ere began to spring up
wide-open brothels, permitted by the authorities, regulated by official
supervision and subject to express, strict rules. Towards the end of
the nineteenth century both streets of Yama--Great Yamskaya and Little
Yamskaya--proved to be entirely occupied, on one side of the street as
well as the other, exclusively with houses of ill-fame.[1] Of the
private houses no more than five or six were left, but even they were
taken up by public houses, beer halls, and general stores, catering to
the needs of Yama prostitution.

[1] "Houses of Suffrance"--i.e., Houses of the Necessary Evil.--Trans.

The course of life, the manners and customs, are almost identical in
all the thirty-odd establishments; the difference is only in the
charges exacted for the briefly-timed love, and consequently in certain
external minutiae as well: in the assortment of more or less handsome
women, in the comparative smartness of the costumes, in the
magnificence of the premises and the luxuriousness of the furnishings.

The most chic establishment is that of Treppel, the first house to the
left upon entering Great Yamskaya. This is an old firm. Its present
owner bears an entirely different name, and fills the post of an
elector in the city council and is even a member of the city board. The
house is of two stories, green and white, built in the debauched
pseudo-Russian style a la Ropetovsky, with little horses, carved
facings, roosters, and wooden towels bordered with lace-also of wood; a
carpet with a white runner on the stairs; in the front hall a stuffed
bear, holding a wooden platter for visiting cards in his out-stretched
paws; a parquet floor in the ballroom, heavy raspberry silk curtains
and tulle on the windows, along the walls white and gold chairs and
mirrors with gilt frames; there are two private cabinets with carpets,
divans, and soft satin puffs; in the bedrooms blue and rose lanterns,
blankets of raw silk stuff and clean pillows; the inmates are clad in
low-cut ball gowns, bordered with fur, or in expensive masquerade
costumes of hussars, pages, fisher lasses, school-girls; and the
majority of them are Germans from the Baltic provinces--large, handsome
women, white of body and with ample breasts. At Treppel's three roubles
are taken for a visit, and for the whole night, ten.

Three of the two-rouble establishments--Sophie Vassilievna's, The Old
Kiev, and Anna Markovna's--are somewhat worse, somewhat poorer.