She did not reply, but laughed. From the fourth cubicle which we had not yet entered, there also came the sound of women’s laughter. The landlord came out of his cubicle and joined us. He had evidently heard my questions and the woman’s replies. He looked severely at her and addressing me said: ‘She’s a prostitute,’ evidently pleased that he knew this word used by the officials, and could pronounce it correctly.1 Having said this to me with a scarcely perceptible smile of respectful satisfaction, he turned to the woman. As soon as he spoke to her his whole face changed; and with a peculiar, contemptuously rapid utterance such as people use to a dog, he said without looking at her:
1 ‘Prostitute’ is a hard, foreign word, little used by common people in Russia.-A. M.
‘Why talk nonsense? “I sit in a tavern,” indeed! If you sit there, then speak plainly and say you’re a prostitute.’ Again he used that word and added, ‘She doesn’t know what to call herself.’
His tone exasperated me. ‘It is not for us to shame her,’ said I; ‘if we all lived godly lives there would not be any such as she.’
‘Yes, that’s the way of it,’ said the landlord with an unnatural smile.
‘Then it is not for us to reproach them but to pity them. Is it their fault?’
I don’t remember exactly what I said; but I know that the contemptuous tone of this young landlord of a lodging full of women he called prostitutes, revolted me; and I felt sorry for the woman, and expressed both feelings. And hardly had I spoken, before in the room from which the laughter had come, the boards of the bunks creaked and above the partition (which did not reach to the ceiling) appeared the dishevelled curly hair and small swollen eyes of a woman with a shiny red face, and then a second, and a third. They had evidently got up on their bunks and were all three stretching their necks with bated breath and strained attention, silently looking at us.
An awkward silence ensued. The student who had been smiling became serious; the landlord lowered his eyes abashed; and the women, not drawing a breath, looked at me and waited. I was more abashed than any of them. I had not at all expected that a word casually dropped would produce such an effect. It was as when Ezekiel’s field of death strewn with bones quivered at the touch of the spirit and the dead bones moved. I had spoken a chance word of love and pity, and it had acted on all as though they had only been waiting for that word to cease to be corpses and to become alive. They all looked at me and waited for what would follow.
They waited for me to speak the words and do the deeds that would cause the bones to come together and be covered with flesh and come to life again. But I felt I had no words or deeds with which to continue what I had begun. In the depth of my soul I felt that I had lied: that I was myself like them and that I had nothing more to say; and I began to write on the card the names and occupations of all the people in the lodging. This incident led me into a fresh error: that of supposing that it would be possible to help these unfortunates also. It seemed to me then, in my self-deception, that this would be quite easy. I said to myself: Let us note down these women also, and afterwards, when we have noted everybody down, we (who these ‘we’ were, I did not stop to consider) will attend to them.
I imagined that we (those very people who have for several generations led, and are still leading, these women into that condition) could one fine day take it into our heads suddenly to rectify it all. Yet had I but remembered my talk with the loose woman who was rocking the child whose mother was ill, I might have understood how insensate such an undertaking was.
When we saw that woman with the child we thought it was her own. In reply to the question, Who are you? she said simply that she was a wench. She did not say, ‘A prostitute’. Only the landlord of the lodging used that terrible word. The supposition that she had a child of her own suggested to me the thought of extricating her from her position. So I asked:
‘Is that your child?’
‘No, it’s this woman’s.’
‘How is it you are rocking it?’ ‘She asked me to. She is dying.’
Though my supposition had proved erroneous, I continued to speak to her in the same sense. I began to ask her who she was and how she came to be in such a position. She told me her story willingly and very simply. She was of Moscow birth, the daughter of a factory workman. She had been left an orphan, and an aunt (now dead) had taken charge of her. From her aunt’s she began to frequent the taverns. When I asked whether she would not like to change her way of life, my question evidently did not even interest her. How can the suggestion of anything quite impossible interest anybody? She giggled and said: ‘Who would take me with a yellow ticket?’1
‘Well, but suppose we found you a place as cook somewhere?’ said I.
That idea suggested itself to me because she was a strong, flaxen-haired woman with a kindly, round face. There are cooks like that. My words obviously did not please her. She said:
‘A cook! But I can’t bake bread!’ and she laughed. She said she could not, but I saw by the expression of her face that she did not wish to be a cook and despised that position and calling.
This woman, who like the widow in the Gospels had quite simply sacrificed her all for a sick neighbour, considered, as her companions did, that the position of a worker was degrading, and she despised it. She had been brought up to live without working and in the way that was considered natural by those around her. Therein lay her misfortune: this misfortune had led her into her present position and kept her there. That was what led her to sit in taverns. And which of us-man or woman-can cure her of that false view of life? Where among us are people who are convinced that an industrious life is always more to be respected than an idle one-people convinced of this and who live accordingly: valuing and respecting others on the basis of that conviction? Had I thought of this, I might have understood that neither I nor any one of those I knew could cure this disease.
I should have understood that those surprised and attentive faces that peered over the partition showed merely surprise at hearing sympathy expressed for them, but certainly not any hope of being cured of their immorality. They do not see the immorality of their lives. They know they are despised and abused, but cannot understand why. They have lived from childhood among other such women, who they know very well have always existed and do exist, and are necessary for society: so necessary that Government officials are appointed to see that they exist properly.2
They know moreover that they have power over men and can often influence them more than other women can. They see that their position in society, though they are always abused, is recognized both by women and men and by the Government, and so they cannot even understand what there is for them to repent of and wherein they ought to amend. During one of our rounds a student told me of a woman in one of the lodgings who traded in her thirteen year-old daughter. Wishing to save the girl, I purposely went to that lodging. The mother and
1 The passport issued to a prostitute by the police.-A. M.
2 This is a reference to the licensing, inspection, and medical examination of brothels that was regularly carried on in Russia.-A. M.
daughter were living in great poverty. The mother, a small, dark, forty-year-old prostitute, was not merely ugly but unpleasantly ugly. The daughter was equally unpleasant. To all my indirect questions about their way of life the mother replied curtly and with hostile distrust, evidently regarding me as an enemy. The daughter never answered me without first glancing at her mother, and evidently trusted her completely.
They did not evoke in me cordial pity rather repulsion; but yet I decided that it was necessary to save the daughter, and that I would speak to some ladies who take an interest in the wretched position of such women, and would send them here. Had I but thought of the long past life of that mother: of how she bore, nursed, and reared that daughter-in her position assuredly without the least help from others, and with heavy sacrifices-had I thought of the view that had been formed in her mind, I should have understood that in her action there was absolutely nothing bad or immoral: she had done and was
