On the first occasion I couldn’t object, so great was my hunger was so great, but I couldn’t bear to look at her tearful eyes. And if she’d been a little older or prettier, I wouldn’t have accepted a pork chop with fried potatoes either on that first occasion or later – and having to eat them like a thief. But the girl was youthful, about seventeen or eighteen, quite childish in her appearance, shabbily dressed, almost filthy, the slippers on her feet always full of holes and almost without soles, her face oblong, her nose longish, her mouth too big, her front teeth sparse and stumpy, her gums too prominent when she laughed, her eyes small under black brows.
In truth, her brows were the only part of her whole being that nature had not given her niggardly – her brows and maybe her hair, because it was black, a quite beautiful black and naturally a little curly. But otherwise it was quite pitiful to look at this poor creature either walking or standing: her neck was short and thick, her shoulders broad as if they belonged to a man, her waist too low, her legs too short, her whole body below the average height. So when she stood in her mundane shabbiness or wretchedness by the door, supporting one shoulder against the doorframe with her darned stockings in her torn slippers, holding a plate with another upturned one on top of it, wearing a soiled apron and her hair clustered on her head and with tears in her eyes, looking away as though she and not I should be ashamed, I felt such a deep pity for her that I might have accepted a dead frog or a rat from her and bolted it down, simply because she was what she was. For no other reason than the manner in which she stood at the door. Because if she had said a little earlier those words that she only said when I had started eating the chop and the potatoes, I would certainly not have accepted her gift. But no, she was silent until I’d half finished the plate and said, “The landlady has nothing to do with this; it’s my portion, which she gave to me.”
“But didn’t you have anything to eat,” I cried pushing the plate away.
“Young sir, I can’t eat pork chops anyway,” she replied. “I always give them away to someone else – to the cat or the dog.”
The morsel congealed in my mouth and my tongue reached for my palate. For this wretched girl I was replacing a cat or a neighbourhood dog! I didn’t know where to look. But when I did finally turn to her, I realised that everything she had said was a lie. The only true part was that she had brought me her tastiest morsels, and in their place she was gnawing on a bit of dry bread and sucking on a herring’s tail.
“Why are you lying to me like this?” I asked.
“No, sir, I’m not lying. I can’t eat such greasy stuff; I’m used to the lean,” she explained.
If that was true, then I was still playing the part of the cat or neighbourhood dog who gets what isn’t good enough for humans. But nothing could be done about it; half of the chop and half of the potatoes had gone now, and the rest was going to follow them.
Later with a full stomach as I laid myself out comfortably on the divan, my thoughts turned again to the girl, as she had leaned at first against the doorpost, a plate under her apron. And now she seemed to me, if not as some sort of beauty, at least no longer as ugly – pleasant, at least. And I tried to understand what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is pleasant and what is unpleasant. Of course I didn’t come to any conclusion. It only occurred to me that the landlady had engaged the girl mainly because of her ugliness and wretchedness, because she didn’t consider pretty maids to be suitable objects to have about the house, and above all she was wary of the neat manner of their dress. “These days nobody wants to work once they’ve got themselves some glad rags,” she would assert, and that conviction of hers must have been the reason she only let in ragamuffin girls like that one. I was amazed that even an experienced landlady like her could be so wrong about people, about men and women. Even though it made no difference that Loona might have been, like everyone else, made to be pitied, laughed at, joked about or found fault with, she could still stand by the door like that and see that she could please any man, even be beautiful in his eyes?
For the past couple of days I haven’t been able to write a line – I wasn’t at home. Three evenings ago, I went out following the incident I’ve just related to satisfy my hunger one way or another, and had rotten luck in the literal sense of the word. I only got back at about three or four o’clock this morning, and although the clock will soon strike three again, my head still hurts and I feel giddy. I was supposed to go out again, but for some reason I started rereading what I had written.
In my present state of mind, I’m struck by only one thing: I should have been clearer about my purpose of my writing, for why else would I have deviated so badly from my original intention? I started by describing my own appearance, but as soon as I got to the jaws and teeth, everything was suddenly forgotten, and there followed pages and pages only about food and about who brings me food one way or another. One thing I haven’t mentioned is that Loona’s explanation for bringing me food was of course all a lie and a deception, but not in the way I thought – quite a different one. Nor did the landlady make a mistake in choosing Loona as her servant, and I was wrong about her knowledge of people. But there’s a time and a place for all that.
Now I’ll return to my own appearance, and tell you: perhaps I was right to break off my description last time, which due my hunger. I very much doubt that a person’s outward appearance can be linked with their inner self. If I, for example, have a flat nose, who can definitely conclude from that that I can’t have the same natural qualities that some hook-nosed people have? You can’t. So why should I emphasise my flat nose so much?
It’s a different thing when it’s a question of women and love – quite a different thing. Women think that only straight-nosed and hook-nosed men are noble, so to speak, and that their love is to nobility as a bee is to honey. Simply ridiculous! As if nobility couldn’t be found behind an African wide nose. Several researchers testify that it’s to be found there in much greater numbers than amongst hook-nosed Europeans. And when my acquaintances assure me that I have a real Finnish nose, what I want to know is whether there’s any nobility such a nose? And does that nobility have anything to do with love? But then I ask, what is nobility anyway, and what does it mean to be in love?
So much for flat and hook noses, and therefore I won’t say any more on the subject, except that my broadish nose constitutes, along with my jaws and my shoulders, and especially my feet, a certain artistic whole: they all correspond to each other and are in balance. My gait, in particular, is of that kind: a little broad and longish, a little clumsy and angular. It is for wise heads to decide what to make of this, because they love to make mistakes, so that even wiser ones will have something to rectify. I do have three teeth – two lower molars and one front tooth at the upper right, just next to a canine, that have been filled, but I don’t think that affects my nobility or my knowledge; it only affects love, especially if the filling doesn’t fit, is made of bad material or has fallen out. Anyone who doesn’t know that knows nothing of love, just like those who think it doesn’t matter what shoes you wear.
A shoe is more important in love than a nose or personality, and the shape of the tip decides a person’s fate in temporal and eternal life much more than the flatness or curvature of a person’s nose. I have noticed this. Someone else will notice something else, and that is for them to write about. So I have the perfect right to say that I wear size 43 and 44 shoes alternately, whereas the only right size would be 43 ½, but those, the half-sizes, are not to be found anywhere. That’s why many older people pine for the old Russian times, because they were widely available then. The most suitable are the shoes with a wide toe, as can be inferred from my previous arguments, but I also wear those that are sharp as arrows, if fashion dictates it. So I’m not going to create a principle for myself about the toe of a shoe, just as I have no firm principles about human relationships, but I do think that if shoe toes keep changing their shape more and more often, then people should also change their principles more and more often, or even cast them aside and only follow fashion, which is perhaps the most modern principle and world view. The cobbler and the tailor have to calculate the direction of culture and the level of education.