Yama (The Pit) | Page 7

and hair dressed in a little curly pompadour; she adores actors--preferably stout comedians. Toward Emma Edwardovna she is ingratiating.
The fifth person, finally, is the local district inspector, Kerbesh. This is an athletic man; he is kind of bald, has a red beard like a fan, vividly blue slumbrous eyes, and a thin, slightly hoarse, pleasant voice. Everybody knows that he formerly served in the secret service division and was the terror of crooks, thanks to his terrible physical strength and cruelty in interrogations.
He has several shady transactions on his conscience. The whole town knows that two years back he married a rich old woman of seventy, and that last year he strangled her; however, he was somehow successful in hushing up this affair. But for that matter, the remaining four have also seen a thing or two in their chequered life. But, just as the bretteurs of old felt no twinges of conscience at the recollection of their victims, even so do these people regard the dark and bloody things in their past, as the unavoidable little unpleasantness of their professions.
They are drinking coffee with rich, boiled cream--the inspector with Benedictine. But he, strictly speaking, is not drinking, but merely conveying the impression that he is doing it to oblige.
"Well, what is it to be, Phoma Phornich?" asks the proprietress searchingly. "This business isn't worth an empty eggshell, now... Why, you have only to say a word..."
Kerbesh slowly draws in half a wine-glass of liqueur, works the oily, strong, pungent liquid slightly with his tongue over the roof of his mouth, swallows it, chases it down, without hurrying, with coffee, and then passes the ring finger of his left hand over his moustaches, to the right and left.
"Think it over for yourself, Madam Shoibes," he says, looking down at the table, spreading out his hands and screwing up his eyes. "Think of the risk to which I'm exposed! The girl through means of deception was enticed into this... what-you-may-call-it... well, in a word, into a house of ill-fame, to express it in lofty style. Now the parents are searching for her through the police. Ve-ery well. She gets into one place after another, from the fifth into the tenth... Finally the trail is picked up with you, and most important of all--think of it!--in my district! What can I do?"
"Mr. Kerbesh, but she is of age," says the proprietress.
"They are of age," confirms Isaiah Savvich. "They gave an acknowledgment, that it was of their own will..."
Emma Edwardovna pronounces in a bass, with cool accurance:
"Honest to God, she's the same here as an own daughter."
"But that's not what I am talking about," the inspector frowns in vexation. "Just consider my position... Why, this is duty. Lord, there's no end of unpleasantnesses without that!"
The proprietress suddenly arises, shuffles in her slippers to the door, and says, winking to the inspector with a sleepy, expressionless eye of faded blue:
"Mr. Kerbesh, I would ask you to have a look at our alterations. We want to enlarge the place a bit."
"A-ah! With pleasure..."
After ten minutes both return, without looking at each other. Kerbesh's hand is crunching a brand-new hundred rouble note in his pocket. The conversation about the seduced girl is not renewed. The inspector, hastily finishing his Benedictine, complains of the present decline in manners.
"I have a son, now, a schoolboy--Paul. He comes to me, the scoundrel, and declares: 'Papa, the pupils swear at me, because you are a policeman, and because you serve on Yamskaya, and because you take bribes from brothels.' Well, tell me, for God's sake, Madam Shoibes, if that isn't effrontery?"
"Ai, ai, ai! ... And what bribes can there be? Now with me..."
"I say to him: 'Go, you good-for-nothing, and let the principal know, that there should be no more of this, otherwise papa will inform on all of you to the governor.' And what do you think? He comes to me and says: 'I am no longer a son to you--seek another son for yourself.' What an argument! Well, I gave him enough to last till the first of the month! Oho-ho! Now he doesn't want to speak with me. Well, I'll show him yet!"
"Ah, you don't have to tell us," sighs Anna Markovna, letting her lower, raspberry-coloured lip hang down and with a mist coming over her faded eyes. "We keep our Birdie--she is in Fleisher's high school--we purposely keep her in town, in a respectable family. You. understand, it is awkward, after all. And all of a sudden she brings such words and expressions from the high school that I just simply turned all red."
"Honest to God, Annochka turned all red," confirms Isaiah Savvich.
"You'll turn red, all right!" warmly agrees the inspector. "Yes, yes, yes, I understand you fully. But, my God, where are we going! Where