Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

we dragged into our company this peach off the street? We must needs tie up with all sorts of riffraff? The devil knows what he is⁠—perhaps he’s even a dinny? Who can vouch for him? And you’re always like that, Likhonin.”

“It isn’t Likhonin 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 someone else’s expense. Why, don’t you see for yourselves that this is the most ordinary type of habitué 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, assured and serious bearing, so little suitable to the private cabinet of a brothel. But the seeming indifference with which the reporter let pass 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.

Little White Manya, laughing, shook her head reproachfully. Jennie always had such a face when her turbulent soul sensed that a scandal was nearing which she herself had brought on.

“Don’t get your back up, Borinka,” said Likhonin. “Here all are equal.”

Niura came with a pillow and laid it down on the divan.

“And what’s that for?” Sobashnikov yelled at her. “Git! take it away at once. This isn’t a lodging house.”

“Now, leave her be, honey. What’s that to you?” retorted Jennie in a sweet voice and hid the pillow behind Tamara’s back. “Wait, sweetie, I’d better sit with you for a while.”

She walked around the table, forced Boris to sit on a chair, and herself got up on his knees. Twining his neck with her arm, she pressed her lips to his mouth, so long and so vigorously that the student caught his breath. Right up close to his eyes he saw the eyes of the woman⁠—strangely large, dark, luminous, indistinct and unmoving. For a quarter of a second or so, for an instant, it seemed to him that in these unliving eyes was impressed an expression of keen, mad hate; and the chill of terror, some vague premonition of an ominous, inevitable calamity flashed through the student’s brain. With difficulty tearing the supple arms of Jennie away from him, and pushing her away, he said, laughing, having turned red and breathing hard:

“There’s a temperament for you! Oh, you Messalina Paphnutievna!⁠ ⁠… They call you Jennka, I think? You’re a good-looking little rascal.”

Platonov returned with Pasha. Pasha was pitiful and revolting to look at. Her face was pale, with, a bluish cast as though the blood had run off; the glazed, half-closed eyes were smiling with a faint, idiotic smile; the parted lips seemed to resemble two frayed, red, wet rags, and she walked with a sort of timid, uncertain step, just as though with one foot she were making a large step, and with the other a small one. She walked with docility up to the divan and with docility laid her head down on the pillow, without ceasing to smile faintly and insanely. Even at a distance it was apparent that she was cold.

“Pardon me, gentlemen, I am going to undress,” said Likhonin, and taking his coat off he threw it over the shoulders of the prostitute. “Tamara, give her chocolate and wine.”

Boris Sobashnikov again stood up picturesquely in the corner, in a leaning position, one leg in front of the other and his head held high. Suddenly he spoke amid the general silence, addressing Platonov directly, in a most foppish tone:

“Eh⁠ ⁠… Listen⁠ ⁠… what’s your name?⁠ ⁠… This, then, must be your mistress? Eh?” And with the tip of his boot he pointed in the direction of the recumbent Pasha.

“Wha-at?” asked Platonov in a drawl, knitting his eyebrows.

“Or else you’re her lover⁠—it’s all one⁠ ⁠… What do they call this duty here? Well, now, these same people for whom the women embroider shirts and with whom they divide their honest earnings?⁠ ⁠… Eh?⁠ ⁠…”

Platonov looked at him with a heavy, intent gaze through his narrowed lids.

“Listen,” he said quietly, in a hoarse voice, slowly and ponderously separating his words. “This isn’t the first time that you’re trying to pick a quarrel with me. But, in the first place, I see that despite your sober appearance you are exceedingly and badly drunk; and, in the second place, I spare you for the sake of your comrades. However, I warn you, that if you think of talking that way to me again, take your eyeglasses off.”

“What’s this stuff?” exclaimed Boris, raising his shoulders high and snorting through his nose. “What eyeglasses? Why eyeglasses?” But mechanically, with two