The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (47 page)

Madrid. Thirtieth Februarius.

And so I’m in Spain, and it happened so quickly that I’ve barely come to my senses.
This morning the Spanish deputies came to me, and I got into the carriage together with them.
The extraordinary speed seemed strange to me.
We drove so quickly that in half an hour we reached the Spanish border.
However, there are railroads everywhere in Europe now, and steamships drive very fast.
Spain is a strange land: when we entered the first room, I saw a lot of people with shaved heads.
I guessed, however, that they must be either grandees or soldiers, since they shave their heads.
The behavior of the lord chancellor, who led me by the arm, seemed extremely strange to me; he pushed me into a little room and said, “Sit here, and if you still want to call yourself King Ferdinand, I’ll beat the wish out of you.” But I, knowing it was nothing but a provocation, replied in the negative—for which the chancellor hit me twice on the back with a stick, so painfully that I nearly cried out, but caught myself, having remembered that this was the knightly custom on entering upon high rank, because in Spain they still preserve knightly customs.
Being left alone, I decided to occupy myself with state affairs.
I discovered that China and Spain are absolutely one and the same land, and it is only out of ignorance that they are considered separate countries.
I advise everyone purposely to write Spain on a piece of paper, and it will come out China.
But, nevertheless, I was extremely upset by an event that is going to take place tomorrow.
Tomorrow at seven o’clock a strange phenomenon will occur: the earth is going to sit on the moon.
This has also been written about by the noted English chemist Wellington.
I confess, I felt troubled at heart when I pictured to myself the extraordinary delicacy and fragility of the moon.
For the moon is usually made in Hamburg, and made quite poorly.
I’m surprised England doesn’t pay attention to this.
It’s made by a lame cooper, and one can see that the fool understands nothing about the moon.
He used tarred rope and a quantity of cheap olive oil, and that’s why there’s a terrible stench all over the
earth, so that you have to hold your nose.
And that’s why the moon itself is such a delicate sphere that people can’t live on it, and now only noses live there.
And for the same reason, we can’t see our own noses, for they’re all in the moon.
And when I pictured how the earth is a heavy substance and in sitting down may grind our noses into flour, I was overcome with such anxiety that, putting on my stockings and shoes, I hurried to the state council chamber to order the police not to allow the earth to sit on the moon.
The shaved grandees, great numbers of whom I found in the state council chamber, were all very intelligent people, and when I said, “Gentlemen, let us save the moon, because the earth wants to sit on it,” they all rushed at once to carry out my royal will, and many crawled up the wall in order to get the moon; but just then the lord chancellor came in.
Seeing him, they all ran away.
I, being the king, was the only one to remain.
But, to my surprise, the chancellor hit me with a stick and drove me to my room.
Such is the power of popular custom in Spain!

January of the same year,
which came after February.

I still cannot understand what sort of country Spain is.
The popular customs and court etiquette are absolutely extraordinary I do not understand, I do not understand, I decidedly do not understand anything.
Today they shaved my head, though I shouted with all my might about my unwillingness to be a monk.
But I cannot even remember how I felt when they began dripping cold water on my head.
I’ve never experienced such hell before.
I was ready to start raging, so that they were barely able to hold me back.
I don’t understand the meaning of this strange custom at all.
A stupid, senseless custom!
The folly of the kings, who still have not abolished it, is incomprehensible to me.
Judging by all probabilities, I guess I may have fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, and the one I took for the chancellor may be the grand inquisitor himself.
Only I still cannot understand how a king can be made subject to the Inquisition.
True, this might come from the French side, especially from Polignac.
⁸
Oh, he’s a sly customer, Polignac!
He’s sworn to injure me as long as I live.
And so he persecutes me, persecutes
me; but I know, friend, that you’re being led by the Englishman.
The Englishman is a great politician.
He fusses about everywhere.
The whole world knows that when England takes snuff, France sneezes.

The 25th.

Today the grand inquisitor came to my room, but, hearing his footsteps from far off, I hid under a chair.
Seeing I wasn’t there, he began calling out.
First he shouted, “Poprishchin!” but I didn’t say a word.
Then: “Aksenty Ivanovich!
Titular councillor!
Nobleman!” I kept silent.
“Ferdinand VIII, king of Spain!” I wanted to poke my head out, but then thought, “No, brother, you’re not going to hoodwink me!
We know you: you’ll pour cold water on my head again.” Nevertheless, he saw me and chased me out from under the chair with his stick.
That cursed stick is extremely painful.
However, all this has been rewarded by my present discovery: I’ve learned that every rooster has his Spain, that it’s located under his feathers.
The grand inquisitor nevertheless left me in wrath and threatened me with some punishment.
But I utterly ignored his impotent anger, knowing that he was acting mechanically, as the Englishman’s tool.

The of 34
th, yrea 349.

No, I no longer have the strength to endure.
God!
what they’re doing to me!
They pour cold water on my head!
They do not heed, do not see, do not listen to me.
What have I done to them?
Why do they torment me?
What do they want from poor me?
What can I give them?
I have nothing.
It’s beyond my strength, I cannot endure all their torments, my head is burning, and everything is whirling before me.
Save me!
take me!
give me a troika of steeds swift as the wind!
Take the reins, my driver, ring out, my bells, soar aloft, steeds, and carry me out of this world!
Farther, farther, so that there’s nothing to be seen, nothing.
Here is the sky billowing before me; a little star shines in the distance; a forest races by with dark trees and a crescent moon; blue mist spreads under my feet; a string twangs in the mist; on one side the sea, on the other Italy; and there I see some Russian huts.
Is that my house
blue in the distance?
Is that my mother sitting at the window?
Dear mother, save your poor son!
shed a tear on his sick head!
see how they torment him!
press the poor orphan to your breast!
there’s no place for him in the world!
they’re driving him out!
Dear mother!
pity your sick child!… And do you know that the Dey of Algiers.
has a bump just under his nose?

THE NOSE

I

O
N THE TWENTY-FIFTH
day of March,
¹
an extraordinarily strange incident occurred in Petersburg.
The barber Ivan Yakovlevich, who lives on Voznesensky Prospect (his family name has been lost, and even on his signboard—which portrays a gentleman with a soaped cheek along with the words “Also Bloodletting”—nothing more appears), the barber Ivan Yakovlevich woke up quite early and sensed the smell of hot bread.
Raising himself a little in bed, he saw that his wife, quite a respectable lady, who very much liked her cup of coffee, was taking just-baked loaves from the oven.

“Today, Praskovya Osipovna, I will not have coffee,” said Ivan Yakovlevich, “but instead I’d like to have some hot bread with onion.”

(That is, Ivan Yakovlevich would have liked the one and the other, but he knew it was utterly impossible to ask for two things at the same time, for Praskovya Osipovna very much disliked such whims.) “Let the fool eat bread; so much the better for me,” the wife thought to herself, “there’ll be an extra portion of coffee left.” And she threw a loaf of bread on the table.

For the sake of propriety, Ivan Yakovlevich put his tailcoat on over his undershirt and, settling at the table, poured out some salt,
prepared two onions, took a knife in his hands, and, assuming a significant air, began cutting the bread.
Having cut the loaf in two, he looked into the middle and, to his surprise, saw something white.
Ivan Yakovlevich poked cautiously with his knife and felt with his finger.
“Firm!” he said to himself.
“What could it be?”

He stuck in his fingers and pulled out—a nose!… Ivan Yakovlevich even dropped his arms; he began rubbing his eyes and feeling it: a nose, precisely a nose!
and, what’s more, it seemed like a familiar one.
Terror showed on Ivan Yakovlevich’s face.
But this terror was nothing compared to the indignation that came over his wife.

“Where did you cut that nose off, you beast?” she shouted wrathfully.
“Crook!
Drunkard!
I’ll denounce you to the police myself!
What a bandit!
I’ve heard from three men already that you pull noses so hard when you give a shave that they barely stay attached.”

But Ivan Yakovlevich was more dead than alive.
He recognized this nose as belonging to none other than the collegiate assessor Kovalev, whom he shaved every Wednesday and Sunday.

“Wait, Praskovya Osipovna!
I’ll wrap it in a rag and put it in the corner.
Let it stay there a while, and later I’ll take it out.”

“I won’t hear of it!
That I should leave some cut-off nose lying about my room?… You dried-up crust!
You only know how to drag your razor over the strop, but soon you won’t be able to do your duties at all, you trull, you blackguard!
That I should have to answer for you to the police?… Ah, you muck-worm, you stupid stump!
Out with it!
out!
take it wherever you like!
so that I never hear of it again!”

Ivan Yakovlevich stood totally crushed.
He thought and thought and did not know what to think.

“Devil knows how it happened,” he said finally, scratching himself behind the ear.
“Whether I came home drunk yesterday or not, I can’t say for sure.
But by all tokens this incident should be unfeasible: for bread is a baking matter, and a nose is something else entirely.
I can’t figure it out!…”

Ivan Yakovlevich fell silent.
The thought of the police finding the nose at his place and accusing him drove him to complete distraction.
He could already picture the scarlet collar, beautifully embroidered with silver, the sword … and he trembled all over.
Finally he took his shirt and boots, pulled all this trash on him, and, to the accompaniment of Praskovya Osipovna’s weighty admonitions, wrapped the nose in a rag and went out.

He wanted to leave it somewhere, in an iron hitching post under a gateway, or just somehow accidentally drop it and turn down an alley.
But unfortunately he kept running into someone he knew, who would begin at once by asking, “Where are you off to?” or “Who are you going to shave so early?”—so that Ivan Yakovlevich could never seize the moment.
Another time, he had already dropped it entirely, but a policeman pointed to it from afar with his halberd and said: “Pick that up!
You’ve dropped something there!” And Ivan Yakovlevich had to pick the nose up and put it in his pocket.
Despair came over him, especially as there were more and more people in the street as the stores and shops began to open.

He decided to go to St.
Isaac’s Bridge: might he not somehow manage to throw it into the Neva?… But I am slightly remiss for having said nothing yet about Ivan Yakovlevich, a worthy man in many respects.

Ivan Yakovlevich, like every decent Russian artisan, was a terrible drunkard.
And though he shaved other people’s chins every day, his own was eternally unshaven.
Ivan Yakovlevich’s tailcoat (Ivan Yakovlevich never went around in a frock coat) was piebald; that is, it was black, but all dappled with brownish-yellow and gray spots; the collar was shiny, and in place of three buttons there hung only threads.
Ivan Yakovlevich was a great cynic, and whenever the collegiate assessor Kovalev said to him while being shaved, “Your hands eternally stink, Ivan Yakovlevich”—Ivan Yakovlevich would reply with a question: “And why should they stink?” to which the collegiate assessor would say, “I don’t know, brother, but they stink,” and for that Ivan Yakovlevich, after a pinch of snuff, would soap him up on the cheeks, and under the nose, and behind the ears, and under the chin—in short, anywhere he liked.