Petersburg (Penguin Classics)

by Andrei Bely

  ‘Did I leave it somewhere?

  ‘How do you like that?’

  And he began to rush helplessly about the room, looking for the treacherous key he had forgotten somewhere, picking through quite inappropriate objects of furniture, seizing a three-legged gold censer in the form of a sphere with an opening pierced in it and a half-moon on top, and muttering to himself all the while: Nikolai Apollonovich, like Apollon Apollonovich, was in the habit of talking to himself.

  In fright he rushed through into the next room – to the writing desk: as he went, his foot caught on the Arabian stool with the ivory incrustation; it crashed to the floor; he was struck by the fact that the desk was not locked; the drawer was sticking out in tell-tale fashion; it had been pulled half-way out; his heart sank: how could he have been so careless as to forget to lock it? He tugged at the drawer … And-and-and …

  No: oh, no!

  The objects lay in disorder in the drawer; on the table lay a cabinet photograph, thrown at an angle; but … the sardine tin was not there; furiously, savagely, frightenedly, above the drawer emerged the lines of a crimson countenance with blue around some kind of enormous black eyes: black from the dilation of the pupils; this did he stand between the dark green upholstered armchair and the bust: of Kant, of course.

  He – went to the other desk. He – pulled out the drawer: the objects lay inside the drawer in perfect order: bundles of letters, papers: he put them all – on the table; but … there was no sardine tin … At this point his legs gave way beneath him; and, as he was, in his Italian cloak, in his galoshes – he fell to his knees, dropping his burning head into his cold, wet, rain-dampened hands; for a moment – like that, he froze: the cap of flaxen hair gleamed strangely, deathly pale there, motionless, like a yellowish stain in the semi-twilight of the room among the green upholstered armchairs.

  Yes – up he leapt! Yes – to the bookcase! And the bookcase – flew open; the objects went flying this way and that, to the carpet; but there too – there was no sardine tin; like a whirlwind, he began to rush about the room, resembling an agile little monkey both in the swiftness of his movements (like his elevated papa), and in his modest stature. Indeed: fate was playing a joke; from room to room; from bed (here he rummaged under the pillows, the quilt, the mattress) – to the fireplace: here he soiled his hands in the ash; from the fireplace – to the rows of bookshelves (and the silk that covered the bindings began to slide on little brass wheels); here he thrust his hands between the volumes; and many of them, with a rustling, with a crash, flew to the floor.

  But nowhere was the sardine tin to be found.

  Soon his face, soiled with ash and dust, swayed without any sense or meaning above the heap of objects, which had been swept into a senseless pile and had been picked through by long, spider-like fingers that ran out on trembling hands; these hands moved restlessly about the floor from the outspread Italian cloak; in this stooping pose, trembling and sweaty all over, with bulging neck veins, he really would have reminded anyone of a fat-bellied spider, a devourer of flies; thus, when an observer tears a delicate spider’s web, he beholds a spectacle: disturbed, the enormous insect, which has been trembling on a silver thread in space from the ceiling to the floor, goes clumsily running about the floor on furry legs.

  In just such a pose – above the pile of objects – was Nikolai Apollonovich taken unawares: by Semyonych, who ran in.

  ‘Nikolai Apollonovich! … Young barin! …’

  Nikolai Apollonovich, who was still squatting down, turned; seeing Semyonych, with a swift gesture of his cloak he covered the pile of objects that had been swept together in a heap – the sheets of paper and volumes with gaping jaws – resembling a brood-hen on her eggs: the cap of flaxen hair showed so strangely pale and motionless there – like a yellowish stain in the semi-twilight of the room.

  ‘What is it? …’

  ‘If I may make so bold as to report …’

  ‘Leave me alone: can’t you see that … I’m busy …’

  Stretching his mouth to the ears, he looked every bit like the head of the multicoloured leopard that lay grinning there on the floor:

  ‘I’m arranging these books here.’

  But Semyonych could not calm down.

  ‘But please, sir: you are … requested there …’

  ‘?’

  ‘A family joy: for the little mother barynya, Anna Petrovna, herself, has been so good as to grant us a visit.’

  Nikolai Apollonovich got up mechanically; the cloak flew from him; on the ash-smeared contours of the icon-like countenance – through cinders and dust – like lightning a blush flared; Nikolai Apollonovich cut an absurd and comic little figure in his student’s frockcoat that protruded in two humps and had only one tail – and with a dancing half-belt, when he – began to cough; hoarsely, through his cough, he exclaimed:

  ‘Mamma? Anna Petrovna?’

  ‘She is over there with Apollon Apollonovich, sir; in the drawing-room … She has just been so good as to …’

  ‘Do they want to see me?’

  ‘Apollon Apollonovich requests your company, sir …’

  ‘Very well, in a moment … I’ll be there in a moment … Just a second …’

  In this room, so recently, Nikolai Apollonovich had grown into a self-contained centre – into a series of logical premisses that flowed from the centre, predetermining everything: soul, thought and this armchair here; only recently had he been the sole centre of the universe; but ten days had passed; and his self-awareness had got shamefully bogged down in this heaped-up pile of objects: thus does the free fly, scuttling along the edge of a plate on its six little legs, suddenly get hopelessly bogged down, both leg and wing, in a sticky mass of honey.

  ‘Psst! Semyonych, Semyonych – listen,’ – here Nikolai Apollonovich nimbly darted out through the doorway, catching up with Semyonych, jumped over the upturned stool and caught hold of the old man’s sleeve (goodness, those fingers were tenacious!)

  ‘I say, I wonder if you’ve seen in here – the fact is, that …’ he said, beginning to grow confused, getting down on the floor and pulling the old man away from the corridor door … ‘I forgot … You haven’t seen a sort of object in here? Here, in the room … An object like a toy …’

  ‘A toy, sir …’

  ‘A child’s toy … a sardine tin …’

  ‘A sardine tin?’

  ‘Yes, a toy (in the shape of a sardine tin) – a heavy thing, that one winds up with a key: there’s a little clock inside that ticks … I put it here: a toy …’

  Semyonych slowly turned, freed his sleeve from the fingers that had clutched it, stared at the wall for a moment (a shield hung on the wall – a Negro one: it was made from the hide of a once-slain rhinoceros), thought for a moment and then snapped disrespectfully:

  ‘No!’

  Not even ‘No, sir’: simply – ‘No’ …

  ‘Well, I just thought you might …’

  Just imagine: good fortune, family joy; the barin is beaming there, the minister: for such an occasion … And then here: a sardine tin … a heavy one … that winds up … a toy: and one of his coattails is torn off! …

  ‘So you will permit me to announce you, sir?’

  ‘I’ll be there in a moment, in a moment …’

  And the door closed: Nikolai Apollonovich stood there, not understanding where he was, – next to the upturned dark brown stool, in front of the hookah; before him on the wall hung a shield, a Negro one, made from the thick hide of a rhinoceros and with a rusty Sudanese spear hung to one side of it.

  Not understanding what he was doing, he hurried to exchange the tell-tale frockcoat for one that was completely new; as a preliminary, he washed his hands and face clean of ash; as he washed and changed, he kept saying:

  ‘How can this be, what is happening … And really, where could I have hidden it …’

  Nikolai Apollonovich did not yet realize the full extent of the horror that had assailed him, a horror that p
roceeded from the accidental disappearance of the sardine tin; it was just as well that it had not yet occurred to him that: they had visited his room in his absence and, discovering the sardine tin with dreadful contents, had taken that sardine tin away from him as a precaution.

  The Lackeys Were Astonished

  And precisely the same houses loomed up there, and precisely the same grey human streams flowed past there, and the same green-yellow fog stood there; the faces scuttled there with a look of concentration; the pavements whispered and shuffled – beneath a throng of stone houses like giants; towards them flew – prospect after prospect; and the planet’s spherical surface seemed embraced, as in serpentine coils, by the blackish-grey cubes of the houses; and the mesh of parallel prospects, intersected by a mesh of prospects, expanded into the abysses of the universe in the surfaces of squares and cubes: one square per man-in-the-street.

  But Apollon Apollonovich did not look at his favourite figure: the square; did not give himself up to the mindless contemplation of stone parallelepipeds, cubes; as he swayed to and fro on the soft cushions of the seat of the hired carriage, he kept glancing in agitation at Anna Petrovna, whom he himself was taking – to the lacquered house; what they had talked of there in the hotel room had remained for everyone an impenetrable secret; after this conversation they had resolved: Anna Petrovna would move to the Embankment tomorrow; while today, Apollon Apollonovich was taking Anna Petrovna – to a meeting with her son.

  And Anna Petrovna was disconcerted.

  In the carriage they did not talk; Anna Petrovna looked out of the carriage windows: it was two and a half years since she had seen these grey prospects: there, outside the windows, the street numbering was visible; and the traffic moved; there, from there – on clear days, from far, far away, had blindly flashed: the golden needle, the clouds, the crimson ray of the sunset; there, from there, on misty days – no one, nothing.

  Apollon Apollonovich leaned against the walls of the carriage with unconcealed satisfaction, partitioned off from the scum of the streets inside this closed cube; here he was separated from the flowing human crowds, from the dismally wet red paper covers that were being sold over there at that crossroads; and his eyes darted; only now and then did Anna Petrovna catch: a lost, bewildered gaze, and imagine – one that seemed simply gentle: blue as blue, childlike, senseless even (had he lapsed back into childhood?)

  ‘I heard, Apollon Apollonovich: you are to be made a minister?’

  But Apollon Apollonovich interrupted:

  ‘And where have you come from now, Anna Petrovna?’

  ‘Oh, I have come from Granada …’

  ‘Indeed, ma’am, indeed, ma’am, indeed …’ – and, blowing his nose, – added … – ‘Business, you know: unpleasant things at the office, you know …’

  And – what was this? On his hand he felt a warm hand: he had been stroked on the hand … Hm-hm-hm: Apollon Apollonovich did not know where to look; he was disconcerted, seemed alarmed even; he even felt annoyed … Hm-hm; no one had treated him like that for about fifteen years … She had quite simply stroked him … He had to admit that he had not expected this from the lady person … hm-hm … (Apollon Apollonovich had after all for the past two and half years considered this lady person to be a … lady person of … loose … conduct …)

  ‘You see, I’m going into retirement …’

  Had the cerebral game that had divided them for so many years and had grown ominously more intense this past two and a half years, at last burst out of his stubborn brain? And outside his brain, had it now gathered in storm clouds above them? Broken in unprecedented storms around them? But in breaking outside his brain, it had exhausted itself inside his brain; slowly his brain had cleared; thus in storm clouds you will sometimes see an azure gap running from one side – through bands of rain; then let the downpour lash over you; let the dark masses of cloud burst rumblingly with crimson lightning! The azure gap is growing; soon the sun will look dazzlingly out; you are already expecting the end of the storm; when suddenly there is a flash and a bang: the lightning has struck a pine tree.

  The greenish light of day was breaking through the windows of the carriage; the human streams ran there in an undular surf; and that human surf was a thunderous surf.

  It was here that he had seen the raznochinets; here the eyes of the raznochinets had gleamed, recognized him – some ten days ago (yes, only ten days: in ten days everything had changed; Russia had changed!) …

  The glidings and rumblings of carriages flying past! The melodic cries of motor-car roulades! And – a detachment of police! …

  There, where only the pale grey dampness hung suspended, at first appeared lustrelessly in outline and then completely took shape: the grimy, blackish-grey St Isaac’s … And withdrew back into the fog. And – an expanse opened: the depths, the greenish murk, into which receded the black bridge, where the fog curtained the many-chimneyed distances and from where ran the wave of the approaching clouds.

  Indeed: after all, the lackeys were astonished!

  Thus later on in the entrance hall was it told by the sleepy young lad Grishka:

  ‘Here I am, sitting and counting on my fingers: why, from the Protection to the Nativity of the Mother of God … That makes … From the Nativity of the Mother of God to St Nicholas in Winter …’2

  ‘Tell me another: the Nativity of the Mother of God, the Nativity of the Mother of God!’

  ‘What do you mean? The Nativity of the Mother of God is a feast day in our village – She is our patron … So it works out at: as I count it … Then I hear: someone’s driving up; I go to the door. So I throw the door open: and – oh, sainted fathers! Because it’s the barin himself, in a hired little carriage (and a bad one, too!), and a barynya with him, of respectable years and wearing a cheap waterproof.’

  ‘Not a waterproof, you little rogue: people don’t wear waterproofs nowadays.’

  ‘Don’t embarrass him: he’s daft enough as it is.’

  ‘In a word – wearing a coat. While the barin gets in a lather: from the cab – phoo, the carriage – he jumps down, stretches out his arm to the barynya – smiles: like a cavalier, like, shows her every assistance.’

  ‘Get away with you …’

  ‘It’s true …’

  ‘I don’t think they’ve seen each other for two years,’ voices were heard saying all round.

  ‘Stands to reason: the barynya gets out of the carriage; only thing is, I can see that the barynya’s embarrassed about this event: she’s smiling there – not her full proper self; to give herself courage: she’s holding on to her chin; well, and she’s dressed real poor, like; there’s holes in her gloves; her gloves aren’t darned, I can see: perhaps there’s no one to darn them; maybe in Spain they don’t do no darning …’

  ‘Tell us another, that will do now! …’

  ‘It’s like I’m saying: and the barin, our barin, Apollon Apollonovich, gave up all his finery; stood by the carriage, over a puddle, under the rain: the rain – oh my Lord! The barin hesitates, seems to start running on the spot, his feet stamping up and down on the spot; and when the barynya, getting down from the footboard, leaning right on his arm – for the barynya’s quite heavy – our barin even sagged right down; the barin’s tiny; well, I thought to myself, how could he hold up a heavy woman like that? He doesn’t have the strength …’

  ‘Don’t weave fancy stories; tell us what happened.’

  ‘I’m not weaving fancy stories; I’m telling you like it was; and anyway … Mitry Semyonych will tell you: they met in the entrance hall … What is there to tell? The barin just said to the barynya: welcome, he said, come in, Anna Petrovna … That was when I recognized her.’

  ‘Well, and so what then?’

  ‘She’s aged … At first I didn’t recognize her; but then I did, because I still remember how she used to give me sweets.’

  Thus did the lackeys talk afterwards.

  But really!

  A sudden, unforeseen fact
: it was about two and a half years ago that Anna Petrovna left her husband for an Italian artiste; and now, two and a half years later, deserted by the Italian artiste, from the splendid palaces of Granada across the chain of the Pyrenees, across the Alps, across the mountains of the Tyrol, she came rushing back in an express train; but what was more remarkable was that the senator had found it impossible to breathe a word about Anna Petrovna not only for the past two and a half years, but even two and a half days ago (only yesterday he had bristled up!); for two and a half years Apollon Apollonovich had avoided even the thought of Anna Petrovna (and yet had thought about her); the very sound-combination ‘Anna Petrovna’ broke against his eardrums like a firecracker thrown at a teacher from under a school desk; except that a schoolteacher would bang his fist angrily on the desk; while Apollon Apollonovich merely tightened his lips contemptuously at this sound combination. But why at the news of her return did the customary tightening of his dry lips burst apart in an agitatedly wrathful trembling of the jaws (the night before – during his conversation with Nikolenka); why had he not been able to sleep that night? Why for a period of some twelve hours had that anger evaporated somewhere and been replaced by an aching anguish, bordering on anxiety? Why had he not been able to endure the wait, himself gone to the hotel? Had talked her round; brought her home. Something had happened there – in the hotel room; Anna Petrovna had forgotten her stern promise: she had made that promise to herself – here, yesterday: here in the lacquered house (having visited it and found no one at home).

  Had made the promise: but – had returned.

  Anna Petrovna and Apollon Apollonovich had been agitated and embarrassed by the explanation they had had with one another; and so when they had entered the lacquered house they had not exchanged abundant outpourings of emotion; Anna Petrovna looked at her husband askance: Apollon Apollonovich began to blow his nose … beneath the rusty halberd; emitting a trumpet-like sound, he began to snort into his side-whiskers. Anna Petrovna graciously deigned to reply to the lackeys’ deferential bows, displaying a restraint we have not seen in her before; only Semyonych did she embrace, and seemed to want to cry a little; but, casting a frightened, bewildered look at Apollon Apollonovich, she regained her self-control: her fingers stretched towards the little handbag, but did not take out her handkerchief.