Mechanically I read the advertisements on the first page, the leader,
the extracts from newspapers and magazines, the local news ... Among
other things I find in the local news an item like this: "Our famous
scholar, emeritus professor Nicolai Stiepanovich arrived in Kharkov
yesterday by the express, and stayed at----hotel."
Evidently big names are created to live detached from those who bear
them. Now my name walks in Kharkov undisturbed. In some three months it
will shine as bright as the sun itself, inscribed in letters of gold on
my tombstone--at a time when I myself will be under the sod....
A faint knock at the door. Somebody wants me.
"Who's there? Come in!"
The door opens. I step back in astonishment, and hasten to pull my
dressing gown together. Before me stands Katy.
"How do you do?" she says, panting from running up the stairs. "You
didn't expect me? I ... I've come too."
She sits down and continues, stammering and looking away from me. "Why
don't you say 'Good morning'? I arrived too ... to-day. I found out you
were at this hotel, and came to see you."
"I'm delighted to see you," I say shrugging my shoulders. "But I'm
surprised. You might have dropped straight from heaven. What are you
doing here?"
"I?... I just came."
Silence. Suddenly she gets up impetuously and comes over to me.
"Nicolai Stiepanich!" she says, growing pale and pressing her hands to
her breast. "Nicolai Stiepanich! I can't go on like this any longer. I
can't. For God's sake tell me now, immediately. What shall I do? Tell
me, what shall I do?"
"What can I say? I am beaten. I can say nothing."
"But tell me, I implore you," she continues, out of breath and trembling
all over her body. "I swear to you, I can't go on like this any longer.
I haven't the strength."
She drops into a chair and begins to sob. She throws her head back,
wrings her hands, stamps with her feet; her hat falls from her head and
dangles by its string, her hair is loosened.
"Help me, help," she implores. "I can't bear it any more."
She takes a handkerchief out of her little travelling bag and with it
pulls out some letters which fall from her knees to the floor. I pick
them up from the floor and recognise on one of them Mikhail
Fiodorovich's hand-writing, and accidentally read part of a word:
"passionat...."
"There's nothing that I can say to you, Katy," I say.
"Help me," she sobs, seizing my hand and kissing it. "You're my father,
my only friend. You're wise and learned, and you've lived long! You were
a teacher. Tell me what to do."
I am bewildered and surprised, stirred by her sobbing, and I can hardly
stand upright.
"Let's have some breakfast, Katy," I say with a constrained smile.
Instantly I add in a sinking voice:
"I shall be dead soon, Katy...."
"Only one word, only one word," she weeps and stretches out her hands to
me. "What shall I do?"
"You're a queer thing, really....", I murmur. "I can't understand it.
Such a clever woman and suddenly--weeping...."
Comes silence. Katy arranges her hair, puts on her hat, then crumples
her letters and stuffs them in her little bag, all in silence and
unhurried. Her face, her bosom and her gloves are wet with tears, but
her expression is dry already, stern.... I look at her and am ashamed
that I am happier than she. It was but a little while before my death,
in the ebb of my life, that I noticed in myself the absence of what our
friends the philosophers call the general idea; but this poor thing's
soul has never known and never will know shelter all her life, all her
life.
"Katy, let's have breakfast," I say.
"No, thank you," she answers coldly.
One minute more passes in silence.
"I don't like Kharkov," I say. "It's too grey. A grey city."
"Yes ... ugly.... I'm not here for long.... On my way. I leave to-day."
"For where?"
"For the Crimea ... I mean, the Caucasus."
"So. For long?"
"I don't know."
Katy gets up and gives me her hand with a cold smile, looking away from
me.
I would like to ask her: "That means you won't be at my funeral?" But
she does not look at me; her hand is cold and like a stranger's. I
escort her to the door in silenqe.... She goes out of my room and walks
down the long passage, without looking back. She knows that my eyes are
following her, and probably on the landing she will look back.
No, she did not look back. The black dress showed for the last time, her
steps were stilled.... Goodbye, my treasure! THE FIT I
The medical student Mayer, and Ribnikov, a student at the Moscow school
of painting, sculpture, and architecture, came one evening to their
friend Vassiliev, law student, and proposed that he should go with them
to S----v Street. For a long while Vassiliev did not agree, but eventually
dressed himself and went with them.
Unfortunate women he knew only by hearsay and from books, and never once
in his life had he been in the houses where they live. He knew there
were immoral women who were forced by the pressure of disastrous
circumstances--environment, bad up-bringing, poverty, and the like--to
sell their honour for money. They do not know pure love, have no
children and no legal rights; mothers and sisters mourn them for dead,
science treats them as an evil, men are familiar with them. But
notwithstanding all this they do not lose the image and likeness of God.
They all acknowledge their sin and hope for salvation. They are free to
avail themselves of every means of salvation. True, Society does not
forgive people their past, but with God Mary of Egypt is not lower than
the other saints. Whenever Vassiliev recognised an unfortunate woman in
the street by her costume or her manner, or saw a picture of one in a
comic paper, there came into his mind every time a story he once read
somewhere: a pure and heroic young man falls in love with an unfortunate
woman and asks her to be his wife, but she, considering herself unworthy
of such happiness, poisons herself.
Vassiliev lived in one of the streets off the Tverskoi boulevard. When
he and his friends came out of the house it was about eleven o'clock--the
first snow had just fallen and all nature was under the spell of this
new snow; The air smelt of snow, the snow cracked softly under foot, the
earth, the roofs, the trees, the benches on the boulevards--all were
soft, white, and young. Owing to this the houses had a different look
from yesterday, the lamps burned brighter, the air was more transparent,
the clatter of the cabs was dulled and there entered into the soul with
the fresh, easy, frosty air a feeling like the white, young, feathery
snow. "To these sad shores unknowing" the medico began to sing in a
pleasant tenor, "An unknown power entices...."
"Behold the mill" ... the painter's voice took him up, "it is now fall'n
to ruin."
"Behold the mill, it is now fall'n to ruin," the medico repeated,
raising his eyebrows and sadly shaking his head.
He was silent for a while, passed his hand over his forehead trying to
recall the words, and began to sing in a loud voice and so well that the
passers-by looked back.
"Here, long ago, came free, free love to me"...
All three went into a restaurant and without taking off their coats they
each had two thimblefuls of vodka at the bar. Before drinking the
second, Vassiliev noticed a piece of cork in his Vodka, lifted the glass
to his eye, looked at it for a long while with a short-sighted frown.
The medico misunderstood his expression and said--
"Well, what are you staring at? No philosophy, please. Vodka's made to
be drunk, caviare to be eaten, women to sleep with, snow to walk on.
Live like a man for one evening."
"Well, I've nothing to say," said Vassiliev laughingly, "I'm not
refusing?"
The vodka warmed his breast. He looked at his friends, admired and
envied them. How balanced everything is in these healthy, strong,
cheerful people. Everything in their minds and souls is smooth and
rounded off. They sing, have a passion for the theatre, paint, talk
continually, and drink, and they never have a headache the next day.
They are romantic and dissolute, sentimental and insolent; they can work
and go on the loose and laugh at nothing and talk rubbish; they are hot-
headed, honest, heroic and as human beings not a bit worse than
Vassiliev, who watches his every step and word, who is careful,
cautious, and able to give the smallest trifle the dignity of a problem.
And he made tip his mind if only for one evening to live like his
friends, to let himself go, and be free from his own control. Must he
drink vodka? He'll drink, even if his head falls to pieces to-morrow.
Must he be taken to women? He'll go. He'll laugh, play the fool, and
give a joking answer to disapproving passers-by.
He came out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends--one in a
battered hat with a wide brim who aped aesthetic disorder; the other in
a sealskin cap, not very poor, with a pretence of learned Bohemia. He
liked the snow, the paleness, the lamp-lights, the dear black prints
which the passers' feet left on the snow. He liked the air, and above
all the transparent, tender, naive, virgin tone which can be seen in
nature only twice in the year: when everything is covered in snow, on
the bright days in spring, and on moonlight nights when the ice breaks
on the river.
"To these sad shores unknowing," he began to sing sotto-voce, "An
unknown power entices."
And all the way for some reason or other he and his friends had this
melody on their lips. All three hummed it mechanically out of time with
each other.
Vassiliev Imagined how in about ten minutes he and his friends would
knock at a door, how they would stealthily walk through-the narrow
little passages and dark rooms to the women, how he would take advantage
of the dark, suddenly strike a match, and see lit up a suffering face
and a guilty smile. There he will surely find a fair or a dark woman in
a white nightgown with her hair loose. She will be frightened of the
light, dreadfully confused and say: "Good God! What are you doing? Blow
it out!" All this was frightening, but curious and novel. II
The friends turned out of Trubnoi Square into the Grachovka and soon
arrived at the street which Vassiliev knew only from hearsay. Seeing two
rows of houses with brightly lighted windows and wide open doors, and
hearing the gay sound of pianos and fiddles--sounds which flew out of all
the doors and mingled in a strange confusion, as if somewhere in the
darkness over the roof-tops an unseen orchestra were tuning, Vassiliev
was bewildered and said:
"What a lot of houses!"
"What's that?" said the medico. "There are ten times as many in London.
There are a hundred thousand of these women there."
The cabmen sat on their boxes quiet and indifferent as in other streets;
on the pavement walked the same passers-by. No one was in a hurry; no
one hid his face in his collar; no one shook his head reproachfully. And
in this indifference, in the confused sound of the pianos and fiddles,
in the bright windows and wide-open doors, something very free,
impudent, bold and daring could be felt. It must have been the same as
this in the old times on the slave-markets, as gay and as noisy; people
looked and walked with the same indifference.
"Let's begin right at the beginning," said the painter.
The friends walked into a narrow little passage lighted by a single lamp
with a reflector. When they opened the door a man in a black jacket rose
lazily from the yellow sofa in the hall. He had an unshaven lackey's
face and sleepy eyes. The place smelt like a laundry, and of vinegar.
From the hall a door led into a brightly lighted room. The medico and
the painter stopped in the doorway, stretched out their necks and peeped
into the room together:
"Buona sera, signore, Rigoletto--huguenote--traviata!--" the painter began,
making a theatrical bow.
"Havanna--blackbeetlano--pistoletto!" said the medico, pressing his hat to
his heart and bowing low.
Vassiliev kept behind them. He wanted to bow theatrically too and say
something silly. But he only smiled, felt awkward and ashamed, and
awaited impatiently what was to follow. In the door appeared a little
fair girl of seventeen or eighteen, with short hair, wearing a short
blue dress with a white bow on her breast.
"What are you standing in the door for?" she said. "Take off your
overcoats and come into the salon."
The medico and the painter went into the salon, still speaking Italian.
Vassiliev followed them irresolutely.
"Gentlemen, take off your overcoats," said the lackey stiffly. "You're
not allowed in as you are."
Besides the fair girl there was another woman in the salon, very stout
and tall, with a foreign face and bare arms. She sat by the piano, with
a game of patience spread on her knees. She took no notice of the
guests.
"Where are the other girls?" asked the medico.
"They're drinking tea," said the fair one. "Stiepan," she called out.
"Go and tell the girls some students have come!"
A little later a third girl entered, in a bright red dress with blue
stripes. Her face was thickly and unskilfully painted. Her forehead was
hidden under her hair. She stared with dull, frightened eyes. As she
came she immediately began to sing in a strong hoarse contralto. After
her a fourth girl. After her a fifth.
In all this Vassiliev saw nothing new or curious. It seemed to him that
he had seen before, and more than once, this salon, piano, cheap gilt
mirror, the white bow, the dress with blue stripes and the stupid,
indifferent faces. But of darkness, quiet, mystery, and guilty smile--of
all he had expected to meet here and which frightened him--he did not see
even a shadow.
Everything was commonplace, prosaic, and dull. Only one thing provoked
his curiosity a little, that was the terrible, as it were intentional
lack of taste, which was seen in the overmantels, the absurd pictures,
the dresses and the White bow. In this lack of taste there was something
characteristic and singular.
"How poor and foolish it all is!" thought Vassiliev. "What is there in
all this rubbish to tempt a normal man, to provoke him into committing a
frightful sin, to buy a living soul for a rouble? I can understand
anyone sinning for the sake of splendour, beauty, grace, passion; but
what is there here? What tempts people here? But ... it's no good
thinking!"
"Whiskers, stand me champagne." The fair one turned to him.
Vassiliev suddenly blushed.
"With pleasure," he said, bowing politely. "But excuse me if I ... I
don't drink with you, I don't drink."
Five minutes after the friends were off to another house.
"Why did you order drinks?" stormed the medico. "What a millionaire,
flinging six roubles into the gutter like that for nothing at all."
"Why shouldn't I give her pleasure if she wants it?" said Vassiliev,
justifying himself.
"You didn't give her any pleasure. Madame got that. It's Madame who
tells them to ask the guests for drinks. She makes by it."
"Behold the mill," the painter began to sing, "Now fall'n to ruin...."
When they came to another house the friends stood outside in the
vestibule, but did not enter the salon. As in the first house, a figure
rose up from the sofa in the hall, in a black jacket, with a sleepy
lackey's face. As he looked at this lackey, at his face and shabby
jacket, Vassiliev thought: "What must an ordinary simple Russian go
through before Fate casts him up here? Where was he before, and what was
he doing? What awaits him? Is he married, where's his mother, and does
she know he's a lackey here?" Thenceforward in every house Vassiliev
involuntarily turned his attention to the lackey first of all.
In one of the houses, it seemed to be the fourth, the lackey was a dry
little, puny fellow, with a chain across his waistcoat. He was reading a
newspaper and took no notice of the guests at all. Glancing at his face,
Vassiliev had the idea that a fellow with a face like that could steal
and murder and perjure. And indeed the face was interesting: a big
forehead, grey eyes, a flat little nose, small close-set teeth, and the
expression on his face dull and impudent at once, like a puppy hard on a
hare. Vassiliev had the thought that he would like to touch this
lackey's hair: is it rough or soft f It must be rough like a dog's. III
Because he had had two glasses the painter suddenly got rather drunk,
and unnaturally lively.
"Let's go to another place," he added, waving his hands. "I'll introduce
you to the best!"
When he had taken his friends into the house which was according to him
the best, he proclaimed a persistent desire to dance a quadrille. The
medico began to grumble that they would have to pay the musicians a
rouble but agreed to be his vis-à-vis. The dance began.
It was just as bad in the best house as in the worst. Just the same
mirrors and pictures were here, the same coiffures and dresses. Looking
round at the furniture and the costumes Vassiliev now understood that it
was not lack of taste, but something that might be called the particular
taste and style of S----v Street, quite impossible to find anywhere else,
something complete, not accidental, evolved in time. After he had been
to eight houses he no longer wondered at the colour of the dresses or
the long trains, or at the bright bows, or the sailor dresses, or the
thick violent painting of the cheeks; he understood that all this was in
harmony, that if only one woman dressed herself humanly, or one decent
print hung on the wall, then the general tone of the whole street would
suffer.
How badly they manage the business? Can't they really understand that
vice is only fascinating when it is beautiful and secret, hidden under
the cloak of virtue? Modest black dresses, pale faces, sad smiles, and
darkness act more strongly than this clumsy tinsel. Idiots! If they
don't understand it themselves, their guests ought to teach them....
A girl in a Polish costume trimmed with white fur came up close to him
and sat down by his side.
"Why don't you dance, my brown-haired darling?" she asked. "What do you
fed so bored about?"
"Because it is boring."
"Stand me a Château Lafitte, then you won't be bored."
Vassiliev made no answer. For a little while he was silent, then he
asked:
"What time do you go to bed as a rule?"
"Six."
"When do you get up?"
"Sometimes two, sometimes three."
"And after you get up what do you do?"
"We drink coffee. We have dinner at seven."
"And what do you have for dinner?"
"Soup or schi as a rule, beef-steak, dessert. Our madame keeps the girls
well. But what are you asking all this for?"
"Just to have a talk...."
Vassiliev wanted to ask about all sorts of things. He had a strong
desire to find out where she came from, were her parents alive, and did
they know she was here; how she got into the house; was she happy and
contented, or gloomy and depressed with dark thoughts. Does she ever
hope to escape.... But he could not possibly think how to begin, or how
to put his questions without seeming indiscreet. He thought for a long
while and asked:
"How old are you?"
"Eighty," joked the girl, looking and laughing at the tricks the painter
was doing with his hands and feet.
She suddenly giggled and uttered a long filthy expression aloud so that
every one could hear.
Vassiliev, terrified, not knowing how to look, began to laugh uneasily.
He alone smiled: all the others, his friends, the musicians and the
women--paid no attention to his neighbour. They might never have heard.
"Stand me a Lafitte," said the girl again.
Vassiliev was suddenly repelled by her white trimming and her voice and
left her. It seemed to him close and hot. His heart began to beat slowly
and violently, like a hammer, one, two, three.
"Let's get out of here," he said, pulling the painter's sleeve.
"Wait. Let's finish it."
While the medico and the painter were finishing their quadrille,
Vassiliev, in order to avoid the women, eyed the musicians. The pianist
was a nice old man with spectacles, with a face like Marshal Basin; the
fiddler a young man with a short, fair beard dressed in the latest
fashion. The young man was not stupid or starved, on the contrary he
looked clever, young and fresh. He was dressed with a touch of
originality, and played with emotion. Problem: how did he and the decent
old man get here? Why aren't they ashamed to sit here? What do they
think about when they look at the women?
If the piano and the fiddle were played by ragged, hungry, gloomy,
drunken creatures, with thin stupid faces, then their presence would
perhaps be intelligible. As it was, Vassiliev could understand. nothing.
Into his memory came the story that he had read about the unfortunate
woman, and now he found that the human figure with the guilty smile had
nothing to do with this. It seemed to him that they were not unfortunate
women that he saw, but they belonged to another, utterly different
world, foreign and inconceivable to him; if he had seen this world on
the stage or read about it in a book he would never have believed it....
The girl with the white trimming giggled again and said something
disgusting aloud. He felt sick, blushed, and went out:
"Wait. We're coming too," cried the painter. IV
"I had a talk with my mam'selle while we were dancing," said the medico
when all three came into the street. "The subject was her first love. He
was a bookkeeper in Smolensk with a wife and five children. She was
seventeen and lived with her pa and ma who kept a soap and candle shop."
"How did he conquer her heart?" asked Vassiliev.
"He bought her fifty roubles'-worth of underclothes--Lord knows what!"
"However could he get her love-story out of his girl?" thought
Vassiliev. "I can't. My dear chaps, I'm off home," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I don't know how to get on here. I'm bored and disgusted. What
is there amusing about it? If they were only human beings; but they're
savages and beasts. I'm going, please."
"Grisha darling, please," the painter said with a sob in his voice,
pressing close to Vassiliev, "let's go to one more--then to Hell with
them. Do come, Grigor."
They prevailed on Vassiliev and led him up a staircase. The carpet and
the gilded balustrade, the porter who opened the door, the panels which
decorated the hall, were still in the same S----v Street style, but here
it was perfected and imposing.
"Really I'm going home," said Vassiliev, taking off his overcoat.
"Darling, please, please," said the painter and kissed him on the neck.
"Don't be so faddy, Grigri--be a pal. Together we came, together we go.
What a beast you are though!"
"I can wait for you in the street. My God, it's disgusting here."
"Please, please.... You just look on, see, just look on."
"One should look at things objectively," said the medico seriously.
Vassiliev entered the salon and sat down. There were many more guests
besides him and his friends: two infantry officers, a grey, bald-headed
gentleman with gold spectacles, two young clean-shaven men from the
Surveyors' Institute, and a very drunk man with an actor's face. All the
girls were looking after these guests and took no notice of Vassiliev.
Only one of them dressed like Aïda glanced at him sideways, smiled at
something and said with a yawn:
"So the dark one's come."
Vassiliev's heart was beating and his face was burning. He felt ashamed
for being there, disgusted and tormented. He was tortured by the thought
that he, a decent and affectionate man (so he considered himself up till
now), despised these women and felt nothing towards them but repulsion.
He could not feel pity for them or for the musicians or the lackeys.
"It's because I don't try to understand them," he thought. "They're all
more like beasts than human beings; but all the same they are human
beings. They've got souls. One should understand them first, then judge
them."
"Grisha, don't go away. Wait for us," called the painter; and he
disappeared somewhere.
Soon the medico disappeared also.