Yama (The Pit) Part 4

Niura laughs shrilly over all Yama, and throws herself down on the sill, kicking her legs in high black stockings. Afterward, having ceased laughing, she all of a sudden makes round astonished eyes and says in a whisper:

"But do you know, girlie--why, he cut a woman's throat the year before last--that same Prokhor. Honest to G.o.d!"

"Is that so? Did she die?"

"No, she didn't. She got by," says Niura, as though with regret. "But just the same she lay for two months in the Alexandrovskaya Hospital.

The doctors said, that if it were only this teen-weeny bit higher--then it would have been all over. Bye-bye!"

"Well, what did he do that to her for?"

"How should I know? Maybe she hid money from him or wasn't true to him.

He was her lover--her pimp."

"Well, and what did he get for it?"

"Why, nothing. There was no evidence of any kind. There had been a free-for-all mix-up. About a hundred people were fighting. She also told the police that she had no suspicions of any sort. But Prokhor himself boasted afterwards: 'I,' says he, 'didn't do for Dunka that time, but I'll finish her off another time. She,' says he, 'won't get by my hands. I'm going to give her the works.'"

A s.h.i.+ver runs all the way down Liuba's back.

"They're desperate fellows, these pimps!" she p.r.o.nounces quietly, with horror in her voice.

"Something terrible! I, you know, played at love with our Simeon for a whole year. Such a Herod, the skunk! I didn't have a whole spot on me.

I always went about in black and blue marks. And it wasn't for any reason at all, but just simply so--he'd go in the morning into a room with me, lock himself in, and start in to torture me. He'd wrench my arms, pinch my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, grab my throat and begin to strangle me. Or else he'd be kissing, kissing, and then he'd bite the lips so that the blood would just spurt out ... I'd start crying--but that's all he was looking for. Then he'd just pounce an me like a beast--simply s.h.i.+vering all over. And he'd take all my money away--well, now, to the very last little copper. There wasn't anything to buy ten cigarettes with. He's stingy, this here Simeon, that's what, always into the bank-book with it, always putting it away into the bank-book... Says when he gets a thousand roubles together--he'll go into a monastery."

"Go on!"

"Honest to G.o.d. You look into his little room: the twenty-four hours round, day and night, the little holy lamp burns before the images.

He's very strong for G.o.d ... Only I think that he's that way because there's heavy sins upon him. He's a murderer."

"What are you saying?"

"Oh, let's drop talking about him, Liubochka. Well, let's go on further:

"I'll go to the drug store, buy me some poison, And I will poison then meself."

Niura starts off in a very high, thin voice.

Jennie walks back and forth in the room, with arms akimbo, swaying as she walks, and looking at herself in all the mirrors. She has on a short orange satin dress, with straight deep pleats in the skirt, which vacillates evenly to the left and right from the movement of her hips.

Little Manka, a pa.s.sionate lover of card games, ready to play from morning to morning, without stopping, is playing away at "sixty-six"

with Pasha, during which both women, for convenience in dealing, have left an empty chair between them, while they gather their tricks into their skirts, spread out between their knees. Manka has on a brown, very modest dress, with black ap.r.o.n and pleated black bib; this dress is very becoming to her dainty, fair little head and small stature; it makes her younger and gives her the appearance of a high-school undergraduate.

Her partner Pasha is a very queer and unhappy girl. She should have been, long ago, not in a house of ill-fame, but in a psychiatric ward, because of an excruciating nervous malady, which compels her to give herself up, frenziedly, with an unwholesome avidity, to any man whatsoever who may choose her, even the most repulsive. Her mates make sport of her and despise her somewhat for this vice, just as though for some treason to their corporate enmity toward men. Niura, with very great versimilitude, mimics her sighs, groans, outcries and pa.s.sionate words, from which she can never refrain in the moments of ecstasy and which are to be heard in the neighbouring rooms through two or three part.i.tions. There is a rumour afloat about Pasha, that she got into a brothel not at all through necessity or temptation or deception, but had gone into it her own self, voluntarily, following her horrible, insatiable instinct. But the proprietress of the house and both the housekeepers indulge Pasha in every way and encourage her insane weakness, because, thanks to it, Pasha is in constant demand and earns four, five times as much as any one of the remaining girls--earns so much, that on busy gala days she is not brought out to the more drab guests at all, or else refused them under the pretext of Pasha's illness, because the steady, paying guests are offended if they are told that the girl they know is busy with another. And of such steady guests Pasha has a mult.i.tude; many are with perfect sincerity, even though b.e.s.t.i.a.lly, in love with her, and even not so long ago two, almost at the same time, offered to set her up: a Georgian--a clerk in a store of Cakhetine wines, and some railroad agent, a very proud and very poor n.o.bleman, with s.h.i.+rt cuffs the colour of a cabbage rose, and with an eye which had been replaced by a black circle on an elastic.

Pasha, pa.s.sive in everything save her impersonal sensuality, would go with anybody who might call her, but the administration of the house vigilantly guards its interests in her. A near insanity already flits over her lovely face, in her half-closed eyes, always smiling with some heady, blissful, meek, bashful and unseemly smile, in her languorous, softened, moist lips, which she is constantly licking; in her short, quiet laugh--the laugh of an idiot. Yet at the same time she--this veritable victim of the social temperament--in everyday life is very good-natured, yielding, entirely uncovetous and is very much ashamed of her inordinate pa.s.sion. Toward her mates she is tender, likes very much to kiss and embrace them and sleep in the same bed with them, but still everybody has a little aversion for her, it would seem.

"Mannechka, sweetie, dearie," says Pasha lightly touching Manya's hand with emotion, "tell my fortune, my precious little child."

"We-ell," Manya pouts her lips just like a child, "let's play a little more."

"Mannechka, my little beauty, you little good-looker, my precious, my own, my dear..."

Manya gives in and lays out the pack on her knees. A suit of hearts comes out, a small monetary interest and a meeting in the suit of spades with a large company in the king of clubs.

Pasha claps her hands joyously:

"Ah, it's my Levanchik! Well, yes, he promised to come to-day. Of course, it's Levanchik."

"That's your Georgian!"

"Yes, yes, my little Georgian. Oh, how nice he is. I'd just love never to let him go away from me. Do you know what he told me the last time?

'If you'll go on living in a sporting house, then I'll make both you dead, and make me dead.' And he flashed his eyes at me so!"

Jennie, who had stopped near, listens to her words and asks haughtily:

"Who was it said that?"

"Why, my little Georgian, Levan. 'Both for you death and for me death.'"

"Fool! He isn't any little Georgian at all, but simply a common Armenian. You're a crazy fool."

"Oh no, he isn't--he's a Georgian. And it is quite strange on your part..."

"I'm telling you--a common Armenian. I can tell better. Fool!"

"What are you cursing for, Jennie? I didn't start cursing you first off, did I?"

"You just try and be the first to start cursing! Fool! Isn't it all the same to you what he is? Are you in love with him, or what?"

"Well, I am in love with him!"

"Well, and you're a fool. And the one with the badge in his cap, the lame one--are you in love with him too?"

"Well, what of it? I respect him very much. He is very respectable."

"And with Nicky the Book-keeper? And with the contractor? And with Antoshka-Kartoshka?[4] And with the fat actor? Oo-ooh, you shameless creature!" Jennie suddenly cries out. "I can't look at you without disgust. You're a b.i.t.c.h! In your place, if I was such a miserable thing, I'd rather lay hands on myself, strangle myself with a cord from my corset. You vermin!"

[4] Tony the Potato.--Trans.

Pasha silently lowers her eyelashes over her tear-filled eyes. Manya tries to defend her.

"Really, what are you carrying on like that for, Jennechka? What are you down on her like that for..."

"Eh, all of you are fine!" Jennie sharply cuts her short. "No self-respect of any sort! Some sc.u.m comes along, buys you like a piece of meat, hires you like a cabby, at a fixed rate, for love for an hour, but you go all to pieces: 'Ah, my little lover! Ah, what unearthly pa.s.sion!' Ugh!" she spat in disgust.

She wrathfully turns her back upon them and continues to promenade on a diagonal through the room, swinging her hips and blinking at herself in every mirror.

During this time Isaac Davidovich, the piano player, is still struggling with the refractory violinist.