“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 loaferIs spice, is spice;But the prostituteIs as cold as ice.Ha-ha-ha!They came togetherMatched 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 bedAnd laughs like she’s daft.Ha-ha-ha!Comes morning, the laddieIs led to the pen;But for the prostituteHis 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 WOMANThey loved each other beyond belief—She was a strumpet, he was a thief;Whenever she thought of his tricks, thereafterShe’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 thereafterShe 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 herRed wine and sang with laughter!And still further a convict song:I’m a ruined laddie,Ruined for alway;While year after yearThe days go away.And also:Don’t you cry, my Mary,You’ll belong to me;When I’ve served the armyI 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 youWhat your ache may be,But I am a-athking youWhat 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 wordsProffered I thee reproach of jealousy ...We went apart for aye,Yet only if with theeI 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 theeI 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 pantsHer 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 stirThat 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.
“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.
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 loaferIs spice, is spice;But the prostituteIs as cold as ice.Ha-ha-ha!
They came togetherMatched 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 bedAnd laughs like she’s daft.Ha-ha-ha!
Comes morning, the laddieIs led to the pen;But for the prostituteHis 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, thereafterShe’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 thereafterShe 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 herRed wine and sang with laughter!
And still further a convict song:
I’m a ruined laddie,Ruined for alway;While year after yearThe days go away.
And also:
Don’t you cry, my Mary,You’ll belong to me;When I’ve served the armyI 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 youWhat your ache may be,But I am a-athking youWhat 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 wordsProffered I thee reproach of jealousy ...We went apart for aye,Yet only if with theeI 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 theeI 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.
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!”
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.
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.”
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 pantsHer 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 stirThat 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.