The Stories of VLADIMIR NABOKOV.
Vladimir Nabokov.
Preface.
HAVING APPEARED individually in periodicals and in various a.s.sortments in previous volumes, fifty-two of Vladimir Nabokov"s stories were eventually published, during his lifetime, in four definitive English collections: Nabokov"s Dozen and three other thirteen-story "dozens"-A Russian Beauty and Other Stories, Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, and Details of a Sunset and Other Stories.
Nabokov had long expressed the intention of issuing a final batch, but was not sure whether there were enough stories that met his standard to make up a fifth Nabokovian-or numerical-dozen. His creative life was too full, and was truncated too suddenly, for him to make a final selection. He had penciled a brief list of stories he considered worthy of publication and labeled it "bottom of the barrel." He was referring, he explained to me, not to their quality, but to the fact that, among the materials available for consultation at the moment, they were the final ones worthy of publication. Nonetheless, after our archive had been organized and thoroughly checked, Vera Nabokov and I came up with a happy total of thirteen, all of which, in our circ.u.mspect estimation, Nabokov might have deemed suitable. Hence Nabokov"s "bottom of the barrel" list, reproduced following this preface, should be considered partial and preliminary; it contains only eight of the thirteen newly collected stories, and also includes The Enchanter, which does not appear in the present collection but has been published in English as a separate short novel (New York, Putnam"s, 1986; New York, Vintage International, 1991). Nor do the author"s working t.i.tles correspond in every case to those decided upon for this volume.
From the list ent.i.tled "Stories written in English," also reproduced following the preface, Nabokov omitted "First Love" (first published in The New Yorker as "Colette"), either through an oversight or because of its transformation into a chapter of Speak, Memory (original t.i.tle: Conclusive Evidence). Some alignment instructions-albeit in Russian-in the upper left-hand corner suggest that this list was a fair copy prepared for typing. The two facsimile lists contain a few inaccuracies. "The Vane Sisters," for example, was written in 1951.
The four "definitive" volumes mentioned above had been painstakingly a.s.sorted and orchestrated by Nabokov using various criteria-theme, period, atmosphere, uniformity, variety. It is appropriate that each of them conserve its "book" ident.i.ty for future publication as well. The thirteen stories published in France and Italy as, respectively, La Venitienne and La veneziana have also perhaps earned the right to appear as a separate English-language volume. These thirteen have made other individual and collective debuts in Europe, and the four previous dozens have appeared worldwide, sometimes in different constellations such as the recent Russkaya Dyuzhena (Russian Dozen) in Israel. I shall not touch on publication in post-Perestroyka Russia, which, with few exceptions, has been mega-copy piracy in every sense until now, although improvements shimmer on the horizon.
The present comprehensive collection, while not intended to eclipse the previous groupings, is deliberately arranged in chronological sequence, or the best possible approximation thereof. To this end, the order used in previous volumes has occasionally been altered, and the newly collected pieces have been integrated where appropriate. Date of composition was the criterion of choice. When this was not available or not dependable, date of first publication or other mentions became the guide. Eleven of the newly incorporated thirteen have never before been translated into English. Five of them remained unpublished until the recent appearance of the "new" thirteen in several European languages. Further bibliographical essentials and certain other interesting details appear at the back of this volume.
One obvious bonus of the new arrangement is a convenient overview of Nabokov"s development as a writer of fiction. It is interesting, too, that the vectors are not always linear, and a strikingly mature short story may suddenly crop up amid the younger, simpler tales. While illuminating the evolution of the creative process, and affording exciting insights into the themes and methods to be used later-particularly in the novels-Vladimir Nabokov"s stories are nevertheless among his most immediately accessible work. Even when linked in some way to the larger fictions, they are self-contained. Even when they can be read on more than one level, they require few literary prerequisites. They offer the reader immediate gratification whether or not he has ventured into Nabokov"s larger and more complex writings or delved into his personal history.
My translations of the "new" thirteen are my responsibility alone. The translation of most of the previously published Russian stories was the fruit of a cloudless collaboration between father and son, but the father had authorial license to alter his own texts in their translated form as, on occasion, he deemed appropriate. It is conceivable he might have done so, here and there, with the newly translated stories as well. It goes without saying that, as lone translator, the only liberty I have taken was the correction of the obvious slip or typo, and of editorial blunders from the past. The worst of those was the omission of the entire, wonderful, final page of "The a.s.sistant Producer" in all English-language editions, it seems, subsequent to the first. Incidentally, in the song that twice meanders through the story, the Don Cossack who heaves his bride into the Volga is Stenka Razin.
I confess that, during the long gestation of this collection, I have taken advantage of queries and comments from hawk-eyed translators and editors of recent and concurrent translations into other tongues, and of fine-toothed inspections by those who are publishing a few of the stories individually in English. No matter how intense and pedantic the checking, a flounder or several will slip through the net. Nevertheless, future editors and translators should be aware that the present volume reflects what, at the time of its publication, are the most accurate versions of the English texts and, especially with regard to the thirteen newly collected pieces, of the underlying Russian originals (which were at times very hard to decipher, contained possible or probable author"s or copyist"s slips necessitating sometimes difficult decisions, and on occasion had one or more variants).
To be fair, I would like to acknowledge, with grat.i.tude, spontaneously submitted draft translations of two stories. One came from Charles Nicol, the other from Gene Barabtarlo. Both are appreciated, and both yielded trouvailles. However, in order to maintain an appropriately h.o.m.ogeneous style, I have stuck, by and large, to my own English locutions. I am indebted to Brian Boyd, Dieter Zimmer, and Michael Juliar for their invaluable bibliographical research. Above all, I am grateful to Vera Nabokov for her infinite wisdom, her superlative judgment, and the willpower that compelled her, with failing eyesight and enfeebled hands, to jot a preliminary translation of several pa.s.sages of "G.o.ds" in her very last days.
It would take much more than a brief preface to trace themes, methods, and images as they weave and develop in these stories, or the echoes of Nabokov"s youth in Russia, his university years in England, the emigre period in Germany and France, and the America he was inventing, as he put it, after having invented Europe. To choose at random from the thirteen newly collected stories, "La Veneziana," with its astonishing twist, echoes Nabokov"s love for painting (to which he intended, as a boy, to dedicate his life) against a backdrop that includes tennis, which he played and described with a special flair. The other twelve range from fable ("The Dragon") and political intrigue ("Russian Spoken Here") to a poetical, personal impressionism ("Sounds" and "G.o.ds").
Nabokov gives in his notes (which appear at the end of this volume) certain insights regarding the previously collected stories. Among the many things one might add is the eerie doubling of s.p.a.ce-time (in "Terra Incognita" and "The Visit to the Museum") that foreshadows the atmosphere of Ada, Pale Fire, and, to a degree, Transparent Things and Look at the Harlequins! Nabokov"s predilection for b.u.t.terflies is a central theme of "The Aurelian" and flickers through many other stories. But what is stranger, music, for which he never professed a special love, often figures prominently in his writing ("Sounds," "Bachmann," "Music," "The a.s.sistant Producer").
Particularly touching to me personally is the sublimation, in "Lance" (as my father told me), of what my parents experienced in my mountain-climbing days. But perhaps the deepest, most important theme, be it subject or undercurrent, is Nabokov"s contempt for cruelty-the cruelty of humans, the cruelty of fate-and here the instances are too numerous to name.
DMITRI NABOKOV.
St. Petersburg, Russia, and Montreux, Switzerland.
June 1995.
A note from Georg Heepe, editorial director of Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg, traces the discovery of "Easter Rain," now appended to this edition. It reads in part: When we were preparing the first German edition of the complete stories in 198788, Nabokov scholar Dieter Zimmer searched all the accessible libraries, likely and unlikely, for the April 1925 issue of the Russian emigre magazine Russkoe Ekho that he knew included "Easter Rain." He went even into what was then East Berlin on a day"s permit, and thought of the Deutsche Buecherei in Leipzig as well. But the chance seemed too slight, the bureaucratic procedures too forbidding. And there was one more consideration. There would have been no copy machines.
We had published the stories without "Easter Rain" when he heard rumors that a scholar residing in Sweden had found the story in Leipzig. The Iron Curtain had been raised by then, and he went to check. There it was: a complete set of Russkoe Ekho. And now they had Xerox machines.
Thus "Easter Rain"-first discovered by Svetlana Polsky, though we only learned her name some years later; translated into English in collaboration with Peter Constantine for the Spring 2002 issue of Conjunctions-now joins this volume.
DMITRI NABOKOV.
Vevy, Switzerland.
May 2002.
A Russian text for "The Word" first came to my attention in the spring of 2005, a story so startlingly emotional that, before I translated it, I had to quell some doubts regarding its authenticity. It was the second story my father published, and the first he published after the a.s.sa.s.sination of his father in 1922; composed in Berlin, it appeared in a January 1923 issue of Rul", the Russian emigre periodical his father had co-published in Berlin. Like "Ultima Thule" a decade later, "The Word" contains an all-explaining secret we never learn. Like "The Wood-Sprite" and an early poem, "Revolution," "The Word" projects an idyllic, kindly world against barbarous reality, ominously silhouetted by its pagination in Rul": it appeared next to an unfinished fragment by his father.
"The Word" is also one of the very few Vladimir Nabokov stories in which angels take part. They are, of course, a very personal embodiment, much more closely related to angels of fable, fantasy, and fresco than to the standard angels of Russian Orthodox religion. It is also true that symbols of religious faith appeared ever less frequently in Nabokov"s fiction after his father"s death (see "Wingstroke" for a very different kind of angel). The ingenuous rapture of "The Word" surfaces in my father"s later works, but only fleetingly, in an otherworld Nabokov could only hint at. He explained, however, that he would be unable to say as much as he did, had he not known more than he said.
DMITRI NABOKOV.
Montreux, Switzerland.
January 2006.
THE WOOD-SPRITE.
I WAS pensively penning the outline of the inkstand"s circular, quivering shadow. In a distant room a clock struck the hour, while I, dreamer that I am, imagined someone was knocking at the door, softly at first, then louder and louder. He knocked twelve times and paused expectantly.
"Yes, I"m here, come in...."
The doork.n.o.b creaked timidly, the flame of the runny candle tilted, and he hopped sidewise out of a rectangle of shadow, hunched, gray, powdered with the pollen of the frosty, starry night.
I knew his face-oh, how long I had known it!
His right eye was still in the shadows, the left peered at me timorously, elongated, smoky-green. The pupil glowed like a point of rust.... That mossy-gray tuft on his temple, the pale-silver, scarcely noticeable eyebrow, the comical wrinkle near his whiskerless mouth-how all this teased and vaguely vexed my memory!
I got up. He stepped forward.
His shabby little coat seemed to be b.u.t.toned wrong-on the female side. In his hand he held a cap-no, a dark-colored, poorly tied bundle, and there was no sign of any cap....
Yes, of course I knew him-perhaps had even been fond of him, only I simply could not place the where and the when of our meetings. And we must have met often, otherwise I would not have had such a firm recollection of those cranberry lips, those pointy ears, that amusing Adam"s apple....
With a welcoming murmur I shook his light, cold hand, and touched the back of a shabby armchair. He perched like a crow on a tree stump, and began speaking hurriedly.
"It"s so scary in the streets. So I dropped in. Dropped in to visit you. Do you recognize me? You and I, we used to romp together and halloo at each other for days at a time. Back in the old country. Don"t tell me you"ve forgotten?"
His voice literally blinded me. I felt dazzled and dizzy-I remembered the happiness, the echoing, endless, irreplaceable happiness....
No, it can"t be: I"m alone.... It"s only some capricious delirium. Yet there really was somebody sitting next to me, bony and implausible, with long-eared German bootees, and his voice tintinnabulated, rustled-golden, luscious-green, familiar-while the words were so simple, so human....
"There-you remember. Yes, I am a former Forest Elf, a mischievous sprite. And here I am, forced to flee like everyone else."
He heaved a deep sigh, and once again I had visions of billowing nimbus, lofty leafy undulations, bright flashes of birch bark like splashes of sea foam, against a dulcet, perpetual, hum.... He bent toward me and glanced gently into my eyes. "Remember our forest, fir so black, birch all white? They"ve cut it all down. The grief was unbearable-I saw my dear birches crackling and falling, and how could I help? Into the marshes they drove me, I wept and I howled, I boomed like a bittern, then left lickety-split for a neighboring pinewood.
"There I pined, and could not stop sobbing. I had barely grown used to it, and lo, there was no more pinewood, just blue-tinted cinders. Had to do some more tramping. Found myself a wood-a wonderful wood it was, thick, dark, and cool. Yet somehow it was just not the same thing. In the old days I"d frolic from dawn until dusk, whistle furiously, clap my hands, frighten pa.s.sersby. You remember yourself-you lost your way once in a dark nook of my woods, you and some little white dress, and I kept tying the paths up in knots, spinning the tree trunks, twinkling through the foliage. Spent the whole night playing tricks. But I was only fooling around, it was all in jest, vilify me as they might. But now I sobered up, for my new abode was not a merry one. Day and night strange things crackled around me. At first I thought a fellow elf was lurking there; I called, then listened. Something crackled, something rumbled.... But no, those were not the kinds of sounds we make. Once, toward evening, I skipped out into a glade, and what do I see? People lying around, some on their backs, some on their bellies. Well, I think, I"ll wake them up, I"ll get them moving! And I went to work shaking boughs, bombarding with cones, rustling, hooting.... I toiled away for a whole hour, all to no avail. Then I took a closer look, and I was horror-struck. Here"s a man with his head hanging by one flimsy crimson thread, there"s one with a heap of thick worms for a stomach.... I could not endure it. I let out a howl, jumped in the air, and off I ran....
"Long I wandered through different forests, but I could find no peace. Either it was stillness, desolation, mortal boredom, or such horror it"s better not to think about it. At last I made up my mind and changed into a b.u.mpkin, a tramp with a knapsack, and left for good: Rus", adieu! Here a kindred spirit, a Water-Sprite, gave me a hand. Poor fellow was on the run too. He kept marveling, kept saying-what times are upon us, a real calamity! And even if, in olden times, he had had his fun, used to lure people down (a hospitable one, he was!), in recompense how he petted and pampered them on the gold river bottom, with what songs he bewitched them! These days, he says, only dead men come floating by, floating in batches, enormous numbers of them, and the river"s moisture is like blood, thick, warm, sticky, and there"s nothing for him to breathe.... And so he took me with him.
"He went off to knock about some distant sea, and put me ash.o.r.e on a foggy coast-go, brother, find yourself some friendly foliage. But I found nothing, and ended up here in this foreign, terrifying city of stone. Thus I turned into a human, complete with proper starched collars and bootees, and I"ve even learned human talk...."
He fell silent. His eyes glistened like wet leaves, his arms were crossed, and, by the wavering light of the drowning candle, some pale strands combed to the left shimmered so strangely.
"I know you too are pining," his voice shimmered again, "but your pining, compared to mine, my tempestuous, turbulent pining, is but the even breathing of one who is asleep. And think about it: not one of our Tribe is there left in Rus". Some of us swirled away like wisps of fog, others scattered over the world. Our native rivers are melancholy, there is no frisky hand to splash up the moon-gleams. Silent are the orphaned bluebells that remain, by chance, unmown, the pale-blue gusli that once served my rival, the ethereal Field-Sprite, for his songs. The s.h.a.ggy, friendly, household spirit, in tears, has forsaken your besmirched, humiliated home, and the groves have withered, the pathetically luminous, magically somber groves....
"It was we, Rus", who were your inspiration, your unfathomable beauty, your agelong enchantment! And we are all gone, gone, driven into exile by a crazed surveyor.
"My friend, soon I shall die, say something to me, tell me that you love me, a homeless phantom, come sit closer, give me your hand...."
The candle sputtered and went out. Cold fingers touched my palm. The familiar melancholy laugh pealed and fell still.
When I turned on the light there was no one in the armchair.... No one!... Nothing was left but a wondrously subtle scent in the room, of birch, of humid moss....
RUSSIAN SPOKEN HERE.
MARTIN MARTINICH"S tobacco shop is located in a corner building. No wonder tobacco shops have a predilection for corners, for Martin"s business is booming. The window is of modest size, but well arranged. Small mirrors make the display come alive. At the bottom, amid the hollows of hilly azure velvet, nestles a motley of cigarette boxes with names couched in the glossy international dialect that serves for hotel names as well; higher up, rows of cigars grin in their lightweight boxes.
In his day Martin was a well-off landowner. He is famed in my childhood recollections for a remarkable tractor, while his son Petya and I succ.u.mbed simultaneously to Meyn Ried and scarlet fever, so that now, after fifteen years chock-full of all kinds of things, I enjoyed stopping by the tobacco shop on that lively corner where Martin sold his wares.
Since last year, moreover, we have more than reminiscences in common. Martin has a secret, and I have been made party to that secret. "So, everything as usual?" I ask in a whisper, and he, glancing over his shoulder, replies just as softly, "Yes, thank heaven, all is quiet." The secret is a quite extraordinary one. I recall how I was leaving for Paris and stayed at Martin"s till evening the day before. A man"s soul can be compared to a department store and his eyes to twin display windows. Judging by Martin"s eyes, warm, brown tints were in fashion. Judging by those eyes, the merchandise inside his soul was of superb quality. And what a luxuriant beard, fairly glistening with robust Russian gray. And his shoulders, his stature, his mien.... At one time they used to say he could slit a handkerchief with a sword-one of the exploits of Richard Coeur de Lion. Now a fellow emigre would say with envy, "The man did not give in!"
His wife was a puffy, gentle old woman with a mole by her left nostril. Ever since the time of revolutionary ordeals her face had had a touching tic: she would give quick sidewise glances skyward. Petya had the same imposing physique as his father. I was fond of his mild-mannered glumness and unexpected humor. He had a large, flaccid face (about which his father used to say, "What a mug-three days would not suffice to circ.u.mnavigate it") and reddish-brown, permanently tousled hair. Petya owned a tiny cinema in a spa.r.s.ely populated part of town, which brought a very modest income. And there we have the whole family.
I spent that day before my departure sitting by the counter and watching Martin receive his customers-first he would lean lightly, with two fingers, on the countertop, then step to the shelves, produce a box with a flourish, and ask, as he opened it with his thumbnail, "Einen Rauchen?"-I remember that day for a special reason: Petya suddenly came in from the street, disheveled and livid with rage. Martin"s niece had decided to return to her mother in Moscow, and Petya had just been to see the diplomatic representatives. While one of the representatives was giving him some information, another, who was obviously involved with the government political directorate, whispered barely audibly, "All kinds of White Guard sc.u.m keep hanging around."
"I could have made mincemeat of him," said Petya, slamming his fist into his palm, "but unfortunately I could not forget about my aunt in Moscow."
"You already have a peccadillo or two on your conscience," good-naturedly rumbled Martin. He was alluding to a most amusing incident. Not long ago, on his nameday, Petya had visited the Soviet bookstore, whose presence blemishes one of Berlin"s most charming streets. They sell not only books there, but also various handmade bric-a-brac. Petya selected a hammer adorned with poppies and emblazoned with an inscription typical for a Bolshevik hammer. The clerk inquired if he would like something else. Petya said, "Yes, I would," nodding at a small plaster bust of Mister Ulyanov.* He paid fifteen marks for bust and hammer, whereupon, without a word, right there on the counter, he popped that bust with that hammer, and with such force that Mister Ulyanov disintegrated.
I was fond of that story, just as I was fond, for instance, of the dear silly sayings from unforgettable childhood that warm the c.o.c.kles of one"s heart. Martin"s words made me glance with a laugh at Petya. But Petya jerked his shoulder sullenly and scowled. Martin rummaged in the drawer and proffered him the most expensive cigarette in the shop. But even this did not dispel Petya"s gloom.
I returned to Berlin a half-year later. One Sunday morning I felt an urge to see Martin. On weekdays you could get through via the shop, since his apartment-three rooms and kitchen-was directly behind it. But of course on a Sunday morning the shop was closed, and the window had shut its grated visor. I glanced rapidly through the grating at the red and gold boxes, at the swarthy cigars, at the modest inscription in a corner: "Russian spoken here," remarked that the display had in some way grown even gayer, and walked through the courtyard to Martin"s place. Strange thing-Martin himself appeared to me even jollier, jauntier, more radiant than before. And Petya was downright unrecognizable: his oily, s.h.a.ggy locks were combed back, a broad, vaguely bashful smile did not leave his lips, he kept a kind of sated silence, and a curious, joyous preoccupation, as if he carried a precious cargo within him, softened his every movement. Only the mother was pale as ever, and the same touching tic flashed across her face like faint summer lightning. We sat in their neat parlor, and I knew that the other two rooms-Petya"s bedroom and that of his parents-were just as cozy and clean, and I found that an agreeable thought. I sipped tea with lemon, listened to Martin"s mellifluous speech, and I could not rid myself of the impression that something new had appeared in their apartment, some kind of joyous, mysterious palpitation, as happens, for instance, in a home where there is a young mother-to-be. Once or twice Martin glanced with a preoccupied air at his son, whereupon the other would promptly rise, leave the room, and, on his return, nod discreetly toward his father, as if to say everything was going splendidly.
There was also something new and, to me, enigmatic in the old man"s conversation. We were talking about Paris and the French, and suddenly he inquired, "Tell me, my friend, what"s the largest prison in Paris?" I replied I didn"t know and started telling him about a French revue that featured blue-painted women.
"You think that"s something!" interrupted Martin. "They say, for example, that women scratch the plaster off the walls in prison and use it to powder their faces, necks, or whatever." In confirmation of his words he fetched from his bedroom a thick tome by a German criminologist and located in it a chapter about the routine of prison life. I tried changing the subject, but, no matter what theme I selected, Martin steered it with artful convolutions so that suddenly we would find ourselves discussing the humaneness of life imprisonment as opposed to execution, or the ingenious methods invented by criminals to break out into the free world.
I was puzzled. Petya, who loved anything mechanical, was picking with a penknife at the springs of his watch and chuckling to himself. His mother worked at her needlepoint, now and then nudging the toast or the jam toward me. Martin, clutching his disheveled beard with all five fingers, gave me a sidelong flash of his tawny eye, and suddenly something within him let go. He banged the palm of his hand on the table and turned to his son. "I can"t stand it any longer, Petya-I"m going to tell him everything before I burst." Petya nodded silently. Martin"s wife was getting up to go to the kitchen. "What a chatterbox you are," she said, shaking her head indulgently. Martin placed his hand on my shoulder, gave me such a shake that, had I been an apple tree in the garden, the apples would literally have come tumbling off me, and glanced into my face. "I"m warning you," he said. "I"m about to tell you such a secret, such a secret ... that I just don"t know. Mind you-mum"s the word! Understand?"
And, leaning close to me, bathing me in the odor of tobacco and his own pungent old-man smell, Martin told me a truly remarkable tale.
"It happened," began Martin, "shortly after your departure. In walked a customer. He had obviously not noticed the sign in the window, for he addressed me in German. Let me emphasize this: if he had noticed the sign he would not have entered a modest emigre shop. I recognized him right off as a Russian by his p.r.o.nunciation. Had a Russian mug too. I, of course, launched into Russian, asked him what price range, what kind. He gave me a look of disagreeable surprise: "What made you think I was Russian?" I gave him a perfectly friendly answer, as I recall, and began counting out his cigarettes. At that moment Petya entered. When he saw my customer he said with utter calm, "Now here"s a pleasant encounter." Then my Petya walks up close to him and bangs him on the cheek with his fist. The other froze. As Petya explained to me later, what had happened was not just a knockout with the victim crumpling to the floor, but a special kind of knockout: it turns out Petya had delivered a delayed-action punch, and the man went out on his feet. And looked as if he were sleeping standing up. Then he started slowly tilting back like a tower. Here Petya walked around behind him and caught him under the armpits. It was all highly unexpected. Petya said, "Give me a hand, Dad." I asked what he thought he was doing. Petya only repeated, "Give me a hand." I know my Petya well-no point in smirking, Petya-and know he has his feet on the ground, ponders his actions, and does not knock people unconscious for nothing. We dragged the unconscious one from the shop into the corridor and on to Petya"s room. Right then I heard a ring-someone had stepped into the shop. Good thing, of course, that it hadn"t happened earlier. Back into the shop I went, made my sale, then, luckily, my wife arrived with the shopping, and I immediately put her to work at the counter while I, without a word, went lickety-split into Petya"s room. The man was lying with eyes closed on the floor, while Petya was sitting at his table, examining in a pensive kind of way certain objects like that large leather cigar case, half a dozen obscene postcards, a wallet, a pa.s.sport, an old but apparently efficient revolver. He explained right away: as I"m sure you have imagined, these items came from the man"s pockets, and the man himself was none other than the representative-you remember Petya"s story-who made the crack about the White sc.u.m, yes, yes, the very same one! And, judging by certain papers, he was a GPU man if I ever saw one. "Well and good," I say to Petya, "so you"ve punched a guy in the mug. Whether he deserved it or not is a different matter, but please explain to me, what do you intend to do now? Evidently you forgot all about your aunt in Moscow." "Yes, I did," said Petya. "We must think of something."
"And we did. First we got hold of some stout rope, and plugged his mouth with a towel. While we were working on him he came to and opened one eye. Upon closer examination, let me tell you, the mug turned out to be not only repulsive but stupid as well-some kind of mange on his forehead, mustache, bulbous nose. Leaving him lying on the floor, Petya and I settled down comfortably nearby and started a judicial inquiry. We debated for a good while. We were concerned not so much with the affront itself-that was a trifle, of course-as much as with his entire profession, so to speak, and with the deeds he had committed in Russia. The defendant was allowed to have the last word. When we relieved his mouth of the towel, he gave a kind of moan, gagged, but said nothing except "You wait, you just wait...." The towel was retied, and the session resumed. The votes were split at first. Petya demanded the death sentence. I found that he deserved to die, but proposed subst.i.tuting life imprisonment for execution. Petya thought it over and concurred. I added that although he had certainly committed crimes, we were unable to ascertain this; that his employment in itself alone const.i.tuted a crime; that our duty was limited to rendering him harmless, nothing more. Now listen to the rest.
"We have a bathroom at the end of the corridor. Dark, very dark little room, with an enameled iron bathtub. The water goes on strike pretty often. There is an occasional c.o.c.kroach. The room is so dark because the window is extremely narrow and is situated right under the ceiling, and besides, right opposite the window, three feet away or less, there"s a good, solid brick wall. And it was here in this nook that we decided to keep the prisoner. It was Petya"s idea-yes, yes, Petya, give Caesar his due. First of all, of course, the cell had to be prepared. We began by dragging the prisoner into the corridor so he would be close by while we worked. And here my wife, who had just locked up the shop for the night and was on her way to the kitchen, saw us. She was amazed, even indignant, but then understood our reasoning. Docile girl. Petya began by dismembering a stout table we had in the kitchen-knocked off its legs and used the resulting board to hammer shut the bathroom window. Then he unscrewed the taps, removed the cylindrical water heater, and laid a mattress on the bathroom floor. Of course next day we added various improvements: we changed the lock, installed a deadbolt, reinforced the window board with metal-and all of it, of course, without making too much noise. As you know, we have no neighbors, but nonetheless it behooved us to act cautiously. The result was a real prison cell, and there we put the GPU chap. We undid the rope, untied the towel, warned him that if he started yelling we would reswaddle him, and for a long time; then, satisfied that he had understood for whom the mattress had been placed in the bathtub, we locked the door and, taking turns, stood guard all night.
"That moment marked the beginning of a new life for us. I was no longer simply Martin Martinich, but Martin Martinich the head warden. At first the inmate was so stunned by what had happened that his behavior was subdued. Soon, however, he reverted to a normal state and, when we brought his dinner, launched into a hurricane of foul language. I cannot repeat the man"s obscenities; I shall limit myself to saying that he placed my dear late mother in the most curious situations. It was decided to inculcate in him thoroughly the nature of his legal status. I explained that he would remain imprisoned until the end of his days; that if I died first I would transmit him to Petya like a bequest; that my son in his turn would transmit him to my future grandson and so forth, causing him to become a kind of family tradition. A family jewel. I mentioned in pa.s.sing that, in the unlikely eventuality of our having to move to a different Berlin flat, he would be tied up, placed in a special trunk, and would make the move with us easy as pie. I went on to explain to him that in one case only would he be granted amnesty. Namely, he would be released the day the Bolshevik bubble burst. Finally I promised that he would be well fed-far better than when, in my time, I had been locked up by the Cheka-and that, by way of special privilege, he would receive books. And in fact, to this day I don"t believe he has once complained about the food. True, at first Petya proposed that he be fed dried roach, but search as he might, that Soviet fish was unavailable in Berlin. We are obliged to give him bourgeois food. Exactly at eight every morning Petya and I go in and place by his tub a bowl of hot soup with meat and a loaf of gray bread. At the same time we take out the chamber pot, a clever apparatus we acquired just for him. At three he gets a gla.s.s of tea, at seven some more soup. This nutritional system is modeled on the one in use in the best European jails.
"The books were more of a problem. We held a family council, for starters, and stopped at three t.i.tles: Prince Serebryaniy, Krylov"s Fables, and Around the World in Eighty Days. He announced that he would not read those "White Guard pamphlets," but we left him the books, and we have every reason to believe that he read them with pleasure.
"His mood was changeable. He grew quiet. Evidently he was cooking up something. Maybe he hoped the police would start looking for him. We checked the papers, but there was not a word about the vanished Cheka agent. Most likely the other representatives had decided the man had simply defected, and had preferred to bury the affair. To this pensive period belongs his attempt to slip away, or at least to get word to the outside world. He trudged about his cell, probably reached for the window, tried to pry the planks loose, tried pounding, but we made some threat or other and the pounding ceased. And once, when Petya went in there alone, the man lunged at him. Petya grabbed him in a gentle bear hug and sat him back in the tub. After this occurrence he underwent another change, became very good-natured, even joked on occasion, and finally attempted to bribe us. He offered us an enormous sum, promising to obtain it through somebody. When this did not help either, he started whimpering, then went back to swearing worse than before. At the moment he is at a stage of grim submissiveness, which, I"m afraid, bodes no good.
"We take him for a daily walk in the corridor, and twice a week we air him out by an open window; naturally we take all necessary precautions to prevent him from yelling. On Sat.u.r.days he takes a bath. We ourselves have to wash in the kitchen. On Sundays I give him short lectures and let him smoke three cigarettes-in my presence, of course. What are these lectures about? All sorts of things. Pushkin, for instance, or Ancient Greece. Only one subject is omitted-politics. He is totally deprived of politics. Just as if such a thing did not exist on the face of the earth. And you know what? Ever since I have kept one Soviet agent locked up, ever since I have served the Fatherland, I am simply a different man. Jaunty and happy. And business has looked up, so there is no great problem supporting him either. He costs me twenty marks or so a month, counting the electric bill: it"s completely dark in there, so from eight a.m. to eight p.m. one weak lightbulb is left on.
"You ask, what milieu is he from? Well, how shall I put it.... He is twenty-four years old, he is a peasant, it is unlikely that he finished even a village school, he was what is called "an honest Communist," studied only political literacy, which in our book signifies trying to make blockheads out of knuckleheads-that"s all I know. Oh, if you want I"ll show him to you, only remember, mum"s the word!"
Martin went into the corridor. Petya and I followed. The old man in his cozy house jacket really did look like a prison warden. He produced the key as he walked, and there was something almost professional in the way he inserted it in the lock. The lock crunched twice, and Martin threw open the door. Far from being some ill-lit hole, it was a splendid, s.p.a.cious bathroom, of the kind one finds in comfortable German dwellings. Electric light, bright yet pleasing to the eye, burned behind a merry, ornate shade. A mirror glistened on the left-hand wall. On the night table by the bathtub there were books, a peeled orange on a l.u.s.trous plate, and an untouched bottle of beer. In the white bathtub, on a mattress covered with a clean sheet, with a large pillow under the back of his head, lay a well-fed, bright-eyed fellow with a long growth of beard, in a bathrobe (a hand-me-down from the master) and warm, soft slippers.
"Well, what do you say?" Martin asked me.
I found the scene comical and did not know what to answer. "That"s where the window used to be," Martin indicated with his finger. Sure enough, the window was boarded up to perfection.
The prisoner yawned and turned toward the wall. We went out. Martin fondled the bolt with a smile. "Fat chance he"ll ever escape," he said, and then added pensively, "I would be curious to know, though, just how many years he"ll spend in there...."
*Lenin"s real name.-D.N.
*In this narrative, all traits and distinguishing marks that might hint at the ident.i.ty of the real Martin are of course deliberately distorted. I mention this so that curiosity seekers will not search in vain for the "tobacco shop in the corner building."-V.N.