Petersburg (36 page)

And the hostess distractedly abandoned her interlocutor.

‘But tell me …’

Putting her miniature lorgnette to her eyes, she saw that there in the next room a law student in a rustling little silk uniform jacket with the waist pulled in too tight, had fluttered out of the ballroom to the flushed young girl who was drinking fruit punch and, rolling his r’s in the French manner in a thunderous little bass, the law student was jokingly pulling the glass of ruby fruit punch out of the young girl’s hand and shyly taking a cold sip from it.
And Lyubov’ Alekseyevna, breaking off the editor’s ferocious discourse, stood up, rustling, and sailed through to the semi-dark room in order to sternly observe:

‘What are you doing here – you must dance, dance.’

And then the happy couple returned to the ballroom that seethed with gleams of light; the law student embraced with a snow-white glove the young girl’s waist that was as slender as a wasp; the
young girl threw herself back on this snow-white glove; both suddenly began to fly intoxicatingly, moving their legs with extreme swiftness, cutting through the flying dresses, shawls and fans that wove sparkling patterns around them; at last, they themselves became a kind of radiant sparks.
Over there the ballroom pianist, arching his spine in bizarre fashion, leaned over his flying fingers on the keys somehow stealthily, in order to pour out some rather garish sounds in the treble: they too ran off in pursuit of one another; then the pianist, leaning back wearily, with a squeak of the piano stool ran his fingers over some thick bass notes …

‘Taxil made up a complete fable about the Masons,’ rang the caustic voice of the professor.
‘Unfortunately many people believed that fable; but later Taxil renounced the fable in decisive fashion; he publicly confessed that his sensational statements to the pope were merely his own plain mockery at the obscurantism and evil will of the Vatican.
But for that Taxil was anathemaed in a papal encyclical …’

Here someone new came in – a bustling, taciturn-like gentleman with an enormous wart near his nose – and suddenly began to nod and smile to the senator, rubbing his fingers together; and with ambiguous meekness he led the senator off to a corner:

‘You see … Apollon Apollonovich … the director of Department X has proposed … how should one put it … Well, to ask you a certain ticklish question.’

More than this it was hard to make out: one could hear the little gentleman whispering something in the pale ear with ambiguous meekness, and then Apollon Apollonovich flung himself at him with a kind of pathetic fear.

‘Speak to the point … My son?’

‘That’s precisely it, precisely it: that is the delicate question.’

‘My son has relations with …?’

More than this one could not make out; all one could hear was:

‘Nonsense …

‘It’s all utter nonsense …’

‘To be sure, it’s a pity that this inappropriate joke should have assumed such an inappropriate character that the press …

‘And you know: I will confess that we have given the Petersburg police instructions to follow your son …

‘Only for his own good, naturally …’

And again there was a whispering.
And the senator asked:

‘A domino, you say?’

‘Yes – the very same one.’

With these words the bustling little gentleman pointed to the next room, where somewhere the bustling domino, moving jerkily about, was trailing his satin cape over the lacquered tiles of the parquetry.

A Scandal

Sofya Petrovna Likhutina, when she had handed over the letter, slipped away from her cavalier and sank helplessly on to a soft stool; her arms and legs refused to work.

What had she done?

She saw the red domino running past her into a corner of the empty intermediate room; and there, unnoticed, the domino tore the paper of the envelope; a note began to whisper in brightly rustling hands.
The red domino, in his efforts to see the small, minute handwriting of the note better, involuntarily pushed the mask up on to his forehead, making the black lace of his beard reveal through two luxuriant folds the domino’s pale face, as if they were two flaps of a black silk cap; from the trembling flaps that face was thrust, waxen, frozen, with protruding lips, and his hand trembled, and the note trembled in his fingers; and a cold sweat appeared on his forehead.

The red domino did not see Madame Pompadour now, who was watching him from the corner; he was now entirely absorbed in reading; he began to fidget, threw open the satin skirts of his long garment, revealing his ordinary apparel – a dark green frock-coat; Nikolai Apollonovich pulled out his gold pince-nez and, putting it to his eyes, inclined his face towards the little note.

Nikolai Apollonovich jerked right back; his eyes fixed on her with horror; but he did not see her: his lips apparently whispered things that were quite inarticulate – and Sofya Petrovna wanted to
rush to him from her corner, because she could no longer endure these widened eyes that were fixed on her.
At this point people came into the room; the red domino nervously hid the note in his trembling fingers, withdrawing them into the folds of his garment; but the red domino forgot to lower his mask.
Thus he stood, with the mask raised on his forehead, his mouth half open and his eyes unseeing.

Even faster than before did the young girl come rushing into the room again after the waltz in order to cool off; she almost knocked down the
zemstvo
official, who was for some reason dozing solitarily near the entrance, stopped in front of a pier-glass, set straight a ribbon that had settled in her hair and, putting one foot on a chair, tied her snow-white dancing shoe; she began a suspicious whispering with her female friend, who was also a young girl, hearing the torrent of sounds, the discordant rustling shuffling, the hoarse cries from the drawing-room, the laughter, the peremptory shouts of the master of ceremonies, hearing the barely audible jingling of cavaliers’ spurs.

Suddenly she saw the domino with his unlowered mask; and, having seen him, exclaimed:

‘So that’s who you are!
Hello, Nikolai Apollonovich, hello: who could ever have recognized you?’

Sofya Petrovna Likhutina saw Nikolai Apollonovich smile long-sufferingly, dart away somehow strangely, and rush off back to the ballroom.

There stood two rows of dancers, floating away into the delicately blinded gaze in transfusions of mother-of-pearl pink,
gris-de-perle
, heliotrope, bluish and white velvets and silks: on the silks, on the velvets lay shawls, scarves, veils, fans and beads, on the shoulders lay heavy lace made of silver laminae; at the slightest movement there a scaly spine flashed; everywhere now one could see flushed arms, fingers uncontrollably playing with the laminae of fans, coarsening blotches in the white velvet, rising and falling
décolletages
and cheeks that were quite crimson, in a haze of coiffures disturbed by dancing.

There stood two rows of dancing couples, floating away into the gaze in black, greenish and bright red hussar cloth, gold collars that cut into chins, padded uniformed chests and padded shoulders,
snow-white openings of frock-coat waistcoats that cracked when pressed, and the lustre of frock-coats the colour of ravens’ wings.

Nikolai Apollonovich impetuously flew past the maskers and the cavaliers, moving jerkily on his trembling legs; and his blood-red satin cape trailed after him over the lacquered tiles of the parquetry, only barely registering itself on the tiles of the parquetry like a flying, crimson ripple of its own reflections; crimson, that ripple, like an unsteady red lightning, licked the parquetry in front of the monstrous runner.

This flight of the red domino with the mask raised on to his forehead, beneath which the face of Nikolai Apollonovich protruded in front, caused a real scandal; the merry couples rushed from the spot; one young lady had a fit of hysterics; while two maskers suddenly revealed their bewildered faces in fright; and when, having recognized the fleeing Ableukhov, Leib Hussar Shporyshev grabbed him by the sleeve with the words: ‘Nikolai Apollonovich, Nikolai Apollonovich, for God’s sake tell us what’s the matter with you.’ Nikolai Apollonovich, like a wild beast brought to bay, grinned pathetically with a mad countenance, making an effort to laugh, but did not succeed in smiling; Nikolai Apollonovich, tearing his sleeve loose, disappeared through the doorway.

An indescribable confusion ran through the ballroom; the young ladies and cavaliers busily told one another their impressions; everyone was alarmed; the maskers who had, only just now, been mysteriously fleeting about, all these dark blue little knights, harlequins and Spanish girls, had lost their sense of intrigue; from behind the mask of a two-headed monster that ran up to Shporyshev came a disturbed and familiar voice:

‘For God’s sake explain what all this means!’

And Leib Hussar Shporyshev recognized Verhefden’s voice.

This commotion in the ballroom was instinctively transmitted through the two intermediate rooms and into the drawing-room; and there, there, where the azure globe of the electric chandelier burned, where in the shimmering azure light the drawing-room visitors somehow heavily stood, showing mistily through the suspended flocks of bluish tobacco smoke – these visitors looked with alarm in there – to the ballroom.
Among this group the dried-up little figure of the senator stood out, his pale face, as if made of
papier mâché, the lips firmly pressed together, his two small side-whiskers and the contours of his greenish ears: precisely thus had he been depicted on the front page of some wretched little street journal.

In the ballroom raged a contagion of surmise, excitement and rumour apropos of the strange, highly strange, exceedingly strange behaviour of the senator’s son; there it was said, in the first place, that this behaviour had been caused by some drama; in the second place, the rumour was started that Nikolai Apollonovich, who had visited the Tsukatovs’ house in secret, was the red domino who was creating a sensation in the press.
The meaning of it all was discussed.
It was said that the senator knew nothing of it; from afar, from the ballroom, heads nodded towards the drawing-room, where the little figure of the senator now stood and from where his dried-up face protruded indistinctly amidst the suspended flocks of bluish tobacco smoke.

Well, But What If?

We left Sofya Petrovna Likhutina alone at the ball; now we shall return to her again.

Sofya Petrovna Likhutina had stopped in the middle of the ballroom.

Before her for the first time her terrible vengeance
¹⁹
had appeared: the crumpled little envelope had now passed into his hands, and Sofya Petrovna Likhutina scarcely understood what she had done; Sofya Petrovna did not understand what she had read yesterday in the crumpled envelope.
But now the contents of the dreadful note appeared clearly before her: Nikolai Apollonovich’s letter invited him to throw some sort of bomb with a clock mechanism, a bomb which apparently lay in his writing desk; to judge by the hints, the letter proposed that he throw this bomb at
the senator
(everyone called Apollon Apollonovich
the senator
).

Sofya Petrovna stood bewilderedly amidst the maskers with her pale azure waist barely flexed, wondering what it all meant.
It was, of course, some wicked, base joke; but she had so much wanted to frighten him with this joke: after all, he was … a base coward.
Well, but what if … what if what was in the letter were true?
What if … if Nikolai Apollonovich really did keep objects of such dreadful content in his writing desk?
And if people heard about it?
And now he would be arrested?
… Sofya Petrovna stood bewilderedly amidst the maskers with her pale azure waist, pulling at her curls, which were silvery-grey with powder and luxuriantly ringleted.

And then she began to spin round uneasily among the maskers; and then the Valenciennes lace she was wearing began to flutter; while the panniered skirt below her corsage, which looked as though it had risen beneath the breathing of languorous zephyrs, swayed its flounces and gleamed like a garland of silver grasses in the form of light festoons.
Around her, voices, fusing together in a whisper, grumbled ceaselessly, constantly, tiresomely like a fateful spindle.
A little flock of grey-browed matrons, rustling their satin skirts, was preparing to leave
this kind of
merry ball; this one, stretching out her neck, was summoning her daughter, who was dressed as a
paysanne
, from the midst of a swarm of clowns; another, putting her miniature lorgnette to her eyes, was growing uneasy.
And above everything hung a disturbing atmosphere of scandal.
The ballroom pianist stopped churning up the air with sounds; he put his elbow on the lid of the grand piano; waited to be asked to play for more dancing; but no such requests came.

The cadets, the little high-school students, the law students – they all dived into the waves of clowns and, having dived, disappeared; and were no longer there; from all sides came lamentations, rustlings, whisperings.

‘No, did you see, did you see?
Do you understand?’

‘Don’t say it – it’s dreadful …’

‘I have always said it, I have always said it,
ma chère
: he has raised a scoundrel.
Even
tante Lise
said it; Mimi said it;
Nicolas
said it.’

‘Poor Anna Petrovna: I understand her!
…’

‘Yes, and I too understand: we all do.’

‘Here he is, here he is.’

‘What dreadful ears he has …’

‘He’s to be made a minister …’

‘He’ll ruin the country …’

‘He ought to be told …’

‘But look: the
Bat
is looking at us; as though he senses that we’re talking about him … And the Tsukatovs are hanging around him – it’s simply shameful to look …’

‘They don’t dare to tell him why we’re leaving … They say that Madame Tsukatova is from a family of priests.’

Suddenly the hissing of an ancient dragon was heard from the agitated little flock of grey-browed matrons: