Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

At soul she was not at all against taking Liubka back. It must be said, that she had even let her go only because she had been tempted by the money, one-half of which she had appropriated for herself. And in addition to that, she had reckoned that with the present seasonal influx of new prostitutes she would have an enormous choice; in which, however, she had made a mistake, because the season had terminated abruptly. But in any case, she had firmly resolved to take Liubka. Only it was necessary, for the preservation and rounding out of prestige, to give her a scare befittingly.

“Wha-at?” she began to yell at Liubka, babbling in confusion, scarcely having heard her out. “You want to be taken on again?⁠ ⁠… You wallowed the devil knows with whom in the streets, under the fences; and now, you scum, you’re again shoving your way into a respectable, decent establishment!⁠ ⁠… Pfui, you Russian swine! Out!⁠ ⁠…”

Liubka was catching her hands, trying to kiss them, but the housekeeper roughly snatched them away. Then, suddenly paling, with a distorted face, biting her trembling, twisted lower lip, Emma calculatingly and with good aim struck Liubka on her cheek, with all her might; from which the other went down on her knees, but got up right away, gasping for breath and stammering from the sobs.

“Darlingest, don’t beat me⁠ ⁠… Oh my dear, don’t beat me⁠ ⁠…”

And again fell down, this time flat upon the floor.

And this systematic, malignant slaughter, in cold blood, continued for some two minutes. Jennka, who had at first been looking on with her customary malicious, disdainful air, suddenly could not stand it; she began to squeal savagely, threw herself upon the housekeeper, clutched her by the hair, tore off her chignon and began to vociferate in a real hysterical fit:

“Fool!⁠ ⁠… Murderer!⁠ ⁠… Low-down go-between!⁠ ⁠… Thief!⁠ ⁠…”

All the three women vociferated together, and at once enraged wails resounded through all the corridors and rooms of the establishment. This was that general fit of grand hysterics, which takes possession of those confined in prisons, or that elemental insanity (raptus), which envelops unexpectedly and epidemically an entire lunatic asylum, from which even experienced psychiatrists grow pale.

Only after the lapse of an hour was order restored by Simeon and two comrades by profession who had come to his aid. All the thirteen girls got it hot; but Jennka, who had gone into a real frenzy, more than the others. The beaten-up Liubka kept on crawling before the housekeeper until she was taken back. She knew that Jennka’s outbreak would sooner or later be reflected upon her in a cruel repayment. Jennka sat on her bed until the very night, her legs crossed Turkish fashion; refused dinner, and chased out all her mates who went in to her. Her eye was bruised, and she assiduously applied a five-kopeck copper to it. From underneath the torn shirt a long, transversal scratch reddened on the neck, just like a mark from a rope. That was where Simeon had torn off her skin in the struggle. She sat thus, alone, with eyes that glowed in the dark like a wild beast’s, with distended nostrils, with spasmodically moving cheekbones, and whispered wrathfully:

“Just you wait⁠ ⁠… Watch out, you damned things⁠—I’ll show you⁠ ⁠… You’ll see yet⁠ ⁠… Ooh-ooh, you man-eaters⁠ ⁠…”

But when the lights had been lit, and the junior housekeeper, Zociya, knocked on her door with the words: “Miss, get dressed!⁠ ⁠… Into the drawing room!” she rapidly washed herself, dressed, put some powder on the bruise, smeared the scratch over with Crême de Simon and pink powder, and went out into the drawing room, pitiful but proud; beaten-up, but her eyes flaming with an unbearable wrathfulness and a beauty not human.

Many people, who have happened to see suicides a few hours before their horrible death, say that in their visages in those fateful hours before death they have noticed some enigmatic, mysterious, incomprehensible allurement. And all who saw Jennka on this night, and on the next day for a few hours, for long, intently and in wonder, kept their gaze upon her.

And strangest of all (this was one of the sombre wiles of fate) was the fact that the indirect culprit of her death, the last grain of sand which draws down the pan of the scales, appeared none other than the dear, most kind, military cadet Kolya Gladishev.

II

Kolya Gladishev was a fine, merry, bashful young lad, with a large head; pink-cheeked, with a funny little white, bent line, as though from milk, on his upper lip, under the light down of the moustache, sprouting through for the first time; with gray, naive eyes, placed far apart; and so closely cropped that, from underneath his flaxen little bristles, the skin glistened through, just as with a thoroughbred Yorkshire suckling pig. It was precisely he with whom Jennka during the past winter had played either at maternal relations, or at dolls; and thrust upon him a little apple or a couple of bonbons on his way, when he would be going away from the house of ill repute, squirming from shame.

This time, when he came, there could at once be felt in him, after long living in camps, that rapid change in age, which so often imperceptibly and rapidly transforms a boy into a youth. He had already finished the cadet academy and with pride counted himself a junker, although he still, for the nonce, walked around in a cadet’s uniform, much to his aversion. He had grown taller, had become better formed and more adroit; camp life had done him good. He spoke in a bass, and during these months to his most great pride the nipples of his breast had hardened; the most important⁠—he already knew about this⁠—and undeniable sign of virile maturity. Now, in the meanwhile, until the eyes-front severities of a military school, he was having his vacation⁠—a period of alluring freedom. Already he was permitted to smoke at home, in the presence