The whole day, passed together, had shaken them into an accustomed, tenacious herd.
It seemed that if even one were to go away from the company, a certain attained equilibrium would be disturbed and could not be restored afterwards.
And so they dallied and stamped upon the sidewalk, near the exit of the tavern’s underground vault, interfering with the progress of the infrequent passers-by.
They discussed hypocritically where else they might go to wind up the night.
It proved to be too far to the Tivoli Garden, and in addition to that one also had to pay for admission tickets, and the prices in the buffet were outrageous, and the program had ended long ago.
Volodya Pavlov proposed going to him— he had a dozen of beer and a little cognac home.
But it seemed a bore to all of them to go in the middle of the night to a family apartment, to enter on tiptoes up the stairs and to talk in whispers all the time.
“Tell you what, brethren … Let’s better ride to the girlies, that will be nearer the mark,” said peremptorily Lichonin, an old student, a tall, stooping, morose and bearded fellow.
By convictions he was an anarchist— theoretic, but by avocation a passionate gambler at billiards, races and cards— a gambler with a very broad, fatalistic sweep.
Only the day before he had won a thousand roubles at macao in the Merchants’ Club, and this money was still burning a hole in his pockets.
“And why not?
Right-o!” somebody sustained him. “Let’s go, comrades?”
“Is it worth while?
Why, this is an all night affair … ” spoke another with a false prudence and an insincere fatigue.
And a third said through a feigned yawn:
“Let’s better go home, gentlemen … a-a-a … go bye-bye … That’s enough for to-day.”
“You won’t work any wonders when you’re asleep,” Lichonin remarked sneeringly. “Herr professor, are you coming?”
But the sub-professor Yarchenko was obstinate and seemed really angered, although, perhaps, he himself did not know what was lurking within him, in some dark cranny of his soul.
“Leave me in peace, Lichonin.
As I see it, gentlemen, this is downright and plain swinishness— that which you are about to do.
We have passed the time so wonderfully, amiably and simply, it seems,— but no, you needs must, like drunken cattle, clamber into a cesspool.
I won’t go.”
“Still, if my memory does not play me false,” said Lichonin, with calm causticity, “I recollect that no further back than past autumn we with a certain future Mommsen were pouring in some place or other a jug of ice into a pianoforte, delineating a Bouratian god, dancing the belly-dance, and all that sort of thing?”
Lichonin spoke the truth.
In his student days, and later, being retained at the university, Yarchenko had led the most wanton and crack-brained life.
In all the taverns, cabarets, and other places of amusement his small, fat, roundish little figure, his rosy cheeks, puffed out like those of a painted cupid, and the shining, humid kindly eyes were well known, his hurried, spluttering speech and shrill laughter remembered.
His comrades could never fathom where he found the time to employ in study, but nevertheless he went through all examinations and prescribed work with distinction and from the first course the professors had him in view.
Now Yarchenko was beginning little by little to quit his former comrades and bottle companions.
He had just established the indispensable connections with the professorial circle; the reading of lectures in Roman history for the coming year had been offered him, and not infrequently in conversation he would use the expression current among the sub-professors:
“We, the learned ones!”
The student familiarity, the compulsory companionship, the obligatory participation in all meetings, protests and demonstrations, were becoming disadvantageous to him, embarrassing, and even simply tedious.
But he knew the value of popularity among the younger element, and for that reason could not decide to sever relations abruptly with his former circle.
Lichonin’s words, however, provoked him.
“Oh, my God, what does it matter what we did when we were youngsters?
We stole sugar, soiled our panties, tore the wings off beetles,” Yarchenko began to speak, growing heated, and spluttering. “But there is a limit and a mean to all this.
I, gentlemen, do not presume, of course, to give you counsels and to teach you, but one must be consistent.
We are all agreed that prostitution is one of the greatest calamities of humanity, and are also agreed, that in this evil not the women are guilty, but we, men, because the demand gives birth to the offer.
And therefore if, having drunk a glass of wine too much, I still, notwithstanding my convictions, go to the prostitutes, I am committing a triple vileness: before the unfortunate, foolish woman, whom I subject to the most degrading form of slavery for my filthy rouble; before humanity, because, hiring a public woman for an hour or two for my abominable lust, I through this justify and uphold prostitution; and finally, this is a vileness before one’s own conscience and mind.
And before logic.”
“Phew-ew!” Lichonin let out a long-drawn whistle and chanted in a thin, dismal voice, nodding in time with his head hanging down to one side: “The philosopher is off on our usual stuff: ’A rope— is a common cord.’”
“Of course, there’s nothing easier than to play the tom-fool,” responded Yarchenko. “But in my opinion there is not in the sorrowful life of Russia a more mournful phenomenon than this lackadaisicalness and vitiation of thought.
To-day we will say to ourselves: Eh!
It’s all the same, whether I go to a brothel or whether I do not go, from this one time things will get neither worse nor better.
And after five years we will be saying: Undoubtedly a bribe is a horribly nasty bit of business, but you know— children … the family … And just the same way after ten years we, having remained fortuitous Russian liberals, will be sighing about personal freedom and bowing low before worthless scoundrels, whom we despise, and will be cooling our heels in their ante-rooms.
‘Because, don’t you know,’ we will say, tittering, ‘when you live with wolves, you must howl like a wolf.’
By God, it wasn’t in vain that some minister called the Russian students future head-clerks!”
“Or professors,” Lichonin put in.
“But most important of all,” continued Yarchenko, letting this pointed remark pass by, “most important of all is this, that I have seen all of you to-day on the river and afterwards there … on the other shore … with these charming, fine girls.
How attentive, well-bred, obliging you all were— but scarcely have you taken leave of them, when you are drawn to public women.
Let each one of you imagine for a moment, that we all had been visiting his sisters and straight from them had driven to Yama … What?