Character guide

Likhonin

major

Also known as The Sparrows, XI

A student who rescues Liubka from the brothel and then discovers that saving someone is not the same as loving her.

Liubka

major

Also known as Liubka So, Anna Markovna's

A young woman pulled out of Anna Markovna's house and into a cramped student flat, where she learns knitting, flowers, and the limits of being saved.

Tamara

major

Also known as The modest quiet Tamara, Tamarochka

The brothel's cleverest woman, who spins a year-long romance with a respectable notary while keeping her real life entirely hidden from him.

Jennka

major

Also known as the proud Jennka, The self-respecting Jennka

The proudest woman in the house, who turns her diagnosis into a weapon and deliberately spreads infection to every man she can.

Sergei Ivanovich Platonov

major

Also known as Sergei Ivanovich, Sergei

A journalist who prefers unloading watermelons at the port to writing newspaper filler, and who watches the brothel world with a vagabond's clear eye.

Anna Markovna

supporting

Also known as Anna, Markovna, Anna Markovna Shaibes

The brothel's proprietress, who inspects new arrivals like livestock and runs her house with the calm arithmetic of a businesswoman.

Simon Yakovlevich Horizon

supporting

Also known as Simon Yakovlevich, Horizon

A polished, calculating patron of the brothel whose grand theories about rescuing fallen women mask a colder appetite for control and self-regard.

Emma Edwardovna Titzner

supporting

Also known as Emma, Emma Edwardovna

The brothel's new proprietress, a former prostitute who rules with a boa-constrictor's gaze, demanding kissed hands and absolute obedience from the women she calls her own.

Soloviev

supporting

Also known as The ponderous Soloviev, darling Soloviev

A ponderous, warm-hearted friend of the brothel women who defends Likhonin's rescue of Liubka with real wrath and insists an untouched mind is virgin soil worth cultivating.

Simeon

supporting

Also known as the gloomy Simeon

A gloomy, stingy pimp who hoards money toward a monastery while leaving bruises on the women he claims to love, and whom the girls whisper is a murderer.

Simanovsky

supporting

Also known as Comrade Simanovsky

A self-satisfied comrade of Likhonin's circle who lectures on saving fallen women with heroic rhetoric, then turns Liubka's education into reckless parlor chemistry.

Magdalen

supporting

Also known as Magda

A prostitute known as Magda whose tragic past shadows the brothel, one of the women whose ruined life gives weight to the men's talk of rescue.

Liuba

supporting

Also known as The naive Liuba

A freckled, strong-bodied girl from Anna Markovna's establishment, she becomes the raw material for a student's grand experiment in salvation.

Little Manka

supporting

Also known as Little White Manka, Manka

Known as Little White Manka, she is the devoted companion whose caresses Jennka deliberately withdraws to spare her from ruin.

Rovinskaya

supporting

One of the four hundred women in the public harems, she moves through the brothel's drowsy afternoons as both witness and sister to the others' suffering.

Prince Nijeradze

supporting

Also known as Prince

A Georgian prince whose skeptical grunts and sidelong glances puncture every high-minded speech about rescuing fallen women.

Roly-Poly

supporting

Also known as The lanky rickety Roly-Poly, Poly, Roly

A lanky, rickety freeloader who recites doggerel, cadges drinks, and is tolerated by the girls as almost one of their own.

Boris Sobashnikov

supporting

Also known as Sobashnikov, Boris, comrade Boris

A student comrade whose drunken night in the Yamkas and sudden pity for the women set him on a course of reckless rescue.

Volodya Chaplinsky

supporting

Also known as Chaplinsky, Volodya

Chaplinsky moves through the brothel's drawing room as a minor satellite of Rovinskaya's circle, a young man whose devotion is so obvious that she can tease him into mimicking a street musician's head-tossing and call him 'Volodya' with easy familiarity. His calm, faintly ironic interjections—like dubbing Ryazanov's defense of the evening 'the speech for the defense'—mark him as more observer than actor. He matters because his unrequited, self-effacing attachment quietly exposes how the men around the Yamkas convert feeling into performance.

Mr. Yarchenko

supporting

Also known as Gavrila Petrovich Yarchenko

Yarchenko belongs to the loose set of students, reporters, and gentlemen who drift from the river to the publican's and finally to Anna Markovna's, and it is his name Nijeradze catches when the party is recounted. Half ashamed of his weakness and half exalted by it, he converts a morning of cognac-soaked sentiment into a plan to snatch a girl out of the slough and teach her to read. His impulsive philanthropy sets in motion the novel's central experiment, making him the pivot on which the brothel's private lives open to the outside world.

Niura

supporting

Niura is one of the women whose daily life in Anna Markovna's establishment forms the novel's backdrop, and she becomes an unwitting audience for the amateur physicist Simanovsky's attempts to astonish a 'virginally feminine mind.' Where he expects gasps, she offers flat recognition—fireworks she has seen before—and when a Leyden jar stings her finger she curses him as Satan. Her refusal to be amazed, and her insistence that she is now 'a decent woman' with a flat of her own, quietly rebukes the men who treat her as raw material for edification.

Zoe

supporting

Zoe arrives one winter evening in a caracul sacque, a woman of about twenty-six with no makeup and no obvious need, and asks the proprietress to take her on. Emma Edwardovna strips and feels her over like a drover appraising cattle, and Zoe undresses without a flicker of shame, answering questions about relatives and children with a flat 'I'm all alone.' Her unexplained willingness to enter the Yamkas, and the housekeeper's wariness of women 'who have known freedom,' make her the novel's most enigmatic arrival—a quiet disturbance in the brothel's routine.

Ernst Andreievich Ryazanov

supporting

Also known as Ernst Andreievich

Ryazanov sits among the brothel's guests as the one who refuses to sneer, sipping his goblet and answering the baroness's boredom with the melancholy claim that youth and laughter have left human life for good. His soft, disarming voice and his willingness to imagine that the present evening might be a holiday for those below mark him as the party's reluctant conscience. He matters because his defense of patience—half genuine, half exhausted—frames the moral question the novel keeps asking about the women of the Yamkas.

Mr. Berkesh

supporting

Also known as the ferocious and brazen Berkesh

Berkesh belongs to the stream of men who pass through Anna Markovna's establishment, and his reputation for ferocity and shamelessness makes him a name the women register with a particular wariness. He is the type Yarchenko's drunken sermon indicts—the whippersnapper or shattered ancient who takes a woman for a whim and walks away whistling. His presence sharpens the contrast between the men's lofty talk of souls and the daily reality of the house.

Jennechka

supporting

Jennka is one of the women in the brothel, known for her biting wit and the sullen distance she keeps even from those who adore her, like Little White Manka. When she learns she has syphilis, she refuses to withdraw quietly; instead she chooses her clients deliberately, infecting the richest and most important among them with a fury that scandalizes and fascinates her companions. Her intimate confession to Tamara reveals a woman who has turned self-destruction into a kind of savage justice, and her fierce, wounded loyalty to the other women makes her both a threat and a strange moral center in the house.

Pasha

minor

A character in the brothel.

Verka

minor

Also known as the trusting Verka

A trusting prostitute in the brothel.

Kitty

minor

Also known as fat Kitty, Fat Katie, Katie, the stout Kitty

A stout prostitute in the brothel.

Dilectorsky

minor

A minor character who appears in the narrative.

Pashka

minor

Also known as the unhappy Pashka

An unhappy character in the brothel.

Isaiah Savvich

minor

A character who visits the brothel.

Sonka

minor

A prostitute in the brothel.

Madame Barsukova

minor

A madam or visitor to the brothel.

Petrov

minor

A minor character in the story.

Alexandra

minor

Also known as The crafty Alexandra

A crafty prostitute in the brothel.

Manya

minor

Also known as Little Manya, Little White Manya

A young prostitute known as Little Manya.

Liubochka

minor

A diminutive form of Liubka, a prostitute.

Borya Sobashnikov

minor

Also known as Borya

A younger version of Boris Sobashnikov.

Ellena Victorovna

minor

A woman who appears in the story.

Sergei Ivanich

minor

Also known as Ivanich

A patron of the brothel.

Birdie

minor

A prostitute in the brothel.

Zociya

minor

A prostitute in the brothel.

Ninka

minor

Also known as the cowardly and insensible Ninka

A cowardly and insensible prostitute.

Senka

minor

Also known as Senka the Depot, the astonished Senka

A character known as Senka the Depot.

Vera

minor

A minor character in the story.

Vanda

minor

A prostitute in the brothel.

Zavorotny

minor

A minor character in the story.

Prokhor Ivanovich

minor

Also known as Prokhor, Prokhor Ivanich

A servant or minor character in the brothel.

Elsa

minor

A minor character in the story.

Petrovsky

minor

A minor character in the story.

Volodya Pavlov

minor

Also known as Pavlov

A minor character in the story.

Jeannette

minor

Also known as Henrietta

A minor character in the story.

Treppel

minor

A minor character in the story.

Mr. Shepsherovich

minor

Also known as Shepsherovich

A minor character in the story.

Chook

minor

A minor character in the story.

Mannechka

minor

A minor character in the story.

Doroshenko

minor

A minor character in the story.

Glycera

minor

Also known as Aunt Glycera

A minor character in the story.

Dyadchenko

minor

A minor character in the story.

Magdochka

minor

A diminutive form of Magdalen.

Terekhov

minor

A minor character in the story.

Bella

minor

A minor character in the story.

Vassil Vassilich

minor

A minor character in the story.

Manka the Crocodile

minor

A prostitute with a nickname.

Sarochka

minor

A minor character in the story.

Doctor Krassov

minor

A doctor who appears in the story.

Susannah Raitzina

minor

Also known as Raitzina, Susannah

A minor character in the story.

Pheclusha

minor

A minor character in the story.

Mishka

minor

A minor character in the story.

Veltman

minor

A minor character in the story.

Lazer

minor

A minor character in the story.

Hans

minor

A minor character in the story.