Petersburg (34 page)

And then, to greet the ballroom pianist’s gesture, Nikolai Petrovich Tsukatov suddenly thrust his smoothly shaven chin out of his raging side-whiskers, making to the ballroom pianist a sign of encouragement and approval; and then with head inclined, as if he were butting space, he somehow hurriedly threw himself in front of the couples at the highlights on the parquetry, twisting the end of one greying side-whisker in two fingers.
And after him an angel-like creature flew helplessly, stretching her heliotrope scarf in space.
Nikolai Petrovich Tsukatov, having derived inspiration from his
dancing flight of fantasy, flew like lightning to the ballroom pianist and roared, like a lion, to the whole ballroom:

‘Pas-de-quatre, s’il vous plait!’

And after him the angel-like creature helplessly flew.

Meanwhile servants appeared, running promptly into the corridor.
For some reason tables, stools and chairs were carried out from somewhere and then carried in again; a pile of fresh sandwiches was brought in on a porcelain dish.
There was also a chiming of forks.
A stack of fragile plates was brought in.

Couple after couple poured into the brightly lit corridor.
Jokes were scattered and laughter was scattered in a single, unbroken roar, and in a single unbroken rumbling chairs were moved about.

Puffs of cigarette smoke rose in the corridor, in the smoking room; puffs of cigarette smoke rose in the vestibule.
Here, pulling a glove from his fingers and thrusting his hand in his pocket, a young cadet fanned his cheeks with a darkened glove; embracing, two young girls were telling each other some sacred secrets which had, perhaps, only just come into being; brunette talked to blonde, and the little blonde was snorting and biting her delicate little handkerchief.

If one stood in the corridor one could also see a corner of the dining-room, which was packed full with guests; and into there open sandwiches, bowls laden with fruit, bottles of wine, bottles of tart, nose-tingling fizzy drinks were being carried.

Now in the impossibly brightly-lit room only the ballroom pianist remained, gathering his music; thoroughly wiping his hot fingers, carefully passing a soft rag over the keyboard of the grand piano and putting the music into piles, this modest ballroom pianist, in whose presence the servants opened all the vents in the windows one by one, moved off indecisively through the lacquered corridor, resembling a black, long-legged bird.
With pleasure he too was thinking of tea and sandwiches.

Through the doors that led into the drawing-room, out of the semi-darkness sailed a lady of forty-five with a fleshy chin that fell on to her corset-supported bosom.
And looked through her lorgnette.

While into the ballroom after her sailed a rather fat man whose face was unpleasantly pitted with smallpox scars, and whose belly of
respectable proportions was pulled in tight by a crease in his frockcoat.

Somewhere over there, at a distance, the professor of statistics, who until now had been sitting as at daggers drawn, was also plodding along; now he bumped into the
zemstvo
official, who was standing bored by the passageway, suddenly recognized that official, smiled cordially, and even began to pluck a button on his frock-coat with two fingers, as though he were grasping at a cast sheet-anchor; and now there resounded:

‘According to statistical information … The annual consumption of salt by the average Dutchman …’

And again there resounded:

‘The annual consumption of salt by the normal Spaniard …’

‘According to statistical information …’

As Though Someone Were Complaining

They were waiting for the maskers.
And still the maskers were not there.
It had evidently only been a rumour.
Yet they went on waiting for the maskers all the same.

And then the tinkling of the doorbell was heard: it was a timid sound; as though someone who had not been invited were giving a reminder of himself, asking to be let in out of the damp, cruel fog and the slush of the streets; but no one answered him.
And then again the little bell began to ring, more loudly.

As though someone were complaining.

At that moment, panting, a girl of ten years ran out of the two intermediate rooms and saw the ballroom, which had just been full, glittering with an absence of people.
There, by the entrance to the hallway, a door banged inquiringly, while the door’s faceted and diamond-spawning handle began to sway slightly; and when a void had sufficiently appeared between the walls and the door, a small black mask thrust itself cautiously out of the void as far as its nose, and two pale sparks gleamed in the slits of the eyes.

Then the ten-year-old child saw between the wall and the door the small black mask and from the slits two hostile eyes fixed on her; now the whole masker pushed his way in, and a black beard
made of gently curling lace was revealed; after the beard in the doorway, rustling, a satin cape sluggishly appeared, and the child, who had at first raised her fingers to her eyes in alarm, now joyfully smiled, began to clap her hands, and with a cry of: ‘Here are the maskers, they’ve come!’ she hurriedly ran back into the depths of the enfilade of rooms – to where, amidst the suspended flocks of bluish tobacco smoke, the misty professor on his elephant legs showed through.

The bright blood-red domino, stepping abruptly over the threshold, drew his satin cape over the lacquered tiles of the parquet floor; and just barely was it registered on the tiles of the parquet floor, like a floating crimson ripple of its own reflections; running crimson through the ballroom, as if an unsteady pool of blood were running from parquet to parquet; while towards it heavy feet began to tread, and enormous boots began to squeak from the distance towards the domino.

The
zemstvo
official, who had now become firmly established in the ballroom, stopped in perplexity, clutching with one hand at a tuft of his beard; meanwhile the lonely domino seemed to be imploring him not to drive him out of this house back into the Petersburg slush, imploring him not to drive him out of this house back into the cruel and dense fog.
The
zemstvo
official evidently wanted to make a joke, because he hemmed and hawed; but when he tried to express his joke in words, that joke assumed a rather incoherent form:

‘Mm … Yes, yes …’

The domino was advancing towards him, imploring with the whole of his body, advancing towards him with a red, rustling outstretched arm and the transparent lace lifted ever so slightly from his head that hung down from its stooping shoulders.

‘Tell me, please, are you a masker?’

Silence.

‘Mm … Yes, yes …’

But the masker implored; he threw forward the whole of his outstretched body – in the void, over the lacquered surfaces, the highlights, above the pool of his own reflections; rushing, lonely, about the ballroom.

‘There’s a fine thing …’

And again he threw himself forward, and again the red reflections slipped forward.

Now the
zemstvo
official, puffing and panting, began to retreat.

Suddenly he waved his arm; and he turned; quickly he began, God knows why, to return whence he had come, where the azure electric light shone, where in the azure electric light the professor of statistics stood with his pulled-up frock-coat, showing mistily through the flocks of tobacco smoke; but the
zemstvo
official was nearly knocked off his feet by an onrushing swarm of young ladies: their ribbons fluttered, party forfeits fluttered in the air and knees rustled.

This twittering swarm had come running out to look at the masker who had dropped by; but the twittering swarm stopped at the door, and its merry exclamations suddenly seemed to become a barely breathing rustle; at last this rustle grew silent; heavy was the silence.
Suddenly behind the young ladies’ backs an insolent young cadet declaimed:

Who art thou, art thou, guest forbidding,

Fateful domino?

Look now – swathed in cape of crimson

He doth come and go.
¹⁵

And on the lacquers, on the lights and above the ripple of his own reflections the domino seemed to run dolefully to the side, and the wind from the open window whistled on the bright satin in an icy blast; poor domino: as if he had been exposed in the act of some offence – he kept leaning forward his outstretched silhouette; his red-rustling arm stretched forward, as though imploring them all not to drive him out of this house back into the Petersburg slush, imploring them not to drive him out of this house back into the cruel and damp fog.

And the young cadet faltered.

‘Tell us, domino: are you the one who rushes about the prospects of Petersburg?’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, have you read today’s “Diary of Events”?’

‘What if we have?’

‘Oh, the red domino has been seen again …’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, that is foolishness.’

The lonely domino continued to say nothing.

Suddenly one of the young ladies at the front, the one who, with head inclined, had narrowed her eyes severely at the unexpected guest – began to whisper something expressively to her female friend.

‘Foolishness …’

‘No, no: I don’t feel quite myself …’

‘I suppose the cat has got the dear domino’s tongue: but he is a domino …’

‘There isn’t really anything we can do with him …’

‘But he
is
a domino!’

The lonely domino continued to say nothing.

‘Would you like some tea and sandwiches?’

‘What about this, would you like this?’

Having thus exclaimed, the young cadet, turning round, threw at the domino, over the motley-coloured heads of the young ladies, a rustling stream of confetti.
¹⁶
In the air the arc of a paper streamer unwound for an instant; and when the end of it struck the masker with a dry crack, the arc of paper, coiling, lost momentum and sank to the floor; and to this amusing joke the domino made no reaction, merely stretched out his arms, imploring them not to drive him out of this house into the Petersburg street, imploring them not to drive him out of this house into the cruel and thick fog.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, let us go back inside …’

And the swarm of young ladies ran away.

Only the one who had been standing closer than anyone else to the domino tarried for a moment; she measured the domino with a compassionate gaze; for some reason she sighed, then turned and went; and again turned round, and again said to herself:

‘All the same … It’s … it’s somehow not right.’

A Dried-up Little Figure

This was, of course, still him: Nikolai Apollonovich.
He had come there today to say – to say what?

He had himself forgotten; forgotten his own thoughts; and forgotten his hopes; had revelled in his own predestined role: a
godlike, impassive creature had flown off somewhere; there remained a naked passion, and the passion had become a poison.
The feverish poison penetrated his brain, pouring invisibly out of his eyes like a fiery cloud, entwining him in clinging, blood-red satin: it was as if he now looked at everything with a charred countenance out of the fires that baked his body, and the charred countenance turned into a black mask, while the fires that baked his body turned into red silk.
He had now truly become a buffoon, an outrageous and red one (as she had once called him).
Revengefully did this buffoon now violate some truth – was it his own, or hers?
– perfidiously and keenly; yet again: did he love or hate?

It was as though he had been casting a spell on her all these last days, stretching cold hands out of the windows of the yellow house, stretching cold hands from the granite into the fog of the Neva.
He wanted to seize, while loving, the mental image he had summoned up, he wanted, while taking revenge on her, to strangle the silhouette that fluttered somewhere; that was why all these days cold hands had stretched out of space into space, that was why all these days some kind of unearthly confessions had whispered out of space into her ears, some kind of whistling invocations of disaster and some kind of wheezing passions; that was why incoherent whistlings sounded in her ears, while the crimson of the leaves chased beneath her feet the rustling alluvial deposits of words.

That was why he had just come to that house: but she, the traitress, was not there; and in a corner he reflected.
In the fog it was as if he saw the surprised, venerable
zemstvo
official; as if somewhere in the distance, in the labyrinth of mirrors, before him the figures of the laughing young ladies floated past like unsteady blobs; and when out of this labyrinth from the cold, greenish surface the distant echoes of questions with a paper serpent of confetti assailed him, he was surprised in the way that people marvel in dreams: was surprised at the emergence into the bright world before him of a reflection that was not real; but at the same time as he looked on them all as vacillating reflections that raced about in a dream, those reflections evidently took him for an apparition from the other world; and as an apparition from the other world, he drove them all away.

Then once again distant echoes drifted to him, and he turned
slowly: both vaguely and dimly – somewhere over there, somewhere over there – a dried-up little figure, without hair, without whiskers, without eyebrows, quickly traversed the ballroom.
Nikolai Apollonovich could with difficulty make out the details of the little figure that had flown into the ballroom – the strain to his vision through the slits of the mask gave him a pain in his eyes (apart from everything else, he suffered from short-sightedness), and only the contours of the greenish ears stood out – somewhere over there, somewhere over there.
There was in all this something familiar, something near and alive, and Nikolai Apollonovich jerkily, in oblivion, rushed over to the little figure in order to see it at close quarters; but the little figure jerked back, seemed even to clutch at its heart, ran away, and was now looking at him.
Great was Nikolai Apollonovich’s amazement: right there before him stood a kindred face; it seemed to him covered in wrinkles that had eaten away at cheeks, forehead, chin and nose; from a distance one might have taken that face for the face of a Skopets, more young than old; but close to this was a feeble, sickly old man, conspicuous by his barely noticeable side-whiskers; in a word – under his nose Nikolai Apollonovich saw his father.
Apollon Apollonovich, fingering the rings of his watch chain, fixed his eyes in poorly concealed fear at the satin domino who had so unexpectedly assailed him.
In these blue eyes flickered something like a surmise; Nikolai Apollonovich felt an unpleasant shiver, for it was uncanny to look brazenly from behind the mask at that impassive gaze before which at ordinary times he lowered his eyes with incomprehensible diffidence; yes, it was uncanny now in that gaze to read fear, and a kind of helpless, sickly senility; and the surmise, quickly flickering past, was read as the answer to a riddle: Nikolai Apollonovich thought he had been recognized.
This was not the case: Apollon Apollonovich simply thought that some clumsy prankster was terrorizing him, the courtier, with the symbolic colour of his brilliant cape.