He went out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends—one in a crushed broad-brimmed hat, with an afiectation of artistic disorder; the other in a sealskin
an attack of nerves 225
cap, a man not poor, though he affected to belong to the Bohemia of learning. He liked the snow, the pale street lamps, the sharp black tracks left in the first snow by the feet of the passers-by. He liked the air, and especially that limpid, tender, naive, as it were virginal tone, which can be observed in nature only twice in the year—when everything is covered with snow, and in spring on bright days and moonlight evenings when the ice breaks on the river.
Against my will an unkno^ force, Has led me to these mournful shores,
he hummed in an undertone.
And the lines for some reason haunted him and his friends aU the way, and all three of them hummed it mechanically, not in time with one another.
Vasilyev's imagination was picturing how, in another ten minutes, he and his friends would knock at a door; how by little dark passages and dark rooms they would steal in to the women; how, taking advantage of the darkness, he would strike a match, would light up and see a martyred face and a guilty smile. The unknown, fair or dark, would certainly have her hair down and be wearing a white bed-jacket; she would be frightened by the light, would be fearfuUy confused, and would say: "For God's sake, what are you doing? Put it out!" It would aU be dreadful, but interesting and novel.
n
The friends proceeded from Trubnoy Square to Gra- chevka, and soon reached the side street which Vasilyev only knew by reputation. Seeing two rows of houses with brightly lighted windows and wide-open doors, and hearing gay strains of pianos and violins, sounds which floated out from every door and formed a strange medley, as though an unseen orchestra were tuning up in the darkness above the roofs, Vasilyev was surprised and said:
"What a lot of houses!"
"That's nothing," said the medical student. "In Lon- don there are ten times as many. There are about a hundred thousand such women there."
The cabmen were sitting on their boxes as calmly and indifferently as in any other side street; there were passers-by on the sidewalks as in other streets. No one was hurrying, no one was hiding his face in his coat- collar, no one shook his head reproachfully. . . . And in this indifference, in the mingled sounds of pianos and violins, in the bright windows and wide-open doors, there was something immodest, insolent, reckless, and extravagant. Probably it was as gay and noisy at the slave-markets in their day, and people's faces and gait showed the same indifference.
"Let us begin from the beginning," said the artist.
The friends went into a narrow passage lighted by a lamp with a reflector. When they opened the door a man in a black coat, with an unshaven face like a flunkey's, and sleepy-looking eyes, got up lazily from a yellow sofa in the hall. The place smelled like a laundry with an odor of vinegar in addition. A door from the hall led into a brightly lighted room. The medical stu- dent and the artist stopped at this door and, craning their necks, peeped into the room.
"Buona sera, signori, rigolleto—hugenotti—traviatal" began the artist, with a theatrical bow.
"Havanna—tarakano—pistoletol" said the medical student, pressing his cap to his breast and bowing low.
Vasilyev was standing behind them. He would have liked to make a theatrical bow and say something silly, too, but he only smiled, felt an awkwardness that was like shame, and waited impatiently for what would happen next.
A little blond girl of seventeen or eighteen, with bobbed hair, in a short light-blue frock with a white bow on her bosom, appeared in the doorway.
"Why do you stand at the door?" she said. "Take off your coats and come into the drawing-room."
The medical student and the artist, still talking Ital- ian, went into the drawing-room. Vasilyev followed them irresolutely.
"Gentlemen, take off your coats!" the flunkey said sternly; "you can't go in like that."
In the drawing-room there was, besides the girl, an- other woman, very stout and tall, with a foreign face and bare arms. She was sitting near the piano, laying out a game of patience on her lap. She took no notice whatever of the visitors.
''Where are the other young ladies?" asked the medi- cal student.
"They are having their tea," said the blonde. "Stepan," she called, "go and tell the young ladies some students have come!"
A little later a third young lady came into the room. She was wearing a bright red dress with blue stripes. Her face was painted thickly and unskillfully, her brow was hidden under her hair, and there was an unblink- ing, frightened stare in her eyes. As she came in, she began at once singing some song in a coarse, powerful contralto. After her a fourth appeared, and a fifth. . . .
In all this Vasilyev saw nothing novel or interesting. It seemed to him that this room, the piano, the looking- glass in its cheap gilt frame, the bow, the dress with the blue stripes, and the blank indifferent faces, he had seen before and more than once. Of the darkness, the silence,
the secrecy, the guilty smile, of all that he had expected
to meet here and had dreaded, he saw no trace.
Everything was ordinary, prosaic, and uninteresting. Only one thing faintly stirred his curiosity—the terrible, as it were intentional, bad taste which was visible in the cornices, in the absurd pictures, in the dresses, in the sash. There was something characteristic and peculiar in this bad taste.
"How poor and stupid it all is!" thought Vasilyev. "What is there in all this trumpery I see now that can tempt a normal man and excite him to commit the hor- rible sin of buying a human being for a ruble? I under- stand any sin for the sake of splendor, beauty, grace, passion, taste; but what is there here? What is there here worth sinning for? But ... I mustn't think!"
"Beardy, treat me to some porter!" said the blonde, addressing him.
Vasilyev was at once overcome with embarrassment.
'With pleasure," he said, boWing politely. "Only ex- cuse me, madam, I ... I won't drink with you. I don't drink."
Five minutes later the friends went off into another house.
"Why did you ask for porter?" said the medical stu- dent angrily. "What a millionaire! You have thrown away six rubles for no reason whatever—simply waste!"
"If she wants it, why not let her have the pleasure?" said Vasilyev, justifying himself.
"You did not give pleasure to her, but to the madam. They are told to ask the visitors to stand them treat be- cause it is a profit to the house."
"Behold the mill . • ." hummed the artist, "in ruins now. . . ."
Entering the next house, the friends stopped in the hall and did not go into the drawing-room. Here, as in the first house, a figure in a black coat, with a sleepy face like a flunkey's, got up from a sofa in the hall. Looking at this flunkey, at his face and his shabby black coat, Vasilyev thought: "What must an ordinary simple Russian have gone through before Fate flung him down as a flunkey here? Where had he been before and what had he done? What was awaiting him? Was he married? Where was his mother, and did she know that he was employed here as a flunkey?" And Vasilyev took par- ticular notice of the flunkey in each house. In one of the houses—he thought it was the fourth—there was a little spare, frail-looking flunkey with a watch-chain on his waistcoat. He was reading a newspaper, and took no notice of them when they came in. Looking at his face Vasilyev, for some reason, thought that a man with such a face might steal, might murder, might bear false wit- ness. But the face was really^interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a little flattened nose, thin compressed lips, and a blankly stupid and at the same time insolent ex- pression like that of a young harrier overtaking a hare. Vasilyev thought it would be well to touch this man's hair, to see whether it was soft or coarse. It must be coarse like a dog's.