The Flight

by Gaito Gazdanov

  “And you haven’t drawn any conclusions from this?”

  Suddenly Liza, eyes wide with rage, said quietly, looking Sergey Sergeyevich straight in the eyes:

  “I cannot go on like this any longer, do you understand? Always nice, always joking, always this forgiving wit of yours—and a complete absence of passion, blood and desire.”

  “God, what dreadful things you say,” said Sergey Sergeyevich in that same heroic tone of voice with which he would tell his hunting tale: The day, as I recall, was overcast, calm. My dog, which I’d bought—just imagine!—completely by chance from a peasant and which turned out…

  “I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it!” Liza screamed, and, getting up from her place, she went to her room.

  Sergey Sergeyevich and Seryozha were left alone. The former began whistling a serenade slowly, paying attention to the pitch and the purity of the sound. He whistled the tune right through to the end and said:

  “When you’re down in the Midi, advise your aunt to take as many baths as possible; it’ll calm her nerves. À part ça,§§§ how are things with you?”

  “Not bad,” said Seryozha. “I was training for the hundred metres today.”

  “What was your time?”

  “Twelve and a half.”

  “A little on the slow side,” said Sergey Sergeyevich. “I suspect you’re losing time at the start.”

  * Always delectable, always enchanting… I’m so pleased to see you.

  † Swoons.

  ‡ Can this possibly be so? Come, come!… Oh yes, my poor reader, oh yes!

  § People of ill intent.

  ¶ He is gone, my child.

  || She let them get on with it.

  ** You called me erudite; perhaps you thought I wouldn’t know?

  †† The staging will be sumptuous.

  ‡‡ Sumptuous staging… scenes dashed off at a fiendish pace… the strange charm of Mademoiselle… the warm and captivating voice of Monsieur.

  §§ Marvellous… splendid… we’ve got to find a way.

  ¶¶ I like your plan very much, Madame. Yes, I like it very much… A room full to bursting and the cheering crowd, the very crowd that has always adored you.

  |||| With his fortune, he can afford to…

  *** Marvellous.

  ††† All fabulous people.

  ‡‡‡ Well then, little one… what is it that you want?

  §§§ That aside.

  ARKADY ALEXANDROVICH KUZNETSOV, with whom Olga Alexandrovna had travelled to Italy and whom she had met about a year previously, was a stoutish man of forty-seven with dull eyes and a small bald patch, who dressed in a somewhat antiquated fashion and carried a cane with an ornate handle; his complexion was slightly jaundiced; he was short of breath; he walked slowly, and his voice was unexpectedly high-pitched. He never exercised or played sports, and on account of this his hands and body were soft, like a woman’s. He was a writer by profession—and it was to this fact that he owed his acquaintance with Olga Alexandrovna, for he had met her at a literary evening, where a middle-aged poet with desperate eyes and a haggard face had recited the most naive verses, of which the majority described nature and a love of the earth.

  Naturally, it was Sergey Sergeyevich who had bought the tickets to this evening, so fateful in Olga Alexandrovna’s life. At dinner he had said to her and Liza:

  “Ladies, you should, at least once in your life, go and hear some poetry.”

  He then explained that the poet they were to hear was un brave homme,* with six children and an interminably pregnant wife, and that the man was hard up. All this had come so out of the blue that Olga Alexandrovna and Liza decided to attend the evening. The poet recited his verse, each one exceedingly like the last and so feeble that the audience began to feel somewhat embarrassed. What was more, the poet had a marked Provençal accent. However, having delivered his third offering, he looked to the audience and suddenly smiled such an artless, naive smile, unaware of its charm, giving everyone to realize that the poetry, of course, was unimportant, and what was important was that he truly was the sweetest and most ingenuous man, who most probably loved children dearly—and all this was contained in that astonishing smile.

  “Oh, how charming!” said Olga Alexandrovna in Russian.

  And the man sitting beside her turned his pale, jaundiced face to her with its dull, laughing eyes, and said:

  “Indeed.”

  During the interval this man introduced himself to Olga Alexandrovna, apologizing for the remark he had permitted himself to make; Olga Alexandrovna had never heard of him, but Liza had read his books, and so the conversation turned to literature. He then invited them to a cafe, was very sweet, amiable and unassuming, and so Olga Alexandrovna went to the next literary evening with the firm intention of meeting him. Such an intention also guided Arkady Alexandrovich, and after a short while their acquaintance began to take on a precariously habitual form, in the absence of which, in some fatal way, Olga Alexandrovna’s life could no longer go on. When Liza asked Sergey Sergeyevich whether he had heard of Kuznetsov, he replied that he had, and to the question of what he made of him, Sergey Sergeyevich replied with his usual smile:

  “A maniac with a pen.”

  Then, with his habitual kindliness, he began to talk of literature and writers whom he considered, every one of them without exception, charming people, but, of course, mad and misguided. Their error lay primarily in their choice of vocation; as far as Sergey Sergeyevich was concerned, the majority of them ought not to write at all.

  “What do you mean by ‘the majority’?”

  “The term is, of course, diplomatic, Lizochka. However, on this occasion I can be more precise: ninety per cent.”

  “You’re terribly harsh, Sergey Sergeyevich.”

  “Harsh? How so? I give them money.”

  “You give everyone money.”

  “Not everyone, thankfully. But to a lot of people, it’s true.”

  “Where’s your respect for a writer?”

  “Liza, dear, don’t play that game with me. You too could do with showing some respect. Perhaps you keep a diary? All right, then, just to make you happy I’ll give you another utterly rapturous take on literature. So, why should I have any respect for writers? Take this Kuznetsov of yours: you know these sorry books he writes—they’re all dust and vanity, so to speak, while he himself is such an interesting and intelligent man and understands all this perfectly well. Lizochka, all his characters talk in that same intellectual, legalistic language that no living person speaks, but for barristers, solicitors and pharmacists. And all these characters of his—from a groom to a general—say exactly the same things.”

  “What, would you deny a man’s right to pessimism?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. But what’s important is the cause of… Suppose the man has chronic rheumatism, or kidney trouble, or a liver complaint—there’s pessimism for you.”

  “You astound me, Seryozha, with such a crude physiological explanation.”

  “Of course, it isn’t quite so simple: it passes through a multitude of stages along the way; only I’m omitting them. Or here, suppose he’s impotent.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t be too sure about that.”

  “No, that, of course, was merely by way of suggestion. He’s really the nicest chap. I know him; I’ve met him a handful of times, a little melancholic, a little limp, but on the whole quite charming. Perhaps he’s on the rocks? Why do you mention him, anyhow?”

  “We met him at the literary evening.”

  “Oh! What of it?”

  “He seemed to take a shine to us,” said Liza, walking out of the room. Following her, Sergey Sergeyevich’s leisurely voice, in which this time one could hear a genuine smile, said:

  “To listen to you, Lizochka, one might think you were a saint.”

  There was no more talk of Arkady Alexandrovich. Only one day at dinner, Sergey Sergeyevich mentioned in passing that he had been reading a book by Arkady Alexandrovi
ch, The Last Stage, and that he found it remarkable: such intellect, such understanding; he said it with such innocent and unsuspecting conviction that Olga Alexandrovna looked at him with gratitude in her eyes, and only Liza, without raising her head—she was eating an artichoke—uttered: “Your acting skills are wasted, Sergey Sergeyevich!”

  Meanwhile, relations between Olga Alexandrovna and Arkady Alexandrovich were beginning to take on a rather definitive character. Olga Alexandrovna had read all of his books; in reading them, she seemed to hear the intonations of his touchingly high-pitched, childlike voice, and all his characters’ many travails, which were brought about by the most varied of circumstances, caused Olga Alexandrovna to return to one and the same thought, which she once revealed to her sister, saying that one had only to read these books to know just how much suffering this man must have gone through in order to write them. Indeed, Arkady Alexandrovich’s books were marvels. They betrayed an indefinable beauty that was forever restive and growing, never-ending; everything was clever, tender and melancholy, and no one but Olga Alexandrovna could see this. Olga Alexandrovna began to see to his clothes, to make sure that he wore a warm coat—it was cold outside—that he did not catch cold, that he went to see the doctor. And so Arkady Alexandrovich in turn, in his forty-eighth year, fell in love for the first time in his life. It struck him one morning, when his wife, a tired woman with mercilessly bleached hair, heard him singing. She was so astonished that she left her bedroom in a nightdress and walked down the hallway to the bathroom, where she saw Arkady Alexandrovich bare to the waist, his odious, white, flaccid body and—in the mirror—his unexpectedly joyful eyes. “Have you gone mad?” Arkady Alexandrovich, continuing to sing, paid her no attention whatsoever. At last, when she repeated her question, he turned to her, laughing, and said:

  “Don’t try to understand what you’re incapable of understanding.”

  “I’m capable of understanding that you’re old and a fool.”

  “Enough. Leave me in peace.”

  She then recalled several things to which, until now, she had attached no importance, and, amassing all this information, came to the conclusion that some change must have taken place in her husband’s life, one that was both manifest and significant yet escaped her. Firstly, he had stopped asking for money. Second, he had ceased bemoaning his lot. Third, he had attended a concert given by Kreisler. A whole host of astonishing things had entered into his life and changed everything. Normally Lyudmila would have had no time for such considerations; she was much too absorbed in her own life to linger on them.

  Lyudmila was an exceptional woman. Throughout the many years of their life together, Arkady Alexandrovich had earned almost nothing; everything they had was the result of her labours. What was more, they had a decent apartment, one that was well furnished, and everything was always paid on time, and she and Arkady Alexandrovich lived in complete happiness and security. She despised her husband down to the depths of her soul, yet kept him on like some legal fiction that had entered her budget along with the gas, the electricity and the telephone. In her own affairs, she would often invoke his name, mostly without his knowledge. He was also unaware that he would always figure in her accounts as a tyrant and a despot, a man of morbid jealousy, from whom she was forced to hide absolutely everything. For indeed she did have things to hide. Her most recent affair had been a veritable success: her admirer had given her the sum of ten thousand francs to pay for the burial of her only child, a charming little girl of eight years, whose illness and death she had recounted in harrowing detail; real tears had welled in her dark-blue eyes. Listening to her tale, so appalling in its plainness and persuasiveness, her admirer—no longer a young man, and a father himself—could not hold back his tears either. She implored him not to telephone for a week, to give her time to bury her daughter; thereafter, she would have only one consolation in the world—his love. Later she would call or write to him herself. And so she left, clutching the bag of money she had acquired through her labours. Only in the motor car did she begin to recover her senses, and her face gradually took on its usual appearance, which is difficult to convey: coldness, a certain moral lassitude, and only in her eyes something approaching a glimmer of hope. Her particular sort of charm was not lacking in allure, particularly for those no longer in the first flush of youth. One could like Lyudmila or not: her plans might go awry if not, but when she was liked, she would achieve her aims. She was possessed of what she herself called an iron fist. The power of imagination she would demonstrate, for example, in the case of her daughter’s funeral, was truly remarkable: she had never had any children, but if she had, they could have fallen ill and died in all good conscience, since with the money she had received for their treatment and interment, one could have treated and killed off an entire family.

  Lyudmila’s brothers were consumptive—in the final stages of tuberculosis—and undergoing treatment in Swiss sanatoriums, which they had to leave, since they had no money to pay their bills; she had a great many relations in Russia who were forever starving, sisters who had been stricken down by paralysis and were condemned never to get out of bed again; she had signed promissory notes under terrible circumstances, and they had been presented for collection, because she, Lyudmila, in response to a creditor’s brazen suggestion, would not hesitate to slap him in the face, while later she would weep feebly at home, in her apartment, the rent of which had gone unpaid for a long time. And yet she had a distinctly Germanic exactitude and fastidiousness about her in matters of finance, paying for everything down to the last penny and doing it as though she were performing a redemptive act; she despised dishonest people and those who did not pay their debts.

  She had but one blind and unremitting passion in life, for the sake of which she was ready to forgo everything: music. She herself was a magnificent pianist and would spend evenings alone in her apartment playing Bach, Beethoven and Schumann in the grip of a cold, selfless sensuality. Only in these hours, far from everything else, alone in this illusory, swelling world of polyphony, did she feel truly happy. Then she would stop playing and pause, gazing fixedly into the black mirror of the piano; and the unfinished melodies would continue to ring out silently, conjuring up a whole series of regrets, presentiments and reminders of what had never been. In these moments she would resemble a man who shudders from the memory that his life has been squandered, or a woman befallen by the most terrible catastrophe. Next she would lie down in her cold bed with the white-and-bluish sheets drawn tightly around her, smoke a couple of cigarettes and doze off drowsily, with the intention of repeating it all the following morning. She knew nothing of attachment, or love, or pity; when, around once a month, in the morning and always in her nightdress, she would cause a scene because her husband had not hung his overcoat in its proper place, or had thrown an unstubbed cigarette end into the waste-paper basket, Arkady Alexandrovich would look on, terrified, at her wild hair, her pale lips, shaking his head and preferring not to think about how it was possible that life could be so monstrous and absurd.

  And just as Lyudmila was bereft of love and pity, so too was Arkady Alexandrovich devoid of self-esteem and morals. He understood these concepts and knew perfectly well what they were, and his characters’ conflicts would more often than not have an ethical basis; however, none of his personal feelings corresponded to this understanding. He was not an actively unscrupulous man and would never have acted dishonestly where his family and friends were concerned; yet he possessed neither courage nor any will to independence whatsoever. He understood theoretically that it was wrong to live off the money of a woman who despised him and, into the bargain, a woman who earned it in such an unseemly fashion, but how could he act otherwise? He could never imagine suddenly having to work in a factory or in an office, having to leave his beautiful, warm apartment and take a cold room in a cheap pension, getting up at seven o’clock in the morning—it was so horrible that he simply had to reconcile himself to anything in order to avoid this. It
was necessary for the sake of these most moral attitudes, which were fit only for literature, and for which there was no place in life; otherwise, to live would have been much too painful and distressing. And when people, in taking him to lunch and offering him a loan of one or two hundred francs, spoke ill of his friends, he would not defend them, for a defence would mean that there would be no more lunches, no more money. He never actually gave this any consideration; it came about of itself, so much was it plainly necessitated. Before, when he was young and embarking on his literary career, he believed that he could change everything—both life and art—and he was unafraid to utter these words; later he began to sense that to speak in such terms—“life and art”—was simply unmannerly in the society in which he moved—respectable people, rich businessmen with the hearts of patrons of the arts (but not actual patrons of the arts, as are people with the hearts of students but who are themselves not students), famous politicians or writers—in a word, everyone whose more or less stable, entrenched position admitted no desire, no necessity, not even in most cases the very capacity for abstract thought or the evaluation of different artistic concepts. Little by little, he too came to resemble these people; however, as with people of limited intelligence, he too failed to notice this, just as he failed to notice the error of his ways, and so fell to thinking that young people understood nothing and laboured under a delusion. In literature he immediately found his own voice, the one he would always employ—one of slightly weary scepticism, always guaranteed to make an impression: “All is corruptible, all is transient, all is insignificant and vain.” And since none of this required any fortitude of thought, everything was written with ease and simplicity, and Arkady Alexandrovich felt genuine satisfaction, verging on joy, from this automatic deployment of ready-made attitudes, though the fates of his characters were most often tragic. Despite this, however, he enjoyed no literary success. He could trot out dozens of satisfactory explanations, but the main reason, which escaped Arkady Alexandrovich, was that he was incapable of experiencing or understanding the temptation to commit a crime, debauchery, great passion, the compulsion to murder someone, vengeance, irresistible desire, gruelling physical strain. He was a fat and flaccid man, living out his life peacefully in a rather nice apartment, and not once had his feelings been subjected to the cruel trials of mortal danger, hunger or war—everything transpired in refined halftones, and for that very reason it all seemed, essentially, unconvincing.