Invitation to a Beheading

by Vladimir Nabokov

  The speaker took a sip from his glass and carefully set it aside.

  He went on, batting his eyelashes: "I need not explain how precious to the success of our common undertaking is that atmosphere of warm camaraderie which, with the help of patience and kindness, is gradually created between the sentenced and the executor of the sentence. It is difficult or even impossible to recall without a shudder the barbarity of long-bygone days, when these two, not knowing each other at all, strangers to each other, but bound together by implacable law, met face to face only at the last instant before the sacrament itself. This has all been changed just as the ancient, barbaric wedding ceremony, more closely resembling a human sacrifice--when the submissive virgin was hurled by her parents into the tent of a stranger--has changed with the passing of time."

  (Cincinnatus found in his pocket a piece of tinfoil chocolate wrapper and began kneading it.)

  "And so, gentlemen, in order to establish the friendliest possible relations with the condemned, I moved into a gloomy cell like his, in the guise of a prisoner like him, if not more so. My innocent deception could not but succeed and therefore it would be strange for me to feel any remorse; but I do not want the cup of our friendship to be poisoned by the slightest drop of bitterness. In spite of the fact that there are witnesses present, and that I know myself to be absolutely in the right, I ask" (he stretched his hand out to Cincinnatus) "your forgiveness."

  "Yes, that's real tact for you," said the director in a low voice, and his inflamed froglike eyes grew damp; he produced a folded handkerchief and was about to dab at his palpitating eyelid, but thought better of it, and instead fixed a severe, expectant gaze on Cincinnatus. The lawyer also glanced, but only in passing, as he silently moved his lips, which had begun to look like his handwriting, that is, without breaking his connection with the line, which had separated from the paper but was ready to resume its course upon it instantly.

  "Your hand!" roared the director, and took such a whack at the table that he hurt his thumb.

  "No, don't force him if he does not want to," M'sieur Pierre said gently. "After all, it is only a formality. Let us continue."

  "Oh, righteous one," trilled Rodrig Ivanovich, bestowing upon M'sieur Pierre a glance as moist as a kiss.

  "Let us continue," said M'sieur Pierre. "During this time I have succeeded in establishing a close friendship with my neighbor. We passed ..."

  Cincinnatus looked under the table. M'sieur Pierre for some reason lost countenance, began to fidget and cast a sidelong glance down. The director, lifting a corner of the oilcloth, also looked down and then glanced suspiciously at Cincinnatus. The lawyer, in his turn, made a dive, then looked around at everybody and resumed writing. Cincinnatus straightened up. (Nothing special--he had dropped his little ball of tinfoil.)

  "We passed," M'sieur Pierre went on in a hurt voice, "long evenings together in constant talks, games and various amusements. Like children, we engaged in contests of strength; I, poor, weak little M'sieur Pierre naturally, oh, naturally was no match for my mighty coeval. We discussed everything--such as sex and other lofty subjects, and the hours flew by like minutes, the minutes like hours. Sometimes, in peaceful silence ..."

  Here Rodrig Ivanovich suddenly tittered. "Impayable, ce 'naturally,' " he whispered, getting the joke a little late.

  "... Sometimes, in peaceful silence, we would sit side by side, almost with our arms about each other, each thinking his own twilight thoughts, and the thoughts of both of us would flow together like rivers when we opened our lips to speak. I shared with him my experience in romance, taught him the art of chess, entertained him with a timely anecdote. And so the days passed. The results are before you. We grew to love each other, and the structure of Cincinnatus's soul is as well known to me as the structure of his neck. Thus it will be not an unfamiliar, terrible somebody but a tender friend that will help him mount the crimson steps, and he will surrender himself to me without fear--forever, for all death. Let the will of the public be carried out!" (He got up; the director got up also; the lawyer, engrossed in his writing, only rose slightly.)

  "So. Now, Rodrig Ivanovich, I shall ask you to announce my title officially and to introduce me."

  The director hastily put on his glasses, examined a slip of paper, and in a megaphone voice addressed Cincinnatus:

  "All right--This is M'sieur Pierre. Bref--the performer of the execution.... I am grateful for the honor," he added and, with an astonished expression on his face, dropped back into his chair.

  "Well, you didn't manage that too well," said M'sieur Pierre with displeasure. "After all, there are certain official forms of procedure and they ought to be followed. I am certainly no pedant, but at such an important moment ... It's no use holding your hand to your chest, you botched it, friend. No, no, stay seated, enough. Now let us continue. Roman Vissarionovich, where is the program?"

  "I gave it to you," the lawyer said glibly. "However ..." and he began to rummage in his briefcase.

  "I found it, don't bother," said M'sieur Pierre, "so ... the performance is scheduled for the day after tomorrow ... In Thriller Square. Couldn't they have picked a better place ... Remarkable!" (Goes on reading, muttering to himself) "Adults will be admitted ... Circus subscription stubs will be honored ... So, so, so ... The performer of the execution, in red pantaloons ... now this is nonsense--they've overdone it, as usual ..." (To Cincinnatus) "Day after tomorrow, then. Did you understand--? And tomorrow, as our glorious custom demands, you and I must go visit the city fathers--I think you have the little list, don't you, Rodrig Ivanovich?"

  Rodrig Ivanovich began to slap at various parts of his cotton-padded body, rolling his eyes and for some reason getting up. At last the list was found.

  "All righty," said M'sieur Pierre. "Add it to your file, Roman Vissarionovich. I think that does it. Now, according to the law, the floor belongs to--"

  "Oh, no, c'est vraiment superflu..." Rodrig Ivanovich interrupted hastily. "After all, that's a very antiquated law."

  "According to the law," M'sieur Pierre repeated firmly, turning to Cincinnatus, "the floor is yours."

  "Honest one!" said the director in a breaking voice, his jelly jowls shaking.

  Silence ensued. The lawyer was writing so quickly that the flashing of his pencil hurt the eyes.

  "I shall wait one whole minute," said M'sieur Pierre, placing a thick watch on the table before him.

  The lawyer inhaled jerkily and began gathering up the thickly covered sheets.

  The minute passed.

  "The conference is concluded," said M'sieur Pierre. "Let us go, gentlemen. Roman Vissarionovich, you will let me look over the minutes before you have them mimeographed, won't you? No, a little later--right now my eyes are tired."

  "I must admit," said the director, "in spite of myself I sometimes regret that we no longer use the sys ..." He bent over to M'sieur Pierre's ear in the doorway.

  "What's that you're saying, Rodrig Ivanovich?" the lawyer inquired jealously. The director whispered it to him also.

  "Yes, you're right," agreed the lawyer. "However, the dear little law can be circumvented. For example, if we stretch the chop-chop out to several times ..."

  "Now, now," said M'sieur Pierre, "enough of that, you jokers, I never make notches."

  "No, we were just speaking theoretically," the director smiled ingratiatingly; "only in the old days, when it was legal to use--" The door slammed shut, and the voices faded in the distance.

  Almost immediately, however, another guest called on Cincinnatus--the librarian, coming to fetch the books. His long, pale face with its halo of dusty-black hair around a bald spot, his long tremulous torso in the bluish sweater, his long legs in the truncated trousers--all of this together created an odd, morbid impression, as if the man had been squashed and flattened out. However, it seemed to Cincinnatus that, with the book dust, a film of something remotely human had settled on the librarian.

  "You must have heard," said Cincinnatus, "the day a
fter tomorrow will be my extermination. I shan't be taking any more books."

  "You will not," said the librarian.

  Cincinnatus went on: "I should like to weed out a few noxious truths. Do you have a minute? I want to say that now, when I know exactly ... How delightful was that very ignorance that so depressed me ... No more books ..."

  "Would you like something about gods?" the librarian suggested.

  "No, don't bother. I don't feel like reading that."

  "Some do," said the librarian.

  "Yes, I know, but really, it's not worthwhile."

  "For the last night," the librarian finished his thought with difficulty.

  "You are awfully talkative today," said Cincinnatus with a smile. "No, take all this away. I wasn't able to finish Quercus! Oh yes, by the way, this was brought me by mistake ... these little volumes ... Arabic, aren't they? ... unfortunately I hadn't time to study the Oriental languages."

  "Pity," said the librarian.

  "It's all right, my soul will make up for it. Wait a minute, do not go yet. Although I know, of course, that you are only bound in human skin, as it were, yet ... I am content with little ... The day after tomorrow--"

  But, trembling, the librarian left.

  Seventeen

  Tradition required that on the eve of the execution its passive and active participants together make a brief farewell visit to each of the chief officials; however, in order to shorten the ritual, it was decided that those persons would assemble at the suburban house of the deputy city manager (the manager himself, who was the deputy's nephew, was away, visiting friends in Pritomsk) and that Cincinnatus and M'sieur Pierre would drop in for an informal supper.

  It was a dark night, and a strong warm wind was blowing when, dressed in identical capes, on foot, escorted by six soldiers carrying halberds and lanterns, they crossed the bridge and entered the sleeping city where, avoiding the main streets, they began to climb a flinty path between rustling gardens.

  (Just before that, on the bridge Cincinnatus had turned, freeing his head from the hood of his cloak: the blue, elaborate, many-towered, huge bulk of the fortress rose into the dull sky, where a cloud had barred an apricot moon. The dark air above the bridge blinked and twitched because of the bats. "You promised ...," whispered M'sieur Pierre, giving him a slight squeeze on the elbow, and Cincinnatus again pulled on his cowl.)

  This nocturnal promenade which had promised to be so rich with sad, carefree, singing, murmuring impressions--for what is a recollection, if not the soul of an impression?--proved in reality to be vague and insignificant and flashed by so quickly as happens only amid very familiar surroundings, in the dark, when the varicolored fractions of day are replaced by the integers of night.

  At the end of a narrow and gloomy lane, where the gravel crunched and there was a smell of juniper, there suddenly appeared a theatrically lighted carriage porch with whitewashed columns, friezes on the pediment, and potted laurels, and hardly pausing in the vestibule, where servants flitted to and fro like birds of paradise, shedding plumes on the black and white tiles, Cincinnatus and M'sieur Pierre entered a hall buzzing with a large gathering. All were assembled here.

  Here the custodian of the city fountains could be at once recognized by his characteristic shock of hair; here the telegraph chief's uniform flashed with golden medals; here, with his obscene nose, was the ruddy director of supplies; and the lion-tamer with an Italian name; and the judge, deaf and venerable; and, in green patent-leather shoes, the park administrator; and a multitude of other stately, respectable, gray-haired individuals with repulsive faces. There were no ladies present, unless one counted the district superintendent of schools, a very stout, elderly woman in a gray frock coat cut like a man's, with large flat cheeks and a smooth hairdo as shiny as steel.

  Someone slipped on the parquetry, to the accompaniment of general laughter. A chandelier dropped one of its candles. Someone had already placed a bouquet on a small coffin that had been set out for exhibition. Standing apart with Cincinnatus, M'sieur Pierre was calling his charge's attention to these phenomena.

  Just then, however, the host, a swarthy old man with a goatee, clapped his hands. The doors were flung open, and everyone moved into the dining room. M'sieur Pierre and Cincinnatus were seated side by side at the head of a dazzling table, and everyone began to glance, with restraint at first, then with benevolent curiosity--which in some began to turn into surreptitious tenderness--at the pair, identically clad in Elsinore jackets; then, as a lambent smile gradually appeared on M'sieur Pierre's lips and he began to talk, the eyes of the guests turned more and more openly toward him and Cincinnatus, who was unhurriedly, diligently and intently--as if seeking the solution to a problem--balancing his fish knife in various ways, now on the salt shaker, now on the incurvation of the fork, now leaning it against the slender crystal vase with a white rose that distinctly adorned his place.

  The footmen, recruited from among the town's most adroit dandies--the best representatives of its purple youth--briskly served the food (sometimes even leaping across the table with a dish), and everyone noticed the polite solicitude with which M'sieur Pierre took care of Cincinnatus, immediately switching from a conversational smile to momentary seriousness, while he carefully placed a choice morsel on Cincinnatus's plate; whereupon, with the former playful twinkle on his pink, hairless face, he would resume his witty conversation, directed to the whole table--and suddenly, leaning over just a little, grabbing the gravy boat or the pepper shaker, he would glance interrogatively at Cincinnatus; the latter, however, did not touch any of the food, but continued, just as silently, attentively and diligently, to shift the knife about.

  "Your remark," M'sieur Pierre said gaily, turning to the city traffic chief, who had managed to get a word in and was now pleasurably anticipating a scintillating reply, "your remark reminds me of the well-known anecdote about the Hippocratic oath."

  "Tell it, we don't know it, do tell it," voices begged him from all sides.

  "I comply with your wish," said M'sieur Pierre. "To a gynecologist comes this--"

  "Scuse the intermission," said the lion-tamer (gray-haired and mustachioed, with a crimson ribbon across his chest), "but is the gent convicted that the anecdotus is wholesomely for the ears of ...?" He emphatically indicated Cincinnatus with his eyes.

  "Quite, quite," M'sieur Pierre replied sternly, "I would never allow myself the slightest impropriety in the presence of ... As I was saying, to a gynecologist comes this little old lady" (M'sieur Pierre stuck out his lower lip slightly). "She says, 'I've got quite a serious illness and I'm afraid it'll be the death of me.' 'What are the symptoms?' asks the doctor. 'Oh doctor, my head shakes ...' " and M'sieur Pierre, mumbling and shaking, mimicked the old woman.

  The guests roared. At the other end of the table the deaf judge, his face in agonized contortions as if constipated with laughter, was thrusting his large, humid ear in the face of his guffawing, selfish neighbor, and, tugging at his sleeve, implored him to repeat the story of M'sieur Pierre, who, meanwhile, was jealously following the fate of his anecdote across the whole length of the table, and was satisfied only when somebody had assuaged the sufferer's curiosity.

  "Your remarkable aphorism that life is a medical secret," said the custodian of fountains, creating such a spray of fine saliva that a rainbow formed near his mouth, "might very well be applied to the odd thing that happened the other day in my secretary's family. Can you imagine ..."

  "Well, my little Cincinnatus, are you afraid?" one of the glittering footmen asked Cincinnatus as he poured him wine; Cincinnatus looked up, it was his waggish brother-in-law. "Afraid, aren't you? Here, have a drink on the brink."

  "What's going on here?" M'sieur Pierre coldly said, putting the babbler in his place, and the latter promptly stepped away, and now he was bending over with his bottle at the elbow of the next guest.

  "Gentlemen!" exclaimed the host, rising from his chair and holding his glass containing an icy pale-yellow dri
nk at the level of his starched chest. "I propose a toast to ..."

  "Bitter, bitter, sweeten it with a kiss," said a recent best man, and the rest of the guests joined in the chanting.

  "Let us ... a bruderschaft ... I implore you--" M'sieur Pierre said to Cincinnatus in a changed voice, his face twisted in supplication, "do not refuse me this, I implore you, this is the way it is done always, always ..."

  Cincinnatus was fiddling with the curled petal tips of the moist white rose, which he had absently pulled out of the overturned vase.

  "... I have the right, finally, to demand," M'sieur Pierre whispered convulsively, and suddenly, with a gasp of forced laugh, he poured a drop of wine from his glass on top of Cincinnatus's head, and then sprinkled himself also.

  Cries of "Bravo!" were heard from all sides, and neighbor would turn to neighbor, expressing in dramatic pantomime his wonder and delight, and the unbreakable glasses clinked, and heaps of apples each as big as a child's head shone among the dusty-blue bunches of grapes on a silver ship breasting the air, and the table seemed to slope up like a diamond mountain, and the many-armed chandelier journeyed through the mists of plafond art, shedding tears, shedding beams, in vain search of a landing.

  "I am touched, touched," M'sieur Pierre was saying, as they took turns coming up to him to congratulate him. As they did so, some of them stumbled, and a few sang. The father of the city firemen was disgracefully drunk; two of the servants were trying stealthily to haul him away, but he sacrificed his coattails like a lizard does its tail, and remained. The respectable woman, who supervised the schools, flushing blotchily, was silently and tensely leaning away as she defended herself from the supply director, who was playfully aiming at her with his finger, which resembled a carrot, as though he were about to transfix her or tickle her, all the while repeating, "tee-tee-tee!"

  "Friends, let us go out on the terrace," announced the host, whereupon Marthe's brother and the son of the late Dr. Sineokov pulled open a drapery with a rattle of wooden rings; the swaying light of painted lanterns revealed a stone veranda, bordered further by the tenpinlike uprights of a balustrade, between which showed black the hourglasses of night.