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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 “That must be the officers going home to the camp from the
Police Captain’s,” thought the chemist’s wife.
Soon afterwards two figures wearing officers’ white tunics came
into sight: one big and tall, the other thinner and shorter. . . . They
slouched along by the fence, dragging one leg after the other and
talking loudly together. As they passed the chemist’s shop, they
walked more slowly than ever, and glanced up at the windows.
“It smells like a chemist’s,” said the thin one. “And so it is! Ah, I
remember. . . . I came here last week to buy some castor-oil. There’s
a chemist here with a sour face and the jawbone of an ass! Such a
jawbone, my dear fellow! It must have been a jawbone like that
Samson killed the Philistines with.”
“M’yes,” said the big one in a bass voice. “The pharmacist is
asleep. And his wife is asleep too. She is a pretty woman, Obtyosov.”
“I saw her. I liked her very much. . . . Tell me, doctor, can she
possibly love that jawbone of an ass? Can she?”
“No, most likely she does not love him,” sighed the doctor,
speaking as though he were sorry for the chemist. “The little woman
is asleep behind the window, Obtyosov, what? Tossing with the heat,
her little mouth half open . . . and one little foot hanging out of bed.
I bet that fool the chemist doesn’t realise what a lucky fellow he is. .
. . No doubt he sees no difference between a woman and a bottle of
carbolic!”
“I say, doctor,” said the officer, stopping. “Let us go into the shop
and buy something. Perhaps we shall see her.”
“What an idea—in the night!”
“What of it? They are obliged to serve one even at night. My dear
fellow, let us go in!”
“If you like. . . .”
 The chemist’s wife, hiding behind the curtain, heard a muffled
ring. Looking round at her husband, who was smiling and snoring
sweetly as before, she threw on her dress, slid her bare feet into her
slippers, and ran to the shop.
On the other side of the glass door she could see two shadows.
The chemist’s wife turned up the lamp and hurried to the door to
open it, and now she felt neither vexed nor bored nor inclined to cry,
though her heart was thumping. The big doctor and the slender
Obtyosov walked in. Now she could get a view of them. The doctor
was corpulent and swarthy; he wore a beard and was slow in his
movements. At the slightest motion his tunic seemed as though it
would crack, and perspiration came on to his face. The officer was
rosy, clean-shaven, feminine-looking, and as supple as an English
whip.
“What may I give you?” asked the chemist’s wife, holding her
dress across her bosom.
“Give us . . . er-er . . . four pennyworth of peppermint lozenges!”
Without haste the chemist’s wife took down a jar from a shelf and
began weighing out lozenges. The customers stared fixedly at her
back; the doctor screwed up his eyes like a well-fed cat, while the
lieutenant was very grave.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen a lady serving in a chemist’s shop,”
observed the doctor.
“There’s nothing out of the way in it,” replied the chemist’s wife,
looking out of the corner of her eye at the rosy-cheeked officer. “My
husband has no assistant, and I always help him.”
“To be sure. . . . You have a charming little shop! What a number
of different . . . jars! And you are not afraid of moving about among
the poisons? Brrr!”
The chemist’s wife sealed up the parcel and handed it to the
doctor. Obtyosov gave her the money. Half a minute of silence
followed. . . . The men exchanged glances, took a step towards the
door, then looked at one another again.
“Will you give me two pennyworth of soda?” said the doctor.
Again the chemist’s wife slowly and languidly raised her hand to
the shelf.
“Haven’t you in the shop anything . . . such as . . .” muttered
Obtyosov, moving his fingers, “something, so to say, allegorical . . .
revivifying . . . seltzer-water, for instance. Have you any seltzer-
water?”
“Yes,” answered the chemist’s wife.
“Bravo! You’re a fairy, not a woman! Give us three bottles!”
The chemist’s wife hurriedly sealed up the soda and vanished
through the door into the darkness.
“A peach!” said the doctor, with a wink. “You wouldn’t find a
pineapple like that in the island of Madeira! Eh? What do you say?
Do you hear the snoring, though? That’s his worship the chemist
enjoying sweet repose.”
A minute later the chemist’s wife came back and set five bottles
on the counter. She had just been in the cellar, and so was flushed
and rather excited.
“Sh-sh! . . . quietly!” said Obtyosov when, after uncorking the
bottles, she dropped the corkscrew. “Don’t make such a noise; you’ll
wake your husband.”
“Well, what if I do wake him?”
“He is sleeping so sweetly . . . he must be dreaming of you. . . .
To your health!”
“Besides,” boomed the doctor, hiccupping after the seltzer-water,
“husbands are such a dull business that it would be very nice of
them to be always asleep. How good a drop of red wine would be in
this water!”
“What an idea!” laughed the chemist’s wife.
“That would be splendid. What a pity they don’t sell spirits in
chemist’s shops! Though you ought to sell wine as a medicine. Have
you any vinum gallicum rubrum?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, give us some! Bring it here, damn it!”
“How much do you want?”
“Quantum satis. . . . Give us an ounce each in the water, and
afterwards we’ll see. . . . Obtyosov, what do you say? First with
water and afterwards per se. . . .”
The doctor and Obtyosov sat down to the counter, took off their
caps, and began drinking the wine.
“The wine, one must admit, is wretched stuff! Vinum nastissimum!
Though in the presence of . . . er . . . it tastes like nectar. You are
enchanting, madam! In imagination I kiss your hand.”
“I would give a great deal to do so not in imagination,” said
Obtyosov. “On my honour, I’d give my life.”
“That’s enough,” said Madame Tchernomordik, flushing and
assuming a serious expression.
“What a flirt you are, though!” the doctor laughed softly, looking
slyly at her from under his brows. “Your eyes seem to be firing shot:
piff-paff! I congratulate you: you’ve conquered! We are vanquished!”
The chemist’s wife looked at their ruddy faces, listened to their
chatter, and soon she, too, grew quite lively. Oh, she felt so gay! She
entered into the conversation, she laughed, flirted, and even, after
repeated requests from the customers, drank two ounces of wine.
 “You officers ought to come in oftener from the camp,” she said;
“it’s awful how dreary it is here. I’m simply dying of it.”
“I should think so!” said the doctor indignantly. “Such a peach, a
miracle of nature, thrown away in the wilds! How well Griboyedov
said, ‘Into the wilds, to Saratov’! It’s time for us to be off, though.
Delighted to have made your acquaintance . . . very. How much do
we owe you?”
The chemist’s wife raised her eyes to the ceiling and her lips
moved for some time.
“Twelve roubles forty-eight kopecks,” she said.
Obtyosov took out of his pocket a fat pocket-book, and after
fumbling for some time among the notes, paid.
“Your husband’s sleeping sweetly . . . he must be dreaming,” he
muttered, pressing her hand at parting.
“I don’t like to hear silly remarks. . . .”
“What silly remarks? On the contrary, it’s not silly at all . . . even
Shakespeare said: ‘Happy is he who in his youth is young.’”
“Let go of my hand.”
At last after much talk and after kissing the lady’s hand at parting,
the customers went out of the shop irresolutely, as though they
were wondering whether they had not forgotten something.
She ran quickly into the bedroom and sat down in the same place.
She saw the doctor and the officer, on coming out of the shop, walk
lazily away a distance of twenty paces; then they stopped and began
whispering together. What about? Her heart throbbed, there was a
pulsing in her temples, and why she did not know. . . . Her heart
beat violently as though those two whispering outside were deciding
her fate.
 Five minutes later the doctor parted from Obtyosov and walked
on, while Obtyosov came back. He walked past the shop once and a
second time. . . . He would stop near the door and then take a few
steps again. At last the bell tinkled discreetly.
“What? Who is there?” the chemist’s wife heard her husband’s
voice suddenly. “There’s a ring at the bell, and you don’t hear it,” he
said severely. “Is that the way to do things?”
He got up, put on his dressing-gown, and staggering, half asleep,
flopped in his slippers to the shop.
“What . . . is it?” he asked Obtyosov.
“Give me . . . give me four pennyworth of peppermint lozenges.”
Sniffing continually, yawning, dropping asleep as he moved, and
knocking his knees against the counter, the chemist went to the
shelf and reached down the jar.
Two minutes later the chemist’s wife saw Obtyosov go out of the
shop, and, after he had gone some steps, she saw him throw the
packet of peppermints on the dusty road. The doctor came from
behind a corner to meet him. . . . They met and, gesticulating,
vanished in the morning mist.
“How unhappy I am!” said the chemist’s wife, looking angrily at
her husband, who was undressing quickly to get into bed again. “Oh,
how unhappy I am!” she repeated, suddenly melting into bitter
tears. “And nobody knows, nobody knows. . . .”
“I forgot fourpence on the counter,” muttered the chemist, pulling
the quilt over him. “Put it away in the till, please. . . .”
And at once he fell asleep again.
The Schoolmistress and Other
Stories
 THE SCHOOLMISTRESS

A
T half-past eight they drove out of the town.
The highroad was dry, a lovely April sun was shining
warmly, but the snow was still lying in the ditches and in the
woods. Winter, dark, long, and spiteful, was hardly over; spring had
come all of a sudden. But neither the warmth nor the languid
transparent woods, warmed by the breath of spring, nor the black
flocks of birds flying over the huge puddles that were like lakes, nor
the marvelous fathomless sky, into which it seemed one would have
gone away so joyfully, presented anything new or interesting to
Marya Vassilyevna who was sitting in the cart. For thirteen years she
had been schoolmistress, and there was no reckoning how many
times during all those years she had been to the town for her salary;
and whether it were spring as now, or a rainy autumn evening, or
winter, it was all the same to her, and she always—invariably—
longed for one thing only, to get to the end of her journey as quickly
as could be.
She felt as though she had been living in that part of the country
for ages and ages, for a hundred years, and it seemed to her that
she knew every stone, every tree on the road from the town to her
school. Her past was here, her present was here, and she could
imagine no other future than the school, the road to the town and
back again, and again the school and again the road....
She had got out of the habit of thinking of her past before she
became a schoolmistress, and had almost forgotten it. She had once
had a father and mother; they had lived in Moscow in a big flat near
the Red Gate, but of all that life there was left in her memory only
something vague and fluid like a dream. Her father had died when
she was ten years old, and her mother had died soon after.... She
had a brother, an officer; at first they used to write to each other,
then her brother had given up answering her letters, he had got out
of the way of writing. Of her old belongings, all that was left was a
photograph of her mother, but it had grown dim from the dampness
of the school, and now nothing could be seen but the hair and the
eyebrows.
When they had driven a couple of miles, old Semyon, who was
driving, turned round and said:
“They have caught a government clerk in the town. They have
taken him away. The story is that with some Germans he killed
Alexeyev, the Mayor, in Moscow.”
“Who told you that?”
“They were reading it in the paper, in Ivan Ionov’s tavern.”
And again they were silent for a long time. Marya Vassilyevna
thought of her school, of the examination that was coming soon,
and of the girl and four boys she was sending up for it. And just as
she was thinking about the examination, she was overtaken by a
neighboring landowner called Hanov in a carriage with four horses,
the very man who had been examiner in her school the year before.
When he came up to her he recognized her and bowed.
“Good-morning,” he said to her. “You are driving home, I
suppose.”
This Hanov, a man of forty with a listless expression and a face
that showed signs of wear, was beginning to look old, but was still
handsome and admired by women. He lived in his big homestead
alone, and was not in the service; and people used to say of him
that he did nothing at home but walk up and down the room
whistling, or play chess with his old footman. People said, too, that
he drank heavily. And indeed at the examination the year before the
very papers he brought with him smelt of wine and scent. He had
been dressed all in new clothes on that occasion, and Marya
Vassilyevna thought him very attractive, and all the while she sat
beside him she had felt embarrassed. She was accustomed to see
frigid and sensible examiners at the school, while this one did not
remember a single prayer, or know what to ask questions about, and
was exceedingly courteous and delicate, giving nothing but the
highest marks.
“I am going to visit Bakvist,” he went on, addressing Marya
Vassilyevna, “but I am told he is not at home.”
They turned off the highroad into a by-road to the village, Hanov
leading the way and Semyon following. The four horses moved at a
walking pace, with effort dragging the heavy carriage through the
mud. Semyon tacked from side to side, keeping to the edge of the
road, at one time through a snowdrift, at another through a pool,
often jumping out of the cart and helping the horse. Marya
Vassilyevna was still thinking about the school, wondering whether
the arithmetic questions at the examination would be difficult or
easy. And she felt annoyed with the Zemstvo board at which she had
found no one the day before. How unbusiness-like! Here she had
been asking them for the last two years to dismiss the watchman,
who did nothing, was rude to her, and hit the schoolboys; but no
one paid any attention. It was hard to find the president at the
office, and when one did find him he would say with tears in his
eyes that he hadn’t a moment to spare; the inspector visited the
school at most once in three years, and knew nothing whatever
about his work, as he had been in the Excise Duties Department,
and had received the post of school inspector through influence. The
School Council met very rarely, and there was no knowing where it
met; the school guardian was an almost illiterate peasant, the head
of a tanning business, unintelligent, rude, and a great friend of the
watchman’s—and goodness knows to whom she could appeal with
complaints or inquiries....
“He really is handsome,” she thought, glancing at Hanov.
 The road grew worse and worse.... They drove into the wood.
Here there was no room to turn round, the wheels sank deeply in,
water splashed and gurgled through them, and sharp twigs struck
them in the face.
“What a road!” said Hanov, and he laughed.
The schoolmistress looked at him and could not understand why
this queer man lived here. What could his money, his interesting
appearance, his refined bearing do for him here, in this mud, in this
God-forsaken, dreary place? He got no special advantages out of life,
and here, like Semyon, was driving at a jog-trot on an appalling road
and enduring the same discomforts. Why live here if one could live
in Petersburg or abroad? And one would have thought it would be
nothing for a rich man like him to make a good road instead of this
bad one, to avoid enduring this misery and seeing the despair on the
faces of his coachman and Semyon; but he only laughed, and
apparently did not mind, and wanted no better life. He was kind,
soft, naive, and he did not understand this coarse life, just as at the
examination he did not know the prayers. He subscribed nothing to
the schools but globes, and genuinely regarded himself as a useful
person and a prominent worker in the cause of popular education.
And what use were his globes here?
“Hold on, Vassilyevna!” said Semyon.
The cart lurched violently and was on the point of upsetting;
something heavy rolled on to Marya Vassilyevna’s feet—it was her
parcel of purchases. There was a steep ascent uphill through the
clay; here in the winding ditches rivulets were gurgling. The water
seemed to have gnawed away the road; and how could one get
along here! The horses breathed hard. Hanov got out of his carriage
and walked at the side of the road in his long overcoat. He was hot.
“What a road!” he said, and laughed again. “It would soon smash
up one’s carriage.”
 “Nobody obliges you to drive about in such weather,” said Semyon
surlily. “You should stay at home.”
“I am dull at home, grandfather. I don’t like staying at home.”
Beside old Semyon he looked graceful and vigorous, but yet in his
walk there was something just perceptible which betrayed in him a
being already touched by decay, weak, and on the road to ruin. And
all at once there was a whiff of spirits in the wood. Marya
Vassilyevna was filled with dread and pity for this man going to his
ruin for no visible cause or reason, and it came into her mind that if
she had been his wife or sister she would have devoted her whole
life to saving him from ruin. His wife! Life was so ordered that here
he was living in his great house alone, and she was living in a God-
forsaken village alone, and yet for some reason the mere thought
that he and she might be close to one another and equals seemed
impossible and absurd. In reality, life was arranged and human
relations were complicated so utterly beyond all understanding that
when one thought about it one felt uncanny and one’s heart sank.
“And it is beyond all understanding,” she thought, “why God gives
beauty, this graciousness, and sad, sweet eyes to weak, unlucky,
useless people—why they are so charming.”
“Here we must turn off to the right,” said Hanov, getting into his
carriage. “Good-by! I wish you all things good!”
And again she thought of her pupils, of the examination, of the
watchman, of the School Council; and when the wind brought the
sound of the retreating carriage these thoughts were mingled with
others. She longed to think of beautiful eyes, of love, of the
happiness which would never be....
His wife? It was cold in the morning, there was no one to heat the
stove, the watchman disappeared; the children came in as soon as it
was light, bringing in snow and mud and making a noise: it was all
so inconvenient, so comfortless. Her abode consisted of one little
room and the kitchen close by. Her head ached every day after her
work, and after dinner she had heart-burn. She had to collect money
from the school-children for wood and for the watchman, and to give
it to the school guardian, and then to entreat him—that overfed,
insolent peasant—for God’s sake to send her wood. And at night she
dreamed of examinations, peasants, snowdrifts. And this life was
making her grow old and coarse, making her ugly, angular, and
awkward, as though she were made of lead. She was always afraid,
and she would get up from her seat and not venture to sit down in
the presence of a member of the Zemstvo or the school guardian.
And she used formal, deferential expressions when she spoke of any
one of them. And no one thought her attractive, and life was passing
drearily, without affection, without friendly sympathy, without
interesting acquaintances. How awful it would have been in her
position if she had fallen in love!
“Hold on, Vassilyevna!”
Again a sharp ascent uphill....
She had become a schoolmistress from necessity, without feeling
any vocation for it; and she had never thought of a vocation, of
serving the cause of enlightenment; and it always seemed to her
that what was most important in her work was not the children, nor
enlightenment, but the examinations. And what time had she for
thinking of vocation, of serving the cause of enlightenment?
Teachers, badly paid doctors, and their assistants, with their terribly
hard work, have not even the comfort of thinking that they are
serving an idea or the people, as their heads are always stuffed with
thoughts of their daily bread, of wood for the fire, of bad roads, of
illnesses. It is a hard-working, an uninteresting life, and only silent,
patient cart-horses like Mary Vassilyevna could put up with it for
long; the lively, nervous, impressionable people who talked about
vocation and serving the idea were soon weary of it and gave up the
work.
Semyon kept picking out the driest and shortest way, first by a
meadow, then by the backs of the village huts; but in one place the
peasants would not let them pass, in another it was the priest’s land
and they could not cross it, in another Ivan Ionov had bought a plot
from the landowner and had dug a ditch round it. They kept having
to turn back.
They reached Nizhneye Gorodistche. Near the tavern on the dung-
strewn earth, where the snow was still lying, there stood wagons
that had brought great bottles of crude sulphuric acid. There were a
great many people in the tavern, all drivers, and there was a smell
of vodka, tobacco, and sheepskins. There was a loud noise of
conversation and the banging of the swing-door. Through the wall,
without ceasing for a moment, came the sound of a concertina being
played in the shop. Marya Vassilyevna sat down and drank some tea,
while at the next table peasants were drinking vodka and beer,
perspiring from the tea they had just swallowed and the stifling
fumes of the tavern.
“I say, Kuzma!” voices kept shouting in confusion. “What there!”
“The Lord bless us!” “Ivan Dementyitch, I can tell you that!” “Look
out, old man!”
A little pock-marked man with a black beard, who was quite
drunk, was suddenly surprised by something and began using bad
language.
“What are you swearing at, you there?” Semyon, who was sitting
some way off, responded angrily. “Don’t you see the young lady?”
“The young lady!” someone mimicked in another corner.
“Swinish crow!”
“We meant nothing...” said the little man in confusion. “I beg your
pardon. We pay with our money and the young lady with hers.
Good-morning!”
“Good-morning,” answered the schoolmistress.
“And we thank you most feelingly.”
 Marya Vassilyevna drank her tea with satisfaction, and she, too,
began turning red like the peasants, and fell to thinking again about
firewood, about the watchman....
“Stay, old man,” she heard from the next table, “it’s the
schoolmistress from Vyazovye.... We know her; she’s a good young
lady.”
“She’s all right!”
The swing-door was continually banging, some coming in, others
going out. Marya Vassilyevna sat on, thinking all the time of the
same things, while the concertina went on playing and playing. The
patches of sunshine had been on the floor, then they passed to the
counter, to the wall, and disappeared altogether; so by the sun it
was past midday. The peasants at the next table were getting ready
to go. The little man, somewhat unsteadily, went up to Marya
Vassilyevna and held out his hand to her; following his example, the
others shook hands, too, at parting, and went out one after another,
and the swing-door squeaked and slammed nine times.
“Vassilyevna, get ready,” Semyon called to her.
They set off. And again they went at a walking pace.
“A little while back they were building a school here in their
Nizhneye Gorodistche,” said Semyon, turning round. “It was a
wicked thing that was done!”
“Why, what?”
“They say the president put a thousand in his pocket, and the
school guardian another thousand in his, and the teacher five
hundred.”
“The whole school only cost a thousand. It’s wrong to slander
people, grandfather. That’s all nonsense.”
“I don’t know,... I only tell you what folks say.”
 But it was clear that Semyon did not believe the schoolmistress.
The peasants did not believe her. They always thought she received
too large a salary, twenty-one roubles a month (five would have
been enough), and that of the money that she collected from the
children for the firewood and the watchman the greater part she
kept for herself. The guardian thought the same as the peasants,
and he himself made a profit off the firewood and received
payments from the peasants for being a guardian—without the
knowledge of the authorities.
The forest, thank God! was behind them, and now it would be flat,
open ground all the way to Vyazovye, and there was not far to go
now. They had to cross the river and then the railway line, and then
Vyazovye was in sight.
“Where are you driving?” Marya Vassilyevna asked Semyon. “Take
the road to the right to the bridge.”
“Why, we can go this way as well. It’s not deep enough to matter.”
“Mind you don’t drown the horse.”
“What?”
“Look, Hanov is driving to the bridge,” said Marya Vassilyevna,
seeing the four horses far away to the right. “It is he, I think.”
“It is. So he didn’t find Bakvist at home. What a pig-headed fellow
he is. Lord have mercy upon us! He’s driven over there, and what
for? It’s fully two miles nearer this way.”
They reached the river. In the summer it was a little stream easily
crossed by wading. It usually dried up in August, but now, after the
spring floods, it was a river forty feet in breadth, rapid, muddy, and
cold; on the bank and right up to the water there were fresh tracks
of wheels, so it had been crossed here.
“Go on!” shouted Semyon angrily and anxiously, tugging violently
at the reins and jerking his elbows as a bird does its wings. “Go on!”
 The horse went on into the water up to his belly and stopped, but
at once went on again with an effort, and Marya Vassilyevna was
aware of a keen chilliness in her feet.
“Go on!” she, too, shouted, getting up. “Go on!”
They got out on the bank.
“Nice mess it is, Lord have mercy upon us!” muttered Semyon,
setting straight the harness. “It’s a perfect plague with this
Zemstvo....”
Her shoes and goloshes were full of water, the lower part of her
dress and of her coat and one sleeve were wet and dripping: the
sugar and flour had got wet, and that was worst of all, and Marya
Vassilyevna could only clasp her hands in despair and say:
“Oh, Semyon, Semyon! How tiresome you are really!...”
The barrier was down at the railway crossing. A train was coming
out of the station. Marya Vassilyevna stood at the crossing waiting
till it should pass, and shivering all over with cold. Vyazovye was in
sight now, and the school with the green roof, and the church with
its crosses flashing in the evening sun: and the station windows
flashed too, and a pink smoke rose from the engine... and it seemed
to her that everything was trembling with cold.
Here was the train; the windows reflected the gleaming light like
the crosses on the church: it made her eyes ache to look at them.
On the little platform between two first-class carriages a lady was
standing, and Marya Vassilyevna glanced at her as she passed. Her
mother! What a resemblance! Her mother had had just such
luxuriant hair, just such a brow and bend of the head. And with
amazing distinctness, for the first time in those thirteen years, there
rose before her mind a vivid picture of her mother, her father, her
brother, their flat in Moscow, the aquarium with little fish, everything
to the tiniest detail; she heard the sound of the piano, her father’s
voice; she felt as she had been then, young, good-looking, well-
dressed, in a bright warm room among her own people. A feeling of
joy and happiness suddenly came over her, she pressed her hands to
her temples in an ecstacy, and called softly, beseechingly:
“Mother!”
And she began crying, she did not know why. Just at that instant
Hanov drove up with his team of four horses, and seeing him she
imagined happiness such as she had never had, and smiled and
nodded to him as an equal and a friend, and it seemed to her that
her happiness, her triumph, was glowing in the sky and on all sides,
in the windows and on the trees. Her father and mother had never
died, she had never been a schoolmistress, it was a long, tedious,
strange dream, and now she had awakened....
“Vassilyevna, get in!”
And at once it all vanished. The barrier was slowly raised. Marya
Vassilyevna, shivering and numb with cold, got into the cart. The
carriage with the four horses crossed the railway line; Semyon
followed it. The signalman took off his cap.
“And here is Vyazovye. Here we are.”
 A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

A
MEDICAL student called Mayer, and a pupil of the Moscow
School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture called
Rybnikov, went one evening to see their friend Vassilyev, a law
student, and suggested that he should go with them to S. Street. For
a long time Vassilyev would not consent to go, but in the end he put
on his greatcoat and went with them.
He knew nothing of fallen women except by hearsay and from
books, and he had never in his life been in the houses in which they
live. He knew that there are immoral women who, under the
pressure of fatal circumstances—environment, bad education,
poverty, and so on—are forced to sell their honor for money. They
know nothing of pure love, have no children, have no civil rights;
their mothers and sisters weep over them as though they were
dead, science treats of them as an evil, men address them with
contemptuous familiarity. But in spite of all that, they do not lose the
semblance and image of God. They all acknowledge their sin and
hope for salvation. Of the means that lead to salvation they can avail
themselves to the fullest extent. Society, it is true, will not forgive
people their past, but in the sight of God St. Mary of Egypt is no
lower than the other saints. When it had happened to Vassilyev in
the street to recognize a fallen woman as such, by her dress or her
manners, or to see a picture of one in a comic paper, he always
remembered a story he had once read: a young man, pure and self-
sacrificing, loves a fallen woman and urges her to become his wife;
she, considering herself unworthy of such happiness, takes poison.
Vassilyev lived in one of the side streets turning out of Tverskoy
Boulevard. When he came out of the house with his two friends it
was about eleven o’clock. The first snow had not long fallen, and all
nature was under the spell of the fresh snow. There was the smell of
snow in the air, the snow crunched softly under the feet; the earth,
the roofs, the trees, the seats on the boulevard, everything was soft,
white, young, and this made the houses look quite different from the
day before; the street lamps burned more brightly, the air was more
transparent, the carriages rumbled with a deeper note, and with the
fresh, light, frosty air a feeling stirred in the soul akin to the white,
youthful, feathery snow. “Against my will an unknown force,”
hummed the medical student in his agreeable tenor, “has led me to
these mournful shores.”
“Behold the mill...” the artist seconded him, “in ruins now....”
“Behold the mill... in ruins now,” the medical student repeated,
raising his eyebrows and shaking his head mournfully.
He paused, rubbed his forehead, trying to remember the words,
and then sang aloud, so well that passers-by looked round:

“Here in old days when I was free,

Love, free, unfettered, greeted me.”

The three of them went into a restaurant and, without taking off
their greatcoats, drank a couple of glasses of vodka each. Before
drinking the second glass, Vassilyev noticed a bit of cork in his
vodka, raised the glass to his eyes, and gazed into it for a long time,
screwing up his shortsighted eyes. The medical student did not
understand his expression, and said:
“Come, why look at it? No philosophizing, please. Vodka is given
us to be drunk, sturgeon to be eaten, women to be visited, snow to
be walked upon. For one evening anyway live like a human being!”
“But I haven’t said anything...” said Vassilyev, laughing. “Am I
refusing to?”
There was a warmth inside him from the vodka. He looked with
softened feelings at his friends, admired them and envied them. In
these strong, healthy, cheerful people how wonderfully balanced
everything is, how finished and smooth is everything in their minds
and souls! They sing, and have a passion for the theatre, and draw,
and talk a great deal, and drink, and they don’t have headaches the
day after; they are both poetical and debauched, both soft and hard;
they can work, too, and be indignant, and laugh without reason, and
talk nonsense; they are warm, honest, self-sacrificing, and as men
are in no way inferior to himself, Vassilyev, who watched over every
step he took and every word he uttered, who was fastidious and
cautious, and ready to raise every trifle to the level of a problem.
And he longed for one evening to live as his friends did, to open out,
to let himself loose from his own control. If vodka had to be drunk,
he would drink it, though his head would be splitting next morning.
If he were taken to the women he would go. He would laugh, play
the fool, gaily respond to the passing advances of strangers in the
street....
He went out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends—one
in a crushed broad-brimmed hat, with an affectation of artistic
untidiness; the other in a sealskin cap, a man not poor, though he
affected to belong to the Bohemia of learning. He liked the snow,
the pale street lamps, the sharp black tracks left in the first snow by
the feet of the passers-by. He liked the air, and especially that
limpid, tender, naive, as it were virginal tone, which can be seen in
nature only twice in the year—when everything is covered with
snow, and in spring on bright days and moonlight evenings when the
ice breaks on the river.

“Against my will an unknown force,

Has led me to these mournful shores,”

he hummed in an undertone.
And the tune for some reason haunted him and his friends all the
way, and all three of them hummed it mechanically, not in time with
one another.
Vassilyev’s imagination was picturing how, in another ten minutes,
he and his friends would knock at a door; how by little dark
passages and dark rooms they would steal in to the women; how,
taking advantage of the darkness, he would strike a match, would
light up and see the face of a martyr and a guilty smile. The
unknown, fair or dark, would certainly have her hair down and be
wearing a white dressing-jacket; she would be panic-stricken by the
light, would be fearfully confused, and would say: “For God’s sake,
what are you doing! Put it out!” It would all be dreadful, but
interesting and new.
The friends turned out of Trubnoy Square into Gratchevka, and
soon reached the side street which Vassilyev only knew by
reputation. Seeing two rows of houses with brightly lighted windows
and wide-open doors, and hearing gay strains of pianos and violins,
sounds which floated out from every door and mingled in a strange
chaos, as though an unseen orchestra were tuning up in the
darkness above the roofs, Vassilyev was surprised and said:
“What a lot of houses!”
“That’s nothing,” said the medical student. “In London there are
ten times as many. There are about a hundred thousand such
women there.”
The cabmen were sitting on their boxes as calmly and indifferently
as in any other side street; the same passers-by were walking along
the pavement as in other streets. No one was hurrying, no one was
hiding his face in his coat-collar, no one shook his head
reproachfully.... And in this indifference to the noisy chaos of pianos
and violins, to the bright windows and wide-open doors, there was a
feeling of something very open, insolent, reckless, and devil-may-
care. Probably it was as gay and noisy at the slave-markets in their
day, and people’s faces and movements showed the same
indifference.
“Let us begin from the beginning,” said the artist.
The friends went into a narrow passage lighted by a lamp with a
reflector. When they opened the door a man in a black coat, with an
unshaven face like a flunkey’s, and sleepy-looking eyes, got up lazily
from a yellow sofa in the hall. The place smelt like a laundry with an
odor of vinegar in addition. A door from the hall led into a brightly
lighted room. The medical student and the artist stopped at this
door and, craning their necks, peeped into the room.
“Buona sera, signori, rigolleto—hugenotti—traviata!” began the
artist, with a theatrical bow.
“Havanna—tarakano—pistoleto!” said the medical student,
pressing his cap to his breast and bowing low.
Vassilyev was standing behind them. He would have liked to make
a theatrical bow and say something silly, too, but he only smiled, felt
an awkwardness that was like shame, and waited impatiently for
what would happen next.
A little fair girl of seventeen or eighteen, with short hair, in a short
light-blue frock with a bunch of white ribbon on her bosom,
appeared in the doorway.
“Why do you stand at the door?” she said. “Take off your coats
and come into the drawing-room.”
The medical student and the artist, still talking Italian, went into
the drawing-room. Vassilyev followed them irresolutely.
“Gentlemen, take off your coats!” the flunkey said sternly; “you
can’t go in like that.”
In the drawing-room there was, besides the girl, another woman,
very stout and tall, with a foreign face and bare arms. She was
sitting near the piano, laying out a game of patience on her lap. She
took no notice whatever of the visitors.
“Where are the other young ladies?” asked the medical student.
“They are having their tea,” said the fair girl. “Stepan,” she called,
“go and tell the young ladies some students have come!”
 A little later a third young lady came into the room. She was
wearing a bright red dress with blue stripes. Her face was painted
thickly and unskillfully, her brow was hidden under her hair, and
there was an unblinking, frightened stare in her eyes. As she came
in, she began at once singing some song in a coarse, powerful
contralto. After her a fourth appeared, and after her a fifth....
In all this Vassilyev saw nothing new or interesting. It seemed to
him that that room, the piano, the looking-glass in its cheap gilt
frame, the bunch of white ribbon, the dress with the blue stripes,
and the blank indifferent faces, he had seen before and more than
once. Of the darkness, the silence, the secrecy, the guilty smile, of
all that he had expected to meet here and had dreaded, he saw no
trace.
Everything was ordinary, prosaic, and uninteresting. Only one
thing faintly stirred his curiosity—the terrible, as it were intentionally
designed, bad taste which was visible in the cornices, in the absurd
pictures, in the dresses, in the bunch of ribbons. There was
something characteristic and peculiar in this bad taste.
“How poor and stupid it all is!” thought Vassilyev. “What is there in
all this trumpery I see now that can tempt a normal man and excite
him to commit the horrible sin of buying a human being for a
rouble? I understand any sin for the sake of splendor, beauty, grace,
passion, taste; but what is there here? What is there here worth
sinning for? But... one mustn’t think!”
“Beardy, treat me to some porter!” said the fair girl, addressing
him.
Vassilyev was at once overcome with confusion.
“With pleasure,” he said, bowing politely. “Only excuse me,
madam, I.... I won’t drink with you. I don’t drink.”
Five minutes later the friends went off into another house.
 “Why did you ask for porter?” said the medical student angrily.
“What a millionaire! You have thrown away six roubles for no reason
whatever—simply waste!”
“If she wants it, why not let her have the pleasure?” said
Vassilyev, justifying himself.
“You did not give pleasure to her, but to the ‘Madam.’ They are
told to ask the visitors to stand them treat because it is a profit to
the keeper.”
“Behold the mill...” hummed the artist, “in ruins now....”
Going into the next house, the friends stopped in the hall and did
not go into the drawing-room. Here, as in the first house, a figure in
a black coat, with a sleepy face like a flunkey’s, got up from a sofa in
the hall. Looking at this flunkey, at his face and his shabby black
coat, Vassilyev thought: “What must an ordinary simple Russian
have gone through before fate flung him down as a flunkey here?
Where had he been before and what had he done? What was
awaiting him? Was he married? Where was his mother, and did she
know that he was a servant here?” And Vassilyev could not help
particularly noticing the flunkey in each house. In one of the houses
—he thought it was the fourth—there was a little spare, frail-looking
flunkey with a watch-chain on his waistcoat. He was reading a
newspaper, and took no notice of them when they went in. Looking
at his face Vassilyev, for some reason, thought that a man with such
a face might steal, might murder, might bear false witness. But the
face was really interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a little
flattened nose, thin compressed lips, and a blankly stupid and at the
same time insolent expression like that of a young harrier overtaking
a hare. Vassilyev thought it would be nice to touch this man’s hair, to
see whether it was soft or coarse. It must be coarse like a dog’s.
III
Having drunk two glasses of porter, the artist became suddenly
tipsy and grew unnaturally lively.
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