Petersburg (69 page)

‘In that case, Sergei Sergeich, let us do our talking in a coffee house … Why don’t we go to a coffee house …’

‘What do you mean, a coffee house …’ Likhutin said, indignantly.
‘I am not accustomed to having business conversations in such places …’

‘Sergei Sergeyevich?
But where, then?
…’

‘Well, I’m thinking, too … Since you’ve got into the carriage, let us go to my flat …’

These words were said in a tone that was manifestly dissembling: here Nikolai Apollonovich bit his lips very nearly until the blood came:

‘At his home, at his home … How can it be – at his home?
That means I’ll have to closet myself with the second lieutenant eye to eye, give an account of my inappropriate escapades with Sofya Petrovna; perhaps I will have to explain to her indignant husband in her presence why I did not keep my word … It’s plain to see: it’s a trap …’

‘But, Sergei Sergeyevich, I think that for several reasons which I am sure you will understand, I wouldn’t feel comfortable at your flat …’

‘Oh, come now!’

To be fair to Nikolai Apollonovich, he did not list any more
reasons; he obediently said: ‘I am ready.’ And he behaved calmly; his lower jaw trembled slightly – that was all.

‘As an enlightened, humane man, Sergei Sergeyevich, you will understand me … In a word, in a word … it’s in connection with Sofya Petrovna.’

Suddenly, growing confused, he broke off.

They sat down in the carriage.
And – it was high time: there, where the banners had just been rushing about and from where dry bursts of crackling gunfire had come, there was now not a single banner; but from there surged such a crowd, pressing against those who were running ahead, that the carriages that had swarmed into clusters and were standing here, flew into the depths of the Nevsky – in the opposite direction, where now the circulation had been reestablished, where along the street grey-clad police inspectors ran, and gendarmes danced on horses.

Off they went.

Nikolai Apollonovich saw that the human myriapod was flowing here, as though nothing had happened; as it had flowed here for centuries; the seasons ran there, higher; to them a term was fixed; but the human myriapod had no such term; it would crawl as it crawled; and it crawled as it crawled: ones, twos, fours; and couple after couple: bowler hats, feathers, service caps; service caps, service caps, feathers; tricorne, top hat, service cap; shawl, umbrella, feather.

Now it all disappeared: they turned off the prospect; above the stone buildings in the sky towards them rushed ragged clouds with a hanging band of rain; Nikolai Apollonovich bent completely under the burden of the unexpected weight that had fallen; a ragged cloud crept up; and when the grey, bluish band covered them – the busy drops began to beat, to rattle, to whisper, spinning their cold bubbles on the gurgling puddles; Nikolai Apollonovich sat bent in the carriage, his face wrapped in his Italian cloak; for a moment he forgot where he was going; a troubled feeling remained: he was going – under duress.

The heavy confluence of circumstances now once again came weighing down.

The heavy confluence of circumstances – can one thus describe the pyramid of events that had piled up during these recent days,
like massif upon massif?
A pyramid of massifs that shattered the soul, and precisely – a pyramid!
…

In a pyramid there is something that exceeds all the notions of man; the pyramid is a delirium of geometry, that is, a delirium that cannot be measured by anything; the pyramid is a satellite of the planet, created by man; it is both yellow and dead, like the moon.

The pyramid is a delirium that is measured by figures.

There is a horror compounded of figures – the horror of thirty signs laid end to end, where the sign is, of course, a zero; thirty zeros with a unit are a horror; cross out the unit, and the thirty zeros will collapse.

There will be – zero.

There is no horror in a unit, either; in itself the unit is a nonentity; namely – a unit!
… But a unit plus thirty zeros will form itself into the monstrosity of a quintillion: a quintillion – oh, oh, oh!
– hangs on a little thin black stick; the unit of a quintillion repeats itself more than a billion billion times, repeated more than a billion times.

Through immeasurabilities it drags itself.

Thus does man drag himself through universal space from time everlasting to time everlasting.

Yes, –

like a human unit, or rather, like that thin little stick, Nikolai Apollonovich had lived in space until now, accomplishing a run from time everlasting –

– in the costume of Adam, Nikolai Apollonovich was a little stick; ashamed of his thinness, he had never been to a Russian bathhouse with anyone –

– since time everlasting!

And now on the shoulders of this little stick the monstrosity of a quintillion had fallen, that is to say: more than a billion billions, repeated more than a billion times; an unpresentable
something
had taken a gigantic
nothing
into itself: and the gigantic
nothing
had been swelling in presentable fashion since time everlasting –

– thus does a stomach swell, thanks to the development of gases, from which all the Ableukhovs had suffered –

– since time everlasting!

An unpresentable
something
had taken a gigantic nothing into itself; the gigantic, empty, zero had made the
something
swell up to the point of horror.
Quite simply some Gaurisankars distended themselves; while he, Nikolai Apollonovich, was exploding like a bomb.

Eh?
A bomb?
A sardine tin?

In the twinkling of an eye, everything raced past that had raced past since morning: his plan flew through his head.

What was it?

The Plan

Yes, yes, yes!
…

To bring in the sardine tin by stealth: to put it under his father’s pillow; or – no: to put it under the mattress in a corresponding place.
And – his expectation would not deceive him: precision was guaranteed by the clock mechanism.

He would say to him:

‘Good night, Papa!’

In reply:

‘Good night, Kolenka!
…’

To give him a squelching kiss on the lips, to go to his room.

To undress impatiently – he must undress without fail!
To lock the door with a click, and pull the blanket over his head.

To be an ostrich.

But in the warm, feather bed begin to shiver, to breathe jerkily – from the jolts of his beating heart; to feel miserable, afraid, to try to hear: the bang there would be in there … the crash there would be in there – from behind the flock of stone walls; to wait for the bang, the crash that would blow the silence to pieces, blow the bed, the table and the wall to pieces; having blown to pieces, perhaps … having blown to pieces, perhaps …

To feel miserable, afraid, to try to hear … And then hear the familiar flopping of slippers towards … the place that had no comparison.

From his light French reading to turn – simply to cotton wool, with which to stop up his ears; to put his head under the pillow.
To
be finally convinced: nothing would help any more!
Instantly throwing off the blanket, to stick out his perspiration-covered head – and in an abyss of fear dig a new abyss.

To wait and wait.

Now there was only half an hour left; there already was the greenish lightening of dawn; the room turned blue, turned grey; the flame of the candle grew smaller; and now there were only fifteen minutes left; now the candle was going out; eternities were sluggishly flowing by, not minutes, but precisely – eternities; then a match would strike: five minutes had passed … To reassure oneself that
all that
would not be soon, but only after ten sluggish revolutions of time, and be shakingly deceived, because –

– an unrepeatable, never yet heard, attracting sound would all the same … –

–crash!!
…

Then: –

quickly putting his bare legs into long johns (no, why long johns: better to be as he was, without long johns!) – or even in his undershirt, his face twisted and white –

– yes, yes, yes! –

– to jump out of his warm bed and go pattering through with bare feet into a space that was full of mystery: into the black corridor; to race and race – like an arrow: towards the unrepeatable sound, bumping into servants and taking into his chest a peculiar smell: a mixture of smoke, burning and gas with …
something else,
that was more horrible than burning, gas or smoke.

As a matter of fact, though, there would probably be no smell.

To run into the room that was full of smoke and very cold; choking with a loud cough, to leap back out again in order to quickly thrust himself again through the black hole in the wall that had formed after the sound (a lighted candelabra would somehow be dancing in his hand).

There: beyond the hole … –

in place of the devastated bedroom, a rust-red flame would illumine
… would illumine a mere trifle: clouds of smoke belching from all sides.

And would also illumine … no!
… A veil must be thrown over that scene – a veil of smoke, of smoke!
That was all there was: smoke and more smoke!

All the same …

To push in under that veil if only for a moment, and – ai, ai!
The completely red half of a wall: that redness was flowing; the walls must be wet; and they must be sticky, sticky … All this would be his first impression of the room; and probably his last.
Pell mell, between two impressions would impress itself: plaster, splinters of shattered parquetry and torn shreds of scorched rugs; those shreds would be smouldering.
No, one had better not, but … a shin-bone?

Why had it survived intact, and not the other parts?

All that would happen in a trice; while in a trice, behind his back: an idiotic rumble of voices, the uneven patter of feet in the depths of the corridor, the desperate wail – imagine!
– of the scullery maid; and – the sound of the telephone being used (someone was probably calling the police) …

To drop the candelabra … Squatting down, to shiver beside the hole in the October wind that was blowing through the hole (all the window-panes had been smashed by the noise); and – to shiver, to pull his nightshirt around him, until a compassionate lackey –

– perhaps, the valet, the very man on whom soon afterwards it would be easiest to unload the blame (shadows would fall on him of their own accord) –

– until the compassionate lackey dragged him into the adjacent room and forcibly poured cold water into his mouth …

But, getting up from the floor, to see: –

beneath his feet
that same
dark-red stickiness that had splashed here after the loud noise; it had splashed out of the hole with a shred of
torn-off skin … (from which part of the body?).
To lift his gaze – and see above him, sticking to the wall …

Brr!
… Then suddenly to faint.

To play out the comedy to the end.

Only twenty-four hours later, before the tightly nailed-up coffin (for there was nothing to bury) – before the coffin to rap out an Acathistus,
⁴
leaning over a candle in a uniform jacket with a close-fitting waist.

Only two days later, his freshly-shaven, marble, godlike countenance tucked away in the fur of his Nikolayevka, to pass to the hearse, outside in the street, with the air of an innocent angel; and to clutch his service cap in white kid-gloved fingers, proceed sorrowfully to the cemetery in the company of that whole exalted retinue … behind a heap of flowers (behind the coffin).
Goldchested, white-trousered little old men would drag that heap of flowers up the staircase in their trembling hands – with swords and ribbons.

The heap would be dragged by eight little bald old men!

And – yes, yes!

To give evidence at the inquest, but of a kind that … would all the same cast a shadow … on whomever it might be (not intentionally, of course) …; and a shadow must be cast – a shadow on whomever it might be; if not – the shadow would fall on him … How could it be otherwise?

The shadow would be cast.

Silly little simpleton

Kolenka is dancing:

He has put his dunce-cap on –

On his horse he’s prancing.

And it became clear to him: that very moment when Nikolai Apollonovich was heroically dooming himself to be the executioner of a death penalty – a death penalty
in the name of an idea
(so he thought), that moment, and nothing else, was the creator of such a plan, and not the grey prospect along which he had rushed all morning; action in the name of an idea was combined, however agitated he had been, with infernally cold-blooded dissembling and, perhaps, with slander: the slander of the most innocent persons (most convenient of all was the valet: after all, he received visits from his nephew, who was a pupil at a vocational school, and, it seemed, not a member of the Party, but … all the same …)

There was none the less calculation in his cold-bloodedness.
A lie had been added to parricide, and so had cowardice; but, above all, so had – baseness.

Noble, slender, pale,

Hair like flax has he;

Rich in thought, in feeling poor

N.A.A. – who can he be?