Текст книги "The Collected tales of Nikolai Gogol"
Автор книги: Николай Гоголь
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God, where had he come! At first he refused to believe it and began studying the objects that filled the room more attentively; but the bare walls and curtainless windows showed no presence of a thoughtful housewife; the worn faces of these pathetic creatures, one of whom sat down almost in front of his nose and gazed at him as calmly as at a spot on someone's clothes-all this convinced him that he had come to one of those revolting havens where pathetic depravity makes its abode, born of tawdry education and the terrible populousness of the capital. One of those havens where man blasphemously crushes and derides all the pure and holy that adorns life, where woman, the beauty of the world, the crown of creation, turns into some strange, ambiguous being, where, along with purity of soul, she loses everything feminine and repulsively adopts all the mannerisms and insolence of a man, and ceases to be that weak, that beautiful being so different from us. Piskarev looked her up and down with astonished eyes, as if still wishing to make sure that it was she who had so bewitched him and swept him away on Nevsky Prospect. But she stood before him as beautiful as ever; her hair was as wonderful; her eyes seemed as heavenly. She was fresh; she was just seventeen; one could see that terrible depravity had overtaken her only recently; it had not yet dared to touch her cheeks, they were fresh and lightly tinted by a fine blush-she was beautiful.
He stood motionless before her and was about to fall into the same simple-hearted reverie as earlier. But the beauty got bored with such long silence and smiled significantly, looking straight into his eyes. Yet this smile was filled with some pathetic insolence; it was as strange and as suited to her face as an expression of piety is to the mug of a bribe-taker, or an accountant's ledger to a poet. He shuddered. She opened her pretty lips and began to say something, but it was all so stupid, so trite… As if intelligence left a person together with chastity. He did not want to hear any more. He was extremely ridiculous and as simple as a child. Instead of taking advantage of this favor, instead of being glad of such an occasion, as anyone else in his place would undoubtedly have been, he rushed out headlong, like a wild goat, and ran down to the street.
His head bowed, his arms hanging limp, he sat in his room like a poor man who found a priceless pearl and straightaway dropped it into the sea. "Such a beauty, such divine features-and where, in what place!…" That was all he was able to utter.
Indeed, pity never possesses us so strongly as at the sight of beauty touched by the corrupting breath of depravity. Let ugliness make friends with it, but beauty, tender beauty… in our thoughts it is united only with chastity and purity. The beauty who had so bewitched poor Piskarev was in fact a marvelous, extraordinary phenomenon. Her presence in that despicable circle seemed still more extraordinary. Her features were all so purely formed, the whole expression of her beautiful face was marked by such nobility, that it was simply impossible to think that depravity had stretched out its terrible claws over her. She would have been a priceless pearl, the whole world, the whole paradise, the whole wealth of an ardent husband; she would have been the beautiful, gentle star of an unostentatious family circle, and would have given sweet orders with one movement of her beautiful mouth. She would have been a divinity in a crowded hall, on the bright parquet, in the glow of candles, the awestruck company of her admirers lying speechless at her feet. But, alas! by the terrible will of some infernal spirit who wishes to destroy the harmony of life, she had been flung, with a loud laugh, into the abyss.
Filled with rending pity, he sat by a guttering candle. It was long after midnight, the bell in the tower struck half-past, and he sat fixed, sleepless, keeping a pointless vigil. Drowsiness, taking advantage of his fixity, was gradually beginning to come over him, the room was already beginning to disappear, only the light of the candle penetrated the reveries that were coming over him, when suddenly a knock at the door made him start and come to his senses. The door opened and a lackey in rich livery came in. Never had rich livery visited his solitary room, and that at such an unusual hour… He was perplexed and looked at the entering lackey with impatient curiosity.
"The lady whom you were pleased to visit several hours ago," the lackey said with a courteous bow, "bids me invite you to call on her and sends a carriage for you."
Piskarev stood in wordless astonishment: a carriage, a liveried lackey!… No, there must be some mistake here…
"Listen, my good fellow," he said with timidity, "you must have come to the wrong place. The lady undoubtedly sent you for someone else, and not for me."
"No, sir, I am not mistaken. Was is not you who kindly accompanied a lady on foot to a house on Liteiny, to a room on the fourth floor?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, make haste if you please, the lady wishes to see you without fail and asks you kindly to come straight to her house."
Piskarev ran down the stairs. A carriage was indeed standing outside. He got into it, the door slammed, the pavement rumbled under wheels and hooves, and the lit-up perspective of buildings with bright signboards raced past the carriage windows. On the way, Piskarev kept thinking and was unable to figure out this adventure. A private house, a carriage, a lackey in rich livery… he could in no way reconcile all this with the room on the fourth floor, the dusty windows, and the out-of-tune piano.
The carriage stopped in front of a brightly lit entrance, and he was struck at once: by the row of carriages, the talk of the coachmen, the brightly lit windows, and the sounds of music. The lackey in rich livery helped him out of the carriage and respectfully led the way to a front hall with marble columns, a doorman all drowned in gold, cloaks and fur coats scattered about, and a bright lamp. An airy stairway with shining banisters, perfumed with scents, raced upwards. He was already on it, he was already in the first room, frightened and drawing back at the first step from the terrible crowdedness. The extraordinary diversity of faces threw him into complete bewilderment; it seemed as if some demon had chopped the whole world up into a multitude of different pieces and mixed those pieces together with no rhyme or reason. Ladies' gleaming shoulders, black tailcoats, chandeliers, lamps, airy gauzes flying, ethereal ribbons, and a fat double bass peeking from behind the railing of a magnificent gallery-everything was splendid for him. He saw at once so many venerable old and half-old men with stars on their tailcoats, ladies who stepped so lightly, proudly, and gracefully over the parquet or sat in rows, he heard so many French and English words, moreover the young men in black tailcoats were filled with such nobility, talked or kept silent with such dignity, were so incapable of saying anything superfluous, joked so majestically, smiled so respectfully, wore such superb side-whiskers, knew so well how to display perfect hands as they straightened their ties, the ladies were so airy, so completely immersed in self-satisfaction and rapture, lowered their eyes so charmingly, that… but the humble air of Piskarev, who clung fearfully to a column, was enough to show that he was utterly at a loss. At that moment the crowd surrounded a group of dancers.
They raced on, wrapped in transparent Parisian creations, dresses woven of the very air; carelessly they touched the parquet with their shining little feet, and were more ethereal than if they had not touched it at all. But one among them was dressed more finely, more splendidly and dazzlingly than the rest. Inexpressible, the very finest combination of taste showed in her attire, and yet it seemed that she did not care about it at all and that it showed inadvertently, of itself. She both looked and did not look at the crowd of spectators around her, her beautiful long eyelashes lowered indifferently, and the shining whiteness of her face struck the eye still more dazzlingly when a slight shadow fell on her charming brow as she inclined her head.
Piskarev made a great effort to force his way through the crowd and get a better look at her, but, to his greatest vexation, some huge head with dark, curly hair kept getting in the way; the crowd also pressed him so much that he did not dare move forward or backward for fear he might somehow shove some privy councillor. But then he did push to the front and looked at his clothes, wishing to straighten them properly. Heavenly Creator, what was this! He had a frock coat on, and it was all covered with paint: in his haste he had even forgotten to change into decent clothes. He blushed to his ears and, dropping his glance, wanted to disappear somewhere, but there was decidedly nowhere to disappear to: court chamberlains in brilliant uniforms stood in a solid wall behind him. He wished he was far away from the beauty with the wonderful brow and eyelashes. He fearfully raised his eyes to see whether she was looking at him: God! she was standing right in front of him… But what is this? what is this? "It's she!" he cried almost aloud. Indeed it was she, the very same one he had met on Nevsky and followed to her house.
She raised her eyelashes meanwhile and looked at everyone with her bright eyes. "Aie, aie, aie, what beauty!…" was all he was able to utter with failing breath. She looked around the whole circle of people, all of whom strove to hold her attention, but her weary and inattentive eyes soon turned away and met the eyes of Piskarev. Oh, what heaven! what paradise! Grant him strength, O Creator, to bear it! Life will not contain it, it will destroy and carry off his soul! She made a sign, but not with her hand, not by inclining her head-no, but her devastating eyes expressed this sign so subtly and inconspicuously that no one could see it, yet he saw it, he understood it. The dance lasted a long time; the weary music seemed to fade and go out altogether, then it would break loose again, shriek and thunder. Finally-the end! She sat down, her bosom heaved under the thin smoke of gauze; her hand (O Creator, what a wonderful hand!) dropped on her knees, crushing her airy dress beneath it, and her dress under her hand seemed to start breathing music, and its fine lilac color emphasized still more the bright whiteness of this beautiful hand. Just to touch it-nothing more! No other desires-they are all too bold… He stood behind her chair, not daring to speak, not daring to breathe.
"Was it boring for you?" she said. "I was bored, too. I see that you hate me…" she added, lowering her long eyelashes.
"Hate you? Me?… I…" Piskarev, utterly at a loss, was about to say, and would probably have produced a whole heap of the most incoherent things, but just then a gentleman-in-waiting approached with witty and pleasant observations and a beautifully curled forelock on his head. He rather pleasantly displayed a row of rather good teeth, and each of his witticisms was a sharp nail in Piskarev's heart. At last some third person, fortunately, addressed the gentleman with some question.
"How unbearable!" she said, raising her heavenly eyes to him. "I'll go and sit at the other end of the room. Meet me there!"
She slipped through the crowd and disappeared. He shoved his way through the crowd like a madman and was already there.
Yes, it was she! She was sitting like a queen, the best of all, the most beautiful of all, and was seeking him with her eyes.
"You're here," she said softly. "I'll be frank with you: you must have thought the circumstances of our meeting strange. Could you really think that I belong to that despicable class of creatures among whom you met me? To you my actions seem strange, but I will reveal a secret to you. Will you be able," she said, fixing her eyes on him, "to keep it forever?"
"Oh, I will, I will, I will!…"
But just then a rather elderly man approached, spoke to her in some language unknown to Piskarev, and offered her his arm. She looked at Piskarev with imploring eyes and motioned to him to stay where he was and wait for her to come back, but he, in a fit of impatience, was unable to obey any orders, even from her lips. He started after her; but the crowd parted them. He could no longer see the lilac dress! Anxiously he went from room to room, shoving everyone he met unmercifully, but in all the rooms there were aces sitting over whist, sunk in dead silence. In one corner of the room, several elderly men argued about the advantages of military service over civil; in another, people in superb tailcoats were exchanging light remarks about a multivolume edition of a hardworking poet. Piskarev felt one elderly man of respectable appearance seize him by the button of his tailcoat and present for his judgment some quite correct observation of his, but he rudely pushed him away without even noticing that he had a rather significant decoration around his neck. He ran to the next room-she was not there either. To a third-not there. "Where is she? Give her to me! Oh, I cannot live without another look at her! I want to hear what she was going to say"-but his search was all in vain. Anxious, weary, he pressed himself into a corner and gazed at the crowd; but his strained eyes began to present everything to him in some vague way. Finally, the walls of his own room began to show clearly before him. He raised his eyes. Before him stood a candlestick with the light nearly gone out inside it; the whole candle had melted away; tallow had poured over the table.
So he had been sleeping! God, what a dream! And why wake up? why not wait one more moment: she surely would have appeared again! The unpleasant and wan light of vexatious day showed in his windows. Such gray, such dingy disorder in his room… Oh, how repulsive reality is! What is it compared with dreams? He undressed hastily and went to bed, wrapped in a blanket, wishing to call back the flown vision for a moment. Sleep, indeed, was not slow in coming to him, but it did not at all present him with what he would have liked to see: now a Lieutenant Pirogov would come with his pipe, now an Academy watchman, now an actual state councillor, now the head of a Finnish woman whose portrait he had painted once, and other such nonsense.
He lay in bed till noon, wishing to fall asleep; but she would not appear. If only she would show her beautiful features for a moment, if only he could hear her light footstep for a moment, if only her bare arm, bright as snow on a mountaintop, could flash before him.
Abandoning everything, forgetting everything, he sat with a crushed, hopeless look, filled only with his dream. He did not think of eating anything; without any interest, without any life, his eyes gazed out the window to the courtyard, where a dirty water-carrier was pouring water that froze in the air, and the bleating voice of a peddler quavered: "Old clothes for sale." The everyday and real struck oddly on his ear. Thus he sat till evening, when he greedily rushed to bed. For a long time he struggled with sleeplessness and finally overcame it. Again some dream, some trite, vile dream. "God, be merciful; show her to me for a moment at least, just for one moment!" Again he waited till evening, again fell asleep, again dreamed of some official who was an official and at the same time a bassoon. Oh, this was unbearable! At last she came! her head and her tresses… she looks… Oh, how brief! Again the mist, again some stupid dream.
In the end dreams became his life, and his whole life thereafter took a strange turn: one might say he slept while waking and watched while asleep. If anyone had seen him sitting silently before the empty table or walking down the street, he would certainly have taken him for a lunatic or someone destroyed by hard drinking; his gaze was quite senseless, his natural distractedness developed, finally, and imperiously drove all feeling, all movement, from his face. He became animated only with the coming of night.
Such a state unsettled his health, and his most terrible torment was that sleep finally began to desert him entirely. Wishing to salvage this his only possession, he used every means to restore it. He heard that there was a means of restoring sleep-one had only to take opium. But where to get this opium? He remembered one Persian shopkeeper who sold shawls and who, whenever they met, asked him to paint a beauty for him. He decided to go to him, supposing that he would undoubtedly have this opium. The Persian received him sitting on a couch, his legs tucked under him.
"What do you need opium for?" he asked.
Piskarev told him about his insomnia.
"Very well, I give you opium, only paint me a beauty. Must be a fine beauty! Must be with black eyebrows and eyes big as olives; and me lying beside her smoking my pipe! Do you hear? Must be a fine one! a beauty!"
Piskarev promised everything. The Persian stepped out for a minute and returned with a little pot filled with dark liquid, carefully poured some of it into another little pot and gave it to Piskarev, with instructions to take no more than seven drops in water. He greedily seized this precious pot, which he would not have given up for a heap of gold, and rushed headlong home.
On coming home, he poured a few drops into a glass of water and, having swallowed it, dropped off to sleep.
God, what joy! It's she! She again! but now with a completely different look! Oh, how nicely she sits by the window of a bright country house! Her dress breathes such simplicity as only a poet's thought is clothed in. Her hair is done… O Creator, how simply her hair is done, and how becoming it is to her! A short shawl lightly covers her slender neck; everything in her is modest, everything in her is-a mysterious, inexplicable sense of taste. How lovely her graceful gait! how musical the sound of her footsteps and the rustle of her simple dress! how beautiful her arm clasped round with a bracelet of hair! She says to him with tears in her eyes: "Don't despise me. I'm not at all what you take me for. Look at me, look at me more closely, and say: Am I capable of what you think?" "Oh, no, no! If anyone dares to think so, let him…" But he woke up, all stirred, distraught, with tears in his eyes. "It would be better if you didn't exist, didn't live in the world, but were the creation of an inspired artist! I would never leave the canvas, I would eternally gaze at you and kiss you. I would live and breathe by you, as the most beautiful dream, and then I would be happy. My desires could reach no further. I would call upon you as my guardian angel, before sleep and waking, and I would wait for you whenever I had to portray the divine and holy. But now… what a terrible life! What is the use of her being alive? Is the life of a madman pleasant for his relations and friends who once used to love him? God, what is our life! An eternal discord between dream and reality!" Thoughts much like these constantly occupied him. He did not think about anything, he even ate almost nothing, and impatiently, with a lover's passion, waited for evening and the desired vision. His thoughts were constantly turned to one thing, and this finally acquired such power over his whole being and imagination that the desired image came to him almost every day, always in a situation contrary to reality, because his thoughts were perfectly pure, like the thoughts of a child. Through his dreams, the object itself was somehow becoming more pure and totally transformed.
Taking opium enflamed his thoughts still more, and if anyone was ever in love to the utmost degree of madness, impetuously, terribly, destructively, stormily, he was that unfortunate man.
Of all his dreams, one was the most joyful for him: he imagined his studio, he was so happy, he sat holding the palette with such pleasure! And she was right there. She was his wife now. She sat beside him, her lovely elbow resting on the back of his chair, and looked at his work. Her eyes, languid, weary, showed the burden of bliss; everything in his room breathed of paradise; there was such brightness, such order! O Creator! she leaned her lovely head on his breast… He had never had a better dream. He got up after it, somehow more fresh and less distracted than before. Strange thoughts were born in his head. "It may be," he thought, "that she's been drawn into depravity by some involuntary, terrible accident; it may be that the impulses of her soul are inclined to repentance; it may be that she herself wishes to tear herself away from her terrible condition. And can one indifferently allow for her ruin, and that at a moment when it is enough just to reach out a hand to save her from drowning?" His thoughts went further still. "No one knows me," he said to himself, "and who cares about me anyway? And I don't care about them either. If she shows pure repentance and changes her life, then I'll marry her. I must marry her, and surely I'll do much better than many of those who marry their housekeepers, and often even the most despicable creatures. But my deed will be an unmercenary and perhaps even a great one. I'll restore to the world its most beautiful ornament."
Having come up with such a light-minded plan, he felt the flush of color on his face; he went to the mirror and was himself frightened by his sunken cheeks and the pallor of his face. He began to dress carefully; he washed, brushed his hair, put on a new tailcoat, a smart waistcoat, threw on a cloak, and went out. He breathed the fresh air and felt freshness in his heart, like a convalescent who has decided to go out for the first time after a long illness. His heart was pounding as he approached the street where he had not set foot since the fatal encounter.
He spent a long time looking for the house; his memory seemed to fail him. Twice he walked up and down the street, not knowing where to stop. Finally one seemed right to him. He quickly ran up the stairs, knocked at the door: the door opened, and who should come out to meet him? His ideal, his mysterious image, the original of his dreamt pictures, she by whom he lived, lived so terribly, so tormentingly, so sweetly. She herself stood before him. He trembled; he could barely keep his feet from weakness, overcome by an impulse of joy. She stood before him just as beautiful, though her eyes were sleepy, though pallor had already crept over her face, no longer so fresh-yet still she was beautiful.
"Ah!" she cried out, seeing Piskarev and rubbing her eyes (it was then already two o'clock). "Why did you run away from us that time?"
Exhausted, he sat down on a chair and gazed at her.
"And I just woke up. They brought me back at seven in the morning. I was completely drunk," she added with a smile.
Oh, better you were mute and totally deprived of speech than to utter such things! She had suddenly shown him the whole of her life as in a panorama. However, he mastered himself despite that and decided to try whether his admonitions might have an effect on her. Summoning his courage, he began in a trembling and at the same time fervent voice to present her terrible position to her. She listened to him with an attentive look and with that sense of astonishment which we show at the sight of something unexpected and strange. With a slight smile, she glanced at her friend who was sitting in the corner and who, abandoning the comb she was cleaning, also listened attentively to the new preacher.
"True, I'm poor," Piskarev said finally, after a long and instructive admonition, "but we'll work; we'll vie with each other in our efforts to improve our life. There's nothing more pleasant than to owe everything to oneself. I'll sit over my paintings, you'll sit by me, inspiring my labors, embroidering or doing some other handwork, and we won't lack for anything."
"What!" she interrupted his speech with an expression of some disdain. "I'm no laundress or seamstress that I should do any work!"
God! in these words all her low, all her contemptible life was expressed-a life filled with emptiness and idleness, the faithful companions of depravity.
"Marry me!" her friend, till then sitting silently in the corner, picked up with an impudent look. "If I was a wife, I'd sit like this!"
And with that she made some stupid grimace with her pathetic face which the beauty found very funny.
Oh, this was too much! This was more than he could bear! He rushed out, having lost all feeling and thought. His reason was clouded: stupidly, aimlessly, seeing, hearing, feeling nothing, he wandered about for the whole day. No one could say whether he slept anywhere or not; only the next day, following some stupid instinct, did he come to his apartment, pale, dreadful-looking, his hair disheveled, with signs of madness on his face. He locked himself in his room, let no one in and asked for nothing. Four days passed, and his locked room never once opened; finally a week went by, and the room still remained locked. They rushed to the door, began calling him, but there was no answer; finally they broke the door down and found his lifeless body with the throat cut. A bloody razor lay on the floor. From his convulsively spread arms and terribly disfigured appearance, it could be concluded that his hand had not been steady and that he had suffered for a long time before his sinful soul left his body.
Thus perished, the victim of a mad passion, poor Piskarev, quiet, timid, modest, childishly simple-hearted, who bore in himself a spark of talent which in time might have blazed up broadly and brightly. No one wept over him; no one could be seen by his lifeless body except the ordinary figure of a district inspector and the indifferent mien of a city doctor. His coffin was quietly taken to Okhta, 6 even without religious rites; only a soldier-sentry wept as he followed it, and that because he had drunk an extra dram of vodka. Not even Lieutenant Pirogov came to look at the body of the unfortunate wretch upon whom, while he lived, he had bestowed his lofty patronage. However, he could not be bothered with that; he was occupied with an extraordinary event. But let us turn to him.
I don't like corpses and dead men, and it always gives me an unpleasant feeling when a long funeral procession crosses my path and an invalid soldier, dressed like some sort of Capuchin, takes a pinch of snuff with his left hand because his right is occupied with a torch. My heart is always vexed at the sight of a rich catafalque and a velvet coffin; but my vexation is mixed with sadness when I see a drayman pulling the bare pine coffin of a poor man, and only some beggar woman met at an intersection plods after it, having nothing else to do.
It seems we left Lieutenant Pirogov at the point of his parting from poor Piskarev and rushing after the blonde. This blonde was a light, rather interesting little creature. She stopped in front of each shop window to gaze at the displays of belts, kerchiefs, earrings, gloves, and other trifles; she fidgeted constantly, looked in all directions, and glanced over her shoulder. "You're mine, litde sweetie!" Lieutenant Pirogov repeated self-confidently as he continued his pursuit, covering his face with the collar of his overcoat lest he meet some acquaintance. But it will do no harm if we inform readers of who this Lieutenant Pirogov was.
But before we tell who this Lieutenant Pirogov was, it will do no harm if we say a thing or two about the society to which Pirogov belonged. There are officers in Petersburg who constitute a sort of middle class in society. You will always find one of them at a soiree, at a dinner given by a state or actual state councillor, who earned this rank by forty long years of labor. Several pale daughters, completely colorless, like Petersburg, some of them overripe, a tea table, a piano, dancing-all this is usually inseparable from a bright epaulette shining by a lamp, between a well-behaved blonde and the black tailcoat of a brother or a friend of the family. It is very hard to stir up these cool-blooded girls and make them laugh; it takes very great art, or, better to say, no art at all. One must speak so that it is neither too intelligent nor too funny, so that it is all about the trifles that women like. In this the gentlemen under discussion should be given their due. They have a special gift for making these colorless beauties laugh and listen. Exclamations stifled by laughter-"Ah, stop it! Aren't you ashamed to make me laugh so!"-are usually their best reward. Among the upper classes they occur very rarely, or, better to say, never. They are forced out altogether by what this society calls aristocrats; however, they are considered educated and well-bred people. They like talking about literature; they praise Bulgarin, Pushkin, and Grech, and speak with contempt and barbed wit of A. A. Orlov. 7 They never miss a single public lecture, be it on accounting or even on forestry. In the theater, whatever the play, you will always find one of them, unless they are playing some Filatkas, 8 which are highly insulting to their fastidious taste. They are constantly in the theater. For theater managers, these are the most profitable people. In plays, they especially like good poetry; they also like very much to call loudly for the actors; many of them, being teachers in government schools, or preparing students for them, in the end acquire a cabriolet and a pair of horses. Then their circle widens: they finally arrive at marrying a merchant's daughter who can play the piano, with a hundred thousand or so in cash and a heap of bearded relations. However, this honor they cannot attain before being promoted to the rank of colonel at the very least. Because our Russian beards, though still giving off a whiff of cabbage, have no wish for their daughters to marry any but generals, or colonels at the very least. These are the main features of this sort of young men. But Lieutenant Pirogov had a host of talents that belonged to him personally. He declaimed verses from Dmitri Donskoy and Woe from Wit 9 superbly well, and possessed a special art of producing smoke rings from his pipe so skillfully that he could suddenly send ten of them passing one through another. He could very pleasantly tell a joke about a cannon being one thing and a unicorn something else again. However, it is rather difficult to enumerate all the talents fate had bestowed on Pirogov.
