Yama (The Pit) Part 10

Yarchenko always instilled confidence in servants and MAITRES D'HOTEL, with his das.h.i.+ng clothes and polite but seigniorial ways. Emma Edwardovna started nodding her head willingly, just like an old, fat circus horse.

"It can be done ... it can be done ... Pa.s.s this way, gentlemen, into the parlor. It can be done, it can be done ... What liqueur? We have only Benedictine ... Benedictine, then? It can be done, it can be done ... And will you allow the young ladies to come in?"

"Well, if that is so indispensable?" Yarchenko spread out his hands with a sigh.

And at once the girls one after the other straggled into the parlor with its gray plush furniture and blue lantern. They entered, extended to every one in turn their unbending palms, unused to hand-clasps, gave their names abruptly in a low voice--Manya, Katie, Liuba ... They sat down on somebody's knees, embraced him around the neck, and, as usual, began to importune:

"Little student, you're such a little good-looker. May I ask for oranzes?"

"Volodenka, buy me some candy! All right?"

"And me chocolate!"

"Fatty," Vera, dressed as a jockey, wheedled the sub-professor, clambering up on his knees, "I have a friend, only she's sick and can't come out into the drawing room. I'll carry her some apples and chocolate. Will you let me?"

"Well, now, those are all just stories about a friend! But above all, don't be thrusting your tenderness at me. Sit as smart children sit, right here alongside, on the arm chair, just so. And fold your little hands."

"Ah, but what if I can't!" writhed Vera in coquetry, rolling her eyes up under her upper lids ... "When you are so nice."

But Lichonin, in answer to this professional beggary, only nodded his head gravely and good-naturedly, just like Emma Edwardovna, and repeated over and over again, mimicking her German accent:

"Itt can pe done, itt can pe done, itt can pe done..."

"Then I will tell the waiter, honey, to carry my friend some sweets and apples?" pestered Vera.

Such importunity entered the round of their tacit duties. There even existed among the girls some captious, childish, strange rivalry as to the ability to "ease a guest of his money"--strange enough because they did not derive any profit out of this, unless, indeed, a certain affection from the housekeeper or a word of approbation from the proprietress. But in their petty, monotonous, habitually frivolous life there was, in general, a great deal of semi-puerile, semi-hysterical play.

Simeon brought a coffee pot, cups, a squatty bottle of Benedictine, fruits and bon-bons in gla.s.s vases, and gaily and easily began making the corks of the beer and wine pop.

"But why don't you drink?" Yarchenko turned to the reporter Platonov.

"Allow me ... I do not mistake? Sergei Ivanovich, I believe?"

"Right."

"Allow me to offer you a cup of coffee, Sergei Ivanovich. It's refres.h.i.+ng. Or perhaps, let's drink this same dubious Lafitte?"

"No, you really must allow me to refuse. I have a drink of my own ...

Simeon, give me..."

"Cognac!" cried out Niura hurriedly.

"And with a pear!" Little White Manka caught up just as fast.

"I heard you, Sergei Ivanich--right away," unhurriedly but respectfully responded Simeon, and, bending down and letting out a grunt, resoundingly drew the cork out of the neck of the bottle.

"It's the first time I hear of cognac being served in Yama," uttered Lichonin with amazement. "No matter how much I asked, they always refused me."

"Perhaps Sergei Ivanich knows some sort of magic word," jested Ramses.

"Or is held here in an especially honoured state?" Boris Sobashnikov put in pointedly, with emphasis.

The reporter listlessly, without turning his head, looked askance at Sobashnikov, at the lower row of b.u.t.tons on his short, foppish, white summer uniform jacket, and answered with a drawl:

"There is nothing honourable in that I can drink like a horse and never get drunk; but then, I also do not quarrel with anyone or pick upon anybody. Evidently, these good sides of my character are sufficiently known here, and because of that confidence is shown me."

"Good for you, old fellow!" joyously exclaimed Lichonin, who was delighted by a certain peculiar, indolent negligence--of few words, yet at the same time self-confident--in the reporter. "Will you share the cognac with me also?"

"Very, very gladly," affably answered Platonov and suddenly looked at Lichonin with a radiant, almost child-like smile, which beautified his plain face with the prominent cheek-bones. "You, too, appealed to me from the first. And even when I saw you there, at Doroshenko's, I at once thought that you are not at all as rough as you seem."

"Well, now, we have exchanged pleasantries," laughed Lichonin. "But it's amazing that we haven't met once just here. Evidently, you come to Anna Markovna's quite frequently?"

"Even too much so."

"Sergei Ivanich is our most important guest!" naively shrieked Niura.

"Sergei Ivanich is a sort of brother among us!"

"Fool!" Tamara stopped her.

"That seems strange to me," continued Lichonin. "I, too, am a habitue.

In any case, one can only envy everybody's cordiality toward you."

"The local chieftain!" said Boris Sobashnikov, curling his lips downward, but said it so low that Platanov, if he chose to, could pretend that he had not heard anything distinctly. This reporter had for long aroused in Boris some blind and p.r.i.c.kling irritation. That he was not one of his own herd really meant nothing. But Boris, like many students (and also officers, junkers, and high-school boys) had grown accustomed to the fact that the outside "civilian" people, who accidentally fell into a company of students on a spree, should hold themselves somewhat subordinately and with servility in it, flatter the studying youths, be struck with its daring, laugh at its jokes, admire its self-admiration, recall their own student years with a sigh of suppressed envy. But in Platonov there not only was none of this customary wagging of the tail before youth, but, on the contrary, there was to be felt a certain abstracted, calm and polite indifference.

Besides that, Sobashnikov was angered--and angered with a petty, jealous vexation--by that simple and yet antic.i.p.atory attention which was shown to the reporter by everybody in the establishment, beginning with the porter and ending with the fleshy, taciturn Katie. This attention was shown in the way he was listened to, in that triumphal carefulness with which Tamara filled his gla.s.s, and in the way Little White Manka pared a pear for him solicitously, and in the delight of Zoe, who had caught the case skillfully thrown to her across the table by the reporter, when she had vainly asked for a cigarette from her two neighbors, who were lost in conversation; and in the way none of the girls begged either chocolate or fruits from him, in the lively grat.i.tude for his little services and his treating. "Pimp!" Sobashkinov had almost decided mentally with malice, but did not believe it even himself--the reporter was altogether too homely and too carelessly dressed, and moreover he bore himself with great dignity.

Platonov again made believe that he had not heard the insolent remark made by the student. He only nervously crumpled a napkin in his fingers and lightly threw it aside from him. And again his eyelids quivered in the direction of Boris Sobashnikov.

"Yes, true, I am one of the family here," he continued calmly, moving his gla.s.s in slow circles on the table. "Just think, I dined in this very house, day after day, for exactly four months."

"No? Seriously?" Yarchenko wondered and laughed.

"In all seriousness. The table here isn't at all bad, by the way. The food is filling and savory, although exceedingly greasy."

"But how did you ever..."

"Why, just because I was tutoring for high school a daughter of Anna Markovna, the lady of this hospitable house. Well, I stipulated that part of my monthly pay should be deducted for my dinners."

"What a strange fancy!" said Yarchenko. "And did you do this of your own will? Or ... Pardon me, I am afraid of seeming indiscreet to you ... Perhaps at that time ... extreme necessity? ..."

"Not at all. Anna Markovna soaked me three times as much as it would have cost in a student's dining room. I simply wanted to live here a while on a somewhat nearer, closer footing, to enter intimately into this little world, so to speak."

"A-ah! It seems I am beginning to understand!" beamed Yarchenko. "Our new friend--pardon me for the little familiarity--is, apparently, gathering material from life? And, perhaps, in a few years we will have the pleasure of reading ..."

"A t-r-ragedy out of a brothel!" Boris Sobashnikov put in loudly, like an actor.

While the reporter had been answering Yarchenko, Tamara quietly got up from her place, walked around the table, and, bending down over Sobashnikov, spoke in a whisper in his ear:

"Dearie, sweetie, you'd better not touch this gentleman. Honest to G.o.d, it will be better for you, even."