Petersburg (82 page)

At this point he caught sight of the table, gleaming with a pair of ultra-clean napkins and gleaming with a
thé complet
: a hotel accessory, carelessly left here.
From the shadows a silhouette emerged: his heart was wrung a second time, because on the chair –

– and yet no, not on the chair! –

– getting up from the chair he saw – was it her? – Anna Petrovna, who had grown sunken, put on weight, and – had a very strong streak of grey in her hair; the first thing he realized was a most deplorable fact: during the two and a half years of her stay in Spain (and – where else, where?) – a double chin more plainly stuck out from beneath her collar, while a rounded stomach more plainly stuck out from beneath her corset; only the two azure-filled eyes of her once handsome and recently beautiful face shone there as they used to; in their depths the most complex emotions now ran high: timidity, fear, anger, sympathy, pride, humiliation at the furnishings of the wretched room, concealed bitterness and … fear.

Apollon Apollonovich could not endure this gaze: he lowered his eyes and crumpled his hat in his hand.
Yes, the years of her sojourn with the Italian artiste had changed her; and where had her sedateness, her inborn sense of dignity, her love for neatness and order got to?
Apollon Apollonovich let his eyes run over the room: scattered in disorder were – small handbag, straps, black lace fan, stockings and clump of lemon-yellow rags, probably Spanish.

Before Anna Petrovna … – but was it he?
The two and a half years had changed him, too; two and a half years earlier she had seen before her for the last time a face sharply carved from grey stone, coldly looking at her over the mother-of-pearl table (during their final talk); each little feature had cut into her sharply like an icy frost; but now, in his face – there was a complete absence of features.

(For our own part let us say: features were there not long ago; and we outlined them at the beginning of our narrative …)

Two and a half years ago Apollon Apollonovich, it was true, had already been an old man, but … there had been something ageless about him; and he had looked – like a statesman; but now – where
was the man of state?
Where the iron will, where the stony gaze, that streamed nothing but whirlwinds, cold, infertile, cerebral (not feelings) – where was the stony gaze?
No, it had all retreated before old age; the old man outweighed it all: his position in the world and his will; what struck her was his terrible thinness; what struck her was his stooping posture; what struck her were the trembling of his lower jaw, and his trembling fingers; and above all – the colour of his little coat: never when she had been around had he ordered garments of this colour.

Thus did they stand facing each other: Apollon Apollonovich, – not stepping across the threshold; and Anna Petrovna – over the little table: with a trembling and half-spilled cup of strong tea in her hands (she was spilling the tea on the tablecloth).

At last Apollon Apollonovich raised his head to her; he chewed his lips and said, faltering:

‘Anna Petrovna!’

Now he saw her completely (his eyes had grown accustomed to the semi-darkness); he saw: all her features lit up handsomely for a moment; and then again her features were covered by little wrinkles, puffinesses, fatty little bags: they surrounded the clear beauty of her childlike features with the coarsening of old age; but for an instant all her features lit up handsomely, and precisely – when with a sharp movement she pushed away the tea she had been served; and seemed positively to dart towards him; yet all the same: did not move from the spot; and merely threw to the old man with her lips from behind the little table:

‘Apollon Apollonovich!’

Apollon Apollonovich ran towards her (thus had he run towards her two and a half years earlier, in order to thrust forth two fingers, tug them away and throw cold water); ran towards her, as he was, through the room – in his little coat, with his hat in his hand; her face inclined towards his bald pate; the surface of the enormous cranium, as bare as a knee, and the two protruding ears reminded her of something, and when his cold lips touched her hand, which was wet with the spilt tea, the complex expression of her features was replaced by an unconcealed sense of contentment: imagine, if you will – something childlike flared up, played and hid in her eyes.

And when he straightened up, his small figure stood out before
her even with an exceeding distinctness, overhanging the trousers, the little coat (of a colour never seen before) and a large quantity of fresh wrinkles, with two eyes that tore his entire face apart and seemed to be new; these two sticking-out eyes did not seem to her, as they had done before, like two transparent stones; what emerged from them were: an unfamiliar strength and firmness.

But the eyes were lowered.
Apollon Apollonovich, his eyes darting, sought for the proper expressions:

‘I, thou …’ he thought, and ended: ‘you know …’

‘?’

‘Have come to testify to you, Anna Petrovna, my respect …

‘And congratulate you on your arrival …’

And Anna Petrovna caught a confused, bewildered, simply gentle-seeming, sympathetic look – of a dark, cornflower hue, like that of warm spring air.

From the next room were heard: laughter, noise; from behind the door – the conversation of the chambermaids, continuing; and the grand piano – from somewhere downstairs; scattered in disorder were: straps, small handbag, black lace fan, small cut-glass Venetian vase and clump of loud, lemon rags, which turned out to be a blouse; the specks on the wallpaper stared; as did the window that looked on to the impudently staring wall that was some kind of olive tint; instead of the sky there was smoke, and in the smoke was – Petersburg: streets and prospects, pavements and roofs; the sleet was settling on the tin-plated window-sill out there; cold rivulets plunging down from the tin-plated gutters.

‘We have …’

‘Won’t you have some tea?
…’

‘A strike beginning …’

Swayed above the Pile of Objects …

The door flew open.

Nikolai Apollonovich found himself in the hallway from which he had fled very early that morning in such haste; on the walls shone the display of ancient weapons: here swords rusted; there – inclining halberds: Nikolai Apollonovich looked as though he were
beside himself; with a sharp movement of his hand he tore off his broad-brimmed Italian hat; the cap of flaxen white hair softened this cold, almost stern exterior with engraved stubbornness (it is hard to find hair of this tint in adult persons; it is frequently encountered among peasant children – especially in Belorussia); drily, coldly, clearly emerged the lines of a completely white countenance, like one in an icon, when for a moment he reflected, directing his gaze over there, where beneath a rusty green shield a Lithuanian helmet shone with its spike, and the cross-shaped handle of a knight’s sword sparkled.

Now he flushed; and in his wet, crumpled cloak, limping slightly, he flew up the steps of the carpeted staircase; why did he keep flushing from time to time, glowing red, something that never normally happened to him?
And he was – coughing; and he was – panting; he was shaken by a fever: it is indeed impossible to stand out in the rain too long with impunity; the most interesting thing was that the cloth had been ripped away from the knee of the leg on which he was limping; and – rags fluttered; his little student’s frockcoat had ridden up beneath the cloak, its back and chest hunched; between the whole tail and the torn-off tail, the belt stuck out; truly, truly: Nikolai Apollonovich looked lame, hunchbacked, and – as though he had a little tail, as he flew with all his might up the soft-stepped staircase, his cap of flaxen white hair wafting along – past the walls where a pistol and a six-pointed mace bowed.

Slipped in front of the door with the faceted crystal handle; and when he ran past the rooms that shone with lacquer, it seemed that around him there formed only the illusion of rooms; and then flew apart without trace, erecting beyond the limit of consciousness its misty surfaces; and when he banged the corridor door behind him and walked down the corridor stamping his heels, it seemed to him that the veins at his temples were hammering: the swift pulsation of those veins plainly marked a premature sclerosis on his forehead.

He flew, not himself, into his multicoloured room: and the green budgerigars shrieked desperately in their cage and began to beat their wings; this shrieking interrupted his flight; for a moment he stared before him; and saw: the multicoloured leopard, thrown at his feet with gaping jaws; and – began to rummage in his pocket (he was looking for the key to the writing desk).

‘Eh?

‘The devil take it …

‘Have I lost it?

‘Did I leave it somewhere?

‘How do you like that?’

And he began to rush helplessly about the room, looking for the treacherous key he had forgotten somewhere, picking through quite inappropriate objects of furniture, seizing a three-legged gold censer in the form of a sphere with an opening pierced in it and a half-moon on top, and muttering to himself all the while: Nikolai Apollonovich, like Apollon Apollonovich, was in the habit of talking to himself.

In fright he rushed through into the next room – to the writing desk: as he went, his foot caught on the Arabian stool with the ivory incrustation; it crashed to the floor; he was struck by the fact that the desk was not locked; the drawer was sticking out in tell-tale fashion; it had been pulled half-way out; his heart sank: how could he have been so careless as to forget to lock it?
He tugged at the drawer … And-and-and …

No: oh, no!

The objects lay in disorder in the drawer; on the table lay a cabinet photograph, thrown at an angle; but … the sardine tin was not there; furiously, savagely, frightenedly, above the drawer emerged the lines of a crimson countenance with blue around some kind of enormous black eyes: black from the dilation of the pupils; this did he stand between the dark green upholstered armchair and the bust: of Kant, of course.

He – went to the other desk.
He – pulled out the drawer: the objects lay inside the drawer in perfect order: bundles of letters, papers: he put them all – on the table; but … there was no sardine tin … At this point his legs gave way beneath him; and, as he was, in his Italian cloak, in his galoshes – he fell to his knees, dropping his burning head into his cold, wet, rain-dampened hands; for a moment – like that, he froze: the cap of flaxen hair gleamed strangely, deathly pale there, motionless, like a yellowish stain in the semi-twilight of the room among the green upholstered armchairs.

Yes – up he leapt!
Yes – to the bookcase!
And the bookcase –
flew open; the objects went flying this way and that, to the carpet; but there too – there was no sardine tin; like a whirlwind, he began to rush about the room, resembling an agile little monkey both in the swiftness of his movements (like his elevated papa), and in his modest stature.
Indeed: fate was playing a joke; from room to room; from bed (here he rummaged under the pillows, the quilt, the mattress) – to the fireplace: here he soiled his hands in the ash; from the fireplace – to the rows of bookshelves (and the silk that covered the bindings began to slide on little brass wheels); here he thrust his hands between the volumes; and many of them, with a rustling, with a crash, flew to the floor.

But nowhere was the sardine tin to be found.

Soon his face, soiled with ash and dust, swayed without any sense or meaning above the heap of objects, which had been swept into a senseless pile and had been picked through by long, spider-like fingers that ran out on trembling hands; these hands moved restlessly about the floor from the outspread Italian cloak; in this stooping pose, trembling and sweaty all over, with bulging neck veins, he really would have reminded anyone of a fat-bellied spider, a devourer of flies; thus, when an observer tears a delicate spider’s web, he beholds a spectacle: disturbed, the enormous insect, which has been trembling on a silver thread in space from the ceiling to the floor, goes clumsily running about the floor on furry legs.

In just such a pose – above the pile of objects – was Nikolai Apollonovich taken unawares: by Semyonych, who ran in.

‘Nikolai Apollonovich!
… Young
barin
!
…’

Nikolai Apollonovich, who was still squatting down, turned; seeing Semyonych, with a swift gesture of his cloak he covered the pile of objects that had been swept together in a heap – the sheets of paper and volumes with gaping jaws – resembling a brood-hen on her eggs: the cap of flaxen hair showed so strangely pale and motionless there – like a yellowish stain in the semi-twilight of the room.

‘What is it?
…’

‘If I may make so bold as to report …’

‘Leave me alone: can’t you see that … I’m busy …’

Stretching his mouth to the ears, he looked every bit like the head of the multicoloured leopard that lay grinning there on the floor:

‘I’m arranging these books here.’

But Semyonych could not calm down.

‘But please, sir: you are … requested there …’

‘?’

‘A family joy: for the little mother
barynya,
Anna Petrovna, herself, has been so good as to grant us a visit.’

Nikolai Apollonovich got up mechanically; the cloak flew from him; on the ash-smeared contours of the icon-like countenance – through cinders and dust – like lightning a blush flared; Nikolai Apollonovich cut an absurd and comic little figure in his student’s frock-coat that protruded in two humps and had only one tail – and with a dancing half-belt, when he – began to cough; hoarsely, through his cough, he exclaimed:

‘Mamma?
Anna Petrovna?’

‘She is over there with Apollon Apollonovich, sir; in the drawing-room … She has just been so good as to …’

‘Do they want to see me?’