The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (9 page)

“I met him yesterday as I was flying on my skis in the dark. Last night he came to me.”

Trying not to listen, Kern wrote in a bold hand:

“My dear friend, this is my last letter. I could never forget how you helped me when disaster crashed down on me. He probably lives on a peak where he hunts alpine eagles and feeds on their meat.…”

Catching himself, he slashed that out and took another sheet. Isabel was sobbing with her face buried in the pillow.

“What shall I do now? He’ll come after me for revenge.… Oh, my God.…”

“My dear friend,”
Kern wrote quickly,
“she sought unforgettable caresses and now she will give birth to a winged little beast.…”
Oh, damn! He crumpled the sheet.

“Try to get some sleep,” he addressed Isabel over his shoulder, “and leave tomorrow. For a monastery.”

Her shoulders shook rapidly. Then she grew still.

Kern wrote. Before him smiled the eyes of the one person in the world with whom he could freely speak or remain silent. He wrote to that person that life was finished, that he had begun feeling of late that, in place of the future, a black wall was looming ever closer, and that now something had happened after which a man cannot and must not continue living.
“At noon tomorrow I shall die,” wrote
Kern,
“tomorrow, because I want to die in full command of my faculties, in the sober light of day. And right now I am in too deep a state of shock.”

When he had finished he sat down in the armchair by the window. Isabel was sleeping, her breathing barely audible. An oppressive fatigue girdled his shoulders. Sleep descended like a soft fog.

He was awakened by a knock on the door. Frosty azure was pouring through the window.

“Come in,” he said, stretching.

The waiter noiselessly set a tray with a cup of tea on the table and exited with a bow.

Laughing to himself, Kern thought, “And here I am in a rumpled dinner jacket.”

Then, instantly, he remembered what had happened during the night. He shuddered and glanced at the bed. Isabel was gone. Must have returned to her room with the approach of morning. And by now she has undoubtedly left.… He had a momentary vision of brown, crumbly wings. Getting up quickly, he opened the door to the corridor.

“Listen,” he called to the waiter’s departing back. “Take a letter with you.”

He went to the desk and rummaged about. The fellow was waiting at the door. Kern slapped all his pockets and took a look under the armchair.

“You may go. I’ll give it to the porter later.”

The parted hair bent forward, and the door closed softly.

Kern was distressed at having lost the letter. That letter in particular. He had said in it so well, so smoothly and simply, all that needed to be said. Now he could not recall the words. Only senseless sentences surfaced. Yes, the letter had been a masterpiece.

He began writing anew, but it came out cold and rhetorical. He sealed the letter and neatly wrote the address.

He felt a strange lightness in his heart. He would shoot himself at noon, and after all, a man who has resolved to kill himself is a god.

The sugary snow glistened outside the window. He felt drawn out there, for the last time.

The shadows of frosted trees lay on the snow like blue plumes. Sleigh bells jingled somewhere, densely and merrily There were lots of people out, girls in fur caps moving timorously and awkwardly on their skis, young men exhaling clouds of laughter as they called loudly to each other, elderly people ruddy from the effort, and some sinewy blue-eyed oldster dragging a velvet-covered sled. Kern thought in passing, why not give the old chap a whack in the face, a backhanded one,
just for the fun of it, for now everything was permissible. He broke out laughing. He had not felt so good in a long time.

Everyone was drifting to the area where the ski-jumping competition had begun. The site consisted of a steep descent merging halfway down into a snowy platform, which ended abruptly, forming a right-angled projection. A skier glided down the steep section and flew off the projecting ramp into the azure air. He flew with outstretched arms, landed upright on the continuation of the slope, and glided on. The Swede had just broken his own recent record and, far below, in a whirlwind of silvery dust, turned sharply with one bent leg extended.

Two others, in black sweaters, sped past, jumped, and resiliently hit the snow.

“Isabel is jumping next,” said a soft voice at Kern’s shoulder. Kern thought rapidly, Don’t tell me she is still here.… How can she … and looked at the speaker. It was Monfiori. In a top hat, pushed over his protruding ears, and a little black coat with strips of faded velvet on the collar, he stood out drolly amid the woolly crowd. Should I tell him? thought Kern.

He rejected with revulsion the smelly brown wings—must not think about that.

Isabel mounted the hill. She turned to say something to her companion, gaily, gaily as always. This gaiety gave Kern a scary feeling. He caught what seemed a fleeting glimpse of something above the snows, above the glassy hotel, above the toylike people—a shudder, a shimmer …

“And how are you today?” asked Monfiori, rubbing his lifeless hands.

Simultaneously voices rang out around them: “Isabel! Airborne Isabel!”

Kern threw back his head. She was hurtling down the steep slope. For an instant he saw her bright face, her glistening lashes. With a soft whistling sound she skimmed off the trampoline, flew up, hung motionless, crucified in midair. And then …

No one, of course, could have expected it. In full flight Isabel crumpled spasmodically, fell like a stone, and started rolling amid the snowbursts of her cartwheeling skis.

Right away she was hidden from view by the backs of people rushing toward her. Kern slowly approached with hunched shoulders. He saw it vividly in his mind’s eye, as if it were written in a large hand: revenge, wingstroke. The Swede and the lanky type in horn-rimmed glasses bent over Isabel. With professional gestures the bespectacled
man was palpating her motionless body. He muttered, “I can’t understand it—her rib cage is crushed.…”

He raised up her head. There was a glimpse of her dead, seemingly denuded face.

Kern turned with a crunch of his heel and strode off resolutely toward the hotel. Beside him trotted Monfiori, running ahead, peeking into his eyes.

“I am going upstairs to my room now,” said Kern, trying to swallow his sobbing laughter, to restrain it. “Upstairs … If you wish to accompany me …”

The laughter neared his throat and bubbled over. Kern was climbing the stairs like a blind man. Monfiori was supporting him, meekly and hastily.

H
ERE
is what I see in your eyes right now: rainy night, narrow street, streetlamps gliding away into the distance. The water runs down the drainpipes from steeply sloping roofs. Under the snake’s-mouth of each pipe stands a green-hooped bucket. Rows of buckets line the black walls on either side of the street. I watch as they fill with cold mercury. The pluvial mercury swells and overflows. The bareheaded lamps float in the distance, their rays standing on end in the rainy murk. The water in the buckets is overflowing.

Thus I gain entry to your overcast eyes, to a narrow alley of black glimmer where the nocturnal rain gurgles and rustles. Give me a smile. Why do you look at me so balefully and darkly? It’s morning. All night the stars shrieked with infant voices and, on the roof, someone lacerated and caressed a violin with a sharp bow. Look, the sun slowly crossed the wall like a blazing sail. You emanate an enveloping smoky haze. Dust starts swirling in your eyes, millions of golden worlds. You smiled!

We go out on the balcony. It’s spring. Below, in the middle of the street, a yellow-curled boy works lickety-split, sketching a god. The god stretches from one sidewalk to the other. The boy is clutching a piece of chalk in his hand, a little piece of white charcoal and he’s squatting, circling, drawing with broad strokes. This white god has large white buttons and turned-out feet. Crucified on the asphalt, he looks skyward with round eyes. He has a white arc for a mouth. A log-sized cigar has appeared in his mouth. With helical jabs the boy makes spirals representing smoke. Arms akimbo, he contemplates his work. He adds another button.… A window frame clanked across the way; a female voice, enormous and happy, rang out summoning him. The boy gave the chalk a punt and dashed inside. On the purplish asphalt remained the white geometric god, gazing skyward.

Your eyes again grew murky. I realized, of course, what you were remembering. In a corner of our bedroom, under the icon, there is a colored rubber ball. Sometimes it hops softly and sadly from the table and rolls gently on the floor.

Put it back in its place under the icon, and then why don’t we go take a walk?

Spring air. A little downy. See those lindens lining the street? Black boughs covered with wet green spangles. All the trees in the world are journeying somewhere. Perpetual pilgrimage. Remember, when we were on our way here, to this city, the trees traveling past the windows of our railroad car? Remember the twelve poplars conferring about how to cross the river? Earlier, still, in the Crimea, I once saw a cypress bending over an almond tree in bloom. Once upon a time the cypress had been a big, tall chimney sweep with a brush on a wire and a ladder under his arm. Head over heels in love, poor fellow, with a little laundry maid, pink as almond petals. Now they have met at last, and are on their way somewhere together. Her pink apron balloons in the breeze; he bends toward her timidly, as if still worried he might get some soot on her. First-rate fable.

All trees are pilgrims. They have their Messiah, whom they seek. Their Messiah is a regal Lebanese cedar, or perhaps he is quite small, some totally inconspicuous little shrub in the tundra.…

Today some lindens are passing through town. There was an attempt to restrain them. Circular fencing was erected around their trunks. But they move all the same.…

The roofs blaze like oblique, sun-blinded mirrors. A winged woman stands on a windowsill washing the panes. She bends over, pouts, brushes a strand of flaming hair from her face. The air is faintly redolent of gasoline and lindens. Who can tell, today, just what emanations gently greeted a guest entering a Pompeian atrium? A half-century from now no one will know the smells that prevailed in our streets and rooms. They will excavate some military hero of stone, of which there are hundreds in every city, and heave a sigh for Phidias of yore. Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar.… Listen … today, we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous. We move in a gigantic, joyous world. A tall pillar on the corner is tightly swathed in wet canvases, across which a paintbrush has scattered colored whirlwinds. The old woman who sells papers has curling gray hairs on her chin, and mad light-blue eyes. Unruly newspapers stick chaotically out of her pouch. Their large type makes me think of flying zebras.

A bus stops at its signpost. Upstairs the conductor ba-bangs with
his palm on the iron gunwale. The helmsman gives his huge wheel a mighty turn. A mounting, labored moan, a brief grinding sound. The wide tires have left silver imprints on the asphalt. Today, on this sunny day, anything is possible. Look—a man has jumped from a roof onto a wire and is walking on it, splitting with laughter, his arms widespread, high over the rocking street. Look—two buildings have just had a harmonious game of leapfrog; number three ended up between one and two; it did not fully settle right away—I saw a gap below it, a narrow band of sunlight. And a woman stopped in the middle of a square, threw back her head, and started singing; a crowd gathered around her, then surged back: an empty dress lies on the asphalt, and up in the sky there’s a transparent cloudlet.

You’re laughing. When you laugh, I want to transform the entire world so it will mirror you. But your eyes are instantly extinguished. You say, passionately, fearfully, “Would you like to go … there? Would you? It’s lovely there today, everything’s in bloom.…”

Certainly it’s all in bloom, certainly we’ll go. For aren’t you and I gods? … I sense in my blood the rotation of unexplorable universes.…

Listen—I want to run all my life, screaming at the top of my lungs. Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator.

Don’t stop to think, don’t interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming, choking on its screams. Laughter. Running. Let-down hair. That is all there is to life.

They are leading camels along the street, on the way from the circus to the zoo. Their plump humps list and sway. Their long, gentle faces are turned up a little, dreamily. How can death exist when they lead camels along a springtime street? At the corner, an unexpected whiff of Russian foliage; a beggar, a divine monstrosity, turned all inside out, feet growing out of armpits, proffers, with a wet, shaggy paw, a bunch of greenish lilies-of-the-val … I bump a passerby with my shoulder.… Momentary collision of two giants. Merrily, magnificently, he swings at me with his lacquered cane. The tip, on the back-swing, breaks a shopwindow behind him. Zigzags shoot across the shiny glass. No—it’s only the splash of mirrored sunlight in my eyes. Butterfly, butterfly! Black with scarlet bands.… A scrap of velvet.… It swoops above the asphalt, soars over a speeding car and a tall building, into the humid azure of the April sky. Another, identical butterfly once settled on the white border of an arena; Lesbia, senator’s daughter, gracile, dark-eyed, with a gold ribbon on her forehead, entranced
by the palpitating wings, missed the split second, the whirlwind of blinding dust, in which the bull-like neck of one combatant crunched under the other’s naked knee.