Harold Bell Wright - "Their Yesterdays"

Unknown - "Human Genome Project, Chromosome 13"

J. Henri Fabre - "The Life of the Fly"

Calvin Coolidge - "State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge"

Yama (The Pit)

A >> Alexandra Kuprin >> Yama (The Pit)




"I, as an anarchist, partly understand you," said Lichonin
thoughtfully. It was as though he heard and yet did not hear the
reporter. Some thought was with difficulty, for the first time,
being born in his mind. "But one thing I can not comprehend. If
humanity has become so malodorous to you, then how do you stand--
and for so long, too,--all this,--" Lichonin took in the whole
table with a circular motion of his hand,--"the basest thing that
mankind could invent?"

"Well, I don't even know myself," said Platonov with artlessness.
"You see, I am a vagabond, and am passionately in love with life.
I have been a turner, a compositor; I have sown and sold tobacco--
the cheap Silver Makhorka kind--have sailed as a stoker on the
Azov Sea, have been a fisherman on the Black--on the Dubinin
fisheries; I have loaded watermelons and bricks on the Dnieper,
have ridden with a circus, have been an actor--I can't even recall
everything. And never did need drive me. No, only an immeasurable
thirst for life and an insupportable curiosity. By God, I would
like for a few days to become a horse, a plant, or a fish, or to
be a woman and experience childbirth; I would like to live with
the inner life, and to look upon the universe with the eyes of
every human being I meet. And so I wander care-free over towns and
hamlets, bound by nothing; know and love tens of trades and
joyously float wherever it suits fate to set my sail... And so it
was that I came upon the brothel, and the more I look at it, the
more there grows within me alarm, incomprehension, and very great
anger. But even this will soon be at an end. When things get well
into autumn--away again! I'll get into a rail-rolling mill. I've a
certain friend, he'll manage it ... Wait, wait, Lichonin ...
Listen to the actor ... That's the third act."

Egmont-Lavretzki, who until this had been very successfully
imitating now a shoat which is being put into a bag, now the
altercation of a cat with a dog, was beginning little by little to
wilt and droop. Upon him was already advancing the stage of self-
revelation, next in order, in the paroxysm of which he several
times attempted to kiss Yarchenko's hand. His lids had become red;
around the shaven, prickly lips had deepened the tearful wrinkles
that gave him an appearance of weeping; and it could be heard by
his voice that his nose and throat were already overflowing with
tears.

"I serve in a farce!" he was saying, smiting himself on the breast
with his fist. "I disport myself in striped trunks for the sport
of the sated mob! I have put out my torch, have hid my talent in
the earth, like the slothful servant! But fo-ormerly!" he began to
bray tragically, "Fo-ormerly-y-y! Ask in Novocherkassk, ask in
Tvier, in Ustejne, in Zvenigorodok, in Krijopole. [Footnote: All
provincial towns.--Trans.] What a Zhadov and Belugin I was! How I
played Max! What a figure I created of Veltishchev--that was my
crowning ro-ole ... Nadin-Perekopski was beginning with me at
Sumbekov's! With Nikiphorov-Pavlenko did I serve. Who made the
name for Legunov-Pochainin? I! But no-ow ..."

He sniveled, and sought to kiss the sub-professor.

"Yes! Despise me, brand me, ye honest folk. I play the tom-fool.
I drink ... I have sold and spilt the sacred ointment! I sit in a
dive with vendable merchandise. While my wife ... she is a saint,
and pure, my little dove! ... Oh, if she knew, if she only knew!
she works hard, she runs a modiste's shop; her fingers--the
fingers of an angel--are pricked with the needle, but I! Oh,
sainted woman! And I--the scoundrel!--whom do I exchange thee for!
Oh, horror!" The actor seized his hair. "Professor, let me, I'll
kiss your scholarly hand. You alone understand me. Let us go, I'll
introduce you, you'll see what an angel this is! ... She awaits
me, she does not sleep nights, she folds the tiny hands of my
little ones and together with them whispers: 'Lord, save and
preserve papa.'"

"You're lying about it all, you ham!" said the drunken Little
White Manka suddenly, looking with hatred upon Egmont-Lavretzki.
"She isn't whispering anything, but most peacefully sleeping with
a man in your bed."

"Be still, you w--!" vociferated the actor beside himself; and
seizing a bottle by the neck raised it high over his head. "Hold
me, or else I'll brain this carrion. Don't you dare besmirch with
your foul tongue..."

"My tongue isn't foul--I take communion," impudently replied the
woman. "But you, you fool, wear horns. You go traipsing around
with prostitutes yourself, and yet want your wife not to play you
false. And look where the dummy's found a place to slaver, till he
looks like he had reins in his mouth. And what did you mix the
children in for, you miserable papa you! Don't you roll your eyes
and gnash your teeth at me. You won't frighten me! W--yourself!"

It required many efforts and much eloquence on the part of
Yarchenko in order to quiet the actor and Little White Manka, who
always after Benedictine ached for a row. The actor in the end
burst into copious and unbecoming tears and blew his nose, like an
old man; he grew weak, and Henrietta led him away to her room.

Fatigue had already overcome everybody. The students, one after
another, returned from the bedrooms; and separately from them,
with an indifferent air, came their chance mistresses. And truly,
both these and the others resembled flies, males and females, just
flown apart on the window pane. They yawned, stretched, and for a
long time an involuntary expression of wearisomeness and aversion
did not leave their faces, pale from sleeplessness, unwholesomely
glossy. And when they, before going their ways, said good-bye to
each other, in their eyes twinkled some kind of an inimical
feeling, just as with the participants of one and the same filthy
and unnecessary crime.

"Where are you going right now?" Lichonin asked the reporter in a
low voice.

"Well, really, I don't know myself. I did want to spend the night
in the cabinet of Isaiah Savvich, but it's a pity to lose such a
splendid morning. I'm thinking of taking a bath, and then I'll get
on a steamer and ride to the Lipsky monastery to a certain
tippling black friar I know. But why?"

"I would ask you to remain a little while and sit the others out.
I must have a very important word or two with you."

"It's a go."

Yarchenko was the last to go. He averred a headache and fatigue.
But scarcely had he gone out of the house when the reporter seized
Lichonin by the hand and quickly dragged him into the glass
vestibule of the entrance.

"Look!" he said, pointing to the street.

And through the orange glass of the little coloured window
Lichonin saw the sub-professor, who was ringing at Treppel's.
After a minute the door opened and Yarchenko disappeared through
it.

"How did you find out?" asked Lichonin with astonishment.

"A mere trifle! I saw his face, and saw his hands smoothing
Verka's tights. The others were less restrained. But this fellow
is bashful."

"Well, now, let's go," said Lichonin. "I won't detain you long."





CHAPTER XII.


Of the girls only two remained in the cabinet-Jennie, who had come
in her night blouse, and Liuba, who had long been sleeping under
cover of the conversation, curled up into a ball in the large
plush armchair. The fresh, freckled face of Liuba had taken on a
meek, almost childlike, expression, while the lips, just as they
had smiled in sleep, had preserved the light imprint of a radiant,
peaceful and tender smile. It was blue and biting in the cabinet
from the dense tobacco smoke; guttered, warty little streams had
congealed on the candles in the candelabras; the table, flooded
with coffee and wine, scattered all over with orange peels, seemed
hideous.

Jennie was sitting on the divan, her knees clasped around with her
arms. And again was Platonov struck by the sombre fire in her deep
eyes, that seemed fallen in underneath the dark eyebrows,
formidably contracted downward, toward the bridge of the nose.

"I'll put out the candles," said Lichonin.

The morning half-light, watery and drowsy, filled the room through
the slits of the blinds. The extinguished wicks of the candles
smoked with faint streams. The tobacco smoke swirled in blue,
layered shrouds, but a ray of sunlight that had cut its way
through the heart-shaped hollow in a window shutter, transpierced
the cabinet obliquely with a joyous, golden sword of dust, and in
liquid, hot gold splashed upon the paper on the wall.

"That's better," said Lichonin, sitting down. "The conversation
will be short, but ... the devil knows ... how to approach it."

He looked at Jennie in abstraction.

"Shall I go away, then?" said she indifferently.

"No, you sit a while," the reporter answered for Lichonin. "She
won't be in the way," he turned to the student and slightly
smiled. "For the conversation will be about prostitution? Isn't
that so?"

"Well, yes... sort of..."

"Very well, then. You listen to her carefully. Her opinions happen
to be of an unusually cynical nature, but at times of exceeding
weight."

Lichonin vigorously rubbed and kneaded his face with his palms,
then intertwined his fingers and nervously cracked them twice. It
was apparent that he was agitated and was himself constrained
about that which he was getting ready to say.

"Oh, but isn't it all the same!" he suddenly exclaimed angrily.
"You were to-day speaking about these women ... I listened...
True, you haven't told me anything new. But-strangely-I, for some
reason, as though for the first time in my loose life, have looked
upon this question with open eyes... I ask you, what is
prostitution in the end? What is it? The extravagant delirium of
large cities, or an eternal historical phenomenon? Will it cease
some time? Or will it die only with the death of all mankind? Who
will answer me that?"

Platonov was looking at him intently, narrowing his eyes slightly,
through habit. He wanted to know what main thought was inflicting
such sincere torture on Lichonin.

"When it will cease, none will tell you. Perhaps when the
magnificent Utopias of the socialists and anarchists will
materialize, when the world will become everyone's and no one's,
when love will be absolutely free and subject only to its own
unlimited desires, while mankind will fuse into one happy family,
wherein will perish the distinction between mine and thine, and
there will come a paradise upon earth, and man will again become
naked, glorified and without sin. Perhaps it may be then..."

"But now? Now?" asks Lichonin with growing agitation. "Shall I
look on, with my little hands folded? 'It's none of my affair?'
Tolerate it as an unavoidable evil? Put up with it, and wash my
hands of it? Shall I pronounce a benediction upon it?"

"This evil is not unavoidable, but insuperable. But isn't it all
the same to you?" asked Platonov with cold wonder. "For you're an
anarchist, aren't you?"

"What the devil kind of an anarchist am I! Well, yes, I am an
anarchist, because my reason, when I think of life, always leads
me logically to the anarchistic beginning. And I myself think in
theory: let men beat, deceive, and fleece men, like flocks of
sheep--let them!--violence will breed rancour sooner or later. Let
them violate the child, let them trample creative thought under
foot, let there be slavery, let there be prostitution, let them
thieve, mock, spill blood...Let them! The worse, the better, the
nearer the end. There is a great law, I think, the same for
inanimate objects as well as for all the tremendous and many-
millioned human life: the power of effort is equal to the power of
resistance. The worse, the better. Let evil and vindictiveness
accumulate in mankind, let them grow and ripen like a monstrous
abscess--an abscess the size of the whole terrestrial sphere. For
it will burst some time! And let there be terror and insufferable
pain. Let the pus deluge all the universe. But mankind will either
choke in it and perish, or, having gone through the illness, will
be regenerated to a new, beautiful life."

Lichonin avidly drank off a cup of cold black coffee and continued
vehemently:

"Yes. Just so do I and many others theorize, sitting in our rooms,
over tea with white bread and cooked sausage, when the value of
each separate human life is so-so, an infinitesimally small
numeral in a mathematical formula. But let me see a child abused,
and the red blood will rush to my head from rage. And when I look
and look upon the labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown
into hysterics for shame at my algebraic calculations. There is--
the devil take it!--there is something incongruous, altogether
illogical, but which at this time is stronger than human reason.
Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this minute as though I had
robbed a sleeping man or deceived a three-year-old child, or hit a
bound person? And why does it seem to me to-day that I myself am
guilty of the evil of prostitution--guilty in my silence, my
indifference, my indirect permission? What am I to do, Platonov!"
exclaimed the student with grief in his voice.

Platonov kept silent, squinting at him with his little narrow
eyes. But Jennie unexpectedly said in a caustic tone:

"Well, you do as one Englishwoman did ... A certain red-haired
clodhopper came to us here. She must have been important, because
she came with a whole retinue ... all some sort of officials ...
But before her had come the assistant of the commissioner, with
the precinct inspector Kerbesh. And the assistant directly
forewarned us, just like that: 'If you stiffs, and so on and so
on, will let out even one little rude word, or something, then I
won't leave one stone upon another of your establishment, while
I'll flog all the wenches soundly in the station-house and make
'em rot in jail!' Well, at last this galoot came. She gibbered and
she gibbered something in a foreign language, all the time pointed
to heaven with her hand, and then distributed a five-kopeck
Testament to every one of us and rode away. Now you ought to do
the same, dearie."

Platonov burst into loud laughter. But seeing the naive and sad
face of Lichonin, who did not seem to understand, nor even suspect
mockery, he restrained his laughter and said seriously:

"You won't accomplish anything, Lichonin. While there will be
property, there will also be poverty. While marriage exists,
prostitution also will not die. Do you know who will always
sustain and nourish prostitution? It is the so-called decent
people, the noble paterfamiliases, the irreproachable husbands,
the loving brothers. They will always find a seemly motive to
legitimize, normalize and put a wrapper all around paid
libertinage, because they know very well that otherwise it would
rush in a torrent into their bedrooms and nurseries. Prostitution
is for them a deflection of the sensuousness of others from their
personal, lawful alcove. And even the respectable paterfamilias
himself is not averse to indulge in a love debauch in secret. And
really, it is palling to have always the one and the same thing
the wife, the chambermaid, and the lady on the side. Man, as a
matter of fact, is a poly--and exceedingly so--a polygamous
animal. And to his rooster-like amatory instincts it will always
be sweet to unfold in such a magnificent nursery garden, A LA
Treppel's or Anna Markovna's. Oh, of course, a well-balanced
spouse or the happy father of six grown-up daughters will always
be clamouring about the horror of prostitution. He will even
arrange with the help of a lottery and an amateur entertainment a
society for the saving of fallen women, or an asylum in the name
of St. Magdalene. But the existence of prostitution he will bless
and sustain."

"Magdalene asylums!" with quiet laughter, full of an ancient
hatred the ache of which had not yet healed, repeated Jennie.

"Yes, I know that all these false measures undertaken are stuff
and a total mockery," cut in Lichonin. "But let me be ridiculous
and stupid, yet I do not wish to remain a commiserating spectator,
who sits on a warm ledge, gazes upon a conflagration, and is
saying all the time: 'Oh, my, but it's burning ... by God, it is
burning! Perhaps there are even people burning!'--but for his part
merely laments and slaps his thighs."

"Well, now," said Platonov harshly, "would you take a child's
syringe and go to put out the fire with it?"

"No!" heatedly exclaimed Lichonin ... "Perhaps--who knows?--
perhaps I'll succeed in saving at least one living soul? It was
just this that I wanted to ask you about, Platonov, and you must
help me ... Only, I implore you, without jeers, without cooling
off ..."

"You want to take a girl out of here? To save her?" asked
Platonov, looking at him attentively. He now understood the drift
of this entire conversation.

"Yes ... I don't know ... I'll try ..." answered Lichonin
uncertainly.

"She'll come back," said Platonov.

"She will," Jennie repeated with conviction.

Lichonin walked up to her, took her by the hands and began to
speak in a trembling whisper:

"Jennechka ... Perhaps you ... eh? For I don't call you as a
mistress ... but a friend ... It's all a trifle, half a year of
rest ... and then we'll master some trade or other ... we'll
read..."

Jennie snatched her hands out of his with vexation.

"Oh, into a bog with you!" she almost slouted. "I know you! Want
me to darn socks for you? Cook on a kerosene stove? Pass nights
without sleeping on account of you when you'll be chitter-
chattering with your short-haired friends? But when you get to be
a doctor or a lawyer, or a government clerk, then it's me will get
a knee in the back: 'Out on the street with you, now, you public
hide, you've ruined my young life. I want to marry a decent girl,
pure, and innocent! ..."

"I meant it as a brother ... I meant it without that ..." mumbled
Lichonin in confusion.

"I know that kind of brothers. Until the first night ... Leave off
and don't talk nonsense to me! It makes me tired to listen to it!"

"Wait, Lichonin!" began the reporter seriously. "Why, you will
pile a load beyond your strength upon yourself as well. I've known
idealists, among the populists, who married peasant girls out of
principle. This is just the way they thought--nature, black-loam,
untapped forces. ... But this black-loam after a year turned into
the fattest of women, who lies the whole day in bed and chews
cookies, or studs her fingers with penny rings, spreads them out
and admires them. Or else sits in the kitchen, drinks sweet liquor
with the coachman and carries on a natural romance with him. Look
out, here it will be worse!"

All three became silent. Lichonin was pale and was wiping his
moist forehead with a handkerchief.

"No, the devil take it!" he cried out suddenly with obstinacy. "I
don't believe you! I don't want to believe! Liuba" he called
loudly the girl who had fallen asleep. "Liubochka!"

The girl awoke, passed her palm over her lips, first to one side,
then the other, yawned, and smiled, in a funny, child-like manner.

"I wasn't sleeping, I heard everything," she said. "I only dozed
off for a teeny-weeny bit."

"Liuba, do you want to go away from here with me?" asked Lichonin
and took her by the hand. "But entirely, forever, to go away so's
never to return either to a brothel or the street?"

Liuba questioningly, with perplexity, looked at Jennie, as though
seeking from her an explanation of this jest.

"That's enough for you," she said slyly. "You're still studying
yourself. Where do you come in, then, to take a girl and set her
up?"

"Not to set you up, Liuba ... I simply want to help you ... For it
isn't very sweet for you in a brothel, is it now!"

"Naturally, it isn't all sugar! If I was as proud as Jennechka, or
so enticing like Pasha ... but I won't get used to things here for
anything ..."

"Well, then, let's go, let's go! ..." entreated Lichonin. "Surely,
you know some manual work--well, now, sewing something,
embroidering, cutting?"

"I don't know anything!" answered Liuba bashfully and started
laughing and turned red, covering her mouth with the elbow of her
free arm. "What's asked of us in the village, that I know, but
anything more I don't know. I can cook a little ... I lived at the
priest's--cooked for him."

"That's splendid! That's excellent!" Lichonin grew joyous. "I will
assist you, you'll open a dining room ... A cheap dining room, you
understand ... I'll advertise it for you ... The students will
come! That's magnificent! ..."

"That's enough of making fun of me!" retorted Liuba, a bit
offended, and again looked askance and questioningly at Jennie.

"He's not joking," answered Jennie with a voice which quavered
strangely. "He's in earnest, seriously."

"Here's my word of honour that I'm serious! Honest to God,
now!" the student caught her up with warmth and for some reason
even made the sign of the cross in the direction of the empty
corner.

"And really," said Jennie, "take Liubka. That's not the same thing
as taking me. I'm like an old dragoon's nag, and used to it. You
can't make me over, neither with hay nor a stick. But Liubka is a
simple girl and a kind one. And she hasn't grown used to our life
yet. What are you popping your eyes out at me for, you ninny?
Answer when you're asked. Well? Do you want to or don't you want
to?"

"And why not? If they ain't laughing, but for real ... And you,
Jennechka, what would you advise me ..."

"Oh, you're such wood!" Jennie grew angry. "What's better
according to you--to rot on straw with a nose fallen through? To
croak under the fence like a dog? Or to turn honest? Fool! You
ought to kiss his hands; but no, you're getting particular."

The naive Liuba did, in fact, extend her lips toward Lichonin's
hand, and this movement made everybody laugh, and touched them
just the least trifle.

"And that's very good! It's like magic!" bustled the overjoyed
Lichonin. "Go and notify the proprietress at once that you're
going away from here forever. And take the most necessary things;
it isn't as it used to be; now a girl can go away from a brothel
whenever she wants to."

"No, it can't be done that way," Jennie stopped him; "she can go
away, that's so, but you'll have no end of unpleasantness and
hullabaloo. Here's what you do, student. You won't regret ten
roubles?"

"Of course, of course ... if you please."

"Let Liuba tell the housekeeper that you're taking her to your
rooms for to-day. That's the fixed rate--ten roubles. And
afterwards, well, even to-morrow--come after the ticket and
things. That's nothing; we'll work this thing roundly. And after
that you must go to the police with her ticket and declare, that
Liubka So-and-so has hired herself to you as chambermaid, and that
you desire to exchange her blank for a real passport. Well,
Liubka, lively! Take the money and march. And, look out, be as
quick as possible with the housekeeper, or else she, the bitch,
will read it in your eyes. And also don't forget," she cried, now
after Liuba, "wipe the rouge off your puss, now. Or else the
drivers will be pointing their fingers at you."

After half an hour Liuba and Lichonin were getting on a cab at the
entrance. Jennie and the reporter were standing on the sidewalk.

"You're committing a great folly, Lichonin," Platonov was saying
listlessly, "but I honour and respect the fine impulse within you.
Here's the thought--and here's the deed. You're a brave and a
splendid fellow."

"Here's to your commencement!" laughed Jennie. "Look out, don't
forget to send for me to the christening."

"You won't see it, no matter how long you wait for it!" laughed
Lichonin, waving his cap about.

They rode off. The reporter looked at Jennie, and with
astonishment saw tears in her softened eyes.

"God grant it, God grant it," she was whispering.

"What has been the matter with you to-day, Jennie?" he asked
kindly. "What? Are you oppressed? Can't I do anything?"

She turned her back to him and leaned over the bent balustrade of
the stoop.

"How shall I write to you, if need be?" she asked in a stifled
voice.

"Why, it's simple. Editorial rooms of Echoes. So-and-so. They'll
pass it on to me pretty fast."

"I ... I ... I ..." Jennie just began, but suddenly burst into
loud, passionate sobs and covered her face with her hands, "I'll
write you ..."

And without taking her hands away from her face, her shoulders
quivering, she ran up the stoop and disappeared in the house,
loudly banging the door after her.





PART TWO





CHAPTER I.


Even to this day, after a lapse of ten years, the erstwhile
inhabitants of the Yamkas recall that year, abounding in unhappy,
foul, bloody events, which began with a series of trifling, small
affrays, but terminated in the administration's, one fine day,
taking and destroying completely the ancient, long-warmed nest of
legalized prostitution, which nest it had itself created--
scattering its remains over the hospitals, jails and streets of
the big city. Even to this day a few of the former proprietresses
who have remained alive and have reached the limit of decrepitude,
and quondam housekeepers, fat and hoarse, like pug-dogs grown old,
recall this common destruction with sorrow, horror, and stolid
perplexity.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.