The Flight

by Gaito Gazdanov

  Both Lyudmila and Arkady Alexandrovich were astonished by the change they immediately observed in one another. Lyudmila noticed Arkady Alexandrovich’s suntanned face, his sprightlier gait; he had lost a lot of weight and acquired what could almost be called, in comparison with his former aspect, a trim figure; he was self-assured and wore a finely tailored suit, and there was none of that evasive look in his eyes that Lyudmila had known for so many years. Arkady Alexandrovich, in turn, was struck by the markedly dulcet tone in Lyudmila’s voice, the sincerity of her intonation, which was not directed at him but continued as a result of momentum, and then the absence of suspicion in her eyes.

  “I’m glad to see you, my dear,” said Arkady Alexandrovich in that perfectly unaffected voice, of which he could only have dreamt before, and kissed her hand. Lyudmila began speaking English, immediately apologizing, and saying that she had become unaccustomed to speaking Russian—“to the point, just think, where I often have to search for the words”—and that she had a familiar feeling of disappointment; for her complete satisfaction, Arkady Alexandrovich would have to have been destitute, shabbily dressed and humiliated. Alas, this was not the case. It violated a detail of a long-held dream, but in the abundance of her bliss she was ready to forgive Arkady Alexandrovich even this. The conversation, after the very insignificant practical questions had been exhausted, carried on to the most general of topics. Arkady Alexandrovich and Lyudmila simultaneously asserted that they essentially had nothing to talk about, and they both thought of the absurdity that these two entirely dissimilar people had lived together for so many years. After all, neither of them was stupid; both were sufficiently well-educated people, with a wealth of worldly experience, and one would have thought they ought to have found things to talk about. However, at that particular moment both of them were essentially so consumed by one aspect of their private lives, the result of which was an indisputable impoverishment of all the emotional and spiritual faculties that did not have any direct bearing on what they both held to be the most important matter. Lyudmila casually dropped in a few phrases, the point of which was to give Arkady Alexandrovich to understand that her future husband was a very wealthy man—wild sums of money were mentioned, along with God knows what else—and everywhere the pronoun “we” figured, right down to “we thought”, “we supposed”, “we paid”. Arkady Alexandrovich did not know how to explain this behaviour: either Lyudmila was using every pretext available to underscore the existence of this “worthy man”, or else she was truly indifferent to him and for that reason had lost her sense of ridicule and that intelligence in conversation which usually never failed her. Arkady Alexandrovich, in turn, responded with those same passive-aggressive tactics Lyudmila was employing, but, in so doing, resorted to counter-manoeuvres: never once did he say “we”; he made no mention of money or automobiles, but gave her to understand that everything was very luxurious by means of oblique, casual allusions to minor things—such things whose significance did not even suggest itself, but became immediately apparent. In this way, he emerged the victor from their covert duel and derived indisputable pleasure from this.

  As it happened, Lyudmila would be leaving her apartment in several weeks’ time. Arkady Alexandrovich promised to stop by soon to collect his books and a few other things. Then Arkady Alexandrovich paid; they left together and he headed towards a taxi.

  “Can I drop you off?”

  “No,” said Lyudmila. “We’re headed in different directions.”

  They bid each other farewell. Arkady Alexandrovich kissed his former wife’s hand, cold as ever, and thought that, perhaps, they would never see each other again. While he was in the taxi, a chord emitted by the radio in a shop he was driving past suddenly struck him as strangely familiar. He then immediately recalled the last evening he had spent with Lyudmila, around three years previously, after a long and painful conversation; on that occasion, she had gone through to the drawing room and sat down at the piano. Arkady Alexandrovich had been standing by the door. She began playing the first thing that came into her head—an étude by Chopin—and Arkady Alexandrovich could now clearly see her fair-haired head and dark-blue eyes in front of the black mirror sheen of the piano, and he heard the motif he thought he had long forgotten. Those feelings he had experienced at the time now came flooding back to him: the sense of pity that life would slip away, just as this melody in the black mirror, too, would fade, and never, never… The rest defied definition: music, emotion and dreams, and that strange, almost immobile woman at the piano. There was also a sense of pity that all art, music in particular, leaves us without even the remotest, most illusory comfort. He pictured his entire specious, wasted life, and for the first time in recent months, that corruptible, transient world he had until now been writing about flashed anew before him and vanished in a momentary flight, together with the final phrase of that Chopin étude.

  IT WAS THE postmeridian hours of a brilliant September’s day; Seryozha and Liza were planning to drive to Monte Carlo. Seryozha was already dressed and waiting on the terrace for Liza, who was expected any minute, when suddenly the telephone rang. He went over to the apparatus.

  “There’s a call from Paris for you,” said the operator.

  Then a very familiar voice said:

  “Hello! Is that Seryozha or Liza?”

  “Hello, Papa, it’s me,” said Seryozha.

  “I shouldn’t have recognized your voice, you’ve such a queer bass. Is everything all right at your end?”

  “Yes,” replied Seryozha, faltering slightly. “Liza’s just coming.”

  Indeed, Liza was walking over to Seryozha.

  “Fine, put her on. Liza? Mon amour,* you need to come back to Paris.”

  “We were, in principle, planning to do just that.”

  “You’ve essentially got a few days left. Seryozha needs to be in London for the last week of September. But in any case, despite the pleasure that… By the way, there’s a bit of family news.”

  “More than a bit,” Liza wanted to say; in conversations with Sergey Sergeyevich she would always slip into a sarcastic tone. However, she asked:

  “What is it?”

  “Your older sister is planning to marry Arkady Alexandrovich Kuznetsov.”

  “Have you lost your senses?”

  “Not I, Liza, not I. But it gives rise to a whole host of interesting considerations, which…”

  “What do you mean to say?”

  “Nothing in particular, but who knows how things will turn out?”

  Liza understood what Sergey Sergeyevich was thinking, and the thought terrified her. She said:

  “You think… you mean that this is her final decision?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What a fool she is!”

  “I can’t help agreeing with you. What news with you?”

  “Everything’s fine, I’ve had an enchanting summer.”

  “I’m pleased for you. I’d very much like to say the same for myself, but that would be a lie. Anyhow, please explain to Seryozha that his mother is getting married, sooner or later. When should I expect you?”

  “Soon, without much advance notice.”

  “Excellent. Take care of yourself.”

  “Goodbye, Seryozha.”

  Seryozha, who had been standing beside her, asked when Liza replaced the receiver:

  “Who’s a fool, Liza?”

  “Everyone, my little one,” said Liza with a sigh. “Everyone. But without a certain foolishness it wouldn’t be worth living. Don’t you think?”

  Liza did not know whether to tell Seryozha that his mother was getting married. Strictly speaking, there were no particular reasons to hide this; however, Liza would have to make such an effort to initiate the conversation, because each of these matters would lead to another that had never hitherto been mentioned but was impossible not to have sensed. Nevertheless, she overcame her internal aversion to raising all these issues and told him about it that evening. Seryozha
was shocked and distressed.

  “I don’t understand her,” he said. “Of course, it’s her own private affair. But we all love her so; she’s so charming, and Papa has spent his whole life granting her every wish. So why this marriage?”

  “Well, it’s certainly not one of convenience, Seryozhenka.”

  “My dear mama—suddenly to marry another man! It’s absurd, Liza.”

  “I think so too, Seryozha.”

  “I’ll write to her today,” said Seryozha. “She’s probably thinking of me, too. I’ll tell her that I’ll still love her, just the same as before, that she’s my mother and that’s what matters. She is very charming, isn’t she, Liza?”

  Liza felt awkward; she had an unsettling presentiment, the reason for which was clear: she had to leave here, to come into direct contact, as it were, with every almost insurmountable obstacle awaiting her in Paris; she had to be stronger than all this and set things up so that later she and Seryozha could be together.

  “This is what we’ll do, Seryozha,” she said finally. “We’ll go to Paris, then you’ll head on to London. I’ll say there for approximately one month, then I’ll join you in England and we’ll be together again. Do you see?”

  “I see, Liza, but why a whole month?”

  “It will be better that way, Seryozhenka. What’s more, you must understand that no one should know about this.”

  “All right, Liza. And so on for the rest of our lives?”

  “Perhaps our whole lives, Seryozha. Don’t you think it’s worth it?…”

  “O, si!† Ten lives if needs be.”

  “Well then. To tell the truth, I’d rather not go to Paris or England. I’d rather stay with you here, my little one.”

  “Regrettably, I don’t think that will be possible.”

  “Utterly impossible. Although we’re lucky that there’s another solution. Now close your eyes and let’s forget that Paris and London exist, and we’ll live like before, these last few days. These are our last days in the Midi,” she said with inadvertent sadness in her voice.

  “This year, yes. But we don’t know what the future holds in store.”

  * My love.

  † Oh, I do!

  THEY ARRIVED IN PARIS on the morning of the twenty-fifth of September; Liza did not want Seryozha to stay there with her and Sergey Sergeyevich for more than a few days. Since Sergey Sergeyevich had not been forewarned, no one was there to meet them, so they took a taxi back to the apartment. At home they found only Sletov, who informed them that Sergey Sergeyevich would return late that evening, because he had been summoned to the provinces. In Paris Seryozha immediately felt an unbearable difference between the atmosphere of the Midi and the icy discomfort that reigned there. He had never thought that his house could seem so foreign and unwelcoming. In the course of the day he kissed Liza only once, when he went into her room. They both—despite their age and experience—exaggerated the danger of compromising themselves, and for that reason conducted themselves with mutual restraint, keeping an unnatural distance, so that even Sletov asked Seryozha:

  “What’s the matter, have you quarrelled with your aunt or something?”

  “Yes, a little,” said Seryozha, blushing.

  Sergey Sergeyevich called in the evening to let them know that he had been detained and would return the following morning. Then Liza called Seryozha to her room.

  “Seryozha,” she said, almost breathless; he had never seen her in such a state. “I’m going out. Follow me in half an hour. Here’s a key. Come to rue Boileau, number forty-four, first floor, on the left. I’ll be waiting for you. Go now.”

  “What’s there?” asked Seryozha perplexedly.

  “You’ll see,” she said quickly. “Go, go.”

  When Seryozha arrived, he found Liza waiting for him on the other side of the door. She was wearing that same favourite dressing gown of hers with the embroidered birds; Seryozha wondered how the dressing gown, which ought to have still been in a suitcase, had wound up here.

  “I have two, Seryozhenka,” said Liza, smiling. “This is my apartment,” she explained, “ours, if you like. Didn’t you know that I had my own apartment?”

  “No,” he said in astonishment. “What do you need it for?”

  “Every woman needs a place of her own,” she said evasively. Had Seryozha been any other man, she would not have said this; however, Seryozha believed blindly in everything she said, and he found her every action remarkable. In any case, he should not have been initiated into this secret, but she could not help doing so: her desire to be alone with Seryozha was stronger than all other considerations. Late at night they left together; amid the cool air Liza felt a sadness that had not been there in the Midi. She sent Seryozha home, and she herself returned only an hour later; he was already sound asleep by then. The whole apartment was quiet. Only in Sletov’s room was the light on; he was reading Casanova’s memoirs, shrugging from time to time—he held a very dim view of this man, and it seemed incomprehensible how someone could waste his entire life, swapping lovers almost daily: Sletov truly could not understand it.

  The following morning Seryozha, having discussed trivialities with his father for a quarter of an hour, and in such a tone, as if it were only the other day that they had last seen one another (thus was always the case with Sergey Sergeyevich, for reasons unknown), obtained his mother’s telephone number and rang her. In a voice choked with joy Olga Alexandrovna asked him to come immediately; she met him with prolonged embraces and kisses, as if he had been saved from mortal danger and it was a miracle that he was still alive. “My little one, my darling, you’ve grown so big, so handsome, Seryozhenka! You haven’t forgotten your mother, have you?”

  There was so much love in her words and intonations that tears began to well in Seryozha’s eyes. He thought then that, whatever happened, he would always love this woman dearly, and suddenly the fact that she was getting married seemed entirely immaterial and inconsequential to him. As if apprehending his thoughts, Olga Alexandrovna asked:

  “You won’t stop loving your old mother because she’s not behaving as she should, will you?”

  “No, Mama,” said Seryozha, kissing her warm hand. “No, I’ll never stop loving you. You’re the only mother I have.”

  “We’ll see each other often, we’ll go for walks together, we’ll talk. You’ll tell me everything, won’t you, Seryozhenka? Are you going to London? I’ll come to visit you. You’re all I have, too, but then you’re such a good boy. You’re growing up. Soon you’ll really start living, and we’ll talk about everything.”

  “Well, you know, Mama,” said Seryozha, sitting on the arm of her chair and embracing her around the neck, “there’s so much that I’ve come to understand recently.”

  “What have you understood, Seryozhenka?”

  “Such very, very important things. And, you know, it’s so strange—here we are, talking about it. You aren’t rushing off, are you?”

  “No, no, tell me.”

  “There are things we don’t ever seem to think or talk about, but when we stumble across them for the first time, as it were, we find we already have a perfectly formed impression of them.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as a person’s relationship with his mother. I love you dearly and I’m certain that, come what may, I’ll always love you. No one else, only you. Of course, on the one hand, it’s just a feeling, but it’s a feeling that corresponds to a theoretical conviction, one that’s unshakable, good and right.”

  “Oh, how clever we are!” said Olga Alexandrovna. “Well then, I’ll also make a confession to you. You know I’m getting married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s all the same to me what people will think. If somebody takes offence, that’s a great pity, but what am I to do about it? The only thing that worried me was how you would react. It’s odd, isn’t it? You’re still a child, a boy, Seryozhenka, a babe in arms—and when you don’t pay attention to yourself and put on ai
rs with other people, you still have that darling little face of a baby. And to think, it’s so important to me that this little baby doesn’t stop loving me.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that, Mama.”

  “I don’t any more, I know,” said Olga Alexandrovna. “Although I did tell you a fib; I do need to go out, but it pains me to part with you. We’ll go together; you will accompany me, won’t you?”

  “Of course. Do you know I’m leaving tomorrow? I’m going to London.”

  “At what time?”

  “In the morning, I think.”

  “Then I’ll say goodbye to you. It will only be a week until I see you again. Goodbye, my little one,” she said, kissing him several times. Then she made the sign of the cross over him three times in quick succession, repeating: “Christ keep you, Seryozhenka. Study hard, and be good.”

  “You always treat me like a child,” said Seryozha.

  “No, darling, it’s just awkward doing it in the street.”

  They parted ways, their minds at peace: Seryozha was glad that this meeting had not changed his usual perception of his mother at all; after her conversation with Seryozha, Olga Alexandrovna let go of the sole unpleasant thought that had recently materialized, which was how her new marriage might affect her relationship with Seryozha.

  ON THE EVE of Seryozha and his father’s departure for London, dinner might have passed in silence were it not for Sergey Sergeyevich’s chatter, in which he recounted his summer trips, how he had met a great many exceedingly lovely people during this time; as ever, all these exceedingly lovely people came off as complete idiots, in spite of Sergey Sergeyevich’s preposterous appraisal of them. He took particular pleasure in describing one of his accountants who worked in Norway and was, according to Sergey Sergeyevich, an extraordinary man.

  “In what way is he extraordinary?”

  “Well,” said Sergey Sergeyevich, “just imagine, he was the richest man in Russia, managed millions, was the head of a household, and so on. His wife committed suicide, his children all perished, his fortune too, and he barely managed to escape with his life. And this is what he says to me: ‘Please, Sergey Sergeyevich,’ he says, ‘have the workers treat me as my rank and status demand.’ His rank! Such an odd word, you know. And that’s what preoccupied the old man. Isn’t it touching? There you go, Fedya, a variation on axiology.”