“I know whom you have in mind,” Vanya put in. “That baron something or other.”
“Or maybe it was somebody else,” Evgenia went on. “Oh, that’s so delightful! A gentleman who was all soul, a ‘spiritual gentleman,’ says the janitor’s wife. I could die laughing …”
“I’ll make a point of taking all that down,” said Roman Bogdanovich in a juicy voice. “My friend in Tallin will get a most interesting letter.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of it?” asked Vanya. “I started keeping a diary several times but always dropped it. And when I read it over I was always ashamed of what I had put down.”
“Oh, no,” said Roman Bogdanovich. “If you do it thoroughly and regularly you get a good feeling, a feeling of self-preservation, so to speak—you preserve your entire life, and, in later years, rereading it, you may find it not devoid of fascination. For instance, I’ve done a description of you that would be the envy of any professional writer. A stroke here, a stroke there, and there it is—a complete portrait …”
“Oh, please show me!” said Vanya.
“I can’t,” Roman Bogdanovich answered with a smile.
“Then show it to Evgenia,” said Vanya.
“I can’t. I’d like to, but I can’t. My Tallin friend stores up my weekly contributions as they arrive, and I deliberately keep no copies so there will be no temptation to make changes ex post facto—to cross things out and so on. And one day, when Roman Bogdanovich is very old, Roman Bogdanovich will sit down at his desk and start rereading his life. That’s who I’m writing for—for the future old man with the Santa-Claus beard. And if I find that my life has been rich and worth while, then I shall leave this memoir as a lesson for posterity.”
“And if it’s all nonsense?” asked Vanya.
“What is nonsense to one may have sense for another,” replied Roman Bogdanovich rather sourly.
The thought of this epistolary diary had long interested and somewhat troubled me. Gradually the desire to read at least one excerpt became a violent torment, a constant preoccupation. I had no doubt that those jottings contained a description of Smurov. I knew that very often a trivial account of conversations, and country rambles and one’s neighbor’s tulips or parrots, and what one had for lunch that overcast day when, for example, the king was beheaded—I knew that such trivial notes often live hundreds of years, and that one reads them with pleasure, for the savor of anciency, for the name of a dish, for the festive-looking spaciousness where now tall buildings crowd together. And, besides, it often happens that the diarist, who in his lifetime has gone unnoticed or had been ridiculed by forgotten nonentities, emerges 200 years later as a first-rate writer, who knew how to immortalize, with a striggle of his old-fashioned pen, an airy landscape, the smell of a stagecoach, or the oddities of an acquaintance. At the very thought that Smurov’s image might be so securely, so lastingly preserved I felt a sacred chill, I grew crazed with desire, and felt that I must at any cost interpose myself spectrally between Roman Bogdanovich and his friend in Tallin. Experience warned me, of course, that the particular image of Smurov, which was perhaps destined to live forever (to the delight of scholars), might be a shock to me; but the urge to gain possession of this secret, to see Smurov through the eyes of future centuries, was so bedazzling that no thought of disappointment could frighten me. I feared only one thing—a lengthy and meticulous perlustration, since it was difficult to imagine that in the very first letter I intercepted, Roman Bogdanovich would start right off (like the voice, in full swing, that bursts upon your ears when you turn on the radio for a moment) with an eloquent report on Smurov.
I recall a dark street on a stormy March night. The clouds rolled across the sky, assuming various grotesque attitudes like staggering and ballooning buffoons in a hideous carnival, while, hunched up in the blow, holding onto my derby which I felt would explode like a bomb if I let go of its brim, I stood by the house where lived Roman Bogdanovich. The only witnesses to my vigil were a street light that seemed to blink because of the wind, and a sheet of wrapping paper that now scurried along the sidewalk, now attempted with odious friskiness to wrap itself around my legs, no matter how hard I tried to kick it away. Never before had I experienced such a wind or seen such a drunken, disheveled sky. And this irked me. I had come to spy on a ritual—Roman Bogdanovich, at midnight between Friday and Saturday, depositing a letter in the mailbox—and it was essential that I see it with my own eyes before I begin developing the vague plan I had conceived. I hoped that as soon as I saw Roman Bogdanovich struggling with the wind for possession of the mailbox, my bodiless plan would immediately grow alive and distinct (I was thinking of rigging up an open sack which I would somehow introduce into the mailbox, placing it in such a way that a letter dropped into the slot would fall into my net). But this wind—now humming under the dome of my headgear, now inflating my trousers, or clinging to my legs until they seemed skeletal—was in my way, preventing me from concentrating on the matter. Midnight would soon close completely the acute angle of time; I knew that Roman Bogdanovich was punctual. I looked at the house and tried to guess behind which of the three or four lighted windows there sat at this very moment a man, bent over a sheet of paper, creating an image, perhaps immortal, of Smurov. Then I would shift my gaze to the dark cube fixed to the cast-iron railing, to that dark mailbox into which presently an unthinkable letter would sink, as into eternity. I stood away from the street light; and the shadows afforded me a kind of hectic protection. Suddenly a yellow glow appeared in the glass of the front door, and in my excitement I loosened my grip on the brim of my hat. In the next instant I was gyrating on one spot, both hands raised, as if the hat just snatched from me were still flying around my head. With a light thump, the derby fell and rolled away on the sidewalk. I dashed in pursuit, trying to step on the thing to stop it—and almost collided on the run with Roman Bogdanovich, who picked up my hat with one hand, while holding with the other a sealed envelope that looked white and enormous. I think my appearance in his neighborhood at that late hour puzzled him. For a moment the wind enveloped us in its violence; I yelled a greeting, trying to out-shout the din of the demented night, and then, with two fingers, lightly and neatly plucked the letter from Roman Bogdanovich’s hand. “I’ll mail it, I’ll mail it,” I shouted. “It’s on my way, it’s on my way …” I had time to glimpse an expression of alarm and uncertainty on his face, but I immediately made off, running the 20 yards to the mailbox into which I pretended to thrust something, but instead squeezed the letter into my inside breast pocket. Here he overtook me. I noticed his carpet slippers. “What manners you have,” he said with displeasure. “Perhaps I had no intention to post it. Here, take this hat of yours … Ever see such a wind? …”
“I’m in a hurry,” I gasped (the swift night took my breath away). “Goodbye, goodbye!” My shadow, as it plunged into the aura of the street lamp, stretched out and passed me, but then was lost in the darkness. No sooner had I left that street, than the wind ceased; all was startlingly still, and amid the stillness a streetcar was groaning around a turn.
I hopped on it without glancing at its number, for what lured me was the festive brightness of its interior, since I had to have light immediately. I found a cozy corner seat, and with furious haste ripped open the envelope. Here someone came up to me and, with a start, I placed my hat over the letter. But it was only the conductor. Feigning a yawn, I calmly paid for my ticket, but kept the letter concealed all the time, so as to be safe from possible testimony in court—there is nothing more damning than those inconspicuous witnesses, conductors, taxi drivers, janitors. He went away and I unfolded the letter. It was ten pages long, in a round hand and without a single correction. The beginning was not very interesting. I skipped several pages and suddenly, like a familiar face amid a hazy crowd, there was Smurov’s name. What amazing luck!
“I propose, my dear Fyodor Robertovich, to return briefly to that rascal. I fear it may bore you, but, in the words of the Swan of
Weimar—I refer to the illustrious Goethe—(there followed a German phrase). Therefore allow me to dwell on Mr. Smurov again and treat you to a little psychological study …”
I paused and looked up at a milk chocolate advertisement with lilac alps. This was my last chance to renounce penetrating into the secret of Smurov’s immortality. What did I care if this letter would indeed travel across a remote mountain pass into the next century, whose very designation—a two and three zeros—is so fantastic as to seem absurd? What did it matter to me to what kind of portrait a long-dead author would “treat,” to use his own vile expression, his unknown posterity? And anyway, was it not high time to abandon my enterprise, to call off the hunt, the watch, the insane attempt to corner Smurov? But alas, this was mental rhetoric: I knew perfectly well that no force on earth could prevent me from reading that letter.
“I have the impression, dear friend, that I have already written you of the fact that Smurov belongs to that curious class of people I once called ‘sexual lefties.’ Smurov’s entire appearance, his frailness, his decadence, his mincing gestures, his fondness for Eau de Cologne, and, in particular, those furtive, passionate glances that he constantly directs toward your humble servant—all this has long since confirmed this conjecture of mine. It is remarkable that these sexually unfortunate individuals, while yearning physically for some handsome specimen of mature virility, often choose for object of their (perfectly platonic) admiration—a woman—a woman they know well, slightly, or not at all. And so Smurov, notwithstanding his perversion, has chosen Varvara as his ideal. This comely but rather stupid lass is engaged to a certain M. M. Mukhin, one of the youngest colonels in the White Army, so Smurov has full assurance that he will not be compelled to perform that which he is neither capable nor desirous of performing with any lady, even if she were Cleopatra herself. Furthermore, the ‘sexual lefty’—I admit I find the expression exceptionally apt—frequently nurtures a tendency to break the law, which infraction is further facilitated for him by the fact that an infraction of the law of nature is already there. Here again our friend Smurov is no exception. Imagine, the other day Filip Innokentievich Khrushchov confided to me that Smurov was a thief, a thief in the ugliest sense of the word. My interlocutor, so it turned out, had handed him a silver snuffbox with occult symbols—an object of great age—and had asked him to show it to an expert. Smurov took this beautiful antique and the next day announced to Khrushchov with all the outward signs of dismay that he had lost it. I listened to Khrushchov’s account and explained to him that sometimes the urge to steal is a purely pathological phenomenon, even having a scientific name—kleptomania. Khrushchov, like many pleasant but limited people, began naively denying that in the present instance we are dealing with a ‘kleptomaniac’ and not a criminal. I did not set forth certain arguments that would undoubtedly have convinced him. To me everything is clear as day. Instead of branding Smurov with the humiliating designation of ‘thief,’ I am sincerely sorry for him, paradoxical as it may seem.
“The weather has changed for the worse, or, rather, for the better, for are not this slush and wind harbingers of spring, pretty little spring, which, even in an elderly man’s heart, arouses vague desires? An aphorism comes to mind that will doubtless—”
I skimmed to the end of the letter. There was nothing further of interest to me. I cleared my throat and with untrembling hands tidily folded the sheets.
“Terminal stop, sir,” a gruff voice said over me.
Night, rain, the outskirts of the city …
Dressed in a remarkable fur coat with a feminine collar, Smurov is sitting on a step of the staircase. Suddenly Khrushchov, also in fur, comes down and sits next to him. It is very difficult for Smurov to begin, but there is little time, and he must take the plunge. He frees a slender hand sparkling with rings—rubies, all rubies—from the ample fur sleeve and, smoothing his hair, says, “There is something of which I want to remind you, Filip Innokentievich. Please listen carefully.”
Khrushchov nods. He blows his nose (he has a bad cold from constantly sitting on the stairs). He nods again, and his swollen nose twitches.
Smurov continues, “I am about to speak of a small incident that occurred recently. Please listen carefully.”
“At your service,” replies Khrushchov.
“It is difficult for me to begin,” says Smurov. “I might betray myself by an incautious word. Listen carefully. Listen to me, please. You must understand that I return to this incident without any particular thought at the back of my mind. It would not even enter my head that you should think me a thief. You yourself must agree with me that I cannot possibly know of your thinking this—after all, I don’t read other people’s letters. I want you to understand that the subject has come up quite by chance … Are you listening?”
“Go on,” says Khrushchov, snuggling in his fur.
“Good. Let us think back, Filip Innokentievich. Let us recall the silver miniature. You asked me to show it to Weinstock. Listen carefully. As I left you I was holding it in my hand. No, no, please don’t recite the alphabet. I can communicate with you perfectly well without the alphabet. And I swear, I swear by Vanya, I swear by all the women I have loved, I swear that every word of the person whose name I cannot utter—since otherwise you will think I read other people’s mail, and am therefore capable of thievery as well—I swear that every word of his is a lie: I really did lose it. I came home, and I no longer had it, and it is not my fault. It is just that I am very absent-minded, and love her so much.”
But Khrushchov does not believe Smurov; he shakes his head. In vain does Smurov swear, in vain does he wring his white, glittering hands-it is no use, words to convince Khrushchov do not exist. (Here my dream exhausted its meager supply of logic: by now the staircase on which the conversation took place was standing all by itself in open country, and below there were terraced gardens and the haze of trees in blurry bloom; the terraces stretched away into the distance, where one seemed to distinguish cascades and mountain meadows.) “Yes, yes,” said Khrushchov in a hard menacing voice. “There was something inside that box, therefore it is irreplaceable. Inside it was Vanya—yes, yes, this happens sometimes to girls … A very rare phenomenon, but it happens, it happens …”
I awoke. It was early morning. The window-panes were trembling from a passing truck. They had long ceased to be frosted with a mauve film, for spring was near. I paused to think how much had happened lately, how many new people I had met, and how enthralling, how hopeless was this house-to-house search, this quest of mine for the real Smurov. There is no use to dissemble—all these people I met were not live beings but only chance mirrors for Smurov; one among them, though, and for me the most important, the brightest mirror of all, still would not yield me Smurov’s reflection. Hosts and guests at 5 Peacock Street move before me from light to shade, effortlessly, innocently, created merely for my amusement. Once again Mukhin, rising slightly from the sofa, stretches his hand across the table toward the ashtray, but I see neither his face, nor that hand with the cigarette; I see only his other hand, which (already unconsciously!) rests momentarily on Vanya’s knee. Once again Roman Bogdanovich, bearded and with a pair of red apples for cheeks, bends his congested face to blow on the tea, and again Marianna sits down and crosses her legs, thin legs in apricot-colored stockings. And, as a joke—it was Christmas Eve, I think—Khrushchov pulls on his wife’s fur coat, assumes mannequin attitudes before the mirror, and walks about the room to general laughter, which gradually begins to grow forced, because Khrushchov always overdoes his jokes. Evgenia’s lovely little hand, with its nails so glossy they seem moist, picks up a table-tennis paddle, and the little celluloid ball pings dutifully back and forth across the green net. Again in the semidarkness Weinstock floats by, seated at his planchette table as if at a steering wheel; again the maid—Hilda or Gretchen—passes dreamily from one door to another, and suddenly begins to whisper and wriggle out of her dress. Whenever I wish, I can accelerate or retard to rid
iculous slowness the motions of all these people, or distribute them in different groups, or arrange them in various patterns, lighting them now from below, now from the side … For me, their entire existence has been merely a shimmer on a screen.
But wait, life did make one last attempt to prove to me that it was real—oppressive and tender, provoking excitement and torment, possessed of blinding possibilities for happiness, with tears, with a warm wind.
That day I climbed up to their flat at noon. I found the door unlocked, the rooms empty, the windows open. Somewhere a vacuum cleaner was putting its whole heart into an ardent whir. All at once, through the glass door leading from the parlor to the balcony, I saw Vanya’s bowed head. She was sitting on the balcony with a book and—strangely enough—this was the first time I found her at home alone. Ever since I had been trying to subdue my love by telling myself that Vanya, like all the others, existed only in my imagination, and was a mere mirror, I had got into the habit of assuming a special jaunty tone with her, and now, greeting her, I said, without the least embarrassment, that she was “like a princess welcoming spring from her lofty tower.” The balcony was quite small, with empty green flower boxes, and, in one corner, a broken clay pot, which I mentally compared to my heart, since it often happens that one’s style of speaking to a person affects one’s way of thinking in that person’s presence. The day was warm, though not very sunny, with a touch of turbidity and dampness—diluted sunlight and a tipsy but meek little breeze, fresh from a visit to some public garden where the young grass was already nappy and green against the black of the loam. I took a breath of this air, and realized simultaneously that Vanya’s wedding was only a week away. This thought brought back all the yearn and ache, I forgot again about Smurov, forgot that I must talk in a carefree manner. I turned away and began looking down at the, street. How high we were, and so completely alone. “He will be quite a while yet,” said Vanya. “They keep you waiting for hours in those offices.”