The Nose

AN extraordinarily strange incident took place in Petersburg on the 25th of March. The barber, Ivan Yakovlevitch, who lives in the Voznesensky Prospect (his surname is lost, and nothing more appears even on his signboard, where a gentleman is depicted with his cheeks covered with soapsuds, together with an inscription “also lets blood”)—the barber Ivan Yakovlevitch woke up rather early and was aware of a smell of hot bread. Raising himself in bed he saw his spouse, a rather portly lady who was very fond of drinking coffee, engaged in taking out of the oven some freshly-baked loaves.

“I won’t have coffee to-day, Praskovya Osipovna,” said Ivan Yakovlevitch; “instead I should like some hot bread with onion.” (The fact is that Ivan Yakovlevitch would have liked both, but he knew that it was utterly impossible to ask for two things at once, for Praskovya Osipovna greatly disliked such caprices.)

“Let the fool have bread, so much the better for me,” thought his spouse to herself; “there will be an extra cup of coffee left,” and she flung one loaf on the table.”

For the sake of propriety Ivan Yakovlevitch put a tail coat over his shirt, and, sitting down to the table, sprinkled with salt and prepared two onions, took a knife in his hand and, making a solemn face, set to work to cut the bread. After dividing the loaf into two halves he looked into the middle of it—and to his amazement saw there something that looked white. Ivan Yakovlevitch scooped at it carefully with his knife and felt it with his finger: “It’s solid,” he said to himself. “Whatever can it be?”

He thrust in his finger and drew it out—it was a nose! ... Ivan Yakovlevitch’s hand dropped with astonishment, he rubbed his eyes and felt it: it actually was a nose, and, what’s more, it looked to him somehow familiar. A look of horror came into Ivan Yakovlevitch’s face. But that horror was nothing to the indignation with which his wife was overcome.

“Where have you cut that nose off, you brute?” she cried wrathfully. “You scoundrel, you drunkard, I’ll go to the police myself to tell of you! You ruffian! Here I have heard from three men that when you are shaving them you pull at their noses till you almost tug them off.”

But Ivan Yakovlevitch was more dead than alive: he perceived that the nose was no other than that of Kovalyov, the collegiate assessor, whom he shaved every Wednesday and every Sunday.

“Stay, Praskovya Osipovna! I’ll wrap it up in a rag and put it in a corner. Let it stay there for a bit; I’ll return it later on.”

“I won’t hear of it! As though I would allow a stray nose to lie about in my room. You dried-up biscuit! To be sure, he can do nothing but sharpen his razors on the strop, but soon he won’t be fit to do his duties at all, the gad-about, the good-for-nothing! As though I were going to answer to the police for you.... Oh, you sloven, you stupid blockhead. Away with it, away with it! Take it where you like! Don’t let me set eyes on it again!”

Ivan Yakovlevitch stood as though utterly crushed. He thought and thought, and did not know what to think. “The devil only knows how it happened,” he said at last, scratching behind his ear. “Did I come home drunk last night or not? I can’t say for certain now. But from all signs and tokens it must be a thing quite unheard of, for bread is a thing that is baked, while a nose is something quite different. I can’t make head or tail of it.” Ivan Yakovlevitch sank into silence. The thought that the police might make a search there for the nose and throw the blame of it on him reduced him to complete prostration. Already the red collar, beautifully embroidered with silver, the sabre, hovered before his eyes, and he trembled all over. At last he got his breeches and his boots, pulled on these wretched objects, and, accompanied by the stern upbraidings of Praskovya Osipovna, wrapped the nose in a rag and went out into the street.

He wanted to thrust it out of sight somewhere, under a gate, or somehow accidentally to drop it and then turn off into a side street, but as ill-luck would have it he kept coming upon some one he knew, who would at once begin by asking: “Where are you going?” or “Whom are you going to shave so early?” so that Ivan Yakovlevitch could never find a good moment. Another time he really did drop it, but a sentry pointed to it with his halberd from a long way off, saying as he did so: “Pick it up, you have dropped something!” and Ivan Yakovlevitch was obliged to pick up the nose and put it in his pocket. He was overcome by despair, especially as the number of people in the street was continually increasing as the shops and stalls began to open.

He made up his mind to go to St. Isaac’s Bridge in the hope of being able to fling it into the Neva.... But I am rather in fault for not having hitherto said anything about Ivan Yakovlevitch, a worthy man in many respects.

Ivan Yakovlevitch, like every self-respecting Russian workman, was a terrible drunkard, and though every day he shaved other people’s chins, his own went for ever unshaven. Ivan Yakovlevitch’s tail coat (he never wore any other shape) was piebald, that is, it was black dappled all over with brown and yellow and grey; the collar was shiny, and instead of three buttons there was only one hanging on a thread. Ivan Yakovlevitch was a great cynic, and when Kovalyov the collegiate assessor said to him while he was being shaved: “Your hands always stink, Ivan Yakovlevitch,” the latter would reply with the question: “What should make them stink?” “I can’t tell, my good man, but they do stink,” the collegiate assessor would say, and, taking a pinch of snuff, Ivan Yakovlevitch lathered him for it on his cheeks and under his nose and behind his ears and under his beard—in fact wherever he chose.

The worthy citizen found himself by now on St. Isaac’s Bridge. First of all he looked about him, then bent over the parapet as though to look under the bridge to see whether there were a great number of fish racing by, and stealthily flung in the rag with the nose. He felt as though with it a heavy weight had rolled off his back. Ivan Yakovlevitch actually grinned. Instead of going to shave the chins of government clerks, he repaired to an establishment bearing the inscription “Tea and refreshments” and asked for a glass of punch, when he suddenly observed at the end of the bridge a police inspector of respectable appearance with full whiskers, with a three-cornered hat and a sword. He turned cold, and meanwhile the inspector beckoned to him and said: “Come this way, my good man.”

Ivan Yakovlevitch, knowing the etiquette, took off his hat some way off and, as he approached, said: “I wish your honour good health.”

“No, no, old fellow, I am not ‘your honour’: tell me what you were about, standing on the bridge?”

“Upon my soul, sir, I was on my way to shave my customers, and I was only looking to see whether the current was running fast.”

“That’s a lie, that’s a lie! You won’t get off with that. Kindly answer!”

“I am ready to shave you, gracious sir, two or even three times a week with no conditions whatever,” answered Ivan Yakovlevitch.

“No, my friend, that is nonsense; I have three barbers to shave me and they think it a great honour, too. But be so kind as to tell me what you were doing there?”

Ivan Yakovlevitch turned pale ... but the incident is completely veiled in obscurity, and absolutely nothing is known of what happened next.