That first Christmas homecoming, which remained so vividly impressed in his mother’s memory, was also a festive occasion for Martin. He had a queer sensation of having returned to Russia, so white was everything, but, being ashamed of his own sensitivity, he did not share it with his mother, thus depriving her in the future of yet another poignant recollection. His uncle’s gift pleased him; for an instant there materialized a snow-covered slope in a St. Petersburg suburb—although, of course, in those distant days the toes of Russian felt boots used to be inserted in the plain loops of light children’s skis, which, moreover, had a string (for the skier to hold on) attached to their upturned tips. Not so the new ones—real, substantial skis of flexible ash, and the boots, too, were real ski boots. Bending one knee, Martin adjusted the heel cable and bent back the stiff lever of the side
throw. Its ice-cold metal stung his fingers. When he had put on the other ski as well, he picked up his mittens from the snow, straightened up, stamped his feet once or twice to see if everything was secure, and swung forward.
Yes, he found himself back in Russia. Here were the splendid “rugs” of snow spreading in the Pushkin poem which Archibald Moon recited so sonorously, reveling in the scuds of its iambic tetrameter. Above the burdened firs the blue sky shone clear and bright. The cluster of snow dislodged by a jay, flying from perch to perch, would dissipate in midair. Martin passed through the woods into the clearing from which, the previous summer, he used to descend to the local Majestic. He could see it far below, with a straight column of rose-colored smoke coming out of a chimney. What was it about that hotel that lured him so strongly, why must he again hasten there, when in the summer all he had found there had been a bevy of raucous, angular English flappers? But there was no doubt that it beckoned to him: the reflected sunlight in its windows flashed a silent sign of invitation. Martin was even frightened by such enigmatic intrusion, such abstruse insistence. He had seen that signal before, displayed by some detail of the landscape. There he must go down: it would be wrong to ignore such blandishments. The firm surface began whistling delightfully under his skis as Martin sped down the slope faster and faster. And how many times afterwards, sleeping in his chilly Cambridge room, he dream-sped like that and suddenly, in a stunning explosion of snow, fell and awakened. Everything was as usual. He could hear the clock ticking in the adjacent parlor. A mouse was rolling a lump of sugar on the floor. Footfalls passed on the sidewalk and faded away. He would turn over in bed and instantly fall asleep again; in the morning, still drowsy, he heard other sounds from the parlor: Mrs. Newman fussing about,
moving things, putting coals on the fire, tearing paper, scratching a match—and presently she departed, and the silence was gradually and delectably filled with the morning hum of the ignited hearth.
“Nothing special there after all,” reflected Martin, and reached toward the night table for cigarettes. “Mostly middle-aged blokes in sweaters. Good example of how metaphysics can fool you. Ah, it’s Saturday today—off to London. How come Darwin keeps getting letters from Sonia? I’ll have to worm it out of him. Good idea to cut Grzhezinsky’s lecture. Here comes the hag to wake me.”
Mrs. Newman brought his tea. She was elderly, red-haired, and had foxy little eyes. “Last night, sir, you went out without your gown,” she remarked phlegmatically. “I’ll have to inform your tutor.” She drew open the curtains, gave a brief but exact report on the weather, and was gone.
Martin put on his bathrobe, descended the creaky staircase, and knocked on Darwin’s door. Darwin, already shaven and washed, was eating scrambled eggs and bacon; Marshall, a fat textbook on political economy, lay open near his plate.
“Got another letter today?” sternly inquired Martin.
“From my tailor,” said Darwin chewing juicily.
“Sonia’s handwriting isn’t too good,” remarked Martin.
“It’s rotten,” agreed Darwin, gulping some coffee. Martin walked around behind him, placed both hands around Darwin’s neck, and started squeezing.
“The bacon went down anyway,” said Darwin in a smugly strained voice.
That evening they were both off for London. Darwin spent the night in one of those charming two-room
flats provided by clubs for bachelors—and Darwin’s club was one of the smartest and staidest in London, with overstuffed armchairs, glossy magazines, and thick silent rugs. Martin ended up this time in one of the upstairs bedrooms at the Zilanovs’, Nelly being in Reval, and her husband marching on St. Petersburg. When Martin arrived, nobody was at home but Mihail Platonovich Zilanov himself, busy writing in his study. A sturdy, thickset man, with Tartar features and the same dark lusterless eyes as Sonia, he invariably wore cylindrical detachable cuffs and a starched shirt; the shirt front bulged, imparting a dovelike quality to his chest. He was one of those Russians who, upon awaking, first of all pull on trousers with dangling suspenders; who wash only face, nape, and hands in the morning, but wash them most thoroughly, and who regard their weekly bath as an event not devoid of a certain risk. He had done a goodly amount of traveling around in his time, was intensely active in liberal politics, conceived life as a succession of congresses in various cities, had miraculously escaped a Soviet death, and always carried a bulging briefcase. And when someone said meditatively, “What shall I do with these books—it’s raining,” he would wordlessly, instantly, and extremely skillfully swaddle the books in a sheet of newspaper, rummage in his briefcase, produce some string and, in a flash, tie it crosswise around the neat package, a process which the luckless acquaintance, shifting from foot to foot, watched with apprehensive
attendrissement
. “There you are, sir,” Zilanov would say and, after a hasty good-bye, was off to Riga, Belgrade, or Paris. He always traveled light, with three clean handkerchiefs in his briefcase, and would sit in the railway carriage completely blind to picturesque spots (which the fast train traversed in its trusting efforts to please), immersed in a brochure and making occasional notes in the margin. While marveling at
his inattention to landscapes, comforts, and cleanliness, Martin nevertheless admired Zilanov for that plodding dryish courage of his, and every time he saw him could not help recalling that this seemingly unathletic and unfashionable man, who probably played only billiards and perhaps bowls, had escaped from the Bolshevists by crawling through a drainpipe, and had once fought a duel with the Octobrist Tuchkov.
“Welcome,” said Zilanov extending a swarthy hand. “Sit down.” Martin sat down. Zilanov again contemplated the half-filled sheet of paper upon his desk, picked up his pen, imparted to it a hovering flicker directly above the paper before transforming the flicker into the rapid glide of writing, then simultaneously gave the pen its freedom and said, “They should be back any moment now.”
Martin reached for a newspaper lying on a nearby table. It turned out to be a Russian émigré one, published in Paris.
“How’s school?” asked Zilanov, without raising his eyes from the evenly running pen.
“Pretty good,” said Martin, putting down the paper. “How long have they been out?” Zilanov did not answer: the pen was going at full tilt. A few minutes later, though, he spoke again, still not looking at Martin. “Idling away your time, I imagine. Only thing colleges care about here is
le sport.”
Martin grinned. Zilanov rapidly thumped a blotter all over the lines he had written and said, “Your mother keeps asking me for additional information, but I don’t know anything more. I wrote her in the Crimea at the time, telling her everything I knew.” Martin cleared his throat.
“Shto vï
(what’s that)?” asked Zilanov, who had picked up that bit of bad Russian in Moscow.
“Nothing,” replied Martin.
“I’m referring to your father’s death, of course,” said
Zilanov, glancing with dull eyes at Martin. “If you remember, it was I who notified you at the time.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Martin, nodding hurriedly. He always felt embarrassed when strangers—even with the best intentions—spoke to him about his father.
“Our last meeting is as clear in my mind as if it had happened today,” Zilanov went on. “We chanced to meet on the street. I was already in hiding then. At first I did not want to go up to him. But Sergey Robertovich looked so appallingly sick. I remember, he was very concerned about what was happening to you and your mother in the Crimea. And a couple of days later I went to see him, and there they were carrying out the coffin.”
Martin kept nodding, searching agonizingly for a way to change the subject. Zilanov was telling him all this for the third time, and, on the whole, the narrative was a rather pale one. Zilanov turned over the sheet. His pen quivered and started again. To kill time Martin again reached for the newspaper, but just then the front-door lock clicked and from the entrance hall came the sound of voices, of shuffling feet, and Irina’s awful cackling laugh.
Martin went out to greet them, and, as generally happened when he encountered Sonia, he instantly had the sensation that he stood in relief against a dark background. The same thing had happened on her last visit to Cambridge (she had come with her father, who had tormented him with questions about the age of various colleges and the number of books in the Library, while she and Darwin kept quietly laughing about something or other), and
it came upon him again now, that strange torpor. His light-blue necktie, the sharp points of his soft collar, his double-breasted suit, all seemed to be in order, and yet Martin had the impression, under Sonia’s impenetrable gaze, that he was dressed shabbily, that his hair was badly brushed, that he had shoulders like a furniture mover’s, and that the roundness of his face was the shape of stupidity. No less repulsive were his big knuckles, which had reddened and grown swollen of late, what with his goalkeeping and his boxing lessons. The solid sense of contentment somehow related to the strength in his shoulders, the coolness of sleekly shaven cheeks, the reliability of a recently filled tooth, all of it vanished instantly in Sonia’s presence. And what appeared particularly silly to him was the way his eyebrows petered out: they were thick only at their starting point and then, templeward, took on a look of surprised sparseness.
Supper was served. Mrs. Pavlov, a pudgy and dour lady who resembled her sister (but smiled even more seldom than she), kept a habitual and discreet eye on Irina, seeing to it that her daughter ate decorously, without leaning on the table too much and without licking her knife. Zilanov arrived a moment later, rapidly and energetically inserted a corner of his napkin under his collar and, half-rising in his chair, snatched from clear across the table a roll which he immediately sliced and buttered. His wife was reading a letter from Reval, and, as she read, saying to Martin, “Help yourself.” On his left Irina fidgeted, scratched her armpit, and uttered sounds of endearment addressed to her cold mutton. On his right sat Sonia, and the way she had of taking salt with the tip of her knife, her short black hair with its harsh gloss, and the dimple on her pale cheek ineffably irritated him. After supper there came a telephone call from Darwin, who suggested they go dancing. Sonia played coy for a while,
then agreed. Martin went to change and was already pulling on his silk socks, when Sonia told him through the door that she was tired and would not go after all. Half an hour later Darwin arrived, very gay, very big and elegant, his top hat cocked, with tickets to a very expensive ball in his pocket. Martin told him that Sonia had wilted and gone to bed, whereupon Darwin drank a cup of tepid tea, gave an almost natural yawn, and said that in this world everything was for the best. Martin knew that he had traveled to London for the sole purpose of seeing Sonia, and when Darwin, in his un-needed top hat and opera cloak, went off whistling down the empty dark street, Martin felt very hurt for him. He softly closed the front door and went upstairs to his bedroom. Sonia slipped out into the passage to meet him, wearing a kimono and looking very short in heelless bedroom slippers.
“Is he gone?” she asked.
“Really rotten of you,” Martin commented under his breath without stopping.
“You could have stopped him,” she said after him, adding quickly, “I know what—I’ll go down and ring him up and go dancing, that’s what I’ll do.”
Without answering, Martin slammed his door, angrily brushed his teeth, yanked open his bed as if he wanted to throw somebody out of it, and, dispatching the light with a murderous twist of his fingers, pulled the covers over his head. But a few minutes later the thickness of the blanket did not prevent him from hearing Sonia’s steps hurrying up the passage and her door shutting—was it possible that she had actually been downstairs and telephoned? He listened attentively, and, after a new period of silence, there were her footsteps again, only now they had a different, lighter, almost ethereal sound. Martin could not restrain himself. He stepped out into the corridor and caught sight of Sonia hopping
downstairs in a flamingo-colored frock, a fluffy fan in one hand and something bright encircling her black hair. She had left her door open and the light on. In her room there remained a cloudlet of powder, like the smoke following a shot; a stocking, killed outright, lay under a chair; and the motley innards of the wardrobe had spilled onto the carpet.
Instead of being glad for his friend, Martin felt very hurt. All was still, except for the heavy snores that came from the master bedroom. “God damn her,” he muttered, and for a while debated with himself whether he too should join them at the ball—after all, there were three tickets. He saw himself dashing up the sumptuous stairs, wearing his pumps with flat bows, his dinner jacket and silk shirt with the frilled front (as sported by the dandies that year). The flame of music shot from the open doors. The resilient, tender caress of a girl’s soft leg, which keeps giving way and yet pressing against you, the fragrant hair by your very lips, a cheek that leaves its powder on your silk lapel—all these immemorial and tender banalities stirred Martin deeply. He enjoyed dancing with a fair stranger, enjoyed the vacuous, chaste talk, through which you listen closely to that bewitching, vague something going on inside you and inside her, which will last a couple of bars more and then, finding no resolution, will vanish forever and be utterly forgotten. But while the bond of bodies is still unbroken, the outlines of a potential love affair begin to form, and the rough draft already comprises everything: the sudden silence between two people in some dimly lit room; the man carefully placing with trembling fingers on the edge of an ashtray the just-lit but impedient cigarette; the woman’s eyes slowly closing as in a filmed scene; and the rapt darkness, and in it a point of light, a glossy limousine traveling fast through the rainy night, and suddenly, a white terrace and the dazzling ripple of the sea,
and Martin softly saying to the girl he has carried off, “Your name—what’s your name?” Leafy shadows play on her luminous dress. She gets up, she goes away. The rapacious croupier rakes in Martin’s last chips, and he has nothing left but to thrust his hands into the empty pockets of his dinner jacket and descend slowly into the casino garden and, then, sign on as a longshoreman—and there she is again, aboard someone else’s yacht, sparkling, laughing, flinging coins into the water.