7 April

7 April is the date on which the nose reappears on Major Platon Kovaloff’s face, ending his immediate ordeal without offering a cause for either its disappearance or its return. After the nose has moved through the city as a state councillor, its restoration is presented as a plain fact discovered in a mirror: the narrative’s precise date anchors an otherwise inexplicable reversal in ordinary time.

Date and Return

The narrator specifies that the return occurred on 7 April. On waking, Kovaloff happens to look in a mirror and sees that he has a nose again. He touches it to make sure; it is there beyond doubt. The sequence repeats the mirror-checking through which he first discovered his loss, but now each test confirms the restoration: he washes, looks again, dries his face, and checks once more.

The nose’s return is described as if nothing had happened. That matter-of-fact phrasing sharply contrasts with the prior commotion, when the same nose had appeared in public wearing a state-councillor’s uniform and had refused to recognize Kovaloff as its owner. The date gives the miraculous change a firm chronological point, while the narration leaves its mechanism entirely obscure.

Kovaloff’s Response

Kovaloff exclaims in joy and is on the point of dancing barefoot across his room. Ivan’s entrance interrupts the dance before it takes place. Kovaloff instead asks his valet to bring water, washes, and confirms the result in the glass, moving from astonishment to repeated, almost procedural certainty.

His first comment to Ivan is that he seems to have developed a heat-boil on his nose, recalling the small blemish he had noticed before its disappearance. The remark makes the restored feature part of an ordinary morning again: rather than dwell on how it returned, Kovaloff immediately treats it as something on his face to inspect.

Narrative Significance

The date marks a reversal, not an explanation. The nose had been absent from Kovaloff’s face while acting independently and claiming a social identity superior to his own; on 7 April it is simply back between his cheeks. The narrative supplies no account of where it has been or what caused its return, preserving the gap between the fantastical event and the everyday routine in which Kovaloff discovers it.

By returning the nose as suddenly as it vanished, the story restores Kovaloff’s physical appearance while leaving the underlying absurdity intact. The mirror, touch, washing, and second look establish the fact of restoration through repeated ordinary checks; none can make the event itself intelligible.