Vladimir Nabokov: The Enchanter

In a joyful rush, he changed the sheets on his bed (in her former bedroom); tidied up summarily; bathed; called off a business meeting; canceled the char; had a quick snack in his “bachelor” restaurant; bought a supply of dates, ham, rye bread, whipped cream, muscat grapes—had he forgotten anything?—and, when he got home, disintegrated into multiple packages and kept visualizing how she would pass here and sit down there, springily bracing herself behind her back with her slender bare arms, all curly and dark—and at that moment there was a call from the hospital asking him to look in after all; on the way to the station he reluctantly stopped by and learned that the person was no more.

He was seized first of all by a sense of enraged disappointment: it meant that his plan had fallen through, that this night with all its warm, cosy closeness had been snatched from him, and that, when she arrived in response to a telegram, it would naturally be in the company of that hag and that hag’s husband, and the two of them would settle in for a good week. But the very nature of this first reaction, the momentum of this shortsighted rush of emotion, created a vacuum, since an immediate transition from vexation at her death (which happened to have temporarily interfered) to gratitude (for the basic course destiny had taken) was impossible. Meanwhile, that vacuum was filling with preliminary, grayly human content. Sitting on a bench in the hospital garden, gradually calming down, preparing for the various steps of the funeral procedure, he mentally reviewed with appropriate sadness what he had just seen with his own eyes: the polished forehead, the translucent nostrils with the pearly wart on one side, the ebony cross, all of death’s jewelry work. He parenthetically gave surgery a contemptuous dismissal and started thinking what a superb period she had had under his tutelage, how he had incidentally provided her with some real happiness to brighten the last days of her vegetative existence, and thence it was already a natural transition to crediting clever Fate with splendid behavior, and to the first delicious throb in his bloodstream: the lone wolf was getting ready to don Granny’s nightcap.

He was expecting them next day at lunchtime. The doorbell rang on schedule, but the late person’s friend stood on the doorstep alone (extending her bony hands and taking unfair advantage of a severe cold for the exigencies of obvious condolence): neither her husband nor “the little orphan” could come because both were laid up with the flu. His disappointment was alleviated by the thought that it was best this way—why spoil things? The girl’s presence amid this combination of funereal encumbrances would have been just as agonizing as had been her arrival for the wedding, and it would be much more sensible to spend the coming days getting the formalities over with and thoroughly preparing a radical leap into complete safety. The only part that irritated him was the way the woman said “both”—the bond of illness (as if the two patients were sharing a common sickbed), the bond of contagion (maybe that vulgarian, following her up a steep staircase, liked to paw her bared thighs).

Feigning total shock—which was simplest of all, as murderers know too—he sat like a benumbed widower, his larger-than-life hands lowered, scarcely moving his lips in reply to her advice that he relieve the constipation of grief with tears, and watched with a turbid gaze as she blew her nose (all three were united by the cold—that was better). When, absently but greedily attacking the ham, she said such things as “At least her suffering did not last long” or “Thank God she was unconscious,” on the lumped-together assumption that suffering and sleep were the natural human lot, that the worms had kind little faces, and that the supreme supine flotation took place in a blissful stratosphere, he nearly answered that death, as such, always had been and always would be an obscene idiot, but realized in time that this might cause his consoler to have disagreeable doubts about his ability to impart a religious and moral education to the adolescent girl.

There were very few people at the funeral (but for some reason a friend of sorts from former times, a gold craftsman, showed up with his wife), and later, in the home-bound car, a plump lady (who had also been at his farcical wedding) told him, compassionately but in no uncertain terms (as his bowed head bobbed with the car’s motion), that now, at least, something must be done about the child’s abnormal situation (meanwhile his late spouse’s friend pretended to gaze out into the street), and that paternal concerns would undoubtedly give him the needed consolation, and a third woman (an infinitely remote relative of the deceased) joined in, saying, “And what a pretty girl she is! You’ll have to watch her like a hawk—she’s already biggish for her age, just wait another three years and the boys will be sticking to her like flies, you’ll have no end of worries,” and meanwhile he was guffawing and guffawing to himself, floating on featherbeds of happiness.

The day before, in response to a second telegram (“Worried how is your health kiss”—and this kiss written on the telegraph blank was the first real one), came the news that neither of them had any more fever, and, before leaving for home, the still runny-nosed friend showed him a small box and asked if she could take it for the girl (it contained some maternal trinkets from the remote, sacred past), after which she inquired what would happen next, and how. Only then, speaking extremely slowly and expressionlessly, with frequent pauses, as though with every syllable he were overcoming the speechlessness of sorrow, he announced to her what would happen and how: after first thanking her for the year of care, he advised her that in exactly two weeks he would come to fetch his daughter (the very word he used) to take her south and then probably abroad. “Yes, that’s wise,” replied the other with relief (somewhat tempered, but only by the thought, let us hope, that, of late, she had probably been making a nice little profit on her ward). “Go away, distract yourself—there’s nothing like a trip to calm one’s grief.”

He needed those two weeks to organize his affairs so he would not have to think about them for at least a year; then he would see. He was forced to sell certain items from his own collection. And while packing he happened to find in his desk a coin he had once picked up (which, incidentally, had turned out to be counterfeit). He chuckled: the talisman had already done its job.

WHEN HE BOARDED THE TRAIN, day-after-tomorrow’s address still seemed a shoreline in a torrid mist, a preliminary symbol of future anonymity. The only thing he tentatively planned was where they would pass the night on the way to that shimmering South; he found it unnecessary to predetermine subsequent habitations. The locus did not matter—it would always be adorned by a little naked foot; the destination was immaterial—as long as he could abscond with her into the azure void. The telegraph poles, like violin bridges, flew past with spasms of guttural music. The throbbing of the car’s partitions was like the crackle of mightily bulging wings. We shall live far away, now in the hills, now by the sea, in a hothouse warmth where savagelike nudity will automatically become habitual, perfectly alone (no servants!), seeing no one, just the two of us in an eternal nursery, and thus any remaining sense of shame will be dealt its final blow. There will be constant merriment, pranks, morning kisses, tussles on the shared bed, a single, huge sponge shedding its tears on four shoulders, squirting with laughter amid four legs.

Luxuriating in the concentrated rays of an internal sun, he pondered the delicious alliance between premeditation and pure chance, the Edenic discoveries that awaited her, the way the amusing traits peculiar to bodies of different sex, seen at close range, would appear extraordinary yet natural and homey to her, while the subtle distinctions of intricately refined passion would long remain for her but the alphabet of innocent caresses: she would be entertained only with storybook images (the pet giant, the fairy-tale forest, the sack with its treasure), and with the amusing consequences that would ensue when she inquisitively fingered the toy with the familiar but never tedious trick. He was convinced that, as long as novelty still prevailed and she did not look around her, it would be easy, by means of pet names and jokes confirming the essentially aimless simplicity of given oddities, to divert a normal girl’s attention ahead of time from the comparisons, generalizations, and questions that might be prompted by something overheard previously, or a dream, or her first menstruation, so as to prepare a painless transition from a world of semiabstractions of which she was probably semi-conscious (such as the correct interpretation of a neighbor’s autonomously swelling belly, or schoolgirl predilections for the mug of a matinee idol), from everything in any way connected with adult love, into the everyday reality of pleasant fun, while decorum and morality, aware neither of the goings-on nor of the address, would refrain from visiting.