The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov Part 14

"The birches suddenly dispersed, half a dozen small houses poured down a hill, some of them, in their haste, barely missing being run over by the train; then a huge purple-red factory strode by flashing its windowpanes; somebody's chocolate hailed us from a ten-yard poster; another factory followed with its bright gla.s.s and chimneys; in short, there happened what usually happens when one is nearing a city. But all at once, to our surprise, the train braked convulsively and pulled up at a desolate whistle-stop, where an express had seemingly no business to dawdle. I also found it surprising that several policemen stood out there on the platform. I lowered a window and leaned out. 'Shut it, please,' said one of the men politely. The pa.s.sengers in the corridor displayed some agitation. A conductor pa.s.sed and I asked what was the matter. 'There's a criminal on the train,' he replied, and briefly explained that in the town at which we had stopped in the middle of the night, a murder had occurred on the eve: a betrayed husband had shot his wife and her lover. The ladies exclaimed 'akh!,' the old gentleman shook his head. Two policemen and a rosy-cheeked, plump, bowlerhatted detective who looked like a bookmaker entered the corridor. I was asked to go back to my berth. The policemen remained in the corridor, while the detective visited one compartment after another. I showed him my pa.s.sport. His reddish-brown eyes glided over my face; he returned my pa.s.sport. We stood, he and I, in that narrow coupe on the upper bunk of which slept a dark-coc.o.o.ned figure. 'You may leave,' said the detective, and stretched his arm toward that upper darkness: 'Papers, please.' The blanketed man kept on snoring. As I lingered in the doorway, I still heard that snoring and seemed to make out through it the sibilant echoes of his nocturnal sobs. 'Please, wake up,' said the detective, raising his voice; and with a kind of professional jerk he pulled at the edge of the blanket at the sleeper's nape. The latter stirred but continued to snore. The detective shook him by the shoulder. This was rather sickening. I turned away and stared at the window across the corridor, but did not really see it, while listening with my whole being to what was happening in the compartment.

"And imagine, I heard absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. The man on the upper berth sleepily mumbled something, the detective distinctly demanded his pa.s.sport, distinctly thanked him, then went out and entered another compartment. That is all. But think only how nice it would have seemed-from the writer's viewpoint, naturally-if the evil-footed, weeping pa.s.senger had turned out to be a murderer, how nicely his tears in the night could have been explained, and, what is more, how nicely all that would have fitted into the frame of my night journey, the frame of a short story. Yet, it would appear that the plan of the Author, the plan of Life, was in this case, as in all others, a hundred times nicer."

The writer sighed and fell silent, as he sucked his cigarette, which had gone out long ago and was now all chewed up and damp with saliva. The critic was gazing at him with kindly eyes.

"Confess," spoke the writer again, "that beginning with the moment when I mentioned the police and the unscheduled stop, you were sure my sobbing pa.s.senger was a criminal?"

"I know your manner," said the critic, touching his interlocutor's shoulder with the tips of his fingers and, in a gesture peculiar to him, instantly s.n.a.t.c.hing back his hand. "If you were writing a detective story, your villain would have turned out to be not the person whom none of the characters suspect but the person whom everybody in the story suspects from the very beginning, thus fooling the experienced reader who is used to solutions proving to be not the obvious ones. I am well aware that you like to produce an impression of inexpectancy by means of the most natural denouement; but don't get carried away by your own method. There is much in life that is casual, and there is also much that is unusual. The Word is given the sublime right to enhance chance and to make of the transcendental something that is not accidental. Out of the present case, out of the dance of chance, you could have created a well-rounded story if you had transformed your fellow traveler into a murderer."

The writer sighed again.

"Yes, yes, that did occur to me. I might have added several details. I would have alluded to the pa.s.sionate love he had for his wife. All kinds of inventions are possible. The trouble is that we are in the dark-maybe Life had in mind something totally different, something much more subtle and deep. The trouble is that I did not learn, and shall never learn, why the pa.s.senger cried."

"I intercede for the Word," gently said the critic. "You, as a writer of fiction, would have at least thought up some brilliant solution: your character was crying, perhaps, because he had lost his wallet at the station. I once knew someone, a grown-up man of martial appearance, who would weep or rather bawl when he had a toothache. No, thanks, no-don't pour me any more. That's sufficient, that's quite sufficient."

THE DOORBELL.

SEVEN years had pa.s.sed since he and she had parted in Petersburg. G.o.d, what a crush there had been at the Nikolaevsky Station! Don't stand so close-the train is about to start. Well, here we go, good-bye, dearest.... She walked alongside, tall, thin, wearing a raincoat, with a black-and-white scarf around her neck, and a slow current carried her off backward. A Red Army recruit, he took part, reluctantly and confusedly, in the civil war. Then, one beautiful night, to the ecstatic stridulation of prairie crickets, he went over to the Whites. A year later, in 1920, not long before leaving Russia, on the steep, stony Chainaya Street in Yalta, he ran into his uncle, a Moscow lawyer. Why, yes, there was news-two letters. She was leaving for Germany and already had obtained a pa.s.sport. You look fine, young man. And at last Russia let go of him-a permanent leave, according to some. Russia had held him for a long time; he had slowly slithered down from north to south, and Russia kept trying to keep him in her grasp, with the taking of Tver, Kharkov, Belgorod, and various interesting little villages, but it was no use. She had in store for him one last temptation, one last gift-the Crimea-but even that did not help. He left. And on board the ship he made the acquaintance of a young Englishman, a jolly chap and an athlete, who was on his way to Africa.

Nikolay visited Africa, and Italy, and for some reason the Canary Islands, and then Africa again, where he served for a while in the Foreign Legion. At first he recalled her often, then rarely, then again more and more often. Her second husband, the German industrialist Kind, died during the war. He had owned a goodish bit of real estate in Berlin, and Nikolay a.s.sumed there was no danger of her going hungry there. But how quickly time pa.s.sed! Amazing!... Had seven whole years really gone by?

During those years he had grown hardier, rougher, had lost an index finger, and had learned two languages-Italian and English. The color of his eyes had become lighter and their expression more candid owing to the smooth rustic tan that covered his face. He smoked a pipe. His walk, which had always had the solidity characteristic of short-legged people, now acquired a remarkable rhythm. One thing about him had not changed at all: his laugh, accompanied by a quip and a twinkle.

He had quite a time, chuckling softly and shaking his head, before he finally decided to drop everything and by easy stages make his way to Berlin. On one occasion-at a newsstand, somewhere in Italy, he noticed an emigre Russian paper, published in Berlin. He wrote to the paper to place an advertis.e.m.e.nt under Personal: So-and-so seeks So-and-so. He got no reply. On a side trip to Corsica, he met a fellow Russian, the old journalist Grushevski, who was leaving for Berlin. Make inquiries on my behalf. Perhaps you'll find her. Tell her I am alive and well.... But this source did not bring any news either. Now it was high time to take Berlin by storm. There, on the spot, the search would be simpler. He had a lot of trouble obtaining a German visa, and he was running out of funds. Oh, well, he would get there one way or another....

And so he did. Wearing a trenchcoat and a checked cap, short and broad-shouldered, with a pipe between his teeth and a battered valise in his good hand, he exited onto the square in front of the station. There he stopped to admire a great jewel-bright advertis.e.m.e.nt that inched its way through the darkness, then vanished and started again from another point. He spent a bad night in a stuffy room in a cheap hotel, trying to think of ways to begin the search. The address bureau, the office of the Russian-language newspaper ... Seven years. She must really have aged. It was rotten of him to have waited so long; he could have come sooner. But, ah, those years, that stupendous roaming about the world, the obscure ill-paid jobs, chances taken and chucked, the excitement of freedom, the freedom he had dreamed of in childhood!... It was pure Jack London.... And here he was again: a new city, a suspiciously itchy featherbed, and the screech of a late tram. He groped for his matches, and with a habitual movement of his index stump began pressing the soft tobacco into the pipebowl.

When traveling the way he did you forget the names of time; they are crowded out by those of places. In the morning, when Nikolay went out intending to go to the police station, the gratings were down on all the shop fronts. It was a d.a.m.ned Sunday. So much for the address office and the newspaper. It was also late autumn: windy weather, asters in the public gardens, a sky of solid white, yellow trees, yellow trams, the nasal honking of rheumy taxis. A chill of excitement came over him at the idea that he was in the same town as she. A fifty-pfennig coin bought him a gla.s.s of port in a cab drivers' bar, and the wine on an empty stomach had a pleasant effect. Here and there in the streets there came a sprinkling of Russian speech: "... Skol'ko raz ya tebe govorila" ("... How many times have I told you"). And again, after the pa.s.sage of several natives: "... He's willing to sell them to me, but frankly, I ..." The excitement made him chuckle and finish each pipeful much more quickly than usual. "... Seemed to be gone, but now Grisha's down with it too...." He considered going up to the next pair of Russians and asking, very politely: "Do you know by any chance Olga Kind, born Countess Karski?" They must all know each other in this bit of provincial Russia gone astray.

It was already evening, and, in the twilight, a beautiful tangerine light had filled the gla.s.sed tiers of a huge department store when Nikolay noticed, on one of the sides of a front door, a small white sign that said: "I. S. WEINER, DENTIST. FROM PETROGRAD." An unexpected recollection virtually scalded him. This fine friend of ours is pretty well decayed and must go. In the window, right in front of the torture seat, inset gla.s.s photographs displayed Swiss landscapes.... The window gave on Moika Street. Rinse, please. And Dr. Weiner, a fat, placid, white-gowned old man in perspicacious gla.s.ses, sorted his tinkling instruments. She used to go to him for treatment, and so did his cousins, and they even used to say to each other, when they quarreled for some reason or other, "How would you like a Weiner?" (i.e., a punch in the mouth?). Nikolay dallied in front of the door, on the point of ringing the bell, remembering it was Sunday; he thought some more and rang anyway. There was a buzzing in the lock and the door gave. He went up one flight. A maid opened the door. "No, the doctor is not receiving today." "My teeth are fine," objected Nikolay in very poor German. "Dr. Weiner is an old friend of mine. My name is Galatov-I'm sure he remembers me...." "I'll tell him," said the maid.

A moment later a middle-aged man in a frogged velveteen jacket came out into the hallway. He had a carroty complexion and seemed extremely friendly. After a cheerful greeting he added in Russian, "I don't remember you, though-there must be a mistake." Nikolay looked at him and apologized: "Afraid so. I don't remember you either. I was expecting to find the Dr. Weiner who lived on Moika Street in Petersburg before the Revolution, but got the wrong one. Sorry."

"Oh, that must be a namesake of mine. A common namesake. I lived on Zagorodny Avenue."

"We all used to go to him," explained Nikolay, "and well, I thought ... You see, I'm trying to locate a certain lady, a Madame Kind, that's the name of her second husband-"

Weiner bit his lip, looked away with an intent expression, then addressed him again. "Wait a minute.... I seem to recall ... I seem to recall a Madame Kind who came to see me here not long ago and was also under the impression-We'll know for sure in a minute. Be kind enough to step into my office."

The office remained a blur in Nikolay's vision. He did not take his eyes off Weiner's impeccable calvities as the latter bent over his appointment book.

"We'll know for sure in a minute," he repeated, sunning his fingers across the pages. "We'll know for sure in just a minute. We'll know in just ... Here we are. Frau Kind. Gold filling and some other work-which I can't make out, there's a blot here."

"And what's the first name and patronymic?" asked Nikolay, approaching the table and almost knocking off an ashtray with his cuff.

"That's in the book too. Olga Kirillovna."

"Right," said Nikolay with a sigh of relief.

"The address is Plannerstra.s.se fifty-nine, care of Babb," said Weiner with a smack of his lips, and rapidly copied the address on a separate slip. "Second street from here. Here you are. Very happy to be of service. Is she a relative of yours?"

"My mother," replied Nikolay.

Coming out of the dentist's, he proceeded with a somewhat quickened step. Finding her so easily astonished him, like a card trick. He had never paused to think, while traveling to Berlin, that she might long since have died or moved to a different city, and yet the trick had worked. Weiner had turned out to be a different Weiner-and yet fate found a way. Beautiful city, beautiful rain! (The pearly autumn drizzle seemed to fall in a whisper and the streets were dark.) How would she greet him-tenderly? Sadly? Or with complete calm. She had not spoiled him as a child. You are forbidden to run through the drawing room while I am playing the piano. As he grew up, he would feel more and more frequently that she did not have much use for him. Now he tried to picture her face, but his thoughts obstinately refused to take on color, and he simply could not gather in a living optical image what he knew in his mind: her tall, thin figure with that loosely a.s.sembled look about her; her dark hair with streaks of gray at the temples; her large, pale mouth; the old raincoat she had on the last time he saw her; and the tired, bitter expression of an aging woman, that seemed to have always been on her face-even before the death of his father, Admiral Galatov, who had shot himself shortly before the Revolution. Number 51. Eight houses more.

He suddenly realized that he was unendurably, indecently perturbed, much more so than he had been, for example, that first time when he lay pressing his sweat-drenched body against the side of a cliff and aiming at an approaching whirlwind, a white scarecrow on a splendid Arabian horse. He stopped just short of Number 59, took out his pipe and a rubber tobacco pouch; stuffed the bowl slowly and carefully, without spilling a single shred; lit up, coddled the flame, drew, watched the fiery mound swell, gulped a mouthful of sweetish, tongue-p.r.i.c.kling smoke, carefully expelled it, and with a firm, unhurried step walked up to the house.

The stairs were so dark that he stumbled a couple of times. When, in the dense blackness, he reached the second-floor landing, he struck a match and made out a gilt nameplate. Wrong name. It was only much higher that he found the odd name "Babb." The flamelet burned his fingers and went out. G.o.d, my heart is pounding.... He groped for the bell in the dark and rang. Then he removed the pipe from between his teeth and began waiting, feeling an agonizing smile rend his mouth.

Then he heard a lock, a bolt made a double resonant sound, and the door, as if swung by a violent wind, burst open. It was just as dark in the anteroom as on the stairs, and out of that darkness floated a vibrant, joyful voice. "The lights are out in the whole building-eto oozhas, it's appalling"-and Nikolay recognized at once that long emphatic "oo" and on its basis instantly reconstructed down to the most minute feature the person who now stood, still concealed by darkness, in the doorway.

"Sure, can't see a thing," said he with a laugh, and advanced toward her.

Her cry was as startled as if a strong hand had struck her. In the dark he found her arms, and shoulders, and b.u.mped against something (probably the umbrella stand). "No, no, it's not possible ..." she kept repeating rapidly as she backed away.

"Hold still, Mother, hold still for a minute," he said, hitting something again (this time it was the half-open front door, which shut with a great slam).

"It can't be ... Nicky, Nick-"

He was kissing her at random, on the cheeks, on the hair, everywhere, unable to see anything in the dark but with some interior vision recognizing all of her from head to toe, and only one thing about her had changed (and even this novelty unexpectedly made him recall his earliest childhood, when she used to play the piano): the strong, elegant smell of perfume-as if those intervening years had not existed, the years of his adolescence and her widowhood, when she no longer wore perfume and faded so sorrowfully-it seemed as if nothing of that had happened, and he had pa.s.sed straight from distant exile into childhood.... "It's you. You've come. You're really here," she prattled, pressing her soft lips against him. "It's good.... This is how it should be...."

"Isn't there any light anywhere?" Nikolay inquired cheerfully.

She opened an inner door and said excitedly, "Yes, come on. I've lit some candles there."

"Well, let me look at you," he said, entering the flickering aura of candlelight and gazing avidly at his mother. Her dark hair had been bleached a very light strawlike shade.

"Well, don't you recognize me?" she asked, with a nervous intake of breath, then added hurriedly, "Don't stare at me like that. Come on, tell me all the news! What a tan you have ... my goodness! Yes, tell me everything!"

That blond bob ... And her face was made up with excruciating care. The moist streak of a tear, though, had eaten through the rosy paint, and her mascara-laden lashes were wet, and the powder on the wings of her nose had turned violet. She was wearing a glossy blue dress closed at the throat. And everything about her was unfamiliar, restless and frightening.

"You're probably expecting company, Mother," observed Nikolay, and not quite knowing what to say next, energetically threw off his overcoat.

She moved away from him toward the table, which was set for a meal and sparkled with crystal in the semidarkness; then she came back toward him, and mechanically glanced at herself in the shadow-blurred mirror.

"So many years have pa.s.sed.... Goodness! I can hardly believe my eyes. Oh, yes, I have friends coming tonight. I'll call them off. I'll phone them. I'll do something. I must call them off.... Oh, Lord...."

She pressed against him, palpating him to find out how real he was.

"Calm down, Mother, what's the matter with you-this is overdoing it. Let's sit down somewhere. Comment vas-tu? How does life treat you?"... And, for some reason fearing the answers to his questions, he started telling her about himself, in the snappy neat way he had, puffing on his pipe, trying to drown his astonishment in words and smoke. It turned out that, after all, she had seen his ad and had been in touch with the old journalist and been on the point of writing to Nikolay-always on the point.... Now that he had seen her face distorted by its make-up and her artificially fair hair he felt that her voice, too, was no longer the same. And as he described his adventures, without a moment's pause, he glanced around the half-lit, quivering room, at its awful middle-cla.s.s trappings-the toy cat on the mantelpiece, the coy screen from behind which protruded the foot of the bed, the picture of Friedrich the Great playing the flute, the bookless shelf with the little vases in which the reflected lights darted up and down like mercury.... As his eyes roamed around he also inspected something he had previously only noticed in pa.s.sing: that table-a table set for two, with liqueurs, a bottle of Asti, two tall wine gla.s.ses, and an enormous pink cake adorned with a ring of still unlit little candles. "... Of course, I immediately jumped out of my tent, and what do you think it turned out to be? Come on, guess!"

She seemed to emerge from a trance, and gave him a wild look (she was reclining next to him on the divan, her temples compressed between her hands, and her peach-colored stockings gave off an unfamiliar sheen).

"Aren't you listening, Mother?"

"Why, yes-I am...."

And now he noticed something else: she was oddly absent, as if she were listening not to his words but to a doomful thing coming from afar, menacing and inevitable. He went on with his jolly narrative, but then stopped again and asked, "That cake-in whose honor is it? Looks awfully good."

His mother responded with a fl.u.s.tered smile. "Oh, it's a little stunt. I told you I was expecting company."

"It reminded me awfully of Petersburg," said Nikolay. "Remember how you once made a mistake and forgot one candle? I had turned ten, but there were only nine candles. Tu escamotas my birthday. I bawled my head off. And how many do we have here?"

"Oh, what does it matter?" she shouted, and rose, almost as if she wanted to block his view of the table. "Why don't you tell me instead what time it is? I must ring up and cancel the party.... I must do something."

"Quarter past seven," said Nikolay.

"Trop tard, trop tard!" she raised her voice again. "All right! At this point it no longer matters...."

Both fell silent. She resumed her seat. Nikolay was trying to force himself to hug her, to cuddle up to her, to ask, "Listen, Mother-what has happened to you? Come on: out with it." He took another look at the brilliant table and counted the candles ringing the cake. There were twenty-five of them. Twenty-five! And he was already twenty-eight....

"Please don't examine my room like that!" said his mother. "You look like a regular detective! It's a horrid hole. I would gladly move elsewhere, but I sold the villa that Kind left me." Abruptly she gave a small gasp: "Wait a minute-what was that? Did you make that noise?"

"Yes," answered Nikolay. "I'm knocking the ashes out of my pipe. But tell me: you do still have enough money? You're not having any trouble making ends meet?"

She busied herself with readjusting a ribbon on her sleeve and spoke without looking at him: "Yes.... Of course. He left me a few foreign stocks, a hospital and an ancient prison. A prison!... But I must warn you that I have barely enough to live on. For heaven's sake stop knocking with that pipe. I must warn you that I ... That I cannot ... Oh, you understand, Nick-it would be hard for me to support you."

"What on earth are you talking about, Mother?" exclaimed Nikolay (and at that moment, like a stupid sun issuing from behind a stupid cloud, the electric light burst forth from the ceiling). "There, we can snuff out those tapers now; it was like squatting in the Mostaga Mausoleum. You see, I do have a small supply of cash, and anyway, I like to be as free as a d.a.m.ned fowl of some sort.... Come, sit down-stop running around the room."

Tall, thin, bright blue, she stopped in front of him and now, in the full light, he saw how much she had aged, how insistently the wrinkles on her cheeks and forehead showed through the make-up. And that awful bleached hair!...

"You came tumbling in so suddenly," she said and, biting her lips, she consulted a small clock standing on the shelf. "Like snow out of a cloudless sky ... It's fast. No, it's stopped. I'm having company tonight, and here you arrive. It's a crazy situation...."

"Nonsense, Mother. They'll come, they'll see your son has arrived, and very soon they'll evaporate. And before the evening's over you and I will go to some music hall, and have supper somewhere.... I remember seeing an African show-that was really something! Imagine-about fifty Negroes, and a rather large, the size of, say-"

The doorbell buzzed loudly in the front hall. Olga Kirillovna, who had perched on the arm of a chair, gave a start and straightened up.

"Wait, I'll get it," said Nikolay, rising.

She caught him by the sleeve. Her face was twitching. The bell stopped. The caller waited.

"It must be your guests," said Nikolay. "Your twenty-five guests. We have to let them in."

His mother gave a brusque shake of her head and resumed listening intently.

"It isn't right-" began Nikolay.

She pulled at his sleeve, whispering, "Don't you dare! I don't want to ... Don't you dare...."

The bell started buzzing again, insistently and irritably this time. And it buzzed on for a long time.

"Let me go," said Nikolay. "This is silly. If somebody rings you have to answer the door. What are you frightened of?"

"Don't you dare-do you hear," she repeated, spasmodically clutching at his hand. "I implore you.... Nicky, Nicky, Nicky!... Don't!"

The bell stopped. It was replaced by a series of vigorous knocks, produced, it seemed, by the stout k.n.o.b of a cane.

Nikolay headed resolutely for the front hall. But before he reached it his mother had grabbed him by the shoulders, and tried with all her might to drag him back, whispering all the while, "Don't you dare.... Don't you dare.... For G.o.d's sake!..."

The bell sounded again, briefly and angrily.

"It's your business," said Nikolay with a laugh and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, walked the length of the room. This is a real nightmare, he thought, and chuckled again.

The ringing had stopped. All was still. Apparently the ringer had got fed up and left. Nikolay went up to the table, contemplated the splendid cake with its bright frosting and twenty-five festive candles, and the two winegla.s.ses. Nearby, as if hiding in the bottle's shadow, lay a small white cardboard box. He picked it up and took off the lid. It contained a brand-new, rather tasteless silver cigarette case.

"And that's that," said Nikolay.

His mother, who was half-reclining on the couch with her face buried in a cushion, was convulsed with sobs. In previous years he had often seen her cry, but then she had cried quite differently: while sitting at table, for instance, she would cry without turning her face away, and blow her nose loudly, and talk, talk, talk; yet now she was weeping so girlishly, was lying there with such abandon ... and there was something so graceful about the curve of her spine and about the way one foot, in its velvet slipper, was touching the floor.... One might almost think that it was a young, blond woman crying.... And her crumpled handkerchief was lying on the carpet just the way it was supposed to, in that pretty scene.

Nikolay uttered a Russian grunt (kryak) and sat down on the edge of her couch. He kryak'ed again. His mother, still hiding her face, said into the cushion, "Oh, why couldn't you have come earlier? Even one year earlier ... Just one year!..."

"I wouldn't know," said Nikolay.

"It's all over now," she sobbed, and tossed her light hair. "All over. I'll be fifty in May. Grown-up son comes to see aged mother. And why did you have to come right at this moment ... tonight!"

Nikolay put on his overcoat (which, contrary to European custom, he had simply thrown into a corner), took his cap out of a pocket, and sat down by her again.

"Tomorrow morning I'll move on," he said, stroking the shiny blue silk of his mother's shoulder. "I feel an urge to head north now, to Norway, perhaps-or else out to sea for some whale fishing. I'll write you. In a year or so we'll meet again, then perhaps I'll stay longer. Don't be cross with me because of my wanderl.u.s.t!"

Quickly she embraced him and pressed a wet cheek to his neck. Then she squeezed his hand and suddenly cried out in astonishment.

"Blown off by a bullet," laughed Nikolay. "Good-bye, my dearest."

She felt the smooth stub of his finger and gave it a cautious kiss. Then she put her arm around her son and walked with him to the door.

"Please write often.... Why are you laughing? All the powder must have come off my face?"

And no sooner had the door shut after him than she flew, her blue dress rustling, to the telephone.

AN AFFAIR OF HONOR.

1.