The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (36 page)

He felt under the couch, where his watch had landed. Eleven. Mityushin and Gnushke have already been at Berg’s. Suddenly a pleasant thought darted among the others, pushed them apart, and disappeared. What was it? Oh, of course! They had been drunk yesterday, and he had been drunk too. They must have overslept, then come to their senses and thought that he had been babbling nonsense; but the pleasant thought flashed past and vanished. It made no difference—the thing had been started and he would have to repeat to them what he had said yesterday. Still, it was odd that they had not shown up yet. A duel. What an impressive word, “duel”! I am having a duel. Hostile meeting. Single combat. Duel. “Duel” sounds best. He got up, and noticed that his trousers were terribly wrinkled. The ashtray had been removed. Elspeth must have come in while he was sleeping. How embarrassing. Must go see how things look in the bedroom. Forget his wife. She did not exist any more. Never had existed. All of that was gone. Anton Petrovich took a deep breath and opened the bedroom door. He found the maid there stuffing a crumpled newspaper into the wastebasket.

“Bring me some coffee, please,” he said, and went to the dressing table. There was an envelope on it. His name; Tanya’s hand. Beside it,
in disorder, lay his hairbrush, his comb, his shaving brush, and an ugly, stiff glove. Anton Petrovich opened the envelope. The hundred marks and nothing else. He turned it this way and that, not knowing what to do with it.

“Elspeth.…”

The maid approached, glancing at him suspiciously.

“Here, take it. You were put to so much inconvenience last night, and then those other unpleasant things.… Go on, take it.”

“One hundred marks?” the maid asked in a whisper, and then suddenly blushed crimson. Heaven only knows what rushed through her head, but she banged the wastebasket down on the floor and shouted, “No! You can’t bribe me, I’m an honest woman. Just you wait, I’ll tell everybody you wanted to bribe me. No! This is a madhouse.…” And she went out, slamming the door.

“What’s wrong with her? Good Lord, what’s wrong with her?” muttered Anton Petrovich in confusion, and, stepping rapidly to the door, shrieked after the maid, “Get out this minute, get out of this house!”

“That’s the third person I’ve thrown out,” he thought, his whole body trembling. “And now there is no one to bring me my coffee.”

He spent a long time washing and changing, and then sat in the café across the street, glancing every so often to see if Mityushin and Gnushke were not coming. He had lots of business to attend to in town, but he could not be bothered with business. Duel. A glamorous word.

In the afternoon Natasha, Tanya’s sister, appeared. She was so upset that she could barely speak. Anton Petrovich paced back and forth, giving little pats to the furniture. Tanya had arrived at her sister’s flat in the middle of the night, in a terrible state, a state you simply could not imagine. Anton Petrovich suddenly found it strange to be saying
“ty”
(thou) to Natasha. After all, he was no longer married to her sister.

“I shall give her a certain sum every month under certain conditions,” he said, trying to keep a rising hysterical note out of his voice.

“Money isn’t the point,” answered Natasha, sitting in front of him and swinging her glossily stockinged leg. “The point is that this is an absolutely awful mess.”

“Thanks for coming,” said Anton Petrovich, “we’ll have another chat sometime, only right now I’m very busy.” As he saw her to the door, he remarked casually (or at least he hoped it sounded casual), “I’m fighting a duel with him.” Natasha’s lips quivered; she quickly kissed him on the cheek and went out. How strange that she did not
Start imploring him not to fight. By all rights she ought to have implored him not to fight. In our time nobody fights duels. She is wearing the same perfume as … As who? No, no, he had never been married.

A little later still, at about seven, Mityushin and Gnushke arrived. They looked grim. Gnushke bowed with reserve and handed Anton Petrovich a sealed business envelope. He opened it. It began:
“I have received your extremely stupid and extremely rude message
.…” Anton Petrovich’s monocle fell out, he reinserted it.
“I feel very sorry for you, but since you have adopted this attitude, I have no choice but to accept your challenge. Your seconds are pretty awful. Berg.”

Anton Petrovich’s throat went unpleasantly dry, and there was again that ridiculous quaking in his legs.

“Sit down, sit down,” he said, and himself sat down first. Gnushke sank back into an armchair, caught himself, and sat up on its edge.

“He’s a highly insolent character,” Mityushin said with feeling. “Imagine—he kept laughing all the while, so that I nearly punched him in the teeth.”

Gnushke cleared his throat and said, “There is only one thing I can advise you to do: take careful aim, because he is also going to take careful aim.”

Before Anton Petrovich’s eyes flashed a notebook page covered with Xs: diagram of a cemetery.

“He is a dangerous fellow,” said Gnushke, leaning back in his armchair, sinking again, and again wriggling out.

“Who’s going to make the report, Henry, you or I?” asked Mityushin, chewing on a cigarette as he jerked at his lighter with his thumb.

“You’d better do it,” said Gnushke.

“We’ve had a very busy day,” began Mityushin, goggling his baby-blue eyes at Anton Petrovich. “At exactly eight-thirty Henry, who was still as tight as a drum, and I …”

“I protest,” said Gnushke.

“…  went to call on Mr. Berg. He was sipping his coffee. Right off we handed him your little note. Which he read. And what did he do, Henry? Yes, he burst out laughing. We waited for him to finish laughing, and Henry asked what his plans were.”

“No, not his plans, but how he intended to react,” Gnushke corrected.

“…  to react. To this, Mr. Berg replied that he agreed to fight and that he chose pistols. We have settled all the conditions: the combatants will be placed facing each other at twenty paces. Firing will be regulated
by a word of command. If nobody is dead after the first exchange, the duel may go on. And on. What else was there, Henry?”

“If it is impossible to procure real dueling pistols, then Browning automatics will be used,” said Gnushke.

“Browning automatics. Having established this much, we asked Mr. Berg how to get in touch with his seconds. He went out to telephone. Then he wrote the letter you have before you. Incidentally, he kept joking all the time. The next thing we did was to go to a café to meet his two chums. I bought Gnushke a carnation for his buttonhole. It was by this carnation that they recognized us. They introduced themselves, and, well, to put it in a nutshell, everything is in order. Their names are Marx and Engels.”

“That’s not quite exact,” interjected Gnushke. “They are Markov and Colonel Arkhangelski.”

“No matter,” said Mityushin and went on. “Here begins the epic part. We went out of town with these chaps to look for a suitable spot. You know Weissdorf, just beyond Wannsee. That’s it. We took a walk through the woods there and found a glade, where, it turned out, these chaps had had a little picnic with their girls the other day. The glade is small, and all around there is nothing but woods. In short, the ideal spot—although, of course, you don’t get the grand mountain decor as in Lermontov’s fatal affair. See the state of my boots—all white with dust.”

“Mine too,” said Gnushke. “I must say that trip was quite a strenuous one.”

There followed a pause.

“It’s hot today,” said Mityushin. “Even hotter than yesterday.”

“Considerably hotter,” said Gnushke.

With exaggerated thoroughness Mityushin began crushing his cigarette in the ashtray. Silence. Anton Petrovich’s heart was beating in his throat. He tried to swallow it, but it started pounding even harder. When would the duel take place? Tomorrow? Why didn’t they tell him? Maybe the day after tomorrow? It would be better the day after tomorrow.…

Mityushin and Gnushke exchanged glances and got up.

“We shall call for you tomorrow at six-thirty a.m.,” said Mityushin. “There is no point in leaving sooner. There isn’t a damn soul out there anyway.”

Anton Petrovich got up too. What should he do? Thank them?

“Well, thank you, gentlemen.… Thank you, gentlemen.… Everything is settled, then. All right, then.”

The others bowed.

“We must still find a doctor and the pistols,” said Gnushke.

In the front hall Anton Petrovich took Mityushin by the elbow and mumbled, “You know, it’s awfully silly, but you see, I don’t know how to shoot, so to speak, I mean, I know how, but I’ve had no practice at all.…”

“Hm,” said Mityushin, “that’s too bad. Today is Sunday, otherwise you could have taken a lesson or two. That’s really bad luck.”

“Colonel Arkhangelski gives private shooting lessons,” put in Gnushke.

“Yes,” said Mityushin. “You’re the smart one, aren’t you? Still, what are we to do, Anton Petrovich? You know what—beginners are lucky. Put your trust in God and just press the trigger.”

They left. Dusk was falling. Nobody had lowered the blinds. There must be some cheese and graham bread in the sideboard. The rooms were deserted and motionless, as if all the furniture had once breathed and moved about but had now died. A ferocious cardboard dentist bending over a panic-stricken patient of cardboard—this he had seen such a short time ago, on a blue, green, violet, ruby night, shot with fireworks, at the Luna Amusement Park. Berg took a long time aiming, the air rifle popped, the pellet hit the target, releasing a spring, and the cardboard dentist yanked out a huge tooth with a quadruple root. Tanya clapped her hands, Anton Petrovich smiled, Berg fired again, and the cardboard discs rattled as they spun, the clay pipes were shattered one after another, and the Ping-Pong ball dancing on a slender jet of water disappeared. How awful.… And, most awful of all, Tanya had then said jokingly, “It wouldn’t be much fun fighting a duel with you.” Twenty paces. Anton Petrovich went from door to window, counting the paces. Eleven. He inserted his monocle, and tried to estimate the distance. Two such rooms. Oh, if only he could manage to disable Berg at the first fire. But he did not know how to aim the thing. He was bound to miss. Here, this letter opener, for example. No, better take this paperweight. You are supposed to hold it like this and take aim. Or like this, perhaps, right up near your chin—it seems easier to do it this way. And at this instant, as he held before him the paperweight in the form of a parrot, pointing it this way and that, Anton Petrovich realized that he would be killed.

At about ten he decided to go to bed. The bedroom, though, was taboo. With great effort he found some clean bedclothes in the dresser, recased the pillow, and spread a sheet over the leather couch in the parlor. As he undressed, he thought, I am going to bed for the last time in my life. Nonsense, faintly squeaked some little particle of Anton Petrovich’s soul, the same particle that had made him throw the
glove, slam the door, and call Berg a scoundrel. “Nonsense!” Anton Petrovich said in a thin voice, and at once told himself it was not right to say such things. If I think that nothing will happen to me, then the worst will happen. Everything in life always happens the other way around. It would be nice to read something—for the last time—before going to sleep.

There I go again, he moaned inwardly. Why “for the last time”? I am in a terrible state. I must take hold of myself. Oh, if only I were given some sign. Cards?

He found a deck of cards on a nearby console and took the top card, a three of diamonds. What does the three of diamonds mean chiromantically? No idea. Then he drew, in that order, the queen of diamonds, the eight of clubs, the ace of spades. Ah! That’s bad. The ace of spades—I think that means death. But then that’s a lot of nonsense, superstitious nonsense.… Midnight. Five past. Tomorrow has become today. I have a duel today.

He sought peace in vain. Strange things kept happening: the book he was holding, a novel by some German writer or other, was called
The Magic Mountain
, and “mountain,” in German is
Berg
; he decided that if he counted to three and a streetcar went by at “three” he would be killed, and a streetcar obliged. And then Anton Petrovich did the very worst thing a man in his situation could have done: he decided to reason out what death really meant. When he had thought along these lines for a minute or so, everything lost sense. He found it difficult to breathe. He got up, walked about the room, and took a look out the window at the pure and terrible night sky. Must write my testament, thought Anton Petrovich. But to make a will was, so to speak, playing with fire; it meant inspecting the contents of one’s own urn in the columbarium. “Best thing is to get some sleep,” he said aloud. But as soon as he closed his eyelids, Berg’s grinning face would appear before him, purposively slitting one eye. He would turn on the light again, attempt to read, smoke, though he was not a regular smoker. Trivial memories floated by—a toy pistol, a path in the park, that sort of thing—and he would immediately cut short his recollections with the thought that those who are about to die always remember trifles from their past. Then the opposite thing frightened him: he realized that he was not thinking of Tanya, that he was numbed by a strange drug that made him insensitive to her absence. She was my life and she has gone, he thought. I have already, unconsciously, bid life farewell, and everything is now indifferent to me, since I shall be killed.… The night, meanwhile, was beginning to wane.

At about four he shuffled into the dining room and drank a glass of
soda water. A mirror near which he passed reflected his striped pajamas and thinning, wispy hair. I’m going to look like my own ghost, he thought. But how can I get some sleep? How?

He wrapped himself in a lap robe, for he noticed that his teeth were chattering, and sat down in an armchair in the middle of the dim room that was slowly ascertaining itself. How will it all be? I must dress soberly, but elegantly. Tuxedo? No, that would be idiotic. A black suit, then … and, yes, a black tie. The new black suit. But if there’s a wound, a shoulder wound, say … The suit will be ruined.… The blood, the hole, and, besides, they may start cutting off the sleeve. Nonsense, nothing of the sort is going to happen. I must wear my new black suit. And when the duel starts, I shall turn up my jacket collar—that’s the custom, I think, in order to conceal the whiteness of one’s shirt, probably, or simply because of the morning damp. That’s how they did it in that film I saw. Then I must keep absolutely cool, and address everyone politely and calmly. Thank you, I have already fired. It is your turn now. If you do not remove that cigarette from your mouth I shall not fire. I am ready to continue. “Thank you, I have already laughed”—that’s what you say to a stale joke.… Oh, if one could only imagine all the details! They would arrive—he, Mityushin, and Gnushke—in a car, leave the car on the road, walk into the woods. Berg and his seconds would probably be waiting there already, they always do in books. Now, there was a question: does one salute one’s opponent? What does Onegin do in the opera? Perhaps a discreet tip of the hat from a distance would be just right. Then they would probably start marking off the yards and loading the pistols. What would he do meanwhile? Yes, of course—he would place one foot on a stump somewhere a little way off, and wait in a casual attitude. But what if Berg also put one foot on a stump? Berg was capable of it.… Mimicking me to embarrass me. That would be awful. Other possibilities would be to lean against a tree trunk, or simply sit down on the grass. Somebody (in a Pushkin story?) ate cherries from a paper bag. Yes, but you have to bring that bag to the dueling ground—looks silly. Oh, well, he would decide when the time came. Dignified and nonchalant. Then we would take our positions. Twenty yards between us. It would be then that he should turn up his collar. He would grasp the pistol like this. Colonel Angel would wave a handkerchief or count till three. And then, suddenly, something utterly terrible, something absurd would happen—an unimaginable thing, even if one thought about it for nights on end, even if one lived to be a hundred in Turkey.… Nice to travel, sit in cafés.… What does one feel when a bullet hits one between the ribs or in the forehead? Pain? Nausea? Or is there
simply a bang followed by total darkness? The tenor Sobinov once crashed down so realistically that his pistol flew into the orchestra. And what if, instead, he received a ghastly wound of some kind—in one eye, or in the groin? No, Berg would kill him outright. Of course, here I’ve counted only the ones I killed outright. One more cross in that little black book. Unimaginable.…