Vladimir Nabokov - Mary

He found himself again in the tiny public garden of the same square, but now the air had grown chilly, the pale sky had dimmed in a vesperal swoon.

‘Four days left: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And I might die any moment.’

‘Pull yourself together!’ he mumbled abruptly, knitting his dark brows. ‘Enough of that. Time to go home.’

On walking upstairs to the landing of the pension , he met Alfyorov, who, hunched in his voluminous overcoat and pursing his lips with concentration, was inserting a key into the keyhole of the lift.

‘I’m going out to buy a newspaper, Lev Glebovich. Like to join me?’

‘No, thanks,’ said Ganin, and went on to his room.

But as he grasped the door handle he stopped. A sudden temptation overcame him. He heard Alfyorov getting into the lift, heard the machine go down with its laborious dull din and heard the clang as it reached the bottom.

‘He’s gone,’ he thought, biting his lip. ‘Hell, I’ll risk it.’

Fate willed it that five minutes later Klara knocked on Alfyorov’s door to ask him whether he had a postage stamp. The yellow light showing through the frosted glass upper panels of his door suggested that Alfyorov must be in his room.

‘Aleksey Ivanovich,’ began Klara, simultaneously knocking and opening the door slightly, ‘do you have —’

She stopped short in amazement. Ganin was standing by the desk and hastily shutting the drawer. He looked round, teeth flashing, gave the drawer a push with his hip and straightened up.

‘Good God,’ Klara murmured, and backed out of the room.

Ganin quickly strode after her, turning out the light and slamming the door as he went. Klara leaned against the wall in the semidarkness of the passage and looked at him with horror, pressing her chubby hands to her temples.

‘Good God,’ she repeated in the same low voice. ‘How could you —’

With a slow rumble, panting after its exertions, the lift was rising again.

‘He’s coming back,’ whispered Ganin, with an air of mystery.

‘Oh, I won’t give you away,’ exclaimed Klara bitterly, her shining wet eyes fixed upon him. ‘But how could you? He’s no better off than you are, after all. No, it’s like a nightmare.’

‘Let’s go to your room,’ said Ganin with a smile. ‘I’ll explain if you like.’

She detached herself from the wall and with head bowed led him to room April 5. There it was warm and smelled of good perfume; on the wall was a copy of Böcklin’s The Isle of the Dead , and on the table a framed photograph — Lyudmila’s face, very much retouched.

‘We’ve quarreled.’ Ganin nodded toward the photograph. ‘Don’t ask me in if she comes to see you. It’s all over.’ Klara sat down with her feet up on a couch, wrapping herself in a black shawl.

‘This is all nonsense, Klara,’ he continued, sitting down beside her and leaning on his outstretched arm. ‘Surely you don’t really think I was stealing money, do you? Although of course I wouldn’t like Alfyorov to find out that I was poking about in his desk.’

‘But what were you doing? What else could it be?’ Klara whispered. ‘I didn’t expect this of you, Lev Glebovich.’

‘What a funny girl you are,’ said Ganin. He noticed that her big, kind, somewhat prominent eyes were just a little over-bright, that her shoulders were rising and falling rather too excitedly under her black shawl.

‘Come, come.’ He smiled. ‘All right then, let’s suppose I’m a thief, a burglar. But why should it upset you so much?’

‘Please go,’ said Klara softly, turning her head away. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

When the door had closed behind him, Klara burst into tears and wept for a long time, the big shiny tears welling up rhythmically between her eyelashes and trickling in long drops down her cheeks, aglow with sobbing.

‘Poor dear,’ she muttered. ‘What life has brought him to! And what can I say to him?’

There came a light tap on the wall from the dancers’ room. Klara blew her nose hard and listened. The tap was repeated, velvety-soft and feminine: it was obviously Kolin tapping. Then there was a burst of laughter, someone exclaimed, ‘Alec, oh Alec, stop it,’ and two voices started a muffled, intimate conversation.

Klara thought how tomorrow, as always, she would have to go to work and hammer the keys until six o’clock, watching the mauve-colored line of type as it poured onto the page with a dry, staccato rattle; or how, if there was nothing to do, she would read, propping her borrowed and shamefully tattered book on her black Remington. She made herself some tea, listlessly ate her supper, then undressed, languidly and very slowly. Lying in bed she heard voices in Podtyagin’s room. She heard somebody come in and go out, then Ganin’s voice saying something unexpectedly loudly and Podtyagin answering in a low, depressed voice. She remembered that the old man had gone again today to see about his passport, that he suffered badly from heart trouble, that life was passing: on Friday she would be twenty-six. On and on went the voices — and it seemed to Klara she dwelt in a house of glass that was on the move, swaying and floating. The noise of the trains, although particularly audible on the other side of the corridor, could also be heard in her room, and her bed seemed to rise and sway. For a moment she visualized Ganin’s back as he leaned over the desk and looked around over his shoulder, baring his bright teeth. Then she fell asleep and had a nonsensical dream: she seemed to be sitting in a tramcar next to an old woman extraordinarily like her Lodz aunt, who was talking rapidly in German; then it gradually turned out that it was not her aunt at all but the cheerful marketwoman from whom Klara bought oranges on her way to work.

That evening Anton Sergeyevich had a visitor. He was an old gentleman with a sandy moustache clipped in the English fashion, very dependable-looking, very dapper in his frock coat and striped trousers. Podtyagin was regaling him with Maggi’s bouillon when Ganin entered. The air was tinged blue with cigarette smoke.

‘Mr Ganin — Mr Kunitsyn.’ Anton Sergeyevich, breathing heavily, his pince-nez twinkling, gently pushed Ganin into an armchair.

‘This, Lev Glebovich, is my old schoolfellow who once wrote cribs for me.’

Kunitsyn grinned. ‘That’s so,’ he said in a deep, rounded voice. ‘But tell me, my dear Anton Sergeyevich, what time is it?’

‘Still early, time to sit a while yet.’

Kunitsyn stood up, pulling down his waistcoat. ‘I can’t, my wife’s expecting me.’

‘In that case I have no right to detain you.’ Anton Sergeyevich spread his hands and glanced sidelong through his pince-nez at his visitor. ‘Please give my regards to your wife. I haven’t the pleasure of knowing her, but give her my regards all the same.’

‘Thank you,’ said Kunitsyn. ‘Delighted. Goodbye. I believe I left my coat in the hall.’

‘I’ll see you out,’ said Podtyagin. ‘Please excuse me, Lev Glebovich, I’ll be back in a moment.’

Alone, Ganin settled more comfortably in the old green armchair and smiled reflectively. He had called on the old poet because he was probably the only person who might understand his disturbed state. He wanted to tell him about many things — about sunsets over a highroad in Russia, about birch groves. He was, after all, that same Podtyagin whose verses were to be found beneath little vignettes in old bound volumes of magazines like The World Illustrated and The Pictorial Review .

Anton Sergeyevich returned, gloomily shaking his head. ‘He insulted me,’ he said, sitting down at the table and drumming on it with his fingers. ‘Oh, how he insulted me.’