Yama Aleksandr Kuprin (smart ebook reader txt) 📖

is this, anyway! It doesn’t look as if I were preparing to run away from here. And besides, can’t you discriminate between people at all? You can see that a man of respectability, in a uniform, has come to you, and not some tramp. What sort of importunity is this!”

The housekeeper gave in a little.

“Now, don’t get offended, mister. Of course, you’ll pay the young lady yourself for the visit. I don’t think you will do her any wrong, she’s a fine girl among us. But I must trouble you to pay for the beer and lemonade. I, too, have to give an account to the proprietress. Two bottles at fifty is a rouble and the lemonade thirty⁠—a rouble thirty.”

“Good Lord, a bottle of beer fifty kopecks!” the German waxed indignant. “Why, I will get it in any beer-shop for twelve kopecks.”

“Well, then, go to a beer-shop if it’s cheaper there,” Zociya became offended. “But if you’ve come to a respectable establishment, the regular price is half a rouble. We don’t take anything extra. There, that’s better. Twenty kopecks change coming to you?”

“Yes, change, without fail,” firmly emphasized the German teacher. “And I would request of you that nobody else should enter.”

“No, no, no, what are you saying?” Zociya began to bustle near the door. “Dispose yourself as you please, to your heart’s content. A pleasant appetite to you.”

Manka locked the door on a hook after her and sat down on the German’s knee, embracing him with her bare arm.

“Are you here long?” he asked, sipping his beer. He felt dimly that that imitation of love which must immediately take place demanded some sort of psychic propinquity, a more intimate acquaintance, and on that account, despite his impatience, began the usual conversation, which is carried on by almost all men when alone with prostitutes, and which compels the latter to lie almost mechanically, to lie without mortification, enthusiasm or malice, according to a single, very ancient stencil.

“Not long, only the third month.”

“And how old are you?”

“Sixteen,” fibbed Little Manka, taking five years off her age.

“O, such a young one!” the German wondered, and began, bending down and grunting, to take off his boots. “Then how did you get here?”

“Well, a certain officer deprived me of my innocence there⁠ ⁠… near his birthplace. And it’s terrible how strict my mamma is. If she was to find out, she’d strangle me with her own hands. Well, so then I ran away from home and got in here⁠ ⁠…”

“And did you love that same officer, the one who was the first one, now?”

“If I hadn’t loved him, I wouldn’t have gone to him. He promised to marry me, the scoundrel, but then managed to get what he was after, and abandoned me.”

“Well, and were you ashamed the first time?”

“Of course, you’d be ashamed⁠ ⁠… How do you like it, daddy, with light or without light? I’ll turn, down the lantern a little. All right?”

“Well, and aren’t you bored here? What do they call you?”

“Manya. To be sure I’m bored. What sort of a life is ours!”

The German kissed her hard on her lips and again asked:

“And do you love the men? Are there men who please you? Who afford you pleasure?”

“How shouldn’t there be?” Manka started laughing. “I love the ones like you especially, such nice little fatties.”

“You love them? Eh? Why do you love them?”

“Oh, I love them just so. You’re nice, too.”

The German meditated for a few seconds, pensively sipping away at his beer. Then he said that which every man tells a prostitute in these moments preceding the casual possession of her body:

“Do you know, Marichen, you also please me very much. I would willingly take you and set you up.”

“You’re married,” the girl objected, touching his ring.

“Yes, but, you understand, I don’t live with my wife; she isn’t well, she can’t fulfill her conjugal duties.”

“The poor thing! If she were to find out where you go, daddy, she would cry for sure.”

“Let’s drop that. So, you know, Mary, I am always looking out for such a girl as you for myself, so modest and pretty. I am a man of means, I would find a flat with board for you, with fuel and light. And forty roubles a month pin money. Would you go?”

“Why not go⁠—I’d go.”

He kissed her violently, but a secret apprehension glided swiftly through his cowardly heart.

“But are you healthy?” he asked in an inimical, quavering voice.

“Why, yes, I am healthy. There’s a doctor’s inspection every Saturday in our place.”

After five minutes she went away from him, as she walked putting away in her stocking the earned money, on which, as on the first handsel, she had first spat, after a superstitious custom. There had been no further speech either about maintenance or natural liking. The German was left unsatisfied with the frigidity of Manka and ordered the housekeeper to be summoned to him.

“Housekeeper dear, my husband demands your presence!” said Manya, coming into the drawing room and fixing her hair before a mirror.

Zociya went away, then returned afterwards and called Pasha out into the corridor. Later she came back into the drawing room, but alone.

“How is it, Manka, that you haven’t pleased your cavalier?” she asked with laughter. “He complains about you: ‘This,’ he says, ‘is no woman, but some log of wood, a piece of ice.’ I sent him Pashka.”

“Eh, what a disgusting man!” Manka puckered up her face and spat aside. “Butts in with his conversations. Asks: ‘Do you feel when I kiss you? Do you feel a pleasant excitement?’ An old hound. ‘I’ll take you,’ he says, ‘and set you up!’ ”

“They all say that,” remarked Zoe indifferently.

But Jennie, who since morning has been in an evil mood, suddenly flared up.

“Oh, the sneak, the big, miserable sneak that he is!” she exclaimed, turning red and energetically putting her hands to her sides. “Why, I would take him, the old, dirty little beast, by the ear, then lead him up to the mirror and show him his