Crocodrile

Dostoevsky Fyodor

Description

The civil servant Ivan Matveich and his wife Yelena Ivanovna are spectators of an exhibition - in a shopping arcade - of a crocodile owned by a German, when Ivan is suddenly swallowed alive by the animal. Unsuccessful in his attempts to be freed from his prison, due to the German's concern for his crocodile and excessive desire for compensation, the civil servant gradually comes to appreciate his new environment, while his wife begins to enjoy her new-found freedom.Inspired by Gogol's surreal tales, Dostoevsky's hilarious story has been interpreted by some as a vitriolic piece of social criticism and a veiled attack on the revolutionary philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

Informations

• Publié par: Alma Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780714545806
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Crocodile
b y
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by
Guy Daniels


alma classics an imprint of alma books ltd
3 Castle Yard
Richmond
Surrey TW10 6TF
United Kingdom
www.almaclassics.com
First published in Russian in 1865
This translation first published, together with other stories, in the US in the volume Russian Comic Fiction by New American Library in 1970, and later reprinted by Schocken Books in 1986
First published by Alma Classics in 2011
This new paperback edition first published by Alma Classics in 2016
Translation © Guy Daniels, 1970
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
isbn : 978-1-84749-681-2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.



C ontents
The Crocodile
N otes
B iographical Note



The Crocodile
A Passage in the Passage


The true story of how a gentleman of a certain age and a certain appearance was swallowed alive – every bit of him – by the crocodile of the Passage, and what came of it.
Ohé, Lambert! Où est Lambert?
As-tu vu Lambert? *


1
A t 12.30 p.m. on 13th January of this present year of 1865, Yelena Ivanovna, the wife of Ivan Matveich, my cultured friend, colleague and more or less distant relative, expressed a desire to go and see the crocodile being exhibited for a fee in the Passage. * Since Ivan Matveich already had in his pocket a ticket for a trip abroad (not so much for reasons of health as out of scholarly curiosity) and was therefore officially on leave and completely free that morning, he did not oppose his wife’s overwhelming desire but, on the contrary, was stirred to a high pitch of curiosity himself.
“A splendid idea!” he said with great satisfaction. “Let’s examine the crocodile! Since I am about to leave for Europe, it would not be a bad idea to get acquainted with the indigenous inhabitants right here and now.” And with these words, he took his wife by the arm and set off with her for the Passage. As was my habit, in my role as friend of the family, I went along with them.
Never before had I seen Ivan Matveich in more pleasant spirits than he was on that memorable morning. Truly, our beginnings never know our ends. The moment we entered the Passage we went into raptures over the magnificence of the building. And when we came to the shop where the monster lately brought to the capital was being exhibited, Ivan Matveich himself, in an unprecedented gesture, offered to pay my admission fee of a quarter-rouble. As we entered the small room we noticed that in addition to the crocodile there were some parrots of the foreign breed called cockatoo, plus a group of monkeys in a separate, recessed enclosure. Just inside the entrance, along the left wall, was a large tin tank that looked something like a bathtub. It was covered with a heavy iron grating, and had a few inches of water in the bottom. In this shallow pool was an immense crocodile – lying there like a log, perfectly motionless, and apparently deprived of all his faculties by our damp climate, so inhospitable to foreigners.
This monster at first aroused no particular curiosity in any of us. “So that’s a crocodile!” drawled Yelena Ivanovna in a disappointed tone of voice. “And there I was thinking it would be… you know, something different.”
Most likely, she thought it would be studded with diamonds.
The shop proprietor and crocodile-owner, a German, came out and looked at us with an air of great pride.
“He’s right,” Ivan Matveich whispered to me, “because he knows that he’s the only person in all Russia who is now exhibiting a crocodile.”
This totally stupid remark I also attribute to the singularly good spirits possessing Ivan Matveich, whose usual mood was a grudging one.
“Your crocodile looks to me as though he isn’t alive,” Yelena Ivanovna ventured, piqued by the proprietor’s stolidity. And she gave him a gracious smile so as to make that boorish fellow unbend a little – a manoeuvre quite typical of women.
“Oh, yes he is, madam,” he answered in broken Russian. And he at once raised the grating above the tank and began to prod the crocodile’s head with a stick.
At this the wily monster, in order to show some signs of life, wiggled its paws and its tail a little, then raised its snout and emitted something like a prolonged snort.
“Now, now! Don’t you get angry, Karlchen!” the German cooed, his vanity gratified.
“How horrid that crocodile is! He gave me a regular fright!” Yelena Ivanovna babbled even more coquettishly. “Now I’ll have dreams about him.”
“He won’t bite you in your dreams, madam,” the German retorted gallantly, and laughed at his own witticism before anyone else did. But none of us responded.
“Come on, Semyon Semyonych,” Yelena Ivanovna continued to me, disregarding the others. “Let’s look at the monkeys instead. I’m frightfully fond of monkeys – they’re such darlings! And the crocodile is horrible.”
“Oh, don’t be afraid, my dear,” Ivan Matveich called as we moved away, charmingly making a show of his manly courage. “This somnolent citizen of the realms of the Pharaohs won’t do us any harm.” And he remained by the tank. Not content with that, he took off one of his gloves and began to tickle the crocodile’s nose with it, hoping (as he admitted later) to make him snort again. Meantime, Yelena Ivanovna being the lady of the party, the proprietor followed her to the monkey cage.
And so everything was going along splendidly, and nothing could have been foreseen. Yelena Ivanovna was so amused by the monkeys that she became quite frolicsome and seemed completely taken up with them. She squealed with delight, constantly turning to me as though not wanting to pay any attention to the proprietor, and giggled at the resemblances she found between these monkeys and her friends and acquaintances. I was enjoying myself, too, because the resemblance was unquestionable. The German crocodile-owner didn’t know whether to laugh or not, and ended up scowling darkly.
And then suddenly, at that very moment, a terrifying – one might even say preternatural – scream shook the room. At first, not knowing what to make of it, I froze to the spot. But noticing that Yelena Ivanovna was now screaming too, I turned quickly and what did I see? Oh, Heavens! I saw the hapless Ivan Matveich in the terrible jaws of the crocodile – which were gripping him by the waist – already raised horizontally in mid-air, with his feet kicking desperately. Then a moment later he was gone.
But I shall describe this in detail, because throughout it I was standing immobile and was able to observe the entire process that took place before my eyes, with the utmost attention and curiosity. “What,” I thought in that fateful moment, “if all this were happening to me instead of Ivan Matveich? How very unpleasant it would be for me.” But to return to our subject. The crocodile began as follows. Having turned poor Ivan Matveich around in his terrible jaws feet foremost, he first gulped down the legs; next, having partially belched up Ivan Matveich, who was struggling to get out and clutching at the edge of the tank, he again swallowed him up to the waist. Then, having belched once more, he gulped two more times. In this way, Ivan Matveich was visibly disappearing before our very eyes. At last, with a definitive gulp, the crocodile ingested the whole of my cultured friend, this time leaving nothing of him behind. One could follow, on the crocodile’s outsides, the progress of Ivan Matveich, with all of his bodily appurtenances, through the monster’s insides. I was on the point of shouting again, when Fate suddenly and treacherously decided to play one more trick on us. The crocodile strained hard, no doubt feeling crammed with the immensity of the object he had swallowed, and again opened wide his hideous maw: from it, in the form of a last regurgitation, there popped out for one second the head of Ivan Matveich, with a desperate expression on his face – and his glasses fell off his nose to the bottom of the tank. It seemed as if this desperate head had popped out for the sole purpose of taking a last look at all physical objects, and mentally taking leave of all worldly pleasures. But it did not have time to carry out its intention. The crocodile again summoned up all his strength, and gulped: in a flash, the head vanished – this time for ever. This appearance and disappearance of a still-living human head was so horrible, but at the same time – whether due to the rapidity and unexpectedness of the action, or as a result of the glasses falling from the nose – had about it something so comical that I most unexpectedly burst out laughing. But quickly realizing that, as a friend of the family, it was improper of me to laugh at such a moment, I turned at once to Yelena Ivanovna with a sympathetic look and said, “Now our Ivan Matveich is kaput.”
I can’t even begin to describe how violently perturbed Yelena Ivanovna was during this whole process. At the outset, after the first scream, she stood stock-still, as it were, and watched the commotion with seeming indifference, yet with her eyes bulging far out. Then she suddenly let out a heart-rending wail; but I grasped her hands. At that moment the proprietor, who had also gone numb with horror at the first moment, suddenly spread his hands and, looking heavenward, cried out: “Oh, my crocodile! O mein allerliebster Karlchen! Mutter, Mutter, Mutt