The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (51 page)

“Look, Ivan, I think I’ve got a pimple on my nose,” he said, and thought meanwhile, “What a disaster if Ivan says, ‘No, sir, not only no pimple, but no nose either!’ ”

But Ivan said:

“Nothing, sir, no pimple at all—the nose is clean!”

“Good, devil take it!” the major said to himself and snapped his fingers.
At that moment the barber Ivan Yakovlevich peeked in the
door, but as timorously as a cat that has just been beaten for stealing lard.

“Tell me first: are your hands clean?” Kovalev cried to him from afar.

“Yes.”

“Lies!”

“By God, they’re clean, sir.”

“Well, watch yourself now.”

Kovalev sat down.
Ivan Yakovlevich covered him with a towel and in an instant, with the aid of a brush, transformed his whole chin and part of his cheeks into a cream such as is served on merchants’ birthdays.

“Look at that!” Ivan Yakovlevich said to himself, glancing at the nose.
Then he tipped the head the other way and looked at it from the side.
“There, now!
really, just think of it,” he continued and went on looking at the nose for a long time.
At last, lightly, as cautiously as one can imagine, he raised two fingers so as to grasp the tip of it.
Such was Ivan Yakovlevich’s system.

“Oh-oh, watch out!” cried Kovalev.

Ivan Yakovlevich dropped his arms, more confused and taken aback than he had ever been before.
Finally he started tickling carefully under his chin with the razor; and though it was quite difficult and inconvenient for him to give a shave without holding on to the smelling part of the body, nevertheless, resting his rough thumb on the cheek and lower jaw, he finally overcame all obstacles and shaved him.

When everything was ready, Kovalev hastened at once to get dressed, hired a cab, and drove straight to the pastry shop.
Going in, he cried from afar, “A cup of hot chocolate, boy!” and instantly went up to the mirror: the nose was there!
He gaily turned around and, with a satirical air, squinting one eye a little, looked at two military men, one of whom had a nose no bigger than a waistcoat button.
After that, he went to the office of the department where he had solicited a post as vice-governor or, failing that, as an executive.
Passing through the waiting room, he looked in the mirror: the nose was there!
Then he went to see another collegiate assessor, or major, a great mocker, to whom he often said in response to
various needling remarks: “Well, don’t I know you, you sharpy!” On the way there, he thought, “If even the major doesn’t split from laughing when he sees me, then it’s a sure sign that whatever’s there is sitting where it should.” But from the collegiate assessor—nothing.
“Good, good, devil take it!” Kovalev thought to himself.
On his way he met Podtochina, the staff officer’s wife, with her daughter, greeted them, and was met with joyful exclamations—nothing, then; he was in no way damaged.
He talked with them for a very long time and, purposely taking out his snuffbox, spent a very long time in front of them filling his nose from both entrances, murmuring to himself, “There, that’s for you, females, hen folk!
and even so I won’t marry the daughter.
Just like that—
par amour
, if you please!” And Major Kovalev strolled on thereafter as if nothing was wrong, on Nevsky Prospect, and in the theaters, and everywhere.
And the nose also sat on his face as if nothing was wrong, not even showing a sign that it had ever gone anywhere.
And after that Major Kovalev was seen eternally in a good humor, smiling, chasing after decidedly all the pretty ladies, and even stopping once in front of a shop in the Merchants’ Arcade to buy some ribbon or other, no one knows for what reason, since he was not himself the bearer of any decoration.

Such was the story that occurred in the northern capital of our vast country!
Only now, on overall reflection, we can see that there is much of the implausible in it.
To say nothing of the strangeness of the supernatural detachment of the nose and its appearance in various places in the guise of a state councillor—how was it that Kovalev did not realize that he ought not to make an announcement about the nose through the newspaper office?
I’m speaking here not in the sense that I think it costly to pay for an announcement: that is nonsense, and I am not to be numbered among the mercenary.
But it is indecent, inept, injudicious!
And then, too—how did the nose end up in the baked bread and how did Ivan Yakovlevich himself …?
no, that I just do not understand, I decidedly do not understand!
But what is strangest, what is most incomprehensible of all is how authors can choose such subjects … I confess, that is utterly inconceivable, it is simply … no, no, I utterly fail to understand.
In the first place, there is decidedly no benefit to the fatherland; in the
second place … but in the second place there is also no benefit.
I simply do not know what it …

And yet, for all that, though it is certainly possible to allow for one thing, and another, and a third, perhaps even … And then, too, are there not incongruities everywhere?… And yet, once you reflect on it, there really is something to all this.
Say what you like, but such incidents do happen in the world—rarely, but they do happen.

THE CARRIAGE

T
HE LITTLE TOWN
of B.
became much gayer when the —— cavalry regiment was stationed there.
Before then, it was awfully boring.
When you happened to drive through it and gaze at the low cob houses looking out so incredibly sourly, it’s impossible to describe what would come over your heart then—such anguish as if you’d lost at cards or blurted out something stupid at the wrong time; in short, no good.
The cob has fallen off them on account of the rain, and the walls, instead of white, have become piebald; the roofs are in most cases covered with thatch, as is usual in our southern towns; as for the gardens, they were cut down long ago on the mayor’s orders, to improve appearances.
You wouldn’t meet a soul abroad, except maybe a rooster crossing the street, soft as a pillow owing to the five inches of dust lying on it, which turns to mud with the slightest rain, and then the streets of the town of B.
fill up with those stout animals the mayor of the place calls Frenchmen.
Poking their serious snouts out of their baths, they set up such a grunting that the traveler can only urge his horses on faster.
However, it was hard to meet a traveler in the town of B.
Rarely, very rarely, some landowner possessed of eleven peasant souls, wearing a nankeen frock coat, would rattle down the street in something halfway between a cart and a britzka, peeking out
from amidst a heap of flour sacks and whipping up a bay mare with a colt running behind her.
The marketplace itself has a rather woeful look: the tailor’s house sits quite stupidly, not with the whole front facing it, but catercorner; across from it some stone building with two windows has been a-building for fifteen years now; further on, a fashionable plank fence stands all by itself, painted gray to match the color of the mud, erected as a model for other buildings by the mayor in the time of his youth, when he did not yet have the habit of napping directly after dinner and taking some sort of infusion of dried gooseberries before going to bed.
In other places, it’s almost all wattle fence; in the middle of the square stand the smallest shops: in them you could always notice a string of pretzels, a woman in a red kerchief, a crate of soap, a few pounds of bitter almonds, shot for small arms, half-cotton cloth, and two salesclerks playing mumblety-peg by the shop door all the time.
But when the cavalry regiment began to be stationed in the regional town of B., everything changed.
The streets became colorful, animated—in short, acquired a totally different look.
The little, low houses often saw passing by a trim, adroit officer with a plume on his head, on his way to visit a friend for a chat about horse breeding, or the excellence of tobacco, or occasionally for a game of cards, with what might be called the regimental droshky as the stake, because it managed to pass through everybody’s hands without ever leaving the regiment: today the major was driving around in it, tomorrow it turned up in the lieutenant’s stable, and a week later, lo and behold, again the major’s orderly was greasing it with lard.
The wooden fences between houses were all dotted with soldiers’ caps hanging out in the sun; a gray overcoat was bound to be sticking up somewhere on a gate; in the lanes you might run into soldiers with mustaches as stiff as a bootblack’s brush.
These mustaches could be seen in all places.
If tradeswomen got together at the market with their dippers, a mustache was sure to be peeking over their shoulders.
In the middle of the square, a soldier with a mustache was sure to be soaping the beard of some village yokel, who merely grunted, rolling up his eyes.
The officers animated society, which till then had consisted only of the judge, who lived
in the same house as some deacon’s widow, and the mayor, a reasonable man, but who slept decidedly all day: from dinner till evening, and from evening till dinner.
Society became still more numerous and entertaining when the quarters of the brigadier general were transferred there.
Neighboring landowners, whose existence no one had even suspected till then, began coming to the little town more often, to meet the gentlemen officers and on occasion to play a little game of faro, which before had been an extremely vague fancy in their heads, busied with crops, their wives’ errands, and hunting hares.
It’s a great pity I’m unable to remember for what occasion the brigadier general gave a big dinner; enormous preparations went into it: the snick of the chef’s knives in the general’s kitchen could be heard as far as the town gates.
The entire market was completely bought up for this dinner, so that the judge and his deaconess had to eat buckwheat pancakes and cornstarch custard.
The small yard of the general’s house was entirely filled with droshkies and carriages.
The company consisted of men: officers and some neighboring landowners.
Among the landowners, the most remarkable was Pythagor Pythagorovich Chertokutsky, one of the chief aristocrats of the B.
region, who made the biggest stir at the local elections, coming to them in a jaunty carriage.
He had served formerly in one of the cavalry regiments and had numbered among its important and notable officers.
At least he was seen at many balls and gatherings, wherever his regiment happened to migrate; the girls of Tambov and Simbirsk provinces might, incidentally, be asked about that.
It’s quite possible that his favorable repute would have spread to other provinces as well, if he had not retired on a certain occasion, usually known as an unpleasant incident: either he gave someone a slap in his earlier years, or he was given one, I don’t remember for sure, only the upshot was that he was asked to retire.
However, he by no means lost any of his dignity: wore a high-waisted tailcoat after the fashion of military uniforms, spurs on his boots, and a mustache under his nose, because otherwise the noblemen might have thought he had served in the infantry, which he sometimes scornfully called infantury and sometimes infantary.
He visited all
the crowded fairs, where the insides of Russia, consisting of nannies, children, daughters, and fat landowners, came for the merrymaking in britzkas, gigs, tarantasses, and such carriages as no one ever saw even in dreams.
His nose could smell where a cavalry regiment was stationed, and he always went to meet the gentleman officers.
With great adroitness he would leap from his light carriage or droshky before them and make their acquaintance extremely quickly.
During the last election, he gave an excellent dinner for the nobility, at which he announced that if he were elected marshal,
¹
he would put the nobility on the very best footing.
He generally behaved with largesse, as they say in the districts and provinces, married a pretty little thing, with her got a dowry of two hundred souls plus several thousand in capital.
The capital went immediately on a sixsome of really fine horses, gilded door latches, a tame monkey for the house, and a Frenchman for a butler.
The two hundred souls, together with his own two hundred, were mortgaged with a view to some sort of commercial transactions.
In short, he was a real landowner … A landowner good and proper.
Besides him, there were several other landowners at the general’s dinner, but they are not worth talking about.
The rest were all army men of the same regiment, including two staff officers: a colonel and a rather fat major.
The general was stocky and corpulent himself, though a good commander in the officers’ opinion.
He spoke in a rather deep, imposing bass.
The dinner was extraordinary: sturgeon, beluga, sterlet, bustard, asparagus, quail, partridge, and mushrooms testified that the cook had not sat down to eat since the day before, and that four soldiers, knives in hand, had worked all night helping him with the
fricassées
and
gelées.
The myriads of bottles—tall ones of Lafitte, short-necked ones of Madeira—the beautiful summer day, the windows all thrown wide open, the plates of ice on the table, the gentlemen officers with their bottom button unbuttoned, the owners of trim tailcoats with their shirt fronts all rumpled, the crisscross conversation dominated by the general’s voice and drowned in champagne—everything was in harmony with everything else.
After dinner they all got up with an agreeable heaviness in their stomachs and, having lit their
long or short chibouks, stepped out on the porch, cups of coffee in their hands.