Kovalev can't get the nose to stick on his face and a doctor he summons refuses to help… because the doctor is actually the nose in disguise, making its escape. He gives up and goes home, but just then a policeman shows up with the nose.

Kovalev first tries to get the police involved and then tries to put an announcement in the paper, but all he gets for his troubles is a lot of social awkwardness and rudeness.įinally, he decides that this is obviously the work of the mother of a girl he's been flirting with but not actually proposing to. The nose denies being his nose and goes about its day like a total weirdo. Kovalev follows the nose, but when he gets close enough to talk to him (it?), he gets all stressy about speaking to someone so much higher ranking. 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. He is embarrassed about having to go outside like this and covers his face with a handkerchief. That same day, Collegiate Assessor Kovalev wakes up and realizes that his nose is gone. After some misadventures in the streets, the barber ends up throwing it away into the river. 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. Neither of them is particularly grossed out by this.

He recognizes the nose-it belongs to one of his clients, Collegiate Assessor Kovalev. One morning, a barber and his wife are munching on some breakfast when he finds a nose in his bread roll.

Summary of the nose by nikolai gogol