The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (43 page)

And so Pirogov would not cease his pursuit of the unknown lady, entertaining her now and then with questions to which she replied sharply, curtly, and with some sort of vague sounds.
Through the dark Kazan gate they entered Meshchanskaya Street, the street of tobacco and grocery shops, of German artisans and Finnish nymphs.
The blonde ran more quickly and fluttered through the gates of a rather dingy house.
Pirogov followed her.
She ran up the narrow, dark stairway and went in at a door, through which Pirogov also boldly made his way.
He found himself in a big room with black walls and a soot-covered ceiling.
There was a heap of iron screws, locksmith’s tools, shiny coffeepots and candlesticks on the table; the floor was littered with copper and iron shavings.
Pirogov realized at once that this was an artisan’s dwelling.
The unknown lady fluttered on through a side door.
He stopped to think for a moment, but, following the Russian rule, resolved to go ahead.
He entered a room in no way resembling the first, very neatly decorated, showing that the owner was a German.
He was struck by an extraordinarily strange sight.

Before him sat Schiller—not the Schiller who wrote
Wilhelm Tell
and the
History of the Thirty Years’ War
, but the well-known Schiller, the tinsmith of Meshchanskaya Street.
Next to Schiller stood Hoffmann—not the writer Hoffmann, but a rather good cobbler from Ofitserskaya Street, a great friend of Schiller’s.
¹⁰
Schiller was drunk and sat oh a chair stamping his foot and heatedly saying something.
All this would not have been so surprising to Pirogov, but what did surprise him was the extremely strange posture of the figures.
Schiller was sitting, his rather fat nose stuck out and his head raised, while Hoffmann was holding him by this nose with two fingers and waggling the blade of his cobbler’s knife just above the surface of it.
Both personages were speaking in German, and therefore Lieutenant Pirogov, whose only German was “
Gut Morgen
,” was able to understand nothing of this whole story.
Schiller’s words, however, consisted of the following:

“I don’t want, I have no need of a nose!” he said, waving his arms.
“For this one nose I need three pounds of snuff a month.
And I pay in the Russian vile shop, because the German shop doesn’t have Russian snuff, I pay in the Russian vile shop forty kopecks for each pound; that makes one rouble twenty kopecks; twelve times one rouble twenty kopecks makes fourteen roubles forty kopecks.
Do you hear, Hoffmann my friend?
For this one nose, fourteen roubles forty kopecks!
Yes, and on feast days I snuff rappee, because I don’t want to snuff Russian vile tobacco on feast days.
I snuff two pounds of rappee a year, two roubles a pound.
Six plus fourteen—twenty roubles forty kopecks on snuff alone.
That’s highway robbery!
I ask you, Hoffmann my friend, is it not so?” Hoffmann, who was drunk himself, answered in the affirmative.
“Twenty roubles forty kopecks!
I’m a Swabian German; I have a king in Germany.
I don’t want a nose!
Cut my nose off!
Here’s my nose!”

And had it not been for the sudden appearance of Lieutenant Pirogov, there is no doubt that Hoffmann would have cut Schiller’s nose off just like that, because he was already holding his knife in such a position as if he were about to cut out a shoe sole.

Schiller found it extremely vexing that an unknown, uninvited person had suddenly hindered them so inopportunely.
Despite his
being under the inebriating fumes of beer and wine, he felt it somewhat indecent to be in the presence of an outside witness while looking and behaving in such a fashion.
Meanwhile Pirogov bowed slightly and said with his usual pleasantness:

“You will excuse me …”

“Get out!” Schiller drawled.

This puzzled Lieutenant Pirogov.
Such treatment was completely new to him.
The smile that had barely appeared on his face suddenly vanished.
With a sense of distressed dignity, he said:

“I find it strange, my dear sir … you must have failed to notice … I am an officer …”

“What is an officer!
I am a Swabian German.
Mineself” (here Schiller banged his fist on the table) “I can be an officer: a year and a half a Junker,
¹¹
two years a sub-lieutenant, and tomorrow I’m right away an officer.
But I don’t want to serve.
I’ll do this to an officer—poof!” Here Schiller held his hand to his mouth and poofed on it.

Lieutenant Pirogov saw that there was nothing left for him but to withdraw.
Nevertheless, such treatment, not at all befitting his rank, was disagreeable to him.
He stopped several times on the stairs, as if wishing to collect his wits and think how to make Schiller sensible of his insolence.
He finally concluded that Schiller could be excused because his head was full of beer; besides, he pictured the pretty blonde and decided to consign it all to oblivion.
Next morning, Lieutenant Pirogov showed up very early at the tinsmith’s shop.
In the front room he was met by the pretty blonde, who asked in a rather stern voice that was very becoming to her little face:

“What can I do for you?”

“Ah, good morning, my little dear!
You don’t recognize me?
Sly thing, such pretty eyes you have!” at which Lieutenant Pirogov was going to chuck her nicely under the chin with his finger.

But the blonde uttered a timorous exclamation and asked with the same sternness:

“What can I do for you?”

“Let me look at you, that’s all,” Lieutenant Pirogov said with a very pleasant smile, getting closer to her; but, noticing that the
timorous blonde wanted to slip out the door, he added, “I’d like to order some spurs, my little dear.
Can you make spurs for me?
Though to love you, what’s needed is not spurs but a bridle.
Such pretty hands!”

Lieutenant Pirogov was always very courteous in conversations of this sort.

“I’ll call my husband right now,” the German lady cried and left, and a few minutes later Pirogov saw Schiller come out with sleepy eyes, barely recovered from yesterday’s drinking.
Looking at the officer, he recalled as in a vague dream what had happened yesterday.
He did not remember how it had been, but felt that he had done something stupid, and therefore he received the officer with a very stern air.

“I can’t take less than fifteen roubles for spurs,” he said, wishing to get rid of Pirogov, because as an honorable German he was very ashamed to look at anyone who had seen him in an improper position.
Schiller liked to drink without any witnesses, with two or three friends, and at such times even locked himself away from his workmen.

“Why so much?” Pirogov asked benignly.

“German workmanship,” Schiller uttered coolly, stroking his chin.
“A Russian would make them for two roubles.”

“Very well, to prove that I like you and want to become acquainted with you, I’ll pay the fifteen roubles.”

Schiller stood pondering for a moment: being an honest German, he felt a bit ashamed.
Wishing to talk him out of the order, he announced that it would be two weeks before he could make them.
But Pirogov, without any objection, declared his consent.

The German lapsed into thought and stood pondering how to do his work better, so that it would actually be worth fifteen roubles.
At that moment, the blonde came into the workshop and began rummaging around on the table, which was all covered with coffeepots.
The lieutenant took advantage of Schiller’s thoughtfulness, got close to her, and pressed her arm, which was bare up to the shoulder.
Schiller did not like that at all.

“
Mein’ Frau!
” he cried.

“
Was wollen Sie dock?
” answered the blonde.

“
Geh’n Sie
to the kitchen!”

The blonde withdrew.

“In two weeks, then?” said Pirogov.

“Yes, in two weeks,” Schiller replied ponderingly.
“I have a lot of work now.”

“Good-bye!
I’ll be back.”

“Good-bye,” answered Schiller, locking the door behind him.

Lieutenant Pirogov decided not to abandon his quest, even though the German lady had obviously rebuffed him.
He did not understand how he could be resisted, the less so as his courtesy and brilliant rank gave him full right to attention.
It must be said, however, that Schiller’s wife, for all her comeliness, was very stupid.
Though stupidity constitutes a special charm in a pretty wife.
I, at least, have known many husbands who are delighted with their wives’ stupidity and see in it all the tokens of childlike innocence.
Beauty works perfect miracles.
All inner shortcomings in a beauty, instead of causing repugnance, become somehow extraordinarily attractive; vice itself breathes comeliness in them; but if it were to disappear, then a woman would have to be twenty times more intelligent than a man in order to inspire, if not love, at least respect.
However, Schiller’s wife, for all her stupidity, was always faithful to her duty, and therefore Pirogov was hard put to succeed in his bold enterprise; but pleasure is always combined with the overcoming of obstacles, and the blonde was becoming more and more interesting for him day by day.
He began inquiring about the spurs quite frequently, so that Schiller finally got tired of it.
He bent every effort towards quickly finishing the spurs he had begun; finally the spurs were ready.

“Ah, what excellent workmanship!” Lieutenant Pirogov exclaimed when he saw the spurs.
“Lord, how well made!
Our general doesn’t have such spurs.”

A sense of self-satisfaction spread all through Schiller’s soul.
His eyes acquired a very cheerful look, and he was completely reconciled with Pirogov.
“The Russian officer is an intelligent man,” he thought to himself.

“So, then, you can also make a sheath, for instance, for a dagger or something else?”

“Oh, very much so,” Schiller said with a smile.

“Then make me a sheath for a dagger.
I’ll bring it.
I have a very good Turkish dagger, but I’d like to make a different sheath for it.”

Schiller was as if hit by a bomb.
His brows suddenly knitted.
“There you go!” he thought, denouncing himself inwardly for having called down more work on himself.
He considered it dishonest to refuse now; besides, the Russian officer had praised his work.
Shaking his head a little, he gave his consent; but the kiss Pirogov brazenly planted right on the lips of the pretty blonde threw him into total perplexity.

I consider it not superfluous to acquaint the reader a little more closely with Schiller.
Schiller was a perfect German in the full sense of this whole word.
From the age of twenty, that happy time when a Russian lives by hit-or-miss, Schiller had already measured out his entire life, and on no account would he make any exceptions.
He had resolved to get up at seven, to have dinner at two, to be precise in all things, and to get drunk every Sunday.
He had resolved to put together a capital of fifty thousand in ten years, and this was as sure and irresistible as fate, because a clerk will sooner forget to leave his card with his superior’s doorman
¹²
than a German will decide to go back on his word.
On no account would he increase his expenses, and if the price of potatoes went up too much compared to usual, he did not spend a kopeck more but merely decreased the quantity, and though he occasionally went a bit hungry, he would nevertheless get used to it.
His accuracy went so far as the decision to kiss his wife not more than twice a day, and to avoid somehow kissing her an extra time, he never put more than one teaspoon of pepper in his soup; on Sundays, however, this rule was not fulfilled so strictly, because Schiller then drank two bottles of beer and one bottle of caraway-seed vodka, which he nevertheless always denounced.
He drank not at all like an Englishman, who bolts his door right after dinner and gets potted by himself.
On the contrary, being a German, he always drank inspiredly, either with the cobbler Hoffmann or with the cabinetmaker Kuntz, also a German and a big drinker.
Such was the character of the noble Schiller, who was finally put into an extremely difficult position.
Though he was phlegmatic and a German, Pirogov’s
behavior still aroused something like jealousy in him.
He racked his brain and could not figure out how to get rid of this Russian officer.
Meanwhile, Pirogov, as he was smoking his pipe in a circle of his comrades—because Providence has so arranged it that where there are officers there are also pipes—smoking his pipe in a circle of his comrades, hinted significantly and with a pleasant smile at a little intrigue with a pretty German lady with whom, in his words, he was already on quite close terms and whom in reality he had all but lost hope of attracting to himself.

One day, while strolling along Meshchanskaya, he kept glancing at the house adorned by Schiller’s shingle with its coffeepots and samovars; to his great joy, he saw the blonde’s head leaning out the window and watching the passers-by.
He stopped, waved his hand, and said: “
Gut Morgen!
” The blonde greeted him as an acquaintance.

“Say, is your husband at home?”

“Yes,” answered the blonde.

“And when is he not at home?”

“He’s not at home on Sundays,” the stupid blonde answered.

“Not bad,” Pirogov thought to himself, “I must take advantage of it.”

And next Sunday, out of the blue, he appeared before the blonde.
Schiller was indeed not at home.
The pretty hostess got frightened; but this time Pirogov behaved quite prudently, treated her very respectfully and, bowing, showed all the beauty of his tightly fitted waist.
He joked very pleasantly and deferentially, but the silly German woman replied to everything in monosyllables.
Finally, having tried to get at her from all sides and seeing that nothing would amuse her, he offered to dance.
The German woman accepted at once, because German women are always eager to dance.
Pirogov placed great hopes in this: first, she already enjoyed it; second, it would demonstrate his tournure and adroitness; third, while dancing he could get closer and embrace the pretty German, and thus start it all going—in short, the result would be complete success.
He started some sort of gavotte, knowing that German women need gradualness.
The pretty German stepped out into the middle of the room and raised her beautiful
little foot.
This position so delighted Pirogov that he rushed to kiss her.
The German woman began to scream, thereby increasing her loveliness still more in Pirogov’s eyes; he showered her with kisses.
When suddenly the door opened and in came Schiller with Hoffmann and the cabinetmaker Kuntz.
These worthy artisans were all drunk as cobblers.