Yama (The Pit) Part 45

Platonov with enjoyment straightened out his back and bent it backward, and spread out his swollen arms. With pleasure he thought of having already gotten over that first pain in all the muscles, which tells so during the first days, when one is just getting back into the work after disuse. While up to this day, awaking in the mornings in his lair on Temnikovskaya--also to the sound of a factory blast agreed upon--he would during the first minutes experience such fearful pains in his neck, back, in his arms and legs, that it seemed to him as if only a miracle would be able to compel him to get up and make a few steps.

"Go-o-o and e-at," Zavorotny began to clamour again.

The stevedores went down to the water; got down on their knees or laid down flat on the gangplank or on the rafts; and, scooping up the water in handfuls, washed their wet, heated faces and arms. Right here, too, on the sh.o.r.e, to one side, where a little gra.s.s had been left yet, they disposed themselves for dinner: placed in a circle ten of the most ripe watermelons, black bread, and twenty dried porgies. Gavriushka the Bullet was already running with a half-gallon bottle to the pot-house and was singing as he went the soldiers' signal for dinner:

"Drag spoon and mess-kit out, If there's no bread, eat without."

A bare-footed urchin, dirty and so ragged that there was more of his bare body than clothes upon him, ran up to the gang.

"Which one of you here is Platonov?" he asked, quickly running over them with his thievish eyes.

"I'm Platonov, and by what name do they tease you?"

"Around the corner here, behind the church, some sort of a young lady is waiting for you...Here's a note for you."

The whole gang neighed deeply.

"What d'you open up your mouths for, you pack of fools!" said Platonov calmly. "Give me the note here."

This was a letter from Jennka, written in a round, naive, rolling, childish handwriting, and not very well spelt.

"Sergei Ivanich. Forgive me that I disturbe you. I must talk over a very, very important matter with you. I would not be troubling you if it was Trifles. For only 10 minutes in all. Jennka, whom you know, from Anna Markovna's."

Platonov got up.

"I'm going away for a little while," he said to Zavorotny. "When you begin, I'll be in my place."

"Now you've found somethin' to do," lazily and contemptuously said the head of the gang. "There's the night for that business...Go ahead, go ahead, who's holding you. But only if you won't be here when we begin work, then this day don't count. I'll take any tramp. And as many watermelons as he busts--that's out of your share, too...I didn't think it of you, Platonov--that you're such a he-dog..."

Jennka was waiting for him in the tiny little square, sheltered between a church and the wharf, and consisting of ten sorry poplars. She had on a gray, one-piece street dress; a simple, round, straw hat with a small black ribbon. "And yet, even though she has dressed herself simply,"

reflected Platonov, looking at her from a distance with his habitually puckered eyes, "and yet, every man will walk past, give a look, and inevitably look back three or four times; he'll feel the especial tone at once."

"Howdy do, Jennka! Very glad to see you," he said cordially, squeezing the girl's hand. "There, now, I didn't expect it!"

Jennka was reserved, sad, and apparently troubled over something.

Platonov at once understood and sensed this.

"You excuse me, Jennechka, I must have dinner right away," said he, "so, perhaps, you'll go together with me and tell me what's the matter, while I'll manage to eat at the same time. There's a modest little inn not far from here. At this time there are no people there at all, and there's even a tiny little stall, a sort of a private room; that will be just the thing for you and me. Let's go! Perhaps you'll also have a bite of something."

"No. I won't eat," answered Jennka hoa.r.s.ely, "and I won't detain you for long...a few minutes. I have to talk things over, have some advice--but I haven't anybody."

"Very well...Let's go then! In whatever way I can, I'm always at your service, in everything. I love you very much, Jennka!"

She looked at him sadly and gratefully.

"I know this, Serge Ivanovich; that's why I've come."

"You need money, perhaps? Just say so. I haven't got much with me, myself; but the gang will trust me with an advance."

"No, thanks...it isn't that at all. I'll tell everything at once, there, where we're going now."

In the dim, low-ceiled little inn, the customary haunt of petty thieves, where business was carried on only in the evening, until very far into the night, Platonov took the little half-dark cubby hole.

"Give me boiled meat, cuc.u.mbers, a large gla.s.s of vodka, and bread," he ordered the waiter.

The waiter--a young fellow with a dirty face; pugnosed; as dirty and greasy in all his person as though he had just been pulled out of a cesspool, wiped his lips and asked hoa.r.s.ely:

"How many kopecks' bread?" "As much as it comes to." Then he started laughing:

"Bring as much as possible--we'll reckon it up later... and some bread cider!"

"Well, Jennie, say what your trouble is...I can already see by your face that there's trouble, or something distasteful in general...Go ahead and tell it!"

Jennka for a long time plucked her handkerchief and looked at the tips of her slippers, as though, gathering her strength. Timorousness had taken possession of her--the necessary and important words would not come into her mind, for anything. Platonov came to her aid: "Don't be embarra.s.sed, my dear Jennie, tell all there is! For you know that I'm like one of the family, and will never give you away. And perhaps I may really give you some worth-while advice. Well, dive off with a splash into the water--begin!"

"That's just it, I don't know how to begin," said Jennka irresolutely.

"Here's what, Sergei Ivanovich, I'm a sick woman...Understand?--sick in a bad way...With the most nasty disease...Do you know which?"

"Go on!" said Platonov, nodding his head.

"And I've been that way for a long time...more than a month...a month and a half, maybe...Yes, more than a month, because I found out about this on the Trinity..."

Platonov quickly rubbed his forehead with his hand. "Wait a while, I've recalled it...This was that day I was there together with the students...isn't that so?"

"That's right, Sergei Ivanovich, that's so..."

"Ah, Jennka," said Platonov reproachfully and with regret. "For do you know, that after this two of the students got sick...Wasn't it from you?"

Jennka wrathfully and disdainfully flashed her eyes.

"Perhaps even from me...How should I know? There were a lot of them...I remember there was this one, now, who was even trying to pick a fight with you all the time ...A tall sort of fellow, fair-haired, in pince-nez..."

"Yes, yes...That's Sobashnikov. They pa.s.sed the news to me...That's he...that one was nothing--a little c.o.xcomb! But then the other--him I'm sorry for. Although I've known him long, somehow I never made the right inquiries about his name...I only remember that he comes from some city or other--Poliyansk...Zvenigorodsk... His comrades called him Ramses...When the physicians--he turned to several physicians--when they told him irrevocably that he had the lues, he went home and shot himself...And in the note that he wrote there were amazing things, something like this: I supposed all the meaning of life to be in the triumph of mind, beauty and good; with this disease I am not a man, but junk, rottenness, carrion; a candidate for a progressive paralytic. My human dignity cannot reconcile itself to this. But guilty in all that has happened, and therefore in my death as well, am I alone; for that I, obeying a momentary b.e.s.t.i.a.l inclination, took a woman without love, for money. For that reason have I earned the punishment which I myself lay upon me..."

"I am sorry for him..." added Platonov quietly.

Jennka dilated her nostrils.

"But I, now, not the very least bit."

"That's wrong...You go away now, young fellow. When I'll need you I'll call out," said Platonov to the serving-man "Absolutely wrong, Jennechka! This was an unusually big and forceful man. Such come only one to the hundreds of thousands. I don't respect suicides. Most frequent of all, these are little boys, who shoot and hang themselves over trifles, like a child that has not been given a piece of candy, and hits itself against the wall to spite those around it. But before his death I reverently and with sorrow bow my head. He was a wise, generous, kindly man, attentive to all; and, as you see, too strict to himself."

"But to me this is absolutely all one," obstinately contradicted Jennka, "wise or foolish, honest or dishonest, old or young--I have come to hate them all. Because--look upon me--what am I? Some sort of universal spittoon, cesspool, privy. Think of it, Platonov; why, thousands, thousands of people have taken me, clutched me; grunted, snorted over me; and all those who were, and all those who might yet have been on my bed--oh, how I hate them all! If I only could, I would sentence them to torture by fire and iron! ... I would order..."

"You are malicious and proud, Jennie," said Platonov quietly.

"I was neither malicious nor proud...It's only now. I wasn't ten yet when my own mother sold me; and since that time I've been travelling from hand to hand... If only some one had seen a human being in me! No!

... I am vermin, refuse, worse than a beggar, worse than a thief, worse than a murderer! ... Even a hangman...we have even such coming to the establishment--and even he would have treated me loftily, with loathing: I am nothing; I am a public wench! Do you understand, Sergei Ivanovich, what a horrible word this is? Pub-lic! ... This means n.o.body's: not papa's, not mamma's, not Russian, not Riyazan, but simply--public! And not once did it enter anybody's head to walk up to me and think: why, now, this is a human being too; she has a heart and a brain; she thinks of something, feels something; for she's not made out of wood, and isn't stuffed with straw, small hay, or excelsior! And yet, only I feel this. I, perhaps, am the only one out of all of them who feels the horror of her position; this black, stinking, filthy pit.