Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

disgusting snout. What? Good-looking, aren’t you? And how much better you’ll be when the spit will be running out of your mouth, and you’ll cross your eyes, and begin to choke and rattle in the throat, and to snort right in the face of the woman. And for your damned rouble you want me to go all to pieces before you like a pancake, and that from your nasty love my eyes should pop out onto my forehead? Why, hit him in the snout, the skunk, in the snout! Until there’s blood!”

“O, Jennie! Stop it now! Pfui!” the susceptible Emma Edwardovna, made indignant by her tone, stopped her.

“I won’t stop!” she cut her short abruptly. But she grew quiet by herself and wrathfully walked away with distending nostrils and with fire in the darkened, handsome eyes.

VIII

Little by little the drawing room was filling. There came Roly-Poly, long known to all Yama⁠—a tall, thin, red-nosed, gray old man, in the uniform of a forest ranger, in high boots, with a wooden yardstick always sticking out of his side-pocket. He passed whole days and evenings as a habitué of the billiard parlor in the tavern, always half-tipsy, shedding his little jokes, jingles and little sayings, acting familiarly with the porters, with the housekeepers and the girls. In the houses everybody⁠—from the proprietress to the chambermaids⁠—treated him with a bit of derision⁠—careless, a trifle contemptuous, but without malice. At times he was even not without use: he could transmit notes from the girls to their lovers, and run over to the market or to the drugstore. Not infrequently, thanks to his loosely hung tongue and long extinguished self-respect, he would worm himself into a gathering of strangers and increase their expenditures, nor did he carry elsewhere the money gotten as “loans” on such occasions, but spent it right here for women⁠—unless, indeed, he left himself some change for cigarettes. And, out of habit, he was good-naturedly tolerated.

“And here’s Roly-Poly come,” announced Niura, when he, having already managed to shake hands amicably with Simeon the porter, stopped in the doorway of the drawing room, lanky, in a uniform cap knocked at a brave slant over one side of his head. “Well, now, Roly-Poly, fire away!”

“I have the honour to present myself,” Roly-Poly immediately commenced to grimace, putting his hand up to his brim in military fashion, “a right honourable privy frequenter of the local agreeable establishments, Prince Bottlekin, Count Liquorkin, Baron Whoatinkevich-Giddapkovski⁠—Mister Beethoven! Mister Chopin!” he greeted the musicians. “Play me something from the opera The Brave and Charming General Anisimov, or A Hubbub in the Coolidor. My regards to the little political economist Zociya.9 Aha! Then you kiss only at Easter? We shall write that down. Ooh-you, my Tomalachka, my pitty-itty tootsicums!”

And so with jests and with pinches he went the round of all the girls and at last sat down alongside of the fat Katie, who put her fat leg upon his, leant with her elbow upon her knee, while upon the palm she laid her chin, and began to watch indifferently and closely the surveyor rolling a cigarette for himself.

“And how is it that you don’t ever get tired of it, Roly-Poly? You’re forever rolling a coffin nail.”

Roly-Poly at once commenced to move his eyebrows and the skin of his scalp and broke in verse:

“Dear cigarette, my secret mate,
How can I help loving thee?
Not through mere whim, prompted by fate,
All have started smoking thee.”

“Why, Roly-Poly, but you are going to croak soon,” said Kitty indifferently.

“And a very simple matter, that.”

“Roly-Poly, say something still funnier, in verse,” begged Verka.

And at once, obediently, having placed himself in a funny pose, he began to declaim:

“Many stars are in the bright sky,
But to count them there’s no way.
Yes, the wind whispers there can be,
But there really is no way.
Blossoming now are burdocks,
Now sing out the birds called cocks.”

“And here’s another sentimental ballad you might listen to.” And, in a quavering little tenor, he sings:

“There goes an officer,
And a miss pursues the same,
For her sole aim
Is to have him tarry,
To court her, and then marry.
But the officer, he pays her no heed;
The officer, he just puts his spurs to his steed,
And, twirling his moustache, rides off at full speed!”

Playing the tomfool in this manner, Roly-Poly would sit whole evenings and nights through in the drawing rooms of the establishments. And through some strange psychic fellow feeling the girls counted him almost as one of their own; occasionally rendered him little temporary services and even bought him beer and vodka at their expense.

Some time after Roly-Poly a large company of hairdressers, who were that day free from work, tumbled in. They were noisy, gay, but even here, in a brothel, did not cease their petty reckonings and conversations about closed and open theatrical benefits, about the bosses, about the wives of the bosses. All these were people corrupt to a sufficient degree, liars, with great hopes for the future⁠—such as, for example, entering the service of some countess as a kept lover. They wanted to utilize to the widest possible extent their rather hard-earned money, and on that account decided to make a review of absolutely all the houses of Yama; only Treppel’s they could not resolve to enter, as that was too swell for them. But at Anna Markovna’s they at once ordered a quadrille and danced it, especially the fifth figure, where the gents execute a solo, perfectly, like real Parisians, even putting their thumbs in the arm holes of their vests. But they did not want to remain with the girls; instead, they promised to come later, when they had wound up the complete review of the brothels.

And there also came and went government clerks of some sort; crisp young people in patent leather boots; several students; several officers, who were horribly afraid of losing their dignity in the eyes of the proprietress and the guests of the brothel. Little