“I believe, that not now, not soon—after fifty years or so—but there will come a writer of genius, and precisely a Russian one, who will absorb within himself all the burdens and all the abominations of this life and will cast them forth to us in the form of simple, fine, and deathlessly-caustic images. And we shall all say: ‘Why, now, we ourselves have seen and known all this, but we could not even suppose that this is so horrible!’ In this coming artist I believe with all my heart.”
Kuprin is too sincere, too big, to have written this with himself in mind; yet no reader of the scathing, searing arraignment called Yama, will question that the great, the gigantic Kuprin has shown “the burdens and abominations” of prostitution, in “simple, fine, and deathlessly-caustic images”; has shown that “all the horror is in just this—that there is no horror …” For it is as a pitiless reflection of a “singular,” sinister reality that Yama stands unsurpassed.
The adventures of Yama, as a book, were they to be told, would prove as interesting as its context; and not the least engrossing chapter would deal with the tribulations of my translation. Suffice it to say for the present that it is with intense pleasure, as a publisher, that I now make available to the general English-speaking public this faithful, complete, integral, revised and authorised translation of a Russian masterpiece, after having, as a translator, rescued it out of what I consider most unworthy hands.
The present edition can be best described in the author’s own words, from a recent letter to me: “I send you Yama thoroughly corrected, revised and supplemented—in an integral form. Now it bears no traces of the red pencil of the censor, or the haste of the compositor, or the illiteracy of the proofreader.”
As Yama now stands, it is practically twenty percent fuller than any other edition, in any language—containing, as it does, material written especially for this edition, and which has not appeared hitherto even in the original language.
It may also be of interest to the reader to know that the long-promised sequel to Yama is now in preparation.
Any criticisms or suggestions sent to the address subjoined will be deeply appreciated.
Translator’s Note
A word must be said of Kuprin’s style. He is by no means a purist; his pages bristle with neologisms and foreign—or, rather, outlandish—words; nor has he any hesitancy in adapting and Russianizing such words. He coins words; he is, at times, actually Borrowesque, and not only does he resort to colloquialisms and slang, but to 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.
Yama
The Pit
Part I
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 nighttime 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.1 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, the invention of the architect Ropet, 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 outstretched paws; a parquet floor in the ballroom, heavy raspberry silk curtains and
