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Title: Yama [The Pit], a Novel in Three Parts

Author: A. I. Kuprin

Translator: Bernard Guilbert Guerney

Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #4706]
Most recently updated: March 15, 2023

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YAMA [THE
PIT], A NOVEL IN THREE PARTS ***

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

YA M A [ T H E P I T ]
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.