Читать книгу Petersburg - Andrei Bely - Страница 19

What, then, was the social position of the person who has arisen here from non-being?

I think the question is rather out of place: Ableukhov was known by all Russia for the eminent expansiveness of the speeches that he delivered. These speeches noiselessly effused certain poisons, as a result of which the proposals of an opposing camp were rejected in the appropriate place. With Ableukhov’s installation in a responsible position, the Ninth Department became inactive.^† With this particular Department Apollon Apollonovich did dogged battle, both through official papers and, where necessary, through speeches, in an effort to promote the import of American haybalers into Russia. (The Ninth Department did not favor their import.)

Apollon Apollonovich was head of a Government Institution. Oh, uhhh, what was its name?

Were one to compare the wizened and utterly unprepossessing little figure of my elder statesman with the immeasurable immensity of the mechanisms managed by him, one might perhaps lapse into naive astonishment for quite some time. But then, after all, absolutely everyone was astonished at the explosion of the mental forces which poured forth from this particular cranium in defiance of all Russia.

My senator^† had just turned sixty-eight. And his pallid face recalled a gray paperweight (in a moment of triumph), and papier-mâché (in an hour of leisure). The stony senatorial eyes, surrounded by blackish green hollows, looked more blue and more immense in moments of fatigue.

On our part let us add: Apollon Apollonovich was not in the least agitated when he contemplated his ears, green all over and enlarged to immense size, against the bloody background of a Russia in flames. Thus had he recently been portrayed on the title page of a gutter rag,^† one of those trashy humor rags put out by the kikes, whose bloody covers in those days were spawned with staggering swiftness on prospects swarming with people. . . .