Yama (The Pit) Part 13

Little White Manya, laughing, shook her head reproachfully. Jennie always had such a face when her turbulent soul sensed that a scandal was nearing which she herself had brought on.

"Don't get your back up, Borinka," said Lichonin. "Here all are equal."

Niura came with a pillow and laid it down on the divan.

"And what's that for?" Sobashnikov yelled at her. "Git! take it away at once. This isn't a lodging house."

"Now, leave her be, honey. What's that to you?" retorted Jennie in a sweet voice and hid the pillow behind Tamara's back. "Wait, sweetie, I'd better sit with you for a while."

She walked around the table, forced Boris to sit on a chair, and herself got up on his knees. Twining his neck with her arm, she pressed her lips to his mouth, so long and so vigorously that the student caught his breath. Right up close to his eyes he saw the eyes of the woman--strangely large, dark, luminous, indistinct and unmoving. For a quarter of a second or so, for an instant, it seemed to him that in these unliving eyes was impressed an expression of keen, mad hate; and the chill of terror, some vague premonition of an ominous, inevitable calamity flashed through the student's brain. With difficulty tearing the supple arms of Jennie away from him, and pus.h.i.+ng her away, he said, laughing, having turned red and breathing hard:

"There's a temperament for you! Oh, you Messalina Paphnutievna! ...

They call you Jennka, I think? You're a good-looking little rascal."

Platonov returned with Pasha. Pasha was pitiful and revolting to look at. Her face was pale, with, a bluish cast as though the blood had run off; the glazed, half-closed eyes were smiling with a faint, idiotic smile; the parted lips seemed to resemble two frayed, red, wet rags, and she walked with a sort of timid, uncertain step, just as though with one foot she were making a large step, and with the other a small one. She walked with docility up to the divan and with docility laid her head down on the pillow, without ceasing to smile faintly and insanely. Even at a distance it was apparent that she was cold.

"Pardon me, gentlemen, I am going to undress," said Lichonin, and taking his coat off he threw it over the shoulders of the prost.i.tute.

"Tamara, give her chocolate and wine."

Boris Sobashnikov again stood up picturesquely in the corner, in a leaning position, one leg in front of the other and his head held high.

Suddenly he spoke amid the general silence, addressing Platonov directly, in a most foppish tone:

"Eh ... Listen ... what's your name? ... This, then, must be your mistress? Eh?" And with the tip of his boot he pointed in the direction of the rec.u.mbent Pasha.

"Wha-at?" asked Platonov in a drawl, knitting his eyebrows.

"Or else you are her lover--it's all one ... What do they call this duty here? Well, now, these same people for whom the women embroider s.h.i.+rts and with whom they divide their honest earnings? ... Eh? ..."

Platonov looked at him with a heavy, intent gaze through his narrowed lids.

"Listen," he said quietly, in a hoa.r.s.e voice, slowly and ponderously separating his words. "This isn't the first time that you're trying to pick a quarrel with me. But, in the first place, I see that despite your sober appearance you are exceedingly and badly drunk; and, in the second place, I spare you for the sake of your comrades. However, I warn you, that if you think of talking that way to me again, take your eyegla.s.ses off."

"What's this stuff?" exclaimed Boris, raising his shoulders high and snorting through his nose. "What eyegla.s.ses? Why eyegla.s.ses?" But mechanically, with two extended fingers, he fixed the bow of the PINCE-NEZ on the bridge of his nose.

"Because I'm going to hit you, and the pieces may get in your eye,"

said the reporter unconcernedly.

Despite the unexpectedness of such a turn of the quarrel, n.o.body started laughing. Only Little White Manka oh'd in astonishment and clapped her hands. Jennie, with avid impatience, s.h.i.+fted her eyes from one to the other.

"Well, now! I'll give you change back myself so's you won't like it!"

roughly, altogether boyishly, cried out Sobashnikov. "Only it's not worth while mussing one's hands with every ..." he wanted to add a new invective, but decided not to, "with every ... And besides, comrades, I do not intend to stay here any longer. I am too well brought up to be hail-fellow-well-met with such persons."

He rapidly and haughtily walked to the door.

It was necessary for him to pa.s.s almost right up against Platonov, who, out of the corner of his eye, animal-like, was watching his every movement. For a moment in the mind of the student flashed a desire to strike Platonov unexpectedly, from the side, and jump away--the comrades would surely part them and not allow a fight. But immediately, almost without looking at the reporter, with some sort of deep, unconscious instinct, he saw and sensed those broad hands, lying quietly on the table, that obdurately bowed head with its broad forehead, and all the ungainly, alert, powerful body of his foe, so neligently hunched up and spread out on the chair, but ready at any second for a quick and terrific blow. And Sobashnikov walked out into the corridor, loudly banging the door after him.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," said Jennie after him in a mocking patter. "Tamarochka, pour me out some more cognac."

But the lanky student Petrovsky got up from his place and considered it necessary to defend Sobashnikov.

"Just as you wish, gentlemen; this is a matter of your personal view, but out of principle I go together with Boris. Let him be not right and so on, we can express censure to him in our own intimate company, but when an insult has been rendered our comrade--I can't remain here. I am going away."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" And Lichonin nervously and vexedly scratched his temple.

"Boris behaved himself all the time in the highest degree vulgarly, rudely and foolishly. What sort of corporate honour do you think this is? A collective walk-out from editorial offices, from political meetings, from brothels. We aren't officers to screen the foolishness of each comrade."

"All the same, just as you wish, but I am going away out of a sense of solidarity!" said Petrovsky importantly and walked out.

"May the earth be as down upon you!" Jennie sent after him.

But how tortuous and dark the ways of the human soul! Both of them--Sobashnikov as well as Petrovsky--acted in their indignation rather sincerely, but the first only half so, while the second only a quarter in all. Sobashnikov, despite his intoxication and wrath, still had knocking at the door of his mind the alluring thought that now it would be more convenient and easier before his comrades to call out Jennka on the quiet and to be alone with her. While Petrovsky, with exactly the same aim, went after Sobashnikov in order to make a loan of three roubles from him. In the general drawing room they made things up between them, and after ten minutes Zociya, the housekeeper, shoved in her little, squinting, pink, cunning face through the half-open door of the private room.

"Jennechka," she called, "go, they have brought your linen, go count it. And you, Niura, the actor begs to come for just a minute, to drink some champagne. He's with Henrietta and Big Manya."

The precipitate and incongruous quarrel of Platonov and Sobashnikov long served as a subject of conversation. The reporter, in cases like this, always felt shame, uneasiness, regret and the torments of conscience. And despite the fact that all those who remained were on his side, he was speaking with weariness in his voice:

"By G.o.d, gentlemen! I'll go away, best of all. Why should I disrupt your circle? We were both at fault. I'll go away. Don't bother about the bill. I've already paid Simeon, when I was going after Pasha."

Lichonin suddenly rumpled up his hair and stood up

"Oh, no, the devil take it! I'll go and drag him here. Upon my word of honour, they're both fine fellows--Boris as well as Vaska. But they're young yet, and bark at their own tails. I'm going after them, and I warrant that Boris will apologize."

He went away, but came back after five minutes.

"They repose," said he, sombrely, and made a hopeless gesture with his hand. "Both of them."

CHAPTER XI.

At this moment Simeon walked into the cabinet with a tray upon which stood two goblets of a bubbling golden wine and lay a large visiting card.

"May I ask which of you here might be Mister Gavrila Petrovich Yarchenko?" he said, looking over all those sitting.

"I," responded Yarchenko.

"If youse please. The actor gent sent this."

Yarchenko took the visiting card and read aloud:

Eumenii Poluectovich EGMONT--LAVRETZKI Dramatic Artist of Metropolitan Theatres

"It's remarkable," said Volodya Pavlov, "that all the Russian Garricks bear such queer names, on the style of Chrysantov, Thetisov, Mamontov and Epimhakov."

"And besides that, the best known of them must needs either speak thickly, or lisp, or stammer," added the reporter.

"Yes, but most remarkable of all is the fact that I do not at all have the honour of knowing this artist of the metropolitan theatres.

However, there's something else written on the reverse of this card.