Petersburg (81 page)

Now he undressed.

Now he sat on the bed, hairy and naked, with his legs apart; female-like rounded shapes were clearly marked on his shaggy chest.

Lippanchenko slept naked.

Obliquely across from the candle, between the window wall and
the little wardrobe, in a dark, shadowy niche, an intricate outline emerged: of a pair of trousers that hung here; and formed the likeness of – someone looking out from there; Lippanchenko was for ever hanging his trousers in different places; and the result was always: the likeness – of someone looking out from there.

He saw this likeness now.

And when he blew out the candle, the outline trembled and emerged more clearly; Lippanchenko reached out his hand to the curtain on the window; the curtain was tugged aside: the receding calico rustled; the room shone with a greenish radiance of copper; there, from there: out of the white pewter of the clouds a flaming disc crashed across the room; and … –

Against the background of the completely green and as if vitriol-coloured wall – there!
– stood a little figure in a wretched coat, with a frozen, chalk-white face: it looked like a clown, and its white lips were smiling.
Lippanchenko went thudding in his bare feet in the direction of the door, but went, belly and breasts, smack into the door (he had forgotten he had locked it); at this point he was pulled backwards; a hot stream of boiling water splashed his bare back from shoulder-blades to buttocks; falling on to the bed, he realized that someone had cut open his back; cut it open as the hairless skin of a cold sucking-pig with horseradish sauce is cut; and no sooner had he realized this than he felt that stream of boiling water – under his navel.

And from there something hissed mockingly; and somewhere inside him he thought it was gases, because his belly had been sliced open; inclining his head over his heaving belly, staring senselessly into space, he slumped down in utter drowsiness, probing the flowing liquid with his fingers – on his belly and on the sheet.

This was his last conscious impression of ordinary reality; now his consciousness expanded; its monstrous periphery sucked the planets into itself; and sensed them as organs that had been disjointed from one another; the sun floated in the expansions of his heart; his backbone was made incandescent by the touch of Saturn’s masses; in his belly a volcano opened.

All this time the body sat senseless with its head sagging on to its chest and its eyes staring at its cleft belly; suddenly it tumbled down – belly first into the sheet; the arm hung over the bloodstained rug,
its fur showing reddish in the moonlight; the head with its sagging jaw was thrown in the direction of the door and stared at it with an unblinking eye; the eyebrows began to gleam browlessly; on the sheet emerged the imprint of five bloodstained fingers; and a fat heel protruded.

A bush seethed: white-maned stripes came flying from the gulf; they flew close to the shore in ragged foam; they licked the sands; like thin blades of glass, they rushed over the sands; splashed into a salty lake, filling it with a salt solution; and ran back again.
Between the branches of the bush one could see a sailing vessel rocking – turquoise, transparent; in a thin layer it cut the expanses with sharp-winged sails; on the surface of a sail a misty puff of smoke was growing denser.

From the gulf white-maned stripes came flying; the moon illumined them, stripe after stripe foamed in the distance and thundered there; and then fell, flying right up to the shore in ragged foam; from the gulf the flying stripe spread over the flat shore – submissively, transparently; it licked the sands: it cut the sands – corroded them; like a thin blade of glass, it rushed over the sands; here and there the glassy stripes splashed into a salty lake; filled it with a salt solution.

When they entered in the morning, Lippanchenko was no longer there; there was a pool of blood; there was a corpse; and there was also a small figure of a man – with a white, leering face, beside itself; the figure had a small moustache; it was turned up at the ends; very strange: the man was sitting astride the corpse;
¹¹
he was clutching a pair of scissors in one hand; he had this hand stretched out; across his face – over his nose, round his lips – the blotch of a cockroach crawled away.

He had evidently gone mad.

END OF THE SEVENTH CHAPTER

Chapter the Eighth

and last

The past moves by before me …

Isn’t long since it rushed by, full of events,

In agitation, like the ocean?

Now it is silent and peaceful:

Few are the faces memory has kept for me,

Few are the words that come down to me …
¹

A.
Pushkin

But First Of All …

Anna Petrovna!

We have forgotten her: Anna Petrovna had returned; and now she was awaiting … But first of all: –

– these last twenty-four hours! –

– these last twenty-four hours of our narrative have expanded and scattered in psychic space: in a most outrageous dream; and have blocked the horizon around us; and the author’s gaze, too, has become entangled in psychic space; it has been shut off.

Anna Petrovna has been concealed along with it.

Like stern, leaden clouds, cerebral, leaden games have dragged themselves along in a closed horizon, along a circle that has been traced by us, – hopelessly, hopelessly, meticulously –

– in these last twenty-four hours! …

And through these sternly flowing and insalubrious events the news about Anna Petrovna has fluttered by with gleams of some kind of gentle light – from somewhere.
Then we reflected sadly –
only for a single moment; and – forgot; while we ought to have remembered … that Anna Petrovna – had returned.

These last twenty-four hours!

A day and a night, that is: a relative concept, a concept that consists of a multivariety of moments, where the moment –

– is either a minimal segment of time, or – something, well, different, psychical, able to be defined by the completeness of psychic events, – not by a figure; for if by a figure, it is precise, it is two-tenths of a second; and is in that case immutable; defined by the completeness of psychic events it is an hour, or a zero; the experience grows in the moment, or – is absent in the moment –

– where the moment in our narrative has resembled a full cup of events.

But Anna Petrovna’s arrival is a fact; and – an enormous one; to be sure, there are in it no dreadful contents, as in other facts we have noted; that is why we, the author, have forgotten about Anna Petrovna; and, as is usually the case, the heroes of the novel have also forgotten about Anna Petrovna.

And yet all the same … –

Anna Petrovna had returned; the events we have described she did not see; she did not suspect, did not know about these events; only one thing that had happened troubled her: her return; and it must have troubled the persons I have described; these persons must after all have responded at once to this thing that happened; have showered her with notes, letters, expressions of joy or anger; but there were no notes or messengers for her: no one paid any attention to the tremendous thing that had happened – neither Nikolai Apollonovich, nor Apollon Apollonovich.

And – Anna Petrovna was sad.

She did not go out; a hotel of magnificent fashion enclosed her within one of its small rooms; and Anna Petrovna sat for hours on the only chair, staring at the specks on the wallpaper; these specks got into her eyes; she moved her eyes to the window; and the window looked out on to an impudently staring wall that was some
kind of olive tint; instead of the sky there was yellow smoke; all one could see, in a window over there, obliquely, was some piles of dirty plates, a washtub, and the rolled-up sleeves of arms through the gleaming of the panes …

Not a letter nor a visit: either from her husband or her son.

Sometimes she rang; some kind of giddy creature in a butterfly-shaped bonnet appeared.

And Anna Petrovna – for the umpteenth time!
– was pleased to ask:

‘A
thé complet
in my room, please.’

A lackey in black evening dress appeared, his linen starched, his necktie gleaming with freshness – with a most enormous tray, placed neatly: on his palm and shoulder; he surveyed the little room contemptuously, the clumsily mended dress of its occupant, the brightly coloured Spanish rags that lay on the double bed, and the shabby little suitcase; disrespectfully, but soundlessly, he plucked from his shoulders the most enormous tray; and without any sound the
thé complet
descended to the table.
And without any sound the lackey withdrew.

No one, nothing: the same specks on the wallpaper; the same laughter and noise from the next room, the conversation of two chambermaids in the corridor; a grand piano – from somewhere downstairs (in the room of a visiting woman pianist who was preparing to give her recital); and – for the umpteenth time – she moved her eyes to the window, and the window looked on to the impudently staring wall that was some kind of olive tint; instead of the sky there was smoke, and all one could see, in a window over there, obliquely, through the gleaming of the panes, was …

– (suddenly there was a knocking at the door; in sudden confusion, Anna Petrovna splashed her tea on the ultra-clean napkins of the tray) –

– all one could see, in a window over there, obliquely, was some piles of dirty napkins, a washtub, and the rolled-up sleeves of arms.

The maid came flying in and handed her a visiting card; Anna Petrovna blushed all over; she got up noisily from behind the table;
her first gesture was
that
gesture, the one she had acquired in her girlhood: a swift motion of the hand, adjusting her hair.

‘Where is the gentleman?’

‘He’s waiting in the corridor, miss.’

Blushing, moving her hand from her hair to her chin (a gesture she had acquired only recently and was probably caused by shortness of breath), Anna Petrovna said:

‘Ask him to come in.’

She began to breathe quickly and to blush.

There were heard – the laughter and noise from the next room, the conversation of the two chambermaids in the corridor, and the grand piano from somewhere downstairs; footsteps swiftly-swiftly running to the door were heard; the door opened; Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, not stepping across the threshold, was vainly making an effort to make something out in the semi-twilight of the little room; and the first thing he caught sight of proved to be a wall that was some kind of olive tint, staring outside the window; and – smoke instead of the sky; all one could see, in a window over there, obliquely, through the gleaming of the panes, was some piles of dirty plates, a washtub, and the rolled-up sleeves of arms that were washing something.

The first thing that rushed at him was the meagre furnishings of the cheap little room (the shadows fell in such a way that Anna Petrovna was somehow pushed into the background); a room like that, and – in a first-class hotel!
What of it?
There was nothing to be surprised about there; there are little rooms like this in all the first-class hotels – of first-class capital cities: each hotel has one of them, many have two; but there are advertisements for them in all the guidebooks.
You read, for example: ‘Savoy Premier ordre.
Chambres depuis 3 fr.’ This means: the minimum price for a tolerable room is not less than fifteen francs; but for appearance’s sake, you will unfailingly find in the attic storey an uninhabited corner, untidied, dirty – in all the first-class hotels of first-class capital cities; and it is of it that the guidebooks say: ‘depuis trois francs’; this room is left in neglect; it is impossible to stay in it (instead you will end up in the fifteen-franc room); for the room
that is ‘depuis trois francs’ lacks both air and light; even the maid would shun it, never mind you, the
barin
; furnishings and everything else are also lacking; woe betide you if you stay in it: the numerous staff of chambermaids, waiters and bellboys will view you with contempt.

And you will move to a second-class hotel, where for seven or eight francs you will rest in cleanliness, comfort and honour.

‘Premier ordre – depuis 3 francs’ – the Lord preserve us!

Here are a bed, a table and a chair; scattered in disorder on the bed are a small handbag, straps, a black lace fan, a little cut-glass Venetian vase, wrapped – just fancy – in a long stocking (of the purest silk), a plaid, straps and a clump of loud, lemon-coloured Spanish rags; all this, in Apollon Apollonovich’s opinion, must have been travelling accessories and souvenirs of Granada and Toledo, which had in all probability once been valuable and had now lost all their show, all their lustre, –

– and the three thousand silver roubles that had so recently been sent to Granada must evidently not have been received –

– why, it was simply embarrassing for a lady
in her social position
to be carrying these old rags around with her; and – his heart was wrung within him.