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Updated: May 28, 2025
Some of them had attempted to save women.... "All these not very numerous attempts," thought Vassilyev, "can be divided into three groups. Some, after buying the woman out of the brothel, took a room for her, bought her a sewing-machine, and she became a semptress.
Everything was ordinary, prosaic, and uninteresting. Only one thing faintly stirred his curiosity the terrible, as it were intentionally designed, bad taste which was visible in the cornices, in the absurd pictures, in the dresses, in the bunch of ribbons. There was something characteristic and peculiar in this bad taste. "How poor and stupid it all is!" thought Vassilyev.
He was followed by the tall, stout "madam," who was shouting in a shrill voice: "Nobody has given you leave to slap girls on the cheeks! We have visitors better than you, and they don't fight! Impostor!" A hubbub arose. Vassilyev was frightened and turned pale. In the next room there was the sound of bitter, genuine weeping, as though of someone insulted.
"Oh, just to talk...." Vassilyev longed to talk to the young lady about many things.
For one evening anyway live like a human being!" "But I haven't said anything..." said Vassilyev, laughing. "Am I refusing to?" There was a warmth inside him from the vodka. He looked with softened feelings at his friends, admired them and envied them. In these strong, healthy, cheerful people how wonderfully balanced everything is, how finished and smooth is everything in their minds and souls!
It seemed to him hot and stifling, and his heart began throbbing slowly but violently, like a hammer one! two! three! "Let us go away!" he said, pulling the artist by his sleeve. "Wait a little; let me finish." While the artist and the medical student were finishing the quadrille, to avoid looking at the women, Vassilyev scrutinized the musicians.
The medical student disappeared soon after. "Yes, one must make an effort to understand, one mustn't be like this...." Vassilyev went on thinking. And he began gazing at each of the women with strained attention, looking for a guilty smile.
The latter, with the air of completely comprehending the tears and the despair, of feeling himself a specialist in that line, went up to Vassilyev and, without a word, gave him some medicine to drink; and then, when he was calmer, undressed him and began to investigate the degree of sensibility of the skin, the reflex action of the knees, and so on. And Vassilyev felt easier.
The snowflakes whirled thickly round Vassilyev and hung upon his beard, his eyelashes, his eyebrows.... The cabmen, the horses, and the passers-by were white. "And how can the snow fall in this street!" thought Vassilyev. "Damnation take these houses!"
Getting no answer, he stood for a minute, pondered, and answered himself in Little Russian: "Nay. The confounded fellow has gone to the University." And he went away. Vassilyev lay down on the bed and, thrusting his head under the pillow, began crying with agony, and the more freely his tears flowed the more terrible his mental anguish became.
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