But if the Georgian and the kind-souled Soloviev served as a palliating
beginning against the sharp thorns of great worldly wisdom, in the
curious education of the mind and soul of Liubka; and if Liubka forgave
the pedantism of Lichonin for the sake of a first sincere and limitless
love for him, and forgave just as willingly as she would have forgiven
curses, beatings, or a heavy crime—the lessons of Simanovsky, on the
other hand, were a downright torture and a constant, prolonged burden
for her. For it must be said that he, as though in spite, was far more
accurate and exact in his lessons than any pedagogue working out his
weekly stipulated tutorings.
With the incontrovertibility of his opinions, the assurance of his tone
and the didacticism of his presentation he took away the will of poor
Liubka and paralyzed her soul; in the same way that he sometimes,
during university gatherings or at mass meetings, influenced the timid
and bashful minds of newcomers. He was an orator at meetings; he was a
prominent member in the organization of students’ mess halls; he took
part in the recording, lithographing and publication of lectures; he
was chosen the head of the course; and, finally, took a very great
interest in the students’ treasury. He was of that number of people
who, after they leave the student auditoriums, become the leaders of
parties, the unrestrained arbiters of pure and self-denying conscience;
serve out their political stage somewhere in Chukhlon, directing the
keen attention of all Russia to their heroically woeful situation; and
after that, beautifully leaning on their past, make a career for
themselves, thanks to a solid advocacy, a deputation, or else a
marriage joined with a goodly piece of black loam land and provincial
activity. Unnoticeably to themselves and altogether unnoticeably, of
course, to the casual glance, they cautiously right themselves; or,
more correctly, fade until they grow a belly unto themselves, and
acquire podagra and diseases of the liver. Then they grumble at the
whole world; say that they were not understood, that their time was the
time of sacred ideals. While in the family they are despots and not
infrequently give money out at usury.
The path of the education of Liubka’s mind and soul was plain to him,
as was plain and incontrovertible everything that he conceived; he
wanted at the start to interest Liubka in chemistry and physics.
“The virginally feminine mind,” he pondered, “will be astounded, then I
shall gain possession of her attention, and from trifles, from
hocus-pocus, I shall pass on to that which will lead her to the centre
of universal knowledge, where there is no superstition, no prejudices;
where there is only a broad field for the testing of nature.”
It must be said that he was inconsistent in his lessons. He dragged in
all that came to his hand for the astonishment of Liubka. Once he
brought along for her a large self-made serpent—a long cardboard hose,
filled with gunpowder, bent in the form of a harmonica, and tied
tightly across with a cord. He lit it, and the serpent for a long time
with crackling jumped over the dining room and the bedroom, filling the
place with smoke and stench. Liubka was scarcely amazed and said that
this was simply fireworks, that she had already seen this, and that you
couldn’t astonish her with that. She asked, however, permission to open
the window. Then he brought a large phial, tinfoil, rosin and a cat’s
tail, and in this manner contrived a Leyden jar. The discharge,
although weak, was produced, however.
“Oh, the unclean one take you, Satan!” Liubka began to cry out, having
felt the dry fillip in her little finger.
Then, out of heated peroxide of manganese, mixed with sand, with the
help of a druggist’s vial, the gutta-percha end of a syringe, a basin
filled with water, and a jam jar—oxygen was derived. The red-hot cork,
coal and phosphorus burnt in the jar so blindingly that it pained the
eyes. Liubka clapped her palms and squealed out in delight:
“Mister Professor, more! Please, more, more! ...”
But when, having united the oxygen with the hydrogen brought in an
empty champagne bottle, and having wrapped up the bottle for precaution
in a towel, Simanovsky ordered Liubka to direct its neck toward a
burning candle, and when the explosion broke out, as though four
cannons had been fired off at once—an explosion through which the
plastering fell down from the ceiling—then Liubka grew timorous, and,
only getting to rights with difficulty, pronounced with trembling lips,
but with dignity: “You must excuse me now, but since I have a flat of
my own, and I’m not at all a wench any longer, but a decent woman, I’d
ask you therefore not to misbehave in my place. I thought you, like a
smart and educated man, would do everything nice and genteel, but you
busy yourself with silly things. They can even put one in jail for
that.”
Subsequently, much, much later, she told how she had a student friend,
who made dynamite before her.
It must have been, after all, that Simanovsky, this enigmatic man, so
influential in his youthful society, where he had to deal with theory
for the most part, and so incoherent when a practical experiment with a
living soul had come into his hands—was just simply stupid, but could
skillfully conceal this sole sincere quality of his.
Having suffered failure in applied sciences, he at once passed on to
metaphysics. Once he very self-assuredly, and in a tone such that after
it no refutation was possible, announced to Liubka that there is no
God, and that he would undertake to prove this during five minutes.
Whereupon Liubka jumped up from her place, and told him firmly that
she, even though a quondam prostitute, still believed in God and would
not allow Him to be offended in her presence; and if he would continue
such nonsense, then she would complain to Vassil Vassilich.
“I will also tell him,” she added in a weeping voice, “that you,
instead of teaching me, only rattle off all kinds of stuff and all that
sort of nastiness, while you yourself hold your hand on my knees. And
that’s even not at all genteel.” And for the first time during all
their acquaintanceship she, who had formerly been so timorous and
constrained, sharply moved away from her teacher.
However, having suffered a few failures, Simanovsky still obstinately
continued to act upon the mind and imagination of Liubka. He tried to
explain to her the theory of the origin of species, beginning with an
amoeba and ending with Napoleon. Liubka listened to him attentively,
and during this there was an imploring expression in her eyes: “When
will you stop at last?” She yawned into a handkerchief and then
guiltily explained: “Excuse me, that’s from my nerves.” Marx also had
no success goods, supplementary value, the manufacturer and the worker,
which had become algebraic formulas, were for Liubka merely empty
sounds, vibrating the air; and she, very sincere at soul, always jumped
up with joy from her place, when hearing that, apparently, the
vegetable soup had boiled up, or the samovar was getting ready to boil
over.
It cannot be said that Simanovsky did not have success with women. His
aplomb and his weighty, decisive tone always acted upon simple souls,
especially upon fresh, naive, trusting souls. Out of protracted ties he
always got out very easily; either he was dedicated to a tremendously
responsible call, before which domestic love relations were nothing; or
he pretended to be a superman, to whom all is permitted (O, thou,
Nietszche, so long ago and so disgracefully misconstrued for
high-school boys!). The passive, almost imperceptible, but firmly
evasive resistance of Liubka irritated and excited him. What
particularly incensed him was the fact that she, who had formerly been
so accessible to all, ready to yield her love in one day to several
people in succession, to each one for two roubles, was now all of a
sudden playing at some pure and disinterested inamoration!
“Nonsense,” he thought. “This can’t be. She’s making believe, and,
probably, I don’t strike the right tone with her.”
And with every day he became more exacting, captious, and stern. Hardly
consciously, more probably through habit, he relied on his usual
influence, intimidating the thought and subduing the will, which rarely
betrayed him.
Once Liubka complained about him to Lichonin:
“He’s too strict with me, now, Vassil Vassilievich; and I don’t
understand anything he says, and I don’t want to take lessons with him
any more.”
Somehow or other, Lichonin lamely quieted her down; but still he had an
explanation with Simanovsky. The other answered him with sang froid:
“Just as you wish, my dear fellow; if my method displeases you or
Liubka, then I’m even ready to resign. My problem consists only of
bringing in a genuine element of discipline into her education. If she
does not understand anything, then I compel her to learn it by heart,
aloud. With time this will cease. That is unavoidable. Recall,
Lichonin, how difficult the transition from arithmetic to algebra was
for us, when we were compelled to replace common numerals with letters,
and did not know why this was done. Or why did they teach us grammar,
instead of simply advising us to write tales and verses?”
And on the very next day, bending down low under the hanging shade of
the lamp over Liubka’s body, and sniffing all over her breast and under
her arm pits, he was saying to her:
“Draw a triangle... Well, yes, this way and this way. On top I write
‘Love.’ Write simply the letter L, and below M and W. That will be: the
Love of Man and Woman.”
With the air of an oracle, unshakable and austere, he spoke all sorts
of erotic balderdash and almost unexpectedly concluded:
“And so look, Liuba. The desire to love—it’s the same as the desire to
eat, to drink, and to breathe the air.” He would squeeze her thigh
hard, considerably above the knee; and she again, becoming confused and
not wishing to offend him, would try almost imperceptibly to move her
leg away gradually.
“Tell me, would it be offensive, now, for your sister, mother, or for
your husband, that you by chance had not dined at home, but had gone
into a restaurant or a cook-shop, and had there satisfied your hunger?
And so with love. No more, no less. A physiological enjoyment. Perhaps
more powerful, more keen, than all others, but that’s all. Thus, for
example, now: I want you as a woman. While you ...”
“Oh, drop it, Mister,” Liubka cut him short with vexation. “Well, what
are you harping on one and the same thing for all the time? Change your
act. You’ve been told: no and no. Don’t you think I see what you’re
trying to get at? But only I’ll never agree to unfaithfulness, seeing
as how Vasilli Vasillievich is my benefactor, and I adore him with all
my soul... And you’re even pretty disgusting to me with your nonsense.”
Once he caused Liubka a great and scandalous hurt, and all because of
his theoretical first principles. As at the university they were
already for a long time talking about Lichonin’s having saved a girl
from such and such a house; and that now he is taken up with her moral
regeneration; that rumour, naturally, also reached the studying girls,
who frequented the student circles. And so, none other than Simanovsky
once brought to Liubka two female medicos, one historian, and one
beginning poetess, who, by the way, was already writing critical essays
as well. He introduced them in the most serious and fool-like manner.
“Here,” he said, stretching out his hand, now in the direction of the
guests, now of Liubka, “here, comrades, get acquainted. You, Liuba,
will find in them real friends, who will help you on your radiant path;
while you—comrades, Liza, Nadya, Sasha and Rachel—you will regard as
elder sisters a being who has just struggled out of that horrible
darkness into which the social structure places the modern woman.”
He spoke not exactly so, perhaps; but in any case, approximately in
that manner. Liubka turned red, extended her hand, with all the fingers
clumsily folded together, to the young ladies in coloured blouses and
in leather belts; regaled them with tea and jam; promptly helped them
with lights for cigarettes; but, despite all invitations, did not want
to sit down for anything. She would say: “Yes-ss, n-no, as you wish.”
And when one of the young ladies dropped a handkerchief on the floor,
she hurriedly made a dash to pick it up.
One of the maidens, red, stout, and with a bass voice, whose face, all
in all, consisted of only a pair of red cheeks, out of which
mirth-provokingly peeped out a hint at an upturned nose, and with a
pair of little black eyes, like tiny raisins, sparkling out of their
depths, was inspecting Liubka from head to feet, as though through an
imaginary lorgnette; directing over her a glance which said nothing,
but was contemptuous. “Why, I haven’t been getting anybody away from
her,” thought Liubka guiltily. But another was so tactless, that
she—perhaps for the first time for her, but the hundredth for
Liubka—began a conversation about: how had she happened upon the path
of prostitution? This was a bustling young lady, pale, very pretty,
ethereal; all in little light curls, with the air of a spoiled kitten
and even a little pink cat’s bow on her neck.
“But tell me, who was this scoundrel, now ... who was the first to ...
well, you understand? ...”
In the mind of Liubka quickly flashed the images of her former mates,
Jennka and Tamara, so proud, so brave and resourceful—oh, far brainier
than these maidens—and she, almost unexpectedly for herself, suddenly
said sharply:
“There was a lot of them. I’ve already forgotten. Kolka, Mitka,
Volodka, Serejka, Jorjik, Troshka, Petka, and also Kuzka and Guska with
a party. But why are you interested?”
“Why... no... that is, I ask as a person who fully sympathizes with
you.”
“But have you a lover?”
“Pardon me, I don’t understand what you’re saying. People, it’s time we
were going.”
“That is, what don’t you understand? Have you ever slept with a man?”
“Comrade Simanovsky, I had not presupposed that you would bring us to
such a person. Thank you. It was exceedingly charming of you!”
It was difficult for Liubka to surmount the first step. She was of
those natures which endure long, but tear loose rapidly; and she,
usually so timorous, was unrecognizable at this moment.
“But I know!” she was screaming in wrath. “I know, that you’re the very
same as I! But you have a papa, a mamma; you’re provided for, and if
you have to, then you’ll even commit abortion—many do so. But if you
were in my place, when there’s nothing to stuff your mouth with, and a
girlie doesn’t understand anything yet, because she can’t read or
write; while all around the men are shoving like he-dogs—then you’d be
in a sporting house too. It’s a shame to put on airs before a poor
girl—that’s what!”
Simanovsky, who had gotten into trouble, said a few general consolatory
words in a judicious bass, such as the noble fathers used in olden
comedies, and led his ladies off.
But he was fated to play one more very shameful, distressing, and final
role in the free life of Liubka. She had already complained to Lichonin
for a long time that the presence of Simanovsky was oppressive to her;
but Lichonin paid no attention to womanish trifles: the vacuous,
fictitious, wordy hypnosis of this man of commands was strong within
him. There are influences, to get rid of which is difficult, almost
impossible. On the other hand, he was already for a long time feeling
the burden of co-habitation with Liubka. Frequently he thought to
himself: “She is spoiling my life; I am growing common, foolish; I have
become dissolved in fool benevolence; it will end up in my marrying
her, entering the excise or the assay office, or getting in among
pedagogues; I’ll be taking bribes, will gossip, and become an
abominable provincial morel. And where are my dreams of the power of
thought, the beauty of life, of love and deeds for all humanity?” he
would say, at times even aloud, and pull his hair. And for that reason,
instead of attentively going into Liubka’s complaints, he would lose
his temper, yell, stamp his feet, and the patient, meek Liubka would
grow quiet and retire into the kitchen, to have a good cry there.
Now more and more frequently, after family quarrels, in the minutes of
reconciliation he would say to Liubka:
“My dear Liuba, you and I do not suit each other, comprehend that.
Look: here are a hundred roubles for you, ride home. Your relatives
will receive you as their own. Live there a while, look around you. I
will come for you after half a year; you’ll have become rested, and, of
course, all that’s filthy, nasty, that has been grafted upon you by the
city, will go away, will die off. And you’ll begin a new life
independently, without any assistance, alone and proud!”
But then, can anything be done with a woman who has come to love for
the first, and, of course, as it seems to her, for the last time? Can
she be convinced of the necessity for parting? Does logic exist for
her?
Always reverent before the firmness of the words and decisions of
Simanovsky, Lichonin, however, surmised and by instinct understood his
real relation to Liubka; and in his desire to free himself, to shake
off a chance load beyond his strength, he would catch himself in a
nasty little thought: “She pleases Simanovsky; and as for her, isn’t it
all the same if it’s he or I or a third? Guess I’ll make a clean breast
of it, explain things to him and yield Liubka up to him like a comrade.
But then, the fool won’t go. Will raise a rumpus.”
“Or just to come upon the two of them together, somehow,” he would
ponder further, “in some decisive pose... to raise a noise, make a
row... A noble gesture... a little money and... a getaway.”
He now frequently, for several days, would not return home; and
afterwards, having come, would undergo torturesome hours of feminine
interrogations, scenes, tears, even hysterical fits. Liubka would at
times watch him in secret, when he went out of the house; would stop
opposite the entrance that he went into, and for hours would await his
return in order to reproach him and to cry in the street. Not being
able to read, she intercepted his letters and, not daring to turn to
the aid of the prince or Soloviev, would save them up in her little
cupboard together with sugar, tea, lemon and all sorts of other trash.
She had even reached the stage when, in minutes of anger, she
threatened him with sulphuric acid.
“May the devil take her,” Lichonin would ponder during the minutes of
his crafty plans. “It’s all one, let there even be nothing between
them. But I’ll take and make a fearful scene for him, and her.”
And he would declaim to himself:
“Ah, so! ... I have warmed you in my bosom, and what do I see now? You
are paying me with black ingratitude. ... And you, my best comrade, you
have attempted my sole happiness! ... O, no, no, remain together; I go
hence with tears in my eyes. I see, that I am one too many! I do not
wish to oppose your love, etc., etc.”
And precisely these dreams, these hidden plans, such momentary, chance,
and, at bottom, vile ones—of those to which people later do not confess
to themselves—were suddenly fulfilled. It was the turn of Soloviev’s
lesson. To his great happiness, Liubka had at last read through almost
without faltering: “A good plough has Mikhey, and a good one has Sisoi
as well... a swallow... a swing ... the children love God...” And as a
reward for this Soloviev read aloud to her Of the Merchant Kalashnikov
and of Kiribeievich, Life-guardsman of Czar Ivan the Fourth. Liubka
from delight bounced in her armchair, clapped her hands. The beauty of
this monumental, heroic work had her in its grasp. But she did not have
a chance to express her impressions in full. Soloviev was hurrying to a
business appointment. And immediately, coming to meet Soloviev, having
barely exchanged greetings with him in the doorway, came Simanovsky.
Liubka’s face sadly lengthened and her lips pouted. For this pedantic
teacher and coarse male had become very repugnant to her of late.
This time he began a lecture on the theme that for man there exist no
laws, no rights, no duties, no honour, no vileness; and that man is a
quantity self-sufficient, independent of anyone and anything.
“It’s possible to be a God, possible to be an intestinal worm, a tape
worm—it’s all the same.”
He already wanted to pass on to the theory of amatory emotions; but, it
is to be regretted, he hurried a trifle from impatience: he embraced
Liubka, drew her to him and began to squeeze her roughly. “She’ll
become intoxicated from caressing. She’ll give in!” thought the
calculating Simanovsky. He sought to touch her mouth with his lips for
a kiss, but she screamed and snorted spit at him. All the assumed
delicacy had left her.
“Get out, you mangy devil, fool, swine, dirt! I’ll smash your snout for
you! ...”
All the lexicon of the establishment had come back to her; but
Simanovsky, having lost his pince-nez, his face distorted, was looking
at her with blurred eyes and jabbering whatever came into his head:
“My dear ... It’s all the same ... a second of enjoyment! ... You and I
will blend in enjoyment! ... No one will find out! ... Be mine! ...”
It was just at this very minute that Lichonin walked into the room.
Of course, at soul he did not admit to himself that this minute he
would commit a vileness; but only somehow from the side, at a distance,
reflected that his face was pale, and that his immediate words would be
tragic and of great significance.
“Yes!” he said dully, like an actor in the fourth act of a drama; and,
letting his hands drop impotently, began to shake his chin, which had
fallen upon his breast. “I expected everything, only not this. You I
excuse, Liuba—you are a cave being; but you, Simanovsky ... I esteemed
you ... however, I still esteem you a decent man. But I know, that
passion is at times stronger than the arguments of reason. Right here
are fifty roubles—I am leaving them for Liuba; you, of course, will
return them to me later, I have no doubt of that. Arrange her destiny
... You are a wise, kind, honest man, while I am ... (“A skunk!”
somebody’s distinct voice flashed through his head.) I am going away,
because I will not be able to bear this torture any more. Be happy.”
He snatched out of his pocket and with effect threw his wallet on the
table; then seized his hair and ran out of the room.
Still, this was the best way out for him. And the scene had been played
out precisely as he had dreamt of it.
PART THREE
CHAPTER I.
All this Liubka told at length and disjointedly, sobbing on Jennka’s
shoulder. Of course, in her personal elucidation this tragi-comical
history proved altogether unlike what it had been in reality.
Lichonin, according to her words, had taken her to him only to entice,
to tempt her; to have as much use as possible out of her foolishness,
and then to abandon her. But she, the fool, had in truth fallen in
love—with him, and since she was very jealous about him and all these
tousled girls in leather belts, he had done a low-down thing: had sent
up his comrade on purpose, had framed it up with him, and the other had
begun to hug Liubka, and Vasska came in, saw it, and kicked up a great
row, and chased Liubka out into the street.
Of course, in her version there were two almost equal parts of truth
and untruth; but so, at least, all this had appeared to her.
She also told with great details how, having found herself without
masculine support or without anybody’s powerful extraneous influence,
she had hired a room In a rather bad little hotel, on a retired street;
how even from the first day the boots, a tough bird, a hard-boiled egg,
had attempted to trade in her, without even having and Vasska came in,
saw it, and kicked up a great row, the hotel to a private room, but
even there had been overtaken by an experienced old woman go-between,
with whose like the houses inhabited by poverty swarm.
Therefore, even with quiet living, there was in the face, in the
conversation, and in the entire manner of Liubka something peculiar,
specific to the casual eye; perhaps even entirely imperceptible, but
for the business scent as plain and as irrefutable as the day.
But the chance, brief, sincere love had given her the strength to
oppose the inevitability of a second fall. In her heroic courage she
even went so far as putting in a few notices in the newspapers, that
she was seeking a place with “all found.” However, she had no
recommendation of any sort. In addition, she had to do exclusively with
women when it came to the hiring; and they also, with some sort of an
inner, infallible instinct, surmised in her their ancient foe—the
seductress of their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons.
There was neither sense nor use in going home. Her native Vassilkovsky
district is distant only fifteen versts from the state capital; and the
rumour that she had entered that sort of an establishment had long
since penetrated, by means of her fellow-villagers, into the village.
This was written of in letters, and transmitted verbally, by those
village neighbours who had seen her both on the street and at Anna
Markovna’s place itself—porters and bell-hops of hotels, waiters at
small restaurants, cabbies, small contractors. She knew what odour this
fame would give off if she were to return to her native haunts. It were
better to hang one’s self than to endure this.
She was as uneconomical and impractical in money matters as a
five-year-old child, and in a short while was left without a kopeck;
while to go back to the brothel was fearful and shameful. But the
temptations of street prostitution turned up of themselves, and at
every step begged to be seized. In the evenings, on the main street,
old hardened street prostitutes at once unerringly guessed her former
profession. Ever and anon one of them, having come alongside of her,
would begin in a sweet, ingratiating voice:
“How is it, young lady, that you’re walking alone? Let’s be mates.
Let’s walk together. That’s always more convenient. Whenever men want
to pass the time pleasantly with girls, they always love to start a
party of four.”
And right here the experienced, tried recruiting agent, at first
casually, but after that warmly, with all her heart, would begin to
praise up all the conveniences of living at your own landlady’s—the
tasty food, full freedom of going out, the possibility of always
concealing from the landlady of your rooms the surplus over the agreed
pay. Here also much of the malicious and the offensive was said, by the
way, against the women of the private houses, who were called
“government hides,” “government stuff,” “genteel maidens” and
“institutes.” Liubka knew the value of these sneers, because the
dwellers in brothels also bear themselves with the greatest contempt
toward street prostitutes, calling them “bimmies” and “venereals.”
To be sure, in the very end that happened which had to happen. Seeing
in perspective a whole series of hungry days, and in the very depth of
them the dark horror of an unknown future, Liubka consented to a very
civil invitation of some respectable little old man; important,
grayish, well-dressed and correct. For this ignominy Liubka received a
rouble, but did not dare to protest: the previous life in the house had
entirely eaten away her personal initiative, mobility and energy.
Later, several times running, he even did not pay her anything at all.
One young man, easy of manner and handsome, in a cap with a flattened
brim, put on at a brave slant over one ear, in a silk blouse, girdled
by a cord with tassels, also led her with him into a hotel, asked for
wine and a snack; for a long time lied to Liubka about his being an
earl’s son on the wrong side of the blanket, and that he was the first
billiardist in the whole city; that all the wenches like him and that
he would make a swell Jane out of Liubka as well. Then he went out of
the room for just one minute, as though on business of his own, and
vanished forever. The stern, cross-eyed porter beat her with
contentment, long, in silence, with a business-like air; breathing hard
and covering up Liubka’s mouth with his hand. But in the end, having
become convinced, probably, that the fault was not hers, but the
guest’s, he took her purse, in which was a rouble with some small
change, away from her; and took as security her rather cheap little hat
and small outer jacket.
Another man of forty-five years, not at all badly dressed, having
tortured the girl for some two hours, paid for the room and gave her 80
kopecks; but when she started to complain, he with a ferocious face put
an enormous red-haired fist up to her very nose, the first thing, and
said decisively:
“You just snivel a bit more to me... I’ll snivel you... I’ll yell for
the police, now, and say that you robbed me when I was sleeping. Want
me to? Is it long since you’ve been in a station house?”
And went away.
And of such cases there were many.
On that day, when her landlords—a boatman and his wife—had refused to
let her have a room and just simply threw her things out into the yard;
and when she had wandered the night through on the streets, without
sleep, under the rain, hiding from the policemen—only then, with
aversion and shame, did she resolve to turn to Lichonin’s aid. But
Lichonin was no longer in town pusillanimously, he had gone away the
very same day when the unjustly wronged and disgraced Liubka had run
away from the flat. And it was in the morning that there came into her
head the desperate thought of returning into the brothel and begging
forgiveness there.
“Jennechka, you’re so clever, so brave, so kind; beg Emma Edwardovna
for me—the little housekeeper will listen to you,” she implored Jennka
and kissed her bare shoulders and wetted them with tears.
“She won’t listen to anybody,” gloomily answered Jennka. “And you did
have to tie up with a fool and a low-down fellow like that.”
“Jennechka, but you yourself advised me to,” timidly retorted Liubka.
“I advised you? ... I didn’t advise you anything. What are you lying on
me for, just as though I was dead... Well, all right then—let’s go.”
Emma Edwardovna had already known for a long while about the return of
Liubka; and had even seen her at that moment when she had passed
through the yard of the house, looking all around her. At soul she was
not at all against taking Liubka back. It must be said, that she had
even let her go only because she had been tempted by the money,
one-half of which she had appropriated for herself. And in addition to
that, she had reckoned that with the present seasonal influx of new
prostitutes she would have a large choice; in which, however, she had
made a mistake, because the season had terminated abruptly. But in any
case, she had firmly resolved to take Liubka. Only it was necessary,
for the preservation and rounding out of prestige, to give her a scare
befittingly.
“Wha-at?” she began to yell at Liubka, scarcely having heard her out,
babbling in confusion. “You want to be taken on again? ... You wallowed
the devil knows with whom in the streets, under the fences; and now,
you scum, you’re again shoving your way into a respectable, decent
establishment! ... Pfui, you Russian swine! Out! ...”
Liubka was catching her hands, aiming to kiss them, but the housekeeper
roughly snatched them away. Then, suddenly paling, with a distorted
face, biting her trembling, twisted lower lip, Emma calculatingly and
with good aim struck Liubka on her cheek, with all her might; from
which the other went down on her knees, but got up right away, gasping
for breath and stammering from the sobs.
“Darlingest, don’t beat me... Oh my dear, don’t beat me...”
And again fell down, this time flat upon the floor.
And this systematic, malignant slaughter, in cold blood, continued for
some two minutes. Jennka, who had at first been looking on with her
customary malicious, disdainful air, suddenly could not stand it; she
began to squeal savagely, threw herself upon the housekeeper, clutched
her by the hair, tore off her chignon and began to vociferate in a real
hysterical fit:
“Fool! ... Murderer! ... Low-down go-between! ... Thief! ...”
All the three women vociferated together, and at once enraged wails
resounded through all the corridors and rooms of the establishment.
This was that general fit of grand hysterics, which takes possession of
those confined in prisons, or that elemental insanity (raptus), which
envelops unexpectedly and epidemically an entire lunatic asylum, from
which even experienced psychiatrists grow pale.
Only after the lapse of an hour was order restored by Simeon and two
comrades by profession who had come to his aid. All the thirteen girls
got it hot; but Jennka, who had gone into a real frenzy, more than the
others. The beaten-up Liubka kept on crawling before the housekeeper
until she was taken back. She knew that Jennka’s outbreak would sooner
or later be reflected upon her in a cruel repayment. Jennka sat on her
bed until the very night, her legs crossed Turkish fashion; refused
dinner, and chased out all her mates who went in to her. Her eye was
bruised, and she assiduously applied a five-kopeck copper to it. From
underneath the torn shirt a long, transversal scratch reddened on the
neck, just like a mark from a rope. That was where Simeon had torn off
her skin in the struggle. She sat thus, alone, with eyes that glowed in
the dark like a wild beast’s, with distended nostrils, with
spasmodically moving cheek-bones, and whispered wrathfully:
“Just you wait... Watch out, you damned things—I’ll show you... You’ll
see yet... Ooh-ooh, you man-eaters...”
But when the lights had been lit, and the junior housekeeper, Zociya,
knocked on her door with the words: “Miss, get dressed! ... Into the
drawing room!” she rapidly washed herself, dressed, put some powder on
the bruise, smeared the scratch over with CREME DE SIMON and pink
powder, and went out into the drawing room, pitiful but proud;
beaten-up, but her eyes flaming with an unbearable wrathfulness and a
beauty not human.
Many people, who have happened to see suicides a few hours before their
horrible death, say that in their visages in those fateful hours before
death they have noticed some enigmatic, mysterious, incomprehensible
allurement. And all who saw Jennka on this night, and on the next day
for a few hours, for long, intently and in wonder, kept their gaze upon
her.
And strangest of all (this was one of the sombre wiles of fate) was the
fact that the indirect culprit of her death, the last grain of sand
which draws down the pan of the scales, appeared none other than the
dear, most kind, military cadet Kolya Gladishev.
CHAPTER II.
Kolya Gladishev was a fine, merry, bashful young lad, with a large
head; pink-cheeked, with a funny little white, bent line, as though
from milk, upon his upper lip, under the light down of the moustache,
sprouting through for the first time; with gray, naive eyes, placed far
apart; and so closely cropped, that from underneath his flaxen little
bristles the skin glistened through, just as with a thoroughbred
Yorkshire suckling pig. It was precisely he with whom Jennka during the
past winter had played either at maternal relations, or at dolls; and
thrust upon him a little apple or a couple of bon-bons on his way, when
he would be going away from the house of ill repute, squirming from
shame.
This time, when he came, there could at once be felt in him, after long
living in camps, that rapid change in age, which so often imperceptibly
and rapidly transforms a boy into a youth. He had already finished the
cadet academy and with pride counted himself a junker; although he
still walked around in a cadet’s uniform, with aversion. He had grown
taller, had become better formed and more adroit; the camp life had
done him good. He spoke in a bass, and during these months to his most
great pride the nipples of his breast had hardened; the most
important—he already knew about this—and undeniable sign of virile
maturity. Now, in the meanwhile, until the eyes-front severities of a
military school, he had a period of alluring freedom. Already he was
permitted to smoke at home, in the presence of grown-ups; and even his
father had himself presented him with a leather cigar case with his
monogram, and also, in the elevation of family joy, had assigned him
fifteen roubles monthly salary.
And it was just here—at Anna Markovna’s—that he had come to know woman
for the first time—the very same Jennka.
The fall of innocent souls in houses of ill-fame, or with street
solitaries, is fulfilled far more frequently than it is usually
thought. When not green youths only, but even honourable men of fifty,
almost grandfathers, are interrogated about this ticklish matter, they
will tell you, sure enough, the ancient stencilled lie of how they had
been seduced by a chambermaid or a governess. But this is one of those
lingering, queer lies, going back into the depth of past decades, which
are almost never noticed by a single one of the professional observers,
and in any case are not described by any one.
If each one of us will try, to put it pompously, to put his hand on his
heart, then every one will catch himself in the fact, that having once
in childhood said some sort of boastful or touching fiction, which had
success, and having repeated it for that reason two and five and ten
times more—he afterwards cannot get rid of it all his life, and repeats
with entire firmness by now a history which had never been; a firmness
such that in the very end he believes the story. With time Kolya also
narrated to his comrades how his aunt once removed, a young woman of
the world had seduced him. It must be said, however, that the intimate
proximity to this lady—a large, dark-eyed, white faced, sweetly
fragrant southern woman—did really exist; but existed only in Kolya’s
imagination, in those sad, tragic and timid minutes of solitary sexual
enjoyments, through which pass if not a hundred percent of all men,
then ninety-nine, in any case.
Having experienced mechanical sexual excitements very early,
approximately since nine or nine years and a half, Kolya did not at all
have the least understanding of the significance of that end of being
in love or of courtship, which is so horrible on the face of it, if it
be looked at impartially, or if it be explained scientifically.
Unfortunately, there was at that time near him not a one of the present
progressive and learned ladies who, having turned away the neck of the
classic stork, and torn up by the roots the cabbage underneath which
children are found, recommend that the great mystery of love and
generation be explained to children in lectures, through comparisons
and assimilations, mercilessly and in a well-nigh graphic manner.
It must be said, that at that remote time of which we are speaking, the
private institutions—male PENSIONS and institutes, as well as academies
for cadets—represented some sort of hot-house nurseries. The care of
the mind and morality they tried to entrust as much as possible to
educators who were bureaucrats-formalists; and in addition impatient,
captious, capricious in their sympathies and hysterical, just like old
maid lady teachers. Now it is otherwise. But at that time the boys were
left to themselves. Barely snatched away, speaking figuratively, from
the maternal breast; from the care of devoted nurses; from morning and
evening caresses, quiet and sweet; even though they were ashamed of
every manifestation of tenderness as “womanishness,” they were still
irresistibly and sweetly drawn to kisses, contacts, conversations
whispered in the ear.
Of course, attentive, solicitous treatment, bathing, exercises in the
open air—precisely not gymnastics, but voluntary exercises, each to his
own taste—could have always put off the coming of this climacteric
period or soften and make it understandable.
I repeat—then there was nothing of this.
The longing for family endearment, the endearment of mother, sister,
nurse, so roughly and unexpectedly cut short, turned into deformed
forms of courting (every whit like the “crushes” in a female institute)
of good-looking boys, of “fairies”; they loved to whisper in corners
and, walking arm in arm, or embracing in dark corridors, to tell in
each other’s ears improbable histories of adventures with women. This
was partly both childhood’s need of the fairy-tale element and partly
awakening sensuality as well. Not infrequently some fifteen-year-old
chubby, for whom it was just the proper time to be playing at popular
tennis or to be greedily putting away buckwheat porridge with milk,
would be telling, having read up, of course, on certain cheap novels,
of how every Saturday, now, when it is leave, he goes to a certain,
handsome widow millionairess; and of how she is passionately enamored
of him; and how near their couch always stand fruits and precious wine;
and how furiously and passionately she makes love to him.
Here, by the bye, came along the inevitable run of prolonged reading,
like hard drinking, which, of course, every boy and girl has undergone.
No matter how strict in this respect the class surveillance may be, the
striplings did read, are reading, and will read just that which is not
permitted them. Here is a special passion, CHIC, the allurement of the
forbidden. Already in the third class went from hand to hand the
manuscript transcripts of Barkov; of a spurious Pushkin; the youthful
sins of Lermontov and others: “THE FIRST NIGHT,” “THE CHERRY,” “LUCAS,”
“THE FESTIVAL AT PETERHOF,” “THE SHE UHLAN, GRIEF THROUGH WISDOM,” “THE
PRIEST,” &c.
But no matter how strange, fictitious or paradoxical this may seem,
still, even these compositions, and drawings, and obscene photographic
cards, did not arouse a delightful curiosity. They were looked upon as
a prank, a lark, and the allurement of contraband risk. In the cadets’
library were chaste excerpts from Pushkin and Lermontov; all of
Ostrovsky, who only made you laugh; and almost all of Turgenev, who was
the very one that played a chief and cruel role in Kolya’s life. As it
is known, love with the late great Turgenev is always surrounded with a
tantalizing veil; some sort of crepe, unseizable, forbidden, but
tempting: his maidens have forebodings of love and are agitated at its
approach, and are ashamed beyond all measure, and tremble, and turn
red. Married women or widows travel this tortuous path somewhat
differently: they struggle for a long time with their duty, or with
respectability, or with the opinion of the world; and, in the
end—oh!—fall with tears; or—oh!—begin to brave it; or, which is still
more frequent, the implacable fate cuts short her or his life at the
most—oh!—necessary moment, when it only lacks a light puff of wind for
the ripened fruit to fall. And yet all of his personages still thirst
after this shameful love; weep radiantly and laugh joyously from it;
and it shuts out all the world for them. But since boys think entirely
differently than we grown-ups, and since everything that is forbidden,
everything not said fully, or said in secret, has in their eyes an
enormous, not only twofold but threefold interest—it is therefore
natural that out of reading they drew the hazy thought that the
grown-ups were concealing something from them.
And it must be mentioned—had not Kolya (like the majority of those of
his age) seen the chambermaid Phrociya—so rosy-cheeked, always merry,
with legs of the hardness of steel (at times he, in the heat of
playing, had slapped her on the back), had he not seen her once, when
Kolya had by accident walked quickly into papa’s cabinet, scurry out of
there with all her might, covering her face with her apron; and had he
not seen that during this time papa’s face was red, with a dark blue,
seemingly lengthened nose? And Kolya had reflected: “Papa looks like a
turkey.” Had not Kolya—partly through the fondness for pranks and the
mischievousness natural to all boys, partly through tedium—accidentally
discovered in an unlocked drawer of papa’s writing table an enormous
collection of cards, whereon was represented just that which shop
clerks call the crowning of love, and worldly nincompoops—the unearthly
passion?
And had he not seen, that every time before the visit of the
sweet-scented and bestarched Paul Edwardovich, some ninny with some
embassy, with whom mamma, in imitation of the fashionable St.
Petersburg promenades to the Strelka, used to ride to the Dnieper to
contemplate the sun setting on the other side of the river, in the
Chernigovskaya district—had he not seen how mamma’s bosom went, and how
her cheeks glowed under the powder; had he not detected at these
moments many new and strange things; had he not heard her voice, an
altogether unknown voice, like an actor’s; nervously breaking off,
mercilessly malicious to those of the family and the servants, and
suddenly soft, like velvet, like a green meadow under the sun, when
Paul Edwardovich would arrive? Ah, if we people who have been made wise
by experience would know how much, and even too much, the urchins and
little girls surrounding us know, of whom we usually say:
“Well, why mind Volodya (or Petie, or Katie)? ... Why, they are little.
They don’t understand anything! ...”
So also not in vain passed for Gladishev the history of his elder
brother, who had just come out of a military school into one of the
conspicuous grenadier regiments; and, being on leave until such time
when it would be possible for him to spread his wings, lived in two
separate rooms with his family. At that time Niusha, a chambermaid, was
in their service; at times they jestingly called her signorita Anita—a
seductive black-haired girl, who, if she were to change costumes, could
in appearance be taken for a dramatic actress, or a princess of the
royal blood, or a political worker. Kolya’s mother manifestly
countenanced the fact that Kolya’s brother, half in jest, half in
earnest, was allured by this girl. Of course, she had only the sole,
holy, maternal calculation: If it were destined, after all, for her
Borenka to fall, then let him give his purity, his innocence, his first
physical inclination, not to a prostitute, not to a street-walker, not
to a seeker of adventures, but to a pure girl. Of course, only a
disinterested, unreasoning, truly-maternal feeling guided her. Kolya at
that time was living through the epoch of llanos, pampases, Apaches,
track-finders, and a chief by the name of “Black Panther”; and, of
course, attentively kept track of the romance of his brother, and made
his own syllogisms; at times only too correct, at times fantastic.
After six months, from behind a door, he was the witness—or more
correctly the auditor—of an outrageous scene. The wife of the general,
always so respectable and restrained, was yelling in her boudoir at
signorita Anita, and cursing in the words of a cab-driver: the
signorita was in the fifth month of pregnancy. If she had not cried,
then, probably, they would simply have given her smart-money, and she
would have gone away in peace; but she was in love with the young
master, did not demand anything, and for that reason they drove her
away with the aid of the police.
In the fifth or sixth class many of Kolya’s comrades had already tasted
of the tree of knowledge of evil. At that time it was considered in
their corpus an especial, boastful masculine chic to call all secret
things by their own names. Arkasha Shkar contracted a disease, not
dangerous, but still venereal; and he became for three whole months the
object of worship of all the seniors—at that time there were no squads
yet. And many of them visited brothels; and, really, about their sprees
they spoke far more handsomely and broadly than the hussars of the time
of Denis Davidov.[23] These debauches were esteemed by them the last
word in valour and maturity.
[23] A Russian ban vivant, wit and poet (1781-1839), the overwhelming
majority of whose lyrics deals with military exploits and
debauches.—Trans.
And so it happened once, that they did not exactly persuade Gladishev
to go to Anna Markovna, but rather he himself had begged to go, so
weakly had he resisted temptation. This evening he always recalled with
horror, with aversion; and dimly, just like some heavy dream. With
difficulty he recalled, how in the cab, to get up courage, he had drunk
rum, revoltingly smelling of real bedbugs; how qualmish this beastly
drink made him feel; how he had walked into the big hall, where the
lights of the lustres and the candelabra on the walls were turning
round in fiery wheels; where the women moved as fantastic pink, blue,
violet splotches, and the whiteness of their necks, bosoms and arms
flashed with a blinding, spicy, victorious splendour. Some one of the
comrades whispered something in the ear of one of these fantastic
figures. She ran up to Kolya and said:
“Listen, you good-looking little cadet, your comrades are saying, now,
that you’re still innocent ... Let’s go ... I’ll teach you everything.”
The phrase was said in a kindly manner; but this phrase the walls of
Anna Markovna’s establishment had already heard several thousand times.
Further, that took place which it was so difficult and painful to
recall, that in the middle of his recollections Kolya grew tired, and
with an effort of the will turned back the imagination to something
else. He only remembered dimly the revolving and spreading circles from
the light of the lamp; persistent kisses; disconcerting contacts—then a
sudden sharp pain, from which one wanted both to die in enjoyment and
to cry out in terror; and then with wonder he saw his pale shaking
hands, which could not, somehow, button his clothes.
Of course, all men have experienced this primordial tristia post
coitus; but this great moral pain, very serious in its significance and
depth, passes very rapidly, remaining, however, with the majority for a
long time—sometimes for all life—in the form of wearisomeness and
awkwardness after certain moments. In a short while Kolya became
accustomed to it; grew bolder, became familiarized with woman, and
rejoiced very much over the fact that when he came into the
establishment, all the girls, and Verka before all, would call out:
“Jennechka, your lover has come!”
It was pleasant, in relating this to his comrades, to be plucking at an
imaginary moustache.
CHAPTER III.
It was still early—about nine—of a rainy August evening. The
illuminated drawing room in the house of Anna Markovna was almost
empty. Only near the very doors a young telegraph clerk was sitting,
his legs shyly and awkwardly squeezed under his chair, and was trying
to start with the thick-fleshed Katie that worldly, unconstrained
conversation which is laid down as the proper thing in polite society
at quadrille, during the intermissions between the figures of the
dance. And, also, the long-legged, aged Roly-Poly wandered over the
room, sitting down now next one girl, now another, and entertaining
them all with his fluent chatter.
When Kolya Gladishev walked into the front hall, the first to recognize
him was the round-eyed Verka, dressed in her usual jockey costume. She
began to twirl round and round, to clap her palms, and called out:
“Jennka, Jennka, come quicker, your little lover has come to you ...
The little cadet ... And what a handsome little fellow!”
But Jennka was not in the drawing room at this time; a stout
head-conductor had already managed to get hold of her.
This elderly, sedate, and majestic man was a very convenient guest,
because he never lingered in the house for more than twenty minutes,
fearing to let his train go by; and, even so, glanced at his watch all
the while. During this time he regularly drank down four bottles of
beer, and, going away, infallibly gave the girl half a rouble for candy
and Simeon twenty kopecks for drink-money.
Kolya Gladishev was not alone, but with a comrade of the same school,
Petrov, who was stepping over the threshold of a brothel for the first
time, having given in to the tempting persuasions of Gladishev.
Probably, during these minutes, he found himself in the same wild,
absurd, feverish state which Kolya himself had gone through a year and
a half ago, when his legs had shook, his mouth had grown dry, and the
lights of the lamps had danced before him in revolving wheels.
Simeon took their great-coats from them and hid them separately, on the
side, that the shoulder straps and the buttons might not be seen.
It must be said, that this stern man, who did not approve of students
because of their free-and-easy facetiousness and incomprehensible style
in conversation, also did not like when just such boys in uniform
appeared in the establishment.
“Well, what’s the good of it?” he would at times say sombrely to his
colleagues by profession. “What if a whippersnapper like that comes,
and runs right up nose to nose against his superiors? Smash, and
they’ve closed up the establishment! There, like Lupendikha’s three
years back. Of course, it’s nothing that they closed it up—she
transferred it in another name right off; and when they sentenced her
to sit in jail for a year and a half, why, it came to a pre-etty penny
for her. She had to shell out four hundred for Kerbesh alone ... And
then it also happens: a little pig of that kind will cook up some sort
of disease for himself and start in whining: ‘Oh, papa! Oh, mamma! I am
dying!’ ‘Tell me, you skunk, where you got it?’ ‘There and there ...’
Well, and so they haul you over the coals again; judge me, thou
unrighteous judge!”
“Pass on, pass on,” said he to the cadets sternly.
The cadets entered, blinking from the bright light. Petrov, who had
been drinking to get up courage, swayed and was pale. They sat down
beneath the picture of the Feast of the Russian Noblemen, and
immediately two of the young ladies—Verka and Tamara—joined them on
both sides.
“Treat me to a smoke, you beautiful little brunet!” Verka turned to
Petrov; and as though by accident put against his leg her strong, warm
thigh, closely drawn over with white tights. “What an agreeable little
fellow you are!”
“But where’s Jennie?” Gladishev asked of Tamara. “Is she busy with
anybody?”
Tamara looked him in the eyes intently—looked so fixedly, that the boy
even began to feel uncomfortable, and turned away.
“No. Why should she be busy? Only the whole day to-day her head ached;
she was walking through the corridor, and at that time the housekeeper
opened the door quickly and accidentally struck her in the forehead—and
so her head started in to ache. The poor thing, she’s lying the whole
day with a cold pack. But why? Or can’t you hold out? Wait a while,
she’ll come out in five minutes. You’ll remain very much satisfied with
her.”
Verka pestered Petrov:
“Sweetie, dearie, what a tootsie-wootsicums you are! I adore such pale
brunets; they are jealous and very fiery in love.”
And suddenly she started singing in a low voice:
“He’s kind of brown,
My light, my own,
Won’t sell me out, and won’t deceive.
He suffers madly,
Pants and coat gladly
All for a woman he will give.”
“How do they call you, ducky dear?”
“George,” answered Petrov in a hoarse, cadet’s bass.
“Jorjik Jorochka! Ah, how very nice!”
She suddenly drew near to his ear and whispered with a cunning face:
“Jorochka, come to me.”
Petrov was abashed and forlornly let out in a bass:
“I don’t know ... It all depends on what the comrade says, now...”
Verka burst into loud laughter:
“There’s a case for you! Say, what an infant it is! Such as you,
Jorochka, in a little village would long since have been married; but
he says: ‘It all depends on the comrade!’ You ought to ask a nurse or a
wet nurse yet! Tamara, my angel, just imagine: I’m calling him to go
sleeping, but he says: ‘It all depends on the comrade.’ What about you,
mister friend, are you his bringer up?”
“Don’t be pestering, you devil!” clumsily, altogether like a cadet
before a quarrel, grumbled out Petrov in a bass.
The lanky, ricketty Roly-Poly, grown still grayer, walked up to the
cadets, and, inclining his long, narrow head to one side, and having
made a touching grimace, began to patter:
“Messieurs cadets, highly educated young people; the flower, so to
speak, of the intelligentzia; future masters of ordnance, will you not
lend to a little old man, an aborigine of these herbiferous regions,
one good old cigarette? I be poor. Omnia mea mecum porto. But I do
adore the weed.”
And, having received a cigarette, suddenly, without delay, he got into
a free-and-easy, unconstrained pose; put forward the bent right leg,
put his hand to his side, and began to sing in a wizened falsetto:
“It used to be that I gave dinners,
In rivers flowed the champagne wine;
But now I have not even bread crusts,
Nor for a split, oh brother mine.
It used to be—in the Saratov
The doorman rushed, and was so fine;
But now all drive me in the neck,
Give for a split, oh brother mine.”
“Gentlemen!” suddenly exclaimed Roly-Poly with pathos, cutting short
his singing and smiting himself on the chest. “Here I behold you, and
know that you are the future generals Skobelev and Gurko; but I, too,
in a certain respect, am a military hound. In my time, when I was
studying for a forest ranger, all our department of woods and forests
was military; and for that reason, knocking at the diamond-studded,
golden doors of your hearts, I beg of you—donate toward the raising for
an ensign of taxation of a wee measure of spiritus vini, which same is
taken of the monks also.”
“Roly!” cried the stout Kitty from the other end, “show the young
officers the lightning; or else, look you, you’re taking the money only
for nothing, you good-for-nothing camel.”
“Right away!” merrily responded Roly-Poly. “Most illustrious
benefactors, turn your attention this way. Living Pictures. Thunder
Storm on a Summer Day in June. The work of the unrecognized
dramaturgist who concealed himself under the pseudonym of Roly-Poly.
The first picture.
“‘It was a splendid day in June. The scorching rays of the sun
illumined the blossoming meadows and environs ...’”
Roly-Poly’s Don Quixotic phiz spread into a wrinkled, sweetish smile;
and the eyes narrowed into half-circles.
“‘... But now in the distance the first clouds have appeared upon the
horizon. They grew, piled upon each other like crags, covering little
by little the blue vault of the sky.”
By degrees the smile was coming off Roly-Poly’s face, and it grew more
and more serious and austere.
“‘At last the clouds have overcast the sun ... An ominous darkness has
fallen ...’”
Roly-Poly made his physiognomy altogether ferocious.
“‘The first drops of the rain fell ...’”
Roly-Poly began to drum his fingers on the back of a chair.
“‘... In the distance flashed the first lightning ... ’”
Roly-Poly’s eye winked quickly, and the left corner of his mouth gave a
twitch.
“‘... Whereupon the rain began to pour down in torrents, and there came
a sudden, blinding flash of lightning...’”
And with unusual artistry and rapidity Roly-Poly, with a successive
movement of his eyebrows, eyes, nose, the upper and the lower lip,
portrayed a lightning zig-zag.
“‘... A jarring thunder clap burst out—trrroo-oo. An oak that had stood
through the ages fell down to earth, as though it were a frail reed
...’”
And Roly-Poly with an ease and daring not to be expected from one of
his years, bending neither the knees nor the back, only drawing down
his head, instantaneously fell down; straight, like a statue, with his
back to the floor, but at once deftly sprang up on his feet.
“‘But now the thunder storm is gradually abating. The lightning flashes
less and less often. The thunder sounds duller, just like a satiated
beast—oooooo-oooooo ... The clouds scurry away. The first rays of the
blessed sun have peeped out ...’”
Roly-Poly made a wry smile.
“‘... And now, the luminary of day has at last begun to shine anew over
the bathed earth ...’”
And the silliest of beatific smiles spread anew over the senile face of
Roly-Poly.
The cadets gave him a twenty-kopeck piece each. He laid them on his
palm, made a pass in the air with the other hand, said: ein, zwei,
drei, snapped two of his fingers, and the coins vanished.
“Tamarochka, this isn’t honest,” he said reproachfully. “Aren’t you
ashamed to take the last money from a poor retired almost-head-officer?
Why have you hidden them here?”
And, having snapped his fingers again, he drew the coins out of
Tamara’s ear.
“I shall return at once, don’t be bored without me,” he reassured the
young people; “but if you can’t wait for me, then I won’t have any
special pretensions about it. I have the honour! ...”
“Roly-Poly!” Little White Manka cried after him, “Won’t you buy me
candy for fifteen kopecks... Turkish Delight, fifteen kopecks’ worth.
There, grab!”
Roly-Poly neatly caught in its flight the thrown fifteen-kopeck piece;
made a comical curtsey and, pulling down the uniform cap with the green
edging at a slant over his eyes, vanished.
The tall, old Henrietta walked up to the cadets, also asked for a smoke
and, having yawned, said:
“If only you young people would dance a bit—for as it is the young
ladies sit and sit, just croaking from weariness.”
“If you please, if you please!” agreed Kolya. “Play a waltz and
something else of the sort.”
The musicians began to play. The girls started to whirl around with one
another, ceremoniously as usual, with stiffened backs and with eyes
modestly cast down.
Kolya Gladishev, who was very fond of dancing, could not hold out and
invited Tamara; he knew even from the previous winter that she danced
more lightly and skillfully than the rest. While he was twirling in the
waltz, the stout head-conductor, skillfully making his way between the
couples, slipped away unperceived through the drawing room. Kolya did
not have a chance to notice him.
No matter how Verka pressed Petrov, she could not, in any way, drag him
off his place. The recent light intoxication had by now gone entirely
out of his head; and more and more horrible, and unrealizable, and
monstrous did that for which he had come here seem to him. He might
have gone away, saying that not a one here pleased him; have put the
blame on a headache, or something; but he knew that Gladishev would not
let him go; and mainly—it seemed unbearably hard to get up from his
place and to walk a few steps by himself. And, besides that, he felt
that he had not the strength to start talking of this with Kolya.
They finished dancing. Tamara and Gladishev again sat down side by
side.
“Well, really, how is it that Jennechka isn’t coming by now?” asked
Kolya impatiently.
Tamara quickly gave Verka a look with a question, incomprehensible to
the uninitiated, in her eyes. Verka quickly lowered her eyelashes. This
signified: yes, he is gone.
“I’ll go right away and call her,” said Tamara.
“But what are you so stuck on your Jennka for,” said Henrietta. “You
might take me.”
“All right, another time,” answered Kolya and nervously began to smoke.
Jennka was not even beginning to dress yet. She was sitting before the
mirror and powdering her face.
“What is it, Tamarochka?” she asked.
“Your little cadet has come to you. He’s waiting.”
“Ah, that’s the little baby of last year... Well, the devil with him!”
“And that’s right, too. But how healthy and handsome the lad has grown,
and how tall... It’s a delight, that’s all! So if you don’t want to,
I’ll go myself.”
Tamara saw in the mirror how Jennka contracted her eyebrows.
“No, you wait a while, Tamara, don’t. I’ll see. Send him here to me.
Say that I’m not well, that my head aches.”
“I have already told him, anyway, that Zociya had opened the door
unsuccessfully and hit you on the head; and that you’re lying down with
a cold pack. But the only thing is, is it worth while, Jennechka?”
“Whether it’s worth while or not, that’s not your business, Tamara,”
answered Jennka rudely.
Tamara asked cautiously:
“Is it possible, then, that you aren’t at all, at all sorry?”
“But for me you aren’t sorry?” and she passed her hand over the red
stripe that slashed her throat. “And for yourself you aren’t sorry? And
not sorry for this Liubka, miserable as she is? And not sorry for
Pashka? You’re huckleberry jelly, and not a human being!”
Tamara smiled craftily and haughtily:
“No, when it comes to a real matter, I’m not jelly. Perhaps you’ll see
this soon, Jennechka. Only let’s better not quarrel—as it is it isn’t
any too sweet to live. All right, I’ll go at once and send him to you.”
When she had gone away, Jennka lowered the light in the little hanging
blue lantern, put on her night blouse, and lay down. A minute later
Gladishev walked in; and after him Tamara, dragging Petrov by the hand,
who resisted and kept his head down. And in the rear was thrust in the
pink, sharp, foxy little phiz of the cross-eyed housekeeper Zociya.
“And that’s fine, now,” the housekeeper commenced to bustle. “It’s just
sweet to look at; two handsome gents and two swell dames. A regular
bouquet. What shall I treat you with, young people? Will you order beer
or wine?”
Gladishev had a great deal of money in his pocket, as much as he never
had before during all his brief life—all of twenty-five roubles; and he
wanted to go on a splurge. Beer he drank only out of bravado, but could
not bear its bitter taste, and wondered himself how others could ever
drink it. And for that reason, squeamishly, like an old rake, sticking
out his lower lip, he said mistrustfully:
“But then, you surely must have some awful stuff?”
“What do you mean, what do you mean, good-looking! The very best
gentlemen approve of it. Of the sweet, there are Cagore, church wine,
Teneriffe; while of the French there’s Lafitte. You can get port wine
also. The girls just simply adore Lafitte with lemonade.”
“And what are the prices?”
“No dearer than money. As is the rule in all good establishments—a
bottle of Lafitte five roubles, four bottles of lemonade at a half
each, that’s two roubles, and only seven in all...”
“That’ll do you, Zociya,” Jennka stopped her indifferently, “it’s a
shame to take advantage of boys. Even five is enough. You can see these
are decent people, and not just anybody...”
But Gladishev turned red, and with a negligent air threw a ten rouble
note on the table.
“Oh, what’s the use of talking about it. All right, bring it.”
“Whilst I’m at it, I’ll take the money for the visit as well. What
about you, young people—are you on time or for the night? You know the
rates yourself: on time, at two roubles; for the night, at five.”
“All right, all right. On time,” interrupted Jennka, flaring up. “Trust
us in that, at least.”
The wine was brought. Tamara through importunity got pastry, besides.
Jennka asked for permission to call in Little White Manka. Jennka
herself did not drink, did not get up from the bed, and all the time
muffled herself up in a gray shawl of Orenburg[24] manufacture,
although it was hot in the room. She looked fixedly, without tearing
her eyes away, at the handsome, sunburned face of Gladishev, which had
become so manly.
[24] Orenburg has as high a reputation for woolens as Sheffield has for
steel.—Trans.
“What’s the matter with you, dearie?” asked Gladishev, sitting down on
her bed and stroking her hand.
“Nothing special... Head aches a little... I hit myself.”
“Well, don’t you pay any attention.”
“Well, here I’ve seen you, and already I feel better. How is it you
haven’t been here for so long?”
“I couldn’t snatch away the time, nohow-camping. You know yourself...
We had to put away twenty-five versts a day. The whole day drilling and
drilling: field, formation, garrison. With a full pack. Used to get so
fagged out from morning to night that towards evening you couldn’t feel
your legs under you... We were at the manoeuvres also... It isn’t
sweet...”
“Oh, you poor little things!” Little White Manka suddenly clasped her
hands. “And what do they torture you for, angels that you are? If I was
to have a brother like you, or a son—my heart would just simply bleed.
Here’s to your health, little cadet!”
They clinked glasses. Jennka was just as attentively scrutinizing
Gladishev.
“And you, Jennechka?” he asked, extending a glass.
“I don’t want to,” she answered listlessly, “but, however, ladies,
you’ve drunk some wine, chatted a bit—don’t wear the welcome off the
mat.”
“Perhaps you’ll stay with me the whole night?” she asked Gladishev,
when the others had gone away. “Don’t you be afraid, dearie; if you
won’t have enough money, I’ll pay the difference for you. You see, how
good-looking you are, that a wench does not grudge even money for you?”
she began laughing.
Gladishev turned around to her; even his unobserving ear was struck by
Jennka’s strange tone—neither sad, nor kindly, nor yet mocking.
“No, sweetie, I’d be very glad to; I’d like to remain myself, but I
can’t possibly; I promised to be home toward ten o’clock.”
“That’s nothing, dear, they’ll wait; you’re altogether a grown-up man
now. Is it possible that you have to listen to anybody? ... But,
however, as you wish. Shall I put out the light entirely, perhaps; or
is it all right the way it is? Which do you want—the outside or near
the wall?”
“It’s immaterial to me,” he answered in a quavering voice; and, having
embraced with his arm the hot, dry body of Jennka, he stretched with
his lips toward her face. She slightly repulsed him.
“Wait, bear a while, sweetheart—we have time enough to kiss our fill
yet. Just lie still for one little minute... So, now... quiet,
peaceful... don’t stir...”
These words, passionate and imperious, acted like hypnosis upon
Gladishev. He submitted to her and lay down on his back, putting his
hands underneath his head. She raised herself a little, leant upon her
elbow, and placing her head upon the bent hand, silently, in the faint
half-light, was looking his body over—so white, strong, muscular; with
a high and broad pectoral cavity; with well-made ribs; with a narrow
pelvis; and with mighty, bulging thighs. The dark tan of the face and
the upper half of the neck was divided by a sharp line from the
whiteness of the shoulders and breast.
Gladishev blinked for a second. It seemed to him that he was feeling
upon himself, upon his face, upon his entire body, this intensely fixed
gaze, which seemed to touch his face and tickle it, like the cobwebby
contact of a comb, which you first rub against a cloth—the sensation of
a thin, imponderous, living matter.
He opened his eyes and saw altogether near him the large, dark, uncanny
eyes of the woman, who seemed to him now an entire stranger.
“What are you looking at, Jennie?” he asked quietly. “What are you
thinking of?”
“My dear little boy! ...They call you Kolya: isn’t that so?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be angry at me, carry out a certain caprice of mine, please:
shut your eyes again... no, even tighter, tighter... I want to turn up
the light and have a good look at you. There now, so... If you only
knew how beautiful you are now... right now... this second. Later you
will become coarse, and you will begin giving off a goatish smell; but
now you give off an odour of fur and milk... and a little of some wild
flower. But shut them—shut your eyes!”
She added light, returned to her place, and sat down in her favourite
pose—Turkish fashion. Both kept silent. In the distance, several rooms
away, a broken-down grand piano was tinkling; somebody’s vibrating
laughter floated in; while from the other side—a little song, and
rapid, merry talking. The words could not be heard. A cabby was
rumbling by somewhere through the distant street...
“And now I will infect him right away, just like all the others,”
pondered Jennka, gliding with a deep gaze over his well-made legs, his
handsome torso of a future athlete, and over his arms, thrown back,
upon which, above the bend of the elbow, the muscles tautened—bulging,
firm. “Why, then, am I so sorry for him? Or is it because he is such a
good-looking little fellow? No. I am long since a stranger to such
feelings. Or is it because he is a boy? Why, only a little over a year
ago I shoved apples in his pocket, when he was going away from me at
night. Why have I not told him then that which, I can, and dare, tell
him now? Or would he not have believed me, anyway? Would have grown
angry? Would have gone to another? For sooner or later this turn awaits
every man... And that he bought me for money—can that be forgiven? Or
did he act just as all of them do—blindly? ...”
“Kolya!” she said quietly, “Open your eyes.”
He obeyed, opened his eyes, turned to her; entwined her neck with his
arm, drew her a little to him, and wanted to kiss her in the opening of
her chemise—on the breast. She again tenderly but commandingly repulsed
him.
“No, wait a while, wait a while—hear me out... one little minute more.
Tell me, boy, why do you come here to us—to the women?”
Kolya quietly and hoarsely began laughing.
“How silly you are! Well, what do they all come for? Am I not also a
man? For, it seems, I’m at that age when in every man ripens... well, a
certain need... for woman. For I’m not going to occupy myself with all
sorts of nastiness!”
“Need? Only need? That means, just as for that chamber which stands
under my bed?”
“No, why so?” retorted Kolya, with a kindly laugh. “I liked you very
much... From the very first time... If you will, I’m even... a little
in love with you... at least, I never stayed with any of the others.”
“Well, all right! But then, the first time, could it possibly have been
need?”
“No, perhaps, it wasn’t need even; but somehow, vaguely, I wanted
woman... My friends talked me into it... Many had already gone here
before me... So then, I too...”
“But, now, weren’t you ashamed the first time?”
Kolya became confused; all this interrogation was to him unpleasant,
oppressive. He felt, that this was not the empty, idle bed talk, so
well known to him, out of his small experience; but something else, of
more import.
“Let’s say... not that I was ashamed... well, but still I felt kind of
awkward. I drank that time to get up courage.”
Jennie again lay down on her side; leaned upon her elbow, and again
looked at him from time to time, near at hand and intently.
“But tell me, sweetie,” she asked, in a barely audible voice, so that
the cadet with difficulty made out her words, “tell me one thing more;
but the fact of your paying money, these filthy two roubles—do you
understand?—paying them for love, so that I might caress, kiss you,
give all my body to you—didn’t you feel ashamed to pay for that?
Never?”
“Oh, my God! What strange questions you put to me to-day! But then they
all pay money! Not I, then some one else would have paid—isn’t it all
the same to you?”
“And have you been in love with any one, Kolya? Confess! Well, now, if
not in real earnest, then just so... at soul... Have you done any
courting? Brought little flowers of some sort... Strolled arm-in-arm
with her under the moon? Wasn’t that so?”
“Well, yes,” said Koiya in a sedate bass. “What follies don’t happen in
one’s youth! It’s a matter anyone can understand...”
“Some sort of a little first cousin? An educated young lady? A boarding
school miss? A high school girl? ... There has been, hasn’t there?”
“Well, yes, of course—everybody has them.”
“Why, you wouldn’t have touched her, would you? ... You’d have spared
her? Well, if she had only said to you: take me, but only give me two
roubles—what would you have said to her?”
“I don’t understand you, Jennka!” Gladishev suddenly grew angry. “What
are you putting on airs for! What sort of comedy are you trying to put
over! Honest to God, I’ll dress myself at once and go away.”
“Wait a while, wait a while, Kolya! One more, one more, the last, the
very, very last question.”
“Oh, you!” growled Kolya displeased.
“And could you never imagine... well, imagine it right now, even for a
second... that your family has suddenly grown poor, become ruined.
You’d have to earn your bread by copying papers; or, now, let’s say,
through carpenter or blacksmith work; and your sister was to go wrong,
like all of us... yes, yes, yours, your own sister... if some blockhead
seduced her and she was to go travelling... from hand to hand... what
would you say then?”
“Bosh! ... That can’t be...” Kolya cut her short curtly. “But, however,
that’s enough—I’m going away!”
“Go away, do me that favour! I’ve ten roubles lying there, near the
mirror, in a little box from chocolates—take them for yourself. I don’t
need them, anyway. Buy with them a tortoise powder box with a gold
setting for your mamma; and if you have a little sister, buy her a good
doll. Say: in memory from a certain wench that died. Go on, little
boy!”
Kolya, with a frown, angry, with one shove of a well-knit body jumped
off the bed, almost without touching it. Now he was standing on the
little mat near the bed, naked, well-formed, splendid in all the
magnificence of his blooming, youthful body.
“Kolya!” Jennka called him quietly, insistently and caressingly.
“Kolechka!”
He turned around to her call, and drew in the air in a short, jerky
gust, as though he had gasped: he had never yet in his life met
anywhere, even in pictures, such a beautiful expression of tenderness,
sorrow, and womanly silent reproach, as the one he was just now
beholding in the eyes of Jennka, filled with tears. He sat down on the
edge of the bed, and impulsively embraced her around the bared, swarthy
arms.
“Let’s not quarrel, then, Jennechka,” he said tenderly.
And she twined herself around him, placed her arms on his neck, while
her head she pressed against his breast. They kept silent so for
several seconds.
“Kolya,” Jennie suddenly asked dully, “but were you never afraid of
becoming infected?”
Kolya shivered. Some chill, loathsome horror stirred and glided through
within his soul. He did not answer at once.
“Of course, that would be horrible... horrible... God save me! But then
I go only to you alone, only to you! You’d surely have told me? ...”
“Yes, I’d have told you,” she uttered meditatively. And at once
rapidly, consciously, as though having weighed the significance of her
words: “Yes, of course, of course, I would have told you! But haven’t
you ever heard what sort of a thing is that disease called syphilis?”
“Of course, I’ve heard... The nose falls through...”
“No, Kolya, not only the nose! The person becomes all diseased: his
bones, sinews, brains grow diseased... Some doctors say such nonsense
as that it’s possible to be cured of this disease. Bosh! You’ll never
cure yourself! A person rots ten, twenty, thirty years. Every second
paralysis can strike him down, so that the right side of the face, the
right arm, the right leg die—it isn’t a human being that’s living, but
some sort of a little half. Half-man-half-corpse. The majority of them
go out of their minds. And each understands... every person... each one
so infected understands, that if he eats, drinks, kisses, simply even
breathes—he can’t be sure that he won’t immediately infect some one of
those around him, the very nearest—sister, wife, son... To all
syphilitics the children are born monsters, abortions, goitrous,
consumptives, idiots. There, Kolya, is what this disease means. And
now,” Jennka suddenly straightened up quickly, seized Kolya fast by his
bare shoulders, turned his face to her, so that he was almost blinded
by the flashing of her sorrowful, sombre, extraordinary eyes, “and now,
Kolya, I will tell you that for more than a month I am sick with this
filth. And that’s just why I haven’t allowed you to kiss me...”
“You’re joking! ... You’re teasing me on purpose, Jennie!” muttered
Gladishev, wrathful, frightened, and out of his wits.
“Joking? ...Come here!”
She abruptly compelled him to get up on his feet, lit a match and said:
“Now look closely at what I’m going to show you...”
She opened her mouth wide and placed the light so that it would
illumine her larynx. Kolya looked and staggered back.
“Do you see these white spots? This is syphilis, Kolya! Do you
understand?—syphilis in the most fearful, the most serious stage. Now
dress yourself and thank God.”
He, silently and without looking around at Jennka, began to dress
hurriedly, missing his clothes when he tried to put his legs through.
His hands were shaking, and his under jaw jumped so that the lower
teeth knocked against the upper; while Jennka was speaking with bowed
head:
“Listen, Kolya, it’s your good fortune that you’ve run across an honest
woman; another wouldn’t have spared you. Do you hear that? We, whom you
deprive of innocence and then drive out of your home, while later you
pay us two roubles a visit, we always—do you understand?”—she suddenly
raised her head—“we always hate you and never have any pity for you!”
The half-clad Kolya suddenly dropped his dressing, sat down on the bed
near Jennka and, covering his face with his palms, burst into tears;
sincerely, altogether like a child...
“Lord, Lord,” he whispered, “why this is the truth! ... What a vile
thing this really is! ... We, also, we had this happen: we had a
chambermaid, Niusha...a chambermaid... they also called her signorita
Anita...a pretty little girl...and my brother lived with her...my elder
brother...an officer...and when he went away, she proved pregnant and
mother drove her out...well, yes—drove her out...threw her out of the
house, like a floor mop...Where is she now? And father...father...he
also with a cham...chambermaid.”
And the half-naked Jennka, this Jennka, the atheist, swearer, and
brawler, suddenly got up from the bed, stood before the cadet, and
slowly, almost solemnly, made the sign of the cross over him.
“And may God preserve you my boy!” she said with an expression of deep
tenderness and gratitude.
And at once she ran to the door, opened it and called out:
“Housekeeper!”
“Tell you what, housekeeper dear,” Jennka directed, “go and find out,
please, which one of them is free—Tamara or Little White Manka. And the
one that’s free send here.”
Kolya growled out something in the back, but Jennka purposely did not
listen to him.
“And please make it as quick as possible, housekeeper dear, won’t you
be so kind?”
“Right away, right away, miss.”
“Why, why do you do this, Jennie?” asked Gladishev with anguish. “Well,
what’s that for? ...Is it possible that you want to tell about it? ...”
“Wait awhile, that’s not your business...Wait a while, I won’t do
anything unpleasant for you.”
After a minute Little White Manka came in her brown, smooth,
deliberately modest dress of a high school girl.
“What did you call me for, Jennie? Or have you quarreled?”
“No, we haven’t quarreled, Mannechka, but my head aches very much,”
answered Jennka calmly, “and for that reason my little friend finds me
very cold. Be a friend, Mannechka, stay with him, take my place!”
“That’s enough, Jennie, stop it, darling!” in a tone of sincere
suffering retorted Kolya. “I understand everything, everything, it’s
not necessary now ... Don’t be finishing me off, then! ...”
“I don’t understand anything of what’s happened,” the frivolous Manka
spread out her hands. “Maybe you’ll treat a poor little girl to
something?”
“Well, go on, go on!” Jennka sent her away gently. “I’ll come right
away. We just played a joke.”
Already dressed, they stood for long in the open door between the
bedroom and the corridor; and without words sadly looked at each other.
And Kolya did not understand, but sensed, that at this moment in his
soul was taking place one of those tremendous crises which tell
imperiously upon the entire life.
Then he pressed Jennie’s hand hard and said:
“Forgive! ... Will you forgive me, Jennie? Will you forgive? ...”
“Yes, my boy! ... Yes, my fine one! ... Yes...yes...”
She tenderly, softly, like a mother, stroked his closely cropped harsh
head and gave him, a slight shove into the corridor.
“Where are you bound now?” she sent after him, half opening her door.
“I’ll take my comrade right away, and then home.”
“As you know best! ... God bless you, dearie!”
“Forgive me! ... Forgive me! ...” once more repeated Kolya, stretching
out his hands to her.
“I’ve already told you, my splendid boy...And you forgive me too...For
we won’t see each other anymore!”
And she, having closed the door, was left alone.
In the corridor Gladishev hesitated, because he did not know how to
find the room to which Petrov had retired with Tamara. But the
housekeeper Zociya helped him, running past him very quickly, and with
a very anxious, alarmed air.
“Oh, I haven’t time to bother with you now!” she snarled back at
Gladishev’s question. “Third door to the left.”
Kolya walked up to the door indicated and knocked. Some sort of bustle
and whispering sounded in the room. He knocked once more.
“Kerkovius, open! This is me—Soliterov.”
Among the cadets, setting out on expeditions of this sort, it was
always agreed upon to call each other by fictitious names. It was not
so much a conspiracy or a shift against the vigilance of those in
authority, or fear of compromising one’s self before a chance
acquaintance of the family, but rather a play, of its own kind, at
mysteriousness and disguise—a play tracing its beginning from those
times when the young people were borne away by Gustave Aimard, Mayne
Reid, and the detective Lecocq.
“You can’t come in!” the voice of Tamara came from behind the door.
“You can’t come in. We are busy.”
But the bass voice of Petrov immediately cut her short:
“Nonsense! She’s lying. Come in. It’s all right.”
Kolya opened the door.
Petrov was sitting on a chair dressed, but all red, morose, with lips
pouting like a child’s, with downcast eyes.
“Well, what a friend you’ve brought—I must say!” Tamara began speaking
sneeringly and wrathfully. “I thought he was a man in earnest, but this
is only some sort of a little girl! He’s sorry to lose his innocence,
if you please. What a treasure you’ve found, to be sure! But take back,
take back your two roubles!” she suddenly began yelling at Petrov and
tossed two coins on the table. “You’ll give them away to some poor
chambermaid or other! Or else save them for gloves for yourself, you
marmot!”
“But what are you cursing for?” grumbled Petrov, without raising his
eyes. “I’m not cursing you, am I? Then why do you curse first? I have a
full right to act as I want to. But I have passed some time with you,
and so take them. But to be forced, I don’t want to. And on your part,
Gladishev—that is, Soliterov—this isn’t at all nice. I thought she was
a nice girl, but she’s trying to kiss all the time, and does God knows
what...”
Tamara, despite her wrath, burst into laughter.
“Oh, you little stupid, little stupid! Well, don’t be angry—I’ll take
your money. Only watch: this very evening you’ll be sorry, you’ll be
crying. Well, don’t be angry, don’t be angry, angel, let’s make up. Put
your hand out to me, as I’m doing to you.”
“Let’s go, Kerkovius,” said Gladishev. “Au revoir, Tamara!”
Tamara let the money down into her stocking, through the habit of all
prostitutes, and went to show the boys the way.
Even at the time that they were passing through the corridor Gladishev
was struck by the strange, silent, tense bustle in the drawing room;
the trampling of feet and some muffled, low-voiced, rapid
conversations.
Near that place where they had just been sitting below the picture, all
the inmates of Anna Markovna’s house and several outsiders had
gathered. They were standing in a close knot, bending down. Kolya
walked up with curiosity, and, wedging his way through a little, looked
in between the heads: on the floor, sideways, somehow unnaturally drawn
up, was lying Roly-Poly. His face was blue, almost black. He did not
move, and was lying strangely small, shrunken, with legs bent. One arm
was squeezed in under his breast, while the other was flung back.
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Gladishev in a fright.
Niurka answered him, starting to speak in a rapid, jerky whisper:
“Roly-Poly just came here...Gave Manka the candy, and then started in
to put Armenian riddles to us...’Of a blue colour, hangs in the parlor
and whistles’...We couldn’t guess nohow, but he says: ‘A
herring’...Suddenly he started laughing, had a coughing spell, and
began falling sideways; and then—bang on the ground and don’t
move...They sent for the police...Lord, there’s doings for you! ... I’m
horribly afraid of corpseses!”
“Wait!” Gladishev stopped her. “It’s necessary to feel his forehead; he
may be alive yet...”
He did try to thrust himself forward, but Simeon’s fingers, just like
iron pincers, seized him above the elbows and dragged him back.
“There’s nothing, there’s nothing to be inspecting,” sternly ordered
Simeon, “go on, now, young gents, out of here! This is no place for
you: the police will come, will summon you as witnesses—then it’s scat!
to the devil’s dam! for you out of the military high school! Better go
while you’re good and healthy!”
He escorted them to the entrance hall, shoved the great-coats into
their hands and added still more sternly:
“Well, now—go at a run...Lively! So’s there won’t be even a whiff of
you left. And if you come another time, then I won’t let youse in at
all. You are wise guys, you are! You gave the old hound money for
whiskey—so now he’s gone and croaked.”
“Well, don’t you get too smart, now!” Gladishev flew at him, all
ruffled up.
“What d’you mean, don’t get smart? ...” Simeon suddenly began to yell
infuriatedly, and his black eyes without lashes and brows became so
terrible that the cadets shrank back. “I’ll soak you one on the snout
so hard you’ll forget how to say papa and mamma! Git, this second! Or
else I’ll bust you in the neck!”
The boys went down the steps.
At this time two men were going up, in cloth caps on the sides of their
heads; one in a blue, the other in a red blouse, with the skirts
outside, under the unbuttoned, wide open jackets—evidently, Simeon’s
comrades in the profession.
“What?” one of them called out gaily from below, addressing Simeon, “Is
it bye-bye for Roly-Poly?”
“Yes, it must be the finish,” answered Simeon. “We’ve got to throw him
out into the street in the meantime, fellows, or else the spirits will
start haunting. The devil with him, let ’em think that he drank himself
full and croaked on the road.”
“But you didn’t ... well, now? ... You didn’t do for him?”
“Well, now, there’s foolish talk! If there’d only been some reason. He
was a harmless fellow. Altogether like a little lamb. It must be just
that his turn came.”
“And didn’t he find a place where to die! Couldn’t he have thought up
something worse?” said the one who was in the red shirt.
“Right you are, there!” seconded the other. “Lived to grin and died in
sin. Well, let’s go, mate, what?”
The cadets ran with all their might. Now, in the darkness, the figure
of Roly-Poly drawn up on the floor, with his blue face, appeared before
them in all the horror that the dead possess for early youth; and
especially if recalled at night, in the dark.
CHAPTER IV.
A fine rain, like dust, obstinate and tedious, had been drizzling since
morning. Platonov was working in the port at the unloading of
watermelons. At the mill, where he had since the very summer proposed
to establish himself, luck had turned against him; after a week he had
already quarreled, and almost had a fight, with the foreman, who was
extremely brutal with the workers. About a month Sergei Ivanovich had
struggled along somehow from hand to mouth, somewheres in the
back-yards of Temnikovskaya Street, dragging into the editorial rooms
of The Echoes, from time to time, notes of street accidents or little
humorous scenes from the court rooms of the justices of the peace. But
the hard newspaper game had long ago grown distasteful to him. He was
always drawn to adventures, to physical labour in the fresh air, to
life completely devoid of even the least hint at comfort; to care-free
vagabondage, in which a man, having cast from him all possible external
conditions, does not know himself what is going to be with him on the
morrow. And for that reason, when from the lower stretches of the
Dnieper the first barges with watermelons started coming in, he
willingly entered a gang of labourers, in which he was known even from
last year, and loved for his merry nature, for his comradely spirit,
and for his masterly ability of keeping count.
This labour was carried on with good team work and with skill. Four
parties, each of five men, worked on each barge. Number one would reach
for a watermelon and pass it on to the second, who was standing on the
side of the barge. The second cast it to the third, standing already on
the wharf; the third threw it over to the fourth; while the fourth
handed it up to the fifth, who stood on a horse cart and laid the
watermelons away—now dark-green, now white, now striped—into even
glistening rows. This work is clean, lively, and progresses rapidly.
When a good party is gotten up, it is a pleasure to see how the
watermelons fly from hand to hand, are caught with a circus-like
quickness and success, and anew, and anew, without a break, fly, in
order to fill up the dray. It is only difficult for the novices, that
have not as yet gained the skill, have not caught on to that especial
sense of the tempo. And it is not as difficult to catch a watermelon as
to be able to throw it.
Platonov remembered well his first experiences of last year. What
swearing—virulent, mocking, coarse—poured down upon him when for the
third or fourth time he had been gaping and had slowed up the passing:
two watermelons, not thrown in time, had smashed against the pavement
with a succulent crunch, while the completely lost Platonov dropped the
one which he was holding in his hands as well. The first time they
treated him gently; on the second day, however, for every mistake they
began to deduct from him five kopecks per watermelon out of the common
share. The following time when this happened, they threatened to throw
him out of the party at once, without any reckoning. Platonov even now
still remembered how a sudden fury seized him: “Ah, so? The devil take
you!” he had thought. “And yet you want me to be chary of your
watermelons? So then, here you are, here you are! ...” This flare-up
helped him as though instantaneously. He carelessly caught the
watermelons, just as carelessly threw them over, and to his amazement
suddenly felt that precisely just now he had gotten into the real swing
of the work with all his muscles, sight, and breathing; and understood,
that the most important thing was not to think at all of the
watermelons representing some value, and that then everything went
well. When he, finally, had fully mastered this art, it served him for
a long time as a pleasant and entertaining athletic game of its own
kind. But that, too, passed away. He reached, in, the end, the stage
where he felt himself a will-less, mechanical wheel in a general
machine consisting of five men and an endless chain of flying
watermelons.
Now he was number two. Bending downward rhythmically, he, without
looking, received with both hands the cold, springy, heavy watermelon;
swung it to the right; and, also almost without looking, or looking
only out of the corner of his eye, tossed it downward, and immediately
once again bent down for the next watermelon. And his ear seized at
this time how smack-smack ...smack-smack...the caught watermelons
slapped in the hands; and immediately bent downwards and again threw,
letting the air out of himself noisily—ghe...ghe...
The present work was very profitable; their gang, consisting of forty
men, had taken on the work, thanks to the great rush, not by the day
but by the amount of work done, by the waggon load. Zavorotny, the
head—an enormous, mighty Poltavian—had succeeded with extreme deftness
in getting around the owner; a young man, and, to boot, in all
probability not very experienced as yet. The owner, it is true, came to
his senses later and wanted to change the stipulations; but experienced
melon growers dissuaded him from it in time: “Drop it. They’ll kill
you,” they told him simply and firmly. And so, through this very stroke
of good luck every member of the gang was now earning up to four
roubles a day. They all worked with unusual ardour, even with some sort
of vehemence; and if it had been possible to measure with some
apparatus the labour of each one of them, then, in all probability, the
number of units of energy created would have equalled the work of a
large Voronezhian train horse.
However, Zavorotny was not satisfied even with this—he hurried and
hurried his lads on all the time. Professional ambition was speaking
within him; he wanted to bring the daily earnings of every member of
the gang up to five roubles per snout. And gaily, with unusual ease,
twinkled from the harbour to the waggon, twirling and flashing, the wet
green and white watermelons; and their succulent plashing resounded
against accustomed palms.
But now a long blast sounded on the dredging machine in the port. A
second, a third, responded to it on the river; a few more on shore; and
for a long time they roared together in a mighty chorus of different
voices.
“Ba-a-a-st-a-a!” hoarsely and thickly, exactly like a locomotive blast,
Zavorotny started roaring.
And now the last smack-smack—and the work stopped instantaneously.
Platonov with enjoyment straightened out his back and bent it backward,
and spread out his swollen arms. With pleasure he thought of having
already gotten over that first pain in all the muscles, which tells so
during the first days, when one is just getting back into the work
after disuse. While up to this day, awaking in the mornings in his lair
on Temnikovskaya—also to the sound of a factory blast agreed upon—he
would during the first minutes experience such fearful pains in his
neck, back, in his arms and legs, that it seemed to him as if only a
miracle would be able to compel him to get up and make a few steps.
“Go-o-o and e-at,” Zavorotny began to clamour again.
The stevedores went down to the water; got down on their knees or laid
down flat on the gangplank or on the rafts; and, scooping up the water
in handfuls, washed their wet, heated faces and arms. Right here, too,
on the shore, to one side, where a little grass had been left yet, they
disposed themselves for dinner: placed in a circle ten of the most ripe
watermelons, black bread, and twenty dried porgies. Gavriushka the
Bullet was already running with a half-gallon bottle to the pot-house
and was singing as he went the soldiers’ signal for dinner:
“Drag spoon and mess-kit out,
If there’s no bread, eat without.”
A bare-footed urchin, dirty and so ragged that there was more of his
bare body than clothes upon him, ran up to the gang.
“Which one of you here is Platonov?” he asked, quickly running over
them with his thievish eyes.
“I’m Platonov, and by what name do they tease you?”
“Around the corner here, behind the church, some sort of a young lady
is waiting for you...Here’s a note for you.”
The whole gang neighed deeply.
“What d’you open up your mouths for, you pack of fools!” said Platonov
calmly. “Give me the note here.”
This was a letter from Jennka, written in a round, naive, rolling,
childish handwriting, and not very well spelt.
“Sergei Ivanich. Forgive me that I disturbe you. I must talk over a
very, very important matter with you. I would not be troubling you if
it was Trifles. For only 10 minutes in all. Jennka, whom you know, from
Anna Markovna’s.”
Platonov got up.
“I’m going away for a little while,” he said to Zavorotny. “When you
begin, I’ll be in my place.”
“Now you’ve found somethin’ to do,” lazily and contemptuously said the
head of the gang. “There’s the night for that business...Go ahead, go
ahead, who’s holding you. But only if you won’t be here when we begin
work, then this day don’t count. I’ll take any tramp. And as many
watermelons as he busts—that’s out of your share, too...I didn’t think
it of you, Platonov—that you’re such a he-dog...”
Jennka was waiting for him in the tiny little square, sheltered between
a church and the wharf, and consisting of ten sorry poplars. She had on
a gray, one-piece street dress; a simple, round, straw hat with a small
black ribbon. “And yet, even though she has dressed herself simply,”
reflected Platonov, looking at her from a distance with his habitually
puckered eyes, “and yet, every man will walk past, give a look, and
inevitably look back three or four times; he’ll feel the especial tone
at once.”
“Howdy do, Jennka! Very glad to see you,” he said cordially, squeezing
the girl’s hand. “There, now, I didn’t expect it!”
Jennka was reserved, sad, and apparently troubled over something.
Platonov at once understood and sensed this.
“You excuse me, Jennechka, I must have dinner right away,” said he,
“so, perhaps, you’ll go together with me and tell me what’s the matter,
while I’ll manage to eat at the same time. There’s a modest little inn
not far from here. At this time there are no people there at all, and
there’s even a tiny little stall, a sort of a private room; that will
be just the thing for you and me. Let’s go! Perhaps you’ll also have a
bite of something.”
“No. I won’t eat,” answered Jennka hoarsely, “and I won’t detain you
for long...a few minutes. I have to talk things over, have some
advice—but I haven’t anybody.”
“Very well...Let’s go then! In whatever way I can, I’m always at your
service, in everything. I love you very much, Jennka!”
She looked at him sadly and gratefully.
“I know this, Serge Ivanovich; that’s why I’ve come.”
“You need money, perhaps? Just say so. I haven’t got much with me,
myself; but the gang will trust me with an advance.”
“No, thanks...it isn’t that at all. I’ll tell everything at once,
there, where we’re going now.”
In the dim, low-ceiled little inn, the customary haunt of petty
thieves, where business was carried on only in the evening, until very
far into the night, Platonov took the little half-dark cubby hole.
“Give me boiled meat, cucumbers, a large glass of vodka, and bread,” he
ordered the waiter.
The waiter—a young fellow with a dirty face; pugnosed; as dirty and
greasy in all his person as though he had just been pulled out of a
cesspool, wiped his lips and asked hoarsely:
“How many kopecks’ bread?” “As much as it comes to.” Then he started
laughing:
“Bring as much as possible—we’ll reckon it up later... and some bread
cider!”
“Well, Jennie, say what your trouble is...I can already see by your
face that there’s trouble, or something distasteful in general...Go
ahead and tell it!”
Jennka for a long time plucked her handkerchief and looked at the tips
of her slippers, as though, gathering her strength. Timorousness had
taken possession of her—the necessary and important words would not
come into her mind, for anything. Platonov came to her aid: “Don’t be
embarrassed, my dear Jennie, tell all there is! For you know that I’m
like one of the family, and will never give you away. And perhaps I may
really give you some worth-while advice. Well, dive off with a splash
into the water—begin!”
“That’s just it, I don’t know how to begin,” said Jennka irresolutely.
“Here’s what, Sergei Ivanovich, I’m a sick woman...Understand?—sick in
a bad way...With the most nasty disease...Do you know which?”
“Go on!” said Platonov, nodding his head.
“And I’ve been that way for a long time...more than a month...a month
and a half, maybe...Yes, more than a month, because I found out about
this on the Trinity...”
Platonov quickly rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Wait a while, I’ve
recalled it...This was that day I was there together with the
students...isn’t that so?”
“That’s right, Sergei Ivanovich, that’s so...”
“Ah, Jennka,” said Platonov reproachfully and with regret. “For do you
know, that after this two of the students got sick...Wasn’t it from
you?”
Jennka wrathfully and disdainfully flashed her eyes.
“Perhaps even from me...How should I know? There were a lot of them...I
remember there was this one, now, who was even trying to pick a fight
with you all the time ...A tall sort of fellow, fair-haired, in
pince-nez...”
“Yes, yes...That’s Sobashnikov. They passed the news to me...That’s
he...that one was nothing—a little coxcomb! But then the other—him I’m
sorry for. Although I’ve known him long, somehow I never made the right
inquiries about his name...I only remember that he comes from some city
or other—Poliyansk...Zvenigorodsk... His comrades called him
Ramses...When the physicians—he turned to several physicians—when they
told him irrevocably that he had the lues, he went home and shot
himself...And in the note that he wrote there were amazing things,
something like this: I supposed all the meaning of life to be in the
triumph of mind, beauty and good; with this disease I am not a man, but
junk, rottenness, carrion; a candidate for a progressive paralytic. My
human dignity cannot reconcile itself to this. But guilty in all that
has happened, and therefore in my death as well, am I alone; for that
I, obeying a momentary bestial inclination, took a woman without love,
for money. For that reason have I earned the punishment which I myself
lay upon me...”
“I am sorry for him...” added Platonov quietly.
Jennka dilated her nostrils.
“But I, now, not the very least bit.”
“That’s wrong...You go away now, young fellow. When I’ll need you I’ll
call out,” said Platonov to the serving-man “Absolutely wrong,
Jennechka! This was an unusually big and forceful man. Such come only
one to the hundreds of thousands. I don’t respect suicides. Most
frequent of all, these are little boys, who shoot and hang themselves
over trifles, like a child that has not been given a piece of candy,
and hits itself against the wall to spite those around it. But before
his death I reverently and with sorrow bow my head. He was a wise,
generous, kindly man, attentive to all; and, as you see, too strict to
himself.”
“But to me this is absolutely all one,” obstinately contradicted
Jennka, “wise or foolish, honest or dishonest, old or young—I have come
to hate them all. Because—look upon me—what am I? Some sort of
universal spittoon, cesspool, privy. Think of it, Platonov; why,
thousands, thousands of people have taken me, clutched me; grunted,
snorted over me; and all those who were, and all those who might yet
have been on my bed—oh, how I hate them all! If I only could, I would
sentence them to torture by fire and iron! ... I would order...”
“You are malicious and proud, Jennie,” said Platonov quietly.
“I was neither malicious nor proud...It’s only now. I wasn’t ten yet
when my own mother sold me; and since that time I’ve been travelling
from hand to hand... If only some one had seen a human being in me! No!
... I am vermin, refuse, worse than a beggar, worse than a thief, worse
than a murderer! ... Even a hangman...we have even such coming to the
establishment—and even he would have treated me loftily, with loathing:
I am nothing; I am a public wench! Do you understand, Sergei Ivanovich,
what a horrible word this is? Pub-lic! ... This means nobody’s: not
papa’s, not mamma’s, not Russian, not Riyazan, but simply—public! And
not once did it enter anybody’s head to walk up to me and think: why,
now, this is a human being too; she has a heart and a brain; she thinks
of something, feels something; for she’s not made out of wood, and
isn’t stuffed with straw, small hay, or excelsior! And yet, only I feel
this. I, perhaps, am the only one out of all of them who feels the
horror of her position; this black, stinking, filthy pit. But then, all
the girls with whom I have met, and with whom I am living right
now—understand, Platonov, understand me!—why, they don’t realize
anything... Talking, walking pieces of meat! And this is even worse
than my malice! ...”
“You are right!” said Platonov quietly. “And this is one of those
questions where you’ll always run up against a wall. No one will help
you...”
“No one, no one! ...” passionately exclaimed Jennka. “Do you
remember—this was while you were there: a student carried away our
Liubka...”
“Why, certainly, I remember well! ... Well, and what then?”
“And this is what, that yesterday she came back tattered,
wet...Crying...Left her, the skunk! ... Played a while at kindliness,
and then away with her! ‘You,’ he says, ‘are a sister.’ ‘I,’ he says,
‘will save you, make a human being of you...’”
“Is that possible?”
“Just so! ... One man I did see, kindly, indulgent, without the designs
of a he-dog—that’s you. But then, you’re altogether different. You’re
somehow queer. You’re always wandering somewhere, seeking
something...You forgive me, Sergei Ivanovich, you’re some sort of a
little innocent! ... And that’s just why I’ve come to you, to you
alone! ...”
“Speak on, Jennechka...”