Man From the USSR & Other Plays
Page 21
FLEMING
I simply couldn’t help it....He was lying
so well. His death had been so comfortable.
And now I shall remain here....
CAPT. SCOTT
Fleming, you
remember how, as children, we would read
about Sinbad’s adventures—you remember?
FLEMING
I do, yes.
CAPT. SCOTT
People are fond of fables, aren’t they?
Thus, you and I, alone, amid the snows,
so far away.... I think that England....
CURTAIN
The Grand-dad
DRAMA IN ONE ACT
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The Grand-dad (Dédushka) was completed on 30 June 1923 at the Domaine de Beaulieu. It was published in Rul’ in Berlin on 14 October of the same year. The English translation is based on a collation of the published text and two almost identical handwritten versions recorded by Nabokov’s mother in her albums. What few discrepancies and lapses there were generally had resulted from oversights in copying.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Wife
Husband
Passerby (de Mérival)
Juliette
Grand-dad
The action takes place in 1816 in France, in the house of a well-off peasant family. A spacious room, with windows giving on a garden. Slanting rain. Enter the owners and a stranger—a passerby.
WIFE
...Come in. Our living room
is over here....
HUSBAND
...One moment—we’ll have wine
for you. (to his daughter)
Juliette, run to the cellar, quickly!
PASSERBY
(looking around)
How cozy it is here....
HUSBAND
...Be seated, please—
here....
PASSERBY
Bright.... And neat....A carved chest in the corner,
a clock up on the wall, its dial adorned
with cornflowers....
WIFE
Aren’t you soaked?
PASSERBY
Oh, not at all—
I ducked under a roof in time. A real
downpour! You’re certain it’s no trouble? May I
wait till it stops? As soon as it is over...
HUSBAND
Oh, it’s our pleasure....
WIFE
Are you from nearby?
PASSERBY
A traveler....I’ve recently returned from
abroad. I’m staying at my brother’s castle—
de Mérival.... Just a short way from here...
HUSBAND
Yes, yes, we know it....
(to his daughter, who has come in with the wine)
Put it here, Juliette.
There. Drink, good sir. It’s sunshine in a glass....
PASSERBY
(clinking glasses)
Your health....Ah, what a fine bouquet! And what
a comely daughter you have too.... Juliette,
my sweet, where is your Romeo?
WIFE
(laughing)
What is
a “Romeo”?
PASSERBY
Oh ... Never mind—one day
she’ll learn herself....
JULIETTE
Have you seen Grand-dad yet, sir?
PASSERBY
Not yet.
JULIETTE
He’s nice....
HUSBAND
(to Wife)
Say, by the way, where is he?
WIFE
Asleep inside his room, smacking his lips
just like a little child....
PASSERBY
And your grand-dad—
he’s very old?
HUSBAND
Near seventy, I reckon ...
we do not know....
WIFE
He’s not our kin, you see:
it was our own idea to call him that.
JULIETTE
He’s gentle....
PASSERBY
But who is he?
HUSBAND
That’s exactly
the point—we haven’t the least idea....One day
last spring an oldster turned up in the village,
and it was clear he came from a great distance.
He had no recollection of his name,
and smiled a timid smile at all our questions.
It was Juliette who brought him to the house.
We gave the old man food, we gave him drink;
he cooed with pleasure, licked his chops, eyes narrowed,
squeezed at my hand, with an enraptured smile,
but made no sense at all; must be his mind
was growing bald....We kept him here with us—
it was Juliette who talked us into it....
He must be coddled, though ... his tooth is sweet,
and he’s been costing us a pretty penny.
WIFE
Oh, stop it, child ... the dear old man....
HUSBAND
I meant
no harm.... It was just idle chatter.... Drink, sir!
PASSERBY
I’m drinking, thanks.... Although it’s almost time
for me to go.... What rain! It will breathe life
into your land.
HUSBAND
Thank heavens. Only this
is just a joke, not rain. There, look—the sun’s
beginning to peek through already.... No....
PASSERBY
Look at that lovely golden smoke!
HUSBAND
See—you, sir,
can marvel at it, but what about us?
We are the land.... And our thoughts are the land’s
own thoughts....We do not need to look, but sense
the swelling of the seed within the furrow,
the fruit becoming plump....When, from the heat,
the earth begins to parch and crack, so, too,
the skin upon our palms starts cracking, sir.
And, if it rains, we listen with alarm,
and inwardly we pray: “Noise, blessed noise,
be not transformed to hammering of hail!”...
And if that ricocheting clatter should
begin resounding on our windowsills,
it’s then—then that we plug our ears, and bury
our faces in our pillows, just like cowards
who hear a distant fusillade! Our worries
are many....As when, lately, in the pear tree,
a worm appeared—a monstrous, warty worm,
a green-hued devil! Or when aphids, like
a clammy rash, will coat a youthful vine....
And so it goes.
PASSERBY
Yet what a sense of pride
for you, what joy it must be to receive
the ruddy, aromatic thank-you’s that
your trees give to you!
WIFE
Grand-dad, too, awaits
assiduously some kind of revelation,
pressing his ear first to the bark, then to
a petal....He believes, it seems to me,
that dead men’s souls live on in lilies, or
in cherry trees.
PASSERBY
I wouldn’t mind a chat
with him—I’m fond of gentle simpletons
like that....
WIFE
I look and look at you but I
just cannot figure out your age. You don’t seem
too young, and yet there’s something....I don’t know....
PASSERBY
Dear lady, I’m in my sixth decade.
HUSBAND
Then
you’ve lived a life of peace—there’s not a wrinkle
upon your brow....
PASSERBY
Of peace, you say! (laughs) If I
wrote it all down....Sometimes I, even,
cannot
believe my past! My head spins from it as ...
as it does from your wine. I’ve drained the cup
of life in such enormous draughts, such draughts....
And then there were times, too, when death would nudge
my elbow....Well, perhaps you’d like to hear
the tale of how, the summer of the year
seventeen ninety-two, in Lyon, Monsieur
de Merival—aristocrat, and traitor,
so on, so forth—was saved right from the scaffold
of the guillotine?
WIFE
We’re listening, tell
us....
PASSERBY
I was twenty that tempestuous year.
And the tribunal’s thunder had condemned me
to death—perhaps it was my powdered hair,
or else, perhaps, the noble particle
before my name—who knows: the merest trifle
meant execution then.... That very night I
was to appear, by torchlight, at the scaffold.
The executioner was nimble, by
the way, and diligent: an artist, not
an axman. He was always emulating
his Paris cousin, the renowned Sanson:
he had procured the same kind of small tumbrel
and, when he’d lopped a head off, he would hold
it by the hair and swing it the same way....
And so he carts me off. Darkness had fallen,
along black streets the windows came alight,
and street lamps too. I sat, back to the wind,
inside the shaky cart, clutching the side rails
with hands numb from the cold—and I was thinking...
of what?—of various trivial details mostly:
that I had left without a handkerchief,
or that my executioner companion
looked like a dignified physician.... Soon we
arrived. A final turning, and before us
there opened up the square’s expanse....Its center
was ominously lit....And it was then,
as, with a kind of guilty courtesy,
the executioner helped me descend,
and I realized the journey’s end had come—
that was the moment terror seized my throat....
Lugubrious hallooing midst the crowd—
derisive, maybe, too (I couldn’t hear)—
the horses’ moving croups, the lances, wind,
the smell of burning torches—all of this
passed like a dream, and I saw but one thing,
just one: there, there, up in the murky sky,
like a steel wing, the heavy oblique blade
between two uprights hung, ready to fall....
Its edge, catching a transient gleam, appeared
to be already glistening with blood!
To rumblings from the distant crowd, I started
to ascend the scaffold, and each step
would make a different creak. In silence they
removed my camisole, and slashed my shirt
down to my scapulae.... The board seemed a
raised drawbridge: to it I’d be lashed, I knew,
the bridge would drop, I’d swing face down, and then,
between the posts the wooden collar would
slam tight on me, and then—yes, only then—
death, with an instant crash, would plummet down.
It grew impossible for me to swallow,
my nape was racked by a presentient pain,
my temples thundered and my chest was bursting,
tensed with the palpitation and the pounding—
but, I believe, I outwardly seemed calm....
WIFE
Oh, I’d be screaming, lunging—my entreaties
for mercy would be heard, and I’d ... But then—
then how did you escape?
PASSERBY
A miracle....
So—I was standing on the scaffold. They
had not yet bound my hands. My shoulders felt
the frigid wind. The executioner was
unraveling some kind of rope. Just then—
a cry of “fire!” and instantly flames shot
up from behind the rail; I and the headsman
were swaying, struggling on the platform’s edge....
A crackling—and the heat breathed on my face,
the hand that had been clutching me relaxed,
I fell somewhere, knocked someone down, I dove,
I slid, amid torrents of smoke, into
a storm of rearing steeds and running people—
“Fire! Fire!” the cry vibrated over and over,
choking with sobs of joy, with boundless bliss!
But I was far away by then! Just once
I looked back, on the run, and saw the crimson
smoke billowing into a vault of black,
the uprights bursting into flames themselves,
the blade come crashing down, set free by fire!
WIFE
How dreadful!...
HUSBAND
Yes, when you’ve seen death you don’t
forget....One time some thieves got in the garden.
The night, the darkness, fright....I got my gun off
its hook—
PASSERBY
(interrupting, lost in thought)
—Thus I escaped, and suddenly
it seemed my eyes were opened: I’d been awkward,
unfeeling, absent-minded, had not fully
appreciated life, the colored specks of
our precious life—but, having seen so close
that pair of upright posts, that narrow gate
to nonexistence, and those gleams, that gloom....
Amid the whistle of sea winds I fled
from France, and kept avoiding France so long
as over her the icy Robespierre
loomed like a greenish incubus, so long
as dusty armies marched into the gunfire
spurred by the Corsican’s gray gaze and forelock.
But life was hard for me in foreign countries.
In dank and melancholy London I
gave lessons in the science of duelling. I
sojourned in Russia, playing the fiddle at
an opulent barbarian’s abode....
In Turkey and in Greece I wandered then,
and in enchanting Italy I starved.
The sights I saw were many; I became
a deckhand, then a chef, a barber, a tailor,
then just a simple tramp. Yet, to this day
I thank the Lord with every passing hour
for all the hardships that I came to know—
and for the rustle of the roadside corn,
the rustle and the warming breath of all
the human souls that have passed close to me.
HUSBAND
Of all, sir, all of them? But you forget
the soul belonging to that flashy craftsman
whom you encountered that day on the scaffold.
PASSERBY
Oh, no—through him the world revealed itself
to me. He was, unwittingly, the key.
HUSBAND
No, I don’t get it.... (rising) Before supper, I
have chores to do....Our meal is unpretentious...
but maybe you’ll—
PASSERBY
Why not, why not....
HUSBAND
Agreed, then! (going out)
PASSERBY
Forgive my talkativeness....I’m afraid
my tale was boring....
WIFE
Goodness, not at all....
PASSERBY
Is that a baby’s bonnet you are sewing?
WIFE
(laughs)
That’s right. I think I’ll need it around Christmas....
PASSERBY
How wonderful....
; WIFE
And that’s another baby,
there, in the garden....
PASSERBY
(looks out the window)
Oh—your “grand-dad.” Splendid
old man....The sun gives him a silvery sheen.
Splendid ... and there’s a certain dreamy air
about his movements, as his fingers slide
along a lily stem, and he is bent
over the flower bed, not picking, just
caressing, all aglow with such a tender
and timid smile....
WIFE
That’s true, he loves the lilies—
he fondles them, has conversations with them.
He even has invented names for them—
all names of duchesses, of marquesses....
PASSERBY
How nice for him.... Now he is one, I’m certain,
who’s lived his life in peace—yes, in some village,
away from civil and from other tumults....
WIFE
He’s good at doctoring.... Knows all about
medicinal herbs. Once, for our daughter—