Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  Minskaia smiled. “Call a doctor,” she said.

  “Doctors can’t help—it’s spleen!”

  “Fall in love!” (The look which accompanied this statement expressed something like the following: “I feel like tormenting him a bit!”)

  “With whom?”

  “What about me!”

  “No! You would be bored even flirting with me, and besides—to be frank—no woman could love me.”

  “What about that Italian countess, the one who followed you from Naples to Milan?”

  “Well, you see,” replied Lugin thoughtfully, “I judge others by my own feelings, and I’m certain that I don’t err in doing so. I have in fact had occasion to awaken all the signs of passion in certain women. But since I know very well it is only thanks to artistry and skill that I am able to play on particular strings of the human heart, I derive no enjoyment from my success. I have asked myself if I could fall in love with an ugly woman—and it has turned out I cannot. I am ugly—consequently a woman could not love me, that is clear; artistic sensibility is more strongly developed in women than in us men; they are more frequently—and remain for much longer—under the sway of first impressions. If I have been able to arouse in a few women that which is called a tendre, it has cost me incredible effort and sacrifice. But since I always knew the artificiality of the feelings I inspired, and that I had only myself to thank for them—I have been unable to lose myself in a full, disinterested love; a little malice has always been mixed with my passions. This is all sad, but true!”

  “What nonsense!” said Minskaia, but, glancing briefly at Lugin, she involuntarily agreed with him.

  Lugin’s features were in fact not the least bit attractive. In spite of the fact that there was much fire and intelligence in the strange expression of the eyes, you would not find in his overall appearance a single one of those traits which render a gentleman appealing in society. He was awkwardly and crudely built; he spoke abruptly and jerkily; the sickly and sparse hairs on his temples, the uneven color of his face (symptoms of a permanent mysterious ailment) all make him appear older than he really was. He had spent three years in Italy taking cure for morbid hypochondria; and although he had not been cured, had at least discovered a useful diversion. He had taken to painting; a natural talent, hitherto inhibited by the demands of work, developed broadly and freely under the influence of a vivifying southern sky and the marvelous works of the old masters. He returned a true artist, although only his friends were granted the right to enjoy his superb talent. His pictures were always suffused with a certain vague but oppressive feeling: they bore the stamp of that bitter poetry which our poor age has sometimes wrung from the hearts of its finest proponents.

  It had already been two months since Lugin had returned to Petersburg. He had independent means, few relatives, and several longstanding acquaintances in the highest social circle of the capital, where he intended to pass the winter. Lugin often called on Minskaia: her beauty, rare wit, and original views could not fail to make an impression on a man of intelligence and imagination. There was, however, no hint of love between them.

  Their conversation ceased for a time, and they both seemed to be absorbed in the music. The singer engaged for the evening was performing “The Forest King,” a ballad by Schubert set to the lyrics of Goethe. When she had finished, Lugin rose.

  “Where are you going?” asked Minskaia.

  “Good-bye.”

  “It’s still early.”

  He sat down again.

  “Do you know,” he observed with some gravity, “that I am beginning to lose my mind?”

  “Really?”

  “All joking aside. I can tell you about this; you won’t laugh at me. I have been hearing a voice for several days. From morning till night someone keeps repeating something to me. And what do you think it is?—An address. There—I hear it now: ‘Stoliarnyi Lane, near the Kokukshin Bridge, the home of Titular Councilor Shtoss, apartment 27.’ And it’s repeated so rapidly, rapidly, as if the speaker were pressed for time … it’s unbearable …”

  He had turned pale. But Minskaia didn’t notice.

  “You don’t see the person who is speaking, though, do you?” she asked absently.

  “No. But the voice is a clear, sharp tenor.”

  “When did this begin?”

  “Should I confess? I can’t tell you for certain … I don’t know … this is really most amusing!” he said with a forced smile.

  “The blood is rushing to your head, and it’s making your ears ring.”

  “No, no. Tell me—how can I be rid of this?”

  “The best way” replied Minskaia after some thought, “would be for you to go to the Kokukshin Bridge and look for the apartment. And since some cobbler or watchmaker probably lives there, you could order something from him just for propriety’s sake, and then when you return home, go to bed, because … you really are unwell!” she added, having glanced at Lugin’s troubled face with concern.

  “You’re right,” answered Lugin gloomily. “I will go without fail.”

  He rose, took up his hat, and went out.

  She looked after him with surprise.

  2.

  A damp November morning lay over Petersburg. Wet snow was falling; the houses appeared dirty and dark and the faces of passers-by were green; coachmen, wrapped in red sleigh-rugs, dozed at their stands; their poor nags’ long wet coats were curling like sheep’s wool. The mist gave a sort of grayish-lilac color to distant objects. Along the pavement only rarely was heard the slap of clerks’ galoshes—and from time to time noise and laughter rang out from an ale-cellar as a drunk in a green frieze coat and oilcloth cap was thrown out. Of course you would encounter such scenes only in the out-of-the-way parts of the city, for instance … near the Kokukshin Bridge. Across this bridge there now came a man of medium height, neither thin nor stout, not strongly built but with broad shoulders, wearing a greatcoat and in general dressed with taste. It was a pity to see his lacquered boots soaked through with snow and mud, but he, it seemed, did not care about this in the least. With hands thrust into his pockets and head lowered he walked along at an uneven pace, as though he were afraid to reach his goal or as if he had no goal at all. On the bridge he stopped, raised his head, and looked around. It was Lugin. His face showed the traces of mental exhaustion; in his eyes burned a secret anxiety.

  “Where is Stoliarnyi Lane?” in an uncertain voice he addressed an idle cab driver with a shag rug pulled up to his neck who was whistling the “Kamarinskaia” as he drove past at a walk.

  The driver glanced at Lugin, flicked his horse with the tip of his whip, and drove on.

  This seemed very strange. Enough of this, is there really a Stoliarnyi Lane? Lugin stepped from the bridge and asked the same question of a boy who was running across the street with a half-liter of ale.

  “Stoliarnyi?” said the boy. “Go straight along the Little Meshchanskaia and the first lane on the right will be Stolyarny.”

  Lugin was reassured. Coming to the corner, he turned right and saw a small, dirty lane along which there were no more than ten houses of any great size. He knocked at the door of the first small shop; when the shopkeeper appeared, Lugin inquired, “Where is Stoss’s?

  “Shtoss’s? I don’t know, sir. There is no such person here. But right next door is the house of the merchant Blinnikov, and further down …”

  “But I need Shtoss’s!”

  “Well, I don’t know … Shtoss!” said the shopkeeper, scratching the back of his neck, and then adding, “No, never heard of him, sir!”

  Lugin set off to take a look at the nameplates on the houses himself; something told him that he would recognize the house at first sight, even though he had never seen it. He had almost reached the end of the lane, and not a single nameplate had coincided in any way with the one he had imagined, when suddenly he glanced casually across the street and saw over one of the gates a tin nameplate with no inscription whatsoever.

 
Lugin ran up to the gate, but no matter how he peered at it, he could make out nothing resembling a trace of an inscription erased by time. The nameplate was brand-new.

  A yard-keeper in a discolored, long-skirted caftan was sweeping away the snow near the gate; he had a gray beard which had long gone untrimmed, wore no cap and had a dirty apron belted around his waist.

  “Hey, yard-keeper!” cried Lugin.

  The yard keeper grumbled something through his teeth.

  “Whose house is this?”

  “It’s been sold,” the yard keeper answered rudely.

  “But whose was it?”

  “Whose? Kifeinik’s—the merchant.”

  “It can’t be—this has to be Shtoss’s!” Lugin cried involuntarily.

  “No, it was Kifeinik’s—it’s only now that it’s Stoss’s.

  Lugin faltered.

  His heart began to pound, as if in presentiment of misfortune. Should he continue his search? Wouldn’t it be better to stop it in time? Anyone who has never been in a similar situation will have difficulty understanding it: curiosity, they say, has ruined the human race; even today it is our cardinal, primary passion, such that all our other passions can be attributed to it. But there are times when the mysterious nature of an object gives curiosity an unusual power: obedient to it, like a rock cast off a mountain by a powerful arm, we cannot stop ourselves, even though we see an abyss awaiting us.

  Lugin stood in front of the gate a long time. Finally he addressed a question to the yard-keeper.

  “Does the new owner live here?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, where does he live?”

  “The Devil only knows.”

  “Have you been yard keeper here a long time?”

  “A long time.”

  “And are there people living in the house?”

  “There are.”

  After a brief silence Lugin slipped the yard-keeper a ruble and said, “Tell me, please, who lives in apartment 27?”

  The yard-keeper set the broom up against the gate, took the ruble, and stared at Lugin.

  “Apartment 27? Who’d be living there? It’s been empty God knows how long.”

  “Haven’t they let it?”

  “How do you mean, sir—not let it? They have let it.’

  “Then how can you say that nobody lives there?”

  “God knows! They don’t live there, is all! They take it for a year, and then they don’t move in.”

  “Well, who was the last to take it?”

  “A colonel of the Injuneer Corps, or something like that.”

  “Why didn’t he live there?”

  “Well, he was about to move in, but then they say he was sent to Viatka—so the apartment’s been empty ever since.”

  “And before the colonel?”

  “Before him a baron—a German one—took it; but that one didn’t move in either; I heard he died.”

  “And before the baron?”

  “A merchant took it for his … ahem! But he went bankrupt, so he left us with just the deposit! …”

  “Strange,” thought Lugin.

  “May I see the apartment?”

  The yard-keeper again stared at him.

  “Why not? of course you can,” he answered and waddled off after his keys.

  He soon returned and led Lugin up a wide, but rather dirty stairway to the first floor. The key grated in the rusty lock, and the door opened; an odor of damp struck them in the face. They went in. The apartment consisted of four rooms and a kitchen. Old dusty furniture which had once been gilt was stiffly arranged along walls covered in wallpaper depicting red parrots and golden lyres against a green background; the tile stoves were cracked here and there; the pine floor, painted to imitate parquet, squeaked rather suspiciously in certain places; oval mirrors with rococo frames hung in the spaces between the windows; in general, the rooms had a sort of strange, outmoded air.

  For some reason—I don’t know why—the rooms appealed to Lugin.

  “I will take the apartment,” he said. “Have the windows washed and the furniture dusted … just look how many spider webs there are! And you must heat the place well …” At that moment he noticed on the wall of the last room a half-length portrait depicting a man of about forty in a Bohara dressing-gown, with regular features and large gray eyes. In his right hand he held a gold snuffbox of extraordinary size. On his fingers a multitude of rings glittered. The portrait seemed to have been painted by a timid student’s brush: everything—the clothes, hair, hand, rings—was very poorly done; yet, there breathed such a tremendous feeling of life in the facial expression—especially the lips—that it was impossible to look away. In the line of the mouth there was a subtle, imperceptible curve of a sort which is inaccessible to art—unconsciously inscribed here, of course—which gave the face an expression by turns sarcastic, sad, evil, and tender. Have you never happened, on a frosty windowpane or in a jagged shadow accidentally cast by some object or other, to notice a human face, a profile sometimes unimaginably beautiful, and at other times unfathomably repulsive? Just try to get those features down on paper! You won’t be able to do it. Take a pencil and try to trace on the wall the silhouette which has so struck you, and its charm will disappear; the human hand cannot intentionally produce such lines: a single, minute deviation, and the former expression is irrevocably destroyed. On the portrait’s face was precisely that inexpressible quality which only genius or accident can produce.

  “Strange that I only noticed the portrait at the moment I said I would take the apartment!” thought Lugin.

  He sat down in an armchair, rested his head on his hand, and lost himself in thought.

  The yard-keeper stood opposite Lugin for a long time, swinging his keys.

  “Well then, sir?” he finally said.

  “Ah!”

  “Well then, if you’re taking it—a deposit, please.”

  They agreed on a sum; Lugin gave him the deposit, then sent an order to his place to have his things brought over, while he himself sat opposite the portrait until evening; by nine o’clock the most essential things had been brought from the hotel in which Lugin had been staying.

  “It’s nonsense to think it impossible to live in this apartment,” mused Lugin. “My predecessors obviously were not destined to move into it—that’s strange, of course! But I took my own measures—I moved in immediately! And so?—nothing has happened!”

  He and his old valet Nikita were arranging things in the apartment until twelve o’clock.

  One ought to add that Lugin chose as his bedchamber the room where the portrait hung. Before going to bed he approached the portrait with candle in hand, wanting to take another good look at it. And in place of the artist’s name, he found a word written in red letters: Wednesday.

  “What day is today?” he asked Nikita.

  “It’s Monday, sir …”

  “The day after tomorrow is Wednesday,” said Lugin indifferently.

  “Just so, sir!”

  For God knows what reason Lugin became angry with him.

  “Get out of here!” he shouted, stamping his foot.

  Old Nikita shook his head and went out.

  After this Lugin went to bed and fell asleep.

  The next morning the rest of his things and a few unfinished pictures were brought over.

  3.

  Among the unfinished pictures, most of which were small, was one of rather significant size: in the middle of a canvas covered with charcoal, chalk, and greenish-brown primer was a sketch of a woman’s head worth the attention of a connoisseur. Yet despite the charm of the drawing and the liveliness of the colors, the head struck one unpleasantly thanks to something indefinable in the expression of the eyes and the smile; it was obvious that Lugin had redrawn the head several times from different aspects, but had been unable to satisfy himself, because the same little head, blotted out with brown paint, appeared in several places on the canvas. It was not a real portrait; perhaps like some
of our young poets, pining for beautiful women who have never existed, he was trying to embody on canvas his ideal angel-woman, a whim understandable in early youth, but rare in a person who has had any experience of life. However, there are people with whom experiences of the mind do not affect the heart, and Lugin was one of these unfortunate poetic creatures. The most cunning rogue or the most experienced coquette would have had difficulty duping Lugin, but he deceived himself daily with the naiveté of a child. For some time he had been haunted by a fixed idea—one which was torturous and unbearable, all the more so because his pride suffered as a result of it: he was far from handsome, it is true, but there was nothing repellent about him. Those acquainted with his intelligence, talent, and kindness even found his facial expression pleasant; but he was firmly convinced that the his degree of ugliness precluded the possibility of love, and he began to view women as his natural enemies, suspecting ulterior motives in their occasional caresses and explaining in a coarse, suggestive manner their most obvious good will.

  I shall not examine the degree to which he was correct, but the fact is that such a state of mind excuses his rather fantastic love for an ethereal ideal—a love that is most innocent, but at the same time most harmful for a man of imagination.

  That day, Tuesday, nothing special happened to Lugin: he sat at home until evening, although he needed to go out. An incomprehensible lassitude overwhelmed all his feelings: he wanted to paint, but the brushes fell from his hands; he tried to read, but his eyes flitted over the lines, and he read something quite different from what was actually printed; he had bouts of fever and chills, his head ached, and there was a ringing in his ears. When dusk came he did not order a candle brought to him: he sat by a window which looked out on the courtyard; it was dark outside; his poorer neighbors’ windows were dimly lit. He sat for a long time. Outside, a barrel organ suddenly began to play; it played some sort of old German waltz; Lugin listened and listened—and he became terribly sad. He began to pace around the room; an unprecedented anxiety took hold of him: he felt like weeping, like laughing… he threw himself on the bed and burst into tears. He reviewed the whole of his past: he remembered how often he had been deceived, how often he had hurt the very people he had loved, what a wild joy had at times flooded his heart at the sight of tears which he had brought to their eyes, now closed forever. And with horror he saw and admitted to himself that he was unworthy of a disinterested and genuine love—and this was so painful for him, so oppressive!