Little Apples

Authenticated by—Chekhonte

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Gruzdev, a young telegraph operator, was lounging on a sofa in a hotel room, his light-blond head propped on his hands. He was gazing at a tiny red-haired young woman.

“Tell me, Katya, what led you to become a fallen woman?” he asked with an offhand sigh. “By the way, you look frozen through!”

It was one of the worst possible March nights. The dull flicker of the streetlamps barely lit the grimy, thinning snow. Everything was wet, dirty, and gray. The wind moaned quietly, timidly, as if afraid it might be forbidden to sing. There was the sound of heavy feet tramping through the slush. Nature was in the grip of nausea.

“What led you to become a fallen woman?” Gruzdev asked again.

Katya looked shyly into his eyes. They were honest, warm, sincere eyes, she thought. Fallen creatures are drawn to honest eyes like moths to a flame. A kind look is worth more than a full bowl of gruel. Embarrassed, picking at the fringe of the tablecloth, she told Gruzdev her sad tale. A humdrum tawdry tale: a man, promises, deceit, and so on.

“What a scoundrel!” Gruzdev muttered indignantly. “Brutes like that should be rounded up and sent to hell one and all! Was he rich?”

“Yes.”

“I knew it! But you women are just as much to blame, hankering after money like that! What do you need all that money for?”

“He swore he would take care of me for the rest of my life,” Katya whispered. “Is that so bad? How could I resist? I have a poor old mother to care for!”

“What unfortunate creatures you are! And you all end up like this out of sheer foolishness, out of idiocy! You women are all so fainthearted! Unfortunate, pitiful! Listen, Katya! It’s none of my business, and I’m the last person to want to meddle in other people’s affairs, but your face is so sad I have to speak my mind! Why don’t you return to a respectable life? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? After all, it’s plain to see that you are not completely ruined yet, that you can still turn back! Why don’t you at least try to be respectable again? You could, Katya, I’m sure of it! You have an honest face, and in your eyes there is goodness, sorrow. You have such a nice smile!”

Gruzdev took Katya by both hands and, looking through her eyes into her soul, uttered many kind words. He spoke in a soft trembling tenor, his eyes filled with tears. His hot breath poured over her face and neck.

“You can be respectable again, Katya! You are still young, you must try!”

“I have tried, but . . . but nothing came of it! I tried everything! Once I even started working as a scullery maid, though . . . though I am of noble lineage! I wanted to give up my life of sin! Better the dirtiest drudgery than the trade I am in now! I worked as a scullery maid in a merchant’s house. I stayed there for a month and I made do, life was livable. But the mistress was a jealous woman, even though I never paid the slightest attention to the master. Finally she threw me out, and again I had nowhere to go, and . . . and I ended up where I started! Right where I started!”

Katya’s eyes widened, her face grew pale, and suddenly she let out a shriek. In the room next door something fell crashing to the floor—Katya’s shriek must have startled someone. Her thin hysterical sobs echoed through the flimsy partition between the rooms. Gruzdev quickly got her some water. Ten minutes later Katya was lying on the sofa, still sobbing, “What a worthless woman I am! The worst in the whole world! I will never manage to return to a life of decency now! Never! I will never manage to lead a virtuous life! How can I? I am so vile! I am so ashamed! But I deserve no better!”

Katya said little, not as much as Gruzdev, but there was candor in her words. She wanted to make a full confession, the confession of an honest sinner, but her words did not amount to more than moral self-flagellation. Again and again she clawed at her soul.

“I have tried and tried, but nothing ever comes of it! Nothing! I might as well perish!” she finally concluded with a sigh, and carefully set about rearranging her hair.

The young man looked at the clock.

“I will never amount to anything, but still, I am so grateful to you! This is the first time in my life that anybody has spoken such kind words to me. You are the only person who has ever treated me humanely, even though I am a vile, fallen woman!”

And suddenly she fell silent. A novel she had once read flashed through her mind. The hero had befriended a fallen woman and after much back and forth had convinced her to return to a life of virtue, and after she returned to a life of virtue he had made her his mistress. Katya thought awhile. Was not blond Gruzdev the hero of that novel? Was he not at least a little bit like him? Quite like him, she mused. With a pounding heart, she looked into his eyes. Tears ran in streams down her cheeks.

“There, there, Katya, calm down!” Gruzdev sighed, looking at the clock. “If you really want to, I’m sure you’ll be able to turn your back on this life.”

Katya, still crying, slowly unbuttoned the three top buttons of her coat. The novel with the eloquent hero faded from her mind.

The distraught wind howled through the ventilation shaft as if it was the first time it had ever seen the violence human beings will submit to in quest of their daily bread. High up above, on another floor, someone was plucking at an untuned guitar. The most humdrum of music.