The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov Read online

  After supper, which ended with port and coffee, the Colonel, Maureen, and Frank sat down to play bridge, with a dummy since the other two did not play.

  The old restorer went out, bandy-legged, onto the darkened balcony and Simpson followed, feeling Maureen’s warmth recede behind him.

  McGore eased himself with a grunt into a wicker chair near the balustrade and offered Simpson a cigar. Simpson perched sideways on the railing and lit up awkwardly, narrowing his eyes and inflating his cheeks.

  “I guess you liked that old rake del Piombo’s Venetian lass,” said McGore, releasing a rosy puff of smoke into the dark.

  “Very much,” replied Simpson, and added, “Of course, I don’t know anything about pictures—”

  “All the same, you liked it,” nodded McGore. “Splendid. That’s the first step toward understanding. I, for one, have dedicated my whole life to this.”

  “She looks absolutely real,” Simpson said pensively. “It’s enough to make one believe mysterious tales about portraits coming to life. I read somewhere that some king descended from a canvas, and, as soon as—”

  McGore dissolved in a subdued, brittle laugh. “That’s nonsense, of course. But another phenomenon does occur—the inverse, so to speak.”

  Simpson glanced at him. In the dark of the night his starched shirtfront bulged like a whitish hump, and the flame of his cigar, like a ruby pinecone, illumined his small, wrinkled face from below. He had had a lot of wine and was, apparently, in the mood to talk.

  “Here is what happens,” McGore continued unhurriedly. “Instead of inviting a painted figure to step out of its frame, imagine someone managing to step into the picture himself. Makes you laugh, doesn’t it? And yet I’ve done it many a time. I have had the good fortune of visiting all the art museums of Europe, from The Hague to Petersburg and from London to Madrid. When I found a painting I particularly liked, I would stand directly in front of it and concentrate all my willpower on one thought: to enter it. It was an eerie sensation, of course. I felt like the apostle about to step off his bark onto the water’s surface. But what bliss ensued! Let us say I was facing a Flemish canvas, with the Holy Family in the foreground, against a smooth, limpid, landscape. You know, with a road zigzagging like a white snake, and green hills. Then, finally, I would take the plunge. I broke free from real life and entered the painting. A miraculous sensation! The coolness, the placid air permeated with wax and incense. I became a living part of the painting and everything around me came alive. The pilgrims’ silhouettes on the road began to move. The Virgin Mary was saying something in a rapid Flemish patter. The wind rippled through the conventional flowers. The clouds were gliding.… But the delight did not last long. I would get the feeling that I was softly congealing, cohering with the canvas, merging into a film of oil color. Then I would shut my eyes tight, yank with all my strength, and leap out. There was a gentle plop, as when you pull your foot out of the mud. I would open my eyes, and find myself lying on the floor beneath a splendid but lifeless painting.”

  Simpson listened with attention and embarrassment. When McGore paused, he gave a barely perceptible start and looked around. Everything was as before. Below, the garden breathed the darkness, one could see the dimly lit dining room through the glass door, and, in the distance, through another open doorway, a bright corner of the parlor with three figures playing cards. What strange things McGore was saying!…

  “You understand, don’t you,” he continued, shaking off some scaly ash, “that in another instant the painting would have sucked me in forever. I would have vanished into its depths and lived on in its landscape, or else, grown weak with terror, and lacking the strength either to return to the real world or to penetrate the new dimension, I would have jelled into a figure painted on the canvas, like the anachronism Frank was talking about. Yet, despite the danger, I have yielded to temptation time after time.… Oh, my friend, I’ve fallen in love with Madonnas! I remember my first infatuation—a Madonna with an azure corona, by the delicate Raffaello.… Beyond her, at a distance, two men stood by a column, calmly chatting. I eavesdropped on their conversation—they were discussing the worth of some dagger.… But the most enchanting Madonna of all comes from the brush of Bernardo Luini. All his creations contain the quiet and the delicacy of the lake on whose shore he was born, Lago Maggiore. The most delicate of masters. His name even yielded a new adjective, luinesco. His best Madonna has long, caressingly lowered eyes, and her apparel has light-blue, rose-red, misty-orange tints. A gaseous, rippling haze encircles her brow, and that of her reddish-haired infant. He raises a pale apple toward her, she looks at it lowering her gentle, elongated eyes … Luinesque eyes … God, how I kissed them.…”

  McGore fell silent and a dreamy smile tinged his thin lips, lighted by the cigar’s flame. Simpson held his breath and, as before, felt he was slowly gliding off into the night.

  “Complications did occur,” McGore went on after clearing his throat. “I got an ache in my kidneys after a goblet of strong cider that a plump Rubens bacchante once served me, and I caught such a chill on the foggy, yellow skating rink of one of the Dutchmen that I went on coughing and bringing up phlegm for a whole month. That’s the kind of thing that can happen, Mr. Simpson.”

  McGore’s chair creaked as he rose and straightened his waistcoat. “Got carried away,” he remarked dryly. “Time for bed. God knows how long they’ll go on slapping their cards about. I’m off—good night.”

  He crossed the dining room and the parlor, nodding to the players as he went, and disappeared in the shadows beyond. Simpson was left alone on his balustrade. His ears rang with McGore’s high-pitched voice. The magnificent starry night reached to the very balcony, and the enormous velvety shapes of the black trees were motionless. Through the French window, beyond a band of darkness, he could see the pink-hued parlor lamp, the table, the players’ faces rouged by the light. He saw the Colonel rise. Frank followed suit. From afar, as if over the telephone, came the Colonel’s voice. “I’m an old man, I turn in early. Good night, Mrs. McGore.”

  And Maureen’s laughing voice: “I’ll go in a minute too. Or else my husband will be cross with me.…”

  Simpson heard the door close in the distance behind the Colonel. Then an extraordinary thing happened. From his vantage point in the darkness he saw Maureen and Frank, now alone far off in that lacuna of mellow light, slip into each other’s arms, he saw Maureen fling back her head and bend it back farther and farther beneath Frank’s violent and prolonged kiss. Then, catching up her fallen fur and giving Frank’s hair a ruffle, she disappeared into the distance with a muffled slam of the door. Frank smoothed his hair with a smile, thrust his hands in his pockets, and, whistling softly, crossed the dining room on his way to the balcony. Simpson was so flabbergasted that he froze still, his fingers clutching the railing, and gazed with horror as the starched shirtfront and the dark shoulder approached through the glistening glass. When he came out onto the balcony and saw his friend’s silhouette in the dark, Frank gave a slight shudder and bit his lip.

  Simpson awkwardly crawled off the railing. His legs were trembling. He made a heroic effort: “Marvelous night. McGore and I have been chatting out here.”

  Frank said calmly, “He lies a lot, that McGore. On the other hand, when he gets going he’s worth a listen.”

  “Yes, it’s very curious.…” lamely concurred Simpson.

  “The Big Dipper,” said Frank and yawned with his mouth closed. Then, in an even voice, he added, “Of course I know that you are a perfect gentleman, Simpson.”

  4

  Next morning a warm drizzle came pattering, shimmering, stretching in thin threads across the dark background of the forest’s depths. Only three people came down for breakfast—first the Colonel and listless, wan Simpson; then Frank, fresh, bathed, shaved to a high gloss, with an innocent smile on his overly thin lips.

  The Colonel was markedly out of spirits. The night before, during the bridge game, he had noticed some
thing. Bending down hastily to retrieve a dropped card, he had seen Frank’s knee pressed against Maureen’s. This must be stopped immediately. For some time already the Colonel had had an inkling that something was not right. No wonder Frank had rushed off to Rome, where the McGores always went in the spring. His son was free to do as he liked, but to stand for something like this here, at home, in the ancestral castle—no, the most stringent measures must be taken immediately.

  The Colonel’s displeasure had a disastrous effect on Simpson. He had the impression that his presence was a burden to his host, and was at a loss for a subject of conversation. Only Frank was placidly jovial as always, and, his teeth asparkle, munched with gusto on hot toast spread with orange marmalade.

  When they had finished their coffee, the Colonel lit his pipe and rose.

  “Didn’t you want to take a look at the new car, Frank? Let’s walk over to the garage. Nothing to do in this rain anyway.”

  Then, sensing that poor Simpson had remained mentally suspended in midair, the Colonel added, “I’ve got a few good books here, my dear Simpson. Help yourself if you wish.”

  Simpson came to with a start and pulled some bulky red volume down from the shelf. It turned out to be the Veterinary Herald for 1895.

  “I need to have a little talk with you,” began the Colonel when he and Frank had tugged on their crackling raincoats and walked out into a mist of rain.

  Frank gave his father a rapid glance.

  “How shall I put it,” he pondered, puffing on his pipe. “Listen, Frank,” he said, taking the plunge—and the wet gravel crunched more succulently under his soles—“it has come to my attention, it doesn’t matter how, or, to put it more simply, I have noticed … Dammit, Frank, what I mean is, what kind of relations do you have with McGore’s wife?”

  Frank replied quietly and coolly, “I’d rather not discuss that with you, Father,” meanwhile thinking angrily to himself: what a scoundrel—he did rat on me!

  “Obviously I cannot demand—” began the Colonel, and stopped short. At tennis, after the first bad shot, he still managed to control himself.

  “Might be a good idea to fix this footbridge,” remarked Frank, hitting a rotten timber with his heel.

  “To hell with the bridge!” said the Colonel. This was his second miss, and the veins swelled on his forehead in an irate vee.

  The chauffeur, who had been banging around with some buckets by the garage gates, yanked off his checkered cap upon seeing his master. He was a short, stocky man with a cropped yellow mustache.

  “Morning, sir,” he said amiably and pushed open one of the gates with his shoulder. In the petrol-and-leather-scented penumbra glimmered an enormous, black, brand-new Rolls-Royce.

  “And now let us take a walk in the park,” said the Colonel in a toneless voice when Frank had had his fill of examining cylinders and levers.

  The first thing that happened in the park was that a large, cold drop of water fell from a branch, inside the Colonel’s collar. And actually it was this drop that made the cup overflow. After a masticating movement of his lips, as though rehearsing the words, he abruptly thundered: “I warn you, Frank, in my house I shall not stand for any adventures of the French-novel genre. Furthermore, McGore is my friend—can you understand that or not?”

  Frank picked up the racquet Simpson had forgotten on the bench the previous day. The damp had turned it into a figure eight. Rotten racquet, Frank thought with revulsion. His father’s words were pounding ponderously past: “I shall not stand for it,” he was saying. “If you cannot behave properly, then leave. I am displeased with you, Frank, I am terribly displeased with you. There is something about you that I don’t understand. At university you do poorly at your studies. In Italy God knows what you were up to. They tell me you paint. I suppose I’m not worthy of being shown your daubings. Yes, daubings. I can imagine.… A genius indeed! For you doubtless consider yourself a genius, or, even better, a futurist. And now we have these love affairs to boot.… In short, unless—”

  Here the Colonel noticed that Frank was whistling softly and nonchalantly through his teeth. The Colonel stopped and goggled his eyes.

  Frank flung the twisted racquet into the bushes like a boomerang, smiled, and said, “This is all poppycock, Father. I read in a book on the Afghanistan war about what you did there and what you were decorated for. It was absolutely foolish, featherbrained, suicidal, but it was an exploit. That is what counts. While your disquisitions are poppycock. Good day.”

  And the Colonel remained standing alone in the middle of the lane, frozen in wonderment and wrath.

  5

  The distinctive feature of everything extant is its monotony. We partake of food at predetermined hours because the planets, like trains that are never late, depart and arrive at predetermined times. The average person cannot imagine life without such a strictly established timetable. But a playful and sacrilegious mind will find much to amuse it imagining how people would exist if the day lasted ten hours today, eighty-five tomorrow, and after tomorrow a few minutes. One can say a priori that, in England, such uncertainty with regard to the exact duration of the coming day would lead first of all to an extraordinary proliferation of betting and sundry other gambling arrangements. One could lose his entire fortune because a day lasted a few more hours than he had supposed on the eve. The planets would become like racehorses, and what excitement would be aroused by some sorrel Mars as it tackled the final celestial hurdle! Astronomers would assume bookmakers’ functions, the god Apollo would be depicted in a flaming jockey cap, and the world would merrily go mad.

  Unfortunately, however, that is not the way things are. Exactitude is always grim, and our calendars, where the world’s existence is calculated in advance, are like the schedule of some inexorable examination. Of course there is something soothing and insouciant about this regimen devised by a cosmic Frederick Taylor. Yet how splendidly, how radiantly the world’s monotony is interrupted now and then by the book of a genius, a comet, a crime, or even simply by a single sleepless night. Our laws, though—our pulse, our digestion are firmly linked to the harmonious motion of the stars, and any attempt to disturb this regularity is punished, at worst by beheading, at best by a headache. Then again, the world was unquestionably created with good intentions and it is no one’s fault if it sometimes grows boring, if the music of the spheres reminds some of us of the endless repetitions of a hurdy-gurdy.

  Simpson was particularly conscious of this monotony. He found it somehow terrifying that today, too, breakfast would be followed by lunch, tea by supper, with inviolable regularity. He wanted to scream at the thought that things would continue like that all his life, he wanted to struggle like someone who has awakened in his coffin. The drizzle was still shimmering outside the window, and having to stay indoors made his ears ring as they do when you have a fever. McGore spent the whole day in the workshop that had been set up for him in one of the castle’s towers. He was busy restoring the varnish of a small, dark picture painted on wood. The workshop smelled of glue, turpentine, and garlic, which is used for removing greasy spots from paintings. On a small carpenter’s bench near the press sparkled retorts containing hydrochloric acid and alcohol; scattered about lay scraps of flannel, nostriled sponges, assorted scrapers. McGore was wearing an old dressing gown, glasses, a shirt with no starched collar, and a stud nearly the size of a doorbell button protruding right under his Adam’s apple; his neck was thin, gray, and covered with senile excrescences, and a black skullcap covered his bald spot. With a delicate rotary rubbing of his fingers already familiar to the reader, he was sprinkling a pinch of ground tar, carefully rubbing it into the painting so that the old, yellowed varnish, abraded by the powdery particles, itself turned into dry dust.

  The castle’s other denizens sat in the parlor. The Colonel had angrily unfolded a giant newspaper and, as he gradually cooled down, was reading aloud an emphatically conservative article. Then Maureen and Frank got involved in a game of Ping-Pong. T
he little celluloid ball, with its crackly, melancholy ring, flew back and forth across the green net intersecting the long table, and of course Frank played masterfully, moving only his wrist as he nimbly flicked the thin wooden paddle left and right.

  Simpson traversed all the rooms, biting his lips and adjusting his pince-nez. Eventually he reached the gallery. Pale as death, carefully closing behind him the heavy, silent door, he tiptoed up to Fra Bastiano del Piombo’s Veneziana. She greeted him with her familiar opaque gaze, and her long fingers paused on their way to her fur wrap, to the slipping crimson folds. Caressed by a whiff of honeyed darkness, he glanced into the depths of the window that interrupted the black background. Sand-tinted clouds stretched across the greenish blue; toward them rose dark, fractured cliffs amid which wound a pale-hued trail, while lower down there were indistinct wooden huts, and, in one of them, Simpson thought he saw a point of light flicker for an instant. As he peered through this ethereal window, he sensed that the Venetian lady was smiling, but his swift glance failed to catch that smile; only the shaded right corner of her gently joined lips was slightly raised. At that moment something within him deliciously gave way, and he yielded totally to the picture’s warm enchantment. One must bear in mind that he was a man of morbidly rapturous temperament, that he had no idea of life’s realities, and that, for him, impressionability took the place of intellect. A cold tremor, like a quick dry hand, brushed his back, and he realized immediately what he must do. However, when he looked around and saw the sheen of parquet, the table, and the blind white gloss of the paintings where the drizzly light pouring through the window fell on them, he had a feeling of shame and fear. And, in spite of another momentary surge of the previous enchantment, he already knew that he could hardly carry out what, a minute ago, he could have done unthinkingly.