Petersburg (Penguin Classics)

by Andrei Bely

  From Apollon Apollonovich came projects, came counsels, came orders: the orders were showered in salvos; Apollon Apollonovich had sat in his study with a swollen temporal vein all these past weeks, dictating order after order; and order after order went rushing off like arrow-shaped lightning into the provincial darkness; but the darkness was advancing; before it had only threatened from the horizons; now it was flooding the districts and had surged into Pupinsk, in order thence, from Pupinsk, to threaten the provincial centre, from where, flooded in darkness, Ivanchevsky had flown down into darkness.

  Just then, in Petersburg itself, on the Nevsky, the provincial darkness had appeared in the form of a dark Manchurian hat; that hat had swarmed together and was amicably strolling through the prospects; on the prospects it excited itself with a red calico rag (that was the kind of day it had turned out to be): on this day the ring of many-chimneyed factories ceased to belch out smoke.

  Apollon Apollonovich was turning the enormous wheel of a mechanism, like Sisyphus; up the steep slope of history he had rolled the wheel ceaselessly for five years; the powerful muscles were bursting; but ever more frequently from under the muscles there stuck out a skeleton that was not involved in any of it, or rather, what stuck out was – Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, who lived on the English Embankment.

  Because he really did feel like a bare, picked skeleton from which Russia had fallen away.

  To tell the truth: even before this fateful night, Apollon Apollonovich had seemed to some of the high officials who had observed him somehow ragged, consumed by a secret illness, skewered through (only on the last night did he swell up); every day he threw himself with his heaps into a carriage the colour of a raven’s wing, wearing a coat the colour of a raven’s wing and a top hat – the colour of a raven’s wing; two black-maned steeds bore Pluto away.

  Over the waves of Phlegethon they bore him to Tartarus: here, in the waves, he floundered.

  At last, – with many dozens of catastrophes (alternations, for example, of Ivanchevskys and events in Pupinsk) the Phlegethontic waves of paper struck against the wheel of the enormous machine which the senator was turning; in the Institution a breach opened up – the Institution of which in Russia there are so few.

  And when there occurred a scandal without like – as people said later on – the Genius winged its way out of the mortal body of the wearer of diamond insignia within twenty-four hours; many were even afraid that he had gone off his rocker. Within twenty-four hours – no, within some twelve hours, no more (from midnight to midday) – Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov swiftly flew down the rungs of his civil service career.

  He fell in the opinion of many.

  People said later that the cause of it was the scandal with his son: yes, he arrived at the Tsukatovs’ soirée a statesman of national importance; but when it was discovered that it was his son who had fled from the soirée, all the senator’s shortcomings were also discovered, starting with his cast of thought and ending with his diminutive stature; and when in the early morning the damp newspapers appeared and the newspaper boys went running along the streets with cries of ‘Secret of the Red Domino’, there could be no doubt whatsoever.

  Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov was in no uncertain terms struck off the list of candidates for a government post of exceptional importance.

  As for the ill-famed newspaper report – well, here it is: ‘It has been established by officials of the criminal investigation department that the rumours about the appearance on the streets of Petersburg of an unknown domino are based on incontrovertible facts; the hoaxer’s trail has been found: suspicion has fallen on the son of a highly placed official who occupies an administrative post; measures have been taken by the police.’

  From this day began the twilight of Ableukhov.

  Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov was born in 1837 (the year of Pushkin’s death); his childhood was spent on an old aristocratic estate in the province of Nizhny --gorod; in 1858 he graduated from the School of Law; in 1870 he was appointed Professor of P– L– at the University of St Petersburg; in 1885 he became deputy director of the Ministerial Department of X, and in 1890 became its director; in the following year he was appointed by the highest decree to the Governmental Senate; in 1900 he became head of an Institution.

  That is his curriculum vitae.

  Charcoal Pills

  Here already was the greenish lightening of morning, and Semyonych had not closed his eyes all night! In his little cupboard of a room he had groaned, turned, fidgeted about; he had attacks of yawning, itching and – forgive our sins, O Lord! – sneezing; and, in addition to all this – reflections of the following kind:

  ‘Anna Petrovna, your mother, has come back from Shpain – she’s on a visit …’

  Concerning this, Semyonych said to himself:

  ‘Yes, sir … I opened the door … I saw a lady I thought were a stranger … One I didn’t know, and dressed in a foreign get-up … And she said to me …

  ‘Aaaa …

  ‘And she said to me …’

  And the yawns came weighing down.

  Now the Tetyurin chimney (of the Tetyurin factory) was speaking; now the little steamboats whistled, too; there was electric light on the bridge: a puff – and it was gone … Throwing off the blanket, Semyonych sat up: he grazed the floor-covering with his big toe.

  He began to whisper to himself:

  ‘And I said to him: “Your Excellency, barin, sir” – so on and so forth … And his honour said: “yes …”

  ‘He paid no attention …

  ‘And he’s just a little barin: hardly rises off the floor, he doesn’t … And – forgive our sins, O Lord! – he’s a white-toothed puppy and a milksop.

  ‘They’re not barins, they’re just Hamlets …’

  Thus did Semyonych snuffle to himself; and – put his head back under the pillow again; the hours passed sluggishly; small, pinkish clouds, ripening in the sun’s radiance, fleeted high above the ripening radiance of the Neva … And warmed by the blanket, Semyonych kept muttering miserably:

  ‘They’re not barins but … swindlers …’

  And that door banging there, echoing there down the corridor: was it burglars? … Avgiev the merchant had been burgled, Avgiev the merchant had been burgled.

  They had come to cut the Moldavian Khakhu’s throat.

  Throwing the blanket off, he stuck out his head, which was covered in perspiration; quickly putting on his long johns, he jumped out of his warm bed with an air of fussed offence, and a chewing jaw, and shuffled in his bare feet into a spatial expanse that was full of mystery: the black corridor.

  And – what was this?

  A bolt clicked down there outside … the water closet: His Excellency, Apollon Apollonovich, the barin, was pleased to proceed thence, with lighted candle, to – his bedroom.

  The dark blue expanse of the corridor was already turning grey, and there was light in the other rooms; and the crystal was sparkling: it was half past seven; the bulldog was scratching itself and pawing at its collar, and touching its back with a grinning, tiger-like muzzle.

  ‘Merciful Lord, merciful Lord!’

  ‘Avgiev the merchant was burgled! … Avgiev the merchant was burgled! … Khakhu the chemist nearly had his throat cut! …’

  Rays flashed furiously across the crystal, resonant, the blue sky.

  Throwing off his little trousers, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov began to get clumsily tangled up in crimson tassels as he invested himself in his little quilted, mouse-coloured, semi-threadbare dressing-gown, poking his unshaven chin (which was, as a matter of fact, smooth even the day before) out of the bright crimson lapels, studded all over with a dense and prickly, completely white stubble, as though by a hoar frost that had fallen overnight and marked out both the hollows of his eyes and the hollows under his cheekbones, hollows which – we shall observe for our part – had grown greatly enlarged overnight.

  He sat with his mouth open, his chest exposed and hairy, o
n his bed, taking a long time over drawing in and jerkily breathing out the air that did not penetrate his lungs; every moment or two he felt his pulse and looked at the clock.

  He was evidently tormented by incessant hiccups.

  And in no wise thinking about the series of most alarming telegrams that rushed towards him from all sides, nor about the fact that a governmental position was slipping away from him for ever, nor – even! – about Anna Petrovna, – he was probably thinking about what one thought about when looking at a small, open box of blackish pills.

  That is to say – he was thinking that the hiccups, the jolts, the stoppages and cramped breathing (the yearning to drink in air), which as always brought on colic, a mild tickling of his palms, were caused not by his heart but – by the development of gases.

  About the ache in his left arm and the shooting pains in his left shoulder he tried, all this time, not to think.

  ‘Do you know what? It’s all simply caused by the stomach!’

  Thus once had the chamberlain Sapozhkov, an old man in his eighties, who had recently died of pectoral angina, tried to explain it to him.

  ‘The gases, you know, make the stomach swell up: and the diaphragm contracts … That is what causes the jolts and the hiccuping … It’s all the development of gases …’

  Once in the Senate recently, while discussing a report, Apollon Apollonovich had turned blue, begun to wheeze and been helped out; when he was urgently exhorted to consult a doctor, he had explained to them all:

  ‘It’s the gases, you know … That’s what causes the jolts.’

  A dry, black pill that absorbed the gases sometimes helped him, but not always.

  ‘Yes, it’s the gases,’ – and off he went to … to …: it was – half past eight.

  This was the sound that Semyonych had heard.

  Soon after that – a door in the corridor had banged, echoing, and from afar another had boomed; removing his striped plaid from his frozen knees, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov again set off, approached the closed door of the bedroom, opened that door and stuck out a face that was covered in perspiration, in order to collide in that very same doorway – with another face, also covered in perspiration:

  ‘Is it you?’

  ‘Yes, sir …’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m about on my errands here, sir …’

  ‘Aa: yes, yes … But why so early …’

  ‘I’ve got to go round everywhere keeping an eye out …’

  ‘What is it, tell me? …’

  ‘? …’

  ‘Some kind of noise …’

  ‘And what was it?’

  ‘There was a bang …’

  ‘Oh, that.’

  Here Semyonych gripped the edge of his very wide long johns, and shook his head disapprovingly:

  ‘It’s nothing …’

  The fact was that ten minutes earlier, Semyonych had noticed with astonishment: a blond head had stuck itself out of the door of the young barin’s room; had looked to the right and looked to the left, and – disappeared.

  And then – the young barin had flitted like a grasshopper to the door of the old barin’s room.

  Had stood, breathed, shook his head, turned round, not noticing Semyonych, who was pressed up against a shadowy corner of the corridor; had stood, breathed again, and put his head – to the keyhole that let light through: yes – he was glued there, could not take his eyes off the door! The young barin’s curiosity was not barin-like, there was something wrong – something not right …

  So he was a snoop, was he? And then, too – it was almost indecent.

  It was not as though he was watching some stranger who might have hidden away – he was watching his own dear papa, his own flesh and blood; perhaps he was watching to see how his health was; but, then again: he had a feeling that this was no matter of a son’s concern, but simply: for the sake of idleness. And so it had turned out: he was a rascal!

  He was no lackey – but the son of a general, educated in the French manner. Here Semyonych began to clear his throat.

  The young barin – how he jumped!

  ‘Brush my frock-coat right away …’ he said, angry-like.

  And from the door of his papa’s room he went to his own: simply some kind of rascal!

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Semyonych said, chewing his lips disapprovingly, all the while thinking to himself:

  ‘His mother’s come back, and all he can say is: “Brush my frock-coat”.

  ‘It’s not good, not decent!

  ‘They’re just some kind of Hamlets … Oh, merciful Lord … spying through the keyhole!’

  All this had begun to creep about in the old man’s brains as, gripping the edge of his trousers that were falling down, he shook his head disapprovingly and muttered ambiguously down his nose:

  ‘Eh? … That? … Yes, there was a bang: that’s right …’

  ‘What made the bang?’

  ‘It’s nothing, sir: please don’t trouble yourself …’

  ‘? …’

  ‘Nikolai Apollonovich …’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Banged the door as he went out: he went out early …’

  Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov looked at Semyonych, prepared to ask a question, and kept silent, but … chewed his mouth in a senile fashion: at the memory of the most unsuccessful talk he had had with his son here not long before (this was, after all, the morning after the soirée at the Tsukatovs’), little bags of skin hung down offendedly from the corners of his lips. This unpleasant impression rather sickened Apollon Apollonovich: he drove it away.

  And, losing his confidence, gave Semyonych a pleading glance:

  After all, the old man had seen Anna Petrovna … Had – one way or the other – talked to her …

  This thought fleeted past intrusively.

  Anna Petrovna had probably changed … grown thinner, aged; and, he would not wonder, gone grey: acquired more wrinkles … he ought to ask about all that carefully, in a roundabout way …

  But – no, no! …

  Suddenly, the sixty-eight-year-old barin’s face fell unnaturally apart in wrinkles, his mouth bared its teeth to the ears, and his nose receded into the folds.

  And the man in his sixties became some kind of man a thousand years old; with a strained effort that bordered on shrillness, this grey ruin began forcibly to squeeze from itself a little pun:

  ‘Er … em-em-em … Semyonych … Are you … em-em … barefoot?’

  Semyonych gave a start of offence.

  ‘Excuse me, your exc –’

  ‘No, I … em-em-em … don’t mean that,’ said Apollon Apollonovich, trying to compose the little pun.

  But he did not manage to compose the little pun and stood staring into space; then he drooped the merest bit, and then he fired off a monstrous remark:

  ‘Er … tell me …’

  ‘?’

  ‘Do you have yellow heels?’

  Semyonych took offence:

  ‘No, barin, I don’t; it’s those Chinamen with long pigtails that have yellow heels, sir …’

  ‘Hee-hee-hee … So they’re pink, perhaps?’

  ‘Human, sir …’

  ‘No – yellow, yellow!’

  And Apollon Apollonovich, a thousand years old, trembling, squat, stamped his slippers insistently.

  ‘Well, and what if my heels were, sir? … They’re covered in corns, your excellency … When you put your shoe on, they bore you and burn you …’

  While all the time he thought:

  ‘Oh, what’s all this about heels? … Are heels what matter, then? … Look at you, you old mushroom, you haven’t closed your eyes all night … And she herself is here, in an expectant position … And your son is a Hamletist … And there you go on about heels! … Will you listen to it – yellow ones … You’ve got yellow heels yourself … You’re a “person” too! …’

  And got even more offended.

  But Apollon Apollonovich, as always, in
puns, in nonsense, in little jokes (as was always the case) simply manifested a kind of bullheadedness: sometimes, trying to keep his spirits up, the senator would become (in spite of it all – real privy councillor, professor and wearer of diamond insignia) – a fidget, a flutterer, a pesterer, a teaser, at those moments resembling the flies that get into your eyes, your nostrils, your ear – before a thunderstorm, on an oppressive day, when a grey thundercloud is wearisomely climbing above the lime-trees; such flies are squashed in their dozens – on hands, on moustaches – before a thunderstorm, on an oppressive day.

  ‘And a young girl has – hee-hee-hee … A young girl has …’

  ‘What does a young girl have?’

  ‘Has …’

  Oh, what a fidget!

  ‘What does she have?’

  ‘A pink heel …’

  ‘I’ve no idea …’

  ‘Well, take a look, then …’

  ‘You’re a queer fellow, that you are, barin …’

  ‘They’re made pink by her stocking, when her foot perspires.’

  And without finishing his sentence, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov – real privy councillor, professor, head of an Institution – stamped off back to his little bedroom in his slippers; and – click: locked himself in.

  There, on the other side of the door – he sat down, grew calm, and softened.

  And began helplessly to look at himself: oh, but how he had shrunk! Oh, but how round-shouldered he had become! And – it looked as though one of his shoulders were higher than the other (as though one shoulder had been knocked out of shape). Now and then his hand pressed itself against his thumping, aching side.

  Yes, sir! …

  The alarming reports from the provinces … And, you know – his son, his son! … Yes – he disgraced his father … A dreadful situation, you know …

  Someone fleeced that old fool of a woman, Anna Petrovna: some scoundrelly mountebank, with cockroach moustaches … Now she has come back again …