The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Very gradually the darkness faded to a greyish dimness, and a snow-covered world became faintly perceptible through the window. I felt dreadfully cold in my thin raincoat. The faces of my travelling companions became visible as if layers of webs and dust were slowly brushed away. The woman next to me had a thermos flask of coffee and she handled it with a kind of maternal love. I felt sticky all over and excruciatingly unshaven. I think that if my bristly cheek had come into contact with satin, I should have fainted. There was a flesh-coloured cloud among the drab ones, and a dull pink flushed the patches of thawing snow in the tragic loneliness of barren fields. A road drew out and glided for a minute along the train, and just before it turned away a man on a bicycle wobbled among snow and slush and puddles. Where was he going? Who was he? Nobody will ever know.

  I think I must have dozed for an hour or so – or at least I managed to keep my inner vision dark. My companions were talking and eating when I opened my eyes and I suddenly felt so sick that I scrambled out and sat on a strapontin for the rest of the journey, my mind as blank as the wretched morning. The train, I learnt, was very late, owing to the night blizzard or something, so it was only at a quarter to four in the afternoon that we reached Paris. My teeth chattered as I walked down the platform and for an instant I had a foolish impulse to spend the two or three francs jingling in my pocket on some strong liquor. But I went to the telephone instead. I thumbed the soft greasy book, looking for Dr Starov's number and trying not to think that presently I should know whether Sebastian was still alive. Starkaus, cuirs, peaux; Starley, jongleur, humoriste; Starov… ah, there it was: Jasmin 61-93. I performed some dreadful manipulations and forgot the number in the middle, and struggled again with the book, and redialled, and listened for a while to an ominous buzzing. I sat for a minute quite still: somebody threw the door open and with an angry muttering retreated. Again the dial turned and clicked back, five, six, seven times, and again there was that nasal drone: donne, donne, donne…. Why was I so unlucky? 'Have you finished?' asked the same person – a cross old man with a bulldog face. My nerves were on edge and I quarrelled with that nasty old fellow. Fortunately a neighbouring booth was free by now; he slammed himself in. I went on trying. At last I succeeded. A woman's voice replied that the doctor was out, but could be reached at half past five – she gave me the number. When I got to my office I could not help noticing that my arrival provoked a certain surprise. I showed the telegram I had got to my chief and he was less sympathetic than one might have reasonably expected. He asked me some awkward questions about the business in Marseilles. Finally I got the money I wanted and paid the taxi which I had left at the door. It was twenty minutes to five by then so that I had almost an hour before me.

  I went to have a shave and then ate a hurried breakfast. At twenty past five I rang up the number I had been given, and was told that the doctor had gone home and would be back in a quarter of an hour. I was too impatient to wait and dialled his home number. The female voice I already knew answered that he had just left. I leant against the wall (the booth was in a cafй this time) and knocked at it with my pencil. Would I never get to Sebastian? Who were those idle idiots who wrote on the wall 'Death to the Jews' or 'Vive le front populaire', or left obscene drawings? Some anonymous artist had begun blacking squares – a chess board, ein Schachbrett, un damier…. There was a flash in my brain and the word settled on my tongue: St Damier! I rushed out and hailed a passing taxicab. Would he take me to St Damier, wherever the place was? He leisurely unfolded a map and studied it for some time. Then he replied that it would take two hours at least to get there – seeing the condition of the road. I asked him whether he thought I had better go by train. He did not know.

  'Well, try and go fast,' I said, and knocked my hat off as I plunged into the car.

  We were a long time getting out of Paris. Every kind of known obstacle was put in our way, and I think I have never hated anything so much as I did a certain policeman's arm at one of the crossroads. At last we wriggled out of the traffic jam into a long dark avenue. But still we did not go fast enough. I pushed the glass open and implored the chauffeur to increase his speed. He answered that the road was far too slippery – as it was we badly skidded once or twice. After an hour's drive he stopped and asked his way of a policeman on a bicycle. They both pored at length over the policeman's map, and then the chauffeur drew his own out, and they compared both. We had taken a wrong turning somewhere and now had to go back for at least a couple of miles. I tapped again on the pane: the taxi was positively crawling. He shook his head without as much as turning round. I looked at my watch, it was nearing seven o'clock. We stopped at a filling-station and the driver had a confidential talk with the garage man. I could not guess where we were, but as the road now ran along a vast expanse of fields, I hoped that we were getting nearer my goal. Rain swept and swished against the window-panes and when I pleaded once more with the driver for a little acceleration, he lost his temper and was volubly rude. I felt helpless and numb as I sank back in my seat. Lighted windows blurredly passed by. Would I ever get to Sebastian? Would I find him alive if I did ever reach St Damier? Once or twice we were overtaken by other cars and I drew my driver's attention to their speed. He did not answer, but suddenly stopped and with a violent gesture unfolded his ridiculous map. I inquired whether he had lost his way again. He kept silent but the expression of his fat neck was vicious. We drove on. I noticed with satisfaction that he was going much faster now. We passed under a railway bridge and drew up at a station. As I was wondering whether it was St Damier at last, the driver got out of his seat and wrenched open the door. 'Well,' I asked, 'what's the matter now?'

  'You shall go by train after all,' said the driver, 'I'm not willing to smash my car for your sake. This is the St Damier line, and you're lucky to have been brought here.'

  I was even luckier than he thought for there was a train in a few minutes. The station guard swore I would be at St Damier by nine. That last phase of my journey was the darkest. I was alone in the carriage and a queer torpor had seized me: in spite of my impatience, I was terribly afraid lest I might fall asleep and miss the station. The train stopped often and it was every time a sickening task to find and decipher the station's name. At one stage I experienced the hideous feeling that I had just been jerked awake after dozing heavily for an unknown length of time – and when I looked at my watch it was a quarter past nine. Had I missed it? I was half inclined to use the alarm signal, but then I felt the train was slowing down, and as I leant out of the window, I espied a lighted sign floating past and stopping: St Damier.

  A quarter of an hour's stumble through dark lanes and what seemed by its sough to be a pine wood, brought me to the St Damier hospital. I heard a shuffling and wheezing behind the door and a fat old man clad in a thick grey sweater instead of a coat and in worn felt slippers let me in. I entered a kind of office dimly lit by a weak bare electric lamp, which seemed coated with dust on one side. The man looked at me blinking, his bloated face glistening with the slime of sleep, and for some odd reason I spoke at first in a whisper.

  'I have come,' I said, 'to see Monsieur Sebastian Knight, K, n, i, g, h, t. Knight. Night.'

  He grunted and sat down heavily at a writing desk under the hanging lamp.

  'Too late for visitors,' he mumbled as if talking to himself.

  'I got a wire,' I said, 'my brother is very ill' – and as I spoke I felt I was trying to imply that there was not the shade of a doubt of Sebastian still being alive.

  'What was the name?' he asked with a sigh.

  'Knight,' I said. 'It begins with a "K". It is an English name.'

  'Foreign names ought to be always replaced by numbers,' muttered the man, 'it would simplify matters. There was a patient who died last night, and he had a name….'

  I was struck by the horrible thought that he might be referring to Sebastian…. Was I too late after all?

  'Do you mean to say….' I began, but he shook his head and turned the pages
of a ledger on his desk.

  'No,' he growled, 'the English Monsieur is not dead. K, K, K….'

  'K, n, i, g…' I began once again.

  'C'est bon, c'est bon,' he interrupted. 'K, n, K, g… n… I'm not an idiot, you know. Number thirty-six.'

  He rang the bell and sank back in his armchair with a yawn. I paced up and down the room in a tremor of uncontrollable impatience. At last a nurse entered and the night-porter pointed at me.

  'Number thirty-six,' he said to the nurse.

  I followed her down a white passage and up a short flight of stairs. 'How is he?' I could not help asking.

  'I don't know,' she said and led me to a second nurse who was sitting at the end of another white passage, the exact copy of the first, and reading a book at a little table.

  'A visitor for number thirty-six,' said my guide and slipped away.

  'But the English Monsieur is asleep,' said the nurse, a round-faced young woman, with a very small and very shiny nose.

  'Is he better?' I asked. 'You see, I'm his brother, and I got a telegram….'

  'I think he's a little better,' said the nurse with a smile, which was to me the loveliest smile I could have ever imagined.

  'He had a very, very bad heart attack yesterday morning. Now he is asleep.'

  'Look here,' I said, handing her a ten or twenty franc coin. 'I'll come tomorrow again, but I'd like to go into his room and wait for a minute there.'

  'Oh, but you shouldn't wake him,' she said, smiling again.

  'I shan't wake him. I shall just sit near him and stay only a minute.'

  'Well, I don't know,' she said. 'You might, of course, peep in here, but you must be very careful.'

  She led me to the door, number thirty-six, and we entered a tiny room or closet with a couch; she pushed slightly an inner door which was standing ajar and I peered for a moment into a dark room. At first I could only hear my heart thumping, but then I discerned a quick soft breathing. I strained my eyes; there was a screen or something half round the bed, and anyway it would have been too dark to distinguish Sebastian.

  'There,' whispered the nurse. 'I shall leave the door open an inch and you may sit here, on this couch, for a minute.'

  She lit a small blue-shaded lamp and left me alone. I had a stupid impulse to draw my cigarette case out of my pocket. My hands still shook, but I felt happy. He was alive. He was peacefully asleep. So it was his heart – was it? – that had let him down…. The same as his mother. He was better, there was hope. I would get all the heart specialists in the world to have him saved. His presence in the next room, the faint sound of breathing, gave me a sense of security, of peace, of wonderful relaxation. And as I sat there and listened, and clasped my hands, I thought of all the years that had passed, of our short, rare meetings and I knew that now, as soon as he could listen to me, I should tell him that whether he liked it or not I would never be far from him any more. The strange dream I had had, the belief in some momentous truth he would impart to me before dying – now seemed vague, abstract, as if it had been drowned in some warm flow of simpler, more human emotion, in the wave of love I felt for the man who was sleeping beyond that half-opened door. How had we managed to drift apart? Why had I always been so silly and sullen, and shy during our short interviews in Paris? I would go away presently and spend the night in the hotel, or perhaps they could give me a room at the hospital – just until I could see him? For a moment it seemed to me that the faint rhythm of the sleeper's breath had been suspended, that he had awaked and made a light clamping sound, before sinking again into sleep: now the rhythm continued, so low that I could hardly distinguish it from my own breath, as I sat and listened. Oh, I would tell him thousands of things – I would talk to him about The Prismatic Bezel and Success, and The Funny Mountain, and Albinos in Black, and The Back of the Moon, and Lost Property, and The Doubtful Asphodel – all these books that I knew as well as if I had written them myself. And he would talk, too. How little I knew of his life I But now I was learning something every instant. That door standing slightly ajar was the best link imaginable. That gentle breathing was telling me more of Sebastian than I had ever known before. If I could have smoked, my happiness would have been perfect. A spring clanked in the couch as I shifted my position slightly, and I was afraid that it might have disturbed his sleep. But no: the soft sound was there, following a thin trail which seemed to skirt time itself, now dipping into a hollow, now appearing again – steadily travelling across a landscape formed of the symbols of silence – darkness, and curtains, and a glow of blue light at my elbow.

  Presently I got up and tiptoed out into the corridor.

  'I hope,' the nurse said, 'you did not disturb him? It is good that he sleeps.'

  'Tell me,' I asked, 'when does Doctor Starov come?'

  'Doctor who?' she said. 'Oh, the Russian doctor. Non, c'est le docteur Guinet qui le soigne. You'll find him here tomorrow morning.'

  'You see,' I said, 'I'd like to spend the night somewhere here. Do you think that perhaps….'

  'You could see Doctor Guinet even now,' continued the nurse in her quiet pleasant voice. 'He lives next door. So you are the brother, are you? And tomorrow his mother is coming from England, n'est-ce pas?'

  'Oh, no,' I said, 'his mother died years ago. And tell me, how is he during the day, does he talk? does he suffer?'

  She frowned and looked at me queerly.

  'But…' she said. 'I don't understand…. What is your name, please?'

  'Right,' I said. 'I haven't explained. We are half-brothers, really. My name is [I mentioned my name].'

  'Oh-la-la!' she exclaimed getting very red in the face, 'Mon Dieu! The Russian gentleman died yesterday, and you've been visiting Monsieur Kegan….

  So I did not see Sebastian after all, or at least I did not see him alive. But those few minutes I spent listening to what I thought was his breathing changed my life as completely as it would have been changed, had Sebastian spoken to me before dying. Whatever his secret was, I have learnt one secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being – not a constant state – that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden. Thus – I am Sebastian Knight. I feel as if I were impersonating him on a lighted stage, with the people he knew coming and going – the dim figures of the few friends he had, the scholar, and the poet, and the painter – smoothly and noiselessly paying their graceful tribute; and here is Goodman, the flat-footed buffoon, with his dicky hanging out of his waistcoat; and there – the pale radiance of Clare's inclined head, as she is led away weeping by a friendly maiden. They moved round Sebastian – round me who am acting Sebastian – and the old conjuror waits in the wings with his hidden rabbit: and Nina sits on a table in the brightest corner of the stage, with a wineglass of fuchsined water, under a painted palm. And then the masquerade draws to a close. The bald little prompter shuts his book, as the light fades gently. The end, the end. They all go back to their everyday life (and Clare goes back to her grave) – but the hero remains, for, try as I may, I cannot get out of my part: Sebastian's mask clings to my face, the likeness will not be washed off. I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows.

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