The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov Part 5

"Oh, my Lord, of course-I must have dropped it on the way to the dining car when I jerked free-"

She hurried out of the compartment; arms spread, swaying this way and that, holding back her tears, she traversed one car, another. She reached the end of the sleeping car and, through the rear door, saw nothing but air, emptiness, the night sky, the dark wedge of the roadbed disappearing into the distance.

She thought she had got mixed up and gone the wrong way. With a sob, she headed back.

Next to her, by the toilet door, stood a little old woman wearing a gray ap.r.o.n and an armband, who resembled a night nurse. She was holding a little bucket with a brush sticking out of it.

"They uncoupled the diner," said the little old woman, and for some reason sighed. "After Cologne there will be another."

In the diner that had remained behind under the vault of a station and would continue only next morning to France, the waiters were cleaning up, folding the tablecloths. Luzhin finished, and stood in the open doorway of the car's vestibule. The station was dark and deserted. Some distance away a lamp shone like a humid star through a gray cloud of smoke. The torrent of rails glistened slightly. He could not understand why the face of the old lady with the sandwich had disturbed him so deeply. Everything else was clear, only this one blind spot remained.

Red-haired, sharp-nosed Max also came out into the vestibule. He was sweeping the floor. He noticed a glint of gold in a corner. He bent down. It was a ring. He hid it in his waistcoat pocket and gave a quick look around to see if anyone had noticed. Luzhin's back was motionless in the doorway. Max cautiously took out the ring; by the dim light he distinguished a word in script and some figures engraved on the inside. Must be Chinese, he thought. Actually, the inscription read "1-VIII-1915. ALEKSEY." He returned the ring to his pocket.

Luzhin's back moved. Quietly he got off the car. He walked diagonally to the next track, with a calm, relaxed gait, as if taking a stroll.

A through train now thundered into the station. Luzhin went to the edge of the platform and hopped down. The cinders crunched under his heel.

At that instant, the locomotive came at him in one hungry bound. Max, totally unaware of what happened, watched from a distance as the lighted windows flew past in one continuous stripe.

THE SEAPORT.

THE low-ceilinged barbershop smelled of stale roses. Horseflies hummed hotly, heavily. The sunlight blazed on the floor in puddles of molten honey, gave the lotion bottles tweaks of sparkle, transluced through the long curtain hanging in the entrance, a curtain of clay beads and little sections of bamboo strung alternately on close-hung cord, which would disintegrate in an iridescent c.l.i.tterclatter every time someone entered and shouldered it aside. Before him, in the murkish gla.s.s, Nikitin saw his own tanned face, the long sculptured strands of his shiny hair, the glitter of the scissors that chirred above his ear, and his eyes were attentive and severe, as always happens when you contemplate yourself in mirrors. He had arrived in this ancient port in the south of France the day before, from Constantinople, where life had grown unbearable for him. That morning he had been to the Russian Consulate and the employment office, had roamed about the town, which, down narrow alleyways, crept seaward, and now, exhausted, prostrated by the heat, he had dropped in to have a haircut and to refresh his head. The floor around his chair was already strewn with small bright mice-the cuttings of his hair. The barber filled his palm with lather. A delicious chill ran through the crown of his head as the barber's fingers firmly rubbed in the thick foam. Then an icy gush made his heart jump, and a fluffy towel went to work on his face and his wet hair.

Parting the undulating rain of curtain with his shoulder, Nikitin went out into a steep alley. Its right side was in the shade; on the left a narrow stream quivered along the curb in the torrid radiance; a black-haired, toothless girl with swarthy freckles was collecting the shimmering rivulet with her resonant pail; and the stream, the sun, the violet shade-everything was flowing and slithering downward to the sea: another step and, in the distance, between some walls, loomed its compact sapphire brilliance. Infrequent pedestrians walked on the shady side. Nikitin happened upon a climbing Negro in a Colonial uniform, with a face like a wet galosh. On the sidewalk stood a straw chair from whose seat a cat departed with a cushioned bound. A bra.s.sy Provencal voice started jabbering in some window. A green shutter banged. On a vendor's stand, amid purple mollusks that gave off a whiff of seaweed, lay lemons shot with granulated gold.

Reaching the sea, Nikitin paused to look excitedly at the dense blue that, in the distance, modulated into blinding silver, and at the play of light delicately dappling the white topside of a yacht. Then, unsteady from the heat, he went in search of the small Russian restaurant whose address he had noted on a wall of the consulate.

The restaurant, like the barbershop, was hot and none too clean. In back, on a wide counter, appetizers and fruit showed through billows of protective grayish muslin. Nikitin sat down and squared his shoulders; his shirt stuck to his back. At a nearby table sat two Russians, evidently sailors of a French vessel, and, a little farther off, a solitary old fellow in gold-rimmed gla.s.ses was making smacking and sucking noises as he lapped borscht from his spoon. The proprietress, wiping her puffy hands with a towel, gave the newcomer a maternal look. Two s.h.a.ggy pups were rolling on the floor in a flurry of little paws. Nikitin whistled, and a shabby old b.i.t.c.h with green mucus at the corners of her gentle eyes came and put her muzzle in his lap.

One of the seamen addressed him in a composed and unhurried tone: "Send her away. She'll get fleas all over you."

Nikitin cosseted the dog's head a little and raised his radiant eyes.

"Oh, I'm not afraid of that.... Constantinople ... The barracks ... You can imagine ..."

"Just get here?" asked the seaman. Even voice. Mesh T-shirt. All cool and competent. Dark hair neatly trimmed in back. Clear forehead. Overall appearance decent and placid.

"Last night," Nikitin replied.

The borscht and the fiery dark wine made him sweat even more. He was happy to relax and have a peaceful chat. Bright sunlight poured through the aperture of the door together with the tremulous sparkle of the alley rivulet; from his corner under the gas meter, the elderly Russian's spectacles scintillated.

"Looking for work?" asked the other sailor, who was middle-aged, blue-eyed, had a pale walrus mustache, and was also clean-cut, well groomed, levigated by sun and salty wind.

Nikitin said with a smile, "I certainly am.... Today I went to the employment office.... They have jobs planting telegraph poles, weaving hawsers-I'm just not sure...."

"Come work with us," said the black-haired one. "As a stoker or something. No nonsense there, you can take my word.... Ah, there you are, Lyalya-our profound respects!"

A young girl entered, wearing a white hat, with a sweet, plain face. She made her way among the tables and smiled, first at the puppies, then at the seamen. Nikitin had asked them something but forgot his question as he watched the girl and the motion of her low hips, by which you can always recognize a Russian damsel. The owner gave her daughter a tender look, as if to say, "You poor tired thing," for she had probably spent all morning in an office, or else worked in a store. There was something touchingly homespun about her that made you think of violet soap and a summer flag stop in a birch forest. There was no France outside the door, of course. Those mincing movements ... Sunny nonsense.

"No, it's not complicated at all," the seaman was saying, "here's how it works-you have an iron bucket and a coal pit. You start sc.r.a.ping. Lightly at first, so long as the coal goes sliding down into the bucket by itself, then you sc.r.a.pe harder. When you've filled the bucket you set it on a cart. You roll it over to the chief stoker. A bang of his shovel and-one!-the firebox door's open, a heave of the same shovel and-two!-in goes the coal-you know, fanned out so it will come down evenly. Precision work. Keep your eye on the dial, and if that pressure drops ..."

In a window that gave on the street appeared the head and shoulders of a man wearing a panama and a white suit.

"How are you, Lyalya dearest?"

He leaned his elbows on the windowsill.

"Of course it is hot in there, a real furnace-you wear nothing to work but pants and a mesh T-shirt. The T-shirt is black when you're finished. As I was saying, about the pressure-'fur' forms in the firebox, an incrustation hard as stone, which you break up with a poker this long. Tough work. But afterwards, when you pop out on deck, the sunshine feels cool even if you're in the tropics. You shower, then down you go to your quarters, straight into your hammock-that's heaven, let me tell you...."

Meanwhile, at the window: "And he insists he saw me in a car, you see?" (Lyalya in a high-pitched, excited voice).

Her interlocutor, the gentleman in white, stood leaning on the sill from the outside, and the square window framed his rounded shoulders, his soft, shaven face half-lit by the sun-a Russian who had been lucky.

"He goes on to tell me I was wearing a lilac dress, when I don't even own a lilac dress," yelped Lyalya, "and he persists: 'zhay voo zasyur.' "

The seaman who had been talking to Nikitin turned and asked, "Couldn't you speak Russian?"

The man in the window said, "I managed to get this music, Lyalya. Remember?"

That was the momentary aura, and it felt almost deliberate, as if someone were having fun inventing this girl, this conversation, this small Russian restaurant in a foreign port-an aura of dear workaday provincial Russia, and right away, by some miraculous, secret a.s.sociation of thoughts, the world appeared grander to Nikitin, he yearned to sail the oceans, to put into legendary bays, to eavesdrop everywhere on other people's souls.

"You asked what run we're on? Indochina," spontaneously said the seaman.

Nikitin pensively tapped a cigarette out of its case; a gold eagle was etched on the wooden lid.

"Must be wonderful."

"What do you think? Sure it is."

"Well, tell me about it. Something about Shanghai, or Colombo."

"Shanghai? I've seen it. Warm drizzle, red sand. Humid as a greenhouse. As for Ceylon, for instance, I didn't get ash.o.r.e to visit it-it was my watch, you know."

Shoulders hunched, the white-jacketed man was saying something to Lyalya through the window, softly and significantly. She listened, her head c.o.c.ked, fondling the dog's curled-over ear with one hand. Extending its fire-pink tongue, panting joyously and rapidly, the dog looked through the sunny c.h.i.n.k of the door, most likely debating whether or not it was worthwhile to go lie some more on the hot threshold. And the dog seemed to be thinking in Russian.

Nikitin asked, "Where should I apply?"

The seaman winked at his mate, as if to say, "See, I brought him round." Then he said, "It's very simple. Tomorrow morning bright and early you go to the Old Port, and at Pier Two you'll find our Jean-Bart. Have a chat with the first mate. I think he'll hire you."

Nikitin took a keen and candid look at the man's clear, intelligent forehead. "What were you before, in Russia?" he asked.

The man shrugged and gave a wry smile.

"What was he? A fool," Droopy Mustache answered for him in a ba.s.s voice.

Later they both got up. The younger man pulled out the wallet he carried inserted in the front of his pants behind his belt buckle, in the manner of French sailors. Something elicited a high-pitched laugh from Lyalya as she came up and gave them her hand (palm probably a little damp). The pups were tumbling about the floor. The man standing at the window turned away, whistling absently and tenderly. Nikitin paid and went out leisurely into the sunlight.

It was about five in the afternoon. The sea's blueness, glimpsed at the far ends of alleys, hurt his eyes. The circular screens of the outdoor toilets were ablaze.

He returned to his squalid hotel and, slowly stretching his intertwined hands behind his head, collapsed onto the bed in a state of blissful solar inebriation. He dreamt he was an officer again, walking along a Crimean slope overgrown with milkweed and oak shrubs, mowing off the downy heads of thistles as he went. He awoke because he had started laughing in his sleep; he awoke, and the window had already turned a twilight blue.

He leaned out into the cool chasm, meditating: Wandering women. Some of them Russian. What a big star.

He smoothed his hair, rubbed the dust off the k.n.o.bby tips of his shoes with a corner of the blanket, checked his wallet-only five francs left-and went out to roam some more and revel in his solitary idleness.

Now it was more crowded than it had been in the afternoon. Along the alleys that descended toward the sea, people were sitting, cooling off. Girl in a kerchief with spangles.... Flutter of eyelashes.... Paunchy shopkeeper, sitting astride a straw chair, elbows propped on its reversed back, smoking, with a flap of shirt protruding on his belly from beneath his unb.u.t.toned waistcoat. Children hopping in a squatting posture as they sailed little paper boats, by the light of a streetlamp, in the black streamlet running next to the narrow sidewalk. There were smells of fish and wine. From the sailors' taverns, which shone with a yellow gleam, came the labored sound of hurdy-gurdies, the pounding of palms on tables, metallic exclamations. And, in the upper part of town, along the main avenue, the evening crowds shuffled and laughed, and women's slender ankles and the white shoes of naval officers flashed beneath clouds of acacias. Here and there, like the colored flames of some petrified fireworks display, cafes blazed in the purple twilight. Round tables right out on the sidewalk, shadows of black plane trees on the striped awning, illuminated from within. Nikitin stopped, picturing a mug of beer, ice-cold and heavy. Inside, beyond the tables, a violin wrung its sounds as if they were human hands, accompanied by the full-bodied resonance of a rippling harp. The more ba.n.a.l the music, the closer it is to the heart.

At an outer table sat a weary streetwalker all in green, swinging the pointed tip of her shoe.

I'll have the beer, decided Nikitin. No I won't ... Then again ...

The woman had doll-like eyes. There was something very familiar about those eyes, about those elongated, shapely legs. Gathering up her purse, she got up as if in a hurry to get somewhere. She wore a long jacketlike top of knitted emerald silk that adhered low on her hips. Past she went, squinting from the music.

It would be strange indeed, mused Nikitin. Something akin to a falling star hurtled through his memory, and, forgetting about his beer, he followed her as she turned into a dark, glistening alley. A streetlamp stretched her shadow. The shadow flashed along a wall and skewed. She walked slowly and Nikitin checked his pace, afraid, for some reason, to overtake her.

Yes, there's no question.... G.o.d, this is wonderful....

The woman stopped on the curb. A crimson bulb burned over a black door. Nikitin walked past, came back, circled the woman, stopped. With a cooing laugh she uttered a French word of endearment.

In the wan light, Nikitin saw her pretty, fatigued face, and the moist l.u.s.ter of her minute teeth.

"Listen," he said in Russian, simply and softly. "We've known each other a long time, so why not speak our native language?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Inglish? Yew spik Inglish?"

Nikitin gave her an intent look, then repeated somewhat helplessly, "Come, you know and I know."

"T'es Polonais, alors?" inquired the woman, dragging out the final rolled syllable as they do in the South.

Nikitin gave up with a sardonic smile, thrust a five-franc note into her hand, turned quickly, and started across the sloping square. An instant later he heard rapid footfalls behind him, and breathing, and the rustle of a dress. He looked back. There was no one. The square was deserted and dark. The night wind propelled a newspaper sheet across the flagstones.

He heaved a sigh, smiled once more, thrust his fists deep into his pockets, and, looking at the stars, which flashed and waned as if fanned by a gigantic bellows, began descending seaward. He sat down on the ancient wharf with his feet dangling over the edge, above the rhythmic, moonlit swaying of the waves, and sat thus for a long time, head thrown back, leaning on the palms of his stretched-back hands.

A falling star shot by with the suddenness of a missed heartbeat. A strong, clean gust blew through his hair, pale in the nocturnal radiance.

REVENGE.

1.

OSTEND, the stone wharf, the gray strand, the distant row of hotels, were all slowly rotating as they receded into the turquoise haze of an autumn day.

The professor wrapped his legs in a tartan lap robe, and the chaise longue creaked as he reclined into its canvas comfort. The clean, ochre-red deck was crowded but quiet. The boilers heaved discreetly.

An English girl in worsted stockings, indicating the professor with a motion of her eyebrow, addressed her brother who was standing nearby: "Looks like Sheldon, doesn't he?"

Sheldon was a comic actor, a bald giant with a round, flabby face. "He's really enjoying the sea," the girl added sotto voce. Whereupon, I regret to say, she drops out of my story.

Her brother, an ungainly, red-haired student on his way back to his university after the summer holidays, took the pipe out of his mouth and said, "He's our biology professor. Capital old chap. Must say h.e.l.lo to him." He approached the professor, who, lifting his heavy eyelids, recognized one of the worst and most diligent of his pupils.

"Ought to be a splendid crossing," said the student, giving a light squeeze to the large, cold hand that was proffered him.

"I hope so," replied the professor, stroking his gray cheek with his fingers. "Yes, I hope so," he repeated weightily, "I hope so."

The student gave the two suitcases standing next to the deck chair a cursory glance. One of them was a dignified veteran, covered with the white traces of old travel labels, like bird droppings on a monument. The other one-brand-new, orange-colored, with gleaming locks-for some reason caught his attention.

"Let me move that suitcase before it falls over," he offered, to keep up the conversation.

The professor chuckled. He did look like that silver-browed comic, or else like an aging boxer....

"The suitcase, you say? Know what I have in it?" he inquired, with a hint of irritation in his voice. "Can't guess? A marvelous object! A special kind of coat hanger ..."

"A German invention, sir?" the student prompted, remembering that the biologist had just been to Berlin for a scientific congress.

The professor gave a hearty, creaking laugh, and a golden tooth flashed like a flame. "A divine invention, my friend-divine. Something everybody needs. Why, you travel with the same kind of thing yourself. Eh? Or perhaps you're a polyp?" The student grinned. He knew that the professor was given to obscure jokes. The old man was the object of much gossip at the university. They said he tortured his spouse, a very young woman. The student had seen her once. A skinny thing, with incredible eyes. "And how is your wife, sir?" asked the red-haired student.

The professor replied, "I shall be frank with you, dear friend. I've been struggling with myself for quite some some time, but now I feel compelled to tell you.... My dear friend, I like to travel in silence. I trust you'll forgive me."

But here the student, whistling in embarra.s.sment and sharing his sister's lot, departs forever from these pages.

The biology professor, meanwhile, pulled his black felt hat down over his bristly brows to shield his eyes against the sea's dazzling shimmer, and sank into a semblance of sleep. The sunlight falling on his gray, clean-shaven face, with its large nose and heavy chin, made it seem freshly modeled out of moist clay. Whenever a flimsy autumn cloud happened to screen the sun, the face would suddenly darken, dry out, and petrify. It was all, of course, alternating light and shade rather than a reflection of his thoughts. If his thoughts had indeed been reflected on his face, the professor would have hardly been a pretty sight. The trouble was that he had received a report the other day from the private detective he had hired in London that his wife was unfaithful to him. An intercepted letter, written in her minuscule, familiar hand, began, "My dear darling Jack, I am still all full of your last kiss." The professor's name was certainly not Jack-that was the whole point. The perception made him feel neither surprise nor pain, not even masculine vexation, but only hatred, sharp and cold as a lancet. He realized with utter clarity that he would murder his wife. There could be no qualms. One had only to devise the most excruciating, the most ingenious method. As he reclined in the deck chair, he reviewed for the hundredth time all the methods of torture described by travelers and medieval scholars. Not one of them, so far, seemed adequately painful. In the distance, at the verge of the green shimmer, the sugary-white cliffs of Dover were materializing, and he had still not made a decision. The steamer fell silent and, gently rocking, docked. The professor followed his porter down the gangplank. The customs officer, after rattling off the items ineligible for import, asked him to open a suitcase-the new, orange one. The professor turned the lightweight key in its lock and swung open the leather flap. Some Russian lady behind him loudly exclaimed, "Good Lord!" and gave a nervous laugh. Two Belgians standing on either side of the professor c.o.c.ked their heads and gave a kind of upward glance. One shrugged his shoulders and the other gave a soft whistle, while the English turned away with indifference. The official, dumbfounded, goggled his eyes at the suitcase's contents. Everybody felt very creepy and uncomfortable. The biologist phlegmatically gave his name, mentioning the university museum. Expressions cleared up. Only a few ladies were chagrined to learn that no crime had been committed.

"But why do you transport it in a suitcase?" inquired the official with respectful reproach, gingerly lowering the flap and chalking a scrawl on the bright leather. "I was in a hurry," said the professor with a fatigued squint. "No time to hammer together a crate. In any case it's a valuable object and not something I'd send in the baggage hold." And, with a stooped but springy gait, the professor crossed to the railway platform past a policeman who resembled a gargantuan toy. But suddenly he paused as if remembering something and mumbled with a radiant, kindly smile, "There-I have it. A most clever method." Whereupon he heaved a sigh of relief and purchased two bananas, a pack of cigarettes, newspapers reminiscent of crackling bedsheets, and, a few minutes later, was speeding in a comfortable compartment of the Continental Express along the scintillating sea, the white cliffs, the emerald pastures of Kent.

2.