Petersburg (Penguin Classics)

by Andrei Bely

  What was this?

  Apollon Apollonovich remembered where he was, what had happened between two instants of thought; between two movements of his fingers with the little pencil that had turned in them; the acutely sharpened pencil – there it danced in his fingers.

  ‘It’s not important … It doesn’t matter …’

  And the sharpened pencil falls on the paper with flocks of question marks.

  Muttering God knows what, the madman still continued to lunge about; muttering God knows what, he continued to stamp: continued to stride in a diagonal through the small, airless study. Nikolai Apollonovich, spread-eagled against the wall, in the shadowy corner over there, continued to observe the movements of the poor madman, who was none the less capable of becoming a wild beast.

  Every time a hand or an elbow lunged out with a sharp movement, he shuddered; and the madman – ceased to stamp, paused, lunged out of his fatal diagonal: two paces from Nikolai Apollonovich a dry and menacing palm began to sway again. Here Nikolai Apollonovich threw himself back: the palm touched the corner – drummed on the corner wall.

  But the second lieutenant who had gone mad (pathetically rather than fiercely) was no longer pursuing him; turning his back, he dug his elbows into his knees: this made his back bend, and his head withdrew into his shoulders; he sighed deeply; he reflected deeply.

  What escaped was:

  ‘Lord!’

  And again, the groan:

  ‘Save and have mercy!’

  Nikolai Apollonovich cautiously took advantage of his lull in the raving.

  Quietly he got up and, trying still not to make any sound, he – straightened up; the second lieutenant’s head did not turn, but then it did nothing but turn and turn, risking – yes, truly! – becoming unscrewed from his neck; a furious paroxysm had evidently broken out; and – now it waned; then Nikolai Apollonovich, limping somewhat, hobbled soundlessly to the desk, trying not to let his shoes creak, trying not to let the floorboard creak – hobbled, cutting a rather ridiculous figure in his elegant uniform jacket … with its torn-off tail, in new rubber galoshes and the muffler he had not removed from his neck.

  He crept forward: paused by the little desk, listening to the beating of his heart and the quiet, muttered prayers of the sick man who was now calming down: and with an inaudible movement, his hand stretched out to the paperweight; but there was the rub: a little stack of writing paper lay on top of the paperweight.

  If only his sleeve did not get caught on the paper!

  Unfortunately his sleeve did catch on the little stack; there was a tell-tale rustle, and the little stack of paper scattered on the desk; this swish of paper awoke the second lieutenant, who had withdrawn, to life again; the paroxysm that had broken out and was now calming down broke out again with renewed vigour; the head turned and saw Nikolai Apollonovich standing with arm outstretched, armed with the paperweight; Nikolai Apollonovich’s heart sank: he leapt away from the desk, while the paperweight remained in his fist – for the sake of precaution.

  In a leap and a bound, Sergei Sergeich Likhutin flew up to him, threw his hand on his shoulder and began to press it: in a word – he took up his old refrain:

  ‘I must ask forgiveness … Forgive me: I lost my temper …’

  ‘Calm down …’

  ‘All this is most unusual … Only, please – do me a favour and don’t be afraid … Well, why are you trembling? … I seem to inspire you with fear? I … I … I … tore off the tail of your coat: I … I … couldn’t help that, because you, Nikolai Apollonovich, manifested the intention of avoiding an explanation … But you must understand that it’s impossible for you to leave me without an explanation …’

  ‘But I’m not trying to avoid it,’ Nikolai Apollonovich implored at this point, still clutching the paperweight in his hand. ‘I myself began to tell you about the domino cape when we were down in the entrance porch: I myself seek an explanation; it is you, Sergei Sergeyevich, it is you who are delaying: you are not giving me a chance to give you an explanation.’

  ‘Mm … yes, yes …’

  ‘Would you believe it, the domino is explained by nervous exhaustion; and it is in no way the breaking of a promise: I did not stand in the entrance porch voluntarily …’

  ‘So forgive me for the coattail,’ Likhutin said, interrupting him again, and merely proving that he really was crazy (he was for the present leaving Ableukhov’s shoulder in peace) … ‘Yours shall be sewn back on; if you like, I myself … I have needles and thread …’

  ‘This is all that was needed,’ flickered through Ableukhov’s head: he was studying the second lieutenant with astonishment, trying to make sure by visual means that the paroxysm really had passed.

  ‘But that is not what it’s all about: not needles and thread …

  ‘Sergei Sergeyevich, in essence … That is nonsense …’

  ‘Yes, yes: nonsense …’

  ‘Nonsense with regard to the principal subject of our explanation: with regard to your standing in the entrance porch …’

  ‘But it’s got nothing to do with my standing in the entrance porch!’ the second lieutenant said, with a vexed wave of his hand, proceeding to stride in the same direction as before: in a diagonal through the small, airless study.

  ‘Well, is it about Sofya Petrovna, then …’ said Ableukhov, coming out of the corner, now noticeably bolder.

  ‘No … no … it’s not about Sofya Petrovna …’ the second lieutenant shouted at him: ‘you haven’t understood me at all! …’

  ‘Then what is it about?’

  ‘This is all nonsense, sir! … Or rather, not nonsense, but nonsense with regard to the subject of our conversation …’

  ‘But what is the subject?’

  ‘Look – the subject,’ said the second lieutenant and, coming to a standstill before him, brought his bloodshot eyes up to Ableukhov’s eyes that were wide with fright … ‘Look, the essence of it is all to do with the fact that you are locked in …’

  ‘But … Why am I locked in?’ And the paperweight was again clutched in his fist.

  ‘Why have I locked you in? Why have I dragged you in here, so to speak, by semi-forcible means? … Ha-ha-ha: this has absolutely nothing to do with either the domino cape or Sofya Petrovna …’

  ‘He really has gone mad: he has forgotten all the reasons, his brain is subject only to morbid associations: and me he is actually planning to …’ flashed through Nikolai Apollonovich’s head, but Sergei Sergeyevich, as though he knew what he was thinking, hurried to reassure him, something that seemed more like mockery and cruel taunting:

  ‘I repeat, you are safe here … There is only the coattail …’

  ‘You are taunting me,’ thought Nikolai Apollonovich, and through his brain shot a thought that was also, in its own way, mad: to whack the second lieutenant on the head with the paperweight; having stunned him, to tie his hands, and by this violent act save his own life, which he needed even if only because … the bomb … in the desk … was ticking! …

  ‘Look: you’re not going to leave here … And I … I am going to leave here with a letter dictated by me – with your signature … I’ll go to your place, to your room, where I was this morning, but where no one noticed me … I shall turn all your things upside down; if my search proves completely fruitless, I shall warn your father …, because’ – he wiped his forehead – ‘it’s not a question of your father; it’s a question of you: yes, yes, yes, sir – of you alone, Nikolai Apollonovich!’

  He rammed a hard finger into Nikolai Apollonovich’s chest, and now stood with raised eyebrow (only one eyebrow).

  ‘This will not happen, do you hear? This will not happen, Nikolai Apollonovich – it will not happen, ever!’

  And on the shaven, crimson face played:

  ‘?

  ‘!

  ‘!?!’

  An utter madman!

  But it was a strange thing: Nikolai Apollonovich listened closely to this utter raving; and someth
ing inside him quivered: was this really raving? It was rather hints, incoherently uttered; but hints – at what? Were they hints at … at … at …?

  Yes, yes, yes …

  ‘Sergei Sergeyevich, what is all this about?’

  And his heart sank: Nikolai Apollonovich felt that his skin did not enwrap his body, but … a heap of cobblestones; instead of a brain he had a cobblestone; and there was a cobblestone in his stomach.

  ‘What is it about? … Why, the bomb, of course …’ – Sergei Sergeyevich retreated two paces, astonished in the extreme.

  The paperweight fell from Ableukhov’s unclenched fist; an instant before, it had seemed to Nikolai Apollonovich that his skin wrapped not his body, but – a heap of cobblestones; but now the horrors passed all bounds; he felt something cutting into the heavy masses of quintillions (between the zeros and the unit); the unit remained.

  While the quintillion became – zero.

  The heavy masses suddenly burst into flames: the cobblestones that crammed his body, becoming gases, spurted in the twinkling of an eye through the orifices of all the pores of his skin, and wound again the spirals of events, but wound them in reverse order; they twisted his body itself into a receding spiral; thus the very sense of his body became – a zero sensation; the contours of his features were traced sharply and acquired an incredible degree of meaning, revealing in the young man the face of a patriarch in his sixties; were sharply traced, acquired meaning, became as if carved; the face – white, pale white – became a luminescent countenance, bathed in luminescent boiling water; while, on the other hand: the face of the second lieutenant turned a bright carrot colour; his shavenness made him look even more stupid, while his little too-tight jacket became even smaller and tighter …

  ‘Sergei Sergeyevich, I am surprised at you … How could you believe that I, that I … ascribe to me consent to an act of dreadful villainy … While I am – not a villain … I, Sergei Sergeyevich – do not think I am yet an out-and-out scoundrel …’

  Nikolai Apollonovich was evidently unable to continue; and he – turned away; having turned away, he turned round again …

  Out of the shadowy corner, as though it had swarmed into shape, emerged the proud, bent and round-shouldered figure that consisted, or so it appeared to the second lieutenant, of nothing but flowing radiances – with a martyred, grinning mouth, with eyes of cornflower hue; his flaxen-white hair, bathed in light, formed a transparent, almost halo-like circle above his gleaming, ultra-high brow; he stood with his palms raised aloft, indignant, insulted, magnificent, somehow raised on the blood-red background of the wallpaper: the wallpaper was red.

  He stood – his muffler dangling from his neck and only one coattail: the other had – alas – been torn off …

  Thus he stood: from the enormous hollows of his eyes a cold, enormous emptiness stared incessantly at the second lieutenant; adhered and chilled to ice; here second lieutenant Likhutin somehow felt that for all his physical strength and health (he thought he was healthy) and, moreover, his nobleness of character – he was only a looming phantom; so that Ableukhov had only to approach the second lieutenant with that scintillant aspect, and the second lieutenant, Sergei Sergeyevich, began manifestly to retreat from him.

  ‘But I believe you, I believe you,’ he said, beginning to flap his hands in bewilderment.

  ‘Look, you see’ – now he was really embarrassed – ‘I was never in any doubt … Actually, I feel ashamed … I am agitated … My wife told me … She had this note slipped into her hands … She read it – of course, she opened it by mistake,’ he lied for some reason, and blushed, and lowered his eyes …

  ‘Once the note was opened, and I could read it’ – the senator’s son seized maliciously on this opportunity – ‘then …’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘then Sofya Petrovna was, of course, entitled (here there was a note of irony) to tell you, as her husband, its contents’ – Nikolai Apollonovich muttered in a most haughty manner; and – continued to advance.

  ‘I … I … lost my temper,’ said Likhutin in self-defence: his gaze fell on the ill-fated coattail, and he seized hold of the coattail.

  ‘Don’t worry about this coattail: I will sew it back on myself …’

  But Nikolai Apollonovich, his mouth just, just barely smiling – luminescent, elegant – reproachfully continued to shake his hands in the air:

  ‘You knew not what you did.’

  His dark cornflower, dark blue eyes and light-bathed hair expressed a dim, unutterable sadness:

  ‘Then go: inform on me, do not believe me! …’

  And turned away …

  The broad shoulders began to move jerkily … Nikolai Apollonovich wept unrestrainedly; at the same time: Nikolai Apollonovich, freed from his rude, animal fear, became altogether fearless; and what was more: at that moment he even wanted to suffer; thus at least did he feel at that moment: felt like a hero given up to torment, suffering publicly and shamefully; his body was in its sensations a tortured body; while his feelings were as torn as his very ‘I’ was torn; but from the tearing of his ‘I’ – so he expected – a blinding torch would flash and a familiar voice would speak to him from there, as always – speak within him: for him alone:

  ‘You have suffered for me: I am standing over you.’

  But there was no voice. Nor was there any torch. There was – darkness. The feeling itself had probably arisen from the fact that only now had he understood: from the encounter on the Neva until this most recent moment he had been undeservedly insulted; he had been brought here by force, been hauled – dragged into the little study; and here, in the little study, the tail had been torn off his frock-coat; why, even as it was, he had suffered ceaselessly for twenty-four hours: so why on top of that must he experience terror in the face of insults inflicted by action? Why was there no reconciling voice saying ‘You have suffered for me’? Because he had not suffered for anyone: had suffered for himself … Had, so to speak, reaped the consequences of the mess he himself had made from outrageous events. That was why there was no voice. And why there was no torch. In the place of his former ‘I’ there was darkness. That he could not endure: his broad shoulders began to move jerkily.

  He turned away: he wept.

  ‘Truly,’ he heard behind his back, in a tone both reconciling and meek, ‘I was mistaken, did not understand …’

  There was in this voice none the less a shade of vexation: of shame and … vexation: and Sergei Sergeyevich stood painfully biting his lip; perhaps the newly reconciled Likhutin was now regretting that he had been mistaken, that now he could not strike his enemy dead: neither with his fist, nor with nobility; precisely thus does a mad bull, teased by a red handkerchief, rush at his adversary and – attack the iron bars of the cage: and stand, and bellow, and not know what to do. The second lieutenant’s face displayed the struggle of unpleasant memories (the domino, of course) and most noble feelings; while his adversary, still with his back turned and weeping, kept saying unpleasantly, over and over again:

  ‘Taking advantage of your physical superiority, you have … dragged me in the presence of a lady, like … like …’

  The rush of most noble feelings got the upper hand; Sergei Sergeich Likhutin crossed the little study with outstretched hand; but Nikolai Apollonovich, turning (a tear trembled on his eyelid), in a voice that was choked by the frenzy that had seized him and – alas! – by a self-respect that had arrived too late, articulated jerkily:

  ‘Like … like … a chicken in the yard …’

  Had Nikolai Apollonovich stretched out his hand to him, Sergei Sergeich would have considered himself the happiest of men: complete contentment would have played over his face; but the rush of noble feeling, just like the rush of frenzy, was immediately corked up within his soul; the rush of noble feeling fell into empty darkness.

  ‘Did you want to make sure, Sergei Sergeyevich? … That I am not a father-murderer? … No, Sergei Sergeyevich, no: you should have thought of it earlier … You just hau
led me like … like a chicken in the yard. And – tore off my coattail …’

  ‘The coattail can be sewn back on again!’

  And before Ableukhov had time to regain his wits, Sergei Sergeyevich rushed to the door:

  ‘Mavrushka! … Black thread! … A needle …’

  But the opened door very nearly struck Sofya Petrovna, who was just then eavesdropping on the other side of it; caught in the act, she jumped aside, but – too late: caught in the act, and red as a peony, she had nowhere to run; and at them – at them both – she threw an indignant, annihilating gaze.

  Between the three of them lay the tail of the frock-coat.

  ‘What? … Sonechka …’

  ‘Sofya Petrovna! …’

  ‘Have I disturbed you? …’

  ‘Just imagine … Nikolai Apollonovich … You know … tore off his coattail … He ought to …’

  ‘No, don’t trouble yourself, Sergei Sergeich; Sofya Petrovna – please …’

  ‘He ought to have it sewn back on.’

  But Nikolai Apollonovich, his mouth twisted because of the stupid situation, wiping the tell-tale eyelashes with his sleeve and still limping on one leg, had already made his appearance in the room with the Fujiyamas … in a torn frock-coat, with one dangling tail; lifting up his Italian cloak, he raised his head and, seeing the damage that had been done to the ceiling, turned his twisted mouth, for the sake of propriety, towards Sofya Petrovna.

  ‘Tell me, Sofya Petrovna, there seems to be some kind of change in your flat: in your ceiling there is some kind of … Some kind of disrepair: have painters been working?’

  But Sergei Sergeyevich interrupted:

  ‘That was me, Nikolai Apollonovich … I … was mending the ceiling …’

  But all the while he was thinking:

  ‘What? how do you like that: last night I didn’t hang myself properly; and now I haven’t explained myself properly …’

  Nikolai Apollonovich, leaving, limped across the hall; falling from his shoulder, his fantastic cape trailed after him like a black train.