Read Petersburg Online

Authors: Andrei Bely

Tags: #Fiction, #Classics, #General

Petersburg (9 page)

BOOK: Petersburg
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Apollon Apollonovich opened the door of his office.

The writing desk stood in its place with the little heap of case documents: in the corner the fireplace crackled its logs; preparing to immerse himself in work, Apollon Apollonovich warmed his frozen hands at the fireplace, while the cerebral game, restricting the senator’s field of vision, continued to erect there its misty planes.

He Had Seen the R
aznochinets

Nikolai Apollonovich …

At this point, Apollon Apollonovich …

‘No, sir: wait.’

‘?
…’

‘What the devil?’

Apollon Apollonovich stopped outside the door, because – how could it be otherwise?

His innocent cerebral game again spontaneously rose into his brain, that is, into the pile of documents and petitions: Apollon Apollonovich would have considered as a cerebral game the wallpaper of the room within whose confines the projects ripened; Apollon Apollonovich treated the spontaneity of mental combinations as a plane surface: this plane surface, however, moving apart at times, let through a surprise into the centre of his intellectual life (as, for example, just now).

Apollon Apollonovich remembered: he had once seen the
raznochinets
.

He had once seen the
raznochinets –
imagine

in his own home
.

He remembered: one day he had been coming down the stairs, going in the direction of the exit; on the stairs Nikolai Apollonovich, leaning over the banisters, had been talking to someone animatedly: the statesman did not consider himself within his rights to inquire about Nikolai Apollonovich’s acquaintances; a sense of tact then naturally prevented him from asking straight out: ‘Kolenka, tell me, who is it who visits you, my dear fellow?’

Nikolai Apollonovich would have lowered his eyes.

‘Oh, it’s nothing, Papa, I just receive visits from people …’

And the conversation would have been broken off.

That was why Apollon Apollonovich was not in the slightest interested in the identity of the
raznochinets
who was looking out of the hallway in his dark topcoat; the stranger had that same small black moustache and those same striking eyes (you would have encountered just such eyes at night in the Moscow chapel of the Great Martyr Panteleimon,
39
by the Nikolsky Gate: – the chapel is famed for the curing of those possessed by devils; you would encounter just such eyes in the portrait appended to the biography of a great man; and, what is more: in a neuropathic clinic and even in a psychiatric one).

On that occasion, too, the eyes had; widened, begun to glitter, gleamed; in other words: that had happened once, and, perhaps, that would be repeated.

‘About everything – yes sir, yes sir …’

‘It will be necessary to …’

‘Obtain the most detailed information …’

The man of state received his most detailed information not by a direct, but by a circuitous route.

Apollon Apollonovich looked out of his office door: writing desks, writing desks!
Piles of dossiers!
Heads inclined over the dossiers!
Squeaking of pens!
Rustling of pages being turned!
What a seething and mighty production of papers!

Apollon Apollonovich calmed down and immersed himself in work.

Strange Qualities

The cerebral play of the wearer of diamond decorations was distinguished by strange, highly strange, exceedingly strange qualities: his cranium became the womb of mental images that were instantly incarnated in this ghostly world.

Once he had taken into consideration this strange, highly strange, exceedingly strange circumstance, it would have been better had Apollon Apollonovich not cast from himself one single idle thought, continuing to carry around idle thoughts, too, in his head: for each idle thought stubbornly developed into a spatio-temporal image, continuing its – by now unchecked – activities outside the senatorial head.

Apollon Apollonovich was in a certain sense like Zeus: out of his head flowed gods, goddesses and spirits.
We have already seen: one such spirit (the stranger with the small black moustache), coming into being as an image, had then quite simply
begun to exist
in the yellowish expanses of the Neva, asserting that he had come – precisely out of them: not out of the senatorial head; this stranger proved to have idle thoughts too; and those idle thoughts possessed the same qualities.

They escaped and acquired substance.

And one such escaped thought of the stranger’s was the thought that he, the stranger, really existed; from the Nevsky Prospect this thought fleeted back into the senatorial brain and there strengthened
his awareness, as though the stranger’s very existence in that head had been an illusory existence.

Thus was the circle closed.

Apollon Apollonovich was in a certain sense like Zeus: hardly had the Stranger–Pallas, armed with a small bundle, been born out of his head, than out clambered another Pallas exactly like it.

This Pallas was the senator’s house.

The stone colossus has escaped from his brain; and now the house opens its hospitable door – to us.

The lackey was going up the staircase; he suffered from breathlessness, though we are not concerned with that now, but with … the staircase: a beautiful staircase!
And it has steps – as soft as the convolutions of the brain.
But the author does not have time to describe to the reader that same staircase, up which ministers have climbed more than once (he will describe it later), because the lackey is already in the reception hall …

And again – the reception hall: beautiful!
Windows and walls: the walls somewhat cold … But the lackey was in the drawing-room (we have seen the drawing-room): We have glanced over the beautiful abode, guided by the general characteristic which the senator was in the habit of allotting to all objects.

Thus: –

– when, once in a blue moon, he ended up in the flowering bosom of nature, Apollon Apollonovich saw the same thing here as we did; that is: he saw – the flowering bosom of nature; but for us this bosom instantly disintegrated into characteristics: into violets, buttercups, dandelions and pinks; but the senator reduced these particulars once more to a unity. We, of course, would say:

‘There is a buttercup!’

‘There is a forget-me-not!
…’

Apollon Apollonovich said simply, and briefly:

‘Flowers …’

‘A flower …’

Let it be said between ourselves: Apollon Apollonovich for some reason considered all flowers to be bluebells … –

He would even have characterized his own house with laconic brevity, a house which for him consisted of walls (forming squares and cubes), cut-through windows, parquets, chairs, tables; after that – the details began.

The lackey entered the corridor …

And here it will do no harm to remember: the things that fleeted past (the pictures, the grand piano, the mirrors, the mother-of-pearl, the incrustation of the small tables), – in a word, everything that had fleeted past, could have no spatial form: it was all of it a mere irritation of the cerebral membrane, if not a chronic indisposition … perhaps, of the cerebellum.

The illusion of a room took form; and then it would fly apart without trace, erecting beyond the limit of consciousness its misty planes; and when the lackey slammed behind him the heavy doors to the drawing-room, when his boots hammered along the small, resonant corridor, it was only a hammering in the temples: Apollon Apollonovich suffered from haemorrhoidal rushes of blood.

Behind the slammed door there turned out to be no drawing-room: there turned out to be … cerebral spaces: convolutions, grey and white matter, the pineal gland; while the heavy walls, that consisted of sparkling spray (caused by the rush of blood) – the bare walls were only a leaden and painful sensation: of the occipital, frontal, temporal and sincipital bones belonging to the respected skull.

The house – the stone colossus – was not a house: the stone leviathan was the senatorial head: Apollon Apollonovich sat at the desk, over dossiers, depressed by migraine, with the sensation that his head was six times larger than it ought to be, and twelve times heavier than it ought to be.

Strange, highly strange, exceedingly strange qualities!

Our Role

Petersburg streets possess an indubitable quality: they turn passers-by into shadows; while Petersburg streets turn shadows into people.

We have seen this in the example of the mysterious stranger.

He, having arisen like a thought in the senatorial head, was for some reason also connected with the senator’s own house; there he had surfaced in the memory; but most of all he assumed substantial form on the prospect, immediately following the senator in our modest story.

From the crossroads to the little restaurant on Millionnaya Street we have described the stranger’s route; we have described, further, his sitting in the little restaurant until the notorious word ‘suddenly’, which interrupted everything; suddenly something happened to the stranger there; some unpleasant sensation visited him.

Let us now investigate his soul; but first let us investigate the little restaurant; we have a reason for doing so; after all, if we, the author, mark out with pedantic exactitude the route of the first person who comes along, the reader will believe us: our action is justified in the future.
In the natural investigation we have undertaken we have merely anticipated Senator Ableukhov’s wish that an agent of the Secret Political Police Department should steadfastly follow the stranger’s steps; the good senator would himself take up the telephone receiver in order by means of it to convey his thought to the proper quarters; fortunately for him, he did not know the stranger’s abode (while we do know that abode).
We shall go and meet the senator; and for the time being let the lightminded agent kick his heels in his Department – we shall be the agent.

But wait, wait …

Have we not gone and put our foot in it?
I mean to say, what kind of agent are we?
There is an agent already.
And he is not asleep, my goodness, no, he is not asleep.
Our role has proved to be an idle role.

When the stranger vanished through the doors of the little restaurant and we were seized by a desire to follow there too, we turned round and caught sight of two silhouettes that were slowly cutting through the fog; one of the two silhouettes was rather fat and tall, clearly standing out by his build; but we could not discern the face of the silhouette (silhouettes do not have faces); all the same, we did make out: a new, opened, silk umbrella, dazzlingly shining galoshes and a semi-sealskin hat with earflaps.

The mangy little figure of a short-statured little gentleman constituted
the principal content of the second silhouette: the silhouette’s face was visible enough: but we did not manage to see this face either, for we were astonished by the hugeness of the wart on it: thus did facial
substantia
screen from us the insolent
accidentia
(as it is fitting that it should act in this world of shadows).

Making it appear as though we are looking into the clouds, we have let slip the dark couple, in front of the restaurant door that dark couple stopped and said a few words in human language:

‘Hm?’

‘Here …’

‘Just as I thought: precautions have been taken: that’s in case you didn’t show it to me by the bridge.’

‘And what precautions have you taken?’

‘Well, I’ve placed a man there, in the little restaurant.’

‘Oh, you’ve no business to go taking precautions!
Why, I’ve told you, told you: told you a hundred times …’

‘Forgive me, I did it out of zeal …’

‘You ought to have consulted me first … Your precautions are fine …’

‘You say so yourself …’

‘Yes, but your fine precautions …’

‘Hm …’

‘What?
… Your fine precautions will make a mess of it all …’

The couple went five paces, stopped; and again said a few words in human language.

‘Hm!
… I’ll have to … Hm!
… Wish you success now …’

‘Well what doubt can there be of it: the undertaking has been set like the mechanism of a clock; unless I stop this deed now, then, believe me as a friend: the deed is in the bag!’

‘Hm?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Damned head cold …’

‘But I’m talking about the deed …’

‘Hm …’

‘The souls are tuned like instruments: and make up the concert – what are you saying?
It remains for the conductor to brandish his
baton from the wings.
Senator Ableukhov must issue a circular, while the Elusive One is in for …’

‘Damned head cold.’

‘Nikolai Apollonovich is in for … In a word: a concert trio, where Russia is the pit.
Do you understand me?
Do you understand?
But why do you still say nothing?’

‘Listen: you ought to take a salary …’

‘No, you won’t understand me!’

‘I will: hm-hm-hm – you definitely don’t have enough handkerchiefs.’

‘What?’

‘But your cold!
… And the wild beast – hm-hm-hm – won’t go away?’

‘Well, where is there for him to …’

‘Well then, you should draw a salary …’

‘A salary!
I don’t work for a salary: I’m an artist, do you understand – an artist!’

‘Of a sort …’

‘What?’

‘Nothing: I’m curing myself with a tallow candle.’

The small figure took out its snot-covered handkerchief and again made a squelching sound with its nose.

‘But I’m talking about the deed!
Make sure you tell them that Nikolai Apollonovich has given a promise …’

‘A tallow candle is a marvellous remedy for a cold …’

‘Tell them all that you heard it from me: this deed has been set …’

‘In the evening you smear it on your nostrils, in the morning you’re as right as rain …’

‘The deed has been set, I tell you again, like the mech …’

‘Your nose is cleared, you breathe freely …’

‘Like the mechanism of a clock!’

‘Eh?’

‘The mechanism, the devil take it, of a clock.’

BOOK: Petersburg
5.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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