St. Petersburg

Andrey Biely, John Cournos

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780802131584
• eBook ISBN: 9780802196798
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

A landmark in Russian literature hailed as "one of the four great masterpieces of twentieth-century prose" by Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita. In this incomparable novel of the seething revolutionary Russia of 1905, Andrey Biely plays ingeniously on the great themes of Russian history and literature as he tells the mesmerizing tale of Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, a high-ranking Tsarist official, and his dilettante son, Nikolai, an aspiring terrorist, whose first assignment is to assassinate his father. "There is nothing like a ticking time bomb to supply fictional suspense, and perhaps no other writer has ever used the device more successfully than Andrey Biely in St. Petersburg ... Biely is a crafty storyteller who can keep a reader flipping the pages while whipping up an intellectual storm." — Time

CHAPTER ONE

There was a dreadful time, we keep
Still freshly on our memories painted;
And you, my friends, shall be acquainted
By me with all that history:
A grievous record it will be.

—PUSHKIN

1

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov came of very good stock: Adam was his ancestor. A later and more important ancestor of his in the same honored line was Shem, the forefather of the Semitic, Hessitic, and red-skinned races.

At this point, we can transfer our attention to ancestors of a less remote epoch.

These more recent ancestors had spent their lives among the Kirghiz-Kaisatsk hordes whence, during the reign of the Empress Anne, one Ameer Ab-Lai, great-grandfather of the Senator who, on his conversion to Christianity, received the name of Andrey and the surname of Ukhov, had bravely entered the Russian service. The name of Ab-Lai-Ukhov was later abbreviated to Ableukhov.

This particular Ableukhov was the progenitor of all the later generations of the Ableukhovs.

A lackey attired in gray trimmed with gold galloon was dusting the writing desk with a feather-duster when a chef’s white cap was thrust through the open door.

“Is the master up?” the cook inquired.

“He’s rubbing himself with eau-de-cologne and he’ll be wanting his coffee soon.”

“The postman said there was a letter from Spain. The letter has a Spanish stamp.”

“Permit me to remark, it’d be better for you not to poke your nose into matters that don’t concern you!”

The chef’s head suddenly vanished. Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov strode into the study.

Apollon Apollonovich’s attention was arrested by a pencil on the desk. Apollon Apollonovich instantly decided to give a refined form to the pointed end of the pencil. He stepped quickly to the desk and seized … a paperweight which in deep meditation he turned for a long time this way and that.

His distraction was due to a profound thought that had suddenly struck him; at an unseasonable moment it had rapidly unfolded and pursued its runaway course.

Apollon Apollonovich began quickly to jot down his fleeting thoughts. This accomplished, he thought: “It’s time for the office.” He entered the dining room to have his coffee.

Then cautiously and with curious persistence, he began to question the old lackey:

“Is Nikolai Apollonovich up yet?”

“By no means. He’s still in bed.”

With a dissatisfied gesture, Apollon Apollonovich went on rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Eh … eh, tell me … when Nikolai Apollonovich, so to speak …”

But without finishing his question he promptly helped himself to more coffee and glanced at his watch.

It was exactly half-past nine.

Every morning the Senator asked the same question about Nikolai Apollonovich. And every morning he frowned at his own question.

Nikolai Apollonovich was the Senator’s son.

2

Russia knew the Senator for the superior quality of his circumstantial speeches; subtly these speeches spread and led in certain quarters to the rejection of certain requests. With Ableukhov’s investiture in the responsible post of department head, the Ninth Department became inactive. Apollon Apollonovich carried on an obstinate feud with this Department by means of official papers and, where need be, of speeches promoting the importation into Russia of American binders and files, to which the Ninth Department had been opposed.

Apollon Apollonovich was the head of a department of some magnitude: the department of … what’s its name?

If we compare the dry and wholly insignificant figure of our esteemed personage with the measureless immensity of the mechanisms he directed, we might pause in naive astonishment; and, indeed, everyone was astonished at the outburst of mental energy which poured from this skull box in the face of the resistance provoked across the length and breadth of all Russia.

The Senator had only just attained his sixty-eighth year. In moments of exultation, his pale face resembled the gray paperweight which in a relaxed moment he had handled a short while ago. Indeed his face was like papier-mâché. His stony Senatorial eyes, sunken within deep round hollows of a dark green hue, seemed larger and bluer.

Apollon Apollonovich was not a bit perturbed when he contemplated his quite green ears which had been immensely magnified on the blood-red banner of revolutionary Russia. Thus he had been lately portrayed on the title page of a vulgar comic journal, one of those “Judaic” papers with red covers which circulated in those days with astonishing rapidity and in ever-increasing numbers on the swarming prospects.

3

A cuckoo clock cuckooed on a wall of the oak-paneled dining room. Apollon Apollonovich sat before his porcelain cup, breaking off pieces of crust from a roll; as he sipped his coffee, he joked with the lackey:

“Semenich, who is the most honored of men?”

“I suppose, Apollon Apollonovich, no one is more honored than a Privy Councilor.”

Apollon Apollonovich smiled broadly:

“You’re mistaken—it’s the chimneysweep.”

The lackey, who already knew the answer to the riddle, also knew that he must not divulge it.

“Why do you think so? I hope I may venture to ask, sir?”

“Well, Semenich, everyone must make way for a Privy Councilor …”

“I suppose that’s right.”

“But even a Privy Councilor, must make way for the chimneysweep. The chimneysweep would soil him, you see.”

“That’s a fact, to be sure, sir.”

“Yes, that’s the way it is. There’s only one service even more honored …”

After a pause, he would add:

“It’s the man who cleans the water-closet.”

“Pfuh…”

There was a gurgle of coffee being swallowed.

“That reminds me, Apollon Apollonovich, once when Anna Petrovna …”

At the last word, the gray-haired lackey stopped short.

“The gray coat, sir?”

“Yes, the gray.”

“Which gloves, sir?”

“The suede.”

“I hope you don’t mind waiting, Your Excellency. The suede gloves are in the chiffonier: shelf B-North-East.”

Apollon Apollonovich had only once intervened in the petty details of his domestic life; he had revised the domestic inventory. Order was established in the household: all the shelves and the sub-shelves were lettered and named. The shelves were lettered A, B, C, while the four walls of the shelves were named after the four points of the compass.

After putting his spectacles away, Apollon Apollonovich had made a list in his small, meticulous script: spectacles, Shelf B and N.E., i.e., North-East. His valet was given a copy of this list.

The world’s storms flowed noiselessly through this lacquered house; yet they flowed and flowed fatally.

4

A long-legged bronze graced the table. The lampshade of delicate violet-rose that topped it no longer sparkled. Our age has lost the secret of cunningly wrought colors. The glass and its fine design had been dimmed by time.

From every angle, the greenish surfaces of the gilt-framed pier-glasses swallowed the drawing room; a gold-cheeked cupid crowned each of them with a wing; a small mother-of-pearl table sparkled.

Apollon Apollonovich, placing his hand on a cut-crystal handle, flung open the door with a rapid gesture; his steps sounded on the small gleaming squares of the parquet floor; from all sides little heaps of porcelain trifles leaped into sight—Apollon Apollonovich had brought these trifles from Venice thirty years before, when he had visited that city with his wife, Anna Petrovna. The memory of the misty lagoon, the gondola, and the arias sobbing in the distance, flitted inopportunely through the Senator’s head.

At once he transferred his glance to the grand piano.

Leaves of incrusted bronze gleamed on its yellow lacquered cover; and again—oh, irksome memory!—Apollon Apollonovich remembered a certain white night in Petersburg. The river flowed past the windows; the moon was high; and a roulade of Chopin’s thundered; he could remember distinctly Anna Petrovna playing Chopin (not Schumann).

Leaves of mother-of-pearl and bronze incrustations sparkled on the tiny boxes and little shelves on the walls. Apollon Apollonovich seated himself in an Empire armchair on whose pale azure satin seat there was a woven pattern of wreaths. He snatched at a packet of unsealed letters from a small Chinese tray; his bald head bent over the envelopes.

He opened the envelopes. Here was an ordinary one, the stamp crookedly affixed. He mumbled to himself:

“So, so, very well…

“A petition …

“Another petition, and still another …”

In due course, later, he would attend to it…

He came to an envelope of heavy paper with a monogram and a seal.

“H’m … Count Dubleve…. What’s he up to now? … H’m …”

Count Dubleve was the head of the Ninth Department.

Then he came across a pale rose envelope. The Senator’s hand trembled: he recognized the handwriting. He stared at the Spanish stamp, but made no move to open the envelope.

“But the money was surely sent?” he thought. “Yes, the money will be sent!” he added.

And thinking that he had extracted a stub of a pencil from his waistcoat pocket when it was actually a tiny nail brush, Apollon Apollonovich prepared to make a note …

“Yes?”

“The carriage is waiting, Your Excellency.”

Apollon Apollonovich raised his bald head and strode from the room.

David’s painting, Distribution des aigles par Napoléon premier, in a reduced copy hung over the grand piano. The picture represented the great Emperor in a chaplet and a purple and ermine mantle.

A total absence of rugs imparted to the reception room an air of cold magnificence. The parquet floor gleamed; if the sun had lighted upon it even for an instant, one would have involuntarily blinked one’s eyes.

Senator Ableukhov had elevated his preference for coolness to a principle and now he based his whole life upon it.

This principle was personified in the master of the house, in his statues, in his servants, even in the dark brown-yellow bulldog who spent his life somewhere near the kitchen. In this house, everyone lived in a state of diffidence and embarrassment; everyone was in awe of the parquet floor, the paintings and the statues, smiled timidly and held his breath; everyone scraped and bowed, and wrung his cold fingers in fits of sterile officiousness.

Since the departure of Anna Petrovna, the reception room had remained silent, and the lid of the grand piano had been lowered; roulades thundered no more.

When Apollon Apollonovich descended into the vestibule, his gray-haired valet accompanied him, glancing at his master’s honorable ears. Apollon Apollonovich was fingering a snuffbox—the gift of a Minister.

Apollon Apollonovich paused at the foot of the stairs, seeking the appropriate word:

“What, generally, does he do? What does he do?” he asked.

“? …”

“I’m referring to Nikolai Apollonovich.”

“Nothing in particular, Your Excellency. He just greets us …”

“And what else?”

“He shuts himself in and reads books.”

“Books, eh? What else?”

“He paces up and down his rooms.”

“So that’s it?… And how?”

“In his dressing-gown, sir.”

“Quite … And what else?”

“Yesterday he was expecting someone …”

“Whom?”

“A costumer, sir.”

“What sort of costumer?”

“A costumer …”

Apollon Apollonovich rubbed the bridge of his nose: a gleam of intelligence illuminated his face, which suddenly looked patriarchal.

“Have you ever had a sty?” he asked.

“No, Your Excelle...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Epilogue
• Footnote