The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (45 page)

Night came; a slippery polished moon sped, without the least friction, in between chinchilla clouds, and Eleanor, returning from the wedding supper, and still all atingle from the wine and the juicy jokes, recalled her own wedding day as she leisurely walked home. Somehow all the thoughts now passing through her brain kept turning so as to show their moon-bright, attractive side; she felt almost lighthearted as she entered the gateway and proceeded to open the door, and she caught herself thinking that it was surely a great thing to have an apartment of one’s own, stuffy and dark though it might be. Smiling, she turned on the light in her bedroom, and saw at once that all the drawers had been pulled open: she hardly had time to imagine burglars, for there were those keys on the night table and a bit of paper propped against the alarm clock. The note was brief:
“Off to Spain. Don’t touch anything till I write. Borrow from Sch. or W. Feed the lizards.”

The faucet was dripping in the kitchen. Unconsciously she picked up her silver bag where she had dropped it, and kept on sitting on the edge of the bed, quite straight and still, with her hands in her lap as if she were having her photograph taken. After a time someone got up, walked across the room, inspected the bolted window, came back again, while she watched with indifference, not realizing that it was she who was moving. The drops of water plopped in slow succession, and suddenly she felt terrified at being alone in the house. The man whom she had loved for his mute omniscience, stolid coarseness, grim perseverance in work, had stolen away.… She felt like howling, running to the police, showing her marriage certificate, insisting, pleading; but still she kept on sitting, her hair slightly ruffled, her hands in white gloves.

Yes, Pilgram had gone far, very far. Most probably he visited Granada and Murcia and Albarracin, and then traveled farther still, to Surinam or Taprobane; and one can hardly doubt that he saw all the glorious bugs he had longed to see—velvety black butterflies soaring over the jungles, and a tiny moth in Tasmania, and that Chinese “skipper” said to smell of crushed roses when alive, and the short-clubbed beauty that a Mr. Baron had just discovered in Mexico. So, in a certain sense, it is quite irrelevant that some time later, upon wandering into the shop, Eleanor saw the checkered suitcase, and then her husband, sprawling on the floor with his back to the counter, among scattered coins, his livid face knocked out of shape by death.

O
UR
suitcase is carefully embellished with bright-colored stickers: “Nürnberg,” “Stuttgart,” “Köln”—and even “Lido” (but that one is fraudulent). We have a swarthy complexion, a network of purple-red veins, a black mustache, trimly clipped, and hairy nostrils. We breathe hard through our nose as we try to solve a crossword puzzle in an émigré paper. We are alone in a third-class compartment—alone and, therefore, bored.

Tonight we arrive in a voluptuous little town. Freedom of action! Fragrance of commercial travels! A golden hair on the sleeve of one’s coat! Oh, woman, thy name is Goldie! That’s how we called Mamma and, later, our wife Katya. Psychoanalytic fact: every man is Oedipus. During the last trip we were unfaithful to Katya three times, and that cost us 30 reichsmarks. Funny—they all look a fright in the place one lives in, but in a strange town they are as lovely as antique hetaerae. Even more delicious, however, might be the elegancies of a chance encounter: your profile reminds me of the girl for whose sake years ago … After one single night we shall part like ships.… Another possibility: she might turn out to be Russian. Allow me to introduce myself: Konstantin … Better omit the family name—or maybe invent one? Obolenski. Yes, relatives.

We do not know any famous Turkish general and can guess neither the father of aviation nor an American rodent. It is also not very amusing to look at the view. Fields. A road. Birches-smirches. Cottage and cabbage patch. Country lass, not bad, young.

Katya is the very type of a good wife. Lacks any sort of passion, cooks beautifully, washes her arms as far as the shoulders every morning, and is not overbright: therefore, not jealous. Given the sterling breadth of her pelvis one is surprised that for the second time now she has produced a stillborn babikins. Laborious years. Uphill all the way.
Absolut Marasmus
in business. Sweating twenty times before persuading one customer. Then squeezing out the commission drop by drop. God, how one longs to tangle with a graceful gold-bright little devil in a fantastically lit hotel room! Mirrors, orgies, a couple of drinks. Another five hours of travel. Railroad riding, it is proclaimed, disposes one to this kind of thing. Am extremely disposed. After all, say what you will, but the mainspring of life is robust romance. Can’t concentrate on business unless I take care first of my romantic interests. So here is the plan: starting point, the cafe which Lange told me about. Now if I don’t find anything there—

Crossing gate, warehouse, big station. Our traveler let down the window and leaned upon it, elbows wide apart. Beyond a platform, steam was issuing from under some sleeping cars. One could vaguely make out the pigeons changing perches under the lofty glass dome. Hotdogs cried out in treble, beer in baritone. A girl, her bust enclosed in white wool, stood talking to a man, now joining her bare arms behind her back, swaying slightly and beating her buttocks with her handbag, now folding her arms on her chest and stepping with one foot upon the other, or else holding her handbag under her arm and with a small snapping sound thrusting nimble fingers under her glossy black belt; thus she stood, and laughed, and sometimes touched her companion in a valedictory gesture, only to resume at once her twisting and turning: a suntanned girl with a heaped-up hairdo that left her ears bare, and a quite ravishing scratch on her honey-hued upper arm. She does not look at us, but never mind, let us ogle her fixedly. In the beam of the gloating tense glance she starts to shimmer and seems about to dissolve. In a moment the background will show through her—a refuse bin, a poster, a bench; but here, unfortunately, our crystalline lens had to return to its normal condition, for everything shifted, the man jumped into the next carriage, the train jerked into motion, and the girl took a handkerchief out of her handbag. When, in the course of her receding glide, she came exactly in front of his window, Konstantin, Kostya, Kostenka, thrice kissed with gusto the palm of his hand, but his salute passed unnoticed: with rhythmical waves of her handkerchief, she floated away.

He shut the window and, on turning around, saw with pleased surprise that during his mesmeric activities the compartment had managed to fill up: three men with their newspapers and, in the far corner, a brunette with a powdered face. Her shiny coat was of gelatinlike translucency—resisting rain, maybe, but not a man’s gaze. Decorous humor and correct eye-reach—that’s our motto.

Ten minutes later he was deep in conversation with the passenger in the opposite window seat, a neatly dressed old gentleman; the prefatory theme had sailed by in the guise of a factory chimney; certain statistics came to be mentioned, and both men expressed themselves with melancholic irony regarding industrial trends; meanwhile the white-faced woman dismissed a sickly bouquet of forget-me-nots to the baggage rack, and having produced a magazine from her traveling bag became engrossed in the transparent process of reading: through it comes our caressive voice, our commonsensical speech. The second male passenger joined in: he was engagingly fat, wore checked knickerbockers stuck into green stockings and talked about pig breeding. What a good sign—she adjusts every part you look at. The third man, an arrogant recluse, hid behind his paper. At the next stop the industrialist and the expert on hogs got out, the recluse retired to the dining car, and the lady moved to the window seat.

Let us appraise her point by point. Funereal expression of eyes, lascivious lips. First-rate legs, artificial silk. What is better: the experience of a sexy thirty-year-old brunette, or the silly young bloom of a bright-curled romp? Today the former is better, and tomorrow we shall see. Next point: through the gelatin of her raincoat glimmers a beautiful nude, like a mermaid seen through the yellow waves of the Rhine. Spasmodically rising, she shed her coat, but revealed only a beige dress with a piqué collaret. Arrange it. That’s right.

“May weather,” affably said Konstantin, “and yet the trains are still heated.”

Her left eyebrow went up, and she answered, “Yes, it
is
warm here, and I’m mortally tired. My contract is finished, I’m going home now. They all toasted me—the station buffet there is tops. I drank too much, but I never get tipsy, just a heaviness in my stomach. Life has grown hard, I receive more flowers than money, and a month’s rest will be most welcome; after that I have a new contract, but of course, it’s impossible to lay anything by. The potbellied chap who just left behaved obscenely. How he stared at me! I feel as if I have been on this train for a long, long time, and I am so very anxious to return to my cozy little apartment far from all that flurry and claptrap and rot.”

“Allow me to offer you,” said Kostya, “something to palliate the offense.”

He pulled from under his backside a square pneumatic cushion, its rubber covered in speckled satin: he always had it under him during his flat, hard, hemorrhoidal trips.

“And what about yourself?” she inquired.

“We’ll manage, we’ll manage. I must ask you to rise a little. Excuse me. Now sit down. Soft, isn’t it? That part is especially sensitive on the road.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Not all men are so considerate. I’ve lost quite a bit of flesh lately. Oh, how nice! Just like traveling second class.”

“Galanterie, Gnädigste,” said
Kostenka, “is an innate property with us. Yes, I’m a foreigner. Russian. Here’s an example: one day my father had gone for a walk on the grounds of his manor with an old pal, a well-known general. They happened to meet a peasant woman—a little old hag, you know, with a bundle of firewood on her back—and my father took off his hat. This surprised the general, and then my father said, ‘Would Your Excellency really want a simple peasant to be more courteous than a member of the gentry?’ ”

“I know a Russian—I’m sure you’ve heard his name, too—let me see, what was it? Baretski … Baratski.… From Warsaw. He now owns a drugstore in Chemnitz. Baratski … Baritski. I’m sure you know him?”

“I do not. Russia is a big country. Our family estate was about as large as your Saxony. And all has been lost, all has been burnt down. The glow of the fire could be seen at a distance of seventy kilometers. My parents were butchered in my presence. I owe my life to a faithful retainer, a veteran of the Turkish campaign.”

“How terrible,” she said, “how very terrible!”

“Yes, but it inures one. I escaped, disguised as a country girl. In those days I made a very cute little maiden. Soldiers pestered me. Especially one beastly fellow … And thereby hangs a most comic tale.”

He told his tale.
“Pfui!”
she uttered, smiling.

“Well, after that came the era of wanderings, and a multitude of trades. At one time I even used to shine shoes—and would see in my dreams the precise spot in the garden where the old butler, by torchlight, had buried our ancestral jewels. There was, I remember, a sword, studded with diamonds—”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” said the lady.

The resilient cushion had not yet had time to cool when she again sat down upon it and with mellow grace recrossed her legs.

“—and moreover two rubies, that big, then stocks in a golden casket, my father’s epaulets, a string of black pearls—”

“Yes, many people are ruined at present,” she remarked with a sigh, and continued, again raising that left eyebrow: “I too have experienced all sorts of hardships. I had a husband, it was a dreadful marriage, and I said to myself: enough! I’m going to live my own way. For almost a
year now I’m not on speaking terms with my parents—old people, you know, don’t understand the young—and it affects me deeply. Sometimes I pass by their house and sort of dream of dropping in—and my second husband is now, thank goodness, in Argentina, he writes me absolutely marvelous letters, but I will never return to him. There was another man, the director of a factory, a very sedate gentleman, he adored me, wanted me to bear him a child, and his wife was also such a dear, so warmhearted—much older than he—oh, we three were such friends, went boating on the lake in summer, but then they moved to Frankfurt. Or take actors—such good, gay people—and affairs with them are so
kameradschaftlich
, there’s no pouncing upon you, at once, at once, at once.…”

In the meantime Kostya reflected: We know all those parents and directors. She’s making up everything. Very attractive, though. Breasts like a pair of piggies, slim hips. Likes to tipple, apparently. Let’s order some beer from the diner.

“Well, some time later, there was a lucky break, brought me heaps of money. I had four apartment houses in Berlin. But the man whom I trusted, my friend, my partner, deceived me.… Painful recollections. I lost a fortune but not my optimism, and now, again, thank God, despite the depression.… Apropos, let me show you something, madam.”

The suitcase with the swanky stickers contained (among other meretricious articles) samples of a highly fashionable kind of vanity-bag looking glass; little things neither round, nor square, but
Phantasie
-shaped, say, like a daisy or a butterfly or a heart. Meanwhile came the beer. She examined the little mirrors and looked in them at herself; blinks of light shot across the compartment. She downed the beer like a trooper, and with the back of her hand removed the foam from her orange-red lips. Kostenka fondly replaced the samples in the valise and put it back on the shelf. All right, let’s begin.

“Do you know—I keep looking at you, and imagining that we met once years ago. You resemble to an absurd degree a girl—she died of consumption—whom I loved so much that I almost shot myself. Yes, we Russians are sentimental eccentrics, but believe me we can love with the passion of a Rasputin and the naïveté of a child. You are lonely, and I am lonely. You are free, and I am free. Who, then, can forbid us to spend several pleasant hours in a sheltered love nest?”