Yama by Aleksandr Kuprin (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📕

turn, Anna Markovna knew and could tell several shady and not especially flattering anecdotes; but in their society it was not customary to talk of the sources of the family well-being⁠—only cleverness, daring, success, and decent manners were esteemed.

But, even besides that, Anna Markovna, sufficiently limited in mind and not especially developed, had some sort of an amazing inner intuition, which during all her life permitted her instinctively but irreproachably to avoid unpleasantnesses, and to find prudent paths in time. And so now, after the sudden death of Roly-Poly, and the suicide of Jennka which followed the next day, she, with her unconsciously-penetrating soul foreguessed that Fate⁠—which had been favouring her house of ill-fame, sending her good fortunes, steering her clear of all underwater shoals⁠—was now getting ready to turn its back upon her. And she was the first to retreat.

They say, that not long before a fire in a house, or before the wreck of a ship, the wise, nervous rats in droves make their way into another place. And Anna Markovna was directed by the same ratlike, animal, prophetic intuition. And she was right: immediately right after the death of Jennka some fearful curse seemed to hang over the house, formerly Anna Markovna Shaibes’, but now Emma Edwardovna Titzner’s: deaths, misfortunes, scandals just simply descended upon it ceaselessly, becoming constantly more frequent, on the manner of bloody events in Shakespeare’s tragedies; as, however, was the case at all the remaining houses of the Yamas as well.

One of the first to die, a week after the liquidation of the business, was Anna Markovna herself. However, this frequently happens with people put out of their accustomed rut of thirty years: so die war heroes, who have gone into retirement⁠—people of insuperable health and iron will; so quickly go off the stage ex-stockbrokers, who have happily gone into retirement and rest, but have been deprived of the burning allurement of risk and hazard; so too, age rapidly, droop, and grow decrepit, the great artists who leave the stage⁠ ⁠… Her death was the death of the just. While at a game of cards she felt herself unwell; begged them to wait a while for her, saying that she would lie down for just a minute; lay down in the bedroom on a bed; sighed deeply, and passed on into another world⁠—with a calm face, with a peaceful, senile smile upon her lips. Isaiah Savvich⁠—her faithful comrade on the path of life, a trifle downtrodden, who had always played a secondary, a subordinate role⁠—survived her only a month.

Birdie was left sole heiress. She very successfully turned the cozy house into money, as well as the land somewheres at the edge of the town; married, as it had been presupposed, very happily; and up to this time is convinced that her father carried on a great commercial business in the export of wheat through Odessa and Novorossiysk into Asia Minor.

On the evening of the day when Jennie’s corpse had been carried away to an anatomical theatre; at an hour when not even a chance guest appears on Yamskaya Street, all the girls, at the insistence of Emma Edwardovna, assembled in the drawing room. Not one of them dared murmur against the fact that on this distressing day, when they had not yet recovered from the impression of Jennka’s horrible death, they would be compelled to dress up, as usual, in wildly festive finery, and to go into the brightly illuminated drawing room, in order to dance, sing, and to entice lecherous men with their denuded bodies.

And at last into the drawing room walked Emma Edwardovna herself. She was more majestic than she had ever been⁠—clad in a black silk gown, from which, just like battlements, her enormous breasts jutted out, upon which descended two fat chins; in black silk mittens; with an enormous gold chain wound thrice around her neck, and terminating in a ponderous medallion hanging upon the very abdomen.

“Ladies!⁠ ⁠…” she began impressively, “I must⁠ ⁠… Stand up!” she suddenly called out commandingly. “When I speak, you must hear me out standing.”

They all exchanged glances with perplexity: such an order was a novelty in the establishment. However, the girls got up one after another, irresolutely, with eyes and mouths gaping.

“Sie sollen⁠ ⁠… you must from this day show me that respect which you are bound to show to your mistress,” importantly and weightily began Emma Edwardovna. “Beginning from today, the establishment in a legal manner has passed from our good and respected Anna Markovna to me, Emma Edwardovna Titzner. I hope that we will not quarrel, and that you will behave yourselves like sensible, obedient, and well-brought-up girls. I will be to you like in place of your own mother, but only remember, that I will not stand for laziness, or drunkenness, or notions of any sort; or any kind of disorder. The kind Madame Shaibes, it must be said, held you in too loose reins. O-o, I will be far more strict. Discipline über alles⁠ ⁠… before everything. It’s a great pity, that the Russian people are lazy, dirty and stoopid, and do not understand this rule; but don’t you trouble yourself, I will teach you this for your own good. I say ‘for your own good,’ because my main thought is to kill the competition of Treppel. I want that my client should be a man of substance, and not some charlatan and ragamuffin, some kind of student, now, or ham actor. I want that my ladies should be the most beautiful, best brought-up, the healthiest and gayest in the whole city. I won’t spare any money in order to set up swell furnishings; and you will have rooms with silk furniture and with genuine, beautiful rugs. Your guests will no longer be demanding beer, but only genteel Bordeaux and Burgundy wines and champagne. Remember, that a rich, substantial, elderly man never likes your common, ordinary, coarse love. He requires Cayenne pepper; he requires not a trade, but an art,