“Introduce me? To whom?”
“To Anempodist Petrovich.”
“No, thanks very much.”
“What? You mean you’d rather not?”
“Absolutely.”
“A shame: he’s a very shrewd man—statesmanlike, you might almost say—and yet at the same time he’s a Russian through and through. He’s a man who sees to the very heart of things, a man who’ll go far.”
“Well, good luck to him, that’s what I say.”
“Yes, quite. But you know, he’s an amiable fellow and one you could learn a good deal from.”
“Good grief!” I thought. “What virtues will he find in him next! The sort you can learn from, indeed! Pah!”
We went over to the buffet and mingled with the throng. Anempodist Petrovich, who had established himself at its centre, was delivering an edifying address. I concentrated on trying to catch a few of the prophecies emanating from this oracle.
The only thing he talked about at first, however, was the salmon. His comments were indeed substantial and founded on a considerable expertise. All of which seemed to me quite enough to make any decent man sick.
He sucked and chewed and smacked his lips, voluptuously testing each morsel on his tongue and palate; this procedure ensured a more precise sampling, a finer evaluation of the salmon. He delicately savoured it, then, just like Gogol’s Petukh, pronounced through closed lips:
“Mm … mm … yes … not bad … not at all bad … in fact, pretty good … you might say.”
“Very good salmon indeed,” someone remarked.
“Mm … mm … yes … possibly … mm … pretty fair … it is tender”
“Why, it’s as soft as butter.”
“Mm … mm … yes … you could say it has … mm … a certain buttery quality ….”
“Well, I must say, you’re sparing in your praise.” This intervention came from a colonel with a scar running the width of his forehead and across the bridge of his nose. “After the muck we got in the Crimea, anything seems good. You couldn’t get hold of stuff like this down there.”
“Mm … mm … well … is that really so? … We … mm … managed to get it all right, even there.”
“But at a price, I’ll warrant.”
“Mm … true, yes, of course, one had to pay … but we got plenty of it … for ourselves … through Kiev … we ordered it from the merchant Pokrovsky … good salmon it was, too … they actually called it ‘commissariat salmon.’ Yes … this Pokrovsky, incidentally, also supplied salmon for the royal table—only that, of course, wasn’t quite the same quality; you see, they didn’t dare charge His Majesty what they charged us. But we … it didn’t matter to us—we had the money.”
The colonel with the scar heaved a sigh.
“You certainly weren’t short of money,” he said, “in fact you had so much you didn’t know what to do with it.”
“That’s perfectly true; indeed, some of our chaps were not used to it and didn’t know where to stop … mm … one of them, I remember, heard about ‘jeroboam pockets,’ and ordered his tailor to make him some. Well, it was a farce; the tailor thought it must mean some sort of fine material, and so made the pockets out of damask. That really caused some amusement.”
“What did it mean then?”
“Well, big enough to hold a jeroboam of wine … mm … mm … you see, our wallets were … mm … so fat ….”
“Why, you unholy swine!” I thought. “And he hasn’t even the decency to keep his mouth shut!”
Meanwhile he was going on with a tale about some fellow of theirs in victualling or the commissariat, who at that terrible time, in the midst of universal suffering and the hardships of war, went even more berserk.
“This chap,” says he, “all of a sudden lost whatever sense of taste he ever had, and started guzzling God knows what crazy stuff.”
“Aha,” I thought, “that’s splendid. I wish the whole lot of you would do the same and poison yourselves.” But the “crazy stuff” in question turned out to be something quite unexpected.
“This chap had always liked kvass,” Anempodist Petrovich went on, and kvass was his regular tipple. He came from a good solid background—he’d been educated at a seminary. His father was an archpriest and a well-known preacher; in his last testament he enjoined his son, if he had the means to buy wine, to drink beer; if he had the means to buy beer, to drink kvass; and if he had the means to buy kvass, to drink water. But in fact he touched nothing but kvass, and wanted nothing but kvass—but then during the campaign he began to add champagne to it ….”
“How do you mean?”
“Just like I say … mm … he mixed them in equal portions: he’d pour half a glass of kvass and half a glass of champagne, stir and drink.”
“What a pig!” I muttered, but so indiscreetly that Anempodist Petrovich heard me and, casting a glance in my direction, observed:
“Yes, pretty loutish behaviour, I grant you. Mind you, I should just say that champagne and kvass is not such a bad mixture as you might think …. Indeed, during the war, it became quite a fashion among our chaps in the victualling service … mm … quite a few of the lads still drink it … they’ve acquired the taste. Now foreigners, they can’t drink it … we did try giving them some just for the fun of it … and they … er … spat it out … just didn’t have the stomach for it.”
Now I may not be a foreigner, but I myself felt like spitting and leaving—when suddenly this splendid specimen of an Anempodist Petrovich turns to me in the most casual fashion and says:
“By the way, forgive me, I beg you, but, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to raise one tiny objection to what you were saying about the Russian character.”
I really can’t say why, but instead of cutting him dead with some insult or other, I answered:
“Oh, do be so kind, tell me.”
“Well,” says he, “in a nutshell, I’ll say only this: what you had to say about us Russians was hurtful and unfair.”
That brought me to my feet, I can tell you.
“What! I? Hurtful!”
“Yes. While I was sitting playing cards, I kept picking up snatches of what you were saying to your comrades, and I rather took offence on behalf of all my compatriots. Believe me, you’ve really no right to defame the Russian nation in that way.”
“Who—I?” I said. “You say I defame the Russian nation?”
“Why yes, of course you do. What was it you were saying? … I listened to you for some time … you divided the Russian people into two halves, your suggestion being that one half consisted of entirely honourable folk, heroes as it were, while the other half were nothing but thieves and scoundrels.”
“Aha!” I said, “so that’s what you find hurtful, is it?”
“No, sir. Absolutely nothing offends me personally, because I also inherited a precept from my father, a nobleman—namely, that one should never take anything unpleasant that one hears as referring to oneself. But I do take offence on behalf of all other Russians at your unwarranted slur. I believe that we Russians are all, without exception, capable of every possible human virtue. You stated, sir, that when you—that is to say, fighting soldiers—were shedding your blood in the mud of the Crimea, at that same time we in the victualling service were robbing and stealing—and that is perfectly true.”
“Yes,” I replied heatedly, “I can assure you it is true. And now, having heard your disgraceful story about the kvass and the champagne, I’m even more convinced that I was right to say what I did.”
“Well, let’s leave aside the kvass and the champagne: that’s just a matter of taste—some like one thing, some like another. King Friedrich added asafoetida to his food, but I don’t see anything particularly disgraceful even in that. But as concerns your division of us Russians into two widely differing categories—with that I cannot agree. The way I see it, you know, one shouldn’t go giving a bad name to no less than half a nation. We’re all created from the same rib and anointed
with the same oil.”
“Now wait a minute,” I said. “All anointed with the same oil we may be, but that doesn’t mean we’re all thieves.”
He tried to give the impression he hadn’t quite caught what I had said, and asked:
“What was that?”
I repeated, straight to his face:
“We are not thieves.”
“That I know, sir. How could you be expected to be thieves? Why, you haven’t had the chance yet to learn the art of stealing. The late Admiral Lazarev instilled in you a sense of honesty, to which, for the time being anyway, you still cling. But what lies in the future—that God alone knows ….”
“No, that will never change!”
“And why not?”
“Because those who serve with me are honourable men.”
“Honourable men! For goodness’ sake, I’m not disputing that. They are very honourable men, but that’s no reason to assert that only your chaps are honourable, whereas others are dishonourable. Fiddlesticks! I insist on speaking out in their defence, and in defence of all Russians, for that matter! Yes, sir! Take my word for it, you are not the only ones who can quietly suffer hunger, fight, and die like heroes; but to hear you talk, the only thing we have been capable of doing, since the day we were baptised, is thieving. Fiddlesticks, sir! Not true, sir! We Russians—it’s the fate of every one of us, it’s part of that breadth of character with which we are all endowed—we have the capacity for anything. We’re like cats: throw us where you will, we’ll never land face-down in the dirt; no, we’ll land foursquare on our feet; whatever fits the bill, we’ll show we’ve got it in full measure: if it’s a question of dying, we’ll die, if it’s stealing, we’ll steal. You were asked to fight, and you did it as well as it could be done—you fought and died like heroes and earned fame throughout Europe for it. But we found ourselves in a business where a man could steal: and we too made a name for ourselves; we thieved so well that our fame also spread far and wide. But if, let’s say, an order had come through for us all to swap places, with us ending up in the trenches and you in army supply, then we thieves would have fought and died, and you … would have thieved ….”
That’s what he said, as bold as brass!
I was just on the point of snapping back: “Why, you dirty dog!” But everybody else was absolutely delighted by the man’s candour, and they started shouting:
“Bravo, bravo, Anempodist Petrovich! Shameless—but how neatly put!” And they all burst into jolly laughter, as though he’d just told them some marvellous good news or other about themselves. Even Yevgraf Ivanovich couldn’t restrain himself and stuttered:
“It’s the t-t-truth!”
Meanwhile, he, the thick-skinned devil, had stuffed his mouth full of salmon again, and started reading me another homily.
“Of course,” he says, “if all that rubbish you were talking earlier can be put down to your inexperience, then God will forgive you: but in future, just you watch what you have to say about your own people. Why praise some and find fault with others? We are all, every single one of us, capable of absolutely everything, and, God willing, by the time you die, you will have come to see that for yourself.”
So that’s the way it ended. I was left the guilty party, and got a ticking off into the bargain from this paragon of practical wisdom, to the approval of all present. Well, as you will appreciate, after that little lesson, I pulled my horns in a bit and … to be perfectly honest, nowadays I quite often recall the brazen cheek of the man, and I get to thinking that, for all I know, the shameless rascal may have been right.
AUGUSTE VILLIERS DE L’ ISLE-ADAM
The Very Image
(A S’y Méprende!, 1883)
This brief text from Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s Cruel Tales is nothing more than a double description of Parisian locales that establishes an extremely simple equation between the world of business (a cafe near the stock exchange) and the world of the dead (a room in a funeral hall). In both cases, the vision is repeated, described in the same words, a method that is perhaps used here intentionally for the first time and that would be used by contemporary writers such as Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (1838–1889) puts his ironic taste for intellectual cruelty and his proclivity to resolve tales using effects attained through rapid, sharp means at the service of fantastic invention.
FOR MONSIEUR HENRY DE BORNIER
Darting their dark eyes everywhere.
—C. Baudelaire
ONE GREY NOVEMBER morning I was hurrying along the embankments. The air was damp with a cold drizzle. Black-clad passers-by, sheltering under shapeless umbrellas, came and went.
The yellow Seine swept its merchant vessels along as if they were outsize cockchafers. On the bridges, the wind kept snatching at hats whose owners fought with space to save them, with those convulsive gestures which are always such a painful sight for artists’ eyes.
My ideas were pale and misty; the thought of a business appointment, arranged the day before, was nagging at my mind. Time was pressing; and I decided to shelter under the porch of a doorway, from where it would be easier for me to signal a cab.
At that very moment I noticed, right beside me, the entrance of a square, solid-looking building.
It had reared up in the mist like a stone apparition, and, despite its rigid architecture, despite the dismal, eerie vapour in which it was enveloped, I recognized a certain cordial air of hospitality about it which reassured me.
“The people who live here,” I said to myself, “must surely be sedentary folk. This threshold has an inviting look: isn’t the door open?”
So, in the politest possible way, with a contented air, hat in hand, and even planning a complimentary speech to make to the mistress of the house, I went smilingly in, and promptly found myself before a room with a glass roof through which a ghastly light was falling.
There were pillars on which clothes, mufflers, and hats had been hung.
Marble tables were installed on all sides.
Some people were there with legs outstretched, heads raised, staring eyes, and matter-of-fact expressions, who appeared to be meditating.
And their gaze was devoid of thought, their faces the colour of the weather.
There were portfolios lying open and papers spread out beside each one of them.
And then I realized that the mistress of the house, on whose courteous welcome I had been counting, was none other than Death.
I looked at my hosts.
It was obvious that, in order to escape from the worries of a harassing life, most of them had murdered their bodies, hoping in that way to obtain a little more comfort.
As I was listening to the noise of the brass taps fastened to the wall and intended for the daily refreshment of those mortal remains, I heard the rumbling of a cab. It was stopping outside the establishment. I reflected that my businessmen were waiting, and turned round to take advantage of my good luck.
The cab had, in fact, just disgorged, on the threshold of the building, some students on the spree who needed to see death to believe in it.
I looked at the empty carriage and said to the driver:
“The Passage de l’Opéra!”
A little later, on the boulevards, the weather struck me as duller than ever, on account of the absence of any horizon. The skeletal trees looked as if, with the tips of their black branches, they were vaguely pointing out pedestrians to the sleepy policemen.
The carriage sped along.
The passers-by, seen through the window, gave me the impression of flowing water.
On arriving at my destination, I jumped out on to the pavement and plunged into the arcade, which was full of care-worn faces.
At the end I noticed, right in front of me, the entrance to a café—since burnt down in a famous fire (for life is a dream). It was tucked away at the back of a sort of shed, under a square, sinister archway.
“It is there,” I thought, “that my businessmen are
waiting for me, glass in hand, their shining eyes defying Fate.”
I accordingly turned the handle of the door and promptly found myself in a room into which a ghastly light was filtering through the windows.
There were pillars on which clothes, mufflers, and hats had been hung.
Marble tables were installed on all sides.
Some people were there with legs outstretched, heads raised, staring eyes, and matter-of-fact expressions, who appeared to be meditating.
And their faces were the colour of the weather, their gaze devoid of thought.
There were portfolios lying open and papers spread out beside each one of them.
I looked at those men.
It was obvious that, in order to escape from the obsessions of an unbearable conscience, most of them had long ago murdered their “souls,” hoping in that way to obtain a little more comfort.
As I was listening to the noise of the brass taps fastened to the wall and intended for the daily refreshment of those mortal remains, the memory of the rumbling of the cab came back to my mind.
“That driver,” I said to myself, “must have been afflicted in the course of time by a sort of coma, to have brought me back, after so many circumconvolutions, to my starting-point. All the same, I must admit (if there has been a mistake) that the second glimpse is more sinister than the first!”
I therefore silently shut the glass door and went home, firmly resolved—despite the force of example and whatever might become of me—never to do any business.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Night: A Nightmare
(La Nuit, 1887)
An example of the fantastic achieved through minimal means, this narrative is nothing more than a stroll through Paris, a careful account of the sensations Maupassant felt every evening during his nightly walks. But here an oppressive, nightmarish sensation fills the picture from start to finish, growing more and more intense with each step. The city is always the same, street by street, palace by palace, but then the people disappear, and afterward the lights. The familiar scene seems to contain only a fear of the absurd and of death.
Fantastic Tales: Visionary and Everyday Page 40