Part 7

Vassiliev imagined how in about ten minutes he and his friends would knock at a door, how they would stealthily walk through the narrow little passages and dark rooms to the women, how he would take advantage of the dark, suddenly strike a match, and see lit up a suffering face and a guilty smile. There he will surely find a fair or a dark woman in a white nightgown with her hair loose. She will be frightened of the light, dreadfully confused and say: “Good God! What are you doing? Blow it out!” All this was frightening, but curious and novel.

II

The friends turned out of Trubnoi Square into the Grachovka and soon arrived at the street which Vassiliev knew only from hearsay. Seeing two rows of houses with brightly lighted windows and wide open doors, and hearing the gay sound of pianos and fiddles--sounds which flew out of all the doors and mingled in a strange confusion, as if somewhere in the darkness over the roof-tops an unseen orchestra were tuning, Vassiliev was bewildered and said:

“What a lot of houses!”

“What’s that?” said the medico. “There are ten times as many in London. There are a hundred thousand of these women there.”

The cabmen sat on their boxes quiet and indifferent as in other streets; on the pavement walked the same passers-by. No one was in a hurry; no one hid his face in his collar; no one shook his head reproachfully. And in this indifference, in the confused sound of the pianos and fiddles, in the bright windows and wide-open doors, something very free, impudent, bold and daring could be felt. It must have been the same as this in the old times on the slave-markets, as gay and as noisy; people looked and walked with the same indifference.

“Let’s begin right at the beginning,” said the painter.

The friends walked into a narrow little passage lighted by a single lamp with a reflector. When they opened the door a man in a black jacket rose lazily from the yellow sofa in the hall. He had an unshaven lackey’s face and sleepy eyes. The place smelt like a laundry, and of vinegar. From the hall a door led into a brightly lighted room. The medico and the painter stopped in the doorway, stretched out their necks and peeped into the room together:

“Buona sera, signore, Rigoletto--huguenote--traviata!--” the painter began, making a theatrical bow.

“Havanna--blackbeetlano--pistoletto!” said the medico, pressing his hat to his heart and bowing low.

Vassiliev kept behind them. He wanted to bow theatrically too and say something silly. But he only smiled, felt awkward and ashamed, and awaited impatiently what was to follow. In the door appeared a little fair girl of seventeen or eighteen, with short hair, wearing a short blue dress with a white bow on her breast.

“What are you standing in the door for?” she said. “Take off your overcoats and come into the salon.”

The medico and the painter went into the salon, still speaking Italian. Vassiliev followed them irresolutely.

“Gentlemen, take off your overcoats,” said the lackey stiffly. “You’re not allowed in as you are.”

Besides the fair girl there was another woman in the salon, very stout and tall, with a foreign face and bare arms. She sat by the piano, with a game of patience spread on her knees. She took no notice of the guests.

“Where are the other girls?” asked the medico.

“They’re drinking tea,” said the fair one. “Stiepan,” she called out. “Go and tell the girls some students have come!”

A little later a third girl entered, in a bright red dress with blue stripes. Her face was thickly and unskilfully painted. Her forehead was hidden under her hair. She stared with dull, frightened eyes. As she came she immediately began to sing in a strong hoarse contralto. After her a fourth girl. After her a fifth.

In all this Vassiliev saw nothing new or curious. It seemed to him that he had seen before, and more than once, this salon, piano, cheap gilt mirror, the white bow, the dress with blue stripes and the stupid, indifferent faces. But of darkness, quiet, mystery, and guilty smile--of all he had expected to meet here and which frightened him--he did not see even a shadow.

Everything was commonplace, prosaic, and dull. Only one thing provoked his curiosity a little, that was the terrible, as it were intentional lack of taste, which was seen in the overmantels, the absurd pictures, the dresses and the white bow. In this lack of taste there was something characteristic and singular.

“How poor and foolish it all is!” thought Vassiliev. “What is there in all this rubbish to tempt a normal man, to provoke him into committing a frightful sin, to buy a living soul for a rouble? I can understand anyone sinning for the sake of splendour, beauty, grace, passion; but what is there here? What tempts people here? But ... it’s no good thinking!”

“Whiskers, stand me champagne.” The fair one turned to him.

Vassiliev suddenly blushed.

“With pleasure,” he said, bowing politely. “But excuse me if I ... I don’t drink with you, I don’t drink.”

Five minutes after the friends were off to another house.

“Why did you order drinks?” stormed the medico. “What a millionaire, flinging six roubles into the gutter like that for nothing at all.”

“Why shouldn’t I give her pleasure if she wants it?” said Vassiliev, justifying himself.

“You didn’t give her any pleasure. Madame got that. It’s Madame who tells them to ask the guests for drinks. She makes by it.”

“Behold the mill,” the painter began to sing, “Now fall’n to ruin....”

When they came to another house the friends stood outside in the vestibule, but did not enter the salon. As in the first house, a figure rose up from the sofa in the hall, in a black jacket, with a sleepy lackey’s face. As he looked at this lackey, at his face and shabby jacket, Vassiliev thought: “What must an ordinary simple Russian go through before Fate casts him up here? Where was he before, and what was he doing? What awaits him? Is he married, where’s his mother, and does she know he’s a lackey here?” Thenceforward in every house Vassiliev involuntarily turned his attention to the lackey first of all.

In one of the houses, it seemed to be the fourth, the lackey was a dry little, puny fellow, with a chain across his waistcoat. He was reading a newspaper and took no notice of the guests at all. Glancing at his face, Vassiliev had the idea that a fellow with a face like that could steal and murder and perjure. And indeed the face was interesting: a big forehead, grey eyes, a flat little nose, small close-set teeth, and the expression on his face dull and impudent at once, like a puppy hard on a hare. Vassiliev had the thought that he would like to touch this lackey’s hair: is it rough or soft? It must be rough like a dog’s.

III

Because he had had two glasses the painter suddenly got rather drunk, and unnaturally lively.

“Let’s go to another place,” he added, waving his hands. “I’ll introduce you to the best!”

When he had taken his friends into the house which was according to him the best, he proclaimed a persistent desire to dance a quadrille. The medico began to grumble that they would have to pay the musicians a rouble but agreed to be his _vis-à-vis._ The dance began.

It was just as bad in the best house as in the worst. Just the same mirrors and pictures were here, the same coiffures and dresses. Looking round at the furniture and the costumes Vassiliev now understood that it was not lack of taste, but something that might be called the particular taste and style of S----v Street, quite impossible to find anywhere else, something complete, not accidental, evolved in time. After he had been to eight houses he no longer wondered at the colour of the dresses or the long trains, or at the bright bows, or the sailor dresses, or the thick violent painting of the cheeks; he understood that all this was in harmony, that if only one woman dressed herself humanly, or one decent print hung on the wall, then the general tone of the whole street would suffer.

How badly they manage the business? Can’t they really understand that vice is only fascinating when it is beautiful and secret, hidden under the cloak of virtue? Modest black dresses, pale faces, sad smiles, and darkness act more strongly than this clumsy tinsel. Idiots! If they don’t understand it themselves, their guests ought to teach them....

A girl in a Polish costume trimmed with white fur came up close to him and sat down by his side.

“Why don’t you dance, my brown-haired darling?” she asked. “What do you feel so bored about?”

“Because it is boring.”

“Stand me a Château Lafitte, then you won’t be bored.”

Vassiliev made no answer. For a little while he was silent, then he asked:

“What time do you go to bed as a rule?”

“Six.”

“When do you get up?”

“Sometimes two, sometimes three.”

“And after you get up what do you do?”

“We drink coffee. We have dinner at seven.”

“And what do you have for dinner?”

“Soup or _schi_ as a rule, beef-steak, dessert. Our madame keeps the girls well. But what are you asking all this for?”

“Just to have a talk....”

Vassiliev wanted to ask about all sorts of things. He had a strong desire to find out where she came from, were her parents alive, and did they know she was here; how she got into the house; was she happy and contented, or gloomy and depressed with dark thoughts. Does she ever hope to escape.... But he could not possibly think how to begin, or how to put his questions without seeming indiscreet. He thought for a long while and asked:

“How old are you?”

“Eighty,” joked the girl, looking and laughing at the tricks the painter was doing with his hands and feet.

She suddenly giggled and uttered a long filthy expression aloud so that every one could hear.

Vassiliev, terrified, not knowing how to look, began to laugh uneasily. He alone smiled: all the others, his friends, the musicians and the women--paid no attention to his neighbour. They might never have heard.

“Stand me a Lafitte,” said the girl again.

Vassiliev was suddenly repelled by her white trimming and her voice and left her. It seemed to him close and hot. His heart began to beat slowly and violently, like a hammer, one, two, three.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, pulling the painter’s sleeve.

“Wait. Let’s finish it.”

While the medico and the painter were finishing their quadrille, Vassiliev, in order to avoid the women, eyed the musicians. The pianist was a nice old man with spectacles, with a face like Marshal Basin; the fiddler a young man with a short, fair beard dressed in the latest fashion. The young man was not stupid or starved, on the contrary he looked clever, young and fresh. He was dressed with a touch of originality, and played with emotion. Problem: how did he and the decent old man get here? Why aren’t they ashamed to sit here? What do they think about when they look at the women?

If the piano and the fiddle were played by ragged, hungry, gloomy, drunken creatures, with thin stupid faces, then their presence would perhaps be intelligible. As it was, Vassiliev could understand. nothing. Into his memory came the story that he had read about the unfortunate woman, and now he found that the human figure with the guilty smile had nothing to do with this. It seemed to him that they were not unfortunate women that he saw, but they belonged to another, utterly different world, foreign and inconceivable to him; if he had seen this world on the stage or read about it in a book he would never have believed it.... The girl with the white trimming giggled again and said something disgusting aloud. He felt sick, blushed, and went out:

“Wait. We’re coming too,” cried the painter.

IV

“I had a talk with my _mam’selle_ while we were dancing,” said the medico when all three came into the street. “The subject was her first love. _He_ was a bookkeeper in Smolensk with a wife and five children. She was seventeen and lived with her pa and ma who kept a soap and candle shop.”

“How did he conquer her heart?” asked Vassiliev.

“He bought her fifty roubles’-worth of underclothes--Lord knows what!”

“However could he get her love-story out of his girl?” thought Vassiliev. “I can’t. My dear chaps, I’m off home,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know how to get on here. I’m bored and disgusted. What is there amusing about it? If they were only human beings; but they’re savages and beasts. I’m going, please.”

“Grisha darling, please,” the painter said with a sob in his voice, pressing close to Vassiliev, “let’s go to one more--then to Hell with them. Do come, Grigor.”

They prevailed on Vassiliev and led him up a staircase. The carpet and the gilded balustrade, the porter who opened the door, the panels which decorated the hall, were still in the same S----v Street style, but here it was perfected and imposing.

“Really I’m going home,” said Vassiliev, taking off his overcoat.

“Darling, please, please,” said the painter and kissed him on the neck. “Don’t be so faddy, Grigri--be a pal. Together we came, together we go. What a beast you are though!”

“I can wait for you in the street. My God, it’s disgusting here.”

“Please, please.... You just look on, see, just look on.”

“One should look at things objectively,” said the medico seriously.

Vassiliev entered the salon and sat down. There were many more guests besides him and his friends: two infantry officers, a grey, bald-headed gentleman with gold spectacles, two young clean-shaven men from the Surveyors’ Institute, and a very drunk man with an actor’s face. All the girls were looking after these guests and took no notice of Vassiliev. Only one of them dressed like Aïda glanced at him sideways, smiled at something and said with a yawn:

“So the dark one’s come.”

Vassiliev’s heart was beating and his face was burning. He felt ashamed for being there, disgusted and tormented. He was tortured by the thought that he, a decent and affectionate man (so he considered himself up till now), despised these women and felt nothing towards them but repulsion. He could not feel pity for them or for the musicians or the lackeys.

“It’s because I don’t try to understand them,” he thought. “They’re all more like beasts than human beings; but all the same they are human beings. They’ve got souls. One should understand them first, then judge them.”

“Grisha, don’t go away. Wait for us,” called the painter; and he disappeared somewhere.

Soon the medico disappeared also.

“Yes, one should try to understand. It’s no good, otherwise,” thought Vassiliev, and he began to examine intently the face of each girl, looking for the guilty smile. But whether he could not read faces or because none of these women felt guilty he saw in each face only a dull look of common, vulgar boredom and satiety. Stupid eyes, stupid smiles, harsh, stupid voices, impudent gestures--and nothing else. Evidently every woman had in her past a love romance with a bookkeeper and fifty roubles’-worth of underclothes. And in the present the only good things in life were coffee, a three-course dinner, wine, quadrilles, and sleeping till two in the afternoon....

Finding not one guilty smile, Vassiliev began to examine them to see if even one looked clever and his attention was arrested by one pale, rather tired face. It was that of a dark woman no longer young, wearing a dress scattered with spangles. She sat in a chair staring at the floor and thinking of something. Vassiliev paced up and down and then sat down beside her as if by accident.

“One must begin with something trivial,” he thought, “and gradually pass on to serious conversation....”

“What a beautiful little dress you have on,” he said, and touched the gold fringe of her scarf with his finger.

“It’s all right,” said the dark woman.

“Where do you come from?”

“I? A long way. From Tchernigov.”

“It’s a nice part.”

“It always is, where you don’t happen to be.”

“What a pity I can’t describe nature,” thought Vassiliev. “I’d move her by descriptions of Tchernigov. She must love it if she was born there.”

“Do you feel lonely here?” he asked.

“Of course I’m lonely.”

“Why don’t you go away from here, if you’re lonely?”

“Where shall I go to? Start begging, eh?”

“It’s easier to beg than to live here.”

“Where did you get that idea? Have you been a beggar?”

“I begged, when I hadn’t enough to pay my university fees; and even if I hadn’t begged it’s easy enough to understand. A beggar is a free man, at any rate, and you’re a slave.”

The dark woman stretched herself, and followed with sleepy eyes the lackey who carried a tray of glasses and soda-water.

“Stand us a champagne,” she said, and yawned again.

“Champagne,” said Vassiliev. “What would happen if your mother or your brother suddenly came in? What would you say? And what would they say? You would say ‘champagne’ then.”

Suddenly the noise of crying was heard. From the next room where the lackey had carried the soda-water, a fair man rushed out with a red face and angry eyes. He was followed by the tall, stout madame, who screamed in a squeaky voice:

“No one gave you permission to slap the girls in the face. Better class than you come here, and never slap a girl. You bounder!”

Followed an uproar. Vassiliev was scared and went white. In the next room some one wept, sobbing, sincerely, as only the insulted weep. And he understood that indeed human beings lived here, actually human beings, who get offended, suffer, weep, and ask for help. The smouldering hatred, the feeling of repulsion, gave way to an acute sense of pity and anger against the wrong-doer. He rushed into the room from which the weeping came. Through the rows of bottles which stood on the marble table-top he saw a suffering tear-stained face, stretched out his hands towards this face, stepped to the table and instantly gave a leap back in terror. The sobbing woman was dead-drunk.

As he made his way through the noisy crowd, gathered round the fair man, his heart failed him, he lost his courage like a boy, and it seemed to him that in this foreign, inconceivable world, they wanted to run after him, to beat him, to abuse him with foul words. He tore down his coat from the peg and rushed headlong down the stairs.

V

Pressing close to the fence, he stood near to the house and waited for his friends to come out. The sounds of the pianos and fiddles, gay, bold, impudent and sad, mingled into chaos in the air, and this confusion was, as before, as if an unseen orchestra were tuning in the dark over the roof-tops. If he looked up towards the darkness, then all the background was scattered with white, moving points: it was snowing. The flakes, coming into the light, spun lazily in the air like feathers, and still more lazily fell. Flakes of snow crowded whirling about Vassiliev, and hung on his beard, his eyelashes, his eyebrows. The cabmen, the horses, and the passers-by, all were white.

“How dare the snow fall in this street?” thought Vassiliev. “A curse on these houses.”

Because of his headlong rush down the staircase his feet failed him from weariness; he was out of breath as if he had climbed a mountain. His heart beat so loud that he could hear it. A longing came over him to get out of this street as soon as possible and go home; but still stronger was his desire to wait for his friends and to vent upon them his feeling of heaviness.

He had not understood many things in the houses. The souls of the perishing women were to him a mystery as before; but it was dear to him that the business was much worse than one would have thought. If the guilty woman who poisoned herself was called a prostitute, then it was hard to find a suitable name for all these creatures, who danced to the muddling music and said long, disgusting phrases. They were not perishing; they were already done for.

“Vice is here,” he thought; “but there is neither confession of sin nor hope of salvation. They are bought and sold, drowned in wine and torpor, and they are dull and indifferent as sheep and do not understand. My God, my God!”

It was so clear to him that all that which is called human dignity, individuality, the image and likeness of God, was here dragged down to the gutter, as they say of drunkards, and that not only the street and the stupid women were to blame for it.

A crowd of students white with snow, talking and laughing gaily, passed by. One of them, a tall, thin man, peered into Vassiliev’s face and said drunkenly, “He’s one of ours. Logged, old man? Aha! my lad. Never mind. Walk up, never say die, uncle.”

He took Vassiliev by the shoulders and pressed his cold wet moustaches to his cheek, then slipped, staggered, brandished his arms, and cried out:

“Steady there--don’t fall.”

Laughing, he ran to join his comrades.

Through the noise the painter’s voice became audible.

“You dare beat women! I won’t have it. Go to Hell. You’re regular swine.”

The medico appeared at the door of the house. He glanced round and on seeing Vassiliev, said in alarm:

“Is that you? My God, it’s simply impossible to go anywhere with Yegor. I can’t understand a chap like that. He kicked up a row--can’t you hear? Yegor,” he called from the door. “Yegor!”

“I won’t have you hitting women.” The painter’s shrill voice was audible again from upstairs.

Something heavy and bulky tumbled down the staircase. It was the painter coming head over heels. He had evidently been thrown out.

He lifted himself up from the ground, dusted his hat, and with an angry indignant face, shook his fist at the upstairs.

“Scoundrels! Butchers! Bloodsuckers! I won’t have you hitting a weak, drunken woman. Ah, you....”

“Yegor ... Yegor!” the medico began to implore, “I give my word I’ll never go out with you again. Upon my honour, I won’t.”

The painter gradually calmed, and the friends went home.

“To these sad shores unknowing”--the medico began--“An unknown power entices....”

“‘Behold the mill,’” the painter sang with him after a pause, “‘Now fallen into ruin.’ How the snow is falling, most Holy Mother. Why did you go away, Grisha? You’re a coward; you’re only an old woman.”

Vassiliev was walking behind his friends. He stared at their backs and thought: “One of two things: either prostitution only seems to us an evil and we exaggerate it, or if prostitution is really such an evil as is commonly thought, these charming friends of mine are just as much slavers, violators, and murderers as the inhabitants of Syria and Cairo whose photographs appear in ‘The Field.’ They’re singing, laughing, arguing soundly now, but haven’t they just been exploiting starvation, ignorance, and stupidity? They have, I saw them at it. Where does their humanity, their science, and their painting come in, then? The science, art, and lofty sentiments of these murderers remind me of the lump of fat in the story. Two robbers killed a beggar in a forest; they began to divide his clothes between themselves and found in his bag a lump of pork fat. ‘In the nick of time,’ said one of them. ‘Let’s have a bite!’ ‘How can you?’ the other cried in terror. ‘Have you forgotten to-day’s Friday?’ So they refrained from eating. After having cut the man’s throat they walked out of the forest confident that they were pious fellows. These two are just the same. When they’ve paid for women they go and imagine they’re painters and scholars....

“Listen, you two,” he said angrily and sharply. “Why do you go to those places? Can’t you understand how horrible they are? Your medicine tells you every one of these women dies prematurely from consumption or something else; your arts tell you that she died morally still earlier. Each of them dies because during her lifetime she accepts on an average, let us say, five hundred men. Each of them is killed by five hundred men, and you’re amongst the five hundred. Now if each of you comes here and to places like this two hundred and fifty times in his lifetime, then it means that between you you have killed one woman. Can’t you understand that? Isn’t it horrible?”