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Alexei Tolstoy. Kaliostro
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"Тмбо Убхякгнмк"
Russian translation by Olga Shartse
Raduga Publishers, Moscow, 1991
Origin: http://home.freeuk.net/russica2/
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A Soviet writer, Alexei Tolstoy (1883-1945) was an aristocrat by birth
- he inherited the title of count-and a distant relative of Lev Tolstoy. He
studied engineering at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute. It was
his admiration for symbolist poetry that inspired him to write. His early
stories, such as those of the collection Eccentrics (1910), depict the decay
of the life of the provincial gentry. At first opposing the Revolution,
Alexei Tolstoy emigrated in 1919, going to Paris and then to Berlin. In 1923
he returned to the Soviet Union where he was hailed as a great writer. His
books were tremendously popular: with Sholokhov he was probably the most
widely read novelist of the late 1930s and the early 1940s. Tolstoy's
masterpiece is his trilogy, Ordeal (completed in 1941) which attempts to
give a broad picture of the historical events of the Revolution and Civil
War, and their effect on a group of intellectuals, who at first oppose the
Reds, but gradually come to understand and accept the "people's" cause. The
unfinished Peter the Great (1929-45) also has claims to be regarded as a
masterpiece. Though Peter is the central figure, the author gives a vivid
portrayal of Russia at the time of reforms. Tolstoy was to try his hand at
sci-fi: the fantastic romance, Aelita (1924), was followed by Engineer
Garin's Death Ray (1925-26); Tolstoy also wrote two plays about Ivan the
Terrible in which Ivan's cruelty is minimized as incidental to his struggle
to unite and strengthen the Russian land.
In Smolensk Uyezd, on the tall bank of the river, in the middle of a
hilly plain, covered with stripes of wheat fields and small birch woods,
sprawled an estate called White Springs, the ancient family seat of the
Princes Tulupov. The original wooden house, standing in a dip of the land,
had been boarded up and abandoned. The new mansion with columns in the Greek
style faced the river and the fields beyond. At the back of the house there
were two wings which stretched into the park, complete with ponds, islands,
and fountains.
Besides, in different corners of the park one could come upon a stone
woman with an arrow, or an urn with this inscription on the socle: "Sit here
a while and ponder how fleet is time", or else some sad ruins, now tangled
in creepers. The house and the park had been completed some five years
earlier when the mistress of White Springs, Princess Praskovia Tulupova,
widow of the Brigadier, suddenly died in her prime. The estate was inherited
by her third cousin Alexei Fedyashev, then serving as an officer in St.
Petersburg.
Alexei sent in his papers and settled down to a quiet existence in the
privacy of White Springs together with his aunt Fedosia Ivanovna Fedyasheva.
He was a quiet, dreamy sort, and still very young-he had just turned
nineteen. He gladly resigned from the military service because the noise and
bustle of the Court receptions, the din of the regimental drinking parties,
the laughter of the beauties at the balls, the smell of powder and the
rustle of their silk skirts gave him a splitting headache and a stitch in
his heart.
With quiet joy he welcomed this privacy amid the fields and woods.
Sometimes he rode out to look at the haymaking or reaping, sometimes he sat
angling on the bank of the river under an old willow, and sometimes he gave
orders for the village girls to dance around the pond in the park and
watched this picturesque scene from a window. On winter evenings he read
avidly, while Fedosia Ivanovna played solitaire, as the wind howled in the
tall garrets, and the little old man who took care of the stoves shuffled
along the creaking floorboards to stoke up the fire here and there.
And that is how they lived, in peace and quiet. But soon Fedosia
Ivanovna began to notice that something was not quite right with Alexis, as
she called her nephew. He was strangely moody, absent-minded and pale. And
once Fedosia Ivanovna ventured to say to him:
"Isn't it time, my dear, for you to take the plunge and marry, because,
after all, if you go on looking at an old mushroom like me all life long,
something might go wrong with you..."
What a hope! He actually stamped his foot in anger. "Stop it, auntie...
I have no wish now or ever to sink into such boring prosiness: going about
in a dressing gown all day long and playing tre-septs with guests... And
then whom would you have me marry, I'd like to know?"
"Prince Shakhmatov has five daughters," replied his aunt. "All
excellent wenches. And then Prince Patrikeyev has fourteen daughters... Then
there are the Svinyins-Sasha, Masha, Dasha..."
"Ah, auntie, auntie dear, all the girls you have named possess
excellent qualities, but just think: supposing my heart is fired with
passion, we marry, and what then? The one whose glove or garter should
excite and thrill me, starts running about with a bunch of keys, poking into
the barn, puttering in the store-rooms, or else ordering chicken noodle soup
for dinner and spooning it up in my presence..."
"But why must it be noodle soup, Alexis? And even if it is noodle soup,
what's wrong with that?"
"No, auntie, only a superhuman passion could break down my
melancholy... But there is no woman capable of this in the world."
Saying this he glanced with languid longing at the wall on which hung a
large, full-length portrait of the beautiful Praskovia Tulupova. Then, with
a sigh, he snugly wrapped himself into his dressing-gown made of silk with a
Chinese pattern, filled his pipe, and settled down in an armchair at the
window, to puff on his pipe and gaze at the thin plumes of smoke curling up.
However, it seems that he did let something slip and his aunt did
understand something, because, glancing at him in wonder, she said:
"If you're a man, then love a woman and not some lunatic dream, for
mercy's sake..."
Alexei said nothing in reply. In the yard, overgrown with curly grass,
where his bored gaze travelled, a reddish calf stood sucking at the ear of
another calf. The yard sloped down to the river, on the bank of which, amid
the burdocks sat several white geese, much like lumps of snow; one of the
geese rose, flapped its wings and sat down again. It was sultry and quiet at
this midday hour. Hazy waves of heat hovered and quivered above the wheat
fields beyond the river. A peasant came riding along the road that emerged
from a small birch wood, then he went down to the ford, the horse stepped
belly-deep into the water and began to drink. Now he turned the horse round,
scattering the frightened geese, galloped up the slope, sticking out his
elbows and dangling his bare feet, called out something to a servant girl
carrying an armful of straw, guffawed, but suddenly noticing the master in
the window, quickly jumped down from the horse and doffed his cap. This was
the Fedyashevs' messenger boy who was sent once a week to fetch the mail.
This time he brought a letter for Fedosia Ivanovna and a batch of books for
the master.
Fedosia Ivanovna went to fetch her glasses. Alexei started glancing
through the books. His attention was caught by an article in the 28th issue
of the Economic Magazine on the causes of hypochondria. "The primary
unfortunate source of hypochondria is a cruel and lasting indulgence in
carnal desires and such passions which maintain the spirit in perpetual
melancholy; a man, troubled by such desires for which he does not see an
outlet, seeks privacy, sinks more and more into the depths of sadness, until
at last the nerves of his stomach and intestines become utterly
exhausted..."
After reading these lines, Alexei closed the book. And so, hypochondria
was in store for him, since there was no outlet for the passion, devouring
his soul.
About half a year ago, when Alexei was finishing the interior
decoration of some of the rooms, he went to the old house to see if there
were any things there worth salvaging. He remembered going there as if it
were yesterday. The sun was setting in colours that presaged hard frost. Dry
snow was already swirling over the cooling fields. An ancient crow, croaking
harshly, took wing from a birch tree, adorned with hoarfrost, and sifted
snow over Alexei who, in a jacket lined with fox fur, was walking along a
path on the river bank which had just been swept clean of snow.
A village girl, squatting beside the ice-hole on the river, was drawing
water; she filled her pails, lifted them on the yoke over her shoulder, and
went home, turning her round, black-browed face at the master every now and
again. In the village, lights were appearing in the snow-crusted little
windows in the cottages here and there between the snowdrifts; gates could
be heard creaking, and voices that sounded clear in the frosty air. A bleak,
peaceful picture.
Alexei mounted the porch steps of the old house, ordered the boards to
be ripped off the front door, and entered the rooms. Everything was covered
with dust, everything terribly old and gone to rack and ruin. The servant
boy who walked ahead of him with a lantern threw the light on some gilding
on the wall, and then on broken bits of furniture dumped into a corner. A
large rat ran across the room. Apparently, everything of any value at all
had been taken out of the house. Alexei was about to turn back, but then,
going past a low-ceilinged empty room, he looked in and saw, hanging
crookedly on the wall, a large, full-length portrait of a young woman. The
servant boy raised the lantern. There was a film of dust on the canvas, but
the colours were fresh, and Alexei discerned a face of wondrous beauty,
smoothily dressed and powdered hair, arched eyebrows, a small and passionate
mouth with the corners curling up, and a cream-coloured gown cut very low on
the high, maidenly bosom. The hand which lay serenely under the breast held
a rose.
Alexei guessed that this was a portrait of the late Princess Praskovia
Pavlovna Tulupova, his third cousin whom he had seen only when he was a
child. He had the portrait moved to the new house at once and hung in the
library.
He saw the portrait there before him all the time. Whether he was
reading a book-he loved reading the description of travels in savage
lands-or making notes in his note-book, while smoking a pipe, or whether in
his slippers sown with glass beads he was simply wandering about the rooms
with the freshly waxed hardwood floors, he would pause for a long look at
the lovely portrait. Little by little he bestowed upon this image all the
most excellent qualities of kindness, wisdom and passion. To himself he
started calling Praskovia Pavlovna the friend who shared his lonely hours
and inspired his dreams.
Once, he had a dream about her in which she was as motionless and
haughty as in the portrait, but the rose in her hand was fresh, he reached
for it but could not take it out of her hand. He awoke with an alarmingly
beating heart and a burning head. After that night he could not look at the
portrait without a thrill of excitement. The woman in it had wholly captured
his imagination.
Fedosia Ivanovna came back with the letter in her hand, her spectacles
on her nose, and, seating herself in an armchair facing Alexei, said:
"Pavel Petrovich writes..."
"What Pavel Petrovich, auntie?"
"Why, bless you, Alexis, my dear, Pavel Petrovich Fedyashev, the
second-major... Well then, he writes about this and that, and here's
something for you: A great to-do has been caused here with us in St.
Petersburg by the well-known Count Fenix, or as he is called-Cagliostro. He
cured Princess's Volkonskaya's sick pearls, increased the ruby in General
Bibikov's ring by eleven carats, and what's more, destroyed the air bubble
inside the stone. He showed Kostich the famous deal in a bowl of punch, and
the very next day Kostich won more than a hundred thousand roubles. For
Golovina, the lady-in-waiting, he materialized the ghost of her dead husband
out of her locket, and the husband actually spoke to her and held her hand,
after which the poor old lady became quite daft... In short, the miracles
are too many to enumerate... The Empress was of a mind to summon him to the
palace, but here a most funny thing happened. Prince Potyomkin fell
violently in love with the wife of this Count Fenix, a Chech lady, I have
not seen her myself, but people say she is a beauty. Potyomkin had a lot of
money, costly carpets and objets d'art passed on to the Count, but when he
saw there was no buying him off with money, he decided to steal the beauty
at his own ball. But that very day the Count, together with his wife,
vanished from St. Petersburg no one knows where, and the police have been
looking for them in vain till this day...'"
Alexei listened to the letter very attentively, and then read it over
himself. A light flush appeared on his cheeks.
"All these miracles are a manifestation of an incomprehensible magnetic
force," he said. "If only I could meet that man... Oh, if I could just meet
him..." He started pacing the floor, uttering these ejaculations: "Oh, if
only... I would find the right words to persuade him... Let him experiment
on me... Let him embody my dream... Let my dream become reality, and let my
life dissolve like smoke. I won't regret it..."
Fedosia Ivanovna looked at her nephew with fright, her faded eyes all
but starting out of her head. It was enough to give anyone a fright. Alexei
had flung himself into an armchair and with a dreamy smile stared through
the window at the two village girls who had come close to the window with a
basket of mushrooms, but he saw neither the mushrooms, nor the girls, not
the field where a tall pillar of dust started whirling along a balk, and
drifted away, swirling and scaring the birds in the roadside birch.
The next morning Alexei woke up with a splitting headache. The sky was
sultry in spite of the early hour. The leaves hung motionlessly on the
trees, everything seemed mesmerized, and the green had a metallic sheen like
the leaves on a tin gravestone wreath. The hens did not cluck; a red cow
that looked bloated lay without moving or chewing on the slope going down to
the river. Even the sparrows were subdued. In the north-east, close to the
ground the colour of the sky was dark, dull and harsh.
The steward came into the dining-room with his report. Alexei left him
with Fedosia Ivanovna and, grimacing from the pain in his temples, went to
the library, opened a book but very soon grew bored with it, so he took up a
pen, but all he could do was practise his signature.
Then he began to contemplate the portrait of Praskovia Pavlovna, but
even the portrait, like everything else around him, seemed cruel and
sinister. Three flies were sitting on the face. Alexei felt that he would
burst into sobs if everything that surrounded him remained so glaringly
clear-cut and harsh much longer. His soul was sick with misery.
Suddenly, a window banged open somewhere in the house, there was the
sound of shattered glass and frightened voices. Alexei went and stood at the
library window. A huge, dense cloud, as dark as the sky at night, was
advancing on the estate, creeping low over the fields. The water in the
river turned dark blue and had a sullen look. The reeds thrashed about and
then lay down in crumpled heaps. A strong wind picked up the goose feathers
on the bank, tore the crow's nest down from the old willow, tousled the
branches, chased the hens down the yard, rocked the wooden fence, picked up
the skirt of a peasant woman and threw it over her head, and then pounced on
the house with all its might, tore into the windows and set up a wail in the
chimneys. A flash of light appeared in the dark cloud and with blinding
zigzags like a tree root ran all the way down to the ground. The sky split
apart, and thunder crashed. The house shook. The spring in the mantelpiece
clock rang sadly in response.
Alexei was standing at the window with the wind tearing at his long
hair and fluttering the skirts of his dressing-gown. His aunt came running
in, she gripped him by the hand, pulled him away from the window and shouted
something, but the second, even more terrible crash of thunder, drowned out
her words. The next minute came the first heavy drops of rain, and then it
came pouring down in a grey curtain, drumming and frothing on the panes of
the closed window. It grew quite dark outside.
"Alexis," said his aunt, still breathing heavily from the scare she had
suffered. "I'm telling you: we have guests."
"Guests? Who are they?"
"I don't rightly know myself. Their carriage broke down, they're
frightened of the storm and are asking us to put them up for the night."
"They're welcome, of course."
"I've already given the orders. They're taking off their wet things
just now. And you might go and dress too."
Alexei hurried out of the library, but in the door he all but collided
with Fimka, the parlour maid, who cannoned in with her hair hanging loose,
her sarafan rain-soaked, and cried in a panic:
"Mistress, mistress dear, these guests, I swear it's the honest
truth-one of them is as black as the devil!"
The rain went on pouring for the rest of the day, and candles had to be
lit earlier than usual. Quiet came after the storm. The windows and doors
into the garden were flung open, and there a gentle, warm rain was falling
in the darkness, pattering softly on the leaves.
Alexei stood in the door wearing a silk kaftan, a waistcoat with a
design of forget-me-nots woven on the cream ground, he carried a sword and
his hair had been curled and powdered. The wet grass on the lawn looked grey
where the light fell on it. The air smelt of damp and flowers.
Alexei stood looking at the lighted windows of the right wing of the
house which was built in a semicircle and ended behind the lime trees.
There, shadows appeared on the lowered white window curtains: now the shadow
of a man in a huge wig, now the graceful shadow of a woman, and now that of
the servant-a tall person wearing a turban.
They were the guests. They had long changed their wet clothes, had had
a rest, and were now evidently dressing for dinner. Alexei watched the
movement of the shadows on the curtains with impatience. The smell of the
rain, the flowers and the burning candles made him dizzy.
And now the long shadow of the servant appeared again, it bowed and
vanished, and measured steps were heard in the house. Alexei stepped back
from the door. In came a tall, perfectly black man, the whites of his eyes
like hard-boiled eggs. He had on a long raspberry-red robe belted with a
scarf, and another scarf was wound round his head. With a deferential, yet
dignified bow he said in broken French:
"My master salutes you, sir, and has asked me to tell you that he
accepts your invitation to have supper with you with exceptional pleasure."
Alexei smiled and, coming close to him, asked: "Tell me please what is
your master's name and title?"
With a sigh the servant dropped his head "I do not know."
"What do you mean-you don't know?" "His name has been concealed from
me."
"Oh, I can see you're a rogue, my good man. But then your own name, at
least, can you tell me?"
"Margadon."
"What are you-an Ethiopian?"
"I was born in Nubia," Margadon replied calmly, looking down on Alexei.
"In the reign of Pharaoh Amenkhosiris I was taken prisoner and sold to my
master."
Alexei backed away from him and frowned.
"What nonsense are you telling me? How old are you then?"
"Over three thousand."
"See if I don't tell your master to have you flogged properly for
this!" cried Alexei, flushing an angry red. "Get out!"
Margadon bowed as deferentially as before and walked out. Alexei
cracked his fingers as he pulled himself together, then he pondered for a
moment and burst out laughing.
At this very moment the servant boy flung open both halves of the
carved door, and into the room came a gentleman with a lady on his arm. Bows
and introductions began.
The gentleman was perhaps in his fifties and solidly built. His
purplish-red face with a hooked nose was cushioned in lace. His huge wig
with locks, of a style worn at the dawn of the century, was carelessly
powdered. His coat of stiff blue silk was embroidered in gold thread with
masks and flowers. On top of this coat he wore a green overcoat lined with
blue foxes. His black stockings were also embroidered with gold thread.
Diamonds sparkled on the buckles of his velvet shoes, and each finger of his
blunt, hairy hands was adorned with two or even three precious rings.
In a duskish deep voice this gentleman greeted his host, and then,
moving a step aside from the lady, presented her.
"Countess-our host. Sir-my wife."
This done, he busied himself with his snuff-box, sniffing, blowing his
nose, and throwing back his head. Alexei expressed his regret to the
Countess on account of the bad weather and his keenest delight which this
unexpected acquaintance with them afforded him. He offered her his arm, and
led the way to the table.
The Countess answered him in monosyllables and seemed tired and
depressed. But even so she was startlingly lovely. Her blond hair was
dressed simply. Her face, a face of a child rather than that of a woman,
seemed transparent, for so soft and clear was the skin; she kept her eyelids
modestly lowered over her blue eyes, and her sweet mouth slightly parted-she
must have been gladly breathing in the freshness pouring in from the garden.
Fedosia Ivanovna met the guests at the table laden with cold and hot
dishes. Her French was poor, the guests did not speak Russian at all, and so
Alexei had to do all the talking. The guests, it appeared, were travelling
from St. Petersburg to Warsaw without changing horses and had already been
on the road for two weeks.
"Do forgive me," said Alexei, "but I did not quite get your name."
"Count Fenix," replied the guest, greedily plunging his strong white
teeth into a chicken leg.
Alexei quickly set down the glass that had started shaking badly in his
hand, and turned whiter than his napkin.
"Then you are the celebrated Cagliostro whose miracles the whole world
is talking about?" asked Alexei.
Count Fenix raised his shaggy greying eyebrows, poured some wine into
his glass and poured it down his throat, without gulping.
"Yes, I'm Cagliostro," he said, complacently smacking his thick lips.
"The whole world is talking about my wonders. But that comes from ignorance.
There are no wonders. Just knowledge of natural elements, that is to say:
fire, water, earth and air; the substances of nature, that is, the solid,
the liquid, the soft, and the volatile; the forces of nature: attraction,
repulsion, motion and tranquillity; the elements of nature of which there
are thirty six, and finally the energy of nature: electric, magnetic, light,
and sensitive. All this is subordinate to three things: knowledge, logic and
will, which are contained right here," at this, he banged himself on the
forehead. He put his napkin down on the table, took a golden toothpick out
of his waistcoat pocket, and went to work at his teeth with a determined
air.
Alexei watched him like a timid little rabbit. Dinner over, he took the
guests to the library where logs were blazing in the fireplace, driving away
the evening damp. Fedosia Ivanovna, who had not understood a word throughout
dinner, stayed behind in the dining-room to see to things.
Cagliostro sat down in a leather armchair and between pinches of snuff
held forth on the beneficial effects of a good digestion. The Countess
seated herself on a small chair near the fireplace and gazed at the fire,
deep in thought. Her hands, folded in her lap, sank in the blue silk of her
gown.
"My friend, a doctor of philosophy who died in Nuremberg in fourteen...
What a cursed memory," muttered Cagliostro, drumming his fingers on his
snuffbox, "my friend, Doctor Bombastus Theophrastus Paracelsus, told me
again and again: chew, chew, chew, - that is the first commandment of the
wise: chew..."
Alexei glanced at him in puzzlement, but the very next moment, as it
often happens in dreams, the inconceivable merged effortlessly with reality,
he felt slightly dizzy for a moment as his mind took it in, but the
dizziness passed at once.
"I, too, have often heard, Your Excellency, that a good digestion
inspires happy thoughts and a poor digestion plunges one into sadness and
even causes hypochondria," said Alexei. "However, there are other reasons
besides..."
"Undoubtedly," said Cagliostro, lowering his eyebrows.
"I make so bold as to speak of myself as an example... It was the
portrait over there that started my nervous distress..."
Cagliostro turned his head, looked the portrait up and down, and again
lowered his eyebrows over his eyes.
And then Alexei told his guests the story of the portrait painted in
France (this he had learnt from his aunt), and how he found it in the old
house, and ended by pouring out all his feelings and hopeless desires which
had brought on his hypochondria.
During the telling of the story he glanced at the Countess now and
again. She was listening attentively. Alexei rose from his armchair and
pointing at the portrait exclaimed:
"Only today I was telling Fedosia Ivanovna that if only I could meet
Count Fenix I would persuade him to embody my dream, to bring the portrait
alive, and after that-even if it cost me my life..."
A look of horror appeared in the Countess's blue eyes when he said
this, she quickly dropped her head and again stared into the fire.
"The materialization of emotional ideas," said Cagliostro, yawning and
covering his mouth with a hand glittering with precious stones, "is one of
the most difficult and dangerous tasks of our science... During the
materialization, fatal defects of the idea that is being materialized are
very often disclosed, and sometimes its utter uselessness too... However, I
should like to ask our host to allow us to retire for an early night."
Alexei did not shut his eyes all night. At daybreak, he put on a robe,
went down to the river and jumped into the water, invisible through the
mist. On the surface it was lukewarm, but deep down it was icy. After the
bathe, he got dressed, had his hair waved, drank some hot milk with honey,
and went down into the garden-his thoughts were excited, and his head was
afire.
The morning was humid and still. Blackbirds, looking worried, were
running about the grass. A golden oriole was whistling as if it were blowing
into a warbler. In the bluish mist hovering over the pool with the fountains
playing at half strength, a dove was sobbing tenderly somewhere in the tall,
spreading trees.
The walks had been washed clean and were still damp, and on one of them
Alexei noticed the prints of a woman's feet. He followed them, and in a
glade where the outlines of a round folly and the huge black poplars beside
it stood out from the bluish mist, he saw the Countess. She was standing on
the steps with drooping arms and listening to the cuckoo calling in the
grove.
When he came closer his heart began to hammer, for tears were pouring
down the young woman's face, and her bare shoulders were jerking. Startled
by the sound of his footsteps, she turned round, gasped and ran, holding up
her full skirt with both hands. However, at the pond she stopped and faced
him. A blush suffused her cheeks, and tears stood in her frightened blue
eyes. She quickly wiped them with a tiny handkerchief and smiled contritely.
"I frightened you, forgive me," said Alexei.
"No, oh no," she replied, tucked the handkerchief into the low neck of
her dress, and curtsied. Alexei kissed her hand politely. "The morning was
so lovely, the cuckoo called so nicely, that I felt sad, and you gave me a
fright." She walked beside Alexei along the shore. "Don't you feel sad when
you see how lovely is God's world? You know, I was thinking about what you
told us last night. You are living in such plenty, unattached. And young...
But why, why is there no happiness?"
She stopped short and looked into his eyes. Alexei answered the first
thing that came into his head-something about the coarseness of life and the
impossibility of happiness. Saying this he gave her a wide smile and the
smile remained on his lips.
... ... ...
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