King, Queen, Knave

by Vladimir Nabokov

  He was about to turn back when Tom gave a short muffled bark and Franz came out of a little café wiping his mouth with his knuckles.

  “Well, well, well, fancy running into you,” exclaimed Dreyer. “Starting the day with a schnapps, eh?”

  “My landlord has stopped serving me breakfast,” said Franz. What a horrible encounter. Side by side they walked, eyed by luminous puddles.

  They almost never had occasion to be alone together, and Dreyer now realized that they had absolutely nothing to talk about. It was an odd feeling. He tried to clarify it for himself. He saw Franz practically every other evening at his house but always in Martha’s presence; Franz fitted naturally into those usual surroundings, occupying a place long since set aside for him, and Dreyer never spoke to him in any but a joking casual way seeking no information, and expressing no feeling, accepting Franz on trust amid the rest of the familiar objects and people, and interrupting with irrelevant remarks the silly and dull narratives that Franz vaguely directed at Martha. Dreyer was well aware of his own secret shyness, of his inability to have a frank, serious, heart-to-heart talk with a person whom ruthless chance confronted him with. Now he felt both apprehension and an urge to laugh at the silence that was being wedged between him and Franz. He had not the least idea what to do about it. Ask him where he was going? He cleared his throat and gave Franz a sidelong glance. Franz looked at the ground as he walked.

  “Where are you going?” asked Dreyer.

  “I live near here,” said Franz with an indefinite gesture. Dreyer was looking at him not unkindly. Let him look, thought Franz. Everything in life is senseless, and this walk is senseless too.

  “Fine, fine,” said Dreyer. “I think I’ve never been here. I cut through a wilderness of kitchen gardens, and then suddenly there were half-built houses all around me. By the way, you know what—why don’t you show me your apartment?”

  Franz nodded. Silence. Presently he pointed to the right and both involuntarily quickened their step in order to accomplish at least one not wholly aimless act—a right turn. Tom, too, looked ennuied. He was not overfond of Franz.

  “How stupid,” thought Dreyer. “I must find something to tell him. We are not following a hearse.” He wondered if he should not tell him about the electric mannequins. It might interest a young man. The subject in fact was so entertaining that he had to make quite an effort not to gush about it at home. Lately the Inventor had asked him not to visit the workshop, saying he wanted to prepare a surprise, and then the other day, looking very smug, he invited Dreyer to come. The sculptor who looked like a scientist and the professor who looked like an artist also seemed extremely pleased with themselves. Two young men from the store, Moritz and Max, could hardly hide their giggles. Pulling at a cord, the Inventor drew open a black curtain, also an innovation, and a pale dignified gentleman in dinner jacket, with a carnation in his buttonhole, walked out of the side door at the left, crossed the room at a lifelike though somewhat somnambulic gait, and left by the side door at the right. Behind the scenes he was seized by Moritz and Max, who changed his clothes while a youth in white, with a racket under his arm, wandered across the room in his turn and was immediately followed by somnambule number one, now wearing a gray suit with an elegant tie and carrying a briefcase. He dropped it absentmindedly before leaving the stage but Moritz retrieved it and followed him to the exit. Meanwhile the youth reappeared, now sporting a cherry-red blazer, and after him the older man, soberly clad in a raincoat, ambled along in his melancholy and mysterious dream.

  Dreyer found the show absolutely entrancing: not only did those grandly trousered legs and properly shod feet move with a stylized grace that no mechanical toy had ever achieved before, but the two faces were fashioned with exquisite care in the same wax-like substance as the hands. And when vulgar young Max humorously impersonated the younger automannequin by stalking and prancing in his wake on the delightful youth’s final appearance, none could doubt which of the two personages had more human charm, though one Inventor was so much more experienced than the other. Presently the mature gentleman came by for the last time, and at this point his creator had devised matters in such a way as to have the re-tuxedoed one (minus the carnation mislaid in some avatar) stop in mid-stage, jiggle his feet a little as if demonstrating a dance step, and then continue toward the exit with his arm crooked as if escorting an invisible lady. “Next time,” said the Inventor, “a woman will be added. Beauty is easy to render because beauty is based on the rendering of beauty, but we are still working on her hips, we want her to roll them, and that is difficult.”

  But could one describe all this to Franz? Told in a jocular tone it would be of no interest, and if made serious, Franz might not believe it since Dreyer had pulled his leg too frequently in the past. All at once a saving thought flashed through his mind. Franz did not know yet that he was being invited to the seaside and of course should be told the good news; and simultaneously Dreyer recalled the end of the anecdote that had eluded him on the eve. First, though, he told him about the trip, saving the anecdote for the last. Franz mumbled that he was very grateful. Dreyer explained to him what to buy for the trip, charging everything to Uncle, selbstverständlich! Franz, reviving a little, thanked him again more eloquently.

  “Are you thinking of marriage?” asked Dreyer (Franz made the gesture of a clown’s stooge when presented with a conundrum). “Because I might find you a very amorous bride.”

  Franz grinned. “I’m too poor,” he replied. “Perhaps if I got a raise.”

  “That’s an idea,” said Dreyer.

  “We are almost there,” said Franz, and almost fell over Tom, who had stopped.

  Dreyer decided he would wait to tell his story—which was really an extremely funny one—until they were in Franz’s room: certain vehement gestures and extravagant attitudes had to accompany the story. This was a fatal postponement. He never told it. They were now in front of the house where another good anecdote was in the process of what botanically minded folklorists call “exfoliating.” Tom stopped again, looking up and then back. “March-march,” said Dreyer, and with his knee pushed the intelligent hound.

  “I live there,” said Franz pointing at the fifth floor.

  “Well, let’s go in by all means,” said Dreyer, and held the door open for Tom, who shot upstairs with a whimper of excitement.

  “Good Lord, I must get him some other quarters. No nephew of mine should live in a slum,” reflected Dreyer, as he climbed the stairs whose meager carpeting disappeared at an elevation well below timberline. While they climbed Martha had time to finish darning a last hole. She was sitting on the dear decrepit couch leaning over her work, her lips puckering and moving in a happy domestic pout. The landlord had said that Franz would be back in a moment. He had popped out to eat a bigger breakfast than a sick old woman could prepare. Martha got up to return the socks to their drawer. She was already wearing the emblematic slippers and had laid out the little rubber basin coquettishly covered with a clean towel. She stopped in a half-bent attitude holding her breath. “He’s here,” she thought and gave a blissful sigh. Then a strange patter of nonhuman footfalls came along the corridor; a horribly familiar bark rang out. “Quiet, Tom, behave yourself,” said Dreyer’s cheerful voice. “Third door on your right,” said Franz’s voice. Martha made for the door in order to turn the key in the lock. The key was on the other side. “Here?” asked Dreyer, and the handle moved. She braced her whole body against the door, holding the handle with her strong hand. The key was heard to turn this way and that. Tom was ardently sniffing under the door. The handle attempted to jerk again. There were now two men against her. She slipped and lost a slipper, which had happened already in another life. “What’s the matter?” said Dreyer’s voice. “Your door doesn’t open.” Her efficient lover was helping to press on the door. “Two idiots,” thought Martha coldly, and started to slide again. She heaved with her shoulder and forced it shut. Franz was muttering: “I don’t understand it a
t all. Maybe it’s some joke of my landlord’s.” Tom was barking his head off. He shall be destroyed tomorrow. Dreyer was chuckling and advising Franz to call the police. “Let’s kick it in,” he said. Martha felt she could not hold the door any longer. Suddenly there was silence, and in the silence a squeaky querulous voice uttered the magic anti-sesame: “Your girl is in there.”

  Dreyer turned. An old man in a dressing gown, clutching a kettle, was shaking his shaggy gray head at the young imbecile who had covered his face with his hands. Tom was sniffing at the old man. Dreyer burst out laughing and, dragging the dog by the collar, started to walk away. Franz accompanied him to the hallway, and tripped over a pail. “Aha, that’s what you’re up to,” said Dreyer. He winked, nudged Franz in the solar plexus, and went out. Tom looked back—and then followed his master. Franz, wooden-faced and a bit unsteady on his feet, returned along the corridor and opened the now unresisting door. Rosy, dishevelled, panting, as though after a fight, Martha was looking for her slippers.

  Impetuously she embraced Franz. Beaming and laughing, she kissed him on the lips, on the nose, on his spectacles, then sat him down beside her on the bed, gave him a drink of water, he rocked limply, and dropped his head in her lap; she stroked his hair and softly, soothingly, explained to him the only, the liquid, the resplendent solution.

  She was home before her husband, and when he arrived, and Tom trotted up to her, she gave the dog a withering derisive look.

  “Listen,” said Dreyer, “our little Franz—no, just imagine—” he spluttered and shook his head for a long time until he finally told her. The image of his somber and awkward nephew fondling a big, hefty sweetheart was unspeakably comic. He recalled Franz hopping on one foot in soiled underpants and his mirth increased. “I think you’re simply envious,” said Martha, and he tried to hug her.

  The very next time Franz came to supper his clever uncle began poking fun at him. Martha kicked her husband under the table. “My dear Franz,” said Dreyer, moving out of her shoe’s range, “perhaps you don’t feel like going away to a distant shore, perhaps you are perfectly happy in town. You can speak frankly. After all I was young myself.”

  Or else he would turn to Martha and casually observe: “You know, I’ve hired a private detective. His job is to see that my clerks lead an ascetic life, do not drink, do not gamble, and especially do not—” Here he pressed his fingers to his lips as if he had said too much, and glanced at his victim. “Of course I’m joking,” he continued in mock confusion, and added in a thin artificial voice, as if changing the subject: “What lovely weather we’re having.”

  Only a few days remained before the scheduled departure. Martha was so happy, so calm, that nothing could now affect her very deeply: her husband’s witticisms would soon end as would everything else—his cigar, his eau de cologne, his shadow with the shadow of a book on the white terrace. One thing only—the fact that the director of the Sea view Hotel had had the impudence to take advantage of the vacational influx and demand a colossal price for the rooms—only this could still perturb her. It was certainly a pity that Dreyer’s removal would be so expensive—especially now, when they had to save every penny because before you knew it he could in those last few days lose, she said, his entire fortune. Some grounds for such apprehension did exist. But at the same time she experienced a certain odd satisfaction at the thought that now, at the very moment when he was to die under her supervision, Dreyer seemed to have exhausted the brilliant business imagination, the gift of daring enterprise, thanks to which he had prepared a fortune to leave to his not ungrateful widow.

  She did not know that paradoxically, at that period of decline and indolence, Dreyer had quietly started on the very expensive affair of the automannequins. Question: Were they not too glamorous, too extravagant, too original and luxurious, for the needs of a stodgy bourgeois store in Berlin? On the other hand, he did not doubt one minute that the invention would fetch a spectacular price if one could dazzle and enchant the prospective buyer. Mr. Ritter, an American businessman who had the knack of making fancy stuff work for him, was soon to arrive. I’ll sell it, reflected Dreyer. Wouldn’t mind selling the whole store as well.

  Secretly he realized that he was a businessman by accident and that his fantasies were not salable. His father had wanted to be an actor, had been a make-up man in a travelling circus, had tried to design theatrical scenery and wonderful velvet costumes, and had ended as a moderately successful tailor. In his boyhood Kurt had wanted to be an artist—any kind of artist—but instead had spent many dull years working in his father’s shop. The greatest artistic satisfaction he ever derived was from his commercial ventures during the inflation. But he knew quite well that he would appreciate even more other arts, other inventions. What prevented him from seeing the world? He had the means—but there was some fatal veil between him and every dream that beckoned to him. He was a bachelor with a beautiful marble wife, a passionate hobbyist without anything to collect, an explorer not knowing on what mountain to die, a voracious reader of unmemorable books, a happy and healthy failure. Instead of arts and adventures, he meanly contented himself with a suburban villa, with a humdrum vacation at a Baltic resort—and even that thrilled him as the smell of a cheap circus used to intoxicate his gentle bumbling father.

  That little trip to Pomerania Bay was in fact proving to be quite a boon for everybody concerned, including the god of chance (Cazelty or Sluch, or whatever his real name was), once you imagined that god in the role of a novelist or a playwright, as Goldemar had in his most famous work. Martha was getting ready for the seaside with systematic and blissful zest. Lying on Franz’s breast, sprawling all over him, strong and heavy, and a little sticky from the heat, she whispered into his mouth and ear that his torments would be soon allayed. She purchased—not at her husband’s store—oh, no—various festive fripperies, a black bathing suit, a beachrobe zigzagged with blue and green, flannel slacks, a new camera, and a lot of bright clothes, which, she chided herself with a smile, was reckless since she would be so soon in mourning. Dreyer depended on the emporium for a tremendous beach ball and a new type of water wings.

  She wrote to her sister Hilda, who had tentatively suggested they all spend summer together, that this year plans were uncertain, they might go for a few days to the seaside, or again they might not, she would write if they did and found they wanted to stay longer. She permitted Frieda to remain in the attic but forbade her to receive visitors there. She told the gardener that hysterical Tom had bitten her, that she did not wish to upset her husband, but that she wanted the beast to be put quickly to sleep as soon as they left for Gravitz. The gardener seemed about to demur, but she pushed a fifty-mark note into his honest, caterpillar-stained claw, and the old soldier shrugged his consent.

  On the eve of their departure she inspected all the rooms of the villa, furniture, dishes, pictures, whispering to herself and to them that in a very short time she would return, she would return free and happy. That day Franz showed her a letter from his mother. The woman wrote that Emmy would be getting married in a year. “In a year,” smiled Martha, “in a year, my darling, another wedding will be taking place too. Come on, cheer up, stop picking your navel. Everything is fine.”

  They were meeting for the last time in the shabby room which already had an apprehensive unnatural look as happens when a furnished room parts with its tenant forever. Martha had already taken the red slippers home with her and hidden them in a trunk but she did not quite know what to do with the doilies, the two pretty cushions, and the dainty implementa so full of memories. With a heavy heart she advised Franz to wrap it all up and mail it to his sister as a thoughtful wedding present. The little room was aware it was being talked about and was assuming a more and more strained expression. The lewd bidders were appraising the big-nippled bronze-bangled slave girl for the last time. The pattern on the wallpaper—bouquets of blood-brown flowers in a regular succession of repeated variations—arrived at the door from three directi
ons but then there was no further place to go, and they could not leave the room, just as human thoughts, admirably coordinated though they may be, cannot escape the confines of their private circle of hell. Two suitcases stood in a corner, one brand-new in brown leatherette, with its pretty little key still attached to the grip, a sweetheart’s gift; the other, a black fibrous affair, bought a year ago at a market stall, and still quite usable except that one lock would sometimes fly open without provocation. All that had been brought into this room, or had accumulated there in the course of ten months, disappeared in those two suitcases which were to depart on the morrow—forever.