LITMIR.BIZ

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that point the door flew open. Apollon Apollonovich entered.

      The joke broke off (thus does a nimble baby mouse scamper off into a crack). Apollon Apollonovich did not take offense at jokes.

      Apollon Apollonovich then went up to the window. Two heads in the windows across the way saw opposite them the blur of the face of an unknown little old man behind a pane.

      ***

      Here, in the office of a high Government Institution, Apollon Apollonovich would grow into a kind of center of governmental institutions and green-topped tables. Here he was a point of radiating energy, a grid, an impulse. He was a force in the Newtonian sense, and a force in the Newtonian sense is an occult force.

      Consciousness would detach itself from individuality, becoming incredibly clear and concentrating in a single point (between the eyes and the forehead). A flame, flaring between the eyes and the forehead, would scatter sheaves of lightning bolts. His lightning-bolt thoughts would fly from his bald head in every direction like snakes; a clairvoyant would doubtless have seen the head of the Gorgon-Medusa.

      Consciousness would detach itself from individuality: and individuality presented itself to the senator’s imagination as a cranium and as a container that had been utterly emptied.

      From this armchair he would intersect his life by means of his consciousness. From this place circulars sliced up the patchwork field of humdrum life, which he would equate with sexual, vegetable, or other kinds of needs.

      Only from here did he loom and hover madly over Russia, and in his foes evoke a fateful comparison (with a bat).^†

      Apollon Apollonovich was particularly sharp today. Not once did his head nod over a report. Lord knows why, Apollon Apollonovich had come to the conclusion that his very own son, Nikolai Apollonovich, was a scoundrel.

      ***

      At the entryway the caryatid was visible: a bearded man of stone.

      The bearded man of stone rose above the noise of the street, above the seasons. The year eighteen hundred and twelve saw him freed from his scaffolding. The year eighteen hundred and twenty-five saw the crowds rage beneath him.^† The crowd passed by even now, in the year nineteen hundred and five. For more than five years Apollon Apollonovich had been looking daily from here at the smile carved in stone. The tooth of time was gnawing it away. During those five years events had flown by: Anna Petrovna was in Spain; Vyacheslav Konstantinovich was no more; the yellow heel had brazenly mounted the ridges above Port Arthur; there had been turmoil in China, and Port Arthur had fallen.

      The door opened. The secretary, a young man with a medal flapping on his chest, flew up to the high personage, the over-starched edge of his cuff crackling deferentially. And to his timid question Apollon Apollonovich droned back:

      “No, no! Do as I said. And you’d better do it . . .” said Apollon Apollonovich; but he stopped and corrected himself:

      “I mean . . .”

      He had wanted to say “be so good as” to the secretary, but it came out “you’d better do it.”^†

      The tales of his absentmindedness were legion.

      COLD FINGERS^†

      Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, in a gray coat and a tall black top hat, with a stony face resembling a paperweight, ran rapidly out of the carriage, and ran up the steps of the entryway, removing a glove as he ran.

      He entered the vestibule. The top hat was handed to the lackey.

      “Would you be so kind: does a young man often come here?”

      “Young people do visit, Your Excellency.”

      “Yes, but . . . with a small mustache?”

      “With a small mustache, sir?”

      “Well, yes, and . . . wearing a coat . . . with a turned-up collar?”^†

      Suddenly something dawned on the doorman:

      “One such-like did come once, sir . . . he dropped in to see the young master.”

      “With a small mustache?”

      “That’s right, sir!”

      Apollon Apollonovich paused for a moment. And suddenly, Apollon Apollonovich moved on.

      The staircases were covered by a gray velvet carpet. This gray carpet also covered the walls. On the walls glittered a display of antique weapons: a Lithuanian helmet glittered beneath a rusty green shield; the hilt of a knight’s sword sparkled; here were rusting swords, there halberds fixed at an angle; and a pistol and a battle mace hung at a tilt.

      The top of the staircase gave onto a balustrade. Here from a matte-white pedestal a Niobe,^† forever frozen, raised her alabaster eyes heavenward.

      Resting his bony hand on the faceted knob, Apollon Apollonovich briskly flung open the door.

      THUS IT IS ALWAYS

      A phosphorescent blot raced across the sky, misty and deathlike. The heavens gradually misted over in a phosphorescent glow, making iron roofs and chimneys flicker. Here flowed the waters of the Moika. On one side loomed that same three-storied building, with projections on top.

      Wrapped in furs, Nikolai Apollonovich was making his way along the Moika, his head sunk in his overcoat. Nameless tremors arose in his heart. Something awful, something sweet. . . .^†

      He thought: could this too be love? He recalled.

      He shuddered.

      A shaft of light flew by: a black court carriage flew by. Past window recesses it bore blood red lamps that seemed drenched in blood. They played and shimmered on the black waters of the Moika. The spectral outline of a footman’s tricorne and the outline of the wings of his greatcoat flew, with the light, out of the fog and into the fog.

      Nikolai Apollonovich stood for a while in front of the house. He kept standing and then suddenly disappeared in the entryway.

      The entryway door flew open before him; and the sound struck him in the back. Darkness enveloped him, as though all had fallen away (this is most likely how it is the first instant after death). Nikolai Apollonovich was not thinking about death now; he was thinking about his own gestures. And in the darkness his actions took on a fantastic stamp. He seated himself on the cold step by the door, his face buried in fur, listening to the beating of his heart.

      Nikolai Apollonovich sat in the darkness.

      ***

      The stone curve of the Winter Canal^† showed its plangent expanse. The Neva was buffeted by the onslaught of a damp wind. The soundlessly flying surfaces glimmered, the walls that formed the side of the four-storied palace^† gleamed in the moonlight.

      No one, nothing.

      Only the Canal streaming its waters. Was that shadow of a woman darting onto the little bridge to throw itself off? Was it Liza?^† No, just the shadow of a woman of Petersburg. And having traversed the Canal, it was still running away from the yellow house on the Gagarin Embankment,^† beneath which it stood every evening and looked long at the window.

      Ahead the Square^† was now widening out. Greenish bronze statues emerged one after another from everywhere. Hercules and Poseidon looked on as always. Beyond the Neva rose an immense mass—the outlines of islands and houses. And it cast its amber eyes into the fog, and it seemed to be weeping.

      Higher up, ragged arms mournfully stretched vague outlines across the sky. Swarm upon swarm they rose above the Neva’s waves, coursing off toward the zenith. And when they touched the zenith, the phosphorescent blot would precipitously attack them, flinging itself upon them from the heavens.

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