Yama (The Pit) by Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin
PART TWO
CHAPTER I
Even to this day, after a lapse of ten years, the erstwhile
inhabitants of the Yamkas recall that year, abounding in unhappy,
foul, bloody events, which began with a series of trifling, small
affrays, but terminated in the administration's, one fine day,
taking and destroying completely the ancient, long-warmed nest of
legalized prostitution, which nest it had itself created—
scattering its remains over the hospitals, jails and streets of
the big city. Even to this day a few of the former proprietresses
who have remained alive and have reached the limit of decrepitude,
and quondam housekeepers, fat and hoarse, like pug-dogs grown old,
recall this common destruction with sorrow, horror, and stolid
perplexity.
Just like potatoes out of a sack, brawls, robberies, diseases,
murders and suicides began to pour down, and, it seemed, no one
was to blame for this. All these misfortunes just simply began to
be more frequent of their own accord, to pile one upon the other,
to expand and grow; just as a small lump of snow, pushed by the
feet of urchins, becomes constantly bigger and bigger by itself
from the thawing snow sticking to it, grows bigger than the
stature of a man, and, finally, with one last, small effort is
precipitated into a ravine and rolls down as an enormous
avalanche. The old proprietresses and housekeepers, of course, had
never heard of fatality; but inwardly, with the soul, they sensed
its mysterious presence in the inevitable calamities of that
terrible year.
And, truly, everywhere in life where people are bound by common
interests, blood relationship, or the benefits of a profession
into close, individualized groups—there inevitably can be
observed this mysterious law of sudden accumulation, of a piling
up, of events; their epidemicity, their strange succession and
connectedness, their incomprehensible lingering. This occurs, as
popular wisdom has long ago noted, in isolated families, where
disease or death suddenly falls upon the near ones in an
inevitable, enigmatic order. "Misfortune does not come alone."
"Misfortune without waits—open wide the gates." This is to be
noticed also in monasteries, banks, governmental departments,
regiments, places of learning and other public institutions, where
for a long time, almost for decades, life flows evenly, like a
marshy river; and, suddenly, and after some altogether
insignificant incident or other, there begin transfers, changes in
positions, expulsions from service, losses, sicknesses. The
members of society, just as though they had conspired, die, go
insane, are caught thieving, shoot or hang themselves; vacancy
after vacancy is freed; promotions follow promotions, new elements
flow in, and, behold, after two years there is not a one of the
previous people on the spot; everything is new, if only the
institution has not fallen into pieces completely, has not crept
apart. And is it not the same astounding destiny which overtakes
enormous social, universal organizations—cities, empires,
nations, countries, and, who knows, perhaps whole planetary
worlds?
Something resembling this incomprehensible fatality swept over the
Yamaskya Borough as well, bringing it to a rapid and scandalous
destruction. Now in place of the boisterous Yamkas is left a
peaceful, humdrum outskirt, in which live truck-farmers, cat's-
meat men, Tartars, swineherds and butchers from the near-by
slaughterhouses. At the petition of these worthy people even the
designation of Yamaskya Borough itself, as disgracing the
inhabitants with its past, has been named over into Golubovka, in
honour of the merchant Golubov, owner of a shop dealing in
groceries and delicacies, and warden of the local church.
The first subterranean shocks of this catastrophe began in the
heat of summer, at the time of the annual summer fair, which this
year was unbelievably brilliant. Many circumstances contributed to
its extraordinary success, multitudes, and the stupendousness of
the deals concluded during it: the building in the vicinity of
three new sugar refineries, and the unusually abundant crop of
wheat, and, in particular, of sugar beets; the commencement of
work in the laying of an electric trolley and of canalization; the
building of a new road to the distance of 750 versts; but mainly,
the fever of building which seized the whole town, all the banks
and financial institutions, and all the houseowners. Factories for
making brick sprang up on the outskirts of the town like
mushrooms. A grandiose agricultural exposition opened. Two new
steamer lines came into being, and they, together with the
previously established ones, frenziedly competed with each other,
transporting freight and pilgrims. In competition they reached
such a state, that they lowered their passenger rates for the
third class from seventy-five kopecks to five, three, two, and
even one kopeck. In the end, ready to fall from exhaustion in the
unequal struggle, one of the steamship companies offered a free
passage to all the third-class passengers. Then its competitor at
once added to the free passage half a loaf of white bread as well.
But the biggest and most significant enterprise of this city was
the engineering of the extensive river port, which had attracted
to it hundreds of thousands of labourers and which cost God knows
what money.
It must also be added, that the city was at this time celebrating
the millennial anniversary of its famous abbey, the most honoured
and the richest among all the monasteries of Russia. From all the
ends of Russia, out of Siberia, from the shores of the Frozen
Ocean, from the extreme south—the Black and Caspian Seas—
countless pilgrims had gathered for the worship of the local
sanctities: the abbey's saints, reposing deep underground in
calcareous caverns. Suffice it to say, that the monastery gave
shelter, and food of a sort, to forty thousand people daily; while
those for whom there was not enough room lay, at night, side by
side, like logs, in the extensive yards and lanes of the abbey.
This was a summer out of some fairy-tale. The population of the
city increased well-nigh fourfold through every sort of newly-come
people. Stone-masons, carpenters, painters, engineers,
technicians, foreigners, agriculturists, brokers, shady business
men, river navigators, unoccupied knaves, tourists, thieves, card
sharpers—they all overflowed the city, and not in a single hotel,
the most dirty and dubious one, was there a vacant room. Insane
prices were paid for quarters. The stock exchange gambled on a
grand scale, as never before or since that summer. Money in
millions simply flowed from hands to hands, and thence to a third
pair. In one hour colossal riches were created, but then many
former firms burst, and yesterday's men of wealth turned into
beggars. The commonest of labourers bathed and warmed themselves
in this golden flood. Stevedores, draymen, street porters,
roustabouts, hod carriers and ditch diggers still remember to this
day what money they earned by the day during this mad summer. Any
tramp received no less than four of five roubles a day at the
unloading of barges laden with watermelons. And all this noisy,
foreign band, locoed by the easy money, intoxicated with the
sensual beauty of the ancient, seductive city, enchanted by the
delightful warmth of the southern nights, made drunk by the
insidious fragrance of the white acacias—these hundreds of
thousands of insatiable, dissolute beasts in the image of men,
with all their massed will clamoured: "Give us woman!"
In a single month new amusement enterprises—chic Tivolis,
CHATEAUX DES FLEURES, Olympias, Alcazars, etc., with a chorus and
an operetta; many restaurants and beerhouses, with little summer
gardens, and common little taverns—sprang up by the score in the
city, in the vicinity of the building port. On every crossing new
"violet-wine" houses were opened every day—little booths of
boards, in each of which, under the pretext of selling bread-
cider, old wenches trafficked in themselves by twos and threes,
right alongside behind a partition of deal, and to many mothers
and fathers is this summer painful and memorable through the
degrading diseases of their sons—schoolboys and military cadets.
For the casual arrivals servants were demanded, and thousands of
peasant girls started out from the surrounding villages toward the
city. It was inevitable that the demand on prostitution should
become unusually high. And so, from Warsaw, from Lodz, from
Odessa, from Moscow, and even from St. Petersburg, even from
abroad, flocked together an innumerable multitude of foreign
women; cocottes of Russian fabrication, the most ordinary
prostitutes of the rank and file, and chic Frenchwomen and
Viennese. Imperiously told the corrupting influence of the
hundreds of millions of easy money. It was as though this cascade
of gold had lashed down upon, had set to whirling and deluged
within it, the whole city. The number of thefts and murders
increased with astounding rapidity. The police, collected in
augmented proportions, lost its head and was swept off its feet.
But it must also be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful
bribes, it resembled a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and
listless. People were killed for anything and nothing, just so. It
happened that men would walk up to a person in broad daylight
somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask: "What's your name?"
"Fedorov." "Aha, Federov? Then take this!" and they would slit his
belly with a knife. They nicknamed these blades just that in the
city—"rippers"; and there were among them names of which the city
news seemed actually proud: the two brothers Polishchuk (Mitka and
Dundas), Volodka the Greek, Fedor Miller, Captain Dmitriev,
Sivocho, Dobrovolski, Shpachek, and many others.
Both day and night on the main streets of the frenzied city stood,
moved, and yelled the mob, as though at a fire. It would be almost
impossible to describe what went on in the Yamkas then. Despite
the fact that the madams had increased the staff of their patients
to more than double and increased their prices trebly, their poor
demented girls could not catch up in satisfying the demands of the
drunken, crazed public, which threw money around like chips. It
happened that in the drawing room, filled to overflowing with
people, each girl would be awaited for by some seven, eight, at
times even ten, men. It was, truly, some kind of a mad,
intoxicated, convulsive time!
And from that very time began all the misfortunes of the Yamkas,
which brought them to ruin. And together with the Yamkas perished
also the house, familiar to us, of the stout, old, pale-eyed Anna
Markovna.