Vanka the Booby

"Akh, Vanka! You are such an oaf! Why don't you make something of yourself?" shouted Mrs Sinusov in the ear of her only son Ivan, who was more commonly addressed as "ninny", "lout", "oaf", "booby", or "lummox", depending on his parents' mood. To the sensitive reader, mother Sinusov's words may seem harsh, but the Russia of Alexander I was a harsh place, especially for sons of parents with high ambitions for their only son.

Mama Sinusov rang Vanka's ear with a hearty twhack.

"What in the name of Dazhdbog do you think you are doing, lying about all the time, reading those silly books? Where is your pride? You are nearly thirty years old. When are you going to go out and get a nice fat civil service position like all of your school chums? You just wait until your father gets home!"

Throughout his mother's tirade, Ivan Klimovich Sinusov sat staring dumbly into space through rimless spectacles, which now sat slightly askew upon his boney nose. To the casual observer, Ivan might have seemed oblivious to his mother's teaching; stoically enduring the slaps and the sarcasm. But in fact, Vanka had drifted off into another world. His home away from home, so to speak. On this occasion he imagined himself a famous general, like Suvorov or Kutuzov. To be sure, he had no idea how he would become either famous or a general. Oh, yes, his parents had enrolled him at the Military Lyceum, but that ended abruptly after Vanka fell asleep during fencing practice. In the the words of Colonel Harumfov, the school's one-legged director, Ivan's lack of military instincts "bordered on dementia." Not to put too fine a point on it, dear readers, Vanka was a dreamer, not a doer (which made him notoriously bad at drill). This unfortunate bent put young Ivan at odds with the material world and its standards. Still and all, Ivan was not over concerned. He, like so many whose ears have been boxed by their mothers, put his faith in a magical tomorrow and waited patiently for his moment of glory that was surely crouching just behind the next dream.

***

Once upon a time, Vanka's parents thought they could save face and respectability by marrying their son off. They went to the matchmaker Thyokla, who found them one Andrei Andreevich Glubokikh-Karmanov, a local landowner blessed with a surplus of unmarriageable daughters. (Andrei Andreevich's wife Mephistophelina was famous in Russia for having given birth to the country's first known set of octuplets: Do-do, Re-re, Mi-mi, Fa-fa, So-so, La-la, Ti-ti and Yekaterina.) One by one, the maidens were placed in proximity to the Sinusovs' son. Vanka, however, showed no interest. He would sit silent as a stone next to the prospective bride, staring at the portrait of his great grandfather Fyodor Bulatov, the scourge of the Dvina. Try as they might, the octuplets could not get a peep out of Ivan. After a few hours, the girl would eventually get up and leave, usually in tears. Ti-Ti, Andrei Andreevich's favorite, wept so long and mournfully that Mephistophelina challenged Klim to a duel. Catastrophe, or worse, was avoided when Klim offered the family a free samovar and a steel rake imported from Germany. Stung by the experience, the Sinusovs decided that their Vanka wasn't the marrying kind.

Meanwhile, Vanka was content to spend his days chomping on raw turnips with his nose firmly fixed in a thick tome. This vexed his parents no end, for they had great hopes for their only son. Being a turnip-eating bookworm wasn't one of them, however. They had their sights set a bit higher. But, alas, Vanka showed no aptitude for the noble careers open to young men in the Russia of Alexander I. Even so, Masha and Klim Sinusov continued to pray to God to give Vanka a nice, lucrative position in the civil service. Anything above a collegiate assessor would be good. Tainy sovietnik would be heaven itself.

Klim Sinusov did not leave his wife alone to deal with their son. He complemented Masha's ear boxing and shrieking with regular father-to-son-talks. Every Saturday night, Klim would return home from his samovar shop on Glavnaya Street, throw off his great fur coat that he wore even in summer, and shout, "Where's the booby? I have a bone to pick."

Masha would then bring her husband a bottle of Holy Cross vodka, which he consumed to achieve the proper oratorical mood; to find the "magic"words that would inspire his son to once and for all, "make something of himself." After downing several tumblers, Klim felt ready to summon Vanka for a chat, man to man, and mind to mind. Vanka tried to protest, but it did no good. Klim was a man on a mission. His eyes adroop and cheeks aflush, Klim Klimitch stared solemnly at his son. Then, raising a splintery index-finger to Heaven, he would begin:

"Vanka, I am your father...I am sixty-three years old...You are my son...and vice versa!" Klim would repeat these words over and over, each time stressing a different syllable while trilling all the Rs with great ceremony. (Klim had once studied for the priesthood.) After more vodka and more iterations, Klim veered off the rails of reason into a thicket of half-remembered platitudes:

"Great oaks have no children, but behold the fathers of acorns are wise."

The floodgates of Klim's sub-conscious were now wide open, and anything could happen. Once he recited the entire Book of Revelation in 11th century Slavonic while standing on one leg. On another occasion he nearly burned the house down when he mistook Ivan's head for a votive candle. Why, just two weeks earlier, Klim did an interpretive dance of Matthew 8:28 from the point of view of the swine.

During his father's soliloquies, Vanka did what he always did: escape into his daydreams. He imagined himself a general in a great plumed hat, poring over war maps with the tsar in some distant land. Or, he saw himself a great poet, waspish of waist and tongue, winning hearts and skewering nasty noblemen with his rapier wit. "I might even fight a duel. Just like Pushkin." He thought.

It was with these fancies dancing in his head that our young friend drifted off to sleep to dream the dreams of a dreamer who can dream only of dreams and having dreamt them.

***

Vanka awoke to an eerie stillness. He rose from his bed and went to the window. The pre-dawn sky was an odd, pastel green. Out of the corner of his mind he spied a blackbird perched in a birch, pining for a breeze. The strains of an ancient Slavic air wafted up from the steppe. Ivan sang it to himself softly. Suddenly he was astride a fiery Russian steed, on the banks of the Don, by the stream Nepriadva. Next to him in full battle regalia was great Prince Dmitri, his eyes fixed on the horizon.

Gonfalons and pennons flutter in the pre-dawn September light. A flock of cranes surges upward from the river and hails the sun, yet unseen. Sturdy Russian warhorses, manes flowing, graze peacefully...soldiers wait.

It is 1380. Prince Dmitri sits at the head of his mighty host, just as "legless" Bayan, the Holy Fool, had prophesied thirty years before. In the chill, half-light of morning, Dmitri shares a joke with his chieftains. The ripple of quiet laughter drifts out across the murmuring Don and mingles with a distant, dusty rumbling.

"Mamai!"

Prince Dmitri leans forward in his saddle and squints dawnward. The Russian horses, their nostrils caked with the acrid scent of Tartars, toss their manes, snort and paw the black earth. The morning sun opens bright its piercing eye to the jingle-jangle of brass and the rainless thunder of one hundred thousand hooves. The ground shakes more insistently now, chasing a welter of steppe birds from their earthly nests. The yeoman Russian army crosses itself as one man. Mamai has come with his hordes. Prince Dmitri lifts his lance and sounds the battle cry...

"Wake up, you dummy!" a whack to the ear jolts Vanka from his reverie. "Breakfast."

"Yes, Mamai, er, I mean, Mama."

At the breakfast table, Papa Sinusov did not acknowledge his son's presence. He was busy shovelling kasha into his sunken and sallow face. The heavy drinking of the previous night had rendered Klim mute, and the only known resurrectant was kasha, kasha, and more kasha.

Vanka began eating his own kasha, but before he could swallow his first spoonful, Mama was into her litany.

"Sit up straight, and don't be so sloppy! You've got more kasha on your shirt than in your big mouth! You'd think with a gob that big you'd be able to hit it with a spoonful of food once in a while. Why has God punished us so? It wouldn't be so bad if he were a complete idiot. If he were a complete idiot, he could be a holy fool. People would rub his head for luck and give him a few kopecks. But he's neither fish nor fowl and will never amount to a cockroach's sneeze.

At that instant a cockroach eeked out from under Klim's bowl and scooted off into a crack.

Ivan, as usual, said nothing.

Mama Sinusov now turned to address her husband, whose purplish nose was deep into his breakfast bowl, licking up the last bits of kasha.

"You know, Klimchik," she began, "Pelageia tells me that some of Vanka's smarter pals are doing pretty well for themselves. She says that Alex Balbesov, the scribbler, has been made a chamberlain. All I can say is, it sure pays to have a beautiful wife, if you know what I mean." Mrs. Sinusov punctuated this last remark with a disapproving glance at Ivan.

"And Pelageia says," she continued, "that Dmitri Trubetskoi has entered the hussars, and has mustachios that would make the tsar weep with envy. Just the thing to set off his gold tooth. Oh, how dashing he must look in that handsome uniform with all that important looking braid, those too divine boots with their cute little spurs and that oh-so-manly saber.

Swept away by her own fancy, Mrs. Sinusov broke into a mazurka with her imaginary hussar and let loose a tiny girlish giggle. This startled her, and it was a full five minutes before she could collect herself and go back to being Masha Sinusov, loving wife and doting mother. Waving her spoon in the air, she declared:

"EVERYBODY KNOWS VANKA CAN'T EVEN GROW MUSTACHIOS!"

It should be noted that once Mama Sinusov took the bit between her teeth, she spoke in boldface, like so many mothers of that era.

Ivan cringed inwardly and covered his upper lip with a napkin. It was true. Even his eyebrows were pitifully thin, but there was nothing he could do about it. It was just bad luck. Once he tried to glue cat hair to his lip but this just caused him to sneeze uncontrollably. By the end of the day his catty lip hair was gone with the wind.

"But that isn't the worst of it, " his mother galloped on.

"You probably won't believe this, Klimchik, but Pelegeia swears it is absolutely true. She heard it from a Cossack with one ear who heard it from a teacher of Greek who read it in The Bee. Do you remember Vanka's nit-wit friend, Nicky Gogol? The one with the runny nose and dirty fingernails who used to strangle cats behind the cathedral? Well, he has landed a job at the UNIVERSITY!"

Papa Klim, who up to now had been listening indifferently to his wife's remarks choked at the mention of the last item, in mid gulp, which caused a sticky goo to explode onto Vanka's face. Klim was now completely sober. He shook his head as if trying to recover from a powerful blow, turned to his wife and uttered a long, incredulous "NOOOOOO!"

"Oh, but yes, my dear husband. It is TRUE! The Bee wouldn't print a lie. You can imagine how embarrassed I was when Pelageia asked me what our son was doing these days. Oi, I couldn't tell her the truth, God forbid! I couldn't tell her that a thirty year old man sits in his room all day reading books and munching on turnips like some rodent.

"So what did you tell her?" Asked Klim.

"I told her he is working on plans for a steam engine. I hated to lie, but what can a mother do in such a case? We have to save face somehow. But here's what I can't understand. Why can't a boy who is no bigger a nit-wit than Nicky Gogol, and who has two WONDERFUL Russian parents, MAKE SOMETHING OF HIMSELF? I mean, if a hayseed like Nicky Gogol can be a professor at the University of St. Petersburg, why, our Vanka should be PRIME MINISTER....

At this Vanka rose quietly, bowed politely to his parents, went to his room, and slammed the door.

Mrs. Sinusov was silent for the better part of three seconds. Then she shrugged her shoulders in that quaint Gallic way Russians have, and said,

"Such a touchy boy. Give him some helpful criticism and he gets brain fever."

Klim was less philosophical. "He's an idiot!"

"Now maybe he will finally make something of himself," said his mother.

Later that morning, when Vanka failed to request his usual turnips and raspberry tea, Mama Sinusov was not unduly concerned.

"Still pouting, the lout!", she thought.

Toward three o'clock, Masha placed pile of turnips outside his door as a peace offering. When she came back at five with some borsch and the latest edition of the St. Petersburg Bee, the turnips were still there.

Vanka, it seems, was not in the mood to compromise. He did not acknowledge his mother's calls to open the door or accept the borshch. Out of curiosity, Mama Sinusov peeped through the keyhole to no avail. The room was dark and silent. "Still brooding" she mused, and left the borshch by the door next to the pile of untouched turnips.

Klim and Masha tried not to worry. Ivan was just having a bad day. He would have to come out sooner or later, to apologize when he saw the error of his ways, so why not just take it easy until he is ready? And so it was that Klim and Masha Sinusov settled into their customary post-prandial pastimes. Klim lit his pipe and sat in his favorite chair to read The Daily Tattler. Masha sat at a small table turning over her cards,"For the home...for the heart...what will be...how it will end."

***

Meanwhile, in a more elegant part of Petersburg.

"Ho-ho-ho, Nikolai Vasilyevich! What a story! Hoo-boy! I never laughed so hard in my life," exclaimed the bald man with a pipe, dabbing the tears from his eyes. "How in the world did you ever think of such a thing?" said the man's wife. Nikolai Vasilyevich, who had suffered from catarrh since arriving in the northern capital from Little Russia held an enormous blue handkerchief to his nose and blew, punctuating each honk with a polite, "Pardon!", pronounced in the French manner.

"Oh, Kolya, you are a naughty boy!", tittered the dessicated Princess S., as she tapped N.V. on the wrist with her ivory fan.

"Pardon,""What a marvellous story! A brilliant conceit. My congratulations, said the famous poet, shaking NV.'s free hand.

"As usual, you had us all in stitches. You read masterfully," said the portly publisher.

"I daresay that head cold didn't hurt, eh?" winked the doctor.

Nikolay Vasilyevich accepted all praise with nods and blushes while his dark eyes stole furtive glances at a particular mademoiselle, a vision in black crepe de chine whose prominent poitrine had so distracted N.V. that he kept losing his place and reading the same paragraph twice, which added to the general hilarity. Nobody seemed to notice, or mind.

"Pardon", said N.V.

"Of course, the censors will have their say," said a fat man in a fez. "They always do."

N. V. smiled apologetically.

Suddenly, the demoiselle, her ample decolletage no doubt warmed by N.V.s gaze, left her cavalry officer escort and moved toward the young writer.

"Now I don't know much about literature, " said a wealthy merchant in red pantaloons. "I'll be honest about it. Stories about noses on the run go right over my head. You want my advice Mr. Gogol, give them reality. A good solid plot, lots of action and romance. Plenty of romance. That's my advice."

The young lady, her eyes lowered, moved closer.

"Poitrine," murmured N.V.

"How's that? Asked the merchant.

"Pardon, I meant pardon." Said Gogol.

"Oh."

The decollete bounced in. Beads of perspiration formed on the young author's brow. He felt faint. The decollete furled and unfurled her fan, moving ever closer.

N.V. was overcome with an enormous desire...to sneeze. He pinched his nostrils as hard as he could...to no avail. The harder he squeezed, the stronger the urge. He tried holding his breath. No use. Just then the young woman smiled.

"Oh, no," shrieked Gogol and let out a sneeze so powerful it was heard by a coachman in Tsarskoe Selo.

Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the demoiselle, her cavalry officer escort, the man with the orange mustache, Princess S., the fat man in the fez, the wealthy merchant in the sateen pantaloons, the doctor, the editor, publisher, and famous poet were gone. Vanished. Only the young writer N.V. Gogol remained.

"Pardon."

***

Klim Sinusov leapt from his armchair, sparks spurting from his pipe.

"This is incredible!" He roared.

"What is it, Klimchik?

"Look! Read this!" he said, handing her Vanka's copy of The Contemporary, vol. 3, which he picked up out of curiosity after finishing the Tattler article on women who had turned themselves into men by drinking rusty water.

"Where it's underlined." He said, pointing to a passage Ivan had marked in red.

Masha squinted at the page and read the following:

"Chrez dve minuty nos deistvitel'no vyshel. On byl v mundire, shitom zolotom, s bol'shim stoyachim vorotnikom; na nyom byli zamshevye pantalony; pri boku shpaga. Po shlyape s plyumazhem mozhno bylo zaklyuchit' chto on schitaetsya v range statskogo sovetnika."

"And?" Said Masha, quizzically.

"Come, Masha, follow me!"

Mama Sinusov scurried excitedly after her husband, clutching a dog-eared queen of spades to her chest. Klim knocked on Ivan's door. No answer. He turned the handle and poked his head inside. "Holy Troika!" yelped Klim. "Mama, will you look at this! Just like in the story!

For a good long while Klim and Masha stood gawking in awe at what Klim would forever after call "Our Phenomenon".

Klim snapped to attention and delivered a smart, military salute. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

"The devil take it, Masha, it looks like all that reading finally paid off."

"Yes, he was always such a clever lad, bless his heart."

***

And so it came to pass on an ordinary day, in an ordinary family, in not-so-ordinary tsarist Russia, life had played its hand in a most extraordinary way. For in the very same bed where the dull and loutish Vanka Sinusov had once spent countless hours reading, munching turnips and dreaming so many dreams, there now lay snoring lightly, without a care in the world, a giant nose. Yes, that's right! Now, certainly, a giant nose, per se, is nothing special. Plenty of people have those. A nose is a nose is a nose, after all. Such things have been seen before. In Kiev for instance, a man reported that his wife had turned into a nose overnight. It is true, later they discovered that the woman was not actually the man's wife, but that's another story. The point is that she was a commoner. But this nose was no common one. No, siree. This nose was a proboscis with civil service rank. You could tell by the uniform, dripping with gold braid, the grey suede trousers, the high collar, and the large plumed hat, and the shiny sword.

***

Thus ends the tale of a poor, young man who finally made something of himself in the face of tremendous odds. Well, to be truthful, he was made into something, somehow or other. The thing is, he did it, or it was done to him, and everyone lived happily ever. Well, not quite. Masha drank rusty water from a jar in Klim's shop and became a barge-hauler on the Volga. Klim found solace in the local church where he regularly saw visions and prophesied about sporting events. And every Easter, he would stand outside the cathedral passing out handkerchiefs and telling all within earshot about his only son Ivan, whom God had transformed into a high-ranking civil servant.

As for our hero, Ivan married a beautiful heiress with a notable bosom, for which reason it was said he was nearly appointed Ambassador to France. He might have been too, his French was excellent. But his wife ran off with a regiment of Cossacks at the worst possible moment. As compensation, Ivan was appointed Inspector General, in which post he caused much consternation among local officials across Russia. After retiring to the country, it was rumored that he sold overcoats and speculated in serfs. Others claim that he started a turnip farm. This is probably apocryphal, but nobody knows for sure.

***

I know that my tale contains many flaws. As a work of literature, it falls far short of the mark. For this I beg the reader's indulgence. My education was not the best. I also know that many readers more erudite than myself will find this story unredeemedly absurd. These worthies will say that such stories should not even be printed on scientific grounds alone. It is impossible, they say, citing Newton and Darwin and God knows who else, for a human being to be transformed into an organ of smell, and doubly impossible for said organ to become a high-ranking tsarist official. An Austrian neurotic, they say, can metamorphose into a beetle, but a nose can't turn into anything. It is just a nose. This is sheer nonsense. Anything an Austrian can do, a Russian can do, and better. And what's more...Well, I digress. My apologies. The story is what the story is. No more, no less. Let everyone take from it what he will, and leave the rest for the pedants to pick at. said Nikolai Vasilyevich, who only liked to be called Kolya by his mother.