Who He Is
The little old man of the Fontanka is a stranger whom the Dreamer meets every single day, at the same hour, on the embankment of the Fontanka in St. Petersburg, and with whom he has never spoken. He appears in a single paragraph, at the start of the First Night, among the faces the Dreamer knows by sight and lives on without speaking to them. He has no name and does not speak. What is known of him is what the Dreamer sees: an important, thoughtful face, a man who murmurs to himself and waves his left hand, and who carries in his right hand a long, knotted cane with a gold knob. What he wants or fears, the text does not say; what the Dreamer attributes to him is the friendship he himself feels: the old man would have noticed him, would take a heartfelt interest in him, and would be downcast if one day he failed to appear at his usual hour. It is the most complete portrait in the book of the only companionship the Dreamer had before Nastenka.
Trajectory
On the First Night, the Dreamer spends three days in anguish without understanding why, and the anguish comes precisely from the absence of these faces:
Мне страшно стало оставаться одному, и целых три дня я бродил по городу в глубокой тоске, решительно не понимая, что со мной делается., I became frightened of staying alone, and for three whole days I wandered the city in deep anguish, quite unable to understand what was happening to me.
He explains that in eight years in the city he has barely made an acquaintance, but that he knows all of Petersburg: on the Nevsky, in the garden, on the embankment, he crosses every day, at the same hour, the same people, who do not know him and whose faces he has studied so closely that he rejoices when they are cheerful and grows sad when they cloud over. The little old man is the extreme case, the one with whom, he says, he nearly made friends. The two sometimes almost greet each other, especially when both are in good humor. One day, after two days without seeing each other, they both raised their hands to their hats at the same moment; they realized it in time, lowered their hands and passed each other with sympathy. Soon after, the Dreamer passes the houses, which also greet him, and the little pink house that the painters have ruined:
слышу жалобный крик: «А меня красят в желтую краску!», I hear a plaintive cry: «They are painting me yellow!»
The little old man does not appear again. But that same night, when a gentleman in a tailcoat, drunk, chases the young woman on the embankment, the Dreamer happens to have a knotted cane in his right hand, like the old man's, and with it he crosses in an instant the street he had not dared to cross minutes before.
Themes Embodied
The little old man is the Dreamer's mirror before the book gives him a conversation partner. The two make the same route at the same hour, each alone; the old man murmurs and gestures at no one, like the hero of the speech in the Second Night, who returns home smiling and gesturing, to the point that passersby laugh at him; and the knotted cane the old man carries in his right hand is the one the Dreamer holds when he faces the drunk of the First Night. It is Solitude and isolation as companionship without words: a true bond, with longing and sympathy, that never comes to a greeting.
The old man is also the Dreamer's future, and the book returns him at the end without naming him. On the Morning, after Nastenka's letter, the Dreamer imagines himself fifteen years from now:
я увидел себя таким, как я теперь, ровно через пятнадцать лет, постаревшим, в той же комнате, так же одиноким, с той же Матреной, I saw myself as I am now, exactly fifteen years from now, aged, in the same room, as lonely as I am now, with the same Matryona.
A man grown old and alone, who makes the same walk every day and knows the city without knowing anyone, is what he saw on the Fontanka on the first page. And when he imagines the old man downcast at his absence, he lends him the anguish he himself felt on seeing the familiar faces disappear.
Divergent Readings
In one reading, the bond is entirely imagined. The Dreamer says the old man noticed him and would be downcast at his absence, but all he knows of the old man is the face; the friendship is one more of the romances he creates in his daydreams, and the old man is as much an interlocutor as the houses that speak. In another reading, the bond is reciprocal, and the text offers proof: at the moment of reunion, the two raise their hands to their hats at the same time, and both lower them. The old man too would live on faces known by sight.
The shared gesture weighs in favor of the second reading, and it is what gives the paragraph its grace: the two nearly greet each other and both back off, as if the greeting were already the beginning of a conversation. What the Dreamer achieves with the young woman on the embankment, on the same First Night, is exactly what he fails to achieve with the old man, moving from gesture to word, and he achieves it only because a drunk and a cane decide for him.
Relationships
- The Dreamer: the passerby who meets him every day on the Fontanka, nearly makes friends with him and almost greets him, on the First Night.
- Nastenka: never sees him; it is with her that the Dreamer moves from gesture to word, on the same First Night, with a knotted cane like the old man's in his hand.