Preziosa was the name of the young lady who now entered the room, like a romance, or a ballade, accompanied by a pomelo of an aunt, and from this moment there was no more peace for the monkey, who had never known before what it is to love. He knew it now. Suddenly all the nonsense was swept out of his head. With resolute step he approached his heart’s elect and desired her to become his wife; he knew a trick or two to show her what sort of a person he was! The young lady said: “You shall come home with us. I must say you are hardly suitable for a husband. If you behave well, you will receive every day a tap on the nose. You are radiant! I’ll allow you that. You will see to it that I do not get bored.” So saying, she rose up so proudly that a roar of laughter came over the monkey, whereupon she boxed his ears.
When they got home, the Jewess sat down, having dismissed her aunt with a gesture, upon an expensive golden-footed sofa, and asked the monkey, who was standing before her in picturesque pose, to tell her who he was, to which this quintessence of monkeyhood answered:
“I once wrote poems on the Zürichberg; these I now submit in print to the object of my devotions. Though your eyes attempt to crush me to the floor, which is impossible, for the sight of you raises me continually up again, formerly indeed I often went into the forest to my lady friends, the pines, looked up at their crests, lay full length on the moss, till I grew weary from my sprightliness, and melancholy from gladness—”
“You lazy thing!” interjected Preziosa.
The family friend, for as such he already ventured to consider himself, continued, and said: “Once I left a dentist’s bill unpaid, believing I would nevertheless succeed in life, and I sat at the feet of women of higher society, who accorded me a quantum of benevolence. Then you might also be informed that in autumn I picked windfall apples, gathered flowers in spring, and for a season lived where a poet named Keller grew up, of whom you will probably not have heard, although you ought to have done—”
“Impudence!” the young lady cried. “It would give me the greatest of pleasure to dismiss you, only to grieve you; still, I’ll be merciful. But if you are ever ungallant again, you will have breathed in my presence for the last time, long for me as you may. Now, proceed.”
He began again, and said: “I never gave much to women, and so they value me. Also in you, miss, I detect an admiration for the simplest loon ever to utter indiscretions to ladies merely to make them angry and afterwards content again. I arrived as ambassador in Constantinople—”
“No lies, Mr. Braggart!”
“—and one day at the railway terminus caught sight of a lady-in-waiting, that is to say, another person saw her, I was sitting next to him in the carriage, he reported to me the observation which I now dish up to you, though only figuratively, for there’s no dish, howbeit I long for a loaded one, because I have developed an appetite in presenting to you a specimen of my powers of rhetoric.”
“Go into the kitchen and serve supper. Meanwhile, I shall read your verses.”
He did as he was told, went into the kitchen, but could not find it. Did he go into it without even having set eyes on it? There must have been a slight slip of the pen.
He went back to Preziosa, who had fallen asleep over his poems, who lay there like a picture in an Oriental fairy tale. One of her hands hung down like a cluster of grapes. He wanted to tell her how he had gone into the kitchen without having found where it was, how gradually, gradually he had grown silent, but an irrefragable impulse had driven him back to the lady he had abandoned. He stood before the sleeper, knelt at the shrine of loveliness, and touched the hand that seemed to him like a Jesukin, too beautiful to hold, with his breath alone.
While he was making his reverences — which one would hardly have expected of him — her eyes opened. She had a lot of questions to ask him, but she only said: “You do not seem to me to be a proper monkey at all. Tell me, are you a royalist?”
“Why should I be that?”
“Because you are so patient, and you spoke of ladies-in-waiting.”
“I only want to be polite.”
“It appears that is just what you are.”
The next day she wanted him to tell her how to find happiness. He gave her the most astonishing answer. “Come, I’ll dictate you a letter,” she said. While he was writing, she glanced over his shoulder to see if he was taking it all faithfully down. Phew! How nimbly he wrote, listening with the most pointed attention to every syllable she spoke. We leave them to their correspondence.
In the birdcage pranced a cockatoo.
Preziosa was thinking of something.
[1925]
Dostoevsky’s “Idiot”
THE contents of Dostoevsky’s Idiot pursue me. Lapdogs interest me greatly. I’m not searching for someone as lively as an Aglaya. Unfortunately, she would, of course, take someone else. Marie remains unforgettable to me. One morning did I not stop and stand affectionately before a jackass? Who will introduce me to a General Epanchin’s wife? Valets have wondered about me already, too. It is still questionable whether or not I write as nicely as the offspring of the house of Myshkin and whether or not I have inherited millions. It would be splendid to be taken into the confidence of a beautiful woman. Why haven’t I yet seen a merchant’s house like that of Rogozhin? Why don’t I suffer from convulsive seizures? The idiot was thin, made only a poor impression. A good lad, at whose feet the demimondaine knelt one evening. I definitely expect something similar. I know two or three Kolyas. Wouldn’t an Ivolgin also have to be seen? I’d be capable of knocking down a vase: to doubt this would be to underrate oneself. To make a speech is as difficult as it is easy; it depends on inspiration. I’ve often encountered people who are never satisfied with themselves. Often enough a person is not well because he tries too hard to be pleased with himself. Thereafter I’d arrive in the Schneider Institute. For the time being, Nastasia would have to be pacified. I’m by no means idiotic, but am receptive to every reasonable thing; I’m sorry I’m not the hero of a novel. I’m not up to playing such a part, I just read a lot sometimes.
[1925]
Translated by Tom Whelan and Carol Gehrig