Invitation to a Beheading

by Nabokov, Vladimir

  The inscriptions on the walls had by now been wiped away. The list of rules likewise had disappeared. Also taken away—or perhaps broken—was the classic pitcher with spelaean water in its resonant depths. All was bare, redoubtable, and cold in this chamber where the prisonlike character was suppressed by the neutrality of a waiting room—whether office, hospital or some other kind—when it is already getting to be evening, and one hears only the humming in one’s ears … and the horror of this waiting was somehow connected with the incorrectly located center of the ceiling.

  Library volumes, in black shoe-leatherlike bindings, lay on the table, which had been covered for some time already with a checkered oilcloth. The pencil, which had lost its slender length and was well chewed, rested on violently scribbled pages, stacked windmill fashion. Here also had been thrown a letter to Marthe, completed by Cincinnatus the day before, that is, the day after the interview: but he could not make up his mind to send it, and had therefore let it lie a while, as though expecting from the thing itself that fruition which his irresolute thoughts, in need of another climate, simply could not achieve.

  The subject will now be the precious quality of Cincinnatus; his fleshy incompleteness; the fact that the greater part of him was in a quite different place, while only an insignificant portion of it was wandering, perplexed, here—a poor, vague Cincinnatus, a comparatively stupid Cincinnatus, trusting, feeble and foolish as people are in their sleep. But even during this sleep—still, still—his real life showed through too much.

  Cincinnatus’s face, grown transparently pallid, with fuzz on its sunken cheeks and a mustache with such a delicate hair texture that it seemed to be actually a bit of disheveled sunlight on his upper lip; Cincinnatus’s face, small and still young despite all the torments, with gliding eyes, eerie eyes of changeable shade, was, in regard to its expression, something absolutely inadmissible by the standards of his surroundings, especially now, when he had ceased to dissemble. The open shirt, the black dressing grown that kept flying open, the oversize slippers on his slender feet, the philosopher’s skullcap on the top of his head and the ripple (there was a draft coming from somewhere after all!) running through the transparent hair on his temples completed a picture, the full indecency of which it is difficult to put into words—produced as it was of a thousand barely noticeable, overlapping trifles: of the light outline of his lips, seemingly not quite fully drawn but touched by a master of masters; of the fluttering movements of his empty, not-yet-shaded-in hands; of the dispersing and again gathering rays in his animated eyes; but even all of this, analyzed and studied, still could not fully explain Cincinnatus: it was as if one side of his being slid into another dimension, as all the complexity of a tree’s foliage passes from shade into radiance, so that you cannot distinguish just where begins the submergence into the shimmer of a different element. It seemed as though at any moment, in the course of his movements about the limited space of the haphazardly invented cell, Cincinnatus would step in such a way as to slip naturally and effortlessly through some chink of the air into its unknown coulisses to disappear there with the same easy smoothness with which the flashing reflection of a rotated mirror moves across every object in the room and suddenly vanishes, as if beyond the air, in some new depth of ether. At the same time, everything about him breathed with a delicate, drowsy, but in reality exceptionally strong, ardent and independent life: his veins of the bluest blue pulsated; crystal-clear saliva moistened his lips; the skin quivered on his cheeks and his forehead, which was edged with dissolved light … and all this so teased the observer as to make him long to tear apart, cut to shreds, destroy utterly this brazen elusive flesh, and all that it implied and expressed, all that impossible, dazzling freedom—enough, enough—do not walk any more, Cincinnatus, lie down on your cot, so you will not arouse, will not irritate … And in truth Cincinnatus would become aware of the predatory eye in the peephole following him and lie down or sit at the table and open a book.

  The black pile of books on the table consisted of the following: first, a contemporary novel that Cincinnatus had not bothered to read during his period of existence at liberty; second, one of those anthologies, published in countless editions with condensed rehashes of and excerpts from ancient literature; third, bound issues of an old magazine; fourth, several bedraggled little volumes of a work in an unknown tongue, brought him by mistake—he had not ordered them.

  The novel was the famous Quercus, and Cincinnatus had already read a good third of it, or about a thousand pages. Its protagonist was an oak. The novel was a biography of that oak. At the place where Cincinnatus had stopped the oak was just starting on its third century; a simple calculation suggested that by the end of the book it would reach the age of six hundred at least.

  The idea of the novel was considered to be the acme of modern thought. Employing the gradual development of the tree (growing lone and mighty at the edge of a canyon at whose bottom the waters never ceased to din), the author unfolded all the historic events—or shadows of events—of which the oak could have been a witness; now it was a dialogue between two warriors dismounted from their steeds—one dappled, the other dun—so as to rest under the cool ceil of its noble foliage; now highwaymen stopping by and the song of a wild-haired fugitive damsel; now, beneath the storm’s blue zigzag, the hasty passage of a lord escaping from royal wrath; now, upon a spread cloak a corpse, still quivering with the throb of the leafy shadows; now a brief drama in the life of some villagers. There was a paragraph a page and a half long in which all the words began with “p.”

  It seemed as though the author were sitting with his camera somewhere among the topmost branches of the Quercus, spying out and catching his prey. Various images of life would come and go, pausing among the green macules of light. The normal periods of inaction were filled with scientific descriptions of the oak itself, from the viewpoints of dendrology, ornithology, coleopterology, mythology—or popular descriptions, with touches of folk humor. Among other things there was a detailed list of all the initials carved in the bark with their interpretations. And, finally, no little attention was devoted to the music of waters, the palette of sunsets, and the behavior of the weather.

  Cincinnatus read for a while and laid it aside. This work was unquestionably the best that his age had produced; yet he overcame the pages with a melancholy feeling, plodded through the pages with dull distress, and kept drowning out the tale in the stream of his own meditation: what matters to me all this, distant, deceitful and dead—I, who am preparing to die? Or else he would begin imagining how the author, still a young man, living, so they said, on an island in the North Sea—would be dying himself; and it was somehow funny that eventually the author must needs die—and it was funny because the only real, genuinely unquestionable thing here was only death itself, the inevitability of the author’s physical death.

  The light would move along the wall. Rodion would appear with what he called frühstück. Again a butterfly wing would slide between his fingers, leaving colored powder on them.

  “Can it be that he has not arrived yet?” asked Cincinnatus; it was already not the first time he had asked this question, which greatly angered Rodion, and again he did not reply.

  “And another interview—will they grant me that?” asked Cincinnatus.

  In anticipation of the usual heartburn he lay down on the cot and, turning toward the wall, for a long, long time helped patterns form on it, from tiny blobs of the glossy paint and their round little shadows; he would discover, for example, a diminutive profile with a large mouselike ear; then he would lose it and was unable to reconstruct it. This cold ochre smelled of the grave, it was pimply and horrible, yet his gaze still persisted in selecting and correlating the necessary little protuberances—so starved he was for even a vague semblance of a human face. Finally he turned over, lay on his back and, with the same attention began to examine the shadows and cracks on the ceiling.

  “Anyway, they have succeeded in softening me,” muse
d Cincinnatus. “I have grown so limp and soggy that they will be able to do it with a fruit knife.”

  For some time he sat on the edge of the cot, his hands compressed between his knees, all hunched over. Letting out a shuddering sigh he began again to roam. It is interesting, though, in what language this is written. The small, crowded, ornate type, with dots and squiggles within the sickle-shaped letters, seemed to be oriental—it was somehow reminiscent of the inscriptions on museum daggers. Such old little volumes, with their faded pages … some tinged with tawny blotches.

  The clock struck seven, and shortly Rodion appeared with dinner.

  “You are sure he still has not come?” asked Cincinnatus.

  Rodion was about to leave, but turned on the threshold.

  “Shame on you,” he said with a sob in his voice, “day and night you do nothing … a body feeds you here, tends you lovingly, wears himself out for your sake, and all you do is ask stupid questions. For shame, you thankless man …”

  Time, humming evenly, continued to pass. The air in the cell grew dark, and when it had become quite dense and dull, the light came on in business-like fashion in the center of the ceiling—no, not quite in the center, that was just it—an agonizing reminder. Cincinnatus undressed and got in bed with Quercus. The author was already getting to the civilized ages, to judge by the conversation of three merry wayfarers, Tit, Pud, and the Wandering Jew who were taking swigs of wine from their flasks on the cool moss beneath the black vespertine oak.

  “Will no one save me?” Cincinnatus suddenly asked aloud and sat up on the bed (opening his pauper’s hands, showing that he had nothing).

  “Can it be that no one will?” repeated Cincinnatus, gazing at the implacable yellowness of the walls and still holding up his empty palms.

  The draft became a leafy breeze. From the dense shadows above there fell and bounced on the blanket a large dummy acorn, twice as large as life, splendidly painted a glossy buff, and fitting its cork cup as snugly as an egg.

  Twelve

  He was awakened by a muted tapping, scratching, and the sound of something crumbling somewhere. Just as when, having fallen asleep healthy last night, you wake up past midnight in a fever. He listened to these sounds for quite a long while—trup, trup, tock-tock-tock—without any thought about their meaning, simply listening, because they had awakened him and because his hearing had nothing else to do. Trup, tap, scratch, crumble-crumble. Where? To the right? To the left? Cincinnatus raised himself up a little.

  He listened—his whole head became an organ of hearing, his whole body a tense heart; he listened and already began to make sense out of certain indications: the weak distillation of darkness within the cell … the dark had settled to the bottom … Beyond the bars of the window, a gray twilight—that meant it was three or half past three … The guards asleep in the cold … The sounds were coming from somewhere below … no, it was, rather, from above, no, it was still below, just on the other side of the wall, at floor level, like a large mouse scratching with iron claws.

  Cincinnatus was especially excited by the concentrated self-confidence of the sounds, the insistent seriousness with which they pursued, in the quiet of the fortress night, perhaps a distant, but none the less attainable goal. With bated breath, with a phantomlike lightness, like a sheet of tissue paper, he slipped off—and tiptoed along the sticky, clinging—to the corner from which it seemed—it seemed to be—but coming closer, he realized that he was mistaken—the tapping was more to the right and higher up; he moved, and again got confused, fooled by the aural deception that occurs when a sound, traversing diagonally one’s head, is hurriedly served by the wrong ear.

  Stepping awkwardly, Cincinnatus brushed against the tray, which was standing on the floor near the wall. “Cincinnatus!” said the tray reproachfully; and then the tapping ceased with abrupt suddenness, which conveyed to the listener a heartening rationality; and, standing motionless by the wall, pressing down with his toe the spoon on the tray and tilting his open, hollow head, Cincinnatus felt that the unknown digger was also standing still and listening.

  A half-minute passed and the sounds, quieter, more restrained, but more expressive and wiser, began again. Turning and slowly moving his sole off the zinc, Cincinnatus tried again to ascertain their location: to the right, if one stood facing the door … yes, to the right, and, in any case, still far off … after listening a long time that was all he was able to conclude. Finally moving back toward the cot to get his slippers—he could not stand it barefoot any longer–he startled the loud-legged chair, which never spent the night in the same spot twice, and again the sounds ceased, this time for good; that is, they might have resumed after a cautious interval, but morning was already coming into its own and Cincinnatus saw—with the eyes of habitual imagination—Rodion, all steaming from the dampness and opening in a yawn his bright-red mouth as he stretched on his stool in the hall.

  All morning long Cincinnatus listened and calculated how he could make known his attitude to the sounds in case they should recur. A summer thunderstorm, simply yet tastefully staged, was performed outside: it was as dark as evening in the cell, thunder was heard, now substantial and round, now sharp and crackly, and lightning printed the shadows of the bars in unexpected places. At noon Rodrig Ivanovich arrived.

  “You have company,” he said, “but first I wanted to find out …”

  “Who?” asked Cincinnatus, at the same time thinking: please, not now… (that is, please do not let the tapping resume now).

  “You see, here’s the way it is,” said the director, “I am not sure that you wish … You see, it’s your mother—votre mère, paraît-il.”

  “My mother?” asked Cincinnatus.

  “Well, yes—mother, mummy, mama—in short, the woman who gave birth to you. Shall I admit her? Make up your mind quickly.”

  “… I have only seen her once in my life,” said Cincinnatus, “and I really have no feeling … no, no, it’s not worth it, don’t, it would be pointless.”

  “As you wish,” said the director and went out.

  A minute later, cooing politely, he led in diminutive Cecilia C, clad in a black raincoat. “I shall leave you two alone,” he added benevolently, “even though it is against our rules, sometimes there are situations … exceptions … mother and son … I defer …”

  Exit, backing out like a courtier.

  In her shiny black raincoat and a similar waterproof hat with lowered brim (giving it something of the appearance of a sou’wester), Cecilia C. remained standing in the center of the cell, looking with a clear gaze at her son; she unbuttoned herself; she sniffled noisily and said in her rapid, choppy way: “What a storm, what mud, I thought I’d never make it up here, streams and torrents coming down the road at me …”

  “Sit down,” said Cincinnatus, “don’t stand like that.”

  “Say what you will, but it’s quiet here in your place,” she went on, sniffling all the while and rubbing her finger firmly, as if it were a cheese grater, under her nose, so that the pink tip wrinkled and wagged. “I’ll say one thing, it’s quiet and fairly clean. By the way, over at the maternity ward, we don’t have private quarters as big as this. Oh, that bed—my dear, just look what a mess your bed is!”

  She plopped down her midwife’s bag, nimbly pulled the black cotton gloves off her small, mobile hands, and, stooping low over the cot, began making the bed afresh. Her back in the belted coat with its seal-like sheen, her mended stockings…

  “Now, that’s better,” she said, straightening up; then, standing for a moment with arms akimbo, she looked askance at the book-cluttered table.

  She was youthful, and all her features were a model for those of Cincinnatus, which had emulated them in their own way; Cincinnatus himself was vaguely aware of this resemblance as he looked at her sharp-nosed little face, and protruding, luminous eyes. Her dress was opened in front, revealing a triangle of red sun-tanned freckled skin; in general, however, the integument was the same as that
from which a piece had once been taken for Cincinnatus—a pale, thin skin, with sky-blue veins.

  “Tsk, tsk, a little straightening up would be in order here too …” she prattled and, as quickly as she did everything else, busied herself with the books, arranging them in even piles. In passing her interest was caught by an illustration in an open magazine; she fished out of her raincoat pocket a kidney-shaped case and, dropping the corners of her mouth, put on a pince-nez. “Came out back in ’26,” she said with a laugh. “Such a long time ago, it’s really hard to believe it.”

  (Two photographs: in one the President of the Isles shaking with a dental smile the hand of the venerable great granddaughter of the last of the inventors at the Manchester railroad station; in the other, a two-headed calf born in a Danube village.)

  She sighed causelessly, pushed the volume aside, knocked the pencil off, did not catch it in time, and said “oops!”

  “Leave as is,” said Cincinnatus. “There can be no disorder here—only a shifting about.”

  “Here, I brought you this.” (She pulled a pound bag out of her coat pocket, pulling out the lining as well.) “Here. Some candy. Suck on it to your heart’s content.”

  She sat down and puffed out her cheeks.

  “I climbed, and climbed, and finally made it, and now I am tired,” she said, puffing deliberately; then she froze, gazing with vague longing at the cobweb up above.

  “Why did you come?” asked Cincinnatus pacing about the cell. “It doesn’t do you any good, and it doesn’t do me any good. Why? It is neither kind, nor interesting. For I can see perfectly well that you are just as much of a parody as everybody and everything else. And if they treat me to such a clever parody of a mother … But imagine, for instance, that I have pinned my hopes on some distant sound—how can I have faith in it, if even you are a fraud? And you speak of ‘candy!’ Why not ‘goodies’? And why is your raincoat wet when your shoes are dry—see, that’s careless. Tell the prop man for me.”