Yama: the pit

I’m going with forty, going with an ace of spades— a ten-spot, Mannechka, if you

please. I’m through. Fifty-seven, eleven, sixty-eight. How much have you?”

herself aloof in the house, does not chum with any one, does not initiate any one into her past life. But in her case there must have been many more adventures besides having been a nun: there is something mysterious, taciturn and criminal in her unhurried speech, in the evasive glance of her deep and dark-gold eyes from under the long, lowered eyelashes, in her manners, her sly smiles and intonations of a modest but wanton would-be saint. There was one occurrence when the girls, with well-nigh reverent awe, heard that Tamara could talk fluently in French and German. She has within her some sort of an inner, restrained power. Notwithstanding her outward meekness and complaisance, all in the establishment treat her with respect and circumspection— the proprietress, and her mates, and both housekeepers, and even the doorkeeper, that veritable sultan of the house of ill-fame, that general terror and hero.

Here also, with her legs crossed, slightly bent, with some sewing, sits Tamara— a quiet, easy-going, pretty girl, slightly reddish, with that dark and shining tint of hair which is to be found on the back of a fox in winter. Her real name is Glycera, or Lukeria, as the common folk say it. But it is already an ancient usage of the houses of ill-fame to replace the uncouth names of the Matrenas, Agathas, Cyclitinias with sonorous, preferably exotic names. Tamara had at one time been a nun, or, perhaps, merely a novice in a convent, and to this day there have been preserved on her face timidity and a pale puffiness— a modest and sly expression, which is peculiar to young nuns. She holds

the room of Little Manka, who is also called Manka the Scandaliste and Little White Manka, a whole party has gathered.

Niura is a small girl, with goggle-eyes of blue; she has white, flaxen hair and little blue veins on her temples.

Liubka, after breakfast, had carried out the leavings of bread and the cuttings of ham to Amour, but the dog had soon palled upon her.

Honest to God, Annochka turned all red,” confirms Isaiah Savvich.

The fifth person, finally, is the local district inspector, Kerbesh. This is an athletic man; he is kind of bald, has a red beard like a fan, vividly blue slumbrous eyes, and a thin, slightly hoarse, pleasant voice

The other one is called Zociya. She has just struggled out of the ranks of the common girls.