Petersburg (Penguin Classics)

by Andrei Bely

  ‘Why, I thought all liaison with him was through me …’

  ‘Well, you can see that it isn’t …’

  Around them was heard:

  ‘Eat, eat, friend …’

  ‘Get me some beef jelly.’

  ‘In food is truth …’

  ‘What is truth?’40

  ‘Truth is tooth …’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘If you know, that’s fine: move up a plate and eat …’

  Lippanchenko’s dark yellow suit reminded the stranger of the dark yellow colour of the wallpaper of his abode on Vasily Island – a colour that was connected with insomnia and white spring nights and September sombre ones; and, so it must be, that cruel insomnia had suddenly evoked in his memory a certain fateful face with narrow little Mongolian eyes; that face had looked repeatedly at him from a piece of his yellow wallpaper. Examining this place by day, the stranger had only been able to make out a damp spot, over which a woodlouse was crawling. In order to distract himself from memories of the hallucination that had tormented him, my stranger lit a cigarette, to his own surprise, becoming garrulous:

  ‘Listen to the noise …’

  ‘Yes, they’re making a fair old noise.’

  ‘The sound of the noise is an i, but you hear an y …’

  Lippanchenko, torpid, was immersed in some thought.

  ‘In the sound y one hears something stupid and slimy … Or am I mistaken?’

  ‘No, no: not in the slightest,’ not listening, Lippanchenko muttered and for a moment tore himself away from the computations of his thought …

  ‘All words with an y in them are trivial to the point of ugliness: i is not like that; i-i-i – a blue firmament, a thought, a crystal; the sound i-i-i evokes in me the notion of an eagle’s curved beak; while words with y in them are trivial; for example: the word ryba (fish); listen: r-y-y-y-ba, that is, something with cold blood … And again my-y-y-lo (soap): something slimy; glyby (clods) – something formless: tyl (rear) – the place of debauches …’

  My stranger broke off his discourse: Lippanchenko sat before him like a formless glyba: and the dym (smoke) from his cigarette slimily soaped up (obmylival) the atmosphere: Lippanchenko sat in a cloud; my stranger looked at him and thought ‘Pah!, what filth, Tartar stuff …’ Before him sat quite simply a kind of Y …

  From the next table someone, hiccuping, exclaimed:

  ‘You big Y, you big Y …’

  ‘I say, Lippanchenko, you’re not a Mongol, are you?’

  ‘Why such a strange question? …’

  ‘Oh, it just occurred to me …’

  ‘Well, but Mongol blood flows in every Russian …’

  Against the next table leaned a fat paunch; and from the next table a paunch rose to greet it …

  ‘To the slaughterer Apofriev! …’

  ‘Regards!’

  ‘To the slaughterer of the city abattoirs … Take a seat …’

  ‘Waiter! …’

  ‘Well, how are things with you? …’

  ‘Waiter: put on “The Negro’s Dream” …’

  And the horns of the machine bellowed to the slaughterer’s health, like a bull under the slaughterer’s knife.

  What Costumier?

  Nikolai Apollonovich’s lodging consisted of the rooms: bedroom, working study, reception room.

  The bedroom: the bedroom was taken up by an enormous bed; it was covered by a red satin spread – with lace covers on the fluffily plumped-up pillows.

  The study was furnished with oak shelves that were tightly packed with books, before which silk lightly slipped on brass rings; a careful hand could at one time completely conceal from the gaze the contents of the shelves, at another reveal rows of black leather bindings that were speckled with the inscription: Kant.

  The study’s furniture was green-upholstered; and there was a handsome bust … of Kant, of course.

  For two years now Nikolai Apollonovich had not risen before noon. For two and a half years before that he had woken up earlier: had woken up at nine o’clock, at half past nine appearing in a tightly buttoned-up uniform jacket, for the family imbibing of coffee.

  Two and a half years before, Nikolai Apollonovich had not paced about the house in a Bokharan robe; a skullcap had not adorned his Oriental drawing-room; two and a half years before, Anna Petrovna, Nikolai Apollonovich’s mother and Apollon Apollonovich’s spouse, had finally abandoned the family hearth, inspired by an Italian artist; and after her flight with the artist Nikolai Apollonovich had appeared on the parquets of the cooling domestic hearth dressed in a Bokharan robe: the daily meetings of father and son over morning coffee were somehow curtailed of themselves. Coffee was served to Nikolai Apollonovich in bed.

  And Apollon Apollonovich was inclined to partake of coffee considerably earlier than his son.

  The meetings of father and son took place only over dinner; and even then, only for a short time; meanwhile in the mornings a robe began to appear on Nikolai Apollonovich; Tartar slippers, trimmed with fur, were acquired; while on his head a skullcap appeared.

  And the brilliant young man was transformed into an Oriental.

  Nikolai Apollonovich had just received a letter; a letter written in unfamiliar handwriting: some kind of wretched doggerel with an amorous-revolutionary tinge and the striking signature: ‘A Fiery Soul’. Wishing for the sake of precision to acquaint himself with the contents of the doggerel, Nikolai Apollonovich began helplessly to rush about the room, hunting for his spectacles, rummaging among books, quills, pens and other knick-knacks and muttering to himself:

  ‘A-a … But where are my spectacles? …

  ‘The devil take it …

  ‘Have you lost them?

  ‘Tell me, please.

  ‘Eh? …’

  Like Apollon Apollonovich, Nikolai Apollonovich talked to himself.

  His movements were impetuous, like the movements of his eminent papa; like Apollon Apollonovich, he was distinguished by an unprepossessing stature, a ceaselessly smiling face with an anxious gaze: but when he immersed himself in the serious contemplation of anything at all this gaze slowly turned to stone: drily, sharply and coldly protruded the lines of his completely white countenance, like one painted on an icon, striking the observer with an especial kind of aristocratic nobility: the nobility in his face was manifested in a notable manner by his forehead – chiselled, with small, swollen veins: the rapid pulsation of these veins clearly marked on his forehead a premature sclerosis.

  The bluish veins coincided with the blueness around his enormous eyes, which looked as though they had been pencilled in some dark cornflower colour (only in moments of agitation did his eyes become black from the dilation of the pupils).

  Nikolai Apollonovich was arrayed before us in a Tartar skullcap; but had he taken it off – there would have appeared a cap of white flaxen hair, softening this cold, almost stern exterior with an imprinted stubbornness; it was rare to encounter hair of such a colour in a grown man; this hair colour, unusual for adults, is frequently encountered in peasant infants – especially in Belorussia.

  Carelessly abandoning the letter, Nikolai Apollonovich sat down before an open book; and the thing he had been reading a day earlier arose before him (some kind of treatise). Both chapter and page came back to him: he recalled even the lightly traced zigzag of a rounded fingernail; the convoluted passages of thoughts and his own notations – in pencil in the margins; now his face grew enlivened, remaining both stern and clear: it was animated by thought.

  Here, in his room, Nikolai Apollonovich truly grew into a self-appointed centre – into a series of logical premisses that predetermined thought, soul and this very desk: here he was the sole centre of the universe, both conceivable and inconceivable, cyclically elapsing in all zones of time.

  This centre made deductions.

  But scarcely had Nikolai Apollonovich succeeded this day in putting away from him the trivia of day-to-day existence and the abyss of all kinds of obscurity
, called world and life, and scarcely had Nikolai Apollonovich succeeded in going into his study than obscurity again burst into Nikolai Apollonovich’s world; and in this obscurity consciousness of self got shamefully stuck: thus does the untrammelled fly, running along the rim of a plate on its six legs, suddenly get inextricably stuck leg and wing in a sticky sediment of honey.

  Nikolai Apollonovich tore himself away from the book: someone was knocking at his door:

  ‘Well …?

  ‘What is it?’

  From the other side of the door a hollow and deferential voice was heard.

  ‘There, sir …

  ‘They’re asking for you, sir …’

  Concentrating himself in thought, Nikolai Apollonovich was in the habit of locking his work room: then it began to seem to him that both he and the room and the objects in that room were instantly transformed from objects of the real world into the intelligible symbols of purely logical constructions; the space of the room blended with his body, which had lost sensitivity, into a general chaos of existence, called by him the ‘universe’; and Nikolai Apollonovich’s consciousness, separating itself from his body, united itself directly with the electric lamp on his writing desk, which he called ‘the sun of consciousness’. Having locked himself in and reviewing the tenets of his system which was being, step by step, reduced to a unity, he felt his body being poured into the ‘universe’, that is, into the room; while the head of this ‘body’ was displaced into the electric lamp’s pot-bellied lightbulb under the coquettish shade.

  And having displaced himself thus, Nikolai Apollonovich became a truly creative being.

  This was why he liked to lock himself in: the voice, rustle or step of an intruder turning the ‘universe’ into a room, and ‘consciousness’ into a lamp, shattered Nikolai Apollonovich’s whimsical sequence of thought.

  So it was now.

  ‘What is it?

  ‘I can’t hear …’

  But from the distance of space the lackey’s voice responded:

  ‘A man has arrived out there.’

  At this point Nikolai Apollonovich’s face suddenly took on a pleased expression:

  ‘Ah, this will be someone from the costumier’s: the costumier has brought me my costume …’

  What costumier?

  Nikolai Apollonovich, gathering up the skirts of his robe, strode off in the direction of the exit; by the staircase balustrade Nikolai Apollonovich leaned over and shouted:

  ‘Is that you? …

  ‘The costumier?

  ‘Are you from the costumier?

  ‘Has the costumier sent me the costume?’

  And again we repeat to ourselves: what costumier?

  In Nikolai Apollonovich’s room a cardboard box appeared; Nikolai Apollonovich locked the door; fussily he cut the string; and he raised the lid; further, pulled out of the box: first a small mask with a black lace beard, and after the mask Nikolai Apollonovich pulled out a sumptuous bright red domino cape with folds that rustled.

  Soon he stood before the mirror – all of satin, all of red, having raised the miniature mask over his face; the black lace of the beard, turning away, fell on to his shoulders, forming to right and left a whimsical, fantastical wing; and from the black lace of the wings from the semi-twilight of the room in the mirror looked at him tormentingly, strangely – it, the same: the face, – his, his own; you would have said that there in the mirror it was not Nikolai Apollonovich looking at himself, but an unknown, pale, languishing – demon of space.

  After this masquerade Nikolai Apollonovich, with an exceedingly pleased look on his face, put back into the cardboard box first the red domino cape, and after it the small black mask.

  A Wet Autumn

  A wet autumn was flying over Petersburg; and cheerlessly did the September day glimmer.

  In a greenish swarm shreds of clouds rushed by out there; they thickened into a yellowish smoke, pressing themselves against the roofs like a threat. The greenish swarm rose unceasingly above the irreparable distance of the Neva’s spaces; the dark watery depths beat at the boundaries with the steel of their scales; into the greenish swarm stretched a spire … from the Petersburg Side.

  Having described a funereal arc in the sky, a dark stripe of soot rose high from the funnels of steamboats; and fell like a tail into the Neva.

  And the Neva seethed, and cried desperately there with the whistle of a small steamboat that had begun to hoot, smashed its shields of water and steel against the stone bridge-piers; and licked the granite, with an onslaught of cold Neva winds it tore away peaked caps, umbrellas, capes and service caps. And everywhere in the air hung a pale grey mould; and from there, into the Neva, into the pale grey mould, the wet statue of the Horseman continued to hurl his heavy, green-turned bronze.

  And against this darkening background of tailed and drooping soot above the damp stones of the embankment railing, his eyes fixed upon the turbid, bacillus-infected water of the Neva, the silhouette of Nikolai Apollonovich distinctly stood out, clad in a grey Nikolayevka and a student’s peaked cap worn at a slant. Slowly did Nikolai Apollonovich move towards the grey, dark bridge, did not smile, presenting a rather ridiculous figure: tightly wrapped in the greatcoat, he appeared stooping and rather awkward, with a wing of greatcoat dancing most absurdly in the wind.

  By the large black bridge he stopped.

  An unpleasant smile flared for an instant on his face and died; memories of an unsuccessful love had seized him, gushing out in an onslaught of cold wind; Nikolai Apollonovich remembered a certain foggy night; on that night he had leaned over the railing; turned round and seen that there was no one there; raised his leg; and in a sleek rubber galosh brought it over the railing, and … remained like that: with raised leg; it seemed that consequences ought to have ensued; but … Nikolai Apollonovich continued to stand with raised leg. A few moments later Nikolai Apollonovich had lowered his leg.

  It was then that an ill-considered plan had matured within him: to give a dreadful promise to a certain frivolous party.

  Remembering now this unsuccessful action of his, Nikolai Apolonovich smiled in a most unpleasant manner, presenting a rather ridiculous figure: tightly wrapped in the greatcoat, he appeared stooping and rather awkward with his long wing of greatcoat dancing in the wind; with such an aspect did he turn on to the Nevsky; it was beginning to get dark; here and there in a shop’s display window gleamed a light.

  ‘A handsome fellow,’ was constantly heard around Nikolai Apollonovich.

  ‘An antique mask …’

  ‘The Apollo Belvedere.’

  ‘A handsome fellow …’

  In all probability the ladies he encountered spoke of him thus.

  ‘That pallor of his face …’

  ‘That marble profile …’

  ‘Divine …’

  In all probability the ladies he encountered spoke of him thus.

  But if Nikolai Apollonovich had wished to enter into conversation with the ladies, the ladies would have said to themselves:

  ‘An ugly monster …’

  Where from an entrance porch two melancholic lions place paw on grey granite paw, – there, by that place, Nikolai Apollonovich stopped and was surprised to see behind him the back of a passing officer; tripping over the skirts of his greatcoat, he began to catch the officer up:

  ‘Sergei Sergeyevich?’

  The officer (a tall, blond fellow with a little pointed beard) turned round and with a shade of annoyance watched expectantly through the blue lenses of his spectacles as, tripping over the skirts of his greatcoat, clumsily towards him trailed a diminutive and student-like figure from a familiar place where from an entrance porch two melancholic lions with sleek granite manes mockingly place paw upon paw. For an instant some kind of thought seemed to strike the officer’s face; from the expression of his trembling lips one might have thought that the officer was excited; he seemed to be hesitating: should he recognize or not?

  ‘Er … hello … Where
are you going?’

  ‘I have to go to Panteleimonovskaya,’ Nikolai Apollonovich lied, in order to be able to walk along the Moika with the officer.

  ‘Let’s go together, if you like …’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Nikolai Apollonovich lied a second time, in order to be able to walk along the Moika with the officer.

  ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘That’s on our way, then.’

  Between the windows of the yellow, official building, above both of them, hung rows of stone lions’ faces; each face hung above a coat of arms that was entwined with a stone garland.

  As if trying not to touch on some painful past, they both, interrupting each other, began to talk concernedly to one another: about the weather, about how the disturbances of recent weeks had affected Nikolai Apollonovich’s philosophical work, about the cases of swindling that the officer had uncovered in the provisions commission (the officer was in charge of provisions somewhere out there).

  Thus did they talk all the way.

  And there was the Moika already: the same bright, three-storeyed building of the Alexandrine era; and the same stripe of ornamental stucco above the second storey; circle after circle; and in the circle a Roman helmet on crossed swords. They had already passed the building; there after the building was a house; and there – windows … The officer stopped outside the house and for some reason suddenly flushed; and, having flushed, said:

  ‘Well, goodbye … are you going further? …’

  Nikolai Apollonovich’s heart began to thump violently: he was getting ready to ask something; and – no, he did not ask; now he stood alone in front of the slammed door; memories of an unsuccessful love, or more correctly – sensual attraction – these memories seized him; and more violently did the bluish veins at his temples begin to throb; now he was considering his revenge: outrage at the emotions of the lady who had wounded him and who lived through this entrance porch; he had been considering his revenge for about a month now; and – for the moment about this not a word!