The Nose and Other Stories

by Nikolai Gogol

  Many of the signoras worked as models for painters. There were all sorts of models. There were models who allowed only their face to be painted, there were models who allowed their chest and shoulders to be painted, but would repent every time to their father confessor, and finally there were models who would undress from head to foot, and would not even make a confession about it.43 When they had money, they would happily pass the time with their husbands and a whole company of friends in the osteria; when they didn’t have money, they wouldn’t be bored and would just look out the window. Now the street was quieter than usual, because some people had gone to join the crowd of folk on the Corso. The prince went up to the dilapidated door of one pitiful little house, which was all riddled with holes, so that the owner himself would have to spend a long time poking with his key until he found the right one. He was about to take hold of the ring-shaped door handle when he suddenly heard the words:

  “Does Sior Principe wish to see Peppe?”

  He raised his head: Siora Tutta was sticking her head out of the third floor.

  “What a loudmouth,” Siora Susanna said out of the window opposite. “The Principe perhaps came here for an entirely different reason than to see Peppe.”

  “Of course he came to see Peppe, didn’t you, Prince? Didn’t you come to see Peppe? To see Peppe?”

  “What Peppe, what Peppe!” Siora Susanna continued, gesturing with both hands. “As if the prince would even think of Peppe! It’s the time of Carnival now, the prince is going to go with his cugina,* the Marchesa Montelli, he’ll go with his friends in a coach to throw flowers, he’ll go outside the city and far allegria. What Peppe! What Peppe!”

  The prince was amazed to hear such details about how he spent his time; but there was no reason to be amazed, because Siora Susanna knew everything.

  “No, my dear signore,” the prince said, “I do in fact need to see Peppe.”

  This was answered by Signora Grazia, who had long ago stuck her head out of a window on the second floor and was listening. She answered him by lightly clicking her tongue and twirling her finger—the usual sign of negation given by Roman women—and then added: “He’s not at home.”

  “But perhaps you know where he is, where he’s gone?”

  “Eh! Where he’s gone!” Siora Grazia repeated, bending her head to her shoulder. “Perhaps he’s in the osteria, on the square, by the fountain; probably somebody invited him, he went somewhere, chi lo sa (who knows)!”

  “If the Principe wants to say something to him,” Barbaruccia caught up from the window opposite, putting an earring into her ear at the same time, “he can tell me, and I’ll pass it on to him.”

  “Well, no,” the prince thought and thanked her for her willingness.

  At that moment, out of a cross-lane, a huge, grimy nose peeped out, hanging like a large axe above the lips and the whole face that appeared after it. This was Peppe himself.

  “There’s Peppe!” Siora Susanna exclaimed.

  “Here comes Peppe, Sior Principe!” Signora Grazia shouted energetically from her window.

  “Peppe’s coming, he’s coming!” Siora Cecilia chimed in from the corner.

  “Principe, Principe! There’s Peppe, there’s Peppe (ecco Peppe, ecco Peppe)!” the urchins on the street shouted.

  “I see him, I see him,” the prince said, deafened by the lively shouting.

  “Here I am, eccelenza,* here I am!” Peppe said, taking off his cap.

  It was obvious that he had already had a chance to taste the delights of the Carnival. He had been hit pretty hard with flour on one side. His whole side and back were completely whitened, his hat was broken, and his whole face was pricked with white spikes. Peppe was notable for having kept his nickname Peppe his whole life. He had never made it to becoming Giuseppe, although his hair had turned gray. He even came from a good family, from the rich home of a trader, but his last pitiful little house had been seized from him in a lawsuit. His father, a person of the same sort as Peppe himself, although he was called Sior Giovanni, had squandered the last of the property, and Peppe now led his miserable life the way many others did—that is as best he could: He would suddenly get a job as the servant of some foreigner, then he would run errands for a lawyer, then he would appear as a cleaner of the studio of some artist, then he would be a watchman in a vineyard or a villa; and he kept changing his costume to suit each role. Sometimes you would see Peppe on the street in a round hat and a roomy frock coat, sometimes in a narrow caftan, its seams bursting in two or three places, with such narrow sleeves that his long arms stuck out like brooms; sometimes a priest’s stocking and shoe would appear on his leg, sometimes he appeared in a costume that was hard to figure out, all the more because it was put on quite incorrectly: At times you might think that he had put a jerkin on his legs instead of trousers, gathering it up and tying it up somehow from behind. He would carry out all possible kinds of commissions in the most genial way, often without any personal interest: he would drag off for sale all sorts of rags the ladies of his street had consigned to him, the parchment books of a financially ruined priest or antique dealer, the painting of an artist; he would go around to the priests in the morning to collect their trousers and shoes to be cleaned at his house, then forget to return them at the appointed time out of an excessive desire to do a service for some third party he happened to meet, and the priests would be left under house arrest, without shoes and trousers, for the whole day.

  Considerable amounts of money would often come his way, but he would dispose of the money in the Roman fashion: that is, it would always be gone the next day; not because he had spent it on himself or squandered it, but because he used it all for the lottery, of which he was terribly fond. There probably didn’t exist any number that he hadn’t tried. Every insignificant daily incident had great significance for him. If he happened upon some piece of trash in the street, he would immediately consult a fortune-telling book to see what number was assigned to it, so that he could immediately play that number in the lottery. Once he dreamed that Satan, who in any case appeared in his dreams at the beginning of every spring for some unknown reason—he dreamed that Satan dragged him by the nose over all the roofs of all the buildings, beginning with the Church of St. Ignatius, then along the whole Via del Corso, then along Tre Ladroni Lane, then along the Via della Stamperia, and finally stopped on the stairway of the Trinità itself, saying: “Here you are, Peppe; because you prayed to Saint Pancras, your ticket isn’t going to win.”44 This dream gave rise to lots of talk among Siora Cecilia, Siora Susanna, and almost the whole street; but Peppe resolved it in his own way: He ran right away to the fortune-telling book and found out that the devil means the number 13, the nose is number 24, and Saint Pancras is number 30, and that very morning he bet on all three numbers. Then he added the three numbers and got 67, so he bet on 67 as well. All four numbers lost, as usual.

  Another time he got into a squabble with a winegrower, a fat Roman, Sior Raffaele Tomacelli. God knows what their quarrel was about, but they shouted loudly, making powerful gestures with their arms, and finally they both grew pale—a terrible sign, at which all the women would stick their heads out the windows in fright, and a passerby would keep his distance—a sign that the matter was finally reaching the stage of knives. And indeed, fat Tomacelli had already stuck his hand into the belted boot top that hugged his fat calf, and said: “Just you wait, I’m going to get you, you calf’s head!”—when Peppe suddenly hit himself on the forehead and ran away from the place of battle. He had remembered that he had never once bought a ticket on a calf’s head; he looked up the number of a calf’s head and ran full speed to the lottery office, so that all the people who had gotten ready to watch a bloody scene were amazed at such an unexpected act, and Raffaele Tomacelli himself, sticking his knife back into his boot top, didn’t know what to do for a long time, and finally said: “Che uomo curioso!” (What a strange man!) Peppe was not at all upset by the fact that the tickets lost and went for n
othing. He was firmly convinced that he would become a rich man, and for that reason, whenever he went by a shop, he would almost always ask what each thing cost. Once, when he learned that a large house was being sold, he purposely stopped in to discuss it with the seller, and when the people who knew him started laughing at him, he answered very simpleheartedly: “What is there to laugh about, why laugh? I don’t want to buy it now, but later, in time, when I have the money. There’s nothing wrong with it… Everyone needs to acquire a fortune they can leave later to their children, to the church, to the poor, for various other things… chi lo sa!”

  The prince had known him for a long time. Peppe had even been taken into their home as a steward and then was dismissed because he wore out his livery in a month and threw the whole toilette of the old prince out the window when he accidentally bumped it with his elbow.

  “Listen, Peppe!” the prince said.

  “What orders does Eccelenza wish to give?” Peppe said, standing with his head bared. “All the Prince has to say is: ‘Peppe!’—and I will say: ‘Here I am.’ Then let the Prince only say: ‘Listen, Peppe,’ and I will say: ‘Ecco me, eccelenza!’ ”

  “Peppe, you must do me this favor…” With these words the prince looked around and saw that all the Siora Grazias, the Siora Susannas, the Barbaruccias, the Tettas, the Tuttas—all of them to the last one—were leaning out of their windows with curiosity, and poor Siora Cecilia had nearly fallen right out onto the street.

  “Hmm, this isn’t good!” the prince thought.

  “Let’s go, Peppe, follow me.”

  After he said this, he set off ahead, and Peppe followed him, head lowered and talking to himself. “Eh! Women are curious because they are women, because they are curious.”

  They walked for a long time from street to street, each plunged in his own thoughts. This is what Peppe was thinking about: “The Prince will probably give me some commission, maybe an important one, because he doesn’t want to say it in front of everyone; that means he’ll give me a fine present or money. If the Prince gives me money, what should I do with it? Give it to Sior Servilio, the owner of the café, because I’ve been in debt to him for a long time? Because Sior Servilio will certainly demand money from me the very first week of Lent, because Sior Servilio planted all his money in the monstrous violin, which he spent three months making with his own hands for the Carnival so as to ride through all the streets with it—now Sior Servilio will probably have to spend a long time eating broccoli boiled in water instead of kid goat roasted on a spit, until he again accumulates the money he gets from selling coffee. Or should I not pay Sior Servilio but instead invite him to have dinner in an osteria? Because Sior Servilio is il vero Romano,* and in exchange for the honor offered to him he’ll be prepared to be patient about the debt—and the lottery will certainly start the second week of Lent. Only how can I hold onto the money until then, how can I keep it so that neither Giacomo, nor Master Petruccio, the knife grinder, will find out; they will certainly ask me for a loan, because Giacomo pawned all his clothes to the Jews in the Ghetto, and Master Petruccio also pawned his clothes to the Jews in the Ghetto and tore his wife’s skirt and her last kerchief when he dressed up as a woman… How can I manage not to give them a loan?”45 That is what Peppe was thinking about.

  This is what the prince was thinking about: “Peppe can search out and learn the beauty’s name, where she lives, and where she’s from, and who she is. In the first place, he knows everyone and thus more than anyone else he can find friends in the crowd, he can have them investigate, he can drop into all the cafés and osterias, he can even talk about it without arousing any suspicion based on the figure he cuts. And although he’s sometimes a blabbermouth and a scatterbrain, if I bind him with his word as a true Roman, he will keep it all a secret.”

  That is what the prince was thinking as he walked from street to street, and finally stopped, seeing that he had long ago crossed the bridge, he had long been in the Trastevere region of Rome, had long ago climbed the hill, and that the church of San Pietro in Montorio was not far from him.46 So as not to stand on the road, he went up to the little square from which one could see all of Rome, and he said, turning to Peppe: “Listen, Peppe, I would like to ask you to perform a certain service.”

  “What does eccelenza want?” Peppe said again.

  But here the prince glanced at Rome and stopped: Before him, in a marvelous, shining panorama, the eternal city appeared. The whole bright heap of houses, churches, domes, and sharp spires was powerfully illuminated by the brilliance of the sinking sun. In groups and singly, the houses, roofs, statues, airy terraces, and galleries emerged out from behind one another; over there was the motley mass of bell towers and domes with their delicate tops, playing in the patterned caprice of the lamps; over there a dark palace emerged in its entirety; over there was the flat dome of the Pantheon; over there was the ornamented top of the Antonino column with its capital and the statue of the apostle Paul; over to the right rose the tops of the Capitoline buildings, with horses and statues; even farther to the right, over the brilliant crowd of houses and roofs, the dark breadth of the Colosseum’s bulk rose majestically and austerely; over there was again a playful crowd of walls, terraces, and domes, covered in the blinding brilliance of the sun.47 And over this whole sparkling mass, the tops of the holm oaks from the villas of the Ludovisi and the Medici showed darkly in the distance with their black foliage, and above them in the air the dome-shaped crowns of the Roman stone pines, raised on their slender trunks, stood in a whole flock. And along the whole length of the picture towered the light-blue, transparent hills, as light as air, embraced by a kind of phosphorescent light. Neither word nor brush would be able to convey the marvelous harmony and the combination of all the levels of this picture. The air was so pure and transparent that the tiniest little feature of the distant buildings was clear, and everything seemed so close that you could grab it with your hand. The last petty architectural ornament, the patterned decoration of the cornice—everything was marked out with an incomprehensible purity. At that moment the shot of a cannon and the distant merged shout of the mass of people resounded—the sign that the riderless horses had already run by, marking the end of the Carnival day.48 The sun was sinking lower toward the earth; its brilliance showed a brighter scarlet on the whole architectural mass; the city became more vivid and closer; the stone pines became a darker black; the hills became even bluer and more phosphorescent; the heavenly air, ready to be extinguished, became more solemn and beautiful… My God, what a view! The prince, in its embrace, forgot himself, and the beauty of Annunziata, and the mysterious fate of his people, and everything that exists in the world.

  * butler

  * Oh God, what a divine thing!

  † Oh devil, what a divine thing!

  * tavern

  * What a divine thing this is!

  * make merry

  * Prince

  * nobility

  † oh, what joy

  ‡ It’s a dirty mess.

  * Oh, what a beautiful woman!

  * What a beast!

  * court clerks

  † porter

  * female cousin

  * Your Excellency

  * a true Roman

  The Overcoat

  In the Department… but it would be better not to name the Department. Nothing is more irascible than all sorts of departments, regiments, chancelleries, and, in short, all sorts of official estates. These days every individual person considers that if he is insulted, all of society is insulted in his person. They say that very recently an appeal was received from a certain chief of district police, I don’t remember in what town, in which he clearly stated that government decrees were crumbling and that his sacred name was being taken absolutely in vain. As proof of this, he attached to his petition an enormously lengthy volume of a work of Romantic literature in which a chief of district police appears every ten pages, sometimes in a quite drunken state. So, in order t
o avoid all kinds of unpleasantness, it will be best if we call the Department in which the affair took place a certain Department. So, in a certain Department there worked a certain civil servant; a civil servant who could not be said to be very remarkable; of short stature, somewhat pockmarked, somewhat reddish-haired, somewhat even weak-sighted by the look of him, with a small bald spot on his forehead, with wrinkles on both sides of his cheeks, and with a facial complexion of the sort that is called hemorrhoidal… What can you do! The St. Petersburg climate is to blame. As for his rank (because in Russia you have to announce the rank first of all), he was what they call an eternal titular councillor, about whom various writers have made jokes and witticisms to their heart’s content, those writers who have the commendable habit of oppressing people who can’t bite back.1

  The civil servant’s last name was Bashmachkin. It is immediately apparent from this name that it was once derived from bashmak, meaning shoe; but when, at what time, and how it was derived from bashmak, nothing at all is known. His father, and his grandfather, and even his brother-in-law, and absolutely all the Bashmachkins wore boots, changing the soles only about three times a year.2 His name was Akaky Akakievich. Perhaps it seems somewhat strange and recherché, but we can assure the reader that no one searched for it at all, and that such circumstances happened all by themselves, that it was impossible to give him any other name, and this came about in the following way. Akaky Akakievich was born late on the night of March 23rd, if my memory does not deceive me. His deceased mother, the wife of a civil servant and a very good woman, was disposed to christen the child, as is appropriate. His mother was still lying on the bed opposite the door, and at her right side stood the godfather, a most excellent man, Ivan Ivanovich Yeroshkin, who served as a desk head in the Senate, and the godmother, the wife of a district police inspector, a woman of rare virtues, Arina Semyonovna Belobryushkova. The woman who had given birth was offered a choice of any of three names, whichever she wanted to choose: Mokkiya, Sossiya, or to call the child by the name of the martyr Khozdazat. “No,” the deceased woman thought, “these are all such names.” In order to oblige her, they opened up the Calendar of Saints to a different place; again, three names emerged: Trifily, Dula, and Varakhasy.3 “What did I do to deserve this,” the old woman said, “such names they all are; truly, I never heard such names before. If only it were Varadat or Varukh, but it’s Trifily and Varakhasy.” They turned another page—they got: Pavsikakhy and Vakhtisy. “Well, I see,” the old woman said, “that this must be his fate. If that’s the way it is, then let him be named the way his father was. His father was Akaky, so let the son be Akaky too.” And that is how Akaky Akakievich came about. The child was christened, and during the ceremony he started crying and made such a grimace that it seemed he had a premonition that he would be a titular councillor. So, that is how all this came about. We cited this so that the reader could see for himself that this happened by absolute necessity and that it was quite impossible to give him any other name.