Fifty-Two Stories

“Take your coatses off, gentlemen!” the lackey said sternly. “It’s not done like that.”

Besides the blonde there was another woman in the room, very plump and tall, with a non-Russian face and bare arms. She was sitting by the piano and laying out a game of patience on her knees. She paid no attention at all to the visitors.

“Where are the other young ladies?” asked the medic.

“They’re having tea,” said the blonde. “Stepan,” she shouted, “go tell the young ladies that some students have come!”

A little later a third girl came into the room. This one was wearing a bright red dress with blue stripes. Her face was made up heavily and ineptly, her forehead was hidden behind her hair, her eyes stared unblinking and frightened. On coming in, she immediately began to sing a song in a loud, crude contralto. Behind her appeared a fourth young lady, then a fifth…

In all this Vassilyev saw nothing either new or intriguing. It seemed to him that this room, the piano, the mirror in its cheap gilt frame, the aiglet, the dress with blue stripes, and these dull, indifferent faces, he had already seen somewhere, and more than once. But of the darkness, the silence, the secrecy, the guilty smile that he had expected to meet here and that frightened him, he saw not even a trace.

Everything was ordinary, prosaic, and uninteresting. Only one thing slightly aroused his curiosity—the terrible, as if purposely contrived tastelessness that could be seen in the cornices, the absurd paintings, the dresses, the aiglet. In this tastelessness there was something characteristic, distinctive.

“How poor and stupid it all is!” thought Vassilyev. “What in all this rubbish I see now can tempt a normal man, urge him to commit a terrible sin—to buy a living human being for a rouble? I can understand any sin for the sake of glamour, beauty, grace, passion, taste, but here what is there? For the sake of what do people sin here? However…better not to think!”

“Beardy, treat me to some porter!” the blonde addressed him.

Vassilyev suddenly became embarrassed.

“With pleasure…,” he said, bowing politely. “Only pardon me, ma’am, but I…I won’t drink with you. I don’t drink.”

Five minutes later the friends were already on their way to another house.

“So, why did you order porter?” the medic said angrily. “Some millionaire! To throw away six roubles just like that, for nothing, to the wind!”

“If she wants it, why not give her that pleasure?” Vassilyev justified himself.

“You gave pleasure not to her, but to the madam. The madams get them to ask for treats, because they profit from it.”

“ ‘Behold the mill…,’ ” the artist sang. “ ‘Already ’tis in ruin…’ ”

On coming to the second house, the friends only stood in the front hall, but did not go into the reception room. Just as in the first house, a figure in a frock coat and with a sleepy lackey face rose from a divan in the front hall. Looking at this lackey, at his face and shabby frock coat, Vassilyev thought: “How much must an ordinary, simple Russian man live through before fate brings him here as a lackey? Where was he before, and what did he do? What awaits him? Is he married? Where is his mother, and does she know that he works here as a lackey?” And now in each house Vassilyev involuntarily paid attention first of all to the lackey. In one of the houses, the fourth in line it seemed, the lackey was a small, scrawny, dried-up man with a watch chain on his waistcoat. He was reading The Leaflet⁴ and paid no attention to the men coming in. Looking at his face, Vassilyev thought for some reason that a man with such a face could steal, and kill, and lie under oath. And in fact the face was interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a flattened little nose, thin, tight lips, and a dull and at the same time insolent expression, like a young hound chasing down a hare. Vassilyev thought it would be nice to touch this lackey’s hair: was it stiff or soft? Most likely stiff, like a dog’s.

III

The artist, having tossed off two glasses of porter, somehow suddenly became drunk and unnaturally animated.

“Let’s go to another!” he commanded, waving his arms. “I’ll take you to the best one!”

Having brought his friends to the house which in his opinion was the best, he expressed a firm desire to dance a quadrille. The medic began to grumble about having to pay the musicians a rouble, but agreed to be his vis-à-vis. They began to dance.