The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (46 page)

 … Sophie sat at her table sewing something.
I was looking out the window, because I enjoy watching passers-by.
When suddenly a lackey came in and said: “Teplov!” “Show him in,” Sophie cried and rushed to embrace me … “Ah, Medji, Medji!
If you knew who he is: dark hair, a kammerjunker,
⁵
and such eyes!
dark and glowing like fire”—and Sophie ran to her room.
A moment later a young kammerjunker with dark side-whiskers came in, went up to the mirror, smoothed his hair, and glanced around the room.
I growled a little and kept my place.
Sophie came out soon and bowed gaily to his scraping; and I, as if noticing nothing, just went on looking out the window; however, I cocked my head a little to one side and tried to hear what they were talking about.
Ah,
ma chère
, such nonsense they talked about!
They talked about a lady who performed one figure instead of another during a dance; also how a certain Bobov looked just like a stork in his jabot and nearly fell down; how a certain Miss Lidin fancies she has blue eyes, whereas they’re green—and the like.
“Well,” thought I to myself, “and if we compare the kammerjunker with Trésor!” Heavens, what a difference!
First of all, the kammerjunker has a perfectly smooth, broad face with side-whiskers
around it, as if someone had tied it with a black band; while Trésor has a slender little muzzle and a white spot right on his forehead.
Between Trésor’s waist and the kammerjunker’s there’s no comparing.
The eyes, the gestures, the manners are not at all alike.
Oh, what a difference!
I don’t know,
ma chère
, what she finds in her Teplov.
Why does she admire him so?…

To me it also seems that there’s something wrong here.
It can’t be that a kammerjunker could enchant her so.
Let’s see further on:

It seems to me that if she likes that kammerjunker, she’ll soon be liking the clerk who sits in Papà’s study.
Ah,
ma chère
, if you only knew how ugly he is.
A perfect turtle in a sack …

What clerk might this be?…

He has the strangest last name.
He always sits and sharpens pens.
The hair on his head looks very much like hay.
Papà always sends him out instead of a servant.

I think the vile little dog is aiming at me.
How is my hair like hay?

Sophie can never help laughing when she looks at him.

You’re lying, you cursed dog!
What a vile tongue!
As if I don’t know it’s a matter of envy.
As if I don’t know whose tricks these are.
These are the section chief’s tricks.
The man has sworn undying hatred—and so he injures me, he keeps injuring me at every step.
However, let’s look at another letter.
Maybe the thing will explain itself.

Ma chère
Fidèle, you must excuse my not writing for so long.
I’ve been in perfect ecstasy.
It’s entirely correct what some writer has said, that love is a second life.
Besides, there are big changes in our house now.
The kammerjunker now
comes every day.
Sophie loves him to distraction.
Papà is very happy.
I even heard from our Grigory, who sweeps the floor and almost always talks to himself, that there will be a wedding soon; because Papà absolutely wants to see Sophie married to a general, or a kammerjunker, or an army colonel …

Devil take it!
I can’t read any more … It’s all either kammerjunker or general.
All that’s best in the world, all of it goes either to kammerjunkers or generals.
You find a poor treasure for yourself, hope to reach out your hand to it—a kammerjunker or a general plucks it away from you.
Devil take it!
I wish I could become a general myself: not so as to get her hand and the rest of it, no, I want to be a general simply to see how they’ll fawn and perform all those various courtly tricks and equivocations, and then to tell them I spit on them both.
Devil take it.
How annoying!
I’ve torn the stupid dog’s letters to shreds.

December 3.

It can’t be.
Lies!
The wedding won’t take place!
So what if he’s a kammerjunker.
It’s nothing more than a dignity; it’s not anything visible that you can take in your hands.
He’s not going to have a third eye on his forehead because he’s a kammerjunker.
His nose isn’t made of gold, it’s the same as mine or anybody else’s; he doesn’t eat with it, he smells; he doesn’t cough, he sneezes.
Several times already I’ve tried to figure out where all these differences come from.
What makes me a titular councillor, and why on earth am I a titular councillor?
Maybe I’m some sort of count or general and only seem to be a titular councillor?
Maybe I myself don’t know who I am.
There are so many examples in history: some simple fellow, not only not a nobleman, but simply some tradesman or even peasant—and it’s suddenly revealed that he’s some sort of dignitary, or sometimes even an emperor.
If even a muzhik sometimes turns out like that, what, then, may become of a nobleman?
Suddenly, for instance, I walk in wearing a general’s uniform: an epaulette on my right shoulder, and an epaulette on my left shoulder, a blue ribbon over my shoulder—what then?
How is my beauty going to sing?
What is Papá himself, our director, going to
say?
Oh, he’s a man of great ambition!
He’s a Mason, a downright Mason, though he pretends to be this and that, I noticed right away he’s a Mason: whenever he shakes a person’s hand, he only holds out two fingers.
But can’t I be promoted this minute to governor general, or intendant, or something else like that?
I’d like to know, what makes me a titular councillor?
Why precisely a titular councillor?

December 5.

I spent the whole morning today reading the newspapers.
There are strange doings in Spain.
I couldn’t even make them out properly.
They write that the throne is vacant and that the officials are in a difficult position about the selection of an heir, which is causing disturbances.
This seems terribly strange to me.
How can a throne be vacant?
They say some doña should ascend the throne.
⁶
A doña cannot ascend a throne.
Simply cannot.
There should be a king on a throne.
But, they say, there is no king.
It cannot be that there was no king.
A state cannot be without a king.
There is a king, only he’s somewhere unknown.
Possibly he’s right there, but either some sort of family reasons, or apprehensions about neighboring powers, such as France and other countries, have forced him into hiding, or there are other reasons of some sort.

December 8.

I was just about to go to the office, but various reasons and reflections held me back.
I couldn’t get these Spanish affairs out of my head.
How can a doña be made a queen?
They won’t allow it.
And, first of all, England won’t allow it.
And besides, the political affairs of the whole of Europe: the Austrian emperor, our sovereign … I confess, these events so crushed and shook me that I was decidedly unable to busy myself with anything all day long.
Mavra observed to me that I was extremely distracted at the table.
And, indeed, it seems I absentmindedly threw two plates on the floor, which proceeded to break.
After dinner, I strolled around the toboggan slides.
Couldn’t arrive at anything constructive.
Mostly lay in bed and reasoned about the affairs in Spain.

The Year 2000, 43rd of April.

This day—is a day of the greatest solemnity!
Spain has a king.
He has been found.
I am that king.
Only this very day did I learn of it.
I confess, it came to me suddenly in a flash of lightning.
I don’t understand how I could have thought and imagined that I was a titular councillor.
How could such a wild notion enter my head?
It’s a good thing no one thought of putting me in an insane asylum.
Now everything is laid open before me.
Now I see everything as on the palm of my hand.
And before, I don’t understand, before everything around me was in some sort of fog.
And all this happens, I think, because people imagine that the human brain is in the head.
Not at all: it is brought by a wind from the direction of the Caspian Sea.
First off, I announced to Mavra who I am.
When she heard that the king of Spain was standing before her, she clasped her hands and nearly died of fright.
The stupid woman had never seen a king of Spain before.
However, I endeavored to calm her down and assured her in gracious words of my benevolence and that I was not at all angry that she sometimes polished my boots poorly.
They’re benighted folk.
It’s impossible to tell them about lofty matters.
She got frightened, because she’s convinced that all kings of Spain are like Philip II.
But I explained to her that there was no resemblance between me and Philip II, and that I didn’t have a single Capuchin
⁷
 … I didn’t go to the office … To hell with it!
No, friends, you won’t lure me there now; I’m not going to copy your vile papers!

The 86th of Martober. Between day and night.

Today our manager came to tell me to go to the office, since I hadn’t been to work for over three weeks.
I went to the office as a joke.
The section chief thought I’d bow to him and start apologizing, but I looked at him with indifference—neither too wrathfully nor too benevolently—and sat down at my place as if not noticing anyone.
I looked at all that office riffraff and thought: “What if you knew who was sitting amongst you … Lord God!
what a rumpus you’d raise, and the section chief would start bowing as low to me as he now bows to the director.” Some papers were placed in front of me so that I could make an abstract of them.
But
I didn’t even set a finger to them.
A few minutes later everything was in turmoil.
They said the director was coming.
Many clerks ran up front to show themselves before him.
But I didn’t budge.
When he was passing through our section, everybody buttoned up their tailcoats; but I—nothing of the sort!
What is a director that I should stand up before him—never!
What sort of director is he?
He’s a doornail, not a director.
An ordinary doornail, a simple doornail, nothing more.
The kind used in doors.
I was most amused when they slipped me a paper to be signed.
They thought I’d write “Chief Clerk So-and-So” at the very bottom of the page.
Not a chance!
In the central place, where the director of the department signs, I dashed off: “Ferdinand VIII.” You should have seen what reverent silence ensued; but I merely waved my hand, saying, “No need for any tokens of homage!” and walked out.
From there I went straight to the director’s apartment.
He was not at home.
The lackey didn’t want to let me in, but after what I said to him, he just dropped his arms.
I made my way straight to the boudoir.
She was sitting before the mirror, jumped up, and backed away from me.
However, I didn’t tell her I was the king of Spain.
I only said that such happiness awaited her as she could not even imagine, and that despite the machinations of enemies, we would be together.
I did not want to say anything more, and walked out.
Oh, she’s a perfidious being—woman!
Only now have I grasped what woman is.
Till now no one has found out who she’s in love with: I’m the first to discover it.
Woman is in love with the devil.
Yes, no joking.
It’s stupid what physicists write, that she’s this or that—she loves only the devil.
See there, from a box in the first balcony, she’s aiming her lorgnette.
You think she’s looking at that fat one with the star?
Not at all, she’s looking at the devil standing behind his back.
There he is hiding in his tailcoat.
There he is beckoning to her with his finger!
And she’ll marry him.
Marry him.
And all those high-ranking fathers of theirs, all those who fidget in all directions and worm their way into court and say they’re patriots and this and that: income, income is what these patriots want!
Mother, father, God—they’ll sell them all for money, the ambitious Judases!
It’s all ambition, and ambition is caused by a little blister under the tongue with a little worm in it
the size of a pinhead, and it’s all the doing of some barber who lives in Gorokhovaya Street.
I don’t know what his name is; but it’s known for certain that he, together with some midwife, wants to spread Mohammedanism throughout the world, and as a result, they say, in France the majority of people already accepts the faith of Mohammed.

Date none. The day had no date.

Strolled incognito on Nevsky Prospect.
His Majesty the emperor drove by.
The whole city took their hats off, and I did, too; however, I didn’t let on that I was the king of Spain.
I considered it unsuitable to reveal myself right there in front of everybody; because, first of all, I have to present myself at court.
The only thing holding me up is that I still don’t have royal attire.
If only I could get some sort of mantle.
I was going to order one from a tailor, but they’re perfect asses, and, besides, they neglect their work completely; they’ve thrown themselves into affairs and are mostly busy paving the streets with stones.
I decided to make a mantle out of my new uniform, which I had only worn twice.
But, to prevent those blackguards from ruining it, I decided to sew it myself, after locking the door so that no one could see.
I cut it all up with scissors, because the style has to be completely different.

Don’t remember the date. There was no
month, either. Devil knows what there was.

The mantle is all ready and sewn up.
Mavra cried out when I put it on.
However, I still refrain from presenting myself at court.
No deputation from Spain so far.
Without deputies it’s not proper.
There’ll be no weight to my dignity.
I expect them any moment.

The 1st.

I’m extremely astonished at the slowness of the deputies.
What reasons can be holding them up?
Can it be France?
Yes, that is the most unfavorably disposed power.
I went to inquire at the post office whether the Spanish deputies had arrived.
But the postmaster is very stupid, he doesn’t know anything; no, he says, there are no Spanish deputies here, and if you wish to write letters, we
accept them at the set rate.
Devil take it!
what’s a letter!
A letter’s nonsense.
Apothecaries can write letters …