Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  The staircase swirled upwards, and his rapid dreams swirled with it. “Go carefully!” a voice resounded like a harp, infusing his veins with renewed trembling. At the dark top of the third floor the unknown girl knocked at a door—it opened and they walked in together. A rather pleasant-looking woman met them with a candle in her hand, but she looked at Piskarev in such a strange, insolent manner that he involuntarily lowered his eyes. They entered the room. There, feminine shapes in different corners met his eyes. One of the women was laying out cards, another was sitting at the piano, making a pitiful, two-fingered attempt at an old Polonaise; the third was sitting in front of a mirror combing her long hair, with no intention whatever of interrupting her toilette for a stranger’s entry. A certain unpleasant disorder, such as one only sees in the room of a carefree bachelor, reigned supreme. The furnishings, of fairly high quality, were covered in dust; a spider had veiled the molded cornice with its web; through the partly open door into the other room the spurs of a pair of boots and the red braid of a uniform could be seen; a loud male’s voice and a woman’s laughter resounded unrestrainedly.

  Lord! Where had he come to! At first he didn’t want to believe it and began to stare harder at the objects filling the room; but the bare walls and undraped windows didn’t bespeak the presence of a conscientious landlady; the haggard faces of these pitiful creatures, one of whom was sitting right under his nose, surveying him as calmly as she would a stain on someone else’s gown—all this convinced him he had come upon one of those dens of iniquity in which pitiful vice, born of tawdry education and the fearful overcrowding of the capital, had made its abode. It was one of those dens where men sacrilegiously trample on and mock all that is pure and holy and makes life beautiful, where Woman, the jewel of the world, the crown of creation, is transformed into some strange, ambiguous being, where she and the purity of her soul are stripped of everything feminine and repulsively acquires the tricks and shamelessness of men, and ceases to be that weak, beautiful creature so different from us. Piskarev scanned her from head to foot with astonished eyes, as if still trying to assure himself this was the same girl who had charmed and captivated him on Nevsky Prospect. But she stood before him, looking just as beautiful as before, her hair was just as beautiful, and her eyes seemed every bit as heavenly. She was fresh-complected, not a day more than seventeen years old, and it was obvious that she had only recently been caught up in horrifying depravity; it still had not dared to touch her cheeks, they were so fresh and slightly tinged with alight blush—she was beautiful.

  He stood motionless before her, ready to be swept off his feet by her again, as he had been earlier. But the beautiful girl grew impatient with such a long silence and smiled insinuatingly, looking him straight in the eye. But that smile was full of a somehow pitiful insolence; it looked so strange and unsuited to her face, as a pious expression is to a bribe-taker’s mug, or an accountant’s ledger to a poet. He shuddered. She opened her pretty little mouth and began to say something, but it was all so stupid, so banal … as if intelligence had disappeared with chastity! He didn’t want to hear anything else. He was extraordinarily abashed and as artless as a child. Instead of using such favor, instead of rejoicing at such an opportunity, which without doubt would have rejoiced any other man in his position, he took to his heels like a wild goat and ran out into the street.

  Head hung low and limbs drooping, he sat in his room like a poor man who has found a priceless pearl and then immediately dropped it into the sea. “Such a beauty; such a divine creature—what’s she doing in a place like that?” They were the only words he could utter.

  Indeed, remorse never overcomes us so powerfully as when we see beauty touched by the rotten breath of debauchery. We can accept ugliness as vice’s companion, but beauty, such tender beauty … in our minds it can only be associated with chastity and purity. The beautiful girl who had so charmed poor Piskarev was a truly wonderful, unusual creature, and her living in the despicable milieu seemed more and more unbelievable. Her features were all so finely traced and the expression on her beautiful face bore the stamp of such nobility it was impossible to think that debauchery had clasped her in its terrible claws. She could have been the priceless pearl, the whole world, the whole of paradise, or all the wealth of a passionate husband, she could have been the beautiful, gentle star of an ordinary family circle and with just a movement of her beautiful mouth she could have uttered her sweet instructions. She could have been a goddess in a crowded room, on the bright parquet floor in the gleam of the candles, surrounded by the silent reverence of a multitude of faithful admirers at her feet. But alas! By the horrid will of the denizen of Hell, athirst to destroy the harmony of life, she had been cast, sped on by laughter, into his abyss.

  Overcome with heartrending pity, Piskarev sat before a guttering candle. It was already long past midnight, the bell in the tower struck half-past while he sat motionless, not yet asleep yet at the same time not fully awake. Drowsiness, taking advantage of his inertia, was about to steal up on him; already the room was beginning to disappear, only the glow of the single candle was shining through the dreams overpowering him, when suddenly a knock at the door made him start and brought him around. The door opened, and in came a servant in a fine livery. No fine livery had ever entered into his isolated room, especially at such a late hour He was amazed, and with impatient curiosity he stared at the servant who had just arrived.

  “The lady,” the servant said with a polite bow, “at whose house you deigned to spend some time, has ordered me to invite you to call on her and has sent a carriage for you.”

  Piskarev stood in silent amazement: A carriage, a servant in livery! No, surely there must be some mistake….

  “Listen, my good man,” he said timidly, “perhaps you’ve called at the wrong house. The lady must have sent you to fetch someone else, not me.”

  “No sir, I’m not mistaken. Was it not you who were so good as to walk the lady home to her room on the third floor, on Liteinaia Street?”

  “It was.”

  “Well, then, please hurry. The lady wishes to see you without fail and asks you to come straight to her house.”

  Piskarev ran downstairs. Outside there really was a carriage. He got into it, the doors slammed shut, the cobblestones of the road-way clattered under the wheels and hooves—and the illuminated perspective of the houses with bright signboards flashed past the carriage windows. Piskarev pondered for the entire journey and didn’t know what to conclude about this adventure. Her own house, a carriage, a servant in fine livery—he couldn’t reconcile all this with the room on the third floor, the dusty windows and the out-of-tune piano. The carriage drew up outside a brightly-lit entrance gate and Piskarev was immediately stunned: a line of carriages, the chatter of coachmen, brightly-lit windows and the sound of music. The servant in the fine livery helped him down from the carriage and respectfully led him into a hall with marble columns, a doorman bedecked in gold, scattered capes and furs and a bright lamp. An airy staircase suffused with perfumes and with a gleaming balustrade led upwards. He was already on it and had already gone up to the first room, stunned and frightened into taking a step backwards from the terrifying crowd of people. The extraordinarily variegated mass of people confused him utterly; it seemed to him that some devil had crumbled up the world into thousands of different pieces and was now, with no significance or meaning, mixing them together. The gleaming shoulders of the ladies and the black tail-coats, the chandeliers, the sconces, the incorporeal, flickering gas lamps, the ethereal ribbons and the fat bassoon, staring out from behind the railings of the great choirs—all this was dazzling to him. He saw at a glance so many dignified old and middle-aged men with stars on their frock coats, ladies, so lightly, proudly and graciously stepping out onto the parquet floor or sitting in rows, he heard so many French and English words, and, moreover, the young men in black frock coats were infused with such an air of nobility, they spoke and kept silent with such propriety, as they had le
arned not to say anything superfluous, and they joked so magnificently and smiled so respectfully, wore such wonderful whiskers, had such a talent for displaying their wonderful hands while arranging their neckties, and the ladies were so incorporeal and so steeped in complete self-conceit and ecstasy, they lowered their eyes so enchantingly that … but the mere sight of Piskarev’s benumbed expression, pressed timidly as he was against a column, illustrated how completely his nerves had been shattered. At that moment the crowd clustered around a group of dancers. They surged on, draped in their transparent Parisian creations, in their dresses woven out of the air itself; they stepped carelessly over the parquet with their dainty gleaming feet and they could not have appeared more ethereal if they had been walking on air. But one was more lovely and dressed so much more sumptuously and strikingly than all the rest. An inexplicable, subtle combination of taste was evident in her garb and for all that it seemed that she had not troubled herself about it; it just happened by itself, spontaneously. She was both looking and not looking at the surrounding crowd, she lowered her beautiful long eyelashes indifferently, and the gleaming whiteness of her face dazzled the eye most blindingly when her enchanting brow lightly shaded it as she inclined her head.

  Piskarev used all his strength to force away through the crowd to have a look at her; but, to his great annoyance, some huge head with dark curly hair kept getting in the way; moreover, the crowd hemmed him in to such an extent that he did not dare edge forward, nor move backwards, so afraid was he of unintentionally nudging into some privy councilor. But then he managed to edge forward and glance down at his coat, thinking to adjust it. God in Heaven, what was this! He was wearing a frock coat stained all over with paint; hurrying off, he had forgotten all about changing into a decent coat. He blushed to the ears and, head down, wanted to sink through the floor but there was no room to sink: the gentlemen-of-the-bedchamber in their gleaming suits moved into position behind him like a veritable wall. He wanted to get as far away as possible from the beautiful girl with the beautiful forehead and eyelashes. In terror he raised his eyes to see if she was looking at him—Lord! She was standing right in front of him But what’s this? What’s this? “It’s she”—he shouted almost at the top of his voice. Indeed, it was she, that very same girl whom he had met on Nevsky Prospect and whom he had taken home.

  Meanwhile, she raised her eyelashes and was looking at everyone with her clear eyes. “Oh, oh, oh how beautiful she is! …” was all he could say, with halting breath. She cast her eyes over the circle of people vying with each other to attract her attention, but with a certain aloofness and inattention she quickly put them off, and then her eyes met Piskarev’s. Oh! What Heaven! What Paradise! God give me strength to bear all this! It’s more than life can stand, it will destroy and carry off my soul! She signaled to him, not with her hand but with a nod of her head—no, in her ravishing eyes this sign was expressed in such a slight, unnoticeable expression, that nobody could have seen it, but he did see, did understand her. The dance went on a long time; the weary music seemed to die down and fade away completely, then again swell up, shriek and thunder: at last—it was over! She sat down, her breast was heaving in the faint smoke from the gaslight, her hand (Lord, what a wonderful hand!) fell onto her lap, pressed her incorporeal dress down and beneath it the dress seemed to breathe the music, and its faint lilac color outlined more vividly the whiteness of this beautiful hand. If only he could touch it—nothing more! No other desires—they would only be an impertinence. He was standing behind her chair, not daring to speak, not daring to breathe.

  “You were bored,” she said. “So was I. I see you despise me …” she added, lowering her long eyelashes.

  “Despise you? Me? … I” The completely nonplussed Piskarev was about to speak, and he would have surely uttered a mass of incoherent words but at this moment a gentleman-in-waiting with a beautiful tuft of hair gathered up on top of his head approached them, making witty and pleasant remarks. He rather good naturedly displayed a row of reasonably good teeth and with each of his witticisms banged a sharp nail through Piskarev’s heart. At last somebody standing to the side, fortunately, turned to the gentleman-in-waiting with a question.

  “I can’t stand any more!” she said, raising her heavenly eyes toward him. “I’m going to sit down at the other end of the hall: you must come there!”

  She slipped through the crowd and disappeared. He shot through the crowd as one demented and got there before her.

  Yes, this was she! She was sitting, like a tsaritsa, more lovely and more beautiful than the rest, searching for him with her eyes.

  “You’ve come,” she said quietly. “I’ll be frank with you: I’m sure the circumstances of our meeting seem strange to you. But surely you can’t believe that I belong to that despicable class of creatures among whom you found me. My behavior must seem strange to you, but I’m going to reveal my secret to you. Will you be able,” she said, riveting her eyes on him, not to betray it?”

  “Oh, I will! I will! I will!”

  But at that moment a rather elderly man approached and began talking to her in a language which Piskarev could not understand, and offered her his arm. She looked at Piskarev imploringly and signaled to him to stay where he was and wait till she returned, but a fit of impatience made him unable to hear a single command even from her lips. He set off after her, but the crowd separated them. He could no longer see her lilac dress; he walked from room to room in a state of agitation and mercilessly jolted people who got in his way, but in all the rooms there were only aces seated at their whist, steeped in deathly silence. In one corner of the room some elderly people were arguing about the advantages of military service over civilian; in another, people dressed in magnificent frock coats were making flippant remarks about the voluminous works of a poet-worker. Piskarev became aware of an elderly gentleman, of respectable appearance, who seized hold of his coat button and asked his opinion on a very justifiable remark, but he rudely pushed him away, without even noticing that the man was wearing a rather prestigious order around his neck. He ran through to another room—she was not there either. Nor was she in the third room. “Where is she? Give her to me! Oh, I cannot live without seeing her! I want to hear what she was going to tell me!” But all his searchings were in vain. Agitated, exhausted, he huddled in a corner and simply gazed at the crowd; but his strained eyes began to make him see things unclearly. Finally, the walls of his room became plainly visible to him. He raised his eyes; in front of him stood a candlestick with the flame burned almost right down into the socket; the candle had all melted away; the wax had spilled onto his table.

  He had been asleep! Lord, what a beautiful dream! And why did he wake up? Why could it not have gone on for just a moment longer? She surely would have appeared again! The irritating daylight looked in through the window with its unpleasant, dingy brilliance. The room was in such gray, murky disorder … Oh, how loathsome reality is! How can it compare with a dream? He quickly undressed and lay down on his bed, wrapped in a blanket, wishing to recapture the retreating dream if only for a moment. Sleep, in fact, was not long returning, but it presented him with a dream that was not at all what he desired: now Lieutant Pirogov appeared smoking a pipe, now an Academy guard, now a real state councilor, now the head of the Finnish woman whose portrait he had once drawn, and other such nonsense.

  He lay in bed as late as midday, trying to get to sleep; but she never returned. If only for a fleeting moment she would show her beautiful features, if only for a fleeting moment he could hear her gentle footsteps, if only her bare arm, as white as heavenly snow, would flash before his eyes!

  Oblivious of everything, abandoning everything, he sat with a distraught, hopeless look on his face, completely engrossed in the dream. He didn’t think of taking up anything; his eyes stared lifelessly and distractedly through the window overlooking the yard where a filthy water-carrier was pouring out water which froze in mid-air and the goatish voice of some peddler rattled “Old c
lothes for sale.” Anything connected with daily life or reality had a strangely grating effect on his ears. So he sat till evening and then threw himself eagerly onto his bed. He wrestled for a long time with insomnia and finally conquered it. Again a dream, a common, vulgar dream. “God have mercy on me; show her to me, just for a minute, just for a single minute!” He again waited for evening again fell asleep, again dreamed of some official who was both an official and a bassoon at the same time. Oh! It was unbearable! Finally she appeared! Her head and ringlets … She looked at him … but how briefly! Then again a mist, again some stupid dream.

  Eventually dreaming became his life, and from then on his entire life took a strange turn: he, one might say, slept while awake and was only awake in his sleep. If someone were to see him sitting quietly at a bare table or walking along a street, they doubtless would take him for a sleepwalker or for someone the worse for drink; the look in his eyes was totally absent of any meaning, and his natural absentmindedness eventually increased and peremptorily banished all sensations and movement from his face. He revived only with the onset of night.

  This situation sapped his strength, but the most awful torture for him was that finally the dream began to leave him completely. Wishing to save this, his only remaining treasure, he used all his efforts to bring it back. It came to his ears that there was a means of recalling his dream—all one needed to do was take opium. But where was he to get opium? He remembered about a certain Persian who kept a gown shop and who, when they met, nearly always asked Piskarev to draw him a portrait of a beautiful woman. He decided to approach him, supposing that he would be bound to have this opium. The Persian received him seated on a couch with his feet folded under him.

  “What do you want opium for?” he asked him.