The Nose and Other Stories

Today an unusual incident took place. I got up rather late in the morning, and when Mavra brought me the boots she had cleaned, I asked her what time it was. When I heard that it had struck ten o’clock quite a while ago, I hurried to get dressed as soon as possible. I confess I would not have gone to the Department at all, knowing in advance the sort of sour face the head of our section would make. For a long time now he’s been saying to me: “What’s all that senseless mess in your head, my good man? Sometimes you rush around like mad, at times you mix up your work so that Satan himself wouldn’t be able to figure it out, you put a small letter in the title, you don’t indicate either the date or the number.” The damned heron! He probably envies me because I sit in the director’s private study and sharpen the quill pens for His Excellency.¹ In short, I would not have gone to the Department if not for my hope of seeing the paymaster and perhaps coaxing that Jew into giving me at least a little of my salary in advance. He’s a real creature! My dear God, the Last Judgment will come sooner than he’ll give anyone some money a month in advance! You can ask until you burst, even if you’re in the direst of straits, he won’t give it to you, the gray-haired devil. And at home his own kitchen woman hits him on the cheeks. The whole world knows about it. I do not understand the advantage of serving in the Department. There are no resources at all. Now in the Provincial Administration, in the Judicial Board and Finance Board, it’s quite a different matter: In those offices you look and there’s a clerk who’s huddled into a corner writing. He’s wearing a nasty old frock coat, his ugly mug makes you want to spit, but just look at the country house he’s renting! Don’t even try to bring him gilt porcelain teacups: “That’s a present for a doctor,” he says; give him a pair of trotters, or a droshky, or a beaver-fur coat that costs three hundred rubles. He looks so quiet and humble, he speaks so delicately—“Please lend me your little penknife so I can mend my little quill”—and then he’ll fleece a petitioner so that all he has left is his shirt. It’s true, on the other hand, that our office is noble, there’s such cleanliness as you’ll never ever see in the Provincial Administration: tables made of mahogany, and all the supervisors address you in the most polite fashion.² Yes, I confess, if not for the nobility of the place, I would have left the Department long ago.

I put on my old overcoat and took my umbrella, because it was pouring rain. There was no one on the streets; all I saw were peasant women covering their heads with the hems of their skirts, and Russian merchants under umbrellas, and errand boys. Of the nobility the only person I saw was a civil servant like me. I saw him at the crossroads. As soon as I saw him, I immediately said to myself: “Hey! No, my dear man, you’re not going to the Department, you’re hurrying after that woman who’s running ahead of you, and you’re looking at her little feet.” What knaves we civil servants are! Honest to God, no officer has anything on us. If some girl in a little hat walks by, one of our kind will hook onto her without fail. While I was thinking this, I saw a coach rolling up to the store I was walking by. I recognized it right away: It was our director’s coach. “But he has no reason to go to a store,” I thought, “It’s probably his daughter.” I pressed up against the wall. A footman opened the doors, and she flitted out of the coach like a little bird. How she looked right and left, how she flashed her eyebrows and eyes… My dear God! I’m ruined, utterly ruined. And why should she go out riding in such rainy weather? Now just try and tell me that women don’t have a great passion for all those rags. She didn’t recognize me, and I tried to wrap myself up as much as possible, because I was wearing a very soiled overcoat, an old-fashioned one to boot. Now people are wearing cloaks with long collars, but my coat had short ones, one on top of the other; and the cloth was not at all decatized.³

Her little doggie, who hadn’t managed to jump into the store, was left on the street. I know this little doggie. Her name is Madgie. I had been there barely a minute when I suddenly heard a thin little voice: “Hi there, Madgie!” Well, I’ll be! Who is that talking? I looked around and saw two ladies walking under an umbrella: one old, one young; but they had already passed by, and next to me again rang out: “Shame on you, Madgie!” What the devil! I saw Madgie exchanging sniffs with a little doggie who was walking behind the ladies. “Hey!” I said to myself, “this can’t be, am I drunk or something? But that only rarely happens to me.”—“No, Fidèle, you’re quite wrong”—I saw Madgie say it myself—“I was, arf, arf! I was, arf, arf, arf! very ill.” Oh, you little doggie! I confess I was quite amazed to hear her speaking in a human fashion. But later, when I thought it all through carefully, I stopped being amazed. In reality, many such examples have happened in the world before. They say that in England a fish swam out and said two words in such a strange language that scientists have been trying for three years to determine what it is and to this day have not discovered anything. I also read in the newspapers about two cows who came into a shop and asked for a pound of tea.⁴ But I confess I was much more amazed when Madgie said, “I wrote to you, Fidèle; Polkan probably didn’t bring my letter!” May I not receive my salary! I have never in my life heard that a dog could write.⁵ Only a nobleman can write correctly. It’s true, there are a few merchant’s clerks and even serfs who can sometimes write a little bit; but their writing is mechanical for the most part: no commas, no periods, no style.

This amazed me. I confess, recently I’ve begun to sometimes hear and see things that no one else has ever seen or heard. “Let me just follow this little doggie,” I said to myself, “and find out what she is and what she thinks.”

I opened my umbrella and set off after the two ladies. They crossed over to Gorokhovaya Street, turned into Meshchanskaya Street, from there into Stolyarnaya Street, finally they went toward the Kokushkin Bridge and stopped in front of a large building. “I know that building,” I said to myself. “That’s Zverkov’s House.” What a big, cumbersome building! All kinds of folk live there: so many cooks, so many newcomers! And so many of my sort, civil servants—they’re like dogs, sitting one on top of another. I have a good friend who lives there, who plays the trumpet very well. The ladies went up to the fifth floor.⁶ “Good,” I thought, “I won’t go there now, but I’ll note the place and will not fail to make use of it at the first opportunity.”

Today is Wednesday, and therefore I was working in our supervisor’s private study. I purposely came early, sat down, and sharpened all the quill pens. Our director must be a very intelligent man. His whole study is filled with bookcases full of books. I read the titles of some of them. It’s all erudition, such erudition that there’s no access for people like me: It’s all either in French or in German. And just look into his face. Whew, what importance shines in his eyes! I have never once heard him say a superfluous word. Except perhaps when you give him a paper, he’ll ask: “What’s it like outside?”—“It’s wet out, Your Excellency!” No, there’s no comparing him with people like me! A statesman. I notice, however, that he has a particular liking for me. If his daughter too… Oh, canaillerie!… It’s nothing, it’s nothing, silence!⁷

I started reading the Bee. What a stupid folk the French are! What is it that they want? Honest to God, they should take them all and flog them with birch rods! In the same paper I read a very pleasant depiction of a ball, described by a Kursk landowner. Kursk landowners write very well.⁸ After this I noticed that it had already struck half past twelve, and our boss hadn’t come out of his bedroom. But at around one thirty, an event occurred that no pen could describe. The door opened, I thought it was the director, and I jumped up from the chair with some papers; but it was she, she herself! Saints alive, how she was dressed! The dress she was wearing was as white as a swan! Whew, how sumptuous! And the look she gave: the sun, honest to God, the sun! She bowed and said: “Has Papá not been here?” Oh, my, my! What a voice! A canary, truly, a canary! “Your Excellency,” I wanted to say, “do not give the order to execute me, but if you want to execute me, then execute me with your own little hand, my general.” But damn it, my tongue refused to obey me, and I said only: “He has not, madam.” She looked at me, at the books, and dropped her kerchief. I rushed headlong, slipped on the damned parquet floor and very nearly unstuck my nose from my face, but I caught myself and retrieved the kerchief. Oh, Holy Ones, what a kerchief! So fine, made of cambric—ambergris, perfect ambergris! It simply breathes General-hood. She thanked me and just barely grinned, so that her sugary little lips almost didn’t move, and then she went out. I sat there for another hour, when suddenly a footman came and said: “Go home, Aksenty Ivanovich, the master has left the house.” I cannot abide the society of footmen. They’re always lounging around in the anteroom, and they can never be bothered even to nod. And that’s not all: once one of those knaves took it into his head to offer me snuff without getting up from his seat. Do you have any idea, you stupid lackey, that I am a civil servant, I am of noble descent. But I took my hat and put my overcoat on myself, because these gentlemen will never give you your hat, and I left. At home I mostly just lay on my bed. Then I copied out some very good lines of verse: “An hour passed without my sweetie, / I thought a year had passed instead; / My life is hateful, yes, indeedy, / Sometimes I think I’m better dead.” Pushkin must have written it.⁹ In the evening I wrapped myself up in my overcoat, walked to Her Excellency’s front entrance, and waited a long time for her to come out and get in her coach, so that I could see her one more little time—but no, she didn’t come out.

The head of our section made me furious. When I arrived at the Department, he called me over and started talking to me like this: “Now please tell me, what are you doing?”—“What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m not doing anything,” I replied. “Well, you just think things over! After all, you’re over forty now—it’s time to get some sense into your head. What are you imagining? You think I don’t know all your pranks? You’re dangling after the director’s daughter! Well, just look at yourself, just think, what are you? You’re a zero, nothing more. You don’t have a penny to your name. Just look in the mirror at your face, you don’t have a chance in the world!” Damn it, he thinks just because his face looks like an apothecary’s vial, and he has a wisp of hair on his head that’s curled into a forelock, and he holds it upright and smears it with some kind of “Rosette” pomade, because of all that he thinks that he’s the only one who can do anything. I understand, I understand why he’s so mad at me. He’s envious; perhaps he saw some signs of good favor that were rendered to me preferentially. I spit on him! What a big deal, to be a court councillor! He’s hung a gold chain on his watch, he orders boots that cost thirty rubles a pair—damn him to hell! What am I, a commoner, a tailor, or a noncommissioned officer’s child? I am a nobleman. I can earn a good rank myself. I’m only forty-two years old—that’s the time when your career gets going in earnest. Just you wait, my friend! I’ll get to be a colonel, too, and maybe, God willing, something even bigger. I’ll make myself a reputation even better than yours. How did you get it into your head that there are no decent people besides yourself? Give me a Rutsch tailcoat of a fashionable cut and let me tie on a necktie just like yours—then you won’t be able to hold a candle to me.¹⁰ I don’t have any affluence—that’s the problem.

I went to the theater. They were doing the Russian idiot Filatka. I laughed a lot. They also did a vaudeville with funny verses about attorneys, especially a certain collegiate registrar; they were written with great licentiousness, so that I was amazed that the censor had passed them, and about merchants they said right out that they deceive people and that their sons go on benders and try to become noblemen.¹¹ There was also a very funny couplet about journalists, that they love to abuse everything and that the author asks the public to defend him. Writers are writing very funny plays these days. I love to go to the theater. As soon as you have half a kopeck in your pocket, you just can’t help going. Some of my fellow civil servants are such pigs, though. They won’t go to the theater at all, the peasants; maybe only if you give them a free ticket. One actress sang so well. I recalled the other one… eh, canaillerie!… it’s nothing, it’s nothing… silence.

Today I was sitting in our director’s private study, I sharpened twenty-three quill pens for him and for her, ay! ay!… for Her Excellency I sharpened four pens. He really likes to have a lot of pens standing ready. Ooh! The head he must have! He’s always silent, but in his head, I think, he’s constantly thinking things over. I would like to know what he thinks about most of all, what is brewing in that head. I would like to take a closer look at the life of these gentlemen, all these équivoques and courtly tricks—what are they like, what do they do in their society—that is what I would like to know!¹² I planned several times to strike up a conversation with His Excellency, but damn it, my tongue just wouldn’t obey me: All I could say was whether it was cold or warm outside, and I couldn’t utter another word. I would like to peek into the parlor where you can sometimes see the door open, and beyond the parlor into another room. Oh, what rich décor! What mirrors and porcelains! I would like to peek in there, into the part of the house where Her Excellency is—that’s where I would like to go! Into the boudoir: to see all those little jars, little vials, flowers of a kind you’re afraid to breathe on; how her clothes lie there strewn about, clothes that are more like air than clothes. I would like to peek into the bedroom… that’s where the miracles are, I bet, that’s where there’s a kind of paradise that doesn’t exist in heaven. To look at the little bench on which she puts her little foot when she gets out of bed, how she puts a little stocking as white as snow on that little foot… ay! ay! ay! It’s nothing, it’s nothing… silence.

But today it was as if a light shone on me: I remembered that conversation between the two little doggies that I had heard on Nevsky Avenue. “Good,” I thought to myself, “I’ll find out everything now. I must take possession of the correspondence those wretched little doggies carried on with each other. I’ll probably find out a thing or two from it.” I confess, once I was about to call Madgie over and say: “Listen, Madgie, we’re alone now; I’ll even lock the door, if you wish, so no one will see—tell me everything you know about the young lady, who is she really and what is she like? I swear to you that I will not reveal it to anyone.” But the cunning little doggie tucked in her tail, shrank up to half her size, and went out the door quietly, as if she hadn’t heard anything. I have long suspected that dogs are much more intelligent than people. I was even convinced that they can talk, but that they are obstinate somehow. The dog is an extraordinary politician: It notices everything, all a person’s steps. No, no matter what, I will go to Zverkov’s House tomorrow, interrogate Fidèle, and if possible, take possession of all the letters that Madgie wrote to her.

At two o’clock in the afternoon I set off with the firm intention of seeing Fidèle and interrogating her. I cannot stand cabbage, the smell of which comes billowing out of all the groceries on Meshchanskaya Street; moreover, such a hell can be smelled coming out from under the gates of every building that I held my nose and ran as fast as I could. And the vile craftsmen send out such a quantity of soot and smoke from their workshops that it’s absolutely impossible for a noble person to take a stroll here. When I made my way to the sixth floor and rang the bell, a girl came out, not entirely bad-looking, with little freckles. I recognized her. She was the same one who had been walking with the old woman. She blushed slightly, and I immediately put two and two together: You’re looking for a suitor, my little darling. “What do you want?” she said. “I need to have a talk with your little doggie.” The girl was so stupid! I immediately recognized how stupid she was! The doggie ran up, barking. I wanted to seize her, but the filthy little thing almost caught my nose with her teeth. But I caught sight of her bed in the corner. Oh, that’s just what I need! I went up to it, rummaged through the straw in the wooden box and, to my unusual satisfaction, I pulled out a small sheaf of little pieces of paper. When the nasty little doggie saw this, she first bit me on the calf, and then when she sniffed out that I had taken the papers, she began to squeal and nuzzle up to me, but I said: “No, my darling, farewell!”—and I took off running. I think the girl mistook me for a madman, because she got extremely scared. When I got home I wanted to get to work right away and decipher these letters, because I have some trouble seeing by candlelight. But Mavra took it into her head to wash the floor. These stupid Finns are always worried about cleanliness at the wrong moment. So I went out to take a stroll and think this incident over. Now, finally, I will find out all their doings, their thoughts, all these mainsprings, and I will finally find out everything. These letters will reveal everything to me. Dogs are an intelligent folk, they know all the political relationships, and therefore it’s certain that everything will be there: the portrait of that man and all his dealings. There will also be something about the one who… it’s nothing, silence! I came home toward evening. I mostly just lay on my bed.

Papá often caresses me too. I drink tea and coffee with cream. Oh, ma chère, I must tell you that I see absolutely no pleasure in the huge gnawed-up bones that our Polkan gobbles in the kitchen. Bones are good only when they come from game birds, and then only if no one has sucked the marrow out of them. It’s very nice to mix several gravies together, but only if there are no capers or greens in them; but I know nothing worse than the custom of giving dogs pieces of bread rolled up into little balls. Some gentleman sitting at the table, who’s had all sorts of trash in his hands, starts crumbling up the bread with those hands, calls you to him, and sticks the little ball in your mouth. It’s impolite to refuse, so you eat it; it’s disgusting, but you eat it….

… a very strange person. He is silent most of the time. He speaks very rarely; but a week ago he was constantly talking to himself: “Will I get it or not?” He’d take a piece of paper in one hand, close his other empty hand, and say: “Will I get it or not?” Once he even addressed the question to me: “What do you think, Madgie? Will I get it or not?” I couldn’t understand anything at all, I sniffed his boot and went away. Then, ma chère, a week later Papá came in looking overjoyed. The whole morning, gentlemen in uniforms were coming to see him and congratulating him on something. At the table he was more cheerful than I’d ever seen him, he kept telling jokes, and after dinner he picked me up, held me to his neck, and said: “Look, Madgie, what is this?” I saw some kind of little ribbon. I sniffed it, but I could find no fragrance whatsoever; finally I licked it, on the sly: It was a little salty.

… my young lady Sophie was in an extraordinary flurry. She was getting ready to go to a ball, and I was overjoyed that in her absence I would be able to write to you. My Sophie is always extremely happy to go to a ball, although she almost always gets angry while dressing. I simply cannot understand, ma chère, what pleasure there is in going to a ball. Sophie comes home from a ball at six o’clock in the morning, and I can almost always guess from her pale and emaciated appearance that they didn’t give the poor girl anything to eat there. I confess I could never live like that. If I were not given some gravy with grouse or some roasted chicken wings, then… I don’t know what would happen to me then. Gravy with porridge is also good. But carrots, or turnips, or artichokes are never any good….

Oh, my dear! How perceptible is the coming of spring. My heart is beating as if it is ever awaiting something. There is an eternal hum in my ears, so that often I lift my leg and stand for a few minutes, listening at the doors. I will reveal to you that I have many suitors. Often I sit in the window and look them over. Oh, if you only knew what freaks there are among them. There’s one most clumsily built mutt, he’s terribly stupid, stupidity is just written on his face, he walks pompously down the street and imagines that he is the most distinguished personage, he thinks that everyone is staring at him in wonderment. Not at all. I didn’t pay him any attention, as if I didn’t even see him. And what a terrifying mastiff stops in front of my window! If he stood on his hind legs, which the ruffian certainly does not know how to do—he would be a whole head taller than my Sophie’s Papá, who is also somewhat tall and stout. This oaf must be horribly insolent. I growled at him, but he didn’t care a bit. If only he had grimaced! He stuck out his tongue, drooped his enormous ears, and looked in the window—what a peasant! But please don’t think, ma chère, that my heart is indifferent to all pursuit,—oh, no… If you saw a certain cavalier who climbed over the fence of the house next door, by the name of Trésor. Oh, ma chère, what a sweet muzzle he has!

… Sophie was sitting at her little table and sewing something. I was looking out the window, because I like to inspect the passersby. When suddenly the footman came in and said: “Teplov!”—“Ask him in,” Sophie cried and rushed to embrace me. “Oh, Madgie, Madgie! If only you knew who it is: He has dark hair, he’s a gentleman of the bedchamber, and what eyes he has! They’re black and as bright as fire,” and Sophie ran off to her room.¹⁴ A moment later a young gentleman of the bedchamber with black whiskers came in, went up to the mirror, smoothed his hair, and looked around the room. I growled and sat down in my place. Sophie soon came out and gaily bowed in response to him scraping his foot; and I just kept looking out the window, as if I didn’t notice anything, but I bent my head a little to the side and tried to hear what they were talking about. Oh, ma chère! What nonsense they were talking! They were talking about how a certain lady danced one figure instead of another; they also talked about how someone named Bobov in his jabot looked very much like a stork and nearly fell down; how someone named Lidina imagines that she has blue eyes, when in fact they are green—and that kind of thing. “What if,” I thought to myself, “you compare the gentleman of the bedchamber with Trésor!” Heavens! What a disparity! In the first place, the gentleman of the bedchamber has a perfectly smooth broad face and whiskers all around, as if he had tied it up with a black kerchief; while Trésor has a thin little muzzle, and a white spot right on his forehead. Trésor’s waistline cannot be compared with the gentleman of the bedchamber’s. And his eyes, his ways, his manner, are quite different. Oh, what a disparity! I don’t know, ma chère, what she sees in her Teplov. Why is she so enraptured with him?

Ma chère Fidèle, please forgive me for not writing for so long. I was in perfect ecstasy. That writer was absolutely right when he said that love is a second life. Meanwhile there are great changes going on in our house right now. The gentleman of the bedchamber comes to see us every day. Sophie is in love with him to the point of madness. Papá is very cheerful. I even heard from our Grigory, who sweeps the floor and almost always talks to himself, that there will be a wedding soon, because Papá wants to see Sophie marry either a general or a gentleman of the bedchamber or a military colonel without fail…

What the devil! I can’t read any more… It’s all about either a gentleman of the bedchamber or a general. Everything that’s best in the world falls to the lot of either gentlemen of the bedchamber or generals. You find some poor treasure for yourself, you think you can reach it with your hand—and a gentleman of the bedchamber or a general tears it away from you. The devil take it! I would like to become a general myself: not in order to be given her hand and so on—no, I would like to be a general merely in order to see how they dangle around and do all those courtly tricks and équivoques, and then to say to them that I spit on you both. The devil take it. It’s annoying! I tore the letters of the stupid little doggie into pieces.

It cannot be. It’s a pack of lies! There’s not going to be a wedding! So what if he’s a gentleman of the bedchamber. After all, that’s nothing but a title; it’s not a visible thing that you can hold in your hands. After all, being a gentleman of the bedchamber doesn’t give you a third eye in your forehead. After all, his nose isn’t made of gold, it’s just like mine or like anyone’s; after all, he smells with it, he doesn’t eat with it; he sneezes with it, he doesn’t cough with it. Several times I’ve tried to get at the question of where all these differences originate. Why am I a titular councillor and for what reason am I a titular councillor? Perhaps I’m a count or a general, and I only seem to be a titular councillor? Perhaps I myself do not know who I am. After all, there are so many examples in history: There’s some simple person, not even a nobleman maybe, but simply a petit-bourgeois or even a peasant—and suddenly it is discovered that he is really a grand dignitary of some sort, or sometimes even the sovereign. When a peasant can turn out to be such a thing, what might come of a nobleman? Suppose for example I enter wearing a general’s uniform: I have an epaulet on my right shoulder, and an epaulet on my left shoulder, and a pale-blue ribbon across my chest—well?¹⁵ What will my lovely one sing then? What will Papá himself, our director, say? Oh, he’s a most ambitious man! He’s a Mason, he’s certainly a Mason, although he pretends to be this and that, but I immediately noticed that he’s a Mason: If he offers his hand to somebody, he only sticks out two fingers.¹⁶ Can I really not be awarded the rank of governor-general or quartermaster, or some other sort of rank, right this minute? I would like to know why I am a titular councillor? Why a titular councillor and nothing else?

I spent the whole morning today reading newspapers. There are strange things going on in Spain. I couldn’t decipher them completely. They write that the throne is vacant and that the high officers of state find themselves in a difficult situation with regard to selecting an heir and that there may be rebellions because of this. This seems extremely strange to me. How can the throne be vacant? They say that a doña is supposed to ascend to the throne. A doña cannot ascend to the throne. That simply cannot be. On the throne there must be a king. But they say there is no king—it cannot be that there is no king. The state cannot be without a king. There is a king, but he is in obscurity somewhere. Or perhaps he is right there, but some sort of familial reasons, or fears about the reaction of neighboring powers, such as France and other lands, are forcing him to conceal himself, or there are some other reasons.

I was on the point of going to the Department, but various reasons and reflections held me back. I just couldn’t get the Spanish affairs out of my head.¹⁷ How can it be that a doña could become the queen? They won’t permit it. In the first place, England will not permit it. And then there are the political affairs of all Europe: The Austrian emperor, our sovereign… I confess, these events have so destroyed and shaken me that I could do absolutely nothing all day. Mavra remarked to me that at the table I was extremely distracted. Indeed it seems that in my absentmindedness I threw two plates to the floor and they immediately smashed to bits. After dinner I went to the ice hills.¹⁸ I could not derive anything instructive from it. I mostly just lay on my bed and meditated on the Spanish affairs.

Today is a day of the greatest festivity! There is a king in Spain. He has been found. This king is me. I found out about it only this very day. I confess that I felt as if I had been struck by lightning. I cannot understand how I could have thought and imagined that I was a titular councillor. How could that crazy idea have gotten into my head? It’s a good thing no one back then figured it out and stuck me in a madhouse. Now everything has been revealed to me. Now I see everything as if on the palm of my hand. But before this—I can’t understand it—before this everything lay before me in a kind of mist. And I think this all originates from the fact that people imagine that the human brain is located in the head; not at all: It is blown here by a wind from the direction of the Caspian Sea. First of all I announced to Mavra who I am. When she heard that the king of Spain was standing before her, she threw up her hands and nearly died of fright. The stupid woman has never seen a king of Spain before. But I tried to calm her down and assure her in gracious words that I was benevolent and that I was not at all angry with her for sometimes doing a bad job of cleaning my boots. After all, she’s from the peasant-worker class. They are forbidden to speak of lofty matters. She got scared because she was convinced that all kings in Spain resemble Philip II. But I explained to her that there is no resemblance at all between me and Philip, and that I do not have a single Capuchin.¹⁹… I did not go to the Department… The hell with it! No, my friends, you will not be able to lure me now; I’m not going to copy your nasty papers any more!

Between day and night.

Today our administrator came to tell me to go to the Department, and that it’s been three weeks since I’ve gone to work. Just for laughs I went to the Department. The head of our section thought that I would bow to him and apologize, but I looked at him indifferently, not too angrily and not too benevolently, and sat at my place, as if not noticing anyone. I looked at all that office riffraff and thought: “What if you knew who is sitting among you… My Lord God! What a senseless mess you’d start up, and the head of the section himself would start bowing to me deeply, the way he does to the director.” They put some papers in front of me so that I would make a précis. But I didn’t lay a finger on them. A few minutes later everyone started fussing around. They said the director was coming. Many of the civil servants vied with each other to run and show themselves to him. But I didn’t move from my spot. When he was passing through our section, everyone buttoned up their tailcoats, but I did nothing at all! What kind of a director is this! That I should get up for him—never! What kind of director is he? He’s a cork, not a director. Just an ordinary cork, a simple cork, nothing more. The kind you use to stop up bottles. I was amused most of all when they shoved a piece of paper at me to sign. They thought that I would write at the very end of the sheet: Desk Head So-and-so. Not on your life! In the most important space, where the director of the Department is supposed to sign, I wrote: “Ferdinand VIII.” You should have seen what reverential silence reigned; but I just motioned with my hand, saying, “No signs of your subjecthood are necessary!” and I left.

From there I went right to the director’s apartment. He was not home. The footman did not want to let me in, but I said such things to him that he was forced to give way. I passed through right to the dressing room. She was sitting in front of the mirror; she jumped up and stepped away from me. But I did not tell her that I was the king of Spain. I said only that a kind of happiness awaited her that she could not even imagine, and that despite the intrigues of our enemies, we would be together. I did not want to say any more and I left. Oh, that perfidious creature—woman! Only now have I grasped what a woman is. Up to now no one has found out who she is in love with: I am the first to discover it. Woman is in love with the devil. Yes, seriously. The natural philosophers write silly things about how she is this and that—she loves the devil and no one else. See her over there, looking through her lorgnette from the first-tier boxes. You think she is looking at that fat man with the star on his breast? Not at all, she is looking at the devil who is standing behind him. Now he’s hidden himself in the man’s tailcoat. Now he’s motioning to her from there with his finger! And she will marry him. She will. And all those high-ranking fathers of theirs, all those who wriggle around and try to get into the Court and say that they’re patriots and so on: High incomes, that’s what those patriots want! They’ll sell their mother, their father, their God for money, the ambitious climbers, the Christ-sellers! It’s all ambition, and it’s ambition because there is a tiny little blister under the tongue, and in it is a tiny worm the size of the head of a pin, and this is all made by a barber who lives on Gorokhovaya Street. I don’t remember his name; but it is reliably known that he, together with a certain midwife, wants to spread Mohammedanism throughout the whole world, and because of this, they say, in France a large part of the people already profess the faith of Mohammed.

The day had no date.

I was walking along Nevsky Avenue incognito. The Sovereign Emperor rode by. The whole city took off their caps, and I as well, but I gave no sign at all that I was the king of Spain. I considered it unseemly to reveal myself right there in front of everyone; because first of all I must present myself to the Court. The only thing that was stopping me was that I still do not have a king’s attire. I have to acquire at least some kind of mantle. I wanted to order it from a tailor, but they are utter asses, and besides, they neglect their work entirely, they’ve gotten involved in shady deals and mostly pave the street with stones. I decided to make a mantle out of my new uniform, which I had only worn twice. But so that those scoundrels wouldn’t ruin it, I decided to sew it myself, after locking the door so no one would see. I cut it all up with scissors, because it had to be of a completely different cut.

There was also no month.

It was the devil knows what.

And so, I am in Spain, and it happened so quickly that I could hardly come to my senses. This morning the Spanish delegates came to my house, and I got into a coach with them. The unusual speed seemed strange to me. We traveled so quickly that in half an hour we reached the Spanish border. But you know that there are now cast-iron roads throughout Europe, and the steamships go extremely fast.²⁰ Spain is a strange land: When we entered the first room, I saw a multitude of people with shaved heads. However, I guessed that these must be either grandees or soldiers, because they shave their heads. The behavior of the state chancellor, who led me by the hand, seemed extremely strange to me. He pushed me into a small room and said: “Sit here, and if you call yourself King Ferdinand, I’ll beat it out of you.” But knowing that this was nothing but a test, I answered in the negative—for which the chancellor hit me twice on the back with a stick so painfully that I almost cried out, but I restrained myself, recalling that this is the knightly custom when one is initiated into a high rank, because in Spain to this day they maintain knightly customs. When I was left alone, I decided to occupy myself with affairs of state. I discovered that China and Spain are one and the same country, and it is only out of ignorance that they are considered separate states. I advise everyone to deliberately write “Spain” on a piece of paper, and it will turn out as “China.”

But I was extremely distressed by an event that is to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow at seven o’clock a strange phenomenon will take place: The earth will sit down on the moon. Even the famous English chemist Wellington writes about this.²¹ I confess that I experienced sincere alarm when I imagined the unusual tenderness and fragility of the moon. After all, they usually make the moon in Hamburg, and they do a very bad job of it. I am amazed that England does not turn its attention to this. It is made by a lame cooper, and it is clear that he’s a fool and doesn’t have the slightest idea about the moon. He put in a tarred cable and a portion of low-grade lamp oil, and because of that there is a horrible stench all over the earth, so that you have to hold your nose. And because of that the moon itself is such a tender orb that people cannot live there, and only noses live there now. And for that very same reason we cannot see our noses, for they are all located on the moon. And when I imagined that the earth is a heavy substance and might grind our noses into flour when it sits down, I was overcome by such alarm that I put on my stockings and shoes and hurried to the hall of the State Council, in order to give an order to the police not to allow the earth to sit down on the moon. The shaven grandees, of whom I found a great multitude in the hall of the State Council, were very intelligent folk, and when I said: “Gentlemen, let us save the moon, because the earth wants to sit down on it”—they all instantly rushed to carry out my monarchical desire, and many of them climbed up the wall in order to catch the moon; but at that moment the grand chancellor came in. When they saw him, they all ran off in different directions. I, as the king, remained alone. But the chancellor, to my amazement, hit me with a stick and chased me into my room. Such is the power of folk customs in Spain!

To this day I cannot understand what kind of country Spain is. The folk customs and the etiquette of the Court are quite unusual. I do not understand, I do not understand, I absolutely do not understand anything. Today they shaved my head, despite the fact that I shouted with all my might that I did not wish to become a monk. But I can no longer remember what happened to me when they started dripping cold water on my head.²² I have never before experienced such a hell. I was ready to go into such a rage that they could hardly restrain me. I do not understand the significance of this strange custom at all. It’s a stupid, senseless custom! The thoughtlessness of the kings who have not yet abolished it is inconceivable for me. Judging by all the probabilities, I have a hunch: have I not fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, and is not the person I took for the chancellor really the grand inquisitor himself?²³ The only thing I cannot understand is how a king could be subjected to the Inquisition. Of course, it could be the work of France, especially Polignac.²⁴ Oh, that knave Polignac! He swore to hurt me until the day that I die. And now he keeps on and on persecuting me; but I know, my friend, that the Englishman is directing you. The Englishman is a great politician. He wriggles around everywhere. The whole world knows that when England takes snuff, France sneezes.

Today the grand inquisitor came into my room, but when I heard his steps coming from afar, I hid under the chair. When he saw I wasn’t there, he began to call me. At first he shouted: “Poprishchin!”—I didn’t say a word. Then: “Aksenty Ivanovich! Titular councillor! Nobleman!” I kept silent. “Ferdinand VIII, king of Spain!” I wanted to stick my head out, but then I thought: “No, brother, you won’t fool me! We know all about your type. You’re going to pour cold water on my head again.” But he saw me and chased me out from under the chair with a broom. That damned stick strikes extremely painfully. Nevertheless, I was rewarded for all this by today’s discovery: I found out that every rooster has a Spain, which is located under his feathers. The grand inquisitor, however, left me in a fury, threatening me with some sort of punishment. But I completely disregarded his powerless malice, knowing that he functions like a machine, as the tool of the Englishman.

No, I have no strength left to endure it. My God! What they are doing to me! They are pouring cold water on my head! They do not hearken, do not see, do not listen to me. What have I done to them? Why are they tormenting me? What do they want of poor me? What can I give them? I have nothing. I do not have the strength, I cannot bear all their torments, my head is burning, and everything is spinning before my eyes. Save me! Take me! Give me a troika of steeds, swift as a whirlwind! Take your seat, my coachman; ring, my bells; rise up, steeds, and carry me away from this world! Far, far away, so that nothing, nothing can be seen. Out there the sky swirls before me; a little star is sparkling in the distance; the forest rushes by with dark trees and the moon; a blue-gray mist floats under our feet; a string is plucked in the mist; on one side is the sea, on the other side Italy; I can see Russian huts off over there. Is that my dark-blue house I can see in the distance? Is it my mother sitting by the window? Mother, save your poor son! Drop a little tear on his sick little head! See how they are tormenting him! Clasp your poor little orphan to your breast! There is no place for him in the world! He is being persecuted! Mother! Have pity on your sick little child!… And did you know that the Dey of Algiers has a bump right under his nose?²⁵