THE FIT

The medical student Mayer, and Ribnikov, a student at the Moscow school

of painting, sculpture, and architecture, came one evening to their

friend Vassiliev, law student, and proposed that he should go with

them to S----v Street. For a long while Vassiliev did not agree, but

eventually dressed himself and went with them.

Unfortunate women he knew only by hearsay and from books, and never

once in his life had he been in the houses where they live. He knew

there were immoral women who were forced by the pressure of disastrous

circumstances--environment, bad up-bringing, poverty, and the like--to

sell their honour for money. They do not know pure love, have no

children and no legal rights; mothers and sisters mourn them for

dead, science treats them as an evil, men are familiar with them. But

notwithstanding all this they do not lose the image and likeness of

God. They all acknowledge their sin and hope for salvation. They are

free to avail themselves of every means of salvation. True, Society

does not forgive people their past, but with God Mary of Egypt is

not lower than the other saints. Whenever Vassiliev recognised an

unfortunate woman in the street by her costume or her manner, or saw a

picture of one in a comic paper, there came into his mind every time

a story he once read somewhere: a pure and heroic young man falls in

love with an unfortunate woman and asks her to be his wife, but she,

considering herself unworthy of such happiness, poisons herself.

Vassiliev lived in one of the streets off the Tverskoi boulevard.

When he and his friends came out of the house it was about eleven

o’clock--the first snow had just fallen and all nature was under

the spell of this new snow. The air smelt of snow, the snow cracked

softly under foot, the earth, the roofs, the trees, the benches on the

boulevards--all were soft, white, and young. Owing to this the houses

had a different look from yesterday, the lamps burned brighter, the

air was more transparent, the clatter of the cabs was dulled and there

entered into the soul with the fresh, easy, frosty air a feeling like

the white, young, feathery snow. “To these sad shores unknowing” the

medico began to sing in a pleasant tenor, “An unknown power entices”.

“Behold the mill” ... the painter’s voice took him up, “it is now

fall’n to ruin.”

“Behold the mill, it is now fall’n to ruin,” the medico repeated,

raising his eyebrows and sadly shaking his head.

He was silent for a while, passed his hand over his forehead trying to

recall the words, and began to sing in a loud voice and so well that

the passers-by looked back.

“Here, long ago, came free, free love to me”...

All three went into a restaurant and without taking off their coats

they each had two thimblefuls of vodka at the bar. Before drinking the

second, Vassiliev noticed a piece of cork in his Vodka, lifted the

glass to his eye, looked at it for a long while with a short-sighted

frown. The medico misunderstood his expression and said--

“Well, what are you staring at? No philosophy, please. Vodka’s made to

be drunk, caviare to be eaten, women to sleep with, snow to walk on.

Live like a man for one evening.”

“Well, I’ve nothing to say,” said Vassiliev laughingly, “I’m not

refusing?”

The vodka warmed his breast. He looked at his friends, admired and

envied them. How balanced everything is in these healthy, strong,

cheerful people. Everything in their minds and souls is smooth and

rounded off. They sing, have a passion for the theatre, paint, talk

continually, and drink, and they never have a headache the next day.

They are romantic and dissolute, sentimental and insolent; they can

work and go on the loose and laugh at nothing and talk rubbish; they

are hot-headed, honest, heroic and as human beings not a bit worse

than Vassiliev, who watches his every step and word, who is careful,

cautious, and able to give the smallest trifle the dignity of a

problem. And he made up his mind if only for one evening to live like

his friends, to let himself go, and be free from his own control.

Must he drink vodka? He’ll drink, even if his head falls to pieces

to-morrow. Must he be taken to women? He’ll go. He’ll laugh, play the

fool, and give a joking answer to disapproving passers-by.

He came out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends--one in a

battered hat with a wide brim who aped aesthetic disorder; the other in

a sealskin cap, not very poor, with a pretence of learned Bohemia. He

liked the snow, the paleness, the lamp-lights, the clear black prints

which the passers’ feet left on the snow. He liked the air, and above

all the transparent, tender, naive, virgin tone which can be seen in

nature only twice in the year: when everything is covered in snow, on

the bright days in spring, and on moonlight nights when the ice breaks

on the river.

“To these sad shores unknowing,” he began to sing _sotto-voce,_ “An

unknown power entices.”

And all the way for some reason or other he and his friends had this

melody on their lips. All three hummed it mechanically out of time with

each other.

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?”

“Ah, isn’t this awful, my God?”

“There, I knew it would end like this,” said the painter frowning. “We

oughtn’t to have had anything to do with this fool of a blockhead. I

suppose you think your head’s full of great thoughts and great ideas

now. Devil knows what they are, but they’re not ideas. You’re staring

at me now with hatred and disgust; but if you want my opinion you’d

better build twenty more of the houses than look like that. There’s

more vice in your look than in the whole street. Let’s clear out,

Volodya, damn him! He’s a fool. He’s a blockhead, and that’s all he is.”

“Human beings are always killing each other,” said the medico. “That is

immoral, of course. But philosophy won’t help you. Good-bye!”

The friends parted at Trubnoi Square and went their way. Left alone,

Vassiliev began to stride along the boulevard. He was frightened of the

dark, frightened of the snow, which fell to the earth in little flakes,

but seemed to long to cover the whole world; he was frightened of the

street-lamps, which glimmered faintly through the clouds of snow. An

inexplicable faint-hearted fear possessed his soul. Now and then people

passed him; but he gave a start and stepped aside. It seemed to him

that from everywhere there came and stared at him women, only women....

“It’s coming on,” he thought, “I’m going to have a fit.”

VI

At home he lay on his bed and began to talk, shivering all over his

body.

“Live women, live.... My God, they’re alive.”

He sharpened the edge of his imagination in every possible way. Now he

was the brother of an unfortunate, now her father. Now he was himself a

fallen woman, with painted cheeks; and all this terrified him.

It seemed to him somehow that he must solve this question immediately,

at all costs, and that the problem was not strange to him, but was his

own. He made a great effort, conquered his despair, and, sitting on the

side of the bed, his head clutched in his hands, he began to think:

How could all the women he had seen that night be saved? The process

of solving a problem was familiar to him as to a learned person; and

notwithstanding all his excitement he kept strictly to this process.

He recalled to mind the history of the question, its literature, and

just after three o’clock he was pacing up and down, trying to remember

all the experiments which are practised nowadays for the salvation of

women. He had a great many good friends who lived in furnished rooms,

Falzfein, Galyashkin, Nechaiev, Yechkin ... not a few among them were

honest and self-sacrificing, and some of them had attempted to save

these women....

All these few attempts, thought Vassiliev, rare attempts, may be

divided into three groups. Some having rescued a woman from a brothel

hired a room for her, bought her a sewing-machine and she became a

dressmaker, and the man who saved her kept her for his mistress,

openly or otherwise, but later when he had finished his studies and was

going away, he would hand her over to another decent fellow. So the

fallen woman remained fallen. Others after having bought her out also

hired a room for her, bought the inevitable sewing-machine and started

her off reading and writing and preached at her. The woman sits and

sews as long as it is novel and amusing, but later, when she is bored,

she begins to receive men secretly, or runs back to where she can sleep

till three in the afternoon, drink coffee, and eat till she is full.

Finally, the most ardent and self-sacrificing take a bold, determined

step. They marry, and when the impudent, self-indulgent, stupefied

creature becomes a wife, a lady of the house, and then a mother, her

life and outlook are utterly changed, and in the wife and mother it is

hard to recognise the unfortunate woman. Yes, marriage is the best, it

may be the only, resource.

“But it’s impossible,” Vassiliev said aloud and threw himself down on

his bed. “First of all, I could not marry one. One would have to be a

saint to be able to do it, unable to hate, not knowing disgust. But

let us suppose that the painter, the medico, and I got the better of

our feelings and married, that all these women got married, what is

the result? What kind of effect follows? The result is that while the

women get married here in Moscow, the Smolensk bookkeeper seduces a

fresh lot, and these will pour into the empty places, together with

women from Saratov, Nijni-Novgorod, Warsaw.... And what happens to the

hundred thousand in London? What can be done with those in Hamburg?”

The oil in the lamp was used up and the lamp began to smell. Vassiliev

did not notice it. Again he began to pace up and down, thinking. Now he

put the question differently. What can be done to remove the demand for

fallen women? For this it is necessary that the men who buy and kill

them should at once begin to feel all the immorality of their _rôle_ of

slave-owners, and this should terrify them. It is necessary to save the

men.

Science and art apparently won’t do, thought Vassiliev. There is only

one way out--to be an apostle.

And he began to dream how he would stand to-morrow evening at the

corner of the street and say to each passer-by: “Where are you going

and what for? Fear God!”

He would turn to the indifferent cabmen and say to them:

“Why are you standing here? Why don’t you revolt? You do believe in

God, don’t you? And you do know that this is a crime, and that people

will go to Hell for this? Why do you keep quiet, then? True, the women

are strangers to you, but they have fathers and brothers exactly the

same as you....”

Some friend of Vassiliev’s once said of him that he was a man of

talent. There is a talent for writing, for the theatre, for painting;

but Vassiliev’s was peculiar, a talent for humanity. He had a fine and

noble _flair_ for every kind of suffering. As a good actor reflects in

himself the movement and voice of another, so Vassiliev could reflect

in himself another’s pain. Seeing tears, he wept. With a sick person,

he himself became sick and moaned. If he saw violence done, it seemed

to him that he was the victim. He was frightened like a child, and,

frightened, ran for help. Another’s pain roused him, excited him, threw

him into a state of ecstasy....

Whether the friend was right I do not know, but what happened to

Vassiliev when it seemed to him that the question was solved was very

much like an ecstasy. He sobbed, laughed, said aloud the things he

would say to-morrow, felt a burning love for the men who would listen

to him and stand by his side at the corner of the street, preaching. He

sat down to write to them; he made vows.

All this was the more like an ecstasy in that it did not last.

Vassiliev was soon tired. The London women, the Hamburg women, those

from Warsaw, crushed him with their mass, as the mountains crush the

earth. He quailed before this mass; he lost himself; he remembered he

had no gift for speaking, that he was timid and faint-hearted, that

strange people would hardly want to listen to and understand him, a

law-student in his third year, a frightened and insignificant figure.

The true apostleship consisted, not only in preaching, but also in

deeds....

When daylight came and the carts rattled on the streets, Vassiliev lay

motionless on the sofa, staring at one point. He did not think any

more of women, or men, or apostles. All his attention was fixed on the

pain of his soul which tormented him. It was a dull pain, indefinite,

vague; it was like anguish and the most acute fear and despair. He

could say where the pain was. It was in his breast, under the heart.

It could not be compared to anything. Once on a time he used to have

violent toothache. Once, he had pleurisy and neuralgia. But all these

pains were as nothing beside the pain of his soul. Beneath this pain

life seemed repulsive. The thesis, his brilliant work already written,

the people he loved, the salvation of fallen women, all that which only

yesterday he loved or was indifferent to, remembered now, irritated

him in the same way as the noise of the carts, the running about of

the porters and the daylight.... If someone now were to perform before

his eyes a deed of mercy or an act of revolting violence, both would

produce upon him an equally repulsive impression. Of all the thoughts

which roved lazily in his head, two only did not irritate him: one--at

any moment he had the power to kill himself, the other--that the pain

would not last more than three days. The second he knew from experience.

After having lain down for a while he got up and walked wringing his

hands, not from corner to corner as usually, but in a square along

the walls. He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass. His face

was pale and haggard, his temples hollow, his eyes bigger, darker,

more immobile, as if they were not his own, and they expressed the

intolerable suffering of his soul.

In the afternoon the painter knocked at the door.

“Gregory, are you at home?” he asked.

Receiving no answer, he stood musing for a while, and said to himself

good-naturedly:

“Out. He’s gone to the University. Damn him.”

And went away.

Vassiliev lay down on his bed and burying his head in the pillow he

began to cry with the pain. But the faster his tears flowed, the more

terrible was the pain. When it was dark, he got into his mind the idea

of the horrible night which was awaiting him and awful despair seized

him. He dressed quickly, ran out of his room, leaving the door wide

open, and into the street without reason or purpose. Without asking

himself where he was going, he walked quickly to Sadovaia Street.

Snow was falling as yesterday. It was thawing. Putting his hands into

his sleeves, shivering, and frightened of the noises and the bells

of the trams and of passers-by, Vassiliev walked from Sadovaia to

Sukhariev Tower then to the Red Gates, and from here he turned and

went to Basmannaia. He went into a public-house and gulped down a big

glass of vodka, but felt no better. Arriving at Razgoulyai, he turned

to the right and began to stride down streets that he had never in

his life been down before. He came to that old bridge under which the

river Yaouza roars and from whence long rows of lights are seen in the

windows of the Red Barracks. In order to distract the pain of his soul

by a new sensation or another pain, not knowing what to do, weeping

and trembling, Vassiliev unbuttoned his coat and jacket, baring his

naked breast to the damp snow and the wind. Neither lessened the pain.

Then he bent over the rail of the bridge and stared down at the black,

turbulent Yaouza, and he suddenly wanted to throw himself head-first,

not from hatred of life, not for the sake of suicide, but only to hurt

himself and so to kill one pain by another. But the black water, the

dark, deserted banks covered with snow were frightening. He shuddered

and went on. He walked as far as the Red Barracks, then back and into a

wood, from the wood to the bridge again.

“No! Home, home,” he thought. “At home I believe it’s easier.”

And he went back. On returning home he tore off his wet clothes and

hat, began to pace along the walls, and paced incessantly until the

very morning.

VII

The next morning when the painter and the medico came to see him,

they found him in a shirt torn to ribbons, his hands bitten all over,

tossing about in the room and moaning with pain.

“For God’s sake!” he began to sob, seeing his comrades, “Take me

anywhere you like, do what you like, but save me, for God’s sake now,

now! I’ll kill myself.”

The painter went pale and was bewildered. The medico, too, nearly began

to cry; but, believing that medical men must be cool and serious on

every occasion of life, he said coldly:

“It’s a fit you’ve got. But never mind. Come to the doctor, at once.”

“Anywhere you like, but quickly, for God’s sake!”

“Don’t be agitated. You must struggle with yourself.”

The painter and the medico dressed Vassiliev with trembling hands and

led him into the street.

“Mikhail Sergueyich has been wanting to make your acquaintance for a

long while,” the medico said on the way. “He’s a very nice man, and

knows his job splendidly. He took his degree in ’82, and has got a huge

practice already. He keeps friends with the students.”

“Quicker, quicker....” urged Vassiliev. Mikhail Sergueyich, a stout

doctor with fair hair, received the friends politely, firmly, coldly,

and smiled with one cheek only.

“The painter and Mayer have told me of your disease already,” he said.

“Very glad to be of service to you. Well? Sit down, please.”

He made Vassiliev sit down in a big chair by the table, and put a box

of cigarettes in front of him.

“Well?” he began, stroking his knees. “Let’s make a start. How old are

you?”

He put questions and the medico answered. He asked whether Vassiliev’s

father suffered from any peculiar diseases, if he had fits of drinking,

was he distinguished by his severity or any other eccentricities. He

asked the same questions about his grandfather, mother, sisters, and

brothers. Having ascertained that his mother had a fine voice and

occasionally appeared on the stage, he suddenly brightened up and asked:

“Excuse me, but could you recall whether the theatre was not a passion

with your mother?”

About twenty minutes passed. Vassiliev was bored by the doctor stroking

his knees and talking of the same thing all the while.

“As far as I can understand your questions, Doctor,” he said. “You want

to know whether my disease is hereditary or not. It is not hereditary.”

The doctor went on to ask if Vassiliev had not any secret vices

in his early youth, any blows on the head, any love passions,

eccentricities, or exceptional infatuations. To half the questions

habitually asked by careful doctors you may return no answer without

any injury to your health; but Mikhail Sergueyich, the medico and the

painter looked as though, if Vassiliev failed to answer even one single

question, everything would be ruined. For some reason the doctor wrote

down the answers he received on a scrap of paper. Discovering that

Vassiliev had already passed through the faculty of natural science and

was now in the Law faculty, the doctor began to be pensive....

“He wrote a brilliant thesis last year....” said the medico.

“Excuse me. You mustn’t interrupt me; you prevent me from

concentrating,” the doctor said, smiling with one cheek. “Yes,

certainly that is important for the anamnesis.... Yes, yes.... And do

you drink vodka?” he turned to Vassiliev.

“Very rarely.”

Another twenty minutes passed. The medico began _sotto voce_ to give

his opinion of the immediate causes of the fit and told how he, the

painter and Vassiliev went to S----v Street the day before yesterday.

The indifferent, reserved, cold tone in which his friends and the

doctor were speaking of the women and the miserable street seemed to

him in the highest degree strange....

“Doctor, tell me this one thing,” he said, restraining himself from

being rude. “Is prostitution an evil or not?”

“My dear fellow, who disputes it?” the doctor said with an expression

as though he had long ago solved all these questions for himself. “Who

disputes it?”

“Are you a psychiatrist?”

“Yes-s, a psychiatrist.”

“Perhaps all of you are right,” said Vassiliev, rising and beginning

to walk from corner to corner. “It may be. But to me all this seems

amazing. They see a great achievement in my having passed through two

faculties at the university; they praise me to the skies because I have

written a work that will be thrown away and forgotten in three years’

time, but because I can’t speak of prostitutes as indifferently as I can

about these chairs, they send me to doctors, call me a lunatic, and

pity me.”

For some reason Vassiliev suddenly began to feel an intolerable pity

for himself, his friends, and everybody whom he had seen the day before

yesterday, and for the doctor. He began to sob and fell into the chair.

The friends looked interrogatively at the doctor. He, looking as though

he magnificently understood the tears and the despair, and knew himself

a specialist in this line, approached Vassiliev and gave him some drops

to drink, and then when Vassiliev grew calm undressed him and began to

examine the sensitiveness of his skin, of the knee reflexes....

And Vassiliev felt better. When he was coming out of the doctor’s he

was already ashamed; the noise of the traffic did not seem irritating,

and the heaviness beneath his heart became easier and easier as though

it were thawing. In his hand were two prescriptions. One was for

kali-bromatum, the other--morphia. He used to take both before.

He stood still in the street for a while, pensive, and then, taking

leave of his friends, lazily dragged on towards the university.