Fantastic Tales: Visionary and Everyday

by Italo Calvino

  “I don’t see anything,” the nose said. “Kindly come to the point.”

  “Sir,” Kovalev said with dignity, “I don’t know how to interpret your words. The matter is quite clear, I believe. Unless you are trying … Don’t you realize that you are my nose?”

  The nose looked at the major and frowned slightly.

  “You’re mistaken, sir. I’m all on my own. Moreover, there couldn’t possibly have been close relations between us. Judging by your dress, you must be employed by the Senate, or possibly by the Ministry of Justice, whereas my field is science.”

  And having said this, the nose turned away and resumed his prayers.

  Kovalev was now completely at a loss. Then he heard the pleasant rustle of a feminine dress. He saw a middle-aged lady covered with lace and, with her, a pretty, slender thing in a white dress which set off a very moving waistline, and with a straw hat as light as whipped cream. Behind them walked a tall man with side whiskers and a very complicated collar.

  Kovalev worked his way toward them, pulled up the spotless collar of his shirt front to make sure it showed, straightened the seals that hung on a golden chain, and concentrated his attention on the young lady who, like a spring blossom, raised her white hand with its half-transparent fingers to her forehead. And Kovalev’s smile spread twice as wide when, under the hat, he made out a chin of a tender whiteness and a cheek touched by the early spring coloring of a rose. But then he jumped back as though burned. He had remembered that instead of a nose he had absolutely nothing, and the tears sprang to his eyes.

  He turned to the gentleman dressed as a state councilor to tell him that he was nothing but a fraud and a crook, nothing but his, Kovalev’s, personally owned nose.

  But the nose was nowhere to be seen. He must have driven off on another official visit.

  Kovalev was in despair. He retraced his steps, stopped for a while under the colonnade, and looked intently around him in the hope of catching sight of the nose. He remembered that the nose had had a plumed hat and a gold-braided uniform, but he hadn’t noticed his greatcoat, or the color of his carriage, or his horses, or even whether he had had a footman up behind him and, if so, what livery he wore. And then there were so many carriages rushing back and forth, all going so fast that he would have had difficulty in picking one out and no way of stopping it anyway. It was a lovely sunny day. Nevsky Avenue was thronged with people; from the central police station to Anichkin Bridge, ladies poured over the sidewalks in a colorful cascade. There went an acquaintance of his, a court councilor, whom he addressed as Lieutenant-Colonel, especially in the presence of outsiders. Then Kovalev saw Yaryzhkin, head clerk in the Senate, a good friend who always lost whenever they played cards together. And there was another major, another Caucasus-made collegiate assessor, beckoning …

  “Goddammit,” Kovalev said, “what the hell does he want from me? Cabbie! To the police commissioner’s!”

  He got into the cab and kept exhorting the cabbie again and again: “Come on, let’s go! Quick! Now turn into Ivanovskaya Street.”

  “Is the Commissioner in?” he called out, as soon as he entered the house.

  “No, sir,” the doorman answered. “He left only a minute ago.”

  “That’s really too much ….”

  “Yes, sir,” the doorman said. “If you’d come a minute earlier, you’d have caught him.”

  Kovalev, still holding his handkerchief to his face, got back into the cab and shouted in a desperate voice:

  “Get going.”

  “Where to?”

  “Straight ahead.”

  “Straight ahead? But this is a dead end. Shall I go right or left?”

  Kovalev was caught off balance and forced to give the matter some thought. In his position, he ought first to go to the National Security Administration, not because it was directly connected with the police, but because its orders would be acted on more rapidly than those of others.

  Certainly it was no use taking his grievance to the scientific department where the nose claimed to have a post. At best, it would be unwise, since, judging by his statement that he had never seen Kovalev before, it was obvious that he held nothing sacred and he might lie whenever he found it convenient. So Kovalev was about to tell the cabman to drive him to the National Security Administration when it occurred to him that the crook and impostor, who had just behaved so unscrupulously toward him, might very well try to slip out of town, in which case finding him would be quite hopeless or would take, God forbid, a whole month perhaps. Finally, he had what seemed like a divine inspiration. He decided to go straight to the Press Building to have an advertisement put in the papers with a detailed description of the nose in all his aspects, so that anyone who met him could turn him over to Kovalev, or at least inform him of the nose’s whereabouts. So, having decided this, he told the cabman to take him to the Press Building and, during the entire ride, he kept pommeling him on the back with his fist and shouting:

  “Faster, damn you! Faster!”

  “Really, sir!” the cabman said, shaking his head and flicking the reins at his horse, which had hair as long as a lap dog’s.

  At last the cab came to a stop, and Kovalev, panting, burst into the small outer office where a gray-haired, bespectacled employee in an ancient frock coat was seated at a table, his pen clenched between his teeth, counting out the change someone had paid in.

  “Who handles advertisements here?” shouted Kovalev. “Ah,” he said, “good morning!”

  “Good morning, sir,” the gray-haired employee said, raising his eyes for a moment and lowering them again to the little piles of coins before him.

  “I want to insert—”

  “Excuse me. Would you mind waiting just a moment, please,” the employee said, writing down a figure with his right hand while his left hand moved two beads on his abacus.

  A footman, whose gold-braided livery and whole appearance testified to his service in an aristocratic house, stood by the old employee holding a piece of paper in his hand and, to prove his worldliness, started chattering away:

  “Believe me, I’m quite sure the mutt isn’t worth eighty kopeks. In fact, I wouldn’t give eight kopeks, if you ask me. But the Countess loves that cur—she has to if she’s willing to give a hundred rubles to the person who finds it. Since we are among people who understand, I’ll tell you one thing: it’s all a matter of taste. I can understand a dog lover. But then, go and get a deerhound or maybe a poodle. Then, if you want to spend five hundred or a thousand on it, it’s only natural. But, in my opinion, when you pay you are entitled to a real dog ….”

  The elderly employee was listening to this speech with an important expression and was counting the number of letters in the text of the advertisement the manservant had handed him. The room was full of old women, shopkeepers, and doormen, all holding pieces of paper on which advertisements had been written out. In one a coachman, sober and dependable, was for hire; another announced that a carriage with very little mileage, brought from Paris in 1814, was for sale; a nineteen-year-old girl, a washer-woman’s assistant, but suitable for other work too, wanted employment; also for sale were an excellent hansom cab (one spring missing) and a young, seventeen-year-old dappled-gray horse, as well as a consignment of turnip and radish seeds straight from London, a summer house with a two-carriage coach house, and a piece of land very suitable for planting a lovely birch wood. Another advertisement invited persons desirous of buying secondhand shoe soles to present themselves in a certain salesroom between 8 A.M. and 3 P.M.

  The reception room in which all these people waited was quite small and the air was getting stuffy. But the smell didn’t bother Collegiate Assessor Kovalev because he kept his face covered with a handkerchief and also because his nose happened to be God knew where.

  “Excuse me, sir … I don’t want to bother you, but this is an emergency,” he said impatiently at last.

  “Wait, wait … two rubles, forty-three kopeks, please. One minute, pleas
e! … One ruble, sixty-four, over there …” the old employee said, shoving sheets of paper under the noses of porters and old women. “Now, what can I do for you?” he said finally, turning to Kovalev.

  “I wanted,” Kovalev said, “to ask you to … a fraud, or perhaps a theft, has been committed. I’m still not clear. I want you to run an advertisement simply saying that whoever delivers that robber to me will get a handsome reward.”

  “Your name, please.”

  “My name? What for? I can’t tell you my name. I have too many acquaintances, such as Mrs. Chekhtareva, the wife of a civil servant, and Palageya Grigorievna Podtochina, who’s married to Captain Podtochin, an officer on the Army General Staff …. Suppose they found out, God forbid. Write simply ‘a collegiate assessor’ or, better still, ‘a major.’”

  “And the runaway, was he a household serf?”

  “A household serf. That wouldn’t be half so vicious a crime. The runaway is my nose … yes, my own nose ….”

  “Hm … odd name. And now may I inquire the sum, the amount, of which this Mr. Nose has defrauded you?”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. I said nose. My own nose, which has disappeared God knows where. I am the victim of some foul joke ….”

  “But how could it disappear? I still don’t understand, sir.”

  “Well, I can’t explain how, but the main thing is that he mustn’t go all over town impersonating a state councilor. That’s why I want you to advertise that anyone who catches him should contact me as quickly as possible. Besides, imagine how I feel with such a conspicuous part of my body missing. It’s not just a matter of, say, a toe. You could simply stick your foot into your shoe and no one would be the wiser. On Thursdays, I usually visit Mrs. Chekhtareva, the wife of a state councilor …. And Mrs. Podtochina, the wife of the staff officer, has an extremely pretty daughter. They are close friends of mine, you see, and now tell me, what am I to do? … How can I show myself to them?”

  The employee was thinking hard, as could be seen from his tightly pressed lips.

  “I am sorry, sir, but I cannot accept your advertisement,” he said, after a long silence.

  “What’s that! Why?”

  “I just can’t. A newspaper could lose its good name if everybody started advertising vagrant noses …. No, sir, as it is, too many absurdities and unfounded rumors manage to slip into print.”

  “Why is it absurd? I don’t see anything so unusual about it.”

  “It may look that way to you. But just let me tell you … Last week, for instance, a government employee came to see me just as you have now. I even remember that his advertisement came to two rubles, seventy-three kopeks. But what it all boiled down to was that a black poodle had run away. You’d think there was nothing to it, wouldn’t you? But wait. Turned out to be deliberate libel because the poodle in question happened to be the treasurer of I can’t recall exactly what.”

  “But listen, I’m not advertising about a poodle but about my own nose which is the same as myself.”

  “Sorry, I can’t accept the advertisement.”

  “But I have lost my nose!”

  “If you have, it is a matter for a doctor. I’ve heard that there are specialists who can fit you with any sort of nose you want. But I’m beginning to think that you are one of these cheerful people who likes to have his little joke.”

  “But I swear to you by all that’s holy! And if it comes to that, I’ll show you.”

  “Why take the trouble,” the employee said, taking a pinch of snuff. “But then, after all, if you really don’t mind,” he added, making a slight movement indicating curiosity, “why, I wouldn’t mind having a look.”

  Kovalev removed the handkerchief from his face.

  “My! It is strange!” the employee said. “Why, it’s as flat as a fresh-cooked pancake, incredibly smooth!”

  “Well, now you won’t refuse to run my advertisement, will you? It simply must be published. I will be very much obliged to you, and I’m very happy that this accident has given me a chance to make your acquaintance ….”

  The major, it can be seen, had decided that he’d better make up to him a bit.

  “Certainly, running it is no great problem,” the employee said, “but I don’t see that it would do you any good. However, if you absolutely want to see it in print, why not entrust it to someone who can really write and ask him to present it as a rare natural phenomenon and have it published in the Northern Bee”—here he took another pinch of snuff—“for the edification of the young”—here he wiped his nose—“or just as a matter of general interest.”

  The collegiate assessor was taken aback. He lowered his eyes and his glance happened to fall on the theatrical announcements at the bottom of the page of a newspaper. His face was just about to break into a smile at the sight of the name of a very pretty actress and his hand had already plunged into his pocket to see whether he had a five-ruble bill on him, since, in his opinion, an officer of his rank should sit in the stalls, when he remembered the nose and everything was ruined.

  The employee, too, seemed touched by Kovalev’s awkward position. To alleviate his distress, he thought it would be appropriate to express his sympathy in a few words:

  “I’m very sorry that such a painful thing should have happened to you. Perhaps you’d feel better if you took a pinch of snuff. It eases people’s headaches and cheers them up. It’s even good for hemorrhoids.”

  As he said this, the employee offered Kovalev his snuff-box, rather deftly folding back the lid which had a picture on it of some lady in a hat.

  At this unintentional provocation, Kovalev’s patience snapped.

  “I simply don’t understand how you can make a joke of it,” he said angrily. “Can’t you see that I am missing just what I would need to take a pinch of snuff with? You know what you can do with your snuff! I can’t even look at it now, especially not at your cheap Berezinsky brand. You might at least have offered me something better ….”

  Incensed, he rushed out of the Press Building. He decided to take his case to the borough Police Commissioner.

  At the moment when Kovalev entered the office of the Commissioner, the latter had just finished stretching himself and reflecting:

  “I might as well treat myself to a nap. A couple of hours or so.”

  Thus it would have been easy to predict that the major’s visit was rather poorly timed. Incidentally, the Commissioner, though a great lover of the arts and of commerce, still preferred a bill put in circulation by the Imperial Russian Bank over anything else. His opinion on the matter was as follows:

  “It has everything: it doesn’t have to be fed, it doesn’t take up much room, and, in any case, can always be fitted into a pocket. If you drop it, it doesn’t break.”

  The Commissioner was rather cold with Kovalev. Right after a meal, he said, was not the proper time for investigations. Nature itself, he said, dictated rest when one’s belly was full. From this, the collegiate assessor was able to gather that the Commissioner was rather familiar with the maxims of the wise men of antiquity.

  “Moreover,” the Commissioner said, “they don’t tear noses off decent citizens’ faces.”

  Bull’s-eye! We must note here that Kovalev was quick to take offense. He could forgive anything that was said about himself personally, but he couldn’t stand anything that he considered a slur on his rank and position. He even held the view that, in dramatic works, while a disparaging reference to subaltern ranks was permissible, it became intolerable when applied to officers above the rank of captain. He was so disconcerted by the reception given him by the Commissioner that he shook his head slightly, shrugged, and, on his way out, said in a dignified tone:

  “Well, I must say … after your offensive remarks I have nothing further to add.”

  He reached home hardly able to feel his feet beneath him. It was getting dark. After his futile search, his place looked sad and repulsive. As he walked in, he saw Ivan, his manservant, lying on his bac
k on the old leather divan in the entrance hall spitting at the ceiling—very successfully it must be said. Ivan was hitting the same spot again and again. But such indifference enraged Kovalev. He hit him on the head with his hat and said bitterly:

  “Swine! You think of nothing but trivialities.”

  Ivan jumped up and started anxiously to help Kovalev off with his coat.

  The major went into his room and let himself fall into an armchair, sad and exhausted. He let out a few sighs, after which he said:

  “Good heavens! Why is all this happening to me? What have I done wrong? It would have been better to have lost an arm or a leg. It would have been bad enough without ears, yet still bearable. But without a nose a man is not a man but God knows what—neither fish nor fowl. He can’t even be a proper citizen any more. If only I had had it lopped off during a war or in a duel or if I had been responsible for the loss. But I lost it for no reason and for nothing; I haven’t even got a kopek out of it! No, it’s impossible,” he added after a pause, “it is impossible that the nose could have disappeared. Incredible! It is probably a dream or just a hallucination … maybe, by mistake, I drank a glassful of the vodka with which I rub my face after shaving? That fool Ivan must have forgotten to put it away and I must have swallowed it inadvertently.”

  To prove to himself that he was really drunk, the major pinched himself so hard that he let out a moan. The pain convinced him that he was quite sober. Then, slowly, as though stalking something, he approached the mirror, his eyes half closed, in the vague hope that, who knows, perhaps the nose would be in its proper place. But immediately he jumped away.

  “What a slanderous sight!”

  It was really quite bewildering. Many things get lost: a button, a silver spoon, a watch, or some such object. But to disappear just like that…. And what’s more, in his own apartment! Having weighed the matter, Major Kovalev came to what seemed to be the most likely explanation: the culprit behind it all was Mrs. Podtochina, who wanted him to marry her daughter. He rather enjoyed the girl’s company himself but he was just not ready for a final decision. And when Mrs. Podtochina had told him plainly that she wanted him to marry her daughter, he had quietly beaten a polite retreat, saying that he was still very young and that he ought to devote another five years or so to his career, after which he would be at least forty-two. So, probably, that was when Mrs. Podtochina had decided to maim him and had hired witches or something for the purpose, because by no stretch of the imagination could it be assumed that the nose had been cut off; no one had entered his bedroom; Ivan Yakovlevich, the barber, hadn’t shaved him since Wednesday and during the rest of that day and even on Thursday, his nose, all in one piece, had been on his face. He was absolutely certain of it. Moreover, had the nose been cut off he would have felt pain and the wound could never have healed so fast and become as smooth as a pancake ….