The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

by Vladimir Nabokov

  “Well, how’s life?” he asked, sinking once again into the tight armchair.

  “Well—you can see for yourself,” replied Lev. “Tea will be ready in a minute. If you’re hungry I have some sausage.”

  Serafim declined, blew his nose thoroughly, and started discussing Berlin.

  “They’ve outdone America,” he said. “Just look at the traffic. The city has changed enormously. I was here, you know, in ‘twenty-four.”

  “I was living in Prague at the time,” said Lev.

  “I see,” said Serafim.

  Silence. They both watched the teapot, as if they expected some miracle from it.

  “It’s going to boil soon,” said Lev. “Have some of these caramels in the meantime.”

  Serafim did and his left cheek started working. Lev still could not bring himself to sit down: sitting meant getting set for a chat; he preferred to stand or keep loitering between bed and table, table and sink. Several fir needles lay scattered about the colorless carpet. Suddenly the faint hissing ceased.

  “Prussak kaput,” said Serafim.

  “We’ll fix that,” Lev began in haste, “just one second.”

  But there was no alcohol left in the bottle. “Stupid situation.… You know, I’ll go get some from the landlady.”

  He went out into the corridor and headed for her quarters.— Idiotic. He knocked on the door. No answer. Not an ounce of attention, a pound of contempt. Why did it come to mind, that schoolboy tag (uttered when ignoring a tease)? He knocked again. Everything was dark. She was out. He found his way to the kitchen. The kitchen had been providently locked.

  Lev stood for a while in the corridor, thinking not so much about the alcohol as about what a relief it was to be alone for a minute and what agony it would be to return to that tense room where a stranger was securely ensconced. What might one discuss with him? That article on Faraday in an old issue of Die Natur? No, that wouldn’t do. When he returned Serafim was standing by the bookshelf, examining the tattered, miserable-looking volumes.

  “Stupid situation,” said Lev. “It’s really frustrating. Forgive me, for heaven’s sake. Maybe …”

  (Maybe the water was just about to boil? No. Barely tepid.)

  “Nonsense. To be frank, I’m not a great lover of tea. You read a lot, don’t you?”

  (Should he go downstairs to the pub and get some beer? Not enough money and no credit there. Damn it, he’d blown it all on the candy and the tree.)

  “Yes, I do read,” he said aloud. “What a shame, what a damn shame. If only the landlady …”

  “Forget it,” said Serafim, “we’ll do without. So that’s how it is. Yes. And how are things in general? How’s your health? Feeling all right? One’s health is the main thing. As for me, I don’t do much reading,” he went on, looking askance at the bookshelf. “Never have enough time. On the train the other day I happened to pick up—”

  The phone rang in the corridor.

  “Excuse me,” said Lev. “Help yourself. Here’s the zwieback, and the caramels. I’ll be right back.” He hurried out.

  “What’s the matter with you, good sir?” said Leshcheyev’s voice. “What’s going on here? What happened? Are you sick? What? I can’t hear you. Speak up.”

  “Some unexpected business,” replied Lev. “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “Message my foot. Come on. It’s Christmas, the wine’s been bought, the wife has a present for you.”

  “I can’t make it,” said Lev, “I’m terribly sorry myself.…”

  “You’re a rum fellow! Listen, get out of whatever you’re doing there, and we’ll be right over. The Fuchses are here too. Or else, I have an even better idea—you get yourself over here. Eh? Olya, be quiet, I can’t hear. What’s that?”

  “I can’t. I have my … I’m busy, that’s all there is to it.”

  Leshcheyev emitted a national curse. “Good-bye,” said Lev awkwardly into the already dead phone.

  Now Serafim’s attention had shifted from the books to a picture on the wall.

  “Business call. Such a bore,” said Lev with a grimace. “Please excuse me.”

  “You have a lot of business?” asked Serafim, without taking his eyes off the oleograph—a girl in red with a soot-black poodle.

  “Well, I make a living—newspaper articles, various stuff,” Lev answered vaguely. “And you—so you aren’t here for long?”

  “I’ll probably leave tomorrow. I dropped in to see you for just a few minutes. Tonight I still have to—”

  “Sit down, please, sit down.…”

  Serafim sat down. They remained silent for a while. They were both thirsty.

  “We were talking about books,” said Serafim. “What with one thing and another I just don’t have the time for them. On the train, though, I happened to pick something up, and read it for want of anything better to do. A German novel. Piffle, of course, but rather entertaining. About incest. It went like this.…”

  He retold the story in detail. Lev kept nodding and looking at Serafim’s substantial gray suit, and his ample smooth cheeks, and as he looked he thought: Was it really worth having a reunion with your brother after ten years to discuss some philistine tripe by Leonard Frank? It bores him to talk about it and I’m just as bored to listen. Now, let’s see, there was something I wanted to say … Can’t remember. What an agonizing evening.

  “Yes, I think I’ve read it. Yes, that’s a fashionable subject these days. Help yourself to some candy. I feel so guilty about the tea. You say you found Berlin greatly changed.” (Wrong thing to say—they had already discussed that.)

  “The Americanization,” answered Serafim. “The traffic. The remarkable buildings.”

  There was a pause.

  “I have something to ask you,” said Lev spasmodically. “It’s not quite your field, but in this magazine here … There were bits I didn’t understand. This, for instance—these experiments of his.”

  Serafim took the magazine and began explaining. “What’s so complicated about it? Before a magnetic field is formed—you know what a magnetic field is?—all right, before it is formed, there exists a so-called electric field. Its lines of force are situated in planes that pass through a so-called vibrator. Note that, according to Faraday’s teachings, a magnetic line appears as a closed circle, while an electric one is always open. Give me a pencil—no, it’s all right, I have one.… Thanks, thanks, I have one.”

  He went on explaining and sketching something for quite a time, while Lev nodded meekly. He spoke of Young, Maxwell, Hertz. A regular lecture. Then he asked for a glass of water.

  “It’s time for me to be going, you know,” he said, licking his lips and setting the glass back on the table. “It’s time.” From somewhere in the region of his belly he extracted a thick watch. “Yes, it’s time.”

  “Oh, come on, stay awhile longer,” mumbled Lev, but Serafim shook his head and got up, tugging down his waistcoat. His gaze stopped once again on the oleograph of the girl in red with the black poodle.

  “Do you recall its name?” he asked, with his first genuine smile of the evening.

  “Whose name?”

  “Oh, you know—Tikhotski used to visit us at the dacha with a girl and a poodle. What was the poodle’s name?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Lev. “Wait a minute. Yes, that’s right. I’ll remember in a moment.”

  “It was black,” said Serafim. “Very much like this one.… Where did you put my coat? Oh, there it is. Got it.”

  “It’s slipped my mind too,” said Lev. “Oh, what was the name?”

  “Never mind. To hell with it. I’m off. Well … It was great to see you.…” He donned his coat adroitly in spite of his corpulence.

  “I’ll accompany you,” said Lev, producing his frayed raincoat.

  Awkwardly, they both cleared their throats at the same instant. Then they descended the stairs in silence and went out. It was drizzling.

  “I’m taking the subway. What was that name,
though? It was black and had pompons on its paws. My memory is getting incredibly bad.”

  “There was a k in it,” replied Lev. “That much I’m sure of—it had a k in it.”

  They crossed the street.

  “What soggy weather,” said Serafim. “Well, well.… So we’ll never remember? You say there was a k?”

  They turned the corner. Streetlamp. Puddle. Dark post office building. Old beggar woman standing as usual by the stamp machine. She extended a hand with two matchboxes. The beam of the streetlamp touched her sunken cheek; a bright drop quivered under her nostril.

  “It’s really absurd,” exclaimed Serafim. “I know it’s there in one of my brain cells, but I can’t reach it.”

  “What was the name … what was it?” Lev chimed in. “It really is absurd that we can’t … Remember how it got lost once, and you and Tikhotski’s girl wandered for hours in the woods searching for it. I’m sure there was a k and perhaps an r somewhere.”

  They reached the square. On its far side shone a pearl horseshoe on blue glass—the emblem of the subway. Stone steps led into the depths.

  “She was a stunner, that girl,” said Serafim. “Well, I give up. Take care of yourself. Sometime we’ll get together again.”

  “It was something like Turk.… Trick … No, it won’t come. It’s hopeless. You also take care of yourself. Good luck.”

  Serafim gave a wave of his spread hand, and his broad back hunched over and vanished into the depths. Lev started walking back slowly, across the square, past the post office and the beggar woman.… Suddenly he stopped short. Somewhere in his memory there was a hint of motion, as if something very small had awakened and begun to stir. The word was still invisible, but its shadow had already crept out as from behind a corner, and he wanted to step on that shadow to keep it from retreating and disappearing again. Alas, he was too late. Everything vanished, but, at the instant his brain ceased straining, the thing stirred again, more perceptibly this time, and like a mouse emerging from a crack when the room is quiet, there appeared, lightly, silently, mysteriously, the live corpuscle of a word.… “Give me your paw, Joker.” Joker! How simple it was. Joker.…

  He looked back involuntarily, and thought how Serafim, sitting in his subterranean car, might have remembered too. What a wretched reunion.

  Lev heaved a sigh, looked at his watch, and, seeing it was not yet too late, decided to head for the Leshcheyevs’ house. He would clap his hands under their window, and maybe they would hear and let him in.

  LIPS TO LIPS

  THE violins were still weeping, performing, it seemed, a hymn of passion and love, but already Irina and the deeply moved Dolinin were rapidly walking toward the exit. They were lured by the spring night, by the mystery that had tensely stood up between them. Their two hearts were beating as one.

  “Give me your cloakroom ticket,” uttered Dolinin (crossed out).

  “Please, let me get your hat and manteau” (crossed out).

  “Please,” uttered Dolinin, “let me get your things” (“and my” inserted between “your” and “things”).

  Dolinin went up to the cloakroom, and after producing his little ticket (corrected to “both little tickets”)—

  Here Ilya Borisovich Tal grew pensive. It was awkward, most awkward, to dawdle there. Just now there had been an ecstatic surge, a sudden blaze of love between the lonely, elderly Dolinin and the stranger who happened to share his box, a girl in black, whereupon they decided to escape from the theater, far, far away from the décolletés and military uniforms. Somewhere beyond the theater the author dimly visualized the Kupecheskiy or Tsarskiy Park, locusts in bloom, precipices, a starry night. The author was terribly impatient to plunge with his hero and heroine into that starry night. Still one had to get one’s coats, and that interfered with the glamour. Ilya Borisovich reread what he had written, puffed out his cheeks, stared at the crystal paperweight, and finally made up his mind to sacrifice glamour to realism. This did not prove simple. His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people. Furthermore Ilya Borisovich tussled constantly with pronouns, as for example “she,” which had a teasing way of referring not only to the heroine but also to her mother or sister in the same sentence, so that in order to avoid repeating a proper name one was often compelled to put “that lady” or “her interlocutress” although no interlocution was taking place. Writing meant to him an unequal contest with indispensable objects; luxury goods appeared to be much more compliant, but even they rebelled now and then, got stuck, hampered one’s freedom of movement—and now, having ponderously finished with the cloakroom fuss and being about to present his hero with an elegant cane, Ilya Borisovich naively delighted in the gleam of its rich knob, and did not foresee, alas, what claims that valuable article would make, how painfully it would demand mention, when Dolinin, his hands feeling the curves of a supple young body, would be carrying Irina across a vernal rill.

  Dolinin was simply “elderly”; Ilya Borisovich Tal would soon be fifty-five. Dolinin was “colossally wealthy,” without precise explanation of his source of income; Ilya Borisovich directed a company engaged in the installation of bathrooms (that year, incidentally, it had been appointed to panel with enameled tiles the cavernal walls of several underground stations) and was quite well-to-do. Dolinin lived in Russia—South Russia, probably—and first met Irina long before the Revolution. Ilya Borisovich lived in Berlin, whither he had migrated with wife and son in 1920. His literary output was of long standing, but not big: the obituary of a local merchant, famous for his liberal political views, in the Kharkov Herald (1910), two prose poems, ibid. (August 1914 and March 1917), and one book, consisting of that obituary and those two prose poems—a pretty volume that landed right in the raging middle of the civil war. Finally, upon reaching Berlin, Ilya Borisovich wrote a little étude, “Travelers by Sea and Land,” which appeared in a humble émigré daily published in Chicago; but that newspaper soon vanished like smoke, while other periodicals did not return manuscripts and never discussed rejections. Then followed two years of creative silence: his wife’s illness and death, the Inflationszeit, a thousand business undertakings. His son finished high school in Berlin and entered Freiburg University. And now, in 1925, at the onset of old age, this prosperous and on the whole very lonely person experienced such an attack of writer’s itch, such a longing—oh, not for fame, but simply for some warmth and heed on the part of readerdom—that he resolved to let himself go, write a novel and have it published at his own cost.

  Already by the time that its protagonist, the heavy-hearted, world-weary Dolinin, hearkened to the clarion of a new life and (after that almost fatal stop at the cloakroom) escorted his young companion into the April night, the novel had acquired a title: Lips to Lips. Dolinin had Irina move to his flat, but nothing had happened yet in the way of lovemaking, for he desired that she come to his bed of her own accord, exclaiming:

  “Take me, take my purity, take my torment. Your loneliness is my loneliness, and however long or short your love may be, I am prepared for everything, because around us spring summons us to humanness and good, because the sky and the firmament radiate divine beauty, and because I love you.”

  “A powerful passage,” observed Euphratski. “Terra firma meant, I dare say. Very powerful.”

  “And it is not boring?” asked Ilya Borisovich Tal, glancing over his horn-rimmed glasses. “Eh? Tell me frankly.”

  “I suppose he’ll deflower her,” mused Euphratski.

  “Mimo, chitatel’, mimol” (“Wrong, reader, wrong!”) answered Ilya Borisovich (misinterpreting Turgenev). He smiled rather smugly, gave his manuscript a resettling shake, crossed his fat-thighed legs more comfortably, and continued his reading.

&nbs
p; He read his novel to Euphratski bit by bit, at the rate of production. Euphratski, who had once swooped upon him on the occasion of a concert with a charitable purpose, was an émigré journalist “with a name,” or, rather, with a dozen pseudonyms. Hitherto Ilya Borisovich’s acquaintances used to come from German industrial circles; now he attended émigré meetings, lectures, amateur theatricals, and had learned to recognize some of the belles-lettres brethren. He was on especially good terms with Euphratski and valued his opinion as coming from a stylist, although Euphratski’s style belonged to the topical sort we all know. Ilya Borisovich frequently invited him, they sipped cognac and talked about Russian literature, or more exactly Ilya Borisovich did the talking, and the guest avidly collected comical scraps with which to entertain his own cronies later. True, Ilya Borisovich’s tastes were on the heavyish side. He gave Pushkin his due, of course, but knew him mainly through the medium of three or four operas, and in general found him “olympically serene and incapable of stirring the reader.” His knowledge of more recent poetry was limited to his remembering two poems, both with a political slant, “The Sea” by Veynberg (1830–1908) and the famous lines of Skitaletz (Stepan Petrov, born 1868) in which “dangled” (on the gallows) rhymes with “entangled” (in a revolutionary plot). Did Ilya Borisovich like to make mild fun of the “Decadents”? Yes, he did, but then, one must note that he frankly admitted his incomprehension of verse. Per contra, he was fond of discussing Russian fiction: he esteemed Lugovoy (a regional mediocrity of the 1900s), appreciated Korolenko, and considered that Artsybashev debauched young readers. In regard to the novels of modern émigré writers he would say, with the “empty-handed” Russian gesture of inutility, “Dull, dull!,” which sent Euphratski into a kind of rapturous trance.

  “An author should be soulful,” Ilya Borisovich would reiterate, “and compassionate, and responsive, and fair. Maybe I’m a flea, a nonentity, but I have my credo. Let at least one word of my writings impregnate a reader’s heart.” And Euphratski would fix reptilian eyes upon him, foretasting with agonizing tenderness tomorrow’s mimetic report, A’s belly laugh, Z’s ventriloquistic squeak.