Unwitting Street

by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

  That night the first black beam from Nothingness, which had replaced Everything, broke past the winged circles and reached the earth.

  And then strange things began to happen. Brooge’s brief report on Scorpius’s lost star β was kept under wraps. But the facts overturning numbers and formulas were multiplying by the day: again and again stars did not blaze up at the pre-calculated second on the meridional crosshairs. In the constellation Libra an emerald fire abruptly flared, illuminating half the heavens. Stars were burning out and disappearing one after another. Hasty hypotheses were concocted to cover the facts. The ancient word “miracle” began to smolder in crowds. The radio tried to reassure listeners, predicting a quick end to the cataclysm. Electric suns, suspended on wires between skyscrapers, blotted out the blank starless sky with their white-yellow beams. But gradually the orbits of nearby planets too began to run amok. The bulging lenses of telescopes ransacked the black abyss, searching in vain for even one star glint. All around the earth a pitch-black darkness yawned. It could no longer be hidden from the masses: the abyss—tamed with numbers, scored with the lines of orbits—had risen in revolt, scattering stars, expunging orbits, threatening even the earth with death. On the frigid earth now cloaked in perpetual dusk, people hid behind thick walls, under massive ceilings, seeking eyes with eyes, breath with breath; but any two were always joined by an uninvited third: one had only to avert gaze from gaze—and there—hard by one’s pupils—were the blind eye sockets of the third; one had only to tear lips from lips—and there—black on red—was the icy mouth of the third.

  Poetry died first. And then the poet Régnier—having dipped an ordinary steel pen into a small bottle of prussic acid, he punctured his skin with it: that was enough. After him went others. But Professor Graham continued to use his pen for its primary purpose: he wrote a book—The Birth of God. Strangely enough, he was not locked up on Third Testament Island, as he would have been before, and by year’s end his book was in its forty-first edition. Indeed, the small deserted island could not have held all those now swept up in the morbus religiosa epidemic. The island seemed to have expanded its shores to embrace the entire earth, returning it to the kingdom of madness. Frightened by the catastrophes, lost amidst the emptinesses yawning from souls and from space, people huddled like trembling herds around the name of God: “This is punishment for centuries of atheism,” they droned. Prophets, pointing to the world collapsing around the dead God, shouted at intersections: “These are miracles of the Lord!” “Repent!” “Glorify the name of the Creator!” Altars were hastily erected for the “name.”Over the altars arches were built. Churches and temples, one after another, cast gold crosses and silver moons up into the black sky.

  What had to happen was now happening: when there was God—there was no faith; when God died—faith was born. It was born because He died. Nature does not “abhor a vacuum” (the old scholastics were confused), but a vacuum abhors nature: prayers full of the names of gods, if cast into Nothingness, will do far less to disrupt its unreality. So long as a thing exists, its nominative yields to the substantial, its name remains silent; but let a thing cease to be, and instantly there appears, beating down the doors of universal consciousness, its widow—its name: grieving, in crêpe, it asks for help and assistance. There was no God—that is why everyone, sincerely believing and venerating, said: there was.

  They restored the ancient cult, which assumed the old Catholic forms. They elected a pontiff, by name Pius XVII. Several timeworn stones, remnants of the long razed Vatican, were brought back from their museum pedestals to the ashes of Rome: on these, surmounted with marble statues, arose the New Vatican.

  The day came for the consecration of the new citadel of God. If day it was: dusk now never deserted the earth; a black starless sky yawned round the planet, still guided by the sun’s fading and failing rays on its lonely last orbit through the universe. On the hills around the new temple, myriads of eyes had gathered, awaiting the moment when the aged pontiff would make the sign of the cross over the crowds, absolving them unto death.

  Down the marble steps an antique litter swayed; then a quavery “in nomine Deo” swept over the crowds. A trembling hand reached up in blessing to the black heavens. Crosses fluttered on gonfalons. Fine threads of incense streamed up into the heavens: but the heavens were dead. Thousands upon thousands of lips, repeating the “name” thrown out by the pontiff urbi et orbi,3 were calling to God. Thousands upon thousands of eyes, following the pontiff’s three fingers and the censers’ smoke, were searching beyond the dead and black starlessness for God.

  In vain: He was dead.

  1922

  1. Faith stimulator. (Latin)

  2. Like cures like. (Latin)

  3. To the city and the world. (Latin)

  THE SMOKE-COLORED GOBLET

  “PERHAPS you would care to see a collection of old coins? Numismatists have praised it. Or . . .”

  “You wish me to buy from you money that has long since lost its ability to buy? Better . . .”

  “Then have a look at my collection of miniatures. If you will take this magnifying glass . . .”

  “Tell me, what is that goblet over there—to the left, on the shelf?”

  “You’d like to see it? One moment.”

  Pulling the black cap on his bald pate down over his brow, the antique dealer leaned a ladder against the shelf—and the goblet, shimmering smoke-colored glass with a straight round stem, stood on the countertop.

  “Strange: it seems not to be empty. What’s in it?”

  “Wine. As befits a goblet. A thousand-year-old vintage. I recommend it. Let me just remove the dust with this Venetian Murano teaspoon.”

  The caller at the antique shop raised the goblet by its slender stem, holding it between the window and his eye: through the smoke-colored glass there glimmered a dark smoke-colored liquor with a soft ruby sheen.

  The buyer brought the goblet to his lips and sampled a few drops. The wine’s smoke-colored surface remained somnolent and motionless. The tart taste in his mouth was like a shot with a hundred needles.

  “Like a snake bite,” said the buyer, pushing the goblet away. “Incidentally, I was told you have a set of Jain statuettes. I would like . . . But how strange—my sip did not lower the level in that goblet of yours.”

  The dealer’s lips parted guiltily, exposing gold fillings.

  “You see, one does come across—in fairy tales at least—not only inexhaustible purses, but undrainable goblets.”

  “Strange.”

  “Oh, the word ‘strange’ will never want for work in our world.”

  “And is that goblet for sale?”

  “Given the right person: perhaps.”

  “How much do you want for it?”

  The dealer plucked a pencil from behind his ear and wrote on the counter.

  “That is beyond my means.”

  “Very well. I’ll cross out the zero on the right. The main thing is: the right person. Shall I wrap it?”

  “Please.”

  The buyer passed out of the shop. In his right hand he held the goblet wrapped in paper. Past him walked a man whose eyes were glazed with smoke-colored goggles. Someone’s elbow jogged his elbow: on the paper, around the bottom of the goblet, dark red stains appeared. “Spilled it,” thought the man and walked on, hugging the housefronts, shielding his purchase from jolts.

  However, when he got home and unwrapped the crystal, the goblet was full to the brim as before, though sliding down its round stem were spilled drops.

  The man now in possession of the undrainable goblet did not immediately put his purchase to the test. The day slid down its slope. The sun sank into the blaze. Soon the dusky air had turned the color of the slender-stemmed glass. The man took the silent goblet in the fingers of his right hand and brought it to his lips. The tart wine burned his lips. He set the goblet down—and again it was brimful, its ruby liquor lapping the gold rim of the glass.

  At first the one-le
gged guest, having walked on his round glass foot into the life of a lover of rare objects, behaved modestly and almost good-naturedly. Yielding up sips, he covered himself at once with more of the vinous liquor, right up to the gilt rim of his glass. He knew how to make for variety: one sip produced a heady feeling of languor; another pricked one’s tongue with poison pins; a third enmeshed one’s brain in a smoky-crimson web. For the man who had acquired it, the goblet soon became something like a gustatory lamp. By the light of its blood-red drops, the man read and reread his books, or made sketches in his notebooks. Drained almost to the bottom, the goblet instantly filled to its gold rim, again offering itself to the man’s lips. The man took to drink . . . He tossed the goblet back by its limpid foot over and over. Scarlet drops danced in his brain. Thoughts struck upon thoughts, bursting into fiery sprays of sparks. The drained liquor would always rise—like the sun, seemingly killed by the dusk and buried by the night. The man drank by the light of day, by moonlight, and in the moonless dark. The glass clinked against his teeth: “More, more!”

  One night, as he was falling asleep, the man knocked over the goblet. Next morning he awoke to find the whole room awash in a dark red liquid. The liquid, exuding tart vinous fumes, was creeping up to a dangling corner of the bed-covers. In the middle of the room, bumping against a table leg, a lone slipper floated. The downstairs neighbors came up to find out what was going on: their ceiling had broken out in mysterious red blotches. The man plunged his arm into the drink up to his elbow and finally fished out the wine-secreting goblet. He stood the goblet, sticky with vinous ichor, on the table, and up it sprang, the dark red liquor, up to the golden rim. The man gulped it down and began to put his room in order.

  Sometimes the goblet’s smoke-colored facets—especially after ten or twenty sips—looked to the man like a glassy puff of smoke rising from a bonfire. Other times, in the gold rim that ran round its crystal curve, he seemed to see a villainous smile, all mockery and gold fillings.

  Then one day—a bright sunny day when scarlet sparks were skipping about inside the red drops—the man happened to notice, as he tossed back the goblet, a zigzag at the bottom, a combination of symbols, or rather letters. But those symbols were at once covered by a fresh wash of wine, right up to the top of the goblet. The man again drained the goblet, trying to catch sight of the vanishing letters. But the dark red liquid covered them again before he could grasp the inscription’s meaning. He recalled only the first alpha-like letter—and a vague sense of the ten or eleven symbols that came after.

  “Try again,” thought the man and again quickly drained the goblet. From somewhere in the middle—like a slender mast with yard athwart—the word flew up, only to founder a moment later in the wine, like a ship that has sprung a leak. The man raised the goblet yet again to his lips. He drank slowly, with effort. The word, eleven letters wavering, floated into his eyes, but was covered with lees, and the man could not understand what he saw.

  From that day began the game of eye against goblet. The odds were clearly unequal. After two or three jolts of alcohol, his brain was blanketed with a smoke-colored fog. The man who had come into possession of the unread inscription now rarely set foot outside his door. His windowsills were finger-deep in dust. The curtains never opened their yellow eyelids. The owner of the smoke-colored goblet rarely left his glass guest. Only once or twice was he seen walking along the embankment; the buttons on his coat were crooked, in the wrong buttonholes; he walked on without returning bows, without hearing greetings.

  •

  Into the antique shop shuffled a stooped man with gray bristles on his cheeks. He was kindly offered a chair, but continued to stand.

  “How may I help you?”

  “Do you have a duplicate of that smoke-colored thing?”

  “Come again?”

  “That smoke-colored goblet. I’m nearer penury than poverty. But then you crossed out the zero. Remember? And if . . .”

  “I’m sorry, I’ve never seen you before. There’s another antique shop across the way. You must have . . .”

  “No. I know that black cap and . . . Smile!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, ‘Smile!’ That’s right: same gold fillings, same sly grin. No mistake. Besides, when I threw that thing, that undrainable goblet, into the river, from St. Stephen’s Bridge, the river itself . . . But this is between our four ears, otherwise . . . Now.”

  The caller reached into his coat and pulled out a small bottle. He turned the ground-glass stopper:

  “Now, the next day I went down to the river and took a sample. This here. Turns out that smoke-colored thing had the power to stain the waters of the Danube, the entire Danube—how ’bout that?—a bloody-reddish color. Incidentally, the river now has a slightly tart taste. Don’t believe me? Take a sip. Don’t want to? Then I’ll make you . . .”

  Only the counter separated the two men. But now the little bell over the door jangled and into the shop walked a third. He wore a neatly fitting policeman’s uniform.

  “A-a-ah!” rejoiced the dealer, opening wide his generous gold mouth. “You’ve come about the taxes? Gladly, gladly . . . As for you,” he turned to the caller, who still held the stopper in his hand, “you want the shop across the way! Antiquité—black and yellow sign. You mistook the door.”

  The caller, frowning, put away the bottle, having first carefully reinserted the stopper. Then he asked:

  “And are there many of them, those . . . doors?”

  The dealer shrugged his shoulders. The policeman merely raised an eyebrow.

  The caller walked out.

  •

  A day or two later, the proprietor of that same antique shop was glancing through the newspaper when he came across this item: “Yesterday, from St. Stephen’s Bridge, a man threw himself into . . .”

  The little bell over the door cut short his reading.

  1939

  THE GRAY FEDORA

  1

  RANGED on compartmentalized shelves—like urns in a columbarium—were round white cylinders. The shop assistant produced a stepladder, scampered up—and one of the urns dropped down with a cardboard thump onto the counter. The shop assistant blew the dust off the lid and tossed it aside.

  “There!”

  Flipping around in his fingers, preening, was a gray fedora the color of dusk; round the crown ran a dark ribbon; from under the brim a tag showed white. Catching with his pupils the lady’s approving nod, the shop assistant pulled a receipt pad out of his pocket and flicked back the leaves.

  2

  You could not call it a thought. It resembled a thought no more than dusk does night. But whenever this gray, still formless blot appeared on the folds of his brain, all his thoughts bristled with suspicion, like dogs that have smelled a jackal. Therefore the gray creeper always chose the time when the lights of consciousness were out in his neurons and the branching dendrites shaded by dreams. This pre-thought would prowl around the outermost convolutions of his brain, without ever finding a haven.

  The same thing happened that night. The gray creeper, now that the brain-owner’s eyelids were tight shut, stole into his brain and fell in with a crowd of migrants come from far, far away—of dreams. Then suddenly a voice jogged the man’s brain, the dreams scattered and his eyelids opened. Raising himself up on one elbow, the man saw: his wife’s face—on her face a broad smile—and below the smile, on bended palms, a gray fedora.

  “You don’t want to sleep through your name day!”

  The husband ran his hand round the hat’s brim.

  “How many times have I told you! For people who have made their name, all days are name days. Whereas for the nameless, name days are like gloves for the handless. You mustn’t . . .”

  “But still, try it on.”

  “It’s probably too small. There: you see? I have a head, not a hat-tree for stretching hats. Take it back!”

  That morning, his teaspoon clinked more loudly than usual against his gl
ass. His folded newspaper remained folded. Under his eyes, bent over the yellow tea, angry pouches showed yellow—as if his eyes had tucked in them the sun’s surplus, images not fully seen, the way a monkey tucks unchewed food in its cheek. He pushed his tea glass away and walked quickly out into the hall. His fingers glided over the coat-rack hooks without finding what they wanted.

  “What the hell! Where’s my old hat? Glasha!”

  From another room came first the patter of feet, then a voice:

  “I was told to throw it out.”

  Frowning in irritation, the man reached up to the shelf and took down the new hat. He even strode back into the room, the better to inspect his present: the soft gray brim, the neatly creased felt crown and even a silk cord wound twice around it. Yet there was something in the very feel of the fedora, in its color and shape, that made the pouches under his eyes quiver and bulge, as if into them there had slipped a new image—intercepted between eye and brain.

  Hat in hand, the man opened the front door, and stairs whirled his footsteps down the flights.