by Andrei Bely
The same bright, five-columned building with a stripe of ornamental stucco; circle after circle; and in the circle a Roman helmet on crossed swords.
In the evening the prospect is suffused with a fiery murk. Regularly in the centre rise the apples of the electric lights. While along the sides plays the variable lustre of signs; here, here and here rubies of lights suddenly flare; there – emeralds flare. An instant: the rubies are there; while the emeralds are here, here and here.
In the evening the Nevsky is suffused with a fiery murk. And the walls of many houses burn with a diamond light: words formed from diamonds brightly scintillate: ‘Coffee House’, ‘Farce’, ‘Tate Diamonds’, ‘Omega Watches’. Greenish by day, but now effulgent, a display window opens wide on the Nevsky its fiery maw: everywhere there are tens, hundreds of infernal fiery maws: these maws agonizingly disgorge on to the flagstones their brilliant white light; they spew a turbid wetness like fiery rust. And the prospect is gnawed to shreds by rust. The white brilliance falls on bowlers, top hats, feathers; the white brilliance rushes onwards, towards the centre of the prospect, shoving aside the evening darkness from the pavement: and the evening wetness dissolves above the Nevsky in glitterings, forming a dim, bloody-yellowish lees made of blood and mud. Thus from the Finnish marshes the city will show you the site of its mad way of life as a red, red stain: and that stain is soundlessly seen from the distance in the dark-coloured night. As you journey through our immense motherland, from the distance you will see a stain of red blood rising into the dark-coloured night; in fear you will say: ‘Is that not the place of the fires of Gehenna over there?’ You will say it – and will go trudging off into the distance: you will try to avoid the place of Gehenna.
But if, reckless reader, you dared to walk towards Gehenna, the brightly-bloody brilliance that horrified you from the distance would slowly dissolve into a whitish, not entirely pure radiance, surround you with many-lighted houses, – and that is all: in the end it would disintegrate into a great multitude of lights.
And there would be no Gehenna.
Nikolai Apollonovich did not see the Neva, in his eyes he still saw that same little house: the windows, the shadows behind the windows; behind the windows, perhaps, merry voices: the voice of the Yellow Cuirassier, Baron Ommau-Ommergau; of the Blue Cuirassier, Count Aven and her – her voice … Here sits Sergei Sergeich, the officer, inserting into his merry jokes perhaps:
‘Oh, I’ve just been out walking with Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov …’
Apollon Apollonovich Remembered
Yes, Apollon Apollonovich remembered: he had recently heard a certain good-natured joke about himself:
The civil servants said:
‘Our Bat41 (Apollon Apollonovich’s nickname in the Institution), when he shakes the hands of petitioners, behaves not at all like one of Gogol’s civil servants; when he shakes the hands of petitioners, he certainly does not run the gamut of handshakes from complete contempt, through inattention, to non-contempt: from collegiate registrar42 to state …’
And to this they observed:
‘He plays only one note: contempt …’
Here defenders intervened:
‘Gentlemen, please stop: it’s caused by haemorrhoids …’
And everyone agreed.
The door flew open: Apollon Apollonovich came in. The joke was timidly curtailed (thus does a young, quick-moving mouse swiftly fly into a crack as soon as you enter the room). But Apollon Apollonovich did not take offence at jokes; and, moreover, there was a degree of truth in the assertion: he did suffer from haemorrhoids.
Apollon Apollonovich went over to the window: two children’s heads in the windows of the house that stood there saw opposite them behind the pane of the house that stood there the facial stain of an unknown little old man.
And the heads over there in the windows disappeared.
Here, in the office of the lofty Institution, Apollon Apollonovich was truly growing into a kind of centre: into a series of government institutions, studies and green tables (only more modestly furnished). Here he was a point of radiating energy, an intersection of forces and an impulse of numerous, multi-constituent manipulations. Here Apollon Apollonovich was a force in the Newtonian sense; and a force in the Newtonian sense is, as you probably do not know, an occult force.
Here he was the final authority – in reports, petitions and telegrams.
He did not relate this authority in the state organism to himself, but to the centre he contained within himself – his consciousness.
Here consciousness detached itself from valiant personality, spilling around between the walls, growing incredibly clear, concentrating with such great force in a single point (between the eyes and the forehead) that it seemed an invisible, white light, flaring up between the eyes and the forehead, scattered around sheaves of serpentine lightnings; the lightning thoughts flew asunder like serpents from his bald head; and if a clairvoyant had stood at that moment before the face of the venerable statesman, he would without doubt have seen the head of the Gorgon Medusa.
And Apollon Apollonovich would have seized him with Medusan horror.
Here consciousness detached itself from valiant personality: while personality, with an abyss of all possible kinds of agitations (that incidental consequence of the soul’s existence), presented itself to the senator’s soul as a cranium, an empty, at the present moment voided, container.
At the Institution Apollon Apollonovich spent hours in the review of the document factory: from the radiant centre (between the eyes and the forehead) flew out all the circulars to the heads of the subordinate institutions. And in so far as he, from this armchair, cut across his life by means of his consciousness, so far did his circulars, from this place, cut the patchwork field of everyday life.
Apollon Apollonovich liked to compare this life with a sexual, vegetable or any other need (for example, the need for a quick trip through the St Petersburg prospects).
When he emerged from the cold-permeated walls, Apollon Apollonovich suddenly became an ordinary man in the street.
Only from here did he tower up and madly hover over Russia, in his enemies evoking a fateful comparison (with a bat). These enemies were – all to a man – ordinary folk; this enemy without the walls was himself.
Apollon Apollonovich was particularly efficient today: not once did his bare head nod at a report; Apollon Apollonovich was afraid to display weakness: in the discharging of his official duties! … To tower up into logical clarity he found particularly difficult today: God knew why, but Apollon Apollonovich had come to the conclusion that his own son, Nikolai Apollonovich, was an out-and-out scoundrel.
A window permitted one to see the lower part of the balcony. If one went over to the window one could see the caryatid at the entrance: a bearded man of stone.
Like Apollon Apollonovich, the bearded man of stone rose above the noise of the streets and above the season: the year eighteen twelve had freed him from his scaffolding. The year eighteen hundred and twenty-five had raged beneath him in crowds; the crowd was passing even now – in the year nineteen hundred and five. For five years now Apollon Apollonovich had seen daily from here the smile sculpted in stone; time’s tooth was gnawing it away. During five years events had flown past: Anna Petrovna was in Spain; Vyacheslav Konstantinovich was no more; the yellow heel had audaciously mounted the ridges of the Port Arthur heights; China had been in a state of ferment and Port Arthur had fallen.
As he prepared to go out to the crowd of waiting petitioners, Apollon Apollonovich smiled; but the smile proceeded from timidity: something was waiting for him outside the doors.
Apollon Apollonovich had spent his life between two writing desks: the desk of his study and the desk of the Institution. A third favourite place was the senatorial carriage.
And now: he – quailed.
But already the door had opened: the secretary, a young man, with a small medal liberally throbbing somewhere on the starch of his throat,
flew up to the elevated personage, with a deferential click of the overstarched edge of his snow-white cuff. And to his timid question Apollon Apollonovich honked:
‘No, no! … Do as I said … And knowest thou,’ said Apollon Apollonovich, stopped, corrected himself:
‘Dyouknow …’
He had meant to say ‘do you know’, but it had come out as: ‘knowest thou …’
About his absent-mindedness legends circulated; one day Apollon Apollonovich had appeared at a lofty reception, imagine – without a tie, and stopped by a palace lackey he had got into the greatest confusion, from which the lackey had extricated him by suggesting that he borrow a tie from him.
Cold Fingers
In a grey coat and a tall black top hat Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, with a stony face that recalled a paperweight, quickly ran from the carriage and ran up the steps of the entrance, taking off a suede glove on his way.
Quickly he entered the vestibule. The top hat was with caution entrusted to the lackey. With the same caution were surrendered: coat, briefcase and muffler.
Apollon Apollonovich stood before the lackey in meditation; suddenly Apollon Apollonovich turned to him with the question:
‘Please be so kind as to tell me: does a young man often come here – yes: a young man?’
‘A young man, sir?’
An awkward silence ensued. Apollon Apollonovich was unable to formulate his thought differently. And the lackey could not, of course, guess what young man the barin was asking about.
‘Young men come seldom, your exc’cy, sir …’
‘Well, but what about … young men with small moustaches?’
‘Small moustaches, sir?’
‘Black ones.’
‘Black ones, sir?’
‘Well yes, and … wearing a coat …’
‘They all arrive in coats, sir …’
‘Yes, but with a turned-up collar …’
Something suddenly dawned on the doorman.
‘Oh, you mean the one that …’
‘That’s right, yes: him …’
‘A man like that did come one day, sir … he was visiting the young barin: only it was quite a long time ago; you know how it is, sir … they come and pay a call …’
‘What did he look like?’
‘How do you mean, sir?’
‘Did he have a small moustache?’
‘That’s exactly right, sir!’
‘A black one?’
‘He had a small black moustache …’
‘And a coat with a turned-up collar?’
‘That’s the very man, sir …’
Apollon Apollonovich stood for a moment as though rooted to the spot and suddenly: Apollon Apollonovich walked past.
The staircase was covered by a grey velvet carpet; the staircase was, of course, framed by heavy walls; a grey velvet carpet covered those walls. On the walls gleamed an ornamental display of ancient weapons; and beneath a rusty green shield shone a Lithuanian helmet with its spike; the cross-shaped handle of a knight’s sword sparkled; here swords were rusting; there – heavily inclined halberds; a many-ringed coat of mail lustrelessly enlivened the walls; and there bowed: a pistol and a six-pointed mace.
The top of the staircase led on to a balustrade; here from a lustreless pedestal of white alabaster a white Niobe raised her alabaster eyes to heaven.
Apollon Apollonovich sharply flung open the door before him, resting his bony hand on its faceted handle: through the enormous hall that stretched excessively in length, resounded the cold step of a heavy tread.
It is Always Like This
Above the empty Petersburg streets flew barely illumined dimnesses; fragments of rainclouds outran one another.
A kind of phosphorescent stain, both misty and deathly, rushed across the sky; the heights became misted by a phosphorescent sheen; and this made the iron roofs and chimneys gleam. Here the green waters of the Moika flowed past; on one side towered that same three-storeyed building with its five white columns; on top there were projections. There, against the bright background of the bright building, one of Her Majesty’s cuirassiers was slowly walking. He had a golden, gleaming helmet.
And above the helmet a silver dove had extended its wings.
Nikolai Apollonovich, scented and shaven, was making his way along the Moika, wrapped tightly in furs; his head had sunk into his greatcoat, while his eyes shone somehow strangely; in his soul – tremors without name were rising there; something sinister and sweet was singing there: it was as though within him Aeolus’ bag of winds had flown to pieces and the sons of foreign gusts were cruelly chasing him away with whistling lashes to strange and incomprehensible lands.
He thought: was this also – love? He remembered: one foggy night, running headlong out of that entrance way there, he had set off in flight towards a cast-iron Petersburg bridge, in order there, on the bridge …
He started.
A shaft of light flew by: a black court carriage flew by: past the bright window recesses of that same house carried its bright red, as if bloodshot, lamps; on the black flood of the Moika the lamps played and shone; the ghostly contour of a lackey’s tricorne and the contour of the wings of his greatcoat flew with the light out of the fog into the fog.
Nikolai Apollonovich stood for a while before the house, reflectively: his heart was hammering within his breast; stood for a while, stood for a while – and suddenly he disappeared into a familiar entrance porch.
In former times he had come here every evening; but now it was more than two months since he had crossed the threshold; and he crossed it now as though he were a thief. In former times a maid in a white apron used to open the door cordially; would say:
‘Good day, barin,’ with a sly smile.
But now? No one would come out to meet him; if he were to ring, the same maid would blink her eyes at him in fright, and would not say, ‘Good day, barin’; no, he was not going to ring.
Then why was he here?
The entrance-porch door flew open before him; and the entrance-porch door struck him in the back with noise; darkness enveloped him; as though everything had fallen away behind him (this is probably what the first moment after death is like, when the temple of the body comes crashing down from the soul into the abyss of putrefaction); but Nikolai Apollonovich was not thinking about death now – death was far away; in the darkness, evidently, he was thinking about his own gestures, because in the darkness his actions took on a fantastic stamp; on the cold step he sat down near one of the entrance doors, his face lowered into the fur and listening to the beating of his heart; a certain black emptiness was beginning behind his back; a black emptiness was in front.
Thus did Nikolai Apollonovich sit in the darkness.
And as he sat, the Neva still went on revealing itself between Alexander Square and Millionnaya; the stone curve of the Winter Canal showed a whining expanse; the Neva rushed from there in an onslaught of wet wind; the soundlessly flying surfaces of its waters began to shimmer, furiously returning to the fog a pale sheen. The smooth walls of the four-storeyed palace flank, speckled with lines, mordantly gleamed with moonlight.
No one, nothing.
Here the canal went on, as ever, pouring the same cholera-infected water into the Neva; and the same small bridge curved as ever; the same nightly female shadow kept running out across the bridge, in order to – throw itself into the water? … Liza’s shadow?43 No, not Liza’s, but simply – a Petersburg woman’s; a Petersburg woman ran out here, did not throw herself into the Neva: having cut across the Winter Canal, she quickly ran away from some yellow house on the Gagarin Embankment, below which she stood every evening, looking long at a window.
A quiet lapping remained behind her back: before her spread the square; endless statues, greenish ones, bronze ones, revealed themselves from everywhere above the dark red walls; Hercules and Poseidon44 went on surveying the expanses in the night as ever; on the other side of the Neva a colossus rose – in the contours
of the islands and the houses; and sorrowfully cast amber eyes into the fog; and seemed to be weeping; a row of riverside street lamps dropped fiery tears into the Neva; its surface was burned through by simmering gleams.
Higher up, ragged arms mournfully stretched some kind of vague outlines across the sky; swarm upon swarm they rose above the Neva’s waves, racing away towards the zenith; and when they touched the zenith, then, impetuously attacking, from the sky the phosphorescent stain hurled itself upon them. Only in one place that had not been touched by chaos – there, where by day the heavy stone bridge threw itself across – enormous clusters of diamonds showed strangely misty.
The female shadow, face set into a small muff, ran along to the Moika to that same entrance porch from which it had run in the evenings and where now on the cold step, below the door, sat Nikolai Apollonovich; the entrance-porch door opened before her; the darkness enveloped her; as though everything had fallen away behind her; the little lady in black thought for a while in the entrance porch about simple and earthly things; in a moment she would give instructions for a samovar to be brought; she had already stretched out her hand to the bell, and – then saw: some kind of outline, a mask, it seemed, rose before her from the step.
And when the door opened and a shaft of light illumined the darkness of the entrance porch for a moment, the exclamation of a frightened chambermaid confirmed it all for her, because in the open door there first appeared an apron and an overstarched cap; and then from the door shrank back – both apron and cap. In the bright flare of light a scene of indescribable strangeness was revealed, and the little lady’s black outline rushed out of the open door.
Behind her back, out of the murk, rose a rustling, dark crimson clown with a small, bearded, trembling mask.
One could see from the murk how soundlessly and slowly from the satin-rustling shoulders slid the furs of the Nikolayevka,45 how two red hands painfully stretched towards the door. At this point, of course, the door closed, cutting through the shaft of light and throwing the entrance-porch staircase back into complete emptiness, darkness: crossing the threshold of death, thus do we throw back our bodies into the darkened abyss that has just shone with light.