The Luzhin Defense

by Vladimir Nabokov

  There were also books. Books written by his father, with red and gold embossed bindings and a handwritten inscription on the first page: I earnestly hope that my son will always treat animals and people the same way as Tony, and a big exclamation mark. Or: I wrote this book thinking of your future, my son. These inscriptions inspired in him a vague feeling of shame for his father, and the books themselves were as boring as Korolenko's The Blind Musician or Goncharov's The Frigate Pallas. A large volume of Pushkin with a picture of a thick-lipped, curly-haired boy on it was never opened. On the other hand there were two books, both given him by his aunt, with which he had fallen in love for his whole life, holding them in his memory as if under a magnifying glass, and experiencing them so intensely that twenty years later, when he read them over again, he saw only a dryish paraphrase, an abridged edition, as if they had been outdistanced by the unrepeatable, immortal image that he had retained. But it was not a thirst for distant peregrinations that forced him to follow on the heels of Phileas Fogg, nor was it a boyish inclination for mysterious adventures that drew him to that house on Baker Street, where the lanky detective with the hawk profile, having given himself an injection of cocaine, would dreamily play the violin. Only much later did he clarify in his own mind what it was that had thrilled him so about these two books; it was that exact and relentlessly unfolding pattern: Phileas, the dummy in the top hat, wending his complex elegant way with its justifiable sacrifices, now on an elephant bought for a million, now on a ship of which half has to be burned for fuel; and Sherlock endowing logic with the glamour of a daydream, Sherlock composing a monograph on the ash of all known sorts of cigars and with this ash as with a talisman progressing through a crystal labyrinth of possible deductions to the one radiant conclusion. The conjuror whom his parents engaged to perform on Christmas day somehow managed to blend in himself briefly both Fogg and Holmes, and the strange pleasure which Luzhin experienced on that day obliterated all the unpleasantness that accompanied the performance. Since requests--cautious infrequent requests--to "invite your school friends" never led to anything, Luzhin senior, confident that it would be both enjoyable and useful, got in touch with two acquaintances whose children attended the same school, and he also invited the children of a distant relative, two quiet, flabby little boys and a pale little girl with a thick braid of black hair. All the boys invited wore sailor suits and smelled of hair oil. Two of them little Luzhin recognized with horror as Bersenev and Rosen from Class Three, who at school were always dressed sloppily and behaved violently. "Well, here we are," said Luzhin senior, joyfully holding his son by the shoulder (the shoulder slowly sliding out from under his hand). "Now I'll leave you alone. Get to know one another and play for a while--and later you'll be called, we have a surprise for you." Half an hour later he went to call them. In the room there was silence. The little girl was sitting in a corner and leafing through the supplement to the review Niva (The Cornfield), looking for pictures. Bersenev and Rosen were self-consciously sitting on the sofa, both very red and shiny with pomade. The flabby nephews wandered around the room examining without interest the English woodcuts on the walls, the globe, the squirrel and a long since broken pedometer lying on a table. Luzhin himself, also wearing a sailor suit, with a whistle on a white cord on his chest, was sitting on a hard chair by the window, glowering and biting his thumbnail. But the conjuror made up for everything and even when on the following day Bersenev and Rosen, by this time again their real disgusting selves, came up to him in the school hall and bowed low, afterwards breaking into vulgar guffaws of laughter and quickly departing, arm in arm and swaying from side to side--even then this mockery was unable to break the spell. Upon his sullen request--whatever he said nowadays his brows came painfully together--his mother brought him from the Bazaar a large box painted a mahogany color and a book of tricks with a bemedaled gentleman in evening dress on the cover lifting a rabbit by its ears. Inside the box were smaller boxes with false bottoms, a wand covered with starry paper, a pack of crude cards where the picture cards were half jacks or half kings and half sheep in uniforms, a folding top hat with compartments, a rope with two wooden gadgets at the ends whose function was unclear. And there also were coquettish little envelopes containing powders for tinting water blue, red and green. The book was much more entertaining, and Luzhin had no difficulty in learning several card tricks which he spent hours showing to himself before the mirror. He found a mysterious pleasure, a vague promise of still unfathomed delights, in the crafty and accurate way a trick would come out, but still there was something missing, he could not grasp that secret which the conjuror had evidently mastered in order to be able to pluck a ruble out of the air or extract the seven of clubs, tacitly chosen by the audience, from the ear of an embarrassed Rosen. The complicated accessories described in the book irritated him. The secret for which he strove was simplicity, harmonious simplicity, which can amaze one far more than the most intricate magic.

  In the written report on his progress that was sent at Christmas, in this extremely detailed report where under the rubric of General Remarks they spoke at length, pleonastically, of his lethargy, apathy, sleepiness and sluggishness and where marks were replaced by epithets, there turned out to be one "unsatisfactory" in Russian language and several "barely satisfactory"s--among other things, in mathematics. However, it was just at this time that he had become extraordinarily engrossed in a collection of problems entitled "Merry Mathematics," in the fantastical misbehavior of numbers and the wayward frolics of geometric lines, in everything that the Schoolbook lacked. He experienced both bliss and horror in contemplating the way an inclined line, rotating spokelike, slid upwards along another, vertical one--in an example illustrating the mysteries of parallelism. The vertical one was infinite, like all lines, and the inclined one, also infinite, sliding along it and rising ever higher as its angle decreased, was doomed to eternal motion, for it was impossible for it to slip off, and the point of their intersection, together with his soul, glided upwards along an endless path. But with the aid of a ruler he forced them to unlock: he simply redrew them, parallel to one another, and this gave him the feeling that out there, in infinity, where he had forced the inclined line to jump off, an unthinkable catastrophe had taken place, an inexplicable miracle, and he lingered long in those heavens where earthly lines go out of their mind.

  For a while he found an illusory relief in jigsaw puzzles. At first they were simple childish ones, consisting of large pieces cut out with rounded teeth at the edges, like petitbeurre cookies, which interlocked so tenaciously that it was possible to lift whole sections of the puzzle without breaking them. But that year there came from England the fad of jigsaw puzzles invented for adults--"poozels" as they called them at the best toyshop in Petersburg--which were cut out with extraordinary ingenuity: pieces of all shapes, from a simple disk (part of a future blue sky) to the most intricate forms, rich in corners, capes, isthmuses, cunning projections, which did not allow you to tell where they were supposed to fit--whether they were to fill up the piebald hide of a cow, already almost completed, or whether this dark border on a green background was the shadow of the crook of a shepherd whose ear and part of whose head were plainly visible on a more outspoken piece. And when a cow's haunch gradually appeared on the left, and on the right, against some foliage, a hand with a shepherd's pipe, and when the empty space above became built up with heavenly blue, and the blue disk fitted smoothly into the sky, Luzhin felt wonderfully stirred by the precise combinations of these varicolored pieces that formed at the last moment an intelligible picture. Some of these brain-twisters were very expensive and consisted of several thousand pieces; they were brought by his young aunt, a gay, tender, red-haired aunt--and he would spend hours bent over a card table in the drawing room, measuring with his eyes each projection before trying if it would fit into this or that gap and attempting to determine by scarcely perceptible signs the essence of the picture in advance. From the next room, full of the noise of guests, his
aunt would plead: "For goodness' sake, don't lose any of the pieces!" Sometimes his father would come in, look at the puzzle and stretch out a hand tableward, saying: "Look, this undoubtedly goes in here," and then Luzhin without looking round would mutter: "Rubbish, rubbish, don't interfere," and his father would cautiously apply his lips to the tuffed top of his son's head and depart--past the gilded chairs, past the vast mirror, past the reproduction of Phryne Taking Her Bath, past the piano--a large silent piano shod with thick glass and caparisoned with a brocaded cloth.

  3

  Only in April, during the Easter holidays, did that inevitable day come for Luzhin when the whole world suddenly went dark, as if someone had thrown a switch, and in the darkness only one thing remained brilliantly lit, a newborn wonder, a dazzling islet on which his whole life was destined to be concentrated. The happiness onto which he fastened came to stay; that April day froze forever, while somewhere else the movement of seasons, the city spring, the country summer, continued in a different plane--dim currents which barely affected him.

  It began innocently. On the anniversary of his father-in-law's death, Luzhin senior organized a musical evening in his apartment. He himself had little understanding of music; he nourished a secret, shameful passion for La Traviata and at concerts listened to the piano only at the beginning, after which he contented himself with watching the pianist's hands reflected in the black varnish. But willy-nilly he had to organize that musical evening at which works of his late father-in-law would be played: as it was the newspapers had been silent for too long--the oblivion was complete, leaden, hopeless--and his wife kept repeating with a tremulous smile that it was all intrigue, intrigue, intrigue, that even during his lifetime others had envied her father's genius and that now they wanted to suppress his posthumous fame. Wearing a black, open-necked dress and a superb diamond dog collar, with a permanent expression of drowsy amiability on her puffy white face, she received the guests quietly, without exclaiming, whispering to each a few rapid, soft-sounding words; but inwardly she was beset by shyness and kept looking about for her husband, who was moving back and forth with mincing steps, his starched shirtfront swelling cuirasslike out of his waistcoat--a genial, discreet gentleman in the first timid throes of literary venerability. "Stark naked again," sighed the editor of an art magazine, taking a passing look at Phryne, who was particularly vivid as a result of the intensified light. At this point young Luzhin cropped up under his feet and had his head stroked. The boy recoiled. "How huge he's grown," said a woman's voice from behind. He hid behind someone's tails. "No, I beg your pardon," thundered out above his head: "Such demands must not be made on our press." Not at all huge but on the contrary very small for his years, he wandered among the guests trying to find a quiet spot. Sometimes somebody caught him by the shoulder and asked idiotic questions. The drawing room looked especially crowded because of the gilded chairs which had been placed in rows. Someone carefully came through the door carrying a music stand.

  By imperceptible stages Luzhin made his way to his father's study, where it was dark, and settled on a divan in the corner. From the distant drawing room, through two rooms, came the tender wail of a violin.

  He listened sleepily, clasping his knees and looking at a chink of lacy light between the loosely closed curtains, through which a gas-lamp from the street shone lilac-tinged white. From time to time a faint glimmer sped over the ceiling in a mysterious arc and a gleaming dot showed on the desk--he did not know what: perhaps one facet of a paperweight in the guise of a heavy crystal egg or a reflection in the glass of a desk photograph. He had almost dozed off when suddenly he started at the ringing of a telephone on the desk, and it became immediately clear that the gleaming dot was on the telephone support. The butler came in from the dining room, turned on in passing a light which illuminated only the desk, placed the receiver to his ear, and without noticing Luzhin went out again, having carefully laid the receiver on the leather-bound blotter. A minute later he returned accompanying a gentleman who as soon as he entered the circle of light picked up the receiver from the desk and with his other hand groped for the back of the desk chair. The servant closed the door behind him, cutting off the distant ripple of music. "Hello," said the gentleman. Luzhin looked at him out of the darkness, fearing to move and embarrassed by the fact that a complete stranger was reclining so comfortably at his father's desk. "No, I've already played," he said looking upwards, while his white restless hand fidgeted with something on the desk. A cab clip-clopped hollowly over the wooden pavement. "I think so," said the gentleman. Luzhin could see his profile--an ivory nose, black hair, a bushy eyebrow. "Frankly, I don't know why you are calling me here," he said quietly, continuing to fiddle with something on the desk. "If it was only to check up ... You silly," he laughed and commenced to swing one foot in its patent leather shoe regularly back and forth. Then he placed the receiver very skillfully between his ear and his shoulder and replying intermittently with "yes" and "no" and "perhaps," used both hands to pick up the object he had been playing with on the desk. It was a polished box that had been presented to his father a few days before. Luzhin junior had still not had a chance to look inside and now he watched the gentleman's hands with curiosity. But the latter did not open the box immediately. "Me too," he said. "Many times, many times. Good night, little girl." Having hung up the receiver he sighed and opened the box. However, he turned in such a way that Luzhin could see nothing from behind his black shoulder. Luzhin moved cautiously, but a cushion slid onto the floor and the gentleman quickly looked round. "What are you doing here?" he asked, spying Luzhin in the dark corner. "My, my, how bad it is to eavesdrop!" Luzhin remained silent. "What's your name?" asked the gentleman amiably. Luzhin slid off the divan and came closer. A number of carved figures lay closely packed in the box. "Excellent chessmen," said the gentleman. "Does Papa play?" "I don't know," said Luzhin. "And do you play yourself?" Luzhin shook his head. "That's a pity. You should learn. At ten I was already a good player. How old are you?"

  Carefully the door was opened. Luzhin senior came in--on tiptoe. He had been prepared to find the violinist still talking on the telephone and had thought to whisper very tactfully: "Continue, continue, but when you finish the audience would very much like to hear something more." "Continue, continue," he said mechanically and was brought up short upon seeing his son. "No, no, I've already finished," replied the violinist, getting up. "Excellent chessmen. Do you play?" "Indifferently," said Luzhin senior. ("What are you doing here? You too come and listen to the music ...") "What a game, what a game," said the violinist, tenderly closing the box. "Combinations like melodies. You know, I can simply hear the moves." "In my opinion one needs great mathematical skill for chess," said Luzhin senior. "And in that respect I ... They are awaiting you, Maestro." "I would rather have a game," laughed the violinist, as he left the room. "The game of the gods. Infinite possibilities." "A very ancient invention," said Luzhin senior and looked around at his son: "What's the matter? Come with us!" But before reaching the drawing room Luzhin contrived to tarry in the dining room where the table was laid with refreshments. There he took a plateful of sandwiches and carried it away to his room. He ate while he undressed and then ate in bed. He had already put the light out when his mother looked in and bent over him, the diamonds around her neck glinting in the half-light. He pretended to be asleep. She went away and was a long, long time--so as not to make a noise--closing the door.

  He woke up next day with a feeling of incomprehensible excitement. The April morning was bright and windy and the wooden street pavements had a violet sheen; above the street near Palace Arch an enormous red-blue-white flag swelled elastically, the sky showing through it in three different tints: mauve, indigo and pale blue. As always on holidays he went for a walk with his father, but these were not the former walks of his childhood; the midday cannon no longer frightened him and father's conversation was unbearable, for finding a pretext in last night's concert, he kept hinting that it would be a good ide
a to take up music. For lunch there was the remains of the paschal cream cheese (now a squat little cone with a grayish shading on its round summit) and a still untouched Easter cake. His aunt, the same sweet copper-haired aunt, second cousin to his mother, was gay in the extreme, threw cake crumbs across the table and related that for twenty-five rubles Latham was going to give her a ride in his "Antoinette" monoplane, which, by the way, was unable to leave the ground for the fifth day, while Voisin on the contrary kept circling the aerodrome like clockwork, and moreover so low that when he banked over the stands one could even see the cotton wool in the pilot's ears. Luzhin for some reason remembered that morning and that lunch with unusual brightness, the way you remember the day preceding a long journey. His father said it would be a good idea after lunch to drive to the Islands beyond the Neva, where the clearings were carpeted with anemones, and while he was speaking, the young aunt landed a crumb right in Father's mouth. His mother remained silent. Suddenly after the second course she got up, trying to conceal her face twitching with restrained tears and repeating under her breath "It's nothing, nothing, it'll pass in a moment," hastily left the dining room. Father threw his napkin on the table and followed her. Luzhin never discovered exactly what had happened, but passing along the corridor with his aunt he heard subdued sobs from his mother's room and his father's voice remonstrating and loudly repeating the phrase "imagining things."