The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (40 page)

From four o’clock on, Nevsky Prospect is empty, and you will hardly meet even one clerk on it.
Some seamstress from a shop runs across Nevsky Prospect, a box in her hands; some pathetic victim of a humanitarian lawyer, reduced to begging in a frieze overcoat; some visiting eccentric for whom all hours are the same; some long, tall Englishwoman with a reticule and a book in her hands; some company agent, a Russian in a half-cotton frock coat gathered at the back, with a narrow little beard, who lives all his life in a slapdash way, in whom everything moves—back and arms and legs and head—as he goes deferentially down the sidewalk; now and then a lowly artisan; you will not meet anyone else on Nevsky Prospect.

But as soon as dusk falls on the houses and streets, and the sentry, covering himself with a bast mat, climbs the ladder to light the lantern, and prints which do not dare show themselves in the daytime peek out of the low shop windows, then Nevsky Prospect again comes to life and begins to stir.
Then comes that mysterious time when lamps endow everything with some enticing, wondrous light.
You will meet a great many young men, mostly bachelors, in warm frock coats or overcoats.
At that time there is a sense of some goal, or, better, of something resembling a goal, something extremely unaccountable; everyone’s steps quicken and generally become very uneven.
Long shadows flit over the walls and pavement, their heads all but reaching the Police Bridge.
Young collegiate registrars, provincial and collegiate secretaries stroll about for a very long time; but the old collegiate registrars, titular councillors, and court councillors mostly stay home, either because they are married folk or because their food is very well prepared by their live-in German cooks.
Here you will meet the respectable old men who strolled along Nevsky Prospect with such gravity and such amazing nobility at two o’clock.
You will see them running just like young collegiate registrars to peek under the hat of a lady spotted from far off, whose thick lips and rouge-plastered cheeks are liked by so many strollers, most of all by the
salesclerks, company agents, shopkeepers, always dressed in German frock coats, who go strolling in whole crowds and usually arm in arm.

“Wait!” Lieutenant Pirogov cried at that moment, tugging at the young man in the tailcoat and cloak who was walking beside him.
“Did you see?”

“I did, a wonderful girl, a perfect Perugino Bianca.”
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“But who are you talking about?”

“Her, the dark-haired one.
And what eyes!
God, what eyes!
The bearing, and the figure, and the shape of the face—sheer wonders!”

“I’m talking about the blonde who walked after her in the same direction.
Why don’t you go after the brunette, since you liked her so much?”

“Oh, how could I?” the young man in the tailcoat exclaimed, blushing.
“As if she were the kind to walk about Nevsky Prospect in the evening.
She must be a very noble lady,” he went on, sighing, “her cloak alone is worth about eighty roubles!”

“Simpleton!” cried Pirogov, pushing him toward where the bright cloak was fluttering.
“Go on, ninny, you’ll miss her!
And I’ll follow the blonde.”

The two friends parted.

“We know you all,” Pirogov thought with a self-satisfied and self-confident smile, sure that no beauty would be able to resist him.

The young man in the tailcoat and cloak went with timid and tremulous steps toward where, some distance away, the colorful cloak was fluttering, now bathed in bright light as it approached a street lamp, now instantly covered in darkness as it left it behind.
His heart was pounding, and he unwittingly quickened his pace.
He did not even dare dream of gaining any right to the attention of the beauty flying off into the distance, still less to admit such a black thought as Lieutenant Pirogov had hinted at; he merely wished to see the house, to make note of where this lovely being dwelt, who seemed to have flown down from heaven right onto Nevsky Prospect and would surely fly off again no one knew
where.
He flew along so quickly that he was constantly pushing staid gentlemen with gray side-whiskers off the sidewalk.
This young man belonged to a class which represents quite a strange phenomenon among us and belongs as much to the citizens of Petersburg as a person who comes to us in a dream belongs to the real world.
This exceptional group is highly unusual in a city in which everyone is either an official, a shopkeeper, or a German artisan.
He was an artist.
A strange phenomenon, is it not?
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, misty.
These artists do not in the least resemble Italian artists—proud, ardent, like Italy and its sky; on the contrary, they are for the most part kind and meek people, bashful, lighthearted, with a quiet love for their art, who drink tea with their two friends in a small room, who talk modestly about their favorite subject and are totally indifferent to all superfluity.
He is forever inviting some old beggar woman to his place and making her sit for a good six hours, so as to transfer her pathetic, insensible expression to canvas.
He paints his room in perspective, with all sorts of artistic clutter appearing in it: plaster arms and legs turned coffee-colored with time and dust, broken easels, an overturned palette, a friend playing a guitar, paint-stained walls, and an open window through which comes a glimpse of the pale Neva and poor fishermen in red shirts.
They paint almost everything in dull, grayish colors—the indelible imprint of the north.
Yet, for all that, they apply themselves with genuine pleasure to their work.
They often nurture a genuine talent in themselves, and if the fresh air of Italy were to breathe on them, it would surely develop as freely, broadly, and vividly as a plant that has finally been brought outside into the open air.
They are generally very timid: a star
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or a thick epaulette throws them into such confusion that they unwittingly lower the price of their works.
They like to play the dandy on occasion, but this dandyism always stands out in them and looks something like a patch.
You will sometimes meet an excellent tailcoat on them and a dirty cloak, an expensive velvet waistcoat and a frock coat all covered with paint.
Just as you will sometimes meet on their unfinished landscape a nymph painted upside down, which the artist, finding
no other place, sketched on the dirty background of an old work he once delighted in painting.
He never looks you straight in the eye; or if he does, it is somehow vaguely, indefinitely; he does not pierce you with the hawk’s eye of an observer or the falcon’s gaze of a cavalry officer.
The reason for that is that he sees, at one and the same time, both your features and those of some plaster Hercules standing in his room, or else he imagines a painting of his own that he still means to produce.
That is why his responses are often incoherent, not to the point, and the muddle of things in his head increases his timidity all the more.
To this kind belonged the young man we have described, the artist Piskarev, shy, timid, but bearing in his soul sparks of feeling ready on the right occasion to burst into flame.
With a secret tremor he hastened after his object, who had struck him so strongly, and he himself seemed to marvel at his own boldness.
The unknown being to whom his eyes, thoughts, and feelings clung so, suddenly turned her head and looked at him.
God, what divine features!
The loveliest brow, of a dazzling whiteness, was overshadowed by beautiful, agate-like hair.
They were curly, those wondrous tresses, some of which fell from under her hat onto her cheek, touched with a fine, fresh color called up by the cool of the evening.
Her lips were locked on a whole swarm of the loveliest reveries.
All that remains of childhood, that comes of dreaming and quiet inspiration by a lighted lamp—all this seemed to join and merge and be reflected in her harmonious lips.
She glanced at Piskarev, and his heart fluttered at this glance; it was a stern glance, a sense of indignation showed on her face at the sight of such insolent pursuit; but on this beautiful face wrath itself was bewitching.
Overcome with shame and timidity, he stopped, his eyes cast down; but how lose this divinity without even discovering to what holy place she had descended for a visit?
Such thoughts came into the young dreamer’s head, and he resolved on pursuit.
But to do it without being noticed, he hung back, glanced around nonchalantly and studied the shop signs, while not losing sight of a single step the unknown lady took.
Passers-by began to flit by more rarely, the street grew quieter; the beauty looked back, and it seemed to him that a slight smile flashed on her lips.
He trembled all over and did not believe
his eyes.
No, it was the street lamp with its deceitful light showing the semblance of a smile on her face; no, it was his own dreams laughing at him.
But it stopped the breath in his breast, everything in him turned into a vague trembling, all his senses were aflame, and everything before him was covered with a sort of mist.
The sidewalk rushed under him, carriages with galloping horses seemed motionless, the bridge was stretched out and breaking on its arch, the house stood roof down, the sentry box came tumbling to meet him, and the sentry’s halberd, along with the golden words of a shop sign and its painted scissors, seemed to flash right on his eyelashes.
And all this was accomplished by one glance, by one turn of a pretty head.
Unhearing, unseeing, unheeding, he raced in the light tracks of beautiful feet, himself trying to moderate the quickness of his pace, which flew in time with his heart.
Sometimes doubt would come over him: Was the expression of her face indeed so benevolent?—and then he would stop for a moment, but the beating of his heart, the invincible force and agitation of all his feelings, urged him onward.
He did not even notice how a four-story house suddenly rose before him, how all four rows of windows, shining with light, glared at him at once, and the railings of the entrance opposed him with their iron thrust.
He saw the unknown woman fly up the steps, look back, put her finger to her lips, and motion for him to follow her.
His knees trembled; his senses and thoughts were on fire; a lightning flash of joy pierced his heart with an unbearable point!
No, it was no dream!
God, so much happiness in one instant!
such a wonderful life of two minutes!

But was it not a dream?
Could it be that she, for one of whose heavenly glances he would be ready to give his whole life, to approach whose dwelling he already counted an inexplicable bliss—could it be that she had just shown him such favor and attention?
He flew up the stairs.
He did not feel any earthly thought; he was not heated with the flame of earthly passion, no, at that moment he was pure and chaste, like a virginal youth, still breathing the vague spiritual need for love.
And that which in a depraved man would arouse bold thoughts, that same thing, on the contrary, made him still more radiant.
This trust which a weak, beautiful
being had shown in him, this trust imposed on him a vow of chivalric rigor, a vow slavishly to fulfill all her commands.
He wished only for her commands to be all the more difficult and unrealizable, so that he could fly to overcome them with the greater effort.
He had no doubt that some secret and at the same time important reason had made the unknown woman entrust herself to him, that some important services would surely be required of him, and he already felt in himself enough strength and resolve for everything.

The stairway wound around, and his quick dreams wound with it.
“Watch your step!” a voice sounded like a harp and filled his veins with fresh trembling.
On the dark height of the fourth floor, the unknown lady knocked at the door—it opened, and they went in together.
A rather good-looking woman met them with a candle in her hand, but she gave Piskarev such a strange and insolent look that he involuntarily lowered his eyes.
They went into the room.
Three female figures in different corners appeared before his eyes.
One was laying out cards; the second sat at a piano and with two fingers picked out some pathetic semblance of an old polonaise; the third sat before a mirror combing her long hair and never thought of interrupting her toilette at the entrance of a stranger.
Some unpleasant disorder, to be met with only in the carefree room of a bachelor, reigned over all.
The rather nice furniture was covered with dust; a spider had spread its web over a molded cornice; in the half-open doorway to another room, a spurred boot gleamed and the red piping of a uniform flitted: a loud male voice and female laughter rang out unrestrainedly.

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.