Yama (The Pit) | Page 4

dialect, cant,
and even actual argot. Therein is his glory--and, perhaps, his weakness. Therefore, an
attempt has been made, wherever corruptions, slang, and so forth, appear in the original,
to render them through the nearest English equivalents. While this has its obvious
dubieties and disadvantages, any other course would have smacked of prettification--a
fate which such a book as "Yama" surely does not deserve.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I.
A long, long time ago, long before the railroads, the stage- drivers--both government and
private--used to live, from generation to generation, at the very farthest confine of a large
southern city. And that is why the entire region was called the Yamskaya Sloboda--the
Stage-drivers' Borough; or simply Yamskaya, or Yamkas--Little Ditches, or, shorter still,
Yama--The Pit. In the course of time, when hauling by steam killed off transportation by
horses, the mettlesome tribe of the stage- drivers little by little lost its boisterous ways
and its brave customs, went over into other occupations, fell apart and scattered. But for
many years--even up to this time--a shady renown has remained to Yama, as of a place

exceedingly gay, tipsy, brawling, and in the night-time not without danger.
Somehow it came about of itself, that on the ruins of those ancient, long-warmed nests,
where of yore the rosy-cheeked, sprightly wives of the soldiery and the plump widows of
Yama, with their black eyebrows, had secretly traded in vodka and free love, there began
to spring up wide-open brothels, permitted by the authorities, regulated by official
supervision and subject to express, strict rules. Towards the end of the nineteenth century
both streets of Yama--Great Yamskaya and Little Yamskaya--proved to be entirely
occupied, on one side of the street as well as the other, exclusively with houses of
ill-fame. [Footnote: "Houses of Suffrance"--i.e., Houses of the Necessary Evil.--Trans.]
Of the private houses no more than five or six were left, but even they were taken up by
public houses, beer halls, and general stores, catering to the needs of Yama prostitution.
The course of life, the manners and customs, are almost identical in all the thirty-odd
establishments; the difference is only in the charges exacted for the briefly-timed love,
and consequently in certain external minutiae as well: in the assortment of more or less
handsome women, in the comparative smartness of the costumes, in the magnificence of
the premises and the luxuriousness of the furnishings.
The most chic establishment is that of Treppel, the first house to the left upon entering
Great Yamskaya. This is an old firm. Its present owner bears an entirely different name,
and fills the post of an elector in the city council and is even a member of the city board.
The house is of two stories, green and white, built in the debauched pseudo-Russian style
a la Ropetovsky, with little horses, carved facings, roosters, and wooden towels bordered
with lace-also of wood; a carpet with a white runner on the stairs; in the front hall a
stuffed bear, holding a wooden platter for visiting cards in his out-stretched paws; a
parquet floor in the ballroom, heavy raspberry silk curtains and tulle on the windows,
along the walls white and gold chairs and mirrors with gilt frames; there are two private
cabinets with carpets, divans, and soft satin puffs; in the bedrooms blue and rose lanterns,
blankets of raw silk stuff and clean pillows; the inmates are clad in low- cut ball gowns,
bordered with fur, or in expensive masquerade costumes of hussars, pages, fisher lasses,
school-girls; and the majority of them are Germans from the Baltic provinces--large,
handsome women, white of body and with ample breasts. At Treppel's three roubles are
taken for a visit, and for the whole night, ten.
Three of the two-rouble establishments--Sophie Vassilievna's, The Old Kiev, and Anna
Markovna's--are somewhat worse, somewhat poorer. The remaining houses on Great
Yamskaya are rouble ones; they are furnished still worse. While on Little Yamskaya,
which is frequented by soldiers, petty thieves, artisans, and drab folk In general, and
where fifty kopecks or less are taken for time, things are altogether filthy and poor-the
floor in the parlor is crooked, warped, and full of splinters, the windows are hung with
pieces of red fustian; the bedrooms, just like stalls, are separated by thin partitions, which
do not reach to the ceiling, and on the beds, on top of the shaken down hay-mattresses,
are scattered torn, spotted bed-sheets and flannel blankets, dark from time, crumpled any
old way, full of holes; the air is sour and full of fumes, with a mixture of alcohol vapours
and the smell of human emanations; the women, dressed in rags of coloured printed
calico or in sailor costumes, are for the greater part hoarse or snuffling, with noses half

fallen through, with faces preserving traces