The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (88 page)

But, as you know, during those days I did not read the papers: you were dying then. Now, however, having heard the story of Falter in detail, I experienced a certain very strong and perhaps slightly shamefaced desire.

You understand, of course. In the condition I was in, people without imagination—i.e., deprived of its support and inquiry—turn to the advertisements of wonder-workers; to chiromancers in comedy turbans, who combine the magic business with a trade in rat poison or rubber sheaths; to fat, swarthy women fortune-tellers; but particularly to spiritualists, who fake a still unidentified force by giving it the milky features of phantoms and getting them to manifest themselves in silly physical ways. But I have my share of imagination, and therefore two possibilities existed: the first was my work, my art, the consolation of my art; the second consisted of taking the plunge and believing that a person like Falter, rather average when you come down to it, despite a shrewd mind’s parlor games, and even a little vulgar, had actually and conclusively learned that at which no seer, no sorcerer had ever arrived.

My art? You remember him, don’t you, that strange Swede or Dane—or Icelander, for all I know—anyway, that lanky, orange-tanned blond fellow with the eyelashes of an old horse, who introduced himself to me as “a well-known writer,” and, for a price that gladdened you (you were already confined to your bed and unable to speak, but would write me funny trifles with colored chalk on slate—for instance, that the things you liked most in life were “verse, wildflowers, and foreign currency”), commissioned me to make a series of illustrations for the epic poem
Ultima Thule
, which he had just composed in his language. Of course there could be no question of my acquainting myself thoroughly with his manuscript, since French, in which we agonizingly communicated, was known to him mostly by hearsay, and he was unable to translate his imagery for me. I managed to understand only that his hero was some Northern king, unhappy and unsociable; that his kingdom, amid the sea mists, on a melancholy and remote island, was plagued by political intrigues of some kind, assassinations, insurrections, and that a white horse which had lost its rider was flying along the misty heath.… He was pleased with my first
blanc et noir
sample, and we decided on the subjects of the other drawings. As he did not turn up in a week as he had promised, I called his hotel, and learned that he had left for America.

I concealed my employer’s disappearance from you, but did not go on with the drawings; then again, you were already so ill that I did not feel like thinking about my golden pen and traceries in India ink. But
when you died, when the early mornings and late evenings became especially unbearable, then, with a pitiful, feverish eagerness, the awareness of which would bring tears to my own eyes, I would continue the work for which I knew no one would come, and for that very reason that task seemed to me appropriate—its spectral, intangible nature, the lack of aim or reward would lead me away to a realm akin to the one in which, for me, you exist, my ghostly goal, my darling, such a darling earthly creation, for which no one will ever come anywhere; and since everything kept distracting me, fobbing upon me the paint of temporality instead of the graphic design of eternity, tormenting me with your tracks on the beach, with the stones on the beach, with your blue shadow on the loathsome bright beach, I decided to return to our lodging in Paris and settle down to work seriously.
Ultima Thule
, that island born in the desolate, gray sea of my heartache for you, now attracted me as the home of my least expressible thoughts.

However, before leaving the Riviera, I absolutely had to see Falter. This was the second solace I had invented for myself. I managed to convince myself that he was not simply a lunatic after all, that not only did he believe in the discovery he had made, but that this very discovery was the source of his madness, and not vice versa. I learned that he had moved to an apartment next to my
pension
. I also learned that his health was flagging; that when the flame of life had gone out in him it had left his body without supervision and without incentive; that he would probably die soon. I learned, finally, and this was especially important to me, that lately, in spite of his failing strength, he had grown unusually talkative and for days on end would treat his visitors (and alas, a different kind of curiosity-seeker than I got through to him) to speeches in which he caviled at the mechanics of human thought, oddly meandering speeches, exposing nothing, but almost Socratic in rhythm and sting. I offered to visit him, but his brother-in-law replied that the poor fellow enjoyed any diversion, and had the strength to reach my house.

And so they arrived—that is, the brother-in-law in his inevitable shabby black suit, his wife Eleonora (a tall, taciturn woman, whose clear-cut sturdiness recalled the former frame of her brother, and now served as a kind of living lesson to him, an adjacent moralistic picture), and Falter himself, whose appearance shocked me, even though I was prepared to see him changed. How can I express it? Mr. L. had said that he looked as if his bones had been removed; I, on the other hand, had the impression that his soul had been extracted but his mind intensified tenfold in recompense. By this I mean that one look at Falter was sufficient to understand that one need not expect from him any of
the human feelings common in everyday life, that Falter had utterly lost the knack of loving anyone, of feeling pity, if only for himself, of experiencing kindness and, on occasion, compassion for the soul of another, of habitually serving, as best he could, the cause of good, if only that of his own standard, just as he had lost the knack of shaking hands or using his handkerchief. And yet he did not strike one as a madman—oh, no, quite the contrary! In his oddly bloated features, in his unpleasant, satiated gaze, even in his flat feet, shod no longer in fashionable Oxfords but in cheap espadrilles, one could sense some concentrated power, and this power was not in the least interested in the flabbiness and inevitable decay of the flesh that it squeamishly controlled.

His attitude toward me now was not that of our last brief encounter, but that which I remembered from the days of our youth, when he would come to coach me. No doubt he was perfectly aware that, chronologically, a quarter of a century had passed since those days, and yet as though along with his soul he had lost his sense of time (without which the
soul
cannot live), he obviously regarded me—a matter not so much of words, but of his whole manner—as if it had all been yesterday; yet he had no sympathy, no warmth whatever for me—nothing, not even a speck of it.

They seated him in an armchair, and he spread his limbs strangely, as a chimpanzee might do when his keeper makes him parody a Sybarite in a recumbent position. His sister settled down to her knitting, and during the whole course of the conversation did not once raise her short-haired gray head. Her husband took two newspapers—a local one, and one from Marseilles—out of his pocket, and was also silent. Only when Falter, noticing a large photograph of you that happened to be standing right in his line of sight, asked where were you hiding, did Mr. L. say, in the loud, artificial voice people use to address the deaf, and without looking up from his newspaper: “Come, you know perfectly well she is dead.”

“Ah, yes,” remarked Falter with inhuman unconcern, and, addressing me, added, “Oh well, may the kingdom of heaven be hers—isn’t that what one is supposed to say in society?”

Then the following conversation began between us; total recall, rather than shorthand notes, now allows me to transcribe it exactly.

“I wanted to see you, Falter,” I said (actually addressing him by first name and patronymic, but, in narration, his timeless image does not tolerate any conjunction of the man with a definite country and a genetic past), “I wanted to see you in order to have a frank talk with
you. I wonder if you would consider it possible to ask your relatives to leave us alone.”

“They do not count,” abruptly observed Falter.

“When I say ‘frank,’ ” I went on, “I presuppose the reciprocal possibility of asking no matter what questions, and the readiness to answer them. But since it is I who shall ask the questions, and expect answers from you, everything depends upon your consent to be straightforward; you do not need that assurance from me.”

“To a straightforward question I shall give a straightforward answer,” said Falter.

“In that case allow me to come right to the point. We shall ask Mr. and Mrs. L. to step outside for a moment, and you will tell me verbatim what you told the Italian doctor.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Falter.

“You cannot refuse me this. In the first place, the information won’t kill me—this I guarantee you; I may look tired and seedy but don’t you worry, I still have enough strength left. In the second place, I promise to keep your secret to myself, and even to shoot myself, if you like, immediately after learning it. You see, I allow that my loquacity may bother you even more than my death. Well, do you agree?”

“I refuse absolutely,” replied Falter, and swept away a book from the table next to him to make room for his elbow.

“For the sake of somehow starting our talk, I shall temporarily accept your refusal. Let us proceed
ab ovo
. Now then, Falter, I understand that the essence of things has been revealed to you.”

“Yes, period,” said Falter.

“Agreed—you will not tell me about it; nevertheless, I draw two important deductions: things do have an essence, and this essence can be revealed to the mind.”

Falter smiled. “Only do not call them deductions, mister. They are but flag stops. Logical reasoning may be a most convenient means of mental communication for covering short distances, but the curvature of the earth, alas, is reflected even in logic: an ideally rational progression of thought will finally bring you back to the point of departure where you return aware of the simplicity of genius, with a delightful sensation that you have embraced truth, while actually you have merely embraced your own self. Why set out on that journey, then? Be content with the formula: the essence of things has been revealed—wherein, incidentally, a blunder of yours is already present; I cannot explain it to you, since the least hint at an explanation would be a lethal glimpse. As long as the proposition remains static, one does
not notice the blunder. But anything you might term a deduction already exposes the flaw: logical development inexorably becomes an envelopment.”

“All right, for the present I shall be content with that much. Now allow me a question. When a hypothesis enters a scientist’s mind, he checks it by calculation and experiment, that is, by the mimicry and the pantomime of truth. Its plausibility infects others, and the hypothesis is accepted as the true explanation for the given phenomenon, until someone finds its faults. I believe the whole of science consists of such exiled or retired ideas: and yet at one time each of them boasted high rank; now only a name or a pension is left. But in your case, Falter, I suspect that you have found some different method of discovery and test. May I call it ‘revelation’ in the theological sense?”

“You may not,” said Falter.

“Wait a minute. Right now I am interested not so much in the method of discovery as in your conviction that the result is true. In other words, either you have a method of checking the result, or the awareness of its truth is inherent in it.”

“You see,” answered Falter, “in Indochina, at the lottery drawings, the numbers are extracted by a monkey. I happen to be that monkey. Another metaphor: in a country of honest men a yawl was moored at the shore, and it did not belong to anyone; but no one knew that it did not belong to anyone; and its assumed appurtenance to someone rendered it invisible to all. I happened to get into it. But perhaps it would be simplest of all if I said that in a moment of playfulness, not mathematical playfulness, necessarily—mathematics, I warn you, is but a perpetual game of leapfrog over its own shoulders as it keeps breeding—I kept combining various ideas, and finally found the right combination and exploded, like Berthold Schwartz. Somehow I survived; perhaps another in my place might have survived, too. However, after the incident with my charming doctor I do not have the least desire to be bothered by the police again.”

“You’re warming up, Falter. But let’s get back to the point: what exactly makes you certain that it is the truth? That monkey is not really a party to the cast lots.”

“Truths, and shadows of truths,” said Falter, “in the sense of species, of course, not specimens, are so rare in the world, and available ones are either so trivial or tainted, that—how shall I put it?—that the
recoil
upon perceiving Truth, the instant reaction of one’s whole being, remains an unfamiliar, little-studied phenomenon. Oh, well, sometimes in children—when a boy wakes up or regains his senses after a bout with scarlet fever and there is an electric discharge of reality, relative
reality, no doubt, for you, humans, possess no other. Take any truism, that is, the corpse of a relative truth. Now analyze the physical sensation evoked in you by the words ‘black is darker than brown,’ or ‘ice is cold.’ Your thought is too lazy even to make a polite pretense of raising its rump from its bench, as if the same teacher were to enter your classroom a hundred times in the course of one lesson in old Russia. But, in my childhood, one day of great frost, I licked the shiny lock of a wicket. Let us dismiss the physical pain, or the pride of discovery, if it is a pleasant one—all that is not the real reaction to truth. You see, its impact is so little known that one cannot even find an exact word for it. All your nerves simultaneously answer ‘yes!’—something like that. Let us also set aside a kind of astonishment, which is merely the unaccustomed assimilation of the
thingness
of truth, not of Truth itself. If you tell me that So-and-so is a thief, then I combine at once in my mind a number of suddenly illuminated trifles that I had myself observed, yet I have time to marvel that a man who had seemed so upright turned out to be a crook, but unconsciously I have already absorbed the truth, so that my astonishment itself promptly assumes an inverted form (how could one have ever thought honest such an obvious crook?); in other words, the sensitive point of truth lies exactly halfway between the first surprise and the second.”