Authors: Vladimir Nabokov
Later her husband arrived from Paris and would come to dinner with her; he was a husband like any other, and I did not pay much
attention to him, except to notice the habit he had before speaking of clearing his throat into his fist with a rapid rumble; and the heavy bright-knobbed black cane with which he would tap on the floor while Matilda transformed the parting with her hostess into a buoyant soliloquy. After a month her husband left, and, the very first night I was seeing her home, Matilda invited me to come up to take a book she had been persuading me to read for a long time, something in French called
Ariane, Jeune Fille Russe
. It was raining as usual, and there were tremulous halos around the street lamps; my right hand was immersed in the hot fur of her moleskin coat; with my left I held an open umbrella, drummed upon by the night. This umbrella—later, in Matilda’s apartment—lay expanded near a steam radiator, and kept dripping, dripping, shedding a tear every half-minute, and so managed to run up a large puddle. As for the book, I forgot to take it.
Matilda was not my first mistress. Before her, I was loved by a seamstress in St. Petersburg. She too was plump, and she too kept advising me to read a certain novelette (
Murochka, the Story of a Woman’s Life
). Both of these ample ladies would emit, during the sexual
storm, a shrill, astonished, infantile peep, and sometimes it seemed to me that it had been a waste of effort, everything I had gone through when escaping from Bolshevist Russia, by crossing, frightened to death, the Finnish border (even if it was by express train and with a prosaic permit), only to pass from one embrace to another almost identical one. Furthermore, Matilda soon began to bore me. She had one constant and, to me, depressing subject of conversation—her husband. This man, she would say, was a noble brute. He would kill her on the spot if he found out. He worshiped her and was savagely jealous. Once in Constantinople he had grabbed an enterprising Frenchman and slapped him several times against the floor, like a rag. He was so passionate, it frightened you. But he was beautiful in his cruelty. I would try to change the subject, but this was Matilda’s hobbyhorse, which she straddled with her strong fat thighs. The image she created of her husband was hard to reconcile with the appearance of the man I had hardly noticed; at the same time I found it highly unpleasant to conjecture that perhaps it was not her fantasy at all, and at that moment a jealous fiend in Paris, sensing his predicament, was acting the banal role
assigned to him by his wife: gnashing his teeth, rolling his eyes, and breathing heavily through the nose.
Often, as I trudged home, my cigarette case empty, my face burning in the auroral breeze as if I had just removed theatrical make-up, every step sending a throb of pain echoing through my head, I would inspect my puny little bliss from this side and that, and marvel, and pity myself, and feel despondent and afraid. The summit of lovemaking was for me but a bleak knoll with a relentless view. After all, in order to live happily, a man must know now and then a few moments of perfect blankness. Yet I was always exposed, always wide-eyed; even in sleep I did not cease to watch over myself, understanding nothing of my existence, growing crazy at the thought of not being able to stop being aware of myself, and envying all those simple people—clerks, revolutionaries, shopkeepers—who, with confidence and concentration, go about their little jobs. I had no shell of that kind; and on those terrible, pastel-blue mornings, as my heels tapped across the wilderness of the city, I would imagine somebody who goes mad because he begins to perceive clearly the motion of the terrestrial sphere: there he is, staggering, trying to keep
his balance, clutching at the furniture; or else settling down in a window seat with an excited grin, like that of the stranger on a train who turns to you with the words: “Really burning up the track, isn’t she!” But soon, all the swaying and rocking would make him sick; he would start sucking on a lemon or an ice cube, and lie down flat on the floor, but all in vain. The motion cannot be stopped, the driver is blind, the brakes are nowhere to be found—and his heart would burst when the speed became intolerable.
And how lonely I was! Matilda, who would inquire coyly if I wrote poetry; Matilda, who on the stairs or at the door would artfully incite me to kiss her, only for the opportunity to give a sham shiver and passionately whisper, “You insane boy …”; Matilda, of course, did not count. And whom else did I know in Berlin? The secretary of an organization for the assistance of
émigrés;
the family that employed me as tutor; Mr. Weinstock, the owner of a Russian bookshop; the little old German lady from whom I had formerly rented a room—a meager list. Thus, my whole defenseless being invited calamity. One evening the invitation was accepted.
I
T was around six. The air indoors was growing heavy with the fall of dusk, and I was barely able to make out the lines of the humorous Chekhov story that I was reading in a stumbling voice to my charges; but I did not dare turn on the lights: those boys had a strange, unchildlike bent for thriftiness, a certain odious housekeeping instinct; they knew the exact prices of sausage, butter, electricity, various makes of cars. As I read aloud
The Double-Bass Romance
, trying vainly to entertain them, and feeling ashamed for myself and for the poor author, I knew they realized my struggle with the blurring dusk and were coolly waiting to see if I would last until the first light came on in the house across the street to set the example. I made it, and light was my reward.
I was just preparing to put greater animation in my voice (at the approach of the most hilarious passage in the story) when suddenly the telephone rang in the hall. We were alone in the flat, and the boys immediately jumped up and raced each other toward the jangling. I remained with the open book in my lap, smiling tenderly at the interrupted line. The call, it turned out, was for me. I sat down in a crackling wicker armchair and put the receiver
to my ear. My pupils stood by, one on my right, the other on my left, imperturbably watching me.
“I’m on my way over,” said a male voice. “You will be home, I trust?”
“Your trust shall not be betrayed,” I answered cheerfully. “But who are you?”
“You don’t recognize me? So much the better—it’ll be a surprise,” said the voice.
“But I’d like to know who is speaking,” I insisted, laughing. (Afterward it was only with horror and shame that I could recall the arch playfulness of my tone.)
“In due time,” said the voice tersely.
Here I really started to frolic. “But why? Why?” I asked. “What an amusing way to …” I realized that I was talking to a vacuum, shrugged, and hung up.
We returned to the parlor. I said, “Now then, where were we?” and, having found the place, resumed reading.
Nevertheless, I felt an odd restlessness. As I read aloud mechanically, I kept wondering who this guest might be. A new arrival from Russia? I vaguely went through the faces and voices I knew—alas, they were not many—and I stopped for some reason at a student named Ushakov. The memory of my single university
year in Russia, and of my loneliness there, hoarded this Ushakov like a treasure. When, during a conversation, I would assume a knowing, faintly dreamy expression at the mention of the festive song
“Gaudeamus igitur”
and reckless student days, it meant I was thinking of Ushakov, even though, God knows, I had had only a couple of chats with him (about political or other trifles, I forget what). It was hardly likely, though, that he would be so mysterious over the telephone. I lost myself in conjecture, imagining now a Communist agent, now an eccentric millionaire in need of a secretary.
The doorbell. Again the boys dashed headlong into the hall. I put down my book and strolled after them. With great gusto and dexterity they drew the little steel bolt, fiddled with some additional gadget, and the door opened.
A strange recollection … Even now, now that many things have changed, my heart sinks when I summon up that strange recollection, like a dangerous criminal from his cell. It was then that a whole wall of my life crumbled, quite noiselessly, as on the silent screen. I understood that something catastrophic was about to happen, but there was undoubtedly
a smile on my face, and, if I am not mistaken, an ingratiating one; and my hand, reaching out, doomed to meet a void, and anticipating that void, nevertheless sought to complete the gesture (associated in my mind with the ring of the phrase “elementary courtesy”).
“Down with that hand,” were the guest’s first words, as he looked at my proffered palm—which was already sinking into an abyss.
No wonder I had not recognized his voice a moment ago. What had come out over the telephone as a certain strained quality distorting a familiar timbre was, in effect, a quite exceptional rage, a thick sound that never until then had I heard in any human voice. That scene remains in my memory like a
tableau vivant:
the brightly lit hall; I, not knowing what to do with my rejected hand; a boy on the right and a boy on the left, both looking not at the visitor but at me; and the visitor himself, in an olive raincoat with fashionable shoulder loops, his face pale as if paralyzed by a photographer’s flash—with protruding eyes, dilated nostrils, and a lip replete with venom under the black equilateral triangle of his trimmed mustache. Then began a barely perceptible movement: his lips smacked as they came unstuck, and the thick black cane in his
hand twitched slightly; I could no longer take my eyes off that cane.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s the matter? There must be a misunderstanding … Surely, a misunderstanding …” At this point I found a humiliating, impossible place for my still unaccommodated, still yearning hand: in a vague attempt to retain my dignity, I let my hand rest on the shoulder of one of my pupils; the boy glanced at it askance.
“Look, my good fellow,” blurted the visitor, “move away just a bit. I shan’t harm them, you don’t have to protect them. What I need is some room, because I’m about to beat the dust out of you.”
“This is not your house,” I said. “You have no right to make a row. I don’t understand what you want of me …”
He hit me. He caught me a loud, hot crack right on the shoulder, and I lurched to one side from the force of the blow, causing the wicker chair to scuttle out of my way like a live thing. He bared his teeth and got ready to hit me again. The blow landed on my raised arm. Here I retreated and dodged into the parlor. He came after me. Another curious detail: I was shouting at the top of my voice, addressing him by name and patronymic, loudly asking
him what I had done to him. When he caught up with me again, I tried to protect myself with a cushion I had grabbed on the run, but he knocked it out of my hand. “This is a disgrace,” I shouted. “I’m unarmed. I’ve been slandered. You’ll pay for this …” I took refuge behind a table, and as before, everything froze for a moment into a tableau. There he was, teeth bared, cane upraised, and, behind him, on either side of the door, stood the boys: perhaps my memory is stylized at this point, but, so help me, I really believe that one was leaning with folded arms against the wall, while the other sat on the arm of a chair, both imperturbably watching the punishment being administered to me. Presently everything was in motion again, and all four of us passed into the next room; the level of his attack lowered viciously, my hands formed an abject fig leaf, and then, with a horrible blinding blow, he whacked me across the face. How curious that I personally could never bring myself to hit anyone, no matter how badly he might have offended me, and now, under his heavy cane, not only was I unable to strike back (not being versed in the manly arts), but even in those moments of pain and humiliation could not imagine myself raising a hand against a fellow
man, especially if that fellow man were angry and strong; nor did I try to escape to my room, where, in a drawer, lay a revolver—acquired, alas, only to frighten off ghosts.
The contemplative immobility of my two pupils, the different poses in which they froze like frescoes at the end of this room or that, the obliging way they turned on the lights the moment I backed into the dark dining room—all this must be a perceptional illusion—disjointed impressions to which I have imparted significance and permanence, and, for that matter, just as arbitrary as the raised knee of a politician stopped by the camera not in the act of dancing a jig but merely in that of crossing a puddle.
In reality, it seems, they were not present throughout my execution; at a certain moment, fearing for their parents’ furniture, they dutifully started to phone the police (an attempt that the man cut short by a thunderous roar), but I do not know where to place this moment—at the beginning, or at that apotheosis of suffering and horror when at last I fell limply to the floor, exposing my rounded back to his blows, and kept repeating hoarsely, “Enough, enough, I have a weak heart … Enough, I have a weak …” My heart, let me remark
parenthetically, has always functioned quite well.
A minute later, it was all over. He lit a cigarette, panting loudly and rattling the matchbox; he hung around for a while, appraising matters, and then, saying something about a “little lesson,” adjusted his hat and hurried out. I immediately got up from the floor and headed for my room. The boys ran after me. One of them tried to scramble through the door. I hurled him away with a blow of the elbow, and I know it hurt. I locked the door, rinsed my face, nearly crying out from the caustic contact of water, then pulled my suitcase from under the bed and began packing. It was hard—my back ached and my left hand did not work properly.
When I went out into the hall with my coat on, carrying the heavy suitcase, the boys reappeared. I did not even glance at them. As I descended the stairs, I felt them watching me from above, straining over the banisters. A little way down I met their music teacher; Tuesday happened to be her day. She was a meek Russian girl with glasses and bandy legs. I did not greet her but, turning away my swollen face and spurred on by the deathly silence of her surprise, rushed out into the street.