The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Meet Gumm, meet economist Gumm, a round-tummied little old man in a woolen waistcoat, with blue spectacles pushed up high on his pink forehead, bouncy, trim, giggly Gumm. Their meetings increased in frequency, and at the end of his second year at college, K even sojourned for about a week in Gumm’s house. By that time K had discovered enough things about the crown prince’s behavior not to regret that first explosion of indignation. Not so much from Gumm himself, who seemed always to be rolling somewhither, as from his relatives and entourage, K learned about the measures which had already been tried to subdue the prince. At first, people had attempted to inform the old king about his son’s frolics, so as to obtain parental restraint. Indeed, when this or that person, after gaining, through the thorns of protocol, access to the king’s kabinet, depicted frankly those stunts to His Majesty, the old man, flushing purple and nervously pulling together the skirts of his dressing gown, displayed greater wrath than one might have hoped for. He shouted that he would put an end to it, that the cup of endurance (wherein his morning coffee stormily splashed) was overflowing, that he was happy to hear a candid report, that he would banish the lecherous cur for six months to a suyphellhus (monastery ship, floating hermitage), that he would—And when the audience had come to a close, and the pleased official was about to bow his way out, the old king, still puffing, but already pacified, would take him aside, with a businesslike confidential air (though actually they were alone in the study), and say, “Yes, yes, I understand all that, all that is so, but listen—quite between us—tell me, if we look at it reasonably—after all my Adulf is a bachelor, a gay dog, he’s fond of a little sport—is it necessary to get all worked up? Remember, we also were boys once.” That last consideration sounded rather silly, for the king’s distant youth had flowed with milky tranquillity, and afterwards, the late queen, his wife, treated him with unusual severity till he was sixty. She was, incidentally, a remarkably obstinate, stupid, and petty-minded woman with a constant propensity for innocent but extremely absurd fantasies; and very possibly it was owing to her that the habitus of the court and, to a certain extent, of the state acquired those peculiar, difficult-to-define features, oddly blending stagnation and caprice, improvidence and the primness of nonviolent insanity, that so much tormented the present king.

  The second, chronologically speaking, form of opposition was considerably deeper: it consisted of rallying and fortifying public resources. One could scarcely rely on the conscious participation of the plebeian class: among the insular plowmen, weavers, bakers, carpenters, corn-mongers, fisherfolk, and so forth, the transformation of any crown prince into any king was accepted as meekly as a change in the weather: the rustic gazed at the auroral gleam amid the cumulated clouds, shook his head—and that was all; in his dark lichenian brain a traditional place was always reserved for traditional disaster, national or natural. The meagerness and sluggishness of economics, the frozen level of prices, which had long since lost vital sensitivity (through which there is formed all at once a connection between an empty head and an empty stomach), the grim constancy of inconsiderable but just sufficient harvests, the secret pact between greens and grain, which had agreed, it seemed, to supplement each other and thus hold agronomy in equipoise—all this, according to Gumm (see The Basis and Anabasis of Economics) kept the people in languid submission; and if some sort of sorcery prevailed here, then so much the worse for the victims of its viscous spells. Furthermore—and the enlightened found therein a source of especial sadness—Prince Fig enjoyed a kind of smutty popularity among the lower classes and the petty bourgeoisie (between whom the distinction was so wobbly that one could regularly observe such puzzling phenomena as the return of a shopkeeper’s prosperous son to the humble manual trade of his grandfather). The hearty laughter invariably accompanying talk about Fig’s pranks prevented them from being condemned: the mask of mirth stuck to one’s mouth, and that mimicry of approval could no longer be distinguished from the real thing. The more lewdly Fig romped, the louder folks guffawed, the mightier and merrier red fists thumped on the deal tables of pubs. A characteristic detail: one day when the prince, passing on horseback, a cigar between his teeth, through a backwoodsy hamlet, noticed a comely little girl to whom he offered a ride, and notwithstanding her parents’ horror (which respect barely helped to restrain), swept her away, while her old granddad kept running along the road until he toppled into a ditch, the whole village, as agents reported, expressed their admiration by roars of laughter, congratulated the family, reveled in surmise, and did not stint in mischievous inquiries when the child returned after an hour’s absence, holding a hundred-krun note in one hand, and, in the other, a fledgling that had fallen out of its nest in a desolate grove where she had picked it up on her way back to the village.

  In military circles displeasure with the prince was based not so much on considerations of general morals and national prestige as on direct resentment suscitated by his attitude toward flaming punch and booming guns. King Gafon himself, in contrast to his pugnacious predecessor, was a “deeply civilian” old party; nonetheless the army put up with it, his complete noncomprehension of military matters being redeemed by the timorous esteem in which he held them; per contra, the Guard could not forgive his son’s open sneer. War games, parades, puff-cheeked music, regimental banquets with the observation of colorful customs, and various other conscientious recreations on the part of the small insular army produced nothing but scornful ennui in Adulf’s eminently artistic soul. Yet the army’s unrest did not go further than desultory murmurs, plus, maybe, the making of midnight oaths (to the gleam of tapers, goblets, and swords)—to be forgotten next morning. Thus the initiative belonged to the enlightened minds of the public, which sad to say were not numerous; the anti-Adulfian opposition included, however, certain statesmen, newspaper editors, and jurists—all respectable, tough-sinewed old fellows, wielding plenty of secret or manifest influence. In other words, public opinion rose to the occasion, and the ambition to curb the crown prince as his iniquity progressed became considered a sign of decency and intelligence. It only remained to find a weapon. Alas, this precisely was lacking. There existed the press, there existed a parliament, but by the code of the constitution the least disrespectful poke at a member of the royal family must result in the newspaper’s being banned or the chamber’s dissolved. A single attempt to stir up the nation failed. We are referring to the celebrated trial of Dr. Onze.

  That trial presented something unparalleled even in the unparalleled annals of Thulean justice. A man renowned for his virtue, a lecturer and writer on civic and philosophical questions, a personality so highly regarded, endowed with such strictness of views and principles, in a word, such a dazzlingly unstained character that, in comparison, the reputation of anyone else appeared spotty, was accused of various crimes against morals, defended himself with the clumsiness of despair, and finally acknowledged his guilt. So far there was nothing very unusual about it: goodness knows into what furuncles the mamillae of merit may turn under scrutiny! The unusual and subtle part of the matter lay in the fact that the indictment and the evidence formed practically a replica of all that could be imputed to the crown prince. One could not help being amazed by the precision of details obtained in order to insert a full-length portrait in the prepared frame without touching up or omitting anything. Much of it was so new, and individualized so precisely the commonplaces of long-coarsened rumor, that at first the masses did not realize who had sat for the picture. Very soon, however, the daily reports in the papers began to stir up quite exceptional interest among such readers as had caught on, and people who used to pay up to twenty kruns to attend the trial now did not spare five hundred or more.

  The initial idea had been generated in the womb of the prokuratura (magistracy). The oldest judge in the capital took a fancy to it. All one needed was to find a person sufficiently upright not to be confused with the prototype of the affair, sufficiently clever not to act as a clown or a cretin before the tribunal, a
nd, in particular, sufficiently dedicated to the case to sacrifice everything to it, endure a monstrous mud bath, and exchange his career for hard labor. Candidates for that role were not available: the conspirators, most of them well-to-do family men, liked every part except the one without which the play could not be staged. The situation already looked hopeless—when one day, at a meeting of the plotters, appeared Dr. Onze dressed entirely in black and, without sitting down, declared that he put himself completely at their disposal. A natural impatience to grasp the occasion hardly allowed them time to marvel; for at first blush it surely must have been difficult to understand how the rarefied life of a thinker could be compatible with the willingness to be pilloried for the sake of political intrigue. Actually, his was not such an uncommon case. Being constantly occupied with spiritual problems, and constantly adapting the laws of the most rigid principles to the most fragile abstractions, Dr. Onze did not find it possible to refuse a personal application of the same method when presented with the opportunity of performing a deed that was disinterested and probably senseless (and therefore still abstract, owing to the utmost purity of its nature). Furthermore, one should remember that Dr. Onze was giving up his chair, the mollitude of his book-lined study, the continuation of his latest opus—in brief, everything that a philosopher has the right to treasure. Let us mention that he was in indifferent health; let us emphasize the fact that before submitting the case to a close examination he had been obliged to devote three nights to delving in rather special works dealing with problems of which an ascetic could know little; and let us add that not long before he took his decision, he had become engaged to a senescent virgin after years of unexpressed love, during which time her fiancé of long standing fought phthisis in distant Switzerland until he expired, hence freeing her of her pact with compassion.

  The case started by that truly heroic female’s suing Dr. Onze for allegedly luring her to his secret garçonnière, “a den of luxury and libertinism.” A similar claim (the only difference being that the apartment surreptitiously taken and fitted by the conspirators was not the one which the prince used to rent at one time for special pleasures but faced it on the opposite side of the street—which immediately established the mirror-image idea characteristic of the entire trial) had been filed against Fig by a not overbright maiden, who did not happen to know that her seducer was the heir to the throne, i.e., a person who in no circumstances could be arraigned. There followed the testimony of numerous witnesses (some of them altruistic adherents, others paid agents: there had not been quite enough of the first); their declarations had been brilliantly composed by a committee of experts, among whom one noted a distinguished historian, two major literati, and several experienced jurists. In these declarations the activity of the crown prince developed gradually, in the correct chronological order, but with some calendric abridgment compared to the time it had taken the prince to exasperate the public so badly. Group fornication, ultraurningism, abduction of youngsters, and many other amusements were described to the accused in the form of detailed questions to which he replied much more briefly. Having studied the whole affair with the methodical diligence peculiar to his mentality, Dr. Onze, who had never considered theatrical art (in fact, he did not go to the theater), now, by means of a savant’s approach, unconsciously achieved a splendid impersonation of the kind of criminal whose denial of the charge (an attitude which in the present case was meant to let the prosecution get into its stride) finds nourishment in contradictory statements and assistance in bewildered stubbornness.

  Everything proceeded as planned; alas, it soon became clear that the conspirators had no idea what really to hope for. For the eyes of the people to open? But the people knew all along Fig’s nominal value. For moral revulsion to turn into civic revolt? But nothing indicated the way to such a metamorphosis. Or maybe the whole scheme was to be but a link in a long chain of progressively more efficient disclosures? But then the boldness and bite of the affair, by the very fact of their lending it an unrepeatable character of exclusiveness, could not help breaking, between the first link and the next, a chain that demanded above all some gradual form of malleation.

  The publication of all the details of the case only helped to enrich the papers: their circulation grew to such an extent that in the resulting lush shade certain alert people (as for example Sien) managed to create new organs which pursued this or that object, but whose success was guaranteed because of their reports on the trial. The honestly indignant citizens were vastly outnumbered by the lip-smackers and the curious. Plain folks read and laughed. In those public proceedings they saw a marvelously entertaining gag thought up by rascals. The crown prince’s image acquired in their minds the aspect of a punchinello whose varnished pate gets, perhaps, thumped by the stick of a mangy devil, but who remains the pet of the gapers, the star of the show-box. On the other hand, the personality of sublime Dr. Onze not only failed to be recognized as such but provoked happy hoots of malice (echoed disgracefully by the yellow press), the populace having mistaken his position for a wretched readiness to please on the part of a bribed highbrow. In a word, the pornographic popularity which had always surrounded the prince was only augmented, and even the most ironic conjectures as to how he must feel reading about his own escapades bore the mark of that good nature with which we involuntarily encourage another chap’s showy recklessness.

  The nobility, the Councilors, the court, and “courtierist” members of the Peplerhus were caught napping. They tamely decided to lie in wait and thus lost invaluable political tempo. True, a few days before the verdict, members of the royalist party succeeded, by intricate or merely crooked means, in getting a law passed forbidding the newspapers to report on “divorce cases or other hearings apt to contain scandalous items”; but as, constitutionally, no law could be enforced until forty days had elapsed since its acceptance (a period termed “parturiency of Themis”), the papers had ample time to cover the trial to the very end.

  Prince Adulf himself regarded the business with complete indifference, which, moreover, was so naturally expressed that one wondered if he understood about whom they really were talking. Since every scrap of the affair must have been familiar to him, one is forced to conclude that either he had suffered an amnesic shock or that his self-control was superb. Once only his intimates thought they saw a shadow of vexation flit across his large face: “What a pity,” he cried, “why didn’t that polisson invite me to his parties? Que de plaisirs perdus!” As to the king, he also looked unconcerned, but to judge by the way he cleared his throat while filing away the newspaper in a drawer and removing his reading glasses, and also by the frequency of his secret sessions with this or that Councilor summoned at an unseasonable hour, one gathered that he was strongly perturbed. It was said that during the days of the trial he offered several times, with feigned casualness, to lend his son the royal yacht so that Adulf might undertake “a little round-the-world voyage,” but Adulf only laughed and kissed him on his bald spot. “Really, my dear boy,” insisted the old king, “it’s so delightful being at sea! You might take musicians with you, a barrel of wine!” “Hélas!” answered the prince, “a see-sawing sea line compromises my solar plexus.”

  The trial entered its final stage. The defense alluded to the accused’s “youth,” to his “hot blood,” to the “temptations” attending a bachelor’s life—all of which was a rather coarse parody of the king’s overindulgence. The prosecutor made a speech of savage force—and overshot the mark by demanding the death penalty. The defendant’s last word introduced an utterly unexpected note. Exhausted by lengthy tension, harrowed by having been forced to wallow in another’s filth, and involuntarily staggered by the prosecutor’s blast, the luckless scholar lost his nerve and, after a few incoherent mumblings, suddenly started, in a new, hysterically clear voice, to tell how one night in his youth, having drunk his first glass of hazel brandy, he accepted to go with a classmate to a brothel, and how he did not get there only because he fainted i
n the street. This unforeseen avowal convulsed the public with long laughter, while the prosecutor, losing his head, attempted to stop the defendant’s mouth by physical means. Then the jury retired for a silent smoke to the room allotted to them, and presently came back to announce the verdict. It was suggested that Dr. Onze be sentenced to eleven years’ hard labor.

  The sentence was wordily approved by the press. At secret visits his friends shook hands with the martyr, as they took farewell of him.… But here, good old Gafon, for the first time in his life, unexpectedly for everybody including, maybe, his own self, acted rather wittily: he took advantage of an incontestable prerogative and granted Onze a full pardon.

  Thus both the first and second modes of pressure upon the prince practically came to nothing. There remained a third, a most decisive and certain, way. All the talks in Gumm’s entourage tended exclusively toward the realization of that third measure, though its actual name, apparently, nobody pronounced: Death enjoys a sufficient number of euphemisms. K, upon getting involved in the tangled circumstances of a plot, did not quite make out what was happening, and the reason of that blindness lay not solely in youthful inexperience; it depended upon his considering himself, instinctively, though quite erroneously, to be the main instigator (whereas, of course, he was no more than an honorary walk-on actor—or an honorary hostage) and therefore refusing to believe that the enterprise he had initiated could end in bloodshed; indeed, no enterprise really existed, since he vaguely felt that by the very act of surmounting his disgust in studying his cousin’s life he was accomplishing something sufficiently important and needful; and when with the passing of time he got a little bored with that study and with constant talks about the same thing, he still kept participating in them, dutifully stuck to the tedious topic, and continued to think he was performing his duty by collaborating with some kind of force that remained obscure to him but that finally would transform, by a stroke of its wand, an impossible prince into an acceptable heir apparent. Even if it occurred to him to welcome the possibility of simply forcing Adulf to forgo his claim to the throne (and the vagaries of figurative speech used by the plotters might have chanced to imply such an interpretation), he, strangely enough, never brought that thought to the end, i.e., to himself as the next in line. For almost two years, in the margin of college work, he constantly associated with rotund Gumm and his friends, and imperceptibly found himself caught in a very dense and delicate web; and perhaps the enforced boredom he felt more and more keenly should not be reduced to the mere incapacity—otherwise characteristic of his nature—to keep concerned with things that gradually grew the integument of habit (through which he no longer distinguished the radiance of their passionate revival); but perhaps it was the deliberately changed voice of a subliminal warning. Meanwhile the business that had been commenced long before his participation in it neared its gory denouement.