It is hard to say whether the girls hated or feared Vaska more.

They all made up to him, trying to curry favor with him. Everyone eagerly sought the honor of being his mistress. At the same time they egged on their pimps, the guests, and the bouncers whom they knew to beat Red up. But he was enormously strong, and never got drunk, so that it was hard to get the better of him. More than once arsenic was placed in his food, his tea, and his beer, and on one occasion to some effect, but he recovered. In some way he always got wind of every move against him. But apparently his realization of what he was risking by living among countless enemies neither increased nor diminished his cold cruelty toward the girls. With his usual stolidity he would say:

“I know that you’d tear me to pieces with your teeth if you got the chance.…But there’s no use your getting worked up about it. Nothing will happen to me.”

And shoving out his thick lips, he would snort into their faces. This was his way of laughing at them.

His companions were policemen, other bouncers, and detectives, of whom there are always many in houses of prostitution. But he had no friends among them, and there was not one of his acquaintances whom he wished to see more frequently than the rest. He treated all alike with complete indifference. He drank beer with them and talked of the scandals that occurred every night in the district. He never left the house of his employer unless he was called away on business, that is, to administer a beating, or, as they said, to put the fear of God into someone’s girl.

The house in which he was employed was one of the establishments of the middling sort. The admission charge was three rubles, and the charge for the night, five. The proprietress, Fekla Yermolayevna, a stout woman of about fifty, was stupid and malicious, feared Vaska, prized him highly, and paid him fifteen rubles a month, in addition to his keep. He had a small, coffin-like room in the attic. Because of Vaska, perfect order prevailed among her girls. There were eleven of them and they were all as meek as sheep.

When she was in a good humor, and talking to a guest whom she knew, she often bragged of her girls as one brags about pigs and cows.

“My goods are first class,” she would say, smiling with pride and satisfaction. “The girls are all fresh and sound. The oldest is twenty-six. Of course, she’s not a girl you can have an interesting talk with, but what a body! Just take a look at her, sir—a marvel, not a girl! Ksyushka, come here.…”

Ksyushka would come up, waddling like a duck. The guest would examine her more or less carefully and always be satisfied with her body.

She was a girl of medium height, plump, and as firm as though she had been hammered out of one piece. She had an ample, high bosom, a round face, and a little mouth with thick bright red lips. Her eyes, which were expressionless and irresponsive, resembled the beady eyes of a doll, and her pug nose and the bangs over her eyebrows, by adding to her resemblance to a doll, quenched in the least exacting guest the desire for any conversation with her on any subject. Usually they simply said to her:

“Come.”

And she would go, with her heavy swaying gait, smiling meaninglessly and rolling her eyes from right to left. She had been taught this by the madam. It was known as “luring the guest.” Her eyes had gotten so accustomed to this movement that she began to “lure the guest” from the very moment when, gaudily dressed, she entered the still empty parlor in the evening, and her eyes continued to roll from side to side all the time she was there, whether alone, with other girls, or with a guest.