The Nose

What is utterly nonsensical happens in the world. Sometimes there is not the slightest resemblance to truth about it: all at once that very nose which had been driving about the place in the form of a civil councillor, and had made such a stir in the town, turned up again as though nothing had happened, in its proper place, that is, precisely between the two cheeks of Major Kovalyov. This took place on the seventh of April. Waking up and casually glancing into the looking-glass, he sees—his nose! puts up his hands, actually his nose! “Aha!” said Kovalyov, and in his joy he almost danced a jig barefoot about his room; but the entrance of Ivan checked him. He ordered the latter to bring him water at once, and as he washed he glanced once more into the looking-glass—the nose! As he wiped himself with the towel he glanced again into the looking-glass—the nose!

“Look, Ivan, I fancy I have a pimple on my nose,” he said, while he thought: “How dreadful if Ivan says ‘No, indeed, sir, there’s no pimple and, indeed, there is no nose either!’ ”

But Ivan said: “There is nothing, there is no pimple: your nose is quite clear!”

“Good, dash it all!” the major said to himself, and he snapped his fingers.

At that moment Ivan Yakovlevitch the barber peeped in at the door, but as timidly as a cat who has just been beaten for stealing the bacon.

“Tell me first: are your hands clean?” Kovalyov shouted to him while he was still some way off.

“Yes.”

“You are lying!”

“Upon my word, they are clean, sir.”

“Well, mind now.”

Kovalyov sat down. Ivan Yakovlevitch covered him up with a towel, and in one instant with the aid of his brushes had smothered the whole of his beard and part of his cheek in cream, like that which is served at merchants’ name-day parties.

“My eye!” Ivan Yakovlevitch said to himself, glancing at the nose and then turning his customer’s head on the other side and looking at it sideways. “There it is, sure enough. What can it mean?” He went on pondering, and for a long while he gazed at the nose. At last, lightly, with a cautiousness which may well be imagined, he raised two fingers to take it by the tip. Such was Ivan Yakovlevitch’s system.

“Now, now, now, mind!” cried Kovalyov. Ivan Yakovlevitch let his hands drop, and was flustered and confused as he had never been confused before. At last he began circumspectly tickling him with the razor under his beard, and, although it was difficult and not at all handy for him to shave without holding on to the olfactory portion of the face, yet he did at last somehow, pressing his rough thumb into his cheek and lower jaw, overcome all difficulties, and finish shaving him.

When it was all over, Kovalyov at once made haste to dress, took a cab, and drove to the confectioner’s shop. Before he was inside the door he shouted: “Waiter, a cup of chocolate!” and at the same instant peeped at himself in the looking-glass. The nose was there. He turned round gaily and, with a satirical air, slightly screwing up his eyes, looked at two military men, one of whom had a nose hardly bigger than a waistcoat button. After that he set off for the office of the department, in which he was urging his claims to a post as vice-governor or, failing that, the post of an executive clerk. After crossing the waiting-room he glanced at the mirror; the nose was there. Then he drove to see another collegiate assessor or major, who was much given to making fun of people, and to whom he often said in reply to various sharp observations: “There you are, I know you, you are as sharp as a pin!” On the way he thought: “If even the major does not split with laughter when he sees me, then it is a sure sign that everything is in its place.” But the sarcastic collegiate assessor said nothing. “Good, good, dash it all!” Kovalyov thought to himself. On the way he met Madame Podtatchin with her daughter; he was profuse in his bows to them and was greeted with exclamations of delight—so there could be nothing amiss with him, he thought. He conversed with them for a long time and, taking out his snuff-box, purposely put a pinch to each nostril while he said to himself: “So much for you, you petticoats, you hens! but I am not going to marry your daughter all the same. Just simply par amour—I daresay!”

And from that time forth Major Kovalyov promenaded about, as though nothing had happened, on the Nevsky Prospect, and at the theatres and everywhere. And the nose, too, as though nothing had happened, sat on his face without even a sign of coming off at the sides. And after this Major Kovalyov was always seen in a good humour, smiling, resolutely pursuing all the pretty ladies, and even on one occasion stopping before a shop in the Gostiny Dvor and buying the ribbon of some order, I cannot say with what object, since he was not himself a cavalier of any order.

So this is the strange event that occurred in the Northern capital of our spacious empire! Only now, on thinking it all over, we perceive that there is a great deal that is improbable in it. Apart from the fact that it certainly is strange for a nose supernaturally to leave its place and to appear in various places in the guise of a civil councillor—how was it that Kovalyov did not grasp that he could not advertise about his nose in a newspaper office? I do not mean to say that I should think it too expensive to advertise: that is nonsense, and I am by no means a mercenary person: but it is unseemly, awkward, not nice! And again: how did the nose come into the loaf, and how about Ivan Yakovlevitch himself? ... no, that I cannot understand, I am absolutely unable to understand it! But what is stranger, what is more uncomprehensible than anything is that authors can choose such subjects. I confess that is quite beyond my grasp, it really is ... No, no! I cannot understand it at all. In the first place, it is absolutely without profit to the fatherland; in the second place ... but in the second place, too, there is no profit. I really do not know what to say of it....

And yet, with all that, though of course one may admit the first point, the second and the third ... may even ... but there, are there not inconsequences everywhere?—and yet, when you think it over, there really is something in it. Whatever any one may say, such things do happen—not often, but they do happen.