laughed.
+
+"In all seriousness. The table here isn't at all bad, by the way. The
+food is filling and savory, although exceedingly greasy."
+
+"But how did you ever..."
+
+"Why, just because I was tutoring for high school a daughter of Anna
+Markovna, the lady of this hospitable house. Well, I stipulated that
+part of my monthly pay should be deducted for my dinners."
+
+"What a strange fancy!" said Yarchenko. "And did you do this of your
+own will? Or ... Pardon me, I am afraid of seeming indiscreet to you
+... Perhaps at that time ... extreme necessity? ..."
+
+"Not at all. Anna Markovna soaked me three times as much as it would
+have cost in a student's dining room. I simply wanted to live here a
+while on a somewhat nearer, closer footing, to enter intimately into
+this little world, so to speak."
+
+"A-ah! It seems I am beginning to understand!" beamed Yarchenko. "Our
+new friend--pardon me for the little familiarity--is, apparently,
+gathering material from life? And, perhaps, in a few years we will have
+the pleasure of reading ..."
+
+"A t-r-ragedy out of a brothel!" Boris Sobashnikov put in loudly, like
+an actor.
+
+While the reporter had been answering Yarchenko, Tamara quietly got up
+from her place, walked around the table, and, bending down over
+Sobashnikov, spoke in a whisper in his ear:
+
+"Dearie, sweetie, you'd better not touch this gentleman. Honest to God,
+it will be better for you, even."
+
+"Wass that?" the student looked at her superciliously, fixing his
+PINCE-NEZ with two spread fingers. "Is he your lover? Your pimp?"
+
+"I swear by anything you want that not once in his life has he stayed
+with any one of us. But, I repeat, don't pick on him."
+
+"Why, yes! Why, of course!" retorted Sobashnikov, grimacing scornfully.
+"He has such a splendid defense as the entire brothel. And it's a sure
+thing that all the bouncers on Yamskaya are his near friends and
+cronies."
+
+"No, not that," retorted Tamara in a kind whisper. "Only he'll take you
+by the collar and throw you out of the window, like a puppy. I've
+already seen such an aerial flight. God forbid its happening to anyone.
+It's disgraceful, and bad for the health."
+
+"Get out of here, you filth!" yelled Sobashnikov, swinging his elbow at
+her.
+
+"I'm going, dearie," meekly answered Tamara, and walked away from him
+with her light step.
+
+Everybody for an instant turned toward the student.
+
+"Behave yourself, barberry!" Lichonin threatened him with his finger.
+"Well, well, go on," he begged the reporter; "all that you're saying is
+so interesting."
+
+"No, I'm not gathering anything," continued the reporter calmly and
+seriously. "But the material here is in reality tremendous, downright
+crushing, terrible ... And not at all terrible are the loud phrases
+about the traffic in women's flesh, about the white slaves, about
+prostitution being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on, and
+so on ... an old hurdy-gurdy of which all have tired! No, horrible are
+the everyday, accustomed trifles, these business-like, daily,
+commercial reckonings, this thousand year old science of amatory
+practice, this prosaic usage, determined by the ages. In these
+unnoticeable nothings are completely dissolved such feelings as
+resentment, humiliation, shame. There remains a dry profession, a
+contract, an agreement, a well-nigh honest petty trade, no better, no
+worse than, say, the trade in groceries. Do you understand, gentlemen,
+that all the horror is in just this, that there is no horror! Bourgeois
+work days--and that is all. And also an after taste of an exclusive
+educational institution, with its NAIVETE, harshness, sentimentality
+and imitativeness."
+
+"That's right," confirmed Lichonin, while the reporter continued,
+gazing pensively into his glass:
+
+"We read in the papers, in leading articles, various wailings of
+anxious souls. And the women-physicians are also endeavouring in this
+matter, and endeavouring disgustingly enough. 'Oh, dear, regulation!
+Oh, dear, abolition! Oh, dear, live merchandise! A condition of
+slavery! The mesdames, these greedy haeterae! These heinous degenerates
+of humanity, sucking the blood of prostitutes!' ... But with clamour
+you will scare no one and will affect no one. You know, there's a
+little saying: much cry, little wool. More awful than all awful
+words--a hundredfold more awful--is some such little prosaic stroke or
+other as will suddenly knock you all in a heap, like a blow on the
+forehead. Take even Simeon, the porter here. It would seem, according
+to you, there is no sinking lower--a bouncer in a brothel, a brute,
+almost certainly a murderer, he plucks the prostitutes, gives them
+"black eyes," to use a local expression--that is, just simply beats
+them. But, do you know on what grounds he and I came together and
+became friendly? On the magnificent details of the divine service of
+the prelate, on the canon of the honest Andrew, pastor of Crete, on the
+works of the most beatific father, John the Damascene. He is
+religious--unusually so! I used to lead him on, and he would sing to me
+with tears in his eyes: 'Come ye brethren, and we will give the last
+kiss to him who has gone to his rest...' From the ritual of the burial
+of laymen. No, just think: it is only in the Russian soul alone that
+such contradictions may dwell together!"
+
+"Yes. A fellow like that will pray, and pray, then cut a throat, and
+then wash his hands and put a candle before an image," said Ramses.
+
+"Just so. I know of nothing more uncanny than this fusion of fully
+sincere devoutness with an innate leaning toward crime. Shall I confess
+to you? I, when I talk all alone to Simeon--and we talk with each other
+long and leisurely, for hours--I experience at moments a genuine
+terror. A superstitious terror! Just as though, for instance, I am
+standing in the dusk upon a shaking little board, bending over some
+dark, malodorous well, and just barely distinguish how there, at the
+bottom, reptiles are stirring. And yet, he is devout in a real way, and
+I am sure will some time join the monks and will be a great faster and
+sayer of prayers, and the devil knows how, in what monstrous fashion, a
+real religious ecstasy will entwine in his soul with blasphemy, with
+scoffing at sacred things, with some repulsive passion or other, with
+sadism or something else of that nature!"
+
+"However, you do not spare the object of your observations," said
+Yarchenko, and carefully indicated the girls with his eyes.
+
+"Eh, it's all the same. Our relations are cool now."
+
+"How so?" asked Volodya Pavlov, who had caught the end of the
+conversation.
+
+"Just so ... It isn't even worth the telling..." smiled the reporter
+evasively. "A trifle ... Let's have your glass here, Mr. Yarchenko."
+
+But the precipitate Niura, who could never keep her tongue behind her
+teeth, suddenly shot oat in rapid patter:
+
+"It's because Sergei Ivanich gave him one in the snout ... On account
+of Ninka. A certain old man came to Ninka ... And stayed for the night
+... And Ninka had the flowers ... And the old man was torturing her all
+the time ... So Ninka started crying and ran away."[6]
+
+
+[6] The Russian expression is "the red flag."--TRANS.
+
+
+"Drop it, Niura; it's boring," said Platonov with a wry face.
+
+"Can it!" (leave off) ordered Tamara severely, in the jargon of houses
+of prostitution.
+
+But it was impossible to stop Niura, who had gotten a running start.
+
+"But Ninka says: 'I,' she says, 'won't stay with him for anything,
+though you cut me all to pieces ... He,' she says, 'has made me all wet
+with his spit.' Well, the old man complained to the porter, to be sure,
+and the porter starts in to beat up Ninka, to be sure. And Sergei
+Ivanich at this time was writing for me a letter home, to the province,
+and when he heard that Ninka was hollering..."
+
+"Zoe, shut her mouth!" said Platonov.
+
+"He just jumped up at once and ... app! ..." and Niura's torrent
+instantly broke off, stopped up by Zoe's palm.
+
+Everybody burst out laughing, only Boris Sobashnikov muttered under
+cover of the noise with a contemptuous look:
+
+"OH, CHEVALIER SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE!"
+
+He was already pretty far gone in drink, stood leaning against the
+wall, in a provoking pose, and was nervously chewing a cigarette.
+
+"Which Ninka is this?" asked Yarchenko with curiosity. "Is she here?"
+
+"No, she isn't here. Such a small, pug-nosed little girl. Naive and
+very angry." The reporter suddenly and sincerely burst into laughter.
+"Excuse me ... It's just so ... over my thoughts," explained he through
+laughter. "I recalled this old man very vividly just now, as he was
+running along the corridor in fright, having grabbed his outer clothing
+and shoes ... Such a respectable ancient, with the appearance of an
+apostle, I even know where he serves. Why, all of you know him. But the
+funniest of all was when he, at last, felt himself out of danger in the
+drawing room. You understand--he is sitting on a chair, putting on his
+pantaloons, can't put his foot where it ought to go, by any means, and
+bawls all over the house: 'It's an outrage! This is an abominable dive!
+I'll show you up! ... To-morrow I'll give you twenty-four hours to
+clear out! ... Do you know, this combination of pitiful helplessness
+with the threatening cries was so killing that even the gloomy Simeon
+started laughing ... Well, now, apropos of Simeon ... I say, that life
+dumfounds, with its wondrous muddle and farrago, makes one stand
+aghast. You can utter a thousand sonorous words against souteneurs, but
+just such a Simeon you will never think up. So diverse and motley is
+life! Or else take Anna Markovna, the proprietress of this place. This
+blood-sucker, hyena, vixen and so on ... is the tenderest mother
+imaginable. She has one daughter--Bertha, she is now in the fifth grade
+of high school. If you could only see how much careful attention, how
+much tender care Anna Markovna expends that her daughter may not
+somehow, accidentally, find out about her profession. And everything is
+for Birdie, everything is for the sake of Birdie. And she herself dare
+not even converse before her, is afraid of her lexicon of a bawd and an
+erstwhile prostitute, looks into her eyes, holds herself servilely,
+like an old servant, like a foolish, doting nurse, like an old,
+faithful, mange-eaten poodle. It is long since time for her to retire
+to rest, because she has money, and because her occupation is both
+arduous and troublesome, and because her years are already venerable.
+But no and no; one more extra thousand is needed, and then more and
+more--everything for Birdie. And so Birdie has horses, Birdie has an
+English governess, Birdie is every year taken abroad, Birdie has
+diamonds worth forty thousand--the devil knows whose they are, these
+diamonds? And it isn't that I am merely convinced, but I know well,
+that for the happiness of this same Birdie, nay, not even for her
+happiness, but, let us suppose that Birdie gets a hangnail on her
+little finger--well then, in order that this hangnail might pass
+away--imagine for a second the possibility of such a state of
+things!--Anna Markovna, without the quiver of an eyelash, will sell
+into corruption our sisters and daughters, will infect all of us and
+our sons with syphilis. What? A monster, you will say? But I will say
+that she is moved by the same grand, unreasoning, blind, egoistical
+love for which we call our mothers sainted women."
+
+"Go easy around the curves!" remarked Boris Sobashnikov through his
+teeth.
+
+"Pardon me: I was not comparing people, but merely generalizing on the
+first source of emotion. I might have brought out as an example the
+self-denying love of animal-mothers as well. But I see that I have
+started on a tedious matter. Better let's drop it."
+
+"No, you finish," protested Lichonin. "I feel that you have a massive
+thought."
+
+"And a very simple one. The other day a professor asked me if I am not
+observing the life here with some literary aims. And all I wanted to
+say was, that I can see, but precisely can not observe. Here I have
+given you Simeon and the bawd for example. I do not know myself why,
+but I feel that in them lurks some terrible, insuperable actuality of
+life, but either to tell it, or to show it, I can not. Here is
+necessary the great ability to take some picayune trifle, an
+insignificant, paltry little stroke, and then will result a dreadful
+truth, from which the reader, aghast, will forget that his mouth is
+agape. People seek the terrible in words, in cries, in gestures. Well,
+now, for example, I am reading a description of some pogrom or of a
+slaughter in jail, or of a riot being put down. Of course, the
+policemen are described, these servants of arbitrariness, these
+lifeguards of contemporaneousness, striding up to their knees in blood,
+or how else do they write in such cases? Of course, it is revolting and
+it hurts, and is disgusting, but all this is felt by the mind, and not
+the heart. But here I am walking along Lebyazhia Street, and see that a
+crowd has collected, a girl of five years in the centre--she has lagged
+behind the mother and has strayed, or it may be that the mother had
+abandoned her. And before the girl, squatting down on his heels, is a
+roundsman. He is interrogating her, how she is called, and where is she
+from, and how do they call papa, and how do they call mamma. He has
+broken out into sweat, the poor fellow, from the effort, the cap is at
+the back of his neck, the whiskered face is such a kindly and woeful
+and helpless one, while the voice is gentle, so gentle. At last, what
+do you think? As the girl has become all excited, and has already grown
+hoarse from tears, and is shy of everybody--he, this same 'roundsman on
+the beat,' stretches out two of his black, calloused fingers, the index
+and the little, and begins to imitate a nanny goat for the girl and
+reciting an appropriate nursery rhyme! ... And so, when I looked upon
+this charming scene and thought that half an hour later at the station
+house this same patrolman will be beating with his feet the face and
+chest of a man whom he had not till that time seen once, and whose
+crime he is entirely ignorant of--then--you understand!--I began to
+feel inexpressibly eerie and sad. Not with the mind, but the heart.
+Such a devilish muddle is this life. Shall we drink some cognac,
+Lichonin?"
+
+"What do you say to calling each other thou?" suddenly proposed
+Lichonin.
+
+"All right. Only, really, without any of this business of kissing, now.
+Here's to your health, old man ... Or here is another instance ... I
+read a certain French classic, describing the thoughts and sensations
+of a man condemned to capital punishment. He describes it all
+sonorously, powerfully, brilliantly, but I read and ... well, there is
+no impression of any sort; neither emotion nor indignation--just ENNUI.
+But then, within the last few days I come across a brief newspaper
+notice of a murderer's execution somewhere in France. The Procureur,
+who was present at the last toilet of the criminal, sees that he is
+putting on his shoes on his bare feet, and--the blockhead!--reminds
+him: 'What about the socks?' But the other gives him a look and says,
+sort of thoughtfully: 'Is it worth while?' Do you understand, these two
+remarks, so very short, struck me like a blow on the skull! At once all
+the horror and all the stupidity of unnatural death were revealed to me
+... Or here is something else about death ... A certain friend of mine
+died, a captain in the infantry--a drunkard, a vagabond, and the finest
+soul in the world. For some reason we called him the Electrical
+Captain. I was in the vicinity, and it fell to me to dress him for the
+last parade. I took his uniform and began to attach the epaulettes to
+it. There's a cord, you know, that's drawn through the shank of the
+epaulette buttons, and after that the two ends of this cord are shoved
+through two little holes under the collar, and on the inside--the
+lining--are tied together. Well, I go through all this business, and
+tie the cord with a slipknot, and, you know, the loop won't come out,
+nohow--either it's too loosely tied, or else one end's too short. I am
+fussing over this nonsense, and suddenly into my head comes the most
+astonishingly simple thought, that it's far simpler and quicker to tie
+it in a knot--for after all, it's all the same, NO ONE IS GOING TO
+UNTIE IT. And immediately I felt death with all my being. Until that
+time I had seen the captain's eyes, grown glassy, had felt his cold
+forehead, and still somehow had not sensed death to the full, but I
+thought of the knot--and I was all transpierced, and the simple and sad
+realization of the irrevocable, inevitable perishing of all our words,
+deeds, and sensations, of the perishing of all the apparent world,
+seemed to bow me down to the earth ... And I could bring forward a
+hundred such small but staggering trifles ... Even, say, about what
+people experienced in the war ... But I want to lead my thought up to
+one thing. We all pass by these characteristic trifles indifferently,
+like the blind, as though not seeing them scattered about under our
+feet. But an artist will come, and he will look over them carefully,
+and he will pick them up. And suddenly he will so skillfully turn in
+the sun a minute bit of life that we shall all cry out: 'Oh, my God!
+But I myself--myself--have seen this with my own eyes. Only it simply
+did not enter my head to turn my close attention upon it.' But our
+Russian artists of the word--the most conscientious and sincere artists
+in the whole world--for some reason have up to this time passed over
+prostitution and the brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me to
+answer that. Perhaps because of squeamishness, perhaps because of
+pusillanimity, out of fear of being signalized as a pornographic
+writer; finally, from the apprehension that our gossiping criticism
+will identify the artistic work of the writer with his personal life
+and will start rummaging in his dirty linen. Or perhaps they can find
+neither the time, nor the self-denial, nor the self-possession to
+plunge in head first into this life and to watch it right up close,
+without prejudice, without sonorous phrases, without a sheepish pity,
+in all its monstrous simplicity and every-day activity. Oh, what a
+tremendous, staggering and truthful book would result!"
+
+"But they do write!" unwillingly remarked Ramses.
+
+"They do write," wearily repeated Platonov in the same tone as he. "But
+it is all either a lie, or theatrical effects for children of tender
+years, or else a cunning symbolism, comprehensible only to the sages of
+the future. But the life itself no one as yet has touched. One big
+writer--a man with a crystal-pure soul and a remarkable talent for
+delineation--once approached this theme,[7] and then all that could
+catch the eye of an outsider was reflected in his soul, as in a
+wondrous mirror. But he could not decide to lie to and to frighten
+people. He only looked upon the coarse hair of the porter, like that of
+a dog, and reflected: 'But, surely, even he had a mother.' He passed
+with his wise, exact gaze over the faces of the prostitutes and
+impressed them on his mind. But that which he did not know he did not
+dare to write. It is remarkable, that this same writer, enchanting with
+his honesty and truthfulness, has looked at the moujik as well, more
+than once. But he sensed that both the tongue and the turn of mind, as
+well as the soul of the people, were for him dark and incomprehensible
+... And he, with an amazing tact, modestly went around the soul of the
+people, but refracted all his fund of splendid observation through the
+eyes of townsfolk. I have brought this up purposely. With us, you see,
+they write about detectives, about lawyers, about inspectors of the
+revenue, about pedagogues, about attorneys, about the police, about
+officers, about sensual ladies, about engineers, about baritones--and
+really, by God, altogether well--cleverly, with finesse and talent.
+But, after all, all these people, are rubbish, and their life is not
+life but some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of
+world culture. But there are two singular realities--ancient as
+humanity itself: the prostitute and the moujik. And about them we know
+nothing save some tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions in
+literature. I ask you: what has Russian literature extracted out of all
+the nightmare of prostitution? Sonechka Marmeladova alone.[8]
+
+What has it given us about the moujik save odious, false, nationalistic
+pastorals? One, altogether but one, but then, in truth, the greatest
+work in all the world--a staggering tragedy, the truthfulness of which
+takes the breath away and makes the hair stand on end. You know what I
+am speaking of ..."
+
+
+[7] The reference here is most probably to Chekhov.--TRANS.
+
+[8] The heroine of Dostoievsky's "Crime and Punishment."--Trans.
+
+
+"'The little claw is sunk in...'"[9] quietly prompted Lichonin.
+
+
+[9] "The little claw is sunk in, the whole bird is bound to perish"--a
+folk proverb used by Tolstoi as a sub-title to his "The Power of
+Darkness."--Trans.
+
+
+"Yes," answered the reporter, and looked kindly at the student with
+gratefulness.
+
+"But as regards Sonechka--why, this is an abstract type," remarked
+Yarchenko with assurance. "A psychological scheme, so to speak..."
+
+Platonov, who up to now had been speaking as though unwillingly, at a
+slow rate, suddenly grew heated:
+
+"A hundred times have I heard this opinion, a hundred times! And it is
+entirely an untruth. Underneath the coarse and obscene profession,
+underneath the foulest oaths--about one's mother--underneath the
+drunken, hideous exterior--Sonechka Marmeladova still lives! The fate
+of the Russian prostitute--oh, what a tragic, piteous, bloody,
+ludicrous and stupid path it is! Here everything has been juxtaposed:
+the Russian God, Russian breadth and unconcern, Russian despair in a
+fall, Russian lack of culture, Russian naivete, Russian patience,
+Russian shamelessness. Why, all of them, whom you take into
+bedrooms,--look upon them, look upon them well,--why, they are all
+children; why, each of them is but eleven years old. Fate has thrust
+them upon prostitution and since then they live in some sort of a
+strange, fairy-like, toy existence, without developing, without being
+enriched by experience, naive, trusting, capricious, not knowing what
+they will say and do half an hour later--altogether like children. This
+radiant and ludicrous childishness I have seen in the very oldest
+wenches, fallen as low as low can be, broken-winded and crippled like a
+cabby's nags. And never does this impotent pity, this useless
+commiseration toward human suffering die within them ... For
+example..."
+
+Platonov looked over all the persons sitting with a slow gaze, and
+suddenly, waving his hand despondently, said in a tired voice:
+
+"However ... The devil take it all! To-day I have spoken enough for ten
+years ... And all of it to no purpose."
+
+"But really, Sergei Ivanich, why shouldn't you try to describe all this
+yourself?" asked Yarchenko. "Your attention is so vitally concentrated
+on this question."
+
+"I did try!" answered Platonov with a cheerless smile. "But nothing
+came of it. I started writing and at once became entangled in various
+'whats,' 'which's,' 'was's.' The epithets prove flat. The words grow
+cold on the page. It's all a cud of some sort. Do you know, Terekhov
+was here once, while passing through ... You know ... The well-known
+one ... I came to him and started in telling him lots and lots about
+the life here, which I do not tell you for fear of boring you. I begged
+him to utilize my material. He heard me out with great attention, and
+this is what he said, literally: 'Don't get offended, Platonov, if I
+tell you that there's almost not a single person of those I have met
+during my life, who wouldn't thrust themes for novels and stories upon
+me, or teach me as to what ought to be written up. That material which
+you have just communicated to me is truly unencompassable in its
+significance and weightiness. But what shall I do with it? In order to
+write a colossal book such as the one you have in mind, the words of
+others do not suffice--even though they be the most exact--even
+observations, made with a little note-book and a bit of pencil, do not
+suffice. One must grow accustomed to this life, without being cunningly
+wise, without any ulterior thoughts of writing. Then a terrific book
+will result.'
+
+"His words discouraged me and at the same time gave me wings. Since
+that time I believe, that now, not soon--after fifty years or so--but
+there will come a writer of genius, and precisely a Russian one, who
+will absorb within himself all the burdens and all the abominations of
+this life and will cast them forth to us in the form of simple, fine,
+and deathlessly-caustic images. And we shall all say: 'Why, now, we,
+ourselves, have seen and known all this, but we could not even suppose
+that this is so horrible!' In this coming artist I believe with all my
+heart."
+
+"Amen!" said Lichonin seriously. "Let us drink to him."
+
+"But, honest to God," suddenly declared Little Manka, "If some one
+would only write the truth about the way we live here, miserable
+w--that we are..."
+
+There was a knock at the door, and at once Jennie entered in her
+resplendent orange dress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+She greeted all the men without embarrassment, with the independent
+bearing of the first personage in the house, and sat down near Sergei
+Ivanich, behind his chair. She had just gotten free from that same
+German in the uniform of the benevolent organization, who early in the
+evening had made Little White Manka his choice, but had afterwards
+changed her, at the recommendation of the housekeeper, for Pasha. But
+the provoking and self-assured beauty of Jennie must have smitten
+deeply his lecherous heart, for, having prowled some three hours
+through certain beer emporiums and restaurants, and having there
+gathered courage, he had again returned into the house of Anna
+Markovna, had waited until her time-guest--Karl Karlovich, from the
+optical store--had gone away from Jennie, and had taken her into a room.
+
+To the silent question in Tamara's eyes Jennie made a wry face of
+disgust, shivered with her back and nodded her head affirmatively.
+
+"He's gone... Brrr! ..."
+
+Platonov was looking at Jennie with extraordinary attentiveness. He
+distinguished her from the rest of the girls and almost respected her
+for her abrupt, refractory, and impudently mocking character. And now,
+turning around occasionally, by her flaming, splendid eyes, by the
+vividly and unevenly glowing unhealthy red of her cheeks, by the much
+bitten parched lips, he felt that her great, long ripening rancour was
+heavily surging within the girl and suffocating her. And it was then
+that he thought (and subsequently often recalled this) that he had
+never yet seen Jennie so radiantly beautiful as on this night. He also
+noticed, that all the men present in the private cabinet, with the
+exception of Lichonin, were looking at her--some frankly, others by
+stealth and as though in passing--with curiosity and furtive desire.
+The beauty of this woman, together with the thought of her altogether
+easy accessibility, at any minute, agitated their imagination.
+
+"There's something working upon you, Jennie," said Platonov quietly.
+
+Caressingly, she just barely drew her fingers over his arm.
+
+"Don't pay any attention. Just so ... our womanish affairs ... It won't
+be interesting to you."
+
+But immediately, turning to Tamara, she passionately and rapidly began
+saying something in an agreed jargon, which presented a wild mixture
+out of the Hebrew, Tzigani and Roumanian tongues and the cant words of
+thieves and horse-thieves.
+
+"Don't try to put anything over on the fly guy, the fly guy is next,"
+Tamara cut her short and with a smile indicated the reporter with her
+eyes.
+
+Platonov had, in fact, understood. Jennie was telling with indignation
+that during this day and night, thanks to the influx of a cheap public,
+the unhappy Pashka had been taken into a room more than ten times--and
+all by different men. Only just now she had had a hysterical fit,
+ending in a faint. And now, scarcely having brought Pashka back to
+consciousness and braced her up on valerian drops in a glass of
+spirits, Emma Edwardovna had again sent her into the drawing room.
+Jennie had attempted to take the part of her comrade, but the
+house-keeper had cursed the intercessor out and had threatened her with
+punishment.
+
+"What is it all about?" asked Yarchenko in perplexity, raising high his
+eyebrows.
+
+"Don't trouble yourself ... nothing out of the way..." answered Jennie
+in a still agitated voice. "Just so ... our little family trifles ...
+Sergei Ivanich, may I have some of your wine?"
+
+She poured out half a glass for herself and drank the cognac off at a
+draught, distending her thin nostrils wide.
+
+Platonov got up in silence and went toward the door.
+
+"It's not worth while, Sergei Ivanich. Drop it..." Jennie stopped him.
+
+"Oh no, why not?" objected the reporter. "I shall do a very simple and
+innocent thing, take Pasha here, and if need be--pay for her, even. Let
+her lie down here for a while on the divan and rest, even though a
+little ... Niura, run for a pillow quick!"
+
+Scarcely had the door shut behind his broad, ungainly figure in its
+gray clothes, when Boris Sobashnikov at once commenced speaking with a
+contemptuous bitterness:
+
+"Gentlemen, what the devil for have we dragged into our company this
+peach off the street? We must needs tie up with all sorts of riff-raff?
+The devil knows what he is--perhaps he's even a dinny? Who can vouch
+for him? And you're always like that, Lichonin."
+
+"It isn't Lichonin but I who introduced him to everybody,"' said
+Ramses. "I know him for a fully respectable person and a good
+companion."
+
+"Eh! Nonsense! A good companion to drink at some one else's expense.
+Why, don't you see for yourselves that this is the most ordinary type
+of habitue attached to a brothel, and, most probably, he is simply the
+pimp here, to whom a percentage is paid for the entertainment into
+which he entices the visitors."
+
+"Leave off, Borya. It's foolish," remarked Yarchenko reproachfully.
+
+But Borya could not leave off. He had an unfortunate
+peculiarity--intoxication acted neither upon his legs nor his tongue,
+but put him in a morose, touchy frame of mind and egged him on into
+quarrels. And Platonov had already for a long time irritated him with
+his negligently sincere, assured and serious bearing, so little
+suitable to the private cabinet of a brothel. But the seeming
+indifference with which the reporter let pass the malicious remarks
+which he interposed into the conversation angered Sobashnikov still
+more.
+
+"And then, the tone in which he permits himself to speak in our
+company!" Sobashnikov continued to seethe. "A certain aplomb,
+condescension, a professorial tone ... The scurvy penny-a-liner! The
+free-lunch grafter!"
+
+Jennie, who had all the time been looking intently at the student,
+gaily and maliciously flashing with her sparkling dark eyes, suddenly
+began to clap her hands.
+
+"That's the way! Bravo, little student! Bravo, bravo, bravo! ... That's
+the way, give it to him good! ... Really, what sort of a disgrace is
+this! When he'll come, now, I'll repeat everything to him."
+
+"I--if you please! A--as much as you like!" Sobashnikov drawled out
+like an actor, making superciliously squeamish creases about his mouth.
+"I shall repeat the very same things myself."
+
+"There's a fine fellow, now,--I love you for that!" exclaimed Jennie
+joyously and maliciously, striking her fist on the table. "You can tell
+an owl at once by its flight, a good man by his snot!"
+
+Little White Manya and Tamara looked at Jennie with wonder, but, noting
+the evil little lights leaping in her eyes and her nervously quivering
+nostrils, they both understood and smiled.
+
+Little White Manya, laughing, shook her head reproachfully. Jennie
+always had such a face when her turbulent soul sensed that a scandal
+was nearing which she herself had brought on.
+
+"Don't get your back up, Borinka," said Lichonin. "Here all are equal."
+
+Niura came with a pillow and laid it down on the divan.
+
+"And what's that for?" Sobashnikov yelled at her. "Git! take it away at
+once. This isn't a lodging house."
+
+"Now, leave her be, honey. What's that to you?" retorted Jennie in a
+sweet voice and hid the pillow behind Tamara's back. "Wait, sweetie,
+I'd better sit with you for a while."
+
+She walked around the table, forced Boris to sit on a chair, and
+herself got up on his knees. Twining his neck with her arm, she pressed
+her lips to his mouth, so long and so vigorously that the student
+caught his breath. Right up close to his eyes he saw the eyes of the
+woman--strangely large, dark, luminous, indistinct and unmoving. For a
+quarter of a second or so, for an instant, it seemed to him that in
+these unliving eyes was impressed an expression of keen, mad hate; and
+the chill of terror, some vague premonition of an ominous, inevitable
+calamity flashed through the student's brain. With difficulty tearing
+the supple arms of Jennie away from him, and pushing her away, he said,
+laughing, having turned red and breathing hard:
+
+"There's a temperament for you! Oh, you Messalina Paphnutievna! ...
+They call you Jennka, I think? You're a good-looking little rascal."
+
+Platonov returned with Pasha. Pasha was pitiful and revolting to look
+at. Her face was pale, with, a bluish cast as though the blood had run
+off; the glazed, half-closed eyes were smiling with a faint, idiotic
+smile; the parted lips seemed to resemble two frayed, red, wet rags,
+and she walked with a sort of timid, uncertain step, just as though
+with one foot she were making a large step, and with the other a small
+one. She walked with docility up to the divan and with docility laid
+her head down on the pillow, without ceasing to smile faintly and
+insanely. Even at a distance it was apparent that she was cold.
+
+"Pardon me, gentlemen, I am going to undress," said Lichonin, and
+taking his coat off he threw it over the shoulders of the prostitute.
+"Tamara, give her chocolate and wine."
+
+Boris Sobashnikov again stood up picturesquely in the corner, in a
+leaning position, one leg in front of the other and his head held high.
+Suddenly he spoke amid the general silence, addressing Platonov
+directly, in a most foppish tone:
+
+"Eh ... Listen ... what's your name? ... This, then, must be your
+mistress? Eh?" And with the tip of his boot he pointed in the direction
+of the recumbent Pasha.
+
+"Wha-at?" asked Platonov in a drawl, knitting his eyebrows.
+
+"Or else you are her lover--it's all one ... What do they call this
+duty here? Well, now, these same people for whom the women embroider
+shirts and with whom they divide their honest earnings? ... Eh? ..."
+
+Platonov looked at him with a heavy, intent gaze through his narrowed
+lids.
+
+"Listen," he said quietly, in a hoarse voice, slowly and ponderously
+separating his words. "This isn't the first time that you're trying to
+pick a quarrel with me. But, in the first place, I see that despite
+your sober appearance you are exceedingly and badly drunk; and, in the
+second place, I spare you for the sake of your comrades. However, I
+warn you, that if you think of talking that way to me again, take your
+eyeglasses off."
+
+"What's this stuff?" exclaimed Boris, raising his shoulders high and
+snorting through his nose. "What eyeglasses? Why eyeglasses?" But
+mechanically, with two extended fingers, he fixed the bow of the
+PINCE-NEZ on the bridge of his nose.
+
+"Because I'm going to hit you, and the pieces may get in your eye,"
+said the reporter unconcernedly.
+
+Despite the unexpectedness of such a turn of the quarrel, nobody
+started laughing. Only Little White Manka oh'd in astonishment and
+clapped her hands. Jennie, with avid impatience, shifted her eyes from
+one to the other.
+
+"Well, now! I'll give you change back myself so's you won't like it!"
+roughly, altogether boyishly, cried out Sobashnikov. "Only it's not
+worth while mussing one's hands with every ..." he wanted to add a new
+invective, but decided not to, "with every ... And besides, comrades, I
+do not intend to stay here any longer. I am too well brought up to be
+hail-fellow-well-met with such persons."
+
+He rapidly and haughtily walked to the door.
+
+It was necessary for him to pass almost right up against Platonov, who,
+out of the corner of his eye, animal-like, was watching his every
+movement. For a moment in the mind of the student flashed a desire to
+strike Platonov unexpectedly, from the side, and jump away--the
+comrades would surely part them and not allow a fight. But immediately,
+almost without looking at the reporter, with some sort of deep,
+unconscious instinct, he saw and sensed those broad hands, lying
+quietly on the table, that obdurately bowed head with its broad
+forehead, and all the ungainly, alert, powerful body of his foe, so
+neligently hunched up and spread out on the chair, but ready at any
+second for a quick and terrific blow. And Sobashnikov walked out into
+the corridor, loudly banging the door after him.
+
+"Good riddance to bad rubbish," said Jennie after him in a mocking
+patter. "Tamarochka, pour me out some more cognac."
+
+But the lanky student Petrovsky got up from his place and considered it
+necessary to defend Sobashnikov.
+
+"Just as you wish, gentlemen; this is a matter of your personal view,
+but out of principle I go together with Boris. Let him be not right and
+so on, we can express censure to him in our own intimate company, but
+when an insult has been rendered our comrade--I can't remain here. I am
+going away."
+
+"Oh, my God!" And Lichonin nervously and vexedly scratched his temple.
+"Boris behaved himself all the time in the highest degree vulgarly,
+rudely and foolishly. What sort of corporate honour do you think this
+is? A collective walk-out from editorial offices, from political
+meetings, from brothels. We aren't officers to screen the foolishness
+of each comrade."
+
+"All the same, just as you wish, but I am going away out of a sense of
+solidarity!" said Petrovsky importantly and walked out.
+
+"May the earth be as down upon you!" Jennie sent after him.
+
+But how tortuous and dark the ways of the human soul! Both of
+them--Sobashnikov as well as Petrovsky--acted in their indignation
+rather sincerely, but the first only half so, while the second only a
+quarter in all. Sobashnikov, despite his intoxication and wrath, still
+had knocking at the door of his mind the alluring thought that now it
+would be more convenient and easier before his comrades to call out
+Jennka on the quiet and to be alone with her. While Petrovsky, with
+exactly the same aim, went after Sobashnikov in order to make a loan of
+three roubles from him. In the general drawing room they made things up
+between them, and after ten minutes Zociya, the housekeeper, shoved in
+her little, squinting, pink, cunning face through the half-open door of
+the private room.
+
+"Jennechka," she called, "go, they have brought your linen, go count
+it. And you, Niura, the actor begs to come for just a minute, to drink
+some champagne. He's with Henrietta and Big Manya."
+
+The precipitate and incongruous quarrel of Platonov and Sobashnikov
+long served as a subject of conversation. The reporter, in cases like
+this, always felt shame, uneasiness, regret and the torments of
+conscience. And despite the fact that all those who remained were on
+his side, he was speaking with weariness in his voice:
+
+"By God, gentlemen! I'll go away, best of all. Why should I disrupt
+your circle? We were both at fault. I'll go away. Don't bother about
+the bill. I've already paid Simeon, when I was going after Pasha."
+
+Lichonin suddenly rumpled up his hair and stood up
+
+"Oh, no, the devil take it! I'll go and drag him here. Upon my word of
+honour, they're both fine fellows--Boris as well as Vaska. But they're
+young yet, and bark at their own tails. I'm going after them, and I
+warrant that Boris will apologize."
+
+He went away, but came back after five minutes.
+
+"They repose," said he, sombrely, and made a hopeless gesture with his
+hand. "Both of them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+At this moment Simeon walked into the cabinet with a tray upon which
+stood two goblets of a bubbling golden wine and lay a large visiting
+card.
+
+"May I ask which of you here might be Mister Gavrila Petrovich
+Yarchenko?" he said, looking over all those sitting.
+
+"I," responded Yarchenko.
+
+"If youse please. The actor gent sent this."
+
+Yarchenko took the visiting card and read aloud:
+
+  Eumenii Poluectovich
+  EGMONT--LAVRETZKI
+  Dramatic Artist of Metropolitan Theatres
+
+"It's remarkable," said Volodya Pavlov, "that all the Russian Garricks
+bear such queer names, on the style of Chrysantov, Thetisov, Mamontov
+and Epimhakov."
+
+"And besides that, the best known of them must needs either speak
+thickly, or lisp, or stammer," added the reporter.
+
+"Yes, but most remarkable of all is the fact that I do not at all have
+the honour of knowing this artist of the metropolitan theatres.
+However, there's something else written on the reverse of this card.
+Judging by the handwriting, it was written by a man greatly drunk and
+little lettered.
+
+"'I dreenk'--not drink, but dreenk," explained Yarchenko. "'I dreenk to
+the health of the luminary of Russian science, Gavrila Petrovich
+Yarchenko, whom I saw by chance when I was passing by through the
+collidor. Would like to clink glasses together personally. If you do
+not remember, recollect the National Theatre, Poverty Is No Disgrace,
+and the humble artist who played African.' Yes, that's right," said
+Yarchenko. "Once, somehow, they saddled me with the arrangement of this
+benefit performance in the National Theatre. Also, there dimly glimmers
+some clean-shaven haughty visage, but ... What shall it be, gentlemen?"
+
+Lichonin answered good-naturedly:
+
+"Why, drag him here. Perhaps he's funny."
+
+"And you?" the sub-professor turned to Platonov.
+
+"It's all the same to me. I know him slightly. At first he'll shout:
+'KELLNER, champagne!' then burst into tears about his wife, who is an
+angel, then deliver a patriotic speech and finally raise a row over the
+bill, but none too loudly. All in all he's entertaining."
+
+"Let him come," said Volodya, from behind the shoulder of Katie, who
+was sitting on his knees, swinging her legs.
+
+"And you, Veltman?"
+
+"What?" the student came to with a start. He was sitting on the divan
+with his back to his companions, near the reclining Pasha, bending over
+her, and already for a long time, with the friendliest appearance of
+sympathy, had been stroking her, now on the shoulder, now on the hair
+at the nape of the neck, while she was smiling at him with her shyly
+shameless and senselessly passionate smile through half-closed and
+trembling eyelashes. "What? What's it all about? Oh yes,--is it all
+right to let the actor in? I've nothing against it. Please do ..."
+
+Yarchenko sent an invitation through Simeon, and the actor came and
+immediately commenced the usual actor's play. In the door he paused, in
+his long frock coat, shining with its silk lapels, with a glistening
+opera hat, which he held with his arm in the middle of his chest, like
+an actor portraying in the theatre an elderly worldly lion or a bank
+director. And approximately these persons he was inwardly picturing to
+himself.
+
+"May I be permitted, gentlemen, to intrude into your intimate company?"
+he asked in an unctuous, kindly voice, with a half-bow done somewhat to
+one side.
+
+They asked him in, and he began to introduce himself. Shaking hands, he
+stuck out his elbow forward and raised it so high that the hand proved
+to be far lower. Now it was no longer a bank director, but such a
+clever, splendid fellow, a sportsman and a rake of the golden youths.
+But his face--with rumpled, wild eyebrows and with denuded lids without
+lashes--was the vulgar, harsh and low face of a typical alcoholic,
+libertine, and pettily cruel man. Together with him came two of his
+ladies: Henrietta the eldest girl in years in the establishment of Anna
+Markovna, experienced, who had seen everything and had grown accustomed
+to everything, like an old horse on the tether of a threshing machine,
+the possessor of a thick bass, but still a handsome woman; and Big
+Manka, or Manka the Crocodile. Henrietta since still the preceding
+night had not parted from the actor, who had taken her from the house
+to a hotel.
+
+Having seated himself alongside of Yarchenko, he straight off began to
+play a new role--he became something on the order of an old good soul
+of a landed proprietor, who had at one time been at a university
+himself, and now can not look upon the students without a quiet,
+fatherly emotion.
+
+"Believe me, gentlemen, that one's soul rests from all these worldly
+squabbles in the midst of youth," he was saying, imparting to his
+depraved and harsh face an actor-like, exaggerated and improbable
+expression of being moved. "This faith in a high ideal, these honest
+impulses! ... What can be loftier and purer than our Russian students
+as a body? ... KELLNER! Chompa-a-agne!" he yelled deafeningly all of a
+sudden, and dealt a heavy blow on the table with his fist.
+
+Lichonin and Yarchenka did not wish to remain in debt to him. A spree
+began. God knows in what manner Mishka the Singer and Nicky the
+Book-keeper soon found themselves in the cabinet, and at once began
+singing in their galloping voices:
+
+    "They fe-e-e-el the tru-u-u-uth,
+    Come thou daw-aw-aw-awning quicker ..."
+
+There also appeared Roly-Poly, who had awakened. Letting his head drop
+touchingly to one side and having made little narrowed, lachrymose,
+sweet eyes in his wrinkled old face of a Don Quixote, he was speaking
+in a persuasively begging tone:
+
+"Gentlemen students ... you ought to treat a little old man. I love
+education, by God! ... Allow me!"
+
+Lichonin was glad to see everybody, but Yarchenko in the
+beginning--until the champagne had mounted to his head--only raised
+high his small, short eyebrows with a timorous, wondering and naive
+air. It suddenly became crowded, smoky, noisy and close in the cabinet.
+Simeon, with rattling, closed the blinds with bolts on the outside. The
+women, just having gotten done with a visit or in the interim between
+dances, walked into the room, sat on somebody's knees, smoked, sang
+disjointedly, drank wine, kissed and again went away, and again came.
+The clerks of Kereshkovsky, offended because the damsels bestowed more
+attention upon the cabinet than the drawing room, did start a row and
+tried to enter into a provoking explanation with the students, but
+Simeon in a moment quelled them with two or three authoritative words,
+thrown out as though in passing.
+
+Niura came back from her room and a little later Petrovsky followed
+her. Petrovsky with an extremely serious air declared that he had been
+walking on the street all this time, thinking over the incident which
+had taken place and in the end had come to the conclusion that comrade
+Boris was in reality not in the right, but that there also was a
+circumstance in extenuation of his fault--intoxication. Also, Jennie
+came later, but alone--Sobashnikov had fallen asleep in her room. The
+actor proved to have no end of talents. He very faithfully imitated the
+buzzing of a fly which an intoxicated man is catching on a window-pane,
+and the sounds of a saw; drolly performed, standing with his face in
+the corner, the conversation of a nervous lady over the telephone;
+imitated the singing of a phonograph record, and in the end, with
+exceeding likeness to life, showed a little Persian lad with a little
+trained monkey. Holding on with his hand to an imaginary small chain
+and at the same time baring his teeth, squatting like a monkey, winking
+his eyelids often, and scratching now his posteriors, now the hair on
+his head, he sang through his nose, in a monotonous and sad voice,
+distorting the words:
+
+    "The i-young cissack to the war has went,
+     The i-young ladee underneath the fence lies spraw-aw-ling.
+     AINA, AINA, AI-NA-NA-NA, AI-NA NA-NA-NA."
+
+In conclusion he took Little White Manka in his arms, wrapped her up in
+the skirts of his frock and, stretching out his hand and making a
+tearful face, began to nod his head, bent to one side, as is done by
+little swarthy, dirty, oriental lads who roam over all Russia in long,
+old, soldiers' overcoats, with bared chest of a bronze colour, holding
+a coughing, moth-eaten little monkey in their bosom.
+
+"And who may you be?" severely asked fat Kate, who knew and loved this
+joke.
+
+"Me Serbian, lady-y-y," piteously moaned the actor through his nose.
+"Give me somethin', lady-y-y."
+
+"And what do they call your little monkey?"
+
+"Matreshka-a-a ... Him 'ungry-y-y, lady ... him want eat..."
+
+"And have you got a passport?"
+
+"We Serbia-a-an. Gimme something lady-y-y..."
+
+The actor proved not superfluous on the whole. He created at once a
+great deal of noise and raised the spirits of the company, which were
+beginning to be depressing. And every minute he cried out in a
+stentorian voice:
+
+"KELLNER! Chompa-a-agne!"--although Simeon, who was accustomed to his
+manner paid very little attention to these cries.
+
+There began a truly Russian hubbub, noisy and senseless. The rosy,
+flaxen-haired, pleasing Tolpygin was playing LA SEGUIDILLE from CARMEN
+on the piano, while Roly-Poly was dancing a Kamarinsky peasant dance to
+its tune. His narrow shoulders hunched up, twisted all to one side, the
+fingers of his hanging hands widely spread, he intricately hopped on
+one spot from one long, thin leg to the other, then suddenly letting
+out a piercing grunt, would throw himself upward and shout out in time
+to his wild dance:
+
+    "Ugh! Dance on, Matthew,
+     Don't spare your boots, you! ..."
+
+"Eh, for one stunt like that a quartern of brandy isn't enough!" he
+would add, shaking his long, graying hair.
+
+"They fee-ee-eel! the tru-u-u-uth!" roared the two friends, raising
+with difficulty their underlids, grown heavy, beneath dull, bleary eyes.
+
+The actor commenced to tell obscene anecdotes, pouring them out as from
+a bag, and the women squealed from delight, bent in two from laughter
+and threw themselves against the backs of their chairs. Veltman, who
+had long been whispering with Pasha, inconspicuously, in the hubbub,
+slipped out of the cabinet, while a few minutes after him Pasha also
+went away, smiling with her quiet, insane and bashful smile.
+
+But all of the remaining students as well, save Lichonin, one after the
+other, some on the quiet, some under one pretext or another, vanished
+from the cabinet and did not return for long periods. Volodya Pavlov
+experienced a desire to look at the dancing; Tolpygin's head began to
+ache badly, and he asked Tamara to lead him somewhere where he might
+wash up; Petrovski, having "touched" Lichonin for three roubles on the
+quiet, went out into the corridor and only from there despatched the
+housekeeper Zociya for Little White Manka. Even the prudent and
+fastidious Ramses could not cope with that spicy feeling which to-day's
+strange, vivid and unwholesome beauty of Jennie excited in him. It
+proved that he had some important, undeferrable business this morning;
+it was necessary to go home and snatch a bit of sleep if only for a
+couple of hours. But, having told good-bye to his companions, he,
+before going out of the cabinet, rapidly and with deep significance
+pointed the door out to Jennie with his eyes. She understood, slowly,
+scarcely perceptibly, lowered her eyelashes as a sign of consent, and,
+when she again raised them, Platonov, who almost without looking had
+seen this silent dialogue, was struck by that expression of malice and
+menace in her eyes which she sped the back of the departing Ramses.
+Having waited for five minutes she got up, said "Excuse me, I'll be
+right back," and went out, swinging her short orange skirt.
+
+"Well, now? Is it your turn, Lichonin?" asked the reporter banteringly.
+
+"No, brother, you're mistaken!" said Lichonin and clacked his tongue.
+"And I'm not doing it out of conviction or on principle, either ... No!
+I, as an anarchist, proclaim the gospel that the worse things are, the
+better ... But, fortunately, I am a gambler and spend all my
+temperament on gaming; on that account simple squeamishness speaks
+louder within me than this same unearthly feeling. But it's amazing our
+thoughts coincided. I just wanted to ask you about the same thing."
+
+"I--no. Sometimes, if I become very much tired out, I sleep here over
+night. I take from Isaiah Savvich the key to his little room and sleep
+on the divan. But all the girls here are already used to the fact that
+I am a being of the third sex."
+
+"And really ... never? ..."
+
+"Never."
+
+"Well, what's right is right!" exclaimed Nhira. "Sergei Ivanich is like
+a holy hermit."
+
+"Previously, some five years ago, I experienced this also," continued
+Platonov. "But, do you know, it's really too tedious and disgusting.
+Something on the nature of these flies which the actor gentleman just
+represented. They're stuck together on the window sill, and then in
+some sort of fool wonder scratch their backs with their little hind
+legs and fly apart forever. And to play at love here? ... Well, for
+that I'm no hero out of their sort of novel. I'm not handsome, am shy
+with women, uneasy, and polite. While here they thirst for savage
+passions, bloody jealousy, tears, poisonings, beatings, sacrifices,--in
+a word, hysterical romanticism. And it's easy to understand why. The
+heart of woman always wants love, while they are told of love every day
+with various sour, drooling words. Involuntarily one wants pepper in
+one's love. One no longer wants words of passion, but
+tragically-passionate deeds. And for that reason thieves, murderers,
+souteners and other riff-raff will always be their lovers."
+
+"And most important of all," added Platonov, "that would at once spoil
+for me all the friendly relations which have been so well built up."
+
+"Enough of joking!" incredulously retorted Lichonin. "Then what compels
+you to pass days and nights here? Were you a writer--it would be a
+different matter. It's easy to find an explanation; well, you're
+gathering types or something ... observing life ... After the manner of
+that German professor who lived for three years with monkeys, in order
+to study closely their language and manners. But you yourself said that
+you don't indulge in writing?"
+
+"It isn't that I don't indulge, but I simply don't know how--I can't."
+
+"We'll write that down. Now let's suppose another thing--that you come
+here as an apostle of a better, honest life, in the nature of a, now,
+saviour of perishing souls. You know, as in the dawn of Christianity
+certain holy fathers instead of standing on a column for thirty years
+or living in a cave in the woods, went to the market places, into
+houses of mirth, to the harlots and scaramuchios. But you aren't
+inclined that way."
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"Then why, the devil take it, do you hang around here? I can see very
+well that a great deal here is revolting and oppressive and painful to
+your own self. For example, this fool quarrel with Boris or this flunky
+who beats a woman, and--, in general, the constant contemplation of
+every kind of filth, lust, bestiality, vulgarity, drunkenness. Well,
+now, since you say so--I believe that you don't give yourself up to
+lechery. But then, still more incomprehensible to me is your MODUS
+VIVENDI, to express myself in the style of leading articles."
+
+The reporter did not answer at once:
+
+"You see," he began speaking slowly, with pauses, as though for the
+first time lending ear to his thoughts and weighing them. "You see, I'm
+attracted and interested in this life by its ... how shall I express
+it? ... its fearful, stark truth. Do you understand, it's as though all
+the conventional coverings were ripped off it. There is no falsehood,
+no hypocrisy, no sanctimoniousness, there are no compromises of any
+sort, neither with public opinion, nor with the importunate authority
+of our forefathers, nor with one's own conscience. No illusions of any
+kind, nor any kind of embellishments! Here she is--'I! A public woman,
+a common vessel, a cloaca for the drainage of the city's surplus lust.
+Come to me any one who wills--thou shalt meet no denial, therein is my
+service. But for a second of this sensuality in haste--thou shalt pay
+in money, revulsion, disease and ignominy.' And that is all. There is
+not a single phase of human life where the basic main truth should
+shine with such a monstrous, hideous, stark clearness, without any
+shade of human prevarication or self-whitewashing."
+
+"Oh, I don't know! These women lie like the very devil. You just go and
+talk with her a bit about her first fall. She'll spin you such a yarn!"
+
+"Well, don't you ask then. What business is that of yours? But even if
+they do lie, they lie altogether like children. But then, you know
+yourself that children are the foremost, the most charming fibsters,
+and at the same time the sincerest people on earth. And it's
+remarkable, that both they and the others--that is, both prostitutes
+and children--lie only to us--men--and grown-ups. Among themselves they
+don't lie--they only inspiredly improvise. But they lie to us because
+we ourselves demand this of them, because we clamber into their souls,
+altogether foreign to us, with our stupid tactics and questionings,
+because they regard us in secret as great fools and senseless
+dissemblers. But if you like, I shall right now count off on my fingers
+all the occasions when a prostitute is sure to lie, and you yourself
+will be convinced that man incites her to lying."
+
+"Well, well, we shall see." "First: she paints herself mercilessly, at
+times even in detriment to herself. Why? Because every pimply military
+cadet, who is so distressed by his sexual maturity that he grows stupid
+in the spring, like a wood-cock on a drumming-log; or some sorry petty
+government clerk or other from the department of the parish, the
+husband of a pregnant woman and the father of nine infants--why, they
+both come here not at all with the prudent and simple purpose of
+leaving here the surplus of their passion. He, the good for nothing,
+has come to enjoy himself; he needs beauty, d'you see--aesthete that he
+is! But all these girls, these daughters of the simple, unpretentious,
+great Russian people--how do they regard aesthetics? 'What's sweet,
+that's tasty; what's red, that's handsome.' And so, there you are,
+receive, if you please, a beauty of antimony, white lead and rouge.
+
+"That's one. Secondly, his desire for beauty isn't enough for this
+resplendent cavalier--no, he must in addition be served with a
+similitude of love, so that from his caresses there should kindle in
+the woman this same 'fa-hire of in-sane pahass-ssion!' which is sung
+about In idiotical ballads. Ah! Then THAT is what you want? There
+y'are! And the woman lies to him with countenance, voice, sighs, moans,
+movements of the body. And even he himself in the depths of his soul
+knows about this professional deception, but--go along with you!--still
+deceives himself: 'Ah, what a handsome man I am! Ah, how the women love
+me! Ah, into what an ecstasy I bring them ...' You know, there are
+cases when a man with the most desperate brazenness, in the most
+unlikely manner, is flattered to his face, and he himself sees and
+knows it very plainly, but--the devil take it!--despite everything a
+delightful feeling of some sort lubricates his soul. And so here.
+Query: whose is the initiative in the lie?
+
+"And here's a third point for you, Lichonin. You prompted it yourself.
+They lie most of all when they are asked: 'How did you come to such a
+life?' But what right have you to ask her about that, may the devil
+take you! For she does not push her way into your intimate life? She
+doesn't interest herself with your first, 'holy' love or the virtue of
+your sisters and your bride. Aha! You pay money? Splendid! The bawd and
+the bouncer, and the police, and medicine, and the city government,
+watch over your interests. Polite and seemly conduct on the part of the
+prostitute hired by you for love is guaranteed you, and your
+personality is immune ... even though in the most direct sense, in the
+sense of a slap in the face, which you, of course, deserve through your
+aimless, and perhaps tormenting interrogations. But you desire truth as
+well for your money? Well, that you are never to discount and to
+control. They will tell you just such a conventionalized history as
+you--yourself a man of conventionality and a vulgarian--will digest
+easiest of all. Because by itself life is either exceedingly humdrum
+and tedious to you, or else as exceedingly improbable as only life can
+be improbable. And so you have the eternal mediocre history about an
+officer, about a shop clerk, about a baby and a superannuated father,
+who there, in the provinces, bewails his strayed daughter and implores
+her to return home. But mark you, Lichonin, all that I'm saying doesn't
+apply to you; in you, upon my word of honour, I sense a sincere and
+great soul ... Let's drink to your health?"
+
+They drank.
+
+"Shall I speak on?" continued Platonov undecidedly.
+
+"Are you bored?"
+
+"No, no, I beg of you, speak on."
+
+"They also lie, and lie especially innocently, to those who preen
+themselves before them on political hobby horses. Here they agree with
+anything you want. I shall tell her to-day: Away with the modern
+bourgeois order! Let us destroy with bombs and daggers the capitalists,
+landed proprietors, and the bureaucracy! She'll warmly agree with me.
+But to-morrow the hanger-on Nozdrunov will yell that it's necessary to
+string up all the socialists, to beat up all the students and massacre
+all the sheenies, who partake of communion in Christian blood. And
+she'll gleefully agree with him as well. But if in addition to that
+you'll also inflame her imagination, make her fall in love with
+yourself, then she'll go with you everywhere you may wish--on a pogrom,
+on a barricade, on a theft, on a murder. But then, children also are
+yielding. And they, by God, are children, my dear Lichonin...
+
+"At fourteen years she was seduced, and at sixteen she became a patent
+prostitute, with a yellow ticket and a venereal disease. And here is
+all her life, surrounded and fenced off from the universe with a sort
+of a bizarre, impenetrable and dead wall. Turn your attention to her
+everyday vocabulary--thirty or forty words, no more--altogether as with
+a baby or a savage: to eat, to drink, to sleep, man, bed, the madam,
+rouble, lover, doctor, hospital, linen, policeman--and that's all. And
+so her mental development, her experience, her interests, remain on an
+infantile plane until her very death, exactly as in the case of a gray
+and naive lady teacher who has not crossed over the threshold of a
+female institute since she was ten, as in the case of a nun given as a
+child into a convent. In a word, picture to yourself a tree of a
+genuinely great species, but raised in a glass bell, in a jar from jam.
+And precisely to this childish phase of their existence do I attribute
+their compulsory lying--so innocent, purposeless and habitual ... But
+then, how fearful, stark, unadorned with anything the frank truth in
+this business-like dickering about the price of a night; in these ten
+men in an evening; in these printed rules, issued by the city fathers,
+about the use of a solution of boric acid and about maintaining one's
+self in cleanliness; in the weekly doctors' inspections; in the nasty
+diseases, which are looked upon as lightly and facetiously, just as
+simply and without suffering, as a cold would be; in the deep revulsion
+of these women to men--so deep, that they all, without conception,
+compensate for it in the Lesbian manner and do not even in the least
+conceal it. All their incongruous life is here, on the palm of my hand,
+with all its cynicism, monstrous and coarse injustice; but there is in
+it none of that falsehood and that hypocrisy before people and before
+one's self, which enmesh all humanity from top to bottom. Consider, my
+dear Lichonin, how much nagging, drawn out, disgusting deception, how
+much hate, there is in any marital cohabitation in ninety-nine cases
+out of a hundred. How much blind, merciless cruelty--precisely not
+animal, but human, reasoned, far-sighted, calculated cruelty--there is
+in the sacred maternal instinct--and behold, with what tender colours
+this instinct is adorned! Then what about all these unnecessary,
+tom-fool professions, invented by cultured man for the safeguarding of
+my nest, my bit of meat, my woman, my child, these different overseers,
+controllers, inspectors, judges, attorneys, jailers, advocates, chiefs,
+bureaucrats, generals, soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of titles
+more. They all subserve human greed, cowardice, viciousness, servility,
+legitimised sensuality, laziness-beggarliness!--yes, that is the real
+word!--human beggarliness. But what magnificent words we have! The
+altar of the fatherland, Christian compassion for our neighbor,
+progress, sacred duty, sacred property, holy love. Ugh! I do not
+believe in a single fine word now, and I am nauseated to infinity with
+these petty liars, these cowards and gluttons! Beggar women! ... Man is
+born for great joy, for ceaseless creation, in which he is God; for a
+broad, free love, unhindered by anything,--love for everything: for a
+tree, for the sky, for man, for a dog, for the dear, benign, beautiful
+earth,--oh, especially for the earth with its beatific motherhood, with
+its mornings and nights, with its magnificent everyday miracles. But
+man has lied himself out so, has become such an importunate beggar, and
+has sunk so low! ... Ah, Lichonin, but I am weary!"
+
+"I, as an anarchist, partly understand you," said Lichonin
+thoughtfully. It was as though he heard and yet did not hear the
+reporter. Some thought was with difficulty, for the first time, being
+born in his mind. "But one thing I can not comprehend. If humanity has
+become so malodorous to you, then how do you stand--and for so long,
+too,--all this,--" Lichonin took in the whole table with a circular
+motion of his hand,--"the basest thing that mankind could invent?"
+
+"Well, I don't even know myself," said Platonov with artlessness. "You
+see, I am a vagabond, and am passionately in love with life. I have
+been a turner, a compositor; I have sown and sold tobacco--the cheap
+Silver Makhorka kind--have sailed as a stoker on the Azov Sea, have
+been a fisherman on the Black--on the Dubinin fisheries; I have loaded
+watermelons and bricks on the Dnieper, have ridden with a circus, have
+been an actor--I can't even recall everything. And never did need drive
+me. No, only an immeasurable thirst for life and an insupportable
+curiosity. By God, I would like for a few days to become a horse, a
+plant, or a fish, or to be a woman and experience childbirth; I would
+like to live with the inner life, and to look upon the universe with
+the eyes of every human being I meet. And so I wander care-free over
+towns and hamlets, bound by nothing; know and love tens of trades and
+joyously float wherever it suits fate to set my sail... And so it was
+that I came upon the brothel, and the more I look at it, the more there
+grows within me alarm, incomprehension, and very great anger. But even
+this will soon be at an end. When things get well into autumn--away
+again! I'll get into a rail-rolling mill. I've a certain friend, he'll
+manage it ... Wait, wait, Lichonin ... Listen to the actor ... That's
+the third act."
+
+Egmont-Lavretzki, who until this had been very successfully imitating
+now a shoat which is being put into a bag, now the altercation of a cat
+with a dog, was beginning little by little to wilt and droop. Upon him
+was already advancing the stage of self-revelation, next in order, in
+the paroxysm of which he several times attempted to kiss Yarchenko's
+hand. His lids had become red; around the shaven, prickly lips had
+deepened the tearful wrinkles that gave him an appearance of weeping;
+and it could be heard by his voice that his nose and throat were
+already overflowing with tears.
+
+"I serve in a farce!" he was saying, smiting himself on the breast with
+his fist. "I disport myself in striped trunks for the sport of the
+sated mob! I have put out my torch, have hid my talent in the earth,
+like the slothful servant! But fo-ormerly!" he began to bray
+tragically, "Fo-ormerly-y-y! Ask in Novocherkassk, ask in Tvier, in
+Ustejne, in Zvenigorodok, in Krijopole.[10] What a Zhadov and Belugin I
+was! How I played Max! What a figure I created of Veltishchev--that was
+my crowning ro-ole ... Nadin-Perekopski was beginning with me at
+Sumbekov's! With Nikiphorov-Pavlenko did I serve. Who made the name for
+Legunov-Pochainin? I! But no-ow ..."
+
+
+[10] All provincial towns.--Trans.
+
+
+He sniveled, and sought to kiss the sub-professor.
+
+"Yes! Despise me, brand me, ye honest folk. I play the tom-fool. I
+drink ... I have sold and spilt the sacred ointment! I sit in a dive
+with vendable merchandise. While my wife ... she is a saint, and pure,
+my little dove! ... Oh, if she knew, if she only knew! she works hard,
+she runs a modiste's shop; her fingers--the fingers of an angel--are
+pricked with the needle, but I! Oh, sainted woman! And I--the
+scoundrel!--whom do I exchange thee for! Oh, horror!" The actor seized
+his hair. "Professor, let me, I'll kiss your scholarly hand. You alone
+understand me. Let us go, I'll introduce you, you'll see what an angel
+this is! ... She awaits me, she does not sleep nights, she folds the
+tiny hands of my little ones and together with them whispers: 'Lord,
+save and preserve papa.'"
+
+"You're lying about it all, you ham!" said the drunken Little White
+Manka suddenly, looking with hatred upon Egmont-Lavretzki. "She isn't
+whispering anything, but most peacefully sleeping with a man in your
+bed."
+
+"Be still, you w--!" vociferated the actor beside himself; and seizing
+a bottle by the neck raised it high over his head. "Hold me, or else
+I'll brain this carrion. Don't you dare besmirch with your foul
+tongue..."
+
+"My tongue isn't foul--I take communion," impudently replied the woman.
+"But you, you fool, wear horns. You go traipsing around with
+prostitutes yourself, and yet want your wife not to play you false. And
+look where the dummy's found a place to slaver, till he looks like he
+had reins in his mouth. And what did you mix the children in for, you
+miserable papa you! Don't you roll your eyes and gnash your teeth at
+me. You won't frighten me! W--yourself!"
+
+It required many efforts and much eloquence on the part of Yarchenko in
+order to quiet the actor and Little White Manka, who always after
+Benedictine ached for a row. The actor in the end burst into copious
+and unbecoming tears and blew his nose, like an old man; he grew weak,
+and Henrietta led him away to her room.
+
+Fatigue had already overcome everybody. The students, one after
+another, returned from the bedrooms; and separately from them, with an
+indifferent air, came their chance mistresses. And truly, both these
+and the others resembled flies, males and females, just flown apart on
+the window pane. They yawned, stretched, and for a long time an
+involuntary expression of wearisomeness and aversion did not leave
+their faces, pale from sleeplessness, unwholesomely glossy. And when
+they, before going their ways, said good-bye to each other, in their
+eyes twinkled some kind of an inimical feeling, just as with the
+participants of one and the same filthy and unnecessary crime.
+
+"Where are you going right now?" Lichonin asked the reporter in a low
+voice.
+
+"Well, really, I don't know myself. I did want to spend the night in
+the cabinet of Isaiah Savvich, but it's a pity to lose such a splendid
+morning. I'm thinking of taking a bath, and then I'll get on a steamer
+and ride to the Lipsky monastery to a certain tippling black friar I
+know. But why?"
+
+"I would ask you to remain a little while and sit the others out. I
+must have a very important word or two with you."
+
+"It's a go."
+
+Yarchenko was the last to go. He averred a headache and fatigue. But
+scarcely had he gone out of the house when the reporter seized Lichonin
+by the hand and quickly dragged him into the glass vestibule of the
+entrance.
+
+"Look!" he said, pointing to the street.
+
+And through the orange glass of the little coloured window Lichonin saw
+the sub-professor, who was ringing at Treppel's. After a minute the
+door opened and Yarchenko disappeared through it.
+
+"How did you find out?" asked Lichonin with astonishment.
+
+"A mere trifle! I saw his face, and saw his hands smoothing Verka's
+tights. The others were less restrained. But this fellow is bashful."
+
+"Well, now, let's go," said Lichonin. "I won't detain you long."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Of the girls only two remained in the cabinet-Jennie, who had come in
+her night blouse, and Liuba, who had long been sleeping under cover of
+the conversation, curled up into a ball in the large plush armchair.
+The fresh, freckled face of Liuba had taken on a meek, almost
+childlike, expression, while the lips, just as they had smiled in
+sleep, had preserved the light imprint of a radiant, peaceful and
+tender smile. It was blue and biting in the cabinet from the dense
+tobacco smoke; guttered, warty little streams had congealed on the
+candles in the candelabras; the table, flooded with coffee and wine,
+scattered all over with orange peels, seemed hideous.
+
+Jennie was sitting on the divan, her knees clasped around with her
+arms. And again was Platonov struck by the sombre fire in her deep
+eyes, that seemed fallen in underneath the dark eyebrows, formidably
+contracted downward, toward the bridge of the nose.
+
+"I'll put out the candles," said Lichonin.
+
+The morning half-light, watery and drowsy, filled the room through the
+slits of the blinds. The extinguished wicks of the candles smoked with
+faint streams. The tobacco smoke swirled in blue, layered shrouds, but
+a ray of sunlight that had cut its way through the heart-shaped hollow
+in a window shutter, transpierced the cabinet obliquely with a joyous,
+golden sword of dust, and in liquid, hot gold splashed upon the paper
+on the wall.
+
+"That's better," said Lichonin, sitting down. "The conversation will be
+short, but ... the devil knows ... how to approach it."
+
+He looked at Jennie in abstraction.
+
+"Shall I go away, then?" said she indifferently.
+
+"No, you sit a while," the reporter answered for Lichonin. "She won't
+be in the way," he turned to the student and slightly smiled. "For the
+conversation will be about prostitution? Isn't that so?"
+
+"Well, yes... sort of..."
+
+"Very well, then. You listen to her carefully. Her opinions happen to
+be of an unusually cynical nature, but at times of exceeding weight."
+
+Lichonin vigorously rubbed and kneaded his face with his palms, then
+intertwined his fingers and nervously cracked them twice. It was
+apparent that he was agitated and was himself constrained about that
+which he was getting ready to say.
+
+"Oh, but isn't it all the same!" he suddenly exclaimed angrily. "You
+were to-day speaking about these women ... I listened... True, you
+haven't told me anything new. But-strangely-I, for some reason, as
+though for the first time in my loose life, have looked upon this
+question with open eyes... I ask you, what is prostitution in the end?
+What is it? The extravagant delirium of large cities, or an eternal
+historical phenomenon? Will it cease some time? Or will it die only
+with the death of all mankind? Who will answer me that?"
+
+Platonov was looking at him intently, narrowing his eyes slightly,
+through habit. He wanted to know what main thought was inflicting such
+sincere torture on Lichonin.
+
+"When it will cease, none will tell you. Perhaps when the magnificent
+Utopias of the socialists and anarchists will materialize, when the
+world will become everyone's and no one's, when love will be absolutely
+free and subject only to its own unlimited desires, while mankind will
+fuse into one happy family, wherein will perish the distinction between
+mine and thine, and there will come a paradise upon earth, and man will
+again become naked, glorified and without sin. Perhaps it may be
+then..."
+
+"But now? Now?" asks Lichonin with growing agitation. "Shall I look on,
+with my little hands folded? 'It's none of my affair?' Tolerate it as
+an unavoidable evil? Put up with it, and wash my hands of it? Shall I
+pronounce a benediction upon it?"
+
+"This evil is not unavoidable, but insuperable. But isn't it all the
+same to you?" asked Platonov with cold wonder. "For you're an
+anarchist, aren't you?"
+
+"What the devil kind of an anarchist am I! Well, yes, I am an
+anarchist, because my reason, when I think of life, always leads me
+logically to the anarchistic beginning. And I myself think in theory:
+let men beat, deceive, and fleece men, like flocks of sheep--let
+them!--violence will breed rancour sooner or later. Let them violate
+the child, let them trample creative thought under foot, let there be
+slavery, let there be prostitution, let them thieve, mock, spill
+blood...Let them! The worse, the better, the nearer the end. There is a
+great law, I think, the same for inanimate objects as well as for all
+the tremendous and many-millioned human life: the power of effort is
+equal to the power of resistance. The worse, the better. Let evil and
+vindictiveness accumulate in mankind, let them grow and ripen like a
+monstrous abscess--an abscess the size of the whole terrestrial sphere.
+For it will burst some time! And let there be terror and insufferable
+pain. Let the pus deluge all the universe. But mankind will either
+choke in it and perish, or, having gone through the illness, will be
+regenerated to a new, beautiful life."
+
+Lichonin avidly drank off a cup of cold black coffee and continued
+vehemently:
+
+"Yes. Just so do I and many others theorize, sitting in our rooms, over
+tea with white bread and cooked sausage, when the value of each
+separate human life is so-so, an infinitesimally small numeral in a
+mathematical formula. But let me see a child abused, and the red blood
+will rush to my head from rage. And when I look and look upon the
+labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown into hysterics for shame
+at my algebraic calculations. There is--the devil take it!--there is
+something incongruous, altogether illogical, but which at this time is
+stronger than human reason. Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this
+minute as though I had robbed a sleeping man or deceived a
+three-year-old child, or hit a bound person? And why does it seem to me
+to-day that I myself am guilty of the evil of prostitution--guilty in
+my silence, my indifference, my indirect permission? What am I to do,
+Platonov!" exclaimed the student with grief in his voice.
+
+Platonov kept silent, squinting at him with his little narrow eyes. But
+Jennie unexpectedly said in a caustic tone:
+
+"Well, you do as one Englishwoman did ... A certain red-haired
+clodhopper came to us here. She must have been important, because she
+came with a whole retinue ... all some sort of officials ... But before
+her had come the assistant of the commissioner, with the precinct
+inspector Kerbesh. And the assistant directly forewarned us, just like
+that: 'If you stiffs, and so on and so on, will let out even one little
+rude word, or something, then I won't leave one stone upon another of
+your establishment, while I'll flog all the wenches soundly in the
+station-house and make 'em rot in jail!' Well, at last this galoot
+came. She gibbered and she gibbered something in a foreign language,
+all the time pointed to heaven with her hand, and then distributed a
+five-kopeck Testament to every one of us and rode away. Now you ought
+to do the same, dearie."
+
+Platonov burst into loud laughter. But seeing the naive and sad face of
+Lichonin, who did not seem to understand, nor even suspect mockery, he
+restrained his laughter and said seriously:
+
+"You won't accomplish anything, Lichonin. While there will be property,
+there will also be poverty. While marriage exists, prostitution also
+will not die. Do you know who will always sustain and nourish
+prostitution? It is the so-called decent people, the noble
+paterfamiliases, the irreproachable husbands, the loving brothers. They
+will always find a seemly motive to legitimize, normalize and put a
+wrapper all around paid libertinage, because they know very well that
+otherwise it would rush in a torrent into their bedrooms and nurseries.
+Prostitution is for them a deflection of the sensuousness of others
+from their personal, lawful alcove. And even the respectable
+paterfamilias himself is not averse to indulge in a love debauch in
+secret. And really, it is palling to have always the one and the same
+thing the wife, the chambermaid, and the lady on the side. Man, as a
+matter of fact, is a poly--and exceedingly so--a polygamous animal. And
+to his rooster-like amatory instincts it will always be sweet to unfold
+in such a magnificent nursery garden, A LA Treppel's or Anna
+Markovna's. Oh, of course, a well-balanced spouse or the happy father
+of six grown-up daughters will always be clamouring about the horror of
+prostitution. He will even arrange with the help of a lottery and an
+amateur entertainment a society for the saving of fallen women, or an
+asylum in the name of St. Magdalene. But the existence of prostitution
+he will bless and sustain."
+
+"Magdalene asylums!" with quiet laughter, full of an ancient hatred the
+ache of which had not yet healed, repeated Jennie.
+
+"Yes, I know that all these false measures undertaken are stuff and a
+total mockery," cut in Lichonin. "But let me be ridiculous and stupid,
+yet I do not wish to remain a commiserating spectator, who sits on a
+warm ledge, gazes upon a conflagration, and is saying all the time:
+'Oh, my, but it's burning ... by God, it is burning! Perhaps there are
+even people burning!'--but for his part merely laments and slaps his
+thighs."
+
+"Well, now," said Platonov harshly, "would you take a child's syringe
+and go to put out the fire with it?"
+
+"No!" heatedly exclaimed Lichonin ... "Perhaps--who knows?--perhaps
+I'll succeed in saving at least one living soul? It was just this that
+I wanted to ask you about, Platonov, and you must help me ... Only, I
+implore you, without jeers, without cooling off ..."
+
+"You want to take a girl out of here? To save her?" asked Platonov,
+looking at him attentively. He now understood the drift of this entire
+conversation.
+
+"Yes ... I don't know ... I'll try ..." answered Lichonin uncertainly.
+
+"She'll come back," said Platonov.
+
+"She will," Jennie repeated with conviction.
+
+Lichonin walked up to her, took her by the hands and began to speak in
+a trembling whisper:
+
+"Jennechka ... Perhaps you ... eh? For I don't call you as a mistress
+... but a friend ... It's all a trifle, half a year of rest ... and
+then we'll master some trade or other ... we'll read..."
+
+Jennie snatched her hands out of his with vexation.
+
+"Oh, into a bog with you!" she almost shouted. "I know you! Want me to
+darn socks for you? Cook on a kerosene stove? Pass nights without
+sleeping on account of you when you'll be chitter-chattering with your
+short-haired friends? But when you get to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a
+government clerk, then it's me will get a knee in the back: 'Out on the
+street with you, now, you public hide, you've ruined my young life. I
+want to marry a decent girl, pure, and innocent! ..."
+
+"I meant it as a brother ... I meant it without that ..." mumbled
+Lichonin in confusion.
+
+"I know that kind of brothers. Until the first night ... Leave off and
+don't talk nonsense to me! It makes me tired to listen to it!"
+
+"Wait, Lichonin!" began the reporter seriously. "Why, you will pile a
+load beyond your strength upon yourself as well. I've known idealists,
+among the populists, who married peasant girls out of principle. This
+is just the way they thought--nature, black-loam, untapped forces. ...
+But this black-loam after a year turned into the fattest of women, who
+lies the whole day in bed and chews cookies, or studs her fingers with
+penny rings, spreads them out and admires them. Or else sits in the
+kitchen, drinks sweet liquor with the coachman and carries on a natural
+romance with him. Look out, here it will be worse!"
+
+All three became silent. Lichonin was pale and was wiping his moist
+forehead with a handkerchief.
+
+"No, the devil take it!" he cried out suddenly with obstinacy. "I don't
+believe you! I don't want to believe! Liuba" he called loudly the girl
+who had fallen asleep. "Liubochka!"
+
+The girl awoke, passed her palm over her lips, first to one side, then
+the other, yawned, and smiled, in a funny, child-like manner.
+
+"I wasn't sleeping, I heard everything," she said. "I only dozed off
+for a teeny-weeny bit."
+
+"Liuba, do you want to go away from here with me?" asked Lichonin and
+took her by the hand. "But entirely, forever, to go away so's never to
+return either to a brothel or the street?"
+
+Liuba questioningly, with perplexity, looked at Jennie, as though
+seeking from her an explanation of this jest.
+
+"That's enough for you," she said slyly. "You're still studying
+yourself. Where do you come in, then, to take a girl and set her up?"
+
+"Not to set you up, Liuba ... I simply want to help you ... For it
+isn't very sweet for you in a brothel, is it now!"
+
+"Naturally, it isn't all sugar! If I was as proud as Jennechka, or so
+enticing like Pasha ... but I won't get used to things here for
+anything ..."
+
+"Well, then, let's go, let's go! ..." entreated Lichonin. "Surely, you
+know some manual work--well, now, sewing something, embroidering,
+cutting?"
+
+"I don't know anything!" answered Liuba bashfully and started laughing
+and turned red, covering her mouth with the elbow of her free arm.
+"What's asked of us in the village, that I know, but anything more I
+don't know. I can cook a little ... I lived at the priest's--cooked for
+him."
+
+"That's splendid! That's excellent!" Lichonin grew joyous. "I will
+assist you, you'll open a dining room ... A cheap dining room, you
+understand ... I'll advertise it for you ... The students will come!
+That's magnificent! ..."
+
+"That's enough of making fun of me!" retorted Liuba, a bit offended,
+and again looked askance and questioningly at Jennie.
+
+"He's not joking," answered Jennie with a voice which quavered
+strangely. "He's in earnest, seriously."
+
+"Here's my word of honour that I'm serious! Honest to God, now!" the
+student caught her up with warmth and for some reason even made the
+sign of the cross in the direction of the empty corner.
+
+"And really," said Jennie, "take Liubka. That's not the same thing as
+taking me. I'm like an old dragoon's nag, and used to it. You can't
+make me over, neither with hay nor a stick. But Liubka is a simple girl
+and a kind one. And she hasn't grown used to our life yet. What are you
+popping your eyes out at me for, you ninny? Answer when you're asked.
+Well? Do you want to or don't you want to?"
+
+"And why not? If they ain't laughing, but for real ... And you,
+Jennechka, what would you advise me ..."
+
+"Oh, you're such wood!" Jennie grew angry. "What's better according to
+you--to rot on straw with a nose fallen through? To croak under the
+fence like a dog? Or to turn honest? Fool! You ought to kiss his hands;
+but no, you're getting particular."
+
+The naive Liuba did, in fact, extend her lips toward Lichonin's hand,
+and this movement made everybody laugh, and touched them just the least
+trifle.
+
+"And that's very good! It's like magic!" bustled the overjoyed
+Lichonin. "Go and notify the proprietress at once that you're going
+away from here forever. And take the most necessary things; it isn't as
+it used to be; now a girl can go away from a brothel whenever she wants
+to."
+
+"No, it can't be done that way," Jennie stopped him; "she can go away,
+that's so, but you'll have no end of unpleasantness and hullabaloo.
+Here's what you do, student. You won't regret ten roubles?"
+
+"Of course, of course ... if you please."
+
+"Let Liuba tell the housekeeper that you're taking her to your rooms
+for to-day. That's the fixed rate--ten roubles. And afterwards, well,
+even to-morrow--come after the ticket and things. That's nothing; we'll
+work this thing roundly. And after that you must go to the police with
+her ticket and declare, that Liubka So-and-so has hired herself to you
+as chambermaid, and that you desire to exchange her blank for a real
+passport. Well, Liubka, lively! Take the money and march. And, look
+out, be as quick as possible with the housekeeper, or else she, the
+bitch, will read it in your eyes. And also don't forget," she cried,
+now after Liuba, "wipe the rouge off your puss, now. Or else the
+drivers will be pointing their fingers at you."
+
+After half an hour Liuba and Lichonin were getting on a cab at the
+entrance. Jennie and the reporter were standing on the sidewalk.
+
+"You're committing a great folly, Lichonin," Platonov was saying
+listlessly, "but I honour and respect the fine impulse within you.
+Here's the thought--and here's the deed. You're a brave and a splendid
+fellow."
+
+"Here's to your commencement!" laughed Jennie. "Look out, don't forget
+to send for me to the christening."
+
+"You won't see it, no matter how long you wait for it!" laughed
+Lichonin, waving his cap about.
+
+They rode off. The reporter looked at Jennie, and with astonishment saw
+tears in her softened eyes.
+
+"God grant it, God grant it," she was whispering.
+
+"What has been the matter with you to-day, Jennie?" he asked kindly.
+"What? Are you oppressed? Can't I do anything?"
+
+She turned her back to him and leaned over the bent balustrade of the
+stoop.
+
+"How shall I write to you, if need be?" she asked in a stifled voice.
+
+"Why, it's simple. Editorial rooms of Echoes. So-and-so. They'll pass
+it on to me pretty fast."
+
+"I ... I ... I ..." Jennie just began, but suddenly burst into loud,
+passionate sobs and covered her face with her hands, "I'll write you
+..."
+
+And without taking her hands away from her face, her shoulders
+quivering, she ran up the stoop and disappeared in the house, loudly
+banging the door after her.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Even to this day, after a lapse of ten years, the erstwhile inhabitants
+of the Yamkas recall that year, abounding in unhappy, foul, bloody
+events, which began with a series of trifling, small affrays, but
+terminated in the administration's, one fine day, taking and destroying
+completely the ancient, long-warmed nest of legalized prostitution,
+which nest it had itself created--scattering its remains over the
+hospitals, jails and streets of the big city. Even to this day a few of
+the former proprietresses who have remained alive and have reached the
+limit of decrepitude, and quondam housekeepers, fat and hoarse, like
+pug-dogs grown old, recall this common destruction with sorrow, horror,
+and stolid perplexity.
+
+Just like potatoes out of a sack, brawls, robberies, diseases, murders
+and suicides began to pour down, and, it seemed, no one was to blame
+for this. All these misfortunes just simply began to be more frequent
+of their own accord, to pile one upon the other, to expand and grow;
+just as a small lump of snow, pushed by the feet of urchins, becomes
+constantly bigger and bigger by itself from the thawing snow sticking
+to it, grows bigger than the stature of a man, and, finally, with one
+last, small effort is precipitated into a ravine and rolls down as an
+enormous avalanche. The old proprietresses and housekeepers, of course,
+had never heard of fatality; but inwardly, with the soul, they sensed
+its mysterious presence in the inevitable calamities of that terrible
+year.
+
+And, truly, everywhere in life where people are bound by common
+interests, blood relationship, or the benefits of a profession into
+close, individualized groups--there inevitably can be observed this
+mysterious law of sudden accumulation, of a piling up, of events; their
+epidemicity, their strange succession and connectedness, their
+incomprehensible lingering. This occurs, as popular wisdom has long ago
+noted, in isolated families, where disease or death suddenly falls upon
+the near ones in an inevitable, enigmatic order. "Misfortune does not
+come alone." "Misfortune without waits--open wide the gates." This is
+to be noticed also in monasteries, banks, governmental departments,
+regiments, places of learning and other public institutions, where for
+a long time, almost for decades, life flows evenly, like a marshy
+river; and, suddenly, and after some altogether insignificant incident
+or other, there begin transfers, changes in positions, expulsions from
+service, losses, sicknesses. The members of society, just as though
+they had conspired, die, go insane, are caught thieving, shoot or hang
+themselves; vacancy after vacancy is freed; promotions follow
+promotions, new elements flow in, and, behold, after two years there is
+not a one of the previous people on the spot; everything is new, if
+only the institution has not fallen into pieces completely, has not
+crept apart. And is it not the same astounding destiny which overtakes
+enormous social, universal organizations--cities, empires, nations,
+countries, and, who knows, perhaps whole planetary worlds?
+
+Something resembling this incomprehensible fatality swept over the
+Yamaskya Borough as well, bringing it to a rapid and scandalous
+destruction. Now in place of the boisterous Yamkas is left a peaceful,
+humdrum outskirt, in which live truck-farmers, cat's-meat men, Tartars,
+swineherds and butchers from the near-by slaughterhouses. At the
+petition of these worthy people even the designation of Yamaskya
+Borough itself, as disgracing the inhabitants with its past, has been
+named over into Golubovka, in honour of the merchant Golubov, owner of
+a shop dealing in groceries and delicacies, and warden of the local
+church.
+
+The first subterranean shocks of this catastrophe began in the heat of
+summer, at the time of the annual summer fair, which this year was
+unbelievably brilliant. Many circumstances contributed to its
+extraordinary success, multitudes, and the stupendousness of the deals
+concluded during it: the building in the vicinity of three new sugar
+refineries, and the unusually abundant crop of wheat, and, in
+particular, of sugar beets; the commencement of work in the laying of
+an electric trolley and of canalization; the building of a new road to
+the distance of 750 versts; but mainly, the fever of building which
+seized the whole town, all the banks and financial institutions, and
+all the houseowners. Factories for making brick sprang up on the
+outskirts of the town like mushrooms. A grandiose agricultural
+exposition opened. Two new steamer lines came into being, and they,
+together with the previously established ones, frenziedly competed with
+each other, transporting freight and pilgrims. In competition they
+reached such a state, that they lowered their passenger rates for the
+third class from seventy-five kopecks to five, three, two, and even one
+kopeck. In the end, ready to fall from exhaustion in the unequal
+struggle, one of the steamship companies offered a free passage to all
+the third-class passengers. Then its competitor at once added to the
+free passage half a loaf of white bread as well. But the biggest and
+most significant enterprise of this city was the engineering of the
+extensive river port, which had attracted to it hundreds of thousands
+of labourers and which cost God knows what money.
+
+It must also be added, that the city was at this time celebrating the
+millennial anniversary of its famous abbey, the most honoured and the
+richest among all the monasteries of Russia. From all the ends of
+Russia, out of Siberia, from the shores of the Frozen Ocean, from the
+extreme south--the Black and Caspian Seas--countless pilgrims had
+gathered for the worship of the local sanctities: the abbey's saints,
+reposing deep underground in calcareous caverns. Suffice it to say,
+that the monastery gave shelter, and food of a sort, to forty thousand
+people daily; while those for whom there was not enough room lay, at
+night, side by side, like logs, in the extensive yards and lanes of the
+abbey.
+
+This was a summer out of some fairy-tale. The population of the city
+increased well-nigh fourfold through every sort of newly-come people.
+Stone-masons, carpenters, painters, engineers, technicians, foreigners,
+agriculturists, brokers, shady business men, river navigators,
+unoccupied knaves, tourists, thieves, card sharpers--they all
+overflowed the city, and not in a single hotel, the most dirty and
+dubious one, was there a vacant room. Insane prices were paid for
+quarters. The stock exchange gambled on a grand scale, as never before
+or since that summer. Money in millions simply flowed from hands to
+hands, and thence to a third pair. In one hour colossal riches were
+created, but then many former firms burst, and yesterday's men of
+wealth turned into beggars. The commonest of labourers bathed and
+warmed themselves in this golden flood. Stevedores, draymen, street
+porters, roustabouts, hod carriers and ditch diggers still remember to
+this day what money they earned by the day during this mad summer. Any
+tramp received no less than four of five roubles a day at the unloading
+of barges laden with watermelons. And all this noisy, foreign band,
+locoed by the easy money, intoxicated with the sensual beauty of the
+ancient, seductive city, enchanted by the delightful warmth of the
+southern nights, made drunk by the insidious fragrance of the white
+acacias--these hundreds of thousands of insatiable, dissolute beasts in
+the image of men, with all their massed will clamoured: "Give us woman!"
+
+In a single month new amusement enterprises--chic Tivolis, CHATEAUX DES
+FLEURES, Olympias, Alcazars, etc., with a chorus and an operetta; many
+restaurants and beerhouses, with little summer gardens, and common
+little taverns--sprang up by the score in the city, in the vicinity of
+the building port. On every crossing new "violet-wine" houses were
+opened every day--little booths of boards, in each of which, under the
+pretext of selling bread-cider, old wenches trafficked in themselves by
+twos and threes, right alongside behind a partition of deal, and to
+many mothers and fathers is this summer painful and memorable through
+the degrading diseases of their sons--schoolboys and military cadets.
+For the casual arrivals servants were demanded, and thousands of
+peasant girls started out from the surrounding villages toward the
+city. It was inevitable that the demand on prostitution should become
+unusually high. And so, from Warsaw, from Lodz, from Odessa, from
+Moscow, and even from St. Petersburg, even from abroad, flocked
+together an innumerable multitude of foreign women; cocottes of Russian
+fabrication, the most ordinary prostitutes of the rank and file, and
+chic Frenchwomen and Viennese. Imperiously told the corrupting
+influence of the hundreds of millions of easy money. It was as though
+this cascade of gold had lashed down upon, had set to whirling and
+deluged within it, the whole city. The number of thefts and murders
+increased with astounding rapidity. The police, collected in augmented
+proportions, lost its head and was swept off its feet. But it must also
+be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful bribes, it resembled
+a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and listless. People were killed for
+anything and nothing, just so. It happened that men would walk up to a
+person in broad daylight somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask:
+"What's your name?" "Fedorov." "Aha, Federov? Then take this!" and they
+would slit his belly with a knife. They nicknamed these blades just
+that in the city--"rippers"; and there were among them names of which
+the city news seemed actually proud: the two brothers Polishchuk (Mitka
+and Dundas), Volodka the Greek, Fedor Miller, Captain Dmitriev,
+Sivocho, Dobrovolski, Shpachek, and many others.
+
+Both day and night on the main streets of the frenzied city stood,
+moved, and yelled the mob, as though at a fire. It would be almost
+impossible to describe what went on in the Yamkas then. Despite the
+fact that the madams had increased the staff of their patients to more
+than double and increased their prices trebly, their poor demented
+girls could not catch up in satisfying the demands of the drunken,
+crazed public, which threw money around like chips. It happened that in
+the drawing room, filled to overflowing with people, each girl would be
+awaited for by some seven, eight, at times even ten, men. It was,
+truly, some kind of a mad, intoxicated, convulsive time!
+
+And from that very time began all the misfortunes of the Yamkas, which
+brought them to ruin. And together with the Yamkas perished also the
+house, familiar to us, of the stout, old, pale-eyed Anna Markovna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The passenger train sped merrily from the south to the north,
+traversing golden fields of wheat and beautiful groves of oak,
+careering with rumbling upon iron bridges over bright rivers, leaving
+behind it whirling clouds of smoke.
+
+In the COUPE of the second class, even with open windows, there was a
+fearful stuffiness, and it was hot. The smell of sulphurous smoke
+irritated the throat. The rocking and the heat had completely tired out
+the passengers, save one, a merry, energetic, mobile Hebrew, splendidly
+dressed, accommodating, sociable and talkative. He was travelling with
+a young woman, and it was at once apparent, especially through her,
+that they were newly-weds; so often did her face flare up with an
+unexpected colour at every tenderness of her husband, even the least.
+And when she raised her eyelashes to look upon him, her eyes would
+shine like stars, and grow humid. And her face was as beautiful as only
+the faces of young Hebrew maidens in love can be beautiful--all
+tenderly rosy, with rosy lips, rounded out in beautiful innocence, and
+with eyes so black that their pupils could not be distinguished from
+the irises.
+
+Unabashed by the presence of three strange people, he showered his
+caresses upon his companion every minute, and, it must be said,
+sufficiently coarse ones. With the unceremoniousness of an owner, with
+that especial egoism of one in love, who, it would seem, is saying to
+the whole universe: "See, how happy we are--this makes you happy also,
+isn't that so?"--he would now pass his hand over her leg, which
+resiliently and in relief stood out beneath her dress, now pinch her on
+the cheek, now tickle her neck with his stiff, black, turned-up
+moustache ... But, even though he did sparkle with delight, there was
+still something rapacious, wary, uneasy to be glimpsed in his
+frequently winking eyes, in the twitching of the upper lip, and in the
+harsh outline of his shaved, square chin, jutting out, with a scarcely
+noticeable dent in the middle.
+
+Opposite this infatuated couple were placed three passengers--a retired
+general, a spare, neat little old man, with pomade on his hair, with
+curls combed forward to the temples; a stout land-owner, who had taken
+off his starched collar, but was still gasping from the heat and
+mopping his face every minute with a wet handkerchief; and a young
+infantry officer. The endless talkativeness of Simon Yakovlevich (the
+young man had already managed to inform his neighbours that he was
+called Simon Yakovlevich Horizon) tired and irritated the passengers a
+trifle, just like the buzzing of a fly, that on a sultry summer day
+rhythmically beats against a window pane of a closed, stuffy room. But
+still, he knew how to raise their spirits: he showed tricks of magic;
+told Hebrew anecdotes, full of a fine humour of their own. When his
+wife would go out on the platform to refresh herself, he would tell
+such things that the general would melt into a beatific smile, the
+land-owner would neigh, rocking his black-loam stomach, while the
+sub-lieutenant, a smooth-faced boy, only a year out of school, scarcely
+controlling his laughter and curiosity, would turn away to one side,
+that his neighbours might not see him turning red.
+
+His wife tended Horizon with a touching, naive attention; she wiped his
+face with a handkerchief, waved upon him with a fan, adjusted his
+cravat every minute. And his face at these times became laughably
+supercilious and stupidly self-conceited.
+
+"But allow me to ask," asked the spare little general, coughing
+politely, "allow me to ask, my dear sir, what occupation might you
+pursue?"
+
+"Ah, my God!" with a charming frankness retorted Simon Yakovlevich.
+"Well, what can a poor Jew do in our time? It's a bit of a travelling
+salesman and a commission broker by me. At the present time I'm far
+from business. You--he! he! he!--understand yourselves, gentlemen. A
+honeymoon--don't turn red, Sarochka--it don't repeat itself three times
+in a year. But afterwards I'll have to travel and work a great deal.
+Here we'll come with Sarochka to town, will pay the visits to her
+relatives, and then again on the road. On my first trip I'm thinking of
+taking my wife. You know, sort of a wedding journey. I'm a
+representative from Sidris and two English firms. Wouldn't you like to
+have a look? Here are the samples with me ..."
+
+He very rapidly took out of a small, elegant case of yellow leather a
+few long cardboard folding books, and with the dexterity of a tailor
+began to unfold them, holding one end, from which their folds fell
+downward with a light crackling.
+
+"Look, what splendid samples: they don't give in to foreign ones at
+all. Please notice. Here, for instance, is Russian and here English
+tricot, or here, cangan and cheviot. Compare, feel it, and you'll be
+convinced that the Russian samples almost don't give in to the foreign.
+Why, that speaks of progress, of the growth of culture. So it's
+absolutely for nothing that Europe counts us Russians such barbarians.
+
+"And so we'll pay our family visits, will look at the fair, pay a visit
+to the CHATEAU DES FLEURS, enjoy ourselves a little, stroll a bit, and
+then to the Volga down to Tzaritzin, to the Black Sea, and then again
+home to our native Odessa."
+
+"That's a fine journey," said the sub-lieutenant modestly.
+
+"I should say it's fine," agreed Simon Yakovlevich; "but there are no
+roses without thorns. The work of a travelling salesman is exceedingly
+difficult and requires many kinds of knowledge, and not so much the
+knowledge of business as the knowledge of--how shall I say it?--the
+knowledge of the human soul. Another man may not even want to give an
+order, but you must work like an elephant to convince him, and argue
+until he feels the clearness and justice of your words. Because I take
+only absolutely clean lines exclusively, of which there can be no
+doubts. A fake or a bad line I will not take, although they should
+offer me millions for it. Ask wherever you like, in any store which
+deals in cloths or suspenders GLOIRE--I'm also a representative from
+this firm--or buttons HELIOS--you just ask who Simon Yakovlevich
+Horizon is, and everyone will answer you: 'Simon Yakovlevich is not a
+man, but gold; this is a disinterested man, as honest as a diamond.'"
+And Horizon was already unpacking long boxes with patented suspenders,
+and was showing the glistening leaves of cardboard, covered with
+regular rows of vari-coloured buttons.
+
+"There happen great unpleasantnesses, when the place has been worked
+out, when a lot of travelling salesmen have appeared before you. Here
+you can't do anything; they absolutely won't listen to you, only wave
+their arms. But that's only for others. I am Horizon! I can talk him
+over, the same like a camel from a menagerie. But it happens still more
+unpleasant, when two competitors in one and the same line come together
+in the same town. And it happens even worse when it's some chimney
+sweep and can't do business himself and spoils business for you too.
+Here you go to all sorts of tricks: let him drink till he's drunk or
+let him go off somewhere on a false track. Not an easy trade! Besides
+that, I have one more line--that's false eyes and teeth. But it ain't a
+profitable line. I want to drop it. And besides I'm thinking of leaving
+all this business. I understand, it's all right for a young man, in the
+bloom of his powers, to flutter around like a moth, but once you have a
+wife, and may be a whole family even ..." he playfully patted the woman
+on the knee, from which she became scarlet and looked uncommonly
+better. "For the Lord has blessed us Jews with fecundity for all our
+misfortunes ... Then you want to have some business of your own, you
+want, you understand, to become settled in one place, so's there should
+be a shack of your own, and your own furniture, and your own bedroom,
+and kitchen ... Isn't that so, your excellency?"
+
+"Yes ... Yes ... eh--eh ... Yes, of course, of course," condescendingly
+responded the general.
+
+"And so I took with Sarochka a little dowry. What do I mean, a little
+dowry? Such money that Rothschild would not even want to look at it are
+in my hands a whole capital already. But it must be said that there are
+some savings by me, too. The firms I know will give me credit. If God
+grant it, we shall still eat a piece of bread and a little butter--and
+on the Sabbaths the tasty GEFILTEH FISCH."
+
+"That's fine fish: pike the way the sheenies make it!" said the gasping
+land-owner.
+
+"We shall open up for ourselves the firm of 'Horizon and Son.' Isn't
+that true, Sarochka--'and Son?' And you, I hope, will honour me with
+your esteemed orders? When you see the sign, 'Horizon and Son,' then
+straight off recollect that you once rode in a car together with a
+young man, who had grown as foolish as hell from love and from
+happiness."
+
+"Ab-solutely!" said the land-owner.
+
+And Simon Yakovlevich at once turned to him:
+
+"But I also work by commission broking. To sell an estate, to buy an
+estate, to arrange a second mortgage--you won't find a better
+specialist than me, and such a cheap one at that. I can be of service
+to you, should the need arise," and he extended his visiting card to
+the land-owner with a bow, and, by the way, handed a card each to his
+two neighbours as well.
+
+The land-owner dived into a side pocket and also dragged out a card.
+
+"Joseph Ivanovich Vengjenovski," Simon Yakovlevich read out loud.
+"Very, very pleased! And so, should you need me ..."
+
+"Why not? It's possible ..." said the land-owner meditatively. "Why,
+yes: perhaps, indeed, a favourable chance has brought us together! Why,
+I'm just journeying to K----about the sale of a certain forest country
+house. Suppose you do that, then,--drop in to see me. I always stop at
+the Grand Hotel. Perhaps we may be able to strike up a deal."
+
+"Oh, I'm already almost sure, my dearest Joseph Ivanovich!" exclaimed
+the rejoicing Horizon, and slightly, with the very tips of his fingers,
+patted Vengjenovski's kneecap carefully. "You just rest assured; if
+Horizon has undertaken anything, then you'll be thanking him like your
+own father, no more, no less."
+
+Half an hour later Simon Yakovlevich and the smooth-faced
+sub-lieutenant were standing on the platform of the car and smoking.
+
+"Do you often visit K----, mister sub-lieutenant?" asked Horizon.
+
+"Only for the first time--just imagine! Our regiment is stationed at
+Chernobob. I was born in Moscow, myself."
+
+"AI, AI, AI! How'd you come to get into such a faraway place?"
+
+"Well, it just fell out so. There was no other vacancy when I was let
+out."
+
+"But then--Chernobob is a hole! The worst little town in all Podolia."
+
+"That's true, but it just fell out so."
+
+"That means, then, that the young officer gent is going to K----to
+divert himself a little?"
+
+"Yes. I'm thinking of stopping there for two or three days. I'm
+travelling to Moscow, really. I have received a two months' leave, but
+it would be interesting to look over the city on the way. It's very
+beautiful, they say."
+
+"Oh, what are you trying to tell me? A remarkable city! Well,
+absolutely a European city. If you only knew, what streets,
+electricity, trolleys, theatres! And if you only knew what cabarets!
+You'll lick your own fingers. Positively, positively, I advise you,
+young man, to pay a visit to the CHATEAU DES FLEURS, to the Tivoli, and
+also to ride out to the island. That's something special. What women,
+wha-a-at women!"
+
+The lieutenant turned red, took his eyes away, and asked in a voice
+that quavered:
+
+"Yes, I've happened to hear that. Is it possible that they're really so
+handsome?"
+
+"Oi! Strike me God! Believe me, there are no handsome women there at
+all."
+
+"But--how's that?"
+
+"Why, this way: there are only raving beauties there. You
+understand--what a happy blending of bloods! Polish, Little Russian,
+and Hebrew. How I envy you, young man, that you're free and alone. In
+my time I sure would have shown myself! And what's most remarkable of
+all, they're unusually passionate women! Well, just like fire! And do
+you know something else?" he asked in a whisper of great significance.
+
+"What?" asked the sub-lieutenant in a fright.
+
+"It's remarkable, that nowheres, neither in Paris, nor in
+London--believe me, this was told me by people who had seen the whole
+wide world--never, nowhere, will you meet with such exquisite ways of
+making love as in this town. That's something especial, as us little
+Jews say. They think up such things that no imagination can picture to
+itself. It's enough to drive you crazy!"
+
+"But is that possible?" quietly spoke the sub-lieutenant, whose breath
+had been cut off.
+
+"Well, strike me God! But permit me, young man, by the way! You
+understand yourself. I was single, and of course, every man is liable
+to sin ... It's different now, of course. I've had myself written in
+with the invalids. But from the former days a remarkable collection has
+remained to me. Just wait, I'll show it to you right away. Only,
+please, be as careful as possible in looking at it."
+
+Horizon with trepidation looked around to the right and left and
+extracted from his pocket a long, narrow little box of morocco, in the
+style of those in which playing cards are usually kept, and extended it
+to the sub-lieutenant.
+
+"Here you are, have a look. Only, I beg of you, be very careful."
+
+The sub-lieutenant applied himself to picking out, one after the other,
+the cards of plain and coloured photography, in which in all possible
+aspects was depicted in the most beastly ways, in the most impossible
+positions, the external side of love which at times makes man
+immeasurably lower and viler than a baboon. Horizon would look over his
+shoulder, nudge him with his elbow, and whisper:
+
+"Tell me, ain't that swell, now? Why, this is genuine Parisian and
+Viennese chic!"
+
+The sub-lieutenant looked through the whole collection from the
+beginning to the end. When he was giving back the little box, his hand
+was shaking, his temples and forehead were moist, his eyes had dimmed,
+and over his cheeks had mantled a blush, mottled like marble.
+
+"But do you know what?" Horizon exclaimed gaily, all of a sudden. "It's
+all the same to me--the Indian sign has been put upon me. I, as they
+used to say in the olden times, have burned my ships ... I have burned
+all that I used to adore before. For a long time already I've been
+looking for an opportunity to pass these cards on to some one. I ain't
+especially chasing after a price. You wish to acquire them, mister
+officer?"
+
+"Well, now ... I,--that is ... Why not? ... Let's ..."
+
+"That's fine! On account of such a pleasant acquaintanceship, I'll take
+fifty kopecks apiece. What, is that expensive? Well, what's the
+difference, God be with you! I see you're a travelling man, I don't
+want to rob you; let it go at thirty, then. What? That ain't cheap
+either? Well, shake hands on it! Twenty-five kopecks apiece. OI! What
+an intractable fellow you are! At twenty! You'll thank me yourself
+later! And then, do you know what else? When I come to K--, I always
+stop at the Hotel Hermitage. You can very easily find me there either
+very early in the morning, or about eight o'clock in the evening. I
+know an awful lot of the finest little ladies. So I'll introduce you.
+And, you understand, not for money. Oh, no. It's just simply nice and
+gay for them to pass the time with a young, healthy, handsome man of
+your sort. There's absolutely no money of any kind necessary. And for
+that matter--they themselves will willingly pay for wine, for a bottle
+of champagne! So remember then; The Hermitage, Horizon. And if it isn't
+that, remember it anyway! Maybe I can be of use to you. And the cards
+are such a thing, such a thing, that it will never lay on the shelf by
+you. Those who like that sort of thing give three roubles for each
+specimen. But these, of course, are rich people, little old men. And
+then, you know"--Horizon bent over to the officer's very ear, winked
+one eye, and pronounced in a sly whisper--"you know, many ladies adore
+these cards. Why, you're a young man, and handsome; how many romances
+you will have yet!"
+
+Having received the money and counted it over painstakingly, Horizon
+had the brazenness to extend his hand in addition, and to shake the
+hand of the sub-lieutenant, who did not dare to lift up his eyes to
+him; and, having left him on the platform, went back into the
+passageway of the car, as though nothing had happened.
+
+This was an unusually communicative man. On the way to his COUPE he
+came to a stop before a beautiful little girl of three years, with whom
+he had for some time been flirting at a distance and making all sorts
+of funny grimaces at. He squatted down on his heels before her, began
+to imitate a nanny goat for her, and questioned her in a lisping voice:
+
+"May I athk where the young lady ith going? OI, OI, OI! Thuch a big
+girl! Travelling alone, without mamma? Bought a ticket all by herthelf
+and travelth alone! AI! What a howwid girl! And where ith the girl'th
+mamma?" At this moment a tall, handsome, self-assured woman appeared
+from the COUPE and said calmly:
+
+"Get away from the child. What a despicable thing to annoy strange
+children!"
+
+Horizon jumped up on his feet and began to bustle:
+
+"Madam! I could not restrain myself ... Such a wonderful, such a
+magnificent and swell child! A regular cupid! You must understand,
+madam, I am a father myself--I have children of my own ... I could not
+restrain myself from delight! ..."
+
+But the lady turned her back upon him, took the girl by the hand and
+went with her into the COUPE, leaving Horizon shuffling his feet and
+muttering his compliments and apologies.
+
+Several times during the twenty-four hours Horizon would go into the
+third class, of two cars, separated from each other by almost the
+entire train. In one care were sitting three handsome women, in the
+society of a black-bearded, taciturn, morose man. Horizon and he would
+exchange strange phrases in some special jargon. The women looked at
+him uneasily, as though wishing, yet not daring, to ask him about
+something. Only once, toward noon, did one of them allow herself to
+utter:
+
+"Then that's the truth? That which you said about the place? ... You
+understand--I'm somewhat uneasy at heart!"
+
+"Ah, what do you mean, Margarita Ivanovna? If I said it, then it's
+right, just like by the National Bank. Listen, Lazer," he turned to him
+of the beard. "There will be a station right away. Buy the girls all
+sorts of sandwiches, whichever they may desire. The train stops here
+for twenty-five minutes."
+
+"I'd like to have bouillon," hesitatingly uttered a little blonde, with
+hair like ripened rye, and with eyes like corn-flowers.
+
+"My dear Bella, anything you please! At the station I'll go and see
+that they bring you bouillon with meat and even stuffed dumplings.
+Don't you trouble yourself, Lazer, I'll do all that myself."
+
+In another car he had a whole nursery garden of women, twelve or
+fifteen people, under the leadership of an old, stout woman, with
+enormous, awesome, black eyebrows. She spoke in a bass, while her fat
+chins, breasts, and stomachs swayed under a broad morning dress in time
+to the shaking of the car, just like apple jelly. Neither the old woman
+nor the young women left the least doubts as to their profession.
+
+The women were lolling on the benches, smoking, playing cards--at
+"sixty-six,"--drinking beer. Frequently the male public of the car
+provoked them, and they swore back in unceremonious language, in hoarse
+voices. The young people treated them with wine and cigarettes.
+
+Horizon was here altogether unrecognizable; he was majestically
+negligent and condescendingly jocose. On the other hand, cringing
+ingratiation sounded in every word addressed to him by his female
+clients. But he, having looked over all of them--this strange mixture
+of Roumanians, Jewesses, Poles and Russians--and having assured himself
+that all was in order, gave orders about the sandwiches and
+majestically withdrew. At these moments he very much resembled a
+drover, who is transporting by railroad cattle for slaughter, and at a
+station drops in to look it over and to feed it. After that he would
+return to his COUPE and again begin to toy with his wife, and Hebrew
+anecdotes just poured from his mouth.
+
+At the long stops he would go out to the buffet only to see about his
+lady clients. But he himself said to his neighbours:
+
+"You know, it's all the same to me if it's TREIF or KOSHER. I don't
+recognize any difference. But what can I do with my stomach! The devil
+knows what stuff they'll feed you sometimes at these stations. You'll
+pay some three or four roubles, and then you'll spend a hundred roubles
+on the doctors curing yourself. But maybe you, now, Sarochka"--he would
+turn to his wife--"maybe you'll get off at the station to eat
+something? Or shall I send it up to you here?"
+
+Sarochka, happy over his attention, would turn red, beam upon him with
+grateful eyes, and refuse.
+
+"You're very kind, Senya, only I don't want to. I'm full."
+
+Then Horizon would reach out of a travelling hamper a chicken, boiled
+meat, cucumbers, and a bottle of Palestine wine; have a snack, without
+hurrying, with appetite; regale his wife, who ate very genteelly,
+sticking out the little fingers of her magnificent white hands; then
+painstakingly wrap up the remnants in paper and, without hurrying, lay
+them away accurately in the hamper.
+
+In the distance, far ahead of the locomotive, the cupolas and belfries
+were already beginning to sparkle with fires of gold. Through the COUPE
+passed the conductor and made some imperceptible sign to Horizon. He
+immediately followed the conductor out to the platform.
+
+"The inspector will pass through right away," said the conductor, "so
+you'll please be so kind as to stand for a while here on the platform
+of the third class with your spouse."
+
+"NU, NU, NU!" concurred Horizon.
+
+"And the money as agreed, if you please."
+
+"How much is coming to you, then?"
+
+"Well, just as we agreed; half the extra charge, two roubles eighty
+kopecks."
+
+"What?" Horizon suddenly boiled over. "Two roubles eighty kopecks? You
+think you got it a crazy one in me, what? Here's a rouble for you and
+thank God for that!"
+
+"Pardon me, sir. This is even absurd--didn't you and I agree?"
+
+"Agree, agree! ... Here's a half more, and not a thing besides. What
+impudence! I'll tell the inspector yet that you carry people without
+tickets. Don't you think it, brother--you ain't found one of that sort
+here!"
+
+The conductor's eyes suddenly widened, became blood-shot.
+
+"O-oh! You sheeny!" he began to roar. "I ought to take a skunk like you
+and under the train with you!"
+
+But Horizon at once flew at him like a cock.
+
+"What? Under the train? But do you know what's done for words like
+that? A threat by action! Here, I'll go right away and will yell
+'help!' and will turn the signal handle," and he seized the door-knob
+with such an air of resolution that the conductor just made a gesture
+of despair with his hand and spat.
+
+"May you choke with my money, you mangy sheeny!"
+
+Horizon called his wife out of the COUPE:
+
+"Sarochka! Let's go out on the platform for a look; one can see better
+there. Well, it's so beautiful--just like on a picture!"
+
+Sarah obediently went after him, holding up with an unskilled hand the
+new dress, in all probability put on for the first time, bending out
+and as though afraid of touching the door or the wall.
+
+In the distance, in the rosy gala haze of the evening glow, shone the
+golden cupolas and crosses. High up on the hill the white, graceful
+churches seemed to float in this flowery, magic mirage. Curly woods and
+coppices had run down from above and had pushed on over the very
+ravine. And the sheer, white precipice which bathed its foot in the
+blue river, was all furrowed over with occasional young woods, just
+like green little veins and warts. Beautiful as in a fairy tale, the
+ancient town appeared as though it were itself coming to meet the train.
+
+When the train stopped, Horizon ordered three porters to carry the
+things into the first class, and told his wife to follow him. But he
+himself lingered at the exit in order to let through both his parties.
+To the old woman looking after the dozen women he threw briefly in
+passing:
+
+"So remember, madam Berman! Hotel America, Ivanukovskaya, twenty-two!"
+
+While to the black-bearded man he said:
+
+"Don't forget, Lazer, to feed the girls at dinner and to bring them
+somewhere to a movie show. About eleven o'clock at night wait for me.
+I'll come for a talk. But if some one will be calling for me extra,
+then you know my address--The Hermitage. Ring me up. But if I'm not
+there for some reason, then run into Reiman's cafe, or opposite, into
+the Hebrew dining room. I'll be eating GEFILTEH FISCH there. Well, a
+lucky journey!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+All the stories of Horizon about his commercial travelling were simply
+brazen and glib lying. All the samples of drapers' goods, suspenders
+gloire and buttons helios, the artificial teeth and insertible eyes,
+served only as a shield, screening his real activity--to wit, the
+traffic in the body of woman. True, at one time, some ten years ago, he
+had travelled over Russia as the representative for the dubious wines
+of some unknown firm; and this activity had imparted to his tongue that
+free-and-easy unconstraint for which, in general, travelling salesmen
+are distinguished. This former activity had, as well, brought him up
+against his real profession. In some way, while going to
+Rostov-on-the-Don, he had contrived to make a very young sempstress
+fall in love with him. This girl had not as yet succeeded in getting on
+the official lists of the police, but upon love and her body she looked
+without any lofty prejudices. Horizon, at that time altogether a green
+youth, amorous and light-minded, dragged the sempstress after him on
+his wanderings, full of adventures and unexpected things. After half a
+year she palled upon him dreadfully. She, just like a heavy burden,
+like a millstone, hung around the neck of this man of energy, motion
+and aggressiveness. In addition to that, there were the eternal scenes
+of jealousy, mistrust, the constant control and tears ... the
+inevitable consequences of long living together ... Then he began
+little by little to beat his mate. At the first time she was amazed,
+but from the second time quieted down, became tractable. It is known,
+that "women of love" never know a mean in love relations. They are
+either hysterical liars, deceivers, dissemblers, with a
+coolly-perverted mind and a sinuous dark soul; or else unboundedly
+self-denying, blindly devoted, foolish, naive animals, who know no
+bounds either in concessions or loss of self-esteem. The sempstress
+belonged to the second category, and Horizon was soon successful,
+without great effort, in persuading her to go out on the street to
+traffic in herself. And from that very evening, when his mistress
+submitted to him and brought home the first five roubles earned,
+Horizon experienced an unbounded loathing toward her. It is remarkable,
+that no matter how many women Horizon met after this--and several
+hundred of them had passed through his hands--this feeling of loathing
+and masculine contempt toward them would never forsake him. He derided
+the poor woman in every way, and tortured her morally, seeking out the
+most painful spots. She would only keep silent, sigh, weep, and getting
+down on her knees before him, kiss his hands. And this wordless
+submission irritated Horizon still more. He drove her away from him.
+She would not go away. He would push her out into the street; but she,
+after an hour or two, would come back shivering from cold, in a soaked
+hat, in the turned-up brims of which the rain-water splashed as in
+waterspouts. Finally, some shady friend gave Simon Yakovlevich the
+harsh and crafty counsel which laid a mark on all the rest of his life
+activity--to sell his mistress into a brothel. To tell the truth, in
+going into this enterprise, Horizon almost disbelieved at soul in its
+success. But contrary to his expectation, the business could not have
+adjusted itself better. The proprietress of an establishment (this was
+in Kharkov) willingly met his proposition half-way. She had known long
+and well Simon Yakovlevich, who played amusingly on the piano, danced
+splendidly, and set the whole drawing room laughing with his pranks;
+but chiefly, could, with unusually unabashed dexterity, make any
+carousing party "shell out the coin." It only remained to convince the
+mate of his life, and this proved the most difficult of all. She did
+not want to detach herself from her beloved for anything; threatened
+suicide, swore that she would burn his eyes out with sulphuric acid,
+promised to go and complain to the chief of police--and she really did
+know a few dirty little transactions of Simon Yakovlevich's that
+smacked of capital punishment. Thereupon Horizon changed his tactics.
+He suddenly became a tender, attentive friend, an indefatigable lover.
+Then suddenly he fell into black melancholy. The uneasy questionings of
+the woman he let pass in silence; at first let drop a word as though by
+chance; hinted in passing at some mistake of his life; and then began
+to lie desperately and with inspiration. He said that the police were
+watching him; that he could not get by the jail, and, perhaps, even
+hard labour and the gallows; that it was necessary for him to disappear
+abroad for several months. But mainly, what he persisted in especially
+strongly, was some tremendous fantastic business, in which he stood to
+make several hundred thousands of roubles. The sempstress believed and
+became alarmed with that disinterested, womanly, almost holy alarm, in
+which, with every woman, there is so much of something maternal. It was
+not at all difficult now to convince her that for Horizon to travel
+together with her presented a great danger for him; and that it would
+be better for her to remain here and to bide the time until the affairs
+of her lover would adjust themselves fortuitously. After that to talk
+her into hiding, as in the most trustworthy retreat, in a brothel,
+where she would be in full safety from the police and the detectives,
+was a mere nothing. One morning Horizon ordered her to dress a little
+better, curl her hair, powder herself, put a little rouge on her
+cheeks, and carried her off to a den, to his acquaintance. The girl
+made a favourable impression there, and that same day her passport was
+changed by the police to a so-called yellow ticket. Having parted with
+her, after long embraces and tears, Horizon went into the room of the
+proprietress and received his payment, fifty roubles (although he had
+asked for two hundred). But he did not grieve especially over the low
+price; the main thing was, that he had found his calling at last, all
+by himself, and had laid the cornerstone of his future welfare.
+
+Of course, the woman sold by him just remained forever so in the
+tenacious hands of the brothel. Horizon forgot her so thoroughly that
+after only a year he could not even recall her face. But who knows ...
+perhaps he merely pretended?
+
+Now he was one of the chief speculators in the body of woman in all the
+south of Russia. He had transactions with Constantinople and with
+Argentine; he transported, in whole parties, girls from the brothels of
+Odessa into Kiev; those from Kiev he brought over into Kharkov; and
+those from Kharkov into Odessa. He it was also who stuck away over
+second rate capital cities, and those districts which were somewhat
+richer, the goods which had been rejected or had grown too noticeable
+in the big cities. He had struck up an enormous clientele, and in the
+number of his consumers Horizon could have counted not a few people
+with a prominent social position: lieutenant governors, colonels of the
+gendarmerie, eminent advocates, well-known doctors, rich land-owners,
+carousing merchants. All the shady world--the proprietresses of
+brothels, cocottes solitaires, go-betweens, madams of houses of
+assignation, souteneurs, touring actresses and chorus girls--was as
+familiar to him as the starry sky to an astronomer. His amazing memory,
+which permitted him prudently to avoid notebooks, held in mind
+thousands of names, family names, nicknames, addresses,
+characteristics. He knew to perfection the tastes of all his highly
+placed consumers: some of them liked unusually odd depravity, others
+paid mad sums for innocent girls, for others still it was necessary to
+seek out girls below age. He had to satisfy both the sadistic and the
+masochistic inclinations of his clients, and at times to cater to
+altogether unnatural sexual perversions, although it must be said that
+the last he undertook only in rare instances which promised a large,
+undoubted profit. Two or three times he had to sit in jail, but these
+sessions went to his benefit; he not only did not lose his rapacious
+high-handedness and springy energy in his transactions, but with every
+year became more daring, inventive, and enterprising. With the years to
+his brazen impetuousness was joined a tremendous worldly business
+wisdom.
+
+Fifteen times, during this period, he had managed to marry and every
+time had contrived to take a decent dowry. Having possessed himself of
+his wife's money, he, one fine day, would suddenly vanish without a
+trace, and, if there was a possibility, he would sell his wife
+profitably into a secret house of depravity or into a chic public
+establishment. It would happen that the parents of the deluded victim
+would search for him through the police. But while inquiries would be
+carried on everywhere about him as Shperling, he would already be
+travelling from town to town under the name of Rosenblum. During the
+time of his activity, in despite of an enviable memory, he had changed
+so many names that he had not only forgotten what year he had been
+Nathanielson, and during what Bakalyar, but even his own name was
+beginning to seem to him one of his pseudonyms.
+
+It was remarkable, that he did not find in his profession anything
+criminal or reprehensible. He regarded it just as though he were
+trading in herrings, lime, flour, beef or lumber. In his own fashion he
+was pious. If time permitted, he would with assiduity visit the
+synagogue of Fridays. The Day of Atonement, Passover, and the Feast of
+the Tabernacles were invariably and reverently observed by him
+everywhere wherever fate might have cast him. His mother, a little old
+woman, and a hunch-backed sister, were left to him in Odessa, and he
+undeviatingly sent them now large, now small sums of money, not
+regularly but pretty frequently, from all towns from Kursk to Odessa
+and from Warsaw to Samara. Considerable savings of money had already
+accumulated to him in the Credit Lyonnaise, and he gradually increased
+them, never touching the interest. But to greed or avarice he was
+almost a stranger. He was attracted to the business rather by its tang,
+risk and a professional self-conceit. To the women he was perfectly
+indifferent, although he understood and could value them, and in this
+respect resembled a good chef, who together with a fine understanding
+of the business, suffers from a chronic absence of appetite. To induce,
+to entice a woman, to compel her to do all that he wanted, did not
+require any efforts on his part; they came of themselves to his call
+and became in his hands passive, obedient and yielding. In his
+treatment of them a certain firm, unshakable, self-assured aplomb had
+been worked out, to which they submitted just as a refractory horse
+submits instinctively to the voice, glance, stroking of an experienced
+horseman.
+
+He drank very moderately, and without company never drank. Toward
+eating he was altogether indifferent. But, of course, as with every
+man, he had a little weakness of his own: he was inordinately fond of
+dress and spent no little money on his toilet. Modish collars of all
+possible fashions, cravats, diamond cuff links, watch charms, the
+underwear of a dandy, and chic footwear constituted his main
+distractions.
+
+From the depot he went straight to The Hermitage. The hotel porters, in
+blue blouses and uniform caps, carried his things into the vestibule.
+Following them, he too entered, arm in arm with his wife; both smartly
+attired, imposing, but he just simply magnificent, in his wide,
+bell-shaped English overcoat, in a new broad-brimmed panama, holding
+negligently in his hand a small cane with a silver handle in the form
+of a naked woman.
+
+"You ain't supposed to be here without a permit for your residence,"
+said an enormous, stout doorkeeper, looking down upon him from above
+and preserving on his face a sleepy and immovably-frigid expression.
+
+"Ach, Zachar! Again 'you ain't supposed to!'" merrily exclaimed
+Horizon, and patted the giant on his shoulder. "What does it mean, 'you
+ain't supposed to'? Every time you shove this same 'you ain't supposed
+to' at me. I must be here for three days in all. Soon as I conclude the
+rent agreement with Count Ipatiev, right away I go away. God be with
+you! Live even all by yourself in all your rooms. But you just give a
+look, Zachar, what a toy I brought you from Odessa! You'll be just
+tickled with it!"
+
+With a careful, deft, accustomed movement he thrust a gold piece into
+the doorkeeper's hand, who was already holding it behind his back,
+ready and folded in the form of a little boat.
+
+The first thing that Horizon did upon installing himself in the large,
+spacious room with an alcove, was to put out into the corridor at the
+door of the room six pairs of magnificent shoes, saying to the bell-hop
+who ran up in answer to the bell:
+
+"Immediately all should be cleaned! So it should shine like a mirror!
+They call you Timothy, I think? Then you should know me--if you work by
+me it will never go for nothing. So it should shine like a mirror!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Horizon lived at the Hotel Hermitage for not more than three days and
+nights, and during this time he managed to see some three hundred
+people. His arrival seemed to enliven the big, gay port city. To him
+came the keepers of employment offices for servants, the proprietresses
+of cheap hotels, and old, experienced go-betweens, grown gray in the
+trade in women. Not so much out of an interest in booty as out of
+professional pride, Horizon tried, at all costs, to bargain for as much
+profit as possible, to buy a woman as cheaply as possible. Of course,
+to receive ten, fifteen roubles more was not the reason for him, but
+the mere thought that competitor Yampolsky would receive at the sale
+more than he brought him into a frenzy.
+
+After his arrival, the next day, he set off to Mezer the photographer,
+taking with him the straw-like girl Bella, and had pictures taken in
+various poses together with her; at which for every negative he
+received three roubles, while he gave the woman a rouble. After that he
+rode off to Barsukova.
+
+This was a woman, or, speaking more correctly, a retired wench, whose
+like can be found only in the south of Russia; neither a Pole nor a
+Little Russian; already sufficiently old and rich in order to allow
+herself the luxury of maintaining a husband (and together with him a
+cabaret), a handsome and kindly little Pole. Horizon and Barsukova met
+like old friends. They had, it seemed, no fear, no shame, no conscience
+when they conversed with each other.
+
+"Madam Barsukova! I can offer you something special! Three women: one a
+large brunette, very modest; another a little one, a blonde, but who,
+you understand, is ready for everything; the third is a woman of
+mystery, who merely smiles and doesn't say anything, but promises much
+and is a beauty!"
+
+Madam Barsukova was gazing at him with mistrust, shaking her head.
+
+"Mister Horizon! What are you trying to fill my head with? Do you want
+to do the same with me that you did last time?"
+
+"By God, I should live so, how I want to deceive you! But that's not
+the main thing. I'm also offering you a perfectly educated woman. Do
+with her what you like. In all probability you'll find a connoisseur."
+
+Barsukova smiled artfully and asked:
+
+"Again a wife?"
+
+"No. But she's of the nobility."
+
+"Then that means unpleasantnesses with the police again?"
+
+"Ach! My God! I don't take big money from you; all the three for a
+lousy thousand roubles."
+
+"Well, let's talk frankly; five hundred. I don't want to buy a cat in a
+bag."
+
+"It seems, Madam Barsukova, that it isn't the first time you and I have
+done business together, I won't deceive you and will bring her here
+right away. Only I beg you not to forget that you're my aunt, and
+please work in that direction. I won't be more than three days here in
+the city."
+
+Madam Barsukova, with all her breasts, bellies and chins, began to sway
+merrily.
+
+"We won't dicker over trifles. All the more so since you don't deceive
+me, nor I you. There's a great demand for women now. What would you
+say, Mister Horizon, if I offered you some red wine?"
+
+"Thank you, Madam Barsukova, with pleasure."
+
+"Let's talk a while like old friends. Tell me, how much do you make a
+year?"
+
+"Ach, madam, what shall I say? Twelve, twenty thousand, approximately.
+But think what tremendous expenses there are in constantly travelling."
+
+"Do you put away a little?"
+
+"Well, that's trifles; some two or three thousand a year."
+
+"I thought ten, twenty ..."
+
+Horizon grew wary. He sensed that he was beginning to be drawn out and
+asked insidiously:
+
+"But why does this interest you?"
+
+Anna Michailovna pressed the button of an electric bell and ordered the
+dressy maid to bring coffee with steamed cream and a bottle of
+Chambertaine. She knew the tastes of Horizon. Then she asked:
+
+"Do you know Mr. Shepsherovich?"
+
+Horizon simply pounced upon her.
+
+"My God! Who don't know Shepsherovich! This is a god, this is a genius!"
+
+And, having become animated, forgetting that he was being dragged into
+a trap, he began speaking exaltedly:
+
+"Just imagine what Shepsherovich did last year! He carried to Argentine
+thirty women from Kovno, Vilno, Zhitomir. Each one of them he sold at a
+thousand roubles--a total, madam--count it--of thirty thousand! Do you
+think Shepsherovich calmed down with this? For this money, in order to
+repay his expenses on the steamer, he bought several negresses and
+stuck them about in Moscow, Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov. But,
+you know, madam, this isn't a man, but an eagle. There's a man who can
+do business!"
+
+Barsukova caressingly laid her hand on his knee. She had been waiting
+for this moment and said to him amicably:
+
+"And so I propose to you, Mr.----however, I don't know how you are
+called now..."
+
+"Horizon, let's say..."
+
+"So I propose to you, Mr. Horizon--could you find some innocent girls
+among yours? There's an enormous demand for them now. I'm playing an
+open hand with you. We won't stop at money. Now it's in fashion.
+Notice, Horizon, your lady clients will be returned to you in exactly
+the same state in which they were. This, you understand, is a little
+depravity, which I can in no way make out..."
+
+Horizon cast down his eyes, rubbed his head, and said:
+
+"You see, I've a wife ... You've almost guessed it."
+
+"So. But why almost?"
+
+"I'm ashamed to confess, that she--how shall I say it ... she is my
+bride ..."
+
+Barsukova gaily burst into laughter.
+
+"You know, Horizon, I couldn't at all expect that you're such a nasty
+villain! Let's have your wife, it's all the same. But is it possible
+that you've really refrained?"
+
+"A thousand?" asked Horizon seriously.
+
+"Ah! What trifles; a thousand let's say. But tell me, will I be able to
+manage her?"
+
+"Nonsense!" said Horizon self-assuredly. "Let's again suppose that
+you're my aunt, and I leave my wife with you. Just imagine, Madam
+Barsukova, that this woman is in love with me like a cat. And if you'll
+tell her, that for my good she must do so and so and thus and
+thus--then there won't be no arguments!"
+
+Apparently, there was nothing more for them to talk over. Madam
+Barsukova brought out a promissory note, whereon she with difficulty
+wrote her name, her father's name, and her last name. The promissory
+note, of course, was fantastic; but there is a tie, a welding, an
+honour among thieves. In such deals people do not deceive. Death
+threatens otherwise. It is all the same, whether in prison, or on the
+street, or in a brothel.
+
+Right after that, just like an apparition out of a trapdoor, appeared
+the friend of her heart, the master of the cabaret, a young little
+Pole, with moustaches twirled high. They drank some wine, talked a bit
+about the fair, about the exposition, complained a little about bad
+business. After that Horizon telephoned to his room in the hotel, and
+called out his wife. He introduced her to his aunt and his aunt's
+second cousin, and said that mysterious political reasons were calling
+him out of town. He tenderly kissed Sarah, shed a tear, and rode away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+With the arrival of Horizon (however, God knows how he was called:
+Gogolevich, Gidalevich, Okunev, Rosmitalsky), in a word, with the
+arrival of this man everything changed on Yamskaya Street. Enormous
+shufflings commenced. From Treppel girls were transferred to Anna
+Markovna, from Anna Markovna into a rouble establishment, and from the
+rouble establishment into a half-rouble one. There were no promotions:
+only demotions. At each change of place Horizon earned from five to a
+hundred roubles. Verily, he was possessed of an energy equal,
+approximately, to the waterfall of Imatra! Sitting in the daytime at
+Anna Markovna's, he was saying, squinting from the smoke of the
+cigarette, and swinging one leg crossed over the other:
+
+"The question is ... What do you need this same Sonka for? It's no
+place for her in a decent establishment. If we'll float her down the
+stream, then you'll make a hundred roubles for yourself, I twenty-five
+for myself. Tell me frankly, she isn't in demand, is she, now?"
+
+"Ah, Mr. Shatzky! You can always talk a person over! But just imagine,
+I'm sorry for her. Such a nice girl ..."
+
+Horizon pondered for a moment. He was seeking an appropriate citation
+and suddenly let out:
+
+"'Give the falling a shove!'[11] And I'm convinced, Madam Shaibes, that
+there's no demand of any sort for her."
+
+
+[11] Horizon is quoting a Nietzscheism of Gorky's.--TRANS.
+
+
+Isaiah Savvich, a little, sickly, touchy old man, but in moments of
+need very determined, supported Horizon:
+
+"And that's very simple. There is really no demand of any sort for her.
+Think it over for yourself, Annechka; her outfit costs fifty roubles,
+Mr. Shatzky will receive twenty-five roubles, fifty roubles will be
+left for you and me. And, glory be to God, we have done with her! At
+least, she won't be compromising our establishment."
+
+In such a way Sonka the Rudder, avoiding a rouble establishment, was
+transferred into a half-rouble one, where all kinds of riff-raff made
+sport of the girls at their own sweet will, whole nights through. There
+tremendous health and great nervous force were requisite. Sonka once
+began shivering from terror, in the night, when Thekla, a mountain of a
+woman of some two hundred pounds, jumped out into the yard to fulfill a
+need of nature, and cried out to the housekeeper who was passing by her:
+
+"Housekeeper, dear! Listen--the thirty-sixth man! ... Don't forget!"
+
+Fortunately, Sonka was not disturbed much; even in this establishment
+she was too homely. No one paid any attention to her splendid eyes, and
+they took her only in those instances when there was no other at hand.
+The pharmacist sought her out and came every evening to her. But
+cowardice, or a special Hebrew fastidiousness, or, perhaps, even
+physical aversion, would not permit him to take the girl and carry her
+away with him from the house. He would sit whole nights through near
+her, and, as of yore, patiently waited until she would return from a
+chance guest; created scenes of jealousy for her and yet loved her
+still, and, sticking in the daytime behind the counter in his drug
+store and rolling some stinking pills or other, ceaselessly thought of
+her and yearned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Immediately at the entrance to a suburban cabaret an artificial flower
+bed shone with vari-colored lights, with electric bulbs instead of
+flowers; and just such another fiery alley of wide, half-round arches,
+narrowing toward the end, led away from it into the depths of the
+garden. Further on was a broad, small square, strewn with yellow sand;
+to the left an open stage, a theatre, and a shooting gallery; straight
+ahead a stand for the military band (in the form of a seashell) and
+little booths with flowers and beer; to the right the long terrace of
+the restaurant. Electric globes from their high masts illuminated the
+small square with a pale, dead-white brightness. Against their frosted
+glass, with wire nets stretched over them, beat clouds of night moths,
+whose shadows--confused and large--hovered below, on the ground. Hungry
+women, too lightly, dressily, and fancifully attired, preserving on
+their faces an expression of care-free merriment or haughty, offended
+unapproachability, strolled back and forth in pairs, with a walk
+already tired and dragging.
+
+All the tables in the restaurant were taken--and over them floated the
+continuous noise of knives upon plates and a motley babel, galloping in
+waves. It smelt of rich and pungent kitchen fumes. In the middle of the
+restaurant, upon a stand, Roumanians in red frocks were playing; all
+swarthy, white-toothed, with the faces of whiskered, pomaded apes, with
+their hair licked down. The director of the orchestra, bending forward
+and affectedly swaying, was playing upon a violin and making unseemly
+sweet eyes at the public--the eyes of a man-prostitute. And everything
+together--this abundance of tiresome electric lights, the exaggeratedly
+bright toilettes of the ladies, the odours of modish, spicy perfumes,
+this ringing music, with willful slowings up of the tempo, with
+voluptuous swoonings in the transitions, with the tempestuous passages
+screwed up--everything fitted the one to the other, forming a general
+picture of insane and stupid luxury, a setting for an imitation of a
+gay, unseemly carouse.
+
+Above, around the entire hall, ran open galleries, upon which, as upon
+little balconies, opened the doors of the private cabinets. In one of
+these cabinets four were sitting--two ladies and two men; an artiste
+known to all Russia, the cantatrice Rovinskaya, a large, handsome
+woman, with long, green, Egyptian eyes, and a long, red, sensuous
+mouth, the lips of which were rapaciously drooping at the corners; the
+baroness Tefting, little, exquisite, pale--she was everywhere seen with
+the artiste; the famous lawyer Ryazanov; and Volodya Chaplinsky, a rich
+young man of the world, a composer-dilettante, the author of several
+darling little ballads and many witticisms upon the topics of the day,
+which circulated all over town.
+
+The walls of the cabinet were red, with a gold design. On the table,
+among the lighted candelabra, two white, tarred necks of bottles stuck
+up out of an electroplated vase, which had sweated from the cold, and
+the light in a tenuous gold played in the shallow goblets of wine.
+Outside, near the doors, a waiter was on duty, leaning against the
+wall; while the stout, tall, important maitre d'hotel, on whose right
+little finger, always sticking out, sparkled a huge diamond, would
+frequently stop at these doors, and attentively listen with one ear to
+what was going on in the cabinet.
+
+The baroness, with a bored, pale face, was listlessly gazing through a
+lorgnette down at the droning, chewing, swarming crowd. Among the red,
+white, blue and straw-coloured feminine dresses the uniform figures of
+the men resembled large, squat, black beetles. Rovinskaya negligently,
+yet at the same time intently as well, was looking down upon the stand
+and the spectators, and her face expressed fatigue, ennui, and perhaps
+also that satiation with all spectacles, which are such matters of
+course to celebrities. The splendid, long, slender fingers of her left
+hand were lying upon the crimson velvet of the box-seat. Emeralds of a
+rare beauty hung upon them so negligently that it seemed as though they
+would fall off at any second, and suddenly she began laughing.
+
+"Look" she said; "what a funny figure, or, to put it more correctly,
+what a funny profession! There, there, that one who's playing on a
+'syrinx of seven reeds.'"
+
+Everyone looked in the direction of her hand. And really, the picture
+was funny enough. Behind the Roumanian orchestra was sitting a stout,
+whiskered man, probably the father, and perhaps even the grandfather,
+of a numerous family, and with all his might was whistling into seven
+little pipes glued together. As it was difficult for him, probably, to
+move this instrument between his lips, he therefore, with an unusual
+rapidity, turned his head now to the left, now to the right.
+
+"An amazing occupation," said Rovinskaya. "Well now, Chaplinsky, you
+try to toss your head about like that."
+
+Volodya Chaplinsky, secretly and hopelessly in love with the artiste,
+immediately began obediently and zealously to do this, but after half a
+minute desisted.
+
+"It's impossible," he said, "either long training, or, perhaps,
+hereditary abilities, are necessary for this."
+
+The baroness during this time was tearing away the petals of her rose
+and throwing them into a goblet; then, with difficulty suppressing a
+yawn, she said, making just the least bit of a wry face:
+
+"But, my God, how drearily they divert themselves in our K--! Look: no
+laughter, no singing, no dances. Just like some herd that's been driven
+here, in order to be gay on purpose!"
+
+Ryazanov listlessly took his goblet, sipped it a little, and answered
+apathetically in his enchanting voice:
+
+"Well, and is it any gayer in your Paris, or Nice? Why, it must be
+confessed--mirth, youth and laughter have vanished forever out of human
+life, and it is scarcely possible that they will ever return. One must
+regard people with more patience, it seems to me. Who knows, perhaps
+for all those sitting here, below, the present evening is a rest, a
+holiday?"
+
+"The speech for the defense," put in Chaplinsky in his calm manner.
+
+But Rovinskaya quickly turned around to the men, and her long emerald
+eyes narrowed. And this with her served as a sign of wrath, from which
+even crowned personages committed follies at times. However, she
+immediately restrained herself and continued languidly:
+
+"I don't understand what you are talking about. I don't understand even
+what we came here for. For there are no longer any spectacles in the
+world. Now I, for instance, have seen bull-fights in Seville, Madrid
+and Marseilles--an exhibition which does not evoke anything save
+loathing. I have also seen boxing and wrestling nastiness and
+brutality. I also happened to participate in a tiger hunt, at which I
+sat under a baldachin on the back of a big, wise white elephant ... in
+a word, you all know this well yourselves. And out of all my great,
+chequered, noisy life, from which I have grown old ..."
+
+"Oh, what are you saying, Ellena Victorovna!" said Chaplinsky with a
+tender reproach.
+
+"Abandon compliments, Volodya! I know myself that I'm still young and
+beautiful of body, but, really, it seems to me at times that I am
+ninety. So worn out has my soul become. I continue. I say, that during
+all my life only three strong impressions have sunk into my soul. The
+first, while still a girl, when I saw a cat stealing upon a
+cock-sparrow, and I with horror and with interest watched its movements
+and the vigilant gaze of the bird. Up to this time I don't know myself
+which I sympathized with more: the skill of the cat or the slipperiness
+of the sparrow. The cock-sparrow proved the quicker. In a moment he
+flew up on a tree and began from there to pour down upon the cat such
+sparrow swearing that I would have turned red for shame if I had
+understood even one word. While the cat, as though it had been wronged,
+stuck up its tail like a chimney and tried to pretend to itself that
+nothing out of the way had taken place. Another time I had to sing in
+an opera a duet with a certain great artist ..."
+
+"With whom?" asked the baroness quickly.
+
+"Isn't it all the same? Of what need names? And so, when he and I were
+singing, I felt all of me in the sway of genius. How wonderfully, into
+what a marvelous harmony, did our voices blend! Ah! It is impossible to
+describe this impression. Probably, it happens but once in a lifetime.
+According to the role, I had to weep, and I wept with sincere, genuine
+tears. And when, after the curtain, he walked up to me and patted my
+hair with his big warm hand and with his enchanting, radiant smile
+said, 'Splendid! for the first time in my life have I sung so' ... and
+so I--and I am a very proud being--I kissed his hand. And the tears
+were still standing in my eyes ..."
+
+"And the third?" asked the baroness, and her eyes lit up with the evil
+sparks of jealousy.
+
+"Ah, the third," answered the artiste sadly, "the third is as simple as
+simple can be. During the last season I lived at Nice, and so I saw
+Carmen on the open stage at Frejus with the anticipation of Cecile
+Ketten, who is now," the artiste earnestly made the sign of the cross,
+"dead--I don't really know, fortunately or unfortunately for herself?"
+
+Suddenly, in a moment, her magnificent eyes filled with tears and began
+to shine with a magic green light, such as the evening star gives
+forth, on warm summer twilights. She turned her face around to the
+stage, and for some time her long, nervous fingers convulsively
+squeezed the upholstery of the barrier of the box. But when she again
+turned around to her friends, her eyes were already dry, and the
+enigmatic, vicious and wilful lips were resplendent with an
+unconstrained smile.
+
+Then Ryazanov asked her politely, in a tender but purposely calm tone:
+
+"But then, Ellena Victorovna, your tremendous fame, admirers, the roar
+of the mob ... finally, that delight which you afford to your
+spectators. Is it possible that even this does not titillate your
+nerves?"
+
+"No, Ryazanov," she answered in a tired voice. "You know no less than
+myself what this is worth. A brazen interviewer, who needs passes for
+his friends, and, by the way, twenty-five roubles in an envelope. High
+school boys and girls, students and young ladies attending courses, who
+beg you for autographed photographs. Some old blockhead with a
+general's rank, who hums loudly with me during my aria. The eternal
+whisper behind you, when you pass by: 'there she is, that same famous
+one!' Anonymous letters, the brazenness of back-stage habitues ... why,
+you can't enumerate everything! But surely, you yourself are often
+beset by female psychopathics of the court-room?"
+
+"Yes," said Ryazanov decisively.
+
+"That's all there is to it. But add to that the most terrible thing,
+that every time I have come to feel a genuine inspiration, I
+tormentingly feel on the spot the consciousness that I'm pretending and
+grimacing before people ... And the fear of the success of your rival?
+And the eternal dread of losing your voice, of straining it or catching
+a cold? The eternal tormenting bother of throat bandages? No, really,
+it is heavy to bear renown on one's shoulders."
+
+"But the artistic fame?" retorted the lawyer. "The might of genius!
+This, verily, is a true moral might, which is above the might of any
+king on earth!"
+
+"Yes, yes, of course you're right, my dear. But fame, celebrity, are
+sweet only at a distance, when you only dream about them. But when you
+have attained them you feel only their thorns. But then, with what
+anguish you feel every dram of their decrease. And I have forgotten to
+say something else. Why, we artists undergo a sentence at hard labour.
+In the morning, exercises; in the daytime, rehearsals; and then there's
+scarcely time for dinner and you're due for the performance. An hour or
+so for reading or such diversion as you and I are having now, may be
+snatched only by a miracle. And even so... the diversion is altogether
+of the mediocre..."
+
+She negligently and wearily made a slight gesture with the fingers of
+the hand lying on the barrier.
+
+Volodya Chaplinsky, agitated by this conversation, suddenly asked:
+
+"Yes, but tell me, Ellena Victorovna, what would you want to distract
+your imagination and ennui?"
+
+She looked at him with her enigmatic eyes and answered quietly, even a
+trifle shyly, it seemed:
+
+"Formerly, people lived more gaily and did not know prejudices of any
+sort. Well, it seems to me that then I would have been in my place and
+would have lived with a full life. O, ancient Rome!"
+
+No one understood her, save Ryazanov, who, without looking at her,
+slowly pronounced in his velvety voice, like that of an actor, the
+classical, universally familiar, Latin phrase:
+
+"Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!"
+
+"Precisely! I love you very much, Ryazanov, because you are a clever
+child. You will always catch a thought in its flight; although, I must
+say, that this isn't an especially high property of the mind. And
+really, two beings come together, the friends of yesterday, who had
+conversed with each other and eaten at the same table, and this day one
+of them must perish. You understand depart from life forever. But they
+have neither malice nor fear. There is the most real, magnificent
+spectacle, which I can only picture to myself!"
+
+"How much cruelty there is in you," said the baroness meditatively.
+
+"Well, nothing can be done about it now! My ancestors were cavaliers
+and robbers. However, shan't we go away now?"
+
+They all went out of the garden. Volodya Chaplinsky ordered his
+automobile called. Ellena Victorovna was leaning upon his arm. And
+suddenly she asked:
+
+"Tell me, Volodya, where do you usually go when you take leave of
+so-called decent women?"
+
+Volodya hemmed and hawed. However, he knew positively that he could not
+lie to Rovinskaya.
+
+"M-m-m ... I'm afraid of offending your hearing. To the Tzigani, for
+instance ... to night cabarets ..."
+
+"And somewhere else? Worse?"
+
+"Really, you put me in an awkward position. From the time that I've
+become so madly in love with you ..."
+
+"Leave out the romancing!"
+
+"Well, how shall I say it?" murmured Volodya, feeling that he was
+turning red, not only in the face, but with his body, his back. "Well,
+of course, to the women. Now, of course, this does not occur with me
+personally ..."
+
+Rovinskaya maliciously pressed Chaplinsky's elbow to her side.
+
+"To a brothel?"
+
+Volodya did not answer anything. Then she said:
+
+"And so, you'll carry us at once over there in the automobile and
+acquaint us with this existence, which is foreign to me. But remember,
+that I rely upon your protection."
+
+The remaining two agreed to this, unwillingly, in all probability; but
+there was no possibility of opposing Ellena Victorovna. She always did
+everything that she wanted to. And then they had all heard and knew
+that in Petersburg carousing worldly ladies, and even girls, permit
+themselves, out of a modish snobbism, pranks far worse than the one
+which Rovinskaya had proposed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+On the way to Yamskaya Street Rovinskaya said to Chaplinsky:
+
+"You'll bring me at first into the most luxurious place, then into a
+medium one, and then into the filthiest."
+
+"My dear Ellena Victorovna," warmly retorted Chaplinsky, "I'm ready to
+do everything for you. It is without false boasting when I say that I
+would give my life away at your order, ruin my career and position at a
+mere sign of yours ... But I dare not bring you to these houses.
+Russian manners are coarse, and often simply inhuman manners. I'm
+afraid that you will be insulted by some pungent, unseemly word, or
+that a chance visitor will play some senseless prank before you ..."
+
+"Ah, my God," impatiently interrupted Rovinskaya; "when I was singing
+in London, there were many at that time paying court to me, and I did
+not hesitate to go and see the filthiest dens of Whitechapel in a
+choice company. I will say, that I was treated there very carefully and
+anticipatingly. I will also say, that there were with me at that time
+two English aristocrats; lords, both sportsmen, both people unusually
+strong physically and morally, who, of course, would never have allowed
+a woman to be offended. However, perhaps you, Volodya, are of the race
+of cowards?"
+
+Chaplinsky flared up:
+
+"Oh, no, no, Ellena Victorovna. I forewarned you only out of love for
+you. But if you command, then I'm ready to go where you will. Not only
+on this dubious undertaking, but even very death itself."
+
+By this time they had already driven up to the most luxurious
+establishment in the Yamkas--Treppel's. Ryazanov the lawyer said,
+smiling with his usual ironic smile:
+
+"And so, the inspection of the menagerie begins."
+
+They were led into a cabinet with crimson wall paper, and on the wall
+paper was repeated, in the "empire" style, a golden design in the form
+of small laurel wreaths. And at once Rovinskaya recognized, with the
+keen memory of an artiste, that exactly the same paper had also been in
+that cabinet in which they had just been sitting.
+
+Four German women from the Baltic provinces came out. All of them
+stout, full-breasted, blonde, powdered, very important and respectful.
+The conversation did not catch on at first. The girls sat immovable,
+like carvings of stone, in order to pretend with all their might that
+they were respectable ladies. Even the champagne, which Ryazanov called
+for, did not improve the mood. Rovinskaya was the first to come to the
+aid of the party. Turning to the stoutest, fairest German of all, who
+resembled a loaf, she asked politely in German:
+
+"Tell me, where were you born? Germany, in all probability?"
+
+"No, gnadige Frau, I am from Riga."
+
+"What compels you to serve here, then? Not poverty, I hope?"
+
+"Of course not, gnadige Frau. But, you understand, my bridegroom, Hans,
+works as a kellner in a restaurant-automat, and we are too poor to be
+married now. I bring my savings to a bank, and he does the same. When
+we have saved the ten thousand roubles we need, we will open our own
+beer-hall, and, if God will bless us, then we shall allow ourselves the
+luxury of having children. Two children. A boy and a girl."
+
+"But, listen to me, mein Fraulein!" Rovinskaya was amazed. "You are
+young, handsome, know two languages ..."
+
+"Three, madam," proudly put in the German. "I know Esthonian as well. I
+finished the municipal school and three classes of high school."
+
+"Well, then, you see, you see ..." Rovinskaya became heated. "With such
+an education you could always find a place with everything found, and
+about thirty roubles. Well, in the capacity of a housekeeper, bonne,
+senior clerk in a good store, a cashier, let's say ... And if your
+future bridegroom ... Fritz ..."
+
+"Hans, madam ..."
+
+"If Hans proved to be an industrious and thrifty man, then it would not
+be at all hard for you to get up on your feet altogether, after three
+or four years. What do you think?"
+
+"Ah, madam, you are a little mistaken. You have overlooked that, in the
+very best of positions, I, even denying myself in everything, will not
+be able to put aside more than fifteen, twenty roubles a month; whereas
+here, with a prudent economy, I gain up to a hundred roubles and at
+once carry them away with a book into the savings bank. And besides
+that, just imagine, gnadige Frau, what a humiliating position to be the
+servant in a house! Always to depend on the caprice or the disposition
+of the spirits of the masters! And the master always pesters you with
+foolishness. Pfui! .. And the mistress is jealous, picks, and scolds."
+
+"No ... I don't understand ..." meditatively drawled Rovinskaya,
+without looking the German in the eyes, but casting hers on the floor.
+"I've heard a great deal of your life here, in these ... what do you
+call them? .. these houses. They say it is something horrible. That
+you're forced to love the most repulsive, old and hideous men, that you
+are plucked and exploited in the most cruel manner ..."
+
+"Oh, never, madam ... Each one of us has an account book, wherein is
+written accurately the income and expense. During last month I earned a
+little more than five hundred roubles. As always, two-thirds went to
+the proprietress for board, quarters, fuel, light, linen ... There
+remains to me more than a hundred and fifty, it is not so? Fifty I
+spent on costumes and all sorts of trifles. A hundred I save. What
+exploitation is it, then, madam, I ask you? And if I do not like a man
+at all--true, there are some who are exceedingly nasty--I can always
+say I am sick, and instead of me will go one of the newest girls ..."
+
+"But then ... pardon me, I do not know your name ..."
+
+"Elsa."
+
+"They say, that you're treated very roughly ... beaten at times ...
+compelled to do that which you don't want to and which is repulsive to
+you?"
+
+"Never, madam!" dropped Elsa haughtily. "We all live here as a friendly
+family of our own. We are all natives of the same land or relatives,
+and God grant that many should live so in their own families as we live
+here. True, on Yamskaya Street there happen various scandals and fights
+and misunderstandings. But that's there ... in these ... in the rouble
+establishments. The Russian girls drink a lot and always have one
+lover. And they do not think at all of their future."
+
+"You are prudent, Elsa," said Rovinskaya in an oppressed tone. "All
+this is well. But, what of the chance disease? Infection? Why, that is
+death? And how can you guess?"
+
+"And again--no, madam. I won't let a man into my bed before I make a
+detailed medical inspection of him ... I am guaranteed, at the least,
+against seventy-five per cent."
+
+"The devil!" suddenly exclaimed Rovinskaya with heat and hit the table
+with her fist. "But, then, what of your Albert ..."
+
+"Hans," the German corrected her meekly.
+
+"Pardon me ... Your Hans surely does not rejoice greatly over the fact
+that you are living here, and that you betray him every day?"
+
+Elsa looked at her with sincere, lively amazement.
+
+"But gnadige Frau ... I have never yet betrayed him! It is other lost
+wenches, especially Russian, who have lovers for themselves, on whom
+they spend their hard-earned money. But that I should ever let myself
+go as far as that? Pfui!"
+
+"A greater fall I have not imagined!" said Rovinskaya loudly and with
+aversion, getting up. "Pay gentlemen, and let's go on from here."
+
+When they had gone out into the street, Volodya took her arm and said
+in an imploring voice:
+
+"For God's sake, isn't one experiment enough for you?"
+
+"Oh, what vulgarity! What vulgarity!"
+
+"That's why I'm saying, let's drop this experiment."
+
+"No, in any case I am going through with it to the finish. Show me
+something simpler, more of the medium."
+
+Volodya Chaplinsky, who was all the time in a torment over Ellena
+Victorovna, offered the most likely thing--to drop into the
+establishment of Anna Markovna, which was only ten steps away.
+
+But it was just here that strong impressions awaited them. Simeon did
+not want to let them in, and only several gold pieces, which Ryazanov
+gave him, softened him. They took up a cabinet, almost the same as at
+Treppel's, only somewhat shabbier and more faded. At the command of
+Emma Edwardovna, the girls were herded into the cabinet. But it was the
+same as letting a goat into a truck-garden or mixing soda and acid. The
+main mistake, however, was that they let Jennka in there as
+well--wrathful, irritated, with impudent fires in her eyes. The modest,
+quiet Tamara was the last to walk in, with her shy and depraved smile
+of a Monna Lisa. In the end, almost the entire personnel of the
+establishment gathered in the cabinet. Rovinskaya no longer risked
+asking "How did you come to this life?" But it must be said, that the
+inmates of the house met her with an outward hospitality. Ellena
+Victorovna asked them to sing their usual canonical songs, and they
+willingly sang:
+
+    Monday now is come again,
+    They're supposed to get me out;
+    Doctor Krassov won't let me out,
+    Well, the devil take him then.
+
+And further:
+
+    Poor little, poor little, poor little me,
+    The public house is closed,
+    My head's aching me...
+
+    The love of a loafer
+    Is spice, is spice;
+    But the prostitute
+    Is as cold as ice.
+    Ha-ha-ha!
+
+    They came together
+    Matched as well as might be,
+    She is a prostitute,
+    A pickpocket he.
+    Ha-ha-ha!
+
+    Now morning has come,
+    He is planning a theft;
+    While she lies in her bed
+    And laughs like she's daft.
+    Ha-ha-ha!
+
+    Comes morning, the laddie
+    Is led to the pen;
+    But for the prostitute
+    His pals await then.
+    Ha-ha-ha! ...
+
+[12] While there can be but little doubt that these four stanzas are an
+actual transcript from life, Heinrich Heine's "Ein Weib" is such a
+striking parallel that it may be reproduced here as a matter of
+interest. The translation is by Mr. Louis Untermeyer.--Trans.
+
+
+    A WOMAN
+
+    They loved each other beyond belief--
+    She was a strumpet, he was a thief;
+    Whenever she thought of his tricks, thereafter
+    She'd throw herself on the bed with laughter.
+
+    The day was spent with a reckless zest;
+    At night she lay upon his breast.
+    So when they took him, a while thereafter
+    She watched at the window--with laughter.
+
+    He sent word pleading "Oh come to me,
+    I need you, need you bitterly,
+    Yes, here and in the hereafter."
+    Her little head shook with laughter.
+
+    At six in the morning they swung him high;
+    At seven the turf on his grave was dry;
+    At eight, however, she quaffed her
+    Red wine and sang with laughter!
+
+And still further a convict song:
+
+    I'm a ruined laddie,
+    Ruined for alway;
+    While year after year
+    The days go away.
+
+And also:
+
+    Don't you cry, my Mary,
+    You'll belong to me;
+    When I've served the army
+    I will marry thee.
+
+But here suddenly, to the general amazement, the stout Kitty, usually
+taciturn, burst into laughter. She was a native of Odessa.
+
+"Let me sing one song, too. It's sung by thieves and badger queens in
+the drink shops on our Moldavanka and Peresip."
+
+And in a horrible bass, in a rusty and unyielding voice, she began to
+sing, making the most incongruous gestures, but, evidently, imitating
+some cabaret cantatrice of the third calibre that she had sometime seen:
+
+    "Ah, I'll go to Dukovka,
+    Sit down at the table,
+    Now I throw my hat off,
+    Toss it under table.
+    Then I athk my dearie,
+    'What will you drink, sweet?'
+    But all the answer that she makes:
+    'My head aches fit to split.'
+    'I ain't a-athking you
+    What your ache may be,
+    But I am a-athking you
+    What your drink may be:
+    Will it be beer, or for wine shall I call,
+    Or for violet wine, or nothing else at all?'"
+
+And all would have turned out well, if suddenly Little White Manka, in
+only her chemise and in white lace drawers, had not burst into the
+cabinet. Some merchant, who the night before had arranged a
+paradisaical night, was carousing with her, and the ill-fated
+Benedictine, which always acted upon the girl with the rapidity of
+dynamite, had brought her into the usual quarrelsome condition. She was
+no longer "Little Manka" and "Little White Manka," but she was "Manka
+the Scandaliste." Having run into the cabinet, she suddenly, from
+unexpectedness, fell down on the floor, and, lying on her back, burst
+into such sincere laughter that all the rest burst out laughing as
+well. Yes. But this laughter was not prolonged ... Manka suddenly sat
+up on the floor and began to shout:
+
+"Hurrah! new wenches have joined our place!"
+
+This was altogether an unexpected thing. The baroness did a still
+greater tactlessness. She said:
+
+"I am a patroness of a convent for fallen girls, and therefore, as a
+part of my duty, I must gather information about you."
+
+But here Jennka instantly flared up:
+
+"Get out of here right away, you old fool! You rag! You floor mop! ...
+Your Magdalene asylums--they're worse than a prison. Your secretaries
+use us, like dogs carrion. Your fathers, husbands, and brothers come to
+us, and we infect them with all sorts of diseases ... Purposely ... And
+they in their turn infect you. Your female superintendents live with
+the drivers, janitors and policemen, while we are put in a cell if we
+happen to laugh or joke a little among ourselves. And so, if you've
+come here as to a theatre, then you must hear the truth out, straight
+to your face."
+
+But Tamara calmly stopped her:
+
+"Stop, Jennie, I will tell them myself ... Can it be that you really
+think, baroness, that we are worse than the so-called respectable
+women? A man comes to me, pays me two roubles for a visit or five
+roubles for a night, and I don't in the least conceal this, from any
+one in the world ... But tell me, baroness, do you possibly know even
+one married lady with a family who isn't in secret giving herself up
+either for the sake of passion to a young man, or for the sake of money
+to an old one? I know very well that fifty percent of you are kept by
+lovers, while the remaining fifty, of those who are older, keep young
+lads. I also know that many--ah, how many!--of you cohabit with your
+fathers, brothers, and even sons, but these secrets you hide in some
+sort of a hidden casket. And that's all the difference between us. We
+are fallen, but we don't lie and don't pretend, but you all fall, and
+lie to boot. Think it over for yourself; now--in whose favour is this
+difference?"
+
+"Bravo, Tamarochka, that's the way to serve them!" shouted Manka,
+without getting up from the floor; dishevelled, fair, curly, resembling
+at this moment a thirteen-year-old girl.
+
+"Now, now!" urged Jennka as well, flashing with her flaming eyes.
+
+"Why not, Jennechka? I'll go further than that. Out of us scarcely,
+scarcely one in a thousand has committed abortion. But all of you
+several times over. What? Or isn't that the truth? And those of you
+who've done this, did it not out of desperation or cruel poverty, but
+you simply were afraid of spoiling your figure and beauty--that's your
+sole capital! Or else you've been seeking only beastly carnal pleasure,
+while pregnancy and feeding interfered with your giving yourself up to
+it!"
+
+Rovinskaya became confused and uttered in a quick whisper:
+
+"Faites attention, baronne, que dans sa position cette demoiselle est
+instruite."[13]
+
+
+[13] "Pay attention, baroness, the girl is rather educated for one of
+her position."
+
+
+"Figurez-vous, que moi, j'ai aussi remarque cet etrange visage. Comme
+si je l'ai deja vu ... est-ce en reve? ... en demi-delire? Ou dans sa
+petite enfance?"[14]
+
+
+[14] "Just imagine, I, too, have remarked this strange face. But where
+have I seen it ... was it in a dream? ... in semi-delirium? Or in her
+early infancy?"
+
+
+"Ne vous donnez pas la peine de chercher dans vos souvenirs, baronne,"
+Tamara suddenly interposed insolently. "Je puis de suite vous venir
+aide. Rappelez-vous seulement Kharkoff, et la chambre d'hotel de
+Koniakine, l'entrepreneur Solovieitschik, et le tenor di grazzia ... A
+ce moment vous n'etiez pas encore m-me la baronne de ... [15] However,
+let's drop the French tongue ... You were a common chorus girl and
+served together with me."
+
+
+[15] "Don't trouble to strain your memory, baroness. I will come to
+your aid at once. Just recall Kharkov, a room in Koniakine's hotel, the
+theatrical manager, Solovieitschik, and a certain lyrical tenor ... At
+that time you were not yet baroness de ..."
+
+
+"Mais, dites-moi, au nom de dieu, comment vous trouvez vous ici,
+Mademoiselle Marguerite."[16]
+
+
+[16] "But tell me, in God's name, how you have come to be here,
+Mademoiselle Marguerite?"
+
+
+"Oh, they ask us about that every day. I just up and came to be here
+..."
+
+And with an inimitable cynicism she asked:
+
+"I trust you will pay for the time which we have passed with you?"
+
+"No, may the devil take you!" suddenly shouted out Little White Manka,
+quickly getting up from the rug.
+
+And suddenly, pulling two gold pieces out of her stocking, she flung
+them upon the table.
+
+"There, you! .. I'm giving you that for a cab. Go away right now,
+otherwise I'll break up all the mirrors and bottles here..."
+
+Rovinskaya got up and said with sincere, warm tears in her eyes:
+
+"Of course, we'll go away, and the lesson of Mlle. Marguerite will
+prove of benefit to us. Your time will be paid for--take care of it,
+Volodya. Still, you sang so much for us, that you must allow me to sing
+for you as well."
+
+Rovinskaya went up to the piano, took a few chords, and suddenly began
+to sing the splendid ballad of Dargomyzhsky:
+
+    "We parted then with pride--
+    Neither with sighs nor words
+    Proffered I thee reproach of jealousy ...
+    We went apart for aye,
+    Yet only if with thee
+    I might but chance to meet! ..
+    Ah, that with thee I might but chance to meet!
+
+    "I weep not nor complain--
+    To fate I bend my knee...
+    I know not, if you loved,
+    So greatly wronging me?
+    Yet only if with thee
+    I might but chance to meet! ...
+    Ah, that with thee I might but chance to meet!"
+
+This tender and passionate ballad, executed by a great artiste,
+suddenly reminded all these women of their first love; of their first
+fall; of a late leave-taking at a dawn in the spring, in the chill of
+the morning, when the grass is gray from the dew, while the red sky
+paints the tips of the birches a rosy colour; of last embraces, so
+closely entwined, and of the unerring heart's mournful whispers: "No,
+this will not be repeated, this will not be repeated!" And the lips
+were then cold and dry, while the damp mist of the morning lay upon the
+hair.
+
+Silence seized Tamara; silence seized Manka the Scandaliste; and
+suddenly Jennka, the most untamable of all the girls, ran up to the
+artiste, fell down on her knees, and began to sob at her feet.
+
+And Rovinskaya, touched herself, put her arms around her head and said:
+
+"My sister, let me kiss you!"
+
+Jennka whispered something into her ear.
+
+"Why, that's a silly trifle," said Rovinskaya. "A few months of
+treatment and it will all go away."
+
+"No, no, no ... I want to make all of them diseased. Let them all rot
+and croak."
+
+"Ah, my dear," said Rovinskaya, "I would not do that in your place."
+
+And now Jennka, the proud Jennka began kissing the knees and hands of
+the artiste and was saying:
+
+"Then why have people wronged me so? ... Why have they wronged me so?
+Why? Why? Why?"
+
+Such is the might of genius!
+
+The only might which takes into its beautiful hands not the abject
+reason, but the warm soul of man! The self-respecting Jennka was hiding
+her face in Rovinskaya's dress; Little White Manka was sitting meekly
+on a chair, her face covered with a handkerchief; Tamara, with elbow
+propped on her knee and head bowed on the palm of her hand, was
+intently looking down, while Simeon the porter, who had been looking in
+against any emergency, only opened his eyes wide in amazement.
+
+Rovinskaya was quietly whispering into Jennka's very ear:
+
+"Never despair. Sometimes things fall out so badly that there's nothing
+for it but to hang one's self--but, just look, to-morrow life has
+changed abruptly. My dear, my sister, I am now a world celebrity. But
+if you only knew what seas of humiliation and vileness I have had to
+wade through! Be well, then, my dear, and believe in your star."
+
+She bent down to Jennka and kissed her on the forehead. And never
+afterwards could Volodya Chaplinsky, who had been watching this scene
+with a painful tension, forget those warm and beautiful rays, which at
+this moment kindled in the green, long, Egyptian eyes of the artiste.
+
+The party departed gloomily, but Ryazanov lingered behind for a minute.
+
+He walked up to Jennka, respectfully and gently kissed her hand, and
+said:
+
+"If possible, forgive our prank ... This, of course, will not be
+repeated. But if you ever have need of me, I am always at your service.
+Here is my visiting card. Don't stick it out on your bureau; but
+remember, that from this evening on I am your friend."
+
+And, having kissed Jennka's hand once more, he was the last to go down
+the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+On Thursday, since very morning, a ceaseless, fine drizzle had begun to
+fall, and so the leaves of the chestnuts, acacias, and poplars had at
+once turned green. And, suddenly, it became somehow dreamily quiet and
+protractedly tedious. Pensive and monotonous.
+
+During this all the girls had gathered, as usual, in Jennka's room. But
+something strange was going on within her. She did not utter
+witticisms, did not laugh, did not read, as always, her usual
+yellow-back novel which was now lying aimlessly either on her breast or
+stomach; but was vicious, wrapped up in sadness, and in her eyes blazed
+a yellow fire that spoke of hatred. In vain did Little White Manka,
+Manka the Scandaliste, who adored her, try to turn her attention to
+herself--Jennka seemed not to notice her, and the conversation did not
+at all get on. It was depressing. But it may have been that the August
+drizzle, which had steadily set in for several weeks running, reacted
+upon all of them. Tamara sat down on Jennka's bed, gently embraced her,
+and, having put her mouth near her very ear, said in a whisper:
+
+"What's the matter, Jennechka? I've seen for a long time that something
+strange is going on in you. And Manka feels that too. Just see, how
+she's wasted without your caressing. Tell me. Perhaps I'll be able to
+help you in some way?"
+
+Jennka closed her eyes and shook her head in negation. Tamara moved
+away from her a little, but continued to stroke her shoulder gently.
+
+"It's your affair, Jennechka. I daren't butt into your soul. I only
+asked because you're the only being who..."
+
+Jennka with decision suddenly jumped out of bed, seized Tamara by the
+hand and said abruptly and commandingly:
+
+"All right! Let's get out of here for a minute. I'll tell you
+everything. Girls, wait for us a little while."
+
+In the light corridor Jennka laid her hands on the shoulders of her
+mate and with a distorted, suddenly blanched face, said:
+
+"Well, then, listen here: some one has infected me with syphilis."
+
+"Oh, my poor darling. Long?"
+
+"Long. Do you remember, when the students were here? The same ones who
+started a row with Platonov? I found out about it for the first time
+then. I found out in the daytime."
+
+"Do you know," quietly remarked Tamara, "I almost guessed about this,
+and particularly then, when you went down on your knees before the
+singer and talked quietly about something with her. But still, my dear
+Jennechka, you must attend to yourself."
+
+Jennka wrathfully stamped her foot and tore in half the batiste
+handkerchief which she had been nervously crumpling in her hands.
+
+"No! Not for anything! I won't infect any one of you. You may have
+noticed yourself, that during the last weeks I don't dine at the common
+table, and that I wash and wipe the dishes myself. That's why I'm
+trying to break Manka away from me, whom, you know, I love sincerely,
+in the real way. But these two-legged skunks I infect purposely, infect
+every evening, ten, fifteen of them. Let them rot, let them carry the
+syphilis on to their wives, mistresses, mothers--yes, yes, their
+mothers also, and their fathers, and their governesses, and even their
+grand-grandmothers. Let them all perish, the honest skunks!"
+
+Tamara carefully and tenderly stroked Jennka's head. "Can it be that
+you'll go the limit, Jennechka?"
+
+"Yes. And without any mercy. All of you, however, don't have to be
+afraid of me. I choose the man myself. The stupidest, the handsomest,
+the richest and the most important, but not to one of you will I let
+them go afterward. Oh! I make believe I'm so passionate before them,
+that you'd burst out laughing if you saw. I bite them, I scratch, I cry
+and shiver like an insane woman. They believe it, the pack of fools."
+
+"It's your affair, it's your affair, Jennechka," meditatively uttered
+Tamara, looking down. "Perhaps you're right, at that. Who knows? But
+tell me, how did you get away from the doctor?"
+
+Jennka suddenly turned away from her, pressed her face against the
+angle of the window frame and suddenly burst into bitter, searing
+tears--the tears of wrath and vengefulness--and at the same time she
+spoke, gasping and quivering:
+
+"Because ... because ... Because God has sent me especial luck: I am
+sick there where, in all probability, no doctor can see. And ours,
+besides that, is old and stupid..."
+
+And suddenly, with some unusual effort of the will Jennka stopped her
+tears just as unexpectedly as she had started crying.
+
+"Come to me, Tamarochka," she said. "Of course, you won't chatter too
+much?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+And they returned into Jennka's room, both of them calm and restrained.
+
+Simeon walked into the room. He, contrary to his usual brazenness,
+always bore himself with a shade of respect toward Jennka. Simeon said:
+
+"Well, now, Jennechka, their Excellency has come to Vanda. Allow her to
+go away for ten minutes."
+
+Vanda, a blue-eyed, light blonde, with a large red mouth, with the
+typical face of a Lithuanian, looked imploringly at Jennka. If Jennka
+had said "No" she would have remained in the room, but Jennka did not
+say anything and even shut her eyes deliberately. Vanda obediently went
+out of the room.
+
+This general came accurately twice a month, every two weeks (just as to
+Zoe, another girl, came daily another honoured guest, nicknamed the
+Director in the house).
+
+Jennka suddenly threw the old, tattered book behind her. Her brown eyes
+flared up with a real golden fire.
+
+"You're wrong in despising this general," said she. "I've known worse
+Ethiopians. I had a certain guest once--a real blockhead. He couldn't
+make love to me otherwise than ... otherwise than ... well, let's say
+it plainly: he pricked me with pins in the breast ... While in Vilno a
+Polish Catholic priest used to come to me. He would dress me all in
+white, compel me to powder myself, lay me down on the bed. He'd light
+three candles near me. And then, when I seemed to him altogether like a
+dead woman, he'd throw himself upon me."
+
+Little White Manka suddenly exclaimed:
+
+"It's the truth you're telling, Jennka! I had a certain old bugger,
+too. He made me pretend all the time that I was an innocent girl, so's
+I'd cry and scream. But, Jennechka, though you're the smartest one of
+us, yet I'll bet you won't guess who he was ..."
+
+"The warden of a prison?"
+
+"A fire chief."
+
+Suddenly Katie burst into laughter in her bass:
+
+"Well, now, I had a certain teacher. He taught some kind of arithmetic,
+I disremember which. He always made me believe, that I was the man, and
+he the woman, and that I should do it to him ... by force ... And what
+a fool! Just imagine, girls, he'd yell all the time: 'I'm your woman!
+I'm all yours! Take me! Take me!'"
+
+"Loony!" said the blue-eyed, spry Verka in a positive and unexpectedly
+contralto voice: "Loony."
+
+"No, why?" suddenly retorted the kindly and modest Tamara. "Not crazy
+at all, but simply, like all men, a libertine. At home it's tiresome
+for him, while here for his money he can receive whatever pleasure he
+desires. That's plain, it seems?"
+
+Jennka, who had been silent up to now, suddenly, with one quick
+movement sat up in bed.
+
+"You're all fools!" she cried. "Why do you forgive them all this?
+Before I used to be foolish myself, too, but now I compel them to walk
+before me on all fours, compel them to kiss my soles, and they do this
+with delight ... You all know, girlies, that I don't love money, but I
+pluck the men in whatever way I can. They, the nasty beasts, present me
+with the portraits of their wives, brides, mothers, daughters ...
+However, you've seen, I think, the photographs in our water-closet? But
+now, just think of it, my children ... A woman loves only once, but for
+always, while a man loves like a he-greyhound... That he's unfaithful
+is nothing; but he never has even the commonest feeling of gratitude
+left either for the old, or the new, mistress. I've heard it said, that
+now there are many clean boys among the young people. I believe this,
+though I haven't seen, haven't met them, myself. But all those I have
+seen are all vagabonds, nasty brutes and skunks. Not so long ago I read
+some novel of our miserable life. It's almost the same thing as I'm
+telling you now."
+
+Vanda came back. She slowly, carefully, sat down on the edge of
+Jennka's bed; there, where the shadow of the lamp fell. Out of that
+deep, though deformed psychical delicacy, which is peculiar to people
+sentenced to death, prisoners at hard labour, and prostitutes, none had
+the courage to ask her how she had passed this hour and a half.
+Suddenly she threw upon the table twenty-five roubles and said:
+
+"Bring me white wine and a watermelon."
+
+And, burying her face in her arms, which had sunk on the table, she
+began to sob inaudibly. And again no one took the liberty of putting
+any question to her. Only Jennka grew pale from wrath and bit her lower
+lip so that a row of white spots was left upon it.
+
+"Yes," she said; "here, now, I understand Tamara. You hear, Tamara, I
+apologize before you. I've often laughed over your being in love with
+your thief Senka. But here, now, I'll say that of all the men the most
+decent is a thief or a murderer. He doesn't hide the fact that he loves
+a girlie, and, if need be, will commit a crime for her--a theft or a
+murder. But these--the rest of them! All lying, falsehood, petty
+cunning, depravity on the sly. The nasty beast has three families, a
+wife and five children. A governess and two children abroad. The eldest
+daughter from the first marriage, and a child by her. And this
+everybody, everybody in town knows, save his little children. And even
+they, perhaps, guess it and whisper among themselves. And, just
+imagine, he's a respected person, honoured by the whole world ... My
+children, it seems we've never had occasion to enter into confidences
+with each other, and yet I'll tell you, that I when I was ten and a
+half, was sold by my own mother in the city of Zhitomir to Doctor
+Tarabukin. I kissed his hands, implored him to spare me, I cried out to
+him: 'I'm little!' But he'd answer me: 'That's nothing, that's nothing:
+you'll grow up.' Well, of course, there was pain, aversion, nastiness
+... And he afterwards spread it around as a current anecdote. The
+desperate cry of my soul."
+
+"Well, as long as we do speak, let's speak to the end," suddenly and
+calmly said Zoe, and smiled negligently and sadly. "I was deprived of
+innocence by a teacher in the ministerial school, Ivan Petrovich Sus.
+He simply called me over to his rooms, and his wife at that time had
+gone to market for a suckling pig--it was Christmas. Treated me with
+candies, and then said it was going to be one of two things: either I
+must obey him in everything, or he'd at once expel me out of school for
+bad conduct. But then you know yourselves, girls, how we feared the
+teachers. Here they aren't terrible to us, because we do with them
+whatever we want--but at that time! For then he seemed to us greater
+than Czar and God."
+
+"And me a stewdent. He was teaching the master's boys in our place.
+There, where I was a servant ..."
+
+"No, but I ..." exclaimed Niura, but, turning around unexpectedly,
+remained as she was with her mouth open. Looking in the direction of
+her gaze, Jennka had to wring her hands. In the doorway stood Liubka,
+grown thin, with dark rings under her eyes, and, just like a
+somnambulist, was searching with her hand for the door-knob, as a point
+of support.
+
+"Liubka, you fool, what's the matter with you?" yelled Jennka loudly.
+"What is it?"
+
+"Well, of course, what: he took and chased me out."
+
+No one said a word. Jennka hid her eyes with her hands and started
+breathing hard, and it could be seen how under the skin of her cheeks
+the taut muscles of the jaws were working.
+
+"Jennechka, all my hope is only in you," said Liubka with a deep
+expression of weary helplessness. "Everybody respects you so. Talk it
+over, dearie, with Anna Markovna or with Simeon ... Let them take me
+back."
+
+Jennka straightened up on the bed, fixed Liubka with her dry, burning,
+yet seemingly weeping eyes, and asked brokenly:
+
+"Have you eaten anything to-day?"
+
+"No. Neither yesterday, nor to-day. Nothing."
+
+"Listen, Jennechka," asked Vanda quietly, "suppose I give her some
+white wine? And Verka meanwhile will run to the kitchen for meat? What?"
+
+"Do as you know best. Of course, that's all right. And give a look,
+girlies, why, she's all wet. Oh, what a booby! Well! Lively! Undress
+yourself! Little White Manka, or you, Tamarochka, give her dry drawers,
+warm stockings and slippers. Well, now," she turned to Liubka, "tell
+us, you idiot, all that happened to you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+On that early morning when Lichonin so suddenly, and, perhaps,
+unexpectedly even to himself, had carried off Liubka from the gay
+establishment of Anna Markovna it was the height of summer. The trees
+still remained green, but in the scent of the air, the leaves, and the
+grass there was already to be felt, as though from afar, the tender,
+melancholy, and at the same time bewitching scent of the nearing
+autumn. With wonder the student gazed at the trees, so clean, innocent
+and quiet, as though God, imperceptibly to men, had planted them about
+here at night; and the trees themselves were looking around with wonder
+upon the calm blue water, that still seemed slumbering in the pools and
+ditches and under the wooden bridge thrown across the shallow river;
+upon the lofty, as though newly washed sky, which had just awakened,
+and, in the glow of dawn, half asleep, was smiling with a rosy, lazy,
+happy smile in greeting to the kindling sun.
+
+The heart of the student expanded and quivered; both from the beauty of
+the beatific morning, and from the joy of existence, and from the sweet
+air, refreshing his lungs after the night, passed without sleep, in a
+crowded and smoke-filled compartment. But the beauty and loftiness of
+his own action moved him still more.
+
+Yes, he had acted like a man, like a real man, in the highest sense of
+that word! Even now he is not repenting of what he had done. It's all
+right for them (to whom this "them" applied, Lichonin did not properly
+understand even himself), it's all right for them to talk about the
+horrors of prostitution; to talk, sitting at tea, with rolls and
+sausage, in the presence of pure and cultured girls. But had any one of
+his colleagues taken some actual step toward liberating a woman from
+perdition? Eh, now? And then there is also--the sort that will come to
+this same Sonechka Marmeladova, will tell her all sorts of taradiddles,
+describe all kinds of horrors to her, butt into her soul, until he
+brings her to tears; and right off will start in crying himself and
+begin to console her, embrace her, pat her on the head, kiss her at
+first on the cheek, then on the lips; well, and everybody knows what
+happens next! Faugh! But with him, with Lichonin, the word and the deed
+were never at odds.
+
+He clasped Liubka around the waist, and looked at her with kindly,
+almost loving, eyes; although, the very same minute, he himself thought
+that he was regarding her as a father or a brother.
+
+Sleep was fearfully besetting Liubka; her eyes would close, and she
+with an effort would open them wide, so as not to fall asleep again;
+while on her lips lay the same naive, childish, tired smile, which
+Lichonin had noticed still there, in the cabinet. And out of one corner
+of her mouth ran a thin trickle of saliva.
+
+"Liubka, my dear! My darling, much-suffering woman! Behold how fine it
+is all around! Lord! Here it's five years that I haven't seen the
+sunrise. Now play at cards, now drinking, now I had to hurry to the
+university. Behold, my dearest, over there the dawn has burst into
+bloom. The sun is near! This is your dawn, Liubochka! This is your new
+life beginning. You will fearlessly lean upon my strong arm. I shall
+lead you out upon the road of honest toil, on the way to a brave combat
+with life, face to face with it!"
+
+Liubka eyed him askance. "There, the fumes are still playing in his
+head," she thought kindly. "But that's nothing--he's kind and a good
+sort. Only a trifle homely." And, having smiled with a half-sleepy
+smile, she said in a tone of capricious reproach:
+
+"Ye--es! You'll fool me, never fear. All of you men are like that. You
+just gain yours at first, to get your pleasure, and then--no attention
+whatsoever!"
+
+"I? Oh? That I should do this!" Lichonin exclaimed warmly and even
+smote himself on the chest with his free hand. "Then you know me very
+badly! I'm too honest a man to be deceiving a defenseless girl. No!
+I'll exert all my powers and all my soul to educate your mind, to widen
+your outlook, to compel your poor heart, which has suffered so, to
+forget all the wounds and wrongs which life has inflicted upon it. I
+will be a father and a brother to you! I shall safeguard your every
+step! And if you will come to love somebody with a truly pure, holy
+love, then I shall bless that day and hour when I had snatched you out
+of this Dantean hell!"
+
+During the continuation of this flaming tirade the old cabby with great
+significance, although silently, began laughing, and from this
+inaudible laughter his back shook. Old cabbies hear very many things,
+because to the cabby, sitting in front, everything is readily audible,
+which is not at all suspected by the conversing fares; and many things
+do the old cabbies know of that which takes place among people. Who
+knows, perhaps he had heard more than once even more disordered, more
+lofty speeches?
+
+It seemed to Liubka for some reason that Lichonin had grown angry at
+her, or that he was growing jealous beforehand of some imaginary rival.
+He was declaiming with entirely too much noise and agitation. She
+became perfectly awake, turned her face to Lichonin with wide open,
+uncomprehending, and at the same time submissive eyes, and slightly
+touched his right hand, lying on her waist, with her fingers.
+
+"Don't get angry, my sweetie. I'll never exchange you for another.
+Here's my word of honour, honest to God! My word of honour, that I
+never will! Don't you think I feel you're wanting to take care of me?
+Do you think I don't understand? Why, you're such an attractive, nice
+little young fellow. There, now, if you were an old man and homely..."
+
+"Ah! You haven't got the right idea!" shouted Lichonin, and again in
+high-flown style began to tell her about the equal rights of women,
+about the sacredness of toil, about human justice, about freedom, about
+the struggle against reigning evil.
+
+Of all his words Liubka understood exactly not a one. She still felt
+herself guilty of something and somehow shrank all up, grew sad, bowed
+her head and became quiet. A little more and she, in all probability,
+would have burst out crying in the middle of the street; but
+fortunately, they by this time had driven up to the house where
+Lichonin was staying.
+
+"Well, here we are at home," said the student. "Stop, driver!"
+
+And when he had paid him, he could not refrain from declaiming with
+pathos, his hand extended theatrically straight before him:
+
+    "And into my house, calm and fearless,
+     As its full mistress walk thou in!"
+
+And again the unfathomable, prophetic smile wrinkled the aged brown
+face of the cabby.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+The room in which Lichonin lived was situated on the fifth story and a
+half. And a half, because there are such five, six, and seven-story
+profitable houses, packed to overflowing and cheap, on top of which are
+erected still other sorry bug-breeders of roof iron, something in the
+nature of mansards; or more exactly, bird-houses, in which it is
+fearfully cold in winter, while in the summer time it is just as torrid
+as in the tropics. Liubka with difficulty clambered upward. It seemed
+to her that now, now, two steps more, and she would drop straight down
+on the steps and fall into a sleep from which nothing would be able to
+wake her. But Lichonin was saying all the time:
+
+"My dear! I can see you are tired. But that's nothing. Lean upon me. We
+are going upwards all the time! Always higher and higher! Is this not a
+symbol of all human aspirations? My comrade, my sister, lean upon my
+arm!"
+
+Here it became still worse for poor Liubka. As it was, she could barely
+go up alone, but here she also had to drag in tow Lichonin, who had
+grown extremely heavy. And his weight would not really have mattered;
+his wordiness, however, was beginning to irritate her little by little.
+So irritates at times the ceaseless, wearisome crying, like a
+toothache, of an infant at breast; the piercing whimpering of a canary;
+or someone whistling without pause and out of tune in an adjoining room.
+
+Finally, they reached Lichonin's room. There was no key in the door.
+And, as a rule, it was never even locked with a key. Lichonin pushed
+the door and they entered. It was dark in the room, because the window
+curtains were lowered. It smelt of mice, kerosene, yesterday's
+vegetable soup, long-.used bed linen, stale tobacco smoke. In the
+half-dusk some one who could not be seen was snoring deafeningly and
+with variations.
+
+Lichonin raised the shade. There were the usual furnishings of a poor
+student: a sagging, unmade bed with a crumpled blanket; a lame table,
+and on it a candlestick without a candle; several books on the floor
+and on the table; cigarette stubs everywhere; and opposite the bed,
+along the other wall, an old, old divan, upon which at the present
+moment was sleeping and snoring, with mouth wide open, some young man
+with black hair and moustache. The collar of his shirt was unbuttoned
+and through its opening could be seen the chest and black hair, the
+like of which for thickness and curliness could be found only on
+Persian lambs.
+
+"Nijeradze! Hey, Nijeradze, get up!" cried Lichonin and prodded the
+sleeper in the ribs. "Prince!"
+
+"M-m-m..."
+
+"May your race be even accursed in the person of your ancestors and
+descendants! May they even be exiled from the heights of the beauteous
+Caucasus! May they even never behold the blessed Georgia! Get up, you
+skunk! Get up you Aravian dromedary! Kintoshka! ..."
+
+But suddenly, unexpectedly for Lichonin, Liubka intervened. She took
+him by the arm and said timidly:
+
+"Darling, why torture him? Maybe he wants to sleep, maybe he's tired?
+Let him sleep a bit. I'd better go home. Will you give me a half for a
+cabby? To-morrow you'll come to me again. Isn't that so, sweetie?"
+
+Lichonin was abashed. So strange did the intervention of this silent,
+apparently sleepy girl, appear to him. Of course, he did not grasp that
+she was actuated by an instinctive, unconscious pity for a man who had
+not had enough sleep; or, perhaps, a professional regard for the sleep
+of other people. But the astonishment was only momentary. For some
+reason he became offended. He raised the hand of the recumbent man,
+which hung down to the floor, with the extinguished cigarette still
+remaining between its fingers, and, shaking it hard, he said in a
+serious, almost severe voice:
+
+"Listen, now, Nijeradze, I'm asking you seriously. Understand, now, may
+the devil take you that I'm not alone, but with a woman. Swine!"
+
+It was as though a miracle had happened: the lying man suddenly jumped
+up, as though some spring of unusual force had instantaneously unwound
+under him. He sat down on the divan, rapidly rubbed with his palms his
+eyes, forehead, temples; saw the woman, became confused at once, and
+muttered, hastily buttoning his blouse:
+
+"Is that you, Lichonin? And here I was waiting and waiting for you and
+fell asleep. Request the unknown comrade to turn away for just a
+minute."
+
+He hastily pulled on his gray, everyday student's coat, and rumpled up
+with all the fingers of both his hands his luxuriant black curls.
+Liubka, with the coquetry natural to all women, no matter in what years
+or situation they find themselves, walked up to the sliver of a mirror
+hanging on the wall, to fix her hair-dress. Nijeradze askance,
+questioningly, only with the movement of his eyes, indicated her to
+Lichonin.
+
+"Never mind. Don't pay any attention," answered the other aloud. "But
+let's get out of here, however. I'll tell you everything right away.
+Excuse me, Liubochka, it's only for a minute. I'll come back at once,
+fix you up, and then evaporate, like smoke."
+
+"But don't trouble yourself," replied Liubka: "it'll be all right for
+me here, right on this divan. And you fix yourself up on the bed."
+
+"No, that's no longer like a model, my angel! I have a colleague here.
+And so I'll go to him to sleep. I'll return in just a minute."
+
+Both students went out into the corridor.
+
+"What meaneth this dream?" asked Nijeradze, opening wide his oriental,
+somewhat sheepish eyes. "Whence this beauteous child, this comrade in a
+petticoat?"
+
+Lichonin shook his head with great significance and made a wry face.
+Now, when the ride, the fresh air, the morning, and the business-like,
+everyday, accustomed setting had entirely sobered him, he was beginning
+to experience within his soul an indistinct feeling of a certain
+awkwardness, needlessness of this sudden action; and at the same time
+something in the nature of an unconscious irritation both against
+himself and the woman he had carried off. He already had a presentiment
+of the onerousness of living together, of a multiplicity of cares,
+unpleasantnesses and expenses; of the equivocal smiles or even simply
+the unceremonious questionings of comrades; finally, of the serious
+hindrance during the time of government examinations. But, having
+scarcely begun speaking with Nijeradze, he at once became ashamed of
+his pusillanimity, and having started off listlessly, towards the end
+he again began to prance on his heroic steed.
+
+"Do you see, prince," he said, in his confusion twisting a button of
+his comrade's coat and without looking in his eyes, "you've made a
+mistake. This isn't a comrade in a petticoat, but ... simply, I was
+just now with my colleagues ... that is, I wasn't, but just dropped in
+for a minute with my friends into the Yamkas, to Anna Markovna ..."
+
+"With whom?" asked Nijeradze, becoming animated.
+
+"Well, isn't it all the same to you, prince? There was Tolpygin,
+Ramses, a certain sub-professor--Yarchenko--Borya Sobashnikov, and
+others ... I don't recall. We had been boat-riding the whole evening,
+then dived into a publican's, and only after that, like swine, started
+for the Yamkas. I, you know, am a very abstemious man. I only sat and
+soaked up cognac, like a sponge, with a certain reporter I know. Well,
+all the others fell from grace however. And so, toward morning, for
+some reason or other, I went all to pieces. I got so sad and full of
+pity from looking at these unhappy women. I also thought, now, of how
+our sisters enjoy our regard, love, protection; how our mothers are
+surrounded with reverent adoration. Just let some one say one rude word
+to them, shove them, offend them; we are ready to chew his throat off!
+Isn't that the truth?"
+
+"M-m? ..." drawled out the Georgian, half questioningly, half
+expectantly, and squinted his eyes to one side.
+
+"Well, then I thought: why, now, any blackguard, any whippersnapper,
+any shattered ancient can take any one of these women to himself for a
+minute or for a night, as a momentary whim; and indifferently, one
+superfluous time more--the thousand and first--profane and defile in
+her that which is the most precious in a human being--love... Do you
+understand--revile, trample it underfoot, pay for the visit and walk
+away in peace, his hands in his pockets, whistling. But the most
+horrible of all is that all this has come to be a habit with them; it's
+all one to her, and it's all one to him. The feelings have dulled, the
+soul has dimmed. That's so, isn't it? And yet, in every one of them
+perishes both a splendid sister and a sainted mother. Eh? Isn't that
+the truth?"
+
+"N-na? ...." mumbled Nijeradze and again shifted his eyes to one side.
+
+"And so I thought: wherefore words and superfluous exclamations! To the
+devil with hypocritical speeches during conventions. To the devil with
+abolition, regulation (suddenly, involuntarily, the recent words of the
+reporter came to his mind), Magdalene asylums and all these
+distributions of holy books in the establishments! Here, I'll up and
+act as a really honest man, snatch a girl out of this slough, implant
+her in real firm soil, calm her, encourage her, treat her kindly."
+
+"H-hm!" grunted Nijeradze with a grin.
+
+"Eh, prince! You always have salacious things on your mind. For you
+understand that I'm not talking about a woman, but about a human being;
+not about flesh, but about a soul."
+
+"All right, all right, me soul, go on!"
+
+"Futhermore, as I thought, so did I act. I took her to-day from Anna
+Markovna's and brought her for the present to me. And later--whatever
+God may grant. I'll teach her in the beginning to read, and write; then
+open up for her a little cook-shop, or a grocery store, let's say. I
+think that the comrades won't refuse to help me. The human heart,
+prince, my brother--every heart--is in need of cordiality, of warmth.
+And lo and behold! in a year, in two, I will return to society a good,
+industrious, worthy member, with a virgin soul, open to all sorts of
+great possibilities... For she has given only her body, while her soul
+is pure and innocent."
+
+"Tse, tse, tse," the prince smacked his tongue.
+
+"What does this mean, you Tifflissian he-mule?"
+
+"And will you buy her a sewing machine?"
+
+"Why a sewing machine, in particular? I don't understand."
+
+"It's always that way in the novels, me soul. Just as soon as the hero
+has saved the poor, but lost, creature, he at once sets up a sewing
+machine for her."
+
+"Stop talking nonsense," Lichonin waved him away angrily with his hand.
+"Clown!"
+
+The Georgian suddenly grew heated, his black eyes began to sparkle, and
+immediately Caucasian intonations could be heard in his voice.
+
+"No, not nonsense, me soul. It's one of two things here, and it'll all
+end in one and the same result. Either you'll get together with her and
+after five months chuck her out on the street; and she'll return to the
+brothel or take to walking the street. That's a fact! Or else you won't
+get together with her, but will begin to load her up with manual or
+mental labours and will try to develop her ignorant, dark mind; and she
+from tedium will run away from you, and will again find herself either
+walking the street, or in a brothel. That's a fact, too! However, there
+is still a third combination. You'll be vexing yourself about her like
+a brother, like the knight Lancelot, but she, secretly from you, will
+fall in love with another. Me soul, believe me, that wooman, when she
+is a wooman, is always--a wooman. And the other will play a bit with
+her body, and after three months chuck her out into the street or into
+a brothel."
+
+Lichonin sighed deeply. Somewhere deep--not in his mind, but in the
+hidden, almost unseizable secret recesses of his
+consciousness--something resembling the thought that Nijeradze was
+right flashed through him. But he quickly gained control of himself,
+shook his head, and, stretching out his hand to the prince, uttered
+triumphantly:
+
+"I promise you, that after half a year you'll take your words back, and
+as a mark of apology, you Erivanian billy goat, you Armavirian
+egg-plant, you'll stand me to a dozen of Cakhetine wine."
+
+"Va! That's a go!" the prince struck Lichonin's hand with his palm with
+all his might. "With pleasure. But if it comes out as I say--then you
+do it."
+
+"Then I do it. However, AU REVOIR, prince. Whom are you lodging with?"
+
+"Right here, in this corridor, at Soloviev's. But you, of course, like
+a mediaeval knight, will lay a two-edged sword between yourself and the
+beauteous Rosamond? Yes?"
+
+"Nonsense! I did want to pass the night at Soloviev's myself. But now
+I'll go and wander about the streets a bit and turn in into somebody's;
+to Zaitzevich or Strump. Farewell, prince!"
+
+"Wait, wait!" Nijeradze called him, when he had gone a few steps. "I
+have forgotten to tell you the main thing: Partzan has tripped up!"
+
+"So that's how?" wondered Lichonin, and at once yawned long, deeply and
+with enjoyment.
+
+"Yes. But there's nothing dreadful; only the possession of some illegal
+brochures and stuff. He won't have to sit for more than a year."
+
+"That's nothing; he's a husky lad, he can stand it."
+
+"He's husky, all right" confirmed the prince.
+
+"Farewell!"
+
+"AU REVOIR, knight Grunwaldus!"
+
+"AU REVOIR, you Carbidinian stallion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Lichonin was left alone. In the half-dark corridor it smelt of kerosene
+fumes from the guttering little tin lamp, and of the odour of stagnant
+bad tobacco. The daylight dully penetrated only near the top, from two
+small glass frames, let in the roof at both ends of the corridor.
+
+Lichonin found himself in that simultaneously weakened and elevated
+mood which is so familiar to every man who has happened to be
+thoroughly sleepless for a long time. It was as though he had gone out
+of the limitations of everyday human life, and this life had become to
+him distant and of indifference; but at the same time his thoughts and
+emotions obtained a certain peaceful clarity and apathetic
+distinctness, and there was a tedious and languishing allurement in
+this crystal Nirvanah.
+
+He stood near his room, leaning against the wall, and seemed to see,
+feel, and hear how near him and below him were sleeping several score
+of people; sleeping with the last, fast morning sleep, with open
+mouths, with measured deep breathing, with a wilted pallor on their
+faces, glistening from sleep; and through his head flashed the thought,
+remote yet familiar since childhood, of how horrible sleeping people
+are--far more horrible than dead people. Then he remembered about
+Liubka. His subterranean, submerged, mysterious "I" rapidly, rapidly
+whispered that he ought to drop into the room, and see if the girl were
+all right, as well as make certain dispositions about tea in the
+morning; but he made believe to himself that he was not at all even
+thinking of this, and walked out into the street.
+
+He walked, looking closely at everything that met his eyes, with an
+idle and exact curiosity new to him; and every feature was drawn for
+him in relief to such a degree that it seemed to him as though he were
+feeling it with his fingers... There a peasant woman passed by. Over
+her shoulder is a yoke staff, while at each end of the yoke is a large
+pail of milk; her face is not young, with a net of fine wrinkles on the
+temples and with two deep furrows from the nostrils to the corners of
+the mouth; but her cheeks are rosy, and, probably, hard to the touch,
+while her hazel eyes radiate a sprightly peasant smile. From the
+movement of the heavy yoke and from the smooth walk her hips sway
+rhythmically now to the left, now to the right, and in their wave-like
+movements there is a coarse, sensual beauty.
+
+"A mischievous dame, and she's lived through a checkered life,"
+reflected Lichonin. And suddenly, unexpectedly to himself, he had a
+feeling for, and irresistibly desired, this woman, altogether unknown
+to him, homely and not young; in all probability dirty and vulgar, but
+still resembling, as it seemed to him, a large Antonovka[17] apple
+which had fallen to the ground-somewhat bored by a worm, and which had
+lain just a wee bit too long, but which has still preserved its bright
+colour and its fragrant, winey aroma.
+
+
+[17] Somewhat like a Spitzbergen, but a trifle rounder.--Trans.
+
+
+Getting ahead of her, an empty, black, funereal catafalque whirled by;
+with two horses in harness, and two tied behind to the little rear
+columns. The torch-bearers and grave-diggers, already drunk since
+morning, with red, brutish faces, with rusty opera hats on their heads,
+were sitting in a disorderly heap on their uniform liveries, on the
+reticular horse-blankets, on the mourning lanterns; and with rusty,
+hoarse voices were roaring out some incoherent song. "They must be
+hurrying to a funeral procession; or, perhaps, have even finished it
+already," reflected Lichonin; "merry fellows!" On the boulevard he came
+to a stop and sat down on a small wooden bench, painted green. Two rows
+of mighty centenarian chestnuts went away into the distance, merging
+together somewhere afar into one straight green arrow. The prickly
+large nuts were already hanging on the trees. Lichonin suddenly
+recalled that at the very beginning of the spring he had been sitting
+on this very boulevard, and at this very same spot. Then it had been a
+calm, gentle evening of smoky purple, soundlessly falling into slumber,
+just like a smiling, tired maiden. Then the stalwart chestnuts, with
+their foliage--broad at the bottom and narrow toward the top--had been
+strewn all over with clusters of blossoms, growing with bright, rosy,
+thin cones straight to the sky; just as though some one by mistake had
+taken and fastened upon all the chestnuts, as upon lustres, pink
+Christmas-tree candles. And suddenly, with extraordinary
+poignancy--every man sooner or later passes through this zone of inner
+emotion--Lichonin felt, that here are the nuts ripening already, while
+then there had been little pink blossoming candles, and that there
+would be many more springs and many blossoms, but the one which had
+passed no one and nothing had the power to bring back. Sadly gazing
+into the depths of the retreating dense alley, he suddenly noticed that
+sentimental tears were making his eyes smart.
+
+He got up and went on farther, looking closely at everything that he
+met with an incessant, sharpened, and at the same time calm attention,
+just as though he were looking at the God-created world for the first
+time. A gang of stone masons went past him on the pavement, and all of
+them were reflected in his inner vision with an exaggerated vividness
+and brilliance of colour, just as though on the frosted glass of a
+camera obscura. The foreman, with a red beard, matted to one side, and
+with blue austere eyes; and a tremendous young fellow, whose left eye
+was swollen, and who had a spot of a dark-blue colour spreading from
+the forehead to the cheekbone and from the nose to the temple; and a
+young boy with a naive, country face, with a gaping mouth like a
+fledgling's, weak, moist; and an old man who, having come late, was
+running after the gang at a funny, goat-like trot; and their clothes,
+soiled with lime, their aprons and their chisels--all this flickered
+before him in an inanimate file--a colourful, motley, but dead
+cinematographic film.
+
+He had to cut across the New Kishenevsky Market. Suddenly the savoury,
+greasy odour of something roasted compelled him to distend his
+nostrils. Lichonin recalled that he had not eaten anything since noon
+yesterday, and at once felt hunger. He turned to the right, into the
+centre of the market.
+
+In the days of his starvings--and he had had to experience them more
+than once--he would come here to the market, and for the pitiful
+coppers, gotten with difficulty, would buy himself bread and fried
+sausage. This was in winter, oftenest of all. The huckstress, wrapped
+up in a multiplicity of clothes, usually sat upon a pot of coals for
+warmth; while before her, on the iron dripping-pan, hissed and crackled
+the thick, home-made sausage, cut into pieces a quarter of a yard in
+length, plentifully seasoned with garlic. A piece of sausage usually
+cost ten kopecks, the bread two kopecks.
+
+There were very many folk at market to-day. Even at a distance, edging
+his way to the familiar, loved stall, Lichonin heard the sounds of
+music. Having made his way through the crowd, which in a solid ring
+surrounded one of the stalls, he saw a naive and endearing sight, which
+may be seen only in the blessed south of Russia. Ten or fifteen
+huckstresses, during ordinary times gossips of evil tongue and addicted
+to unrestrainable swearing, inexhaustible in its verbal diversity, but
+now, evidently, flattering and tender cronies, had started celebrating
+even since last evening; had caroused the whole night through and now
+had carried their noisy merrymaking out to the market. The hired
+musicians--two fiddles, a first and a second, and a tambourine--were
+strumming a monotonous but a lively, bold, daring and cunning tune.
+Some of the wives were clinking glasses and kissing each other, pouring
+vodka over one another; others poured it out into glasses and over the
+tables; others still, clapping their palms in time with the music,
+oh'd, squealed, and danced, squatting in one place. And in the middle
+of the ring, upon the cobbles of the pavement, a stout woman of about
+forty-five, but still handsome, with red, fleshy lips, with humid,
+intoxicated, seemingly unctuous eyes, merrily sparkling from under the
+high bows of black, regular, Little Russian eyebrows, was whirling
+around and stamping out a tattoo on one spot. All the beauty and all
+the art of her dance consisted in that she would now bow her little
+head and look out provokingly from under her eyebrows, then suddenly
+toss it back and let her eyelashes down and spread her hands out at her
+sides; and also in that in measure with the dance her enormous breasts
+swayed and quivered under her red calico waist. During the dance she
+was singing, now shuffling her heels, now the toes, of her goat-skin
+shoes:
+
+    "The fiddle's playing on the street,
+    You can hear its bass so sweet;
+    My mother has me locked up neat,
+    My waitin' dearie I can't meet."
+
+That was the very country-wife whom Lichonin knew; the self-same who
+not only had had him for a client during hard times, but had even
+extended him credit. She suddenly recognized Lichonin, darted to him,
+embraced him, squeezed him to her bosom and kissed him straight on his
+lips with her moist, warm, thick lips. Then she spread her arms out
+wide, smote one palm against the other, intertwined her fingers, and
+sweetly, as only Podolian wives can do it, began to coo:
+
+"My little master, my little silver gold trove, my lovie! You forgive a
+drunken wife like me, now. Well, what of it? I've gone op a spree!" She
+then darted at him in an attempt to kiss his hand. "But then, I know
+you ain't proud, like other gentry. Well, give me your hand,
+dearie-dear; why, I want to kiss your little hand! No, no, no! I athk,
+I athk you! ..." "Well, now, that's nonsense, Aunt Glycera!" Linchonin
+interrupted her, unexpectedly becoming animated. "Let's best kiss just
+so, now. Your lips are just too sweet!"
+
+"Ah, my little sweetheart! My little bright sun, my little apple of
+paradise, you," Glycera waxed tender, "give me your lips, then! Give me
+your little lips to buss, then! ..."
+
+She pressed him warmly to her gigantean bosom and again slavered over
+him with her moist, warm, Hottentot lips. After that, she seized him by
+his sleeve, brought him out into the middle of the ring, and began to
+walk around him with a stately, mincing step, having bent her waist
+coquettishly and vociferating:
+
+    "Oh, each to his taste, I want Paraska more,
+    For I've a divel in my pants
+    Her skirt holds somethin' for!"
+
+And then suddenly she passed on, sustained by the musicians, to a most
+rollicking, Little Russian, thumping GOPAK dance:
+
+    "Oh, Chook, that is too much,
+    You have soiled your apron too much.
+    Well, Prisko, don't you fret,
+    Wipe it off, then, if you're wet!
+    TRALALA, TRALALA ...
+
+    Sleeps, Khima, and won't stir
+    That a Kossack sleeps with her,
+    You feel all, Khima--why deceive?
+    Just to yourself you make believe.
+    TAI, TAI, TRALALAI..."'
+
+Lichonin, completely grown merry, suddenly began jumping like a goat
+about her, just like a satellite around a whirling planet--long-legged,
+long-armed, stooping and altogether incongruous. His entrance was
+greeted by a general but pretty friendly neighing. He was made to sit
+down at the table, was helped to vodka and sausage. He, for his part,
+sent a tramp he knew after beer, and, glass in hand, delivered three
+absurd speeches: one about the self-determination of Ukraine; another
+about the goodness of Little Russian sausage, in connection with the
+beauty and domesticity of the women of Little Russia; and the third,
+for some reason, about trade and industry in the south of Russia.
+Sitting alongside of Lukeriya, he was all the time trying to embrace
+her around the waist, and she did not oppose this. But even his long
+arms could not encompass her amazing waist. However, she clasped his
+hand powerfully under the table, until it hurt, with her enormous, soft
+hand, as hot as fire.
+
+At this moment among the huckstresses, who up to now had been tenderly
+kissing, certain old, unsettled quarrels and grievances flickered up.
+Two of the wives, bending toward each other just like roosters ready to
+enter battle, their arms akimbo, were pouring upon each other the most
+choice, out-of-the-way oaths:
+
+"Fool, stiff, daughter of a dog!" one was yelling. "Youse ain't fit to
+kiss me right here." And, turning her back around to her foe, she
+loudly slapped herself below the spine. "Right here! Here!"
+
+While the other, infuriated, squealed in answer:
+
+"You lie, you slut, for I am fit, I am fit!"
+
+Lichonin utilized the minute. As though he had just recalled something,
+he hurriedly jumped up from the bench and called out:
+
+"Wait for me, Aunty Luckeriya, I'll come in three minutes!" and dived
+through the living ring of spectators.
+
+"Master! Master!" his neighbour cried after him: "Come back the
+quickest you can, now! I've one little word to say to you."
+
+Having turned the corner, he for some time racked his head trying to
+recall what it was that he absolutely had to do, now, this very minute.
+And again, in the very depths of his soul, he knew just what he had to
+do, but he procrastinated confessing this to his own self. It was
+already a clear, bright day, about nine or ten o'clock. Janitors were
+watering the streets with rubber hose. Flower girls were sitting on the
+squares and near the gates of the boulevards, with roses,
+stock-gillyflowers and narcissi. The radiant, gay, rich southern town
+was beginning to get animated. Over the pavement jolted an iron cage
+filled with dogs of every possible colour, breed, and age. On the coach
+box were sitting two dog-catchers, or, as they deferentially style
+themselves, "the king's dog-catchers"--i. e., hunters of stray
+dogs--returning home with this morning's catch.
+
+"She must be awake by now," Lichonin's secret thought finally took
+form; "but if she isn't yet awake, then I'll quietly lie down on the
+divan and sleep a little."
+
+In the corridor the dying kerosene lamp emitted a dim light and smoked
+as before, and the watery, murky half-light penetrated into the narrow,
+long box. The door of the room had remained unlocked, after all.
+Lichonin opened it without a sound and entered.
+
+The faint, blue half-light poured in through the interstices between
+the blinds and the windows. Lichonin stopped in the middle of the room
+and with an intensified avidity heard the quiet, sleeping breathing of
+Liubka. His lips became so hot and dry that he had to lick them
+incessantly. His knees began to tremble.
+
+"Ask if she needs anything," suddenly darted through his head.
+
+Like a drunkard, breathing hard, with mouth open, staggering on his
+shaking legs, he walked up to the bed.
+
+Liubka was sleeping on her back, with one bare arm stretched out along
+the body, and the other on her breast. Lichonin bent nearer, to her
+very face. She was breathing evenly and deeply. This breathing of her
+young, healthy body was, despite sleep, pure and almost aromatic. He
+cautiously ran his fingers over her bare arm and stroked her breast a
+little below the clavicle. "What am I doing?" his reason suddenly cried
+out within him in terror; but some one else answered for Lichonin: "But
+I'm not doing anything. I only want to ask if she's sleeping
+comfortably, and whether she doesn't want some tea."
+
+But Liubka suddenly awoke, opened her eyes, blinked them for a moment
+and opened them again. She gave a long, long stretch, and with a
+kindly, not yet fully reasoning smile, encircled Lichonin's neck with
+her warm, strong arm.
+
+"Sweetie! Darling!" caressingly uttered the woman in a crooning voice,
+somewhat hoarse from sleep. "Why, I was waiting for you and waiting,
+and even became angry. And after that I fell asleep and all night long
+saw you in my sleep. Come to me, my baby, my lil' precious!" She drew
+him to her, breast against breast.
+
+Lichonin almost did not resist; he was all atremble, as from a chill,
+and meaninglessly repeating in a galloping whisper with chattering
+teeth:
+
+"No, now, Liuba, don't ... Really, don't do that, Liuba ... Ah, let's
+drop this, Liuba ... Don't torture me. I won't vouch for myself ... Let
+me alone, now, Liuba, for God's sake! ..."
+
+"My-y little silly!" she exclaimed in a laughing, joyous voice. "Come
+to me, my joy!"--and, overcoming the last, altogether insignificant
+opposition, she pressed his mouth to hers and kissed him hard and
+warmly--kissed him sincerely, perhaps for the first and last time in
+her life.
+
+"Oh, you scoundrel! What am I doing?" declaimed some honest, prudent,
+and false body in Lichonin.
+
+"Well, now? Are you eased up a bit?" asked Liubka kindly, kissing
+Lichonin's lips for the last time. "Oh, you, my little student! ..."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and Liubka,
+and, it would seem, toward all the world, Lichonin without undressing
+flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even gnashed
+his teeth from the smarting shame. Sleep would not come to him, while
+his thoughts revolved around this fool action--as he himself called the
+carrying off of Liubka,--in which an atrocious vaudeville had been so
+disgustingly intertwined with a deep drama. "It's all one," he
+stubbornly repeated to himself. "Once I have given my promise, I'll see
+the business through to the end. And, of course, that which has
+occurred just now will never, never be repeated! My God, who hasn't
+fallen, giving in to a momentary laxity of the nerves? Some philosopher
+or other has expressed a deep, remarkable truth, when he affirmed that
+the value of the human soul may be known by the depth of its fall and
+the height of its flight. But still, the devil take the whole of this
+idiotical day and that equivocal reasoner--the reporter Platonov, and
+his own--Lichonin's--absurd outburst of chivalry! Just as though, in
+reality, this had not taken place in real life, but in Chernishevski's
+novel, What's to be done? And how, devil take it, with what eyes will I
+look upon her tomorrow?"
+
+His head was on fire; his eyelids were smarting, his lips dry. He was
+nervously smoking a cigarette and frequently got up from the divan to
+take the decanter of water off the table, and avidly, straight from its
+mouth, drink several big draughts. Then, by some accidental effort of
+the will, he succeeded in tearing his thoughts away from the past
+night, and at once a heavy sleep, without any visions and images,
+enveloped him as though in black cotton.
+
+He awoke long past noon, at two or three o'clock; at first could not
+come to himself for a long while; smacked his lips and looked around
+the room with glazed, heavy eyes. All that had happened during the
+night seemed to have flown out of his memory. But when he saw Liubka,
+who was quietly and motionlessly sitting on the bed, with head lowered
+and hands crossed on her knees, he began to groan and grunt from
+vexation and confusion. Now he recalled everything. And at that minute
+he experienced in his own person how heavy it is to see in the morning,
+with one's own eyes, the results of folly committed the night before.
+
+"Are you awake, sweetie?" asked Liubka kindly.
+
+She got up from the bed, walked up to the divan, sat down at Lichonin's
+feet, and cautiously patted his blanket-covered leg.
+
+"Why, I woke up long ago and was sitting all the while; I was afraid to
+wake you up. You were sleeping so very soundly!"
+
+She stretched toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Lichonin made a
+wry face and gently pushed her away from him.
+
+"Wait, Liubochka! Wait; that's not necessary. Do you
+understand--absolutely, never necessary. That which took place
+yesterday--well, that's an accident. My weakness, let's say. Even more,
+a momentary baseness, perhaps. But, by God, believe me, I didn't at all
+want to make a mistress out of you. I want to see you my friend, my
+sister, my comrade ... Well, that's nothing, then; everything will
+adjust itself, grow customary. Only one mustn't fall in spirit. And in
+the meanwhile, my dear, go to the window and look out of it a bit; I
+just want to put myself in order."
+
+Liubka slightly pouted her lips and walked off to the window, turning
+her back on Lichonin. All these words about friendship, brotherhood and
+comradeship she could not understand with her brain of a hen and her
+simple peasant soul. That a student--after all, not just anybody, but
+an educated man, who could learn to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a
+judge--had taken her for maintenance flattered her imagination far more
+... And here, now, it turned out that he had just fulfilled his
+caprice, had gotten what he wanted, and was now trying to back out.
+They are all like that, the men!
+
+Lichonin hastily got up, splashed a few handfuls of water in his face,
+and dried himself with an old napkin. Then he raised the blinds and
+threw open both window shutters. The golden sunlight, the azure sky,
+the rumble of the city, the foliage of the thick linden trees and the
+chestnuts, the bells of the horse trams, the dry smell of the hot,
+dusty street--all this at once burst into the tiny garret room.
+Lichonin walked up to Liubka and amicably patted her on the shoulder.
+
+"Never mind, my joy ... What's done can't be undone, but it's a lesson
+for the future. You haven't yet asked tea for yourself, Liubochka?"
+
+"No, I was waiting for you all the while. Besides, I didn't know who to
+ask. And you're all right, too. Why, I heard you, after you went off
+with your friend, come back and stand a while near the door. But you
+never even said good-bye to me. Is that right?"
+
+"The first family quarrel," thought Lichonin, but thought it without
+malice, in jest.
+
+The wash-up, the beauty of the gold and blue southern sky, and the
+naive, partly submissive, partly displeased face of Liubka, as well as
+the consciousness that after all he was a man, and that he and not she
+had to answer for the porridge he had cooked--all this together braced
+up his nerves and compelled him to take himself in hand. He opened the
+door and roared into the darkness of the stinking corridor:
+
+"Al-lexa-andra! A samova-ar! Two lo-oaves, bu-utter, and sausage! And a
+small bottle of vo-odka!"
+
+The patter of slippers was heard in the corridor, and an aged voice,
+even from afar, began to speak thickly:
+
+"What are you bawling for? What are you bawling for, eh? Ho, ho, ho!
+Like a stallion in a stall. You ain't little, to look at you; you're
+grown up already, yet you carry on like a street boy! Well, what do you
+want?"
+
+Into the room walked a little old woman, with red-lidded eyes, like
+little narrow cracks, and with a face amazingly like parchment, upon
+which a long, sharp nose stuck downward, morosely and ominously. This
+was Alexandra, the servant of old of the student bird-houses; the
+friend and creditor of all the students; a woman of sixty-five,
+argumentative, and a grumbler.
+
+Lichonin repeated his order to her and gave her a rouble note. But the
+old woman would not go away; shuffled in one place, snorted, chewed
+with her lips and looked inimically at the girl sitting--with her back
+to the light.
+
+"What's the matter with you now, Alexandra, that you seem ossified?"
+asked Lichonin, laughing. "Or are you lost in admiration? Well, then,
+know: this is my cousin, my first cousin, that is--Liubov..."[18] he
+was confused for only a second, but immediately fired away: "Liubov
+Vasilievna, but for me--simply Liubochka. I've known her when she was
+only that high," he showed a quarter of a yard off the table. "And I
+pulled her ears and slapped her for her caprices over the place where
+the legs grow from. And then ... I caught all sorts of bugs for her ...
+But, however ... However, you go on, go on, you Egyptian mummy, you
+fragment of former ages! Let one leg be here and the other there!"
+
+
+[18] Love.--Trans.
+
+
+But the old woman lingered. Stamping all around herself, she barely,
+barely turned to the door and kept a keen, spiteful, sidelong glance on
+Liubka. And at the same time she muttered with her sunken mouth:
+
+"First cousin! We know these first cousins! There's lots of them
+walking around Kashtanovaya Street. There, these he-dogs can never get
+enough!"
+
+"Well, you old barque! Lively and don't growl!" Lichonin shouted after
+her. "Or else, like your friend, the student Triassov, I'll take and
+lock you up in the dressing room for twenty-four hours!"
+
+Alexandra went away, and for a long time her aged, flapping steps and
+indistinct muttering could be heard in the corridor. She was inclined,
+in her austere, grumbling kindliness, to forgive a great deal to the
+studying youths, whom she had served for nigh unto forty years. She
+forgave drunkenness, card playing, scandals, loud singing, debts; but,
+alas! she was a virgin, and there was only one thing her continent soul
+could not abide--libertinage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+"And that's splendid ... And fine and charming," Lichonin was saying,
+bustling about the lame table and without need shifting the tea things
+from one place to another. "For a long time, like an old crocodile, I
+haven't drunk tea as it should be drunk, in a Christian manner, in a
+domestic setting. Sit down, Liuba, sit down, my dear, right here on the
+divan, and keep house. Vodka, in all probability, you don't drink of a
+morning, but I, with your permission, will drink some ... This braces
+up the nerves right off. Make mine a little stronger, please, with a
+piece of lemon. Ah, what can taste better than a glass of hot tea,
+poured out by charming feminine hands?"
+
+Liubka listened to his chatter, a trifle too noisy to seem fully
+natural; and her smile, in the beginning mistrusting, wary, was
+softening and brightening. But she did not get on with the tea
+especially well. At home, in the backwoods village, where this beverage
+was still held a rarity, the dainty luxury of well-to-do families, to
+be brewed only for honored guests and on great holidays--there over the
+pouring of the tea officiated the eldest man of the family. Later, when
+Liubka served with "all found" in the little provincial capital city,
+in the beginning at a priest's, and later with an insurance agent (who
+had been the first to put her on the road of prostitution)--she was
+usually left some strained, tepid tea, which had already been drunk
+off, with a bit of gnawn sugar, by the mistress herself--the thin,
+jaundiced, malicious wife of the priest; or the wife of the agent, a
+fat, old, wrinkled, malignant, greasy, jealous and stingy common woman.
+Therefore, the simple business of preparing the tea was now as
+difficult for her as it is difficult for all of us in childhood to
+distinguish the left hand from the right, or to tie a rope in a small
+noose. The bustling Lichonin only hindered her and threw her into
+confusion.
+
+"My dear, the art of brewing tea is a great art. It ought to be studied
+at Moscow. At first a dry teapot is slightly warmed up. Then the tea is
+put into it and is quickly scalded with boiling water. The first liquid
+must at once be poured off into the slop-bowl--the tea thus becomes
+purer and more aromatic; and by the way, it's also known that Chinamen
+are pagans and prepare their herb very filthily. After that the tea-pot
+must be filled anew, up to a quarter of its volume; left on the tray,
+covered over with a towel and kept so for three and a half minutes.
+Afterwards pour in more boiling water almost up to the top, cover it
+again, let it stay just a bit, and you have ready, my dear, a divine
+beverage; fragrant, refreshing, and strengthening."
+
+The homely, but pleasant-looking face of Liubka, all spotted from
+freckles, like a cuckoo's egg, lengthened and paled a little.
+
+"Well, for God's sake, don't you be angry at me ... You're called
+Vassil Vassilich, isn't that so? Don't get angry, darling Vassil
+Vassilich. Really, now, I'll learn fast, I'm quick. And why do you say
+you and you[19] to me all the time? It seems that we aren't strangers
+now?"
+
+
+[19] In contradistinction to "thou," as used to familiars and inferiors
+in Russia.--Trans.
+
+
+She looked at him kindly. And truly, she had this morning, for the
+first time in all her brief but distorted life, given her body to a
+man--even though without enjoyment but more out of gratitude and pity,
+yet voluntarily--not for money, not under compulsion, not under threat
+of dismissal and scandal. And her feminine heart, always unwithering,
+always drawn to love, like a sunflower to the sun, was at this moment
+pure and inclined to tenderness.
+
+But Lichonin suddenly felt a prickling, shameful awkwardness and
+something inimical toward this woman, yesterday unknown to him,
+now--his chance mistress. "The charms of the family hearth have begun,"
+he thought involuntarily; still, he got up from his chair, walked up to
+Liubka, and having taken her by the hand, drew her to him and patted
+her on the head.
+
+"My dear, my darling sister," he said touchingly and falsely; "that
+which has happened to-day must never more be repeated. In everything
+only I alone am guilty, and, if you desire, I am ready to beg
+forgiveness of you on my knees. Understand--oh, understand, that all
+this came about against my will, somehow elementally, suddenly,
+unexpectedly. And I myself didn't think that it would be like that! You
+understand, for a very long time ... I have not known woman intimately
+... A repulsive, unbridled beast awoke within me ... and ... But, Lord,
+is my fault so great, then? Holy people, anchorites, recluses,
+ascetics, stylites, hermits in deserts, are no match for me in
+fortitude of spirit--yet even they fell in the struggle with the
+temptation of the diabolical flesh. But then, I swear by whatever you
+wish, that this won't be repeated any more ... Isn't that so?"
+
+Liubka was stubbornly trying to pull his hand away from hers. Her lips
+had become a little stuck out and the lowered lids began to wink
+frequently.
+
+"Ye-es," she drawled, like a child that stubbornly refuses to "make
+up." "Well, I can see that I don't please you. Well, then, you'd best
+tell me so straight and give me a little for a cab, and some more, now;
+as much as you want ... The money for the night is paid anyway, and I
+only have to ride up to ... there."
+
+Lichonin seized his hair, flung himself about the room and began to
+declaim:
+
+"Ah, not that, not that, not that! Just understand me, Liuba! To go on
+with that which happened in the morning--that's ... that's swinishness,
+bestiality, and unworthy of a man who respects himself. Love!
+Love--this is a full blending of minds, thoughts, souls, interests, and
+not of the bodies alone. Love is a tremendous, great emotion, mighty as
+the universe, and not the sprawling in bed. There's no such love
+between us, Liubochka. If it'll come, it will be wonderful happiness
+both for you and for me. But in the meantime--I'm your friend, your
+faithful comrade, on the path of life. And that's enough, and that will
+do ... And though I'm no stranger to human frailties, still, I count
+myself an honest man."
+
+Liubka seemed to wilt. "He thinks I want him to marry me. And I
+absolutely don't need that," she thought sadly. "It's possible to live
+just so. There are others, now, living on maintenance. And, they say,
+far better than if they had twirled around an altar. What's so bad
+about that? Peaceful, quiet, genteel ... I'd darn socks for him, wash
+floors, cook ... the plainer dishes. Of course, he'll be in line to get
+married to a rich girl some time. Well, now, to be sure, he wouldn't
+throw me out in the street just so, mother-naked. Although he's a
+little simpleton, and chatters a lot, still it's easy to tell he's a
+decent man. He'll provide for me with something, somehow. And, perhaps,
+he'll get to like me, will get used to me? I'm a simple girl, modest,
+and would never consent to be false to him. For, they say, things do
+fall out that way ... Only I mustn't let him see anything. But that
+he'll come again into my bed, and will come this very night--that's as
+sure as God is holy."
+
+And Lichonin also fell into thought, grew quiet and sad; he was already
+feeling the weight of a great deed which he had undertaken beyond his
+powers. That was why he was even glad when some one knocked on the
+door, and to his answer, "Come in!", two students entered: Soloviev,
+and Nijeradze, who had slept that night at his place.
+
+Soloviev, well-grown and already obese, with a broad, ruddy Volga face
+and a light, scandent little beard, belonged to those kindly, merry and
+simple fellows, of which there are sufficiently many in any university.
+He divided his leisure--and of leisure he had twenty-four hours in the
+day--between the beer-shop and rambling over the boulevards; among
+billiards, whist, the theatre, reading of newspapers and novels, and
+the spectacles of circus wrestling; while the short intervals in
+between he used for eating, sleeping, the home repair of his wardrobe,
+with the aid of thread, cardboard, pins and ink; and for succinct, most
+realistic love with the chance woman from the kitchen, the anteroom or
+the street. Like all the youths of his circle, he deemed himself a
+revolutionary, although he was oppressed by political disputes,
+dissensions, and mutual reproaches; and not being able to stand the
+reading of revolutionary brochures and journals, was almost a complete
+ignoramus in the work For that reason he had not attained even the very
+least party initiation; although at times there were given him
+instructions of a sort, not at all of a safe nature, the meaning of
+which was not made clear to him. And not in vain was his steadfast
+faithfulness relied upon; he carried out everything rapidly,
+exactly,--with a courageous faith in the universal importance of the
+work; with a care-free smile and with a broad contempt of possible
+destruction. He concealed outlawed comrades, guarded forbidden
+literature and printing types, transmitted passports and money. He had
+a great deal of physical strength, black-loam amiability and elemental
+simple-heartedness. Not infrequently he would receive from home,
+somewheres in the depth of the Simbirskaya or Ufimskaya province, sums
+of money sufficiently large for a student; but in two days he scattered
+and dispersed it everywhere, with the carelessness of a French grandee
+of the seventeenth century, while he himself remained during winter in
+only his everyday coat, with boots restored by his own devices.
+
+Beside all these naive, touching, laughable, lofty and shiftless
+qualities of the old Russian student, passing--and God knows if for the
+better?--into the realm of historical memories, he possessed still
+another amazing ability--to invent money and arrange for credit in
+little restaurants and cook-shops. All the employees of pawnshops and
+loan offices, secret and manifest usurers, and old-clo'-men were on
+terms of the closest friendship with him.
+
+But if for certain reasons he could not resort to them, then even here
+Soloviev remained at the height of his resourcefulness. At the head of
+a knot of impoverished friends, and weighed down with his usual
+business responsibility, he would at times be illumined by an inner
+inspiration; make at a distance, across the street, a mysterious sign
+to a Tartar passing with his bundle behind his shoulders, and for a few
+seconds would disappear with him into the nearest gates. He would
+quickly return without his everyday coat, only in his blouse with the
+skirts outside, belted with a thin cord; or, in winter, without his
+overcoat, in the thinnest of small suits; or instead of the new, just
+purchased uniform cap--in a tiny jockey cap, holding by a miracle on
+the crown of his head.
+
+Everybody loved him: comrades, servants, women, children. And all were
+familiar with him. He enjoyed especial good-will from his bosom
+cronies, the Tartars, who, apparently, deemed him a little innocent.
+They would sometimes, in the summer, bring as a present the strong,
+intoxicating KOUMYSS in big quartern bottles, while at Bairam they
+would invite him to eat a suckling colt with them. No matter how
+improbable it may seem, still, Soloviev at critical moments gave away
+for safe-keeping certain books and brochures to the Tartars. He would
+say at this with the most simple and significant air: "That which I am
+giving you is a Great Book. It telleth, that Allah Akbar, and that
+Mahomet is his prophet, that there is much evil and poverty on earth,
+and that men must be merciful and just to each other."
+
+He also had two other abilities: he read aloud very well; and played at
+chess amazingly, like a master, like a downright genius, defeating
+first-class players in jest. His attack was always impetuous and
+rigorous; his defense wise and cautious, preferably in an oblique
+direction; his concessions to his opponent full of refined, far-sighted
+calculation and murderous craftiness. With this, he made moves as
+though under the influence of some inner instinct, or inspiration; not
+pondering for more than four or five seconds and resolutely despising
+the respected traditions.
+
+He was not willingly played with; his manner of play was held
+barbarous, but still they played, sometimes for large sums of money;
+which, invariably winning, Soloviev readily laid down upon the altar of
+his comrades' needs. But he steadfastly declined from participation in
+competitions, which could have created for him the position of a star
+in the world of chess: "There is in my nature neither love for this
+nonsense, nor respect," he would say. "I simply possess some sort of a
+mechanical ability of the mind, some sort of a psychic deformity. Well,
+now, just as there are lefties. And for that reason I've no
+professional self-respect, nor pride at victory, nor spleen at losing."
+
+Such was the generously built student Soloviev. And Nijeradze filled
+the post of his closest comrade; which did not hinder them both,
+however, from jeering at each other, disputing, and swearing, from
+morning till night. God knows, wherewithal and how the Georgian prince
+existed. He said of himself, that he possessed the ability of a camel,
+of nourishing himself for the future, for several weeks ahead; and then
+eating nothing for a month. From home, from his blessed Georgia, he
+received very little; and then, for the most part, in victuals. At
+Christmas, at Easter, or on his birthday (in August) he was sent--and
+inevitably through arriving fellow-countrymen--whole cargoes of hampers
+with mutton, grapes, goat-flesh, sausages, dried hawthorn berries,
+RAKHAT LOUKOUM, egg-plants, and very tasty cookies; as well as leathern
+bottles of excellent home-made wine, strong and aromatic, but giving
+off just the least bit of sheep-skin. Then the prince would summon
+together to one of his comrades (he never had quarters of his own) all
+his near friends and fellow-countrymen; and arranged such a magnificent
+festival--TOI in Caucasian--that at it were extirpated to the last
+shreds the gifts of fertile Georgia. Georgian songs were sung, the
+first place, of course, being given to MRAVOL-DJAMIEM and EVERY GUEST
+IS SENT DOWN TO US FROM HEAVEN BY GOD, NO MATTER OF WHAT COUNTRY HE BE;
+the LEZGINKA was danced without tiring, with table knives brandished
+wildly in the air; and the TULUMBASH (or, perhaps, he is called
+TOMADA?) spoke his improvisations; for the greater part Nijeradze
+himself spoke.
+
+He was a great hand at talking and could, when he warmed up, pronounce
+about three hundred words a minute. His style was distinguished for
+mettle, pomp, and imagery; and his Caucasian accent with characteristic
+lisping and throaty sounds, resembling now the hawking of a woodcock,
+now the clucking of an eagle, not only did not hinder his discourse,
+but somehow even strangely adorned it. And no matter of what he spoke,
+he always led up the monologue to the most beautiful, most fertile, the
+very foremost, most chivalrous, and at the same time the most injured
+country--Georgia. And invariably he cited lines from THE PANTHER'S SKIN
+of the Georgian poet Rustavelli; with assurances, that this poem was a
+thousand times above all of Shakespeare, multiplied by Homer.
+
+Even though he was hot-headed, he was not spiteful; and in his
+demeanour femininely soft, gentle, engaging, without losing his native
+pride ... One thing only did his comrades dislike in him--some
+exaggerated, exotic love of women. He was unshakably, unto sacredness
+or folly, convinced that he was irresistibly splendid of person; that
+all men envied him, all women were in love with him, while husbands
+were jealous ... This self-conceited, obtrusive dangling after women
+did not forsake him for a minute, probably not even in his sleep.
+Walking along the street he would every minute nudge Lichonin, Soloviev
+or some other companion with his elbow, and would say, smacking his
+lips and jerking his head backward at a woman who had passed by: "TSE,
+TSE, TSE... VAI-VAI! A ree-markable wooman! What a look she gave me. If
+I wish it, she'll be mine! ..."
+
+This funny shortcoming about him was known; this trait of his was
+ridiculed good-naturedly and unceremoniously, but willingly forgiven
+for the sake of that independent comradely obligingness and
+faithfulness to his word, given to a man (oaths to women did not
+count), of which he was so naturally possessed. However, it must be
+said that he did in reality enjoy great success with women.
+Sempstresses, modistes, chorus girls, girls in candy stores, and
+telephone girls melted from the intense gaze of his heavy, soft, and
+languishing dark-blue eyes.
+
+"Un-to this house and all those righteously, peacefully and without sin
+inhabiting it ..." Soloviev started in to vociferate like an
+arch-deacon and suddenly missed fire. "Father-prelates," he began to
+murmur in astonishment, trying to continue the unsuccessful jest. "Why,
+but this is ... This is ... ah, the devil ... this is Sonya, no, my
+mistake, Nadya ... Well, yes! Liubka from Anna Markovna's ..."
+
+Liubka blushed hotly, to the verge of tears, and covered her face with
+her palms. Lichonin noticed this, understood, sensed the thoroughly
+agitated soul of the girl, and came to her aid. He sternly, almost
+rudely, stopped Soloviev.
+
+"Perfectly correct, Soloviev. As in a directory. Liubka from the
+Yamkas. Formerly a prostitute. Even more, still yesterday a prostitute.
+But from to-day--my friend, my sister. And so let everyone, who
+respects me to any extent, regard her. Otherwise..."
+
+The ponderous Soloviev hurriedly, sincerely, and powerfully embraced
+and rumpled Lichonin.
+
+"Well, dear fellow, well, that's enough ... I committed a stupidity in
+the flurry. It won't be repeated any more. Hail, my pale-faced sister."
+He extended his hand with a broad sweep across the table to Liubka, and
+squeezed her listless, small and short fingers with gnawed, tiny nails.
+"It's fine--your coming into our modest wigwam. This will refresh us
+and implant in our midst quiet and decent customs. Alexandra! Be-er!"
+he began to call loudly. "We've grown wild, coarse; have become mired
+in foul speech, drunkenness, laziness and other vices. And all because
+we were deprived of the salutary, pacifying influence of feminine
+society. Once again I press your hand. Your charming, little hand.
+Beer!"
+
+"Coming," the displeased voice of Alexandra could be heard on the other
+side of the door. "I'm coming. What you yelling for? How much do you
+want?"
+
+Soloviev went out into the corridor to explain. Lichonin smiled after
+him gratefully; while the Georgian on his way slapped him benignly on
+the back, between his shoulder blades. Both understood and appreciated
+the belated, somewhat coarse delicacy of Soloviev.
+
+"Now," said Soloviev, coming back into the room and sitting down
+cautiously upon an ancient chair, "now let's come to the order of the
+day. Can I be of service to you in any way? If you'll give me half an
+hour's time, I'll run down to the coffee house for a minute and lick
+the guts out of the very best chess player there. In a word--I'm at
+your disposal!"
+
+"What a funny fellow you are!" said Liubka, ill at ease and laughing.
+She did not understand the jocose and unusual style of speech of the
+student, but something drew her simple heart to him.
+
+"Well, that's not at all necessary," Lichonin put in. "I am as yet
+beastly rich. I think we'll all go together to some little tavern
+somewhere. I must have your advice about some things. After all, you're
+the people closest to me; and of course not as stupid and inexperienced
+as you seem at first glance. After that, I'll go and try to arrange
+about her ... about Liuba's passport. You wait for me. That won't take
+long ... In a word, you understand what this whole business consists
+of, and won't be lavish of any superfluous jokes. I,"--his voice
+quivered sentimentally and falsely--"I desire that you take upon
+yourselves a part of my care. Is that a go?"
+
+"VA! It's a go!" exclaimed the prince (it sounded like "idiot," when he
+said it[20]), and for some reason looked significantly at Liubka and
+twirled his moustache. Lichonin gave him a sidelong look. As for
+Soloviev, he said simple-heartedly:
+
+
+[20] The Russian phrase is "Eedet!"--Trans.
+
+
+"That's the way. You've begun something big and splendid, Lichonin. The
+prince told me about it during the night. Well, what of it, that's what
+youth is for--to commit sacred follies. Give me the bottle, Alexandra,
+I'll open it myself, or else you'll rupture yourself and burst a vein.
+To a new life, Liubochka, pardon me ... Liubov ... Liubov ..."
+
+"Nikonovna. But call me just as it comes ... Liuba."
+
+"Well, yes, Liuba. Prince, ALLAHVERDI!"
+
+"YAKSHI-OL," answered Nijeradze and clinked his glass of beer with him.
+
+"And I'll also say, that I rejoice over you, friend Lichonin,"
+continued Soloviev, setting down his glass and licking his moustache.
+"Rejoice, and bow before you. It's precisely you, only, who are capable
+of such a genuinely Russian heroism, expressed simply, modestly,
+without superfluous words."
+
+"Drop it ... Well, where's the heroism?" Lichonin made a wry face.
+
+"That's true, too," confirmed Nijeradze. "You're reproaching me all the
+time that I chatter a lot, but see what nonsense you're spouting
+yourself."
+
+"That makes no difference!" retorted Soloviev. "It may be even
+grandiloquent, but still that makes no difference! As an elder of our
+garret commune, I declare Liuba an honourable member with full rights!"
+He got up, made a sweeping gesture with his hand, and uttered with
+pathos:
+
+    "And into our house, free and fearless,
+     Its charming mistress walk thou in!"
+
+Lichonin recalled vividly, that to-day at dawn he had spoken the very
+same phrase, like an actor; and even blinked his eyes from shame.
+
+"That's enough of tom-foolery. Let's go, gentlemen. Dress yourself,
+Liuba."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+It was not far to The Sparrows restaurant; some two hundred steps. On
+the way Liuba, unnoticed, took Lichonin by the sleeve and pulled him
+toward her. In this wise they lagged a few steps behind Soloviev and
+Nijeradze, who were walking ahead.
+
+"Then you mean it seriously, my darling Vassil Vassilich?" she asked,
+looking up at him with her kindly, dark eyes. "You're not playing a
+joke on me?"
+
+"What jokes can there be here, Liubochka! I'd be the lowest of men if I
+permitted myself such jokes. I repeat, that to you I am more than a
+friend, brother, comrade. And let's not talk about it any more. And
+that which happened to-day toward morning, that, you may be sure, won't
+be repeated. And I'll rent a separate room for you this very day."
+
+Liubka sighed. Not that she was offended by the chaste resolution of
+Lichonin, in which, to tell the truth, she believed but badly; but
+somehow her dark, narrow mind could not even theoretically picture any
+other attitude of a man toward a woman than the sensual. Besides that,
+she experienced the ancient discontent of a preferred or rejected
+female; a feeling strongly intrenched in the house of Anna Markovna, in
+the form of boastful rivalry, but now dulled; yet still angry and
+sincere. And for some reason she believed Lichonin but illy,
+unconsciously seizing much of the assumed, not altogether sincere, in
+his words. Soloviev, now--although he did speak incomprehensively, like
+the rest of the majority of the students known to her, when they joked
+among themselves or with the young ladies in the general room (by
+themselves, in the room, all the men without an exception--all as
+one--said and did one and the same thing)--she would rather believe
+Soloviev, far more readily and willingly. A certain simplicity shone in
+his merry, sparkling gray eyes, placed widely apart.
+
+At THE SPARROWS Lichonin was esteemed for his sedateness, kind
+disposition, and accuracy in money matters. Because of that he was at
+once assigned a little private room--an honour of which but very few
+students could boast. The gas burned all day in this room, because
+light penetrated only through the narrow bottom of a window, cut short
+by the ceiling. Only the boots, shoes, umbrellas and canes of the
+people walking by on the sidewalk could be seen through this window.
+
+They had to let still another student, Simanovsky (whom they ran
+against near the coat room), join the party. "What does he mean, by
+leading me around as though for a show?" thought Liubka: "it looks like
+he's showing off before them." And, snatching a free moment, she
+whispered to Lichonin, who had bent over her:
+
+"But why are there so many people, dearie? For I'm so bashful. I can't
+hold my own in company."
+
+"That's nothing, that's nothing, my dear Liubochka," Lichonin whispered
+rapidly, tarrying at the door of the cabinet. "That's nothing, my
+sister; these are all fine people, good comrades. They'll help you,
+help us both. Don't mind their having fun at times and their silly
+lying. But their hearts are of gold."
+
+"But it's so very awkward for me; I'm ashamed. All of them already know
+where you took me from."
+
+"Well, that's nothing, that's nothing! Why, let 'em know!" warmly
+contradicted Lichonin. "Why be embarrassed with your past, why try to
+pass it by in silence? In a year you'll look bravely and directly in
+the eyes of every man and you'll say: 'He who has never fallen, has
+never gotten up.' Come on, come on, Liubochka!"
+
+While the inelaborate appetizers were being served, and each one was
+ordering the meal, everybody, save Simanovsky, felt ill at ease and
+somehow constrained. And Simanovsky himself was partly the reason for
+this; he was a clean-shaven man, with pince-nez and long hair, with
+head proudly thrown back and with a contemptuous expression on the
+tight lips, drooping at the corners. He had no intimate, hearty friends
+among his comrades; but his opinions and judgments had a considerable
+authoritativeness among them. It is doubtful whether any one of them
+could explain to himself whence this influence came; whether from his
+self-assured appearance, his ability to seize and express in general
+words the dismembered and indistinct things which are dimly sought and
+desired by the majority, or because he always saved his conclusions for
+the most appropriate moment. Among any society there are many of this
+sort of people: some of them act upon their circle through sophistries;
+others through adamant, unalterable stead-fastness of convictions; a
+third group with a loud mouth; a fourth, through a malicious sneer; a
+fifth, simply by silence, which compels the supposition of profound
+thought behind it; a sixth, through a chattering, outward erudition;
+others still through a slashing sneer at everything that is said ...
+many with the terrible Russian word YERUNDA:
+"Fiddlesticks!"--"Fiddlesticks!" they say contemptuously in reply to
+the warm, sincere, probably truthful but clumsily put word. "But why
+fiddlesticks?" "Because it's twaddle, nonsense," answer they, shrugging
+their shoulders; and it is as though they did for a man by hitting him
+with a stone over the head. There are many more sorts of such people,
+bearing the bell at the head of the meek, the shy, the nobly modest,
+and often even the big minds; and to their number did Simanovsky belong.
+
+However, toward the middle of the dinner everybody's tongue became
+loosened--except Liubka's, who kept silent, answered "yes" and "no",
+and left her food practically untouched. Lichonin, Soloviev, and
+Nijeradze talked most of all. The first, in a decisive and
+business-like manner, trying to hide under the solicitous words
+something real, inward, prickling and inconvenient. Soloviev, with a
+puerile delight, with the most sweeping of gestures, hitting the table
+with his fist. Nijeradze, with a slight doubtfulness and with
+unfinished phrases, as though he knew that which must be said, but
+concealed it. The queer fate of the girl, however, had seemingly
+engrossed, interested them all; and each one, in expressing his
+opinion, for some reason inevitably turned to Simanovsky. But he kept
+his counsel for the most part, and looked at each one from under the
+glasses of his pince-nez, raising his head high to do so.
+
+"So, so, so," he said at last, drumming with his fingers upon the
+table. "What Lichonin has done is splendid and brave. And that the
+prince and Soloviev are going to meet him half-way is also very good.
+I, for my part, am ready to co-operate with your beginnings with
+whatever lies in my power. But will it not be better, if we lead our
+friend along the path of her natural inclinations and abilities, so to
+speak? Tell me, my dear," he turned to Liubka, "what do you know, what
+can you do? Well, now, some kind of work, or something. Sewing,
+knitting, embroidering or something."
+
+"I don't know anything," said Liubka in a whisper, letting her eyes
+drop low, all red, squeezing her fingers under the table. "I don't
+understand anything of this.''
+
+"And really, now," interposed Lichonin; "why, we haven't begun the
+business from the right end. By talking about her in her presence we
+merely place her in an awkward position. Just see--even her tongue
+doesn't move from confusion. Let's go, Liubka, I'll escort you home for
+just a little while, and return in ten minutes. And in the meanwhile
+we'll think over ways and means here, without you. All right?"
+
+"As for me, I don't mind," almost inaudibly answered Liubka. "I'll do
+just as you like, Vassil Vassilich. Only I wouldn't like to go home."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"It's awkward for me there alone. I'd best wait for you on the
+boulevard, at the very entrance, on a bench."
+
+"Ah, yes!" Lichonin recollected: "It's Alexandra who has inspired her
+with such a terror. My, but I'll make it hot for this old lizard! Well,
+let's go, Liubochka."
+
+She timidly, in some sidelong way, put out her hand to each one,
+folding it like a little spade; and walked out under the escort of
+Lichonin.
+
+After several minutes he returned and sat down at his place. He felt
+that something had been said about him during his absence, and he ran
+his eyes uneasily over his comrades. Then, putting his hands on the
+table, he began:
+
+"Gentlemen, I know that you're all good, close friends," he gave a
+quick and sidelong look at Simanovsky, "and responsive people. I
+heartily beg of you to come to my aid. The deed was done by me in a
+hurry--this I must confess--but done through a sincere, pure
+inclination of the heart."
+
+"And that's the main thing," put in Soloviev.
+
+"It's absolutely all one to me what acquaintances and strangers will
+begin saying about me; but from my intention to save--pardon the fool
+word, which slipped out--to encourage, to sustain this girl, I will not
+decline. Of course, I'm able to rent an inexpensive, small room for
+her; to give her something for board at first; but what's to be done
+further--that's what presents difficulties to me. The matter, of
+course, isn't one of money, which I'd always find for her; but, then,
+to compel her to eat, drink, and with all that to do nothing--that
+would mean to condemn her to idleness, indifference, apathy; and you
+know what the end will be then. Therefore, we must think of some
+occupation for her. And that's the very matter which we must exert our
+brains about. Make an effort, gentlemen; advise something."
+
+"We must know what she's fitted for," said Simanovsky. "For she must
+have been doing something before getting into the house."
+
+Lichonin, with an air of hopelessness, spread out his hands.
+
+"Almost nothing. She can sew just the least bit, just like any country
+lass. Why, she wasn't fifteen when some government clerk led her
+astray. She can sweep up a room, wash a little, and, if you will, cook
+cabbage soup and porridge. Nothing more, it seems."
+
+"Rather little," said Simanovsky, and clacked his tongue.
+
+"And in addition to that, she's illiterate as well."
+
+"But that's not at all important!" warmly defended Soloviev. "If we had
+to do with a well-educated girl, or, worse still, with a half-educated
+one, then only nonsense would result out of all that we're preparing to
+do, a mere soap-bubble; while here before us is maiden ground,
+untouched virgin soil."
+
+"He-ee!" Nijeradze started neighing equivocally.
+
+Soloviev, now no longer joking, but with real wrath, pounced upon him:
+
+"Listen, prince! Every holy thought, every good deed, can be made
+disgusting, obscene. There's nothing clever or worthy in that. If you
+regard that which we're preparing to do so like a stallion, then
+there's the door and God be with you. Go away from us!"
+
+"Yes, but you yourself just now in the room ..." retorted the prince in
+confusion.
+
+"Yes, I too," Soloviev at once softened and cooled down. "I popped out
+with a stupidity and I regret it. But now I willingly admit that
+Lichonin is a fine fellow and a splendid man; and I'm ready to do
+everything, for my part. And I repeat, that knowledge of reading and
+writing is a secondary matter. It is easy to attain it in play. For
+such an untouched mind to learn reading, writing, counting, and
+especially without school, of one's free will, is like biting a nut in
+two. And as far as a manual trade is concerned, through which it would
+be possible to live and earn one's keep, then there are hundreds of
+trades, which can be easily mastered in two weeks."
+
+"For instance?" asked the prince.
+
+"Well, for instance ... for instance ... well, now, for instance,
+making artificial flowers. Yes, and still better, to get a place as a
+flower clerk. A charming business, clean and nice."
+
+"Taste is necessary," Simanovsky dropped carelessly.
+
+"There are no inborn tastes, as well as abilities. Otherwise talents
+would be born only in refined, highly educated society; while artists
+would be born only to artists, and singers to singers; but we don't see
+this. However, I won't argue. Well, if not a flower girl, then
+something else. I, for instance, saw not long ago in a store show
+window a miss sitting, and some sort of a little machine with
+foot-power before her."
+
+"V-VA! Again a little machine!" said the prince, smiling and looking at
+Lichonin.
+
+"Stop it, Nijeradze," answered Lichonin, quietly but sternly. "You
+ought to be ashamed."
+
+"Blockhead!" Soloviev threw at him, and continued.
+
+"So, then, the machine moves back and forth, while upon it, on a square
+frame, is stretched a thin canvas, and really, I don't know how it's
+contrived, I didn't grasp it; only the miss guides some metallic
+thingamajig over the screen, and there comes out a fine drawing in
+vari-coloured silks. Just imagine, a lake, all grown over with
+pond-lilies with their white corollas and yellow stamens, and great
+green leaves all around. And on the water two white swans are floating
+toward each other, and in the background is a dark park with an alley;
+and all this shows finely, distinctly, as on a picture from life. And I
+became so interested that I went in on purpose to find out how much it
+costs. It proved to be just the least bit dearer than an ordinary
+sewing machine, and it's sold on terms. And any one who can sew a
+little on a common machine can learn this art in an hour. And there's a
+great number of charming original designs. And the main thing is that
+such work is very readily taken for fire-screens, albums, lamp-shades,
+curtains and other rubbish, and the pay is decent."
+
+"After all, that's a sort of a trade, too," agreed Lichonin, and
+stroked his beard in meditation. "But, to confess, here's what I wanted
+to do. I wanted to open up for her ... to open up a little cook-shop or
+dining room, the very tiniest to start with, of course, but one in
+which all the food is cheap, clean and tasty. For it's absolutely all
+the same to many students where they dine and what they eat. There are
+almost never enough places to go round in the students' dining room.
+And so we may succeed, perhaps, in pulling in all our acquaintances and
+friends, somehow."
+
+"That's true," said the prince, "but impractical as well; we'll begin
+to board on credit. And you know what accurate payers we are. A
+practical man, a knave, is needed for such an undertaking; and if a
+woman, then one with a pike's teeth; and even then a man must
+absolutely stick right at her back. Really, it's not for Lichonin to
+stand at the counter and to watch that somebody shouldn't suddenly wine
+and dine and slip away."
+
+Lichonin looked straight at him, insolently, but only set his jaws and
+let it pass in silence.
+
+Simanovsky began in his measured, incontrovertible tone, toying with
+the glasses of his PINCE-NEZ:
+
+"Your intention is splendid, gentlemen, beyond dispute. But have you
+turned your attention to a certain shady aspect, so to speak? For to
+open a dining room, to start some business--all this in the beginning
+demands money, assistance--somebody else's back, so to speak. The money
+is not grudged--that is true, I agree with Lichonin; but then, does not
+such a beginning of an industrious life, when every step is provided
+for--does it not lead to inevitable laxity and negligence, and, in the
+very end, to an indifferent disdain for business? Even a child does not
+learn to walk until it has flopped down some fifty times. No; if you
+really want to help this poor girl, you must give her a chance of
+getting on her feet at once, like a toiling being, and not like a
+drone. True, there is a great temptation here--the burden of labour,
+temporary need; but then, if she will surmount this, she will surmount
+the rest as well."
+
+"What, then, according to you, is she to become--a dish-washer?" asked
+Soloviev with unbelief.
+
+"Well, yes," calmly retorted Simanovsky. "A dish-washer, a laundress, a
+cook. All toil elevates a human being."
+
+Lichonin shook his head.
+
+"Words of gold. Wisdom itself speaks with your lips, Simanovsky.
+Dish-washer, cook, maid, housekeeper ... but, in the first place, it's
+doubtful if she's capable for that; in the second place, she has
+already been a maid and has tasted all the sweets of masters' bawlings
+out, and masters' pinches behind doors, in the corridor. Tell me, is it
+possible you don't know that ninety per cent, of prostitution is
+recruited from the number of female servants? And, therefore, poor
+Liuba, at the very first injustice, at the first rebuff, will the more
+easily and readily go just there where I have gotten her out of; if not
+even worse, because for her that's customary and not so frightful; and,
+perhaps, it will even seem desirable after the masters' treatment. And
+besides that, is it worth while for me--that is, I want to say--is it
+worth while for all of us, to go to so much trouble, to try so hard and
+put ourselves out so, if, after having saved a being from one slavery,
+we only plunge her into another?"
+
+"Right," confirmed Soloviev.
+
+"Just as you wish," drawled Simanovsky with a disdainful air.
+
+"But as far as I'm concerned," said the prince, "I'm ready, as a friend
+and a curious man, to be present at this experiment and to participate
+in it. But even this morning I warned you, that there have been such
+experiments before and that they have always ended in ignominious
+failure, at least those of which we know personally; while those of
+which we know only by hearsay are dubious as regards authenticity. But
+you have begun the business--and go on with it. We are your helpers."
+
+Lichonin struck the table with his palm.
+
+"No!" he exclaimed stubbornly. "Simanovsky is partly right concerning
+the great danger of a person's being led in leading strings. But I
+don't see any other way out. In the beginning I'll help her with room
+and board... find some easy work, buy the necessary accessories for
+her. Let be what may! And let us do everything in order to educate her
+mind a little; and that her heart and soul are beautiful, of that I am
+sure. I've no grounds for the faith, but I am sure, I almost know.
+Nijeradze! Don't clown!" he cried abruptly, growing pale, "I've
+restrained myself several times already at your fool pranks. I have
+until now held you as a man of conscience and feeling. One more
+inappropriate witticism, and I'll change my opinion of you; and know,
+that it's forever."
+
+"Well, now, I didn't mean anything... Really, I... Why go all up in the
+air, me soul? You don't like that I'm a gay fellow, well, I'll be
+quiet. Give me your hand, Lichonin, let's drink!"
+
+"Well, all right, get away from me. Here's to your health! Only don't
+behave like a little boy, you Ossetean ram. Well, then, I continue,
+gentlemen. If we find anything which might satisfy the just opinion of
+Simanovsky about the dignity of independent toil, unsustained by
+anything, then I shall stick to my system: to teach Liuba whatever is
+possible, to take her to the theatre, to expositions, to popular
+lectures, to museums; to read aloud to her, give her the possibility of
+hearing music--comprehensible music, of course. It's understood, I
+alone won't be able to manage all this. I expect help from you; and
+after that, whatever God may will."
+
+"Oh, well," said Simanovsky, "the work is new, not threadbare; and how
+can we know the unknowable--perhaps you, Lichonin, will become the
+spiritual father of a good being. I, too, offer my services."
+
+"And I! And I!" the other two seconded; and right there, without
+getting up from the table, the four students worked out a very broad
+and very wondrous program of education and enlightenment for Liubka.
+
+Soloviev took upon himself to teach the girl grammar and writing. In
+order not to tire her with tedious lessons, and as a reward for
+successes, he would read aloud for her artistic fiction, Russian and
+foreign, easy of comprehension. Lichonin left for himself the teaching
+of arithmetic, geography and history.
+
+While the prince said simple-heartedly, without his usual facetiousness
+this time:
+
+"I, my children, don't know anything; while that which I do know, I
+know very badly. But I'll read to her the remarkable production of the
+great Georgian poet Rustavelli, and translate it line by line. I
+confess to you, that I'm not much of a pedagogue: I tried to be a
+tutor, but they politely chased me out after only the second lesson.
+Still, no one can teach better playing on a guitar, mandolin, and the
+bagpipes!"
+
+Nijeradze was speaking with perfect seriousness, and for that reason
+Lichonin with Soloviev good-naturedly started laughing; but with entire
+unexpectedness, to the general amazement of all, Simanovsky sustained
+him.
+
+"The prince speaks common sense. To have the mastery of an instrument
+elevates the aesthetic sense, in any case; and is even a help in life.
+And I, for my part, gentlemen ... I propose to read with the young
+person the CAPITAL of Marx, and the history of human culture. And to
+take up chemistry and physics with her, besides."
+
+If it were not for the customary authority of Simanovsky and the
+importance with which he spoke, the remaining three would have burst
+into laughter in his face. They only stared at him, with eyes popping
+out.
+
+"Well, yes," continued Simanovsky imperturbably, "I'll show her a whole
+series of chemical and physical experiments, which it is possible to
+carry on at home; which are always amusing and beneficial to the mind;
+and which eradicate prejudices. Incidentally, I'll explain something of
+the structure of the world, of the properties of matter. And as far as
+Karl Marx is concerned, just remember, that great books are equally
+accessible to the understanding both of a scholar and an unlettered
+peasant, if only comprehensibly presented. And every great thought is
+simple."
+
+Lichonin found Liubka at the place agreed upon, on a bench of the
+boulevard. She went home with him very unwillingly. Just as Lichonin
+had supposed, meeting the grumbling Alexandra was a fearful thing to
+her, who had long since grown unused to every-day actuality; harsh, and
+plentiful with all sorts of unpleasantnesses. And besides that, the
+fact that Lichonin did not want to conceal her past acted oppressively
+upon her. But she, who had long ago lost her will in the establishment
+of Anna Markovna, deprived of her personality, ready to follow after
+the call of every stranger, did not tell him a word and walked after
+him.
+
+The crafty Alexandra had already managed during this time to run to the
+superintendent of the houses and to complain to him, that, now,
+Lichonin had come with some miss, had passed the night with her in the
+room; but who she is, that Alexandra don't know; that Lichonin says she
+is his first cousin, like; but did not present a passport. It was
+necessary to explain things at great length, diffusedly and tiresomely,
+to the superintendent, a coarse and insolent man, who bore himself to
+all the tenants in the house as toward a conquered city; and feared
+only the students slightly, because they gave him a severe rebuff at
+times. Lichonin propitiated him only when he rented on the spot another
+room, several rooms away from his, for Liubka; under the very slope of
+the roof, so that it represented on the inside a sharply cut-off, low,
+four-sided pyramid, with one little window.
+
+"But still, Mr. Lichonin, just you present the passport to-morrow
+without fail," said the superintendent insistently at parting. "Since
+you're a respectable man, hard-working, and you and I are long
+acquainted, also you pay punctually, I am willing to do it only for
+you. You know yourself what hard times these are. If some one tells on
+me, they'll not only fire me, but they can put me out of town as well.
+They're strict now."
+
+In the evening Lichonin strolled with Liubka through Prince Park,
+listened to the music playing in the aristocratic club, and returned
+home early. He escorted Liubka to the door of her room and at once took
+leave of her; kissing her, however, tenderly on the brow, like a
+father. But after ten minutes, when he was already lying in bed
+undressed and reading the statutes of state, Liubka, having scratched
+on his door like a cat, suddenly entered his room.
+
+"Darling, sweetie! Excuse me for troubling you. Haven't you a needle
+and thread? But don't get angry at me; I'll go away at once."
+
+"Liuba! I beg of you to go away not at once, but this second. Finally,
+I demand it!"
+
+"My dearie, my pretty," Liubka began to intone laughably and piteously,
+"well, what are you yelling at me for all the time?" and, in a moment,
+having blown upon the candle, she nestled up to him in the darkness,
+laughing and crying.
+
+"No, Liuba, this must not be. It's impossible to go on like this,"
+Lichonin was saying ten minutes later, standing at the door, wrapped up
+in his blanket, like a Spanish hidalgo in a cape. "To-morrow at the
+latest I'll rent a room for you in another house. And, in general,
+don't let this occur! God be with you, and good night! Still, you must
+give me your word of honour that our relations will be merely friendly."
+
+"I give it, dearie, I give it, I give it, I give it!" she began to
+prattle, smiling; and quickly smacked him first on the lips and then on
+his hand.
+
+The last action was altogether instinctive; and, perhaps, unexpected
+even to Liubka herself. Never yet in her life had she kissed any man's
+hand, save a priest's. Perhaps she wanted to express through this her
+gratitude to Lichonin, and a prostration before him as before a higher
+being.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Among Russian intelligents, as has already been noted by many, there is
+a decent quantity of wonderful people; true children of the Russian
+land and culture, who would be able heroically, without the quivering
+of a single muscle, to look straight in the face of death; who are
+capable for the sake of an idea of bearing unconceivable privations and
+sufferings, equal to torture; but then, these people are lost before
+the haughtiness of a doorman; shrink from the yelling of a laundress;
+while into a police station they enter in an insufferable and timid
+distress. And precisely such a one was Lichonin. On the following day
+(yesterday it had been impossible on account of a holiday and the
+lateness), having gotten up very early and recollecting that to-day he
+had to take care of Liubka's passport, he felt just as bad as when in
+former times, as a high-school boy, he went to an examination, knowing
+that he would surely fall through. His head ached, while his arms and
+legs somehow seemed another's; in addition, a drizzling and seemingly
+dirty rain had been falling on the street since morning. "Always, now,
+when there's some unpleasantness in store, there is inevitably a rain
+falling," reflected Lichonin, dressing slowly.
+
+It was not especially far from his street to the Yamskaya, not more
+than two-thirds of a mile. In general, he was not infrequently in those
+parts, but he had never had occasion to go there in the daytime; and on
+the way it seemed to him all the time that every one he met, every
+cabby and policeman, was looking at him with curiosity, with reproach,
+or with disdain, as though surmising the destination of his journey. As
+always on a nasty and muggy morning, all the faces that met his eyes
+seemed pale, ugly, with monstrously underlined defects. Scores of times
+he imagined all that he would say in the beginning at the house; and
+later at the station house; and every time the outcome was different.
+Angry at himself for this premature rehearsal, he would at times stop
+himself:
+
+"Ah! You mustn't think, you mustn't presuppose what you're going to
+say. It always turns out far better when it's done right off..."
+
+And then again imaginary dialogues would run through his head:
+
+"You have no right to hold this girl against her wish."
+
+"Yes, but let her herself give notice about going away."
+
+"I act at her instruction."
+
+"All right; but how can you prove this?" and again he would mentally
+cut himself short.
+
+The city common began, on which cows were browsing; a board sidewalk
+along a fence; shaky little bridges over little brooklets and ditches.
+Then he turned into the Yamskaya. In the house of Anna Markovna all the
+windows were closed with shutters, with openings, in the form of
+hearts, cut out in the middle. And all of the remaining houses on the
+deserted street, desolated as though after a pestilence, were closed as
+well. With a contracting heart Lichonin pulled the bell-handle.
+
+A maid, barefooted, with skirt caught up, with a wet rag in her hand,
+with face striped from dirt, answered the bell--she had just been
+washing the floor.
+
+"I'd like to see Jennka," timidly requested Lichonin.
+
+"Well, now, the young lady is busy with a guest. They haven't waked up
+yet."
+
+"Well, Tamara then."
+
+The maid looked at him mistrustfully.
+
+"Miss Tamara--I don't know... I think she's busy too. But what you
+want--to pay a visit, or what?"
+
+"Ah, isn't it all the same! A visit, let's say."
+
+"I don't know. I'll go and look. Wait a while."
+
+She went away, leaving Lichonin in the half-dark drawing room. The blue
+pillars of dust, coming from the openings in the shutters, pierced the
+heavy obscurity in all directions. Like hideous spots stood out of the
+gray murkiness the bepainted furniture and the sweetish oleographs on
+the walls. It smelt of yesterday's tobacco, of dampness, sourness; and
+of something else peculiar, indeterminate, uninhabited, of which places
+that are lived in only temporarily always smell in the morning--such as
+empty theatres, dance-halls, auditoriums. Far off in the city a droshky
+rumbled intermittently. The wall-clock monotonously ticked behind the
+wall. In a strange agitation Lichonin walked back and forth through the
+drawing room and rubbed and kneaded his trembling hands, and for some
+reason was stooping and felt cold.
+
+"I shouldn't have started all this false comedy," he thought with
+irritation. "It goes without saying that I've now become the by-word of
+the entire university. The devil nudged me! And even during the day
+yesterday it wasn't too late, when she was saying that she was ready to
+go back. All I had to do was to give her for a cabby and a little pin
+money, and she'd have gone, and all would have been fine; and I would
+be independent now, free, and wouldn't be undergoing this tormenting
+and ignominious state of spirits. But it's too late to retreat now.
+To-morrow it'll be still later, and the day after to-morrow--still
+more. Having pulled off one fool stunt, it must be immediately put a
+stop to; but on the other hand, if you don't do that in time, it draws
+two others after it, and they--twenty new ones. Or, perhaps, it's not
+too late now? Why, she's silly, undeveloped, and, probably, a hysteric,
+like the rest of them. She's an animal, fit only for stuffing herself
+and for the bed. Oh! The devil!" Lichonin forcefully squeezed his
+cheeks and his forehead between his hands and shut his eyes. "And if I
+had but held out against the common, coarse, physical temptation!
+There, you see for yourself, this has happened twice already; and then
+it'll go on and on ..."
+
+But side by side with these ran other thoughts, opposed to them:
+
+"But then, I'm a man. I am master of my word. For that which urged me
+on to this deed was splendid, noble, lofty. I remember very well that
+rapture which seized me when my thought transpired into action! That
+was a pure, tremendous feeling. Or was it simply an extravagance of the
+mind, whipped up by alcohol; the consequence of a sleepless night,
+smoking, and long, abstract conversations?"
+
+And immediately Liubka would appear before him, appear at a distance,
+as though out of the misty depths of time; awkward, timid, with her
+homely and endearing face, which had at once come to seem of infinitely
+close kinship; long, long familiar, and at the same time
+unpleasant--unjustly, without cause.
+
+"Can it be that I'm a coward and a rag?" cried Lichonin inwardly and
+wrung his hands. "What am I afraid of, before whom am I embarrassed?
+Have I not always prided myself upon being sole master of my life?
+Let's suppose, even, that the phantasy, the extravagance, of making a
+psychological experiment upon a human soul--a rare experiment,
+unsuccessful in ninety-nine percent--has entered my head. Is it
+possible that I must render anybody an account in this, or fear
+anybody's opinion? Lichonin! Look down upon mankind from above!"
+
+Jennie walked into the room, dishevelled, sleepy, in a night jacket on
+top of a white underskirt.
+
+"A-a!" she yawned, extending her hand to Lichonin. "How d'you do, my
+dear student! How does your Liubochka feel herself in the new place?
+Call me in as a guest some time. Or are you spending your honeymoon on
+the quiet? Without any outside witnesses?"
+
+"Drop the silly stuff, Jennechka. I came about the passport."
+
+"So-o. About the passport," Jennka went into thought. "That is, there's
+no passport here, but you must take a blank from the housekeeper. You
+understand, our usual prostitute's blank; and then they'll exchange it
+for you for a real book at the station house. Only you see, my dear, I
+will be but ill help to you in this business. They are as like as not
+to beat me up if I come near a housekeeper or a porter. But here's what
+you do. You'd best send the maid for the housekeeper; tell her to say
+that a certain guest, now, a steady one, has come on business; that
+it's very urgent to see her personally. But you must excuse me--I'm
+going to back out, and don't you be angry, please. You know
+yourself--charity begins at home. But why should you hang around by
+yourself in this here darkness? You'd better go into the cabinet. If
+you want to, I'll send you beer there. Or, perhaps you want coffee? Or
+else," and her eyes sparkled slyly, "or else a girlie, perhaps? Tamara
+is busy, but may be Niura or Verka will do?"
+
+"Stop it, Jennie! I came about a serious and important matter, but you
+..."
+
+"Well, well, I won't, I won't! I said it just so. I see that you
+observe faithfulness. That's very noble on your part. Let's go, then."
+
+She led him into the cabinet, and, opening the inner bolt of the
+shutter, threw it wide open. The daylight softly and sadly splashed
+against the red and gold walls, over the candelabra, over the soft red
+velveteen furniture.
+
+"Right here it began," reflected Lichonin with sad regret.
+
+"I am going," said Jennka. "Don't you knuckle down too much before her,
+and Simeon too. Abuse them for all you're worth. It's daytime now, and
+they won't dare do anything to you. If anything happens, tell them
+straight that, now, you're going to the governor immediately and are
+going to tell on them. Tell 'em, that they'll be closed up and put out
+of town in twenty-four hours. Bawl 'em out and they get like silk.
+Well, now, I wish you success."
+
+She went away. After ten minutes had passed, into the cabinet floated
+Emma Edwardovna, the housekeeper, in a blue satin PEGNOIR; corpulent,
+with an important face, broadening from the forehead down to the
+cheeks, just like a monstrous squash; with all her massive chins and
+breasts; with small, keen eyes, without eyelashes; with thin,
+malicious, compressed lips. Lichonin, arising, pressed the puffy hand
+extended to him, studded with rings, and suddenly thought with aversion:
+
+"The devil take it! If this vermin had a soul, if it were possible to
+read this soul--then how many direct and indirect murders are lurking
+hidden within it!"
+
+It must be said, that in starting out for the Yamkas, Lichonin, besides
+money, had fetched a revolver along with him; and on the road, while
+walking, he had frequently shoved his hand into his pocket and had
+there felt the chill contact of the metal. He expected affront,
+violence, and was prepared to meet them in a suitable manner. But, to
+his amazement, all that he had presupposed and had feared proved a
+timorous, fantastic fiction. The business was far more simple, more
+wearisome and more prosaic, and at the same time more unpleasant.
+
+"JA, MEIN HERR," said the housekeeper indifferently and somewhat
+loftily, settling into a low chair and lighting a cigarette. "You pay
+for one night and instead of that took already the girl for one more
+night and one more day. ALSO, you owe twenty-five more roubles yet.
+When we let off a girlie for a night we take ten roubles, and for the
+twenty-four hours twenty-five roubles. That's a tax, like. Don't you
+want a smoke, young man?" she stretched out her case, and Lichonin,
+without himself knowing why, took a cigarette.
+
+"I wanted to talk with you about something else entirely."
+
+"O! Don't trouble yourself to speak: I understand everything very well.
+Probably the young man wants to take these girl, those Liubka,
+altogether to himself to set her up, or in order to--how do you
+Russians call it?--in order to safe her? Yes, yes, yes, that happens.
+Twenty-two years I live in a brothel, and I know, that this happens
+with very foolish young peoples. But only I assure you, that from this
+will come nothing out."
+
+"Whether it will come out or whether it won't come out--that is already
+my affair," answered Lichonin dully, looking down at his fingers,
+trembling on his knees.
+
+"O, of course, it's your affair, my young student," and the flabby
+cheeks and majestic chins of Emma Edwardovna began to jump from
+inaudible laughter. "From my soul I wish for you love and friendship;
+but only trouble yourself to tell this nasty creature, this Liubka,
+that she shouldn't dare to show even her nose here, when you throw her
+out into the street like a little doggie. Let her croak from hunger
+under a fence, or go into a half-rouble establishment for the soldiers!"
+
+"Believe me, she won't return. I ask you merely to give me her
+certificate, without delay."
+
+"The certificate? ACH, if you please! Even this very minute. Only I
+will first trouble you to pay for everything that she took here on
+credit. Have a look, here is her account book. I took it along with me
+on purpose. I knew already with what our conversation would end." She
+took out of the slit of her PEGNOIR--showing Lichonin for just a minute
+her fat, full-fleshed, yellow, enormous breast--a little book in a
+black cover, with the heading: ACCOUNT OF MISS IRENE VOSCHHENKOVA IN
+THE HOUSE OF ILL-FAME, MAINTAINED BY ANNA MARKOVNA SHAIBES, ON
+YAM-SKAYA STREET, NO. SO-AND-SO, and extended it to him across the
+table. Lichonin turned over the first page and read through four or
+five paragraphs of the printed rules. There dryly and briefly it was
+stated that the account book consists of two copies, of which one is
+kept by the proprietress while the other remains with the prostitute;
+that all income and expense were entered into both books; that by
+agreement the prostitute receives board, quarters, heat, light, bed
+linen, baths and so forth, and for this pays out to the proprietress in
+no case more than two-thirds of her earnings; while out of the
+remaining money she is bound to dress neatly and decently, having no
+less than two dresses for going out. Further, mention was made of the
+fact that payment was made with the help of stamps, which the
+proprietress gives out to the prostitute upon receipt of money from
+her; while the account is drawn up at the end of every month. And,
+finally, that the prostitute can at any time leave the house of
+prostitution, even if there does remain a debt of hers, which, however,
+she binds herself to cancel on the basis of general civil laws.
+
+Lichonin prodded the last point with his finger, and, having turned the
+face of the book to the housekeeper, said triumphantly:
+
+"Aha! There, you see: she has the right to leave the house at any time.
+Consequently, she can at any time quit your abominable dive of
+violence, baseness, and depravity, in which you ..." Lichonin began
+rattling off, but the housekeeper calmly cut him short:
+
+"O! I have no doubt of this. Let her go away. Let her only pay the
+money."
+
+"What about promissory notes? She can give promissory notes."
+
+"Pst! Promissory notes! In the first place, she's illiterate; while in
+the second, what are her promissory notes worth? A spit and no more.
+Let her find a surety who would be worthy of trust, and then I have
+nothing against it."
+
+"But, then, there's nothing said in the rules about sureties."
+
+"There's many a thing not said! In the rules it also does not say that
+it's permitted to carry a girlie out of the house, without giving
+warning to the owners."
+
+"But in any case you'll have to give me her blank."
+
+"I will never do such a foolishness! Come here with some respectable
+person and with the police; and let the police certify that this friend
+of yours is a man of means; and let this man stand surety for you; and
+let, besides that, the police certify that you are not taking the girl
+in order to trade in her, or to sell her over to another
+stablishment--then as you please! Hand and foot!"
+
+"The devil!" exclaimed Lichonin. "But if that surety will be I, I
+myself! If I'll sign your promissory notes right away ..."
+
+"Young man! I don't know what you are taught in your different
+universities, but is it possible that you reckon me such a positive
+fool? God grant, that you have, besides those which are on you, still
+some other pants! God grant, that you should even the day after have
+for dinner the remnants of sausages from the sausage shop, and yet you
+say--a promissory note! What are you bothering my head for?"
+
+Lichonin grew completely angry. He drew his wallet out of his pocket
+and slapped it down on the table.
+
+"In that case I pay in cash and immediately!"
+
+"ACH, that's a business of another kind," sweetly, but still with
+mistrust, the housekeeper intoned. "I will trouble you to turn the
+page, and see what the bill of your beloved is."
+
+"Keep still, you carrion!"
+
+"I'm still, you fool," calmly responded the housekeeper.
+
+On the small ruled pages on the left side was designated the income, on
+the right were the expenses.
+
+"Received in stamps, 15th of April," read Lichonin, "10 roubles;
+16th--4 roubles; 17th--12 roubles; 18th--sick; 19th--sick; 20th--6
+roubles; 21st--24 roubles."
+
+"My God!" with loathing, with horror, reflected Lichonin. "Twelve men
+in one night!"
+
+At the end of the month stood:
+
+"Total 330 roubles."
+
+"Lord! Why, this is some sort of delirium! One hundred and sixty-five
+visits," thought Lichonin, having mechanically calculated it, and still
+continued turning the pages. Then he went over to the columns on the
+right.
+
+"Made, a red dress of silk with lace 84 roubles Dressmaker Eldokimova.
+Dressing sack of lace 35 roubles Dressmaker Eldokimova. Silk stockings
+6 pair 36 roubles," &c., &c. "Given for cab-fare, given for candy,
+perfumes bought," &c., &c. "Total 205 roubles." After that from the 330
+roubles were deducted 220 roubles--the share of the proprietress for
+board and lodging. The figure of 110 roubles resulted. The end of the
+monthly account declared:
+
+"Total after the payment to the dressmaker and for other articles, of
+110 roubles, a debt of ninety-five (95) roubles remains for Irene
+Voschhenkova and with the four hundred and eighteen roubles remaining
+from last year--five hundred and thirteen (513) roubles."
+
+Lichonin's spirits fell. He did try, at first, to be indignant at the
+expensiveness of the materials supplied; but the housekeeper retorted
+with SANG FROID that that did not concern her at all; that the
+establishment demanded only that the girl dress decently, as becomes a
+girl from a decent, genteel house; while it did not concern itself with
+the rest. The establishment merely extended her credit in paying her
+expenses.
+
+"But this is a vixen, a spider in human shape--this dressmaker of
+yours!" yelled Lichonin beside himself. "Why, she's in a conspiracy
+with you, cupping glass that you are, you abominable tortoise!
+Scuttlefish! Where's your conscience?"
+
+The more agitated he grew, the more calm and jeering Emma Edwardovna
+became.
+
+"Again I repeat: that is not my business. And you, young man, don't
+express yourself like that, because I will call the porter, and he will
+throw you out of the door."
+
+Lichonin was compelled to bargain with the cruel woman long, brutally,
+till he grew hoarse, before she agreed, in the end, to take two hundred
+and fifty roubles in cash, and two hundred roubles in promissory notes.
+And even that only when Lichonin with his half-yearly certificate
+proved to her that he was finishing this year and would become a lawyer.
+
+The housekeeper went after the ticket, while Lichonin took to pacing
+the cabinet back and forth. He had already looked over all the pictures
+on the walls: Leda with the swan, and the bathing on the shore of the
+sea, and the odalisque in a harem, and the satyr, bearing a naked nymph
+in his arms; but suddenly a small printed placard, framed and behind
+glass, half covered by a portiere, attracted his attention. It was the
+first time that it had come across Lichonin's eyes, and the student
+with amazement and aversion read these lines, expressed in the dead,
+official language of police stations. There with shameful, businesslike
+coldness, were mentioned all possible measures and precautions against
+infections; the intimacies of feminine toilet; the weekly medical
+inspections and all the adaptations for them. Lichonin also read that
+no establishment was to be situated nearer than a hundred steps from
+churches, places of learning, and court buildings; that only persons of
+the female sex may maintain houses of prostitution; that only her
+relatives, and even then of the female sex exclusively, and none older
+than seven years, may live with the proprietress; and that the
+proprietors and the owners of the house, as well as the girls, must in
+their relations among themselves and the guests as well, observe
+politeness, quiet, civility and decency, by no means allowing
+themselves drunkenness, swearing and brawls. And also that the
+prostitute must not allow herself the caresses of love when in an
+intoxicated condition or with an intoxicated man; and in addition to
+that, during the time of certain functions. Here also the prostitutes
+were most strictly forbidden to commit abortions. "What a serious and
+moral view of things!" reflected Lichonin with a malicious sneer.
+
+Finally the business with Emma Edwarodvna was concluded. Having taken
+the money and written out a receipt, she stretched it out to Lichonin
+together with the blank, while he stretched out the money to her; at
+which, during the time of the operation, they both looked at each
+other's eyes and hands intently and warily. It was apparent that they
+both felt no especially great mutual trust. Lichonin put the documents
+away in his wallet and was preparing to depart. The housekeeper
+escorted him to the very stoop, and when the student was already
+standing in the street, she, remaining on the steps, leaned out and
+called after him:
+
+"Student! Hey! Student!"
+
+He stopped and turned around.
+
+"What now?"
+
+"And here's another thing. Now I must tell you, that your Liubka is
+trash, a thief, and sick with syphilis! None of our good guests wanted
+to take her; and anyway, if you had not taken her, then we would have
+thrown her out to-morrow! I will also tell you, that she had to do with
+the porter, with policemen, with janitors, and with petty thieves.
+Congratulations on your lawful marriage!"
+
+"Oo-ooh! Vermin!" Lichonin roared back at her.
+
+"You green blockhead!" called out the housekeeper and banged the door.
+
+Lichonin went to the station house in a cab. On the way he recalled
+that he had not had time to look at the blank properly, at this
+renowned "yellow ticket," of which he had heard so much. This was an
+ordinary small white sheet, no larger than a postal envelope. On one
+side, in the proper column, were written out the name, father's name,
+and family name of Liubka, and her profession--"Prostitute"; and on the
+other side, concise extracts from the paragraphs of that placard which
+he had just read through--infamous, hypocritical rules about behaviour
+and external and internal cleanliness. "Every visitor." he read, "has
+the right to demand from the prostitute the written certificate of the
+doctor who has inspected her the last time." And again sentimental pity
+overcame the heart of Lichonin.
+
+"Poor women!" he reflected with grief. "What only don't they do with
+you, how don't they abuse you, until you grow accustomed to everything,
+just like blind horses on a treadmill!" In the station house he was
+received by the district inspector, Kerbesh. He had spent the night on
+duty, had not slept his fill, and was angry. His luxurious, fan-shaped
+red beard was crumpled. The right half of the ruddy face was still
+crimsonly glowing from lying long on the uncomfortable oilcloth pillow.
+But the amazing, vividly blue eyes, cold and luminous, looked clear and
+hard, like blue porcelain. Having ended interrogating, recording, and
+cursing out with obscenities the throng of ragamuffins, taken in during
+the night for sobering up and now being sent out over their own
+districts, he threw himself against the back of the divan, put his
+hands behind his neck, and stretched with all his enormous, heroic body
+so hard that all his ligaments and joints cracked. He looked at
+Lichonin just as at a thing, and asked:
+
+"And what will you have, Mr. Student?"
+
+Lichonin stated his business briefly.
+
+"And so I want," he concluded, "to take her to me ... how is this
+supposed to be done with you? ... in the capacity of a servant, or, if
+you want, a relative, in a word ... how is it done? ..."
+
+"Well, in the capacity of a kept mistress or a wife, let's say,"
+indifferently retorted Kerbesh and twirled in his hands a silver cigar
+case with monograms and little figures. "I can do absolutely nothing
+for you ... at least right now. If you desire to marry her, present a
+suitable permit from your university authorities. But if you're taking
+her on maintenance--then just think, where's the logic in that? You're
+taking a girl out of a house of depravity, in order to live with her in
+depraved cohabitation."
+
+"A servant, finally," Lichonin put in.
+
+"And even a servant. I'd trouble you to present an affidavit from your
+landlord--for, I hope, you're not a houseowner? Very well, then, an
+affidavit from your landlord, as to your being in a position to keep a
+servant; and besides that, all the documents, testifying that you're
+that very person you give yourself out to be; an affidavit, for
+instance, from your district and from the university, and all that sort
+of thing. For you, I hope, are registered? Or, perhaps, you are now,
+eh? ... Of the illegal ones?
+
+"No, I am registered!" retorted Lichonin, beginning to lose patience.
+
+"And that's splendid. But the young lady, about whom you're troubling
+yourself?"
+
+"No, she's not registered as yet. But I have her blank in my
+possession, which, I hope, you'll exchange for a real passport for me,
+and then I'll register her at once."
+
+Kerbesh spread his arms out wide, then again began toying with the
+cigar case.
+
+"Can't do anything for you, Mr. Student, just nothing at all, until you
+present all the papers required. As far as the girl's concerned, why,
+she, as one not having the right of residence, will be sent to the
+police without delay, and there detained; unless she personally desires
+to go there, where you've taken her from. I've the honour of wishing
+you good day."
+
+Lichonin abruptly pulled his hat over his eyes and went toward the
+door. But suddenly an ingenious thought flashed through his head, from
+which, however, he himself became disgusted. And feeling nausea in the
+pit of his stomach, with clammy, cold hands, experiencing a sickening
+pinching in his toes, he again walked up to the table and said as
+though carelessly, but with a catch in his voice:
+
+"Pardon me, inspector. I've forgotten the most important thing; a
+certain mutual acquaintance of ours has instructed me to transmit to
+you a small debt of his."
+
+"Hm! An acquaintance?" asked Kerbesh, opening wide his magnificent
+azure eyes. "And who may he be?"
+
+"Bar ... Barbarisov."
+
+"Ah, Barbarisov? So, so, so, I recollect, I recollect!"
+
+"So then, won't you please accept these ten roubles?"
+
+Kerbesh shook his head, but did not take the bit of paper.
+
+"Well, but this Barbarisov of yours--that is, ours--is a swine. It
+isn't ten roubles he owes me at all, but a quarter of a century. What a
+scoundrel! Twenty-five roubles and some small change besides. Well, the
+small change, of course, I won't count up to him. God be with him!
+This, you see, is a billiard debt. I must say that he's a blackguard,
+plays crookedly ... And so, young man, dig up fifteen more."
+
+"Well, but you are a knave, Mr. Inspector!" said Lichonin, getting out
+the money.
+
+"Oh, mercy!" by now altogether good-naturedly retorted Kerbesh. "A
+wife, children ... You know yourself what our salary is ... Receive the
+little passport, young man. Sign your receipt. Best wishes."
+
+A queer thing! The consciousness that the passport was, finally, in his
+pocket, for some reason suddenly calmed and again braced up and
+elevated Lichonin's nerves.
+
+"Oh, well!" he thought, walking quickly along the street, "the very
+beginning has been laid down, the most difficult part has been done.
+Hold fast, now, Lichonin, and don't fall in spirit! What you've done is
+splendid and lofty. Let me be even a victim of this deed--it's all one!
+It's a shame, having done a good deed, to expect rewards for it right
+away. I'm not a little circus dog, and not a trained camel, and not the
+first pupil of a young ladies' genteel institute. Only it was useless
+for me to let loose yesterday before these bearers of enlightenment. It
+all turned out to be silly, tactless, and, in any case, premature. But
+everything in life is reparable. A person will sustain the heaviest,
+most disgraceful things; but, time passes, and they are recalled as
+trifles ..."
+
+To his amazement, Liubka was not especially struck, and did not at all
+become overjoyed when he triumphantly showed her the passport. She was
+only glad to see Lichonin again. Perhaps, this primitive, naive soul
+had already contrived to cleave to its protector? She did throw herself
+upon his neck, but he stopped her, and quietly, almost in her ear,
+asked her:
+
+"Liubka, tell me ... don't be afraid to tell the truth, no matter what
+it may be ... They told me just now, there in the house, that you're
+sick with a certain disease ... you know, that which is called the evil
+sickness. If you believe in me even to some extent, tell me, my
+darling, tell me, is that so or not?"
+
+She turned red, covered her face with her hands, fell down on the divan
+and burst into tears.
+
+"My dearie! Vassil Vassilich! Vasinka! Honest to God! Honest to God,
+now, there never was anything of the kind! I always was so careful! I
+was awfully afraid of this. I love you so! I would have told you
+without fail." She caught his hands, pressed them to her wet face and
+continued to assure him with the absurd and touching sincerity of an
+unjustly accused child.
+
+And he at once believed her in his soul.
+
+"I believe you, my child," he said quietly, stroking her hair. "Don't
+excite yourself, don't cry. Only let us not again give in to our
+weakness. Well, it has happened--let it have happened; but let us not
+repeat it any more.'
+
+"As you wish," prattled the girl, kissing now his hands, now the cloth
+of his coat. "If I displease you so, then, of course, let it be as you
+wish."
+
+However, this evening also the temptation was again repeated, and kept
+on repeating until the falls from grace ceased to arouse a burning
+shame in Lichonin, and turned into a habit, swallowing and
+extinguishing remorse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Justice must be rendered to Lichonin; he did everything to create for
+Liubka a quiet and secure existence. Since he knew that they would have
+to leave their mansard anyway--this bird house, rearing above the whole
+city--leave it not so much on account of its inconvenience and lack of
+space as on account of the old woman Alexandra, who with every day
+became more ferocious, captious and scolding--he resolved to rent a
+little bit of a flat, consisting of two rooms and a kitchen, on the
+Borschhagovka, at the edge of the town. He came upon an inexpensive
+one, for nine roubles a month, without fuel. True, Lichonin had to run
+very far from there to his pupils, but he relied firmly upon his
+endurance and health, and would often say:
+
+"My legs are my own. I don't have to be sparing of them."
+
+And, truly, he was a great master at walking. Once, for the sake of a
+joke, having put a pedometer in his vest pocket, he towards evening
+counted up twenty versts; which, taking into consideration the unusual
+length of his legs, equalled some twenty-five versts.[21] And he did
+have to run about quite a bit, because the fuss about Liubka's passport
+and the acquisition of household furnishings of a sort had eaten up all
+his accidental winnings at cards. He did try to take up playing again,
+on a small scale at first, but was soon convinced that his star at
+cards had now entered upon a run of fatal ill luck.
+
+
+[21] A verst is equal to two-thirds of a mile.--Trans.
+
+
+By now, of course, the real character of his relations with Liubka was
+a mystery to none of his comrades; but he still continued in their
+presence to act out the comedy of friendly and brotherly relations with
+the girl. For some reason he could not, or did not want to, realize
+that it would have been far wiser and more advantageous for him not to
+lie, not to be false, and not to pretend. Or, perhaps, although he did
+know this, he still could not change the established tone. As for the
+intimate relations, he inevitably played a secondary, passive role. The
+initiative, in the form of tenderness, caressing, always had to come
+from Liubka (she had remained Liubka, after all, and Lichonin had
+somehow entirely forgotten that he himself had read her real
+name--Irene--in the passport).
+
+She, who had so recently given her body up impassively--or, on the
+contrary, with an imitation of burning passion--to tens of people in a
+day, to hundreds in a month, had become attached to Lichonin with all
+her feminine being, loving and jealous; had grown attached to him with
+body, feeling, thoughts. The prince was funny and entertaining to her,
+and the expansive Soloviev interestingly amusing; toward the crushing
+authoritativeness of Simanovsky she felt a supernatural terror; but
+Lichonin was for her at the same time a sovereign, and a divinity; and,
+which is the most horrible of all, her property and bodily joy.
+
+It has long ago been observed, that a man who has lived his fill, has
+been worn out, gnawed and chewed by the jaws of amatory passions, will
+never again love with a strong and only love, simultaneously
+self-denying, pure, and passionate. But for a woman there are neither
+laws nor limitations in this respect. This observation was especially
+confirmed in Liubka. She was ready to crawl before Lichonin with
+delight, to serve him as a slave; but, at the same time, desired that
+he belong to her more than a table, than a little dog, than a night
+blouse. And he always proved wanting, always failing before the
+onslaught of this sudden love, which from a modest little stream had so
+rapidly turned into a river and had over-flowed its banks. And not
+infrequently he thought to himself, with bitterness and a sneer:
+
+"Every evening I play the role of the beauteous Joseph; still, he at
+least managed to tear himself away, leaving his underwear in the hands
+of the ardent lady; but when will I at last get free of my yoke?"
+
+And a secret enmity for Liubka was already gnawing him. All the more
+and more frequently various crafty plans of liberation came into his
+head. And some of them were to such an extent dishonest, that, after a
+few hours, or the next day, Lichonin squirmed inwardly from shame,
+recalling them.
+
+"I am falling, morally and mentally!" he would at times think with
+horror. "It's not in vain that I read somewhere, or heard from some
+one, that the connection of a cultured man with a woman of little
+intellect will never elevate her to the level of the man, but, on the
+contrary, will bow him down and sink him to the mental and moral
+outlook of the woman."
+
+And after two weeks she ceased to excite his imagination entirely. He
+gave in, as to violence, to the long-continued caresses, entreaties,
+and often even to pity.
+
+Yet at the same time Liubka, who had rested and felt living, real soil
+under her, began to improve in looks with unusual rapidity, just as a
+flower bud, that but yesterday was almost dying, suddenly unfolds after
+a plentiful and warm rain. The freckles ran off her soft face, and the
+uncomprehending, troubled expression, like that of a young jackdaw, had
+disappeared from the dark eyes, and they had grown brighter and had
+begun to sparkle. The body grew stronger and filled out; the lips grew
+red. But Lichonin, seeing Liubka every day, did not notice this and did
+not believe those compliments which were showered upon her by his
+friends. "Fool jokes," he reflected, frowning. "The boys are spoofing."
+
+As the lady of the house, Liubka proved to be less than mediocre. True,
+she could cook fat stews, so thick that the spoon stood upright in
+them; prepare enormous, unwieldy, formless cutlets; and under the
+guidance of Lichonin familiarized herself pretty rapidly with the great
+art of brewing tea (at seventy-five kopecks a pound); but further than
+that she did not go, probably because for each art and for each being
+there are extreme limitations of their own, which cannot in any way be
+surmounted. But then, she loved to wash floors very much; and carried
+out this occupation so often and with such zeal, that dampness soon set
+in in the flat and multipedes appeared.
+
+Tempted once by a newspaper advertisement, Lichonin procured a stocking
+knitting machine for her, on terms. The art, the mastery of this
+instrument--promising, to judge by the advertisement, three roubles of
+clear profit a day--proved to be so uncomplicated that Lichonin,
+Soloviev, and Nijeradze easily mastered it in a few hours; while
+Lichonin even contrived to knit a whole stocking of uncommon
+durability, and of such dimensions that it would have proven big even
+for the feet of Minin and Pozharsky, whose statues are in Moscow, on
+Krasnaya Square. Only Liubka alone could not master this trade. At
+every mistake or tangle she was forced to turn to the co-operation of
+the men. But then, she learned pretty rapidly to make artificial
+flowers and, despite the opinion of Simanovsky, made them very
+exquisitely, and with great taste; so that after a month the hat
+specialty stores began to buy her work. And, what is most amazing, she
+had taken only two lessons in all from a specialist, while the rest she
+learned through a self-instructor, guiding herself only by the drawings
+supplemental to it. She did not contrive to make more than a rouble's
+worth of flowers in a week; but this money was her pride, and for the
+very first half-rouble that she made she bought Lichonin a mouthpiece
+for smoking.
+
+Several years later Lichonin confessed to himself at soul, with regret
+and with a quiet melancholy, that this period of time was the most
+quiet, peaceful and comfortable one of all his life in the university
+and as a lawyer. This unwieldy, clumsy, perhaps even stupid Liubka,
+possessed some instinctive domesticity, some imperceptible ability of
+creating a bright and easy quietude around her. It was precisely she
+who attained the fact that Lichonin's quarters very soon became a
+charming, quiet centre; where all the comrades of Lichonin, who, as
+well as the majority of the students of that time, were forced to
+sustain a bitter struggle with the harsh conditions of life, felt
+somehow at ease, as though in a family; and rested at soul after heavy
+tribulations, need, and starvation. Lichonin recalled with grateful
+sadness her friendly complaisance, her modest and attentive silence, on
+those evenings around the samovar, when so much had been spoken, argued
+and dreamt.
+
+In learning, things went with great difficulty. All these self-styled
+cultivators, collectively and separately, spoke of the fact that the
+education of the human mind, and the upbringing of the human soul must
+flow out of individual motives; but in reality they stuffed Liubka with
+just that which seemed to them the most necessary and indispensable,
+and tried to overcome together with her those scientific obstacles,
+which, without any loss, might have been left aside.
+
+Thus, for example, Lichonin did not want, under any conditions, to
+become reconciled, in teaching her arithmetic, to her queer, barbarous,
+savage, or, more correctly, childish, primitive method of counting. She
+counted exclusively in ones, twos, threes and fives. Thus, for example,
+twelve to her was two times two threes; nineteen--three fives and two
+twos; and, it must be said, that through her system she with the
+rapidity of a counting board operated almost up to a hundred. To go
+further she dared not; and besides she had no practical need of this.
+In vain did Lichonin try to transfer her to a digital system. Nothing
+came of this, save that he flew into a rage, yelled at Liubka; while
+she would look at him in silence, with astonished, widely open and
+guilty eyes, the lashes of which stuck into long black arrows from
+tears. Also, through a capricious turn of her mind, she began to master
+addition and multiplication with comparative ease, but subtraction and
+division were for her an impenetrable wall. But then, she could, with
+amazing speed and wit, solve all possible jocose oral head-breaking
+riddles, and even remembered very many of them herself from the
+thousand year old usage of the village. Toward geography she was
+perfectly dull. True, she could orientate herself as to the four
+cardinal points on the street, in the garden, and in the room; hundreds
+of times better than Lichonin--the ancient peasant instinct in her
+asserted itself--but she stubbornly denied the sphericity of the earth
+and did not recognize the horizon; and when she was told that the
+terrestrial globe moves in space, she only snorted from laughter.
+Geographical maps to her were always an incomprehensible daubing in
+several colours; but separate figures she memorized exactly and
+quickly. "Where's Italy?" Lichonin would ask her. "Here it is, a boot,"
+Liubka would say and triumphantly jabbed the Apennine Peninsula.
+"Sweden and Norway?" "This dog, which is jumping off a roof." "The
+Baltic Sea?" "A widow standing on her knees." "The Black Sea?" "A
+shoe." "Spain?" "A fatty in a cap" ... &c. With history matters went no
+better; Lichonin did not take into consideration the fact that she,
+with her childlike soul thirsting for fiction, would have easily become
+familiarized with historic events through various funny and heroically
+touching anecdotes; but he, accustomed to pulling through examinations
+and tutoring high-school boys of the fourth or fifth grade, starved her
+on names and dates. Besides that, he was very impatient, unrestrained,
+irascible; grew fatigued soon, and a secret--usually concealed but
+constantly growing--hatred for the girl who had so suddenly and
+incongruously warped all his life, more and more frequently and
+unjustly broke forth during the time of these lessons.
+
+A far greater success as a pedagogue enjoyed Nijeradze. His guitar and
+mandolin always hung in the dining room, secured to the nails with
+ribbons. The guitar, with its soft, warm sounds, drew Liubka more than
+the irritating, metallic bleating of the mandolin. When Nijeradze would
+come to them as a guest (three or four times a week, in the evening),
+she herself would take the guitar down from the wall, painstakingly
+wipe it off with a handkerchief, and hand it over to him. He, having
+fussed for some time with the tuning, would clear his throat, put one
+leg over the other, negligently throw himself against the back of the
+chair, and begin in a throaty little tenor, a trifle hoarse, but
+pleasant and true:
+
+    "The trea-cha-rous sa-ound av akissing
+    Resahounds through the quiet night air;
+    Tuh all fla-ming hearts it is pleasing,
+    And given tuh each lovin' pair.
+
+    For a single mohoment of mee-ting ..."
+
+And at this he would pretend to swoon away from his own singing, shut
+his eyes, toss his head in the passionate passages or during the
+pauses, tearing his right hand away from the strings; would suddenly
+turn to stone, and for a second would pierce Liubka's eyes with his
+languorous, humid, sheepish eyes. He knew an endless multitude of
+ballads, catches, and old-fashioned, jocose little pieces. Most of all
+pleased Liubka the universally familiar Armenian couplets about Karapet:
+
+    "Karapet has a buffet,
+     On the buffet's a confet,
+     On the confet's a portret--
+     That's the self-same Karapet."
+
+[22] Anglice, "confet" is a bon-bon; "portret," a portrait.--Trans.
+
+Of these couplets (in the Caucasus they are called kinto-uri--the song
+of the peddlers) the prince knew an infinite many, but the absurd
+refrain was always one and the same:
+
+    "Bravo, bravo, Katenka,
+     Katerin Petrovna,
+     Don't you kiss me on the cheek--a,
+     Kiss the backs of my head."
+
+These couplets Nijeradze always sang in a diminished voice, preserving
+on his face an expression of serious astonishment about Karapet; while
+Liubka laughed until it hurt, until tears came, until she had nervous
+spasms. Once, carried away, she could not restrain herself and began to
+chime in with him, and their singing proved to be very harmonious.
+Little by little, when she had by degrees completely ceased to be
+embarrassed before the prince, they sang together more and more
+frequently. Liubka proved to have a very soft and low contralto, even
+though thin, on which her past life with its colds, drinking, and
+professional excesses had left absolutely no traces. And mainly--which
+was already a curious gift of God--she possessed an instinctive,
+inherent ability very exactly, beautifully, and always originally, to
+carry on the second voice. There came a time toward the end of their
+acquaintance, when Liubka did not beg the prince, but the prince
+Liubka, to sing some one of the beloved songs of the people, of which
+she knew a multitude. And so, putting her elbow on the table, and
+propping up her head with her palm, like a peasant woman, she would
+start off to the cautious, painstaking, quiet accompaniment:
+
+    "Oh, the nights have grown tiresome to me, and wearisome;
+    To be parted from my dearie, from my mate!
+    Oh, haven't I myself, woman-like, done a foolish thing--
+    Have stirred up the wrath of my own darling:
+    When I did call him a bitter drunkard! ..."
+
+"Bitter drunkard!" the prince would repeat the last words together with
+her, and would forlornly toss his curly head, inclined to one side; and
+they both tried to end the song so that the scarcely seizable quivering
+of the guitar strings and the voice might by degrees grow quiet, and
+that it might not be possible to note when the sound ended and the
+silence came.
+
+But then, in the matter of THE PANTHER'S SKIN, the work of the famous
+Georgian poet Rustavelli, prince Nijeradze fell down completely. The
+beauty of the poem, of course, consisted in the way it sounded in the
+native tongue; but scarcely would he begin to read in sing-song his
+throaty, sibilant, hawking phrases, when Liubka would at first shake
+for a long time from irresistible laughter; then, finally, burst into
+laughter, filling the whole room with explosive, prolonged peals. Then
+Nijeradze in wrath would slam shut the little tome of the adored
+writer, and swear at Liubka, calling her a mule and a camel. However,
+they soon made up.
+
+There were times when fits of goatish, mischievous merriment would come
+upon Nijeradze. He would pretend that he wanted to embrace Liubka,
+would roll exaggeratedly passionate eyes at her, and would utter with a
+theatrically languishing whisper:
+
+"Me soul! The best rosa in the garden of Allah! Honey and milk are upon
+thy lips, and thy breath is better than the aroma of kabob. Give me to
+drink the bliss of Nirvanah from the goblet of thy lips, O thou, my
+best Tifflissian she-goat!"
+
+But she would laugh, get angry, strike his hands, and threaten to
+complain to Lichonin.
+
+"V-va!" the prince would spread out his hands. "What is Lichonin?
+Lichonin is my friend, my brother, and bosom crony. But then, does he
+know what loffe is? Is it possible that you northern people understand
+loffe? It's we, Georgians, who are created for loffe. Look, Liubka!
+I'll show you right away what loffe is!" He would clench his fists,
+bend his body forward, and would start rolling his eyes so ferociously,
+gnash his teeth and roar with a lion's voice so, that a childish terror
+would encompass Liubka, despite the fact that she knew this to be a
+joke, and she would dash off running into another room.
+
+It must be said, however, that for this lad, in general unrestrained in
+the matter of light, chance romances, existed special firm moral
+prohibitions, sucked in with the milk of his mother Georgian; the
+sacred adates concerning the wife of a friend. And then, probably he
+understood--and it must be said that these oriental men, despite their
+seeming naiveness--and, perhaps, even owing to it--possess, when they
+wish to, a fine psychic intuition--he understood, that having made
+Liubka his mistress for even one minute, he would be forever deprived
+of this charming, quiet, domestic evening comfort, to which he had
+grown so used. For he, who was on terms of thou-ing with almost the
+whole university, nevertheless felt himself so lonely in a strange city
+and in a country still strange to him!
+
+These studies afforded the most pleasure of all to Soloviev. This big,
+strong, and negligent man somehow involuntarily, imperceptibly even to
+himself, began to submit to that hidden, unseizable, exquisite witchery
+of femininity; which not infrequently lurks under the coarsest
+covering, in the harshest, most gnarled environment. The pupil
+dominated, the teacher obeyed. Through the qualities of a primitive,
+but on the other hand a fresh, deep, and original soul, Liubka was
+inclined not to obey the method of another, but to seek out her own
+peculiar, strange processes. Thus, for example, she--like many
+children, however,--learned writing before reading. Not she herself,
+meek and yielding by nature, but some peculiar quality of her mind,
+obstinately refused in reading to harness a vowel alongside of a
+consonant, or vice versa; in writing, however, she would manage this.
+For penmanship along slanted rulings she, despite the general wont of
+beginners, felt a great inclination; she wrote bending low over the
+paper; blew on the paper from exertion, as though blowing off imaginary
+dust; licked her lips and stuck out with the tongue, from the inside,
+now one cheek, now the other. Soloviev did not thwart her, and followed
+after, along those ways which her instinct laid down. And it must be
+said, that during this month and a half he had managed to become
+attached with all his huge, broad, mighty soul to this chance, weak,
+transitory being. This was the circumspect, droll, magnanimous,
+somewhat wondering love, and the careful concern, of a kind elephant
+for a frail, helpless, yellow-downed chick.
+
+The reading was a delectation for both of them, and here again the
+choice of works was directed by the taste of Liubka, while Soloviev
+only followed its current and its sinuosities. Thus, for example,
+Liubka did not overcome Don Quixote, tired, and, finally, turning away
+from him, with pleasure heard Robinson Crusoe through, and wept with
+especial copiousness over the scene of his meeting with his relatives.
+She liked Dickens, and very easily grasped his radiant humour; but the
+features of English manners were foreign to her and incomprehensible.
+They also read Chekhov more than once, and Liubka very freely, without
+difficulty, penetrated the beauty of his design, his smile and his
+sadness. Stories for children moved her, touched her to such a degree
+that it was laughable and joyous to look at her. Once Soloviev read to
+her Chekhov's story, The Fit, in which, as it is known, a student for
+the first time finds himself in a brothel; and afterwards, on the next
+day, writhes about, as in a fit, in the spasms of a keen psychic
+suffering and the consciousness of common guilt. Soloviev himself did
+not expect that tremendous impression which this narrative would make
+upon her. She cried, swore, wrung her hands, and exclaimed all the
+while:
+
+"Lord! Where does he take all that stuff from, and so skillfully! Why,
+it's every bit just the way it is with us!"
+
+Once he brought with him a book entitled THE HISTORY OF MANON LESCAUT
+AND THE CHEVALIER DE GRIEUX, the work of Abbe Prevost. It must be said
+that Soloviev himself was reading this remarkable book for the first
+time. But still, Liubka appraised it far more deeply and finely. The
+absence of a plot, the naiveness of the telling, the surplus of
+sentimentality, the olden fashion of the style--all this taken together
+cooled Soloviev; whereas Liubka received the joyous, sad, touching and
+flippant details of this quaint immortal novel not only through her
+ears, but as though with her eyes and with all her naively open heart.
+
+"'Our intention of espousal was forgotten at St. Denis,'" Soloviev was
+reading, bending his tousled, golden-haired head, illuminated by the
+shade of the lamp, low over the book; "'we transgressed against the
+laws of the church and, without thinking of it, became espoused.'"
+
+"What are they at? Of their own will, that is? Without a priest? Just
+so?" asked Liubka in uneasiness, tearing herself away from her
+artificial flowers.
+
+"Of course. And what of it? Free love, and that's all there is to it.
+Like you and Lichonin, now."
+
+"Oh, me! That's an entirely different matter. You know yourself where
+he took me from. But she's an innocent and genteel young lady. That's a
+low-down thing for him to do. And, believe me, Soloviev, he's sure to
+leave her later. Ah, the poor girl. Well, well, well, read on."
+
+But already after several pages all the sympathies and commiserations
+of Liubka went over to the side of the deceived chevalier.
+
+"'However, the visits and departures by thefts of M. de B. threw me
+into confusion. I also recollected the little purchases of Manon, which
+exceeded our means. All this smacked of the generosity of a new lover.
+"But no, no," I repeated, "it is impossible that Manon should deceive
+me! She is aware, that I live only for her, she is exceedingly well
+aware that I adore her."'"
+
+"Ah, the little fool, the little fool!" exclaimed Liubka. "Why, can't
+you see right off that she's being kept by this rich man. Ah, trash
+that she is!"
+
+And the further the novel unfolded, the more passionate and lively an
+interest did Liubka take in it. She had nothing against Manon's
+fleecing her subsequent patrons with the help of her lover and her
+brother, while de Grieux occupied himself with sharping at the club;
+but her every new betrayal brought Liubka into a rage, while the
+sufferings of the gallant chevalier evoked her tears. Once she asked:
+
+"Soloviev, dearie, who was he--this author?"
+
+"He was a certain French priest."
+
+"He wasn't a Russian?"
+
+"No, a Frenchman, I'm telling you. See, he's got everything so--the
+towns are French and the people have French names."
+
+"Then he was a priest, you say? Where did he know all this from, then?"
+
+"Well, he knew it, that's all. Because he was an ordinary man of the
+world, a nobleman, and only became a monk afterwards. He had seen a lot
+in his life. Then he again left the monks. But, however, here's
+everything about him written in detail in front of this book."
+
+He read the biography of Abbe Prevost to her. Liubka heard it through
+attentively, shaking her head with great significance; asked over again
+about that which she did not understand in certain places, and when he
+had finished she thoughtfully drawled out:
+
+"Then that's what he is! He's written it up awfully good. Only why is
+she so low down? For he loves her so, with all his life; but she's
+playing him false all the time."
+
+"Well, Liubochka, what can you do? For she loved him too. Only she's a
+vain hussy, and frivolous. All she wants is only rags, and her own
+horses, and diamonds."
+
+Liubka flared up and hit one fist against the other.
+
+"I'd rub her into powder, the low-down creature? So that's called her
+having loved, too! If you love a man, then all that comes from him must
+be dear to you. He goes to prison, and you go with him to prison. He's
+become a thief, well, you help him. He's a beggar, but still you go
+with him. What is there out of the way, that there's only a crust of
+black bread, so long as there's love? She's low down, and she's low
+down, that's what! But I, in his place, would leave her; or, instead of
+crying, give her such a drubbing that she'd walk around in bruises for
+a whole month, the varmint!"
+
+The end of the novel she could not manage to hear to the finish for a
+long time, and always broke out into sincere warm tears, so that it was
+necessary to interrupt the reading; and the last chapter they overcame
+only in four doses.
+
+The calamities and misadventures of the lovers in prison, the
+compulsory despatch of Manon to America and the self-denial of de
+Grieux in voluntarily following her, so possessed the imagination of
+Liubka and shook her soul, that she even forgot to make her remarks.
+Listening to the story of the quiet, beautiful death of Manon in the
+midst of the desert plain, she, without stirring, with hands clasped on
+her breast, looked at the light; and the tears ran and ran out of her
+staring eyes and fell, like a shower, on the table. But when the
+Chevalier de Grieux, who had lain two days near the corpse of his dear
+Manon, finally began to dig a grave with the stump of his sword--Liubka
+burst into sobbing so that Soloviev became scared and dashed after
+water. But even having calmed down a little, she still sobbed for a
+long time with her trembling, swollen lips and babbled:
+
+"Ah! Their life was so miserable! What a bitter lot that was! And is it
+possible that it's always like that, darling Soloviev; that just as
+soon as a man and a woman fall in love with each other, in just the way
+they did, then God is sure to punish them? Dearie, but why is that?
+Why?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+But if the Georgian and the kind-souled Soloviev served as a palliating
+beginning against the sharp thorns of great worldly wisdom, in the
+curious education of the mind and soul of Liubka; and if Liubka forgave
+the pedantism of Lichonin for the sake of a first sincere and limitless
+love for him, and forgave just as willingly as she would have forgiven
+curses, beatings, or a heavy crime--the lessons of Simanovsky, on the
+other hand, were a downright torture and a constant, prolonged burden
+for her. For it must be said that he, as though in spite, was far more
+accurate and exact in his lessons than any pedagogue working out his
+weekly stipulated tutorings.
+
+With the incontrovertibility of his opinions, the assurance of his tone
+and the didacticism of his presentation he took away the will of poor
+Liubka and paralyzed her soul; in the same way that he sometimes,
+during university gatherings or at mass meetings, influenced the timid
+and bashful minds of newcomers. He was an orator at meetings; he was a
+prominent member in the organization of students' mess halls; he took
+part in the recording, lithographing and publication of lectures; he
+was chosen the head of the course; and, finally, took a very great
+interest in the students' treasury. He was of that number of people
+who, after they leave the student auditoriums, become the leaders of
+parties, the unrestrained arbiters of pure and self-denying conscience;
+serve out their political stage somewhere in Chukhlon, directing the
+keen attention of all Russia to their heroically woeful situation; and
+after that, beautifully leaning on their past, make a career for
+themselves, thanks to a solid advocacy, a deputation, or else a
+marriage joined with a goodly piece of black loam land and provincial
+activity. Unnoticeably to themselves and altogether unnoticeably, of
+course, to the casual glance, they cautiously right themselves; or,
+more correctly, fade until they grow a belly unto themselves, and
+acquire podagra and diseases of the liver. Then they grumble at the
+whole world; say that they were not understood, that their time was the
+time of sacred ideals. While in the family they are despots and not
+infrequently give money out at usury.
+
+The path of the education of Liubka's mind and soul was plain to him,
+as was plain and incontrovertible everything that he conceived; he
+wanted at the start to interest Liubka in chemistry and physics.
+
+"The virginally feminine mind," he pondered, "will be astounded, then I
+shall gain possession of her attention, and from trifles, from
+hocus-pocus, I shall pass on to that which will lead her to the centre
+of universal knowledge, where there is no superstition, no prejudices;
+where there is only a broad field for the testing of nature."
+
+It must be said that he was inconsistent in his lessons. He dragged in
+all that came to his hand for the astonishment of Liubka. Once he
+brought along for her a large self-made serpent--a long cardboard hose,
+filled with gunpowder, bent in the form of a harmonica, and tied
+tightly across with a cord. He lit it, and the serpent for a long time
+with crackling jumped over the dining room and the bedroom, filling the
+place with smoke and stench. Liubka was scarcely amazed and said that
+this was simply fireworks, that she had already seen this, and that you
+couldn't astonish her with that. She asked, however, permission to open
+the window. Then he brought a large phial, tinfoil, rosin and a cat's
+tail, and in this manner contrived a Leyden jar. The discharge,
+although weak, was produced, however.
+
+"Oh, the unclean one take you, Satan!" Liubka began to cry out, having
+felt the dry fillip in her little finger.
+
+Then, out of heated peroxide of manganese, mixed with sand, with the
+help of a druggist's vial, the gutta-percha end of a syringe, a basin
+filled with water, and a jam jar--oxygen was derived. The red-hot cork,
+coal and phosphorus burnt in the jar so blindingly that it pained the
+eyes. Liubka clapped her palms and squealed out in delight:
+
+"Mister Professor, more! Please, more, more! ..."
+
+But when, having united the oxygen with the hydrogen brought in an
+empty champagne bottle, and having wrapped up the bottle for precaution
+in a towel, Simanovsky ordered Liubka to direct its neck toward a
+burning candle, and when the explosion broke out, as though four
+cannons had been fired off at once--an explosion through which the
+plastering fell down from the ceiling--then Liubka grew timorous, and,
+only getting to rights with difficulty, pronounced with trembling lips,
+but with dignity: "You must excuse me now, but since I have a flat of
+my own, and I'm not at all a wench any longer, but a decent woman, I'd
+ask you therefore not to misbehave in my place. I thought you, like a
+smart and educated man, would do everything nice and genteel, but you
+busy yourself with silly things. They can even put one in jail for
+that."
+
+Subsequently, much, much later, she told how she had a student friend,
+who made dynamite before her.
+
+It must have been, after all, that Simanovsky, this enigmatic man, so
+influential in his youthful society, where he had to deal with theory
+for the most part, and so incoherent when a practical experiment with a
+living soul had come into his hands--was just simply stupid, but could
+skillfully conceal this sole sincere quality of his.
+
+Having suffered failure in applied sciences, he at once passed on to
+metaphysics. Once he very self-assuredly, and in a tone such that after
+it no refutation was possible, announced to Liubka that there is no
+God, and that he would undertake to prove this during five minutes.
+Whereupon Liubka jumped up from her place, and told him firmly that
+she, even though a quondam prostitute, still believed in God and would
+not allow Him to be offended in her presence; and if he would continue
+such nonsense, then she would complain to Vassil Vassilich.
+
+"I will also tell him," she added in a weeping voice, "that you,
+instead of teaching me, only rattle off all kinds of stuff and all that
+sort of nastiness, while you yourself hold your hand on my knees. And
+that's even not at all genteel." And for the first time during all
+their acquaintanceship she, who had formerly been so timorous and
+constrained, sharply moved away from her teacher.
+
+However, having suffered a few failures, Simanovsky still obstinately
+continued to act upon the mind and imagination of Liubka. He tried to
+explain to her the theory of the origin of species, beginning with an
+amoeba and ending with Napoleon. Liubka listened to him attentively,
+and during this there was an imploring expression in her eyes: "When
+will you stop at last?" She yawned into a handkerchief and then
+guiltily explained: "Excuse me, that's from my nerves." Marx also had
+no success goods, supplementary value, the manufacturer and the worker,
+which had become algebraic formulas, were for Liubka merely empty
+sounds, vibrating the air; and she, very sincere at soul, always jumped
+up with joy from her place, when hearing that, apparently, the
+vegetable soup had boiled up, or the samovar was getting ready to boil
+over.
+
+It cannot be said that Simanovsky did not have success with women. His
+aplomb and his weighty, decisive tone always acted upon simple souls,
+especially upon fresh, naive, trusting souls. Out of protracted ties he
+always got out very easily; either he was dedicated to a tremendously
+responsible call, before which domestic love relations were nothing; or
+he pretended to be a superman, to whom all is permitted (O, thou,
+Nietszche, so long ago and so disgracefully misconstrued for
+high-school boys!). The passive, almost imperceptible, but firmly
+evasive resistance of Liubka irritated and excited him. What
+particularly incensed him was the fact that she, who had formerly been
+so accessible to all, ready to yield her love in one day to several
+people in succession, to each one for two roubles, was now all of a
+sudden playing at some pure and disinterested inamoration!
+
+"Nonsense," he thought. "This can't be. She's making believe, and,
+probably, I don't strike the right tone with her."
+
+And with every day he became more exacting, captious, and stern. Hardly
+consciously, more probably through habit, he relied on his usual
+influence, intimidating the thought and subduing the will, which rarely
+betrayed him.
+
+Once Liubka complained about him to Lichonin:
+
+"He's too strict with me, now, Vassil Vassilievich; and I don't
+understand anything he says, and I don't want to take lessons with him
+any more."
+
+Somehow or other, Lichonin lamely quieted her down; but still he had an
+explanation with Simanovsky. The other answered him with sang froid:
+
+"Just as you wish, my dear fellow; if my method displeases you or
+Liubka, then I'm even ready to resign. My problem consists only of
+bringing in a genuine element of discipline into her education. If she
+does not understand anything, then I compel her to learn it by heart,
+aloud. With time this will cease. That is unavoidable. Recall,
+Lichonin, how difficult the transition from arithmetic to algebra was
+for us, when we were compelled to replace common numerals with letters,
+and did not know why this was done. Or why did they teach us grammar,
+instead of simply advising us to write tales and verses?"
+
+And on the very next day, bending down low under the hanging shade of
+the lamp over Liubka's body, and sniffing all over her breast and under
+her arm pits, he was saying to her:
+
+"Draw a triangle... Well, yes, this way and this way. On top I write
+'Love.' Write simply the letter L, and below M and W. That will be: the
+Love of Man and Woman."
+
+With the air of an oracle, unshakable and austere, he spoke all sorts
+of erotic balderdash and almost unexpectedly concluded:
+
+"And so look, Liuba. The desire to love--it's the same as the desire to
+eat, to drink, and to breathe the air." He would squeeze her thigh
+hard, considerably above the knee; and she again, becoming confused and
+not wishing to offend him, would try almost imperceptibly to move her
+leg away gradually.
+
+"Tell me, would it be offensive, now, for your sister, mother, or for
+your husband, that you by chance had not dined at home, but had gone
+into a restaurant or a cook-shop, and had there satisfied your hunger?
+And so with love. No more, no less. A physiological enjoyment. Perhaps
+more powerful, more keen, than all others, but that's all. Thus, for
+example, now: I want you as a woman. While you ..."
+
+"Oh, drop it, Mister," Liubka cut him short with vexation. "Well, what
+are you harping on one and the same thing for all the time? Change your
+act. You've been told: no and no. Don't you think I see what you're
+trying to get at? But only I'll never agree to unfaithfulness, seeing
+as how Vasilli Vasillievich is my benefactor, and I adore him with all
+my soul... And you're even pretty disgusting to me with your nonsense."
+
+Once he caused Liubka a great and scandalous hurt, and all because of
+his theoretical first principles. As at the university they were
+already for a long time talking about Lichonin's having saved a girl
+from such and such a house; and that now he is taken up with her moral
+regeneration; that rumour, naturally, also reached the studying girls,
+who frequented the student circles. And so, none other than Simanovsky
+once brought to Liubka two female medicos, one historian, and one
+beginning poetess, who, by the way, was already writing critical essays
+as well. He introduced them in the most serious and fool-like manner.
+
+"Here," he said, stretching out his hand, now in the direction of the
+guests, now of Liubka, "here, comrades, get acquainted. You, Liuba,
+will find in them real friends, who will help you on your radiant path;
+while you--comrades, Liza, Nadya, Sasha and Rachel--you will regard as
+elder sisters a being who has just struggled out of that horrible
+darkness into which the social structure places the modern woman."
+
+He spoke not exactly so, perhaps; but in any case, approximately in
+that manner. Liubka turned red, extended her hand, with all the fingers
+clumsily folded together, to the young ladies in coloured blouses and
+in leather belts; regaled them with tea and jam; promptly helped them
+with lights for cigarettes; but, despite all invitations, did not want
+to sit down for anything. She would say: "Yes-ss, n-no, as you wish."
+And when one of the young ladies dropped a handkerchief on the floor,
+she hurriedly made a dash to pick it up.
+
+One of the maidens, red, stout, and with a bass voice, whose face, all
+in all, consisted of only a pair of red cheeks, out of which
+mirth-provokingly peeped out a hint at an upturned nose, and with a
+pair of little black eyes, like tiny raisins, sparkling out of their
+depths, was inspecting Liubka from head to feet, as though through an
+imaginary lorgnette; directing over her a glance which said nothing,
+but was contemptuous. "Why, I haven't been getting anybody away from
+her," thought Liubka guiltily. But another was so tactless, that
+she--perhaps for the first time for her, but the hundredth for
+Liubka--began a conversation about: how had she happened upon the path
+of prostitution? This was a bustling young lady, pale, very pretty,
+ethereal; all in little light curls, with the air of a spoiled kitten
+and even a little pink cat's bow on her neck.
+
+"But tell me, who was this scoundrel, now ... who was the first to ...
+well, you understand? ..."
+
+In the mind of Liubka quickly flashed the images of her former mates,
+Jennka and Tamara, so proud, so brave and resourceful--oh, far brainier
+than these maidens--and she, almost unexpectedly for herself, suddenly
+said sharply:
+
+"There was a lot of them. I've already forgotten. Kolka, Mitka,
+Volodka, Serejka, Jorjik, Troshka, Petka, and also Kuzka and Guska with
+a party. But why are you interested?"
+
+"Why... no... that is, I ask as a person who fully sympathizes with
+you."
+
+"But have you a lover?"
+
+"Pardon me, I don't understand what you're saying. People, it's time we
+were going."
+
+"That is, what don't you understand? Have you ever slept with a man?"
+
+"Comrade Simanovsky, I had not presupposed that you would bring us to
+such a person. Thank you. It was exceedingly charming of you!"
+
+It was difficult for Liubka to surmount the first step. She was of
+those natures which endure long, but tear loose rapidly; and she,
+usually so timorous, was unrecognizable at this moment.
+
+"But I know!" she was screaming in wrath. "I know, that you're the very
+same as I! But you have a papa, a mamma; you're provided for, and if
+you have to, then you'll even commit abortion--many do so. But if you
+were in my place, when there's nothing to stuff your mouth with, and a
+girlie doesn't understand anything yet, because she can't read or
+write; while all around the men are shoving like he-dogs--then you'd be
+in a sporting house too. It's a shame to put on airs before a poor
+girl--that's what!"
+
+Simanovsky, who had gotten into trouble, said a few general consolatory
+words in a judicious bass, such as the noble fathers used in olden
+comedies, and led his ladies off.
+
+But he was fated to play one more very shameful, distressing, and final
+role in the free life of Liubka. She had already complained to Lichonin
+for a long time that the presence of Simanovsky was oppressive to her;
+but Lichonin paid no attention to womanish trifles: the vacuous,
+fictitious, wordy hypnosis of this man of commands was strong within
+him. There are influences, to get rid of which is difficult, almost
+impossible. On the other hand, he was already for a long time feeling
+the burden of co-habitation with Liubka. Frequently he thought to
+himself: "She is spoiling my life; I am growing common, foolish; I have
+become dissolved in fool benevolence; it will end up in my marrying
+her, entering the excise or the assay office, or getting in among
+pedagogues; I'll be taking bribes, will gossip, and become an
+abominable provincial morel. And where are my dreams of the power of
+thought, the beauty of life, of love and deeds for all humanity?" he
+would say, at times even aloud, and pull his hair. And for that reason,
+instead of attentively going into Liubka's complaints, he would lose
+his temper, yell, stamp his feet, and the patient, meek Liubka would
+grow quiet and retire into the kitchen, to have a good cry there.
+
+Now more and more frequently, after family quarrels, in the minutes of
+reconciliation he would say to Liubka:
+
+"My dear Liuba, you and I do not suit each other, comprehend that.
+Look: here are a hundred roubles for you, ride home. Your relatives
+will receive you as their own. Live there a while, look around you. I
+will come for you after half a year; you'll have become rested, and, of
+course, all that's filthy, nasty, that has been grafted upon you by the
+city, will go away, will die off. And you'll begin a new life
+independently, without any assistance, alone and proud!"
+
+But then, can anything be done with a woman who has come to love for
+the first, and, of course, as it seems to her, for the last time? Can
+she be convinced of the necessity for parting? Does logic exist for her?
+
+Always reverent before the firmness of the words and decisions of
+Simanovsky, Lichonin, however, surmised and by instinct understood his
+real relation to Liubka; and in his desire to free himself, to shake
+off a chance load beyond his strength, he would catch himself in a
+nasty little thought: "She pleases Simanovsky; and as for her, isn't it
+all the same if it's he or I or a third? Guess I'll make a clean breast
+of it, explain things to him and yield Liubka up to him like a comrade.
+But then, the fool won't go. Will raise a rumpus."
+
+"Or just to come upon the two of them together, somehow," he would
+ponder further, "in some decisive pose... to raise a noise, make a
+row... A noble gesture... a little money and... a getaway."
+
+He now frequently, for several days, would not return home; and
+afterwards, having come, would undergo torturesome hours of feminine
+interrogations, scenes, tears, even hysterical fits. Liubka would at
+times watch him in secret, when he went out of the house; would stop
+opposite the entrance that he went into, and for hours would await his
+return in order to reproach him and to cry in the street. Not being
+able to read, she intercepted his letters and, not daring to turn to
+the aid of the prince or Soloviev, would save them up in her little
+cupboard together with sugar, tea, lemon and all sorts of other trash.
+She had even reached the stage when, in minutes of anger, she
+threatened him with sulphuric acid.
+
+"May the devil take her," Lichonin would ponder during the minutes of
+his crafty plans. "It's all one, let there even be nothing between
+them. But I'll take and make a fearful scene for him, and her."
+
+And he would declaim to himself:
+
+"Ah, so! ... I have warmed you in my bosom, and what do I see now? You
+are paying me with black ingratitude. ... And you, my best comrade, you
+have attempted my sole happiness! ... O, no, no, remain together; I go
+hence with tears in my eyes. I see, that I am one too many! I do not
+wish to oppose your love, etc., etc."
+
+And precisely these dreams, these hidden plans, such momentary, chance,
+and, at bottom, vile ones--of those to which people later do not
+confess to themselves--were suddenly fulfilled. It was the turn of
+Soloviev's lesson. To his great happiness, Liubka had at last read
+through almost without faltering: "A good plough has Mikhey, and a good
+one has Sisoi as well... a swallow... a swing ... the children love
+God..." And as a reward for this Soloviev read aloud to her Of the
+Merchant Kalashnikov and of Kiribeievich, Life-guardsman of Czar Ivan
+the Fourth. Liubka from delight bounced in her armchair, clapped her
+hands. The beauty of this monumental, heroic work had her in its grasp.
+But she did not have a chance to express her impressions in full.
+Soloviev was hurrying to a business appointment. And immediately,
+coming to meet Soloviev, having barely exchanged greetings with him in
+the doorway, came Simanovsky. Liubka's face sadly lengthened and her
+lips pouted. For this pedantic teacher and coarse male had become very
+repugnant to her of late.
+
+This time he began a lecture on the theme that for man there exist no
+laws, no rights, no duties, no honour, no vileness; and that man is a
+quantity self-sufficient, independent of anyone and anything.
+
+"It's possible to be a God, possible to be an intestinal worm, a tape
+worm--it's all the same."
+
+He already wanted to pass on to the theory of amatory emotions; but, it
+is to be regretted, he hurried a trifle from impatience: he embraced
+Liubka, drew her to him and began to squeeze her roughly. "She'll
+become intoxicated from caressing. She'll give in!" thought the
+calculating Simanovsky. He sought to touch her mouth with his lips for
+a kiss, but she screamed and snorted spit at him. All the assumed
+delicacy had left her.
+
+"Get out, you mangy devil, fool, swine, dirt! I'll smash your snout for
+you! ..."
+
+All the lexicon of the establishment had come back to her; but
+Simanovsky, having lost his pince-nez, his face distorted, was looking
+at her with blurred eyes and jabbering whatever came into his head:
+
+"My dear ... It's all the same ... a second of enjoyment! ... You and I
+will blend in enjoyment! ... No one will find out! ... Be mine! ..."
+
+It was just at this very minute that Lichonin walked into the room.
+
+Of course, at soul he did not admit to himself that this minute he
+would commit a vileness; but only somehow from the side, at a distance,
+reflected that his face was pale, and that his immediate words would be
+tragic and of great significance.
+
+"Yes!" he said dully, like an actor in the fourth act of a drama; and,
+letting his hands drop impotently, began to shake his chin, which had
+fallen upon his breast. "I expected everything, only not this. You I
+excuse, Liuba--you are a cave being; but you, Simanovsky ... I esteemed
+you ... however, I still esteem you a decent man. But I know, that
+passion is at times stronger than the arguments of reason. Right here
+are fifty roubles--I am leaving them for Liuba; you, of course, will
+return them to me later, I have no doubt of that. Arrange her destiny
+... You are a wise, kind, honest man, while I am ... ("A skunk!"
+somebody's distinct voice flashed through his head.) I am going away,
+because I will not be able to bear this torture any more. Be happy."
+
+He snatched out of his pocket and with effect threw his wallet on the
+table; then seized his hair and ran out of the room.
+
+Still, this was the best way out for him. And the scene had been played
+out precisely as he had dreamt of it.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+All this Liubka told at length and disjointedly, sobbing on Jennka's
+shoulder. Of course, in her personal elucidation this tragi-comical
+history proved altogether unlike what it had been in reality.
+
+Lichonin, according to her words, had taken her to him only to entice,
+to tempt her; to have as much use as possible out of her foolishness,
+and then to abandon her. But she, the fool, had in truth fallen in
+love--with him, and since she was very jealous about him and all these
+tousled girls in leather belts, he had done a low-down thing: had sent
+up his comrade on purpose, had framed it up with him, and the other had
+begun to hug Liubka, and Vasska came in, saw it, and kicked up a great
+row, and chased Liubka out into the street.
+
+Of course, in her version there were two almost equal parts of truth
+and untruth; but so, at least, all this had appeared to her.
+
+She also told with great details how, having found herself without
+masculine support or without anybody's powerful extraneous influence,
+she had hired a room In a rather bad little hotel, on a retired street;
+how even from the first day the boots, a tough bird, a hard-boiled egg,
+had attempted to trade in her, without even having and Vasska came in,
+saw it, and kicked up a great row, the hotel to a private room, but
+even there had been overtaken by an experienced old woman go-between,
+with whose like the houses inhabited by poverty swarm.
+
+Therefore, even with quiet living, there was in the face, in the
+conversation, and in the entire manner of Liubka something peculiar,
+specific to the casual eye; perhaps even entirely imperceptible, but
+for the business scent as plain and as irrefutable as the day.
+
+But the chance, brief, sincere love had given her the strength to
+oppose the inevitability of a second fall. In her heroic courage she
+even went so far as putting in a few notices in the newspapers, that
+she was seeking a place with "all found." However, she had no
+recommendation of any sort. In addition, she had to do exclusively with
+women when it came to the hiring; and they also, with some sort of an
+inner, infallible instinct, surmised in her their ancient foe--the
+seductress of their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons.
+
+There was neither sense nor use in going home. Her native Vassilkovsky
+district is distant only fifteen versts from the state capital; and the
+rumour that she had entered that sort of an establishment had long
+since penetrated, by means of her fellow-villagers, into the village.
+This was written of in letters, and transmitted verbally, by those
+village neighbours who had seen her both on the street and at Anna
+Markovna's place itself--porters and bell-hops of hotels, waiters at
+small restaurants, cabbies, small contractors. She knew what odour this
+fame would give off if she were to return to her native haunts. It were
+better to hang one's self than to endure this.
+
+She was as uneconomical and impractical in money matters as a
+five-year-old child, and in a short while was left without a kopeck;
+while to go back to the brothel was fearful and shameful. But the
+temptations of street prostitution turned up of themselves, and at
+every step begged to be seized. In the evenings, on the main street,
+old hardened street prostitutes at once unerringly guessed her former
+profession. Ever and anon one of them, having come alongside of her,
+would begin in a sweet, ingratiating voice:
+
+"How is it, young lady, that you're walking alone? Let's be mates.
+Let's walk together. That's always more convenient. Whenever men want
+to pass the time pleasantly with girls, they always love to start a
+party of four."
+
+And right here the experienced, tried recruiting agent, at first
+casually, but after that warmly, with all her heart, would begin to
+praise up all the conveniences of living at your own landlady's--the
+tasty food, full freedom of going out, the possibility of always
+concealing from the landlady of your rooms the surplus over the agreed
+pay. Here also much of the malicious and the offensive was said, by the
+way, against the women of the private houses, who were called
+"government hides," "government stuff," "genteel maidens" and
+"institutes." Liubka knew the value of these sneers, because the
+dwellers in brothels also bear themselves with the greatest contempt
+toward street prostitutes, calling them "bimmies" and "venereals."
+
+To be sure, in the very end that happened which had to happen. Seeing
+in perspective a whole series of hungry days, and in the very depth of
+them the dark horror of an unknown future, Liubka consented to a very
+civil invitation of some respectable little old man; important,
+grayish, well-dressed and correct. For this ignominy Liubka received a
+rouble, but did not dare to protest: the previous life in the house had
+entirely eaten away her personal initiative, mobility and energy.
+Later, several times running, he even did not pay her anything at all.
+
+One young man, easy of manner and handsome, in a cap with a flattened
+brim, put on at a brave slant over one ear, in a silk blouse, girdled
+by a cord with tassels, also led her with him into a hotel, asked for
+wine and a snack; for a long time lied to Liubka about his being an
+earl's son on the wrong side of the blanket, and that he was the first
+billiardist in the whole city; that all the wenches like him and that
+he would make a swell Jane out of Liubka as well. Then he went out of
+the room for just one minute, as though on business of his own, and
+vanished forever. The stern, cross-eyed porter beat her with
+contentment, long, in silence, with a business-like air; breathing hard
+and covering up Liubka's mouth with his hand. But in the end, having
+become convinced, probably, that the fault was not hers, but the
+guest's, he took her purse, in which was a rouble with some small
+change, away from her; and took as security her rather cheap little hat
+and small outer jacket.
+
+Another man of forty-five years, not at all badly dressed, having
+tortured the girl for some two hours, paid for the room and gave her 80
+kopecks; but when she started to complain, he with a ferocious face put
+an enormous red-haired fist up to her very nose, the first thing, and
+said decisively:
+
+"You just snivel a bit more to me... I'll snivel you... I'll yell for
+the police, now, and say that you robbed me when I was sleeping. Want
+me to? Is it long since you've been in a station house?"
+
+And went away.
+
+And of such cases there were many.
+
+On that day, when her landlords--a boatman and his wife--had refused to
+let her have a room and just simply threw her things out into the yard;
+and when she had wandered the night through on the streets, without
+sleep, under the rain, hiding from the policemen--only then, with
+aversion and shame, did she resolve to turn to Lichonin's aid. But
+Lichonin was no longer in town pusillanimously, he had gone away the
+very same day when the unjustly wronged and disgraced Liubka had run
+away from the flat. And it was in the morning that there came into her
+head the desperate thought of returning into the brothel and begging
+forgiveness there.
+
+"Jennechka, you're so clever, so brave, so kind; beg Emma Edwardovna
+for me--the little housekeeper will listen to you," she implored Jennka
+and kissed her bare shoulders and wetted them with tears.
+
+"She won't listen to anybody," gloomily answered Jennka. "And you did
+have to tie up with a fool and a low-down fellow like that."
+
+"Jennechka, but you yourself advised me to," timidly retorted Liubka.
+
+"I advised you? ... I didn't advise you anything. What are you lying on
+me for, just as though I was dead... Well, all right then--let's go."
+
+Emma Edwardovna had already known for a long while about the return of
+Liubka; and had even seen her at that moment when she had passed
+through the yard of the house, looking all around her. At soul she was
+not at all against taking Liubka back. It must be said, that she had
+even let her go only because she had been tempted by the money,
+one-half of which she had appropriated for herself. And in addition to
+that, she had reckoned that with the present seasonal influx of new
+prostitutes she would have a large choice; in which, however, she had
+made a mistake, because the season had terminated abruptly. But in any
+case, she had firmly resolved to take Liubka. Only it was necessary,
+for the preservation and rounding out of prestige, to give her a scare
+befittingly.
+
+"Wha-at?" she began to yell at Liubka, scarcely having heard her out,
+babbling in confusion. "You want to be taken on again? ... You wallowed
+the devil knows with whom in the streets, under the fences; and now,
+you scum, you're again shoving your way into a respectable, decent
+establishment! ... Pfui, you Russian swine! Out! ..."
+
+Liubka was catching her hands, aiming to kiss them, but the housekeeper
+roughly snatched them away. Then, suddenly paling, with a distorted
+face, biting her trembling, twisted lower lip, Emma calculatingly and
+with good aim struck Liubka on her cheek, with all her might; from
+which the other went down on her knees, but got up right away, gasping
+for breath and stammering from the sobs.
+
+"Darlingest, don't beat me... Oh my dear, don't beat me..."
+
+And again fell down, this time flat upon the floor.
+
+And this systematic, malignant slaughter, in cold blood, continued for
+some two minutes. Jennka, who had at first been looking on with her
+customary malicious, disdainful air, suddenly could not stand it; she
+began to squeal savagely, threw herself upon the housekeeper, clutched
+her by the hair, tore off her chignon and began to vociferate in a real
+hysterical fit:
+
+"Fool! ... Murderer! ... Low-down go-between! ... Thief! ..."
+
+All the three women vociferated together, and at once enraged wails
+resounded through all the corridors and rooms of the establishment.
+This was that general fit of grand hysterics, which takes possession of
+those confined in prisons, or that elemental insanity (raptus), which
+envelops unexpectedly and epidemically an entire lunatic asylum, from
+which even experienced psychiatrists grow pale.
+
+Only after the lapse of an hour was order restored by Simeon and two
+comrades by profession who had come to his aid. All the thirteen girls
+got it hot; but Jennka, who had gone into a real frenzy, more than the
+others. The beaten-up Liubka kept on crawling before the housekeeper
+until she was taken back. She knew that Jennka's outbreak would sooner
+or later be reflected upon her in a cruel repayment. Jennka sat on her
+bed until the very night, her legs crossed Turkish fashion; refused
+dinner, and chased out all her mates who went in to her. Her eye was
+bruised, and she assiduously applied a five-kopeck copper to it. From
+underneath the torn shirt a long, transversal scratch reddened on the
+neck, just like a mark from a rope. That was where Simeon had torn off
+her skin in the struggle. She sat thus, alone, with eyes that glowed in
+the dark like a wild beast's, with distended nostrils, with
+spasmodically moving cheek-bones, and whispered wrathfully:
+
+"Just you wait... Watch out, you damned things--I'll show you... You'll
+see yet... Ooh-ooh, you man-eaters..."
+
+But when the lights had been lit, and the junior housekeeper, Zociya,
+knocked on her door with the words: "Miss, get dressed! ... Into the
+drawing room!" she rapidly washed herself, dressed, put some powder on
+the bruise, smeared the scratch over with CREME DE SIMON and pink
+powder, and went out into the drawing room, pitiful but proud;
+beaten-up, but her eyes flaming with an unbearable wrathfulness and a
+beauty not human.
+
+Many people, who have happened to see suicides a few hours before their
+horrible death, say that in their visages in those fateful hours before
+death they have noticed some enigmatic, mysterious, incomprehensible
+allurement. And all who saw Jennka on this night, and on the next day
+for a few hours, for long, intently and in wonder, kept their gaze upon
+her.
+
+And strangest of all (this was one of the sombre wiles of fate) was the
+fact that the indirect culprit of her death, the last grain of sand
+which draws down the pan of the scales, appeared none other than the
+dear, most kind, military cadet Kolya Gladishev.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Kolya Gladishev was a fine, merry, bashful young lad, with a large
+head; pink-cheeked, with a funny little white, bent line, as though
+from milk, upon his upper lip, under the light down of the moustache,
+sprouting through for the first time; with gray, naive eyes, placed far
+apart; and so closely cropped, that from underneath his flaxen little
+bristles the skin glistened through, just as with a thoroughbred
+Yorkshire suckling pig. It was precisely he with whom Jennka during the
+past winter had played either at maternal relations, or at dolls; and
+thrust upon him a little apple or a couple of bon-bons on his way, when
+he would be going away from the house of ill repute, squirming from
+shame.
+
+This time, when he came, there could at once be felt in him, after long
+living in camps, that rapid change in age, which so often imperceptibly
+and rapidly transforms a boy into a youth. He had already finished the
+cadet academy and with pride counted himself a junker; although he
+still walked around in a cadet's uniform, with aversion. He had grown
+taller, had become better formed and more adroit; the camp life had
+done him good. He spoke in a bass, and during these months to his most
+great pride the nipples of his breast had hardened; the most
+important--he already knew about this--and undeniable sign of virile
+maturity. Now, in the meanwhile, until the eyes-front severities of a
+military school, he had a period of alluring freedom. Already he was
+permitted to smoke at home, in the presence of grown-ups; and even his
+father had himself presented him with a leather cigar case with his
+monogram, and also, in the elevation of family joy, had assigned him
+fifteen roubles monthly salary.
+
+And it was just here--at Anna Markovna's--that he had come to know
+woman for the first time--the very same Jennka.
+
+The fall of innocent souls in houses of ill-fame, or with street
+solitaries, is fulfilled far more frequently than it is usually
+thought. When not green youths only, but even honourable men of fifty,
+almost grandfathers, are interrogated about this ticklish matter, they
+will tell you, sure enough, the ancient stencilled lie of how they had
+been seduced by a chambermaid or a governess. But this is one of those
+lingering, queer lies, going back into the depth of past decades, which
+are almost never noticed by a single one of the professional observers,
+and in any case are not described by any one.
+
+If each one of us will try, to put it pompously, to put his hand on his
+heart, then every one will catch himself in the fact, that having once
+in childhood said some sort of boastful or touching fiction, which had
+success, and having repeated it for that reason two and five and ten
+times more--he afterwards cannot get rid of it all his life, and
+repeats with entire firmness by now a history which had never been; a
+firmness such that in the very end he believes the story. With time
+Kolya also narrated to his comrades how his aunt once removed, a young
+woman of the world had seduced him. It must be said, however, that the
+intimate proximity to this lady--a large, dark-eyed, white faced,
+sweetly fragrant southern woman--did really exist; but existed only in
+Kolya's imagination, in those sad, tragic and timid minutes of solitary
+sexual enjoyments, through which pass if not a hundred percent of all
+men, then ninety-nine, in any case.
+
+Having experienced mechanical sexual excitements very early,
+approximately since nine or nine years and a half, Kolya did not at all
+have the least understanding of the significance of that end of being
+in love or of courtship, which is so horrible on the face of it, if it
+be looked at impartially, or if it be explained scientifically.
+Unfortunately, there was at that time near him not a one of the present
+progressive and learned ladies who, having turned away the neck of the
+classic stork, and torn up by the roots the cabbage underneath which
+children are found, recommend that the great mystery of love and
+generation be explained to children in lectures, through comparisons
+and assimilations, mercilessly and in a well-nigh graphic manner.
+
+It must be said, that at that remote time of which we are speaking, the
+private institutions--male PENSIONS and institutes, as well as
+academies for cadets--represented some sort of hot-house nurseries. The
+care of the mind and morality they tried to entrust as much as possible
+to educators who were bureaucrats-formalists; and in addition
+impatient, captious, capricious in their sympathies and hysterical,
+just like old maid lady teachers. Now it is otherwise. But at that time
+the boys were left to themselves. Barely snatched away, speaking
+figuratively, from the maternal breast; from the care of devoted
+nurses; from morning and evening caresses, quiet and sweet; even though
+they were ashamed of every manifestation of tenderness as
+"womanishness," they were still irresistibly and sweetly drawn to
+kisses, contacts, conversations whispered in the ear.
+
+Of course, attentive, solicitous treatment, bathing, exercises in the
+open air--precisely not gymnastics, but voluntary exercises, each to
+his own taste--could have always put off the coming of this climacteric
+period or soften and make it understandable.
+
+I repeat--then there was nothing of this.
+
+The longing for family endearment, the endearment of mother, sister,
+nurse, so roughly and unexpectedly cut short, turned into deformed
+forms of courting (every whit like the "crushes" in a female institute)
+of good-looking boys, of "fairies"; they loved to whisper in corners
+and, walking arm in arm, or embracing in dark corridors, to tell in
+each other's ears improbable histories of adventures with women. This
+was partly both childhood's need of the fairy-tale element and partly
+awakening sensuality as well. Not infrequently some fifteen-year-old
+chubby, for whom it was just the proper time to be playing at popular
+tennis or to be greedily putting away buckwheat porridge with milk,
+would be telling, having read up, of course, on certain cheap novels,
+of how every Saturday, now, when it is leave, he goes to a certain,
+handsome widow millionairess; and of how she is passionately enamored
+of him; and how near their couch always stand fruits and precious wine;
+and how furiously and passionately she makes love to him.
+
+Here, by the bye, came along the inevitable run of prolonged reading,
+like hard drinking, which, of course, every boy and girl has undergone.
+No matter how strict in this respect the class surveillance may be, the
+striplings did read, are reading, and will read just that which is not
+permitted them. Here is a special passion, CHIC, the allurement of the
+forbidden. Already in the third class went from hand to hand the
+manuscript transcripts of Barkov; of a spurious Pushkin; the youthful
+sins of Lermontov and others: "THE FIRST NIGHT," "THE CHERRY," "LUCAS,"
+"THE FESTIVAL AT PETERHOF," "THE SHE UHLAN, GRIEF THROUGH WISDOM," "THE
+PRIEST," &c.
+
+But no matter how strange, fictitious or paradoxical this may seem,
+still, even these compositions, and drawings, and obscene photographic
+cards, did not arouse a delightful curiosity. They were looked upon as
+a prank, a lark, and the allurement of contraband risk. In the cadets'
+library were chaste excerpts from Pushkin and Lermontov; all of
+Ostrovsky, who only made you laugh; and almost all of Turgenev, who was
+the very one that played a chief and cruel role in Kolya's life. As it
+is known, love with the late great Turgenev is always surrounded with a
+tantalizing veil; some sort of crepe, unseizable, forbidden, but
+tempting: his maidens have forebodings of love and are agitated at its
+approach, and are ashamed beyond all measure, and tremble, and turn
+red. Married women or widows travel this tortuous path somewhat
+differently: they struggle for a long time with their duty, or with
+respectability, or with the opinion of the world; and, in the
+end--oh!--fall with tears; or--oh!--begin to brave it; or, which is
+still more frequent, the implacable fate cuts short her or his life at
+the most--oh!--necessary moment, when it only lacks a light puff of
+wind for the ripened fruit to fall. And yet all of his personages still
+thirst after this shameful love; weep radiantly and laugh joyously from
+it; and it shuts out all the world for them. But since boys think
+entirely differently than we grown-ups, and since everything that is
+forbidden, everything not said fully, or said in secret, has in their
+eyes an enormous, not only twofold but threefold interest--it is
+therefore natural that out of reading they drew the hazy thought that
+the grown-ups were concealing something from them.
+
+And it must be mentioned--had not Kolya (like the majority of those of
+his age) seen the chambermaid Phrociya--so rosy-cheeked, always merry,
+with legs of the hardness of steel (at times he, in the heat of
+playing, had slapped her on the back), had he not seen her once, when
+Kolya had by accident walked quickly into papa's cabinet, scurry out of
+there with all her might, covering her face with her apron; and had he
+not seen that during this time papa's face was red, with a dark blue,
+seemingly lengthened nose? And Kolya had reflected: "Papa looks like a
+turkey." Had not Kolya--partly through the fondness for pranks and the
+mischievousness natural to all boys, partly through
+tedium--accidentally discovered in an unlocked drawer of papa's writing
+table an enormous collection of cards, whereon was represented just
+that which shop clerks call the crowning of love, and worldly
+nincompoops--the unearthly passion?
+
+And had he not seen, that every time before the visit of the
+sweet-scented and bestarched Paul Edwardovich, some ninny with some
+embassy, with whom mamma, in imitation of the fashionable St.
+Petersburg promenades to the Strelka, used to ride to the Dnieper to
+contemplate the sun setting on the other side of the river, in the
+Chernigovskaya district--had he not seen how mamma's bosom went, and
+how her cheeks glowed under the powder; had he not detected at these
+moments many new and strange things; had he not heard her voice, an
+altogether unknown voice, like an actor's; nervously breaking off,
+mercilessly malicious to those of the family and the servants, and
+suddenly soft, like velvet, like a green meadow under the sun, when
+Paul Edwardovich would arrive? Ah, if we people who have been made wise
+by experience would know how much, and even too much, the urchins and
+little girls surrounding us know, of whom we usually say:
+
+"Well, why mind Volodya (or Petie, or Katie)? ... Why, they are little.
+They don't understand anything! ..."
+
+So also not in vain passed for Gladishev the history of his elder
+brother, who had just come out of a military school into one of the
+conspicuous grenadier regiments; and, being on leave until such time
+when it would be possible for him to spread his wings, lived in two
+separate rooms with his family. At that time Niusha, a chambermaid, was
+in their service; at times they jestingly called her signorita Anita--a
+seductive black-haired girl, who, if she were to change costumes, could
+in appearance be taken for a dramatic actress, or a princess of the
+royal blood, or a political worker. Kolya's mother manifestly
+countenanced the fact that Kolya's brother, half in jest, half in
+earnest, was allured by this girl. Of course, she had only the sole,
+holy, maternal calculation: If it were destined, after all, for her
+Borenka to fall, then let him give his purity, his innocence, his first
+physical inclination, not to a prostitute, not to a street-walker, not
+to a seeker of adventures, but to a pure girl. Of course, only a
+disinterested, unreasoning, truly-maternal feeling guided her. Kolya at
+that time was living through the epoch of llanos, pampases, Apaches,
+track-finders, and a chief by the name of "Black Panther"; and, of
+course, attentively kept track of the romance of his brother, and made
+his own syllogisms; at times only too correct, at times fantastic.
+After six months, from behind a door, he was the witness--or more
+correctly the auditor--of an outrageous scene. The wife of the general,
+always so respectable and restrained, was yelling in her boudoir at
+signorita Anita, and cursing in the words of a cab-driver: the
+signorita was in the fifth month of pregnancy. If she had not cried,
+then, probably, they would simply have given her smart-money, and she
+would have gone away in peace; but she was in love with the young
+master, did not demand anything, and for that reason they drove her
+away with the aid of the police.
+
+In the fifth or sixth class many of Kolya's comrades had already tasted
+of the tree of knowledge of evil. At that time it was considered in
+their corpus an especial, boastful masculine chic to call all secret
+things by their own names. Arkasha Shkar contracted a disease, not
+dangerous, but still venereal; and he became for three whole months the
+object of worship of all the seniors--at that time there were no squads
+yet. And many of them visited brothels; and, really, about their sprees
+they spoke far more handsomely and broadly than the hussars of the time
+of Denis Davidov.[23] These debauches were esteemed by them the last
+word in valour and maturity.
+
+
+[23] A Russian ban vivant, wit and poet (1781-1839), the overwhelming
+majority of whose lyrics deals with military exploits and
+debauches.--Trans.
+
+
+And so it happened once, that they did not exactly persuade Gladishev
+to go to Anna Markovna, but rather he himself had begged to go, so
+weakly had he resisted temptation. This evening he always recalled with
+horror, with aversion; and dimly, just like some heavy dream. With
+difficulty he recalled, how in the cab, to get up courage, he had drunk
+rum, revoltingly smelling of real bedbugs; how qualmish this beastly
+drink made him feel; how he had walked into the big hall, where the
+lights of the lustres and the candelabra on the walls were turning
+round in fiery wheels; where the women moved as fantastic pink, blue,
+violet splotches, and the whiteness of their necks, bosoms and arms
+flashed with a blinding, spicy, victorious splendour. Some one of the
+comrades whispered something in the ear of one of these fantastic
+figures. She ran up to Kolya and said:
+
+"Listen, you good-looking little cadet, your comrades are saying, now,
+that you're still innocent ... Let's go ... I'll teach you everything."
+
+The phrase was said in a kindly manner; but this phrase the walls of
+Anna Markovna's establishment had already heard several thousand times.
+Further, that took place which it was so difficult and painful to
+recall, that in the middle of his recollections Kolya grew tired, and
+with an effort of the will turned back the imagination to something
+else. He only remembered dimly the revolving and spreading circles from
+the light of the lamp; persistent kisses; disconcerting contacts--then
+a sudden sharp pain, from which one wanted both to die in enjoyment and
+to cry out in terror; and then with wonder he saw his pale shaking
+hands, which could not, somehow, button his clothes.
+
+Of course, all men have experienced this primordial tristia post
+coitus; but this great moral pain, very serious in its significance and
+depth, passes very rapidly, remaining, however, with the majority for a
+long time--sometimes for all life--in the form of wearisomeness and
+awkwardness after certain moments. In a short while Kolya became
+accustomed to it; grew bolder, became familiarized with woman, and
+rejoiced very much over the fact that when he came into the
+establishment, all the girls, and Verka before all, would call out:
+
+"Jennechka, your lover has come!"
+
+It was pleasant, in relating this to his comrades, to be plucking at an
+imaginary moustache.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+It was still early--about nine--of a rainy August evening. The
+illuminated drawing room in the house of Anna Markovna was almost
+empty. Only near the very doors a young telegraph clerk was sitting,
+his legs shyly and awkwardly squeezed under his chair, and was trying
+to start with the thick-fleshed Katie that worldly, unconstrained
+conversation which is laid down as the proper thing in polite society
+at quadrille, during the intermissions between the figures of the
+dance. And, also, the long-legged, aged Roly-Poly wandered over the
+room, sitting down now next one girl, now another, and entertaining
+them all with his fluent chatter.
+
+When Kolya Gladishev walked into the front hall, the first to recognize
+him was the round-eyed Verka, dressed in her usual jockey costume. She
+began to twirl round and round, to clap her palms, and called out:
+
+"Jennka, Jennka, come quicker, your little lover has come to you ...
+The little cadet ... And what a handsome little fellow!"
+
+But Jennka was not in the drawing room at this time; a stout
+head-conductor had already managed to get hold of her.
+
+This elderly, sedate, and majestic man was a very convenient guest,
+because he never lingered in the house for more than twenty minutes,
+fearing to let his train go by; and, even so, glanced at his watch all
+the while. During this time he regularly drank down four bottles of
+beer, and, going away, infallibly gave the girl half a rouble for candy
+and Simeon twenty kopecks for drink-money.
+
+Kolya Gladishev was not alone, but with a comrade of the same school,
+Petrov, who was stepping over the threshold of a brothel for the first
+time, having given in to the tempting persuasions of Gladishev.
+Probably, during these minutes, he found himself in the same wild,
+absurd, feverish state which Kolya himself had gone through a year and
+a half ago, when his legs had shook, his mouth had grown dry, and the
+lights of the lamps had danced before him in revolving wheels.
+
+Simeon took their great-coats from them and hid them separately, on the
+side, that the shoulder straps and the buttons might not be seen.
+
+It must be said, that this stern man, who did not approve of students
+because of their free-and-easy facetiousness and incomprehensible style
+in conversation, also did not like when just such boys in uniform
+appeared in the establishment.
+
+"Well, what's the good of it?" he would at times say sombrely to his
+colleagues by profession. "What if a whippersnapper like that comes,
+and runs right up nose to nose against his superiors? Smash, and
+they've closed up the establishment! There, like Lupendikha's three
+years back. Of course, it's nothing that they closed it up--she
+transferred it in another name right off; and when they sentenced her
+to sit in jail for a year and a half, why, it came to a pre-etty penny
+for her. She had to shell out four hundred for Kerbesh alone ... And
+then it also happens: a little pig of that kind will cook up some sort
+of disease for himself and start in whining: 'Oh, papa! Oh, mamma! I am
+dying!' 'Tell me, you skunk, where you got it?' 'There and there ...'
+Well, and so they haul you over the coals again; judge me, thou
+unrighteous judge!"
+
+"Pass on, pass on," said he to the cadets sternly.
+
+The cadets entered, blinking from the bright light. Petrov, who had
+been drinking to get up courage, swayed and was pale. They sat down
+beneath the picture of the Feast of the Russian Noblemen, and
+immediately two of the young ladies--Verka and Tamara--joined them on
+both sides.
+
+"Treat me to a smoke, you beautiful little brunet!" Verka turned to
+Petrov; and as though by accident put against his leg her strong, warm
+thigh, closely drawn over with white tights. "What an agreeable little
+fellow you are!"
+
+"But where's Jennie?" Gladishev asked of Tamara. "Is she busy with
+anybody?"
+
+Tamara looked him in the eyes intently--looked so fixedly, that the boy
+even began to feel uncomfortable, and turned away.
+
+"No. Why should she be busy? Only the whole day to-day her head ached;
+she was walking through the corridor, and at that time the housekeeper
+opened the door quickly and accidentally struck her in the
+forehead--and so her head started in to ache. The poor thing, she's
+lying the whole day with a cold pack. But why? Or can't you hold out?
+Wait a while, she'll come out in five minutes. You'll remain very much
+satisfied with her."
+
+Verka pestered Petrov:
+
+"Sweetie, dearie, what a tootsie-wootsicums you are! I adore such pale
+brunets; they are jealous and very fiery in love."
+
+And suddenly she started singing in a low voice:
+
+    "He's kind of brown,
+     My light, my own,
+     Won't sell me out, and won't deceive.
+     He suffers madly,
+     Pants and coat gladly
+     All for a woman he will give."
+
+"How do they call you, ducky dear?"
+
+"George," answered Petrov in a hoarse, cadet's bass.
+
+"Jorjik Jorochka! Ah, how very nice!"
+
+She suddenly drew near to his ear and whispered with a cunning face:
+
+"Jorochka, come to me."
+
+Petrov was abashed and forlornly let out in a bass:
+
+"I don't know ... It all depends on what the comrade says, now..."
+
+Verka burst into loud laughter:
+
+"There's a case for you! Say, what an infant it is! Such as you,
+Jorochka, in a little village would long since have been married; but
+he says: 'It all depends on the comrade!' You ought to ask a nurse or a
+wet nurse yet! Tamara, my angel, just imagine: I'm calling him to go
+sleeping, but he says: 'It all depends on the comrade.' What about you,
+mister friend, are you his bringer up?"
+
+"Don't be pestering, you devil!" clumsily, altogether like a cadet
+before a quarrel, grumbled out Petrov in a bass.
+
+The lanky, ricketty Roly-Poly, grown still grayer, walked up to the
+cadets, and, inclining his long, narrow head to one side, and having
+made a touching grimace, began to patter:
+
+"Messieurs cadets, highly educated young people; the flower, so to
+speak, of the intelligentzia; future masters of ordnance, will you not
+lend to a little old man, an aborigine of these herbiferous regions,
+one good old cigarette? I be poor. Omnia mea mecum porto. But I do
+adore the weed."
+
+And, having received a cigarette, suddenly, without delay, he got into
+a free-and-easy, unconstrained pose; put forward the bent right leg,
+put his hand to his side, and began to sing in a wizened falsetto:
+
+    "It used to be that I gave dinners,
+    In rivers flowed the champagne wine;
+    But now I have not even bread crusts,
+    Nor for a split, oh brother mine.
+
+    It used to be--in the Saratov
+    The doorman rushed, and was so fine;
+    But now all drive me in the neck,
+    Give for a split, oh brother mine."
+
+"Gentlemen!" suddenly exclaimed Roly-Poly with pathos, cutting short
+his singing and smiting himself on the chest. "Here I behold you, and
+know that you are the future generals Skobelev and Gurko; but I, too,
+in a certain respect, am a military hound. In my time, when I was
+studying for a forest ranger, all our department of woods and forests
+was military; and for that reason, knocking at the diamond-studded,
+golden doors of your hearts, I beg of you--donate toward the raising
+for an ensign of taxation of a wee measure of spiritus vini, which same
+is taken of the monks also."
+
+"Roly!" cried the stout Kitty from the other end, "show the young
+officers the lightning; or else, look you, you're taking the money only
+for nothing, you good-for-nothing camel."
+
+"Right away!" merrily responded Roly-Poly. "Most illustrious
+benefactors, turn your attention this way. Living Pictures. Thunder
+Storm on a Summer Day in June. The work of the unrecognized
+dramaturgist who concealed himself under the pseudonym of Roly-Poly.
+The first picture.
+
+"'It was a splendid day in June. The scorching rays of the sun
+illumined the blossoming meadows and environs ...'"
+
+Roly-Poly's Don Quixotic phiz spread into a wrinkled, sweetish smile;
+and the eyes narrowed into half-circles.
+
+"'... But now in the distance the first clouds have appeared upon the
+horizon. They grew, piled upon each other like crags, covering little
+by little the blue vault of the sky."
+
+By degrees the smile was coming off Roly-Poly's face, and it grew more
+and more serious and austere.
+
+"'At last the clouds have overcast the sun ... An ominous darkness has
+fallen ...'"
+
+Roly-Poly made his physiognomy altogether ferocious.
+
+"'The first drops of the rain fell ...'"
+
+Roly-Poly began to drum his fingers on the back of a chair.
+
+"'... In the distance flashed the first lightning ... '"
+
+Roly-Poly's eye winked quickly, and the left corner of his mouth gave a
+twitch.
+
+"'... Whereupon the rain began to pour down in torrents, and there came
+a sudden, blinding flash of lightning...'"
+
+And with unusual artistry and rapidity Roly-Poly, with a successive
+movement of his eyebrows, eyes, nose, the upper and the lower lip,
+portrayed a lightning zig-zag.
+
+"'... A jarring thunder clap burst out--trrroo-oo. An oak that had
+stood through the ages fell down to earth, as though it were a frail
+reed ...'"
+
+And Roly-Poly with an ease and daring not to be expected from one of
+his years, bending neither the knees nor the back, only drawing down
+his head, instantaneously fell down; straight, like a statue, with his
+back to the floor, but at once deftly sprang up on his feet.
+
+"'But now the thunder storm is gradually abating. The lightning flashes
+less and less often. The thunder sounds duller, just like a satiated
+beast--oooooo-oooooo ... The clouds scurry away. The first rays of the
+blessed sun have peeped out ...'"
+
+Roly-Poly made a wry smile.
+
+"'... And now, the luminary of day has at last begun to shine anew over
+the bathed earth ...'"
+
+And the silliest of beatific smiles spread anew over the senile face of
+Roly-Poly.
+
+The cadets gave him a twenty-kopeck piece each. He laid them on his
+palm, made a pass in the air with the other hand, said: ein, zwei,
+drei, snapped two of his fingers, and the coins vanished.
+
+"Tamarochka, this isn't honest," he said reproachfully. "Aren't you
+ashamed to take the last money from a poor retired almost-head-officer?
+Why have you hidden them here?"
+
+And, having snapped his fingers again, he drew the coins out of
+Tamara's ear.
+
+"I shall return at once, don't be bored without me," he reassured the
+young people; "but if you can't wait for me, then I won't have any
+special pretensions about it. I have the honour! ..."
+
+"Roly-Poly!" Little White Manka cried after him, "Won't you buy me
+candy for fifteen kopecks... Turkish Delight, fifteen kopecks' worth.
+There, grab!"
+
+Roly-Poly neatly caught in its flight the thrown fifteen-kopeck piece;
+made a comical curtsey and, pulling down the uniform cap with the green
+edging at a slant over his eyes, vanished.
+
+The tall, old Henrietta walked up to the cadets, also asked for a smoke
+and, having yawned, said:
+
+"If only you young people would dance a bit--for as it is the young
+ladies sit and sit, just croaking from weariness."
+
+"If you please, if you please!" agreed Kolya. "Play a waltz and
+something else of the sort."
+
+The musicians began to play. The girls started to whirl around with one
+another, ceremoniously as usual, with stiffened backs and with eyes
+modestly cast down.
+
+Kolya Gladishev, who was very fond of dancing, could not hold out and
+invited Tamara; he knew even from the previous winter that she danced
+more lightly and skillfully than the rest. While he was twirling in the
+waltz, the stout head-conductor, skillfully making his way between the
+couples, slipped away unperceived through the drawing room. Kolya did
+not have a chance to notice him.
+
+No matter how Verka pressed Petrov, she could not, in any way, drag him
+off his place. The recent light intoxication had by now gone entirely
+out of his head; and more and more horrible, and unrealizable, and
+monstrous did that for which he had come here seem to him. He might
+have gone away, saying that not a one here pleased him; have put the
+blame on a headache, or something; but he knew that Gladishev would not
+let him go; and mainly--it seemed unbearably hard to get up from his
+place and to walk a few steps by himself. And, besides that, he felt
+that he had not the strength to start talking of this with Kolya.
+
+They finished dancing. Tamara and Gladishev again sat down side by side.
+
+"Well, really, how is it that Jennechka isn't coming by now?" asked
+Kolya impatiently.
+
+Tamara quickly gave Verka a look with a question, incomprehensible to
+the uninitiated, in her eyes. Verka quickly lowered her eyelashes. This
+signified: yes, he is gone.
+
+"I'll go right away and call her," said Tamara.
+
+"But what are you so stuck on your Jennka for," said Henrietta. "You
+might take me."
+
+"All right, another time," answered Kolya and nervously began to smoke.
+
+Jennka was not even beginning to dress yet. She was sitting before the
+mirror and powdering her face.
+
+"What is it, Tamarochka?" she asked.
+
+"Your little cadet has come to you. He's waiting."
+
+"Ah, that's the little baby of last year... Well, the devil with him!"
+
+"And that's right, too. But how healthy and handsome the lad has grown,
+and how tall... It's a delight, that's all! So if you don't want to,
+I'll go myself."
+
+Tamara saw in the mirror how Jennka contracted her eyebrows.
+
+"No, you wait a while, Tamara, don't. I'll see. Send him here to me.
+Say that I'm not well, that my head aches."
+
+"I have already told him, anyway, that Zociya had opened the door
+unsuccessfully and hit you on the head; and that you're lying down with
+a cold pack. But the only thing is, is it worth while, Jennechka?"
+
+"Whether it's worth while or not, that's not your business, Tamara,"
+answered Jennka rudely.
+
+Tamara asked cautiously:
+
+"Is it possible, then, that you aren't at all, at all sorry?"
+
+"But for me you aren't sorry?" and she passed her hand over the red
+stripe that slashed her throat. "And for yourself you aren't sorry? And
+not sorry for this Liubka, miserable as she is? And not sorry for
+Pashka? You're huckleberry jelly, and not a human being!"
+
+Tamara smiled craftily and haughtily:
+
+"No, when it comes to a real matter, I'm not jelly. Perhaps you'll see
+this soon, Jennechka. Only let's better not quarrel--as it is it isn't
+any too sweet to live. All right, I'll go at once and send him to you."
+
+When she had gone away, Jennka lowered the light in the little hanging
+blue lantern, put on her night blouse, and lay down. A minute later
+Gladishev walked in; and after him Tamara, dragging Petrov by the hand,
+who resisted and kept his head down. And in the rear was thrust in the
+pink, sharp, foxy little phiz of the cross-eyed housekeeper Zociya.
+
+"And that's fine, now," the housekeeper commenced to bustle. "It's just
+sweet to look at; two handsome gents and two swell dames. A regular
+bouquet. What shall I treat you with, young people? Will you order beer
+or wine?"
+
+Gladishev had a great deal of money in his pocket, as much as he never
+had before during all his brief life--all of twenty-five roubles; and
+he wanted to go on a splurge. Beer he drank only out of bravado, but
+could not bear its bitter taste, and wondered himself how others could
+ever drink it. And for that reason, squeamishly, like an old rake,
+sticking out his lower lip, he said mistrustfully:
+
+"But then, you surely must have some awful stuff?"
+
+"What do you mean, what do you mean, good-looking! The very best
+gentlemen approve of it. Of the sweet, there are Cagore, church wine,
+Teneriffe; while of the French there's Lafitte. You can get port wine
+also. The girls just simply adore Lafitte with lemonade."
+
+"And what are the prices?"
+
+"No dearer than money. As is the rule in all good establishments--a
+bottle of Lafitte five roubles, four bottles of lemonade at a half
+each, that's two roubles, and only seven in all..."
+
+"That'll do you, Zociya," Jennka stopped her indifferently, "it's a
+shame to take advantage of boys. Even five is enough. You can see these
+are decent people, and not just anybody..."
+
+But Gladishev turned red, and with a negligent air threw a ten rouble
+note on the table.
+
+"Oh, what's the use of talking about it. All right, bring it."
+
+"Whilst I'm at it, I'll take the money for the visit as well. What
+about you, young people--are you on time or for the night? You know the
+rates yourself: on time, at two roubles; for the night, at five."
+
+"All right, all right. On time," interrupted Jennka, flaring up. "Trust
+us in that, at least."
+
+The wine was brought. Tamara through importunity got pastry, besides.
+Jennka asked for permission to call in Little White Manka. Jennka
+herself did not drink, did not get up from the bed, and all the time
+muffled herself up in a gray shawl of Orenburg[24] manufacture,
+although it was hot in the room. She looked fixedly, without tearing
+her eyes away, at the handsome, sunburned face of Gladishev, which had
+become so manly.
+
+
+[24] Orenburg has as high a reputation for woolens as Sheffield has for
+steel.--Trans.
+
+
+"What's the matter with you, dearie?" asked Gladishev, sitting down on
+her bed and stroking her hand.
+
+"Nothing special... Head aches a little... I hit myself."
+
+"Well, don't you pay any attention."
+
+"Well, here I've seen you, and already I feel better. How is it you
+haven't been here for so long?"
+
+"I couldn't snatch away the time, nohow-camping. You know yourself...
+We had to put away twenty-five versts a day. The whole day drilling and
+drilling: field, formation, garrison. With a full pack. Used to get so
+fagged out from morning to night that towards evening you couldn't feel
+your legs under you... We were at the manoeuvres also... It isn't
+sweet..."
+
+"Oh, you poor little things!" Little White Manka suddenly clasped her
+hands. "And what do they torture you for, angels that you are? If I was
+to have a brother like you, or a son--my heart would just simply bleed.
+Here's to your health, little cadet!"
+
+They clinked glasses. Jennka was just as attentively scrutinizing
+Gladishev.
+
+"And you, Jennechka?" he asked, extending a glass.
+
+"I don't want to," she answered listlessly, "but, however, ladies,
+you've drunk some wine, chatted a bit--don't wear the welcome off the
+mat."
+
+"Perhaps you'll stay with me the whole night?" she asked Gladishev,
+when the others had gone away. "Don't you be afraid, dearie; if you
+won't have enough money, I'll pay the difference for you. You see, how
+good-looking you are, that a wench does not grudge even money for you?"
+she began laughing.
+
+Gladishev turned around to her; even his unobserving ear was struck by
+Jennka's strange tone--neither sad, nor kindly, nor yet mocking.
+
+"No, sweetie, I'd be very glad to; I'd like to remain myself, but I
+can't possibly; I promised to be home toward ten o'clock."
+
+"That's nothing, dear, they'll wait; you're altogether a grown-up man
+now. Is it possible that you have to listen to anybody? ... But,
+however, as you wish. Shall I put out the light entirely, perhaps; or
+is it all right the way it is? Which do you want--the outside or near
+the wall?"
+
+"It's immaterial to me," he answered in a quavering voice; and, having
+embraced with his arm the hot, dry body of Jennka, he stretched with
+his lips toward her face. She slightly repulsed him.
+
+"Wait, bear a while, sweetheart--we have time enough to kiss our fill
+yet. Just lie still for one little minute... So, now... quiet,
+peaceful... don't stir..."
+
+These words, passionate and imperious, acted like hypnosis upon
+Gladishev. He submitted to her and lay down on his back, putting his
+hands underneath his head. She raised herself a little, leant upon her
+elbow, and placing her head upon the bent hand, silently, in the faint
+half-light, was looking his body over--so white, strong, muscular; with
+a high and broad pectoral cavity; with well-made ribs; with a narrow
+pelvis; and with mighty, bulging thighs. The dark tan of the face and
+the upper half of the neck was divided by a sharp line from the
+whiteness of the shoulders and breast.
+
+Gladishev blinked for a second. It seemed to him that he was feeling
+upon himself, upon his face, upon his entire body, this intensely fixed
+gaze, which seemed to touch his face and tickle it, like the cobwebby
+contact of a comb, which you first rub against a cloth--the sensation
+of a thin, imponderous, living matter.
+
+He opened his eyes and saw altogether near him the large, dark, uncanny
+eyes of the woman, who seemed to him now an entire stranger.
+
+"What are you looking at, Jennie?" he asked quietly. "What are you
+thinking of?"
+
+"My dear little boy! ...They call you Kolya: isn't that so?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't be angry at me, carry out a certain caprice of mine, please:
+shut your eyes again... no, even tighter, tighter... I want to turn up
+the light and have a good look at you. There now, so... If you only
+knew how beautiful you are now... right now... this second. Later you
+will become coarse, and you will begin giving off a goatish smell; but
+now you give off an odour of fur and milk... and a little of some wild
+flower. But shut them--shut your eyes!"
+
+She added light, returned to her place, and sat down in her favourite
+pose--Turkish fashion. Both kept silent. In the distance, several rooms
+away, a broken-down grand piano was tinkling; somebody's vibrating
+laughter floated in; while from the other side--a little song, and
+rapid, merry talking. The words could not be heard. A cabby was
+rumbling by somewhere through the distant street...
+
+"And now I will infect him right away, just like all the others,"
+pondered Jennka, gliding with a deep gaze over his well-made legs, his
+handsome torso of a future athlete, and over his arms, thrown back,
+upon which, above the bend of the elbow, the muscles tautened--bulging,
+firm. "Why, then, am I so sorry for him? Or is it because he is such a
+good-looking little fellow? No. I am long since a stranger to such
+feelings. Or is it because he is a boy? Why, only a little over a year
+ago I shoved apples in his pocket, when he was going away from me at
+night. Why have I not told him then that which, I can, and dare, tell
+him now? Or would he not have believed me, anyway? Would have grown
+angry? Would have gone to another? For sooner or later this turn awaits
+every man... And that he bought me for money--can that be forgiven? Or
+did he act just as all of them do--blindly? ..."
+
+"Kolya!" she said quietly, "Open your eyes."
+
+He obeyed, opened his eyes, turned to her; entwined her neck with his
+arm, drew her a little to him, and wanted to kiss her in the opening of
+her chemise--on the breast. She again tenderly but commandingly
+repulsed him.
+
+"No, wait a while, wait a while--hear me out... one little minute more.
+Tell me, boy, why do you come here to us--to the women?"
+
+Kolya quietly and hoarsely began laughing.
+
+"How silly you are! Well, what do they all come for? Am I not also a
+man? For, it seems, I'm at that age when in every man ripens... well, a
+certain need... for woman. For I'm not going to occupy myself with all
+sorts of nastiness!"
+
+"Need? Only need? That means, just as for that chamber which stands
+under my bed?"
+
+"No, why so?" retorted Kolya, with a kindly laugh. "I liked you very
+much... From the very first time... If you will, I'm even... a little
+in love with you... at least, I never stayed with any of the others."
+
+"Well, all right! But then, the first time, could it possibly have been
+need?"
+
+"No, perhaps, it wasn't need even; but somehow, vaguely, I wanted
+woman... My friends talked me into it... Many had already gone here
+before me... So then, I too..."
+
+"But, now, weren't you ashamed the first time?"
+
+Kolya became confused; all this interrogation was to him unpleasant,
+oppressive. He felt, that this was not the empty, idle bed talk, so
+well known to him, out of his small experience; but something else, of
+more import.
+
+"Let's say... not that I was ashamed... well, but still I felt kind of
+awkward. I drank that time to get up courage."
+
+Jennie again lay down on her side; leaned upon her elbow, and again
+looked at him from time to time, near at hand and intently.
+
+"But tell me, sweetie," she asked, in a barely audible voice, so that
+the cadet with difficulty made out her words, "tell me one thing more;
+but the fact of your paying money, these filthy two roubles--do you
+understand?--paying them for love, so that I might caress, kiss you,
+give all my body to you--didn't you feel ashamed to pay for that?
+Never?"
+
+"Oh, my God! What strange questions you put to me to-day! But then they
+all pay money! Not I, then some one else would have paid--isn't it all
+the same to you?"
+
+"And have you been in love with any one, Kolya? Confess! Well, now, if
+not in real earnest, then just so... at soul... Have you done any
+courting? Brought little flowers of some sort... Strolled arm-in-arm
+with her under the moon? Wasn't that so?"
+
+"Well, yes," said Koiya in a sedate bass. "What follies don't happen in
+one's youth! It's a matter anyone can understand..."
+
+"Some sort of a little first cousin? An educated young lady? A boarding
+school miss? A high school girl? ... There has been, hasn't there?"
+
+"Well, yes, of course--everybody has them."
+
+"Why, you wouldn't have touched her, would you? ... You'd have spared
+her? Well, if she had only said to you: take me, but only give me two
+roubles--what would you have said to her?"
+
+"I don't understand you, Jennka!" Gladishev suddenly grew angry. "What
+are you putting on airs for! What sort of comedy are you trying to put
+over! Honest to God, I'll dress myself at once and go away."
+
+"Wait a while, wait a while, Kolya! One more, one more, the last, the
+very, very last question."
+
+"Oh, you!" growled Kolya displeased.
+
+"And could you never imagine... well, imagine it right now, even for a
+second... that your family has suddenly grown poor, become ruined.
+You'd have to earn your bread by copying papers; or, now, let's say,
+through carpenter or blacksmith work; and your sister was to go wrong,
+like all of us... yes, yes, yours, your own sister... if some blockhead
+seduced her and she was to go travelling... from hand to hand... what
+would you say then?"
+
+"Bosh! ... That can't be..." Kolya cut her short curtly. "But, however,
+that's enough--I'm going away!"
+
+"Go away, do me that favour! I've ten roubles lying there, near the
+mirror, in a little box from chocolates--take them for yourself. I
+don't need them, anyway. Buy with them a tortoise powder box with a
+gold setting for your mamma; and if you have a little sister, buy her a
+good doll. Say: in memory from a certain wench that died. Go on, little
+boy!"
+
+Kolya, with a frown, angry, with one shove of a well-knit body jumped
+off the bed, almost without touching it. Now he was standing on the
+little mat near the bed, naked, well-formed, splendid in all the
+magnificence of his blooming, youthful body.
+
+"Kolya!" Jennka called him quietly, insistently and caressingly.
+"Kolechka!"
+
+He turned around to her call, and drew in the air in a short, jerky
+gust, as though he had gasped: he had never yet in his life met
+anywhere, even in pictures, such a beautiful expression of tenderness,
+sorrow, and womanly silent reproach, as the one he was just now
+beholding in the eyes of Jennka, filled with tears. He sat down on the
+edge of the bed, and impulsively embraced her around the bared, swarthy
+arms.
+
+"Let's not quarrel, then, Jennechka," he said tenderly.
+
+And she twined herself around him, placed her arms on his neck, while
+her head she pressed against his breast. They kept silent so for
+several seconds.
+
+"Kolya," Jennie suddenly asked dully, "but were you never afraid of
+becoming infected?"
+
+Kolya shivered. Some chill, loathsome horror stirred and glided through
+within his soul. He did not answer at once.
+
+"Of course, that would be horrible... horrible... God save me! But then
+I go only to you alone, only to you! You'd surely have told me? ..."
+
+"Yes, I'd have told you," she uttered meditatively. And at once
+rapidly, consciously, as though having weighed the significance of her
+words: "Yes, of course, of course, I would have told you! But haven't
+you ever heard what sort of a thing is that disease called syphilis?"
+
+"Of course, I've heard... The nose falls through..."
+
+"No, Kolya, not only the nose! The person becomes all diseased: his
+bones, sinews, brains grow diseased... Some doctors say such nonsense
+as that it's possible to be cured of this disease. Bosh! You'll never
+cure yourself! A person rots ten, twenty, thirty years. Every second
+paralysis can strike him down, so that the right side of the face, the
+right arm, the right leg die--it isn't a human being that's living, but
+some sort of a little half. Half-man-half-corpse. The majority of them
+go out of their minds. And each understands... every person... each one
+so infected understands, that if he eats, drinks, kisses, simply even
+breathes--he can't be sure that he won't immediately infect some one of
+those around him, the very nearest--sister, wife, son... To all
+syphilitics the children are born monsters, abortions, goitrous,
+consumptives, idiots. There, Kolya, is what this disease means. And
+now," Jennka suddenly straightened up quickly, seized Kolya fast by his
+bare shoulders, turned his face to her, so that he was almost blinded
+by the flashing of her sorrowful, sombre, extraordinary eyes, "and now,
+Kolya, I will tell you that for more than a month I am sick with this
+filth. And that's just why I haven't allowed you to kiss me..."
+
+"You're joking! ... You're teasing me on purpose, Jennie!" muttered
+Gladishev, wrathful, frightened, and out of his wits.
+
+"Joking? ...Come here!"
+
+She abruptly compelled him to get up on his feet, lit a match and said:
+
+"Now look closely at what I'm going to show you..."
+
+She opened her mouth wide and placed the light so that it would
+illumine her larynx. Kolya looked and staggered back.
+
+"Do you see these white spots? This is syphilis, Kolya! Do you
+understand?--syphilis in the most fearful, the most serious stage. Now
+dress yourself and thank God."
+
+He, silently and without looking around at Jennka, began to dress
+hurriedly, missing his clothes when he tried to put his legs through.
+His hands were shaking, and his under jaw jumped so that the lower
+teeth knocked against the upper; while Jennka was speaking with bowed
+head:
+
+"Listen, Kolya, it's your good fortune that you've run across an honest
+woman; another wouldn't have spared you. Do you hear that? We, whom you
+deprive of innocence and then drive out of your home, while later you
+pay us two roubles a visit, we always--do you understand?"--she
+suddenly raised her head--"we always hate you and never have any pity
+for you!"
+
+The half-clad Kolya suddenly dropped his dressing, sat down on the bed
+near Jennka and, covering his face with his palms, burst into tears;
+sincerely, altogether like a child...
+
+"Lord, Lord," he whispered, "why this is the truth! ... What a vile
+thing this really is! ... We, also, we had this happen: we had a
+chambermaid, Niusha...a chambermaid... they also called her signorita
+Anita...a pretty little girl...and my brother lived with her...my elder
+brother...an officer...and when he went away, she proved pregnant and
+mother drove her out...well, yes--drove her out...threw her out of the
+house, like a floor mop...Where is she now? And father...father...he
+also with a cham...chambermaid."
+
+And the half-naked Jennka, this Jennka, the atheist, swearer, and
+brawler, suddenly got up from the bed, stood before the cadet, and
+slowly, almost solemnly, made the sign of the cross over him.
+
+"And may God preserve you my boy!" she said with an expression of deep
+tenderness and gratitude.
+
+And at once she ran to the door, opened it and called out:
+"Housekeeper!"
+
+"Tell you what, housekeeper dear," Jennka directed, "go and find out,
+please, which one of them is free--Tamara or Little White Manka. And
+the one that's free send here."
+
+Kolya growled out something in the back, but Jennka purposely did not
+listen to him.
+
+"And please make it as quick as possible, housekeeper dear, won't you
+be so kind?"
+
+"Right away, right away, miss."
+
+"Why, why do you do this, Jennie?" asked Gladishev with anguish. "Well,
+what's that for? ...Is it possible that you want to tell about it? ..."
+
+"Wait awhile, that's not your business...Wait a while, I won't do
+anything unpleasant for you."
+
+After a minute Little White Manka came in her brown, smooth,
+deliberately modest dress of a high school girl.
+
+"What did you call me for, Jennie? Or have you quarreled?"
+
+"No, we haven't quarreled, Mannechka, but my head aches very much,"
+answered Jennka calmly, "and for that reason my little friend finds me
+very cold. Be a friend, Mannechka, stay with him, take my place!"
+
+"That's enough, Jennie, stop it, darling!" in a tone of sincere
+suffering retorted Kolya. "I understand everything, everything, it's
+not necessary now ... Don't be finishing me off, then! ..."
+
+"I don't understand anything of what's happened," the frivolous Manka
+spread out her hands. "Maybe you'll treat a poor little girl to
+something?"
+
+"Well, go on, go on!" Jennka sent her away gently. "I'll come right
+away. We just played a joke."
+
+Already dressed, they stood for long in the open door between the
+bedroom and the corridor; and without words sadly looked at each other.
+And Kolya did not understand, but sensed, that at this moment in his
+soul was taking place one of those tremendous crises which tell
+imperiously upon the entire life.
+
+Then he pressed Jennie's hand hard and said:
+
+"Forgive! ... Will you forgive me, Jennie? Will you forgive? ..."
+
+"Yes, my boy! ... Yes, my fine one! ... Yes...yes..."
+
+She tenderly, softly, like a mother, stroked his closely cropped harsh
+head and gave him, a slight shove into the corridor.
+
+"Where are you bound now?" she sent after him, half opening her door.
+
+"I'll take my comrade right away, and then home."
+
+"As you know best! ... God bless you, dearie!"
+
+"Forgive me! ... Forgive me! ..." once more repeated Kolya, stretching
+out his hands to her.
+
+"I've already told you, my splendid boy...And you forgive me too...For
+we won't see each other anymore!"
+
+And she, having closed the door, was left alone.
+
+In the corridor Gladishev hesitated, because he did not know how to
+find the room to which Petrov had retired with Tamara. But the
+housekeeper Zociya helped him, running past him very quickly, and with
+a very anxious, alarmed air.
+
+"Oh, I haven't time to bother with you now!" she snarled back at
+Gladishev's question. "Third door to the left."
+
+Kolya walked up to the door indicated and knocked. Some sort of bustle
+and whispering sounded in the room. He knocked once more.
+
+"Kerkovius, open! This is me--Soliterov."
+
+Among the cadets, setting out on expeditions of this sort, it was
+always agreed upon to call each other by fictitious names. It was not
+so much a conspiracy or a shift against the vigilance of those in
+authority, or fear of compromising one's self before a chance
+acquaintance of the family, but rather a play, of its own kind, at
+mysteriousness and disguise--a play tracing its beginning from those
+times when the young people were borne away by Gustave Aimard, Mayne
+Reid, and the detective Lecocq.
+
+"You can't come in!" the voice of Tamara came from behind the door.
+"You can't come in. We are busy."
+
+But the bass voice of Petrov immediately cut her short:
+
+"Nonsense! She's lying. Come in. It's all right."
+
+Kolya opened the door.
+
+Petrov was sitting on a chair dressed, but all red, morose, with lips
+pouting like a child's, with downcast eyes.
+
+"Well, what a friend you've brought--I must say!" Tamara began speaking
+sneeringly and wrathfully. "I thought he was a man in earnest, but this
+is only some sort of a little girl! He's sorry to lose his innocence,
+if you please. What a treasure you've found, to be sure! But take back,
+take back your two roubles!" she suddenly began yelling at Petrov and
+tossed two coins on the table. "You'll give them away to some poor
+chambermaid or other! Or else save them for gloves for yourself, you
+marmot!"
+
+"But what are you cursing for?" grumbled Petrov, without raising his
+eyes. "I'm not cursing you, am I? Then why do you curse first? I have a
+full right to act as I want to. But I have passed some time with you,
+and so take them. But to be forced, I don't want to. And on your part,
+Gladishev--that is, Soliterov--this isn't at all nice. I thought she
+was a nice girl, but she's trying to kiss all the time, and does God
+knows what..."
+
+Tamara, despite her wrath, burst into laughter.
+
+"Oh, you little stupid, little stupid! Well, don't be angry--I'll take
+your money. Only watch: this very evening you'll be sorry, you'll be
+crying. Well, don't be angry, don't be angry, angel, let's make up. Put
+your hand out to me, as I'm doing to you."
+
+"Let's go, Kerkovius," said Gladishev. "Au revoir, Tamara!"
+
+Tamara let the money down into her stocking, through the habit of all
+prostitutes, and went to show the boys the way.
+
+Even at the time that they were passing through the corridor Gladishev
+was struck by the strange, silent, tense bustle in the drawing room;
+the trampling of feet and some muffled, low-voiced, rapid conversations.
+
+Near that place where they had just been sitting below the picture, all
+the inmates of Anna Markovna's house and several outsiders had
+gathered. They were standing in a close knot, bending down. Kolya
+walked up with curiosity, and, wedging his way through a little, looked
+in between the heads: on the floor, sideways, somehow unnaturally drawn
+up, was lying Roly-Poly. His face was blue, almost black. He did not
+move, and was lying strangely small, shrunken, with legs bent. One arm
+was squeezed in under his breast, while the other was flung back.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" asked Gladishev in a fright.
+
+Niurka answered him, starting to speak in a rapid, jerky whisper:
+
+"Roly-Poly just came here...Gave Manka the candy, and then started in
+to put Armenian riddles to us...'Of a blue colour, hangs in the parlor
+and whistles'...We couldn't guess nohow, but he says: 'A
+herring'...Suddenly he started laughing, had a coughing spell, and
+began falling sideways; and then--bang on the ground and don't
+move...They sent for the police...Lord, there's doings for you! ... I'm
+horribly afraid of corpseses!"
+
+"Wait!" Gladishev stopped her. "It's necessary to feel his forehead; he
+may be alive yet..."
+
+He did try to thrust himself forward, but Simeon's fingers, just like
+iron pincers, seized him above the elbows and dragged him back.
+
+"There's nothing, there's nothing to be inspecting," sternly ordered
+Simeon, "go on, now, young gents, out of here! This is no place for
+you: the police will come, will summon you as witnesses--then it's
+scat! to the devil's dam! for you out of the military high school!
+Better go while you're good and healthy!"
+
+He escorted them to the entrance hall, shoved the great-coats into
+their hands and added still more sternly:
+
+"Well, now--go at a run...Lively! So's there won't be even a whiff of
+you left. And if you come another time, then I won't let youse in at
+all. You are wise guys, you are! You gave the old hound money for
+whiskey--so now he's gone and croaked."
+
+"Well, don't you get too smart, now!" Gladishev flew at him, all
+ruffled up.
+
+"What d'you mean, don't get smart? ..." Simeon suddenly began to yell
+infuriatedly, and his black eyes without lashes and brows became so
+terrible that the cadets shrank back. "I'll soak you one on the snout
+so hard you'll forget how to say papa and mamma! Git, this second! Or
+else I'll bust you in the neck!"
+
+The boys went down the steps.
+
+At this time two men were going up, in cloth caps on the sides of their
+heads; one in a blue, the other in a red blouse, with the skirts
+outside, under the unbuttoned, wide open jackets--evidently, Simeon's
+comrades in the profession.
+
+"What?" one of them called out gaily from below, addressing Simeon, "Is
+it bye-bye for Roly-Poly?"
+
+"Yes, it must be the finish," answered Simeon. "We've got to throw him
+out into the street in the meantime, fellows, or else the spirits will
+start haunting. The devil with him, let 'em think that he drank himself
+full and croaked on the road."
+
+"But you didn't ... well, now? ... You didn't do for him?"
+
+"Well, now, there's foolish talk! If there'd only been some reason. He
+was a harmless fellow. Altogether like a little lamb. It must be just
+that his turn came."
+
+"And didn't he find a place where to die! Couldn't he have thought up
+something worse?" said the one who was in the red shirt.
+
+"Right you are, there!" seconded the other. "Lived to grin and died in
+sin. Well, let's go, mate, what?"
+
+The cadets ran with all their might. Now, in the darkness, the figure
+of Roly-Poly drawn up on the floor, with his blue face, appeared before
+them in all the horror that the dead possess for early youth; and
+especially if recalled at night, in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+A fine rain, like dust, obstinate and tedious, had been drizzling since
+morning. Platonov was working in the port at the unloading of
+watermelons. At the mill, where he had since the very summer proposed
+to establish himself, luck had turned against him; after a week he had
+already quarreled, and almost had a fight, with the foreman, who was
+extremely brutal with the workers. About a month Sergei Ivanovich had
+struggled along somehow from hand to mouth, somewheres in the
+back-yards of Temnikovskaya Street, dragging into the editorial rooms
+of The Echoes, from time to time, notes of street accidents or little
+humorous scenes from the court rooms of the justices of the peace. But
+the hard newspaper game had long ago grown distasteful to him. He was
+always drawn to adventures, to physical labour in the fresh air, to
+life completely devoid of even the least hint at comfort; to care-free
+vagabondage, in which a man, having cast from him all possible external
+conditions, does not know himself what is going to be with him on the
+morrow. And for that reason, when from the lower stretches of the
+Dnieper the first barges with watermelons started coming in, he
+willingly entered a gang of labourers, in which he was known even from
+last year, and loved for his merry nature, for his comradely spirit,
+and for his masterly ability of keeping count.
+
+This labour was carried on with good team work and with skill. Four
+parties, each of five men, worked on each barge. Number one would reach
+for a watermelon and pass it on to the second, who was standing on the
+side of the barge. The second cast it to the third, standing already on
+the wharf; the third threw it over to the fourth; while the fourth
+handed it up to the fifth, who stood on a horse cart and laid the
+watermelons away--now dark-green, now white, now striped--into even
+glistening rows. This work is clean, lively, and progresses rapidly.
+When a good party is gotten up, it is a pleasure to see how the
+watermelons fly from hand to hand, are caught with a circus-like
+quickness and success, and anew, and anew, without a break, fly, in
+order to fill up the dray. It is only difficult for the novices, that
+have not as yet gained the skill, have not caught on to that especial
+sense of the tempo. And it is not as difficult to catch a watermelon as
+to be able to throw it.
+
+Platonov remembered well his first experiences of last year. What
+swearing--virulent, mocking, coarse--poured down upon him when for the
+third or fourth time he had been gaping and had slowed up the passing:
+two watermelons, not thrown in time, had smashed against the pavement
+with a succulent crunch, while the completely lost Platonov dropped the
+one which he was holding in his hands as well. The first time they
+treated him gently; on the second day, however, for every mistake they
+began to deduct from him five kopecks per watermelon out of the common
+share. The following time when this happened, they threatened to throw
+him out of the party at once, without any reckoning. Platonov even now
+still remembered how a sudden fury seized him: "Ah, so? The devil take
+you!" he had thought. "And yet you want me to be chary of your
+watermelons? So then, here you are, here you are! ..." This flare-up
+helped him as though instantaneously. He carelessly caught the
+watermelons, just as carelessly threw them over, and to his amazement
+suddenly felt that precisely just now he had gotten into the real swing
+of the work with all his muscles, sight, and breathing; and understood,
+that the most important thing was not to think at all of the
+watermelons representing some value, and that then everything went
+well. When he, finally, had fully mastered this art, it served him for
+a long time as a pleasant and entertaining athletic game of its own
+kind. But that, too, passed away. He reached, in, the end, the stage
+where he felt himself a will-less, mechanical wheel in a general
+machine consisting of five men and an endless chain of flying
+watermelons.
+
+Now he was number two. Bending downward rhythmically, he, without
+looking, received with both hands the cold, springy, heavy watermelon;
+swung it to the right; and, also almost without looking, or looking
+only out of the corner of his eye, tossed it downward, and immediately
+once again bent down for the next watermelon. And his ear seized at
+this time how smack-smack ...smack-smack...the caught watermelons
+slapped in the hands; and immediately bent downwards and again threw,
+letting the air out of himself noisily--ghe...ghe...
+
+The present work was very profitable; their gang, consisting of forty
+men, had taken on the work, thanks to the great rush, not by the day
+but by the amount of work done, by the waggon load. Zavorotny, the
+head--an enormous, mighty Poltavian--had succeeded with extreme
+deftness in getting around the owner; a young man, and, to boot, in all
+probability not very experienced as yet. The owner, it is true, came to
+his senses later and wanted to change the stipulations; but experienced
+melon growers dissuaded him from it in time: "Drop it. They'll kill
+you," they told him simply and firmly. And so, through this very stroke
+of good luck every member of the gang was now earning up to four
+roubles a day. They all worked with unusual ardour, even with some sort
+of vehemence; and if it had been possible to measure with some
+apparatus the labour of each one of them, then, in all probability, the
+number of units of energy created would have equalled the work of a
+large Voronezhian train horse.
+
+However, Zavorotny was not satisfied even with this--he hurried and
+hurried his lads on all the time. Professional ambition was speaking
+within him; he wanted to bring the daily earnings of every member of
+the gang up to five roubles per snout. And gaily, with unusual ease,
+twinkled from the harbour to the waggon, twirling and flashing, the wet
+green and white watermelons; and their succulent plashing resounded
+against accustomed palms.
+
+But now a long blast sounded on the dredging machine in the port. A
+second, a third, responded to it on the river; a few more on shore; and
+for a long time they roared together in a mighty chorus of different
+voices.
+
+"Ba-a-a-st-a-a!" hoarsely and thickly, exactly like a locomotive blast,
+Zavorotny started roaring.
+
+And now the last smack-smack--and the work stopped instantaneously.
+
+Platonov with enjoyment straightened out his back and bent it backward,
+and spread out his swollen arms. With pleasure he thought of having
+already gotten over that first pain in all the muscles, which tells so
+during the first days, when one is just getting back into the work
+after disuse. While up to this day, awaking in the mornings in his lair
+on Temnikovskaya--also to the sound of a factory blast agreed upon--he
+would during the first minutes experience such fearful pains in his
+neck, back, in his arms and legs, that it seemed to him as if only a
+miracle would be able to compel him to get up and make a few steps.
+
+"Go-o-o and e-at," Zavorotny began to clamour again.
+
+The stevedores went down to the water; got down on their knees or laid
+down flat on the gangplank or on the rafts; and, scooping up the water
+in handfuls, washed their wet, heated faces and arms. Right here, too,
+on the shore, to one side, where a little grass had been left yet, they
+disposed themselves for dinner: placed in a circle ten of the most ripe
+watermelons, black bread, and twenty dried porgies. Gavriushka the
+Bullet was already running with a half-gallon bottle to the pot-house
+and was singing as he went the soldiers' signal for dinner:
+
+    "Drag spoon and mess-kit out,
+    If there's no bread, eat without."
+
+A bare-footed urchin, dirty and so ragged that there was more of his
+bare body than clothes upon him, ran up to the gang.
+
+"Which one of you here is Platonov?" he asked, quickly running over
+them with his thievish eyes.
+
+"I'm Platonov, and by what name do they tease you?"
+
+"Around the corner here, behind the church, some sort of a young lady
+is waiting for you...Here's a note for you."
+
+The whole gang neighed deeply.
+
+"What d'you open up your mouths for, you pack of fools!" said Platonov
+calmly. "Give me the note here."
+
+This was a letter from Jennka, written in a round, naive, rolling,
+childish handwriting, and not very well spelt.
+
+"Sergei Ivanich. Forgive me that I disturbe you. I must talk over a
+very, very important matter with you. I would not be troubling you if
+it was Trifles. For only 10 minutes in all. Jennka, whom you know, from
+Anna Markovna's."
+
+Platonov got up.
+
+"I'm going away for a little while," he said to Zavorotny. "When you
+begin, I'll be in my place."
+
+"Now you've found somethin' to do," lazily and contemptuously said the
+head of the gang. "There's the night for that business...Go ahead, go
+ahead, who's holding you. But only if you won't be here when we begin
+work, then this day don't count. I'll take any tramp. And as many
+watermelons as he busts--that's out of your share, too...I didn't think
+it of you, Platonov--that you're such a he-dog..."
+
+Jennka was waiting for him in the tiny little square, sheltered between
+a church and the wharf, and consisting of ten sorry poplars. She had on
+a gray, one-piece street dress; a simple, round, straw hat with a small
+black ribbon. "And yet, even though she has dressed herself simply,"
+reflected Platonov, looking at her from a distance with his habitually
+puckered eyes, "and yet, every man will walk past, give a look, and
+inevitably look back three or four times; he'll feel the especial tone
+at once."
+
+"Howdy do, Jennka! Very glad to see you," he said cordially, squeezing
+the girl's hand. "There, now, I didn't expect it!"
+
+Jennka was reserved, sad, and apparently troubled over something.
+Platonov at once understood and sensed this.
+
+"You excuse me, Jennechka, I must have dinner right away," said he,
+"so, perhaps, you'll go together with me and tell me what's the matter,
+while I'll manage to eat at the same time. There's a modest little inn
+not far from here. At this time there are no people there at all, and
+there's even a tiny little stall, a sort of a private room; that will
+be just the thing for you and me. Let's go! Perhaps you'll also have a
+bite of something."
+
+"No. I won't eat," answered Jennka hoarsely, "and I won't detain you
+for long...a few minutes. I have to talk things over, have some
+advice--but I haven't anybody."
+
+"Very well...Let's go then! In whatever way I can, I'm always at your
+service, in everything. I love you very much, Jennka!"
+
+She looked at him sadly and gratefully.
+
+"I know this, Serge Ivanovich; that's why I've come."
+
+"You need money, perhaps? Just say so. I haven't got much with me,
+myself; but the gang will trust me with an advance."
+
+"No, thanks...it isn't that at all. I'll tell everything at once,
+there, where we're going now."
+
+In the dim, low-ceiled little inn, the customary haunt of petty
+thieves, where business was carried on only in the evening, until very
+far into the night, Platonov took the little half-dark cubby hole.
+
+"Give me boiled meat, cucumbers, a large glass of vodka, and bread," he
+ordered the waiter.
+
+The waiter--a young fellow with a dirty face; pugnosed; as dirty and
+greasy in all his person as though he had just been pulled out of a
+cesspool, wiped his lips and asked hoarsely:
+
+"How many kopecks' bread?" "As much as it comes to." Then he started
+laughing:
+
+"Bring as much as possible--we'll reckon it up later... and some bread
+cider!"
+
+"Well, Jennie, say what your trouble is...I can already see by your
+face that there's trouble, or something distasteful in general...Go
+ahead and tell it!"
+
+Jennka for a long time plucked her handkerchief and looked at the tips
+of her slippers, as though, gathering her strength. Timorousness had
+taken possession of her--the necessary and important words would not
+come into her mind, for anything. Platonov came to her aid: "Don't be
+embarrassed, my dear Jennie, tell all there is! For you know that I'm
+like one of the family, and will never give you away. And perhaps I may
+really give you some worth-while advice. Well, dive off with a splash
+into the water--begin!"
+
+"That's just it, I don't know how to begin," said Jennka irresolutely.
+"Here's what, Sergei Ivanovich, I'm a sick woman...Understand?--sick in
+a bad way...With the most nasty disease...Do you know which?"
+
+"Go on!" said Platonov, nodding his head.
+
+"And I've been that way for a long time...more than a month...a month
+and a half, maybe...Yes, more than a month, because I found out about
+this on the Trinity..."
+
+Platonov quickly rubbed his forehead with his hand. "Wait a while, I've
+recalled it...This was that day I was there together with the
+students...isn't that so?"
+
+"That's right, Sergei Ivanovich, that's so..."
+
+"Ah, Jennka," said Platonov reproachfully and with regret. "For do you
+know, that after this two of the students got sick...Wasn't it from
+you?"
+
+Jennka wrathfully and disdainfully flashed her eyes.
+
+"Perhaps even from me...How should I know? There were a lot of them...I
+remember there was this one, now, who was even trying to pick a fight
+with you all the time ...A tall sort of fellow, fair-haired, in
+pince-nez..."
+
+"Yes, yes...That's Sobashnikov. They passed the news to me...That's
+he...that one was nothing--a little coxcomb! But then the other--him
+I'm sorry for. Although I've known him long, somehow I never made the
+right inquiries about his name...I only remember that he comes from
+some city or other--Poliyansk...Zvenigorodsk... His comrades called him
+Ramses...When the physicians--he turned to several physicians--when
+they told him irrevocably that he had the lues, he went home and shot
+himself...And in the note that he wrote there were amazing things,
+something like this: I supposed all the meaning of life to be in the
+triumph of mind, beauty and good; with this disease I am not a man, but
+junk, rottenness, carrion; a candidate for a progressive paralytic. My
+human dignity cannot reconcile itself to this. But guilty in all that
+has happened, and therefore in my death as well, am I alone; for that
+I, obeying a momentary bestial inclination, took a woman without love,
+for money. For that reason have I earned the punishment which I myself
+lay upon me..."
+
+"I am sorry for him..." added Platonov quietly.
+
+Jennka dilated her nostrils.
+
+"But I, now, not the very least bit."
+
+"That's wrong...You go away now, young fellow. When I'll need you I'll
+call out," said Platonov to the serving-man "Absolutely wrong,
+Jennechka! This was an unusually big and forceful man. Such come only
+one to the hundreds of thousands. I don't respect suicides. Most
+frequent of all, these are little boys, who shoot and hang themselves
+over trifles, like a child that has not been given a piece of candy,
+and hits itself against the wall to spite those around it. But before
+his death I reverently and with sorrow bow my head. He was a wise,
+generous, kindly man, attentive to all; and, as you see, too strict to
+himself."
+
+"But to me this is absolutely all one," obstinately contradicted
+Jennka, "wise or foolish, honest or dishonest, old or young--I have
+come to hate them all. Because--look upon me--what am I? Some sort of
+universal spittoon, cesspool, privy. Think of it, Platonov; why,
+thousands, thousands of people have taken me, clutched me; grunted,
+snorted over me; and all those who were, and all those who might yet
+have been on my bed--oh, how I hate them all! If I only could, I would
+sentence them to torture by fire and iron! ... I would order..."
+
+"You are malicious and proud, Jennie," said Platonov quietly.
+
+"I was neither malicious nor proud...It's only now. I wasn't ten yet
+when my own mother sold me; and since that time I've been travelling
+from hand to hand... If only some one had seen a human being in me! No!
+... I am vermin, refuse, worse than a beggar, worse than a thief, worse
+than a murderer! ... Even a hangman...we have even such coming to the
+establishment--and even he would have treated me loftily, with
+loathing: I am nothing; I am a public wench! Do you understand, Sergei
+Ivanovich, what a horrible word this is? Pub-lic! ... This means
+nobody's: not papa's, not mamma's, not Russian, not Riyazan, but
+simply--public! And not once did it enter anybody's head to walk up to
+me and think: why, now, this is a human being too; she has a heart and
+a brain; she thinks of something, feels something; for she's not made
+out of wood, and isn't stuffed with straw, small hay, or excelsior! And
+yet, only I feel this. I, perhaps, am the only one out of all of them
+who feels the horror of her position; this black, stinking, filthy pit.
+But then, all the girls with whom I have met, and with whom I am living
+right now--understand, Platonov, understand me!--why, they don't
+realize anything... Talking, walking pieces of meat! And this is even
+worse than my malice! ..."
+
+"You are right!" said Platonov quietly. "And this is one of those
+questions where you'll always run up against a wall. No one will help
+you..."
+
+"No one, no one! ..." passionately exclaimed Jennka. "Do you
+remember--this was while you were there: a student carried away our
+Liubka..."
+
+"Why, certainly, I remember well! ... Well, and what then?"
+
+"And this is what, that yesterday she came back tattered,
+wet...Crying...Left her, the skunk! ... Played a while at kindliness,
+and then away with her! 'You,' he says, 'are a sister.' 'I,' he says,
+'will save you, make a human being of you...'"
+
+"Is that possible?"
+
+"Just so! ... One man I did see, kindly, indulgent, without the designs
+of a he-dog--that's you. But then, you're altogether different. You're
+somehow queer. You're always wandering somewhere, seeking
+something...You forgive me, Sergei Ivanovich, you're some sort of a
+little innocent! ... And that's just why I've come to you, to you
+alone! ..."
+
+"Speak on, Jennechka..."
+
+"And so, when I found out that I was sick, I almost went out of my mind
+from wrath; I choked from wrath ...I thought: and here's the end;
+therefore, there's no more use in pitying, there's nothing to grieve
+about, nothing to expect...The lid! ... But for all that I have
+borne--can it be that there's no paying back for it? Can it be that
+there's no justice in the world? Can it be that I can't even feast
+myself with revenge?--for that I have never known love; that of family
+life I know only by hearsay; that, like a disgustin', nasty little dog,
+they call me near, pat me and then with a boot over the head--get
+out!--that they made me over, from a human being, equal to all of them,
+no more foolish than all those I've met; made me over into a floor mop,
+some sort of a sewer pipe for their filthy pleasures? ...Ugh! ... Is it
+possible that for all of this I must take even such a disease with
+gratitude as well? ... Or am I a slave? ... A dumb object? ... A pack
+horse? ... And so, Platonov, it was just then that I resolved to infect
+them all: young, old, poor, rich, handsome, hideous--all, all, all! ..."
+
+Platonov, who had already long since put his plate away from him, was
+looking at her with astonishment, and even more--almost with horror.
+He, who had seen in life much of the painful, the filthy, at times even
+of the bloody--he grew frightened with an animal fright before this
+intensity of enormous, unvented hatred. Coming to himself, he said:
+
+"One great writer tells of such a case. The Prussians conquered the
+French and lorded it over them in every possible way: shot the men,
+violated the women, pillaged the houses, burned down the fields...And
+so one handsome woman--a Frenchwoman, very handsome,--having become
+infected, began out of spite to infect all the Germans who happened to
+fall into her embraces. She made ill whole hundreds, perhaps even
+thousands...And when she was dying in a hospital, she recalled this
+with joy and with pride...[25] But then, those were enemies, trampling
+upon her fatherland and slaughtering her brothers...But you, you,
+Jennechka! ..."
+
+
+[25] This story is Lit. No. 29, by Guy de Maupassant.--Trans.
+
+
+"But I--all, just all! Tell me, Sergei Ivanovich, only tell me on your
+conscience: if you were to find in the street a child, whom some one
+had dishonoured, had abused...well, let's say, had stuck its eyes out,
+cut its ears off--and then you were to find out that this man is at
+this minute walking past you, and that only God alone, if only He
+exists, is looking at you this minute from heaven--what would you do?"
+
+"Don't know," answered Platonov, dully and downcast; but he paled, and
+his fingers underneath the table convulsively clenched into fists,
+"Perhaps I would kill him..."
+
+"Not 'perhaps,' but certainly! I know you, I sense you. Well, and now
+think: every one of us has been abused so, when we were children! ...
+Children! ..." passionately moaned out Jennka and covered her eyes for
+a moment with her palm. "Why, it comes to me, you also spoke of this at
+one time, in our place--wasn't it on that same evening before the
+Trinity? ... Yes, children--foolish, trusting, blind, greedy,
+frivolous...And we cannot tear ourselves out of our harness...where are
+we to go? what are we to do? ... And please, don't you think it, Sergei
+Ivanovich--that the spite within me is strong only against those who
+wronged just me, me personally...No, against all our guests in general;
+all these cavaliers, from little to big...Well, and so I have resolved
+to avenge myself and my sisters. Is that good or no? ..."
+
+"Jehnechka, really I don't know...I can't...I dare not say anything...I
+don't understand."
+
+"But even that's not the main thing...For the main thing is this: I
+infected them, and did not feel anything--no pity, no remorse, no guilt
+before God or my fatherland. Within me was only joy, as in a hungry
+wolf that has managed to get at blood...But yesterday something
+happened which even I can't understand. A cadet came to me, altogether
+a little bit of a lad, silly, with yellow around his mouth...He used to
+come to me from still last winter...And then suddenly I had pity on
+him... Not because he was very handsome and very young; and not because
+he had always been very polite--even tender, if you will...No, both the
+one and the other had come to me, but I did not spare them: with
+enjoyment I marked them off, just like cattle, with a red-hot brand
+...But this one I suddenly pitied...I myself don't understand--why? I
+can't make it out. It seemed to me, that it would be all the same as
+stealing money from a little simpleton, a little idiot; or hitting a
+blind man, or cutting a sleeper's throat...if he only were some
+dried-up marasmus or a nasty little brute, or a lecherous old fellow, I
+would not have stopped. But he was healthy, robust, with chest and arms
+like a statue's...and I could not... I gave him his money back, showed
+him my disease; in a word, I acted like a fool among fools. He went
+away from me...burst into tears...And now since last evening I haven't
+slept. I walk around as in a fog...Therefore--I'm thinking right
+now--therefore, that which, I meditated; my dream to infect them all;
+to infect their fathers, mothers, sisters, brides--even all the
+world--therefore, all this was folly, an empty fantasy, since I have
+stopped? ... Once again, I don't understand anything ...Sergei
+Ivanovich, you are so wise, you have seen so much of life--help me,
+then, to find myself now!..."
+
+"I don't know, Jennechka!" quietly pronounced Platonov. "Not that I
+fear telling you, or advising you, but I know absolutely nothing. This
+is above my reason... above conscience..."
+
+Jennie crossed her fingers and nervously cracked them.
+
+"And I, too, don't know...Therefore, that which I thought--is not the
+truth. Therefore, there is but one thing left me...This thought came
+into my head this morning..."
+
+"Don't, don't do it, Jennechka! ... Jennie! ..." Platonov quickly
+interrupted her.
+
+"There's one thing: to hang myself..."
+
+"No, no, Jennie, only not that! ... If there were other circumstances,
+unsurmountable, I would, believe me, tell you boldly: well, it's no
+use, Jennie; it's time to close up shop... But what you need isn't that
+at all... If you wish, I can suggest one way out to you, no less
+malicious and merciless; but which, perhaps, will satiate your wrath a
+hundredfold..."
+
+"What's that?" asked Jennie, wearily, as though suddenly wilted after
+her flare-up.
+
+"Well, this is it ... You're still young, and I'll tell you the truth,
+you are very handsome; that is, you can be, if you only want to,
+unusually stunning ... That's even more than beauty. But you've never
+yet known the bounds and the power of your appearance; and, mainly, you
+don't know to what a degree such natures as yours are bewitching, and
+how mightily they enchain men to them, and make out of them more than
+slaves and brutes ... You are proud, you are brave, you are
+independent, you are a clever woman. I know--you have read a great
+deal, let's presuppose even trashy books, but still you have read, you
+have an entirely different speech from the others. With a successful
+turn of life, you can cure yourself, you can get out of these 'Yamkas,'
+these 'Little Ditches,' into freedom. You have only to stir a finger,
+in order to see at your feet hundreds of men; submissive, ready for
+your sake for vileness, for theft, for embezzlement ... Lord it over
+them with tight reins, with a cruel whip in your hands! ... Ruin them,
+make them go out of their minds, as long as your desire and energy hold
+out! ... Look, my dear Jennie, who manages life now if not women!
+Yesterday's chambermaid, laundress, chorus girl goes through estates
+worth millions, the way a country-woman of Tver cracks sunflower seeds.
+A woman scarcely able to sign her name, at times affects the destiny of
+an entire kingdom through a man. Hereditary princes marry the
+street-walkers, the kept mistresses of yesterday... Jennechka, there is
+the scope for your unbridled vengeance; while I will admire you from a
+distance... For you--you are made of this stuff--you are a bird of
+prey, a spoliator... Perhaps not with such a broad sweep--but you will
+cast them down under your feet."
+
+"No," faintly smiled Jennka. "I thought of this before ... But
+something of the utmost importance has burned out within me. There are
+no forces within me, there is no will within me, no desires ... I am
+somehow all empty inside, rotted ... Well, now, you know, there's a
+mushroom like that--white, round,--you squeeze it, and snuff pours out
+of it. And the same way with me. This life has eaten out everything
+within me save malice. And I am flabby, and my malice is flabby ...
+I'll see some little boy again, will have pity on him, will be
+punishing myself again ... No, it's better ... better so! ..."
+
+She became silent. And Platonov did not know what to say. It became
+oppressive and awkward for both. Finally, Jennka got up, and, without
+looking at Platonov, extended her cold, feeble hand to him.
+
+"Good-bye, Sergei Ivanovich! Excuse me, that I took up your time ...
+Oh, well, I can see myself that you'd help me, if you only could ...
+But, evidently, there's nothing to be done here ... Good-bye!"
+
+"Only don't do anything foolish, Jennechka! I implore you! ..."
+
+"Oh, that's all right!" said she and made a tired gesture with her hand.
+
+Having come out of the square, they parted; but, having gone a few
+steps, Jennka suddenly called after him:
+
+"Sergei Ivanovich, oh Sergei Ivanovich! ..."
+
+He stopped, turned around, walked back to her.
+
+"Roly-Poly croaked last evening in our drawing room. He jumped and he
+jumped, and then suddenly plumped down ... Oh, well, it's an easy death
+at least! And also I forgot to ask you, Sergei Ivanovich ... This is
+the last, now ... Is there a God or no?"
+
+Platonov knit his eyebrows.
+
+"What answer can I make? I don't know. I think that there is, but not
+such as we imagine Him. He is more wise, more just..."
+
+"And future life? There, after death? Is there, now, as they tell us, a
+paradise or hell? Is that the truth? Or is there just nothing at all? A
+barren void? A sleep without a dream? A dark basement?"
+
+Platonov kept silent, trying not to look at Jennka. He felt oppressed
+and frightened.
+
+"I don't know," said he, finally, with an effort. "I don't want to lie
+to you."
+
+Jennka sighed, and smiled with a pitiful, twisted smile.
+
+"Well, thanks, my dear. And thanks for even that much ... I wish you
+happiness. With all my soul. Well, good-bye..."
+
+She turned away from him and began slowly, with a wavering walk, to
+climb up the hill.
+
+Platonov returned to work just in the nick of time. The gathering of
+tramps, scratching, yawning, working out their accustomed dislocations,
+were getting into their places. Zavorotny, at a distance, with his keen
+eyes caught sight of Platonov and began to yell over the whole port:
+
+"You did manage to get here in time, you round-shouldered devil ... But
+I was already wanting to take you by the tail and chase you out of the
+gang ... Well, get in your place! ..."
+
+"Well, but I did get a he-dog in you, Serejka! ..." he added, in a
+kindly manner. "If only it was night; but no,--look you, he starts in
+playing ring-around-a-rosie in broad daylight..."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Saturday was the customary day of the doctor's inspection, for which
+they prepared very carefully and with quaking in all the houses; as,
+however, even society ladies prepare themselves, when getting ready for
+a visit to a physician-specialist; they diligently made their intimate
+toilet and inevitably put on clean underthings, even as dressy as
+possible. The windows toward the street were closed with shutters,
+while at one of those windows, which gave out upon the yard, was put a
+table with a hard bolster to put under the back.
+
+All the girls were agitated ... "And what if there's a disease, which I
+haven't noticed myself? ... And then the despatch to a hospital;
+disgrace; the tedium of hospital life; bad food; the hard course of
+treatment..."
+
+Only Big Manka--or otherwise Manka the Crocodile--Zoe, and
+Henrietta--all thirty years old, and, therefore, in the reckoning of
+Yama, already old prostitutes, who had seen everything, had grown
+inured to everything, grown indifferent to their trade, like white, fat
+circus horses--remained imperturbably calm. Manka the Crocodile even
+often said of herself:
+
+"I have gone through fire and water and pipes of brass ... Nothing will
+stick to me any more."
+
+Jennka, since morning, was meek and pensive. She presented to Little
+White Manka a golden bracelet; a medallion upon a thin little chain
+with her photograph; and a silver neck crucifix. Tamara she moved
+through entreaty into taking two rings for remembrance: one of silver,
+in three hoops, that could be moved apart, with a heart in the middle,
+and under it two hands that clasped one another when all the three
+parts of the ring were joined; while the other was of thin gold wire
+with an almandine.
+
+"As for my underwear, Tamarochka--you give it to Annushka, the
+chambermaid. Let her wash it out well and wear it in good health, in
+memory of me."
+
+The two of them were sitting in Tamara's room. Jennka had in the very
+morning sent after cognac; and now slowly, as though lazily, was
+imbibing wine-glass after wine-glass, eating lemon and a piece of sugar
+after drinking. Tamara was observing this for the first time and
+wondered, because Jennka had always disliked wine, and drank very
+rarely; and then only at the constraint of guests.
+
+"What are you giving stuff away so to-day?" asked Tamara. "Just as
+though you'd gotten ready to die, or to go into a convent?"
+
+"Yes, and I will go away," answered Jennka listlessly. "I am weary,
+Tamarochka! ..."
+
+"Well, which one of us has a good time?"
+
+"Well, no! ... It isn't so much that I'm weary; but somehow
+everything--everything is all the same ... I look at you, at the table,
+at the bottle; at my hands and feet; and I'm thinking, that all this is
+alike and everything is to no purpose ... There's no sense in anything
+... Just like on some old, old picture. Look there--there's a soldier
+walking on the street, but it's all one to me, as though they had wound
+up a doll, and it's moving ... And that he's wet under the ram, is also
+all one to me ... And that he'll die, and I'll die, and you, Tamara,
+will die--in this also I see nothing frightful, nothing amazing... So
+simple and wearisome is everything to me..."
+
+Jennka was silent for a while; drank one more wine-glass; sucked the
+sugar, and, still looking out at the street, suddenly asked:
+
+"Tell me, please, Tamara, I've never asked you about it--from where did
+you get in here, into the house? You don't at all resemble all of us;
+you know everything; for everything that turns up you have a good,
+clever remark ... Even French, now--how well you spoke it that time!
+But none of us knows anything at all about you ... Who are you?"
+
+"Darling Jennechka, really, it's not worth while ... A life like any
+life ... I went to boarding school; was a governess; sang in a choir;
+then kept a shooting gallery in a summer garden; and then got mixed up
+with a certain charlatan and taught myself to shoot with a Winchester
+... I traveled with circuses--I represented an American Amazon. I used
+to shoot splendidly ... Then I found myself in a monastery. There I
+passed two years ... I've been through a lot ... Can't recall
+everything ... I used to steal..."
+
+"You've lived through a great deal ... Checkered-like."
+
+"But then, my years are not a few. Well, what do you think--how many?"
+
+"Twenty-two, twenty-four? ..."
+
+"No, my angel! It just struck thirty-two a week ago. I, if you like, am
+older than all of you here in Anna Markovna's. Only I didn't wonder at
+anything, didn't take anything near to heart. As you see, I never drink
+... I occupy myself very carefully with the care of my body; and the
+main thing, the very main thing--I don't allow myself ever to be
+carried away with men..."
+
+"Well, but what about your Senka? ..."
+
+"Senka--that's a horse of another colour; the heart of woman is
+foolish, inconsistent ... Can it possibly live without love? And even
+so, I don't love him, but just so ... a self-deception ... But,
+however, I shall be in very great need of Senka soon."
+
+Jennka suddenly grew animated and looked at her friend with curiosity.
+
+"But how did you come to get stuck right here, in this hole? So clever,
+handsome, sociable..."
+
+"I'd have to take a long time in telling it ... And then I'm too lazy
+... I got in here out of love; I got mixed up with a certain young man
+and went into a revolution with him. For we always act so, we women:
+where the dearie is looking, there we also look; what the dearie sees,
+that we also see ... I didn't believe at soul in his work, but I went.
+A flattering man he was; smart, a good talker, a good looker ... Only
+he proved to be a skunk and a traitor afterwards. He played at
+revolution; while he himself gave his comrades away to the gendarmes. A
+stool-pigeon, he was. When they had killed and shown him up, then all
+the foolishness left me. However, it was necessary to conceal myself
+... I changed my passport. Then they advised me, that the easiest thing
+of all was to screen myself with a yellow ticket ... And then the fun
+began! ... And even here I'm on a sort of pasture ground; when the time
+comes, the successful moment arrives--I'll go away!"
+
+"Where?" asked Jennie with impatience.
+
+"The world is large ... And I love life! ... There, now, I was the same
+way in the convent: I lived on and I lived on; sang antiphonies and
+dulias, until I had rested up, and had finally grown weary of it; and
+then all at once--hop! and into a cabaret ... Wasn't that some jump?
+The same way out of here ... I'll get into a theatre, into a circus,
+into a corps de ballet ... but do you know, Jennechka, I'm drawn to the
+thieving trade the most, after all ... Daring, dangerous, hard, and
+somehow intoxicating ... It's drawing me! ... Don't you mind that I'm
+so respectable and modest, and can appear an educated young lady. I'm
+entirely, entirely different."
+
+Her eyes suddenly blazed up, vividly and gaily.
+
+"There's a devil dwells in me!"
+
+"It's all very well for you," pensively and with weariness pronounced
+Jennie. "You at least desire something, but my soul is some sort of
+carrion ... I'm twenty-five years old, now; but my soul is like that of
+an old woman, shrivelled up, smelling of the earth ... And if I had
+only lived sensibly! ... Ugh! ... There was only some sort of slush."
+
+"Drop it, Jennka; you're talking foolishly. You're smart, you're
+original; you have that special power before which men crawl and creep
+so willingly. You go away from here, too. Not with me, of course--I'm
+always single--but go away all by your own self."
+
+Jennka shook her head and quietly, without tears, hid her face in her
+palms.
+
+"No," she responded dully, after a long silence, "no, this won't work
+out with me: fate has chewed me all up! ... I'm not a human being any
+more, but some sort of dirty cud ... Eh!" she suddenly made a gesture
+of despair. 'Let's better drink some cognac, Jennechka,'" she addressed
+herself, "'and let's suck the lemon a little! ...' Brr ... what nasty
+stuff! ... And where does Annushka always get such abominable stuff? If
+you smear a dog's wool with it, it will fall off ... And always, the
+low-down thing, she'll take an extra half. Once I somehow ask
+her--'What are you hoarding money for?' 'Well, I,' she says, 'am saving
+it up for a wedding. What sort,' she says, 'of joy will it be for my
+husband, that I'll offer him up my innocence alone! I must earn a few
+hundreds in addition.' She's happy! ... I have here, Tamara, a little
+money in the little box under the mirror; you pass it on to her,
+please..."
+
+"And what are you about, you fool; do you want to die, or what?"
+sharply, with reproach, said Tamara.
+
+"No, I'm saying it just so, if anything happens ... Take it, now, take
+the money! Maybe they'll take me off to the hospital ... And how do you
+know what's going to take place there? I left myself some small change,
+if anything happens ... And supposing that I wanted to do something to
+myself in downright earnest, Tamarochka--is it possible that you'd
+interfere with me?"
+
+Tamara looked at her fixedly, deeply, and calmly. Jennie's eyes were
+sad, and as though vacant. The living fire had become extinguished in
+them, and they seemed turbid, just as though faded, with whites like
+moonstone.
+
+"No," Tamara said at last, quietly but firmly. "If it was on account of
+love, I'd interfere; if it was on account of money, I'd talk you out of
+it: but there are cases where one must not interfere. I wouldn't help,
+of course; but I also wouldn't seize you and interfere with you."
+
+At this moment the quick-limbed housekeeper Zociya whirled through the
+corridor with an outcry:
+
+"Ladies, get dressed! The doctor has arrived ... Ladies, get dressed!
+... Lively, ladies! ..."
+
+"Well, go on, Tamara, go on," said Jennka tenderly, getting up. "I'll
+run into my room for just a minute--I haven't changed my dress yet,
+although, to tell the truth, this also is all one. When they'll be
+calling out for me, and I don't come in time, call out, run in after
+me."
+
+And, going out of Tamara's room, she embraced her by the shoulder, as
+though by chance, and stroked it tenderly.
+
+Doctor Klimenko--the official city doctor--was preparing in the parlor
+everything indispensable for an inspection--vaseline, a solution of
+sublimate, and other things--and was placing them on a separate little
+table. Here also were arranged for him the white blanks of the girls,
+replacing their passports, as well as a general alphabetical list. The
+girls, dressed only in their chemises, stockings, and slippers, were
+standing and sitting at a distance. Nearer the table was standing the
+proprietress herself--Anna Markovna--while a little behind her were
+Emma Edwardovna and Zociya.
+
+The doctor--aged, disheartened, slovenly; a man indifferent to
+everything--put the pince-nez crookedly upon his nose, looked at the
+list, and called out:
+
+"Alexandra Budzinskaya! ..."
+
+The frowning, little, pug-nosed Nina stepped out. Preserving on her
+face an angry expression, and breathing heavily from shame, from the
+consciousness of her own awkwardness, and from the exertions, she
+clumsily climbed up on the table. The doctor, squinting through his
+pince-nez and dropping it every minute, carried out the inspection.
+
+"Go ahead! ... You're sound."
+
+And on the reverse side of the blank he marked off: "Twenty-eighth of
+August. Sound" and put down a curly-cue. And when he had not even
+finished writing called out:
+
+"Voshchenkova, Irene! ..."
+
+Now it was the turn of Liubka. She, during the past month and a half of
+comparative freedom, had had time to grow unaccustomed to the
+inspections of every week; and when the doctor turned up the chemise
+over her breast, she suddenly turned as red as only very bashful women
+can--even with her back and breast.
+
+After her was the turn of Zoe; then of Little White Manka; after that
+of Tamara and Niurka--the last, the doctor found, had gonorrhoea, and
+ordered her to be sent off to a hospital.
+
+The doctor carried out the inspection with amazing rapidity. It was now
+nearly twenty years that every week, on Saturdays, he had to inspect in
+such a manner several hundred girls; and he had worked out that
+habitual technical dexterity and rapidity, a calm carelessness of
+movements, which is; frequently to be found in circus artists, in card
+sharpers, in furniture movers and packers, and in other professionals.
+And he carried out his manipulations with the same calmness with which
+a drover or a veterinary inspects several hundred head of cattle in a
+day.
+
+Did he ever think that before him were living people; or that he
+appeared as the last and most important link of that fearful chain
+which is called legalized prostitution?
+
+No! And even if he did experience this, then it must have been in the
+very beginning of his career. Now before him were only naked abdomens,
+naked backs, and opened mouths. Not one exemplar of all this faceless
+herd of every Saturday would he have recognized subsequently on the
+street. The main thing was the necessity of finishing as soon as
+possible the inspection in one establishment, in order to pass on to
+another, to a third, a ninth, a twentieth...
+
+"Susannah Raitzina!" the doctor finally called out.
+
+No one walked up to the table.
+
+All the inmates of the house began to exchange glances and to whisper.
+
+"Jennka ... Where's Jennka? ..."
+
+But she was not among the girls.
+
+Then Tamara, just released by the doctor, moved a little forward and
+said:
+
+"She isn't here. She hasn't had a chance to get herself ready yet.
+Excuse me, Mr. Doctor, I'll go right away and call her."
+
+She ran into the corridor and did not return for a long time. After her
+went, at first Emma Edwardovna, then Zociya, several girls, and even
+Anna Markovna herself.
+
+"PFUI! What indecency is this! ..." the majestic Emma Edwardovna was
+saying in the corridor, making an indignant face. "And eternally this
+Jennka! ... Always this Jennka! ... It seems my patience has already
+burst ..."
+
+But Jennka was nowhere--neither in her room, nor in Tamara's. They
+looked into other chambers, in all the out-of-the-way corners ... But
+she did not prove to be even there.
+
+"We must look in the water-closet ... Perhaps she's there?" surmised
+Zoe.
+
+But this institution was locked from the inside with a bolt. Emma
+Edwardovna knocked on the door with her fist.
+
+"Jennie, do come out at last! What foolishness is this?"
+
+And, raising her voice, she cried out impatiently and threateningly:
+
+"Do you hear, you swine? ... Come out this minute--the doctor's
+waiting!"
+
+But there was no answer of any sort.
+
+All exchanged glances with fear in their eyes, with one and the same
+thought in mind.
+
+Emma Edwardovna shook the door by the brass knob, but the door did not
+yield.
+
+"Go after Simeon!" Anna Markovna directed.
+
+Simeon was called ... He came, sleepy and morose, as was his wont. By
+the distracted faces of the girls and the housekeepers, he already saw
+that some misunderstanding or other had occurred, in which his
+professional cruelty and strength were required. When they explained to
+him what the matter was, he silently took the door-knob with both
+hands, braced himself against the wall, and gave a yank.
+
+The knob remained in his hands; and he himself, staggering backward,
+almost fell to the floor on his back.
+
+"A-a, hell!" he began to growl in a stifled voice. "Give me a table
+knife."
+
+Through the crack of the door he felt the inner bolt with the table
+knife; whittled away with the blade the edges of the crack, and widened
+it so that he could at last push the end of the knife through it, and
+began gradually to scrape back the bolt. Only the grating of metal
+against metal could be heard.
+
+Finally Simeon threw the door wide open.
+
+Jennka was hanging in the middle of the water-closet on a tape from her
+corset, fastened to the lamphook. Her body, already motionless after an
+unprolonged agony, was slowly swinging in the air, and describing
+scarcely perceptible turns to the right and left around its vertical
+axis. Her face was bluishly-purple, and the tip of the tongue was
+thrust out between clenched and bared teeth. The lamp which had been
+taken off was also here, sprawling on the floor.
+
+Some one began to squeal hysterically, and all the girls, like a
+stampeded herd, crowding and jostling each other in the narrow
+corridor, vociferating and choking with hysterical sobbings, started in
+to run.
+
+The doctor came upon hearing the outcries... Came, precisely, and not
+ran. Seeing what the matter was, he did not become amazed or excited;
+during his practice as an official city doctor, he had had his fill of
+seeing such things, so that he had already grown benumbed and hardened
+to human sufferings, wounds and death. He ordered Simeon to lift the
+corpse of Jennka a bit upward, and himself getting up on the seat, cut
+through the tape. Proforma, he ordered Jennka's body to be borne away
+into the room that had been hers, and tried with the help of the same
+Simeon to produce artificial respiration; but after five minutes gave
+it up as a bad job, fixed the pince-nez, which had become crooked, on
+his nose, and said:
+
+"Call the police in to make a protocol."
+
+Again Kerbesh came, again whispered for a long time with the
+proprietress in her little bit of a cabinet, and again crunched in his
+pocket a new hundred-rouble bill.
+
+The protocol was made in five minutes; and Jennka, just as half-naked
+as she had hung herself, was carted away in a hired wagon into an
+anatomical theatre, wrapped up in and covered with two straw mats.
+
+Emma Edwardovna was the first to find the note that Jennka had left on
+her night table. On a sheet, torn out of the income-expense book,
+compulsory for every prostitute, in pencil, in a naive, rounded,
+childish handwriting--by which, however, it could be judged that the
+hands of the suicide had not trembled during the last minutes--was
+written:
+
+"I beg that no one be blamed for my death. I am dying because I have
+become infected, and also because all people are scoundrels and it is
+very disgusting to live. How to divide my things--Tamara knows about
+that. I told her in detail."
+
+Emma Edwardovna turned around upon Tamara, who was right on the spot
+among a number of other girls, and with eyes filled with a cold, green
+hatred, hissed out:
+
+"Then you knew, you low-down thing, what she was preparing to do? ...
+You knew, you vermin? ... You knew and didn't tell? ..."
+
+She already had swung back, in order, as was her wont, to hit Tamara
+cruelly and calculatingly; but suddenly stopped just as she was, with
+gaping mouth and with eyes wide open. It was just as though she was
+seeing, for the first time, Tamara, who was looking at her with a firm,
+wrathful, unbearable gaze, and slowly, slowly was raising from below,
+and at last brought up to the level of the housekeeper's face, a small
+object, glistening with white metal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+That very same day, at evening, a very important event took place in
+the house of Anna Markovna: the whole institution--with land and house,
+with live and inanimate stock--passed into the hands of Emma Edwardovna.
+
+They had been speaking of this, on and off, for a long time in the
+establishment; but when the rumours so unexpectedly, immediately right
+after the death of Jennka, turned into realities, the misses could not
+for a long time come to themselves for amazement and fear. They knew
+well, having experienced the sway of the German upon themselves, her
+cruel, implacable pedantism; her greed, arrogance, and, finally, her
+perverted, exacting, repulsive love, now for one, now for another
+favorite. Besides that, it was no mystery to any one, that out of the
+fifteen thousand which Emma Edwardovna had to pay the former
+proprietress for the firm and for the property, one third belonged to
+Kerbesh, who had, for a long time already, been carrying on
+half-friendly, half-business relations with the fat housekeeper. From
+the union of two such people, shameless, pitiless, and covetous, the
+girls could expect all sorts of disasters for themselves.
+
+Anna Markovna had to let the house go so cheaply not simply because
+Kerbesh, even if he had not known about certain shady little
+transactions to her credit, could still at any time he liked trip her
+up and eat her up without leaving anything. Of pretexts and cavils for
+this even a hundred could be found every day; and certain ones of them
+not merely threatened the shutting down of the house alone, but, if you
+like, even with the court.
+
+But, dissembling, oh-ing and sighing, bewailing her poverty, her
+maladies and orphanhood, Anna Markovna at soul was glad of even such a
+settlement. And then it must be said: she was already for a long time
+feeling the approach of senile infirmity, together with all sorts of
+ailments and the thirst for complete, benevolent rest, undisturbed by
+anything. All, of which she had not even dared dream in her early
+youth, when she herself had yet been a prostitute of the rank and
+file--all had now come to her of itself, one in addition to the other:
+peaceful old age, a house--a brimming cup on one of the quiet, cozy
+streets, almost in the centre of the city,--the adored daughter Birdie,
+who--if not to-day then tomorrow--must marry a respected man, an
+engineer, a house-owner, and member of the city-council; provided for
+as she was with a respectable dowry and magnificent valuables ... Now
+it was possible peacefully, without hurrying, with gusto, to dine and
+sup on sweet things, for which Anna Markovna had always nourished a
+great weakness; to drink after dinner good, home-made, strong
+cherry-brandy; and of evenings to play a bit at "preference," for
+kopeck stakes, with esteemed elderly ladies of her acquaintance, who,
+even although they never as much as let it appear that they knew the
+real trade of the little old woman, did in reality know it very well;
+and not only did not condemn her business but even bore themselves with
+respect toward those enormous percentages which she earned upon her
+capital. And these charming friends, the joy and consolation of an
+untroubled old age, were: one--the keeper of a loan office;
+another--the proprietress of a lively hotel near the railroad; the
+third--the owner of a jewelry shop, not large, but all the go and well
+known among the big thieves, &c. And about them, in her turn, Anna
+Markovna knew and could tell several shady and not especially
+flattering anecdotes; but in their society it was not customary to talk
+of the sources of the family well-being--only cleverness, daring,
+success, and decent manners were esteemed.
+
+But, even besides that, Anna Markovna, sufficiently limited in mind and
+not especially developed, had some sort of an amazing inner intuition,
+which during all her life permitted her instinctively but
+irreproachably to avoid unpleasantnesses, and to find prudent paths in
+time. And so now, after the sudden death of Roly-Poly, and the suicide
+of Jennka which followed the next day, she, with her
+unconsciously--penetrating soul foreguessed that fate--which had been
+favouring her house of ill-fame, sending her good fortunes, turning
+away all under-water shoals--was now getting ready to turn its back
+upon her. And she was the first to retreat.
+
+They say, that not long before a fire in a house, or before the wreck
+of a ship, the wise, nervous rats in droves make their way into another
+place. And Anna Markovna was directed by the same rat-like, animal,
+prophetic intuition. And she was right: immediately right after the
+death of Jennka some fearful curse seemed to hang over the house,
+formerly Anna Markovna Shaibes', but now Emma Edwardovna Titzner's:
+deaths, misfortunes, scandals just simply descended upon it
+ceaselessly, becoming constantly more frequent, on the manner of bloody
+events in Shakespeare's tragedies; as, however, was the case at all the
+remaining houses of the Yamas as well.
+
+And one of the first to die, a week after the liquidation of the
+business, was Anna Markovna herself. However, this frequently happens
+with people put out of their accustomed rut of thirty years: so die war
+heroes, who have gone into retirement--people of insuperable health and
+iron will; so quickly go off the stage former stock brokers, who have
+happily gone away to rest, but have been deprived of the burning
+allurement of risk and hazard; so, too, age rapidly, droop, and grow
+decrepit, the great artists who leave the stage ... Her death was the
+death of the just. Once at a game of cards she felt herself unwell;
+begged them to wait a while for her; said that she would lie down for
+just a minute; lay down in the bedroom on a bed; sighed deeply, and
+passed on into another world--with a calm face, with a peaceful, senile
+smile upon her lips. Isaiah Savvich--her faithful comrade on the path
+of life, a trifle downtrodden, who had always played a secondary,
+subordinate role--survived her only a month.
+
+Birdie was left sole heiress. She very successfully turned the cozy
+house into money, as well as the land somewheres at the edge of the
+town; married, as it had been presupposed, very happily; and up to this
+time is convinced that her father carried on a great commercial
+business in the export of wheat through Odessa and Novorossiysk into
+Asia Minor.
+
+On the evening of the day when Jennie's corpse had been carried away to
+an anatomical theatre; at an hour when not even a chance guest appears
+on Yamskaya Street, all the girls, at the insistence of Emma
+Edwardovna, assembled in the drawing room. Not one of them dared murmur
+against the fact that on this distressing day, when they had not yet
+recovered from the impression of Jennka's horrible death, they would be
+compelled to dress up, as usual, in wildly festive finery, and to go
+into the brightly illuminated drawing room, in order to dance, sing,
+and to entice lecherous men with their denuded bodies.
+
+And at last into the drawing room walked Emma Edwardovna herself. She
+was more majestic than she had ever been--clad in a black silk gown,
+from which, just like battlements, her enormous breasts jutted out,
+upon which descended two fat chins; in black silk mittens; with an
+enormous gold chain wound thrice around her neck, and terminating in a
+ponderous medallion hanging upon the very abdomen.
+
+"Ladies! ..." she began impressively, "I must ... Stand up!" she
+suddenly called out commandingly. "When I speak, you must hear me out
+standing."
+
+They all exchanged glances with perplexity: such an order was a novelty
+in the establishment. However, the girls got up one after another,
+irresolutely, with eyes and mouths gasping.
+
+"Sie sollen ... you must from this day show me that respect which you
+are bound to show to your mistress," importantly and weightily began
+Emma Edwardovna. "Beginning from to-day, the establishment in a legal
+manner has passed from our good and respected Anna Markovna to me, Emma
+Edwardovna Titzner. I hope that we will not quarrel, and that you will
+behave yourselves like sensible, obedient, and well-brought-up girls. I
+will be to you like in place of your own mother, but only remember,
+that I will not stand for laziness, or drunkenness, or notions of any
+sort; or any kind of disorder. The kind Madam Shaibes, it must be said,
+held you in too loose reins. O--o, I will be far more strict.
+Discipline uber alles ... before everything. It's a great pity, that
+the Russian people are lazy, dirty and stoopid, do not understand this
+rule; but don't you trouble yourself, I will teach you this for your
+own good. I say 'for your own good,' because my main thought is to kill
+the competition of Treppel. I want that my client should be a man of
+substance, and not some charlatan and ragamuffin, some kind of student,
+now, or ham actor. I want that my ladies should be the most beautiful,
+best brought-up, the healthiest and gayest in the whole city. I won't
+spare any money in order to set up swell furnishings; and you will have
+rooms with silk furniture and with genuine, beautiful rugs. Your guests
+will no longer be demanding beer, but only genteel Bordeaux and
+Burgundy wines and champagne. Remember, that a rich, substantial,
+elderly man never likes your common, ordinary, coarse love. He requires
+Cayenne pepper; he requires not a trade, but an art, and you will soon
+acquire this. At Treppel's they take three roubles for a visit and ten
+roubles for a night ... I will establish it so, that you will receive
+five roubles for a visit and twenty-five for a night. They will present
+you with gold and diamonds. I will contrive it so, that you won't have
+to pass on into establishments of a lower sort, und so weiter ... right
+down to the soldiers' filthy den. No! Deposits will be put away and
+saved with me for each one of you every month; and will be put away in
+your name in a banker's office, where there will increase interest upon
+them, and interest upon interest. And then, if a girl feels herself
+tired, or wants to marry a respectable man, there will always be at her
+disposal not a large, but a sure capital. So is it done in the best
+establishments in Riga, and everywhere abroad. Let no one say about me,
+that Emma Edwardovna is a spider, a vixen, a cupping glass. But for
+disobedience, for laziness, for notions, for lovers on the side, I will
+punish cruelly and, like nasty weeds, will throw out--on the street, or
+still worse. Now I have said all that I had to. Nina, come near me. And
+all the rest of you come up in turn."
+
+Ninka irresolutely walked right up to Emma Edwardovna--and even
+staggered back in amazement: Emma Edwardovna was extending her right
+hand to her, with the fingers lowered downward, and slowly nearing it
+to Ninka's lips.
+
+"Kiss it! ..." impressively and firmly pronounced Emma Edwardovna,
+narrowing her eyes and with head thrown back, in the magnificent pose
+of a princess ascending her throne.
+
+Ninka was so bewildered that her right arm gave a jerk in order to make
+the sign of the cross; but she corrected herself, loudly smacked the
+extended hand, and stepped aside. Following her Zoe, Henrietta, Vanda
+and others stepped up also. Tamara alone continued to stand near the
+wall with her back to the mirror; that mirror into which Jennka so
+loved to gaze, in gone-by times, admiring herself as she walked back
+and forth through the drawing room.
+
+Emma Edwardovna let the imperious, obstinate gaze of a boa-constrictor
+rest upon her; but the hypnosis did not work. Tamara bore this gaze
+without turning away, without flinching; but without any expression on
+her face. Then the new proprietress put down her hand, produced on her
+face something resembling a smile, and said hoarsely:
+
+"And with you, Tamara, I must have a little talk separately, eye to
+eye. Let's go!"
+
+"I hear you, Emma Edwardovna!" calmly answered Tamara.
+
+Emma Edwardovna came to the little bit of a cabinet, where formerly
+Anna Markovna loved to drink coffee with clotted cream; sat down on the
+divan and pointed out a place opposite her to Tamara. For some time the
+women kept silent; searchingly, mistrustfully eyeing each other.
+
+"You acted rightly, Tamara," said Emma Edwardovna finally. "You did
+wisely in not stepping up, on the manner of those sheep, to kiss my
+hand. But just the same, I would not have let you come to that. I
+wanted right there, in the presence of all, when you walked up to me,
+to press your hand and to offer you the place of first housekeeper--you
+understand?--my chief assistant--and on terms very advantageous to
+you..."
+
+"I thank you ..."
+
+"No, wait a while, don't interrupt me. I will have my say to the end,
+and then you will express your pros and cons. But will you explain to
+me, please, when yesterday you were aiming at me out of a revolver,
+what did you want? Can it possibly be, to kill me?"
+
+"On the contrary, Emma Edwardovna," retorted Tamara respectfully, "on
+the contrary; it seemed to me that you wanted to strike me."
+
+"PJUI! What do you mean, Tamarochka! ... Have you paid no attention to
+the fact that during all the time of our acquaintance I never permitted
+myself, not only to hit you, but even to address you with a rude word?
+... What do you mean, what do you mean? ... I don't confuse you with
+this poor Russian trash ... Glory be to God, I am an experienced person
+and one who knows people well. I can very well see that you are a
+genuinely cultured young lady; far more educated, for example, than I
+myself. You are refined, elegant, smart. I am convinced of the fact
+that you even know music not at all badly. Finally, if I were to
+confess, I was a little ... how shall I put it to you? ... I always was
+a little in love with you. And now you wanted to shoot me! Me, a person
+who could be a very good friend to you! Well, what will you say to
+that?"
+
+"Well ... nothing at all, Emma Edwardovna," retorted Tamara in the
+meekest and most plausible tone. "Everything was very simple. Even
+before that I found the revolver under Jennka's pillow and brought it,
+in order to give it over to you. I did not want to interfere, when you
+were reading the letter; but then you turned around to me--I stretched
+the revolver out to you and wanted to say: 'See, Emma Edwardovna, what
+I found'--for, don't you see, it surprised me awfully how the late
+Jennie, having a revolver at her disposal, preferred such a horrible
+death as hanging? And that's all."
+
+The bushy, frightful eyebrows of Emma Edwardovna rose upward; the eyes
+widened joyously; and a real, uncounterfeited smile spread over her
+cheeks of a behemoth. She quickly extended both hands to Tamara.
+
+"And is this all? O, MEIN KIND? And I thought ... God knows what I
+imagined! Give me your hands, Tamara, your little charming white hands,
+and allow me to press them auf mein Herz, upon my heart, and to kiss
+you."
+
+The kiss was so long, that Tamara with great difficulty and with
+aversion barely freed herself from the embraces of Emma Edwardovna.
+
+"Well, and now to business. And so, here are my terms: you will be
+housekeeper, I give you fifteen percent, out of the clear gain. Mind
+you, Tamara, fifteen percent. And, besides that, a small
+salary--thirty, forty, well, if you like, fifty roubles a month.
+Splendid terms--isn't that the truth? I am deeply convinced, that none
+other than just you will help me to raise the house to a real height,
+and make it the swellest not only in our city, but in all the south of
+Russia as well. You have taste, and an understanding of things! ...
+Besides that, you will always be able to entertain, and to stir up the
+most exacting, the most unyielding guests. In rare instances, when a
+very rich and distinguished gentleman--in Russian they call it one
+"sun-fish," while with us, ein Freier,[26]--when he becomes infatuated
+with you--for you are so handsome, Tamarochka," (the proprietress
+looked at her with misty, humid eyes), "then I do not at all forbid you
+to pass the time with him gaily; only to bear down always upon the fact
+that you have no right, owing to your duty, your position, Und so
+weiter, und so weiter ... aber sagen sie bitte, do you easily make
+yourself understood in German?"
+
+
+[26] In English, a "toff"; in American, a "swell."--trans.
+
+
+"Die Deutsche Sprache beherrsche ich in geringerem Grade als die
+franzosische; indes kann ich stets in einer Salon-Plauderei
+mitmachen."[27]
+
+
+[27] "My mastery of the German language is a trifle worse than that of
+the French, but I can always keep up my end in parlor small talk."
+
+
+"O, wunderbar! sie haben eine entzuckende Rigaer Aussprache, die beste
+alter deutschen Aussprachen. Und also--fahren wir in unserer Sprache
+fort. Sie klingt viel susser meinem Ohr, die Muttersprache. Schon?"[28]
+
+
+[28] O, splendid! ... You have a bewitching Riga enunciation, the most
+correct of all the German ones. And so, let us continue in my tongue.
+That is far sweeter to my ear--my mother tongue. All right?"
+
+
+"SCHON."[29]
+
+
+[29] "All right."
+
+
+"Zuletzt werden Sie nachgeben, dem Anschein nach ungern, unwillkurlich,
+van der Laune des Augenblicks hingerissen--und, was die Hauptsache ist,
+lautlos, heimlich vor mir. Sie verstehen? Dafur zahlen Narren ein
+schweres Geld. Ubrigens brauche ich Sie wohl nicht zu lernen."[30]
+
+
+[30] "In the very end you will give in, as though unwillingly, as
+though against your will, as though from infatuation, a momentary
+caprice, and--which is the main thing--as though on the sly from me.
+You understand? For this the fools pay enormous money. However, it
+seems I will not have to teach you."
+
+
+"Ja, gnadige Frau. Sie sprechen gar kluge Dinge. Doch das ist schon
+keine Plauderei mehr, sondern eine ernste unterhaltung. Yes, my dear
+madam. You say very wise things. But this is no longer small talk; it
+is, rather, serious conversation ... And for that reason it is more
+convenient for me, if you will revert to the Russian language ... I am
+ready to obey you."
+
+"Furthermore! ... I was just now talking about a lover. I dare not
+forbid you this pleasure, but let us be prudent: let him not appear
+here, or appear as rarely as possible. I will give you days for going
+out, when you will be perfectly free. But it's best if you would get
+along without him entirely. It will serve your benefit too. This is
+only a drag and a yoke. I am telling you this from my own personal
+experience. Wait a while; after three or four years we will expand this
+business so, that you will have substantial money already, and then I
+vill take you into the business as a partner with full rights. After
+ten years you will still be young and handsome, and then take and buy
+men as much as you want to. By that time romantic follies will go out
+of your head entirely, and it will not be you who will be chosen
+already, but you who will be choosing with sense and with feeling, as a
+connoisseur picks out precious stones. Do you agree with me?"
+
+Tamara cast down her eyes, and smiled just the least trifle.
+
+"You speak golden truths, Emma Edwardovna. I will drop mine, but not at
+once. For that I will need some two weeks. I will try not to have him
+appear here. I accept your proposition."
+
+"And that's splendid!" said Emma Edwardovna, get ting up. "Now let us
+conclude our agreement with one good, sweet kiss."
+
+And she again embraced and took to kissing Tamara hard; who, with her
+downcast eyes and naive, tender face, seemed now altogether a little
+girl. But, having freed herself, finally, from the proprietress, she
+asked in Russian:
+
+"You see, Emma Edwardovna, that I agree in everything with you, but for
+that I beg you to fulfill one request of mine. It will not cost you
+anything. Namely, I hope that you will allow me and the other girls to
+escort the late Jennie to the cemetery."
+
+Emma Edwardovna made a wry face.
+
+"Oh, if you want to, my darling Tamara, I have nothing against your
+whim. Only what for? This will not help the dead person and will not
+make her alive. Only sentimentalism alone will come out of it ... But
+very well! Only, however, you know yourself that in accordance with
+your law suicides are not buried, or--I don't know with certainty--it
+seems they throw them into some dirty hole beyond the cemetery."
+
+"No, do allow me to do as I want to myself. Let it be my whim, but
+concede it to me, my darling, dear, bewitching Emma Edwardovna! But
+then, I promise you that this will be my last whim. After this I will
+be like a wise and obedient soldier at the disposal of a talented
+general."
+
+"IS' GUT!" Emma Edwardovna gave in with a sigh. "I can not deny you in
+anything, my child. Let me press your hand. Let us toil and labour
+together for the common good."
+
+And, having opened the door, she called out across the drawing room
+into the entrance-hall: "Simeon!" And when Simeon appeared in the room,
+she ordered him weightily and triumphantly:
+
+"Bring us a bottle of champagne here, but the real thing--Rederer demi
+sec, and as cool as possible. Step lively!" she ordered the porter, who
+was gaping at her with popping eyes. "We will drink with you, Tamara,
+to the new business, to our brilliant and beautiful future."
+
+They say that dead people bring luck. If there is any foundation at all
+in this superstition, then on this Saturday it could not have told
+plainer: the influx of visitors was out of the ordinary, even for a
+Saturday night. True, the girls, passing through the corridor or past
+the room that had been Jennka's increased their steps; timorously
+glanced at it sidelong, out of the corner of the eye; while others even
+crossed themselves. But late in the night the fear of death somehow
+subsided, grew bearable. All the rooms were occupied, while in the
+drawing room a new violinist was trilling without cease--a
+free-and-easy, clean-shaven young man, whom the pianist with the
+cataract had searched out somewhere and brought with him.
+
+The appointment of Tamara as housekeeper was received with cold
+perplexity, with taciturn dryness. But, having bided her time, Tamara
+managed to whisper to Little White Manka:
+
+"Listen, Manya! You tell them all that they shouldn't pay any attention
+to the fact that I've been chosen housekeeper. It's got to be so. But
+let them do as they wish, only don't let them trip me up. I am as
+before--their friend and intercessor ... And further on we'll see."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+On the next day, on Sunday, Tamara had a multitude of cares. She had
+become possessed by a firm and undeviating thought to bury her friend
+despite all circumstances, in the way that nearest friends are
+buried--in a Christian manner, with all the sad solemnity of the burial
+of secular persons.
+
+She belonged to the number of those strange persons who underneath an
+external indolent calmness, careless taciturnity, egotistical
+withdrawal into one's self, conceal within them unusual energy; always
+as though slumbering with half an eye, guarding itself from unnecessary
+expenditure; but ready in one moment to become animated and to rush
+forward without reckoning the obstacles.
+
+At twelve o'clock she descended in a cab into the old town; rode
+through it into a little narrow street giving out upon a square where
+fairs were held; and stopped near a rather dirty tea-room, having
+ordered the cabby to wait. In the room she made inquiries of a boy,
+red-haired, with a badger hair-cut and the parting slicked down with
+butter, if Senka the Depot had not come here? The serving lad, who,
+judging by his refined and gallant readiness, had already known Tamara
+for a long time, answered that "Nohow, ma'am; they--Semen Ignatich--had
+not been in yet, and probably would not be here soon seein' as how
+yesterday they had the pleasure of going on a spree at the Transvaal,
+and had played at billiards until six in the morning; and that now
+they, in all probabilities, are at home, in the Half Way House rooms,
+and if the young lady will give the word, then it's possible to hop
+over to them this here minute."
+
+Tamara asked for paper and pencil, and wrote a few words right on the
+spot. Then she gave the note to the waiter, together with a half-rouble
+piece for a tip, and rode away.
+
+The following visit was to the artiste Rovinskaya, living, as Tamara
+had known even before, in the city's most aristocratic
+hotel--Europe--where she occupied several rooms in a consecutive suite.
+To obtain an interview with the singer was not very easy: the doorman
+below said that it looked as if Ellena Victorovna was not at home;
+while her own personal maid, who came out in answer to Tamara's
+knocking, declared that madam had a headache, and that she was not
+receiving any one. Again Tamara was compelled to write on a piece of
+paper:
+
+"I come to you from her who once, in a house which is not spoken of
+loudly, cried, standing before you on her knees, after you had sung the
+ballad of Dargomyzhsky. Your kind treatment of her was so splendid. Do
+you remember? Do not fear--she has no need of any one's help now:
+yesterday she died. But you can do one very important deed in her
+memory, which will be almost no trouble to you at all. While I--am that
+very person who permitted herself to say a few bitter truths to the
+baroness T--, who was then with you; for which truths I am remorseful
+and apologize even now."
+
+"Hand this over!" she ordered the chambermaid.
+
+She returned after two minutes.
+
+"The madam requests you. They apologize very much that they will
+receive you not fully dressed."
+
+She escorted Tamara, opened a door before her and quietly shut it.
+
+The great artiste was lying upon an enormous ottoman, covered with a
+beautiful Tekin rug and a multitude of little silk pillows, and soft
+cylindrical bolsters of tapestry. Her feet were wrapped up in silvery,
+soft fur. Her fingers, as usual, were adorned by a multiplicity of
+rings with emeralds, attracting the eyes by their deep and tender green.
+
+The artiste was having one of her evil, black days to-day. Yesterday
+morning some misunderstandings with the management had arisen; while in
+the evening the public had received her not as triumphantly as she
+would have desired, or, perhaps, this had simply appeared so to her;
+while to-day in the newspaper the fool of a reviewer, who understood
+just as much of art as a cow does of astronomy, had praised up her
+rival, Titanova, in a big article. And so Ellena Victorovna had
+persuaded herself that her head was aching; that there was a nervous
+tic in her temples; and that her heart, time and again, seemed suddenly
+to fall through somewheres.
+
+"How do you do, my dear!" she said, a trifle nasally, in a weak, wan
+voice, with pauses, as heroines on the stage speak when dying from love
+and from consumption. "Sit down here ... I am glad to see you ... Only
+don't be angry--I am almost dying from migraine, and from my miserable
+heart. Pardon my speaking with difficulty. I think I sang too much and
+tired my voice ..."
+
+Rovinskaya, of course, had recalled both the mad escapade of that
+evening; and the striking, unforgettable face of Tamara; but now, in a
+bad mood, in the wearisome, prosaic light of an autumn day, this
+adventure appeared to her as unnecessary bravado; something artificial,
+imagined, and poignantly shameful. But she was equally sincere on that
+strange, night-marish evening when she, through the might of talent,
+had prostrated the proud Jennka at her feet, as well as now, when she
+recalled it with fatigue, indolence, and artistic disdain. She, as well
+as many distinguished artists, was always playing a role; was always
+not her own self, and always regarded her words, movements, actions, as
+though looking at herself from a distance with the eyes and feelings of
+the spectators.
+
+She languidly raised from the pillow her narrow, slender, beautiful
+hand, and applied it to her forehead; and the mysterious, deep emeralds
+stirred as though alive and began to flash with a warm, deep sparkle.
+
+"I just read in your note that this poor ... pardon me, her name has
+vanished out of my head..."
+
+"Jennie."
+
+"Yes, yes, thank you! I recall it now. She died? But from what?"
+
+"She hanged herself ... yesterday morning, during the doctor's
+inspection..."
+
+The eyes of the artiste, so listless, seemingly faded, suddenly opened,
+and, as through a miracle, grew animated and became shining and green,
+just like her emeralds; and in them were reflected curiosity, fear and
+aversion.
+
+"Oh, my God! Such a dear, so original, handsome, so fiery ... Oh, the
+poor, poor soul! ... And the reason for this was? ..."
+
+"You know ... the disease. She told you."
+
+"Yes, yes ... I remember, I remember ... But to hang one's self! ...
+What horror! ... Why, I advised her to treat herself then. Medicine
+works miracles now. I myself know several people who absolutely ...
+well, absolutely cured themselves. Everybody in society knows this and
+receives them ... Ah, the poor little thing, the poor little thing! ..."
+
+"And so I've come to you, Ellena Victorovna. I wouldn't have dared to
+disturb you, but I seem to be in a forest, and have no one to turn to.
+You were so kind then, so touchingly attentive, so tender to us ... I
+need only your advice and, perhaps, a little of your influence, your
+protection..."
+
+"Oh, please, my dear! ... All I can do, I will ... Oh, my poor head!
+And then this horrible news. Tell me, in what way can I be of
+assistance to you?"
+
+"To confess, I don't know even myself yet," answered Tamara. "You see,
+they carried her away to an anatomical theatre ... But until they had
+made the protocol, until they made the journey--then the time for
+receiving had gone by also--in general I think that they have not had a
+chance to dissect her yet ... I'd like, if it's only possible, that she
+should not be touched. To-day is Sunday; perhaps they'll postpone it
+until to-morrow, and in the meanwhile something may be done for her..."
+
+"I can't tell you, dear ... Wait! ... Haven't I some friend among the
+professors, in the medical world? ... I will look later in my
+memo-books. Perhaps we will succeed in doing something."
+
+"Besides that," continued Tamara, "I want to bury her ... At my expense
+... I was attached to her with all my heart during her life."
+
+"I will help you with pleasure in this, materially..."
+
+"No, no! ... A thousand thanks! ... I'll do everything myself. I would
+not hesitate to have recourse to your kind heart, but this ... --you
+will understand me-- ... this is something in the nature of a vow, that
+a person gives to one's self and to the memory of a friend. The main
+difficulty is in how we may manage to bury her with Christian rites.
+She was, it seems, an unbeliever, or believed altogether poorly. And
+it's only by chance that I, also, will cross my forehead. But I don't
+want them to bury her just like a dog, somewhere beyond the enclosure
+of the cemetery; in silence, without words, without singing ... I don't
+know, will they permit burying her properly--with choristers, with
+priests? For that reason I'm asking you to assist me with your advice.
+Or, perhaps, you will direct me somewhere? ..."
+
+Now the artiste had little by little become interested and was already
+beginning to forget about her fatigue, and migraine, and the
+consumptive heroine dying in the fourth act. She was already picturing
+the role of an intercessor, the beautiful figure of genius merciful to
+a fallen woman. This was original, extravagant, and at the same time so
+theatrically touching! Rovinskaya, like many of her confreres, did not
+let one day pass by--and, if it were possible, she would not have let
+pass even one hour--without standing out from the crowd, without
+compelling people to talk about her: to-day she would participate in a
+pseudo-patriotic manifestation, while to-morrow she would read from a
+platform, for the benefit of revolutionaries exiled to Siberia,
+inciting verses, full of fire and vengeance. She loved to sell flowers
+at carnivals, in riding academies; and to sell champagne at large
+balls. She would think up her little bon mots beforehand, which on the
+morrow would be caught up by the whole town. She desired that
+everywhere and always the crowd should look only at her, repeat her
+name, love her Egyptian, green eyes, her rapacious and sensuous mouth;
+her emeralds on the slender and nervous hands.
+
+"I can't grasp it all properly at once," said she after a silence. "But
+if a person wants anything hard, he will attain it, and I want to
+fulfill your wish with all my soul. Stay, stay! ... I think a glorious
+thought is coming into my head ... For then, on that evening, if I
+mistake not, there was with us, beside the baroness and me..."
+
+"I don't know them ... One of them walked out of the cabinet later than
+all of you. He kissed Jennie's hand and said, that if she should ever
+need him, he was always at her service; and gave her his card, but
+asked her not to show it to any strangers. But later all this passed
+off somehow and was forgotten. In some way I never found the time to
+ask Jennie who this man was; while yesterday I searched for the card
+but couldn't find it..."
+
+"Allow me, allow me! ... I have recalled it!" the artiste suddenly
+became animated. "Aha!" exclaimed she, rapidly getting off the ottoman.
+"It was Ryazanov... Yes, yes, yes... The advocate Ernst Andreievich
+Ryazanov. We will arrange everything right away. That's a splendid
+thought!"
+
+She turned to the little table upon which the telephone apparatus was
+standing, and rang:
+
+"Central--18-35 please ... Thank you ... Hello! ... Ask Ernst
+Andreievich to the telephone ... The artiste Rovinskaya ... Thank you
+... Hello! ... Is this you, Ernst Andreievich? Very well, very well,
+but now it isn't a matter of little hands. Are you free? ... Drop the
+nonsense! ... The matter is serious. Couldn't you come up to me for a
+quarter of an hour? ...No, no ... Yes ... Only as a kind and a clever
+man. You slander yourself ... Well, that's splendid, really ... Well, I
+am not especially well-dressed, but I have a justification--a fearful
+headache. No, a lady, a girl ... You will see for yourself, come as
+soon as possible ... Thanks! Au revior! ..."
+
+"He will come right away," said Rovinskaya, hanging up the receiver.
+"He is a charming and awfully clever man. Everything is possible to
+him, even the almost impossible to man ... But in the meantime ...
+pardon me--your name?"
+
+Tamara was abashed, but then smiled at herself:
+
+"Oh, it isn't worth your disturbing yourself, Ellena Victorovna! Mon
+nomme de guerre is Tamara but just so--Anastasia Nikolaevna. It's all
+the same--call me even Tamara ... I am more used to it..."
+
+"Tamara! ... That is so beautiful! ... So now, Mile. Tamara, perhaps
+you will not refuse to breakfast with me? Perhaps Ryazanov will also do
+so with us..."
+
+"I have no time, forgive me."
+
+"That's a great pity! ... I hope, some other time ... But, perhaps you
+smoke," and she moved toward her a gold case, adorned with an enormous
+letter E out of the same emeralds she adored.
+
+Ryazanov came very soon.
+
+Tamara, who had not examined him properly on that evening, was struck
+by his appearance. Tall of stature, almost of an athletic build, with a
+broad brow, like Beethoven's, tangled with artistically negligent
+black, grizzled hair; with the large fleshy mouth of the passionate
+orator; with clear, expressive, clever, mocking eyes--he had such an
+appearance as catches one's eyes among thousands--the appearance of a
+vanquisher of souls and a conqueror of hearts; deeply ambitious, not
+yet oversated with life; still fiery in love and never retreating
+before a beautiful indiscretion ... "If fate had not broken me up so,"
+reflected Tamara, watching his movements with enjoyment, "then here's a
+man to whom I'd throw my life; jestingly, with delight, with a smile,
+as a plucked rose is thrown to the beloved..."
+
+Ryazanov kissed Rovinskaya's hand, then with unconstrained simplicity
+exchanged greetings with Tamara and said:
+
+"We are acquainted even from that mad evening, when you dumbfounded all
+of us with your knowledge of the French language, and when you spoke.
+That which you said was, between us, paradoxical; but then, how it was
+said! ... To this day I remember the tone of your voice, so warm,
+expressive ... And so, Ellena Victorovna," he turned to Rovinskaya
+again, sitting down on a small, low chair without a back, "in what can
+I be of use to you? I am at your disposal."
+
+Rovinskaya, with a languid air, again applied the tips of her fingers
+to her temples.
+
+"Ah, really, I am so upset, my dear Ryazanov," said she, intentionally
+extinguishing the sparkle of her magnificent eyes, "and then, my
+miserable head ... May I trouble you to pass me the pyramidon what-not
+from that table ... Let Mile. Tamara tell you everything ... I can not,
+I am not able to ... This is so horrible! ..."
+
+Tamara briefly, lucidly, narrated to Ryazanov all the sad history of
+Jennka's death; recalled also about the card left with Jennie; and also
+how the deceased had reverently preserved this card; and--in
+passing--about his promise to help in case of need.
+
+"Of course, of course!" exclaimed Ryanzanov, when she had finished; and
+at once began pacing the room back and forth with big steps, ruffling
+and tossing back his picturesque hair through habit. "You are
+performing a magnificent, sincere, comradely action! That is good! ...
+That is very good! ... I am yours ... You say--a permit for the funeral
+... Hm ... God grant me memory!..."
+
+He rubbed his forehead with his palm.
+
+"Hm ... hm ... If I'm not mistaken--Monocanon, rule one hundred seventy
+... one hundred seventy ... eight ... Pardon me, I think I remember it
+by heart ... Pardon me! ... Yes, so! 'If a man slayeth himself, he
+shall not be chanted over, nor shall a mass be said for him, unless he
+were greatly astonied, that is, to wit, out of his mind'... Hm ... See
+St. Timothy Alexandrine ... And so, my dear miss, the first thing ...
+You say, that she was taken down from the noose by your doctor--i.e.,
+the official city doctor ... His name? ..."
+
+"Klimenko."
+
+"It seems I've met him somewheres ... All right ... Who is the district
+inspector in your precinct station?"
+
+"Kerbesh."
+
+"Aha, I know ... Such a strong, virile fellow, with a red beard in a
+fan ... Yes?"
+
+"Yes, that is he."
+
+"I know him very well! There, now, is somebody that a sentence to hard
+labour is hankering after ... Some ten times he fell into my hands; and
+always, the skunk, gave me the slip somehow. Slippery, just like an
+eel-pout ... We will have to slip him a little present. Well, now! And
+then the anatomical theatre ... When do you want to bury her?"
+
+"Really, I don't know ... I would like to do it as soon as possible ...
+if possible, to-day."
+
+"Hm ... To-day ... I don't vouch for it--we will hardly manage it ...
+But here is my memorandum book. Well, take even this page, where are my
+friends under the letter T--just write the very same way: Tamara, and
+your address. In two hours I will give you an answer. Does that suit
+you? But I repeat again, that probably you will have to postpone the
+burial till to-morrow ... Then--pardon my unceremoniousness--is money
+needed, perhaps?"
+
+"No, thank you!" refused Tamara. "I have money. Thanks for your
+interest! ... It's time for me to be going. I thank you with all my
+heart, Ellen Victorovna! ..."
+
+"Then expect it in two hours," repeated Ryazanov, escorting her to the
+door.
+
+Tamara did not at once ride away to the house. She turned into a little
+coffee-house on Catholicheskaya Street on the way. There Senka the
+Depot was waiting for her--a gay fellow with the appearance of a
+handsome Tzigan; not black--but blue-haired; black-eyed, with yellow
+whites; resolute and daring in his work; the pride of local thieves--a
+great celebrity in their world, the first leader of experience, and a
+constant, all-night gamester.
+
+He stretched out his hand to her, without getting up. But in the way in
+which he so carefully, with a certain force, seated her in her place
+could be seen a broad, good-natured endearment.
+
+"How do you do, Tamarochka! Haven't seen you in a long time--I grew
+weary ... Do you want coffee?"
+
+"No! Business first ... To-morrow we bury Jennka ... She hanged
+herself..." "Yes, I read it in a newspaper," carelessly drawled out
+Senka through his teeth. "What's the odds? ..."
+
+"Get fifty roubles for me at once."
+
+"Tamarochka, my sweetheart--I haven't a kopeck! ..."
+
+"I'm telling you--get them!" ordered Tamara, imperiously, but without
+getting angry.
+
+"Oh, my Lord! ... Yours, now, I didn't touch, like I promised; but
+then, it's Sunday ... The savings banks are closed..."
+
+"Let them! ... Hock the savings book! In general, it's up to you!"
+
+"Why do you need this, my dearie?"
+
+"Isn't it all the same to you, you fool? ... For the funeral."
+
+"Oh! Well, all right then!" sighed Senka. "Then I'd best bring it to
+you myself in the evening ... Right, Tamarochka? ... It's so very hard
+for me to stand it without you! Oh, my dearie, how I'd kiss and kiss
+you; I wouldn't let you close your eyes! ... Shan't I come? ..."
+
+"No, no! ... You do as I ask you, Senechka ... Give in to me. But you
+mustn't come--I'm housekeeper now."
+
+"Well, what d'you know about that! ..." drawled out the astonished
+Senka and even whistled.
+
+"Yes. And don't you come to me in the meantime. But afterwards,
+afterwards, sweetheart, whatever you desire ... There will be an end to
+everything soon!"
+
+"Oh, if you wouldn't make me suffer so! Wind things up as soon as you
+can!"
+
+"And I will wind 'em up! Wait one little week more, dearie! Did you get
+the powders?"
+
+"The powders are a trifle!" discontentedly answered Senka. "And it
+isn't powders at all, but pills."
+
+"And you're sure when you say that they'll dissolve at once in water?"
+
+"Sure, I saw it myself."
+
+"But he won't die? Listen, Senya: he won't die? Is that right?..."
+
+"Nothing will happen to him ... He'll only snooze for a while ... Oh,
+Tamara!" exclaimed he in a passionate whisper; and even suddenly
+stretched himself hard from an unbearable emotion, so that his joints
+cracked. "Finish it, for God's sake, as soon as possible! ... Let's do
+the trick and--bye-bye! Wherever you want to go to, sweet-heart! I am
+all at your will: if you want to, we start off for Odessa; if you want
+to--abroad. Finish it up as soon as possible! ..."
+
+"Soon, soon..."
+
+"You just wink at me, and I'm all ready ... with powders, with
+instruments, with passports ... And then--choo-choo! The machine is
+off! Tamarochka! My angel! ... My precious, my sparkler! ..."
+
+And he, always restrained, having forgotten that he could be seen by
+strangers, already wanted to embrace and hug Tamara to himself.
+
+"Now, now!" ... rapidly and deftly, like a cat, Tamara jumped off the
+chair. "Afterwards ... afterwards, Senechka, afterwards, little dearie!
+... I'll be all yours--there won't be any denial, nor forbiddance. I'll
+myself make you weary of me ... Good-bye, my little silly!"
+
+And with a quick movement of her hand having rumpled up his black
+curls, she hastily went out of the coffee-house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+On the next day, on Monday, toward ten o'clock in the morning, almost
+all the inmates of the house--formerly Madam Shaibes', but now Emma
+Edwardovna Titzner's--rode off in cabs to the centre of the city, to
+the anatomical theatre--all, except the far-sighted, much-experienced
+Henrietta; the cowardly and insensible Ninka; and the feeble-minded
+Pashka, who for two days now had not gotten up from her bed, kept
+silent, and to questions directed at her answered by a beatific,
+idiotical smile and with some sort of inarticulate animal lowing. If
+she were not given to eat, she would not even ask; but if food were
+brought, she would eat with greediness, right with her hands. She
+became so slovenly and forgetful, that it was necessary to remind her
+of certain necessary functions in order to avoid unpleasantness. Emma
+Edwardovna did not send out Pashka to her steady guests, who asked for
+Pashka every day. Even before, she had had such periods of a detriment
+of consciousness; however, they had not lasted long, and Emma
+Edwardovna in any case determined to tide it over: Pashka was a
+veritable treasure for the establishment, and its truly horrible victim.
+
+The anatomical theatre represented a long, one-storied, dark-gray
+building, with white frames around the windows and doors. There was in
+its very exterior something low, pressed down, receding into the
+ground, almost weird. The girls one after the other stopped near the
+gates and timidly passed through the yard into the chapel; nestled down
+at the other end of the yard, in a corner, painted over in the same
+dark gray colour, with white frame-work.
+
+The door was locked. It was necessary to go after the watchman. Tamara
+with difficulty sought out a bald, ancient old man, grown over as
+though with bog moss by entangled gray bristles; with little rheumy
+eyes and an enormous, reddish, dark-blue granulous nose, on the manner
+of a cookie.
+
+He unlocked the enormous hanging lock, pushed away the bolt and opened
+the rusty, singing door. The cold, damp air together with the mixed
+smell of the dampness of stones, frankincense, and dead flesh breathed
+upon the girls. They fell back, huddling closely into a timorous flock.
+Tamara alone went after the watchman without wavering.
+
+It was almost dark in the chapel. The autumn light penetrated scantily
+through the little, narrow prison-like window, barred with an iron
+grating. Two or three images without chasubles, dark and without
+visages, hung upon the walls. Several common board coffins were
+standing right on the floor, upon wooden carrying shafts. One in the
+middle was empty, and the taken-off lid was lying alongside.
+
+"What sort is yours, now?" asked the watchman hoarsely and took some
+snuff. "Do you know her face or not?"
+
+"I know her."
+
+"Well, then, look! I'll show them all to you. Maybe this one? ..."
+
+And he took the lid off one of the coffins, not yet fastened down with
+nails. A wrinkled old woman, dressed any old way in her tatters, with a
+swollen blue face, was lying there. Her left eye was closed; while the
+right was staring and gazing immovably and frightfully, having already
+lost its sparkle and resembling mica that had lain for a long time.
+
+"Not this one, you say? Well, look ... Here's more for you!" said the
+watchman; and one after the other, opening the lids, exhibited the
+decedents--all, probably, the poorest of the poor: picked up on the
+streets, intoxicated, crushed, maimed and mutilated, beginning to
+decompose. Certain ones had already begun to show on their hands and
+faces bluish-green spots, resembling mould--signs of putrefaction. One
+man, without a nose, with an upper hare-lip cloven in two, had worms,
+like little white dots, swarming upon his sore-eaten face. A woman who
+had died from hydropsy, reared like a whole mountain from her board
+couch, bulging out the lid.
+
+All of them had been hastily sewn up after autopsy, repaired, and
+washed by the moss-covered watchman and his mates. What affair was it
+of theirs if, at times, the brain got into the stomach; while the skull
+was stuffed with the liver and rudely joined with the help of sticking
+plaster to the head? The watchmen had grown used to everything during
+their night-marish, unlikely, drunken life; and, by the bye, almost
+never did their voiceless clients prove to have either relatives or
+acquaintances...
+
+A heavy odour of carrion--thick, cloying, and so viscid that to Tamara
+it seemed as though it was covering all the living pores of her body
+just like glue--stood in the chapel.
+
+"Listen, watchman," asked Tamara, "what's this crackling under my feet
+all the time?"
+
+"Crack-ling?" the watchman questioned her over again, and scratched
+himself, "why, lice, it must be," he said indifferently. "It's fierce
+how these beasties do multiply on the corpseses! ... But who you
+lookin' for--man or woman?"
+
+"A woman," answered Tamara.
+
+"And that means that all these ain't yours?"
+
+"No, they're all strangers."
+
+"There, now! ... That means I have to go to the morgue. When did they
+bring her, now?"
+
+"On Saturday, grandpa," and Tamara at this got out her purse.
+"Saturday, in the daytime. There's something for tobacco for you, my
+dear sir!"
+
+"That's the way! Saturday, you say in the daytime? And what did she
+have on?"
+
+"Well, almost nothing; a little night blouse, an underskirt ... both
+the one and the other white."
+
+"So-o! That must be number two hundred and seventeen ... How is she
+called, now? ..."
+
+"Susannah Raitzina."
+
+"I'll go and see--maybe she's there. Well, now, mam'selles," he turned
+to the young ladies, who were dully huddling in the doorway,
+obstructing the light. "Which of you are the braver? If your friend
+came the day before yesterday, then that means that she's now lying in
+the manner that the Lord God has created all mankind--that is, without
+anything ... Well, who of you will be the bolder? Which two of you will
+come? She's got to be dressed..."
+
+"Well, now, you go, Manka," Tamara ordered her mate, who, grown chill
+and pale from horror and aversion, was staring at the dead with widely
+open, limpid eyes. "Don't be afraid, you fool--I'll go with you! Who's
+to go, if not you?
+
+"Well, am I ... well, am I? ..." babbled Little White Manka with barely
+moving lips. "Let's go. It's all the same to me..."
+
+The morgue was right here, behind the chapel--a low, already entirely
+dark basement, into which one had to descend by six steps.
+
+The watchman ran off somewhere, and returned with a candle-end and a
+tattered book. When he had lit the candle, the girls saw a score of
+corpses that were lying directly on the stone floor in regular
+rows--extended, yellow, with faces distorted by pre-mortal convulsions,
+with skulls split open, with clots of blood on their faces, with
+grinning teeth.
+
+"Right away ... right away..." the watchman was saying, guiding his
+finger over the headings. "The day before yesterday ... that means, on
+Saturday ... on Saturday ... What did you say her name was, now?"
+
+"Raitzina, Susannah," answered Tamara.
+
+"Rai-tzina Susannah ..." said the watchman, just as though he were
+singing, "Raitzina, Susannah. Just as I said. Two hundred seventeen."
+Bending over the dead and illuminating them with the guttered and
+dripping candle-end, he passed from one to another. Finally he stopped
+before a corpse, upon whose foot was written in ink, in large black
+figures: 217.
+
+"Here's the very same one! Let me, I'll carry her out into the little
+corridor and run after her stuff ... Wait a while! ..."
+
+Grunting, but still with an ease amazing in one of his age, he lifted
+up the corpse of Jennka by the feet, and threw it upon his back with
+the head down, as though it were a carcass of meat, or a bag of
+potatoes.
+
+It was a trifle lighter in the corridor; and, when the watchman had
+lowered his horrible burden to the floor, Tamara for a moment covered
+her face with her hands, while Manka turned away and began to cry.
+
+"If you need anything, say so," the watchman was instructing them. "If
+you want to dress the deceased as is fitting, then we can get
+everything that's required--cloth of gold, a little wreath, a little
+image, a shroud, gauze--we keep everything ... You can buy a thing or
+two in, clothing ... Slippers, too, now..."
+
+Tamara gave him money and went out into the air, letting Manka go in
+front of her.
+
+After some time two wreaths were brought; one from Tamara, of asters
+and georginas with an inscription in black letters upon a white ribbon:
+"To Jennie from a friend;" the other was from Ryazanov, all of red
+flowers; upon its red ribbon stood in gold characters: "Through
+suffering shall we be purified." He also sent a short little note,
+expressing commiseration and apologizing for not being able to come, as
+he was occupied with an undeferrable business meeting.
+
+Then came the singers who had been invited by Tamara--fifteen men from
+the very best choir in the city.
+
+The precentor, in a gray overcoat and a gray hat, all gray, somehow, as
+though covered with dust, but with long, straight moustaches, like a
+military person's, recognized Verka; opened his eyes wide in
+astonishment, smiled slightly and winked at her. Two or three times a
+month, and sometimes even oftener, he visited Yamskaya Street with
+ecclesiastical academicians of his acquaintance, just the same
+precentors as he, and some psalmists; and having usually made a full
+review of all the establishments, always wound up with the house of
+Anna Markovna, where he invariably chose Verka.
+
+He was a merry and sprightly man; danced in a lively manner, in a
+frenzy; and executed such figures during the dances that all those
+present just melted from laughter.
+
+Following the singers came the two-horsed catafalque, that Tamara had
+hired; black, with white plumes, and seven torch-bearers along with it.
+They also brought a white, glazed brocade coffin; and a pedestal for
+it, stretched over with black calico. Without hurrying, with habitually
+deft movements, they put away the deceased into the coffin; covered her
+face with gauze; curtained off the corpse with cloth of gold, and lit
+the candles--one at the head and two at the feet.
+
+Now, in the yellow, trembling light of the candles, the face of Jennka
+became more clearly visible. The lividness had almost gone off it,
+remaining only here and there on the temples, on the nose, and between
+the eyes, in party-coloured, uneven, serpentine spots. Between the
+parted dark lips slightly glimmered the whiteness of the teeth, and the
+tip of the bitten tongue was still visible. Out of the open collar of
+the neck, which had taken on the colour of old parchment, showed two
+stripes: one dark--the mark of the rope; another red--the sign of the
+scratch, inflicted by Simeon during the encounter--just like two
+fearful necklaces. Tamara approached and with a safety pin pinned
+together the lace on the collar, at the very chin.
+
+The clergy came: a little gray priest in gold spectacles, in a
+skull-cap; a lanky, tall, thin-haired deacon with a sickly, strangely
+dark and yellow face, as though of terra-cotta; and a sprightly,
+long-skirted psalmist, animatedly exchanging on his way some gay,
+mysterious signs with his friends among the singers.
+
+Tamara walked up to the priest:
+
+"Father," she asked, "how will you perform the funeral service; all
+together or each one separate?"
+
+"We perform the funeral service for all of them conjointly," answered
+the priest, kissing the stole, and extricating his beard and hair out
+of its slits. "Usually, that is. But by special request, and by special
+agreement, it's also possible to do it separately. What death did the
+deceased undergo?"
+
+"She's a suicide, father."
+
+"Hm ... a suicide? ... But do you know, young person, that by the
+canons of the church there isn't supposed to be any funeral service ...
+there ought not to be any? Of course, there are exceptions--by special
+intercession..."
+
+"Right here, father, I have certificates from the police and from the
+doctor ... She wasn't in her right mind ... in a fit of insanity..."
+
+Tamara extended to the priest two papers, sent her the evening before
+by Ryazanov, and on top of them three bank-notes of ten roubles each.
+"I would beg of you, father, to do everything fitting--Christian like.
+She was a splendid being, and suffered a very great deal. And won't you
+be so kind--go along with her to the cemetery, and there hold one more
+little mass..."
+
+"It's all right for me to go along with her to the cemetery, but in the
+cemetery itself I have no right to hold service--there is a clergy of
+their own ... And also here's how, young person; in view of the fact
+that I'll have to return once more after the rest, won't you, now ...
+add another little ten-spot."
+
+And having taken the money from Tamara's hand, the priest blessed the
+thurible, which had been brought up by the psalmist, and began to walk
+around the body of the deceased with thurification. Then, having
+stopped at her head, he in a meek, wontedly sad voice, uttered:
+
+"Blessed is our God. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
+be, world without end!"
+
+The psalmist began pattering: Holy God, Most Holy Trinity and Our
+Father poured out like peas.
+
+Quietly, as though confiding some deep, sad, occult mystery, the
+singers began in a rapid, sweet recitative: "With Thy blessed saints in
+glory everlasting, the soul of this Thy servant save, set at rest;
+preserving her in the blessed life, as Thou hast loving kindness for
+man."
+
+The psalmist distributed the candles; and they with warm, soft, living
+little flames, one after the other, were lit in the heavy, murky air,
+tenderly and transparently illuminating the faces of the women.
+
+Harmoniously the mournful melody flowed forth, and like the sighs of
+aggrieved angels sounded the great words:
+
+"Rest, oh God, this Thy servant and establish her in Heaven, wherein
+the faces of the just and the saints of the Lord shine like unto
+lights; set at rest this Thy servant who hath fallen asleep, contemning
+all her trespasses."
+
+Tamara was listening intently to the long familiar, but now long
+unheard words, and was smiling bitterly. The passionate, mad words of
+Jennka came back to her, full of such inescapable despair and unbelief
+... Would the all-merciful, all-gracious Lord forgive or would He not
+forgive her foul, fumy, embittered, unclean life? All-Knowing--can it
+be that Thou wouldst repulse her--the pitiful rebel, the involuntary
+libertine; a child that had uttered blasphemies against Thy radiant,
+holy name? Thou--Benevolence, Thou--our Consolation!
+
+A dull, restrained wailing, suddenly passing into a scream, resounded
+in the chapel. "Oh, Jennechka!" This was Little White Manka, standing
+on her knees and stuffing her mouth with her handkerchief, beating
+about in tears. And the remaining mates, following her, also got down
+upon their knees; and the chapel was filled with sighs, stifled
+lamentations and sobbings ...
+
+"Thou alone art deathless, Who hast created and made man; out of the
+dust of the earth were we made, and unto the same dust shall we return;
+as Thou hast ordained me, creating me and saying unto me, dust thou art
+and unto dust shalt thou return."
+
+Tamara was standing motionless and with an austere face that seemed
+turned to stone. The light of the candle in thin gold spirals shone in
+her bronze-chestnut hair; while she could not tear her eyes away from
+the lines of Jennka's moist, yellow forehead and the tip of her nose,
+which were visible to Tamara from her place.
+
+"Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return ..." she was mentally
+repeating the words of the canticles. "Could it be that that would be
+all; only earth alone and nothing more? And which is better: nothing,
+or even anything at all--even the most execrable--but merely to be
+existing?"
+
+And the choir, as though affirming her thoughts, as though taking away
+from her the last consolation, was uttering forlornly:
+
+    "And all mankind may go..."
+
+They sang Eternal Memory through, blew out the candles, and the little
+blue streams spread in the air, blue from frankincense. The priest read
+through the farewell prayer; and afterwards, in the general silence,
+scooped up some sand with the little shovel handed to him by the
+psalmist, and cast it cross-wise upon the corpse, on top of the gauze.
+And at this he was uttering great words, filled with the austere, sad
+inevitability of a mysterious universal law: "The world is the Lord's,
+and its fulfillment the universe, and all that dwelleth therein."
+
+The girls escorted their dead mate to the very cemetery. The road
+thither intersected the very entrance to Yamskaya Street. It would have
+been possible to turn to the left through it, and that would have been
+almost half as short; but dead people were not usually carried through
+Yamskaya.
+
+Nevertheless, out of almost all the doors their inmates poured out
+towards the cross roads, in whatever they had on: in slippers upon bare
+feet, in night gowns, with kerchiefs upon their heads; they crossed
+themselves, sighed, wiped their eyes with their handkerchiefs and the
+edges of their jackets.
+
+The weather cleared up ... The cold sun shone brightly from a cold sky
+of radiant blue enamel; the last grass showed its green, the withered
+leaves on the trees glowed, showing their pink and gold ... And in the
+crystal clear, cold air solemnly, and mournfully reverberated the
+sonorous sounds: "Holy God, Holy Almighty, Holy Everliving, have mercy
+upon us!" And with what flaming thirst for life, not to be satiated by
+aught; with what longing for the momentary--transient like unto a
+dream--joy and beauty of being; with what horror before the eternal
+silence of death, sounded the ancient refrain of John Damascene!
+
+Then a brief requiem at the grave, the dull thud of the earth against
+the lid of the coffin ... a small fresh hillock ...
+
+"And here's the end!" said Tamara to her comrades, when they were left
+alone. "Oh, well, girls--an hour earlier, an hour later! ... I'm sorry
+for Jennka! ... Horribly sorry! ... We won't ever find such another.
+And yet, my children, it's far better for her in her pit than for us in
+ours ... Well, let's cross ourselves for the last time--and home! ..."
+
+And when they all were already nearing their house, Tamara suddenly
+uttered pensively the strange, ominous words:
+
+"And we won't be long together without her: soon we will be scattered,
+by the wind far and wide. Life is good! ... Look: there's the sun, the
+blue sky ... How pure the air is ... Cobwebs are floating--it's Indian
+summer ... How good it is in this world! ... Only we alone--we
+wenches--are wayside rubbish."
+
+The girls started off on their journey. But suddenly from somewhere on
+the side, from behind a monument, a tall sturdy student detached
+himself. He caught up with Liubka and softly touched her sleeve. She
+turned around and beheld Soloviev. Her face instantaneously turned
+pale, her eyes opened wide and her lips began to tremble.
+
+"Go away!" she said quietly, with infinite hatred.
+
+"Liuba ... Liubochka ..." Soloviev began to mumble. "I searched ...
+searched for you ... I ... Honest to God, I'm not like that one ...
+like Lichonin ... I'm in earnest ... even right now, even to-day.
+
+"Go away!" still more quietly pronounced Liubka.
+
+"I'm serious ... I'm serious ... I'm not trifling, I want to marry..."
+
+"Oh, you creature!" suddenly squealed out Liubka, and quickly, hard,
+peasant-like, hit Soloviev on the cheek with her palm.
+
+Soloviev stood a little while, slightly swaying. His eyes were like
+those of a martyr ... The mouth half-open, with mournful creases at the
+sides.
+
+"Go away! Go away! I can't bear to look at all of you!" Liubka was
+screaming with rage. "Hangmen, swine!"
+
+Soloviev unexpectedly covered his face with his palms and went back,
+without knowing his way, with uncertain steps, like one drunk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+And in reality, the words of Tamara proved to be prophetic: since the
+funeral of Jennie not more than two weeks had passed, but during this
+brief space of time so many events burst over the house of Emma
+Edwardovna as do not befall sometimes even in half a decade.
+
+On the very next day they had to send off to a charitable
+institution--into a lunatic asylum--the unfortunate Pashka, who had
+fallen completely into feeble-mindedness. The doctors said that there
+was no hope of her ever improving. And in reality, as they had placed
+her in the hospital on the floor, upon a straw mattress, so did she
+remain upon it without getting up from it to her very death; submerging
+more and more into the black, bottomless abyss of quiet
+feeble-mindedness; but she died only half a year later, from bed-sores
+and infection of the blood.
+
+The next turn was Tamara's.
+
+For about half a month she fulfilled the duties of a housekeeper, was
+all the time unusually active, energetic; and somehow unwontedly wound
+up with that inner something of her own, which was so strongly
+fomenting within her. On a certain evening she vanished, and did not
+return at all to the establishment...
+
+The matter of fact was, that in the city she had carried on a
+protracted romance with a certain notary--an elderly man, sufficiently
+rich, but exceedingly niggardly. Their acquaintance had been scraped up
+yet a year back, when they had been by chance travelling together on
+the same steamer to a suburban monastery, and had begun a conversation.
+The clever, handsome Tamara; her enigmatic, depraved smile; her
+entertaining conversation; her modest manner of deporting herself, had
+captivated the notary. She had even then marked down for herself this
+elderly man with picturesque gray hair, with seigniorial manners; an
+erstwhile jurisconsult and a man of good family. She did not tell him
+about her profession--it pleased her rather to mystify him. She only
+hazily, in a few words, hinted at the fact that she was a married lady
+of the middle class; that she was unfortunate in domestic life, since
+her husband was a gambler and a despot; and that even by fate she was
+denied such a consolation as children. At parting she refused to pass
+an evening with the notary, and did not want to meet him; but then she
+allowed him to write to her--general delivery, under a fictitious name.
+A correspondence commenced between them, in which the notary flaunted
+his style and the ardency of his feelings, worthy of the heroes of Paul
+Bourget. She maintained the same withdrawn, mysterious tone.
+
+Then, being touched by the entreaties of the notary for a meeting, she
+made an appointment in Prince Park; was charming, witty, and
+languishing; but refused to go with him anywhere.
+
+So she tortured her adorer and skillfully inflamed within him the last
+passion, which at times is stronger and more dangerous than first love.
+Finally, this summer, when the family of the notary had gone abroad,
+she decided to visit his rooms; and here for the first time gave
+herself up to him with tears, with twinges of her conscience, and at
+the same time with such ardour and tenderness, that the poor secretary
+lost his head completely--was plunged entirely into that senile love,
+which no longer knows either reason or retrospect; which compels a man
+to lose the last thing--the fear of appearing ridiculous.
+
+Tamara was very sparing of her meetings. This inflamed her impatient
+friend still more. She consented to receiving from him bouquets of
+flowers, a modest breakfast in a suburban restaurant; but indignantly
+refused all expensive presents, and bore herself so skillfully and
+subtly, that the notary never got up the courage to offer her money.
+When he once stammered out something about a separate apartment and
+other conveniences, she looked him in the eyes so intently, haughtily,
+and sternly, that he, like a boy, turned red in his picturesque gray
+hairs, and kissed her hands, babbling incoherent apologies.
+
+So did Tamara play with him, and feel the ground more and more under
+her. She already knew now on what days the notary kept in his fireproof
+iron safe especially large sums. However, she did not hurry, fearing to
+spoil the business through clumsiness or prematurity.
+
+And so right now this long expected day arrived; a great contractors'
+fair had just ended, and all the notaries' offices were transacting
+deals for enormous suras every day. Tamara knew that the notary usually
+carried off the money to the bank on Saturdays, in order to be
+perfectly free on Sunday. And for that reason on Friday the notary
+received the following letter:
+
+"My dear, my adored King Solomon! Thy Shoilamite, thy girl of the
+vineyard, greets thee with burning kisses ... Dear, to-day is a holiday
+for me, and I am infinitely happy. To-day I am free, as well as you. HE
+has gone away to Homel for twenty-four hours on business matters, and I
+want to pass all the evening and ALL the night in your place. Ah, my
+beloved! All my life I am ready to pass on my knees before thee. I do
+not want to go anywhere. The suburban road-houses and cabarets have
+bored me long ago. I want you, only you ... you ... you alone. Await
+me, then, in the evening, my joy, about ten-eleven-o'clock! Prepare a
+great quantity of cold white wine, a canteloupe, and sugared chestnuts.
+I am burning, I am dying from desire! It seems to me, I will tire you
+out! I can not wait! My head is spinning around, my face burning, and
+my hands as cold as ice. I embrace you. Thy Valentina."
+
+That very same evening, about eleven o'clock, she artfully, through
+conversation, led the notary into showing her his fireproof safe;
+playing upon his odd, pecuniary vanity. Rapidly gliding with her glance
+over the shelves and the movable boxes, Tamara turned away with a
+skillfully executed yawn and said:
+
+"Fie, what a bore!"
+
+And, having embraced the notary's neck, she whispered with her lips at
+his very ears, burning him with her hot breath:
+
+"Lock up this nastiness, my treasure! Let's go! .... Let's go! ..."
+
+And she was the first to go out into the dining room.
+
+"Come here, now, Volodya!" she cried out from there. "Come quicker! I
+want wine and after that love, love, love without end! ... No! Drink it
+all, to the very bottom! Just as we will drain our love to the very
+bottom today!"
+
+The notary clinked glasses with her and at one gulp drank off his
+glass. Then he drew in his lips and remarked:
+
+"Strange ... The wine seems to be sort of bitter to-day."
+
+"Yes!" agreed Tamara and looked attentively at her lover. "This wine is
+always the least bit bitter. For such is the nature of Rhine wines..."
+
+"But to-day it's especially strong," said the notary. "No, thanks, my
+dear--I don't want any more!"
+
+After five minutes he fell asleep, sitting in his chair; his head
+thrown back against its back, and his lower jaw hanging down. Tamara
+waited for some time and started to awaken him. He was without motion.
+Then she took the lit candle, and, having placed it on the window sill
+giving out upon the street, went out into the entrance hall and began
+to listen, until she heard light steps on the stairs. Almost without a
+sound she opened the door and let in Senka, dressed like a real
+gentleman, with a brand new leather hand-bag in his hands.
+
+"Ready?" asked the thief in a whisper.
+
+"He's sleeping," answered Tamara, just as quietly. "Look and here are
+the keys."
+
+They passed together into the study with the fireproof safe. Having
+looked over the lock with the aid of a flashlight, Senka swore in a low
+voice:
+
+"The devil take him, the old animal! ... I just knew that it would be a
+lock with a combination. Here you've got to know the letters ... It's
+got to be melted with electricity, and the devil knows how much time
+it'll take."
+
+"It's not necessary," retorted Tamara hurriedly. "I know the word ...
+Pick it out: m-o-r-t-g-a-g-. Without the e."
+
+After ten minutes they descended the steps together; went in purposely
+broken lines through several streets, hiring a cab to the depot only in
+the old city; and rode out of the city with irreproachable passports of
+citizens and landed proprietors--the Stavnitzkys, man and wife. For a
+long time nothing was heard of them until, a year later, Senka was
+caught in Moscow in a large theft, and gave Tamara away during the
+interrogation. They were both tried and sentenced to imprisonment.
+
+Following Tamara came the turn of the naive, trusting, and amorous
+Verka. For a long time already she had been in love with a
+semi-military man, who called himself a civic clerk in the military
+department. His name was Dilectorsky. In their relations Verka was the
+adoring party; while he, like an important idol, condescendingly
+received the worship and the proffered gifts. Even from the end of
+summer Verka noticed that her beloved was becoming more and more cold
+and negligent; and, talking with her, was dwelling in thought somewhere
+far, far away. She tortured herself, was jealous, questioned him, but
+always received in answer some indeterminate phrases, some ominous
+hints at a near misfortune, at a premature grave ...
+
+In the beginning of September he finally confessed to her, that he had
+embezzled official money, big money, something around three thousand;
+and that after five days he would be checked up, and that he,
+Dilectorsky, was threatened with disgrace, the court, and finally, hard
+labour ... Here the civic clerk of the military department burst into
+sobs, clasping his head, and exclaimed:
+
+"My poor mother! ... What will become of her? She will not be able to
+sustain this degradation ... No! Death is a thousand times better than
+these hellish tortures of a being guilty of naught."
+
+Although he was expressing himself, as always, in the style of the dime
+novels (in which way he had mainly enticed the trusting Verka), still,
+the theatrical thought of suicide, once arisen, no longer forsook him.
+
+Somehow one day he was promenading for a long time with Verka in Prince
+Park. Already greatly devastated by autumn, this wonderful ancient park
+glistened and played with the magnificent tones of the foliage,
+blossoming out into colours: crimson, purple, lemon, orange and the
+deep cherry colour of old, settled wine; and it seemed that the cold
+air was diffusing sweet odours, like precious wine. And yet, a fine
+impress, a tender aroma of death, was wafted from the bushes, from the
+grass, from the trees.
+
+Dilectorsky waxed tender; gave his feelings a free rein, was moved over
+himself, and began to weep. Verka wept a bit with him, too.
+
+"To-day I will kill myself!" said Dilectorsky finally. "All is over!
+..."
+
+"My own, don't! ... My precious, don't! ..."
+
+"It's impossible," answered Dilectorsky sombrely. "The cursed money!
+... Which is dearer--honour or life?!"
+
+"My dear..."
+
+"Don't speak, don't speak, Annetta!" (He, for some reason, preferred to
+the common name of Verka the aristocratic Annetta, thought up by
+himself.) "Don't speak. This is decided!"
+
+"Oh, if only I could help you!" exclaimed Verka woefully. "Why, I'd
+give my life away ... Every drop of blood! ..."
+
+"What is life?" Dilectorsky shook his head with an actor's despondence.
+"Farewell, Annetta! ... Farewell! ..."
+
+The girl desperately began to shake her head:
+
+"I don't want it! ... I don't want it! ... I don't want it! ... Take
+me! ... I'll go with you too! ..."
+
+Late in the evening Dilectorsky took a room in an expensive hotel. He
+knew, that within a few hours, perhaps minutes, he and Verka would be
+corpses; and for that reason, although he had in his pocket only eleven
+kopecks, all in all, he gave orders sweepingly, like a habitual,
+downright prodigal; he ordered sturgeon stew, double snipes, and
+fruits; and, in addition to all this, coffee, liqueurs and two bottles
+of frosted champagne. And he was in reality convinced that he would
+shoot himself; but thought of it somehow affectedly, as though
+admiring, a trifle from the side, his tragic role; and enjoying
+beforehand the despair of his relatives and the amazement of his fellow
+clerks. While Verka, when she had suddenly said that she would commit
+suicide with her beloved, had been immediately strengthened in this
+thought. And there was nothing fearful to Verka in this impending
+death. "Well, now, is it better to croak just so, under a fence? But
+here it's together with your dearie! At least a sweet death! ..." And
+she frantically kissed her clerk, laughed, and with dishevelled, curly
+hair, with sparkling eyes, was prettier than she had ever been.
+
+The final triumphal moment arrived at last.
+
+"You and I have both enjoyed ourselves, Annetta ... We have drained the
+cup to the bottom and now, to use an expression of Pushkin's, must
+shatter the goblet!" said Dilectorsky. "You do not repent, oh, my dear?
+..."
+
+"No, no! ..."
+
+"Are you ready?"
+
+"Yes!" whispered she and smiled.
+
+"Then turn away to the wall and shut your eyes!"
+
+"No, no, my dearest, I don't want it so! ... I don't want it! Come to
+me! There, so! Nearer, nearer.. Give me your eyes, I will be gazing
+into them. Give me your lips--I will be kissing you, while you... I am
+not afraid! ... Be braver! ... Kiss me harder! ..."
+
+He killed her; and when he looked upon the horrible deed of his hands,
+he then suddenly felt a loathsome, abominable, abject fear. The
+half-naked body of Verka was still quivering on the bed. The legs of
+Dilectorsky gave in from horror; but the reason of a hypocrite, coward
+and blackguard kept vigil: he did still have spirit sufficient to
+stretch away at his side the skin over his ribs, and to shoot through
+it. And when he was falling, frantically crying out from pain, from
+fright, and from the thunder of the shot, the last convulsion was
+running through the body of Verka.
+
+While two weeks after the death of Verka, the naive, sportful, meek,
+brawling Little White Manka perished as well. During one of the
+general, clamourous brawls, usual in the Yamkas, in an enormous affray,
+some one killed her, hitting her with a heavy empty bottle over the
+head. And the murderer remained undiscovered to the last.
+
+So rapidly did events take place in the Yamkas, in the house of Emma
+Edwardovna; and well nigh not a one of its inmates escaped a bloody,
+foul or disgraceful doom.
+
+The final, most grandiose, and at the same time most bloody calamity
+was the devastation committed on the Yamkas by soldiers.
+
+Two dragoons had been short-changed in a rouble establishment, beaten
+up, and thrown out at night into the street. Tom to pieces, in blood,
+they returned to the barracks, where their comrades, having begun in
+the morning, were still finishing up their regimental holiday. And so,
+not half an hour passed, when a hundred soldiers burst into the Yamkas
+and began to wreck house after house. They were joined by an
+innumerable mob that gathered on the run--men of the golden squad[31],
+ragamuffins, tramps, crooks, souteneurs. The panes were broken in all
+the houses, and the grand pianos smashed to smithereens. The feather
+beds were ripped open and the down thrown out into the street; and yet
+for a long while after--for some two days--the countless bits of down
+flew and whirled over the Yamkas, like flakes of snow. The wenches,
+bare-headed, perfectly naked, were driven out into the street. Three
+porters were beaten to death. The rabble shattered, befouled, and rent
+into pieces all the silk and plush furniture of Treppel. They also
+smashed up all the neighbouring taverns and drink-shops, while they
+were at it.
+
+
+[31] Zolotorotzi--a subtle euphemism for cleaners of cesspools and
+carters of the wealth contained therein.--trans.
+
+
+The drunken, bloody, hideous slaughter continued for some three hours;
+until the arrayed military authorities, together with the fire company,
+finally succeeded in repulsing and scattering the infuriated mob. Two
+half-rouble establishments were set on fire, but the fire was soon put
+out. However, on the next day the tumult again flared up; this time
+already over the whole city and its environs. Altogether unexpectedly
+it took on the character of a Jewish pogrom, which lasted for three
+days, with all its horrors and miseries.
+
+And a week after followed the order of the governor-general about the
+immediate shutting down of houses of prostitution, on the Yamkas as
+well as other streets of the city. The proprietresses were given only a
+week's time for the settlement of matters in connection with their
+property.
+
+Annihilated, crushed, plundered; having lost all the glamour of their
+former grandeur; ludicrous and pitiful, the aged, faded proprietresses
+and fat-faced, hoarse housekeepers were hastily packing up their
+things. And a month after only the name reminded one of merry Yamskaya
+Street; of the riotous, scandalous, horrible Yamkas.
+
+However, even the name of the street was soon replaced by another, more
+respectable one, in order to efface even the memory of the former
+unpardonable times.
+
+And all these Henriettas-Horses, Fat Kitties, Lelkas-Polecats and other
+women--always naive and foolish, often touching and amusing, in the
+majority of cases deceived and perverted children,--spread through the
+big city, were dissolved within it. Out of them was born a new stratum
+of society--a stratum of the strolling, street prostitutes--solitaries.
+And about their life, just as pitiful and incongruous, but tinged by
+other interests and customs, the author of this novel--which he still
+dedicates to youths and mothers--will some time tell.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Yama (The Pit), by Alexandra Kuprin
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Yama (The Pit), by Alexandra Kuprin
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+Title: Yama (The Pit)
+
+Author: Alexandra Kuprin
+
+Release Date: December, 2003 [Etext #4706]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 5, 2002]
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+
+YAMA [THE PIT]
+
+
+Of this edition, intended for private circulation only, and
+printed from type on Berkeley Antique laid paper, 950 copies have
+been printed for America, and 550 for Great Britain. Also, 55
+unnumbered copies, for the press.
+
+This copy is Number 223
+
+
+
+
+
+YAMA [THE PIT]
+
+A NOVEL IN THREE PARTS
+
+BY ALEXANDRA KUPRIN
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
+
+BY BERNARD GUILBERT GUERNEY
+
+"All the horror is in just this, that there is no horror ..."
+
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S DEDICATION
+
+
+I know that many will find this novel immoral and indecent;
+nevertheless, I dedicate it with all my heart to MOTHERS AND
+YOUTHS--A. K.
+
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S DEDICATION
+
+
+I dedicate the labour of translation, in all humility and
+sincerity, to K. ANDRAE. B. G. G.
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+"With us, you see," Kuprin makes the reporter Platonov, his
+mouthpiece, say in Yama, "they write about detectives, about
+lawyers, about inspectors of the revenue, about pedagogues, about
+attorneys, about the police, about officers, about sensual ladies,
+about engineers, about baritones--and really, by God, altogether
+well--cleverly, with finesse and talent. But, after all, all these
+people are rubbish, and their life is not life, but some sort of
+conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of world culture. But
+there are two singular realities--ancient as humanity itself: the
+prostitute and the moujik. And about them we know nothing, save
+some tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions in literature..."
+
+Tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions... Let us consider some
+of the ways in which this monstrous reality has been approached by
+various writers. There is, first, the purely sentimental:
+Prevost's Manon Les caut. Then there is the slobberingly
+sentimental: Dumas' Dame aux Camelias. A third is the
+necrophilically romantic: Louys' Aphrodite. The fertile Balzac has
+given us no less than two: the purely romantic, in his fascinating
+portraits of the Fair Imperia; and the romantically realistic, in
+his Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes. Reade's Peg Woffington
+may be called the literary parallel of the costume drama; Defoe's
+Moll Flanders is honestly realistic; Zola's Nana is rabidly so.
+
+There is one singular fact that must be noted in connection with
+the vast majority of such depictions. Punk or bona roba, lorette
+or drab--put her before an artist in letters, and, lo and behold
+ye! such is the strange allure emanating from the hussy, that the
+resultant portrait is either that of a martyred Magdalene, or, at
+the very least, has all the enigmatic piquancy of a Monna Lisa...
+Not a slut, but what is a hetaera; and not a hetaera, but what is
+well-nigh Kypris herself! I know of but one depiction in all
+literature that possesses the splendour of implacable veracity as
+well as undiminished artistry; where the portrait is that of a
+prostitute, despite all her tirings and trappings; a depiction
+truly deserving to be designated a portrait: the portrait supreme
+of the harlot eternal--Shakespeare's Cleopatra.
+
+Furthermore, it will be observed that such depictions, for the
+most part, are primarily portraits of prostitutes, and not
+pictures of prostitution. It is also a singular fact that war,
+another scourge has met with similar treatment. We have the
+pretty, spotless grenadiers and cuirassiers of Meissonier in
+plenty; Vereshchagin is still alone in the grim starkness of his
+wind-swept, snow-covered battle-fields, with black crows wheeling
+over the crumpled masses of gray...
+
+And, curiously enough, it is another great Russian, Kuprin, who is
+supreme--if not unique--as a painter of the universal scourge of
+prostitution, per se; and not as an incidental background for
+portraits. True, he may not have entirely escaped the strange
+allure, aforementioned, of the femininity he paints; for
+femininity--even though fallen, corrupt, abased, is still
+femininity, one of the miracles of life, to Kuprin, the lover of
+life. But, even if he may be said to have used too much of the oil
+of sentimentality in mixing his colours for the portraits, his
+portraits are subordinate to the background; and there his eye is
+true and keen, his hand steady and unflinching, his colours and
+brushwork unimpeachable. Whether, like his own Platonov--who may
+be called to some extent an autobiographical figure, and many of
+whose experiences are Kuprin's own--"came upon the brothel" and
+gathered his material unconsciously, "without any ulterior
+thoughts of writing, "we do not know, nor need we rummage in his
+dirty linen, as he puts it. Suffice it to say here--to cite but
+two instances--that almost anyone acquainted with Russia will tell
+you the full name of the rich, gay, southern port city of K--;
+that any Odessite will tell you that Treppel's is merely
+transplanted, for fictional reasons, from his own city to K--...
+
+Alexandre I. Kuprin was born in 1870; 1909 marked the twenty-fifth
+anniversary of his literary activity. He attained his fame only
+upon the publication of his amazing, epical novel, "The Duel"--
+which, just like "YAMA," is an arraignment; an arraignment of
+militaristic corruption. Russian criticism has styled him the poet
+of life. If Chekhov was the Wunderkind of Russian letters, Kuprin
+is its enfant terrible. His range of subjects is enormous; his
+power of observation and his versatility extraordinary. Gambrinus
+alone would justify his place among the literary giants of Europe.
+Some of his picaresques, "THE INSULT," "HORSE-THIEVES," and "OFF
+THE STREET"--the last in the form of a monologue--are sheer tours
+de force. "Olessiya" is possessed of a weird, unearthly beauty;
+"The Shulamite" is a prose-poem of antiquity. He deals with the
+life of the moujik in "Back-woods" and "The Swamp"; of the Jews,
+in "The Jewess" and "The Coward"; of the soldiers, in "The
+Cadets," "The Interrogation," "The Night Watch," "Delirium"; of
+the actors, in "How I Was an Actor" and "In Retirement." We have
+circus life in "'Allez!'" "In The Circus," "Lolly," "The Clown"--
+the last a one-act playlet; factory life, in "Moloch"; provincial
+life, in "Small Fry"; bohemian life, in "Captain Ribnicov" and
+"The River of Life"--which no one but Kuprin could have written.
+There are animal stories and flower stories; stories for children
+--and for neuropaths; one story is dedicated to a jockey; another
+to a circus clown; a third, if I remember rightly, to a race-
+horse... "Yama" created an enormous sensation upon the publication
+of the first part in volume three of the "Sbornik Zemliya"--"The
+Earth Anthology"--in 1909; the second part appeared in volume
+fifteen, in 1914; the third, in volume sixteen, in 1915. Both the
+original parts and the last revised edition have been followed in
+this translation. The greater part of the stories listed above are
+available in translations, under various titles; the list, of
+course, is merely a handful from the vast bulk of the fecund
+Kuprin's writings, nor is any group of titles exhaustive of its
+kind. "The Star of Solomon," his latest collection of stories,
+bears the imprint of Helsingfors, 1920.
+
+It must not be thought, despite its locale, that Kuprin's "Yama"
+is a picture of Russian prostitution solely; it is intrinsically
+universal. All that is necessary is to change the kopecks into
+cents, pennies, sous or pfennings; compute the versts into miles
+or metres; Jennka may be Eugenie or Jeannette; and for Yama,
+simply read Whitechapel, Montmartre, or the Barbary Coast. That is
+why "Yama" is a "tremendous, staggering, and truthful book--a
+terrific book." It has been called notorious, lurid--even
+oleographic. So are, perhaps, the picaresques of Murillo, the
+pictorial satires of Hogarth, the bizarreries of Goya...
+
+The best introduction to "Yama," however, can be given in Kuprin's
+own words, as uttered by the reporter Platonov. "They do write,"
+he says, "... but it is all either a lie, or theatrical effects
+for children of tender years, or else a cunning symbolism,
+comprehensible only to the sages of the future. But the life
+itself no one as yet has touched...
+
+"But the material here is in reality tremendous, downright
+crushing, terrible... And not at all terrible are the loud phrases
+about the traffic in women's flesh, about the white slaves, about
+prostitution being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on,
+and so on... an old hurdy-gurdy of which all have tired! No,
+horrible are the everyday, accustomed trifles; these business-
+like, daily, commercial reckonings; this thousand-year-old science
+of amatory practice; this prosaic usage, determined by the ages.
+In these unnoticeable nothings are completely dissolved such
+feelings as resentment, humiliation, shame. There remains a dry
+profession, a contract, an agreement, a well-nigh honest petty
+trade, no better, no worse than, say, the trade in groceries. Do
+you understand, gentlemen, that all the horror is in just this--
+that there is no horror! Bourgeois work days--and that is all...
+
+"More awful than all awful words, a hundredfold more awful--is
+some such little prosaic stroke or other as will suddenly knock
+you all in a heap, like a blow on the forehead..."
+
+It is in such little prosaic strokes; everyday, accustomed,
+characteristic trifles; minute particles of life, that Kuprin
+excels. The detailism which crowds his pages is like the stippling
+of Whistler; or the enumerations of the Bible; or the chiselling
+of Rodin, that endows the back of the Thinker with meaning.
+
+"We all pass by these characteristic trifles indifferently, like
+the blind, as though not seeing them scattered about under our
+feet. But an artist will come, and he will look over them
+carefully, and he will pick them up. And suddenly he will so
+skillfully turn in the sun a minute particle of life, that we
+shall all cry out: 'Oh, my God! But I myself--myself!--have seen
+this with my own eyes. Only it simply did not enter my head to
+turn my close attention upon it.' But our Russian artists of the
+word--the most conscientious and sincere artists in the whole
+world--for some reason have up to this time passed over
+prostitution and the brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me
+to answer that. Perhaps because of squeamishness, perhaps out of
+pusillanimity, out of fear of being signalized as a pornographic
+writer; finally from the apprehension that our gossiping criticism
+will identify the artistic work of the writer with his personal
+life and will start rummaging in his dirty linen. Or perhaps they
+can find neither the time, nor the self-denial, nor the self-
+possession to plunge in head first into this life and to watch it
+right up close, without prejudice, without sonorous phrases,
+without a sheepish pity, in all its monstrous simplicity and
+everyday activity... That material... is truly unencompassable in
+its significance and weightiness... The words of others do not
+suffice--even though they be the most exact--even observations,
+made with a little note-book and a bit of pencil, do not suffice.
+One must grow accustomed to this life, without being cunningly
+wise..."
+
+"I believe, that not now, not soon--after fifty years or so--but
+there will come a writer of genius, and precisely a Russian one,
+who will absorb within himself all the burdens and all the
+abominations of this life and will cast them forth to us in the
+form of simple, fine, and deathlessly--caustic images. And we
+shall all say: 'Why, now, we ourselves have seen and known all
+this, but we could not even suppose that this is so horrible! In
+this coming artist I believe with all my heart."
+
+Kuprin is too sincere, too big, to have written this with himself
+in mind; yet no reader of the scathing, searing arraignment called
+"Yama," will question that the great, the gigantic Kuprin has
+shown "the burdens and abominations" of prostitution, in "simple,
+fine, and deathlessly-caustic images"; has shown that "all the
+horror is in just this--that there is no horror..." For it is as a
+pitiless reflection of a "singular," sinister reality that "Yama"
+stands unsurpassed.
+
+B. G. GUERNEY.
+
+New York City, January, 1922.
+
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
+
+
+A word must be said of Kuprin's style. He is by no means a purist;
+his pages bristle with neologisms and foreign--or, rather,
+outlandish--words; nor has he any hesitancy in adapting and
+Russianizing such words. He coins words; he is, at times, actually
+Borrowesque, and not only does he resort to colloquialisms and
+slang, but to dialect, cant, and even actual argot. Therein is his
+glory--and, perhaps, his weakness. Therefore, an attempt has been
+made, wherever corruptions, slang, and so forth, appear in the
+original, to render them through the nearest English equivalents.
+While this has its obvious dubieties and disadvantages, any other
+course would have smacked of prettification--a fate which such a
+book as "Yama" surely does not deserve.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+A long, long time ago, long before the railroads, the stage-
+drivers--both government and private--used to live, from
+generation to generation, at the very farthest confine of a large
+southern city. And that is why the entire region was called the
+Yamskaya Sloboda--the Stage-drivers' Borough; or simply Yamskaya,
+or Yamkas--Little Ditches, or, shorter still, Yama--The Pit. In
+the course of time, when hauling by steam killed off
+transportation by horses, the mettlesome tribe of the stage-
+drivers little by little lost its boisterous ways and its brave
+customs, went over into other occupations, fell apart and
+scattered. But for many years--even up to this time--a shady
+renown has remained to Yama, as of a place exceedingly gay, tipsy,
+brawling, and in the night-time not without danger.
+
+Somehow it came about of itself, that on the ruins of those
+ancient, long-warmed nests, where of yore the rosy-cheeked,
+sprightly wives of the soldiery and the plump widows of Yama, with
+their black eyebrows, had secretly traded in vodka and free love,
+there began to spring up wide-open brothels, permitted by the
+authorities, regulated by official supervision and subject to
+express, strict rules. Towards the end of the nineteenth century
+both streets of Yama--Great Yamskaya and Little Yamskaya--proved
+to be entirely occupied, on one side of the street as well as the
+other, exclusively with houses of ill-fame. [Footnote: "Houses of
+Suffrance"--i.e., Houses of the Necessary Evil.--Trans.] Of the
+private houses no more than five or six were left, but even they
+were taken up by public houses, beer halls, and general stores,
+catering to the needs of Yama prostitution.
+
+The course of life, the manners and customs, are almost identical
+in all the thirty-odd establishments; the difference is only in
+the charges exacted for the briefly-timed love, and consequently
+in certain external minutiae as well: in the assortment of more or
+less handsome women, in the comparative smartness of the costumes,
+in the magnificence of the premises and the luxuriousness of the
+furnishings.
+
+The most chic establishment is that of Treppel, the first house to
+the left upon entering Great Yamskaya. This is an old firm. Its
+present owner bears an entirely different name, and fills the post
+of an elector in the city council and is even a member of the city
+board. The house is of two stories, green and white, built in the
+debauched pseudo-Russian style a la Ropetovsky, with little
+horses, carved facings, roosters, and wooden towels bordered with
+lace-also of wood; a carpet with a white runner on the stairs; in
+the front hall a stuffed bear, holding a wooden platter for
+visiting cards in his out-stretched paws; a parquet floor in the
+ballroom, heavy raspberry silk curtains and tulle on the windows,
+along the walls white and gold chairs and mirrors with gilt
+frames; there are two private cabinets with carpets, divans, and
+soft satin puffs; in the bedrooms blue and rose lanterns, blankets
+of raw silk stuff and clean pillows; the inmates are clad in low-
+cut ball gowns, bordered with fur, or in expensive masquerade
+costumes of hussars, pages, fisher lasses, school-girls; and the
+majority of them are Germans from the Baltic provinces--large,
+handsome women, white of body and with ample breasts. At Treppel's
+three roubles are taken for a visit, and for the whole night, ten.
+
+Three of the two-rouble establishments--Sophie Vassilievna's, The
+Old Kiev, and Anna Markovna's--are somewhat worse, somewhat
+poorer. The remaining houses on Great Yamskaya are rouble ones;
+they are furnished still worse. While on Little Yamskaya, which is
+frequented by soldiers, petty thieves, artisans, and drab folk In
+general, and where fifty kopecks or less are taken for time,
+things are altogether filthy and poor-the floor in the parlor is
+crooked, warped, and full of splinters, the windows are hung with
+pieces of red fustian; the bedrooms, just like stalls, are
+separated by thin partitions, which do not reach to the ceiling,
+and on the beds, on top of the shaken down hay-mattresses, are
+scattered torn, spotted bed-sheets and flannel blankets, dark from
+time, crumpled any old way, full of holes; the air is sour and
+full of fumes, with a mixture of alcohol vapours and the smell of
+human emanations; the women, dressed in rags of coloured printed
+calico or in sailor costumes, are for the greater part hoarse or
+snuffling, with noses half fallen through, with faces preserving
+traces of yesterday's blows and scratches and naively bepainted
+with the aid of a red cigarette box moistened with spit.
+
+All the year round, every evening--with the exception of the last
+three days of Holy Week and the night before Annunciation, when no
+bird builds its nest and a shorn wench does not plait her braid--
+when it barely grows dark out of doors, hanging red lanterns are
+lit before every house, above the tented, carved street doors. It
+is just like a holiday out on the street--like Easter. All the
+windows are brightly lit up, the gay music of violins and pianos
+floats out through the panes, cabmen drive up and drive off
+without cease. In all the houses the entrance doors are opened
+wide, and through them one may see from the street a steep
+staircase with a narrow corridor on top, and the white flashing of
+the many-facetted reflector of the lamp, and the green walls of
+the front hall, painted over with Swiss landscapes. Till the very
+morning hundreds and thousands of men ascend and descend these
+staircases. Here everybody frequents: half-shattered, slavering
+ancients, seeking artificial excitements, and boys-military cadets
+and high-school lads--almost children; bearded paterfamiliases;
+honourable pillars of society, in goldon spectacles; and newly-
+weds, and enamoured bridegrooms, and honourable professors with
+renowned names; and thieves, and murderers, and liberal lawyers;
+and strict guardians of morals--pedagogues, and foremost writers--
+the authors of fervent, impassioned articles on the equal rights
+of women; and catchpoles, and spies, and escaped convicts, and
+officers, and students, and Social Democrats, and hired patriots;
+the timid and the brazen, the sick and the well, those knowing
+woman for the first time, and old libertines frayed by all species
+of vice; clear-eyed, handsome fellows and monsters maliciously
+distorted by nature, deaf-mutes, blind men, men without noses,
+with flabby, pendulous bodies, with malodorous breath, bald,
+trembling, covered with parasites--pot-bellied, hemorrhoidal apes.
+They come freely and simply, as to a restaurant or a depot; they
+sit, smoke, drink, convulsively pretend to be merry; they dance,
+executing abominable movements of the body imitative of the act of
+sexual love. At times attentively and long, at times with gross
+haste, they choose any woman they like and know beforehand that
+they will never meet refusal. Impatiently they pay their money in
+advance, and on the public bed, not yet grown cold after the body
+of their predecessor, aimlessly commit the very greatest and most
+beautiful of all universal mysteries--the mystery of the
+conception of new life. And the women with indifferent readiness,
+with uniform words, with practiced professional movements, satisfy
+their desires, like machines--only to receive, right after them,
+during the same night, with the very same words, smiles and
+gestures, the third, the fourth, the tenth man, not infrequently
+already biding his turn in the waiting room.
+
+So passes the entire night. Towards daybreak Yama little by little
+grows quiet, and the bright morning finds it depopulated,
+spacious, plunged into sleep, with doors shut tightly, with
+shutters fixed on the windows. But toward evening the women awaken
+and get ready for the following night.
+
+And so without end, day after day, for months and years, they live
+a strange, incredible life in their public harems, outcast by
+society, accursed by the family, victims of the social
+temperament, cloacas for the excess of the city's sensuality, the
+guardians of the honour of the family--four hundred foolish, lazy,
+hysterical, barren women.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Two in the afternoon. In the second-rate, two-rouble establishment
+of Anna Markovna everything is plunged in sleep. The large square
+parlor with mirrors in gilt frames, with a score of plush chairs
+placed decorously along the walls, with oleograph pictures of
+Makovsky's Feast of the Russian Noblemen, and Bathing, with a
+crystal lustre in the middle, is also sleeping, and in the quiet
+and semi-darkness it seems unwontedly pensive, austere, strangely
+sad. Yesterday here, as on every evening, lights burned, the most
+rollicking of music rang out, blue tobacco smoke swirled, men and
+women careered in couples, shaking their hips and throwing their
+legs on high. And the entire street shone on the outside with the
+red lanterns over the street doors and with the light from the
+windows, and it seethed with people and carriages until morning.
+
+Now the street is empty. It is glowing triumphantly and joyously
+in the glare of the summer sun. But in the parlor all the window
+curtains are lowered, and for that reason it is dark within, cool,
+and as peculiarly uninviting as the interiors of empty theatres,
+riding academies and court buildings usually are in the middle of
+the day.
+
+The pianoforte glimmers dully with its black, bent, glossy side;
+the yellow, old, time-eaten, broken, gap-toothed keys glisten
+faintly. The stagnant, motionless air still retains yesterday's
+odour; it smells of perfumes, tobacco, the sour dampness of a
+large uninhabited room, the perspiration of unclean and unhealthy
+feminine flesh, face-powder, boracic-thymol soap, and the dust of
+the yellow mastic with which the parquet floor had been polished
+yesterday. And with a strange charm the smell of withering swamp
+grass is blended with these smells. To-day is Trinity. In
+accordance with an olden custom, the chambermaids of the
+establishment, while their ladies were still sleeping, had bought
+a whole waggon of sedge on the market, and had strewn its long,
+thick blades, that crunch underfoot, everywhere about--in the
+corridors, in the private cabinets, in the drawing room. They,
+also, had lit the lamps before all the images. The girls, by
+tradition, dare not do this with their hands, which have been
+denied during the night.
+
+And the house-porter has adorned the house-entrance, which is
+carved in the Russian style, with two little felled birch-trees.
+And so with all the houses--the thin white trunks with their scant
+dying verdure adorn the exterior near the stoops, bannisters and
+doors.
+
+The entire house is quiet, empty and drowsy. The chopping of
+cutlets for dinner can be heard from the kitchen. Liubka, one of
+the girls, barefooted, in her shift, with bare arms, not good-
+looking, freckled, but strong and fresh of body, has come out into
+the inner court. Yesterday she had had but six guests on time, but
+no one had remained for the night with her, and because of that
+she had slept her fill--splendidly, delightfully, all alone, upon
+a wide bed. She had risen early, at ten o'clock, and had with
+pleasure helped the cook scrub the floor and the tables in the
+kitchen. Now she is feeding the chained dog Amour with the sinews
+and cuttings of the meat. The big, rusty hound, with long
+glistening hair and black muzzle, jumps up on the girl--with his
+front paws, stretching the chain tightly and rattling in the
+throat from shortness of breath, then, with back and tail
+undulating all over, bends his head down to the ground, wrinkles
+his nose, smiles, whines and sneezes from the excitement. But she,
+teasing him with the meat, shouts at him with pretended severity:
+
+"There, you--stupid! I'll--I'll give it to you! How dare you?"
+
+But she rejoices with all her soul over the tumult and caresses of
+Amour and her momentary power over the dog, and because she had
+slept her fill, and passed the night without a man, and because of
+the Trinity, according to dim recollections of her childhood, and
+because of the sparkling sunny day, which it so seldom befalls her
+to see.
+
+All the night guests have already gone their ways. The most
+business-like, quiet and workaday hour is coming on.
+
+They are drinking coffee in the room of the proprietress. The
+company consists of five people. The proprietress herself, in
+whose name the house is registered, is Anna Markovna. She is about
+sixty. She is very small of stature, but dumpy: she may be
+visualized by imagining, from the bottom up, three soft,
+gelatinous globes--large, medium and small, pressed into each
+other without any interstices; this--her skirt, torso and head.
+Strange, her eyes are a faded blue, girlish, even childish, but
+the mouth is that of an old person, with a moist lower lip of a
+raspberry colour, impotently hanging down. Her husband--Isaiah
+Savvich--is also small, a grayish, quiet, silent little old man.
+He is under his wife's thumb; he was doorkeeper in this very house
+even at the time when Anna Markovna served here as housekeeper. In
+order to be useful in some way, he has learned, through self-
+instruction, to play the fiddle, and now at night plays dance
+tunes, as well as a funeral march for shopmen far gone on a spree
+and craving some maudlin tears.
+
+Then, there are the two housekeepers--senior and junior. The
+senior is Emma Edwardovna. She is a tall, full woman of forty-six,
+with chestnut hair, and a fat goitre of three chins. Her eyes are
+encircled with black rings of hemorrhoidal origin. The face
+broadens out like a pear from the forehead down to the cheeks, and
+is of an earthen colour; the eyes are small, black; the nose
+humped, the lips sternly pursed; the expression of the face calmly
+authoritative. It is no mystery to anyone in the house that in a
+year or two Anna Markovna will go into retirement, and sell her
+the establishment with all its rights and furnishings, when she
+will receive part in cash, and part on terms--by promissory note.
+Because of this the girls honour her equally with the proprietress
+and fear her somewhat. Those who fall into error she beats with
+her own hands, beats cruelly, coolly, and calculatingly, without
+changing the calm expression of her face. Among the girls there is
+always a favourite of hers, whom she tortures with her exacting
+love and fantastic jealousy. And this is far harder than her
+beatings.
+
+The other one is called Zociya. She has just struggled out of the
+ranks of the common girls. The girls, as yet, call her
+impersonally, flatteringly and familiarly, "little housekeeper."
+She is spare, spry, just a trifle squinting, with a rosy
+complexion, and hair dressed in a little curly pompadour; she
+adores actors--preferably stout comedians. Toward Emma Edwardovna
+she is ingratiating.
+
+The fifth person, finally, is the local district inspector,
+Kerbesh. This is an athletic man; he is kind of bald, has a red
+beard like a fan, vividly blue slumbrous eyes, and a thin,
+slightly hoarse, pleasant voice. Everybody knows that he formerly
+served in the secret service division and was the terror of
+crooks, thanks to his terrible physical strength and cruelty in
+interrogations.
+
+He has several shady transactions on his conscience. The whole
+town knows that two years back he married a rich old woman of
+seventy, and that last year he strangled her; however, he was
+somehow successful in hushing up this affair. But for that matter,
+the remaining four have also seen a thing or two in their
+chequered life. But, just as the bretteurs of old felt no twinges
+of conscience at the recollection of their victims, even so do
+these people regard the dark and bloody things in their past, as
+the unavoidable little unpleasantness of their professions.
+
+They are drinking coffee with rich, boiled cream--the inspector
+with Benedictine. But he, strictly speaking, is not drinking, but
+merely conveying the impression that he is doing it to oblige.
+
+"Well, what is it to be, Phoma Phornich?" asks the proprietress
+searchingly. "This business isn't worth an empty eggshell, now...
+Why, you have only to say a word..."
+
+Kerbesh slowly draws in half a wine-glass of liqueur, works the
+oily, strong, pungent liquid slightly with his tongue over the
+roof of his mouth, swallows it, chases it down, without hurrying,
+with coffee, and then passes the ring finger of his left hand over
+his moustaches, to the right and left.
+
+"Think it over for yourself, Madam Shoibes," he says, looking down
+at the table, spreading out his hands and screwing up his eyes.
+"Think of the risk to which I'm exposed! The girl through means of
+deception was enticed into this... what-you-may-call-it... well,
+in a word, into a house of ill-fame, to express it in lofty style.
+Now the parents are searching for her through the police. Ve-ery
+well. She gets into one place after another, from the fifth into
+the tenth... Finally the trail is picked up with you, and most
+important of all--think of it!--in my district! What can I do?"
+
+"Mr. Kerbesh, but she is of age," says the proprietress.
+
+"They are of age," confirms Isaiah Savvich. "They gave an
+acknowledgment, that it was of their own will..."
+
+Emma Edwardovna pronounces in a bass, with cool accurance:
+
+"Honest to God, she's the same here as an own daughter."
+
+"But that's not what I am talking about," the inspector frowns in
+vexation. "Just consider my position... Why, this is duty. Lord,
+there's no end of unpleasantnesses without that!"
+
+The proprietress suddenly arises, shuffles in her slippers to the
+door, and says, winking to the inspector with a sleepy,
+expressionless eye of faded blue:
+
+"Mr. Kerbesh, I would ask you to have a look at our alterations.
+We want to enlarge the place a bit."
+
+"A-ah! With pleasure..."
+
+After ten minutes both return, without looking at each other.
+Kerbesh's hand is crunching a brand-new hundred rouble note in his
+pocket. The conversation about the seduced girl is not renewed.
+The inspector, hastily finishing his Benedictine, complains of the
+present decline in manners.
+
+"I have a son, now, a schoolboy--Paul. He comes to me, the
+scoundrel, and declares: 'Papa, the pupils swear at me, because
+you are a policeman, and because you serve on Yamskaya, and
+because you take bribes from brothels.' Well, tell me, for God's
+sake, Madam Shoibes, if that isn't effrontery?"
+
+"Ai, ai, ai! ... And what bribes can there be? Now with me..."
+
+"I say to him: 'Go, you good-for-nothing, and let the principal
+know, that there should be no more of this, otherwise papa will
+inform on all of you to the governor.' And what do you think? He
+comes to me and says: 'I am no longer a son to you--seek another
+son for yourself.' What an argument! Well, I gave him enough to
+last till the first of the month! Oho-ho! Now he doesn't want to
+speak with me. Well, I'll show him yet!"
+
+"Ah, you don't have to tell us," sighs Anna Markovna, letting her
+lower, raspberry-coloured lip hang down and with a mist coming
+over her faded eyes. "We keep our Birdie--she is in Fleisher's
+high school--we purposely keep her in town, in a respectable
+family. You. understand, it is awkward, after all. And all of a
+sudden she brings such words and expressions from the high school
+that I just simply turned all red."
+
+"Honest to God, Annochka turned all red," confirms Isaiah Savvich.
+
+"You'll turn red, all right!" warmly agrees the inspector. "Yes,
+yes, yes, I understand you fully. But, my God, where are we going!
+Where are we only going? I ask you, what are these revolutionaries
+and all these various students, or... what-you-may-call-'ems? ...
+trying to attain? And let them put the blame on none but
+themselves. Corruption is everywhere, morality is falling, there
+is no respect for parents. They ought to be shot."
+
+"Well, now, the day before yesterday we had a case," Zociya mixes
+in bustlingly. "A certain guest came, a stout man..."
+
+"Drop it!" Emma Edwardovna, who was listening to the inspector,
+piously nodding with her head bowed to one side, cuts her short in
+the jargon of the brothels. "You'd better go and see about
+breakfast for the young ladies."
+
+"And not a single person can be relied upon," continues the
+proprietress grumblingly. "Not a servant but what she's a stiff, a
+faker. And all the girls ever think about is their lovers. Just
+so's they may have their own pleasure. But about their duties they
+don't even think."
+
+There is an awkward silence. Some one knocks on the door. A thin,
+feminine voice speaks on the other side of the door:
+
+"Housekeeper, dear, take the money and be kind enough to give me
+the stamps. Pete's gone."
+
+The inspector gets up and adjusts his sabre.
+
+"Well, it's time I was going to work. Best regards, Anna Markovna.
+Best wishes, Isaiah Savvich."
+
+"Perhaps you'll have one more little glass for a stirrup cup?" the
+nearly blind Isaiah Savvich thrusts himself over the table.
+
+"Tha-ank you. I can't. Full to the gills. Honoured, I'm sure! ..."
+
+"Thanks for your company. Drop in some time."
+
+"Always glad to be your guest, sir. Au revoir!"
+
+But in the doorway he stops for a minute and says significantly:
+
+"But still, my advice to you is--you'd better pass this girl on to
+some place or other in good time. Of course, it's your affair, but
+as a good friend of yours I give you warning."
+
+He goes away. When his steps are abating on the stairs and the
+front door bangs to behind him, Emma Edwardovna snorts through her
+nose and says contemptuously:
+
+"Stool-pigeon! He wants to take money both here and there..."
+
+Little by little they all crawl apart out of the room. It is dark
+in the house. It smells sweetly of the half-withered sedge. Quiet
+reigns.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Until dinner, which is served at six in the evening, the time
+drags endlessly long and with intolerable monotony. And, in
+general, this daily interval is the heaviest and emptiest in the
+life of the house. It remotely resembles in its moods those
+slothful, empty hours which are lived through during the great
+holidays in scholastic institutes and other private institutions
+for females, when all the friends have dispersed, when there is
+much leisure and much indolence, and a radiant, agreeable tedium
+reigns the whole day. In only their petticoats and white shifts,
+with bare arms, sometimes barefooted, the women aimlessly ramble
+from room to room, all of them unwashed, uncombed; lazily strike
+the keys of the old pianoforte with the index finger, lazily lay
+out cards to tell their fortune, lazily exchange curses, and with
+a languishing irritation await the evening.
+
+Liubka, after breakfast, had carried out the leavings of bread and
+the cuttings of ham to Amour, but the dog had soon palled upon
+her. Together with Niura she had bought some barberry bon-bons and
+sunflower seeds, and now both are standing behind the fence
+separating the house from the street, gnawing the seeds, the
+shells of which remain on their chins and bosoms, and speculate
+indifferently about those who pass on the street: about the lamp-
+lighter, pouring kerosene into the street lamps, about the
+policeman with the daily registry book under his arm, about the
+housekeeper from somebody else's establishment, running across the
+road to the general store.
+
+Niura is a small girl, with goggle-eyes of blue; she has white,
+flaxen hair and little blue veins on her temples. In her face
+there is something stolid and innocent, reminiscent of a white
+sugar lamb on a Paschal cake. She is lively, bustling, curious,
+puts her nose into everything, agrees with everybody, is the first
+to know the news, and, when she speaks, she speaks so much and so
+rapidly that spray flies out of her mouth and bubbles
+effervescence on the red lips, as in children.
+
+Opposite, out of the dram-shop, a servant pops out for a minute--a
+curly, besotted young fellow with a cast in his eye--and runs into
+the neighbouring public house.
+
+"Prokhor Ivanovich, oh Prokhor Ivanovich," shouts Niura, "don't
+you want some?--I'll treat you to some sunflower seeds!"
+
+"Come on in and pay us a visit," Liubka chimes in.
+
+Niura snorts and adds through the laughter which suffocates her:
+
+"Warm your feet for a while!"
+
+But the front door opens; in it appears the formidable and stern
+figure of the senior housekeeper.
+
+"Pfui! [Footnote: A German exclamation of disgust or contempt,
+corresponding to the English fie.--Trans.] What sort of indecency
+is this!" she cries commandingly. "How many times must it be
+repeated to you, that you must not jump out on the street during
+the day, and also--pfui!--only in your underwear. I can't
+understand how you have no conscience yourselves. Decent girls,
+who respect themselves, must not demean themselves that way in
+public. It seems, thank God, that you are not in an establishment
+catering to soldiers, but in a respectable house. Not in Little
+Yamskaya."
+
+The girls return into the house, get into the kitchen, and for a
+long time sit there on tabourets, contemplating the angry cook
+Prascoviya, swinging their legs and silently gnawing the sunflower
+seeds.
+
+In the room of Little Manka, who is also called Manka the
+Scandaliste and Little White Manka, a whole party has gathered.
+Sitting on the edge of the bed, she and another girl--Zoe, a tall
+handsome girl, with arched eyebrows, with grey, somewhat bulging
+eyes, with the most typical, white, kind face of the Russian
+prostitute--are playing at cards, playing at "sixty-six." Little
+Manka's closest friend, Jennie, is lying behind their backs on the
+bed, prone on her back, reading a tattered book, The Queen's
+Necklace, the work of Monsieur Dumas, and smoking. In the entire
+establishment she is the only lover of reading and reads
+intoxicatingly and without discrimination. But, contrary to
+expectation, the forced reading of novels of adventure has not at
+all made her sentimental and has not vitiated her imagination.
+Above all, she likes in novels a long intrigue, cunningly thought
+out and deftly disentangled; magnificent duels, before which the
+viscount unties the laces of his shoes to signify that he does not
+intend to retreat even a step from his position,[Footnote:
+Probably a sly dig at Gautier's Captain Fracasse.-Trans.] and
+after which the marquis, having spitted the count through,
+apologizes for having made an opening in his splendid new
+waistcoat; purses, filled to the full with gold, carelessly strewn
+to the left and right by the chief heroes; the love adventures and
+witticisms of Henry IV--in a word, all this spiced heroism, in
+gold and lace, of the past centuries of French history. In
+everyday life, on the contrary, she is sober of mind, jeering,
+practical and cynically malicious. In her relation to the other
+girls of the establishment she occupies the same place that in
+private educational institutions is accorded to the first strong
+man, the man spending a second year in the same grade, the first
+beauty in the class--tyrannizing and adored. She is a tall, thin
+brunette, with beautiful hazel eyes, a small proud mouth, a little
+moustache on the upper lip and with a swarthy, unhealthy pink on
+her cheeks.
+
+Without letting the cigarette out of her mouth and screwing up her
+eyes from the smoke, all she does is to turn the pages constantly
+with a moistened finger. Her legs are bare to the knees; the
+enormous balls of the feet are of the most vulgar form; below the
+big toes stand out pointed, ugly, irregular tumours.
+
+Here also, with her legs crossed, slightly bent, with some sewing,
+sits Tamara--a quiet, easy-going, pretty girl, slightly reddish,
+with that dark and shining tint of hair which is to be found on
+the back of a fox in winter. Her real name is Glycera, or Lukeria,
+as the common folk say it. But it is already an ancient usage of
+the houses of ill-fame to replace the uncouth names of the
+Matrenas, Agathas, Cyclitinias with sonorous, preferably exotic
+names. Tamara had at one time been a nun, or, perhaps, merely a
+novice in a convent, and to this day there have been preserved on
+her face timidity and a pale puffiness--a modest and sly
+expression, which is peculiar to young nuns. She holds herself
+aloof in the house, does not chum with any one, does not initiate
+any one into her past life. But in her case there must have been
+many more adventures besides having been a nun: there is something
+mysterious, taciturn and criminal in her unhurried speech, in the
+evasive glance of her deep and dark-gold eyes from under the long,
+lowered eyelashes, in her manners, her sly smiles and intonations
+of a modest but wanton would-be saint. There was one occurrence
+when the girls, with well-nigh reverent awe, heard that Tamara
+could talk fluently in French and German. She has within her some
+sort of an inner, restrained power. Notwithstanding her outward
+meekness and complaisance, all in the establishment treat her with
+respect and circumspection--the proprietress, and her mates, and
+both housekeepers, and even the doorkeeper, that veritable sultan
+of the house of ill-fame, that general terror and hero.
+
+"I've covered it," says Zoe and turns over the trump which had
+been lying under the pack, wrong side up. "I'm going with forty,
+going with an ace of spades--a ten-spot, Mannechka, if you please.
+I'm through. Fifty-seven, eleven, sixty-eight. How much have you?"
+
+"Thirty," says Manka in an offended tone, pouting her lips; "oh,
+it's all very well for you--you remember all the plays. Deal ...
+Well, what's after that, Tamarochka?" she turns to her friend.
+"You talk on--I'm listening."
+
+Zoe shuffles the old, black, greasy cards, allows Manya to cut,
+then deals, having first spat upon her fingers.
+
+Tamara in the meanwhile is narrating to Manya in a quiet voice,
+without dropping her sewing.
+
+"We embroidered with gold, in flat embroidery--altar covers,
+palls, bishops' vestments... With little grasses, with flowers,
+little crosses. In winter, you'd be sitting near a casement; the
+panes are small, with gratings, there isn't much light, it smells
+of lamp oil, incense, cypress; you mustn't talk--the mother
+superior was strict. Some one from weariness would begin droning a
+pre-Lenten first verse of a hymn ... 'When I consider thy heavens
+...' We sang fine, beautifully, and it was such a quiet life, and
+the smell was so fine; you could see the flaky snow out the
+windows--well, now, just like in a dream..."
+
+Jennie puts the tattered novel down on her stomach, throws the
+cigarette over Zoe's head, and says mockingly:
+
+"We know all about your quiet life. You chucked the infants into
+toilets. The Evil One is always snooping around your holy places."
+
+"I call forty. I had forty-six. Finished!" Little Manka exclaims
+excitedly and claps her palms. "I open with three."
+
+Tamara, smiling at Jennie's words, answers with a scarcely
+perceptible smile, which barely distends her lips, but makes
+little, sly, ambiguous depressions at their corners, altogether as
+with Monna Lisa in the portrait by Leonardo da Vinci.
+
+"Lay folk say a lot of things about nuns ... Well, even if there
+had been sin once in a while ..."
+
+"If you don't sin--you don't repent," Zoe puts in seriously, and
+wets her finger in her mouth.
+
+"You sit and sew, the gold eddies before your eyes, while from
+standing in the morning at prayer your back just aches, and your
+legs ache. And at evening there is service again. You knock at the
+door of the mother superior's cell: 'Through prayers of Thy
+saints, oh Lord, our Father, have mercy upon us.' And the mother
+superior would answer from the cell, in a little bass-like 'A-men.'"
+
+Jennie looks at her intently for some time, shakes her head and
+says with great significance:
+
+"You're a queer girl, Tamara. Here I'm looking at you and
+wondering. Well, now, I can understand how these fools, on the
+manner of Sonka, play at love. That's what they're fools for. But
+you, it seems, have been roasted on all sorts of embers, have been
+washed in all sorts of lye, and yet you allow yourself foolishness
+of that sort. What are you embroidering that shirt for?"
+
+Tamara, without haste, with a pin refastens the fabric more
+conveniently on her knee, smooths the seam down with the thimble,
+and speaks, without raising the narrowed eyes, her head bent just
+a trifle to one side:
+
+"One's got to be doing something. It's wearisome just so. I don't
+play at cards, and I don't like them."
+
+Jennie continues to shake her head.
+
+"No, you're a queer girl, really you are. You always have more
+from the guests than all of us get. You fool, instead of saving
+money, what do you spend it on? You buy perfumes at seven roubles
+the bottle. Who needs it? And now you have bought fifteen roubles'
+worth of silk. Isn't this for your Senka, now?"
+
+"Of course, for Sennechka."
+
+"What a treasure you've found, to be sure! A miserable thief. He
+rides up to this establishment like some general. How is it he
+doesn't beat you yet? The thieves--they like that. And he plucks
+you, have no fear?"
+
+"More than I want to, I won't give," meekly answers Tamara and
+bites the thread in two.
+
+"Now that is just what I wonder at. With your mind, your beauty, I
+would put such rings-around-a-rosie about a guest like that, that
+he'd take me and set me up. I'd have horses of my own, and
+diamonds."
+
+"Everyone to his tastes, Jennechka. You too, now, are a very
+pretty and darling girl, and your character is so independent and
+brave, and yet you and I have gotten stuck in Anna Markovna's."
+
+Jennie flares up and answers with unsimulated bitterness:
+
+"Yes! Why not! All things come your way! ...You have all the very
+best guests. You do what you want with them, but with me it's
+always either old men or suckling babies. I have no luck. The ones
+are snotty, the others have yellow around the mouth. More than
+anything else, now, I dislike the little boys. He comes, the
+little varmint; he's cowardly, he hurries, he trembles, but having
+done the business, he doesn't know what to do with his eyes for
+shame. He's all squirming from disgust. I just feel like giving
+him one in the snout. Before giving you the rouble, he holds it in
+his pocket in his fist, and that rouble's all hot, even sweaty.
+The milksop! His mother gives him a ten kopeck piece for a French
+roll with sausage, but he's economized out of that for a wench. I
+had one little cadet in the last few days. So just on purpose, to
+spite him, I say: 'Here, my dearie, here's a little caramel for
+you on your way; when you're going back to your corps, you'll suck
+on it.' So at first he got offended, but afterwards took it. Later
+I looked from the stoop, on purpose; just as soon as he walked
+out, he looked around, and right away into his mouth with the
+caramel. The little swine!"
+
+"But with old men it's still worse," says Little Manka in a tender
+voice, and slyly looks at Zoe. "What do you think, Zoinka?"
+
+Zoe, who had already finished playing, and was just about to yawn,
+now cannot in any way give rein to her yawns. She does not know
+whether she wants to be angry or to laugh. She has a steady
+visitor, some little old man in a high station, with perverted
+erotic habits. The entire establishment makes fun of his visits to
+her.
+
+Zoe at last succeeds in yawning.
+
+"To the devil's dam with all of you," she says, with her voice
+hoarse after the yawn; "may he be damned, the old anathema!"
+
+"But still, the worst of all," Jennie continues to discourse,
+"worse than your director, Zoinka, worse than my cadet, the worst
+of all--are your lovers. What can there be joyous in this: he
+comes drunk, poses, makes sport of you, wants to pretend there's
+something in him--only nothing comes of it all. Wha-at a lad-die,
+to be sure! The scummiest of the scum, dirty, beaten-up, stinking,
+his whole body in scars, there's only one glory about him: the
+silk shirt which Tamarka will embroider for him. He curses one's
+mother, the son of a bitch, always aching for a fight. Ugh! No!"
+she suddenly exclaimed in a merry provoking voice, "The one I love
+truly and surely, for ever and ever, is my Mannechka, Manka the
+white, little Manka, my Manka-Scandalistochka."
+
+And unexpectedly, having embraced Manya by the shoulders and
+bosom, she drew her toward herself, threw her down on the bed, and
+began to kiss deeply and vigorously her hair, eyes, lips. Manka
+with difficulty tore herself away from her, with dishevelled,
+bright, fine, downy hair, all rosy from the resistance, and with
+eyes downcast and moist from shame and laughter.
+
+"Leave off, Jennechka, leave off. Well, now, what are you doing?
+Let me go!"
+
+Little Manya is the meekest and quietest girl in the entire
+establishment. She is kind, yielding, can never refuse anybody's
+request, and involuntarily everybody treats her with great
+gentleness. She blushes over every trifle, and at such time
+becomes especially attractive, as only very tender blondes with a
+sensitive skin can be attractive. But it is sufficient for her to
+drink three or four glasses of Liqueur Benedictine, of which she
+is very fond, for her to become unrecognizable and to create
+brawls, such, that there is always required the intervention of
+the housekeepers, the porter, at times even the police. It is
+nothing for her to hit a guest in the face or to throw in his face
+a glass filled with wine, to overturn the lamp, to curse out the
+proprietress, Jennie treats her with some strange, tender
+patronage and rough adoration.
+
+"Ladies, to dinner! To dinner, ladies!" calls Zociya the
+housekeeper, running along the corridor. On the run she opens the
+door into Manya's room and drops hurriedly:
+
+"To dinner, to dinner, ladies!"
+
+They go again to the kitchen, all still in their underwear, all
+unwashed, in slippers and barefoot. A tasty vegetable soup of pork
+rinds and tomatoes, cutlets, and pastry-cream rolls are served.
+But no one has any appetite, thanks to the sedentary life and
+irregular sleep, and also because the majority of the girls, just
+like school-girls on a holiday, had already managed during the day
+to send to the store for halvah, nuts, rakkat loukoum (Turkish
+Delight), dill-pickles and molasses candy, and had through this
+spoiled their appetites. Only Nina alone--a small, pug-nosed,
+snuffling country girl, seduced only two months ago by a
+travelling salesman, and (also by him) sold into a brothel--eats
+for four. The inordinate, provident appetite of a woman of the
+common people has not yet disappeared in her.
+
+Jennie, who has only picked fastidiously at her cutlet and eaten
+half her cream roll, speaks to her in a tone of hypocritical
+solicitude:
+
+"Really, Pheclusha, you might just as well eat my cutlet, too.
+Eat, my dear, eat; don't be bashful--you ought to be gaining in
+health. But do you know what I'll tell you, ladies?" she turns to
+her mates, "Why, our Pheclusha has a tape-worm, and when a person
+has a tape-worm, he always eats for two: half for himself, half
+for the worm."
+
+Nina sniffs angrily and answers in a bass which comes as a
+surprise from one of her stature, and through her nose:
+
+"There are no tape-worms in me. It's you that has the tape-worms,
+that's why you are so skinny."
+
+And she imperturbably continues to eat, and after dinner feels
+herself sleepy, like a boa constrictor, eructs loudly, drinks
+water, hiccups, and, by stealth, if no one sees her, makes the
+sign of the cross over her mouth, through an old habit.
+
+But already the ringing voice of Zociya can. be heard through the
+corridors and rooms:
+
+"Get dressed, ladies, get dressed. There's no use in sitting
+around...To work..."
+
+After a few minutes in all the rooms of the establishment there
+are smells of singed hair, boric-thymol soap, cheap eau-de-
+cologne. The girls are dressing for the evening.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The late twilight came on, and after it the warm, dark night, but
+for long, until very midnight, did the deep crimson glow of the
+sky still smoulder. Simeon, the porter of the establishment, has
+lit all the lamps along the walls of the drawing room, and the
+lustre, as well as the red lantern over the stoop. Simeon was a
+spare, stocky, taciturn and harsh man, with straight, broad
+shoulders, dark-haired, pock-marked, with little bald spots on his
+eye-brows and moustaches from small-pox, and with black, dull,
+insolent eyes. By day he was free and slept, while at night he sat
+without absenting himself in the front hall under the reflector,
+in order to help the guests with their coats and to be ready in
+case of any disorder.
+
+The pianist came--a tall, elegant young man, with white eyebrows
+and eyelashes, and a cataract in his right eye. The while there
+were no guests, he and Isaiah Savvich quietly rehearsed Pas
+d'Espagne, at that time coming into fashion. For every dance
+ordered by the guests, they received thirty kopecks for an easy
+dance, and a half rouble for a quadrille. But one-half of this
+price was taken out by the proprietress, Anna Markovna; the other,
+however, the musicians divided evenly. In this manner the pianist
+received only a quarter of the general earnings, which, of course,
+was unjust, since Isaiah Savvich played as one self-taught and was
+distinguished for having no more ear for music than a piece of
+wood. The pianist was constantly compelled to drag him on to new
+tunes, to correct and cover his mistakes with loud chords. The
+girls said of their pianist to the guests, with a certain pride,
+that he had been in the conservatory and always ranked as the
+first pupil, but since he is a Jew, and in addition to that his
+eyes had begun to trouble him, he had not succeeded in completing
+the course. They all treated him carefully and considerately, with
+some sort of solicitous, somewhat mawkish, commiseration, which
+chimes so well with the inner, backstage customs of houses of ill-
+fame, where underneath the outer coarseness and the flaunting of
+obscene words dwells the same sweetish, hysterical sentimentality
+as in female boarding schools, and, so they say, in penal
+institutions.
+
+In the house of Anna Markovna everybody was already dressed and
+ready for the reception of the guests, and languishing from
+inaction and expectation. Despite the fact that the majority of
+the women experienced toward men--with the exception of their
+lovers--a complete, even somewhat squeamish, indifference, before
+every evening dim hopes came to life and stirred within their
+souls; it was unknown who would choose them, whether something
+unusual, funny and alluring might not happen, whether a guest
+would not astonish with his generosity, whether there would not be
+some miracle which would overturn the whole life...In these
+presentiments and hopes was something akin to those emotions which
+the accustomed gamester experiences when counting his ready money
+before starting out for his club. Besides that, despite their
+asexuality, they still had not lost the chiefest instinctive
+aspiration of women--to please.
+
+And, in truth, altogether curious personages came into the house
+at times and ludicrous, motley events arose. The police would
+appear suddenly together with disguised detectives and arrest some
+seemingly respectable, irreproachable gentlemen and lead them off,
+pushing them along with blows in the neck. At times brawls would
+spring up between the drunken, trouble-making company and the
+porters of all the establishments, who had gathered on the run for
+the relief of a fellow porter--a brawl, during which the window-
+panes and the decks of grand-pianos were broken, when the legs of
+the plush chairs were wrenched out for weapons, blood ran over the
+parquet floor of the drawing room and the steps of the stairs, and
+people with pierced sides and broken heads fell down into the dirt
+near the street entrance, to the feral, avid delight of Jennka,
+who, with burning eyes, with happy laughter, went into the
+thickest of the melee, slapped herself on the hips, swore and
+sicked them on, while her mates were squealing from fear and
+hiding under the beds.
+
+There were occurrences when there would arrive, with a pack of
+parasites, some member of a workingmen's association or a cashier,
+long since far gone in an embezzlement of many thousands through
+gambling at cards and hideous orgies, and now, in a drunken,
+senseless delirium, tossing the last money after the other, before
+suicide or the prisoner's box. Then the doors and windows of the
+house would be tightly closed, and for two days and nights at a
+stretch a Russian orgy would go on--nightmarish, tedious, savage,
+with screams and tears, with revilement over the body of woman;
+paradisaical nights were gotten up, during which naked, drunken,
+bow-legged, hairy, pot-bellied men, and women with flabby, yellow,
+pendulous thin bodies hideously grimaced to the music; they drank
+and guzzled like swine, on the beds and on the floor, amidst the
+stifling atmosphere, permeated with spirits, befouled with human
+respiration and the exhalations of unclean skins.
+
+Occasionally, there would appear a circus athlete, creating in the
+low-ceiled quarters a strangely cumbersome impression, somewhat
+like that of a horse led into a room; a Chinaman in a blue blouse,
+white stockings, and with a queue; a negro from a cabaret, in a
+tuxedo coat and checked pantaloons, with a flower in his button-
+hole, and with starched linen, which, to the amazement of the
+girls, not only did not soil from the black skin, but appeared
+still more dazzlingly white.
+
+These rare people fomented the satiated imagination of the
+prostitutes, excited their exhausted sensuality and professional
+curiosity, and all of them, almost enamoured, would walk in their
+steps, jealous and bickering with one another.
+
+There was one incident when Simeon had let into the room an
+elderly man, dressed like a bourgeois. There was nothing
+exceptional about him; he had a stern, thin face, with bony, evil-
+looking cheek-bones, protruding like tumours, a low forehead, a
+beard like a wedge, bushy eyebrows, one eye perceptibly higher
+than the other. Having entered, he raised his fingers, folded for
+the sign of the cross, to his forehead, but having searched the
+corners with his eyes and finding no image, he did not in the
+least grow confused, put down his hand, and at once with a
+business-like air walked up to the fattest girl in the
+establishment--Kitty.
+
+"Let's go!" he commanded curtly, and with determination nodded his
+head in the direction of the door.
+
+During the entire period of her absence the omniscious Simeon,
+with a mysterious, and even somewhat proud air, managed to inform
+Niura, at that time his mistress, while she, in a whisper, with
+horror in her rounded eyes, told her mates, in secret, that the
+name of the bourgeois was Dyadchenko, and that last fall he had
+volunteered, owing to the absence of the hangman, to carry out the
+execution of eleven rioters, and with his own hands had hung them
+in two mornings. And--monstrous as it may be--at that hour there
+was not in the establishment a single girl who did not feel envy
+toward the fat Kitty, and did not experience a painful, keen,
+vertiginous curiosity. When Dyadchenko was going away half an hour
+later--with his sedate and stern air, all the women speechlessly,
+with their mouths gaping, escorted him. to the street door and
+afterwards watched him from the windows as he walked along the
+street. Then they rushed into the room of the dressing Kitty and
+overwhelmed her with interrogations. They looked with a new
+feeling, almost with astonishment, at her bare, red, thick arms,
+at the bed, still crumpled, at the old, greasy, paper rouble,
+which Kitty showed them, having taken it out of her stocking.
+Kitty could tell them nothing. "A man like any man, like all men,"
+she said with a calm incomprehension; but when she found out who
+her visitor had been, she suddenly burst into tears, without
+herself knowing why.
+
+This man, the outcast of outcasts, fallen as low as the fancy of
+man can picture, this voluntary headsman, had treated her without
+rudeness, but with such absence of even a hint at endearment, with
+such disdain and wooden indifference, as no human being is
+treated; not even a dog or a horse, and not even an umbrella,
+overcoat or hat, but like some dirty, unclean object, for which a
+momentary, unavoidable need arises, but which, at the passing of
+its needfulness, becomes foreign, useless, and disgusting. The
+entire horror of this thought the fat Kate could not embrace with
+her brain of a fattened turkey hen, and because of that cried--as
+it seemed even to her--without cause and reason.
+
+There were also other happenings, which stirred up the turbid,
+foul life of these poor, sick, silly, unfortunate women. There
+were cases of savage, unbridled jealousy with pistol shots and
+poisoning; occasionally, very rarely, a tender, flaming and pure
+love would blossom out upon this dung; occasionally the women even
+abandoned an establishment with the help of the loved man, but
+almost always came back. Two or three times it happened that a
+woman from a brothel would suddenly prove pregnant--and this
+always seemed, on the face of it, laughable and disgraceful, but
+touching in the profundity of the event.
+
+And no matter what may have happened, every evening brought with
+it such an irritating, strained, spicy expectation of adventures
+that every other life, after that in a house of ill-fame, would
+have seemed flat and humdrum to these lazy women of no will power.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The windows are opened wide to the fragrant darkness of the
+evening, and the tulle curtains stir faintly back and forth from
+the imperceptible movement of the air. It smells of dewy grass
+from the consumptive little garden in front of the house, and just
+the least wee bit of lilac and the withering birch leaves of the
+little trees placed near the entrance because of the Trinity.
+Liuba, in a blue velvet blouse with low cut bosom, and Niura,
+dressed as a "baby," in a pink, wide sacque to the knees, with her
+bright hair loose and with little curls on her forehead, are lying
+embraced on the window-sill, and are singing in a low voice a song
+about the hospital, which song is the rage of the day and
+exceedingly well known among prostitutes. Niura, through her nose,
+leads in a high voice.
+
+Liuba seconds her with a stifled alto:
+
+    "Monday now is come again,
+    They're supposed to get me out;
+    Doctor Krasov won't let me out ..."
+
+In all the houses the windows are brightly lit, while hanging
+lanterns are burning before the entrances. To both girls the
+interior in the establishment of Sophia Vasilievna, which is
+directly opposite, is distinctly visible--the shining yellow
+parquet, draperies of a dark cherry colour on the doors, caught up
+with cords, the end of a black grand-piano, a pier glass in a gilt
+frame, and the figures of women in gorgeous dresses, now flashing
+at the windows, now disappearing, and their reflections in the
+mirrors. The carved stoop of Treppel, to the right, is brightly
+illuminated by a bluish electric light in a big frosted globe.
+
+The evening is calm and warm. Somewhere far, far away, beyond the
+line of the railroads, beyond some black roofs and the thin black
+trunks of trees, down low over the dark earth in which the eye
+does not see but rather senses the mighty green tone of spring,
+reddens with a scarlet gold the narrow, long streak of the sunset
+glow, which has pierced the dove-coloured mist. And in this
+indistinct, distant light, in the caressing air, in the scents of
+the oncoming night, was some secret, sweet, conscious
+mournfulness, which usually is so gentle in the evenings between
+spring and summer. The indistinct noise of the city floated in,
+the dolorous, snuffling air of an accordeon, the mooing of cows
+could be heard; somebody's soles were scraping dryly and a
+ferruled cane rapped resoundingly on the flags of the pavement;
+lazily and irregularly the wheels of a cabman's victoria, rolling
+at a pace through Yama, would rumble by, and all these sounds
+mingled with a beauty and softness in the pensive drowsiness of
+the evening. And the whistles of the locomotives on the line of
+the railroad, which was marked out in the darkness with green and
+red lights, sounded with a quiet, singing caution.
+
+    "Now the nurse is co-oming in,
+    Bringing sugar and a roll,
+    Bringing sugar and a roll,
+    Deals them equally to all."
+
+"Prokhor Ivanich!" Niura suddenly calls after the curly waiter
+from the dram-shop, who, a light black silhouette, is running
+across the road. "Oh, Prokhor Ivanich!"
+
+"Oh, bother you!" the other snarls hoarsely. "What now?"
+
+"A friend of yours sent you his regards. I saw him today."
+
+"What sort of friend?"
+
+"Such a little good-looker! An attractive little brunet ...No, but
+you'd better ask--where did I see him?"
+
+"Well, where?" Prokhor Ivanovich comes to a stop for a minute.
+
+"And here's where: nailed over there, on the fifth shelf with old
+hats, where we keep all dead cats."
+
+"Scat! You darn fool!"
+
+Niura laughs shrilly over all Yama, and throws herself down on the
+sill, kicking her legs in high black stockings. Afterward, having
+ceased laughing, she all of a sudden makes round astonished eyes
+and says in a whisper:
+
+"But do you know, girlie--why, he cut a woman's throat the year
+before last--that same Prokhor. Honest to God!"
+
+"Is that so? Did she die?"
+
+"No, she didn't. She got by," says Niura, as though with regret.
+"But just the same she lay for two months in the Alexandrovskaya
+Hospital. The doctors said, that if it were only this teen-weeny
+bit higher--then it would have been all over. Bye-bye!"
+
+"Well, what did he do that to her for?"
+
+"How should I know? Maybe she hid money from him or wasn't true to
+him. He was her lover--her pimp."
+
+"Well, and what did he get for it?"
+
+"Why, nothing. There was no evidence of any kind. There had been a
+free-for-all mix-up. About a hundred people were fighting. She
+also told the police that she had no suspicions of any sort. But
+Prokhor himself boasted afterwards: 'I,' says he, 'didn't do for
+Dunka that time, but I'll finish her off another time. She,' says
+he, 'won't get by my hands. I'm going to give her the works.'"
+
+A shiver runs all the way down Liuba's back.
+
+"They're desperate fellows, these pimps!" she pronounces quietly,
+with horror in her voice.
+
+"Something terrible! I, you know, played at love with our Simeon
+for a whole year. Such a Herod, the skunk! I didn't have a whole
+spot on me. I always went about in black and blue marks. And it
+wasn't for any reason at all, but just simply so--he'd go in the
+morning into a room with me, lock himself in, and start in to
+torture me. He'd wrench my arms, pinch my breasts, grab my throat
+and begin to strangle me. Or else he'd be kissing, kissing, and
+then he'd bite the lips so that the blood would just spurt out ...
+I'd start crying--but that's all he was looking for. Then he'd
+just pounce an me like a beast--simply shivering all over. And
+he'd take all my money away--well, now, to the very last little
+copper. There wasn't anything to buy ten cigarettes with. He's
+stingy, this here Simeon, that's what, always into the bank-book
+with it, always putting it away into the bank-book... Says when he
+gets a thousand roubles together--he'll go into a monastery."
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"Honest to God. You look into his little room: the twenty-four
+hours round, day and night, the little holy lamp burns before the
+images. He's very strong for God ... Only I think that he's that
+way because there's heavy sins upon him. He's a murderer."
+
+"What are you saying?"
+
+"Oh, let's drop talking about him, Liubochka. Well, let's go on
+further:
+
+"I'll go to the drug store, buy me some poison, And I will poison
+then meself,"
+
+Niura starts off in a very high, thin voice.
+
+Jennie walks back and forth in the room, with arms akimbo, swaying
+as she walks, and looking at herself in all the mirrors. She has
+on a short orange satin dress, with straight deep pleats in the
+skirt, which vacillates evenly to the left and right from the
+movement of her hips. Little Manka, a passionate lover of card
+games, ready to play from morning to morning, without stopping, is
+playing away at "sixty-six" with Pasha, during which both women,
+for convenience in dealing, have left an empty chair between them,
+while they gather their tricks into their skirts, spread out
+between their knees. Manka has on a brown, very modest dress, with
+black apron and pleated black bib; this dress is very becoming to
+her dainty, fair little head and small stature; it makes her
+younger and gives her the appearance of a high-school
+undergraduate.
+
+Her partner Pasha is a very queer and unhappy girl. She should
+have been, long ago, not in a house of ill-fame, but in a
+psychiatric ward, because of an excruciating nervous malady, which
+compels her to give herself up, frenziedly, with an unwholesome
+avidity, to any man whatsoever who may choose her, even the most
+repulsive. Her mates make sport of her and despise her somewhat
+for this vice, just as though for some treason to their corporate
+enmity toward men. Niura, with very great versimilitude, mimics
+her sighs, groans, outcries and passionate words, from which she
+can never refrain in the moments of ecstasy and which are to be
+heard in the neighbouring rooms through two or three partitions.
+There is a rumour afloat about Pasha, that she got into a brothel
+not at all through necessity or temptation or deception, but had
+gone into it her own self, voluntarily, following her horrible,
+insatiable instinct. But the proprietress of the house and both
+the housekeepers indulge Pasha in every way and encourage her
+insane weakness, because, thanks to it, Pasha is in constant
+demand and earns four, five times as much as any one of the
+remaining girls--earns so much, that on busy gala days she is not
+brought out to the more drab guests at all, or else refused them
+under the pretext of Pasha's illness, because the steady, paying
+guests are offended if they are told that the girl they know is
+busy with another. And of such steady guests Pasha has a
+multitude; many are with perfect sincerity, even though bestially,
+in love with her, and even not so long ago two, almost at the same
+time, offered to set her up: a Georgian--a clerk in a store of
+Cakhetine wines, and some railroad agent, a very proud and very
+poor nobleman, with shirt cuffs the colour of a cabbage rose, and
+with an eye which had been replaced by a black circle on an
+elastic. Pasha, passive in everything save her impersonal
+sensuality, would go with anybody who might call her, but the
+administration of the house vigilantly guards its interests in
+her. A near insanity already flits over her lovely face, in her
+half-closed eyes, always smiling with some heady, blissful, meek,
+bashful and unseemly smile, in her languorous, softened, moist
+lips, which she is constantly licking; in her short, quiet laugh--
+the laugh of an idiot. Yet at the same time she--this veritable
+victim of the social temperament--in everyday life is very good-
+natured, yielding, entirely uncovetous and is very much ashamed of
+her inordinate passion. Toward her mates she is tender, likes very
+much to kiss and embrace them and sleep in the same bed with them,
+but still everybody has a little aversion for her, it would seem.
+
+"Mannechka, sweetie, dearie," says Pasha lightly touching Manya's
+hand with emotion, "tell my fortune, my precious little child."
+
+"We-ell," Manya pouts her lips just like a child, "let's play a
+little more."
+
+"Mannechka, my little beauty, you little good-looker, my precious,
+my own, my dear..."
+
+Manya gives in and lays out the pack on her knees. A suit of
+hearts comes out, a small monetary interest and a meeting in the
+suit of spades with a large company in the king of clubs.
+
+Pasha claps her hands joyously:
+
+"Ah, it's my Levanchik! Well, yes, he promised to come to-day. Of
+course, it's Levanchik."
+
+"That's your Georgian!"
+
+"Yes, yes, my little Georgian. Oh, how nice he is. I'd just love
+never to let him go away from me. Do you know what he told me the
+last time? 'If you'll go on living in a sporting house, then I'll
+make both you dead, and make me dead.' And he flashed his eyes at
+me so!"
+
+Jennie, who had stopped near, listens to her words and asks
+haughtily:
+
+"Who was it said that?"
+
+"Why, my little Georgian, Levan. 'Both for you death and for me
+death.'"
+
+"Fool! He isn't any little Georgian at all, but simply a common
+Armenian. You're a crazy fool."
+
+"Oh no, he isn't--he's a Georgian. And it is quite strange on your
+part..."
+
+"I'm telling you--a common Armenian. I can tell better. Fool!"
+
+"What are you cursing for, Jennie? I didn't start cursing you
+first off, did I?"
+
+"You just try and be the first to start cursing! Fool! Isn't it
+all the same to you what he is? Are you in love with him, or
+what?"
+
+"Well, I am in love with him!"
+
+"Well, and you're a fool. And the one with the badge in his cap,
+the lame one--are you in love with him too?"
+
+"Well, what of it? I respect him very much. He is very
+respectable."
+
+"And with Nicky the Book-keeper? And with the contractor? And with
+Antoshka-Kartoshka? [Footnote: Tony the Potato.-Trans.] And with
+the fat actor? Oo-ooh, you shameless creature!" Jennie suddenly
+cries out. "I can't look at you without disgust. You're a bitch!
+In your place, if I was such a miserable thing, I'd rather lay
+hands on myself, strangle myself with a cord from my corset. You
+vermin!"
+
+Pasha silently lowers her eyelashes over her tear-filled eyes.
+Manya tries to defend her.
+
+"Really, what are you carrying on like that for, Jennechka? What
+are you down on her like that for..."
+
+"Eh, all of you are fine!" Jennie sharply cuts her short. "No
+self-respect of any sort! Some scum comes along, buys you like a
+piece of meat, hires you like a cabby, at a fixed rate, for love
+for an hour, but you go all to pieces: 'Ah, my little lover! Ah,
+what unearthly passion!' Ugh!" she spat in disgust.
+
+She wrathfully turns her back upon them and continues to promenade
+on a diagonal through the room, swinging her hips and blinking at
+herself in every mirror.
+
+During this time Isaac Davidovich, the piano player, is still
+struggling with the refractory violinist.
+
+"Not that way, not that way, Isaiah Savvich. You throw the fiddle
+away for one little minute. Listen a little to me. Here is the
+tune."
+
+He plays with one finger and hums in that horrible goatish voice
+that all musical directors--for which calling he had been at one
+time preparing--possess.
+
+"Ess-tam, ess-tam, ess-tiam-tiam. Well, now, repeat after me the
+first part, first time off..... Well..... ein, zwei..."
+
+Their rehearsal is being attentively watched by the grey-eyed,
+round-faced, arch-browed Zoe, mercilessly bedaubed with cheap
+rouges and whiteners, leaning with her elbows on the pianoforte,
+and the slight Vera, with drink-ravaged face, in the costume of a
+jockey--in a round little cap with straight brim, in a little silk
+jacket, striped blue and white, in tightly stretched trunks and in
+little patent leather boots with yellow facings. And really, Vera
+does resemble a jockey, with her narrow face, in which the
+exceedingly sparkling blue eyes, under a smart bob coming down on
+the forehead, are set too near the humped, nervous, very handsome
+nose. When, at last, after long efforts the musicians agree, the
+somewhat small Verka walks up to the large Zoe, in that mincing,
+tethered walk, the hind part sticking out, and elbows spread as
+though for flight, with which only women in male costume can walk,
+and makes a comical masculine bow to her, spreading her arms wide
+and lowering them. And, with great enjoyment, they begin careering
+over the room.
+
+The nimble Niura, always the first to announce all the news,
+suddenly jumps down from the window sill, and calls out,
+spluttering from the excitement and hurry:
+
+"A swell carriage...has driven up...to Treppel ...with
+electricity... Oi, goils...may I die on the spot...there's
+electricity on the shafts."
+
+All the girls, save the proud Jennie, thrust themselves out of the
+windows. A driver with a fine carriage is indeed standing near the
+Treppel entrance. His brand-new, dashing victoria glistens with
+new lacquer; at the ends of the shafts two tiny electric lights
+burn with a yellow light; the tall white horse, with a bare pink
+spot on the septum of its nose, shakes its handsome head, shifts
+its feet on the same spot, and pricks up its thin ears; the
+bearded, stout driver himself sits on the coach-box like a carven
+image, his arms stretched out straight along his knees.
+
+"Oh, for a ride!" squeals Niura. "Oh, uncle! Oh you swell
+coachman!" she cries out, hanging over the window sill. "Give a
+poor little girlie a ride... Give us a ride for love."
+
+But the swell coachman laughs, makes a scarcely noticeable
+movement with his fingers, and immediately the white horse, as
+though it had been waiting just for that, starts from its place at
+a goodly trot, handsomely turns around and with measured speed
+floats away into the darkness together with the victoria and the
+broad back of the coachman.
+
+"Pfui! What indecency!" the indignant voice of Emma Edwardovna
+sounds in the room. "Well, where did you see that respectable
+girls should allow themselves to climb out of the windows and
+holler all over the street. O, scandal! And it's all Niura, and
+it's always this horrible Niura!"
+
+She is majestic in her black dress, with her yellow flabby face,
+with the dark pouches under her eyes, with the three pendulous,
+quivering chins. The girls, like boarding school misses, staidly
+seat themselves on the chairs along the walls, except Jennie, who
+continues to contemplate herself in all the mirrors. Two more
+cabbies drive up opposite, to the house of Sophia Vasilievna. Yama
+is beginning to liven up. At last one more victoria rattles along
+the paved road and its noise is cut short abruptly at the entrance
+to Anna Markovna's.
+
+The porter Simeon helps someone take off his things in the front
+hall. Jennie looks in there, holding on with both hands to the
+door jambs, but immediately turns back, and as she walks shrugs
+her shoulders and shakes her head negatively.
+
+"Don't know him, someone who's an entire stranger," she says in a
+low voice. "He has never been in our place. Some daddy or other,
+fat, in gold eye-glasses and a uniform."
+
+Emma Edwardovna commands in a voice which sounds like a summoning
+cavalry trumpet:
+
+"Ladies, into the drawing room! Into the drawing room, ladies!"
+
+One after the other, with haughty gaits, into the drawing room
+enter: Tamara, with bare white arms and bared neck, wound with a
+string of artificial pearls; fat Kitty with her fleshy,
+quadrangular face and low forehead--she, too, is in decollete, but
+her skin is red and in goose-pimples; Nina, the very newest one,
+pug-nosed and clumsy, in a dress the colour of a green parrot;
+another Manka--Big Manka, or Manka the Crocodile, as they call
+her, and--the last--Sonka the Rudder, a Jewess, with an ugly dark
+face and an extraordinarily large nose, precisely for which she
+has received her nickname, but with such magnificent large eyes,
+at the same time meek and sad, burning and humid, as, among the
+women of all the terrestrial globe, are to be found only among the
+Jewesses.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The elderly guest in the uniform of the Department of Charity
+walked in with slow, undecided steps, at each step bending his
+body a little forward and rubbing his palms with a circular
+motion, as though washing them. Since all the women were pompously
+silent, as though not noticing him, he traversed the drawing room
+and let himself down on a chair alongside of Liuba, who, in
+accordance with etiquette, only gathered up her skirt a little,
+preserving the abstracted and independent air of a girl from a
+respectable house.
+
+"How do you do, miss?" he said.
+
+"How do you do?" answered Liuba abruptly.
+
+"How are you getting along?"
+
+"Thanks--thank you. Treat me to a smoke."
+
+"Pardon me--I don't smoke."
+
+"So that's how. A man--and he doesn't smoke, just like that. Well,
+then, treat me to some Lafitte with lemonade. I am terribly fond
+of Lafitte with lemonade."
+
+He let that pass in silence.
+
+"Ooh, what a stingy daddy! Where do you work, now? Are you one of
+the government clerks?"
+
+"No, I'm a teacher. I teach the German language."
+
+"But I have seen you somewhere, daddy. Your physiognomy is
+familiar to me. Where have I met you before?"
+
+"Well, now, I don't know, really. Unless it was on the street."
+
+"It might have been on the street, likely as not... You ought to
+treat me to an orange, at least. May I ask for an orange?"
+
+He again grew quiet, looking about him. His face began to glisten
+and the pimples on his forehead became red. He was mentally
+appraising all the women, choosing a likely one for himself, and
+was at the same time embarrassed by his silence. There was nothing
+at all to talk about; besides that the indifferent importunity of
+Liuba irritated him. Fat Katie pleased him with her large, bovine
+body, but she must be--he decided in his mind--very frigid in
+love, like all stout women, and in addition to that not handsome
+of face. Vera also excited him, with her appearance of a little
+boy, and her firm thighs, closely enveloped by the white tights;
+and Little White Manya, looking so like an innocent school-girl;
+and Jennie with her energetic, swarthy, handsome face. For one
+minute he was all ready to stop at Jennie, but only started in his
+chair and did not venture--by her easy, inaccessible and negligent
+air, and because she in all sincerity did not pay him the least
+attention, he surmised that she was the most spoilt of all the
+girls in the establishment, accustomed to having the visitors
+spend more money on her than on the others. But the pedagogue was
+a calculating man, burthened with a large family and an exhausted
+wife, destroyed by his masculine demands and suffering from a
+multiplicity of female ills. Teaching in a female high school and
+in an institute, he lived constantly in a sort of secret sensual
+delirium, and only his German training, stinginess and cowardice
+helped him to hold his constantly aroused desires in check. But
+two or three times a year, with incredible privations, he would
+cut five or ten roubles out of his beggarly budget, denying
+himself in his beloved evening mug of beer and contriving to save
+on the street cars, which necessitated his making enormous
+distances on foot through the town. This money he set aside for
+women and spent it slowly, with gusto, trying to prolong and
+cheapen down the enjoyment as much as possible. And for his money
+he wanted a very great deal, almost the impossible; his German
+sentimental soul dimly thirsted after innocence, timidity, poesy,
+in the flaxen image of Gretchen; but as a man he dreamt, desired,
+and demanded that his caresses should bring a woman into rapture
+and palpitation and into a sweet exhaustion.
+
+However, all the men strove for the very same thing--even the most
+wretched, monstrous, misshapen and impotent of them--and ancient
+experience had long ago taught the women to imitate with voice and
+movements the most flaming passion, retaining in the most
+tempestuous minutes the fullest sang froid.
+
+"You might at least order the musicians to play a polka. Let the
+girls dance a little," asked Liuba grumblingly.
+
+That suited him. Under cover of the music, amid the jostling of
+the dances, it was far more convenient to get up courage, arise,
+and lead one of the girls out of the drawing room, than to do it
+amid the general silence and the finical immobility.
+
+"And how much does that cost?" he asked cautiously.
+
+"A quadrille is half a rouble; but ordinary dances are thirty
+kopecks. Is it all right then?"
+
+"Well, of course...if you please...I don't begrudge it," he
+agreed, pretending to be generous...
+
+"Whom do you speak to?"
+
+"Why, over there--to the musicians."
+
+"Why not? ... I'll do it with pleasure...Mister musician,
+something in the light dances, if you please," he said, laying
+down his silver on the pianoforte.
+
+"What will you order?" asked Isaiah Savvich, putting the money
+away in his pocket. "Waltz, polka, polka-mazourka?"
+
+"Well...Something sort of..."
+
+"A waltz, a waltz!" Vera, a great lover of dancing, shouted from
+her place.
+
+"No, a polka! ... A waltz! ... A vengerka! ... A waltz!" demanded
+others.
+
+"Let them play a polka," decided Liuba in a capricious tone.
+"Isaiah Savvich, play a little polka, please. This is my husband,
+and he is ordering fox me," she added, embracing the pedagogue by
+the neck. "Isn't that true, daddy?"
+
+But he freed himself from under her arm, drawing his head in like
+a turtle, and she without the least offence went to dance with
+Niura. Three other couples were also whirling about. In the dances
+all the girls tried to hold the waist as straight as possible, and
+the head as immobile as possible, with a complete unconcern in
+their faces, which constituted one of the conditions of the good
+taste of the establishment. Under cover of the slight noise the
+teacher walked up to Little Manka.
+
+"Let's go?" he said, offering her his bent arm.
+
+"Let's go," answered she, laughing.
+
+She brought him into her room, gotten up with all the
+coquettishness of a bedroom in a brothel of the medium sort, with
+a bureau, covered with a knit scarf, and upon it a mirror, a
+bouquet of paper flowers, a few empty bonbonierres, a powder box,
+a faded photograph of a young man with white eyebrows and
+eyelashes and a haughtily astonished face, as well as several
+visiting cards. Above the bed, which is covered with a pink pique
+blanket, along the wall, is nailed up a rug with a representation
+of a Turkish sultan luxuriating in his harem, a narghili in his
+mouth; on the walls, several more photographs of dashing men of
+the waiter and actor type; a pink lantern hangs down from the
+ceiling by chains; there are also a round table under a carpet
+cover, three vienna chairs, and an enameled bowl with a pitcher of
+the same sort in the corner on a tabouret, behind the bed.
+
+"Darling, treat me to Lafitte with lemonade," in accordance with
+established usage asked Little Manka, unbuttoning her corsage.
+
+"Afterwards," austerely answered the pedagogue. "It will all
+depend upon yourself. And then--what sort of Lafitte can you have
+here? Some muddy brew or other?"
+
+"We have good Lafitte," contradicted the girl touchily. "Two
+roubles a bottle. But if you are so stingy, then buy me beer at
+least. All right?"
+
+"Well, beer is all right..."
+
+"And for me lemonade and oranges. Yes?"
+
+"A bottle of lemonade, yes; but oranges, no. Later, maybe, I will
+treat you to champagne even. It will all depend on you. If you'll
+exert yourself."
+
+"Then, daddy, I'll ask for four bottles of beer and two bottles of
+lemonade? Yes? And for me just a little cake of chocolate. All
+right? Yes?"
+
+"Two bottles of beer, a bottle of lemonade, and nothing more. I
+don't like when I'm bargained with. If need be, I'll order
+myself."
+
+"And may I invite a friend of mine?"
+
+"No, let it be without any friends, if you please."
+
+Manka leaned out of the door into the corridor and called out
+resoundingly:
+
+"Housekeeper, dear! Two bottles of beer and a bottle of lemonade
+for me."
+
+Simeon came with a tray and began with an accustomed rapidity to
+uncork the bottles. Following him came Zociya, the housekeeper.
+
+"There, now, how well you've made yourself at home here. Here's to
+your lawful marriage!" she congratulated them.
+
+"Daddy, treat the little housekeeper with beer," begged Manka.
+"Drink, housekeeper dear."
+
+"Well, in that case here's to your health, mister. Somehow, your
+face seems kind of familiar to me?"
+
+The German drank his beer, sucking and licking his moustache, and
+impatiently waited for the housekeeper to go away. But she, having
+put down her glass and thanked him, said:
+
+"Let me get the money coming from you, mister. As much as is
+coming for the beer and the time. That's both better for you and
+more convenient for us."
+
+The demand for the money went against the grain of the teacher,
+because it completely destroyed the sentimental part of his
+intentions. He became angry:
+
+"What sort of boorishness is this, anyway! It doesn't look as if I
+were preparing to run away from here. And besides, can't you
+discriminate between people at all? You can see that a man of
+respectability, in a uniform, has come to you, and not some tramp.
+What sort of importunity is this!"
+
+The housekeeper gave in a little.
+
+"Now, don't get offended, mister. Of course, you'll pay the young
+lady yourself for the visit. I don't think you will do her any
+wrong, she's a fine girl among us. But I must trouble you to pay
+for the beer and lemonade. I, too, have to give an account to the
+proprietress. Two bottles at fifty is a rouble and the lemonade
+thirty--a rouble thirty."
+
+"Good Lord, a bottle of beer fifty kopecks!" the German waxed
+indignant. "Why, I will get it in any beer-shop for twelve
+kopecks."
+
+"Well, then, go to a beer-shop if it's cheaper there," Zociya
+became offended. "But if you've come to a respectable
+establishment, the regular price is half a rouble. We don't take
+anything extra. There, that's better. Twenty kopecks change coming
+to you?"
+
+"Yes, change, without fail," firmly emphasized the German teacher.
+"And I would request of you that nobody else should enter."
+
+"No, no, no, what are you saying," Zociya began to bustle near the
+door. "Dispose yourself as you please, to your heart's content. A
+pleasant appetite to you."
+
+Manka locked the door on a hook after her and sat down on the
+German's knee, embracing him with her bare arm.
+
+"Are you here long?" he asked, sipping his beer. He felt dimly
+that that imitation of love which must immediately take place
+demanded some sort of psychic propinquity, a more intimate
+acquaintance, and on that account, despite his impatience, began
+the usual conversation, which is carried on by almost all men--
+when alone with prostitutes, and which compels the latter to lie
+almost mechanically, to lie without mortification, enthusiasm or
+malice, according to a single, very ancient stencil.
+
+"Not long, only the third month."
+
+"And how old are you?"
+
+"Sixteen," fibbed Little Manka, taking five years off her age.
+
+"O, such a young one!" the German wondered, and began, bending
+down and grunting, to take off his boots. "Then how did you get
+here?"
+
+"Well, a certain officer deprived me of my innocence there...near
+his birthplace. And it's terrible how strict my mamma is. If she
+was to find out, she'd strangle me with her own hands. Well, so
+then I ran away from home and got in here..."
+
+"And did you love that same officer, the one who was the first
+one, now?"
+
+"If I hadn't loved him, I wouldn't have gone to him. He promised
+to marry me, the scoundrel, but then managed to get what he was
+after, and abandoned me."
+
+"Well, and were you ashamed the first time?"
+
+"Of course, you'd be ashamed...How do you like it, daddy, with
+light or without light? I'll turn, down the lantern a little. All
+right?"
+
+"Well, and aren't you bored here? What do they call you?"
+
+"Manya. To be sure I'm bored. What sort of a life is ours!"
+
+The German kissed her hard on her lips and again asked:
+
+"And do you love the men? Are there men who please you? Who afford
+you pleasure?"
+
+"How shouldn't there be?" Manka started laughing. "I love the ones
+like you especially, such nice little fatties."
+
+"You love them? Eh? Why do you love them?"
+
+"Oh, I love them just so. You're nice, too."
+
+The German meditated for a few seconds, pensively sipping away at
+his beer. Then he said that which every man tells a prostitute in
+these moments preceding the casual possession of her body:
+
+"Do you know, Marichen, you also please me very much. I would
+willingly take you and set you up."
+
+"You're married," the girl objected, touching his ring.
+
+"Yes, but, you understand, I don't live with my wife; she isn't
+well, she can't fulfill her conjugal duties."
+
+"The poor thing! If she were to find out where you go, daddy, she
+would cry for sure."
+
+"Let's drop that. So, you know, Mary, I am always looking out for
+such a girl as you for myself, so modest and pretty. I am a man of
+means, I would find a flat with board for you, with fuel and
+light. And forty roubles a month pin money. Would you go?"
+
+"Why not go--I'd go."
+
+He kissed her violently, but a secret apprehension glided swiftly
+through his cowardly heart.
+
+"But are you healthy?" he asked in an inimical, quavering voice.
+
+"Why, yes, I am healthy. There's a doctor's inspection every
+Saturday in our place."
+
+After five minutes she went away from him, as she walked putting
+away in her stocking the earned money, on which, as on the first
+handsel, she had first spat, after a superstitious custom. There
+had been no further speech either about maintenance or natural
+liking. The German was left unsatisfied with the frigidity of
+Manka and ordered the housekeeper to be summoned to him.
+
+"Housekeeper dear, my husband demands your presence!" said Manya,
+coming into the drawing room and fixing her hair before a mirror.
+
+Zociya went away, then returned afterwards and called Pasha out
+into the corridor. Later she came back into the drawing room, but
+alone.
+
+"How is it, Manka, that you haven't pleased your cavalier?" she
+asked with laughter. "He complains about you: 'This,' he says, 'is
+no woman, but some log of wood, a piece of ice.' I sent him
+Pashka."
+
+"Eh, what a disgusting man!" Manka puckered up her face and spat
+aside. "Butts in with his conversations. Asks: 'Do you feel when I
+kiss you? Do you feel a pleasant excitement?' An old hound. 'I'll
+take you,' he says, 'and set you up!'"
+
+"They all say that," remarked Zoe indifferently.
+
+But Jennie, who since morning has been in an evil mood, suddenly
+flared up.
+
+"Oh, the sneak, the big, miserable sneak that he is!" she
+exclaimed, turning red and energetically putting her hands to her
+sides. "Why, I would take him, the old, dirty little beast, by the
+ear, then lead him up to the mirror and show him his disgusting
+snout. What? Good-looking, aren't you? And how much better you'll
+be when the spit will be running out of your mouth, and you'll
+cross your eyes, and begin to choke and rattle in the throat, and
+to snort right in the face of the woman. And for your damned
+rouble you want me to go all to pieces before you like a pancake,
+and that from your nasty love my eyes should pop out onto my
+forehead? Why, hit him in the snout, the skunk, in the snout!
+Until there's blood!"
+
+"O, Jennie! Stop it now! PFUI!" the susceptible Emma Edwardovna,
+made indignant by her tone, stopped her.
+
+"I won't stop!" she cut her short abruptly. But she grew quiet by
+herself and wrathfully walked away with distending nostrils and
+with fire in the darkened, handsome eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Little by little the drawing room was filling. There came Roly-
+Poly, long known to all Yama--a tall, thin, red-nosed, gray old
+man, in the uniform of a forest ranger, in high boots, with a
+wooden yard-stick always sticking out of his side-pocket. He
+passed whole days and evenings as a habitue of the billiard parlor
+in the tavern, always half-tipsy, shedding his little jokes,
+jingles and little sayings, acting familiarly with the porters,
+with the housekeepers and the girls. In the houses everybody
+from the proprietress to the chamber-maids--treated him with a bit
+of derision--careless, a trifle contemptuous, but without malice.
+At times he was even not without use: he could transmit notes from
+the girls to their lovers, and run over to the market or to the
+drug-store. Not infrequently, thanks to his loosely hung tongue
+and long extinguished self respect, he would worm himself into a
+gathering of strangers and increase their expenditures, nor did he
+carry elsewhere the money gotten as "loans" on such occasions, but
+spent it right here for women--unless, indeed, he left himself
+some change for cigarettes. And, out of habit, he was good-
+naturedly tolerated.
+
+"And here's Roly-Poly arrived," announced Niura, when he, having
+already managed to shake hands amicably with Simeon the porter,
+stopped in the doorway of the drawing room, lanky, in a uniform
+cap knocked at a brave slant over one side of his head. "Well,
+now, Roly-Poly, fire away!"
+
+"I have the honour to present myself," Roly-Poly immediately
+commenced to grimace, putting his hand up to his brim in military
+fashion, "a right honourable privy frequenter of the local
+agreeable establishments, Prince Bottlekin, Count Liquorkin, Baron
+Whoatinkevich-Giddapkovski--Mister Beethoven! Mister Chopin!" he
+greeted the musicians. "Play me something from the opera The Brave
+and Charming General Anisimov, or, A Hubbub in the Coolidor. My
+regards to the little political economist Zociya. [Footnote: An
+untranslatable pun on Economochka, a diminutive for
+"housekeeper."--Trans.] A-ha! Then you kiss only at Easter? We
+shall write that down. Ooh-you, my Tomalachka, my pitty-itty
+tootsicums!"
+
+And so with jests and with pinches he went the round of all the
+girls and at last sat down alongside of the fat Katie, who put her
+fat leg upon his, leant with her elbow upon her knee, while upon
+the palm she laid her chin, and began to watch indifferently and
+closely the surveyor rolling a cigarette for himself.
+
+"And how is it that you don't ever get tired of it, Roly-Poly?
+You're forever rolling a coffin nail."
+
+Roly-Poly at once commenced to move his eye-brows and the skin of
+his scalp and began to speak in verse:
+
+    "Dear cigarette, my secret mate,
+    How can I help loving thee?
+    Not through mere whim, prompted by fate,
+    All have started smoking thee."
+
+"Why, Roly-Poly, but you are going to croak soon," said Kitty
+indifferently.
+
+"And a very simple matter, that."
+
+"Roly-Poly, say something still funnier, in verse," begged Verka.
+
+And at once, obediently, having placed himself in a funny pose, he
+began to declaim:
+
+    "Many stars are in the bright sky,
+    But to count them there's no way.
+    Yes, the wind whispers there can be,
+    But there really is no way.
+    Blossoming now are burdocks,
+    Now sing out the birds called cocks."
+
+Playing the tom-fool in this manner, Roly-Poly would sit whole
+evenings and nights through in the drawing rooms of the
+establishments. And through some strange psychic fellow feeling
+the girls counted him almost as one of their own; occasionally
+rendered him little temporary services and even bought him beer
+and vodka at their expense.
+
+Some time after Roly-Poly a large company of hairdressers, who
+were that day free from work, tumbled in. They were noisy, gay,
+but even here, in a brothel, did not cease their petty reckonings
+and conversations about closed and open theatrical benefits, about
+the bosses, about the wives of the bosses. All these were people
+corrupt to a sufficient degree, liars, with great hopes for the
+future--such as, for example, entering the service of some
+countess as a kept lover. They wanted to utilize to the widest
+possible extent their rather hard-earned money, and on that
+account decided to make a review of absolutely all the houses of
+Yama; only Treppel's they could not resolve to enter, as that was
+too swell for them. But at Anna Markovna's they at once ordered a
+quadrille and danced it, especially the fifth figure, where the
+gents execute a solo, perfectly, like real Parisians, even putting
+their thumbs in the arm holes of their vests. But they did not
+want to remain with the girls; instead, they promised to come
+later, when they had wound up the complete review of the brothels.
+
+And there also came and went government clerks of some sort; crisp
+young people in patent leather boots; several students; several
+officers, who were horribly afraid of losing their dignity in the
+eyes of the proprietress and the guests of the brothel. Little by
+little in the drawing room was created such a noisy, fumy setting
+that no one there any longer felt ill at ease. There came a steady
+visitor, the lover of Sonka the Rudder, who came almost every day
+and sat whole hours through near his beloved, gazed upon her with
+languishing oriental eyes, sighed, grew faint and created scenes
+for her because she lives in a brothel, because she sins against
+the Sabbath, because she eats meat not prepared in the orthodox
+Hebrew manner, and because she has strayed from the family and the
+great Hebrew church.
+
+As a usual thing--and this happened often--Zociya the housekeeper
+would walk up to him under cover of the hubbub and would say,
+twisting her lips:
+
+"Well, what are you sitting there for mister? Warming your behind?
+You might go and pass the time with the young lady."
+
+Both of them, the Jew and the Jewess, were by birth from Homel,
+and must have been created by God himself for a tender,
+passionate, mutual love; but many circumstances--as, for example,
+the pogrom which took place in their town, impoverishment, a
+complete confusion, fright--had for a time parted them. However,
+love was so great that the junior drug clerk Neiman, with great
+difficulty, efforts, and humiliations, contrived to find for
+himself the place of a junior in one of the local pharmacies, and
+had searched out the girl he loved. He was a real, orthodox
+Hebrew, almost fanatical. He knew that Sonka had been sold by her
+very mother to one of the buyers-up of live merchandise, knew many
+humiliating, hideous particulars of how she had been resold from
+hand to hand, and his pious, fastidious, truly Hebraic soul
+writhed and shuddered at these thoughts, but nevertheless love was
+above all. And every evening he would appear in the drawing room
+of Anna Markovna. If he was successful, at an enormous
+deprivation, in cutting out of his beggarly income some chance
+rouble, he would take Sonka into her room, but this was not at all
+a joy either for him or for her: after a momentary happiness--the
+physical possession of each other--they cried, reproached each
+other, quarreled with characteristic Hebraic, theatrical gestures,
+and always after these visits Sonka the Rudder would return into
+the drawing room with swollen, reddened eyelids.
+
+But most frequently of all he had no money, and would sit whole
+evenings through near his mistress, patiently and jealously
+awaiting her when Sonka through chance was taken by some guest.
+And when she would return and sit down beside him, he would,
+without being perceived, overwhelm her with reproaches, trying not
+to turn the general attention upon himself and without turning his
+head in her direction. And in her splendid, humid, Hebraic eyes
+during these conversations there was always a martyr-like but meek
+expression.
+
+There arrived a large company of Germans, employed in an optical
+shop; there also arrived a party of clerks from the fish and
+gastronomical store of Kereshkovsky, and two young people very
+well known in the Yamas--both bald, with sparse, soft, delicate
+hairs around the bald spots: Nicky the Book-keeper and Mishka the
+Singer--so were they both called in the houses. They also were met
+very cordially, just like Karl Karlovich of the optical shop and
+Volodka of the fish store--with raptures, cries and kisses,
+flattering to their self-esteem. The spry Niurka would jump out
+into the foyer, and, having informed herself as to who had come,
+would report excitedly, after her wont:
+
+    "Jennka, your husband has come!"
+
+Or:
+
+    "Little Manka, your lover has come!"
+
+And Mishka the Singer, who was no singer at all, but the owner of
+a drug warehouse, at once, upon entering, sang out in a vibrating,
+quavering, goatish voice:
+
+    "They fe-e-e-l the tru-u-u-u-uth!
+    Come thou daw-aw-aw-aw-ning..."
+
+which he perpetrated at every visit of his to Anna Markovna.
+
+Almost incessantly they played the quadrille, waltz, polka, and
+danced. There also arrived Senka--the lover of Tamara--but,
+contrary to his wont, he did not put on airs, did not go in for
+"ruination," did not order a funeral march from Isaiah Savvich,
+and did not treat the girls to chocolate ... For some reason he
+was gloomy, limped on his right leg, and sought to attract as
+little attention as possible--probably his professional affairs
+were at this time in a bad way. With a single motion of his head,
+while walking, he called Tamara out of the drawing room and
+vanished with her into her room. And there also arrived Egmont-
+Lavretzki the actor, clean-shaven, tall, resembling a court flunky
+with his vulgar and insolently contemptuous face.
+
+The clerks from the gastronomical store danced with all the ardour
+of youth and with all the decorum recommended by Herman Hoppe, the
+self-instructor of good manners. In this regard the girls also
+responded to their intentions. Both with these and with the others
+it was accounted especially decorous and well-bred to dance as
+rigidly as possible, keeping the arms hanging down, while the
+heads were raised high and inclined to one side with a certain
+proud, and, at the same time, tired and enervated air. In the
+intermissions, between the figures of the dance, it was necessary
+to fan one's self with a handkerchief, with a bored and negligent
+air ... In a word, they all made believe that they belonged to the
+choicest society, and that if they do dance, they only do it out
+of condescension, as a little comradely turn. But still they
+danced so ardently that the perspiration rolled down in streams
+from the clerks of Kereshkovsky.
+
+Two or three rows had already happened in different houses. Some
+man, all in blood, whose face in the pale light of the moon's
+crescent seemed black from the blood, was running around in the
+street, cursing, and, without paying the least attention to his
+wounds, was searching for his cap which had been lost in the
+brawl. On Little Yamskaya some government scribes had had a fight
+with a ship's company. The tired pianists and musicians played as
+in a delirium, in a doze, through mechanical habit. This was
+towards the waning of the night.
+
+Altogether unexpectedly, seven students, a sub-professor, and a
+local reporter walked into the establishment of Anna Markovna.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+They had all, except the reporter, passed the whole day together,
+from the very morning, celebrating May Day with some young women
+of their acquaintance. They had rowed in boats on the Dnieper, had
+cooked field porridge on the other side of the river, in the
+thick, bitter-smelling underbrush; had bathed--men and women by
+turns--in the rapid, warm water; had drunk home-made spiced
+brandy, sung sonorous songs of Little Russia, and had returned to
+town only late in the evening, when the dark, broad, running river
+so eerily and merrily plashed against the sides of their boats,
+playing with the reflections of the stars, the silvery shimmering
+paths of the electric lamps, and the bowing lights of the can-
+buoys. And when they had stepped out on the shore, the palms of
+each burned from the oars, the muscles of the arms and legs ached
+pleasantly, and suffusing the whole body was a blissful, healthy
+fatigue.
+
+Then they had escorted the young women to their homes and at the
+garden-gates and entrances had taken leave of them long and
+cordially, with laughter and with such swinging hand-shakes as if
+they were working the lever of a pump.
+
+The whole day had passed in gaiety and noise, even a trifle
+clamorously, and just the least wee bit tiresomely, but with
+youth-like continence; without intoxication, and, which happens
+especially rarely, without the least shadow of mutual affronts, or
+jealousy, or unvoiced mortifications. Of course, such a benign
+mood had been helped by the sun, the fresh river breeze, the sweet
+exhalations of the grasses and the water, the joyous sensation of
+the strength and alertness of one's body while bathing and rowing,
+and the restraining influence of the clever, kind, pure and
+handsome girls from families they were acquainted with. But,
+almost without the knowledge of their consciousness, their
+sensuousness--not imagination, but the simple, healthy,
+instinctive sensuousness of young playful males--kindled from
+chance encounters of their hands with feminine hands and from
+comradely obliging embraces, when the occasion arose to help the
+young ladies enter a boat or jump out on shore; from the tender
+odour of maiden apparel, warmed by the sun; from the feminine
+cries of coquettish fright on the river; from the sight of
+feminine figures, negligently half-reclining with a naive
+immodesty on the green grass around the samovar--from all these
+innocent liberties, which are so usual and unavoidable on picnics,
+country outings and river excursions, when within man, in the
+infinite depth of his soul, secretly awakens from the care-free
+contact with earth, grasses, water and sun, the beast-ancient,
+splendid, free, but disfigured and intimidated of men.
+
+And for that reason, at two o'clock in the night, when THE
+SPARROWS, a cozy students' restaurant, had barely closed, and all
+the eight, excited by alcohol and the plentiful food, had come out
+of the smoky, fumy underground place into the street, into the
+sweet, disquieting darkness of the night, with its beckoning fires
+in the sky and on the earth, with its warm, heady air, from which
+the nostrils dilate avidly, with its aromas, gliding from unseen
+gardens and flower-beds,--the head of each one of them was aflame
+and the heart quietly and languishingly yearning from vague
+desires. It was joyous and arrogant to sense after the rest the
+new, fresh strength in all the sinews, the deep breathing of the
+lungs, the red, resilient blood in the veins, the supple obedience
+of all the members. And--without words, without thoughts, without
+consciousness--one was drawn on this night to be running without
+raiment in the somnolent forest, to be sniffing hurriedly the
+tracks of some one's feet on the dewy grass, with a loud call to
+be summoning a female unto one's self.
+
+But to separate was now very difficult. The whole day, passed
+together, had shaken them into an accustomed, tenacious herd. It
+seemed that if even one were to go away from the company, a
+certain attained equilibrium would be disturbed and could not be
+restored afterwards. And so they dallied and stamped upon the
+sidewalk, near the exit of the tavern's underground vault,
+interfering with the progress of the infrequent passers-by. They
+discussed hypocritically where else they might go to wind up the
+night. It proved to be too far to the Tivoli Garden, and in
+addition to that one also had to pay for admission tickets, and
+the prices in the buffet were outrageous, and the program had
+ended long ago. Volodya Pavlov proposed going to him--he had a
+dozen of beer and a little cognac home. But it seemed a bore to
+all of them to go in the middle of the night to a family
+apartment, to enter on tiptoes up the stairs and to talk in
+whispers all the time.
+
+"Tell you what, brethren ... Let's better ride to the girlies,
+that will be nearer the mark," said peremptorily Lichonin, an old
+student, a tall, stooping, morose and bearded fellow. By
+convictions he was an anarchist--theoretic, but by avocation a
+passionate gambler at billiards, races and cards--a gambler with a
+very broad, fatalistic sweep. Only the day before he had won a
+thousand roubles at macao in the Merchants' Club, and this money
+was still burning a hole in his pockets.
+
+"And why not? Right-o!" somebody sustained him. "Let's go,
+comrades?"
+
+"Is it worth while? Why, this is an all night affair ..." spoke
+another with a false prudence and an insincere fatigue.
+
+And a third said through a feigned yawn:
+
+"Let's better go home, gentlemen ... a-a-a ... go bye-bye ...
+That's enough for to-day."
+
+"You won't work any wonders when you're asleep," Lichonin remarked
+sneeringly. "Herr professor, are you coming?"
+
+But the sub-professor Yarchenko was obstinate and seemed really
+angered, although, perhaps, he himself did not know what was
+lurking within him, in some dark cranny of his soul.
+
+"Leave me in peace, Lichonin. As I see it, gentlemen, this is
+downright and plain swinishness--that which you are about to do.
+We have passed the time so wonderfully, amiably and simply, it
+seems,--but no, you needs must, like drunken cattle, clamber into
+a cesspool. I won't go."
+
+"Still, if my memory does not play me false," said Lichonin, with
+calm causticity, "I recollect that no further back than past
+autumn we with a certain future Mommsen were pouring in some place
+or other a jug of ice into a pianoforte, delineating a Bouratian
+god, dancing the belly-dance, and all that sort of thing?"
+
+Lichonin spoke the truth. In his student days, and later, being
+retained at the university, Yarchenko had led the most wanton and
+crack-brained life. In all the taverns, cabarets, and other places
+of amusement his small, fat, roundish little figure, his rosy
+cheeks, puffed out like those of a painted cupid, and the shining,
+humid kindly eyes were well known, his hurried, spluttering speech
+and shrill laughter remembered.
+
+His comrades could never fathom where he found the time to employ
+in study, but nevertheless he went through all examinations and
+prescribed work with distinction and from the first course the
+professors had him in view. Now Yarchenko was beginning little by
+little to quit his former comrades and bottle companions. He had
+just established the indispensable connections with the
+professorial circle; the reading of lectures in Roman history for
+the coming year had been offered him, and not infrequently in
+conversation he would use the expression current among the sub-
+professors: "We, the learned ones!" The student familiarity, the
+compulsory companionship, the obligatory participation in all
+meetings, protests and demonstrations, were becoming
+disadvantageous to him, embarrassing, and even simply tedious. But
+he knew the value of popularity among the younger element, and for
+that reason could not decide to sever relations abruptly with his
+former circle. Lichonin's words, however, provoked him.
+
+"Oh, my God, what does it matter what we did when we were
+youngsters? We stole sugar, soiled our panties, tore the wings off
+beetles," Yarchenko began to speak, growing heated, and
+spluttering. "But there is a limit and a mean to all this. I,
+gentlemen, do not presume, of course, to give you counsels and to
+teach you, but one must be consistent. We are all agreed that
+prostitution is one of the greatest calamities of humanity, and
+are also agreed, that in this evil not the women are guilty, but
+we, men, because the demand gives birth to the offer. And
+therefore if, having drunk a glass of wine too much, I still,
+notwithstanding my convictions, go to the prostitutes, I am
+committing a triple vileness: before the unfortunate, foolish
+woman, whom I subject to the most degrading form of slavery for my
+filthy rouble; before humanity, because, hiring a public woman for
+an hour or two for my abominable lust, I through this justify and
+uphold prostitution; and finally, this is a vileness before one's
+own conscience and mind. And before logic."
+
+"Phew-ew!" Lichonin let out a long-drawn whistle and chanted in a
+thin, dismal voice, nodding in time with his head hanging down to
+one side: "The philosopher is off on our usual stuff: 'A rope--is
+a common cord.'"
+
+"Of course, there's nothing easier than to play the tom-fool,"
+responded Yarchenko. "But in my opinion there is not in the
+sorrowful life of Russia a more mournful phenomenon than this
+lackadaisicalness and vitiation of thought. To-day we will say to
+ourselves: Eh! It's all the same, whether I go to a brothel or
+whether I do not go, from this one time things will get neither
+worse nor better. And after five years we will be saying:
+Undoubtedly a bribe is a horribly nasty bit of business, but you
+know--children ... the family ... And just the same way after ten
+years we, having remained fortuitous Russian liberals, will be
+sighing about personal freedom and bowing low before worthless
+scoundrels, whom we despise, and will be cooling our heels in
+their ante-rooms. 'Because, don't you know,' we will say,
+tittering, 'when you live with wolves, you must howl like a wolf.'
+By God, it wasn't in vain that some minister called the Russian
+students future head-clerks!"
+
+"Or professors," Lichonin put in.
+
+"But most important of all," continued Yarchenko, letting this
+pointed remark pass by, "most important of all is this, that I
+have seen all of you to-day on the river and afterwards there ...
+on the other shore ... with these charming, fine girls. How
+attentive, well-bred, obliging you all were--but scarcely have you
+taken leave of them, when you are drawn to public women. Let each
+one of you imagine for a moment, that we all had been visiting his
+sisters and straight from them had driven to Yama ... What? Is
+such a supposition pleasant?"
+
+"Yes, but there must exist some valves for the passions of
+society," pompously remarked Boris Sobashnikov, a tall, somewhat
+supercilious and affected young man, upon whom the short, white
+summer uniform jacket, which scarcely covered his fat posteriors,
+the modish trousers, of a military cut, the PINCE-NEZ on a broad,
+black ribbon, and a cap after a Prussian model, all bestowed the
+air of a coxcomb. "Surely, it isn't more respectable to enjoy the
+caresses of your chambermaid, or to carry on an intrigue on the
+side with another man's wife? What am I to do if woman is
+indispensable to me!"
+
+"Eh, very indispensable indeed!" said Yarchenko with vexation and
+feebly made a despondent gesture.
+
+But here a student who was called Ramses in the friendly coterie
+intervened. This was a yellowish-swarthy, hump-nosed man of small
+stature; his clean-shaven face seemed triangular, thanks to a
+broad forehead, beginning to get bald, with two wedge-like bald
+spots at the temples, fallen-in cheeks and a sharp chin. He led a
+mode of life sufficiently queer for a student. While his
+colleagues employed themselves by turns with politics, love, the
+theatre, and a little in study, Ramses had withdrawn entirely into
+the study of all conceivable suits and claims, into the chicane
+subtleties of property, hereditary, land and other business law-
+suits, into the memorizing and logical analysis of quashed
+decisions. Perfectly of his own will, without in the least needing
+the money, he served for a year as a clerk at a notary's for
+another as a secretary to a justice of the peace, while all of the
+past year, being in the last term, he had conducted in a local
+newspaper the reports of the city council and had borne the modest
+duty of an assistant to a secretary in the management of a
+syndicate of sugar manufacturers. And when this same syndicate
+commenced the well-known suit against one of its members, Colonel
+Baskakov, who had put up the surplus sugar for sale contrary to
+agreement, Ramses from the very beginning guessed beforehand and
+very subtly engineered, precisely that decision which the senate
+subsequently handed down in this suit.
+
+Despite his comparative youth, rather well-known jurists gave heed
+to his opinions--true, a little loftily. None of those who knew
+Ramses closely doubted that he would make a brilliant career, and
+even Ramses himself did not conceal his confidence in that toward
+thirty-five he would knock together a million, exclusively through
+his practice as a civil lawyer. His comrades not infrequently
+elected him chairman of meetings and head of the class, but this
+honour Ramses invariably declined, excusing himself with lack of
+time. But still he did not avoid participation in his comrades'
+trials by arbitration, and his arguments--always incontrovertibly
+logical--were possessed of an amazing virtue in ending the trials
+with peace, to the mutual satisfaction of the litigating parties.
+He, as well as Yarchenko, knew well the value of popularity among
+the studying youths, and even if he did look upon people with a
+certain contempt, from above, still he never, by as much as a
+single movement of his thin, clever, energetical lips, showed
+this.
+
+"Well, Gavrila Petrovich, no one is necessarily dragging you into
+committing a fall from grace," said Ramses in a conciliatory
+manner, "What is all this pathos and melancholy for, when the
+matter as it stands is altogether simple? A company of young
+Russian gentlemen wishes to pass the remnant of the night modestly
+and amicably, to make merry, to sing a little, and to take
+internally several gallons of wine and beer. But everything is
+closed now, except these very same houses. ERGO! ..."
+
+"Consequently, we will go merry-making to women who are for sale?
+To prostitutes? Into a brothel?" Yarchenko interrupted him,
+mockingly and inimically.
+
+"And even so? A certain philosopher, whom it was desired to
+humiliate, was given a seat at dinner near the musicians. But he,
+sitting down, said: 'Here is a sure means of making the last place
+the first.' And finally I repeat: If your conscience does not
+allow you, as you express yourself, to buy a woman, then you can
+go there and come away, preserving your innocence in all its
+blossoming inviolability."
+
+"You overdo it, Ramses," objected Yarchenko with displeasure. "You
+remind me of those bourgeois, who, while it is still dark, have
+gathered to gape at an execution and who say: we have nothing to
+do with this, we are against capital punishment, this is all the
+prosecuting attorney's and the executioner's doing."
+
+"Superbly said and partly true, Gavrila Petrovich. But to us,
+precisely, this comparison may not even apply. One cannot, you
+see, treat some malignant disease while absent, without seeing the
+sufferer in person. And yet all of us, who are now standing here
+in the street and interfering with the passers-by, will be obliged
+at some time in our work to run up against the terrible problem of
+prostitution, and what a prostitution at that--the Russian!
+Lichonin, I, Borya Sobashnikov and Pavlov as jurists, Petrovsky
+and Tolpygin as medicos. True, Veltman has a distinct specialty--
+mathematics. But then, he will be a pedagogue, a guide of youth,
+and, deuce take it, even a father! And if you are going to scare
+with a bugaboo, it is best to look upon it one's self first. And
+finally, you yourself, Gavrila Petrovich--expert of dead languages
+and future luminary of grave digging--is the comparison, then, of
+the contemporary brothels, say, with some Pompeian lupanaria, or
+the institution of sacred prostitution in Thebes and Nineveh, not
+important and instructive to you? ..."
+
+"Bravo, Ramses, magnificent!" roared Lichonin. "And what's there
+to talk so much about, fellows? Take the professor under the gills
+and put him in a cab!"
+
+The students, laughing and jostling, surrounded Yarchenko, seized
+him under the arms, caught him around the waist. All of them were
+equally drawn to the women, but none, save Lichonin, had enough
+courage to take the initiative upon himself. But now all this
+complicated, unpleasant and hypocritical business was happily
+resolved into a simple, easy joke upon the older comrade.
+Yarchenko resisted, and was angry, and laughing, trying to break
+away. But at this moment a tall, black-moustached policeman, who
+had long been eyeing them keenly and inimically, walked up to the
+uproarious students.
+
+"I'd ask you stewdent gents not to congregate. It's not allowed!
+Keep on going!"
+
+They moved on in a throng. Yarchenka was beginning to soften
+little by little.
+
+"Gentlemen, I am ready to go with you, if you like ... Do not
+think, however, that the sophistries of the Egyptian Pharaoh
+Ramses have convinced me ... No, I simply would be sorry to break
+up the party ... But I make one stipulation: we will drink a
+little there, gab a little, laugh a little, and so forth ... but
+let there be nothing more, no filth of any kind ... It is shameful
+and painful to think that we, the flower and glory--of the Russian
+intelligentzia, will go all to pieces and let our mouths water at
+the sight of the first skirt that comes our way."
+
+"I swear it!" said Lichonin, putting up his hand.
+
+"I can vouch for myself," said Ramses.
+
+"And I! And I! By God, gentlemen, let's pledge our words ...
+Yarchenko is right," others took up.
+
+They seated themselves in twos and threes in the cabs--the drivers
+of which had been long since following them in a file, grinning
+and cursing each other--and rode off. Lichonin, for the sake of
+assurance, sat down beside the sub-professor, having embraced him
+around the waist and seated him on his knees and those of his
+neighbour, the little Tolpygin, a rosy, pleasant-faced boy on
+whose face, despite his twenty-three years, the childish white
+down--soft and light--still showed.
+
+"The station is at Doroshenko's!" called out Lichonin after the
+cabbies driving off. "The stop is at Doroshenko's," he repeated,
+turning around.
+
+They all stopped at Doroshenko's restaurant, entered the general
+room, and crowded about the bar. All were satiated and no one
+wanted either to drink or to have a bite. But in the soul of each
+one still remained a dark trace of the consciousness that right
+now they were getting ready to commit something needlessly
+shameful, getting ready to take part in some convulsive,
+artificial, and not at all a merry merriment. And in each one was
+the yearning to bring himself through intoxication to that misty
+and rainbow condition when nothing makes any difference, and when
+the head does not know what the arms and legs are doing, and what
+the tongue is babbling. And, probably, not the students alone, but
+all the casual and constant visitors of Yama experienced in
+greater or lesser degree the friction of this inner psychic heart-
+sore, because Doroshenko did business only late in the evening and
+night, and no one lingered long in his place but only turned in in
+passing, half-way on the journey.
+
+While the students were drinking cognac, beer and vodka, Ramses
+was constantly and intently looking into the farthest corner of
+the restaurant hall, where two men were sitting--a tattered, gray,
+big old man, and, opposite him, his back to the bar, with his
+elbows spread out upon the table and his chin resting on the fists
+folded upon each other, some hunched up, stout, closely-propped
+gentleman in a gray suit. The old man was picking upon a dulcimer
+lying before him and quietly singing, in a hoarse but pleasing
+voice:
+
+     "Oh my valley, my little valley,
+     Bro-o-o-o-o-oad land of plenty."
+
+"Excuse me, but that is a co-worker of ours," said Ramses, and
+went to greet the gentleman in the gray suit. After a minute he
+led him up to the bar and introduced him to his comrades.
+
+"Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you my companion in arms in
+the newspaper game, Sergei Ivanovich Platonov. The laziest and
+most talented of newspaper workers."
+
+They all introduced themselves, indistinctly muttering out their
+names.
+
+"And therefore, let's have a drink," said Uchonin, while Yarchenko
+asked with the refined amiability which never forsook him:
+
+"Pardon me, pardon me, but I am acquainted with you a little, even
+though not personally. Weren't you in the university when
+Professor Priklonsky defended the doctor's dissertation?"
+
+"It was I," answered the reporter.
+
+"Ah, that's very nice," smiled Yarchenko charmingly, and for some
+reason once more pressed Platonov's hand vigorously. "I read your
+report afterwards: very exactly, circumstantially and skillfully
+put together ... Won't you favor me? ... To your health!"
+
+"Then allow me, too," said Platonov. "Onuphriy Zakharich, pour out
+for us again ... one ... two, three, four ... nine glasses of
+cognac..."
+
+"Oh no, you can't do that ... you are our guest, colleague,"
+remonstrated Lichonin.
+
+"Well, now, what sort of colleague am I to you?" good-naturedly
+laughed the reporter. "I was only in the first class and then only
+for half a year--as an unmatriculated student. Here you are,
+Onuphriy Zakharich. Gentlemen, I beg you..."
+
+The upshot of it was that after half an hour Lichonin and
+Yarchenko did not under any consideration want to part with the
+reporter and dragged him with them to Yama. However, he did not
+resist.
+
+"If I am not a burden to you, I would be very glad," he said
+simply. "All the more since I have easy money to-day. THE DNIEPER
+WORD has paid me an honorarium, and this is just as much of a
+miracle as winning two hundred thousand on a check from a theatre
+coat room. Pardon me, I'll be right back..."
+
+He walked up to the old man with whom he had been sitting before,
+shoved some money into his hand, and gently took leave of him.
+
+"Where I'm going, grandpa, there you mustn't go--to-morrow we will
+meet in the same place as to-day. Good-bye!"
+
+They all walked out of the restaurant. At the door Borya
+Sobashnikov, always a little finical and unnecessarily
+supercilious, stopped Lichonin and called him to one side.
+
+"I'm surprised at you, Lichonin," he said squeamishly. "We have
+gathered together in our own close company, yet you must needs
+drag in some vagabond. The devil knows who he is!"
+
+"Quit that, Borya," answered Lichonin amicably. "He's a warm-
+hearted fellow."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+"Well now, gentlemen, this isn't fit for pigs," Yarchenko was
+saying, grumblingly, at the entrance of Anna Markovna's
+establishment. "If we finally have gone, we might at least have
+chosen a decent place, and not some wretched hole. Really,
+gentlemen, let's better go to Treppel's alongside; there it's
+clean and light, at any rate."
+
+"If you please, if you please, signior," insisted Lichonin,
+opening the door before the sub-professor with courtly urbanity,
+bowing and spreading his arms before him. "If you please."
+
+"But this is an abomination ... At Treppel's the women are better-
+looking, at least,"
+
+Ramses, walking behind, burst into dry laughter.
+
+"So, so, Gavrila Petrovich. Let us continue in the same spirit.
+Let us condemn the hungry, petty thief who has stolen a five-
+kopeck loaf out of a tray, but if the director of a bank has
+squandered somebody else's million on race horses and cigars, let
+us mitigate his lot."
+
+"Pardon me, but I do not understand this comparison," answered
+Yarchenko with restraint. "However, it's all the same to me; let's
+go."
+
+"And all the more so," said Lichonin, letting the subprofessor
+pass ahead; "all the more so, since this house guards within it so
+many historical traditions. Comrades! Decades of student
+generations gaze upon us from the heights of the coat-hooks, and,
+besides that, through the power of the usual right, children and
+students pay half here, as in a panopticon. Isn't that so, citizen
+Simeon?"
+
+Simeon did not like to have people come in large parties--this
+always smacked of scandal in the not distant future; moreover, he
+despised students in general for their speech, but little
+comprehensible to him, for their propensity towards frivolous
+jokes, for their godlessness, and chiefly because they were in
+constant revolt against officialdom and order. It was not in vain
+that on the day when on the Bessarabian Square the cossacks, meat-
+sellers, flour dealers and fish mongers were massacring the
+students, Simeon having scarce found it out had jumped into a fine
+carriage passing by, and, standing just like a chief of police in
+the victoria, tore off to the scene of the fray in order to take
+part in it. He esteemed people who were sedate, stout and elderly,
+who came singly, in secret, peeped in cautiously from the ante-
+room into the drawing room, fearing to meet with acquaintances,
+and very soon and with great haste went away, tipping him
+generously. Such he always styled "Your Excellency."
+
+And so, while taking the light grey overcoat off Yarchenko, he
+sombrely and with much significance snarled back in answer to
+Lichonin's banter:
+
+"I am no citizen here, but the bouncer."
+
+"Upon which I have the honour to congratulate you," answered
+Lichonin with a polite bow.
+
+There were many people in the drawing room. The clerks, having
+danced their fill, were sitting, red and wet, near their ladies,
+rapidly fanning themselves with their handkerchiefs; they smelt
+strongly of old goats' wool. Mishka the Singer and his friend the
+Book-keeper, both bald, with soft, downy hairs around the denuded
+skulls, both with turbid, nacreous, intoxicated eyes, were sitting
+opposite each other, leaning with their elbows on a little marble
+table, and were constantly trying to start singing in unison with
+such quavering and galloping voices as though some one was very,
+very often striking them in the cervical vertebrae:
+
+    "They fe-e-e-l the tru-u-u-u-uth!"
+
+while Emma Edwardovna and Zociya with all their might were
+exhorting them not to behave indecently. Roly-Poly was peacefully
+slumbering on a chair, his head hanging down, having laid one long
+leg over the other and grasped the sharp knee with his clasped
+hands.
+
+The girls at once recognized some of the students and ran to meet
+them.
+
+"Tamarochka, your husband has come--Volodenka. And my husband
+too!--Mishka!" cried Niura piercingly, hanging herself on the neck
+of the lanky, big-nosed, solemn Petrovsky. "Hello, Mishenka. Why
+haven't you come for so long? I grew weary of waiting for you."
+
+Yarchenko with a feeling of awkwardness was looking about him on
+all sides.
+
+"We'd like to have in some way ... don't you know ... a little
+private room," he said with delicacy to Emma Edwardovna who had
+approached. "And give us some sort of red wine, please ... And
+then, some coffee as well ... You know yourself."
+
+Yarchenko always instilled confidence in servants and MAITRES
+D'HOTEL, with his dashing clothes and polite but seigniorial ways.
+Emma Edwardovna started nodding her head willingly, just like an
+old, fat circus horse.
+
+"It can be done ... it can be done ... Pass this way, gentlemen,
+into the parlor. It can be done, it can be done ... What liqueur?
+We have only Benedictine ... Benedictine, then? It can be done, it
+can be done ... And will you allow the young ladies to come in?"
+
+"Well, if that is so indispensable?" Yarchenko spread out his
+hands with a sigh.
+
+And at once the girls one after the other straggled into the
+parlor with its gray plush furniture and blue lantern. They
+entered, extended to every one in turn their unbending palms,
+unused to hand-clasps, gave their names abruptly in a low voice--
+Manya, Katie, Liuba ... They sat down on somebody's knees,
+embraced him around the neck, and, as usual, began to importune:
+
+"Little student, you're such a little good-looker. May I ask for
+oranzes?"
+
+"Volodenka, buy me some candy! All right?"
+
+"And me chocolate!"
+
+"Fatty," Vera, dressed as a jockey, wheedled the sub-professor,
+clambering up on his knees, "I have a friend, only she's sick and
+can't come out into the drawing room. I'll carry her some apples
+and chocolate. Will you let me?"
+
+"Well, now, those are all just stories about a friend! But above
+all, don't be thrusting your tenderness at me. Sit as smart
+children sit, right here alongside, on the arm chair, just so. And
+fold your little hands."
+
+"Ah, but what if I can't!" writhed Vera in coquetry, rolling her
+eyes up under her upper lids ... "When you are so nice."
+
+But Lichonin, in answer to this professional beggary, only nodded
+his head gravely and good-naturedly, just like Emma Edwardovna,
+and repeated over and over again, mimicking her German accent:
+
+"Itt can pe done, itt can pe done, itt can pe done..."
+
+"Then I will tell the waiter, honey, to carry my friend some
+sweets and apples?" pestered Vera.
+
+Such importunity entered the round of their tacit duties. There
+even existed among the girls some captious, childish, strange
+rivalry as to the ability to "ease a guest of his money"--strange
+enough because they did not derive any profit out of this, unless,
+indeed, a certain affection from the housekeeper or a word of
+approbation from the proprietress. But in their petty, monotonous,
+habitually frivolous life there was, in general, a great deal of
+semi-puerile, semi-hysterical play.
+
+Simeon brought a coffee pot, cups, a squatty bottle of
+Benedictine, fruits and bon-bons in glass vases, and gaily and
+easily began making the corks of the beer and wine pop.
+
+"But why don't you drink?" Yarchenko turned to the reporter
+Platonov. "Allow me ... I do not mistake? Sergei Ivanovich, I
+believe?"
+
+"Right."
+
+"Allow me to offer you a cup of coffee, Sergei Ivanovich. It's
+refreshing. Or perhaps, let's drink this same dubious Lafitte?"
+
+"No, you really must allow me to refuse. I have a drink of my own
+... Simeon, give me..."
+
+"Cognac!" cried out Niura hurriedly.
+
+"And with a pear!" Little White Manka caught up just as fast.
+
+"I heard you, Sergei Ivanich--right away," unhurriedly but
+respectfully responded Simeon, and, bending down and letting out a
+grunt, resoundingly drew the cork out of the neck of the bottle.
+
+"It's the first time I hear of cognac being served in Yama,"
+uttered Lichonin with amazement. "No matter how much I asked, they
+always refused me."
+
+"Perhaps Sergei Ivanich knows some sort of magic word," jested
+Ramses.
+
+"Or is held here in an especially honoured state?" Boris
+Sobashnikov put in pointedly, with emphasis.
+
+The reporter listlessly, without turning his head, looked askance
+at Sobashnikov, at the lower row of buttons on his short, foppish,
+white summer uniform jacket, and answered with a drawl:
+
+"There is nothing honourable in that I can drink like a horse and
+never get drunk; but then, I also do not quarrel with anyone or
+pick upon anybody. Evidently, these good sides of my character are
+sufficiently known here, and because of that confidence is shown
+me."
+
+"Good for you, old fellow!" joyously exclaimed Lichonin, who was
+delighted by a certain peculiar, indolent negligence--of few
+words, yet at the same time self-confident--in the reporter. "Will
+you share the cognac with me also?"
+
+"Very, very gladly," affably answered Platonov and suddenly looked
+at Lichonin with a radiant, almost child-like smile, which
+beautified his plain face with the prominent cheek-bones. "You,
+too, appealed to me from the first. And even when I saw you there,
+at Doroshenko's, I at once thought that you are not at all as
+rough as you seem."
+
+"Well, now, we have exchanged pleasantries," laughed Lichonin.
+"But it's amazing that we haven't met once just here. Evidently,
+you come to Anna Markovna's quite frequently?"
+
+"Even too much so."
+
+"Sergei Ivanich is our most important guest!" naively shrieked
+Niura. "Sergei Ivanich is a sort of brother among us!"
+
+"Fool!" Tamara stopped her.
+
+"That seems strange to me," continued Lichonin. "I, too, am a
+habitue. In any case, one can only envy everybody's cordiality
+toward you."
+
+"The local chieftain!" said Boris Sobashnikov, curling his lips
+downward, but said it so low that Platanov, if he chose to, could
+pretend that he had not heard anything distinctly. This reporter
+had for long aroused in Boris some blind and prickling irritation.
+That he was not one of his own herd really meant nothing. But
+Boris, like many students (and also officers, junkers, and high-
+school boys) had grown accustomed to the fact that the outside
+"civilian" people, who accidentally fell into a company of
+students on a spree, should hold themselves somewhat subordinately
+and with servility in it, flatter the studying youths, be struck
+with its daring, laugh at its jokes, admire its self-admiration,
+recall their own student years with a sigh of suppressed envy. But
+in Platonov there not only was none of this customary wagging of
+the tail before youth, but, on the contrary, there was to be felt
+a certain abstracted, calm and polite indifference.
+
+Besides that, Sobashnikov was angered--and angered with a petty,
+jealous vexation--by that simple and yet anticipatory attention
+which was shown to the reporter by everybody in the establishment,
+beginning with the porter and ending with the fleshy, taciturn
+Katie. This attention was shown in the way he was listened to, in
+that triumphal carefulness with which Tamara filled his glass, and
+in the way Little White Manka pared a pear for him solicitously,
+and in the delight of Zoe, who had caught the case skillfully
+thrown to her across the table by the reporter, when she had
+vainly asked for a cigarette from her two neighbors, who were lost
+in conversation; and in the way none of the girls begged either
+chocolate or fruits from him, in the lively gratitude for his
+little services and his treating. "Pimp!" Sobashkinov had almost
+decided mentally with malice, but did not believe it even himself
+--the reporter was altogether too homely and too carelessly
+dressed, and moreover he bore himself with great dignity.
+
+Platonov again made believe that he had not heard the insolent
+remark made by the student. He only nervously crumpled a napkin in
+his fingers and lightly threw it aside from him. And again his
+eyelids quivered in the direction of Boris Sobashnikov.
+
+"Yes, true, I am one of the family here," he continued calmly,
+moving his glass in slow circles on the table. "Just think, I
+dined in this very house, day after day, for exactly four months."
+
+"No? Seriously?" Yarchenko wondered and laughed.
+
+"In all seriousness. The table here isn't at all bad, by the way.
+The food is filling and savory, although exceedingly greasy."
+
+"But how did you ever..."
+
+"Why, just because I was tutoring for high school a daughter of
+Anna Markovna, the lady of this hospitable house. Well, I
+stipulated that part of my monthly pay should be deducted for my
+dinners."
+
+"What a strange fancy!" said Yarchenko. "And did you do this of
+your own will? Or ... Pardon me, I am afraid of seeming indiscreet
+to you ... Perhaps at that time ... extreme necessity? ..."
+
+"Not at all. Anna Markovna soaked me three times as much as it
+would have cost in a student's dining room. I simply wanted to
+live here a while on a somewhat nearer, closer footing, to enter
+intimately into this little world, so to speak."
+
+"A-ah! It seems I am beginning to understand!" beamed Yarchenko.
+"Our new friend--pardon me for the little familiarity--is,
+apparently, gathering material from life? And, perhaps, in a few
+years we will have the pleasure of reading ..."
+
+"A t-r-ragedy out of a brothel!" Boris Sobashnikov put in loudly,
+like an actor.
+
+While the reporter had been answering Yarchenko, Tamara quietly
+got up from her place, walked around the table, and, bending down
+over Sobashnikov, spoke in a whisper in his ear:
+
+"Dearie, sweetie, you'd better not touch this gentleman. Honest to
+God, it will be better for you, even."
+
+"Wass that?" the student looked at her superciliously, fixing his
+PINCE-NEZ with two spread fingers. "Is he your lover? Your pimp?"
+
+"I swear by anything you want that not once in his life has he
+stayed with any one of us. But, I repeat, don't pick on him."
+
+"Why, yes! Why, of course!" retorted Sobashnikov, grimacing
+scornfully. "He has such a splendid defense as the entire brothel.
+And it's a sure thing that all the bouncers on Yamskaya are his
+near friends and cronies."
+
+"No, not that," retorted Tamara in a kind whisper. "Only he'll
+take you by the collar and throw you out of the window, like a
+puppy. I've already seen such an aerial flight. God forbid its
+happening to anyone. It's disgraceful, and bad for the health."
+
+"Get out of here, you filth!" yelled Sobashnikov, swinging his
+elbow at her.
+
+"I'm going, dearie," meekly answered Tamara, and walked away from
+him with her light step.
+
+Everybody for an instant turned toward the student.
+
+"Behave yourself, barberry!" Lichonin threatened him with his
+finger. "Well, well, go on," he begged the reporter; "all that
+you're saying is so interesting."
+
+"No, I'm not gathering anything," continued the reporter calmly
+and seriously. "But the material here is in reality tremendous,
+downright crushing, terrible ... And not at all terrible are the
+loud phrases about the traffic in women's flesh, about the white
+slaves, about prostitution being a corroding fester of large
+cities, and so on, and so on ... an old hurdy-gurdy of which all
+have tired! No, horrible are the everyday, accustomed trifles,
+these business-like, daily, commercial reckonings, this thousand
+year old science of amatory practice, this prosaic usage,
+determined by the ages. In these unnoticeable nothings are
+completely dissolved such feelings as resentment, humiliation,
+shame. There remains a dry profession, a contract, an agreement, a
+well-nigh honest petty trade, no better, no worse than, say, the
+trade in groceries. Do you understand, gentlemen, that all the
+horror is in just this, that there is no horror! Bourgeois work
+days--and that is all. And also an after taste of an exclusive
+educational institution, with its NAIVETE, harshness,
+sentimentality and imitativeness."
+
+"That's right," confirmed Lichonin, while the reporter continued,
+gazing pensively into his glass:
+
+"We read in the papers, in leading articles, various wailings of
+anxious souls. And the women-physicians are also endeavouring in
+this matter, and endeavouring disgustingly enough. 'Oh, dear,
+regulation! Oh, dear, abolition! Oh, dear, live merchandise! A
+condition of slavery! The mesdames, these greedy haeterae! These
+heinous degenerates of humanity, sucking the blood of
+prostitutes!' ... But with clamour you will scare no one and will
+affect no one. You know, there's a little saying: much cry, little
+wool. More awful than all awful words--a hundredfold more awful--
+is some such little prosaic stroke or other as will suddenly knock
+you all in a heap, like a blow on the forehead. Take even Simeon,
+the porter here. It would seem, according to you, there is no
+sinking lower--a bouncer in a brothel, a brute, almost certainly a
+murderer, he plucks the prostitutes, gives them "black eyes," to
+use a local expression--that is, just simply beats them. But, do
+you know on what grounds he and I came together and became
+friendly? On the magnificent details of the divine service of the
+prelate, on the canon of the honest Andrew, pastor of Crete, on
+the works of the most beatific father, John the Damascene. He is
+religious--unusually so! I used to lead him on, and he would sing
+to me with tears in his eyes: 'Come ye brethren, and we will give
+the last kiss to him who has gone to his rest...' From the ritual
+of the burial of laymen. No, just think: it is only in the Russian
+soul alone that such contradictions may dwell together!"
+
+"Yes. A fellow like that will pray, and pray, then cut a throat,
+and then wash his hands and put a candle before an image," said
+Ramses.
+
+"Just so. I know of nothing more uncanny than this fusion of fully
+sincere devoutness with an innate leaning toward crime. Shall I
+confess to you? I, when I talk all alone to Simeon--and we talk
+with each other long and leisurely, for hours--I experience at
+moments a genuine terror. A superstitious terror! Just as though,
+for instance, I am standing in the dusk upon a shaking little
+board, bending over some dark, malodorous well, and just barely
+distinguish how there, at the bottom, reptiles are stirring. And
+yet, he is devout in a real way, and I am sure will some time join
+the monks and will be a great faster and sayer of prayers, and the
+devil knows how, in what monstrous fashion, a real religious
+ecstasy will entwine in his soul with blasphemy, with scoffing at
+sacred things, with some repulsive passion or other, with sadism
+or something else of that nature!"
+
+"However, you do not spare the object of your observations," said
+Yarchenko, and carefully indicated the girls with his eyes.
+
+"Eh, it's all the same. Our relations are cool now."
+
+"How so?" asked Volodya Pavlov, who had caught the end of the
+conversation.
+
+"Just so ... It isn't even worth the telling..." smiled the
+reporter evasively. "A trifle ... Let's have your glass here, Mr.
+Yarchenko."
+
+But the precipitate Niura, who could never keep her tongue behind
+her teeth, suddenly shot oat in rapid patter:
+
+"It's because Sergei Ivanich gave him one in the snout ... On
+account of Ninka. A certain old man came to Ninka ... And stayed
+for the night ... And Ninka had the flowers ... And the old man
+was torturing her all the time ... So Ninka started crying and ran
+away." [Footnote: The Russian expression is "the red flag."--
+TRANS.]
+
+"Drop it, Niura; it's boring," said Platonov with a wry face.
+
+"Can it!" (leave off) ordered Tamara severely, in the jargon of
+houses of prostitution.
+
+But it was impossible to stop Niura, who had gotten a running
+start.
+
+"But Ninka says: 'I,' she says, 'won't stay with him for anything,
+though you cut me all to pieces ... He,' she says, 'has made me
+all wet with his spit.' Well, the old man complained to the
+porter, to be sure, and the porter starts in to beat up Ninka, to
+be sure. And Sergei Ivanich at this time was writing for me a
+letter home, to the province, and when he heard that Ninka was
+hollering..."
+
+"Zoe, shut her mouth!" said Platonov.
+
+"He just jumped up at once and ... app! ..." and Niura's torrent
+instantly broke off, stopped up by Zoe's palm.
+
+Everybody burst out laughing, only Boris Sobashnikov muttered
+under cover of the noise with a contemptuous look:
+
+"OH, CHEVALIER SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE!"
+
+He was already pretty far gone in drink, stood leaning against the
+wall, in a provoking pose, and was nervously chewing a cigarette.
+
+"Which Ninka is this?" asked Yarchenko with curiosity. "Is she
+here?"
+
+"No, she isn't here. Such a small, pug-nosed little girl. Naive
+and very angry." The reporter suddenly and sincerely burst into
+laughter. "Excuse me ... It's just so ... over my thoughts,"
+explained he through laughter. "I recalled this old man very
+vividly just now, as he was running along the corridor in fright,
+having grabbed his outer clothing and shoes ... Such a respectable
+ancient, with the appearance of an apostle, I even know where he
+serves. Why, all of you know him. But the funniest of all was when
+he, at last, felt himself out of danger in the drawing room. You
+understand--he is sitting on a chair, putting on his pantaloons,
+can't put his foot where it ought to go, by any means, and bawls
+all over the house: 'It's an outrage! This is an abominable dive!
+I'll show you up! ... To-morrow I'll give you twenty-four hours to
+clear out! ... Do you know, this combination of pitiful
+helplessness with the threatening cries was so killing that even
+the gloomy Simeon started laughing ... Well, now, apropos of
+Simeon ... I say, that life dumfounds, with its wondrous muddle
+and farrago, makes one stand aghast. You can utter a thousand
+sonorous words against souteneurs, but just such a Simeon you will
+never think up. So diverse and motley is life! Or else take Anna
+Markovna, the proprietress of this place. This blood-sucker,
+hyena, vixen and so on ... is the tenderest mother imaginable. She
+has one daughter--Bertha, she is now in the fifth grade of high
+school. If you could only see how much careful attention, how much
+tender care Anna Markovna expends that her daughter may not
+somehow, accidentally, find out about her profession. And
+everything is for Birdie, everything is for the sake of Birdie.
+And she herself dare not even converse before her, is afraid of
+her lexicon of a bawd and an erstwhile prostitute, looks into her
+eyes, holds herself servilely, like an old servant, like a
+foolish, doting nurse, like an old, faithful, mange-eaten poodle.
+It is long since time for her to retire to rest, because she has
+money, and because her occupation is both arduous and troublesome,
+and because her years are already venerable. But no and no; one
+more extra thousand is needed, and then more and more--everything
+for Birdie. And so Birdie has horses, Birdie has an English
+governess, Birdie is every year taken abroad, Birdie has diamonds
+worth forty thousand--the devil knows whose they are, these
+diamonds? And it isn't that I am merely convinced, but I know
+well, that for the happiness of this same Birdie, nay, not even
+for her happiness, but, let us suppose that Birdie gets a hangnail
+on her little finger--well then, in order that this hangnail might
+pass away--imagine for a second the possibility of such a state of
+things!--Anna Markovna, without the quiver of an eyelash, will
+sell into corruption our sisters and daughters, will infect all of
+us and our sons with syphilis. What? A monster, you will say? But
+I will say that she is moved by the same grand, unreasoning,
+blind, egoistical love for which we call our mothers sainted
+women."
+
+"Go easy around the curves!" remarked Boris Sobashnikov through
+his teeth.
+
+"Pardon me: I was not comparing people, but merely generalizing on
+the first source of emotion. I might have brought out as an
+example the self-denying love of animal-mothers as well. But I see
+that I have started on a tedious matter. Better let's drop it."
+
+"No, you finish," protested Lichonin. "I feel that you have a
+massive thought."
+
+"And a very simple one. The other day a professor asked me if I am
+not observing the life here with some literary aims. And all I
+wanted to say was, that I can see, but precisely can not observe.
+Here I have given you Simeon and the bawd for example. I do not
+know myself why, but I feel that in them lurks some terrible,
+insuperable actuality of life, but either to tell it, or to show
+it, I can not. Here is necessary the great ability to take some
+picayune trifle, an insignificant, paltry little stroke, and then
+will result a dreadful truth, from which the reader, aghast, will
+forget that his mouth is agape. People seek the terrible in words,
+in cries, in gestures. Well, now, for example, I am reading a
+description of some pogrom or of a slaughter in jail, or of a riot
+being put down. Of course, the policemen are described, these
+servants of arbitrariness, these lifeguards of
+contemporaneousness, striding up to their knees in blood, or how
+else do they write in such cases? Of course, it is revolting and
+it hurts, and is disgusting, but all this is felt by the mind, and
+not the heart. But here I am walking along Lebyazhia Street, and
+see that a crowd has collected, a girl of five years in the
+centre--she has lagged behind the mother and has strayed, or it
+may be that the mother had abandoned her. And before the girl,
+squatting down on his heels, is a roundsman. He is interrogating
+her, how she is called, and where is she from, and how do they
+call papa, and how do they call mamma. He has broken out into
+sweat, the poor fellow, from the effort, the cap is at the back of
+his neck, the whiskered face is such a kindly and woeful and
+helpless one, while the voice is gentle, so gentle. At last, what
+do you think? As the girl has become all excited, and has already
+grown hoarse from tears, and is shy of everybody--he, this same
+'roundsman on the beat,' stretches out two of his black, calloused
+fingers, the index and the little, and begins to imitate a nanny
+goat for the girl and reciting an appropriate nursery rhyme! ...
+And so, when I looked upon this charming scene and thought that
+half an hour later at the station house this same patrolman will
+be beating with his feet the face and chest of a man whom he had
+not till that time seen once, and whose crime he is entirely
+ignorant of--then--you understand!--I began to feel inexpressibly
+eerie and sad. Not with the mind, but the heart. Such a devilish
+muddle is this life. Shall we drink some cognac, Lichonin?"
+
+"What do you say to calling each other thou?" suddenly proposed
+Lichonin.
+
+"All right. Only, really, without any of this business of kissing,
+now. Here's to your health, old man ... Or here is another
+instance ... I read a certain French classic, describing the
+thoughts and sensations of a man condemned to capital punishment.
+He describes it all sonorously, powerfully, brilliantly, but I
+read and ... well, there is no impression of any sort; neither
+emotion nor indignation--just ENNUI. But then, within the last few
+days I come across a brief newspaper notice of a murderer's
+execution somewhere in France. The Procureur, who was present at
+the last toilet of the criminal, sees that he is putting on his
+shoes on his bare feet, and--the blockhead!--reminds him: 'What
+about the socks?' But the other gives him a look and says, sort of
+thoughtfully: 'Is it worth while?' Do you understand, these two
+remarks, so very short, struck me like a blow on the skull! At
+once all the horror and all the stupidity of unnatural death were
+revealed to me ... Or here is something else about death ... A
+certain friend of mine died, a captain in the infantry--a
+drunkard, a vagabond, and the finest soul in the world. For some
+reason we called him the Electrical Captain. I was in the
+vicinity, and it fell to me to dress him for the last parade. I
+took his uniform and began to attach the epaulettes to it. There's
+a cord, you know, that's drawn through the shank of the epaulette
+buttons, and after that the two ends of this cord are shoved
+through two little holes under the collar, and on the inside--the
+lining--are tied together. Well, I go through all this business,
+and tie the cord with a slipknot, and, you know, the loop won't
+come out, nohow--either it's too loosely tied, or else one end's
+too short. I am fussing over this nonsense, and suddenly into my
+head comes the most astonishingly simple thought, that it's far
+simpler and quicker to tie it in a knot--for after all, it's all
+the same, NO ONE IS GOING TO UNTIE IT. And immediately I felt
+death with all my being. Until that time I had seen the captain's
+eyes, grown glassy, had felt his cold forehead, and still somehow
+had not sensed death to the full, but I thought of the knot--and I
+was all transpierced, and the simple and sad realization of the
+irrevocable, inevitable perishing of all our words, deeds, and
+sensations, of the perishing of all the apparent world, seemed to
+bow me down to the earth ... And I could bring forward a hundred
+such small but staggering trifles ... Even, say, about what people
+experienced in the war ... But I want to lead my thought up to one
+thing. We all pass by these characteristic trifles indifferently,
+like the blind, as though not seeing them scattered about under
+our feet. But an artist will come, and he will look over them
+carefully, and he will pick them up. And suddenly he will so
+skillfully turn in the sun a minute bit of life that we shall all
+cry out: 'Oh, my God! But I myself--myself--have seen this with my
+own eyes. Only it simply did not enter my head to turn my close
+attention upon it.' But our Russian artists of the word--the most
+conscientious and sincere artists in the whole world--for some
+reason have up to this time passed over prostitution and the
+brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me to answer that.
+Perhaps because of squeamishness, perhaps because of
+pusillanimity, out of fear of being signalized as a pornographic
+writer; finally, from the apprehension that our gossiping
+criticism will identify the artistic work of the writer with his
+personal life and will start rummaging in his dirty linen. Or
+perhaps they can find neither the time, nor the self-denial, nor
+the self-possession to plunge in head first into this life and to
+watch it right up close, without prejudice, without sonorous
+phrases, without a sheepish pity, in all its monstrous simplicity
+and every-day activity. Oh, what a tremendous, staggering and
+truthful book would result!"
+
+"But they do write!" unwillingly remarked Ramses.
+
+"They do write," wearily repeated Platonov in the same tone as he.
+"But it is all either a lie, or theatrical effects for children of
+tender years, or else a cunning symbolism, comprehensible only to
+the sages of the future. But the life itself no one as yet has
+touched. One big writer--a man with a crystal-pure soul and a
+remarkable talent for delineation--once approached this theme,
+[Footnote: The reference here is most probably to Chekhov.--
+TRANS.] and then all that could catch the eye of an outsider was
+reflected in his soul, as in a wondrous mirror. But he could not
+decide to lie to and to frighten people. He only looked upon the
+coarse hair of the porter, like that of a dog, and reflected:
+'But, surely, even he had a mother.' He passed with his wise,
+exact gaze over the faces of the prostitutes and impressed them on
+his mind. But that which he did not know he did not dare to write.
+It is remarkable, that this same writer, enchanting with his
+honesty and truthfulness, has looked at the moujik as well, more
+than once. But he sensed that both the tongue and the turn of
+mind, as well as the soul of the people, were for him dark and
+incomprehensible ... And he, with an amazing tact, modestly went
+around the soul of the people, but refracted all his fund of
+splendid observation through the eyes of townsfolk. I have brought
+this up purposely. With us, you see, they write about detectives,
+about lawyers, about inspectors of the revenue, about pedagogues,
+about attorneys, about the police, about officers, about sensual
+ladies, about engineers, about baritones--and really, by God,
+altogether well--cleverly, with finesse and talent. But, after
+all, all these people, are rubbish, and their life is not life but
+some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of world
+culture. But there are two singular realities--ancient as humanity
+itself: the prostitute and the moujik. And about them we know
+nothing save some tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions in
+literature. I ask you: what has Russian literature extracted out
+of all the nightmare of prostitution? Sonechka Marmeladova alone.
+[Footnote: The heroine of Dostoievsky's "Crime and Punishment."
+--Trans.] What has it given us about the moujik save odious, false,
+nationalistic pastorals? One, altogether but one, but then, in
+truth, the greatest work in all the world--a staggering tragedy,
+the truthfulness of which takes the breath away and makes the hair
+stand on end. You know what I am speaking of ..."
+
+"'The little claw is sunk in...'" [Footnote: "The little claw is
+sunk in, the whole bird is bound to perish"--a folk proverb used
+by Tolstoi as a sub-title to his "The Power of Darkness."--Trans.]
+quietly prompted Lichonin.
+
+"Yes," answered the reporter, and looked kindly at the student
+with gratefulness.
+
+"But as regards Sonechka--why, this is an abstract type," remarked
+Yarchenko with assurance. "A psychological scheme, so to speak
+..."
+
+Platonov, who up to now had been speaking as though unwillingly,
+at a slow rate, suddenly grew heated:
+
+"A hundred times have I heard this opinion, a hundred times! And
+it is entirely an untruth. Underneath the coarse and obscene
+profession, underneath the foulest oaths--about one's mother--
+underneath the drunken, hideous exterior--Sonechka Marmeladova
+still lives! The fate of the Russian prostitute--oh, what a
+tragic, piteous, bloody, ludicrous and stupid path it is! Here
+everything has been juxtaposed: the Russian God, Russian breadth
+and unconcern, Russian despair in a fall, Russian lack of culture,
+Russian naivete, Russian patience, Russian shamelessness. Why, all
+of them, whom you take into bedrooms,--look upon them, look upon
+them well,--why, they are all children; why, each of them is but
+eleven years old. Fate has thrust them upon prostitution and since
+then they live in some sort of a strange, fairy-like, toy
+existence, without developing, without being enriched by
+experience, naive, trusting, capricious, not knowing what they
+will say and do half an hour later--altogether like children. This
+radiant and ludicrous childishness I have seen in the very oldest
+wenches, fallen as low as low can be, broken-winded and crippled
+like a cabby's nags. And never does this impotent pity, this
+useless commiseration toward human suffering die within them ...
+For example ..."
+
+Platonov looked over all the persons sitting with a slow gaze, and
+suddenly, waving his hand despondently, said in a tired voice:
+
+"However ... The devil take it all! To-day I have spoken enough
+for ten years ... And all of it to no purpose."
+
+"But really, Sergei Ivanich, why shouldn't you try to describe all
+this yourself?" asked Yarchenko. "Your attention is so vitally
+concentrated on this question."
+
+"I did try!" answered Platonov with a cheerless smile. "But
+nothing came of it. I started writing and at once became entangled
+in various 'whats,' 'which's,' 'was's.' The epithets prove flat.
+The words grow cold on the page. It's all a cud of some sort. Do
+you know, Terekhov was here once, while passing through ... You
+know ... The well-known one ... I came to him and started in
+telling him lots and lots about the life here, which I do not tell
+you for fear of boring you. I begged him to utilize my material.
+He heard me out with great attention, and this is what he said,
+literally: 'Don't get offended, Platonov, if I tell you that
+there's almost not a single person of those I have met during my
+life, who wouldn't thrust themes for novels and stories upon me,
+or teach me as to what ought to be written up. That material which
+you have just communicated to me is truly unencompassable in its
+significance and weightiness. But what shall I do with it? In
+order to write a colossal book such as the one you have in mind,
+the words of others do not suffice--even though they be the most
+exact--even observations, made with a little note-book and a bit
+of pencil, do not suffice. One must grow accustomed to this life,
+without being cunningly wise, without any ulterior thoughts of
+writing. Then a terrific book will result.'
+
+"His words discouraged me and at the same time gave me wings.
+Since that time I believe, that now, not soon--after fifty years
+or so--but there will come a writer of genius, and precisely a
+Russian one, who will absorb within himself all the burdens and
+all the abominations of this life and will cast them forth to us
+in the form of simple, fine, and deathlessly-caustic images. And
+we shall all say: 'Why, now, we, ourselves, have seen and known
+all this, but we could not even suppose that this is so horrible!'
+In this coming artist I believe with all my heart."
+
+"Amen!" said Lichonin seriously. "Let us drink to him."
+
+"But, honest to God," suddenly declared Little Manka, "If some one
+would only write the truth about the way we live here, miserable
+w--that we are..."
+
+There was a knock at the door, and at once Jennie entered in her
+resplendent orange dress.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+She greeted all the men without embarrassment, with the
+independent bearing of the first personage in the house, and sat
+down near Sergei Ivanich, behind his chair. She had just gotten
+free from that same German in the uniform of the benevolent
+organization, who early in the evening had made Little White Manka
+his choice, but had afterwards changed her, at the recommendation
+of the housekeeper, for Pasha. But the provoking and self-assured
+beauty of Jennie must have smitten deeply his lecherous heart,
+for, having prowled some three hours through certain beer
+emporiums and restaurants, and having there gathered courage, he
+had again returned into the house of Anna Markovna, had waited
+until her time-guest--Karl Karlovich, from the optical store--had
+gone away from Jennie, and had taken her into a room.
+
+To the silent question in Tamara's eyes Jennie made a wry face of
+disgust, shivered with her back and nodded her head affirmatively.
+
+"He's gone... Brrr! ..."
+
+Platonov was looking at Jennie with extraordinary attentiveness.
+He distinguished her from the rest of the girls and almost
+respected her for her abrupt, refractory, and impudently mocking
+character. And now, turning around occasionally, by her flaming,
+splendid eyes, by the vividly and unevenly glowing unhealthy red
+of her cheeks, by the much bitten parched lips, he felt that her
+great, long ripening rancour was heavily surging within the girl
+and suffocating her. And it was then that he thought (and
+subsequently often recalled this) that he had never yet seen
+Jennie so radiantly beautiful as on this night. He also noticed,
+that all the men present in the private cabinet, with the
+exception of Lichonin, were looking at her--some frankly, others
+by stealth and as though in passing--with curiosity and furtive
+desire. The beauty of this woman, together with the thought of her
+altogether easy accessibility, at any minute, agitated their
+imagination.
+
+"There's something working upon you, Jennie," said Platonov
+quietly.
+
+Caressingly, she just barely drew her fingers over his arm.
+
+"Don't pay any attention. Just so ... our womanish affairs ... It
+won't be interesting to you."
+
+But immediately, turning to Tamara, she passionately and rapidly
+began saying something in an agreed jargon, which presented a wild
+mixture out of the Hebrew, Tzigani and Roumanian tongues and the
+cant words of thieves and horse-thieves.
+
+"Don't try to put anything over on the fly guy, the fly guy is
+next," Tamara cut her short and with a smile indicated the
+reporter with her eyes.
+
+Platonov had, in fact, understood. Jennie was telling with
+indignation that during this day and night, thanks to the influx
+of a cheap public, the unhappy Pashka had been taken into a room
+more than ten times--and all by different men. Only just now she
+had had a hysterical fit, ending in a faint. And now, scarcely
+having brought Pashka back to consciousness and braced her up on
+valerian drops in a glass of spirits, Emma Edwardovna had again
+sent her into the drawing room. Jennie had attempted to take the
+part of her comrade, but the house-keeper had cursed the
+intercessor out and had threatened her with punishment.
+
+"What is it all about?" asked Yarchenko in perplexity, raising
+high his eyebrows.
+
+"Don't trouble yourself ... nothing out of the way..." answered
+Jennie in a still agitated voice. "Just so ... our little family
+trifles ... Sergei Ivanich, may I have some of your wine?"
+
+She poured out half a glass for herself and drank the cognac off
+at a draught, distending her thin nostrils wide.
+
+Platonov got up in silence and went toward the door.
+
+"It's not worth while, Sergei Ivanich. Drop it..." Jennie stopped
+him.
+
+"Oh no, why not?" objected the reporter. "I shall do a very simple
+and innocent thing, take Pasha here, and if need be--pay for her,
+even. Let her lie down here for a while on the divan and rest,
+even though a little ... Niura, run for a pillow quick!"
+
+Scarcely had the door shut behind his broad, ungainly figure in
+its gray clothes, when Boris Sobashnikov at once commenced
+speaking with a contemptuous bitterness:
+
+"Gentlemen, what the devil for have we dragged into our company
+this peach off the street? We must needs tie up with all sorts of
+riff-raff? The devil knows what he is--perhaps he's even a dinny?
+Who can vouch for him? And you're always like that, Lichonin."
+
+"It isn't Lichonin but I who introduced him to everybody,"' said
+Ramses. "I know him for a fully respectable person and a good
+companion."
+
+"Eh! Nonsense! A good companion to drink at some one else's
+expense. Why, don't you see for yourselves that this is the most
+ordinary type of habitue attached to a brothel, and, most
+probably, he is simply the pimp here, to whom a percentage is paid
+for the entertainment into which he entices the visitors."
+
+"Leave off, Borya. It's foolish," remarked Yarchenko
+reproachfully.
+
+But Borya could not leave off. He had an unfortunate peculiarity--
+intoxication acted neither upon his legs nor his tongue, but put
+him in a morose, touchy frame of mind and egged him on into
+quarrels. And Platonov had already for a long time irritated him
+with his negligently sincere, assured and serious bearing, so
+little suitable to the private cabinet of a brothel. But the
+seeming indifference with which the reporter let pass the
+malicious remarks which he interposed into the conversation
+angered Sobashnikov still more.
+
+"And then, the tone in which he permits himself to speak in our
+company!" Sobashnikov continued to seethe. "A certain aplomb,
+condescension, a professorial tone ... The scurvy penny-a-liner!
+The free-lunch grafter!"
+
+Jennie, who had all the time been looking intently at the student,
+gaily and maliciously flashing with her sparkling dark eyes,
+suddenly began to clap her hands.
+
+"That's the way! Bravo, little student! Bravo, bravo, bravo! ...
+That's the way, give it to him good! ... Really, what sort of a
+disgrace is this! When he'll come, now, I'll repeat everything to
+him."
+
+"I--if you please! A--as much as you like!" Sobashnikov drawled
+out like an actor, making superciliously squeamish creases about
+his mouth. "I shall repeat the very same things myself."
+
+"There's a fine fellow, now,--I love you for that!" exclaimed
+Jennie joyously and maliciously, striking her fist on the table.
+"You can tell an owl at once by its flight, a good man by his
+snot!"
+
+Little White Manya and Tamara looked at Jennie with wonder, but,
+noting the evil little lights leaping in her eyes and her
+nervously quivering nostrils, they both understood and smiled.
+
+Little White Manya, laughing, shook her head reproachfully. Jennie
+always had such a face when her turbulent soul sensed that a
+scandal was nearing which she herself had brought on.
+
+"Don't get your back up, Borinka," said Lichonin. "Here all are
+equal."
+
+Niura came with a pillow and laid it down on the divan.
+
+"And what's that for?" Sobashnikov yelled at her. Git! take it
+away at once. This isn't a lodging house."
+
+"Now, leave her be, honey. What's that to you?" retorted Jennie in
+a sweet voice and hid the pillow behind Tamara's back. "Wait,
+sweetie, I'd better sit with you for a while."
+
+She walked around the table, forced Boris to sit on a chair, and
+herself got up on his knees. Twining his neck with her arm, she
+pressed her lips to his mouth, so long and so vigorously that the
+student caught his breath. Right up close to his eyes he saw the
+eyes of the woman--strangely large, dark, luminous, indistinct and
+unmoving. For a quarter of a second or so, for an instant, it
+seemed to him that in these unliving eyes was impressed an
+expression of keen, mad hate; and the chill of terror, some vague
+premonition of an ominous, inevitable calamity flashed through the
+student's brain. With difficulty tearing the supple arms of Jennie
+away from him, and pushing her away, he said, laughing, having
+turned red and breathing hard:
+
+"There's a temperament for you! Oh, you Messalina Paphnutievna!
+... They call you Jennka, I think? You're a good-looking little
+rascal."
+
+Platonov returned with Pasha. Pasha was pitiful and revolting to
+look at. Her face was pale, with, a bluish cast as though the
+blood had run off; the glazed, half-closed eyes were smiling with
+a faint, idiotic smile; the parted lips seemed to resemble two
+frayed, red, wet rags, and she walked with a sort of timid,
+uncertain step, just as though with one foot she were making a
+large step, and with the other a small one. She walked with
+docility up to the divan and with docility laid her head down on
+the pillow, without ceasing to smile faintly and insanely. Even at
+a distance it was apparent that she was cold.
+
+"Pardon me, gentlemen, I am going to undress," said Lichonin, and
+taking his coat off he threw it over the shoulders of the
+prostitute. "Tamara, give her chocolate and wine."
+
+Boris Sobashnikov again stood up picturesquely in the corner, in a
+leaning position, one leg in front of the other and his head held
+high. Suddenly he spoke amid the general silence, addressing
+Platonov directly, in a most foppish tone:
+
+"Eh ... Listen ... what's your name? ... This, then, must be your
+mistress? Eh?" And with the tip of his boot he pointed in the
+direction of the recumbent Pasha.
+
+"Wha-at?" asked Platonov in a drawl, knitting his eyebrows.
+
+"Or else you are her lover--it's all one ... What do they call
+this duty here? Well, now, these same people for whom the women
+embroider shirts and with whom they divide their honest earnings?
+... Eh? ..."
+
+Platonov looked at him with a heavy, intent gaze through his
+narrowed lids.
+
+"Listen," he said quietly, in a hoarse voice, slowly and
+ponderously separating his words. "This isn't the first time that
+you're trying to pick a quarrel with me. But, in the first place,
+I see that despite your sober appearance you are exceedingly and
+badly drunk; and, in the second place, I spare you for the sake of
+your comrades. However, I warn you, that if you think of talking
+that way to me again, take your eyeglasses off."
+
+"What's this stuff?" exclaimed Boris, raising his shoulders high
+and snorting through his nose. "What eyeglasses? Why eyeglasses?"
+But mechanically, with two extended fingers, he fixed the bow of
+the PINCE-NEZ on the bridge of his nose.
+
+"Because I'm going to hit you, and the pieces may get in your
+eye," said the reporter unconcernedly.
+
+Despite the unexpectedness of such a turn of the quarrel, nobody
+started laughing. Only Little White Manka oh'd in astonishment and
+clapped her hands. Jennie, with avid impatience, shifted her eyes
+from one to the other.
+
+"Well, now! I'll give you change back myself so's you won't like
+it!" roughly, altogether boyishly, cried out Sobashnikov. "Only
+it's not worth while mussing one's hands with every ..." he wanted
+to add a new invective, but decided not to, "with every ... And
+besides, comrades, I do not intend to stay here any longer. I am
+too well brought up to be hail-fellow-well-met with such persons."
+
+He rapidly and haughtily walked to the door.
+
+It was necessary for him to pass almost right up against Platonov,
+who, out of the corner of his eye, animal-like, was watching his
+every movement. For a moment in the mind of the student flashed a
+desire to strike Platonov unexpectedly, from the side, and jump
+away--the comrades would surely part them and not allow a fight.
+But immediately, almost without looking at the reporter, with some
+sort of deep, unconscious instinct, he saw and sensed those broad
+hands, lying quietly on the table, that obdurately bowed head with
+its broad forehead, and all the ungainly, alert, powerful body of
+his foe, so neligently hunched up and spread out on the chair, but
+ready at any second for a quick and terrific blow. And Sobashnikov
+walked out into the corridor, loudly banging the door after him.
+
+"Good riddance to bad rubbish," said Jennie after him in a mocking
+patter. "Tamarochka, pour me out some more cognac."
+
+But the lanky student Petrovsky got up from his place and
+considered it necessary to defend Sobashnikov.
+
+"Just as you wish, gentlemen; this is a matter of your personal
+view, but out of principle I go together with Boris. Let him be
+not right and so on, we can express censure to him in our own
+intimate company, but when an insult has been rendered our
+comrade--I can't remain here. I am going away."
+
+"Oh, my God!" And Lichonin nervously and vexedly scratched his
+temple. "Boris behaved himself all the time in the highest degree
+vulgarly, rudely and foolishly. What sort of corporate honour do
+you think this is? A collective walk-out from editorial offices,
+from political meetings, from brothels. We aren't officers to
+screen the foolishness of each comrade."
+
+"All the same, just as you wish, but I am going away out of a
+sense of solidarity!" said Petrovsky importantly and walked out.
+
+"May the earth be as down upon you!" Jennie sent after him.
+
+But how tortuous and dark the ways of the human soul! Both of
+them--Sobashnikov as well as Petrovsky--acted in their indignation
+rather sincerely, but the first only half so, while the second
+only a quarter in all. Sobashnikov, despite his intoxication and
+wrath, still had knocking at the door of his mind the alluring
+thought that now it would be more convenient and easier before his
+comrades to call out Jennka on the quiet and to be alone with her.
+While Petrovsky, with exactly the same aim, went after Sobashnikov
+in order to make a loan of three roubles from him. In the general
+drawing room they made things up between them, and after ten
+minutes Zociya, the housekeeper, shoved in her little, squinting,
+pink, cunning face through the half-open door of the private room.
+
+"Jennechka," she called, "go, they have brought your linen, go
+count it. And you, Niura, the actor begs to come for just a
+minute, to drink some champagne. He's with Henrietta and Big
+Manya."
+
+The precipitate and incongruous quarrel of Platonov and
+Sobashnikov long served as a subject of conversation. The
+reporter, in cases like this, always felt shame, uneasiness,
+regret and the torments of conscience. And despite the fact that
+all those who remained were on his side, he was speaking with
+weariness in his voice:
+
+"By God, gentlemen! I'll go away, best of all. Why should I
+disrupt your circle? We were both at fault. I'll go away. Don't
+bother about the bill. I've already paid Simeon, when I was going
+after Pasha."
+
+Lichonin suddenly rumpled up his hair and stood up
+
+"Oh, no, the devil take it! I'll go and drag him here. Upon my
+word of honour, they're both fine fellows--Boris as well as Vaska.
+But they're young yet, and bark at their own tails. I'm going
+after them, and I warrant that Boris will apologize."
+
+He went away, but came back after five minutes.
+
+"They repose," said he, sombrely, and made a hopeless gesture with
+his hand. "Both of them."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+At this moment Simeon walked into the cabinet with a tray upon
+which stood two goblets of a bubbling golden wine and lay a large
+visiting card.
+
+"May I ask which of you here might be Mister Gavrila Petrovich
+Yarchenko?" he said, looking over all those sitting.
+
+"I," responded Yarchenko.
+
+"If youse please. The actor gent sent this."
+
+Yarchenko took the visiting card and read aloud:
+
+Eumenii Poluectovich
+
+EGMONT--LAVRETZKI
+
+Dramatic Artist of Metropolitan Theatres
+
+"It's remarkable," said Volodya Pavlov, "that all the Russian
+Garricks bear such queer names, on the style of Chrysantov,
+Thetisov, Mamontov and Epimhakov."
+
+"And besides that, the best known of them must needs either speak
+thickly, or lisp, or stammer," added the reporter.
+
+"Yes, but most remarkable of all is the fact that I do not at all
+have the honour of knowing this artist of the metropolitan
+theatres. However, there's something else written on the reverse
+of this card. Judging by the handwriting, it was written by a man
+greatly drunk and little lettered.
+
+"'I dreenk'--not drink, but dreenk," explained Yarchenko. "'I
+dreenk to the health of the luminary of Russian science, Gavrila
+Petrovich Yarchenko, whom I saw by chance when I was passing by
+through the collidor. Would like to clink glasses together
+personally. If you do not remember, recollect the National
+Theatre, Poverty Is No Disgrace, and the humble artist who played
+African.' "Yes, that's right," said Yarchenko. "Once, somehow,
+they saddled me with the arrangement of this benefit performance
+in the National Theatre. Also, there dimly glimmers some clean-
+shaven haughty visage, but ... What shall it be, gentlemen?"
+
+Lichonin answered good-naturedly:
+
+"Why, drag him here. Perhaps he's funny."
+
+"And you?" the sub-professor turned to Platonov.
+
+"It's all the same to me. I know him slightly. At first he'll
+shout: 'KELLNER, champagne!' then burst into tears about his wife,
+who is an angel, then deliver a patriotic speech and finally raise
+a row over the bill, but none too loudly. All in all he's
+entertaining."
+
+"Let him come," said Volodya, from behind the shoulder of Katie,
+who was sitting on his knees, swinging her legs.
+
+"And you, Veltman?"
+
+"What?" the student came to with a start. He was sitting on the
+divan with his back to his companions, near the reclining Pasha,
+bending over her, and already for a long time, with the
+friendliest appearance of sympathy, had been stroking her, now on
+the shoulder, now on the hair at the nape of the neck, while she
+was smiling at him with her shyly shameless and senselessly
+passionate smile through half-closed and trembling eyelashes.
+"What? What's it all about? Oh yes,--is it all right to let the
+actor in? I've nothing against it. Please do ..."
+
+Yarchenko sent an invitation through Simeon, and the actor came
+and immediately commenced the usual actor's play. In the door he
+paused, in his long frock coat, shining with its silk lapels, with
+a glistening opera hat, which he held with his arm in the middle
+of his chest, like an actor portraying in the theatre an elderly
+worldly lion or a bank director. And approximately these persons
+he was inwardly picturing to himself.
+
+"May I be permitted, gentlemen, to intrude into your intimate
+company?" he asked in an unctuous, kindly voice, with a half-bow
+done somewhat to one side.
+
+They asked him in, and he began to introduce himself. Shaking
+hands, he stuck out his elbow forward and raised it so high that
+the hand proved to be far lower. Now it was no longer a bank
+director, but such a clever, splendid fellow, a sportsman and a
+rake of the golden youths. But his face--with rumpled, wild
+eyebrows and with denuded lids without lashes--was the vulgar,
+harsh and low face of a typical alcoholic, libertine, and pettily
+cruel man. Together with him came two of his ladies: Henrietta
+the eldest girl in years in the establishment of Anna Markovna,
+experienced, who had seen everything and had grown accustomed to
+everything, like an old horse on the tether of a threshing
+machine, the possessor of a thick bass, but still a handsome
+woman; and Big Manka, or Manka the Crocodile. Henrietta since
+still the preceding night had not parted from the actor, who had
+taken her from the house to a hotel.
+
+Having seated himself alongside of Yarchenko, he straight off
+began to play a new role--he became something on the order of an
+old good soul of a landed proprietor, who had at one time been at
+a university himself, and now can not look upon the students
+without a quiet, fatherly emotion.
+
+"Believe me, gentlemen, that one's soul rests from all these
+worldly squabbles in the midst of youth," he was saying, imparting
+to his depraved and harsh face an actor-like, exaggerated and
+improbable expression of being moved. "This faith in a high ideal,
+these honest impulses! ... What can be loftier and purer than our
+Russian students as a body? ... KELLNER! Chompa-a-agne!" he yelled
+deafeningly all of a sudden, and dealt a heavy blow on the table
+with his fist.
+
+Lichonin and Yarchenka did not wish to remain in debt to him. A
+spree began. God knows in what manner Mishka the Singer and Nicky
+the Book-keeper soon found themselves in the cabinet, and at once
+began singing in their galloping voices:
+
+    "They fe-e-e-el the tru-u-u-uth,
+    Come thou daw-aw-aw-awning quicker ..."
+
+There also appeared Roly-Poly, who had awakened. Letting his head
+drop touchingly to one side and having made little narrowed,
+lachrymose, sweet eyes in his wrinkled old face of a Don Quixote,
+he was speaking in a persuasively begging tone:
+
+"Gentlemen students ... you ought to treat a little old man. I
+love education, by God! ... Allow me!"
+
+Lichonin was glad to see everybody, but Yarchenko in the
+beginning--until the champagne had mounted to his head--only
+raised high his small, short eyebrows with a timorous, wondering
+and naive air. It suddenly became crowded, smoky, noisy and close
+in the cabinet. Simeon, with rattling, closed the blinds with
+bolts on the outside. The women, just having gotten done with a
+visit or in the interim between dances, walked into the room, sat
+on somebody's knees, smoked, sang disjointedly, drank wine, kissed
+and again went away, and again came. The clerks of Kereshkovsky,
+offended because the damsels bestowed more attention upon the
+cabinet than the drawing room, did start a row and tried to enter
+into a provoking explanation with the students, but Simeon in a
+moment quelled them with two or three authoritative words, thrown
+out as though in passing.
+
+Niura came back from her room and a little later Petrovsky
+followed her. Petrovsky with an extremely serious air declared
+that he had been walking on the street all this time, thinking
+over the incident which had taken place and in the end had come to
+the conclusion that comrade Boris was in reality not in the right,
+but that there also was a circumstance in extenuation of his
+fault--intoxication. Also, Jennie came later, but alone--
+Sobashnikov had fallen asleep in her room. The actor proved to
+have no end of talents. He very faithfully imitated the buzzing of
+a fly which an intoxicated man is catching on a window-pane, and
+the sounds of a saw; drolly performed, standing with his face in
+the corner, the conversation of a nervous lady over the telephone;
+imitated the singing of a phonograph record, and in the end, with
+exceeding likeness to life, showed a little Persian lad with a
+little trained monkey. Holding on with his hand to an imaginary
+small chain and at the same time baring his teeth, squatting like
+a monkey, winking his eyelids often, and scratching now his
+posteriors, now the hair on his head, he sang through his nose, in
+a monotonous and sad voice, distorting the words:
+
+    "The i-young cissack to the war has went,
+     The i-young ladee underneath the fence lies
+       spraw-aw-ling.
+     AINA, AINA, AI-NA-NA-NA, AI-NA NA-NA-NA."
+
+In conclusion he took Little White Manka in his arms, wrapped her
+up in the skirts of his frock and, stretching out his hand and
+making a tearful face, began to nod his head, bent to one side, as
+is done by little swarthy, dirty, oriental lads who roam over all
+Russia in long, old, soldiers' overcoats, with bared chest of a
+bronze colour, holding a coughing, moth-eaten little monkey in
+their bosom.
+
+"And who may you be?" severely asked fat Kate, who knew and loved
+this joke.
+
+"Me Serbian, lady-y-y," piteously moaned the actor through his
+nose. "Give me somethin', lady-y-y."
+
+"And what do they call your little monkey?"
+
+"Matreshka-a-a ... Him 'ungry-y-y, lady ... him want eat..."
+
+"And have you got a passport?"
+
+"We Serbia-a-an. Gimme something lady-y-y..."
+
+The actor proved not superfluous on the whole. He created at once
+a great deal of noise and raised the spirits of the company, which
+were beginning to be depressing. And every minute he cried out in
+a stentorian voice:
+
+"KELLNER! Chompa-a-agne!"--although Simeon, who was accustomed to
+his manner paid very little attention to these cries.
+
+There began a truly Russian hubbub, noisy and senseless. The rosy,
+flaxen-haired, pleasing Tolpygin was playing LA SEGUIDILLE from
+CARMEN on the piano, while Roly-Poly was dancing a Kamarinsky
+peasant dance to its tune. His narrow shoulders hunched up,
+twisted all to one side, the fingers of his hanging hands widely
+spread, he intricately hopped on one spot from one long, thin leg
+to the other, then suddenly letting out a piercing grunt, would
+throw himself upward and shout out in time to his wild dance:
+
+    "Ugh! Dance on, Matthew,
+     Don't spare your boots, you! ..."
+
+"Eh, for one stunt like that a quartern of brandy isn't enough!"
+he would add, shaking his long, graying hair.
+
+"They fee-ee-eel! the tru-u-u-uth!" roared the two friends,
+raising with difficulty their underlids, grown heavy, beneath
+dull, bleary eyes.
+
+The actor commenced to tell obscene anecdotes, pouring them out as
+from a bag, and the women squealed from delight, bent in two from
+laughter and threw themselves against the backs of their chairs.
+Veltman, who had long been whispering with Pasha, inconspicuously,
+in the hubbub, slipped out of the cabinet, while a few minutes
+after him Pasha also went away, smiling with her quiet, insane and
+bashful smile.
+
+But all of the remaining students as well, save Lichonin, one
+after the other, some on the quiet, some under one pretext or
+another, vanished from the cabinet and did not return for long
+periods. Volodya Pavlov experienced a desire to look at the
+dancing; Tolpygin's head began to ache badly, and he asked Tamara
+to lead him somewhere where he might wash up; Petrovski, having
+"touched" Lichonin for three roubles on the quiet, went out into
+the corridor and only from there despatched the housekeeper Zociya
+for Little White Manka. Even the prudent and fastidious Ramses
+could not cope with that spicy feeling which to-day's strange,
+vivid and unwholesome beauty of Jennie excited in him. It proved
+that he had some important, undeferrable business this morning; it
+was necessary to go home and snatch a bit of sleep if only for a
+couple of hours. But, having told good-bye to his companions, he,
+before going out of the cabinet, rapidly and with deep
+significance pointed the door out to Jennie with his eyes. She
+understood, slowly, scarcely perceptibly, lowered her eyelashes as
+a sign of consent, and, when she again raised them, Platonov, who
+almost without looking had seen this silent dialogue, was struck
+by that expression of malice and menace in her eyes which she sped
+the back of the departing Ramses. Having waited for five minutes
+she got up, said "Excuse me, I'll be right back," and went out,
+swinging her short orange skirt.
+
+"Well, now? Is it your turn, Lichonin?" asked the reporter
+banteringly.
+
+"No, brother, you're mistaken!" said Lichonin and clacked his
+tongue. "And I'm not doing it out of conviction or on principle,
+either ... No! I, as an anarchist, proclaim the gospel that the
+worse things are, the better ... But, fortunately, I am a gambler
+and spend all my temperament on gaming; on that account simple
+squeamishness speaks louder within me than this same unearthly
+feeling. But it's amazing our thoughts coincided. I just wanted to
+ask you about the same thing."
+
+"I--no. Sometimes, if I become very much tired out, I sleep here
+over night. I take from Isaiah Savvich the key to his little room
+and sleep on the divan. But all the girls here are already used to
+the fact that I am a being of the third sex."
+
+"And really ... never? ..."
+
+"Never."
+
+"Well, what's right is right!" exclaimed Nhira. "Sergei Ivanich is
+like a holy hermit."
+
+"Previously, some five years ago, I experienced this also,"
+continued Platonov. "But, do you know, it's really too tedious and
+disgusting. Something on the nature of these flies which the actor
+gentleman just represented. They're stuck together on the window
+sill, and then in some sort of fool wonder scratch their backs
+with their little hind legs and fly apart forever. And to play at
+love here? ... Well, for that I'm no hero out of their sort of
+novel. I'm not handsome, am shy with women, uneasy, and polite.
+While here they thirst for savage passions, bloody jealousy,
+tears, poisonings, beatings, sacrifices,--in a word, hysterical
+romanticism. And it's easy to understand why. The heart of woman
+always wants love, while they are told of love every day with
+various sour, drooling words. Involuntarily one wants pepper in
+one's love. One no longer wants words of passion, but tragically-
+passionate deeds. And for that reason thieves, murderers,
+souteners and other riff-raff will always be their lovers."
+
+"And most important of all," added Platonov, "that would at once
+spoil for me all the friendly relations which have been so well
+built up."
+
+"Enough of joking!" incredulously retorted Lichonin. "Then what
+compels you to pass days and nights here? Were you a writer--it
+would be a different matter. It's easy to find an explanation;
+well, you're gathering types or something ... observing life ...
+After the manner of that German professor who lived for three
+years with monkeys, in order to study closely their language and
+manners. But you yourself said that you don't indulge in writing?"
+
+"It isn't that I don't indulge, but I simply don't know how--I
+can't."
+
+"We'll write that down. Now let's suppose another thing--that you
+come here as an apostle of a better, honest life, in the nature of
+a, now, saviour of perishing souls. You know, as in the dawn of
+Christianity certain holy fathers instead of standing on a column
+for thirty years or living in a cave in the woods, went to the
+market places, into houses of mirth, to the harlots and
+scaramuchios. But you aren't inclined that way."
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"Then why, the devil take it, do you hang around here? I can see
+very well that a great deal here is revolting and oppressive and
+painful to your own self. For example, this fool quarrel with
+Boris or this flunky who beats a woman, and--, in general, the
+constant contemplation of every kind of filth, lust, bestiality,
+vulgarity, drunkenness. Well, now, since you say so--I believe
+that you don't give yourself up to lechery. But then, still more
+incomprehensible to me is your MODUS VIVENDI, to express myself in
+the style of leading articles."
+
+The reporter did not answer at once:
+
+"You see," he began speaking slowly, with pauses, as though for
+the first time lending ear to his thoughts and weighing them. "You
+see, I'm attracted and interested in this life by its ... how
+shall I express it? ... its fearful, stark truth. Do you
+understand, it's as though all the conventional coverings were
+ripped off it. There is no falsehood, no hypocrisy, no
+sanctimoniousness, there are no compromises of any sort, neither
+with public opinion, nor with the importunate authority of our
+forefathers, nor with one's own conscience. No illusions of any
+kind, nor any kind of embellishments! Here she is--'I! A public
+woman, a common vessel, a cloaca for the drainage of the city's
+surplus lust. Come to me any one who wills--thou shalt meet no
+denial, therein is my service. But for a second of this sensuality
+in haste--thou shalt pay in money, revulsion, disease and
+ignominy.' And that is all. There is not a single phase of human
+life where the basic main truth should shine with such a
+monstrous, hideous, stark clearness, without any shade of human
+prevarication or self-whitewashing."
+
+"Oh, I don't know! These women lie like the very devil. You just
+go and talk with her a bit about her first fall. She'll spin you
+such a yarn!"
+
+"Well, don't you ask then. What business is that of yours? But
+even if they do lie, they lie altogether like children. But then,
+you know yourself that children are the foremost, the most
+charming fibsters, and at the same time the sincerest people on
+earth. And it's remarkable, that both they and the others--that
+is, both prostitutes and children--lie only to us--men--and grown-
+ups. Among themselves they don't lie--they only inspiredly
+improvise. But they lie to us because we ourselves demand this of
+them, because we clamber into their souls, altogether foreign to
+us, with our stupid tactics and questionings, because they regard
+us in secret as great fools and senseless dissemblers. But if you
+like, I shall right now count off on my fingers all the occasions
+when a prostitute is sure to lie, and you yourself will be
+convinced that man incites her to lying."
+
+"Well, well, we shall see." "First: she paints herself
+mercilessly, at times even in detriment to herself. Why? Because
+every pimply military cadet, who is so distressed by his sexual
+maturity that he grows stupid in the spring, like a wood-cock on a
+drumming-log; or some sorry petty government clerk or other from
+the department of the parish, the husband of a pregnant woman and
+the father of nine infants--why, they both come here not at all
+with the prudent and simple purpose of leaving here the surplus of
+their passion. He, the good for nothing, has come to enjoy
+himself; he needs beauty, d'you see--aesthete that he is! But all
+these girls, these daughters of the simple, unpretentious, great
+Russian people--how do they regard aesthetics? 'What's sweet,
+that's tasty; what's red, that's handsome.' And so, there you are,
+receive, if you please, a beauty of antimony, white lead and
+rouge.
+
+"That's one. Secondly, his desire for beauty isn't enough for this
+resplendent cavalier--no, he must in addition be served with a
+similitude of love, so that from his caresses there should kindle
+in the woman this same 'fa-hire of in-sane pahass-ssion!' which is
+sung about In idiotical ballads. Ah! Then THAT is what you want?
+There y'are! And the woman lies to him with countenance, voice,
+sighs, moans, movements of the body. And even he himself in the
+depths of his soul knows about this professional deception, but--
+go along with you!--still deceives himself: 'Ah, what a handsome
+man I am! Ah, how the women love me! Ah, into what an ecstasy I
+bring them ...' You know, there are cases when a man with the most
+desperate brazenness, in the most unlikely manner, is flattered to
+his face, and he himself sees and knows it very plainly, but--the
+devil take it!--despite everything a delightful feeling of some
+sort lubricates his soul. And so here. Query: whose is the
+initiative in the lie?
+
+"And here's a third point for you, Lichonin. You prompted it
+yourself. They lie most of all when they are asked: 'How did you
+come to such a life?' But what right have you to ask her about
+that, may the devil take you! For she does not push her way into
+your intimate life? She doesn't interest herself with your first,
+'holy' love or the virtue of your sisters and your bride. Aha! You
+pay money? Splendid! The bawd and the bouncer, and the police, and
+medicine, and the city government, watch over your interests.
+Polite and seemly conduct on the part of the prostitute hired by
+you for love is guaranteed you, and your personality is immune ...
+even though in the most direct sense, in the sense of a slap in
+the face, which you, of course, deserve through your aimless, and
+perhaps tormenting interrogations. But you desire truth as well
+for your money? Well, that you are never to discount and to
+control. They will tell you just such a conventionalized history
+as you--yourself a man of conventionality and a vulgarian--will
+digest easiest of all. Because by itself life is either
+exceedingly humdrum and tedious to you, or else as exceedingly
+improbable as only life can be improbable. And so you have the
+eternal mediocre history about an officer, about a shop clerk,
+about a baby and a superannuated father, who there, in the
+provinces, bewails his strayed daughter and implores her to return
+home. But mark you, Lichonin, all that I'm saying doesn't apply to
+you; in you, upon my word of honour, I sense a sincere and great
+soul ... Let's drink to your health?"
+
+They drank.
+
+"Shall I speak on?" continued Platonov undecidedly.
+
+"Are you bored?"
+
+"No, no, I beg of you, speak on."
+
+"They also lie, and lie especially innocently, to those who preen
+themselves before them on political hobby horses. Here they agree
+with anything you want. I shall tell her to-day: Away with the
+modern bourgeois order! Let us destroy with bombs and daggers the
+capitalists, landed proprietors, and the bureaucracy! She'll
+warmly agree with me. But to-morrow the hanger-on Nozdrunov will
+yell that it's necessary to string up all the socialists, to beat
+up all the students and massacre all the sheenies, who partake of
+communion in Christian blood. And she'll gleefully agree with him
+as well. But if in addition to that you'll also inflame her
+imagination, make her fall in love with yourself, then she'll go
+with you everywhere you may wish--on a pogrom, on a barricade, on
+a theft, on a murder. But then, children also are yielding. And
+they, by God, are children, my dear Lichonin...
+
+"At fourteen years she was seduced, and at sixteen she became a
+patent prostitute, with a yellow ticket and a venereal disease.
+And here is all her life, surrounded and fenced off from the
+universe with a sort of a bizarre, impenetrable and dead wall.
+Turn your attention to her everyday vocabulary--thirty or forty
+words, no more--altogether as with a baby or a savage: to eat, to
+drink, to sleep, man, bed, the madam, rouble, lover, doctor,
+hospital, linen, policeman--and that's all. And so her mental
+development, her experience, her interests, remain on an infantile
+plane until her very death, exactly as in the case of a gray and
+naive lady teacher who has not crossed over the threshold of a
+female institute since she was ten, as in the case of a nun given
+as a child into a convent. In a word, picture to yourself a tree
+of a genuinely great species, but raised in a glass bell, in a jar
+from jam. And precisely to this childish phase of their existence
+do I attribute their compulsory lying--so innocent, purposeless
+and habitual ... But then, how fearful, stark, unadorned with
+anything the frank truth in this business-like dickering about the
+price of a night; in these ten men in an evening; in these printed
+rules, issued by the city fathers, about the use of a solution of
+boric acid and about maintaining one's self in cleanliness; in the
+weekly doctors' inspections; in the nasty diseases, which are
+looked upon as lightly and facetiously, just as simply and without
+suffering, as a cold would be; in the deep revulsion of these
+women to men--so deep, that they all, without conception,
+compensate for it in the Lesbian manner and do not even in the
+least conceal it. All their incongruous life is here, on the palm
+of my hand, with all its cynicism, monstrous and coarse injustice;
+but there is in it none of that falsehood and that hypocrisy
+before people and before one's self, which enmesh all humanity
+from top to bottom. Consider, my dear Lichonin, how much nagging,
+drawn out, disgusting deception, how much hate, there is in any
+marital cohabitation in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. How
+much blind, merciless cruelty--precisely not animal, but human,
+reasoned, far-sighted, calculated cruelty--there is in the sacred
+maternal instinct--and behold, with what tender colours this
+instinct is adorned! Then what about all these unnecessary, tom-
+fool professions, invented by cultured man for the safeguarding of
+my nest, my bit of meat, my woman, my child, these different
+overseers, controllers, inspectors, judges, attorneys, jailers,
+advocates, chiefs, bureaucrats, generals, soldiers, and hundreds
+of thousands of titles more. They all subserve human greed,
+cowardice, viciousness, servility, legitimised sensuality,
+laziness-beggarliness!--yes, that is the real word!--human
+beggarliness. But what magnificent words we have! The altar of the
+fatherland, Christian compassion for our neighbor, progress,
+sacred duty, sacred property, holy love. Ugh! I do not believe in
+a single fine word now, and I am nauseated to infinity with these
+petty liars, these cowards and gluttons! Beggar women! ... Man is
+born for great joy, for ceaseless creation, in which he is God;
+for a broad, free love, unhindered by anything,--love for
+everything: for a tree, for the sky, for man, for a dog, for the
+dear, benign, beautiful earth,--oh, especially for the earth with
+its beatific motherhood, with its mornings and nights, with its
+magnificent everyday miracles. But man has lied himself out so,
+has become such an importunate beggar, and has sunk so low! ...
+Ah, Lichonin, but I am weary!"
+
+"I, as an anarchist, partly understand you," said Lichonin
+thoughtfully. It was as though he heard and yet did not hear the
+reporter. Some thought was with difficulty, for the first time,
+being born in his mind. "But one thing I can not comprehend. If
+humanity has become so malodorous to you, then how do you stand--
+and for so long, too,--all this,--" Lichonin took in the whole
+table with a circular motion of his hand,--"the basest thing that
+mankind could invent?"
+
+"Well, I don't even know myself," said Platonov with artlessness.
+"You see, I am a vagabond, and am passionately in love with life.
+I have been a turner, a compositor; I have sown and sold tobacco--
+the cheap Silver Makhorka kind--have sailed as a stoker on the
+Azov Sea, have been a fisherman on the Black--on the Dubinin
+fisheries; I have loaded watermelons and bricks on the Dnieper,
+have ridden with a circus, have been an actor--I can't even recall
+everything. And never did need drive me. No, only an immeasurable
+thirst for life and an insupportable curiosity. By God, I would
+like for a few days to become a horse, a plant, or a fish, or to
+be a woman and experience childbirth; I would like to live with
+the inner life, and to look upon the universe with the eyes of
+every human being I meet. And so I wander care-free over towns and
+hamlets, bound by nothing; know and love tens of trades and
+joyously float wherever it suits fate to set my sail... And so it
+was that I came upon the brothel, and the more I look at it, the
+more there grows within me alarm, incomprehension, and very great
+anger. But even this will soon be at an end. When things get well
+into autumn--away again! I'll get into a rail-rolling mill. I've a
+certain friend, he'll manage it ... Wait, wait, Lichonin ...
+Listen to the actor ... That's the third act."
+
+Egmont-Lavretzki, who until this had been very successfully
+imitating now a shoat which is being put into a bag, now the
+altercation of a cat with a dog, was beginning little by little to
+wilt and droop. Upon him was already advancing the stage of self-
+revelation, next in order, in the paroxysm of which he several
+times attempted to kiss Yarchenko's hand. His lids had become red;
+around the shaven, prickly lips had deepened the tearful wrinkles
+that gave him an appearance of weeping; and it could be heard by
+his voice that his nose and throat were already overflowing with
+tears.
+
+"I serve in a farce!" he was saying, smiting himself on the breast
+with his fist. "I disport myself in striped trunks for the sport
+of the sated mob! I have put out my torch, have hid my talent in
+the earth, like the slothful servant! But fo-ormerly!" he began to
+bray tragically, "Fo-ormerly-y-y! Ask in Novocherkassk, ask in
+Tvier, in Ustejne, in Zvenigorodok, in Krijopole. [Footnote: All
+provincial towns.--Trans.] What a Zhadov and Belugin I was! How I
+played Max! What a figure I created of Veltishchev--that was my
+crowning ro-ole ... Nadin-Perekopski was beginning with me at
+Sumbekov's! With Nikiphorov-Pavlenko did I serve. Who made the
+name for Legunov-Pochainin? I! But no-ow ..."
+
+He sniveled, and sought to kiss the sub-professor.
+
+"Yes! Despise me, brand me, ye honest folk. I play the tom-fool.
+I drink ... I have sold and spilt the sacred ointment! I sit in a
+dive with vendable merchandise. While my wife ... she is a saint,
+and pure, my little dove! ... Oh, if she knew, if she only knew!
+she works hard, she runs a modiste's shop; her fingers--the
+fingers of an angel--are pricked with the needle, but I! Oh,
+sainted woman! And I--the scoundrel!--whom do I exchange thee for!
+Oh, horror!" The actor seized his hair. "Professor, let me, I'll
+kiss your scholarly hand. You alone understand me. Let us go, I'll
+introduce you, you'll see what an angel this is! ... She awaits
+me, she does not sleep nights, she folds the tiny hands of my
+little ones and together with them whispers: 'Lord, save and
+preserve papa.'"
+
+"You're lying about it all, you ham!" said the drunken Little
+White Manka suddenly, looking with hatred upon Egmont-Lavretzki.
+"She isn't whispering anything, but most peacefully sleeping with
+a man in your bed."
+
+"Be still, you w--!" vociferated the actor beside himself; and
+seizing a bottle by the neck raised it high over his head. "Hold
+me, or else I'll brain this carrion. Don't you dare besmirch with
+your foul tongue..."
+
+"My tongue isn't foul--I take communion," impudently replied the
+woman. "But you, you fool, wear horns. You go traipsing around
+with prostitutes yourself, and yet want your wife not to play you
+false. And look where the dummy's found a place to slaver, till he
+looks like he had reins in his mouth. And what did you mix the
+children in for, you miserable papa you! Don't you roll your eyes
+and gnash your teeth at me. You won't frighten me! W--yourself!"
+
+It required many efforts and much eloquence on the part of
+Yarchenko in order to quiet the actor and Little White Manka, who
+always after Benedictine ached for a row. The actor in the end
+burst into copious and unbecoming tears and blew his nose, like an
+old man; he grew weak, and Henrietta led him away to her room.
+
+Fatigue had already overcome everybody. The students, one after
+another, returned from the bedrooms; and separately from them,
+with an indifferent air, came their chance mistresses. And truly,
+both these and the others resembled flies, males and females, just
+flown apart on the window pane. They yawned, stretched, and for a
+long time an involuntary expression of wearisomeness and aversion
+did not leave their faces, pale from sleeplessness, unwholesomely
+glossy. And when they, before going their ways, said good-bye to
+each other, in their eyes twinkled some kind of an inimical
+feeling, just as with the participants of one and the same filthy
+and unnecessary crime.
+
+"Where are you going right now?" Lichonin asked the reporter in a
+low voice.
+
+"Well, really, I don't know myself. I did want to spend the night
+in the cabinet of Isaiah Savvich, but it's a pity to lose such a
+splendid morning. I'm thinking of taking a bath, and then I'll get
+on a steamer and ride to the Lipsky monastery to a certain
+tippling black friar I know. But why?"
+
+"I would ask you to remain a little while and sit the others out.
+I must have a very important word or two with you."
+
+"It's a go."
+
+Yarchenko was the last to go. He averred a headache and fatigue.
+But scarcely had he gone out of the house when the reporter seized
+Lichonin by the hand and quickly dragged him into the glass
+vestibule of the entrance.
+
+"Look!" he said, pointing to the street.
+
+And through the orange glass of the little coloured window
+Lichonin saw the sub-professor, who was ringing at Treppel's.
+After a minute the door opened and Yarchenko disappeared through
+it.
+
+"How did you find out?" asked Lichonin with astonishment.
+
+"A mere trifle! I saw his face, and saw his hands smoothing
+Verka's tights. The others were less restrained. But this fellow
+is bashful."
+
+"Well, now, let's go," said Lichonin. "I won't detain you long."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Of the girls only two remained in the cabinet-Jennie, who had come
+in her night blouse, and Liuba, who had long been sleeping under
+cover of the conversation, curled up into a ball in the large
+plush armchair. The fresh, freckled face of Liuba had taken on a
+meek, almost childlike, expression, while the lips, just as they
+had smiled in sleep, had preserved the light imprint of a radiant,
+peaceful and tender smile. It was blue and biting in the cabinet
+from the dense tobacco smoke; guttered, warty little streams had
+congealed on the candles in the candelabras; the table, flooded
+with coffee and wine, scattered all over with orange peels, seemed
+hideous.
+
+Jennie was sitting on the divan, her knees clasped around with her
+arms. And again was Platonov struck by the sombre fire in her deep
+eyes, that seemed fallen in underneath the dark eyebrows,
+formidably contracted downward, toward the bridge of the nose.
+
+"I'll put out the candles," said Lichonin.
+
+The morning half-light, watery and drowsy, filled the room through
+the slits of the blinds. The extinguished wicks of the candles
+smoked with faint streams. The tobacco smoke swirled in blue,
+layered shrouds, but a ray of sunlight that had cut its way
+through the heart-shaped hollow in a window shutter, transpierced
+the cabinet obliquely with a joyous, golden sword of dust, and in
+liquid, hot gold splashed upon the paper on the wall.
+
+"That's better," said Lichonin, sitting down. "The conversation
+will be short, but ... the devil knows ... how to approach it."
+
+He looked at Jennie in abstraction.
+
+"Shall I go away, then?" said she indifferently.
+
+"No, you sit a while," the reporter answered for Lichonin. "She
+won't be in the way," he turned to the student and slightly
+smiled. "For the conversation will be about prostitution? Isn't
+that so?"
+
+"Well, yes... sort of..."
+
+"Very well, then. You listen to her carefully. Her opinions happen
+to be of an unusually cynical nature, but at times of exceeding
+weight."
+
+Lichonin vigorously rubbed and kneaded his face with his palms,
+then intertwined his fingers and nervously cracked them twice. It
+was apparent that he was agitated and was himself constrained
+about that which he was getting ready to say.
+
+"Oh, but isn't it all the same!" he suddenly exclaimed angrily.
+"You were to-day speaking about these women ... I listened...
+True, you haven't told me anything new. But-strangely-I, for some
+reason, as though for the first time in my loose life, have looked
+upon this question with open eyes... I ask you, what is
+prostitution in the end? What is it? The extravagant delirium of
+large cities, or an eternal historical phenomenon? Will it cease
+some time? Or will it die only with the death of all mankind? Who
+will answer me that?"
+
+Platonov was looking at him intently, narrowing his eyes slightly,
+through habit. He wanted to know what main thought was inflicting
+such sincere torture on Lichonin.
+
+"When it will cease, none will tell you. Perhaps when the
+magnificent Utopias of the socialists and anarchists will
+materialize, when the world will become everyone's and no one's,
+when love will be absolutely free and subject only to its own
+unlimited desires, while mankind will fuse into one happy family,
+wherein will perish the distinction between mine and thine, and
+there will come a paradise upon earth, and man will again become
+naked, glorified and without sin. Perhaps it may be then..."
+
+"But now? Now?" asks Lichonin with growing agitation. "Shall I
+look on, with my little hands folded? 'It's none of my affair?'
+Tolerate it as an unavoidable evil? Put up with it, and wash my
+hands of it? Shall I pronounce a benediction upon it?"
+
+"This evil is not unavoidable, but insuperable. But isn't it all
+the same to you?" asked Platonov with cold wonder. "For you're an
+anarchist, aren't you?"
+
+"What the devil kind of an anarchist am I! Well, yes, I am an
+anarchist, because my reason, when I think of life, always leads
+me logically to the anarchistic beginning. And I myself think in
+theory: let men beat, deceive, and fleece men, like flocks of
+sheep--let them!--violence will breed rancour sooner or later. Let
+them violate the child, let them trample creative thought under
+foot, let there be slavery, let there be prostitution, let them
+thieve, mock, spill blood...Let them! The worse, the better, the
+nearer the end. There is a great law, I think, the same for
+inanimate objects as well as for all the tremendous and many-
+millioned human life: the power of effort is equal to the power of
+resistance. The worse, the better. Let evil and vindictiveness
+accumulate in mankind, let them grow and ripen like a monstrous
+abscess--an abscess the size of the whole terrestrial sphere. For
+it will burst some time! And let there be terror and insufferable
+pain. Let the pus deluge all the universe. But mankind will either
+choke in it and perish, or, having gone through the illness, will
+be regenerated to a new, beautiful life."
+
+Lichonin avidly drank off a cup of cold black coffee and continued
+vehemently:
+
+"Yes. Just so do I and many others theorize, sitting in our rooms,
+over tea with white bread and cooked sausage, when the value of
+each separate human life is so-so, an infinitesimally small
+numeral in a mathematical formula. But let me see a child abused,
+and the red blood will rush to my head from rage. And when I look
+and look upon the labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown
+into hysterics for shame at my algebraic calculations. There is--
+the devil take it!--there is something incongruous, altogether
+illogical, but which at this time is stronger than human reason.
+Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this minute as though I had
+robbed a sleeping man or deceived a three-year-old child, or hit a
+bound person? And why does it seem to me to-day that I myself am
+guilty of the evil of prostitution--guilty in my silence, my
+indifference, my indirect permission? What am I to do, Platonov!"
+exclaimed the student with grief in his voice.
+
+Platonov kept silent, squinting at him with his little narrow
+eyes. But Jennie unexpectedly said in a caustic tone:
+
+"Well, you do as one Englishwoman did ... A certain red-haired
+clodhopper came to us here. She must have been important, because
+she came with a whole retinue ... all some sort of officials ...
+But before her had come the assistant of the commissioner, with
+the precinct inspector Kerbesh. And the assistant directly
+forewarned us, just like that: 'If you stiffs, and so on and so
+on, will let out even one little rude word, or something, then I
+won't leave one stone upon another of your establishment, while
+I'll flog all the wenches soundly in the station-house and make
+'em rot in jail!' Well, at last this galoot came. She gibbered and
+she gibbered something in a foreign language, all the time pointed
+to heaven with her hand, and then distributed a five-kopeck
+Testament to every one of us and rode away. Now you ought to do
+the same, dearie."
+
+Platonov burst into loud laughter. But seeing the naive and sad
+face of Lichonin, who did not seem to understand, nor even suspect
+mockery, he restrained his laughter and said seriously:
+
+"You won't accomplish anything, Lichonin. While there will be
+property, there will also be poverty. While marriage exists,
+prostitution also will not die. Do you know who will always
+sustain and nourish prostitution? It is the so-called decent
+people, the noble paterfamiliases, the irreproachable husbands,
+the loving brothers. They will always find a seemly motive to
+legitimize, normalize and put a wrapper all around paid
+libertinage, because they know very well that otherwise it would
+rush in a torrent into their bedrooms and nurseries. Prostitution
+is for them a deflection of the sensuousness of others from their
+personal, lawful alcove. And even the respectable paterfamilias
+himself is not averse to indulge in a love debauch in secret. And
+really, it is palling to have always the one and the same thing
+the wife, the chambermaid, and the lady on the side. Man, as a
+matter of fact, is a poly--and exceedingly so--a polygamous
+animal. And to his rooster-like amatory instincts it will always
+be sweet to unfold in such a magnificent nursery garden, A LA
+Treppel's or Anna Markovna's. Oh, of course, a well-balanced
+spouse or the happy father of six grown-up daughters will always
+be clamouring about the horror of prostitution. He will even
+arrange with the help of a lottery and an amateur entertainment a
+society for the saving of fallen women, or an asylum in the name
+of St. Magdalene. But the existence of prostitution he will bless
+and sustain."
+
+"Magdalene asylums!" with quiet laughter, full of an ancient
+hatred the ache of which had not yet healed, repeated Jennie.
+
+"Yes, I know that all these false measures undertaken are stuff
+and a total mockery," cut in Lichonin. "But let me be ridiculous
+and stupid, yet I do not wish to remain a commiserating spectator,
+who sits on a warm ledge, gazes upon a conflagration, and is
+saying all the time: 'Oh, my, but it's burning ... by God, it is
+burning! Perhaps there are even people burning!'--but for his part
+merely laments and slaps his thighs."
+
+"Well, now," said Platonov harshly, "would you take a child's
+syringe and go to put out the fire with it?"
+
+"No!" heatedly exclaimed Lichonin ... "Perhaps--who knows?--
+perhaps I'll succeed in saving at least one living soul? It was
+just this that I wanted to ask you about, Platonov, and you must
+help me ... Only, I implore you, without jeers, without cooling
+off ..."
+
+"You want to take a girl out of here? To save her?" asked
+Platonov, looking at him attentively. He now understood the drift
+of this entire conversation.
+
+"Yes ... I don't know ... I'll try ..." answered Lichonin
+uncertainly.
+
+"She'll come back," said Platonov.
+
+"She will," Jennie repeated with conviction.
+
+Lichonin walked up to her, took her by the hands and began to
+speak in a trembling whisper:
+
+"Jennechka ... Perhaps you ... eh? For I don't call you as a
+mistress ... but a friend ... It's all a trifle, half a year of
+rest ... and then we'll master some trade or other ... we'll
+read..."
+
+Jennie snatched her hands out of his with vexation.
+
+"Oh, into a bog with you!" she almost slouted. "I know you! Want
+me to darn socks for you? Cook on a kerosene stove? Pass nights
+without sleeping on account of you when you'll be chitter-
+chattering with your short-haired friends? But when you get to be
+a doctor or a lawyer, or a government clerk, then it's me will get
+a knee in the back: 'Out on the street with you, now, you public
+hide, you've ruined my young life. I want to marry a decent girl,
+pure, and innocent! ..."
+
+"I meant it as a brother ... I meant it without that ..." mumbled
+Lichonin in confusion.
+
+"I know that kind of brothers. Until the first night ... Leave off
+and don't talk nonsense to me! It makes me tired to listen to it!"
+
+"Wait, Lichonin!" began the reporter seriously. "Why, you will
+pile a load beyond your strength upon yourself as well. I've known
+idealists, among the populists, who married peasant girls out of
+principle. This is just the way they thought--nature, black-loam,
+untapped forces. ... But this black-loam after a year turned into
+the fattest of women, who lies the whole day in bed and chews
+cookies, or studs her fingers with penny rings, spreads them out
+and admires them. Or else sits in the kitchen, drinks sweet liquor
+with the coachman and carries on a natural romance with him. Look
+out, here it will be worse!"
+
+All three became silent. Lichonin was pale and was wiping his
+moist forehead with a handkerchief.
+
+"No, the devil take it!" he cried out suddenly with obstinacy. "I
+don't believe you! I don't want to believe! Liuba" he called
+loudly the girl who had fallen asleep. "Liubochka!"
+
+The girl awoke, passed her palm over her lips, first to one side,
+then the other, yawned, and smiled, in a funny, child-like manner.
+
+"I wasn't sleeping, I heard everything," she said. "I only dozed
+off for a teeny-weeny bit."
+
+"Liuba, do you want to go away from here with me?" asked Lichonin
+and took her by the hand. "But entirely, forever, to go away so's
+never to return either to a brothel or the street?"
+
+Liuba questioningly, with perplexity, looked at Jennie, as though
+seeking from her an explanation of this jest.
+
+"That's enough for you," she said slyly. "You're still studying
+yourself. Where do you come in, then, to take a girl and set her
+up?"
+
+"Not to set you up, Liuba ... I simply want to help you ... For it
+isn't very sweet for you in a brothel, is it now!"
+
+"Naturally, it isn't all sugar! If I was as proud as Jennechka, or
+so enticing like Pasha ... but I won't get used to things here for
+anything ..."
+
+"Well, then, let's go, let's go! ..." entreated Lichonin. "Surely,
+you know some manual work--well, now, sewing something,
+embroidering, cutting?"
+
+"I don't know anything!" answered Liuba bashfully and started
+laughing and turned red, covering her mouth with the elbow of her
+free arm. "What's asked of us in the village, that I know, but
+anything more I don't know. I can cook a little ... I lived at the
+priest's--cooked for him."
+
+"That's splendid! That's excellent!" Lichonin grew joyous. "I will
+assist you, you'll open a dining room ... A cheap dining room, you
+understand ... I'll advertise it for you ... The students will
+come! That's magnificent! ..."
+
+"That's enough of making fun of me!" retorted Liuba, a bit
+offended, and again looked askance and questioningly at Jennie.
+
+"He's not joking," answered Jennie with a voice which quavered
+strangely. "He's in earnest, seriously."
+
+"Here's my word of honour that I'm serious! Honest to God,
+now!" the student caught her up with warmth and for some reason
+even made the sign of the cross in the direction of the empty
+corner.
+
+"And really," said Jennie, "take Liubka. That's not the same thing
+as taking me. I'm like an old dragoon's nag, and used to it. You
+can't make me over, neither with hay nor a stick. But Liubka is a
+simple girl and a kind one. And she hasn't grown used to our life
+yet. What are you popping your eyes out at me for, you ninny?
+Answer when you're asked. Well? Do you want to or don't you want
+to?"
+
+"And why not? If they ain't laughing, but for real ... And you,
+Jennechka, what would you advise me ..."
+
+"Oh, you're such wood!" Jennie grew angry. "What's better
+according to you--to rot on straw with a nose fallen through? To
+croak under the fence like a dog? Or to turn honest? Fool! You
+ought to kiss his hands; but no, you're getting particular."
+
+The naive Liuba did, in fact, extend her lips toward Lichonin's
+hand, and this movement made everybody laugh, and touched them
+just the least trifle.
+
+"And that's very good! It's like magic!" bustled the overjoyed
+Lichonin. "Go and notify the proprietress at once that you're
+going away from here forever. And take the most necessary things;
+it isn't as it used to be; now a girl can go away from a brothel
+whenever she wants to."
+
+"No, it can't be done that way," Jennie stopped him; "she can go
+away, that's so, but you'll have no end of unpleasantness and
+hullabaloo. Here's what you do, student. You won't regret ten
+roubles?"
+
+"Of course, of course ... if you please."
+
+"Let Liuba tell the housekeeper that you're taking her to your
+rooms for to-day. That's the fixed rate--ten roubles. And
+afterwards, well, even to-morrow--come after the ticket and
+things. That's nothing; we'll work this thing roundly. And after
+that you must go to the police with her ticket and declare, that
+Liubka So-and-so has hired herself to you as chambermaid, and that
+you desire to exchange her blank for a real passport. Well,
+Liubka, lively! Take the money and march. And, look out, be as
+quick as possible with the housekeeper, or else she, the bitch,
+will read it in your eyes. And also don't forget," she cried, now
+after Liuba, "wipe the rouge off your puss, now. Or else the
+drivers will be pointing their fingers at you."
+
+After half an hour Liuba and Lichonin were getting on a cab at the
+entrance. Jennie and the reporter were standing on the sidewalk.
+
+"You're committing a great folly, Lichonin," Platonov was saying
+listlessly, "but I honour and respect the fine impulse within you.
+Here's the thought--and here's the deed. You're a brave and a
+splendid fellow."
+
+"Here's to your commencement!" laughed Jennie. "Look out, don't
+forget to send for me to the christening."
+
+"You won't see it, no matter how long you wait for it!" laughed
+Lichonin, waving his cap about.
+
+They rode off. The reporter looked at Jennie, and with
+astonishment saw tears in her softened eyes.
+
+"God grant it, God grant it," she was whispering.
+
+"What has been the matter with you to-day, Jennie?" he asked
+kindly. "What? Are you oppressed? Can't I do anything?"
+
+She turned her back to him and leaned over the bent balustrade of
+the stoop.
+
+"How shall I write to you, if need be?" she asked in a stifled
+voice.
+
+"Why, it's simple. Editorial rooms of Echoes. So-and-so. They'll
+pass it on to me pretty fast."
+
+"I ... I ... I ..." Jennie just began, but suddenly burst into
+loud, passionate sobs and covered her face with her hands, "I'll
+write you ..."
+
+And without taking her hands away from her face, her shoulders
+quivering, she ran up the stoop and disappeared in the house,
+loudly banging the door after her.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Even to this day, after a lapse of ten years, the erstwhile
+inhabitants of the Yamkas recall that year, abounding in unhappy,
+foul, bloody events, which began with a series of trifling, small
+affrays, but terminated in the administration's, one fine day,
+taking and destroying completely the ancient, long-warmed nest of
+legalized prostitution, which nest it had itself created--
+scattering its remains over the hospitals, jails and streets of
+the big city. Even to this day a few of the former proprietresses
+who have remained alive and have reached the limit of decrepitude,
+and quondam housekeepers, fat and hoarse, like pug-dogs grown old,
+recall this common destruction with sorrow, horror, and stolid
+perplexity.
+
+Just like potatoes out of a sack, brawls, robberies, diseases,
+murders and suicides began to pour down, and, it seemed, no one
+was to blame for this. All these misfortunes just simply began to
+be more frequent of their own accord, to pile one upon the other,
+to expand and grow; just as a small lump of snow, pushed by the
+feet of urchins, becomes constantly bigger and bigger by itself
+from the thawing snow sticking to it, grows bigger than the
+stature of a man, and, finally, with one last, small effort is
+precipitated into a ravine and rolls down as an enormous
+avalanche. The old proprietresses and housekeepers, of course, had
+never heard of fatality; but inwardly, with the soul, they sensed
+its mysterious presence in the inevitable calamities of that
+terrible year.
+
+And, truly, everywhere in life where people are bound by common
+interests, blood relationship, or the benefits of a profession
+into close, individualized groups--there inevitably can be
+observed this mysterious law of sudden accumulation, of a piling
+up, of events; their epidemicity, their strange succession and
+connectedness, their incomprehensible lingering. This occurs, as
+popular wisdom has long ago noted, in isolated families, where
+disease or death suddenly falls upon the near ones in an
+inevitable, enigmatic order. "Misfortune does not come alone."
+"Misfortune without waits--open wide the gates." This is to be
+noticed also in monasteries, banks, governmental departments,
+regiments, places of learning and other public institutions, where
+for a long time, almost for decades, life flows evenly, like a
+marshy river; and, suddenly, and after some altogether
+insignificant incident or other, there begin transfers, changes in
+positions, expulsions from service, losses, sicknesses. The
+members of society, just as though they had conspired, die, go
+insane, are caught thieving, shoot or hang themselves; vacancy
+after vacancy is freed; promotions follow promotions, new elements
+flow in, and, behold, after two years there is not a one of the
+previous people on the spot; everything is new, if only the
+institution has not fallen into pieces completely, has not crept
+apart. And is it not the same astounding destiny which overtakes
+enormous social, universal organizations--cities, empires,
+nations, countries, and, who knows, perhaps whole planetary
+worlds?
+
+Something resembling this incomprehensible fatality swept over the
+Yamaskya Borough as well, bringing it to a rapid and scandalous
+destruction. Now in place of the boisterous Yamkas is left a
+peaceful, humdrum outskirt, in which live truck-farmers, cat's-
+meat men, Tartars, swineherds and butchers from the near-by
+slaughterhouses. At the petition of these worthy people even the
+designation of Yamaskya Borough itself, as disgracing the
+inhabitants with its past, has been named over into Golubovka, in
+honour of the merchant Golubov, owner of a shop dealing in
+groceries and delicacies, and warden of the local church.
+
+The first subterranean shocks of this catastrophe began in the
+heat of summer, at the time of the annual summer fair, which this
+year was unbelievably brilliant. Many circumstances contributed to
+its extraordinary success, multitudes, and the stupendousness of
+the deals concluded during it: the building in the vicinity of
+three new sugar refineries, and the unusually abundant crop of
+wheat, and, in particular, of sugar beets; the commencement of
+work in the laying of an electric trolley and of canalization; the
+building of a new road to the distance of 750 versts; but mainly,
+the fever of building which seized the whole town, all the banks
+and financial institutions, and all the houseowners. Factories for
+making brick sprang up on the outskirts of the town like
+mushrooms. A grandiose agricultural exposition opened. Two new
+steamer lines came into being, and they, together with the
+previously established ones, frenziedly competed with each other,
+transporting freight and pilgrims. In competition they reached
+such a state, that they lowered their passenger rates for the
+third class from seventy-five kopecks to five, three, two, and
+even one kopeck. In the end, ready to fall from exhaustion in the
+unequal struggle, one of the steamship companies offered a free
+passage to all the third-class passengers. Then its competitor at
+once added to the free passage half a loaf of white bread as well.
+But the biggest and most significant enterprise of this city was
+the engineering of the extensive river port, which had attracted
+to it hundreds of thousands of labourers and which cost God knows
+what money.
+
+It must also be added, that the city was at this time celebrating
+the millennial anniversary of its famous abbey, the most honoured
+and the richest among all the monasteries of Russia. From all the
+ends of Russia, out of Siberia, from the shores of the Frozen
+Ocean, from the extreme south--the Black and Caspian Seas--
+countless pilgrims had gathered for the worship of the local
+sanctities: the abbey's saints, reposing deep underground in
+calcareous caverns. Suffice it to say, that the monastery gave
+shelter, and food of a sort, to forty thousand people daily; while
+those for whom there was not enough room lay, at night, side by
+side, like logs, in the extensive yards and lanes of the abbey.
+
+This was a summer out of some fairy-tale. The population of the
+city increased well-nigh fourfold through every sort of newly-come
+people. Stone-masons, carpenters, painters, engineers,
+technicians, foreigners, agriculturists, brokers, shady business
+men, river navigators, unoccupied knaves, tourists, thieves, card
+sharpers--they all overflowed the city, and not in a single hotel,
+the most dirty and dubious one, was there a vacant room. Insane
+prices were paid for quarters. The stock exchange gambled on a
+grand scale, as never before or since that summer. Money in
+millions simply flowed from hands to hands, and thence to a third
+pair. In one hour colossal riches were created, but then many
+former firms burst, and yesterday's men of wealth turned into
+beggars. The commonest of labourers bathed and warmed themselves
+in this golden flood. Stevedores, draymen, street porters,
+roustabouts, hod carriers and ditch diggers still remember to this
+day what money they earned by the day during this mad summer. Any
+tramp received no less than four of five roubles a day at the
+unloading of barges laden with watermelons. And all this noisy,
+foreign band, locoed by the easy money, intoxicated with the
+sensual beauty of the ancient, seductive city, enchanted by the
+delightful warmth of the southern nights, made drunk by the
+insidious fragrance of the white acacias--these hundreds of
+thousands of insatiable, dissolute beasts in the image of men,
+with all their massed will clamoured: "Give us woman!"
+
+In a single month new amusement enterprises--chic Tivolis,
+CHATEAUX DES FLEURES, Olympias, Alcazars, etc., with a chorus and
+an operetta; many restaurants and beerhouses, with little summer
+gardens, and common little taverns--sprang up by the score in the
+city, in the vicinity of the building port. On every crossing new
+"violet-wine" houses were opened every day--little booths of
+boards, in each of which, under the pretext of selling bread-
+cider, old wenches trafficked in themselves by twos and threes,
+right alongside behind a partition of deal, and to many mothers
+and fathers is this summer painful and memorable through the
+degrading diseases of their sons--schoolboys and military cadets.
+For the casual arrivals servants were demanded, and thousands of
+peasant girls started out from the surrounding villages toward the
+city. It was inevitable that the demand on prostitution should
+become unusually high. And so, from Warsaw, from Lodz, from
+Odessa, from Moscow, and even from St. Petersburg, even from
+abroad, flocked together an innumerable multitude of foreign
+women; cocottes of Russian fabrication, the most ordinary
+prostitutes of the rank and file, and chic Frenchwomen and
+Viennese. Imperiously told the corrupting influence of the
+hundreds of millions of easy money. It was as though this cascade
+of gold had lashed down upon, had set to whirling and deluged
+within it, the whole city. The number of thefts and murders
+increased with astounding rapidity. The police, collected in
+augmented proportions, lost its head and was swept off its feet.
+But it must also be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful
+bribes, it resembled a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and
+listless. People were killed for anything and nothing, just so. It
+happened that men would walk up to a person in broad daylight
+somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask: "What's your name?"
+"Fedorov." "Aha, Federov? Then take this!" and they would slit his
+belly with a knife. They nicknamed these blades just that in the
+city--"rippers"; and there were among them names of which the city
+news seemed actually proud: the two brothers Polishchuk (Mitka and
+Dundas), Volodka the Greek, Fedor Miller, Captain Dmitriev,
+Sivocho, Dobrovolski, Shpachek, and many others.
+
+Both day and night on the main streets of the frenzied city stood,
+moved, and yelled the mob, as though at a fire. It would be almost
+impossible to describe what went on in the Yamkas then. Despite
+the fact that the madams had increased the staff of their patients
+to more than double and increased their prices trebly, their poor
+demented girls could not catch up in satisfying the demands of the
+drunken, crazed public, which threw money around like chips. It
+happened that in the drawing room, filled to overflowing with
+people, each girl would be awaited for by some seven, eight, at
+times even ten, men. It was, truly, some kind of a mad,
+intoxicated, convulsive time!
+
+And from that very time began all the misfortunes of the Yamkas,
+which brought them to ruin. And together with the Yamkas perished
+also the house, familiar to us, of the stout, old, pale-eyed Anna
+Markovna.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The passenger train sped merrily from the south to the north,
+traversing golden fields of wheat and beautiful groves of oak,
+careering with rumbling upon iron bridges over bright rivers,
+leaving behind it whirling clouds of smoke.
+
+In the COUPE of the second class, even with open windows, there
+was a fearful stuffiness, and it was hot. The smell of sulphurous
+smoke irritated the throat. The rocking and the heat had
+completely tired out the passengers, save one, a merry, energetic,
+mobile Hebrew, splendidly dressed, accommodating, sociable and
+talkative. He was travelling with a young woman, and it was at
+once apparent, especially through her, that they were newly-weds;
+so often did her face flare up with an unexpected colour at every
+tenderness of her husband, even the least. And when she raised her
+eyelashes to look upon him, her eyes would shine like stars, and
+grow humid. And her face was as beautiful as only the faces of
+young Hebrew maidens in love can be beautiful--all tenderly rosy,
+with rosy lips, rounded out in beautiful innocence, and with eyes
+so black that their pupils could not be distinguished from the
+irises.
+
+Unabashed by the presence of three strange people, he showered his
+caresses upon his companion every minute, and, it must be said,
+sufficiently coarse ones. With the unceremoniousness of an owner,
+with that especial egoism of one in love, who, it would seem, is
+saying to the whole universe: "See, how happy we are--this makes
+you happy also, isn't that so?"--he would now pass his hand over
+her leg, which resiliently and in relief stood out beneath her
+dress, now pinch her on the cheek, now tickle her neck with his
+stiff, black, turned-up moustache ... But, even though he did
+sparkle with delight, there was still something rapacious, wary,
+uneasy to be glimpsed in his frequently winking eyes, in the
+twitching of the upper lip, and in the harsh outline of his
+shaved, square chin, jutting out, with a scarcely noticeable dent
+in the middle.
+
+Opposite this infatuated couple were placed three passengers--a
+retired general, a spare, neat little old man, with pomade on his
+hair, with curls combed forward to the temples; a stout land-
+owner, who had taken off his starched collar, but was still
+gasping from the heat and mopping his face every minute with a wet
+handkerchief; and a young infantry officer. The endless
+talkativeness of Simon Yakovlevich (the young man had already
+managed to inform his neighbours that he was called Simon
+Yakovlevich Horizon) tired and irritated the passengers a trifle,
+just like the buzzing of a fly, that on a sultry summer day
+rhythmically beats against a window pane of a closed, stuffy room.
+But still, he knew how to raise their spirits: he showed tricks of
+magic; told Hebrew anecdotes, full of a fine humour of their own.
+When his wife would go out on the platform to refresh herself, he
+would tell such things that the general would melt into a beatific
+smile, the land-owner would neigh, rocking his black-loam stomach,
+while the sub-lieutenant, a smooth-faced boy, only a year out of
+school, scarcely controlling his laughter and curiosity, would
+turn away to one side, that his neighbours might not see him
+turning red.
+
+His wife tended Horizon with a touching, naive attention; she
+wiped his face with a handkerchief, waved upon him with a fan,
+adjusted his cravat every minute. And his face at these times
+became laughably supercilious and stupidly self-conceited.
+
+"But allow me to ask," asked the spare little general, coughing
+politely, "allow me to ask, my dear sir, what occupation might you
+pursue?"
+
+"Ah, my God!" with a charming frankness retorted Simon
+Yakovlevich. "Well, what can a poor Jew do in our time? It's a bit
+of a travelling salesman and a commission broker by me. At the
+present time I'm far from business. You--he! he! he!--understand
+yourselves, gentlemen. A honeymoon--don't turn red, Sarochka--it
+don't repeat itself three times in a year. But afterwards I'll
+have to travel and work a great deal. Here we'll come with
+Sarochka to town, will pay the visits to her relatives, and then
+again on the road. On my first trip I'm thinking of taking my
+wife. You know, sort of a wedding journey. I'm a representative
+from Sidris and two English firms. Wouldn't you like to have a
+look? Here are the samples with me ..."
+
+He very rapidly took out of a small, elegant case of yellow
+leather a few long cardboard folding books, and with the dexterity
+of a tailor began to unfold them, holding one end, from which
+their folds fell downward with a light crackling.
+
+"Look, what splendid samples: they don't give in to foreign ones
+at all. Please notice. Here, for instance, is Russian and here
+English tricot, or here, cangan and cheviot. Compare, feel it, and
+you'll be convinced that the Russian samples almost don't give in
+to the foreign. Why, that speaks of progress, of the growth of
+culture. So it's absolutely for nothing that Europe counts us
+Russians such barbarians.
+
+"And so we'll pay our family visits, will look at the fair, pay a
+visit to the CHATEAU DES FLEURS, enjoy ourselves a little, stroll
+a bit, and then to the Volga down to Tzaritzin, to the Black Sea,
+and then again home to our native Odessa."
+
+"That's a fine journey," said the sub-lieutenant modestly.
+
+"I should say it's fine," agreed Simon Yakovlevich; "but there are
+no roses without thorns. The work of a travelling salesman is
+exceedingly difficult and requires many kinds of knowledge, and
+not so much the knowledge of business as the knowledge of--how
+shall I say it?--the knowledge of the human soul. Another man may
+not even want to give an order, but you must work like an elephant
+to convince him, and argue until he feels the clearness and
+justice of your words. Because I take only absolutely clean lines
+exclusively, of which there can be no doubts. A fake or a bad line
+I will not take, although they should offer me millions for it.
+Ask wherever you like, in any store which deals in cloths or
+suspenders GLOIRE--I'm also a representative from this firm--or
+buttons HELIOS--you just ask who Simon Yakovlevich Horizon is, and
+everyone will answer you: 'Simon Yakovlevich is not a man, but
+gold; this is a disinterested man, as honest as a diamond.' "And
+Horizon was already unpacking long boxes with patented suspenders,
+and was showing the glistening leaves of cardboard, covered with
+regular rows of vari-coloured buttons.
+
+"There happen great unpleasantnesses, when the place has been
+worked out, when a lot of travelling salesmen have appeared before
+you. Here you can't do anything; they absolutely won't listen to
+you, only wave their arms. But that's only for others. I am
+Horizon! I can talk him over, the same like a camel from a
+menagerie. But it happens still more unpleasant, when two
+competitors in one and the same line come together in the same
+town. And it happens even worse when it's some chimney sweep and
+can't do business himself and spoils business for you too. Here
+you go to all sorts of tricks: let him drink till he's drunk or
+let him go off somewhere on a false track. Not an easy trade!
+Besides that, I have one more line--that's false eyes and teeth.
+But it ain't a profitable line. I want to drop it. And besides I'm
+thinking of leaving all this business. I understand, it's all
+right for a young man, in the bloom of his powers, to flutter
+around like a moth, but once you have a wife, and may be a whole
+family even ..." he playfully patted the woman on the knee, from
+which she became scarlet and looked uncommonly better. "For the
+Lord has blessed us Jews with fecundity for all our misfortunes
+... Then you want to have some business of your own, you want, you
+understand, to become settled in one place, so's there should be a
+shack of your own, and your own furniture, and your own bedroom,
+and kitchen ... Isn't that so, your excellency?"
+
+"Yes ... Yes ... eh--eh ... Yes, of course, of course,"
+condescendingly responded the general.
+
+"And so I took with Sarochka a little dowry. What do I mean, a
+little dowry? Such money that Rothschild would not even want to
+look at it are in my hands a whole capital already. But it must be
+said that there are some savings by me, too. The firms I know will
+give me credit. If God grant it, we shall still eat a piece of
+bread and a little butter--and on the Sabbaths the tasty GEFILTEH
+FISCH."
+
+"That's fine fish: pike the way the sheenies make it!" said the
+gasping land-owner.
+
+"We shall open up for ourselves the firm of 'Horizon and Son.'
+Isn't that true, Sarochka--'and Son?' And you, I hope, will honour
+me with your esteemed orders? When you see the sign, 'Horizon and
+Son,' then straight off recollect that you once rode in a car
+together with a young man, who had grown as foolish as hell from
+love and from happiness."
+
+"Ab-solutely!" said the land-owner.
+
+And Simon Yakovlevich at once turned to him:
+
+"But I also work by commission broking. To sell an estate, to buy
+an estate, to arrange a second mortgage--you won't find a better
+specialist than me, and such a cheap one at that. I can be of
+service to you, should the need arise," and he extended his
+visiting card to the land-owner with a bow, and, by the way,
+handed a card each to his two neighbours as well.
+
+The land-owner dived into a side pocket and also dragged out a
+card.
+
+"Joseph Ivanovich Vengjenovski," Simon Yakovlevich read out loud.
+"Very, very pleased! And so, should you need me ..."
+
+"Why not? It's possible ..." said the land-owner meditatively.
+"Why, yes: perhaps, indeed, a favourable chance has brought us
+together! Why, I'm just journeying to K----about the sale of a
+certain forest country house. Suppose you do that, then,--drop in
+to see me. I always stop at the Grand Hotel. Perhaps we may be
+able to strike up a deal."
+
+"Oh, I'm already almost sure, my dearest Joseph Ivanovich!"
+exclaimed the rejoicing Horizon, and slightly, with the very tips
+of his fingers, patted Vengjenovski's kneecap carefully. "You just
+rest assured; if Horizon has undertaken anything, then you'll be
+thanking him like your own father, no more, no less."
+
+Half an hour later Simon Yakovlevich and the smooth-faced sub-
+lieutenant were standing on the platform of the car and smoking.
+
+"Do you often visit K----, mister sub-lieutenant?" asked Horizon.
+
+"Only for the first time--just imagine! Our regiment is stationed
+at Chernobob. I was born in Moscow, myself."
+
+"AI, AI, AI! How'd you come to get into such a faraway place?"
+
+"Well, it just fell out so. There was no other vacancy when I was
+let out."
+
+"But then--Chernobob is a hole! The worst little town in all
+Podolia."
+
+"That's true, but it just fell out so."
+
+"That means, then, that the young officer gent is going to K----to
+divert himself a little?"
+
+"Yes. I'm thinking of stopping there for two or three days. I'm
+travelling to Moscow, really. I have received a two months' leave,
+but it would be interesting to look over the city on the way. It's
+very beautiful, they say."
+
+"Oh, what are you trying to tell me? A remarkable city! Well,
+absolutely a European city. If you only knew, what streets,
+electricity, trolleys, theatres! And if you only knew what
+cabarets! You'll lick your own fingers. Positively, positively, I
+advise you, young man, to pay a visit to the CHATEAU DES FLEURS,
+to the Tivoli, and also to ride out to the island. That's
+something special. What women, wha-a-at women!"
+
+The lieutenant turned red, took his eyes away, and asked in a
+voice that quavered:
+
+"Yes, I've happened to hear that. Is it possible that they're
+really so handsome?"
+
+"Oi! Strike me God! Believe me, there are no handsome women there
+at all."
+
+"But--how's that?"
+
+"Why, this way: there are only raving beauties there. You
+understand--what a happy blending of bloods! Polish, Little
+Russian, and Hebrew. How I envy you, young man, that you're free
+and alone. In my time I sure would have shown myself! And what's
+most remarkable of all, they're unusually passionate women! Well,
+just like fire! And do you know something else?" he asked in a
+whisper of great significance.
+
+"What?" asked the sub-lieutenant in a fright.
+
+"It's remarkable, that nowheres, neither in Paris, nor in London--
+believe me, this was told me by people who had seen the whole wide
+world--never, nowhere, will you meet with such exquisite ways of
+making love as in this town. That's something especial, as us
+little Jews say. They think up such things that no imagination can
+picture to itself. It's enough to drive you crazy!"
+
+"But is that possible?" quietly spoke the sub-lieutenant, whose
+breath had been cut off.
+
+"Well, strike me God! But permit me, young man, by the way! You
+understand yourself. I was single, and of course, every man is
+liable to sin ... It's different now, of course. I've had myself
+written in with the invalids. But from the former days a
+remarkable collection has remained to me. Just wait, I'll show it
+to you right away. Only, please, be as careful as possible in
+looking at it."
+
+Horizon with trepidation looked around to the right and left and
+extracted from his pocket a long, narrow little box of morocco, in
+the style of those in which playing cards are usually kept, and
+extended it to the sub-lieutenant.
+
+"Here you are, have a look. Only, I beg of you, be very careful."
+
+The sub-lieutenant applied himself to picking out, one after the
+other, the cards of plain and coloured photography, in which in
+all possible aspects was depicted in the most beastly ways, in the
+most impossible positions, the external side of love which at
+times makes man immeasurably lower and viler than a baboon.
+Horizon would look over his shoulder, nudge him with his elbow,
+and whisper:
+
+"Tell me, ain't that swell, now? Why, this is genuine Parisian and
+Viennese chic!"
+
+The sub-lieutenant looked through the whole collection from the
+beginning to the end. When he was giving back the little box, his
+hand was shaking, his temples and forehead were moist, his eyes
+had dimmed, and over his cheeks had mantled a blush, mottled like
+marble.
+
+"But do you know what?" Horizon exclaimed gaily, all of a sudden.
+"It's all the same to me--the Indian sign has been put upon me. I,
+as they used to say in the olden times, have burned my ships ... I
+have burned all that I used to adore before. For a long time
+already I've been looking for an opportunity to pass these cards
+on to some one. I ain't especially chasing after a price. You wish
+to acquire them, mister officer?"
+
+"Well, now ... I,--that is ... Why not? ... Let's ..."
+
+"That's fine! On account of such a pleasant acquaintanceship, I'll
+take fifty kopecks apiece. What, is that expensive? Well, what's
+the difference, God be with you! I see you're a travelling man, I
+don't want to rob you; let it go at thirty, then. What? That ain't
+cheap either? Well, shake hands on it! Twenty-five kopecks apiece.
+OI! What an intractable fellow you are! At twenty! You'll thank me
+yourself later! And then, do you know what else? When I come to K
+--, I always stop at the Hotel Hermitage. You can very easily
+find me there either very early in the morning, or about eight
+o'clock in the evening. I know an awful lot of the finest little
+ladies. So I'll introduce you. And, you understand, not for money.
+Oh, no. It's just simply nice and gay for them to pass the time
+with a young, healthy, handsome man of your sort. There's
+absolutely no money of any kind necessary. And for that matter--
+they themselves will willingly pay for wine, for a bottle of
+champagne! So remember then; The Hermitage, Horizon. And if it
+isn't that, remember it anyway! Maybe I can be of use to you. And
+the cards are such a thing, such a thing, that it will never lay
+on the shelf by you. Those who like that sort of thing give three
+roubles for each specimen. But these, of course, are rich people,
+little old men. And then, you know"--Horizon bent over to the
+officer's very ear, winked one eye, and pronounced in a sly
+whisper--"you know, many ladies adore these cards. Why, you're a
+young man, and handsome; how many romances you will have yet!"
+
+Having received the money and counted it over painstakingly,
+Horizon had the brazenness to extend his hand in addition, and to
+shake the hand of the sub-lieutenant, who did not dare to lift up
+his eyes to him; and, having left him on the platform, went back
+into the passageway of the car, as though nothing had happened.
+
+This was an unusually communicative man. On the way to his COUPE
+he came to a stop before a beautiful little girl of three years,
+with whom he had for some time been flirting at a distance and
+making all sorts of funny grimaces at. He squatted down on his
+heels before her, began to imitate a nanny goat for her, and
+questioned her in a lisping voice:
+
+"May I athk where the young lady ith going? OI, OI, OI! Thuch a
+big girl! Travelling alone, without mamma? Bought a ticket all by
+herthelf and travelth alone! AI! What a howwid girl! And where ith
+the girl'th mamma?" At this moment a tall, handsome, self-assured
+woman appeared from the COUPE and said calmly:
+
+"Get away from the child. What a despicable thing to annoy strange
+children!"
+
+Horizon jumped up on his feet and began to bustle:
+
+"Madam! I could not restrain myself ... Such a wonderful, such a
+magnificent and swell child! A regular cupid! You must understand,
+madam, I am a father myself--I have children of my own ... I could
+not restrain myself from delight! ..."
+
+But the lady turned her back upon him, took the girl by the hand
+and went with her into the COUPE, leaving Horizon shuffling his
+feet and muttering his compliments and apologies.
+
+Several times during the twenty-four hours Horizon would go into
+the third class, of two cars, separated from each other by almost
+the entire train. In one care were sitting three handsome women,
+in the society of a black-bearded, taciturn, morose man. Horizon
+and he would exchange strange phrases in some special jargon. The
+women looked at him uneasily, as though wishing, yet not daring,
+to ask him about something. Only once, toward noon, did one of
+them allow herself to utter:
+
+"Then that's the truth? That which you said about the place? ...
+You understand--I'm somewhat uneasy at heart!"
+
+"Ah, what do you mean, Margarita Ivanovna? If I said it, then it's
+right, just like by the National Bank. Listen, Lazer," he turned
+to him of the beard. "There will be a station right away. Buy the
+girls all sorts of sandwiches, whichever they may desire. The
+train stops here for twenty-five minutes."
+
+"I'd like to have bouillon," hesitatingly uttered a little blonde,
+with hair like ripened rye, and with eyes like corn-flowers.
+
+"My dear Bella, anything you please! At the station I'll go and
+see that they bring you bouillon with meat and even stuffed
+dumplings. Don't you trouble yourself, Lazer, I'll do all that
+myself."
+
+In another car he had a whole nursery garden of women, twelve or
+fifteen people, under the leadership of an old, stout woman, with
+enormous, awesome, black eyebrows. She spoke in a bass, while her
+fat chins, breasts, and stomachs swayed under a broad morning
+dress in time to the shaking of the car, just like apple jelly.
+Neither the old woman nor the young women left the least doubts as
+to their profession.
+
+The women were lolling on the benches, smoking, playing cards--at
+"sixty-six,"--drinking beer. Frequently the male public of the car
+provoked them, and they swore back in unceremonious language, in
+hoarse voices. The young people treated them with wine and
+cigarettes.
+
+Horizon was here altogether unrecognizable; he was majestically
+negligent and condescendingly jocose. On the other hand, cringing
+ingratiation sounded in every word addressed to him by his female
+clients. But he, having looked over all of them--this strange
+mixture of Roumanians, Jewesses, Poles and Russians--and having
+assured himself that all was in order, gave orders about the
+sandwiches and majestically withdrew. At these moments he very
+much resembled a drover, who is transporting by railroad cattle
+for slaughter, and at a station drops in to look it over and to
+feed it. After that he would return to his COUPE and again begin
+to toy with his wife, and Hebrew anecdotes just poured from his
+mouth.
+
+At the long stops he would go out to the buffet only to see about
+his lady clients. But he himself said to his neighbours:
+
+"You know, it's all the same to me if it's TREIF or KOSHER. I
+don't recognize any difference. But what can I do with my stomach!
+The devil knows what stuff they'll feed you sometimes at these
+stations. You'll pay some three or four roubles, and then you'll
+spend a hundred roubles on the doctors curing yourself. But maybe
+you, now, Sarochka"--he would turn to his wife--"maybe you'll get
+off at the station to eat something? Or shall I send it up to you
+here?"
+
+Sarochka, happy over his attention, would turn red, beam upon him
+with grateful eyes, and refuse.
+
+"You're very kind, Senya, only I don't want to. I'm full."
+
+Then Horizon would reach out of a travelling hamper a chicken,
+boiled meat, cucumbers, and a bottle of Palestine wine; have a
+snack, without hurrying, with appetite; regale his wife, who ate
+very genteelly, sticking out the little fingers of her magnificent
+white hands; then painstakingly wrap up the remnants in paper and,
+without hurrying, lay them away accurately in the hamper.
+
+In the distance, far ahead of the locomotive, the cupolas and
+belfries were already beginning to sparkle with fires of gold.
+Through the COUPE passed the conductor and made some imperceptible
+sign to Horizon. He immediately followed the conductor out to the
+platform.
+
+"The inspector will pass through right away," said the conductor,
+"so you'll please be so kind as to stand for a while here on the
+platform of the third class with your spouse."
+
+"NU, NU, NU!" concurred Horizon.
+
+"And the money as agreed, if you please."
+
+"How much is coming to you, then?"
+
+"Well, just as we agreed; half the extra charge, two roubles
+eighty kopecks."
+
+"What?" Horizon suddenly boiled over. "Two roubles eighty kopecks?
+You think you got it a crazy one in me, what? Here's a rouble for
+you and thank God for that!"
+
+"Pardon me, sir. This is even absurd--didn't you and I agree?"
+
+"Agree, agree! ... Here's a half more, and not a thing besides.
+What impudence! I'll tell the inspector yet that you carry people
+without tickets. Don't you think it, brother--you ain't found one
+of that sort here!"
+
+The conductor's eyes suddenly widened, became blood-shot.
+
+"O-oh! You sheeny!" he began to roar. "I ought to take a skunk
+like you and under the train with you!"
+
+But Horizon at once flew at him like a cock.
+
+"What? Under the train? But do you know what's done for words like
+that? A threat by action! Here, I'll go right away and will yell
+'help!' and will turn the signal handle," and he seized the door-
+knob with such an air of resolution that the conductor just made a
+gesture of despair with his hand and spat.
+
+"May you choke with my money, you mangy sheeny!"
+
+Horizon called his wife out of the COUPE:
+
+"Sarochka! Let's go out on the platform for a look; one can see
+better there. Well, it's so beautiful--just like on a picture!"
+
+Sarah obediently went after him, holding up with an unskilled hand
+the new dress, in all probability put on for the first time,
+bending out and as though afraid of touching the door or the wall.
+
+In the distance, in the rosy gala haze of the evening glow, shone
+the golden cupolas and crosses. High up on the hill the white,
+graceful churches seemed to float in this flowery, magic mirage.
+Curly woods and coppices had run down from above and had pushed on
+over the very ravine. And the sheer, white precipice which bathed
+its foot in the blue river, was all furrowed over with occasional
+young woods, just like green little veins and warts. Beautiful as
+in a fairy tale, the ancient town appeared as though it were
+itself coming to meet the train.
+
+When the train stopped, Horizon ordered three porters to carry the
+things into the first class, and told his wife to follow him. But
+he himself lingered at the exit in order to let through both his
+parties. To the old woman looking after the dozen women he threw
+briefly in passing:
+
+"So remember, madam Berman! Hotel America, Ivanukovskaya, twenty-
+two!"
+
+While to the black-bearded man he said:
+
+"Don't forget, Lazer, to feed the girls at dinner and to bring
+them somewhere to a movie show. About eleven o'clock at night wait
+for me. I'll come for a talk. But if some one will be calling for
+me extra, then you know my address--The Hermitage. Ring me up. But
+if I'm not there for some reason, then run into Reiman's cafe, or
+opposite, into the Hebrew dining room. I'll be eating GEFILTEH
+FISCH there. Well, a lucky journey!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+All the stories of Horizon about his commercial travelling were
+simply brazen and glib lying. All the samples of drapers' goods,
+suspenders gloire and buttons helios, the artificial teeth and
+insertible eyes, served only as a shield, screening his real
+activity--to wit, the traffic in the body of woman. True, at one
+time, some ten years ago, he had travelled over Russia as the
+representative for the dubious wines of some unknown firm; and
+this activity had imparted to his tongue that free-and-easy
+unconstraint for which, in general, travelling salesmen are
+distinguished. This former activity had, as well, brought him up
+against his real profession. In some way, while going to Rostov-
+on-the-Don, he had contrived to make a very young sempstress fall
+in love with him. This girl had not as yet succeeded in getting on
+the official lists of the police, but upon love and her body she
+looked without any lofty prejudices. Horizon, at that time
+altogether a green youth, amorous and light-minded, dragged the
+sempstress after him on his wanderings, full of adventures and
+unexpected things. After half a year she palled upon him
+dreadfully. She, just like a heavy burden, like a millstone, hung
+around the neck of this man of energy, motion and aggressiveness.
+In addition to that, there were the eternal scenes of jealousy,
+mistrust, the constant control and tears ... the inevitable
+consequences of long living together ... Then he began little by
+little to beat his mate. At the first time she was amazed, but
+from the second time quieted down, became tractable. It is known,
+that "women of love" never know a mean in love relations. They are
+either hysterical liars, deceivers, dissemblers, with a coolly-
+perverted mind and a sinuous dark soul; or else unboundedly self-
+denying, blindly devoted, foolish, naive animals, who know no
+bounds either in concessions or loss of self-esteem. The
+sempstress belonged to the second category, and Horizon was soon
+successful, without great effort, in persuading her to go out on
+the street to traffic in herself. And from that very evening, when
+his mistress submitted to him and brought home the first five
+roubles earned, Horizon experienced an unbounded loathing toward
+her. It is remarkable, that no matter how many women Horizon met
+after this--and several hundred of them had passed through his
+hands--this feeling of loathing and masculine contempt toward them
+would never forsake him. He derided the poor woman in every way,
+and tortured her morally, seeking out the most painful spots. She
+would only keep silent, sigh, weep, and getting down on her knees
+before him, kiss his hands. And this wordless submission irritated
+Horizon still more. He drove her away from him. She would not go
+away. He would push her out into the street; but she, after an
+hour or two, would come back shivering from cold, in a soaked hat,
+in the turned-up brims of which the rain-water splashed as in
+waterspouts. Finally, some shady friend gave Simon Yakovlevich the
+harsh and crafty counsel which laid a mark on all the rest of his
+life activity--to sell his mistress into a brothel. To tell the
+truth, in going into this enterprise, Horizon almost disbelieved
+at soul in its success. But contrary to his expectation, the
+business could not have adjusted itself better. The proprietress
+of an establishment (this was in Kharkov) willingly met his
+proposition half-way. She had known long and well Simon
+Yakovlevich, who played amusingly on the piano, danced splendidly,
+and set the whole drawing room laughing with his pranks; but
+chiefly, could, with unusually unabashed dexterity, make any
+carousing party "shell out the coin." It only remained to convince
+the mate of his life, and this proved the most difficult of all.
+She did not want to detach herself from her beloved for anything;
+threatened suicide, swore that she would burn his eyes out with
+sulphuric acid, promised to go and complain to the chief of
+police--and she really did know a few dirty little transactions of
+Simon Yakovlevich's that smacked of capital punishment. Thereupon
+Horizon changed his tactics. He suddenly became a tender,
+attentive friend, an indefatigable lover. Then suddenly he fell
+into black melancholy. The uneasy questionings of the woman he let
+pass in silence; at first let drop a word as though by chance;
+hinted in passing at some mistake of his life; and then began to
+lie desperately and with inspiration. He said that the police were
+watching him; that he could not get by the jail, and, perhaps,
+even hard labour and the gallows; that it was necessary for him to
+disappear abroad for several months. But mainly, what he persisted
+in especially strongly, was some tremendous fantastic business, in
+which he stood to make several hundred thousands of roubles. The
+sempstress believed and became alarmed with that disinterested,
+womanly, almost holy alarm, in which, with every woman, there is
+so much of something maternal. It was not at all difficult now to
+convince her that for Horizon to travel together with her
+presented a great danger for him; and that it would be better for
+her to remain here and to bide the time until the affairs of her
+lover would adjust themselves fortuitously. After that to talk her
+into hiding, as in the most trustworthy retreat, in a brothel,
+where she would be in full safety from the police and the
+detectives, was a mere nothing. One morning Horizon ordered her to
+dress a little better, curl her hair, powder herself, put a little
+rouge on her cheeks, and carried her off to a den, to his
+acquaintance. The girl made a favourable impression there, and
+that same day her passport was changed by the police to a so-
+called yellow ticket. Having parted with her, after long embraces
+and tears, Horizon went into the room of the proprietress and
+received his payment, fifty roubles (although he had asked for two
+hundred). But he did not grieve especially over the low price; the
+main thing was, that he had found his calling at last, all by
+himself, and had laid the cornerstone of his future welfare.
+
+Of course, the woman sold by him just remained forever so in the
+tenacious hands of the brothel. Horizon forgot her so thoroughly
+that after only a year he could not even recall her face. But who
+knows ... perhaps he merely pretended?
+
+Now he was one of the chief speculators in the body of woman in
+all the south of Russia. He had transactions with Constantinople
+and with Argentine; he transported, in whole parties, girls from
+the brothels of Odessa into Kiev; those from Kiev he brought over
+into Kharkov; and those from Kharkov into Odessa. He it was also
+who stuck away over second rate capital cities, and those
+districts which were somewhat richer, the goods which had been
+rejected or had grown too noticeable in the big cities. He had
+struck up an enormous clientele, and in the number of his
+consumers Horizon could have counted not a few people with a
+prominent social position: lieutenant governors, colonels of the
+gendarmerie, eminent advocates, well-known doctors, rich land-
+owners, carousing merchants. All the shady world--the
+proprietresses of brothels, cocottes solitaires, go-betweens,
+madams of houses of assignation, souteneurs, touring actresses and
+chorus girls--was as familiar to him as the starry sky to an
+astronomer. His amazing memory, which permitted him prudently to
+avoid notebooks, held in mind thousands of names, family names,
+nicknames, addresses, characteristics. He knew to perfection the
+tastes of all his highly placed consumers: some of them liked
+unusually odd depravity, others paid mad sums for innocent girls,
+for others still it was necessary to seek out girls below age. He
+had to satisfy both the sadistic and the masochistic inclinations
+of his clients, and at times to cater to altogether unnatural
+sexual perversions, although it must be said that the last he
+undertook only in rare instances which promised a large, undoubted
+profit. Two or three times he had to sit in jail, but these
+sessions went to his benefit; he not only did not lose his
+rapacious high-handedness and springy energy in his transactions,
+but with every year became more daring, inventive, and
+enterprising. With the years to his brazen impetuousness was
+joined a tremendous worldly business wisdom.
+
+Fifteen times, during this period, he had managed to marry and
+every time had contrived to take a decent dowry. Having possessed
+himself of his wife's money, he, one fine day, would suddenly
+vanish without a trace, and, if there was a possibility, he would
+sell his wife profitably into a secret house of depravity or into
+a chic public establishment. It would happen that the parents of
+the deluded victim would search for him through the police. But
+while inquiries would be carried on everywhere about him as
+Shperling, he would already be travelling from town to town under
+the name of Rosenblum. During the time of his activity, in despite
+of an enviable memory, he had changed so many names that he had
+not only forgotten what year he had been Nathanielson, and during
+what Bakalyar, but even his own name was beginning to seem to him
+one of his pseudonyms.
+
+It was remarkable, that he did not find in his profession anything
+criminal or reprehensible. He regarded it just as though he were
+trading in herrings, lime, flour, beef or lumber. In his own
+fashion he was pious. If time permitted, he would with assiduity
+visit the synagogue of Fridays. The Day of Atonement, Passover,
+and the Feast of the Tabernacles were invariably and reverently
+observed by him everywhere wherever fate might have cast him. His
+mother, a little old woman, and a hunch-backed sister, were left
+to him in Odessa, and he undeviatingly sent them now large, now
+small sums of money, not regularly but pretty frequently, from all
+towns from Kursk to Odessa and from Warsaw to Samara. Considerable
+savings of money had already accumulated to him in the Credit
+Lyonnaise, and he gradually increased them, never touching the
+interest. But to greed or avarice he was almost a stranger. He was
+attracted to the business rather by its tang, risk and a
+professional self-conceit. To the women he was perfectly
+indifferent, although he understood and could value them, and in
+this respect resembled a good chef, who together with a fine
+understanding of the business, suffers from a chronic absence of
+appetite. To induce, to entice a woman, to compel her to do all
+that he wanted, did not require any efforts on his part; they came
+of themselves to his call and became in his hands passive,
+obedient and yielding. In his treatment of them a certain firm,
+unshakable, self-assured aplomb had been worked out, to which they
+submitted just as a refractory horse submits instinctively to the
+voice, glance, stroking of an experienced horseman.
+
+He drank very moderately, and without company never drank. Toward
+eating he was altogether indifferent. But, of course, as with
+every man, he had a little weakness of his own: he was
+inordinately fond of dress and spent no little money on his
+toilet. Modish collars of all possible fashions, cravats, diamond
+cuff links, watch charms, the underwear of a dandy, and chic
+footwear constituted his main distractions.
+
+From the depot he went straight to The Hermitage. The hotel
+porters, in blue blouses and uniform caps, carried his things into
+the vestibule. Following them, he too entered, arm in arm with his
+wife; both smartly attired, imposing, but he just simply
+magnificent, in his wide, bell-shaped English overcoat, in a new
+broad-brimmed panama, holding negligently in his hand a small cane
+with a silver handle in the form of a naked woman.
+
+"You ain't supposed to be here without a permit for your
+residence," said an enormous, stout doorkeeper, looking down upon
+him from above and preserving on his face a sleepy and immovably-
+frigid expression.
+
+"Ach, Zachar! Again 'you ain't supposed to!'" merrily exclaimed
+Horizon, and patted the giant on his shoulder. "What does it mean,
+'you ain't supposed to'? Every time you shove this same 'you ain't
+supposed to' at me. I must be here for three days in all. Soon as
+I conclude the rent agreement with Count Ipatiev, right away I go
+away. God be with you! Live even all by yourself in all your
+rooms. But you just give a look, Zachar, what a toy I brought you
+from Odessa! You'll be just tickled with it!"
+
+With a careful, deft, accustomed movement he thrust a gold piece
+into the doorkeeper's hand, who was already holding it behind his
+back, ready and folded in the form of a little boat.
+
+The first thing that Horizon did upon installing himself in the
+large, spacious room with an alcove, was to put out into the
+corridor at the door of the room six pairs of magnificent shoes,
+saying to the bell-hop who ran up in answer to the bell:
+
+"Immediately all should be cleaned! So it should shine like a
+mirror! They call you Timothy, I think? Then you should know me--
+if you work by me it will never go for nothing. So it should shine
+like a mirror!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Horizon lived at the Hotel Hermitage for not more than three days
+and nights, and during this time he managed to see some three
+hundred people. His arrival seemed to enliven the big, gay port
+city. To him came the keepers of employment offices for servants,
+the proprietresses of cheap hotels, and old, experienced go-
+betweens, grown gray in the trade in women. Not so much out of an
+interest in booty as out of professional pride, Horizon tried, at
+all costs, to bargain for as much profit as possible, to buy a
+woman as cheaply as possible. Of course, to receive ten, fifteen
+roubles more was not the reason for him, but the mere thought that
+competitor Yampolsky would receive at the sale more than he
+brought him into a frenzy.
+
+After his arrival, the next day, he set off to Mezer the
+photographer, taking with him the straw-like girl Bella, and had
+pictures taken in various poses together with her; at which for
+every negative he received three roubles, while he gave the woman
+a rouble. After that he rode off to Barsukova.
+
+This was a woman, or, speaking more correctly, a retired wench,
+whose like can be found only in the south of Russia; neither a
+Pole nor a Little Russian; already sufficiently old and rich in
+order to allow herself the luxury of maintaining a husband (and
+together with him a cabaret), a handsome and kindly little Pole.
+Horizon and Barsukova met like old friends. They had, it seemed,
+no fear, no shame, no conscience when they conversed with each
+other.
+
+"Madam Barsukova! I can offer you something special! Three women:
+one a large brunette, very modest; another a little one, a blonde,
+but who, you understand, is ready for everything; the third is a
+woman of mystery, who merely smiles and doesn't say anything, but
+promises much and is a beauty!"
+
+Madam Barsukova was gazing at him with mistrust, shaking her head.
+
+"Mister Horizon! What are you trying to fill my head with? Do you
+want to do the same with me that you did last time?"
+
+"By God, I should live so, how I want to deceive you! But that's
+not the main thing. I'm also offering you a perfectly educated
+woman. Do with her what you like. In all probability you'll find a
+connoisseur."
+
+Barsukova smiled artfully and asked:
+
+"Again a wife?"
+
+"No. But she's of the nobility."
+
+"Then that means unpleasantnesses with the police again?"
+
+"Ach! My God! I don't take big money from you; all the three for a
+lousy thousand roubles."
+
+"Well, let's talk frankly; five hundred. I don't want to buy a cat
+in a bag."
+
+"It seems, Madam Barsukova, that it isn't the first time you and I
+have done business together, I won't deceive you and will bring
+her here right away. Only I beg you not to forget that you're my
+aunt, and please work in that direction. I won't be more than
+three days here in the city."
+
+Madam Barsukova, with all her breasts, bellies and chins, began to
+sway merrily.
+
+"We won't dicker over trifles. All the more so since you don't
+deceive me, nor I you. There's a great demand for women now. What
+would you say, Mister Horizon, if I offered you some red wine?"
+
+"Thank you, Madam Barsukova, with pleasure."
+
+"Let's talk a while like old friends. Tell me, how much do you
+make a year?"
+
+"Ach, madam, what shall I say? Twelve, twenty thousand,
+approximately. But think what tremendous expenses there are in
+constantly travelling."
+
+"Do you put away a little?"
+
+"Well, that's trifles; some two or three thousand a year."
+
+"I thought ten, twenty ..."
+
+Horizon grew wary. He sensed that he was beginning to be drawn out
+and asked insidiously:
+
+"But why does this interest you?"
+
+Anna Michailovna pressed the button of an electric bell and
+ordered the dressy maid to bring coffee with steamed cream and a
+bottle of Chambertaine. She knew the tastes of Horizon. Then she
+asked:
+
+"Do you know Mr. Shepsherovich?"
+
+Horizon simply pounced upon her.
+
+"My God! Who don't know Shepsherovich! This is a god, this is a
+genius!"
+
+And, having become animated, forgetting that he was being dragged
+into a trap, he began speaking exaltedly:
+
+"Just imagine what Shepsherovich did last year! He carried to
+Argentine thirty women from Kovno, Vilno, Zhitomir. Each one of
+them he sold at a thousand roubles--a total, madam--count it--of
+thirty thousand! Do you think Shepsherovich calmed down with this?
+For this money, in order to repay his expenses on the steamer, he
+bought several negresses and stuck them about in Moscow,
+Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov. But, you know, madam, this
+isn't a man, but an eagle. There's a man who can do business!"
+
+Barsukova caressingly laid her hand on his knee. She had been
+waiting for this moment and said to him amicably:
+
+"And so I propose to you, Mr.----however, I don't know how you are
+called now..."
+
+"Horizon, let's say..."
+
+"So I propose to you, Mr. Horizon--could you find some innocent
+girls among yours? There's an enormous demand for them now. I'm
+playing an open hand with you. We won't stop at money. Now it's in
+fashion. Notice, Horizon, your lady clients will be returned to
+you in exactly the same state in which they were. This, you
+understand, is a little depravity, which I can in no way make out
+..."
+
+Horizon cast down his eyes, rubbed his head, and said:
+
+"You see, I've a wife ... You've almost guessed it."
+
+"So. But why almost?"
+
+"I'm ashamed to confess, that she--how shall I say it ... she is
+my bride ..."
+
+Barsukova gaily burst into laughter.
+
+"You know, Horizon, I couldn't at all expect that you're such a
+nasty villain! Let's have your wife, it's all the same. But is it
+possible that you've really refrained?"
+
+"A thousand?" asked Horizon seriously.
+
+"Ah! What trifles; a thousand let's say. But tell me, will I be
+able to manage her?"
+
+"Nonsense!" said Horizon self-assuredly. "Let's again suppose that
+you're my aunt, and I leave my wife with you. Just imagine, Madam
+Barsukova, that this woman is in love with me like a cat. And if
+you'll tell her, that for my good she must do so and so and thus
+and thus--then there won't be no arguments!"
+
+Apparently, there was nothing more for them to talk over. Madam
+Barsukova brought out a promissory note, whereon she with
+difficulty wrote her name, her father's name, and her last name.
+The promissory note, of course, was fantastic; but there is a tie,
+a welding, an honour among thieves. In such deals people do not
+deceive. Death threatens otherwise. It is all the same, whether in
+prison, or on the street, or in a brothel.
+
+Right after that, just like an apparition out of a trapdoor,
+appeared the friend of her heart, the master of the cabaret, a
+young little Pole, with moustaches twirled high. They drank some
+wine, talked a bit about the fair, about the exposition,
+complained a little about bad business. After that Horizon
+telephoned to his room in the hotel, and called out his wife. He
+introduced her to his aunt and his aunt's second cousin, and said
+that mysterious political reasons were calling him out of town. He
+tenderly kissed Sarah, shed a tear, and rode away.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+With the arrival of Horizon (however, God knows how he was called:
+Gogolevich, Gidalevich, Okunev, Rosmitalsky), in a word, with the
+arrival of this man everything changed on Yamskaya Street.
+Enormous shufflings commenced. From Treppel girls were transferred
+to Anna Markovna, from Anna Markovna into a rouble establishment,
+and from the rouble establishment into a half-rouble one. There
+were no promotions: only demotions. At each change of place
+Horizon earned from five to a hundred roubles. Verily, he was
+possessed of an energy equal, approximately, to the waterfall of
+Imatra! Sitting in the daytime at Anna Markovna's, he was saying,
+squinting from the smoke of the cigarette, and swinging one leg
+crossed over the other:
+
+"The question is ... What do you need this same Sonka for? It's no
+place for her in a decent establishment. If we'll float her down
+the stream, then you'll make a hundred roubles for yourself, I
+twenty-five for myself. Tell me frankly, she isn't in demand, is
+she, now?"
+
+"Ah, Mr. Shatzky! You can always talk a person over! But just
+imagine, I'm sorry for her. Such a nice girl ..."
+
+Horizon pondered for a moment. He was seeking an appropriate
+citation and suddenly let out:
+
+"'Give the falling a shove!' [Footnote: Horizon is quoting a
+Nietzscheism of Gorky's.--TRANS.] And I'm convinced, Madam
+Shaibes, that there's no demand of any sort for her."
+
+Isaiah Savvich, a little, sickly, touchy old man, but in moments
+of need very determined, supported Horizon:
+
+"And that's very simple. There is really no demand of any sort for
+her. Think it over for yourself, Annechka; her outfit costs fifty
+roubles, Mr. Shatzky will receive twenty-five roubles, fifty
+roubles will be left for you and me. And, glory be to God, we have
+done with her! At least, she won't be compromising our
+establishment."
+
+In such a way Sonka the Rudder, avoiding a rouble establishment,
+was transferred into a half-rouble one, where all kinds of riff-
+raff made sport of the girls at their own sweet will, whole nights
+through. There tremendous health and great nervous force were
+requisite. Sonka once began shivering from terror, in the night,
+when Thekla, a mountain of a woman of some two hundred pounds,
+jumped out into the yard to fulfill a need of nature, and cried
+out to the housekeeper who was passing by her:
+
+"Housekeeper, dear! Listen--the thirty-sixth man! ... Don't
+forget!"
+
+Fortunately, Sonka was not disturbed much; even in this
+establishment she was too homely. No one paid any attention to her
+splendid eyes, and they took her only in those instances when
+there was no other at hand. The pharmacist sought her out and came
+every evening to her. But cowardice, or a special Hebrew
+fastidiousness, or, perhaps, even physical aversion, would not
+permit him to take the girl and carry her away with him from the
+house. He would sit whole nights through near her, and, as of
+yore, patiently waited until she would return from a chance guest;
+created scenes of jealousy for her and yet loved her still, and,
+sticking in the daytime behind the counter in his drug store and
+rolling some stinking pills or other, ceaselessly thought of her
+and yearned.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Immediately at the entrance to a suburban cabaret an artificial
+flower bed shone with vari-colored lights, with electric bulbs
+instead of flowers; and just such another fiery alley of wide,
+half-round arches, narrowing toward the end, led away from it into
+the depths of the garden. Further on was a broad, small square,
+strewn with yellow sand; to the left an open stage, a theatre, and
+a shooting gallery; straight ahead a stand for the military band
+(in the form of a seashell) and little booths with flowers and
+beer; to the right the long terrace of the restaurant. Electric
+globes from their high masts illuminated the small square with a
+pale, dead-white brightness. Against their frosted glass, with
+wire nets stretched over them, beat clouds of night moths, whose
+shadows--confused and large--hovered below, on the ground. Hungry
+women, too lightly, dressily, and fancifully attired, preserving
+on their faces an expression of care-free merriment or haughty,
+offended unapproachability, strolled back and forth in pairs, with
+a walk already tired and dragging.
+
+All the tables in the restaurant were taken--and over them floated
+the continuous noise of knives upon plates and a motley babel,
+galloping in waves. It smelt of rich and pungent kitchen fumes. In
+the middle of the restaurant, upon a stand, Roumanians in red
+frocks were playing; all swarthy, white-toothed, with the faces of
+whiskered, pomaded apes, with their hair licked down. The director
+of the orchestra, bending forward and affectedly swaying, was
+playing upon a violin and making unseemly sweet eyes at the
+public--the eyes of a man-prostitute. And everything together--
+this abundance of tiresome electric lights, the exaggeratedly
+bright toilettes of the ladies, the odours of modish, spicy
+perfumes, this ringing music, with willful slowings up of the
+tempo, with voluptuous swoonings in the transitions, with the
+tempestuous passages screwed up--everything fitted the one to the
+other, forming a general picture of insane and stupid luxury, a
+setting for an imitation of a gay, unseemly carouse.
+
+Above, around the entire hall, ran open galleries, upon which, as
+upon little balconies, opened the doors of the private cabinets.
+In one of these cabinets four were sitting--two ladies and two
+men; an artiste known to all Russia, the cantatrice Rovinskaya, a
+large, handsome woman, with long, green, Egyptian eyes, and a
+long, red, sensuous mouth, the lips of which were rapaciously
+drooping at the corners; the baroness Tefting, little, exquisite,
+pale--she was everywhere seen with the artiste; the famous lawyer
+Ryazanov; and Volodya Chaplinsky, a rich young man of the world, a
+composer-dilettante, the author of several darling little ballads
+and many witticisms upon the topics of the day, which circulated
+all over town.
+
+The walls of the cabinet were red, with a gold design. On the
+table, among the lighted candelabra, two white, tarred necks of
+bottles stuck up out of an electroplated vase, which had sweated
+from the cold, and the light in a tenuous gold played in the
+shallow goblets of wine. Outside, near the doors, a waiter was on
+duty, leaning against the wall; while the stout, tall, important
+maitre d'hotel, on whose right little finger, always sticking out,
+sparkled a huge diamond, would frequently stop at these doors, and
+attentively listen with one ear to what was going on in the
+cabinet.
+
+The baroness, with a bored, pale face, was listlessly gazing
+through a lorgnette down at the droning, chewing, swarming crowd.
+Among the red, white, blue and straw-coloured feminine dresses the
+uniform figures of the men resembled large, squat, black beetles.
+Rovinskaya negligently, yet at the same time intently as well, was
+looking down upon the stand and the spectators, and her face
+expressed fatigue, ennui, and perhaps also that satiation with all
+spectacles, which are such matters of course to celebrities. The
+splendid, long, slender fingers of her left hand were lying upon
+the crimson velvet of the box-seat. Emeralds of a rare beauty hung
+upon them so negligently that it seemed as though they would fall
+off at any second, and suddenly she began laughing.
+
+"Look" she said; "what a funny figure, or, to put it more
+correctly, what a funny profession! There, there, that one who's
+playing on a 'syrinx of seven reeds.'"
+
+Everyone looked in the direction of her hand. And really, the
+picture was funny enough. Behind the Roumanian orchestra was
+sitting a stout, whiskered man, probably the father, and perhaps
+even the grandfather, of a numerous family, and with all his might
+was whistling into seven little pipes glued together. As it was
+difficult for him, probably, to move this instrument between his
+lips, he therefore, with an unusual rapidity, turned his head now
+to the left, now to the right.
+
+"An amazing occupation," said Rovinskaya. "Well now, Chaplinsky,
+you try to toss your head about like that."
+
+Volodya Chaplinsky, secretly and hopelessly in love with the
+artiste, immediately began obediently and zealously to do this,
+but after half a minute desisted.
+
+"It's impossible," he said, "either long training, or, perhaps,
+hereditary abilities, are necessary for this."
+
+The baroness during this time was tearing away the petals of her
+rose and throwing them into a goblet; then, with difficulty
+suppressing a yawn, she said, making just the least bit of a wry
+face:
+
+"But, my God, how drearily they divert themselves in our K--!
+Look: no laughter, no singing, no dances. Just like some herd
+that's been driven here, in order to be gay on purpose!"
+
+Ryazanov listlessly took his goblet, sipped it a little, and
+answered apathetically in his enchanting voice:
+
+"Well, and is it any gayer in your Paris, or Nice? Why, it must be
+confessed--mirth, youth and laughter have vanished forever out of
+human life, and it is scarcely possible that they will ever
+return. One must regard people with more patience, it seems to me.
+Who knows, perhaps for all those sitting here, below, the present
+evening is a rest, a holiday?"
+
+"The speech for the defense," put in Chaplinsky in his calm
+manner.
+
+But Rovinskaya quickly turned around to the men, and her long
+emerald eyes narrowed. And this with her served as a sign of
+wrath, from which even crowned personages committed follies at
+times. However, she immediately restrained herself and continued
+languidly:
+
+"I don't understand what you are talking about. I don't understand
+even what we came here for. For there are no longer any spectacles
+in the world. Now I, for instance, have seen bull-fights in
+Seville, Madrid and Marseilles--an exhibition which does not evoke
+anything save loathing. I have also seen boxing and wrestling
+nastiness and brutality. I also happened to participate in a tiger
+hunt, at which I sat under a baldachin on the back of a big, wise
+white elephant ... in a word, you all know this well yourselves.
+And out of all my great, chequered, noisy life, from which I have
+grown old ..."
+
+"Oh, what are you saying, Ellena Victorovna!" said Chaplinsky with
+a tender reproach.
+
+"Abandon compliments, Volodya! I know myself that I'm still young
+and beautiful of body, but, really, it seems to me at times that I
+am ninety. So worn out has my soul become. I continue. I say, that
+during all my life only three strong impressions have sunk into my
+soul. The first, while still a girl, when I saw a cat stealing
+upon a cock-sparrow, and I with horror and with interest watched
+its movements and the vigilant gaze of the bird. Up to this time I
+don't know myself which I sympathized with more: the skill of the
+cat or the slipperiness of the sparrow. The cock-sparrow proved
+the quicker. In a moment he flew up on a tree and began from there
+to pour down upon the cat such sparrow swearing that I would have
+turned red for shame if I had understood even one word. While the
+cat, as though it had been wronged, stuck up its tail like a
+chimney and tried to pretend to itself that nothing out of the way
+had taken place. Another time I had to sing in an opera a duet
+with a certain great artist ..."
+
+"With whom?" asked the baroness quickly.
+
+"Isn't it all the same? Of what need names? And so, when he and I
+were singing, I felt all of me in the sway of genius. How
+wonderfully, into what a marvelous harmony, did our voices blend!
+Ah! It is impossible to describe this impression. Probably, it
+happens but once in a lifetime. According to the role, I had to
+weep, and I wept with sincere, genuine tears. And when, after the
+curtain, he walked up to me and patted my hair with his big warm
+hand and with his enchanting, radiant smile said, 'Splendid! for
+the first time in my life have I sung so' ... and so I--and I am a
+very proud being--I kissed his hand. And the tears were still
+standing in my eyes ..."
+
+"And the third?" asked the baroness, and her eyes lit up with the
+evil sparks of jealousy.
+
+"Ah, the third," answered the artiste sadly, "the third is as
+simple as simple can be. During the last season I lived at Nice,
+and so I saw Carmen on the open stage at Frejus with the
+anticipation of Cecile Ketten, who is now," the artiste earnestly
+made the sign of the cross, "dead--I don't really know,
+fortunately or unfortunately for herself?"
+
+Suddenly, in a moment, her magnificent eyes filled with tears and
+began to shine with a magic green light, such as the evening star
+gives forth, on warm summer twilights. She turned her face around
+to the stage, and for some time her long, nervous fingers
+convulsively squeezed the upholstery of the barrier of the box.
+But when she again turned around to her friends, her eyes were
+already dry, and the enigmatic, vicious and wilful lips were
+resplendent with an unconstrained smile.
+
+Then Ryazanov asked her politely, in a tender but purposely calm
+tone:
+
+"But then, Ellena Victorovna, your tremendous fame, admirers, the
+roar of the mob ... finally, that delight which you afford to your
+spectators. Is it possible that even this does not titillate your
+nerves?"
+
+"No, Ryazanov," she answered in a tired voice. "You know no less
+than myself what this is worth. A brazen interviewer, who needs
+passes for his friends, and, by the way, twenty-five roubles in an
+envelope. High school boys and girls, students and young ladies
+attending courses, who beg you for autographed photographs. Some
+old blockhead with a general's rank, who hums loudly with me
+during my aria. The eternal whisper behind you, when you pass by:
+'there she is, that same famous one!' Anonymous letters, the
+brazenness of back-stage habitues ... why, you can't enumerate
+everything! But surely, you yourself are often beset by female
+psychopathics of the court-room?"
+
+"Yes," said Ryazanov decisively.
+
+"That's all there is to it. But add to that the most terrible
+thing, that every time I have come to feel a genuine inspiration,
+I tormentingly feel on the spot the consciousness that I'm
+pretending and grimacing before people ... And the fear of the
+success of your rival? And the eternal dread of losing your voice,
+of straining it or catching a cold? The eternal tormenting bother
+of throat bandages? No, really, it is heavy to bear renown on
+one's shoulders."
+
+"But the artistic fame?" retorted the lawyer. "The might of
+genius! This, verily, is a true moral might, which is above the
+might of any king on earth!"
+
+"Yes, yes, of course you're right, my dear. But fame, celebrity,
+are sweet only at a distance, when you only dream about them. But
+when you have attained them you feel only their thorns. But then,
+with what anguish you feel every dram of their decrease. And I
+have forgotten to say something else. Why, we artists undergo a
+sentence at hard labour. In the morning, exercises; in the
+daytime, rehearsals; and then there's scarcely time for dinner and
+you're due for the performance. An hour or so for reading or such
+diversion as you and I are having now, may be snatched only by a
+miracle. And even so... the diversion is altogether of the
+mediocre..."
+
+She negligently and wearily made a slight gesture with the fingers
+of the hand lying on the barrier.
+
+Volodya Chaplinsky, agitated by this conversation, suddenly asked:
+
+"Yes, but tell me, Ellena Victorovna, what would you want to
+distract your imagination and ennui?"
+
+She looked at him with her enigmatic eyes and answered quietly,
+even a trifle shyly, it seemed:
+
+"Formerly, people lived more gaily and did not know prejudices of
+any sort. Well, it seems to me that then I would have been in my
+place and would have lived with a full life. O, ancient Rome!"
+
+No one understood her, save Ryazanov, who, without looking at her,
+slowly pronounced in his velvety voice, like that of an actor, the
+classical, universally familiar, Latin phrase:
+
+"Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!"
+
+"Precisely! I love you very much, Ryazanov, because you are a
+clever child. You will always catch a thought in its flight;
+although, I must say, that this isn't an especially high property
+of the mind. And really, two beings come together, the friends of
+yesterday, who had conversed with each other and eaten at the same
+table, and this day one of them must perish. You understand
+depart from life forever. But they have neither malice nor fear.
+There is the most real, magnificent spectacle, which I can only
+picture to myself!"
+
+"How much cruelty there is in you," said the baroness
+meditatively.
+
+"Well, nothing can be done about it now! My ancestors were
+cavaliers and robbers. However, shan't we go away now?"
+
+They all went out of the garden. Volodya Chaplinsky ordered his
+automobile called. Ellena Victorovna was leaning upon his arm. And
+suddenly she asked:
+
+"Tell me, Volodya, where do you usually go when you take leave of
+so-called decent women?"
+
+Volodya hemmed and hawed. However, he knew positively that he
+could not lie to Rovinskaya.
+
+"M-m-m ... I'm afraid of offending your hearing. To the Tzigani,
+for instance ... to night cabarets ..."
+
+"And somewhere else? Worse?"
+
+"Really, you put me in an awkward position. From the time that
+I've become so madly in love with you ..."
+
+"Leave out the romancingl"
+
+"Well, how shall I say it?" murmured Volodya, feeling that he was
+turning red, not only in the face, but with his body, his back.
+"Well, of course, to the women. Now, of course, this does not
+occur with me personally ..."
+
+Rovinskaya maliciously pressed Chaplinsky's elbow to her side.
+
+"To a brothel?"
+
+Volodya did not answer anything. Then she said:
+
+"And so, you'll carry us at once over there in the automobile and
+acquaint us with this existence, which is foreign to me. But
+remember, that I rely upon your protection."
+
+The remaining two agreed to this, unwillingly, in all probability;
+but there was no possibility of opposing Ellena Victorovna. She
+always did everything that she wanted to. And then they had all
+heard and knew that in Petersburg carousing worldly ladies, and
+even girls, permit themselves, out of a modish snobbism, pranks
+far worse than the one which Rovinskaya had proposed.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+On the way to Yamskaya Street Rovinskaya said to Chaplinsky:
+
+"You'll bring me at first into the most luxurious place, then into
+a medium one, and then into the filthiest."
+
+"My dear Ellena Victorovna," warmly retorted Chaplinsky, "I'm
+ready to do everything for you. It is without false boasting when
+I say that I would give my life away at your order, ruin my career
+and position at a mere sign of yours ... But I dare not bring you
+to these houses. Russian manners are coarse, and often simply
+inhuman manners. I'm afraid that you will be insulted by some
+pungent, unseemly word, or that a chance visitor will play some
+senseless prank before you ..."
+
+"Ah, my God," impatiently interrupted Rovinskaya; "when I was
+singing in London, there were many at that time paying court to
+me, and I did not hesitate to go and see the filthiest dens of
+Whitechapel in a choice company. I will say, that I was treated
+there very carefully and anticipatingly. I will also say, that
+there were with me at that time two English aristocrats; lords,
+both sportsmen, both people unusually strong physically and
+morally, who, of course, would never have allowed a woman to be
+offended. However, perhaps you, Volodya, are of the race of
+cowards?"
+
+Chaplinsky flared up:
+
+"Oh, no, no, Ellena Victorovna. I forewarned you only out of love
+for you. But if you command, then I'm ready to go where you will.
+Not only on this dubious undertaking, but even very death itself."
+
+By this time they had already driven up to the most luxurious
+establishment in the Yamkas--Treppel's. Ryazanov the lawyer said,
+smiling with his usual ironic smile:
+
+"And so, the inspection of the menagerie begins."
+
+They were led into a cabinet with crimson wall paper, and on the
+wall paper was repeated, in the "empire" style, a golden design in
+the form of small laurel wreaths. And at once Rovinskaya
+recognized, with the keen memory of an artiste, that exactly the
+same paper had also been in that cabinet in which they had just
+been sitting.
+
+Four German women from the Baltic provinces came out. All of them
+stout, full-breasted, blonde, powdered, very important and
+respectful. The conversation did not catch on at first. The girls
+sat immovable, like carvings of stone, in order to pretend with
+all their might that they were respectable ladies. Even the
+champagne, which Ryazanov called for, did not improve the mood.
+Rovinskaya was the first to come to the aid of the party. Turning
+to the stoutest, fairest German of all, who resembled a loaf, she
+asked politely in German:
+
+"Tell me, where were you born? Germany, in all probability?"
+
+"No, gnadige Frau, I am from Riga."
+
+"What compels you to serve here, then? Not poverty, I hope?"
+
+"Of course not, gnadige Frau. But, you understand, my bridegroom,
+Hans, works as a kellner in a restaurant-automat, and we are too
+poor to be married now. I bring my savings to a bank, and he does
+the same. When we have saved the ten thousand roubles we need, we
+will open our own beer-hall, and, if God will bless us, then we
+shall allow ourselves the luxury of having children. Two children.
+A boy and a girl."
+
+"But, listen to me, mein Fraulein!" Rovinskaya was amazed. "You
+are young, handsome, know two languages ..."
+
+"Three, madam," proudly put in the German. "I know Esthonian as
+well. I finished the municipal school and three classes of high
+school."
+
+"Well, then, you see, you see ..." Rovinskaya became heated. "With
+such an education you could always find a place with everything
+found, and about thirty roubles. Well, in the capacity of a
+housekeeper, bonne, senior clerk in a good store, a cashier, let's
+say ... And if your future bridegroom ... Fritz ..."
+
+"Hans, madam ..."
+
+"If Hans proved to be an industrious and thrifty man, then it
+would not be at all hard for you to get up on your feet
+altogether, after three or four years. What do you think?"
+
+"Ah, madam, you are a little mistaken. You have overlooked that,
+in the very best of positions, I, even denying myself in
+everything, will not be able to put aside more than fifteen,
+twenty roubles a month; whereas here, with a prudent economy, I
+gain up to a hundred roubles and at once carry them away with a
+book into the savings bank. And besides that, just imagine,
+gnadige Frau, what a humiliating position to be the servant in a
+house! Always to depend on the caprice or the disposition of the
+spirits of the masters! And the master always pesters you with
+foolishness. Pfui! .. And the mistress is jealous, picks, and
+scolds."
+
+"No ... I don't understand ..." meditatively drawled Rovinskaya,
+without looking the German in the eyes, but casting hers on the
+floor. "I've heard a great deal of your life here, in these ...
+what do you call them? .. these houses. They say it is something
+horrible. That you're forced to love the most repulsive, old and
+hideous men, that you are plucked and exploited in the most cruel
+manner ..."
+
+"Oh, never, madam ... Each one of us has an account book, wherein
+is written accurately the income and expense. During last month I
+earned a little more than five hundred roubles. As always, two-
+thirds went to the proprietress for board, quarters, fuel, light,
+linen ... There remains to me more than a hundred and fifty, it is
+not so? Fifty I spent on costumes and all sorts of trifles. A
+hundred I save. What exploitation is it, then, madam, I ask you?
+And if I do not like a man at all--true, there are some who are
+exceedingly nasty--I can always say I am sick, and instead of me
+will go one of the newest girls ..."
+
+"But then ... pardon me, I do not know your name ..."
+
+"Elsa."
+
+"They say, that you're treated very roughly ... beaten at times
+... compelled to do that which you don't want to and which is
+repulsive to you?"
+
+"Never, madam!" dropped Elsa haughtily. "We all live here as a
+friendly family of our own. We are all natives of the same land or
+relatives, and God grant that many should live so in their own
+families as we live here. True, on Yamskaya Street there happen
+various scandals and fights and misunderstandings. But that's
+there ... in these ... in the rouble establishments. The Russian
+girls drink a lot and always have one lover. And they do not think
+at all of their future."
+
+"You are prudent, Elsa," said Rovinskaya in an oppressed tone.
+"All this is well. But, what of the chance disease? Infection?
+Why, that is death? And how can you guess?"
+
+"And again--no, madam. I won't let a man into my bed before I make
+a detailed medical inspection of him ... I am guaranteed, at the
+least, against seventy-five per cent."
+
+"The devil!" suddenly exclaimed Rovinskaya with heat and hit the
+table with her fist. "But, then, what of your Albert ..."
+
+"Hans," the German corrected her meekly.
+
+"Pardon me ... Your Hans surely does not rejoice greatly over the
+fact that you are living here, and that you betray him every day?"
+
+Elsa looked at her with sincere, lively amazement.
+
+"But gnadige Frau ... I have never yet betrayed him! It is other
+lost wenches, especially Russian, who have lovers for themselves,
+on whom they spend their hard-earned money. But that I should ever
+let myself go as far as that? Pfui!"
+
+"A greater fall I have not imagined!" said Rovinskaya loudly and
+with aversion, getting up. "Pay gentlemen, and let's go on from
+here."
+
+When they had gone out into the street, Volodya took her arm and
+said in an imploring voice:
+
+"For God's sake, isn't one experiment enough for you?"
+
+"Oh, what vulgarity! What vulgarity!"
+
+"That's why I'm saying, let's drop this experiment."
+
+"No, in any case I am going through with it to the finish. Show me
+something simpler, more of the medium."
+
+Volodya Chaplinsky, who was all the time in a torment over Ellena
+Victorovna, offered the most likely thing--to drop into the
+establishment of Anna Markovna, which was only ten steps away.
+
+But it was just here that strong impressions awaited them. Simeon
+did not want to let them in, and only several gold pieces, which
+Ryazanov gave him, softened him. They took up a cabinet, almost
+the same as at Treppel's, only somewhat shabbier and more faded.
+At the command of Emma Edwardovna, the girls were herded into the
+cabinet. But it was the same as letting a goat into a truck-garden
+or mixing soda and acid. The main mistake, however, was that they
+let Jennka in there as well--wrathful, irritated, with impudent
+fires in her eyes. The modest, quiet Tamara was the last to walk
+in, with her shy and depraved smile of a Monna Lisa. In the end,
+almost the entire personnel of the establishment gathered in the
+cabinet. Rovinskaya no longer risked asking "How did you come to
+this life?" But it must be said, that the inmates of the house met
+her with an outward hospitality. Ellena Victorovna asked them to
+sing their usual canonical songs, and they willingly sang:
+
+    Monday now is come again,
+    They're supposed to get me out;
+    Doctor Krassov won't let me out,
+    Well, the devil take him then.
+
+And further:
+
+    Poor little, poor little, poor little me,
+    The public house is closed,
+    My head's aching me...
+
+    The love of a loafer
+    Is spice, is spice;
+    But the prostitute
+    Is as cold as ice.
+    Ha-ha-ha!
+
+    They came together
+    Matched as well as might be,
+    She is a prostitute,
+    A pickpocket he.
+    Ha-ha-ha!
+
+    Now morning has come,
+    He is planning a theft;
+    While she lies in her bed
+    And laughs like she's daft.
+    Ha-ha-ha!
+
+    Comes morning, the laddie
+    Is led to the pen;
+    But for the prostitute
+    His pals await then.
+    Ha-ha-ha! ...
+
+[Footnote: While there can be but little doubt that these four
+stanzas are an actual transcript from life, Heinrich Heine's "Ein
+Weib" is such a striking parallel that it may be reproduced here
+as a matter of interest. The translation is by Mr. Louis
+Untermeyer.--Trans.
+
+    A WOMAN
+
+    They loved each other beyond belief--
+    She was a strumpet, he was a thief;
+    Whenever she thought of his tricks, thereafter
+    She'd throw herself on the bed with laughter.
+
+    The day was spent with a reckless zest;
+    At night she lay upon his breast.
+    So when they took him, a while thereafter
+    She watched at the window--with laughter.
+
+    He sent word pleading "Oh come to me,
+    I need you, need you bitterly,
+    Yes, here and in the hereafter."
+    Her little head shook with laughter.
+
+    At six in the morning they swung him high;
+    At seven the turf on his grave was dry;
+    At eight, however, she quaffed her
+    Red wine and sang with laughter!]
+
+And still further a convict song:
+
+    I'm a ruined laddie,
+    Ruined for alway;
+    While year after year
+    The days go away.
+
+And also:
+
+    Don't you cry, my Mary,
+    You'll belong to me;
+    When I've served the army
+    I will marry thee.
+
+But here suddenly, to the general amazement, the stout Kitty,
+usually taciturn, burst into laughter. She was a native of Odessa.
+
+"Let me sing one song, too. It's sung by thieves and badger queens
+in the drink shops on our Moldavanka and Peresip."
+
+And in a horrible bass, in a rusty and unyielding voice, she began
+to sing, making the most incongruous gestures, but, evidently,
+imitating some cabaret cantatrice of the third calibre that she
+had sometime seen:
+
+    "Ah, I'll go to Dukovka,
+    Sit down at the table,
+    Now I throw my hat off,
+    Toss it under table.
+    Then I athk my dearie,
+    'What will you drink, sweet?'
+    But all the answer that she makes:
+    'My head aches fit to split.'
+    'I ain't a-athking you
+    What your ache may be,
+    But I am a-athking you
+    What your drink may be:
+    Will it be beer, or for wine shall I call,
+    Or for violet wine, or nothing else at all?'"
+
+And all would have turned out well, if suddenly Little White
+Manka, in only her chemise and in white lace drawers, had not
+burst into the cabinet. Some merchant, who the night before had
+arranged a paradisaical night, was carousing with her, and the
+ill-fated Benedictine, which always acted upon the girl with the
+rapidity of dynamite, had brought her into the usual quarrelsome
+condition. She was no longer "Little Manka" and "Little White
+Manka," but she was "Manka the Scandaliste." Having run into the
+cabinet, she suddenly, from unexpectedness, fell down on the
+floor, and, lying on her back, burst into such sincere laughter
+that all the rest burst out laughing as well. Yes. But this
+laughter was not prolonged ... Manka suddenly sat up on the floor
+and began to shout:
+
+"Hurrah! new wenches have joined our place!"
+
+This was altogether an unexpected thing. The baroness did a still
+greater tactlessness. She said:
+
+"I am a patroness of a convent for fallen girls, and therefore, as
+a part of my duty, I must gather information about you."
+
+But here Jennka instantly flared up:
+
+"Get out of here right away, you old fool! You rag! You floor mop!
+.. Your Magdalene asylums--they're worse than a prison. Your
+secretaries use us, like dogs carrion. Your fathers, husbands, and
+brothers come to us, and we infect them with all sorts of diseases
+... Purposely .. And they in their turn infect you. Your female
+superintendents live with the drivers, janitors and policemen,
+while we are put in a cell if we happen to laugh or joke a little
+among ourselves. And so, if you've come here as to a theatre, then
+you must hear the truth out, straight to your face."
+
+But Tamara calmly stopped her:
+
+"Stop, Jennie, I will tell them myself ... Can it be that you
+really think, baroness, that we are worse than the so-called
+respectable women? A man comes to me, pays me two roubles for a
+visit or five roubles for a night, and I don't in the least
+conceal this, from any one in the world ... But tell me, baroness,
+do you possibly know even one married lady with a family who isn't
+in secret giving herself up either for the sake of passion to a
+young man, or for the sake of money to an old one? I know very
+well that fifty percent of you are kept by lovers, while the
+remaining fifty, of those who are older, keep young lads. I also
+know that many--ah, how many!--of you cohabit with your fathers,
+brothers, and even sons, but these secrets you hide in some sort
+of a hidden casket. And that's all the difference between us. We
+are fallen, but we don't lie and don't pretend, but you all fall,
+and lie to boot. Think it over for yourself; now--in whose favour
+is this difference?"
+
+"Bravo, Tamarochka, that's the way to serve them!" shouted Manka,
+without getting up from the floor; dishevelled, fair, curly,
+resembling at this moment a thirteen-year-old girl.
+
+"Now, now!" urged Jennka as well, flashing with her flaming eyes.
+
+"Why not, Jennechka? I'll go further than that. Out of us
+scarcely, scarcely one in a thousand has committed abortion. But
+all of you several times over. What? Or isn't that the truth? And
+those of you who've done this, did it not out of desperation or
+cruel poverty, but you simply were afraid of spoiling your figure
+and beauty--that's your sole capital! Or else you've been seeking
+only beastly carnal pleasure, while pregnancy and feeding
+interfered with your giving yourself up to it!"
+
+Rovinskaya became confused and uttered in a quick whisper:
+
+"Faites attention, baronne, que dans sa position cette demoiselle
+est instruite." [Footnote: "Pay attention, baroness, the girl is
+rather educated for one of her position."]
+
+"Figurez-vous, que moi, j'ai aussi remarque cet etrange visage.
+Comme si je l'ai deja vu ... est-ce en reve? ... en demi-delire?
+Ou dans sa petite enfance?" [Footnote: "Just imagine, I, too, have
+remarked this strange face. But where have I seen it ... was it in
+a dream? ... in semi-delirium? Or in her early infancy?"]
+
+"Ne vous donnez pas la peine de chercher dans vos souvenirs,
+baronne," Tamara suddenly interposed insolently. "Je puis de suite
+vous venir aide. Rappelez-vous seulement Kharkoff, et la chambre
+d'hotel de Koniakine, l'entrepreneur Solovieitschik, et le tenor
+di grazzia ... A ce moment vous n'etiez pas encore m-me la baronne
+de ... [Footnote: "Don't trouble to strain your memory, baroness.
+I will come to your aid at once. Just recall Kharkov, a room in
+Koniakine's hotel, the theatrical manager, Solovieitschik, and a
+certain lyrical tenor ... At that time you were not yet baroness
+de ..."] However, let's drop the French tongue ... You were a
+common chorus girl and served together with me."
+
+"Mais, dites-moi, au nom de dieu, comment vous trouvez vous ici,
+Mademoiselle Marguerite." [Footnote: "But tell me, in God's name,
+how you have come to be here, Mademoiselle Marguerite?"]
+
+"Oh, they ask us about that every day. I just up and came to be
+here ..."
+
+And with an inimitable cynicism she asked:
+
+"I trust you will pay for the time which we have passed with you?"
+
+"No, may the devil take you!" suddenly shouted out Little White
+Manka, quickly getting up from the rug.
+
+And suddenly, pulling two gold pieces out of her stocking, she
+flung them upon the table.
+
+"There, you! .. I'm giving you that for a cab. Go away right now,
+otherwise I'll break up all the mirrors and bottles here..."
+
+Rovinskaya got up and said with sincere, warm tears in her eyes:
+
+"Of course, we'll go away, and the lesson of Mlle. Marguerite will
+prove of benefit to us. Your time will be paid for--take care of
+it, Volodya. Still, you sang so much for us, that you must allow
+me to sing for you as well."
+
+Rovinskaya went up to the piano, took a few chords, and suddenly
+began to sing the splendid ballad of Dargomyzhsky:
+
+    "We parted then with pride--
+    Neither with sighs nor words
+    Proffered I thee reproach of jealousy ...
+    We went apart for aye,
+    Yet only if with thee
+    I might but chance to meet! ..
+    Ah, that with thee I might but chance to meet!
+
+    "I weep not nor complain--
+    To fate I bend my knee...
+    I know not, if you loved,
+    So greatly wronging me?
+    Yet only if with thee
+    I might but chance to meet! ...
+    Ah, that with thee I might but chance to meet!"
+
+This tender and passionate ballad, executed by a great artiste,
+suddenly reminded all these women of their first love; of their
+first fall; of a late leave-taking at a dawn in the spring, in the
+chill of the morning, when the grass is gray from the dew, while
+the red sky paints the tips of the birches a rosy colour; of last
+embraces, so closely entwined, and of the unerring heart's
+mournful whispers: "No, this will not be repeated, this will not
+be repeated!" And the lips were then cold and dry, while the damp
+mist of the morning lay upon the hair.
+
+Silence seized Tamara; silence seized Manka the Scandaliste; and
+suddenly Jennka, the most untamable of all the girls, ran up to
+the artiste, fell down on her knees, and began to sob at her feet.
+
+And Rovinskaya, touched herself, put her arms around her head and
+said:
+
+"My sister, let me kiss you!"
+
+Jennka whispered something into her ear.
+
+"Why, that's a silly trifle," said Rovinskaya. "A few months of
+treatment and it will all go away."
+
+"No, no, no ... I want to make all of them diseased. Let them all
+rot and croak."
+
+"Ah, my dear," said Rovinskaya, "I would not do that in your
+place."
+
+And now Jennka, the proud Jennka began kissing the knees and hands
+of the artiste and was saying:
+
+"Then why have people wronged me so? ... Why have they wronged me
+so? Why? Why? Why?"
+
+Such is the might of genius!
+
+The only might which takes into its beautiful hands not the abject
+reason, but the warm soul of man! The self-respecting Jennka was
+hiding her face in Rovinskaya's dress; Little White Manka was
+sitting meekly on a chair, her face covered with a handkerchief;
+Tamara, with elbow propped on her knee and head bowed on the palm
+of her hand, was intently looking down, while Simeon the porter,
+who had been looking in against any emergency, only opened his
+eyes wide in amazement.
+
+Rovinskaya was quietly whispering into Jennka's very ear:
+
+"Never despair. Sometimes things fall out so badly that there's
+nothing for it but to hang one's self--but, just look, to-morrow
+life has changed abruptly. My dear, my sister, I am now a world
+celebrity. But if you only knew what seas of humiliation and
+vileness I have had to wade through! Be well, then, my dear, and
+believe in your star."
+
+She bent down to Jennka and kissed her on the forehead. And never
+afterwards could Volodya Chaplinsky, who had been watching this
+scene with a painful tension, forget those warm and beautiful
+rays, which at this moment kindled in the green, long, Egyptian
+eyes of the artiste.
+
+The party departed gloomily, but Ryazanov lingered behind for a
+minute.
+
+He walked up to Jennka, respectfully and gently kissed her hand,
+and said:
+
+"If possible, forgive our prank ... This, of course, will not be
+repeated. But if you ever have need of me, I am always at your
+service. Here is my visiting card. Don't stick it out on your
+bureau; but remember, that from this evening on I am your friend."
+
+And, having kissed Jennka's hand once more, he was the last to go
+down the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+On Thursday, since very morning, a ceaseless, fine drizzle had
+begun to fall, and so the leaves of the chestnuts, acacias, and
+poplars had at once turned green. And, suddenly, it became somehow
+dreamily quiet and protractedly tedious. Pensive and monotonous.
+
+During this all the girls had gathered, as usual, in Jennka's
+room. But something strange was going on within her. She did not
+utter witticisms, did not laugh, did not read, as always, her
+usual yellow-back novel which was now lying aimlessly either on
+her breast or stomach; but was vicious, wrapped up in sadness, and
+in her eyes blazed a yellow fire that spoke of hatred. In vain did
+Little White Manka, Manka the Scandaliste, who adored her, try to
+turn her attention to herself--Jennka seemed not to notice her,
+and the conversation did not at all get on. It was depressing. But
+it may have been that the August drizzle, which had steadily set
+in for several weeks running, reacted upon all of them. Tamara sat
+down on Jennka's bed, gently embraced her, and, having put her
+mouth near her very ear, said in a whisper:
+
+"What's the matter, Jennechka? I've seen for a long time that
+something strange is going on in you. And Manka feels that too.
+Just see, how she's wasted without your caressing. Tell me.
+Perhaps I'll be able to help you in some way?"
+
+Jennka closed her eyes and shook her head in negation. Tamara
+moved away from her a little, but continued to stroke her shoulder
+gently.
+
+"It's your affair, Jennechka. I daren't butt into your soul. I
+only asked because you're the only being who..."
+
+Jennka with decision suddenly jumped out of bed, seized Tamara by
+the hand and said abruptly and commandingly:
+
+"All right! Let's get out of here for a minute. I'll tell you
+everything. Girls, wait for us a little while."
+
+In the light corridor Jennka laid her hands on the shoulders of
+her mate and with a distorted, suddenly blanched face, said:
+
+"Well, then, listen here: some one has infected me with syphilis."
+
+"Oh, my poor darling. Long?"
+
+"Long. Do you remember, when the students were here? The same ones
+who started a row with Platonov? I found out about it for the
+first time then. I found out in the daytime."
+
+"Do you know," quietly remarked Tamara, "I almost guessed about
+this, and particularly then, when you went down on your knees
+before the singer and talked quietly about something with her. But
+still, my dear Jennechka, you must attend to yourself."
+
+Jennka wrathfully stamped her foot and tore in half the batiste
+handkerchief which she had been nervously crumpling in her hands.
+
+"No! Not for anything! I won't infect any one of you. You may have
+noticed yourself, that during the last weeks I don't dine at the
+common table, and that I wash and wipe the dishes myself. That's
+why I'm trying to break Manka away from me, whom, you know, I love
+sincerely, in the real way. But these two-legged skunks I infect
+purposely, infect every evening, ten, fifteen of them. Let them
+rot, let them carry the syphilis on to their wives, mistresses,
+mothers--yes, yes, their mothers also, and their fathers, and
+their governesses, and even their grand-grandmothers. Let them all
+perish, the honest skunks!"
+
+Tamara carefully and tenderly stroked Jennka's head. "Can it be
+that you'll go the limit, Jennechka?"
+
+"Yes. And without any mercy. All of you, however, don't have to be
+afraid of me. I choose the man myself. The stupidest, the
+handsomest, the richest and the most important, but not to one of
+you will I let them go afterward. Oh! I make believe I'm so
+passionate before them, that you'd burst out laughing if you saw.
+I bite them, I scratch, I cry and shiver like an. insane woman.
+They believe it, the pack of fools."
+
+"It's your affair, it's your affair, Jennechka," meditatively
+uttered Tamara, looking down. "Perhaps you're right, at that. Who
+knows? But tell me, how did you get away from the doctor?"
+
+Jennka suddenly turned away from her, pressed her face against the
+angle of the window frame and suddenly burst into bitter, searing
+tears--the tears of wrath and vengefulness--and at the same time
+she spoke, gasping and quivering:
+
+"Because ... because ... Because God has sent me especial luck: I
+am sick there where, in all probability, no doctor can see. And
+ours, besides that, is old and stupid..."
+
+And suddenly, with some unusual effort of the will Jennka stopped
+her tears just as unexpectedly as she had started crying.
+
+"Come to me, Tamarochka," she said. "Of course, you won't chatter
+too much?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+And they returned into Jennka's room, both of them calm and
+restrained.
+
+Simeon walked into the room. He, contrary to his usual brazenness,
+always bore himself with a shade of respect toward Jennka. Simeon
+said:
+
+"Well, now, Jennechka, their Excellency has come to Vanda. Allow
+her to go away for ten minutes."
+
+Vanda, a blue-eyed, light blonde, with a large red mouth, with the
+typical face of a Lithuanian, looked imploringly at Jennka. If
+Jennka had said "No" she would have remained in the room, but
+Jennka did not say anything and even shut her eyes deliberately.
+Vanda obediently went out of the room.
+
+This general came accurately twice a month, every two weeks (just
+as to Zoe, another girl, came daily another honoured guest,
+nicknamed the Director in the house).
+
+Jennka suddenly threw the old, tattered book behind her. Her brown
+eyes flared up with a real golden fire.
+
+"You're wrong in despising this general," said she. "I've known
+worse Ethiopians. I had a certain guest once--a real blockhead. He
+couldn't make love to me otherwise than ... otherwise than ...
+well, let's say it plainly: he pricked me with pins in the breast
+... While in Vilno a Polish Catholic priest used to come to me. He
+would dress me all in white, compel me to powder myself, lay me
+down on the bed. He'd light three candles near me. And then, when
+I seemed to him altogether like a dead woman, he'd throw himself
+upon me."
+
+Little White Manka suddenly exclaimed:
+
+"It's the truth you're telling, Jennka! I had a certain old
+bugger, too. He made me pretend all the time that I was an
+innocent girl, so's I'd cry and scream. But, Jennechka, though
+you're the smartest one of us, yet I'll bet you won't guess who he
+was ..."
+
+"The warden of a prison?"
+
+"A fire chief."
+
+Suddenly Katie burst into laughter in her bass:
+
+"Well, now, I had a certain teacher. He taught some kind of
+arithmetic, I disremember which. He always made me believe, that I
+was the man, and he the woman, and that I should do it to him ...
+by force ... And what a fool! Just imagine, girls, he'd yell all
+the time: 'I'm your woman! I'm all yours! Take me! Take me!'"
+
+"Loony!" said the blue-eyed, spry Verka in a positive and
+unexpectedly contralto voice: "Loony."
+
+"No, why?" suddenly retorted the kindly and modest Tamara. "Not
+crazy at all, but simply, like all men, a libertine. At home it's
+tiresome for him, while here for his money he can receive whatever
+pleasure he desires. That's plain, it seems?"
+
+Jennka, who had been silent up to now, suddenly, with one quick
+movement sat up in bed.
+
+"You're all fools!" she cried. "Why do you forgive them all this?
+Before I used to be foolish myself, too, but now I compel them to
+walk before me on all fours, compel them to kiss my soles, and
+they do this with delight ... You all know, girlies, that I don't
+love money, but I pluck the men in whatever way I can. They, the
+nasty beasts, present me with the portraits of their wives,
+brides, mothers, daughters ... However, you've seen, I think, the
+photographs in our water-closet? But now, just think of it, my
+children ... A woman loves only once, but for always, while a man
+loves like a he-greyhound... That he's unfaithful is nothing; but
+he never has even the commonest feeling of gratitude left either
+for the old, or the new, mistress. I've heard it said, that now
+there are many clean boys among the young people. I believe this,
+though I haven't seen, haven't met them, myself. But all those I
+have seen are all vagabonds, nasty brutes and skunks. Not so long
+ago I read some novel of our miserable life. It's almost the same
+thing as I'm telling you now."
+
+Vanda came back. She slowly, carefully, sat down on the edge of
+Jennka's bed; there, where the shadow of the lamp fell. Out of
+that deep, though deformed psychical delicacy, which is peculiar
+to people sentenced to death, prisoners at hard labour, and
+prostitutes, none had the courage to ask her how she had passed
+this hour and a half. Suddenly she threw upon the table twenty-
+five roubles and said:
+
+"Bring me white wine and a watermelon."
+
+And, burying her face in her arms, which had sunk on the table,
+she began to sob inaudibly. And again no one took the liberty of
+putting any question to her. Only Jennka grew pale from wrath and
+bit her lower lip so that a row of white spots was left upon it.
+
+"Yes," she said; "here, now, I understand Tamara. You hear,
+Tamara, I apologize before you. I've often laughed over your being
+in love with your thief Senka. But here, now, I'll say that of all
+the men the most decent is a thief or a murderer. He doesn't hide
+the fact that he loves a girlie, and, if need be, will commit a
+crime for her--a theft or a murder. But these--the rest of them!
+All lying, falsehood, petty cunning, depravity on the sly. The
+nasty beast has three families, a wife and five children. A
+governess and two children abroad. The eldest daughter from the
+first marriage, and a child by her. And this everybody, everybody
+in town knows, save his little children. And even they, perhaps,
+guess it and whisper among themselves. And, just imagine, he's a
+respected person, honoured by the whole world ... My children, it
+seems we've never had occasion to enter into confidences with each
+other, and yet I'll tell you, that I when I was ten and a half,
+was sold by my own mother in the city of Zhitomir to Doctor
+Tarabukin. I kissed his hands, implored him to spare me, I cried
+out to him: 'I'm little!' But he'd answer me: 'That's nothing,
+that's nothing: you'll grow up.' Well, of course, there was pain,
+aversion, nastiness ... And he afterwards spread it around as a
+current anecdote. The desperate cry of my soul."
+
+"Well, as long as we do speak, let's speak to the end," suddenly
+and calmly said Zoe, and smiled negligently and sadly. "I was
+deprived of innocence by a teacher in the ministerial school, Ivan
+Petrovich Sus. He simply called me over to his rooms, and his wife
+at that time had gone to market for a suckling pig--it was
+Christmas. Treated me with candies, and then said it was going to
+be one of two things: either I must obey him in everything, or
+he'd at once expel me out of school for bad conduct. But then you
+know yourselves, girls, how we feared the teachers. Here they
+aren't terrible to us, because we do with them whatever we want--
+but at that time! For then he seemed to us greater than Czar and
+God."
+
+"And me a stewdent. He was teaching the master's boys in our
+place. There, where I was a servant ..."
+
+"No, but I ..." exclaimed Niura, but, turning around unexpectedly,
+remained as she was with her mouth open. Looking in the direction
+of her gaze, Jennka had to wring her hands. In the doorway stood
+Liubka, grown thin, with dark rings under her eyes, and, just like
+a somnambulist, was searching with her hand for the door-knob, as
+a point of support.
+
+"Liubka, you fool, what's the matter with you?' yelled Jennka
+loudly. "What is it?"
+
+"Well, of course, what: he took and chased me out."
+
+No one said a word. Jennka hid her eyes with her hands and started
+breathing hard, and it could be seen how under the skin of her
+cheeks the taut muscles of the jaws were working.
+
+"Jennechka, all my hope is only in you," said Liubka with a deep
+expression of weary helplessness. "Everybody respects you so. Talk
+it over, dearie, with Anna Markovna or with Simeon ... Let them
+take me back."
+
+Jennka straightened up on the bed, fixed Liubka with her dry,
+burning, yet seemingly weeping eyes, and asked brokenly:
+
+"Have you eaten anything to-day?"
+
+"No. Neither yesterday, nor to-day. Nothing."
+
+"Listen, Jennechka," asked Vanda quietly, "suppose I give her some
+white wine? And Verka meanwhile will run to the kitchen for meat?
+What?"
+
+"Do as you know best. Of course, that's all right. And give a
+look, girlies, why, she's all wet. Oh, what a booby! Well! Lively!
+Undress yourself! Little White Manka, or you, Tamarochka, give her
+dry drawers, warm stockings and slippers. Well, now," she turned
+to Liubka, "tell us, you idiot, all that happened to you!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+On that early morning when Lichonin so suddenly, and, perhaps,
+unexpectedly even to himself, had carried off Liubka from the gay
+establishment of Anna Markovna it was the height of summer. The
+trees still remained green, but in the scent of the air, the
+leaves, and the grass there was already to be felt, as though from
+afar, the tender, melancholy, and at the same time bewitching
+scent of the nearing autumn. With wonder the student gazed at the
+trees, so clean, innocent and quiet, as though God, imperceptibly
+to men, had planted them about here at night; and the trees
+themselves were looking around with wonder upon the calm blue
+water, that still seemed slumbering in the pools and ditches and
+under the wooden bridge thrown across the shallow river; upon the
+lofty, as though newly washed sky, which had just awakened, and,
+in the glow of dawn, half asleep, was smiling with a rosy, lazy,
+happy smile in greeting to the kindling sun.
+
+The heart of the student expanded and quivered; both from the
+beauty of the beatific morning, and from the joy of existence, and
+from the sweet air, refreshing his lungs after the night, passed
+without sleep, in a crowded and smoke-filled compartment. But the
+beauty and loftiness of his own action moved him still more.
+
+Yes, he had acted like a man, like a real man, in the highest
+sense of that word! Even now he is not repenting of what he had
+done. It's all right for them (to whom this "them" applied,
+Lichonin did not properly understand even himself), it's all right
+for them to talk about the horrors of prostitution; to talk,
+sitting at tea, with rolls and sausage, in the presence of pure
+and cultured girls. But had any one of his colleagues taken some
+actual step toward liberating a woman from perdition? Eh, now? And
+then there is also--the sort that will come to this same Sonechka
+Marmeladova, will tell her all sorts of taradiddles, describe all
+kinds of horrors to her, butt into her soul, until he brings her
+to tears; and right off will start in crying himself and begin to
+console her, embrace her, pat her on the head, kiss her at first
+on the cheek, then on the lips; well, and everybody knows what
+happens next! Faugh! But with him, with Lichonin, the word and the
+deed were never at odds.
+
+He clasped Liubka around the waist, and looked at her with kindly,
+almost loving, eyes; although, the very same minute, he himself
+thought that he was regarding her as a father or a brother.
+
+Sleep was fearfully besetting Liubka; her eyes would close, and
+she with an effort would open them wide, so as not to fall asleep
+again; while on her lips lay the same naive, childish, tired
+smile, which Lichonin had noticed still there, in the cabinet. And
+out of one corner of her mouth ran a thin trickle of saliva.
+
+"Liubka, my dear! My darling, much-suffering woman! Behold how
+fine it is all around! Lord! Here it's five years that I haven't
+seen the sunrise. Now play at cards, now drinking, now I had to
+hurry to the university. Behold, my dearest, over there the dawn
+has burst into bloom. The sun is near! This is your dawn,
+Liubochka! This is your new life beginning. You will fearlessly
+lean upon my strong arm. I shall lead you out upon the road of
+honest toil, on the way to a brave combat with life, face to face
+with it!"
+
+Liubka eyed him askance. "There, the fumes are still playing in
+his head," she thought kindly. "But that's nothing--he's kind and a
+good sort. Only a trifle homely." And, having smiled with a half-
+sleepy smile, she said in a tone of capricious reproach:
+
+"Ye--es! You'll fool me, never fear. All of you men are like that.
+You just gain yours at first, to get your pleasure, and then--no
+attention whatsoever!"
+
+"I? Oh? That I should do this!" Lichonin exclaimed warmly and even
+smote himself on the chest with his free hand. "Then you know me
+very badly! I'm too honest a man to be deceiving a defenseless
+girl. No! I'll exert all my powers and all my soul to educate your
+mind, to widen your outlook, to compel your poor heart, which has
+suffered so, to forget all the wounds and wrongs which life has
+inflicted upon it. I will be a father and a brother to you! I
+shall safeguard your every step! And if you will come to love
+somebody with a truly pure, holy love, then I shall bless that day
+and hour when I had snatched you out of this Dantean hell!"
+
+During the continuation of this flaming tirade the old cabby with
+great significance, although silently, began laughing, and from
+this inaudible laughter his back shook. Old cabbies hear very many
+things, because to the cabby, sitting in front, everything is
+readily audible, which is not at all suspected by the conversing
+fares; and many things do the old cabbies know of that which takes
+place among people. Who knows, perhaps he had heard more than once
+even more disordered, more lofty speeches?
+
+It seemed to Liubka for some reason that Lichonin had grown angry
+at her, or that he was growing jealous beforehand of some
+imaginary rival. He was declaiming with entirely too much noise
+and agitation. She became perfectly awake, turned her face to
+Lichonin with wide open, uncomprehending, and at the same time
+submissive eyes, and slightly touched his right hand, lying on her
+waist, with her fingers.
+
+"Don't get angry, my sweetie. I'll never exchange you for another.
+Here's my word of honour, honest to God! My word of honour, that I
+never will! Don't you think I feel you're wanting to take care of
+me? Do you think I don't understand? Why, you're such an
+attractive, nice little young fellow. There, now, if you were an
+old man and homely..."
+
+"Ah! You haven't got the right idea!" shouted Lichonin, and again
+in high-flown style began to tell her about the equal rights of
+women, about the sacredness of toil, about human justice, about
+freedom, about the struggle against reigning evil.
+
+Of all his words Liubka understood exactly not a one. She still
+felt herself guilty of something and somehow shrank all up, grew
+sad, bowed her head and became quiet. A little more and she, in
+all probability, would have burst out crying in the middle of the
+street; but fortunately, they by this time had driven up to the
+house where Lichonin was staying.
+
+"Well, here we are at home," said the student. "Stop, driver!"
+
+And when he had paid him, he could not refrain from declaiming
+with pathos, his hand extended theatrically straight before him:
+
+    "And into my house, calm and fearless,
+     As its full mistress walk thou in!"
+
+And again the unfathomable, prophetic smile wrinkled the aged
+brown face of the cabby.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+The room in which Lichonin lived was situated on the fifth story
+and a half. And a half, because there are such five, six, and
+seven-story profitable houses, packed to overflowing and cheap, on
+top of which are erected still other sorry bug-breeders of roof
+iron, something in the nature of mansards; or more exactly, bird-
+houses, in which it is fearfully cold in winter, while in the
+summer time it is just as torrid as in the tropics. Liubka with
+difficulty clambered upward. It seemed to her that now, now, two
+steps more, and she would drop straight down on the steps and fall
+into a sleep from which nothing would be able to wake her. But
+Lichonin was saying all the time:
+
+"My dear! I can see you are tired. But that's nothing. Lean upon
+me. We are going upwards all the time! Always higher and higher!
+Is this not a symbol of all human aspirations? My comrade, my
+sister, lean upon my arm!"
+
+Here it became still worse for poor Liubka. As it was, she could
+barely go up alone, but here she also had to drag in tow Lichonin,
+who had grown extremely heavy. And his weight would not really
+have mattered; his wordiness, however, was beginning to irritate
+her little by little. So irritates at times the ceaseless,
+wearisome crying, like a toothache, of an infant at breast; the
+piercing whimpering of a canary; or someone whistling without
+pause and out of tune in an adjoining room.
+
+Finally, they reached Lichonin's room. There was no key in the
+door. And, as a rule, it was never even locked with a key.
+Lichonin pushed the door and they entered. It was dark in the
+room, because the window curtains were lowered. It smelt of mice,
+kerosene, yesterday's vegetable soup, long-.used bed linen, stale
+tobacco smoke. In the half-dusk some one who could not be seen was
+snoring deafeningly and with variations.
+
+Lichonin raised the shade. There were the usual furnishings of a
+poor student: a sagging, unmade bed with a crumpled blanket; a
+lame table, and on it a candlestick without a candle; several
+books on the floor and on the table; cigarette stubs everywhere;
+and opposite the bed, along the other wall, an old, old divan,
+upon which at the present moment was sleeping and snoring, with
+mouth wide open, some young man with black hair and moustache. The
+collar of his shirt was unbuttoned and through its opening could
+be seen the chest and black hair, the like of which for thickness
+and curliness could be found only on Persian lambs.
+
+"Nijeradze! Hey, Nijeradze, get up!" cried Lichonin and prodded
+the sleeper in the ribs. "Prince!"
+
+"M-m-m..."
+
+"May your race be even accursed in the person of your ancestors
+and descendants! May they even be exiled from the heights of the
+beauteous Caucasus! May they even never behold the blessed
+Georgia! Get up, you skunk! Get up you Aravian dromedary!
+Kintoshka! ..."
+
+But suddenly, unexpectedly for Lichonin, Liubka intervened. She
+took him by the arm and said timidly:
+
+"Darling, why torture him? Maybe he wants to sleep, maybe he's
+tired? Let him sleep a bit. I'd better go home. Will you give me a
+half for a cabby? To-morrow you'll come to me again. Isn't that
+so, sweetie?"
+
+Lichonin was abashed. So strange did the intervention of this
+silent, apparently sleepy girl, appear to him. Of course, he did
+not grasp that she was actuated by an instinctive, unconscious
+pity for a man who had not had enough sleep; or, perhaps, a
+professional regard for the sleep of other people. But the
+astonishment was only momentary. For some reason he became
+offended. He raised the hand of the recumbent man, which hung down
+to the floor, with the extinguished cigarette still remaining
+between its fingers, and, shaking it hard, he said in a serious,
+almost severe voice:
+
+"Listen, now, Nijeradze, I'm asking you seriously. Understand,
+now, may the devil take you that I'm not alone, but with a woman.
+Swine!"
+
+It was as though a miracle had happened: the lying man suddenly
+jumped up, as though some spring of unusual force had
+instantaneously unwound under him. He sat down on the divan,
+rapidly rubbed with his palms his eyes, forehead, temples; saw the
+woman, became confused at once, and muttered, hastily buttoning
+his blouse:
+
+"Is that you, Lichonin? And here I was waiting and waiting for you
+and fell asleep. Request the unknown comrade to turn away for just
+a minute."
+
+He hastily pulled on his gray, everyday student's coat, and
+rumpled up with all the fingers of both his hands his luxuriant
+black curls. Liubka, with the coquetry natural to all women, no
+matter in what years or situation they find themselves, walked up
+to the sliver of a mirror hanging on the wall, to fix her hair-
+dress. Nijeradze askance, questioningly, only with the movement of
+his eyes, indicated her to Lichonin.
+
+"Never mind. Don't pay any attention," answered the other aloud.
+"But let's get out of here, however. I'll tell you everything
+right away. Excuse me, Liubochka, it's only for a minute. I'll
+come back at once, fix you up, and then evaporate, like smoke."
+
+"But don't trouble yourself," replied Liubka: "it'll be all right
+for me here, right on this divan. And you fix yourself up on the
+bed."
+
+"No, that's no longer like a model, my angel! I have a colleague
+here. And so I'll go to him to sleep. I'll return in just a
+minute."
+
+Both students went out into the corridor.
+
+"What meaneth this dream?" asked Nijeradze, opening wide his
+oriental, somewhat sheepish eyes. "Whence this beauteous child,
+this comrade in a petticoat?"
+
+Lichonin shook his head with great significance and made a wry
+face. Now, when the ride, the fresh air, the morning, and the
+business-like, everyday, accustomed setting had entirely sobered
+him, he was beginning to experience within his soul an indistinct
+feeling of a certain awkwardness, needlessness of this sudden
+action; and at the same time something in the nature of an
+unconscious irritation both against himself and the woman he had
+carried off. He already had a presentiment of the onerousness of
+living together, of a multiplicity of cares, unpleasantnesses and
+expenses; of the equivocal smiles or even simply the unceremonious
+questionings of comrades; finally, of the serious hindrance during
+the time of government examinations. But, having scarcely begun
+speaking with Nijeradze, he at once became ashamed of his
+pusillanimity, and having started off listlessly, towards the end
+he again began to prance on his heroic steed.
+
+"Do you see, prince," he said, in his confusion twisting a button
+of his comrade's coat and without looking in his eyes, "you've
+made a mistake. This isn't a comrade in a petticoat, but ...
+simply, I was just now with my colleagues ... that is, I wasn't,
+but just dropped in for a minute with my friends into the Yamkas,
+to Anna Markovna ..."
+
+"With whom?" asked Nijeradze, becoming animated.
+
+"Well, isn't it all the same to you, prince? There was Tolpygin,
+Ramses, a certain sub-professor--Yarchenko--Borya Sobashnikov, and
+others ... I don't recall. We had been boat-riding the whole
+evening, then dived into a publican's, and only after that, like
+swine, started for the Yamkas. I, you know, am a very abstemious
+man. I only sat and soaked up cognac, like a sponge, with a
+certain reporter I know. Well, all the others fell from grace
+however. And so, toward morning, for some reason or other, I went
+all to pieces. I got so sad and full of pity from looking at these
+unhappy women. I also thought, now, of how our sisters enjoy our
+regard, love, protection; how our mothers are surrounded with
+reverent adoration. Just let some one say one rude word to them,
+shove them, offend them; we are ready to chew his throat off!
+Isn't that the truth?"
+
+"M-m? ..." drawled out the Georgian, half questioningly, half
+expectantly, and squinted his eyes to one side.
+
+"Well, then I thought: why, now, any blackguard, any
+whippersnapper, any shattered ancient can take any one of these
+women to himself for a minute or for a night, as a momentary whim;
+and indifferently, one superfluous time more--the thousand and
+first--profane and defile in her that which is the most precious
+in a human being--love... Do you understand--revile, trample it
+underfoot, pay for the visit and walk away in peace, his hands in
+his pockets, whistling. But the most horrible of all is that all
+this has come to be a habit with them; it's all one to her, and
+it's all one to him. The feelings have dulled, the soul has
+dimmed. That's so, isn't it? And yet, in every one of them
+perishes both a splendid sister and a sainted mother. Eh? Isn't
+that the truth?"
+
+"N-na? ...." mumbled Nijeradze and again shifted his eyes to one
+side.
+
+"And so I thought: wherefore words and superfluous exclamations!
+To the devil with hypocritical speeches during conventions. To the
+devil with abolition, regulation (suddenly, involuntarily, the
+recent words of the reporter came to his mind), Magdalene asylums
+and all these distributions of holy books in the establishments!
+Here, I'll up and act as a really honest man, snatch a girl out of
+this slough, implant her in real firm soil, calm her, encourage
+her, treat her kindly."
+
+"H-hm!" grunted Nijeradze with a grin.
+
+"Eh, prince! You always have salacious things on your mind. For
+you understand that I'm not talking about a woman, but about a
+human being; not about flesh, but about a soul."
+
+"All right, all right, me soul, go on!"
+
+"Futhermore, as I thought, so did I act. I took her to-day from
+Anna Markovna's and brought her for the present to me. And later--
+whatever God may grant. I'll teach her in the beginning to read,
+and write; then open up for her a little cook-shop, or a grocery
+store, let's say. I think that the comrades won't refuse to help
+me. The human heart, prince, my brother--every heart--is in need
+of cordiality, of warmth. And lo and behold! in a year, in two, I
+will return to society a good, industrious, worthy member, with a
+virgin soul, open to all sorts of great possibilities... For she
+has given only her body, while her soul is pure and innocent."
+
+"Tse, tse, tse," the prince smacked his tongue.
+
+"What does this mean, you Tifflissian he-mule?"
+
+"And will you buy her a sewing machine?"
+
+"Why a sewing machine, in particular? I don't understand."
+
+"It's always that way in the novels, me soul. Just as soon as the
+hero has saved the poor, but lost, creature, he at once sets up a
+sewing machine for her."
+
+"Stop talking nonsense," Lichonin waved him away angrily with his
+hand. "Clown!"
+
+The Georgian suddenly grew heated, his black eyes began to
+sparkle, and immediately Caucasian intonations could be heard in
+his voice.
+
+"No, not nonsense, me soul. It's one of two things here, and it'll
+all end in one and the same result. Either you'll get together
+with her and after five months chuck her out on the street; and
+she'll return to the brothel or take to walking the street. That's
+a fact! Or else you won't get together with her, but will begin to
+load her up with manual or mental labours and will try to develop
+her ignorant, dark mind; and she from tedium will run away from
+you, and will again find herself either walking the street, or in
+a brothel. That's a fact, too! However, there is still a third
+combination. You'll be vexing yourself about her like a brother,
+like the knight Lancelot, but she, secretly from you, will fall in
+love with another. Me soul, believe me, that wooman, when she is a
+wooman, is always--a wooman. And the other will play a bit with
+her body, and after three months chuck her out into the street or
+into a brothel."
+
+Lichonin sighed deeply. Somewhere deep--not in his mind, but in
+the hidden, almost unseizable secret recesses of his
+consciousness--something resembling the thought that Nijeradze was
+right flashed through him. But he quickly gained control of
+himself, shook his head, and, stretching out his hand to the
+prince, uttered triumphantly:
+
+"I promise you, that after half a year you'll take your words
+back, and as a mark of apology, you Erivanian billy goat, you
+Armavirian egg-plant, you'll stand me to a dozen of Cakhetine
+wine."
+
+"Va! That's a go!" the prince struck Lichonin's hand with his palm
+with all his might. "With pleasure. But if it comes out as I say--
+then you do it."
+
+"Then I do it. However, AU REVOIR, prince. Whom are you lodging
+with?"
+
+"Right here, in this corridor, at Soloviev's. But you, of course,
+like a mediaeval knight, will lay a two-edged sword between
+yourself and the beauteous Rosamond? Yes?"
+
+"Nonsense! I did want to pass the night at Soloviev's myself. But
+now I'll go and wander about the streets a bit and turn in into
+somebody's; to Zaitzevich or Strump. Farewell, prince!"
+
+"Wait, wait!" Nijeradze called him, when he had gone a few steps.
+"I have forgotten to tell you the main thing: Partzan has tripped
+up!"
+
+"So that's how?" wondered Lichonin, and at once yawned long,
+deeply and with enjoyment.
+
+"Yes. But there's nothing dreadful; only the possession of some
+illegal brochures and stuff. He won't have to sit for more than a
+year."
+
+"That's nothing; he's a husky lad, he can stand it."
+
+"He's husky, all right" confirmed the prince.
+
+"Farewell!"
+
+"AU REVOIR, knight Grunwaldus!"
+
+"AU REVOIR, you Carbidinian stallion."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Lichonin was left alone. In the half-dark corridor it smelt of
+kerosene fumes from the guttering little tin lamp, and of the
+odour of stagnant bad tobacco. The daylight dully penetrated only
+near the top, from two small glass frames, let in the roof at both
+ends of the corridor.
+
+Lichonin found himself in that simultaneously weakened and
+elevated mood which is so familiar to every man who has happened
+to be thoroughly sleepless for a long time. It was as though he
+had gone out of the limitations of everyday human life, and this
+life had become to him distant and of indifference; but at the
+same time his thoughts and emotions obtained a certain peaceful
+clarity and apathetic distinctness, and there was a tedious and
+languishing allurement in this crystal Nirvanah.
+
+He stood near his room, leaning against the wall, and seemed to
+see, feel, and hear how near him and below him were sleeping
+several score of people; sleeping with the last, fast morning
+sleep, with open mouths, with measured deep breathing, with a
+wilted pallor on their faces, glistening from sleep; and through
+his head flashed the thought, remote yet familiar since childhood,
+of how horrible sleeping people are--far more horrible than dead
+people. Then he remembered about Liubka. His subterranean,
+submerged, mysterious "I" rapidly, rapidly whispered that he ought
+to drop into the room, and see if the girl were all right, as well
+as make certain dispositions about tea in the morning; but he made
+believe to himself that he was not at all even thinking of this,
+and walked out into the street.
+
+He walked, looking closely at everything that met his eyes, with
+an idle and exact curiosity new to him; and every feature was
+drawn for him in relief to such a degree that it seemed to him as
+though he were feeling it with his fingers... There a peasant
+woman passed by. Over her shoulder is a yoke staff, while at each
+end of the yoke is a large pail of milk; her face is not young,
+with a net of fine wrinkles on the temples and with two deep
+furrows from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth; but her
+cheeks are rosy, and, probably, hard to the touch, while her hazel
+eyes radiate a sprightly peasant smile. From the movement of the
+heavy yoke and from the smooth walk her hips sway rhythmically now
+to the left, now to the right, and in their wave-like movements
+there is a coarse, sensual beauty.
+
+"A mischievous dame, and she's lived through a checkered life,"
+reflected Lichonin. And suddenly, unexpectedly to himself, he had
+a feeling for, and irresistibly desired, this woman, altogether
+unknown to him, homely and not young; in all probability dirty and
+vulgar, but still resembling, as it seemed to him, a large
+Antonovka [Footnote: Somewhat like a Spitzbergen, but a trifle
+rounder.--Trans.] apple which had fallen to the ground-somewhat
+bored by a worm, and which had lain just a wee bit too long, but
+which has still preserved its bright colour and its fragrant,
+winey aroma.
+
+Getting ahead of her, an empty, black, funereal catafalque whirled
+by; with two horses in harness, and two tied behind to the little
+rear columns. The torch-bearers and grave-diggers, already drunk
+since morning, with red, brutish faces, with rusty opera hats on
+their heads, were sitting in a disorderly heap on their uniform
+liveries, on the reticular horse-blankets, on the mourning
+lanterns; and with rusty, hoarse voices were roaring out some
+incoherent song. "They must be hurrying to a funeral procession;
+or, perhaps, have even finished it already," reflected Lichonin;
+"merry fellows!" On the boulevard he came to a stop and sat down
+on a small wooden bench, painted green. Two rows of mighty
+centenarian chestnuts went away into the distance, merging
+together somewhere afar into one straight green arrow. The prickly
+large nuts were already hanging on the trees. Lichonin suddenly
+recalled that at the very beginning of the spring he had been
+sitting on this very boulevard, and at this very same spot. Then
+it had been a calm, gentle evening of smoky purple, soundlessly
+falling into slumber, just like a smiling, tired maiden. Then the
+stalwart chestnuts, with their foliage--broad at the bottom and
+narrow toward the top--had been strewn all over with clusters of
+blossoms, growing with bright, rosy, thin cones straight to the
+sky; just as though some one by mistake had taken and fastened
+upon all the chestnuts, as upon lustres, pink Christmas-tree
+candles. And suddenly, with extraordinary poignancy--every man
+sooner or later passes through this zone of inner emotion--
+Lichonin felt, that here are the nuts ripening already, while then
+there had been little pink blossoming candles, and that there
+would be many more springs and many blossoms, but the one which
+had passed no one and nothing had the power to bring back. Sadly
+gazing into the depths of the retreating dense alley, he suddenly
+noticed that sentimental tears were making his eyes smart.
+
+He got up and went on farther, looking closely at everything that
+he met with an incessant, sharpened, and at the same time calm
+attention, just as though he were looking at the God-created world
+for the first time. A gang of stone masons went past him on the
+pavement, and all of them were reflected in his inner vision with
+an exaggerated vividness and brilliance of colour, just as though
+on the frosted glass of a camera obscura. The foreman, with a red
+beard, matted to one side, and with blue austere eyes; and a
+tremendous young fellow, whose left eye was swollen, and who had a
+spot of a dark-blue colour spreading from the forehead to the
+cheekbone and from the nose to the temple; and a young boy with a
+naive, country face, with a gaping mouth like a fledgling's, weak,
+moist; and an old man who, having come late, was running after the
+gang at a funny, goat-like trot; and their clothes, soiled with
+lime, their aprons and their chisels--all this flickered before
+him in an inanimate file--a colourful, motley, but dead
+cinematographic film.
+
+He had to cut across the New Kishenevsky Market. Suddenly the
+savoury, greasy odour of something roasted compelled him to
+distend his nostrils. Lichonin recalled that he had not eaten
+anything since noon yesterday, and at once felt hunger. He turned
+to the right, into the centre of the market.
+
+In the days of his starvings--and he had had to experience them
+more than once--he would come here to the market, and for the
+pitiful coppers, gotten with difficulty, would buy himself bread
+and fried sausage. This was in winter, oftenest of all. The
+huckstress, wrapped up in a multiplicity of clothes, usually sat
+upon a pot of coals for warmth; while before her, on the iron
+dripping-pan, hissed and crackled the thick, home-made sausage,
+cut into pieces a quarter of a yard in length, plentifully
+seasoned with garlic. A piece of sausage usually cost ten kopecks,
+the bread two kopecks.
+
+There were very many folk at market to-day. Even at a distance,
+edging his way to the familiar, loved stall, Lichonin heard the
+sounds of music. Having made his way through the crowd, which in a
+solid ring surrounded one of the stalls, he saw a naive and
+endearing sight, which may be seen only in the blessed south of
+Russia. Ten or fifteen huckstresses, during ordinary times gossips
+of evil tongue and addicted to unrestrainable swearing,
+inexhaustible in its verbal diversity, but now, evidently,
+flattering and tender cronies, had started celebrating even since
+last evening; had caroused the whole night through and now had
+carried their noisy merrymaking out to the market. The hired
+musicians--two fiddles, a first and a second, and a tambourine--
+were strumming a monotonous but a lively, bold, daring and cunning
+tune. Some of the wives were clinking glasses and kissing each
+other, pouring vodka over one another; others poured it out into
+glasses and over the tables; others still, clapping their palms in
+time with the music, oh'd, squealed, and danced, squatting in one
+place. And in the middle of the ring, upon the cobbles of the
+pavement, a stout woman of about forty-five, but still handsome,
+with red, fleshy lips, with humid, intoxicated, seemingly unctuous
+eyes, merrily sparkling from under the high bows of black,
+regular, Little Russian eyebrows, was whirling around and stamping
+out a tattoo on one spot. All the beauty and all the art of her
+dance consisted in that she would now bow her little head and look
+out provokingly from under her eyebrows, then suddenly toss it
+back and let her eyelashes down and spread her hands out at her
+sides; and also in that in measure with the dance her enormous
+breasts swayed and quivered under her red calico waist. During the
+dance she was singing, now shuffling her heels, now the toes, of
+her goat-skin shoes:
+
+    "The fiddle's playing on the street,
+    You can hear its bass so sweet;
+    My mother has me locked up neat,
+    My waitin' dearie I can't meet."
+
+That was the very country-wife whom Lichonin knew; the self-same
+who not only had had him for a client during hard times, but had
+even extended him credit. She suddenly recognized Lichonin, darted
+to him, embraced him, squeezed him to her bosom and kissed him
+straight on his lips with her moist, warm, thick lips. Then she
+spread her arms out wide, smote one palm against the other,
+intertwined her fingers, and sweetly, as only Podolian wives can
+do it, began to coo:
+
+"My little master, my little silver gold trove, my lovie! You
+forgive a drunken wife like me, now. Well, what of it? I've gone
+op a spree!" She then darted at him in an attempt to kiss his
+hand. "But then, I know you ain't proud, like other gentry. Well,
+give me your hand, dearie-dear; why, I want to kiss your little
+hand! No, no, no! I athk, I athk you! ..." "Well, now, that's
+nonsense, Aunt Glycera!" Linchonin interrupted her, unexpectedly
+becoming animated. "Let's best kiss just so, now. Your lips are
+just too sweet!"
+
+"Ah, my little sweetheart! My little bright sun, my little apple
+of paradise, you," Glycera waxed tender, "give me your lips, then!
+Give me your little lips to buss, then! ..."
+
+She pressed him warmly to her gigantean bosom and again slavered
+over him with her moist, warm, Hottentot lips. After that, she
+seized him by his sleeve, brought him out into the middle of the
+ring, and began to walk around him with a stately, mincing step,
+having bent her waist coquettishly and vociferating:
+
+    "Oh, each to his taste, I want Paraska more,
+    For I've a divel in my pants
+    Her skirt holds somethin' for!"
+
+And then suddenly she passed on, sustained by the musicians, to a
+most rollicking, Little Russian, thumping GOPAK dance:
+
+    "Oh, Chook, that is too much,
+    You have soiled your apron too much.
+    Well, Prisko, don't you fret,
+    Wipe it off, then, if you're wet!
+    TRALALA, TRALALA ...
+
+    Sleeps, Khima, and won't stir
+    That a Kossack sleeps with her,
+    You feel all, Khima--why deceive?
+    Just to yourself you make believe.
+    TAI, TAI, TRALALAI..."'
+
+Lichonin, completely grown merry, suddenly began jumping like a
+goat about her, just like a satellite around a whirling planet--
+long-legged, long-armed, stooping and altogether incongruous. His
+entrance was greeted by a general but pretty friendly neighing. He
+was made to sit down at the table, was helped to vodka and
+sausage. He, for his part, sent a tramp he knew after beer, and,
+glass in hand, delivered three absurd speeches: one about the
+self-determination of Ukraine; another about the goodness of
+Little Russian sausage, in connection with the beauty and
+domesticity of the women of Little Russia; and the third, for some
+reason, about trade and industry in the south of Russia. Sitting
+alongside of Lukeriya, he was all the time trying to embrace her
+around the waist, and she did not oppose this. But even his long
+arms could not encompass her amazing waist. However, she clasped
+his hand powerfully under the table, until it hurt, with her
+enormous, soft hand, as hot as fire.
+
+At this moment among the huckstresses, who up to now had been
+tenderly kissing, certain old, unsettled quarrels and grievances
+flickered up. Two of the wives, bending toward each other just
+like roosters ready to enter battle, their arms akimbo, were
+pouring upon each other the most choice, out-of-the-way oaths:
+
+"Fool, stiff, daughter of a dog!" one was yelling. "Youse ain't
+fit to kiss me right here." And, turning her back around to her
+foe, she loudly slapped herself below the spine. "Right here!
+Here!"
+
+While the other, infuriated, squealed in answer:
+
+"You lie, you slut, for I am fit, I am fit!"
+
+Lichonin utilized the minute. As though he had just recalled
+something, he hurriedly jumped up from the bench and called out:
+
+"Wait for me, Aunty Luckeriya, I'll come in three minutes!" and
+dived through the living ring of spectators.
+
+"Master! Master!" his neighbour cried after him: "Come back the
+quickest you can, now! I've one little word to say to you."
+
+Having turned the corner, he for some time racked his head trying
+to recall what it was that he absolutely had to do, now, this very
+minute. And again, in the very depths of his soul, he knew just
+what he had to do, but he procrastinated confessing this to his
+own self. It was already a clear, bright day, about nine or ten
+o'clock. Janitors were watering the streets with rubber hose.
+Flower girls were sitting on the squares and near the gates of the
+boulevards, with roses, stock-gillyflowers and narcissi. The
+radiant, gay, rich southern town was beginning to get animated.
+Over the pavement jolted an iron cage filled with dogs of every
+possible colour, breed, and age. On the coach box were sitting two
+dog-catchers, or, as they deferentially style themselves, "the
+king's dog-catchers"--i. e., hunters of stray dogs--returning home
+with this morning's catch.
+
+"She must be awake by now," Lichonin's secret thought finally took
+form; "but if she isn't yet awake, then I'll quietly lie down on
+the divan and sleep a little."
+
+In the corridor the dying kerosene lamp emitted a dim light and
+smoked as before, and the watery, murky half-light penetrated into
+the narrow, long box. The door of the room had remained unlocked,
+after all. Lichonin opened it without a sound and entered.
+
+The faint, blue half-light poured in through the interstices
+between the blinds and the windows. Lichonin stopped in the middle
+of the room and with an intensified avidity heard the quiet,
+sleeping breathing of Liubka. His lips became so hot and dry that
+he had to lick them incessantly. His knees began to tremble.
+
+"Ask if she needs anything," suddenly darted through his head.
+
+Like a drunkard, breathing hard, with mouth open, staggering on
+his shaking legs, he walked up to the bed.
+
+Liubka was sleeping on her back, with one bare arm stretched out
+along the body, and the other on her breast. Lichonin bent nearer,
+to her very face. She was breathing evenly and deeply. This
+breathing of her young, healthy body was, despite sleep, pure and
+almost aromatic. He cautiously ran his fingers over her bare arm
+and stroked her breast a little below the clavicle. "What am I
+doing?" his reason suddenly cried out within him in terror; but
+some one else answered for Lichonin: "But I'm not doing anything.
+I only want to ask if she's sleeping comfortably, and whether she
+doesn't want some tea."
+
+But Liubka suddenly awoke, opened her eyes, blinked them for a
+moment and opened them again. She gave a long, long stretch, and
+with a kindly, not yet fully reasoning smile, encircled Lichonin's
+neck with her warm, strong arm.
+
+"Sweetie! Darling!" caressingly uttered the woman in a crooning
+voice, somewhat hoarse from sleep. "Why, I was waiting for you and
+waiting, and even became angry. And after that I fell asleep and
+all night long saw you in my sleep. Come to me, my baby, my lil'
+precious!" She drew him to her, breast against breast.
+
+Lichonin almost did not resist; he was all atremble, as from a
+chill, and meaninglessly repeating in a galloping whisper with
+chattering teeth:
+
+"No, now, Liuba, don't ... Really, don't do that, Liuba ... Ah,
+let's drop this, Liuba ... Don't torture me. I won't vouch for
+myself ... Let me alone, now, Liuba, for God's sake! ..."
+
+"My-y little silly!" she exclaimed in a laughing, joyous voice.
+"Come to me, my joy!"--and, overcoming the last, altogether
+insignificant opposition, she pressed his mouth to hers and kissed
+him hard and warmly--kissed him sincerely, perhaps for the first
+and last time in her life.
+
+"Oh, you scoundrel! What am I doing?" declaimed some honest,
+prudent, and false body in Lichonin.
+
+"Well, now? Are you eased up a bit?" asked Liubka kindly, kissing
+Lichonin's lips for the last time. "Oh, you, my little student! ..."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and
+Liubka, and, it would seem, toward all the world, Lichonin without
+undressing flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan
+and even gnashed his teeth from the smarting shame. Sleep would
+not come to him, while his thoughts revolved around this fool
+action--as he himself called the carrying off of Liubka,--in which
+an atrocious vaudeville had been so disgustingly intertwined with
+a deep drama. "It's all one," he stubbornly repeated to himself.
+"Once I have given my promise, I'll see the business through to
+the end. And, of course, that which has occurred just now will
+never, never be repeated! My God, who hasn't fallen, giving in to
+a momentary laxity of the nerves? Some philosopher or other has
+expressed a deep, remarkable truth, when he affirmed that the
+value of the human soul may be known by the depth of its fall and
+the height of its flight. But still, the devil take the whole of
+this idiotical day and that equivocal reasoner--the reporter
+Platonov, and his own--Lichonin's--absurd outburst of chivalry!
+Just as though, in reality, this had not taken place in real life,
+but in Chernishevski's novel, What's to be done? And how, devil
+take it, with what eyes will I look upon her tomorrow?"
+
+His head was on fire; his eyelids were smarting, his lips dry. He
+was nervously smoking a cigarette and frequently got up from the
+divan to take the decanter of water off the table, and avidly,
+straight from its mouth, drink several big draughts. Then, by some
+accidental effort of the will, he succeeded in tearing his
+thoughts away from the past night, and at once a heavy sleep,
+without any visions and images, enveloped him as though in black
+cotton.
+
+He awoke long past noon, at two or three o'clock; at first could
+not come to himself for a long while; smacked his lips and looked
+around the room with glazed, heavy eyes. All that had happened
+during the night seemed to have flown out of his memory. But when
+he saw Liubka, who was quietly and motionlessly sitting on the
+bed, with head lowered and hands crossed on her knees, he began to
+groan and grunt from vexation and confusion. Now he recalled
+everything. And at that minute he experienced in his own person
+how heavy it is to see in the morning, with one's own eyes, the
+results of folly committed the night before.
+
+"Are you awake, sweetie?" asked Liubka kindly.
+
+She got up from the bed, walked up to the divan, sat down at
+Lichonin's feet, and cautiously patted his blanket-covered leg.
+
+"Why, I woke up long ago and was sitting all the while; I was
+afraid to wake you up. You were sleeping so very soundly!"
+
+She stretched toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Lichonin
+made a wry face and gently pushed her away from him.
+
+"Wait, Liubochka! Wait; that's not necessary. Do you understand--
+absolutely, never necessary. That which took place yesterday--well,
+that's an accident. My weakness, let's say. Even more, a momentary
+baseness, perhaps. But, by God, believe me, I didn't at all want
+to make a mistress out of you. I want to see you my friend, my
+sister, my comrade ... Well, that's nothing, then; everything will
+adjust itself, grow customary. Only one mustn't fall in spirit.
+And in the meanwhile, my dear, go to the window and look out of it
+a bit; I just want to put myself in order."
+
+Liubka slightly pouted her lips and walked off to the window,
+turning her back on Lichonin. All these words about friendship,
+brotherhood and comradeship she could not understand with her
+brain of a hen and her simple peasant soul. That a student--after
+all, not just anybody, but an educated man, who could learn to be
+a doctor, or a lawyer, or a judge--had taken her for maintenance
+flattered her imagination far more ... And here, now, it turned
+out that he had just fulfilled his caprice, had gotten what he
+wanted, and was now trying to back out. They are all like that,
+the men!
+
+Lichonin hastily got up, splashed a few handfuls of water in his
+face, and dried himself with an old napkin. Then he raised the
+blinds and threw open both window shutters. The golden sunlight,
+the azure sky, the rumble of the city, the foliage of the thick
+linden trees and the chestnuts, the bells of the horse trams, the
+dry smell of the hot, dusty street--all this at once burst into the
+tiny garret room. Lichonin walked up to Liubka and amicably patted
+her on the shoulder.
+
+"Never mind, my joy ... What's done can't be undone, but it's a
+lesson for the future. You haven't yet asked tea for yourself,
+Liubochka?"
+
+"No, I was waiting for you all the while. Besides, I didn't know
+who to ask. And you're all right, too. Why, I heard you, after you
+went off with your friend, come back and stand a while near the
+door. But you never even said good-bye to me. Is that right?"
+
+"The first family quarrel," thought Lichonin, but thought it
+without malice, in jest.
+
+The wash-up, the beauty of the gold and blue southern sky, and the
+naive, partly submissive, partly displeased face of Liubka, as
+well as the consciousness that after all he was a man, and that he
+and not she had to answer for the porridge he had cooked--all this
+together braced up his nerves and compelled him to take himself in
+hand. He opened the door and roared into the darkness of the
+stinking corridor:
+
+"Al-lexa-andra! A samova-ar! Two lo-oaves, bu-utter, and sausage!
+And a small bottle of vo-odka!"
+
+The patter of slippers was heard in the corridor, and an aged
+voice, even from afar, began to speak thickly:
+
+"What are you bawling for? What are you bawling for, eh? Ho, ho,
+ho! Like a stallion in a stall. You ain't little, to look at you;
+you're grown up already, yet you carry on like a street boy! Well,
+what do you want?"
+
+Into the room walked a little old woman, with red-lidded eyes,
+like little narrow cracks, and with a face amazingly like
+parchment, upon which a long, sharp nose stuck downward, morosely
+and ominously. This was Alexandra, the servant of old of the
+student bird-houses; the friend and creditor of all the students;
+a woman of sixty-five, argumentative, and a grumbler.
+
+Lichonin repeated his order to her and gave her a rouble note. But
+the old woman would not go away; shuffled in one place, snorted,
+chewed with her lips and looked inimically at the girl sitting--
+with her back to the light.
+
+"What's the matter with you now, Alexandra, that you seem
+ossified?" asked Lichonin, laughing. "Or are you lost in
+admiration? Well, then, know: this is my cousin, my first cousin,
+that is--Liubov..."[Footnote: Love.--Trans.] he was confused for
+only a second, but immediately fired away: "Liubov Vasilievna, but
+for me--simply Liubochka. I've known her when she was only that
+high," he showed a quarter of a yard off the table. "And I pulled
+her ears and slapped her for her caprices over the place where the
+legs grow from. And then ... I caught all sorts of bugs for her
+... But, however ... However, you go on, go on, you Egyptian
+mummy, you fragment of former ages! Let one leg be here and the
+other there!"
+
+But the old woman lingered. Stamping all around herself, she
+barely, barely turned to the door and kept a keen, spiteful,
+sidelong glance on Liubka. And at the same time she muttered with
+her sunken mouth:
+
+"First cousin! We know these first cousins! There's lots of them
+walking around Kashtanovaya Street. There, these he-dogs can never
+get enough!"
+
+"Well, you old barque! Lively and don't growl!" Lichonin shouted
+after her. "Or else, like your friend, the student Triassov, I'll
+take and lock you up in the dressing room for twenty-four hours!"
+
+Alexandra went away, and for a long time her aged, flapping steps
+and indistinct muttering could be heard in the corridor. She was
+inclined, in her austere, grumbling kindliness, to forgive a great
+deal to the studying youths, whom she had served for nigh unto
+forty years. She forgave drunkenness, card playing, scandals, loud
+singing, debts; but, alas! she was a virgin, and there was only
+one thing her continent soul could not abide--libertinage.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+"And that's splendid ... And fine and charming," Lichonin was
+saying, bustling about the lame table and without need shifting
+the tea things from one place to another. "For a long time, like
+an old crocodile, I haven't drunk tea as it should be drunk, in a
+Christian manner, in a domestic setting. Sit down, Liuba, sit
+down, my dear, right here on the divan, and keep house. Vodka, in
+all probability, you don't drink of a morning, but I, with your
+permission, will drink some ... This braces up the nerves right
+off. Make mine a little stronger, please, with a piece of lemon.
+Ah, what can taste better than a glass of hot tea, poured out by
+charming feminine hands?"
+
+Liubka listened to his chatter, a trifle too noisy to seem fully
+natural; and her smile, in the beginning mistrusting, wary, was
+softening and brightening. But she did not get on with the tea
+especially well. At home, in the backwoods village, where this
+beverage was still held a rarity, the dainty luxury of well-to-do
+families, to be brewed only for honored guests and on great
+holidays--there over the pouring of the tea officiated the eldest
+man of the family. Later, when Liubka served with "all found" in
+the little provincial capital city, in the beginning at a
+priest's, and later with an insurance agent (who had been the
+first to put her on the road of prostitution)--she was usually
+left some strained, tepid tea, which had already been drunk off,
+with a bit of gnawn sugar, by the mistress herself--the thin,
+jaundiced, malicious wife of the priest; or the wife of the agent,
+a fat, old, wrinkled, malignant, greasy, jealous and stingy common
+woman. Therefore, the simple business of preparing the tea was now
+as difficult for her as it is difficult for all of us in childhood
+to distinguish the left hand from the right, or to tie a rope in a
+small noose. The bustling Lichonin only hindered her and threw her
+into confusion.
+
+"My dear, the art of brewing tea is a great art. It ought to be
+studied at Moscow. At first a dry teapot is slightly warmed up.
+Then the tea is put into it and is quickly scalded with boiling
+water. The first liquid must at once be poured off into the slop-
+bowl--the tea thus becomes purer and more aromatic; and by the
+way, it's also known that Chinamen are pagans and prepare their
+herb very filthily. After that the tea-pot must be filled anew, up
+to a quarter of its volume; left on the tray, covered over with a
+towel and kept so for three and a half minutes. Afterwards pour in
+more boiling water almost up to the top, cover it again, let it
+stay just a bit, and you have ready, my dear, a divine beverage;
+fragrant, refreshing, and strengthening."
+
+The homely, but pleasant-looking face of Liubka, all spotted from
+freckles, like a cuckoo's egg, lengthened and paled a little.
+
+"Well, for God's sake, don't you be angry at me ... You're called
+Vassil Vassilich, isn't that so? Don't get angry, darling Vassil
+Vassilich. Really, now, I'll learn fast, I'm quick. And why do you
+say you and you [Footnote: In contradistinction to "thou," as used
+to familiars and inferiors in Russia.--Trans] to me all the time?
+It seems that we aren't strangers now?"
+
+She looked at him kindly. And truly, she had this morning, for the
+first time in all her brief but distorted life, given her body to
+a man--even though without enjoyment but more out of gratitude and
+pity, yet voluntarily--not for money, not under compulsion, not
+under threat of dismissal and scandal. And her feminine heart,
+always unwithering, always drawn to love, like a sunflower to the
+sun, was at this moment pure and inclined to tenderness.
+
+But Lichonin suddenly felt a prickling, shameful awkwardness and
+something inimical toward this woman, yesterday unknown to him,
+now--his chance mistress. "The charms of the family hearth have
+begun," he thought involuntarily; still, he got up from his chair,
+walked up to Liubka, and having taken her by the hand, drew her to
+him and patted her on the head.
+
+"My dear, my darling sister," he said touchingly and falsely;
+"that which has happened to-day must never more be repeated. In
+everything only I alone am guilty, and, if you desire, I am ready
+to beg forgiveness of you on my knees. Understand--oh, understand,
+that all this came about against my will, somehow elementally,
+suddenly, unexpectedly. And I myself didn't think that it would be
+like that! You understand, for a very long time ... I have not
+known woman intimately ... A repulsive, unbridled beast awoke
+within me ... and ... But, Lord, is my fault so great, then? Holy
+people, anchorites, recluses, ascetics, stylites, hermits in
+deserts, are no match for me in fortitude of spirit--yet even they
+fell in the struggle with the temptation of the diabolical flesh.
+But then, I swear by whatever you wish, that this won't be
+repeated any more ... Isn't that so?"
+
+Liubka was stubbornly trying to pull his hand away from hers. Her
+lips had become a little stuck out and the lowered lids began to
+wink frequently.
+
+"Ye-es," she drawled, like a child that stubbornly refuses to
+"make up." "Well, I can see that I don't please you. Well, then,
+you'd best tell me so straight and give me a little for a cab, and
+some more, now; as much as you want ... The money for the night is
+paid anyway, and I only have to ride up to ... there."
+
+Lichonin seized his hair, flung himself about the room and began
+to declaim:
+
+"Ah, not that, not that, not that! Just understand me, Liuba! To
+go on with that which happened in the morning--that's ... that's
+swinishness, bestiality, and unworthy of a man who respects
+himself. Love! Love--this is a full blending of minds, thoughts,
+souls, interests, and not of the bodies alone. Love is a
+tremendous, great emotion, mighty as the universe, and not the
+sprawling in bed. There's no such love between us, Liubochka. If
+it'll come, it will be wonderful happiness both for you and for
+me. But in the meantime--I'm your friend, your faithful comrade,
+on the path of life. And that's enough, and that will do ... And
+though I'm no stranger to human frailties, still, I count myself
+an honest man."
+
+Liubka seemed to wilt. "He thinks I want him to marry me. And I
+absolutely don't need that," she thought sadly. "It's possible to
+live just so. There are others, now, living on maintenance. And,
+they say, far better than if they had twirled around an altar.
+What's so bad about that? Peaceful, quiet, genteel ... I'd darn
+socks for him, wash floors, cook ... the plainer dishes. Of
+course, he'll be in line to get married to a rich girl some time.
+Well, now, to be sure, he wouldn't throw me out in the street just
+so, mother-naked. Although he's a little simpleton, and chatters a
+lot, still it's easy to tell he's a decent man. He'll provide for
+me with something, somehow. And, perhaps, he'll get to like me,
+will get used to me? I'm a simple girl, modest, and would never
+consent to be false to him. For, they say, things do fall out that
+way ... Only I mustn't let him see anything. But that he'll come
+again into my bed, and will come this very night--that's as sure
+as God is holy."
+
+And Lichonin also fell into thought, grew quiet and sad; he was
+already feeling the weight of a great deed which he had undertaken
+beyond his powers. That was why he was even glad when some one
+knocked on the door, and to his answer, "Come in!", two students
+entered: Soloviev, and Nijeradze, who had slept that night at his
+place.
+
+Soloviev, well-grown and already obese, with a broad, ruddy Volga
+face and a light, scandent little beard, belonged to those kindly,
+merry and simple fellows, of which there are sufficiently many in
+any university. He divided his leisure--and of leisure he had
+twenty-four hours in the day--between the beer-shop and rambling
+over the boulevards; among billiards, whist, the theatre, reading
+of newspapers and novels, and the spectacles of circus wrestling;
+while the short intervals in between he used for eating, sleeping,
+the home repair of his wardrobe, with the aid of thread,
+cardboard, pins and ink; and for succinct, most realistic love
+with the chance woman from the kitchen, the anteroom or the
+street. Like all the youths of his circle, he deemed himself a
+revolutionary, although he was oppressed by political disputes,
+dissensions, and mutual reproaches; and not being able to stand
+the reading of revolutionary brochures and journals, was almost a
+complete ignoramus in the work For that reason he had not attained
+even the very least party initiation; although at times there were
+given him instructions of a sort, not at all of a safe nature, the
+meaning of which was not made clear to him. And not in vain was
+his steadfast faithfulness relied upon; he carried out everything
+rapidly, exactly,--with a courageous faith in the universal
+importance of the work; with a care-free smile and with a broad
+contempt of possible destruction. He concealed outlawed comrades,
+guarded forbidden literature and printing types, transmitted
+passports and money. He had a great deal of physical strength,
+black-loam amiability and elemental simple-heartedness. Not
+infrequently he would receive from home, somewheres in the depth
+of the Simbirskaya or Ufimskaya province, sums of money
+sufficiently large for a student; but in two days he scattered and
+dispersed it everywhere, with the carelessness of a French grandee
+of the seventeenth century, while he himself remained during
+winter in only his everyday coat, with boots restored by his own
+devices.
+
+Beside all these naive, touching, laughable, lofty and shiftless
+qualities of the old Russian student, passing--and God knows if
+for the better?--into the realm of historical memories, he
+possessed still another amazing ability--to invent money and
+arrange for credit in little restaurants and cook-shops. All the
+employees of pawnshops and loan offices, secret and manifest
+usurers, and old-clo'-men were on terms of the closest friendship
+with him.
+
+But if for certain reasons he could not resort to them, then even
+here Soloviev remained at the height of his resourcefulness. At
+the head of a knot of impoverished friends, and weighed down with
+his usual business responsibility, he would at times be illumined
+by an inner inspiration; make at a distance, across the street, a
+mysterious sign to a Tartar passing with his bundle behind his
+shoulders, and for a few seconds would disappear with him into the
+nearest gates. He would quickly return without his everyday coat,
+only in his blouse with the skirts outside, belted with a thin
+cord; or, in winter, without his overcoat, in the thinnest of
+small suits; or instead of the new, just purchased uniform cap--in
+a tiny jockey cap, holding by a miracle on the crown of his head.
+
+Everybody loved him: comrades, servants, women, children. And all
+were familiar with him. He enjoyed especial good-will from his
+bosom cronies, the Tartars, who, apparently, deemed him a little
+innocent. They would sometimes, in the summer, bring as a present
+the strong, intoxicating KOUMYSS in big quartern bottles, while at
+Bairam they would invite him to eat a suckling colt with them. No
+matter how improbable it may seem, still, Soloviev at critical
+moments gave away for safe-keeping certain books and brochures to
+the Tartars. He would say at this with the most simple and
+significant air: "That which I am giving you is a Great Book. It
+telleth, that Allah Akbar, and that Mahomet is his prophet, that
+there is much evil and poverty on earth, and that men must be
+merciful and just to each other."
+
+He also had two other abilities: he read aloud very well; and
+played at chess amazingly, like a master, like a downright genius,
+defeating first-class players in jest. His attack was always
+impetuous and rigorous; his defense wise and cautious, preferably
+in an oblique direction; his concessions to his opponent full of
+refined, far-sighted calculation and murderous craftiness. With
+this, he made moves as though under the influence of some inner
+instinct, or inspiration; not pondering for more than four or five
+seconds and resolutely despising the respected traditions.
+
+He was not willingly played with; his manner of play was held
+barbarous, but still they played, sometimes for large sums of
+money; which, invariably winning, Soloviev readily laid down upon
+the altar of his comrades' needs. But he steadfastly declined from
+participation in competitions, which could have created for him
+the position of a star in the world of chess: "There is in my
+nature neither love for this nonsense, nor respect," he would say.
+"I simply possess some sort of a mechanical ability of the mind,
+some sort of a psychic deformity. Well, now, just as there are
+lefties. And for that reason I've no professional self-respect,
+nor pride at victory, nor spleen at losing."
+
+Such was the generously built student Soloviev. And Nijeradze
+filled the post of his closest comrade; which did not hinder them
+both, however, from jeering at each other, disputing, and
+swearing, from morning till night. God knows, wherewithal and how
+the Georgian prince existed. He said of himself, that he possessed
+the ability of a camel, of nourishing himself for the future, for
+several weeks ahead; and then eating nothing for a month. From
+home, from his blessed Georgia, he received very little; and then,
+for the most part, in victuals. At Christmas, at Easter, or on his
+birthday (in August) he was sent--and inevitably through arriving
+fellow-countrymen--whole cargoes of hampers with mutton, grapes,
+goat-flesh, sausages, dried hawthorn berries, RAKHAT LOUKOUM, egg-
+plants, and very tasty cookies; as well as leathern bottles of
+excellent home-made wine, strong and aromatic, but giving off just
+the least bit of sheep-skin. Then the prince would summon together
+to one of his comrades (he never had quarters of his own) all his
+near friends and fellow-countrymen; and arranged such a
+magnificent festival--TOI in Caucasian--that at it were extirpated
+to the last shreds the gifts of fertile Georgia. Georgian songs
+were sung, the first place, of course, being given to MRAVOL-
+DJAMIEM and EVERY GUEST IS SENT DOWN TO US FROM HEAVEN BY GOD, NO
+MATTER OF WHAT COUNTRY HE BE; the LEZGINKA was danced without
+tiring, with table knives brandished wildly in the air; and the
+TULUMBASH (or, perhaps, he is called TOMADA?) spoke his
+improvisations; for the greater part Nijeradze himself spoke.
+
+He was a great hand at talking and could, when he warmed up,
+pronounce about three hundred words a minute. His style was
+distinguished for mettle, pomp, and imagery; and his Caucasian
+accent with characteristic lisping and throaty sounds, resembling
+now the hawking of a woodcock, now the clucking of an eagle, not
+only did not hinder his discourse, but somehow even strangely
+adorned it. And no matter of what he spoke, he always led up the
+monologue to the most beautiful, most fertile, the very foremost,
+most chivalrous, and at the same time the most injured country--
+Georgia. And invariably he cited lines from THE PANTHER'S SKIN of
+the Georgian poet Rustavelli; with assurances, that this poem was
+a thousand times above all of Shakespeare, multiplied by Homer.
+
+Even though he was hot-headed, he was not spiteful; and in his
+demeanour femininely soft, gentle, engaging, without losing his
+native pride ... One thing only did his comrades dislike in him--
+some exaggerated, exotic love of women. He was unshakably, unto
+sacredness or folly, convinced that he was irresistibly splendid
+of person; that all men envied him, all women were in love with
+him, while husbands were jealous ... This self-conceited,
+obtrusive dangling after women did not forsake him for a minute,
+probably not even in his sleep. Walking along the street he would
+every minute nudge Lichonin, Soloviev or some other companion with
+his elbow, and would say, smacking his lips and jerking his head
+backward at a woman who had passed by: "TSE, TSE, TSE... VAI-VAI!
+A ree-markable wooman! What a look she gave me. If I wish it,
+she'll be mine! ..."
+
+This funny shortcoming about him was known; this trait of his was
+ridiculed good-naturedly and unceremoniously, but willingly
+forgiven for the sake of that independent comradely obligingness
+and faithfulness to his word, given to a man (oaths to women did
+not count), of which he was so naturally possessed. However, it
+must be said that he did in reality enjoy great success with
+women. Sempstresses, modistes, chorus girls, girls in candy
+stores, and telephone girls melted from the intense gaze of his
+heavy, soft, and languishing dark-blue eyes.
+
+"Un-to this house and all those righteously, peacefully and
+without sin inhabiting it ..." Soloviev started in to vociferate
+like an arch-deacon and suddenly missed fire. "Father-prelates,"
+he began to murmur in astonishment, trying to continue the
+unsuccessful jest. "Why, but this is ... This is ... ah, the devil
+... this is Sonya, no, my mistake, Nadya ... Well, yes! Liubka
+from Anna Markovna's ..."
+
+Liubka blushed hotly, to the verge of tears, and covered her face
+with her palms. Lichonin noticed this, understood, sensed the
+thoroughly agitated soul of the girl, and came to her aid. He
+sternly, almost rudely, stopped Soloviev.
+
+"Perfectly correct, Soloviev. As in a directory. Liubka from the
+Yamkas. Formerly a prostitute. Even more, still yesterday a
+prostitute. But from to-day--my friend, my sister. And so let
+everyone, who respects me to any extent, regard her. Otherwise
+..."
+
+The ponderous Soloviev hurriedly, sincerely, and powerfully
+embraced and rumpled Lichonin.
+
+"Well, dear fellow, well, that's enough ... I committed a
+stupidity in the flurry. It won't be repeated any more. Hail, my
+pale-faced sister." He extended his hand with a broad sweep across
+the table to Liubka, and squeezed her listless, small and short
+fingers with gnawed, tiny nails. "It's fine--your coming into our
+modest wigwam. This will refresh us and implant in our midst quiet
+and decent customs. Alexandra! Be-er!" he began to call loudly.
+"We've grown wild, coarse; have become mired in foul speech,
+drunkenness, laziness and other vices. And all because we were
+deprived of the salutary, pacifying influence of feminine society.
+Once again I press your hand. Your charming, little hand. Beer!"
+
+"Coming," the displeased voice of Alexandra could be heard on the
+other side of the door. "I'm coming. What you yelling for? How
+much do you want?"
+
+Soloviev went out into the corridor to explain. Lichonin smiled
+after him gratefully; while the Georgian on his way slapped him
+benignly on the back, between his shoulder blades. Both understood
+and appreciated the belated, somewhat coarse delicacy of Soloviev.
+
+"Now," said Soloviev, coming back into the room and sitting down
+cautiously upon an ancient chair, "now let's come to the order of
+the day. Can I be of service to you in any way? If you'll give me
+half an hour's time, I'll run down to the coffee house for a
+minute and lick the guts out of the very best chess player there.
+In a word--I'm at your disposal!"
+
+"What a funny fellow you are!" said Liubka, ill at ease and
+laughing. She did not understand the jocose and unusual style of
+speech of the student, but something drew her simple heart to him.
+
+"Well, that's not at all necessary," Lichonin put in. "I am as yet
+beastly rich. I think we'll all go together to some little tavern
+somewhere. I must have your advice about some things. After all,
+you're the people closest to me; and of course not as stupid and
+inexperienced as you seem at first glance. After that, I'll go and
+try to arrange about her ... about Liuba's passport. You wait for
+me. That won't take long ... In a word, you understand what this
+whole business consists of, and won't be lavish of any superfluous
+jokes. I,"--his voice quivered sentimentally and falsely--"I
+desire that you take upon yourselves a part of my care. Is that a
+go?"
+
+"VA! It's a go!" exclaimed the prince (it sounded like "idiot,"
+when he said it [Footnote: The Russian phrase is "Eedet!"--
+Trans.]), and for some reason looked significantly at Liubka and
+twirled his moustache. Lichonin gave him a sidelong look. As for
+Soloviev, he said simple-heartedly:
+
+"That's the way. You've begun something big and splendid,
+Lichonin. The prince told me about it during the night. Well, what
+of it, that's what youth is for--to commit sacred follies. Give me
+the bottle, Alexandra, I'll open it myself, or else you'll rupture
+yourself and burst a vein. To a new life, Liubochka, pardon me ...
+Liubov ... Liubov ..."
+
+"Nikonovna. But call me just as it comes ... Liuba."
+
+"Well, yes, Liuba. Prince, ALLAHVERDI!"
+
+"YAKSHI-OL," answered Nijeradze and clinked his glass of beer with
+him.
+
+"And I'll also say, that I rejoice over you, friend Lichonin,"
+continued Soloviev, setting down his glass and licking his
+moustache. "Rejoice, and bow before you. It's precisely you, only,
+who are capable of such a genuinely Russian heroism, expressed
+simply, modestly, without superfluous words."
+
+"Drop it ... Well, where's the heroism?" Lichonin made a wry face.
+
+"That's true, too," confirmed Nijeradze. "You're reproaching me
+all the time that I chatter a lot, but see what nonsense you're
+spouting yourself."
+
+"That makes no difference!" retorted Soloviev. "It may be even
+grandiloquent, but still that makes no difference! As an elder of
+our garret commune, I declare Liuba an honourable member with full
+rights!" He got up, made a sweeping gesture with his hand, and
+uttered with pathos:
+
+    "And into our house, free and fearless,
+     Its charming mistress walk thou in!"
+
+Lichonin recalled vividly, that to-day at dawn he had spoken the
+very same phrase, like an actor; and even blinked his eyes from
+shame.
+
+"That's enough of tom-foolery. Let's go, gentlemen. Dress
+yourself, Liuba."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+It was not far to The Sparrows restaurant; some two hundred steps.
+On the way Liuba, unnoticed, took Lichonin by the sleeve and
+pulled him toward her. In this wise they lagged a few steps behind
+Soloviev and Nijeradze, who were walking ahead.
+
+"Then you mean it seriously, my darling Vassil Vassilich?" she
+asked, looking up at him with her kindly, dark eyes. "You're not
+playing a joke on me?"
+
+"What jokes can there be here, Liubochka! I'd be the lowest of men
+if I permitted myself such jokes. I repeat, that to you I am more
+than a friend, brother, comrade. And let's not talk about it any
+more. And that which happened to-day toward morning, that, you may
+be sure, won't be repeated. And I'll rent a separate room for you
+this very day."
+
+Liubka sighed. Not that she was offended by the chaste resolution
+of Lichonin, in which, to tell the truth, she believed but badly;
+but somehow her dark, narrow mind could not even theoretically
+picture any other attitude of a man toward a woman than the
+sensual. Besides that, she experienced the ancient discontent of a
+preferred or rejected female; a feeling strongly intrenched in the
+house of Anna Markovna, in the form of boastful rivalry, but now
+dulled; yet still angry and sincere. And for some reason she
+believed Lichonin but illy, unconsciously seizing much of the
+assumed, not altogether sincere, in his words. Soloviev, now--
+although he did speak incomprehensively, like the rest of the
+majority of the students known to her, when they joked among
+themselves or with the young ladies in the general room (by
+themselves, in the room, all the men without an exception--all as
+one--said and did one and the same thing)--she would rather
+believe Soloviev, far more readily and willingly. A certain
+simplicity shone in his merry, sparkling gray eyes, placed widely
+apart.
+
+At THE SPARROWS Lichonin was esteemed for his sedateness, kind
+disposition, and accuracy in money matters. Because of that he was
+at once assigned a little private room--an honour of which but
+very few students could boast. The gas burned all day in this
+room, because light penetrated only through the narrow bottom of a
+window, cut short by the ceiling. Only the boots, shoes, umbrellas
+and canes of the people walking by on the sidewalk could be seen
+through this window.
+
+They had to let still another student, Simanovsky (whom they ran
+against near the coat room), join the party. "What does he mean,
+by leading me around as though for a show?" thought Liubka: "it
+looks like he's showing off before them." And, snatching a free
+moment, she whispered to Lichonin, who had bent over her:
+
+"But why are there so many people, dearie? For I'm so bashful. I
+can't hold my own in company."
+
+"That's nothing, that's nothing, my dear Liubochka," Lichonin
+whispered rapidly, tarrying at the door of the cabinet. "That's
+nothing, my sister; these are all fine people, good comrades.
+They'll help you, help us both. Don't mind their having fun at
+times and their silly lying. But their hearts are of gold."
+
+"But it's so very awkward for me; I'm ashamed. All of them already
+know where you took me from."
+
+"Well, that's nothing, that's nothing! Why, let 'em know!" warmly
+contradicted Lichonin. "Why be embarrassed with your past, why try
+to pass it by in silence? In a year you'll look bravely and
+directly in the eyes of every man and you'll say: 'He who has
+never fallen, has never gotten up.' Come on, come on, Liubochka!"
+
+While the inelaborate appetizers were being served, and each one
+was ordering the meal, everybody, save Simanovsky, felt ill at
+ease and somehow constrained. And Simanovsky himself was partly
+the reason for this; he was a clean-shaven man, with pince-nez and
+long hair, with head proudly thrown back and with a contemptuous
+expression on the tight lips, drooping at the corners. He had no
+intimate, hearty friends among his comrades; but his opinions and
+judgments had a considerable authoritativeness among them. It is
+doubtful whether any one of them could explain to himself whence
+this influence came; whether from his self-assured appearance, his
+ability to seize and express in general words the dismembered and
+indistinct things which are dimly sought and desired by the
+majority, or because he always saved his conclusions for the most
+appropriate moment. Among any society there are many of this sort
+of people: some of them act upon their circle through sophistries;
+others through adamant, unalterable stead-fastness of convictions;
+a third group with a loud mouth; a fourth, through a malicious
+sneer; a fifth, simply by silence, which compels the supposition
+of profound thought behind it; a sixth, through a chattering,
+outward erudition; others still through a slashing sneer at
+everything that is said ... many with the terrible Russian word
+YERUNDA: "Fiddlesticks!"--"Fiddlesticks!" they say contemptuously
+in reply to the warm, sincere, probably truthful but clumsily put
+word. "But why fiddlesticks?" "Because it's twaddle, nonsense,"
+answer they, shrugging their shoulders; and it is as though they
+did for a man by hitting him with a stone over the head. There are
+many more sorts of such people, bearing the bell at the head of
+the meek, the shy, the nobly modest, and often even the big minds;
+and to their number did Simanovsky belong.
+
+However, toward the middle of the dinner everybody's tongue became
+loosened--except Liubka's, who kept silent, answered "yes" and
+"no", and left her food practically untouched. Lichonin, Soloviev,
+and Nijeradze talked most of all. The first, in a decisive and
+business-like manner, trying to hide under the solicitous words
+something real, inward, prickling and inconvenient. Soloviev, with
+a puerile delight, with the most sweeping of gestures, hitting the
+table with his fist. Nijeradze, with a slight doubtfulness and
+with unfinished phrases, as though he knew that which must be
+said, but concealed it. The queer fate of the girl, however, had
+seemingly engrossed, interested them all; and each one, in
+expressing his opinion, for some reason inevitably turned to
+Simanovsky. But he kept his counsel for the most part, and looked
+at each one from under the glasses of his pince-nez, raising his
+head high to do so.
+
+"So, so, so," he said at last, drumming with his fingers upon the
+table. "What Lichonin has done is splendid and brave. And that the
+prince and Soloviev are going to meet him half-way is also very
+good. I, for my part, am ready to co-operate with your beginnings
+with whatever lies in my power. But will it not be better, if we
+lead our friend along the path of her natural inclinations and
+abilities, so to speak? Tell me, my dear," he turned to Liubka,
+"what do you know, what can you do? Well, now, some kind of work,
+or something. Sewing, knitting, embroidering or something."
+
+"I don't know anything," said Liubka in a whisper, letting her
+eyes drop low, all red, squeezing her fingers under the table. "I
+don't understand anything of this.''
+
+"And really, now," interposed Lichonin; "why, we haven't begun the
+business from the right end. By talking about her in her presence
+we merely place her in an awkward position. Just see--even her
+tongue doesn't move from confusion. Let's go, Liubka, I'll escort
+you home for just a little while, and return in ten minutes. And
+in the meanwhile we'll think over ways and means here, without
+you. All right?"
+
+"As for me, I don't mind," almost inaudibly answered Liubka. "I'll
+do just as you like, Vassil Vassilich. Only I wouldn't like to go
+home."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"It's awkward for me there alone. I'd best wait for you on the
+boulevard, at the very entrance, on a bench."
+
+"Ah, yes!" Lichonin recollected: "It's Alexandra who has inspired
+her with such a terror. My, but I'll make it hot for this old
+lizard! Well, let's go, Liubochka."
+
+She timidly, in some sidelong way, put out her hand to each one,
+folding it like a little spade; and walked out under the escort of
+Lichonin.
+
+After several minutes he returned and sat down at his place. He
+felt that something had been said about him during his absence,
+and he ran his eyes uneasily over his comrades. Then, putting his
+hands on the table, he began:
+
+"Gentlemen, I know that you're all good, close friends," he gave a
+quick and sidelong look at Simanovsky, "and responsive people. I
+heartily beg of you to come to my aid. The deed was done by me in
+a hurry--this I must confess--but done through a sincere, pure
+inclination of the heart."
+
+"And that's the main thing," put in Soloviev.
+
+"It's absolutely all one to me what acquaintances and strangers
+will begin saying about me; but from my intention to save--pardon
+the fool word, which slipped out--to encourage, to sustain this
+girl, I will not decline. Of course, I'm able to rent an
+inexpensive, small room for her; to give her something for board
+at first; but what's to be done further--that's what presents
+difficulties to me. The matter, of course, isn't one of money,
+which I'd always find for her; but, then, to compel her to eat,
+drink, and with all that to do nothing--that would mean to condemn
+her to idleness, indifference, apathy; and you know what the end
+will be then. Therefore, we must think of some occupation for her.
+And that's the very matter which we must exert our brains about.
+Make an effort, gentlemen; advise something."
+
+"We must know what she's fitted for," said Simanovsky. "For she
+must have been doing something before getting into the house."
+
+Lichonin, with an air of hopelessness, spread out his hands.
+
+"Almost nothing. She can sew just the least bit, just like any
+country lass. Why, she wasn't fifteen when some government clerk
+led her astray. She can sweep up a room, wash a little, and, if
+you will, cook cabbage soup and porridge. Nothing more, it seems."
+
+"Rather little," said Simanovsky, and clacked his tongue.
+
+"And in addition to that, she's illiterate as well."
+
+"But that's not at all important!" warmly defended Soloviev. "If
+we had to do with a well-educated girl, or, worse still, with a
+half-educated one, then only nonsense would result out of all that
+we're preparing to do, a mere soap-bubble; while here before us is
+maiden ground, untouched virgin soil."
+
+"He-ee!" Nijeradze started neighing equivocally.
+
+Soloviev, now no longer joking, but with real wrath, pounced upon
+him:
+
+"Listen, prince! Every holy thought, every good deed, can be made
+disgusting, obscene. There's nothing clever or worthy in that. If
+you regard that which we're preparing to do so like a stallion,
+then there's the door and God be with you. Go away from us!"
+
+"Yes, but you yourself just now in the room ..." retorted the
+prince in confusion.
+
+"Yes, I too," Soloviev at once softened and cooled down. "I popped
+out with a stupidity and I regret it. But now I willingly admit
+that Lichonin is a fine fellow and a splendid man; and I'm ready
+to do everything, for my part. And I repeat, that knowledge of
+reading and writing is a secondary matter. It is easy to attain it
+in play. For such an untouched mind to learn reading, writing,
+counting, and especially without school, of one's free will, is
+like biting a nut in two. And as far as a manual trade is
+concerned, through which it would be possible to live and earn
+one's keep, then there are hundreds of trades, which can be easily
+mastered in two weeks."
+
+"For instance?" asked the prince.
+
+"Well, for instance ... for instance ... well, now, for instance,
+making artificial flowers. Yes, and still better, to get a place
+as a flower clerk. A charming business, clean and nice."
+
+"Taste is necessary," Simanovsky dropped carelessly.
+
+"There are no inborn tastes, as well as abilities. Otherwise
+talents would be born only in refined, highly educated society;
+while artists would be born only to artists, and singers to
+singers; but we don't see this. However, I won't argue. Well, if
+not a flower girl, then something else. I, for instance, saw not
+long ago in a store show window a miss sitting, and some sort of a
+little machine with foot-power before her."
+
+"V-VA! Again a little machine!" said the prince, smiling and
+looking at Lichonin.
+
+"Stop it, Nijeradze," answered Lichonin, quietly but sternly. "You
+ought to be ashamed."
+
+"Blockhead!" Soloviev threw at him, and continued.
+
+"So, then, the machine moves back and forth, while upon it, on a
+square frame, is stretched a thin canvas, and really, I don't know
+how it's contrived, I didn't grasp it; only the miss guides some
+metallic thingamajig over the screen, and there comes out a fine
+drawing in vari-coloured silks. Just imagine, a lake, all grown
+over with pond-lilies with their white corollas and yellow
+stamens, and great green leaves all around. And on the water two
+white swans are floating toward each other, and in the background
+is a dark park with an alley; and all this shows finely,
+distinctly, as on a picture from life. And I became so interested
+that I went in on purpose to find out how much it costs. It proved
+to be just the least bit dearer than an ordinary sewing machine,
+and it's sold on terms. And any one who can sew a little on a
+common machine can learn this art in an hour. And there's a great
+number of charming original designs. And the main thing is that
+such work is very readily taken for fire-screens, albums, lamp-
+shades, curtains and other rubbish, and the pay is decent."
+
+"After all, that's a sort of a trade, too," agreed Lichonin, and
+stroked his beard in meditation. "But, to confess, here's what I
+wanted to do. I wanted to open up for her ... to open up a little
+cook-shop or dining room, the very tiniest to start with, of
+course, but one in which all the food is cheap, clean and tasty.
+For it's absolutely all the same to many students where they dine
+and what they eat. There are almost never enough places to go
+round in the students' dining room. And so we may succeed,
+perhaps, in pulling in all our acquaintances and friends,
+somehow."
+
+"That's true," said the prince, "but impractical as well; we'll
+begin to board on credit. And you know what accurate payers we
+are. A practical man, a knave, is needed for such an undertaking;
+and if a woman, then one with a pike's teeth; and even then a man
+must absolutely stick right at her back. Really, it's not for
+Lichonin to stand at the counter and to watch that somebody
+shouldn't suddenly wine and dine and slip away."
+
+Lichonin looked straight at him, insolently, but only set his jaws
+and let it pass in silence.
+
+Simanovsky began in his measured, incontrovertible tone, toying
+with the glasses of his PINCE-NEZ:
+
+"Your intention is splendid, gentlemen, beyond dispute. But have
+you turned your attention to a certain shady aspect, so to speak?
+For to open a dining room, to start some business--all this in the
+beginning demands money, assistance--somebody else's back, so to
+speak. The money is not grudged--that is true, I agree with
+Lichonin; but then, does not such a beginning of an industrious
+life, when every step is provided for--does it not lead to
+inevitable laxity and negligence, and, in the very end, to an
+indifferent disdain for business? Even a child does not learn to
+walk until it has flopped down some fifty times. No; if you really
+want to help this poor girl, you must give her a chance of getting
+on her feet at once, like a toiling being, and not like a drone.
+True, there is a great temptation here--the burden of labour,
+temporary need; but then, if she will surmount this, she will
+surmount the rest as well."
+
+"What, then, according to you, is she to become--a dish-washer?"
+asked Soloviev with unbelief.
+
+"Well, yes," calmly retorted Simanovsky. "A dish-washer, a
+laundress, a cook. All toil elevates a human being."
+
+Lichonin shook his head.
+
+"Words of gold. Wisdom itself speaks with your lips, Simanovsky.
+Dish-washer, cook, maid, housekeeper ... but, in the first place,
+it's doubtful if she's capable for that; in the second place, she
+has already been a maid and has tasted all the sweets of masters'
+bawlings out, and masters' pinches behind doors, in the corridor.
+Tell me, is it possible you don't know that ninety per cent, of
+prostitution is recruited from the number of female servants? And,
+therefore, poor Liuba, at the very first injustice, at the first
+rebuff, will the more easily and readily go just there where I
+have gotten her out of; if not even worse, because for her that's
+customary and not so frightful; and, perhaps, it will even seem
+desirable after the masters' treatment. And besides that, is it
+worth while for me--that is, I want to say--is it worth while for
+all of us, to go to so much trouble, to try so hard and put
+ourselves out so, if, after having saved a being from one slavery,
+we only plunge her into another?"
+
+"Right," confirmed Soloviev.
+
+"Just as you wish," drawled Simanovsky with a disdainful air.
+
+"But as far as I'm concerned," said the prince, "I'm ready, as a
+friend and a curious man, to be present at this experiment and to
+participate in it. But even this morning I warned you, that there
+have been such experiments before and that they have always ended
+in ignominious failure, at least those of which we know
+personally; while those of which we know only by hearsay are
+dubious as regards authenticity. But you have begun the business--
+and go on with it. We are your helpers."
+
+Lichonin struck the table with his palm.
+
+"No!" he exclaimed stubbornly. "Simanovsky is partly right
+concerning the great danger of a person's being led in leading
+strings. But I don't see any other way out. In the beginning I'll
+help her with room and board... find some easy work, buy the
+necessary accessories for her. Let be what may! And let us do
+everything in order to educate her mind a little; and that her
+heart and soul are beautiful, of that I am sure. I've no grounds
+for the faith, but I am sure, I almost know. Nijeradze! Don't
+clown!" he cried abruptly, growing pale, "I've restrained myself
+several times already at your fool pranks. I have until now held
+you as a man of conscience and feeling. One more inappropriate
+witticism, and I'll change my opinion of you; and know, that it's
+forever."
+
+"Well, now, I didn't mean anything... Really, I... Why go all up
+in the air, me soul? You don't like that I'm a gay fellow, well,
+I'll be quiet. Give me your hand, Lichonin, let's drink!"
+
+"Well, all right, get away from me. Here's to your health! Only
+don't behave like a little boy, you Ossetean ram. Well, then, I
+continue, gentlemen. If we find anything which might satisfy the
+just opinion of Simanovsky about the dignity of independent toil,
+unsustained by anything, then I shall stick to my system: to teach
+Liuba whatever is possible, to take her to the theatre, to
+expositions, to popular lectures, to museums; to read aloud to
+her, give her the possibility of hearing music--comprehensible
+music, of course. It's understood, I alone won't be able to manage
+all this. I expect help from you; and after that, whatever God may
+will."
+
+"Oh, well," said Simanovsky, "the work is new, not threadbare; and
+how can we know the unknowable--perhaps you, Lichonin, will become
+the spiritual father of a good being. I, too, offer my services."
+
+"And I! And I!" the other two seconded; and right there, without
+getting up from the table, the four students worked out a very
+broad and very wondrous program of education and enlightenment for
+Liubka.
+
+Soloviev took upon himself to teach the girl grammar and writing.
+In order not to tire her with tedious lessons, and as a reward for
+successes, he would read aloud for her artistic fiction, Russian
+and foreign, easy of comprehension. Lichonin left for himself the
+teaching of arithmetic, geography and history.
+
+While the prince said simple-heartedly, without his usual
+facetiousness this time:
+
+"I, my children, don't know anything; while that which I do know,
+I know very badly. But I'll read to her the remarkable production
+of the great Georgian poet Rustavelli, and translate it line by
+line. I confess to you, that I'm not much of a pedagogue: I tried
+to be a tutor, but they politely chased me out after only the
+second lesson. Still, no one can teach better playing on a guitar,
+mandolin, and the bagpipes!"
+
+Nijeradze was speaking with perfect seriousness, and for that
+reason Lichonin with Soloviev good-naturedly started laughing; but
+with entire unexpectedness, to the general amazement of all,
+Simanovsky sustained him.
+
+"The prince speaks common sense. To have the mastery of an
+instrument elevates the aesthetic sense, in any case; and is even
+a help in life. And I, for my part, gentlemen ... I propose to
+read with the young person the CAPITAL of Marx, and the history of
+human culture. And to take up chemistry and physics with her,
+besides."
+
+If it were not for the customary authority of Simanovsky and the
+importance with which he spoke, the remaining three would have
+burst into laughter in his face. They only stared at him, with
+eyes popping out.
+
+"Well, yes," continued Simanovsky imperturbably, "I'll show her a
+whole series of chemical and physical experiments, which it is
+possible to carry on at home; which are always amusing and
+beneficial to the mind; and which eradicate prejudices.
+Incidentally, I'll explain something of the structure of the
+world, of the properties of matter. And as far as Karl Marx is
+concerned, just remember, that great books are equally accessible
+to the understanding both of a scholar and an unlettered peasant,
+if only comprehensibly presented. And every great thought is
+simple."
+
+Lichonin found Liubka at the place agreed upon, on a bench of the
+boulevard. She went home with him very unwillingly. Just as
+Lichonin had supposed, meeting the grumbling Alexandra was a
+fearful thing to her, who had long since grown unused to every-day
+actuality; harsh, and plentiful with all sorts of
+unpleasantnesses. And besides that, the fact that Lichonin did not
+want to conceal her past acted oppressively upon her. But she, who
+had long ago lost her will in the establishment of Anna Markovna,
+deprived of her personality, ready to follow after the call of
+every stranger, did not tell him a word and walked after him.
+
+The crafty Alexandra had already managed during this time to run
+to the superintendent of the houses and to complain to him, that,
+now, Lichonin had come with some miss, had passed the night with
+her in the room; but who she is, that Alexandra don't know; that
+Lichonin says she is his first cousin, like; but did not present a
+passport. It was necessary to explain things at great length,
+diffusedly and tiresomely, to the superintendent, a coarse and
+insolent man, who bore himself to all the tenants in the house as
+toward a conquered city; and feared only the students slightly,
+because they gave him a severe rebuff at times. Lichonin
+propitiated him only when he rented on the spot another room,
+several rooms away from his, for Liubka; under the very slope of
+the roof, so that it represented on the inside a sharply cut-off,
+low, four-sided pyramid, with one little window.
+
+"But still, Mr. Lichonin, just you present the passport to-morrow
+without fail," said the superintendent insistently at parting.
+"Since you're a respectable man, hard-working, and you and I are
+long acquainted, also you pay punctually, I am willing to do it
+only for you. You know yourself what hard times these are. If some
+one tells on me, they'll not only fire me, but they can put me out
+of town as well. They're strict now."
+
+In the evening Lichonin strolled with Liubka through Prince Park,
+listened to the music playing in the aristocratic club, and
+returned home early. He escorted Liubka to the door of her room
+and at once took leave of her; kissing her, however, tenderly on
+the brow, like a father. But after ten minutes, when he was
+already lying in bed undressed and reading the statutes of state,
+Liubka, having scratched on his door like a cat, suddenly entered
+his room.
+
+"Darling, sweetie! Excuse me for troubling you. Haven't you a
+needle and thread? But don't get angry at me; I'll go away at
+once."
+
+"Liuba! I beg of you to go away not at once, but this second.
+Finally, I demand it!"
+
+"My dearie, my pretty," Liubka began to intone laughably and
+piteously, "well, what are you yelling at me for all the time?"
+and, in a moment, having blown upon the candle, she nestled up to
+him in the darkness, laughing and crying.
+
+"No, Liuba, this must not be. It's impossible to go on like this,"
+Lichonin was saying ten minutes later, standing at the door,
+wrapped up in his blanket, like a Spanish hidalgo in a cape. "To-
+morrow at the latest I'll rent a room for you in another house.
+And, in general, don't let this occur! God be with you, and good
+night! Still, you must give me your word of honour that our
+relations will be merely friendly."
+
+"I give it, dearie, I give it, I give it, I give it!" she began to
+prattle, smiling; and quickly smacked him first on the lips and
+then on his hand.
+
+The last action was altogether instinctive; and, perhaps,
+unexpected even to Liubka herself. Never yet in her life had she
+kissed any man's hand, save a priest's. Perhaps she wanted to
+express through this her gratitude to Lichonin, and a prostration
+before him as before a higher being.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Among Russian intelligents, as has already been noted by many,
+there is a decent quantity of wonderful people; true children of
+the Russian land and culture, who would be able heroically,
+without the quivering of a single muscle, to look straight in the
+face of death; who are capable for the sake of an idea of bearing
+unconceivable privations and sufferings, equal to torture; but
+then, these people are lost before the haughtiness of a doorman;
+shrink from the yelling of a laundress; while into a police
+station they enter in an insufferable and timid distress. And
+precisely such a one was Lichonin. On the following day (yesterday
+it had been impossible on account of a holiday and the lateness),
+having gotten up very early and recollecting that to-day he had to
+take care of Liubka's passport, he felt just as bad as when in
+former times, as a high-school boy, he went to an examination,
+knowing that he would surely fall through. His head ached, while
+his arms and legs somehow seemed another's; in addition, a
+drizzling and seemingly dirty rain had been falling on the street
+since morning. "Always, now, when there's some unpleasantness in
+store, there is inevitably a rain falling," reflected Lichonin,
+dressing slowly.
+
+It was not especially far from his street to the Yamskaya, not
+more than two-thirds of a mile. In general, he was not
+infrequently in those parts, but he had never had occasion to go
+there in the daytime; and on the way it seemed to him all the time
+that every one he met, every cabby and policeman, was looking at
+him with curiosity, with reproach, or with disdain, as though
+surmising the destination of his journey. As always on a nasty and
+muggy morning, all the faces that met his eyes seemed pale, ugly,
+with monstrously underlined defects. Scores of times he imagined
+all that he would say in the beginning at the house; and later at
+the station house; and every time the outcome was different. Angry
+at himself for this premature rehearsal, he would at times stop
+himself:
+
+"Ah! You mustn't think, you mustn't presuppose what you're going
+to say. It always turns out far better when it's done right
+off..."
+
+And then again imaginary dialogues would run through his head:
+
+"You have no right to hold this girl against her wish."
+
+"Yes, but let her herself give notice about going away."
+
+"I act at her instruction."
+
+"All right; but how can you prove this?" and again he would
+mentally cut himself short.
+
+The city common began, on which cows were browsing; a board
+sidewalk along a fence; shaky little bridges over little brooklets
+and ditches. Then he turned into the Yamskaya. In the house of
+Anna Markovna all the windows were closed with shutters, with
+openings, in the form of hearts, cut out in the middle. And all of
+the remaining houses on the deserted street, desolated as though
+after a pestilence, were closed as well. With a contracting heart
+Lichonin pulled the bell-handle.
+
+A maid, barefooted, with skirt caught up, with a wet rag in her
+hand, with face striped from dirt, answered the bell--she had just
+been washing the floor.
+
+"I'd like to see Jennka," timidly requested Lichonin.
+
+"Well, now, the young lady is busy with a guest. They haven't
+waked up yet."
+
+"Well, Tamara then."
+
+The maid looked at him mistrustfully.
+
+"Miss Tamara--I don't know... I think she's busy too. But what you
+want--to pay a visit, or what?"
+
+"Ah, isn't it all the same! A visit, let's say."
+
+"I don't know. I'll go and look. Wait a while."
+
+She went away, leaving Lichonin in the half-dark drawing room. The
+blue pillars of dust, coming from the openings in the shutters,
+pierced the heavy obscurity in all directions. Like hideous spots
+stood out of the gray murkiness the bepainted furniture and the
+sweetish oleographs on the walls. It smelt of yesterday's tobacco,
+of dampness, sourness; and of something else peculiar,
+indeterminate, uninhabited, of which places that are lived in only
+temporarily always smell in the morning--such as empty theatres,
+dance-halls, auditoriums. Far off in the city a droshky rumbled
+intermittently. The wall-clock monotonously ticked behind the
+wall. In a strange agitation Lichonin walked back and forth
+through the drawing room and rubbed and kneaded his trembling
+hands, and for some reason was stooping and felt cold.
+
+"I shouldn't have started all this false comedy," he thought with
+irritation. "It goes without saying that I've now become the by-
+word of the entire university. The devil nudged me! And even
+during the day yesterday it wasn't too late, when she was saying
+that she was ready to go back. All I had to do was to give her for
+a cabby and a little pin money, and she'd have gone, and all would
+have been fine; and I would be independent now, free, and wouldn't
+be undergoing this tormenting and ignominious state of spirits.
+But it's too late to retreat now. To-morrow it'll be still later,
+and the day after to-morrow--still more. Having pulled off one
+fool stunt, it must be immediately put a stop to; but on the other
+hand, if you don't do that in time, it draws two others after it,
+and they--twenty new ones. Or, perhaps, it's not too late now? Why,
+she's silly, undeveloped, and, probably, a hysteric, like the rest
+of them. She's an animal, fit only for stuffing herself and for
+the bed. Oh! The devil!" Lichonin forcefully squeezed his cheeks
+and his forehead between his hands and shut his eyes. "And if I
+had but held out against the common, coarse, physical temptation!
+There, you see for yourself, this has happened twice already; and
+then it'll go on and on ..."
+
+But side by side with these ran other thoughts, opposed to them:
+
+"But then, I'm a man. I am master of my word. For that which urged
+me on to this deed was splendid, noble, lofty. I remember very
+well that rapture which seized me when my thought transpired into
+action! That was a pure, tremendous feeling. Or was it simply an
+extravagance of the mind, whipped up by alcohol; the consequence
+of a sleepless night, smoking, and long, abstract conversations?"
+
+And immediately Liubka would appear before him, appear at a
+distance, as though out of the misty depths of time; awkward,
+timid, with her homely and endearing face, which had at once come
+to seem of infinitely close kinship; long, long familiar, and at
+the same time unpleasant--unjustly, without cause.
+
+"Can it be that I'm a coward and a rag?" cried Lichonin inwardly
+and wrung his hands. "What am I afraid of, before whom am I
+embarrassed? Have I not always prided myself upon being sole
+master of my life? Let's suppose, even, that the phantasy, the
+extravagance, of making a psychological experiment upon a human
+soul--a rare experiment, unsuccessful in ninety-nine percent--has
+entered my head. Is it possible that I must render anybody an
+account in this, or fear anybody's opinion? Lichonin! Look down
+upon mankind from above!"
+
+Jennie walked into the room, dishevelled, sleepy, in a night
+jacket on top of a white underskirt.
+
+"A-a!" she yawned, extending her hand to Lichonin. "How d'you do,
+my dear student! How does your Liubochka feel herself in the new
+place? Call me in as a guest some time. Or are you spending your
+honeymoon on the quiet? Without any outside witnesses?"
+
+"Drop the silly stuff, Jennechka. I came about the passport."
+
+"So-o. About the passport," Jennka went into thought. "That is,
+there's no passport here, but you must take a blank from the
+housekeeper. You understand, our usual prostitute's blank; and
+then they'll exchange it for you for a real book at the station
+house. Only you see, my dear, I will be but ill help to you in
+this business. They are as like as not to beat me up if I come
+near a housekeeper or a porter. But here's what you do. You'd best
+send the maid for the housekeeper; tell her to say that a certain
+guest, now, a steady one, has come on business; that it's very
+urgent to see her personally. But you must excuse me--I'm going to
+back out, and don't you be angry, please. You know yourself--
+charity begins at home. But why should you hang around by yourself
+in this here darkness? You'd better go into the cabinet. If you
+want to, I'll send you beer there. Or, perhaps you want coffee? Or
+else," and her eyes sparkled slyly, "or else a girlie, perhaps?
+Tamara is busy, but may be Niura or Verka will do?"
+
+"Stop it, Jennie! I came about a serious and important matter, but
+you ..."
+
+"Well, well, I won't, I won't! I said it just so. I see that you
+observe faithfulness. That's very noble on your part. Let's go,
+then."
+
+She led him into the cabinet, and, opening the inner bolt of the
+shutter, threw it wide open. The daylight softly and sadly
+splashed against the red and gold walls, over the candelabra, over
+the soft red velveteen furniture.
+
+"Right here it began," reflected Lichonin with sad regret.
+
+"I am going," said Jennka. "Don't you knuckle down too much before
+her, and Simeon too. Abuse them for all you're worth. It's daytime
+now, and they won't dare do anything to you. If anything happens,
+tell them straight that, now, you're going to the governor
+immediately and are going to tell on them. Tell 'em, that they'll
+be closed up and put out of town in twenty-four hours. Bawl 'em
+out and they get like silk. Well, now, I wish you success."
+
+She went away. After ten minutes had passed, into the cabinet
+floated Emma Edwardovna, the housekeeper, in a blue satin PEGNOIR;
+corpulent, with an important face, broadening from the forehead
+down to the cheeks, just like a monstrous squash; with all her
+massive chins and breasts; with small, keen eyes, without
+eyelashes; with thin, malicious, compressed lips. Lichonin,
+arising, pressed the puffy hand extended to him, studded with
+rings, and suddenly thought with aversion:
+
+"The devil take it! If this vermin had a soul, if it were possible
+to read this soul--then how many direct and indirect murders are
+lurking hidden within it!"
+
+It must be said, that in starting out for the Yamkas, Lichonin,
+besides money, had fetched a revolver along with him; and on the
+road, while walking, he had frequently shoved his hand into his
+pocket and had there felt the chill contact of the metal. He
+expected affront, violence, and was prepared to meet them in a
+suitable manner. But, to his amazement, all that he had
+presupposed and had feared proved a timorous, fantastic fiction.
+The business was far more simple, more wearisome and more prosaic,
+and at the same time more unpleasant.
+
+"JA, MEIN HERR," said the housekeeper indifferently and somewhat
+loftily, settling into a low chair and lighting a cigarette. "You
+pay for one night and instead of that took already the girl for
+one more night and one more day. ALSO, you owe twenty-five more
+roubles yet. When we let off a girlie for a night we take ten
+roubles, and for the twenty-four hours twenty-five roubles. That's
+a tax, like. Don't you want a smoke, young man?" she stretched out
+her case, and Lichonin, without himself knowing why, took a
+cigarette.
+
+"I wanted to talk with you about something else entirely."
+
+"O! Don't trouble yourself to speak: I understand everything very
+well. Probably the young man wants to take these girl, those
+Liubka, altogether to himself to set her up, or in order to--how
+do you Russians call it?--in order to safe her? Yes, yes, yes,
+that happens. Twenty-two years I live in a brothel, and I know,
+that this happens with very foolish young peoples. But only I
+assure you, that from this will come nothing out."
+
+"Whether it will come out or whether it won't come out--that is
+already my affair," answered Lichonin dully, looking down at his
+fingers, trembling on his knees.
+
+"O, of course, it's your affair, my young student," and the flabby
+cheeks and majestic chins of Emma Edwardovna began to jump from
+inaudible laughter. "From my soul I wish for you love and
+friendship; but only trouble yourself to tell this nasty creature,
+this Liubka, that she shouldn't dare to show even her nose here,
+when you throw her out into the street like a little doggie. Let
+her croak from hunger under a fence, or go into a half-rouble
+establishment for the soldiers!"
+
+"Believe me, she won't return. I ask you merely to give me her
+certificate, without delay."
+
+"The certificate? ACH, if you please! Even this very minute. Only
+I will first trouble you to pay for everything that she took here
+on credit. Have a look, here is her account book. I took it along
+with me on purpose. I knew already with what our conversation
+would end." She took out of the slit of her PEGNOIR--showing
+Lichonin for just a minute her fat, full-fleshed, yellow, enormous
+breast--a little book in a black cover, with the heading: ACCOUNT
+OF MISS IRENE VOSCHHENKOVA IN THE HOUSE OF ILL-FAME, MAINTAINED BY
+ANNA MARKOVNA SHAIBES, ON YAM-SKAYA STREET, NO. SO-AND-SO, and
+extended it to him across the table. Lichonin turned over the
+first page and read through four or five paragraphs of the printed
+rules. There dryly and briefly it was stated that the account book
+consists of two copies, of which one is kept by the proprietress
+while the other remains with the prostitute; that all income and
+expense were entered into both books; that by agreement the
+prostitute receives board, quarters, heat, light, bed linen, baths
+and so forth, and for this pays out to the proprietress in no case
+more than two-thirds of her earnings; while out of the remaining
+money she is bound to dress neatly and decently, having no less
+than two dresses for going out. Further, mention was made of the
+fact that payment was made with the help of stamps, which the
+proprietress gives out to the prostitute upon receipt of money
+from her; while the account is drawn up at the end of every month.
+And, finally, that the prostitute can at any time leave the house
+of prostitution, even if there does remain a debt of hers, which,
+however, she binds herself to cancel on the basis of general civil
+laws.
+
+Lichonin prodded the last point with his finger, and, having
+turned the face of the book to the housekeeper, said triumphantly:
+
+"Aha! There, you see: she has the right to leave the house at any
+time. Consequently, she can at any time quit your abominable dive
+of violence, baseness, and depravity, in which you ..." Lichonin
+began rattling off, but the housekeeper calmly cut him short:
+
+"O! I have no doubt of this. Let her go away. Let her only pay the
+money."
+
+"What about promissory notes? She can give promissory notes."
+
+"Pst! Promissory notes! In the first place, she's illiterate;
+while in the second, what are her promissory notes worth? A spit
+and no more. Let her find a surety who would be worthy of trust,
+and then I have nothing against it."
+
+"But, then, there's nothing said in the rules about sureties."
+
+"There's many a thing not said! In the rules it also does not say
+that it's permitted to carry a girlie out of the house, without
+giving warning to the owners."
+
+"But in any case you'll have to give me her blank."
+
+"I will never do such a foolishness! Come here with some
+respectable person and with the police; and let the police certify
+that this friend of yours is a man of means; and let this man
+stand surety for you; and let, besides that, the police certify
+that you are not taking the girl in order to trade in her, or to
+sell her over to another stablishment--then as you please! Hand
+and foot!"
+
+"The devil!" exclaimed Lichonin. "But if that surety will be I, I
+myself! If I'll sign your promissory notes right away ..."
+
+"Young man! I don't know what you are taught in your different
+universities, but is it possible that you reckon me such a
+positive fool? God grant, that you have, besides those which are
+on you, still some other pants! God grant, that you should even
+the day after have for dinner the remnants of sausages from the
+sausage shop, and yet you say--a promissory note! What are you
+bothering my head for?"
+
+Lichonin grew completely angry. He drew his wallet out of his
+pocket and slapped it down on the table.
+
+"In that case I pay in cash and immediately!"
+
+"ACH, that's a business of another kind," sweetly, but still with
+mistrust, the housekeeper intoned. "I will trouble you to turn the
+page, and see what the bill of your beloved is."
+
+"Keep still, you carrion!"
+
+"I'm still, you fool," calmly responded the housekeeper.
+
+On the small ruled pages on the left side was designated the
+income, on the right were the expenses.
+
+"Received in stamps, 15th of April," read Lichonin, "10 roubles;
+16th--4 roubles; 17th--12 roubles; 18th--sick; 19th--sick; 20th--6
+roubles; 21st--24 roubles"
+
+"My God!" with loathing, with horror, reflected Lichonin. "Twelve
+men in one night!"
+
+At the end of the month stood:
+
+"Total 330 roubles."
+
+"Lord! Why, this is some sort of delirium! One hundred and sixty-
+five visits," thought Lichonin, having mechanically calculated it,
+and still continued turning the pages. Then he went over to the
+columns on the right.
+
+"Made, a red dress of silk with lace 84 roubles Dressmaker
+Eldokimova. Dressing sack of lace 35 roubles Dressmaker
+Eldokimova. Silk stockings 6 pair 36 roubles," &c., &c. "Given for
+cab-fare, given for candy, perfumes bought," &c., &c. "Total 205
+roubles." After that from the 330 roubles were deducted 220
+roubles--the share of the proprietress for board and lodging. The
+figure of 110 roubles resulted. The end of the monthly account
+declared:
+
+"Total after the payment to the dressmaker and for other articles,
+of 110 roubles, a debt of ninety-five (95) roubles remains for
+Irene Voschhenkova and with the four hundred and eighteen roubles
+remaining from last year--five hundred and thirteen (513)
+roubles."
+
+Lichonin's spirits fell. He did try, at first, to be indignant at
+the expensiveness of the materials supplied; but the housekeeper
+retorted with SANG FROID that that did not concern her at all;
+that the establishment demanded only that the girl dress decently,
+as becomes a girl from a decent, genteel house; while it did not
+concern itself with the rest. The establishment merely extended
+her credit in paying her expenses.
+
+"But this is a vixen, a spider in human shape--this dressmaker of
+yours!" yelled Lichonin beside himself. "Why, she's in a
+conspiracy with you, cupping glass that you are, you abominable
+tortoise! Scuttlefish! Where's your conscience?"
+
+The more agitated he grew, the more calm and jeering Emma
+Edwardovna became.
+
+"Again I repeat: that is not my business. And you, young man,
+don't express yourself like that, because I will call the porter,
+and he will throw you out of the door."
+
+Lichonin was compelled to bargain with the cruel woman long,
+brutally, till he grew hoarse, before she agreed, in the end, to
+take two hundred and fifty roubles in cash, and two hundred
+roubles in promissory notes. And even that only when Lichonin with
+his half-yearly certificate proved to her that he was finishing
+this year and would become a lawyer.
+
+The housekeeper went after the ticket, while Lichonin took to
+pacing the cabinet back and forth. He had already looked over all
+the pictures on the walls: Leda with the swan, and the bathing on
+the shore of the sea, and the odalisque in a harem, and the satyr,
+bearing a naked nymph in his arms; but suddenly a small printed
+placard, framed and behind glass, half covered by a portiere,
+attracted his attention. It was the first time that it had come
+across Lichonin's eyes, and the student with amazement and
+aversion read these lines, expressed in the dead, official
+language of police stations. There with shameful, businesslike
+coldness, were mentioned all possible measures and precautions
+against infections; the intimacies of feminine toilet; the weekly
+medical inspections and all the adaptations for them. Lichonin
+also read that no establishment was to be situated nearer than a
+hundred steps from churches, places of learning, and court
+buildings; that only persons of the female sex may maintain houses
+of prostitution; that only her relatives, and even then of the
+female sex exclusively, and none older than seven years, may live
+with the proprietress; and that the proprietors and the owners of
+the house, as well as the girls, must in their relations among
+themselves and the guests as well, observe politeness, quiet,
+civility and decency, by no means allowing themselves drunkenness,
+swearing and brawls. And also that the prostitute must not allow
+herself the caresses of love when in an intoxicated condition or
+with an intoxicated man; and in addition to that, during the time
+of certain functions. Here also the prostitutes were most strictly
+forbidden to commit abortions. "What a serious and moral view of
+things!" reflected Lichonin with a malicious sneer.
+
+Finally the business with Emma Edwarodvna was concluded. Having
+taken the money and written out a receipt, she stretched it out to
+Lichonin together with the blank, while he stretched out the money
+to her; at which, during the time of the operation, they both
+looked at each other's eyes and hands intently and warily. It was
+apparent that they both felt no especially great mutual trust.
+Lichonin put the documents away in his wallet and was preparing to
+depart. The housekeeper escorted him to the very stoop, and when
+the student was already standing in the street, she, remaining on
+the steps, leaned out and called after him:
+
+"Student! Hey! Student!"
+
+He stopped and turned around.
+
+"What now?"
+
+"And here's another thing. Now I must tell you, that your Liubka
+is trash, a thief, and sick with syphilis! None of our good guests
+wanted to take her; and anyway, if you had not taken her, then we
+would have thrown her out to-morrow! I will also tell you, that
+she had to do with the porter, with policemen, with janitors, and
+with petty thieves. Congratulations on your lawful marriage!"
+
+"Oo-ooh! Vermin!" Lichonin roared back at her.
+
+"You green blockhead!" called out the housekeeper and banged the
+door.
+
+Lichonin went to the station house in a cab. On the way he
+recalled that he had not had time to look at the blank properly,
+at this renowned "yellow ticket," of which he had heard so much.
+This was an ordinary small white sheet, no larger than a postal
+envelope. On one side, in the proper column, were written out the
+name, father's name, and family name of Liubka, and her
+profession--"Prostitute"; and on the other side, concise extracts
+from the paragraphs of that placard which he had just read
+through--infamous, hypocritical rules about behaviour and external
+and internal cleanliness. "Every visitor." he read, "has the right
+to demand from the prostitute the written certificate of the
+doctor who has inspected her the last time." And again sentimental
+pity overcame the heart of Lichonin.
+
+"Poor women!" he reflected with grief. "What only don't they do
+with you, how don't they abuse you, until you grow accustomed to
+everything, just like blind horses on a treadmill!" In the station
+house he was received by the district inspector, Kerbesh. He had
+spent the night on duty, had not slept his fill, and was angry.
+His luxurious, fan-shaped red beard was crumpled. The right half
+of the ruddy face was still crimsonly glowing from lying long on
+the uncomfortable oilcloth pillow. But the amazing, vividly blue
+eyes, cold and luminous, looked clear and hard, like blue
+porcelain. Having ended interrogating, recording, and cursing out
+with obscenities the throng of ragamuffins, taken in during the
+night for sobering up and now being sent out over their own
+districts, he threw himself against the back of the divan, put his
+hands behind his neck, and stretched with all his enormous, heroic
+body so hard that all his ligaments and joints cracked. He looked
+at Lichonin just as at a thing, and asked:
+
+"And what will you have, Mr. Student?"
+
+Lichonin stated his business briefly.
+
+"And so I want," he concluded, to take her to me ... how is this
+supposed to be done with you? ... in the capacity of a servant,
+or, if you want, a relative, in a word ... how is it done? ..."
+
+"Well, in the capacity of a kept mistress or a wife, let's say,"
+indifferently retorted Kerbesh and twirled in his hands a silver
+cigar case with monograms and little figures. "I can do absolutely
+nothing for you ... at least right now. If you desire to marry
+her, present a suitable permit from your university authorities.
+But if you're taking her on maintenance--then just think, where's
+the logic in that? You're taking a girl out of a house of
+depravity, in order to live with her in depraved cohabitation."
+
+"A servant, finally," Lichonin put in.
+
+"And even a servant. I'd trouble you to present an affidavit from
+your landlord--for, I hope, you're not a houseowner? Very well,
+then, an affidavit from your landlord, as to your being in a
+position to keep a servant; and besides that, all the documents,
+testifying that you're that very person you give yourself out to
+be; an affidavit, for instance, from your district and from the
+university, and all that sort of thing. For you, I hope, are
+registered? Or, perhaps, you are now, eh? ... Of the illegal ones?
+
+"No, I am registered!" retorted Lichonin, beginning to lose
+patience.
+
+"And that's splendid. But the young lady, about whom you're
+troubling yourself?"
+
+"No, she's not registered as yet. But I have her blank in my
+possession, which, I hope, you'll exchange for a real passport for
+me, and then I'll register her at once."
+
+Kerbesh spread his arms out wide, then again began toying with the
+cigar case.
+
+"Can't do anything for you, Mr. Student, just nothing at all,
+until you present all the papers required. As far as the girl's
+concerned, why, she, as one not having the right of residence,
+will be sent to the police without delay, and there detained;
+unless she personally desires to go there, where you've taken her
+from. I've the honour of wishing you good day."
+
+Lichonin abruptly pulled his hat over his eyes and went toward the
+door. But suddenly an ingenious thought flashed through his head,
+from which, however, he himself became disgusted. And feeling
+nausea in the pit of his stomach, with clammy, cold hands,
+experiencing a sickening pinching in his toes, he again walked up
+to the table and said as though carelessly, but with a catch in
+his voice:
+
+"Pardon me, inspector. I've forgotten the most important thing; a
+certain mutual acquaintance of ours has instructed me to transmit
+to you a small debt of his."
+
+"Hm! An acquaintance?" asked Kerbesh, opening wide his magnificent
+azure eyes. "And who may he be?"
+
+"Bar ... Barbarisov."
+
+"Ah, Barbarisov? So, so, so, I recollect, I recollect!"
+
+"So then, won't you please accept these ten roubles?"
+
+Kerbesh shook his head, but did not take the bit of paper.
+
+"Well, but this Barbarisov of yours--that is, ours--is a swine. It
+isn't ten roubles he owes me at all, but a quarter of a century.
+What a scoundrel! Twenty-five roubles and some small change
+besides. Well, the small change, of course, I won't count up to
+him. God be with him! This, you see, is a billiard debt. I must
+say that he's a blackguard, plays crookedly ... And so, young man,
+dig up fifteen more."
+
+"Well, but you are a knave, Mr. Inspector!" said Lichonin, getting
+out the money.
+
+"Oh, mercy!" by now altogether good-naturedly retorted Kerbesh. "A
+wife, children ... You know yourself what our salary is ...
+Receive the little passport, young man. Sign your receipt. Best
+wishes."
+
+A queer thing! The consciousness that the passport was, finally,
+in his pocket, for some reason suddenly calmed and again braced up
+and elevated Lichonin's nerves.
+
+"Oh, well!" he thought, walking quickly along the street, "the
+very beginning has been laid down, the most difficult part has
+been done. Hold fast, now, Lichonin, and don't fall in spirit!
+What you've done is splendid and lofty. Let me be even a victim of
+this deed--it's all one! It's a shame, having done a good deed, to
+expect rewards for it right away. I'm not a little circus dog, and
+not a trained camel, and not the first pupil of a young ladies'
+genteel institute. Only it was useless for me to let loose
+yesterday before these bearers of enlightenment. It all turned out
+to be silly, tactless, and, in any case, premature. But everything
+in life is reparable. A person will sustain the heaviest, most
+disgraceful things; but, time passes, and they are recalled as
+trifles ..."
+
+To his amazement, Liubka was not especially struck, and did not at
+all become overjoyed when he triumphantly showed her the passport.
+She was only glad to see Lichonin again. Perhaps, this primitive,
+naive soul had already contrived to cleave to its protector? She
+did throw herself upon his neck, but he stopped her, and quietly,
+almost in her ear, asked her:
+
+"Liubka, tell me ... don't be afraid to tell the truth, no matter
+what it may be ... They told me just now, there in the house, that
+you're sick with a certain disease ... you know, that which is
+called the evil sickness. If you believe in me even to some
+extent, tell me, my darling, tell me, is that so or not?"
+
+She turned red, covered her face with her hands, fell down on the
+divan and burst into tears.
+
+"My dearie! Vassil Vassilich! Vasinka! Honest to God! Honest to
+God, now, there never was anything of the kind! I always was so
+careful! I was awfully afraid of this. I love you so! I would have
+told you without fail." She caught his hands, pressed them to her
+wet face and continued to assure him with the absurd and touching
+sincerity of an unjustly accused child.
+
+And he at once believed her in his soul.
+
+"I believe you, my child," he said quietly, stroking her hair.
+"Don't excite yourself, don't cry. Only let us not again give in
+to our weakness. Well, it has happened--let it have happened; but
+let us not repeat it any more.'
+
+"As you wish," prattled the girl, kissing now his hands, now the
+cloth of his coat. "If I displease you so, then, of course, let it
+be as you wish."
+
+However, this evening also the temptation was again repeated, and
+kept on repeating until the falls from grace ceased to arouse a
+burning shame in Lichonin, and turned into a habit, swallowing and
+extinguishing remorse.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Justice must be rendered to Lichonin; he did everything to create
+for Liubka a quiet and secure existence. Since he knew that they
+would have to leave their mansard anyway--this bird house, rearing
+above the whole city--leave it not so much on account of its
+inconvenience and lack of space as on account of the old woman
+Alexandra, who with every day became more ferocious, captious and
+scolding--he resolved to rent a little bit of a flat, consisting
+of two rooms and a kitchen, on the Borschhagovka, at the edge of
+the town. He came upon an inexpensive one, for nine roubles a
+month, without fuel. True, Lichonin had to run very far from there
+to his pupils, but he relied firmly upon his endurance and health,
+and would often say:
+
+"My legs are my own. I don't have to be sparing of them."
+
+And, truly, he was a great master at walking. Once, for the sake
+of a joke, having put a pedometer in his vest pocket, he towards
+evening counted up twenty versts; which, taking into consideration
+the unusual length of his legs, equalled some twenty-five
+versts.[Footnote: A verst is equal to two-thirds of a mile.--
+Trans] And he did have to run about quite a bit, because the fuss
+about Liubka's passport and the acquisition of household
+furnishings of a sort had eaten up all his accidental winnings at
+cards. He did try to take up playing again, on a small scale at
+first, but was soon convinced that his star at cards had now
+entered upon a run of fatal ill luck.
+
+By now, of course, the real character of his relations with Liubka
+was a mystery to none of his comrades; but he still continued in
+their presence to act out the comedy of friendly and brotherly
+relations with the girl. For some reason he could not, or did not
+want to, realize that it would have been far wiser and more
+advantageous for him not to lie, not to be false, and not to
+pretend. Or, perhaps, although he did know this, he still could
+not change the established tone. As for the intimate relations, he
+inevitably played a secondary, passive role. The initiative, in
+the form of tenderness, caressing, always had to come from Liubka
+(she had remained Liubka, after all, and Lichonin had somehow
+entirely forgotten that he himself had read her real name--Irene--
+in the passport).
+
+She, who had so recently given her body up impassively--or, on the
+contrary, with an imitation of burning passion--to tens of people
+in a day, to hundreds in a month, had become attached to Lichonin
+with all her feminine being, loving and jealous; had grown
+attached to him with body, feeling, thoughts. The prince was funny
+and entertaining to her, and the expansive Soloviev interestingly
+amusing; toward the crushing authoritativeness of Simanovsky she
+felt a supernatural terror; but Lichonin was for her at the same
+time a sovereign, and a divinity; and, which is the most horrible
+of all, her property and bodily joy.
+
+It has long ago been observed, that a man who has lived his fill,
+has been worn out, gnawed and chewed by the jaws of amatory
+passions, will never again love with a strong and only love,
+simultaneously self-denying, pure, and passionate. But for a woman
+there are neither laws nor limitations in this respect. This
+observation was especially confirmed in Liubka. She was ready to
+crawl before Lichonin with delight, to serve him as a slave; but,
+at the same time, desired that he belong to her more than a table,
+than a little dog, than a night blouse. And he always proved
+wanting, always failing before the onslaught of this sudden love,
+which from a modest little stream had so rapidly turned into a
+river and had over-flowed its banks. And not infrequently he
+thought to himself, with bitterness and a sneer:
+
+"Every evening I play the role of the beauteous Joseph; still, he
+at least managed to tear himself away, leaving his underwear in
+the hands of the ardent lady; but when will I at last get free of
+my yoke?"
+
+And a secret enmity for Liubka was already gnawing him. All the
+more and more frequently various crafty plans of liberation came
+into his head. And some of them were to such an extent dishonest,
+that, after a few hours, or the next day, Lichonin squirmed
+inwardly from shame, recalling them.
+
+"I am falling, morally and mentally!" he would at times think with
+horror. "It's not in vain that I read somewhere, or heard from
+some one, that the connection of a cultured man with a woman of
+little intellect will never elevate her to the level of the man,
+but, on the contrary, will bow him down and sink him to the mental
+and moral outlook of the woman."
+
+And after two weeks she ceased to excite his imagination entirely.
+He gave in, as to violence, to the long-continued caresses,
+entreaties, and often even to pity.
+
+Yet at the same time Liubka, who had rested and felt living, real
+soil under her, began to improve in looks with unusual rapidity,
+just as a flower bud, that but yesterday was almost dying,
+suddenly unfolds after a plentiful and warm rain. The freckles ran
+off her soft face, and the uncomprehending, troubled expression,
+like that of a young jackdaw, had disappeared from the dark eyes,
+and they had grown brighter and had begun to sparkle. The body
+grew stronger and filled out; the lips grew red. But Lichonin,
+seeing Liubka every day, did not notice this and did not believe
+those compliments which were showered upon her by his friends.
+"Fool jokes," he reflected, frowning. "The boys are spoofing."
+
+As the lady of the house, Liubka proved to be less than mediocre.
+True, she could cook fat stews, so thick that the spoon stood
+upright in them; prepare enormous, unwieldy, formless cutlets; and
+under the guidance of Lichonin familiarized herself pretty rapidly
+with the great art of brewing tea (at seventy-five kopecks a
+pound); but further than that she did not go, probably because for
+each art and for each being there are extreme limitations of their
+own, which cannot in any way be surmounted. But then, she loved to
+wash floors very much; and carried out this occupation so often
+and with such zeal, that dampness soon set in in the flat and
+multipedes appeared.
+
+Tempted once by a newspaper advertisement, Lichonin procured a
+stocking knitting machine for her, on terms. The art, the mastery
+of this instrument--promising, to judge by the advertisement,
+three roubles of clear profit a day--proved to be so uncomplicated
+that Lichonin, Soloviev, and Nijeradze easily mastered it in a few
+hours; while Lichonin even contrived to knit a whole stocking of
+uncommon durability, and of such dimensions that it would have
+proven big even for the feet of Minin and Pozharsky, whose statues
+are in Moscow, on Krasnaya Square. Only Liubka alone could not
+master this trade. At every mistake or tangle she was forced to
+turn to the co-operation of the men. But then, she learned pretty
+rapidly to make artificial flowers and, despite the opinion of
+Simanovsky, made them very exquisitely, and with great taste; so
+that after a month the hat specialty stores began to buy her work.
+And, what is most amazing, she had taken only two lessons in all
+from a specialist, while the rest she learned through a self-
+instructor, guiding herself only by the drawings supplemental to
+it. She did not contrive to make more than a rouble's worth of
+flowers in a week; but this money was her pride, and for the very
+first half-rouble that she made she bought Lichonin a mouthpiece
+for smoking.
+
+Several years later Lichonin confessed to himself at soul, with
+regret and with a quiet melancholy, that this period of time was
+the most quiet, peaceful and comfortable one of all his life in
+the university and as a lawyer. This unwieldy, clumsy, perhaps
+even stupid Liubka, possessed some instinctive domesticity, some
+imperceptible ability of creating a bright and easy quietude
+around her. It was precisely she who attained the fact that
+Lichonin's quarters very soon became a charming, quiet centre;
+where all the comrades of Lichonin, who, as well as the majority
+of the students of that time, were forced to sustain a bitter
+struggle with the harsh conditions of life, felt somehow at ease,
+as though in a family; and rested at soul after heavy
+tribulations, need, and starvation. Lichonin recalled with
+grateful sadness her friendly complaisance, her modest and
+attentive silence, on those evenings around the samovar, when so
+much had been spoken, argued and dreamt.
+
+In learning, things went with great difficulty. All these self-
+styled cultivators, collectively and separately, spoke of the fact
+that the education of the human mind, and the upbringing of the
+human soul must flow out of individual motives; but in reality
+they stuffed Liubka with just that which seemed to them the most
+necessary and indispensable, and tried to overcome together with
+her those scientific obstacles, which, without any loss, might
+have been left aside.
+
+Thus, for example, Lichonin did not want, under any conditions, to
+become reconciled, in teaching her arithmetic, to her queer,
+barbarous, savage, or, more correctly, childish, primitive method
+of counting. She counted exclusively in ones, twos, threes and
+fives. Thus, for example, twelve to her was two times two threes;
+nineteen--three fives and two twos; and, it must be said, that
+through her system she with the rapidity of a counting board
+operated almost up to a hundred. To go further she dared not; and
+besides she had no practical need of this. In vain did Lichonin
+try to transfer her to a digital system. Nothing came of this,
+save that he flew into a rage, yelled at Liubka; while she would
+look at him in silence, with astonished, widely open and guilty
+eyes, the lashes of which stuck into long black arrows from tears.
+Also, through a capricious turn of her mind, she began to master
+addition and multiplication with comparative ease, but subtraction
+and division were for her an impenetrable wall. But then, she
+could, with amazing speed and wit, solve all possible jocose oral
+head-breaking riddles, and even remembered very many of them
+herself from the thousand year old usage of the village. Toward
+geography she was perfectly dull. True, she could orientate
+herself as to the four cardinal points on the street, in the
+garden, and in the room; hundreds of times better than Lichonin--
+the ancient peasant instinct in her asserted itself--but she
+stubbornly denied the sphericity of the earth and did not
+recognize the horizon; and when she was told that the terrestrial
+globe moves in space, she only snorted from laughter. Geographical
+maps to her were always an incomprehensible daubing in several
+colours; but separate figures she memorized exactly and quickly.
+"Where's Italy?" Lichonin would ask her. "Here it is, a boot,"
+Liubka would say and triumphantly jabbed the Apennine Peninsula.
+"Sweden and Norway?" "This dog, which is jumping off a roof." "The
+Baltic Sea?" "A widow standing on her knees." "The Black Sea?" "A
+shoe." "Spain?" "A fatty in a cap" ... &c. With history matters
+went no better; Lichonin did not take into consideration the fact
+that she, with her childlike soul thirsting for fiction, would
+have easily become familiarized with historic events through
+various funny and heroically touching anecdotes; but he,
+accustomed to pulling through examinations and tutoring high-
+school boys of the fourth or fifth grade, starved her on names and
+dates. Besides that, he was very impatient, unrestrained,
+irascible; grew fatigued soon, and a secret--usually concealed but
+constantly growing--hatred for the girl who had so suddenly and
+incongruously warped all his life, more and more frequently and
+unjustly broke forth during the time of these lessons.
+
+A far greater success as a pedagogue enjoyed Nijeradze. His guitar
+and mandolin always hung in the dining room, secured to the nails
+with ribbons. The guitar, with its soft, warm sounds, drew Liubka
+more than the irritating, metallic bleating of the mandolin. When
+Nijeradze would come to them as a guest (three or four times a
+week, in the evening), she herself would take the guitar down from
+the wall, painstakingly wipe it off with a handkerchief, and hand
+it over to him. He, having fussed for some time with the tuning,
+would clear his throat, put one leg over the other, negligently
+throw himself against the back of the chair, and begin in a
+throaty little tenor, a trifle hoarse, but pleasant and true:
+
+    "The trea-cha-rous sa-ound av akissing
+    Resahounds through the quiet night air;
+    Tuh all fla-ming hearts it is pleasing,
+    And given tuh each lovin' pair.
+
+    For a single mohoment of mee-ting ..."
+
+And at this he would pretend to swoon away from his own singing,
+shut his eyes, toss his head in the passionate passages or during
+the pauses, tearing his right hand away from the strings; would
+suddenly turn to stone, and for a second would pierce Liubka's
+eyes with his languorous, humid, sheepish eyes. He knew an endless
+multitude of ballads, catches, and old-fashioned, jocose little
+pieces. Most of all pleased Liubka the universally familiar
+Armenian couplets about Karapet:
+
+    "Karapet has a buffet,
+     On the buffet's a confet,
+     On the confet's a portret--
+     That's the self-same Karapet."
+
+[Footnote: Anglice, "confet" is a bon-bon; "portret," a portrait.
+--Trans.]
+
+Of these couplets (in the Caucasus they are called kinto-uri--the
+song of the peddlers) the prince knew an infinite many, but the
+absurd refrain was always one and the same:
+
+    "Bravo, bravo, Katenka,
+     Katerin Petrovna,
+     Don't you kiss me on the cheek--a,
+     Kiss the backs of my head."
+
+These couplets Nijeradze always sang in a diminished voice,
+preserving on his face an expression of serious astonishment about
+Karapet; while Liubka laughed until it hurt, until tears came,
+until she had nervous spasms. Once, carried away, she could not
+restrain herself and began to chime in with him, and their singing
+proved to be very harmonious. Little by little, when she had by
+degrees completely ceased to be embarrassed before the prince,
+they sang together more and more frequently. Liubka proved to have
+a very soft and low contralto, even though thin, on which her past
+life with its colds, drinking, and professional excesses had left
+absolutely no traces. And mainly--which was already a curious gift
+of God--she possessed an instinctive, inherent ability very
+exactly, beautifully, and always originally, to carry on the
+second voice. There came a time toward the end of their
+acquaintance, when Liubka did not beg the prince, but the prince
+Liubka, to sing some one of the beloved songs of the people, of
+which she knew a multitude. And so, putting her elbow on the
+table, and propping up her head with her palm, like a peasant
+woman, she would start off to the cautious, painstaking, quiet
+accompaniment:
+
+    "Oh, the nights have grown tiresome to me, and
+      wearisome;
+    To be parted from my dearie, from my mate!
+    Oh, haven't I myself, woman-like, done a foolish
+      thing--
+    Have stirred up the wrath of my own darling:
+    When I did call him a bitter drunkard! ..."
+
+"Bitter drunkard!" the prince would repeat the last words together
+with her, and would forlornly toss his curly head, inclined to one
+side; and they both tried to end the song so that the scarcely
+seizable quivering of the guitar strings and the voice might by
+degrees grow quiet, and that it might not be possible to note when
+the sound ended and the silence came.
+
+But then, in the matter of THE PANTHER'S SKIN, the work of the
+famous Georgian poet Rustavelli, prince Nijeradze fell down
+completely. The beauty of the poem, of course, consisted in the
+way it sounded in the native tongue; but scarcely would he begin
+to read in sing-song his throaty, sibilant, hawking phrases, when
+Liubka would at first shake for a long time from irresistible
+laughter; then, finally, burst into laughter, filling the whole
+room with explosive, prolonged peals. Then Nijeradze in wrath
+would slam shut the little tome of the adored writer, and swear at
+Liubka, calling her a mule and a camel. However, they soon made
+up.
+
+There were times when fits of goatish, mischievous merriment would
+come upon Nijeradze. He would pretend that he wanted to embrace
+Liubka, would roll exaggeratedly passionate eyes at her, and would
+utter with a theatrically languishing whisper:
+
+"Me soul! The best rosa in the garden of Allah! Honey and milk are
+upon thy lips, and thy breath is better than the aroma of kabob.
+Give me to drink the bliss of Nirvanah from the goblet of thy
+lips, O thou, my best Tifflissian she-goat!"
+
+But she would laugh, get angry, strike his hands, and threaten to
+complain to Lichonin.
+
+"V-va!" the prince would spread out his hands. "What is Lichonin?
+Lichonin is my friend, my brother, and bosom crony. But then, does
+he know what loffe is? Is it possible that you northern people
+understand loffe? It's we, Georgians, who are created for loffe.
+Look, Liubka! I'll show you right away what loffe is!" He would
+clench his fists, bend his body forward, and would start rolling
+his eyes so ferociously, gnash his teeth and roar with a lion's
+voice so, that a childish terror would encompass Liubka, despite
+the fact that she knew this to be a joke, and she would dash off
+running into another room.
+
+It must be said, however, that for this lad, in general
+unrestrained in the matter of light, chance romances, existed
+special firm moral prohibitions, sucked in with the milk of his
+mother Georgian; the sacred adates concerning the wife of a
+friend. And then, probably he understood--and it must be said that
+these oriental men, despite their seeming naiveness--and, perhaps,
+even owing to it--possess, when they wish to, a fine psychic
+intuition--he understood, that having made Liubka his mistress for
+even one minute, he would be forever deprived of this charming,
+quiet, domestic evening comfort, to which he had grown so used.
+For he, who was on terms of thou-ing with almost the whole
+university, nevertheless felt himself so lonely in a strange city
+and in a country still strange to him!
+
+These studies afforded the most pleasure of all to Soloviev. This
+big, strong, and negligent man somehow involuntarily,
+imperceptibly even to himself, began to submit to that hidden,
+unseizable, exquisite witchery of femininity; which not
+infrequently lurks under the coarsest covering, in the harshest,
+most gnarled environment. The pupil dominated, the teacher obeyed.
+Through the qualities of a primitive, but on the other hand a
+fresh, deep, and original soul, Liubka was inclined not to obey
+the method of another, but to seek out her own peculiar, strange
+processes. Thus, for example, she--like many children, however,--
+learned writing before reading. Not she herself, meek and yielding
+by nature, but some peculiar quality of her mind, obstinately
+refused in reading to harness a vowel alongside of a consonant, or
+vice versa; in writing, however, she would manage this. For
+penmanship along slanted rulings she, despite the general wont of
+beginners, felt a great inclination; she wrote bending low over
+the paper; blew on the paper from exertion, as though blowing off
+imaginary dust; licked her lips and stuck out with the tongue,
+from the inside, now one cheek, now the other. Soloviev did not
+thwart her, and followed after, along those ways which her
+instinct laid down. And it must be said, that during this month
+and a half he had managed to become attached with all his huge,
+broad, mighty soul to this chance, weak, transitory being. This
+was the circumspect, droll, magnanimous, somewhat wondering love,
+and the careful concern, of a kind elephant for a frail, helpless,
+yellow-downed chick.
+
+The reading was a delectation for both of them, and here again the
+choice of works was directed by the taste of Liubka, while
+Soloviev only followed its current and its sinuosities. Thus, for
+example, Liubka did not overcome Don Quixote, tired, and, finally,
+turning away from him, with pleasure heard Robinson Crusoe
+through, and wept with especial copiousness over the scene of his
+meeting with his relatives. She liked Dickens, and very easily
+grasped his radiant humour; but the features of English manners
+were foreign to her and incomprehensible. They also read Chekhov
+more than once, and Liubka very freely, without difficulty,
+penetrated the beauty of his design, his smile and his sadness.
+Stories for children moved her, touched her to such a degree that
+it was laughable and joyous to look at her. Once Soloviev read to
+her Chekhov's story, The Fit, in which, as it is known, a student
+for the first time finds himself in a brothel; and afterwards, on
+the next day, writhes about, as in a fit, in the spasms of a keen
+psychic suffering and the consciousness of common guilt. Soloviev
+himself did not expect that tremendous impression which this
+narrative would make upon her. She cried, swore, wrung her hands,
+and exclaimed all the while:
+
+"Lord! Where does he take all that stuff from, and so skillfully!
+Why, it's every bit just the way it is with us!"
+
+Once he brought with him a book entitled THE HISTORY OF MANON
+LESCAUT AND THE CHEVALIER DE GRIEUX, the work of Abbe Prevost. It
+must be said that Soloviev himself was reading this remarkable
+book for the first time. But still, Liubka appraised it far more
+deeply and finely. The absence of a plot, the naiveness of the
+telling, the surplus of sentimentality, the olden fashion of the
+style--all this taken together cooled Soloviev; whereas Liubka
+received the joyous, sad, touching and flippant details of this
+quaint immortal novel not only through her ears, but as though
+with her eyes and with all her naively open heart.
+
+"'Our intention of espousal was forgotten at St. Denis,'" Soloviev
+was reading, bending his tousled, golden-haired head, illuminated
+by the shade of the lamp, low over the book; "'we transgressed
+against the laws of the church and, without thinking of it, became
+espoused.'"
+
+"What are they at? Of their own will, that is? Without a priest?
+Just so?" asked Liubka in uneasiness, tearing herself away from
+her artificial flowers.
+
+"Of course. And what of it? Free love, and that's all there is to
+it. Like you and Lichonin, now."
+
+"Oh, me! That's an entirely different matter. You know yourself
+where he took me from. But she's an innocent and genteel young
+lady. That's a low-down thing for him to do. And, believe me,
+Soloviev, he's sure to leave her later. Ah, the poor girl. Well,
+well, well, read on."
+
+But already after several pages all the sympathies and
+commiserations of Liubka went over to the side of the deceived
+chevalier.
+
+"'However, the visits and departures by thefts of M. de B. threw
+me into confusion. I also recollected the little purchases of
+Manon, which exceeded our means. All this smacked of the
+generosity of a new lover. "But no, no," I repeated, "it is
+impossible that Manon should deceive me! She is aware, that I live
+only for her, she is exceedingly well aware that I adore her."'"
+
+"Ah, the little fool, the little fool!" exclaimed Liubka. "Why,
+can't you see right off that she's being kept by this rich man.
+Ah, trash that she is!"
+
+And the further the novel unfolded, the more passionate and lively
+an interest did Liubka take in it. She had nothing against Manon's
+fleecing her subsequent patrons with the help of her lover and her
+brother, while de Grieux occupied himself with sharping at the
+club; but her every new betrayal brought Liubka into a rage, while
+the sufferings of the gallant chevalier evoked her tears. Once she
+asked:
+
+"Soloviev, dearie, who was he--this author?"
+
+"He was a certain French priest."
+
+"He wasn't a Russian?"
+
+"No, a Frenchman, I'm telling you. See, he's got everything so--
+the towns are French and the people have French names."
+
+"Then he was a priest, you say? Where did he know all this from,
+then?"
+
+"Well, he knew it, that's all. Because he was an ordinary man of
+the world, a nobleman, and only became a monk afterwards. He had
+seen a lot in his life. Then he again left the monks. But,
+however, here's everything about him written in detail in front of
+this book."
+
+He read the biography of Abbe Prevost to her. Liubka heard it
+through attentively, shaking her head with great significance;
+asked over again about that which she did not understand in
+certain places, and when he had finished she thoughtfully drawled
+out:
+
+"Then that's what he is! He's written it up awfully good. Only why
+is she so low down? For he loves her so, with all his life; but
+she's playing him false all the time."
+
+"Well, Liubochka, what can you do? For she loved him too. Only
+she's a vain hussy, and frivolous. All she wants is only rags, and
+her own horses, and diamonds."
+
+Liubka flared up and hit one fist against the other.
+
+"I'd rub her into powder, the low-down creature? So that's called
+her having loved, too! If you love a man, then all that comes from
+him must be dear to you. He goes to prison, and you go with him to
+prison. He's become a thief, well, you help him. He's a beggar,
+but still you go with him. What is there out of the way, that
+there's only a crust of black bread, so long as there's love?
+She's low down, and she's low down, that's what! But I, in his
+place, would leave her; or, instead of crying, give her such a
+drubbing that she'd walk around in bruises for a whole month, the
+varmint!"
+
+The end of the novel she could not manage to hear to the finish
+for a long time, and always broke out into sincere warm tears, so
+that it was necessary to interrupt the reading; and the last
+chapter they overcame only in four doses.
+
+The calamities and misadventures of the lovers in prison, the
+compulsory despatch of Manon to America and the self-denial of de
+Grieux in voluntarily following her, so possessed the imagination
+of Liubka and shook her soul, that she even forgot to make her
+remarks. Listening to the story of the quiet, beautiful death of
+Manon in the midst of the desert plain, she, without stirring,
+with hands clasped on her breast, looked at the light; and the
+tears ran and ran out of her staring eyes and fell, like a shower,
+on the table. But when the Chevalier de Grieux, who had lain two
+days near the corpse of his dear Manon, finally began to dig a
+grave with the stump of his sword--Liubka burst into sobbing so
+that Soloviev became scared and dashed after water. But even
+having calmed down a little, she still sobbed for a long time with
+her trembling, swollen lips and babbled:
+
+"Ah! Their life was so miserable! What a bitter lot that was! And
+is it possible that it's always like that, darling Soloviev; that
+just as soon as a man and a woman fall in love with each other, in
+just the way they did, then God is sure to punish them? Dearie,
+but why is that? Why?"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+But if the Georgian and the kind-souled Soloviev served as a
+palliating beginning against the sharp thorns of great worldly
+wisdom, in the curious education of the mind and soul of Liubka;
+and if Liubka forgave the pedantism of Lichonin for the sake of a
+first sincere and limitless love for him, and forgave just as
+willingly as she would have forgiven curses, beatings, or a heavy
+crime--the lessons of Simanovsky, on the other hand, were a
+downright torture and a constant, prolonged burden for her. For it
+must be said that he, as though in spite, was far more accurate
+and exact in his lessons than any pedagogue working out his weekly
+stipulated tutorings.
+
+With the incontrovertibility of his opinions, the assurance of his
+tone and the didacticism of his presentation he took away the will
+of poor Liubka and paralyzed her soul; in the same way that he
+sometimes, during university gatherings or at mass meetings,
+influenced the timid and bashful minds of newcomers. He was an
+orator at meetings; he was a prominent member in the organization
+of students' mess halls; he took part in the recording,
+lithographing and publication of lectures; he was chosen the head
+of the course; and, finally, took a very great interest in the
+students' treasury. He was of that number of people who, after
+they leave the student auditoriums, become the leaders of parties,
+the unrestrained arbiters of pure and self-denying conscience;
+serve out their political stage somewhere in Chukhlon, directing
+the keen attention of all Russia to their heroically woeful
+situation; and after that, beautifully leaning on their past, make
+a career for themselves, thanks to a solid advocacy, a deputation,
+or else a marriage joined with a goodly piece of black loam land
+and provincial activity. Unnoticeably to themselves and altogether
+unnoticeably, of course, to the casual glance, they cautiously
+right themselves; or, more correctly, fade until they grow a belly
+unto themselves, and acquire podagra and diseases of the liver.
+Then they grumble at the whole world; say that they were not
+understood, that their time was the time of sacred ideals. While
+in the family they are despots and not infrequently give money out
+at usury.
+
+The path of the education of Liubka's mind and soul was plain to
+him, as was plain and incontrovertible everything that he
+conceived; he wanted at the start to interest Liubka in chemistry
+and physics.
+
+"The virginally feminine mind," he pondered, "will be astounded,
+then I shall gain possession of her attention, and from trifles,
+from hocus-pocus, I shall pass on to that which will lead her to
+the centre of universal knowledge, where there is no superstition,
+no prejudices; where there is only a broad field for the testing
+of nature."
+
+It must be said that he was inconsistent in his lessons. He
+dragged in all that came to his hand for the astonishment of
+Liubka. Once he brought along for her a large self-made serpent--a
+long cardboard hose, filled with gunpowder, bent in the form of a
+harmonica, and tied tightly across with a cord. He lit it, and the
+serpent for a long time with crackling jumped over the dining room
+and the bedroom, filling the place with smoke and stench. Liubka
+was scarcely amazed and said that this was simply fireworks, that
+she had already seen this, and that you couldn't astonish her with
+that. She asked, however, permission to open the window. Then he
+brought a large phial, tinfoil, rosin and a cat's tail, and in
+this manner contrived a Leyden jar. The discharge, although weak,
+was produced, however.
+
+"Oh, the unclean one take you, Satan!" Liubka began to cry out,
+having felt the dry fillip in her little finger.
+
+Then, out of heated peroxide of manganese, mixed with sand, with
+the help of a druggist's vial, the gutta-percha end of a syringe,
+a basin filled with water, and a jam jar--oxygen was derived. The
+red-hot cork, coal and phosphorus burnt in the jar so blindingly
+that it pained the eyes. Liubka clapped her palms and squealed out
+in delight:
+
+"Mister Professor, more! Please, more, more! ..."
+
+But when, having united the oxygen with the hydrogen brought in an
+empty champagne bottle, and having wrapped up the bottle for
+precaution in a towel, Simanovsky ordered Liubka to direct its
+neck toward a burning candle, and when the explosion broke out, as
+though four cannons had been fired off at once--an explosion
+through which the plastering fell down from the ceiling--then
+Liubka grew timorous, and, only getting to rights with difficulty,
+pronounced with trembling lips, but with dignity: "You must excuse
+me now, but since I have a flat of my own, and I'm not at all a
+wench any longer, but a decent woman, I'd ask you therefore not to
+misbehave in my place. I thought you, like a smart and educated
+man, would do everything nice and genteel, but you busy yourself
+with silly things. They can even put one in jail for that."
+
+Subsequently, much, much later, she told how she had a student
+friend, who made dynamite before her.
+
+It must have been, after all, that Simanovsky, this enigmatic man,
+so influential in his youthful society, where he had to deal with
+theory for the most part, and so incoherent when a practical
+experiment with a living soul had come into his hands--was just
+simply stupid, but could skillfully conceal this sole sincere
+quality of his.
+
+Having suffered failure in applied sciences, he at once passed on
+to metaphysics. Once he very self-assuredly, and in a tone such
+that after it no refutation was possible, announced to Liubka that
+there is no God, and that he would undertake to prove this during
+five minutes. Whereupon Liubka jumped up from her place, and told
+him firmly that she, even though a quondam prostitute, still
+believed in God and would not allow Him to be offended in her
+presence; and if he would continue such nonsense, then she would
+complain to Vassil Vassilich.
+
+"I will also tell him," she added in a weeping voice, "that you,
+instead of teaching me, only rattle off all kinds of stuff and all
+that sort of nastiness, while you yourself hold your hand on my
+knees. And that's even not at all genteel." And for the first time
+during all their acquaintanceship she, who had formerly been so
+timorous and constrained, sharply moved away from her teacher.
+
+However, having suffered a few failures, Simanovsky still
+obstinately continued to act upon the mind and imagination of
+Liubka. He tried to explain to her the theory of the origin of
+species, beginning with an amoeba and ending with Napoleon. Liubka
+listened to him attentively, and during this there was an
+imploring expression in her eyes: "When will you stop at last?"
+She yawned into a handkerchief and then guiltily explained:
+"Excuse me, that's from my nerves." Marx also had no success
+goods, supplementary value, the manufacturer and the worker, which
+had become algebraic formulas, were for Liubka merely empty
+sounds, vibrating the air; and she, very sincere at soul, always
+jumped up with joy from her place, when hearing that, apparently,
+the vegetable soup had boiled up, or the samovar was getting ready
+to boil over.
+
+It cannot be said that Simanovsky did not have success with women.
+His aplomb and his weighty, decisive tone always acted upon simple
+souls, especially upon fresh, naive, trusting souls. Out of
+protracted ties he always got out very easily; either he was
+dedicated to a tremendously responsible call, before which
+domestic love relations were nothing; or he pretended to be a
+superman, to whom all is permitted (O, thou, Nietszche, so long
+ago and so disgracefully misconstrued for high-school boys!). The
+passive, almost imperceptible, but firmly evasive resistance of
+Liubka irritated and excited him. What particularly incensed him
+was the fact that she, who had formerly been so accessible to all,
+ready to yield her love in one day to several people in
+succession, to each one for two roubles, was now all of a sudden
+playing at some pure and disinterested inamoration!
+
+"Nonsense," he thought. "This can't be. She's making believe, and,
+probably, I don't strike the right tone with her."
+
+And with every day he became more exacting, captious, and stern.
+Hardly consciously, more probably through habit, he relied on his
+usual influence, intimidating the thought and subduing the will,
+which rarely betrayed him.
+
+Once Liubka complained about him to Lichonin:
+
+"He's too strict with me, now, Vassil Vassilievich; and I don't
+understand anything he says, and I don't want to take lessons with
+him any more."
+
+Somehow or other, Lichonin lamely quieted her down; but still he
+had an explanation with Simanovsky. The other answered him with
+sang froid:
+
+"Just as you wish, my dear fellow; if my method displeases you or
+Liubka, then I'm even ready to resign. My problem consists only of
+bringing in a genuine element of discipline into her education. If
+she does not understand anything, then I compel her to learn it by
+heart, aloud. With time this will cease. That is unavoidable.
+Recall, Lichonin, how difficult the transition from arithmetic to
+algebra was for us, when we were compelled to replace common
+numerals with letters, and did not know why this was done. Or why
+did they teach us grammar, instead of simply advising us to write
+tales and verses?"
+
+And on the very next day, bending down low under the hanging shade
+of the lamp over Liubka's body, and sniffing all over her breast
+and under her arm pits, he was saying to her:
+
+"Draw a triangle... Well, yes, this way and this way. On top I
+write 'Love.' Write simply the letter L, and below M and W. That
+will be: the Love of Man and Woman."
+
+With the air of an oracle, unshakable and austere, he spoke all
+sorts of erotic balderdash and almost unexpectedly concluded:
+
+"And so look, Liuba. The desire to love--it's the same as the
+desire to eat, to drink, and to breathe the air." He would squeeze
+her thigh hard, considerably above the knee; and she again,
+becoming confused and not wishing to offend him, would try almost
+imperceptibly to move her leg away gradually.
+
+"Tell me, would it be offensive, now, for your sister, mother, or
+for your husband, that you by chance had not dined at home, but
+had gone into a restaurant or a cook-shop, and had there satisfied
+your hunger? And so with love. No more, no less. A physiological
+enjoyment. Perhaps more powerful, more keen, than all others, but
+that's all. Thus, for example, now: I want you as a woman. While
+you ..."
+
+"Oh, drop it, Mister," Liubka cut him short with vexation. "Well,
+what are you harping on one and the same thing for all the time?
+Change your act. You've been told: no and no. Don't you think I
+see what you're trying to get at? But only I'll never agree to
+unfaithfulness, seeing as how Vasilli Vasillievich is my
+benefactor, and I adore him with all my soul... And you're even
+pretty disgusting to me with your nonsense."
+
+Once he caused Liubka a great and scandalous hurt, and all because
+of his theoretical first principles. As at the university they
+were already for a long time talking about Lichonin's having saved
+a girl from such and such a house; and that now he is taken up
+with her moral regeneration; that rumour, naturally, also reached
+the studying girls, who frequented the student circles. And so,
+none other than Simanovsky once brought to Liubka two female
+medicos, one historian, and one beginning poetess, who, by the
+way, was already writing critical essays as well. He introduced
+them in the most serious and fool-like manner.
+
+"Here," he said, stretching out his hand, now in the direction of
+the guests, now of Liubka, "here, comrades, get acquainted. You,
+Liuba, will find in them real friends, who will help you on your
+radiant path; while you--comrades, Liza, Nadya, Sasha and Rachel--
+you will regard as elder sisters a being who has just struggled
+out of that horrible darkness into which the social structure
+places the modern woman."
+
+He spoke not exactly so, perhaps; but in any case, approximately
+in that manner. Liubka turned red, extended her hand, with all the
+fingers clumsily folded together, to the young ladies in coloured
+blouses and in leather belts; regaled them with tea and jam;
+promptly helped them with lights for cigarettes; but, despite all
+invitations, did not want to sit down for anything. She would say:
+"Yes-ss, n-no, as you wish." And when one of the young ladies
+dropped a handkerchief on the floor, she hurriedly made a dash to
+pick it up.
+
+One of the maidens, red, stout, and with a bass voice, whose face,
+all in all, consisted of only a pair of red cheeks, out of which
+mirth-provokingly peeped out a hint at an upturned nose, and with
+a pair of little black eyes, like tiny raisins, sparkling out of
+their depths, was inspecting Liubka from head to feet, as though
+through an imaginary lorgnette; directing over her a glance which
+said nothing, but was contemptuous. "Why, I haven't been getting
+anybody away from her," thought Liubka guiltily. But another was
+so tactless, that she--perhaps for the first time for her, but the
+hundredth for Liubka--began a conversation about: how had she
+happened upon the path of prostitution? This was a bustling young
+lady, pale, very pretty, ethereal; all in little light curls, with
+the air of a spoiled kitten and even a little pink cat's bow on
+her neck.
+
+"But tell me, who was this scoundrel, now ... who was the first to
+... well, you understand? ..."
+
+In the mind of Liubka quickly flashed the images of her former
+mates, Jennka and Tamara, so proud, so brave and resourceful--oh,
+far brainier than these maidens--and she, almost unexpectedly for
+herself, suddenly said sharply:
+
+'There was a lot of them. I've already forgotten. Kolka, Mitka,
+Volodka, Serejka, Jorjik, Troshka, Petka, and also Kuzka and Guska
+with a party. But why are you interested?"
+
+"Why... no... that is, I ask as a person who fully sympathizes
+with you."
+
+"But have you a lover?"
+
+"Pardon me, I don't understand what you're saying. People, it's
+time we were going."
+
+"That is, what don't you understand? Have you ever slept with a
+man?"
+
+"Comrade Simanovsky, I had not presupposed that you would bring us
+to such a person. Thank you. It was exceedingly charming of you!"
+
+It was difficult for Liubka to surmount the first step. She was of
+those natures which endure long, but tear loose rapidly; and she,
+usually so timorous, was unrecognizable at this moment.
+
+"But I know!" she was screaming in wrath. "I know, that you're the
+very same as I! But you have a papa, a mamma; you're provided for,
+and if you have to, then you'll even commit abortion--many do so.
+But if you were in my place, when there's nothing to stuff your
+mouth with, and a girlie doesn't understand anything yet, because
+she can't read or write; while all around the men are shoving like
+he-dogs--then you'd be in a sporting house too. It's a shame to put
+on airs before a poor girl--that's what!"
+
+Simanovsky, who had gotten into trouble, said a few general
+consolatory words in a judicious bass, such as the noble fathers
+used in olden comedies, and led his ladies off.
+
+But he was fated to play one more very shameful, distressing, and
+final role in the free life of Liubka. She had already complained
+to Lichonin for a long time that the presence of Simanovsky was
+oppressive to her; but Lichonin paid no attention to womanish
+trifles: the vacuous, fictitious, wordy hypnosis of this man of
+commands was strong within him. There are influences, to get rid
+of which is difficult, almost impossible. On the other hand, he
+was already for a long time feeling the burden of co-habitation
+with Liubka. Frequently he thought to himself: "She is spoiling my
+life; I am growing common, foolish; I have become dissolved in
+fool benevolence; it will end up in my marrying her, entering the
+excise or the assay office, or getting in among pedagogues; I'll
+be taking bribes, will gossip, and become an abominable provincial
+morel. And where are my dreams of the power of thought, the beauty
+of life, of love and deeds for all humanity?" he would say, at
+times even aloud, and pull his hair. And for that reason, instead
+of attentively going into Liubka's complaints, he would lose his
+temper, yell, stamp his feet, and the patient, meek Liubka would
+grow quiet and retire into the kitchen, to have a good cry there.
+
+Now more and more frequently, after family quarrels, in the
+minutes of reconciliation he would say to Liubka:
+
+"My dear Liuba, you and I do not suit each other, comprehend that.
+Look: here are a hundred roubles for you, ride home. Your
+relatives will receive you as their own. Live there a while, look
+around you. I will come for you after half a year; you'll have
+become rested, and, of course, all that's filthy, nasty, that has
+been grafted upon you by the city, will go away, will die off. And
+you'll begin a new life independently, without any assistance,
+alone and proud!"
+
+But then, can anything be done with a woman who has come to love
+for the first, and, of course, as it seems to her, for the last
+time? Can she be convinced of the necessity for parting? Does
+logic exist for her?
+
+Always reverent before the firmness of the words and decisions of
+Simanovsky, Lichonin, however, surmised and by instinct understood
+his real relation to Liubka; and in his desire to free himself, to
+shake off a chance load beyond his strength, he would catch
+himself in a nasty little thought: "She pleases Simanovsky; and as
+for her, isn't it all the same if it's he or I or a third? Guess
+I'll make a clean breast of it, explain things to him and yield
+Liubka up to him like a comrade. But then, the fool won't go. Will
+raise a rumpus."
+
+"Or just to come upon the two of them together, somehow," he would
+ponder further, "in some decisive pose... to raise a noise, make a
+row... A noble gesture... a little money and... a getaway."
+
+He now frequently, for several days, would not return home; and
+afterwards, having come, would undergo torturesome hours of
+feminine interrogations, scenes, tears, even hysterical fits.
+Liubka would at times watch him in secret, when he went out of the
+house; would stop opposite the entrance that he went into, and for
+hours would await his return in order to reproach him and to cry
+in the street. Not being able to read, she intercepted his letters
+and, not daring to turn to the aid of the prince or Soloviev,
+would save them up in her little cupboard together with sugar,
+tea, lemon and all sorts of other trash. She had even reached the
+stage when, in minutes of anger, she threatened him with sulphuric
+acid.
+
+"May the devil take her," Lichonin would ponder during the minutes
+of his crafty plans. "It's all one, let there even be nothing
+between them. But I'll take and make a fearful scene for him. and
+her."
+
+And he would declaim to himself:
+
+"Ah, so! ... I have warmed you in my bosom, and what do I see now?
+You are paying me with black ingratitude. ... And you, my best
+comrade, you have attempted my sole happiness! ... O, no, no,
+remain together; I go hence with tears in my eyes. I see, that I
+am one too many! I do not wish to oppose your love, etc., etc."
+
+And precisely these dreams, these hidden plans, such momentary,
+chance, and, at bottom, vile ones--of those to which people later
+do not confess to themselves--were suddenly fulfilled. It was the
+turn of Soloviev's lesson. To his great happiness, Liubka had at
+last read through almost without faltering: "A good plough has
+Mikhey, and a good one has Sisoi as well... a swallow... a swing
+... the children love God..." And as a reward for this Soloviev
+read aloud to her Of the Merchant Kalashnikov and of Kiribeievich,
+Life-guardsman of Czar Ivan the Fourth. Liubka from delight
+bounced in her armchair, clapped her hands. The beauty of this
+monumental, heroic work had her in its grasp. But she did not have
+a chance to express her impressions in full. Soloviev was hurrying
+to a business appointment. And immediately, coming to meet
+Soloviev, having barely exchanged greetings with him in the
+doorway, came Simanovsky. Liubka's face sadly lengthened and her
+lips pouted. For this pedantic teacher and coarse male had become
+very repugnant to her of late.
+
+This time he began a lecture on the theme that for man there exist
+no laws, no rights, no duties, no honour, no vileness; and that
+man is a quantity self-sufficient, independent of anyone and
+anything.
+
+"It's possible to be a God, possible to be an intestinal worm, a
+tape worm--it's all the same."
+
+He already wanted to pass on to the theory of amatory emotions;
+but, it is to be regretted, he hurried a trifle from impatience:
+he embraced Liubka, drew her to him and began to squeeze her
+roughly. "She'll become intoxicated from caressing. She'll give
+in!" thought the calculating Simanovsky. He sought to touch her
+mouth with his lips for a kiss, but she screamed and snorted spit
+at him. All the assumed delicacy had left her.
+
+"Get out, you mangy devil, fool, swine, dirt! I'll smash your
+snout for you! ..."
+
+All the lexicon of the establishment had come back to her; but
+Simanovsky, having lost his pince-nez, his face distorted, was
+looking at her with blurred eyes and jabbering whatever came into
+his head:
+
+"My dear ... It's all the same ... a second of enjoyment! ... You
+and I will blend in enjoyment! ... No one will find out! ... Be
+mine! ..."
+
+It was just at this very minute that Lichonin walked into the
+room.
+
+Of course, at soul he did not admit to himself that this minute he
+would commit a vileness; but only somehow from the side, at a
+distance, reflected that his face was pale, and that his immediate
+words would be tragic and of great significance.
+
+"Yes!" he said dully, like an actor in the fourth act of a drama;
+and, letting his hands drop impotently, began to shake his chin,
+which had fallen upon his breast. "I expected everything, only not
+this. You I excuse, Liuba--you are a cave being; but you,
+Simanovsky ... I esteemed you ... however, I still esteem you a
+decent man. But I know, that passion is at times stronger than the
+arguments of reason. Right here are fifty roubles--I am leaving
+them for Liuba; you, of course, will return them to me later, I
+have no doubt of that. Arrange her destiny ... You are a wise,
+kind, honest man, while I am ... ("A skunk!" somebody's distinct
+voice flashed through his head.) I am going away, because I will
+not be able to bear this torture any more. Be happy."
+
+He snatched out of his pocket and with effect threw his wallet on
+the table; then seized his hair and ran out of the room.
+
+Still, this was the best way out for him. And the scene had been
+played out precisely as he had dreamt of it.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+All this Liubka told at length and disjointedly, sobbing on
+Jennka's shoulder. Of course, in her personal elucidation this
+tragi-comical history proved altogether unlike what it had been in
+reality.
+
+Lichonin, according to her words, had taken her to him only to
+entice, to tempt her; to have as much use as possible out of her
+foolishness, and then to abandon her. But she, the fool, had in
+truth fallen in love--with him, and since she was very jealous
+about him and all these tousled girls in leather belts, he had
+done a low-down thing: had sent up his comrade on purpose, had
+framed it up with him, and the other had begun to hug Liubka, and
+Vasska came in, saw it, and kicked up a great row, and chased
+Liubka out into the street.
+
+Of course, in her version there were two almost equal parts of
+truth and untruth; but so, at least, all this had appeared to her.
+
+She also told with great details how, having found herself without
+masculine support or without anybody's powerful extraneous
+influence, she had hired a room In a rather bad little hotel, on a
+retired street; how even from the first day the boots, a tough
+bird, a hard-boiled egg, had attempted to trade in her, without
+even having and Vasska came in, saw it, and kicked up a great row,
+the hotel to a private room, but even there had been overtaken by
+an experienced old woman go-between, with whose like the houses
+inhabited by poverty swarm.
+
+Therefore, even with quiet living, there was in the face, in the
+conversation, and in the entire manner of Liubka something
+peculiar, specific to the casual eye; perhaps even entirely
+imperceptible, but for the business scent as plain and as
+irrefutable as the day.
+
+But the chance, brief, sincere love had given her the strength to
+oppose the inevitability of a second fall. In her heroic courage
+she even went so far as putting in a few notices in the
+newspapers, that she was seeking a place with "all found."
+However, she had no recommendation of any sort. In addition, she
+had to do exclusively with women when it came to the hiring; and
+they also, with some sort of an inner, infallible instinct,
+surmised in her their ancient foe--the seductress of their
+husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons.
+
+There was neither sense nor use in. going home. Her native
+Vassilkovsky district is distant only fifteen versts from the
+state capital; and the rumour that she had entered that sort of an
+establishment had long since penetrated, by means of her fellow-
+villagers, into the village. This was written of in letters, and
+transmitted verbally, by those village neighbours who had seen her
+both on the street and at Anna Markovna's place itself--porters
+and bell-hops of hotels, waiters at small restaurants, cabbies,
+small contractors. She knew what odour this fame would give off if
+she were to return to her native haunts. It were better to hang
+one's self than to endure this.
+
+She was as uneconomical and impractical in money matters as a
+five-year-old child, and in a short while was left without a
+kopeck; while to go back to the brothel was fearful and shameful.
+But the temptations of street prostitution turned up of
+themselves, and at every step begged to be seized. In the
+evenings, on the main street, old hardened street prostitutes at
+once unerringly guessed her former profession. Ever and anon one
+of them, having come alongside of her, would begin in a sweet,
+ingratiating voice:
+
+"How is it, young lady, that you're walking alone? Let's be mates.
+Let's walk together. That's always more convenient. Whenever men
+want to pass the time pleasantly with girls, they always love to
+start a party of four."
+
+And right here the experienced, tried recruiting agent, at first
+casually, but after that warmly, with all her heart, would begin
+to praise up all the conveniences of living at your own
+landlady's--the tasty food, full freedom of going out, the
+possibility of always concealing from the landlady of your rooms
+the surplus over the agreed pay. Here also much of the malicious
+and the offensive was said, by the way, against the women of the
+private houses, who were called "government hides," "government
+stuff," "genteel maidens" and "institutes." Liubka knew the value
+of these sneers, because the dwellers in brothels also bear
+themselves with the greatest contempt toward street prostitutes,
+calling them "bimmies" and "venereals."
+
+To be sure, in the very end that happened which had to happen.
+Seeing in perspective a whole series of hungry days, and in the
+very depth of them the dark horror of an unknown future, Liubka
+consented to a very civil invitation of some respectable little
+old man; important, grayish, well-dressed and correct. For this
+ignominy Liubka received a rouble, but did not dare to protest:
+the previous life in the house had entirely eaten away her
+personal initiative, mobility and energy. Later, several times
+running, he even did not pay her anything at all.
+
+One young man, easy of manner and handsome, in a cap with a
+flattened brim, put on at a brave slant over one ear, in a silk
+blouse, girdled by a cord with tassels, also led her with him into
+a hotel, asked for wine and a snack; for a long time lied to
+Liubka about his being an earl's son on the wrong side of the
+blanket, and that he was the first billiardist in the whole city;
+that all the wenches like him and that he would make a swell Jane
+out of Liubka as well. Then he went out of the room for just one
+minute, as though on business of his own, and vanished forever.
+The stern, cross-eyed porter beat her with contentment, long, in
+silence, with a business-like air; breathing hard and covering up
+Liubka's mouth with his hand. But in the end, having become
+convinced, probably, that the fault was not hers, but the guest's,
+he took her purse, in which was a rouble with some small change,
+away from her; and took as security her rather cheap little hat
+and small outer jacket.
+
+Another man of forty-five years, not at all badly dressed, having
+tortured the girl for some two hours, paid for the room and gave
+her 80 kopecks; but when she started to complain, he with a
+ferocious face put an enormous red-haired fist up to her very
+nose, the first thing, and said decisively:
+
+"You just snivel a bit more to me... I'll snivel you... I'll yell
+for the police, now, and say that you robbed me when I was
+sleeping. Want me to? Is it long since you've been in a station
+house?"
+
+And went away.
+
+And of such cases there were many.
+
+On that day, when her landlords--a boatman and his wife--had
+refused to let her have a room and just simply threw her things
+out into the yard; and when she had wandered the night through on
+the streets, without sleep, under the rain, hiding from the
+policemen--only then, with aversion and shame, did she resolve to
+turn to Lichonin's aid. But Lichonin was no longer in town
+pusillanimously, he had gone away the very same day when the
+unjustly wronged and disgraced Liubka had run away from the flat.
+And it was in the morning that there came into her head the
+desperate thought of returning into the brothel and begging
+forgiveness there.
+
+"Jennechka, you're so clever, so brave, so kind; beg Emma
+Edwardovna for me--the little housekeeper will listen to you," she
+implored Jennka and kissed her bare shoulders and wetted them with
+tears.
+
+"She won't listen to anybody," gloomily answered Jennka. "And you
+did have to tie up with a fool and a low-down fellow like that."
+
+"Jennechka, but you yourself advised me to," timidly retorted
+Liubka.
+
+"I advised you? ... I didn't advise you anything. What are you
+lying on me for, just as though I was dead... Well, all right
+then--let's go."
+
+Emma Edwardovna had already known for a long while about the
+return of Liubka; and had even seen her at that moment when she
+had passed through the yard of the house, looking all around her.
+At soul she was not at all against taking Liubka back. It must be
+said, that she had even let her go only because she had been
+tempted by the money, one-half of which she had appropriated for
+herself. And in addition to that, she had reckoned that with the
+present seasonal influx of new prostitutes she would have a large
+choice; in which, however, she had made a mistake, because the
+season had terminated abruptly. But in any case, she had firmly
+resolved to take Liubka. Only it was necessary, for the
+preservation and rounding out of prestige, to give her a scare
+befittingly.
+
+"Wha-at?" she began to yell at Liubka, scarcely having heard her
+out, babbling in confusion. "You want to be taken on again? ...
+You wallowed the devil knows with whom in the streets, under the
+fences; and now, you scum, you're again shoving your way into a
+respectable, decent establishment! ... Pfui, you Russian swine!
+Out! ..."
+
+Liubka was catching her hands, aiming to kiss them, but the
+housekeeper roughly snatched them away. Then, suddenly paling,
+with a distorted face, biting her trembling, twisted lower lip,
+Emma calculatingly and with good aim struck Liubka on her cheek,
+with all her might; from which the other went down on her knees,
+but got up right away, gasping for breath and stammering from the
+sobs.
+
+"Darlingest, don't beat me... Oh my dear, don't beat me..."
+
+And again fell down, this time flat upon the floor.
+
+And this systematic, malignant slaughter, in cold blood, continued
+for some two minutes. Jennka, who had at first been looking on
+with her customary malicious, disdainful air, suddenly could not
+stand it; she began to squeal savagely, threw herself upon the
+housekeeper, clutched her by the hair, tore off her chignon and
+began to vociferate in a real hysterical fit:
+
+"Fool! ... Murderer! ... Low-down go-between! ... Thief! ..."
+
+All the three women vociferated together, and at once enraged
+wails resounded through all the corridors and rooms of the
+establishment. This was that general fit of grand hysterics, which
+takes possession of those confined in prisons, or that elemental
+insanity (raptus), which envelops unexpectedly and epidemically an
+entire lunatic asylum, from which even experienced psychiatrists
+grow pale.
+
+Only after the lapse of an hour was order restored by Simeon and
+two comrades by profession who had come to his aid. All the
+thirteen girls got it hot; but Jennka, who had gone into a real
+frenzy, more than the others. The beaten-up Liubka kept on
+crawling before the housekeeper until she was taken back. She knew
+that Jennka's outbreak would sooner or later be reflected upon her
+in a cruel repayment. Jennka sat on her bed until the very night,
+her legs crossed Turkish fashion; refused dinner, and chased out
+all her mates who went in to her. Her eye was bruised, and she
+assiduously applied a five-kopeck copper to it. From underneath
+the torn shirt a long, transversal scratch reddened on the neck,
+just like a mark from a rope. That was where Simeon had torn off
+her skin in the struggle. She sat thus, alone, with eyes that
+glowed in the dark like a wild beast's, with distended nostrils,
+with spasmodically moving cheek-bones, and whispered wrathfully:
+
+"Just you wait... Watch out, you damned things--I'll show you...
+You'll see yet... Ooh-ooh, you man-eaters..."
+
+But when the lights had been lit, and the junior housekeeper,
+Zociya, knocked on her door with the words: "Miss, get dressed!
+... Into the drawing room!" she rapidly washed herself, dressed,
+put some powder on the bruise, smeared the scratch over with CREME
+DE SIMON and pink powder, and went out into the drawing room,
+pitiful but proud; beaten-up, but her eyes flaming with an
+unbearable wrathfulness and a beauty not human.
+
+Many people, who have happened to see suicides a few hours before
+their horrible death, say that in their visages in those fateful
+hours before death they have noticed some enigmatic, mysterious,
+incomprehensible allurement. And all who saw Jennka on this night,
+and on the next day for a few hours, for long, intently and in
+wonder, kept their gaze upon her.
+
+And strangest of all (this was one of the sombre wiles of fate)
+was the fact that the indirect culprit of her death, the last
+grain of sand which draws down the pan of the scales, appeared
+none other than the dear, most kind, military cadet Kolya
+Gladishev.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Kolya Gladishev was a fine, merry, bashful young lad, with a large
+head; pink-cheeked, with a funny little white, bent line, as
+though from milk, upon his upper lip, under the light down of the
+moustache, sprouting through for the first time; with gray, naive
+eyes, placed far apart; and so closely cropped, that from
+underneath his flaxen little bristles the skin glistened through,
+just as with a thoroughbred Yorkshire suckling pig. It was
+precisely he with whom Jennka during the past winter had played
+either at maternal relations, or at dolls; and thrust upon him a
+little apple or a couple of bon-bons on his way, when he would be
+going away from the house of ill repute, squirming from shame.
+
+This time, when he came, there could at once be felt in him, after
+long living in camps, that rapid change in age, which so often
+imperceptibly and rapidly transforms a boy into a youth. He had
+already finished the cadet academy and with pride counted himself
+a junker; although he still walked around in a cadet's uniform,
+with aversion. He had grown taller, had become better formed and
+more adroit; the camp life had done him good. He spoke in a bass,
+and during these months to his most great pride the nipples of his
+breast had hardened; the most important--he already knew about
+this--and undeniable sign of virile maturity. Now, in the
+meanwhile, until the eyes-front severities of a military school,
+he had a period of alluring freedom. Already he was permitted to
+smoke at home, in the presence of grown-ups; and even his father
+had himself presented him with a leather cigar case with his
+monogram, and also, in the elevation of family joy, had assigned
+him fifteen roubles monthly salary.
+
+And it was just here--at Anna Markovna's--that he had come to know
+woman for the first time--the very same Jennka.
+
+The fall of innocent souls in houses of ill-fame, or with street
+solitaries, is fulfilled far more frequently than it is usually
+thought. When not green youths only, but even honourable men of
+fifty, almost grandfathers, are interrogated about this ticklish
+matter, they will tell you, sure enough, the ancient stencilled
+lie of how they had been seduced by a chambermaid or a governess.
+But this is one of those lingering, queer lies, going back into
+the depth of past decades, which are almost never noticed by a
+single one of the professional observers, and in any case are not
+described by any one.
+
+If each one of us will try, to put it pompously, to put his hand
+on his heart, then every one will catch himself in the fact, that
+having once in childhood said some sort of boastful or touching
+fiction, which had success, and having repeated it for that reason
+two and five and ten times more--he afterwards cannot get rid of
+it all his life, and repeats with entire firmness by now a history
+which had never been; a firmness such that in the very end he
+believes the story. With time Kolya also narrated to his comrades
+how his aunt once removed, a young woman of the world had seduced
+him. It must be said, however, that the intimate proximity to this
+lady--a large, dark-eyed, white faced, sweetly fragrant southern
+woman--did really exist; but existed only in Kolya's imagination,
+in those sad, tragic and timid minutes of solitary sexual
+enjoyments, through which pass if not a hundred percent of all
+men, then ninety-nine, in any case.
+
+Having experienced mechanical sexual excitements very early,
+approximately since nine or nine years and a half, Kolya did not
+at all have the least understanding of the significance of that
+end of being in love or of courtship, which is so horrible on the
+face of it, if it be looked at impartially, or if it be explained
+scientifically. Unfortunately, there was at that time near him not
+a one of the present progressive and learned ladies who, having
+turned away the neck of the classic stork, and torn up by the
+roots the cabbage underneath which children are found, recommend
+that the great mystery of love and generation be explained to
+children in lectures, through comparisons and assimilations,
+mercilessly and in a well-nigh graphic manner.
+
+It must be said, that at that remote time of which we are
+speaking, the private institutions--male PENSIONS and institutes,
+as well as academies for cadets--represented some sort of hot-
+house nurseries. The care of the mind and morality they tried to
+entrust as much as possible to educators who were bureaucrats-
+formalists; and in addition impatient, captious, capricious in
+their sympathies and hysterical, just like old maid lady teachers.
+Now it is otherwise. But at that time the boys were left to
+themselves. Barely snatched away, speaking figuratively, from the
+maternal breast; from the care of devoted nurses; from morning and
+evening caresses, quiet and sweet; even though they were ashamed
+of every manifestation of tenderness as "womanishness," they were
+still irresistibly and sweetly drawn to kisses, contacts,
+conversations whispered in the ear.
+
+Of course, attentive, solicitous treatment, bathing, exercises in
+the open air--precisely not gymnastics, but voluntary exercises,
+each to his own taste--could have always put off the coming of
+this climacteric period or soften and make it understandable.
+
+I repeat--then there was nothing of this.
+
+The longing for family endearment, the endearment of mother,
+sister, nurse, so roughly and unexpectedly cut short, turned into
+deformed forms of courting (every whit like the "crushes" in a
+female institute) of good-looking boys, of "fairies"; they loved
+to whisper in corners and, walking arm in arm, or embracing in
+dark corridors, to tell in each other's ears improbable histories
+of adventures with women. This was partly both childhood's need of
+the fairy-tale element and partly awakening sensuality as well.
+Not infrequently some fifteen-year-old chubby, for whom it was
+just the proper time to be playing at popular tennis or to be
+greedily putting away buckwheat porridge with milk, would be
+telling, having read up, of course, on certain cheap novels, of
+how every Saturday, now, when it is leave, he goes to a certain,
+handsome widow millionairess; and of how she is passionately
+enamored of him; and how near their couch always stand fruits and
+precious wine; and how furiously and passionately she makes love
+to him.
+
+Here, by the bye, came along the inevitable run of prolonged
+reading, like hard drinking, which, of course, every boy and girl
+has undergone. No matter how strict in this respect the class
+surveillance may be, the striplings did read, are reading, and
+will read just that which is not permitted them. Here is a special
+passion, CHIC, the allurement of the forbidden. Already in the
+third class went from hand to hand the manuscript transcripts of
+Barkov; of a spurious Pushkin; the youthful sins of Lermontov and
+others: "THE FIRST NIGHT," "THE CHERRY," "LUCAS," "THE FESTIVAL AT
+PETERHOF," "THE SHE UHLAN, GRIEF THROUGH WISDOM," "THE PRIEST,"
+&c.
+
+But no matter how strange, fictitious or paradoxical this may
+seem, still, even these compositions, and drawings, and obscene
+photographic cards, did not arouse a delightful curiosity. They
+were looked upon as a prank, a lark, and the allurement of
+contraband risk. In the cadets' library were chaste excerpts from
+Pushkin and Lermontov; all of Ostrovsky, who only made you laugh;
+and almost all of Turgenev, who was the very one that played a
+chief and cruel role in Kolya's life. As it is known, love with
+the late great Turgenev is always surrounded with a tantalizing
+veil; some sort of crepe, unseizable, forbidden, but tempting: his
+maidens have forebodings of love and are agitated at its approach,
+and are ashamed beyond all measure, and tremble, and turn red.
+Married women or widows travel this tortuous path somewhat
+differently: they struggle for a long time with their duty, or
+with respectability, or with the opinion of the world; and, in the
+end--oh!--fall with tears; or--oh!--begin to brave it; or, which
+is still more frequent, the implacable fate cuts short her or his
+life at the most--oh!--necessary moment, when it only lacks a
+light puff of wind for the ripened fruit to fall. And yet all of
+his personages still thirst after this shameful love; weep
+radiantly and laugh joyously from it; and it shuts out all the
+world for them. But since boys think entirely differently than we
+grown-ups, and since everything that is forbidden, everything not
+said fully, or said in secret, has in their eyes an enormous, not
+only twofold but threefold interest--it is therefore natural that
+out of reading they drew the hazy thought that the grown-ups were
+concealing something from them.
+
+And it must be mentioned--had not Kolya (like the majority of
+those of his age) seen the chambermaid Phrociya--so rosy-cheeked,
+always merry, with legs of the hardness of steel (at times he, in
+the heat of playing, had slapped her on the back), had he not seen
+her once, when Kolya had by accident walked quickly into papa's
+cabinet, scurry out of there with all her might, covering her face
+with her apron; and had he not seen that during this time papa's
+face was red, with a dark blue, seemingly lengthened nose? And
+Kolya had reflected: "Papa looks like a turkey." Had not Kolya--
+partly through the fondness for pranks and the mischievousness
+natural to all boys, partly through tedium--accidentally
+discovered in an unlocked drawer of papa's writing table an
+enormous collection of cards, whereon was represented just that
+which shop clerks call the crowning of love, and worldly
+nincompoops--the unearthly passion?
+
+And had he not seen, that every time before the visit of the
+sweet-scented and bestarched Paul Edwardovich, some ninny with
+some embassy, with whom mamma, in imitation of the fashionable St.
+Petersburg promenades to the Strelka, used to ride to the Dnieper
+to contemplate the sun setting on the other side of the river, in
+the Chernigovskaya district--had he not seen how mamma's bosom
+went, and how her cheeks glowed under the powder; had he not
+detected at these moments many new and strange things; had he not
+heard her voice, an altogether unknown voice, like an actor's;
+nervously breaking off, mercilessly malicious to those of the
+family and the servants, and suddenly soft, like velvet, like a
+green meadow under the sun, when Paul Edwardovich would arrive?
+Ah, if we people who have been made wise by experience would know
+how much, and even too much, the urchins and little girls
+surrounding us know, of whom we usually say:
+
+"Well, why mind Volodya (or Petie, or Katie)? ... Why, they are
+little. They don't understand anything! ..."
+
+So also not in vain passed for Gladishev the history of his elder
+brother, who had just come out of a military school into one of
+the conspicuous grenadier regiments; and, being on leave until
+such time when it would be possible for him to spread his wings,
+lived in two separate rooms with his family. At that time Niusha,
+a chambermaid, was in their service; at times they jestingly
+called her signorita Anita--a seductive black-haired girl, who, if
+she were to change costumes, could in appearance be taken for a
+dramatic actress, or a princess of the royal blood, or a political
+worker. Kolya's mother manifestly countenanced the fact that
+Kolya's brother, half in jest, half in earnest, was allured by
+this girl. Of course, she had only the sole, holy, maternal
+calculation: If it were destined, after all, for her Borenka to
+fall, then let him give his purity, his innocence, his first
+physical inclination, not to a prostitute, not to a street-walker,
+not to a seeker of adventures, but to a pure girl. Of course, only
+a disinterested, unreasoning, truly-maternal feeling guided her.
+Kolya at that time was living through the epoch of llanos,
+pampases, Apaches, track-finders, and a chief by the name of
+"Black Panther"; and, of course, attentively kept track of the
+romance of his brother, and made his own syllogisms; at times only
+too correct, at times fantastic. After six months, from behind a
+door, he was the witness--or more correctly the auditor--of an
+outrageous scene. The wife of the general, always so respectable
+and restrained, was yelling in her boudoir at signorita Anita, and
+cursing in the words of a cab-driver: the signorita was in the
+fifth month of pregnancy. If she had not cried, then, probably,
+they would simply have given her smart-money, and she would have
+gone away in peace; but she was in love with the young master, did
+not demand anything, and for that reason they drove her away with
+the aid of the police.
+
+In the fifth or sixth class many of Kolya's comrades had already
+tasted of the tree of knowledge of evil. At that time it was
+considered in their corpus an especial, boastful masculine chic to
+call all secret things by their own names. Arkasha Shkar
+contracted a disease, not dangerous, but still venereal; and he
+became for three whole months the object of worship of all the
+seniors--at that time there were no squads yet. And many of them
+visited brothels; and, really, about their sprees they spoke far
+more handsomely and broadly than the hussars of the time of Denis
+Davidov.[Footnote: A Russian ban vivant, wit and poet (1781-1839),
+the overwhelming majority of whose lyrics deals with military
+exploits and debauches.--Trans.] These debauches were esteemed by
+them the last word in valour and maturity.
+
+And so it happened once, that they did not exactly persuade
+Gladishev to go to Anna Markovna, but rather he himself had begged
+to go, so weakly had he resisted temptation. This evening he
+always recalled with horror, with aversion; and dimly, just like
+some heavy dream. With difficulty he recalled, how in the cab, to
+get up courage, he had drunk rum, revoltingly smelling of real
+bedbugs; how qualmish this beastly drink made him feel; how he had
+walked into the big hall, where the lights of the lustres and the
+candelabra on the walls were turning round in fiery wheels; where
+the women moved as fantastic pink, blue, violet splotches, and the
+whiteness of their necks, bosoms and arms flashed with a blinding,
+spicy, victorious splendour. Some one of the comrades whispered
+something in the ear of one of these fantastic figures. She ran up
+to Kolya and said:
+
+"Listen, you good-looking little cadet, your comrades are saying,
+now, that you're still innocent ... Let's go ... I'll teach you
+everything."
+
+The phrase was said in a kindly manner; but this phrase the walls
+of Anna Markovna's establishment had already heard several
+thousand times. Further, that took place which it was so difficult
+and painful to recall, that in the middle of his recollections
+Kolya grew tired, and with an effort of the will turned back the
+imagination to something else. He only remembered dimly the
+revolving and spreading circles from the light of the lamp;
+persistent kisses; disconcerting contacts--then a sudden sharp
+pain, from which one wanted both to die in enjoyment and to cry
+out in terror; and then with wonder he saw his pale shaking hands,
+which could not, somehow, button his clothes.
+
+Of course, all men have experienced this primordial tristia post
+coitus; but this great moral pain, very serious in its
+significance and depth, passes very rapidly, remaining, however,
+with the majority for a long time--sometimes for all life--in the
+form of wearisomeness and awkwardness after certain moments. In a
+short while Kolya became accustomed to it; grew bolder, became
+familiarized with woman, and rejoiced very much over the fact that
+when he came into the establishment, all the girls, and Verka
+before all, would call out:
+
+"Jennechka, your lover has come!"
+
+It was pleasant, in relating this to his comrades, to be plucking
+at an imaginary moustache.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+It was still early--about nine--of a rainy August evening. The
+illuminated drawing room in the house of Anna Markovna was almost
+empty. Only near the very doors a young telegraph clerk was
+sitting, his legs shyly and awkwardly squeezed under his chair,
+and was trying to start with the thick-fleshed Katie that worldly,
+unconstrained conversation which is laid down as the proper thing
+in polite society at quadrille, during the intermissions between
+the figures of the dance. And, also, the long-legged, aged Roly-
+Poly wandered over the room, sitting down now next one girl, now
+another, and entertaining them all with his fluent chatter.
+
+When Kolya Gladishev walked into the front hall, the first to
+recognize him was the round-eyed Verka, dressed in her usual
+jockey costume. She began to twirl round and round, to clap her
+palms, and called out:
+
+"Jennka, Jennka, come quicker, your little lover has come to you
+... The little cadet ... And what a handsome little fellow!"
+
+But Jennka was not in the drawing room at this time; a stout head-
+conductor had already managed to get hold of her.
+
+This elderly, sedate, and majestic man was a very convenient
+guest, because he never lingered in the house for more than twenty
+minutes, fearing to let his train go by; and, even so, glanced at
+his watch all the while. During this time he regularly drank down
+four bottles of beer, and, going away, infallibly gave the girl
+half a rouble for candy and Simeon twenty kopecks for drink-money.
+
+Kolya Gladishev was not alone, but with a comrade of the same
+school, Petrov, who was stepping over the threshold of a brothel
+for the first time, having given in to the tempting persuasions of
+Gladishev. Probably, during these minutes, he found himself in the
+same wild, absurd, feverish state which Kolya himself had gone
+through a year and a half ago, when his legs had shook, his mouth
+had grown dry, and the lights of the lamps had danced before him
+in revolving wheels.
+
+Simeon took their great-coats from them and hid them separately,
+on the side, that the shoulder straps and the buttons might not be
+seen.
+
+It must be said, that this stern man, who did not approve of
+students because of their free-and-easy facetiousness and
+incomprehensible style in conversation, also did not like when
+just such boys in uniform appeared in the establishment.
+
+"Well, what's the good of it?" he would at times say sombrely to
+his colleagues by profession. "What if a whippersnapper like that
+comes, and runs right up nose to nose against his superiors?
+Smash, and they've closed up the establishment! There, like
+Lupendikha's three years back. Of course, it's nothing that they
+closed it up--she transferred it in another name right off; and
+when they sentenced her to sit in jail for a year and a half, why,
+it came to a pre-etty penny for her. She had to shell out four
+hundred for Kerbesh alone ... And then it also happens: a little
+pig of that kind will cook up some sort of disease for himself and
+start in whining: 'Oh, papa! Oh, mamma! I am dying!' 'Tell me, you
+skunk, where you got it?' 'There and there ...' Well, and so they
+haul you over the coals again; judge me, thou unrighteous judge!"
+
+"Pass on, pass on," said he to the cadets sternly.
+
+The cadets entered, blinking from the bright light. Petrov, who
+had been drinking to get up courage, swayed and was pale. They sat
+down beneath the picture of the Feast of the Russian Noblemen, and
+immediately two of the young ladies--Verka and Tamara--joined them
+on both sides.
+
+"Treat me to a smoke, you beautiful little brunet!" Verka turned
+to Petrov; and as though by accident put against his leg her
+strong, warm thigh, closely drawn over with white tights. "What an
+agreeable little fellow you are!"
+
+"But where's Jennie?" Gladishev asked of Tamara. "Is she busy with
+anybody?"
+
+Tamara looked him in the eyes intently--looked so fixedly, that
+the boy even began to feel uncomfortable, and turned away.
+
+"No. Why should she be busy? Only the whole day to-day her head
+ached; she was walking through the corridor, and at that time the
+housekeeper opened the door quickly and accidentally struck her in
+the forehead--and so her head started in to ache. The poor thing,
+she's lying the whole day with a cold pack. But why? Or can't you
+hold out? Wait a while, she'll come out in five minutes. You'll
+remain very much satisfied with her."
+
+Verka pestered Petrov:
+
+"Sweetie, dearie, what a tootsie-wootsicums you are! I adore such
+pale brunets; they are jealous and very fiery in love."
+
+And suddenly she started singing in a low voice:
+
+    "He's kind of brown,
+     My light, my own,
+     Won't sell me out, and won't deceive.
+     He suffers madly,
+     Pants and coat gladly
+     All for a woman he will give."
+
+"How do they call you, ducky dear?"
+
+"George," answered Petrov in a hoarse, cadet's bass.
+
+"Jorjik Jorochka! Ah, how very nice!"
+
+She suddenly drew near to his ear and whispered with a cunning
+face:
+
+"Jorochka, come to me."
+
+Petrov was abashed and forlornly let out in a bass:
+
+"I don't know ... It all depends on what the comrade says, now
+..."
+
+Verka burst into loud laughter:
+
+"There's a case for you! Say, what an infant it is! Such as you,
+Jorochka, in a little village would long since have been married;
+but he says: 'It all depends on the comrade!' You ought to ask a
+nurse or a wet nurse yet! Tamara, my angel, just imagine: I'm
+calling him to go sleeping, but he says: 'It all depends on the
+comrade.' What about you, mister friend, are you his bringer up?"
+
+"Don't be pestering, you devil!" clumsily, altogether like a cadet
+before a quarrel, grumbled out Petrov in a bass.
+
+The lanky, ricketty Roly-Poly, grown still grayer, walked up to
+the cadets, and, inclining his long, narrow head to one side, and
+having made a touching grimace, began to patter:
+
+"Messieurs cadets, highly educated young people; the flower, so to
+speak, of the intelligentzia; future masters of ordnance, will you
+not lend to a little old man, an aborigine of these herbiferous
+regions, one good old cigarette? I be poor. Omnia mea mecum porto.
+But I do adore the weed."
+
+And, having received a cigarette, suddenly, without delay, he got
+into a free-and-easy, unconstrained pose; put forward the bent
+right leg, put his hand to his side, and began to sing in a
+wizened falsetto:
+
+    "It used to be that I gave dinners,
+    In rivers flowed the champagne wine;
+    But now I have not even bread crusts,
+    Nor for a split, oh brother mine.
+
+    It used to be--in the Saratov
+    The doorman rushed, and was so fine;
+    But now all drive me in the neck,
+    Give for a split, oh brother mine."
+
+"Gentlemen!" suddenly exclaimed Roly-Poly with pathos, cutting
+short his singing and smiting himself on the chest. "Here I behold
+you, and know that you are the future generals Skobelev and Gurko;
+but I, too, in a certain respect, am a military hound. In my time,
+when I was studying for a forest ranger, all our department of
+woods and forests was military; and for that reason, knocking at
+the diamond-studded, golden doors of your hearts, I beg of you--
+donate toward the raising for an ensign of taxation of a wee
+measure of spiritus vini, which same is taken of the monks also."
+
+"Roly!" cried the stout Kitty from the other end, "show the young
+officers the lightning; or else, look you, you're taking the money
+only for nothing, you good-for-nothing camel."
+
+"Right away!" merrily responded Roly-Poly. "Most illustrious
+benefactors, turn your attention this way. Living Pictures.
+Thunder Storm on a Summer Day in June. The work of the
+unrecognized dramaturgist who concealed himself under the
+pseudonym of Roly-Poly. The first picture.
+
+"'It was a splendid day in June. The scorching rays of the sun
+illumined the blossoming meadows and environs ...'"
+
+Roly-Poly's Don Quixotic phiz spread into a wrinkled, sweetish
+smile; and the eyes narrowed into half-circles.
+
+"'... But now in the distance the first clouds have appeared upon
+the horizon. They grew, piled upon each other like crags, covering
+little by little the blue vault of the sky."
+
+By degrees the smile was coming off Roly-Poly's face, and it grew
+more and more serious and austere.
+
+"'At last the clouds have overcast the sun ... An ominous darkness
+has fallen ...'"
+
+Roly-Poly made his physiognomy altogether ferocious.
+
+"'The first drops of the rain fell ...'"
+
+Roly-Poly began to drum his fingers on the back of a chair.
+
+"'... In the distance flashed the first lightning ... '"
+
+Roly-Poly's eye winked quickly, and the left corner of his mouth
+gave a twitch.
+
+"'... Whereupon the rain began to pour down in torrents, and there
+came a sudden, blinding flash of lightning...'"
+
+And with unusual artistry and rapidity Roly-Poly, with a
+successive movement of his eyebrows, eyes, nose, the upper and the
+lower lip, portrayed a lightning zig-zag.
+
+"'... A jarring thunder clap burst out--trrroo-oo. An oak that had
+stood through the ages fell down to earth, as though it were a
+frail reed ...'"
+
+And Roly-Poly with an ease and daring not to be expected from one
+of his years, bending neither the knees nor the back, only drawing
+down his head, instantaneously fell down; straight, like a statue,
+with his back to the floor, but at once deftly sprang up on his
+feet.
+
+"'But now the thunder storm is gradually abating. The lightning
+flashes less and less often. The thunder sounds duller, just like
+a satiated beast--oooooo-oooooo ... The clouds scurry away. The
+first rays of the blessed sun have peeped out ...'"
+
+Roly-Poly made a wry smile.
+
+"'... And now, the luminary of day has at last begun to shine anew
+over the bathed earth ...'"
+
+And the silliest of beatific smiles spread anew over the senile
+face of Roly-Poly.
+
+The cadets gave him a twenty-kopeck piece each. He laid them on
+his palm, made a pass in the air with the other hand, said: ein,
+zwei, drei, snapped two of his fingers, and the coins vanished.
+
+"Tamarochka, this isn't honest," he said reproachfully. "Aren't
+you ashamed to take the last money from a poor retired almost-
+head-officer? Why have you hidden them here?"
+
+And, having snapped his fingers again, he drew the coins out of
+Tamara's ear.
+
+"I shall return at once, don't be bored without me," he reassured
+the young people; "but if you can't wait for me, then I won't have
+any special pretensions about it. I have the honour! ..."
+
+"Roly-Poly!" Little White Manka cried after him, "Won't you buy me
+candy for fifteen kopecks... Turkish Delight, fifteen kopecks'
+worth. There, grab!"
+
+Roly-Poly neatly caught in its flight the thrown fifteen-kopeck
+piece; made a comical curtsey and, pulling down the uniform cap
+with the green edging at a slant over his eyes, vanished.
+
+The tall, old Henrietta walked up to the cadets, also asked for a
+smoke and, having yawned, said:
+
+"If only you young people would dance a bit--for as it is the young
+ladies sit and sit, just croaking from weariness."
+
+"If you please, if you please!" agreed Kolya. "Play a waltz and
+something else of the sort."
+
+The musicians began to play. The girls started to whirl around
+with one another, ceremoniously as usual, with stiffened backs and
+with eyes modestly cast down.
+
+Kolya Gladishev, who was very fond of dancing, could not hold out
+and invited Tamara; he knew even from the previous winter that she
+danced more lightly and skillfully than the rest. While he was
+twirling in the waltz, the stout head-conductor, skillfully making
+his way between the couples, slipped away unperceived through the
+drawing room. Kolya did not have a chance to notice him.
+
+No matter how Verka pressed Petrov, she could not, in any way,
+drag him off his place. The recent light intoxication had by now
+gone entirely out of his head; and more and more horrible, and
+unrealizable, and monstrous did that for which he had come here
+seem to him. He might have gone away, saying that not a one here
+pleased him; have put the blame on a headache, or something; but
+he knew that Gladishev would not let him go; and mainly--it seemed
+unbearably hard to get up from his place and to walk a few steps
+by himself. And, besides that, he felt that he had not the
+strength to start talking of this with Kolya.
+
+They finished dancing. Tamara and Gladishev again sat down side by
+side.
+
+"Well, really, how is it that Jennechka isn't coming by now?"
+asked Kolya impatiently.
+
+Tamara quickly gave Verka a look with a question, incomprehensible
+to the uninitiated, in her eyes. Verka quickly lowered her
+eyelashes. This signified: yes, he is gone.
+
+"I'll go right away and call her," said Tamara.
+
+"But what are you so stuck on your Jennka for," said Henrietta.
+"You might take me."
+
+"All right, another time," answered Kolya and nervously began to
+smoke.
+
+Jennka was not even beginning to dress yet. She was sitting before
+the mirror and powdering her face.
+
+"What is it, Tamarochka?" she asked.
+
+"Your little cadet has come to you. He's waiting."
+
+"Ah, that's the little baby of last year... Well, the devil with
+him!"
+
+"And that's right, too. But how healthy and handsome the lad has
+grown, and how tall... It's a delight, that's all! So if you don't
+want to, I'll go myself."
+
+Tamara saw in the mirror how Jennka contracted her eyebrows.
+
+"No, you wait a while, Tamara, don't. I'll see. Send him here to
+me. Say that I'm not well, that my head aches."
+
+"I have already told him, anyway, that Zociya had opened the door
+unsuccessfully and hit you on the head; and that you're lying down
+with a cold pack. But the only thing is, is it worth while,
+Jennechka?"
+
+"Whether it's worth while or not, that's not your business,
+Tamara," answered Jennka rudely.
+
+Tamara asked cautiously:
+
+"Is it possible, then, that you aren't at all, at all sorry?"
+
+"But for me you aren't sorry?" and she passed her hand over the
+red stripe that slashed her throat. "And for yourself you aren't
+sorry? And not sorry for this Liubka, miserable as she is? And not
+sorry for Pashka? You're huckleberry jelly, and not a human
+being!"
+
+Tamara smiled craftily and haughtily:
+
+"No, when it comes to a real matter, I'm not jelly. Perhaps you'll
+see this soon, Jennechka. Only let's better not quarrel--as it is
+it isn't any too sweet to live. All right, I'll go at once and
+send him to you."
+
+When she had gone away, Jennka lowered the light in the little
+hanging blue lantern, put on her night blouse, and lay down. A
+minute later Gladishev walked in; and after him Tamara, dragging
+Petrov by the hand, who resisted and kept his head down. And in
+the rear was thrust in the pink, sharp, foxy little phiz of the
+cross-eyed housekeeper Zociya.
+
+"And that's fine, now," the housekeeper commenced to bustle. "It's
+just sweet to look at; two handsome gents and two swell dames. A
+regular bouquet. What shall I treat you with, young people? Will
+you order beer or wine?"
+
+Gladishev had a great deal of money in his pocket, as much as he
+never had before during all his brief life--all of twenty-five
+roubles; and he wanted to go on a splurge. Beer he drank only out
+of bravado, but could not bear its bitter taste, and wondered
+himself how others could ever drink it. And for that reason,
+squeamishly, like an old rake, sticking out his lower lip, he said
+mistrustfully:
+
+"But then, you surely must have some awful stuff?"
+
+"What do you mean, what do you mean, good-looking! The very best
+gentlemen approve of it. Of the sweet, there are Cagore, church
+wine, Teneriffe; while of the French there's Lafitte. You can get
+port wine also. The girls just simply adore Lafitte with
+lemonade."
+
+"And what are the prices?"
+
+"No dearer than money. As is the rule in all good establishments--
+a bottle of Lafitte five roubles, four bottles of lemonade at a
+half each, that's two roubles, and only seven in all..."
+
+"That'll do you, Zociya," Jennka stopped her indifferently, "it's
+a shame to take advantage of boys. Even five is enough. You can
+see these are decent people, and not just anybody..."
+
+But Gladishev turned red, and with a negligent air threw a ten
+rouble note on the table.
+
+"Oh, what's the use of talking about it. All right, bring it."
+
+"Whilst I'm at it, I'll take the money for the visit as well. What
+about you, young people--are you on time or for the night? You
+know the rates yourself: on time, at two roubles; for the night,
+at five."
+
+"All right, all right. On time," interrupted Jennka, flaring up.
+"Trust us in that, at least."
+
+The wine was brought. Tamara through importunity got pastry,
+besides. Jennka asked for permission to call in Little White
+Manka. Jennka herself did not drink, did not get up from the bed,
+and all the time muffled herself up in a gray shawl of Orenburg
+[Footnote: Orenburg has as high a reputation for woolens as
+Sheffield has for steel.--Trans] manufacture, although it was hot
+in the room. She looked fixedly, without tearing her eyes away, at
+the handsome, sunburned face of Gladishev, which had become so
+manly.
+
+"What's the matter with you, dearie?" asked Gladishev, sitting
+down on her bed and stroking her hand.
+
+"Nothing special... Head aches a little... I hit myself."
+
+"Well, don't you pay any attention."
+
+"Well, here I've seen you, and already I feel better. How is it
+you haven't been here for so long?"
+
+"I couldn't snatch away the time, nohow-camping. You know
+yourself... We had to put away twenty-five versts a day. The whole
+day drilling and drilling: field, formation, garrison. With a full
+pack. Used to get so fagged out from morning to night that towards
+evening you couldn't feel your legs under you... We were at the
+manoeuvres also... It isn't sweet..."
+
+"Oh, you poor little things!" Little White Manka suddenly clasped
+her hands. "And what do they torture you for, angels that you are?
+If I was to have a brother like you, or a son--my heart would just
+simply bleed. Here's to your health, little cadet!"
+
+They clinked glasses. Jennka was just as attentively scrutinizing
+Gladishev.
+
+"And you, Jennechka?" he asked, extending a glass.
+
+"I don't want to," she answered listlessly, "but, however, ladies,
+you've drunk some wine, chatted a bit--don't wear the welcome off
+the mat."
+
+"Perhaps you'll stay with me the whole night?" she asked
+Gladishev, when the others had gone away. "Don't you be afraid,
+dearie; if you won't have enough money, I'll pay the difference
+for you. You see, how good-looking you are, that a wench does not
+grudge even money for you?" she began laughing.
+
+Gladishev turned around to her; even his unobserving ear was
+struck by Jennka's strange tone--neither sad, nor kindly, nor yet
+mocking.
+
+"No, sweetie, I'd be very glad to; I'd like to remain myself, but
+I can't possibly; I promised to be home toward ten o'clock."
+
+"That's nothing, dear, they'll wait; you're altogether a grown-up
+man now. Is it possible that you have to listen to anybody? ...
+But, however, as you wish. Shall I put out the light entirely,
+perhaps; or is it all right the way it is? Which do you want--the
+outside or near the wall?"
+
+"It's immaterial to me," he answered in a quavering voice; and,
+having embraced with his arm the hot, dry body of Jennka, he
+stretched with his lips toward her face. She slightly repulsed
+him.
+
+"Wait, bear a while, sweetheart--we have time enough to kiss our
+fill yet. Just lie still for one little minute... So, now...
+quiet, peaceful... don't stir..."
+
+These words, passionate and imperious, acted like hypnosis upon
+Gladishev. He submitted to her and lay down on his back, putting
+his hands underneath his head. She raised herself a little, leant
+upon her elbow, and placing her head upon the bent hand, silently,
+in the faint half-light, was looking his body over--so white,
+strong, muscular; with a high and broad pectoral cavity; with
+well-made ribs; with a narrow pelvis; and with mighty, bulging
+thighs. The dark tan of the face and the upper half of the neck
+was divided by a sharp line from the whiteness of the shoulders
+and breast.
+
+Gladishev blinked for a second. It seemed to him that he was
+feeling upon himself, upon his face, upon his entire body, this
+intensely fixed gaze, which seemed to touch his face and tickle
+it, like the cobwebby contact of a comb, which you first rub
+against a cloth--the sensation of a thin, imponderous, living
+matter.
+
+He opened his eyes and saw altogether near him the large, dark,
+uncanny eyes of the woman, who seemed to him now an entire
+stranger.
+
+"What are you looking at, Jennie?" he asked quietly. "What are you
+thinking of?"
+
+"My dear little boy! ...They call you Kolya: isn't that so?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't be angry at me, carry out a certain caprice of mine,
+please: shut your eyes again... no, even tighter, tighter... I
+want to turn up the light and have a good look at you. There now,
+so... If you only knew how beautiful you are now... right now...
+this second. Later you will become coarse, and you will begin
+giving off a goatish smell; but now you give off an odour of fur
+and milk... and a little of some wild flower. But shut them--shut
+your eyes!"
+
+She added light, returned to her place, and sat down in her
+favourite pose--Turkish fashion. Both kept silent. In the
+distance, several rooms away, a broken-down grand piano was
+tinkling; somebody's vibrating laughter floated in; while from the
+other side--a little song, and rapid, merry talking. The words
+could not be heard. A cabby was rumbling by somewhere through the
+distant street...
+
+"And now I will infect him right away, just like all the others,"
+pondered Jennka, gliding with a deep gaze over his well-made legs,
+his handsome torso of a future athlete, and over his arms, thrown
+back, upon which, above the bend of the elbow, the muscles
+tautened--bulging, firm. "Why, then, am I so sorry for him? Or is
+it because he is such a good-looking little fellow? No. I am long
+since a stranger to such feelings. Or is it because he is a boy?
+Why, only a little over a year ago I shoved apples in his pocket,
+when he was going away from me at night. Why have I not told him
+then that which, I can, and dare, tell him now? Or would he not
+have believed me, anyway? Would have grown angry? Would have gone
+to another? For sooner or later this turn awaits every man... And
+that he bought me for money--can that be forgiven? Or did he act
+just as all of them do--blindly? ..."
+
+"Kolya!" she said quietly, "Open your eyes."
+
+He obeyed, opened his eyes, turned to her; entwined her neck with
+his arm, drew her a little to him, and wanted to kiss her in the
+opening of her chemise--on the breast. She again tenderly but
+commandingly repulsed him.
+
+"No, wait a while, wait a while--hear me out... one little minute
+more. Tell me, boy, why do you come here to us--to the women?"
+
+Kolya quietly and hoarsely began laughing.
+
+"How silly you are! Well, what do they all come for? Am I not also
+a man? For, it seems, I'm at that age when in every man ripens...
+well, a certain need... for woman. For I'm not going to occupy
+myself with all sorts of nastiness!"
+
+"Need? Only need? That means, just as for that chamber which
+stands under my bed?"
+
+"No, why so?" retorted Kolya, with a kindly laugh. "I liked you
+very much... From the very first time... If you will, I'm even...
+a little in love with you... at least, I never stayed with any of
+the others."
+
+"Well, all right! But then, the first time, could it possibly have
+been need?"
+
+"No, perhaps, it wasn't need even; but somehow, vaguely, I wanted
+woman... My friends talked me into it... Many had already gone
+here before me... So then, I too..."
+
+"But, now, weren't you ashamed the first time?"
+
+Kolya became confused; all this interrogation was to him
+unpleasant, oppressive. He felt, that this was not the empty, idle
+bed talk, so well known to him, out of his small experience; but
+something else, of more import.
+
+"Let's say... not that I was ashamed... well, but still I felt
+kind of awkward. I drank that time to get up courage."
+
+Jennie again lay down on her side; leaned upon her elbow, and
+again looked at him from time to time, near at hand and intently.
+
+"But tell me, sweetie," she asked, in a barely audible voice, so
+that the cadet with difficulty made out her words, "tell me one
+thing more; but the fact of your paying money, these filthy two
+roubles--do you understand?--paying them for love, so that I might
+caress, kiss you, give all my body to you--didn't you feel ashamed
+to pay for that? Never?"
+
+"Oh, my God! What strange questions you put to me to-day! But then
+they all pay money! Not I, then some one else would have paid--
+isn't it all the same to you?"
+
+"And have you been in love with any one, Kolya? Confess! Well,
+now, if not in real earnest, then just so... at soul... Have you
+done any courting? Brought little flowers of some sort... Strolled
+arm-in-arm with her under the moon? Wasn't that so?"
+
+"Well, yes," said Koiya in a sedate bass. "What follies don't
+happen in one's youth! It's a matter anyone can understand..."
+
+"Some sort of a little first cousin? An educated young lady? A
+boarding school miss? A high school girl? ... There has been,
+hasn't there?"
+
+"Well, yes, of course--everybody has them."
+
+"Why, you wouldn't have touched her, would you? ... You'd have
+spared her? Well, if she had only said to you: take me, but only
+give me two roubles--what would you have said to her?"
+
+"I don't understand you, Jennka!" Gladishev suddenly grew angry.
+"What are you putting on airs for! What sort of comedy are you
+trying to put over! Honest to God, I'll dress myself at once and
+go away."
+
+"Wait a while, wait a while, Kolya! One more, one more, the last,
+the very, very last question."
+
+"Oh, you!" growled Kolya displeased.
+
+"And could you never imagine... well, imagine it right now, even
+for a second... that your family has suddenly grown poor, become
+ruined. You'd have to earn your bread by copying papers; or, now,
+let's say, through carpenter or blacksmith work; and your sister
+was to go wrong, like all of us... yes, yes, yours, your own
+sister... if some blockhead seduced her and she was to go
+travelling... from hand to hand... what would you say then?"
+
+"Bosh! ... That can't be..." Kolya cut her short curtly. "But,
+however, that's enough--I'm going away!"
+
+"Go away, do me that favour! I've ten roubles lying there, near
+the mirror, in a little box from chocolates--take them for
+yourself. I don't need them, anyway. Buy with them a tortoise
+powder box with a gold setting for your mamma; and if you have a
+little sister, buy her a good doll. Say: in memory from a certain
+wench that died. Go on, little boy!"
+
+Kolya, with a frown, angry, with one shove of a well-knit body
+jumped off the bed, almost without touching it. Now he was
+standing on the little mat near the bed, naked, well-formed,
+splendid in all the magnificence of his blooming, youthful body.
+
+"Kolya!" Jennka called him quietly, insistently and caressingly.
+"Kolechka!"
+
+He turned around to her call, and drew in the air in a short,
+jerky gust, as though he had gasped: he had never yet in his life
+met anywhere, even in pictures, such a beautiful expression of
+tenderness, sorrow, and womanly silent reproach, as the one he was
+just now beholding in the eyes of Jennka, filled with tears. He
+sat down on the edge of the bed, and impulsively embraced her
+around the bared, swarthy arms.
+
+"Let's not quarrel, then, Jennechka," he said tenderly.
+
+And she twined herself around him, placed her arms on his neck,
+while her head she pressed against his breast. They kept silent so
+for several seconds.
+
+"Kolya," Jennie suddenly asked dully, "but were you never afraid
+of becoming infected?"
+
+Kolya shivered. Some chill, loathsome horror stirred and glided
+through within his soul. He did not answer at once.
+
+"Of course, that would be horrible... horrible... God save me! But
+then I go only to you alone, only to you! You'd surely have told
+me? ..."
+
+"Yes, I'd have told you," she uttered meditatively. And at once
+rapidly, consciously, as though having weighed the significance of
+her words: "Yes, of course, of course, I would have told you! But
+haven't you ever heard what sort of a thing is that disease called
+syphilis?"
+
+"Of course, I've heard... The nose falls through..."
+
+"No, Kolya, not only the nose! The person becomes all diseased:
+his bones, sinews, brains grow diseased... Some doctors say such
+nonsense as that it's possible to be cured of this disease. Bosh!
+You'll never cure yourself! A person rots ten, twenty, thirty
+years. Every second paralysis can strike him down, so that the
+right side of the face, the right arm, the right leg die--it isn't
+a human being that's living, but some sort of a little half. Half-
+man-half-corpse. The majority of them go out of their minds. And
+each understands... every person... each one so infected
+understands, that if he eats, drinks, kisses, simply even
+breathes--he can't be sure that he won't immediately infect some
+one of those around him, the very nearest--sister, wife, son... To
+all syphilitics the children are born monsters, abortions,
+goitrous, consumptives, idiots. There, Kolya, is what this disease
+means. And now," Jennka suddenly straightened up quickly, seized
+Kolya fast by his bare shoulders, turned his face to her, so that
+he was almost blinded by the flashing of her sorrowful, sombre,
+extraordinary eyes, "and now, Kolya, I will tell you that for more
+than a month I am sick with this filth. And that's just why I
+haven't allowed you to kiss me..."
+
+"You're joking! ... You're teasing me on purpose, Jennie!"
+muttered Gladishev, wrathful, frightened, and out of his wits.
+
+"Joking? ...Come here!"
+
+She abruptly compelled him to get up on his feet, lit a match and
+said:
+
+"Now look closely at what I'm going to show you..."
+
+She opened her mouth wide and placed the light so that it would
+illumine her larynx. Kolya looked and staggered back.
+
+"Do you see these white spots? This is syphilis, Kolya! Do you
+understand?--syphilis in the most fearful, the most serious stage.
+Now dress yourself and thank God."
+
+He, silently and without looking around at Jennka, began to dress
+hurriedly, missing his clothes when he tried to put his legs
+through. His hands were shaking, and his under jaw jumped so that
+the lower teeth knocked against the upper; while Jennka was
+speaking with bowed head:
+
+"Listen, Kolya, it's your good fortune that you've run across an
+honest woman; another wouldn't have spared you. Do you hear that?
+We, whom you deprive of innocence and then drive out of your home,
+while later you pay us two roubles a visit, we always--do you
+understand?"--she suddenly raised her head--"we always hate you
+and never have any pity for you!"
+
+The half-clad Kolya suddenly dropped his dressing, sat down on the
+bed near Jennka and, covering his face with his palms, burst into
+tears; sincerely, altogether like a child...
+
+"Lord, Lord," he whispered, "why this is the truth! ... What a
+vile thing this really is! ... We, also, we had this happen: we
+had a chambermaid, Niusha...a chambermaid... they also called her
+signorita Anita...a pretty little girl...and my brother lived with
+her...my elder brother...an officer...and when he went away, she
+proved pregnant and mother drove her out...well, yes--drove her
+out...threw her out of the house, like a floor mop...Where is she
+now? And father...father...he also with a cham...chambermaid."
+
+And the half-naked Jennka, this Jennka, the atheist, swearer, and
+brawler, suddenly got up from the bed, stood before the cadet, and
+slowly, almost solemnly, made the sign of the cross over him.
+
+"And may God preserve you my boy!" she said with an expression of
+deep tenderness and gratitude.
+
+And at once she ran to the door, opened it and called out:
+"Housekeeper!"
+
+"Tell you what, housekeeper dear," Jennka directed, "go and find
+out, please, which one of them is free--Tamara or Little White
+Manka. And the one that's free send here."
+
+Kolya growled out something in the back, but Jennka purposely did
+not listen to him.
+
+"And please make it as quick as possible, housekeeper dear, won't
+you be so kind?"
+
+"Right away, right away, miss."
+
+"Why, why do you do this, Jennie?" asked Gladishev with anguish.
+"Well, what's that for? ...Is it possible that you want to tell
+about it? ..."
+
+"Wait awhile, that's not your business...Wait a while, I won't do
+anything unpleasant for you."
+
+After a minute Little White Manka came in her brown, smooth,
+deliberately modest dress of a high school girl.
+
+"What did you call me for, Jennie? Or have you quarreled?"
+
+"No, we haven't quarreled, Mannechka, but my head aches very
+much," answered Jennka calmly, "and for that reason my little
+friend finds me very cold. Be a friend, Mannechka, stay with him,
+take my place!"
+
+"That's enough, Jennie, stop it, darling!" in a tone of sincere
+suffering retorted Kolya. "I understand everything, everything,
+it's not necessary now ... Don't be finishing me off, then! ..."
+
+"I don't understand anything of what's happened," the frivolous
+Manka spread out her hands. "Maybe you'll treat a poor little girl
+to something?"
+
+"Well, go on, go on!" Jennka sent her away gently. "I'll come
+right away. We just played a joke."
+
+Already dressed, they stood for long in the open door between the
+bedroom and the corridor; and without words sadly looked at each
+other. And Kolya did not understand, but sensed, that at this
+moment in his soul was taking place one of those tremendous crises
+which tell imperiously upon the entire life.
+
+Then he pressed Jennie's hand hard and said:
+
+"Forgive! ... Will you forgive me, Jennie? Will you forgive? ..."
+
+"Yes, my boy! ... Yes, my fine one! ... Yes...yes..."
+
+She tenderly, softly, like a mother, stroked his closely cropped
+harsh head and gave him, a slight shove into the corridor.
+
+"Where are you bound now?" she sent after him, half opening her
+door.
+
+"I'll take my comrade right away, and then home."
+
+"As you know best! ... God bless you, dearie!"
+
+"Forgive me! ... Forgive me! ..." once more repeated Kolya,
+stretching out his hands to her.
+
+"I've already told you, my splendid boy...And you forgive me
+too...For we won't see each other anymore!"
+
+And she, having closed the door, was left alone.
+
+In the corridor Gladishev hesitated, because he did not know how
+to find the room to which Petrov had retired with Tamara. But the
+housekeeper Zociya helped him, running past him very quickly, and
+with a very anxious, alarmed air.
+
+"Oh, I haven't time to bother with you now!" she snarled back at
+Gladishev's question. "Third door to the left."
+
+Kolya walked up to the door indicated and knocked. Some sort of
+bustle and whispering sounded in the room. He knocked once more.
+
+"Kerkovius, open! This is me--Soliterov."
+
+Among the cadets, setting out on expeditions of this sort, it was
+always agreed upon to call each other by fictitious names. It was
+not so much a conspiracy or a shift against the vigilance of those
+in authority, or fear of compromising one's self before a chance
+acquaintance of the family, but rather a play, of its own kind, at
+mysteriousness and disguise--a play tracing its beginning from
+those times when the young people were borne away by Gustave
+Aimard, Mayne Reid, and the detective Lecocq.
+
+"You can't come in!" the voice of Tamara came from behind the
+door. "You can't come in. We are busy."
+
+But the bass voice of Petrov immediately cut her short:
+
+"Nonsense! She's lying. Come in. It's all right."
+
+Kolya opened the door.
+
+Petrov was sitting on a chair dressed, but all red, morose, with
+lips pouting like a child's, with downcast eyes.
+
+"Well, what a friend you've brought--I must say!" Tamara began
+speaking sneeringly and wrathfully. "I thought he was a man in
+earnest, but this is only some sort of a little girl! He's sorry
+to lose his innocence, if you please. What a treasure you've
+found, to be sure! But take back, take back your two roubles!" she
+suddenly began yelling at Petrov and tossed two coins on the
+table. "You'll give them away to some poor chambermaid or other!
+Or else save them for gloves for yourself, you marmot!"
+
+"But what are you cursing for?" grumbled Petrov, without raising
+his eyes. "I'm not cursing you, am I? Then why do you curse first?
+I have a full right to act as I want to. But I have passed some
+time with you, and so take them. But to be forced, I don't want
+to. And on your part, Gladishev--that is, Soliterov--this isn't at
+all nice. I thought she was a nice girl, but she's trying to kiss
+all the time, and does God knows what..."
+
+Tamara, despite her wrath, burst into laughter.
+
+"Oh, you little stupid, little stupid! Well, don't be angry--I'll
+take your money. Only watch: this very evening you'll be sorry,
+you'll be crying. Well, don't be angry, don't be angry, angel,
+let's make up. Put your hand out to me, as I'm doing to you."
+
+"Let's go, Kerkovius," said Gladishev. "Au revoir, Tamara!"
+
+Tamara let the money down into her stocking, through the habit of
+all prostitutes, and went to show the boys the way.
+
+Even at the time that they were passing through the corridor
+Gladishev was struck by the strange, silent, tense bustle in the
+drawing room; the trampling of feet and some muffled, low-voiced,
+rapid conversations.
+
+Near that place where they had just been sitting below the
+picture, all the inmates of Anna Markovna's house and several
+outsiders had gathered. They were standing in a close knot,
+bending down. Kolya walked up with curiosity, and, wedging his way
+through a little, looked in between the heads: on the floor,
+sideways, somehow unnaturally drawn up, was lying Roly-Poly. His
+face was blue, almost black. He did not move, and was lying
+strangely small, shrunken, with legs bent. One arm was squeezed in
+under his breast, while the other was flung back.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" asked Gladishev in a fright.
+
+Niurka answered him, starting to speak in a rapid, jerky whisper:
+
+"Roly-Poly just came here...Gave Manka the candy, and then started
+in to put Armenian riddles to us...'Of a blue colour, hangs in the
+parlor and whistles'...We couldn't guess nohow, but he says: 'A
+herring'...Suddenly he started laughing, had a coughing spell, and
+began falling sideways; and then--bang on the ground and don't
+move...They sent for the police...Lord, there's doings for you!
+... I'm horribly afraid of corpseses!"
+
+"Wait!" Gladishev stopped her. "It's necessary to feel his
+forehead; he may be alive yet..."
+
+He did try to thrust himself forward, but Simeon's fingers, just
+like iron pincers, seized him above the elbows and dragged him
+back.
+
+"There's nothing, there's nothing to be inspecting," sternly
+ordered Simeon, "go on, now, young gents, out of here! This is no
+place for you: the police will come, will summon you as witnesses
+--then it's scat! to the devil's dam! for you out of the military
+high school! Better go while you're good and healthy!"
+
+He escorted them to the entrance hall, shoved the great-coats into
+their hands and added still more sternly:
+
+"Well, now--go at a run...Lively! So's there won't be even a whiff
+of you left. And if you come another time, then I won't let youse
+in at all. You are wise guys, you are! You gave the old hound
+money for whiskey--so now he's gone and croaked."
+
+"Well, don't you get too smart, now!" Gladishev flew at him, all
+ruffled up.
+
+"What d'you mean, don't get smart? ..." Simeon suddenly began to
+yell infuriatedly, and his black eyes without lashes and brows
+became so terrible that the cadets shrank back. "I'll soak you one
+on the snout so hard you'll forget how to say papa and mamma! Git,
+this second! Or else I'll bust you in the neck!"
+
+The boys went down the steps.
+
+At this time two men were going up, in cloth caps on the sides of
+their heads; one in a blue, the other in a red blouse, with the
+skirts outside, under the unbuttoned, wide open jackets--
+evidently, Simeon's comrades in the profession.
+
+"What?" one of them called out gaily from below, addressing
+Simeon, "Is it bye-bye for Roly-Poly?"
+
+"Yes, it must be the finish," answered Simeon. "We've got to throw
+him out into the street in the meantime, fellows, or else the
+spirits will start haunting. The devil with him, let 'em think
+that he drank himself full and croaked on the road."
+
+"But you didn't ... well, now? ... You didn't do for him?"
+
+"Well, now, there's foolish talk! If there'd only been some
+reason. He was a harmless fellow. Altogether like a little lamb.
+It must be just that his turn came."
+
+"And didn't he find a place where to die! Couldn't he have thought
+up something worse?" said the one who was in the red shirt.
+
+"Right you are, there!" seconded the other. "Lived to grin and
+died in sin. Well, let's go, mate, what?"
+
+The cadets ran with all their might. Now, in the darkness, the
+figure of Roly-Poly drawn up on the floor, with his blue face,
+appeared before them in all the horror that the dead possess for
+early youth; and especially if recalled at night, in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+A fine rain, like dust, obstinate and tedious, had been drizzling
+since morning. Platonov was working in the port at the unloading
+of watermelons. At the mill, where he had since the very summer
+proposed to establish himself, luck had turned against him; after
+a week he had already quarreled, and almost had a fight, with the
+foreman, who was extremely brutal with the workers. About a month
+Sergei Ivanovich had struggled along somehow from hand to mouth,
+somewheres in the back-yards of Temnikovskaya Street, dragging
+into the editorial rooms of The Echoes, from time to time, notes
+of street accidents or little humorous scenes from the court rooms
+of the justices of the peace. But the hard newspaper game had long
+ago grown distasteful to him. He was always drawn to adventures,
+to physical labour in the fresh air, to life completely devoid of
+even the least hint at comfort; to care-free vagabondage, in which
+a man, having cast from him all possible external conditions, does
+not know himself what is going to be with him on the morrow. And
+for that reason, when from the lower stretches of the Dnieper the
+first barges with watermelons started coming in, he willingly
+entered a gang of labourers, in which he was known even from last
+year, and loved for his merry nature, for his comradely spirit,
+and for his masterly ability of keeping count.
+
+This labour was carried on with good team work and with skill.
+Four parties, each of five men, worked on each barge. Number one
+would reach for a watermelon and pass it on to the second, who was
+standing on the side of the barge. The second cast it to the
+third, standing already on the wharf; the third threw it over to
+the fourth; while the fourth handed it up to the fifth, who stood
+on a horse cart and laid the watermelons away--now dark-green, now
+white, now striped--into even glistening rows. This work is clean,
+lively, and progresses rapidly. When a good party is gotten up, it
+is a pleasure to see how the watermelons fly from hand to hand,
+are caught with a circus-like quickness and success, and anew, and
+anew, without a break, fly, in order to fill up the dray. It is
+only difficult for the novices, that have not as yet gained the
+skill, have not caught on to that especial sense of the tempo. And
+it is not as difficult to catch a watermelon as to be able to
+throw it.
+
+Platonov remembered well his first experiences of last year. What
+swearing--virulent, mocking, coarse--poured down upon him when for
+the third or fourth time he had been gaping and had slowed up the
+passing: two watermelons, not thrown in time, had smashed against
+the pavement with a succulent crunch, while the completely lost
+Platonov dropped the one which he was holding in his hands as
+well. The first time they treated him gently; on the second day,
+however, for every mistake they began to deduct from him five
+kopecks per watermelon out of the common share. The following time
+when this happened, they threatened to throw him out of the party
+at once, without any reckoning. Platonov even now still remembered
+how a sudden fury seized him: "Ah, so? The devil take you!" he had
+thought. "And yet you want me to be chary of your watermelons? So
+then, here you are, here you are! ..." This flare-up helped him as
+though instantaneously. He carelessly caught the watermelons, just
+as carelessly threw them over, and to his amazement suddenly felt
+that precisely just now he had gotten into the real swing of the
+work with all his muscles, sight, and breathing; and understood,
+that the most important thing was not to think at all of the
+watermelons representing some value, and that then everything went
+well. When he, finally, had fully mastered this art, it served him
+for a long time as a pleasant and entertaining athletic game of
+its own kind. But that, too, passed away. He reached, in, the end,
+the stage where he felt himself a will-less, mechanical wheel in a
+general machine consisting of five men and an endless chain of
+flying watermelons.
+
+Now he was number two. Bending downward rhythmically, he, without
+looking, received with both hands the cold, springy, heavy
+watermelon; swung it to the right; and, also almost without
+looking, or looking only out of the corner of his eye, tossed it
+downward, and immediately once again bent down for the next
+watermelon. And his ear seized at this time how smack-smack
+...smack-smack...the caught watermelons slapped in the hands; and
+immediately bent downwards and again threw, letting the air out of
+himself noisily--ghe...ghe...
+
+The present work was very profitable; their gang, consisting of
+forty men, had taken on the work, thanks to the great rush, not by
+the day but by the amount of work done, by the waggon load.
+Zavorotny, the head--an enormous, mighty Poltavian--had succeeded
+with extreme deftness in getting around the owner; a young man,
+and, to boot, in all probability not very experienced as yet. The
+owner, it is true, came to his senses later and wanted to change
+the stipulations; but experienced melon growers dissuaded him from
+it in time: "Drop it. They'll kill you," they told him simply and
+firmly. And so, through this very stroke of good luck every member
+of the gang was now earning up to four roubles a day. They all
+worked with unusual ardour, even with some sort of vehemence; and
+if it had been possible to measure with some apparatus the labour
+of each one of them, then, in all probability, the number of units
+of energy created would have equalled the work of a large
+Voronezhian train horse.
+
+However, Zavorotny was not satisfied even with this--he hurried
+and hurried his lads on all the time. Professional ambition was
+speaking within him; he wanted to bring the daily earnings of
+every member of the gang up to five roubles per snout. And gaily,
+with unusual ease, twinkled from the harbour to the waggon,
+twirling and flashing, the wet green and white watermelons; and
+their succulent plashing resounded against accustomed palms.
+
+But now a long blast sounded on the dredging machine in the port.
+A second, a third, responded to it on the river; a few more on
+shore; and for a long time they roared together in a mighty chorus
+of different voices.
+
+"Ba-a-a-st-a-a!" hoarsely and thickly, exactly like a locomotive
+blast, Zavorotny started roaring.
+
+And now the last smack-smack--and the work stopped
+instantaneously.
+
+Platonov with enjoyment straightened out his back and bent it
+backward, and spread out his swollen arms. With pleasure he
+thought of having already gotten over that first pain in all the
+muscles, which tells so during the first days, when one is just
+getting back into the work after disuse. While up to this day,
+awaking in the mornings in his lair on Temnikovskaya--also to the
+sound of a factory blast agreed upon--he would during the first
+minutes experience such fearful pains in his neck, back, in his
+arms and legs, that it seemed to him as if only a miracle would be
+able to compel him to get up and make a few steps.
+
+"Go-o-o and e-at," Zavorotny began to clamour again.
+
+The stevedores went down to the water; got down on their knees or
+laid down flat on the gangplank or on the rafts; and, scooping up
+the water in handfuls, washed their wet, heated faces and arms.
+Right here, too, on the shore, to one side, where a little grass
+had been left yet, they disposed themselves for dinner: placed in
+a circle ten of the most ripe watermelons, black bread, and twenty
+dried porgies. Gavriushka the Bullet was already running with a
+half-gallon bottle to the pot-house and was singing as he went the
+soldiers' signal for dinner:
+
+    "Drag spoon and mess-kit out,
+    If there's no bread, eat without."
+
+A bare-footed urchin, dirty and so ragged that there was more of
+his bare body than clothes upon him, ran up to the gang.
+
+"Which one of you here is Platonov?" he asked, quickly running
+over them with his thievish eyes.
+
+"I'm Platonov, and by what name do they tease you?"
+
+"Around the corner here, behind the church, some sort of a young
+lady is waiting for you...Here's a note for you."
+
+The whole gang neighed deeply.
+
+"What d'you open up your mouths for, you pack of fools!" said
+Platonov calmly. "Give me the note here."
+
+This was a letter from Jennka, written in a round, naive, rolling,
+childish handwriting, and not very well spelt.
+
+"Sergei Ivanich. Forgive me that I disturbe you. I must talk over
+a very, very important matter with you. I would not be troubling
+you if it was Trifles. For only 10 minutes in all. Jennka, whom
+you know, from Anna Markovna's."
+
+Platonov got up.
+
+"I'm going away for a little while," he said to Zavorotny. "When
+you begin, I'll be in my place."
+
+"Now you've found somethin' to do," lazily and contemptuously said
+the head of the gang. "There's the night for that business...Go
+ahead, go ahead, who's holding you. But only if you won't be here
+when we begin work, then this day don't count. I'll take any
+tramp. And as many watermelons as he busts--that's out of your
+share, too...I didn't think it of you, Platonov--that you're such
+a he-dog..."
+
+Jennka was waiting for him in the tiny little square, sheltered
+between a church and the wharf, and consisting of ten sorry
+poplars. She had on a gray, one-piece street dress; a simple,
+round, straw hat with a small black ribbon. "And yet, even though
+she has dressed herself simply," reflected Platonov, looking at
+her from a distance with his habitually puckered eyes, "and yet,
+every man will walk past, give a look, and inevitably look back
+three or four times; he'll feel the especial tone at once."
+
+"Howdy do, Jennka! Very glad to see you," he said cordially,
+squeezing the girl's hand. "There, now, I didn't expect it!"
+
+Jennka was reserved, sad, and apparently troubled over something.
+Platonov at once understood and sensed this.
+
+"You excuse me, Jennechka, I must have dinner right away," said
+he, "so, perhaps, you'll go together with me and tell me what's
+the matter, while I'll manage to eat at the same time. There's a
+modest little inn not far from here. At this time there are no
+people there at all, and there's even a tiny little stall, a sort
+of a private room; that will be just the thing for you and me.
+Let's go! Perhaps you'll also have a bite of something."
+
+"No. I won't eat," answered Jennka hoarsely, "and I won't detain
+you for long...a few minutes. I have to talk things over, have
+some advice--but I haven't anybody."
+
+"Very well...Let's go then! In whatever way I can, I'm always at
+your service, in everything. I love you very much, Jennka!"
+
+She looked at him sadly and gratefully.
+
+"I know this, Serge Ivanovich; that's why I've come."
+
+"You need money, perhaps? Just say so. I haven't got much with me,
+myself; but the gang will trust me with an advance."
+
+"No, thanks...it isn't that at all. I'll tell everything at once,
+there, where we're going now."
+
+In the dim, low-ceiled little inn, the customary haunt of petty
+thieves, where business was carried on only in the evening, until
+very far into the night, Platonov took the little half-dark cubby
+hole.
+
+"Give me boiled meat, cucumbers, a large glass of vodka, and
+bread," he ordered the waiter.
+
+The waiter--a young fellow with a dirty face; pugnosed; as dirty
+and greasy in all his person as though he had just been pulled out
+of a cesspool, wiped his lips and asked hoarsely:
+
+"How many kopecks' bread?" "As much as it comes to." Then he
+started laughing:
+
+"Bring as much as possible--we'll reckon it up later... and some
+bread cider!"
+
+"Well, Jennie, say what your trouble is...I can already see by
+your face that there's trouble, or something distasteful in
+general...Go ahead and tell it!"
+
+Jennka for a long time plucked her handkerchief and looked at the
+tips of her slippers, as though, gathering her strength.
+Timorousness had taken possession of her--the necessary and
+important words would not come into her mind, for anything.
+Platonov came to her aid: "Don't be embarrassed, my dear Jennie,
+tell all there is! For you know that I'm like one of the family,
+and will never give you away. And perhaps I may really give you
+some worth-while advice. Well, dive off with a splash into the
+water--begin!"
+
+"That's just it, I don't know how to begin," said Jennka
+irresolutely. "Here's what, Sergei Ivanovich, I'm a sick
+woman...Understand?--sick in a bad way...With the most nasty
+disease...Do you know which?"
+
+"Go on!" said Platonov, nodding his head.
+
+"And I've been that way for a long time...more than a month...a
+month and a half, maybe...Yes, more than a month, because I found
+out about this on the Trinity..."
+
+Platonov quickly rubbed his forehead with his hand. "Wait a while,
+I've recalled it...This was that day I was there together with the
+students...isn't that so?"
+
+"That's right, Sergei Ivanovich, that's so..."
+
+"Ah, Jennka," said Platonov reproachfully and with regret. "For do
+you know, that after this two of the students got sick...Wasn't it
+from you?"
+
+Jennka wrathfully and disdainfully flashed her eyes.
+
+"Perhaps even from me...How should I know? There were a lot of
+them...I remember there was this one, now, who was even trying to
+pick a fight with you all the time ...A tall sort of fellow, fair-
+haired, in pince-nez..."
+
+"Yes, yes...That's Sobashnikov. They passed the news to
+me...That's he...that one was nothing--a little coxcomb! But then
+the other--him I'm sorry for. Although I've known him long,
+somehow I never made the right inquiries about his name...I only
+remember that he comes from some city or other--
+Poliyansk...Zvenigorodsk... His comrades called him Ramses...When
+the physicians--he turned to several physicians--when they told
+him irrevocably that he had the lues, he went home and shot
+himself...And in the note that he wrote there were amazing things,
+something like this: I supposed all the meaning of life to be in
+the triumph of mind, beauty and good; with this disease I am not a
+man, but junk, rottenness, carrion; a candidate for a progressive
+paralytic. My human dignity cannot reconcile itself to this. But
+guilty in all that has happened, and therefore in my death as
+well, am I alone; for that I, obeying a momentary bestial
+inclination, took a woman without love, for money. For that reason
+have I earned the punishment which I myself lay upon me..."
+
+"I am sorry for him..." added Platonov quietly.
+
+Jennka dilated her nostrils.
+
+"But I, now, not the very least bit."
+
+"That's wrong...You go away now, young fellow. When I'll need you
+I'll call out," said Platonov to the serving-man "Absolutely
+wrong, Jennechka! This was an unusually big and forceful man. Such
+come only one to the hundreds of thousands. I don't respect
+suicides. Most frequent of all, these are little boys, who shoot
+and hang themselves over trifles, like a child that has not been
+given a piece of candy, and hits itself against the wall to spite
+those around it. But before his death I reverently and with sorrow
+bow my head. He was a wise, generous, kindly man, attentive to
+all; and, as you see, too strict to himself."
+
+"But to me this is absolutely all one," obstinately contradicted
+Jennka, "wise or foolish, honest or dishonest, old or young--I
+have come to hate them all. Because--look upon me--what am I? Some
+sort of universal spittoon, cesspool, privy. Think of it,
+Platonov; why, thousands, thousands of people have taken me,
+clutched me; grunted, snorted over me; and all those who were, and
+all those who might yet have been on my bed--oh, how I hate them
+all! If I only could, I would sentence them to torture by fire and
+iron! ... I would order..."
+
+"You are malicious and proud, Jennie," said Platonov quietly.
+
+"I was neither malicious nor proud...It's only now. I wasn't ten
+yet when my own mother sold me; and since that time I've been
+travelling from hand to hand... If only some one had seen a human
+being in me! No! ... I am vermin, refuse, worse than a beggar,
+worse than a thief, worse than a murderer! ... Even a hangman...we
+have even such coming to the establishment--and even he would have
+treated me loftily, with loathing: I am nothing; I am a public
+wench! Do you understand, Sergei Ivanovich, what a horrible word
+this is? Pub-lic! ... This means nobody's: not papa's, not
+mamma's, not Russian, not Riyazan, but simply--public! And not
+once did it enter anybody's head to walk up to me and think: why,
+now, this is a human being too; she has a heart and a brain; she
+thinks of something, feels something; for she's not made out of
+wood, and isn't stuffed with straw, small hay, or excelsior! And
+yet, only I feel this. I, perhaps, am the only one out of all of
+them who feels the horror of her position; this black, stinking,
+filthy pit. But then, all the girls with whom I have met, and with
+whom I am living right now--understand, Platonov, understand me!--
+why, they don't realize anything... Talking, walking pieces of
+meat! And this is even worse than my malice! ..."
+
+"You are right!" said Platonov quietly. "And this is one of those
+questions where you'll always run up against a wall. No one will
+help you..."
+
+"No one, no one! ..." passionately exclaimed Jennka. "Do you
+remember--this was while you were there: a student carried away
+our Liubka..."
+
+"Why, certainly, I remember well! ... Well, and what then?"
+
+"And this is what, that yesterday she came back tattered,
+wet...Crying...Left her, the skunk! ... Played a while at
+kindliness, and then away with her! 'You,' he says, 'are a
+sister.' 'I,' he says, 'will save you, make a human being of
+you...'"
+
+"Is that possible?"
+
+"Just so! ... One man I did see, kindly, indulgent, without the
+designs of a he-dog--that's you. But then, you're altogether
+different. You're somehow queer. You're always wandering
+somewhere, seeking something...You forgive me, Sergei Ivanovich,
+you're some sort of a little innocent! ... And that's just why
+I've come to you, to you alone! ..."
+
+"Speak on, Jennechka..."
+
+"And so, when I found out that I was sick, I almost went out of my
+mind from wrath; I choked from wrath ...I thought: and here's the
+end; therefore, there's no more use in pitying, there's nothing to
+grieve about, nothing to expect...The lid! ... But for all that I
+have borne--can it be that there's no paying back for it? Can it
+be that there's no justice in the world? Can it be that I can't
+even feast myself with revenge?--for that I have never known love;
+that of family life I know only by hearsay; that, like a
+disgustin', nasty little dog, they call me near, pat me and then
+with a boot over the head--get out!--that they made me over, from
+a human being, equal to all of them, no more foolish than all
+those I've met; made me over into a floor mop, some sort of a
+sewer pipe for their filthy pleasures? ...Ugh! ... Is it possible
+that for all of this I must take even such a disease with
+gratitude as well? ... Or am I a slave? ... A dumb object? ... A
+pack horse? ... And so, Platonov, it was just then that I resolved
+to infect them all: young, old, poor, rich, handsome, hideous--
+all, all, all! ..."
+
+Platonov, who had already long since put his plate away from him,
+was looking at her with astonishment, and even more--almost with
+horror. He, who had seen in life much of the painful, the filthy,
+at times even of the bloody--he grew frightened with an animal
+fright before this intensity of enormous, unvented hatred. Coming
+to himself, he said:
+
+"One great writer tells of such a case. The Prussians conquered
+the French and lorded it over them in every possible way: shot the
+men, violated the women, pillaged the houses, burned down the
+fields...And so one handsome woman--a Frenchwoman, very handsome,
+--having become infected, began out of spite to infect all the
+Germans who happened to fall into her embraces. She made ill whole
+hundreds, perhaps even thousands...And when she was dying in a
+hospital, she recalled this with joy and with pride... [Footnote:
+This story is Lit. No. 29, by Guy de Maupassant.--Trans.] But
+then, those were enemies, trampling upon her fatherland and
+slaughtering her brothers...But you, you, Jennechka! ..."
+
+"But I--all, just all! Tell me, Sergei Ivanovich, only tell me on
+your conscience: if you were to find in the street a child, whom
+some one had dishonoured, had abused...well, let's say, had stuck
+its eyes out, cut its ears off--and then you were to find out that
+this man is at this minute walking past you, and that only God
+alone, if only He exists, is looking at you this minute from
+heaven--what would you do?"
+
+"Don't know," answered Platonov, dully and downcast; but he paled,
+and his fingers underneath the table convulsively clenched into
+fists, "Perhaps I would kill him..."
+
+"Not 'perhaps,' but certainly! I know you, I sense you. Well, and
+now think: every one of us has been abused so, when we were
+children! ... Children! ..." passionately moaned out Jennka and
+covered her eyes for a moment with her palm. "Why, it comes to me,
+you also spoke of this at one time, in our place--wasn't it on
+that same evening before the Trinity? ... Yes, children--foolish,
+trusting, blind, greedy, frivolous...And we cannot tear ourselves
+out of our harness...where are we to go? what are we to do? ...
+And please, don't you think it, Sergei Ivanovich--that the spite
+within me is strong only against those who wronged just me, me
+personally...No, against all our guests in general; all these
+cavaliers, from little to big...Well, and so I have resolved to
+avenge myself and my sisters. Is that good or no? ..."
+
+"Jehnechka, really I don't know...I can't...I dare not say
+anything...I don't understand."
+
+"But even that's not the main thing...For the main thing is this:
+I infected them, and did not feel anything--no pity, no remorse,
+no guilt before God or my fatherland. Within me was only joy, as
+in a hungry wolf that has managed to get at blood...But yesterday
+something happened which even I can't understand. A cadet came to
+me, altogether a little bit of a lad, silly, with yellow around
+his mouth...He used to come to me from still last winter...And
+then suddenly I had pity on him... Not because he was very
+handsome and very young; and not because he had always been very
+polite--even tender, if you will...No, both the one and the other
+had come to me, but I did not spare them: with enjoyment I marked
+them off, just like cattle, with a red-hot brand ...But this one I
+suddenly pitied...I myself don't understand--why? I can't make it
+out. It seemed to me, that it would be all the same as stealing
+money from a little simpleton, a little idiot; or hitting a blind
+man, or cutting a sleeper's throat...if he only were some dried-up
+marasmus or a nasty little brute, or a lecherous old fellow, I
+would not have stopped. But he was healthy, robust, with chest and
+arms like a statue's...and I could not... I gave him his money
+back, showed him my disease; in a word, I acted like a fool among
+fools. He went away from me...burst into tears...And now since
+last evening I haven't slept. I walk around as in a
+fog...Therefore--I'm thinking right now--therefore, that which, I
+meditated; my dream to infect them all; to infect their fathers,
+mothers, sisters, brides--even all the world--therefore, all this
+was folly, an empty fantasy, since I have stopped? ... Once again,
+I don't understand anything ...Sergei Ivanovich, you are so wise,
+you have seen so much of life--help me, then, to find myself now!
+..."
+
+"I don't know, Jennechka!" quietly pronounced Platonov. "Not that
+I fear telling you, or advising you, but I know absolutely
+nothing. This is above my reason... above conscience..."
+
+Jennie crossed her fingers and nervously cracked them.
+
+"And I, too, don't know...Therefore, that which I thought--is not
+the truth. Therefore, there is but one thing left me...This
+thought came into my head this morning..."
+
+"Don't, don't do it, Jennechka! ... Jennie! ..." Platonov quickly
+interrupted her.
+
+"There's one thing: to hang myself..."
+
+"No, no, Jennie, only not that! ... If there were other
+circumstances, unsurmountable, I would, believe me, tell you
+boldly: well, it's no use, Jennie; it's time to close up shop...
+But what you need isn't that at all... If you wish, I can suggest
+one way out to you, no less malicious and merciless; but which,
+perhaps, will satiate your wrath a hundredfold..."
+
+"What's that?" asked Jennie, wearily, as though suddenly wilted
+after her flare-up.
+
+"Well, this is it ... You're still young, and I'll tell you the
+truth, you are very handsome; that is, you can be, if you only
+want to, unusually stunning ... That's even more than beauty. But
+you've never yet known the bounds and the power of your
+appearance; and, mainly, you don't know to what a degree such
+natures as yours are bewitching, and how mightily they enchain men
+to them, and make out of them more than slaves and brutes ... You
+are proud, you are brave, you are independent, you are a clever
+woman. I know--you have read a great deal, let's presuppose even
+trashy books, but still you have read, you have an entirely
+different speech from the others. With a successful turn of life,
+you can cure yourself, you can get out of these 'Yamkas,' these
+'Little Ditches,' into freedom. You have only to stir a finger, in
+order to see at your feet hundreds of men; submissive, ready for
+your sake for vileness, for theft, for embezzlement ... Lord it
+over them with tight reins, with a cruel whip in your hands! ...
+Ruin them, make them go out of their minds, as long as your desire
+and energy hold out! ... Look, my dear Jennie, who manages life
+now if not women! Yesterday's chambermaid, laundress, chorus girl
+goes through estates worth millions, the way a country-woman of
+Tver cracks sunflower seeds. A woman scarcely able to sign her
+name, at times affects the destiny of an entire kingdom through a
+man. Hereditary princes marry the street-walkers, the kept
+mistresses of yesterday... Jennechka, there is the scope for your
+unbridled vengeance; while I will admire you from a distance...
+For you--you are made of this stuff--you are a bird of prey, a
+spoliator... Perhaps not with such a broad sweep--but you will
+cast them down under your feet."
+
+"No," faintly smiled Jennka. "I thought of this before ... But
+something of the utmost importance has burned out within me. There
+are no forces within me, there is no will within me, no desires
+... I am somehow all empty inside, rotted ... Well, now, you know,
+there's a mushroom like that--white, round,--you squeeze it, and
+snuff pours out of it. And the same way with me. This life has
+eaten out everything within me save malice. And I am flabby, and
+my malice is flabby ... I'll see some little boy again, will have
+pity on him, will be punishing myself again ... No, it's better
+... better so! ..."
+
+She became silent. And Platonov did not know what to say. It
+became oppressive and awkward for both. Finally, Jennka got up,
+and, without looking at Platonov, extended her cold, feeble hand
+to him.
+
+"Good-bye, Sergei Ivanovich! Excuse me, that I took up your time
+... Oh, well, I can see myself that you'd help me, if you only
+could ... But, evidently, there's nothing to be done here ...
+Good-bye!"
+
+"Only don't do anything foolish, Jennechka! I implore you! ..."
+
+"Oh, that's all right!" said she and made a tired gesture with her
+hand.
+
+Having come out of the square, they parted; but, having gone a few
+steps, Jennka suddenly called after him:
+
+"Sergei Ivanovich, oh Sergei Ivanovich! ..."
+
+He stopped, turned around, walked back to her.
+
+"Roly-Poly croaked last evening in our drawing room. He jumped and
+he jumped, and then suddenly plumped down ... Oh, well, it's an
+easy death at least! And also I forgot to ask you, Sergei
+Ivanovich ... This is the last, now ... Is there a God or no?"
+
+Platonov knit his eyebrows.
+
+"What answer can I make? I don't know. I think that there is, but
+not such as we imagine Him. He is more wise, more just..."
+
+"And future life? There, after death? Is there, now, as they tell
+us, a paradise or hell? Is that the truth? Or is there just
+nothing at all? A barren void? A sleep without a dream? A dark
+basement?"
+
+Platonov kept silent, trying not to look at Jennka. He felt
+oppressed and frightened.
+
+"I don't know," said he, finally, with an effort. "I don't want to
+lie to you."
+
+Jennka sighed, and smiled with a pitiful, twisted smile.
+
+"Well, thanks, my dear. And thanks for even that much ... I wish
+you happiness. With all my soul. Well, good-bye..."
+
+She turned away from him and began slowly, with a wavering walk,
+to climb up the hill.
+
+Platonov returned to work just in the nick of time. The gathering
+of tramps, scratching, yawning, working out their accustomed
+dislocations, were getting into their places. Zavorotny, at a
+distance, with his keen eyes caught sight of Platonov and began to
+yell over the whole port:
+
+"You did manage to get here in time, you round-shouldered devil
+... But I was already wanting to take you by the tail and chase
+you out of the gang ... Well, get in your place! ..."
+
+"Well, but I did get a he-dog in you, Serejka! ..." he added, in a
+kindly manner. "If only it was night; but no,--look you, he starts
+in playing ring-around-a-rosie in broad daylight..."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Saturday was the customary day of the doctor's inspection, for
+which they prepared very carefully and with quaking in all the
+houses; as, however, even society ladies prepare themselves, when
+getting ready for a visit to a physician-specialist; they
+diligently made their intimate toilet and inevitably put on clean
+underthings, even as dressy as possible. The windows toward the
+street were closed with shutters, while at one of those windows,
+which gave out upon the yard, was put a table with a hard bolster
+to put under the back.
+
+All the girls were agitated ... "And what if there's a disease,
+which I haven't noticed myself? ... And then the despatch to a
+hospital; disgrace; the tedium of hospital life; bad food; the
+hard course of treatment..."
+
+Only Big Manka--or otherwise Manka the Crocodile--Zoe, and
+Henrietta--all thirty years old, and, therefore, in the reckoning
+of Yama, already old prostitutes, who had seen everything, had
+grown inured to everything, grown indifferent to their trade, like
+white, fat circus horses--remained imperturbably calm. Manka the
+Crocodile even often said of herself:
+
+"I have gone through fire and water and pipes of brass ... Nothing
+will stick to me any more."
+
+Jennka, since morning, was meek and pensive. She presented to
+Little White Manka a golden bracelet; a medallion upon a thin
+little chain with her photograph; and a silver neck crucifix.
+Tamara she moved through entreaty into taking two rings for
+remembrance: one of silver, in three hoops, that could be moved
+apart, with a heart in the middle, and under it two hands that
+clasped one another when all the three parts of the ring were
+joined; while the other was of thin gold wire with an almandine.
+
+"As for my underwear, Tamarochka--you give it to Annushka, the
+chambermaid. Let her wash it out well and wear it in good health,
+in memory of me."
+
+The two of them were sitting in Tamara's room. Jennka had in the
+very morning sent after cognac; and now slowly, as though lazily,
+was imbibing wine-glass after wine-glass, eating lemon and a piece
+of sugar after drinking. Tamara was observing this for the first
+time and wondered, because Jennka had always disliked wine, and
+drank very rarely; and then only at the constraint of guests.
+
+"What are you giving stuff away so to-day?" asked Tamara. "Just as
+though you'd gotten ready to die, or to go into a convent?"
+
+"Yes, and I will go away," answered Jennka listlessly. "I am
+weary, Tamarochka! ..."
+
+"Well, which one of us has a good time?"
+
+"Well, no! ... It isn't so much that I'm weary; but somehow
+everything--everything is all the same ... I look at you, at the
+table, at the bottle; at my hands and feet; and I'm thinking, that
+all this is alike and everything is to no purpose ... There's no
+sense in anything ... Just like on some old, old picture. Look
+there--there's a soldier walking on the street, but it's all one
+to me, as though they had wound up a doll, and it's moving ... And
+that he's wet under the ram, is also all one to me ... And that
+he'll die, and I'll die, and you, Tamara, will die--in this also I
+see nothing frightful, nothing amazing... So simple and wearisome
+is everything to me..."
+
+Jennka was silent for a while; drank one more wine-glass; sucked
+the sugar, and, still looking out at the street, suddenly asked:
+
+"Tell me, please, Tamara, I've never asked you about it--from
+where did you get in here, into the house? You don't at all
+resemble all of us; you know everything; for everything that turns
+up you have a good, clever remark ... Even French, now--how well
+you spoke it that time! But none of us knows anything at all about
+you ... Who are you?"
+
+"Darling Jennechka, really, it's not worth while ... A life like
+any life ... I went to boarding school; was a governess; sang in a
+choir; then kept a shooting gallery in a summer garden; and then
+got mixed up with a certain charlatan and taught myself to shoot
+with a Winchester ... I traveled with circuses--I represented an
+American Amazon. I used to shoot splendidly ... Then I found
+myself in a monastery. There I passed two years ... I've been
+through a lot ... Can't recall everything ... I used to steal..."
+
+"You've lived through a great deal ... Checkered-like."
+
+"But then, my years are not a few. Well, what do you think--how
+many?"
+
+"Twenty-two, twenty-four? ..."
+
+"No, my angel! It just struck thirty-two a week ago. I, if you
+like, am older than all of you here in Anna Markovna's. Only I
+didn't wonder at anything, didn't take anything near to heart. As
+you see, I never drink ... I occupy myself very carefully with the
+care of rny body; and the main thing, the very main thing--I don't
+allow myself ever to be carried away with men..."
+
+"Well, but what about your Senka? ..."
+
+"Senka--that's a horse of another colour; the heart of woman is
+foolish, inconsistent ... Can it possibly live without love? And
+even so, I don't love him, but just so ... a self-deception ...
+But, however, I shall be in very great need of Senka soon."
+
+Jennka suddenly grew animated and looked at her friend with
+curiosity.
+
+"But how did you come to get stuck right here, in this hole? So
+clever, handsome, sociable..."
+
+"I'd have to take a long time in telling it ... And then I'm too
+lazy ... I got in here out of love; I got mixed up with a certain
+young man and went into a revolution with him. For we always act
+so, we women: where the dearie is looking, there we also look;
+what the dearie sees, that we also see ... I didn't believe at
+soul in his work, but I went. A flattering man he was; smart, a
+good talker, a good looker ... Only he proved to be a skunk and a
+traitor afterwards. He played at revolution; while he himself gave
+his comrades away to the gendarmes. A stool-pigeon, he was. When
+they had killed and shown him up, then all the foolishness left
+me. However, it was necessary to conceal myself ... I changed my
+passport. Then they advised me, that the easiest thing of all was
+to screen myself with a yellow ticket ... And then the fun began!
+... And even here I'm on a sort of pasture ground; when the time
+comes, the successful moment arrives--I'll go away!"
+
+"Where?" asked Jennie with impatience.
+
+"The world is large ... And I love life! ... There, now, I was the
+same way in the convent: I lived on and I lived on; sang
+antiphonies and dulias, until I had rested up, and had finally
+grown weary of it; and then all at once--hop! and into a cabaret
+... Wasn't that some jump? The same way out of here ... I'll get
+into a theatre, into a circus, into a corps de ballet ... but do
+you know, Jennechka, I'm drawn to the thieving trade the most,
+after all ... Daring, dangerous, hard, and somehow intoxicating
+... It's drawing me! ... Don't you mind that I'm so respectable
+and modest, and can appear an educated young lady. I'm entirely,
+entirely different."
+
+Her eyes suddenly blazed up, vividly and gaily.
+
+"There's a devil dwells in me!"
+
+"It's all very well for you," pensively and with weariness
+pronounced Jennie. "You at least desire something, but my soul is
+some sort of carrion ... I'm twenty-five years old, now; but my
+soul is like that of an old woman, shrivelled up, smelling of the
+earth ... And if I had only lived sensibly! ... Ugh! ... There was
+only some sort of slush."
+
+"Drop it, Jennka; you're talking foolishly. You're smart, you're
+original; you have that special power before which men crawl and
+creep so willingly. You go away from here, too. Not with me, of
+course--I'm always single--but go away all by your own self."
+
+Jennka shook her head and quietly, without tears, hid her face in
+her palms.
+
+"No, she responded dully, after a long silence," no, this won't
+work out with me: fate has chewed me all up! ... I'm not a human
+being any more, but some sort of dirty cud ... Eh!" she suddenly
+made a gesture of despair. 'Let's better drink some cognac,
+Jennechka,'" she addressed herself, "'and let's suck the lemon a
+little! ...' Brr ... what nasty stuff! ... And where does Annushka
+always get such abominable stuff? If you smear a dog's wool with
+it, it will fall off ... And always, the low-down thing, she'll
+take an extra half. Once I somehow ask her--'What are you hoarding
+money for?' 'Well, I,' she says, 'am saving it up for a wedding.
+What sort,' she says, 'of joy will it be for my husband, that I'll
+offer him up my innocence alone! I must earn a few hundreds in
+addition.' She's happy! ... I have here, Tamara, a little money
+in. the little box under the mirror; you pass it on to her,
+please..."
+
+"And what are you about, you fool; do you want to die, or what?"
+sharply, with reproach, said Tamara.
+
+"No, I'm saying it just so, if anything happens ... Take it, now,
+take the money! Maybe they'll take me off to the hospital ... And
+how do you know what's going to take place there? I left myself
+some small change, if anything happens ... And supposing that I
+wanted to do something to myself in downright earnest, Tamarochka
+--is it possible that you'd interfere with me?"
+
+Tamara looked at her fixedly, deeply, and calmly. Jennie's eyes
+were sad, and as though vacant. The living fire had become
+extinguished in them, and they seemed turbid, just as though
+faded, with whites like moonstone.
+
+"No," Tamara said at last, quietly but firmly. "If it was on
+account of love, I'd interfere; if it was on account of money, I'd
+talk you out of it: but there are cases where one must not
+interfere. I wouldn't help, of course; but I also wouldn't seize
+you and interfere with you."
+
+At this moment the quick-limbed housekeeper Zociya whirled through
+the corridor with an outcry:
+
+"Ladies, get dressed! The doctor has arrived ... Ladies, get
+dressed! ... Lively, ladies! ..."
+
+"Well, go on, Tamara, go on," said Jennka tenderly, getting up.
+"I'll run into my room for just a minute--I haven't changed my
+dress yet, although, to tell the truth, this also is all one. When
+they'll be calling out for me, and I don't come in time, call out,
+run in after me."
+
+And, going out of Tamara's room, she embraced her by the shoulder,
+as though by chance, and stroked it tenderly.
+
+Doctor Klimenko--the official city doctor--was preparing in the
+parlor everything indispensable for an nspection--vaseline, a
+solution of sublimate, and other things--and was placing them on a
+separate little table. Here also were arranged for him the white
+blanks of the girls, replacing their passports, as well as a
+general alphabetical list. The girls, dressed only in their
+chemises, stockings, and slippers, were standing and sitting at a
+distance. Nearer the table was standing the proprietress herself--
+Anna Markovna--while a little behind her were Emma Edwardovna and
+Zociya.
+
+The doctor--aged, disheartened, slovenly; a man indifferent to
+everything--put the pince-nez crookedly upon his nose, looked at
+the list, and called out:
+
+"Alexandra Budzinskaya! ..."
+
+The frowning, little, pug-nosed Nina stepped out. Preserving on
+her face an angry expression, and breathing heavily from shame,
+from the consciousness of her own awkwardness, and from the
+exertions, she clumsily climbed up on the table. The doctor,
+squinting through his pince-nez and dropping it every minute,
+carried out the inspection.
+
+"Go ahead! ... You're sound."
+
+And on the reverse side of the blank he marked off: "Twenty-eighth
+of August. Sound" and put down a curly-cue. And when he had not
+even finished writing called out:
+
+"Voshchenkova, Irene! ..."
+
+Now it was the turn of Liubka. She, during the past month and a
+half of comparative freedom, had had time to grow unaccustomed to
+the inspections of every week; and when the doctor turned up the
+chemise over her breast, she suddenly turned as red as only very
+bashful women can--even with her back and breast.
+
+After her was the turn of Zoe; then of Little White Manka; after
+that of Tamara and Niurka--the last, the doctor found, had
+gonorrhoea, and ordered her to be sent off to a hospital.
+
+The doctor carried out the inspection with amazing rapidity. It
+was now nearly twenty years that every week, on Saturdays, he had
+to inspect in such a manner several hundred girls; and he had
+worked out that habitual technical dexterity and rapidity, a calm
+carelessness of movements, which is; frequently to be found in
+circus artists, in card sharpers, in furniture movers and packers,
+and in other professionals. And he carried out his manipulations
+with the same calmness with which a drover or a veterinary
+inspects several hundred head of cattle in a day.
+
+Did he ever think that before him were living people; or that he
+appeared as the last and most important link of that fearful chain
+which is called legalized prostitution?
+
+No! And even if he did experience this, then it must have been in
+the very beginning of his career. Now before him were only naked
+abdomens, naked backs, and opened mouths. Not one exemplar of all
+this faceless herd of every Saturday would he have recognized
+subsequently on the street. The main thing was the necessity of
+finishing as soon as possible the inspection in one establishment,
+in order to pass on to another, to a third, a ninth, a
+twentieth...
+
+"Susannah Raitzina!" the doctor finally called out.
+
+No one walked up to the table.
+
+All the inmates of the house began to exchange glances and to
+whisper.
+
+"Jennka ... Where's Jennka? ..."
+
+But she was not among the girls.
+
+Then Tamara, just released by the doctor, moved a little forward
+and said:
+
+"She isn't here. She hasn't had a chance to get herself ready yet.
+Excuse me, Mr. Doctor, I'll go right away and call her."
+
+She ran into the corridor and did not return for a long time.
+After her went, at first Emma Edwardovna, then Zociya, several
+girls, and even Anna Markovna herself.
+
+"PFUI! What indecency is this! ... "the majestic Emma Edwardovna
+was saying in the corridor, making an indignant face. "And
+eternally this Jennka! ... Always this Jennka! ... It seems my
+patience has already burst ..."
+
+But Jennka was nowhere--neither in her room, nor in Tamara's. They
+looked into other chambers, in all the out-of-the-way corners ...
+But she did not prove to be even there.
+
+"We must look in the water-closet ... Perhaps she's there?"
+surmised Zoe.
+
+But this institution was locked from the inside with a bolt. Emma
+Edwardovna knocked on the door with her fist.
+
+"Jennie, do come out at last! What foolishness is this?"
+
+And, raising her voice, she cried out impatiently and
+threateningly:
+
+"Do you hear, you swine? ... Come out this minute--the doctor's
+waiting!"
+
+But there was no answer of any sort.
+
+All exchanged glances with fear in their eyes, with one and the
+same thought in mind.
+
+Emma Edwardovna shook the door by the brass knob, but the door did
+not yield.
+
+"Go after Simeon!" Anna Markovna directed.
+
+Simeon was called ... He came, sleepy and morose, as was his wont.
+By the distracted faces of the girls and the housekeepers, he
+already saw that some misunderstanding or other had occurred, in
+which his professional cruelty and strength were required. When
+they explained to him what the matter was, he silently took the
+door-knob with both hands, braced himself against the wall, and
+gave a yank.
+
+The knob remained in his hands; and he himself, staggering
+backward, almost fell to the floor on his back.
+
+"A-a, hell!" he began to growl in a stifled voice. "Give me a
+table knife."
+
+Through the crack of the door he felt the inner bolt with the
+table knife; whittled away with the blade the edges of the crack,
+and widened it so that he could at last push the end of the knife
+through it, and began gradually to scrape back the bolt. Only the
+grating of metal against metal could be heard.
+
+Finally Simeon threw the door wide open.
+
+Jennka was hanging in the middle of the water-closet on a tape
+from her corset, fastened to the lamphook. Her body, already
+motionless after an unprolonged agony, was slowly swinging in the
+air, and describing scarcely perceptible turns to the right and
+left around its vertical axis. Her face was bluishly-purple, and
+the tip of the tongue was thrust out between clenched and bared
+teeth. The lamp which had been taken off was also here, sprawling
+on the floor.
+
+Some one began to squeal hysterically, and all the girls, like a
+stampeded herd, crowding and jostling each other in the narrow
+corridor, vociferating and choking with hysterical sobbings,
+started in to run.
+
+The doctor came upon hearing the outcries... Came, precisely, and
+not ran. Seeing what the matter was, he did not become amazed or
+excited; during his practice as an official city doctor, he had
+had his fill of seeing such things, so that he had already grown
+benumbed and hardened to human sufferings, wounds and death. He
+ordered Simeon to lift the corpse of Jennka a bit upward, and
+himself getting up on the seat, cut through the tape. Proforma, he
+ordered Jennka's body to be borne away into the room that had been
+hers, and tried with the help of the same Simeon to produce
+artificial respiration; but after five minutes gave it up as a bad
+job, fixed the pince-nez, which had become crooked, on his nose,
+and said:
+
+"Call the police in to make a protocol."
+
+Again Kerbesh came, again whispered for a long time with the
+proprietress in her little bit of a cabinet, and again crunched in
+his pocket a new hundred-rouble bill.
+
+The protocol was made in five minutes; and Jennka, just as half-
+naked as she had hung herself, was carted away in a hired wagon
+into an anatomical theatre, wrapped up in and covered with two
+straw mats.
+
+Emma Edwardovna was the first to find the note that Jennka had
+left on her night table. On a sheet, torn out of the income-
+expense book, compulsory for every prostitute, in pencil, in a
+naive, rounded, childish handwriting--by which, however, it could
+be judged that the hands of the suicide had not trembled during
+the last minutes--was written:
+
+"I beg that no one be blamed for my death. I am dying because I
+have become infected, and also because all people are scoundrels
+and it is very disgusting to live. How to divide my things--Tamara
+knows about that. I told her in detail."
+
+Emma Edwardovna turned around upon Tamara, who was right on the
+spot among a number of other girls, and with eyes filled with a
+cold, green hatred, hissed out:
+
+"Then you knew, you low-down thing, what she was preparing to do?
+... You knew, you vermin? ... You knew and didn't tell? ..."
+
+She already had swung back, in order, as was her wont, to hit
+Tamara cruelly and calculatingly; but suddenly stopped just as she
+was, with gaping mouth and with eyes wide open. It was just as
+though she was seeing, for the first time, Tamara, who was looking
+at her with a firm, wrathful, unbearable gaze, and slowly, slowly
+was raising from below, and at last brought up to the level of the
+housekeeper's face, a small object, glistening with white metal.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+That very same day, at evening, a very important event took place
+in the house of Anna Markovna: the whole institution--with land
+and house, with live and inanimate stock--passed into the hands of
+Emma Edwardovna.
+
+They had been speaking of this, on and off, for a long time in the
+establishment; but when the rumours so unexpectedly, immediately
+right after the death of Jennka, turned into realities, the misses
+could not for a long time come to themselves for amazement and
+fear. They knew well, having experienced the sway of the German
+upon themselves, her cruel, implacable pedantism; her greed,
+arrogance, and, finally, her perverted, exacting, repulsive love,
+now for one, now for another favorite. Besides that, it was no
+mystery to any one, that out of the fifteen thousand which Emma
+Edwardovna had to pay the former proprietress for the firm and for
+the property, one third belonged to Kerbesh, who had, for a long
+time already, been carrying on half-friendy, half-business
+relations with the fat housekeeper. From the union of two such
+people, shameless, pitiless, and covetous, the girls could expect
+all sorts of disasters for themselves.
+
+Anna Markovna had to let the house go so cheaply not simply
+because Kerbesh, even if he had not known about certain shady
+little transactions to her credit, could still at any time he
+liked trip her up and eat her up without leaving anything. Of
+pretexts and cavils for this even a hundred could be found every
+day; and certain ones of them not merely threatened the shutting
+down of the house alone, but, if you like, even with the court.
+
+But, dissembling, oh-ing and sighing, bewailing her poverty, her
+maladies and orphanhood, Anna Markovna at soul was glad of even
+such a settlement. And then it must be said: she was already for a
+long time feeling the approach of senile infirmity, together with
+all sorts of ailments and the thirst for complete, benevolent
+rest, undisturbed by anything. All, of which she had not even
+dared dream in her early youth, when she herself had yet been a
+prostitute of the rank and file--all had now come to her of
+itself, one in addition to the other: peaceful old age, a house--a
+brimming cup on one of the quiet, cozy streets, almost in the
+centre of the city,--the adored daughter Birdie, who--if not to-
+day then tomorrow--must marry a respected man, an engineer, a
+house-owner, and member of the city-council; provided for as she
+was with a respectable dowry and magnificent valuables ... Now it
+was possible peacefully, without hurrying, with gusto, to dine and
+sup on sweet things, for which Anna Markovna had always nourished
+a great weakness; to drink after dinner good, home-made, strong
+cherry-brandy; and of evenings to play a bit at "preference," for
+kopeck stakes, with esteemed elderly ladies of her acquaintance,
+who, even although they never as much as let it appear that they
+knew the real trade of the little old woman, did in reality know
+it very well; and not only did not condemn her business but even
+bore themselves with respect toward those enormous percentages
+which she earned upon her capital. And these charming friends, the
+joy and consolation of an untroubled old age, were: one--the
+keeper of a loan office; another--the proprietress of a lively
+hotel near the railroad; the third--the owner of a jewelry shop,
+not large, but all the go and well known among the big thieves,
+&c. And about them, in her turn, Anna Markovna knew and could tell
+several shady and not especially flattering anecdotes; but in
+their society it was not customary to talk of the sources of the
+family well-being--only cleverness, daring, success, and decent
+manners were esteemed.
+
+But, even besides that, Anna Markovna, sufficiently limited in
+mind and not especially developed, had some sort of an amazing
+inner intuition, which during all her life permitted her
+instinctively but irreproachably to avoid unpleasantnesses, and to
+find prudent paths in time. And so now, after the sudden death of
+Roly-Poly, and the suicide of Jennka which followed the next day,
+she, with her unconsciously--penetrating soul foreguessed that
+fate--which had been favouring her house of ill-fame, sending her
+good fortunes, turning away all under-water shoals--was now
+getting ready to turn its back upon her. And she was the first to
+retreat.
+
+They say, that not long before a fire in a house, or before the
+wreck of a ship, the wise, nervous rats in droves make their way
+into another place. And Anna Markovna was directed by the same
+rat-like, animal, prophetic intuition. And she was right:
+immediately right after the death of Jennka some fearful curse
+seemed to hang over the house, formerly Anna Markovna Shaibes',
+but now Emma Edwardovna Titzner's: deaths, misfortunes, scandals
+just simply descended upon it ceaselessly, becoming constantly
+more frequent, on the manner of bloody events in Shakespeare's
+tragedies; as, however, was the case at all the remaining houses
+of the Yamas as well.
+
+And one of the first to die, a week after the liquidation of the
+business, was Anna Markovna herself. However, this frequently
+happens with people put out of their accustomed rut of thirty
+years: so die war heroes, who have gone into retirement--people of
+insuperable health and iron will; so quickly go off the stage
+former stock brokers, who have happily gone away to rest, but have
+been deprived of the burning allurement of risk and hazard; so,
+too, age rapidly, droop, and grow decrepit, the great artists who
+leave the stage ... Her death was the death of the just. Once at a
+game of cards she felt herself unwell; begged them to wait a while
+for her; said that she would lie down for just a minute; lay down
+in the bedroom on a bed; sighed deeply, and passed on into another
+world--with a calm face, with a peaceful, senile smile upon her
+lips. Isaiah Savvich--her faithful comrade on the path of life, a
+trifle downtrodden, who had always played a secondary, subordinate
+role--survived her only a month.
+
+Birdie was left sole heiress. She very successfully turned the
+cozy house into money, as well as the land somewheres at the edge
+of the town; married, as it had been presupposed, very happily;
+and up to this time is convinced that her father carried on a
+great commercial business in the export of wheat through Odessa
+and Novorossiysk into Asia Minor.
+
+On the evening of the day when Jennie's corpse had been carried
+away to an anatomical theatre; at an hour when not even a chance
+guest appears on Yamskaya Street, all the girls, at the insistence
+of Emma Edwardovna, assembled in the drawing room. Not one of them
+dared murmur against the fact that on this distressing day, when
+they had not yet recovered from the impression of Jennka's
+horrible death, they would be compelled to dress up, as usual, in
+wildly festive finery, and to go into the brightly illuminated
+drawing room, in order to dance, sing, and to entice lecherous men
+with their denuded bodies.
+
+And at last into the drawing room walked Emma Edwardovna herself.
+She was more majestic than she had ever been--clad in a black silk
+gown, from which, just like battlements, her enormous breasts
+jutted out, upon which descended two fat chins; in black silk
+mittens; with an enormous gold chain wound thrice around her neck,
+and terminating in a ponderous medallion hanging upon the very
+abdomen.
+
+"Ladies! ..." she began impressively, "I must ... Stand up!" she
+suddenly called out commandingly. "When I speak, you must hear me
+out standing."
+
+They all exchanged glances with perplexity: such an order was a
+novelty in the establishment. However, the girls got up one after
+another, irresolutely, with eyes and mouths gasping.
+
+"Sie sollen ... you must from this day show me that respect which
+you are bound to show to your mistress," importantly and weightily
+began Emma Edwardovna. "Beginning from to-day, the establishment
+in a legal manner has passed from our good and respected Anna
+Markovna to me, Emma Edwardovna Titzner. I hope that we will not
+quarrel, and that you will behave yourselves like sensible,
+obedient, and well-brought-up girls. I will be to you like in
+place of your own mother, but only remember, that I will not stand
+for laziness, or drunkenness, or notions of any sort; or any kind
+of disorder. The kind Madam Shaibes, it must be said, held you in
+too loose reins. O--o, I will be far more strict. Discipline uber
+alles ... before everything. It's a great pity, that the Russian
+people are lazy, dirty and stoopid, do not understand this rule;
+but don't you trouble yourself, I will teach you this for your own
+good. I say 'for your own good,' because my main thought is to
+kill the competition of Treppel. I want that my client should be a
+man of substance, and not some charlatan and ragamuffin, some kind
+of student, now, or ham actor. I want that my ladies should be the
+most beautiful, best brought-up, the healthiest and gayest in the
+whole city. I won't spare any money in order to set up swell
+furnishings; and you will have rooms with silk furniture and with
+genuine, beautiful rugs. Your guests will no longer be demanding
+beer, but only genteel Bordeaux and Burgundy wines and champagne.
+Remember, that a rich, substantial, elderly man never likes your
+common, ordinary, coarse love. He requires Cayenne pepper; he
+requires not a trade, but an art, and you will soon acquire this.
+At Treppel's they take three roubles for a visit and ten roubles
+for a night ... I will establish it so, that you will receive five
+roubles for a visit and twenty-five for a night. They will present
+you with gold and diamonds. I will contrive it so, that you won't
+have to pass on into establishments of a lower sort, und so weiter
+... right down to the soldiers' filthy den. No! Deposits will be
+put away and saved with me for each one of you every month; and
+will be put away in your name in a banker's office, where there
+will increase interest upon them, and interest upon interest. And
+then, if a girl feels herself tired, or wants to marry a
+respectable man, there will always be at her disposal not a large,
+but a sure capital. So is it done in the best establishments in
+Riga, and everywhere abroad. Let no one say about me, that Emma
+Edwardovna is a spider, a vixen, a cupping glass. But for
+disobedience, for laziness, for notions, for lovers on the side, I
+will punish cruelly and, like nasty weeds, will throw out--on the
+street, or still worse. Now I have said all that I had to. Nina,
+come near me. And all the rest of you come up in turn."
+
+Ninka irresolutely walked right up to Emma Edwardovna--and even
+staggered back in amazement: Emma Edwardovna was extending her
+right hand to her, with the fingers lowered downward, and slowly
+nearing it to Ninka's lips.
+
+"Kiss it! ..." impressively and firmly pronounced Emma Edwardovna,
+narrowing her eyes and with head thrown back, in the magnificent
+pose of a princess ascending her throne.
+
+Ninka was so bewildered that her right arm gave a jerk in order to
+make the sign of the cross; but she corrected herself, loudly
+smacked the extended hand, and stepped aside. Following her Zoe,
+Henrietta, Vanda and others stepped up also. Tamara alone
+continued to stand near the wall with her back to the mirror; that
+mirror into which Jennka so loved to gaze, in gone-by times,
+admiring herself as she walked back and forth through the drawing
+room.
+
+Emma Edwardovna let the imperious, obstinate gaze of a boa-
+constrictor rest upon her; but the hypnosis did not work. Tamara
+bore this gaze without turning away, without flinching; but
+without any expression on her face. Then the new proprietress put
+down her hand, produced on her face something resembling a smile,
+and said hoarsely:
+
+"And with you, Tamara, I must have a little talk separately, eye
+to eye. Let's go!"
+
+"I hear you, Emma Edwardovna!" calmly answered Tamara.
+
+Emma Edwardovna came to the little bit of a cabinet, where
+formerly Anna Markovna loved to drink coffee with clotted cream;
+sat down on the divan and pointed out a place opposite her to
+Tamara. For some time the women kept silent; searchingly,
+mistrustfully eyeing each other.
+
+"You acted rightly, Tamara," said Emma Edwardovna finally. "You
+did wisely in not stepping up, on the manner of those sheep, to
+kiss my hand. But just the same, I would not have let you come to
+that. I wanted right there, in the presence of all, when you
+walked up to me, to press your hand and to offer you the place of
+first housekeeper--you understand?--my chief assistant--and on
+terms very advantageous to you ..."
+
+"I thank you ..."
+
+"No, wait a while, don't interrupt me. I will have my say to the
+end, and then you will express your pros and cons. But will you
+explain to me, please, when yesterday you were aiming at me out of
+a revolver, what did you want? Can it possibly be, to kill me?"
+
+"On the contrary, Emma Edwardovna," retorted Tamara respectfully,
+"on the contrary; it seemed to me that you wanted to strike me."
+
+"PJUI! What do you mean, Tamarochka! ... Have you paid no
+attention to the fact that during all the time of our acquaintance
+I never permitted myself, not only to hit you, but even to address
+you with a rude word? ... What do you mean, what do you mean? ...
+I don't confuse you with this poor Russian trash ... Glory be to
+God, I am an experienced person and one who knows people well. I
+can very well see that you are a genuinely cultured young lady;
+far more educated, for example, than I myself. You are refined,
+elegant, smart. I am convinced of the fact that you even know
+music not at all badly. Finally, if I were to confess, I was a
+little ... how shall I put it to you? ... I always was a little in
+love with you. And now you wanted to shoot me! Me, a person who
+could be a very good friend to you! Well, what will you say to
+that?"
+
+"Well ... nothing at all, Emma Edwardovna," retorted Tamara in the
+meekest and most plausible tone. "Everything was very simple. Even
+before that I found the revolver under Jennka's pillow and brought
+it, in order to give it over to you. I did not want to interfere,
+when you were reading the letter; but then you turned around to
+me--I stretched the revolver out to you and wanted to say: 'See,
+Emma Edwardovna, what I found'--for, don't you see, it surprised
+me awfully how the late Jennie, having a revolver at her disposal,
+preferred such a horrible death as hanging? And that's all."
+
+The bushy, frightful eyebrows of Emma Edwardovna rose upward; the
+eyes widened joyously; and a real, uncounterfeited smile spread
+over her cheeks of a behemoth. She quickly extended both hands to
+Tamara.
+
+"And is this all? O, MEIN KIND? And I thought ... God knows what I
+imagined! Give me your hands, Tamara, your little charming white
+hands, and allow me to press them auf mein Herz, upon my heart,
+and to kiss you."
+
+The kiss was so long, that Tamara with great difficulty and with
+aversion barely freed herself from the embraces of Emma
+Edwardovna.
+
+"Well, and now to business. And so, here are my terms: you will be
+housekeeper, I give you fifteen percent, out of the clear gain.
+Mind you, Tamara, fifteen percent. And, besides that, a small
+salary--thirty, forty, well, if you like, fifty roubles a month.
+Splendid terms--isn't that the truth? I am deeply convinced, that
+none other than just you will help me to raise the house to a real
+height, and make it the swellest not only in our city, but in all
+the south of Russia as well. You have taste, and an understanding
+of things! ... Besides that, you will always be able to entertain,
+and to stir up the most exacting, the most unyielding guests. In
+rare instances, when a very rich and distinguished gentleman--in
+Russian they call it one "sun-fish," while with us, ein
+Freier,[Footnote: In English, a "toff"; in American, a "swell."--
+trans.]--when he becomes infatuated with you--for you are so
+handsome, Tamarochka," (the proprietress looked at her with misty,
+humid eyes), "then I do not at all forbid you to pass the time
+with him gaily; only to bear down always upon the fact that you
+have no right, owing to your duty, your position, Und so weiter,
+und so weiter ... aber sagen sie bitte, do you easily make
+yourself understood in German?"
+
+"Die Deutsche Sprache beherrsche ich in geringerem Grade als die
+franzosische; indes kann ich stets in einer Salon-Plauderei
+mitmachen." [Footnote: "My mastery of the German language is a
+trifle worse than that of the French, but I can always keep up my
+end in parlor small talk."]
+
+"O, wunderbar! sie haben eine entzuckende Rigaer Aussprache, die
+beste alter deutschen Aussprachen. Und also--fahren wir in unserer
+Sprache fort. Sie klingt viel susser meinem Ohr, die
+Muttersprache. Schon? [Footnote: O, splendid! ... You have a
+bewitching Riga enunciation, the most correct of all the German
+ones. And so, let us continue in my tongue. That is far sweeter to
+my ear--my mother tongue. All right?"]
+
+ "SCHON." [Footnote: "All right."]
+
+"Zuletzt werden Sie nachgeben, dem Anschein nach ungern,
+unwillkurlich, van der Laune des Augenblicks hingerissen--und, was
+die Hauptsache ist, lautlos, heimlich vor mir. Sie verstehen?
+Dafur zahlen Narren ein schweres Geld. Ubrigens brauche ich Sie
+wohl nicht zu lernen." [Footnote: "In the very end you will give
+in, as though unwillingly, as though against your will, as though
+from infatuation, a momentary caprice, and--which is the main
+thing--as though on the sly from me. You understand? For this the
+fools pay enormous money. However, it seems I will not have to
+teach you."]
+
+"Ja, gnadige Frau. Sie sprechen gar kluge Dinge. Doch das ist
+schon keine Plauderei mehr, sondern eine ernste unterhaltung.
+"Yes, my dear madam. You say very wise things. But this is no
+longer small talk; it is, rather, serious conversation ... And for
+that reason it is more convenient for me, if you will revert to
+the Russian language ... I am ready to obey you."
+
+"Furthermore! ... I was just now talking about a lover. I dare not
+forbid you this pleasure, but let us be prudent: let him not
+appear here, or appear as rarely as possible. I will give you days
+for going out, when you will be perfectly free. But it's best if
+you would get along without him entirely. It will serve your
+benefit too. This is only a drag and a yoke. I am telling you this
+from my own personal experience. Wait a while; after three or four
+years we will expand this business so, that you will have
+substantial money already, and then I vill take you into the
+business as a partner with full rights. After ten years you will
+still be young and handsome, and then take and buy men as much as
+you want to. By that time romantic follies will go out of your
+head entirely, and it will not be you who will be chosen already,
+but you who will be choosing with sense and with feeling, as a
+connoisseur picks out precious stones. Do you agree with me?"
+
+Tamara cast down her eyes, and smiled just the least trifle.
+
+"You speak golden truths, Emma Edwardovna. I will drop mine, but
+not at once. For that I will need some two weeks. I will try not
+to have him appear here. I accept your proposition."
+
+"And that's splendid!" said Emma Edwardovna, get ting up. "Now let
+us conclude our agreement with one good, sweet kiss."
+
+And she again embraced and took to kissing Tamara hard; who, with
+her downcast eyes and naive, tender face, seemed now altogether a
+little girl. But, having freed herself, finally, from the
+proprietress, she asked in Russian:
+
+"You see, Emma Edwardovna, that I agree in everything with you,
+but for that I beg you to fulfill one request of mine. It will not
+cost you anything. Namely, I hope that you will allow me and the
+other girls to escort the late Jennie to the cemetery."
+
+Emma Edwardovna made a wry face.
+
+"Oh, if you want to, my darling Tamara, I have nothing against
+your whim. Only what for? This will not help the dead person and
+will not make her alive. Only sentimentalism alone will come out
+of it ... But very well! Only, however, you know yourself that in
+accordance with your law suicides are not buried, or--I don't know
+with certainty--it seems they throw them into some dirty hole
+beyond the cemetery."
+
+"No, do allow me to do as I want to myself. Let it be my whim, but
+concede it to me, my darling, dear, bewitching Emma Edwardovna!
+But then, I promise you that this will be my last whim. After this
+I will be like a wise and obedient soldier at the disposal of a
+talented general."
+
+"IS' GUT!" Emma Edwardovna gave in with a sigh. "I can not deny
+you in anything, my child. Let me press your hand. Let us toil and
+labour together for the common good."
+
+And, having opened the door, she called out across the drawing
+room into the entrance-hall: "Simeon!" And when Simeon appeared in
+the room, she ordered him weightily and triumphantly:
+
+"Bring us a bottle of champagne here, but the real thing--Rederer
+demi sec, and as cool as possible. Step lively!" she ordered the
+porter, who was gaping at her with popping eyes. "We will drink
+with you, Tamara, to the new business, to our brilliant and
+beautiful future."
+
+They say that dead people bring luck. If there is any foundation
+at all in this superstition, then on this Saturday it could not
+have told plainer: the influx of visitors was out of the ordinary,
+even for a Saturday night. True, the girls, passing through the
+corridor or past the room that had been Jennka's increased their
+steps; timorously glanced at it sidelong, out of the corner of the
+eye; while others even crossed themselves. But late in the night
+the fear of death somehow subsided, grew bearable. All the rooms
+were occupied, while in the drawing room a new violinist was
+trilling without cease--a free-and-easy, clean-shaven young man,
+whom the pianist with the cataract had searched out somewhere and
+brought with him.
+
+The appointment of Tamara as housekeeper was received with cold
+perplexity, with taciturn dryness. But, having bided her time,
+Tamara managed to whisper to Little White Manka:
+
+"Listen, Manya! You tell them all that they shouldn't pay any
+attention to the fact that I've been chosen housekeeper. It's got
+to be so. But let them do as they wish, only don't let them trip
+me up. I am as before--their friend and intercessor ... And
+further on we'll see."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+On the next day, on Sunday, Tamara had a multitude of cares. She
+had become possessed by a firm and undeviating thought to bury her
+friend despite all circumstances, in the way that nearest friends
+are buried--in a Christian manner, with all the sad solemnity of
+the burial of secular persons.
+
+She belonged to the number of those strange persons who underneath
+an external indolent calmness, careless taciturnity, egotistical
+withdrawal into one's self, conceal within them unusual energy;
+always as though slumbering with half an eye, guarding itself from
+unnecessary expenditure; but ready in one moment to become
+animated and to rush forward without reckoning the obstacles.
+
+At twelve o'clock she descended in a cab into the old town; rode
+through it into a little narrow street giving out upon a square
+where fairs were held; and stopped near a rather dirty tea-room,
+having ordered the cabby to wait. In the room she made inquiries
+of a boy, red-haired, with a badger hair-cut and the parting
+slicked down with butter, if Senka the Depot had not come here?
+The serving lad, who, judging by his refined and gallant
+readiness, had already known Tamara for a long time, answered that
+"Nohow, ma'am; they--Semen Ignatich--had not been in yet, and
+probably would not be here soon seein' as how yesterday they had
+the pleasure of going on a spree at the Transvaal, and had played
+at billiards until six in the morning; and that now they, in all
+probabilities, are at home, in the Half Way House rooms, and if
+the young lady will give the word, then it's possible to hop over
+to them this here minute."
+
+Tamara asked for paper and pencil, and wrote a few words right on
+the spot. Then she gave the note to the waiter, together with a
+half-rouble piece for a tip, and rode away.
+
+The following visit was to the artiste Rovinskaya, living, as
+Tamara had known even before, in the city's most aristocratic
+hotel--Europe--where she occupied several rooms in a consecutive
+suite. To obtain an interview with the singer was not very easy:
+the doorman below said that it looked as if Ellena Victorovna was
+not at home; while her own personal maid, who came out in answer
+to Tamara's knocking, declared that madam had a headache, and that
+she was not receiving any one. Again Tamara was compelled to write
+on a piece of paper:
+
+"I come to you from her who once, in a house which is not spoken
+of loudly, cried, standing before you on her knees, after you had
+sung the ballad of Dargomyzhsky. Your kind treatment of her was so
+splendid. Do you remember? Do not fear--she has no need of any
+one's help now: yesterday she died. But you can do one very
+important deed in her memory, which will be almost no trouble to
+you at all. While I--am that very person who permitted herself to
+say a few bitter truths to the baroness T--, who was then with
+you; for which truths I am remorseful and apologize even now."
+
+"Hand this over!" she ordered the chambermaid.
+
+She returned after two minutes.
+
+"The madam requests you. They apologize very much that they will
+receive you not fully dressed."
+
+She escorted Tamara, opened a door before her and quietly shut it.
+
+The great artiste was lying upon an enormous ottoman, covered with
+a beautiful Tekin rug and a multitude of little silk pillows, and
+soft cylindrical bolsters of tapestry. Her feet were wrapped up in
+silvery, soft fur. Her fingers, as usual, were adorned by a
+multiplicity of rings with emeralds, attracting the eyes by their
+deep and tender green.
+
+The artiste was having one of her evil, black days to-day.
+Yesterday morning some misunderstandings with the management had
+arisen; while in the evening the public had received her not as
+triumphantly as she would have desired, or, perhaps, this had
+simply appeared so to her; while to-day in the newspaper the fool
+of a reviewer, who understood just as much of art as a cow does of
+astronomy, had praised up her rival, Titanova, in a big article.
+And so Ellena Victorovna had persuaded herself that her head was
+aching; that there was a nervous tic in her temples; and that her
+heart, time and again, seemed suddenly to fall through somewheres.
+
+"How do you do, my dear!" she said, a trifle nasally, in a weak,
+wan voice, with pauses, as heroines on the stage speak when dying
+from love and from consumption. "Sit down here ... I am glad to
+see you ... Only don't be angry--I am almost dying from migraine,
+and from my miserable heart. Pardon my speaking with difficulty. I
+think I sang too much and tired my voice ..."
+
+Rovinskaya, of course, had recalled both the mad escapade of that
+evening; and the striking, unforgettable face of Tamara; but now,
+in a bad mood, in the wearisome, prosaic light of an autumn day,
+this adventure appeared to her as unnecessary bravado; something
+artificial, imagined, and poignantly shameful. But she was equally
+sincere on that strange, night-marish evening when she, through
+the might of talent, had prostrated the proud Jennka at her feet,
+as well as now, when she recalled it with fatigue, indolence, and
+artistic disdain. She, as well as many distinguished artists, was
+always playing a role; was always not her own self, and always
+regarded her words, movements, actions, as though looking at
+herself from a distance with the eyes and feelings of the
+spectators.
+
+She languidly raised from the pillow her narrow, slender,
+beautiful hand, and applied it to her forehead; and the
+mysterious, deep emeralds stirred as though alive and began to
+flash with a warm, deep sparkle.
+
+"I just read in your note that this poor ... pardon me, her name
+has vanished out of my head..."
+
+"Jennie."
+
+"Yes, yes, thank you! I recall it now. She died? But from what?"
+
+"She hanged herself ... yesterday morning, during the doctor's
+inspection..."
+
+The eyes of the artiste, so listless, seemingly faded, suddenly
+opened, and, as through a miracle, grew animated and became
+shining and green, just like her emeralds; and in them were
+reflected curiosity, fear and aversion.
+
+"Oh, my God! Such a dear, so original, handsome, so fiery ... Oh,
+the poor, poor soul! ... And the reason for this was? ..."
+
+"You know ... the disease. She told you."
+
+"Yes, yes ... I remember, I remember ... But to hang one's self!
+... What horror! ... Why, I advised her to treat herself then.
+Medicine works miracles now. I myself know several people who
+absolutely ... well, absolutely cured themselves. Everybody in
+society knows this and receives them ... Ah, the poor little
+thing, the poor little thing! ..."
+
+"And so I've come to you, Ellena Victorovna. I wouldn't have dared
+to disturb you, but I seem to be in a forest, and have no one to
+turn to. You were so kind then, so touchingly attentive, so tender
+to us ... I need only your advice and, perhaps, a little of your
+influence, your protection..."
+
+"Oh, please, my dear! ... All I can do, I will ... Oh, my poor
+head! And then this horrible news. Tell me, in what way can I be
+of assistance to you?"
+
+"To confess, I don't know even myself yet," answered Tamara. "You
+see, they carried her away to an anatomical theatre ... But until
+they had made the protocol, until they made the journey--then the
+time for receiving had gone by also--in general I think that they
+have not had a chance to dissect her yet ... I'd like, if it's
+only possible, that she should not be touched. To-day is Sunday;
+perhaps they'll postpone it until to-morrow, and in the meanwhile
+something may be done for her..."
+
+"I can't tell you, dear ... Wait! ... Haven't I some friend among
+the professors, in the medical world? ... I will look later in my
+memo-books. Perhaps we will succeed in doing something."
+
+"Besides that," continued Tamara, "I want to bury her ... At my
+expense ... I was attached to her with all my heart during her
+life."
+
+"I will help you with pleasure in this, materially..."
+
+"No, no! ... A thousand thanks! ... I'll do everything myself. I
+would not hesitate to have recourse to your kind heart, but this
+... --you will understand me-- ... this is something in the nature
+of a vow, that a person gives to one's self and to the memory of a
+friend. The main difficulty is in how we may manage to bury her
+with Christian rites. She was, it seems, an unbeliever, or
+believed altogether poorly. And it's only by chance that I, also,
+will cross my forehead. But I don't want them to bury her just
+like a dog, somewhere beyond the enclosure of the cemetery; in
+silence, without words, without singing ... I don't know, will
+they permit burying her properly--with choristers, with priests?
+For that reason I'm asking you to assist me with your advice. Or,
+perhaps, you will direct me somewhere? ..."
+
+Now the artiste had little by little become interested and was
+already beginning to forget about her fatigue, and migraine, and
+the consumptive heroine dying in the fourth act. She was already
+picturing the role of an intercessor, the beautiful figure of
+genius merciful to a fallen woman. This was original, extravagant,
+and at the same time so theatrically touching! Rovinskaya, like
+many of her confreres, did not let one day pass by--and, if it
+were possible, she would not have let pass even one hour--without
+standing out from the crowd, without compelling people to talk
+about her: to-day she would participate in a pseudo-patriotic
+manifestation, while to-morrow she would read from a platform, for
+the benefit of revolutionaries exiled to Siberia, inciting verses,
+full of fire and vengeance. She loved to sell flowers at
+carnivals, in riding academies; and to sell champagne at large
+balls. She would think up her little bon mots beforehand, which on
+the morrow would be caught up by the whole town. She desired that
+everywhere and always the crowd should look only at her, repeat
+her name, love her Egyptian, green eyes, her rapacious and
+sensuous mouth; her emeralds on the slender and nervous hands.
+
+"I can't grasp it all properly at once," said she after a silence.
+"But if a person wants anything hard, he will attain it, and I
+want to fulfill your wish with all my soul. Stay, stay! ... I
+think a glorious thought is coming into my head ... For then, on
+that evening, if I mistake not, there was with us, beside the
+baroness and me..."
+
+"I don't know them ... One of them walked out of the cabinet later
+than all of you. He kissed Jennie's hand and said, that if she
+should ever need him, he was always at her service; and gave her
+his card, but asked her not to show it to any strangers. But later
+all this passed off somehow and was forgotten. In some way I never
+found the time to ask Jennie who this man was; while yesterday I
+searched for the card but couldn't find it..."
+
+"Allow me, allow me! ... I have recalled it!" the artiste suddenly
+became animated. "Aha!" exclaimed she, rapidly getting off the
+ottoman. "It was Ryazanov... Yes, yes, yes... The advocate Ernst
+Andreievich Ryazanov. We will arrange everything right away.
+That's a splendid thought!"
+
+She turned to the little table upon which the telephone apparatus
+was standing, and rang:
+
+"Central--l8-35 please ... Thank you ... Hello! ... Ask Ernst
+Andreievich to the telephone ... The artiste Rovinskaya ... Thank
+you ... Hello! ... Is this you, Ernst Andreievich? Very well, very
+well, but now it isn't a matter of little hands. Are you free? ...
+Drop the nonsense! ... The matter is serious. Couldn't you come up
+to me for a quarter of an hour? ...No, no ... Yes ... Only as a
+kind and a clever man. You slander yourself ... Well, that's
+splendid, really ... Well, I am not especially well-dressed, but I
+have a justification--a fearful headache. No, a lady, a girl ...
+You will see for yourself, come as soon as possible ... Thanks! Au
+revior! ..."
+
+"He will come right away," said Rovinskaya, hanging up the
+receiver. "He is a charming and awfully clever man. Everything is
+possible to him, even the almost impossible to man ... But in the
+meantime ... pardon me--your name?"
+
+Tamara was abashed, but then smiled at herself:
+
+"Oh, it isn't worth your disturbing yourself, Ellena Victorovna!
+Mon nomme de guerre is Tamara but just so--Anastasia Nikolaevna.
+It's all the same--call me even Tamara ... I am more used to
+it..."
+
+"Tamara! ... That is so beautiful! ... So now, Mile. Tamara,
+perhaps you will not refuse to breakfast with me? Perhaps Ryazanov
+will also do so with us..."
+
+"I have no time, forgive me."
+
+"That's a great pity! ... I hope, some other time ... But, perhaps
+you smoke," and she moved toward her a gold case, adorned with an
+enormous letter E out of the same emeralds she adored.
+
+Ryazanov came very soon.
+
+Tamara, who had not examined him properly on that evening, was
+struck by his appearance. Tall of stature, almost of an athletic
+build, with a broad brow, like Beethoven's, tangled with
+artistically negligent black, grizzled hair; with the large fleshy
+mouth of the passionate orator; with clear, expressive, clever,
+mocking eyes--he had such an appearance as catches one's eyes
+among thousands--the appearance of a vanquisher of souls and a
+conqueror of hearts; deeply ambitious, not yet oversated with
+life; still fiery in love and never retreating before a beautiful
+indiscretion ... "If fate had not broken me up so," reflected
+Tamara, watching his movements with enjoyment, "then here's a man
+to whom I'd throw my life; jestingly, with delight, with a smile,
+as a plucked rose is thrown to the beloved..."
+
+Ryazanov kissed Rovinskaya's hand, then with unconstrained
+simplicity exchanged greetings with Tamara and said:
+
+"We are acquainted even from that mad evening, when you
+dumbfounded all of us with your knowledge of the French language,
+and when you spoke. That which you said was, between us,
+paradoxical; but then, how it was said! ... To this day I remember
+the tone of your voice, so warm, expressive ... And so, Ellena
+Victorovna," he turned to Rovinskaya again, sitting down on a
+small, low chair without a back, "in what can I be of use to you?
+I am at your disposal."
+
+Rovinskaya, with a languid air, again applied the tips of her
+fingers to her temples.
+
+"Ah, really, I am so upset, my dear Ryazanov," said she,
+intentionally extinguishing the sparkle of her magnificent eyes,
+"and then, my miserable head ... May I trouble you to pass me the
+pyramidon what-not from that table ... Let Mile. Tamara tell you
+everything ... I can not, I am not able to ... This is so
+horrible! ..."
+
+Tamara briefly, lucidly, narrated to Ryazanov all the sad history
+of Jennka's death; recalled also about the card left with Jennie;
+and also how the deceased had reverently preserved this card; and
+--in passing--about his promise to help in case of need.
+
+"Of course, of course!" exclaimed Ryanzanov, when she had
+finished; and at once began pacing the room back and forth with
+big steps, ruffling and tossing back his picturesque hair through
+habit. "You are performing a magnificent, sincere, comradely
+action! That is good! ... That is very good! ... I am yours ...
+You say--a permit for the funeral ... Hm ... God grant me memory!
+..."
+
+He rubbed his forehead with his palm.
+
+"Hm ... hm ... If I'm not mistaken--Monocanon, rule one hundred
+seventy ... one hundred seventy ... eight ... Pardon me, I think I
+remember it by heart ... Pardon me! ... Yes, so! 'If a man slayeth
+himself, he shall not be chanted over, nor shall a mass be said
+for him, unless he were greatly astonied, that is, to wit, out of
+his mind'... Hm ... See St. Timothy Alexandrine ... And so, my
+dear miss, the first thing ... You say, that she was taken down
+from the noose by your doctor--i.e., the official city doctor ...
+His name? ..."
+
+"Klimenko."
+
+"It seems I've met him somewheres ... All right ... Who is the
+district inspector in your precinct station?"
+
+"Kerbesh."
+
+"Aha, I know ... Such a strong, virile fellow, with a red beard in
+a fan ... Yes?"
+
+"Yes, that is he."
+
+"I know him very well! There, now, is somebody that a sentence to
+hard labour is hankering after ... Some ten times he fell into my
+hands; and always, the skunk, gave me the slip somehow. Slippery,
+just like an eel-pout ... We will have to slip him a little
+present. Well, now! And then the anatomical theatre ... When do
+you want to bury her?"
+
+"Really, I don't know ... I would like to do it as soon as
+possible ... if possible, to-day."
+
+"Hm ... To-day ... I don't vouch for it--we will hardly manage it
+... But here is my memorandum book. Well, take even this page,
+where are my friends under the letter T--just write the very same
+way: Tamara, and your address. In two hours I will give you an
+answer. Does that suit you? But I repeat again, that probably you
+will have to postpone the burial till to-morrow ... Then--pardon
+my unceremoniousness--is money needed, perhaps?"
+
+"No, thank you!" refused Tamara. "I have money. Thanks for your
+interest! ... It's time for me to be going. I thank you with all
+my heart, Ellen Victorovna! ..."
+
+"Then expect it in two hours," repeated Ryazanov, escorting her to
+the door.
+
+Tamara did not at once ride away to the house. She turned into a
+little coffee-house on Catholicheskaya Street on the way. There
+Senka the Depot was waiting for her--a gay fellow with the
+appearance of a handsome Tzigan; not black--but blue-haired;
+black-eyed, with yellow whites; resolute and daring in his work;
+the pride of local thieves--a great celebrity in their world, the
+first leader of experience, and a constant, all-night gamester.
+
+He stretched out his hand to her, without getting up. But in the
+way in which he so carefully, with a certain force, seated her in
+her place could be seen a broad, good-natured endearment.
+
+"How do you do, Tamarochka! Haven't seen you in a long time--I
+grew weary ... Do you want coffee?"
+
+"No! Business first ... To-morrow we bury Jennka ... She hanged
+herself..." "Yes, I read it in a newspaper," carelessly drawled
+out Senka through his teeth. "What's the odds? ..."
+
+"Get fifty roubles for me at once."
+
+"Tamarochka, my sweetheart--I haven't a kopeck! ..."
+
+"I'm telling you--get them!" ordered Tamara, imperiously, but
+without getting angry.
+
+"Oh, my Lord! ... Yours, now, I didn't touch, like I promised; but
+then, it's Sunday ... The savings banks are closed..."
+
+"Let them! ... Hock the savings book! In general, it's up to you!"
+
+"Why do you need this, my dearie?"
+
+"Isn't it all the same to you, you fool? ... For the funeral."
+
+"Oh! Well, all right then!" sighed Senka. "Then I'd best bring it
+to you myself in the evening ... Right, Tamarochka? ... It's so
+very hard for me to stand it without you! Oh, my dearie, how I'd
+kiss and kiss you; I wouldn't let you close your eyes! ... Shan't
+I come? ..."
+
+"No, no! ... You do as I ask you, Senechka ... Give in to me. But
+you mustn't come--I'm housekeeper now."
+
+"Well, what d'you know about that! ..." drawled out the astonished
+Senka and even whistled.
+
+"Yes. And don't you come to me in the meantime. But afterwards,
+afterwards, sweetheart, whatever you desire ... There will be an
+end to everything soon!"
+
+"Oh, if you wouldn't make me suffer so! Wind things up as soon as
+you can!"
+
+"And I will wind 'em up! Wait one little week more, dearie! Did
+you get the powders?"
+
+"The powders are a trifle!" discontentedly answered Senka. "And it
+isn't powders at all, but pills."
+
+"And you're sure when you say that they'll dissolve at once in
+water?"
+
+"Sure, I saw it myself."
+
+"But he won't die? Listen, Senya: he won't die? Is that right?
+..."
+
+"Nothing will happen to him ... He'll only snooze for a while ...
+Oh, Tamara!" exclaimed he in a passionate whisper; and even
+suddenly stretched himself hard from an unbearable emotion, so
+that his joints cracked. "Finish it, for God's sake, as soon as
+possible! ... Let's do the trick and--bye-bye! Wherever you want
+to go to, sweet-heart! I am all at your will: if you want to, we
+start off for Odessa; if you want to--abroad. Finish it up as soon
+as possible! ..."
+
+"Soon, soon..."
+
+"You just wink at me, and I'm all ready ... with powders, with
+instruments, with passports ... And then--choo-choo! The machine
+is off! Tamarochka! My angel! ... My precious, my sparkler! ..."
+
+And he, always restrained, having forgotten that he could be seen
+by strangers, already wanted to embrace and hug Tamara to himself.
+
+"Now, now! ... rapidly and deftly, like a cat, Tamara jumped off
+the chair. "Afterwards ... afterwards, Senechka, afterwards,
+little dearie! ... I'll be all yours--there won't be any denial,
+nor forbiddance. I'll myself make you weary of me ... Good-bye, my
+little silly!"
+
+And with a quick movement of her hand having rumpled up his black
+curls, she hastily went out of the coffee-house.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+On the next day, on Monday, toward ten o'clock in the morning,
+almost all the inmates of the house--formerly Madam Shaibes', but
+now Emma Edwardovna Titzner's--rode off in cabs to the centre of
+the city, to the anatomical theatre--all, except the far-sighted,
+much-experienced Henrietta; the cowardly and insensible Ninka; and
+the feeble-minded Pashka, who for two days now had not gotten up
+from her bed, kept silent, and to questions directed at her
+answered by a beatific, idiotical smile and with some sort of
+inarticulate animal lowing. If she were not given to eat, she
+would not even ask; but if food were brought, she would eat with
+greediness, right with her hands. She became so slovenly and
+forgetful, that it was necessary to remind her of certain
+necessary functions in order to avoid unpleasantness. Emma
+Edwardovna did not send out Pashka to her steady guests, who asked
+for Pashka every day. Even before, she had had such periods of a
+detriment of consciousness; however, they had not lasted long, and
+Emma Edwardovna in any case determined to tide it over: Pashka was
+a veritable treasure for the establishment, and its truly horrible
+victim.
+
+The anatomical theatre represented a long, one-storied, dark-gray
+building, with white frames around the windows and doors. There
+was in its very exterior something low, pressed down, receding
+into the ground, almost weird. The girls one after the other
+stopped near the gates and timidly passed through the yard into
+the chapel; nestled down at the other end of the yard, in a
+corner, painted over in the same dark gray colour, with white
+frame-work.
+
+The door was locked. It was necessary to go after the watchman.
+Tamara with difficulty sought out a bald, ancient old man, grown
+over as though with bog moss by entangled gray bristles; with
+little rheumy eyes and an enormous, reddish, dark-blue granulous
+nose, on the manner of a cookie.
+
+He unlocked the enormous hanging lock, pushed away the bolt and
+opened the rusty, singing door. The cold, damp air together with
+the mixed smell of the dampness of stones, frankincense, and dead
+flesh breathed upon the girls. They fell back, huddling closely
+into a timorous flock. Tamara alone went after the watchman
+without wavering.
+
+It was almost dark in the chapel. The autumn light penetrated
+scantily through the little, narrow prison-like window, barred
+with an iron grating. Two or three images without chasubles, dark
+and without visages, hung upon the walls. Several common board
+coffins were standing right on the floor, upon wooden carrying
+shafts. One in the middle was empty, and the taken-off lid was
+lying alongside.
+
+"What sort is yours, now?" asked the watchman hoarsely and took
+some snuff. "Do you know her face or not?"
+
+"I know her."
+
+"Well, then, look! I'll show them all to you. Maybe this one? ..."
+
+And he took the lid off one of the coffins, not yet fastened down
+with nails. A wrinkled old woman, dressed any old way in her
+tatters, with a swollen blue face, was lying there. Her left eye
+was closed; while the right was staring and gazing immovably and
+frightfully, having already lost its sparkle and resembling mica
+that had lain for a long time.
+
+"Not this one, you say? Well, look ... Here's more for you!" said
+the watchman; and one after the other, opening the lids, exhibited
+the decedents--all, probably, the poorest of the poor: picked up
+on the streets, intoxicated, crushed, maimed and mutilated,
+beginning to decompose. Certain ones had already begun to show on
+their hands and faces bluish-green spots, resembling mould--signs
+of putrefaction. One man, without a nose, with an upper hare-lip
+cloven in two, had worms, like little white dots, swarming upon
+his sore-eaten face. A woman who had died from hydropsy, reared
+like a whole mountain from her board couch, bulging out the lid.
+
+All of them had been hastily sewn up after autopsy, repaired, and
+washed by the moss-covered watchman and his mates. What affair was
+it of theirs if, at times, the brain got into the stomach; while
+the skull was stuffed with the liver and rudely joined with the
+help of sticking plaster to the head? The watchmen had grown used
+to everything during their night-marish, unlikely, drunken life;
+and, by the bye, almost never did their voiceless clients prove to
+have either relatives or acquaintances...
+
+A heavy odour of carrion--thick, cloying, and so viscid that to
+Tamara it seemed as though it was covering all the living pores of
+her body just like glue--stood in the chapel.
+
+"Listen, watchman," asked Tamara, "what's this crackling under my
+feet all the time?"
+
+"Crack-ling?" the watchman questioned her over again, and
+scratched himself, "why, lice, it must be," he said indifferently.
+"It's fierce how these beasties do multiply on the corpseses! ...
+But who you lookin' for--man or woman?"
+
+"A woman," answered Tamara.
+
+"And that means that all these ain't yours?"
+
+"No, they're all strangers."
+
+"There, now! ... That means I have to go to the morgue. When did
+they bring her, now?"
+
+"On Saturday, grandpa," and Tamara at this got out her purse.
+"Saturday, in the daytime. There's something for tobacco for you,
+my dear sir!"
+
+"That's the way! Saturday, you say in the daytime? And what did
+she have on?"
+
+"Well, almost nothing; a little night blouse, an underskirt ...
+both the one and the other white."
+
+"So-o! That must be number two hundred and seventeen ... How is
+she called, now? ..."
+
+"Susannah Raitzina."
+
+"I'll go and see--maybe she's there. Well, now, mam'selles," he
+turned to the young ladies, who were dully huddling in the
+doorway, obstructing the light. "Which of you are the braver? If
+your friend came the day before yesterday, then that means that
+she's now lying in the manner that the Lord God has created all
+mankind--that is, without anything ... Well, who of you will be
+the bolder? Which two of you will come? She's got to be
+dressed..."
+
+"Well, now, you go, Manka," Tamara ordered her mate, who, grown
+chill and pale from horror and aversion, was staring at the dead
+with widely open, limpid eyes. "Don't be afraid, you fool--I'll go
+with you! Who's to go, if not you?
+
+"Well, am I ... well, am I? ..." babbled Little White Manka with
+barely moving lips. "Let's go. It's all the same to me..."
+
+The morgue was right here, behind the chapel--a low, already
+entirely dark basement, into which one had to descend by six
+steps.
+
+The watchman ran off somewhere, and returned with a candle-end and
+a tattered book. When he had lit the candle, the girls saw a score
+of corpses that were lying directly on the stone floor in regular
+rows--extended, yellow, with faces distorted by pre-mortal
+convulsions, with skulls split open, with clots of blood on their
+faces, with grinning teeth.
+
+"Right away ... right away..." the watchman was saying, guiding
+his finger over the headings. "The day before yesterday ... that
+means, on Saturday ... on Saturday ... What did you say her name
+was, now?"
+
+"Raitzina, Susannah," answered Tamara.
+
+"Rai-tzina Susannah ..." said the watchman, just as though he were
+singing, "Raitzina, Susannah. Just as I said. Two hundred
+seventeen." Bending over the dead and illuminating them with the
+guttered and dripping candle-end, he passed from one to another.
+Finally he stopped before a corpse, upon whose foot was written in
+ink, in large black figures: 217.
+
+"Here's the very same one! Let me, I'll carry her out into the
+little corridor and run after her stuff ... Wait a while! ..."
+
+Grunting, but still with an ease amazing in one of his age, he
+lifted up the corpse of Jennka by the feet, and threw it upon his
+back with the head down, as though it were a carcass of meat, or a
+bag of potatoes.
+
+It was a trifle lighter in the corridor; and, when the watchman
+had lowered his horrible burden to the floor, Tamara for a moment
+covered her face with her hands, while Manka turned away and began
+to cry.
+
+"If you need anything, say so," the watchman was instructing them.
+"If you want to dress the deceased as is fitting, then we can get
+everything that's required--cloth of gold, a little wreath, a
+little image, a shroud, gauze--we keep everything ... You can buy a
+thing or two in, clothing ... Slippers, too, now..."
+
+Tamara gave him money and went out into the air, letting Manka go
+in front of her.
+
+After some time two wreaths were brought; one from Tamara, of
+asters and georginas with an inscription in black letters upon a
+white ribbon: "To Jennie from a friend;" the other was from
+Ryazanov, all of red flowers; upon its red ribbon stood in gold
+characters: "Through suffering shall we be purified." He also sent
+a short little note, expressing commiseration and apologizing for
+not being able to come, as he was occupied with an undeferrable
+business meeting.
+
+Then came the singers who had been invited by Tamara--fifteen men
+from the very best choir in the city.
+
+The precentor, in a gray overcoat and a gray hat, all gray,
+somehow, as though covered with dust, but with long, straight
+moustaches, like a military person's, recognized Verka; opened his
+eyes wide in astonishment, smiled slightly and winked at her. Two
+or three times a month, and sometimes even oftener, he visited
+Yamskaya Street with ecclesiastical academicians of his
+acquaintance, just the same precentors as he, and some psalmists;
+and having usually made a full review of all the establishments,
+always wound up with the house of Anna Markovna, where he
+invariably chose Verka.
+
+He was a merry and sprightly man; danced in a lively manner, in a
+frenzy; and executed such figures during the dances that all those
+present just melted from laughter.
+
+Following the singers came the two-horsed catafalque, that Tamara
+had hired; black, with white plumes, and seven torch-bearers along
+with it. They also brought a white, glazed brocade coffin; and a
+pedestal for it, stretched over with black calico. Without
+hurrying, with habitually deft movements, they put away the
+deceased into the coffin; covered her face with gauze; curtained
+off the corpse with cloth of gold, and lit the candles--one at the
+head and two at the feet.
+
+Now, in the yellow, trembling light of the candles, the face of
+Jennka became more clearly visible. The lividness had almost gone
+off it, remaining only here and there on the temples, on the nose,
+and between the eyes, in party-coloured, uneven, serpentine spots.
+Between the parted dark lips slightly glimmered the whiteness of
+the teeth, and the tip of the bitten tongue was still visible. Out
+of the open collar of the neck, which had taken on the colour of
+old parchment, showed two stripes: one dark--the mark of the rope;
+another red--the sign of the scratch, inflicted by Simeon during
+the encounter--just like two fearful necklaces. Tamara approached
+and with a safety pin pinned together the lace on the collar, at
+the very chin.
+
+The clergy came: a little gray priest in gold spectacles, in a
+skull-cap; a lanky, tall, thin-haired deacon with a sickly,
+strangely dark and yellow face, as though of terra-cotta; and a
+sprightly, long-skirted psalmist, animatedly exchanging on his way
+some gay, mysterious signs with his friends among the singers.
+
+Tamara walked up to the priest:
+
+"Father," she asked, "how will you perform the funeral service;
+all together or each one separate?"
+
+"We perform the funeral service for all of them conjointly,"
+answered the priest, kissing the stole, and extricating his beard
+and hair out of its slits. "Usually, that is. But by special
+request, and by special agreement, it's also possible to do it
+separately. What death did the deceased undergo?"
+
+"She's a suicide, father."
+
+"Hm ... a suicide? ... But do you know, young person, that by the
+canons of the church there isn't supposed to be any funeral
+service ... there ought not to be any? Of course, there are
+exceptions--by special intercession..."
+
+"Right here, father, I have certificates from the police and from
+the doctor ... She wasn't in her right mind ... in a fit of
+insanity..."
+
+Tamara extended to the priest two papers, sent her the evening
+before by Ryazanov, and on top of them three bank-notes of ten
+roubles each. "I would beg of you, father, to do everything
+fitting--Christian like. She was a splendid being, and suffered a
+very great deal. And won't you be so kind--go along with her to
+the cemetery, and there hold one more little mass..."
+
+"It's all right for me to go along with her to the cemetery, but
+in the cemetery itself I have no right to hold service--there is a
+clergy of their own ... And also here's how, young person; in view
+of the fact that I'll have to return once more after the rest,
+won't you, now ... add another little ten-spot."
+
+And having taken the money from Tamara's hand, the priest blessed
+the thurible, which had been brought up by the psalmist, and began
+to walk around the body of the deceased with thurification. Then,
+having stopped at her head, he in a meek, wontedly sad voice,
+uttered:
+
+"Blessed is our God. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever
+shall be, world without end!"
+
+The psalmist began pattering: Holy God, Most Holy Trinity and Our
+Father poured out like peas.
+
+Quietly, as though confiding some deep, sad, occult mystery, the
+singers began in a rapid, sweet recitative: "With Thy blessed
+saints in glory everlasting, the soul of this Thy servant save,
+set at rest; preserving her in the blessed life, as Thou hast
+loving kindness for man."
+
+The psalmist distributed the candles; and they with warm, soft,
+living little flames, one after the other, were lit in the heavy,
+murky air, tenderly and transparently illuminating the faces of
+the women.
+
+Harmoniously the mournful melody flowed forth, and like the sighs
+of aggrieved angels sounded the great words:
+
+"Rest, oh God, this Thy servant and establish her in Heaven,
+wherein the faces of the just and the saints of the Lord shine
+like unto lights; set at rest this Thy servant who hath fallen
+asleep, contemning all her trespasses."
+
+Tamara was listening intently to the long familiar, but now long
+unheard words, and was smiling bitterly. The passionate, mad words
+of Jennka came back to her, full of such inescapable despair and
+unbelief ... Would the all-merciful, all-gracious Lord forgive or
+would He not forgive her foul, fumy, embittered, unclean life?
+All-Knowing--can it be that Thou wouldst repulse her--the pitiful
+rebel, the involuntary libertine; a child that had uttered
+blasphemies against Thy radiant, holy name? Thou--Benevolence,
+Thou--our Consolation!
+
+A dull, restrained wailing, suddenly passing into a scream,
+resounded in the chapel. "Oh, Jennechka!" This was Little White
+Manka, standing on her knees and stuffing her mouth with her
+handkerchief, beating about in tears. And the remaining mates,
+following her, also got down upon their knees; and the chapel was
+filled with sighs, stifled lamentations and sobbings ...
+
+"Thou alone art deathless, Who hast created and made man; out of
+the dust of the earth were we made, and unto the same dust shall
+we return; as Thou hast ordained me, creating me and saying unto
+me, dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return."
+
+Tamara was standing motionless and with an austere face that
+seemed turned to stone. The light of the candle in thin gold
+spirals shone in her bronze-chestnut hair; while she could not
+tear her eyes away from the lines of Jennka's moist, yellow
+forehead and the tip of her nose, which were visible to Tamara
+from her place.
+
+"Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return ..." she was
+mentally repeating the words of the canticles. "Could it be that
+that would be all; only earth alone and nothing more? And which is
+better: nothing, or even anything at all--even the most execrable
+--but merely to be existing?"
+
+And the choir, as though affirming her thoughts, as though taking
+away from her the last consolation, was uttering forlornly:
+
+    "And all mankind may go..."
+
+They sang Eternal Memory through, blew out the candles, and the
+little blue streams spread in the air, blue from frankincense. The
+priest read through the farewell prayer; and afterwards, in the
+general silence, scooped up some sand with the little shovel
+handed to him by the psalmist, and cast it cross-wise upon the
+corpse, on top of the gauze. And at this he was uttering great
+words, filled with the austere, sad inevitability of a mysterious
+universal law: "The world is the Lord's, and its fulfillment the
+universe, and all that dwelleth therein."
+
+The girls escorted their dead mate to the very cemetery. The road
+thither intersected the very entrance to Yamskaya Street. It would
+have been possible to turn to the left through it, and that would
+have been almost half as short; but dead people were not usually
+carried through Yamskaya.
+
+Nevertheless, out of almost all the doors their inmates poured out
+towards the cross roads, in whatever they had on: in slippers upon
+bare feet, in night gowns, with kerchiefs upon their heads; they
+crossed themselves, sighed, wiped their eyes with their
+handkerchiefs and the edges of their jackets.
+
+The weather cleared up ... The cold sun shone brightly from a cold
+sky of radiant blue enamel; the last grass showed its green, the
+withered leaves on the trees glowed, showing their pink and gold
+... And in the crystal clear, cold air solemnly, and mournfully
+reverberated the sonorous sounds: "Holy God, Holy Almighty, Holy
+Everliving, have mercy upon us!" And with what flaming thirst for
+life, not to be satiated by aught; with what longing for the
+momentary--transient like unto a dream--joy and beauty of being;
+with what horror before the eternal silence of death, sounded the
+ancient refrain of John Damascene!
+
+Then a brief requiem at the grave, the dull thud of the earth
+against the lid of the coffin ... a small fresh hillock ...
+
+"And here's the end!" said Tamara to her comrades, when they were
+left alone. "Oh, well, girls--an hour earlier, an hour later! ...
+I'm sorry for Jennka! ... Horribly sorry! ... We won't ever find
+such another. And yet, my children, it's far better for her in her
+pit than for us in ours ... Well, let's cross ourselves for the
+last time--and home! ..."
+
+And when they all were already nearing their house, Tamara
+suddenly uttered pensively the strange, ominous words:
+
+"And we won't be long together without her: soon we will be
+scattered, by the wind far and wide. Life is good! ... Look:
+there's the sun, the blue sky ... How pure the air is ... Cobwebs
+are floating--it's Indian summer ... How good it is in this world!
+... Only we alone--we wenches--are wayside rubbish."
+
+The girls started off on their journey. But suddenly from
+somewhere on the side, from behind a monument, a tall sturdy
+student detached himself. He caught up with Liubka and softly
+touched her sleeve. She turned around and beheld Soloviev. Her
+face instantaneously turned pale, her eyes opened wide and her
+lips began to tremble.
+
+"Go away!" she said quietly, with infinite hatred.
+
+"Liuba ... Liubochka ..." Soloviev began to mumble. "I searched
+... searched for you ... I ... Honest to God, I'm not like that
+one ... like Lichonin ... I'm in earnest ... even right now, even
+to-day.
+
+"Go away!" still more quietly pronounced Liubka.
+
+"I'm serious ... I'm serious ... I'm not trifling, I want to
+marry..."
+
+"Oh, you creature!" suddenly squealed out Liubka, and quickly,
+hard, peasant-like, hit Soloviev on the cheek with her palm.
+
+Soloviev stood a little while, slightly swaying. His eyes were
+like those of a martyr ... The mouth half-open, with mournful
+creases at the sides.
+
+"Go away! Go away! I can't bear to look at all of you!" Liubka was
+screaming with rage. "Hangmen, swine!"
+
+Soloviev unexpectedly covered his face with his palms and went
+back, without knowing his way, with uncertain steps, like one
+drunk.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+And in reality, the words of Tamara proved to be prophetic: since
+the funeral of Jennie not more than two weeks had passed, but
+during this brief space of time so many events burst over the
+house of Emma Edwardovna as do not befall sometimes even in half a
+decade.
+
+On the very next day they had to send off to a charitable
+institution--into a lunatic asylum--the unfortunate Pashka, who
+had fallen completely into feeble-mindedness. The doctors said
+that there was no hope of her ever improving. And in reality, as
+they had placed her in the hospital on the floor, upon a straw
+mattress, so did she remain upon it without getting up from it to
+her very death; submerging more and more into the black,
+bottomless abyss of quiet feeble-mindedness; but she died only
+half a year later, from bed-sores and infection of the blood.
+
+The next turn was Tamara's.
+
+For about half a month she fulfilled the duties of a housekeeper,
+was all the time unusually active, energetic; and somehow
+unwontedly wound up with that inner something of her own, which
+was so strongly fomenting within her. On a certain evening she
+vanished, and did not return at all to the establishment...
+
+The matter of fact was, that in the city she had carried on a
+protracted romance with a certain notary--an elderly man,
+sufficiently rich, but exceedingly niggardly. Their acquaintance
+had been scraped up yet a year back, when they had been by chance
+travelling together on the same steamer to a suburban monastery,
+and had begun a conversation. The clever, handsome Tamara; her
+enigmatic, depraved smile; her entertaining conversation; her
+modest manner of deporting herself, had captivated the notary. She
+had even then marked down for herself this elderly man with
+picturesque gray hair, with seigniorial manners; an erstwhile
+jurisconsult and a man of good family. She did not tell him about
+her profession--it pleased her rather to mystify him. She only
+hazily, in a few words, hinted at the fact that she was a married
+lady of the middle class; that she was unfortunate in domestic
+life, since her husband was a gambler and a despot; and that even
+by fate she was denied such a consolation as children. At parting
+she refused to pass an evening with the notary, and did not want
+to meet him; but then she allowed him to write to her--general
+delivery, under a fictitious name. A correspondence commenced
+between them, in which the notary flaunted his style and the
+ardency of his feelings, worthy of the heroes of Paul Bourget. She
+maintained the same withdrawn, mysterious tone.
+
+Then, being touched by the entreaties of the notary for a meeting,
+she made an appointment in Prince Park; was charming, witty, and
+languishing; but refused to go with him anywhere.
+
+So she tortured her adorer and skillfully inflamed within him the
+last passion, which at times is stronger and more dangerous than
+first love. Finally, this summer, when the family of the notary
+had gone abroad, she decided to visit his rooms; and here for the
+first time gave herself up to him with tears, with twinges of her
+conscience, and at the same time with such ardour and tenderness,
+that the poor secretary lost his head completely--was plunged
+entirely into that senile love, which no longer knows either
+reason or retrospect; which compels a man to lose the last thing--
+the fear of appearing ridiculous.
+
+Tamara was very sparing of her meetings. This inflamed her
+impatient friend still more. She consented to receiving from him
+bouquets of flowers, a modest breakfast in a suburban restaurant;
+but indignantly refused all expensive presents, and bore herself
+so skillfully and subtly, that the notary never got up the courage
+to offer her money. When he once stammered out something about a
+separate apartment and other conveniences, she looked him in the
+eyes so intently, haughtily, and sternly, that he, like a boy,
+turned red in his picturesque gray hairs, and kissed her hands,
+babbling incoherent apologies.
+
+So did Tamara play with him, and feel the ground more and more
+under her. She already knew now on what days the notary kept in
+his fireproof iron safe especially large sums. However, she did
+not hurry, fearing to spoil the business through clumsiness or
+prematurity.
+
+And so right now this long expected day arrived; a great
+contractors' fair had just ended, and all the notaries' offices
+were transacting deals for enormous suras every day. Tamara knew
+that the notary usually carried off the money to the bank on
+Saturdays, in order to be perfectly free on Sunday. And for that
+reason on Friday the notary received the following letter:
+
+"My dear, my adored King Solomon! Thy Shoilamite, thy girl of the
+vineyard, greets thee with burning kisses ... Dear, to-day is a
+holiday for me, and I am infinitely happy. To-day I am free, as
+well as you. HE has gone away to Homel for twenty-four hours on
+business matters, and I want to pass all the evening and ALL the
+night in your place. Ah, my beloved! All my life I am ready to
+pass on my knees before thee. I do not want to go anywhere. The
+suburban road-houses and cabarets have bored me long ago. I want
+you, only you ... you ... you alone. Await me, then, in the
+evening, my joy, about ten-eleven-o'clock! Prepare a great
+quantity of cold white wine, a canteloupe, and sugared chestnuts.
+I am burning, I am dying from desire! It seems to me, I will tire
+you out! I can not wait! My head is spinning around, my face
+burning, and my hands as cold as ice. I embrace you. Thy
+Valentina."
+
+That very same evening, about eleven o'clock, she artfully,
+through conversation, led the notary into showing her his
+fireproof safe; playing upon his odd, pecuniary vanity. Rapidly
+gliding with her glance over the shelves and the movable boxes,
+Tamara turned away with a skillfully executed yawn and said:
+
+"Fie, what a bore!"
+
+And, having embraced the notary's neck, she whispered with her
+lips at his very ears, burning him with her hot breath:
+
+"Lock up this nastiness, my treasure! Let's go! .... Let's go!
+..."
+
+And she was the first to go out into the dining room.
+
+"Come here, now, Volodya!" she cried out from there. "Come
+quicker! I want wine and after that love, love, love without end!
+... No! Drink it all, to the very bottom! Just as we will drain
+our love to the very bottom today!"
+
+The notary clinked glasses with her and at one gulp drank off his
+glass. Then he drew in his lips and remarked:
+
+"Strange ... The wine seems to be sort of bitter to-day."
+
+"Yes!" agreed Tamara and looked attentively at her lover. "This
+wine is always the least bit bitter. For such is the nature of
+Rhine wines..."
+
+"But to-day it's especially strong," said the notary. "No, thanks,
+my dear--I don't want any more!"
+
+After five minutes he fell asleep, sitting in his chair; his head
+thrown back against its back, and his lower jaw hanging down.
+Tamara waited for some time and started to awaken him. He was
+without motion. Then she took the lit candle, and, having placed
+it on the window sill giving out upon the street, went out into
+the entrance hall and began to listen, until she heard light steps
+on the stairs. Almost without a sound she opened the door and let
+in Senka, dressed like a real gentleman, with a brand new leather
+hand-bag in his hands.
+
+"Ready?" asked the thief in a whisper.
+
+"He's sleeping," answered Tamara, just as quietly. "Look and here
+are the keys."
+
+They passed together into the study with the fireproof safe.
+Having looked over the lock with the aid of a flashlight, Senka
+swore in a low voice:
+
+"The devil take him, the old animal! ... I just knew that it would
+be a lock with a combination. Here you've got to know the letters
+... It's got to be melted with electricity, and the devil knows
+how much time it'll take."
+
+"It's not necessary," retorted Tamara hurriedly. "I know the word
+... Pick it out: m-o-r-t-g-a-g-. Without the e."
+
+After ten minutes they descended the steps together; went in
+purposely broken lines through several streets, hiring a cab to
+the depot only in the old city; and rode out of the city with
+irreproachable passports of citizens and landed proprietors--the
+Stavnitzkys, man and wife. For a long time nothing was heard of
+them until, a year later, Senka was caught in Moscow in a large
+theft, and gave Tamara away during the interrogation. They were
+both tried and sentenced to imprisonment.
+
+Following Tamara came the turn of the naive, trusting, and amorous
+Verka. For a long time already she had been in love with a semi-
+military man, who called himself a civic clerk in the military
+department. His name was Dilectorsky. In their relations Verka was
+the adoring party; while he, like an important idol,
+condescendingly received the worship and the proffered gifts. Even
+from the end of summer Verka noticed that her beloved was becoming
+more and more cold and negligent; and, talking with her, was
+dwelling in thought somewhere far, far away. She tortured herself,
+was jealous, questioned him, but always received in answer some
+indeterminate phrases, some ominous hints at a near misfortune, at
+a premature grave ...
+
+In the beginning of September he finally confessed to her, that he
+had embezzled official money, big money, something around three
+thousand; and that after five days he would be checked up, and
+that he, Dilectorsky, was threatened with disgrace, the court, and
+finally, hard labour ... Here the civic clerk of the military
+department burst into sobs, clasping his head, and exclaimed:
+
+"My poor mother! ... What will become of her? She will not be able
+to sustain this degradation ... No! Death is a thousand times
+better than these hellish tortures of a being guilty of naught."
+
+Although he was expressing himself, as always, in the style of the
+dime novels (in which way he had mainly enticed the trusting
+Verka), still, the theatrical thought of suicide, once arisen, no
+longer forsook him.
+
+Somehow one day he was promenading for a long time with Verka in
+Prince Park. Already greatly devastated by autumn, this wonderful
+ancient park glistened and played with the magnificent tones of
+the foliage, blossoming out into colours: crimson, purple, lemon,
+orange and the deep cherry colour of old, settled wine; and it
+seemed that the cold air was diffusing sweet odours, like precious
+wine. And yet, a fine impress, a tender aroma of death, was wafted
+from the bushes, from the grass, from the trees.
+
+Dilectorsky waxed tender; gave his feelings a free rein, was moved
+over himself, and began to weep. Verka wept a bit with him, too.
+
+"To-day I will kill myself!" said Dilectorsky finally. "All is
+over! ..."
+
+"My own, don't! ... My precious, don't! ..."
+
+"It's impossible," answered Dilectorsky sombrely. "The cursed
+money! ... Which is dearer--honour or life?!"
+
+"My dear..."
+
+"Don't speak, don't speak, Annetta!" (He, for some reason,
+preferred to the common name of Verka the aristocratic Annetta,
+thought up by himself.) "Don't speak. This is decided!"
+
+"Oh, if only I could help you!" exclaimed Verka woefully. "Why,
+I'd give my life away ... Every drop of blood! ..."
+
+"What is life?" Dilectorsky shook his head with an actor's
+despondence. "Farewell, Annetta! ... Farewell! ..."
+
+The girl desperately began to shake her head:
+
+"I don't want it! ... I don't want it! ... I don't want it! ...
+Take me! ... I'll go with you too! ..."
+
+Late in the evening Dilectorsky took a room in an expensive hotel.
+He knew, that within a few hours, perhaps minutes, he and Verka
+would be corpses; and for that reason, although he had in his
+pocket only eleven kopecks, all in all, he gave orders sweepingly,
+like a habitual, downright prodigal; he ordered sturgeon stew,
+double snipes, and fruits; and, in addition to all this, coffee,
+liqueurs and two bottles of frosted champagne. And he was in
+reality convinced that he would shoot himself; but thought of it
+somehow affectedly, as though admiring, a trifle from the side,
+his tragic role; and enjoying beforehand the despair of his
+relatives and the amazement of his fellow clerks. While Verka,
+when she had suddenly said that she would commit suicide with her
+beloved, had been immediately strengthened in this thought. And
+there was nothing fearful to Verka in this impending death. "Well,
+now, is it better to croak just so, under a fence? But here it's
+together with your dearie! At least a sweet death! ..." And she
+frantically kissed her clerk, laughed, and with dishevelled, curly
+hair, with sparkling eyes, was prettier than she had ever been.
+
+The final triumphal moment arrived at last.
+
+"You and I have both enjoyed ourselves, Annetta ... We have
+drained the cup to the bottom and now, to use an expression of
+Pushkin's, must shatter the goblet!" said Dilectorsky. "You do not
+repent, oh, my dear? ..."
+
+"No, no! ..."
+
+"Are you ready?"
+
+"Yes!" whispered she and smiled.
+
+"Then turn away to the wall and shut your eyes!"
+
+"No, no, my dearest, I don't want it so! ... I don't want it! Come
+to me! There, so! Nearer, nearer.. Give me your eyes, I will be
+gazing into them. Give me your lips--I will be kissing you, while
+you... I am not afraid! ... Be braver! ... Kiss me harder! ..."
+
+He killed her; and when he looked upon the horrible deed of his
+hands, he then suddenly felt a loathsome, abominable, abject fear.
+The half-naked body of Verka was still quivering on the bed. The
+legs of Dilectorsky gave in from horror; but the reason of a
+hypocrite, coward and blackguard kept vigil: he did still have
+spirit sufficient to stretch away at his side the skin over his
+ribs, and to shoot through it. And when he was falling,
+frantically crying out from pain, from fright, and from the
+thunder of the shot, the last convulsion was running through the
+body of Verka.
+
+While two weeks after the death of Verka, the naive, sportful,
+meek, brawling Little White Manka perished as well. During one of
+the general, clamourous brawls, usual in the Yamkas, in an
+enormous affray, some one killed her, hitting her with a heavy
+empty bottle over the head. And the murderer remained undiscovered
+to the last.
+
+So rapidly did events take place in the Yamkas, in the house of
+Emma Edwardovna; and well nigh not a one of its inmates escaped a
+bloody, foul or disgraceful doom.
+
+The final, most grandiose, and at the same time most bloody
+calamity was the devastation committed on the Yamkas by soldiers.
+
+Two dragoons had been short-changed in a rouble establishment,
+beaten up, and thrown out at night into the street. Tom to pieces,
+in blood, they returned to the barracks, where their comrades,
+having begun in the morning, were still finishing up their
+regimental holiday. And so, not half an hour passed, when a
+hundred soldiers burst into the Yamkas and began to wreck house
+after house. They were joined by an innumerable mob that gathered
+on the run--men of the golden squad [Footnote: Zolotorotzi-a
+subtle euphemism for cleaners of cesspools and carters of the
+wealth contained therein.--trans.], ragamuffins, tramps, crooks,
+souteneurs. The panes were broken in all the houses, and the grand
+pianos smashed to smithereens. The feather beds were ripped open
+and the down thrown out into the street; and yet for a long while
+after--for some two days--the countless bits of down flew and
+whirled over the Yamkas, like flakes of snow. The wenches, bare-
+headed, perfectly naked, were driven out into the street. Three
+porters were beaten to death. The rabble shattered, befouled, and
+rent into pieces all the silk and plush furniture of Treppel. They
+also smashed up all the neighbouring taverns and drink-shops,
+while they were at it.
+
+The drunken, bloody, hideous slaughter continued for some three
+hours; until the arrayed military authorities, together with the
+fire company, finally suceeded in repulsing and scattering the
+infuriated mob. Two half-rouble establishments were set on fire,
+but the fire was soon put out. However, on the next day the tumult
+again flared up; this time already over the whole city and its
+environs. Altogether unexpectedly it took on the character of a
+Jewish pogrom, which lasted for three days, with all its horrors
+and miseries.
+
+And a week after followed the order of the governor-general about
+the immediate shutting down of houses of prostitution, on the
+Yamkas as well as other streets of the city. The proprietresses
+were given only a week's time for the settlement of matters in
+connection with their property.
+
+Annihilated, crushed, plundered; having lost all the glamour of
+their former grandeur; ludicrous and pitiful, the aged, faded
+proprietresses and fat-faced, hoarse housekeepers were hastily
+packing up their things. And a month after only the name reminded
+one of merry Yamskaya Street; of the riotous, scandalous, horrible
+Yamkas.
+
+However, even the name of the street was soon replaced by another,
+more respectable one, in order to efface even the memory of the
+former unpardonable times.
+
+And all these Henriettas-Horses, Fat Kitties, Lelkas-Polecats and
+other women--always naive and foolish, often touching and amusing,
+in the majority of cases deceived and perverted children,--spread
+through the big city, were dissolved within it. Out of them was
+born a new stratum of society--a stratum of the strolling, street
+prostitutes--solitaries. And about their life, just as pitiful and
+incongruous, but tinged by other interests and customs, the author
+of this novel--which he still dedicates to youths and mothers--
+will some time tell.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
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