Petersburg - Andrei Bely

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of his elbow mimicked a tightrope walker’s turn.

      Then, meeting the porter, who was climbing the stairs with a load of aspen wood over his shoulder, the stranger began to show increased concern about the fate of the bundle, which might catch against a log.

      When the stranger reached the bottom, a black cat underfoot hitched up its tail and cut across his path, dropping chicken innards at the stranger’s feet. And a spasm contorted his face.

      Such movements are peculiar to young ladies.

      And movements of precisely this same kind sometimes mark those of our contemporaries who are exhausted by insomnia. The stranger suffered from insomnia: his smoke-redolent habitation hinted at that. And the bluish tinge of the delicate skin of his face also bore witness.

      The stranger remained standing in the courtyard, a quadrangle completely paved with asphalt and pressed in from all sides by the five stories of the many-windowed colossus. Stacked in the middle of the courtyard were damp cords of aspen wood. And visible through the gate was a section of the windswept Seventeenth Line.

      Oh, you lines!

      In you has remained the memory of Petrine Petersburg.†

      The parallel lines were once laid out by Peter. And some of them came to be enclosed with granite, others with low fences of stone, still others with fences of wood. Peter’s line turned into the line of a later age: the rounded one of Catherine, the regular ranks of colonnades.†

      Left among the colossi were small Petrine houses:† here a timbered one, there a green one, there a blue, single-storied one, with the bright red sign “Dinners Served.” Sundry odors hit you right in the nose: the smell of sea salt, of herring, of hawsers, of leather jacket and of pipe, and of nautical tarpaulin.

      Oh, lines!

      How they have changed: how grim days have changed them!

      The stranger recalled: on a summer evening, in the window of that gleaming little house, an old woman was chewing her lips. Since August the window had been shut. In September a brocade-lined coffin was brought.

      He was thinking it was getting more and more expensive to live. Life was hard for working folk. From over there pierced Petersburg, both with the arrows of prospects and with a gang of stone giants.

      From over there rose Petersburg: there buildings blazed out of a wave of clouds. There, it seemed, hovered someone spiteful, cold. From over there, out of the howling chaos someone stared with stony gaze, skull and ears protruding into the fog.

      All of that was in the mind of the stranger. He clenched his fist in his pocket. And he remembered that the leaves were falling.

      He knew it all by heart. These fallen leaves were the last leaves for many. He became a bluish shadow.

      ***

      And as for us, here’s what we’ll say: oh, Russian people, oh, Russian people! Don’t let the crowd of shadows in from the islands! Black and damp bridges are already thrown across the waters of Lethe. If only they could be dismantled. . . .†

      Too late. . . .

      And the shadows thronged across the bridge. And the dark shadow of the stranger.

      Rhythmically swinging in his hand was a not exactly small, yet not very large bundle.

      AND, CATCHING SIGHT, THEY DILATED, LIT UP, AND FLASHED . . .

      The aged senator communicated with the crowd that flowed in front of him by means of wires (telegraph and telephone). The shadowy stream seemed to him like the calmly current news of the world. Apollon Apollonovich was thinking: about the stars. Rocking on the black cushions, he was calculating the power of the light perceived from Saturn.

      Suddenly—

      —his face grimaced and began to twitch. His blue-rimmed eyes rolled back convulsively. His hands flew up to his chest. And his torso reeled back, while the top hat struck the wall and fell on his lap.

      The involuntary nature of his movement was not subject to explanation. The senator’s code of rules had not foreseen. . . .

      Contemplating the flowing silhouettes, Apollon Apollonovich likened them to shining dots. One of these dots broke loose from its orbit and hurtled at him with dizzying speed, taking the form of an immense crimson sphere—

      —among the bowlers on the corner, he caught sight of a pair of eyes. And the eyes expressed the inadmissible. They recognized the senator, and, having recognized him, they grew rabid, dilated, lit up, and flashed.

      Subsequently, on delving into the details of the matter, Apollon Apollonovich understood, rather than remembered, that the upstart intellectual† was holding a bundle in his hand.

      Hemmed in by a stream of vehicles,† the carriage had stopped at an intersection. A stream of upstart intellectuals had pressed against the senator’s carriage, destroying the illusion that he, Apollon Apollonovich, in flying along the Nevsky, was flying billions of miles away from the human myriapod. Perturbed, Apollon Apollonovich had moved closer to the window. At that point he had caught sight of the upstart intellectual. Later he had remembered that face, and was perplexed by the difficulty of assigning it to any of the existing categories.

      It was at just that moment that the stranger’s eyes had dilated, lit up, and flashed.

      In the swarms of dingy smoke, leaning back against the wall of the carriage, he was still seeing the same thing in his eyes. His heart pounded and expanded, while in his breast arose the sensation of a crimson sphere about to burst into pieces.

      Apollon Apollonovich, you see, suffered from dilatation of the heart.

      Automatically putting on his top hat and pressing his hand to his racing heart, Apollon Apollonovich had abandoned himself to his favorite contemplation, cubes, in order to give himself a calm account of what had occurred.

      ***

      The horses came to a halt. The policeman saluted. Behind the glass of the entryway, beneath the bearded caryatid† supporting the stones of a little balcony, Apollon Apollonovich saw the same thing as always. The heavy-headed bronze mace gleamed there; the dark tricorne had fallen onto the shoulder there: the octogenarian doorman dozed over The Stock Exchange Register.† Thus he had dozed the day before yesterday and yesterday.

      Thus he had been sleeping for the past five years. Thus he would sleep on.

      Since the time that Apollon Apollonovich had driven up to the Government Institution as head of the Government Institution, more than five years had gone by. And there had been events: there had been turmoil in China, and Port Arthur had fallen.†

      ***

      The door flew open. The bronze mace rang out. From the carriage door Apollon Apollonovich transferred his gaze into the entryway.

      “Your Excellency. . . . Do sit down, sir. . . . Heavens, you’re all out of breath. . . .

      “You’re always running like a little boy. . . .

      “Maybe you’d like some water?”

      But the eminent statesman’s face became all wrinkles:

      “Tell me, if you will: who is the husband of the countess?”†

      “Which countess, may I ask?”

      “Oh, just any countess.”

      “?”

      “The counter.”

      ***

      “Heh, heh, heh, sir. . . .”

      ***

      OF TWO SHABBILY DRESSED BUT SWEET GIRL STUDENTS . . .†

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