Petersburg (15 page)

There was yet another visitor: the crafty
khokhol
-Little Russian,
¹¹
Lippanchenko;
¹²
this was an individual of thoroughly voluptuary temperament who called Sofya Petrovna not an angel but …
dushkan
;
¹³
to himself, however, the crafty
khokhol
-Little Russian Lippanchenko called her quite plainly and simply:
brankukan, brankukashka
or
brankukanchik
¹⁴
(there are some words, for you, then!) But Lippanchenko kept within the bounds of propriety: and so he was received in that house.

Sofya Petrovna’s most good-natured husband, Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin, a second lieutenant in the Gregorian Regiment of His Majesty the King of Siam, took a meek attitude towards the revolutionary circle of his better half’s acquaintances; the representatives of the polite society circle he regarded merely with emphasized good humour; while the
khokhol
-Little Russian he only barely tolerated: this crafty
khokhol
did not at all, incidentally, resemble a
khokhol
: he sooner resembled a cross between a Semite and a Mongol; he was both tall and fat; this gentleman’s yellowish face
floated unpleasantly in its own chin, which was pushed out by a starched collar; and Lippanchenko wore a yellow and red satin tie, fastened with a paste jewel, sporting a striped dark yellow suit and a pair of shoes the same colour; but on top of this, Lippanchenko shamelessly dyed his hair brown.
Of himself Lippanchenko said that he exported Russian pigs and was preparing to get rich once and for all on this swinishness.

Be that as it may, it was Lippanchenko, he alone, for whom second lieutenant Likhutin had no especial liking.
But why ask whom second lieutenant Likhutin did not like: second lieutenant Likhutin liked everyone, of course: but if there was one person he had liked especially at one time, that person was Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov: after all, they had known each other since the earliest years of their adolescence.
In the first place, Nikolai Apollonovich had been best man at Likhutin’s wedding, in the second, a daily visitor to the flat on the Moika for a period of almost one and a half years.
But then he had disappeared without trace.

It was not Sergei Sergeyevich, of course, who was to blame for the disappearance of the senator’s son, but the senator’s son, or even Angel Peri herself.

Ah, Sofya Petrovna, Sofya Petrovna!
In one word: a lady … And from a lady what may one ask?

The Slim and Handsome Best Man

Even on the first day of her, so to speak, ‘ladyhood’ during the accomplishment of the ritual of marriage, when Nikolai Apollonovich held above her husband, Sergei Sergeyevich, the most solemn crown, Sofya Petrovna Likhutina had been tormentingly struck by the slim and handsome best man, by the colour of his unearthly, dark blue, enormous eyes, the whiteness of his marble face and the godlike quality of his blond flaxen hair: for those eyes did not look, as they often did later, from behind the dim lenses of a pince-nez, and his face was supported by the gold collar of a brand new uniform jacket (not every student has such a collar).
Well, and … Nikolai Apollonovich started visiting the Likhutins at first once every two weeks; later it became once a week; two, three, four
times a week; in the end he came daily.
Soon Sofya Petrovna noticed under the mask of these daily visits that Nikolai Apollonovich’s face, godlike, stern, had turned into a mask: the little grimaces, the aimless rubbing of his sometimes sweaty hands, and ultimately the unpleasant froglike expression of his smile, which proceeded from the play of every conceivable type that never left his face, obscured that face from her for ever.
And as soon as Sofya Petrovna noticed this, to her horror she realized that she was in love with
that
face,
that
one, and not this.
Angel Peri wanted to be a model wife: and the dreadful thought that, while yet faithful, she had already fallen for someone who was not her husband – this thought completely shattered her.
But more, more: from behind the mask, the grimaces, the froglike lips, she unconsciously tried to call forth her irrevocably lost being-in-love: she tormented Ableukhov, showered him with insults; but, concealing it from herself, dogged his footsteps, tried to find out what were his aspirations and tastes, unconsciously followed them in the constant hope of finding in them the authentic, godlike countenance; so she started to put on airs: first meloplastics appeared on the scene, then the cuirassier, Baron Ommau-Ommergau, and finally Varvara Yevgrafovna with the tin box for the collection of ‘fifis’.

In a word, Sofya Petrovna began to grow confused: hating, she loved; loving, she hated.

Ever since then, her real husband had become no more than a visitor to the little flat on the Moika: began to take charge of provisions somewhere out there; left the house early in the morning; reappeared at around midnight: said a ‘fifi’ for the sake of propriety, dropping a twenty-copeck piece into the collection box, or modestly nodding his head at the words ‘revolution-evolution’, drinking a cup of tea and going off to his room to sleep: for he had to get up as early as possible in the morning and walk to somewhere out there in order to take charge of provisions.
Sergei Sergeich had only begun, somewhere out there, to take charge of provisions because he did not want to hamper his wife’s freedom.

But Sofya Petrovna could not endure freedom: after all, she had such a tiny, tiny little forehead; together with the tiny forehead there lay concealed within her volcanoes of the most profound emotions: because she was a lady; and in ladies one must not stir up
chaos: in this chaos ladies keep concealed all manner of cruelties, crimes, degradations, all manner of violent furies, as well as all manner of heroic actions such as have not been seen on the earth before; in every lady a criminal is concealed: but let a crime be committed, and nothing but holiness will remain in the truly ladylike soul.

Soon we shall without doubt demonstrate to the reader the division that also existed in Nikolai Apollonovich’s soul into two independent values: a godlike ice – and a simply froglike slush; this duality is a typical characteristic of all ladies: duality is in essence not a masculine, but a ladylike property; the number two is the symbol of the lady; the symbol of the man is unity.
Only thus is the triality obtained without which it is questionable whether the domestic hearth would be possible.

We have noted Sofya Petrovna’s duality above: a nervousness in her movements – and an awkward languor; an insufficiency of forehead and an excessive profusion of hair; Fujiyama, Wagner, the faithfulness of the female heart – and ‘Henri Besançon’, the gramophone, Baron Ommergau and even Lippanchenko.
Were Sergei Sergeich Likhutin or Nikolai Apollonovich real unities, and not dualities, there would have been a triality; and Sofya Petrovna would have found life’s harmony in a union with a man; the gramophone, meloplastics, Henri Besançon, Lippanchenko, even Ommau-Ommergau would have flown to the devil.

But there was not just one Ableukhov: there was Ableukhov number one, the godlike one, and Ableukhov number two, the little frog.
It all happened because of that.

But what happened?

In Sofya Petrovna, Nikolai Apollonovich-the-little-frog fell for her deep little heart that was raised above all the fuss and bustle; not her tiny little forehead or her hair; while Nikolai Apollonovich’s godlike nature, despising love, was cynically intoxicated by meloplastics;
both
argued within him about whom they should love: the little female or the angel?
The angel, Sofya Petrovna, as naturally befitted an angel, loved only the
god
: while the little female got confused: at first she was indignant at the unpleasant smile, but subsequently she came to love precisely her own indignation; then, having come to love hatred, she came to love the nasty smile, but with a strange
(everyone would say, depraved) love: there was in all this something unnaturally burning, unfathomably sweet and fateful.

Had the criminal awoken within Sofya Petrovna Likhutina then?
Ah, Sofya Petrovna, Sofya Petrovna!
In a word: a lady and a lady …

And from a lady what may one ask?

The Red Buffoon
¹⁵

As a matter of fact, in recent months Sofya Petrovna Likhutina had been behaving extremely provocatively with the object of her affections: in front of the gramophone horn that belched forth ‘The Death of Siegfried’, she had studied body movement (and how!), raising almost to her knees her rustling silk skirt; moreover: from beneath the table her foot had, more than once or twice, touched Ableukhov.
It was not surprising that the latter had more than once endeavoured to embrace the Angel; but then the Angel had slipped away, first showering her admirer with cold; and then again resumed her old ways.
But when one day, defending Greek art, she proposed to form a nudist circle, Nikolai Apollonovich could hold out no longer: all his hopeless passion of many days rushed to his head (Nikolai Apollonovich dropped her on the sofa in the struggle) … But Sofya Petrovna agonizingly bit to blood the lips that sought her lips, and as Nikolai Apollonovich went out of his mind with pain, a slap to his face resounded in the Japanese room.

‘Ooo … Freak, frog
¹⁶
… Ooo – red buffoon.’

Nikolai Apollonovich replied calmly and coldly:

‘If I am a red buffoon, then you are a Japanese doll …’

With exceeding dignity did he draw himself erect by the door; at that moment his face took on precisely that remote expression that had once captivated her, and remembering it, she imperceptibly fell in love with him; and when Nikolai Apollonovich left, she crashed to the floor, both scratching, and biting the carpet as she wept; suddenly she leapt to her feet and extended her arms through the doorway:

‘Come to me, come back – god!’

But in reply to her the exit door banged: Nikolai Apollonovich
fled to the large St Petersburg Bridge.
Later on we shall see him take by the Bridge a certain fateful decision (upon the completion of a certain act, to destroy his own life).
The expression ‘Red Buffoon’ had wounded him in the extreme.

Sofya Petrovna Likhutina did not see him any more: in a kind of wild protest against Ableukhov’s passion for ‘revolution-evolution’ Angel Peri involuntarily flew away from the studying youth, flying instead to Baroness R.R.
for a spiritualist seance.
And Varvara Yevgrafovna began to call more rarely.
On the other hand, frequent visits were once again made by: Count Aven, Baron Ommau-Ommergau, Shporyshev, Verhefden, and even … Lippanchenko: and Lippanchenko’s visits were more frequent than those of the others.
With Count Aven, Baron Ommau-Ommergau, Shporyshev, Verhefden, and even … Lippanchenko she laughed without growing tired of it; suddenly, breaking off her laughter, she would ask perkily:

‘After all, I’m a doll – am I not?’

And they replied to her with ‘fifis’, poured silver into the little tin box with the inscription ‘Charitable Collection’.
And Lippanchenko replied to her: ‘You are a
dushkan
, a
brankukan
, a
bran-kukashka
.’ And brought her a small yellow-faced doll as a present.

But when she said this same thing to her husband, her husband made her no reply.
Sergei Sergeich Likhutin, second lieutenant in the Gregorian Regiment of His Majesty the King of Siam, went off as though he were going to bed: he was in charge, somewhere out there, of provisions; but going into his room, he sat down to write Nikolai Apollonovich a meek little letter: in the letter he made so bold as to inform Ableukhov that he, Sergei Sergeyevich, second lieutenant in the Gregorian Regiment, most humbly requested the following: while not wishing to meddle for reasons of principle in Nikolai Apollonovich’s relations with his preciously beloved spouse, he none the less urgently requested (the word urgently was thrice underlined) to cease visiting their home for ever, as the nerves of his preciously beloved spouse were upset.
As far as his behaviour was concerned, Sergei Sergeyevich resorted to concealment; his behaviour did not change one iota; as before, he left very early in the morning; returned towards midnight; said a ‘fifi’ for propriety’s sake
if he saw Baron Ommau-Ommergau, frowned ever so slightly if he saw Lippanchenko, nodded his head in most good-humoured fashion at the words ‘evolution-revolution’, drank a cup of tea and quietly disappeared: he was in charge – somewhere out there – of provisions.

Sergei Sergeich was tall of stature, had a blond beard, possessed a nose, a mouth, hair, ears and wonderfully shining eyes: but unfortunately he wore dark blue spectacles, and no one knew either the colour of his eyes or the wonderful expression of those eyes.

A Vileness, a Vileness and a Vileness

In those frozen days of early October Sofya Petrovna was in an extraordinary state of agitation; upon being left alone in the little hothouse she would suddenly begin to wrinkle her little forehead, and grow flushed: turn crimson; go over to the window in order to wipe the sweating panes with a small handkerchief of delicate transparent batiste; the pane would begin to squeak, revealing a view of the canal with a gentleman in a top hat walking by – no more; as though she were disappointed in her presentiment, Angel Peri would begin to pick and shred the dampened handkerchief with her little teeth, and then run to put on her black plush coat and matching hat (Sofya Petrovna dressed most modestly), in order, pressing her fur muff to her little nose, aimlessly to wander from the Moika to the embankment; she even once looked in at the Ciniselli Circus
¹⁷
and saw there a wonder of nature: a bearded lady; but most often she called by at the kitchen and talked in whispers with the young chambermaid, Mavrushka, a very pretty young girl in an apron and a butterfly cap.
And her eyes crossed: thus always did her eyes cross at moments of agitation.