The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  He stepped gingerly up to a mirror and looked.

  “What an infernal face!” he exclaimed, and spat with disgust. “If there were only something there instead of the nose, but there is absolutely nothing.”

  He bit his lips with vexation, left the confectioner’s, and resolved, quite contrary to his habit, neither to look nor smile at anyone on the street. Suddenly he halted as if rooted to the spot before a door, where something extraordinary happened. A carriage drew up at the entrance; the carriage door was opened, and a gentleman in uniform came out and hurried up the steps. How great was Kovaloff’s terror and astonishment when he saw that it was his own nose!

  At this extraordinary sight, everything seemed to turn around with him. He felt as though he could hardly keep upright on his legs; but, though trembling all over as though with fever, he resolved to wait till the nose should return to the carriage. After about two minutes the nose actually came out again. It wore a gold-embroidered uniform with a stiff, high collar, trousers of chamois leather, and a sword hanging at its side. The hat, adorned with a plume, showed that it held the rank of a state councillor. It was obvious that it was paying “duty calls.” It looked around on both sides, called to the coachman “Drive on,” and got into the carriage, which drove away.

  Poor Kovaloff nearly lost his reason. He did not know what to think of this extraordinary procedure. And indeed how was it possible that the nose, which only yesterday he had on his face, and which could neither walk nor drive, should wear a uniform. He ran after the carriage, which fortunately had stopped a short way off before the Grand Bazar of Moscow. He hurried toward it and pressed through a crowd of beggar women with their faces bound up, leaving only two openings for the eyes, over whom he had formerly so often made merry.

  There were only a few people in front of the Bazar. Kovaloff was so agitated that he could decide on nothing, and looked for the nose everywhere. At last he saw it standing before a shop. It seemed half buried in its stiff collar, and was attentively inspecting the wares displayed.

  “How can I get at it?” thought Kovaloff. “Everything—the uniform, the hat, and so on—show that it is a state councillor. How the deuce has that happened?”

  He began to cough discreetly near it, but the nose paid him not the least attention.

  “Honorable sir,” said Kovaloff at last, plucking up courage, “honorable sir.”

  “What do you want?” asked the nose, and turned around.

  “It seems to me strange, most respected sir—you should know where you belong—and I find you all of a sudden—where? Judge yourself.”

  “Pardon me, I do not understand what you are talking about. Explain yourself more distinctly.”

  “How shall I make my meaning plainer to him?” Then plucking up fresh courage, he continued, “Naturally—besides I am a Major. You must admit it is not befitting that I should go about without a nose. An old apple woman on the Ascension Bridge may carry on her business without one, but since I am on the lookout for a post; besides in many houses I am acquainted with ladies of high position—Madame Tchektyriev, wife of a state councillor, and many others. So you see—I do not know, honorable sir, what you—” (here the Major shrugged his shoulders). “Pardon me; if one regards the matter from the point of view of duty and honor—you will yourself understand—”

  “I understand nothing,” answered the nose. “I repeat, please explain yourself more distinctly.”

  “Honorable sir,” said Kovaloff with dignity, “I do not know how I am to understand your words. It seems to me the matter is as clear as possible. Or do you wish—but you are after all my own nose!”

  The nose looked at the Major and wrinkled its forehead. “There you are wrong, respected sir; I am myself. Besides, there can be no close relations between us. To judge by the buttons of your uniform, you must be in quite a different department to mine.” So saying, the nose turned away.

  Kovaloff was completely puzzled; he did not know what to do, and still less what to think. At this moment he heard the pleasant rustling of a lady’s dress, and there approached an elderly lady wearing a quantity of lace, and by her side her graceful daughter in a white dress that set off her slender figure to advantage, and wearing a light straw hat. Behind the ladies marched a tall lackey with long whiskers.

  Kovaloff advanced a few steps, adjusted his cambric collar, arranged his seals that hung by a little gold chain, and with smiling face fixed his eyes on the graceful lady, who bowed lightly like a spring flower, and raised to her brow her little white hand with transparent fingers. He smiled still more when he spied under the brim of her hat her little round chin, and part of her cheek faintly tinted with rose color. But suddenly he sprang back as though he had been scorched. He remembered that he had nothing but an absolute blank in place of a nose, and tears started to his eyes. He turned around in order to tell the gentleman in uniform that he was only a state councillor in appearance, but really a scoundrel and a rascal, and nothing else but his own nose; but the nose was no longer there. He had had time to go, doubtless in order to continue his visits.

  His disappearance plunged Kovaloff into despair. He went back and stood for a moment under a colonnade, looking around him on all sides in hope of perceiving the nose somewhere. He remembered very well that it wore a hat with a plume in it and a gold-embroidered uniform; but he had not noticed the shape of the cloak, nor the color of the carriages and the horses, nor even whether a lackey stood behind it, and, if so, what sort of livery he wore. Moreover, so many carriages were passing that it would have been difficult to recognize one, and even if he had done so, there would have been no means of stopping it.

  The day was fine and sunny. An immense crowd was passing to and fro in the Neffsky Avenue; a variegated stream of ladies flowed along the pavement. There was his acquaintance, the Privy Councillor, whom he was accustomed to style “General,” especially when strangers were present. There was Iarygin, his intimate friend who always lost in the evenings at whist; and there another Major, who had obtained the rank of committeeman in the Caucasus, beckoned to him.

  “Go to the deuce!” said Kovaloff sotto voce. “Hi! coachman, drive me straight to the superintendent of police.” He got into a droshky and continued to shout to the coachman “Drive hard!”

  “Is the police superintendent at home?” he asked on entering the front hall.

  “No, sir,” answered the porter, “he has just gone out.”

  “Ah, just as I thought!”

  “Yes,” continued the porter, “he has only just gone out; if you had been a moment earlier you would perhaps have caught him.”

  Kovaloff, still holding his handkerchief to his face, reentered the droshky and cried in a despairing voice “Drive on!”

  “Where?” asked the coachman.

  “Straight on!”

  “But how? There are crossroads here. Shall I go to the right or the left?”

  This question made Kovaloff reflect. In his situation it was necessary to have recourse to the police; not because the affair had anything to do with them directly but because they acted more promptly than other authorities. As for demanding any explanation from the department to which the nose claimed to belong, it would, he felt, be useless, for the answers of that gentleman showed that he regarded nothing as sacred, and he might just as likely have lied in this matter as in saying that he had never seen Kovaloff.

  But just as he was about to order the coachman to drive to the police station, the idea occurred to him that this rascally scoundrel who, at their first meeting, had behaved so disloyally toward him, might, profiting by the delay, quit the city secretly; and then all his searching would be in vain, or might last over a whole month. Finally, as though visited with a heavenly inspiration, he resolved to go directly to an advertisement office, and to advertise the loss of his nose, giving all its distinctive character
istics in detail, so that anyone who found it might bring it at once to him, or at any rate inform him where it lived. Having decided on this course, he ordered the coachman to drive to the advertisement office, and all the way he continued to punch him in the back—“Quick, scoundrel! quick!”

  “Yes, sir!” answered the coachman, lashing his shaggy horse with the reins.

  At last they arrived, and Kovaloff, out of breath, rushed into a little room where a gray-haired official, in an old coat and with spectacles on his nose, sat at a table holding his pen between his teeth, counting a heap of copper coins.

  “Who takes in the advertisements here?” exclaimed Kovaloff.

  “At your service, sir,” answered the gray-haired functionary, looking up and then fastening his eyes again on the heap of coins before him.

  “I wish to place an advertisement in your paper—”

  “Have the kindness to wait a minute,” answered the official, putting down figures on paper with one hand, and with the other moving two balls on his calculating frame.

  A lackey, whose silver-laced coat showed that he served in one of the houses of the nobility, was standing by the table with a note in his hand, and speaking in a lively tone, by way of showing himself sociable. “Would you believe it, sir, this little dog is really not worth twenty-four kopecks, and for my own part I would not give a farthing for it; but the countess is quite gone upon it, and offers a hundred roubles’ reward to anyone who finds it. To tell you the truth, the tastes of these people are very different from ours; they don’t mind giving five hundred or a thousand roubles for a poodle or a pointer, provided it be a good one.”

  The official listened with a serious air while counting the number of letters contained in the note. At either side of the table stood a number of housekeepers, clerks, and porters, carrying notes. The writer of one wished to sell a barouche, which had been brought from Paris in 1814 and had been very little used; others wanted to dispose of a strong droshky that lacked one spring, a spirited horse seventeen years old, and so on. The room where these people were collected was very small, and the air was very close; but Kovaloff was not affected by it, for he had covered his face with a handkerchief, and because his nose itself was heaven knew where.

  “Sir, allow me to ask you—I am in a great hurry,” he said at last impatiently.

  “In a moment! In a moment! Two roubles, twenty-four kopecks—one minute! One rouble, sixty-four kopecks!” said the gray-haired official, throwing their notes back to the housekeepers and porters. “What do you wish?” he said, turning to Kovaloff.

  “I wish—” answered the latter, “I have just been swindled and cheated, and I cannot get hold of the perpetrator. I only want you to insert an advertisement to say that whoever brings this scoundrel to me will be well rewarded.”

  “What is your name, please?”

  “Why do you want my name? I have many lady friends—Madame Tchektyriev, wife of a state councillor, Madame Podtotchina, wife of a Colonel. Heaven forbid that they should get to hear of it. You can simply write ‘committeeman,’ or, better, ‘Major.’ ”

  “And the man who has run away is your serf.”

  “Serf! If he was, it would not be such a great swindle! It is the nose which has absconded.”

  “H’m! What a strange name. And this Mr. Nose has stolen from you a considerable sum?”

  “Mr. Nose! Ah, you don’t understand me! It is my own nose which has gone, I don’t know where. The devil has played a trick on me.”

  “How has it disappeared? I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t tell you how, but the important point is that now it walks about the city itself a state councillor. That is why I want you to advertise that whoever gets hold of it should bring it as soon as possible to me. Consider; how can I live without such a prominent part of my body? It is not as if it were merely a little toe; I would only have to put my foot in my boot and no one would notice its absence. Every Thursday I call on the wife of M. Tchektyriev, the state councillor; Madame Podtotchina, a Colonel’s wife who has a very pretty daughter, is one of my acquaintances; and what am I to do now? I cannot appear before them like this.”

  The official compressed his lips and reflected. “No, I cannot insert an advertisement like that,” he said after a long pause.

  “What! Why not?”

  “Because it might compromise the paper. Suppose everyone could advertise that his nose was lost. People already say that all sorts of nonsense and lies are inserted.”

  “But this is not nonsense! There is nothing of that sort in my case.”

  “You think so? Listen a minute. Last week there was a case very like it. An official came, just as you have done, bringing an advertisement for the insertion of which he paid two roubles, sixty-three kopecks; and this advertisement simply announced the loss of a black-haired poodle. There did not seem to be anything out of the way in it, but it was really a satire; by the poodle was meant the cashier of some establishment or other.”

  “But I am not talking of a poodle, but my own nose; i.e. almost myself.”

  “No, I cannot insert your advertisement.”

  “But my nose really has disappeared!”

  “That is a matter for a doctor. There are said to be people who can provide you with any kind of nose you like. But I see that you are a witty man, and like to have your little joke.”

  “But I swear to you on my word of honor. Look at my face yourself.”

  “Why put yourself out?” continued the official, taking a pinch of snuff. “All the same, if you don’t mind,” he added with a touch of curiosity, “I should like to have a look at it.”

  The committeeman removed the handkerchief from before his face.

  “It certainly does look odd,” said the official. “It is perfectly flat like a freshly fried pancake. It is hardly credible.”

  “Very well. Are you going to hesitate anymore? You see it is impossible to refuse to advertise my loss. I shall be particularly obliged to you, and I shall be glad that this incident has procured me the pleasure of making your acquaintance.” The Major, we see, did not even shrink from a slight humiliation.

  “It certainly is not difficult to advertise it,” replied the official; “but I don’t see what good it would do you. However, if you lay so much stress on it, you should apply to someone who has a skillful pen, so that he may describe it as a curious, natural freak, and publish the article in the Northern Bee” (here he took another pinch) “for the benefit of youthful readers” (he wiped his nose), “or simply as a matter worthy of arousing public curiosity.”

  The committeeman felt completely discouraged. He let his eyes fall absentmindedly on a daily paper in which theatrical performances were advertised. Reading there the name of an actress whom he knew to be pretty, he involuntarily smiled, and his hand sought his pocket to see if he had a blue ticket—for in Kovaloff’s opinion superior officers like himself should not take a lesser-priced seat; but the thought of his lost nose suddenly spoiled everything.

  The official himself seemed touched at his difficult position. Desiring to console him, he tried to express his sympathy by a few polite words. “I much regret,” he said, “your extraordinary mishap. Will you not try a pinch of snuff? It clears the head, banishes depression, and is a good preventive against hemorrhoids.”

  So saying, he reached his snuffbox out to Kovaloff, skillfully concealing at the same time the cover, which was adorned with the portrait of some lady or other.

  This act, quite innocent in itself, exasperated Kovaloff. “I don’t understand what you find to joke about in the matter,” he exclaimed angrily. “Don’t you see that I lack precisely the essential feature for taking snuff? The devil take your snuffbox. I don’t want to look at snuff now, not even the best, certainly not your vile stuff!”

  So saying, he left th
e advertisement office in a state of profound irritation, and went to the commissary of police. He arrived just as this dignitary was reclining on his couch, and saying to himself with a sigh of satisfaction, “Yes, I shall make a nice little sum out of that.”

  It might be expected, therefore, that the committeeman’s visit would be quite inopportune.

  This police commissary was a great patron of all the arts and industries; but what he liked above everything else was a check. “It is a thing,” he used to say, “to which it is not easy to find an equivalent; it requires no food, it does not take up much room, it stays in one’s pocket, and if it falls, it is not broken.”

  The commissary accorded Kovaloff a fairly frigid reception, saying that the afternoon was not the best time to come with a case, that nature required one to rest a little after eating (this showed the committeeman that the commissary was acquainted with the aphorisms of the ancient sages), and that respectable people did not have their noses stolen.

  The last allusion was too direct. We must remember that Kovaloff was a very sensitive man. He did not mind anything said against him as an individual, but he could not endure any reflection on his rank or social position. He even believed that in comedies one might allow attacks on junior officers, but never on their seniors.

  The commissary’s reception of him hurt his feelings so much that he raised his head proudly, and said with dignity, “After such insulting expressions on your part, I have nothing more to say.” And he left the place.

  He reached his house quite wearied out. It was already growing dark. After all his fruitless search, his room seemed to him melancholy and even ugly. In the vestibule he saw his valet Ivan stretched on the leather couch and amusing himself by spitting at the ceiling, which he did very cleverly, hitting every time the same spot. His servant’s equanimity enraged him; he struck him on the forehead with his hat, and said, “You good-for-nothing, you are always playing the fool!”