The Beggar and Other Stories

by Gaito Gazdanov

  Several days later, one of my friends, who had dined with us that evening at Nikolai Franzevich’s, said to me:

  “I have the most pleasant recollection of that evening. But did you not think there was something queer about it?”

  “Queer? No. Though I had no idea that our friend was such a wonderful raconteur.”

  “Did you not think there was something that didn’t quite ring true, something apocryphal about those stories, for all their indisputable skill?”

  “No, I think that everything happened just as he said it did.”

  “I do not doubt it. But do you know what impression I had? That Nikolai Franzevich never did live in Petersburg, that he never has in fact seen the city, but made a diligent study of its history, its way of life, all its place names and festivals, everything—it was as if he were reading us excerpts from a book that he had written about it.”

  “It was well written, in any case.”

  “Indubitably. Besides, ultimately he is indeed a Petersburger—it was from Petersburg that the late senator Trifonov knew him. Say what you will, though, I do not believe this man.”

  He launched into long and garbled explanations that were manifestly unconvincing, yet in a paradoxical way they contained something that was difficult to contradict. And towards the end of the discussion I began to sense that, truly, one fine day we would again arrive at Nikolai Franzevich’s, and he would happen not to be at home, and then it would turn out that in the building where he had lived for so many years there had never been any apartment, any Nikolai Franzevich, and that all this—the burning frigate in his drawing room, his maid, the heavy furniture, his dinners and conversations—all this had been the product of my imagination, one winter’s night in Paris, mixing with the fog and the taste of oysters and wine.

  All this took place before the war, in those times which later would begin to seem idyllic and be plunged into the depths of the past, like those final years of the Russian Empire. Yet after the war, too, everything continued as it had always done: the same apartment, the same frigate, the same silent maid (on whom time seemingly never told either). Seemingly no course of history could alter anything in Nikolai Franzevich’s unconvincing yet indestructible outlook. Despite his advanced age, he maintained exceptional health and a hearty appetite and seemingly never fell ill. However, in all the many years of my acquaintance with Nikolai Franzevich, never once did I see him laugh. His life passed by as though without any difficulties; there were seemingly no tragedies in it, nor could there be. Yet sometimes he would suddenly strike me as a man for whom something distressing prevented his living with that serene ease that should have been his lot—as though amid his cloudless existence something were not as it ought to be, an awareness of guilt, a gnawing regret. Most likely, I thought, neither this guilt nor this regret really existed and were but arbitrary notions, just like that of the imaginary insubstantiality of his positive life.

  There then came a time when I had to leave Paris for some considerable while, and I saw Nikolai Franzevich far less often. Thus passed several years, during which his mode of life never altered, as my friends related to me in letters. One day, however, I received a telephone call informing me that Nikolai Franzevich was dead.

  The night before I received the news, my friends had dined with him, and, according to their accounts, not one of them could have conceived that they were seeing him for the last time. Everything had been as usual: he received his guests just as courteously, ate with his usual appetite, was just as gracious and kind, and seemed to be in perfect health. The following day he got up at ten o’clock in the morning, the maid drew his bath, he lowered himself into the water, and then she heard a noise like a brief sob—she entered the bathroom and found him dead. Thereafter followed the church, the service, the requiem, and so Nikolai Franzevich was buried in one of Paris’s cemeteries, and after a short while a marble slab was placed above his grave, bearing the inscription: “Here lies…”

  Thus ended the long life of Nikolai Franzevich, a venerable and respected man who lived in a fine apartment, travelled abroad, read Descartes and Bossuet, was a marvellous conversationalist and host; who, for so many years, knew neither cares nor want, bequeathed to his faithful maid his fine apartment, the wonderful furniture and, as it came to light a little later, a certain sum of money. Thinking on Nikolai Franzevich’s death, I recalled a speech that had been given by one of our mutual friends during the funeral service.

  “Gentlemen, we are here to bury one of our long-standing friends—he was one of those few people about whom no one can say anything negative and whom no one could ever reproach. He was the living incarnation of all that we consider positive principles in our life. Every man has in his past deeds that he later has cause to regret, instances when he acted not as he ought to have done—such, ultimately, is human nature. Nikolai Franzevich was a happy exception to this rule: never a single negative action, never ill will towards anyone.”

  Our mutual friend who gave this speech had, in his time, graduated from the Law Faculty of Moscow University. His life abroad, however, had developed in such a way that he never had occasion to practise law; his activities centred principally on the stock market, although his vocation was undoubtedly otherwise, and, as he would admit to us, he frequently envisaged himself in court, winning complex cases, seeking justice for the accused and giving speeches built on sound and irrefutable logic. He was full of these unuttered speeches—and so now, at Nikolai Franzevich’s funeral, he spoke as if he were defending the memory of the deceased from some imaginary accusations.

  “Nikolai Franzevich was not a public figure, not an artist in any field, not even an author of any number of books or theories. Yet the circle of his interests was exceedingly broad. One could meet him in all the museums of Europe. One could find him reading contemporary authors or the blessed Augustine, and no cultural phenomenon eluded his constant and at once benevolent attention. Among this great quantity of disparate things, Nikolai Franzevich always found his own path, his own particular set of views on life and on how one ought to live—a set of views that I would define as the triumph of positive morals.

  “There was something else in him that set him apart from all of us. He stood above personal scores, petty practical interests that often poison our lives. He stood, as it were, apart from those garden-variety miseries, from what we, putting it vulgarly, call the prose of daily existence. He was devoid of ambition; never did he strive to usurp someone’s position, to impose his views on someone, and I cannot imagine that Nikolai Franzevich could in any way be indebted to anyone. Conversation with him was always stimulating and fruitful—he belonged to that breed of people who take nothing from others, but willingly share with everyone their exceptional wealth of thoughts and ideas. His personal fate was shaped in such a way that in his life there were, as far as we know, no tragedies, no trials. Yet those to whom they did fall could always count on his understanding and sympathy. He was a man of rare independence, and his sense of self-worth never left him under any circumstance. And if he were to have found himself in a difficult position—which thankfully did not happen during his lifetime—this sense of independence and self-worth would not have left him, and he would have remained just as he does in our memories—a benevolent, cultivated, intelligent, direct and honest man—a sufficiently rare combination of qualities, which in particular bears highlighting when talking of the deceased. He was a Christian—and if you imagine that for him, too, the Day of Judgement will come, he will face this court with a pure soul and a pure heart, and the judges will see that he lived his life without committing a single negative act, without deceiving anyone, without offending, and always trying to understand those who were granted the happiness, as were we all, to be his friend and his grateful contemporaries.”

  Several days after Nikolai Franzevich’s funeral, in the evening, as I was sitting at home, the telephone rang. I lifted the receiver and heard an indistinct woman’s voice saying something
in very rapid French, but in such agitation and with such a thick accent that at first I was unable to make anything out and decided that my caller must have dialled a wrong number. Then I finally realized: it was Nikolai Franzevich’s housekeeper calling to say that she very much wanted to see me. I arranged a meeting for the following morning.

  She arrived—in her black mourning dress, just as pale as always—and, fixing her still eyes upon me, explained that she did not know what to do and what was necessary to undertake in order to receive the legacy left to her by Nikolai Franzevich. She showed me his will, which had been attested by a notary. In the will it was succinctly written that everything belonging to Nikolai Franzevich was left to her. I explained to the Italian woman that, as far as I could see, she should have no difficulties and that she should refer herself to the notary. She thanked me and then said:

  “He has a lot of papers in a foreign language. I don’t understand what’s written there and don’t know what to do with them. Perhaps you would take a look at them?”

  “Very well,” I said. “If they are of a private nature, I shan’t read them and it will be simplest of all to destroy them.”

  After this, we made our way to Nikolai Franzevich’s apartment—to that quiet street where he had lived for so many years. As before, the trees were wild with verdure, up above was that same deep-blue sky, but now it seemed to me that amid all this calming scenery—two rows of tall buildings, trees, sky—the air was suffused with slow waves of a distant and meditative sadness that had not existed in this street, in this air, while Nikolai Franzevich was still alive. We ascended to the first floor, the Italian woman going before me, and I involuntarily noticed the elastic ease with which her legs overcame the lazy, modest steps of the marble staircase. How old might this woman be? Forty? Forty-five?

  The drawers of Nikolai Franzevich’s enormous bureau were stuffed with folders of letters, of which there turned out to be many. All the letters were written in English, and they were all addressed to a certain Ivanov who lived on rue Mouffetard—far from the district in which Nikolai Franzevich’s apartment was located. A copy of Ivanov’s original letter was attached to each of these replies. The letters were addressed to various charitable organizations and to several private individuals, always in faraway countries, chiefly in America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. I extracted one of them—several pages in length. In this letter, sent to a private address in California, Ivanov wrote:

  Until very recently I had considered my situation hopeless and therefore decided not to bother you with any more requests. Long ago I reconciled myself to my lot and to the cruel fate that ordained that my wife, who might have helped me, be deprived of this ability, for she, after the meningitis that very nearly robbed her of her life, has been left almost totally blind. I picture to myself the cold gloom she is now submerged in, in this wretched flat of ours, where the stove lies long unlit (since we have no money for coal). Sometimes I think I could turn the world upside down if my strength were returned to me. But I am still paralysed—and until only recently felt as if I had been lying in the grave so very long—the difference between my corpse and those buried in cemeteries being that my eyes are open and fate has taken everything from me, except for the capacity to suffer and to watch the suffering of this wretched blind woman, whom I recall as a young girl, laughing, full of strength and hope for the future. In these moments it seems to me that death itself would be a thousand times better, a thousand times easier, a thousand times worthier than the fitful simulacrum of existence I now lead.

  Forgive me for writing to you about all this. But you have done so much for me, I am so indebted to you that, separated from you by an enormous distance, I consider you my distant friend—and so I write to you as to a friend. Do you know that this is the first letter I have written to you by myself? I used to dictate my letters, because my hand would not obey my will. Yet several days ago I noted, on a sudden, that I was able to move my right hand. It was a feeling of such tremendous power, it seemed such a miracle, that when I touched this resurrected hand to my face, I found it wet with tears of joy, which I had not until then noticed. The doctor told me that this could just be the beginning, that in future I may yet move the left one, too—and who knows, perhaps after some time I shall stand tall again, as I once did all those many years ago, before I was struck down by paralysis. That is to say, it means I shall again be capable of work—and, whenever I think of this prospect, I find it difficult to breathe from excitement.

  Further down there came a detailed description of Ivanov’s life, into which from time to time he would insert reflections of a different order.

  Sometimes I feel ready to laugh at myself, for I have always held a naive and idyllic dream, a utopian vision of a world in which there is no poverty, no suffering, no envy, a world that is built on a great and complex system of harmonious and happy equilibrium. But I digress. If life be movement, then until very recently I would have been well within my right to consider myself dead.

  This long epistle was written with endless digressions and constituted a verbose appeal for financial assistance. Pinned to the copy of this letter was a slip of paper: “Replied 29/11. California, 16/12, cheque No. 437.”

  Another letter was addressed to Melbourne. Therein Ivanov wrote that he had returned from a sanatorium and was once again at home: a narrow iron bed, the dankness of a small room, the same low ceiling whose curvature sometimes reminded him of the vault of a crypt.

  Further down:

  I am forced to spend a lot of time in bed, since I have no strength for anything else. During these long hours I think about many things. My first thought is to turn to God and to be grateful that I am alone and that this slow death, which has pervaded the very atmosphere in which I have lived all these long years, will harm no one. In the end, what does it matter if the world does not hear the symphonies that are engendered in my imagination and the sounds that attend me everywhere? After my death, people will say that here died a man who thought himself a composer, though he wrote nothing. Who in the end will know that this whole ocean of sounds that engulfs me came into being precisely at the moment when this unrelenting illness deprived me of the ability to set down these symphonies and to harness this impetuous motion of sounds, beyond which I cannot conceive of life?

  In this instance, Ivanov was a composer, who was slowly dying of consumption and who had been advised by doctors that improved nutrition and a trip to the Maritime Alps could save him. But for this he needed means. The composer asked himself the question: did he have the moral right to appeal to a complete stranger for help? He believed he could write such things, which no one before him had written. But perhaps this was just an illusion, perhaps he had no musical gift? So came meditations on the nature of artistic creation.

  Perhaps Beethoven’s symphonies existed before he was born. And that distinction which we call genius—and which we cannot call otherwise—consists in his having been the only person in the world to hear these sounds, that is, the music that, but for him, no one heard. So the question, then, is this: did he create these eternal symphonies, did he create this unique world of sounds—or did he just hear and set down for all what had always been there? If the latter, then perhaps I, too, can hear the sounds that, by dint of millions upon millions of accidents, no one apart from me knows.

  I sat with Ivanov’s archive for several hours. I could but be amazed by the assortment of quotidian details he included in his letters. In some cases he was a lonely man. Others made reference to a wife who had been taken seriously ill. Irrespective, however, of any mention of family or otherwise, Ivanov himself was always at death’s door.

  I know that I am gradually going blind and that nothing can prevent this. When my eyes no longer see, I shall take away with me the visual memory of the world that now is slowly dimming and becoming obscured from my intense gaze. No longer shall I see, but I shall never forget these contours that I have seen for so many years, this dynamism of
lines, this play of coloured reflections on the water, these elusive transitions from azure to navy, from turquoise to azure, which I traced from the deck of a ship at sea. I know that for the remainder of the time allotted to me I shall hear innumerable sounds in the dark, but in this world I shall feel alien, and I hardly imagine that I shall grow accustomed to this blinded universe: without light, without sun, without dusk—without night?

  In another letter Ivanov—who had recently (or so he said) been run over by a motor car—wrote:

  What I feel more than anything is a pain in the toes of my right foot—a feeling that proves to me a single truth that I had never before suspected. We believe—and I always believed so—that imagination is the result of mental activity. By “imagination” I mean the notion of what in reality does not exist, and what you English call fiction, a word that is difficult to translate into other languages. Now I am convinced that this is not so. Our muscular and nervous system—this seemingly inanimate assemblage of tissue and nodes—is also possessed of imagination. For what other than the imagination in muscles and nerves could explain this feeling in the toes of an amputated leg?

  Another thought: what a curious profession—the maker of artificial arms and legs, and what a singular branch of industry!