The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (42 page)

“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, little 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.
He liked talking about some actress or dancer, but not so sharply as a young sub-lieutenant usually talks about this subject.
He was very pleased with his rank, to which he had recently been promoted, and though he would occasionally say, while lying on the sofa: “Ah, ah!
vanity, all is vanity!
So what if I’m a lieutenant?”—secretly he was very flattered by this new dignity; in conversation he often tried to hint at it indirectly, and once, when he ran across some scrivener in the street who seemed impolite to him, he immediately stopped him and in a few but sharp words gave him to know that before him stood a lieutenant and not some other sort of officer.
He tried to expound it the more eloquently as two good-looking ladies were just passing by.
Generally, Pirogov showed a passion for all that was fine, and he encouraged the artist Piskarev; however, this may have proceeded from his great desire to see his masculine physiognomy in a portrait.
But enough about Pirogov’s qualities.
Man is such a wondrous being that it is never possible to count up all his merits at once.
The more you study him, the more new particulars appear, and their description would be endless.