Read Online Despair by Vladimir Nabokov - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Vladimir Nabokov
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another hour was in Eichenberg. I boarded a slow train. I returned to Berlin.
Several times I repeated this monotonous walk without ever meeting a soul in the forest. Gloom and a deep hush. The land near the lake was not selling at all; indeed, the whole enterprise was in a bad way. When we three used to go out there for a swim, our solitude all day long remained so perfect that one could, if a body desired, bathe stark naked; which reminds me that once, at my order, frightened Lydia peeled off her bathing suit and, with many a pretty blush and nervous giggle, posed in the buff and the brown (fat thighs so tightly pressed together she could hardly stand) for her portrait before Ardalion, who all of a sudden got huffed about something, probably about his own lack of talent and, abruptly ceasing to draw, stalked away to look for edible toadstools.
As to my portrait, he worked at it stubbornly, continuing well into August, when, having failed to cope with the honest slog of charcoal, he changed to the petty knavishness of pastel. I set myself a certain time limit: the date of his finishing the thing. At last there came the pear-juice aroma of lacquer, the portrait was framed, and Lydia gave Ardalion twenty German marks, slipping them, for the sake of elegancy, into an envelope. We had guests that evening, Orloviusamong others, and we all stood and gaped; at what? At the ruddy horror of my face. I do not know why he had lent my cheeks that fruity hue; they are really as pale as death. Look as one might, none could see the ghost of a likeness! How utterly ridiculous, for instance, that crimson point in the canthus, or that glimpse of eyetooth from under a curled, snarly lip. All this—against an ambitious background hinting at things that might have been either geometrical figures or gallow trees.…
Orlovius, with whom shortsightedness was a form of stupidity, went up to the portrait as close as he could and after having pushed his spectacles up on his forehead (why ever did he wear them? They were only a hindrance) stood quite still with half-opened mouth, gently panting at the picture as if he were about to make a meal of it. “The modern style,” he said at length with disgust and passed to its neighbor, which he began to examine with the same conscientious attention, although it was but an ordinary print found in every Berlin home: “The Isle of the Dead.”
And now, dear reader, let us imagine a smallish office room on the sixth story of an impersonal house. The typist had gone; I was alone. In the window a cloudy sky loomed. On the wall a calendar showed a huge black nine, rather like the tongue of a bull: the ninth of September. Upon the table lay the worries of the day (in the guise of letters from creditors) and among them stood a symbolically empty chocolate box with the lilac lady who had been untrue to me. Nobody about. I uncovered the typewriter. All was quiet. On a certain page of my pocket diary (destroyed since) there was a certain address, written in a half-illiterate hand. Looking through that trembling prism I could see a waxen brow bending, adirty ear; head downwards, a violet dangled from a buttonhole; a black-nailed finger pressed upon my silver pencil.
I remember, I shook off that numbness, put the little book back into my pocket, took out my keys, was about to lock up and leave—was leaving, but then stopped in the passage with my heart going pit-a-pit.… No, it was impossible to leave.… I returned to the room and stood awhile by the window looking at the house opposite. Lamps had already lit up there, shining upon office ledgers, and a man in black, with one hand behind his back, was walking to and fro, presumably dictating to a secretary I could not see. Ever and anon he appeared, and once, even, he stopped at the window to do some thinking, and then again turned, dictating, dictating, dictating.
Inexorable! I switched on the light, sat down, pressed my temples. Suddenly, with mad fury, the
Several times I repeated this monotonous walk without ever meeting a soul in the forest. Gloom and a deep hush. The land near the lake was not selling at all; indeed, the whole enterprise was in a bad way. When we three used to go out there for a swim, our solitude all day long remained so perfect that one could, if a body desired, bathe stark naked; which reminds me that once, at my order, frightened Lydia peeled off her bathing suit and, with many a pretty blush and nervous giggle, posed in the buff and the brown (fat thighs so tightly pressed together she could hardly stand) for her portrait before Ardalion, who all of a sudden got huffed about something, probably about his own lack of talent and, abruptly ceasing to draw, stalked away to look for edible toadstools.
As to my portrait, he worked at it stubbornly, continuing well into August, when, having failed to cope with the honest slog of charcoal, he changed to the petty knavishness of pastel. I set myself a certain time limit: the date of his finishing the thing. At last there came the pear-juice aroma of lacquer, the portrait was framed, and Lydia gave Ardalion twenty German marks, slipping them, for the sake of elegancy, into an envelope. We had guests that evening, Orloviusamong others, and we all stood and gaped; at what? At the ruddy horror of my face. I do not know why he had lent my cheeks that fruity hue; they are really as pale as death. Look as one might, none could see the ghost of a likeness! How utterly ridiculous, for instance, that crimson point in the canthus, or that glimpse of eyetooth from under a curled, snarly lip. All this—against an ambitious background hinting at things that might have been either geometrical figures or gallow trees.…
Orlovius, with whom shortsightedness was a form of stupidity, went up to the portrait as close as he could and after having pushed his spectacles up on his forehead (why ever did he wear them? They were only a hindrance) stood quite still with half-opened mouth, gently panting at the picture as if he were about to make a meal of it. “The modern style,” he said at length with disgust and passed to its neighbor, which he began to examine with the same conscientious attention, although it was but an ordinary print found in every Berlin home: “The Isle of the Dead.”
And now, dear reader, let us imagine a smallish office room on the sixth story of an impersonal house. The typist had gone; I was alone. In the window a cloudy sky loomed. On the wall a calendar showed a huge black nine, rather like the tongue of a bull: the ninth of September. Upon the table lay the worries of the day (in the guise of letters from creditors) and among them stood a symbolically empty chocolate box with the lilac lady who had been untrue to me. Nobody about. I uncovered the typewriter. All was quiet. On a certain page of my pocket diary (destroyed since) there was a certain address, written in a half-illiterate hand. Looking through that trembling prism I could see a waxen brow bending, adirty ear; head downwards, a violet dangled from a buttonhole; a black-nailed finger pressed upon my silver pencil.
I remember, I shook off that numbness, put the little book back into my pocket, took out my keys, was about to lock up and leave—was leaving, but then stopped in the passage with my heart going pit-a-pit.… No, it was impossible to leave.… I returned to the room and stood awhile by the window looking at the house opposite. Lamps had already lit up there, shining upon office ledgers, and a man in black, with one hand behind his back, was walking to and fro, presumably dictating to a secretary I could not see. Ever and anon he appeared, and once, even, he stopped at the window to do some thinking, and then again turned, dictating, dictating, dictating.
Inexorable! I switched on the light, sat down, pressed my temples. Suddenly, with mad fury, the
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