Petersburg by Andrei Bely Read Free Book Online Page A

the heavy doors to the drawing-room, when his boots hammered along the small, resonant corridor, it was only a hammering in the temples: Apollon Apollonovich suffered from haemorrhoidal rushes of blood.
    Behind the slammed door there turned out to be no drawing-room: there turned out to be … cerebral spaces: convolutions, grey and white matter, the pineal gland; while the heavy walls, that consisted of sparkling spray (caused by the rush of blood) – the bare walls were only a leaden and painful sensation: of the occipital, frontal, temporal and sincipital bones belonging to the respected skull.
    The house – the stone colossus – was not a house: the stone leviathan was the senatorial head: Apollon Apollonovich sat at the desk, over dossiers, depressed by migraine, with the sensation that his head was six times larger than it ought to be, and twelve times heavier than it ought to be.
    Strange, highly strange, exceedingly strange qualities!
    Our Role
    Petersburg streets possess an indubitable quality: they turn passers-by into shadows; while Petersburg streets turn shadows into people.
    We have seen this in the example of the mysterious stranger.
    He, having arisen like a thought in the senatorial head, was for some reason also connected with the senator’s own house; there he had surfaced in the memory; but most of all he assumed substantial form on the prospect, immediately following the senator in our modest story.
    From the crossroads to the little restaurant on Millionnaya Street we have described the stranger’s route; we have described, further, his sitting in the little restaurant until the notorious word ‘suddenly’, which interrupted everything; suddenly something happened to the stranger there; some unpleasant sensation visited him.
    Let us now investigate his soul; but first let us investigate the little restaurant; we have a reason for doing so; after all, if we, the author, mark out with pedantic exactitude the route of the first person who comes along, the reader will believe us: our action is justified in the future.In the natural investigation we have undertaken we have merely anticipated Senator Ableukhov’s wish that an agent of the Secret Political Police Department should steadfastly follow the stranger’s steps; the good senator would himself take up the telephone receiver in order by means of it to convey his thought to the proper quarters; fortunately for him, he did not know the stranger’s abode (while we do know that abode).We shall go and meet the senator; and for the time being let the lightminded agent kick his heels in his Department – we shall be the agent.
    But wait, wait …
    Have we not gone and put our foot in it?I mean to say, what kind of agent are we?There is an agent already.And he is not asleep, my goodness, no, he is not asleep.Our role has proved to be an idle role.
    When the stranger vanished through the doors of the little restaurant and we were seized by a desire to follow there too, we turned round and caught sight of two silhouettes that were slowly cutting through the fog; one of the two silhouettes was rather fat and tall, clearly standing out by his build; but we could not discern the face of the silhouette (silhouettes do not have faces); all the same, we did make out: a new, opened, silk umbrella, dazzlingly shining galoshes and a semi-sealskin hat with earflaps.
    The mangy little figure of a short-statured little gentleman constitutedthe principal content of the second silhouette: the silhouette’s face was visible enough: but we did not manage to see this face either, for we were astonished by the hugeness of the wart on it: thus did facial substantia screen from us the insolent accidentia (as it is fitting that it should act in this world of shadows).
    Making it appear as though we are looking into the clouds, we have let slip the dark couple, in front of the restaurant door that dark couple stopped and said a few words in human