The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov Part 21

"I'm falling, I'm falling!" exclaimed Tanya, and both she and Lola jumped down on the gra.s.s.

"Would you like some more bilberries?" asked Peter.

She shook her head, then looked askance at Lola and, turning to Peter again, added: "She and I have decided to stop speaking to you."

"But why?" mumbled Peter, flus.h.i.+ng painfully.

"Because you are a poseur," replied Tanya, and jumped back onto the seesaw. Peter pretended to be deeply engrossed in the examination of a frizzly-black molehill on the edge of the avenue.

In the meantime a panting Vladimir had brought the "necessary implement"-a green sharp little stick, of the sort used by gardeners to prop up peonies and dahlias but also very much like Elenski's wand at the magic-lantern show. It remained to be settled who would be the "knocker."

"One. Two. Three. Four," began Elenski in a comic narrative tone, while pointing the stick at every player in turn. "The rabbit. Peeped out. Of his door. A hunter. Alas" (Elenski paused and sneezed powerfully). "Happened to pa.s.s" (the narrator replaced his pince-nez). "And his gun. Went bang. Bang. And. The. Poor" (the syllables grew more and more stressed and s.p.a.ced). "Hare. Died. There."

The "there" fell on Peter. But all the other children crowded around Elenski, clamoring for him to be the seeker. One could hear them exclaiming: "Please, please, it will be much more fun!"

"All right, I consent," replied Elenski, without even glancing at Peter.

At the point where the avenue joined the garden terrace, there stood a whitewashed, partly peeled bench with a barred back, also white and also peeling. It was on this bench that Elenski sat down with the green stick in his hands. He humped his fat shoulders, closed his eyes tight and started to count aloud to one hundred, giving time to the players to hide. Vasiliy and Tanya, as if acting in collusion, disappeared in the depths of the park. One of the uniformed schoolboys cannily placed himself behind a linden trunk, only three yards away from the bench. Peter, after a wistful glance at the speckled shade of the shrubbery, turned away and went in the opposite direction, toward the house: he planned to ambuscade on the veranda-not on the main one, of course, where the grown-ups were having tea to the sound of a bra.s.s-horned gramophone singing in Italian, but on a lateral porch giving on Elenski's bench. Luckily, it turned out to be empty. The various colors of the panes inset in its latticed cas.e.m.e.nts were reflected beneath on the long narrow divans, upholstered in dove-gray with exaggerated roses, that lined the walls. There were also a bentwood rocking chair, a dog's bowl, licked clean, on the floor, and an oilcloth-covered table with nothing upon it save a lone-looking pair of old-person spectacles.

Peter crept up on the many-colored window and kneeled on a cus.h.i.+on under the white ledge. At some distance one saw a coral-pink Elenski sitting on a coral-pink bench under the ruby-black leaves of a linden. The rule was that the "seeker," when leaving his post to spy out the concealed players, should also leave his stick behind. Wariness and nice judgment of pace and place advised him not to stray too far, lest a player made a sudden dash from an unsighted point and reach the bench before the "seeker" could get back to it and give a rap of victory with the regained wand. Peter's plan was simple: as soon as Elenski, having finished counting, put the stick down on the bench, and set off toward the shrubbery with its most likely lurking spots, Peter would sprint from his veranda to the bench and give it the sacramental "knock-knock" with the unguarded stick. About half a minute had already elapsed. A light-blue Elenski sat hunched up under indigo-black foliage and tapped his toe on the silver-blue sand in rhythm with the count. How delightful it would have been to wait thus, and peer through this or that lozenge of stained gla.s.s, if only Tanya ... Oh, why? What did I do to her?

The number of plain-gla.s.s panes was much inferior to that of the rest. A gray and white wagtail walked past across the sand-colored sand. There were bits of cobweb in the corners of the latticework. On the ledge a dead fly lay on its back. A bright-yellow Elenski rose from his golden bench and gave a warning knock. At the same instant, the door leading onto the veranda from the inside of the house opened, and out of the dusk of a room there came first a corpulent brown dachshund and then a gray bobhaired little old woman in a tight-belted black dress with a trefoil-shaped brooch on her chest and a chainlet around her neck connecting with the watch stuck into her belt. Very indolently, sideways, the dog descended the steps into the garden. As to the old lady she angrily s.n.a.t.c.hed up the spectacles-for which she had come. All of a sudden she noticed the boy crawling off his seat.

"Priate-qui? Priate-qui?" (pryatki, hide-and-seek), she uttered with the farcical accent inflicted on Russian by old Frenchwomen after half a century of life in our country. "Toute n'est caroche" (tut ne khorosho, here not good), she continued, considering with kindly eyes Peter's face that expressed both embarra.s.sment with his situation and entreaty not to speak too loud. "Sicha.s.se pocajou caroche messt" (seychas pokazhu khoroshee mesto, right away I'll show a good place).

An emerald Elenski stood with arms akimbo on the pale green sand and kept glancing in all directions at once. Peter, fearing the creaky and fussy voice of the old governess might be heard outside, and fearing even more to offend her by a refusal, hastened to follow her, though quite conscious of the ludicrous turn things were taking. Holding him firmly by the hand she led him through one room after another, past a white piano, past a card table, past a little tricycle, and as the variety of sudden objects increased-elk anders, bookcases, a decoy duck on a shelf-he felt she was taking him to the opposite side of the house and making it more and more difficult to explain, without hurting her, that the game she had interrupted was not so much a matter of hiding as of awaiting the moment when Elenski would retreat sufficiently far from the bench to allow one to run to it and knock upon it with the all-important stick!

After pa.s.sing through a succession of rooms, they turned into a corridor, then went up a flight of stairs, then traversed a sunlit mangle room where a rosy-cheeked woman sat knitting on a trunk near the window: she looked up, smiled, and lowered her lashes again, her knitting needles never stopping. The old governess led Peter into the next room where stood a leathern couch and an empty bird's cage and where there was a dark niche between a huge mahogany wardrobe and a Dutch stove.

"Votte" ("Here you are"), said the old lady, and having pressed him with a light push into that hiding place, went back to the mangle room, where in her garbled Russian she continued a gossipy conversation with the comely knitter who kept inserting every now and then an automatic "Skazhite pozhaluysta!" ("Well, I never!").

For a while Peter remained kneeling politely in his absurd nook; presently he straightened up, but continued standing there and peering at the wallpaper with its blandly indifferent azure scroll, at the window, at the top of a poplar rippling in the sun. One could hear a clock hoa.r.s.ely ticktocking and that sound reminded one of various dull and sad things.

A lot of time pa.s.sed. The conversation in the next room began to move away and to lose itself in the distance. Now all was silent, except the clock. Peter emerged from his niche.

He ran down the stairs, tiptoed rapidly through the rooms (bookcases, elkhorns, tricycle, blue card table, piano) and was met at the open door leading to the veranda by a pattern of colored sun and by the old dog returning from the garden. Peter stole up to the windowpanes and chose an unstained one. On the white bench lay the green wand. Elenski was invisible-he had walked off, no doubt, in his unwary search, far beyond the lindens that lined the avenue.

Grinning from sheer excitement, Peter skipped down the steps and rushed toward the bench. He was still running, when he noted an odd irresponsiveness around him. However, at the same swift pace he reached the beach and knocked its seat thrice with the stick. A vain gesture. n.o.body appeared. Flecks of sunlight pulsated on the sand. A ladybird was walking up a bench arm, the transparent tips of her carelessly folded wings showing untidily from under her small spotted cupola.

Peter waited for a minute or two, stealing glances around, and finally realized that he had been forgotten, that the existence of a last, unfound, unflushed lurker had been overlooked, and that everybody had gone to the picnic without him. That picnic, incidentally, had been for him the only acceptable promise of the day: he had been looking forward after a fas.h.i.+on to it, to the absence of grown-ups there, to the fire built in a forest clearing, to the baked potatoes, to the bilberry tarts, to the iced tea in thermos bottles. The picnic was now s.n.a.t.c.hed away, but one could reconcile oneself to that privation. What rankled was something else.

Peter swallowed hard and still holding the green stick wandered back to the house. Uncles, aunts, and their friends were playing cards on the main veranda; he distinguished the sound of his sister's laughter-a nasty sound. He walked around the mansion, with the vague thought that somewhere near it there must be a lily pond and that he might leave on its brink his monogrammed handkerchief and his silver whistle on its white cord, while he himself would go, unnoticed, all the way home. Suddenly, near the pump behind a corner of the house he heard a familiar burst of voices. All were there-Elenski, Vasiliy, Tanya, her brothers and cousins; they cl.u.s.tered around a peasant who was showing a baby owl he had just found. The owlet, a fat little thing, brown, white-speckled, kept s.h.i.+fting this way and that its head or rather its facial disc, for one could not make out exactly where the head started and the body stopped.

Peter approached. Vasiliy Tuchkov glanced at him and said to Tanya with a chuckle: "And here comes the poseur."

THE VISIT TO THE MUSEUM.

SEVERAL years ago a friend of mine in Paris-a person with oddities, to put it mildly-learning that I was going to spend two or three days at Montisert, asked me to drop in at the local museum where there hung, he was told, a portrait of his grandfather by Leroy. Smiling and spreading out his hands, he related a rather vague story to which I confess I paid little attention, partly because I do not like other people's obtrusive affairs, but chiefly because I had always had doubts about my friend's capacity to remain this side of fantasy. It went more or less as follows: after the grandfather died in their St. Petersburg house back at the time of the Russo-j.a.panese War, the contents of his apartment in Paris were sold at auction. The portrait, after some obscure peregrinations, was acquired by the museum of Leroy's native town. My friend wished to know if the portrait was really there; if there, if it could be ransomed; and if it could, for what price. When I asked why he did not get in touch with the museum, he replied that he had written several times, but had never received an answer.

I made an inward resolution not to carry out the request-I could always tell him I had fallen ill or changed my itinerary. The very notion of seeing sights, whether they be museums or ancient buildings, is loathsome to me; besides, the good freak's commission seemed absolute nonsense. It so happened, however, that, while wandering about Montisert's empty streets in search of a stationery store, and cursing the spire of a long-necked cathedral, always the same one, that kept popping up at the end of every street, I was caught in a violent downpour which immediately went about accelerating the fall of the maple leaves, for the fair weather of a southern October was holding on by a mere thread. I dashed for cover and found myself on the steps of the museum.

It was a building of modest proportions, constructed of many-colored stones, with columns, a gilt inscription over the frescoes of the pediment, and a lion-legged stone bench on either side of the bronze door. One of its leaves stood open, and the interior seemed dark against the s.h.i.+mmer of the shower. I stood for a while on the steps, but, despite the overhanging roof, they were gradually growing speckled. I saw that the rain had set in for good, and so, having nothing better to do, I decided to go inside. No sooner had I trod on the smooth, resonant flagstones of the vestibule than the clatter of a moved stool came from a distant corner, and the custodian-a ba.n.a.l pensioner with an empty sleeve-rose to meet me, laying aside his newspaper and peering at me over his spectacles. I paid my franc and, trying not to look at some statues at the entrance (which were as traditional and as insignificant as the first number in a circus program), I entered the main hall.

Everything was as it should be: gray tints, the sleep of substance, matter dematerialized. There was the usual case of old, worn coins resting in the inclined velvet of their compartments. There was, on top of the case, a pair of owls, Eagle Owl and Long-eared, with their French names reading "Grand Duke" and "Middle Duke" if translated. Venerable minerals lay in their open graves of dusty papier-mache; a photograph of an astonished gentleman with a pointed beard dominated an a.s.sortment of strange black lumps of various sizes. They bore a great resemblance to frozen fra.s.s, and I paused involuntarily over them, for I was quite at a loss to guess their nature, composition, and function. The custodian had been following me with felted steps, always keeping a respectful distance; now, however, he came up, with one hand behind his back and the ghost of the other in his pocket, and gulping, if one judged by his Adam's apple.

"What are they?" I asked.

"Science has not yet determined," he replied, undoubtedly having learned the phrase by rote. "They were found," he continued in the same phony tone, "in 1895, by Louis Pradier, Munic.i.p.al Councillor and Knight of the Legion of Honor," and his trembling finger indicated the photograph.

"Well and good," I said, "but who decided, and why, that they merited a place in the museum?"

"And now I call your attention to this skull!" the old man cried energetically, obviously changing the subject.

"Still, I would be interested to know what they are made of," I interrupted.

"Science ..." he began anew, but stopped short and looked crossly at his fingers, which were soiled with dust from the gla.s.s.

I proceeded to examine a Chinese vase, probably brought back by a naval officer; a group of porous fossils; a pale worm in clouded alcohol; a red-and-green map of Montisert in the seventeenth century; and a trio of rusted tools bound by a funereal ribbon-a spade, a mattock, and a pick. To dig in the past, I thought absentmindedly, but this time did not seek clarification from the custodian, who was following me noiselessly and meekly, weaving in and out among the display cases. Beyond the first hall there was another, apparently the last, and in its center a large sarcophagus stood like a dirty bathtub, while the walls were hung with paintings.

At once my eye was caught by the portrait of a man between two abominable landscapes (with cattle and "atmosphere"). I moved closer and, to my considerable amazement, found the very object whose existence had hitherto seemed to me but the figment of an unstable mind. The man, depicted in wretched oils, wore a frock coat, whiskers, and a large pince-nez on a cord; he bore a likeness to Offenbach, but, in spite of the work's vile conventionality, I had the feeling one could make out in his features the horizon of a resemblance, as it were, to my friend. In one corner, meticulously traced in carmine against a black background, was the signature Leroy in a hand as commonplace as the work itself.

I felt a vinegarish breath near my shoulder, and turned to meet the custodian's kindly gaze. "Tell me," I asked, "supposing someone wished to buy one of these paintings, whom should he see?"

"The treasures of the museum are the pride of the city," replied the old man, "and pride is not for sale."

Fearing his eloquence, I hastily concurred, but nevertheless asked for the name of the museum's director. He tried to distract me with the story of the sarcophagus, but I insisted. Finally he gave me the name of one M. G.o.dard and explained where I could find him.

Frankly, I enjoyed the thought that the portrait existed. It is fun to be present at the coming true of a dream, even if it is not one's own. I decided to settle the matter without delay. When I get in the spirit, no one can hold me back. I left the museum with a brisk, resonant step, and found that the rain had stopped, blueness had spread across the sky, a woman in besplattered stockings was spinning along on a silver-s.h.i.+ning bicycle, and only over the surrounding hills did clouds still hang. Once again the cathedral began playing hide-and-seek with me, but I outwitted it. Barely escaping the onrus.h.i.+ng tires of a furious red bus packed with singing youths, I crossed the asphalt thoroughfare and a minute later was ringing at the garden gate of M. G.o.dard. He turned out to be a thin, middle-aged gentleman in high collar and d.i.c.key, with a pearl in the knot of his tie, and a face very much resembling a Russian wolfhound; as if that were not enough, he was licking his chops in a most doglike manner, while sticking a stamp on an envelope, when I entered his small but lavishly furnished room with its malachite inkstand on the desk and a strangely familiar Chinese vase on the mantel. A pair of fencing foils hung crossed over the mirror, which reflected the narrow gray back of his head. Here and there photographs of a wars.h.i.+p pleasantly broke up the blue flora of the wallpaper.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, throwing the letter he had just sealed into the wastebasket. This act seemed unusual to me; however, I did not see fit to interfere. I explained in brief my reason for coming, even naming the substantial sum with which my friend was willing to part, though he had asked me not to mention it, but wait instead for the museum's terms.

"All this is delightful," said M. G.o.dard. "The only thing is, you are mistaken-there is no such picture in our museum."

"What do you mean there is no such picture? I have just seen it! Portrait of a Russian n.o.bleman by Gustave Leroy."

"We do have one Leroy," said M. G.o.dard when he had leafed through an oilcloth notebook and his black fingernail had stopped at the entry in question. "However, it is not a portrait but a rural landscape: The Return of the Herd."

I repeated that I had seen the picture with my own eyes five minutes before and that no power on earth could make me doubt its existence.

"Agreed," said M. G.o.dard, "but I am not crazy either. I have been curator of our museum for almost twenty years now and know this catalogue as well as I know the Lord's Prayer. It says here Return of the Herd and that means the herd is returning, and, unless perhaps your friend's grandfather is depicted as a shepherd, I cannot conceive of his portrait's existence in our museum."

"He is wearing a frock coat," I cried. "I swear he is wearing a frock coat!"

"And how did you like our museum in general?" M. G.o.dard asked suspiciously. "Did you appreciate the sarcophagus?"

"Listen," I said (and I think there was already a tremor in my voice), "do me a favor-let's go there this minute, and let's make an agreement that if the portrait is there, you will sell it."

"And if not?" inquired M. G.o.dard.

"I shall pay you the sum anyway."

"All right," he said. "Here, take this red-and-blue pencil and using the red-the red, please-put it in writing for me."

In my excitement I carried out his demand. Upon glancing at my signature, he deplored the difficult p.r.o.nunciation of Russian names. Then he appended his own signature and, quickly folding the sheet, thrust it into his waistcoat pocket.

"Let's go," he said, freeing a cuff.

On the way he stepped into a shop and bought a bag of sticky-looking caramels which he began offering me insistently; when I flatly refused, he tried to shake out a couple of them into my hand. I pulled my hand away. Several caramels fell on the sidewalk; he stopped to pick them up and then overtook me at a trot. When we drew near the museum we saw the red tourist bus (now empty) parked outside.

"Aha," said M. G.o.dard, pleased. "I see we have many visitors today."

He doffed his hat and, holding it in front of him, walked decorously up the steps.

All was not well at the museum. From within issued rowdy cries, lewd laughter, and even what seemed like the sound of a scuffle. We entered the first hall; there the elderly custodian was restraining two sacrilegists who wore some kind of festive emblems in their lapels and were altogether very purple-faced and full of pep as they tried to extract the munic.i.p.al councillor's merds from beneath the gla.s.s. The rest of the youths, members of some rural athletic organization, were making noisy fun, some of the worm in alcohol, others of the skull. One joker was in rapture over the pipes of the steam radiator, which he pretended was an exhibit; another was taking aim at an owl with his fist and forefinger. There were about thirty of them in all, and their motion and voices created a condition of crush and thick noise.

M. G.o.dard clapped his hands and pointed at a sign reading "VISITORS TO THE MUSEUM MUST BE DECENTLY ATTIRED." Then he pushed his way, with me following, into the second hall. The whole company immediately swarmed after us. I steered G.o.dard to the portrait; he froze before it, chest inflated, and then stepped back a bit, as if admiring it, and his feminine heel trod on somebody's foot.

"Splendid picture," he exclaimed with genuine sincerity. "Well, let's not be petty about this. You were right, and there must be an error in the catalogue."

As he spoke, his fingers, moving as it were on their own, tore up our agreement into little bits which fell like snowflakes into a ma.s.sive spittoon.

"Who's the old ape?" asked an individual in a striped jersey, and, as my friend's grandfather was depicted holding a glowing cigar, another funster took out a cigarette and prepared to borrow a light from the portrait.

"All right, let us settle on the price," I said, "and, in any case, let's get out of here."

"Make way, please!" shouted M. G.o.dard, pus.h.i.+ng aside the curious.

There was an exit, which I had not noticed previously, at the end of the hall and we thrust our way through to it.

"I can make no decision," M. G.o.dard was shouting above the din. "Decisiveness is a good thing only when supported by law. I must first discuss the matter with the mayor, who has just died and has not yet been elected. I doubt that you will be able to purchase the portrait but nonetheless I would like to show you still other treasures of ours."

We found ourselves in a hall of considerable dimensions. Brown books, with a half-baked look and coa.r.s.e, foxed pages, lay open under gla.s.s on a long table. Along the walls stood dummy soldiers in jackboots with flared tops.

"Come, let's talk it over," I cried out in desperation, trying to direct M. G.o.dard's evolutions to a plush-covered sofa in a corner. But in this I was prevented by the custodian. Flailing his one arm, he came running after us, pursued by a merry crowd of youths, one of whom had put on his head a copper helmet with a Rembrandtesque gleam.

"Take it off, take it off!" shouted M. G.o.dard, and someone's shove made the helmet fly off the hooligan's head with a clatter.

"Let us move on," said M. G.o.dard, tugging at my sleeve, and we pa.s.sed into the section of Ancient Sculpture.

I lost my way for a moment among some enormous marble legs, and twice ran around a giant knee before I again caught sight of M. G.o.dard, who was looking for me behind the white ankle of a neighboring giantess. Here a person in a bowler, who must have clambered up her, suddenly fell from a great height to the stone floor. One of his companions began helping him up, but they were both drunk, and, dismissing them with a wave of the hand, M. G.o.dard rushed on to the next room, radiant with Oriental fabrics; there hounds raced across azure carpets, and a bow and quiver lay on a tiger skin.

Strangely, though, the expanse and motley only gave me a feeling of oppressiveness and imprecision, and, perhaps because new visitors kept das.h.i.+ng by or perhaps because I was impatient to leave the unnecessarily spreading museum and amid calm and freedom conclude my business negotiations with M. G.o.dard, I began to experience a vague sense of alarm. Meanwhile we had transported ourselves into yet another hall, which must have been really enormous, judging by the fact that it housed the entire skeleton of a whale, resembling a frigate's frame; beyond were visible still other halls, with the oblique sheen of large paintings, full of storm clouds, among which floated the delicate idols of religious art in blue and pink vestments; and all this resolved itself in an abrupt turbulence of misty draperies, and chandeliers came aglitter and fish with translucent frills meandered through illuminated aquariums. Racing up a staircase, we saw, from the gallery above, a crowd of gray-haired people with umbrellas examining a gigantic mock-up of the universe.

At last, in a somber but magnificent room dedicated to the history of steam machines, I managed to halt my carefree guide for an instant.

"Enough!" I shouted. "I'm leaving. We'll talk tomorrow."

He had already vanished. I turned and saw, scarcely an inch from me, the lofty wheels of a sweaty locomotive. For a long time I tried to find the way back among models of railroad stations. How strangely glowed the violet signals in the gloom beyond the fan of wet tracks, and what spasms shook my poor heart! Suddenly everything changed again: in front of me stretched an infinitely long pa.s.sage, containing numerous office cabinets and elusive, scurrying people. Taking a sharp turn, I found myself amid a thousand musical instruments; the walls, all mirror, reflected an enfilade of grand pianos, while in the center there was a pool with a bronze Orpheus atop a green rock. The aquatic theme did not end here as, racing back, I ended up in the Section of Fountains and Brooks, and it was difficult to walk along the winding, slimy edges of those waters.

Now and then, on one side or the other, stone stairs, with puddles on the steps, which gave me a strange sensation of fear, would descend into misty abysses, whence issued whistles, the rattle of dishes, the clatter of typewriters, the ring of hammers, and many other sounds, as if, down there, were exposition halls of some kind or other, already closing or not yet completed. Then I found myself in darkness and kept b.u.mping into unknown furniture until I finally saw a red light and walked out onto a platform that clanged under me-and suddenly, beyond it, there was a bright parlor, tastefully furnished in Empire style, but not a living soul, not a living soul.... By now I was indescribably terrified, but every time I turned and tried to retrace my steps along the pa.s.sages, I found myself in hitherto unseen places-a greenhouse with hydrangeas and broken windowpanes with the darkness of artificial night showing through beyond; or a deserted laboratory with dusty alembics on its tables. Finally I ran into a room of some sort with coatracks monstrously loaded down with black coats and astrakhan furs; from beyond a door came a burst of applause, but when I flung the door open, there was no theater, but only a soft opacity and splendidly counterfeited fog with the perfectly convincing blotches of indistinct streetlights. More than convincing! I advanced, and immediately a joyous and unmistakable sensation of reality at last replaced all the unreal trash amid which I had just been das.h.i.+ng to and fro. The stone beneath my feet was real sidewalk, powdered with wonderfully fragrant, newly fallen snow, in which the infrequent pedestrians had already left fresh black tracks. At first the quiet and the snowy coolness of the night, somehow strikingly familiar, gave me a pleasant feeling after my feverish wanderings. Trustfully, I started to conjecture just where I had come out, and why the snow, and what were those lights exaggeratedly but indistinctly beaming here and there in the brown darkness. I examined and, stooping, even touched a round spur stone on the curb, then glanced at the palm of my hand, full of wet granular cold, as if hoping to read an explanation there. I felt how lightly, how naively I was clothed, but the distinct realization that I had escaped from the museum's maze was still so strong that, for the first two or three minutes, I experienced neither surprise nor fear. Continuing my leisurely examination, I looked up at the house beside which I was standing and was immediately struck by the sight of iron steps and railings that descended into the snow on their way to the cellar. There was a twinge in my heart, and it was with a new, alarmed curiosity that I glanced at the pavement, at its white cover along which stretched black lines, at the brown sky across which there kept sweeping a mysterious light, and at the ma.s.sive parapet some distance away. I sensed that there was a drop beyond it; something was creaking and gurgling down there. Further on, beyond the murky cavity, stretched a chain of fuzzy lights. Scuffling along the snow in my soaked shoes, I walked a few paces, all the time glancing at the dark house on my right; only in a single window did a lamp glow softly under its green-gla.s.s shade. Here, a locked wooden gate.... There, what must be the shutters of a sleeping shop.... And by the light of a streetlamp whose shape had long been shouting to me its impossible message, I made out the ending of a sign-"... INKA SAPOG" ("... OE REPAIR")-but no, it was not the snow that had obliterated the "hard sign" at the end. "No, no, in a minute I shall wake up," I said aloud, and, trembling, my heart pounding, I turned, walked on, stopped again. From somewhere came the receding sound of hooves, the snow sat like a skullcap on a slightly leaning spur stone and indistinctly showed white on the woodpile on the other side of the fence, and already I knew, irrevocably, where I was. Alas, it was not the Russia I remembered, but the factual Russia of today, forbidden to me, hopelessly slavish, and hopelessly my own native land. A semiphantom in a light foreign suit, I stood on the impa.s.sive snow of an October night, somewhere on the Moyka or the Fontanka Ca.n.a.l, or perhaps on the Obvodny, and I had to do something, go somewhere, run; desperately protect my fragile, illegal life. Oh, how many times in my sleep I had experienced a similar sensation! Now, though, it was reality. Everything was real-the air that seemed to mingle with scattered snowflakes, the still unfrozen ca.n.a.l, the floating fish house, and that peculiar squareness of the darkened and the yellow windows. A man in a fur cap, with a briefcase under his arm, came toward me out of the fog, gave me a startled glance, and turned to look again when he had pa.s.sed me. I waited for him to disappear and then, with a tremendous haste, began pulling out everything I had in my pockets, ripping up papers, throwing them into the snow and stamping them down. There were some doc.u.ments, a letter from my sister in Paris, five hundred francs, a handkerchief, cigarettes; however, in order to shed all the integument of exile, I would have to tear off and destroy my clothes, my linen, my shoes, everything, and remain ideally naked; and, even though I was already s.h.i.+vering from my anguish and from the cold, I did what I could.

But enough. I shall not recount how I was arrested, nor tell of my subsequent ordeals. Suffice it to say that it cost me incredible patience and effort to get back abroad, and that, ever since, I have forsworn carrying out commissions entrusted one by the insanity of others.

A BUSY MAN.

THE man who busies himself overmuch with the workings of his own soul cannot help being confronted by a common, melancholy, but rather curious phenomenon: namely, he witnesses the sudden death of an insignificant memory that a chance occasion causes to be brought back from the humble and remote almshouse where it had been completing quietly its obscure existence. It blinks, it is still pulsating and reflecting light-but the next moment, under your very eyes, it breathes one last time and turns up its poor toes, having not withstood the too abrupt transit into the harsh glare of the present. Henceforth all that remains at your disposal is the shadow, the abridgment of that recollection, now devoid, alas, of the original's bewitching convincingness. Grafitski, a gentle-tempered and death-fearing person, remembered a boyhood dream which had contained a laconic prophecy; but he had ceased long ago to feel any organic link between himself and that memory, for at one of the first summonses, it arrived looking wan, and died-and the dream he now remembered was but the recollection of a recollection. When was it, that dream? Exact date unknown. Grafitski answered, pus.h.i.+ng away the little gla.s.s pot with smears of yogurt and leaning his elbow on the table. When? Come on-approximately? A long time ago. Presumably, between the ages of ten and fifteen: during that period he often thought about death-especially at night.

So here he is-a thirty-two-year-old, smallish, but broad-shouldered man, with protruding transparent ears, half-actor, half-literatus, author of topical jingles in the emigre papers over a not very witty pen name (unpleasantly reminding one of the "Caran d'Ache" adopted by an immortal cartoonist). Here he is. His face consists of horn-framed dark gla.s.ses, with a blindman's glint in them, and of a soft-tufted wart on the left cheek. His head is balding and through the straight strands of brushed-back dunnish hair one discerns the pale-pink chamois of his scalp.

What had he been thinking about just now? What was the recollection under which his jailed mind kept digging? The recollection of a dream. The warning addressed to him in a dream. A prediction, which up to now had in no way hampered his life, but which at present, at the inexorable approach of a certain deadline, was beginning to sound with an insistent, ever-increasing resonance.

"You must control yourself," cried Itski to Graf in a hysterical recitative. He cleared his throat and walked to the closed window.

An ever-increasing insistence. The figure 33-the theme of that dream-had got entangled with his unconscious, its curved claws like those of a bat, had got caught in his soul, and there was no way to unravel that subliminal snarl. According to tradition, Jesus Christ lived to the age of thirty-three and perhaps (mused Graf, immobilized next to the cross of the cas.e.m.e.nt frame), perhaps a voice in that dream had indeed said: "You'll die at Christ's age"-and had displayed, illumined upon a screen, the thorns of two tremendous threes.

He opened the window. It was lighter without than within, but streetlamps had already started to glow. Smooth clouds blanketed the sky; and only westerward, between ochery housetops, an inters.p.a.ce was banded with tender brightness. Farther up the street a fiery-eyed automobile had stopped, its straight tangerine tusks plunged in the watery gray of the asphalt. A blond butcher stood on the threshold of his shop and contemplated the sky.

As if crossing a stream from stone to stone, Graf's mind jumped from butcher to carca.s.s and then to somebody who had been telling him that somebody else somewhere (in a morgue? at a medical school?) used to call a corpse fondly: the "smully" or "smullicans." "He's waiting around the corner, your smullicans." "Don't you worry: smully won't let you down."

"Allow me to sort out various possibilities," said Graf with a sn.i.g.g.e.r as he looked down askance from his fifth floor at the black iron spikes of a palisade. "Number one (the most vexing): I dream of the house being attacked or on fire, I leap out of bed, and, thinking (we are fools in sleep) that I live at street level, I dive out of the window-into an abyss. Second possibility: in a different nightmare I swallow my tongue-that's known to have happened-the fat thing performs a back somersault in my mouth and I suffocate. Case number three: I'm roaming, say, through noisy streets-aha, that's Pushkin trying to imagine his way of death: In combat, wanderings or waves,

Or will it be the nearby valley ...

etc., but mark-he began with 'combat,' which means he did have a presentiment. Superst.i.tion may be masked wisdom. What can I do to stop thinking those thoughts? What can I do in my loneliness?"