by Bely, Andrei
At the words ‘Anna Petrovna’, however, the grey-haired valet stopped short.
‘The grey coat, sir?’
‘Yes, the grey one …’
‘I suppose it will be the grey gloves, too, sir?’
‘No, I want suede gloves …’
‘Try to wait a moment, your excellency, sir: you see, we keep the gloves in the wardrobe: Shelf B – North-West.’
Apollon Apollonovich had entered into life’s trivia only once: one day he had made an inspection of his inventory; the inventory was registered in order and the nomenclature of all the shelves established; the shelves were arranged by letters: A, B, C; while the four sides of the shelves assumed the designations of the four corners of the globe.
When he had put his spectacles away, Apollon Apollonovich would mark the register in fine, minute handwriting: spectacles, Shelf B, NE – North-East, in other words; while the valet received a copy of the register, and learned the directions of the appurtenances of the precious toilet by heart; at times during bouts of insomnia he would flawlessly scan these directions from memory.
In the lacquered house the storms of life passed noiselessly; but ruinously did the storms of life pass here none the less: not with events did they thunder; they did not shine purifyingly into hearts like arrows of lightning; but like a stream of poisonous fluids from a hoarse gullet did they rend the air: and some kind of cerebral games whirled in the consciousness of the inhabitants like dense vapours in hermetically sealed boilers.
The Baron, the Harrow
From the table rose a cold, long-legged bronze: the lampshade did not flash with a violet-pink tone, subtly painted: the secret of this paint had been lost by the nineteenth century; the glass had grown dark with time; the delicate pattern had also grown dark with time.
The golden pier-glasses in the window-piers devoured the drawing-room from all sides with the green surfaces of mirrors; and over there – a golden-cheeked little cupid crowned them with his little wing; and over there – a golden wreath’s laurels and roses were perforated by the heavy flames of torches. Between the pier-glasses a small mother-of-pearl table gleamed from everywhere.
Apollon Apollonovich quickly threw open the door, leaning on the cut-crystal handle; his steps rang out over the radiant tiles of the parquetry; from all sides rushed heaps of porcelain trinkets; they had brought these trinkets from Venice, he and Anna Petrovna – some thirty years ago. Memories of a misty lagoon, a gondola and an aria sobbing in the distance flashed inopportunely through the senator’s head …
Instantly he transferred his eyes to the grand piano.
From the yellow lacquered lid the minute leaves of a bronze incrustation shone resplendently; and again (tiresome memory!) Apollon Apollonovich remembered: a white Petersburg night; in the windows a broad river flowed; and the moon was out; and a roulade of Chopin thundered: he remembered – Anna Petrovna had played Chopin (not Schumann) …
The minute leaves of the incrustation – of mother-of-pearl and bronze – shone resplendently on the boxes and shelves that came out of the walls. Apollon Apollonovich settled down in an Empire-style armchair, on the pale azure satin seat of which garlands wound, and with his hand he reached for a bundle of letters from a small Chinese tray: his bald head inclined towards the envelopes. As he waited for the lackey with his invariable ‘The horses are ready’ he absorbed himself here, before leaving for work, in the reading of his morning correspondence.
Thus did he act on this day, too.
And the small envelopes were torn open: envelope after envelope; an ordinary, postal one – the stamp affixed lopsidedly, the handwriting illegible.
‘Mm … Yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir: very well, sir …’
And the envelope was carefully put away.
‘Mm … A petition …’
‘A petition, and another petition …’
The envelopes were torn open carelessly; these were things to be dealt with in time, later: this way or that …
An envelope made of thick grey paper – sealed, with a monogram, no stamp and the seal done in sealing-wax.
‘Mm … Count Doublevé15 … What’s this? … He wants to see me at the Institution … A personal matter …’
‘Mm … Aha! …’
Count Doublevé, the head of the Ninth Department, was the senator’s adversary and an enemy of separated farming.
Next … A pale pink, miniature envelope; the senator’s hand gave a start; he recognized this handwriting – the handwriting of Anna Petrovna; he studied the Spanish stamp, but did not unseal the envelope:
‘Mm … money …’
‘But the money was sent, wasn’t it?’
‘The money will be sent!! …’
‘Hm … I must make a note …’
Apollon Apollonovich, thinking he had got his pencil, pulled an ivory nailbrush from his waistcoat and was preparing to make a note to ‘Return to address of sender’, when …
‘? …’
‘The horses are ready, sir …’
Apollon Apollonovich raised his bald head and walked out of the room.
On the walls hung pictures, suffused with an oily lustre; and with difficulty through the lustre one could see French women who looked like Greek women, in the narrow tunics of the Directoire of former times and with the tallest of coiffures.
Above the grand piano hung a small reproduction of David’s painting Distribution des aigles par Napoléon Premier. The painting depicted the great Emperor wearing a wreath and an ermine purple mantle; the Emperor Napoleon was extending one hand to a plumed assembly of marshals; his other hand clutched a metal sceptre; on top of the sceptre sat a heavy eagle.
Cold was the magnificence of the drawing-room on account of the complete absence of rugs: the parquet tiles shone; if the sun illumined them for a moment, one’s eyes screwed up involuntarily. Cold was the drawing-room’s hospitality.
But with Senator Ableukhov it had been exalted into a principle.
It impressed itself: in the master, in the statues, in the servants, even in the dark, tiger-striped bulldog that lived somewhere near the kitchen; in this house everyone became disconcerted, giving way to the parquetry, the paintings and the statues, smiling, being disconcerted and swallowing their words: obliging and bowing, and rushing to one another – on these noisy parquets; and wringing their cold fingers in an access of fruitless obsequiousness.
Since Anna Petrovna’s departure: the drawing-room had been silent, the lid of the grand piano closed: the roulade had not thundered.
Yes – with regard to Anna Petrovna, or (to put it more simply) with regard to the letter from Spain: hardly had Apollon Apollonovich stalked past than two nimble lackeys quickly began to jabber.
‘He didn’t read the letter …’
‘Oh well: he will read it.’
‘Will he send it?’
‘ ’Course he will …’
‘Such a stone, the Lord forgive …’
‘I’ll say this to you, as well: you ought to observe the verbal niceties.’
When Apollon Apollonovich came down to the hallway, his grey-haired valet, who was also coming down to the hallway, looked at the respected ears, clutching a snuffbox in his hand – a gift from the minister.
Apollon Apollonovich stopped on the stairs and searched for a word.
‘Mm … Listen …’
‘Your excellency?’
Apollon Apollonovich looked for the right word.
‘How, as a matter of fact, – yes – is he getting on … getting on …’
‘? …’
‘Nikolai Apollonovich.’
‘Passably, Apollon Apollonovich, his honour is well …’
‘And what else?’
‘It’s as before: his honour is pleased to shut himself up and read books.’
‘Books, too?’
‘Then his honour also paces about the rooms, sir …’
‘Paces about – yes, yes … And … And? How?’
&nb
sp; ‘Paces about … In a dressing-gown, sir!’
‘Reading, pacing … I see … Go on.’
‘Yesterday his honour was waiting for a visit from someone …’
‘Waiting? For whom?’
‘A costumier, sir …’
‘What costumier?’
‘A costumier, sir …’
‘Hm-hm … What was that for?’
‘I suppose that his honour is going to a ball …’
‘Aha – so: he’s going to a ball …’
Apollon Apollonovich gave the bridge of his nose a rub: his face lit up with a smile and became suddenly senile:
‘Are you from the peasantry?’
‘That’s right, sir!’
‘Well, so you – do you know – are a baron.’
‘?’
‘Do you have a borona,16 a harrow?’
‘My father had one, sir.’
‘Well, there you are, you see, and yet you say …’
Apollon Apollonovich, taking his top hat, walked out through the open door.
A Carriage Flew into the Fog
A sleety drizzle was pouring down on the streets and prospects, the pavements and the roofs; it hurled itself down in cold jets from tinplated gutters.
A sleety drizzle was pouring down on the passers-by: rewarding them with grippes; together with the fine dust of rain the influenzas and grippes crawled under the raised collar: of gymnasiast, student, civil servant, officer, ordinary chap; and the ordinary chap (the man in the street, so to speak) looked around him in melancholy fashion; and looked at the prospect with a grey, washed-out face; he was circulating into the infinity of the prospects, crossing infinity, without the slightest murmur – in the infinite stream of others like himself – among the flight, the hubbub, the trembling, the droshkys, hearing from afar the melodic voice of the motor cars’ roulades and the increasing rumble of the yellow-and-red tramcars (a rumble that decreased again), and the incessant cry of the loud-voiced newspaper sellers.
From one infinity he fled into another; and then stumbled against the embankment; here everything came to an end: the melodic voice of the motor car roulade, the yellow-and-red tramcar and the man-in-the-street of every kind; here were both the end of the earth and the end of infinity.
And over there, over there: the depths, the greenish dregs; from far, far away, seemingly further than ought to have been the case, the islands17 frightenedly sank and cowered; the estates cowered; and the buildings cowered; it seemed that the waters were going to descend, and that at that moment over them would rush: the depths, the greenish dregs; while in the fog above these greenish dregs rumbled and trembled, fleeing away over there, the black, black Nikolayevsky Bridge.
On this sullen Petersburg morning the heavy doors of a well-appointed yellow house18 flew open: the windows of the yellow house looked on to the Neva. A clean-shaven lackey with gold braid on his lapels rushed out from the entrance porch to give signals to the coachman. The dappled horses started with a jerk towards the entrance; they drew up a carriage on which an old aristocratic coat of arms was depicted: a unicorn goring a knight.
A dashing non-commissioned officer of the police who was walking past the porchway looked foolish and stood to attention when Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, in a grey coat and a tall black top hat, with a face of stone that recalled a paperweight, swiftly ran out of the entrance porch and even more swiftly ran on to the footboard of the carriage, putting on a black suede glove as he did so.
Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov threw a momentary, confused glance at the police inspector, at the carriage, at the coachman, at the large black bridge, at the expanse of the Neva, where the foggy, many-chimneyed distances were drawn so fadedly, and from where Vasily Island looked in fright.
The lackey in grey hurriedly slammed the carriage door. The carriage flew swiftly into the fog; and the chance officer of the police, shaken by all he had seen, looked for a long, long time over his shoulder into the grimy fog – there, where the carriage had impetuously flown; and sighed, and walked on; soon this policeman’s shoulder, too, was concealed in the fog, as was every shoulder, every back, every grey face and every black, wet umbrella. In that direction, too, did the respected lackey look, looked to the right, to the left, at the bridge, at the expanse of the Neva, where the foggy, many-chimneyed distances were drawn so fadedly, and from where Vasily Island looked in fright.
Here, right at the outset, I must break the thread of my narrative in order to present to the reader the place of action of a certain drama. As a preliminary, an inaccuracy that has crept in ought to be corrected; the blame for it belongs not to the author, but to the author’s pen: at this time tramcars were not yet running in the city: this was 1905.19
Squares, Parallelepipeds, Cubes
‘Hey! Hey! …’
That was the coachman shouting.
And the carriage sprayed mud to every side.
There, where only a foggy dampness hung suspended, first lustrelessly appeared in outline, then descended from heaven to earth – the grimy, blackish-grey St Isaac’s; appeared in outline and then completely took shape: the equestrian monument of the Emperor Nicholas;20 the metal emperor was dressed in the uniform of the Leib Guards; by its pedestal a Nicholas grenadier peeped out and withdrew back into the fog like a shaggy fur hat.
The carriage, meanwhile, was flying to Nevsky Prospect.
Apollon Apollonovich swayed on the satin cushions of the seat; he was separated from the street scum by four perpendicular walls; thus was he detached from the crowds of people flowing past, from the drearily sodden red wrappers of the cheap journals that were being sold at that crossroads over there.
Planned regularity and symmetry calmed the senator’s nerves, which were stimulated both by the roughness of domestic life and by the helpless circle of the revolution of our wheel of state.
By a harmonic simplicity were his tastes distinguished.
Most of all did he love the rectilinear prospect; this prospect reminded him of the flow of time between the two points of life; and of one other thing, too: all other cities are a wooden pile of wretched little cottages, and Petersburg is strikingly different from them all.
The wet, slippery prospect: there the houses fused like cubes into a line of life in only one respect: this row had neither an end nor a beginning; here what for the wearer of diamond insignia was only the middle of life’s wanderings turned out for so many high officials to be the ending of life’s way.21
The senator’s soul was seized by inspiration every time his lacquered cube cut across the line of the Nevsky like an arrow; there, outside the windows, the numeration of the houses was visible; and the traffic moved; there, from there – on clear days from far, far away, flashed blindingly: the gold needle,22 the clouds, the crimson ray of the sunset; there, from there, on foggy days – nothing, no one.
And there there were – the lines: the Neva, the islands. Probably in those far-off days, when from the mossy marshes rose the high roofs and the masts and the spires that pierced with their merlons the dank, greenish fog –
– on his shadowy sails the Flying Dutchman23 flew towards St Petersburg from there, from the leaden expanses of the Baltic and German24 Seas, in order here to erect by illusion his misty estates and to give the wave of amassing clouds the name of islands; from here the Dutchman lit the hellish lights of the drinking dens for two hundred years, and the Orthodox folk flocked and flocked into these hellish drinking dens, carrying a foul infection …
The dark shadows floated off a little. But the hellish drinking dens remained. For long years the Orthodox folk caroused here with a ghost: a mongrel race arrived from the islands – neither human beings nor shadows, – settling on the boundary between two worlds that were alien to each other.
Apollon Apollonovich did not like the islands: the population there was industrial, coarse; a human swarm of many thousands plodded its way in the mornings to the many-chimneyed factories; and now he knew that the Brown
ing circulated there; and a few other things as well. Apollon Apollonovich thought: the inhabitants of the islands are numbered among the population of the Russian Empire; the general census has been introduced among them, too; they have numbered houses, police stations, fiscal institutions; the island resident is a lawyer, a writer, a worker, a police clerk; he considers himself a citizen of Petersburg, but he, a denizen of chaos, threatens the capital of the Empire in a gathering cloud …
Apollon Apollonovich did not want to reflect any further: the restless islands must be crushed, crushed! They must be riveted to the ground with the iron of the enormous bridge and transfixed in every direction by the arrows of the prospects …
And now, as he looked pensively into that boundlessness of mists, the man of state suddenly expanded out of the black cube in all directions and soared above it; and he desired that the carriage should fly forward, that the prospects should fly towards him – prospect after prospect, that the whole spherical surface of the planet should be gripped by the blackish-grey cubes of the houses as by serpentine coils; that the whole of the earth squeezed by prospects should intersect the immensity in linear cosmic flight with a rectilinear law; that the mesh of parallel prospects, intersected by a mesh of prospects, should expand into the abysses of outer space with the planes of squares and cubes: one square per man-in-the-street, that, that …
After the line of all the symmetries it was the figure of the square that brought him the most calm.
He was in the habit of giving himself up for long periods of time to the insouciant contemplation of: pyramids, triangles, parallelepipeds, cubes, trapezoids. He was seized by anxiety only when he contemplated the truncated cone.
As for the zigzag line, he could not endure it.
Here, in the carriage, Apollon Apollonovich took pleasure for a long time without thought in the quadrangular walls, residing at the centre of the black, perfect and satin-covered cube: Apollon Apollonovich had been born for solitary confinement; only a love for the planimetry of state clothed him in the polyhedrality of a responsible post.
