Glory (5 page)

At the frontier where one had to change trains Martin
realized that he had forgotten in his compartment the penholder with the tiny glass lens, in which, when held up to your eye, a mother-of-pearl and blue landscape would flash into being; but during supper at the station (hazel hen with lingonberry sauce) the sleeping-car attendant brought it, and Father gave him a ruble. Snow and frost met one on the Russian side of the border, a whole mountain of logs swelled up on the tender, the crimson Russian locomotive was equipped with a fan-shaped snowplow, and abundant white steam flowed, curling, from the huge smokestack. The Nord-Express, russified at Verzhbolovo, retained the brown facings of its cars, but now became more sedate, wide-flanked, thoroughly heated, and, instead of gathering full speed right away, took a long time to gain momentum after a stop. It was pleasant to perch on one of the flap seats in the blue-carpeted corridor, and the fat lantern-jawed attendant, in his chocolate-colored uniform, stroked Martin on the head in passing. White fields stretched outside; here and there leafless sallows stuck up out of the snow. By a crossing gate stood a woman in felt boots, holding a green flag; a peasant, who had jumped down from his sledge, shielded with his mittens the eyes of his backing nag. And at night he saw something wonderful: past the black, mirrory window flew thousands of sparks—arrowlike flourishes of a fire-tipped pen.

From that year on Martin developed a passion for trains, travels, distant lights, the heartrending wails of locomotives in the dark of night, and the waxworks vividness of local stations flashing by, with people never to be seen again. The slow heaving off, the grating of the rudder chain, the internal tremor of the Canadian freighter on which he
and his mother left Crimea in April 1919, the stormy sea and the driving rain were not as conducive to viatic excitement as an express train, and only very gradually did Martin get penetrated with this new enchantment. A disheveled raincoated young woman with a black and white scarf around her neck strolled about the deck, blowing at the hair that tickled her face, accompanied by her pale husband until the sea got the better of him, and in her figure, in her flying scarf, Martin fully recognized the travel thrill that captivated him at the sight of the checkered cap and suede gloves his father would put on in a railroad compartment, or the crocodile satchel worn with its strap over her shoulder by that little French girl with whom it was such fun to roam along a fast train’s long corridor, inserted into the fleeting landscape. This young woman was the only one that looked an exemplary sailor, very much unlike the rest of the passengers whom the captain of this rashly chartered vessel, finding no cargo in crazed Crimea, had agreed to take on board so as not to make the return journey empty. Despite the abundant luggage—lumpy, hastily gathered, fastened with rope instead of straps—all these people somehow gave the impression of traveling light, of sailing as if by chance; the formula of distant journeys could not accommodate their bewilderment and melancholy. They were fleeing before a mortal danger but for some reason Martin was little disturbed by the fact that this was so, that the ashen-faced profiteer over there with a load of precious stones in a belt next to his skin, had he stayed ashore, would have been killed on the spot by the first Red Army fellow to be tempted by his diamond innards. And Martin followed the Russian shore with an almost indifferent gaze as it receded in the rainy mist, so restrainedly, so simply, without a single sign that might have hinted at the supernatural length of the separation. Only when everything had
vanished in the fog did he avidly recall, in a flash, Adreiz, and the cypresses, and the cheerful house, whose denizens would reply to the astonished questions of restless neighbors, “Flee? But where would we live if not in the Crimea?” And his recollection of Lida was colored differently than their former, actual relationship: he remembered how once, when she was complaining about a mosquito bite and was scratching the place, grown red through the tan, on her calf, he wanted to show her how you were supposed to cut a cross on the swelling with your fingernail, and she had slapped him on the hand for no reason at all. He also remembered the farewell visit, when neither of them knew what to talk about, and kept mentioning Kolya, who had gone shopping in Yalta, and what a relief it was when he finally arrived. Lida’s elongated, delicate face, about which there was something doelike, now haunted Martin quite obsessively. As he lay on a couch beneath a ticking clock in the cabin of the captain, with whom he had become great friends, or shared, in reverent silence, the watch of the first mate, a pockmarked Canadian who spoke rarely—and when he did, pronounced English as if masticating it—but who had sent a mysterious chill through Martin’s heart once when he informed him that old salts never sit down even when they go into retirement, that grandchildren sit while their grandfathers walk (“the sea remains in one’s legs”); as he grew accustomed to all this nautical novelty, to the tang of oil and the ship’s rolling, to the diverse and strange varieties of bread, one of which tasted like the Russian Eucharistie
prosfora
, Martin kept trying to convince himself that he had gone voyaging out of grief, that he was mourning an ill-starred love, but that no one, seeing his tranquil, already windburned face, could have suspected his anguish. Mysterious, wonderful people cropped up: there was the person who had chartered the ship, a sullen puritan
from Nova Scotia, whose raincoat hung in the captain’s toilet (which was in a state of hopeless disrepair), pendulating right over the seat. There was the second mate, by the name of Patkin, a Jew originally from Odessa, who, despite his American speech, could still perceive the blurry outlines of Russian words. And among the seamen there was a certain Silvio, a Spanish-American, who always walked barefoot and carried a dagger. One day the captain appeared with an injured hand, saying at first that the cat had scratched him, but later out of friendship confiding to Martin that he had gashed it on Silvio’s teeth when he hit him for drunkenness on board. Thus was Martin initiated into seamen’s life. The complex architectural structure of the ship, all those steps, mazy passages, swinging doors, soon yielded their secrets to him, and it became difficult to find a still unfamiliar corner. Meanwhile the lady with the striped scarf seemed to share Martin’s curiosity, flitting past in the most unexpected places, always with wind-blown hair, always gazing into the distance; already by the second day her husband was laid up, moping, collarless, on the oilcloth’d bench in the saloon, while on another bench lay Sofia, with a slice of lemon between her lips. Now and then Martin, too, felt a sucking void in the pit of his stomach and a kind of general unsteadiness, while the lady was indefatigable, and Martin had already picked her as the one to save in case of disaster. But in spite of the turbulent sea the ship safely reached the harbor of Constantinople one cold, milkily gloomy dawn, and suddenly a wet Turk appeared on deck, and Patkin, who felt the quarantine should be reciprocal, yelled “I’ll ‘sunk’ you!” at him (
ya tebya utonu
), and even threatened him with a pistol. Next day they moved on into the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosporus left no impression at all in Martin’s memory except for three or four minarets that looked like factory chimneys in the mist, and the voice
of the lady in the raincoat, who talked to herself out loud as she gazed at the gloomy coast; Martin, straining to overhear, seemed to distinguish the adjective “amethyst”
(ametistovïy)
, but decided he was mistaken.

After Constantinople the sky cleared, though the sea remained “
ochen
(very) choppy,” as Patkin expressed it. Sofia ventured on deck, but promptly returned to the saloon, saying that there was nothing more hateful in the world than this servile sinking and rising of all one’s insides in rhythm with the rising and sinking of the ship’s prow. The lady’s husband moaned, inquired of God when this would end, and hurriedly, with trembling hands, grabbed for the basin. Martin, whom his reclining mother was holding by the hand, felt that unless he left at once, he would throw up too. At that moment the lady came in with a flick of her scarf, and addressed a compassionate question to her husband. Her husband, without speaking or opening his eyes, made a Russian slicing gesture with his hand across his Adam’s apple (meaning: I’m being slaughtered), whereupon she asked the same question of Sofia, who responded with a martyred smile. “You don’t look too happy either,” said the lady, with a severe glance at Martin. Then she staggered, tossed the end of her scarf over her shoulder, and went out. Martin followed her, and the fresh wind in his face and the sight of the bright-blue, whitecapped sea made him feel better. She was sitting on some coiled ropes, writing in a small morocco notebook. The other day one of the passengers had said about her “not bad, that broad,” and Martin turned angrily but could not identify the rascal among several despondent, middle-aged men with turned-up collars. Now, as he looked at her red
lips, which she kept licking as her pencil whipped across the page, he was embarrassed, did not know what to talk about, and felt a salty taste on his lips. She wrote on and seemed not to notice him. And yet Martin’s nice round face, his seventeen years, a certain trim solidity of build and movement, often present in Russians, but for some reason classified as “something British”—the whole appearance of Martin in his belted blue overcoat had made a certain impression on the lady.

She was twenty-five, her name was Alla, and she wrote poetry: three things, one would think, that were bound to make a woman fascinating. Her favorite poets were two fashionable mediocrities, Paul Géraldy and Victor Gofman; and her own poems, so sonorous, so spicy, always addressed the man in the polite form (“you,” not “thou”) and were asparkle with rubies as red as blood. One of them had recently enjoyed great success in St. Petersburg society. It began thus:

The ladies would copy it from each other, learn it by heart and recite it, and one naval cadet even set it to music. Married at eighteen, she remained faithful to her husband for more than two years, but the world all around was saturated with the rubineous fumes of sin; clean-shaven, persistent males would schedule their own suicides at seven Thursday evening, midnight Christmas Eve, or three in the morning under her windows; the dates got jumbled, and it was hard to keep all of those assignations. A Grand Due languished because of her; Rasputin pestered her for a month with telephone
calls. And sometimes she said that her life was but the light smoke of an amber-perfumed Régie cigarette.

Martin did not understand any of this at all. Her poetry left him somewhat perplexed. When he said that Constantinople was anything but amethyst-colored, Alla objected that he was devoid of poetic imagination, and, on their arrival in Athens, gave him Pierre Louÿs’s
Chansons de Bilitis
in the cheap edition illustrated with the naked forms of adolescents, from which she would read to him, meaningfully pronouncing the French, in the early evening on the Acropolis, the most appropriate place, one might say. What he found particularly appealing about her speech was the ripply way she pronounced the letter “r,” as if there were not just one letter, but a whole gallery, accompanied, as if that were not enough, by its reflection in water. And instead of those French corybantics, guitar-filled Petersburgan white nights, or libertine sonnets of five dactylic stanzas, he managed to find in this girl with the hard-to-assimilate name something quite, quite different. The acquaintance that had imperceptibly begun on shipboard continued in Greece, at the seaside, in one of the white hotels of Phaleron. Sofia and her son ended up in a nasty, tiny room; its only window gave on a dusty courtyard where, at dawn, with various agonizing preparatives, with a preliminary flapping of wings and other sounds, a young cock commenced his series of hoarse, cheerful cries. Martin slept on a hard blue couch; Sofia’s bed was narrow and unsteady with a lumpy mattress. The only representative of the insect kingdom in the room was a solitary flea, which, in recompense, was very crafty, voracious, and absolutely uncatchable. Alla, who had had the good fortune to get an excellent room with twin beds, offered to have Sofia sleep with her, sending her husband over to Martin in exchange. After saying, several times in a row, “I wouldn’t think of it, I wouldn’t
think of it,” Sofia willingly accepted, and the transfer took place that very same day. Chernosvitov was big, lanky, and sullen, and filled the little room with his presence. Apparently his blood immediately poisoned the flea, as it did not reappear. His toilet implements—a small mirror bisected by a crack, eau-de-cologne, a shaving brush that he always forgot to rinse and that would stand the whole day, all stuck together by gelid lather, on windowledge, table, or chair—depressed Martin, and the encroachment was especially hard to bear at bedtime, when he was obliged to clear his couch of the man’s various neckties and mesh undershirts. While undressing, Chernosvitov would scratch himself listlessly between gaping yawns; then he would place an enormous, naked foot on the edge of the chair and, thrusting his hand into his hair, freeze in this uncomfortable attitude, until he slowly came once more into motion, wound his watch, got into bed, and then, for a long time and with many grunts and groans, kneaded the mattress with his body. Some time later, in the dark, his voice would always pronounce the same sentence: “One special request, my boy: don’t foul the air.” While shaving in the morning, he would invariably say, “Pimplekill face cream. Indispensable at your age.” As he dressed, choosing, whenever possible, socks that guaranteed decorum by having holes at the big toe rather than above the heel, he would exclaim (quoting a popular bard), “Ah, yes, in our day we were young coursers too,” and whistle softly through his teeth. This was all very monotonous and unfunny. Martin would smile politely.