The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (91 page)

The king set out in search of breakfast. He never knew in which of the five possible chambers situated along the cold stone gallery, with cobwebs in the corners of its ogival windows, his coffee would be waiting. Opening the doors one by one, he kept trying to locate the little set table, and finally found it where it happened least frequently: under a large, opulently dark portrait of his predecessor. King Gafon was portrayed at the age at which he remembered him, but features, posture, and bodily structure were endowed with a magnificence that had never been characteristic of that stoop-shouldered, fidgety, and sloppy old man with a peasant crone’s wrinkles above his hairless and somewhat
crooked upper lip. The words of the family arms, “see and rule”
(sassed ud halsem)
, used to be changed by wags, when referring to him, to “armchair and filbert brandy”
(sasse ud hazel)
. He reigned thirty-odd years, arousing neither particular love nor particular hatred in anyone, believing equally in the power of good and the power of money, docile in his acquiescence to the parliamentary majority, whose vapid humanitarian aspirations appealed to his sentimental soul, and generously rewarding from a secret treasury the activities of those deputies whose devotion to the crown assured its stability. Kingcraft had long since become for him the flywheel of a mechanical habit, and the benighted submissiveness of the country, where the
Peplerhus
(parliament) faintly shone like a bleary and crackling rushlight, appeared as a similar form of regular rotation. And if the very last years of his reign were poisoned nevertheless by bitter sedition, coming as a belch after a long and carefree dinner, not he was to blame, but the person and behavior of the crown prince. Indeed, in the heat of vexation good burghers found that the one-time scourge of the learned world, the now forgotten Professor ven Skunk, did not err much when he affirmed that childbearing was but an illness, and that every babe was an “externalized,” self-existent parental tumor, often malignant.

The present king (pre-accessionally, let us designate him as K in chess notation) was the old man’s nephew, and in the beginning no one dreamed that the nephew would accede to a throne rightfully promised to King Gafon’s son, Prince Adulf, whose utterly indecent folkname (based on a felicitous assonance) must, for the sake of decorum, be translated “Prince Fig.” K grew up in a remote palace under the eye of a morose and ambitious grandee and his horsey, masculine wife, so he barely knew his cousin and started seeing him a little more often only at the age of twenty, when Adulf was near forty.

We have before us a well-fed, easygoing fellow, with a stout neck, a broad pelvis, a big-cheeked, evenly pink face, and fine, bulging eyes. His nasty little mustache, resembling a pair of blue-black feathers, somehow did not match his fat lips, which always looked greasy, as if he had just finished sucking on a chicken bone. His dark, thick, unpleasantly smelling, and also greasy hair lent a foppish something, uncommon in Thule, to his large, solidly planted head. He had a penchant for showy clothes and was at the same time as unwashed as a
papugh
(seminarian). He was well versed in music, sculpture, and graphics, but could spend hours in the company of dull, vulgar persons. He wept profusely while listening to the melting violin of the great Perelmon, and shed the same tears while picking up the shards of a favorite cup. He was ready to help anyone in any way, if at that moment
he was not occupied with other matters; and, blissfully wheezing, poking, and nibbling at life, he constantly contrived, in regard to third parties whose existence he did not bother about, to cause sorrows far exceeding in depth that of his own soul—sorrows pertaining to another,
the
other, world.

In his twentieth year K entered the University of Ultimare, situated at four hundred miles of purple heather from the capital, on the shore of the gray sea, and there learned something about the crown prince’s morals, and would have heard much more if he did not avoid talks and discussions that might overburden his already none too easy anonymity. The Count, his guardian, who came to visit him once a week (sometimes arriving in the sidecar of a motorcycle driven by his energetic wife), continually emphasized how nasty, disgraceful, and dangerous it would be if any of the students or professors learned that this lanky, gloomy youth, who excelled as much at his studies as at
vanbol
on the two-hundred-year-old-court behind the library building, was not at all a notary’s son, but a king’s nephew. Whether it was submission to one of those many whims, enigmatic in their stupidity, with which someone unknown and mightier than the king and the
Peplerhus
together for some reason troubled the shabby, monotonous, northern life, faithful to half-forgotten covenants, of that
“île triste et lointaine”;
or whether the peeved grandee had his own private scheme, his far-sighted calculation (the rearing of kings was supposed to be kept secret), we do not know; nor was there any reason to speculate about this, since, anyway, the unusual student was busy with other matters. Books, wallball, skiing (winters then used to be snowy), but, most of all, nights of special meditation by the hearth, and, a little later, his romance with Belinda—all sufficiently filled up his existence to leave him unconcerned with the vulgar little intrigues of metapolitics. Moreover, while diligently studying the annals of the fatherland, it never occurred to him that within him slumbered the very blood that had coursed through the veins of preceding kings; or that actual life rushing past was also “history”—history that had issued from the tunnel of the ages into pallid sunlight. Either because his subject of concentration ended a whole century before the reign of Gafon, or because the magic involuntarily evolved by the most sober chroniclers seemed more precious to him than his own testimony, the bookman in him overcame the eyewitness, and later on, when he tried to reestablish connection with the present, he had to content himself with knocking together provisional passages, which only served to deform the familiar remoteness of legend (that bridge on the Egel, that blood-spattered bridge!).

It was, then, before the beginning of his second college year that K,
having come to the capital for a brief vacation and taken modest lodgings at the so-called Cabinet Members’ Club, met, at the very first court reception, the crown prince, a boisterous, plump, indecently young-looking
charmeur
, defying one not to recognize his charm. The meeting took place in the presence of the old king, who sat in a high-backed armchair by a stained-glass window, quickly and nimbly devouring those tiny olive-black plums that were more a delicacy than a medicine for him. Even though Adulf seemed at first not to notice his young relative and continued to address two stooge-courtiers, the prince nevertheless started on a subject carefully calculated to fascinate the newcomer, to whom he offered a three-quarter view of himself: paunch-proud, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his wrinkled check trousers, he stood rocking slightly from heels to toes.

“For instance,” he said in the triumphant voice he reserved for public occasions, “take our entire history, and you will see, gentlemen, that the root of power has always been construed among us as having originated in magic, with obedience conceivable only when, in the mind of the obeyer, it could be identified with the infallible effect of a spell. In other words, the king was either sorcerer or himself bewitched, sometimes by the people, sometimes by the Councilors, sometimes by a political foe who would whisk the crown off his head like a hat from a hatrack. Recall the hoariest antiquity and the rule of the
mossmons”
(high priests, “bog people”), “the worship of luminescent peat, that sort of thing; or take those … those first pagan kings—Gildras and, yes, Ofodras, and that other one, I forget what he was called, anyway, the fellow who threw his goblet into the sea, after which, for three days and nights, fishermen scooped up seawater transformed into wine.…
Solg ud digh vor je sage vel, ud jem gotelm quolm osje musikel”
(“Sweet and rich was the wave of the sea and lassies drank it from seashells”—the prince was quoting Uperhulm’s ballad). “And the first friars, who arrived in a skiff equipped with a cross instead of a sail, and all that business of the ‘Fontal Rock’—for it was only because they guessed the weak spot of our people that they managed to introduce the crazy Roman creed. What is more,” continued the prince, suddenly moderating the crescendos of his voice, for a dignitary of the clergy was now standing a short distance away, “if the so-called church never really engorged on the body of our state, and, in the last two centuries, entirely lost its political significance, it is precisely because the elementary and rather monotonous miracles that it was able to produce very soon became a bore”—the cleric moved away, and the prince’s voice regained its freedom—“and could not compete with the natural sorcery,
la magie innée et naturelle
of our fatherland.
Take the subsequent, unquestionably historical kings and the beginning of our dynasty. When Rogfrid the First mounted, or rather scrambled up onto the wobbly throne that he himself called a sea-tossed barrel, and the country was in the throes of such insurrection and chaos that his aspiration to kinghood seemed a childish dream, do you recall the first thing he does upon acceding to power? He immediately mints kruns, half-kruns, and grosken depicting a sexdigitate hand. Why a hand? Why the six fingers? Not one historian has been able to figure it out, and it is doubtful that Rogfrid even knew himself. The fact remains, however, that this magical measure promptly pacified the country. Later, under his grandson, when the Danes attempted to impose upon us their protégé, and he landed with immense forces, what happened? Suddenly, with the utmost simplicity, the anti-government party—I forget what it was called, anyway, the traitors, without whom the whole plot would not have come into existence—sent a messenger to the invader with a polite announcement that they were henceforth unable to support him; because, you see, ‘the ling’ “—that is, the heather of the plain across which the turncoat army was to pass to join with the foreign forces—” ‘had entwined the stirrups and shins of treachery, thus preventing further advance,’ which apparently is to be taken literally, and not interpreted in the spirit of those stale allegories on which schoolboys are nourished. Then again—ah, yes, a splendid example—Queen Ilda, we must not omit Queen Ilda of the white breast and the abundant amours, who would resolve all state problems by means of incantations, and so successfully that any individual who did not meet her approval would lose his reason; you know yourselves that to this day insane asylums are known among the populace as
ildehams
. And when that populace begins to take part in legislative and administrative matters, it is absurdly clear that magic is on the people’s side. I assure you, for instance, that if poor King Edaric found himself unable to take his seat at the reception for the elected officers, it was certainly not a question of piles. And so on and so forth—” (the prince was beginning to have enough of the topic he had selected) “—the life of our country, like some amphibian, keeps its head up amid simple nordic reality, while submerging its belly in fable, in rich, vivifying sorcery. It’s not for nothing that every one of our mossy stones, every old tree has participated at least once in some magical occurrence or other. Here’s a young student, he is reading History, I am sure he will confirm my opinion.”

As he listened seriously and trustingly to Adulf’s reasoning, K was astounded to what extent it coincided with his own views. True, the textbook selection of examples adduced by the talkative crown prince
seemed to K a bit crude; did not the whole point lie not in the striking manifestations of witchcraft but in the delicate shadings of a fantastic something, which profoundly, and at the same time mistily, colored the island’s history? He was, however, unconditionally in agreement with the basic premise, and that was the answer he gave, lowering his head and nodding to himself. Only much later did he realize that the coincidence of ideas which had so astonished him had been the consequence of an almost unconscious cunning on the part of their promulgator, who undeniably had a special kind of instinct that allowed him to guess the most effective bait for any fresh listener.

When the king had finished his plums he beckoned to his nephew and, having no idea what to talk to him about, asked how many students there were at the university. K lost countenance—he did not know the number, and was not alert enough to name one at random. “Five hundred? One thousand?” persisted the king, with a note of juvenile eagerness in his voice. “I’m sure there must be more,” he added in a conciliatory tone, not having received an intelligible answer; then, after a reflective pause, he went on to inquire whether his nephew enjoyed riding. Here the crown prince butted in with his usual luscious unconstraint, inviting his cousin for an outing together the following Thursday.

“Astonishing, how much he has come to resemble my poor sister,” said the king with a mechanical sigh, taking off his glasses and returning them to the breast pocket of his brown frogged jacket. “I am too poor to give you a horse,” he continued, “but I have a fine little riding whip. Gotsen” (addressing the Lord Chamberlain), “where is that fine little riding whip with the doggie’s head? Look for it afterwards and give it to him … an interesting little object, historical value and all that. Well, I’m delighted to give it to you, but a horse is beyond my means—all I have is a pair of nags, and I’m keeping them for my hearse. Don’t be vexed—I’m not rich.”
(“Il ment,”
said the crown prince under his breath and walked off, humming.)

On the day of the outing the weather was cold and restless, a nacreous sky skimmed overhead, the sallow bushes curtseyed in the ravines, the horsehooves plapped as they scattered the slush of thick puddles in chocolate ruts, crows croaked; and then, beyond the bridge, the riders left the road and set off at a trot across the dark heather, above which a slim, already yellowing birch rose here and there. The crown prince proved to be an excellent horseman, although he had evidently never attended a riding school, for his seat was indifferent. His heavy, broad, corduroy-and-chamois-encased bottom, bouncing up and down in the saddle, and his rounded, sloping shoulders aroused in
his companion an odd, vague kind of pity, which vanished completely whenever K glanced at the prince’s rosy face, radiating health and sufficiency, and heard his urgeful speech.