Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

for him the white blanks of the girls, replacing their passports, as well as a general alphabetical list. The girls, dressed only in their chemises, stockings, and slippers, were standing and sitting at a distance. Nearer the table was standing the proprietress herself⁠—Anna Markovna⁠—while a little behind her were Emma Edwardovna and Zociya.

The doctor⁠—aged, disheartened, slovenly; a man indifferent to everything⁠—put the pince-nez crookedly upon his nose, looked at the list, and called out:

“Alexandra Budzinskaya!⁠ ⁠…”

The frowning, little, pug-nosed Nina stepped out. Preserving on her face an angry expression, and breathing heavily from shame, from the consciousness of her own awkwardness, and from the exertions, she clumsily climbed up on the table. The doctor, squinting through his pince-nez and dropping it every minute, carried out the inspection.

“Go ahead!⁠ ⁠… You’re sound.”

And on the reverse side of the blank he marked off: “Twenty-eighth of August. Sound” and put down a curlycue. And, before he had even finished writing, called out:

“Voshchenkova, Irene!⁠ ⁠…”

Now it was the turn of Liubka. She, during the past month and a half of comparative freedom, had had time to grow unaccustomed to the inspections of every week; and when the doctor turned up the chemise over her breast, she suddenly turned as red as only very bashful women can⁠—even with her back and breast.

After her was the turn of Zoe; then of Little White Manka; after that of Tamara and Niurka⁠—the last, the doctor found, had gonorrhoea, and ordered her to be sent off to a hospital.

The doctor carried out the inspection with amazing rapidity. It was now nearly twenty years that every week, on Saturdays, he had to inspect in such a manner several hundred girls; and he had worked out that habitual technical dexterity and rapidity, a calm carelessness of movements, which is frequently to be found in circus artists, in card sharpers, in furniture movers and packers, and in other professionals. And he carried out his manipulations with the same calmness with which a drover or a veterinary inspects several hundred head of cattle in a day.

Did he ever think that before him were living people; or that he appeared as the last and most important link of that fearful chain which is called legalized prostitution?

No! And even if he did experience this, then it must have been in the very beginning of his career. Now before him were only naked abdomens, naked backs, and opened mouths. Not one exemplar of all this faceless herd of every Saturday would he have recognized subsequently on the street. The main thing was the necessity of finishing as soon as possible the inspection in one establishment, in order to pass on to another, to a third, a ninth, a twentieth⁠ ⁠…

“Susannah Raitzina!” the doctor finally called out.

No one walked up to the table.

All the inmates of the house began to exchange glances and to whisper.

“Jennka⁠ ⁠… Where’s Jennka?⁠ ⁠…”

But she was not among the girls.

Then Tamara, just released by the doctor, moved a little forward and said:

“She isn’t here. She hasn’t had a chance to get herself ready yet. Excuse me, Mr. Doctor, I’ll go right away and call her.”

She ran into the corridor and did not return for a long time. After her went, at first Emma Edwardovna, then Zociya, several girls, and even Anna Markovna herself.

“Pfui! What indecency is this!⁠ ⁠…” the majestic Emma Edwardovna was saying in the corridor, making an indignant face. “And eternally this Jennka!⁠ ⁠… Always this Jennka!⁠ ⁠… It seems my patience has already burst⁠ ⁠…”

But Jennka was nowhere⁠—neither in her room, nor in Tamara’s. They looked into other chambers, in all the out-of-the-way corners⁠ ⁠… But she did not prove to be even there.

“We must look in the water-closet⁠ ⁠… Perhaps she’s there?” surmised Zoe.

But this institution was locked from the inside with a bolt. Emma Edwardovna knocked on the door with her fist.

“Jennie, do come out at last! What foolishness is this?”

And, raising her voice, she cried out impatiently and threateningly:

“Do you hear, you swine?⁠ ⁠… Come out this minute⁠—the doctor’s waiting!”

But there was no answer of any sort.

All exchanged glances with fear in their eyes, with one and the same thought in mind.

Emma Edwardovna shook the door by the brass knob, but the door did not yield.

“Go after Simeon!” Anna Markovna directed.

Simeon was called⁠ ⁠… He came, sleepy and morose, as was his wont. By the distracted faces of the girls and the housekeepers, he already saw that some misunderstanding or other had occurred, in which his professional cruelty and strength were required. When they explained to him what the matter was, he silently took the doorknob with both hands, braced himself against the wall, and gave a yank.

The knob remained in his hands; and he himself, staggering backward, almost fell to the floor on his back.

“A-a, hell!” he began to growl in a stifled voice. “Give me a table knife.”

Through the crack of the door he felt the inner bolt with the table knife; whittled away with the blade the edges of the crack, and widened it so that he could at last push the end of the knife through it, and began gradually to scrape back the bolt. Only the grating of metal against metal could be heard.

Finally Simeon threw the door wide open.

Jennka was hanging in the middle of the water-closet on a tape from her corset, fastened to the lamphook. Her body, already motionless after an unprolonged agony, was slowly swinging in the air, and describing scarcely perceptible turns to the right and left around its vertical axis. Her face was bluishly-purple, and the tip of the tongue was thrust out between clenched and bared teeth. The lamp which had been taken off was also here, sprawling on the floor.

Someone began to squeal hysterically, and all the girls, like a stampeded herd, crowding and jostling each other in the narrow corridor, vociferating and choking with hysterical sobbings, started in to run.

The doctor came upon hearing the outcries⁠ ⁠… Came, precisely, and not ran. Seeing what the matter was, he did not become amazed or excited; during his