The Luzhin Defense (15 page)

The man was evidently sound asleep. He was wearing a black overcoat with strips of velvet on the lapels. His fat face with its heavy chin and convex eyelids was glossy in the light of the streetlamp. “Let’s wait for a taxi,” said Kurt and followed the example of Karl, who had squatted on the curbing. “This night will come to an end,” he said confidently and added, looking at the sky: “How they revolve.” “Stars,” explained Karl and both sat still, staring upward at the wonderful, pale, nebulous abyss, where the stars flowed in an arc. “Pulvermacher’s also looking,” said Kurt after a silence. “No, he’s sleeping,” objected Karl, glancing at the fat, motionless face. “Sleeping,” agreed Kurt.

A light glided over the asphalt and the same good-natured taxi that had taken Günther away somewhere, softly pulled in alongside the sidewalk. “Another one?” laughed the driver. “They could have gone together.” “But where?” Karl asked Kurt sleepily. “There must be an address of some kind—let’s look in his pockets …” the latter answered vaguely. Swaying and involuntarily nodding, they bent over the motionless man and the fact that his
overcoat was unbuttoned facilitated their further explorations. “Velvet waistcoat,” said Kurt. “Poor fellow, poor fellow …” In the very first pocket they found a postcard folded in two, which parted in their hands, and one half with the receiver’s address on it slipped down and vanished without trace. On the remaining half, however, they found another address that had been written across the card and thickly underlined. On the other side there was just a single level line, cut short at the left; but even if it had been possible to place it side by side with the fallen-off and lost half the meaning of this line would hardly have become any clearer. “Bac berepom,” read Kurt mistaking the Russian letters for Latin ones, which was excusable. The address found on the postcard was told to the driver and then they had to thrust the heavy, lifeless body into the car, and again the driver came to their aid. On the door large chess squares—the blazon of Berlin taxis—showed in the light of the streetlamp. Finally the jam-packed motorcar moved off.

Karl fell asleep on the way. His body and the unknown’s body and the body of Kurt, who was sitting on the floor, came into soft, involuntary contact at every turn and subsequently Kurt finished up on the seat and Karl and most of the unknown fellow on the floor. When the car stopped and the driver opened the door he was unable at first to make out how many people were inside. Karl woke up immediately, but the hatless man was as motionless as before. “I’m curious to know what you’ll do with your friend now,” said the driver. “They’re probably waiting for him,” said Kurt. The driver, considering he had done his job and carried enough heavyweights for the night, raised his flag and announced the fare. “I’ll pay,” said Karl. “No, I will,”
said Kurt. “I found him first.” This argument convinced Karl. The car was emptied with difficulty, and departed. Three people remained on the sidewalk: one of them lying with his head resting against a stone step.

Swaying and sighing, Kurt and Karl moved to the middle of the street and then, addressing themselves to the sole lighted window in the house, shouted hoarsely, and immediately, with unexpected responsiveness, the light-slashed blind trembled and was pulled up. A young woman looked out of the window. Not knowing how to begin, Kurt smirked, then, pulling himself together, said boldly and loudly: “Miss, we’ve brought Pulvermacher.” The woman gave no answer and the blind descended with a rattle. One could see, however, that she stayed by the window. “We found him in the street,” said Karl uncertainly, addressing the window. The blind went up again. “A velvet waistcoat,” Kurt considered it necessary to explain. The window emptied, but a moment later the darkness behind the front door disintegrated and through the glass appeared an illuminated staircase, marble as far as the first landing, and this newborn staircase had not had time to congeal completely before swift feminine legs appeared on the stairs. A key grated in the lock and the door opened. On the sidewalk with his back to the steps lay a stout man in black.

Meanwhile the staircase continued to spawn people.… A gentleman appeared wearing bedroom slippers, black trousers and a collarless starched shirt, and behind him came a pale, stocky maid with scuffers on her bare feet. Everybody bent over Luzhin, and the guiltily grinning, completely drunk strangers kept explaining something,
while one of them insistently proffered half a postcard, like a visiting card. The five of them carried Luzhin up the stairs and his fiancée, supporting the heavy, precious head, let out a cry when the light over the staircase suddenly went out. In the darkness everything swung, there was a knocking and a shuffling and a puffing, someone took a step backwards and invoked God’s name in German, and when the light came on again one of the strangers was sitting on a stair and the other was being crushed by Luzhin’s body, while higher up, on the landing, stood Mother in a gaudily embroidered robe, surveying with bright prominent eyes the lifeless body that her husband, groaning and muttering, was supporting, and the large awful head that lay on her daughter’s shoulder. They carried Luzhin into the drawing room. The young strangers clicked their heels, trying to introduce themselves to someone, and shied away from the little tables laden with porcelain. They were seen at once in all the rooms. No doubt they wanted to leave but were unable to make it to the front hall. They were found on all the divans, in the bathroom and on the trunk in the hallway, and there was no way of getting rid of them. Their number was unclear—a fluctuating, blurred number. But after a while they disappeared, and the maid said that she had let two of them out and that the rest must still be sprawling around somewhere, and that drunkenness ruins a man, and that her sister’s fiancé also drank.

“Congratulations, he’s pickled,” said the mistress of the house, looking at Luzhin, who was lying like a corpse, half-undressed and covered with a laprobe, on a couch in the drawing room. “Congratulations.” And strange thing: the
fact that Luzhin was drunk pleased her, evoked a warm sentiment with regard to Luzhin. In such revelry she detected something human and natural, and even a certain daring, a breadth of spirit. This was a situation in which people she knew found themselves, good people, merry people. (And why not, she reasoned, these troubled times knock one off balance so no wonder our Russian lads turn to drink, the green dragon and comforter, from time to time.…) But when it turned out there was no smell of vodka or wine coming from Luzhin, and he was sleeping queerly, not at all like a drunken man, she was disappointed and chided herself for being able to presuppose a single natural inclination in Luzhin. While the doctor, who came at dawn, was examining him, a change occurred in Luzhin’s face, his eyelids lifted and dim eyes looked out from beneath them. And only then did his fiancée come out of that numbness of the soul that had possessed her ever since she saw the body lying by the front steps. It is true she had been expecting something terrible, but this precise horror had been beyond her imagination. Last night when Luzhin had not visited them as usual she had called the chess café and been told that play had finished long ago. Then she called the hotel and they replied that Luzhin had still not returned. She went out onto the street, thinking that perhaps Luzhin was waiting by the locked door, and then called the hotel again, and then consulted her father about notifying the police. “Nonsense,” her father said decisively. “There must be plenty of friends of his around. The man’s gone to a party.” But she knew perfectly well that Luzhin had no friends and that there was something senseless about his absence.

And now, looking at Luzhin’s large, pale face, she so brimmed with aching, tender pity that it seemed as if without this pity inside her there would be no life either. It was impossible to think of this inoffensive man sprawling in the street and his soft body being handled by drunks; she could not bear to think that everybody had taken his mysterious swoon for the flabby, vulgar sleep of a reveler and had expected a devil-may-care snore from his helpless quietude. Such pity, such pain. And this outmoded, eccentric waistcoat that one could not bear to look at without tears, and that poor curl, and the bare, white neck all creased like a child’s.… And all this had happened because of her … she had not kept an eye on him, had not kept an eye on him. She should have stayed by him the whole time, not allowed him to play too much … and how was it he had not been run over yet by a car, and why had she not guessed that at any minute he might topple over, paralyzed by this chess fatigue? … “Luzhin,” she said smiling, as if he could see her smile. “Luzhin, everything’s all right. Luzhin, do you hear me?”

As soon as he was taken to the hospital she went to the hotel for his things, and at first they would not let her into his room, and this led to long explanations and a telephone call to the hospital by a rather cheeky hotel employee, after which she had to pay Luzhin’s bill for the last week, and she did not have enough money and more explanations were necessary, and it seemed to her that the mockery of Luzhin was continuing, and it was difficult to hold back her tears. And when, refusing the coarse help of the hotel chambermaid, she began to gather up Luzhin’s things, the feeling of pity rose to an extreme pitch. Among his things
were some that he must have been carrying around with him for ages, not noticing them and never throwing them out—unnecessary, unexpected things: a canvas belt with a metallic buckle in the shape of a letter S and with a leather pocket on the side, a miniature penknife for a watch chain, inlaid with mother of pearl, a collection of Italian postcards—all blue sky and madonnas and a lilac haze over Vesuvius; and unmistakably St. Petersburg things: a tiny abacus with red and white counters, a desk calendar with turn-back pages for a completely non-calendar year—1918. All this was kicking about in a drawer, among some clean but crumpled shirts, whose colored stripes and starched cuffs evoked a picture of long-gone years. There also she found a collapsible opera hat bought in London, and in it the visiting card of somebody named Valentinov.… The toilet articles were in such a state that she resolved to leave them behind—and to buy him a rubber sponge in place of that unbelievable loofah. A chess set, a cardboard box full of notes and diagrams, and a pile of chess magazines she wrapped up in a separate package: he did not need this now. When the valise and small trunk were full and locked, she looked once more into all the corners and retrieved from under the bed a pair of astonishingly old, torn, laceless brown shoes that served Luzhin in place of bedroom slippers. Carefully she pushed them back under the bed.

From the hotel she went to the chess café, remembering that Luzhin had been without his cane and hat and thinking that perhaps he had left them there. There were lots of people in the tournament hall, and Turati, standing by the coat rack, was jauntily taking off his overcoat. She realized that she had come just as play was about to be resumed, and
that nobody knew of Luzhin’s illness. Never mind, she thought with a certain malicious satisfaction. Let them wait. She found the cane but there was no hat. And after glancing with hatred at the small table, where the pieces had already been set out, and at the broad-shouldered Turati, who was rubbing his hands and deeply clearing his throat like a bass singer, she swiftly left the café, reentered the taxi on top of which Luzhin’s checked little trunk showed touchingly green, and returned to the sanatorium.

She was not at home when yesterday’s young men reappeared. They came to apologize for their tempestuous nocturnal intrusion. They were well dressed, they scraped and bowed and asked after the gentleman they had brought home the night before. They were thanked for delivering him and were told for the sake of decorum that he had slept it off wonderfully after some friendly revels, at which his colleagues had honored him on the occasion of his betrothal. After sitting for ten minutes the young men rose and went away quite satisfied. At about the same time a distracted little man having some connection with the organization of the tournament arrived at the sanatorium. He was not admitted to see Luzhin; the composed young lady who spoke to him informed him coldly that Luzhin had overtired himself and it was uncertain when he would resume his chess activities. “That’s awful, that’s incredible,” plaintively repeated the little man several times. “An unfinished game! And such a good game! Give the Maestro … give the Maestro my anxious wishes, my best wishes …” He waved a hand hopelessly and plodded to the exit, shaking his head.

And the newspapers printed an announcement that
Luzhin had had a nervous breakdown before finishing the deciding game and that, according to Turati, black was bound to lose because of the weakness of the Pawn on f4. And in all the chess clubs the experts made long studies of the positions of the pieces, pursued possible continuations and noted white’s weakness at d3, but nobody could find the key to indisputable victory.

One night soon after this, there took place a long brewing, long rumbling and at last breaking, futile, disgracefully loud, but unavoidable scene. She had just returned from the sanatorium and was hungrily eating hot buckwheat cereal and relating that Luzhin was better. Her parents exchanged looks and then it began.

“I hope,” said her mother resonantly, “that you have renounced your crazy intention.” “More please,” she asked, holding out her plate. “Out of a certain feeling of delicacy,” continued her mother, and here her father quickly took up the torch. “Yes,” he said, “out of delicacy your mother has said nothing to you these past days—until your friend’s situation cleared up. But now you must listen to us. You yourself know that our main desire, and care, and aim, and in general … desire is for you to be all right, for you to be happy, et cetera. But for this …” “In my time parents would simply have forbidden it,” put in her mother, “that’s all.” “No, no, what’s forbidding got to do with this? You listen to me, my pet. You’re not eighteen years old, but twenty-five, and I can see nothing whatsoever enticing or
poetic in all that has happened.” “She just likes to annoy us,” interrupted her mother again. “It’s just one continuous nightmare.…” “What exactly are you talking about?” asked the daughter finally and smiled from beneath lowered brows, resting her elbows softly on the table and looking from her father to her mother. “About the fact that it’s time you ceased to be silly,” cried her mother. “About the fact that marriage to a penniless crackpot is nonsense.” “Ach,” uttered the daughter, and stretching her arm out on the table she put her head upon it. “Here’s what,” her father began again. “We suggest you go to the Italian lakes. Go with Mamma to the Italian lakes. You can’t imagine what heavenly spots there are there. I remember the first time I saw Isola Bella …” Her shoulders began to twitch from half-suppressed laughter; then she lifted her head and continued to laugh softly, keeping her eyes closed. “What is it you want?” asked her mother and banged on the table. “First,” she replied, “that you stop shouting. Second, that Luzhin gets completely well.” “Isola Bella means Beautiful Island,” continued her father hastily, trying with a meaningful grimace to intimate to his wife that he alone would manage it. “You can’t imagine … An azure sky, and the heat, and magnolias, and the superb hotels at Stresa—and of course tennis, dancing … And I particularly remember—what do you call them—those insects that light up …” “Well and what then?” asked the mother with rapacious curiosity. “What then, when your friend—if he doesn’t die …” “That depends on him,” said the daughter, trying to speak calmly. “I can’t abandon him. And I won’t. Period.” “You’ll be in the madhouse with him—that’s where you’ll be, my girl!” “Mad or
not …” began the daughter with a trembling smile. “Doesn’t Italy tempt you?” cried her father. “The girl is crazy. You won’t marry this chess moron!” “Moron yourself. If I want to I’ll marry him. You’re a narrow-minded, and wicked woman …” “Now, now, now, that’s enough, that’s enough,” mumbled her father. “I won’t let him set foot in here again,” panted her mother; “that’s final.” The daughter began to cry soundlessly and left the dining room, banging into a corner of the sideboard as she passed and letting out a plaintive “damn it!” The offended sideboard went on vibrating for a long time.