The Luzhin Defense

by Vladimir Nabokov

  At this point in the conversation a strange noise occurred in the next room, as if someone had knocked against something there and let out a cry. "One moment," said Mrs. Luzhin, jumping up from the sofa, and was about to slide open the door to the drawing room, but changing her mind she went via the hall. In the drawing room she saw a completely unexpected Luzhin. He was in his dressing gown and bedroom slippers and holding a piece of white bread in one hand--but it was not this of course, that was surprising--the surprising thing was the trembling excitement distorting his face, the wide-open, gleaming eyes, and the forehead looking as if it had grown lumpier, the vein as if it had swollen, and catching sight of his wife he appeared to pay no attention to her at first, but continued to stand looking with open mouth in the direction of the study. An instant later it turned out his excitement was joyful. He clicked his teeth joyfully at his wife, then turned heavily in a circle, almost knocking the palm over, lost a slipper which slithered, like a live thing, into the dining room, where some cocoa was steaming, and speedily went after it.

  "Nothing, nothing," said Luzhin slyly, and like a man reveling in a secret find he slapped himself on the knees, and closing his eyes began to shake his head. "That lady is from Russia," said his wife probingly. "She knows your aunt who--well, just an aunt of yours." "Excellent, excellent," said Luzhin and suddenly choked with laughter. What am I frightened of? she thought. He's simply feeling jolly, he woke up in a good mood and wanted, perhaps ... "Is it some private joke, Luzhin?" "Yes, yes," said Luzhin and added, finding a way out: "I wanted to introduce myself in my dressing gown." "So then we're feeling jolly, that's good," she said with a smile. "Have something to eat and then get dressed. It seems to be a little warmer this morning." And leaving her husband in the dining room, Mrs. Luzhin quickly returned to the study. Her visitor was sitting on the couch and looking at some views of Switzerland on the pages of a travel leaflet. "Listen," she said, catching sight of Mrs. Luzhin, "I'm going to take advantage of you. I need to buy a few things and I have absolutely no idea where the best stores are here. Yesterday I stood a solid hour in front of a store window, standing and thinking that perhaps there are stores that are even better. And then my German isn't up to much...."

  Luzhin remained sitting in the dining room and continued from time to time to slap himself on the knees. And there was really something to celebrate. The combination he had been struggling to discern since the ball, had suddenly revealed itself to him, thanks to a chance phrase that had come flying out of the next room. During these first minutes he had still only had time to feel the keen delight of being a chess player, and pride, and relief, and that physiological sensation of harmony which is so well known to artists. He still made many more small motions before he realized the true nature of his unusual discovery--finished his cocoa, shaved, transferred his studs to a clean shirt. And suddenly the delight vanished and he was overcome by other sensations. Just as some combination, known from chess problems, can be indistinctly repeated on the board in actual play--so now the consecutive repetition of a familiar pattern was becoming noticeable in his present life. And as soon as his initial delight in having established the actual fact of the repetition had passed, as soon as he began to go carefully over his discovery, Luzhin shuddered. With vague admiration and vague horror he observed how awesomely, how elegantly and how flexibly, move by move, the images of his childhood had been repeated (country house ... town ... school ... aunt), but he still did not quite understand why this combinational repetition inspired his soul with such dread. He felt one thing keenly: a certain vexation that he had gone so long without noticing the cunning sequence of moves; and now, recalling some trifle--and there had been so many of them, and at times so skillfully presented, that the repetition was almost concealed--Luzhin was indignant with himself for not having reflected, for not taking the initiative, but with trustful blindness letting the combination unfold. But now he resolved to be more circumspect, to keep an eye on the further development of these moves, if there was to be one--and of course, of course, to maintain his discovery in impenetrable secret, to be merry, extraordinarily merry. But from that day on there was no rest for him--he had, if possible, to contrive a defense against this perfidious combination, to free himself of it, and for this he had to foresee its ultimate aim, its dire direction, but this did not yet appear feasible. And the thought that the repetition would probably continue was so frightening that he was tempted to stop the clock of life, to suspend the game for good, to freeze, and at the same time he noticed that he continued to exist, that some kind of preparation was going on, a creeping development, and that he had no power to halt this movement.

  Perhaps his wife would have noticed the change in Luzhin sooner, his wooden jollity between intervals of sullenness, had she been with him more these days. But it so happened that it was precisely during these days that she was taken advantage of, as had been promised, by the importunate lady from Russia--who forced her to spend hours taking her from store to store, and unhurriedly tried on hats, dresses and shoes, and then paid the Luzhins prolonged visits. She continued to maintain as before that there was no theater in Europe and to pronounce "Leningrad" (instead of "Petersburg") with cold glibness, and for some reason Mrs. Luzhin took pity on her, accompanied her to cafes and bought her son, a fat, gloomy little boy deprived of the gift of speech in the presence of strangers, toys which he accepted fearfully and unwillingly, whereupon his mother affirmed that there was nothing here that he liked and that he yearned to return to his little co-Pioneers. She also met Mrs. Luzhin's parents, but unfortunately the conversation about politics did not take place; they reminisced about former acquaintances, while Luzhin silently and concentratedly fed chocolates to little Ivan, and Ivan silently and concentratedly ate them, and then turned deep red and was hastily led out of the room. Meanwhile the weather got warmer, and once or twice Mrs. Luzhin said to her husband that once this unfortunate woman with her unfortunate child and unpresentable husband had finally left, they should go the very first day, without putting it off, and visit the cemetery, and Luzhin nodded with an assiduous smile. The typewriter, geography and drawing were abandoned, for he knew now that all this was part of the combination, was an intricate repetition of all the moves that had been taken down in his childhood. Ridiculous days: Mrs. Luzhin felt she was not paying enough attention to her husband's moods, something was slipping out of control, and yet she continued to listen politely to the newcomer's chatter and to translate her demands to shop assistants, and it was particularly unpleasant when a pair of shoes that had already been worn once turned out to be unsuitable, and she had to accompany her to the store while the purple-faced lady bawled out the firm in Russian and demanded the shoes be changed, and then she had to be soothed and her caustic expressions considerably toned down in the German version. On the evening before her departure she came, together with little Ivan, to say good-bye. She left Ivan in the study while she went to the bedroom with Mrs. Luzhin who for the hundredth time showed her her wardrobe. Ivan sat on the couch and scratched his knee, trying not to look at Luzhin, who also did not know where to look and was thinking how to occupy the flabby child. "Telephone!" exclaimed Luzhin finally in a high voice, and pointing to it with his finger he began to laugh with deliberate astonishment. But Ivan, after looking sullenly in the direction of Luzhin's finger, averted his eyes, his lower lip hanging. "Train and precipice!" tried Luzhin again and stretched out his other hand, pointing to his own picture on the wall. Ivan's left nostril filled with a glistening droplet and he sniffed, looking apathetically before him. "The author of a certain divine comedy!" bellowed Luzhin, raising a hand to the bust of Dante. Silence, a slight sniffing. Luzhin was tired by his gymnastic movements and also grew still. He began to wonder whether there was any candy in the dining room or whether to play the phonograph in the drawing room, but the little boy on the couch hypnotized him with his mere presence and it was impossible to leave the room. "A toy would do it," he said to himself, then lo
oked at his desk, measured the paper knife against the little boy's curiosity, found that his curiosity would not be roused by it, and began in despair to burrow in his pockets. And here again, as many times before, he felt that his left pocket, although empty, mysteriously retained some intangible contents. Luzhin thought that such a phenomenon was capable of interesting little Ivan. He sat down on the edge of the couch beside him and winked slyly. "Conjuring trick," he said and started by showing that the pocket was empty. "This hole has no connection with the trick," he explained. Listlessly and malevolently Ivan watched his movements. "But nevertheless there is something here," said Luzhin rapturously and winked. "In the lining," snorted Ivan, and with a shrug of his shoulders turned away. "Right!" cried Luzhin, miming delight, and thrust one hand through the hole, holding on to the bottom of the jacket with his other one. At first some kind of a red corner came into view, and then the whole object--something in the shape of a flat leather notebook. Luzhin looked at it with raised brows, turned it around in his hands, pulled a little flap out of its slit and cautiously opened the thing. It was not a notebook, but a small, folding chessboard of morocco leather. Luzhin immediately recalled that it had been given to him at a club in Paris--all the participants in that tournament were given this knickknack--some firm's advertisement, not simply a souvenir from the club. Lateral compartments on both leaves of this pocket board contained little celluloid pieces resembling fingernails and each one bore the picture of a chess figure. These were placed in position on the board by inserting the pointed end into a tiny crack at the lower edge of each square so that the rounded top of the piece with the drawn figure on it lay flat on the square. The effect was very elegant and neat--one could not help admiring the little red and white board, the smooth celluloid fingernails, and also the stamped gold letters along the horizontal edge of the board and the golden numbers along the vertical one. Opening his mouth wide with pleasure, Luzhin began to slip in the pieces--at first just a row of Pawns along the second rank--but then he changed his mind, and with the tips of his fingers taking the tiny, insertable figures out of their compartments, he set out the position of his game with Turati at the point where it had been interrupted. This setting out was accomplished almost instantaneously and immediately the whole material side of the matter dropped away: the tiny board lying open in the palm of his hand became intangible and weightless, the morocco dissolved in a pink and cream haze and everything disappeared save the chess position itself, complex, pungent, charged with extraordinary possibilities. Luzhin, one finger pressed to his temple, was so immersed in thought that he did not notice that Ivan, for lack of something to do, had clambered down from the couch and had started to rock the black upright of the standard lamp. It heeled over and the light went out. Luzhin came to his senses in complete darkness and for the first moment did not realize where he was or what was going on around him. An invisible creature was fidgeting and grunting close by, and suddenly the orange shade lit up again with transparent light, and a pale little boy with a shaven head was kneeling and straightening out the cord. Luzhin started and banged the board shut. His terrible little double, little Luzhin, for whom the chess pieces had been set out, crawled over the carpet on his knees.... All this had happened once before.... And again he had been caught, had not understood how exactly the repetition of a familiar theme would come out in practice. The following instant everything regained its balance: Ivan, snuffling, clambered back onto the couch; in the slight gloom beyond the orange light floated Luzhin's study, swaying gently; the red morocco notebook lay innocently on the carpet--but Luzhin knew that this was all a trick, the combination had still not completely developed, and soon a new, dire repetition would manifest itself. Bending down quickly he picked up and thrust into his pocket the material symbol of what had so voluptuously and so horribly possessed his imagination again, and he wondered where would be a surer place to hide it; but just then voices were heard, his wife came in with their visitor and both swam toward him as if through cigarette smoke. "Ivan, get up, it's time to go. Yes, yes, my dear, I still have so much to pack," said the lady and then came up to Luzhin and began to take leave of him. "Very pleased to have made your acquaintance," she said, and between the words managed to think what she had more than once thought before: What a dunderhead, what a queer fish! "Very pleased. Now I can tell your aunt I've seen her little chess player, big now, and famous--" "You must not fail to come and see us on your way back," interrupted Mrs. Luzhin hastily and loudly, for the first time looking with hatred at the woman's smiling, wax-red lips and mercilessly stupid eyes. "But of course, it goes without saying. Ivan, get up and say good-bye!" Ivan carried this out with some reluctance and they all went into the entrance hall. "There's always a lot of fuss with letting people out here in Berlin," she said ironically, watching Mrs. Luzhin take the keys from the pier table. "No, we have an elevator," replied Mrs. Luzhin irrelevantly, yearning with fierce impatience for the lady's departure, and she signed to Luzhin with her eyebrow to offer the sealskin coat. Luzhin instead took down the child's overcoat from the hallstand ... but fortunately the maid turned up at this moment. "Good-bye, good-bye," said Mrs. Luzhin, standing in the doorway while the departing visitors, accompanied by the maid, arranged themselves in the elevator. From behind his wife's shoulder Luzhin saw Ivan clamber onto the little bench but then the doors closed and the elevator sank down in its iron cage. Mrs. Luzhin ran into the study and fell face down on the couch. He sat beside her and began deep down inside him, with difficulty, to produce, glue together and sew up a smile, preparing it for the moment when his wife turned to him. His wife turned. The smile came out completely successfully. "Ouf," sighed Mrs. Luzhin, "we're finally rid of them," and quickly embracing her husband, she began to kiss him--on the right eye, then the chin, then the left ear--observing a strict sequence that had once been approved by him. "Well, cheer up, cheer up," she repeated. "That madam's gone away now, disappeared." "Disappeared," said Luzhin obediently and with a sigh kissed the hand that was patting his neck. "What tenderness," whispered his wife, "ah, what sweet tenderness ..."

  It was time to go to bed, she went to undress, and Luzhin walked through all three rooms, looking for a place to hide the pocket chess set. Everywhere was insecure. The most unexpected places were invaded in the mornings by the snout of that rapacious vacuum cleaner. It is difficult, difficult to hide a thing: the other things are jealous and inhospitable, holding on firmly to their places and not allowing a homeless object, escaping pursuit, into a single cranny. Thus he did not manage to hide the morocco notebook that night, and subsequently he decided not to hide it at all but simply to get rid of it, but this also proved to be far from easy; so it remained in his lining, and only after several months, when all danger was long, long past, only then was the pocket chess set found again, and by then its origin was obscure.

  14

  To herself Mrs. Luzhin admitted that the three-week visit of the lady from Russia had not passed without leaving a trace. The visitor's opinions were false and stupid--but how prove it? She was horrified that in recent years she had taken so little interest in the science of exile, passively accepting the glossy, varnished and gold-lettered views of her parents and paying no attention to the speeches she heard at emigre political meetings, which it had once been the thing to attend. It occurred to her that Luzhin too, perhaps, would have a taste for political matters--would perhaps revel in them, the way millions of other intelligent people do. And a new occupation for Luzhin was essential. He had become strange, the familiar sullenness had reappeared, and there often was in his eyes a kind of slippery expression, as if he were hiding something from her. She was worried that he had still not found a completely engrossing hobby and she reproached herself for the narrowness of her mental vision and her inability to find the sphere, the idea, the object which would provide work and food for Luzhin's inactive talents. She knew she had to hurry, and that every unoccupied minute in Luzhin's life was a loophole for phantoms. Before depar
ting for picturesque lands it was necessary to find Luzhin an interesting game, and only afterwards to resort to the balsam of travel, that decisive factor used by romantic millionaires to cure their spleen.

  She began with newspapers. She took out subscriptions to Znamya (The Banner), Rossianin (The Russian), Zarubezhny Golos (The Voice of Exile), Ob'yedinyenie (Union) and Klich (The Clarion), bought the latest numbers of emigre magazines and--for comparison--several Soviet magazines and newspapers. It was decided that every day after dinner they would read to one another aloud. Noticing that some newspapers printed a chess section, she wondered at first whether to cut out and destroy these bits, but she feared by this to insult Luzhin. Once or twice, as examples of interesting play, old games of Luzhin's would turn up. This was disagreeable and dangerous. She was unable to hide the issues with chess sections in them because Luzhin collected the newspapers with the aim of later binding them in the form of large books. Whenever he opened a newspaper which proved to contain a smudgy chess diagram she watched the expression on his face, but he felt her glance and merely skipped over it. And she did not know with what sinful impatience he awaited those Thursdays or Mondays when the chess section appeared, and did not know with what curiosity he looked through the printed games in her absence. In the case of chess problems he would glance sideways at the diagram and, with this glance grasping the disposition of the pieces, would memorize the problem instantly and then solve it in his mind while his wife read the editorial aloud to him. "... The whole activity comes down to a fundamental transformation and augmentation, which are designed to insure ..." read his wife in an even voice. (An interesting construction, thought Luzhin. Black's Queen is completely free.) "... draws a clear distinction between their vital interests, moreover it would not be superfluous to note that the Achilles heel of this punitive hand ..." (Black has an obvious defense against the threat on h7, thought Luzhin, and smiled mechanically when his wife, interrupting her reading for a moment, said suddenly in a low voice: "I don't understand what he means.") "If in this respect," she continued, "nothing is respected ..." (Oh, splendid! exclaimed Luzhin mentally, finding the key to the problem--a bewitchingly elegant sacrifice.) "... and disaster is not far away," his wife concluded the article, and having finished, sighed. The thing was that the more closely she read the newspapers the more bored she grew, and a fog of words and metaphors, suppositions and arguments was used to obscure the clear truth, which she always felt but was never able to express. But when she turned to the newspapers of the other world, Soviet newspapers, her boredom then knew no bounds. From them came the chill of a sepulchral countinghouse, the boredom of flyblown offices, and they reminded her somehow of the lifeless features of a certain little official in one of the establishments she had had to visit in the days when she and Luzhin were being sent from department to department for the sake of some paltry document. The little official was seedy and touchy, and was eating a diabetic roll. He probably received a miserable salary, was married and had a child whose whole body was covered with a rash. The document they did not have and had to get he endowed with cosmic significance, the whole world hung on that piece of paper and would crumble hopelessly to dust if a person were deprived of it. And that was not all: it turned out the Luzhins could not obtain it until monstrous time spans, millennia of despair and emptiness, had elapsed, and the only means allowed one of easing this Weltschmerz was the writing of petitions. The official snapped at poor Luzhin for smoking in his office and Luzhin started and stuffed the butt into his pocket. Through the window could be seen a house under construction, all in scaffolding, and a slanting rain; in the corner of the room hung a black little jacket which the official changed during working hours for a lustrine one, and his desk gave a general impression of violet ink and that same transcendental hopelessness. They went away with empty hands, and she felt as if she had had to do battle with a gray and blind eternity, which had in fact conquered her, disdainfully brushing aside her timid earthly bribe--three cigars. In another establishment they received the piece of paper instantly. Later Mrs. Luzhin thought with horror that the little official who had sent them away was probably imagining them wandering like inconsolable specters through a vacuum, and perhaps was waiting for their submissive, sobbing return. It was unclear to her why precisely this image floated before her as soon as she picked up a Moscow newspaper. The same sense of boredom and pity, perhaps, but this was not enough for her, her mind was not satisfied--and suddenly she realized that she was also looking for a formula, the official embodiment of feeling, and this was not the point at all. Her mind was unable to grasp the complicated struggle among the hazy opinions expressed by various emigre newspapers; this diversity of opinion particularly stunned her, used as she was to suppose apathetically that everyone who did not think like her parents thought like that amusing lame fellow who had spoken of sociology to a crowd of giggly girls. There turned out to be the most subtle shades of opinion and the most viperous hostility--and if all this was too complex for the mind, then the heart began to grasp one thing quite distinctly: both here and in Russia people tortured, or desired to torture, other people, but there the torture and desire to torture were a hundred times greater than here and therefore here was better.