Yama (The Pit) by Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin
PART THREE
CHAPTER V
Saturday was the customary day of the doctor's inspection, for
which they prepared very carefully and with quaking in all the
houses; as, however, even society ladies prepare themselves, when
getting ready for a visit to a physician-specialist; they
diligently made their intimate toilet and inevitably put on clean
underthings, even as dressy as possible. The windows toward the
street were closed with shutters, while at one of those windows,
which gave out upon the yard, was put a table with a hard bolster
to put under the back.
All the girls were agitated ... "And what if there's a disease,
which I haven't noticed myself? ... And then the despatch to a
hospital; disgrace; the tedium of hospital life; bad food; the
hard course of treatment..."
Only Big Manka—or otherwise Manka the Crocodile—Zoe, and
Henrietta—all thirty years old, and, therefore, in the reckoning
of Yama, already old prostitutes, who had seen everything, had
grown inured to everything, grown indifferent to their trade, like
white, fat circus horses—remained imperturbably calm. Manka the
Crocodile even often said of herself:
"I have gone through fire and water and pipes of brass ... Nothing
will stick to me any more."
Jennka, since morning, was meek and pensive. She presented to
Little White Manka a golden bracelet; a medallion upon a thin
little chain with her photograph; and a silver neck crucifix.
Tamara she moved through entreaty into taking two rings for
remembrance: one of silver, in three hoops, that could be moved
apart, with a heart in the middle, and under it two hands that
clasped one another when all the three parts of the ring were
joined; while the other was of thin gold wire with an almandine.
"As for my underwear, Tamarochka—you give it to Annushka, the
chambermaid. Let her wash it out well and wear it in good health,
in memory of me."
The two of them were sitting in Tamara's room. Jennka had in the
very morning sent after cognac; and now slowly, as though lazily,
was imbibing wine-glass after wine-glass, eating lemon and a piece
of sugar after drinking. Tamara was observing this for the first
time and wondered, because Jennka had always disliked wine, and
drank very rarely; and then only at the constraint of guests.
"What are you giving stuff away so to-day?" asked Tamara. "Just as
though you'd gotten ready to die, or to go into a convent?"
"Yes, and I will go away," answered Jennka listlessly. "I am
weary, Tamarochka! ..."
"Well, which one of us has a good time?"
"Well, no! ... It isn't so much that I'm weary; but somehow
everything—everything is all the same ... I look at you, at the
table, at the bottle; at my hands and feet; and I'm thinking, that
all this is alike and everything is to no purpose ... There's no
sense in anything ... Just like on some old, old picture. Look
there—there's a soldier walking on the street, but it's all one
to me, as though they had wound up a doll, and it's moving ... And
that he's wet under the ram, is also all one to me ... And that
he'll die, and I'll die, and you, Tamara, will die—in this also I
see nothing frightful, nothing amazing... So simple and wearisome
is everything to me..."
Jennka was silent for a while; drank one more wine-glass; sucked
the sugar, and, still looking out at the street, suddenly asked:
"Tell me, please, Tamara, I've never asked you about it—from
where did you get in here, into the house? You don't at all
resemble all of us; you know everything; for everything that turns
up you have a good, clever remark ... Even French, now—how well
you spoke it that time! But none of us knows anything at all about
you ... Who are you?"
"Darling Jennechka, really, it's not worth while ... A life like
any life ... I went to boarding school; was a governess; sang in a
choir; then kept a shooting gallery in a summer garden; and then
got mixed up with a certain charlatan and taught myself to shoot
with a Winchester ... I traveled with circuses—I represented an
American Amazon. I used to shoot splendidly ... Then I found
myself in a monastery. There I passed two years ... I've been
through a lot ... Can't recall everything ... I used to steal..."
"You've lived through a great deal ... Checkered-like."
"But then, my years are not a few. Well, what do you think—how
many?"
"Twenty-two, twenty-four? ..."
"No, my angel! It just struck thirty-two a week ago. I, if you
like, am older than all of you here in Anna Markovna's. Only I
didn't wonder at anything, didn't take anything near to heart. As
you see, I never drink ... I occupy myself very carefully with the
care of rny body; and the main thing, the very main thing—I don't
allow myself ever to be carried away with men..."
"Well, but what about your Senka? ..."
"Senka—that's a horse of another colour; the heart of woman is
foolish, inconsistent ... Can it possibly live without love? And
even so, I don't love him, but just so ... a self-deception ...
But, however, I shall be in very great need of Senka soon."
Jennka suddenly grew animated and looked at her friend with
curiosity.
"But how did you come to get stuck right here, in this hole? So
clever, handsome, sociable..."
"I'd have to take a long time in telling it ... And then I'm too
lazy ... I got in here out of love; I got mixed up with a certain
young man and went into a revolution with him. For we always act
so, we women: where the dearie is looking, there we also look;
what the dearie sees, that we also see ... I didn't believe at
soul in his work, but I went. A flattering man he was; smart, a
good talker, a good looker ... Only he proved to be a skunk and a
traitor afterwards. He played at revolution; while he himself gave
his comrades away to the gendarmes. A stool-pigeon, he was. When
they had killed and shown him up, then all the foolishness left
me. However, it was necessary to conceal myself ... I changed my
passport. Then they advised me, that the easiest thing of all was
to screen myself with a yellow ticket ... And then the fun began!
... And even here I'm on a sort of pasture ground; when the time
comes, the successful moment arrives—I'll go away!"
"Where?" asked Jennie with impatience.
"The world is large ... And I love life! ... There, now, I was the
same way in the convent: I lived on and I lived on; sang
antiphonies and dulias, until I had rested up, and had finally
grown weary of it; and then all at once—hop! and into a cabaret
... Wasn't that some jump? The same way out of here ... I'll get
into a theatre, into a circus, into a corps de ballet ... but do
you know, Jennechka, I'm drawn to the thieving trade the most,
after all ... Daring, dangerous, hard, and somehow intoxicating
... It's drawing me! ... Don't you mind that I'm so respectable
and modest, and can appear an educated young lady. I'm entirely,
entirely different."
Her eyes suddenly blazed up, vividly and gaily.
"There's a devil dwells in me!"
"It's all very well for you," pensively and with weariness
pronounced Jennie. "You at least desire something, but my soul is
some sort of carrion ... I'm twenty-five years old, now; but my
soul is like that of an old woman, shrivelled up, smelling of the
earth ... And if I had only lived sensibly! ... Ugh! ... There was
only some sort of slush."
"Drop it, Jennka; you're talking foolishly. You're smart, you're
original; you have that special power before which men crawl and
creep so willingly. You go away from here, too. Not with me, of
course—I'm always single—but go away all by your own self."
Jennka shook her head and quietly, without tears, hid her face in
her palms.
"No, she responded dully, after a long silence," no, this won't
work out with me: fate has chewed me all up! ... I'm not a human
being any more, but some sort of dirty cud ... Eh!" she suddenly
made a gesture of despair. 'Let's better drink some cognac,
Jennechka,'" she addressed herself, "'and let's suck the lemon a
little! ...' Brr ... what nasty stuff! ... And where does Annushka
always get such abominable stuff? If you smear a dog's wool with
it, it will fall off ... And always, the low-down thing, she'll
take an extra half. Once I somehow ask her—'What are you hoarding
money for?' 'Well, I,' she says, 'am saving it up for a wedding.
What sort,' she says, 'of joy will it be for my husband, that I'll
offer him up my innocence alone! I must earn a few hundreds in
addition.' She's happy! ... I have here, Tamara, a little money
in. the little box under the mirror; you pass it on to her,
please..."
"And what are you about, you fool; do you want to die, or what?"
sharply, with reproach, said Tamara.
"No, I'm saying it just so, if anything happens ... Take it, now,
take the money! Maybe they'll take me off to the hospital ... And
how do you know what's going to take place there? I left myself
some small change, if anything happens ... And supposing that I
wanted to do something to myself in downright earnest, Tamarochka
—is it possible that you'd interfere with me?"
Tamara looked at her fixedly, deeply, and calmly. Jennie's eyes
were sad, and as though vacant. The living fire had become
extinguished in them, and they seemed turbid, just as though
faded, with whites like moonstone.
"No," Tamara said at last, quietly but firmly. "If it was on
account of love, I'd interfere; if it was on account of money, I'd
talk you out of it: but there are cases where one must not
interfere. I wouldn't help, of course; but I also wouldn't seize
you and interfere with you."
At this moment the quick-limbed housekeeper Zociya whirled through
the corridor with an outcry:
"Ladies, get dressed! The doctor has arrived ... Ladies, get
dressed! ... Lively, ladies! ..."
"Well, go on, Tamara, go on," said Jennka tenderly, getting up.
"I'll run into my room for just a minute—I haven't changed my
dress yet, although, to tell the truth, this also is all one. When
they'll be calling out for me, and I don't come in time, call out,
run in after me."
And, going out of Tamara's room, she embraced her by the shoulder,
as though by chance, and stroked it tenderly.
Doctor Klimenko—the official city doctor—was preparing in the
parlor everything indispensable for an nspection—vaseline, a
solution of sublimate, and other things—and was placing them on a
separate little table. Here also were arranged for him the white
blanks of the girls, replacing their passports, as well as a
general alphabetical list. The girls, dressed only in their
chemises, stockings, and slippers, were standing and sitting at a
distance. Nearer the table was standing the proprietress herself—
Anna Markovna—while a little behind her were Emma Edwardovna and
Zociya.
The doctor—aged, disheartened, slovenly; a man indifferent to
everything—put the pince-nez crookedly upon his nose, looked at
the list, and called out:
"Alexandra Budzinskaya! ..."
The frowning, little, pug-nosed Nina stepped out. Preserving on
her face an angry expression, and breathing heavily from shame,
from the consciousness of her own awkwardness, and from the
exertions, she clumsily climbed up on the table. The doctor,
squinting through his pince-nez and dropping it every minute,
carried out the inspection.
"Go ahead! ... You're sound."
And on the reverse side of the blank he marked off: "Twenty-eighth
of August. Sound" and put down a curly-cue. And when he had not
even finished writing called out:
"Voshchenkova, Irene! ..."
Now it was the turn of Liubka. She, during the past month and a
half of comparative freedom, had had time to grow unaccustomed to
the inspections of every week; and when the doctor turned up the
chemise over her breast, she suddenly turned as red as only very
bashful women can—even with her back and breast.
After her was the turn of Zoe; then of Little White Manka; after
that of Tamara and Niurka—the last, the doctor found, had
gonorrhoea, and ordered her to be sent off to a hospital.
The doctor carried out the inspection with amazing rapidity. It
was now nearly twenty years that every week, on Saturdays, he had
to inspect in such a manner several hundred girls; and he had
worked out that habitual technical dexterity and rapidity, a calm
carelessness of movements, which is; frequently to be found in
circus artists, in card sharpers, in furniture movers and packers,
and in other professionals. And he carried out his manipulations
with the same calmness with which a drover or a veterinary
inspects several hundred head of cattle in a day.
Did he ever think that before him were living people; or that he
appeared as the last and most important link of that fearful chain
which is called legalized prostitution?
No! And even if he did experience this, then it must have been in
the very beginning of his career. Now before him were only naked
abdomens, naked backs, and opened mouths. Not one exemplar of all
this faceless herd of every Saturday would he have recognized
subsequently on the street. The main thing was the necessity of
finishing as soon as possible the inspection in one establishment,
in order to pass on to another, to a third, a ninth, a
twentieth...
"Susannah Raitzina!" the doctor finally called out.
No one walked up to the table.
All the inmates of the house began to exchange glances and to
whisper.
"Jennka ... Where's Jennka? ..."
But she was not among the girls.
Then Tamara, just released by the doctor, moved a little forward
and said:
"She isn't here. She hasn't had a chance to get herself ready yet.
Excuse me, Mr. Doctor, I'll go right away and call her."
She ran into the corridor and did not return for a long time.
After her went, at first Emma Edwardovna, then Zociya, several
girls, and even Anna Markovna herself.
"Pfui! What indecency is this! ... "the majestic Emma Edwardovna
was saying in the corridor, making an indignant face. "And
eternally this Jennka! ... Always this Jennka! ... It seems my
patience has already burst ..."
But Jennka was nowhere—neither in her room, nor in Tamara's. They
looked into other chambers, in all the out-of-the-way corners ...
But she did not prove to be even there.
"We must look in the water-closet ... Perhaps she's there?"
surmised Zoe.
But this institution was locked from the inside with a bolt. Emma
Edwardovna knocked on the door with her fist.
"Jennie, do come out at last! What foolishness is this?"
And, raising her voice, she cried out impatiently and
threateningly:
"Do you hear, you swine? ... Come out this minute—the doctor's
waiting!"
But there was no answer of any sort.
All exchanged glances with fear in their eyes, with one and the
same thought in mind.
Emma Edwardovna shook the door by the brass knob, but the door did
not yield.
"Go after Simeon!" Anna Markovna directed.
Simeon was called ... He came, sleepy and morose, as was his wont.
By the distracted faces of the girls and the housekeepers, he
already saw that some misunderstanding or other had occurred, in
which his professional cruelty and strength were required. When
they explained to him what the matter was, he silently took the
door-knob with both hands, braced himself against the wall, and
gave a yank.
The knob remained in his hands; and he himself, staggering
backward, almost fell to the floor on his back.
"A-a, hell!" he began to growl in a stifled voice. "Give me a
table knife."
Through the crack of the door he felt the inner bolt with the
table knife; whittled away with the blade the edges of the crack,
and widened it so that he could at last push the end of the knife
through it, and began gradually to scrape back the bolt. Only the
grating of metal against metal could be heard.
Finally Simeon threw the door wide open.
Jennka was hanging in the middle of the water-closet on a tape
from her corset, fastened to the lamphook. Her body, already
motionless after an unprolonged agony, was slowly swinging in the
air, and describing scarcely perceptible turns to the right and
left around its vertical axis. Her face was bluishly-purple, and
the tip of the tongue was thrust out between clenched and bared
teeth. The lamp which had been taken off was also here, sprawling
on the floor.
Some one began to squeal hysterically, and all the girls, like a
stampeded herd, crowding and jostling each other in the narrow
corridor, vociferating and choking with hysterical sobbings,
started in to run.
The doctor came upon hearing the outcries... Came, precisely, and
not ran. Seeing what the matter was, he did not become amazed or
excited; during his practice as an official city doctor, he had
had his fill of seeing such things, so that he had already grown
benumbed and hardened to human sufferings, wounds and death. He
ordered Simeon to lift the corpse of Jennka a bit upward, and
himself getting up on the seat, cut through the tape. Proforma, he
ordered Jennka's body to be borne away into the room that had been
hers, and tried with the help of the same Simeon to produce
artificial respiration; but after five minutes gave it up as a bad
job, fixed the pince-nez, which had become crooked, on his nose,
and said:
"Call the police in to make a protocol."
Again Kerbesh came, again whispered for a long time with the
proprietress in her little bit of a cabinet, and again crunched in
his pocket a new hundred-rouble bill.
The protocol was made in five minutes; and Jennka, just as half-
naked as she had hung herself, was carted away in a hired wagon
into an anatomical theatre, wrapped up in and covered with two
straw mats.
Emma Edwardovna was the first to find the note that Jennka had
left on her night table. On a sheet, torn out of the income-
expense book, compulsory for every prostitute, in pencil, in a
naive, rounded, childish handwriting—by which, however, it could
be judged that the hands of the suicide had not trembled during
the last minutes—was written:
"I beg that no one be blamed for my death. I am dying because I
have become infected, and also because all people are scoundrels
and it is very disgusting to live. How to divide my things—Tamara
knows about that. I told her in detail."
Emma Edwardovna turned around upon Tamara, who was right on the
spot among a number of other girls, and with eyes filled with a
cold, green hatred, hissed out:
"Then you knew, you low-down thing, what she was preparing to do?
... You knew, you vermin? ... You knew and didn't tell? ..."
She already had swung back, in order, as was her wont, to hit
Tamara cruelly and calculatingly; but suddenly stopped just as she
was, with gaping mouth and with eyes wide open. It was just as
though she was seeing, for the first time, Tamara, who was looking
at her with a firm, wrathful, unbearable gaze, and slowly, slowly
was raising from below, and at last brought up to the level of the
housekeeper's face, a small object, glistening with white metal.