Petersburg (21 page)

‘About the time that you began, in your own words, to grow intoxicated by the spirit of death, that little wrinkle probably appeared in you.’

‘It did.’

‘And you began to smoke and drink.’

‘Yes, yes, yes: and peculiar lustful feelings appeared, too: you know, I have never been in love with a woman: I’ve been in love – how should I say it: with individual parts of the female body, with items of toilette, with stockings, for example.
But men have fallen in love with me.’

‘Well, and did that
certain person
appear precisely at that time?’

‘How I hate him.
I mean, you know – yes, I’m sure you know not by your will but by the will of the fate that has exalted itself above me – the fate of the Elusive One – my identity, that of Aleksandr Ivanovich, has turned into an appendage of my own shadow.
The shadow of the Elusive One is known; I – Aleksandr Ivanovich Dudkin – am unknown to anyone at all; and no one wants to know me, either.
And after all, the person who starved, froze and in general experienced something was not the Elusive One, but Dudkin.
Aleksandr Ivanovich Dudkin was, for example, distinguished by an extreme sensitivity; while the Elusive One was
both cold and cruel.
Aleksandr Ivanovich Dudkin was from nature distinguished by a vividly expressed sociability and was not averse to enjoying life.
While the Elusive One has to be ascetically silent.
In a word, even today Dudkin’s elusive shadow makes its triumphant procession: in the brains of youth, of course; why, I myself have been under the influence of the
person
– but look, just look at how I’ve ended up!’

‘Yes, you know …’

And both again fell silent.

‘And finally, Nikolai Apollonovich, a strange nervous indisposition also crept up on me: under the influence of that indisposition I came to an unexpected conclusion: I, Nikolai Apollonovich, realized completely that out of the cold of my
outer space
I was aflame with a secret hatred not of the government at all, but of –
a certain person
; after all, that person, who had turned me, Dudkin, into the shadow of Dudkin, had expelled me from the three-dimensional world, having spread me, so to speak, on the wall of my garret (my favourite posture during insomnia, you know, is to stand up against the wall and spread myself, stretch my arms in both directions).
And there in my spread position against the wall (I stand like that for hours, Nikolai Apollonovich) one night I came to my second conclusion; this conclusion was somehow strangely connected with a certain phenomenon that may be understood if one takes into account my developing illness.’

Aleksandr Ivanovich deemed it appropriate to remain silent about the phenomenon.

The phenomenon consisted of a strange hallucination: from time to time on the brownish-yellow wallpaper of his abode a spectral face would appear; at times the features of this face formed into a Semite; more often, however, Mongolian features showed through in this face: while the whole face was swathed in an unpleasant, saffron-yellow sheen.
Now a Semite, now a Mongol fixed upon Aleksandr Ivanovich a gaze full of hatred.
Aleksandr Ivanovich would then light a cigarette; and through the bluish clouds of tobacco smoke the Semite or Mongol would move his yellow lips, and it was as though within Aleksandr Ivanovich the same word kept echoing:

‘Helsingfors, Helsingfors.’

Aleksandr Ivanovich had been in Helsingfors after his escape from places not so very remote: with Helsingfors he had no particular connections: there he had merely met
a certain person
.

So why Helsingfors in particular?

Aleksandr Ivanovich continued to drink cognac.
The alcohol worked with systematic gradualness; after vodka (wine was beyond his means) there followed a uniform effect: an undular line of thoughts became a zigzag one; its zigzags intersected; if he went on drinking, the line of thoughts would disintegrate into a series of fragmentary arabesques, brilliant for those who thought it; but only brilliant for him alone at that moment alone; he had only to sober up a little for the salt of brilliance to vanish off somewhere; and the brilliant thoughts seemed simply a muddle, for at those moments thought indubitably ran ahead of both tongue and brain, beginning to revolve with frantic speed.

Aleksandr Ivanovich’s excitement transmitted itself to Ableukhov: the bluish streams of tobacco smoke and twelve crushed cigarette ends positively irritated him; it was as though some invisible third person suddenly stood before them, raised aloft from the smoke and this little pile of ash here; this third person, having emerged, now exercised dominion over all.

‘Wait: perhaps I shall come out with you; I seem to have a splitting headache: out there, in the fresh air, we can continue our conversation without hindrance.
Wait a moment.
I’ll just change.’

‘That is an excellent idea.’

A sharp knock at the door broke off the conversation; before Nikolai Apollonovich had conceived the design of ascertaining who had knocked there, like one distracted, the half-drunk Aleksandr Ivanovich quickly threw open the door; there, from the door opening was thrust, almost flung, at the stranger a bald cranium with ears of enlarged dimensions; the cranium and Aleksandr Ivanovich’s head very nearly banged together; Aleksandr Ivanovich recoiled in bewilderment and looked at Nikolai Apollonovich, and, having looked at him, saw nothing but a … hairdresser’s dummy: a pale, waxen beau with an unpleasant, timid smile on a mouth that was stretched to the ears.

And again he cast a glance at the door, but in the wide open
doorway stood Apollon Apollonovich with … a most enormous watermelon under his arm …

‘Indeed, sir, indeed, sir …’

‘I think I’m intruding …’

‘You know what, Kolenka, I’ve brought you this little melon – here …’

According to the tradition of the house in this autumn season Apollon Apollonovich, as he returned home, sometimes bought an Astrakhan watermelon, of which both he and Nikolai Apollonovich were fond.

For a moment all three were silent; each of them at that moment experienced a most candid, purely animal fear.

‘This, Papa, is a friend of mine from university … Aleksandr Ivanovich Dudkin …’

‘Indeed, sir … Very pleasant, sir …’

Apollon Apollonovich presented two of his fingers:
those eyes
were not staring dreadfully – was it the same face that had looked at him in the street – Apollon Apollonovich saw before him only a timid man who was obviously dejected by need.

Aleksandr Ivanovich seized the senator’s fingers with ardour; that
other, fateful
thing had flown away somewhere: Aleksandr Ivanovich saw before him only a pathetic old man.

Nikolai Apollonovich looked at them both with that unpleasant smile; but he too calmed down; the timid young man presented his hand to the weary skeleton.

But the hearts of all three were pounding; the eyes of all three avoided one another.
Nikolai Apollonovich ran off to get ready:
she
had wandered under the windows there: that meant she was depressed; but today there awaited her – what awaited her?
…

His thought was interrupted: from the cupboard Nikolai Apollonovich pulled out his
domino
and put it on over his frock coat; he pinned up its red, satin skirts with pins; on top of all the rest he put on his Nikolayevka.

Apollon Apollonovich, meanwhile, entered into conversation with the stranger; the disorder in his son’s room, the cigarettes, the cognac – all this had left in his soul an unpleasant and bitter after-taste; only Aleksandr Ivanovich’s replies brought him any calm: the replies were incoherent.
Aleksandr Ivanovich kept flushing and his
replies were not to the point.
Before him he saw only kindly wrinkles; on those kindly wrinkles eyes looked: the eyes of a hunted man; and the rumbling voice was shouting something with a crack of hysteria; Aleksandr Ivanovich listened only to the last words, and caught at the very most a series of jerky exclamations:

‘You know … even when he was a schoolboy at the gymnasium, Kolenka knew all those birds … He used to read Kaigorodov …
³⁵

‘He had an inquiring mind …

‘But now he’s not the same: he’s given it all up …

‘And he doesn’t go to the university …’

Thus did the old man of sixty-eight jerkily shout at Aleksandr Ivanovich; something that resembled sympathy stirred in the heart of the Elusive One …

Into the room now came Nikolai Apollonovich.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Why, Papa, I’m off on business …’

‘You are … so to speak … With Aleksandr … with Aleksandr …’

‘With Aleksandr Ivanovich …’

‘Indeed, sir … With Aleksandr Ivanovich, then …’

But to himself Apollon Apollonovich thought: ‘What of it, perhaps it’s for the best: and perhaps
the eyes
were only something I dreamed …’ And at the same time Apollon Apollonovich also reflected that poverty was not a sin.
Only why had they had to drink cognac (Apollon Apollonovich entertained a revulsion towards alcohol)?

‘Yes: we’re off on business …’

Apollon Apollonovich began to search for a suitable word:

‘Perhaps … you’d like to dine … And Aleksandr Ivanovich would like to dine with us …

Aleksandr Ivanovich looked at his watch:

‘But in any case … I don’t wish to get in your way …’

‘Goodbye, Papa …’

‘My respects, sir …’

When they opened the door and walked along the booming corridor, little Apollon Apollonovich appeared there, following them – in the semi-twilight of the corridor.

Yes, as they walked along in the semi-twilight of the corridor, Apollon Apollonovich stood there; craning his neck in pursuit of that couple, he was staring with curiosity.

All the same, all the same … Yesterday the eyes had looked:
³⁶
in them there were both hatred and fear; and those eyes had been real: they belonged to
him
, the
raznochinets
.
And the zigzag was – most unpleasant, or had this not happened – never happened?

‘Aleksandr Ivanovich Dudkin … A student at the university.’

Apollon Apollonovich began to stalk off after them.

In the sumptuous vestibule Nikolai Apollonovich stopped before the old lackey, trying to catch one of his own thoughts that had run away.

‘Ye-ee … es …’

‘Very good, sir!’

‘E – er … The mouse!’

Nikolai Apollonovich continued helplessly to rub his forehead, trying to remember what it was he was supposed to express with the aid of the verbal symbol, mouse: this often happened to him, especially after he had been reading very serious treatises that consisted solely of unimaginable words: after he had been reading those treatises every object, even more than that – every name of an object seemed to him inconceivable, and vice versa: everything conceivable proved to be completely insubstantial, without object.
And apropos of this Nikolai Apollonovich pronounced a second time, with an injured look:

‘The mouse …’

‘Precisely so, sir!’

‘Where is it?
Listen, what have you done with the mouse?’

‘With the one that was here earlier?
Let it out on to the embankment …’

‘Really?’

‘For goodness’ sake,
barin
: the way we always do.’

Nikolai Apollonovich was distinguished by an unusual tenderness for these small creatures.

Their minds set at rest on the subject of the mouse’s fate, Nikolai Apollonovich and Aleksandr Ivanovich set off on their way.

As a matter of fact, both set off on their way because both thought someone was looking at them from the balustrade of the staircase both searchingly and sadly.

He Appeared, He Appeared

A certain gloomy building
³⁷
towered up on a certain gloomy street.
It was just getting dark; the street lamps had begun to shine palely, lighting up the entrance porch; the fourth storeys were still crimson with the sunset.

It was to here that from every end of Petersburg individuals made their way; their complement was of a dual nature; their complement was, in the first place, enlisted from the working-class, shaggy-headed individual – in hats that had been brought from the bloodstained fields of Manchuria; in the second place, that complement was enlisted from protesters in general: the protester walked abundantly on long legs; he was pale and fragile; sometimes he fed on
phytin
,
³⁸
sometimes he also fed on cream; today he was walking with a most enormous gnarled stick; if my protester were to be placed in one pan of the scales, and his gnarled stick to be placed in the other, then the said implement would without doubt outweigh the protester; it was not quite clear who was following whom; whether the cudgel was capering in front of the protester, or whether he himself was walking along behind the cudgel; but most probable of all was that the cudgel hopped all on its own from Nevsky, Pushkin, the Vyborg Side, even from Izmailovskaya Rota; the protester was dragged after it; and he was panting, he could barely keep up; and the pert boy who was rushing about at the hour when the evening supplement of the newspaper came out – that pert boy could have toppled the protester, had the protester not been a worker, but only what he was – a protester.

This protester who was what he was had begun, not without purpose, to stroll about of late: around Petersburg, Saratov,
Tsarevokokshaisk, Kineshma; not every day did he stroll thus … What happened was that one went out in the evening for a walk: quiet and harmonious was the sunset; and so harmoniously did a young lady laugh in the street; with the young lady my individual laughed softly and harmoniously – without any cudgel: chaffed, smoked; with a most good-natured air chatted with the yardkeeper, with a most good-natured air chatted with constable Brykachev.

‘Well now, Brykachev, I dare say you’re fed up standing here?’

‘Of course,
barin
: the work isn’t easy.’