Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

The gens d’armes and the police went away, and came no more, but for long after that all of Yamskaya Street teased Anna Markovna’s boarders with being “soshalists,” which angered them quite seriously.

But one day Tamara with horror heard (or, more exactly speaking, overheard) the story which the brave, blue-eyed, bearded Berkesh was telling in the small cabinet to the proprietress, her husband, and the housekeeper, over a pony of liqueur:

“D’you remember your Magda? This, I must say, was a bird of the loftiest flight! Big game! She had almost half-a-score of names, and one of them was the very same name that was on the passport which you, Emma Edwardovna, brought personally to the police-station, to exchange for a yellow ticket. According to the passport she then had, she was designated as Olga Lavinskaya⁠—one of the nobility and a teacher of music. But d’you know why she insinuated herself into your house? It’s amazing! It’s over-r-whelming! She was making her first steps in your place, going through the primary class, so to speak, of instruction in the school of prostitution. Don’t upset yourself⁠—don’t ah and oh! That which follows is still more amazing. Having studied up on the trade in your place to such an extent that, calling herself a prostitute, she might deceive even an experienced eye, what did she do? She went South, to Sebastopol. In the beginning she joined on in a sailors’ dive, then in another, then a third and a fourth, and after that took up the same practice in Odessa and Nikolaev. Mark you, now⁠—all naval ports. And everywhere, under cover of the yellow ticket, did she carry on a desperate, anti-government propaganda, summoning everybody to the annihilation of the reigning dynasty and all those in power, as well as to the destruction of the monied interests⁠—especially landowners. Through her, in all these cities, were scattered millions of agitatory appeals and proclamations. They couldn’t catch her, no matter how they tried. She was helped everywhere by her friends, the comrades of the revolution. Why, that captain who so brazenly carried her off from here, leaving us all holding the bag, was the ex-student Novikov, simply dressed up in a military uniform. And just see what a stunt this devil pulled off at that time: he came before the head of police from the governor of the town himself, and handed him a letter on official paper, with a seal, and with an indubitable, personal signature. The nerve of the scoundrel! Well, now, no matter⁠—they caught him and shipped him off to the mines of Siberia, to dig gold. They didn’t give him enough, the scoundrel!”

“And Magda?” asked Anna Markovna.

“Magda is quits. She threw a bomb at the governor. They hanged her.”

The windows are opened wide to the fragrant darkness of the evening, and the tulle curtains stir faintly back and forth from the imperceptible movement of the air. It smells of dewy grass from the consumptive little garden in front of the house, and just the least wee bit of lilac and the withering birch leaves of the little trees placed near the entrance because of the Trinity. Liuba, in a blue velvet blouse with low cut bosom, and Niura, dressed as a “baby,” in a pink, wide sacque to the knees, with her bright hair loose and with little curls on her forehead, are lying embraced on the windowsill, and are singing in a low voice a song about the hospital, which song is the rage of the day and exceedingly well known among prostitutes. Niura, through her nose, leads in a high voice. Liuba seconds her with a stifled alto:

“Monday now is come again,
They’re supposed to get me out;
Doctor Krasov won’t let me out,
Well, the devil take him then⁠ ⁠…”

In all the houses the windows are brightly lit, while hanging lanterns are burning before the entrances. To both girls the interior in the establishment of Sophia Vasilievna, which is directly opposite, is distinctly visible⁠—the shining yellow parquet, draperies of a dark cherry colour on the doors, caught up with cords, the end of a black grand-piano, a pier glass in a gilt frame, and the figures of women in gorgeous dresses, now flashing at the windows, now disappearing, and their reflections in the mirrors. The carved stoop of Treppel, to the right, is brightly illuminated by a bluish electric light in a big frosted globe.

The evening is calm and warm. Somewhere far, far away, beyond the line of the railroads, beyond some black roofs and the thin black trunks of trees, down low over the dark earth in which the eye does not see but rather senses the mighty green tone of spring, reddens with a scarlet gold the narrow, long streak of the sunset glow, which has pierced the dove-coloured mist. And in this indistinct, distant light, in the caressing air, in the scents of the oncoming night, was some secret, sweet, conscious mournfulness, which usually is so gentle in the evenings between spring and summer. The indistinct noise of the city floated in, the dolorous, snuffling air of an accordion, the mooing of cows, could be heard; somebody’s soles were scraping dryly and a ferruled cane rapped resoundingly on the flags of the pavement; lazily and irregularly the wheels of a cabman’s victoria, rolling at a pace through Yama, would rumble by, and all these sounds mingled with a beauty and softness in the pensive drowsiness of the evening. And the whistles of the locomotives on the line of the railroad, which was marked out in the darkness with green and red lights, sounded with a quiet, singing caution.

“Now nurse dear is co-oming in,
Bringin’ sugar and a roll,
Bringin’ sugar and a roll,
Deals them equally to all.”

“Prokhor Ivanich!” Niura suddenly calls after the curly waiter from the dram-shop, who, a light black silhouette, is running across the road. “Oh, Prokhor Ivanich!”

“Oh, bother you!” the other snarls hoarsely. “What now?”

“A friend of