"Wa.s.s 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. G.o.d 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!" Lichonin 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 prost.i.tution 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 business-like, 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 inst.i.tution, with its NAIVETE, harshness, sentimentality and imitativeness."

"That's right," confirmed Lichonin, while the reporter continued, gazing pensively into his gla.s.s:

"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 haeterae! These heinous degenerates of humanity, sucking the blood of prost.i.tutes!' ... 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 prost.i.tutes, 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 innate leaning toward crime. Shall I confess to you? I, when I talk all alone to Simeon--and we talk with each other long and leisurely, for hours--I experience at moments a genuine terror. A superst.i.tious terror! Just as though, for instance, I am standing in the dusk upon a shaking little board, bending over some dark, malodorous well, and just barely distinguish how there, at the bottom, reptiles are stirring. And yet, he is devout in a real way, and I am sure will some time join the monks and will be a great faster and sayer of prayers, and the devil knows how, in what monstrous fashion, a real religious ecstasy will entwine in his soul with blasphemy, with scoffing at sacred things, with some repulsive pa.s.sion or other, with sadism or something else of that nature!"

"However, you do not spare the object of your observations," said Yarchenko, and carefully indicated the girls with his eyes.

"Eh, it's all the same. Our relations are cool now."

"How so?" asked Volodya Pavlov, who had caught the end of the conversation.

"Just so ... It isn't even worth the telling..." smiled the reporter evasively. "A trifle ... Let's have your gla.s.s here, Mr. Yarchenko."

But the precipitate Niura, who could never keep her tongue behind her teeth, suddenly shot oat in rapid patter:

"It's because Sergei Ivanich gave him one in the snout ... On account of Ninka. A certain old man came to Ninka ... And stayed for the night ... And Ninka had the flowers ... And the old man was torturing her all the time ... So Ninka started crying and ran away."[6]

[6] The Russian expression is "the red flag."--TRANS.

"Drop it, Niura; it's boring," said Platonov with a wry face.

"Can it!" (leave off) ordered Tamara severely, in the jargon of houses of prost.i.tution.

But it was impossible to stop Niura, who had gotten a running start.

"But Ninka says: 'I,' she says, 'won't stay with him for anything, though you cut me all to pieces ... He,' she says, 'has made me all wet with his spit.' Well, the old man complained to the porter, to be sure, and the porter starts in to beat up Ninka, to be sure. And Sergei Ivanich at this time was writing for me a letter home, to the province, and when he heard that Ninka was hollering..."

"Zoe, shut her mouth!" said Platonov.

"He just jumped up at once and ... app! ..." and Niura's torrent instantly broke off, stopped up by Zoe's palm.

Everybody burst out laughing, only Boris Sobashnikov muttered under cover of the noise with a contemptuous look:

"OH, CHEVALIER SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE!"

He was already pretty far gone in drink, stood leaning against the wall, in a provoking pose, and was nervously chewing a cigarette.

"Which Ninka is this?" asked Yarchenko with curiosity. "Is she here?"

"No, she isn't here. Such a small, pug-nosed little girl. Naive and very angry." The reporter suddenly and sincerely burst into laughter.

"Excuse me ... It's just so ... over my thoughts," explained he through laughter. "I recalled this old man very vividly just now, as he was running along the corridor in fright, having grabbed his outer clothing and shoes ... Such a respectable ancient, with the appearance of an apostle, I even know where he serves. Why, all of you know him. But the funniest of all was when he, at last, felt himself out of danger in the drawing room. You understand--he is sitting on a chair, putting on his pantaloons, can't put his foot where it ought to go, by any means, and bawls all over the house: 'It's an outrage! This is an abominable dive!

I'll show you up! ... To-morrow I'll give you twenty-four hours to clear out! ... Do you know, this combination of pitiful helplessness with the threatening cries was so killing that even the gloomy Simeon started laughing ... Well, now, apropos of Simeon ... I say, that life dumfounds, with its wondrous muddle and farrago, makes one stand aghast. You can utter a thousand sonorous words against souteneurs, but just such a Simeon you will never think up. So diverse and motley is life! Or else take Anna Markovna, the proprietress of this place. This blood-sucker, hyena, vixen and so on ... is the tenderest mother imaginable. She has one daughter--Bertha, she is now in the fifth grade of high school. If you could only see how much careful attention, how much tender care Anna Markovna expends that her daughter may not somehow, accidentally, find out about her profession. And everything is for Birdie, everything is for the sake of Birdie. And she herself dare not even converse before her, is afraid of her lexicon of a bawd and an erstwhile prost.i.tute, looks into her eyes, holds herself servilely, like an old servant, like a foolish, doting nurse, like an old, faithful, mange-eaten poodle. It is long since time for her to retire to rest, because she has money, and because her occupation is both arduous and troublesome, and because her years are already venerable.

But no and no; one more extra thousand is needed, and then more and more--everything for Birdie. And so Birdie has horses, Birdie has an English governess, Birdie is every year taken abroad, Birdie has diamonds worth forty thousand--the devil knows whose they are, these diamonds? And it isn't that I am merely convinced, but I know well, that for the happiness of this same Birdie, nay, not even for her happiness, but, let us suppose that Birdie gets a hangnail on her little finger--well then, in order that this hangnail might pa.s.s away--imagine for a second the possibility of such a state of things!--Anna Markovna, without the quiver of an eyelash, will sell into corruption our sisters and daughters, will infect all of us and our sons with syphilis. What? A monster, you will say? But I will say that she is moved by the same grand, unreasoning, blind, egoistical love for which we call our mothers sainted women."

"Go easy around the curves!" remarked Boris Sobashnikov through his teeth.

"Pardon me: I was not comparing people, but merely generalizing on the first source of emotion. I might have brought out as an example the self-denying love of animal-mothers as well. But I see that I have started on a tedious matter. Better let's drop it."

"No, you finish," protested Lichonin. "I feel that you have a ma.s.sive thought."

"And a very simple one. The other day a professor asked me if I am not observing the life here with some literary aims. And all I wanted to say was, that I can see, but precisely can not observe. Here I have given you Simeon and the bawd for example. I do not know myself why, but I feel that in them lurks some terrible, insuperable actuality of life, but either to tell it, or to show it, I can not. Here is necessary the great ability to take some picayune trifle, an insignificant, paltry little stroke, and then will result a dreadful truth, from which the reader, aghast, will forget that his mouth is agape. People seek the terrible in words, in cries, in gestures. Well, now, for example, I am reading a description of some pogrom or of a slaughter in jail, or of a riot being put down. Of course, the policemen are described, these servants of arbitrariness, these lifeguards of contemporaneousness, striding up to their knees in blood, or how else do they write in such cases? Of course, it is revolting and it hurts, and is disgusting, but all this is felt by the mind, and not the heart. But here I am walking along Lebyazhia Street, and see that a crowd has collected, a girl of five years in the centre--she has lagged behind the mother and has strayed, or it may be that the mother had abandoned her. And before the girl, squatting down on his heels, is a roundsman. He is interrogating her, how she is called, and where is she from, and how do they call papa, and how do they call mamma. He has broken out into sweat, the poor fellow, from the effort, the cap is at the back of his neck, the whiskered face is such a kindly and woeful and helpless one, while the voice is gentle, so gentle. At last, what do you think? As the girl has become all excited, and has already grown hoa.r.s.e from tears, and is shy of everybody--he, this same 'roundsman on the beat,' stretches out two of his black, calloused fingers, the index and the little, and begins to imitate a nanny goat for the girl and reciting an appropriate nursery rhyme! ... And so, when I looked upon this charming scene and thought that half an hour later at the station house this same patrolman will be beating with his feet the face and chest of a man whom he had not till that time seen once, and whose crime he is entirely ignorant of--then--you understand!--I began to feel inexpressibly eerie and sad. Not with the mind, but the heart.

Such a devilish muddle is this life. Shall we drink some cognac, Lichonin?"

"What do you say to calling each other thou?" suddenly proposed Lichonin.

"All right. Only, really, without any of this business of kissing, now.

Here's to your health, old man ... Or here is another instance ... I read a certain French cla.s.sic, describing the thoughts and sensations of a man condemned to capital punishment. He describes it all sonorously, powerfully, brilliantly, but I read and ... well, there is no impression of any sort; neither emotion nor indignation--just ENNUI.

But then, within the last few days I come across a brief newspaper notice of a murderer's execution somewhere in France. The Procureur, who was present at the last toilet of the criminal, sees that he is putting on his shoes on his bare feet, and--the blockhead!--reminds him: 'What about the socks?' But the other gives him a look and says, sort of thoughtfully: 'Is it worth while?' Do you understand, these two remarks, so very short, struck me like a blow on the skull! At once all the horror and all the stupidity of unnatural death were revealed to me ... Or here is something else about death ... A certain friend of mine died, a captain in the infantry--a drunkard, a vagabond, and the finest soul in the world. For some reason we called him the Electrical Captain. I was in the vicinity, and it fell to me to dress him for the last parade. I took his uniform and began to attach the epaulettes to it. There's a cord, you know, that's drawn through the shank of the epaulette b.u.t.tons, and after that the two ends of this cord are shoved through two little holes under the collar, and on the inside--the lining--are tied together. Well, I go through all this business, and tie the cord with a slipknot, and, you know, the loop won't come out, nohow--either it's too loosely tied, or else one end's too short. I am fussing over this nonsense, and suddenly into my head comes the most astonishingly simple thought, that it's far simpler and quicker to tie it in a knot--for after all, it's all the same, NO ONE IS GOING TO UNTIE IT. And immediately I felt death with all my being. Until that time I had seen the captain's eyes, grown gla.s.sy, had felt his cold forehead, and still somehow had not sensed death to the full, but I thought of the knot--and I was all transpierced, and the simple and sad realization of the irrevocable, inevitable perishing of all our words, deeds, and sensations, of the perishing of all the apparent world, seemed to bow me down to the earth ... And I could bring forward a hundred such small but staggering trifles ... Even, say, about what people experienced in the war ... But I want to lead my thought up to one thing. We all pa.s.s by these characteristic trifles indifferently, like the blind, as though not seeing them scattered about under our feet. But an artist will come, and he will look over them carefully, and he will pick them up. And suddenly he will so skillfully turn in the sun a minute bit of life that we shall all cry out: 'Oh, my G.o.d!

But I myself--myself--have seen this with my own eyes. Only it simply did not enter my head to turn my close attention upon it.' But our Russian artists of the word--the most conscientious and sincere artists in the whole world--for some reason have up to this time pa.s.sed over prost.i.tution and the brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me to answer that. Perhaps because of squeamishness, perhaps because of pusillanimity, out of fear of being signalized as a p.o.r.nographic writer; finally, from the apprehension that our gossiping criticism will identify the artistic work of the writer with his personal life and will start rummaging in his dirty linen. Or perhaps they can find neither the time, nor the self-denial, nor the self-possession to plunge in head first into this life and to watch it right up close, without prejudice, without sonorous phrases, without a sheepish pity, in all its monstrous simplicity and every-day activity. Oh, what a tremendous, staggering and truthful book would result!"

"But they do write!" unwillingly remarked Ramses.

"They do write," wearily repeated Platonov in the same tone as he. "But it is all either a lie, or theatrical effects for children of tender years, or else a cunning symbolism, comprehensible only to the sages of the future. But the life itself no one as yet has touched. One big writer--a man with a crystal-pure soul and a remarkable talent for delineation--once approached this theme,[7] and then all that could catch the eye of an outsider was reflected in his soul, as in a wondrous mirror. But he could not decide to lie to and to frighten people. He only looked upon the coa.r.s.e hair of the porter, like that of a dog, and reflected: 'But, surely, even he had a mother.' He pa.s.sed with his wise, exact gaze over the faces of the prost.i.tutes and impressed them on his mind. But that which he did not know he did not dare to write. It is remarkable, that this same writer, enchanting with his honesty and truthfulness, has looked at the moujik as well, more than once. But he sensed that both the tongue and the turn of mind, as well as the soul of the people, were for him dark and incomprehensible ... And he, with an amazing tact, modestly went around the soul of the people, but refracted all his fund of splendid observation through the eyes of townsfolk. I have brought this up purposely. With us, you see, they write about detectives, about lawyers, about inspectors of the revenue, about pedagogues, about attorneys, about the police, about officers, about sensual ladies, about engineers, about baritones--and really, by G.o.d, altogether well--cleverly, with finesse and talent.

But, after all, all these people, are rubbish, and their life is not life but some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of world culture. But there are two singular realities--ancient as humanity itself: the prost.i.tute and the moujik. And about them we know nothing save some tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions in literature. I ask you: what has Russian literature extracted out of all the nightmare of prost.i.tution? Sonechka Marmeladova alone.[8]

What has it given us about the moujik save odious, false, nationalistic pastorals? One, altogether but one, but then, in truth, the greatest work in all the world--a staggering tragedy, the truthfulness of which takes the breath away and makes the hair stand on end. You know what I am speaking of ..."

[7] The reference here is most probably to Chekhov.--TRANS.

[8] The heroine of Dostoievsky's "Crime and Punishment."--Trans.