Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow Irina Reyfman (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

maladies are the results of this toxicity. O my dear ones! Weep over the error of my youth, invoke in aid the art of medicine, and, if you can, do not hate me.

But it is now that the full extent of this voluptuous crime opens before my eyes. I sinned before myself by incurring when still youthful an untimely old age and decrepitude. I sinned before you by having poisoned your life juices before you were born and thereby predetermined your feeble health and, perhaps, a premature death. I sinned—and may this be a punishment to me—I sinned in my amorous ardor when I took your mother in marriage. Who can guarantee to me that I was not the cause of her extinction? A death-dealing poison, diffused in pleasure, was transferred to her chaste body and corrupted her innocent limbs. Its lethalness was all the greater by being more hidden. A false primness had prevented me from warning her; however, she was not wary of her poisoner in her passion for him. The inflammation that beset her was, perhaps, the fruit of the poison that I had given her…. O my dear ones, how greatly you must hate me!

But who is the reason that this fetid illness produces in all kingdoms such devastation, mowing down not only the current generation but also shortening the span of future generations? Who is the cause if not the government? By sanctioning remunerated debauchery, it not only opens up the path to many vices but poisons the life of citizens. Public women find defenders, and in some countries come under the protection of the authorities. If the release of amorous passion for pay were prohibited then, some maintain, the shocks felt not infrequently in society would be powerful. Amorous passion would be the cause of not infrequent abductions, rapes, and murder. They might even shake the very foundations of societies.—And you would rather have quiet and the fatigue and sorrow that go with it than the health and bravery that go with disquiet. Keep silent, revolting teachers, you who are the mercenaries of tyranny, which, by always preaching peace and quiet, ensnares in chains those who have been lulled by flattery. Tyranny fears even peripheral disturbance. It would prefer thought to agree with it everywhere so that it can be reliably cossetted in grandeur and wallow in fornication…. I am not surprised by your words. It is proper that slaves want to see everyone in chains. A uniformity of fates eases their lot, while anyone’s superiority oppresses their reason and spirit.

VALDAI

The story goes that this little town was settled by Poles taken into captivity during the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. This little town is remembered for the erotic inclinations of its residents, and most especially its unmarried women.

Who has not been to Valdai, who is not familiar with the pretzels of Valdai and Valdai’s rouged-up wenches? The brazen wenches of Valdai, their shame cast aside, impede every voyager and attempt to inflame the traveler’s concupiscence in order to profit from his generosity at the expense of their chastity. Comparing the morals of the inhabitants of this village, raised to the status of a city, with the morals of other Russian cities, you would take the former to be the most ancient, its corrupt morals are the sole vestige of its ancient founding. But as it is only a little more than a hundred years since it was settled, one can conclude how debauched even its first residents must have been.

The baths were, and still are, a place for amorous festivities. Once the terms of his visit with an accommodating old lady or a lad have been agreed, the traveler takes up temporary residence where he intends to make his sacrifice to Lada,62 the universally worshipped. Night has fallen. The bath is already prepared for him. The traveler undresses, enters the bath where the hostess, if she is young, greets him—or her daughter, or relations, or neighbors. They rub down his tired limbs, they wash off his dirt. They do this having shed their clothing, they ignite in him an erotic fire, and he spends the night here, losing money, health, and precious travel time. The story goes that in the past, in order to appropriate his property, these lascivious monsters would consign to death the incautious traveler, subdued by his erotic conquests and wine. I do not know whether this is true, but it is true that the brazenness of these Valdai wenches has diminished. And while they do not even now refuse to satisfy the desires of a traveler, their previous brazenness is no longer apparent.

Lake Valdai, on which this city is built, will still be remembered in tales about the monk who sacrificed his life for the sake of his lover. One and a half versts* from the city, on an island in the middle of the lake, is situated the Iversk Monastery, built by the famous Patriarch Nikon. One of the monks of this monastery, when visiting Valdai, fell in love with the daughter of a resident of Valdai. The love soon became mutual, soon they hurtled towards its consummation. Once they had tasted its delight, they no longer had the strength to resist its compulsion. But the position of each created a barrier to this. The lover could not often be absent from his monastery; his mistress could not visit the cell of her lover. But their passion overcame all: out of the besotted monk it made a fearless man and endowed him with practically supernatural strength. Scarcely had the night covered everything visible in its black mantle, when this new Leander,63 in order to take his pleasure daily in the arms of his mistress, quietly emerged from his cell, and, taking off his cassock, swam across the lake to the opposite bank where he was welcomed into his beloved’s embraces. A bath and its amorous delights were already prepared for him and he would forget the