Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

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 superstitious 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 passion 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 glass here, Mr. Yarchenko.”

But the precipitate Niura, who could never keep her tongue behind her teeth, suddenly shot out 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 ⁠…11 And the old man was torturing her all the time⁠ ⁠… So Ninka started crying and ran away.”

“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 prostitution.

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!⁠ ⁠… Tomorrow 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 dumbfounds, with its wondrous muddle and farrago, makes one stand aghast. You can utter a thousand sonorous words against souteneurs, about these macquereaux, 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 bloodsucker, 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 prostitute, 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 pass 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,