But it must also be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful bribes, it resembled a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and listless.
People were killed for anything and nothing, just so.
It happened that men would walk up to a person in broad daylight somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask:
“What’s your name?”
“Fedorov.”
“Aha, Federov?
Then take this!” and they would slit his belly with a knife.
They nicknamed these blades just that in the city— “rippers”; and there were among them names of which the city news seemed actually proud: the two brothers Polishchuk (Mitka and Dundas), Volodka the Greek, Fedor Miller, Captain Dmitriev, Sivocho, Dobrovolski, Shpachek, and many others.
Both day and night on the main streets of the frenzied city stood, moved, and yelled the mob, as though at a fire.
It would be almost impossible to describe what went on in the Yamkas then.
Despite the fact that the madams had increased the staff of their patients to more than double and increased their prices trebly, their poor demented girls could not catch up in satisfying the demands of the drunken, crazed public, which threw money around like chips.
It happened that in the drawing room, filled to overflowing with people, each girl would be awaited for by some seven, eight, at times even ten, men.
It was, truly, some kind of a mad, intoxicated, convulsive time!
And from that very time began all the misfortunes of the Yamkas, which brought them to ruin.
And together with the Yamkas perished also the house, familiar to us, of the stout, old, pale-eyed Anna Markovna.
Chapter 2
The passenger train sped merrily from the south to the north, traversing golden fields of wheat and beautiful groves of oak, careering with rumbling upon iron bridges over bright rivers, leaving behind it whirling clouds of smoke.
In the Coupe of the second class, even with open windows, there was a fearful stuffiness, and it was hot.
The smell of sulphurous smoke irritated the throat.
The rocking and the heat had completely tired out the passengers, save one, a merry, energetic, mobile Hebrew, splendidly dressed, accommodating, sociable and talkative.
He was travelling with a young woman, and it was at once apparent, especially through her, that they were newly-weds; so often did her face flare up with an unexpected colour at every tenderness of her husband, even the least.
And when she raised her eyelashes to look upon him, her eyes would shine like stars, and grow humid.
And her face was as beautiful as only the faces of young Hebrew maidens in love can be beautiful— all tenderly rosy, with rosy lips, rounded out in beautiful innocence, and with eyes so black that their pupils could not be distinguished from the irises.
Unabashed by the presence of three strange people, he showered his caresses upon his companion every minute, and, it must be said, sufficiently coarse ones.
With the unceremoniousness of an owner, with that especial egoism of one in love, who, it would seem, is saying to the whole universe:
“See, how happy we are— this makes you happy also, isn’t that so?”— he would now pass his hand over her leg, which resiliently and in relief stood out beneath her dress, now pinch her on the cheek, now tickle her neck with his stiff, black, turned-up moustache … But, even though he did sparkle with delight, there was still something rapacious, wary, uneasy to be glimpsed in his frequently winking eyes, in the twitching of the upper lip, and in the harsh outline of his shaved, square chin, jutting out, with a scarcely noticeable dent in the middle.
Opposite this infatuated couple were placed three passengers— a retired general, a spare, neat little old man, with pomade on his hair, with curls combed forward to the temples; a stout land-owner, who had taken off his starched collar, but was still gasping from the heat and mopping his face every minute with a wet handkerchief; and a young infantry officer.
The endless talkativeness of Simon Yakovlevich (the young man had already managed to inform his neighbours that he was called Simon Yakovlevich Horizon) tired and irritated the passengers a trifle, just like the buzzing of a fly, that on a sultry summer day rhythmically beats against a window pane of a closed, stuffy room.
But still, he knew how to raise their spirits: he showed tricks of magic; told Hebrew anecdotes, full of a fine humour of their own.
When his wife would go out on the platform to refresh herself, he would tell such things that the general would melt into a beatific smile, the land-owner would neigh, rocking his black-loam stomach, while the sub-lieutenant, a smooth-faced boy, only a year out of school, scarcely controlling his laughter and curiosity, would turn away to one side, that his neighbours might not see him turning red.
His wife tended Horizon with a touching, naive attention; she wiped his face with a handkerchief, waved upon him with a fan, adjusted his cravat every minute.
And his face at these times became laughably supercilious and stupidly self-conceited.
“But allow me to ask,” asked the spare little general, coughing politely, “allow me to ask, my dear sir, what occupation might you pursue?”
“Ah, my God!” with a charming frankness retorted Simon Yakovlevich. “Well, what can a poor Jew do in our time?
It’s a bit of a travelling salesman and a commission broker by me.
At the present time I’m far from business.
You— he! he! he!— understand yourselves, gentlemen.
A honeymoon— don’t turn red, Sarochka— it don’t repeat itself three times in a year.
But afterwards I’ll have to travel and work a great deal.
Here we’ll come with Sarochka to town, will pay the visits to her relatives, and then again on the road.
On my first trip I’m thinking of taking my wife.
You know, sort of a wedding journey.
I’m a representative from Sidris and two English firms.
Wouldn’t you like to have a look? Here are the samples with me … ”
He very rapidly took out of a small, elegant case of yellow leather a few long cardboard folding books, and with the dexterity of a tailor began to unfold them, holding one end, from which their folds fell downward with a light crackling.
“Look, what splendid samples: they don’t give in to foreign ones at all.
Please notice.
Here, for instance, is Russian and here English tricot, or here, cangan and cheviot.
Compare, feel it, and you’ll be convinced that the Russian samples almost don’t give in to the foreign.
Why, that speaks of progress, of the growth of culture.