Petersburg (Penguin Classics)

by Bely, Andrei

  ‘Mr Officer, Mr Officer!’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve no small change …’

  ‘Oh, that’s not what I want: what’s going to happen there now? … What’s going to happen? … Those defenceless young ladies there – the coursistes …’

  The officer grew embarrassed, turned red, for some reason touched his cap in salute:

  ‘I don’t know, to tell you the truth … That’s not why I’m here … I’m only just back from Manchuria; look – here’s my St George’s medal …’

  And something had already happened over there.

  Tatam: Tam, Tam!22

  It was now late.

  Sofya Petrovna was returning home quietly, hiding her little nose in her downy muff; at her back, Troitsky Bridge stretched infinitely over to the islands, withdrawing into those silent places; and shadows stretched across the bridge; on the great iron bridge, above the damp, damp railings, above the greenish water that seethed with bacilli, there came behind her in the gusts of Neva wind – bowler, cane, coat, ears, moustache and nose.

  Suddenly her eyes stopped, dilated, blinked, crossed: under the damp, damp railings, bow-legged, sat a dark, tiger-like beast, snuffling and slavering on a small silver whip it had in its teeth; the dark, tiger-like beast turned its snub-nosed muzzle away from her; and when she cast a glance at the averted muzzle, she saw: that same waxen face, making its lips protrude above the damp railings, above the greenish water that seethed with bacilli, stretched forth there out of the overcoat; with his lips protruding, he seemed to be thinking some magical thought, one which had echoed within her, too, these past few days, because these past few days the words of a certain homely romance had so tormentingly sung themselves to her:

  Gazing at the rays of purple sunset

  You stood upon the bank of the Neva.23

  And lo and behold: there he was, standing on the bank of the Neva, somehow dully staring into the green, or rather, no – letting his gaze fly away to where the banks cowered, where the buildings of the islands squatted submissively and from where above the white walls of the fortress hopelessly and coldly the sharp, unmerciful, cold spire of Peter and Paul stretched tormentingly towards the sky.

  All of her stretched out to him – what use were words, what use were reflections! But again – again he had not noticed her; his lips protruding, his eyes glassily dilated, he looked quite simply like an armless freak; and again without arms into the wind flew the wings of his overcoat above the railings of the bridge.

  But when she moved away, Nikolai Apollonovich slowly turned round to face her and went mincing off at a fair pace, stumbling and tripping on the long skirts of his coat; but at the corner of the bridge a likhach was waiting: and the likhach flew off; and when the likhach caught up with Sofya Petrovna Likhutina, Nikolai Apollonovich, leaning out and squeezing the bulldog’s collar in his hands, turned, round-shouldered, to the small, dark figure who had stuck her little nose so forlornly into her muff; looked, and smiled; but the likhach flew past.

  Suddenly the first snow began to fall; and with such lively little diamonds did it sparkle in the circle of light from the street lamp as it danced; the light circle just barely illumined now a side of the palace, and the small canal, and the small stone bridge; into the depths ran the canal; all was deserted: a solitary likhach was whistling on the corner, waiting for someone; a grey Nikolayevka lay carelessly tossed on the carriage.

  Sofya Petrovna Likhutina stood on the arch of the small bridge and looked dreamily – into the depths, into the small canal that lapped in its shroud of vapour; Sofya Petrovna Likhutina had stopped at this spot before; had stopped with him here, once upon a time; and sighed about Liza, arguing earnestly about the horrors of The Queen of Spades24 – about the divine, charming, wonderful harmonies of a certain opera, and had then sung in a low voice, conducting with her finger:

  ‘Tatam: tam, tam! … Tatatam: tam, tam, tam!’

  Now again she stood here; her lips opened, and a small finger was raised:

  ‘Tatam, tam, tam! … Tatatam: tam, tam!’

  But she heard the sound of running footsteps, looked – and did not even utter a scream: suddenly a red domino almost perplexedly thrust itself from round the side of the palace, rushed hither and thither, as though it were searching for something, and, seeing a woman’s shadow on the arch of the small bridge, threw itself towards it; in its jerky running it stumbled on the stones, stretching forward its mask with narrow slits for the eyes; and behind the mask a stream of icy Neva wind began to play in a thick fan of lace, black of course; and as the mask ran towards the small bridge, Sofya Petrovna Likhutina, without even having time to reflect that the domino was a joker, that some tasteless prankster (and we know who it was) had quite simply decided to play a joke on her, that behind the velvet mask and the black lace beard there quite simply hid a human face; there it was now, staring at her vigilantly through the oblong slits. Sofya Petrovna thought (she had, after all, such a tiny little forehead) that some sort of hole had formed in this world, and from there, from the hole, and not from this world at all, the buffoon had rushed at her: as to who this buffoon was, she would probably not have been able to answer.

  But when the black lace beard, stumbling, flew on to the small bridge, the buffoon’s satin blades flew aloft with a rustling in a gust of the Neva’s wind and, gleaming red, fell over there, beyond the railings – into the dark-coloured night; the all too familiar trouser straps were revealed, and the fearsome buffoon became a buffoon who was merely pathetic; at that moment a galosh slipped on a salience in the stone: the pathetic buffoon came crashing down on the stone at full tilt; and above him now there resounded not even laughter at all: simply a loud guffaw.

  ‘You wretched little frog, you freak – you red buffoon …’

  A swift female foot rewarded the buffoon angrily with kicks.

  Some kind of bearded men now came running along the canal; and a police whistle sounded from afar; the buffoon leapt to his feet; the buffoon rushed to the likhach, and from afar one could see something red helplessly floundering about in the carriage, trying to pull a Nikolayevka about its shoulders as it flew. Sofya Petrovna began to cry, and fled from this accursed place.

  Soon, in pursuit of the likhach, a snub-nosed bulldog ran out from behind the Winter Canal, barking; its short legs flickered in the air, and behind them, behind the short legs, on rubber tyres, in pursuit, sprawling, two agents of the secret police were already hurtling.

  Shadows

  Shadow was talking to shadow:

  ‘My dear, dear fellow, you have left out one rather important fact which I have learned with the help of my own methods.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You haven’t made a sound about the red domino.’

  ‘And do you know, then?’

  ‘Not only do I know: I followed him all the way to his lodgings.’

  ‘Well, and who is the red domino?’

  ‘Nikolai Apollonovich.’

  ‘Hm! Yes, yes: but the incident has not yet come to a head.’

  ‘Don’t try to wriggle out of it: you’ve simply let it drop.’

  ‘?!?’

  ‘Yes, yes: you’ve let it drop … And yet you reproached me with the counterfeiter, reproached me with a fifty-copeck piece – remember? While I said nothing about the fact that you have artificial hair.’

  ‘Not artificial – dyed …’

  ‘It comes to the same thing.’

  ‘How is your cold?’

  ‘Better, thank you.’

  ‘I haven’t dropped it.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  ‘Why do you say that: I’m not short of evidence.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  ‘You will just have to believe me.’

  ‘Evidence!!!’

  But sardonic laughter was heard in reply.

  ‘Evidence? You need evidence? The evidence is the Petersburg “Diary of Events”. Have you read the “Diary” these last few days?’


  ‘I will confess: I haven’t.’

  ‘But I mean, it’s your duty to know what Petersburg is talking about. If you were to look in the “Diary” you would realize that news about the domino preceded his appearance near the Winter Canal.’

  ‘Hm-hm.’

  ‘You see, you see, you see: but now you say something. Ask me who wrote all this in the “Diary”.’

  ‘Well, who was it?’

  ‘Neintelpfain, my collaborator.’

  ‘I will confess that I didn’t expect you to pull off a stunt like that.’

  ‘And yet you attack me, shower me with caustic remarks: but I’ve told you a hundred times that I’m a collaborator in the cause, that this undertaking has been set like the mechanism of a clock. You’re still in blissful ignorance, and all along my Neintelpfain has been making a sensation.’

  ‘Hm-hm-hm: speak louder – I can’t hear you.’

  ‘I hope you will give your agents instructions that they’re to leave Nikolai Apollonovich in perfect peace, otherwise: otherwise – I can’t vouch for success in what lies ahead.’

  ‘I will confess that I’ve already told the newspapers about this recent incident.’

  ‘Oh my God, why, you must be a complete …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A complete … idealist: this time, as always, you have interfered in my sphere of authority … I hope to God that at least his father doesn’t find out!’

  A Mad Dog Yelped

  We left Sofya Petrovna Likhutina in a difficult situation; we left her on the Petersburg pavement that cold night, when police whistles began to sound from somewhere in the distance, and all around some kind of dark contours ran. Then she herself, outraged, ran in the opposite direction; into her soft muff she poured tears of outrage; she would never be able to reconcile herself to the dreadful occurrence that had shamed her for ever. It would have been better if Nikolai Apollonovich had outraged her in some other way, if he had struck her, if he had even thrown himself off the small bridge in his red domino – all the rest of her life she would have remembered him with a terrible shiver, remembered until her dying day. Sofya Petrovna Likhutina did not consider the Winter Canal as just any prosaic place where one might allow oneself to do what he had just allowed himself; not for nothing, after all, had she sighed repeatedly over the strains of The Queen of Spades; there was something similar to Liza in this situation of hers (what the similarity was, she could not have said exactly); and it went without saying that she had dreamt of seeing Nikolai Apollonovich here as Hermann. And Hermann? … Hermann had behaved like a wretched little pickpocket thief: he had, in the first place, thrust his mask at her with ridiculous cowardice from round the side of the palace; in the second place, having flapped his domino in front of her with ridiculous haste, he had sprawled on the small bridge; and then from under the folds of satin the trouser straps had prosaically appeared (those trouser straps had finally driven her to fury); to crown all these monstrosities, which had nothing to do with Hermann, this Hermann had been running away from a Petersburg policeman; Hermann had not remained where he was and torn the mask off with a heroic, tragic gesture; he had not said audaciously in a hollow, dying voice in front of everyone: ‘I love you’; and Hermann had not then shot himself. No, Hermann’s shameful behaviour had turned the very thought of the domino into a pretentious harlequinade; and above all, she had been injured by this shameful behaviour; well, what kind of Liza could she be, if there was no Hermann! So, vengeance on him, vengeance on him!

  Sofya Petrovna Likhutina flew into the small flat like a storm. In the illumined hallway hung an officer’s coat and a peaked cap: that meant that her husband was now back, and without taking her coat off, Sofya Petrovna Likhutina flew into her husband’s room; throwing the door wide open with a prosaically coarse gesture – she flew inside: with her streaming boa, her soft muff, her burning, burning little face, which was somehow unattractively swollen: flew inside – and stopped.

  Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin was evidently getting ready for bed; his double-breasted jacket hung rather modestly on the coat-rack, while he himself, in a dazzlingly white shirt cross-girdled with braces, knelt, as if broken, like a dying silhouette; before him an icon gleamed and an icon-lamp sputtered. Sergei Sergeyevich’s face was outlined lustrelessly in the half-light from the blue lamp, with a pointed little beard of exactly the same colour and a hand, also of the same colour, raised to his forehead; hand, face, beard and white chest were carved from some kind of hard, fragrant wood; Sergei Sergeyevich’s lips were barely moving; and Sergei Sergeyevich’s forehead barely nodded towards the small blue flame, and barely did his clenched, bluish fingers move as they pressed against his forehead – in order to make the sign of the cross.

  Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin first placed his bluish fingers on his chest and on both shoulders, bowed, and only then, rather reluctantly, turned round. Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin was not alarmed, was not embarrassed; getting up off his knees, he assiduously began to brush away the specks of dust that clung to them. After these slow actions, he asked coolly:

  ‘What’s the matter, Sonyushka?’

  Sofya Petrovna was irritated and somehow even offended by her husband’s cool composure, just as she was offended by that blue flame over there in the corner. Abruptly she fell on to a chair and, covering her face with her muff, sobbed aloud to the whole room.

  Then Sergei Sergeyevich’s whole face grew kinder, softened; his thin lips relaxed, a wrinkle cut across his brow, giving his face a look of compassion. But Sergei Sergeyevich had only a vague idea of how he ought to act in this ticklish situation – whether to give free rein to female tears, and then put up with a scene and reproaches of coldness, or on the other hand go down on his knees before Sofya Petrovna, respectfully lift her little head from the muff with a gentle hand, and with that hand wipe away her tears, embrace her in brotherly fashion and cover her little face with kisses; but Sergei Sergeyevich was afraid of seeing a grimace of contempt and boredom; and Sergei Sergeyevich chose the middle way: he simply patted Sofya Petrovna on her trembling shoulder:

  ‘Now, now, Sonya … Now that’s enough … Enough, my little child! Baby, baby!’

  ‘Stop it, stop it! …’

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong? Tell me! … Let us discuss it coolly and rationally.’

  ‘No: stop it, stop it! … Coolly and rationally … stop it! One can see … aaah … you have … cold fish-blood.’

  Sergei Sergeyevich stepped back from his wife in offence, stood undecidedly, and then sank into a nearby armchair.

  ‘Aaah … To leave your life like that! … So you can be in charge of provisions somewhere out there! … To go away! … To know nothing! …’

  ‘You’re wrong, Sonyushka, if you think I don’t know anything at all … Look …’

  ‘Oh, please stop it! …’

  ‘Look, my dear: ever since … I moved into this room … In a word, I have my self-respect: and you must understand that I don’t want to hamper your freedom … What is more, I cannot hamper you: I understand you; and I know very well that it’s not easy for you, my dear … I have hopes, Sonyushka: perhaps some day once again … Well, but I won’t, I won’t insist! But you must understand me, too: my distance, my cool rationality, are not the result of coldness at all … Well, but I don’t insist, I won’t insist …’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to see Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov? Perhaps something has happened between you? Then tell me everything: tell it without hiding anything; we shall discuss your position together.’

  ‘Don’t dare speak of him to me! … He is a scoundrel, a scoundrel! … Another husband would have shot him long ago … But you? … No, stop it!’

  And incoherently, in agitation, having dropped her little head to her breast, Sofya Petrovna told everything as it was.

  Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin was a simple man. And simple men are struck by the inexplicable absurdity of an action even more than by low-down behaviour, by murder or a bl
oody manifestation of brutality. A man is capable of understanding human treachery, crime, even human disgrace; after all, to understand something means almost to find a justification for it; but how is one to explain to oneself, for example, the action of a socially accepted and, it would appear, thoroughly honourable man, if to this socially accepted and thoroughly honourable man there suddenly comes a completely absurd fantasy: to get down on all fours on the threshold of a certain fashionable drawing-room flapping the skirts of his tailcoat? That would be, if I may say so, a complete abomination! The incomprehensibility, the futility of that abomination cannot be justified, in the same way that blasphemy, sacrilege and any sort of futile mockery cannot be justified! No, rather let a thoroughly honourable man squander the state’s money with impunity, as long as he never gets down on all fours, because after an action like that everything is defiled.

  Angrily, vividly, distinctly, Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin pictured to himself the buffoon-like aspect of the satin domino in the unlit entrance porch, and … Sergei Sergeyevich began to blush, blushed a bright carrot colour: the blood rushed to his head. He and Nikolai Apollonovich had, after all, played together as children; Sergei Sergeyevich had subsequently been surprised at Nikolai Apollonovich’s philosophical abilities; Sergei Sergeyevich had nobly permitted Nikolai Apollonovich, as an honourable man of good society, to come between himself and his wife and … Sergei Sergeyevich Likhutin angrily, vividly, distinctly pictured to himself the buffoon-like grimaces of the red domino in the unlit entrance porch. He got up and began to pace agitatedly about the tiny little room, compressing his fingers to a fist and furiously raising his compressed fingers each time he made a sharp turn; when Sergei Sergeyevich lost his temper (he had only ever lost his temper two or three times – no more), this gesture always appeared; Sofya Petrovna sensed very well what the gesture meant; she was a little frightened of it; she was always a little frightened, not of the gesture, but of the silence that made the gesture manifest.