The Nose and Other Stories

by Nikolai Gogol

  The first.

  I am extremely surprised at the slowness of the delegates. What could have stopped them? Could it really be France? Yes, that is the most nonfavorable power. I went to the post office to inquire whether the Spanish delegates had arrived. But the postmaster is extremely stupid, he knows nothing. No, he said, there are no Spanish delegates here, but if you are pleased to write some letters, we will accept them at the established rate. The devil take it! What letters? Letters are nonsense. Letters are written by apothecaries…

  Madrid. Februarius the 30th.

  And so, I am in Spain, and it happened so quickly that I could hardly come to my senses. This morning the Spanish delegates came to my house, and I got into a coach with them. The unusual speed seemed strange to me. We traveled so quickly that in half an hour we reached the Spanish border. But you know that there are now cast-iron roads throughout Europe, and the steamships go extremely fast.20 Spain is a strange land: When we entered the first room, I saw a multitude of people with shaved heads. However, I guessed that these must be either grandees or soldiers, because they shave their heads. The behavior of the state chancellor, who led me by the hand, seemed extremely strange to me. He pushed me into a small room and said: “Sit here, and if you call yourself King Ferdinand, I’ll beat it out of you.” But knowing that this was nothing but a test, I answered in the negative—for which the chancellor hit me twice on the back with a stick so painfully that I almost cried out, but I restrained myself, recalling that this is the knightly custom when one is initiated into a high rank, because in Spain to this day they maintain knightly customs. When I was left alone, I decided to occupy myself with affairs of state. I discovered that China and Spain are one and the same country, and it is only out of ignorance that they are considered separate states. I advise everyone to deliberately write “Spain” on a piece of paper, and it will turn out as “China.”

  But I was extremely distressed by an event that is to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow at seven o’clock a strange phenomenon will take place: The earth will sit down on the moon. Even the famous English chemist Wellington writes about this.21 I confess that I experienced sincere alarm when I imagined the unusual tenderness and fragility of the moon. After all, they usually make the moon in Hamburg, and they do a very bad job of it. I am amazed that England does not turn its attention to this. It is made by a lame cooper, and it is clear that he’s a fool and doesn’t have the slightest idea about the moon. He put in a tarred cable and a portion of low-grade lamp oil, and because of that there is a horrible stench all over the earth, so that you have to hold your nose. And because of that the moon itself is such a tender orb that people cannot live there, and only noses live there now. And for that very same reason we cannot see our noses, for they are all located on the moon. And when I imagined that the earth is a heavy substance and might grind our noses into flour when it sits down, I was overcome by such alarm that I put on my stockings and shoes and hurried to the hall of the State Council, in order to give an order to the police not to allow the earth to sit down on the moon. The shaven grandees, of whom I found a great multitude in the hall of the State Council, were very intelligent folk, and when I said: “Gentlemen, let us save the moon, because the earth wants to sit down on it”—they all instantly rushed to carry out my monarchical desire, and many of them climbed up the wall in order to catch the moon; but at that moment the grand chancellor came in. When they saw him, they all ran off in different directions. I, as the king, remained alone. But the chancellor, to my amazement, hit me with a stick and chased me into my room. Such is the power of folk customs in Spain!

  January of the same year, which happened after February.

  To this day I cannot understand what kind of country Spain is. The folk customs and the etiquette of the Court are quite unusual. I do not understand, I do not understand, I absolutely do not understand anything. Today they shaved my head, despite the fact that I shouted with all my might that I did not wish to become a monk. But I can no longer remember what happened to me when they started dripping cold water on my head.22 I have never before experienced such a hell. I was ready to go into such a rage that they could hardly restrain me. I do not understand the significance of this strange custom at all. It’s a stupid, senseless custom! The thoughtlessness of the kings who have not yet abolished it is inconceivable for me. Judging by all the probabilities, I have a hunch: have I not fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, and is not the person I took for the chancellor really the grand inquisitor himself?23 The only thing I cannot understand is how a king could be subjected to the Inquisition. Of course, it could be the work of France, especially Polignac.24 Oh, that knave Polignac! He swore to hurt me until the day that I die. And now he keeps on and on persecuting me; but I know, my friend, that the Englishman is directing you. The Englishman is a great politician. He wriggles around everywhere. The whole world knows that when England takes snuff, France sneezes.

  The 25th.

  Today the grand inquisitor came into my room, but when I heard his steps coming from afar, I hid under the chair. When he saw I wasn’t there, he began to call me. At first he shouted: “Poprishchin!”—I didn’t say a word. Then: “Aksenty Ivanovich! Titular councillor! Nobleman!” I kept silent. “Ferdinand VIII, king of Spain!” I wanted to stick my head out, but then I thought: “No, brother, you won’t fool me! We know all about your type. You’re going to pour cold water on my head again.” But he saw me and chased me out from under the chair with a broom. That damned stick strikes extremely painfully. Nevertheless, I was rewarded for all this by today’s discovery: I found out that every rooster has a Spain, which is located under his feathers. The grand inquisitor, however, left me in a fury, threatening me with some sort of punishment. But I completely disregarded his powerless malice, knowing that he functions like a machine, as the tool of the Englishman.

  No, I have no strength left to endure it. My God! What they are doing to me! They are pouring cold water on my head! They do not hearken, do not see, do not listen to me. What have I done to them? Why are they tormenting me? What do they want of poor me? What can I give them? I have nothing. I do not have the strength, I cannot bear all their torments, my head is burning, and everything is spinning before my eyes. Save me! Take me! Give me a troika of steeds, swift as a whirlwind! Take your seat, my coachman; ring, my bells; rise up, steeds, and carry me away from this world! Far, far away, so that nothing, nothing can be seen. Out there the sky swirls before me; a little star is sparkling in the distance; the forest rushes by with dark trees and the moon; a blue-gray mist floats under our feet; a string is plucked in the mist; on one side is the sea, on the other side Italy; I can see Russian huts off over there. Is that my dark-blue house I can see in the distance? Is it my mother sitting by the window? Mother, save your poor son! Drop a little tear on his sick little head! See how they are tormenting him! Clasp your poor little orphan to your breast! There is no place for him in the world! He is being persecuted! Mother! Have pity on your sick little child!… And did you know that the Dey of Algiers has a bump right under his nose?25

  The Carriage

  The little town of B— became a merrier place when the *** Cavalry Regiment was billeted there. Before that it was terribly boring. It used to be that when you’d drive through and look at the squat little wattle-and-daub houses with their unbelievably sour aspect, something indescribable would happen in your heart. You’d feel the kind of anguish you’d feel if you had lost at cards, or said a really stupid thing at the wrong moment—in a word: not good. The clay on the houses was crumbling from the rains, and their walls had turned from white to piebald; the roofs were mostly thatched, as is customary in our southern towns; the mayor had long ago ordered that the little groves be cut down, to improve the view. You wouldn’t encounter a single soul on the streets, unless maybe a rooster crossed the roadway, which was as soft as a pillow from the dust that lay seven inches thick and would turn to mud from the slightest bit of rain, and then the street
s of the little town of B— would be filled with those stout animals that the mayor calls Frenchmen. When they stick their serious snouts out of their mud baths, they raise such an oinking that all the traveler can do is urge his horses on faster. But it’s not easy to come across a traveler in the little town of B—. Only very, very rarely does a landowner who owns eleven peasant souls, wearing a nankeen frock coat, clatter along the roadway in a kind of half-britzka, half-wagon, looking out from under a pile of flour sacks and lashing his bay mare, with a foal running behind her.1 Even the market square has a somewhat mournful aspect: The tailor’s house is situated very stupidly, with its facade stuck on at an angle; on the opposite side they’ve been building a stone construction with two windows in it for about fifteen years; beyond that a fashionable board fence stands all by itself, painted gray to match the color of the mud. This fence was erected as a model for other structures by the mayor in the time of his youth, when he had not yet acquired the habit of sleeping immediately after the midday meal and drinking a decoction flavored with dried gooseberries before going to bed. Most of the other constructions are of wattle. In the middle of the square are tiny shops; in them you can always see a bundle of ring-shaped rolls, a peasant woman in a red scarf, a pood of soap, a few pounds of bitter almonds, shot for shooting, some poplin, and two shop assistants who are always near the door playing a game in which they pitch iron spikes into a ring.2

  But as soon as the cavalry regiment was billeted in the little town of B—, everything changed. The streets got more colorful and lively—in short, they took on a completely different look. The squat houses often saw a nimble, well-built officer with a plume on his head walking by as he went to see his comrade to have a chat about promotions, about the most excellent tobacco, or sometimes to stake his droshky on a card. This droshky could be called the regimental droshky, because without ever leaving the regiment it had made the full rounds. Today a major would be riding in it, tomorrow it would appear in a lieutenant’s stable, and in a week, just look, it’s again being greased with lard by the major’s batman. The wooden lath fence between the houses was all sprinkled with soldiers’ peaked caps hung out to dry in the sun; a gray military overcoat would always be hanging on somebody’s gate; in the lanes you would encounter soldiers with mustaches as bristly as boot brushes. You could see these mustaches everywhere. If some lower-class townswomen gathered at the market with their baskets, then mustaches would inevitably peep out from behind their shoulders. On the main square, mustachioed soldiers would always be dressing down some country clodhopper, who would just utter little groans, bulging his eyes upward.3 The officers livened up local society, which up to that time consisted only of the judge, who lived in the same house with a deacon’s wife, and the mayor, who was a sensible man but who spent positively the whole day sleeping: from the midday meal until evening and from evening until the midday meal. Society became more populous and amusing when the brigadier-general moved his quarters here. Neighboring landowners of whose existence no one could have guessed hitherto started coming to the district town more frequently, in order to see the gentleman officers and sometimes to play a game of faro, the rules of which were only foggily preserved in their heads, so preoccupied with planting, their wives’ errands, and hares.4

  I am very sorry that I cannot recall what the occasion was that prompted the brigadier-general to give a big dinner party. There were enormous preparations for it. The clattering of the cooks’ knives in the general’s kitchen could be heard as soon as you came through the town gates. The contents of the whole market had been confiscated for the dinner, so that the judge and his deaconess had nothing to eat but buckwheat flapjacks and farina porridge. The small courtyard of the general’s quarters was filled with droshkies and carriages. The company consisted of men: the officers and a few of the neighboring landowners. The most notable of the landowners was Pifagor Pifagorovich Chertokutsky, one of the chief aristocrats of the B. district, who made the biggest fuss at the nobility elections and would always arrive in a fashionable equipage.5 He had previously served in one of the cavalry regiments and was one of its most important and visible officers. At least, he was visible at many balls and gatherings, wherever their regiment roamed; by the way, you can ask the maidens of the Tambov and Simbirsk Provinces about that. It’s quite possible that he would have spread his favorable reputation in other provinces as well, if he had not had to resign his commission because of a certain incident of the kind that’s usually called an “unpleasant story.” Whether he had slapped somebody in the face once upon a time or somebody had slapped him, I don’t remember exactly, but the point is that he was asked to resign. Nevertheless, he did not lose any of his importance because of this: He wore a tailcoat with a high waist in the style of a military uniform, he had spurs on his boots and a mustache under his nose, because without that the noblemen might have thought that he had served in the infantry, which he would contemptuously call sometimes the infantile-ry, and sometimes the infantarium.

  He would visit all the populous fairs to which the innards of Russia, consisting of mamas, children, daughters, and fat landowners, would travel to enjoy the britzkas, cabriolets, tarantasses, and such coaches as no one has ever even dreamed of. He would sniff out with his nose where a cavalry regiment was billeted, and he would always come to visit the gentleman officers. He would jump very nimbly down from his elegant carriage or droshky right in front of them and would make their acquaintance very quickly. At the last elections he gave a splendid dinner for the noblemen, at which he declared that if only they elected him marshal of the nobility, he would put them on the very best footing. In general he behaved in a lordly fashion, as they say in the districts and the provinces; he married a rather pretty woman, who came with a dowry of two hundred souls and several thousands in capital. The capital was immediately spent on a team of six truly excellent horses, gilded locks for the doors, a tame monkey for the house, and a French butler. The two hundred souls along with his own two hundred were put in hock for the sake of some commercial dealings. In short, he was a landowner of the proper kind… A pretty substantial landowner.

  Besides him, there were a few other landowners at the general’s dinner, but there’s no need to speak of them. The rest of the guests were all military men of the same regiment and two staff officers, a colonel and a rather fat major. The general himself was hefty and corpulent, but a good commander, the officers said. He spoke in a deep, imposing bass voice. The dinner was extraordinary: The sturgeon, white sturgeon, sterlet, bustard, asparagus, quail, partridge, and mushrooms made it clear that the cook had not eaten any hot food since the day before and that four soldiers with knives in their hands had been working to assist him all night long making fricassées and gelées. The huge number of bottles—tall ones of Lafite, short-necked ones of madeira—the splendid summer day, the whole row of windows opened, the dishes of ice on the table, the last unbuttoned button of the gentleman officers’ jackets, the rumpled shirtfronts of the owners of capacious tailcoats, the conversation crisscrossing the table, dominated by the general’s bass voice and lubricated by champagne—everything was in harmony with itself. After dinner they all got up with a pleasant heaviness in their stomachs, and after lighting up pipes with long and short stems, they went out onto the porch with cups of coffee in their hands.

  The uniforms of the general, the colonel, and even the major were completely unbuttoned, so that you could catch a glimpse of their noble suspenders made of silk, but the gentleman officers, maintaining due respect, kept their uniforms buttoned except for the last three buttons.6

  “You can take a look at her now,” the general said. “Please, my dear man,” he added, turning to his adjutant, a rather nimble young man of pleasant appearance, “order the bay mare brought out! So you’ll see for yourselves.” The general drew on his pipe and blew out smoke. “She’s not in perfect shape. This damned hole of a town, there isn’t a decent stable. The horse—puff, puff—is quite decent!”

/>   “Pray tell me, Your Excellency—puff, puff—have you had her a long time?” Chertokutsky said.

  “Puff, puff, puff—well—puff—not so long. It’s only two years since I took her from the stud-farm!”

  “And did you, pray tell me, obtain her already broken in or did you, pray tell me, break her in here?”

  “Puff, puff, puh, puh, puh… uh… uh… ff—here,” the general said, disappearing completely into smoke.

  Meanwhile a soldier jumped out of the stable, the clatter of hooves was heard, and finally another one appeared, wearing a white duster, with a huge black mustache, leading by the bridle a quivering, frightened horse who when she suddenly raised her head almost lifted the squatting soldier into the air along with his mustache. “Come on now, Agrafena Ivanovna!” he said, leading her up to the porch.7

  The mare was named Agrafena Ivanovna. As strong and wild as a beautiful woman of the south, she crashed her hooves against the wooden porch and suddenly stopped.

  The general lowered his pipe and started to look at Agrafena Ivanovna with a satisfied air. The colonel himself came down from the porch and took Agrafena Ivanovna by the muzzle. The major himself patted Agrafena Ivanovna on the leg, and the others clicked their tongues at her.

  Chertokutsky came down from the porch and came at her from the rear. The soldier, standing at attention and holding the bridle, looked right into the visitors’ eyes, as if he wanted to leap up into them.

  “A very, very good mare!” Chertokutsky said, “a beautifully formed horse! Pray tell, Your Excellency, how is her gait?”