My God, where had he come to! At first he didn’t want to believe it and began to scrutinize more closely the objects that filled the room, but the bare walls and the uncurtained windows showed no sign of the presence of a careful housewife; the raddled faces of these pitiful creatures, one of whom sat down almost right in front of his nose and looked him over just as calmly as if he were a stain on a stranger’s clothes—all of this convinced him that he had come to that revolting refuge where pitiful debauchery has made its home base, debauchery engendered by the meretricious civilization and terrible overpopulation of the capital city. It was that refuge where man has blasphemously crushed and ridiculed everything pure and holy that adorns life, where woman, that beauty of the world, the crown of creation, has been turned into a strange, ambiguous being, where together with the purity of her soul she has been deprived of everything feminine, has revoltingly adopted the manners and insolence of a man, and has ceased to be that weak, splendid being who is so different from us. Piskaryov measured her from head to foot with amazed eyes, as if still not convinced that she was really the same person who had cast such a spell on him and carried him away on Nevsky Avenue. But she stood before him just as beautiful; her hair was just as splendid; her eyes still seemed heavenly to him. She was fresh; she was only seventeen years old; it was obvious that horrible debauchery had only recently overtaken her; it still had not dared to touch her cheeks, they were fresh and slightly shaded by a subtle rosiness—she was splendidly beautiful.
He stood motionless before her and was ready to start daydreaming just as naively as he had before. But the beauty got bored by his long silence and gave him a significant smile, looking straight into his eyes. This smile was filled with a sort of pitiful insolence. It was just as strange and just as inappropriate to her face as an expression of piety is to the ugly mug of a bribe taker or a bookkeeper’s ledger is to a poet. He shuddered. She opened her pretty mouth and started saying something, but it was all so stupid, so vulgar… As if a person’s intellect abandons them along with their chastity. He did not want to hear any more. He was extremely ridiculous and as simple as a little child. Instead of taking advantage of her good favor, instead of rejoicing at such a chance, as no doubt any other man would have rejoiced in his place, he took to his heels at full speed, like a wild goat, and ran out into the street.
Hanging his head in despair, he sat in his room like a pauper who has found a priceless pearl and immediately dropped it into the sea. “Such a beauty, such divine features—and where? In what kind of place!” That is all he was able to utter.
Indeed, we are never so powerfully overcome by pity as when we see beauty touched by the pestilential breath of debauchery. Let ugliness make friends with it, but beauty, tender beauty… in our thoughts it can only be merged with chastity and purity. The beautiful woman who had cast such a spell on poor Piskaryov was in fact a miraculous, unusual phenomenon. Her residence in that contemptible realm seemed even more unusual. All her features were so purely formed, the whole expression of her splendid face was marked by such nobility, that it was impossible to think that debauchery had unsheathed its terrible claws over her. She would have been the priceless pearl, the whole world, the whole paradise, the whole wealth of her passionate spouse. She would have been a splendid, quiet star in an obscure family circle, and with one movement of her splendid lips she would have given sweet orders. She would have been a divinity in a crowded hall, on a bright parquet floor, by shining candlelight, receiving the silent homage of the crowd of admirers lying prostrate at her feet. But, alas! By the horrible will of the hellish spirit that thirsts to destroy the harmony of life, she had been cast with a guffaw into his abyss.
Imbued with tormenting pity, he sat before his candle with its burnt wick. Midnight had long passed, the tower bell pealed half past twelve, and he sat motionless, sleepless, without active wakefulness. Somnolence, taking advantage of his motionlessness, had already begun to quietly overcome him, the room had already begun to disappear, only the light of the candle glimmered through the reveries that were overcoming him, when suddenly a knock at the door caused him to shudder and come to. The door opened, and a footman in a rich livery entered. A rich livery had never peeped into his lonely room, moreover at such an unusual hour… He was bewildered and looked at the footman with impatient curiosity.
“The lady,” the footman said with a polite bow, “whose home you were good enough to visit a few hours ago, has ordered me to invite you to come see her and has sent a coach for you.”
Piskaryov stood there in silent amazement, thinking, “A coach, a footman in livery! No, there must be some mistake…”
“Listen, my dear man,” he said timidly. “You have probably come to the wrong place. No doubt the lady sent you to get someone else, not me.”
“No, sir, I am not mistaken. Was it not you who were good enough to accompany my lady on foot to her home which is on Liteinaya Street, in a room on the fourth floor?”
“It was.”
“Well then, please come quickly, my lady wishes to see you without fail and asks you to come to see her at her house.”
Piskaryov ran down the stairs. Indeed a coach was waiting outside. He got in, the doors slammed, the stones of the roadway thundered under the wheels and the hooves—and an illuminated perspective of buildings with bright signs rushed past the coach windows. Piskaryov was thinking the whole way and could not figure out this incident. Her own house, the coach, the footman in rich livery—he simply could not reconcile all this with the room on the fourth floor, the dusty windows, and the out-of-tune piano.
The coach stopped at a brightly illuminated entrance, and he was immediately impressed: a row of equipages, the talking of coachmen, brightly illuminated windows, and the sounds of music. The footman in rich livery helped him out of the coach and respectfully accompanied him into the entryway flanked by marble columns, with a doorman dripping with gold, with cloaks and fur coats thrown about, with a bright lamp. An airy staircase with shining banisters, perfumed with fragrances, led upward. He was already on it, he had already ascended into the first ballroom, where he became frightened and lurched backward at his first step because of the horrible crowd. The unusually motley collection of faces caused him acute consternation: It seemed to him that a demon had crumbled the whole world into a multitude of various pieces and had mixed them all together with no meaning or sense. Gleaming ladies’ shoulders and black tailcoats, chandeliers, lamps, airy flying gauze, ethereal ribbons, and a fat contrabass peeping out from behind the railings of the magnificent music gallery—everything looked brilliant to him. He saw all at one time so many respectable old men and half-old men with stars on their tailcoats, ladies who stepped onto the parquet floor so lightly, proudly, and gracefully, or who were sitting in rows, he heard so many French and English words, and the young men in black tailcoats were filled with such nobility, they spoke and were silent with such dignity, they were so skilled at saying nothing superfluous, they joked so majestically, they smiled so respectfully, they had such superb whiskers, they were so skilled at showing off their excellent hands when they adjusted their neckties, the ladies were so airy, so plunged into perfect self-satisfaction and rapture, they lowered their eyes so enchantingly, that… but the humbled look of Piskaryov as he leaned on a column in fear showed at a glance that he had completely lost his bearings.
At that time the crowd had surrounded a dancing group. They flew about, entwined by the transparent creations of Paris, in dresses woven of air itself; their glittering little feet carelessly touched the parquet and were more ethereal than if they had not touched it at all. But one of them was more beautiful than them all, more sumptuously and brilliantly dressed. An inexpressible, most subtle combination of taste was spilled all over her attire, and nevertheless it seemed as if she had not given it a care and it had just poured out involuntarily all by itself. She both looked and did not look at the surrounding crowd of spectators, her splendid long eyelashes were indiffere
ntly lowered, and the glittering whiteness of her face was even more blinding when a slight shadow lay on her charming brow as she bowed her head.
Piskaryov made every effort to move the crowd aside and scrutinize her, but to his great annoyance, a huge head with dark curly hair kept blocking his view, and the crowd was pressing on him so that he did not dare to move either forward or back, fearing that he might somehow shove a privy councillor. But now he had finally managed to make his way forward and looked at his clothes in order to put them into seemly order. Heavenly Creator, what is this! He was wearing a frock coat that was all splattered with paint: In his hurry to leave, he had forgotten to change into a decorous outfit. He blushed up to his ears, lowered his head, and wanted to disappear, but there was nowhere he could disappear to: Gentlemen of the bedchamber in brilliant costume had moved together behind him to form a solid wall.14 Now he wanted to be as far away as possible from the beautiful woman with the splendid brow and eyelashes. In terror he raised his eyes to see whether she was looking at him: My God! She was standing before him… But what is this? What is this? “It’s her!” he cried, almost at the top of his voice. In fact, it was her, the same woman he had encountered on Nevsky and accompanied to her dwelling.
Meanwhile she raised her eyelashes and looked at everyone with her clear gaze. “Oh my, oh my, how beautiful!” was all he could utter with bated breath. She cast her eyes over the whole circle of people, who were thirstily vying to catch her attention, but she quickly averted her eyes with fatigue and inattention and met the eyes of Piskaryov. Oh, what heaven! What paradise! Creator, give me the strength to bear it! Life cannot contain this, it will destroy and carry off my soul! She gave a sign, not with her hand, not with the bowing of her head, no, in her shattering eyes the sign was expressed by such a subtle, unnoticeable expression that no one could have seen it, but he saw it, he understood it. The dance went on for a long time; the exhausted music seemed to be going out, dying away, and then it would break out again, squealing and thundering; finally—the end! She sat down, her breast rose under the fine smoke of gauze; her hand (oh, Creator, what a miraculous hand!) fell onto her knees, crushed her airy dress, and the dress seemed to breathe music, and its subtle lilac color set off the bright whiteness of that splendid hand still more visibly. If he could only touch it—and nothing more! No other desires—they were all too impertinent… He stood behind her chair, not daring to speak, not daring to breathe.
“Were you bored?” she said. “I was also bored. I see that you hate me…” she added, lowering her long eyelashes.
“Hate you! Me? I…” Piskaryov, utterly bewildered, wanted to say, and he would probably have uttered a heap of incoherent words, but at that moment a chamberlain approached with witty, pleasant remarks, with a beautifully curled forelock on his head. He pleasantly displayed a row of rather handsome teeth and with each of his sharp witticisms he drove a sharp nail into Piskaryov’s heart. At last, luckily, one of the people standing by addressed some question to the chamberlain.
“How unbearable this is!” she said, raising her heavenly eyes to him. “I’ll take a seat at the other end of the room; meet me there!”
She slipped through the crowd and disappeared. He pushed the crowd aside like a maniac and was already there.
So, it was her! She was sitting there like a queen, more beautiful than anyone, more splendid than anyone, and was trying to catch sight of him.
“You are here,” she said quietly. “I will be frank with you: The circumstances of our meeting probably seemed strange to you. Do you really think that I could belong to that contemptible class of creatures in which you encountered me? My actions will seem strange to you, but I will reveal a secret to you: Will you be capable,” she said, gazing at him fixedly, “of never betraying it?”
“Oh, yes! Yes! Yes!”
But at that moment an elderly man came up, started talking to her in a language Piskaryov didn’t understand, and offered her his arm. She looked at Piskaryov with a pleading glance and gave him a sign to stay where he was and await her return, but in a fit of impatience he was incapable of obeying any orders even from her lips. He set off after her, but the crowd separated them. He could no longer see the lilac dress. He passed anxiously through room after room and mercilessly shoved aside everyone he met, but in all the rooms were sitting big shots playing whist, plunged into deathlike silence. In one corner of the room a few elderly men were arguing about the advantages of military service over civil service; in another, some people in superb tailcoats were tossing off light remarks about the multivolume works of a hard-working poet. Piskaryov felt an elderly man with a respectable appearance grab the button of his tailcoat and offer for his consideration a most judicious remark, but he rudely shoved him aside, not even noticing that he had a fairly significant decoration around his neck. Piskaryov ran into another room—and she was not there. Into a third—she was not there either. “Where can she be? Give her to me! Oh, I cannot live without catching a glimpse of her! I want to hear out what she had to say”—but all his searching was in vain. Agitated, exhausted, he huddled into a corner and looked at the crowd, but his strained eyes started to present everything to him in a kind of unclear form. Finally he could quite distinctly see the walls of his own room. He raised his eyes; before him stood the candlestick with the fire almost gone out deep inside it. The whole candle had melted away; the tallow had spilled onto his table.
So he had been sleeping! My God, what a dream! Why did he have to wake up? Why couldn’t he have waited just one more minute? She would surely have appeared again! The annoying light of day looked into his windows with its unpleasant, dull radiance. The room was in such gray, turbid disorder… Oh, how revolting reality is! How can it compare with a dream? He quickly got undressed, lay down in bed, and wrapped himself up in the blanket, wishing to summon for a moment the dream that had flown away. Sleep did in fact come without delay, but it presented to him something quite different from what he wanted to see: First Lieutenant Pirogov appeared with a pipe, then the Academy watchman, then an actual state councillor, then the head of a Finnish woman whose portrait he had once wanted to paint, and other such nonsense.
He lay in bed right up to noontime, wishing to fall asleep, but she did not appear. If only she would show her splendid features for a moment, if only her light step would rustle for a moment, if only her bare arm, as bright as empyrean snow, would flash before his eyes.
Casting everything aside, forgetting everything, he sat looking crushed and hopeless, full of nothing but a single dream. He had no desire to touch anything. Without interest, without life, his eyes looked out the window into the courtyard, where a dirty water carrier was pouring water that froze as soon as it hit the air, and the goaty voice of a peddler rattled: “Old clothes for sale.” Everyday things and actual things struck his hearing strangely. He sat like that right until evening and then jumped eagerly into bed. He struggled with sleeplessness for a long time, and finally overcame it. Again he had a dream, a vulgar, nasty dream. “My God, have mercy: Show her to me at least for a moment, just one moment!” He again waited for evening, again fell asleep, again dreamed of a civil servant who was both a civil servant and a bassoon; oh, this was intolerable! Finally she appeared! Her little head and her ringlets… she was looking… Oh, for so short a time! Again a fog, again some stupid dream.
Finally dreams became his life, and from that time his whole life took a strange turn. One might say that he slept while he was awake and stayed awake while he was asleep. If anyone had seen him sitting silently in front of an empty table or walking along the street, they would probably have taken him for a lunatic or someone destroyed by strong drink. His gaze was devoid of any significance, his natural absentmindedness had finally expanded and had imperiously banished all feelings and movements from his face. He came to life only as night set in.
This condition disordered his energies, and his most horrible torment was that finally sleep began to abandon him entirely. W
ishing to save sleep, his only source of wealth, he employed all possible means to restore it. He had heard that there was a means for restoring sleep—all one had to do was to take opium. But where could he get this opium? He remembered a certain Persian, the owner of a store that sold shawls, who when they met almost always asked him to paint a beautiful woman for him. Piskaryov resolved to go see him, supposing that he would no doubt have some of this opium. The Persian received him sitting on a divan with his legs crossed under him.
“What do you need opium for?” he asked.
Piskaryov told him about his insomnia.
“Fine, I’ll give you some opium, but just paint me a beautiful woman. She should be a really fine beauty! Her eyebrows should be black and her eyes as large as olives, and I should be lying next to her and smoking a pipe! Do you hear? She should be fine! She should be a beauty!”15
Piskaryov promised to do it all. The Persian left for a moment and returned with a little jar filled with a dark liquid, poured part of it into another jar and gave it to Piskaryov with the instruction that he use no more than seven drops dissolved in water. He eagerly grabbed the precious jar, which he would not have traded for a pile of gold, and ran home as fast as he could.
When he got home, he poured a few drops into a glass of water, swallowed it, and collapsed into his bed to fall asleep.
The Nose and Other Stories Page 15