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

the daytime, rehearsals; and then there’s scarcely time for dinner and you’re due for the performance. An hour or so for reading or such diversion as you and I are having now, may be snatched only by a miracle. And even so⁠ ⁠… the diversion is altogether of the mediocre⁠ ⁠…”

She negligently and wearily made a slight gesture with the fingers of the hand lying on the barrier.

Volodya Chaplinsky, agitated by this conversation, suddenly asked:

“Yes, but tell me, Ellena Victorovna, what would you want to distract your imagination and ennui?”

She looked at him with her enigmatic eyes and answered quietly, even a trifle shyly, it seemed:

“Formerly, people lived more gaily and did not know prejudices of any sort. Well, it seems to me that then I would have been in my place and would have lived with a full life. Oh, ancient Rome!”

No one understood her, save Ryazanov, who, without looking at her, slowly pronounced in his velvety voice, like that of an actor, the classical, universally familiar, Latin phrase:

“Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!”

“Precisely! I love you very much, Ryazanov, because you are a clever child. You will always catch a thought in its flight; although, I must say, that this isn’t an especially high faculty of the mind. And really, two beings come together, the friends of yesterday, who had conversed with each other and eaten at the same table, and this day one of them must perish. You understand⁠—depart from life forever. But they have neither malice nor fear. There is the most real, magnificent spectacle, which I can only picture to myself!”

“How much cruelty there is in you,” said the baroness meditatively.

“Well, nothing can be done about it now! My ancestors were cavaliers and robbers. However, shan’t we go now?”

They all went out of the garden. Volodya Chaplinsky ordered his automobile called. Ellena Victorovna was leaning upon his arm. And suddenly she asked:

“Tell me, Volodya, where do you usually go when you take leave of so-called decent women?”

Volodya hemmed and hawed. However, he knew positively that he could not lie to Rovinskaya.

“M-m-m⁠ ⁠… I’m afraid of offending your hearing. To the Tzigani, for instance⁠ ⁠… to night cabarets⁠ ⁠…”

“And somewhere else? Worse?”

“Really, you put me in an awkward position. From the time that I’ve become so madly in love with you⁠ ⁠…”

“Leave out the romancing!”

“Well, how shall I say it?” murmured Volodya, feeling that he was turning red, not only in the face, but with his body, his back. “Well, of course, to the women. Now, of course, this does not occur with me personally⁠ ⁠…”

Rovinskaya maliciously pressed Chaplinsky’s elbow to her side.

“To a brothel?”

Volodya did not answer anything. Then she said:

“And so, you’ll carry us at once over there in the automobile and acquaint us with this existence, which is foreign to me. But remember, that I rely upon your protection.”

The remaining two agreed to this, unwillingly, in all probability; but there was no possibility of opposing Ellena Victorovna. She always did everything that she wanted to. And then they had all heard and knew that in Petersburg carousing worldly ladies, and even girls, permit themselves, out of a modish snobbism, pranks far worse than the one which Rovinskaya had proposed.

VII

On the way to Yamskaya Street, Rovinskaya said to Volodya:

“You’ll bring me at first into the most luxurious place, then into a medium one, and then into the filthiest.”

“My dear Ellena Victorovna,” warmly retorted Chaplinsky, “I’m ready to do everything for you. It is without false boasting when I say that I would give my life away at your order, ruin my career and position at a mere sign of yours⁠ ⁠… But I dare not bring you to these houses. Russian manners are coarse, and often simply inhuman manners. I’m afraid that you will be insulted by some pungent, unseemly word, or that a chance visitor will play some senseless prank before you⁠ ⁠…”

“Ah, my God,” impatiently interrupted Rovinskaya; “when I was singing in London, there were many at that time paying court to me, and I did not hesitate to go and see the filthiest dens of Whitechapel in a choice company. I will say, that I was treated there very carefully and anticipatingly. I will also say, that there were with me at that time two English aristocrats; lords, both sportsmen, both people unusually strong physically and morally, who, of course, would never have allowed a woman to be offended. However, perhaps you, Volodya, are of the race of cowards?”

Chaplinsky flared up:

“Oh, no, no, Ellena Victorovna. I forewarned you only out of love for you. But if you command, then I’m ready to go where you will. Not only on this dubious undertaking, but even very death itself.”

By this time they had already driven up to the most luxurious establishment in the Yamkas⁠—Treppel’s. Ryazanov the lawyer said, smiling with his usual ironic smile:

“And so, the inspection of the menagerie begins.”

They were led into a cabinet with crimson wall paper, and on the wall paper was repeated, in the “empire” style, a golden design in the form of small laurel wreaths. And at once Rovinskaya recognized, with the keen memory of an artist, that exactly the same paper had also been in that cabinet in which they had just been sitting.

Four German women from the Baltic provinces came out. All of them stout, full-breasted, blonde, powdered, very important and respectful. The conversation did not catch on at first. The girls sat immovable, like carvings of stone, in order to pretend with all their might that they were respectable ladies. Even the champagne, which Ryazanov called for, did not improve the mood. Rovinskaya was the first to come to the aid of the party. Turning to the stoutest, fairest German of all, who resembled a loaf, she asked politely in German:

“Tell me, where were you born? Germany, in all probability?”

“No, gnädige Frau, I am from Riga.”

“What compels you to serve here, then? Not poverty, I hope?”

“Of course not, gnädige Frau. But, you understand, my