Anonymous - Grushenka. Three Times a Woman

Katerina viewed the nude forms. Two of the girls were impossible at a glance. One had very small, almost boyish breasts and of course the wide hips which were so common. The other had such thick thighs and so broad a bottom, that she might already have had a couple of children. Katerina disregarded them entirely and, though they stayed in the room, it was only because it had been forgotten to send them away. Katerina now motioned the last girl nearer to the window and took out, to the amazement of Madame Drakeshkow, the aforementioned multicolored ribbons. With some misgivings she started with the height (which was correct), came to the bust, where more than the thickness of two fingers was missing and gave it up when the hips proved more than a hand's breadth too large. With a sigh, she put her ribbon back in her sack and moved without speaking to the exit door. She paid no attention to the rain of words from the utterly bewildered Madame Drakeshkow, who had not understood what she had been about. To measure a servant girl! Who had ever heard of such folly? But Katerina was already on the street with the look of a beaten dog in her eyes, undecided what to do next. The droshky driver, warmed meanwhile by a drink from a nearby public house, saluted her cheerfully and coaxed her to hire him again. He hoped that her eminence had completed her mission perfectly and that he could drive her home in roaring speed. Katerina let him know that she had been unsuccessful and that, by the name of her personal Saint, she would have to give up. Then the befuddled driver remembered that she wanted to buy some girls, and anew praised the goods which his cousin wanted to dispose of. He'd drive her over quickly and- Katerina looked at the sun. It was still early. One unsuccessful try more or less did not matter, and she climbed back into the carriage, which answered with a sigh, bending to her weight. We soon see Katerina breathing heavily while climbing up a creaking and steep staircase to the cousin's attic. It turned out that this cousin, a thin spinster of about fifty years, was handling the embroidery business on a small scale; that she wanted to give up her enterprise and leave Moscow in order to stay with relatives in the south. Lacking money for the long trip, the sale of the two girls should provide the means. Katerina was led into the adjoining room, a large, very light attic room, bare of any furniture except a work table crowded with materials of all kinds. On a bench before this table, bent over their work, sat two girls. The cousin commanded them to rise and it was then that Katerina uttered a cry of amazement. One of the girls was an exact duplicate of her Princess; at least her face and features were so perfectly like those of her mistress that Katerina first feared a spook might have tricked her. Still, the face did not matter at all. It was only the right contours of the body which were sought. The height was right, the form seemed so; Katerina hastily demanded that this dark-haired girl with the shining blue eyes be stripped. The other girl was a short, flat-nosed, sturdy creature and Katerina disregarded her. Not so the cousin. She made it quite clear that she would not sell one girl alone; it must be both or neither. Katerina mumbled that all that could be arranged, just let her see the dark one. The girls, who had no previous knowledge that their madame wanted to get rid of them, flushed slightly, looked at each other and at the cousin, and stood sheepishly. The cousin slapped the dark girl and demanded to know whether she had become deaf and when she wanted to start taking her clothes off. With excited fingers, the buttons of the blouse opened; then came a bodice of common linen, strapped and fastened with many ribbons, and from underneath a rough chemise stood out two full and hard breasts with deep red nipples. Katerina, the never smiling, grinned. It was the kind of bust she was looking for. The wide skirt of flowered and cheap material fell to the floor and a pair of wide trousers, reaching to the ankles, came into view. A bush of thick black hair protruded through the open slit of the drawers, which was there for the sake of commodity. (The women of that time attended to their natural functions through the gap of their trousers, which they opened up while sitting down for the necessity.) Soon shirt and drawers were also removed and Katerina eyed her find with growing satisfaction. She went around and around the nude girl. The waistline was perfect; the legs full and female but subtle; and the flesh seemed to be even softer than that of her mistress. To find out, she came close to the girl and felt her body. She was content. This was not the usual peasant type. This was not a tough and common brat. This girl had the form of an aristocrat, a form which must be like that of her “little mother.” Katerina remembered her measurements, took out her ribbons and began her comparisons. Well, the height was almost perfect, a little too tall, but she could tolerate that small difference. The length of the back, the breasts, the waistline, the thickness of the thighs, were right and what one might call right. Even the wrists and the ankles fitted.

It turned out that the length of the legs, measured from the crotch to the floor, was a trifle too long, but Katerina had already resolved that this girl was to be bought. The bargaining started. Katerina wanted to buy only the dark girl and she did not want to pay more than 50 rubles. The blonde imp was not wanted; her master owned 100,000 souls and did not need any more. The cousin shrieked that he did not then need to buy the dark girl either. While Katerina zealously defended the money of her master, the blonde girl leaned against the table and the nude, dark one stood motionless with hanging arms in the middle of the room, as if she had nothing to do with the affair. The driver here and there interjected an appeasing word from the door, where he loitered as a witness who is waiting for a handsome commission. The cousin was thin and hard. Katerina was eager to buy and, after a battle, the old housekeeper's hand went into the bodice which covered her enormous bosom and brought to light an ugly leather purse, from which she paid the cousin 90 rubles in glittering gold.

She had gotten the price down from the demanded hundred, but she had to take both girls. No, she was not sending a carriage for them.

She was going to take both with her. She was afraid she might lose her precious discovery. They would start immediately. The girls had nothing to pack. They had no belongings except some woolen kerchiefs and the like, which were quickly made into a bundle. After the dark girl was hurriedly dressed again, Katerina took a quick leave with her purchase, though not without assuring the cousin anew that the price paid had been outrageous. The cousin made the sign of the cross over her former serfs. They in turn, automatically and without feeling, kissed the hem of her dress and soon the three women sat in the carriage. The driver was paid a little distance from Sokolow's house and received what he demanded. It is quite sure that with this money and the commission from his cousin, he was senselessly drunk for several days. Starting toward the palace, Katerina asked the dark girl what her name was. “Grushenka,” answered the girl readily. That was the first word she spoke after she had become one of the uncounted souls of Prince Alexey Sokolow. She did not then know the name of her new master.

It must be remembered that our story takes place shortly after the death of Peter the Great and that the revolutionizing changes he had made during his violent dictatorship came at this time to their first blossom. Peter the Great had done away with the seclusion of women who had lived before then in the oriental life of the harem. He had forced them into society, where they were at first so awkward that he got them drunk in order to loosen them up. He had lifted the Bojars, the aristocratic caste, to an elevated position by forcing the working class into unheard of servitude and submission. He had, by the most cruel tortures, in which he participated personally, built up a social order in which might was God and the serf a slave. He had forced Western culture upon his Bojars and one of his orders had been that they should build themselves great castles and houses. Alexey Sokolow was only a score of years the junior of this great ruler. While eager to take all the advantages which were offered to his class, he had enough cunning to see that it was wiser to stay away from the inner court circle, where the greatest generals or officials were uncertain when they would find themselves on the rack or the wheel and eventually beheaded. Sokolow had therefore established his city life in Moscow instead of St. Petersburg, and here in Moscow, he had erected the magnificent palace which can be seen to this day. Katerina dismissed the droshky a few blocks away, so as not to be seen by other servants riding in a hired carriage, and led the two bewildered serf girls to the huge arch of the main entrance which was guarded by two soldiers with muskets, high tin helmets and high boots. They paid no attention to the three women who quickly entered the archway and were admitted to the inner courtyard. Flowers, lampoons, grass, even bushes covered the tremendous square of the inner court. Tables, chairs and benches stood about in great disorder. This courtyard was normally a barren place of cobblestones, but the Princess had given an entertainment the night before for which the flowers and grass had been raised in hot-houses in the country. Katerina gave her wards no time to look or to think. She hurried them through the court and down a stone staircase to the basement, which consisted of endless halls, rooms and kitchens. Here Katerina left the blonde girl with a woman who seemed to be an overseer of this underground labyrinth. She then took Grushenka by the hand and marched on with her. This time she led her up a small and winding wooden staircase, which ended at the second floor. Thick Turkish carpets covered the light hallway and Grushenka soon saw a room which she was going to know very thoroughly afterwards. It was the try-on room of the Princess, fitted with a big oak table in the middle of the room and huge chestnut closets and presses along the walls, between which mirrors of all kinds and dimensions were installed. On a curt order from Katerina the girl took all her clothes off and, entirely nude, was dragged by the old housekeeper through other rooms, which were magnificently adorned with silks and brocades. Katerina led the substitute of Madame through the half open door of her mistress' boudoir, in her excitement not waiting for permission to enter. The Princess was sitting before a mirror at her toilet table. Boris, the coiffeur, was busy curling her long, dark brown hair. A young serf girl knelt on the floor and put rouge on her mistress' toe-nails. In the corner, near a window, sat “Fraulein,” an elderly spinster who had been a German governess in different houses of the great, and who was now reading aloud in a dry and monotonous voice some French poetry. The Princess listened with only slight understanding or interest. The French poet had worked into his fable all kinds of persons from the Greek and Latin mythology, which meant nothing to the capricious listener. But when he described how the enormous shaft of Mars was pushed into the grotto of Venus, that called for noticeable attention. In her mirror, Princess Nelidowa had seen Katerina approaching with Grushenka and waved angrily not to be disturbed. So Grushenka had an opportunity to study the group just described. The Princess wore only a short batiste chemise which left her more or less uncovered. She did not mind that Boris, clad in the formal house uniform of the Sokolows with a long pig-tail at his back, could see her nudity, because he was only a serf. He had been sent to Dresden some years ago to learn the art of hairdressing with a very famous master in the Saxonian capital. Sokolow had intended to rent him out to one of the ladies' hairdressing parlors recently opened in Moscow, but the Princess had taken the clever man into her private service. He was responsible for her many tufts and locks worn in the daytime and for her powdered wigs decorated with precious stones which went with the evening gowns. When the reading of the poem had ceased, Katerina could restrain herself no longer. “I have her! I have her!” she cried and dragged Grushenka closer to the Princess. “I found a substitute who fits you perfectly and she is ours now!” “I know you could have found her sooner,” said Nelidowa maliciously. “But you'll be forgiven since you dug her up at last. Now show me, does she really have the same measurements or are you lying to me?” She rose hastily from her stool, so that poor Boris was in danger of burning her with his hot irons. “She really and truly fits,” answered Katerina. “Here, I'll show you.” And she took out the multicolored ribbons to prove the fact. But Nelidowa was not interested in that.