by Andrei Bely
Sergei Sergeich was tall of stature, had a blond beard, possessed a nose, a mouth, hair, ears and wonderfully shining eyes: but unfortunately he wore dark blue spectacles, and no one knew either the colour of his eyes or the wonderful expression of those eyes.
A Vileness, a Vileness and a Vileness
In those frozen days of early October Sofya Petrovna was in an extraordinary state of agitation; upon being left alone in the little hothouse she would suddenly begin to wrinkle her little forehead, and grow flushed: turn crimson; go over to the window in order to wipe the sweating panes with a small handkerchief of delicate transparent batiste; the pane would begin to squeak, revealing a view of the canal with a gentleman in a top hat walking by – no more; as though she were disappointed in her presentiment, Angel Peri would begin to pick and shred the dampened handkerchief with her little teeth, and then run to put on her black plush coat and matching hat (Sofya Petrovna dressed most modestly), in order, pressing her fur muff to her little nose, aimlessly to wander from the Moika to the embankment; she even once looked in at the Ciniselli Circus17 and saw there a wonder of nature: a bearded lady; but most often she called by at the kitchen and talked in whispers with the young chambermaid, Mavrushka, a very pretty young girl in an apron and a butterfly cap. And her eyes crossed: thus always did her eyes cross at moments of agitation.
Then one day, when Lippanchenko was there, with loud laughter she snatched a pin from her hat and stuck it into her little finger:
‘Look: it doesn’t hurt; and there’s no blood: I’m made of wax … a doll.’
But Lippanchenko did not understand at all: he burst out laughing, and said:
‘You’re not a doll: you’re a dushkan.’
And flying into a rage, Angel Peri drove him away from her. Seizing from the table his hat with earflaps, Lippanchenko retreated.
And she rushed about the little hothouse, wrinkling her brow, flushing, wiping the pane; a view of the canal with a carriage flying past came into view: no more.
What more could there have been?
The fact of the matter was this: several days ago Sofya Petrovna Likhutina had returned home from Baroness R.R. At Baroness R.R.’s that evening there had been table-tapping; whitish sparks had run across the wall; and on one occasion the table had even jumped: no more; but Sofya Petrovna’s nerves were stretched to the limit (after a seance she wandered about the streets), and the entrance porch to her house was not lit (the entrance porches to blocks of cheap flats are not lit): and inside the black entrance Sofya Petrovna very distinctly saw a spot even blacker than the darkness staring at her – it looked like a black mask; something showed dimly red beneath the mask, and with all her strength Sofya Petrovna tugged at the bell. And when the door flew open and a stream of bright light from the hallway fell on the staircase, Mavrushka uttered a scream and threw up her hands: Sofya Petrovna saw nothing, because she impetuously flew past into the flat. Mavrushka saw: behind the barynya’s back a red, satin domino stretched forward its black mask, surrounded from below by a thick lace fan that was of course black, so that this black lace fell towards Sofya Petrovna’s shoulder (it was a good thing that she did not turn her little head); the red domino stretched out to Mavrushka its bloody sleeve, from which a visiting card protruded; and when the door slammed in front of the hand, Sofya Petrovna, too, saw the visiting card by the door (it had doubtless flown through the crack in the doorway); but what was drawn on that visiting card? A skull and crossbones instead of a nobleman’s coronet and also the words, set in fashionable script: ‘I await you at the masked ball – at such-and-such a place, on such-and-such a date’; and then the signature: ‘The Red Buffoon’.
Sofya Petrovna spent the whole evening in a dreadful state of agitation. Who could have dressed up in a red domino? Of course, it was he, Nikolai Apollonovich: after all, she seemed to remember she had once called him by that name … And the Red Buffoon had arrived. In that case what name was one to give to such a piece of behaviour with a defenceless woman? Well, was it not a vileness?
A vileness, a vileness and a vileness.
She wished her husband, the officer, would hurry up and come home: he would teach the insolent fellow a lesson. Sofya Petrovna blushed, squinted, bit her handkerchief and became covered in perspiration. If only someone would come: Aven, or Baron Ommau-Ommergau, or Shporyshev, or even … Lippanchenko.
But no one appeared.
Well, so in that case suddenly it was not he? And Sofya Petrovna felt distinctly upset: she felt somehow loath to part with her thoughts about the buffoon being him; in these thoughts together with anger was interlaced that same sweet, familiar, fateful emotion; she must have wanted him to prove to be a most complete scoundrel.
No – it was not he: so he was not the scoundrel, not the naughty boy! … Well, but what if he really were the Red Buffoon? Who the Red Buffoon could be, to this she could not offer any coherent answer to herself – and yet … And her heart fell – it was not he.
She at once ordered Mavrushka to say nothing: but she went to the masked ball; and in secret from her meek husband: for the first time she went to a masked ball.
The fact of the matter was that Sergei Sergeich Likhutin had most sternly forbidden her to attend masked balls. He was a strange fellow: valued his epaulettes, his sword, his officer’s honour (was he not a Bourbon?)
Meekness upon meekness … to the point of eccentricity, to his officer’s honour. He would say only: ‘I give you my officer’s word of honour – this will happen, and this will not.’ And – would not on any account be moved: a kind of inflexibility, cruelty. When, as he usually did, he raised his spectacles on to his forehead, became cold, unpleasant, wooden, as if carved out of white cypress, he would bang his cypress fist on the table: at such times Angel Peri would fly out of her husband’s room in fear: her little nose wrinkled, teardrops fell, the bedroom door would be bitterly locked.
Among Sofya Petrovna’s visitors, one of the guests-so-to-speak who talked about ‘revolution-evolution’ was a certain respected newspaper contributor: Neintelpfain; black-haired, wrinkled, with a nose that was bent from top to bottom, and with a little beard that was bent in the opposite direction. Sofya Petrovna revered him dreadfully: and in him did she confide; he it was who had taken her to the masked ball, where some kind of buffoon – harlequins, Italian maidens, Spanish maidens and oriental women flashed the hostile pinpoints of their eyes at one another from behind black velvet masks; on the arm of Neintelpfain, the respected newspaper contributor, Sofya Petrovna modestly walked about the halls in her black domino. And some kind of red, satin domino kept rushing about the halls, kept looking for someone, stretching before him his black mask, below which swished a thick fan made of lace – also black, of course.
At this point it was that Sofya Petrovna Likhutina told the faithful Neintelpfain about a mysterious event, well, of course, hiding all the threads; the little Neintelpfain, the respected newspaper contributor, received five copecks per line: ever since that time it had invariably, invariably been the case that each day without fail there appeared in the ‘Diary of Events’ a note about – a red domino, a red domino!
People discussed the domino, grew dreadfully excited about him and argued about him: some saw in him revolutionary terror; while others merely said nothing and shurgged their shoulders. Bells rang in the Secret Political Department.
People talked of that appearance of the domino on the streets of Petersburg even in the little hothouse; and Count Aven, and Baron Ommau-Ommergau, and Leib Hussar Shporyshev, and Verhefden made ‘fifis’ in this connection, and a ceaseless rain of twenty-copeck pieces flew into the little copper collection box; only the crafty khokhol-Little Russian Lippanchenko seemed crookedly to laugh. While Sofya Petrovna Likhutina, beside herself, turned crimson, turned pale, became covered in perspiration and bit her handkerchief. Neintelpfain had quite simply proved to be a beast, but Neintelpfain did not show himself: day after day he assiduously teased out his newspaper lines
; and the newspaper rigmarole dragged on and on, covering the world with the most utter nonsense.
A Completely Smoked-up Face
Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov stood above the staircase balustrade in his little multicoloured robe, scattering in all directions an iridescent gleam, forming a complete contrast to the column and the small alabaster pillar from which a white Niobe raised heavenward her alabaster eyes.
‘Nikolai Apollonovich, I expect you took me for someone else …’
‘I am – I …’
There at the bottom stood the stranger with the small black moustache and the coat with the raised collar.
At this point Nikolai Apollonovich bared his teeth in an unpleasant smile from the balustrade:
‘Is it you, Aleksandr Ivanovich? … Most pleasant!’
And then hypocritically he added:
‘I did not recognize you without my glasses …’
Overcoming the unpleasant impression of the stranger’s presence in the lacquered house, Nikolai Apollonovich continued to nod his head from the balustrade:
‘To tell you the truth, I’ve only just got out of bed: that’s why I’m wearing my robe’ (as though with this chance remark Nikolai Apollonovich wanted to give the visitor to understand that the latter had inflicted his visit at an inopportune time; on our own part we shall add: every night of late, Nikolai Apollonovich had been missing).
The stranger with the small black moustache presented in his person an exceedingly pathetic spectacle against the rich background of the ornamental display of ancient weapons; none the less the stranger summoned up his courage, continuing with heat to calm Nikolai Apollonovich – half mocking, and half being the most utter simpleton:
‘It does not matter at all, Nikolai Apollonovich, that you’ve just got out of bed … The most utter trifle, I assure you: you are not a young lady, and I am not a young lady either … Why, I myself have only just risen …’
There was nothing for it. Having mastered within his soul the unpleasant impression (it had been evoked by the stranger’s appearance – here, in the lacquered house, where the lackeys might be thoroughly puzzled and where, at last, the stranger might be greeted by his papa) – having mastered within his soul the unpleasant impression, Nikolai Apollonovich conceived the design of moving downstairs in order with dignity, in the Ableukhov manner, to lead into the lacquered house the punctilious guest; but, to his annoyance, one of his fur slippers jumped off; and the naked foot began to stagger from under the skirts of the robe; Nikolai Apollonovich stumbled on the steps; and in addition he let the stranger down: in the assumption that Nikolai Apollonovich, in an access of his usual obsequiousness, was rushing down towards him (Nikolai Apollonovich had already manifested in this direction all the impetuosity of his gestures), the stranger with the small black moustache rushed in his turn towards Nikolai Apollonovich, leaving his muddy footprints upon the velvet-grey stairs; but now my stranger stood bewilderedly between the hallway and the summit of the stairs; and as he did so he saw that he was besmirching the carpet; my stranger embarrassedly smiled.
‘Please, take off your coat.’
The delicate reminder that it was on no account possible to penetrate into the barin’s chambers wearing a coat, belonged to a lackey, into whose hands with despairing independence the stranger shook off his wet little coat; he stood now in a grey, checked suit that had been nibbled by moths. Seeing that the lackey intended to stretch out his hand for the wet bundle, too, my stranger flared up; having flared up, he became doubly disconcerted:
‘No, no …’
‘But please, sir …’
‘No: this I shall take with me …’
The stranger with the small black moustache trod with his wornthrough boots the shining slippery parquetry with the same doggedness with which he rushed at everything; surprised and fleeting were the glances he cast at the sumptuous perspective of rooms. Nikolai Apollonovich, with particular mildness, gathering up the skirts of his robe, walked ahead of the stranger. To both of them, however, their silent peregrination through these shining perspectives seemed irksome: both were sadly silent; to the stranger with the small black moustache Nikolai Apollonovich presented with relief not his face but his iridescent back; for that reason, doubtless, the smile had also vanished from his hitherto unnaturally smiling lips. For our part, however, let us observe directly: Nikolai Apollonovich was afraid; in his head quickly spun: ‘It’s probably some charitable collection – for a victimized worker; at the very most – for arms …’ And in his soul drearily began to whine: ‘No, no – not this, or what will happen?’
Before the oak door of his study, Nikolai Apollonovich suddenly turned sharply round to face the stranger; across the faces of both a smile slipped for a moment; both suddenly looked each other in the eye with an expectant expression.
‘So please … Aleksandr Ivanovich …’
‘Don’t be uneasy …’
‘Welcome …’
‘But no, no …’
Nikolai Apollonovich’s reception room stood in complete contrast to his severe study: it was as multicoloured as … as a Bokhara robe; Nikolai Apollonovich’s robe, so to speak, extended into all the appurtenances of the room: for example, into the low sofa; it sooner recalled an oriental tapestry couch; the Bokhara robe extended into the wooden stool of dark brown colours; the stool was incrusted with fine bands of ivory and mother-of-pearl; the robe extended further into the Negro shield of thick hide from a rhinoceros that had fallen once upon a time, and into the rusty Sudanese arrow with its massive handle; for some reason it had been hung up on the wall here; lastly, the robe extended into the skin of a multicoloured leopard, thrown to their feet with a gaping maw; on the stool stood a dark blue hookah and a three-legged censer in the form of a sphere pierced with openings and a half moon on top; but most surprising of all was a multicoloured cage in which from time to time green budgerigars began to beat their wings.
Nikolai Apollonovich moved up the multicoloured stool for his guest; the stranger with the black moustache sank on to the edge of the stool and pulled from his pocket a rather cheap cigar case.
‘May I?’
‘Please do!’
‘You don’t smoke yourself?’
‘No, I don’t have the habit …’
And at once, growing embarrassed, Nikolai Apollonovich added:
‘As a matter of fact, when others are smoking, I …’
‘You open the small window?’
‘Oh come, come! …’
‘The ventilator?’
‘Ach, but no … quite the contrary – I was trying to say that smoking rather affords me …’ Nikolai Apollonovich hurried, but his guest, who was not listening to him, continued to interrupt:
‘You yourself leave the room?’
‘Ach, but no, I tell you: I was trying to say that I like the smell of tobacco smoke, especially cigars.’
‘You shouldn’t, Nikolai Apollonovich, you really shouldn’t: after smokers …’
‘Yes? …’
‘One ought to …’
‘Yes?’
‘Quickly air the room.’
‘Oh come, come!’
‘Opening both the small window and the ventilator.’
‘On the contrary, on the contrary …’
‘Do not defend tobacco, Nikolai Apollonovich: I tell you that from experience … Smoke penetrates the grey matter of the brain … The cerebral hemispheres become clogged: a general inertia spreads into the organism …’
The stranger with the small black moustache gave a familiarly meaningful wink: the stranger saw that the host still doubted the permeability of the brain’s grey matter, but because of his habit of being a courteous host he was not going to dispute with his guest: then the stranger with the small black moustache began vexedly to pluck at that small black moustache:
‘Take a look at my face.’
Unable to find his spectacles, Nikolai Apollonovich brought his blinking eyelids right up
to the stranger’s face.
‘You see my face?’
‘Yes, your face …’
‘A pale face.’
‘Yes, a little on the pale side,’ – and a play of all kinds of civilities and their nuances spread over Ableukhov’s cheeks.
‘A completely green, smoked-up face,’ the stranger interrupted him, ‘the face of a smoker. I will smoke your room for you, Nikolai Apollonovich.’
Nikolai Apollonovich had long been experiencing an uneasy heaviness, as though what were spreading into the atmosphere of the room were not smoke but lead; Nikolai Apollonovich felt the hemispheres of his brain becoming clogged and a general inertia spreading into his organism, but now he was thinking not about the properties of tobacco smoke but about how he was going to get out of a ticklish incident with dignity, about how – he thought – he would act in the risky eventuality if the stranger, if …
This leaden heaviness was in no way related to the rather cheap little cigarette that was extending into the upper regions its bluish streamlet, but was rather related to the host’s depressed condition of spirit. Nikolai Apollonovich was expecting that at any second now his uneasy visitor would break off his chatter which he had evidently started with a sole purpose in view – that of tormenting him with expectation – yes: he would break off his chatter and remind him of how he, Nikolai Apollonovich, had once given, through the mediation of a strange stranger – as it were, to put it more precisely …
In a word, he had once given an obligation, dreadful for himself, to execute which he was compelled not only by honour; Nikolai Apollonovich had really only given the dreadful promise out of despair; what had prompted him to it was a failure in his life; later that failure had gradually been erased. It might have seemed that the dreadful promise would lose its validity of itself: but the dreadful promise remained: it remained, though only because it had not been retracted: Nikolai Apollonovich, to tell the truth, had thoroughly forgotten about it; but it, the promise, continued to live in the collective consciousness of a certain rash and hasty circle, at the same time as the sense of life’s bitterness under the influence of the failure had been erased; Nikolai Apollonovich himself would undoubtedly have classed his promise among promises of a humorous nature.