When they succeeded in approaching him the man smacked his lips and slowly turned toward them. Yes, it was Karl, but what a Karl—his face blank, his eyes glazed! “I’m just taking a rest,” he said in a dull voice. “I’ll continue in a minute.” Suddenly a taxi with its flag up came rolling slowly over the deserted asphalt. “Stop him,” said Karl. “I want him to take me.” The car drew up. Günther kept tumbling over Karl, trying to help him get up, and Kurt tugged at somebody’s gray-spatted foot. From his seat the driver encouraged all this good-naturedly and then climbed out and also began to help.
The limply floundering body was squeezed through the aperture of the door and the car immediately pulled away. “And we’re nearly there,” said Kurt. The figure standing next to him sighed and Kurt, looking at him, saw that it was Karl—which meant that the taxi had carried off Günther instead. “I’ll give you a hand,” he said guiltily. “Let’s go.” Looking in front of him with empty, childlike eyes, Karl leaned toward him and they both moved off and started to cross to the other side of the heaving asphalt. “Here’s another,” said Kurt.
A fat man without a hat lay all hunched up on the sidewalk, beside a garden fence. “That’s probably Pulvermacher,” muttered Kurt. “You know he’s changed an awful lot in recent years.” “That’s not Pulvermacher,” replied Karl, sitting down on the sidewalk beside him. “Pulvermacher’s bald.” “It doesn’t matter,” said Kurt. “He also has to be taken home.” They tried to raise the man by his shoulders and lost their equilibrium. “Don’t break the fence,” cautioned Karl. “He has to be taken,” repeated Kurt. “Perhaps it’s Pulvermacher’s brother. He was there, too.”
The man was evidently sound asleep. He was wearing a black overcoat with strips of velvet on the lapels. His fat face with its heavy chin and convex eyelids was glossy in the light of the streetlamp. “Let’s wait for a taxi,” said Kurt and followed the example of Karl, who had squatted on the curbing. “This night will come to an end,” he said confidently and added, looking at the sky: “How they revolve.” “Stars,” explained Karl and both sat still, staring upward at the wonderful, pale, nebulous abyss, where the stars flowed in an arc. “Pulvermacher’s also looking,” said Kurt after a silence. “No, he’s sleeping,” objected Karl, glancing at the fat, motionless face. “Sleeping,” agreed Kurt.
A light glided over the asphalt and the same good-natured taxi that had taken Günther away somewhere, softly pulled in alongside the sidewalk. “Another one?” laughed the driver. “They could have gone together.” “But where?” Karl asked Kurt sleepily. “There must be an address of some kind—let’s look in his pockets …” the latter answered vaguely. Swaying and involuntarily nodding, they bent over the motionless man and the fact that his overcoat was unbuttoned facilitated their further explorations. “Velvet waistcoat,” said Kurt. “Poor fellow, poor fellow …” In the very first pocket they found a postcard folded in two, which parted in their hands, and one half with the receiver’s address on it slipped down and vanished without trace.
On the remaining half, however, they found another address that had been written across the card and thickly underlined. On the other side there was just a single level line, cut short at the left; but even if it had been possible to place it side by side with the fallen-off and lost half the meaning of this line would hardly have become any clearer. “Bac berepom,” read Kurt mistaking the Russian letters for Latin ones, which was excusable. The address found on the postcard was told to the driver and then they had to thrust the heavy, lifeless body into the car, and again the driver came to their aid. On the door large chess squares—the blazon of Berlin taxis—showed in the light of the streetlamp. Finally the jam-packed motorcar moved off.
Karl fell asleep on the way. His body and the unknown’s body and the body of Kurt, who was sitting on the floor, came into soft, involuntary contact at every turn and subsequently Kurt finished up on the seat and Karl and most of the unknown fellow on the floor. When the car stopped and the driver opened the door he was unable at first to make out how many people were inside. Karl woke up immediately, but the hatless man was as motionless as before. “I’m curious to know what you’ll do with your friend now,” said the driver. “They’re probably waiting for him,” said Kurt. The driver, considering he had done his job and carried enough heavyweights for the night, raised his flag and announced the fare. “I’ll pay,” said Karl. “No, I will,” said Kurt. “I found him first.” This argument convinced Karl. The car was emptied with difficulty, and departed. Three people remained on the sidewalk: one of them lying with his head resting against a stone step.
Swaying and sighing, Kurt and Karl moved to the middle of the street and then, addressing themselves to the sole lighted window in the house, shouted hoarsely, and immediately, with unexpected responsiveness, the light-slashed blind trembled and was pulled up. A young woman looked out of the window. Not knowing how to begin, Kurt smirked, then, pulling himself together, said boldly and loudly: “Miss, we’ve brought Pulvermacher.” The woman gave no answer and the blind descended with a rattle. One could see, however, that she stayed by the window. “We found him in the street,” said Karl uncertainly, addressing the window. The blind went up again. “A velvet waistcoat,” Kurt considered it necessary to explain. The window emptied, but a moment later the darkness behind the front door disintegrated and through the glass appeared an illuminated staircase, marble as far as the first landing, and this newborn staircase had not had time to congeal completely before swift feminine legs appeared on the stairs. A key grated in the lock and the door opened. On the sidewalk with his back to the steps lay a stout man in black.
Meanwhile the staircase continued to spawn people.… A gentleman appeared wearing bedroom slippers, black trousers and a collarless starched shirt, and behind him came a pale, stocky maid with scuffers on her bare feet. Everybody bent over Luzhin, and the guiltily grinning, completely drunk strangers kept explaining something, while one of them insistently proffered half a postcard, like a visiting card. The five of them carried Luzhin up the stairs and his fiancée, supporting the heavy, precious head, let out a cry when the light over the staircase suddenly went out.
In the darkness everything swung, there was a knocking and a shuffling and a puffing, someone took a step backwards and invoked God’s name in German, and when the light came on again one of the strangers was sitting on a stair and the other was being crushed by Luzhin’s body, while higher up, on the landing, stood Mother in a gaudily embroidered robe, surveying with bright prominent eyes the lifeless body that her husband, groaning and muttering, was supporting, and the large awful head that lay on her daughter’s shoulder. They carried Luzhin into the drawing room.
The young strangers clicked their heels, trying to introduce themselves to someone, and shied away from the little tables laden with porcelain. They were seen at once in all the rooms. No doubt they wanted to leave but were unable to make it to the front hall. They were found on all the divans, in the bathroom and on the trunk in the hallway, and there was no way of getting rid of them. Their number was unclear—a fluctuating, blurred number. But after a while they disappeared, and the maid said that she had let two of them out and that the rest must still be sprawling around somewhere, and that drunkenness ruins a man, and that her sister’s fiancé also drank.
“Congratulations, he’s pickled,” said the mistress of the house, looking at Luzhin, who was lying like a corpse, half-undressed and covered with a laprobe, on a couch in the drawing room. “Congratulations.” And strange thing: the fact that Luzhin was drunk pleased her, evoked a warm sentiment with regard to Luzhin. In such revelry she detected something human and natural, and even a certain daring, a breadth of spirit.
This was a situation in which people she knew found themselves, good people, merry people. (And why not, she reasoned, these troubled times knock one off balance so no wonder our Russian lads turn to drink, the green dragon and comforter, from time to time.…) But when it turned out there was no smell of vodka or wine coming from Luzhin, and he was sleeping queerly, not at all like a drunken man, she was disappointed and chided herself for being able to presuppose a single natural inclination in Luzhin. While the doctor, who came at dawn, was examining him, a change occurred in Luzhin’s face, his eyelids lifted and dim eyes looked out from beneath them.
And only then did his fiancée come out of that numbness of the soul that had possessed her ever since she saw the body lying by the front steps. It is true she had been expecting something terrible, but this precise horror had been beyond her imagination. Last night when Luzhin had not visited them as usual she
