The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

by Vladimir Nabokov

  That was when L.I. took me under his wing. “What’s the matter, old man?” (We already knew each other slightly; he had been compiling a Russian-German pocket dictionary of technical terms and used to visit the office where I worked.) “Wait a minute, old man, just look at yourself.” Right there on the corner (he was coming out of a delicatessen shop with his supper in his briefcase) I burst into tears, and, without a word, L.I. took me to his place, installed me on the sofa, fed me liverwurst and beef-tea, and spread over me a quilted overcoat with a worn astrakhan collar. I shivered and sobbed, and presently fell asleep.

  In short, I remained in his little apartment, and lived like that for a couple of weeks, after which I rented a room next door, and we continued seeing each other daily. And yet, who would think we had anything in common? We were different in every respect! He was nearly twice my age, dependable, debonair, portly, dressed generally in a cutaway coat, cleanly and thriftily, like the majority of our orderly, elderly émigré bachelors: it was worth seeing, and especially hearing, how methodically he brushed his trousers in the morning: the sound of that brushing is now so intimately associated with him, so prominent in my recollection of him—especially the rhythm of the process, the pauses between spells of scraping, when he would stop to examine a suspicious place, scratch at it with his fingernail, or hold it up to the light. Oh, those “inexpressibles” (as he called them), that let the sky’s azure shine through at the knee, his inexpressibles, inexpressibly spiritualized by that ascension!

  His room was characterized by the naive neatness of poverty. He would imprint his address and telephone number on his letters with a rubber stamp (a rubber stamp!). He knew how to make botviniya, a cold soup of beet tops. He was capable of demonstrating for hours on end some little trinket he considered a work of genius, a curious cuff link or cigarette lighter sold to him by a smooth-talking hawker (note that L.I. himself did not smoke), or his pets, three diminutive turtles with hideous cronelike necks; one of them perished in my presence when it crashed down from a round table along the edge of which it used to keep moving, like a hurrying cripple, under the impression that it was following a straight course, leading far, far away. Another thing that I just remembered with such clarity: on the wall above his bed, which was as smooth as a prisoner’s cot, hung two lithographs: a view of the Neva from the Columna Rostrata side and a portrait of Alexander I. He had happened to acquire them in a moment of yearning for the Empire, a nostalgia he distinguished from the yearning for one’s native land.

  L.I. totally lacked any sense of humor, and was totally indifferent to art, literature, and what is commonly known as nature. If the talk did happen to turn, say, to poetry, his contribution would be limited to a statement like “No, say what you will, but Lermontov is somehow closer to us than Pushkin.” And when I pestered him to quote even a single line of Lermontov, he made an obvious effort to recall something out of Rubinstein’s opera The Demon, or else answered, “Haven’t reread him in a long while, ‘all these are deeds of bygone days,’ and, anyway, my dear Victor, just let me alone.” Incidentally, he did not realize that he was quoting from Pushkin’s Ruslan and Ludmila.

  In the summer, on Sundays, he would invariably go on a trip out of town. He knew the outskirts of Berlin in astonishing detail and prided himself on his knowledge of “wonderful spots” unfamiliar to others. This was a pure, self-sufficient delight, related, perhaps, to the delights of collectors, to the orgies indulged in by amateurs of old catalogues; otherwise it was incomprehensible why he needed it all: painstakingly preparing the route, juggling various means of transportation (there by train, then back to this point by steamer, thence by bus, and this is how much it costs, and nobody, not even the Germans themselves, knows it is so cheap). But when he and I finally stood in the woods it turned out that he could not tell the difference between a bee and a bumblebee, or between alder and hazel, and perceived his surroundings quite conventionally and collectively: greenery, fine weather, the feathered tribe, little bugs. He was even offended if I, who had grown up in the country, remarked, for the sake of a bit of fun, on the differences between the flora around us and a forest in central Russia: he felt that there existed no significant difference, and that sentimental associations alone mattered.

  He liked to stretch out on the grass in a shady spot, prop himself up on his right elbow, and discourse lengthily on the international situation or tell stories about his brother Peter, apparently quite a dashing fellow—ladies’ man, musician, brawler—who, back in prehistoric times, drowned one summer night in the Dnieper—a very glamorous end. In dear old L.I.’s account, though, it all turned out so dull, so thorough, so well rounded out, that when, during a rest in the woods, he would suddenly ask with a kind smile: “Did I ever tell you about the time Pete took a ride on the village priest’s she-goat?” I felt like crying out, “Yes, yes, you did, please spare me!”

  What would I not give to hear his uninteresting yarns now, to see his absentminded, kindly eyes, that bald pate, rosy from the heat, those graying temples. What, then, was the secret of his charm, if everything about him was so dull? Why was everybody so fond of him, why did they all cling to him? What did he do in order to be so well liked? I don’t know. I don’t know the answer. I only know that I felt uneasy during his morning absences when he would leave for his Institute of Social Sciences (where he spent the time poring over bound volumes of Die Ökonomische Welt, from which he would copy in a neat, minute hand, excerpts that in his opinion were significant and noteworthy in the utmost), or for a private lesson of Russian, which he eternally taught to an elderly couple and the elderly couple’s son-in-law; his association with them led him to make many incorrect conclusions about the German way of life—on which the members of our intelligentsia (the most unobservant race in the world) consider themselves authorities. Yes, I would feel uneasy, as though I had a premonition of what has since happened to him in Prague: heart failure in the street. How happy he was, though, to get that job in Prague, how he beamed! I have an exceptionally clear recollection of the day we saw him off. Just think, a man gets the opportunity to lecture on his favorite subject! He left me a pile of old magazines (nothing grows old and dusty as fast as a Soviet magazine), his shoe trees (shoe trees were destined to pursue me), and a brand-new fountain pen (as a memento). He showed great concern for me as he left, and I know that afterwards, when our correspondence somehow wilted and ceased, and life again crashed into deep darkness—a darkness howling with thousands of voices, from which it is unlikely I will ever escape—L.I., I know, kept thinking about me, questioning people, and trying to help indirectly. He left on a beautiful summer day; tears welled persistently in the eyes of some of those seeing him off; a myopic Jewish girl with white gloves and a lorgnette brought a whole sheaf of poppies and cornflowers; L.I. inexpertly sniffed them, smiling. Did it occur to me that I might be seeing him for the last time?

  Of course it did. That is exactly what occurred to me: yes, I am seeing you for the last time; this, in fact is what I always think, about everything, about everyone. My life is a perpetual good-bye to objects and people, that often do not pay the least attention to my bitter, brief, insane salutation.

  THE CIRCLE

  IN THE second place, because he was possessed by a sudden mad hankering after Russia. In the third place, finally, because he regretted those years of youth and everything associated with it—the fierce resentment, the uncouthness, the ardency, and the dazzlingly green mornings when the coppice deafened you with its golden orioles. As he sat in the café and kept diluting with syphoned soda the paling sweetness of his cassis, he recalled the past with a constriction of the heart, with melancholy—what kind of melancholy?—well, a kind not yet sufficiently investigated. All that distant past rose with his breast, raised by a sigh, and slowly his father ascended from the grave, squaring his shoulders: Ilya Ilyich Bychkov, le maître d’école chez nous au village, in flowing black tie, picturesquely knotted, and pongee jacket, whose buttons began,
in the old fashion, high on the breastbone but stopped also at a high point, letting the diverging coat flaps reveal the watch chain across the waistcoat; his complexion was reddish, his head bald yet covered with a tender down resembling the velvet of a deer’s vernal antlers; there were lots of little folds along his cheeks, and a fleshy wart next to the nose producing the effect of an additional volute described by the fat nostril. In his high school and college days, Innokentiy used to travel from town on holidays to visit his father at Leshino. Diving still deeper, he could remember the demolition of the old school at the end of the village, the clearing of the ground for its successor, the foundation-stone ceremony, the religious service in the wind, Count Konstantin Godunov-Cherdyntsev throwing the traditional gold coin, the coin sticking edgewise in the clay. The new building was of a grainy granitic gray on its outside; its inside, for several years and then for another long spell (that is, when it joined the staff of memory) sunnily smelled of glue; the classes were graced with glossy educational appliances such as enlarged portraits of insects injurious to field or forest; but Innokentiy found even more irritating the stuffed birds provided by Godunov-Cherdyntsev. Flirting with the common people! Yes, he saw himself as a stern plebeian: hatred (or so it seemed) suffocated him when as a youth he used to look across the river at the great manorial park, heavy with ancient privileges and imperial grants, casting the reflection of its black amassments onto the green water (with the creamy blur of a racemosa blooming here and there among the fir trees).

  The new school was built on the threshold of this century, at a time when Godunov-Cherdyntsev had returned from his fifth expedition to central Asia and was spending the summer at Leshino, his estate in the Government of St. Petersburg, with his young wife (at forty he was twice as old as she). To what a depth one has plunged, good God! In a melting crystalline mist, as if it were all taking place under water, Innokentiy saw himself as a boy of three or four entering the manor house and floating through marvelous rooms, with his father moving on tiptoe, a damp nosegay of lilies of the valley bunched in his fist so tight that they squeaked—and everything around seemed moist too, a luminous, squeaking, quivering haze, which was all one could distinguish—but in later years it turned into a shameful recollection, his father’s flowers, tiptoeing progress, and sweating temples darkly symbolizing grateful servility, especially after Innokentiy was told by an old peasant that Ilya Ilyich had been disentangled by “our good master” from a trivial but tacky political affair, for which he would have been banished to the backwoods of the empire had the Count not interceded.

  Tanya used to say that they had relatives not only in the animal kingdom but also among plants and minerals. And, indeed, Russian and foreign naturalists had described under the specific name of “godunovi” a new pheasant, a new antelope, a new rhododendron, and there was even a whole Godunov Range (he himself described only insects). Those discoveries of his, his outstanding contributions to zoology, and a thousand perils, for disregarding which he was famous, could not, however, make people indulgent to his high descent and great wealth. Furthermore, let us not forget that certain sections of our intelligentsia had always held nonapplied scientific research in contempt, and therefore Godunov was rebuked for showing more interest in “Sinkiang bugs” than in the plight of the Russian peasant. Young Innokentiy readily believed the tales (actually idiotic) told about the Count’s traveling concubines, his Chinese-style inhumanity, and the secret errands he discharged for the Tsar—to spite the English. The reality of his image remained dim: an ungloved hand throwing a gold piece (and, in the still earlier recollection, that visit to the manor house, the lord of which got confused by the child with a Kalmuck, dressed in sky blue, met on the way through a reception hall). Then Godunov departed again, to Samarkand or to Vernyi (towns from which he usually started his fabulous strolls), and was gone a long time. Meanwhile his family summered in the south, apparently preferring their Crimean country place to their Petropolitan one. Their winters were spent in the capital. There, on the quay, stood their house, a two-floor private residence, painted an olive hue. Innokentiy sometimes happened to walk by; his memory retained the feminine forms of a statue showing its dimpled sugar-white buttock through the patterned gauze on a whole-glassed window. Olive-brown atlantes with strongly arched ribs supported a balcony: the strain of their stone muscles and their agonizingly twisted mouths struck our hotheaded uppergrader as an allegory of the enslaved proletariat. Once or twice, on that quay, in the beginning of the gusty Neva spring, he glimpsed the little Godunov girl with her fox terrier and governess; they positively whirled by, yet were so vividly outlined: Tanya wore boots laced up to the knee and a short navy-blue coat with knobbed brass buttons, and as she marched rapidly past, she slapped the pleats of her short navy-blue skirt—with what? I think with the dog leash she carried—and the Ladoga wind tossed the ribbons of her sailor cap, and a little behind her sped her governess, karakul-jacketed, her waist flexed, one arm thrown out, the hand encased in a muff of tight-curled black fur.

  He lodged at his aunt’s, a seamstress, in an Okhta tenement. He was morose, unsociable, applied ponderous groaning efforts to his studies while limiting his ambition to a passing mark, but to everybody’s astonishment finished school brilliantly and at the age of eighteen entered St. Petersburg University as a medical student—at which point his father’s worship of Godunov-Cherdyntsev mysteriously increased. He spent one summer as a private tutor with a family in Tver. By May of the following year, 1914, he was back in the village of Leshino—and discovered not without dismay that the manor across the river had come alive.

  More about that river, about its steep bank, about its old bathhouse. This was a wooden structure standing on piles; a stepped path, with a toad on every other step, led down to it, and not everyone could have found the beginning of that clayey descent in the alder thicket at the back of the church. His constant companion in riparian pastimes was Vasiliy, the blacksmith’s son, a youth of indeterminable age (he could not say himself whether he was fifteen or a full twenty), sturdily built, ungainly, in skimpy patched trousers, with huge bare feet dirty carrot in color, and as gloomy in temper as was Innokentiy at the time. The pinewood piles cast concertina-shaped reflections that wound and unwound on the water. Gurgling and smacking sounds came from under the rotten planks of the bathhouse. In a round, earth-soiled tin box depicting a horn of plenty—it had once contained cheap fruit drops—worms wriggled listlessly. Vasiliy, taking care that the point of the hook would not stick through, pulled a plump segment of worm over it, leaving the rest to hang free; then seasoned the rascal with sacramental spittle and proceeded to lower the lead-weighted line over the outer railing of the bathhouse. Evening had come. Something resembling a broad fan of violet-pink plumes or an aerial mountain range with lateral spurs spanned the sky, and the bats were already flitting, with the overstressed soundlessness and evil speed of membraned beings. The fish had begun to bite, and scorning the use of a rod, simply holding the tensing and jerking line between finger and thumb, Vasiliy tugged at it ever so slightly to test the solidity of the underwater spasms—and suddenly landed a roach or a gudgeon. Casually, and even with a kind of devil-may-care crackling snap, he would wrench the hook out of the toothless round little mouth and place the frenzied creature (rosy blood oozing from a torn gill) in a glass jar where already a chevin was swimming, its lower lip stuck out. Angling was especially good in warm overcast weather when rain, invisible in the air, covered the water with mutually intersecting widening circles, among which appeared here and there a circle of different origin, with a sudden center: the jump of a fish that vanished at once or the fall of a leaf that immediately sailed away with the current. And how delicious it was to go bathing beneath that tepid drizzle, on the blending line of two homogeneous but differently shaped elements—the thick river water and the slender celestial one! Innokentiy took his dip intelligently and indulged afterwards in a long rubdown with a towel. The peasant boys, per contra, kept
floundering till complete exhaustion; finally, shivering, with chattering teeth and a turbid snot trail from nostril to lip, they would hop on one foot to pull their pants up to their wet thighs.