Despair

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Such sensations, however nasty, were possible to deal with--more or less. It was, for example, rather hard to forget how utterly he had surrendered himself to me, that soft-stuffed creature, when I was getting him ready for his execution. Those cold obedient paws! It quite bewildered me to recall how pliant he had been. His toenail was so strong that my scissors could not bite in at once, it screwed round one blade as the jag of a tin of corned beef envelops the key. Is a man's will really so powerful as to be able to convert another into a dummy? Did I actually shave him? Astounding! Yes, what tormented me above all, when recalling things, was Felix's submissiveness, the ridiculous, brainless, automatous quality of his submissiveness. But, as said already, I got over that. Far worse was my failure to put up with mirrors. In fact, the beard I started growing was meant to hide me not so much from others as from my own self. Dreadful thing--a hypertrophied imagination. So it is quite easy to understand that a man endowed with my acute sensitiveness gets into the devil of a state about such trifles as a reflection in a dark looking glass, or his own shadow, falling dead at his feet, und so weiter. Stop short, you people--I raise a huge white palm like a German policeman, stop! No sighs of compassion, people, none whatever. Stop, pity! I do not accept your sympathy; for among you there are sure to be a few souls who will pity me--me, a poet misunderstood. "Mist, vapor ... in the mist a chord that quivers." No, that's not verse, that's from old Dusty's great book, Crime and Slime. Sorry: Schuld und Suhne (German edition). Any remorse on my part is absolutely out of the question: an artist feels no remorse, even when his work is not understood, not accepted. As to that premium--

  I know, I know: it is a bad mistake from the novelist's point of view that in the whole course of my tale there is--as far as I remember--so very little attention devoted to what seems to have been my leading motive; greed of gain. How does it come that I am so reticent and vague about the purpose I pursued in arranging to have a dead double? But here I am assailed by odd doubts: was I really so very, very much bent upon making profit and did it really seem to me so desirable, that rather equivocal sum (the worth of a man in terms of money; and a reasonable remuneration for his disappearance), or was it the other way round and remembrance, writing for me, could not (being truthful to the end) act otherwise and attach any special importance to a talk in Orlovius's study (did I describe that study?).

  And there is one other thing I would like to say about my posthumous moods: although in my soul of souls I had no qualms about the perfection of my work, believing that in the black and white wood there lay a dead man perfectly resembling me, yet as a novice of genius, still unfamiliar with the flavor of fame, but filled with the pride that escorts self-stringency, I longed, to the point of pain, for that masterpiece of mine (finished and signed on the ninth of March in a gloomy wood) to be appreciated by men, or in other words, for the deception--and every work of art is a deception--to act successfully; as to the royalties, so to speak, paid by the insurance firm, that was in my mind a matter of secondary importance. Oh, yes, I was the pure artist of romance.

  Things that pass are treasured later, as the poet sang. One fine day at last Lydia joined me abroad; I called at her hotel. "Not so wildly," I said with grave warning, as she was about to fling herself into my arms. "Remember that my name is Felix, and that I am merely an acquaintance of yours." She looked very comely in her widow's weeds, just as my artistic black bow and nicely trimmed beard suited me. She began relating ... yes, everything had worked as I had expected, without a hitch. It appeared she had wept quite sincerely during the crematory service, when the pastor with a professional catch in his throbbing voice had spoken about me, "... and this man, this noblehearted man, who--" I imparted to her my further plans and very soon began to court her.

  We are married now, I and my little widow; we live in a quiet picturesque place, in our cottage. We spend long lazy hours in the little myrtle garden with its view of the blue gulf far below, and talk very often of my poor dead brother. I keep recounting to her new episodes from his life. "Fate, kismet," says Lydia with a sigh. "At least now, in Heaven, his soul is consoled by our being happy."

  Yes, Lydia is happy with me; she needs nobody else. "How glad I am," she says sometimes, "that we are forever rid of Ardalion. I used to pity him a good deal, and gave him a lot of my time, but, really, I could never stand the man. Wonder where he is at present. Probably drinking himself to death, poor fellow. That's also fate!"

  In the mornings I read and write; maybe I shall soon publish one or two little things under my new name; a Russian author who lives in the neighborhood highly praises my style and vivid imagination.

  Occasionally Lydia receives a line from Orlovius--New Year's greetings, say. He invariably asks her to give his kindest regards to her husband whom he has not the pleasure of knowing, and probably thinks the while: "Ah, here is a widow who is easily comforted. Poor Hermann Karlovich!"

  Do you feel the tang of this epilogue? I have concocted it according to a classic recipe. Something is told about every character in the book to wind up the tale; and in doing so, the dribble of their existence is made to remain correctly, though summarily, in keeping with what has been previously shown of their respective ways; also, a facetious note is admitted--poking sly fun at life's conservativeness.

  Lydia is as forgetful and untidy as ever....

  And left to the very end of the epilogue there is, pour la bonne bouche, some especially hearty bit, quite possibly having to do with an insignificant object which just flicked by in some earlier part of the novel:

  You may still see on the wall of their chamber the same pastel portrait, and as usual, whenever he looks at it, Hermann laughs and curses.

  Finis. Farewell, Turgy! Fairwell, Dusty!

  Dreams, dreams ... and rather trite ones at that. Who cares, anyway? ...

  Let us return to our tale. Let us try to control ourselves better. Let us omit certain details of the journey. I remember that when I arrived at Pignan, almost on the Spanish border, the first thing I did was to try and obtain German newspapers; I did find a few, but there was nothing in them yet.

  I took a room in a second-rate hotel, a huge room, with a stone floor and walls like cardboard, on which there seemed to be painted the sienna-brown door leading into the next room, and a looking glass with only one reflection. It was horribly cold; yet the open hearth of the preposterous fireplace was no more adapted to give heat than a stage contrivance would be, and when the chips brought by the maid had burned out, the room seemed colder still. The night I spent there was full of the most extravagant and exhausting visions; and as morning came, and feeling sticky and prickly all over, I emerged into the narrow street, inhaled the sickening rich odors and was crushed among the southern crowd jostling in the marketplace, it became quite clear to me that I simply could not remain in that town any longer.

  With shivers continuously running down my spine and a head fairly bursting, I made my way to the syndicat d'initiative, where a talkative individual suggested a score of resorts in the vicinity: I wanted a cosy secluded one, and when toward evening a leisurely bus dropped me at the address I had chosen, it struck me that here was exactly what I desired.

  Apart, alone, surrounded by cork oaks, stood a decent-looking hotel, the greater part still shuttered (the season beginning only in summer). A strong wind from Spain worried the chick fluff of the mimosas. In a pavilion, reminding one of a chapel, a spring of curative water gushed, and cobwebs hung in the corners of its ruby dark windows.

  Few people were staying there. There was the doctor, the soul of the hotel and the sovereign of the table d'hote: he sat at the head of the table and did the talking; there was the parrot-beaked old fellow in the alpaca coat, who used to produce an assortment of snorts and grunts, when, with a light patter of feet, the nimble maid served the trout which he had angled in the neighboring stream; there was a vulgar young couple come to this hole all the way from Madagascar; there was the little old lady in the muslin gorgerette, a
school mistress; there was a jeweler with a large family; there was a finicking young person, who was styled at first vicomtesse, then comtesse and finally (which brings us to the time I am writing this) marquise--all due to the doctor's exertions (who does all he can to enhance the establishment's reputation). Let us not forget, too, the mournful commercial traveler from Paris, representative of a patented species of ham; nor the coarse fat abbe who kept jawing about the beauty of some cloister in the vicinity; and, to express it better, he would pluck a kiss from his meaty lips pursed into the semblance of a heartlet. That was all the collection, I believe. The beetle-browed manager stood near the door with his hands clasped behind his back and followed with a surly eye the ceremonial dinner. Outside a riotous wind raged.

  These novel impressions had a beneficial effect upon me. The food was good. I had a sunny room, and it was interesting to watch, from the window, the wind roughly upturning the several petticoats of the olive trees which it tumbled. In the distance against a mercilessly blue sky, there stood out the mauve-shaded sugar cone of a mountain resembling Fujiyama. I was not much out of doors: it frightened me, that thunder in my head, that incessant crashing, blinding March wind, that murderous mountain draft. Still, on the second day, I went to town for newspapers, and once again there was nothing in them, and because the suspense exasperated me beyond measure, I determined not to trouble about them for a few days.

  The impression I made upon the table d'hote was, I am afraid, one of gruff unsociability, although I tried hard to answer all questions addressed to me; but in vain did the doctor press me to go to the salon after dinner, a stuffy little room with a cottage piano out of tune, plush armchairs and a round table littered with touring advertisements. The doctor had a goat's beard, watery blue eyes and a round little belly. He fed in a businesslike and very disgusting manner. His method of dealing with poached eggs was to give the yolk an underhand twist with a crust of bread which landed it whole, to the accompaniment of a juicy intake of saliva, into his wet, pink mouth. He used to gather, with gravy-soaked fingers, the bones left after the meat course on people's plates, and wrap up his spoil anyhow, and thrust it into the pocket of his ample coat; by doing so he evidently aimed at being taken for an eccentric character: "C'est pour les pauvres chiens, for the poor dogs," he would say (and says so still), "animals are often better than human beings"--an affirmation that provoked (and goes on doing so) passionate disputes, the abbe waxing especially hot. Upon learning that I was a German and a musician the doctor seemed quite fascinated; and from the glances directed at me, I concluded that it was not so much my face (on its way from unshavenness to beardedness) which attracted attention, as my nationality and profession, in both of which the doctor perceived something distinctly favorable to the prestige of the house. He would buttonhole me on the stairs or in one of the long white passages, and start upon some endless gossiping, now discussing the social faults of the ham deputy, then deploring the abbe's intolerance. It was all getting a little upon my nerves, although diverting after a fashion.

  As soon as night fell and the shadows of branches, which a solitary lamp in the courtyard caught and lost, came sweeping across my room, a sterile and hideous confusion filled my vast vacant soul. Oh, no, I have never feared dead bodies, just as broken, shattered playthings do not frighten me. What I feared, all alone in a treacherous world of reflections, was to break down instead of holding on till a certain extraordinary, madly happy, all-solving moment which it was imperative I should attain; the moment of an artist's triumph; of pride, deliverance, bliss: was my picture a sensational success or was it a dismal flop?

  On the sixth day of my stay the wind became so violent that the hotel could be likened to a ship at sea in a tempest: windowpanes boomed, walls creaked; and the heavy evergreen foliage fell back with a receding rustle and then lurching forward, stormed the house. I attempted to go out into the garden, but at once was doubled up, retained my hat by a miracle and went up to my room. Once there, standing deep in thought at the window amid all that turmoil and tintinnabulation I failed to hear the gong, so that when I came down to lunch and took my seat at the table, the third course was in progress--giblets, mossy to the palate, with tomato sauce--the doctor's favorite dish. At first I did not heed the general conversation, skillfully guided by the doctor, but all of a sudden noticed that everyone was gazing at me.

  "Et vous--and you," the doctor was saying to me, "what do you think upon this subject?"

  "What subject?" I asked.

  "We were speaking," said the doctor, "of that murder, chez vous, in Germany. What a monster a man must be"--he went on, anticipating an interesting discussion--"to insure his life and then take another's--"

  I do not know what came over me, but suddenly I lifted my hand and said: "Look here, stop," and, bringing it down, with my clenched fist I gave the table a bang that made the napkin ring jump into the air, and I cried, in a voice which I did not recognize as mine: "Stop, stop! How dare you, what right have you got? Of all the insulting--No, I won't stand it! How dare you--Of my land, of my people ... be silent! Be silent," I cried ever louder: "You! ... To dare tell me to my face that in Germany--Be silent!"

  As it was, they had all been silent for a long time already--since that moment when, from the bang of my fist, the ring had started rolling. It rolled to the very end of the table; and was cautiously tapped down by the jeweler's youngest son. A silence of exceptionally fine quality. Even the wind, I believe, had ceased booming. The doctor, holding his knife and fork, froze: a fly froze on his forehead. I felt a spasm in my throat; I threw down my napkin and left the dining room, with every face automatically turning to watch me pass.

  Without pausing in my stride I grabbed the newspaper that lay outspread on a table in the hall and, once in my room, sank down upon my bed. I was trembling all over, strangled by rising sobs, convulsed with fury; my knuckles were filthily splashed with tomato sauce. As I pored over the paper I still had time to tell myself that it was all nonsense, a mere coincidence--one could hardly expect Frenchmen to hear of the matter, but in a flash my name, my former name, came dancing before my eyes....

  I do not recall exactly what I learned from that particular paper: since then I have perused heaps of them, and they have got rather mixed up in my mind; they are now lying somewhere about, but I have not the leisure to sort them. What I well remember, however, was that I immediately grasped two facts: first, that the murderer's identity was known, and second, that that of the victim was not. The communication did not proceed from a special correspondent, but was merely a brief summary of what, presumably, the German papers contained, and there was something careless and insolent about the fashion in which it was served up, between reports of a political fray and a case of psittacosis. And I was unspeakably shocked by the tone of the thing: it was in fact so improper, so impossible in regard to me, that for a moment I even thought it might refer to a person bearing the same name as I; for such a tone is used when writing of some halfwit hacking to bits a whole family. I understand now. It was, I guess, a ruse on the part of the international police; a silly attempt to frighten and rattle me; but not realizing this, I was, at first, in a frenzy of passion, and spots swam before my eyes which kept blundering into this or that line of the column--when suddenly there came a loud knock at the door. I shoved the paper under my bed and said: "Come in."

  It was the doctor. He was finishing chewing something.

  "Ecoutez," he said, having hardly crossed the threshold--"there has been a mistake. You have wrongly interpreted my meaning. I'd very much like--"

  "Out!"--I roared--"out you go!"

  His face changed and he went without closing the door. I jumped up and slammed it with an incredible crash. Then, from under the bed, I pulled out the paper; but now I could not find in it what I had just been reading. I examined it from beginning to end: nothing! Could I have dreamt reading it? I started looking through the pages afresh; it was like a nightmare when a thing gets lost, and not only c
an it not be discovered but there are none of those natural laws which would lend the search a certain logic, instead of which everything is absurdly shapeless and arbitrary. No, there was nothing about me in the paper. Nothing at all. I must probably have been in an awful state of blind excitement, because a few seconds later I noticed that the paper was an old German rag and not the Paris one which I had been reading. Diving under the bed again I retrieved it and reread the trivially worded, and even libelous, communication. Now it dawned upon me what had shocked me most--shocked me as an insult: not a word was there about our resemblance; not only was it not criticized (for instance they might have said, at least: "Yes, an admirable resemblance, yet such and such markings show it to be not his body") but it was not mentioned at all--which left one with the impression that it was some wretch whose appearance was quite different from mine. Now, one single night could not very well have decomposed him; on the contrary his countenance ought to have acquired a marble quality, making our likeness still more sharply chiseled; but even if the body had been found quite a few days later, thus giving playful Death time to tamper with it, all the same the stages of its decomposition would have tallied with mine--damned hasty way of putting it, I am afraid, but I am in no mood for niceties. This affected ignorance of what, to me, was most precious and all-important, struck me as an extremely cowardly trick, implying as it did that, from the very first, everybody knew perfectly well that it was not I, that it simply could not have entered anybody's head to mistake the corpse for mine. And the slipshod way in which the story was told seemed, in itself, to stress a solecism which I could certainly never, never have committed; and still there they were, mouths hidden, and snouts turned away, silent, but all aquiver, the ruffians, bubbling over with joy, yes, with an evil vindictive joy; yes, vindictive, jeering, unbearable--