The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (34 page)

“You’re probably expecting company, Mother,” observed Nikolay, and not quite knowing what to say next, energetically threw off his overcoat.

She moved away from him toward the table, which was set for a meal and sparkled with crystal in the semidarkness; then she came back toward him, and mechanically glanced at herself in the shadow-blurred mirror.

“So many years have passed.… Goodness! I can hardly believe my eyes. Oh, yes, I have friends coming tonight. I’ll call them off. I’ll phone them. I’ll do something. I must call them off.… Oh, Lord.…”

She pressed against him, palpating him to find out how real he was.

“Calm down, Mother, what’s the matter with you—this is overdoing it. Let’s sit down somewhere.
Comment vas-tu?
How does life treat you?”… And, for some reason fearing the answers to his questions, he started telling her about himself, in the snappy neat way he had, puffing on his pipe, trying to drown his astonishment in words and smoke. It turned out that, after all, she had seen his ad and had
been in touch with the old journalist and been on the point of writing to Nikolay—always on the point.… Now that he had seen her face distorted by its make-up and her artificially fair hair he felt that her voice, too, was no longer the same. And as he described his adventures, without a moment’s pause, he glanced around the half-lit, quivering room, at its awful middle-class trappings—the toy cat on the mantelpiece, the coy screen from behind which protruded the foot of the bed, the picture of Friedrich the Great playing the flute, the bookless shelf with the little vases in which the reflected lights darted up and down like mercury.… As his eyes roamed around he also inspected something he had previously only noticed in passing: that table—a table set for two, with liqueurs, a bottle of Asti, two tall wine glasses, and an enormous pink cake adorned with a ring of still unlit little candles. “…  Of course, I immediately jumped out of my tent, and what do you think it turned out to be? Come on, guess!”

She seemed to emerge from a trance, and gave him a wild look (she was reclining next to him on the divan, her temples compressed between her hands, and her peach-colored stockings gave off an unfamiliar sheen).

“Aren’t you listening, Mother?”

“Why, yes—I am.…”

And now he noticed something else: she was oddly absent, as if she were listening not to his words but to a doomful thing coming from afar, menacing and inevitable. He went on with his jolly narrative, but then stopped again and asked, “That cake—in whose honor is it? Looks awfully good.”

His mother responded with a flustered smile. “Oh, it’s a little stunt. I told you I was expecting company.”

“It reminded me awfully of Petersburg,” said Nikolay. “Remember how you once made a mistake and forgot one candle? I had turned ten, but there were only nine candles.
Tu escamotas
my birthday. I bawled my head off. And how many do we have here?”

“Oh, what does it matter?” she shouted, and rose, almost as if she wanted to block his view of the table. “Why don’t you tell me instead what time it is? I must ring up and cancel the party.… I must do something.”

“Quarter past seven,” said Nikolay.

“Trop tard, trop tard!”
she raised her voice again. “All right! At this point it no longer matters.…”

Both fell silent. She resumed her seat. Nikolay was trying to force himself to hug her, to cuddle up to her, to ask, “Listen, Mother—what has happened to you? Come on: out with it.” He took another
look at the brilliant table and counted the candles ringing the cake. There were twenty-five of them. Twenty-five! And he was already twenty-eight.…

“Please don’t examine my room like that!” said his mother. “You look like a regular detective! It’s a horrid hole. I would gladly move elsewhere, but I sold the villa that Kind left me.” Abruptly she gave a small gasp: “Wait a minute—what was that? Did you make that noise?”

“Yes,” answered Nikolay. “I’m knocking the ashes out of my pipe. But tell me: you do still have enough money? You’re not having any trouble making ends meet?”

She busied herself with readjusting a ribbon on her sleeve and spoke without looking at him: “Yes.… Of course. He left me a few foreign stocks, a hospital and an ancient prison. A prison!… But I must warn you that I have barely enough to live on. For heaven’s sake stop knocking with that pipe. I must warn you that I … That I cannot … Oh, you understand, Nick—it would be hard for me to support you.”

“What on earth are you talking about, Mother?” exclaimed Nikolay (and at that moment, like a stupid sun issuing from behind a stupid cloud, the electric light burst forth from the ceiling). “There, we can snuff out those tapers now; it was like squatting in the Mostaga Mausoleum. You see, I do have a small supply of cash, and anyway, I like to be as free as a damned fowl of some sort.… Come, sit down—stop running around the room.”

Tall, thin, bright blue, she stopped in front of him and now, in the full light, he saw how much she had aged, how insistently the wrinkles on her cheeks and forehead showed through the make-up. And that awful bleached hair!…

“You came tumbling in so suddenly,” she said and, biting her lips, she consulted a small clock standing on the shelf. “Like snow out of a cloudless sky … It’s fast. No, it’s stopped. I’m having company tonight, and here you arrive. It’s a crazy situation.…”

“Nonsense, Mother. They’ll come, they’ll see your son has arrived, and very soon they’ll evaporate. And before the evening’s over you and I will go to some music hall, and have supper somewhere.… I remember seeing an African show—that was really something! Imagine—about fifty Negroes, and a rather large, the size of, say—”

The doorbell buzzed loudly in the front hall. Olga Kirillovna, who had perched on the arm of a chair, gave a start and straightened up.

“Wait, I’ll get it,” said Nikolay, rising.

She caught him by the sleeve. Her face was twitching. The bell stopped. The caller waited.

“It must be your guests,” said Nikolay. “Your twenty-five guests. We have to let them in.”

His mother gave a brusque shake of her head and resumed listening intently.

“It isn’t right—” began Nikolay.

She pulled at his sleeve, whispering, “Don’t you dare! I don’t want to … Don’t you dare.…”

The bell started buzzing again, insistently and irritably this time. And it buzzed on for a long time.

“Let me go,” said Nikolay. “This is silly. If somebody rings you have to answer the door. What are you frightened of?”

“Don’t you dare—do you hear,” she repeated, spasmodically clutching at his hand. “I implore you.… Nicky, Nicky, Nicky!… Don’t!”

The bell stopped. It was replaced by a series of vigorous knocks, produced, it seemed, by the stout knob of a cane.

Nikolay headed resolutely for the front hall. But before he reached it his mother had grabbed him by the shoulders, and tried with all her might to drag him back, whispering all the while, “Don’t you dare.… Don’t you dare.… For God’s sake!…”

The bell sounded again, briefly and angrily.

“It’s your business,” said Nikolay with a laugh and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, walked the length of the room. This is a real nightmare, he thought, and chuckled again.

The ringing had stopped. All was still. Apparently the ringer had got fed up and left. Nikolay went up to the table, contemplated the splendid cake with its bright frosting and twenty-five festive candles, and the two wineglasses. Nearby, as if hiding in the bottle’s shadow, lay a small white cardboard box. He picked it up and took off the lid. It contained a brand-new, rather tasteless silver cigarette case.

“And that’s that,” said Nikolay.

His mother, who was half-reclining on the couch with her face buried in a cushion, was convulsed with sobs. In previous years he had often seen her cry, but then she had cried quite differently: while sitting at table, for instance, she would cry without turning her face away, and blow her nose loudly, and talk, talk, talk; yet now she was weeping so girlishly, was lying there with such abandon … and there was something so graceful about the curve of her spine and about the way one foot, in its velvet slipper, was touching the floor.… One might almost think that it was a young, blond woman crying.… And her crumpled handkerchief was lying on the carpet just the way it was supposed to, in that pretty scene.

Nikolay uttered a Russian grunt
(kryak)
and sat down on the edge of her couch. He
kryak’ed
again. His mother, still hiding her face, said into the cushion, “Oh, why couldn’t you have come earlier? Even one year earlier … Just one year!…”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Nikolay.

“It’s all over now,” she sobbed, and tossed her light hair. “All over. I’ll be fifty in May. Grown-up son comes to see aged mother. And why did you have to come right at this moment … tonight!”

Nikolay put on his overcoat (which, contrary to European custom, he had simply thrown into a corner), took his cap out of a pocket, and sat down by her again.

“Tomorrow morning I’ll move on,” he said, stroking the shiny blue silk of his mother’s shoulder. “I feel an urge to head north now, to Norway, perhaps—or else out to sea for some whale fishing. I’ll write you. In a year or so we’ll meet again, then perhaps I’ll stay longer. Don’t be cross with me because of my wanderlust!”

Quickly she embraced him and pressed a wet cheek to his neck. Then she squeezed his hand and suddenly cried out in astonishment.

“Blown off by a bullet,” laughed Nikolay. “Good-bye, my dearest.”

She felt the smooth stub of his finger and gave it a cautious kiss. Then she put her arm around her son and walked with him to the door.

“Please write often.… Why are you laughing? All the powder must have come off my face?”

And no sooner had the door shut after him than she flew, her blue dress rustling, to the telephone.

T
HE
accursed day when Anton Petrovich made the acquaintance of Berg existed only in theory, for his memory had not affixed to it a date label at the time, and now it was impossible to identify that day. Broadly speaking, it happened last winter around Christmas, 1926. Berg arose out of nonbeing, bowed in greeting, and settled down again—into an armchair instead of his previous nonbeing. It was at the Kurdyumovs’, who lived on St. Mark Strasse, way off in the sticks, in the Moabit section of Berlin, I believe. The Kurdyumovs remained the paupers they had become after the Revolution, while Anton Petrovich and Berg, although also expatriates, had since grown somewhat richer. Now, when a dozen similar ties of a smoky, luminous shade—say that of a sunset cloud—appeared in a haberdasher’s window, together with a dozen handkerchiefs in exactly the same tints, Anton Petrovich would buy both the fashionable tie and fashionable handkerchief, and every morning, on his way to the bank, would have the pleasure of encountering the same tie and the same handkerchief, worn by two or three gentlemen who were also hurrying to their offices. At one time he had business relations with Berg; Berg was indispensable, would call up five times a day, began frequenting their house, and would crack endless jokes—God, how he loved to crack jokes. The first time he came, Tanya, Anton Petrovich’s wife, found that he resembled an Englishman and was very amusing. “Hello, Anton!” Berg would roar, swooping down on Anton’s hand with outspread fingers (the way Russians do), and then shaking it vigorously. Berg was broad-shouldered, well-built, clean-shaven, and liked to compare himself to an athletic angel. He once showed Anton Petrovich a little old black notebook. The pages were all covered with crosses, exactly five hundred twenty-three in number. “Civil war in the Crimea—a souvenir,” said Berg with a slight smile, and coolly added, “Of course, I counted
only those Reds I killed outright.” The fact that Berg was an ex-cavalry man and had fought under General Denikin aroused Anton Petrovich’s envy, and he hated when Berg would tell, in front of Tanya, of reconnaissance forays and midnight attacks. Anton Petrovich himself was short-legged, rather plump, and wore a monocle, which, in its free time, when not screwed into his eye socket, dangled on a narrow black ribbon and, when Anton Petrovich sprawled in an easy chair, would gleam like a foolish eye on his belly. A boil excised two years before had left a scar on his left cheek. This scar, as well as his coarse, cropped mustache and fat Russian nose, would twitch tensely when Anton Petrovich screwed the monocle home. “Stop making faces,” Berg would say, “you won’t find an uglier one.”

In their glasses a light vapor floated over the tea; a half-squashed chocolate eclair on a plate released its creamy inside; Tanya, her bare elbows resting on the table and her chin leaning on her interlaced fingers, gazed upward at the drifting smoke of her cigarette, and Berg was trying to convince her that she must wear her hair short, that all women, from time immemorial, had done so, that the Venus de Milo had short hair, while Anton Petrovich heatedly and circumstantially objected, and Tanya only shrugged her shoulder, knocking the ash off her cigarette with a tap of her nail.

And then it all came to an end. One Wednesday at the end of July Anton Petrovich left for Kassel on business, and from there sent his wife a telegram that he would return on Friday. On Friday he found that he had to remain at least another week, and sent another telegram. On the following day, however, the deal fell through, and without bothering to wire a third time Anton Petrovich headed back to Berlin. He arrived about ten, tired and dissatisfied with his trip. From the street he saw that the bedroom windows of his flat were aglow, conveying the soothing news that his wife was at home. He went up to the fifth floor, with three twirls of the key unlocked the thrice-locked door, and entered. As he passed through the front hall, he heard the steady noise of running water from the bathroom. Pink and moist, Anton Petrovich thought with fond anticipation, and carried his bag on into the bedroom. In the bedroom, Berg was standing before the wardrobe mirror, putting on his tie.