Vladimir Nabokov - The Enchanter

BY THE THIRD VISIT (he had dropped by to inform her that the mover could come no earlier than Friday) he had tea with her and, in his turn, told her about himself and about his limpid, elegant profession. They turned out to have a common acquaintance, the brother of an attorney who had died the same year as her husband. Objectively and without insincere regrets she discussed the husband, about whom he already knew certain things: he had been a bon vivant and an expert on notarial matters; he had gotten on well with his wife, but had tried to spend as little time as possible at home.

On Thursday he bought the couch and two chairs, and on Saturday he called for her as agreed to take her for a quiet stroll in the park. However, she was feeling rotten, was in bed with a hot-water bottle, and spoke to him in a singsong through the door. He asked the gloomy crone who periodically appeared to cook and nurse to let him know at such-and-such a number how the patient had spent the night.

In this fashion a few more busy weeks elapsed, weeks of murmuring, exploration, persuasion, intensive remolding of another’s pliable solitude. Now he was moving toward a definite goal, for, even back when he had proffered the candy, he had suddenly recognized the outlying destination silently indicated to him by what looked like a strange, nailless finger (scrawled on a fence), and the true hiding-place of genuine, blinding opportunity. The path was unenticing but neither was it difficult, and the sight of a weekly letter to Mother, in a still unsteady, coltishly sprawling hand, left lying about with inexplicable heedlessness, sufficed to put an end to any sort of doubt.

He had learned from other sources that the mother had checked on him, with results that could only have pleased her, not the least of which was a well-kept bank account. From the way she showed him, with devoutly lowered voice, old, rigid snapshots depicting, in various more or less flattering poses, a young girl in high shoes with a round, pleasant face, a nice full bosom, and hair combed back from her forehead (there were also the wedding photos, which invariably included the bridegroom, who had a happily surprised expression and an oddly familiar slant to his eyes), he gathered that she was surreptitiously addressing the faded mirror of the past in search of something that might even now entitle her to masculine attention, and must have decided that the keen eye of an appraiser of facets and reflections could still discern the traces of her past comeliness (which, incidentally, she exaggerated), traces that would become even more apparent after this retrospective bride-show.

To the cup of tea she poured him she imparted a dainty touch of intimacy; into the highly detailed accounts of her diverse indispositions she managed to infuse so much romanticism that he could barely resist asking some coarse question; and at times she would pause, seemingly lost in thought, and then catch up, with a belated query, to his cautiously tiptoeing words.

He felt both sorry and repelled but, realizing that the material, apart from its one specific function, had no potential whatever, he kept doggedly at his chore, which in itself demanded such concentration that the physical aspect of this woman dissolved and vanished (if he had run into her on the street in a different part of town he would not have recognized her) and its place was haphazardly filled by the formal features of the abstract bride in the snapshots, grown so familiar that they had lost all meaning (thus, after all, her pathetic calculations had been successful).

The task proceeded swimmingly and when, one rainy, late-fall evening, she heard out—impassively, without a single bit of feminine advice—his vague complaints about the yearnings of a bachelor who looks with envy at the tailcoat and misty aura of another’s wedding and thinks involuntarily of the lonely grave at the end of his lonely road, he concluded the time had come to call the packers. Meanwhile, though, he sighed and changed the subject, and, a day later, how she was amazed when their silent tea-drinking (he had gone to the window a couple of times, as if meditating about something) was interrupted by the furniture mover’s powerful ring. Home came two chairs, the couch, the lamp, and the chest: thus, when solving a mathematical problem, one first sets aside a certain number so as to work more freely, and then returns it to the womb of the solution.

“You don’t understand. All it means is that a married couple’s belongings are owned jointly. In other words, I offer you both the contents of the cuff and the live ace of hearts.”

Meanwhile, two workmen who had brought in the furniture were bustling nearby, and she chastely retreated to the next room.

“You know something?” she said. “Go home and have a good sleep.”

He tried, with a chuckle, to take her hand in his, but she drew it behind her back, repeating resolutely that this was all a lot of nonsense.

“All right,” he replied, producing a handful of change and preparing the tip in his palm. “All right, I’ll leave, but, if you decide to accept, kindly let me know, otherwise don’t bother—I’ll rid you of my presence forever.”

“Wait a bit. Let them leave first. You pick strange times for this kind of talk.”

“Now let’s sit down and discuss things rationally,” she said a moment later, having descended heavily and meekly onto the newly returned sofa (while he sat next to her in profile with one leg tucked under him, holding onto the lace of the protruding shoe). “First of all, my friend, as you know, I am a sick, a seriously sick, woman. For a couple of years now my life has been one of constant medical care. The operation I had on April twenty-fifth was in all likelihood the next-to-last one—in other words, next time they’ll take me from the hospital to the cemetery. No, no, don’t pooh-pooh what I’m saying. Let’s even assume I last a few more years—what change can there be? I’m doomed until my dying day to suffer all the torments of my infernal diet, and my attention is totally focused on my stomach and my nerves. My character is hopelessly ruined. There was a time when I never stopped laughing…. Yet I have always been demanding of others, and now I’m demanding of everything—of material objects, of my neighbors’ dog, of every minute of my existence that does not serve me as I want. You know that I was married for seven years. I have no recollection of any special happiness. I am a bad mother, but have reconciled myself to that, and know that my death would only be accelerated by having a boisterous girl around, and at the same time I feel a stupid, painful envy for her muscular little legs, her rosy complexion, her healthy digestion. I’m poor: one half of my pension goes for my illness, the other for my debts. Even if one were to suppose you had the kind of character and sensibilities… oh, in a word, the various traits that might make you a suitable husband for me—see, I stress the word ‘me’—what kind of existence would you have with such a wife? I may feel young spiritually, and I may not yet be a total monstrosity to look at, but won’t you get bored constantly fussing with such a fastidious person, never, never contradicting her, respecting her habits and eccentricities, her fasting and the other rules she lives by? And all for what—in order to remain, perhaps in six months or so, a widower with someone else’s child on your hands!”

“Which leads me to conclude,” said he, “that my proposal has been accepted.” And he shook out into his hand, from a chamois pouch, a splendid uncut stone that seemed illuminated from within by a rosy flame gleaming through a winy-bluish cast.

THE GIRL ARRIVED two days before the wedding, cheeks aglow and wearing an unbuttoned blue coat with the ends of its belt dangling behind, woolen stockings almost up to her knees, and a beret on her damp curls.