The Enchanter

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Or would it? He saw the same woman knitting on the same bench and, sensing that, instead of a gentlemanly smile, he had leered and flashed a tusk from beneath a bluish lip, sat down. His uneasiness and the trembling of his hands did not last long. A conversation developed, which in itself gave him a strange satisfaction; the weight on his chest dissolved, and he began to feel almost merry. She appeared, clamping along on her skates, as she had the previous day. Her light-gray eyes dwelled on him for an instant, even though it was not he but the knitter who was speaking, and, having accepted him, she turned insouciantly away. Then she was sitting beside him, holding onto the edge of the seat with rosy, sharp-knuckled hands, on which shifted now a vein, now a deep dimple near the wrist while her hunched shoulders remained motionless, and her dilating pupils followed someone’s ball rolling across the gravel. As the day before, his neighbor, reaching across him, handed a sandwich to the girl, who began tapping her somewhat scarred knees together lightly as she ate.

  “…it’s healthier, of course, and, most important of all, we have a first-rate school,” a distant voice was saying when he suddenly noticed that the auburn-curled head on his left had silently bent low over his hand.

  “You lost the hands of your watch,” said the girl.

  “No,” he answered, clearing his throat, “that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s a rarity.”

  Reaching across with her left hand (the right one was holding the sandwich) she caught hold of his wrist and examined the blank, centerless dial beneath which the hands were inserted, revealing only their very tips, like two black droplets, amid the silvery digits. A shriveled leaf trembled in her hair, very near her neck above the delicate projection of a vertebra—and during his next spell of insomnia he kept yanking off the ghost of that leaf, grasping and yanking, with two fingers, with three, then with all five.

  The day after, and the days that followed, he sat in the same place, doing an amateurish but quite tolerable imitation of an eccentric loner: the usual hour, the usual place. The girl’s arrival, her breathing, her legs, her hair, everything she did, whether it was scratching a shin and leaving white marks on it, or throwing a small black ball high in the air, or brushing against him with a bare elbow as she seated herself on the bench—all of it (while he appeared engrossed in pleasant conversation) evoked an intolerable sensation of sanguine, dermal, multivascular communion with her, as if the monstrous bisector pumping all the juices from the depths of his being extended into her like a pulsating dotted line, as if this girl were growing out of him, as if, with every carefree movement, she tugged and shook her vital roots implanted in the bowels of his being, so that, when she abruptly changed position or rushed off, he felt a yank, a barbarous pluck, a momentary loss of equilibrium: suddenly you are traveling through the dust on your back, banging the back of your head, on your way to being strung up by your insides. And all the while he calmly sat listening, smiling, nodding his head, pulling at a pant leg to free his knee, scrabbling lightly in the gravel with his walking stick, and saying, “Is that so?” or “Yes, it happens sometimes, you know…,” but comprehending his neighbor’s words only when the girl was nowhere nearby. He learned from this circumstantiating chatterbox that between her and the girl’s mother, a forty-two-year-old widow, there existed a five-year friendship (her own husband’s honor had been saved by the widow’s late spouse); that last spring this widow had, after a long illness, undergone a serious operation of the intestine; that, having long since lost all her family, she had promptly and tenaciously clutched at the kind couple’s suggestion that the girl move in with them in their provincial town; and that now she had been brought for a visit with her mother, as the garrulous lady’s husband had a bit of bothersome business to attend to in the capital, but that soon it would be time to head home—the sooner the better, for the girl’s presence only irritated the widow, who was exceptionally decent but had grown somewhat self-indulgent.

  “Say, didn’t you mention that she was selling off some sort of furniture?”

  This question (with its continuation) he had prepared during the night and tried out sotto voce on the ticking silence; having convinced himself that it sounded natural, he repeated it the next day to his newfound acquaintance. She replied affirmatively and explained in no uncertain terms that it wouldn’t be a bad idea if the widow made a little money—her medical care was costing and would continue to cost a lot, her resources were very limited, she insisted on paying for her daughter’s upkeep but did so rather sporadically—and we’re not rich either—in a word, the debt of honor, apparently, was considered already extinguished.

  “Actually,” he continued without missing a beat, “I could use certain pieces of furniture myself. Do you suppose it might be convenient as well as proper if I…” He had forgotten the rest of his sentence, but improvised most adroitly, as he was beginning to feel at home with the artificial style of the still not fully comprehensible, many-ringed dream with which he was already so indistinctly but so firmly entwined that, for instance, he no longer knew what this thing was, and whose: part of his own leg or part of an octopus.

  She was obviously delighted, and offered to take him there that very moment if he wished—the widow’s apartment, where she and her husband were also staying, was not far, right on the other side of the electric-railway bridge.

  They set off. The girl walked in front, energetically swinging a canvas bag on a string, and already everything about her was, to his eyes, terrifyingly and insatiably familiar—the curve of her narrow back, the resilience of the two round little muscles farther down, the exact way the checks of her dress (the other, brown, one) tightened when she raised an arm, the delicate ankles, the rather high heels. She might be a little introverted, livelier of movement than of conversation, neither bashful nor forward, with a soul that seemed submerged, but in a radiant moistness. Opalescent on the surface but translucent in her depths, she must be fond of sweets, and puppies, and the innocent trickery of newsreels. Such warm-skinned, russet-sheened, open-lipped girls got their periods early, and it was little more to them than a game, like cleaning up a dollhouse kitchen…. And hers was not a very happy childhood, that of a half-orphan: this stern woman’s kindness was not like milk chocolate, but like the bitter kind—a home without caresses, strict order, symptoms of fatigue, a favor for a friend grown burdensome…. And for all this, for the glow of her cheeks, the twelve pairs of narrow ribs, the down along her back, her wisp of a soul, that slightly husky voice, the roller skates and the grayish day, the unknown thought that had just run through her head as she glanced at an unknown thing from the bridge… For all this he would have given a sack of rubies, a bucket of blood, anything he was asked….

  Outside the building they ran into an unshaven man with a briefcase, as unabashed and as gray as his wife, so the four of them made a noisy entrance together. He expected to find a sick, emaciated woman in an armchair, but instead was met by a tall, pale, broad-hipped lady, with a hairless wart near a nostril of her bulbous nose: one of those faces you describe without being able to say anything about the lips or the eyes because any mention of them—even this—would be an involuntary contradiction of their utter inconspicuousness.

  Upon learning that he was a potential buyer she immediately ushered him into the dining room, explaining, as she proceeded slowly and with a slight list, that she had no need for a four-room apartment, that she was moving that winter into a two-room one, and that she would be glad to get rid of that extension table, the extra chairs, that couch over in the parlor (when it had done its duty as a sleeping accommodation for her friends), a large étagère, and a small chest. He said he would like to see the last of these items, which turned out to be in the room occupied by the girl, whom they found lolling on the bed and gazing at the ceiling, with her knees, drawn up and encircled by outstretched arms, rocking in unison.

  “Off the bed! What’s the meaning of this?” Hurriedly concealing the soft skin of her underside and the tiny wedge
of her taut panties, she rolled off (oh, the liberties I would allow her! he thought).

  He said he would buy the chest—it was a laughably cheap price for access to the house—and probably something else as well, but he had to decide just what. If it was all right with her, he would drop by for another look in a couple of days and then have everything picked up at the same time—here, by the way, was his card.

  As she saw him to the door she unsmilingly (evidently she smiled seldom) but quite cordially mentioned that her friend and her daughter had already told her about him and that her friend’s husband was even a little jealous.

  “Sure, sure,” said the latter, following them into the vestibule. “I’d gladly unload my better half on anybody who’d take her.”

  “Watch your step,” said his wife, appearing from the same room as he. “Someday you might be sorry!”

  “Well, you’re welcome anytime,” said the widow. “I’m always home, and you might be interested in the lamp or the pipe collection—they are all fine things, and it makes me a little sad to part with them, but that’s life.”

  “What next?” he wondered on the way home. Up to that point he had played it by ear, practically without forethought, following blind intuition, like a chess player penetrating and applying pressure wherever there is a hint of shakiness or constriction in his opponent’s position. But what now? Day after tomorrow they are taking my darling away—that rules out any direct benefit from my acquaintance with her mother…. She’ll be back, though, and may even stay here for good, and by that time I’ll be a welcome guest…. But if the woman has less than a year to live (according to the hints I was given), then everything goes down the drain…. I must say she doesn’t look too decrepit to me, but if she does take to her bed and die, then the setting and the circumstances for a potentially jovial relationship will crumble, then it will all be over—how would I find her, under what pretext?… Nevertheless, he felt instinctively that this was the way to proceed: don’t think too much, keep the pressure on the weak corner of the board.

  Therefore, next day he set out for the park with an attractive box of marrons glacés and sugar violets as a going-away present for the girl. Reason told him that it was a silly cliché, that this was a particularly dangerous moment to single her out for overt attention, even from an uninhibited eccentric, especially since so far he had—quite rightly—paid hardly any attention to her (he was a past master at dissimulating lightning bolts)—not like one of your putrid oldsters who always carry some candy to lure the lasses—and still he minced along with his present, in response to a secret impulse that was more accurate than reason.

  He spent a whole hour on the bench, but they did not come. Must have left a day early. And, although one more encounter with her could in no way have alleviated the very special burden that had accumulated during the past week, he experienced the burning chagrin of a betrayed lover.

  Continuing to ignore the voice of reason that told him he was again doing the wrong thing, he rushed over to the widow’s and bought the lamp. Noticing his odd shortness of breath, she invited him to sit down and offered him a cigarette. In his search for a lighter he came upon the oblong box and said, like a character in a book:

  “It may seem odd to you, since we’ve known each other for such a short time, but still allow me to present you with this trifle—a little candy, not bad candy, I think—if you accept, it will give me great pleasure.”

  She smiled for the first time—apparently she was more flattered than surprised—and explained that all the sweets of life were forbidden to her, and that she would give it to her daughter.

  “Oh—I thought they had already—”

  “No, tomorrow morning,” the widow resumed, fingering the gold ribbon not without regret. “Today, my friend, who spoils her dreadfully, took her to a needlework exhibit.” She sighed, and gingerly, as if it were something fragile, set the gift on a nearby side table, while her exceedingly charming guest inquired what she was and was not allowed, and listened to the epic of her malady, referring to the variants and interpreting with great acuity the most recent distortions of the text.

  BY THE THIRD VISIT (he had dropped by to inform her that the mover could come no earlier than Friday) he had tea with her and, in his turn, told her about himself and about his limpid, elegant profession. They turned out to have a common acquaintance, the brother of an attorney who had died the same year as her husband. Objectively and without insincere regrets she discussed the husband, about whom he already knew certain things: he had been a bon vivant and an expert on notarial matters; he had gotten on well with his wife, but had tried to spend as little time as possible at home.

  On Thursday he bought the couch and two chairs, and on Saturday he called for her as agreed to take her for a quiet stroll in the park. However, she was feeling rotten, was in bed with a hot-water bottle, and spoke to him in a singsong through the door. He asked the gloomy crone who periodically appeared to cook and nurse to let him know at such-and-such a number how the patient had spent the night.

  In this fashion a few more busy weeks elapsed, weeks of murmuring, exploration, persuasion, intensive remolding of another’s pliable solitude. Now he was moving toward a definite goal, for, even back when he had proffered the candy, he had suddenly recognized the outlying destination silently indicated to him by what looked like a strange, nailless finger (scrawled on a fence), and the true hiding-place of genuine, blinding opportunity. The path was unenticing but neither was it difficult, and the sight of a weekly letter to Mother, in a still unsteady, coltishly sprawling hand, left lying about with inexplicable heedlessness, sufficed to put an end to any sort of doubt.

  He had learned from other sources that the mother had checked on him, with results that could only have pleased her, not the least of which was a well-kept bank account. From the way she showed him, with devoutly lowered voice, old, rigid snapshots depicting, in various more or less flattering poses, a young girl in high shoes with a round, pleasant face, a nice full bosom, and hair combed back from her forehead (there were also the wedding photos, which invariably included the bridegroom, who had a happily surprised expression and an oddly familiar slant to his eyes), he gathered that she was surreptitiously addressing the faded mirror of the past in search of something that might even now entitle her to masculine attention, and must have decided that the keen eye of an appraiser of facets and reflections could still discern the traces of her past comeliness (which, incidentally, she exaggerated), traces that would become even more apparent after this retrospective bride-show.

  To the cup of tea she poured him she imparted a dainty touch of intimacy; into the highly detailed accounts of her diverse indispositions she managed to infuse so much romanticism that he could barely resist asking some coarse question; and at times she would pause, seemingly lost in thought, and then catch up, with a belated query, to his cautiously tiptoeing words.

  He felt both sorry and repelled but, realizing that the material, apart from its one specific function, had no potential whatever, he kept doggedly at his chore, which in itself demanded such concentration that the physical aspect of this woman dissolved and vanished (if he had run into her on the street in a different part of town he would not have recognized her) and its place was haphazardly filled by the formal features of the abstract bride in the snapshots, grown so familiar that they had lost all meaning (thus, after all, her pathetic calculations had been successful).

  The task proceeded swimmingly and when, one rainy, late-fall evening, she heard out—impassively, without a single bit of feminine advice—his vague complaints about the yearnings of a bachelor who looks with envy at the tailcoat and misty aura of another’s wedding and thinks involuntarily of the lonely grave at the end of his lonely road, he concluded the time had come to call the packers. Meanwhile, though, he sighed and changed the subject, and, a day later, how she was amazed when their silent tea-drinking (he had gone to the window a couple of times, as if meditating about somethin
g) was interrupted by the furniture mover’s powerful ring. Home came two chairs, the couch, the lamp, and the chest: thus, when solving a mathematical problem, one first sets aside a certain number so as to work more freely, and then returns it to the womb of the solution.

  “You don’t understand. All it means is that a married couple’s belongings are owned jointly. In other words, I offer you both the contents of the cuff and the live ace of hearts.”

  Meanwhile, two workmen who had brought in the furniture were bustling nearby, and she chastely retreated to the next room.

  “You know something?” she said. “Go home and have a good sleep.”

  He tried, with a chuckle, to take her hand in his, but she drew it behind her back, repeating resolutely that this was all a lot of nonsense.

  “All right,” he replied, producing a handful of change and preparing the tip in his palm. “All right, I’ll leave, but, if you decide to accept, kindly let me know, otherwise don’t bother—I’ll rid you of my presence forever.”

  “Wait a bit. Let them leave first. You pick strange times for this kind of talk.”

  “Now let’s sit down and discuss things rationally,” she said a moment later, having descended heavily and meekly onto the newly returned sofa (while he sat next to her in profile with one leg tucked under him, holding onto the lace of the protruding shoe). “First of all, my friend, as you know, I am a sick, a seriously sick, woman. For a couple of years now my life has been one of constant medical care. The operation I had on April twenty-fifth was in all likelihood the next-to-last one—in other words, next time they’ll take me from the hospital to the cemetery. No, no, don’t pooh-pooh what I’m saying. Let’s even assume I last a few more years—what change can there be? I’m doomed until my dying day to suffer all the torments of my infernal diet, and my attention is totally focused on my stomach and my nerves. My character is hopelessly ruined. There was a time when I never stopped laughing…. Yet I have always been demanding of others, and now I’m demanding of everything—of material objects, of my neighbors’ dog, of every minute of my existence that does not serve me as I want. You know that I was married for seven years. I have no recollection of any special happiness. I am a bad mother, but have reconciled myself to that, and know that my death would only be accelerated by having a boisterous girl around, and at the same time I feel a stupid, painful envy for her muscular little legs, her rosy complexion, her healthy digestion. I’m poor: one half of my pension goes for my illness, the other for my debts. Even if one were to suppose you had the kind of character and sensibilities… oh, in a word, the various traits that might make you a suitable husband for me—see, I stress the word ‘me’—what kind of existence would you have with such a wife? I may feel young spiritually, and I may not yet be a total monstrosity to look at, but won’t you get bored constantly fussing with such a fastidious person, never, never contradicting her, respecting her habits and eccentricities, her fasting and the other rules she lives by? And all for what—in order to remain, perhaps in six months or so, a widower with someone else’s child on your hands!”