She understood, slowly, scarcely perceptibly, lowered her eyelashes as a sign of consent, and, when she again raised them, Platonov, who almost without looking had seen this silent dialogue, was struck by that expression of malice and menace in her eyes which she sped the back of the departing Ramses.
Having waited for five minutes she got up, said
“Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” and went out, swinging her short orange skirt.
“Well, now?
Is it your turn, Lichonin?” asked the reporter banteringly.
“No, brother, you’re mistaken!” said Lichonin and clacked his tongue. “And I’m not doing it out of conviction or on principle, either … No!
I, as an anarchist, proclaim the gospel that the worse things are, the better … But, fortunately, I am a gambler and spend all my temperament on gaming; on that account simple squeamishness speaks louder within me than this same unearthly feeling.
But it’s amazing our thoughts coincided.
I just wanted to ask you about the same thing.”
“I— no.
Sometimes, if I become very much tired out, I sleep here over night.
I take from Isaiah Savvich the key to his little room and sleep on the divan.
But all the girls here are already used to the fact that I am a being of the third sex.”
“And really … never? … ”
“Never.”
“Well, what’s right is right!” exclaimed Nhira. “Sergei Ivanich is like a holy hermit.”
“Previously, some five years ago, I experienced this also,” continued Platonov. “But, do you know, it’s really too tedious and disgusting.
Something on the nature of these flies which the actor gentleman just represented.
They’re stuck together on the window sill, and then in some sort of fool wonder scratch their backs with their little hind legs and fly apart forever.
And to play at love here? … Well, for that I’m no hero out of their sort of novel.
I’m not handsome, am shy with women, uneasy, and polite.
While here they thirst for savage passions, bloody jealousy, tears, poisonings, beatings, sacrifices,— in a word, hysterical romanticism.
And it’s easy to understand why.
The heart of woman always wants love, while they are told of love every day with various sour, drooling words.
Involuntarily one wants pepper in one’s love.
One no longer wants words of passion, but tragically-passionate deeds.
And for that reason thieves, murderers, souteners and other riff-raff will always be their lovers.”
“And most important of all,” added Platonov, “that would at once spoil for me all the friendly relations which have been so well built up.”
“Enough of joking!” incredulously retorted Lichonin. “Then what compels you to pass days and nights here?
Were you a writer— it would be a different matter.
It’s easy to find an explanation; well, you’re gathering types or something … observing life … After the manner of that German professor who lived for three years with monkeys, in order to study closely their language and manners.
But you yourself said that you don’t indulge in writing?”
“It isn’t that I don’t indulge, but I simply don’t know how— I can’t.”
“We’ll write that down.
Now let’s suppose another thing— that you come here as an apostle of a better, honest life, in the nature of a, now, saviour of perishing souls.
You know, as in the dawn of Christianity certain holy fathers instead of standing on a column for thirty years or living in a cave in the woods, went to the market places, into houses of mirth, to the harlots and scaramuchios.
But you aren’t inclined that way.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why, the devil take it, do you hang around here?
I can see very well that a great deal here is revolting and oppressive and painful to your own self.
For example, this fool quarrel with Boris or this flunky who beats a woman, and— , in general, the constant contemplation of every kind of filth, lust, bestiality, vulgarity, drunkenness.
Well, now, since you say so— I believe that you don’t give yourself up to lechery.
But then, still more incomprehensible to me is your modus vivendi, to express myself in the style of leading articles.”
The reporter did not answer at once:
“You see,” he began speaking slowly, with pauses, as though for the first time lending ear to his thoughts and weighing them. “You see, I’m attracted and interested in this life by its … how shall I express it? … its fearful, stark truth.
Do you understand, it’s as though all the conventional coverings were ripped off it.
There is no falsehood, no hypocrisy, no sanctimoniousness, there are no compromises of any sort, neither with public opinion, nor with the importunate authority of our forefathers, nor with one’s own conscience.
No illusions of any kind, nor any kind of embellishments!
Here she is— ’I!
A public woman, a common vessel, a cloaca for the drainage of the city’s surplus lust.