The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Fixing his eyes on the Veneziana’s face, he backed away from her and suddenly flung his arms apart. His coccyx banged painfully on something. He looked around and saw the black table behind him. Trying to think about nothing, he climbed onto it, stood up fully erect facing the Venetian lady, and once again, with an upward sweep of his arms, prepared to fly to her.

  “Astonishing way to admire a painting. Invented it yourself, did you?”

  It was Frank. He was standing, legs apart, in the doorway and gazing at Simpson with icy derision.

  With a wild glint of pince-nez lenses in his direction, Simpson staggered awkwardly, like an alarmed lunatic. Then he hunched over, flushed hotly, and clambered clumsily to the floor.

  Frank’s face wrinkled with acute revulsion as he silently left the room. Simpson lunged after him.

  “Please, I beg you, don’t tell anyone.…” Without turning or stopping, Frank gave a squeamish shrug.

  6

  Toward evening the rain unexpectedly ceased. Someone, remembering, had turned off the taps. A humid orange sunset came aquiver amid the boughs, broadened, was reflected in all the puddles simultaneously. Dour little McGore was dislodged from his tower by force. He smelled of turpentine, and had burned his hand with a hot iron. He reluctantly pulled on his black coat, turned up the collar, and went out with the others for a stroll. Only Simpson stayed home, on the pretext that he absolutely must answer a letter brought by the evening post. Actually no answer was required, since it was from the university milkman and demanded immediate payment of a bill for two shillings and ninepence.

  For a long time Simpson sat in the advancing twilight, leaning back aimlessly in the leather armchair. Then, with a shudder, he realized he was falling asleep, and started thinking how he could get away from the castle as quickly as possible. The simplest way would be to say his father was ill: like many bashful people, Simpson was capable of lying without batting an eyelash. Yet it was difficult for him to leave. Something dark and delicious held him back. How attractive the dark rocks looked in the fenestral chasm.… What a joy it would be to embrace her shoulder, take from her left hand the basket with its yellow fruit, to walk off peacefully with her along that pale path into the penumbra of the Venetian evening.…

  Once again he caught himself falling asleep. He got up and washed his hands. From downstairs sounded the spherical, dignified dinner gong.

  Thus from constellation to constellation, from meal to meal, proceeds the world, and so does this tale. But its monotony will now be broken by an incredible miracle, an unheard-of adventure. Of course neither McGore, who had again painstakingly freed of glossy red ribbons the faceted nudity of an apple, nor the Colonel, once more agreeably flushed after four glasses of port (not to mention two of white Burgundy) had any way of knowing what woes the morrow would bring. Dinner was followed by the invariable game of bridge, during which the Colonel noticed with pleasure that Frank and Maureen did not even glance at each other. McGore went off to work; Simpson seated himself in a corner and opened a portfolio of prints, glancing only a couple of times from his corner at the players, having marveled in passing that Frank was so cold toward him, while Maureen seemed to have faded somehow, to have yielded her place to another.… How insignificant these thoughts were compared to the sublime anticipation, the enormous excitement that he now tried to outwit by examining indistinct lithographs.

  When they were parting company, and Maureen nodded to him with a good-night smile, he absently, unabashedly, smiled back.

  7

  That night, sometime after one o’clock, the old watchman, who had once worked as groom for the Colonel’s father, was, as usual, taking a short walk along the park lanes. He knew perfectly well that his duty was purely perfunctory, since the location was exceptionally peaceful. He invariably turned in at eight, the alarm would go off with a clatter at one, and the watchman (a giant of an old fellow with venerable gray side-whiskers, which, incidentally, the gardener’s children liked to tug) would awaken, light up his pipe, and clamber out into the night. Having once made the rounds of the dark, tranquil park, he would return to his small room, immediately undress, and, clad only in an imperishable undershirt that went very well with his whiskers, go back to bed and sleep through till morning.

  That night, however, the old watchman noticed something that was not to his liking. He noticed from the park that one window of the castle was feebly illuminated. He knew with absolute precision that it was a window of the hall where the precious paintings were hung. Since he was an exceptionally cowardly old chap, he decided to pretend to himself that he had not noticed that strange light. But his conscientiousness got the upper hand, and he calmly determined that, while it was his duty to ascertain that there were no thieves in the park, he had no obligation to chase thieves within the house. And having thus determined, the old man went back to his quarters with a clear conscience—he lived in a little brick house by the garage—and straightaway fell into a dead man’s sleep, which would have been impervious even to the roar of the new black car, had someone started it up in jest, deliberately opening the muffler cutout.

  Thus the pleasant, innocuous old fellow, like some guardian angel, momentarily traverses this narrative and rapidly vanishes into the misty domains whence he was evoked by a whim of the pen.

  8

  But something really did happen in the castle.

  Simpson awoke exactly at midnight. He had just fallen asleep and, as sometimes happens, the very act of falling asleep was what woke him. Propping himself on one arm, he looked into the darkness. His heart was thumping rapidly because he sensed that Maureen had entered his room. Just now, in his momentary dream, he had been talking to her, helping her climb the waxen path between black cliffs with their occasional glossy, oil-paint fissures. Now and then a dulcet breeze made the narrow white headdress quiver gently, like a sheet of thin paper, on her dark hair.

  With a stifled exclamation Simpson felt for the switch. The light came in a spurt. There was no one in the room. He felt an acute sting of disappointment and lapsed into thought, shaking his head like a drunk. Then, moving drowsily, he rose from the bed and started to dress, listlessly smacking his lips. He was guided by a vague sensation that he must dress severely and smartly. So it was with a kind of somnolent meticulousness that he buttoned his low waistcoat on his belly, tied the black bow of his tie, and for a long time pinched with two fingers at a nonexistent little worm on the satin lapel of his jacket. Vaguely recollecting that the simplest way into the gallery was from outdoors, he slipped out like a silent breeze through the French window into the dark, humid garden. Looking as if they had been doused with mercury, black bushes glistened in the starlight. Somewhere an owl was hooting. With a light, quick step Simpson walked across the lawn, amid gray bushes, rounding the massive house. For a moment he was sobered by the night’s freshness and the intensely shining stars. He stopped, bent over, and then collapsed like an empty suit of clothes onto the grass in the narrow interstice between flower bed and castle wall. A wave of drowsiness came over him, and he tried to shake it off with a jerk of his shoulder. He had to hurry. She was waiting. He thought he heard her insistent whisper.…

  He was unaware of how he had got up, gone indoors, and switched on the lights, bathing Luciani’s canvas in a warm sheen. The Venetian girl stood half-facing him, alive and three-dimensional. Her dark eyes gazed into his without the sparkle, the rosy fabric of her blouse set off with an unhabitual warmth the dark-hued beauty of her neck and the delicate creases under her ear. A gently mocking smile was frozen at the right corner of her expectantly joined lips. Her long fingers, spread in twos, stretched toward her shoulder, from which the fur and velvet were about to fall.

  And Simpson, with a profound sigh, moved toward her and effortlessly entered the painting. A marvelous freshness immediately made his head spin. There was a scent of myrtle and of wax, with a very faint whiff of lemon. He was standing in a bare black room of some kind, by a window that opened
on evening, and at his very side stood a real, Venetian, Maureen—tall, gorgeous, all aglow from within. He realized that the miracle had happened, and slowly moved toward her. With a sidewise smile la Veneziana gently adjusted her fur and, lowering her hand into her basket, handed him a small lemon. Without taking his eyes off her now playfully mobile eyes, he accepted the yellow fruit from her hand, and, as soon as he felt its firm, roughish coolness and the dry warmth of her long fingers, an incredible bliss came to a boil within him and began deliciously burbling. Then, with a start, he looked behind him toward the window. There, along a pale path amid some rocks, walked blue silhouettes with hoods and small lanterns. Simpson looked about the room in which he was standing, but without any awareness of a floor beneath his feet. In the distance, instead of a fourth wall, a far, familiar hall glimmered like water, with the black island of a table at its center. It was then that a sudden terror made him compress the cold little lemon. The enchantment had dissolved. He tried looking to his left at the girl but was unable to turn his neck. He was mired like a fly in honey—he gave a jerk and got stuck, feeling his blood and flesh and clothing turning into paint, growing into the varnish, drying on the canvas. He had become part of the painting, depicted in a ridiculous pose next to the Veneziana, and, directly in front of him, even more distinct than before, stretched the hall, filled with live, terrestrial air that, henceforth, he would not breathe.

  9

  Next morning McGore woke up earlier than usual. With his bare, hairy feet, with toenails like black pearls, he groped for his slippers, and softly padded along the corridor to the door of his wife’s room. They had had no conjugal relations for more than a year, but he nevertheless visited her every morning and watched with powerless excitement while she did her hair, jerking her head energetically as the comb chirruped through the chestnut wing of the taut tresses. Today, entering her room at this early hour, he found the bed made and a sheet of paper pinned to the headboard. McGore produced from the pocket of his dressing gown an enormous eyeglass case and, without putting on the glasses but simply holding them up to his eyes, leaned over the pillow and read the minute, familiar writing on the pinned note. When he had finished he meticulously replaced his glasses in their case, unpinned and folded the sheet, stood lost in thought for an instant, and then shuffled resolutely out of the room. In the corridor he collided with the manservant, who glanced at him with alarm.

  “What, is the Colonel up already?” asked McGore.

  The manservant answered hurriedly, “Yes, sir. The Colonel is in the picture gallery. I’m afraid, sir, that he’s very cross. I was sent to wake up the young gentleman.”

  Without waiting to hear him out, wrapping his mouse-colored robe around him as he went, McGore set off quickly for the gallery. Also in his dressing gown, from beneath which protruded the folds of his striped pajama bottoms, the Colonel was pacing to and fro along the wall. His mustache bristled and his crimson-flushed countenance was terrifying to behold. Seeing McGore, he stopped, and, after some preliminary lip-chewing, roared, “Here, have a good look!”

  McGore, to whom the Colonel’s ire mattered little, nevertheless inadvertently looked where his hand was pointing and saw something truly incredible. On the Luciani canvas, next to the Venetian girl, an additional figure had appeared. It was an excellent, if hastily executed, portrait of Simpson. Gaunt, his black jacket strongly highlighted by the lighter background, his feet turned oddly outward, he extended his hands as if in supplication, and his pallid face was distorted by a pitiful, frantic expression.

  “Like it?” the Colonel inquired furiously. “No worse than Bastiano himself, is it? The vile brat! That’s his revenge for my kindhearted advice. Just wait …”

  The waiter came in, distraught.

  “Mr. Frank is not in his room, sir. And his things are gone. Mr. Simpson has disappeared too, sir. He must have gone out for a stroll, sir, seeing as how it’s such a fine morning.”

  “To hell with the morning!” thundered the Colonel. “This very instant, I want—”

  “May I be so bold as to inform you,” meekly added the waiter, “that the chauffeur was just here and said the new motor car had disappeared from the garage.”

  “Colonel,” McGore said softly, “I think I can explain what’s happened.”

  He glanced at the waiter, who tiptoed out.

  “Now then,” went on McGore in a bored tone, “your supposition that it was indeed your son who painted in that figure is doubtless right. But, in addition, I gather from a note that was left for me that he departed at daybreak with my wife.”

  The Colonel was a gentleman and an Englishman. He immediately felt that to vent one’s anger in front of a man whose wife had just run off was improper. Therefore, he went over to a window, swallowed half his anger and blew the other half outdoors, smoothed his mustache, and, regaining his calm, addressed McGore.

  “Allow me, my dear friend,” he said courteously, “to assure you of my sincerest, deepest sympathy, rather than dwell on the wrath I feel toward the perpetrator of your calamity. Nevertheless, while I understand the state you are in, I must—I am obliged, my friend—to ask an immediate favor of you. Your art will rescue my honor. Today I am expecting young Lord Northwick from London, the owner, as you know, of another painting by the same del Piombo.”

  McGore nodded. “I’ll bring the necessary implements, Colonel.”

  He was back in a couple of minutes, still in his dressing gown, carrying a wooden case. He opened it immediately, produced a bottle of ammonia, a roll of cotton wool, rags, scrapers, and went to work. As he scraped and rubbed Simpson’s dark figure and white face from the varnish he did not give a thought to what he was doing, and what he was thinking about should not arouse the curiosity of a reader respectful of another’s grief. In half an hour Simpson’s portrait was completely gone, and the slightly damp paints of which he had consisted remained on McGore’s rags.

  “Remarkable,” said the Colonel. “Remarkable. Poor Simpson has disappeared without a trace.”

  On occasion some chance remark sets off very important thoughts. This is what happened now to McGore who, as he was gathering his instruments, suddenly stopped short with a shocked tremor.

  How strange, he thought, how very strange. Is it possible that—He looked at the rags with the paint sticking to them, and abruptly, with an odd frown, wadded them together and tossed them out the window by which he had been working. Then he ran his palm across his forehead with a frightened glance at the Colonel—who, interpreting his agitation differently, was trying not to look at him—and, with uncharacteristic haste, went out of the hall straight into the garden.

  There, beneath the window, between the wall and the rhododendrons, the gardener stood scratching the top of his head over a man in black lying facedown on the lawn. McGore quickly approached.

  Moving his arm, the man turned over. Then, with a flustered smirk, he got up.

  “Simpson, for heaven’s sake, what’s happened?” asked McGore, peering into his pale countenance.

  Simpson gave another laugh.

  “I’m awfully sorry.… It’s so silly.… I went out for a stroll last night and fell right asleep, here on the grass. Ow, I’m all aches and pains.… I had a monstrous dream.… What time is it?”

  Left alone, the gardener gave a disapproving shake of his head as he looked at the matted lawn. Then he bent down and picked up a small dark lemon bearing the imprint of five fingers. He stuck the lemon in his pocket and went to fetch the stone roller he had left on the tennis court.

  10

  Thus the dry, wrinkled fruit the gardener happened to find remains the only riddle of this whole tale. The chauffeur, dispatched to the station, returned with the black car and a note Frank had inserted into the leather pouch above the seat.

  The Colonel read it aloud to McGore:

  “Dear Father,” wrote Frank, “I have fulfilled two of your wishes. You did not want any romances going on in your house, so I am leaving, and
taking with me the woman without whom I cannot live. You also wanted to see a sample of my art. That is why I made you a portrait of my former friend, whom you can tell for me, by the way, that informers only make me laugh. I painted him at night, from memory, so if the resemblance is imperfect it is from lack of time, poor light, and my understandable haste. Your new car runs fine. I am leaving it for you at the station garage.”

  “Splendid,” hissed the Colonel. “Except I’d be very curious to know what money you’re going to live on.”