Invitation to a Beheading

by Nabokov, Vladimir

  Five

  “Please accept my sincerest congratulations,” said the director in his unctuous bass as he entered Cincinnatus’s cell next morning. Rodrig Ivanovich seemed even more spruce than usual: the dorsal part of his best frock coat was stuffed with cotton padding like a Russian coachman’s, making his back look broad, smooth, and fat; his wig was glossy as new; the rich dough of his chin seemed to be powdered with flour, while in his buttonhole there was a pink waxy flower with a speckled mouth. From behind his stately figure—he had stopped on the threshold—the prison employees peeked curiously, also decked out in their Sunday best, also with their hair slicked down; Rodion had even put on some little medal.

  “I am ready. I shall get dressed at once. I knew it would be today.”

  “Congratulations,” repeated the director, paying no attention to Cincinnatus’s jerky agitation. “I have the honor to inform you that henceforth you have a neighbor—yes, yes, he has just moved in. You have grown tired of waiting, I bet? Well, don’t worry—now, with a confidant, with a pal, to play and work with, you won’t find it so dull. And, what is more—but this, of course, must remain strictly between ourselves—I can inform you that permission has come for you to have an interview with your spouse, demain matin.”

  Cincinnatus lay back down on the cot and said, “Yes, that’s fine. I thank you, rag doll, coachman, painted swine … Excuse me, I am a little …”

  Here the walls of the cell started to bulge and dimple, like reflections in disturbed water; the director began to ripple, the cot became a boat. Cincinnatus grabbed the side in order to keep his balance, but the oarlock came off in his hand, and, neck-deep, among a thousand speckled flowers, he began to swim, got tangled, began sinking. Sleeves rolled up, they started poking at him with punting poles and grappling hooks, in order to snare him and pull him to the shore. They fished him out.

  “Nerves, nerves, a regular little woman,” said the prison doctor—alias Rodrig Ivanovich—with a smile. “Breathe freely. You can eat everything. Do you ever have night sweats? Go on as you are, and, if you are very obedient, maybe we shall let you take a quick peek at the new boy … but mind you, only a quick peek …”

  “How long … that interview … how much time shall we be given? …” Cincinnatus uttered with difficulty.

  “In a minute, in a minute. Do not be in such a hurry, do not get excited. We promised to show him to you, and we will. Put on your slippers, straighten your hair. I think that …” The director looked interrogatively at Rodion, who nodded. “But please observe absolute silence,” he again addressed Cincinnatus, “and don’t grab at anything with your hands. Come, get up, get up. You haven’t deserved this—you, my friend, are behaving badly, but still you have the permission—Now—not a word, quiet as a mouse …”

  On tiptoe, balancing with his arms, Rodrig Ivanovich left the cell and with him went Cincinnatus in his oversize shuffling slippers. In the depths of the corridor Rodion was already stooping at a door with imposing bolts: he had pushed aside the cover of the peephole and was peering into it. Without turning, he made a motion with his hand demanding even greater silence and then imperceptibly changed the gesture into a different, beckoning one. The director rose even higher on tiptoe and turned with a threatening grimace, but Cincinnatus could not help scraping a little with his feet. Here and there, in the semidarkness of the passageways, the shadowy figures of the prison employees gathered, stooped, shaded their eyes with their hands as if to make out something in the distance. Laboratory assistant Rodion let the boss look through the focused eyepiece. His back emitting a solid squeak, Rodrig Ivanovich bent to peer in … Meanwhile, in the gray shadows, indistinct figures noiselessly changed their positions, noiselessly summoned each other, formed ranks, and already their many silent feet were working in place like pistons, preparing to step out. At last the director slowly moved away and tugged Cincinnatus lightly by the sleeve, inviting him, as a professor would a layman who had dropped in, to examine the slide. Cincinnatus meekly placed his eye against the luminous circle. At first he saw only bubbles of sunlight and bands of color, but then he distinguished a cot, identical to the one he had in his cell; piled nearby were two good suitcases with gleaming locks and a large oblong case like the kind used to carry a trombone.

  “Well, do you see anything?” whispered the director, stooping close to him, and reeking of lilies in an open grave. Cincinnatus nodded, even though he did not yet see the main attraction; he shifted his gaze to the left, and then really saw something.

  Seated on a chair, sideways to the table, as still as if he were made of candy, was a beardless little fat man, about thirty years old, dressed in old-fashioned but clean and freshly ironed prison pajamas; he was all in stripes—in striped socks, and brand-new morocco slippers—and revealed a virgin sole as he sat with one stubby leg crossed over the other and clasped his shin with his plump hands; a limpid aquamarine sparkled on his auricular finger, his honey-blond hair was parted in the middle of his remarkably round head, his long eyelashes cast shadows on his cherubic cheek, and the whiteness of his wonderful, even teeth gleamed between his crimson lips. He seemed to be all frosted with gloss, melting just a little in the shaft of sunlight falling on him from above. There was nothing on the table except an elegant traveling clock encased in a leather case.

  “That’ll do now,” whispered the director with a smile, “me want to looky too,” and he again attached himself to the bright hole. Rodion indicated by signs to Cincinnatus that it was time to go home. The shadowy figures of the employees were respectfully approaching in single file: behind the director there was already a whole queue of people waiting to get a look; some had brought along their eldest sons.

  “We certainly are spoiling you,” muttered Rodion in conclusion, and for a long time was unable to unlock the door of Cincinnatus’s cell, even honoring it with a potent bit of Russian swearing, which turned the trick.

  Everything become quiet. Everything was the same as always.

  “No, not everything—tomorrow you will come,” Cincinnatus said aloud, still trembling from his recent swoon. “What shall I say to you,” he continued thinking, murmuring, shuddering. “What will you say to me? In spite of everything I loved you, and will go on loving you—on my knees, with my shoulders drawn back, showing my heels to the headsman and straining my goose neck—even then. And afterwards—perhaps most of all afterwards—I shall love you, and one day we shall have a real, all-embracing explanation, and then perhaps we shall somehow fit together, you and I, and turn ourselves in such a way that we form one pattern, and solve the puzzle: draw a line from point A to point B … without looking, or, without lifting the pencil … or in some other way … we shall connect the points, draw the line, and you and I shall form that unique design for which I yearn. If they do this kind of thing to me every morning, they will get me trained and I shall become quite wooden.”

  Cincinnatus had a fit of yawning—the tears streamed down his cheeks, and still hump after hump swelled under his palate. It was nerves—he was not sleepy. He had to find something to keep him busy until tomorrow—fresh books had not yet arrived. He had not returned the catalogue yet … Oh yes, the little drawings! But now, in the light of tomorrow’s interview…

  A child’s hand, undoubtedly Emmie’s, had drawn a set of pictures, forming (as it had seemed to Cincinnatus yesterday) a coherent narrative, a promise, a sample of phantasy. First there was a horizontal line—that is, this stone floor; on it was a rudimentary chair somewhat like an insect, and above was a grating made of six squares. Then came the same picture but with the addition of a full moon, the corners of its mouth drooping sourly beyond the grating. Next, a stool composed of three strokes with an eyeless (hence, sleeping) jailer on it and, on the floor, a ring with six keys. Then the same key ring, only a little larger, with a hand, extremely pentadactyl and in a short sleeve, reaching for it. Here it begins to get interesting. The door is ajar in the next drawing, and beyond it something looking l
ike a bird’s spur—all that is visible of the fleeing prisoner. Then he himself, with commas on his head instead of hair, in a dark little robe, represented to the best of the artist’s ability by an isosceles triangle; he is being led by a little girl: prong-like legs, wavy skirt, parallel lines of hair. Then the same again, only in the form of a plan: a square for the cell, an angled line for the corridor, with a dotted line indicating the route and an accordionlike staircase at the end. And finally the epilogue: the dark tower, above it a pleased moon, with the corners of its mouth curling upward.

  No—this was only self-deception, nonsense. The child had doodled aimlessly … Let us copy out the titles and lay the catalogue aside. Yes, the child … With the tip of her tongue showing at the right corner of her mouth, tightly holding the stubby pencil, pressing down upon it with a finger white with effort … And then, after connecting a particularly successful line, leaning back, rolling her head this way and that, wriggling her shoulders, and, going back to work on the paper, shifting her tongue to the left corner … so painstakingly.… Nonsense, let’s not dwell on it any more…

  Trying to think of a way to enliven the listless hours, Cincinnatus decided to tidy up for tomorrow’s Marthe. Rodion agreed to haul in another tub like the one in which Cincinnatus had splashed on the eve of the trial. While waiting for the water Cincinnatus sat down at the table; today the table was a little wobbly.

  “The interview,” wrote Cincinnatus, “signifies, in all probability, that my terrible morning is already nearing. The day after tomorrow, at this very time, my cell will be empty. But I am happy that I shall see you. We used to go up to the workshops by two different staircases, the men by one, the women by the other, but would meet on the penultimate landing. No longer can I conjure Marthe as she was when I first met her, but I can recall having noticed at once that she opens her mouth a little an instant before laughing, and the round hazel eyes, and the coral earrings—oh, how I should like to reproduce her as she was, all new and still solid—and then the gradual softening—the fold between cheek and neck when she turned her head toward me, already grown warm, and almost alive. Her world. Her world consists of simple components, simply joined; I think that the simplest cook-book recipe is more complicated than the world that she bakes as she hums: every day for herself, for me, for everyone. But whence-even then, in the first days—whence the malice and obstinacy that suddenly … So soft, so amusing and warm, and then suddenly … At first I thought she was doing it deliberately, perhaps to show how another in her place might have grown shrewish and stubborn. Can you imagine my amazement when I realized that this was her real self! Because of what trifles—my foolish one, how little your head was, if one feels through all that auburn, thick mass to which she knows how to impart an innocent sleekness with a girlish gloss on the top of her head. ‘Your little wife looks so quiet and gentle, but she bites, I tell you,’ her first unforgettable lover said to me, and the base thing is that the verb was not being used figuratively … because it was true that at a certain moment … one of those memories that one should drive away, or else it will overpower and crush you. Little Marthe did it again.… And once I saw, I saw, I saw—from the balcony I saw—and since that day I would never enter any room without first announcing my approach from afar—by a cough, or a meaningless exclamation. How awful it was to glimpse that contortion, that breathless haste—all that had been mine in the shadowed seclusion of the Tamara Gardens, and that I had afterward lost. Count how many she had … endless torture: to talk at dinner with one or another of her lovers, appear cheerful, crack nuts, crack jokes, and all the while to be mortally afraid to bend down, and chance to see the nether half of that monster whose upper half was quite presentable, having the appearance of a young woman and a young man visible down to the waist at table, peacefully feeding and chatting; and whose nether half was a writhing, raging quadruped. I descended into hell to retrieve a dropped napkin. Later Marthe would say of herself (in that same first person plural), ‘We are very much ashamed that we were seen,’ and pouted. And still I love you. Inescapably, fatally, incurably … As long as the oaks stand in those gardens, I will … When they gave you official proof that I was not wanted, that I was to be shunned—you were surprised that you had noticed nothing yourself—and yet it was so easy to hide it from you! I remember how you implored me to reform, with no real understanding what it was in me that ought to be reformed and how one would go about it, and even now you do not understand anything, do not for a moment stop to think whether you understand or not, and, when you wonder, your wonder is almost cozy. Still, when the bailiff began going around the courtroom with the hat, you too threw in your scrap of paper.”

  As the tub rocked at the wharf, an innocent, gay, inviting steam rose above it. Impulsively, in two quick motions, Cincinnatus heaved a sigh and laid aside the filled sheets. From his modest footlocker he produced a clean towel. Cincinnatus was so small and slender that he was able to get all of himself into the washing tub. He sat there as in a canoe and floated peacefully. A reddish evening ray, mingling with the steam, aroused a motley tremor in the small world of the stone cell. Reaching shore, Cincinnatus stood up and stepped out onto land. As he dried himself he struggled with dizziness and palpitations. He was very thin, and now, as the light of the setting sun exaggerated the shadows of his ribs, the very structure of his rib cage seemed a triumph of cryptic coloration inasmuch as it expressed the barred nature of his surroundings, of his gaol. My poor little Cincinnatus. As he dried himself, trying to find some diversion in his own body, he kept examining his veins and he could not help thinking how he would soon be uncorked, and all the contents would run out. His bones were light and thin; his meek toe nails (you dear ones, you innocent ones) gazed up at him with childlike attention; and, as he sat thus on the cot—naked, his entire skinny back, from coccyx to cervical vertebrae, exposed, to the observers on the other side of the door (he could hear whispers, rustling movements, a discussion of something or other—but never mind, let them look), Cincinnatus might have passed for a sickly youth—even the back of his head, with its hollowed nape and tuft of wet hair, was boyish—and exceptionally handy. From the same valise Cincinnatus took a small mirror and a vial of depilatory water which always reminded him of that marvelously hirsute mole which Marthe had on her side. He rubbed it into his prickly cheeks, removing the prickliness and carefully avoiding the mustache.

  Nice and clean now. He heaved a sigh and put on the cool nightshirt, still smelling of home washing.

  It grew dark. He lay in bed and kept floating. At the customary hour Rodion turned on the light and removed the bucket and the tub. The spider lowered itself to him on a thread and settled on the finger which Rodion offered to the furry beastie, chatting with it as with a canary. Meanwhile the door to the corridor remained ajar, and all at once something stirred there … for an instant the twining tips of pale curls drooped, and then disappeared when Rodion moved as he gazed up at the tiny black aerialist receding up under the circus dome. The door still remained a quarter of the way open. Heavy Rodion, with his leather apron and his crinky red beard, lumbered about the cell, and, when the clock (closer now because of the direct communication) began its hoarse rattle prior to striking, he produced a thick watch from a recess in his belt and checked the time. Then, supposing Cincinnatus to be asleep, he watched him for a rather long time, leaning on his broom as on a halberd. Having reached who knows what conclusions he moved again … Just then, silently and not very fast, a red-and-blue ball rolled in through the door, followed one leg of a right triangle straight under the cot, disappeared for an instant, thumped against the chamber pot, and rolled out along the other cathetus—that is, toward Rodion, who all without noticing it, happened to kick it as he took a step; then, following the hypotenuse, the ball departed into the same chink through which it had entered. Shouldering the broom, Rodion left the cell. The light went out.

  Cincinnatus did not sleep, did not sleep, did not sleep—no, he was asleep, bu
t with a moan scrambled out again—and now again he did not sleep, slept, did not sleep, and everything was jumbled—

  Marthe, the executioner’s block, her velvet—and how will it turn out … which will it be? A beheading or a tryst? Everything merged totally, but he did open his eyes for just one more wink when the light went on and Rodion entered on tiptoe, took the catalogue in its black binding from the table, went out, and it became dark.

  Six

  What was it—through everything terrible, nocturnal, unwieldy—what was that thing? It had been last to move aside, reluctantly yielding to the huge, heavy wagons of sleep, and now it was first to hurry back—so pleasant, so very pleasant—swelling, growing more distinct, suffusing his heart with warmth: Marthe is coming today!

  Just then Rodion brought a lilac letter on a salver as they do in plays. Cincinnatus perched on the bed and read the following: “A million apologies! An inexcusable blunder! Upon consulting the text of the law it was discovered that an interview is granted only upon expiration of one week following the trial. Hence we shall postpone it until tomorrow. Best of health, old boy, regards. Everything the same here, one worry after another, the paint sent for the sentry boxes again turned out to be worthless, about which I had already written, but without results.”