Despair

by Vladimir Nabokov

  In the case of my talk with Felix, however, my performance proved to be merely a loss of time, for I suddenly realized that if I went on with that monologue about filming, he would get up and leave, returning the ten marks I had sent him; (no, on second thought I believe he would not have returned them--no, never!) The weighty German word for "money" (money in German being gold, in French, silver, in Russian, copper) was mouthed by him with extraordinary reverence, which, curiously, could turn into brutal lust. But he would have certainly gone away, with an I-shan't-be-insulted air!

  To be perfectly frank, I do not quite see why everything linked with the theatre or cinema seemed so utterly atrocious to him; strange, foreign--yes, but ... atrocious? Let us try to explain it by the German plebeian's backwardness. The German peasant is old-fashioned and prudish; just try, one day, to walk through a village in nothing but swimming trunks. I have tried, so I know what happens; the men stand stock-still, the women titter, hiding their faces, quite like parlor maids in old-world comedies.

  I fell silent. Felix was silent too, tracing lines on the table with his finger. He had probably expected me to offer him a gardener's job or that of a chauffeur, and was now disappointed and sulky. I called the waiter and paid. Once again we were pacing the streets. It was a sharp bleak night. Among small clouds curled like astrakhan, a shiny flat moon kept sliding in and out.

  "Listen, Felix. Our talk is not finished. We cannot leave it like that. I've booked a room in a hotel; come along, you'll spend the night with me."

  He accepted this as his due. Slow as his wits were, he understood that I needed him, and that it was unwise to break off our relations without having arrived at something definite. We again walked past the duplicate of the Bronze Rider. Not a soul did we meet on the boulevard. Not a gleam was there in the houses; had I noticed a single lighted window, I should have supposed that somebody had hanged himself there and left the lamp burning--so unwonted and unwarranted would a light have seemed. We reached the hotel in silence. A collar-less sleepwalker let us in. Upon entering the room I again had that sensation of something very familiar; but other matters engaged my mind.

  "Sit down." He did so with his fists on his knees; his mouth half opened. I removed my coat and thrusting both hands into my trouser pockets and clinking small change in them, started walking to and fro. I wore, by the bye, a lilac tie flecked with black, which blew up every time I turned on my heel. For some while it continued like that; silence, my pacing, the wind of my motion.

  All of a sudden Felix, as if shot dead, let his head fall and began unlacing his shoes. I glanced at his unprotected neck, at the wistful expression of his first vertebra, and it made me feel queer to think that I was about to sleep with my double in one room, under one blanket almost, for the twin beds stood side by side, quite close. Then, too, there came, with a pang, the dreadful idea that his flesh might be tainted by the scarlet blotches of a skin disease or by some crude tattooing; I demanded of his body a minimum of resemblance to mine; as to his face, there was no trouble about that.

  "Yes, go on, take your things off," said I, walking and veering.

  He lifted his head, a nondescript shoe in his hand.

  "It is a long while since I've slept in a bed," he said with a smile (don't show your gums, fool). "In a real bed."

  "Take off everything," I said impatiently. "You are surely dirty, dusty. I'll give you a shirt to sleep in. But first wash."

  Grinning and grunting, perhaps a trifle shy of me, he stripped to the skin and proceeded to douche his armpits over the basin of the cupboardlike washstand. I shot glances at him, examining eagerly that stark-naked man. His back was about as muscular as mine, with a pinker coccyx and uglier buttocks. When he turned I could not help wincing at the sight of his big knobbed navel--but then mine is no beauty either. I doubt he had ever in his life washed his animal parts: they looked fairly plausible as these things go but did not invite close inspection. His toenails were much less abominable than I had expected. He was lean and white, much whiter than his face, thus making it seem that it was my face, still retaining its summer tan, that was affixed to his pale trunk. You could even discern the line round his neck where the head adhered. I derived a keen pleasure from that survey; it set my mind at ease; no special marks stigmatized him.

  When, having pulled on the clean shirt I issued him from my suitcase, he went to bed, I sat down at his feet and fixed him with a frank sneer. I do not know what he thought, but that unusual cleanness had mollified him, and in a bashful gush of something, which for all its repulsive sentimentality was quite a tender gesture, he stroked my hand and said--I translate literally: "You're a good fellow."

  Without unclenching my teeth I went into shivers of laughter; then, I suppose, the expression of my face struck him as odd, for his eyebrows climbed up and he cocked his head. No longer suppressing my mirth I poked a cigarette into his mouth. It fairly made him choke.

  "You ass!" I exclaimed. "Haven't you really guessed that if I made you come here it was for some important, terribly important matter?" and producing a thousand-mark note from my wallet, and still shaking with merriment, I held it up before the fool's face.

  "That's for me?" he asked, and dropped the lighted cigarette; it was as if his fingers had involuntarily parted, ready to snatch.

  "You'll burn a hole in the sheet," I said (laughing, laughing). "Or in your precious hide! You seem moved, I see. Yes, this money will be yours, you'll even receive it in advance if you agree to the thing I am going to suggest. How was it you didn't realize that I babbled about movies only to test you, and that I am no actor whatsoever, but a shrewd, hard businessman. Briefly, here is the matter: I intend performing a certain operation, and a slight chance exists of their getting at me later. All suspicions, however, will be at once allayed by the definite proof that at the exact time when the aforesaid operation was performed, I happened to be very far from the spot."

  "Robbery?" asked Felix, and a look of strange satisfaction flitted across his face.

  "I see you aren't as stupid as I thought," I went on, lowering my voice to a mere murmur. "Evidently you have long had an inkling that there was something fishy. And now you are glad that you weren't mistaken, as every man is glad when the correctness of his guess is confirmed. We both have a weakness for silver objects--that's what you thought, didn't you? Or perchance, what really pleased you was that I turned out to be not a leg puller after all, not a dreamer slightly cracked, but a man who meant business?"

  "Robbery?" asked Felix again, with new life in his eyes.

  "At any rate, an unlawful action. You shall learn the details in due time. First, let me explain what I want you to do. I have a car. Wearing my clothes you'll sit in that car and drive along a certain road. That's all. You'll get a thousand marks--or if you prefer, two hundred and fifty dollars--for that joyride."

  "A thousand?" he repeated after me ignoring the lure of valuta. "And when will you give it me?"

  "It'll happen perfectly naturally, my friend. On putting on my coat you'll find my wallet in it, and in the wallet, the cash."

  "What must I do next?"

  "I've told you. Go for a drive. I'll vanish; you'll be seen, taken for me; you'll return and ... well, I'll be back, too, with my purpose accomplished. Want me to be more exact? Righto. At a certain hour you will drive through a village, where my face is well known; you won't have to speak to anyone, it will all be a matter of a few minutes. But I'll pay for those few minutes handsomely, just because they'll give me the marvelous opportunity of being in two places at once."

  "You'll get caught with the goods," said Felix, "and then the police will be after me; it'll all come out at the trial; you'll squeal."

  I laughed: "D'you know, friend, I like the way you at once accepted the notion of my being a crook."

  He rejoined, saying that he was not fond of jails; that jails sapped one's youth; and that there was nothing like freedom and the singing of birds. He spoke rather thickly and without the lea
st enmity. After a while he became pensive with his elbow upon the pillow. The room was smelly and quiet. Only a couple of paces or one jump separated his bed from mine. I yawned and, without undressing, lay down the Russian way upon (not under) the featherbed. A quaint little thought tickled me: during the night Felix might kill me and rob me. By straining my foot out and aside, and scraping with my shoe against the wall, I managed to reach the switch; slipped; strained still more, and with my heel kicked out the light.

  "And what if it's all a lie?" came his dull voice breaking the silence. "What if I don't believe you?"

  I did not stir.

  "A lie," he repeated a minute later.

  I did not stir, and presently I began to breathe with the dispassionate rhythm of sleep.

  He listened, that was certain. I listened to his listening. He listened to my listening to his listening. Something snapped. I noticed that I was not thinking at all of what I thought I was thinking; attempted to catch my consciousness tripping, but got mazed myself.

  I dreamed a loathsome dream, a triple ephialtes. First there was a small dog; but not simply a small dog; a small mock dog, very small, with the minute black eyes of a beetle's larva; it was white through and through, and coldish. Flesh? No, not flesh, but rather grease or jelly, or else perhaps, the fat of a white worm, with, moreover, a kind of carved corrugated surface reminding one of a Russian paschal lamb of butter--disgusting mimicry. A cold-blooded being, which Nature had twisted into the likeness of a small dog with a tail and legs, all as it should be. It kept getting into my way, I could not avoid it; and when it touched me, I felt something like an electric shock. I woke up. On the sheet of the bed next to mine there lay curled up, like a swooned white larva, that very same dreadful little pseudo dog ... I groaned with disgust and opened my eyes. All around shadows floated; the bed next to mine was empty except for the broad burdock leaves which, owing to the damp, grow out of bedsteads. One could see, on those leaves, telltale stains of a slimy nature; I peered closer; there, glued to a fat stem it sat, small, tallowish-white, with its little black button eyes ... but then, at last, I woke up for good.

  We had forgotten to pull down the blinds. My wristwatch had stopped. Might be five or half-past five. Felix slept, wrapped up in the feather bed, with his back to me; the dark crown of his head alone was visible. A weird awakening, a weird dawn. I recollected our talk, I remembered that I had not been able to convince him; and a brand-new, most attractive idea got hold of me.

  Oh, reader, I felt as fresh as a child after my little snooze; my soul was rinsed clean; I was, in fact, only in my thirty-sixth year, and the generous remainder of my life might be devoted to something better than a vile will-o'-the-wisp. Really, what a fascinating thought; to take the advice of fate and, now, at once, leave that room, forever leave and forget, and spare my poor double.... And, who knows, maybe he was not the least like me after all, I could see only the crown of his head, he was fast asleep, with his back to me. Thus an adolescent, after yielding once again to a solitary and shameful vice, says to himself with inordinate force and clearness: "That's finished for good; from this time forth, life shall be pure; the rapture of purity"; thus, after having voiced everything, having lived through everything in advance and had my fill of pain and pleasure, I was now superstitiously keen to turn away from temptation for ever.

  All seemed so simple; on that other bed slept a tramp whom I had by chance sheltered; his poor dusty shoes stood on the floor with toes turned in; his trusty stick had been carefully placed across the seat of the chair that supported his clothes folded with proletarian tidiness. What on earth was I doing in that provincial hotel room? What reason was there to loiter? And that sober and heavy smell of a stranger's sweat, that curdled sky in the window, that large black fly settled on the decanter ... all were saying to me: rise and go.

  A black smear of gravelly mud on the wall near the switch reminded me of a spring day in Prague. Oh, I could scrape it off so as to leave no trace, no trace, no trace! I longed for the hot bath I would take in my beautiful home--though wryly correcting anticipation with the thought that Ardalion had probably used the tub as his kind cousin had already allowed him to do, I suspected, once or twice in my absence.

  I lowered my feet on to an upturned corner of the rug; combed my hair back from the temples with a pocket comb of genuine tortoiseshell--not the dirty mock turtle I had seen that bum using; without a sound, I slipped across the room to put on my overcoat and hat; lifted my suitcase and went out, closing the door noiselessly after me. I presume that had I even happened to cast a glance at the face of my sleeping double, I should have gone all the same; but I experienced no wish to do so, just as the above-mentioned adolescent does not, in the morning, deign to glance at the photograph he had adored in bed.

  In a slight haze of dizziness I went down the stairs, polished my shoes with a towel in the lavatory, recombed my hair, paid for the room, and, followed by the night porter's sleepy stare, stepped into the street. Half an hour later I was sitting in a railway carriage; a brandy-flavored belch traveled with me, and in the corners of my mouth lingered the salty traces of a plain, but delicious omelette that I had hurriedly eaten at the station restaurant. Thus, on a low esophageal note, this vague chapter ends.

  Chapter Six

  The nonexistence of God is simple to prove. Impossible to concede, for example, that a serious Jah, all wise and almighty, could employ his time in such inane fashion as playing with manikins, and--what is still more incongruous--should restrict his game to the dreadfully trite laws of mechanics, chemistry, mathematics, and never--mind you, never!--show his face, but allow himself surreptitious peeps and circumlocutions, and the sneaky whispering (revelations, indeed!) of contentious truths from behind the back of some gentle hysteric.

  All this divine business is, I presume, a huge hoax for which priests are certainly not to blame; priests themselves are its victims. The idea of God was invented in the small hours of history by a scamp who had genius; it somehow reeks too much of humanity, that idea, to make its azure origin plausible; by which I do not mean that it is the fruit of crass ignorance; that scamp of mine was skilled in celestial lore--and really I wonder which variation of Heaven is best: that dazzle of argus-eyed angels fanning their wings, or that curved mirror in which a self-complacent professor of physics recedes, getting ever smaller and smaller. There is yet another reason why I cannot, nor wish to, believe in God: the fairy tale about him is not really mine, it belongs to strangers, to all men; it is soaked through by the evil-smelling effluvia of millions of other souls that have spun about a little under the sun and then burst; it swarms with primordial fears; there echoes in it a confused choir of numberless voices striving to drown one another; I hear in it the boom and pant of the organ, the roar of the orthodox deacon, the croon of the cantor, Negroes wailing, the flowing eloquency of the Protestant preacher, gongs, thunderclaps, spasms of epileptic women; I see shining through it the pallid pages of all philosophies like the foam of long-spent waves; it is foreign to me, and odious and absolutely useless.

  If I am not master of my life, not sultan of my own being, then no man's logic and no man's ecstatic fits may force me to find less silly my impossibly silly position: that of God's slave; no, not his slave even, but just a match which is aimlessly struck and then blown out by some inquisitive child, the terror of his toys. There are, however, no grounds for anxiety: God does not exist, as neither does our hereafter, that second bogey being as easily disposed of as the first. Indeed, imagine yourself just dead--and suddenly wide awake in Paradise where, wreathed in smiles, your dear dead welcome you.

  Now tell me, please, what guarantee do you possess that those beloved ghosts are genuine; that it is really your dear dead mother and not some petty demon mystifying you, masked as your mother and impersonating her with consummate art and naturalness? There is the rub, there is the horror; the more so as the acting will go on and on, endlessly; never, never, never, never, never will your soul in th
at other world be quite sure that the sweet gentle spirits crowding about it are not fiends in disguise, and forever, and forever, and forever shall your soul remain in doubt, expecting every moment some awful change, some diabolical sneer to disfigure the dear face bending over you.

  That is the reason why I am ready to accept all, come what may; the burly executioner in his top hat, and then the hollow hum of blank eternity; but I refuse to undergo the tortures of everlasting life, I do not want those cold white little dogs. Let me go, I will not stand the least token of tenderness, I warn you, for all is deceit, a low conjuring trick. I do not trust anything or anyone--and when the dearest being I know in this world meets me in the next and the arms I know stretch out to embrace me, I shall emit a yell of sheer horror, I shall collapse on the paradisian turf, writhing ... oh, I know not what I shall do! No, let strangers not be admitted to the land of the blessed.

  Still, despite my lack of faith, I am by nature neither sullen nor wicked. When I returned from Tarnitz to Berlin and drew up an inventory of my soul's belongings, I rejoiced like a child over the small but certain riches found therein, and I had the sensation that, renovated, refreshed, released, I was entering, as the saying goes, upon a new period of life. I had a bird-witted but attractive wife who worshiped me; a nice little flat; an accommodating stomach; and a blue car. There was in me, I felt, a poet, an author; also, big commercial capacities, albeit business remained pretty dull. Felix, my double, seemed no more than a harmless curio, and, quite possibly, I should in those days have told friends about him, had I had any friends. I toyed with the idea of dropping my chocolate and taking up something else; the publishing, for instance, of expensive volumes de luxe dealing exhaustively with sexual relations as revealed in literature, art, science ... in short, I was bursting with fierce energy which I did not know how to apply.