Yama Kuprin summary by chapter. Alexander Kuprin’s story “The Pit”, summary

Anna Markovna's establishment is not one of the most luxurious, like, say, Treppel's, but it is not low-class either. In Yama (the former Yamskaya settlement) there were only two more of these. The rest are ruble and fifty-kopeck coins, for soldiers, thieves, and gold miners. Late in May evening, Anna Markovna’s guest room hosted a group of students, with whom was private assistant professor Yarchenko and a reporter from the local newspaper Platonov. The girls had already come out to them, but the men continued the conversation they had started on the street. Platonov said that he had known this establishment and its inhabitants well for a long time. He, one might say, belongs here, but he has never visited any of them. He wanted to enter this little world and understand it from the inside. All the loud phrases about the trade in female meat are nothing in comparison with everyday, business trifles, prosaic everyday life. The horror is that it is not perceived as horror. Bourgeois everyday life - and nothing more. Moreover, in the most incredible way, seemingly incompatible principles converge here: sincere, for example, piety and a natural attraction to crime. Here is Simeon, the local bouncer. Robs prostitutes, beats them, probably a murderer in the past. And he became friends with him through the works of John of Damascus. Extraordinarily religious. Or Anna Markovna. A bloodsucker, a hyena, but the most tender mother. Everything for Bertochka: a horse, an Englishwoman, and forty thousand worth of diamonds. At that time, Zhenya entered the hall, whom Platonov, and both clients and the inhabitants of the house respected for her beauty, mocking audacity and independence. She was excited today and quickly began speaking in conventional jargon with Tamara. However, Platonov understood him: due to the influx of public, Pasha had already been taken into the room more than ten times, and this ended in hysteria and fainting. But as soon as she came to her senses, the hostess sent her back to the guests. The girl was in great demand because of her sexuality. Platonov paid for her so that Pasha could relax in their company: The students soon scattered to their rooms, and Platonov, left alone with Likhonin, an ideological anarchist, continued his story about the local women. As for prostitution as a global phenomenon, it is an insurmountable evil. Lichonin listened sympathetically to Platonov and suddenly declared that he did not want to remain just a sympathetic spectator. He wants to take the girl from here, save her. , - Platonov stated with conviction. , - Zhenya responded to him in tone. . The girl agreed, and Lichonin, having rented her an apartment for ten days from the housekeeper for the whole day, planned to demand her yellow ticket the next day and exchange it for a passport. Taking responsibility for a person’s fate, the student had little idea of ​​the hardships associated with this. His life became complicated from the very first hours. However, his friends agreed to help him develop the rescued one. Lichonin began to teach her arithmetic, geography and history, and he was also responsible for taking her to exhibitions, the theater and popular lectures. Nezheradze began to read to her and teach her to play the guitar, mandolin and zurna. Simanovsky suggested studying Marx, cultural history, physics and chemistry. All this took a lot of time, required considerable funds, but gave very modest results. In addition, brotherly relations with her were not always successful, and she perceived them as disdain for her feminine virtues. To get a yellow ticket from his mistress Lyubin, he had to pay more than five hundred rubles of her debt. The passport cost twenty-five. The relationship of his friends to Lyuba, who became prettier and prettier outside the brothel environment, also became a problem. Soloviev unexpectedly discovered that he was submitting to the charm of her femininity, and Simanovsky more and more often turned to the topic of a materialistic explanation of love between a man and a woman and, when he drew a diagram of this relationship, he leaned so low over the seated Lyuba that he could smell her breasts. But she responded to all his erotic rubbish because she became more and more attached to her Vasil Vasilich. The same one, noticing that Simanovsky liked her, was already thinking about how, having caught them inadvertently, he would create a scene and free himself from a burden that was truly unbearable for him. Lyubka reappeared with Anna Markovna after another extraordinary event. The singer Rovinskaya, known throughout Russia, a large, beautiful woman with green Egyptian eyes, in the company of Baroness Tefting, lawyer Rozanov and the socialite young man Volodya Chaplinsky, out of boredom, toured the establishments of the Yama: first the expensive ones, then the average ones, then the dirtiest ones. After Treppel we went to Anna Markovna and occupied a separate office, where the housekeeper herded the girls. The last to enter was Tamara, a quiet, pretty girl, who had once been a novice in a monastery, and before that someone else, and at least spoke fluent French and German. Everyone knew that she had Senechka, a thief on whom she spent a lot of money. At Elena Viktorovna’s request, the young ladies sang their usual, canonical songs. And everything would have turned out well if the drunken Little Manka had not burst into them. When sober, she was the meekest girl in the entire establishment, but now she fell to the floor and screamed: The Baroness, indignant, said that she patronized a monastery for fallen girls - the Magdalene Orphanage. And then Zhenya appeared, inviting this old fool to leave immediately. Her shelters are worse than a prison, and Tamara said: she knows well that half of decent women are supported, and the rest, older ones, support young boys. Of the prostitutes, hardly one in a thousand had an abortion, and they all did it several times. During Tamara’s tirade, the baroness said in French that she had already seen this face somewhere, and Rovinskaya, also in French, reminded her that in front of them was the chorus girl Margarita, and it was enough to remember Kharkov, the Konyakin hotel, Soloveichik’s entrepreneur. Then the Baroness was not yet a Baroness. Rovinskaya stood up and said that, of course, they would leave and the time would be paid for, but for now she would sing them Dargomyzhsky’s romance. As soon as the singing stopped, the indomitable Zhenya fell on her knees in front of Rovinskaya and began to sob. Elena Viktorovna bent down to kiss her, but she whispered something to her, to which the singer replied that a few months of treatment and everything would pass. After this visit, Tamara inquired about Zhenya’s health. She admitted that she was infected with syphilis, but does not announce it, and every evening she deliberately infects ten to fifteen two-legged scoundrels. The girls began to remember and curse all their most unpleasant or perverse clients. Following this, Zhenya remembered the name of the man to whom her own mother sold her, ten years old. , - she shouted to him, but he answered: , - and then repeated this cry of her soul, like a walking joke. Zoya remembered her school teacher who said that she had to obey him in everything or he would kick her out of school for bad behavior. At that moment Lyubka appeared. Emma Eduardovna, the housekeeper, responded to the request to take her back with abuse and beatings. Zhenya, unable to bear it, grabbed her hair. There was a loud voice in the neighboring rooms, and a fit of hysteria gripped the entire house. Only an hour later, Simeon and two brothers in the profession were able to calm them down, and at the usual hour, the junior housekeeper Zosya shouted: “Cadet Kolya Gladyshev invariably came to Zhenya. And today he was sitting in her room, but she asked him not to rush and did not allow him to kiss her. Finally she said that she was sick and let him thank God: anyone else would not have spared him. After all, those who are paid for love hate those who pay and never feel sorry for them. Kolya sat down on the edge of the bed and covered his face with his hands. Zhenya stood up and crossed him: . - he said. In the morning, Zhenya went to the port, where, leaving the newspaper for a vagabond life, he worked unloading Platonov’s watermelons. She told him about her illness, and he said that, probably, Sabashnikov and a student nicknamed Ramses were infected from it, who shot himself, leaving a note where he wrote that he himself was to blame for what happened, because he took a woman for money, without love. But Sergei Pavlovich, who loves Zhenya, could not resolve her doubts that gripped her after she took pity on Kolya: wasn’t the dream of infecting everyone stupidity, a fantasy? Nothing makes sense. There is only one thing left for her: two days later, during a medical examination, she was found hanged. This smacked of some scandalous glory for the establishment. But now only Emma Eduardovna could worry about this, who finally became the owner, having bought the house from Anna Markovna. She announced to the young ladies that from now on she demands real order and unconditional obedience. Her establishment will be better than Treppel's. She immediately invited Tamara to become her main assistant, but so that Senechka would not appear in the house. Through Rovinskaya and Rezanov, Tamara settled the matter of burying the suicide killer Zhenya according to the Orthodox rite. All the young ladies followed her coffin. Pasha died after Zhenka. She finally fell into dementia and was taken to an insane asylum, where she died. But this was not the end of Emma Eduardovna’s troubles. Tamara and Senka soon robbed a notary, in whom, by playing a married woman in love with him, she inspired complete trust. She mixed sleeping powder with the notary, let Senka into the apartment, and he opened the safe. A year later, Senka was caught in Moscow and betrayed Tamara, who fled with him. Then Vera passed away. Her lover, a military official, squandered government money and decided to shoot himself. Vera wanted to share his fate. In an expensive hotel room after a luxurious feast, he shot at her, became cowardly and only wounded himself. Finally, during one of the fights, Little Manka was killed. The ruin of Emma Eduardovna was completed when a hundred soldiers came to the aid of two brawlers who had been cheated in a neighboring establishment, ruining at the same time all nearby ones. The ruin of Emma Eduardovna was completed when a hundred soldiers came to the aid of two brawlers who had been cheated in a neighboring establishment, ruining at the same time and all nearby. She told him about her illness, and he said that, probably, Sabashnikov and a student nicknamed Ramses were infected from it, who shot himself, leaving a note where he wrote that he himself was to blame for what happened, because he took a woman for money, without love. But Sergei Pavlovich, who loves Zhenya, could not resolve her doubts that gripped her after she took pity on Kolya: wasn’t the dream of infecting everyone stupidity, a fantasy? Nothing makes sense. There is only one thing left for her: two days later, during a medical examination, she was found hanged. This smacked of some scandalous glory for the establishment. But now only Emma Eduardovna could worry about this, who finally became the owner, having bought the house from Anna Markovna. She announced to the young ladies that from now on she demands real order and unconditional obedience. Her establishment will be better than Treppel's. She immediately invited Tamara to become her main assistant, but so that Senechka would not appear in the house. Through Rovinskaya and Rezanov, Tamara settled the matter of burying the suicide killer Zhenya according to the Orthodox rite. All the young ladies followed her coffin. Pasha died after Zhenka. She finally fell into dementia and was taken to an insane asylum, where she died. But this was not the end of Emma Eduardovna’s troubles. Tamara and Senka soon robbed a notary, in whom, by playing a married woman in love with him, she inspired complete trust. She mixed sleeping powder with the notary, let Senka into the apartment, and he opened the safe. A year later, Senka was caught in Moscow and betrayed Tamara, who fled with him. Then Vera passed away. Her lover, a military official, squandered government money and decided to shoot himself. Vera wanted to share his fate. In an expensive hotel room after a luxurious feast, he shot at her, became cowardly and only wounded himself. Finally, during one of the fights, Little Manka was killed. The ruin of Emma Eduardovna was completed when a hundred soldiers came to the aid of two brawlers who had been cheated in a neighboring establishment, ruining at the same time all nearby ones. The ruin of Emma Eduardovna was completed when a hundred soldiers came to the aid of two brawlers who had been cheated in a neighboring establishment, ruining at the same time and all nearby.

Alexander Kuprin wrote this story for six whole years. The summary of "The Pit" can be quite poor. Indeed, despite the slippery subject matter, this work contains a lot of touching details, cute sketches and important details. The author found this topic long before starting work and systematically thought about it for two years. The theme of corrupt love has never been explored as deeply by Russian writers as Kuprin did. The summary of “The Pit” is in significant events and main plot twists, but even through them one can see how chastely and with what love for humanity this story was written.

Composition

The story consists of three unequal parts. The first, where the reader meets the characters, has twelve chapters. Already here it becomes clear that there will not be a single plot core here, the content is so diverse. Kuprin's "The Pit" is an absolutely artistic work, despite its journalistic positioning: the absence of a main character, the chronicle nature of the paintings of the selected layer of the social environment, observation of detail and apparent descriptiveness.

The second part is more massive, and this is no coincidence. In seventeen chapters, conflicts are brewing, solutions are being sought, and the culmination of hopelessness is brewing. Lichonin and Platonov continue to debate about the reasons for the viability of such a social ulcer as prostitution. The subtle nuances of the master of Russian prose cannot be revealed in the story “The Pit” by a brief summary. The fate of Lyuba, like a guinea pig undergoing medical experiments, is an example of this: how can you talk about this in a nutshell?

Through the descriptiveness of the essay, through all the episodes that seem not too connected with each other, the author’s philosophical concept runs through. The little man cannot defeat social evil, since he himself is an episode in this endless world. That’s why I called mine “Yama”. The summary of the story is the tragedy in the fate of the residents of the two-ruble establishment, who were mostly brought to this place by a bitter fate - each woman has her own. The third part contains only nine chapters, during which the action does not wind down, but develops quickly, so that in the last chapter we can put a dot at the end of each tragedy.

Before you begin to analyze the chapter-by-chapter summary of Kuprin’s story “The Pit,” you need to note the plot connections between the chapters and parts. One of the main ones is the experiment of student Lichonin with Lyuba. The reader has to decide whether he acted out of true love and Christian compassion, or whether simply curiosity pushed him into the role of arbiter of destinies. Throughout the entire second part of the story, the history of these relationships is examined, without letting the other characters out of sight.

Form

Kuprin provided this story with many of the features of a novella, especially the last two parts, inserting episodes that were not related to the plot (the merchant Horizon, the singer Rovinskaya and the lawyer Ryazanov). The naturalism of such genres, very fashionable just half a century before Kuprin wrote this story, here has all the signs of high artistry, the first part is especially good in this regard. The main thing for the reader remains the author’s approach to the topic: honest, caring. Deeply sympathetic, revealing the position of a true artist-humanist, who raised the “base” to unimaginable heights, this is how both the author himself and his story - Kuprin, “The Pit” showed themselves.

Summary reviews were, of course, very different. People don’t really like to look at themselves from the point of view of objectivity, and those who are “not in the know,” that is, outsiders, usually do not delve into such an environment and are disdainful. Yes, the social problems raised in the story are, of course, unpleasant. However, the power of art is glorified here by Kuprin, and social depravity is castigated, and he thinks about a new educational system that will eradicate existing ignorance. Here are dreams of revolution, and the strength of Russian character, and the eternal theme of the isolation of the intelligentsia from the people - all this is Kuprin. "Pit". A summary is hardly capable of containing this immensity.

Images

The inhabitants of Anna Markovna’s establishment come off the pages as if they were alive, so artistically and vividly did Kuprin characterize them. Here is a gallery of different types: the meek and quiet Manya Little; if sober, Pasha is unhappy in everything; Tamara, desperately in love with the thief; Zhenya, immersed in another book. The portraits are as colorful as they are static. Only Zhenya and Lyuba have a sharply developing line in the narrative, the rest are a swamp. This is not because Kuprin could not twist each one into the plot. It simply would not correspond to the truth of life. The whole life of these women is not completely human, they live at the level of instincts. That’s why the writer Kuprin called his work “The Pit.”

A summary of the chapters will not allow enough to be said about other seemingly minor characters, such as the housekeeper Elsa Eduardovna, the owner of the establishment Anna Markovna, and her henpecked husband Isai Savvich. But Kuprin painted these images absolutely masterfully accurately. And the reporter Platonov, through whose lips the author himself speaks, is also an image worthy of deep disclosure. The spiritual poverty of society will also remain behind the scenes, if we highlight a brief summary in the story “The Pit”.

Institution

Anna Markovna has an establishment that is not one of the most luxurious, but also not one of the last: soldiers, thieves and other “golden companies” come here for fifty dollars. However, morals and lifestyle are the same almost everywhere. Payment difference. The action begins with the fact that late in the evening guests gathered at Anna Markovna’s place: reporter Platonov and private assistant professor Yarchenko. The guests continue the conversation they started along the way, although the girls are already waiting for them.

Platonov is his own man here, but he has never had fun with any of the inhabitants; he has an almost professional interest - to understand this small and stuffy world from the inside. The whole horror is that society does not perceive this as horror: the everyday life of the bourgeoisie, and that’s all. Here such contrasts as piety and crime coexist. The bouncer Simeon is religious to the extreme, which does not stop him from beating and robbing girls. The owner of the house is the last hyena with her powerless subordinates, but she madly loves her daughter, she is both kind and generous with her.

Zhenya

A girl appears. whom both clients and friends in the craft love and respect - she is beautiful, mocking, daring and independent, as much as possible here. This is Zhenya. She is worried that the girl Pasha is on the verge, because more than ten clients have already passed through her.

Zhenya says that as soon as Pasha’s fainting and hysteria pass, the hostess again sends her to the guests, because Pasha is in demand (even mild mental retardation distinguishes patients with uncontrollable sexuality; this is exactly the case with the girl).

Likhonin

Platonov forks out, which gives Pasha a rest. The students go to the rooms with the ladies, and Lichonin (anarchist) and Platonov continue the conversation about the fact that such social evil is ineradicable. The latter talks a lot about the local girls, and Lichonin sympathizes. This is a man of action. He decides to save at least one girl from here.

Platonov dissuades him, because he is sure that the girl will soon return here with an even greater mental wound. Zhenya agrees with Platonov. But Lichonin did not calm down: he asked Lyuba if she would like to leave here with him and open, for example, her own dining room. Lichonin pays a daily fee for her and the next day demands a passport from Anna Markovna Lyubin in exchange for

Responsibility

Student Lichonin did not expect that the hardships of liberating Lyuba would cost him so dearly. His friends, however, agreed to help him adapt the girl: Lichonin himself undertook to teach her history, geography and arithmetic, take her to the theater, exhibitions and lectures, Nezheradze teaches her music and reads Rustaveli’s poem, Simanovsky - physics, chemistry and cultural history. The results are very modest, although they take an exorbitant amount of money and time. In addition, Anna Markovna literally robbed Lichonin before returning Lyubin’s passport to him.

Students try to treat Lyuba as a sister, but she doesn’t understand, considers her neglectful, and stops feeling desirable, beautiful and feminine. She refuses everyone’s claims because she becomes attached to Lichonin, but her love strains him. He even dreams of catching one of his friends with Lyuba in order to have a reason to break up. The burden turns out to be too much for him. And so, as Platonov and Zhenya predicted, Lyuba returns back.

Rovinskaya

The famous singer Rovinskaya, a beautiful and talented woman, in the company of friends, including Baroness Tefting, Chaplinsky and Rozanov, bored, travels around the hot spots of the city. Several eloquently described establishments clearly show that Anna Markovna’s establishment is not the only “pit” in the city.

Summary of the scene in the brothel with the German women: the prostitutes do not even realize that they are living dishonest lives. They do not see any sin in their occupation, since they do not have permanent lovers, like these dirty Russians in neighboring establishments, and what they earn, they put in the bank for a future decent life. It's just their job. Business, nothing personal.

The power of art

Anna Markovna had her share of scandals, but the atmosphere was much warmer, one might say, soulful. The ladies first quarreled, and Tamara understood the Baroness’s French speech and replied in pure Parisian dialect that, they say, yes, you and I really knew each other - in Kharkov, where you were also a chorus girl, like me, but were not a baroness. It was she, the future baroness, who had one of the lyric tenors in the choir...

But Tamara has a thief named Senechka. She loves him. After the angry speeches of Tamara, Zhenya, and the drunken Manya Little, the situation becomes tense. The ladies are getting ready to leave, but Rovinskaya decides to sing a romance when they say goodbye. She knows well how to captivate any audience. And she succeeds. Everyone is silent in shock and confusion, and Zhenya falls to her knees and kisses the hands of the one she had just angrily denounced. Great is the power of art. Zhenya sobs, Rovinskaya picks her up and tries to kiss her. Zhenya whispers something to her, and Rovinskaya replies that it’s nothing, she needs a few months of treatment, and everything will pass.

Riot

Zhenya admits to Tamara that she is infected with syphilis, but hides it from everyone because she wants to infect more of these two-legged nonhumans. They curse their pervert clients. And then they leave everything as it is, that is, Zhenya does not go for treatment. She remembers the man to whom her own mother sold her at the age of ten. Zoya remembers the teacher who promised to kick her out of school if she didn’t listen.

And then Lyuba returns. But the housekeeper doesn’t want to let her in, she swears and fights. Zhenya rushes into a fight for her friend. Other girls run out of the neighboring rooms screaming, and hysteria reigns in the house. After some time, Simeon comes with his friends and influences the situation physically. The girls calm down.

Repentance

Cadet Gladyshev comes to Zhenya, only to her. But today she is in no hurry to caress the young man, she admits that she is sick and says that the other will not spare him, because all prostitutes hate their clients and never feel sorry for anyone. She says goodbye to the boy forever and in the morning goes to the port to see Platonov in order to warn him that his friends are infected: Ramses, who shot himself when he learned about the shameful disease, and who only blamed himself because he took a woman without love, and Sabashnikov .

Zhenya repents, she no longer dreams of infecting more of these terrible males, because she understands that they are also people, each with their own sorrows and problems. Platonov cannot console the girl. And on the third day Zhenya was found hanged. Everything is moving towards a denouement: the most poignant moment of the story was the episode of Zhenya’s repentance. This is the summary Kuprin chose for his story. The “pit” as such is collapsing, everything is falling into decay. The housekeeper bought the establishment from Anna Markovna, and now she cannot do anything about the events that are happening, which not only cast a shadow on the establishment, they shroud it in notoriety.

Tamara and others

The girl was offered to become an assistant to the new owner, with the condition that she give up the house to her dear friend Senechka. Tamara is looking for Rezanov and Rovinskaya, who help bury Zhenya according to the Orthodox rite, despite the fact that she is a suicide. Following Zhenya, Pasha dies, driven into terminal dementia by exhausting work. She is taken to an insane asylum, where she dies almost immediately. Tamara is also not so simple. She gains the notary's trust and slips sleeping pills into his drink. Then he lets his dear friend Senechka into the apartment, who opens the safe. Senechka is arrested a year later, and he gives Tamara to the police.

Vera dies absurdly: her lover, a military man, embezzled the treasury and decides to shoot himself. Vera is ready to share his fate. They say goodbye to life beautifully with a luxurious feast, after which the man decisively kills Vera, but not himself, he doesn’t succeed. Manya Little dies in the fight. And the establishment comes to a complete end when soldiers - a whole hundred - come to the aid of two offended brawlers. This is how Kuprin ended his story. The summary of “The Pit” is also quite interesting, although, of course, it lacks the details talentedly captured by the writer.

Still from the film “Kuprin. Pit" (2014)

Anna Markovna's establishment is not one of the most luxurious, like, say, Treppel's, but it is not low-class either. In Yama (the former Yamskaya settlement) there are only two of these. The rest are ruble and fifty-kopeck coins, for soldiers, thieves, and gold miners.

The lifestyle, morals and customs are almost the same in all thirty-odd establishments, the only difference being the fees charged for short-term love.

Late on a May evening, a group of students are having fun in Anna Markovna’s guest room. In their company are private assistant professor Yarchenko and a reporter from the local newspaper Platonov. The girls have already come out to them, but the men continue the conversation they started on the street.

Platonov says that he has known this establishment and its inhabitants well for a long time. He, one might say, belongs here, but he has never visited any of the “girls.” He wants to enter this little world and understand it from the inside. All the loud phrases about the trade in female meat are nothing in comparison with everyday, business trifles, prosaic everyday life. The horror is that it is not perceived as horror. Bourgeois everyday life - and nothing more. Moreover, in the most incredible way, seemingly incompatible principles converge here: sincere piety and a natural attraction to crime.

Here is Simeon, the local bouncer. He robs prostitutes, beats them, is probably a murderer in the past, but he loves the works of John of Damascus and is extraordinarily religious. Or Anna Markovna. A bloodsucker, a hyena, but the most tender and generous mother for her daughter Bertha.

At this time, Zhenya enters the hall, whom Platonov, the other clients and the inhabitants of the house respect for her beauty, mocking audacity and independence. The excited girl speaks very quickly in conventional jargon with Tamara, but Platonov understands him: Zhenya is worried about her friend Pasha. Due to the influx of public, she had already been taken into the room more than ten times, and this ended in hysterics and fainting. But as soon as the girl comes to her senses, the hostess sends her back to the guests. The girl is in great demand because of her sexuality.

Platonov pays for her so that Pasha can rest in their company. The students soon disperse to their rooms, and Platonov, left alone with Vasily Vasilich Likhonin, an ideological anarchist, continues his story about the local women. As for prostitution as a global phenomenon, it is an insurmountable evil.

Lichonin listens sympathetically to Platonov and suddenly declares that he would not like to remain just a sympathetic spectator. He wants to take the girl from here, save her. Platonov is convinced that the girl will come back, and Zhenya also thinks so. Lichonin asks another girl, Lyuba, if she wants to get out of here and open her own dining room. The girl agrees. Lichonin hires her for the whole day, and the next day he plans to demand from Anna Markovna her yellow ticket and exchange it for a passport.

Taking responsibility for a person’s fate, the student has little idea of ​​the associated hardships. His life becomes complicated from the very first hours. However, his friends agree to help him develop the rescued one. Lichonin begins to teach her arithmetic, geography and history, and he is also responsible for taking her to exhibitions, the theater and popular lectures. Nezheradze reads “The Knight in the Skin of a Tiger” to her and teaches her to play the guitar, mandolin and zurna. Simanovsky suggests studying Marx's Capital, cultural history, physics and chemistry.

All this takes a lot of time, requires a lot of money, but gives very modest results. Students try to maintain brotherly relations with Lyuba, but she perceives them as disdain for her feminine virtues.

To get a yellow ticket from the mistress Lyubin, Lichonin has to pay off all the girl’s debts, and the passport costs a tidy sum. The relationship of Lichonin’s friends to Lyuba, who looks prettier outside the brothel setting, also becomes a problem. But Lyuba refuses everyone, because she becomes more and more attached to her Vasil Vasilich. The same one, noticing that her friends like her, is already thinking about catching them inadvertently, causing a scene and freeing himself from a burden that is too much for him.

Lyuba reappears at Anna Markovna's after another extraordinary event. The singer Rovinskaya, known throughout Russia, a large, beautiful woman with green Egyptian eyes, in the company of Baroness Tefting, lawyer Rozanov and the socialite young man Volodya Chaplinsky, out of boredom, visits all the establishments of the Pit and finally appears at Anna Markovna’s.

The company occupies a separate office, where the housekeeper herds the girls. The last one is driven by Tamara, a quiet, pretty girl who was once a novice in a monastery and speaks fluent French and German. Everyone knew that she had a pimp, Senechka, a thief, on whom she spent a lot of money.

If you love a person, then everything should be nice from him. He's going to prison, and you're going to prison with him. He has become a thief, and you help him. He is a beggar, but you are still with him.

At Elena Viktorovna’s request, the young ladies sing their usual songs. Suddenly, a drunken Little Manka bursts into the office. When sober, she is the meekest girl in the establishment, but now she falls to the floor and shouts: “Hurray! New girls have arrived!” The indignant baroness says that she patronizes a monastery for fallen girls - the Magdalene Orphanage. Zhenya invites this old fool to leave immediately. Her shelters are worse than a prison, and Tamara declares: she knows well that half of decent women are supported, and the rest, older ones, support young boys. Of the prostitutes, hardly one in a thousand had an abortion, and they all did it several times.

During Tamara’s tirade, the Baroness says in French that she has already seen this face somewhere, and Rovinskaya, also in French, reminds her that in front of them is the chorus girl Margarita from Kharkov. Then Rovinskaya was not yet a baroness.

Rovinskaya gets up, promises to leave and pay for the girls’ time, and as a farewell she sings to them Dargomyzhsky’s romance “We parted proudly...”. As soon as the singing stops, the indomitable Zhenya falls to her knees in front of Rovinskaya and sobs. Elena Viktorovna bends down to kiss her, but she quietly asks her something. The singer replies that a few months of treatment and everything will pass.

After this visit, Tamara inquires about Zhenya’s health. She admits that she has contracted syphilis, but does not announce it, and every evening she deliberately infects ten to fifteen two-legged scoundrels.

The girls curse all their most unpleasant or perverted clients.

A woman loves once, but forever, and a man is like a greyhound dog... It’s okay that he changes, but he never even has a simple feeling of gratitude to either the old or the new mistress.

Zhenya remembers the name of the man to whom her own mother sold her, ten years old. Zoya remembers her teacher who said that she must obey him in everything or he would kick her out of school for bad behavior.

At this moment Lyubka appears. When asked to take her back, the housekeeper responds with abuse and beatings. Zhenya, unable to stand it, grabs her hair. Screams begin in the neighboring rooms, and a fit of hysteria engulfs the entire house. Only an hour later, Simeon and two fellow professionals calm the girls down, and at the usual hour the junior housekeeper calls them into the hall.

Cadet Kolya Gladyshev invariably comes to Zhenya. And today he sits in her room, but she asks him not to rush and does not allow him to kiss her. Finally she says that she is sick; anyone else would not have spared him. After all, those who are paid for love hate those who pay and never feel sorry for them. Zhenya says goodbye to the cadet forever.

In the morning, Zhenya goes to the port, where, leaving the newspaper for a vagabond life, he works unloading Platonov’s watermelons. She tells him about her illness, and he tells him that it was probably Sabashnikov and a student nicknamed Ramses who got infected from it, who shot himself, leaving a note where he wrote that he himself was to blame for what happened, because he took a woman for money, without love.

Sergei Pavlovich, who loves Zhenka, cannot resolve the doubts that gripped her: was her dream of infecting everyone stupid? Zhenya loses the meaning of life. Two days later she is found hanged. This smacks of scandalous fame for the establishment, but now only the housekeeper, who has finally become the mistress, has bought the house from Anna Markovna. She announces to the young ladies that from now on she demands real order and unconditional obedience, and invites Tamara to become her main assistant, but so that Senechka does not appear in the house.

Through Rovinskaya and Rezanov, Tamara buries the suicide Zhenya according to the Orthodox rite. Following Zhenka, Pasha dies. She finally fell into dementia and was taken to an insane asylum, where she died. But this was not the end of the former housekeeper’s troubles.

Tamara gains the trust of the notary and, together with Senka, soon robs him. She mixed sleeping powder with the notary, let Senka into the apartment, and he opened the safe. A year later, Senka is caught in Moscow and betrays Tamara, who fled with him.

Then Vera passes away. Her lover, a military official, squandered government money and decided to shoot himself. Vera wanted to share his fate. In an expensive hotel room after a luxurious feast, he shot at her, became cowardly and only wounded himself.

Finally, during one of the fights, Little Manka is killed. The ruin of the establishment ends when a hundred soldiers come to the aid of two fighters who were cheated in a nearby brothel.

Retold

I know that many will find this story immoral and indecent, nevertheless I dedicate it with all my heart mothers and youth.

Part one

I

A long time ago, long before the railroads, on the farthest outskirts of a large southern city, there lived generation after generation of coachmen - official and free. That is why this entire area was called Yamskaya Settlement, or simply Yamskaya, Yamki, or, even shorter, Yama. Subsequently, when steam traction killed the horse-drawn carriage, the dashing tribe of coachmen gradually lost their wild manners and brave customs, moved on to other activities, disintegrated and scattered. But for many years, even to this day, Yama retained a dark reputation as a cheerful, drunken, pugnacious place and unsafe at night.

Somehow it happened naturally that on the ruins of those ancient, well-fed nests, where previously ruddy, broken soldiers and black-browed rich Yamsk widows secretly traded vodka and free love, open brothels gradually began to grow, permitted by the authorities, guided by official supervision and subordinated to deliberately harsh rules. By the end of the 19th century, both streets of Yama - Bolshaya Yamskaya and Malaya Yamskaya - turned out to be completely occupied, on both sides, exclusively by brothels. There are no more than five or six private houses left, but they also house taverns, porter shops and small shops serving the needs of Yamsk prostitution.

The lifestyle, morals and customs are almost the same in all thirty-odd establishments, the only difference is in the fee charged for short-term love, and therefore in some external details: in the selection of more or less beautiful women, in the comparative elegance of costumes, in the splendor of the premises and luxury of surroundings.

The most luxurious establishment is Treppelya, at the entrance to Bolshaya Yamskaya, the first house on the left. This is an old company. Its current owner has a completely different surname and is a member of the city council and even a member of the council. The house is two-story, green and white, built in the pseudo-Russian, Yornichsky, Ropetovsky style, with skates, carved platbands, roosters and wooden towels, bordered with wooden lace; carpet with a white runner on the stairs; in the hallway there is a stuffed bear holding a wooden dish for business cards in its outstretched paws; there is parquet flooring in the dance hall, heavy crimson silk curtains and tulle on the windows, white and gold chairs and mirrors in gilded frames along the walls; there are two cabinets with carpets, sofas and soft satin poufs; in the bedrooms there are blue and pink lanterns, canvas blankets and clean pillows; the inhabitants are dressed in open ball gowns trimmed with fur, or in expensive masquerade costumes of hussars, pages, fisherwomen, schoolgirls, and most of them are Baltic Germans - large, fair-bodied, busty, beautiful women. Treppel is charged three rubles for a visit, and ten for the whole night.

Three two-ruble establishments - Sofia Vasilievna's, "Staro-Kyiv" and Anna Markovna's - are somewhat worse, poorer. The rest of the houses on Bolshaya Yamskaya are in rubles; they are even worse furnished. And on Malaya Yamskaya, which is visited by soldiers, petty thieves, artisans and generally gray people and where they charge fifty kopecks or less for a time, it is absolutely dirty and meager: the floor in the hall is crooked, peeling and splintered, the windows are hung with red red pieces; the bedrooms, like stalls, are separated by thin partitions that do not reach the ceiling, and on the beds, on top of the knocked-down hay bunks, lie crumpled, torn, stained sheets, dark with age, and holey flannel blankets; the air is sour and fuzzy, mixed with alcohol fumes and the smell of human eruptions; the women, dressed in colored calico rags or sailor suits, are mostly hoarse or nasal, with half-sunken noses, with faces bearing traces of yesterday's beatings and scratches and naively painted using a drooled red cigarette box.

The whole night goes on like this. By dawn, the Pit gradually calms down, and the bright morning finds it deserted, spacious, immersed in sleep, with tightly closed doors, with blank shutters on the windows. And before evening, women will wake up and prepare for the next night.

And so endlessly, day after day, months and years, they live in their public harems a strange, implausible life, thrown out by society, cursed by the family, victims of social temperament, cesspools for the excess of urban voluptuousness, guardians of family honor, four hundred stupid, lazy, hysterical, infertile women.

II

Two o'clock in the afternoon. In Anna Markovna’s secondary, two-ruble establishment, everything is immersed in sleep. A large square hall with mirrors in gilded frames, with two dozen plush chairs, decorously arranged along the walls, with oleographic paintings by Makovsky “Boyar Feast” and “Bathing”, with a crystal chandelier in the middle - it also sleeps and in the silence and twilight it seems unusually thoughtful, strict, strangely sad. Yesterday here, as every evening, the lights were burning, daring music was ringing, blue tobacco smoke was swaying, pairs of men and women were rushing around, swaying their hips and throwing their legs high in the air. And the whole street shone outside with red lanterns above the entrances and light from the windows and was seething with people and carriages until the morning.

Now the street is empty. It burns solemnly and joyfully in the brilliance of the summer sun. But all the curtains in the hall are down, and that is why it is dark, cool and especially unsociable, as happens in the middle of the day in empty theaters, arenas and courthouses.

The piano shines dully with its black, curved, glossy side; the yellow, old, time-corroded, broken, chipped keys glow faintly. The stagnant, motionless air still retains the smell of yesterday; it smells of perfume, tobacco, the sour dampness of a large uninhabited room, then of an unhealthy and unclean female body, powder, boron-thymol soap and dust from the yellow mastic that was used to rub the parquet floor yesterday. And with a strange charm the smell of fading swamp grass is mixed with these smells. Today is Trinity. According to a long-standing custom, the maids of the establishment early in the morning, while their young ladies were still sleeping, bought a whole cartload of sedge at the market and scattered its long, thick grass that crunched underfoot everywhere: in the corridors, in the offices, in the hall. They lit the lamps in front of all the images. Girls, according to tradition, do not dare to do this with their hands defiled during the night.

And the janitor decorated the carved, Russian-style entrance with two felled birch trees. Likewise, in all houses, near the porches, railings and doors, white thin stems with liquid dying greenery adorn the outside.

Quiet, empty and sleepy throughout the house. You can hear cutlets being chopped for dinner in the kitchen. One of the girls, Lyubka, barefoot, in a shirt, with bare arms, ugly, freckled, but strong and fresh in body, went out into the courtyard. Last night she had only six temporary guests, but no one stayed with her for the night, and therefore she slept wonderfully, sweetly, alone, completely alone, on a wide bed. She got up early, at ten o'clock, and happily helped the cook wash the kitchen floor and tables. Now she feeds the chained dog Amur with sinews and scraps of meat. A large red dog with long shiny hair and a black muzzle either jumps at the girl with his front paws, pulling the chain tightly and snoring from suffocation, then, all agitated with his back and tail, bends his head to the ground, wrinkles his nose, smiles, whines and sneezes with excitement. And she, teasing him with meat, shouts at him with feigned severity:

- Well, you idiot! I'll give it to you! How dare you?

But she is heartily glad of Cupid’s excitement and affection, and her momentary power over the dog, and the fact that she slept well and spent the night without a man, and the trinity, according to vague childhood memories, and the sparkling sunny day that she so rarely sees.

All the overnight guests have already left. The most businesslike, quiet, everyday hour is approaching.

The hostess is drinking coffee in the room. Company of five people. The owner herself, in whose name the house is registered, is Anna Markovna. She is about sixty years old. She is very small in stature, but round and thick: you can imagine her by imagining from bottom to top three soft gelatinous balls - large, medium and small, squeezed into each other without gaps; this is her skirt, torso and head. It’s strange: her eyes are faded blue, girlish, even childish, but her mouth is senile, with a limp, wet lower crimson lip hanging down. Her husband, Isai Savvich, is also a small, gray-haired, quiet, silent old man. He's under his wife's shoe; was a doorman in the same. house back at the time when Anna Markovna served as a housekeeper here. In order to be useful in some way, he learned to play the violin and now plays dances in the evenings, as well as a funeral march for spree clerks thirsting for drunken tears.

Then two housekeepers - a senior and a junior. The eldest Emma Eduardovna. She is tall, plump, brown-haired, about forty-six years old, with a fat goiter consisting of three chins. Her eyes are surrounded by black hemorrhoidal circles. The face widens out like a pear, from the forehead down to the cheeks, and is sallow in color; eyes small, black; humped nose, strictly selected lips; the expression on his face is calm and imperious. It is no secret to anyone in the house that in a year or two, Anna Markovna, retiring, will sell her the establishment with all the rights and furnishings, and will receive part of it in cash, and part of it in installments on a bill of exchange. Therefore, the girls honor her on an equal basis with the mistress and are afraid of her. She beats the guilty with her own hands, beats them cruelly, coldly and calculatingly, without changing the calm expression on her face. Among the girls she always has a favorite, whom she torments with her demanding love and fantastic jealousy. And this is much harder than beatings.

The other one is called Zosya. She has just broken out of the ordinary young ladies. For now, the girls still call her impersonally, flatteringly and familiarly “the housekeeper.” She is thin, nimble, slightly lopsided, with a pink complexion and a lamb hairdo; loves actors, mostly fat comedians. She treats Emma Eduardovna with servility.

Finally, the fifth person is the local police officer, Kerbesh. This is an athletic person; he is bald, has a fanned red beard, bright blue sleepy eyes and a thin, slightly hoarse, pleasant voice. Everyone knows that he previously served in the detective department and was a terror for swindlers thanks to his terrible physical strength and cruelty during interrogations.

He has several dark deeds on his conscience. The whole city knows that two years ago he married a rich seventy-year-old old woman, and last year he strangled her; however, he somehow managed to hush up the matter. And the other four also saw something in their checkered lives. But, just as the ancient Breters did not feel any remorse when remembering their victims, so these people look at the dark and bloody in their past as inevitable little troubles of their professions.

They drink coffee with heavy baked cream, and coffee with Benedictine. But he, in fact, does not drink, but only pretends that he is doing a favor.

- So what about it, Foma Fomich? – the hostess asks searchingly. - This thing is not worth a damn... After all, you just have to say the word...

Kerbesh slowly inhales half a glass of liqueur, lightly kneads the oily, pungent, strong liquid across the palate with his tongue, swallows it, slowly washes it down with coffee and then runs the ring finger of his left hand along his mustache to the right and left.

“Think for yourself, Madame Scheubes,” he says, looking at the table, spreading his arms and squinting, “think about the risk I’m running here!” The girl was deceptively involved in this... in what's his name... well, in a word, in a brothel, to put it in a high style. Now her parents are looking for her through the police. Good with. It gets from one place to another, from the fifth to the tenth... Finally, the trail is with you, and most importantly, think! - in my neighborhood! What can I do?

“Mr. Kerbesh, but she’s an adult,” says the hostess.

“They are adults,” confirms Isai Savvich. - They gave a receipt that in their own free will...

Emma Eduardovna says in a deep voice with cold confidence:

“By God, she’s like her own daughter here.”

“But that’s not what I’m talking about,” the police officer frowns in annoyance. – You will understand my position... After all, this is a service. Lord, you can’t get away with troubles without this!

The hostess suddenly gets up, shuffles her shoes to the door and says, blinking her lazy, expressionless pale blue eye to the police officer:

- Mister Kerbesh, I will ask you to look at our alterations. We want to expand the premises a little.

- A-ah! With pleasure…

Ten minutes later, both return without looking at each other. Kerbesh’s hand crunches in the pocket of a brand new hundred-ruble note. The conversation about the seduced girl is no longer resumed. The policeman, hastily finishing his Benedictine, complains about the current decline in morals:

– Here I have a son, a high school student, Pavel. The scoundrel comes and says: “Dad, my students scold me that you are a policeman, and that you serve on Yamskaya, and that you take bribes from brothels.” Well, tell me, for God’s sake, Madame Scheubes, isn’t this impudence?

- Ay-ay-ay!.. And what kind of bribes are there?.. Here I have too...

“I tell him: “Go, scoundrel, and tell the director that this won’t happen again, otherwise dad will report you all to the head of the region.” What do you think? He comes and believes: “I am no longer your son, look for another son.” Argument! Well, I gave him the first number! Wow! Now he doesn't want to talk to me. Well, I'll show him again!

“Oh, don’t tell me,” sighs Anna Markovna, hanging her lower crimson lip and clouding her faded eyes. “We are our Bertochka,” she is in the Fleischer gymnasium, “we deliberately keep her in the city, in a respectable family.” You understand, it’s still awkward. And suddenly she brought such words and expressions from the gymnasium that I actually blushed all over.

“By God, Annochka is all red,” confirms Isaiah Savvich.

- You'll blush! – the police officer warmly agrees. Yes, yes, yes, I understand you. But, my God, where are we going! Where are we going? I ask you, what do these revolutionaries and various students there want to achieve, or... whatever their name is? And let them blame themselves. There is debauchery everywhere, morality is falling, there is no respect for parents, they need to be shot.

“But we had an incident the day before,” Zosya fussily intervenes. - One guest came, a fat man...

“Don’t mess around,” Emma Eduardovna, who was listening to the police officer, piously nodding her head tilted to one side, interrupts her sternly in the slang of brothels. “You’d better go and arrange breakfast for the young ladies.”

“And you can’t rely on a single person,” the hostess continues grumpily. - No matter what the servant, she’s a bitch and a liar. And the girls only think about their lovers. So that only they can have their own pleasure. And they don’t even think about their responsibilities.

An awkward silence. There's a knock on the door. A thin female voice says on the other side of the doors:

- Housekeeper! Accept the money and give me some stamps. Petya left.

The police officer stands up and straightens his saber.

- However, it’s time to go to work. All the best, Anna Markovna. All the best, Isaiah Savvich.

– Maybe another glass on the way? - the blind Isaiah Savvich pokes over the table.

- Thank you, sir. I can not. Equipped. I have the honor!..

- Thank you for the company. Come in.

- Your guests, sir. Goodbye.

But at the door he stops for a minute and says meaningfully:

“Still, my advice to you: you’d better float this girl somewhere in advance.” Of course, it’s your business, but as a good friend, I’m warning you, sir.

He's leaving. When his steps fade on the stairs and the front door slams behind him, Emma Eduardovna snorts and says contemptuously:

- Pharaoh! He wants to take money here and there...

Little by little everyone crawls out of the room. The house is dark. The sweet smell of half-withered sedge. Silence.

III

Until dinner, which is served at six o'clock in the evening, time drags on endlessly and unbearably monotonously. And in general, this daytime period is the hardest and emptiest in life at home. It is vaguely similar in mood to those sluggish, empty hours that are experienced on major holidays in institutes and other closed women's institutions, when friends have left, when there is a lot of freedom and a lot of idleness and a bright, sweet boredom reigns all day. Wearing only petticoats and white shirts, with bare arms, sometimes barefoot, women wander aimlessly from room to room, all unwashed, unkempt, lazily pointing their index fingers at the keys of an old piano, lazily reading fortune-telling on cards, lazily bickering and with weary irritation. waiting for the evening.

After breakfast, Lyubka brought Amur the remains of bread and scraps of ham, but she soon got tired of the dog. Together with Nyura, she bought barberry sweets and sunflowers, and both now stand behind the fence separating the house from the street, gnawing seeds, the shells of which remain on their chins and chests, and indifferently gossip about everyone who passes along the street: about the lamplighter , pouring kerosene into street lamps, about a policeman with a delivery book under his arm, about a housekeeper from someone else’s establishment running across the road to a small shop...

Nyura is a small, pop-eyed, blue-eyed girl; she has white, flaxen hair, blue veins at the temples. There is something goofy and innocent about her face, reminiscent of a white Easter sugar lamb. She is lively, fussy, curious, gets involved in everything, agrees with everyone, is the first to know all the news, and if she speaks, she speaks so much and so quickly that splashes fly from her mouth and bubbles boil on her red lips, like children’s.

On the contrary, a curly-haired, wasted, white-haired guy, serving, jumps out of the pub for a minute and runs to the neighboring tavern.

“Prokhor Ivanovich, and Prokhor Ivanovich,” shouts Nyura, “would you like me to treat you to some sunflowers?”

“Come and visit us,” Lyuba picks up.

Nyura snorts and adds through her choking laughter:

- On warm feet!

But the front door opens, revealing the formidable and stern figure of the senior housekeeper.

- Pfu! What kind of disgrace is this? - she shouts bossily. – How many times do I have to tell you that you can’t jump out into the street during the day and then – poof! h- in only underwear. I don’t understand how you have no conscience. Decent girls who respect themselves should not behave like this in public. It seems, thank God, you are not in a soldier’s establishment, but in a decent house. Not on Malaya Yamskaya.

The girls return to the house, climb into the kitchen and sit there for a long time on stools, contemplating the angry cook Praskovya, swinging their legs and silently gnawing on sunflower seeds.

In the room of Little Manka, who is also called Manka Scandalist and Manka Belenka, a whole society has gathered. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she and another girl, Zoya, a tall, beautiful girl, with round eyebrows, bulging gray eyes, with the most typical white, kind face of a Russian prostitute, are playing cards, “sixty-six.” Little Manka's closest friend, Zhenya, lies supine on the bed behind them, reading a tattered book, “The Queen's Necklace,” an essay, etc. Dumas, and smokes. In the entire establishment she is the only lover of reading and reads voraciously and indiscriminately. But, contrary to expectation, intensive reading of adventure novels did not at all make her sentimental and did not weaken her imagination. What she likes most in novels is the long, cunningly conceived and deftly unraveled intrigue, the magnificent duels, before which the Viscount unties the bows from his shoes as a sign that he does not intend to retreat a single step from his position, and after which the Marquis, having pierced the Count , apologizes for making a hole in his beautiful new doublet; purses filled with gold, carelessly thrown left and right by the main characters, love adventures and witticisms of Henry IV - in a word, all this spicy, gold and lace, heroism of the past centuries of French history. In everyday life, on the contrary, she is sober-minded, mocking, practical and cynically evil. In relation to other girls of the institution, she occupies the same place that in closed educational institutions belongs to the first strongman, the repeat student, the first beauty in the class - tyrant and adored. She is a tall, thin brunette, with beautiful brown, burning eyes, a small proud mouth, a mustache on her upper lip and a dark, unhealthy blush on her cheeks.

Without letting go of the cigarette in her mouth and squinting from the smoke, she continually turns the pages with a greasy finger. Her legs are bare to the knees, her huge feet are of the most vulgar shape: below the big toes, sharp, ugly, irregular nodules protrude outward.

Here, crossing her legs, bent slightly with sewing in her hands, sits Tamara, a quiet, comfortable, pretty girl, slightly reddish, with that dark and shiny shade of hair that a fox has on its spine in winter. Her real name is Glykeria, or Lukeria in common people. But the long-standing custom of brothels is to replace the rude names Matryon, Agathias, Siklitiny with sonorous, mostly exotic names. Tamara was once a nun, or perhaps only a novice in a monastery, and her face still retains the pale swelling and timidity, the modest and sly expression that is characteristic of young nuns. She keeps to herself in the house, doesn’t make friends with anyone, doesn’t let anyone in on her past life. But, besides monasticism, she must have had many more adventures: there is something mysterious, silent and criminal in her leisurely conversation, in the evasive look of her thick and dark golden eyes from under her long drooping eyelashes, in her manners, grins and intonations of a modest but depraved saint. One day it happened that the girls almost heard with awe that Tamara could speak French and German fluently. She has some kind of inner restrained strength. Despite her outward meekness and tractability, everyone in the establishment treats her with respect and caution: the hostess, her friends, both housekeepers, and even the doorman, this true sultan of the brothel, a universal thunderstorm and hero.

“I covered it,” says Zoya and turns the trump card, which was lying under the deck, face down. - I go out from forty, I go with the ace of spades, please, Manechka, ten. I finished. Fifty-seven, eleven, sixty-eight. How many do you have?

Zoya shuffles the old, black, oily cards and lets Mana take them off, then deals them, after spitting on her fingers.

Tamara at this time tells Mana in a quiet voice, without looking up from her sewing.

– We embroidered with satin stitch, gold, altar tables, airs, bishop’s vestments... with herbs, flowers, crosses. In winter, you used to sit by the window—the windows were small, with bars—there wasn’t much light, there was a smell of olive oil, incense, cypress, you couldn’t talk: mother was strict. Out of boredom, someone will begin to chant the Lenten Irmos... “See the sky and I will say and sing...” They sang well, beautifully, and such a quiet life, and such a beautiful smell, snow outside the window, well, it’s like in a dream...

Zhenya lowers the tattered novel onto his stomach, throws a cigarette over Zoya’s head and says mockingly:

– We know your quiet life. Babies were thrown into outhouses. The evil one is still wandering around your holy places.

- I announce forty. I had forty-six! I've finished! – Little Manka excitedly exclaims and splashes her palms. - I open three.

Tamara, smiling at Zhenya’s words, answers with a barely noticeable smile, which almost does not stretch her lips, but makes small, crafty, ambiguous indentations at the ends, just like Monna Lisa’s in the portrait of Leonardo da Vinci.

- They gossip a lot about worldly nuns... Well, if there was a sin...

“If you don’t sin, you won’t repent,” Zoya interjects seriously and wets her finger in her mouth.

“You sit, embroider, the gold dazzles in your eyes, and from standing in the morning your back ache and your legs ache.” And in the evening there is another service. You knock on your mother’s cell: “Through the prayers of the saints, our fathers, Lord, have mercy on us.” And the mother from the cells will answer in a bass voice: “Amen.”

Zhenya looks at her intently for some time, shakes her head and says meaningfully:

– You’re a strange girl, Tamara. I look at you and am surprised. Well, I understand that these fools like Sonya are into love. That's why they are stupid. But you, it seems, have been baked in all the ashes, washed in all the lyes, and yet you also allow yourself such nonsense. Why are you embroidering this shirt?

Tamara slowly pinches the fabric on her knee with a pin, smoothes the seam with a thimble and says, without raising her narrowed eyes, slightly tilting her head to the side:

- We have to do something. It's so boring. I don't play cards and I don't like them.

Zhenya continues to shake her head.

- No, you’re a strange girl, really, strange. You always get more from your guests than we all do. Stupid, why save money, what do you spend it on? You buy perfume for seven rubles per bottle. Who needs it? Now I’ve collected fifteen rubles worth of silk. Are you your Senka?

- Of course, Senechka.

– I also found a treasure. The thief is unfortunate. He will arrive at the establishment like some kind of commander. How else does he not hit you? Thieves, they love it. And he probably robs?

“I won’t give you more than I want,” Tamara answers meekly and bites the thread.

“That’s what I’m surprised by.” With your intelligence, with your beauty, I would have such a guest that I would take him for my support. And they would have their own horses and diamonds.

– Whatever you like, Zhenechka. Here you are, too, a pretty and sweet girl, and your character is so independent and brave, but here we are stuck with Anna Markovna.

Zhenya flares up and answers with unfeigned bitterness:

- Yes! Still would! You are lucky!.. You have all the best guests. You do with them what you want, but with me everything is either old people or infants. I have no luck. Some are snotty, others are yellow-faced. Most of all, I don’t like boys. The bastard will come, he’s cowardly, in a hurry, trembling, but he’s done his job, he doesn’t know where to put his eyes from shame. He squirms in disgust. I would have punched him in the face. Before giving the ruble, he holds it in his pocket in his fist, the whole ruble is hot, even sweaty. Baby sucker! His mother gives him a dime for a French roll with sausage, but he saved for the girl. I had a cadet visit with me the other day. So I purposely, to spite him, say to him: “You’re wearing a caramel for the road, my dear, you’re going back to the building and you’re going to suck it.” So at first he was offended, and then he took it. Then I deliberately peeked from the porch: when I came out, I looked back, and now I was putting caramel in my mouth. Piglet!

“Well, it’s even worse with old people,” says Little Manka in a gentle voice and looks slyly at Zoya, “what do you think, Zoinka?”

Zoya, who had already finished playing and was just about to yawn, now cannot yawn. She wants to either be angry or laugh. She has a regular guest, some high-ranking old man with perverted erotic habits. The whole establishment makes fun of his visits to her.

Zoya finally manages to open her mouth.

“To hell with you,” she says in a hoarse voice, after a yawn, “damn him, old anathema!”

“But still, the worst of all,” Zhenya continues to reason, “worse than your director, Zoinka, worse than my cadet, worst of all are your lovers.” Well, what’s so joyful about this: a drunk man comes, he breaks down, he mocks, he wants to pretend to be something like that, but nothing comes of it. Please say: boy-chi-shech-ka. A lout, a lout, dirty, beaten, smelly, his whole body covered in scars, only one praise for him: the silk shirt that Tamarka will embroider for him. The son of a bitch swears, swears, and tries to fight. Ugh! No,” she suddenly exclaimed in a cheerful, perky voice, “Whom I love truly and unhypocritically, forever and ever, is my Manya, Little Little Manka, Little Manka, my Scandalous Manka. And unexpectedly, hugging Manya by the shoulders and chest, she pulled her towards her, threw her onto the bed and began to kiss her hair, eyes, lips long and hard. Manka struggled to escape from her with disheveled blond, thin, fluffy hair, all pink from resistance and with lowered eyes, wet from shame and laughter.

- Leave it, Zhenechka, leave it. Well, really... Let me go!

Year of publication of the book: 1915

Kuprin’s story “The Pit” became popular to read after the release of the television series “Kuprin”. This television series is based on several works by Kuprin, one of which is the story “The Pit”. This allowed another work of the great Russian classic, which occupies a leading position in, to enter the list of the most read works.

Kuprin's story "The Pit" summary

Meanwhile, in Kuprin’s story “The Pit” you can read about how the famous singer Rovinskaya comes to Anna Markovna’s establishment, in the company of Baroness Tefting, lawyer Rozanov and Volodya Chaplinsky. All the “girls” and Tamara are brought to them. This girl was once a novice in a monastery, but then fell in love with the pimp Senechka. At Rovinskaya's request, all the girls sing their favorite songs. At this moment, a drunken Little Manka bursts in and, falling, shouts: “Hurray! New girls have arrived!” The Baroness invites her to go to her shelter for fallen women. To this, Zhenya and Tamara declare that their shelters are worse than prisons, and that decent women themselves are either kept women or support young boys themselves. And unlike most decent women, prostitutes do not perform 1,000 abortions in their lifetime. Meanwhile, Rovinskaya recognizes Tamara as a chorus girl from Kharkov and, as a farewell, sings them the romance “We parted proudly...”. When she tries to leave, Zhenya throws herself at her feet and quietly asks something. Rovinskaya says she has been undergoing treatment for several months.

Further, if you read the summary of Kuprin’s story “The Pit”, you will learn how Tamara asks Zhenya about her health. As a result, she learns that Zhenya has syphilis and has decided to infect as many scoundrels as possible with this disease. In addition, Zhenya tells how her own mother sold at the age of 10 and the story of her life. At this time, Lyuba returns to the establishment and a formal scandal arises in the establishment.

Further in Kuprin’s story “The Pit” you can read about how during one of the visits to the wife of cadet Gladyshev, the girl admits to her illness. The cadet tells Platonov about this, who by this moment no longer works anywhere, but is a wanderer. Two days later Zhenya hanged herself. This smelled like a scandal for the establishment and the housekeeper, who bought the establishment from Anna Markovna, with the help of Tamara, buries Zhenya according to church rites.

These events marked the beginning of the end of the brothel. Soon Pasha falls into dementia and dies. Tamara and her Senechka rob a notary and soon end up with the police following a denunciation from her loved one. Vera decides to share the fate of her favorite stealing official. But having shot at Vera, he becomes cowardly and only wounds himself. Little Manka dies in a fight, and the demise of the establishment is completed by the arrival of hundreds of soldiers to the aid of the two fighting.

Kuprin's story "The Pit" on the Top books website

The series “Kuprin” aroused such interest in reading the story “The Pit” that this allowed the work to get into our rating. In addition, Kuprin’s book “The Pit” is included in the ratings of our site. But this rise is probably temporary and in subsequent ratings the story may not be included in our lists of the most read books.