Sunday, November 10, 2013

I found a nose on the beach.

I found the nose this evening.

Have you read The Nose by Nikolai Gogol? It's one of my favorite stories.

A summary of how it begins:

One morning, a barber and his wife are munching on some breakfast when he finds a nose in his bread roll. He recognizes the nose—it belongs to one of his clients, Collegiate Assessor Kovalev. Neither of them is particularly grossed out by this. Still, the barber's wife gets mad at her husband's carelessness, drunkenness, and general crappiness, and she demands that he take the nose away. After some misadventures in the streets, the barber ends up throwing it away into the river.

That same day, Collegiate Assessor Kovalev wakes up and realizes that his nose is gone. He is embarrassed about having to go outside like this and covers his face with a handkerchief. Suddenly, on the street, he sees a highly decorated civil servant get out of a carriage and go into a mansion, and is shocked to realize—it's his nose ….