Petersburg by Andrei Bely Read Free Book Online Page B

language:
    ‘Hm?’
    ‘Here …’
    ‘Just as I thought: precautions have been taken: that’s in case you didn’t show it to me by the bridge.’
    ‘And what precautions have you taken?’
    ‘Well, I’ve placed a man there, in the little restaurant.’
    ‘Oh, you’ve no business to go taking precautions!Why, I’ve told you, told you: told you a hundred times …’
    ‘Forgive me, I did it out of zeal …’
    ‘You ought to have consulted me first … Your precautions are fine …’
    ‘You say so yourself …’
    ‘Yes, but your fine precautions …’
    ‘Hm …’
    ‘What?… Your fine precautions will make a mess of it all …’
    The couple went five paces, stopped; and again said a few words in human language.
    ‘Hm!… I’ll have to … Hm!… Wish you success now …’
    ‘Well what doubt can there be of it: the undertaking has been set like the mechanism of a clock; unless I stop this deed now, then, believe me as a friend: the deed is in the bag!’
    ‘Hm?’
    ‘What are you saying?’
    ‘Damned head cold …’
    ‘But I’m talking about the deed …’
    ‘Hm …’
    ‘The souls are tuned like instruments: and make up the concert – what are you saying?It remains for the conductor to brandish hisbaton from the wings.Senator Ableukhov must issue a circular, while the Elusive One is in for …’
    ‘Damned head cold.’
    ‘Nikolai Apollonovich is in for … In a word: a concert trio, where Russia is the pit.Do you understand me?Do you understand?But why do you still say nothing?’
    ‘Listen: you ought to take a salary …’
    ‘No, you won’t understand me!’
    ‘I will: hm-hm-hm – you definitely don’t have enough handkerchiefs.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘But your cold!… And the wild beast – hm-hm-hm – won’t go away?’
    ‘Well, where is there for him to …’
    ‘Well then, you should draw a salary …’
    ‘A salary!I don’t work for a salary: I’m an artist, do you understand – an artist!’
    ‘Of a sort …’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Nothing: I’m curing myself with a tallow candle.’
    The small figure took out its snot-covered handkerchief and again made a squelching sound with its nose.
    ‘But I’m talking about the deed!Make sure you tell them that Nikolai Apollonovich has given a promise …’
    ‘A tallow candle is a marvellous remedy for a cold …’
    ‘Tell them all that you heard it from me: this deed has been set …’
    ‘In the evening you smear it on your nostrils, in the morning you’re as right as rain …’
    ‘The deed has been set, I tell you again, like the mech …’
    ‘Your nose is cleared, you breathe freely …’
    ‘Like the mechanism of a clock!’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘The mechanism, the devil take it, of a clock.’
    ‘My ear’s blocked: I can’t hear.’
    ‘The-me-chan-ism-of-a …’
    ‘Achoo!…’
    Under the wart the handkerchief again began to ply: the two shadows were slowly flowing away into the dank murk.Soon the shadow of the fat man in the semi-sealskin hat with the earflaps appeared again out of the fog and looked absent-mindedly at the spire of Peter and Paul.
    And went into the little restaurant.
    And Moreover the Face Glistened
    Reader!
    ‘Suddenly’ is familiar to you.Then why, like an ostrich, do you hide your head in your feathers at the approach of a fateful and inexorable ‘suddenly’?Start talking to you about an alien ‘suddenly’, and you will probably say:
    ‘Dear sir, excuse me: you must be an out-and-out decadent.’
    And you will probably expose me as a decadent.
    You are even now before me as an ostrich; but in vain do you hide – you know me perfectly well: you also understand the inexorable ‘suddenly’.
    Then listen …
    Your ‘suddenly’ steals up behind your back, indeed sometimes it precedes your appearance in the room; in the first case you are made horribly uneasy: in your back an unpleasant sensation develops, as though a gang of invisible beings had begun to throng into your back, as through