“I wish to publish…”
“Permit me. Please wait a moment,” the clerk said, writing a number on a piece of paper with one hand and moving two beads on an abacus with the fingers of his left hand.
A footman with braiding on his livery, whose appearance showed that he resided in an aristocratic home, was standing by the desk with a note in his hands, and considered it seemly to display his sociability: “Would you believe it, sir, the little doggie isn’t worth eighty kopecks, at least I wouldn’t pay even four kopecks for it; but the Countess loves it, honest to God, she loves it—and so the person who finds it will get a hundred rubles! If we’re talking in a seemly way, the way you and I are talking right now, people really don’t share their tastes in common. If you’re a dog fancier, then get a pointer or a poodle. Don’t begrudge five hundred rubles, pay a thousand, but you should get a good dog for that.”
The estimable clerk listened to this with a dignified air and at the same time was calculating how many letters there were in the note the footman had brought. To either side stood a multitude of old women, merchants’ clerks, and yard sweepers, all holding notes. In one it was stated that a coachman of sober conduct was being offered for service; another offered to sell a gently used carriage that had been exported from Paris in 1814; another was offering a nineteen-year-old serving girl trained for laundry work and good for other types of work as well; a durable droshky missing all its springs; a fiery young dapple-gray horse, seventeen years of age; new turnip and radish seeds received from London; a country villa with all the appurtenances: two horse stalls and an area on which one might cultivate a superb birch or fir grove; there was also a call to those wishing to buy old shoe soles, with an invitation to appear at the auction house every day from eight to three in the morning.14 The room that was accommodating this whole company was small, and the air in it was extremely dense, but Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov could not catch the scent, because he had covered himself with a kerchief and because his nose itself was located in God knows what locality.
“My dear sir, permit me to ask you to… I have a great need,” he finally said impatiently.
“Right away! Right away! Two rubles forty-three kopecks! This very minute! One ruble sixty-four kopecks!” the gray-haired gentleman said, tossing the notes into the faces of the old women and yard sweepers. “What can I do for you?” he finally said, turning to Kovalyov.
“I ask you to,…” Kovalyov said, “A great swindle or roguery has occurred, to this moment I have not been able to find out what. I am only asking you to publish a notice that the person who presents this rascal to me will receive a handsome reward.”
“Permit me to ask, what is your last name?”
“No, why do you need my last name? I cannot tell you that. I have many acquaintances: Chekhtaryova, the wife of a state councillor, Palageya Grigoryevna Podtochina, the wife of a staff officer… What if they find out, God forbid! You can simply write: a collegiate assessor, or even better, a person occupying the rank of major.”
“And is it your house-serf who’s run away?”
“What house-serf? That wouldn’t be such a big swindle! The runaway is my… nose…”
“Hmm! What a strange name! And did this Mr. Nosov steal a large sum from you?”
“Not Nosov, nose… You’re on the wrong track! My nose, my own nose has disappeared to an unknown location. The devil wanted to play a trick on me!”
“In what manner did it disappear? For some reason I can’t fully understand this.”
“I have no way of telling you in what manner, but the main thing is that he is now riding around town and calling himself a state councillor. And for that reason, I ask you to announce that the person who catches him should present him to me immediately and at the earliest possible moment. Judge for yourself—indeed, how can I be without such a noticeable part of the body? This isn’t some little toe that I could hide in my boot, and no one would see it wasn’t there. I frequent the home of Chekhtaryova, the wife of a state councillor, on Thursdays. Palageya Grigoryevna Podtochina, the wife of a staff officer, and her very pretty daughter, are also very good acquaintances of mine, and you can judge for yourself, how can I now… I can’t go see them now at all.”
The clerk was lost in thought, as was signified by his firmly compressed lips.
“No, I cannot place such an advertisement in the newspapers,” he said finally, after a long silence.
“What? Why?”
“Just so. The newspaper might lose its reputation. If anyone can write that his nose ran away, then… As it is, they’re saying that a lot of preposterous things and false rumors are being printed.”
“In what way is this preposterous? There’s nothing of the sort here.”
“It only seems to you that there isn’t. Just last week we had a case. A civil servant came in just the way you did now, he brought a note, it came to two rubles seventy-three kopecks, and the whole advertisement said only that a poodle with a black coat had run away. It would seem there was nothing in it. But it turned out to be a libelous pasquinade: The poodle was a paymaster, I don’t remember in what department.”
“But I’m not advertising about a poodle, but about my very own nose, which means, almost the same as about my own self.”
“No, I absolutely cannot place such an advertisement.”
“Even though my nose really has disappeared!”
“If it’s disappeared, then that’s a case for a physician. They say there are people who can attach any kind of nose you want. But by the way, I see you must be a person of a cheerful nature who likes to have a joke in good company.”
“I swear to you, as God is my witness! All right, if it’s come to that, I’ll show you.”
“Why trouble yourself!” the clerk continued, taking a pinch of snuff. “But all right, if it isn’t too much trouble,” he added with a gesture of curiosity, “then I would like to take a look.”
The collegiate assessor removed the kerchief from his face.
“Indeed, it’s extremely strange!” the clerk said, “The place is quite smooth, like a freshly cooked pancake. Yes, it is unbelievably flat!”
“Well, now are you going to argue with me? You can see for yourself that you simply must print the advertisement. I will be particularly grateful to you, and I am very glad that this accident afforded me the pleasure of making your acquaintance…”
The major, as one can see, had decided on this occasion to be a bit of a toady.
“To print it is, of course, not a large matter,” the clerk said, “but I can foresee no profit in it for you. If you wish, give the note to someone with a skillful pen to describe it as a rare product of nature and publish a brief article in the Northern Bee” (here he took another dose of snuff) “for the benefit of youth” (here he wiped his nose) “or just for general interest.”
The collegiate assessor was utterly bereft of hope. He lowered his eyes to the bottom of the newspaper, where plays were announced. His face was getting ready to smile, seeing the name of a pretty actress, and his hand reached for his pocket to see if there was a dark-blue five-ruble note in it, because in Kovalyov’s opinion, staff officers should sit in orchestra seats—but the thought of the nose ruined everything!
The clerk himself, it seemed, was touched by Kovalyov’s awkward situation. Wishing to lighten his affliction somewhat, he considered it seemly to express his sympathy in the following words: “Truly, I find it deplorable that such an anecdote has happened to you. Would you not care to take a little snuff? It dispels headaches as well as inclinations toward sadness. It’s good even with respect to hemorrhoids.”
Saying this, the clerk extended his snuffbox to Kovalyov, deftly tucking under it the lid bearing the portrait of a lady in a hat.
This thoughtless action made Kovalyov lose his patience.
“I don’t understand how you can find a place for jokes,” he said angrily, “do you really not see that the thing I would need for sniffing is preci
sely what I don’t have? The devil take your snuff! I can’t even look at it, and not only your nasty cheap stuff, but even if you were offering me rappee.”15
After saying this, he left the newspaper office, deeply frustrated, and set off to see the district police superintendent, who was a great lover of sugar. In his house the entire entrance hall, which was also his dining room, was filled with loaves of sugar that had been brought to him by merchants wishing to show their friendship. At that moment the cook was removing the superintendent’s uniform jackboots; his sword and all his military paraphernalia were already hung in their peaceful corners, and his little three-year-old son was already touching his terrifying tricorn hat; and he, after his life of battle and fighting, was preparing to taste the pleasures of peacetime.
Kovalyov came in just when he had stretched, grunted, and said, “Aahh, I’m going to have a nice sleep for a couple of hours!” And thus one could anticipate that the collegiate assessor’s arrival came at a quite inopportune moment. I’m not sure that he would have been received very cordially even if he had brought several pounds of tea or broadcloth along with him. The superintendent was a great patron of the arts and manufactures, but he preferred a government banknote to everything else. “This is a real thing,” he would usually say, “there is nothing better than this thing. It doesn’t ask for anything to eat, it doesn’t take up much space, it always fits into your pocket, if you drop it, it doesn’t get hurt.”
The superintendent received Kovalyov somewhat coldly and said that the after-dinner hour was not the right time to carry out an investigation, that nature itself had decreed that after a person has eaten his fill he should rest a little while (from this the collegiate assessor could see that the superintendent was not unfamiliar with the sayings of the ancient sages), that a respectable man would not have had his nose torn off, and that there are all kinds of majors in the world who don’t even keep their underwear in a seemly condition and who hang around in indecent places.
That hit him right between the eyes! We must note that Kovalyov was a person who was extremely quick to take offense. He could forgive everything that was said about himself but could never excuse anything that related to his office or rank. He even considered that in theatrical plays one could let pass everything that related to subaltern officers, but that it was quite impermissible to attack staff officers.16 The reception by the superintendent so affronted him that he shook his head and said with a feeling of dignity, spreading his arms somewhat apart: “I confess, after such offensive remarks on your part I cannot add anything more,” and went out.
He came home nearly dead on his feet. It was already dusk. After all these failed pursuits, his apartment seemed sad or extremely disgusting. As he came into the entrance hall, he saw his footman Ivan on the stained leather divan, lying on his back spitting at the ceiling and repeatedly hitting the very same spot rather successfully. Such indifference on the part of his servant enraged him. He hit him on the forehead with his hat, saying, “You pig, you’re always wasting your time doing stupid things!”
Ivan suddenly jumped up from his place and rushed to take off Kovalyov’s cloak.
As he entered his room, the major, tired and sad, flung himself into an armchair, and after sighing a few times, said: “My God! My God! Why such a misfortune? If I were missing an arm or a leg—all the same, it would be better; if I were missing my ears—it would be terrible, but still bearable; but without a nose a person is the devil knows what: not a bird, not a citizen, just take him and throw him out the window! And it would be one thing if it had been cut off in war or at a duel, or if I myself were the cause, but it disappeared for no reason at all, it disappeared in vain, for nothing! But no, it cannot be,” he added after thinking a bit. “It’s unbelievable that my nose disappeared. It can’t be believed at all. Probably it is either happening in a dream, or I’m simply having a vision. Perhaps somehow by mistake I drank the vodka I rub on my chin after shaving instead of water. That idiot Ivan didn’t take it away and I probably grabbed it by mistake.”
In order to convince himself that he was indeed not drunk, the major pinched himself so painfully that he shrieked. This pain convinced him that he was acting and living in waking reality. He slowly approached the mirror and squinted his eyes at first, thinking that perhaps the nose would appear in its place, but at the same moment he jumped back, saying: “What a pasquinadesque appearance!”
It was indeed inexplicable. If a button had disappeared, or a silver spoon, or a watch, or something like that; but to disappear, and who was it who disappeared? And in his own apartment at that! After taking all these circumstances into consideration, Major Kovalyov speculated that the likeliest explanation was that the blame fell on none other than Podtochina, the staff officer’s wife, who wanted him to marry her daughter. He did like to flirt with her, but he always avoided a definitive outcome. When the staff officer’s wife announced to him point-blank that she wanted to marry her daughter off to him, he quietly sailed away with his compliments, saying that he was still young, that he needed to be in the service for another five years so that he would be exactly forty-two years old. And so the staff officer’s wife, probably in revenge, had decided to ruin him, and for this purpose she had hired some witchy-women, because it was impossible to imagine that the nose had been cut off. No one had come into his room; the barber Ivan Yakovlevich had shaved him on Wednesday, and all day Wednesday and even all day Thursday his nose had been intact. He remembered and knew this very well; moreover, he would have felt pain, and no doubt the wound could not have healed so quickly and been as smooth as a pancake. He tried to make plans mentally: Should he bring the staff officer’s wife to court by formal procedure, or should he go to see her himself and establish her guilt? His meditations were interrupted by a light that shone through all the cracks in the doors, which made him aware that Ivan had lit the candle in the entrance hall. Soon Ivan himself appeared, carrying it in front of him and brightly illuminating the whole room. Kovalyov’s first movement was to grab the kerchief and cover the place where his nose had been yesterday, so that the servant, who was indeed stupid, would not gape at this oddity on his master.
Ivan had hardly had time to go off into his kennel when an unfamiliar voice was heard in the entrance hall, saying: “Does Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov live here?”
“Come in. Major Kovalyov is here,” Kovalyov said, hastily jumping up and opening the door.
There entered a handsome police official with whiskers that were not too light but not dark either and somewhat plump cheeks, the same one who was standing at the end of Saint Isaac’s Bridge at the beginning of our story.
“Pray tell, did you lose your nose?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“It has been found.”
“What are you saying?” Major Kovalyov shouted. Joy took away his power of speech. He stared alertly at the police officer standing before him, on whose plump lips and cheeks the flickering light of the candle was gleaming. “How did it happen?”
“By a strange accident. We intercepted him when he was almost on his way out of town. He had already gotten into a post chaise and was planning to go to Riga. He had a passport that had long ago been drawn up in the name of a certain civil servant. The strange thing is that at first, I took him for a gentleman. But luckily, I had my glasses with me, and I immediately saw that it was a nose. You see, I’m nearsighted, and if you stand in front of me all I can see is that you have a face, but I can’t perceive either your nose or your beard, nothing. My mother-in-law, that is, my wife’s mother, also can’t see at all.”
Kovalyov was beside himself.
“Where is it? Where? I’ll run over there right now.”
“Don’t trouble yourself. Knowing that you need it, I brought it with me. The strange thing is that the main accessory in this affair is a swindler of a barber on Ascension Street, who is now sitting in the lockup. I’ve long suspected him of drunkenness and theft, and three days ago he s
wiped a dozen buttons from a store. Your nose is exactly the same as it was.”
At this the policeman reached into his pocket and pulled out the nose, wrapped in a piece of paper.
“Yes, that’s it!” Kovalyov shouted. “That’s really it! Please stay and have a cup of tea with me.”
“I would be most pleased to do so, but I cannot. From here I have to run over to the jail… The prices for all sorts of provisions have risen enormously… My mother-in-law lives with us, that is, my wife’s mother, and we have children; the eldest in particular shows great promise. He’s a very intelligent little boy, but we have absolutely no means of providing for his education.”
Kovalyov took the hint and, grabbing a red ten-ruble note from the table, he stuck it into the inspector’s hands. The inspector clicked his heels, went out the door, and at almost the same moment Kovalyov could hear his voice out on the street, where he was giving an admonition right in the teeth to a stupid peasant who had just driven his cart onto the boulevard.
After the policeman left, the collegiate assessor remained in a kind of indefinite state for a few minutes, and only several minutes later was he capable of seeing and feeling: such was the oblivion into which his unexpected joy had plunged him. He took the recovered nose into his cupped hands protectively and again inspected it attentively.
“Yes, that’s it, it’s really it!” Major Kovalyov said. “There’s the pimple on the left side that popped up yesterday.”
The major nearly burst out laughing from joy.
But nothing on this earth lasts for a long time, and thus even joy is not as vivid the second moment as it is the first; the third moment, it becomes still weaker, and finally it merges unnoticeably with the normal state of one’s soul, just as a circle created on the water by a falling pebble finally merges with the smooth surface. Kovalyov began meditating and realized that the business was not over yet: The nose had been recovered, but it had to be stuck on, situated in its place.
The Nose and Other Stories Page 23