Ah! Finally! Yes, I knew it: They have a political point of view on all subjects. Let’s see what they say about Papá:
… a very strange person. He is silent most of the time. He speaks very rarely; but a week ago he was constantly talking to himself: “Will I get it or not?” He’d take a piece of paper in one hand, close his other empty hand, and say: “Will I get it or not?” Once he even addressed the question to me: “What do you think, Madgie? Will I get it or not?” I couldn’t understand anything at all, I sniffed his boot and went away. Then, ma chère, a week later Papá came in looking overjoyed. The whole morning, gentlemen in uniforms were coming to see him and congratulating him on something. At the table he was more cheerful than I’d ever seen him, he kept telling jokes, and after dinner he picked me up, held me to his neck, and said: “Look, Madgie, what is this?” I saw some kind of little ribbon. I sniffed it, but I could find no fragrance whatsoever; finally I licked it, on the sly: It was a little salty.
Hmm! This doggie, it seems to me, is a little too… if only they don’t whip her! Ah! So he’s ambitious! I must take that into consideration.
Farewell, ma chère, I have to run and so on… and so on…. Tomorrow I will finish the letter. Well, hello! I’m with you again now. Today my young lady Sophie….
Ah! Well, let’s see what about Sophie. Oh, canaillerie!… It’s nothing, it’s nothing… let’s continue.
… my young lady Sophie was in an extraordinary flurry. She was getting ready to go to a ball, and I was overjoyed that in her absence I would be able to write to you. My Sophie is always extremely happy to go to a ball, although she almost always gets angry while dressing. I simply cannot understand, ma chère, what pleasure there is in going to a ball. Sophie comes home from a ball at six o’clock in the morning, and I can almost always guess from her pale and emaciated appearance that they didn’t give the poor girl anything to eat there. I confess I could never live like that. If I were not given some gravy with grouse or some roasted chicken wings, then… I don’t know what would happen to me then. Gravy with porridge is also good. But carrots, or turnips, or artichokes are never any good….
An extremely uneven style. It’s immediately evident that it was not written by a person. It begins properly but ends with dogginess. Let’s look at another little letter. It’s kind of longish. Hmm! And the date is not indicated.
Oh, my dear! How perceptible is the coming of spring. My heart is beating as if it is ever awaiting something. There is an eternal hum in my ears, so that often I lift my leg and stand for a few minutes, listening at the doors. I will reveal to you that I have many suitors. Often I sit in the window and look them over. Oh, if you only knew what freaks there are among them. There’s one most clumsily built mutt, he’s terribly stupid, stupidity is just written on his face, he walks pompously down the street and imagines that he is the most distinguished personage, he thinks that everyone is staring at him in wonderment. Not at all. I didn’t pay him any attention, as if I didn’t even see him. And what a terrifying mastiff stops in front of my window! If he stood on his hind legs, which the ruffian certainly does not know how to do—he would be a whole head taller than my Sophie’s Papá, who is also somewhat tall and stout. This oaf must be horribly insolent. I growled at him, but he didn’t care a bit. If only he had grimaced! He stuck out his tongue, drooped his enormous ears, and looked in the window—what a peasant! But please don’t think, ma chère, that my heart is indifferent to all pursuit,—oh, no… If you saw a certain cavalier who climbed over the fence of the house next door, by the name of Trésor. Oh, ma chère, what a sweet muzzle he has!
Ugh, the hell with it! What trash! And how can you fill letters with such silly things. Give me a person! I want to see a person; I demand food—the kind that would nourish and delight my soul; and instead of that I get trivia like this… let’s turn the page and see if it won’t get better:
… Sophie was sitting at her little table and sewing something. I was looking out the window, because I like to inspect the passersby. When suddenly the footman came in and said: “Teplov!”—“Ask him in,” Sophie cried and rushed to embrace me. “Oh, Madgie, Madgie! If only you knew who it is: He has dark hair, he’s a gentleman of the bedchamber, and what eyes he has! They’re black and as bright as fire,” and Sophie ran off to her room.14 A moment later a young gentleman of the bedchamber with black whiskers came in, went up to the mirror, smoothed his hair, and looked around the room. I growled and sat down in my place. Sophie soon came out and gaily bowed in response to him scraping his foot; and I just kept looking out the window, as if I didn’t notice anything, but I bent my head a little to the side and tried to hear what they were talking about. Oh, ma chère! What nonsense they were talking! They were talking about how a certain lady danced one figure instead of another; they also talked about how someone named Bobov in his jabot looked very much like a stork and nearly fell down; how someone named Lidina imagines that she has blue eyes, when in fact they are green—and that kind of thing. “What if,” I thought to myself, “you compare the gentleman of the bedchamber with Trésor!” Heavens! What a disparity! In the first place, the gentleman of the bedchamber has a perfectly smooth broad face and whiskers all around, as if he had tied it up with a black kerchief; while Trésor has a thin little muzzle, and a white spot right on his forehead. Trésor’s waistline cannot be compared with the gentleman of the bedchamber’s. And his eyes, his ways, his manner, are quite different. Oh, what a disparity! I don’t know, ma chère, what she sees in her Teplov. Why is she so enraptured with him?
It seems to me too, that there’s something not right here. It cannot be that a gentleman of the bedchamber could have enchanted her so. Let’s see what comes next:
It seems to me that if she likes this gentleman of the bedchamber, soon she’s going to start liking that civil servant who sits in Papá’s private study. Oh, ma chère, if you only knew what a freak he is. He looks just like a turtle in a sack…
What civil servant could that be?
He has a very strange last name. He always sits and sharpens quill pens. The hair on his head is very similar to hay. Papá always sends him on errands instead of the servants.
It seems to me that this nasty little doggie is referring to me. But who says my hair is like hay?
Sophie can’t help laughing when she looks at him.
You’re lying, you damned doggie! What a nasty tongue! As if I don’t know that this is because of envy. As if I don’t know whose tricks these are. These are the tricks of the head of our section. After all, he swore implacable hatred—and he keeps trying and trying to hurt me, at every step he tries to hurt me. But let’s look at one more letter. Perhaps the whole business will reveal itself there.
Ma chère Fidèle, please forgive me for not writing for so long. I was in perfect ecstasy. That writer was absolutely right when he said that love is a second life. Meanwhile there are great changes going on in our house right now. The gentleman of the bedchamber comes to see us every day. Sophie is in love with him to the point of madness. Papá is very cheerful. I even heard from our Grigory, who sweeps the floor and almost always talks to himself, that there will be a wedding soon, because Papá wants to see Sophie marry either a general or a gentleman of the bedchamber or a military colonel without fail…
What the devil! I can’t read any more… It’s all about either a gentleman of the bedchamber or a general. Everything that’s best in the world falls to the lot of either gentlemen of the bedchamber or generals. You find some poor treasure for yourself, you think you can reach it with your hand—and a gentleman of the bedchamber or a general tears it away from you. The devil take it! I would like to become a general myself: not in order to be given her hand and so on—no, I would like to be a general merely in order to see how they dangle around and do all those courtly tricks and équivoques, and then to say to them that I spit on you both. The devil take it. It’s annoying! I tore the letters of the stupid little doggie into pieces.
December 3.
It cannot be. It’s a pack of lies! There’s not going to be a wedding! So what if he’s a gentleman of the bedchamber. After all, that’s nothing but a title; it’s not a visible thing that you can hold in your hands. After all, being a gentleman of the bedchamber doesn’t give you a third eye in your forehead. After all, his nose isn’t made of gold, it’s just like mine or like anyone’s; after all, he smells with it, he doesn’t eat with it; he sneezes with it, he doesn’t cough with it. Several times I’ve tried to get at the question of where all these differences originate. Why am I a titular councillor and for what reason am I a titular councillor? Perhaps I’m a count or a general, and I only seem to be a titular councillor? Perhaps I myself do not know who I am. After all, there are so many examples in history: There’s some simple person, not even a nobleman maybe, but simply a petit-bourgeois or even a peasant—and suddenly it is discovered that he is really a grand dignitary of some sort, or sometimes even the sovereign. When a peasant can turn out to be such a thing, what might come of a nobleman? Suppose for example I enter wearing a general’s uniform: I have an epaulet on my right shoulder, and an epaulet on my left shoulder, and a pale-blue ribbon across my chest—well?15 What will my lovely one sing then? What will Papá himself, our director, say? Oh, he’s a most ambitious man! He’s a Mason, he’s certainly a Mason, although he pretends to be this and that, but I immediately noticed that he’s a Mason: If he offers his hand to somebody, he only sticks out two fingers.16 Can I really not be awarded the rank of governor-general or quartermaster, or some other sort of rank, right this minute? I would like to know why I am a titular councillor? Why a titular councillor and nothing else?
December 5.
I spent the whole morning today reading newspapers. There are strange things going on in Spain. I couldn’t decipher them completely. They write that the throne is vacant and that the high officers of state find themselves in a difficult situation with regard to selecting an heir and that there may be rebellions because of this. This seems extremely strange to me. How can the throne be vacant? They say that a doña is supposed to ascend to the throne. A doña cannot ascend to the throne. That simply cannot be. On the throne there must be a king. But they say there is no king—it cannot be that there is no king. The state cannot be without a king. There is a king, but he is in obscurity somewhere. Or perhaps he is right there, but some sort of familial reasons, or fears about the reaction of neighboring powers, such as France and other lands, are forcing him to conceal himself, or there are some other reasons.
December 8.
I was on the point of going to the Department, but various reasons and reflections held me back. I just couldn’t get the Spanish affairs out of my head.17 How can it be that a doña could become the queen? They won’t permit it. In the first place, England will not permit it. And then there are the political affairs of all Europe: The Austrian emperor, our sovereign… I confess, these events have so destroyed and shaken me that I could do absolutely nothing all day. Mavra remarked to me that at the table I was extremely distracted. Indeed it seems that in my absentmindedness I threw two plates to the floor and they immediately smashed to bits. After dinner I went to the ice hills.18 I could not derive anything instructive from it. I mostly just lay on my bed and meditated on the Spanish affairs.
The Year 2000, April 43.
Today is a day of the greatest festivity! There is a king in Spain. He has been found. This king is me. I found out about it only this very day. I confess that I felt as if I had been struck by lightning. I cannot understand how I could have thought and imagined that I was a titular councillor. How could that crazy idea have gotten into my head? It’s a good thing no one back then figured it out and stuck me in a madhouse. Now everything has been revealed to me. Now I see everything as if on the palm of my hand. But before this—I can’t understand it—before this everything lay before me in a kind of mist. And I think this all originates from the fact that people imagine that the human brain is located in the head; not at all: It is blown here by a wind from the direction of the Caspian Sea. First of all I announced to Mavra who I am. When she heard that the king of Spain was standing before her, she threw up her hands and nearly died of fright. The stupid woman has never seen a king of Spain before. But I tried to calm her down and assure her in gracious words that I was benevolent and that I was not at all angry with her for sometimes doing a bad job of cleaning my boots. After all, she’s from the peasant-worker class. They are forbidden to speak of lofty matters. She got scared because she was convinced that all kings in Spain resemble Philip II. But I explained to her that there is no resemblance at all between me and Philip, and that I do not have a single Capuchin.19… I did not go to the Department… The hell with it! No, my friends, you will not be able to lure me now; I’m not going to copy your nasty papers any more!
Marchtober 86.
Between day and night.
Today our administrator came to tell me to go to the Department, and that it’s been three weeks since I’ve gone to work. Just for laughs I went to the Department. The head of our section thought that I would bow to him and apologize, but I looked at him indifferently, not too angrily and not too benevolently, and sat at my place, as if not noticing anyone. I looked at all that office riffraff and thought: “What if you knew who is sitting among you… My Lord God! What a senseless mess you’d start up, and the head of the section himself would start bowing to me deeply, the way he does to the director.” They put some papers in front of me so that I would make a précis. But I didn’t lay a finger on them. A few minutes later everyone started fussing around. They said the director was coming. Many of the civil servants vied with each other to run and show themselves to him. But I didn’t move from my spot. When he was passing through our section, everyone buttoned up their tailcoats, but I did nothing at all! What kind of a director is this! That I should get up for him—never! What kind of director is he? He’s a cork, not a director. Just an ordinary cork, a simple cork, nothing more. The kind you use to stop up bottles. I was amused most of all when they shoved a piece of paper at me to sign. They thought that I would write at the very end of the sheet: Desk Head So-and-so. Not on your life! In the most important space, where the director of the Department is supposed to sign, I wrote: “Ferdinand VIII.” You should have seen what reverential silence reigned; but I just motioned with my hand, saying, “No signs of your subjecthood are necessary!” and I left.
From there I went right to the director’s apartment. He was not home. The footman did not want to let me in, but I said such things to him that he was forced to give way. I passed through right to the dressing room. She was sitting in front of the mirror; she jumped up and stepped away from me. But I did not tell her that I was the king of Spain. I said only that a kind of happiness awaited her that she could not even imagine, and that despite the intrigues of our enemies, we would be together. I did not want to say any more and I left. Oh, that perfidious creature—woman! Only now have I grasped what a woman is. Up to now no one has found out who she is in love with: I am the first to discover it. Woman is in love with the devil. Yes, seriously. The natural philosophers write silly things about how she is this and that—she loves the devil and no one else. See her over there, looking through her lorgnette from the first-tier boxes. You think she is looking at that fat man with the star on his breast? Not at all, she is looking at the devil who is standing behind him. Now he’s hidden himself in the man’s tailcoat. Now he’s motioning to her from there with his finger! And she will marry him. She will. And all those high-ranking fathers of theirs, all those who wriggle around and try to get into the Court and say that they’re patriots and so on: High incomes, that’s what those patriots want! They’ll sell their mother, their father, their God for money, the ambitious climbers, the Christ-sellers! It’s all ambition, and it’s ambition because there is a tiny little blister under the tongue, and in it is a tiny worm the size of the head of a pin, and this is all made by a barbe
r who lives on Gorokhovaya Street. I don’t remember his name; but it is reliably known that he, together with a certain midwife, wants to spread Mohammedanism throughout the whole world, and because of this, they say, in France a large part of the people already profess the faith of Mohammed.
No date of any sort.
The day had no date.
I was walking along Nevsky Avenue incognito. The Sovereign Emperor rode by. The whole city took off their caps, and I as well, but I gave no sign at all that I was the king of Spain. I considered it unseemly to reveal myself right there in front of everyone; because first of all I must present myself to the Court. The only thing that was stopping me was that I still do not have a king’s attire. I have to acquire at least some kind of mantle. I wanted to order it from a tailor, but they are utter asses, and besides, they neglect their work entirely, they’ve gotten involved in shady deals and mostly pave the street with stones. I decided to make a mantle out of my new uniform, which I had only worn twice. But so that those scoundrels wouldn’t ruin it, I decided to sew it myself, after locking the door so no one would see. I cut it all up with scissors, because it had to be of a completely different cut.
I do not remember the date.
There was also no month.
It was the devil knows what.
The mantle is quite finished and sewn. Mavra screamed when I put it on. But I have still not made up my mind to present myself to the Court. To this day there has not been a delegation from Spain. Without delegates it is unseemly. There will be no weight to my dignity. I expect them any moment now.
The Nose and Other Stories Page 19
