The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (44 page)

But I will let my readers judge of Schiller’s wrath and indignation for themselves.

“Ruffian!” he cried in the greatest indignation.
“How dare you kiss my wife?
You are a scoundrel, not a Russian officer.
Devil take it, Hoffmann my friend, I am a German, not a Russian swine!”

Hoffmann responded in the affirmative.

“Oh, I will not the horns have!
Take him by the collar, Hoffmann my friend, I will not,” he went on, swinging his arms violently, and his face was close in color to the red flannel of his waistcoat.
“I have lived in Petersburg for eight years, I have my mother in Swabia and my uncle in Nuremberg; I am a German, not a horned beef!
Off with everything, Hoffmann my friend!
Hold his arm and leg, Kuntz my comrat!”

And the Germans seized Pirogov by his arms and legs.

He vainly tried to fight them off; the three artisans were the most stalwart fellows of all the Petersburg Germans, and they behaved so rudely and impolitely with him that I confess I can find no words to describe this sorry event.

I’m sure that Schiller was in a bad fever the next day, that he trembled like a leaf, expecting the police to come every moment, that he would have given God knows what for all of yesterday’s events to have been a dream.
But what’s done cannot be undone.
Nothing could compare with Pirogov’s wrath and indignation.
The very thought of such a terrible insult drove him to fury.
He thought Siberia and the lash the very least of punishments for Schiller.
He flew home so that, having changed, he could go straight to the general and describe for him in the most vivid colors the violence of the German artisans.
He also wanted to petition general headquarters at the same time.
And if the punishment of general headquarters was insufficient, he would go straight to the state council, or else to the sovereign himself.

But all this ended somehow strangely: he stopped at a pastry shop on his way, ate two puff pastries, read something from
The Northern Bee
, and left the place already in a less wrathful state.
Besides, the rather pleasant, cool evening induced him to take a little stroll on Nevsky Prospect; toward nine o’clock he calmed down and decided it was not nice to trouble the general on a Sunday, and besides he had undoubtedly been summoned somewhere; and therefore he went to a soiree given by one of the heads of the college of auditors, where there was a very pleasant gathering of functionaries and officers.
He enjoyed the evening he spent there, and so distinguished himself in the mazurka that not only the ladies but even their partners were delighted.

“Marvelous is the working of our world,” I thought as I walked down Nevsky Prospect two days ago, calling to mind these two events.
“How strangely, how inconceivably our fate plays with us!
Do we ever get what we desire?
Do we ever achieve that for which our powers seem purposely to prepare us?
Everything happens in a contrary way.
To this one fate gave wonderful horses, and he drives around indifferently without ever noticing their beauty—while another, whose heart burns with the horse passion, goes on foot and contents himself with merely clicking his tongue as a trotter is led past him.
This one has an excellent cook, but unfortunately so small a mouth that it cannot let pass more than a couple of tidbits; another has a mouth as big as the archway of general headquarters, but, alas!
has to be satisfied with some German dinner of potatoes.
How strangely our fate plays with us!”

But strangest of all are the events that take place on Nevsky Prospect.
Oh, do not believe this Nevsky Prospect!
I always wrap myself tighter in my cloak and try not to look at the objects I meet at all.
Everything is deception, everything is a dream, everything is not what it seems to be!
You think this gentleman who goes about in a finely tailored frock coat is very rich?
Not a bit of it: he consists entirely of his frock coat.
You imagine that these two fat men who stopped at the church under construction are discussing its architecture?
Not at all: they’re talking about how strangely two crows are sitting facing each other.
You think that this enthusiast waving his arms is telling how his wife threw a little ball out the
window at a completely unknown officer?
Not at all, he’s talking about Lafayette.
¹³
You think these ladies … but least of all believe the ladies.
Peer less at the shop windows: the knickknacks displayed in them are beautiful, but they smell of a terrible quantity of banknotes.
But God forbid you should peer under the ladies’ hats!
However a beauty’s cloak may flutter behind her, I shall never follow curiously after her.
Further away, for God’s sake, further away from the street lamp!
pass it by more quickly, as quickly as possible.
You’ll be lucky to get away with it pouring its stinking oil on your foppish frock coat.
But, along with the street lamp, everything breathes deceit.
It lies all the time, this Nevsky Prospect, but most of all at the time when night heaves its dense mass upon it and sets off the white and pale yellow walls of the houses, when the whole city turns into a rumbling and brilliance, myriads of carriages tumble from the bridges, postillions shout and bounce on their horses, and the devil himself lights the lamps only so as to show everything not as it really looks.

THE DIARY OF A MADMAN

October 3.

T
ODAY AN EXTRAORDINARY
adventure took place.
I got up rather late in the morning, and when Mavra brought me my polished boots, I asked what time it was.
On hearing that it had long since struck ten, I quickly hastened to get dressed.
I confess, I wouldn’t have gone to the office at all, knowing beforehand what a sour face the section chief would make.
He has long been saying to me: “Why is it you’ve got such a hotchpotch in your head, brother?
You rush about frantically, you sometimes confuse a case so much the devil himself couldn’t sort it out, you start the title in lowercase, forget the date or number.” Cursed stork!
He must be envious that I sit in the director’s study and sharpen pens for His Excellency.
In short, I wouldn’t have gone to the office if it weren’t for the hope of seeing the treasurer and maybe cajoling at least some of my pay out of that Jew in advance.
What a creature!
For him to hand out any money a month ahead—Lord God, the Last Judgment would come sooner!
Even if you beg on your life, even if you’re destitute—he won’t hand out anything, the hoary devil!
Yet at home his own cook slaps him in the face.
The whole world knows it.
I don’t see the profit of working in my department.
Absolutely no resources.
In the provincial government, in the civil courts and treasuries, it’s quite a different matter: there, lo
and behold, a man squeezes himself into a corner and scribbles away.
His tailcoat is vile, his mug begs to be spat in, but just look what sort of country house he rents!
Don’t even try giving him a gilded china cup: “That,” he says, “is a gift fit for a doctor.” He wants to be given a pair of trotters, or a droshky, or a beaver coat worth some three hundred roubles.
He looks like such a goody-goody, he talks with such delicacy—“Lend me your little knife to trim my little pen”—and then he skins a petitioner so that the man’s left in nothing but his shirt.
It’s true, our work is noble, it’s clean everywhere, as you never see it in the provincial government: the tables are mahogany, and the superiors address each other formally.
Yes, I confess, if it weren’t for the nobility of the work, I’d long since have quit the department.

I put on my old overcoat and took an umbrella, because it was pouring rain.
There was nobody in the streets; only peasant women with their skirts pulled over their heads and Russian merchants under umbrellas and messenger boys caught my eye.
Of the gentry I met only a fellow clerk.
I saw him at an intersection.
As I noticed him, I said to myself at once, “Oh-ho!
No, dear heart, you’re not going to the office, you’re rushing after that thing running ahead of you and ogling her little feet.” Our fellow clerk is quite a customer!
By God, he won’t yield to any officer; if a pretty thing in a bonnet passes by, he’s sure to tag after her.
While I was thinking that, I saw a carriage drive up to a shop I was walking past.
I recognized it at once: it was our director’s carriage.
“But he has no business in that shop,” I thought, “it must be his daughter.” I pressed myself to the wall.
The lackey opened the doors, and she fluttered out of the carriage like a little bird.
As she glanced right and left, as she flashed her eyebrows and eyes … Lord God!
I’m lost, I’m utterly lost!
And why does she have to go out in such rainy weather!
Go on, now, tell me women don’t have a great passion for all these rags.
She didn’t recognize me, and I tried to wrap myself up the best I could, because the overcoat I had on was very dirty, and old-fashioned besides.
Now everyone wears cloaks with tall collars, and mine is short, overlapping; and the broadcloth isn’t waterproof at all.
Her lapdog didn’t manage to get through the
door into the shop and was left in the street.
I know this dog.
She’s called Medji.
A minute hadn’t passed when I suddenly heard a piping little voice: “Hello, Medji!” Well, I’ll be!
Who said that?
I looked around and saw two ladies walking under an umbrella: one a little old lady, the other a young one; but they had already passed by when I heard beside me: “Shame on you, Medji!” What the devil!
I saw Medji and the little dog that was following the ladies sniff each other.
“Oh-ho!” I said to myself, “what, am I drunk or something?
Only that seldom seems to happen with me.” “No, Fidèle, you shouldn’t think so,” I myself saw Medji say it, “I’ve been bow-wow!
I’ve been bow-wow-wow!
very sick.” Ah, you pup!
I confess, I was very surprised to hear her speak in human language.
But later, when I’d thought it over properly, I at once ceased to be surprised.
Actually, there have already been many such examples in the world.
They say in England a fish surfaced who spoke a couple of words in such a strange language that scholars have already spent three years trying to define them and still haven’t found anything out.
I also read in the papers about two cows that came to a grocer’s and asked for a pound of tea.
But, I confess, I was much more surprised when Medji said, “I wrote to you, Fidèle.
It must be that Polkan didn’t deliver my letter!” May my salary be withheld!
Never yet in my life have I heard of a dog being able to write.
Only a gentleman can write correctly.
Of course, there are sometimes merchants’ clerks and even certain serfs who can write a bit; but their writing is mostly mechanical—no commas, no periods, no style.

This surprised me.
I confess, lately I had begun sometimes to hear and see things no one had ever seen or heard before.
“I’ll just follow that little dog,” I said to myself, “and find out what she is and what she thinks.”

I opened my umbrella and followed the two ladies.
They went down Gorokhovaya, turned onto Meshchanskaya, from there to Stolyarnaya, and finally to the Kokushkin Bridge, where they stopped in front of a big house.
“I know that building,” I said to myself.
“That’s Zverkov’s building.” What a pile!
And the sorts that live in it: so many cooks, so many out-of-towners!
and our fellow
clerks—like pups, one on top of the other.
I, too, have a friend there, a very good trumpet player.
The ladies went up to the fifth floor.
“Very well,” I thought, “I won’t go up now, but I’ll note the place and be sure to make use of it at the first opportunity.”

October 4.

Today is Wednesday, and so I was in my superior’s study.
I came earlier on purpose, sat down to work, and sharpened all the pens.
Our director must be a very intelligent man.
His whole study is filled with bookcases.
I read the titles of some of the books: it’s all learning, such learning as our kind can’t even come close to: all in French, or in German.
And to look at his face: pah, such importance shines in his eyes!
I’ve never yet heard him utter an extra word.
Except maybe when I hand him some papers, and he asks, “How is it outside?” “Wet, Your Excellency!” Yes, there’s no comparison with our kind!
A real statesman.
I notice, though, that he has a special liking for me.
If only the daughter also … ah, confound it!… Never mind, never mind, silence!
I read the little
Bee.
¹
What fools these Frenchmen are!
So, what is it they want?
By God, I’d take the lot of them and give them a good birching!
I also read a very pleasant portrayal of a ball there, described by a Kursk landowner.
Kursk landowners are good writers.
After that I noticed it had already struck twelve-thirty, and our man had never left his bedroom.
But around one-thirty an event took place which no pen can describe.
The door opened, I thought it was the director and jumped up from the chair with my papers; but it was she, she herself!
Heavens above, how she was dressed!
Her gown was white as a swan, and so magnificent, pah!
and her glance—the sun, by God, the sun!
She nodded and said, “Papà hasn’t been here?” Aie, aie, aie!
what a voice!
A canary, truly, a canary!
“Your Excellency,” I almost wanted to say, “don’t punish me, but if it is your will to punish me, punish me with Your Excellency’s own hand.” But, devil take it, my tongue somehow refused to move, and I said only, “No, ma’am.” She looked at me, at the books, and dropped her handkerchief I rushed headlong, slipped on the cursed parquet, almost smashed my nose, nevertheless kept my balance and picked up the handkerchief.
Heavens, what a handkerchief!
The
finest cambric—ambrosia, sheer ambrosia!
it simply exuded excellency.
She thanked me and just barely smiled, so that her sugary lips scarcely moved, and after that she left.
I sat for another hour, when suddenly a lackey came in and said, “Go home, Aksenty Ivanovich, the master has already gone out.” I can’t stand the lackey circle: there is one always sprawled in the front hall who won’t even nod his head.
Moreover, one of the knaves decided once to offer me some snuff without getting up.
But don’t you know, stupid churl, that I am an official, a man of noble birth?
However, I took my hat and put my overcoat on by myself—because these gentlemen never help you—and left.
At home I lay in bed most of the time.
Then I copied out some very nice verses: “I was gone from her an hour, / Yet to me it seemed a year; / Life itself for me turned sour, / And the future dark and drear.” Must be Pushkin’s writing.
²
In the evening, wrapped in my overcoat, I went to Her Excellency’s front gates and waited for a long time to see whether she’d come out for a carriage, to have one more look—but no, she didn’t come out.