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her red bathrobe with her golden hair undone, and she was beautiful. At ten past nine the doorbell rang. When I opened the apartment door I saw a girl pressed against the wall. I recognized her immediately. Once a week I go to a girls' school. They've organized a poetry club and secretly worship me.
"I said: 'May I ask what you're doing here?'
" 'I need to talk to you!'
"'What do you have to tell me?'
"'I have to tell you something terribly important!'
"'Listen,' I said, 'it's late, you can't come in now, get yourself downstairs and wait for me ait the cellar door.'
"I went back into the bedroom and told my wife someone had the wrong door. And then, picking up two empty buckets, I casually announced I had to go down to the cellar for some coal. That was damned stupid. My gallbladder had been bothering me all day, and I'd been lying down. Such unexpected zeal made my wife suspicious."
"You have gallbladder trouble?" asked Goethe with interest.
"I've had it for years now," said Petrarch.
"Why don't you have an operation?"
"Not a chance!"
Goethe nodded sympathetically.
"Where was I?" Petrarch asked.
"Your gallbladder hurts and you're holding two coal buckets," prompted Verlaine.
"I found the girl at the cellar door," Petrarch went on, "and I told her to come down there with me. I
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picked up a shovel and, while I was filling the buckets, tried to find out what she wanted. She kept repeating she had to see me. I couldn't get anything more out of her.
"Then I heard footsteps on the staircase above. I grabbed the full bucket and ran up out of the cellar. My wife was on the way down. I passed her the bucket:
Please take this up right away, I'm going to fill the other one.' My wife went back up with the bucket, and I went back down to the cellar and told the girl we couldn't stay there and she should wait for me on the street. I quickly filled the other bucket and ran upstairs. Then I gave my wife a kiss and told her to go to bed, that I wanted to take a bath before going to sleep. She went off to bed, and I went into the bathroom and turned on the faucets. The water gushed noisily into the tub. I took off my slippers and in my socks went to the apartment door, where I'd put the shoes I wore that day. I left them there to show that I hadn't gone far. I took another pair of shoes from the wardrobe, put them on, and slipped out of the apartment."
Here Boccaccio interrupted: "Petrarch, we all know you're a great poet. But now I see you're also very methodical, a wily strategist who not even for a moment allows himself to be blinded by passion! What you did with the slippers and the two pairs of shoes is a masterpiece!"
All the poets agreed with Boccaccio and showered Petrarch with praise, which visibly flattered him.
"She was waiting for me on the street. I tried to calm
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her. I told her I had to go back inside and suggested she return next day in the afternoon, when my wife would be away at work. There's a streetcar stop right in front of the building. I insisted she go over to it. But when the streetcar arrived, she started laughing and tried to rush to the building door."
"You should have pushed her under the streetcar," said Boccaccio.
"My friends," Petrarch announced almost solemnly, "there are times when, against your will, it's necessary to be nasty to a woman. So I said to her: 'If you won't go home of your own accord, I'll lock the building door. Don't forget, this is my home and I can't turn it into a barnyard!' And keep in mind, my friends, that while I was arguing with her in front of the building, upstairs the bathtub faucets were running and the tub was about to overflow!
"I turned around and dashed through the building door. She started to run after me. And to top things off, some people were entering the building just then and she edged her way in with them. I went up those stairs like a sprinter! I could hear her footsteps behind me. We live on the fourth floor! It was quite a feat! But I was faster, and I practically slammed the door in her face. And I had just enough time to tear the doorbell wire off the wall so no one could hear her ringing, because I knew she was going to push the button and not let go of it. After that I ran on tiptoe into the bathroom."
"Had the tub overflowed?" asked Goethe solicitously.
"I shut the faucets at the last instant. Then I went to
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take a quick look at the apartment door. I opened the peephole and saw she was still there, standing motionless, with her eyes riveted on the door. My friends, that frightened me. I wondered whether she was going to stay there all night."
Boccaccio Behaves Badly
"Petrarch, you're an incorrigible worshiper," Boccaccio interrupted. "I can imagine how these girls who started a poetry club invoke you as their Apollo. Nothing would make me want to meet any of them. A woman poet is doubly a woman. That's too much for a misogynist like me."
"Listen, Boccaccio," said Goethe, "why are you always bragging that you're a misogynist?"
"Because misogynists are the best of men."
All the poets reacted to these words with hooting. Boccaccio was forced to raise his voice:
"Please understand me. Misogynists don't despise women. Misogynists don't like femininity. Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers or poets revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility, sacred flashes of hysteria,
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and the divine voice of nature within us, while in misogynists or gynophobes these values inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women's femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don't forget: a woman can be happy only with a misogynist. No woman has ever been happy with any of you!"
These words provoked another round of hostile clamor.
"Worshipers or poets can bring drama, passion, tears, and worries to women, but never any pleasure. I knew one once. He worshiped his wife. Then he took up worshiping someone else. He didn't like humiliating the one by deceiving her and the other by making her a clandestine mistress. So he confessed everything to his wife, asked her to help him, his wife fell ill, he spent all his time crying, so his mistress finally couldn't stand it anymore and announced she was leaving him. He lay down on the tracks in front of a streetcar. Unfortunately, the motorman saw him in time, and that worshiper had to pay fifty crowns for impeding traffic."
"Boccaccio is a liar!" shouted Verlaine.
"The story Petrarch just told us," Boccaccio went on, "is the same old stuff. Does your wife with the golden hair deserve your taking that hysterical girl seriously?"
"What do you know about my wife?" Petrarch shouted. "My wife is my faithful friend! We have no secrets from each other!"
"Then why did you change shoes?" asked Lermontov.
But Petrarch was not flustered. "My friends, at that
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crucial moment, when the girl was out there and I really didn't know what to do, I went to my wife in the bedroom and told her everything."
"Just like my worshiper!" said Boccaccio, and laughed. "To tell everything! It's the reflex of every worshiper! Surely you asked her to help you!"
Petrarch's voice was filled with tenderness: "Yes, I asked her to help me. She'd never refused me her help. Not this time either. She went to the door by herself. I stayed in the bedroom, because I was afraid."
"I'd be afraid too," said Goethe, filled with understanding.
"When she came back she was quite calm. After looking through the peephole she'd opened the door, and no one was there. One might have said I'd invented the whole thing. But suddenly we heard loud banging behind us, and then the sound of shattering glass; as you know, we live in one of those old b
uildings where the apartment windows and entrance doors give onto a gallery facing the courtyard. When no one answered the ringing doorbell, the girl got a metal bar somewhere and went along the gallery breaking all our windows, one after the other. We watched from inside the apartment, unable to do anything, nearly terrified. Then, coming from the dark other side of the gallery, we saw three white shadows. They were the old ladies from the apartment opposite. The shattering glass had awakened them. They were rushing around eagerly and impatiently in their nightgowns, happy with this unexpected scene. Just imagine! A beautiful teenager
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with a metal bar in her hand, surrounded by the malevolent shadows of three witches!
"Then the girl broke the last window and came through it into the bedroom.
"I tried to go talk to her, but my wife took me by the arms and begged me, 'Don't go, shell kill you!' And the girl stood there in the middle of the room with the metal bar in her hand, beautiful and majestic like Joan of Arc with her lance! I tore myself away from my wife's arms and headed for the girl. The nearer I got to her, the more she lost her threatening look, it softened, radiated a celestial peacefulness. I grabbed the metal bar, threw it on the floor, and took the girl by the hand."
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their mothers' shadows. In every woman they see a messenger from their mother and submit to her. Their mothers' skirts spread over them like the sky." That last image pleased him so much he repeated it several times: "Poets, what you're seeing overhead is not the sky but your mothers' enormous skirts! You're all living under your mothers' skirts!"
"What did you say?" Yesenin yelled out with incredible loudness, springing up from his chair. He was tottering. From the start, he had been drinking more than anyone else. "What did you say about my mother? What did you say?"
"I wasn't talking about your mother," said Boccaccio gently. He knew that Yesenin lived with a famous dancer thirty years older than he, and he felt genuinely sorry for him. But the spit was already on Yesenin's lips, and he leaned forward and let fly. But he was too drunk, and the gob landed on Goethe's collar. Boccaccio took out his handkerchief and wiped it off the great poet.
Spitting had made Yesenin feel deathly tired, and he fell back into his chair.
Petrarch went on: "Listen, all of you, my friends, to what she said to me, it was unforgettable. She said to me, and it was like a prayer, like a litany, 'I'm a simple girl, I'm quite an ordinary girl, I have nothing to offer you, but I came here because I was sent by love, I came'—and now she squeezed my hand very hard— "so that you'll know what real love is, so that you'll experience it once in your life.'"
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Insults
"I don't believe a word of your story," Lermontov announced.
"Of course, it didn't happen quite the way Petrarch told it," Boccaccio again interrupted, "but I believe it really happened. The girl is a hysteric, and any normal man in that kind of situation would long since have slapped her a couple of times. Worshipers or poets have always been perfect prey for hysterics, who know they'll never be slapped by them. Worshipers are disarmed when faced by a woman, because they're still in
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"And what did your wife say to that messenger of love?" asked Lermontov with heavy irony.
Goethe laughed: "What wouldn't Lermontov give to have a woman come and break his windows! He'd even pay her to do it!"
Lermontov cast a look of hatred at Goethe, and Petrarch went on: "My wife? You're mistaken, Lermontov, if you think this is just a funny Boccaccio story. The girl turned to my wife with a celestial look and said to her, and again it was like a prayer, like a litany, cYou shouldn't hold it against me, because you're good and I love you too, I love you both,' and with her free hand, she took my wife by the hand."
"If it were a scene from a funny Boccaccio story, I'd have nothing against it," Lermontov said. "But what you've just told us is something worse. It's bad poetry."
"You're just jealous!" Petrarch shouted at him. "It's never happened to you in your whole life, being alone in a room with two beautiful women who love you! Do you know how beautiful my wife is in a red bathrobe, with her golden hair undone?"
Lermontov laughed mockingly, and this time Goethe decided to punish him for his caustic comments: "You're a great poet, Lermontov, we all know that, but why do you have such complexes?"
For a few moments Lermontov was stunned, then he said to Goethe, barely controlling himself: "Johann, you shouldn't have said that to me. It's the worst thing you could have said to me. It's boorish."
Goethe, a lover of harmony, would not have gone on
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teasing Lermontov, but Voltaire laughingly interrupted: "It's as plain as the nose on your face, Lermontov, that you're loaded with complexes," and he started to analyze all his poetry, which lacked both Goethe's happy natural charm and Petrarch's impassioned inspiration. He even started to dissect each of his metaphors to show brilliantly that Lermontov's inferiority complex was the direct source of his imagination and that it had taken root in a childhood marked by poverty and the oppressive influence of an authoritarian father.
Just then Goethe leaned over to Petrarch and said in a whisper that resounded throughout the room, to be heard by everyone, including Lermontov: "Come off it! What a bunch of nonsense. Lermontov's trouble is hypercelibacy!"
The Student Takes Lermontov's Side
The student kept quiet, pouring himself wine (a discreet waiter noiselessly removed empty bottles and brought full ones) and listening attentively to the conversation with its flying sparks. He couldn't swivel his head fast enough to follow their giddy whirl.
He tried to decide which of the poets he liked most. He venerated Goethe just as much as Kristyna venerated him, just as much, for that matter, as the entire country. Petrarch cast a spell on him with his burning
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eyes. But strangely enough it was the much-insulted Lermontov for whom he felt the greatest affinity, especially after Goethe's last remark, which led him to think that even a great poet (and Lermontov really was a great poet) could experience the same difficulties as an ordinary student, such as himself. He looked at his watch and noted it was time he returned home if he wanted to avoid ending up just like Lermontov.
Nonetheless, he could not tear himself away from the great men, and instead of going back to Kristyna, he went to the toilet. Filled with grandiose thoughts as he stood in front of the white tiles, he heard Lermontov's voice next to him: "You heard them. They're not subtle. Do you understand? They're not subtle."
Lermontov said the word "subtle" as if it were in italics. Yes, there are words unlike all the others, those words whose particular meaning is known only to initiates. The student did not know why Lermontov said the word "subtle" as if it were in italics, but I, who am among the initiates, know that Lermontov once read Pascal's pensee about subtle minds and geometrical minds, and ever since had divided the human race into two categories: those who are subtle, and all the others.
"You think they're subtle, don't you?" he said aggressively to the silent student.
Buttoning his fly, the student noticed that Lermontov, just as Countess Rostopchin had noted in her diary one hundred fifty years before, had very short legs. He felt grateful to him as the first great poet to ask him a serious question and await an equally serious answer.
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The student said the word "subtle" in roman type: "They're not subtle at all."
Lermontov stood still on his short legs: "No, not subtle at all." And raising his voice, he added: "But I'm proud! Do you understand, I'm proud!"
The word "proud" was another that came from his mouth in italics, to indicate that only a fool could think Lermontov's pride was like a girl's in her beauty
or a shopkeeper's in his goods, for it was a singular kind of pride, a pride justified and noble.
"I'm proud," shouted Lermontov, and he returned with the student to the function room, where Voltaire was delivering a panegyric to Goethe. Lermontov then went into a frenzy. Planting himself at the edge of the table, which at once made him a head taller than the seated others, he said: "And now I'm going to show you what I'm proud of! Now I'm going to tell you something, because I'm proudl There are only two poets in this country: Goethe and me."
This time it was Voltaire who raised his voice: "You may be a great poet, but you're a small man! I can say you're a great poet, but you don't have the right to say it."
Lermontov was taken aback for a moment. Then he stammered: "Why don't I have the right to say it? I'm proud!"
Lermontov repeated several more times that he was proud, Voltaire roared with laughter, and then the others roared with him.
The student realized that the moment he was waiting for had arrived. He stood up like Lermontov and looked
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around at the assembled poets: "You don't understand Lermontov. A poet's pride is not ordinary pride. Only the poet himself can know the value of what he writes. Others don't understand it until much later, or they may never understand it. So it's the poet's duty to be proud. If he weren't, he would betray his own work."
A moment before, they had been roaring with laughter, but now at a single stroke they all agreed with the student, because they were just as proud as Lermontov and were only ashamed to say so, not realizing that when the word "proud" is properly enunciated it stops being laughable and becomes witty and noble. So they were grateful to the student for giving them such good advice, and one of them, probably Verlaine, even applauded.