So also not in vain passed for Gladishev the history of his elder brother, who had just come out of a military school into one of the conspicuous grenadier regiments; and, being on leave until such time when it would be possible for him to spread his wings, lived in two separate rooms with his family.
At that time Niusha, a chambermaid, was in their service; at times they jestingly called her signorita Anita— a seductive black-haired girl, who, if she were to change costumes, could in appearance be taken for a dramatic actress, or a princess of the royal blood, or a political worker.
Kolya’s mother manifestly countenanced the fact that Kolya’s brother, half in jest, half in earnest, was allured by this girl.
Of course, she had only the sole, holy, maternal calculation: If it were destined, after all, for her Borenka to fall, then let him give his purity, his innocence, his first physical inclination, not to a prostitute, not to a street-walker, not to a seeker of adventures, but to a pure girl.
Of course, only a disinterested, unreasoning, truly-maternal feeling guided her.
Kolya at that time was living through the epoch of llanos, pampases, Apaches, track-finders, and a chief by the name of
“Black Panther”; and, of course, attentively kept track of the romance of his brother, and made his own syllogisms; at times only too correct, at times fantastic.
After six months, from behind a door, he was the witness— or more correctly the auditor— of an outrageous scene.
The wife of the general, always so respectable and restrained, was yelling in her boudoir at signorita Anita, and cursing in the words of a cab-driver: the signorita was in the fifth month of pregnancy.
If she had not cried, then, probably, they would simply have given her smart-money, and she would have gone away in peace; but she was in love with the young master, did not demand anything, and for that reason they drove her away with the aid of the police.
In the fifth or sixth class many of Kolya’s comrades had already tasted of the tree of knowledge of evil.
At that time it was considered in their corpus an especial, boastful masculine chic to call all secret things by their own names.
Arkasha Shkar contracted a disease, not dangerous, but still venereal; and he became for three whole months the object of worship of all the seniors— at that time there were no squads yet.
And many of them visited brothels; and, really, about their sprees they spoke far more handsomely and broadly than the hussars of the time of Denis Davidov.[23] These debauches were esteemed by them the last word in valour and maturity.
And so it happened once, that they did not exactly persuade Gladishev to go to Anna Markovna, but rather he himself had begged to go, so weakly had he resisted temptation.
This evening he always recalled with horror, with aversion; and dimly, just like some heavy dream.
With difficulty he recalled, how in the cab, to get up courage, he had drunk rum, revoltingly smelling of real bedbugs; how qualmish this beastly drink made him feel; how he had walked into the big hall, where the lights of the lustres and the candelabra on the walls were turning round in fiery wheels; where the women moved as fantastic pink, blue, violet splotches, and the whiteness of their necks, bosoms and arms flashed with a blinding, spicy, victorious splendour.
Some one of the comrades whispered something in the ear of one of these fantastic figures.
She ran up to Kolya and said:
“Listen, you good-looking little cadet, your comrades are saying, now, that you’re still innocent … Let’s go … I’ll teach you everything.”
The phrase was said in a kindly manner; but this phrase the walls of Anna Markovna’s establishment had already heard several thousand times.
Further, that took place which it was so difficult and painful to recall, that in the middle of his recollections Kolya grew tired, and with an effort of the will turned back the imagination to something else.
He only remembered dimly the revolving and spreading circles from the light of the lamp; persistent kisses; disconcerting contacts— then a sudden sharp pain, from which one wanted both to die in enjoyment and to cry out in terror; and then with wonder he saw his pale shaking hands, which could not, somehow, button his clothes.
Of course, all men have experienced this primordial tristia post coitus; but this great moral pain, very serious in its significance and depth, passes very rapidly, remaining, however, with the majority for a long time— sometimes for all life— in the form of wearisomeness and awkwardness after certain moments.
In a short while Kolya became accustomed to it; grew bolder, became familiarized with woman, and rejoiced very much over the fact that when he came into the establishment, all the girls, and Verka before all, would call out:
“Jennechka, your lover has come!”
It was pleasant, in relating this to his comrades, to be plucking at an imaginary moustache.
Chapter 3
It was still early— about nine— of a rainy August evening.
The illuminated drawing room in the house of Anna Markovna was almost empty.
Only near the very doors a young telegraph clerk was sitting, his legs shyly and awkwardly squeezed under his chair, and was trying to start with the thick-fleshed Katie that worldly, unconstrained conversation which is laid down as the proper thing in polite society at quadrille, during the intermissions between the figures of the dance.
And, also, the long-legged, aged Roly-Poly wandered over the room, sitting down now next one girl, now another, and entertaining them all with his fluent chatter.
When Kolya Gladishev walked into the front hall, the first to recognize him was the round-eyed Verka, dressed in her usual jockey costume.
She began to twirl round and round, to clap her palms, and called out:
“Jennka, Jennka, come quicker, your little lover has come to you … The little cadet … And what a handsome little fellow!”
But Jennka was not in the drawing room at this time; a stout head-conductor had already managed to get hold of her.
This elderly, sedate, and majestic man was a very convenient guest, because he never lingered in the house for more than twenty minutes, fearing to let his train go by; and, even so, glanced at his watch all the while.
During this time he regularly drank down four bottles of beer, and, going away, infallibly gave the girl half a rouble for candy and Simeon twenty kopecks for drink-money.
Kolya Gladishev was not alone, but with a comrade of the same school, Petrov, who was stepping over the threshold of a brothel for the first time, having given in to the tempting persuasions of Gladishev.
Probably, during these minutes, he found himself in the same wild, absurd, feverish state which Kolya himself had gone through a year and a half ago, when his legs had shook, his mouth had grown dry, and the lights of the lamps had danced before him in revolving wheels.
Simeon took their great-coats from them and hid them separately, on the side, that the shoulder straps and the buttons might not be seen.
It must be said, that this stern man, who did not approve of students because of their free-and-easy facetiousness and incomprehensible style in conversation, also did not like when just such boys in uniform appeared in the establishment.
“Well, what’s the good of it?” he would at times say sombrely to his colleagues by profession. “What if a whippersnapper like that comes, and runs right up nose to nose against his superiors?
Smash, and they’ve closed up the establishment!
There, like Lupendikha’s three years back.
Of course, it’s nothing that they closed it up— she transferred it in another name right off; and when they sentenced her to sit in jail for a year and a half, why, it came to a pre-etty penny for her.
She had to shell out four hundred for Kerbesh alone … And then it also happens: a little pig of that kind will cook up some sort of disease for himself and start in whining:
‘Oh, papa!
Oh, mamma!
I am dying!’ ’Tell me, you skunk, where you got it?’