With pounding heart the young artist put the portrait aside and began going through the others to see if anything else of the kind was to be found, but all the others formed a completely different world, and only demonstrated that this guest had ended up among them through foolish chance. Finally Chertkov asked about the price. The sly merchant, who had noticed, thanks to the artist’s interest, that the portrait was worth something, scratched behind his ear and said, “Well, you know, ten rubles would be a small price.”
Chertkov reached into his pocket.
“I’ll give eleven!” rang out behind him.
He turned and saw that a crowd of people had gathered and that one gentleman in a cloak had, like him, been standing in front of the painting for a long time. Chertkov’s heart began to beat hard and his lips began to quiver, like a man who feels that an object he has been searching for is about to be taken away from him. After looking attentively at the new customer, he was somewhat reassured, seeing that he was in clothes that were no better than his own. He said in a trembling voice, “I’ll give you twelve rubles, the painting is mine.”
“Proprietor! The painting is mine, here are fifteen rubles,” said the customer.
Chertkov’s face flinched convulsively, he caught his breath, and he said involuntarily, “Twenty rubles.”
The merchant rubbed his hands in pleasure, seeing that the customers were haggling among themselves to his advantage. The crowd grew denser around the buyers. They had caught the scent that an ordinary sale had turned into an auction, which is always so interesting, even for bystanders. Finally they drove the price up to fifty rubles. Almost in despair, Chertkov cried out, “Fifty,” recalling that all he had was fifty rubles, at least part of which he was supposed to use for rent, and also to buy paint and a few other necessities. His opponent gave up at that point—the sum had apparently exceeded his means as well—and the painting was Chertkov’s. He took a bill out of his pocket, threw it in the merchant’s face, and greedily grasped the painting. But suddenly he jumped away from it, overcome by terror. The dark eyes of the painted old man looked in such a lifelike and at the same time deathlike way that it was impossible not to feel fear. It seemed as if, by some inexplicably strange force, a part of life had been retained in them. These were not painted eyes; they were living eyes, human eyes. They were motionless, but they would probably not have been so horrible if they had moved. Some sort of savage feeling—not terror, but that inexplicable sensation that we feel at the appearance of something strange, something that represents a disorder in nature, or rather a kind of insanity of nature—that same feeling caused almost everyone to cry out. Trembling, Chertkov passed his hand over the canvas, but the canvas was smooth. The effect produced by the portrait was universal: the crowd rushed in horror away from the shop; the customer who had been competing with him moved away fearfully. The dusk had thickened just at that time, seemingly in order to make this incomprehensible phenomenon even more horrible. Chertkov didn’t have the strength to stay there any longer. Not daring to think of taking the portrait with him, he ran out into the street. The fresh air, the roar of traffic on the road, the talk of the crowd, seemed to refresh him for the moment, but his soul was still gripped by an oppressive feeling. No matter how he turned his gaze about him at the surrounding objects, still his thoughts were occupied only with the extraordinary phenomenon.
“What is it?” he thought to himself. “Art or some kind of supernatural magic, emerging independently of the laws of nature? What a strange, incomprehensible problem! Or is there a certain boundary line for a human being, up to which higher perception leads him, but when he steps over it, the human being steals something that is not to be created by human labor, he tears something living out of the life that animated the original? Why is it that this passing over the line set as a boundary for the imagination is so horrible? Or is it that after imagination, after impulse, there finally follows reality, that horrible reality onto which the imagination is pushed off its axis by an external shove, that horrible reality that appears to the one who thirsts for it when, wishing to comprehend a beautiful person, he arms himself with an anatomical knife, opens up the person’s viscera and sees a repulsive person? Incomprehensible! Such an amazing, horrible vitality! Or is an excessively faithful imitation of nature just as cloying as a dish with an excessively sweet taste?”
With such thoughts he entered his tiny room in a small wooden building on the Fifteenth Line of Vasilievsky Island, a room in which his rudimentary student work lay scattered in every corner—copies from ancient models that were careful and precise and demonstrated that the artist was trying to grasp the fundamental laws and inner proportions of nature.5 He examined them for a long time, and finally his thoughts began moving one after the other and were expressed almost in words—so vividly did he feel what he was reflecting on!
“It’s been a year now that I’ve been laboring over this dry, skeletal work! I try with all my powers to find out that which is given so miraculously to the great creators and seems to be the fruit of a moment’s swift inspiration. Hardly do they touch brush to canvas than a man appears, free, unfettered, just as he was created by nature; his movements are lifelike, unconstrained. To them this is given all at once, but I have to labor my whole life long; spend my whole life studying boring principles and elements, give my whole life up to insipid work that offers no response to my feelings. There are my daubings! They are faithful, they resemble the originals; but if I were to try to produce something of my own, it would come out all wrong. The leg won’t stand so surely and easily; the arm won’t rise so lightly and freely; for me the turn of the head will never be as natural as for them—and the conception, and those inexpressible phenomena… No, I will never be a great artist!”
His reflections were cut short by the entrance of his valet, a lad of about eighteen, in a Russian peasant shirt, with a pink face and red hair. Without ceremony he began to pull off Chertkov’s boots, while the latter remained plunged in his reflections. This lad in the red shirt was his manservant and model, cleaned his boots, yawned in his tiny anteroom, ground his paints, and soiled his floor with his dirty feet. Having taken the boots, he threw Chertkov a dressing gown and was leaving the room when he suddenly turned his head back and said loudly, “Master, should I light a candle or not?”
“Yes, do,” Chertkov answered absentmindedly.
“Oh, and the landlord came by,” the filthy valet added offhandedly, following the praiseworthy custom of all people of his profession—mentioning as a postscript the most important thing. “The landlord came by and said that if you don’t pay him, he’ll throw all your paintings out the window along with your bed.”
“Tell the landlord not to worry about the money,” Chertkov answered. “I managed to get the money.”
At these words he reached for the pocket of his tailcoat, but suddenly remembered that he had left all his money at the shop in payment for the portrait. He began mentally reproaching himself for his foolishness in running out of the shop for no reason, frightened by an insignificant incident, and not taking either the money or the portrait. He resolved to go to the merchant first thing the next day and take the money back, considering himself completely justified in refusing to make such a purchase, especially since his domestic circumstances did not permit him any unnecessary expenses.
The light of the moon lay on his floor in the form of a bright white window, encompassing part of the bed and ending on the wall. All the objects and paintings hanging in his room seemed to be smiling, sometimes catching with their edges a part of this eternally beautiful radiance. At that moment he looked at the wall as if by chance and saw on it that same strange portrait that had so impressed him in the shop. A light trembling passed involuntarily over his body. The first thing he did was call his valet-model and ask him how the portrait had gotten there and who had brought it; but the valet-model swore that no one had visited except the landlord, who had come in the morning and had had nothing but a
key in his hands. Chertkov could feel his hair start to move on his head. Sitting down by the window, he struggled to convince himself that there couldn’t be anything supernatural going on, that his boy might have fallen asleep at that moment, that the owner of the portrait could have sent it after finding out his address by some special happenstance… In short, he began to adduce all those trite explanations that we use when we want what happened to have happened just the way we think it did. He made a point of not looking at the portrait, but his head kept turning to it involuntarily, and it seemed that his gaze was stuck to the strange depiction. The old man’s motionless gaze was unbearable; his eyes absolutely shone, absorbing the moonlight, and their vitality was so terrifying that Chertkov involuntarily covered his eyes with his hand. It seemed as if a tear was trembling on the old man’s eyelashes; the bright twilight into which the sovereign moon had transformed the night intensified the effect; the canvas disappeared, and the terrifying face of the old man moved forward and looked out of the frame as if out of a window.
Attributing the portrait’s supernatural effect to the moon, whose miraculous light possesses the secret property of lending objects part of the sounds and colors of another world, Chertkov ordered his servant to quickly give him the candle he was fumbling with, but the expressiveness of the portrait did not lessen in the slightest. The moonlight, merging with the radiance of the candle, lent the portrait a still more incomprehensible and at the same time strange vitality. Seizing a sheet, Chertkov began to cover the portrait, wrapping it up three times so that it could not shine through the sheet, but all the same, whether as the result of a powerfully disturbed imagination, or whether his own eyes, exhausted by intense strain, had attained a fleeting, transient knack, it seemed to him for a long time as if the gaze of the old man was gleaming through the canvas. Finally he decided to put out the candle and lie down in his bed, which was blocked off by screens that hid the portrait from him. In vain did he wait for sleep. The most distressing thoughts drove away that calm state that brings sleep with it. Anguish, vexation, the landlord demanding money, the unfinished paintings that were creations of impotent impulses, poverty—all these things moved before him, and one took the place of the other. And whenever he succeeded in driving them away for a moment, the magical portrait would push its way into his imagination like a sovereign, and it would seem as if its death-dealing eyes were gleaming through a chink in the screens. He had never before felt such a heavy weight on his soul. The moonlight, which contains so much music when it invades the lonely bedroom of a poet and carries infantile, enchanting half-dreams over the head of his bed—that same moonlight did not bring him musical reveries; his reveries were painful. Finally he fell into something that was not sleep, but a kind of half-oblivion, that oppressive state when with one eye we see the approaching visions of dreams, and with the other we see surrounding objects in a vague form. He saw the surface of the old man’s image detach itself and come down from the portrait, just as the top layer of froth comes off of boiling liquid; this surface image rose into the air and floated closer and closer to him and finally came right up to his bed. Chertkov felt his breath being taken away; he made an effort to raise himself up—but he couldn’t move his arms. The old man’s eyes burned dimly and fastened themselves on him with all their magnetic force.
“Do not be afraid,” said the strange old man in an intimate tone, and Chertkov noticed a smile on his lips that seemed to sting him with its grin and which illuminated the dull wrinkles of his face with its bright vitality. “Do not be afraid of me,” the strange phenomenon said. “You and I will never be separated. You’ve thought up a very stupid occupation: What makes you want to sweat for ages over the alphabet when you have long been able to read fluently? You think that by long efforts you’ll be able to comprehend art, that you will win and receive something for it? Yes, you’ll receive something…” and at this his face became strangely distorted and a motionless laughter was expressed in all his wrinkles, “you’ll receive the enviable right to throw yourself into the Neva River from Saint Isaac’s Bridge or to tie up your neck with a kerchief and hang yourself from the first available nail; and as for your works, some dauber will buy them up for a ruble and cover them with primer so he can paint some ugly red face on top. Give up your foolish idea! Everything on earth is done for the sake of profit. You’d do better to take your brush and paint portraits of the whole town! Take on anything they commission, but don’t fall in love with your work, don’t sit over it day and night; time flies fast and life does not stop. The more paintings you can slap together in a day, the more money and fame you’ll have in your pocket. Give up this garret and rent a luxurious apartment. I love you and that’s why I’m giving you this advice; I will also give you money if you’ll just come to me.” At these words the old man again expressed on his face the same motionless, terrifying laughter.
An incomprehensible trembling came over Chertkov and emerged as a cold sweat on his face. Gathering all his strength, he raised his arm and finally half rose from the bed. But the image of the old man had become dim, and he only caught sight of it going back into its frame. Chertkov got up anxiously and began to pace around the room. In order to refresh himself a little, he went up to the window. The moon’s radiance still lay on the roofs and the white walls of the houses, although some small storm clouds had begun to pass more frequently across the sky. All was quiet; now and then one could hear the distant jingling of a cabby’s droshky as he drowsed in some obscure lane, lulled to sleep by his lazy nag as he waited for a late fare.6 Chertkov finally convinced himself that his imagination was excessively upset and had presented to him in a dream the creation of his own disturbed thoughts. He went up to the portrait again. The sheet completely covered it from sight, and it seemed that only a little spark could be seen through it from time to time. Finally he fell asleep and slept until morning.
On awakening he long felt himself to be in that unpleasant condition that overcomes a person after coal-gas poisoning: His head ached unpleasantly. It was dim in the room, and an unpleasant dampness drizzled in the air and seeped through the chinks in his windows, which were blocked up by paintings or by stretched and primed canvases. Soon there was a knock at the door, and his landlord came in accompanied by the district police inspector, the appearance of whom is just as unpleasant for insignificant people as the ingratiating face of a petitioner is for the rich. The landlord of the small building in which Chertkov lived was one of those creatures who usually are owners of buildings on the Fifteenth Line of Vasilievsky Island, or on the Petersburg Side, or in a distant corner of Kolomna; a creature the likes of which is very numerous in Russia and whose character is as hard to define as the color of a worn-out frock coat.7 In his youth he was both a captain and a loudmouth, he was also employed in civilian business, he was a master at giving a good flogging, he was both quick and efficient, and a dandy, and stupid; but in his old age he had merged all these vivid peculiarities within himself into a kind of dim indefiniteness. He was already a widower, already retired; he no longer played the dandy, or boasted, or got into fights; he only loved to drink tea and chatter all kinds of nonsense while drinking it; he would walk around his room and trim the tallow candle-end; precisely at the end of each month he would call on his tenants for the rent; he would go out into the street with a key in his hand in order to look at the roof of his building; he would chase the yard sweeper several times out of his kennel, where he would hide in order to sleep—in short, he was a retired person who, after a wild life and a bumpy ride with post-horses, has nothing left but banal habits.
“Be so good as to see for yourself,” the landlord said, turning to the police inspector and spreading his arms. “Be so good as to take charge and inform him.”
“I must inform you,” said the district police inspector, hooking his hand behind the loop on his uniform, “that you must without fail pay the rent that you have owed for three months.”
“I would be glad to pay, but wha
t can I do when I have no money?” Chertkov said coolly.
“In that case, the landlord must take your personal property equal in value to the sum of the rent, and you must immediately move out, this very day.”
“Take whatever you want,” Chertkov answered almost insensibly.
“Many of these paintings are done with some skill,” the police inspector continued, looking through some of them. “But it’s a pity that they’re not finished and the colors aren’t too vivid… Maybe you didn’t have enough money to buy paint? And what is this painting wrapped up in linen?”
At this, the police inspector, approaching the painting without ceremony, pulled the sheet off it, because these gentlemen always permit themselves a bit of liberty when they see utter defenselessness or poverty. The portrait seemed to amaze him, because the extraordinary vitality of the eyes produced an equal effect on everyone. While inspecting the painting he squeezed its frame firmly, and since the hands of police employees are always somewhat crudely fashioned, the frame suddenly split. A small board fell onto the floor together with a roll of gold coins that banged heavily to the ground, and several glittering little discs rolled in all directions. Chertkov greedily rushed to pick them up and tore out of the policeman’s hands several three-ruble coins that he had picked up.
The Nose and Other Stories Page 9
