Lichonin avidly drank off a cup of cold black coffee and continued vehemently:“Yes. Just so do I and many others theorize, sitting in our rooms, over tea with white bread and cooked sausage, when the value of each separate human life is so-so, an infinitesimally small numeral in a mathematical formula. But let me see a child abused, and the red blood will rush to my head from rage. And when I look and look upon the labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown into hysterics for shame at my algebraic calculations. There is—the devil take it!—there is something incongruous, altogether illogical, but which at this time is stronger than human reason. Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this minute as though I had robbed a sleeping man or deceived a three-year-old child, or hit a bound person? And why does it seem to me to-day that I myself am guilty of the evil of prostitution—guilty in my silence, my indifference, my indirect permission? What am I to do, Platonov!” exclaimed the student with grief in his voice.Platonov kept silent, squinting at him with his little narrow eyes. But Jennie unexpectedly said in a caustic tone:“Well, you do as one Englishwoman did ... A certain red-haired clodhopper came to us here. She must have been important, because she came with a whole retinue ... all some sort of officials ... But before her had come the assistant of the commissioner, with the precinct inspector Kerbesh. And the assistant directly forewarned us, just like that: ‘If you stiffs, and so on and so on, will let out even one little rude word, or something, then I won’t leave one stone upon another of your establishment, while I’ll flog all the wenches soundly in the station-house and make ’em rot in jail!’ Well, at last this galoot came. She gibbered and she gibbered something in a foreign language, all the time pointed to heaven with her hand, and then distributed a five-kopeck Testament to every one of us and rode away. Now you ought to do the same, dearie.”Platonov burst into loud laughter. But seeing the naive and sad face of Lichonin, who did not seem to understand, nor even suspect mockery, he restrained his laughter and said seriously:“You won’t accomplish anything, Lichonin. While there will be property, there will also be poverty. While marriage exists, prostitution also will not die. Do you know who will always sustain and nourish prostitution? It is the so-called decent people, the noble paterfamiliases, the irreproachable husbands, the loving brothers. They will always find a seemly motive to legitimize, normalize and put a wrapper all around paid libertinage, because they know very well that otherwise it would rush in a torrent into their bedrooms and nurseries. Prostitution is for them a deflection of the sensuousness of others from their personal, lawful alcove. And even the respectable paterfamilias himself is not averse to indulge in a love debauch in secret. And really, it is palling to have always the one and the same thing the wife, the chambermaid, and the lady on the side. Man, as a matter of fact, is a poly—and exceedingly so—a polygamous animal. And to his rooster-like amatory instincts it will always be sweet to unfold in such a magnificent nursery garden, A LA Treppel’s or Anna Markovna’s. Oh, of course, a well-balanced spouse or the happy father of six grown-up daughters will always be clamouring about the horror of prostitution. He will even arrange with the help of a lottery and an amateur entertainment a society for the saving of fallen women, or an asylum in the name of St. Magdalene. But the existence of prostitution he will bless and sustain.”“Magdalene asylums!” with quiet laughter, full of an ancient hatred the ache of which had not yet healed, repeated Jennie.“Yes, I know that all these false measures undertaken are stuff and a total mockery,” cut in Lichonin. “But let me be ridiculous and stupid, yet I do not wish to remain a commiserating spectator, who sits on a warm ledge, gazes upon a conflagration, and is saying all the time: ‘Oh, my, but it’s burning ... by God, it is burning! Perhaps there are even people burning!’—but for his part merely laments and slaps his thighs.”“Well, now,” said Platonov harshly, “would you take a child’s syringe and go to put out the fire with it?”“No!” heatedly exclaimed Lichonin ... “Perhaps—who knows?—perhaps I’ll succeed in saving at least one living soul? It was just this that I wanted to ask you about, Platonov, and you must help me ... Only, I implore you, without jeers, without cooling off ...”“You want to take a girl out of here? To save her?” asked Platonov, looking at him attentively. He now understood the drift of this entire conversation.“Yes ... I don’t know ... I’ll try ...” answered Lichonin uncertainly.“She’ll come back,” said Platonov.“She will,” Jennie repeated with conviction.Lichonin walked up to her, took her by the hands and began to speak in a trembling whisper:“Jennechka ... Perhaps you ... eh? For I don’t call you as a mistress ... but a friend ... It’s all a trifle, half a year of rest ... and then we’ll master some trade or other ... we’ll read...”Jennie snatched her hands out of his with vexation.“Oh, into a bog with you!” she almost shouted. “I know you! Want me to darn socks for you? Cook on a kerosene stove? Pass nights without sleeping on account of you when you’ll be chitter-chattering with your short-haired friends? But when you get to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a government clerk, then it’s me will get a knee in the back: ‘Out on the street with you, now, you public hide, you’ve ruined my young life. I want to marry a decent girl, pure, and innocent! ...”“I meant it as a brother ... I meant it without that ...” mumbled Lichonin in confusion.“I know that kind of brothers. Until the first night ... Leave off and don’t talk nonsense to me! It makes me tired to listen to it!”“Wait, Lichonin!” began the reporter seriously. “Why, you will pile a load beyond your strength upon yourself as well. I’ve known idealists, among the populists, who married peasant girls out of principle. This is just the way they thought—nature, black-loam, untapped forces. ... But this black-loam after a year turned into the fattest of women, who lies the whole day in bed and chews cookies, or studs her fingers with penny rings, spreads them out and admires them. Or else sits in the kitchen, drinks sweet liquor with the coachman and carries on a natural romance with him. Look out, here it will be worse!”All three became silent. Lichonin was pale and was wiping his moist forehead with a handkerchief.“No, the devil take it!” he cried out suddenly with obstinacy. “I don’t believe you! I don’t want to believe! Liuba” he called loudly the girl who had fallen asleep. “Liubochka!”The girl awoke, passed her palm over her lips, first to one side, then the other, yawned, and smiled, in a funny, child-like manner.“I wasn’t sleeping, I heard everything,” she said. “I only dozed off for a teeny-weeny bit.”“Liuba, do you want to go away from here with me?” asked Lichonin and took her by the hand. “But entirely, forever, to go away so’s never to return either to a brothel or the street?”Liuba questioningly, with perplexity, looked at Jennie, as though seeking from her an explanation of this jest.“That’s enough for you,” she said slyly. “You’re still studying yourself. Where do you come in, then, to take a girl and set her up?”“Not to set you up, Liuba ... I simply want to help you ... For it isn’t very sweet for you in a brothel, is it now!”“Naturally, it isn’t all sugar! If I was as proud as Jennechka, or so enticing like Pasha ... but I won’t get used to things here for anything ...”“Well, then, let’s go, let’s go! ...” entreated Lichonin. “Surely, you know some manual work—well, now, sewing something, embroidering, cutting?”“I don’t know anything!” answered Liuba bashfully and started laughing and turned red, covering her mouth with the elbow of her free arm. “What’s asked of us in the village, that I know, but anything more I don’t know. I can cook a little ... I lived at the priest’s—cooked for him.”“That’s splendid! That’s excellent!” Lichonin grew joyous. “I will assist you, you’ll open a dining room ... A cheap dining room, you understand ... I’ll advertise it for you ... The students will come! That’s magnificent! ...”“That’s enough of making fun of me!” retorted Liuba, a bit offended, and again looked askance and questioningly at Jennie.“He’s not joking,” answered Jennie with a voice which quavered strangely. “He’s in earnest, seriously.”“Here’s my word of honour that I’m serious! Honest to God, now!” the student caught her up with warmth and for some reason even made the sign of the cross in the direction of the empty corner.“And really,” said Jennie, “take Liubka. That’s not the same thing as taking me. I’m like an old dragoon’s nag, and used to it. You can’t make me over, neither with hay nor a stick. But Liubka is a simple girl and a kind one. And she hasn’t grown used to our life yet. What are you popping your eyes out at me for, you ninny? Answer when you’re asked. Well? Do you want to or don’t you want to?”“And why not? If they ain’t laughing, but for real ... And you, Jennechka, what would you advise me ...”“Oh, you’re such wood!” Jennie grew angry. “What’s better according to you—to rot on straw with a nose fallen through? To croak under the fence like a dog? Or to turn honest? Fool! You ought to kiss his hands; but no, you’re getting particular.”The naive Liuba did, in fact, extend her lips toward Lichonin’s hand, and this movement made everybody laugh, and touched them just the least trifle.“And that’s very good! It’s like magic!” bustled the overjoyed Lichonin. “Go and notify the proprietress at once that you’re going away from here forever. And take the most necessary things; it isn’t as it used to be; now a girl can go away from a brothel whenever she wants to.”“No, it can’t be done that way,” Jennie stopped him; “she can go away, that’s so, but you’ll have no end of unpleasantness and hullabaloo. Here’s what you do, student. You won’t regret ten roubles?”“Of course, of course ... if you please.”“Let Liuba tell the housekeeper that you’re taking her to your rooms for to-day. That’s the fixed rate—ten roubles. And afterwards, well, even to-morrow—come after the ticket and things. That’s nothing; we’ll work this thing roundly. And after that you must go to the police with her ticket and declare, that Liubka So-and-so has hired herself to you as chambermaid, and that you desire to exchange her blank for a real passport. Well, Liubka, lively! Take the money and march. And, look out, be as quick as possible with the housekeeper, or else she, the bitch, will read it in your eyes. And also don’t forget,” she cried, now after Liuba, “wipe the rouge off your puss, now. Or else the drivers will be pointing their fingers at you.”After half an hour Liuba and Lichonin were getting on a cab at the entrance. Jennie and the reporter were standing on the sidewalk.“You’re committing a great folly, Lichonin,” Platonov was saying listlessly, “but I honour and respect the fine impulse within you. Here’s the thought—and here’s the deed. You’re a brave and a splendid fellow.”“Here’s to your commencement!” laughed Jennie. “Look out, don’t forget to send for me to the christening.”“You won’t see it, no matter how long you wait for it!” laughed Lichonin, waving his cap about.They rode off. The reporter looked at Jennie, and with astonishment saw tears in her softened eyes.“God grant it, God grant it,” she was whispering.“What has been the matter with you to-day, Jennie?” he asked kindly. “What? Are you oppressed? Can’t I do anything?”She turned her back to him and leaned over the bent balustrade of the stoop.“How shall I write to you, if need be?” she asked in a stifled voice.“Why, it’s simple. Editorial rooms of Echoes. So-and-so. They’ll pass it on to me pretty fast.”“I ... I ... I ...” Jennie just began, but suddenly burst into loud, passionate sobs and covered her face with her hands, “I’ll write you ...”And without taking her hands away from her face, her shoulders quivering, she ran up the stoop and disappeared in the house, loudly banging the door after her.
Lichonin avidly drank off a cup of cold black coffee and continued vehemently:
“Yes. Just so do I and many others theorize, sitting in our rooms, over tea with white bread and cooked sausage, when the value of each separate human life is so-so, an infinitesimally small numeral in a mathematical formula. But let me see a child abused, and the red blood will rush to my head from rage. And when I look and look upon the labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown into hysterics for shame at my algebraic calculations. There is—the devil take it!—there is something incongruous, altogether illogical, but which at this time is stronger than human reason. Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this minute as though I had robbed a sleeping man or deceived a three-year-old child, or hit a bound person? And why does it seem to me to-day that I myself am guilty of the evil of prostitution—guilty in my silence, my indifference, my indirect permission? What am I to do, Platonov!” exclaimed the student with grief in his voice.
Platonov kept silent, squinting at him with his little narrow eyes. But Jennie unexpectedly said in a caustic tone:
“Well, you do as one Englishwoman did ... A certain red-haired clodhopper came to us here. She must have been important, because she came with a whole retinue ... all some sort of officials ... But before her had come the assistant of the commissioner, with the precinct inspector Kerbesh. And the assistant directly forewarned us, just like that: ‘If you stiffs, and so on and so on, will let out even one little rude word, or something, then I won’t leave one stone upon another of your establishment, while I’ll flog all the wenches soundly in the station-house and make ’em rot in jail!’ Well, at last this galoot came. She gibbered and she gibbered something in a foreign language, all the time pointed to heaven with her hand, and then distributed a five-kopeck Testament to every one of us and rode away. Now you ought to do the same, dearie.”
Platonov burst into loud laughter. But seeing the naive and sad face of Lichonin, who did not seem to understand, nor even suspect mockery, he restrained his laughter and said seriously:
“You won’t accomplish anything, Lichonin. While there will be property, there will also be poverty. While marriage exists, prostitution also will not die. Do you know who will always sustain and nourish prostitution? It is the so-called decent people, the noble paterfamiliases, the irreproachable husbands, the loving brothers. They will always find a seemly motive to legitimize, normalize and put a wrapper all around paid libertinage, because they know very well that otherwise it would rush in a torrent into their bedrooms and nurseries. Prostitution is for them a deflection of the sensuousness of others from their personal, lawful alcove. And even the respectable paterfamilias himself is not averse to indulge in a love debauch in secret. And really, it is palling to have always the one and the same thing the wife, the chambermaid, and the lady on the side. Man, as a matter of fact, is a poly—and exceedingly so—a polygamous animal. And to his rooster-like amatory instincts it will always be sweet to unfold in such a magnificent nursery garden, A LA Treppel’s or Anna Markovna’s. Oh, of course, a well-balanced spouse or the happy father of six grown-up daughters will always be clamouring about the horror of prostitution. He will even arrange with the help of a lottery and an amateur entertainment a society for the saving of fallen women, or an asylum in the name of St. Magdalene. But the existence of prostitution he will bless and sustain.”
“Magdalene asylums!” with quiet laughter, full of an ancient hatred the ache of which had not yet healed, repeated Jennie.
“Yes, I know that all these false measures undertaken are stuff and a total mockery,” cut in Lichonin. “But let me be ridiculous and stupid, yet I do not wish to remain a commiserating spectator, who sits on a warm ledge, gazes upon a conflagration, and is saying all the time: ‘Oh, my, but it’s burning ... by God, it is burning! Perhaps there are even people burning!’—but for his part merely laments and slaps his thighs.”
“Well, now,” said Platonov harshly, “would you take a child’s syringe and go to put out the fire with it?”
“No!” heatedly exclaimed Lichonin ... “Perhaps—who knows?—perhaps I’ll succeed in saving at least one living soul? It was just this that I wanted to ask you about, Platonov, and you must help me ... Only, I implore you, without jeers, without cooling off ...”
“You want to take a girl out of here? To save her?” asked Platonov, looking at him attentively. He now understood the drift of this entire conversation.
“Yes ... I don’t know ... I’ll try ...” answered Lichonin uncertainly.
“She’ll come back,” said Platonov.
“She will,” Jennie repeated with conviction.
Lichonin walked up to her, took her by the hands and began to speak in a trembling whisper:
“Jennechka ... Perhaps you ... eh? For I don’t call you as a mistress ... but a friend ... It’s all a trifle, half a year of rest ... and then we’ll master some trade or other ... we’ll read...”
Jennie snatched her hands out of his with vexation.
“Oh, into a bog with you!” she almost shouted. “I know you! Want me to darn socks for you? Cook on a kerosene stove? Pass nights without sleeping on account of you when you’ll be chitter-chattering with your short-haired friends? But when you get to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a government clerk, then it’s me will get a knee in the back: ‘Out on the street with you, now, you public hide, you’ve ruined my young life. I want to marry a decent girl, pure, and innocent! ...”
“I meant it as a brother ... I meant it without that ...” mumbled Lichonin in confusion.
“I know that kind of brothers. Until the first night ... Leave off and don’t talk nonsense to me! It makes me tired to listen to it!”
“Wait, Lichonin!” began the reporter seriously. “Why, you will pile a load beyond your strength upon yourself as well. I’ve known idealists, among the populists, who married peasant girls out of principle. This is just the way they thought—nature, black-loam, untapped forces. ... But this black-loam after a year turned into the fattest of women, who lies the whole day in bed and chews cookies, or studs her fingers with penny rings, spreads them out and admires them. Or else sits in the kitchen, drinks sweet liquor with the coachman and carries on a natural romance with him. Look out, here it will be worse!”
All three became silent. Lichonin was pale and was wiping his moist forehead with a handkerchief.
“No, the devil take it!” he cried out suddenly with obstinacy. “I don’t believe you! I don’t want to believe! Liuba” he called loudly the girl who had fallen asleep. “Liubochka!”
The girl awoke, passed her palm over her lips, first to one side, then the other, yawned, and smiled, in a funny, child-like manner.
“I wasn’t sleeping, I heard everything,” she said. “I only dozed off for a teeny-weeny bit.”
“Liuba, do you want to go away from here with me?” asked Lichonin and took her by the hand. “But entirely, forever, to go away so’s never to return either to a brothel or the street?”
Liuba questioningly, with perplexity, looked at Jennie, as though seeking from her an explanation of this jest.
“That’s enough for you,” she said slyly. “You’re still studying yourself. Where do you come in, then, to take a girl and set her up?”
“Not to set you up, Liuba ... I simply want to help you ... For it isn’t very sweet for you in a brothel, is it now!”
“Naturally, it isn’t all sugar! If I was as proud as Jennechka, or so enticing like Pasha ... but I won’t get used to things here for anything ...”
“Well, then, let’s go, let’s go! ...” entreated Lichonin. “Surely, you know some manual work—well, now, sewing something, embroidering, cutting?”
“I don’t know anything!” answered Liuba bashfully and started laughing and turned red, covering her mouth with the elbow of her free arm. “What’s asked of us in the village, that I know, but anything more I don’t know. I can cook a little ... I lived at the priest’s—cooked for him.”
“That’s splendid! That’s excellent!” Lichonin grew joyous. “I will assist you, you’ll open a dining room ... A cheap dining room, you understand ... I’ll advertise it for you ... The students will come! That’s magnificent! ...”
“That’s enough of making fun of me!” retorted Liuba, a bit offended, and again looked askance and questioningly at Jennie.
“He’s not joking,” answered Jennie with a voice which quavered strangely. “He’s in earnest, seriously.”
“Here’s my word of honour that I’m serious! Honest to God, now!” the student caught her up with warmth and for some reason even made the sign of the cross in the direction of the empty corner.
“And really,” said Jennie, “take Liubka. That’s not the same thing as taking me. I’m like an old dragoon’s nag, and used to it. You can’t make me over, neither with hay nor a stick. But Liubka is a simple girl and a kind one. And she hasn’t grown used to our life yet. What are you popping your eyes out at me for, you ninny? Answer when you’re asked. Well? Do you want to or don’t you want to?”
“And why not? If they ain’t laughing, but for real ... And you, Jennechka, what would you advise me ...”
“Oh, you’re such wood!” Jennie grew angry. “What’s better according to you—to rot on straw with a nose fallen through? To croak under the fence like a dog? Or to turn honest? Fool! You ought to kiss his hands; but no, you’re getting particular.”
The naive Liuba did, in fact, extend her lips toward Lichonin’s hand, and this movement made everybody laugh, and touched them just the least trifle.
“And that’s very good! It’s like magic!” bustled the overjoyed Lichonin. “Go and notify the proprietress at once that you’re going away from here forever. And take the most necessary things; it isn’t as it used to be; now a girl can go away from a brothel whenever she wants to.”
“No, it can’t be done that way,” Jennie stopped him; “she can go away, that’s so, but you’ll have no end of unpleasantness and hullabaloo. Here’s what you do, student. You won’t regret ten roubles?”
“Of course, of course ... if you please.”
“Let Liuba tell the housekeeper that you’re taking her to your rooms for to-day. That’s the fixed rate—ten roubles. And afterwards, well, even to-morrow—come after the ticket and things. That’s nothing; we’ll work this thing roundly. And after that you must go to the police with her ticket and declare, that Liubka So-and-so has hired herself to you as chambermaid, and that you desire to exchange her blank for a real passport. Well, Liubka, lively! Take the money and march. And, look out, be as quick as possible with the housekeeper, or else she, the bitch, will read it in your eyes. And also don’t forget,” she cried, now after Liuba, “wipe the rouge off your puss, now. Or else the drivers will be pointing their fingers at you.”
After half an hour Liuba and Lichonin were getting on a cab at the entrance. Jennie and the reporter were standing on the sidewalk.
“You’re committing a great folly, Lichonin,” Platonov was saying listlessly, “but I honour and respect the fine impulse within you. Here’s the thought—and here’s the deed. You’re a brave and a splendid fellow.”
“Here’s to your commencement!” laughed Jennie. “Look out, don’t forget to send for me to the christening.”
“You won’t see it, no matter how long you wait for it!” laughed Lichonin, waving his cap about.
They rode off. The reporter looked at Jennie, and with astonishment saw tears in her softened eyes.
“God grant it, God grant it,” she was whispering.
“What has been the matter with you to-day, Jennie?” he asked kindly. “What? Are you oppressed? Can’t I do anything?”
She turned her back to him and leaned over the bent balustrade of the stoop.
“How shall I write to you, if need be?” she asked in a stifled voice.
“Why, it’s simple. Editorial rooms of Echoes. So-and-so. They’ll pass it on to me pretty fast.”
“I ... I ... I ...” Jennie just began, but suddenly burst into loud, passionate sobs and covered her face with her hands, “I’ll write you ...”
And without taking her hands away from her face, her shoulders quivering, she ran up the stoop and disappeared in the house, loudly banging the door after her.