Yama (The Pit) by Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin
PART TWO
CHAPTER X
The room in which Lichonin lived was situated on the fifth story
and a half. And a half, because there are such five, six, and
seven-story profitable houses, packed to overflowing and cheap, on
top of which are erected still other sorry bug-breeders of roof
iron, something in the nature of mansards; or more exactly, bird-
houses, in which it is fearfully cold in winter, while in the
summer time it is just as torrid as in the tropics. Liubka with
difficulty clambered upward. It seemed to her that now, now, two
steps more, and she would drop straight down on the steps and fall
into a sleep from which nothing would be able to wake her. But
Lichonin was saying all the time:
"My dear! I can see you are tired. But that's nothing. Lean upon
me. We are going upwards all the time! Always higher and higher!
Is this not a symbol of all human aspirations? My comrade, my
sister, lean upon my arm!"
Here it became still worse for poor Liubka. As it was, she could
barely go up alone, but here she also had to drag in tow Lichonin,
who had grown extremely heavy. And his weight would not really
have mattered; his wordiness, however, was beginning to irritate
her little by little. So irritates at times the ceaseless,
wearisome crying, like a toothache, of an infant at breast; the
piercing whimpering of a canary; or someone whistling without
pause and out of tune in an adjoining room.
Finally, they reached Lichonin's room. There was no key in the
door. And, as a rule, it was never even locked with a key.
Lichonin pushed the door and they entered. It was dark in the
room, because the window curtains were lowered. It smelt of mice,
kerosene, yesterday's vegetable soup, long-.used bed linen, stale
tobacco smoke. In the half-dusk some one who could not be seen was
snoring deafeningly and with variations.
Lichonin raised the shade. There were the usual furnishings of a
poor student: a sagging, unmade bed with a crumpled blanket; a
lame table, and on it a candlestick without a candle; several
books on the floor and on the table; cigarette stubs everywhere;
and opposite the bed, along the other wall, an old, old divan,
upon which at the present moment was sleeping and snoring, with
mouth wide open, some young man with black hair and moustache. The
collar of his shirt was unbuttoned and through its opening could
be seen the chest and black hair, the like of which for thickness
and curliness could be found only on Persian lambs.
"Nijeradze! Hey, Nijeradze, get up!" cried Lichonin and prodded
the sleeper in the ribs. "Prince!"
"M-m-m..."
"May your race be even accursed in the person of your ancestors
and descendants! May they even be exiled from the heights of the
beauteous Caucasus! May they even never behold the blessed
Georgia! Get up, you skunk! Get up you Aravian dromedary!
Kintoshka! ..."
But suddenly, unexpectedly for Lichonin, Liubka intervened. She
took him by the arm and said timidly:
"Darling, why torture him? Maybe he wants to sleep, maybe he's
tired? Let him sleep a bit. I'd better go home. Will you give me a
half for a cabby? To-morrow you'll come to me again. Isn't that
so, sweetie?"
Lichonin was abashed. So strange did the intervention of this
silent, apparently sleepy girl, appear to him. Of course, he did
not grasp that she was actuated by an instinctive, unconscious
pity for a man who had not had enough sleep; or, perhaps, a
professional regard for the sleep of other people. But the
astonishment was only momentary. For some reason he became
offended. He raised the hand of the recumbent man, which hung down
to the floor, with the extinguished cigarette still remaining
between its fingers, and, shaking it hard, he said in a serious,
almost severe voice:
"Listen, now, Nijeradze, I'm asking you seriously. Understand,
now, may the devil take you that I'm not alone, but with a woman.
Swine!"
It was as though a miracle had happened: the lying man suddenly
jumped up, as though some spring of unusual force had
instantaneously unwound under him. He sat down on the divan,
rapidly rubbed with his palms his eyes, forehead, temples; saw the
woman, became confused at once, and muttered, hastily buttoning
his blouse:
"Is that you, Lichonin? And here I was waiting and waiting for you
and fell asleep. Request the unknown comrade to turn away for just
a minute."
He hastily pulled on his gray, everyday student's coat, and
rumpled up with all the fingers of both his hands his luxuriant
black curls. Liubka, with the coquetry natural to all women, no
matter in what years or situation they find themselves, walked up
to the sliver of a mirror hanging on the wall, to fix her hair-
dress. Nijeradze askance, questioningly, only with the movement of
his eyes, indicated her to Lichonin.
"Never mind. Don't pay any attention," answered the other aloud.
"But let's get out of here, however. I'll tell you everything
right away. Excuse me, Liubochka, it's only for a minute. I'll
come back at once, fix you up, and then evaporate, like smoke."
"But don't trouble yourself," replied Liubka: "it'll be all right
for me here, right on this divan. And you fix yourself up on the
bed."
"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 a petticoat?"
Lichonin shook his head with great significance and made a wry
face. Now, when the ride, the fresh air, the morning, and the
business-like, everyday, accustomed setting had entirely sobered
him, he was beginning to experience within his soul an indistinct
feeling of a certain awkwardness, 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 some one 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 to-day 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," Lichonin 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 tedium will run away from
you, and will again find herself either walking the street, or in
a brothel. That's a fact, too! However, there is still a third
combination. You'll be vexing yourself about her like a brother,
like the knight Lancelot, but she, secretly from you, will fall in
love with another. Me soul, believe me, that wooman, when she is a
wooman, is always—a wooman. And the other will play a bit with
her body, and after three months chuck her out into the street or
into a brothel."
Lichonin sighed deeply. Somewhere deep—not in his mind, but in
the hidden, almost unseizable secret recesses of his
consciousness—something resembling the thought that Nijeradze was
right flashed through him. But he quickly gained control of
himself, shook his head, and, stretching out his hand to the
prince, uttered triumphantly:
"I promise you, that after half a year you'll take your words
back, and as a mark of apology, you Erivanian billy goat, you
Armavirian egg-plant, you'll stand me to a dozen of Cakhetine
wine."
"Va! That's a go!" the prince struck Lichonin's hand with his palm
with all his might. "With pleasure. But if it comes out as I say—
then you do it."
"Then I do it. However, au revoir, prince. Whom are you lodging
with?"
"Right here, in this corridor, at Soloviev's. But you, of course,
like a mediaeval knight, will lay a two-edged sword between
yourself and the beauteous Rosamond? Yes?"
"Nonsense! I did want to pass the night at Soloviev's myself. But
now I'll go and wander about the streets a bit and turn in into
somebody's; to Zaitzevich or Strump. Farewell, prince!"
"Wait, wait!" Nijeradze called him, when he had gone a few steps.
"I have forgotten to tell you the main thing: Partzan has tripped
up!"
"So that's how?" wondered Lichonin, and at once yawned long,
deeply and with enjoyment.
"Yes. But there's nothing dreadful; only the possession of some
illegal brochures and stuff. He won't have to sit for more than a
year."
"That's nothing; he's a husky lad, he can stand it."
"He's husky, all right" confirmed the prince.
"Farewell!"
"Au revoir, knight Grunwaldus!"
"Au revoir, you Carbidinian stallion."