Vladimir Nabokov - The Gift

From the very beginning it was apparent that the road led to disaster. The Rigan’s farcical accent and bizarre solecisms were incompatible with the obscurity of his meaning. When, already in the Prologue, there appeared a “Lone Companion” ( odinokiy sputnik instead of odinokiy putnik , lone wayfarer) walking along that road, Fyodor still hoped against hope that this was a metaphysical paradox and not a traitorous lapsus . The Chief of the Town Guard, not admitting the traveler, repeated several times that he “would not pass definitely” (rhyming with “nightly”). The town was a coastal one (the lone companion was coming from the Hinterland) and the crew of a Greek vessel was carousing there. This conversation went on in the Street of Sin:

There were also two choruses, one of which somehow managed to represent the de Broglie’s waves and the logic of history, while the other chorus, the good one, argued with it. “First Sailor, Second Sailor, Third Sailor,” continued Busch, enumerating the conversing characters in his nervous bass voice edged with moisture. There also appeared three flower vendors: a “Lilies’ Woman,” a “Violets’ Woman” and a “Woman of Different Flowers.” Suddenly something gave: little landslides began among the audience.

Before long, certain power lines formed in various directions all across the room—a network of exchanged glances between three or four, then five or six, then ten people, which represented a third of the gathering. Koncheyev slowly and carefully took a large volume from the bookshelf near which he was sitting (Fyodor noticed that it was an album of Persian miniatures), and just as slowly turning it this way and that in his lap, he began to glance through it with myopic eyes. Mme. Chernyshevski wore a surprised and hurt expression, but in keeping with her secret ethics, somehow tied up with the memory of her son, she was forcing herself to listen. Busch was reading rapidly, his glossy jowls gyrated, the horseshoe in his black tie sparkled, while beneath the table his feet stood pigeon-toed—and as the idiotic symbolism of the tragedy became ever deeper, more involved and less comprehensible, the painfully repressed, subterraneously raging hilarity more and more desperately needed an outlet, and many were already bending over, afraid to look, and when the Dance of the Maskers began in the square, someone—Getz it was—coughed, and together with the cough there issued a certain additional whoop, whereupon Getz covered his face with his hands and after a while emerged again with a senselessly bright countenance and humid, bald head, while on the couch Tamara had simply lain down and was rocking as if in the throes of labor, while Fyodor, who was deprived of protection, shed floods of tears, tortured by the forced noiselessness of what was going on inside him. Unexpectedly Vasiliev turned in his chair so ponderously that a leg collapsed with a crack and Vasiliev lurched forward with a changed expression, but did not fall, and this event, not funny in itself, served as a pretext for an elemental, orgiastic explosion to interrupt the reading, and while Vasiliev was transferring his bulk to another chair, Herman Ivanovich Busch, knitting his magnificent but quite unfruitful brow, jotted something on the manuscript with a pencil stub, and in the relieved calm an unidentified woman uttered something in a separate final moan, but Busch was already going on:

“Hear, hear!” chimed in the Chorus, as in the British Parliament. Again there was a slight commotion: an empty cigarette box, on which the fat lawyer had written something, began a journey across the whole room, and everybody followed the stages of its trip; something extremely funny must have been written on it, but no one read it and it was passed dutifully from hand to hand, destined for Fyodor, and when it finally reached him, he read on it: Later I want to discuss a certain little affair with you .

The last act was nearing its conclusion. The god of laughter imperceptibly forsook Fyodor and he gazed meditatively at the shine of his shoe. Onto the cold shore from the ferry. The right one pinched more than the left. Koncheyev, his mouth half open, was leafing through the final pages of the album. “Zanaves [curtain],” exclaimed Busch, accenting the last syllable instead of the first.

Vasiliev announced that there would be an intermission. Most of the audience had a rumpled and wilted look, as after a night in a third-class coach. Busch had rolled his tragedy into a thick tube and was standing in a far corner, and it seemed to him that in the din of voices there formed and spread constant ripples of admiration; Lyubov Markovna offered him some tea and then his powerful face suddenly assumed a defenseless, gentle expression, and blissfully licking his lips, he bent toward the glass that had been handed him. Fyodor observed this from afar with a certain feeling of awe, while behind him he heard the following:

“Please give me some explanation!” (The angry voice of Mme. Chernyshevski.)

“Well, you know, such things do happen …” (guiltily debonair Vasiliev).

“I ask you for an explanation.”

“But, my dear lady, what can I do now?”

“Well, didn’t you read it beforehand? Didn’t he bring it to you at the office? I thought you said it was a serious, interesting work. A significant work.”

“Yes, that’s true, a first impression you know, when I skimmed it—I did not take into consideration how it would sound—I was fooled! It’s really baffling. But go over to him, Alexandra Yakovlevna, say something to him.”

The lawyer grasped Fyodor above the elbow. “You’re just the person I’m looking for. It suddenly occurred to me that there is something for you here. A client of mine came to me—he requires a German translation of some papers of his, for a divorce case, don’t you see? The Germans who are handling the affair for him have a Russian girl in their office but apparently she will be able to do only part of it, and they need someone to help her out with the rest. Would you undertake this? Here, let me take your telephone number. Gemacht.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, be seated please,” rang out Vasiliev’s voice. “Now we shall have a discussion of the work that has been read. Those who wish to participate please sign up.”

Just then Fyodor saw that Koncheyev, stooping and with his hand behind his lapel, was making a serpentine course toward the exit. Fyodor followed, nearly forgetting his magazine in the process. In the anteroom they were joined by old Stupishin; he frequently moved from one rented room to another but lived always so far from the center of the city that these changes, important and complicated for him, seemed to others to happen in an ethereal world, beyond the horizon of human worries. Draping a skimpy, gray-striped scarf around his neck, he held it in place with his chin in the Russian manner while, also in the Russian manner, he got into his overcoat by means of several dorsal jerks.

“Well, he certainly gave us a treat,” he said as they descended, accompanied by the maid with the front door key.