Yama (The Pit) by Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin
PART ONE
CHAPTER VIII
They had all, except the reporter, passed the whole day together,
from the very morning, celebrating May Day with some young women
of their acquaintance. They had rowed in boats on the Dnieper, had
cooked field porridge on the other side of the river, in the
thick, bitter-smelling underbrush; had bathed—men and women by
turns—in the rapid, warm water; had drunk home-made spiced
brandy, sung sonorous songs of Little Russia, and had returned to
town only late in the evening, when the dark, broad, running river
so eerily and merrily plashed against the sides of their boats,
playing with the reflections of the stars, the silvery shimmering
paths of the electric lamps, and the bowing lights of the can-
buoys. And when they had stepped out on the shore, the palms of
each burned from the oars, the muscles of the arms and legs ached
pleasantly, and suffusing the whole body was a blissful, healthy
fatigue.
Then they had escorted the young women to their homes and at the
garden-gates and entrances had taken leave of them long and
cordially, with laughter and with such swinging hand-shakes as if
they were working the lever of a pump.
The whole day had passed in gaiety and noise, even a trifle
clamorously, and just the least wee bit tiresomely, but with
youth-like continence; without intoxication, and, which happens
especially rarely, without the least shadow of mutual affronts, or
jealousy, or unvoiced mortifications. Of course, such a benign
mood had been helped by the sun, the fresh river breeze, the sweet
exhalations of the grasses and the water, the joyous sensation of
the strength and alertness of one's body while bathing and rowing,
and the restraining influence of the clever, kind, pure and
handsome girls from families they were acquainted with. But,
almost without the knowledge of their consciousness, their
sensuousness—not imagination, but the simple, healthy,
instinctive sensuousness of young playful males—kindled from
chance encounters of their hands with feminine hands and from
comradely obliging embraces, when the occasion arose to help the
young ladies enter a boat or jump out on shore; from the tender
odour of maiden apparel, warmed by the sun; from the feminine
cries of coquettish fright on the river; from the sight of
feminine figures, negligently half-reclining with a naive
immodesty on the green grass around the samovar—from all these
innocent liberties, which are so usual and unavoidable on picnics,
country outings and river excursions, when within man, in the
infinite depth of his soul, secretly awakens from the care-free
contact with earth, grasses, water and sun, the beast-ancient,
splendid, free, but disfigured and intimidated of men.
And for that reason, at two o'clock in the night, when THE
SPARROWS, a cozy students' restaurant, had barely closed, and all
the eight, excited by alcohol and the plentiful food, had come out
of the smoky, fumy underground place into the street, into the
sweet, disquieting darkness of the night, with its beckoning fires
in the sky and on the earth, with its warm, heady air, from which
the nostrils dilate avidly, with its aromas, gliding from unseen
gardens and flower-beds,—the head of each one of them was aflame
and the heart quietly and languishingly yearning from vague
desires. It was joyous and arrogant to sense after the rest the
new, fresh strength in all the sinews, the deep breathing of the
lungs, the red, resilient blood in the veins, the supple obedience
of all the members. And—without words, without thoughts, without
consciousness—one was drawn on this night to be running without
raiment in the somnolent forest, to be sniffing hurriedly the
tracks of some one's feet on the dewy grass, with a loud call to
be summoning a female unto one's self.
But to separate was now very difficult. The whole day, passed
together, had shaken them into an accustomed, tenacious herd. It
seemed that if even one were to go away from the company, a
certain attained equilibrium would be disturbed and could not be
restored afterwards. And so they dallied and stamped upon the
sidewalk, near the exit of the tavern's underground vault,
interfering with the progress of the infrequent passers-by. They
discussed hypocritically where else they might go to wind up the
night. It proved to be too far to the Tivoli Garden, and in
addition to that one also had to pay for admission tickets, and
the prices in the buffet were outrageous, and the program had
ended long ago. Volodya Pavlov proposed going to him—he had a
dozen of beer and a little cognac home. But it seemed a bore to
all of them to go in the middle of the night to a family
apartment, to enter on tiptoes up the stairs and to talk in
whispers all the time.
"Tell you what, brethren ... Let's better ride to the girlies,
that will be nearer the mark," said peremptorily Lichonin, an old
student, a tall, stooping, morose and bearded fellow. By
convictions he was an anarchist—theoretic, but by avocation a
passionate gambler at billiards, races and cards—a gambler with a
very broad, fatalistic sweep. Only the day before he had won a
thousand roubles at macao in the Merchants' Club, and this money
was still burning a hole in his pockets.
"And why not? Right-o!" somebody sustained him. "Let's go,
comrades?"
"Is it worth while? Why, this is an all night affair ..." spoke
another with a false prudence and an insincere fatigue.
And a third said through a feigned yawn:
"Let's better go home, gentlemen ... a-a-a ... go bye-bye ...
That's enough for to-day."
"You won't work any wonders when you're asleep," Lichonin remarked
sneeringly. "Herr professor, are you coming?"
But the sub-professor Yarchenko was obstinate and seemed really
angered, although, perhaps, he himself did not know what was
lurking within him, in some dark cranny of his soul.
"Leave me in peace, Lichonin. As I see it, gentlemen, this is
downright and plain swinishness—that which you are about to do.
We have passed the time so wonderfully, amiably and simply, it
seems,—but no, you needs must, like drunken cattle, clamber into
a cesspool. I won't go."
"Still, if my memory does not play me false," said Lichonin, with
calm causticity, "I recollect that no further back than past
autumn we with a certain future Mommsen were pouring in some place
or other a jug of ice into a pianoforte, delineating a Bouratian
god, dancing the belly-dance, and all that sort of thing?"
Lichonin spoke the truth. In his student days, and later, being
retained at the university, Yarchenko had led the most wanton and
crack-brained life. In all the taverns, cabarets, and other places
of amusement his small, fat, roundish little figure, his rosy
cheeks, puffed out like those of a painted cupid, and the shining,
humid kindly eyes were well known, his hurried, spluttering speech
and shrill laughter remembered.
His comrades could never fathom where he found the time to employ
in study, but nevertheless he went through all examinations and
prescribed work with distinction and from the first course the
professors had him in view. Now Yarchenko was beginning little by
little to quit his former comrades and bottle companions. He had
just established the indispensable connections with the
professorial circle; the reading of lectures in Roman history for
the coming year had been offered him, and not infrequently in
conversation he would use the expression current among the sub-
professors: "We, the learned ones!" The student familiarity, the
compulsory companionship, the obligatory participation in all
meetings, protests and demonstrations, were becoming
disadvantageous to him, embarrassing, and even simply tedious. But
he knew the value of popularity among the younger element, and for
that reason could not decide to sever relations abruptly with his
former circle. Lichonin's words, however, provoked him.
"Oh, my God, what does it matter what we did when we were
youngsters? We stole sugar, soiled our panties, tore the wings off
beetles," Yarchenko began to speak, growing heated, and
spluttering. "But there is a limit and a mean to all this. I,
gentlemen, do not presume, of course, to give you counsels and to
teach you, but one must be consistent. We are all agreed that
prostitution is one of the greatest calamities of humanity, and
are also agreed, that in this evil not the women are guilty, but
we, men, because the demand gives birth to the offer. And
therefore if, having drunk a glass of wine too much, I still,
notwithstanding my convictions, go to the prostitutes, I am
committing a triple vileness: before the unfortunate, foolish
woman, whom I subject to the most degrading form of slavery for my
filthy rouble; before humanity, because, hiring a public woman for
an hour or two for my abominable lust, I through this justify and
uphold prostitution; and finally, this is a vileness before one's
own conscience and mind. And before logic."
"Phew-ew!" Lichonin let out a long-drawn whistle and chanted in a
thin, dismal voice, nodding in time with his head hanging down to
one side: "The philosopher is off on our usual stuff: 'A rope—is
a common cord.'"
"Of course, there's nothing easier than to play the tom-fool,"
responded Yarchenko. "But in my opinion there is not in the
sorrowful life of Russia a more mournful phenomenon than this
lackadaisicalness and vitiation of thought. To-day we will say to
ourselves: Eh! It's all the same, whether I go to a brothel or
whether I do not go, from this one time things will get neither
worse nor better. And after five years we will be saying:
Undoubtedly a bribe is a horribly nasty bit of business, but you
know—children ... the family ... And just the same way after ten
years we, having remained fortuitous Russian liberals, will be
sighing about personal freedom and bowing low before worthless
scoundrels, whom we despise, and will be cooling our heels in
their ante-rooms. 'Because, don't you know,' we will say,
tittering, 'when you live with wolves, you must howl like a wolf.'
By God, it wasn't in vain that some minister called the Russian
students future head-clerks!"
"Or professors," Lichonin put in.
"But most important of all," continued Yarchenko, letting this
pointed remark pass by, "most important of all is this, that I
have seen all of you to-day on the river and afterwards there ...
on the other shore ... with these charming, fine girls. How
attentive, well-bred, obliging you all were—but scarcely have you
taken leave of them, when you are drawn to public women. Let each
one of you imagine for a moment, that we all had been visiting his
sisters and straight from them had driven to Yama ... What? Is
such a supposition pleasant?"
"Yes, but there must exist some valves for the passions of
society," pompously remarked Boris Sobashnikov, a tall, somewhat
supercilious and affected young man, upon whom the short, white
summer uniform jacket, which scarcely covered his fat posteriors,
the modish trousers, of a military cut, the PINCE-NEZ on a broad,
black ribbon, and a cap after a Prussian model, all bestowed the
air of a coxcomb. "Surely, it isn't more respectable to enjoy the
caresses of your chambermaid, or to carry on an intrigue on the
side with another man's wife? What am I to do if woman is
indispensable to me!"
"Eh, very indispensable indeed!" said Yarchenko with vexation and
feebly made a despondent gesture.
But here a student who was called Ramses in the friendly coterie
intervened. This was a yellowish-swarthy, hump-nosed man of small
stature; his clean-shaven face seemed triangular, thanks to a
broad forehead, beginning to get bald, with two wedge-like bald
spots at the temples, fallen-in cheeks and a sharp chin. He led a
mode of life sufficiently queer for a student. While his
colleagues employed themselves by turns with politics, love, the
theatre, and a little in study, Ramses had withdrawn entirely into
the study of all conceivable suits and claims, into the chicane
subtleties of property, hereditary, land and other business law-
suits, into the memorizing and logical analysis of quashed
decisions. Perfectly of his own will, without in the least needing
the money, he served for a year as a clerk at a notary's for
another as a secretary to a justice of the peace, while all of the
past year, being in the last term, he had conducted in a local
newspaper the reports of the city council and had borne the modest
duty of an assistant to a secretary in the management of a
syndicate of sugar manufacturers. And when this same syndicate
commenced the well-known suit against one of its members, Colonel
Baskakov, who had put up the surplus sugar for sale contrary to
agreement, Ramses from the very beginning guessed beforehand and
very subtly engineered, precisely that decision which the senate
subsequently handed down in this suit.
Despite his comparative youth, rather well-known jurists gave heed
to his opinions—true, a little loftily. None of those who knew
Ramses closely doubted that he would make a brilliant career, and
even Ramses himself did not conceal his confidence in that toward
thirty-five he would knock together a million, exclusively through
his practice as a civil lawyer. His comrades not infrequently
elected him chairman of meetings and head of the class, but this
honour Ramses invariably declined, excusing himself with lack of
time. But still he did not avoid participation in his comrades'
trials by arbitration, and his arguments—always incontrovertibly
logical—were possessed of an amazing virtue in ending the trials
with peace, to the mutual satisfaction of the litigating parties.
He, as well as Yarchenko, knew well the value of popularity among
the studying youths, and even if he did look upon people with a
certain contempt, from above, still he never, by as much as a
single movement of his thin, clever, energetical lips, showed
this.
"Well, Gavrila Petrovich, no one is necessarily dragging you into
committing a fall from grace," said Ramses in a conciliatory
manner, "What is all this pathos and melancholy for, when the
matter as it stands is altogether simple? A company of young
Russian gentlemen wishes to pass the remnant of the night modestly
and amicably, to make merry, to sing a little, and to take
internally several gallons of wine and beer. But everything is
closed now, except these very same houses. ERGO! ..."
"Consequently, we will go merry-making to women who are for sale?
To prostitutes? Into a brothel?" Yarchenko interrupted him,
mockingly and inimically.
"And even so? A certain philosopher, whom it was desired to
humiliate, was given a seat at dinner near the musicians. But he,
sitting down, said: 'Here is a sure means of making the last place
the first.' And finally I repeat: If your conscience does not
allow you, as you express yourself, to buy a woman, then you can
go there and come away, preserving your innocence in all its
blossoming inviolability."
"You overdo it, Ramses," objected Yarchenko with displeasure. "You
remind me of those bourgeois, who, while it is still dark, have
gathered to gape at an execution and who say: we have nothing to
do with this, we are against capital punishment, this is all the
prosecuting attorney's and the executioner's doing."
"Superbly said and partly true, Gavrila Petrovich. But to us,
precisely, this comparison may not even apply. One cannot, you
see, treat some malignant disease while absent, without seeing the
sufferer in person. And yet all of us, who are now standing here
in the street and interfering with the passers-by, will be obliged
at some time in our work to run up against the terrible problem of
prostitution, and what a prostitution at that—the Russian!
Lichonin, I, Borya Sobashnikov and Pavlov as jurists, Petrovsky
and Tolpygin as medicos. True, Veltman has a distinct specialty—
mathematics. But then, he will be a pedagogue, a guide of youth,
and, deuce take it, even a father! And if you are going to scare
with a bugaboo, it is best to look upon it one's self first. And
finally, you yourself, Gavrila Petrovich—expert of dead languages
and future luminary of grave digging—is the comparison, then, of
the contemporary brothels, say, with some Pompeian lupanaria, or
the institution of sacred prostitution in Thebes and Nineveh, not
important and instructive to you? ..."
"Bravo, Ramses, magnificent!" roared Lichonin. "And what's there
to talk so much about, fellows? Take the professor under the gills
and put him in a cab!"
The students, laughing and jostling, surrounded Yarchenko, seized
him under the arms, caught him around the waist. All of them were
equally drawn to the women, but none, save Lichonin, had enough
courage to take the initiative upon himself. But now all this
complicated, unpleasant and hypocritical business was happily
resolved into a simple, easy joke upon the older comrade.
Yarchenko resisted, and was angry, and laughing, trying to break
away. But at this moment a tall, black-moustached policeman, who
had long been eyeing them keenly and inimically, walked up to the
uproarious students.
"I'd ask you stewdent gents not to congregate. It's not allowed!
Keep on going!"
They moved on in a throng. Yarchenka was beginning to soften
little by little.
"Gentlemen, I am ready to go with you, if you like ... Do not
think, however, that the sophistries of the Egyptian Pharaoh
Ramses have convinced me ... No, I simply would be sorry to break
up the party ... But I make one stipulation: we will drink a
little there, gab a little, laugh a little, and so forth ... but
let there be nothing more, no filth of any kind ... It is shameful
and painful to think that we, the flower and glory—of the Russian
intelligentzia, will go all to pieces and let our mouths water at
the sight of the first skirt that comes our way."
"I swear it!" said Lichonin, putting up his hand.
"I can vouch for myself," said Ramses.
"And I! And I! By God, gentlemen, let's pledge our words ...
Yarchenko is right," others took up.
They seated themselves in twos and threes in the cabs—the drivers
of which had been long since following them in a file, grinning
and cursing each other—and rode off. Lichonin, for the sake of
assurance, sat down beside the sub-professor, having embraced him
around the waist and seated him on his knees and those of his
neighbour, the little Tolpygin, a rosy, pleasant-faced boy on
whose face, despite his twenty-three years, the childish white
down—soft and light—still showed.
"The station is at Doroshenko's!" called out Lichonin after the
cabbies driving off. "The stop is at Doroshenko's," he repeated,
turning around.
They all stopped at Doroshenko's restaurant, entered the general
room, and crowded about the bar. All were satiated and no one
wanted either to drink or to have a bite. But in the soul of each
one still remained a dark trace of the consciousness that right
now they were getting ready to commit something needlessly
shameful, getting ready to take part in some convulsive,
artificial, and not at all a merry merriment. And in each one was
the yearning to bring himself through intoxication to that misty
and rainbow condition when nothing makes any difference, and when
the head does not know what the arms and legs are doing, and what
the tongue is babbling. And, probably, not the students alone, but
all the casual and constant visitors of Yama experienced in
greater or lesser degree the friction of this inner psychic heart-
sore, because Doroshenko did business only late in the evening and
night, and no one lingered long in his place but only turned in in
passing, half-way on the journey.
While the students were drinking cognac, beer and vodka, Ramses
was constantly and intently looking into the farthest corner of
the restaurant hall, where two men were sitting—a tattered, gray,
big old man, and, opposite him, his back to the bar, with his
elbows spread out upon the table and his chin resting on the fists
folded upon each other, some hunched up, stout, closely-propped
gentleman in a gray suit. The old man was picking upon a dulcimer
lying before him and quietly singing, in a hoarse but pleasing
voice:
"Oh my valley, my little valley,
Bro-o-o-o-o-oad land of plenty."
"Excuse me, but that is a co-worker of ours," said Ramses, and
went to greet the gentleman in the gray suit. After a minute he
led him up to the bar and introduced him to his comrades.
"Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you my companion in arms in
the newspaper game, Sergei Ivanovich Platonov. The laziest and
most talented of newspaper workers."
They all introduced themselves, indistinctly muttering out their
names.
"And therefore, let's have a drink," said Uchonin, while Yarchenko
asked with the refined amiability which never forsook him:
"Pardon me, pardon me, but I am acquainted with you a little, even
though not personally. Weren't you in the university when
Professor Priklonsky defended the doctor's dissertation?"
"It was I," answered the reporter.
"Ah, that's very nice," smiled Yarchenko charmingly, and for some
reason once more pressed Platonov's hand vigorously. "I read your
report afterwards: very exactly, circumstantially and skillfully
put together ... Won't you favor me? ... To your health!"
"Then allow me, too," said Platonov. "Onuphriy Zakharich, pour out
for us again ... one ... two, three, four ... nine glasses of
cognac..."
"Oh no, you can't do that ... you are our guest, colleague,"
remonstrated Lichonin.
"Well, now, what sort of colleague am I to you?" good-naturedly
laughed the reporter. "I was only in the first class and then only
for half a year—as an unmatriculated student. Here you are,
Onuphriy Zakharich. Gentlemen, I beg you..."
The upshot of it was that after half an hour Lichonin and
Yarchenko did not under any consideration want to part with the
reporter and dragged him with them to Yama. However, he did not
resist.
"If I am not a burden to you, I would be very glad," he said
simply. "All the more since I have easy money to-day. THE DNIEPER
WORD has paid me an honorarium, and this is just as much of a
miracle as winning two hundred thousand on a check from a theatre
coat room. Pardon me, I'll be right back..."
He walked up to the old man with whom he had been sitting before,
shoved some money into his hand, and gently took leave of him.
"Where I'm going, grandpa, there you mustn't go—to-morrow we will
meet in the same place as to-day. Good-bye!"
They all walked out of the restaurant. At the door Borya
Sobashnikov, always a little finical and unnecessarily
supercilious, stopped Lichonin and called him to one side.
"I'm surprised at you, Lichonin," he said squeamishly. "We have
gathered together in our own close company, yet you must needs
drag in some vagabond. The devil knows who he is!"
"Quit that, Borya," answered Lichonin amicably. "He's a warm-
hearted fellow."