II
THE GENTLEMAN WITH CRAPE ON HIS HAT
It was the third of July. The stuffiness and heat were unbearable. For Velchaninov the day turned out to be a most bustling one: all morning he had to walk and drive around, and the future held for him the absolute need to visit that evening a certain necessary gentleman, a businessman and state councillor, at his country house somewhere on the Black River, 1and catch him unexpectedly at home. Sometime after five, Velchaninov finally entered a certain restaurant (rather dubious, but French) on Nevsky Prospect, near the Police Bridge, sat down in his usual corner at his table, and asked for his daily dinner.
He ate a one-rouble dinner daily and paid separately for the wine, considering this a sacrifice sensibly offered up to his disordered circumstances. Surprised that it was possible to eat such trash, he nevertheless finished everything to the last crumb—and each time with such appetite as if he had not eaten for three days. “There’s something morbid about it,” he occasionally muttered to himself, noting his appetite. But this time he sat down at his table in the nastiest state of mind, vexedly flung his hat away somewhere, leaned on his elbow, and fell to thinking. Let his neighbor, having dinner at the next table, make some noise, or a serving boy not understand him from the first word—and he, who knew so well how to be polite and, when necessary, so haughtily imperturbable, would surely raise a row like a cadet, and perhaps make a scandal.
The soup was served, he took the spoon, but suddenly, before dipping it, he dropped the spoon on the table and all but jumped up from his chair. An unexpected thought suddenly dawned on him: at that moment—and God knows by what process—he suddenly understood fully the cause of his anguish, his special, particular anguish, which had already tormented him for several days in a row, the whole time lately, which had fastened on to him God knows how and, God knows why, refused to get unfastened; and now he all at once saw and understood everything like the palm of his hand.
“It’s all that hat!” he murmured as if inspired. “Just simply and solely that cursed round hat with the loathsome funeral crape on it, that’s the cause of it all!”
He began to think—and the further he thought into it, the gloomier he became and the more astonishing “the whole event” became in his eyes.
“But… but what sort of event is it, anyhow?” he tried to protest, not trusting himself. “Is there anything in it that remotely resembles an event?”
The whole thing consisted in this: almost two weeks ago (he really did not remember, but it seemed like two weeks), he had met for the first time, in the street, somewhere at the corner of Podiachesky and Meshchansky Streets, a gentleman with crape on his hat. The gentleman was like everybody else, there was nothing special about him, he had passed by quickly, but he had glanced at Velchaninov somehow much too intently and for some reason had at once greatly attracted his attention. At least his physiognomy had seemed familiar to Velchaninov. He had apparently met it sometime somewhere. “Ah, anyhow, haven’t I met thousands of physiognomies in my life? One can’t remember them all!” Having gone on some twenty paces, he seemed to have forgotten the encounter already, despite his first impression. But the impression nevertheless lingered for the whole day—and a rather original one: in the form of some pointless, peculiar anger. Now, two weeks later, he recalled it all clearly, he also recalled failing completely to understand the source of his anger—to the point of not even once connecting and juxtaposing his nasty state of mind all that evening with the morning’s encounter. But the gentleman hastened to give a reminder of himself, and the next day again ran into Velchaninov on Nevsky Prospect and again looked at him somehow strangely. Velchaninov spat, but, having spat, was at once surprised at his spitting. True, there are physiognomies that instantly provoke a pointless and aimless revulsion. “Yes, I actually met him somewhere,” he muttered pensively, half an hour after the encounter. Then again for the whole evening he was in the nastiest state of mind; he even had some bad dream during the night, and still it did not occur to him that the whole cause of this new and peculiar spleen of his—was just merely the earlier encounter with the mourning gentleman, though that evening he had remembered him more than once. He even had a fleeting fit of anger, that “such trash” dared to get remembered for so long; and he would certainly have considered it humiliating to ascribe all his anxiety to the man, if such a thought had occurred to him. Two days later they met again, in a crowd, getting off some Neva steamer. This third time Velchaninov was ready to swear that the gentleman in the mourning hat recognized him and strained toward him, drawn back and pushed by the crowd; it seemed he even “dared” to reach out his hand to him; perhaps he even cried out and called him by name. This last, however, Velchaninov did not hear clearly, but… “who, however, is this rascal and why doesn’t he approach me, if in fact he recognizes me and would like so much to approach?” he thought spitefully, getting into a cab and going off toward the Smolny monastery. Half an hour later he was arguing loudly with his lawyer, but that evening and night he was again in the vilest and most fantastic anguish. “Is my bile not rising?” he asked himself suspiciously, looking in the mirror.
This was the third encounter. Then for five days in a row he encountered decidedly “no one,” and of the “rascal” there was not a sound. And yet every now and then the gentleman with crape on his hat would be remembered. Velchaninov caught himself at it with some surprise. “Am I pining for him, or what?—Hm!… And it must be that he also has a lot to do in Petersburg—and for whom is this crape of his? He evidently recognized me, but I don’t recognize him. And why do these people wear crape? It somehow doesn’t become them… I suppose if I look at him more closely, I’ll recognize him…”
And something was as if beginning to stir in his memories, like some familiar but for some reason suddenly forgotten word, which you try as hard as you can to remember; you know it perfectly—and you know that you know it; you know precisely what it means, you circle around it; but the word simply refuses to be remembered, no matter how you struggle over it!
“It was… It was long ago… and it was somewhere… There was… there was …—well, devil take it all, whatever there was or wasn’t!…” he suddenly cried out spitefully. “And is it worth befouling and humiliating myself over this rascal!…”
He got terribly angry; but in the evening, when he suddenly recalled that he had gotten angry that day, and “terribly” so—it felt extremely unpleasant to him; as if someone had caught him at something. He was embarrassed and surprised:
“It means, then, that there are reasons for my getting so angry… out of the blue… just from remembering…” He did not finish his thought.
And the next day he got still angrier, but this time it seemed to him that there was a cause and that he was perfectly right; it was “an unheard-of impertinence”: the thing was that a fourth encounter had taken place. The gentleman with the crape had appeared again, as if from under the ground. Velchaninov had only just caught in the street that very state councillor and necessary gentleman whom he was now trying to catch by coming upon him by chance at his country house, because this official, barely acquainted with Velchaninov, but needed for his case, refused to be caught, then as now, and was hiding as well as he could, not wishing for his part to meet with Velchaninov; rejoicing that he had finally run into him, Velchaninov walked beside him, hurrying, peeking into his eyes, and trying as well as he could to guide the gray-haired old fox toward a certain theme, toward a certain conversation in which he might divulge and let drop one much-sought and long-awaited little phrase; but the gray-haired old fox also kept his own counsel, laughed it off, and said nothing—and then, precisely at this extremely tricky moment, Velchaninov’s eye suddenly picked out, across the street, the gentleman with crape on his hat. He was standing there and gazing intently at them both; he was watching them—that was obvious—and even seemed to be chuckling.