Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

“No, that’s no longer like a model, my angel! I have a colleague here. And so I’ll go to him to sleep. I’ll return in just a minute.”

Both students went out into the corridor.

“What meaneth this dream?” asked Nijeradze, opening wide his oriental, somewhat sheepish eyes. “Whence this beauteous child, this comrade in petticoats?”

Likhonin shook his head with great significance and made a wry face. Now, when the ride, the fresh air, the morning, and the businesslike, everyday, accustomed setting had entirely sobered him, he was beginning to experience within his soul an indistinct feeling of a certain awkwardness, a certain needlessness of this sudden action; and at the same time something in the nature of an unconscious irritation both against himself and the woman he had carried off. He already had a presentiment of the onerousness of living together, of a multiplicity of cares, unpleasantnesses and expenses; of the equivocal smiles or even simply the unceremonious questionings of comrades; finally, of the serious hindrance during the time of government examinations. But, having scarcely begun speaking with Nijeradze, he at once became ashamed of his pusillanimity, and having started off listlessly, towards the end he again began to prance on his heroic steed.

“Do you see, Prince,” he said, in his confusion twisting a button of his comrade’s coat and without looking in his eyes, “you’ve made a mistake. This isn’t a comrade in a petticoat, but⁠ ⁠… simply, I was just now with my colleagues⁠ ⁠… that is, I wasn’t, but just dropped in for a minute with my friends into the Yamkas, to Anna Markovna⁠ ⁠…”

“With whom?” asked Nijeradze, becoming animated.

“Well, isn’t it all the same to you, Prince? There was Tolpygin, Ramses, a certain sub-professor⁠—Yarchenko⁠—Borya Sobashnikov, and others⁠ ⁠… I don’t recall. We had been boat-riding the whole evening, then dived into a publican’s, and only after that, like swine, started for the Yamkas. I, you know, am a very abstemious man. I only sat and soaked up cognac, like a sponge, with a certain reporter I know. Well, all the others fell from grace however. And so, toward morning, for some reason or other, I went all to pieces. I got so sad and full of pity from looking at these unhappy women. I also thought, now, of how our sisters enjoy our regard, love, protection; how our mothers are surrounded with reverent adoration. Just let someone say one rude word to them, shove them, offend them; we are ready to chew his throat off! Isn’t that the truth?”

“M-m?⁠ ⁠…” drawled out the Georgian, half questioningly, half expectantly, and squinted his eyes to one side.

“Well, then I thought: why, now, any blackguard, any whippersnapper, any shattered ancient can take any one of these women to himself for a minute or for a night, as a momentary whim; and indifferently, one superfluous time more⁠—the thousand and first⁠—profane and defile in her that which is the most precious in a human being: love⁠ ⁠… Do you understand⁠—revile, trample it underfoot, pay for the visit and walk away in peace, his hands in his pockets, whistling. But the most horrible of all is that all this has come to be a habit with them; it’s all one to her, and it’s all one to him. The feelings have dulled, the soul has dimmed. That’s so, isn’t it? And yet, in every one of them perishes both a splendid sister and a sainted mother. Eh? Isn’t that the truth?”

“N-na?⁠ ⁠…” mumbled Nijeradze and again shifted his eyes to one side.

“And so I thought: wherefore words and superfluous exclamations! To the devil with hypocritical speeches during conventions. To the devil with abolition, regulation [suddenly, involuntarily, the recent words of the reporter came to his mind], Magdalene asylums and all these distributions of holy books in the establishments! Here, I’ll up and act as a really honest man, snatch a girl out of this slough, implant her in real firm soil, calm her, encourage her, treat her kindly.”

“H-hm!” grunted Nijeradze with a grin.

“Eh, Prince! You always have salacious things on your mind. For you understand that I’m not talking about a woman, but about a human being; not about flesh, but about a soul.”

“All right, all right, me soul, go on!”

“Futhermore, as I thought, so did I act. I took her today from Anna Markovna’s and brought her for the present to me. And later⁠—whatever God may grant. I’ll teach her in the beginning to read, and write; then open up for her a little cook-shop, or a grocery store, let’s say. I think that the comrades won’t refuse to help me. The human heart, Prince, my brother⁠—every heart⁠—is in need of cordiality, of warmth. And lo and behold! in a year, in two, I will return to society a good, industrious, worthy member, with a virgin soul, open to all sorts of great possibilities⁠ ⁠… For she has given only her body, while her soul is pure and innocent.”

“Tse, tse, tse,” the Prince smacked his tongue.

“What does this mean, you Tifflissian he-mule?”

“And will you buy her a sewing machine?”

“Why a sewing machine, in particular? I don’t understand.”

“It’s always that way in the novels, me soul. Just as soon as the hero has saved the poor, but lost, creature, he at once sets up a sewing machine for her.”

“Stop talking nonsense,” Likhonin waved him away angrily with his hand. “Clown!”

The Georgian suddenly grew heated, his black eyes began to sparkle, and immediately Caucasian intonations could be heard in his voice.

“No, not nonsense, me soul. It’s one of two things here, and it’ll all end in one and the same result. Either you’ll get together with her and after five months chuck her out on the street; and she’ll return to the brothel or take to walking the street. That’s a fact! Or else you won’t get together with her, but will begin to load her up with manual or mental labours and will try to develop her ignorant, dark mind; and she from