Petersburg by Andrei Bely Page B

narrow little Mongolian eyes; that face had looked repeatedly at him from a piece of his yellow wallpaper.Examining this place by day, the stranger had only been able to make out a damp spot, over which a woodlouse was crawling.In order to distract himself from memories of the hallucination that had tormented him, my stranger lit a cigarette, to his own surprise, becoming garrulous:
    ‘Listen to the noise …’
    ‘Yes, they’re making a fair old noise.’
    ‘The sound of the noise is an i , but you hear an y …’
    Lippanchenko, torpid, was immersed in some thought.
    ‘In the sound y one hears something stupid and slimy … Or am I mistaken?’
    ‘No, no: not in the slightest,’ not listening, Lippanchenko muttered and for a moment tore himself away from the computations of his thought …
    ‘All words with an y in them are trivial to the point of ugliness: i is not like that; i-i-i – a blue firmament, a thought, a crystal; the sound i-i-i evokes in me the notion of an eagle’s curved beak; while words with y in them are trivial; for example: the word ryba (fish); listen: r-y-y-y-ba , that is, something with cold blood … And again my-y-y-lo (soap): something slimy; glyby (clods) – something formless: tyl (rear) – the place of debauches …’
    My stranger broke off his discourse: Lippanchenko sat before him like a formless glyba : and the dym (smoke) from his cigarette slimily soaped up ( obmylival ) the atmosphere: Lippanchenko sat in a cloud; my stranger looked at him and thought ‘Pah!, what filth, Tartar stuff …’ Before him sat quite simply a kind of Y …
    From the next table someone, hiccuping, exclaimed:
    ‘You big Y , you big Y …’
    ‘I say, Lippanchenko, you’re not a Mongol, are you?’
    ‘Why such a strange question?…’
    ‘Oh, it just occurred to me …’
    ‘Well, but Mongol blood flows in every Russian …’
    Against the next table leaned a fat paunch; and from the next table a paunch rose to greet it …
    ‘To the slaughterer Apofriev!…’
    ‘Regards!’
    ‘To the slaughterer of the city abattoirs … Take a seat …’
    ‘Waiter!…’
    ‘Well, how are things with you?…’
    ‘Waiter: put on “The Negro’s Dream” …’
    And the horns of the machine bellowed to the slaughterer’s health, like a bull under the slaughterer’s knife.
    What Costumier?
    Nikolai Apollonovich’s lodging consisted of the rooms: bedroom, working study, reception room.
    The bedroom: the bedroom was taken up by an enormous bed; it was covered by a red satin spread – with lace covers on the fluffily plumped-up pillows.
    The study was furnished with oak shelves that were tightly packed with books, before which silk lightly slipped on brass rings; a careful hand could at one time completely conceal from the gaze the contents of the shelves, at another reveal rows of black leather bindings that were speckled with the inscription: Kant.
    The study’s furniture was green-upholstered; and there was a handsome bust … of Kant, of course.
    For two years now Nikolai Apollonovich had not risen before noon.For two and a half years before that he had woken up earlier: had woken up at nine o’clock, at half past nine appearing in a tightly buttoned-up uniform jacket, for the family imbibing of coffee.
    Two and a half years before, Nikolai Apollonovich had not paced about the house in a Bokharan robe; a skullcap had not adorned his Oriental drawing-room; two and a half years before, Anna Petrovna, Nikolai Apollonovich’s mother and Apollon Apollonovich’s spouse, had finally abandoned the family hearth, inspired by an Italianartist; and after her flight with the artist Nikolai Apollonovich had appeared on the parquets of the cooling domestic hearth dressed in a Bokharan robe: the daily meetings of father and son over morning coffee were somehow curtailed of themselves.Coffee was served to Nikolai Apollonovich in bed.
    And Apollon Apollonovich was inclined to partake of coffee considerably