Almost immediately, however, another guest called on Cincinnatus—the librarian, coming to fetch the books. His long, pale face with its halo of dusty-black hair around a bald spot, his long tremulous torso in the bluish sweater, his long legs in the truncated trousers—all of this together created an odd, morbid impression, as if the man had been squashed and flattened out. However, it seemed to Cincinnatus that, with the book dust, a film of something remotely human had settled on the librarian.
“You must have heard,” said Cincinnatus, “the day after tomorrow will be my extermination. I shan’t be taking any more books.”
“You will not,” said the librarian.
Cincinnatus went on: “I should like to weed out a few noxious truths. Do you have a minute? I want to say that now, when I know exactly … How delightful was that very ignorance that so depressed me … No more books …”
“Would you like something about gods?” the librarian suggested.
“No, don’t bother. I don’t feel like reading that.”
“Some do,” said the librarian.
“Yes, I know, but really, it’s not worthwhile.”
“For the last night,” the librarian finished his thought with difficulty.
“You are awfully talkative today,” said Cincinnatus with a smile. “No, take all this away. I wasn’t able to finish Quercus! Oh yes, by the way, this was brought me by mistake … these little volumes … Arabic, aren’t they? … unfortunately I hadn’t time to study the Oriental languages.”
“Pity,” said the librarian.
“It’s all right, my soul will make up for it. Wait a minute, do not go yet. Although I know, of course, that you are only bound in human skin, as it were, yet … I am content with little … The day after tomorrow—”
But, trembling, the librarian left.
Chapter Seventeen
Tradition required that on the eve of the execution its passive and active participants together make a brief farewell visit to each of the chief officials; however, in order to shorten the ritual, it was decided that those persons would assemble at the suburban house of the deputy city manager (the manager himself, who was the deputy’s nephew, was away, visiting friends in Pritomsk) and that Cincinnatus and M’sieur Pierre would drop in for an informal supper.
It was a dark night, and a strong warm wind was blowing when, dressed in identical capes, on foot, escorted by six soldiers carrying halberds and lanterns, they crossed the bridge and entered the sleeping city where, avoiding the main streets, they began to climb a flinty path between rustling gardens.
(Just before that, on the bridge Cincinnatus had turned, freeing his head from the hood of his cloak: the blue, elaborate, many-towered, huge bulk of the fortress rose into the dull sky, where a cloud had barred an apricot moon. The dark air above the bridge blinked and twitched because of the bats. “You promised …,” whispered M’sieur Pierre, giving him a slight squeeze on the elbow, and Cincinnatus again pulled on his cowl.)
This nocturnal promenade which had promised to be so rich with sad, carefree, singing, murmuring impressions—for what is a recollection, if not the soul of an impression?—proved in reality to be vague and insignificant and flashed by so quickly as happens only amid very familiar surroundings, in the dark, when the varicolored fractions of day are replaced by the integers of night.
At the end of a narrow and gloomy lane, where the gravel crunched and there was a smell of juniper, there suddenly appeared a theatrically lighted carriage porch with whitewashed columns, friezes on the pediment, and potted laurels, and hardly pausing in the vestibule, where servants flitted to and fro like birds of paradise, shedding plumes on the black and white tiles, Cincinnatus and M’sieur Pierre entered a hall buzzing with a large gathering. All were assembled here.
Here the custodian of the city fountains could be at once recognized by his characteristic shock of hair; here the telegraph chief’s uniform flashed with golden medals; here, with his obscene nose, was the ruddy director of supplies; and the lion-tamer with an Italian name; and the judge, deaf and venerable; and, in green patent-leather shoes, the park administrator; and a multitude of other stately, respectable, gray-haired individuals with repulsive faces. There were no ladies present, unless one counted the district superintendent of schools, a very stout, elderly woman in a gray frock coat cut like a man’s, with large flat cheeks and a smooth hairdo as shiny as steel.
Someone slipped on the parquetry, to the accompaniment of general laughter. A chandelier dropped one of its candles. Someone had already placed a bouquet on a small coffin that had been set out for exhibition. Standing apart with Cincinnatus, M’sieur Pierre was calling his charge’s attention to these phenomena.
Just then, however, the host, a swarthy old man with a goatee, clapped his hands. The doors were flung open, and everyone moved into the dining room. M’sieur Pierre and Cincinnatus were seated side by side at the head of a dazzling table, and everyone began to glance, with restraint at first, then with benevolent curiosity—which in some began to turn into surreptitious tenderness—at the pair, identically clad in Elsinore jackets; then, as a lambent smile gradually appeared on M’sieur Pierre’s lips and he began to talk, the eyes of the guests turned more and more openly toward him and Cincinnatus, who was unhurriedly, diligently and intently—as if seeking the solution to a problem—balancing his fish knife in various ways, now on the salt shaker, now on the incurvation of the fork, now leaning it against the slender crystal vase with a white rose that distinctly adorned his place.
The footmen, recruited from among the town’s most adroit dandies—the best representatives of its purple youth—briskly served the food (sometimes even leaping across the table with a dish), and everyone noticed the polite solicitude with which M’sieur Pierre took care of Cincinnatus, immediately switching from a conversational smile to momentary seriousness, while he carefully placed a choice morsel on Cincinnatus’s plate; whereupon, with the former playful twinkle on his pink, hairless face, he would resume his witty conversation, directed to the whole table—and suddenly, leaning over just a little, grabbing the gravy boat or the pepper shaker, he would glance interrogatively at Cincinnatus; the latter, however, did not touch any of the food, but continued, just as silently, attentively and diligently, to shift the knife about.
“Your remark,” M’sieur Pierre said gaily, turning to the city traffic chief, who had managed to get a word in and was now pleasurably anticipating a scintillating reply, “your remark reminds me of the well-known anecdote about the Hippocratic oath.”
“Tell it, we don’t know it, do tell it,” voices begged him from all sides.
“I comply with your wish,” said M’sieur Pierre. “To a gynecologist comes this—”
“Scuse the intermission,” said the lion-tamer (gray-haired and mustachioed, with a crimson ribbon across his chest), “but is the gent convicted that the anecdotus is wholesomely for the ears of …?” He emphatically indicated Cincinnatus with his eyes.
“Quite, quite,” M’sieur Pierre replied sternly, “I would never allow myself the slightest impropriety in the presence of … As I was saying, to a gynecologist comes this little old lady” (M’sieur Pierre stuck out his lower lip slightly). “She says, ‘I’ve got quite a serious illness and I’m afraid it’ll be the death of me.’ ‘What are the symptoms?’ asks the doctor. ‘Oh doctor, my head shakes …’ ” and M’sieur Pierre, mumbling and shaking, mimicked the old woman.
The guests roared. At the other end of the table the deaf judge, his face in agonized contortions as if constipated with laughter, was thrusting his large, humid ear in the face of his guffawing, selfish neighbor, and, tugging at his sleeve, implored him to repeat the story of M’sieur Pierre, who, meanwhile, was jealously following the fate of his anecdote across the whole length of the table, and was satisfied only when somebody had assuaged the sufferer’s curiosity.
“Your remarkable aphorism that life is a medical secret,” said the custodian of fountains, creating such a spray of fine saliva that a rainbow formed near his mouth, “might very well be applied to the odd thing that happened the other day in my secretary’s family. Can you imagine …”
“Well, my little Cincinnatus, are you afraid?” one of the glittering footmen asked Cincinnatus as he poured him wine; Cincinnatus looked up, it was his waggish brother-in-law. “Afraid, aren’t you? Here, have a drink on the brink.”
“What’s going on here?” M’sieur Pierre coldly said, putting the babbler in his place, and the latter promptly stepped away, and now he was bending over with his bottle at the elbow of the next guest.
“Gentlemen!” exclaimed the host, rising from his chair and holding his glass containing an icy pale-yellow drink at the level of his starched chest. “I propose a toast to …”
“Bitter, bitter, sweeten it with a kiss,” said a recent best man, and the rest of the guests joined in the chanting.
“Let us … a bruderschaft … I implore you—” M’sieur Pierre said to Cincinnatus in a changed voice, his face twisted in supplication, “do not refuse me this, I implore you, this is the way it is done always, always …”
Cincinnatus was fiddling with the curled petal tips of the moist white rose, which he had absently pulled out of the overturned vase.
“… I have the right, finally, to demand,” M’sieur Pierre whispered convulsively, and suddenly, with a gasp of forced laugh, he poured a drop of wine from his glass on top of Cincinnatus’s head, and then sprinkled himself also.
Cries of “Bravo!” were heard from all sides, and neighbor
