Alexander Kuprin. Pit (№ 431181)

Under a rude and obscene profession, under obscene words, under a drunken, ugly appearance - and yet Sonechka Marmeladova is still alive! The fate of a Russian prostitute - oh, what a tragic, pitiful, bloody, ridiculous and stupid path it is! Everything was combined here: Russian God, Russian breadth and carelessness, Russian despair in the fall, Russian lack of culture, Russian naivety, Russian patience, Russian shamelessness. After all, all of them that you take to your bedrooms - look, take a good look at them - after all, they are all children, after all, they are all eleven years old. Fate pushed them to prostitution, and since then they live in some strange, enchanting, toy life, not developing, not enriched by experience, naive, trusting, capricious, not knowing what they will say and what they will do in half an hour - just like children ... I saw this bright and funny childishness among the most depressed, the oldest girls, hackneyed and crippled like cabbies. And this impotent pity, this useless sympathy for human suffering never dies in them.