Likhonin avidly drank off a cup of cold black coffee and continued vehemently:
“Yes. Just so do I and many others theorize, sitting in our rooms, over tea with white bread and cooked sausage, when the value of each separate human life is so-so, an infinitesimally small numeral in a mathematical formula. But let me see a child abused, and the red blood will rush to my head from rage. And when I look and look upon the labour of a muzhik or a labourer, I am thrown into hysterics for shame at my algebraic calculations. There is—the devil take it!—there is something, incongruous, altogether illogical, but which is a hundred times stronger than human reason. Take today, now … Why do I feel at this minute as though I had robbed a sleeper or deceived a three-year-old child, or struck a man bound? And why does it seem to me today that I myself am guilty of the evil of prostitution—guilty in my silence, my indifference, my indirect permission? What am I to do, Platonov!” exclaimed the student with grief in his voice.
Platonov kept silent, squinting at him with his little narrow eyes. But Jennie unexpectedly said in a caustic tone:
“Well, you do as one Englishwoman did … A certain red-haired clodhopper came to us here. She must have been important, because she came with a whole retinue … all some sort of officials … But before her had come the assistant of the commissioner, with the precinct inspector Berkesh. And the assistant directly forewarned us, just like that: ‘If you stiffs, and so on and so on, will let out even one little rude word, or something, then I won’t leave one stone upon another of your establishment, while I’ll flog all the wenches soundly in the station-house and make ’em rot in jail!’ Well, at last this galoot came. She gibbered and she gibbered something in a foreign language, all the time pointed to heaven with her hand, and then distributed a five-kopeck Testament to every one of us and rode away. Now you ought to do the same, dearie.”
Platonov burst into loud laughter. But seeing the naive and sad face of Likhonin, who did not seem to understand, nor even suspect mockery, he restrained his laughter and said seriously:
“You won’t accomplish anything, Likhonin. While there will be property, there will also be poverty. While marriage exists, prostitution also will not die. Do you know who will always sustain and nourish prostitution? It is the so-called decent people, the noble paterfamiliases, the irreproachable husbands, the loving brothers. They will always find a seemly motive to legitimize, normalize and put a wrapper all around paid libertinage, because they know very well that otherwise it would rush in a torrent into their bedrooms and nurseries. Prostitution is for them a deflection of the sensuousness of others from their personal, lawful alcove. And even the respectable paterfamilias himself is not averse to indulge in a love debauch in secret. And really, it is palling to have always the one and the same thing—the wife, the chambermaid, and the lady on the side. Man, as a matter of fact, is a poly—and exceedingly so—a polygamous animal. And to his rooster-like amatory instincts it will always be sweet to unfold in such a magnificent nursery garden, à la Treppel’s or Anna Markovna’s. Oh, of course, a well-balanced spouse or the happy father of six grown-up daughters will always be clamouring about the horror of prostitution. He will even arrange with the help of a lottery and an amateur entertainment a society for the saving of fallen women, or an asylum in the name of St. Magdalene. But the existence of prostitution he will bless and sustain.”
“Magdalene asylums!” with quiet laughter, full of an ancient hatred the ache of which had not yet healed, repeated Jennie.
“Yes, I know that all these false measures undertaken are stuff and a total mockery,” cut in Likhonin. “But let me be ridiculous and stupid, yet I do not wish to remain a commiserating spectator, who sits on a warm ledge, gazes upon a conflagration, and is saying all the time: ‘Oh, my, but it’s burning … by God, it is burning! Perhaps there are even people burning!’—but for his part merely laments and slaps his thighs.”
“Well, now,” said Platonov harshly, “would you take a child’s syringe and go to put out the fire with it?”
“No!” heatedly exclaimed Likhonin … “Perhaps—who knows?—perhaps I’ll succeed in saving at least one living soul? It was just this that I wanted to ask you about, Platonov, and you must help me … Only, I implore you, without jeers, without cooling off …”
“You want to take a girl out of here? To save her?” asked Platonov, looking at him attentively. He now understood the drift of this entire conversation.
“Yes … I don’t know … I’ll try …” answered Likhonin uncertainly.
“She’ll come back,” said Platonov.
“She will,” Jennie repeated with conviction.
Likhonin walked up to her, took her by the hands and began to speak in a trembling whisper:
“Jennechka … Perhaps you … eh? For I don’t call you as a mistress … but a friend … It’s all a trifle, half a year of rest … and then we’ll master some trade or other … we’ll read …”
Jennie snatched her hands out of his with vexation.
“Oh, into a bog with you!” she almost shouted. “I know you! Want me to darn socks for you? Cook on a kerosene stove? Pass nights without sleeping on account of you when you’ll be chitter-chattering with your boyish-bob friends? But when you get
