“After this my father sent me to the Cadet Corps military school, where I spent the whole time of my education, while he retired to a monastery in a secluded little town, surrounded by wilderness, where the poor North offered only a wild nature, and he solemnly took monastic vows. He bore all the heavy obligations of that office with such submissiveness and humility, he led his whole life of toil with such humility combined with enthusiasm and ardent faith, that apparently nothing criminal could have the power to touch him. But the terrible image with the living eyes, the image he himself had traced, persecuted him even in this almost tomblike seclusion. When the Father Superior learned of my father’s unusual talent as a painter, he charged him to decorate the church with some icons. One had to see with what lofty religious humility he labored over his work. In strict fasting and prayer, in deep meditation and seclusion of the soul he prepared for his feat. He spent whole nights over his holy depictions, and perhaps that is why you will rarely find works even by significant artists that would bear the stamp of such truly Christian feelings and thoughts. In his righteous men there was such heavenly tranquility, in his penitents such heartfelt grief, as I have very seldom encountered even in paintings by famous artists. Finally all his thoughts and desires were fixed on the goal of depicting the Divine Mother, meekly extending her arms over the praying people. He labored over this work with such self-sacrifice and such forgetfulness of himself and the whole world that a part of the tranquility that was poured out by his brush in the features of the divine protectress of the world seemed to have passed into his own soul. At least, the terrible image of the moneylender ceased to visit him, and the portrait disappeared, no one knew where.
“Meanwhile my education in the Cadet Corps ended. I graduated as an officer, but to my great regret, circumstances did not allow me to see my father. We were immediately sent to the army in the field, which, because of the war declared by the Turks, was located on the border.14 I will not bore you with stories about my life spent among campaigns, bivouacs, and hot skirmishes. Suffice it to say that labors, dangers, and a hot climate changed me completely, so that those who knew me before could not recognize me at all. My tanned face, huge mustache, and loud, hoarse voice gave me a completely different physiognomy. I was a merry fellow, never thought about tomorrow, loved to empty an extra bottle with a comrade, to talk nonsense with pretty girls, to let fall some foolish word without thinking about it—in short, I was a carefree military man. But as soon as the campaign was over, I considered it my first duty to visit my father.
“When I rode up to the secluded monastery, I was possessed by a strange feeling that I had never before experienced: I felt that I was still tied to one creature, that there was still something incomplete in my condition. The secluded monastery in the midst of a pale, bare nature induced a kind of poetic oblivion in me and gave a strange, indefinite direction to my thoughts, the kind we usually feel in the heart of autumn, when the leaves rustle under our feet, there is not a single leaf over our heads, the black branches appear as a sparse network, the ravens caw in the distant heights, and we involuntarily hasten our step as if trying to gather our scattered thoughts. A multitude of blackened wooden annexes surrounded the stone building. I entered under long galleries, rotted through in places, turned green with moss, which were located near the cells, and I asked for the monk Father Grigory. This was the name my father had taken when he became a monk.15 His cell was pointed out to me.
“I will never forget the impression he made on me. I saw an old man on whose pale, exhausted face there seemed to be not one feature, not one thought, of the earthly. His eyes, accustomed to being fixed toward heaven, had taken on the impassive look, permeated by an unearthly fire, that dawns on artists only in moments of inspiration. He was sitting motionless before me like a saint looking down onto the praying people from a canvas onto which the hand of an artist has transferred him; it seemed that he had not noticed me at all, although his eyes were turned in the direction from which I had entered his room. I did not want to reveal myself to him yet, and so I simply asked for his blessing like a travelling pilgrim; but what was my amazement when he said: ‘Greetings, my son, Leon!’ I was astounded by this: I had parted with him when I was only ten. Moreover, even people who had seen me not so long ago did not recognize me. ‘I knew that you would come to me,’ he continued. ‘I asked this of the Most Pure Virgin and the Holy Saint, and I was awaiting you with every passing hour, because I feel my end coming near and I want to reveal an important secret to you. Come, my son, and let us pray together first!’ We went into the church, and he led me up to a large painting depicting the Mother of God blessing the people. I was struck by the deep expression of divinity on her face. He lay for a long time cast down before the picture, and finally, after a long silence and meditation, he came out with me.
“Then my father recounted to me everything you have just heard. I believed the truth of the story because I myself was a witness to many sad incidents in our lives. ‘Now I will tell you, my son,’ he added after this story, ‘what was revealed to me by the saint who appeared to me, unrecognized by anyone but me in the midst of a large gathering of people, as I was honored by the merciful Creator with such an inexpressible blessing.’ At these words my father crossed his arms and fixed his eyes on heaven, completely devoted to Him with his whole being. And I finally heard that which I am now preparing to recount to you. You must not be amazed at the strangeness of his words. I saw that he was in that state of the soul that takes possession of a man when he experiences strong, unbearable misfortunes; when, wishing to gather all his strength, all the iron strength of his soul, and not finding it to be sufficiently powerful, he devotes himself entirely to religion, and the stronger the oppression of his misfortunes, the more ardent are his spiritual contemplations and prayers. He no longer resembles that quiet, meditative hermit who moored himself to his wilderness as if to a longed-for pier, with the desire to rest from life and to pray with Christian humility to the One to whom he has become closer and more accessible; on the contrary, he becomes something like a giant. The ardor of his soul has not been extinguished, but on the contrary strives and breaks out of him with greater strength. Then he turns entirely into a religious flame. His head is eternally filled with miraculous dreams. At every step he sees visions and hears revelations; his thoughts are white-hot; his eye no longer sees anything that belongs to the earth; all his movements, consequences of his eternal striving toward one thing, are filled with enthusiasm. From the very first I noted this state in him and I mention it so that the words I heard from him will not seem too amazing to you.
“ ‘My son!’ he said to me after a long, almost motionless fixing of his eyes toward heaven. ‘Soon, soon will come the time when the tempter of the human race, the Antichrist, will be born into the world. That time will be horrible. It will be right before the end of the world. He will gallop by on a giant steed, and great will be the torments endured by those who remain true to Christ. Listen, my son: The Antichrist has long wished to be born, but he cannot, because he must be born in a supernatural manner. But in our world everything has been arranged by the Omnipotent in such a way that everything happens in a natural order, and therefore no forces, my son, can help the Antichrist break through into the world. But our earth is dust before the Creator. According to His laws, it must collapse, and with each day the laws of nature will become weaker, and therefore the boundaries holding back the supernatural will become more pregnable. The Antichrist is being born even now, but only a certain part of him is striving to appear in the world. He chooses man himself as his dwelling and appears in those people whose angel seems to have forsaken them at their very birth and who are branded with a terrible hatred for people and for everything that is the work of the Creator. Such a one was that amazing moneylender whom I, accursed one, dared to depict with my criminal brush. It is he, my son, he was the Antichrist himself. If my criminal hand had not dared to depict him, he would have withdrawn and disappear
ed, because he could not live longer than the body in which he had confined himself. In those repulsive living eyes a demonic feeling was preserved. Be amazed, my son, at the horrible might of the demon. He tries to penetrate everything: our deeds, our thoughts, and even the very inspiration of the artist. Innumerable will be the victims of this hellish spirit, who lives invisibly, with no image, on the earth. It is that black spirit that breaks into us even in a moment of the most pure and holy meditations. Oh, if my brush had not stopped its hellish work, he would have done even more evil, and there are no human powers that can stand against him, because he chooses precisely the time when the greatest misfortunes befall us. Woe, my son, to poor humanity! But listen to what the Mother of God herself revealed to me in an hour of holy vision. When I was laboring over the depiction of the most pure visage of the Virgin Mary, shedding tears of repentance for my past life and abiding long in fasting and prayer, in order to be more worthy of depicting her divine features, I was visited, my son, by an inspiration, and I felt that a higher power dawned on me and an angel raised up my sinful hand, and I felt my hair start to move on my head, and my soul trembled all over. Oh, my son! For the sake of that moment I would take upon myself a thousand torments. And I myself marveled at what my brush had depicted. At that time the most pure visage of the Virgin appeared to me in a dream, and I learned that as a reward for my labors and prayers, the supernatural existence of that demon in the portrait would not be eternal, and if someone would solemnly recount his story after fifty years at the first new moon, his power would be extinguished and dispersed like dust, and that I could convey this to you right before my death. It has been thirty years that he has been living from that time; there are twenty years ahead. Let us pray, my son!’ At this he fell down on his knees and turned into nothing but prayer.
“I confess that internally I ascribed all these words to his inflamed imagination, heightened by ceaseless fasting and prayers, and therefore out of respect I did not wish to make any remark or comment. But when I saw how he raised his withered arms toward heaven, with what deep grief he fell silent, destroyed within himself, with what inexpressible tenderness he prayed for those who had not had the strength to withstand the hellish seducer and had destroyed everything lofty in their souls, with what passionate sorrow he prostrated himself, and how the speaking tears flowed down his face, and in all his features was expressed nothing but silent sobbing—oh! Then I did not have the strength to enter into cold reflection and to analyze his words.
“Several years passed after his death. I did not believe this story and did not even think much about it, but I could never recount it to anyone. I do not know why it was, but I always felt something holding me back. Today without any goal I dropped in to this auction and for the first time I told the story of this unusual portrait—so that I involuntarily begin to wonder whether today is that new moon about which my father spoke, because in fact twenty years have passed since that time.”
Here the narrator stopped, and the listeners who had heeded him with undistracted interest involuntarily turned their eyes to the strange portrait, and to their amazement noticed that its eyes no longer preserved that strange vitality that had so struck them at first. Their amazement increased still further when the features of the strange picture almost imperceptibly began to disappear, the way breath disappears from a pure steel surface. Something cloudy remained on the canvas. And when they went up closer to it, they saw an insignificant landscape. So the visitors, in leaving, wondered for a long time whether they had really seen the mysterious portrait, or whether it had been a daydream that had appeared for an instant to eyes wearied by long inspection of old paintings.
1835
Nevsky Avenue
There is nothing better than Nevsky Avenue, at least in St. Petersburg. For St. Petersburg it is everything. This street shines in every way—it’s the beauty of our capital city! I know that not one of the city’s pale civil service inhabitants would exchange Nevsky Avenue for all possible blessings. It’s not only the man who is twenty-five years of age, who has a splendid mustache and an amazingly well-tailored frock coat, who’s enraptured with Nevsky Avenue, but even the man who has white whiskers sprouting from his chin and a head as smooth as a silver platter.1 And the ladies! Oh, the ladies find Nevsky Avenue even more pleasing. And who doesn’t find it pleasing? The moment you ascend to Nevsky Avenue, you catch the scent of pure promenading. Even if you have some necessary, obligatory business to do, as soon as you ascend to the avenue, you will surely forget all about your business. This is the only place where people appear not out of obligation, where they have not been driven by necessity and the mercantile interest that enfolds all of St. Petersburg. It seems that a person you encounter on Nevsky Avenue is less of an egoist than the ones you meet on Morskaya, Gorokhovaya, Liteinaya, Meshchanskaya, and other streets, where avarice and greed and necessity are expressed on both pedestrians and the people flying by in coaches and droshkies.2 Nevsky Avenue is St. Petersburg’s universal means of communication. The inhabitant of the Petersburg Side or Vyborg District who has not visited his friend who lives in Peski or the Moscow Turnpike neighborhood for several years can be assured that he will meet him here without fail.3 No address directory or inquiry office can supply such reliable information as Nevsky Avenue. All-powerful Nevsky Avenue! The sole entertainment available in St. Petersburg, so poor in outdoor amusements!4 How cleanly its sidewalks are swept, and my God, how many feet have left their traces on it! The clumsy, muddy boot of a retired soldier, under whose weight it seems the very granite cracks; and the miniature slipper, light as smoke, of a young lady who turns her little head to the shining windows of a store the way a sunflower turns to the sun; and the clanking saber of a hope-filled ensign, which makes a sharp scratch on it—everyone vents on it the power of strength or the power of weakness. What a rapid phantasmagoria takes place on it in the course of a single day! How many changes it undergoes in the course of only twenty-four hours!
Let us begin with the very earliest morning, when all of St. Petersburg smells of hot, freshly baked bread, and the city is filled with old women in tattered dresses and mantles, who are carrying out their raids on the churches and on compassionate passersby. Then Nevsky Avenue is empty. The solid store proprietors and their clerks are still sleeping in their fine linen nightshirts or lathering their noble cheeks and drinking coffee; beggars are gathering at the doors of the pastry shops, where a sleepy Ganymede, who yesterday flitted around like a fly with cups of hot chocolate, comes crawling out with a broom in his hand, without a tie, and tosses them stale pies and scraps.5 Impoverished people trudge along the streets: Sometimes the avenue is crossed by Russian peasants, hurrying to work, in boots spattered with lime, boots that could not be washed clean even by the waters of the Catherine Canal, famous for its purity.6 It is usually indecent for ladies to walk at that time, because the Russian common folk like to employ harsh expressions of the sort that the ladies will probably never hear even in the theater. Sometimes a sleepy civil servant will trudge by with a portfolio under his arm, if his route to the Department lies across Nevsky Avenue. One may state decisively that at that time, that is, before twelve o’clock, Nevsky Avenue is not anyone’s goal, it serves only as a means: It gradually fills with persons who have their own occupations, their own worries, their own annoyances, but who are not thinking about the avenue at all. The Russian peasant is talking about a ten-kopeck piece or seven two-kopeck copper coins, old men and old women are gesticulating or talking to themselves, sometimes with dramatic gestures, but no one listens to them or laughs at them, with the sole exception, perhaps, of the urchins in coarse motley smocks, carrying empty liter flasks or finished boots, who run along Nevsky Avenue like lightning.7 At that time, no matter what you wear, even if you have a peaked cap on instead of a hat, even if your collar is sticking up too far out of your necktie—no one will notice.
At twelve o’clock, tutors of all nations make their incursions onto Nevsky Avenue wit
h their charges in cambric collars. English Joneses and French Coques walk arm in arm with the charges that have been entrusted to their parental care and explain to them with seemly solidity that the signs over the stores are made so that by means of them one might learn what is located in the stores themselves. Governesses—pale English misses and rosy Slavs—walk majestically behind the slight, fidgety girls in their care, ordering them to raise their shoulders a little higher and to stand up straighter. In short, at this time Nevsky Avenue is a pedagogical Nevsky Avenue. But the closer it gets to two o’clock, the fewer the tutors, pedagogues, and children. They are finally displaced by their affectionate sires, who walk arm in arm with their variegated, multicolored, weak-nerved helpmates. Little by little their company is joined by all those who have completed their important domestic tasks, such as: talking to their doctor about the weather and about a small pimple that has popped up on their nose; inquiring about the health of their horses and their children, who by the way display great talents; reading a theater poster and an important article in the newspapers about the personages who have arrived and departed; and finally drinking a cup of coffee and tea. They are also joined by those whom an enviable fate has endowed with the blessed rank of civil servant on special commission. They are also joined by those who serve in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs and who are distinguished by the nobility of their occupations and habits. My God, what splendid posts and offices there are! How they elevate and delight the soul! But, alas! I am not in the civil service and have been deprived of the pleasure of seeing how elegantly the supervisors treat themselves.
The Nose and Other Stories Page 13