Yama (The Pit) Part 15

"It isn't that I don't indulge, but I simply don't know how--I can't."

"We'll write that down. Now let's suppose another thing--that you come here as an apostle of a better, honest life, in the nature of a, now, saviour of perishing souls. You know, as in the dawn of Christianity certain holy fathers instead of standing on a column for thirty years or living in a cave in the woods, went to the market places, into houses of mirth, to the harlots and scaramuchios. But you aren't inclined that way."

"I'm not."

"Then why, the devil take it, do you hang around here? I can see very well that a great deal here is revolting and oppressive and painful to your own self. For example, this fool quarrel with Boris or this flunky who beats a woman, and--, in general, the constant contemplation of every kind of filth, l.u.s.t, b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, vulgarity, drunkenness. Well, now, since you say so--I believe that you don't give yourself up to lechery. But then, still more incomprehensible to me is your MODUS VIVENDI, to express myself in the style of leading articles."

The reporter did not answer at once:

"You see," he began speaking slowly, with pauses, as though for the first time lending ear to his thoughts and weighing them. "You see, I'm attracted and interested in this life by its ... how shall I express it? ... its fearful, stark truth. Do you understand, it's as though all the conventional coverings were ripped off it. There is no falsehood, no hypocrisy, no sanctimoniousness, there are no compromises of any sort, neither with public opinion, nor with the importunate authority of our forefathers, nor with one's own conscience. No illusions of any kind, nor any kind of embellishments! Here she is--'I! A public woman, a common vessel, a cloaca for the drainage of the city's surplus l.u.s.t.

Come to me any one who wills--thou shalt meet no denial, therein is my service. But for a second of this sensuality in haste--thou shalt pay in money, revulsion, disease and ignominy.' And that is all. There is not a single phase of human life where the basic main truth should shine with such a monstrous, hideous, stark clearness, without any shade of human prevarication or self-whitewashing."

"Oh, I don't know! These women lie like the very devil. You just go and talk with her a bit about her first fall. She'll spin you such a yarn!"

"Well, don't you ask then. What business is that of yours? But even if they do lie, they lie altogether like children. But then, you know yourself that children are the foremost, the most charming fibsters, and at the same time the sincerest people on earth. And it's remarkable, that both they and the others--that is, both prost.i.tutes and children--lie only to us--men--and grown-ups. Among themselves they don't lie--they only inspiredly improvise. But they lie to us because we ourselves demand this of them, because we clamber into their souls, altogether foreign to us, with our stupid tactics and questionings, because they regard us in secret as great fools and senseless dissemblers. But if you like, I shall right now count off on my fingers all the occasions when a prost.i.tute is sure to lie, and you yourself will be convinced that man incites her to lying."

"Well, well, we shall see." "First: she paints herself mercilessly, at times even in detriment to herself. Why? Because every pimply military cadet, who is so distressed by his s.e.xual maturity that he grows stupid in the spring, like a wood-c.o.c.k on a drumming-log; or some sorry petty government clerk or other from the department of the parish, the husband of a pregnant woman and the father of nine infants--why, they both come here not at all with the prudent and simple purpose of leaving here the surplus of their pa.s.sion. He, the good for nothing, has come to enjoy himself; he needs beauty, d'you see--aesthete that he is! But all these girls, these daughters of the simple, unpretentious, great Russian people--how do they regard aesthetics? 'What's sweet, that's tasty; what's red, that's handsome.' And so, there you are, receive, if you please, a beauty of antimony, white lead and rouge.

"That's one. Secondly, his desire for beauty isn't enough for this resplendent cavalier--no, he must in addition be served with a similitude of love, so that from his caresses there should kindle in the woman this same 'fa-hire of in-sane paha.s.s-ssion!' which is sung about In idiotical ballads. Ah! Then THAT is what you want? There y'are! And the woman lies to him with countenance, voice, sighs, moans, movements of the body. And even he himself in the depths of his soul knows about this professional deception, but--go along with you!--still deceives himself: 'Ah, what a handsome man I am! Ah, how the women love me! Ah, into what an ecstasy I bring them ...' You know, there are cases when a man with the most desperate brazenness, in the most unlikely manner, is flattered to his face, and he himself sees and knows it very plainly, but--the devil take it!--despite everything a delightful feeling of some sort lubricates his soul. And so here.

Query: whose is the initiative in the lie?

"And here's a third point for you, Lichonin. You prompted it yourself.

They lie most of all when they are asked: 'How did you come to such a life?' But what right have you to ask her about that, may the devil take you! For she does not push her way into your intimate life? She doesn't interest herself with your first, 'holy' love or the virtue of your sisters and your bride. Aha! You pay money? Splendid! The bawd and the bouncer, and the police, and medicine, and the city government, watch over your interests. Polite and seemly conduct on the part of the prost.i.tute hired by you for love is guaranteed you, and your personality is immune ... even though in the most direct sense, in the sense of a slap in the face, which you, of course, deserve through your aimless, and perhaps tormenting interrogations. But you desire truth as well for your money? Well, that you are never to discount and to control. They will tell you just such a conventionalized history as you--yourself a man of conventionality and a vulgarian--will digest easiest of all. Because by itself life is either exceedingly humdrum and tedious to you, or else as exceedingly improbable as only life can be improbable. And so you have the eternal mediocre history about an officer, about a shop clerk, about a baby and a superannuated father, who there, in the provinces, bewails his strayed daughter and implores her to return home. But mark you, Lichonin, all that I'm saying doesn't apply to you; in you, upon my word of honour, I sense a sincere and great soul ... Let's drink to your health?"

They drank.

"Shall I speak on?" continued Platonov undecidedly.

"Are you bored?"

"No, no, I beg of you, speak on."

"They also lie, and lie especially innocently, to those who preen themselves before them on political hobby horses. Here they agree with anything you want. I shall tell her to-day: Away with the modern bourgeois order! Let us destroy with bombs and daggers the capitalists, landed proprietors, and the bureaucracy! She'll warmly agree with me.

But to-morrow the hanger-on Nozdrunov will yell that it's necessary to string up all the socialists, to beat up all the students and ma.s.sacre all the sheenies, who partake of communion in Christian blood. And she'll gleefully agree with him as well. But if in addition to that you'll also inflame her imagination, make her fall in love with yourself, then she'll go with you everywhere you may wish--on a pogrom, on a barricade, on a theft, on a murder. But then, children also are yielding. And they, by G.o.d, are children, my dear Lichonin...

"At fourteen years she was seduced, and at sixteen she became a patent prost.i.tute, with a yellow ticket and a venereal disease. And here is all her life, surrounded and fenced off from the universe with a sort of a bizarre, impenetrable and dead wall. Turn your attention to her everyday vocabulary--thirty or forty words, no more--altogether as with a baby or a savage: to eat, to drink, to sleep, man, bed, the madam, rouble, lover, doctor, hospital, linen, policeman--and that's all. And so her mental development, her experience, her interests, remain on an infantile plane until her very death, exactly as in the case of a gray and naive lady teacher who has not crossed over the threshold of a female inst.i.tute since she was ten, as in the case of a nun given as a child into a convent. In a word, picture to yourself a tree of a genuinely great species, but raised in a gla.s.s bell, in a jar from jam.

And precisely to this childish phase of their existence do I attribute their compulsory lying--so innocent, purposeless and habitual ... But then, how fearful, stark, unadorned with anything the frank truth in this business-like d.i.c.kering about the price of a night; in these ten men in an evening; in these printed rules, issued by the city fathers, about the use of a solution of boric acid and about maintaining one's self in cleanliness; in the weekly doctors' inspections; in the nasty diseases, which are looked upon as lightly and facetiously, just as simply and without suffering, as a cold would be; in the deep revulsion of these women to men--so deep, that they all, without conception, compensate for it in the Lesbian manner and do not even in the least conceal it. All their incongruous life is here, on the palm of my hand, with all its cynicism, monstrous and coa.r.s.e injustice; but there is in it none of that falsehood and that hypocrisy before people and before one's self, which enmesh all humanity from top to bottom. Consider, my dear Lichonin, how much nagging, drawn out, disgusting deception, how much hate, there is in any marital cohabitation in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. How much blind, merciless cruelty--precisely not animal, but human, reasoned, far-sighted, calculated cruelty--there is in the sacred maternal instinct--and behold, with what tender colours this instinct is adorned! Then what about all these unnecessary, tom-fool professions, invented by cultured man for the safeguarding of my nest, my bit of meat, my woman, my child, these different overseers, controllers, inspectors, judges, attorneys, jailers, advocates, chiefs, bureaucrats, generals, soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of t.i.tles more. They all subserve human greed, cowardice, viciousness, servility, legitimised sensuality, laziness-beggarliness!--yes, that is the real word!--human beggarliness. But what magnificent words we have! The altar of the fatherland, Christian compa.s.sion for our neighbor, progress, sacred duty, sacred property, holy love. Ugh! I do not believe in a single fine word now, and I am nauseated to infinity with these petty liars, these cowards and gluttons! Beggar women! ... Man is born for great joy, for ceaseless creation, in which he is G.o.d; for a broad, free love, unhindered by anything,--love for everything: for a tree, for the sky, for man, for a dog, for the dear, benign, beautiful earth,--oh, especially for the earth with its beatific motherhood, with its mornings and nights, with its magnificent everyday miracles. But man has lied himself out so, has become such an importunate beggar, and has sunk so low! ... Ah, Lichonin, but I am weary!"

"I, as an anarchist, partly understand you," said Lichonin thoughtfully. It was as though he heard and yet did not hear the reporter. Some thought was with difficulty, for the first time, being born in his mind. "But one thing I can not comprehend. If humanity has become so malodorous to you, then how do you stand--and for so long, too,--all this,--" Lichonin took in the whole table with a circular motion of his hand,--"the basest thing that mankind could invent?"

"Well, I don't even know myself," said Platonov with artlessness. "You see, I am a vagabond, and am pa.s.sionately in love with life. I have been a turner, a compositor; I have sown and sold tobacco--the cheap Silver Makhorka kind--have sailed as a stoker on the Azov Sea, have been a fisherman on the Black--on the Dubinin fisheries; I have loaded watermelons and bricks on the Dnieper, have ridden with a circus, have been an actor--I can't even recall everything. And never did need drive me. No, only an immeasurable thirst for life and an insupportable curiosity. By G.o.d, I would like for a few days to become a horse, a plant, or a fish, or to be a woman and experience childbirth; I would like to live with the inner life, and to look upon the universe with the eyes of every human being I meet. And so I wander care-free over towns and hamlets, bound by nothing; know and love tens of trades and joyously float wherever it suits fate to set my sail... And so it was that I came upon the brothel, and the more I look at it, the more there grows within me alarm, incomprehension, and very great anger. But even this will soon be at an end. When things get well into autumn--away again! I'll get into a rail-rolling mill. I've a certain friend, he'll manage it ... Wait, wait, Lichonin ... Listen to the actor ... That's the third act."

Egmont-Lavretzki, who until this had been very successfully imitating now a shoat which is being put into a bag, now the altercation of a cat with a dog, was beginning little by little to wilt and droop. Upon him was already advancing the stage of self-revelation, next in order, in the paroxysm of which he several times attempted to kiss Yarchenko's hand. His lids had become red; around the shaven, p.r.i.c.kly lips had deepened the tearful wrinkles that gave him an appearance of weeping; and it could be heard by his voice that his nose and throat were already overflowing with tears.

"I serve in a farce!" he was saying, smiting himself on the breast with his fist. "I disport myself in striped trunks for the sport of the sated mob! I have put out my torch, have hid my talent in the earth, like the slothful servant! But fo-ormerly!" he began to bray tragically, "Fo-ormerly-y-y! Ask in Novocherka.s.sk, ask in Tvier, in Ustejne, in Zvenigorodok, in Krijopole.[10] What a Zhadov and Belugin I was! How I played Max! What a figure I created of Veltishchev--that was my crowning ro-ole ... Nadin-Perekopski was beginning with me at Sumbekov's! With Nikiphorov-Pavlenko did I serve. Who made the name for Legunov-Pochainin? I! But no-ow ..."

[10] All provincial towns.--Trans.

He sniveled, and sought to kiss the sub-professor.

"Yes! Despise me, brand me, ye honest folk. I play the tom-fool. I drink ... I have sold and spilt the sacred ointment! I sit in a dive with vendable merchandise. While my wife ... she is a saint, and pure, my little dove! ... Oh, if she knew, if she only knew! she works hard, she runs a modiste's shop; her fingers--the fingers of an angel--are p.r.i.c.ked with the needle, but I! Oh, sainted woman! And I--the scoundrel!--whom do I exchange thee for! Oh, horror!" The actor seized his hair. "Professor, let me, I'll kiss your scholarly hand. You alone understand me. Let us go, I'll introduce you, you'll see what an angel this is! ... She awaits me, she does not sleep nights, she folds the tiny hands of my little ones and together with them whispers: 'Lord, save and preserve papa.'"

"You're lying about it all, you ham!" said the drunken Little White Manka suddenly, looking with hatred upon Egmont-Lavretzki. "She isn't whispering anything, but most peacefully sleeping with a man in your bed."

"Be still, you w--!" vociferated the actor beside himself; and seizing a bottle by the neck raised it high over his head. "Hold me, or else I'll brain this carrion. Don't you dare besmirch with your foul tongue..."

"My tongue isn't foul--I take communion," impudently replied the woman.

"But you, you fool, wear horns. You go traipsing around with prost.i.tutes yourself, and yet want your wife not to play you false. And look where the dummy's found a place to slaver, till he looks like he had reins in his mouth. And what did you mix the children in for, you miserable papa you! Don't you roll your eyes and gnash your teeth at me. You won't frighten me! W--yourself!"

It required many efforts and much eloquence on the part of Yarchenko in order to quiet the actor and Little White Manka, who always after Benedictine ached for a row. The actor in the end burst into copious and unbecoming tears and blew his nose, like an old man; he grew weak, and Henrietta led him away to her room.

Fatigue had already overcome everybody. The students, one after another, returned from the bedrooms; and separately from them, with an indifferent air, came their chance mistresses. And truly, both these and the others resembled flies, males and females, just flown apart on the window pane. They yawned, stretched, and for a long time an involuntary expression of wearisomeness and aversion did not leave their faces, pale from sleeplessness, unwholesomely glossy. And when they, before going their ways, said good-bye to each other, in their eyes twinkled some kind of an inimical feeling, just as with the partic.i.p.ants of one and the same filthy and unnecessary crime.

"Where are you going right now?" Lichonin asked the reporter in a low voice.

"Well, really, I don't know myself. I did want to spend the night in the cabinet of Isaiah Savvich, but it's a pity to lose such a splendid morning. I'm thinking of taking a bath, and then I'll get on a steamer and ride to the Lipsky monastery to a certain tippling black friar I know. But why?"

"I would ask you to remain a little while and sit the others out. I must have a very important word or two with you."

"It's a go."

Yarchenko was the last to go. He averred a headache and fatigue. But scarcely had he gone out of the house when the reporter seized Lichonin by the hand and quickly dragged him into the gla.s.s vestibule of the entrance.

"Look!" he said, pointing to the street.

And through the orange gla.s.s of the little coloured window Lichonin saw the sub-professor, who was ringing at Treppel's. After a minute the door opened and Yarchenko disappeared through it.

"How did you find out?" asked Lichonin with astonishment.

"A mere trifle! I saw his face, and saw his hands smoothing Verka's tights. The others were less restrained. But this fellow is bashful."

"Well, now, let's go," said Lichonin. "I won't detain you long."

CHAPTER XII.

Of the girls only two remained in the cabinet-Jennie, who had come in her night blouse, and Liuba, who had long been sleeping under cover of the conversation, curled up into a ball in the large plush armchair.

The fresh, freckled face of Liuba had taken on a meek, almost childlike, expression, while the lips, just as they had smiled in sleep, had preserved the light imprint of a radiant, peaceful and tender smile. It was blue and biting in the cabinet from the dense tobacco smoke; guttered, warty little streams had congealed on the candles in the candelabras; the table, flooded with coffee and wine, scattered all over with orange peels, seemed hideous.

Jennie was sitting on the divan, her knees clasped around with her arms. And again was Platonov struck by the sombre fire in her deep eyes, that seemed fallen in underneath the dark eyebrows, formidably contracted downward, toward the bridge of the nose.

"I'll put out the candles," said Lichonin.

The morning half-light, watery and drowsy, filled the room through the slits of the blinds. The extinguished wicks of the candles smoked with faint streams. The tobacco smoke swirled in blue, layered shrouds, but a ray of sunlight that had cut its way through the heart-shaped hollow in a window shutter, transpierced the cabinet obliquely with a joyous, golden sword of dust, and in liquid, hot gold splashed upon the paper on the wall.