“Here I am juggling three apples,” said M’sieur Pierre.
“Isn’t that something!” said the director clucking his tongue.
“At breakfast,” said M’sieur Pierre. “This is me, and that is my late father.”
“Yes, yes, of course I recognize him … That noble brow!”
“On the banks of the Strop,” said M’sieur Pierre. “Have you been there?” he asked turning to Cincinnatus.
“I don’t think he has,” replied Rodrig Ivanovich. “And where was this taken? What an elegant little overcoat! You know something, you look older in this one. Just a second, I want to see that one again, with the watering can.”
“There … That is all I have with me,” said M’sieur Pierre, and again addressed Cincinnatus: “If only I had known that you are so interested, I would have brought along more—I have a good dozen albums.”
“Wonderful, stunning,” repeated Rodrig Ivanovich, wiping with a lilac-colored handkerchief his eyes, grown moist from all these joyous titters and ejaculations.
M’sieur Pierre reassembled the contents of his wallet. Suddenly there was a deck of cards in his hands.
“Think of a card, please, any card,” he proposed, laying the cards out on the table; he pushed the ash tray aside with his elbow; he continued laying.
“We have thought of one,” said the director jauntily.
Indulging in a bit of hocus-pocus M’sieur Pierre put his index finger to his forehead; then he quickly gathered up the cards, smartly made the pack crackle and threw out a trey of spades.
“This is amazing,” exclaimed the director. “Simply amazing!”
The deck vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared, and, making an imperturbable face, M’sieur Pierre said: “This little old woman comes to the doctor and says, ‘I have a terrible malady, Mr. Doctor,’ she says, ‘I’ve an awful fright I’ll die of it …’ ‘And what are the symptoms?’ ‘My head shakes, Mr. Doctor,’ ” and M’sieur Pierre, mumbling and shaking, imitated the little old woman.
Rodrig Ivanovich burst into riotous mirth, struck the table with his fist, nearly fell off his chair; then had a fit of coughing; moaned; and with a great effort regained control of himself.
“M’sieur Pierre, you are the life of the party,” he said, still shedding tears, “truly the life of the party! I haven’t heard such a hilarious anecdote in all my life!”
“How melancholy we are, how tender,” said M’sieur Pierre to Cincinnatus, thrusting out his lips as if he were trying to make a sulking child laugh. “We keep so still, and our little mustache is all quivering, and the vein on our neck is throbbing, and our little eyes are misty …”
“It’s all from joy,” quickly inserted the director. “N’y faites pas attention.”
“Yes, it is indeed a happy day, a red-letter day,” said M’sieur Pierre. “I am bubbling over with excitement myself … I don’t want to boast, but in me, my dear colleague, you will find a rare combination of outward sociability and inward delicacy, the art of the causerie and the ability to keep silent, playfulness and seriousness … Who will console a sobbing infant, and glue his broken toy together? M’sieur Pierre. Who will intercede for a poor widow? M’sieur Pierre. Who will provide sober advice, who will recommend a medicine, who will bring glad tidings? Who? Who? M’sieur Pierre. All will be done by M’sieur Pierre.”
“Remarkable! What talent!” exclaimed the director, as though he had been listening to poetry; yet all the time from beneath a twitching eyebrow he kept glancing at Cincinnatus.
“Therefore, it seems to me,” went on M’sieur Pierre, “Oh yes, by the way,” he interrupted himself, “are you satisfied with your quarters? You are not cold at night? Do they give you enough to eat?”
“He gets the same as I,” answered Rodrig Ivanovich. “The board is excellent.”
“All aboard,” quipped M’sieur Pierre.
The director was getting ready to roar again, but just then the door opened and the gloomy, lanky librarian appeared with a stack of books under his arm. A woolen scarf was wound around his throat. Without saying hello to anyone he dumped the books on the cot, and for a moment stereometric apparitions of those same books, composed of dust, hung above them in the air, they hung, vibrated, and dispersed.
“Wait a minute,” said Rodrig Ivanovich. “I don’t think you have met.”
The librarian nodded, without looking, while polite M’sieur Pierre rose from his chair.
“Please, M’sieur Pierre,” begged the director, putting his hand to his shirt front, “please show him your trick!”
“Oh, it’s hardly worth it—it’s really nothing,” M’sieur Pierre modestly began but the director would not stop:
“It’s a miracle! Red magic! We all beg you! Oh, do it for us … Wait, wait just a minute,” he shouted to the librarian, who was already starting toward the door. “Just a minute, M’sieur Pierre will show you something. Please, please! Don’t go …”
“Think of one of these cards,” pronounced M’sieur Pierre with mock solemnity; he shuffled the deck; he threw out the five of spades.
“No,” said the librarian and left.
M’sieur Pierre shrugged a round little shoulder.
“I’ll be right back,” muttered the director and went out also.
Cincinnatus and his guest remained alone.
Cincinnatus opened a book and buried himself in it, that is, he kept reading the first sentence over and over. M’sieur Pierre looked at him with a kind smile, with one little paw lying palm up on the table, just as if he were offering to make peace with Cincinnatus. The director returned. In his tightly clenched fist was a woolen scarf.
“Maybe you can use it, M’sieur Pierre,” he said; then he handed over the scarf, sat down, exhaled noisily like a horse, and began examining his thumb, from the end of which a half-broken nail protruded like a sickle.
“What were we talking about?” exclaimed M’sieur Pierre with charming tact, just as if nothing had happened. “Yes, we were talking about photographs. Some time I’ll bring my camera and take your picture. That will be fun. What are you reading? May I take a look?”
“You ought to put the book aside,” remarked the director with a rasp of exasperation in his voice; “after all, you do have a guest.”
“Oh, let him be,” smiled M’sieur Pierre.
There was a pause.
“It is growing late,” said the director after consulting his watch.
“Yes, we’ll be going in a minute … My, what a little grouch … Look at him, his little lips all atremble … any moment now the sun will peek out from behind the clouds … Grouch, grouch!…”
“Let’s go,” said the director, rising.
“Just a moment … I like it so much here that I can hardly tear myself away … In any case, my dear neighbor, I shall take advantage of your permission to visit you often, often—that is, of course, if you grant me permission—and you will, won’t you? … Good-by for now, then. Good-by! Good-by!”
Bowing comically, in imitation of someone, M’sieur Pierre withdrew; the director once again took him by his elbow, emitting voluptuous nasal sounds. They left, but at the last minute his voice was heard to say: “Excuse me, I forgot something, I’ll catch up with you in a moment,” and the director gushed back into the cell; he approached Cincinnatus, and for an instant the smile left his purple face: “I am ashamed,” he hissed through his teeth, “ashamed of you. You behaved like … I’m coming, I’m coming,” he yelled, beaming once again; then he snatched the vase of peonies from the table, and splashing water as he went, left the cell.
Cincinnatus kept staring into the book. A drop had fallen on the page. Through the drop several letters turned from brevier into pica, having swollen as if a reading glass were lying over them.
Chapter Eight
(There are some who sharpen a pencil toward themselves, as if they were peeling a potato, and there are others who slice away from themselves, as though whittling a stick … Rodion was of the latter number. He had an old penknife with several blades and a corkscrew. The corkscrew slept on the outside.)
“Today is the eighth day” (wrote Cincinnatus with the pencil, which had lost more than a third of its length) “and not only am I still alive, that is, the sphere of my own self still limits and eclipses my being, but, like any other mortal, I do not know my mortal hour and can apply to myself a formula that holds for everyone: the probability of a future decreases in inverse proportion to its theoretical remoteness. Of course in my case discretion requires that I think in term of very small numbers—but that is all right, that is all right—I am alive. I had a strange sensation last night—and it was not the first time—: I am taking off layer after layer, until at last … I do not know how to describe it, but I know this: through the process of gradual divestment I reach the final, indivisible, firm, radiant point, and this point says: I am! like a pearl ring embedded in a shark’s gory fat—O my eternal, my eternal … and this point is enough for me—actually nothing more is necessary. Perhaps as a citizen of the next century, a guest who has arrived ahead of time (the hostess is not yet up), perhaps simply a carnival freak in a gaping, hopelessly festive world, I have lived an agonizing life, and I would like to describe that agony to you—but I am obsessed by the fear that there will not be time enough. As far back as I can remember myself—and I remember myself with lawless lucidity, I have been my own accomplice, who knows too much, and therefore is
