The soul-sick Demon, exile’s Spirit,
Soared high above the guilty Earth,
And memories of better seasons
Swarmed by—of these he’d known no dearth,
Of days when, safe in pure Light’s keeping
He shone—a brightest Cherubim,
When on her way the Comet, fleeting,
A smile of welcome and of greeting
Was pleased to interchange with him,
When through the drift of ageless ether
Athirst for knowledge, he had traced
Star caravans—whose cartwheels teetered
Above the emptiness of space;
Where he had known both Love and Faith,
The firstborn Son of all creation
Had felt no anger, vacillation,
His mind had still withstood Time’s threat—
The empty eons aimless rolling …
So much, so much to recollect …
The will now failed him in recalling!
Long banished, he had wandered on,
Creation’s wasteland gave no shelter,
The ages coursed by, one by one,
As minutes upon minutes pelter—
Each one monotonously drear.
Above this trifling earthly sphere
He ruled, sowed evil with no pleasure,
Nowhere opposed for his dark art,
His actions met no countermeasure,
Yet Evil came to dull his heart.
Above the grand Caucasian summits,
Now Heaven’s exile, soaring, raced;
Kazbek—a diamantine facet
Below—in timeless snow-banks blazed.
And lower yet, an ebon crevice,
A fissure for a serpent’s clevis,
Daryal unwound its ice-black lace.
And Terek, like a lion leaping—
A shaggy mane upon its spine—
Roamed wild. The beasts, the eagles sweeping
Their course along the azure height,
All hearkened to his thunderous calling;
In serried ranks the snow-white clouds
From southern climes, in gilded shrouds,
Accompanied its northward falling;
And closely packed massifs of stone
In deep dark slumber, full of dreaming,
Inclined their heads to Terek’s moan
Above the river’s billows gleaming;
The lofty castles on the steeps
Peered through the clouds like haughty sentries,
Who stand their post before the keep,
To Georgia’s foe forbidding entry;
Untamed was God’s world all around,
Estranged. And yet the Demon proud
Viewed all about him with derision,
Creation of his Maker’s will
His lofty forehead scorned this vision,
Expressed no thought—precisely nil.
A proem to Demon, transl. by A.L. and M.K.
THIS SECTION CONTINUES with but a small sample of the creative craft of another superb Russian 19th-century poet who gradually switched his creative focus from poetry to prose: M. Iu. Lermontov. Of all Russia’s nineteenth-century poets, it is Lermontov who at first glance seems to embody the Romantic image of the poète-maudit. Like Pushkin, Lermontov was both a superb poet and a rising master of the story and the novel. Lermontov, commisioned a cornet in the Life Guard Hussars at twenty, was only twenty-three when Pushkin’s death in a duel inspired him to pen the elegy On the Death of a Poet (Na smert’ poeta, 1837), which made him instantly famous. His bitter indictment of the Petersburg Imperial court—responsible, in his view, for Pushkin’s demise—earned him exile to the Caucasus. These magnificent untamed mountains provide the setting for the highly Romantic verse narrative The Demon (Demon, 1839), the initial stanzas of which are quoted above in a new translation. This accomplished narrative poem—with dazzling highland imagery set against a truly cosmic panorama—is imbued with Miltonic pathos and Byronic loneliness, both embraced by the poet in his own life and art with grim earnestness. Also set in the Caucasus is the work of Lermontov best known in the west: the novel A Hero of Our Time (Geroi nashego vremeni, 1840) which is considered by many to be a pioneering work of psychological realism in Russian literature; in its period it stands on a par with Pushkin’s earlier verse novel Eugene Onegin (Evgeny Onegin). While relishing A Hero of our Time as one of the greatest works of nineteenth-century fiction, what most Russians remember about the novel is that in one of its chapters Lermontov predicts with unsettling prescience the place and circumstances of his own death in the Caucasus. At the age of twenty-seven Lermontov, like his idol Pushkin at thirty-seven, was to be killed in a duel.
Only two complete short works representative of Lermontov’s art are in this volume, one of poetry and the other of prose, though such a selection is doubtless an injustice to the scope of Lermontov’s true accomplishments. First is the disquietingly prophetic poem The Dream (Son—in some translations called The Triple Dream), in which—a year before the event—the poet again foretells with eerie exactitude the locus of his own tragic death. The poem also represents Lermontov’s uncanny ability to fold space and time in upon themselves, forming successive dream-layers of perception within a text.
The short story Shtoss (untitled in the manuscript) is another example of this sort of folding. Abandoning for once his beloved Caucasus, Lermontov sets the tale in the surreal urban labyrinth of St. Petersburg through which the protagonist, a painter named Lugin, must feel his way in his quest to transubstantiate ideal beauty—an ethereal female—both in art and life. Parenthetically it should be noted that Lermontov was a serious painter himself and some of the narrator’s comments on the nature of the exceptional in art reflect his own views. Moreover, like Lugin, he apparently considered himself quite ugly. Nonetheless, romantic irony with respect to the protagonist’s artistic quest and his fate permeates this text. For instance, in the mention of how Lugin’s disturbed and excited mind produces the optical illusion that all other people are surrounded with and permeated by a yellow hue, yet by the story’s end the narrator makes Lugin a part and part of that disturbed vision when he mentions that Lugin himself turned yellow. Also connected with the narrator’s irony is the story’s strange syllable “shtoss” (habitually used in lieu of a title, as the extant manuscript version bears none). Shtoss has more than one meaning in Russian: it is a card game (faro) which Lugin plays, but which also stands here for a surname. In addition the word mimics the phrase Shto-s? a colloquial elision of Shto, sudar’? or roughly “What did you say, sir?” At various stages of the story the narrator lets Lugin mistake one of these meanings for another.
Such irony with respect to his protagonist suggests that Lermontov directed his readers to grasp something that lay beyond Lugin’s search—something encompassing narrativity itself and the story’s enigmatic ending. This deliberate aspect is made clear by the story of Lermontov’s single public reading of Shtoss in 1841: according to an account by E. P. Rostopchina, the author promised to read a just-completed novel during a mesmeric seance at her salon, and requested four hours for the presentation. He arrived bearing a huge tome and insisted that all doors to the room be locked and lights dimmed, creating in his audience a mood fraught with tension, an expectation of something monumental and mysterious about to happen. Whereupon Lermontov read through the brief manuscript in less than an hour, leaving an impression that he had planned the evening as an anti-climatic joke.
Lermontov died several months later and the event, as well as the manuscript, were forgotten for many years. When the story resurfaced, it was discussed as an unfinished piece precisely due to its abrupt ending. Nonetheless some scholars (Eikhenbaum, Mersereau) paid close attention to the fact that Shtoss is a story with a multilayered set of subtexts. They noted that Lugin, like Herman in the Queen of Spades, plays faro, and they surmised that Lermontov might have planned for him the same fate suffered by Pushkin’s protagonist. References to Gogol’s fiction were found to be especially abundant and evident, with many allusions to Nevsky Prospect, in which one of the protagonists, Piskarev, shares Lugin’s notion of ideal female beauty (and commits suicide at the end of his story) and to The Portrait, in which a personage depicted in a mysterious painting seems to step out from its frame as a ghost. Some even wondered whether Gogol himself might have contributed to Lermontov’s tale.
Be that as it may, it is clear that this accomplished story was considered unfinished for far too long and surely erroneously (as Vatsuro has also suggested recently). Stoss is closed in upon itself in various formal ways, and we know that it was read by the author himself as a finished work. A reader familiar with Petersburg’s streets who attempted to retrace Lugin’s steps would—in Petersburg’s real topography—arrive at the very place from which the artist set out on his journey. Moreover the story’s last sentence must be read as a pun (one of many Lermontov encoded into this text) on two Russian meanings of the verb reshit’sia, “to come to a decision” or “to go out of one’s mind.” Lermontov thus confronts us here with a double denouement, and his ending must be considered both closed and open at the same time. This does not mean that the author intended to resolve this duality: his end-focused “joke” enhances the enigma of the plot in a pre-modernist way and represents a clear advance over the host of concurrent works with the same subject matter—indeed, over the device of romantic irony itself.
At blazing noon, in Dagestan’s deep valley,
A bullet in my chest, dead still I lay,
As steam yet rose above my wound, I tallied
Each drop of blood, as life now seeped away.
Alone I lay within a sandy hollow,
As jagged ledges teemed there, rising steep,
With sun-scorched peaks above me, burning yellow,
I too was scorched, yet slept a lifeless sleep.
I dreamt of lights upon an evening hour,
A lavish feast held in my native land,
And fair young maidens garlanded with flowers:
Their talk—of me—was merry and off-hand.
But one of them, not joining their free chatter,
Sat timidly apart, bemused, alone
Sunk in a dream, her soul with sadness shattered:
God only knows what made her feel forlorn;
She dreamed of sand in Dagestan’s deep valley,
That gorge in which a man she knew lay dead,
Black steam still rose above the wound’s scorched hollow,
As blood streamed down and cooled like molten lead.
Translated by A. L.
1.
The Countess V … was hosting a musical evening. The finest artists of the capital were paying with their artistry for the honor of attending an aristocratic reception. Among the guests appeared several literati and scholars, two or three fashionable beauties, several society misses and elderly ladies, and one guards officer. A clutch of home-grown social lions struck poses around the doors of the second drawing room and by the fire. All was as usual; it was neither dull nor lively.
Just as a newly arrived singer was approaching the piano and unfolding her sheets of music … one of the young ladies yawned, rose, and went into the next room, which then was all but deserted. She was wearing a black gown, likely due to the Court’s being in mourning. A diamond insignia fastened to a pale blue sash sparkled on her shoulder; she was of average height, graceful, slow and languid in her movements. Long, black, marvelous tresses set off her still young and regular but pale features, and on those features shone the stamp of thought.
“Good evening, Monsieur Lugin,” said Minskaia, “I’m tired. Say something.” She sank onto a broad divan by the fireplace. The gentleman to whom she had spoken took a seat opposite her and made no reply. They were the only two people in the room, and Lugin’s cold silence showed clearly that he was not one of Minskaia’s admirers.
“I’m bored,” said Minskaia, and yawned again. “You see I don’t play games with you,” she added.
“And I’m having a fit of spleen!” answered Lugin.
“You feel like going to Italy again,” she said after a short silence, “Isn’t that so?”
Lugin for his part had not heard the question; he crossed his legs, unconsciously fixing his gaze on the marble-white shoulders of his interlocutor, and continued. “Imagine the misfortune that has befallen me! What could be worse for one such as myself, who has dedicated himself to painting? For two weeks now people have seemed yellow to me—and only people! It would be fine if it were everything—then there would be harmony in the general palette. But no! Everything else is just as it used to be; only faces have changed. At times it seems to me that people have lemons instead of heads.”
Minskaia smiled. “Call a doctor,” she said.
“Doctors can’t help—it’s spleen!”
“Fall in love!” (The look which accompanied this statement expressed something like the following: “I feel like tormenting him a bit!”)
“With whom?”
“What about me!”
“No! You would be bored even flirting with me, and besides—to be frank—no woman could love me.”
“What about that Italian countess, the one who followed you from Naples to Milan?”
“Well, you see,” replied Lugin thoughtfully, “I judge others by my own feelings, and I’m certain that I don’t err in doing so. I have in fact had occasion to awaken all the signs of passion in certain women. But since I know very well it is only thanks to artistry and skill that I am able to play on particular strings of the human heart, I derive no enjoyment from my success. I have asked myself if I could fall in love with an ugly woman—and it has turned out I cannot. I am ugly—consequently a woman could not love me, that is clear; artistic sensibility is more strongly developed in women than in us men; they are more frequently—and remain for much longer—under the sway of first impressions. If I have been able to arouse in a few women that which is called a tendre, it has cost me incredible effort and sacrifice. But since I always knew the artificiality of the feelings I inspired, and that I had only myself to thank for them—I have been unable to lose myself in a full, disinterested love; a little malice has always been mixed with my passions. This is all sad, but true!”
“What nonsense!” said Minskaia, but, glancing briefly at Lugin, she involuntarily agreed with him.
Lugin’s features were in fact not the least bit attractive. In spite of the fact that there was much fire and intelligence in the strange expression of the eyes, you would not find in his overall appearance a single one of those traits which render a gentleman appealing in society. He was awkwardly and crudely built; he spoke abruptly and jerkily; the sickly and sparse hairs on his temples, the uneven color of his face (symptoms of a permanent mysterious ailment) all make him appear older than he really was. He had spent three years in Italy taking cure for morbid hypochondria; and although he had not been cured, had at least discovered a useful diversion. He had taken to painting; a natural talent, hitherto inhibited by the demands of work, developed broadly and freely under the influence of a vivifying southern sky and the marvelous works of the old masters. He returned a true artist, although only his friends were granted the right to enjoy his superb talent. His pictures were always suffused with a certain vague but oppressive feeling: they bore the stamp of that bitter poetry which our poor age has sometimes wrung from the hearts of its finest proponents.
It had already been two months since Lugin had returned to Petersburg. He had independent means, few relatives, and several longstanding acquaintances in the highest social circle of the capital, where he intended to pass the winter. Lugin often called on Minskaia: her beauty, rare wit, and original views could not fail to make an impression on a man of intelligence and imagination. There was, however, no hint of love between them.
Their conversation ceased for a time, and they both seemed to be absorbed in the music. The singer engaged for the evening was performing “The Forest King,” a ballad by Schubert set to the lyrics of Goethe. When she had finished, Lugin rose.
“Where are you going?” asked Minskaia.
“Good-bye.”
“It’s still early.”
He sat down again.
“Do you know,” he observed with some gravity, “that I am beginning to lose my mind?”
“Really?”
“All joking aside. I can tell you about this; you won’t laugh at me. I have been hearing a voice for several days. From morning till night someone keeps repeating something to me. And what do you think it is?—An address. There—I hear it now: ‘Stoliarnyi Lane, near the Kokukshin Bridge, the home of Titular Councilor Shtoss, apartment 27.’ And it’s repeated so rapidly, rapidly, as if the speaker were pressed for time … it’s unbearable …”
He had turned pale. But Minskaia didn’t notice.
“You don’t see the person who is speaking, though, do you?” she asked absently.
“No. But the voice is a clear, sharp tenor.”
“When did this begin?”
“Should I confess? I can’t tell you for certain … I don’t know … this is really most amusing!” he said with a forced smile.
“The blood is rushing to your head, and it’s making your ears ring.”
“No, no. Tell me—how can I be rid of this?”
“The best way” replied Minskaia after some thought, “would be for you to go to the Kokukshin Bridge and look for the apartment. And since some cobbler or watchmaker probably lives there, you could order something from him just for propriety’s sake, and then when you return home, go to bed, because … you really are unwell!” she added, having glanced at Lugin’s troubled face with concern.
“You’re right,” answered Lugin gloomily. “I will go without fail.”
He rose, took up his hat, and went out.
She looked after him with surprise.
2.
A damp November morning lay over Petersburg. Wet snow was falling; the houses appeared dirty and dark and the faces of passers-by were green; coachmen, wrapped in red sleigh-rugs, dozed at their stands; their poor nags’ long wet coats were curling like sheep’s wool. The mist gave a sort of grayish-lilac color to distant objects. Along the pavement only rarely was heard the slap of clerks’ galoshes—and from time to time noise and laughter rang out from an ale-cellar as a drunk in a green frieze coat and oilcloth cap was thrown out. Of course you would encounter such scenes only in the out-of-the-way parts of the city, for instance … near the Kokukshin Bridge. Across this bridge there now came a man of medium height, neither thin nor stout, not strongly built but with broad shoulders, wearing a greatcoat and in general dressed with taste. It was a pity to see his lacquered boots soaked through with snow and mud, but he, it seemed, did not care about this in the least. With hands thrust into his pockets and head lowered he walked along at an uneven pace, as though he were afraid to reach his goal or as if he had no goal at all. On the bridge he stopped, raised his head, and looked around. It was Lugin. His face showed the traces of mental exhaustion; in his eyes burned a secret anxiety.
“Where is Stoliarnyi Lane?” in an uncertain voice he addressed an idle cab driver with a shag rug pulled up to his neck who was whistling the “Kamarinskaia” as he drove past at a walk.
The driver glanced at Lugin, flicked his horse with the tip of his whip, and drove on.
This seemed very strange. Enough of this, is there really a Stoliarnyi Lane? Lugin stepped from the bridge and asked the same question of a boy who was running across the street with a half-liter of ale.
“Stoliarnyi?” said the boy. “Go straight along the Little Meshchanskaia and the first lane on the right will be Stolyarny.”
Lugin was reassured. Coming to the corner, he turned right and saw a small, dirty lane along which there were no more than ten houses of any great size. He knocked at the door of the first small shop; when the shopkeeper appeared, Lugin inquired, “Where is Stoss’s?
“Shtoss’s? I don’t know, sir. There is no such person here. But right next door is the house of the merchant Blinnikov, and further down …”
“But I need Shtoss’s!”
“Well, I don’t know … Shtoss!” said the shopkeeper, scratching the back of his neck, and then adding, “No, never heard of him, sir!”
Lugin set off to take a look at the nameplates on the houses himself; something told him that he would recognize the house at first sight, even though he had never seen it. He had almost reached the end of the lane, and not a single nameplate had coincided in any way with the one he had imagined, when suddenly he glanced casually across the street and saw over one of the gates a tin nameplate with no inscription whatsoever.
Lugin ran up to the gate, but no matter how he peered at it, he could make out nothing resembling a trace of an inscription erased by time. The nameplate was brand-new.
A yard-keeper in a discolored, long-skirted caftan was sweeping away the snow near the gate; he had a gray beard which had long gone untrimmed, wore no cap and had a dirty apron belted around his waist.
“Hey, yard-keeper!” cried Lugin.
The yard keeper grumbled something through his teeth.
“Whose house is this?”
“It’s been sold,” the yard keeper answered rudely.
“But whose was it?”
“Whose? Kifeinik’s—the merchant.”
“It can’t be—this has to be Shtoss’s!” Lugin cried involuntarily.
“No, it was Kifeinik’s—it’s only now that it’s Stoss’s.
Lugin faltered.
His heart began to pound, as if in presentiment of misfortune. Should he continue his search? Wouldn’t it be better to stop it in time? Anyone who has never been in a similar situation will have difficulty understanding it: curiosity, they say, has ruined the human race; even today it is our cardinal, primary passion, such that all our other passions can be attributed to it. But there are times when the mysterious nature of an object gives curiosity an unusual power: obedient to it, like a rock cast off a mountain by a powerful arm, we cannot stop ourselves, even though we see an abyss awaiting us.
Lugin stood in front of the gate a long time. Finally he addressed a question to the yard-keeper.
“Does the new owner live here?”
“No.”
“Well, then, where does he live?”
“The Devil only knows.”
“Have you been yard keeper here a long time?”
“A long time.”
“And are there people living in the house?”
“There are.”
After a brief silence Lugin slipped the yard-keeper a ruble and said, “Tell me, please, who lives in apartment 27?”
The yard-keeper set the broom up against the gate, took the ruble, and stared at Lugin.
“Apartment 27? Who’d be living there? It’s been empty God knows how long.”
“How do you mean, sir—not let it? They have let it.’
“Then how can you say that nobody lives there?”
“God knows! They don’t live there, is all! They take it for a year, and then they don’t move in.”
“Well, who was the last to take it?”
“A colonel of the Injuneer Corps, or something like that.”
“Why didn’t he live there?”
“Well, he was about to move in, but then they say he was sent to Viatka—so the apartment’s been empty ever since.”
“And before the colonel?”
“Before him a baron—a German one—took it; but that one didn’t move in either; I heard he died.”
“And before the baron?”
“A merchant took it for his … ahem! But he went bankrupt, so he left us with just the deposit! …”
“Strange,” thought Lugin.
“May I see the apartment?”
The yard-keeper again stared at him.
“Why not? of course you can,” he answered and waddled off after his keys.
He soon returned and led Lugin up a wide, but rather dirty stairway to the first floor. The key grated in the rusty lock, and the door opened; an odor of damp struck them in the face. They went in. The apartment consisted of four rooms and a kitchen. Old dusty furniture which had once been gilt was stiffly arranged along walls covered in wallpaper depicting red parrots and golden lyres against a green background; the tile stoves were cracked here and there; the pine floor, painted to imitate parquet, squeaked rather suspiciously in certain places; oval mirrors with rococo frames hung in the spaces between the windows; in general, the rooms had a sort of strange, outmoded air.
For some reason—I don’t know why—the rooms appealed to Lugin.
“I will take the apartment,” he said. “Have the windows washed and the furniture dusted … just look how many spider webs there are! And you must heat the place well …” At that moment he noticed on the wall of the last room a half-length portrait depicting a man of about forty in a Bohara dressing-gown, with regular features and large gray eyes. In his right hand he held a gold snuffbox of extraordinary size. On his fingers a multitude of rings glittered. The portrait seemed to have been painted by a timid student’s brush: everything—the clothes, hair, hand, rings—was very poorly done; yet, there breathed such a tremendous feeling of life in the facial expression—especially the lips—that it was impossible to look away. In the line of the mouth there was a subtle, imperceptible curve of a sort which is inaccessible to art—unconsciously inscribed here, of course—which gave the face an expression by turns sarcastic, sad, evil, and tender. Have you never happened, on a frosty windowpane or in a jagged shadow accidentally cast by some object or other, to notice a human face, a profile sometimes unimaginably beautiful, and at other times unfathomably repulsive? Just try to get those features down on paper! You won’t be able to do it. Take a pencil and try to trace on the wall the silhouette which has so struck you, and its charm will disappear; the human hand cannot intentionally produce such lines: a single, minute deviation, and the former expression is irrevocably destroyed. On the portrait’s face was precisely that inexpressible quality which only genius or accident can produce.
“Strange that I only noticed the portrait at the moment I said I would take the apartment!” thought Lugin.
He sat down in an armchair, rested his head on his hand, and lost himself in thought.
The yard-keeper stood opposite Lugin for a long time, swinging his keys.
“Well then, sir?” he finally said.
“Ah!”
“Well then, if you’re taking it—a deposit, please.”
They agreed on a sum; Lugin gave him the deposit, then sent an order to his place to have his things brought over, while he himself sat opposite the portrait until evening; by nine o’clock the most essential things had been brought from the hotel in which Lugin had been staying.
“It’s nonsense to think it impossible to live in this apartment,” mused Lugin. “My predecessors obviously were not destined to move into it—that’s strange, of course! But I took my own measures—I moved in immediately! And so?—nothing has happened!”
He and his old valet Nikita were arranging things in the apartment until twelve o’clock.
One ought to add that Lugin chose as his bedchamber the room where the portrait hung. Before going to bed he approached the portrait with candle in hand, wanting to take another good look at it. And in place of the artist’s name, he found a word written in red letters: Wednesday.
“What day is today?” he asked Nikita.
“It’s Monday, sir …”
“The day after tomorrow is Wednesday,” said Lugin indifferently.
“Just so, sir!”
For God knows what reason Lugin became angry with him.
“Get out of here!” he shouted, stamping his foot.
Old Nikita shook his head and went out.
After this Lugin went to bed and fell asleep.
The next morning the rest of his things and a few unfinished pictures were brought over.
3.
Among the unfinished pictures, most of which were small, was one of rather significant size: in the middle of a canvas covered with charcoal, chalk, and greenish-brown primer was a sketch of a woman’s head worth the attention of a connoisseur. Yet despite the charm of the drawing and the liveliness of the colors, the head struck one unpleasantly thanks to something indefinable in the expression of the eyes and the smile; it was obvious that Lugin had redrawn the head several times from different aspects, but had been unable to satisfy himself, because the same little head, blotted out with brown paint, appeared in several places on the canvas. It was not a real portrait; perhaps like some of our young poets, pining for beautiful women who have never existed, he was trying to embody on canvas his ideal angel-woman, a whim understandable in early youth, but rare in a person who has had any experience of life. However, there are people with whom experiences of the mind do not affect the heart, and Lugin was one of these unfortunate poetic creatures. The most cunning rogue or the most experienced coquette would have had difficulty duping Lugin, but he deceived himself daily with the naiveté of a child. For some time he had been haunted by a fixed idea—one which was torturous and unbearable, all the more so because his pride suffered as a result of it: he was far from handsome, it is true, but there was nothing repellent about him. Those acquainted with his intelligence, talent, and kindness even found his facial expression pleasant; but he was firmly convinced that the his degree of ugliness precluded the possibility of love, and he began to view women as his natural enemies, suspecting ulterior motives in their occasional caresses and explaining in a coarse, suggestive manner their most obvious good will.
I shall not examine the degree to which he was correct, but the fact is that such a state of mind excuses his rather fantastic love for an ethereal ideal—a love that is most innocent, but at the same time most harmful for a man of imagination.
That day, Tuesday, nothing special happened to Lugin: he sat at home until evening, although he needed to go out. An incomprehensible lassitude overwhelmed all his feelings: he wanted to paint, but the brushes fell from his hands; he tried to read, but his eyes flitted over the lines, and he read something quite different from what was actually printed; he had bouts of fever and chills, his head ached, and there was a ringing in his ears. When dusk came he did not order a candle brought to him: he sat by a window which looked out on the courtyard; it was dark outside; his poorer neighbors’ windows were dimly lit. He sat for a long time. Outside, a barrel organ suddenly began to play; it played some sort of old German waltz; Lugin listened and listened—and he became terribly sad. He began to pace around the room; an unprecedented anxiety took hold of him: he felt like weeping, like laughing… he threw himself on the bed and burst into tears. He reviewed the whole of his past: he remembered how often he had been deceived, how often he had hurt the very people he had loved, what a wild joy had at times flooded his heart at the sight of tears which he had brought to their eyes, now closed forever. And with horror he saw and admitted to himself that he was unworthy of a disinterested and genuine love—and this was so painful for him, so oppressive!
Around midnight he grew calmer, sat down at the table, lit a candle, and took a sheet of paper and began a drawing—all was quiet. The candle burned brightly and tranquilly; he was sketching the head of an old man, and when he finished he was struck by the similarity between that head and the head of someone he knew. He raised his eyes to the portrait hanging opposite him; the resemblance was striking; he involuntarily shuddered and turned around; it seemed to him that the doors leading into the empty parlor had squeaked; he could not tear his eyes from the door.
“Who’s there?” he cried out.
He heard a rustle, like the shuffling of slippers, behind the door; plaster dust from the stove sprinkled down onto the floor. “Who is that?” he repeated in a faint voice.
At that moment both leaves of the door began to open quietly, noiselessly; a chill breath wafted into room; the door was opening by itself—the room beyond was as dark as a cellar.
When the doors had opened a figure in a striped dressing gown and slippers appeared: it was a gray, hunched little old man; he moved slowly in a cringing stoop. His face—long and pale-—was motionless; his lips were compressed; his gray, dull eyes, rimmed in red, looked straight ahead, blankly. He sat down at the table, across from Lugin, pulled from his dressing gown two decks of cards, placed one of them opposite Lugin, the other in front of himself, and smiled …
“What do you want?” said Lugin with the courage that comes from despair. His fists clenched convulsively, and he was ready to throw the large candleholder at the uninvited guest.
From the dressing gown came a sigh.
“This is unbearable,” gasped Lugin. His thoughts were confused.
The little old man began to fidget on his chair; his whole figure was changing constantly: he became now taller, now stouter, then almost shrank away completely; at last he assumed his original form.
“All right,” thought Lugin, “if this is an apparition, I won’t yield to it.”
“Wouldn’t you like me to deal a hand of shtoss?” asked the little old man.
Lugin took the deck of cards lying in front of him and answered mockingly, “But what shall we play for? I want to warn you that I will not stake my soul on a card!” (He thought he would perplex the apparition with this.)”… but if you want,” he continued, “I’ll stake a klyunger [a gold piece]. I doubt that you have those in your ethereal bank.”
This joke did not confuse the little old man at all.
“I have this in the bank,” he said, extending his hand.
“That?” said Lugin, taking fright and averting his gaze to the left. “What is it?” Something white, vague, and transparent fluttered near him. He turned away in repugnance. “Deal,” he said, recovering a little. He took a klyunger from his pocket and placed it on a card. “We’ll go on blind luck.” The little old man bowed, shuffled the cards, cut the deck and began to deal. Lugin played the seven of clubs; it was beaten immediately. The little old man extended his hand and took the gold coin.
“Another round!” said Lugin with vexation.
The apparition shook his head.
“What does that mean?”
“On Wednesday,” said the little old man.
“Oh! Wednesday!” cried Lugin in a rage. “No! I don’t want to on Wednesday! Tomorrow or never! Do you hear me?”
The strange guest’s eyes glittered piercingly, and he again squirmed uneasily in his seat.
“All right,” he said at last. He rose, bowed, and walked out with his cringing gait. The door again quietly closed after him; from the next room again came the sound of shuffling slippers … and little by little everything became quiet. The blood was pounding inside Lugin’s head like a mallet; a strange feeling agitated him and gnawed at his soul. He was vexed and offended that he had lost …
“But I didn’t yield to him!” he said, trying to console himself. “I forced him to agree to my terms. On Wednesday?—But of course! I must be mad! But that’s good, very good! He won’t rid himself of me!
And he looks so much like that portrait! … Terribly, terribly like it! Aha! Now I understand!”
At this he fell asleep in his chair. The next morning he told no one what had occurred, spent the entire day at home, awaited the evening with feverish impatience.
“But I didn’t get a look at what he had in the bank! …” he thought. “It must be something unusual.”
When midnight had come, he rose from his chair, went out into the next room, locked the door leading into the vestibule, and returned to his seat. He did not have to wait long; again he heard a rustling sound, the shuffling of slippers, the old man’s cough, and again his cadaverous figure appeared at the door. Another figure followed him, but it was indistinct and Lugin could not make out its shape.
Just as he had done the evening before, the little old man sat down, placed two decks of cards on the table, cut one, and prepared to deal: he obviously expected no resistance from Lugin; his eyes shone with an unusual confidence, as if they were reading the future. Lugin, completely under the magnetic spell of those gray eyes, was about to throw two half-imperials on the table, when suddenly he came to his senses.
“Just a moment,” said Lugin, covering his deck with his hand.
The little old man sat motionless.
“There was something I wanted to say to you! Just a moment … yes!” Lugin had become confused.
Finally, with an effort, he slowly said, “All right—I will play with you—I accept the challenge—I am not afraid—but there is one condition: I must know with whom I am playing! What is your surname?”
The little old man smiled.
“I won’t play otherwise,” said Lugin, while at the same time his shaking hand was pulling the next card from the deck.
“Chto-s? [What, sir],” said the unknown one, smiling mockingly.
“Shtoss?—Who?” Lugin faltered; he was frightened.
At that instant he sensed a fresh, aromatic breath nearby; and a faint, rustling sound, and an involuntary sigh, and a light fiery touch. A strange, sweet, but at the same time morbid tremor ran through his veins. He turned his head for an instant, and immediately returned his gaze to the cards; but that momentary glance was sufficient to compel him to gamble away his soul. It was a marvelous divine vision: leaning at his shoulder there gleamed the head of a woman; her lips entreated him; and in her eyes there was an inexpressible melancholy … she stood out against the dark walls of the room as the morning star stands out in the misty east. Life had never produced anything so ethereal-heavenly; death had never taken from earth anything so full of ardent life; the vision was not an earthly being: it was made up of color and light rather than form and body, a warm breath in place of blood, and thought rather than feeling; nor was it an empty and deceitful vision … because these indistinct features were infused with a turbulent and avid passion, with desire, grief, love, fear, and hope. This was one of those marvelously beautiful women youthful imagination depicts for us—before which we fall to our knees in the high emotion accompanying ardent visions, and we cry, pray, and celebrate for God knows what reason—one of those divine creations of a soul in its youth, when with its surplus of power it creates for itself a new nature—better and more complete than the one to which it is chained.
At that moment Lugin could not have explained what had happened to him, but from that instant he decided to play until he won; that goal became the goal of his life; he was very happy about it.
The little old man began to deal. Lugin’s card was beaten. A pale hand again drew the two half-imperials across the table.
“Tomorrow,” said Lugin.
The little old man sighed gravely, but nodded his head in assent, and went out as he had the previous evening.
The scene repeated itself every night for a month: every night Lugin lost, but he didn’t regret the money; he was certain that at least one winning card would ultimately be dealt to him, and for that reason he doubled his already large wagers. He suffered terrible losses, but nevertheless every night for a second he met the gaze and smile for which he was ready to give up everything on earth. He grew terribly thin and yellow. He spent entire days at home, locked in his room; he rarely ate. He awaited evening as a lover awaits a rendezvous: and every evening he was rewarded with an ever more tender gaze, a friendlier smile. She—I don’t know her name—she seemed to take an anxious interest in the play of the cards; she seemed to be awaiting impatiently the moment when she would be released from the yoke of the old man; and each time Lugin’s card was beaten, each time he turned to her with a sad look, he would find fixed upon him her passionate, deep gaze, which seemed to say, “Take courage, don’t lose heart. Wait, I will be yours no matter what happens! I love you …” and a bitter, wordless sorrow would cast its shadow over her changeable features. And every evening, as they parted, Lugin’s heart painfully contracted in despair and frenzy. He had already sold many of his belongings in order to sustain the game; he saw that in the not too distant future the moment would come when he would have nothing left to stake on the cards. It was necessary to make some sort of decision, or go mad. He did.—
Translated by David Lowe; edited by A. L. and M.K.