October 3

October 4

November 6

November 8

November 9

November 11

November 12

November 13

December 3

December 5

December 8

The year 2000, April 43rd

Marchtober 86th

No Date Whatsoever

I don’t remember the date. There was no month either.

The 1st

Madrid. February Thirtieth

January of the same year

The 25th

Dat 34 te Mon ar

I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man.

They don’t listen to me, they don’t hear me, they don’t see me.

April 43rd 2000. Today is the day of great triumph. There is a king of Spain. He has been found at last. That king is me.

Do we ever get what we really want? Do we ever achieve what our powers have ostensibly equipped us for? No: everything works by contraries.

In this holy Russia of ours everything is infected by a mania for imitation, and everyone apes his superior.

October 3

An extraordinary adventure happened today. I woke up quite late in the morning, and when Mavra brought me my polished boots, I asked her what time it was. Hearing that it was long past ten, I hurried to get dressed. I confess, I would not have gone to the department at all, knowing in advance what a sour face our section chief would make. He has been telling me for a long time: “What is this jumble always in your head, my dear fellow? Sometimes you rush around like a madman, you sometimes mess up a matter so badly that the devil himself couldn’t sort it out, you put a small letter in the title, you don’t include either the date or the number.” The damned heron! He must be envious that I sit in the director’s office and sharpen the pens for his Excellency.

In short, I would not have gone to the department if it weren’t for the hope of seeing the treasurer and perhaps begging this Jew for at least some advance on my salary. There’s another character! For him to ever pay money in advance for a month—my God, the Last Judgment would come sooner. Beg, even if you burst, even if you are in dire need—he won’t give it, the grey devil. And at home, his own cook slaps him on the cheeks. Everyone knows that.

I don’t understand the benefits of serving in the department. Absolutely no resources. In the provincial government, civil and state chambers, it’s a completely different matter: there, you see, someone is huddled in the very corner, writing. His little frock coat is vile, his face is such that you want to spit, but look at the dacha he rents! Don’t even bring him a porcelain gilded cup: “That, he says, is a doctor’s gift”; he wants a pair of trotters, or a carriage, or a beaver coat worth three hundred rubles. He looks so quiet, speaks so delicately: “Lend me your little knife to sharpen a feather,”—and then he fleeces the petitioner so that only a shirt is left on him. It is true, on the other hand, that our service is noble, there is such cleanliness in everything that the provincial government will never see: mahogany tables, and all the chiefs are on the formal “you.” Yes, I confess, if it weren’t for the nobility of the service, I would have left the department long ago.

I put on my old overcoat and took an umbrella because it was pouring rain. There was no one in the streets; only peasant women, covered with the skirts of their dresses, and Russian merchants under umbrellas, and couriers came across my eyes. Of the noble people, only our brother, the official, met me. I saw him at the intersection. As soon as I saw him, I immediately told myself: “Aha! No, my dear fellow, you are not going to the department; you are rushing after the one running ahead, and you are looking at her little legs.” What a beast our brother, the official, is! By God, he won’t yield to any officer: if some woman in a hat passes by, he will certainly try to flirt.

While I was thinking this, I saw a carriage pull up to the shop I was passing. I immediately recognized it: it was the carriage of our director. “But he has no reason to go to a shop,” I thought, “it must be his daughter.” I pressed myself against the wall. The footman opened the door, and she fluttered out of the carriage like a little bird. How she glanced to the right and left, how her eyebrows and eyes flashed… My God! I’m lost, completely lost. And why should she go out in such rainy weather? Now assert that women don’t have a great passion for all these rags. She didn’t recognize me, and I purposely tried to wrap myself up as much as possible, because I was wearing a very stained overcoat and, besides, it was old-fashioned. Now cloaks are worn with long collars, but mine had short ones, one on top of the other; and the cloth was not décatie at all. Her little dog, failing to jump into the shop door, remained on the street. I know this little dog. Its name is Medji.

I hadn’t been there for a minute when suddenly I heard a thin voice: “Hello, Medji!” Well, now! Who is saying that? I looked around and saw two ladies walking under an umbrella: one old, the other young; but they had already passed, and next to me, the sound came again: “Shame on you, Medji!” What the devil! I saw that Medji was sniffing another little dog that was following the ladies. “Aha!” I said to myself, “Am I drunk? Although that rarely happens to me, it seems.” — “No, Fidèle, you are wrong to think so,” I saw Medji pronounce herself, “I was, bow-wow! I was, bow-wow-wow! very sick.”

Oh, you little dog! I admit, I was very surprised to hear her speak like a human. But afterward, when I considered all this carefully, I immediately stopped being surprised. Indeed, many similar examples have already happened in the world. They say that in England a fish swam out that said two words in such a strange language that scholars have been trying to define it for three years and still have not discovered anything. I also read in the newspapers about two cows that came into a shop and asked for a pound of tea for themselves. But, I confess, I was much more surprised when Medji said: “I wrote to you, Fidèle; surely Polkan did not bring my letter!” May I never receive my salary! I have never heard in my life that a dog could write. Only a nobleman can write properly. Of course, some merchants’ clerks and even serfs write sometimes; but their writing is mostly mechanical: no commas, no periods, no style.

This surprised me. I confess that recently I sometimes begin to hear and see things that no one else has ever seen or heard. “I’ll go,” I said to myself, “after this little dog and find out what she is and what she thinks.”

I opened my umbrella and set off after the two ladies. They crossed into Gorokhovaya Street, turned into Meshchanskaya, from there into Stolyarnaya, and finally reached Kokushkin Bridge and stopped in front of a large house. “I know this house,” I said to myself. “It’s Zverkov’s house.” What a machine! What kind of people don’t live in it: how many cooks, how many visitors! And our brethren, the officials—like dogs, sitting on top of each other. I have a friend there, too, who plays the trumpet well. The ladies went up to the fifth floor. “Good,” I thought, “I won’t go now, but I will note the place and will not fail to take advantage of the first opportunity.”