The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (22 page)

The habitués of the dubious little taverns burning venomously amid the fog of a gloomy suburb would see a small stocky man with untidy hair around a bald spot and moist eyes pink like sores, who would always choose an out-of-the-way corner, but would gladly buy a drink for anybody who happened to importune him. An old little piano tuner, long since fallen into decay, who drank with him on several occasions, decided that he followed the same trade, since Bachmann, when drunk, would drum on the table with his fingers and, in a thin, high voice, sing a very exact A. Sometimes a hardworking prostitute with high cheekbones would lead him off to her place. Sometimes he tore the violin out of the tavern fiddler’s hands, stamped on it, and was thrashed in punishment. He mixed with gamblers, sailors, athletes incapacitated by hernias, as well as with a guild of quiet, courteous thieves.

For nights on end Sack and Mme. Perov would look for him. It is true that Sack searched only when it was necessary to get him in shape for a concert. Sometimes they found him, and sometimes, bleary-eyed, dirty, collarless, he would appear at Mme. Perov’s of his own accord;
the sweet, silent lady would put him to bed, and only after two or three days would she telephone Sack to tell him that Bachmann had been found.

He combined a kind of unearthly shyness with the prankishness of a spoiled brat. He hardly talked to Mme. Perov at all. When she remonstrated with him and tried to take him by the hands, he would break away and hit her on the fingers with shrill cries, as if the merest touch caused him impatient pain, and presently he would crawl under the blanket and sob for a long time. Sack would come and say it was time to leave for London or Rome, and take Bachmann away.

Their strange liaison lasted three years. When a more or less reanimated Bachmann was served up to the audience, Mme. Perov would invariably be sitting in the first row. On long trips they would take adjoining rooms. Mme. Perov saw her husband several times during this period. He, of course, like everybody else, knew about her rapturous and faithful passion, but he did not interfere and lived his own life.

“Bachmann made her existence a torment,” Sack kept repeating. “It is incomprehensible how she could have loved him. The mystery of the female heart! Once, when they were at somebody’s house together, I saw the Maestro with my own eyes suddenly begin snapping his teeth at her, like a monkey, and you know why? Because she wanted to straighten his tie. But in those days there was genius in his playing. To that period belongs his Symphony in D Minor and several complex fugues. No one saw him writing them. The most interesting is the so-called Golden Fugue. Have you heard it? Its thematic development is totally original. But I was telling you about his whims and his growing lunacy. Well, here’s how it was. Three years passed, and then, one night in Munich, where he was performing …”

And as Sack neared the end of his story, he narrowed his eyes more sadly and more impressively.

It seems that the night of his arrival in Munich Bachmann escaped from the hotel where he had stopped as usual with Mme. Perov. Three days remained before the concert, and therefore Sack was in a state of hysterical alarm. Bachmann could not be found. It was late autumn, with a lot of rain. Mme. Perov caught cold and took to her bed. Sack, with two detectives, continued to check the bars.

On the day of the concert the police telephoned to say that Bachmann had been located. They had picked him up in the street during the night and he had had an excellent bit of sleep at the station. Without a word Sack drove him from the police station to the theater, consigned him like an object to his assistants, and went to the hotel to
get Bachmann’s tailcoat. He told Mme. Perov through the door what had happened. Then he returned to the theater.

Bachmann, his black felt hat pushed down onto his brows, was sitting in his dressing room, sadly tapping the table with one finger. People fussed and whispered around him. An hour later the audience began taking their places in the huge hall. The white, brightly lit stage, adorned by sculptured organ pipes on either side, the gleaming black piano, with upraised wing, and the humble mushroom of its stool—all awaited in solemn idleness a man with moist, soft hands who would soon fill with a hurricane of sound the piano, the stage, and the enormous hall, where, like pale worms, women’s shoulders and men’s bald pates moved and glistened.

And now Bachmann has trotted onstage. Paying no attention to the thunder of welcome that rose like a compact cone and fell apart in scattered, dying claps, he began rotating the disc of the stool, cooing avidly, and, having patted it, sat down at the piano. Wiping his hands, he glanced toward the first row with his timid smile. Abruptly his smile vanished and Bachmann grimaced. The handkerchief fell to the floor. His attentive gaze slid once again across the faces—and stumbled, as it were, upon reaching the empty seat in the center. Bachmann slammed down the lid, got up, walked out to the very edge of the stage, and, rolling his eyes and raising his bent arms like a ballerina, executed two or three ridiculous
pas
. The audience froze. From the back seats came a burst of laughter. Bachmann stopped, said something that nobody could hear, and then, with a sweeping, archlike motion, showed the whole house a fico.

“It happened so suddenly,” went Sack’s account, “that I could not get there in time to help. I bumped into him when, after the fig—instead of the fugue—he was leaving the stage. I asked him, ‘Bachmann, where are you going?’ He uttered an obscenity and disappeared into the greenroom.”

Then Sack himself walked out on the stage, to a storm of wrath and mirth. He raised his hand, managed to obtain silence, and gave his firm promise that the concert would take place. Upon entering the greenroom he found Bachmann sitting there as though nothing had happened, his lips moving as he read the printed program.

Sack glanced at those present and, raising a brow meaningfully, rushed to the telephone and called Mme. Perov. For a long time he could get no answer; at last something clicked and he heard her feeble voice.

“Come here this instant,” jabbered Sack, striking the telephone
book with the side of his hand. “Bachmann won’t play without you. It’s a terrible scandal! The audience is beginning to—What?— What’s that?— Yes, yes, I keep telling you he refuses. Hello? Oh, damn!—I’ve been cut off.…”

Mme. Perov was worse. The doctor, who had visited her twice that day, had looked with dismay at the mercury that had climbed so high along the red ladder in its glass tube. As she hung up—the telephone was by the bed—she probably smiled happily. Tremulous and unsteady on her feet, she started to dress. An unbearable pain kept stabbing her in the chest, but happiness called to her through the haze and hum of the fever. I imagine for some reason that when she started pulling on her stockings, the silk kept catching on the toenails of her icy feet. She arranged her hair as best she could, wrapped herself in a brown fur coat, and went out, cane in hand. She told the doorman to call a taxi. The black pavement glistened. The handle of the car door was wet and ice-cold. All the way during the ride that vague, happy smile must have remained on her lips, and the sound of the motor and the hiss of the tires blended with the hot humming in her temples. When she reached the theater, she saw crowds of people opening angry umbrellas as they tumbled out into the street. She was almost knocked off her feet, but managed to squeeze through. In the greenroom Sack was pacing back and forth, clutching now at his left cheek, now at his right.

“I was in an utter rage!” he told me. “While I was struggling with the telephone, the Maestro escaped. He said he was going to the toilet, and slipped away. When Mme. Perov arrived I pounced on her—why hadn’t she been sitting in the theater? You understand, I absolutely did not take into account the fact that she was ill. She asked me, ‘So he’s back at the hotel now? So we passed each other on the way?’ And I was in a furious state, shouting, ‘The hell with hotels—he’s in some bar! Some bar! Some bar!’ Then I gave up and rushed off. Had to rescue the ticket seller.”

And Mme. Perov, trembling and smiling, went to search for Bachmann. She knew approximately where to look for him, and it was thither, to that dark, dreadful quarter that an astonished driver took her. When she reached the street where, according to Sack, Bachmann had been found the day before, she let the taxi go and, leaning on her cane, began walking along the uneven sidewalk, under the slanting streams of black rain. She entered all the bars one by one. Bursts of raucous music deafened her and men looked her over insolently. She would glance around the smoky, spinning, motley tavern and go back out into the lashing night. Soon it began to seem to her that she was continuously entering one and the same bar, and an agonizing weakness
descended upon her shoulders. She walked, limping and emitting barely audible moans, holding tightly the turquoise knob of her cane in her cold hand. A policeman who had been watching her for some time approached with a slow, professional step and asked for her address, then firmly and gently led her over to a horse cab on night duty. In the creaking, evil-smelling murk of the cab she lost consciousness and, when she came to, the door was open and the driver, in a shiny oilskin cape, was giving her little pokes in the shoulder with the butt of his whip. Upon finding herself in the warm corridor of the hotel, she was overcome by a feeling of complete indifference to everything. She pushed open the door of her room and went in. Bachmann was sitting on her bed, barefoot and in a nightshirt, with a plaid blanket humped over his shoulders. He was drumming with two fingers on the marble top of the night table, while using his other hand to make dots on a sheet of music paper with an indelible pencil. So absorbed was he that he did not notice the door open. She uttered a soft, moanlike “ach.” Bachmann gave a start. The blanket started to slide off his shoulders.

I think this was the only happy night in Mme. Perov’s life. I think that these two, the deranged musician and the dying woman, that night found words the greatest poets never dreamt of. When the indignant Sack arrived at the hotel the next morning, Bachmann sat there with an ecstatic, silent smile, contemplating Mme. Perov, who was lying across the wide bed, unconscious under the plaid blanket. Nobody could know what Bachmann was thinking as he looked at the burning face of his mistress and listened to her spasmodic breathing; probably he interpreted in his own fashion the agitation of her body, the flutter and fire of a fatal illness, not the least idea of which entered his head. Sack called the doctor. At first Bachmann looked at them distrustfully, with a timid smile; then he clutched at the doctor’s shoulder, ran back, struck himself on the forehead, and began tossing to and fro and gnashing his teeth. She died the same day, without regaining consciousness. The expression of happiness never left her face. On the night table Sack found a crumpled sheet of music paper, but no one was able to decipher the violet dots of music scattered over it.

“I took him away immediately,” Sack went on. “I was afraid of what would happen when the husband arrived, you can understand. Poor Bachmann was as limp as a rag doll and kept plugging his ears with his fingers. He would cry out as though someone were tickling him, ‘Stop those sounds! Enough, enough music!’ I don’t really know what gave him such a shock: between you and me, he never loved that unfortunate woman. In any case, she was his undoing. After the funeral
Bachmann disappeared without leaving a trace. You can still find his name in the advertisements of player-piano firms, but, generally speaking, he has been forgotten. It was only six years later that fate brought us together again. For an instant only. I was waiting for a train at a small station in Switzerland. It was a glorious evening, I recall. I was not alone. Yes, a woman—but that’s a different libretto. And then, what do you know, I see a small crowd gathered around a short man in a shabby black coat and black hat. He was thrusting a coin into a music box, and sobbing uncontrollably. He would put in a coin, listen to the tinny melody, and sob. Then the roll or something broke down. The coin jammed. He began shaking the box, wept louder, gave up, and went away. I recognized him immediately, but, you understand, I was not alone, I was with a lady, and there were people around, sort of gaping. It would have been awkward to go up to him and say
Wie geht’s dir
, Bachmann?”

H
E LIVED
in reclusion in a deep, murky cave, in the very heart of a rocky mountain, feeding only on bats, rats, and mold. Occasionally, it is true, stalactite hunters or snoopy travelers would come peeking into the cave, and that was a tasty treat. Other pleasant memories included a brigand attempting to flee from justice, and two dogs that were once let loose to ascertain if the passage did not go clear through the mountain. The surrounding country was wild, porous snow lay here and there on the rock, and waterfalls rumbled with an icy roar. He had hatched some thousand years ago, and, perhaps because it had happened rather unexpectedly—the enormous egg was cracked open by a lightning bolt one stormy night—the dragon had turned out cowardly and not overly bright. Besides, he was strongly affected by his mother’s death.… She had long terrorized the neighboring villages, had spat flames, and the king would get cross, and around her lair incessantly prowled knights, whom she would crunch to pieces like walnuts. But once, when she had swallowed a plump royal chef and dozed off on a sun-warmed rock, the great Ganon himself galloped up in iron armor, on a black steed under silver netting. The poor sleepy thing went rearing up, her green and red humps flashing like bonfires, and the charging knight thrust his swift lance into her smooth white breast. She crashed to the ground, and promptly, out of the pink wound, sidled the corpulent chef with her enormous, steaming heart under his arm.

The young dragon saw all this from a hiding place behind the rock and, forever after, could not think about knights without a shudder. He withdrew into the depths of a cave, whence he never emerged. Thus passed ten centuries, equivalent to twenty dragon years.