There is no doubt that Star City will not be habitable for several more months. Now it is nearly abandoned. In the city which could house as many as 3,000,000 inhabitants there now live about 30,000 workers who are clearing the streets and buildings. One must add that some former habitants have returned to claim the bodies of their loved ones and to collect the remnants of their property. A few tourists have also arrived, attracted by the spectacle of the deserted city. Two businessmen have already opened two hotels which are doing rather well. Entertainers have already been hired for a night club which will be opening soon. The Northern European Evening Herald, for its part has sent a new correspondent, Mr. Andrew Ewald, to the city and it intends to acquaint its readers with any new discoveries which will be made in the unfortunate capital of the Republic of the Southern Cross.
(1905) Translated by Leland Fetzer
Fyodor Kuzmich Sologub
(1863–1921)
__________________________________
The Asteroid
Beyond the course of Mars, I race around the Sun,
Unknown to Earth am I—a dark-hued Asteroid.
A surge of molten metal is my living blood,
My living flesh—a quivering colloid.
My earthly twin, I cannot come to your embrace,
By Draco’s breath I’m blown away to empty reaches.
And only from afar I view the Sun’s bright face,
I’m cast to rest upon no Earthly beaches.
I envy you: you range at will, my weakling friend,
You change your wheeling course, yet cloaked in narrow vizard.
But my fate is—to trace my circle without end,
All in the selfsame, endless, weary, blizzard.
Translated by A.L & M.K.
A Little Man
I
Iakov Alexeevich Saranin was just short of average height. His wife, Aglaia Nikiforovna, from merchant stock, was tall and bulky. And now, in the first year of her married life, the twenty-year-old woman was already so hefty that beside her scrawny little husband she looked like an Amazon.
“And what if she fills out even more?” thought Iakov Alexeevich.
So he thought, even though he had married for love—love both for her and for her dowry.
The difference in the proportions of man and wife frequently provoked sarcastic remarks from their friends. These thoughtless gibes poisoned Saranin’s peace of mind and made Aglaia laugh.
Once Saranin returned home thoroughly upset after an evening with some people from the office during which he’d had to put up with more than his share of barbed comments.
Lying in bed beside Aglaia, he kept muttering and nagging at his wife. Aglaia protested sluggishly and unenthusiastically, her voice sleepy.
“Well, what should I do? It’s not my fault.” She had a very calm and peaceful disposition.
Saranin grumbled: “Stop swilling down the meat, don’t stuff your gut with so much starch; you’re gobbling candy all day long.”
“But look, you can’t expect me to eat nothing if I have a healthy appetite,” Aglaia replied. “When I was still single, my appetite was even better.”
“I can imagine: I can just see you eating a whole bull at one sitting.”
“You can’t eat a bull at one sitting,” Aglaia retorted calmly.
She soon fell asleep, but Saranin could not get to sleep on that strange autumn night.
He tossed and turned for a long time. When sleep denies itself to the Russian, he meditates. And Saranin gave himself up to that activity, which was so uncharacteristic of him at other times. For he was a civil servant: there was not much to think about, and no particular reason for doing so.
“There must be some way,” Saranin ruminated. “Every day science makes amazing discoveries; in America they make noses of every imaginable shape for people. They grow new skin on your face. The kind of operations they do—they drill holes in your skull, they cut your guts or your heart open and then sew them back up again. Isn’t there really any way either for me to grow or for Aglaia to take off a little flesh? What if there’s some secret means? But how to find it? How? Well, just lying around you certainly won’t find it. God helps them who help themselves. But as for looking … A secret remedy! Maybe he, the inventor, is just walking around in the streets looking for a customer. Sure, what else? After all, he can’t advertise in the papers. But in the streets you can peddle anything you want when nobody’s looking. That’s very likely. So he walks around and offers it confidentially. Anyone who needs a secret remedy won’t be lolling in bed.”
After pondering things in this manner, Saranin quickly began to dress, purring to himself.
“‘At twelve o’clock midnight …’”
He did not worry about waking his wife. He knew that Aglaia was a sound sleeper.
“Like a merchant,” he said aloud; “like a clod,” he thought to himself.
He finished dressing and went out into the street. He did not have the slightest desire to sleep. His heart felt light, and his mood was that of the inveterate seeker of adventures on the verge of a new and interesting experience.
The peaceful civil servant, who had lived a quiet and colorless life for a third of a century, suddenly felt stirring in him the heart of the hunter in the trackless deserts, enterprising and free—a hero of Cooper or Mayne Reid.
But after he had taken a few steps along the familiar route—toward his office—he stopped and began to reflect. Where exactly should he go? Everything was quiet and peaceful, so peaceful that the street seemed like the corridor of a vast building, quite ordinary, quite safe, and isolated from the unpredictable outside world. Janitors dozed by gates. At the intersection a policeman could be seen. The street lamps glowed. The paving stones of the sidewalks and the cobbles of the roadway gleamed faintly with the moisture of a recent rainfall.
Saranin thought a while, and then in quiet confusion he began to walk straight ahead, and then turned to the right.
II.
At the intersection of two streets he saw, in the light of the lamps, a man coming toward him. His heart lay heavy in joyful anticipation.
It was a strange figure.
A robe of bright colors, with a wide belt. A tall hat, sharp-pointed, with black designs. A thin beard dyed saffron, long and narrow. Gleaming white teeth. Burning black eyes. Feet in slippers.
“An Armenian!” Saranin suddenly thought for some reason or other.
The Armenian came up to him and said: “Dear heart, what is it you spend your nights looking for? Why do you not go to bed or else to beautiful maidens? Want me to take you there?”
“No, I have more than enough of my own beautiful maiden,” said Saranin.
And he trustingly revealed his misfortune to the Armenian.
The Armenian bared his teeth and neighed: “Big wife, little husband—to kiss, you need a ladder. Oi, no good!”
“What could possibly be good about it!”
“Follow me. I will help a good man.”
They walked through the quiet corridor-like streets for a long time, the Armenian in front, Saranin behind. As they moved from street lamp to street lamp, the Armenian kept undergoing a strange transformation. In darkness he grew, and the further he moved away from the street lamp, the more enormous he became. Sometimes the sharp peak of his hat seemed to be rising above the houses into the cloudy sky. Then, as he approached the light, he became smaller and directly under the lamp he would resume his former dimensions and would look like a plain ordinary peddler in a robe. And, strangely enough, Saranm was not surprised at this phenomenon. He was in such a trusting mood that the most spectacular wonders of the Arabian fairy tales would have seemed just as ordinary to him as the insignificant doings of drab everyday life.
At the gates of a house, a most ordinary structure, five stories high and painted yellow, they stopped. The light markings on the lamp at the gate stood out clearly, Saranin noted: “No. 41.”
They went into the cour
tyard; then up the staircase of a building in the rear. The staircase lay in semi-darkness. But the door the Armenian stopped in front of was dimly illuminated by a small lamp, and Saranin could make out numbers: “No. 43.”
The Armenian reached into his pocket, took out a small bell—the kind used in country houses to call servants—and rang it. The bell gave out a pure, silvery tinkle.
At once the door opened. Behind the door stood a barefoot boy, handsome, swarthy, with very bright red lips. His white teeth gleamed, for he was smiling, either in delight or in mockery. And he seemed to be always smiling. The comely boy’s eyes glowed with a greenish luster. His whole body was lithe, like a kitten’s, and impalpable, like the phantom of a quiet nightmare. He looked at Saranin, smiling. Saranin became terrified.
They went in. With a lithe and sinuous bend of his body the boy closed the door, and walked before them along a corridor, carrying a lantern in his hand. He opened a door, and again—another impalpable movement, then laughter.
A dreadful dark narrow room, the walls lined with cabinets holding some kind of flasks and small bottles. There was a strange odor, an irritating and mysterious odor.
The Armenian lit a lamp, opened a cabinet, rummaged around in it and brought out a flask containing a greenish liquid.
“Good drops,” he said. “You will put one drop in a glass of water, she will just fall asleep without a sound and will not wake up.”
“No, I don’t want that,” Saranin said irritably. “Did you think that was really what I came for?”
“Dear heart,” the Armenian said persuasively. “You will take another wife, your own size—the simplest thing in the world.”
“I don’t want to!” cried Saranin.
“Now do not shout,” the Armenian stopped him. “Why are you angry, dear heart, why are you upsetting yourself for nothing? You do not want them, do not take them, I will give you another kind. But the other ones are so expensive—oi, oi, so expensive!”
The Armenian squatted—which made his long figure look ludicrous—and brought out a square-shaped bottle. In it gleamed a transparent liquid. The Armenian said quietly, with a mysterious air: “You drink a drop—a pound will come off; you drink forty drops—forty pounds come off. A drop—a pound. A drop—a rouble. Count the drops, give the roubles.”
Joy flamed in Saranin’s heart.
“How much is it I need?” Saranin began to reckon. “There must be about two hundred pounds of her. Take off a hundred and twenty or so, and then there’ll be a nice petite little wife. That’ll be fine.”
“Give me a hundred and twenty drops.”
The Armenian shook his head. “You want much—no good will come of it.”
Saranin flared up. “That’s nobody’s business but mine.”
The Armenian looked at him searchingly. “Count the money.”
Saranin took out his wallet. “All tonight’s winnings, and I have to add some of my own,” he thought.
In the meantime the Armenian had brought out a flask of cut glass, and he began to drip the liquid into it.
Sudden doubt quickened in Saranin’s mind. “A hundred and twenty roubles is no little cash. And what if he should cheat me?” He asked hesitantly, “Are you sure they work?”
“The goods speak for themselves,” said the proprietor. “I will show you right now how they work. Caspar!” he shouted.
The same barefoot boy entered. He was wearing a red jacket and short dark-blue trousers. His swarthy legs were exposed above the knees. They were shapely and beautiful, and they moved gracefully and nimbly.
The Armenian gave a wave of his hand. Caspar deftly shed his clothes. He approached the table.
The candles cast a dim light on his yellow body, lithe, strong, and beautiful. And on his obedient depraved smile. On his black eyes and the blue rings under them.
The Armenian said: “If you drink these drops straight, it will work at once. If you mix them in water or wine, it will work slowly—you will not see it happening before your eyes. If you do not mix them thoroughly, it will work in leaps, and that will not be pretty.”
He took a narrow graduated cylinder, poured some liquid into it, and handed it to Caspar. Caspar simpered like a spoiled child who is given something sweet, drank the liquid to the bottom, threw his head back, licked the last sweet drops with his long sharp tongue, which was like that of a poisonous snake—and at once, before Saranin’s very eyes, he began to shrink. He stood erect, looked at Saranin, laughed, and began to change, like the doll you buy at the Carnival fair which collapses when the air is let out.
The Armenian took him by the elbow and placed him on the table. The boy was the size of a candle. He danced and made faces.
“But what will become of him now?” asked Saranin.
“Dear heart, we will grow him again,” replied the Armenian.
He opened the cabinet, and from the top shelf he took down another vessel of an equally strange shape. The liquid in it was green. The Armenian poured a bit of the liquid into a tiny goblet the size of a thimble. He handed it to Caspar.
Once again Caspar drank, as he had the first time. Slowly and surely, like water rising in a bathtub, the naked boy grew bigger and bigger. Finally he returned to his former dimensions.
The Armenian said: “Drink it with wine, or with water, or with milk, drink it with anything you want—only do not drink it with Russian kvas or your hair will start to fall out all over the place.”
III.
A few days passed.
Saranin radiated happiness. He kept smiling enigmatically. He was awaiting an opportunity. The opportunity came. Aglaia was complaining of a headache.
“I have a remedy,” Saranin said. “It really helps.”
“No remedies will help,” Aglaia said, making a sour face.
“No, this one will help. I got it from a certain Armenian.”
He said this with such assurance that Aglaia was convinced of the effectiveness of the remedy he had got from the Armenian.
“Oh, all right, have it your way, I’ll take it.”
He brought the little flask.
“Does it have a nasty taste?” Aglaia asked.
“It tastes just fine and it really does help. Only it’ll give you a touch of the runs.”
Aglaia made a face.
“Drink it, drink it.”
“Can I put it in some Madeira?”
“All right.”
“And you have some Madeira with me too,” Aglaia said in the tone of a spoiled child.
Saranin poured two glasses of Madeira, and emptied the potion into his wife’s glass.
“I feel sort of chilly,” Aglaia said softly and listlessly. “A shawl would be nice.”
Saranin ran to get a shawl. When he came back the glasses were standing as before. Aglaia was sitting and smiling.
He wrapped the shawl around her.
“I seem to feel a bit more comfortable,” she said. “Should I drink?”
“Drink, drink,” Saranin exclaimed. “To your health.”
He took up his glass. They drank. She roared with laughter. “What’s the matter?” Saranin asked. “I switched the glasses. You’re the one who’ll have the runs, not me.”
He shuddered. He turned pale. “What have you done?” he cried in despair.
Aglaia laughed and laughed. Her laughter seemed repulsive and cruel to Saranin.
Suddenly he remembered that the Armenian had a restorant. He ran to the Armenian.
“He’ll really scalp me,” he fretted. “But who cares about money? Let him take everything, as long as I can save myself from the horrible effects of this potion.”
IV.
But ill fate had evidently fallen upon Saranin.
On the door of the apartment where the Armenian had lived hung a padlock. Saranin tugged at the bell in despair. A mad hope gave him strength. He rang the bell furiously.
On the other side of the door the bell rang loudly, distinctly, clearly—with that relentless
clarity bells have only in empty apartments. Saranin ran to the janitor. He was pale. Tiny, fine beads of sweat, like dew on a cold rock, broke out on his face and especially on his nose.
He rushed into the janitor’s room and shouted: “Where’s Khalatyants?”
A phlegmatic black-bearded individual, the head janitor, was drinking tea from a saucer. He turned a disapproving gaze on Saranin. He asked imperturbably: “And what is it you want of him?”
Saranin stared blankly at the janitor, and did not know what to say.
“If you got some sort of business with him, mister,” the janitor said, eying Saranin suspiciously, “then you better go away. On account of he’s an Armenian we’d better look out or we’ll get in trouble with the cops.”
“Oh, where is that damned Armenian!” Saranin exclaimed in despair. “The one from No. 43.”
“There ain’t no Armenian,” replied the janitor. “There was one, there sure was, I ain’t saying there wasn’t, except now there ain’t no more.”
“Well, where is he then?”
“Gone.”
“Where?” Saranin shouted.
“Who knows?” the janitor answered with complete unconcern. “He fixed himself up a foreign passport and left the country.”
Saranin turned pale.
“Look, try to understand,” he said with a trembling voice, “I really need him desperately.”
Worlds Apart Page 45