Vladimir Nabokov - Mary

‘He’s not in love with you, is he, Klarochka?’ he repeated, blowing on his tea and giving her a sidelong glance over his pince-nez.

‘He broke it off with Lyudmila yesterday,’ Klara said suddenly, feeling that she could reveal the secret to Podtyagin.

‘I thought so,’ the old man nodded, sipping with relish. ‘He wouldn’t be looking so radiant for nothing. Away with the old, on with the new. Did you hear what he suggested to me today? He’s coming with me to the police tomorrow.’

‘I shall be seeing her this evening,’ said Klara reflectively. ‘Poor girl. She sounded deathly on the telephone.’

Podtyagin sighed. ‘Ah, youth. That girl will get over it. No harm done. It’s all for the best. As for me, Klarochka, I shall die soon.’

‘Good heavens, Anton Sergeyevich! What nonsense!’

‘No, it’s not nonsense. I had another attack last night. At one moment my heart was in my mouth, at the next moment it was under the bed.’

‘You poor man,’ said Klara anxiously. ‘You should see a doctor.’

Podtyagin smiled. ‘I was joking. On the contrary, I’ve felt far better lately. And there was no attack. I invented it on the spur of the moment just to see your great eyes open still wider. If we were in Russia, Klarochka, some country doctor or a well-to-do architect would be courting you. Tell me — do you love Russia?’

‘Very much.’

‘Quite so. We should love Russia. Without the love of us émigrés, Russia is finished. None of the people there love her.’

‘I’m already twenty-six,’ said Klara, ‘I type all morning, and five times a week I work until six. I get very tired. I’m quite alone in Berlin. What do you think, Anton Sergeyevich — will it go on like this for long?’

‘I don’t know, my dear,’ sighed Podtyagin. ‘I’d tell you if I knew, but I don’t. I worked too, I started up a magazine here. And now I’ve got nothing to show for it. I only hope to God I can get to Paris. Life’s more free and easy there. What do you think — will I get there?’

‘Why, of course you will, Anton Sergeyevich. Everything will be arranged tomorrow.’

‘Life’s freer — and cheaper, apparently,’ said Podtyagin, spooning up an unmelted scrap of sugar and thinking that there was something Russian about that little porous lump, something rather like the melting snow in springtime.

In the sense of routine Ganin’s day became emptier after his break with Lyudmila, but on the other hand he did not feel bored from having nothing to do. He was so absorbed with his memories that he was unaware of time. His shadow lodged in Frau Dorn’s pension , while he himself was in Russia, reliving his memories as though they were reality. Time for him had become the progress of recollection, which unfolded gradually. And although his affair with Mary in those far-off days had lasted not just for three days, not for a week but for much longer, he did not feel any discrepancy between actual time and that other time in which he relived the past, since his memory did not take account of every moment and skipped over the blank unmemorable stretches, only illuminating those connected with Mary. Thus no discrepancy existed between the course of life past and life present.

It seemed as though his past, in that perfect form it had reached, ran now like a regular pattern through his everyday life in Berlin. Whatever Ganin did at present, that other life comforted him unceasingly.

It was not simply reminiscence but a life that was much more real, much more intense than the life lived by his shadow in Berlin. It was a marvelous romance that developed with genuine, tender care.

By the second week of August in northern Russia there is already a touch of autumn in the air. Every now and again a small yellow leaf falls from a birch tree; the broad fields, already harvested, have a bright autumnal emptiness. Along the forest’s edge, where an expanse of tall grass spared by the haymakers shows its sheen to the wind, torpid bumblebees sleep on the mauve cushions of scabious flowers. And one afternoon, in a pavilion of the park —

Yes, the pavilion. It stood on rotting piles above a ravine, reached from either side by two sloping footbridges, slippery with alder aments and fir needles.

In its small diamond-shaped window frames were panes of different-colored glass: if, say, you looked through a blue one the world seemed frozen in a lunar trance; through a yellow one, everything appeared extraordinarily gay, through a red one, the sky looked pink and the foliage as dark as burgundy. Some of the panes were broken, their jagged edges joined up by a spider’s web. Inside, the pavilion was whitewashed; vacationists who illegally wandered into the estate’s park from their dachas had scribbled in pencil on the walls and on the folding table.

One day Mary and two of her rather plain girl friends wandered there too. He first overtook them on a path which ran alongside the river, and drove so close that her girl friends leaped aside with a shriek. He drove on round the park, cut through the middle and then from a distance through the leaves watched them go into the pavilion. He leaned his bicycle up against a tree and went in after them.

‘This is private property,’ he said in a low, hoarse voice. ‘There’s even a notice on the gate saying so.’

She said nothing in reply, looking at him with her mischievous, slanting eyes. Pointing to one of the faint graffiti he inquired, ‘Did you do that?’

It said: ‘On the third of July Mary, Lida and Nina sat out a thunderstorm in this pavilion.’

All three of them burst out laughing and then he laughed too. He sat on the window table, swinging his legs, and noticed with annoyance that he had torn one of his black socks at the ankle. Suddenly, pointing at the pink hole in the silk, Mary said, ‘Look — the sun has come out.’

They talked about thunderstorms, about the people living in the dachas, about his having had typhus, about the funny student at the military hospital and about the concert.

She had adorable mobile eyebrows, a dark complexion with a covering of very fine, lustrous down which gave a specially warm tinge to her cheeks; her nostrils flared as she talked, emitting short laughs and sucking the sweetness from a grass stalk; her voice was rapid and burry, with sudden chest tones, and a dimple quivered at her open neck.

Then toward evening he escorted her and her friends to the village and as they walked down a green, weed— grown forest path, at the spot where stood a lame bench, he told them with a very straight face, ‘Macaroni grows in Italy. When still small it’s called vermicelli. That means Mike’s worms in Italian.’

He arranged to take them all boating next day; but she appeared without her companions. At the rickety jetty he unwound the clanking chain of the rowboat, a big heavy affair of mahogany, removed the tarpaulin, screwed in the rowlocks, pulled the oars out of a long box, inserted the rudder pintle into its steel socket.

From some distance came the steady roar of the sluice gates at the water mill; one could distinguish the foamy folds of the falling water and the russet-gold sheen of pine logs that floated near.

Mary sat at the rudder. He pushed off with a boat hook and slowly started to row along the park shore where dense alder shrubs cast reflections like black eye-spots upon the water and many dark-blue demoiselle dragonflies flittered about. Then he turned into the middle of the river, weaving between the islets of algal brocade, while Mary, holding both ends of the tiller rope in one hand, dangled the other in the water trying to pull off the shiny yellow heads of waterlilies. The rowlocks creaked at every stroke of the oars and as he leaned back, then stretched forward, Mary, facing him in the stern, alternately moved away and drew closer in her navy-blue jacket, open over a light blouse that breathed with her.