Petersburg (83 page)

‘Apollon Apollonovich requests your company, sir …’

‘Very well, in a moment … I’ll be there in a moment … Just a second …’

In this room, so recently, Nikolai Apollonovich had grown into a self-contained centre – into a series of logical premisses that flowed from the centre, predetermining everything: soul, thought and this armchair here; only recently had he been the sole centre of the universe; but ten days had passed; and his self-awareness had got shamefully bogged down in this heaped-up pile of objects: thus does the free fly, scuttling along the edge of a plate on its six little legs, suddenly get hopelessly bogged down, both leg and wing, in a sticky mass of honey.

‘Psst!
Semyonych, Semyonych – listen,’ – here Nikolai Apollonovich nimbly darted out through the doorway, catching up with
Semyonych, jumped over the upturned stool and caught hold of the old man’s sleeve (goodness, those fingers were tenacious!)

‘I say, I wonder if you’ve seen in here – the fact is, that …’ he said, beginning to grow confused, getting down on the floor and pulling the old man away from the corridor door … ‘I forgot … You haven’t seen a sort of object in here?
Here, in the room … An object like a toy …’

‘A toy, sir …’

‘A child’s toy … a sardine tin …’

‘A sardine tin?’

‘Yes, a toy (in the shape of a sardine tin) – a heavy thing, that one winds up with a key: there’s a little clock inside that ticks … I put it here: a toy …’

Semyonych slowly turned, freed his sleeve from the fingers that had clutched it, stared at the wall for a moment (a shield hung on the wall – a Negro one: it was made from the hide of a once-slain rhinoceros), thought for a moment and then snapped disrespectfully:

‘No!’

Not even ‘No, sir’: simply – ‘No’ …

‘Well, I just thought you might …’

Just imagine: good fortune, family joy; the
barin
is beaming there, the
minister
: for such an occasion … And then here: a sardine tin … a heavy one … that winds up … a toy: and one of his coattails is torn off!
…

‘So you will permit me to announce you, sir?’

‘I’ll be there in a moment, in a moment …’

And the door closed: Nikolai Apollonovich stood there, not understanding where he was, – next to the upturned dark brown stool, in front of the hookah; before him on the wall hung a shield, a Negro one, made from the thick hide of a rhinoceros and with a rusty Sudanese spear hung to one side of it.

Not understanding what he was doing, he hurried to exchange the tell-tale frock-coat for one that was completely new; as a preliminary, he washed his hands and face clean of ash; as he washed and changed, he kept saying:

‘How can this be, what is happening … And really, where could I have hidden it …’

Nikolai Apollonovich did not yet realize the full extent of the horror that had assailed him, a horror that proceeded from the accidental disappearance of the sardine tin; it was just as well that it had not yet occurred to him that:
they had visited his room in his absence and, discovering the sardine tin with dreadful contents, had taken that sardine tin away from him as a precaution.

The Lackeys Were Astonished

And precisely the same houses loomed up there, and precisely the same grey human streams flowed past there, and the same green-yellow fog stood there; the faces scuttled there with a look of concentration; the pavements whispered and shuffled – beneath a throng of stone houses like giants; towards them flew – prospect after prospect; and the planet’s spherical surface seemed embraced, as in serpentine coils, by the blackish-grey cubes of the houses; and the mesh of parallel prospects, intersected by a mesh of prospects, expanded into the abysses of the universe in the surfaces of squares and cubes: one square per man-in-the-street.

But Apollon Apollonovich did not look at his favourite figure: the square; did not give himself up to the mindless contemplation of stone parallelepipeds, cubes; as he swayed to and fro on the soft cushions of the seat of the hired carriage, he kept glancing in agitation at Anna Petrovna, whom he himself was taking – to the lacquered house; what they had talked of there in the hotel room had remained for everyone an impenetrable secret; after this conversation they had resolved: Anna Petrovna would move to the Embankment tomorrow; while today, Apollon Apollonovich was taking Anna Petrovna – to a meeting with her son.

And Anna Petrovna was disconcerted.

In the carriage they did not talk; Anna Petrovna looked out of the carriage windows: it was two and a half years since she had seen these grey prospects: there, outside the windows, the street numbering was visible; and the traffic moved; there, from there – on clear days, from far, far away, had blindly flashed: the golden needle, the clouds, the crimson ray of the sunset; there, from there, on misty days – no one, nothing.

Apollon Apollonovich leaned against the walls of the carriage with unconcealed satisfaction, partitioned off from the scum of the streets inside this closed cube; here he was separated from the flowing human crowds, from the dismally wet red paper covers that were being sold over there at that crossroads; and his eyes darted; only now and then did Anna Petrovna catch: a lost, bewildered gaze, and imagine – one that seemed simply gentle: blue as blue, childlike, senseless even (had he lapsed back into childhood?)

‘I heard, Apollon Apollonovich: you are to be made a minister?’

But Apollon Apollonovich interrupted:

‘And where have you come from now, Anna Petrovna?’

‘Oh, I have come from Granada …’

‘Indeed, ma’am, indeed, ma’am, indeed …’ – and, blowing his nose, – added … – ‘Business, you know: unpleasant things at the office, you know …’

And – what was this?
On his hand he felt a warm hand: he had been stroked on the hand … Hm-hm-hm: Apollon Apollonovich did not know where to look; he was disconcerted, seemed alarmed even; he even felt annoyed … Hm-hm; no one had treated him like that for about fifteen years … She had quite simply stroked him … He had to admit that he had not expected this from the lady person … hm-hm … (Apollon Apollonovich had after all for the past two and half years considered this lady person to be a … lady person of … loose … conduct …)

‘You see, I’m going into retirement …’

Had the cerebral game that had divided them for so many years and had grown ominously more intense this past two and a half years, at last burst out of his stubborn brain?
And outside his brain, had it now gathered in storm clouds above them?
Broken in unprecedented storms around them?
But in breaking outside his brain, it had exhausted itself inside his brain; slowly his brain had cleared; thus in storm clouds you will sometimes see an azure gap running from one side – through bands of rain; then let the downpour lash over you; let the dark masses of cloud burst rumblingly with crimson lightning!
The azure gap is growing; soon the sun will look dazzlingly out; you are already expecting the end of the storm; when suddenly there is a flash and a bang: the lightning has struck a pine tree.

The greenish light of day was breaking through the windows of the carriage; the human streams ran there in an undular surf; and that human surf was a thunderous surf.

It was here that he had seen the
raznochinets
; here the eyes of the
raznochinets
had gleamed, recognized him – some ten days ago (yes, only ten days: in ten days everything had changed; Russia had changed!) …

The glidings and rumblings of carriages flying past!
The melodic cries of motor-car roulades!
And – a detachment of police!
…

There, where only the pale grey dampness hung suspended, at first appeared lustrelessly in outline and then completely took shape: the grimy, blackish-grey St Isaac’s … And withdrew back into the fog.
And – an expanse opened: the depths, the greenish murk, into which receded the black bridge, where the fog curtained the many-chimneyed distances and from where ran the wave of the approaching clouds.

Indeed: after all, the lackeys were astonished!

Thus later on in the entrance hall was it told by the sleepy young lad Grishka:

‘Here I am, sitting and counting on my fingers: why, from the Protection to the Nativity of the Mother of God … That makes … From the Nativity of the Mother of God to St Nicholas in Winter …’
²

‘Tell me another: the Nativity of the Mother of God, the Nativity of the Mother of God!’

‘What do you mean?
The Nativity of the Mother of God is a feast day in our village – She is our patron … So it works out at: as I count it … Then I hear: someone’s driving up; I go to the door.
So I throw the door open: and – oh, sainted fathers!
Because it’s the
barin
himself, in a hired little carriage (and a bad one, too!), and a
barynya
with him, of respectable years and wearing a cheap waterproof.’

‘Not a waterproof, you little rogue: people don’t wear waterproofs nowadays.’

‘Don’t embarrass him: he’s daft enough as it is.’

‘In a word – wearing a coat.
While the
barin
gets in a lather: from
the cab – phoo, the carriage – he jumps down, stretches out his arm to the
barynya
– smiles: like a cavalier, like, shows her every assistance.’

‘Get away with you …’

‘It’s true …’

‘I don’t think they’ve seen each other for two years,’ voices were heard saying all round.

‘Stands to reason: the
barynya
gets out of the carriage; only thing is, I can see that the
barynya
’s embarrassed about this
event
: she’s smiling there – not her full proper self; to give herself courage: she’s holding on to her chin; well, and she’s dressed real poor, like; there’s holes in her gloves; her gloves aren’t darned, I can see: perhaps there’s no one to darn them; maybe in Spain they don’t do no darning …’

‘Tell us another, that will do now!
…’

‘It’s like I’m saying: and the
barin,
our
barin,
Apollon Apollonovich, gave up all his finery; stood by the carriage, over a puddle, under the rain: the rain – oh my Lord!
The
barin
hesitates, seems to start running on the spot, his feet stamping up and down on the spot; and when the
barynya,
getting down from the footboard, leaning right on his arm – for the
barynya
’s quite heavy – our
barin
even sagged right down; the
barin
’s tiny; well, I thought to myself, how could he hold up a heavy woman like that?
He doesn’t have the strength …’

‘Don’t weave fancy stories; tell us what happened.’

‘I’m not weaving fancy stories; I’m telling you like it was; and anyway … Mitry Semyonych will tell you: they met in the entrance hall … What is there to tell?
The
barin
just said to the
barynya
: welcome, he said, come in, Anna Petrovna … That was when I recognized her.’

‘Well, and so what then?’

‘She’s aged … At first I didn’t recognize her; but then I did, because I still remember how she used to give me sweets.’

Thus did the lackeys talk afterwards.

But really!

A sudden, unforeseen fact: it was about two and a half years ago
that Anna Petrovna left her husband for an Italian artiste; and now, two and a half years later, deserted by the Italian artiste, from the splendid palaces of Granada across the chain of the Pyrenees, across the Alps, across the mountains of the Tyrol, she came rushing back in an express train; but what was more remarkable was that the senator had found it impossible to breathe a word about Anna Petrovna not only for the past two and a half years, but even two and a half days ago (only yesterday he had bristled up!); for two and a half years Apollon Apollonovich had avoided even the thought of Anna Petrovna (and yet had thought about her); the very sound-combination ‘Anna Petrovna’ broke against his eardrums like a firecracker thrown at a teacher from under a school desk; except that a schoolteacher would bang his fist angrily on the desk; while Apollon Apollonovich merely tightened his lips contemptuously at this sound combination.
But why at the news of her return did the customary tightening of his dry lips burst apart in an agitatedly wrathful trembling of the jaws (the night before – during his conversation with Nikolenka); why had he not been able to sleep that night?
Why for a period of some twelve hours had that anger evaporated somewhere and been replaced by an aching anguish, bordering on anxiety?
Why had he not been able to endure the wait, himself gone to the hotel?
Had talked her round; brought her home.
Something had happened there – in the hotel room; Anna Petrovna had forgotten her stern promise: she had made that promise to herself – here, yesterday: here in the lacquered house (having visited it and found no one at home).

Had made the promise: but – had returned.

Anna Petrovna and Apollon Apollonovich had been agitated and embarrassed by the explanation they had had with one another; and so when they had entered the lacquered house they had not exchanged abundant outpourings of emotion; Anna Petrovna looked at her husband askance: Apollon Apollonovich began to blow his nose … beneath the rusty halberd; emitting a trumpet-like sound, he began to snort into his side-whiskers.
Anna Petrovna graciously deigned to reply to the lackeys’ deferential bows, displaying a restraint we have not seen in her before; only Semyonych did she embrace, and seemed to want to cry a little; but, casting a frightened,
bewildered look at Apollon Apollonovich, she regained her self-control: her fingers stretched towards the little handbag, but did not take out her handkerchief.

Apollon Apollonovich, standing above her on the stairs, commandingly cast stern glances at the lackeys; he cast such glances at moments of bewilderment: but at ordinary times, Apollon Apollonovich was scrupulously polite and prim with the lackeys to the point of offensiveness (apart from when he was making his jokes).
While the servants were standing there he maintained a tone of indifference: nothing had happened – until now the
barynya
had been living abroad, for the sake of her health; that was all: and now the
barynya
had returned … What of it?
Oh, it was all very fine!
…