Invitation to a Beheading

by Vladimir Nabokov

  "Where?" Cincinnatus asked mechanically, feeling his neck vertebrae.

  M'sieur Pierre went over to him and sat down on the edge of the cot. "Right here," he said, "but I see now that it was only a shadow. I thought I saw ... a little swelling of some kind. You seem uncomfortable when you move your head. Does it hurt? Did you catch a chill?"

  "Oh, stop pestering me, please," Cincinnatus said, sorrowfully.

  "No, just a minute. My hands are clean--allow me to feel here. It seems, after all ... Does it hurt here? How about here?"

  With his small but muscular hand he was rapidly touching Cincinnatus's neck and examining it carefully, breathing through the nose with a slight wheeze.

  "No, nothing. Everything is in order," he said at last, moving away and slapping the patient on the nape--"Only you do have an awfully thin one--otherwise everything is normal, it's just that sometimes, you know ... Let's see your tongue. The tongue is a mirror of the stomach. Cover up, cover up, it's chilly in here. What were we chatting about? Refresh my memory."

  "If you were really interested in my welfare," said Cincinnatus, "then you would leave me alone. Go away, please."

  "You mean you really do not want to hear what I have to say," M'sieur Pierre objected with a smile, "you really are so obstinately convinced that your conclusions are infallible--conclusions that are unknown to me--mark that, unknown."

  Lost in sadness, Cincinnatus said nothing.

  "Allow me to tell you, though," M'sieu Pierre went on with a certain solemnity, "what was the nature of my crime. I was accused--justly or not, that is a different matter--I was accused ... of what, do you suppose?"

  "Well, come on out with it," said Cincinnatus with a melancholy sigh.

  "You will be amazed. I was accused of attempting to ... Oh ungrateful, distrustful friend ... I was accused of attempting to help you escape from here."

  "Is that true?" asked Cincinnatus.

  "I never lie," M'sieur Pierre said imposingly. "Perhaps there are times when one ought to lie--that is another matter--and perhaps such scrupulous veracity is foolish and in the end does no good--that may all be so. But the fact remains, I never lie. I ended up here, my fine friend, because of you. I was arrested at night. Where? Let us say in Upper Elderbury. Yes, I am an Elderburian. Salt works, fruit orchards. Should you ever want to come and call on me, I shall treat you to some of our elderburies (I assume no responsibility for the pun--it appears in our city seal). There--not in the seal, but in the jail--your obedient servant spent three days. Then they transferred me here."

  "You mean you wanted to save me ..." Cincinnatus said pensively.

  "Whether I wanted to or not is my business, friend of my heart, cockroach-under-the-hearth. In any case I was accused of it--you know, informers are a young and hotheaded breed, so here I am: 'here in rapture I'm standing before you ...'--remember the song? The principal evidence against me was some sketch of this fortress that supposedly had my marks on it. You see, I was supposed to have thought out every last detail of your escape, my little cockroach."

  "You were supposed to, or ...?" asked Cincinnatus.

  "What a naive, delightful creature he is!" grinned M'sieur Pierre, displaying a multitude of teeth. "He wants everything to be so simple--as, alas, it never is in real life!"

  "One would still like to know," said Cincinnatus.

  "What? Whether my judges were right? Whether I really was planning to save you? Shame, shame ..."

  "Then it is true?" whispered Cincinnatus.

  M'sieur Pierre got up and began to walk about the cell. "Let us leave the matter," he said resignedly. "Decide for yourself, distrustful friend. One way or another, but I ended up here because of you. And I'll tell you more: we shall mount the scaffold together too."

  He kept walking about the cell with a noiseless, springy step, the soft parts of his body, enclosed in prison pajamas, bouncing slightly, and Cincinnatus, with dejected attention, followed every step of the nimble fatty.

  "For the heck of it I shall believe you," Cincinnatus said finally, "We'll see what will come of it. You hear me, I believe you. And, to make it more convincing, I even thank you."

  "Oh, what for--there's no need ..." said M'sieur Pierre and sat down again by the table. "I simply wanted you to be informed. That's fine. Now we've both got a load off our chests, haven't we? I don't know about you, but I feel like crying. And this is a good feeling. Cry, do not restrain those salutary tears."

  "How horrible it is here," said Cincinnatus cautiously.

  "There's nothing horrible about it. By the way, I've wanted to reproach you for a long time about your attitude toward the life here. No, no, don't turn away, allow me, as a friend ... You are not fair either to our good Rodion or, even more important, to his excellency the director. All right--he is not very bright, a little pompous, something of a scatterbrain--and he is not adverse to delivering speeches--it's all true, and I myself sometimes am not in the mood for him and, of course, cannot share with him my inmost thoughts, as I do with you, especially when my soul--pardon the expression--aches. But whatever faults he might have, he is a straight-forward, honest and kind man. Yes, a man of rare kindness--do not argue--I would not say it if I did not know, and I never speak idly, and I have more experience and know life and people better than you. That's why it hurts me to see with what cruel coldness, what haughty contempt you reject Rodrig Ivanovich. I can sometimes read such pain in his eyes ... As for Rodion, how is that you who are so intelligent are unable to perceive through his assumed gruffness all the touching benignity of this grown-up child. Oh, I realize that you are nervous, that you are sex starved--still, Cincinnatus--you'll forgive me, but it isn't right, it isn't right at all ... And, in general, you slight people ... You scarcely touch the marvelous dinners we get here. All right, supposing you don't care for them--believe me, I too know a little about gastronomy--but you sneer at them, and yet someone cooked them, someone worked hard ... I know, it sometimes gets boring here, and you feel like going for a walk or having a romp--but why think only of yourself, of your desires, why haven't you smiled even once at the painstaking little jokes of dear pathetic Rodrig Ivanovich? ... Perhaps he cries afterwards, and does not sleep nights, remembering how you reacted ..."

  "In any case your defense is clever," said Cincinnatus, "but I am an expert in dolls. I shall not yield."

  "It's a pity," said M'sieur Pierre in a hurt tone. "I ascribe it to your youth," he added after a pause. "No, no, you must not be so unfair ..."

  "Tell me," asked Cincinnatus, "do they keep you in the dark too? The fateful churl has not arrived yet? The hacking fest isn't set for tomorrow?"

  "You should not use such words," remarked M'sieur Pierre confidentially. "Particularly with that intonation ... There is something vulgar in it, something unworthy of a gentleman. How can you pronounce such things--I am surprised at you ..."

  "But tell me, when?" asked Cincinnatus.

  "In due time," M'sieur Pierre replied evasively. "Why such foolish curiosity? And in general ... No, you still have a lot to learn--this sort of thing won't do. This arrogance, these preconceptions ..."

  "But how they drag it out ..." Cincinnatus said drowsily. "Of course one does get accustomed to it ... You hold your soul in readiness from one day to the next--and still they will take you by surprise. Ten days have passed like this, and I haven't gone crazy. And then, of course, there is always some hope ... Indistinct, as if under water, but therefore all the more attractive. You speak of escape ... I think, I surmise, that there is someone else too who is concerned with it ... Certain hints ... But what if this is only deception, a fold of the fabric mimicking a human face ..."

  He sighed and paused.

  "This is curious," said M'sieur Pierre. "What are these hopes, and who is this savior?"

  "Imagination," replied Cincinnatus. "And you--would you like to escape?"

  "What do you mean 'escape'? Where to?" asked M'sieur Pierre in amazement.

  Cincinnatus sighed
again.

  "What difference does it make where? We might, you and I ... I don't know, though, whether, with your build, you are able to run fast. Your legs ..."

  "Come, come, what kind of nonsense is that?" said M'sieur Pierre, squirming in his chair. "Only in fairy tales do people escape from prison. As for your remarks about my physique, kindly keep them to yourself."

  "I feel sleepy," said Cincinnatus.

  M'sieur Pierre rolled up his right sleeve. There appeared a tattoo. Under the wonderfully white skin his muscle bulged and rolled. He assumed a firm stance, grasped the chair with one hand, turned it upside down and slowly began lifting it. Swaying from the effort, he held it for a moment high above his head and slowly lowered it. This was only a preliminary.

  Concealing his labored respiration, he wiped his hands long and carefully with a red handkerchief, while the spider, as the youngest member of the circus family, performed a simple trick above his web.

  Throwing him the handkerchief, M'sieur Pierre shouted a French exclamation and suddenly was standing on his hands. His spherical head gradually became suffused with beautiful rosy blood; his left trouser leg slid down, exposing his ankle; his upside-down eyes--as happens with anyone in this position--looked like the eyes of an octopus.

  "How about that?" he asked, bouncing back onto his feet and readjusting his clothes. From the corridor came a tumult of applause, and then, separately, the clown began to clap, loose-jointedly, as he walked--before beaning himself on the barrier.

  "Well?" repeated M'sieur Pierre. "How's that for strength? And will my agility do? Or haven't you seen enough yet?"

  In one leap M'sieur Pierre hopped up on the table, stood on his hands, and grasped the back of the chair in his teeth. The music paused breathlessly. M'sieur Pierre was lifting the chair, clenched firmly between his teeth; his tensed muscles were quivering; his jaw was creaking.

  The door softly swung open, and there entered--in jack boots, with a whip, powdered and spotlit with blinding violet light--the circus director. "Sensational! A unique performance!" he whispered, and, taking off his top hat, he sat down by Cincinnatus.

  Something gave, and M'sieur Pierre, releasing the chair from his mouth, turned a somersault and was again standing on the floor. Apparently, however, not everything was well. He at once covered his mouth with his handkerchief, glanced quickly under the table, then inspected the chair, and suddenly seeing what he sought, attempted, with a subdued oath, to yank off the back of the chair his hinged denture, which was embedded there. Magnificently displaying all its teeth, it held on with a bulldog grip. Whereupon, without losing his head, M'sieur Pierre embraced the chair and departed with it.

  Rodrig Ivanovich, who had noticed nothing, was applauding wildly. The arena, however, remained empty. He cast a suspicious look at Cincinnatus, clapped some more, but without the former ardor, gave a little start and, in obvious distress, left the box.

  And thus the performance ended.

  Eleven

  Now newspapers were no longer brought to the cell: having noticed that everything that might have any connection with the execution was clipped out, Cincinnatus himself had declined to receive them. Breakfast had grown simpler: instead of chocolate--albeit weak chocolate--he would receive some slop with a flotilla of tea leaves; the toast was so hard he could not bite through it. Rodion made no secret of the fact that he had grown bored with serving the silent and fastidious prisoner.

  He would deliberately busy himself for a longer and longer time in the cell. His flame-red beard, the imbecile azure of his eyes, his leather apron, his clawlike hands--all this accumulated through repetition to form such a depressing, tedious impression that Cincinnatus would turn away toward the wall while the cleaning was in progress.

  And that is how it was this day--only the return of the chair, with the deep imprints of bulldog teeth on the top edge of its straight back, served as a distinguishing feature for the day's beginning. Together with the chair Rodion brought a note from M'sieur Pierre; a fleecily curling script, elegant punctuation marks, signature like a seven-veil dance. In jocular and kindly words his neighbor thanked him for yesterday's friendly chat and expressed hope that it would be repeated shortly. "Let me assure you," thus ended the note, "that I am physically very, very strong [twice underlined with a ruler], and if you are still not convinced of this, I shall be honored some time to show you certain further interesting [underlined] demonstrations of agility and astounding muscular development."

  After this, for two hours, with imperceptible intervals of mournful torpor, Cincinnatus, now pinching at his mustache, now flipping the pages of a book, walked about the cell. He had by now made a completely precise study of it--he knew it much better than, for instance, the room where he had lived for many years.

  This is how matters stood with the walls: their number was unalterably four; they were painted a uniform yellow; but, because of the shadow covering it, the basic hue seemed dark and smooth, claylike as it were, in comparison with that shifting spot where the bright ochre reflection of the window spent the day: here, in the light, all the small protuberances of the thick yellow paint were in evidence-even the wavy curve of the tracings left by the joint passage of brush hairs--and there was the familiar scratch which the precious parallelogram of sunlight would reach at ten in the morning.

  A creeping, heel-clutching chill rose from the dusky stone floor; an underdeveloped, mean little echo inhabited some part of the slightly concave ceiling, with a light (wire-enclosed) in its center--no, that is, not quite in the center: a flaw that agonizingly irritated the eye--and, in this sense, no less agonizing was the unsuccessful attempt to paint over the iron door.

  Of the three items of furniture--cot, table, chair--only the last was movable. The spider also moved. Up above, where the sloping window recess began, the well-nourished black beastie had found points of support for a first-rate web with the same resourcefulness as Marthe displayed when she would find, in what seemed the most unsuitable corner, a place and a method for hanging out laundry to dry. Its paws folded so that the furry elbows stuck out at the sides, it would gaze with round hazel eyes at the hand with the pencil extended toward it, and would begin to back away, without taking its eyes off it. It was most eager however, to take a fly, or a moth from the large fingers of Rodion--and now, for example, in the southwest part of the web there hung a butterfly's orphaned hind wing, cherry-red, with a silky shading, and with blue lozenges along its crenelated edge. It stirred slightly in a delicate draft.

  The inscriptions on the walls had by now been wiped away. The list of rules likewise had disappeared. Also taken away--or perhaps broken--was the classic pitcher with spelaean water in its resonant depths. All was bare, redoubtable, and cold in this chamber where the prisonlike character was suppressed by the neutrality of a waiting room--whether office, hospital or some other kind--when it is already getting to be evening, and one hears only the humming in one's ears ... and the horror of this waiting was somehow connected with the incorrectly located center of the ceiling.

  Library volumes, in black shoe-leatherlike bindings, lay on the table, which had been covered for some time already with a checkered oilcloth. The pencil, which had lost its slender length and was well chewed, rested on violently scribbled pages, stacked windmill fashion. Here also had been thrown a letter to Marthe, completed by Cincinnatus the day before, that is, the day after the interview: but he could not make up his mind to send it, and had therefore let it lie a while, as though expecting from the thing itself that fruition which his irresolute thoughts, in need of another climate, simply could not achieve.

  The subject will now be the precious quality of Cincinnatus; his fleshy incompleteness; the fact that the greater part of him was in a quite different place, while only an insignificant portion of it was wandering, perplexed, here--a poor, vague Cincinnatus, a comparatively stupid Cincinnatus, trusting, feeble and foolish as people are in their sleep. But even during this sleep--still, still--his real lif
e showed through too much.

  Cincinnatus's face, grown transparently pallid, with fuzz on its sunken cheeks and a mustache with such a delicate hair texture that it seemed to be actually a bit of disheveled sunlight on his upper lip; Cincinnatus's face, small and still young despite all the torments, with gliding eyes, eerie eyes of changeable shade, was, in regard to its expression, something absolutely inadmissible by the standards of his surroundings, especially now, when he had ceased to dissemble. The open shirt, the black dressing grown that kept flying open, the oversize slippers on his slender feet, the philosopher's skullcap on the top of his head and the ripple (there was a draft coming from somewhere after all!) running through the transparent hair on his temples completed a picture, the full indecency of which it is difficult to put into words--produced as it was of a thousand barely noticeable, overlapping trifles: of the light outline of his lips, seemingly not quite fully drawn but touched by a master of masters; of the fluttering movements of his empty, not-yet-shaded-in hands; of the dispersing and again gathering rays in his animated eyes; but even all of this, analyzed and studied, still could not fully explain Cincinnatus: it was as if one side of his being slid into another dimension, as all the complexity of a tree's foliage passes from shade into radiance, so that you cannot distinguish just where begins the submergence into the shimmer of a different element. It seemed as though at any moment, in the course of his movements about the limited space of the haphazardly invented cell, Cincinnatus would step in such a way as to slip naturally and effortlessly through some chink of the air into its unknown coulisses to disappear there with the same easy smoothness with which the flashing reflection of a rotated mirror moves across every object in the room and suddenly vanishes, as if beyond the air, in some new depth of ether. At the same time, everything about him breathed with a delicate, drowsy, but in reality exceptionally strong, ardent and independent life: his veins of the bluest blue pulsated; crystal-clear saliva moistened his lips; the skin quivered on his cheeks and his forehead, which was edged with dissolved light ... and all this so teased the observer as to make him long to tear apart, cut to shreds, destroy utterly this brazen elusive flesh, and all that it implied and expressed, all that impossible, dazzling freedom--enough, enough--do not walk any more, Cincinnatus, lie down on your cot, so you will not arouse, will not irritate ... And in truth Cincinnatus would become aware of the predatory eye in the peephole following him and lie down or sit at the table and open a book.