earlier than his son.
The meetings of father and son took place only over dinner; and even then, only for a short time; meanwhile in the mornings a robe began to appear on Nikolai Apollonovich; Tartar slippers, trimmed with fur, were acquired; while on his head a skullcap appeared.
And the brilliant young man was transformed into an Oriental.
Nikolai Apollonovich had just received a letter; a letter written in unfamiliar handwriting: some kind of wretched doggerel with an amorous-revolutionary tinge and the striking signature: ‘A Fiery Soul’.Wishing for the sake of precision to acquaint himself with the contents of the doggerel, Nikolai Apollonovich began helplessly to rush about the room, hunting for his spectacles, rummaging among books, quills, pens and other knick-knacks and muttering to himself:
‘A-a … But where are my spectacles?…
‘The devil take it …
‘Have you lost them?
‘Tell me, please.
‘Eh?…’
Like Apollon Apollonovich, Nikolai Apollonovich talked to himself.
His movements were impetuous, like the movements of his eminent papa; like Apollon Apollonovich, he was distinguished by an unprepossessing stature, a ceaselessly smiling face with an anxious gaze: but when he immersed himself in the serious contemplation of anything at all this gaze slowly turned to stone: drily, sharply and coldly protruded the lines of his completely white countenance, like one painted on an icon, striking the observer with an especial kind of aristocratic nobility: the nobility in his face was manifested in a notable manner by his forehead – chiselled, with small, swollen veins: the rapid pulsation of these veins clearly marked on his forehead a premature sclerosis.
The bluish veins coincided with the blueness around his enormous eyes, which looked as though they had been pencilled in some dark cornflower colour (only in moments of agitation did his eyes become black from the dilation of the pupils).
Nikolai Apollonovich was arrayed before us in a Tartar skullcap; but had he taken it off – there would have appeared a cap of white flaxen hair, softening this cold, almost stern exterior with an imprinted stubbornness; it was rare to encounter hair of such a colour in a grown man; this hair colour, unusual for adults, is frequently encountered in peasant infants – especially in Belorussia.
Carelessly abandoning the letter, Nikolai Apollonovich sat down before an open book; and the thing he had been reading a day earlier arose before him (some kind of treatise).Both chapter and page came back to him: he recalled even the lightly traced zigzag of a rounded fingernail; the convoluted passages of thoughts and his own notations – in pencil in the margins; now his face grew enlivened, remaining both stern and clear: it was animated by thought.
Here, in his room, Nikolai Apollonovich truly grew into a self-appointed centre – into a series of logical premisses that predetermined thought, soul and this very desk: here he was the sole centre of the universe, both conceivable and inconceivable, cyclically elapsing in all zones of time.
This centre made deductions.
But scarcely had Nikolai Apollonovich succeeded this day in putting away from him the trivia of day-to-day existence and the abyss of all kinds of obscurity, called world and life, and scarcely had Nikolai Apollonovich succeeded in going into his study than obscurity again burst into Nikolai Apollonovich’s world; and in this obscurity consciousness of self got shamefully stuck: thus does the untrammelled fly, running along the rim of a plate on its six legs, suddenly get inextricably stuck leg and wing in a sticky sediment of honey.
Nikolai Apollonovich tore himself away from the book: someone was knocking at his door:
‘Well …?
‘What is it?’
From the other side of the door a hollow and deferential voice was heard.
‘There, sir …
‘They’re asking for you, sir …’
Concentrating himself in thought, Nikolai Apollonovich was
The meetings of father and son took place only over dinner; and even then, only for a short time; meanwhile in the mornings a robe began to appear on Nikolai Apollonovich; Tartar slippers, trimmed with fur, were acquired; while on his head a skullcap appeared.
And the brilliant young man was transformed into an Oriental.
Nikolai Apollonovich had just received a letter; a letter written in unfamiliar handwriting: some kind of wretched doggerel with an amorous-revolutionary tinge and the striking signature: ‘A Fiery Soul’.Wishing for the sake of precision to acquaint himself with the contents of the doggerel, Nikolai Apollonovich began helplessly to rush about the room, hunting for his spectacles, rummaging among books, quills, pens and other knick-knacks and muttering to himself:
‘A-a … But where are my spectacles?…
‘The devil take it …
‘Have you lost them?
‘Tell me, please.
‘Eh?…’
Like Apollon Apollonovich, Nikolai Apollonovich talked to himself.
His movements were impetuous, like the movements of his eminent papa; like Apollon Apollonovich, he was distinguished by an unprepossessing stature, a ceaselessly smiling face with an anxious gaze: but when he immersed himself in the serious contemplation of anything at all this gaze slowly turned to stone: drily, sharply and coldly protruded the lines of his completely white countenance, like one painted on an icon, striking the observer with an especial kind of aristocratic nobility: the nobility in his face was manifested in a notable manner by his forehead – chiselled, with small, swollen veins: the rapid pulsation of these veins clearly marked on his forehead a premature sclerosis.
The bluish veins coincided with the blueness around his enormous eyes, which looked as though they had been pencilled in some dark cornflower colour (only in moments of agitation did his eyes become black from the dilation of the pupils).
Nikolai Apollonovich was arrayed before us in a Tartar skullcap; but had he taken it off – there would have appeared a cap of white flaxen hair, softening this cold, almost stern exterior with an imprinted stubbornness; it was rare to encounter hair of such a colour in a grown man; this hair colour, unusual for adults, is frequently encountered in peasant infants – especially in Belorussia.
Carelessly abandoning the letter, Nikolai Apollonovich sat down before an open book; and the thing he had been reading a day earlier arose before him (some kind of treatise).Both chapter and page came back to him: he recalled even the lightly traced zigzag of a rounded fingernail; the convoluted passages of thoughts and his own notations – in pencil in the margins; now his face grew enlivened, remaining both stern and clear: it was animated by thought.
Here, in his room, Nikolai Apollonovich truly grew into a self-appointed centre – into a series of logical premisses that predetermined thought, soul and this very desk: here he was the sole centre of the universe, both conceivable and inconceivable, cyclically elapsing in all zones of time.
This centre made deductions.
But scarcely had Nikolai Apollonovich succeeded this day in putting away from him the trivia of day-to-day existence and the abyss of all kinds of obscurity, called world and life, and scarcely had Nikolai Apollonovich succeeded in going into his study than obscurity again burst into Nikolai Apollonovich’s world; and in this obscurity consciousness of self got shamefully stuck: thus does the untrammelled fly, running along the rim of a plate on its six legs, suddenly get inextricably stuck leg and wing in a sticky sediment of honey.
Nikolai Apollonovich tore himself away from the book: someone was knocking at his door:
‘Well …?
‘What is it?’
From the other side of the door a hollow and deferential voice was heard.
‘There, sir …
‘They’re asking for you, sir …’
Concentrating himself in thought, Nikolai Apollonovich was
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