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

“Mister Professor, more! Please, more, more!⁠ ⁠…”

But when, having united the oxygen with the hydrogen brought in an empty champagne bottle, and having wrapped up the bottle for precaution in a towel, Simanovsky ordered Liubka to direct its neck toward a burning candle, and when the explosion broke out, as though four cannons had been fired off at once⁠—an explosion through which the plastering fell down from the ceiling⁠—then Liubka grew timorous, and, only getting to rights with difficulty, pronounced with trembling lips, but with dignity:

“You must excuse me now, but since I have a flat of my own, and I’m not at all a wench any longer, but a decent woman, I’d ask you therefore not to misbehave in my place. I thought you, like a smart and educated man, would do everything nice and genteel, but you busy yourself with silly things. They can even put one in jail for that.”

Subsequently, much, much later, she told how she had a student friend, who made dynamite before her.

It must have been, after all, that Simanovsky⁠—this enigmatic man, so influential in his youthful society, where he had to deal with theory for the most part, and so incoherent when a practical experiment with a living soul had come into his hands⁠—was just simply stupid, but could skillfully conceal this sole sincere quality of his.

Having suffered failure in applied sciences, he at once passed on to metaphysics. Once he very self-assuredly, and in a tone such that after it no refutation was possible, announced to Liubka that there is no God, and that he would undertake to prove this during five minutes. Whereupon Liubka jumped up from her place, and told him firmly that she, even though a quondam prostitute, still believed in God and would not allow Him to be offended in her presence; and if he would continue such nonsense, then she would complain to Vassil Vassilich.

“I will also tell him,” she added in a weeping voice, “that you, instead of teaching me, only rattle off all kinds of stuff and all that sort of nastiness, while you yourself hold your hand on my knees. And that’s even not at all genteel.” And for the first time during all their acquaintanceship she, who had formerly been so timorous and constrained, sharply moved away from her teacher.

However, having suffered a few failures, Simanovsky still obstinately continued to act upon the mind and imagination of Liubka. He tried to explain to her the theory of the origin of species, beginning with an amoeba and ending with Napoleon. Liubka listened to him attentively, and during this there was an imploring expression in her eyes: “When will you stop at last?” She yawned into a handkerchief and then guiltily explained: “Excuse me, that’s from my nerves.” Marx also had no success⁠—goods, supplementary value, the manufacturer and the worker, which had become algebraic formulas, were for Liubka merely empty sounds, vibrating the air; and she, very sincere at soul, always jumped up with joy from her place, when hearing that, apparently, the beet soup had boiled up, or that someone seemed to be knocking at the door.

It cannot be said that Simanovsky did not have success with women. His aplomb and his weighty, decisive tone always acted upon simple souls, especially upon virginal, naively trusting souls. And protracted ties he always got out of very easily; either he was dedicated to a tremendously responsible call, before which domestic love relations were nothing; or he pretended to be a superman, to whom all is permitted (O, thou, Nietszche, so long ago and so disgracefully misconstrued for high-school boys!). The passive, almost imperceptible, but firmly evasive resistance of Liubka irritated and excited him. What particularly incensed him was the fact that she, who had formerly been so accessible to all, ready to yield her love in one day to several people in succession, to each one for two roubles, was now all of a sudden playing at some pure and disinterested inamoration! The welts of disgrace upon the soul are never thoroughly healed up, and shameful sex habits are never smoothed out of the memory.

“Nonsense,” he thought. “This can’t be. She’s making believe, and, probably, I don’t strike the right tone with her.”

And with every day he became more exacting, captious, and stern. Hardly consciously, more probably through habit, he relied on his usual influence, intimidating the thought and subduing the will, which rarely betrayed him.

Once Liubka complained about him to Likhonin:

“He’s too strict with me, now, Vassil Vassilievich; and I don’t understand anything he says, and I don’t want to take lessons with him any more.”

Somehow or other, Likhonin lamely quieted her down; but still he had an explanation with Simanovsky. The other answered him with sang froid:

“Just as you wish, my dear fellow; if my method displeases you or Liubka, then I’m even ready to resign. My problem consists only of bringing in a genuine element of discipline into her education. If she does not understand anything, then I compel her to learn it by heart, aloud. With time this will cease. That is unavoidable. Recall, Likhonin, how difficult the transition from arithmetic to algebra was for us, when we were compelled to replace common numerals with letters, and did not know why this was done. Or why did they teach us grammar, instead of simply advising us to write tales and verses?”

And on the very next day, bending down low under the hanging shade of the lamp over Liubka’s body, and sniffing all over her breast and under her arm pits, he was saying to her:

“Draw a triangle⁠ ⁠… Well, yes, this way and this way. On top I write ‘Love.’ Write simply the letter L, and below M and W. That will be: the Love of Man and Woman.”

With the air of an oracle, unshakable and austere, he spoke all sorts of erotic balderdash and almost unexpectedly concluded:

“And so look,