Petersburg (13 page)

A quiet lapping remained behind her back: before her spread the square; endless statues, greenish ones, bronze ones, revealed themselves from everywhere above the dark red walls; Hercules and Poseidon
⁴⁴
went on surveying the expanses in the night as ever; on the other side of the Neva a colossus rose – in the contours of the
islands and the houses; and sorrowfully cast amber eyes into the fog; and seemed to be weeping; a row of riverside street lamps dropped fiery tears into the Neva; its surface was burned through by simmering gleams.

Higher up, ragged arms mournfully stretched some kind of vague outlines across the sky; swarm upon swarm they rose above the Neva’s waves, racing away towards the zenith; and when they touched the zenith, then, impetuously attacking, from the sky the phosphorescent stain hurled itself upon them.
Only in one place that had not been touched by chaos – there, where by day the heavy stone bridge threw itself across – enormous clusters of diamonds showed strangely misty.

The female shadow, face set into a small muff, ran along to the Moika to that same entrance porch from which it had run in the evenings and where now on the cold step, below the door, sat Nikolai Apollonovich; the entrance-porch door opened before her; the darkness enveloped her; as though everything had fallen away behind her; the little lady in black thought for a while in the entrance porch about simple and earthly things; in a moment she would give instructions for a samovar to be brought; she had already stretched out her hand to the bell, and – then saw: some kind of outline, a mask, it seemed, rose before her from the step.

And when the door opened and a shaft of light illumined the darkness of the entrance porch for a moment, the exclamation of a frightened chambermaid confirmed it all for her, because in the open door there first appeared an apron and an overstarched cap; and then from the door shrank back – both apron and cap.
In the bright flare of light a scene of indescribable strangeness was revealed, and the little lady’s black outline rushed out of the open door.

Behind her back, out of the murk, rose a rustling, dark crimson clown with a small, bearded, trembling mask.

One could see from the murk how soundlessly and slowly from the satin-rustling shoulders slid the furs of the Nikolayevka,
⁴⁵
how two red hands painfully stretched towards the door.
At this point, of course, the door closed, cutting through the shaft of light and throwing the entrance-porch staircase back into complete emptiness,
darkness: crossing the threshold of death, thus do we throw back our bodies into the darkened abyss that has just shone with light.

A second later Nikolai Apollonovich leapt out on to the street; from under the skirts of his greatcoat dangled a piece of red silk; his nose tucked into his Nikolayevka, Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov raced in the direction of the bridge.

Petersburg, Petersburg!

Falling like fog, you have pursued me, too, with idle cerebral play: you are a cruel-hearted tormentor; you are an unquiet ghost; for years you have attacked me; I ran through your dreadful prospects and took a flying leap on to the cast-iron bridge that began from the limit of the earth, leading into the limitless distance; beyond the Neva, in that other-worldly, green distance there – the ghosts of islands and houses arose, seducing with the vain hope that world is reality and that it is not a howling limitlessness that drives the pale smoke of the clouds into the Petersburg street.

From the islands trail restless ghosts; thus the swarm of visions repeats itself, reflected by the prospects, driving one another way down the prospects, reflected in one another, like a mirror in a mirror, where the very moment of time itself expands in the boundlessness of zones: and as you plod your way from entrance porch to entrance porch, you experience centuries.

Oh, great bridge, shining with electricity!

I remember a certain fateful moment; over your damp railings I too leant on a September night: a moment – and my body would have flown into the mists.

O, green waters, seething with bacilli!

Another moment and you would have wound me, too, into your shadow.
The restless shadow, preserving the aspect of an ordinary man in the street, would have ambiguously begun to loom in the draught of the damp little canal; over his shoulder the passer-by would have seen: a bowler, a walking-stick, a coat, ears, a nose and a moustache …

He would have gone further … to the cast-iron bridge.

On the cast-iron bridge he would have turned round; and he would have seen nothing: above the wet railings, above the greenish water that seethed with bacilli would have merely flown past into the draughts of the Neva’s wind – a bowler, a walking-stick, ears, a nose and a moustache.

You Will Never Forget Him

In this chapter we have seen Senator Ableukhov; we have also seen the senator’s idle thoughts in the form of the senator’s house and in the form of the senator’s son, who also carries his own idle thoughts in his head; we have seen, finally, another idle shadow – the stranger.

This shadow arose accidentally in Senator Ableukhov’s consciousness and received there an ephemeral existence of its own; but Apollon Apollonovich’s consciousness is a shadowy consciousness, because he too is the possessor of an ephemeral existence and is a product of the author’s fantasy: a superfluous, idle, cerebral play.

The author, having spread out scenes of illusions, ought to clear them away as soon as possible, breaking off the thread of the narrative if only with this sentence; but … the author will not act thus: he has sufficient right not to.

Cerebral play is only a mask; behind this mask the invasion of the brain by forces unknown to us is accomplished: and even if Apollon Apollonovich is woven from our brains, he will none the less be able to frighten with another, stupendous existence that attacks by night.
Apollon Apollonovich is endowed with the attributes of this existence; all his cerebral play is endowed with this existence.

Once his brain has come into play with the mysterious stranger, that stranger exists, really does exist: he will not disappear from the Petersburg prospects while a senator with such thoughts exists, because thought, too, exists.

And so let our stranger be a real live stranger!
And let my stranger’s two shadows be real live shadows!

Those dark shadows will follow, they will follow on the stranger’s
heels, in the same way as the stranger himself will directly follow the senator; the aged senator will pursue you, he will pursue you, too, reader, in his black carriage: and from this day forth you will never forget him!

END OF THE FIRST CHAPTER

Chapter the Second

in which the story is told of a meeting fraught with consequences

I myself, though in books and words

My confrères level mocking chat,

I am a philistine, as well you know,

And in that sense a democrat.
¹

A.
Pushkin

The Diary of Events

Our respectable citizens do not read the newspapers’ ‘Diary of Events’; in October of the year 1905 the ‘Diary of Events’ was not even read at all; our respectable citizens were probably reading the leading articles in the
Comrade
,
²
unless, that is, they were subscribers to the most recent, thunder-bearing newspapers; these latter kept a diary of rather different events.

However, all the other real Russian men-in-the-street, as though it were natural, rushed to the ‘Diary of Events’; I too rushed to the ‘Diary’; and reading this ‘Diary’, am splendidly informed.
Well, who, in fact, actually read all the reports of robberies, witches and spirits in the year 1905?
Everyone read the leaders, of course.
The reports quoted here will probably be recalled by no one.

It is a true story … Here are some newspaper cuttings from that time (the author will be silent): alongside notification of robberies, rape, the theft of diamonds and the disappearance from a small provincial town of some literary man or other (Daryalsky,
³
I believe) together with diamonds worth a respectable sum, we have a series of interesting news items – sheer fantasy, perhaps, that would make the head of any reader of Conan Doyle spin.
In a word – here are some newspaper cuttings.

‘The Diary of Events’.

‘
First of October
.
According to the account of a
coursiste
of the higher medical assistant courses, N.N., we publish a report concerning a certain exceedingly mysterious event.
Late on the evening of the first of October, the
coursiste
N.N.
was walking near the Chernyshev Bridge.
⁴
There, near the bridge, the
coursiste
observed a very strange sight: above the canal, in the middle of the night, against the railings of the bridge a red satin domino was dancing; on the red domino’s face was a black lace mask.’

‘
Second of October
.
According to the account of the schoolmistress M.M.
we notify the respected public of a mysterious event near one of our suburban schools.
The schoolmistress M.M.
was giving her morning lesson in O.O.
municipal school; the windows of the school looked on to the street; suddenly outside the window a pillar of dust began to swirl with violent force, and the schoolmistress M.
M., together with her sprightly youngsters, naturally rushed to the windows of O.O.
municipal school; but great was the confusion of class and class preceptress when a red domino, situated in the centre of the dust he had raised, ran up to the windows of O.O.
municipal school and pressed a black lace mask to the window!
In O.O.
municipal school lessons ceased …’

‘
Third of October
.
At a spiritualist seance that took place in the flat of the respected Baroness R.R.
the amicably assembled spiritualists formed a spiritualistic chain; but hardly had they formed the chain, when in the midst of it a domino was discovered who, while dancing, touched with the folds of his cape the tip of titular councillor S.’s nose.
A physician at the G.
Hospital has ascertained that there is a most violent burn on titular councillor S.’s nose: the tip of the nose is, according to rumour, covered with purple spots.
In a word, the red domino is everywhere.’

And finally: ‘
Fourth of October
.
The inhabitants of the suburb of I.
have unanimously fled in the face of the domino’s appearance: a number of protests are being drawn up; the U.
Cossack Hundred has been called to the suburb.’

This domino, this domino – what can it mean?
Who is the
coursiste
N.N., who are M.M., the class’s preceptress, the Baroness R.R., and so on?
… In the year 1905, reader, you did not of course read the ‘Diary of Events’.
Then blame yourself, and not the
author: but the ‘Diary of Events’, believe me, ran all the way to the library.

What is a newspaper contributor?
He is, in the first place, a functionary of the periodical press; and as a functionary of the press (of a sixth of the world) he receives for a line – five copecks, seven copecks, ten copecks, fifteen copecks, twenty copecks, reporting in a line all that is and all that never was.
If one were to put together the newspaper lines of any newspaper contributor, the single line formed of their lines would entwine the terrestrial globe with that which took place and that which did not.

Such are the respected characteristics of the majority of contributors to extreme right-wing, right-wing, centrist, moderate liberal and, last but not least, revolutionary newspapers and, combined with a calculation of their quantity and quality, these respected characteristics are simply the key that opens the truth of the year 1905 – the truth of the ‘Diary of Events’ under the headline ‘The Red Domino’.
This is what it was all about: a certain respected contributor to an indubitably respected newspaper, receiving five copecks, suddenly decided to make use of a certain fact that was told to him in a certain house; in that house a lady was the mistress.
What it was all about, then, was not the respected contributor who was paid by the line; what it was all about was the lady …

But who is the lady?

Very well, we shall start with her.

A lady: hm!
And a pretty one … What is a lady?

The chiromancer has not revealed the properties of the lady: lonely stands the chiromancer before the riddle that is headed ‘lady’: how, in that case, is the psychologist – or – pah!
– the writer – to tackle the enigma?
The enigma will be doubly enigmatic if the lady is a young one, if it be said of her that she is pretty.

So it was like this: there was a certain lady; and out of boredom she attended the courses for women; and again out of boredom sometimes in the mornings she substituted for a schoolmistress at the O.O.
municipal school, provided that in the evening she was not at a spiritualist seance on days that were vacant of balls; it goes without saying that the
coursiste
N.N., M.M.
(the class preceptress), and R.R.
(the spiritualist baroness) were simply a lady: and a pretty
lady.
The respected newspaper contributor spent evenings at her home.

One day this lady laughingly told him that she had just encountered a red domino in an unlighted entrance porch.
Thus did the pretty lady’s innocent confession end up in the columns of the newspapers under the heading ‘Diary of Events’.
And having ended up in the ‘Diary of Events’, it unravelled into a series of occurrences that never were, and that threatened the peace.

What actually did happen, then?
Even rumoured smoke rises from a fire.
What then was the fire from which this smoke of a respected newspaper proceeded, smoke about which all Russia read and which, to your shame, you probably have not read?