She vanished, but for a while her voice in the passage went on explaining to somebody about her husband’s urgent business, and Martin felt so piercingly, so ineffably saddened by all this commotion and disorder that he actually yearned to bundle Sonia off, to get rid of her as quickly as possible, and return to Cambridge and its lazy sunshine.
Sonia smiled, took him by the shoulder, and kissed him on the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know—maybe,” she whispered, and, quickly wriggling out of Martin’s violent embrace, raised a warning finger. “Tout beau, doggy,” she said, and then made big eyes, for at that moment, from downstairs, came the sound of awful, impossible, house-shaking sobs. “Come on, come on,” hurried Sonia. “I can’t understand why the poor child is so unhappy about moving away. Cut it out, damn it—let me go!”
At the bottom of the stairs Irina was tossing, howling, clutching at the banister. Her mother kept coaxing her softly, “Ira, Irochka,” while Zilanov, using an oft-tested expedient, took out his handkerchief, quickly made a long-eared, fat knot, pulled the handkerchief over his hand, and maneuvered in such a way as to make a little fellow in nightshirt and cap cozily getting into bed.
At the station she burst into tears again, only more quietly and hopelessly. Martin slipped her a box of candy that had actually been intended for Sonia. Zilanov had no sooner taken his seat than he opened a newspaper. Mrs. Zilanov and Mrs. Pavlov were counting suitcases with their eyes. With a clatter the doors began closing; the train moved. Sonia thrust her head out, leaning her elbows on the lowered window, and for a few instants Martin walked alongside the car; then he fell behind, and an already much diminished Sonia blew him a kiss, and Martin stumbled against some box on the platform.
“Well, there they go,” he sighed, and felt a certain relief. He made his way to the other station, bought the new issue of a humor magazine with a puppet, all nose, chin, and hump, on the cover, and, when he had extracted the last joke out of it, fixed his gaze on the gentle fields that were sliding past. “My darling, my darling,” he repeated several times, and, gazing through a hot tear at the green scenery, he imagined how, after many adventures, he would arrive in Berlin, look up Sonia, and, like Othello, begin to tell a story of hairbreadth escapes, of most disastrous chances. “No, it can’t go on like this,” he said, rubbing his eyelid with a finger and tensing his upper lip. “No, no. Less talk and more action.” Closing his eyes, and wedging himself comfortably into the corner, he started preparing for a dangerous expedition, studying an imaginary map. No one knew what he planned to do, Darwin alone might be informed—good-bye, good luck, the northbound train moves, and amidst these preparations he fell asleep, as he once used to fall asleep while putting on football apparel in his reveries. It was dark when he arrived in Cambridge. Darwin was still reading the same book, and yawned like a lion when Martin came in. And here Martin yielded to a little mischievous temptation, which he was subsequently to pay for. Counterfeiting a pensive smile, he stared at nothing, and Darwin, having unhurriedly completed his yawn, gave him a curious look.
“I am the happiest man in the world,” said Martin in a low voice full of feeling. “Oh, if I could only tell you everything.”
In a sense, this was no lie, for when he had dozed off on the train, he had dreamt a dream grown out of something that Sonia had said. In the dream she pressed his head to her smooth shoulder and bent over him, tickling him with her lips, murmuring warm muffled words of tenderness, and now it was hard to separate fancy from fact.
“Well, I’m very happy for you,” said Darwin. A sudden embarrassment overcame Martin, and, whistling to himself, he went off to bed. A week later he received a postcard with a view of the Brandenburg Gate crossed by Sonia’s spidery handwriting, which he spent a long time deciphering, trying in vain to read a hidden meaning into trivial words.
And now, gliding down the river beneath low-hanging boughs in bloom, Martin went back over his last meeting with her in London, analyzing it, testing it with different acids: a pleasant, but not very fruitful labor. It was a hot day; the sun penetrated his closed eyelids with a languorous strawberry crimson; he could hear the restrained plash of water and the gentle far-off music of floating phonographs. Presently he opened his eyes and, in a flood of sunlight, there was Darwin reclining on the cushions opposite, dressed as he in white flannel pants and open-necked shirt. The pole propelling their punt was wielded by Vadim. His cracked pumps glistened with drops of water and there was an intent expression on his sharp-featured face—he was fond of navigation, and now performed a sacred rite, as it were, skillfully, rhythmically manipulating the pole, pulling it out of the water with a methodical change of hold and bearing down on it anew. The punt glided between flowery banks; the transparent green water reflected now chestnut trees, now brambles in milk-white bloom; occasionally a petal would fall, and you could see its reflection hurrying up to meet it out of the watery depths, and then both would converge. Lazily, soundlessly—if one discounted the cooing of phonographs—other punts, or now and then a canoe, glided past. Martin noticed ahead an open bright-colored parasol which rotated this way and that, but nothing was visible of the girl twirling it except a hand, incongruously clad in a white glove. Her punt was manned by a young chap with glasses, poling very inexpertly, so that the boat followed a weaving course, and Vadim seethed with contempt, and did not know on which side to pass. At the very first bend it headed inexorably for the bank, the convex parasol showed in profile, and Martin recognized Rose.
“Look, how amusing,” he said, and Darwin, without moving the fat arms upon which his nape rested, turned his eyes in the direction of Martin’s gaze.
“You shall not say hello to her,” he observed calmly.
Martin smiled, “Oh yes, I certainly will.”
“If you do,” drawled Darwin, “I’ll knock your head off.”
There was a strange look in his eyes, and Martin felt uneasy; but for the very reason that Darwin’s threat did not sound jocular and frightened him, Martin shouted as he floated past the punt entangled in the riverside shrubbery, “Hello, hello, Rose!” And she smiled silently, her eyes sparkling and her parasol spinning, and in his exertions the bespectacled chap dropped his pole with a splash, and next moment they were concealed by the bend, and Martin again lay back and contemplated the sky.
After they had glided in silence for some minutes, Darwin greeted somebody in his turn. “John!” he roared, “paddle over here!”
John grinned and started backing water. This black-browed, crew-cut portly young man was a gifted mathematician who had recently won a prize for one of his papers. He sat low in his pirogue (Vadim’s nomenclature), moving a shiny paddle close to the boat’s side.
“I say, John,” announced Darwin, “I’ve been challenged to a fight here, and I want you as second. We’ll choose a quiet spot and land.”
“Righto,” answered John, without showing the least surprise, and, as he paddled alongside, began a lengthy account about a student who had recently acquired a seaplane, and promptly crashed it during an attempt to take off from the narrow Cam. Martin reclined on his cushions, motionless. Here it was, the familiar tremor and weakness in the legs. Maybe Darwin was joking after all. What did he have to get so furious about?
Vadim, immersed in the mystique of navigation, had apparently heard nothing. Three or four bends later Darwin asked him to head for shore. Evening was already drawing near. The river was deserted at that point. Vadim aimed the punt at a little green tongue of land that projected from beneath a leafy canopy. They thumped gently to a stop.
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Darwin jumped ashore first and helped Vadim moor the boat. Martin stretched, got up unhurriedly, and also debarked.
“Began reading Chekhov yesterday,” John said to him, wriggling his eyebrows. “Very grateful to you for the advice. Appealing, humane writer.”
“Oh, he certainly is,” said Martin, and quickly thought to himself, “Is there really going to be a fight?”
“Ther
e,” said Darwin, drawing near. “If we go through these bushes we’ll come out in a meadow, and we’ll be out of sight of the river.”
Only here did Vadim understand what was about to take place. “Mamka will kill you,” he said to Martin in Russian.
“Nonsense,” replied Martin. “I’m just as good a boxer as he is.”
“Forget about boxing,” Vadim whispered feverishly. “Give him a good kick right away!” and he specified exactly where. He was rooting for Martin solely out of patriotism.
The little meadow, ringed by hazel trees, proved velvet-smooth. Darwin rolled up his sleeves, but, on second thought, rolled them back down and took off his shirt, exposing a massive pink torso with a muscular gloss at the shoulders and a path of golden hairs down the middle of his broad chest. He tightened his belt, and suddenly broke into a smile. It’s all a joke, thought Martin joyously, but, just to be safe, he too removed his shirt. His skin was of a creamier shade, with numerous little birthmarks, common among Russians. Next to Darwin he seemed sparer, even though solidly built and broad-shouldered. He pulled his cross over his head, gathered the chain in his palm, and thrust this handful of trickling gold in his pocket. The evening sun flooded his back with warmth.
“How do you want it, with breathers?” asked John, sprawling comfortably on the grass. Darwin glanced questioningly at Martin, who stood with spread legs and folded arms.
“Makes no difference to me,” remarked Martin, while through his mind rushed the thought: “No, it’s the real thing—how ghastly——”
Vadim slouched around restlessly with his hands in his pockets, sniffling, smirking uneasily, and then sat down cross-legged beside John.
John took out his watch. “Anyway, they oughtn’t to have more than five minutes in all—agreed, Vadim?”
Vadim nodded in confusion.
“Well, you can begin,” said John.
Fists clenched, legs flexed, the two started dancing around one another. Martin still could not imagine himself hitting Darwin in the face, in that large, clean-shaven face with the soft wrinkles around the mouth; however, when Darwin’s left shot out and caught Martin on the jaw, everything changed: all anxiety vanished, he felt relaxed and radiant inside, and the ringing in his head, from the jolt it had received, sang of Sonia, over whom, in a sense, they were fighting this duel. Dodging another lunge, he punched Darwin’s gentle face, ducked under Darwin’s retaliating right, attempted an uppercut, and received himself such a black, star-spangled blow in the eye that he staggered and only just managed to evade the most vicious of half-a-dozen swipes. He crouched, he feinted, and jabbed Darwin in the mouth so nicely that his knuckles felt the hardness of teeth through the wetness of lips, but at once was punished himself in the belly by running into what seemed the protruding end of an iron girder. They bounced away from each other and resumed circling. Darwin had a red trickle at the corner of his mouth. He spat twice and the fight went on. John, pensively puffing on his pipe, juxtaposed in his mind Darwin’s experience and Martin’s speed and decided that if he were to choose between these two heavyweights in the ring, he would be inclined to bet on the elder. Martin’s left eye was already closed and swollen, and both combatants were glossy with sweat and smeared with blood. In the meantime Vadim had got all worked up, and was shouting excitedly in Russian; John shushed him. Bang! on the ear. Martin lost his balance, and, as he was tumbling, Darwin managed to hit him a second time, whereupon Martin sat down heavily on a pebbly patch, hurting his coccyx, but instantly sprang up and returned to the fray. Despite the buzzing pain in his head, and the crimson fog in his eyes, Martin felt sure he was inflicting more injury on Darwin than Darwin on him, but John, a lover of pugilism, already saw clearly that Darwin was only now getting into his stride, and that in a few moments the younger of the two would be down for good. But Martin miraculously withstood a series of resonant hooks and even managed to slam the other again on the mouth. He was panting now, and not thinking too clearly, and what he saw before him was no longer called Darwin, and in fact had no human name at all, but had become simply a pink, slippery, rapidly moving mass that must be punched with every last bit of strength. He succeeded in planting yet another very solid and satisfying blow somewhere—he did not see where—but immediately a multitude of fists pummeled him at length from all sides, wherever he turned; he stubbornly searched for a breach in this whirlwind, found one, hammered at a continuum of squelchy pulp, suddenly felt that his own head was flying off, slipped, and remained hanging on Darwin in a humid clinch.
“Time!” came John’s voice from remote space, and the fighters separated. Martin collapsed on the grass, and Darwin, his bloodied mouth forming a grin, plumped down beside him, tenderly put his arm around Martin’s shoulders, and both froze motionless, inclining their heads and breathing heavily.
“You ought to wash up,” said John, while Vadim approached cautiously and started examining their bruised faces.
“Can you stand?” Darwin asked solicitously. Martin nodded and, leaning on him, straightened up. They trudged toward the river, arms across each other’s shoulders. John patted them on their clammy bare backs; Vadim went on ahead to look for a secluded cove. There, Darwin helped Martin give face and frame a good wash, then Martin did the same for him, and both kept asking each other in low, solicitous tones where it hurt and if the water did not sting.
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Dusk was deepening, the nightingales had begun bubbling, the dim meadows and the dark shrubs breathed dampness. The river mists engulfed John and his black canoe. Vadim, once again propelling the punt, a white, ghostlike figure in the gloom, wordlessly and with a somnambulically smooth motion immersed his spectral pole. Martin and Darwin lay side by side on the cushions, limp, languid, swollen, staring with their three good eyes at the sky, across which a dark branch passed every now and then. And that sky, and the branch, and the barely plashing water, and the figure of Vadim, mysteriously ennobled by his love of navigation, and the colored lights of the paper lanterns on the bows of passing punts, and the thought that in a few days Cambridge would end, that perhaps the three of them were gliding for the last time along the narrow, misty river—all this merged in Martin’s mind into something wondrous and spellbinding, and the leaden pain in his head and the ache in his shoulders struck him as having an exalted, romantic quality, for thus wounded Tristram had floated alone with his harp.
One last bend, and there was the shore. The shore on which Martin landed was very fair, very bright, and full of variety. He knew, though, that for example Uncle Henry remained firmly convinced that these three years of aquatics in Cambridge had gone to waste, because Martin had indulged in a philological cruise, and not even a very distant one, instead of learning a useful profession. But Martin in all honesty did not understand why it was worse to be an expert in Russian letters than a transportation engineer or a merchant. Actually, Uncle Henry’s menagerie—and everybody has one—housed, among other creatures, a little black beast, and that bête noire was to him the twentieth century. Now this amazed Martin, since in his opinion one could not even imagine a better century than the one in which he lived. No other epoch had had such brilliance, such daring, such projects. Everything that had glimmered in previous ages—the passion for exploration of unknown lands, the audacious experiments, the glorious exploits of disinterested curiosity, the scientists who went blind or were blown to bits, the heroic conspiracies, the struggle of one against many—now emerged with unprecedented force. The cool suicide of a man after his having lost millions on the stock market struck Martin’s imagination as much as, for instance, the death of a Roman general falling on his sword. An automobile advertisement, brightly beckoning in a wild, picturesque gorge from an absolutely inaccessible spot on an alpine cliff thrilled him to tears. The complaisant and affectionate nature of very complicated and very simple machines, like the tractor or the linotype, for example, induced him to reflect that the good in mankind was so contagious that it infected metal. When, at an amazing hei
ght in the blue sky above the city, a mosquito-sized airplane emitted fluffy, milk-white letters a hundred times as big as it, repeating in divine dimensions the flourish of a firm’s name, Martin was filled with a sense of marvel and awe. But Uncle Henry, as if throwing tidbits to his black beastie, spoke with horror and revulsion about the twilight of Europe, about postwar fatigue, about our practical age, about the invasion of inanimate machines; in his imagination there existed some diabolical connection between the fox-trot and skyscrapers on one side and women’s fashions and cocktails on the other. Furthermore, Uncle Henry had the impression he lived in an age of terrible haste, and it was particularly funny when he chatted about this haste, on a summer day, at the edge of a mountain road, with the local priest, while the clouds sailed serenely and the abbé’s old, pink horse, shaking off flies with a tinkle, blinking its white eyelashes, would lower its head in a movement full of ineffable charm and munch succulently on the roadside grass, with its skin twitching or a hoof shifting now and then, and, if the talk about the mad haste of our days, about the almighty dollar, about the Argentines who seduced all the girls of Switzerland, dragged on too long, and the last tender stalk among coarser ones had been eaten at a given spot, it would move ahead a little, accompanied by the creak of the gig’s high wheels. And Martin could not take his eyes off the gentle equine lips and the blades of grass caught in the bit.
“Here, this young man, for example,” Uncle Henry would say, indicating Martin with his walking stick, “he has finished college, one of the most expensive colleges in the world, and you ask him what he has learned, what he is prepared for. I absolutely don’t know what he is going to do next. In my time young men became doctors, soldiers, notaries, while he is probably dreaming of being an aviator or a gigolo.”
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