Character: Sergey Ivanovich Platonov

But if they [prostitutes] and lie, then they lie just like children. But you yourself know that children are the very first, sweetest fools and at the same time the most sincere people in the world. And it's great that both of them, that is, both prostitutes and children, lie only to us - men - and adults. They do not lie to each other, they only improvise with inspiration. But they lie to us because we ourselves demand it from them, because we crawl into their souls completely alien to us with our stupid methods and questions, because, finally, they secretly consider us big fools and stupid pretenders.

You see, I am attracted and interested in this life by her ... how can I put it? ... her terrible, naked truth. You see, it is as if all the conditional covers have been pulled off from her. There is no lies, no hypocrisy, no hypocrisy, there are no deals either with public opinion, or with the obsessive authority of ancestors, or with your conscience. No illusions, no embellishments! Here I am! A public woman, a public vessel, a cesspool to drain the excess of the city's lust. Anyone who wants to come to me - you will not meet with refusal, this is my service. But for a second of this voluptuousness in a hurry - you will pay with money, disgust, illness and shame. And that's all. There is not a single side of human life where the main, main truth shines with such a monstrous, ugly naked brightness, without any shadow of human lies and self-whitening.

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.

This is the whole horror, that there is no horror! Bourgeois everyday life - and nothing more. Moreover, the taste of a closed educational institution with its naivety, rudeness, sentimentality and imitation.

No illusions, no embellishments! Here I am! Public woman, public vessel, the cesspool to drain the excess urban lust. Come to me whoever wants, you will not meet failure in this my service. But for a second of lust in a hurry - you pay money, revulsion, disease and shame. And that's all. No one side of human life where the basic main truth shone with such a monstrous, ugly naked brightness without any shadow of human lvania and samooborony.

But, you know, it is very much boring and disgusting. Like those of flies, which now represented the Professor. Slapelis for a moment on the windowsill, and then in some stupid surprise scratched his hind legs back and shattered forever. A plant here love?.. So for this I am the hero of their romance. I'm ugly, women are timid, shy and polite. They crave here wild passions, bloody jealousy, tears, poisonings, beatings, sacrifices, in a word, hysterical romanticism.

The fate of Russian prostitutes - Oh, what a tragic, pathetic, bloody, funny and silly way! Here, everything is aligned: Russian God, Russian latitude and reckless Russian despair in a fall, Russian backwardness, Russian naivete, Russian patience, the Russian shamelessness. All of them, which you take to the bedrooms, - look, look at them carefully, because they are the children, because they're all eleven years. Fate pushed them into prostitution, and since they live in a strange, magical, toy life, not developing, not enriched by the experience, naive, gullible, capricious, not knowing what to say that will make half an hour - just as children are. This bright and funny childishness I have seen the lowest the oldest of the girls, worn-out and mutilated as a cab horse. And not dying in them, never this helpless pity, it is useless empathy for human suffering...

But I hronicheskaya come across a short article about how somewhere in France executed a murderer. The Prosecutor who was present at the last toilet of the criminal, sees that he was wearing boots on his bare feet, and - the blockhead! - recalls: "And the stockings then?" And he looked at him and thoughtfully says: "is it Worth it?" Understand: these two little replicas of me as a stone on the skull! Immediately appeared in front of me all the horror and all the stupidity of violent death...

But screaming does not scare anybody and will not catch. You know, there pogovorochka: a lot of screeching and little wool.