Mary

by Vladimir Nabokov

  His remaining money was enough for him to leave Berlin, but that would mean shedding Lyudmila, and he did not know how to break with her. And although he had given himself a week to do it in and had told the landlady that he had finally decided to leave on Saturday, Ganin felt that neither this week nor the next would change anything. Meanwhile nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring. His window looked out onto the railway tracks, so that the chance of getting away never ceased to entice him. Every five minutes a subdued rumble would start to move through the house, followed by a huge cloud of smoke billowing outside the window and blotting out the white Berlin daylight. Then it would slowly dissolve again, revealing the fan of the railway tracks that narrowed in the distance between the black, sliced-off backs of houses, all under a sky as pale as almond milk.

  Ganin would have felt more at ease had he been living on the other side of the corridor, in Podtyagin’s room, or in Klara’s; their windows looked out onto a rather dull street, and although it was crossed by a railway bridge it at least lacked the view into the pale, seductive distance. That bridge was a continuation of the tracks that could be seen from Ganin’s window, and he could never rid himself of the feeling that every train was passing, unseen, right through the house itself. It would come in from the far side, its phantom reverberation would shake the wall, jolt its way across the old carpet, graze a glass on the washstand, and finally disappear out of the window with a chilling clang — immediately followed by a cloud of smoke billowing up outside the window, and as this subsided a train of the Stadtbahn would emerge as though excreted by the house: olive-drab carriages with a row of dark dog-nipples along their roofs and a stubby little locomotive coupled at the wrong end, moving briskly backward as it pulled the carriages into the white distance between black walls, whose sooty blackness was either coming off in patches or was mottled with frescoes of outdated advertisements. It was as if an iron draft kept always blowing through the house.

  ‘Ah, to leave!’ muttered Ganin, stretching listlessly, and at once stopped short — what would he do about Lyudmila? It was absurd how flabby he had become. Once (in the days when he had walked on his hands or jumped over five chairs) he had been able not merely to control his will but to play games with it. There had been a time when he used to exercise it by making himself, for instance, get out of bed in the middle of the night in order to go down and throw a cigarette butt into a postbox. Yet now he could not bring himself to tell a woman that he no longer loved her. The day before yesterday she had stayed five hours in his room; yesterday, Sunday, he had spent the whole day with her on the lakes outside Berlin, unable to refuse her this ridiculous little excursion. Everything about Lyudmila he now found repulsive: her yellow locks, fashionably bobbed, the two streaks of unshaven black hairs down the nape of her neck, her dark, languid eyelids, and above all her lips, glossy with purple-red lipstick. He was bored and repelled when as she dressed, after a bout of mechanical lovemaking, she would narrow her eyes, which at once gave them an unpleasantly shaggy look, and say, ‘I’m so sensitive, you know, that I shall be able to tell at once when you don’t love me as much as you used to.’ Ganin, without replying, turned away toward the window, where there rose a white wall of smoke. Then she would give a little nasal snigger and call him in a husky whisper: ‘Come here.’ At that moment he felt like wringing his hands to make the joints crack in delicious pain, and say to her, ‘Get out, woman, and goodbye.’ Instead of that he smiled and bent down to her. She would run her nails, so sharp that they might have been artificial, over his chest, and pout, and flutter her coal-black eyelashes in her performance of a slighted girl or a capricious marquise. There seemed to him something sleazy, stale and old in the smell of her perfume, although she herself was only twenty-five. As he brushed her hot little forehead with his lips she forgot everything — forgot the falsity which she trailed around everywhere like her scent, the falsity of her baby talk, of her exquisite senses, of her passion for some imaginary orchids, as well as for Poe and Baudelaire, whom she had never read; she forgot all her factitious charms, her modishly yellow hair, sultry face powder and piggy-pink silk stockings — and, tilting back her head, she would press against Ganin her whole feeble, pathetic, unwanted flesh.

  Bored and ashamed, Ganin felt a nonsensical tenderness — a melancholy trace of warmth left where love had once fleetingly passed by — which caused him to kiss without passion the painted rubber of her proffered lips, although this tenderness did not succeed in silencing a calm, sarcastic voice advising him: try right now to thrust her away!

  With a sigh he smiled gently down at her upturned face and could think of nothing to say when she clutched him by the shoulder and begged him in a fluttery voice quite unlike her usual nasal whisper, her whole being seeming to fly into words, ‘Tell me — please — do you love me?’ But as soon as she noticed his reaction — a familiar shadow, an involuntary frown — she remembered that she should be fascinating him with poetry, scent and sensibility, and at once began putting on her act that wavered between the poor little girl and the subtle courtesan. And again Ganin was seized with boredom, and he paced back and forth from the window to the door and back again, almost in tears from trying to yawn with his mouth shut while she put on her hat and watched him surreptitiously in the mirror.

  Klara, a full-busted and very cosy young lady dressed in black silk, knew that her girl friend visited Ganin and she felt distressed and embarrassed whenever Lyudmila told her about her love affair. Klara considered that emotions of that kind ought to be more restrained, without violet irises and crying violins. But it was even more intolerable when her friend, narrowing her eyes and expelling cigarette smoke through her nostrils, would describe the still warm and horribly exact details, after which Klara would dream monstrous and shameful dreams. Lately she had taken to avoiding Lyudmila for fear that her friend would end by spoiling for her that enormous, always festive sensation that is daintily called ‘reverie.’ She loved Ganin’s sharp, slightly arrogant features, his gray eyes with bright arrowlike streaks radiating from the unusually large pupils, his thick and very dark eyebrows which when he frowned or listened attentively formed a solid black line, but which unfurled like delicate wings whenever a rare smile momentarily bared his handsome, glistening teeth. Klara was so taken by these pronounced features that in his presence she lost her composure, did not say things she would have liked to say, constantly patted the wavy chestnut hair which half covered her ear, or rearranged the black silk folds on her bust, causing her lower lip to protrude and reveal her double chin. Anyway, once a day at lunch was the most she saw of Ganin, except for a single time when she had supper with him and Lyudmila in the squalid pub where he used to have his evening meal of würstchen and sauerkraut or cold pork. At lunch in the dreary pension dining room she used to sit opposite Ganin, as the landlady placed her lodgers at table in roughly the same order as the position of their rooms; thus Klara sat between Podtyagin and Gornotsvetov, and Ganin between Alfyorov and Kolin. The prim and sad little black figure of Frau Dorn seemed very out of place and forlorn at the head of the table between the facing profiles of the two affected, powdered ballet dancers, who spoke to her with little darting, birdlike quirks of demeanor. Hampered by her slight deafness, she herself spoke little and confined herself to seeing that the vast Erika brought in and cleared away the dishes at the proper time. Like a dry leaf her tiny wrinkled hand would now and then flit up to the dangling bell knob and then, yellow and faded, would flutter back again.

  When Ganin entered the dining room at about half past two on Monday afternoon, all the others were already in their places. Catching sight of him, Alfyorov smiled in greeting and rose in his place, but Ganin did not offer his hand and sat down beside him with a silent nod, having already mentally cursed his obtrusive neighbor. Podtyagin, a neatly dressed, unassuming old man, who fed rather than ate, was noisily slurping his soup while with his left hand preventing his collar-l
odged napkin from falling into the plate, glanced over the lenses of his pince-nez and then with a vague sigh returned to his slops. In a moment of frankness Ganin had told him about his oppressive love affair with Lyudmila and now regretted having done so. Kolin, on his left, passed him a plate of soup with tremulous care, giving him such an ingratiating look and such a smile with his strange veiled eyes that Ganin felt uncomfortable. Meanwhile, to his right, Alfyorov’s unctuous little tenor voice resumed its prattling, objecting to something said by Podtyagin, who was sitting opposite him.

  ‘You’re wrong to find fault, Anton Sergeyevich. This is a most cultured country. No comparison with backward old Russia.’

  With a kindly glint of his pince-nez, Podtyagin turned to Ganin. ‘Congratulate me. Today the French have sent me my entrance visa. I feel like putting on the great ribbon of an order and calling on President Doumergue.’

  He had an unusually pleasant voice, soft, without change in pitch, mellow and mat in tone. His fat, smooth face with its gray little goatee under the lower lip and its receding chin seemed to be covered with an even, reddish tan, and wrinkles of kindliness fanned out around his serene, intelligent eyes. In profile he looked like a large, grizzled guinea pig.

  ‘I’m so glad,’ said Ganin. ‘When are you leaving?’

  But Alfyorov did not allow the old man to reply. Giving a habitual twitch to his scraggy neck with its sparse golden hairs and large mobile Adam’s apple, he went on. ‘I advise you to stay here. What’s wrong with this place? Things are straightforward here. France is more like a zigzag, and as for our Russia — that’s a googly. I like it a lot here — there’s work and the streets are nice for a walk. I can prove to you mathematically that if one’s got to reside somewhere —’

  ‘But,’ Podtyagin quietly interrupted him, ‘what about the mountains of paper, the coffinlike cardboard boxes, the interminable files, files and more files! The shelves are groaning under the weight of them. And the police official practically expired under the strain of finding my name in the records. You just can’t imagine (at the word ‘imagine’ Podtyagin shook his head slowly and mournfully) what a person has to go through simply to be allowed to leave this country. As for the number of forms I’ve had to fill in! Today I had already begun to hope: ah, they will stamp my passport with their exit visa! Nothing of the sort. They sent me to have my picture taken, but the photos won’t be ready until this evening.’

  ‘All very proper,’ Alfyorov nodded. ‘That’s how things should be in a well-run country. None of your Russian inefficiency here. Have you noticed, for instance, what’s written on the front doors? “For the gentry only.” That’s significant. Generally speaking, the difference between our country and this one can be expressed like this: imagine a curve, and on it —’

  Ganin stopped listening and said to Klara, sitting opposite him, ‘Yesterday Lyudmila Borisovna asked me to tell you to ring her up as soon as you came home from work. It’s about going to the cinema, I think.’

  Klara confusedly thought: ‘How can he talk about her so casually. After all, he knows that I know.’

  For propriety’s sake she inquired, ‘Oh, did you see her yesterday?’

  Ganin raised his eyebrows in surprise and went on eating.

  ‘I don’t quite understand your geometry,’ Podtyagin was saying, carefully sweeping breadcrumbs into the palm of his hand with his knife. Like most aging poets he had a penchant for plain human logic.

  ‘But don’t you see? It’s so clear,’ cried Alfyorov excitedly. ‘Just imagine —’

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ Podtyagin repeated firmly, and, tilting his head back slightly, he poured the collection of crumbs into his mouth. Alfyorov spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness and knocked over Ganin’s glass.

  ‘Oh, sorry!’

  ‘It was empty,’ said Ganin.

  ‘You’re not a mathematician, Anton Sergeyevich,’ Alfyorov went on fussily, ‘but I’ve been swinging on that trapeze all my life. I once used to say to my wife that if I’m a “summer” you’re surely a spring cinquefoil —’

  Gornotsvetov and Kolin dissolved in mannered mirth. Frau Dorn gave a start and looked at them both in fright.

  ‘In short, a flower and a figure,’ said Ganin drily. Only Klara smiled. Ganin started pouring himself some water, his action watched by all the others.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, a most fragile flower,’ drawled Alfyorov, turning his bright, vacant look onto his neighbor. ‘It’s an absolute miracle how she survived those seven years of horror. And I’m sure that when she arrives she’ll be gay and blooming. You’re a poet, Anton Sergeyevich; you ought to write something about it — about how womanhood, lovely Russian womanhood, is stronger than any revolution and can survive it all — adversity, terror —’

  Kolin whispered to Ganin, ‘There he goes again — it was the same yesterday — all he could talk about was his wife.’

  ‘Vulgar little man,’ thought Ganin as he watched Alfyorov’s twitching beard. ‘I bet his wife’s frisky. It’s a positive sin not to be unfaithful to a man like him.’

  ‘Lamb today,’ Lydia Nikolaevna suddenly announced stiffly, with a cross look at the listless way her lodgers were eating their meat course. Alfyorov bowed for some reason, then went on. ‘You’re making a big mistake by not taking that as a theme.’ (Podtyagin was gently but firmly shaking his head.) ‘When you meet my wife perhaps you’ll understand what I mean. She’s very fond of poetry, by the way. You two ought to agree. And I’ll tell you another thing —’

  Glancing sidelong at Alfyorov, Kolin was stealthily beating time to him. Watching his friend’s finger, Gornotsvetov shook with silent laughter.

  ‘But the chief thing,’ Alfyorov burbled on, ‘is that Russia is finished, done for. She’s been rubbed out, just as if someone had wiped a funny face off a blackboard by smearing a wet sponge across it.’

  ‘But —’ Ganin smiled.

  ‘Does what I say upset you, Lev Glebovich?’

  ‘Yes, it does, but I won’t stop you from saying it, Aleksey Ivanovich.’

  ‘Does that mean, then, that you believe —’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ Podtyagin interrupted in his even, slightly lisping voice. ‘No politics, please. Why must we talk politics?’

  ‘All the same Monsieur Alfyorov is wrong,’ Klara put in unexpectedly, and gave her hair-do a brisk pat.

  ‘Is your wife arriving on Saturday?’ asked Kolin in an innocent voice down the length of the table, and Gornotsvetov tittered into his table napkin.

  ‘Yes, Saturday,’ Alfyorov replied, pushing away his plate with the uneaten remains of his mutton. His eyes lost their combative gleam and immediately faded to a reflective look.

  ‘Do you know, Lydia Nikolaevna,’ he said, ‘yesterday Lev Glebovich and I were stuck in the lift together.’

  ‘Stewed pears,’ replied Frau Dorn.

  The dancers burst out laughing. Jogging the elbows of the people at table, Erika began to clear away the plates. Ganin carefully rolled up his napkin, squeezed it into its ring and stood up. He never ate dessert.

  ‘What boredom,’ he thought as he made his way back to his room. ‘What can I do now? Go for a walk, I suppose.’

  The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting. Lack of work irked him now, but there was no work to do. Turning up the collar of his old mackintosh, bought for a pound from an English lieutenant in Constantinople (the first stage of exile), and thrusting his fists hard into its pockets, he strolled slowly along the pale April streets, where the black domes of umbrellas bobbed and swam. He stared long at a splendid model of the Mauretania in a steamship company’s window and at the colored strings joining the ports of two continents on a large map. At the back was a photograph of a tropical grove — chocolate-brown palms against a beige sky.

  He spent about an hour drinking coffee, sitting at a picture window a
nd watching the passers-by. Back in his room he tried to read, but he found the contents of the book so alien and inappropriate that he abandoned it in the middle of a subordinate clause. He was in the kind of mood that he called ‘dispersion of the will.’ He sat motionless at his table unable to decide what to do: to shift the position of his body, to get up and wash his hands, or to open the window, outside which the bleak day was fading into twilight. It was a dreadful, agonizing state rather like that dull sense of unease when we wake up but at first cannot open our eyelids, as though they were stuck together for good. Ganin felt that the murky twilight which was gradually seeping into the room was also slowly penetrating his body, transforming his blood into fog, and that he was powerless to stop the spell that was being cast on him by the twilight.

  He was powerless because he had no precise desire, and this tortured him because he was vainly seeking something to desire. He could not even make himself stretch out his hand to switch on the light. The simple transition from intention to action seemed an unimaginable miracle. Nothing relieved his depression, his thoughts slithered aimlessly, his heartbeat was faint, his underclothes stuck unpleasantly to his body. At one moment he felt he should at once write a letter to Lyudmila explaining firmly that it was time to break off this dreary affair, then at the next he remembered that he was going to the cinema with her that evening and that somehow it was much harder to make himself ring her up and cancel today’s date than it was to write a letter, which prevented him from doing either.