Despair

by Vladimir Nabokov

  "Dashed if I know. They keep sending me letters in German; I'd ask you for a translation, but it bores me stiff.... And--well, I either lose the things or just tear them up as they come. I understand they demand additional payments. Next summer I'll build a house there, that's what I'll do. Then they won't pull out the land from under it, I fancy. But you were speaking, my dear chap, about a change of climate. Go on, I'm listening."

  "Oh, it's not much use, you are not interested. I talk sense and that nettles you."

  "God bless you, why on earth should I be nettled? On the contrary--"

  "No, it's no use."

  "You mentioned Italy, my dear chap. Fire away. I like the subject."

  "I haven't really mentioned it yet," said I with a laugh. "But as you have pronounced that word ... I say, isn't it nice and cosy here? There are rumors that you have stopped ..."--and by a succession of fillips under my jaw I produced the sound of a gurgling bottleneck.

  "Yes. Cut out drink altogether. I'd not refuse one just now, though. The cracking-a-bottle-with-a-friend affair, if you see what I mean. Oh, all right, I was only joking...."

  "So much the better, because nothing would come of it: quite impossible to make me tight. So that's that. Heigh-ho, how badly I have slept tonight! Heigh-ho ... ah! Awful thing insomnia," I went on, looking at him through my tears. "Ah.... Do pardon me for yawning like that."

  Ardalion, smiling wistfully, was toying with his spoon. His fat face, with its leonine nose-bridge, was inclined; his eyelids--reddish warts for lashes--half screened his revoltingly bright eyes. All of a sudden he flashed a glance at me and said:

  "If I took a trip to Italy, I'd indeed paint some gorgeous stuff. What I'd get out of selling it, would at once go to settle my debt."

  "Your debt? Got debts?" I asked mockingly.

  "Oh, drop it, Hermann Karlovich," said he, using for the first time, I think, my name and patronymic. "You quite understand what I'm driving at. Lend me two hundred fifty marks, or make it dollars, and I'll pray for your soul in all the Florentine churches."

  "For the moment take this to pay for your visa," said I flinging open my wallet. "You have, I suppose, one of those Nansen-sical passports, not a solid German one, as all decent people have. Ask for the visa immediately, otherwise you'll spend this advance on drink."

  "Shake hands, old man," said Ardalion.

  We both kept silent awhile, he, because he was brimming with feelings, which meant little to me, and I, because the matter was ended and there was nothing to say.

  "Brilliant idea," cried Ardalion suddenly. "My dear chap, why shouldn't you let Lyddy come with me; it's damn dull here; the little woman needs something to amuse her. Now if I go by myself ... You see she's of the jealous sort--she'll keep imagining me getting tight somewhere. Really, do let her come away with me for a month, eh?"

  "Maybe she'll come later on. Maybe we'll both come. Long have I, weary slave, been planning my escape to the far land of art and the translucent grape. Good. I'm afraid I've got to go now. Two coffees; that's all, isn't it?"

  Chapter Eight

  Early next morning--it was not nine yet--I made my way to one of the central underground stations and there, at the top of the stairs, took up a strategical position. At even intervals there would come rushing out of the cavernous deep a batch of people with briefcases--up, up the stairs, shuffling and stamping, and every now and again somebody's toe would hit, with a clank, the metallic advertisement sign which a certain firm finds it advisable to affix to the front part of the steps. On the second one from the top, with his back to the wall and his hat in his hand (who was the first mendicant genius who adapted a hat to the wants of his profession?), there stood, stooping his shoulders as humbly as possible, an elderly wretch. Higher still, there was an assembly of newspaper vendors with coxcomb caps and all hung about with posters. It was a dark, miserable day; in spite of my wearing spats, my feet were numb with cold. I wondered if perhaps they would freeze less if I did not give my black shoes such a smart shine: a passing and repassing thought. At last, punctually at five minutes to nine, just as I had reckoned, Orlovius's figure appeared from the deep. I at once turned and walked slowly away; Orlovius outstrode me, glanced back and exposed his fine but false teeth. Our meeting had the exact color of chance I wanted.

  "Yes, I'm coming your way," said I in answer to his question. "I've got to visit my bank."

  "Dog's weather," said Orlovius floundering at my side. "How is your wife? Very well?"

  "Thanks, she is all right."

  "And how are you going on? Not very well?" he continued to inquire courteously.

  "No, not very. Nerves, insomnia. Trifles that would have amused me before now annoy me."

  "Consume lemons," put in Orlovius.

  ".... that would have amused me before now annoy me. Here, for instance--"

  I gave a slight snort of laughter, and produced my pocketbook. "I got this idiotic blackmailing letter, and it somehow weighs upon my mind. Read it if you like, it's a rum business."

  Orlovius stopped and scrutinized the letter closely. While he read, I examined the shop window near which we were standing: there, pompous and inane, a couple of bathtubs and various other lavatory accessories gleamed white; and next to it was a shop window with coffins and there, too, all looked pompous and silly.

  "Tut-tut," uttered Orlovius. "Do you know who has been writing this?"

  I popped the letter back into my wallet and replied with a snigger:

  "Of course I do. A rogue. He was at one time in the service of a distant relation of mine. An abnormal creature, if not frankly insane. Got it into his head my family had deprived him of some inheritance; you know how it is: a fixed conviction which nothing can shatter."

  Orlovius explained to me, with copious details, the danger lunatics present to the community and then inquired whether I was going to inform the police.

  I shrugged my shoulders: "Nonsense.... Not worth really discussing.... Tell me, what do you think of the Chancellor's speech--read it?"

  We continued to walk side by side, comfortably conversing about foreign and home politics. At the door of his office I started removing--as the rules of Russian politeness request--the glove from the hand I was going to proffer.

  "It is bad that you are so nervous," said Orlovius. "I pray you, greet, please, your wife."

  "I shall do so by all means. Only you know, I am pretty envious of your bachelorhood."

  "Why so?"

  "It's like this. Hurts me to speak of it, but, you see, my married life is not happy. My wife has a fickle heart, and--well, she's interested in somebody else. Yes, cold and frivolous, that's what I call her, and I don't think she'd weep long if I happened ... er ... you know what I mean. And do forgive me for airing such intimate troubles."

  "Certain things I have long observed," said Orlovius nodding his head sagely and sadly.

  I shook his woolen paw and we parted. It had all worked beautifully. Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool. In his eagerness to sympathize with everybody, not only did he take sides with the noble loving husband when I slandered my exemplary wife, but even decided privately that he had "long observed" (as he put it) a thing or two. I would give a lot to know what that purblind eagle could detect in the cloudless blue of our wedlock. Yes, it had all worked beautifully. I was satisfied. I would have been still more satisfied had there not been some miscarriage about the getting of that Italian visa.

  Ardalion, with Lydia's help, filled out the application form, after which he was told that at least a fortnight would elapse till the visa could be granted (I had about one month before me till the ninth of March; in the worst case, I could always write to Felix changing the date). At last, late in February, Ardalion received his visa and bought his ticket. Moreover, I gave him a thousand marks--it would last him, I hoped, two or three months. He had arranged to go on the first of March, bu
t it transpired suddenly that he had managed to lend the entire sum to a desperate friend and was now obliged to await its return. A rather mysterious case to say the least of it. Ardalion maintained that it was a "matter of honor." I, on my part, am always most skeptical about such vague matters which involve honor--and, mark you, not the honor of the ragged borrower himself, but always that of a third or even fourth party, whose name is not disclosed. Ardalion (always according to his tale) had to lend the money, the other swearing he would return it within three days; the usual time limit with those descendants of feudal barons. When that time had expired Ardalion went to look for his debtor and, naturally, could not find him anywhere. With icy fury, I asked for his name. Ardalion attempted to evade the question and then said: "Oh, you remember--that fellow who once called on you." That made me lose my temper altogether.

  Upon regaining my calm, I would have probably helped him out, had not things been complicated by my being rather short of money, whereas it was absolutely necessary that I should have a certain amount about me. I told him to set forth as he was, with a ticket and a few marks in his pocket. I'd send him the rest, I said. He answered that he would do so, just postponing his departure for a couple of days in case the money might still be retrieved. And indeed on the third of March he rang me up to say, rather casually, I thought, that he had got back his loan and was starting next evening. On the fourth it turned out that Lydia, to whom, for some reason or other, Ardalion had given his ticket to keep for him, was at present incapable of recalling where she had put it. A gloomy Ardalion crouched on a stool in the hall: "Nothing to be done," he muttered repeatedly. "Fate is against it." From the adjoining rooms there came the banging of drawers and a frantic rustling of paper: it was Lydia hunting for the ticket. An hour later Ardalion gave up and went home. Lydia sat on the bed crying her heart out. On the fifth she discovered the ticket among the dirty linen prepared for the laundry; and on the sixth we went to see Ardalion off.

  The train was due to leave at 10:10. The longer hand of the clock would point like a setter, then pounce on the coveted minute, and forthwith aim at the next. No Ardalion. We stood waiting beside the coach marked "Milan."

  "What on earth is the matter," Lydia kept worrying. "Why doesn't he come? I'm anxious."

  All that ridiculous fuss about Ardalion's departure maddened me to such an extent that I was now afraid to unclench my teeth lest I have a fit or something on the station platform. Two sordid individuals, one sporting a blue mackintosh, the other a Russian-looking greatcoat with a moth-eaten astrakhan collar, came up and, dodging me, effusively greeted Lydia.

  "Why doesn't he come? What d'you think has happened?" Lydia asked, looking at them with frightened eyes and holding away from her the little bunch of violets which she had taken the trouble to buy for the brute. The blue mackintosh spread out his hands, and the fur collar pronounced in a deep voice:

  "Nescimus. We do not know."

  I felt I could not contain myself any longer and, turning sharply, marched off toward the exit. Lydia ran after me: "Where are you going, wait a bit, I'm sure he's--"

  It was at this minute that Ardalion appeared in the distance. A grim-faced tatterdemalion held him up by the elbow and carried his portmanteau. So drunk was Ardalion that he could barely stand on his feet; the grim one, too, reeked of spirits.

  "Oh, dear, he can't go in such a state," cried Lydia.

  Very flushed, very humid, bewildered and groggy, without his overcoat (in hazy anticipation of southern warmth), Ardalion started upon a tottering round of slobbery embraces. I just managed to avoid him.

  "My name's Perebrodov, professional artist," blurted his grim companion, confidentially thrusting out, as if it held a dirty postcard, an unshakable hand in my direction. "Had the fortune of meeting you in the gambling hells of Cairo."

  "Hermann, do something! Impossible to let him go like that," wailed Lydia tugging at my sleeve.

  Meanwhile the carriage doors were already slamming. Ardalion, swaying and emitting appealing cries, had reeled off to follow the cart of a sandwich-and-brandy vendor, but was caught by friendly hands. Then, all at once, he gathered up Lydia in his clutch and covered her with juicy kisses.

  "Oh, you googly kid," he cooed, "good-bye, kid, thanks, kid...."

  "Look here, gentlemen," said I with perfect calm, "would you mind helping me to lift him into the carriage?"

  The train glided off. Beaming and bawling, Ardalion all but tumbled out of the window. Lydia, a lamb in leopard's clothes, trotted alongside the carriage almost as far as Switzerland. When the last carriage turned its buffers upon her, she bent low, peering under the receding wheels (a national superstition) and then crossed herself. She still held in her fist that little bunch of violets.

  Ah, what relief.... The sigh I heaved filled my chest and I let it out noisily. All day long Lydia gently fretted and worried, but then a wire came--two words: "Traveling merrily"--and that soothed her. I had now to tackle the most tedious part of the business: talking to her, coaching her.

  I fail to remember the way I began: when the current of my memory is turned on, that talk is already in full swing. I see Lydia sitting on the divan and staring at me with dumb amazement. I see myself sitting on the edge of a chair opposite her and now and then, like a doctor, touching her wrist. I hear my even voice going on and on. First I told her something, which, I said, I had never told anyone before. I told her about my younger brother. He was a student in Germany when the war broke out; was recruited there and fought against the Russians. I had always remembered him as a quiet, despondent little fellow. My parents used to thrash me and spoil him; he did not show them any affection, however, but in regard to me he developed an incredible, more than brotherly adoration, followed me everywhere, looked into my eyes, loved everything that came into contact with me, loved to smell my pocket handkerchief, to put on my shirt when still warm from my body, to clean his teeth with my brush. At first we shared a bed with a pillow at each end until it was discovered he could not go to sleep without sucking my big toe, whereupon I was expelled to a mattress in the lumber room but since he insisted on changing places with me in the middle of the night, we never quite knew, nor did dear mamma, who was sleeping where. It was not a perversion on his part--oh, not at all--it was but the best he could do to express our indescribable oneness, for we resembled each other so closely that our nearest relatives used to mistake us, and as the years went on, this resemblance grew more and more perfect. I remember that when I was seeing him off on his way to Germany (that was shortly before Princip's pistol shot) the poor fellow sobbed with such bitterness as though he foresaw what a long and cruel separation it would be. People on the platform looked at us, looked at those two identical youths who stood with interlocked hands and peered into each other's eyes with a kind of sorrowful ecstasy....

  Then came the war. Whilst languishing in remote captivity I never had any news of my brother, but was somehow sure that he had been killed. Sultry years, black-shrouded years. I taught myself not to think of him; and even later, when I was married, not a word thereof did I breathe to Lydia--it was all too sad.

  Then, soon after my bringing my wife to Germany, a cousin (who took his cue in passing, just to utter that single line) informed me that Felix, though alive, had morally perished. I never learned the exact manner in which his soul was wrecked.... Presumably, his delicate psychic structure did not withstand the strain of war, while the thought that I was no more (for, strange to say, he, too, was sure of his brother's death), that never would he see his adored double, or better say, the optimal edition of his own personality, this thought crippled his mind, he felt as if he had lost both support and ambition, so that henceforth life could be lived anyhow. And down he went. That man as sweet-tuned as some musical instrument now turned thief and forger, took to drugs and finally committed murder: he poisoned the woman who kept him. I learned of the latter affair from his own lips; he had not even been suspected--so cunningly had the evil deed been co
ncealed. As to my meeting him again ... well, that was the work of chance, a most unexpected and painful meeting too (one of its consequences being that change in me, that depression which even Lydia had noticed) in a cafe at Prague: he stood up, I remember, upon seeing me, opened his arms and crashed backward in a deep swoon which lasted eighteen minutes.

  Yes, horribly painful. Instead of the sluggish, dreamy, tender lad, I found a talkative madman, all jerks and jumps. The happiness he experienced upon being reunited with me, dear old Hermann, who all at once, dressed in a handsome grey suit, had arisen from the dead, not only did not lull his conscience, but quite, quite contrariwise, convinced him of the utter inadmissibility of living with a murder on his mind. The conversation we had was awful; he kept covering my hands with kisses, and bidding me farewell. Even the waiters wept.

  Very soon I realized that no human force in the world could now shake the decision he had formed of killing himself; even I could do nothing, I who always had had such an ideal influence on him. The minutes I lived through were anything but pleasant. Putting myself in his shoes, I could readily imagine the refined torture which his memory made him endure; and I perceived, alas, that the sole issue for him was death. God forbid anyone passing through such an ordeal--that is, seeing one's brother perish and not having the moral right to avert his doom.

  But now comes the complication: his soul, which had its mystical side, yearned for some atonement, some sacrifice: merely putting a bullet through his brain seemed to him not sufficient.

  "I want to make a gift of my death to somebody," he suddenly said and his eyes brimmed with the diamond light of madness. "Make a gift of my death. We two are still more alike than we were formerly. In our sameness I see a divine intent. To lay one's hands upon a piano does not yet mean the making of music, and what I want is music. Tell me, might it not benefit you in some way to vanish from the earth?"

  At first, I did not heed his question: I supposed that Felix was delirious; and a gypsy orchestra in the cafe drowned part of his speech; his subsequent words proved, however, that he had a definite plan. So! On one hand the abyss of a soul in torment, on the other, business prospects. In the lurid glare of his tragic fate and belated heroism, that part of his plan which concerned me, my profit, my well-being, seemed as stupidly matter of fact, as, say, the inauguration of a railway during an earthquake.