Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

to Likhonin with all her feminine being, loving and jealous; had grown attached to him with body, feeling, thoughts. The Prince was funny and entertaining to her, and the expansive Soloviev interestingly amusing; toward the crushing authoritativeness of Simanovsky she felt a supernatural terror; but Likhonin was for her at the same time a sovereign, and a divinity; and, which is the most horrible of all, her property and bodily joy.

It has long ago been observed, that a man who has lived his fill, has been worn out, gnawed and chewed by the jaws of amatory passions, will never again love with a strong and only love, simultaneously self-denying, pure, and passionate. But for a woman there are neither laws nor limitations in this respect. This observation was especially confirmed in Liubka. She was ready to crawl before Likhonin with delight, to serve him as a slave; but, at the same time, desired that he belong to her more than a table, than a little dog, than a night blouse. And he always proved wanting, always failing before the onslaught of this sudden love, which from a modest little stream had so rapidly turned into a river and had overflowed its banks. And not infrequently he thought to himself, with bitterness and a sneer:

“Every evening I play the role of the beauteous Joseph; still, he at least managed to tear himself away, leaving his underwear in the hands of the ardent lady; but when will I at last get free of my yoke?”

Besides that, Likhonin was depressed by the equivocal attitude toward him and Liubka of his student comrades, who, just as moths are toward a light, were drawn to his poor yet nevertheless hospitable house, with its door always wide open. In them, in their words, intonations, and gestures, addressed to Liubka, one could not at all sense the signs of that accepted respect, that delicacy, with which one’s youthful comrades ought always regard the wife, sweetheart or sister of their friend. In the case of his friends, in their outwardly decent behaviour toward Liubka Likhonin super-sensitively felt their thought:

“You were taken out of a house of ill-fame, for an inexpensive, economical pleasure. But you had been yielding yourself to scores, to hundreds of men, for money; despite everything, you are, even up to now, a professional; the stigma of your former service is not to be washed off by anything; to invite you for a night is no great matter: you, without reflecting, would go⁠—you are bound to go.”

And with an ungraspable, dark revulsion Likhonin felt how he, too, was being insulted by the thoughts of his comrades, who were placing him on the same level with a “Liubka.”

And a secret enmity for Liubka was already gnawing him. All the more and more frequently various crafty plans of liberation came into his head. And some of them were to such an extent dishonest, that, after a few hours, or the next day, Likhonin squirmed inwardly from shame, recalling them.

“I am falling, morally and mentally!” he would at times think with horror. “It’s not in vain that I read somewhere, or heard from someone, that the connection of a cultured man with a woman of little intellect will never elevate her to the level of the man, but, on the contrary, will bow him down and sink him to the mental and moral outlook of the woman.”

And after two weeks she ceased to excite his imagination entirely. He gave in, as to violence, to the long-continued caresses, entreaties, and often even to pity.

Yet at the same time Liubka, who had rested and felt living, real soil under her, began to improve in looks with unusual rapidity, just as a flower bud, that but yesterday was almost dying, suddenly unfolds after a plentiful and warm rain. The freckles ran off her soft face, and the uncomprehending, troubled expression, like that of a young jackdaw, had disappeared from the dark eyes, and they had grown brighter and had begun to sparkle. Her body grew stronger and filled out; her lips were now red. But Likhonin, seeing Liubka every day, did not notice this and did not believe those compliments which were showered upon her by his friends. “Fool jokes,” he reflected, frowning. “The boys are spoofing.”

As the lady of the house, Liubka proved to be less than mediocre. True, she could cook fat stews, so thick that the spoon stood upright in them; prepare enormous, unwieldy, formless cutlets; and, under the guidance of Likhonin, familiarized herself pretty rapidly with the great art of brewing tea (at seventy-five kopecks a pound); but further than that she did not go, probably because for each art and for each being there are extreme limitations of their own, which cannot in any way be surmounted. But then, she loved to wash floors very much; and carried out this occupation so often and with such zeal, that dampness soon set in in the flat and multipedes appeared.

Tempted once by a newspaper advertisement, Likhonin procured a stocking knitting machine for her, on terms. The art, the mastery of this instrument⁠—promising, to judge by the advertisement, three roubles of clear profit a day⁠—proved to be so uncomplicated that Likhonin, Soloviev, and Nijeradze easily mastered it in a few hours; while Likhonin even contrived to knit a whole stocking of uncommon durability, and of such dimensions that it would have proven big even for the feet of Minin and Pozharsky, the great conquerors, whose enormous bronze statues are in Moscow, on Krasnaya [Red] Square. Only Liubka alone could not master this trade. At every mistake or tangle she was forced to turn to the cooperation of the men. But then, she learned pretty rapidly to make artificial flowers and, despite the opinion of Simanovsky, made them very exquisitely, and with great taste; so that after a month the hat specialty stores began to buy her work. And, what is most amazing, she had taken only two lessons in all