Petersburg (72 page)

‘Eh?
… That?
… Yes, there was a bang: that’s right …’

‘What made the bang?’

‘It’s nothing, sir: please don’t trouble yourself …’

‘?
…’

‘Nikolai Apollonovich …’

‘Eh?’

‘Banged the door as he went out: he went out early …’

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov looked at Semyonych, prepared to ask a question, and kept silent, but … chewed his mouth in a senile fashion: at the memory of the most unsuccessful talk he had had with his son here not long before (this was, after all, the morning after the soirée at the Tsukatovs’), little bags of skin hung down offendedly from the corners of his lips.
This unpleasant impression rather sickened Apollon Apollonovich: he drove it away.

And, losing his confidence, gave Semyonych a pleading glance:

After all, the old man had seen Anna Petrovna … Had – one way or the other – talked to her …

This thought fleeted past intrusively.

Anna Petrovna had probably changed … grown thinner, aged; and, he would not wonder, gone grey: acquired more wrinkles … he ought to ask about all that carefully, in a roundabout way …

But – no, no!
…

Suddenly, the sixty-eight-year-old
barin
’s face fell unnaturally apart in wrinkles, his mouth bared its teeth to the ears, and his nose receded into the folds.

And the man in his sixties became some kind of man a thousand years old; with a strained effort that bordered on shrillness, this grey ruin began forcibly to squeeze from itself a little pun:

‘Er … em-em-em … Semyonych … Are you … em-em … barefoot?’

Semyonych gave a start of offence.

‘Excuse me, your exc –’

‘No, I … em-em-em … don’t mean that,’ said Apollon Apollonovich, trying to compose the little pun.

But he did not manage to compose the little pun and stood staring into space; then he drooped the merest bit, and then he fired off a monstrous remark:

‘Er … tell me …’

‘?’

‘Do you have yellow heels?’

Semyonych took offence:

‘No,
barin,
I don’t; it’s those Chinamen with long pigtails that have yellow heels, sir …’

‘Hee-hee-hee … So they’re pink, perhaps?’

‘Human, sir …’

‘No – yellow, yellow!’

And Apollon Apollonovich, a thousand years old, trembling, squat, stamped his slippers insistently.

‘Well, and what if my heels were, sir?
… They’re covered in corns, your excellency … When you put your shoe on, they bore you and burn you …’

While all the time he thought:

‘Oh, what’s all this about heels?
… Are heels what matter, then?
… Look at you, you old mushroom, you haven’t closed your eyes all night … And she herself is here, in an expectant position … And your son is a Hamletist … And there you go on about heels!
… Will you listen to it – yellow ones … You’ve got yellow heels yourself … You’re a “person” too!
…’

And got even more offended.

But Apollon Apollonovich, as always, in puns, in nonsense, in little jokes (as was always the case) simply manifested a kind of bullheadedness: sometimes, trying to keep his spirits up, the senator would become (in spite of it all – real privy councillor, professor and wearer of diamond insignia) – a fidget, a flutterer, a pesterer, a teaser, at those moments resembling the flies that get into your eyes, your nostrils, your ear – before a thunderstorm, on an oppressive day, when a grey thundercloud is wearisomely climbing above the lime-trees; such flies are squashed in their dozens – on hands, on moustaches – before a thunderstorm, on an oppressive day.

‘And a young girl has – hee-hee-hee … A young girl has …’

‘What does a young girl have?’

‘Has …’

Oh, what a fidget!

‘What does she have?’

‘A pink heel …’

‘I’ve no idea …’

‘Well, take a look, then …’

‘You’re a queer fellow, that you are,
barin
…’

‘They’re made pink by her stocking, when her foot perspires.’

And without finishing his sentence, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov – real privy councillor, professor, head of an Institution – stamped off back to his little bedroom in his slippers; and – click: locked himself in.

There, on the other side of the door – he sat down, grew calm, and softened.

And began helplessly to look at himself: oh, but how he had shrunk!
Oh, but how round-shouldered he had become!
And – it looked as though one of his shoulders were higher than the other (as though one shoulder had been knocked out of shape).
Now and then his hand pressed itself against his thumping, aching side.

Yes, sir!
…

The alarming reports from the provinces … And, you know –
his son, his son!
… Yes – he disgraced his father … A dreadful situation, you know …

Someone fleeced that old fool of a woman, Anna Petrovna: some scoundrelly mountebank, with cockroach moustaches … Now she has come back again …

No matter, sir!
… Somehow!
…

An uprising, the ruin of Russia … And already they’re preparing: they’ve made an attempt … Some school-leaver or other with eyes and a little moustache bursts into an old, respected aristocratic house …

And then – the gases, the gases!

Here he took a pill.

A spring that is overloaded with weights ceases to be resilient; to resiliency there is a limit; to the human will there is also a limit; even an iron will melts; in old age the human brain grows watery.
Today frost falls – and the firm, snowy heap is sprinkled with a luminescent sparkling; and sculpts from the frosty snowflakes a gleaming human bust.

The thaw comes rustling – the heap turns brown, is eaten away: it goes all flabby and slimy; and – slumps down.

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov had frozen in his childhood: frozen and struck root; beneath the frosty night of the capital city his gleaming bust looked sterner, stronger, more terrible – luminescent, sparkling, rising above the northern night above all until that dampish wind that had felled his friend, and which in recent times had flamed into a hurricane.

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov rose up to the hurricane;
afterwards,
too …

Solitary, long and proud did Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov stand beneath the flaming muzzle of the hurricane – luminescent, frozen, strong; but a limit is set to all things: even platinum melts.

In one night Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov grew round-shouldered; in one night he collapsed and hung his great head; he too, resilient as a spring, drooped; and formerly?
Only recently on the uncreased profile, challengingly thrown under the heavens towards
the disasters, the red tongues of flame had quivered, that might … set light … to Russia!

But only a night passed.

And against the fiery background of the burning Russian Empire, instead of the strong, gold-uniformed man of state there was – a haemorrhoidal old man standing with his jerkily breathing, hairy chest exposed – unshaven, uncombed, perspiring – in a robe with tassels – he could not, of course, steer the passage (over potholes, bumps, ruts) of our tottering wheel of state!
…

Fortune had betrayed him.

And of course – it was not the events of his personal life, not that out-and-out scoundrel, his son, and not the fear of falling to a bomb, as a simple fighter in the field falls, not the arrival there of some Anna Petrovna or other, a person of whom he knew little, and who had succeeded in no walk of life whatsoever – not the arrival there of Anna Petrovna (in a darned black dress and with a reticule), and above all not a red rag that had turned the wearer of flashing diamond insignia into a plain melted heap.

No – it was time …

Have you seen men of state, who are falling into childhood but are none the less eminent – old men who for half a century have warded off so many blows – white-curled (but more often bald) leaders who have been hardened in the iron of battle?

I have seen them.

In assemblies, at meetings, at congresses they have clambered up to the rostra in their snow-white starched linen and gleaming tailcoats with padded shoulders; round-shouldered old men with drooping jaws, with false teeth, toothless –

– I have seen them –

– they have continued, out of habit, to strike the hearts of others while on the rostrum keeping their self-possession.

And I have seen them at home.

Hurling painful, obtuse witticisms into my ear in a whisper, with weak-minded commotion, in the company of their hangers-on, they trailed into their studies and boasted slaveringly about a little shelf
of collected works, bound in morocco leather, which I too once read now and then, and with which they regaled both me and themselves.

I feel sad!

At exactly ten o’clock the doorbell rang: it was not Semyonych who opened the door; someone came in and passed through – into Nikolai Apollonovich’s room; he sat there, and left a note there.

I Know What I am Doing

At exactly ten o’clock Apollon Apollonovich had his coffee in the dining-room.

He usually ran, as we know, into the dining-room – icy, stern, shaven, spreading a scent of eau-de-Cologne and proportioning coffee with chronometer; today, however, scratching the floor with his slippers, he came trailing in for his coffee in his dressing-gown: unscented, unshaven.

From half-past eight until ten o’clock in the morning he sat sequestered.

He did not look at his correspondence, did not respond to the greetings of the servants, as he customarily did; and when the bulldog’s slavering muzzle placed itself on his knees, his rhythmically mumbling mouth –

He calls for me, my Delvig dear,

Companion of my lively youth,

Companion of my mournful youth –

– his rhythmically mumbling mouth merely choked on the coffee:

‘Er … listen: take the dog away, will you …’

Tweaking and crumbling a French croissant, he stared at the black grounds of coffee with eyes that were turning to stone.

At half past eleven, Apollon Apollonovich, as though remembering something, began to fuss and fidget; his eyes darted restlessly, in a manner reminiscent of a grey mouse; he leapt up – and with tiny footsteps, trembling, quickened his pace towards the room that
was his study, revealing the half-fastened long johns beneath the open skirts of his dressing-gown.

Soon the lackey looked into his study in order to remind him that the horses were ready; looked in – and stopped on the threshold as though rooted to the spot.

With amazement he watched as Apollon Apollonovich wheeled a heavy bookshelf ladder from shelf to shelf over the velvet rugs that were there strewn everywhere – moaning, groaning, stumbling, perspiring – and climbing up the ladder, clambering his way to the top, at risk to his own life, testing the dust on the volumes with his finger; catching sight of the lackey, Apollon Apollonovich chewed his lips disdainfully, and made no reply when reminded that it was time for him to leave.

Knocking a binding against a shelf, he asked for some rags.

Two lackeys brought him the rags; they had to be delivered to him on an upraised floor-brush (he would not allow anyone to go up to where he was, and would not come down himself); the two lackeys each took a stearin candle; the two lackeys stood on either side of the ladder with upwards-stretched, rigid arms.

‘Raise the light, will you … No, not like that … And not like that … Er, yes – higher: a bit higher …’

By this time ragged clouds had billowed up from behind the buildings on the other side of the Neva, their gloomy, felt-like billows came to the attack; the wind beat against the panes; semitwilight reigned in the greenish, frowning room; the wind howled; and higher, higher stretched two stearin candles on either side of the ladder, receding towards the ceiling; there, from a cloud of dust, from the very ceiling itself swirled the mouse-coloured skirts and the crimsonish tassels dangled.

‘Your ex’cy!

‘Is this any task for you?
…

‘You are pleased to trouble yourself …

‘My goodness … Whoever heard of such a thing …’

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, real privy councillor, could not hear what they were saying at all from the cloud of dust: what did he care!
Forgetting everything, he was wiping the spines with a rag, banging the volumes violently on the rungs of the ladder; and – at last burst out sneezing:

‘Dust, dust, dust …

‘Look at it … look at it!
…

‘Well, now I shall wipe it … with the rag: like that, sir, like that, sir, like that, sir …

‘Very good, sir!
…’

And hurled himself at the dust with the dirty rag in his hand.

The telephone rang worriedly: that was the Institution calling; but the telephone’s worried ring received as reply from the yellow house:

‘His excellency?
… Yes … He is having his coffee … We will tell him … Yes … The horses are ready …’

And the telephone rang a second time; and the second time the telephone rang the answer came a second time:

‘Yes … yes … He’s still at table … Yes, we have told him … We will tell him … Yes … The horses are ready …’

To the third, now indignant ring of the telephone they replied:

‘On no account, sir!

‘His honour is busy arranging the books …

‘The horses?

‘They are ready …’

The horses, having waited, went back to the stable; the coachman spat: to curse he did not dare …

‘I shall give them a good wipe!’

‘Ai, ai, ai!
… Will you look at his honour!’

‘Ah-choo!’

And the trembling yellow hands, armed with volumes, hammered against the shelf.

In the vestibule the doorbell began to tinkle: it tinkled sporadically; silence spoke between the two jolts of tinkling; like a memory – a memory of something forgotten, familiar – this silence flew through the space of the lacquered room; and – entered the study without being asked; here was something old, old; and – it was coming up the staircase.