“What if it won’t stick?”
At this question he had posed to himself, the major turned pale.
With a feeling of inexplicable terror, he rushed to the table and pulled the mirror close to him, so he would not by chance stick the nose on crookedly. His hands were trembling. Carefully and deliberately he applied it to its former place. Oh, horrors! The nose would not stick! He brought it up to his mouth, warmed it a little with his breath, and again brought it up to the smooth place located between his two cheeks; but the nose would not stay on by any means.
“Come on! Come on, now! Get on there, you idiot!” he said to it. But the nose seemed to be made of wood and kept falling to the table with a strange sound, as if it were a cork. The major’s face twisted convulsively. “Will it really not grow back on?” he said in fright. But no matter how many times he tried to put it into its very own place, his efforts were as unsuccessful as before.
He called Ivan and sent him to get the doctor who occupied the best apartment on the bel étage of the same building.17 This doctor was an impressive-looking man with beautiful pitch-black whiskers and a fresh, healthy doctor’s wife, a man who ate fresh apples in the morning and kept his mouth exceptionally clean, rinsing it every morning for almost three quarters of an hour and polishing his teeth with five different sorts of little brushes. The doctor arrived immediately. After asking how long ago the misfortune had occurred, he lifted Major Kovalyov by the chin and flicked him with his thumb on the very place where his nose had been before, causing the Major to throw his head back so hard that he hit the back of it against the wall. The physician said that this was all right, and after advising him to move away from the wall a little bit, he told him to first bend his head to the right, and after feeling the place where the nose had been before, he said, “Hmm!” Then he told him to bend his head to the left, and said, “Hmm!”—and in conclusion he again flicked him with his thumb, so that Major Kovalyov jerked his head like a horse whose teeth are being inspected. After carrying out this test, the physician shook his head and said: “No, it’s impossible. You’d better leave it like that, because you could make it even worse. Of course, one could stick it back on. I could probably stick it back on for you right now, but I assure you it would be worse for you.”
“That’s a fine thing! How am I supposed to remain without a nose?” Kovalyov said. “It couldn’t be any worse than it is now. It’s simply the devil knows what! Where can I show myself with this kind of pasquinadery? I have a fine set of acquaintances. For example, today I’m supposed to appear at evening parties in two different homes. I am acquainted with many people: the state councillor’s wife Chekhtaryova; Podtochina, the staff officer’s wife… although after what she’s done now, I won’t have any dealings with her except through the police. Would you be so kind,” Kovalyov uttered in an imploring voice, “is there no remedy? Just stick it on somehow. Even if it isn’t good, if only it would stay on. I could even prop it up with my hand a little in dangerous situations. Moreover, I’ll refrain from dancing, so as not to harm it by some incautious movement. Be assured, everything that relates to gratitude for your house calls, as far as my means allow…”
“Would you believe it,” the doctor said in a voice that was neither loud nor soft, but extremely affable and magnetic, “I never treat people for mercenary motives. That is against my principles and my healing art. It’s true, I do charge for house calls, but solely in order not to offend people by refusing. Of course, I would stick your nose back on, but I assure you on my honor, if you do not trust my words alone, that it would be much worse. You’d do better to leave it up to the action of nature itself. Wash the place often with cold water, and I assure you that without a nose you will be just as healthy as if you had it. And the nose itself I advise you to put into a jar full of alcohol or, even better, to pour in two tablespoons of aqua regia and warmed-up vinegar—and then you can charge a decent sum for it.18 I would even take it myself, as long as you don’t ask too high a price.”
“No, no! I won’t sell it for any sum!” Major Kovalyov screamed in desperation. “It would be better if it disappeared!”
“Excuse me!” the doctor said, taking his leave. “I just wanted to help you… What is to be done! At least you saw how hard I tried.”
After saying this, the doctor left the room with a noble bearing. Kovalyov had not even perceived his face, and in his deep oblivion he saw only the cuffs of his shirt, white and clean as snow, peeping out of the sleeves of his black tailcoat.
He resolved the very next day, before making a formal complaint, to write to the staff officer’s wife to see whether she would agree to return to him that which she owed him. The content of the letter was as follows:
My Dear Madam, Alexandra Grigoryevna!19
I cannot understand this strange action on your part. Please be assured that, by acting in such a manner, you will not gain anything and will not in the slightest coerce me into marrying your daughter. Please believe me, I know all about the story with regard to my nose, just as the fact that you and no one other than you are the main accessories in this business. Its sudden separation from its place, its flight and disguise, now in the form of a civil servant, now in the form of itself, are nothing more than the result of sorcery carried out either by you or those who practice the same noble occupations as yourself. For my part I consider it my duty to advise you: If the abovementioned nose is not back in its place this very day, I will be compelled to resort to the defense and protection of the law.
However, with the greatest respect for you, I have the honor of being
Your obedient servant,
Platon Kovalyov
My Dear Sir, Platon Kuzmich!
Your letter amazed me exceedingly. I must frankly admit that I did not at all expect it, especially with regard to the unjust reproaches on your part. I advise you that I never received in my home the civil servant you mention, either in disguise or in his true form. It’s true, Filipp Ivanovich Potanchikov has visited me. And although indeed he has sought the hand of my daughter, being himself of good, sober conduct and great erudition, I never gave him any hopes. You also mention a nose. If you mean by this that I wished to lead you around by the nose, that is, to give you a formal refusal, I am amazed that you yourself are saying that, when I, as you well know, was of the exact opposite opinion, and if you are now asking in a legitimate fashion for my daughter’s hand in marriage, I am prepared this very minute to give you satisfaction, for this has always been the object of my most keen desire, in hopes of which I remain always at your service,
Alexandra Podtochina20
“No,” Kovalyov said after he had read the letter. “She is truly not guilty. It cannot be! The letter is written in a way that could not be written by a person who was guilty of a crime.” The collegiate assessor was conversant in this matter, because he had been sent on investigations several times when he was still in the Caucasus region. “By what means, by what fates did this occur? Only the devil can figure it out!” he said finally, dropping his hands in surrender.
Meanwhile rumors about this unusual event had spread throughout the whole capital, and as usual, not without special additions. At that time, everyone’s minds were attuned to the extraordinary. Not long ago the public had been fascinated by the experiments in the operation of magnetism. Also, the story of the dancing chairs on Stables Street was still fresh, and thus it is not surprising that soon people began to say that the nose of Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov was going for a walk on Nevsky Avenue every day at exactly three o’clock.21 Every day a multitude of curious people would gather. Someone said that supposedly the nose had been in Junker’s store—and such a crowd and crush formed near Junker’s store that the police had to intervene. One speculator of estimable appearance, with side-whiskers, who would sell various dry confectionary pastries in front of the entrance to the theater, built beautiful, durable wooden benches on purpose, and invited the curious to stand on them for eighty kopecks per
customer. One distinguished colonel left home early in the morning for this very purpose and made his way through the crowd with great difficulty. But to his great indignation, he saw in the shop window instead of a nose an ordinary woolen undershirt and a lithographed picture depicting a girl straightening her stocking and a dandy with an open waistcoat and a small beard looking at her from behind a tree—a picture that had been hanging in the same place for more than ten years now. Walking away, he said in vexation: “How can they confuse the people with such stupid and implausible rumors?”
Then a rumor spread that it wasn’t on Nevsky Avenue that Major Kovalyov’s nose was taking his walk, but in the Tauride Gardens, that supposedly he’d been there for a long time now; that when Khosrow Mirza had still been residing there, he had been quite amazed at this strange sport of nature.22 Several of the students from the Surgical Academy set off there. One prominent, estimable lady sent a special letter to the keeper of the gardens asking him to show her children this rare phenomenon and, if possible, to accompany it with an explication that would be instructive and edifying for youths.
All these incidents greatly gladdened the hearts of all those society men, indispensable guests at evening receptions, who loved to make ladies laugh, and whose reserves had been completely exhausted at this time. A small group of estimable and well-intentioned people were extremely unhappy. One gentleman said indignantly that he did not understand how in this enlightened age such absurd inventions could be spread, and that he was amazed that the government did not turn its attention to it. This gentleman, as we see, belonged to the category of gentlemen who would like to get the government mixed up in everything, even in their daily quarrels with their wives. Following this… but here again the whole event is hidden by a fog, and absolutely nothing is known about what happened then.
III
Utter nonsense happens in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at all: Suddenly that very nose who drove around in the rank of state councillor and caused such commotion in the city found himself, as if nothing had happened, in his place, that is, namely, between Major Kovalyov’s two cheeks. This happened on the seventh of April.23 After waking up and looking by chance into the mirror, he saw: the nose!—he grabbed it with his hand—it was really the nose! “Oho!” Kovalyov said, and in his joy he nearly started dancing a barefoot trepak all over his room, but the entrance of Ivan prevented him.24 He ordered that he be given his washing accoutrements immediately, and as he washed he looked at himself in the mirror one more time: the nose! As he dried himself with a towel, he looked in the mirror again: the nose!
“Ivan, take a look, it seems I have a pimple on my nose,” he said, and meanwhile he was thinking, “It’ll be bad if Ivan says: No, sir, not only is there no pimple, there’s no nose either!”
But Ivan said: “No, sir, there’s no pimple: The nose is clean!”
“Excellent, the devil take it!” the major said to himself and snapped his fingers. At that moment the barber Ivan Yakovlevich peeped in the door, but as timorously as a cat who’s just been whipped for stealing fatback.
“Tell me in advance: Are your hands clean?” Kovalyov shouted at him when he was still at a distance.
“Yes, they are.”
“You’re lying!”
“Honest to God, sir, they’re clean.”
“Well, just watch out.”
Kovalyov took a seat. Ivan Yakovlevich covered him with a cloth, and in one instant, with the help of his brush, he turned his whole chin and part of his cheek into the kind of crème that is served at merchants’ birthday parties.
“Just look at that!” Ivan Yakovlevich said to himself, looking at the nose, and then he bent Kovalyov’s head the other way and looked at it from the side. “There it is! Well, really, what do you know,” he continued, and looked at the nose for a long time. Finally, gently, with the kind of protectiveness one can only imagine, he raised two fingers in order to grab it by its little tip. This was Ivan Yakovlevich’s system.
“Now, now, now, watch out!” Kovalyov shouted.
Ivan Yakovlevich dropped his hands in surrender. He was dumbfounded and more flustered than he had ever been. Finally he began carefully tickling Kovalyov under his chin with the razor, and although it was extremely inconvenient and difficult for him to shave without holding onto the sniffing part of the body, nevertheless, somehow resting his rough thumb on Kovalyov’s cheek and lower gum, he finally overcame all obstacles and shaved him.
When everything was done, Kovalyov hastened to get dressed immediately, hired a cab, and went right to the pastry shop. As he entered, he shouted while still at a distance: “Boy, give me a cup of hot chocolate!” And at the same moment he went up to the mirror: There was the nose! He cheerfully turned back and with a satirical air, slightly squinting, looked at two military men, one of whom had a nose no bigger than a waistcoat button. Then he set off for the office of the department in which he was trying to wangle a position as a vice-governor, and if that failed, then as an administrator. Passing through the waiting room, he glanced into the mirror: There was the nose! Then he went to see another collegiate assessor, or major, a great joker, to whom he often said in reply to various prickly remarks: “Oh, I know you, you’re a real needler!” On the way he thought: “If even the Major doesn’t split his sides laughing when he sees me, then that’s a sure sign that every blessed thing is sitting in its proper place.” But the collegiate assessor showed no sign. “Good, good, the devil take it!” Kovalyov thought to himself. Along the way he encountered the staff officer’s wife Podtochina with her daughter, bowed to them, and was greeted with joyful exclamations: That meant it was all right, he had no visible damage. He spent a long time talking to them and, taking out his snuffbox on purpose, he spent a long time in front of them stuffing his nose at both entrances, saying to himself, “There you go, you womenfolk, you tribe of hens! And all the same I won’t marry your daughter. Just for the fun of it, par amour, if you wish!” And from that time Major Kovalyov went promenading around, as if nothing had happened, on Nevsky Avenue, and in the theaters, and everywhere. And the nose also sat on his face as if nothing had happened, showing no sign that he had absented himself in all directions. And after that Major Kovalyov was always seen in a good humor, smiling, running after absolutely all the pretty ladies, and even stopping once at a store in the Gostiny Dvor shopping arcade and buying the ribbon for an Order of some sort, no one knows for what reason, because he himself was not a knight of any Order at all.
So that is the story that happened in the northern capital city of our vast nation! Only now, after thinking it all over, do we see that there is a lot about it that is implausible. Not even to speak of the fact that the supernatural separation of the nose and his appearance in various places in the form of a state councillor is indeed strange—how did Kovalyov not realize that you cannot go to a newspaper office to place an advertisement about a nose? I’m not saying this because I think it costs too much to pay for an advertisement: That’s nonsense, and I am not one of those mercenary people. But it’s unseemly, it’s awkward, it’s not good! And also—how did the nose find itself in a baked loaf of bread, and what about Ivan Yakovlevich himself?… No, I can’t understand this at all, I absolutely do not understand! But the strangest and most incomprehensible thing of all—is that writers can choose such plots. I confess, this is quite unfathomable, this is really… no, no, I do not understand at all. In the first place, there is absolutely no benefit to the fatherland; in the second place… but in the second place there’s no benefit either. I simply do not know what it is…
But for all that, although, of course, one may concede both this, that, and the other, one may even… well, but aren’t there preposterous things everywhere? All the same, after all, when you really think about it, truly, there is something to all this. No matter what you say, such events do happen in the world—they happen rarely, but they do happen.
Rome
(A Fragment)
&nb
sp; Try to look at the lightning when it splits the coal-black storm clouds and unbearably shivers out a whole flood of brilliance. Such are the eyes of Annunziata, a woman from Albano.1 Everything about her recalls those ancient times when marble came to life and sculptors’ chisels gleamed. Her thick pitch-black hair rises in two rings of a weighty plait over her head and spills onto her neck in four long curls. No matter which way she turns the radiant snow of her face, her image has been entirely engraved on your heart. If she stands in profile—her profile breathes a wondrous nobility, and a beauty of line is drawn such that no brush has ever created. If she turns her nape with her marvelous hair tucked up high, showing her gleaming neck shining from behind, and the beauty of shoulders the like of which the world has never seen—even then she is a miracle! But most miraculous of all is when she looks directly with her eyes into your eyes, striking cold and faintness into your heart. Her rich voice rings like copper. No lithe panther can compare with her in the swiftness, power, and pride of its movements. Everything in her is the crown of creation, from her shoulders to her classical breathing leg and to the last toe of her foot. No matter where she goes, she carries a painting with her: If she hurries to the fountain in the evening with a hammered copper vase on her head—all the surroundings that embrace her are penetrated by a marvelous harmony: The miraculous lines of the Alban Hills recede more ethereally into the distance, the depths of the Roman sky are a darker blue, the cypress tree flies upward more straightly, and the Roman stone pine, that beauty among southern trees, is outlined against the sky more finely and purely with its umbrella-shaped crown, which almost floats in the air. And everything—the fountain itself, where the women of Albano have already crowded together into a swarm on the marble steps, one above the other, talking to one another in their strong silvery voices, as the water spurts in a sonorous diamantine arc into the copper tubs they hold up to the fountain in turn—the fountain itself, and the crowd itself—everything, it seems, is there for her, in order to display her triumphant beauty more brightly, in order that one could see how she is the leader of all, just as an empress is the leader of her court retinue.
The Nose and Other Stories Page 24