The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Meanwhile we kept sinking into the ooze more and more frequently, deeper and deeper; the insatiable mire would suck at us; and, wriggling, we would slip free. Cook kept falling down and crawling, covered with insect bites, all swollen and soaked, and, dear God, how he would squeal when disgusting bevies of minute, bright-green hydrotic snakes, attracted by our sweat, would take off in pursuit of us, tensing and uncoiling to sail two yards and then another two. I, however, was much more frightened by something else: now and then, on my left (always, for some reason, on my left), listing among the repetitious reeds, what seemed a large armchair but was actually a strange, cumbersome gray amphibian, whose name Gregson refused to tell me, would rise out of the swamp.

  “A break,” said Gregson abruptly, “let’s take a break.”

  By a stroke of luck we managed to scramble onto an islet of rock, surrounded by the swamp vegetation. Gregson took off his knapsack and issued us some native patties, smelling of ipecacuanha, and a dozen acreana fruit. How thirsty I was, and how little help was the scanty, astringent juice of the acreana.…

  “Look, how odd,” Gregson said to me, not in English, but in some other language, so that Cook would not understand. “We must get through to the hills, but look, how odd—could the hills have been a mirage?—they are no longer visible.”

  I raised myself up from my pillow and leaned my elbow on the resilient surface of the rock.… Yes, it was true that the hills were no longer visible; there was only the quivering vapor hanging over the marsh. Once again everything around me assumed an ambiguous transparency. I leaned back and said softly to Gregson, “You probably can’t see, but something keeps trying to come through.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Gregson.

  I realized that what I was saying was nonsense and stopped. My head was spinning and there was a humming in my ears; Gregson, down on one knee, rummaged through his knapsack, but found no medicine there, and my supply was exhausted. Cook sat in silence, morosely picking at a rock. Through a rent in his shirtsleeve there showed a strange tattoo on his arm: a crystal tumbler with a teaspoon, very well executed.

  “Vallière is sick—haven’t you got some tablets?” Gregson said to him. I did not hear the exact words, but I could guess the general sense of their talk, which would grow absurd and somehow spherical when I tried to listen more closely.

  Cook turned slowly and the glassy tattoo slid off his skin to one side, remaining suspended in midair; then it floated off, floated off, and I pursued it with my frightened gaze, but, as I turned away, it lost itself in the vapor of the swamp, with a last faint gleam.

  “Serves you right,” muttered Cook. “It’s just too bad. The same will happen to you and me. Just too bad.…”

  In the course of the last few minutes—that is, ever since we had stopped to rest on the rocky islet—he seemed to have grown larger, had swelled, and there was now something mocking and dangerous about him. Gregson took off his sun helmet and, pulling out a dirty handkerchief, wiped his forehead, which was orange over the brows, and white above that. Then he put on his helmet again, leaned over to me, and said, “Pull yourself together, please” (or words to that effect). “We shall try to move on. The vapor is hiding the hills, but they are there. I am certain we have covered about half the swamp.” (This is all very approximate.)

  “Murderer,” said Cook under his breath. The tattoo was now again on his forearm; not the entire glass, though, but one side of it—there was not quite enough room for the remainder, which quivered in space, casting reflections. “Murderer,” Cook repeated with satisfaction, raising his inflamed eyes. “I told you we would get stuck here. Black dogs eat too much carrion. Mi, re, fa, sol.”

  “He’s a clown,” I softly informed Gregson, “a Shakespearean clown.”

  “Clow, clow, clow,” Gregson answered, “clow, clow—clo, clo, clo.… Do you hear,” he went on, shouting in my ear. “You must get up. We have to move on.”

  The rock was as white and as soft as a bed. I raised myself a little, but promptly fell back on the pillow.

  “We shall have to carry him,” said Gregson’s faraway voice. “Give me a hand.”

  “Fiddlesticks,” replied Cook (or so it sounded to me). “I suggest we enjoy some fresh meat before he dries up. Fa, sol, mi, re.”

  “He’s sick, he’s sick too,” I cried to Gregson. “You’re here with two lunatics. Go ahead alone. You’ll make it.… Go.”

  “Fat chance we’ll let him go,” said Cook.

  Meanwhile delirious visions, taking advantage of the general confusion, were quietly and firmly finding their places. The lines of a dim ceiling stretched and crossed in the sky. A large armchair rose, as if supported from below, out of the swamp. Glossy birds flew through the haze of the marsh and, as they settled, one turned into the wooden knob of a bedpost, another into a decanter. Gathering all my willpower, I focused my gaze and drove off this dangerous trash. Above the reeds flew real birds with long flame-colored tails. The air buzzed with insects. Gregson was waving away a varicolored fly, and at the same time trying to determine its species. Finally he could contain himself no longer and caught it in his net. His motions underwent curious changes, as if someone kept reshuffling them. I saw him in different poses simultaneously; he was divesting himself of himself, as if he were made of many glass Gregsons whose outlines did not coincide. Then he condensed again, and stood up firmly. He was shaking Cook by the shoulder.

  “You are going to help me carry him,” Gregson was saying distinctly. “If you were not a traitor, we would not be in this mess.”

  Cook remained silent, but slowly flushed purple.

  “See here, Cook, you’ll regret this,” said Gregson. “I’m telling you for the last time—”

  At this point occurred what had been ripening for a long time. Cook drove his head like a bull into Gregson’s stomach. They both fell; Gregson had time to get his revolver out, but Cook managed to knock it out of his hand. Then they clutched each other and started rolling in their embrace, panting deafeningly. I looked at them, helpless. Cook’s broad back would grow tense and the vertebrae would show through his shirt; but suddenly, instead of his back, a leg, also his, would appear, covered with coppery hairs, and with a blue vein running up the skin, and Gregson was rolling on top of him. Gregson’s helmet flew off and wobbled away, like half of an enormous cardboard egg. From somewhere in the labyrinth of their bodies Cook’s fingers wriggled out, clenching a rusty but sharp knife; the knife entered Gregson’s back as if it were clay, but Gregson only gave a grunt, and they both rolled over several times; when I next saw my friend’s back the handle and top half of the blade protruded, while his hands had locked around Cook’s thick neck, which crunched as he squeezed, and Cook’s legs were twitching. They made one last full revolution, and now only a quarter of the blade was visible—no, a fifth—no, now not even that much showed: it had entered completely. Gregson grew still after having piled on top of Cook, who had also become motionless.

  I watched, and it seemed to me (fogged as my senses were by fever) that this was all a harmless game, that in a moment they would get up and, when they had caught their breath, would peacefully carry me off across the swamp toward the cool blue hills, to some shady place with babbling water. But suddenly, at this last stage of my mortal illness—for I knew that in a few minutes I would die—in these final minutes everything grew completely lucid: I realized that all that was taking place around me was not the trick of an inflamed imagination, not the veil of delirium, through which unwelcome glimpses of my supposedly real existence in a distant European city (the wallpaper, the armchair, the glass of lemonade) were trying to show. I realized that the obtrusive room was fictitious, since everything beyond death is, at best, fictitious: an imitation of life hastily knocked together, the furnished rooms of nonexistence. I realized that reality was here, here beneath that wonderful, frightening tropical sky, among those gleaming swordlike reeds, in that vapor hanging over them, and in the thick-lippe
d flowers clinging to the flat islet, where, beside me, lay two clinched corpses. And, having realized this, I found within me the strength to crawl over to them and pull the knife from the back of Gregson, my leader, my dear friend. He was dead, quite dead, and all the little bottles in his pockets were broken and crushed. Cook, too, was dead, and his ink-black tongue protruded from his mouth. I pried open Gregson’s fingers and turned his body over. His lips were half-open and bloody; his face, which already seemed hardened, appeared badly shaven; the bluish whites of his eyes showed between the lids. For the last time I saw all this distinctly, consciously, with the seal of authenticity on everything—their skinned knees, the bright flies circling over them, the females of those flies already seeking a spot for oviposition. Fumbling with my enfeebled hands, I took a thick notebook out of my shirt pocket, but here I was overcome by weakness; I sat down and my head drooped. And yet I conquered this impatient fog of death and looked around. Blue air, heat, solitude.… And how sorry I felt for Gregson, who would never return home—I even remembered his wife and the old cook, and his parrots, and many other things. Then I thought about our discoveries, our precious finds, the rare, still undescribed plants and animals that now would never be named by us. I was alone. Hazier flashed the reeds, dimmer flamed the sky. My eyes followed an exquisite beetle that was crawling across a stone, but I had no strength left to catch it. Everything around me was fading, leaving bare the scenery of death—a few pieces of realistic furniture and four walls. My last motion was to open the book, which was damp with my sweat, for I absolutely had to make a note of something; but, alas, it slipped out of my hand. I groped all along the blanket, but it was no longer there.

  THE REUNION

  LEV had a brother, Serafim, who was older and fatter than he, although it was entirely possible that during the past nine years—no, wait … God, it was ten, more than ten—he had got thinner, who knows. In a few minutes we shall find out. Lev had left Russia and Serafim had remained, a matter of pure chance in both cases. In fact, you might say that it was Lev who had been leftish, while Serafim, a recent graduate of the Polytechnic Institute, thought of nothing but his chosen field and was wary of political air currents.… How strange, how very strange that in a few minutes he would come in. Was an embrace called for? So many years … A “spets,” a specialist. Ah, those words with the chewed-off endings, like discarded fishheads … “spets”…

  There had been a phone call that morning, and an unfamiliar female voice had announced in German that he had arrived, and would like to drop in that evening, as he was leaving again the following day. This had come as a surprise, even though Lev already knew that his brother was in Berlin. Lev had a friend who had a friend, who in turn knew a man who worked at the USSR Trade Mission. Serafim had come on an assignment to arrange a purchase of something or other. Was he a Party member? More than ten years …

  All those years they had been out of touch. Serafim knew absolutely nothing about his brother, and Lev knew next to nothing about Serafim. A couple of times Lev caught a glimpse of Serafim’s name through the smokescreen grayness of the Soviet papers that he glanced through at the library. “And inasmuch as the fundamental prerequisite of industrialization,” spouted Serafim, “is the consolidation of socialist elements in our economic system generally, radical progress in the village emerges as one of the particularly essential and immediate current tasks.”

  Lev, who had finished his studies with an excusable delay at the University of Prague (his thesis was about Slavophile influences in Russian literature), was now seeking his fortune in Berlin, without ever really being able to decide where that fortune lay: in dealing in various knickknacks, as Leshcheyev advised, or in a printer’s job, as Fuchs suggested. Leshcheyev and Fuchs and their wives, by the way, were supposed to come over that evening (it was Russian Christmas). Lev had spent his last bit of cash on a secondhand Christmas tree, fifteen inches tall; a few crimson candles; a pound of zwieback; and half a pound of candy. His guests had promised to take care of the vodka and the wine. However, as soon as he received the conspiratorial, incredible message that his brother wanted to see him, Lev promptly called off the party. The Leshcheyevs were out, and he left word with the maid that something unexpected had come up. Of course, a face-to-face talk with his brother in stark privacy would already be sheer torture, but it would be even worse if … “This is my brother, he’s here from Russia.” “Pleased to meet you. Well, are they about ready to croak?” “Whom exactly are you referring to? I don’t understand.” Leshcheyev was particularly impassioned and intolerant.… No, the Christmas party had to be called off.

  Now, at about eight in the evening, Lev was pacing his shabby but clean little room, bumping now against the table, now against the white headboard of the lean bed—a needy but neat little man, in a black suit worn shiny and a turndown collar that was too large for him. His face was beardless, snub-nosed, and not very distinguished, with smallish, slightly mad eyes. He wore spats to hide the holes in his socks. He had recently been separated from his wife, who had quite unexpectedly betrayed him, and with whom! A vulgarian, a nonentity.… Now he put away her portrait; otherwise he would have to answer his brother’s questions (“Who’s that?” “My ex-wife.” “What do you mean, ex?”). He removed the Christmas tree too, setting it, with his landlady’s permission, out on her balcony—otherwise, who knows, his brother might start making fun of émigré sentimentality. Why had he bought it in the first place? Tradition. Guests, candlelight. Turn off the lamp—let the little tree glow alone. Mirrorlike glints in Mrs. Leshcheyev’s pretty eyes.

  What would he talk about to his brother? Should he tell him, casually and lightheartedly, about his adventures in the south of Russia at the time of the civil war? Should he jokingly complain about his present (unbearable, stifling) poverty? Or pretend to be a broadminded man who was above émigré resentment, and understood … understood what? That Serafim could have preferred to my poverty, my purity, an active collaboration … and with whom, with whom! Or should he, instead, attack him, shame him, argue with him, even be acidly witty? “Grammatically, Leningrad can only mean the town of Nellie.”

  He pictured Serafim, his meaty, sloping shoulders, his huge rubbers, the puddles in the garden in front of their dacha, the death of their parents, the beginning of the Revolution.… They had never been particularly close—even when they were at school, each had his own friends, and their teachers were different.… In the summer of his seventeenth year Serafim had a rather unsavory affair with a lady from a neighboring dacha, a lawyer’s wife. The lawyer’s hysterical screams, the flying fists, the disarray of the not so young lady, with the catlike face, running down the garden avenue and, somewhere in the background, the disgraceful noise of shattering glass. One day, while swimming in a river, Serafim had nearly drowned.… These were Lev’s more colorful recollections of his brother, and God knows they didn’t amount to much. You often feel that you remember someone vividly and in detail, then you check the matter and it all turns out to be so inane, so meager, so shallow—a deceptive façade, a bogus enterprise on the part of your memory. Nevertheless, Serafim was still his brother. He ate a lot. He was orderly. What else? One evening, at the tea table …

  The clock struck eight. Lev cast a nervous glance out the window. It was drizzling, and the streetlamps swam in the mist. The white remains of wet snow showed on the sidewalk. Warmed-over Christmas. Pale paper ribbons, left over from the German New Year, hung from a balcony across the street, quivering limply in the dark. The sudden peal of the front-door bell hit Lev like a flash of electricity somewhere in the region of his solar plexus.

  He was even bigger and fatter than before. He pretended to be terribly out of breath. He took Lev’s hand. Both of them were silent, with identical grins on their faces. A Russian wadded coat, with a small astrakhan collar that fastened with a hook; a gray hat that had been bought abroad.

  “Over here,” said Lev. “Take it off. Come, I’ll put it here. Did you fi
nd the house right away?”

  “Took the subway,” said Serafim, panting. “Well, well. So that’s how it is.…”

  With an exaggerated sigh of relief he sat down in an armchair.

  “There’ll be some tea ready in a minute,” Lev said in a bustling tone as he fussed with a spirit lamp on the sink.

  “Foul weather,” said Serafim, rubbing his palms together. Actually it was rather warm out.

  The alcohol went into a copper sphere; when you turned a thumbscrew it oozed into a black groove. You had to release a tiny amount, turn the screw shut, and light a match. A soft, yellowish flame would appear, floating in the groove, then gradually die, whereupon you opened the valve again, and, with a loud report (under the iron base where a tall tin teapot bearing a large birthmark on its flank stood with the air of a victim) a very different, livid flame like a serrated blue crown burst into life. How and why all this happened Lev did not know, nor did the matter interest him. He blindly followed the landlady’s instructions. At first Serafim watched the fuss with the spirit lamp over his shoulder, to the extent allowed by his corpulence; then he got up and came closer, and they talked for a while about the apparatus, Serafim explaining its operation and turning the thumbscrew gently back and forth.