time his impudent sweetheart came to see him, he had Grushenka apply her skillful tongue to his back alley. But he did not allow her to make love to his little whore again, and she, in turn, was angry at Grushenka's presence.
A few weeks passed by, until one day she openly rebelled and refused to let him have her as long as Grushenka was around. He swore at her and beat her, but she answered with not less flowery words and hit back. All the while his shaft stood at attention. Grushenka, seeing the row, had an inspiration. Tearing her clothes off, she got a sudden hold of the captain, encircled him in her arms and threw herself and him to the carpet. Before the astonished man knew what it was all about, she had her thighs around him, his little bird was in her nest and she was making love to him with the circling movements of her hips. He really was worked up and soon answered her thrusts.
An amazing encounter started. The girl, first believing that Grushenka was going to help her, then suddenly realizing that she was stealing her own lover before her eyes, got enraged and tried to pull the two away from each other. She rolled them over the carpet, kicked and pushed them, tore at their limbs, pinched their backs and kicked them in the buttocks. But they were so hotly involved that they continued making love in the face of this bodily aggression-were even stimulated by it. They groaned in the climax. It was a magnificent experience.
The captain got up first, while Grushenka lay with closed eyes, exhausted on the floor. The captain now was really furious with his former bed-fellow. He let her have it in words and blows, then threw her out, never to come back. Grushenka got up slowly, softly embraced the man -whose rage was just ebbing away-and kissed him tenderly on both cheeks. The fat little captain, who had not been kissed in this way in years and who had just detected what a rare poke Grushenka was, softened to a degree which was unusual with him.
“No use,” he muttered, “to have you out in the ward all the time.
I'll tell you what we'll do. You become my housekeeper from now on.”
He lived in comfortable quarters in a wing of the prison, and Grushenka moved in. She was more like a dutiful wife than a housekeeper and lover. She cleaned and cooked for him, made his private life comfortable, satisfied his sexual desires with prudence, never overworking him and saw to it that he always wanted her. He, in turn, treated her quite like a human being. He took her out with him in his carriage, introduced her to his friends, never beat her and was satisfied to be henpecked. Months went by and Grushenka was undecided whether she should make him marry her. Why not? He had plenty of money and a position of a kind, and she would have a certain security. But finally she abandoned this idea.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The reason Grushenka did not want to be coupled for her lifetime with the captain of the police was, no doubt, inspired by her physical aversion to him. He was round and fat; his arms, buttocks, legs-indeed, everything about him-was stupidly rounded and unpleasantly self-satisfied. He was not a good lover, and, when, once or twice a week, he put his short and stubby shaft into her sheath and gave himself a good rubbing in her-without considering her desires-he felt well pleased with himself. He snored in bed, he did not believe in keeping himself clean and he spit in the-room as one might have done in a pig-sty. He exercised his duties brutally, and his means to justice was the whip. Even his jokes were vile, so why stay with him? In order to break away, however, Grushenka needed money-and she had none. The captain, though, had plenty. In the evening his pockets were always bulging with gold and silver. Yet he left in the morning without a cent. The bribes he received were enormous. But what did he do with this money? Grushenka found out quickly enough. He had a big iron cash-box, standing on the floor, about three feet high and five feet long. There was no lock on this box. but it would not open for Grushenka. She watched him and saw him move a little handle on the back of it. The next morning she lifted the lid and was amazed. The box was filled almost to the top with thousands of coins-gold, silver and copper. He had thrown them in carelessly, as they came his way. Grushenka did some thinking.
She then proceeded to rifle his pile of wealth systematically. Every day, while he was away, she helped herself to a few hundred rubles in gold. Of these she changed one or two pieces into silver and copper and threw them back into the box so as not to leave any holes. The rest she kept. Soon she had accumulated many “thousand rubles, without the pile of coins having become smaller. She transferred her treasure one fine day to a banker-it was enough for a good start.
All that was now left was to get away from the man. This she accomplished through weeks of careful manipulation. First she became apparently moody and sickly and wailed about her failing health. Then she refused to have him when she felt that way. Of course, he would not stand for that, and mounted her Against her protests. While he worked away on her, she would start a conversation with him, annoying him all the time by talk. She would ask him to reach his climax quickly or, out of a blue sky-when he was ready to climax-she would ask him what he wanted for dinner the next day. Of course, he, in turn, did not treat her too kindly. Often he would give her a sound slap, providing her with a good excuse for sulking. Once or twice he turned her over and spanked her bare buttocks with his hands. She stood it because she knew that he would soon want her to leave him.
He began to make love to his prisoners again, as he had been in the habit of doing when he had no whore who enticed him. Grushenka would hear, of Bourse, that he was untrue to her, and would make scenes about it. Simultaneously she spoke with him about the disorderly houses in Moscow, how excellent that business was and how little were the bribes which he collected from them. Soon she approached him directly as to whether it would not be a good idea to run a whorehouse himself, give it his whole protection, close all the other ones and put her in charge of it. He would not listen to this plan because he was not interested very much in increasing his wealth. But when she painted, in the brightest colors, how he would be master of the house, how she would always provide him with very young girls who would put on great parties for him, he succumbed to her wiles and told her to go ahead and do what she liked. But she was to understand that he had no money whatsoever and that she would have to put the house on its feet by herself. She almost loved him for that, and got busy at once. Grushenka acquired a house in the best neighborhood, where, without the captain's protection, nobody would have dared open an establishment of that kind. The house, surrounded by a small garden in the front and by a large one in the back, consisted of three floors. The upper floors contained about a dozen rooms each, while the ground floor had a magnificent dining room and four or five very spacious drawing-rooms, all leading to a big front hall. Grushenka modeled the whole mansion after the layout of the best whorehouse in Rome, which she had visited quite often when she wanted a young girl to make love to her. She resolved that it would be best for her to employ only serf- girls, whom she could train for her purposes without having to consider their wishes. She prepared all this without the captain's knowledge. And she had to make more raids on his cash-box, because she furnished her establishment with the best. There were a colorful carriage and four horses, a few stable men, an old housekeeper and six sturdy peasant maids, lovely furniture and, of course, a well-selected choice of four-poster beds with canopies and silk sheets. All this assembled, she left the captain, settled down in the big house and began leisurely to buy her girls.
We see her now, going in her own carriage, to all parts of Moscow, looking over features and shapes the way Katerina had done about ten years before in order to buy her for Nelidova. But she had it easier than Katerina, because she did not have to look for any special type of girl; she needed girls of all types and shapes to satisfy the taste of her prospective customers. The hunger in the poor sections of Moscow was responsible for her best finds. Not only foster-parents but also parents would flock to her with their daughters. The girls, on their part, were delighted to enter the services of so fine and elegant a lady, where they would be safe from starvation. Grushenka would send word through her housekeeper to one of the poorer streets that she was willing buy a few young girls, between fifteen and twenty years of age, for her private service. She would be told where-for example, in the back room of a certain inn -she could look over the merchandise. When her elegant carriage rolled into the street, there would be great excitement, the mothers flocking around her, kissing the hem of her garments and imploring her to take their daughters. After the near-riot of her arrival was over, Grushenka would be led into a large room, filled with twenty to thirty girls, all in rags, dirty and smelly. The chatter and shouting of the parents, anxious to sell, would make it impossible for her to select at ease. The first few times she was so helpless against all this that she left without making an attempt to look the girls over. Throwing on the ground alms for which the mob scrambled gave her the opportunity to leave quickly. But then she found a better way; she removed all the parents from the room, resolutely locked the door from inside and went about her task in a businesslike way. The girls had to throw off their rags. Those she disliked she sent from the room, keeping the three or four who seemed likely. She
