Читать книгу Petersburg - Andrei Bely - Страница 35

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.

The shadow of a woman, face buried in a muff, darted along the Moika to that same entryway from which it would dart out every evening, and where now, on the cold step, below the door, sat Nikolai Apollonovich. The entryway door closed in front of it; the entryway door slammed shut in front of it.^† Darkness enveloped the shadow, as though all had fallen away behind it. In the entryway, the black little lady thought about simple and earthly things. She had already reached her hand toward the bell, and it was then that she saw an outline, apparently masked, rise up before her from the step.

And when the door opened and a shaft of light illuminated the darkness of the entryway for an instant, the exclamation of a terrified maid confirmed it all for her, because first there appeared in the open door an apron and an overstarched cap; then the apron and cap recoiled from the door. In the sudden flash a picture of indescribable strangeness was revealed. The black outline of the little lady flung itself through the open door.

Behind her back, out of the gloom, rose a rustling clown in a bearded, trembling half-mask.

One could see how, out of the gloom, the fur of the caped greatcoat^† soundlessly and slowly slid from the shoulders, and two red arms reached toward the door. The door closed, cutting off the shaft of light and plunging the entryway stairs once more into utter darkness.

***

In a second Nikolai Apollonovich sprang out into the street. From beneath the skirts of his greatcoat dangled a piece of red silk. His nose buried in the greatcoat, he raced in the direction of the bridge.

***

On the iron bridge he turned. And saw nothing. Above the damp railing, above the greenish waters teeming with germs, bowler, cane, coat, ears, nose, and mustache rushed by into the gusts of Neva wind.