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 of yesterday’s blows and scratches and
naively bepainted with the aid of a red cigarette
box moistened with spit.
All the year round, every evening—with
the exception of the last three days of Holy Week
and the night before Annunciation, when no bird builds
its nest and a shorn wench does not plait her braid—
when it barely grows dark out of doors, hanging red
lanterns are lit before every house, above the tented,
carved street doors. It is just like a holiday
out on the street—like Easter. All
the windows are brightly lit up, the gay music of
violins and pianos floats out through the panes, cabmen
drive up and drive off without cease. In all
the houses the entrance doors are opened wide, and
through them one may see from the street a steep staircase
with a narrow corridor on top, and the white flashing
of the many-facetted reflector of the lamp, and the
green walls of the front hall, painted over with Swiss
landscapes. Till the very morning hundreds and
thousands of men ascend and descend these staircases.
Here everybody frequents: half-shattered, slavering
ancients, seeking artificial excitements, and boys-military
cadets and high-school lads—almost children;
bearded paterfamiliases; honourable pillars of society,
in goldon spectacles; and newly-weds, and enamoured
bridegrooms, and honourable professors with renowned
names; and thieves, and murderers, and liberal lawyers;
and strict guardians of morals—pedagogues,
and foremost writers— the authors of fervent,
impassioned articles on the equal rights of women;
and catchpoles, and spies, and escaped convicts, and
officers, and students, and Social Democrats, and hired
patriots; the timid and the brazen, the sick and the
well, those knowing woman for the first time, and
old libertines frayed by all species of vice; clear-eyed,
handsome fellows and monsters maliciously distorted
by nature, deaf-mutes, blind men, men without noses,
with flabby, pendulous bodies, with malodorous breath,
bald, trembling, covered with parasites—pot-bellied,
hemorrhoidal apes. They come freely and simply,
as to a restaurant or a depot; they sit, smoke, drink,
convulsively pretend to be merry; they dance, executing
abominable movements of the body imitative of the act
of sexual love. At times attentively and long,
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