Petersburg (18 page)

He Calls for Me, My Delvig Dear

As he walked up the red staircase of the Institution, his hand resting on the cold marble of the banister, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov caught the toe of his shoe on the broadcloth and – stumbled; involuntarily his step became slower; consequently: it was perfectly natural that his eyes (without any preconceived bias) should linger on the enormous portrait of the minister, who was directing before him a sad and compassionate gaze.

Along Apollon Apollonovich’s backbone gooseflesh ran: the Institution was poorly heated.
To Apollon Apollonovich this white room seemed like a plain.

He feared spatial expanses.

He feared them more than zigzags, than broken lines and sectors; country landscape simply scared him: beyond the wastes of snow and ice there, beyond the jagged line of the forests the blizzard raised an intersectedness of aerial currents; there, by a stupid chance, he had very nearly frozen to death.

This had been some fifty years ago.

At this hour of his lonely freezing it had seemed as though someone’s cold fingers, heartlessly stuck into his chest, had stiffly stroked his heart: the icy hand had drawn him on; following the icy hand he had climbed the steps of his career, ever keeping before his eyes that same fateful, improbable expanse; there, from there – the icy hand had beckoned; and measurelessness flew: the Russian Empire.

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov sat tight behind the city wall for many years, hating with all his soul the lonely rural district distances, the smoke of the hamlets and the jackdaw that sat upon the scarecrow; only once did he dare to cross those distances by express train, travelling on an official errand from Petersburg to Tokyo.

About his stay in Tokyo Apollon Apollonovich said nothing to anyone.
Yes – apropos of the portrait of the minister … He would say to the minister:

‘Russia is an icy plain, over which wolves have roamed for many hundreds of years …’

The minister would look at him with a velvety gaze that caressed the soul, smoothing with a white hand his grey, sleek moustache; and say nothing, and sigh.
The minister accepted the large number of departments under his direction as an agonizing, sacrificial, crucifying cross; upon the completion of his service he had intended to …

But he died.

Now he was resting in his coffin; Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov was now completely alone – into the immeasurable spaces the ages fled away; ahead – an icy hand revealed: immeasurabilities.

Immeasurabilities flew towards him.

Rus, Rus!
He saw – you, you!

It was you who raised a howl with winds, with blizzards, with snow, with rain, with black ice – you raised a howl with millions of living, conjuring voices!
At that moment it seemed to the senator as though a certain voice in the expanses were summoning him from a lonely grave mound; a lonely cross did not sway there; no lamp winked at the snowy whirlwinds; only the hungry wolves, gathering into packs, pitifully echoed the winds.

Beyond doubt, with the passage of the years there had developed in the senator a fear of space.

The illness had grown more acute: since the time of that tragic death; true, the image of the departed friend visited him at nights, stroking him with a velvety gaze in the long nights, stroking with a white hand his grey, sleek moustache, because the image of his departed friend was forever united in his consciousness now with a fragment of verse:

And he is not – and Rus he has abandoned,

The land he raised …

In Apollon Apollonovich’s consciousness that fragment arose whenever he, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, crossed the reception room.

After the quoted fragment of verse there would arise another fragment of verse:

And it seems my turn has come,

He calls for me, my Delvig dear,

Companion of my lively youth,

Companion of my mournful youth,

Companion of our youthful songs,

Our feasts and pure intentions’ way.

Thither, to the crowd of familiar shades

A genius gone from our midst for aye.

The series of verse fragments was angrily interrupted:

And o’er the earth new thunderclouds have gathered

And the hurricane them …

As he remembered the fragments, Apollon Apollonovich became particularly frosty; and with particular precision did he run out to present his fingers to the petitioners.

Meanwhile the Conversation Had a Sequel

Meanwhile Nikolai Apollonovich’s conversation with the stranger had a sequel.

‘I have been instructed,’ said the stranger, accepting an ashtray from Nikolai Apollonovich, ‘yes: I have been instructed to give you this little bundle here for safekeeping.’

‘Is that all!’ cried Nikolai Apollonovich, not yet daring to believe that the appearance of the stranger, which had troubled him so much, in no way concerned
that dreadful
proposal and was merely connected with a most inoffensive little bundle; and in a transport of distracted joy he was already on the point of smothering the little bundle in kisses; and his face covered with grimaces, manifesting a stormy life; he swiftly rose and moved towards the little bundle; but then for some reason the stranger also rose, and for some reason he suddenly rushed between the bundle and Nikolai Apollonovich; and when the hand of the senator’s dear son stretched out towards the notorious bundle, the stranger’s hand unceremoniously grabbed Nikolai Apollonovich’s fingers:

‘Be more careful, for God’s sake …’

Nikolai Apollonovich, drunk with joy, muttered some incoherent
apology and again distractedly stretched out his hand towards the object: and for a second time the stranger prevented him from taking the object, stretching out his hand in entreaty:

‘No: I earnestly ask you to be more careful, Nikolai Apollonovich, more careful …’

‘Aa … yes, yes …’ This time too Nikolai Apollonovich took nothing in: but no sooner had he caught hold of the bundle by the edge of the towel, than this time the stranger shouted into his ear in a voice of perfect anger …

‘Nikolai Apollonovich, I say to you a third time: be more careful …’

This time Nikolai Apollonovich was surprised:

‘It’s literature, I expect?
…’

‘Well, no …’

Just then a distinct metallic sound rang out: something clicked; in the silence there was the thin squeak of a trapped mouse; at the same moment the soft stool was overturned and the stranger’s footsteps began to thud into the corner:

‘Nikolai Apollonovich, Nikolai Apollonovich,’ his frightened voice rang out, ‘Nikolai Apollonovich – a mouse, a mouse … Tell your servant quickly … to, to … clear it away: I find it … I cannot …’

Nikolai Apollonovich, putting down the little bundle, marvelled at the stranger’s consternation:

‘Are you afraid of mice?
…’

‘Quick, quick, take it away …’

As he leapt out of his room and pressed the bell button, Nikolai Apollonovich presented, it must be admitted, a most absurd sight; but most absurd of all was the fact that in his hand he held … an anxiously struggling mouse; the mouse was, it was true, running around inside a wire trap, but Nikolai Apollonovich had absent-mindedly inclined his notable face right down to the trap and was now with the greatest attention examining his grey female captive, running a long, sleek, yellowish fingernail along the metal wire.

‘A mouse,’ – he raised his eyes to the lackey; and the lackey deferentially repeated after him:

‘A mouse, sir … Indeed it is, sir …’

‘Look: it’s running, running …’

‘It’s running, sir …’

‘It’s afraid, too …’

‘Of course it is, sir …’

From the open door of the reception room the stranger now peeped out, gave a frightened look and again concealed himself:

‘No – I can’t …’

‘Is his honour frightened, sir?
… It’s all right: a mouse is one of God’s creatures … Of course, sir … It too is …’

For a few moments both servant and
barin
were preoccupied with contemplating the female captive: at last the venerable servant took the trap into his hands.

‘A mouse …’ Nikolai Apollonovich repeated in a satisfied voice and with a smile returned to the guest who awaited him.
Nikolai Apollonovich had a peculiarly soft spot for mice.

At last, Nikolai Apollonovich took the bundle into his work room: somehow he was struck in passing only by the bundle’s heavy weight; but on this he did not reflect; as he went into the study, he tripped on a multicoloured Arabian rug, having caught his foot in a soft crease; then something in the bundle clinked with a metal sound, and at this clinking the stranger with the small black moustache leapt up; behind Nikolai Apollonovich’s back the stranger’s hand described that same zigzag-shaped line that had recently frightened the senator so badly.

But nothing happened: the stranger saw only that on a massive armchair in the next room a red domino and a small black satin mask were luxuriantly spread; the stranger fixed his eyes in astonishment upon this small black mask (it shocked him, to tell the truth), while Nikolai Apollonovich opened his writing desk and, having cleared sufficient space, carefully put the little bundle inside; the stranger with the small black moustache, continuing to examine the domino, began meanwhile animatedly to express a certain thoroughly threadbare thought of his:

‘You know … Loneliness is killing me.
I have completely lost the art of conversation these last months.
Don’t you notice that I get my words mixed up, Nikolai Apollonovich?’

Nikolai Apollonovich, offering the stranger his Bokharan back, only muttered absent-mindedly through clenched teeth:

‘Well, that happens to everyone, you know.’

Nikolai Apollonovich was at this moment carefully covering the little bundle with a cabinet-size photograph of a brunette; as he covered the bundle with the brunette, Nikolai Apollonovich fell into reflection, not taking his eyes from the photograph; and the froglike expression passed over his faded lips for a moment.

Meanwhile, into his back, the stranger’s words went on resounding.

‘Every sentence of mine gets mixed up.
I want to say one word, and instead of it I say the wrong one entirely: I keep going around and about … Or I suddenly forget, well, what the most ordinary object is called; and, when I do remember it, I doubt whether that is really its name.
I say over and over again: lamp, lamp, lamp; and then I suddenly fancy that there is no such word as “lamp”.
And sometimes there is no one to ask; and if there was, then to ask simply anyone would be shameful, you know: people would take one for a madman.’

‘Oh, come …’

Incidentally, concerning the bundle: if Nikolai Apollonovich had taken a somewhat more attentive attitude towards his visitor’s injunction to be more careful with the bundle, he would probably have realized that the bundle which was in his opinion most inoffensive was not as inoffensive as he thought, but he, I repeat, was concerned with the portrait; concerned so much, that the thread of the stranger’s words got lost inside his head.
And now, having caught the words, he barely understood them.
While into his back the pompous falsetto still drummed:

‘It is difficult to live as one excluded, Nikolai Apollonovich, like myself, in a Torricellian vacuum …’
²²

‘Torricellian?’ Nikolai Apollonovich said in surprise, without turning his back, having taken nothing in.

‘That is correct – Torricellian, and this, please observe, is for the benefit of the community; the community, society – and what, permit me to ask, kind of society do I see?
The society of a
certain
person who is unknown to you, the society of my house’s yardkeeper, Matvei Morzhov,
²³
and the society of grey woodlice: brrr
… there are woodlice in the attic where I live … Eh?
How do you like that, Nikolai Apollonovich?’

‘Yes, you know …’

‘The public cause!
Well, for me it long ago turned into a private cause, one that does not permit me to see other people: why, the public cause has excluded me from the list of the living.’

The stranger with the small black moustache had evidently quite by chance landed upon his favourite topic: and, having quite by chance landed upon his favourite topic, the stranger with the black moustache forgot about the purpose of his visit, forgot, doubtless, his rather wet little bundle, even forgot the number of extinguished cigarettes that were fetidly amassing: like all people who are forcibly constrained to silence and are talkative by nature, he sometimes experienced an inexpressible need to tell someone, no matter whom, the sum total of his thoughts: a friend, an enemy, a yardkeeper, a policeman, a child, even … a hairdresser’s dummy exhibited in a window.
Sometimes at night the stranger talked to himself.
In the setting of the luxurious, multicoloured reception room this need to talk suddenly awakened invincibly, like some bout of hard drinking after a month-long abstinence from vodka.

‘I’m not joking: what joke is there; why, in this joke I have spent more than two years; it is all right for you to joke, you who are included in all kinds of society; but my society is the society of bedbugs and woodlice.
I am I.
Do you hear me?’

‘Of course I hear you.’

Nikolai Apollonovich really was now listening.

‘I am I: but they try to tell me that I am not I, but some kind of “we”.
But I ask you – why do they do this?
And now my memory has broken down: a bad sign, a bad sign, pointing to the beginning of some brain disorder’ – the stranger with the small black moustache began to pace from corner to corner – ‘you know, the loneliness is killing me.
And sometimes one even gets angry: the public cause, social equality, while I …’