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Beyond the course of Mars, I race around the Sun,
Unknown to Earth am I—a dark-hued Asteroid.
A surge of molten metal is my living blood,
My living flesh—a quivering colloid.
My earthly twin, I cannot come to your embrace,
By Draco’s breath I’m blown away to empty reaches.
And only from afar I view the Sun’s bright face,
I’m cast to rest upon no Earthly beaches.
I envy you: you range at will, my weakling friend,
You change your wheeling course, yet cloaked in narrow vizard.
But my fate is—to trace my circle without end,
All in the selfsame, endless, weary, blizzard.
Translated by A.L & M.K.
I
Iakov Alexeevich Saranin was just short of average height. His wife, Aglaia Nikiforovna, from merchant stock, was tall and bulky. And now, in the first year of her married life, the twenty-year-old woman was already so hefty that beside her scrawny little husband she looked like an Amazon.
“And what if she fills out even more?” thought Iakov Alexeevich.
So he thought, even though he had married for love—love both for her and for her dowry.
The difference in the proportions of man and wife frequently provoked sarcastic remarks from their friends. These thoughtless gibes poisoned Saranin’s peace of mind and made Aglaia laugh.
Once Saranin returned home thoroughly upset after an evening with some people from the office during which he’d had to put up with more than his share of barbed comments.
Lying in bed beside Aglaia, he kept muttering and nagging at his wife. Aglaia protested sluggishly and unenthusiastically, her voice sleepy.
“Well, what should I do? It’s not my fault.” She had a very calm and peaceful disposition.
Saranin grumbled: “Stop swilling down the meat, don’t stuff your gut with so much starch; you’re gobbling candy all day long.”
“But look, you can’t expect me to eat nothing if I have a healthy appetite,” Aglaia replied. “When I was still single, my appetite was even better.”
“I can imagine: I can just see you eating a whole bull at one sitting.”
“You can’t eat a bull at one sitting,” Aglaia retorted calmly.
She soon fell asleep, but Saranin could not get to sleep on that strange autumn night.
He tossed and turned for a long time. When sleep denies itself to the Russian, he meditates. And Saranin gave himself up to that activity, which was so uncharacteristic of him at other times. For he was a civil servant: there was not much to think about, and no particular reason for doing so.
“There must be some way,” Saranin ruminated. “Every day science makes amazing discoveries; in America they make noses of every imaginable shape for people. They grow new skin on your face. The kind of operations they do—they drill holes in your skull, they cut your guts or your heart open and then sew them back up again. Isn’t there really any way either for me to grow or for Aglaia to take off a little flesh? What if there’s some secret means? But how to find it? How? Well, just lying around you certainly won’t find it. God helps them who help themselves. But as for looking … A secret remedy! Maybe he, the inventor, is just walking around in the streets looking for a customer. Sure, what else? After all, he can’t advertise in the papers. But in the streets you can peddle anything you want when nobody’s looking. That’s very likely. So he walks around and offers it confidentially. Anyone who needs a secret remedy won’t be lolling in bed.”
After pondering things in this manner, Saranin quickly began to dress, purring to himself.
“‘At twelve o’clock midnight …’”
He did not worry about waking his wife. He knew that Aglaia was a sound sleeper.
“Like a merchant,” he said aloud; “like a clod,” he thought to himself.
He finished dressing and went out into the street. He did not have the slightest desire to sleep. His heart felt light, and his mood was that of the inveterate seeker of adventures on the verge of a new and interesting experience.
The peaceful civil servant, who had lived a quiet and colorless life for a third of a century, suddenly felt stirring in him the heart of the hunter in the trackless deserts, enterprising and free—a hero of Cooper or Mayne Reid.
But after he had taken a few steps along the familiar route—toward his office—he stopped and began to reflect. Where exactly should he go? Everything was quiet and peaceful, so peaceful that the street seemed like the corridor of a vast building, quite ordinary, quite safe, and isolated from the unpredictable outside world. Janitors dozed by gates. At the intersection a policeman could be seen. The street lamps glowed. The paving stones of the sidewalks and the cobbles of the roadway gleamed faintly with the moisture of a recent rainfall.
Saranin thought a while, and then in quiet confusion he began to walk straight ahead, and then turned to the right.
II.
At the intersection of two streets he saw, in the light of the lamps, a man coming toward him. His heart lay heavy in joyful anticipation.
It was a strange figure.
A robe of bright colors, with a wide belt. A tall hat, sharp-pointed, with black designs. A thin beard dyed saffron, long and narrow. Gleaming white teeth. Burning black eyes. Feet in slippers.
“An Armenian!” Saranin suddenly thought for some reason or other.
The Armenian came up to him and said: “Dear heart, what is it you spend your nights looking for? Why do you not go to bed or else to beautiful maidens? Want me to take you there?”
“No, I have more than enough of my own beautiful maiden,” said Saranin.
And he trustingly revealed his misfortune to the Armenian.
The Armenian bared his teeth and neighed: “Big wife, little husband—to kiss, you need a ladder. Oi, no good!”
“What could possibly be good about it!”
“Follow me. I will help a good man.”
They walked through the quiet corridor-like streets for a long time, the Armenian in front, Saranin behind. As they moved from street lamp to street lamp, the Armenian kept undergoing a strange transformation. In darkness he grew, and the further he moved away from the street lamp, the more enormous he became. Sometimes the sharp peak of his hat seemed to be rising above the houses into the cloudy sky. Then, as he approached the light, he became smaller and directly under the lamp he would resume his former dimensions and would look like a plain ordinary peddler in a robe. And, strangely enough, Saranm was not surprised at this phenomenon. He was in such a trusting mood that the most spectacular wonders of the Arabian fairy tales would have seemed just as ordinary to him as the insignificant doings of drab everyday life.
At the gates of a house, a most ordinary structure, five stories high and painted yellow, they stopped. The light markings on the lamp at the gate stood out clearly, Saranin noted: “No. 41.”
They went into the courtyard; then up the staircase of a building in the rear. The staircase lay in semi-darkness. But the door the Armenian stopped in front of was dimly illuminated by a small lamp, and Saranin could make out numbers: “No. 43.”
The Armenian reached into his pocket, took out a small bell—the kind used in country houses to call servants—and rang it. The bell gave out a pure, silvery tinkle.
At once the door opened. Behind the door stood a barefoot boy, handsome, swarthy, with very bright red lips. His white teeth gleamed, for he was smiling, either in delight or in mockery. And he seemed to be always smiling. The comely boy’s eyes glowed with a greenish luster. His whole body was lithe, like a kitten’s, and impalpable, like the phantom of a quiet nightmare. He looked at Saranin, smiling. Saranin became terrified.
They went in. With a lithe and sinuous bend of his body the boy closed the door, and walked before them along a corridor, carrying a lantern in his hand. He opened a door, and again—another impalpable movement, then laughter.
A dreadful dark narrow room, the walls lined with cabinets holding some kind of flasks and small bottles. There was a strange odor, an irritating and mysterious odor.
The Armenian lit a lamp, opened a cabinet, rummaged around in it and brought out a flask containing a greenish liquid.
“Good drops,” he said. “You will put one drop in a glass of water, she will just fall asleep without a sound and will not wake up.”
“No, I don’t want that,” Saranin said irritably. “Did you think that was really what I came for?”
“Dear heart,” the Armenian said persuasively. “You will take another wife, your own size—the simplest thing in the world.”
“I don’t want to!” cried Saranin.
“Now do not shout,” the Armenian stopped him. “Why are you angry, dear heart, why are you upsetting yourself for nothing? You do not want them, do not take them, I will give you another kind. But the other ones are so expensive—oi, oi, so expensive!”
The Armenian squatted—which made his long figure look ludicrous—and brought out a square-shaped bottle. In it gleamed a transparent liquid. The Armenian said quietly, with a mysterious air: “You drink a drop—a pound will come off; you drink forty drops—forty pounds come off. A drop—a pound. A drop—a rouble. Count the drops, give the roubles.”
Joy flamed in Saranin’s heart.
“How much is it I need?” Saranin began to reckon. “There must be about two hundred pounds of her. Take off a hundred and twenty or so, and then there’ll be a nice petite little wife. That’ll be fine.”
“Give me a hundred and twenty drops.”
The Armenian shook his head. “You want much—no good will come of it.”
Saranin flared up. “That’s nobody’s business but mine.”
The Armenian looked at him searchingly. “Count the money.”
Saranin took out his wallet. “All tonight’s winnings, and I have to add some of my own,” he thought.
In the meantime the Armenian had brought out a flask of cut glass, and he began to drip the liquid into it.
Sudden doubt quickened in Saranin’s mind. “A hundred and twenty roubles is no little cash. And what if he should cheat me?” He asked hesitantly, “Are you sure they work?”
“The goods speak for themselves,” said the proprietor. “I will show you right now how they work. Caspar!” he shouted.
The same barefoot boy entered. He was wearing a red jacket and short dark-blue trousers. His swarthy legs were exposed above the knees. They were shapely and beautiful, and they moved gracefully and nimbly.
The Armenian gave a wave of his hand. Caspar deftly shed his clothes. He approached the table.
The candles cast a dim light on his yellow body, lithe, strong, and beautiful. And on his obedient depraved smile. On his black eyes and the blue rings under them.
The Armenian said: “If you drink these drops straight, it will work at once. If you mix them in water or wine, it will work slowly—you will not see it happening before your eyes. If you do not mix them thoroughly, it will work in leaps, and that will not be pretty.”
He took a narrow graduated cylinder, poured some liquid into it, and handed it to Caspar. Caspar simpered like a spoiled child who is given something sweet, drank the liquid to the bottom, threw his head back, licked the last sweet drops with his long sharp tongue, which was like that of a poisonous snake—and at once, before Saranin’s very eyes, he began to shrink. He stood erect, looked at Saranin, laughed, and began to change, like the doll you buy at the Carnival fair which collapses when the air is let out.
The Armenian took him by the elbow and placed him on the table. The boy was the size of a candle. He danced and made faces.
“But what will become of him now?” asked Saranin.
“Dear heart, we will grow him again,” replied the Armenian.
He opened the cabinet, and from the top shelf he took down another vessel of an equally strange shape. The liquid in it was green. The Armenian poured a bit of the liquid into a tiny goblet the size of a thimble. He handed it to Caspar.
Once again Caspar drank, as he had the first time. Slowly and surely, like water rising in a bathtub, the naked boy grew bigger and bigger. Finally he returned to his former dimensions.
The Armenian said: “Drink it with wine, or with water, or with milk, drink it with anything you want—only do not drink it with Russian kvas or your hair will start to fall out all over the place.”
III.
A few days passed.
Saranin radiated happiness. He kept smiling enigmatically. He was awaiting an opportunity. The opportunity came. Aglaia was complaining of a headache.
“I have a remedy,” Saranin said. “It really helps.”
“No remedies will help,” Aglaia said, making a sour face.
“No, this one will help. I got it from a certain Armenian.”
He said this with such assurance that Aglaia was convinced of the effectiveness of the remedy he had got from the Armenian.
“Oh, all right, have it your way, I’ll take it.”
He brought the little flask.
“Does it have a nasty taste?” Aglaia asked.
“It tastes just fine and it really does help. Only it’ll give you a touch of the runs.”
Aglaia made a face.
“Drink it, drink it.”
“Can I put it in some Madeira?”
“All right.”
“And you have some Madeira with me too,” Aglaia said in the tone of a spoiled child.
Saranin poured two glasses of Madeira, and emptied the potion into his wife’s glass.
“I feel sort of chilly,” Aglaia said softly and listlessly. “A shawl would be nice.”
Saranin ran to get a shawl. When he came back the glasses were standing as before. Aglaia was sitting and smiling.
He wrapped the shawl around her.
“I seem to feel a bit more comfortable,” she said. “Should I drink?”
“Drink, drink,” Saranin exclaimed. “To your health.”
He took up his glass. They drank. She roared with laughter. “What’s the matter?” Saranin asked. “I switched the glasses. You’re the one who’ll have the runs, not me.”
He shuddered. He turned pale. “What have you done?” he cried in despair.
Aglaia laughed and laughed. Her laughter seemed repulsive and cruel to Saranin.
Suddenly he remembered that the Armenian had a restorant. He ran to the Armenian.
“He’ll really scalp me,” he fretted. “But who cares about money? Let him take everything, as long as I can save myself from the horrible effects of this potion.”
IV.
But ill fate had evidently fallen upon Saranin.
On the door of the apartment where the Armenian had lived hung a padlock. Saranin tugged at the bell in despair. A mad hope gave him strength. He rang the bell furiously.
On the other side of the door the bell rang loudly, distinctly, clearly—with that relentless clarity bells have only in empty apartments. Saranin ran to the janitor. He was pale. Tiny, fine beads of sweat, like dew on a cold rock, broke out on his face and especially on his nose.
He rushed into the janitor’s room and shouted: “Where’s Khalatyants?”
A phlegmatic black-bearded individual, the head janitor, was drinking tea from a saucer. He turned a disapproving gaze on Saranin. He asked imperturbably: “And what is it you want of him?”
Saranin stared blankly at the janitor, and did not know what to say.
“If you got some sort of business with him, mister,” the janitor said, eying Saranin suspiciously, “then you better go away. On account of he’s an Armenian we’d better look out or we’ll get in trouble with the cops.”
“Oh, where is that damned Armenian!” Saranin exclaimed in despair. “The one from No. 43.”
“There ain’t no Armenian,” replied the janitor. “There was one, there sure was, I ain’t saying there wasn’t, except now there ain’t no more.”
“Well, where is he then?”
“Gone.”
“Where?” Saranin shouted.
“Who knows?” the janitor answered with complete unconcern. “He fixed himself up a foreign passport and left the country.”
Saranin turned pale.
“Look, try to understand,” he said with a trembling voice, “I really need him desperately.”
He began to weep.
The janitor looked at him sympathetically and said: “Don’t break your heart over it, sir. If you really need the damned Armenian so, then you leave the country too, go to the address bureau there and you’ll find him where the address is.”
Saranin did not grasp the absurdity of what the janitor was saying. He took heart.
He ran home at once, whirled like a hurricane into the head janitor’s office, and demanded that the head janitor arrange for a foreign passport without delay. But suddenly he remembered: “But where am I to go?
V.
The damned potion was doing its evil work as slowly and relentlessly as fate. With every passing day Saranin grew smaller and smaller. His clothes hung on him like a sack.
The people who knew him wondered. They said:
“Aren’t you sort of smaller? Have you stopped wearing heels?” “You’ve gotten thinner too.” “You’re working too hard.” “What’s the point of killing yourself?”
Finally whenever they met him they would gasp: “What is the matter with you?”
Saranin’s acquaintances began jeering at him behind his back: “He’s growing down.” “He’s striving toward the minimum.”
His wife finally noticed it a little later. He had been diminishing before her very eyes, gradually—and she had paid no attention. She noticed it from the baggy appearance of his clothing.
At first she roared with laughter at the peculiar decrease in her husband’s dimensions. Then she began to get angry.
“This is very, very strange and indecent,” she said. “Could I really have married such a Lilliputian!”
Soon it became necessary to alter all his clothing. All his old things were falling off him, his trousers came up to his ears, and his top hat fell down to his shoulders.
One day the head janitor of the building came into the kitchen.
“What’s going on around here?” he asked the cook sternly.
“Ain’t none of my affair,” fat red-faced Matryona was just about to burst out angrily, but she caught herself in time and said: “Ain’t nothing special going on. Everything’s just like always.”
“But look, your master’s started manifesting certain actions—now, is this permitted? What we really should do is hand him over to the law,” the head janitor said very sternly.
The chain on his belly bounced angrily.
Matryona suddenly sat down on a trunk and began to cry.
“You don’t have to tell me, Sidor Pavlovich,” she said. “The mistress and I can’t get over it, we can’t figure out what’s the matter with him.”
“For what reason? And on what grounds?” the head janitor exclaimed angrily. “Now is this really permitted?”
“Only one comfort,” said the cook, sniffling, “he don’t eat so much grub.”
The longer—the smaller.
Domestics, tailors, and everyone Saranin happened to come in contact with began to treat him with un-concealed contempt. He would for instance be running to work—a little man, barely able to drag an enormous briefcase with both his hands—and he would hear behind him the gloating laughter of a doorman, a janitor, of cabbies, of kids.
“Our nice little gentleman!” said the head janitor.
Saranin tasted much gall. He lost his wedding ring. His wife made a scene. She wrote to her parents in Moscow.
“The damned Armenian!” Saranin thought.
He often recalled how the Armenian, in counting out the drops, had poured too much in.
“Oh!” Saranin had exclaimed.
“Do not worry, dear heart, that is my mistake; I will charge you nothing for it.”
Saranin even went to a doctor. As he examined him he made playful comments. He found everything in order.
Or Saranin would be paying a visit to someone. At first the doorman would not let him in.
“Now, who would you be?” Saranin would tell him.
“I don’t know,” the doorman would say; “our folks don’t receive this kind.”
VI.
At work, in the office, people at first cast glances at him and laughed. Especially the young men. Still alive were the traditions of the colleagues of Akakii Akakievich Bashmachkin.
Then they began to grumble and speak what was on their minds.
The doorman now began to remove his overcoat with obvious reluctance.
“Look at the kind of officials we have nowadays,” he grumbled; “such small fry. What can you expect to get from a type like this at Christmas?”
And to keep up his prestige Saranin was forced to tip more lavishly and more frequently than before. But this did very little good. The doorman accepted the money, but looked at Saranin suspiciously.
Saranin blurted out to one of his colleagues that it was an Armenian who had done him dirt. The rumor about an Armenian intrigue quickly spread through the office. It even reached other offices …
The head of the office on one occasion came upon the little official in the hall. He looked him over in surprise. He said nothing. He returned to his office.
Then it was deemed necessary to report the matter. The head of the office asked: “Has this been going on long?”
The deputy head began to stammer.
“It’s a pity you didn’t notice it in good time,” the director said acidly, without waiting for an answer. “It’s strange that I didn’t know about it. I regret it very much.”
He had Saranin summoned. While Saranin was on his way to the director’s office, all the clerks looked at him with stem disapproval.
His heart trembling, Saranin went in to the boss’s office. A faint hope still remained with him—the hope that His Excellency intended to entrust him with a very flattering mission, one that would take advantage of his small stature, such as sending him to an international exhibition, or on some secret mission. But with the first sounds of the acid, directorially departmental voice this hope vanished like smoke.
“Sit down here,” said His Excellency, pointing at a chair.
Saranin managed to climb up. The director took one angry look at the official’s legs dangling in the air. He asked: “Mr. Saranin, are you familiar with the laws of civil service by government appointment?”
“Your Excellency,” Saranin began to babble, and folded his little hands on his chest in an imploring gesture.
“How did you have the audacity to go against government procedures so brazenly?”
“Believe me, Your Excellency …”
“Why have you done this?” asked the director.
And Saranin could no longer say anything. He began to cry. Of late he was very easily moved to tears.
The director looked at him. He shook his head. He began to speak very sternly: “Mr. Saranin, I have invited you here to inform you that your inexplicable behavior is becoming completely intolerable.”
“But Your Excellency, it would seem that I … everything efficiently …” Saranin babbled, “as for my stature …”
“Yes, precisely.”
“But this misfortune is beyond my control.”
“I am in no position to judge to what extent this strange and improper occurrence is a misfortune for you, and to what extent it is beyond your control, but I must tell you that for the office which has been entrusted to me your strange diminution is becoming positively scandalous. Many insinuating rumors are already circulating in the town. I cannot judge how well founded they are, but I do know that these rumors link your behavior with propaganda for Armenian separatism. You must agree that the department cannot be a place for hatching an Armenian intrigue directed at the dismemberment of the Russian sovereign power. We cannot keep officials who behave so strangely.”
Saranin jumped off the chair, trembled, squealed:
“A trick of nature, Your Excellency.”
“Strange, but the service …” And again he repeated the same question: “But why have you done it?”
“Your Excellency, I myself don’t know how this has happened.”
“Such instincts! By taking advantage of your smallness you can easily conceal yourself under any lady’s—excuse the expression—skirt. This cannot be tolerated.”
“I have never done that,” Saranin screamed.
But the director was not listening. He continued:
“I have even heard that you are doing this out of sympathy for the Japanese. But one must recognize a limit in everything.”
“But how could I be doing this, Your Excellency?”
“I do not know. But I ask you to put a stop to it. You could be retained in the service, but only in the provinces, and on the condition that this be stopped at once, and that you resume your usual dimensions. To restore your health you are given a four-month leave of absence. I request that you no longer come to the department. All the necessary papers will be sent to your home. My respects.”
“Your Excellency, I am capable of working. Why the leave of absence?”
“You will take it for reasons of health.”
“But I am well, Your Excellency.”
“Now, now, please.”
Saranin was given a leave of absence for four months.
VII.
Before long, Aglaia’s parents arrived for a visit. This was after dinner. At dinner Aglaia spent a long time ridiculing her husband. She had gone to her room.
He timidly went into his study, which was now so enormous for him, clambered up onto the couch, huddled in one corner, and began to cry. An oppressive feeling of bewilderment gnawed at him.
Why had such a misfortune fallen on him and nobody else? A ghastly, unparalleled misfortune.
What carelessness!
He sobbed and whimpered despairingly.
“Why, oh, why did I do it?”
Suddenly he heard familiar voices in the hallway. He began to tremble with fear. He tiptoed over to the washstand, so people would not notice his red and swollen eyes. But even washing was a chore—a chair had to be put in front of the stand.
The guests were already coming into the parlor. Saranin greeted them. He bowed to all of them and squeaked something unintelligible. Aglaia’s father gaped at him oafishly. He was big, fat, with a bull’s neck and a red face. Aglaia took after him.
Planting himself in front of his son-in-law with his legs wide apart he looked around warily, carefully took Saranin’s hand, bent over slightly, and, lowering his voice, said: “Son-in-law, we’ve come for a little get-together.”
It was evident that he intended to act circumspectly. He was feeling things out.
From behind his back emerged Aglaia’s mother, a scrawny and spiteful type. She began to shrill: “Where is he? Where? Aglaia, show me this Pygmalion.”
She was looking over Saranin’s head. She deliberately did not notice him. The flowers on her head swayed strangely. She was coming straight for Saranin. He gave a squeak and jumped aside.
Aglaia began to cry and said: “Here he is, Mamma.”
“I’m here, Mamma,” Saranin squealed and clicked his heels in a bow.
“You rat, what have you done to yourself? Why have you lopped so much off yourself?”
The maid snorted.
“You, dearie, don’t go snorting at your betters.”
Aglaia blushed.
“Mamma, let’s go into the living room.”
“Wait a minute. Speak up, you little rat. What are you making such a pygmy of yourself for?”
“Now hold on, just a minute. Mother,” the father stopped her.
She jumped on her husband too. “Didn’t I tell you not to marry her off to someone without a beard? Well, it turns out I was right.”
The father kept glancing warily at Saranin and trying to switch the conversation to politics. “The Japanese,” he was saying, “are approximately of a not very great stature, but to all appearances they’re a real brainy nation, and even, incidentally, resourceful.”
VIII.
And so Saranin grew small, very small. By now he could walk under a table very easily. And every day he grew slighter. He had not yet put his leave of absence to full use, except that he no longer went to the office. But they had not yet made plans to go anywhere.
Aglaia sometimes jeered at him, sometimes cried and said: “Where can I take you the way you are? It’s a shame and a disgrace.”
A walk from the study to the dining room became a trip of considerable scope. And furthermore, to climb up on a chair …
On the other hand, fatigue as such was pleasant.
It stimulated the appetite and the hope of growing. Saranin positively attacked his food. He devoured it out of all proportion to his miniature measurements. But he was not growing. On the contrary. He was getting tinier and tinier. Worst of all, the shrinking sometimes went in leaps, at the most inconvenient times. As if he were doing tricks.
Aglaia got the notion of passing him off as a boy and enrolling him in the gymnasium. She went to the nearest one. But the conversation with the director disheartened her.
Papers were required. It turned out that the plan could not be realized.
With an air of extreme bewilderment the director told Aglaia: “We cannot admit a senior civil servant. What would we do with him? The teacher might tell him to stand in the comer, and he would say: ‘I wear the Anna Cross.’ This is very awkward.”
Aglaia put on an imploring face and made an attempt to plead with him: “Couldn’t it be arranged somehow? He won’t dare to be naughty—I’ll see to that.’
The director remained adamant. “No,” he said stub-bornly, “a government official cannot be admitted to a gymnasium. Nowhere, in no directive, has provision been made. And it would be most awkward to go to higher authority with a representation of this kind. One never knows how they would look at it. It might create serious trouble. No, absolutely impossible. If you wish, you may appeal to the superintendent.”
But Aglaia no longer had the courage to go to see authorities.
IX.
One day a young man, his hair slicked down until it gleamed, came to see Aglaia. He clicked his heels in a courtly bow. He introduced himself. “I represent the firm of Strigal and Co. A top-quality store in the busiest center of the capital’s aristocratic traffic. We have a great many customers in the best and highest society.”
Aglaia, just to be on the safe side, made eyes at the representative of the illustrious firm. With a languid movement of her plump hand she directed him to a chair. She sat down with her back to the light. She inclined her head to the side. She prepared herself to listen.
The dazzlingly coiffured young man continued: “We have learned that it was your spouse’s pleasure to prefer a singularly miniature size. Therefore, our firm, facilitating the very latest vogues in the domain of ladies’ and gentlemen’s fashions, has the honor to propose to you, madam, with a view toward advertising, that we should, at no charge at all, tailor some suits for the gentleman according to the very best Paris fashion magazine.”
“For free?” Aglaia asked languidly.
“Not only for free, madam, but even with an honorarium, for your own, so to speak, benefit, but on one small and easily fulfilled condition.”
Meanwhile Saranin, overhearing that the conversation was about him, had made his way into the living room. He pattered around the young man with the dazzling coiffure. He kept clearing his throat and tapping his heels. He was very much annoyed that the representative of the firm Strigal and Co. paid not the slightest attention to him.
Finally he ran right up to the young man. He gave a thunderous squeak: “Haven’t you been told that I’m at home?”
The representative of the illustrious firm arose. He made a courtly bow. He sat down. He turned to Aglaia: “Only one tiny condition.”
Saranin snorted disdainfully. Aglaia began to laugh. She said, her curious eyes gleaming: “All right, tell me what the condition is.”
“Our condition is that the gentleman be good enough to sit in the window of our store as a living advertisement.”
Aglaia chortled with malicious glee.
“Splendid! Anything to get him out of my sight.”
“I won’t agree,” Saranin began to squeak in a piercing voice. “I can never bring myself to that. I am a senior civil servant and the holder of a decoration. To sit in the window of a store for advertising—why, I think that’s positively ridiculous.”
“Be quiet!” Aglaia shouted. “Nobody’s asking you.”
“What do you mean, nobody’s asking me?” Saranin screamed. “How long will I suffer from these minority groups?”
“Oh, the gentleman is mistaken,” the young man objected politely. “Our firm has nothing in common with minority elements. All our employees are Russian Orthodox and Lutherans from Riga. And we do not employ any Jews.”
“I don’t want to sit in the window!” Saranin shouted.
He was stamping his feet. Aglaia grabbed him by the arm. She pulled him into the bedroom.
“Where are you dragging me?” cried Saranin. “I won’t. Let me go!”
“I’ll quiet you down,” Aglaia shouted.
She shut the door tight.
“I’ll give you a beating you’ll remember,” she said, her teeth clenched. She started pummeling him. He thrashed around helplessly in her powerful arms. “You pygmy, you’re in my power. I can do whatever I want to you. I can stick you in my pocket. How dare you resist me! I don’t care anything about your titles. I’ll give you such a beating you won’t be able to tell night from day.”
“I’ll lodge a complaint,” Saranin squealed.
But he soon realized that resistance was useless. He was too small, and it was obvious that Aglaia had decided to bring all her strength to bear on the business at hand.
“Enough, enough,” he howled. “I’ll go into Strigal’s window. I’ll sit there—the disgrace will be yours. I’ll put on all my decorations.”
Aglaia roared with laughter.
“You’ll put on whatever Strigal gives you,” she shouted.
She dragged her husband out into the living room. She threw him to the salesman. She shouted: “Here he is! Take him away at once! And the money in advance! Every month!”
Her words were hysterical shrieks.
The young man took out his wallet. He counted out two hundred roubles.
“Not enough!” Aglaia screamed.
The young man gave a smile. He reached for another hundred-rouble note.
“I am not empowered to go any higher,” he said politely. “In a month you will be receiving the next installment.”
Saranin was running around the room.
“Into the window! Into the window!” he was screaming. “You damned Armenian! What have you done to me?”
And suddenly he settled by another three inches or so.
X.
Saranin’s helpless tears, Saranin’s anguish … What do Strigal and his partners care about that?
They paid. They are asserting their rights. The cruel rights of the capital.
Under the sway of Mammon, even a senior civil servant and the holder of a decoration occupies a position which fully corresponds to his exact dimensions, but which in no way accords with his pride. A Lilliputian dressed in the latest style runs around in the window of a fashionable store. Sometimes he is lost in contemplation of the pretty girls—so enormous!—sometimes he angrily shakes his little fists at boys who laugh at him.
At the windows of Strigal and Co. there is a crowd.
In the store of Strigal and Co. the clerks are knocked off their feet.
The workshop of Strigal and Co. is deluged with orders.
Strigal and Co. are basking in glory. Strigal and Co. are expanding their workshops.
Strigal and Co. are rich. Strigal and Co. are buying up houses.
Strigal and Co. are magnanimous: they feed Saranin royally, they spare no expense for his wife.
Aglaia is already getting a thousand a month.
Aglaia has also found other sources of income.
And acquaintanceships.
And lovers. And diamonds.
And carriages. And a house.
Aglaia feels cheerful and satisfied. She has filled out even more. She wears high-heeled shoes. She selects charming hats of gigantic dimensions.
When she visits her husband she pets him and feeds him from her finger, as if he were a bird. Saranin, in a dress suit with short tails, patters around on the table before her and squeaks something. His voice is piercing, like the whine of a mosquito. But the words are inaudible.
Puny little people may speak, but their peeping is inaudible to people of larger dimensions—Aglaia, Strigal, and his entire company. Aglaia, surrounded by clerks, listens to the squealing and peeping of this person. She chortles. She goes away.
Saranin is carried to the window where a full apartment has been set up for him in a nest of soft fabrics, its open side facing the public.
The tough street kids see a tiny little man sitting down at the table and starting to write petitions. Tiny, tiny petitions for the restoration of his rights that have been violated by Aglaia and by Strigal and Co. He writes. He sticks them into a tiny envelope. The kids die laughing.
Aglaia, meanwhile, takes her seat in a resplendent carriage. She is going for a drive before dinner.
XI.
Neither Aglaia nor Strigal and Co. gave any thought to how all this would end. They were content with the present. It seemed that there would be no end to the rain of gold that showered on them. But the end came. A most ordinary one. One that should have been anticipated.
Saranin kept getting tinier. Every day several new suits were made for him, each time smaller.
And suddenly, just after he had put on some tiny new trousers, he became altogether miniscule, before the eyes of the astonished clerks. He swam out of his tiny trousers. And he had already become as small as the head of a pin.
There blew a light draft of air. Saranin, as tiny as a dust speck, rose into the air. He whirled around. He merged with a cloud of dust specks dancing in a sunbeam.
He disappeared.
All searches were in vain. Nowhere could Saranin be found.
Aglaia, Strigal and Company, the police, the clergy, the authorities—all were at a complete loss.
How was Saranin’s disappearance to be officially formulated?
Finally, after consultation with the Academy of Sciences, it was decided to consider him as having been sent on a mission with a scientific purpose.
Then they forgot about him.
Saranin came to an end.
(1905) Translated by Maurice Friedberg