by Bely, Andrei
A second later Nikolai Apollonovich leapt out on to the street; from under the skirts of his greatcoat dangled a piece of red silk; his nose tucked into his Nikolayevka, Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov raced in the direction of the bridge.
Petersburg, Petersburg!
Falling like fog, you have pursued me, too, with idle cerebral play: you are a cruel-hearted tormentor; you are an unquiet ghost; for years you have attacked me; I ran through your dreadful prospects and took a flying leap on to the cast-iron bridge that began from the limit of the earth, leading into the limitless distance; beyond the Neva, in that other-worldly, green distance there – the ghosts of islands and houses arose, seducing with the vain hope that world is reality and that it is not a howling limitlessness that drives the pale smoke of the clouds into the Petersburg street.
From the islands trail restless ghosts; thus the swarm of visions repeats itself, reflected by the prospects, driving one another way down the prospects, reflected in one another, like a mirror in a mirror, where the very moment of time itself expands in the boundlessness of zones: and as you plod your way from entrance porch to entrance porch, you experience centuries.
Oh, great bridge, shining with electricity!
I remember a certain fateful moment; over your damp railings I too leant on a September night: a moment – and my body would have flown into the mists.
O, green waters, seething with bacilli!
Another moment and you would have wound me, too, into your shadow. The restless shadow, preserving the aspect of an ordinary man in the street, would have ambiguously begun to loom in the draught of the damp little canal; over his shoulder the passer-by would have seen: a bowler, a walking-stick, a coat, ears, a nose and a moustache …
He would have gone further … to the cast-iron bridge.
On the cast-iron bridge he would have turned round; and he would have seen nothing: above the wet railings, above the greenish water that seethed with bacilli would have merely flown past into the draughts of the Neva’s wind – a bowler, a walking-stick, ears, a nose and a moustache.
You Will Never Forget Him
In this chapter we have seen Senator Ableukhov; we have also seen the senator’s idle thoughts in the form of the senator’s house and in the form of the senator’s son, who also carries his own idle thoughts in his head; we have seen, finally, another idle shadow – the stranger.
This shadow arose accidentally in Senator Ableukhov’s consciousness and received there an ephemeral existence of its own; but Apollon Apollonovich’s consciousness is a shadowy consciousness, because he too is the possessor of an ephemeral existence and is a product of the author’s fantasy: a superfluous, idle, cerebral play.
The author, having spread out scenes of illusions, ought to clear them away as soon as possible, breaking off the thread of the narrative if only with this sentence; but … the author will not act thus: he has sufficient right not to.
Cerebral play is only a mask; behind this mask the invasion of the brain by forces unknown to us is accomplished: and even if Apollon Apollonovich is woven from our brains, he will none the less be able to frighten with another, stupendous existence that attacks by night. Apollon Apollonovich is endowed with the attributes of this existence; all his cerebral play is endowed with this existence.
Once his brain has come into play with the mysterious stranger, that stranger exists, really does exist: he will not disappear from the Petersburg prospects while a senator with such thoughts exists, because thought, too, exists.
And so let our stranger be a real live stranger! And let my stranger’s two shadows be real live shadows!
Those dark shadows will follow, they will follow on the stranger’s heels, in the same way as the stranger himself will directly follow the senator; the aged senator will pursue you, he will pursue you, too, reader, in his black carriage: and from this day forth you will never forget him!
END OF THE FIRST CHAPTER
Chapter the Second
in which the story is told of a meeting fraught with consequences
I myself, though in books and words
My confrères level mocking chat,
I am a philistine, as well you know,
And in that sense a democrat.1
A. Pushkin
The Diary of Events
Our respectable citizens do not read the newspapers’ ‘Diary of Events’; in October of the year 1905 the ‘Diary of Events’ was not even read at all; our respectable citizens were probably reading the leading articles in the Comrade,2 unless, that is, they were subscribers to the most recent, thunder-bearing newspapers; these latter kept a diary of rather different events.
However, all the other real Russian men-in-the-street, as though it were natural, rushed to the ‘Diary of Events’; I too rushed to the ‘Diary’; and reading this ‘Diary’, am splendidly informed. Well, who, in fact, actually read all the reports of robberies, witches and spirits in the year 1905? Everyone read the leaders, of course. The reports quoted here will probably be recalled by no one.
It is a true story … Here are some newspaper cuttings from that time (the author will be silent): alongside notification of robberies, rape, the theft of diamonds and the disappearance from a small provincial town of some literary man or other (Daryalsky,3 I believe) together with diamonds worth a respectable sum, we have a series of interesting news items – sheer fantasy, perhaps, that would make the head of any reader of Conan Doyle spin. In a word – here are some newspaper cuttings.
‘The Diary of Events’.
‘First of October. According to the account of a coursiste of the higher medical assistant courses, N.N., we publish a report concerning a certain exceedingly mysterious event. Late on the evening of the first of October, the coursiste N.N. was walking near the Chernyshev Bridge.4 There, near the bridge, the coursiste observed a very strange sight: above the canal, in the middle of the night, against the railings of the bridge a red satin domino was dancing; on the red domino’s face was a black lace mask.’
‘Second of October. According to the account of the schoolmistress M.M. we notify the respected public of a mysterious event near one of our suburban schools. The schoolmistress M.M. was giving her morning lesson in O.O. municipal school; the windows of the school looked on to the street; suddenly outside the window a pillar of dust began to swirl with violent force, and the schoolmistress M. M., together with her sprightly youngsters, naturally rushed to the windows of O.O. municipal school; but great was the confusion of class and class preceptress when a red domino, situated in the centre of the dust he had raised, ran up to the windows of O.O. municipal school and pressed a black lace mask to the window! In O.O. municipal school lessons ceased …’
‘Third of October. At a spiritualist seance that took place in the flat of the respected Baroness R.R. the amicably assembled spiritualists formed a spiritualistic chain; but hardly had they formed the chain, when in the midst of it a domino was discovered who, while dancing, touched with the folds of his cape the tip of titular councillor S.’s nose. A physician at the G. Hospital has ascertained that there is a most violent burn on titular councillor S.’s nose: the tip of the nose is, according to rumour, covered with purple spots. In a word, the red domino is everywhere.’
And finally: ‘Fourth of October. The inhabitants of the suburb of I. have unanimously fled in the face of the domino’s appearance: a number of protests are being drawn up; the U. Cossack Hundred has been called to the suburb.’
This domino, this domino – what can it mean? Who is the coursiste N.N., who are M.M., the class’s preceptress, the Baroness R.R., and so on? … In the year 1905, reader, you did not of course read the ‘Diary of Events’. Then blame yourself, and not the author: but the ‘Diary of Events’, believe me, ran all the way to the library.
What is a newspaper contributor? He is, in the first place, a functionary of the periodical press; and as a functionary of the press (of a sixth of the world) he receives for a line – five co
pecks, seven copecks, ten copecks, fifteen copecks, twenty copecks, reporting in a line all that is and all that never was. If one were to put together the newspaper lines of any newspaper contributor, the single line formed of their lines would entwine the terrestrial globe with that which took place and that which did not.
Such are the respected characteristics of the majority of contributors to extreme right-wing, right-wing, centrist, moderate liberal and, last but not least, revolutionary newspapers and, combined with a calculation of their quantity and quality, these respected characteristics are simply the key that opens the truth of the year 1905 – the truth of the ‘Diary of Events’ under the headline ‘The Red Domino’. This is what it was all about: a certain respected contributor to an indubitably respected newspaper, receiving five copecks, suddenly decided to make use of a certain fact that was told to him in a certain house; in that house a lady was the mistress. What it was all about, then, was not the respected contributor who was paid by the line; what it was all about was the lady …
But who is the lady?
Very well, we shall start with her.
A lady: hm! And a pretty one … What is a lady?
The chiromancer has not revealed the properties of the lady: lonely stands the chiromancer before the riddle that is headed ‘lady’: how, in that case, is the psychologist – or – pah! – the writer – to tackle the enigma? The enigma will be doubly enigmatic if the lady is a young one, if it be said of her that she is pretty.
So it was like this: there was a certain lady; and out of boredom she attended the courses for women; and again out of boredom sometimes in the mornings she substituted for a schoolmistress at the O.O. municipal school, provided that in the evening she was not at a spiritualist seance on days that were vacant of balls; it goes without saying that the coursiste N.N., M.M. (the class preceptress), and R.R. (the spiritualist baroness) were simply a lady: and a pretty lady. The respected newspaper contributor spent evenings at her home.
One day this lady laughingly told him that she had just encountered a red domino in an unlighted entrance porch. Thus did the pretty lady’s innocent confession end up in the columns of the newspapers under the heading ‘Diary of Events’. And having ended up in the ‘Diary of Events’, it unravelled into a series of occurrences that never were, and that threatened the peace.
What actually did happen, then? Even rumoured smoke rises from a fire. What then was the fire from which this smoke of a respected newspaper proceeded, smoke about which all Russia read and which, to your shame, you probably have not read?
Sofya Petrovna Likhutina
That lady … But that lady was Sofya Petrovna; we must at once devote many words to her.
Sofya Petrovna Likhutina was distinguished, perhaps, by an excessive chevelure: and she was somehow unusually lissom: if Sofya Petrovna Likhutina had let down her black hair, that black hair would, covering her entire figure, have fallen to her calves; and Sofya Petrovna Likhutina, to be quite honest, simply did not know what to do with this hair of hers, which was so black that there was, perhaps, no object any blacker; because of the excessiveness of her hair, or because of its blackness – whatever the reason: above Sofya Petrovna’s lips a fluff appeared, one that threatened her with a real moustache in her old age. Sofya Petrovna Likhutina possessed an unusual facial colour; this colour was simply that of pearl, marked out with the whiteness of apple petals, or else – with a delicate pink; but if anything unexpectedly agitated Sofya Petrovna, she would suddenly turn completely crimson.
Sofya Petrovna Likhutina’s sweet little eyes were not sweet little eyes at all, but eyes: were I not afraid of lapsing into a prosaic tone, I should call Sofya Petrovna’s sweet little eyes not eyes, but great big eyes of a dark, blue – a dark blue colour (let us call them orbs). These orbs now sparkled, now grew dim, now seemed vacant, somehow faded, immersed in sunken, ominously bluish sockets: and squinted. Her bright red lips were lips that were too large, but her little teeth (ah, her little teeth!): her pearly little teeth! And in addition – her childlike laughter … This laughter imparted to her protruding lips a kind of charm; her lissom figure also imparted a kind of charm; and again it was excessively lissom: every movement of this figure and of its somehow nervous back was now impetuous, now languid – almost outrageously clumsy.
Sofya Petrovna often wore a black woollen dress that fastened at the back and invested her luxurious forms; if I say luxurious forms this means that my vocabulary has dried up, that the banal phrase ‘luxurious forms’ signifies, one way or the other, a threat to Sofya Petrovna: a premature plumpness by the age of thirty. But Sofya Petrovna Likhutina was twenty-three.
Ah, Sofya Petrovna!
Sofya Petrovna Likhutina lived in a small flat that looked on to the Moika: there from the walls on all sides fell cascades of the brightest, most restless colours: brilliantly fiery there – and here azure. On the walls there were Japanese fans, lace, small pendants, bows, and on the lamps: satin lampshades fluttered satin and paper wings as though they were butterflies from tropical lands; and it seemed that a swarm of these butterflies, suddenly flying off the walls, would spill with azure wings around Sofya Petrovna Likhutina (the officers she knew called her Angel Peri,5 probably fusing the two concepts ‘Angel’ and ‘Peri’ quite simply into one: Angel Peri).
Sofya Petrovna Likhutina had hung up on her walls Japanese landscapes, every single one of which depicted a view of Mount Fujiyama; in the hung-up little landscapes there was no perspective at all; but neither was there any perspective in the little rooms, which were tightly stuffed with armchairs, sofas, pouffes, fans and live Japanese chrysanthemums: perspective was a satin alcove, from behind which Sofya Petrovna would come fluttering out, or a reed curtain that fell down from the door, whispering something, through which she would again come fluttering, or else Fujiyama – the motley background to her luxuriant hair; it should be said: when Sofya Petrovna Likhutina flew through from behind the door to the alcove in the mornings, she was a real Japanese woman. But perspective there was none.
The rooms were – small rooms; each was occupied by only one enormous object: in the tiny bedroom the bed was the enormous object: in the tiny bathroom it was the bath; in the drawing-room it was the bluish alcove; in the dining-room it was the table-cum-sideboard; in the maid’s room the object was her maid; in her husband’s room the object was, of course, her husband.
Well, so how could there be any perspective?
All six tiny rooms were heated by steam central heating, which meant that in the little flat you were suffocated by a humid, hothouse heat; the panes of the windows sweated; and Sofya Petrovna’s visitor sweated; both maid and husband eternally sweated; Sofya Petrovna Likhutina was herself covered in perspiration, like a Japanese chrysanthemum in warm dew. Well, so how could any perspective be established in such a hothouse?
And there was no perspective.
Sofya Petrovna’s Visitors
The visitor to the hothouse of Sofya Petrovna, Angel Peri (he was obliged, incidentally, to purvey chrysanthemums to the angel), always praised her Japanese landscapes, adding in passing his opinions on painting in general; and knitting her small black eyebrows, Angel Peri would at one point authoritatively blurt out: ‘This landscape belongs to the pen of Hadusai’6 … The angel decidedly confused all proper names and all foreign words. The visitor who was a painter would take exception to this; and after that he would not address Angel Peri with any more lectures on painting in general: even so, with the last of her pocket money this angel went on buying landscapes and would admire them in solitude for hours, days and months.
Sofya Petrovna did not entertain the visitor in any way: if he were a young man of polite society, devoted to amusements, she considered it necessary to laugh loudly at all the joking, not-at-all joking and most serious things he said; she laughed at everything, turning crimson with laughter, and perspiration covered her tiny nose: the young man of polite society would also then turn crimson for some reason; p
erspiration covered his nose, too: the young man of society would admire her young, but far from politely social laughter; admire it so much that he classed Sofya Petrovna Likhutina as belonging to the demi-monde; meanwhile on the table appeared a collection box with the inscription ‘Charitable Collection’ and Sofya Petrovna Likhutina, Angel Peri, laughing loudly, would exclaim: ‘You’ve told me another “fifi” – now you must pay.’ (Sofya Petrovna Likhutina had recently founded a charitable collection for the benefit of the unemployed, into which payments were to be made for each social ‘fifi’: ‘fifis’ were what she for some reason called any intentionally-uttered stupid remark, deriving this word from ‘fie’ …). And Baron Ommau-Ommergau, one of Her Majesty’s Yellow Cuirassiers, and Count Aven, one of her Blue Cuirassiers, and Leib Hussar Shporyshev, and a clerk of special assignments in Ableukhov’s office, Verhefden (all young men of polite society) uttered ‘fifi’ after ‘fifi’, putting twenty-copeck piece after twenty-copeck piece into the tin box.
But why did so many officers visit her? Oh my goodness, she danced at balls; and while she was not a lady of the demi-monde, she was pretty; lastly, she was an officer’s wife.
If, however, Sofya Petrovna’s visitor turned out either himself to be a musician, or was a music critic, or simply a music lover, Sofya Petrovna explained to him that her idols were ‘Duncan’ and ‘Nikisch’;7 in enthusiastic expressions which were less verbal than gesticulatory, she explained that she herself intended to study meloplastics,8 so as to be able to dance ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ neither better nor worse than it was danced in Bayreuth; the musician, music critic or simple music lover, shaken by her incorrect pronunciation of the two names (he himself said Duncan and Nikisch, not Duncan and Nikisch), would conclude that Sofya Petrovna Likhutina was quite simply an ‘empty little female’; and become more playful; meanwhile the very pretty maid would bring a gramophone into the little room: and from its red horn the gramophone’s tin throat would belch forth ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ at the guest. That Sofya Petrovna Likhutina did not miss a single fashionable opera, this circumstance the guest would forget: he became crimson and excessively familiar. Such a guest was always shown the door of Sofya Petrovna Likhutina’s flat; and for this reason musicians who performed for polite society were rare in the little hothouse; while the representatives of polite society, Count Aven, Baron Ommau-Ommergau, Shporyshev and Verhefden, did not permit themselves unseemly escapades in relation to a woman who was, after all, an officer’s wife who bore the name of the old noble family, Likhutin: and so Count Aven, and Baron Ommau-Ommergau, and Shporyshev, and Verhefden, continued to visit. For a time there had also been a student who had quite often moved among their number, Nikolenka Ableukhov. And then suddenly disappeared.
