There is nothing better than Nevsky Avenue, at least in St. Petersburg. For St. Petersburg it is everything. This street shines in every way—it’s the beauty of our capital city! I know that not one of the city’s pale civil service inhabitants would exchange Nevsky Avenue for all possible blessings. It’s not only the man who is twenty-five years of age, who has a splendid mustache and an amazingly well-tailored frock coat, who’s enraptured with Nevsky Avenue, but even the man who has white whiskers sprouting from his chin and a head as smooth as a silver platter.1 And the ladies! Oh, the ladies find Nevsky Avenue even more pleasing. And who doesn’t find it pleasing? The moment you ascend to Nevsky Avenue, you catch the scent of pure promenading. Even if you have some necessary, obligatory business to do, as soon as you ascend to the avenue, you will surely forget all about your business. This is the only place where people appear not out of obligation, where they have not been driven by necessity and the mercantile interest that enfolds all of St. Petersburg. It seems that a person you encounter on Nevsky Avenue is less of an egoist than the ones you meet on Morskaya, Gorokhovaya, Liteinaya, Meshchanskaya, and other streets, where avarice and greed and necessity are expressed on both pedestrians and the people flying by in coaches and droshkies.2 Nevsky Avenue is St. Petersburg’s universal means of communication. The inhabitant of the Petersburg Side or Vyborg District who has not visited his friend who lives in Peski or the Moscow Turnpike neighborhood for several years can be assured that he will meet him here without fail.3 No address directory or inquiry office can supply such reliable information as Nevsky Avenue. All-powerful Nevsky Avenue! The sole entertainment available in St. Petersburg, so poor in outdoor amusements!4 How cleanly its sidewalks are swept, and my God, how many feet have left their traces on it! The clumsy, muddy boot of a retired soldier, under whose weight it seems the very granite cracks; and the miniature slipper, light as smoke, of a young lady who turns her little head to the shining windows of a store the way a sunflower turns to the sun; and the clanking saber of a hope-filled ensign, which makes a sharp scratch on it—everyone vents on it the power of strength or the power of weakness. What a rapid phantasmagoria takes place on it in the course of a single day! How many changes it undergoes in the course of only twenty-four hours!
Let us begin with the very earliest morning, when all of St. Petersburg smells of hot, freshly baked bread, and the city is filled with old women in tattered dresses and mantles, who are carrying out their raids on the churches and on compassionate passersby. Then Nevsky Avenue is empty. The solid store proprietors and their clerks are still sleeping in their fine linen nightshirts or lathering their noble cheeks and drinking coffee; beggars are gathering at the doors of the pastry shops, where a sleepy Ganymede, who yesterday flitted around like a fly with cups of hot chocolate, comes crawling out with a broom in his hand, without a tie, and tosses them stale pies and scraps.5 Impoverished people trudge along the streets: Sometimes the avenue is crossed by Russian peasants, hurrying to work, in boots spattered with lime, boots that could not be washed clean even by the waters of the Catherine Canal, famous for its purity.6 It is usually indecent for ladies to walk at that time, because the Russian common folk like to employ harsh expressions of the sort that the ladies will probably never hear even in the theater. Sometimes a sleepy civil servant will trudge by with a portfolio under his arm, if his route to the Department lies across Nevsky Avenue. One may state decisively that at that time, that is, before twelve o’clock, Nevsky Avenue is not anyone’s goal, it serves only as a means: It gradually fills with persons who have their own occupations, their own worries, their own annoyances, but who are not thinking about the avenue at all. The Russian peasant is talking about a ten-kopeck piece or seven two-kopeck copper coins, old men and old women are gesticulating or talking to themselves, sometimes with dramatic gestures, but no one listens to them or laughs at them, with the sole exception, perhaps, of the urchins in coarse motley smocks, carrying empty liter flasks or finished boots, who run along Nevsky Avenue like lightning.7 At that time, no matter what you wear, even if you have a peaked cap on instead of a hat, even if your collar is sticking up too far out of your necktie—no one will notice.
At twelve o’clock, tutors of all nations make their incursions onto Nevsky Avenue with their charges in cambric collars. English Joneses and French Coques walk arm in arm with the charges that have been entrusted to their parental care and explain to them with seemly solidity that the signs over the stores are made so that by means of them one might learn what is located in the stores themselves. Governesses—pale English misses and rosy Slavs—walk majestically behind the slight, fidgety girls in their care, ordering them to raise their shoulders a little higher and to stand up straighter. In short, at this time Nevsky Avenue is a pedagogical Nevsky Avenue. But the closer it gets to two o’clock, the fewer the tutors, pedagogues, and children. They are finally displaced by their affectionate sires, who walk arm in arm with their variegated, multicolored, weak-nerved helpmates. Little by little their company is joined by all those who have completed their important domestic tasks, such as: talking to their doctor about the weather and about a small pimple that has popped up on their nose; inquiring about the health of their horses and their children, who by the way display great talents; reading a theater poster and an important article in the newspapers about the personages who have arrived and departed; and finally drinking a cup of coffee and tea. They are also joined by those whom an enviable fate has endowed with the blessed rank of civil servant on special commission. They are also joined by those who serve in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs and who are distinguished by the nobility of their occupations and habits. My God, what splendid posts and offices there are! How they elevate and delight the soul! But, alas! I am not in the civil service and have been deprived of the pleasure of seeing how elegantly the supervisors treat themselves.
Everything you encounter on Nevsky Avenue, everything is filled with propriety: the men in their long frock coats with their hands in their pockets, the ladies in pink, white, and pale-blue satin redingotes and little hats. Here you will encounter unique whiskers, which have been tucked under the necktie with unusual and amazing skill; velvety whiskers, satiny whiskers, whiskers as black as coal, but, alas, these whiskers are the sole property of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs. Providence has denied black whiskers to those serving in other departments; they must wear red whiskers, which is unpleasant for them in the highest degree. Here you will encounter marvelous mustaches that cannot be described by any pen or any brush; mustaches to which the best part of a life has been devoted—the object of long vigils by day and by night, mustaches that have had the most ravishing perfumes and fragrances poured onto them and have been anointed by the most precious and rare types of pomade, mustaches that are rolled in fine vellum paper for the night, mustaches that breathe of the extremely touching devotion their possessors feel for them and that are the envy of passersby. Anyone on Nevsky Avenue will be blinded by a thousand types of little hats, dresses, scarves—particolored, light, which keep the devotion of their lady owners sometimes for two whole days. It seems as if a whole sea of butterflies has suddenly ascended from the stems of plants and is billowing in a brilliant swarm over the black beetles of the male sex. Here you will encounter the kind of waists that you have never dreamed of: slim, narrow waists, no thicker than the neck of a bottle, which will cause you to walk respectfully aside, so as not to shove them incautiously with an impolite elbow; your heart will be overcome by timidity and fear lest an incautious breath should cause this most charming creation of nature and art to snap in two. And the ladies’ sleeves you will encounter on Nevsky Avenue! Oh, how lovely! They somewhat resemble two hot-air balloons, so that the lady would suddenly ascend into the air if the man were not holding onto her, because it is as easy and pleasant to raise a lady into the air as it is to raise a glass of champagne to one’s lips.
Nowhere do people bow to each other upon meeting so nobly and easily as on Nevsky Avenue. Here you will encounter a unique smile, a smile that is the summit of artistry, sometimes the kind of smile that causes you to melt with pleasure, sometimes the kind that makes you see yourself as lower than the grass and causes you to hang your head, sometimes the kind that makes you feel taller than the Admiralty spire and causes you to raise your head again.8 Here you will encounter people talking about a concert or about the weather with unusual nobility and a feeling of their own dignity. Here you will encounter a thousand incomprehensible characters and phenomena. Oh, Creator! What strange characters you will encounter on Nevsky Avenue! There is a multitude of those people who when they meet you will inevitably look at your boots, and if you pass by them, they will turn around to look at your coattails. To this very day I cannot understand why this happens. At first I thought that they were shoemakers, but it isn’t that at all. For the most part they work in various civil service departments, and many of them can write a memorandum from one government office to another in the most superb manner; or they are people who occupy themselves with strolling and reading newspapers in pastry shops—in a word, for the most part, they are all decent people.
At this blessed time from two to three o’clock in the afternoon, which might be called the movable capital city of Nevsky Avenue, the main exposition of all the best works of man takes place. One displays a dandified frock coat with the best beaver trim, another displays a beautiful Grecian nose, a third bears superb whiskers, a fourth—a pair of pretty little eyes and an amazing little hat, a fifth—a talisman ring on a dandified pinky finger, a sixth—a little foot in an enchanting slipper, a seventh—a necktie that arouses amazement, an eighth—a mustache that strikes people with astonishment. But three o’clock strikes, and the exposition ends, the crowd thins out… At three o’clock there is a new change. Suddenly spring arrives on Nevsky Avenue: It is all covered with civil servants in green uniforms. Hungry titular, court, and other kinds of councillors try with all their might to hasten their step.9 Young collegiate registrars, gubernial and collegiate secretaries hurry to make use of the remaining time and walk along Nevsky Avenue with the kind of bearing that flat out denies that they have been sitting in an office for six hours. But the old collegiate secretaries and titular and court councillors walk quickly, their heads bent: They couldn’t care less about occupying themselves with scrutinizing the passersby; they have not yet torn themselves away from their cares; their heads are filled with a muddle and a whole archive of business that they’ve begun and not finished. For a long time they see instead of a shop sign a file full of papers or the fat face of the Chancellery administrator.
From four o’clock Nevsky Avenue is empty, and you will most likely not encounter a single civil servant on it. A seamstress from one of the stores will run across Nevsky Avenue with a box in her hands; the pitiful victim of a philanthropic court clerk, cast out into the world in a rough wool coat; an oddball from out of town, for whom all hours of the day are the same; a long tall Englishwoman with a reticule and a book in her hands; an artisan from a cooperative, a Russian man in a frock coat of thick cotton with its waist gathered at the back, with a narrow beard, who lives his whole life in a slipshod way, in whom everything is moving—his back, and his arms, and his legs, and his head—as he passes politely along the sidewalk; sometimes a lowly craftsman; you will not encounter anyone else on Nevsky Avenue.
But as soon as dusk falls on the buildings and streets and the policeman on duty covers himself with bast matting and scrambles up a ladder to light the streetlamp, and those prints that don’t dare to show themselves in broad daylight start to peep out of the low little windows of the stores, then Nevsky Avenue again comes to life and begins to stir.10 Then that mysterious time sets in when the lamps lend everything a sort of alluring, miraculous light. You will encounter quite a few young people, bachelors for the most part, in warm frock coats and overcoats. At that time one senses a kind of goal, or rather something that resembles a goal, something extraordinarily unaccountable. Everyone’s steps speed up and become quite uneven. Long shadows flash along the walls and the roadway and nearly reach the Police Bridge with their heads. Young collegiate registrars and gubernial and collegiate secretaries spend a long time strolling along, but for the most part the old collegiate registrars and titular and court councillors sit at home, either because they are married folk or because the German woman cooks who live with them prepare very tasty meals. Here you will encounter respectable old men, who at two o’clock stroll along Nevsky Avenue with such solemnity and such amazing nobility. You will see them running just like the young collegiate registrars, in order to peek under the little hat of a lady they have glimpsed from afar, whose thick lips and cheeks, plastered with rouge, are so fancied by many of the men out for a stroll, but most of all by the shop clerks, cooperative artisans, and merchants, who always stroll in a whole crowd, wearing German frock coats and usually arm in arm.
“Stop!” shouted Lieutenant Pirogov at that moment, tugging the sleeve of a young man in a tailcoat and cloak who was walking with him. “Did you see her?”
“I saw her, she’s marvelous, she’s a perfect Bianca of Perugino.”11
“Who are you talking about?”
“About her, the one with the dark hair. And what eyes! My God, what eyes! Her whole posture, and her contours, and the setting of her face—they’re miracles!”12
“I’m talking about the blonde who passed behind her in that direction. Why don’t you follow the brunette, if she pleased you so much?”
“Oh, how could I!” the young man in the tailcoat exclaimed, blushing. “As if she were one of those who walk along Nevsky Avenue in the evenings. She must be a very well-born lady,” he continued with a sigh, “her cloak alone is worth about eighty rubles!”
“You simpleton!” Pirogov shouted, pushing him by force in the direction where her brightly colored cloak was fluttering. “Get going, you nincompoop, you’ll let her slip away! And I’ll go after the blonde.”
The two friends went their separate ways.
“We know all about your type,” Pirogov thought to himself with a self-satisfied and self-confident smile. He was convinced that no beautiful woman could possibly resist him.
The young man in the tailcoat and cloak walked timidly and tremulously in the direction of the multicolored cloak fluttering in the distance, which would spread out with a bright gleam as it approached the light of the streetlamp, then would instantly be covered in darkness as it moved away from it. His heart was pounding, and he involuntarily quickened his pace. He didn’t dare to think of obtaining the right to the attention of the beautiful woman who was flying into the distance, much less admitting such a dark idea as the one Lieutenant Pirogov had hinted at; he just wanted to see her house, to note where this lovely creature, who seemed to have flown down from heaven right onto Nevsky Avenue and would probably fly away no one knows where, had her dwelling place. He flew so quickly that he was constantly pushing stately gentlemen with gray whiskers off the sidewalk.
This young man belonged to that class that constitutes a somewhat strange phenomenon here and belongs to the citizenry of St. Petersburg just as much as a face that appears to us in a dream belongs to the world of substance. This exceptional estate is very unusual in the city where everything is either civil servants, or merchants, or German craftsmen. He was an artist. Isn’t that a strange phenomenon? A Petersburg artist! An artist in the land of snows, an artist in the land of Finns, where everything is wet, smooth, flat, pale, gray, and foggy. These artists do not at all resemble Italian artists, as proud and fiery as Italy and its sky. On the contrary, they are for the most part a kind, gentle folk, shy, carefree, who love their art, who drink tea with two friends in a small room, modestly discussing their beloved subject and quite disregarding anything superfluous. Such an artist is always inviting some old beggar woman to his place and forcing her to sit for a whole six hours so that he can transfer her pitiful, impassive countenance onto canvas. He draws a perspective of his room, in which there is all sorts of artistic trash: plaster hands and feet, which have been rendered coffee-colored by time and dust, broken easels, a palette turned upside down, a friend playing the guitar, walls stained by paint, with an opened window through which one can glimpse the pale Neva River and some poor fishermen in red peasant shirts. These artists always put a kind of gray, turbid coloration on everything—the indelible imprint of the north. For all that, they labor over their work with true enjoyment.
They often harbor true talent in themselves, and if only the fresh air of Italy were to waft onto them, that talent would probably develop just as freely, broadly, and brightly as a plant that is finally taken out of a room into the pure air. They are generally very timid: A decoration with a star and a thick epaulet cause them such embarrassment that they involuntarily lower the price of their works. They sometimes like to play the dandy, but this dandyism always seems a little too striking and somewhat resembles a patch. You’ll sometimes encounter them wearing an excellent tailcoat and a soiled cloak, or an expensive velvet vest and a frock coat all covered with paint. In exactly the same way you’ll sometimes see on one of their unfinished landscape paintings a nymph sketched in upside down, which the artist, who couldn’t find any other place, tossed onto the soiled primer of his previous work, which he had once painted with great relish. An artist of this kind never looks straight into your eyes, and if he does, he does it in a kind of turbid, indefinite way; he does not pierce you with the hawkish gaze of an observer or the falconine glance of a cavalry officer. This is because at one and the same moment he is seeing your features and the features of some plaster Hercules that stands in his room, or he’s imagining his own painting that he’s planning to create. That is why he often gives incoherent answers, sometimes not to the point, and the objects that are mixed up in his head increase his timidity even more.
Such is the genus to which the young man we have described belonged, the artist Piskaryov—shy, timid, but bearing the sparks of feeling in his soul, sparks that were ready to turn into flame at an opportune moment. With secret trembling he hurried after the object that had so impressed him, and it seemed that he was amazed at his own audacity. The unknown creature to whom his eyes, thoughts, and feelings now clung suddenly turned her head and glanced at him. My God, what divine features! The loveliest, most blindingly white brow was shadowed by hair as beautiful as agate. These marvelous tresses curled, and some of them, falling out from under her little hat, brushed her cheeks, which were touched by a faint, fresh rosiness, called forth by the cold of the evening. Her lips were closed by a whole swarm of the loveliest reveries. Everything that remains from the memories of childhood, everything that leads to daydreaming and quiet inspiration by shining lamplight—all of that seemed to be combined and merged and reflected in her harmonious lips. She glanced at Piskaryov, and his heart began to tremble from that glance; she glanced sternly, a feeling of indignation emerged on her face at the sight of such an insolent pursuit; but anger itself was bewitching on that beautiful face. Overcome by shame and timidity, he stopped, his eyes lowered; but how could he lose this divinity and not find the holy place to which it had descended for its sojourn? These were the thoughts that came to the young dreamer, and he made up his mind to pursue her. But so as not to allow her to notice it, he kept at a good distance, he looked from side to side in a carefree way, inspecting the shop signs, and meanwhile he did not let a single step of the unknown woman escape his vision. The number of passersby diminished, and the street became quieter. The beauty looked back, and it seemed to him as if a slight smile flashed on her lips. He started trembling all over and couldn’t believe his eyes. No, it was the streetlamp’s deceptive light that expressed the semblance of a smile on her face; no, it was his own daydreams laughing at him. But he gasped for breath, everything inside him turned into an indefinite trembling, all his senses burned, and everything in front of him was swathed in a fog. The sidewalk rushed beneath his feet, the coaches with their galloping horses seemed to be motionless, the bridge stretched out and snapped apart at its arch, a building stood with its roof downward, a police booth toppled toward him, and the sentry’s halberd along with the golden words and painted scissors on a shop sign seemed to be gleaming on the very eyelashes of his eyes.13 And all this was produced by a single glance, a single turn of a pretty little head.
Hearing nothing, seeing nothing, heeding nothing, he rushed after the light traces of the beautiful little feet, trying to moderate the speed of his own steps, which flew in time with the beating of his heart. Sometimes he would be overcome by doubt—was the expression on her face really so well disposed?—and then he would stop for a moment, but the beating of his heart, the insuperable strength and disquiet of all his senses, urged him forward. He didn’t even notice how a four-story building suddenly rose up before him, all four rows of windows, shining with lights, looked at him all at once, and the entryway fence repulsed him with its iron shove. He saw the unknown woman fly up the stairs, look back, place a finger to her lips, and give him a sign to follow her. His knees were trembling; his senses and thoughts were burning; a lightning bolt of joy pierced his heart with its unbearable tip. No, this was no longer a daydream! My God! So much happiness in a single instant! Such a miraculous life in two minutes!
But wasn’t this all happening in a dream? Could it really be true? He was ready to give up his whole life in exchange for a single heavenly glance from this woman, he considered it an inexpressible blessing that he had been able to come near her dwelling place—could it really be true that she was now so well disposed and attentive to him? He flew up the stairs. He was not feeling any earthly idea; he was not warmed by the flame of an earthly passion, no, at that moment he was as pure and chaste as a virginal youth, still breathing with an indefinite spiritual need for love. And that which in a debauched man would arouse impertinent thoughts, that very thing, on the contrary, made his thoughts more holy. The trust that the beautiful weak creature had shown him, this trust placed upon him a vow of knightly severity, the vow to slavishly carry out all her commands. He only wished that these commands would be as difficult and hard to carry out as possible, so that he would need an even greater exertion of his powers in order to fly to overcome them. He had no doubt that there was some secret and most important occurrence that had caused the unknown woman to put her faith in him, that he would probably be required to perform significant services, and he felt in himself the strength and resolve for any task.
The staircase twisted, and along with it his swift daydreams twisted. “Be careful!” her voice resounded like a harp, and it filled all his veins with new tremors. At the dark top of the fourth story the unknown woman knocked at a door—it opened, and they went in together. A rather handsome woman met them with a candle in her hand, but she looked at Piskaryov in such a strange and insolent way that he involuntarily lowered his eyes. They entered the room. Three female figures in various corners appeared before his eyes. One was laying out some cards; another was sitting at a piano and playing a pitiful simulacrum of an old polonaise with two fingers; the third was sitting in front of a mirror, combing out her long hair, and having no thought of abandoning her toilette upon the entrance of an unknown person. A sort of unpleasant disorder, the kind one only encounters in the carefree room of a bachelor, reigned over everything. Quite good quality furniture was covered with dust; a spider was covering an ornamental cornice with its web; through the slightly open door of the next room a spurred boot gleamed and the piping of a uniform showed red; a loud male voice and female laughter resounded without the slightest restraint.
My God, where had he come to! At first he didn’t want to believe it and began to scrutinize more closely the objects that filled the room, but the bare walls and the uncurtained windows showed no sign of the presence of a careful housewife; the raddled faces of these pitiful creatures, one of whom sat down almost right in front of his nose and looked him over just as calmly as if he were a stain on a stranger’s clothes—all of this convinced him that he had come to that revolting refuge where pitiful debauchery has made its home base, debauchery engendered by the meretricious civilization and terrible overpopulation of the capital city. It was that refuge where man has blasphemously crushed and ridiculed everything pure and holy that adorns life, where woman, that beauty of the world, the crown of creation, has been turned into a strange, ambiguous being, where together with the purity of her soul she has been deprived of everything feminine, has revoltingly adopted the manners and insolence of a man, and has ceased to be that weak, splendid being who is so different from us. Piskaryov measured her from head to foot with amazed eyes, as if still not convinced that she was really the same person who had cast such a spell on him and carried him away on Nevsky Avenue. But she stood before him just as beautiful; her hair was just as splendid; her eyes still seemed heavenly to him. She was fresh; she was only seventeen years old; it was obvious that horrible debauchery had only recently overtaken her; it still had not dared to touch her cheeks, they were fresh and slightly shaded by a subtle rosiness—she was splendidly beautiful.
He stood motionless before her and was ready to start daydreaming just as naively as he had before. But the beauty got bored by his long silence and gave him a significant smile, looking straight into his eyes. This smile was filled with a sort of pitiful insolence. It was just as strange and just as inappropriate to her face as an expression of piety is to the ugly mug of a bribe taker or a bookkeeper’s ledger is to a poet. He shuddered. She opened her pretty mouth and started saying something, but it was all so stupid, so vulgar… As if a person’s intellect abandons them along with their chastity. He did not want to hear any more. He was extremely ridiculous and as simple as a little child. Instead of taking advantage of her good favor, instead of rejoicing at such a chance, as no doubt any other man would have rejoiced in his place, he took to his heels at full speed, like a wild goat, and ran out into the street.
Hanging his head in despair, he sat in his room like a pauper who has found a priceless pearl and immediately dropped it into the sea. “Such a beauty, such divine features—and where? In what kind of place!” That is all he was able to utter.
Indeed, we are never so powerfully overcome by pity as when we see beauty touched by the pestilential breath of debauchery. Let ugliness make friends with it, but beauty, tender beauty… in our thoughts it can only be merged with chastity and purity. The beautiful woman who had cast such a spell on poor Piskaryov was in fact a miraculous, unusual phenomenon. Her residence in that contemptible realm seemed even more unusual. All her features were so purely formed, the whole expression of her splendid face was marked by such nobility, that it was impossible to think that debauchery had unsheathed its terrible claws over her. She would have been the priceless pearl, the whole world, the whole paradise, the whole wealth of her passionate spouse. She would have been a splendid, quiet star in an obscure family circle, and with one movement of her splendid lips she would have given sweet orders. She would have been a divinity in a crowded hall, on a bright parquet floor, by shining candlelight, receiving the silent homage of the crowd of admirers lying prostrate at her feet. But, alas! By the horrible will of the hellish spirit that thirsts to destroy the harmony of life, she had been cast with a guffaw into his abyss.
Imbued with tormenting pity, he sat before his candle with its burnt wick. Midnight had long passed, the tower bell pealed half past twelve, and he sat motionless, sleepless, without active wakefulness. Somnolence, taking advantage of his motionlessness, had already begun to quietly overcome him, the room had already begun to disappear, only the light of the candle glimmered through the reveries that were overcoming him, when suddenly a knock at the door caused him to shudder and come to. The door opened, and a footman in a rich livery entered. A rich livery had never peeped into his lonely room, moreover at such an unusual hour… He was bewildered and looked at the footman with impatient curiosity.
“The lady,” the footman said with a polite bow, “whose home you were good enough to visit a few hours ago, has ordered me to invite you to come see her and has sent a coach for you.”
Piskaryov stood there in silent amazement, thinking, “A coach, a footman in livery! No, there must be some mistake…”
“Listen, my dear man,” he said timidly. “You have probably come to the wrong place. No doubt the lady sent you to get someone else, not me.”
“No, sir, I am not mistaken. Was it not you who were good enough to accompany my lady on foot to her home which is on Liteinaya Street, in a room on the fourth floor?”
“It was.”
“Well then, please come quickly, my lady wishes to see you without fail and asks you to come to see her at her house.”
Piskaryov ran down the stairs. Indeed a coach was waiting outside. He got in, the doors slammed, the stones of the roadway thundered under the wheels and the hooves—and an illuminated perspective of buildings with bright signs rushed past the coach windows. Piskaryov was thinking the whole way and could not figure out this incident. Her own house, the coach, the footman in rich livery—he simply could not reconcile all this with the room on the fourth floor, the dusty windows, and the out-of-tune piano.
The coach stopped at a brightly illuminated entrance, and he was immediately impressed: a row of equipages, the talking of coachmen, brightly illuminated windows, and the sounds of music. The footman in rich livery helped him out of the coach and respectfully accompanied him into the entryway flanked by marble columns, with a doorman dripping with gold, with cloaks and fur coats thrown about, with a bright lamp. An airy staircase with shining banisters, perfumed with fragrances, led upward. He was already on it, he had already ascended into the first ballroom, where he became frightened and lurched backward at his first step because of the horrible crowd. The unusually motley collection of faces caused him acute consternation: It seemed to him that a demon had crumbled the whole world into a multitude of various pieces and had mixed them all together with no meaning or sense. Gleaming ladies’ shoulders and black tailcoats, chandeliers, lamps, airy flying gauze, ethereal ribbons, and a fat contrabass peeping out from behind the railings of the magnificent music gallery—everything looked brilliant to him. He saw all at one time so many respectable old men and half-old men with stars on their tailcoats, ladies who stepped onto the parquet floor so lightly, proudly, and gracefully, or who were sitting in rows, he heard so many French and English words, and the young men in black tailcoats were filled with such nobility, they spoke and were silent with such dignity, they were so skilled at saying nothing superfluous, they joked so majestically, they smiled so respectfully, they had such superb whiskers, they were so skilled at showing off their excellent hands when they adjusted their neckties, the ladies were so airy, so plunged into perfect self-satisfaction and rapture, they lowered their eyes so enchantingly, that… but the humbled look of Piskaryov as he leaned on a column in fear showed at a glance that he had completely lost his bearings.
At that time the crowd had surrounded a dancing group. They flew about, entwined by the transparent creations of Paris, in dresses woven of air itself; their glittering little feet carelessly touched the parquet and were more ethereal than if they had not touched it at all. But one of them was more beautiful than them all, more sumptuously and brilliantly dressed. An inexpressible, most subtle combination of taste was spilled all over her attire, and nevertheless it seemed as if she had not given it a care and it had just poured out involuntarily all by itself. She both looked and did not look at the surrounding crowd of spectators, her splendid long eyelashes were indifferently lowered, and the glittering whiteness of her face was even more blinding when a slight shadow lay on her charming brow as she bowed her head.
Piskaryov made every effort to move the crowd aside and scrutinize her, but to his great annoyance, a huge head with dark curly hair kept blocking his view, and the crowd was pressing on him so that he did not dare to move either forward or back, fearing that he might somehow shove a privy councillor. But now he had finally managed to make his way forward and looked at his clothes in order to put them into seemly order. Heavenly Creator, what is this! He was wearing a frock coat that was all splattered with paint: In his hurry to leave, he had forgotten to change into a decorous outfit. He blushed up to his ears, lowered his head, and wanted to disappear, but there was nowhere he could disappear to: Gentlemen of the bedchamber in brilliant costume had moved together behind him to form a solid wall.14 Now he wanted to be as far away as possible from the beautiful woman with the splendid brow and eyelashes. In terror he raised his eyes to see whether she was looking at him: My God! She was standing before him… But what is this? What is this? “It’s her!” he cried, almost at the top of his voice. In fact, it was her, the same woman he had encountered on Nevsky and accompanied to her dwelling.
Meanwhile she raised her eyelashes and looked at everyone with her clear gaze. “Oh my, oh my, how beautiful!” was all he could utter with bated breath. She cast her eyes over the whole circle of people, who were thirstily vying to catch her attention, but she quickly averted her eyes with fatigue and inattention and met the eyes of Piskaryov. Oh, what heaven! What paradise! Creator, give me the strength to bear it! Life cannot contain this, it will destroy and carry off my soul! She gave a sign, not with her hand, not with the bowing of her head, no, in her shattering eyes the sign was expressed by such a subtle, unnoticeable expression that no one could have seen it, but he saw it, he understood it. The dance went on for a long time; the exhausted music seemed to be going out, dying away, and then it would break out again, squealing and thundering; finally—the end! She sat down, her breast rose under the fine smoke of gauze; her hand (oh, Creator, what a miraculous hand!) fell onto her knees, crushed her airy dress, and the dress seemed to breathe music, and its subtle lilac color set off the bright whiteness of that splendid hand still more visibly. If he could only touch it—and nothing more! No other desires—they were all too impertinent… He stood behind her chair, not daring to speak, not daring to breathe.
“Were you bored?” she said. “I was also bored. I see that you hate me…” she added, lowering her long eyelashes.
“Hate you! Me? I…” Piskaryov, utterly bewildered, wanted to say, and he would probably have uttered a heap of incoherent words, but at that moment a chamberlain approached with witty, pleasant remarks, with a beautifully curled forelock on his head. He pleasantly displayed a row of rather handsome teeth and with each of his sharp witticisms he drove a sharp nail into Piskaryov’s heart. At last, luckily, one of the people standing by addressed some question to the chamberlain.
“How unbearable this is!” she said, raising her heavenly eyes to him. “I’ll take a seat at the other end of the room; meet me there!”
She slipped through the crowd and disappeared. He pushed the crowd aside like a maniac and was already there.
So, it was her! She was sitting there like a queen, more beautiful than anyone, more splendid than anyone, and was trying to catch sight of him.
“You are here,” she said quietly. “I will be frank with you: The circumstances of our meeting probably seemed strange to you. Do you really think that I could belong to that contemptible class of creatures in which you encountered me? My actions will seem strange to you, but I will reveal a secret to you: Will you be capable,” she said, gazing at him fixedly, “of never betraying it?”
“Oh, yes! Yes! Yes!”
But at that moment an elderly man came up, started talking to her in a language Piskaryov didn’t understand, and offered her his arm. She looked at Piskaryov with a pleading glance and gave him a sign to stay where he was and await her return, but in a fit of impatience he was incapable of obeying any orders even from her lips. He set off after her, but the crowd separated them. He could no longer see the lilac dress. He passed anxiously through room after room and mercilessly shoved aside everyone he met, but in all the rooms were sitting big shots playing whist, plunged into deathlike silence. In one corner of the room a few elderly men were arguing about the advantages of military service over civil service; in another, some people in superb tailcoats were tossing off light remarks about the multivolume works of a hard-working poet. Piskaryov felt an elderly man with a respectable appearance grab the button of his tailcoat and offer for his consideration a most judicious remark, but he rudely shoved him aside, not even noticing that he had a fairly significant decoration around his neck. Piskaryov ran into another room—and she was not there. Into a third—she was not there either. “Where can she be? Give her to me! Oh, I cannot live without catching a glimpse of her! I want to hear out what she had to say”—but all his searching was in vain. Agitated, exhausted, he huddled into a corner and looked at the crowd, but his strained eyes started to present everything to him in a kind of unclear form. Finally he could quite distinctly see the walls of his own room. He raised his eyes; before him stood the candlestick with the fire almost gone out deep inside it. The whole candle had melted away; the tallow had spilled onto his table.
So he had been sleeping! My God, what a dream! Why did he have to wake up? Why couldn’t he have waited just one more minute? She would surely have appeared again! The annoying light of day looked into his windows with its unpleasant, dull radiance. The room was in such gray, turbid disorder… Oh, how revolting reality is! How can it compare with a dream? He quickly got undressed, lay down in bed, and wrapped himself up in the blanket, wishing to summon for a moment the dream that had flown away. Sleep did in fact come without delay, but it presented to him something quite different from what he wanted to see: First Lieutenant Pirogov appeared with a pipe, then the Academy watchman, then an actual state councillor, then the head of a Finnish woman whose portrait he had once wanted to paint, and other such nonsense.
He lay in bed right up to noontime, wishing to fall asleep, but she did not appear. If only she would show her splendid features for a moment, if only her light step would rustle for a moment, if only her bare arm, as bright as empyrean snow, would flash before his eyes.
Casting everything aside, forgetting everything, he sat looking crushed and hopeless, full of nothing but a single dream. He had no desire to touch anything. Without interest, without life, his eyes looked out the window into the courtyard, where a dirty water carrier was pouring water that froze as soon as it hit the air, and the goaty voice of a peddler rattled: “Old clothes for sale.” Everyday things and actual things struck his hearing strangely. He sat like that right until evening and then jumped eagerly into bed. He struggled with sleeplessness for a long time, and finally overcame it. Again he had a dream, a vulgar, nasty dream. “My God, have mercy: Show her to me at least for a moment, just one moment!” He again waited for evening, again fell asleep, again dreamed of a civil servant who was both a civil servant and a bassoon; oh, this was intolerable! Finally she appeared! Her little head and her ringlets… she was looking… Oh, for so short a time! Again a fog, again some stupid dream.
Finally dreams became his life, and from that time his whole life took a strange turn. One might say that he slept while he was awake and stayed awake while he was asleep. If anyone had seen him sitting silently in front of an empty table or walking along the street, they would probably have taken him for a lunatic or someone destroyed by strong drink. His gaze was devoid of any significance, his natural absentmindedness had finally expanded and had imperiously banished all feelings and movements from his face. He came to life only as night set in.
This condition disordered his energies, and his most horrible torment was that finally sleep began to abandon him entirely. Wishing to save sleep, his only source of wealth, he employed all possible means to restore it. He had heard that there was a means for restoring sleep—all one had to do was to take opium. But where could he get this opium? He remembered a certain Persian, the owner of a store that sold shawls, who when they met almost always asked him to paint a beautiful woman for him. Piskaryov resolved to go see him, supposing that he would no doubt have some of this opium. The Persian received him sitting on a divan with his legs crossed under him.
“What do you need opium for?” he asked.
Piskaryov told him about his insomnia.
“Fine, I’ll give you some opium, but just paint me a beautiful woman. She should be a really fine beauty! Her eyebrows should be black and her eyes as large as olives, and I should be lying next to her and smoking a pipe! Do you hear? She should be fine! She should be a beauty!”15
Piskaryov promised to do it all. The Persian left for a moment and returned with a little jar filled with a dark liquid, poured part of it into another jar and gave it to Piskaryov with the instruction that he use no more than seven drops dissolved in water. He eagerly grabbed the precious jar, which he would not have traded for a pile of gold, and ran home as fast as he could.
When he got home, he poured a few drops into a glass of water, swallowed it, and collapsed into his bed to fall asleep.
My God, what joy! It was her! Again her! But now she looked quite different. Oh, how nicely she sits by the window of a bright little house in the country! Her attire breathes the kind of simplicity that swathes only the thoughts of a poet. The way her hair is arranged… Oh, Creator, what a simple hairstyle and how it becomes her! A short kerchief was lightly thrown onto her shapely little neck; everything about her was modest, everything about her bore the secret, inexplicable sense of good taste. How sweet was her graceful walk! How musical was the sound of her steps and of her simple little dress! How pretty was her arm, encircled by a bracelet made of hair!16 She spoke to him with tears in her voice: “Do not despise me. I am not at all the person you take me for. Look at me, look carefully and tell me: Am I really capable of what you think I am?”—“Oh! No, no! Let he who dares to think that, let him…” But he woke up, deeply moved, devastated, with tears in his eyes. “It would be better if you had not existed at all! If you had not lived in the world but had been the creation of an inspired artist! I would never have left the canvas, I would have eternally looked at you and kissed you. I would have lived and breathed through you, as through the most splendid daydream, and I would have been happy then. No desires would have extended any further. I would have summoned you as a guardian angel in sleep and in waking, and I would have awaited you when I had occasion to depict the divine and the holy. But now… what a horrible life! What use is her life? Is the life of a madman pleasant for his relatives and friends, who once loved him? My God, what is our life! An eternal discord between dreams and substance!”
Such were the ideas that constantly occupied him. He thought of nothing, he ate almost nothing, and he awaited evening and his desired vision with impatience, with the passion of a lover. The constant directing of his thoughts at a single object finally took such power over his whole existence and imagination that his desired image appeared to him almost every day, always in a situation that was the opposite of reality, because his thoughts were quite pure, like the thoughts of a child. By means of these dreams the object itself somehow became pure and was completely transformed.
The drafts of opium made his thoughts white-hot, and if ever there had been a man enamored to the last degree of madness, impetuously, horribly, ruinously, restlessly, that unfortunate man was he.
Of all his dreams one was more delightful for him than all the rest. In it he saw his studio, he was so cheerful, he sat so pleasurably with his palette in his hands! And she was right there. She was already his wife. She was sitting next to him, leaning her charming elbow on the back of his chair, and was looking at his work. In her languid, tired eyes was depicted a burden of bliss; everything in his room breathed of paradise; it was so bright, so neat and clean. Oh, Creator! She bent her charming little head on his chest… He had never had a better dream. After it he got up feeling fresher and less absentminded than before. Strange thoughts were born in his head. “Perhaps,” he thought, “she has been inveigled into debauchery by some horrible involuntary chance occurrence; perhaps the movements of her soul are inclined to repentance; perhaps she would herself wish to tear herself out of her horrible condition. Can I really tolerate her ruin with indifference, especially when all I have to do is offer my hand to save her from foundering?” His thoughts extended even further. “No one knows me,” he said to himself, “and no one cares about me, and I don’t care about anyone either. If she expresses pure repentance and changes her way of life, I will marry her. I should marry her, and I will probably do much better than many men who marry their housekeepers or even the most contemptible creatures, as so often happens. But my feat will be selfless and perhaps even great. I will return to the world the most splendid of its adornments.”
Having formed such a harebrained plan, he felt color flaming up on his face. He went up to the mirror and took fright at his own sunken cheeks and pale face. He began to get dressed with great care. He washed up, smoothed his hair, put on a new tailcoat and a dandyish waistcoat, threw on his cloak and went out into the street. He breathed in the fresh air and felt freshness in his heart, like a convalescent person who has decided to go out for the first time after a lengthy illness. His heart pounded when he approached the street he had not set foot on since their fateful meeting.
It took him a long time to find the building; his memory seemed to have betrayed him. He walked down the street twice and didn’t know which building to stop in front of. Finally one of them seemed to him to be the one. He quickly ran up the stairs and knocked at the door. The door opened, and who came out to meet him? His ideal, his mysterious image, the original of his dreamy pictures, the one he lived by, lived so horribly, so tormentingly, so sweetly. She herself was standing before him. He began to tremble; he could hardly keep on his feet from weakness, as he was seized by a burst of joy. She stood before him looking just as splendidly beautiful, although her eyes were sleepy, and pallor was stealing onto her face, which was no longer quite as fresh—but all the same she was splendid.
“Oh!” she cried when she saw Piskaryov, and she rubbed her eyes (it was already two o’clock). “Why did you run away from us the other day?”
He collapsed onto a chair and looked at her.
“I just now woke up; they brought me home at seven o’clock this morning. I was so drunk,” she added with a smile.
Oh, it would be better if you were mute and completely deprived of speech, than to utter such things! She had suddenly showed him her whole life as if in a panorama. Nevertheless, despite all this, he steeled his heart and made up his mind to try and see if his exhortations would have any effect on her. Gathering his courage, in a trembling and at the same time ardent voice he began to represent her horrible situation to her. She listened to him attentively and with the feeling of amazement that we express when we see something unexpected and strange. With a slight smile she looked at her friend who was sitting in the corner, who had stopped cleaning out her comb and was also listening to the new preacher with great attention.
“It’s true, I’m poor,” Piskaryov finally said after a long and didactic exhortation, “but we will toil, we will vie with each other in striving to improve our life. There is nothing more pleasant than to be obligated to one’s own self for everything. I will sit working on my paintings, you will sit next to me and inspire my work while embroidering or doing some other kind of handiwork, and we will not suffer any want.”
“How could that be!” she interrupted his speech with an expression of contempt. “I’m not a laundress or a seamstress, and I’m not about to start working.”
My God! Her whole base, contemptible life was expressed in these words—a life filled with emptiness and idleness, the true companions of debauchery.
“Marry me!” caught up her friend, who up to then had been sitting silently in the corner. “If I become a wife, I’ll sit just like this!”
While saying this she put a stupid expression on her pitiful face, which made the beauty burst out laughing.
Oh, this was too much! He had no strength to endure this. He rushed out, having lost all feelings and thoughts. His mind became turbid. Stupidly, with no goal, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, he wandered around all day. No one would have been able to tell whether he spent the night somewhere or not. It was not until the next day that by some stupid instinct he arrived at his apartment, pale, looking horrible, with disheveled hair and traces of madness on his face. He locked himself in his room and would not let anyone in, and asked for nothing. Four days passed, and his locked-up room did not open a single time. Finally a week passed, and his room was still locked up. They threw themselves at the door, they started calling him, but there was no answer. Finally they broke the door down and found his lifeless corpse with its throat cut. The bloody razor lay on the floor. One could tell from the convulsively spread arms and the terribly distorted face that his hand had been unsteady and that he had suffered for a long time before his sinful soul had left his body.
Thus the victim of a mad passion perished, poor Piskaryov—quiet, timid, humble, as simple-hearted as a child, carrying within himself a spark of talent that would perhaps have blazed broadly and brightly in the course of time. No one wept over him; no one was to be seen near his inanimate corpse but the usual figure of the district police inspector and the indifferent countenance of the police physician. They transported his coffin quietly, without any religious rites, to Okhta. The only person walking after it and crying was a soldier-watchman, and only because he had drunk one too many liters of vodka.17 Even Lieutenant Pirogov failed to come to look at the corpse of the poor unfortunate man to whom in life he had given his lofty patronage. By the way, he had no time for this at all: He was occupied by an extraordinary event. But let us turn to him.
I do not like corpses and deceased people, and I always find it unpleasant when my path is crossed by a long funeral procession and a disabled soldier, dressed in a sort of Capuchin cloak, takes some snuff with his left hand because his right hand is holding a torch.18 I always feel annoyance in my soul when I see a rich catafalque and a coffin lined with velvet; but my annoyance is mixed with sadness when I see a drayman pulling a pauper’s pine coffin, not covered with anything, and with just one old beggar woman who met them at the crossroads and has gone trudging after them because she has nothing else to do.
It seems that we left Lieutenant Pirogov at the point when he parted with poor Piskaryov and went rushing after the blonde. This blonde was a light, rather interesting little creature. She kept stopping in front of every store and feasting her eyes on the sashes, kerchiefs, earrings, gloves, and other trifles that were displayed in the windows, constantly twirling around, gaping in all directions, and looking behind her. “You are mine, my little darling!” Pirogov said with self-confidence, continuing his pursuit and covering his face with the collar of his overcoat so as not to encounter any of his acquaintances. But it wouldn’t hurt to inform the reader what kind of person Lieutenant Pirogov was.
But before we say what kind of person Lieutenant Pirogov was, it wouldn’t hurt to say a few things about the society to which Pirogov belonged. There are officers who constitute a kind of intermediate class of society in St. Petersburg. At an evening party or a dinner at the home of a state councillor or an actual state councillor, who has earned his rank by virtue of forty years of labor, you will always find one of them. A few pale daughters, as colorless as St. Petersburg, of whom some are past their prime, a tea table, a piano, domestic dancing—all of this is inseparable from the bright epaulet that shines in the lamplight, between a well-mannered blonde and the black tailcoat of a brother or a friend of the family. It is extremely difficult to stir up these cold-blooded maidens and get them to laugh. For that you need great skill or rather no skill at all. You have to talk in a way that is neither too intelligent nor too funny, so that your talk is full of the kind of trivia that women like. In this area one must give the abovementioned gentlemen their due. They have a particular talent for making these colorless beauties laugh and listen. Exclamations smothered by laughter: “Oh, stop it! Aren’t you ashamed to make me laugh so?”—these exclamations are their best reward.
Among the higher classes these officers appear very seldom, or rather never. They have been crowded out by what they call in those circles aristocrats, but all the same they are considered learned and well-educated people. They love to expound on literature; they praise Bulgarin, Pushkin, and Grech, and speak with contempt and witty barbs about A. A. Orlov.19 They do not miss a single public lecture, whether it is about bookkeeping or even forestry. In the theater, no matter what the play, you will always find one of them, unless the play is something like Filatka, which greatly offends their fastidious taste.20 They are constantly at the theater. They are the most advantageous people for the theater administration. They especially like to hear good poetry in a play, and they also like to loudly call the actors back to the stage. Many of them who teach in state institutions or prepare students to enter state institutions are finally able to acquire a cabriolet and a pair of horses. Then their circle becomes more expansive. They finally manage to marry a merchant’s daughter who knows how to play the piano, who has a hundred thousand or so in cash and a heap of bearded relatives. But they cannot attain such an honor until they have earned at least the rank of colonel. Because Russian beards, despite the fact that they still smell faintly of cabbage, do not by any means want to see their daughters married to anyone other than a general or at least a colonel.21
Such are the main features of this sort of young man. But Lieutenant Pirogov had many talents that belonged to him alone. He could superbly declaim lines of verse from Dmitry Donskoy and Woe from Wit, and he was particularly skilled at emitting smoke rings from his pipe so successfully that he could suddenly string about ten of them one after another.22 He could very pleasantly tell the joke about how a cannon is one thing and a unicorn gun is quite another.23 But it is difficult to list all the talents with which fate had endowed Pirogov. He loved to talk about an actress and a dancer, but not in the same harsh terms in which a young ensign expresses himself on that subject. He was very satisfied with his rank, to which he had been recently promoted, and although sometimes he would lie on a divan and say: “Oh, oh! Vanity, all is vanity! What does it signify that I am a lieutenant?”—secretly he was very flattered by his new dignity. He would often try to hint at it in conversation, and once on the street when he ran across a copying clerk who seemed to him to be impolite, he immediately stopped him and in a few harsh words gave him to understand that it was a lieutenant standing before him, and not some other kind of officer. He tried to expound this all the more eloquently in view of the fact that two quite handsome ladies were passing by. In general Pirogov displayed a passion for everything elegant and gave his encouragement to the artist Piskaryov, but this perhaps arose from the fact that he very much wished to see his own manly physiognomy in a portrait. But that’s enough about Pirogov’s qualities. Man is such a wondrous being that sometimes it’s impossible to list all his virtues right away—the more closely you look, the more new peculiarities appear, and to describe them would be an endless task.
So Pirogov did not cease pursuing the unknown woman, engaging her with questions from time to time, to which she would answer sharply, abruptly, and with indistinct sounds. Through the dark Kazan Gates they entered Meshchanskaya Street, a street of tobacco stores and groceries, German craftsmen, and Finnish nymphs.24 The blonde started running faster and flitted through the gates of a somewhat dingy building. Pirogov followed her. She ran up a dark, narrow staircase and went through a door that Pirogov also maneuvered his way through. He found himself in a large room with black walls and a sooty ceiling. A heap of iron screws, metalworker’s tools, shining coffeepots, and candlesticks was on the table; the floor was littered with copper and iron filings. Pirogov immediately put two and two together and saw that this was the apartment of an artisan. The unknown woman flitted through a side door. He very nearly hesitated for a moment, but following the Russian rule, he resolved to go forward. He entered a room that was quite unlike the first one and was very neatly arranged, showing that the master of the house was a German. He was struck by an unusually strange sight.
Before him sat Schiller—not the Schiller who wrote William Tell and the History of the Thirty Years’ War, but the famous Schiller, the master tinsmith of Meshchanskaya Street. Next to Schiller stood Hoffmann—not the writer Hoffmann, but the fairly good shoemaker from Ofitserskaya Street, a great friend of Schiller.25 Schiller was drunk and was sitting on a chair, stamping his foot and saying something heatedly. All this would not have amazed Pirogov, but he was amazed by the extraordinarily strange position of the figures. Schiller was sitting with his somewhat thick nose stuck out and his head raised upward, and Hoffmann was holding him by this nose with two fingers and twirling the blade of his shoemaker’s knife on its very surface. These two personages were speaking German, and therefore Lieutenant Pirogov, whose knowledge of German did not go beyond “guten Morgen,”* could not understand what was going on. Schiller’s words, however, consisted of the following: “I do not want it, I do not need a nose!” he said, waving his arms. “I use three pounds of snuff on one nose per month. And I pay in a Russian nasty store, because a German store doesn’t keep Russian snuff, I pay in a Russian nasty store forty kopecks for each pound; that comes to a ruble twenty kopecks; twelve times a ruble twenty kopecks comes to fourteen rubles forty kopecks. Do you hear, my friend Hoffmann? For one nose, fourteen rubles forty kopecks! And on holidays I use rappee, because I don’t want to take Russian nasty snuff on holidays. I sniff two pounds of rappee per year, at two rubles a pound. Six plus fourteen—twenty rubles forty kopecks on snuff alone.26 It’s highway robbery! I ask you, my friend Hoffmann, isn’t that right?” Hoffmann, who was drunk himself, answered in the affirmative. “Twenty rubles forty kopecks! I am a Swabian German; I have a king in Germany. I do not want my nose! Cut my nose off! Here’s my nose!”
And if not for the sudden appearance of Lieutenant Pirogov, Hoffmann would without doubt have cut off Schiller’s nose for no good reason, because he had already brought his knife into the position he used for cutting out a sole.
It seemed very annoying to Schiller that an unknown, uninvited person was so inappropriately interfering with him. Despite the fact that he was in the intoxicating daze of beer and wine, he felt that it was unseemly to be found in such a state and in the middle of such an action in the presence of an outside witness. Meanwhile Pirogov made a slight bow and said with his characteristic pleasantness: “Please excuse me…”
“Get out!” Schiller drawled.
Lieutenant Pirogov was taken aback. This kind of treatment was quite new to him. The smile that had started to faintly appear on his face suddenly disappeared. With a sense of aggrieved dignity he said:
“This is strange, my good sir… You probably didn’t notice… I am an officer…”
“What’s an officer to me! I am a Swabian German. Me myself” (at this Schiller pounded the table with his fist) “will be an officer: a year and a half as a Junker, two years as a lieutenant, and tomorrow I’m right away an officer. But I don’t want to serve. I’ll do this to an officer: foo!”—at this Schiller brought his palm to his lips and blew on it.
Lieutenant Pirogov could see that there was nothing left for him to do but to withdraw, but this kind of treatment, which was not at all appropriate for his rank, was unpleasant for him. He kept stopping on the staircase, as if wishing to gather his courage and think of a way to make Schiller feel how impertinent he had been. Finally he reasoned that Schiller could be excused because his head was full of beer. Besides, the image of the pretty blonde appeared to him, and he decided to consign the incident to oblivion. Early in the morning of the next day, Lieutenant Pirogov appeared at the workshop of the master tinsmith. In the front room he was met by the pretty blonde, who asked in a severe voice, which suited her little face wonderfully well: “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, hello, my lovely! You don’t recognize me? You little rogue, what pretty little eyes!”—with these words Lieutenant Pirogov wished to raise her chin with his finger in a very sweet way.
But the blonde uttered a skittish exclamation and asked with the same severity: “What can I do for you?”
“You can let me see you, there’s nothing more I need,” Lieutenant Pirogov said, smiling pleasantly, and came closer to her, but noticing that the skittish blonde wanted to slip through the door, he added: “I need to order some spurs, my lovely. Can you make me some spurs? Although no spurs are needed in order to love you—a bridle would be more useful. What pretty little hands!”
Lieutenant Pirogov was always very amiable in expressions of this kind.
“I’ll call my husband right now,” the German woman exclaimed and went out, and in a few minutes Pirogov saw Schiller emerging with sleepy eyes, having barely come to his senses after yesterday’s drinking bout. Looking at the officer, he recalled as if in a hazy dream the incident of the day before. He didn’t remember exactly what had happened, but he felt that he had done something stupid, and therefore he received the officer with a very severe look.
“For spurs I cannot ask less than fifteen rubles,” he said, wishing to get rid of Pirogov, because as an honorable German, he was very ashamed to look at a person who had seen him in an indecent situation. Schiller liked to drink without any witnesses, with two or three friends, and during such times he would lock even his own workmen out.
“Why are they so expensive?” Pirogov asked affectionately.
“German workmanship,” Schiller said coolly, stroking his chin. “A Russian will undertake it for two rubles.”
“Very well, in order to prove that I like you and wish to make your acquaintance, I will pay fifteen rubles.”
Schiller had to stop and think for a moment: As an honorable German, he felt a little ashamed. Wishing to dissuade him from making the order, he declared that he could not make them in less than two weeks. But Pirogov expressed his complete consent, without any attempts at contradiction.
The German fell into thought and started pondering how he could do his work in such a way that it would actually be worth fifteen rubles. At that moment the blonde came into the workshop and started rummaging on the table, which was covered by coffeepots. The lieutenant took advantage of Schiller’s musing, approached her and squeezed her arm, which was bare right up to the shoulder. Schiller really did not like this.
“Meine Frau!”* he shouted.
“Gehen Sie to the kitchen!”†
The blonde withdrew.
“So in two weeks?” Pirogov said.
“Yes, in two weeks,” Schiller answered, pondering. “I have a lot of work right now!”
“Good-bye! I’ll come see you.”
“Good-bye!” Schiller answered and locked the door behind him.
Lieutenant Pirogov made up his mind not to abandon his quest, despite the fact that the German woman had given him an explicit rebuff. He could not understand how it was possible to resist him, all the more since his amiability and brilliant rank gave him full rights to her attention. One must, however, say that Schiller’s wife, for all her comeliness, was very stupid. But stupidity is a particularly charming feature in a pretty wife. At least I’ve known many husbands who are enraptured by the stupidity of their wives and see in it all the signs of an infantile innocence. Beauty works perfect miracles. All spiritual defects in a beautiful woman, instead of evoking revulsion, become unusually attractive; in these women, vice itself breathes with comeliness; but let beauty disappear—and the woman must be twenty times more intelligent than a man in order to inspire if not love then at least respect. But for all her stupidity, Schiller’s wife was always true to her obligations, and therefore it was fairly difficult for Pirogov to succeed in his bold undertaking. But there is always a certain enjoyment involved in overcoming obstacles, and the blonde became more interesting to him from day to day. He began to come quite frequently to inquire about his spurs, so that Schiller finally got sick of it. He made every effort to finish making the spurs as soon as possible. Finally they were ready.
“Oh, what excellent workmanship!” Lieutenant Pirogov shouted when he saw the spurs. “My Lord, how well made they are! Our general doesn’t have spurs like this.”
A feeling of self-satisfaction spread over Schiller’s face. His eyes became rather merry, and he was quite reconciled to Pirogov. “A Russian officer is an intelligent man,” he thought to himself.
“So you must be able to make a mounting, say for a dagger or other things?”
“Oh, yes, I certainly can,” Schiller said with a smile.
“Then make me a mounting for my dagger. I will bring it to you. I have a very fine Turkish dagger, but I would like to make a different mounting for it.”
This was a bombshell for Schiller. He suddenly knit his brow. “Now I’ve done it!” he thought, cursing himself inwardly for inviting another job. He considered it dishonorable to refuse, and moreover the Russian officer had praised his workmanship. After shaking his head, he expressed his consent, but the kiss that Pirogov impudently planted on the very lips of the pretty blonde as he went out completely bewildered him.
I consider it not superfluous to acquaint the reader somewhat more closely with Schiller. Schiller was a perfect German, in the full sense of the word. When he was only twenty years old, at that happy time when a Russian lives without a care in the world, Schiller had already measured out his whole life and never made any exceptions in any case. He made a rule of getting up at seven o’clock, having dinner at two, being exact in everything, and getting drunk every Sunday. He made a rule of amassing a capital of fifteen thousand over ten years, and this was as true and irrefutable as fate, because a civil servant will sooner forget to peek into his superior’s anteroom than a German will change his word. He never increased his expenditures in any case, and if the price of potatoes got higher than usual, he would not add a single kopeck, but would simply reduce the quantity he bought, and although he sometimes was somewhat hungry, he got used to it nevertheless. His punctiliousness extended to the fact that he made it a rule to kiss his wife no more than twice in a twenty-four-hour period, and in order not to kiss her an extra time, he never put more than one spoonful of pepper in his soup; however, this rule was not so strictly observed on Sundays, because then Schiller drank two bottles of beer and one bottle of caraway-seed vodka, which, however, he always complained about.27 He drank in a quite different way from an Englishman, who puts the door on the hook right after dinner and gets blind drunk all by himself. On the contrary, as a German, he always drank in an inspired way, either with the shoemaker Hoffmann or with the carpenter Kuntz, also a German and a great drunkard. Such was the character of the noble Schiller, who finally found himself in an extraordinarily awkward position. Although he was phlegmatic and a German, nevertheless Pirogov’s actions aroused something like jealousy in him. He wracked his brains and could not think how to rid himself of this Russian officer. Meanwhile Pirogov, smoking a pipe in the circle of his comrades—because Providence has so arranged that wherever there are officers, there are pipes—smoking a pipe in the circle of his comrades, would hint meaningfully, with a pleasant smile, about a little intrigue with a pretty German woman, with whom he said he was already on quite friendly terms, and whom in fact he had nearly lost all hope of winning over.
One day he was strolling along Meshchanskaya Street, stealing looks at the building that sported Schiller’s sign with its coffeepots and samovars. To his great joy he caught sight of the blonde’s little head, leaning out the window and inspecting the passersby. He stopped, waved at her, and said, “Guten Morgen!” The blonde bowed to him, as an acquaintance.
“Is your husband home?”
“Yes,” the blonde answered.
“When is he not at home?”
“He’s not at home on Sundays,” the stupid little blonde said.
“That’s not bad,” Pirogov thought to himself. “I can take advantage of that.”
And the next Sunday he appeared before the blonde out of the blue. Indeed Schiller was not at home. The pretty mistress of the house was frightened, but Pirogov acted rather cautiously this time, he behaved very respectfully, and as he bowed, he showed off all the beauty of his lithe, well-belted figure. He made some jokes in a very pleasant and polite manner, but the stupid little German woman responded to everything with one-syllable words. Finally, after coming at her from all sides and seeing that nothing engaged her, he proposed that they dance. The German woman agreed instantly, because German women are always lovers of dancing. Pirogov based his hopes on this most of all: In the first place, it would give her pleasure, in the second place, it would show off his tournure and his agility, and in the third place, while dancing he could get as close as possible to her, embrace the pretty German woman, and lay the foundation for everything. In short, he deduced a complete success from this. He began a gavotte, knowing that German women need to proceed gradually. The pretty German stepped out into the middle of the room and raised her splendid little foot. This position so enraptured Pirogov that he rushed to kiss her. The German woman began screaming and thereby increased her charm in Pirogov’s eyes even more; he covered her with kisses. All of a sudden the door opened and Schiller came in with Hoffmann and the carpenter Kuntz. All these worthy craftsmen were as drunk as cobblers.
But I leave it to the reader to judge how angry and indignant Schiller was.
“You churl!” he screamed with the greatest indignation, “how can you dare to kiss my wife? You are a scoundrel, not a Russian officer. The devil take it, my friend Hoffmann, I am a German, not a Russian pig!”
Hoffmann answered in the affirmative.
“Oh, I do not want to have horns! Take him, my friend Hoffmann, by the collar, I do not want,” he continued, wildly waving his arms, with his face looking like the red cloth of his waistcoat. “I’ve been living in Petersburg for eight years, I have a mother in Swabia, and my uncle is in Nürnberg. I am a German, not a horned side of beef! Strip him, my friend Hoffmann! Hold him by the arms and legs, my Kamerad Kuntz!”28
And the Germans seized Pirogov by the arms and legs.
In vain did he struggle to fight them off. These three craftsmen were the heftiest of all the St. Petersburg Germans, and they behaved so roughly and rudely with him that I confess I simply cannot find words to depict this lamentable event.
I am sure that Schiller had a bad fever the next day, that he was shaking like a leaf, expecting the police to arrive at any minute, and that he would have given God knows what if only the event of the day before had taken place in a dream. But there is no changing what has happened. Nothing could compare with Pirogov’s anger and indignation. The mere thought of such a horrible insult drove him wild. He considered Siberia and the lash to be the most lenient punishment for Schiller. He flew home in order to get dressed and go straight to the general, to describe the riotous conduct of the German craftsmen in the most dramatic colors. At the same time he planned to submit a written petition to the General Staff Headquarters. If the General Staff assigned an insufficient punishment, then he would go straight to the State Council, and if necessary to the sovereign himself.29
But it all ended somehow strangely: He stopped into a pastry shop along the way, ate two puff pastries, read a couple of items in the Northern Bee, and emerged in a less angry frame of mind.30 Besides, the pleasant, cool evening caused him to take a little stroll along Nevsky Avenue; by nine o’clock he had calmed down and thought that it was not a good idea to bother the general on a Sunday, besides he had no doubt been called away somewhere, and so he set off for an evening party at the home of the administrator of the Board of Control, where there was a very pleasant gathering of civil servants and officers. He passed the evening there with great pleasure, and so distinguished himself in dancing the mazurka that he sent not only the ladies but even the cavaliers into raptures.
“Our world is wondrously arranged!” I thought the other day as I walked along Nevsky Avenue and recalled these two events. “How strangely, how incomprehensibly does our fate play games with us! Do we ever get what we wish for? Do we ever attain that which it seems our powers have been purposely prepared for? Everything turns out quite the reverse. Fate has given one man the most splendid horses, and he rides out with them indifferently, without noticing their beauty at all—while another man, whose heart burns with a passion for horses, walks on foot and has to content himself with clicking his tongue when they lead a trotter past him. One man has an excellent cook, but unfortunately, he has such a small mouth that it won’t admit more than two little pieces; another has a mouth the size of the arch of the General Staff Building, but, alas! He has to content himself with a German dinner of nothing but potatoes. How strangely our fate plays games with us!”31
But strangest of all are the events that happen on Nevsky Avenue. Oh, do not trust that Nevsky Avenue! I always wrap myself up more tightly in my cloak when I walk along it, and I try not to look at the objects I meet at all. All is deception, all is daydream, all is not what it seems! You think that that gentleman who is strolling along in a beautifully tailored frock coat is very rich? Nothing of the sort: He consists entirely of his frock coat. You imagine that those two fat men who have stopped in front of a church that is being built are judging its architecture? Not at all: They are talking about how strangely two crows have perched facing each other. You think that that enthusiast who is waving his arms is talking about how his wife threw a ball out the window at an officer who was completely unknown to her? Not at all: He is talking about Lafayette.32 You think that those two ladies… but trust the ladies least of all. Don’t look into the windows of the stores so much: The trifles that are displayed in them are splendid, but they smell of a terribly large quantity of banknotes. But God forbid that you peek under the ladies’ little hats! No matter how the cloak of a beauty flutters in the distance, I absolutely refuse to follow it and sate my curiosity. Get away, for the love of God, get away from the streetlamp! And pass by quickly, as quickly as possible. You will be lucky if you get away with just having it spill its stinking oil on your dandyish tailcoat. But besides the streetlamp, everything breathes of deception. It lies at all times of day, that Nevsky Avenue, but most of all when night presses onto it in a condensed mass and marks out the white and pale-yellow walls of the buildings, when the whole city turns into thunder and glitter, myriad coaches tumble off the bridges, the postilions shout and bounce on the horses, and when the demon himself lights the lamps for the sole purpose of showing everything not as it really is.