The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (5 page)

You gave a shivery shrug. “We’ll be bored to death there. This is awful.” You glanced at your wrist and sighed. “Time to go. I must change my shoes.”

In your misty bedroom, the sunlight, having penetrated the lowered Venetian blinds, formed two golden ladders on the floor. You said something in your muted voice. Outside the window, the trees breathed and dripped with a contented rustle. And I, smiling at that rustle, lightly and unavidly embraced you.

It happened like this. On one bank of the river was your park, your meadows, and on the other stood the village. The highway was deeply rutted in places. The mud was a lush violet, and the grooves contained bubbly, café-au-lait water. The oblique shadows of black log isbas extended with particular clarity.

We walked in the shade along a well-trodden path, past a grocery, past an inn with an emerald sign, past sun-filled courtyards emanating the aromas of manure and of fresh hay.

The schoolhouse was new, constructed of stone, with maples planted around it. On its threshold a peasant woman’s white calves gleamed as she wrung out a rag into a bucket.

You inquired, “Is Pal Palych in?” The woman, with her freckles and braids, squinted against the sun. “He is, he is.” The pail tinkled
as she pushed it with her heel. “Come in, ma’am. They’ll be in the workshop.”

We creaked along a dark hallway, then through a spacious classroom.

I glanced in passing at an azure map, and thought, That’s how all of Russia is—sunlight and hollows.… In a corner sparkled a crushed piece of chalk.

Farther on, in the small workshop, there was a pleasant smell of carpenter’s glue and pine sawdust. Coatless, puffy, and sweaty, his left leg extended, Pal Palych was planing away appetizingly at a groaning white board. His moist, bald pate rocked to and fro in a dusty ray of sunlight. On the floor under the workbench, the shavings curled like flimsy locks.

I said loudly, “Pal Palych, you have guests!”

He gave a start, immediately got flustered, bestowed a polite smack on the hand you raised with such a listless, familiar gesture, and for an instant poured his damp fingers into my hand and gave it a shake. His face looked as if it had been fashioned of buttery modeling clay, with its limp mustache and unexpected furrows.

“Sorry—I’m not dressed, you see,” he said with a guilty smile. He grabbed a pair of shirt cuffs that had been standing like cylinders side by side on the windowsill, and pulled them on hastily.

“What are you working on?” you asked with a glint of your bracelet. Pal Palych was struggling into his jacket with sweeping motions. “Nothing, just puttering,” he sputtered, stumbling slightly on the labial consonants. “It’s a kind of little shelf. Haven’t finished yet. I still have to sand and lacquer it. But take a look at this—I call it the Fly.…” With a spinning rub of his joined palms, he launched a miniature wooden helicopter, which soared with a buzzing sound, bumped on the ceiling, and dropped.

The shadow of a polite smile flitted across your face. “Oh, silly me,” Pal Palych started again. “You were expected upstairs, my friends.… This door squeaks. Sorry. Allow me to go first. I’m afraid my place is a mess.…”

“I think he forgot he invited me,” you said in English as we began climbing the creaky staircase.

I was watching your back, the silk checks of your blouse. From somewhere downstairs, probably the courtyard, came a resonant peasant-woman voice, “Gerosim! Hey, Gerosim!” And suddenly it was supremely clear to me that, for centuries, the world had been blooming, withering, spinning, changing solely in order that now, at this instant,
it might combine and fuse into a vertical chord the voice that had resounded downstairs, the motion of your silken shoulder blades, and the scent of pine boards.

Pal Palych’s room was sunny and somewhat cramped. A crimson rug with a yellow lion embroidered in its center was nailed to the wall above the bed. On another wall hung a framed chapter from
Anna Karenin
, set in such a way that the interplay of dark and light type together with the clever placement of the lines formed Tolstoy’s face.

Rubbing his hands together, our host seated you. As he did so, he knocked an album off the table with the flap of his jacket. He retrieved it. Tea, yogurt, and some insipid biscuits appeared. From a dresser drawer, Pal Palych produced a flowery tin of Landrin hard candy. When he stooped, a fold of pimply skin bulged behind his collar. The down of a spiderweb on the windowsill contained a yellow, dead bumblebee. “Where is Sarajevo?” you asked suddenly, rustling a newspaper page that you had listlessly picked up from a chair. Pal Palych, busy pouring tea, replied, “In Serbia.”

And, with a trembling hand, he carefully gave you the steaming glass in its silver stand.

“There you are. May I offer you some biscuits? … And what are they throwing bombs for?” he addressed me with a jerk of his shoulders.

I was examining, for the hundredth time, a massive glass paperweight. The glass contained pinkish azure and St. Isaac’s Cathedral specked with golden sandy grains. You laughed and read aloud, “Yesterday, a merchant of the Second Guild named Yeroshin was arrested at the Quisisana Restaurant. It turned out that Yeroshin, under the pretext of …” You laughed again. “No, the rest is indecent.”

Pal Palych grew flustered, flushed a brownish shade of red, and dropped his spoon. Maple leaves glistened immediately beneath the windows. A wagon rattled past. From somewhere came the plaintive, tender cry “Ice—cream!…”

He began talking about school, about drunkenness, about the trout that had appeared in the river. I started scrutinizing him, and had the feeling I was really seeing him for the first time, even though we were old acquaintances. An image of him from our first encounter must have remained impressed on my brain and never changed, like something
accepted and grown habitual. When thinking in passing about Pal Palych, I had the impression for some reason that he had not only a dark-blond mustache but even a matching little beard. An imaginary beard is a characteristic of many Russian faces. Now, having given him a special look, so to speak, with an internal eye, I saw that in reality his chin was rounded, hairless, and had a slight cleft. He had a fleshy nose, and I noticed, on his left eyelid, a pimplelike mole I would have dearly loved to cut off—but cutting would have meant killing. That little grain contained him, totally and exclusively. When I realized all this, and examined all of him, I made the slightest of motions, as if nudging my soul to start it sliding downhill, and glided inside Pal Palych, made myself comfortable inside him, and felt from within, as it were, that growth on his wrinkly eyelid, the starched winglets of his collar, and the fly crawling across his bald spot. I examined all of him with limpid, mobile eyes. The yellow lion over the bed now seemed an old acquaintance, as if it had been on my wall since childhood. The colored postcard, enclosed in its convex glass, became extraordinary, graceful, joyous. It was not you sitting in front of me, in the low wicker armchair to which my back had grown accustomed, but the benefactress of the school, a taciturn lady I hardly knew. And right away, with the same lightness of movement, I glided into you too, perceived the ribbon of a garter above your knee and, a little higher, the tickle of batiste, and thought, in your stead, that it was boring, it was hot, one wanted to smoke. At that instant you produced a gold case from your purse and inserted a cigarette into your holder. And I was within everything—you, the cigarette, the holder, Pal Palych scrabbling awkwardly with his match, the glass paperweight, the dead bumblebee on the windowsill.

Many years have sailed by, and I do not know where he is now, timid, puffy Pal Palych. Sometimes, though, when he is the last thing I am thinking about, I see him in a dream, transposed into the setting of my current existence. He enters a room with his fussy, smiling gait, faded panama in hand; he bows as he walks; he mops his bald spot and ruddy neck with an enormous handkerchief. And when I dream of him you invariably traverse my dream, looking lazy and wearing a low-belted silk top.

•   •   •

I was not loquacious on that wonderfully happy day. I gulped the slippery flakes of curds and strained to hear every sound. When Pal Palych fell silent, I could hear his stomach muttering—a delicate squeak, followed by a tiny gurgle. Whereupon he would demonstratively clear his throat and hurriedly start talking about something. Stumbling, at a loss for the right word, he would frown and drum his fingertips on the table. You reclined in the low armchair, impassive and silent. Turning your head sidewise and lifting your angular elbow, you would glance at me from under your lashes as you adjusted the hairpins in back. You thought I felt awkward in front of Pal Palych because you and I had arrived together, and he might have an inkling about our relationship. And I was amused that you were thinking this, and amused by the dim, melancholy way Pal Palych blushed when you deliberately mentioned your husband and his work.

In front of the school, the sun’s hot ochre had splashed beneath the maples. From the threshold, Pal Palych bowed, thanking us for dropping by, then he bowed again from the doorway, and a thermometer sparkled, glassy-white, on the outside wall.

When we had left the village, crossed the bridge, and were climbing the path toward your house, I took you under the elbow, and you flashed that special sidelong smile that told me you were happy. Suddenly I had the desire to tell you about Pal Palych’s little wrinkles, about the spangled St. Isaac’s, but, as soon as I began, I had a feeling the wrong words were coming out, bizarre words, and when you tenderly said, “Decadent,” I changed the subject. I knew what you needed: simple feelings, simple words. Your silence was effortless and windless, like the silence of clouds or plants. All silence is the recognition of a mystery. There was much about you that seemed mysterious.

A workman in a puffed blouse was resonantly and firmly sharpening his scythe. Butterflies floated above the unmowed scabious flowers. Toward us along the path came a young girl with a pale-green kerchief on her shoulders and daisies in her dark hair. I had already seen her three times or so, and her thin, tanned neck had stuck in my memory. As she passed, she gave you an attentive touch of her barely slanted eyes. Then, hopping carefully across the ditch, she disappeared behind the alders. A silvery tremor traversed the matte-textured bushes. You said, “I bet she was having herself a nice walk in my park. How I detest
these vacationers.…” A fox terrier, a plump old bitch, was trotting along the path after her owner. You adored dogs. The little animal crawled up to us on its belly, wriggling, its ears laid back. It rolled over under your proffered hand, showing its pink underbelly, covered with gray maplike spots. “Why, you sweetheart,” you said with your special, petting-ruffling voice.

The fox terrier, having rolled around for a while, gave a dainty little squeal and trotted on, scuttling across the ditch.

When we were already approaching the low park gate, you decided you wanted to smoke, but, after rummaging in your handbag, you softly clucked, “How silly of me. I left the holder at his place.” You touched my shoulder. “Dearest, run and fetch it. Otherwise I cannot smoke.” I laughed as I kissed your fluttery eyelashes and your narrow smile.

You cried out after me, “Just hurry!” I set off at a run, not because there was any great rush, but because everything around me was running—the iridescence of the bushes, the shadows of the clouds on the damp grass, the purplish flowers scurrying for their lives into a gully before the mower’s lightning.

Some ten minutes later, panting hotly, I was climbing the steps to the schoolhouse. I banged on the brown door with my fist. A mattress spring squeaked inside. I turned the handle, but the door was locked. “Who’s there?” came Pal Palych’s flustered voice.

I shouted, “Come on, let me in!” The mattress clinked again, and there was a slapping of unshod feet. “What do you lock yourself in for, Pal Palych?” I noticed right away that his eyes were red.

“Come in, come in.… Glad to see you. You see, I was asleep. Come on in.”

“We forgot a cigarette holder here,” I said, trying not to look at him.

We finally found the green-enameled tube under the armchair. I stuck it in my pocket. Pal Palych was trumpeting into his handkerchief.

“She’s a wonderful person,” he said inopportunely, sitting down heavily on the bed. He sighed and looked askance. “There’s something about a Russian woman, a certain—” He got all wrinkled up and rubbed his brow. “A certain”—he emitted a gentle grunt—“spirit of self-sacrifice. There is nothing more sublime in the world. That extraordinarily subtle, extraordinarily sublime spirit of self-sacrifice.” He joined his hands behind his head and broke into a lyrical smile.

“Extraordinarily …” He fell silent, then asked, already with a different tone, one that he often used to make me laugh, “And what else do you have to tell me, my friend?” I felt like giving him a hug, saying something full of warmth, something he needed. “You ought to go for a walk, Pal Palych. Why mope in a stuffy room?”

He gave a dismissive wave. “I’ve seen all there is to see. You do nothing b-but get all hot out there.…” He wiped his puffy eyes and his mustache with a downward motion of his hand. “Maybe tonight I’ll go do some fishing.” The pimplelike mole on his wrinkled eyelid twitched.

One ought to have asked him, “Dear Pal Palych, why were you lying down just now with your face buried in the pillow? Is it just hay fever, or some major grief? Have you ever loved a woman? And why cry on a day like this, with this nice sunshine and the puddles outside? …”

“Well, I have to run, Pal Palych,” I said, glancing at the abandoned glasses, the typographically re-created Tolstoy, and the boots with earlike loops under the table.

Two flies settled on the red floor. One climbed on top of the other. They buzzed and flew apart.

“No hard feelings,” Pal Palych said with a slow exhalation. He shook his head. “I’ll grin and bear it—go, don’t let me keep you.”

I was running again along the path, next to the alder bushes. I felt that I had bathed in another’s grief, that I was radiant with his tears. The feeling was a happy one, which I have since experienced only rarely: at the sight of a bowed tree, a pierced glove, a horse’s eye. It was happy because it had a harmonious flow. It was happy as any movement or radiance is happy. I had once been splintered into a million beings and objects. Today I am one; tomorrow I shall splinter again. And thus everything in the world decants and modulates. That day I was on the crest of a wave. I knew that all my surroundings were notes of one and the same harmony, knew—secretly—the source and the inevitable resolution of the sounds assembled for an instant, and the new chord that would be engendered by each of the dispersing notes. My soul’s musical ear knew and comprehended everything.