Vladimir Nabokov - Mary

‘Nice little poem, but I can’t remember the beginning or the end and I forget who wrote it. Now I shall wait for your letter. I don’t know how to say goodbye to you. Perhaps I’ve kissed you. Yes, I suppose, I have.’

Two or three weeks later came her fourth letter:

‘I was glad to get your letter, Lyova. It is such a nice, nice letter. Yes, one can never forget how much and how radiantly one loved. You write that you would give your whole future life for a moment from the past — but it would be better to meet and verify one’s feelings.

‘Lyova, if you do come, ring up the local telephone exchange and ask for number 34. They may answer you in German: there is a German military hospital here. Ask them to call for me.

‘I was in town yesterday and had some “fun.” It was very gay, with lots of music and lights. A very amusing man with a little yellow beard made a play for me and called me “the queen of the ball.” Today it’s so boring, boring. It’s such a pity that the days go by so pointlessly and stupidly — and these are supposed to be the best, the happiest years of our life. It looks as if I shall soon turn into a hypocrite — I mean, hypochondriac. No, that mustn’t happen.

‘Quite something, isn’t it?

‘Write to me as soon as you get my letter. Will you come here and see me? Impossible? Well, too bad. Perhaps you can, though? What nonsense I’m writing: to come all the way here just to see me. What conceit! — don’t you think?

‘Just now I read a poem in an old magazine: “My Little Pale Pearl” by Krapovitsky. I like it very much. Write and tell me absolutely everything. I kiss you. Here’s something else I’ve read — by Podtyagin:

‘Dear Podtyagin,’ mused Ganin. ‘How strange. Goodness, how strange. If someone had told me then I should meet him, of all people.’

Smiling and shaking his head, he unfolded one last letter. He had received it the day before leaving for the front line. It had been a cold January dawn on board ship, and he had felt queasy from drinking coffee made from acorns.

‘Lyova, my darling, my joy, how I waited and longed for your letter. It was so hard and painful to write you such restrained letters. How can I have lived these three years without you, how have I managed to survive and what was there to live for?

‘I love you. If you come back I’ll plague you with kisses. Do you remember:

‘Goodness, where has it gone, all that distant, bright, endearing — Like you, I feel that we shall meet again — but when, when?

‘I love you. Come to me. Your letter was such a joy that I still can’t regain my senses for happiness

‘Happiness,’ Ganin repeated softly, folding all five letters into an even batch. ‘That’s it — happiness. We’re going to meet again in twelve hours’ time.’

He stood motionless, preoccupied with secret, delicious thoughts. He had no doubt that Mary still loved him. Her five letters lay in his hand. Outside it was quite dark. The knobs on his suitcases gleamed. The desolate room smelled faintly of dust.

He was still sitting in the same position when voices were heard outside the door and suddenly, without knocking, Alfyorov strode into the room.

‘Oh, sorry,’ he said without showing any particular embarrassment. ‘I somehow thought you’d already gone.’

His fingers playing with the folded letters, Ganin stared vacantly at Alfyorov’s little yellow beard. The landlady appeared in the doorway.

‘Lydia Nikolaevna,’ Alfyorov went on, twitching his neck and crossing the room with a proprietorial air. ‘We must get this damn thing out of the way, so that we can open the door into my room.’

He tried to move the wardrobe, grunted and staggered back helplessly.

‘Let me do it,’ Ganin suggested cheerfully. Thrusting the black wallet into his pocket he stood up, walked over to the wardrobe and spat on his hands.

The black trains roared past, shaking the windows of the house; with a movement like ghostly shoulders shaking off a load, heaving mountains of smoke swept upward, blotting out the night sky. The roofs burned with a smooth metallic blaze in the moonlight; and a sonorous black shadow under the iron bridge awoke as a black train rumbled across it, sending a chain of light flickering down its length. The clattering roar and mass of smoke seemed to pass right through the house as it quivered between the chasm where the rail tracks lay like lines drawn by a moonlit fingernail and the street where it was crossed by the flat bridge waiting for the next regular thunder of railway carriages. The house was like a specter you could put your hand through and wriggle your fingers.

Standing at the window of the dancers’ room, Ganin looked out onto the street: the asphalt gleamed dully, black foreshortened people walked hither and thither, disappearing into shadows and re-emerging in the slanting light reflected from shop windows. In an uncurtained window of the house opposite, sparkling glass and gilded frames could be seen in the bright amber gap. Then an elegant black shadow pulled down the blinds.

Ganin turned around. Kolin handed him a quivering glassful of vodka.

The room was lit by a somewhat pale unearthly light, because the ingenious dancers had shrouded the lamp in a scrap of mauve silk. On the table, in the middle of the room, bottles gave off a violet-colored gleam, oil glistened in open sardine tins, there were chocolates in silver wrappings, a mosaic of sausage slices, glazed meat patties.

Sitting at the table were Podtyagin, pale and morose, with beads of sweat on his large forehead; Alfyorov, sporting a brand new shot-silk tie; Klara in her eternal black dress, languid and flushed from drinking cheap orange liqueur.

Gornotsvetov, without a jacket and wearing a soiled silk shirt with an open collar, was sitting on the edge of the bed tuning a guitar which he had somehow obtained. Kolin kept constantly on the move pouring out vodka, liqueurs, pale Rhine wine, his fat hips wriggling comically while his trim torso, gripped by a tight blue jacket, remained almost motionless as he moved.

‘What — not drinking?’ he pouted, asking the conventional reproachful question as he raised his melting glance to Ganin.

‘Yes — why not?’ said Ganin, sitting down on the window ledge and taking the light, cold wineglass from the dancer’s trembling hand. Tossing it down, he glanced round the people sitting at the table. All were silent — even Alfyorov who was much too excited by the fact that in eight or nine hours’ time his wife would arrive.

‘The guitar’s in tune,’ said Gornotsvetov as he adjusted a key and plucked the string. He struck a chord, then damped the twanging sound with his palm.

‘Why aren’t you singing, gentlemen? In Klara’s honor. Come along now. “Like a fragrant flower —”’

Grinning at Klara and raising his glass with mock gallantry, Alfyorov leaned backward in his chair — at which he nearly fell over, as it was a revolving stool without a back — and made an effort to sing in a false, affected little tenor, but no one else joined in.