IX.
As soon as I turned the corner, I was compelled to stop when I saw a handsome lad of around seven crying, his little face blanched from the tears; he was rubbing his eyes with his fists and sobbing. Moved by a pity that would have been natural for anyone upon meeting this sight, I leaned down and asked him: “Where have you come from, little boy? Have you been abandoned? How did you get here?”
Without a word, he went on sobbing, peering up at me mistrustfully. The sight of him was heartrending. There was nobody around. His thin little frame shivered, his little feet were filthy and bare. Despite my rush to get to the place of danger, I could not abandon this child, all the more so because he was meekly silent, from either fright or exhaustion, trembling and squirming at my every question, as though it were a threat. Stroking his head and looking into his eyes full of tears, I achieved nothing; he could only hang his head and cry. “Little one,” I said, having resolved to knock on some door in order to deposit the child, “sit here. I’ll be back soon, and we’ll find that unfit mother of yours.” To my astonishment, however, he clung to my arm and refused to let it go. There was something absurd and wild about his efforts; he even followed me along the sidewalk, screwing up his eyes, while I, with a sudden pang of suspicion, snatched my hand away. His beautiful little face was contorted, straining with effort. “Hey, there!” I cried, trying to free my hand. “Stop that!” I pushed him away. No longer crying and also silent, he fixed his enormous black eyes on me. Then he recovered and, chuckling, ran off so quickly that I flinched, dumbstruck. “Who are you?” I shouted menacingly. He giggled and, quickening his pace, vanished around a corner, but for some while I kept looking in that direction, feeling as though I’d been bitten, before I came to my senses and broke into a run with the speed of someone trying to catch a tram. I was out of breath. Twice I had to stop before continuing on as fast as I could, running again and, again losing my breath, having to content myself with a mad dash, a fitful sprint.
I was already on Horse Guards Parade when I was overtaken by a girl who fleetingly glanced at me with the expression of someone trying to recall a face she had seen before. She was about to run on, but I recognized her instantly with such a violent internal jolt equal to the ecstasy of salvation. As I called to her, she let out a soft exclamation and stopped with a shadow of annoyance on her sweet face.
“It really is you!” she said. “How could I not have recognized you? To think I would have gone straight past you, were it not for the look of shock on your face. How haggard you look, how pale!”
Great bewilderment and yet the greatest calm swept over me. Overwhelmed by a radiant and violent confusion, I looked at this face that I might well have lost, with a faith in the complex significance of this happy accident. I was so stunned, so internally arrested, for in my pursuit of her my galloping imagination had envisaged the end of my journey in such different circumstances that I now felt a sense of frustration—it would have been nicer had I met her there, where she lived.
“Listen,” I said, unable to break away from her trusting gaze. “I was running on my way to see you. It’s still not too late …”
She stopped me, taking me aside by the sleeve.
“It’s too soon,” she said significantly, “or too late, as you will. It’s light, but it is still night. You will come to me this evening, do you hear? I’ll tell you everything then. I’ve been thinking a lot about us. Know this: I love you.”
It was like stopping a clock. That moment my soul separated from hers. She couldn’t, wouldn’t talk like that. With a sigh, I let go of her fresh little hand that was clasping mine and took a step back. She looked at me with a face that was ready to twitch with impatience. The expression distorted her features—her tenderness gave way to obtuseness, her eyes darted about sharply, and, with a dreadful laugh, I shook my finger.
“No, you can’t deceive me,” I said. “She’s there. She’s sleeping now, and I’m going to wake her up. Avaunt, foul specter, whoever you are.”
With a quick sleight of the hand she covered her face with a kerchief, and that was the last I clearly saw of her, two paces away from me. Then the narrow strips of light filtering through the trees began to flicker, now recalling the silhouette of a woman dashing through them, now reminding me that I was running at full pelt. I could already see the clock on the square. The bridge was already barricaded by chevaux de frise. In the distance, on the opposite side of the embankment, a black tug was puffing out plumes of smoke, towing a barge by a rope. I jumped over a cheval and made it across the bridge at the last possible moment, just as the midsection was beginning to rise up, splitting apart the tramlines. My flying jump was met by the guards’ cry of frantic obscenities; however, with a mere glance at the gap of water glittering below, I was already far away from them, and so I ran until I reached the gates.
X.
Then—or, rather, presently—there came a moment, subsequent to which I can reconstruct only part of the fleeting, obscure events in reverse order. To begin with, I saw the girl, standing by the door, listening, with her hand stretched out as people do when they are asking or silently bidding you to sit down quietly. She had on a summer coat; her face wore a worried, sad expression. She had been asleep when I arrived. This I knew, but the circumstances of my arrival slipped away, like water in a clenched fist, as soon as I made an immediate, conscious effort to link everything together. Obeying her gesture, which was pregnant with anxiety, I sat there, stock-still, waiting to see how this listening for something would end. I tried to understand its meaning but in vain. A little longer and I would have made a concerted effort to master my extreme weakness; I wanted to ask what was going on in the main room, when, as if divining my movement, the girl turned her head, frowning and threatening me with a finger. Now I remembered that her name was Suzy, that someone had given her this name—the man who had gone out, with the words: “There must be absolute silence.” Was I asleep, or was I simply befuddled? In an attempt to answer this, I instinctively lowered my gaze and saw that the flap of my overcoat was torn. It had been intact while I was running here. I passed from bewilderment to surprise. Suddenly everything began to tremble and seemed to dart away, blocking the light; blood rushed to my head, there came a deafening crash, similar to a shot above the ear, and then a cry. “Halt!” somebody shouted behind the door. Taking a deep breath, I leaped to my feet. A man in a gray dressing gown appeared from the doorway, holding out to the recoiling girl a little board, on which, trapped in an arc of wire, hung an enormous black rat that had been broken in two. Its teeth were bared and its tail hung down.
Then, rent out of my truly dreadful condition by the shock and the cry, my memory crossed a dark precipice. In an instant I grasped a number of things and refused to let them go. My feelings were moved to speak. My inner vision turned to the opening of the scene, going over the chain of exploits. I remembered how I had climbed the gate, fearing to knock, lest I invite new dangers; how I had bypassed the door and pulled the third-floor bell. But the conversation through the door—a long and anxious conversation, during the course of which a man’s and a woman’s voices argued over whether to let me in—I forgot irrevocably. This I recalled only later.
All these details that were not yet quite aligned came to me in the blink of an eye. The old man who had brought in the rat trap had a head of thick gray hair that was cut evenly all round, recalling the cup of an acorn. His sharp nose, his thin, clean-shaven lips with their complex, stubborn expression, his bright, colorless eyes, and the wispy gray whiskers on his rosy face, which ended with his little protruding chin, which nestled in his pale-blue scarf, might have been of interest to the portrait painter or an amateur of typologies.
He said:
“You see before you the so-called black Guinean rat. Its bite is very dangerous. It causes a slow living decay, turning the victim into a collection of tumors and abscesses. This type of rodent is rare in Europe, but they occasionally arrive on ships. The ‘free passage�
�� you heard mentioned last night is an artificial hole that I made near the kitchen so that I could experiment with all different manner of traps. For the past two days the passage really was free, for I was absorbed in reading Hert Hertrus: The Storehouse of the Rat King, a book that is a rarity par excellence. It was published in Germany four centuries ago. Its author was burned at the stake as a heretic in Bremen. Your story …”
Consequently, I had already said everything that I had come to say. But I still had doubts. I asked:
“Have you taken measures? Do you know the nature of this danger? I do not understand it myself entirely.”
“Measures?” said Suzy. “What measures do you mean?”
“The danger …” the old man began, but paused, looking at his daughter. “I don’t understand.”
There was a moment of confusion. All three of us exchanged expectant glances.
“I mean,” I began uncertainly, “that you should beware. I must have told you already, but, forgive me, I don’t quite recall what I said. I feel as though I must have fainted.”
The girl looked at her father, then at me, before smiling embarrassedly: “How can this be?”
“He is tired, Suzy,” the old man said. “I know what insomnia is. Everything has been said, and the measures have been taken. If I name this rat”—he set down the trap at my feet with the satisfied look of a hunter—“‘the Liberator,’ you shall have something of an idea.”
“This is a joke,” I objected, “the joke of a rat-catcher, of course.” As I said this, I remembered having seen a bell, below which hung the modest sign bearing the words:
RAT-CATCHER
Extermination of rats and mice
O. Jensen
Tel. 1–08–01.
I had seen it at the entrance.
“You must be joking, for I don’t believe that this ‘Liberator’ could have caused you so much trouble.”
“He isn’t joking,” said Suzy. “He knows.” I compared these two gazes, to which I then replied with a disconcerted smile—the gaze of youth, full of genuine conviction, and the gaze of aged but bright eyes, doubting whether to continue the conversation as it had begun.
“I prefer to let Hert Hertrus speak for me on these matters.” The rat-catcher left and came back carrying an old book bound in leather and with red edging. “Here is the part you may laugh at or ponder, as you please.”
This black and artful creature possesses the powers of the human mind. It is further master of the secrets of the underworld, where it hides. It is within its power to alter its appearance, to take on human form, with arms and legs, to wear clothing and to adopt the face, eyes, and movements resembling those of a human, and its imposture, in its perfection, is in no way inferior to the very image of a human. Rats may also cause incurable disease, using to this end means known only to them.
They are beloved of pestilence, famine, war, flood, and invasion. Then they gather under the sign of mysterious metamorphoses, acting like people, and you will talk to them, not knowing who they are. They steal and sell at a profit inconceivable to the honest worker, and they deceive with the splendor of their garments and the meekness of their speech. They murder and destroy by fire, swindle, and lay traps; surrounded by luxury, they eat and drink their fill and have everything in abundance. Gold and silver is their most beloved loot, and precious jewels too, which they store underground.
“But enough of this,” said the rat-catcher. “You have guessed, of course, why I translated specifically this passage. You were surrounded by rats.”
But I had already understood. In certain cases we prefer to say nothing, so that our impression, wavering and being rent by other considerations, find a sure haven. Meanwhile, the furniture covers had begun to glint in the intensifying light streaming in through the window. The first voices in the street rang out as clearly as if they were in the room itself. Again I plunged into oblivion. The faces of the girl and her father receded, becoming a vague mirage, shrouded in a transparent mist. “Suzy, what’s wrong with him?” came the booming question. The girl approached me, standing somewhere near me, but where exactly I did not see, for I was in no state to turn my head. All of a sudden my forehead grew warm from the touch of a woman’s hand, while my surroundings, full of distorted, crossed perspectives, were engulfed in the chaos of my psyche. A wild, heavy dream carried me off. I heard her voice: “He’s asleep”—the words to which I awoke after thirty hours of nonbeing. I was taken to a cramped neighboring room and transferred onto a real bed, after which I learned that “for a man” I was “very light.” They took pity on me; the very next day, a room in the neighboring apartment was placed entirely at my disposal. What happens next is of no consequence. But it falls to me to ensure that it be just like that moment when I felt a warm hand on my head. I must win trust …
And not another word about this.
* in the new orthography … old: Russian orthography underwent a major reform in 1918, which saw, among other things, the elimination of four letters from the alphabet. Although the reforms had been prepared by the Academy of Sciences before the events of October 1917, their implementation after the revolution brought an immediate association with the new political regime.
* the Central Bank: The building in question is the Chicherin House at 15 Nevsky Prospect. It was converted into the House of Arts in 1919 (see Introduction).
* the Fifth Line: The street is located on Vasilyevsky Island; however, the numbering in the street runs only as far as 70.
* six arshins in width: The arshin is an old Russian unit of measurement, equivalent to two and one-third feet; the width of the aperture is thus fourteen feet.
FANDANGO
I.
In winter—when faces pale from the cold, when a person will run about a room wildly, hands thrust in sleeves, casting longing glances at the cold stove—how pleasant it is to think of summer, for in summer it’s warm.
I saw before me a burning glass and the sun overhead. Let us imagine that it’s July. A harsh, blinding spot, caught by the glaring lens, begins to smoke at the tip of a cigarette placed under it. The heat is fierce. It makes you unbutton your collar, wipe your damp neck and forehead, down a glass of water. But spring is a long way off, and a tropical pattern on the frosty window absurdly unfolds a transparent palm leaf.
Frozen stiff, trembling, I couldn’t make up my mind to leave, even though it was an unequivocal necessity. I do not like the snow, the frost, the ice—the pleasures of the Eskimo are foreign to my heart. Moreover, my clothing and footwear were simply no good at all. My old summer coat, an old cap, boots with worn-out soles—these were all I had to see out December and its twenty-seven degrees of frost.
S. T. had entrusted me to buy a painting by Gorshkov from the artist Brock. This was a kindly favor on S. T.’s part, since he could easily have bought the painting himself. As an act of pity, he meant to give me the commission. I was pondering this just now, as I was whistling the “Fandango.”
In those days I had no aversion to earning money by any means. I had discovered this little picture the week before, when I stopped off at Brock’s to collect some belongings, for until only recently I had occupied the room that was now his. I didn’t care for Gorshkov, much as people don’t care for cold, clammy, or limp handshakes; still, knowing that for S. T. the “who” was more important that the “what,” I informed him of my discovery. I added further that I doubted whether Brock’s acquisition of the painting had been entirely aboveboard.
Fandango and Other Stories Page 24