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

did not believe it even himself⁠—the reporter was altogether too homely and too carelessly dressed, and moreover he bore himself with great dignity.

Platonov again made believe that he had not heard the insolent remark made by the student. He only nervously crumpled a napkin in his fingers and lightly threw it aside from him. And again his eyelids quivered in the direction of Boris Sobashnikov.

“Yes, true, I am one of the family here,” he continued calmly, moving his glass in slow circles on the table. “Just think, I dined in this very house, day after day, for exactly four months.”

“No? Seriously?” Yarchenko wondered and laughed.

“In all seriousness. The table here isn’t at all bad, by the way. The food is filling and savory, although exceedingly greasy.”

“But how did you ever⁠ ⁠…”

“Why, just because I was tutoring for high school a daughter of Anna Markovna, the lady of this hospitable house. Well, I stipulated that part of my monthly pay should be deducted for my dinners.”

“What a strange fancy!” said Yarchenko. “And did you do this of your own will? Or⁠ ⁠… Pardon me, I am afraid of seeming indiscreet to you⁠ ⁠… Perhaps at that time⁠ ⁠… extreme necessity?⁠ ⁠…”

“Not at all. Anna Markovna soaked me three times as much as it would have cost in a student’s dining room. I simply wanted to live here a while on a somewhat nearer, closer footing, to enter intimately into this little world, so to speak.”

“A-ah! It seems I am beginning to understand!” beamed Yarchenko. “Our new friend⁠—pardon me for the little familiarity⁠—is, apparently, gathering material from life? And, perhaps, in a few years we will have the pleasure of reading⁠ ⁠…”

“A t-r-ragedy out of a brothel!” Boris Sobashnikov put in loudly, like an actor.

While the reporter had been answering Yarchenko, Tamara quietly got up from her place, walked around the table, and, bending down over Sobashnikov, spoke in a whisper in his ear:

“Dearie, sweetie, you’d better not touch this gentleman. Honest to God, it will be better for you, even.”

“Wass that?” the student looked at her superciliously, fixing his pince-nez with two spread fingers. “Is he your lover? Your pimp?”

“I swear by anything you want that not once in his life has he stayed with any one of us. But, I repeat, don’t pick on him.”

“Why, yes! Why, of course!” retorted Sobashnikov, grimacing scornfully. “He has such a splendid defense as the entire brothel. And it’s a sure thing that all the bouncers on Yamskaya are his near friends and cronies.”

“No, not that,” retorted Tamara in a kind whisper. “Only he’ll take you by the collar and throw you out of the window, like a puppy. I’ve already seen such an aerial flight. God forbid its happening to anyone. It’s disgraceful, and bad for the health.”

“Get out of here, you filth!” yelled Sobashnikov, swinging his elbow at her.

“I’m going, dearie,” meekly answered Tamara, and walked away from him with her light step.

Everybody for an instant turned toward the student.

“Behave yourself, barberry!” Likhonin threatened him with his finger. “Well, well, go on,” he begged the reporter; “all that you’re saying is so interesting.”

“No, I’m not gathering anything,” continued the reporter calmly and seriously. “But the material here is in reality tremendous, downright crushing, terrible⁠ ⁠… And not at all terrible are the loud phrases about the traffic in women’s flesh, about the white slaves, about prostitution being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on, and so on⁠ ⁠… an old hurdy-gurdy of which all have tired! No, horrible are the everyday, accustomed trifles, these businesslike, daily, commercial reckonings, this thousand year old science of amatory practice, this prosaic usage, determined by the ages. In these unnoticeable nothings are completely dissolved such feelings as resentment, humiliation, shame. There remains a dry profession, a contract, an agreement, a well-nigh honest petty trade, no better, no worse than, say, the trade in groceries. Do you understand, gentlemen, that all the horror is in just this, that there is no horror! Bourgeois work days⁠—and that is all. And also an after taste of an exclusive educational institution, with its naivete, harshness, sentimentality and imitativeness.”

“That’s right,” confirmed Likhonin, while the reporter continued, gazing pensively into his glass:

“We read in the papers, in leading articles, various wailings of anxious souls. And the women-physicians are also endeavouring in this matter, and endeavouring disgustingly enough. ‘Oh, dear, regulation! Oh, dear, abolition! Oh, dear, live merchandise! A condition of slavery! The mesdames, these greedy hetaerae! These heinous degenerates of humanity, sucking the blood of prostitutes!’⁠ ⁠… But with clamour you will scare no one and will affect no one. You know, there’s a little saying: much cry, little wool. More awful than all awful words⁠—a hundredfold more awful⁠—is some such little prosaic stroke or other as will suddenly knock you all in a heap, like a blow on the forehead. Take even Simeon, the porter here. It would seem, according to you, there is no sinking lower⁠—a bouncer in a brothel, a brute, almost certainly a murderer, he plucks the prostitutes, gives them “black eyes,” to use a local expression⁠—that is, just simply beats them. But, do you know on what grounds he and I came together and became friendly? On the magnificent details of the divine service of the prelate, on the canon of the honest Andrew, pastor of Crete, on the works of the most beatific father, John the Damascene. He is religious⁠—unusually so! I used to lead him on, and he would sing to me with tears in his eyes: ‘Come ye brethren, and we will give the last kiss to him who has gone to his rest⁠ ⁠…’ From the ritual of the burial of laymen. No, just think: it is only in the Russian soul alone that such contradictions may dwell together!”

“Yes. A fellow like that will pray, and pray, then cut a throat, and then wash his hands and put a candle before an image,” said Ramses.

“Just so. I know of nothing more uncanny than this fusion of fully sincere devoutness with an