"'The little claw is sunk in...'"[9] quietly prompted Lichonin.

[9] "The little claw is sunk in, the whole bird is bound to perish"--a folk proverb used by Tolstoi as a sub-t.i.tle to his "The Power of Darkness."--Trans.

"Yes," answered the reporter, and looked kindly at the student with gratefulness.

"But as regards Sonechka--why, this is an abstract type," remarked Yarchenko with a.s.surance. "A psychological scheme, so to speak..."

Platonov, who up to now had been speaking as though unwillingly, at a slow rate, suddenly grew heated:

"A hundred times have I heard this opinion, a hundred times! And it is entirely an untruth. Underneath the coa.r.s.e and obscene profession, underneath the foulest oaths--about one's mother--underneath the drunken, hideous exterior--Sonechka Marmeladova still lives! The fate of the Russian prost.i.tute--oh, what a tragic, piteous, b.l.o.o.d.y, ludicrous and stupid path it is! Here everything has been juxtaposed: the Russian G.o.d, Russian breadth and unconcern, Russian despair in a fall, Russian lack of culture, Russian naivete, Russian patience, Russian shamelessness. Why, all of them, whom you take into bedrooms,--look upon them, look upon them well,--why, they are all children; why, each of them is but eleven years old. Fate has thrust them upon prost.i.tution and since then they live in some sort of a strange, fairy-like, toy existence, without developing, without being enriched by experience, naive, trusting, capricious, not knowing what they will say and do half an hour later--altogether like children. This radiant and ludicrous childishness I have seen in the very oldest wenches, fallen as low as low can be, broken-winded and crippled like a cabby's nags. And never does this impotent pity, this useless commiseration toward human suffering die within them ... For example..."

Platonov looked over all the persons sitting with a slow gaze, and suddenly, waving his hand despondently, said in a tired voice:

"However ... The devil take it all! To-day I have spoken enough for ten years ... And all of it to no purpose."

"But really, Sergei Ivanich, why shouldn't you try to describe all this yourself?" asked Yarchenko. "Your attention is so vitally concentrated on this question."

"I did try!" answered Platonov with a cheerless smile. "But nothing came of it. I started writing and at once became entangled in various 'whats,' 'which's,' 'was's.' The epithets prove flat. The words grow cold on the page. It's all a cud of some sort. Do you know, Terekhov was here once, while pa.s.sing through ... You know ... The well-known one ... I came to him and started in telling him lots and lots about the life here, which I do not tell you for fear of boring you. I begged him to utilize my material. He heard me out with great attention, and this is what he said, literally: 'Don't get offended, Platonov, if I tell you that there's almost not a single person of those I have met during my life, who wouldn't thrust themes for novels and stories upon me, or teach me as to what ought to be written up. That material which you have just communicated to me is truly unencompa.s.sable in its significance and weightiness. But what shall I do with it? In order to write a colossal book such as the one you have in mind, the words of others do not suffice--even though they be the most exact--even observations, made with a little note-book and a bit of pencil, do not suffice. One must grow accustomed to this life, without being cunningly wise, without any ulterior thoughts of writing. Then a terrific book will result.'

"His words discouraged me and at the same time gave me wings. Since that time I believe, that now, not soon--after fifty years or so--but there will come a writer of genius, and precisely a Russian one, who will absorb within himself all the burdens and all the abominations of this life and will cast them forth to us in the form of simple, fine, and deathlessly-caustic images. And we shall all say: 'Why, now, we, ourselves, have seen and known all this, but we could not even suppose that this is so horrible!' In this coming artist I believe with all my heart."

"Amen!" said Lichonin seriously. "Let us drink to him."

"But, honest to G.o.d," suddenly declared Little Manka, "If some one would only write the truth about the way we live here, miserable w--that we are..."

There was a knock at the door, and at once Jennie entered in her resplendent orange dress.

CHAPTER X.

She greeted all the men without embarra.s.sment, with the independent bearing of the first personage in the house, and sat down near Sergei Ivanich, behind his chair. She had just gotten free from that same German in the uniform of the benevolent organization, who early in the evening had made Little White Manka his choice, but had afterwards changed her, at the recommendation of the housekeeper, for Pasha. But the provoking and self-a.s.sured beauty of Jennie must have smitten deeply his lecherous heart, for, having prowled some three hours through certain beer emporiums and restaurants, and having there gathered courage, he had again returned into the house of Anna Markovna, had waited until her time-guest--Karl Karlovich, from the optical store--had gone away from Jennie, and had taken her into a room.

To the silent question in Tamara's eyes Jennie made a wry face of disgust, shivered with her back and nodded her head affirmatively.

"He's gone... Brrr! ..."

Platonov was looking at Jennie with extraordinary attentiveness. He distinguished her from the rest of the girls and almost respected her for her abrupt, refractory, and impudently mocking character. And now, turning around occasionally, by her flaming, splendid eyes, by the vividly and unevenly glowing unhealthy red of her cheeks, by the much bitten parched lips, he felt that her great, long ripening rancour was heavily surging within the girl and suffocating her. And it was then that he thought (and subsequently often recalled this) that he had never yet seen Jennie so radiantly beautiful as on this night. He also noticed, that all the men present in the private cabinet, with the exception of Lichonin, were looking at her--some frankly, others by stealth and as though in pa.s.sing--with curiosity and furtive desire.

The beauty of this woman, together with the thought of her altogether easy accessibility, at any minute, agitated their imagination.

"There's something working upon you, Jennie," said Platonov quietly.

Caressingly, she just barely drew her fingers over his arm.

"Don't pay any attention. Just so ... our womanish affairs ... It won't be interesting to you."

But immediately, turning to Tamara, she pa.s.sionately and rapidly began saying something in an agreed jargon, which presented a wild mixture out of the Hebrew, Tzigani and Roumanian tongues and the cant words of thieves and horse-thieves.

"Don't try to put anything over on the fly guy, the fly guy is next,"

Tamara cut her short and with a smile indicated the reporter with her eyes.

Platonov had, in fact, understood. Jennie was telling with indignation that during this day and night, thanks to the influx of a cheap public, the unhappy Pashka had been taken into a room more than ten times--and all by different men. Only just now she had had a hysterical fit, ending in a faint. And now, scarcely having brought Pashka back to consciousness and braced her up on valerian drops in a gla.s.s of spirits, Emma Edwardovna had again sent her into the drawing room.

Jennie had attempted to take the part of her comrade, but the house-keeper had cursed the intercessor out and had threatened her with punishment.

"What is it all about?" asked Yarchenko in perplexity, raising high his eyebrows.

"Don't trouble yourself ... nothing out of the way..." answered Jennie in a still agitated voice. "Just so ... our little family trifles ...

Sergei Ivanich, may I have some of your wine?"

She poured out half a gla.s.s for herself and drank the cognac off at a draught, distending her thin nostrils wide.

Platonov got up in silence and went toward the door.

"It's not worth while, Sergei Ivanich. Drop it..." Jennie stopped him.

"Oh no, why not?" objected the reporter. "I shall do a very simple and innocent thing, take Pasha here, and if need be--pay for her, even. Let her lie down here for a while on the divan and rest, even though a little ... Niura, run for a pillow quick!"

Scarcely had the door shut behind his broad, ungainly figure in its gray clothes, when Boris Sobashnikov at once commenced speaking with a contemptuous bitterness:

"Gentlemen, what the devil for have we dragged into our company this peach off the street? We must needs tie up with all sorts of riff-raff?

The devil knows what he is--perhaps he's even a dinny? Who can vouch for him? And you're always like that, Lichonin."

"It isn't Lichonin but I who introduced him to everybody,"' said Ramses. "I know him for a fully respectable person and a good companion."

"Eh! Nonsense! A good companion to drink at some one else's expense.

Why, don't you see for yourselves that this is the most ordinary type of habitue attached to a brothel, and, most probably, he is simply the pimp here, to whom a percentage is paid for the entertainment into which he entices the visitors."

"Leave off, Borya. It's foolish," remarked Yarchenko reproachfully.

But Borya could not leave off. He had an unfortunate peculiarity--intoxication acted neither upon his legs nor his tongue, but put him in a morose, touchy frame of mind and egged him on into quarrels. And Platonov had already for a long time irritated him with his negligently sincere, a.s.sured and serious bearing, so little suitable to the private cabinet of a brothel. But the seeming indifference with which the reporter let pa.s.s the malicious remarks which he interposed into the conversation angered Sobashnikov still more.

"And then, the tone in which he permits himself to speak in our company!" Sobashnikov continued to seethe. "A certain aplomb, condescension, a professorial tone ... The scurvy penny-a-liner! The free-lunch grafter!"

Jennie, who had all the time been looking intently at the student, gaily and maliciously flashing with her sparkling dark eyes, suddenly began to clap her hands.

"That's the way! Bravo, little student! Bravo, bravo, bravo! ... That's the way, give it to him good! ... Really, what sort of a disgrace is this! When he'll come, now, I'll repeat everything to him."

"I--if you please! A--as much as you like!" Sobashnikov drawled out like an actor, making superciliously squeamish creases about his mouth.

"I shall repeat the very same things myself."

"There's a fine fellow, now,--I love you for that!" exclaimed Jennie joyously and maliciously, striking her fist on the table. "You can tell an owl at once by its flight, a good man by his snot!"

Little White Manya and Tamara looked at Jennie with wonder, but, noting the evil little lights leaping in her eyes and her nervously quivering nostrils, they both understood and smiled.