The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (18 page)

“Lugano, Como, Venice …,” he murmured as he sat on the bench under a soundless hazelnut tree, and right away he heard the subdued plashing of sunny towns, and then, closer, the tinkling of bells, the whistle of pigeon wings, a high-pitched laugh akin to the laugh of Maureen, and the ceaseless shuffling of unseen passersby. He
wanted to halt his hearing there, but his hearing, like a torrent, rushed ever deeper. Another instant and, unable now to halt his extraordinary plunge, he was hearing not only their footfalls but their hearts. Millions of hearts were swelling and thundering, and Simpson, coming fully to his senses, realized that
all
those sounds,
all
those hearts were concentrated in the frenzied beat of his own.

He raised his head. A light wind, like the motion of a silk cape, passed along the avenue. The sun’s rays were a gentle yellow.

He rose with a feeble smile and, forgetting his racquet on the bench, went toward the house. It was time to dress for dinner.

“It’s hot with this fur on, though! No, Colonel, it’s only cat. It’s true my Venetian rival wore something more expensive. But the color is the same, isn’t it? A perfect likeness, in short.”

“If I dared I’d coat you with varnish, and send Luciani’s canvas up to the attic,” courteously countered the Colonel, who, in spite of his strict principles, was not averse to challenging a lady as attractive as Maureen to a flirtatious verbal duel.

“I would split with laughter,” she parried.

“I fear, Mrs. McGore, that we make a terribly poor background for you,” said Frank, with a broad, boyish grin. “We are crude, complacent anachronisms. Now if your husband were to don a coat of armor—”

“Fiddlesticks,” said McGore. “The impression of antiquity can be evoked as easily as the impression of color by pressing one’s upper eyelid. On occasion I allow myself the luxury of imagining today’s world, our machines, our fashions, as they will appear to our descendants four or five hundred years hence. I assure you that I feel as ancient as a Renaissance monk.”

“Have some more wine, my dear Simpson,” offered the Colonel.

Bashful, quiet Simpson, who was seated between McGore and his wife, had put his large fork to work prematurely, during the second course when he should have used the small one, so that he had only the small fork and a large knife for the meat course, and now, as he manipulated them, one of his hands had a kind of limp. When the main course was brought around the second time, he helped himself out of nervousness, then noticed he was the only one eating and everyone
was waiting impatiently for him to finish. He got so flustered that he pushed away his still-full plate, nearly knocked over his glass, and began slowly reddening. He had already come ablaze several times during dinner, not because he actually had something to be ashamed about, but because he thought how he might blush for no reason, and then the pink blood colored his cheeks, his forehead, even his neck, and it was no more possible to halt that blind, agonizing, hot flush than to confine the emerging sun behind its cloud. At the first such onset he deliberately dropped his napkin, but, when he raised his head, he was a fearful sight: at any moment his starched collar would catch fire too. Another time he tried to suppress the onslaught of the hot, silent wave by addressing a question to Maureen—whether or not she liked playing lawn tennis—but Maureen, alas, did not hear him, asked him what he had said, whereupon, as he repeated his foolish phrase, Simpson instantly blushed to the point of tears and Maureen, out of charity, turned away and started on some other topic.

The fact that he was sitting next to her, sensing the warmth of her cheek and of her shoulder, from which, as in the painting, the gray fur was slipping, and that she seemed about to pull it up, but stopped at Simpson’s question, extending and twining her slender, elongated fingers, filled him with such languor that there was a moist sparkle in his eyes from the crystal blaze of the wineglasses, and he kept imagining that the circular table was an illuminated island, slowly revolving, floating somewhere, gently carrying off those seated around it. Through the open French windows one could see, in the distance, the skittle shapes of the terrace balustrade, and the breath of the blue night air was stifling. Maureen’s nostrils inhaled this air; her soft, totally dark eyes remained unsmiling as they glided from face to face, even when a smile would faintly raise a corner of her tender, unpainted lips. Her face remained within a somewhat swarthy shadow, and only her forehead was bathed by the levigate light. She said fatuous, funny things. Everyone laughed, and the wine gave the Colonel a nice flush. McGore, who was peeling an apple, encircled it with his palm like a monkey, his small face with its halo of gray hair wrinkled from the effort, and the silver knife tightly clutched in his dark, hairy fist detached endless spirals of red and yellow peel. Frank’s face was not visible to Simpson, since between them stood a bouquet of flaming, fleshy dahlias in a sparkling vase.

After supper, which ended with port and coffee, the Colonel, Maureen, and Frank sat down to play bridge, with a dummy since the other two did not play.

The old restorer went out, bandy-legged, onto the darkened balcony
and Simpson followed, feeling Maureen’s warmth recede behind him.

McGore eased himself with a grunt into a wicker chair near the balustrade and offered Simpson a cigar. Simpson perched sideways on the railing and lit up awkwardly, narrowing his eyes and inflating his cheeks.

“I guess you liked that old rake del Piombo’s Venetian lass,” said McGore, releasing a rosy puff of smoke into the dark.

“Very much,” replied Simpson, and added, “Of course, I don’t know anything about pictures—”

“All the same, you liked it,” nodded McGore. “Splendid. That’s the first step toward understanding. I, for one, have dedicated my whole life to this.”

“She looks absolutely real,” Simpson said pensively. “It’s enough to make one believe mysterious tales about portraits coming to life. I read somewhere that some king descended from a canvas, and, as soon as—”

McGore dissolved in a subdued, brittle laugh. “That’s nonsense, of course. But another phenomenon does occur—the inverse, so to speak.”

Simpson glanced at him. In the dark of the night his starched shirtfront bulged like a whitish hump, and the flame of his cigar, like a ruby pinecone, illumined his small, wrinkled face from below. He had had a lot of wine and was, apparently, in the mood to talk.

“Here is what happens,” McGore continued unhurriedly. “Instead of inviting a painted figure to step out of its frame, imagine someone managing to step into the picture himself. Makes you laugh, doesn’t it? And yet I’ve done it many a time. I have had the good fortune of visiting all the art museums of Europe, from The Hague to Petersburg and from London to Madrid. When I found a painting I particularly liked, I would stand directly in front of it and concentrate all my willpower on one thought: to enter it. It was an eerie sensation, of course. I felt like the apostle about to step off his bark onto the water’s surface. But what bliss ensued! Let us say I was facing a Flemish canvas, with the Holy Family in the foreground, against a smooth, limpid, landscape. You know, with a road zigzagging like a white snake, and green hills. Then, finally, I would take the plunge. I broke free from real life and entered the painting. A miraculous sensation! The coolness, the placid air permeated with wax and incense. I became a living part of the painting and everything around me came alive. The pilgrims’ silhouettes on the road began to move. The Virgin Mary was saying something in a rapid Flemish patter. The wind rippled through
the conventional flowers. The clouds were gliding.… But the delight did not last long. I would get the feeling that I was softly congealing, cohering with the canvas, merging into a film of oil color. Then I would shut my eyes tight, yank with all my strength, and leap out. There was a gentle plop, as when you pull your foot out of the mud. I would open my eyes, and find myself lying on the floor beneath a splendid but lifeless painting.”

Simpson listened with attention and embarrassment. When McGore paused, he gave a barely perceptible start and looked around. Everything was as before. Below, the garden breathed the darkness, one could see the dimly lit dining room through the glass door, and, in the distance, through another open doorway, a bright corner of the parlor with three figures playing cards. What strange things McGore was saying!…

“You understand, don’t you,” he continued, shaking off some scaly ash, “that in another instant the painting would have sucked me in forever. I would have vanished into its depths and lived on in its landscape, or else, grown weak with terror, and lacking the strength either to return to the real world or to penetrate the new dimension, I would have jelled into a figure painted on the canvas, like the anachronism Frank was talking about. Yet, despite the danger, I have yielded to temptation time after time.… Oh, my friend, I’ve fallen in love with Madonnas! I remember my first infatuation—a Madonna with an azure corona, by the delicate Raffaello.… Beyond her, at a distance, two men stood by a column, calmly chatting. I eavesdropped on their conversation—they were discussing the worth of some dagger.… But the most enchanting Madonna of all comes from the brush of Bernardo Luini. All his creations contain the quiet and the delicacy of the lake on whose shore he was born, Lago Maggiore. The most delicate of masters. His name even yielded a new adjective,
luinesco
. His best Madonna has long, caressingly lowered eyes, and her apparel has light-blue, rose-red, misty-orange tints. A gaseous, rippling haze encircles her brow, and that of her reddish-haired infant. He raises a pale apple toward her, she looks at it lowering her gentle, elongated eyes … Luinesque eyes … God, how I kissed them.…”

McGore fell silent and a dreamy smile tinged his thin lips, lighted by the cigar’s flame. Simpson held his breath and, as before, felt he was slowly gliding off into the night.

“Complications did occur,” McGore went on after clearing his throat. “I got an ache in my kidneys after a goblet of strong cider that a plump Rubens bacchante once served me, and I caught such a chill on the foggy, yellow skating rink of one of the Dutchmen that I went
on coughing and bringing up phlegm for a whole month. That’s the kind of thing that can happen, Mr. Simpson.”

McGore’s chair creaked as he rose and straightened his waistcoat. “Got carried away,” he remarked dryly. “Time for bed. God knows how long they’ll go on slapping their cards about. I’m off—good night.”

He crossed the dining room and the parlor, nodding to the players as he went, and disappeared in the shadows beyond. Simpson was left alone on his balustrade. His ears rang with McGore’s high-pitched voice. The magnificent starry night reached to the very balcony, and the enormous velvety shapes of the black trees were motionless. Through the French window, beyond a band of darkness, he could see the pink-hued parlor lamp, the table, the players’ faces rouged by the light. He saw the Colonel rise. Frank followed suit. From afar, as if over the telephone, came the Colonel’s voice. “I’m an old man, I turn in early. Good night, Mrs. McGore.”

And Maureen’s laughing voice: “I’ll go in a minute too. Or else my husband will be cross with me.…”

Simpson heard the door close in the distance behind the Colonel. Then an extraordinary thing happened. From his vantage point in the darkness he saw Maureen and Frank, now alone far off in that lacuna of mellow light, slip into each other’s arms, he saw Maureen fling back her head and bend it back farther and farther beneath Frank’s violent and prolonged kiss. Then, catching up her fallen fur and giving Frank’s hair a ruffle, she disappeared into the distance with a muffled slam of the door. Frank smoothed his hair with a smile, thrust his hands in his pockets, and, whistling softly, crossed the dining room on his way to the balcony. Simpson was so flabbergasted that he froze still, his fingers clutching the railing, and gazed with horror as the starched shirtfront and the dark shoulder approached through the glistening glass. When he came out onto the balcony and saw his friend’s silhouette in the dark, Frank gave a slight shudder and bit his lip.

Simpson awkwardly crawled off the railing. His legs were trembling. He made a heroic effort: “Marvelous night. McGore and I have been chatting out here.”

Frank said calmly, “He lies a lot, that McGore. On the other hand, when he gets going he’s worth a listen.”

“Yes, it’s very curious.…” lamely concurred Simpson.

“The Big Dipper,” said Frank and yawned with his mouth closed. Then, in an even voice, he added, “Of course I know that you are a perfect gentleman, Simpson.”