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

Jennka. “Don’t you knuckle down too much before her⁠—and that goes for Simeon too. Abuse them for all you’re worth. It’s daytime now, and they won’t dare do anything to you. If anything happens, tell them straight that, now, you’re going to the governor immediately and are going to tell on them. Tell ’em that they’ll be closed up and put out of town in twenty-four hours. Bawl ’em out and they get as soft as silk. Well, now, I wish you success.”

She went away. After ten minutes had passed, into the cabinet floated Emma Edwardovna, the housekeeper, in a blue satin pegnoir; corpulent, with an important face, broadening from the forehead down to the cheeks, just like a monstrous squash; with all her massive chins and breasts; with small, keen eyes, without eyelashes; with thin, malicious, compressed lips. Likhonin, arising, pressed the puffy hand extended to him, studded with rings, and suddenly thought with aversion:

“The devil take it! If this vermin had a soul, if it were possible to read this soul⁠—then how many direct and indirect murders are lurking hidden within it!”

It must be said, that in starting out for the Yamkas, Likhonin, besides money, had fetched a revolver along with him; and on the road, while walking, he had frequently shoved his hand into his pocket and had there felt the chill contact of the metal. He expected affront, violence, and was prepared to meet them in a suitable manner. But, to his amazement, all that he had presupposed and had feared proved a timorous, fantastic fiction. The business was far more simple, more wearisome and more prosaic, and at the same time more unpleasant.

“Ja, mein Herr,” said the housekeeper indifferently and somewhat loftily, settling into a low chair and lighting a cigarette. “You pay for one night and instead of that took already the girl for one more night and one more day. Also, you owe twenty-five more roubles yet. When we let off a girlie for a night we take ten roubles, and for the twenty-four hours twenty-five roubles. That’s a tax, like. Don’t you want a smoke, young man?” she stretched out her case, and Likhonin, without himself knowing how it came about, took a cigarette.

“I wanted to talk with you about something else entirely.”

“O! Don’t trouble yourself to speak: I understand everything very well. Probably the young man wants to take these girl, those Liubka, altogether to himself to set her up, or in order to⁠—how do you Russians call it?⁠—in order to safe her? Yes, yes, yes, that happens. Twenty-two years I live in a brothel, and I know, that this happens with very foolish young peoples. But only I assure you, that from this will come nothing out.”

“Whether it will come out or whether it won’t come out⁠—that is already my affair,” answered Likhonin dully, looking down at his fingers, trembling on his knees.

“O, of course, it’s your affair, my young student,” and the flabby cheeks and majestic chins of Emma Edwardovna began to jump from inaudible laughter. “From my soul I wish for you love and friendship; but only trouble yourself to tell this nasty creature, this Liubka, that she shouldn’t dare to show even her nose here, when you throw her out into the street like a little doggie. Let her croak from hunger under a fence, or go into a half-rouble establishment for the soldiers!”

“Believe me, she won’t return. I ask you merely to give me her certificate, without delay.”

“The certificate? Ach, if you please! Even this very minute. Only I will first trouble you to pay for everything that she took here on credit. Have a look, here is her account book. I took it along with me on purpose. I knew already beforehand with what our conversation would wind up.” She took out of the slit of her pegnoir⁠—showing Likhonin for just a minute her fat, full-fleshed, yellow, enormous bosom⁠—a little book in a black cover, with the heading: Account of Miss Irene Voschhenkova in the House of Ill-Fame, Maintained by Anna Markovna Shaibes, on Yamskaya Street, No. So-and-So, and extended it to him across the table. Likhonin turned over the first page and read through four or five paragraphs of the printed rules. There dryly and briefly it was stated that the account book consists of two copies, of which one is kept by the proprietress while the other remains with the prostitute; that all income and expense were entered into both books; that by agreement the prostitute receives board, quarters, heat, light, bed linen, baths and so forth, and for this pays out to the proprietress in no case more than two-thirds of her earnings; while out of the remaining money she is bound to dress neatly and decently, having no less than two dresses for going out. Further, mention was made of the fact that payment was made with the help of stamps, which the proprietress gives out to the prostitute upon receipt of money from her; while the account is drawn up at the end of every month. And, finally, that the prostitute can at any time leave the house of prostitution, even if there does remain a debt of hers, which, however, she binds herself to cancel on the basis of general civil laws.

Likhonin prodded the last point with his finger, and, having turned the face of the book to the housekeeper, said triumphantly:

“Aha! There, you see: she has the right to leave the house at any time. Consequently, she can at any time quit your abominable dive of violence, baseness, and depravity, in which you⁠ ⁠…” Likhonin began rattling off, but the housekeeper calmly cut him short:

“O! I have no doubt of this. Let her go away. Let her only pay the money.”

“What about promissory notes? She can give promissory notes.”

“Pst! Promissory notes! In the first place, she’s illiterate; while in the second, what are her promissory notes worth? A spit⁠—and no more. Let her find a surety who