The Flight

by Gaito Gazdanov

  “Over there, on the right, high up, Seryozha?”

  “Yes, Liza, thereabouts.”

  “I was thinking about something else, Seryozha…”

  “About what?”

  “About time. What do you call it, that arduous flight?”

  “Yes, if you will.”

  “So, do you feel at this very moment that time is no more? Do you understand how absurd Yegorkin, Chef, Paris and London are—none of these exist right now; only you and I, the sky, the earth, the waves in the sea and the rain. That we’re cold and that I love you. Let’s shout together: time is no more!”

  They shouted this; their voices drowned in the noise of the rain. Then Liza said:

  “You should sleep, Seryozha; go back to bed.”

  In a habitual movement, he picked her up in his arms and, as always, she said: “You’re mad, you’ll drop me. I weigh almost sixty kilos; you’re mad, do you hear?”

  But she put her arms around his neck and would not let go.

  * I believe you’ve already begun.

  † He has no qualities… He has nothing to overcome.

  ‡ Sister-in-law.

  § That had never been much in itself.

  THE ENTIRETY OF THE immense world in which she had hitherto lived her life had been set in motion, only for it to vanish. Liza would now recall it, but only the most elementary images remained: coldness, ennui, emptiness, and the way in which every sound seemed to sink without an echo—this world was almost mute and lifeless, and no mighty breath could animate it. Music rang out, rivers flowed, snow crunched, the sea lapped, but it was as if all this were taking place in some long-familiar painting, on the mute spectrum of someone’s silent, fading inspiration. Sometimes she began to think—in those distant times—that it could be ascribed to the absence of unrealizable desires of a material and geographical order: indeed, she was entirely free, she could do what she wanted, go where she pleased, dress as the mood took her—and for all this, Sergey Sergeyevich was by her side, ever ready to fulfil her wishes. There was nothing she had wanted for; of course the sunset over Lac Léman was more beautiful than the dawn in Paris; of course it was better at the Italian lakes than in London, but these were immaterial details that could not alter what really mattered. But there was nothing that really mattered, nor could there ever be.

  Now she saw everything differently, as though looking through someone else’s eyes—they retained their former dimensions, colours and sharpness of perception, but everything she now saw in those landscapes had blossomed and been transformed. The vastness of the distant sky spread out overhead, the water began to shimmer, and the black-and-white cliffs along the right-hand bank of Cap Ferrat towered as if for the very first time above the sea in their two-toned chaotic beauty. Above all this, amid the lush, almost wearying combination of different colours in the harlequin still, there was always the sound of distant music, lacking in melodic harmony—the wind in the trees, the sobbing of the water in the bay, the call of the cicadas, the roar of the waves crashing into the narrow clefts between the cliffs—but it was alive, never ceasing for an instant, and inexpressibly beautiful. Her vision grew sharper and more perceptive; she took in everything she saw, and she noticed everything—the shuffling gait of the old Italian woman who was going out to her vegetable garden, the muscular strength of the man who, some distance from the shore, was furling his sail in a light breeze, the casual suppleness of the monkey that was jumping about, tethered to a long chain in one of the nearest gardens, the impossibly swift flight of the swallow soaring upwards directly from the earth’s surface to the belfry of the local church, the rush of a fish swimming away down below, the steady undulation of underwater seaweed, the smooth power of Seryozha’s bronzed body in the water, when he, running off the jetty, hurled himself into the sea. She had the impression that her situation recalled the feelings of a man who is gravely ill, who cannot move and has to rest for long periods, without hope of ever getting up, but then, doing just that, feels his body revive, his fingers regain their magical, almost lost suppleness, and everything begin to live and run amok around him. Other sensations comprised that same disparity: from Seryozha’s first tender caress, her head had begun to spin and her eyes had immediately clouded; this second life, the only one that was real, had begun that evening when she kissed Seryozha for the first time.

  Despite the fact that she would almost always act prudently—in the sense that she tried to take into consideration every possible consequence of one action or another and take appropriate precautions that would eliminate any foreseeable obstacles or concerns—on this occasion she spared almost no thought for the aftermath, although in this instance it was more necessary than it had been at any other time. It felt too good, and her instinct—infallible at almost any given moment—which found the notion of a temporary perspective strange, prevented her from thinking about this. She felt, however, that the further she went, the more impossible a separation from Seryozha became for her. In any case, by ignoring what was to come, she knew intuitively that if any future sacrifice were necessary on her part, she would not let that be an impediment.

  And so, despite Liza’s unexpected and undoubted enrichment—in the sense that she experienced a great number of sensations and emotions that until then had been known to her only from books—it was impossible not to notice her privation in purely spiritual terms. Books, her beloved books, which she would occasionally attempt to read (these days her patience lasted for only half an hour, no more), now seemed boring to her. She could still appreciate their brilliance from a distance; their logical constructions still seemed persuasive to her, but they had lost their ability to comfort her, as they had done previously. In the end, it became clear that they essentially had nothing to do with her. “Art, Lizochka, was devised for those who are malcontent,” Sergey Sergeyevich had once said to her long ago, whereupon she had vehemently opposed him, insisting that it was only his inner philistinism that led him to think so. Now she could not help agreeing with him. When one day they went with Yegorkin to see some mediocre exhibition in Nice, Liza had been unable to recall afterwards a single painting; all that had lodged in her memory were patches of colour, because the whole time Seryozha had been walking next to her, arm in arm, and his presence had absolutely consumed her attention. Even her appearance had changed. Before, it would happen that while walking down a street she would notice how people turned to look at her, but now, not only did it occur much more frequently, but among those who turned there were a great many simple people—workers, fishermen—who before would never have paid her any attention at all, because it was much too apparent that she was a lady who had nothing, and indeed never could have anything, to do with them. Now she had somehow become closer to them—perhaps because it was beyond all doubt, and because one could see in her eyes and face, by her slightly coarsened, weighed-down aspect, that it was the erotic that now occupied the lead role in her life—no man could have been mistaken in this regard. She understood this, but her understanding, as with everything that did not have any immediate bearing on her private life, was somehow abstract, extraneous and irrelevant. She was glad that at her age she felt no physical distinction between the woman she was many years ago, when she had held the young Seryozha in her arms, and the woman she was now; she did not think and did not remember that this was also due to Sergey Sergeyevich, who forced her to play sports and said: “You’ll thank me later.” However, on this point he was mistaken—at least for the moment. Liza felt no gratitude whatsoever towards him, to say the least. It pleased her that she was almost as strong as Seryozha, which never failed to astonish him—all the more so because the happy configuration of her body was such that her muscles did not show. Seryozha was surprised one day when Liza was held up on the road; he came out to meet her and found that she had a flat tyre and was changing the wheel.

  “You’re doing that yourself?”

  “Of course I’m doing it myself, silly,” she said.


  “How did you unscrew the nuts?”

  “Like this, Seryozhenka,” she said, making a turning movement with her right hand.

  “And you were strong enough?”

  She laughed and then proposed an arm-wrestling match, from which Seryozha emerged victorious, but only after such effort that his whole face was left covered in beads of sweat.

  “I was a little tired,” she said. “If I’d been on form, you’d have been in trouble.”

  She enjoyed the sensation of Seryozha’s supple resistance in the contest; in a similar exercise with Sergey Sergeyevich, she had met only with disappointment—therein she had found neither resistance nor suppleness, only a stiff, lifeless arm that she was unable to move, and it ended in her biting it, after which Sergey Sergeyevich calmly said:

  “That isn’t part of the game, Liza.”

  Liza had never before suspected herself capable of that unceasing physical languor which now almost never left her. Seryozha could but yield to it; for several days he lost weight and his face became drawn, in spite of the fact that he ate plenty and enjoyed several hours of unbroken sleep.

  He had matured a lot in the first week; his features had become more defined, the slit of his eyes, ever so slightly darker but still very light against his bronzed face, seemed clearer. After Liza said to him, “Promise me not to think about this, Seryozha,” he obediently submitted to her; for him there was no greater pleasure than to carry out her wishes, whatever they may be. However, even prior to this prohibition he would think deeply and intensely about everything, and now he was powerless to prevent, under the brilliance of the sun, at morning on the seashore, or in the soft, transparent darkness of the southern evening, the face of his mother occasionally materializing before him, just as lovely as he remembered it: those large dark eyes which had no eyelashes above them, her perfectly smooth, wrinkleless forehead and the hint of eau de toilette that would appear as she leant over him. Strictly speaking, it was impossible to tell what Seryozha was thinking; it would have been inexact: his thoughts did not contain a single rational argument; there were a few visual associations that were at times more painful than any thought. To this day he had never succeeded in linking everything he thought, saw and felt to a logical system that developed gradually, as human life was usually depicted in the books he read. He did not believe that life was always conventional and artificial; he simply had the impression that he himself was incapable of such artistic representation. He knew a great deal and had read extensively for his age, and until recently he had imagined that, in theory, there was nothing in the world that he could not understand. He had taken umbrage one day when his father told him, in speaking of some mundane problem, that he could not comprehend it. He said this without offering any initial explanation; then Seryozha asked his father whether he thought him a complete imbecile. Sergey Sergeyevich patted him on the check with unexpected affection and replied that, on the contrary, he was very pleased with him, and that he could not have hoped for a better heir; however, this heir, according to Sergey Sergeyevich, was still too young to understand certain things.

  “Not because, Seryozha, you aren’t as clever as some rouged-up old lady who, truth to tell, is an utter fool; however, she is able to understand, and you aren’t, even if she hasn’t read even a tenth of those clever books that—”

  “So what’s the difference?”

  “The difference, Seryozha, lies in emotional experience. Do you understand? It’s difficult to explain and it would be pointless to try. In time you’ll learn. You’ll come across things you’ve read about a thousand times over, and then you’ll see that to read is one thing, and to understand is another. What is every ethical problem? An attempt to systematize collective emotional experience—that’s first and foremost—then comes utilitarianism, practicability, and so on.”

  Liza, on the other hand, would say this was not worth thinking about—not generally not worth thinking about, but that he, Seryozha, should not fixate on it; for him it was unimportant. As far as Seryozha was concerned, Liza had always been the embodiment of every virtue, and not only would this image of her no longer endure the slightest distortion, but it had even been reinforced. Of course, it was terrible that she was his mother’s sister; but for this one minor point, everything would have been splendid, even from an ethical point of view. This aspect of the problem, however, was difficult for Seryozha, not because he personally experienced any discomfort, embarrassment or awkwardness on account of it—no, only because he could envisage the horror in his mother’s eyes when she found out. He was utterly unable to imagine his father’s reaction, but he knew that his father, too, would naturally take a dim view of it. With Sergey Sergeyevich, that was just what one could expect: a dim view. Where Olga Alexandrovna was concerned, the words would be savage: she would most likely be horrified. However, blood rushed to his face at the idea that Liza might suffer as a result of this; come what may, Liza should not suffer—she was so wonderful, so pure and so tender.

  All these thoughts had occurred to Seryozha prior to his conversation with Liza—and at the time they had been agonizing and insoluble. Yet after the conversation he immediately felt as if a weight had been lifted from his chest: truly, he stopped asking himself questions about the degree to which everything was possible or impossible, as though between him and all these painful ambiguities stood an opaque screen, and only Liza and love remained—and nothing else in the whole world surrounding them.

  THE FUNERAL OF PIERRE, Lola Aînée’s husband, was exceptionally successful and, for the summer months, remarkably well attended. All Lola’s many friends and acquaintances, the majority of whom considered her marriage to have been a mésalliance and had not even liked Pierre when he was alive, now suddenly gave the impression that he had been a wonderful man. Thus Lola’s marriage, which had always come under fire during Pierre’s lifetime, now acquired sympathetic sanction from society, and even received a few notes of approval. Lola had to hear out a multitude of condolences; most often people would say to her: “I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing your husband well, but on the two occasions that I met him, he left the very best impression on me—and believe me, I fully share in your…” Lola would nod and reply: “My dear friend, I never doubted your feelings…” The funeral was attended by people of the most diverse ages, the majority, however, were elderly and had been lured there by a double-edged, contradictory sentiment: on one hand, it was an unpleasant thought that their own deaths, too, were already on the horizon and drawing ever nearer; on the other, in vanquishing these melancholy notions, there was a palpable joy that it was this Pierre who had died, and not them; these people would attend almost every funeral in order to obtain entirely irrefutable proof of their albeit temporary immortality.

  At the beginning of the service, one of Lola’s friends, a man of her own generation but still her senior, had a sympathetic chat with her and said that it would all pass. He was interminably old, but tried to keep his spirits up (although he did wear a corset which caused him no end of pain and creaked at the slightest movement); he was the author of a book that had enjoyed a certain popularity fifty-six years previously, in the January of that unforgettable year, an academic and an exceedingly respectable man who wore a discreet grey toupee atop his nodding head. Towards the end of the service, he came up to her again, adding this time that, as sad as it may be (tears were welling in his eyes, for he was tired and deeply moved), it was impossible not to observe that a great many of his and Lola’s generation no longer numbered among the living. And now poor Pierre… With her face placid and downcast, Lola listened to him attentively, although what he was saying was entirely absurd, since Pierre could in no way be considered a man of their generation: as their fame had blossomed, Pierre had yet to be born. Moreover, Lola found the conversation about these distant times wholly unpalatable, for it reminded her of her age. She would usually reply to such things with the same unvarying line: “Yes, I scarcely remember it myself. I was real
ly only a child back then.” Her companion would be left to smile politely in response and recall inwardly that this child had had fifteen lovers by that point, all of whom would lavish money on her and were ready to fight duels on her account, according to the custom of that lost and exceptionally heroic era.

  A mass of dark-coloured automobiles followed in the funeral cortège; the harmony was broken only by a light-grey cabriolet being driven by a very young man in a summer suit, hatless and with a truly pained expression on his face; next to him, however, sat an elderly lady, the very picture of mourning, wholly appropriate for the general scene—that is, somewhat old fashioned, with a solemn tranquillity. The appearance of the young man and his pained face could be ascribed to the fact that his aunt, having missed the official procession and, on account of her dreadful avarice, begrudging the money to hire a taxi, spotted him as he was turning at the corner of her street and insisted that he take her to the funeral: there was nothing else for it, and among those present he was the only man whose grief was entirely unfeigned.

  “Lola Aînée, ma tante?” he said. “Mais c’est une vieille toupie…”

  “C’est une interprète remarquable de Racine et de Corneille,” said his aunt indignantly, “et il faut avoir une grandeur d’âme qui est inconnue maintenant pour être à la hauteur de ces rôles.”

  “Pour la grandeur d’âme, ma tante,” he murmured disconsolately, “je vous l’accorde, mais celle des spectateurs est encore plus remarquable.”