Petersburg by Andrei Bely Page A

towards the little bundle; and they shone, the fake stones of the rings on his swollen fingers with their bitten nails (the nails actually showed dark traces of a brown dye that corresponded to the colour of his hair; an attentive observer could draw the conclusion: the person dyed his hair).
    ‘I mean, one movement (just put your elbow on it), and there might be a … catastrophe …’
    And with especial caution the person moved the small bundle to a chair.
    ‘Well, yes, with both of us there would be …’ the stranger joked unpleasantly.‘We would both be …’
    He was evidently enjoying the confusion of the person whom – let us say for our part – he hated.
    ‘I’m concerned, of course, not for myself, but for …’
    ‘Of course, of course you’re not concerned for yourself, but for …’ the stranger agreed with the person.
    While around them was heard:
    ‘Don’t you call me a pig …’
    ‘But I don’t mean it like that.’
    ‘Yes you do: you’re annoyed for having paid … So what if you paid; you paid that time, I’ll pay today …’
    ‘All right, my friend, I’ll smother you with kisses for this good deed of yours …’
    ‘Don’t be angry about the “pig”: but I’ll eat and eat …’
    ‘All right, go on and eat, eat: it’s more proper that way.’
    ‘Here now, Aleksandr Ivanovich, sir, here now, my dear chap, take this little bundle’ – Lippanchenko looked sideways – ‘to Nikolai Apollonovich, immediately.’
    ‘To Ableukhov?’
    ‘Yes: to him – for safe keeping.’
    ‘But let me look after it: the little bundle can reside at my place …’
    ‘Inconvenient: you may be arrested; whereas there it will be in safe hands.One way or the other, the house of Senator Ableukhov … By the way: have you heard about the old fellow’s latest crucial pronouncement?…’
    Here, leaning over, the fat man began to whisper something into my stranger’s ear:
    ‘Shoo-shoo-shoo …’
    ‘Ableukhov?’
    ‘Shoo …’
    ‘To Ableukhov?…’
    ‘Shoo-shoo-shoo …’
    ‘With Ableukhov?…’
    ‘No, not with the senator, but with the senator’s son: if you’re at his place, then do me a favour and give him along with the little bundle – this little letter: here it is …’
    Straight to the stranger’s face did Lippanchenko’s narrow-browed head lean; in their sockets the gnawing little eyes hid searchingly; his lips quivered imperceptibly and sucked the air.The stranger with the small black moustache listened closely to the fat gentleman’s whispering, attentively trying to make out the contents of the whisper that was being drowned by the voices in the restaurant; the voices in the restaurant covered Lippanchenko’s whisper; something was imperceptibly rustling from the repulsive lips (like the rustle of many hundreds of arthropodal ants’ legs above a dug-up anthill) and it seemed as if that whisper had terrible contents, as if what was being whispered about here was worlds and planetary systems; but one had only to listen closely to the whispering in order to realize that the terrible contents of the whispering were actually humdrum contents:
    ‘Give him the letter …’
    ‘Oh, is Nikolai Apollonovich in special liaison, then?’
    The person screwed up his small eyes and gave a click of his small tongue.
    ‘Why, I thought all liaison with him was through me …’
    ‘Well, you can see that it isn’t …’
    Around them was heard:
    ‘Eat, eat, friend …’
    ‘Get me some beef jelly.’
    ‘In food is truth …’
    ‘What is truth?’ 40
    ‘Truth is tooth …’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘If you know, that’s fine: move up a plate and eat …’
    Lippanchenko’s dark yellow suit reminded the stranger of the dark yellow colour of the wallpaper of his abode on Vasily Island – a colour that was connected with insomnia and white spring nightsand September sombre ones; and, so it must be, that cruel insomnia had suddenly evoked in his memory a certain fateful face with