Authors: Vladimir Nabokov
When he returned home it was dark in the apartment—the hope darted through his mind that she might already be asleep, but, alas, the door to her bedroom had been underlined with rulerlike precision by a fine-honed point of light.
“Charlatans …,” he thought with a grim contortion. “We’ll have to stick to the original version. I’ll say good night to the dear departed and turn in.” (What about tomorrow? What about the next day? What about all the days after that?)
But in the middle of his farewell speeches about his migraine, by her luxuriant headboard, things suddenly, unexpectedly, and spontaneously took a sharply angled turn and identity became immaterial, so that, after the fact, it was with astonishment that he discovered the corpse of the miraculously vanquished giantess and gazed at the moiré girdle that almost totally concealed her scar.
Of late she had been feeling tolerably well (the only complaint that still tormented her was eructation), but,
during the very first days of their marriage, the pains she knew from the previous winter quietly reappeared. She posited, not unpoetically, that the massive, grouchy organ that had, as it were, dozed away “like an old dog” amid the warmth of incessant pampering was now jealous of her heart, a newcomer that “had been given but a single pat.” Be that as it may, she spent a good month in bed listening intently to this internal turmoil, to the tentative scrabbling and the cautious nibbling; then it all quieted down, she even got up, rummaged through her first husband’s letters, burned some of them, sorted certain exceedingly old small objects—a child’s thimble; a mesh change purse of her mother’s; something else, thin, golden, fluid as time itself. At Christmastime she again grew ill, and her daughter’s planned visit came to nought.
He was unfailingly attentive. He made mooing sounds of consolation and accepted her awkward caresses with concealed hatred when, on occasion, she tried to explain, grimacing, that not she but
it
(a little finger indicated her belly) was responsible for their nocturnal separation, and it all sounded exactly as if she were pregnant (a false pregnancy, a pregnancy with her own death). Always even-tempered, always self-controlled, he sustained the smooth tone he had assumed from the start, and she was grateful for everything—for the old-fashioned gallantry with which he treated her, the polite form of address that in her estimation gave tenderness a dignified dimension,
the way he satisfied her whims, the new radio phonograph, his docile acquiescence to twice changing the nurses who were hired to care for her around the clock.
On trifling errands, she would let him out of her sight no farther than to the corner room, while, when he went out on business, they jointly established beforehand the precise duration of his absence and, since his work did not call for a fixed schedule, on each occasion he had to battle—gaily, but with clenched teeth—for every grain of time. Impotent rage writhed inside him, the ashes of crumbling combinations stifled him, but he was sick of trying to hasten her demise; the very hope of it had become so vulgarized that he preferred to court its antithesis: perhaps by summer she would recover to such a degree that she would let him take the girl to the seashore for a few days. But how could he lay the groundwork? Originally he had imagined that it would be easy, sometime, under the guise of a business trip, to whip over to that town with its black church and its gardens reflected in the river; but when he once mentioned that, by a stroke of luck, he might be able to visit her daughter if he had to travel to a certain destination (he named a nearby city), he had the sensation that some vague, tiny, almost subconscious ember of jealousy had suddenly enlivened her hitherto nonexistent eyes. He hastily changed the subject, and contented himself with the thought that she herself apparently
had promptly forgotten that idiotic flash of intuition, which there was of course no point in reigniting.
The regularity of the fluctuations in her health seemed to him to embody the very mechanics of her existence; that regularity became the regularity of life itself; for his part, he noticed that his work, the precision of his eye, and the faceted transparency of his deductions had begun to suffer from the ceaseless vacillation of his soul between despair and hope, the perpetual ripple of unsatisfied desires, the painful burden of his rolled-up, tucked-away passion—the entire savage, stifling existence that he, and only he, had brought upon himself.
Sometimes he would walk past young girls at play, and sometimes a pretty one would catch his eye; but what that eye perceived was the senselessly smooth movement of slow-motion film, and he himself marveled at how unresponsive and occupied he was, how specifically the sensations recruited from every side—melancholy, avidity, tenderness, madness—were now concentrated upon the image of that absolutely unique and irreplaceable being who used to rush past with sun and shade contending for her dress. And sometimes, at night, when everything had quieted down—the radio phonograph, the water in the bathroom, the nurse’s soft white footfalls, that endlessly protracted sound (worse than any bang) with which she closed the doors, the teaspoon’s cautious tinkle, the click-click of the medicine cabinet, that person’s distant, sepulchral
lamentations—when it had all grown totally still, he would lie supine and evoke the one and only image, entwine his smiling victim with eight hands, which turned into eight tentacles affixed to every detail of her nudity, and at last he would dissolve in a black mist and lose her in the blackness, and the blackness spread everywhere, and was but the blackness of the night in his solitary bedroom.
I
N SPRING THE ILLNESS
seemed to take a turn for the worse; there was a consultation and she was transported to the hospital. There, on the eve of the operation, she spoke to him with sufficient clarity, in spite of her suffering, about the will, the attorney, what he must do in case tomorrow she … She made him swear twice—yes, twice—that he would treat the girl as if he were her real … And that he would see to it that she bore no ill feelings toward her late mother. “Maybe we should have her come after all,” he said, louder than intended, “what do you think?” But she had already finished giving
instructions, and tightly shut her eyes in agony; he stood for a while by the window, heaved a sigh, kissed the yellow fist on the folded-back sheet, and left.
Early the following morning he had a call from one of the doctors at the hospital, informing him that the operation had just ended, that it had apparently been a total success, surpassing the surgeon’s every hope, but that it would be best not to visit until tomorrow.
“Success, eh? Total, eh?” he muttered incoherently, rushing from room to room, “Isn’t that just dandy.… Congratulate us—we’re going to convalesce, we’re going to bloom.… What’s going on here?” he abruptly cried in a guttural voice, giving the toilet door such a slam that the crystalware in the dining room reacted with fright. “We’ll see about this,” he continued amid the panic-stricken chairs, “Yes sirree … I’ll show you a success! Success, suckercess.” He mocked the pronunciation of sniveling fate. “Just nifty, isn’t it. We’ll keep on living and thriving, and marry off our daughter nice and early—no matter if she’s a little frail, for the bridegroom will be a lusty fellow, he’ll go ramming rough-shod into her frailty.… No, I’ve had enough of this! I’ve taken all the derision I’m going to! I too have a voice in the matter! I …”—and suddenly his roving rage happened upon an unexpected prey.
He froze, his fingers ceased twitching, his eyes rolled up for an instant—and he returned from this brief stupor
with a smile. “I’ve had enough,” he kept repeating, but with a different, almost propitiatory tone.
He immediately obtained the needed information: there was a most convenient express at 12:23, arriving at exactly 4:00
P.M
. The return connection was not as simple … he would have to hire a car and leave immediately—by nightfall we’ll be back here, the two of us, in utter seclusion, the little thing will be tired and sleepy, get your clothes off quick, I’ll rock you to sleep—that’s all, just some cosy cuddling, who wants to be sentenced to hard labor (although, incidentally, hard labor now would be better than some bastard in the future)… the stillness, her naked clavicles, the little straps, the buttons in back, the foxlike silk between her shoulder blades, her sleepy yawns, her hot armpit, her legs, the tenderness—mustn’t lose my head … although what could be more natural than bringing home my little stepdaughter, deciding on it after all—they’re cutting open her mother, aren’t they?… Normal sense of responsibility, normal paternal zeal, besides, didn’t the mother herself ask me to “take care of the girl”? And while the other is quietly reposing in the hospital, what—we repeat—what could be more natural if here, where my darling couldn’t possibly disturb anybody … At the same time she’ll be close by, one never knows, one must be ready for any eventuality.… A success, was it? All the better—their character improves as they convalesce, and if madam still elects to be angry,
we’ll explain, we’ll explain, we wanted to do what was best, maybe we got a little flustered, we admit, but all with the best …
In a joyful rush, he changed the sheets on his bed (in
her
former bedroom); tidied up summarily; bathed; called off a business meeting; canceled the char; had a quick snack in his “bachelor” restaurant; bought a supply of dates, ham, rye bread, whipped cream, muscat grapes—had he forgotten anything?—and, when he got home, disintegrated into multiple packages and kept visualizing how she would pass here and sit down there, springily bracing herself behind her back with her slender bare arms, all curly and dark—and at that moment there was a call from the hospital asking him to look in after all; on the way to the station he reluctantly stopped by and learned that the person was no more.
He was seized first of all by a sense of enraged disappointment: it meant that his plan had fallen through, that this night with all its warm, cosy closeness had been snatched from him, and that, when she arrived in response to a telegram, it would naturally be in the company of that hag and that hag’s husband, and the two of them would settle in for a good week. But the very nature of this first reaction, the momentum of this shortsighted rush of emotion, created a vacuum, since an immediate transition from vexation at her death (which happened to have temporarily interfered) to gratitude (for the basic
course destiny had taken) was impossible. Meanwhile, that vacuum was filling with preliminary, grayly human content. Sitting on a bench in the hospital garden, gradually calming down, preparing for the various steps of the funeral procedure, he mentally reviewed with appropriate sadness what he had just seen with his own eyes: the polished forehead, the translucent nostrils with the pearly wart on one side, the ebony cross, all of death’s jewelry work. He parenthetically gave surgery a contemptuous dismissal and started thinking what a superb period she had had under his tutelage, how he had incidentally provided her with some real happiness to brighten the last days of her vegetative existence, and thence it was already a natural transition to crediting clever Fate with splendid behavior, and to the first delicious throb in his bloodstream:
the lone wolf was getting ready to don Granny’s nightcap.
He was expecting them next day at lunchtime. The doorbell rang on schedule, but the late person’s friend stood on the doorstep alone (extending her bony hands and taking unfair advantage of a severe cold for the exigencies of obvious condolence): neither her husband nor “the little orphan” could come because both were laid up with the flu. His disappointment was alleviated by the thought that it was best this way—why spoil things? The girl’s presence amid this combination of funereal encumbrances would have been just as agonizing as had
been her arrival for the wedding, and it would be much more sensible to spend the coming days getting the formalities over with and thoroughly preparing a radical leap into complete safety. The only part that irritated him was the way the woman said “both”—the bond of illness (as if the two patients were sharing a common sickbed), the bond of contagion (maybe that vulgarian, following her up a steep staircase, liked to paw her bared thighs).
Feigning total shock—which was simplest of all, as murderers know too—he sat like a benumbed widower, his larger-than-life hands lowered, scarcely moving his lips in reply to her advice that he relieve the constipation of grief with tears, and watched with a turbid gaze as she blew her nose (all three were united by the cold—that was better). When, absently but greedily attacking the ham, she said such things as “At least her suffering did not last long” or “Thank God she was unconscious,” on the lumped-together assumption that suffering and sleep were the natural human lot, that the worms had kind little faces, and that the supreme supine flotation took place in a blissful stratosphere, he nearly answered that death, as such, always had been and always would be an obscene idiot, but realized in time that this might cause his consoler to have disagreeable doubts about his ability to impart a religious and moral education to the adolescent girl.
There were very few people at the funeral (but for some
reason a friend of sorts from former times, a gold craftsman, showed up with his wife), and later, in the home-bound car, a plump lady (who had also been at his farcical wedding) told him, compassionately but in no uncertain terms (as his bowed head bobbed with the car’s motion), that now, at least, something must be done about the child’s abnormal situation (meanwhile his late spouse’s friend pretended to gaze out into the street), and that paternal concerns would undoubtedly give him the needed consolation, and a third woman (an infinitely remote relative of the deceased) joined in, saying, “And what a pretty girl she is! You’ll have to watch her like a hawk—she’s already biggish for her age, just wait another three years and the boys will be sticking to her like flies, you’ll have no end of worries,” and meanwhile he was guffawing and guffawing to himself, floating on featherbeds of happiness.