Petersburg (39 page)

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov turned right round; and there he saw the convulsions of the ugly legs that belonged to this company of state criminals: no, sorry: of dancing young people; among this devilish dancing his attention was still struck by the domino, who had unfolded his bloody satin in the dance.

Apollon Apollonovich vainly tried to remember where he had seen all these gestures.
And could not remember.

And when a sugary and mangy-looking little gentleman flew up to him deferentially, Apollon Apollonovich grew animated in the extreme, tracing with his hand a triangle of greeting in space.

The fact was that the mangy little gentleman, despised by everyone, was, so to speak, a necessary figure: well, of course, it went without saying: a figure of a transitional age, whose existence Apollon Apollonovich in principle censured, whose existence within the bounds of legality was, of course, deplorable, but … what could one do?
He was necessary, convenient and … in any case, since the figure existed, one had to reconcile oneself to him.
The good thing about the mangy little gentleman, if one were to take account of the difficulty of his situation, was that the mangy little gentleman, knowing his own worth, assumed no airs of any kind; did not dress himself up in the ballyhoo of idly uttered phrases, like that professor; did not bang his fist on the table in a most indecent
manner, like that editor.
The sugary little gentleman, in his own quiet way, silently served various departments, while remaining attached to one department.
Apollon Apollonovich could not help valuing the little gentleman, for he made no attempt to be on an equal footing with civil servants or with people who were simply members of society – in a word, the mangy little gentleman was an out-and-out lackey.
What was so strange about that?
Apollon Apollonovich was extremely considerate to lackeys: no lackey who had served in the Ableukhov household had yet had cause for complaint.

And with emphasized politeness, Apollon Apollonovich immersed himself in a detailed conversation with the little figure.

The fact that he brought away from this conversation struck him like thunder: the blood-red, unpleasant domino, the ridiculous buffoon, about whom he had just been reflecting, in the wake of the little gentleman’s words, turned out to be … No, no (Apollon Apollonovich made a grimace as though he had seen a lemon being sliced, and the blade that did the slicing being oxidized in the juice) – no, no: the domino turned out to be his
own
son!
…

But was he really his
own
son?
His
own
son might, after all, turn out quite simply to be Anna Petrovna’s son, thanks to the predominance, so to speak, in his veins of his mother’s blood; and in his mother’s blood – in Anna Petrovna’s blood – there was according to the most precisely conducted inquiries … priests’ blood (Apollon Apollonovich had made these inquiries after his wife’s escape)!
It was probable that her priests’ blood had
befouled
the immaculate Ableukhov family, having given her eminent husband a son who was simply
foul
.
Only a
foul
son – a real mongrel – could have got up to
such ventures
(there had been nothing like it in the Ableukhov family since the time that the Kirghiz – Kaisak, Ab-Lai, had migrated to Russia – since the time of Anna Ioannovna).

The senator had been struck most of all by the fact that the foul domino who was leaping about over there (Nikolai Apollonovich) had, according to what the little gentleman had reported, a past so foul that the Jewish press was writing about these foul habits; here Apollon Apollonovich decidedly regretted that during all these recent days he had not found time to run through the ‘Diary of Events’ – in a certain place that had no comparison he had only had
time to acquaint himself with the leading articles that came from the pens of moderate state criminals (as for the leading articles by immoderate state criminals, Apollon Apollonovich did not read them).

Apollon Apollonovich altered the position of his body: quickly he got up and was about to run through to the next room in order to investigate the domino, but from there, from the room, a clean-shaven little high-school student, dressed in a tight-fitting frock-coat and trousers, came flying up to him at top speed; and absentmindedly Apollon Apollonovich very nearly gave him his hand to shake; on closer inspection the clean-shaven little high-school student turned out to be Senator Ableukhov: in his running dive Apollon Apollonovich had very nearly bumped into a mirror, having confused the arrangement of the rooms.

Apollon Apollonovich altered the position of his body, turning his back to the mirror; and – there, there: in the room between the drawing-room and the ballroom, Apollon Apollonovich again saw the foul domino (the mongrel), absorbed in the reading of some (probably foul) note (probably of pornographic content).
And Apollon Apollonovich did not have sufficient courage to catch his son in the act.

Apollon Apollonovich several times altered the position of the aggregate of sinews, skin and bones that he called his body, and looked like a small Egyptian.
With immoderate nervousness he rubbed his little hands and approached the card tables over and over again, having suddenly discovered an extreme politeness, an extreme curiosity with regard to diverse objects; of the statistician Apollon Apollonovich inquired irrelevantly about the potholes in the roads of the Ukhtomsk district of the province of Ploshchegorsk; while of the
zemstvo
official from the province of Ploshchegorsk he inquired about the consumption of pepper on the island of Newfoundland.
The professor of statistics, touched by the attention of the eminent man of state, but not at all conversant with the pothole question in the province of Ploshchegorsk, promised to send the person of the first class a certain reputable guide to the geographical peculiarities of the entire planet Earth.
While the
zemstvo
official, who was uninformed about the pepper question, hypocritically observed that pepper was consumed by the Newfoundlanders in
enormous quantities, which was an invariable fact in all countries that had a constitution.

Soon to Apollon Apollonovich’s ears some kind of bashfully arisen whispers, rustlings and crooked chuckles came drifting; Apollon Apollonovich plainly noticed that the convulsion of the dancing legs had suddenly ceased: for a single moment his agitated spirit was calmed.
But then his head began to work again with dreadful clarity; the fateful premonition he had had all these uneasily passing hours was confirmed: his son, Nikolai Apollonovich, was a most dreadful scoundrel, because only a most dreadful scoundrel could behave in such a repulsive manner: for several days to wear a red domino, for several days to go around with a mask on, for several days to excite the Jewish press.

Apollon Apollonovich realized with decided clarity that for as long as the officers, young ladies, ladies and final-year students of the teaching and educational institutions were dancing there in the ballroom, his son, Nikolai Apollonovich, was dancing towards … But Apollon Apollonovich could not form any clear idea of
what precisely
Nikolai Apollonovich was dancing his way towards: Nikolai Apollonovich was, like it or not, his son, and not simply some … person of the male gender, begotten by Anna Petrovna, perhaps, the devil knew where; Nikolai Apollonovich had, after all, the ears of all the Ableukhovs – ears of incredible dimensions, and protruding, moreover.

This thought about ears softened Apollon Apollonovich’s anger somewhat: Apollon Apollonovich put off his intention of driving his son out of the house, making no more precise inquiry into the reasons that had made his son wear a domino.
But at any rate Apollon Apollonovich had now been deprived of his post, he would have to renounce the post; he could not accept the post until he had washed away the disgraceful stains in his son’s conduct (who was, whether one liked it or not, an Ableukhov), which drew down shame upon the house.

With this deplorable thought and with crooked lips (as though he had sucked dry a pale yellow lemon), Apollon Apollonovich took his leave of them all and swiftly ran out of the drawing-room, accompanied by his hosts.
And when, as he flew through the ballroom, he looked round in the most utter horror in the direction
of the walls, finding the expanse of the illumined ballroom excessively huge, he saw plainly: a little flock of grey-browed matrons whispering venomously to one another.

To Apollon Apollonovich’s ears floated only one word:

‘Chicken.’

Apollon Apollonovich hated the sight of the headless, plucked chickens that were sold in the shops.

For better or worse, Apollon Apollonovich swiftly ran through the ballroom.
In his utter
naïveté
, he did not know, after all, that in the whispering ballroom there was not now a single soul for whom the identity of the red domino who had recently danced here would have been a secret: yet no one said a word about the fact that his son, Nikolai Apollonovich, had a quarter of an hour earlier rushed into indecent flight through the ballroom, where now he himself was running with such manifest haste.

The Letter

Nikolai Apollonovich, shocked by the letter, ran past the merry
contredanse
a quarter of an hour before the senator.
How he had left the house, he could not remember at all.
He came to his senses in utter prostration in front of the Tsukatovs’ entrance porch; continued to stand there in a continuous dark dream, in the continuous dark slush, mechanically counting the number of waiting carriages, mechanically following the movement of someone tall and sad who was keeping order there: it was the district police inspector.

Suddenly the tall, sad man strolled past under Nikolai Apollonovich’s nose: Nikolai Apollonovich was suddenly burned by his blue gaze; the police inspector, waxing angry at the student in an overcoat, shook his flaxen beard: glared and walked on.

Quite naturally Nikolai Apollonovich also moved off, in the continuous dark dream, in the continuous dark slush, through which the rust-coloured blotch of a street lamp stubbornly stared: out of the fog, over the spike of the lamp, the caryatid of the entrance porch fell upon the blotch from above with a deathly hue, and inside the blotch a small piece of the house next door stood out;
the little house was black, one-storeyed, with bay windows and small carved wooden sculptures.

But no sooner had Nikolai Apollonovich moved off than he noted with indifference that his feet were completely absent: some sort of soft parts began to squelch incoherently in a puddle; vainly did he try to control those parts: the soft parts would not obey him; they had every appearance of the outline of feet, but he could not feel any feet (there were no feet).
Nikolai Apollonovich lowered himself involuntarily on to the front step of the little house; and sat there for a moment, wrapped up in his overcoat.

This was natural in his position (his entire conduct was completely natural); just as naturally did he throw open his greatcoat, exposing the red blotch of his domino cape; just as naturally did he begin to rummage in his pockets, pull out a small, crumpled envelope, and read the contents of the note over and over again, trying to detect in it the trace of a straightforward joke, or a trace of mockery.
But he could detect no traces of either the one or the other …

‘Remembering your proposal of the summer, we hasten to inform you, comrade, that it is now your turn to act; and so you are immediately encharged with carrying out of the deed against …’ – here Nikolai Apollonovich could read no further, because his father’s name stood there – and then: ‘The material you need, in the form of a bomb with a clock mechanism, has been suitably delivered in a bundle.
Please hurry: time does not wait; it is desirable that the whole venture be carried out in the next few days …’ This was followed by a slogan: both slogan and handwriting were familiar to Nikolai Apollonovich in equal degree.
This had been written by the Unknown One: he had several times received notes from this Unknown One.

There could be no doubt.

Nikolai Apollonovich’s arms and legs sagged; Nikolai Apollonovich’s lower lip fell away from the upper one.

Right from the fateful moment when some lady or other had handed him the crumpled little envelope, Nikolai Apollonovich had kept trying to catch at plain coincidences, at completely irrelevant, idle thoughts that like flocks of frenzied crows, frightened by a shot, rise from a tree with many boughs and begin to circle – this way and that, this way and that, until the next shot; thus did
completely idle thoughts circle in his head, such as, for example: concerning the number of books that would fit on a shelf of his bookcase; concerning the patterns of the flounces on the petticoat of some female person he had formerly loved, when that person used to go out of the room, raising her skirt just a little (that this person was Sofya Petrovna he somehow did not remember).

Nikolai Apollonovich kept trying not to think, not to understand: to think, to
understand
– could there be any understanding of
this; this
had
come, overwhelmed, roared
; if one thought about it, one would simply throw oneself through a hole in the ice … What could one think?
There was no point in thinking here … because
this … this
… Well, what was
this
?
…

No, here no one was capable of thinking.

In the first moment after he had read the note through, something in his soul bellowed piteously: bellowed as piteously as a meek ox bellows under the butcher’s knife.
In that first moment he found his father with his gaze; and his father looked merely so-so, so-so: looked small, old – looked like a little chicken with no feathers; he felt sick with horror; in his soul something again bellowed piteously: so submissively and piteously.

At this point he had gone rushing off.

And now Nikolai Apollonovich kept trying to catch at externals: that caryatid in the entrance porch; there was nothing particularly remarkable about it: it was a caryatid … And yet – no, no!
There was something wrong about the caryatid – he had never seen anything like it; it was hanging over a flame.
And that little house there: there was nothing particularly remarkable about it – it was a small, black house.