Read Online The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov - Free Book Online

pity on him immediately added: “Or cabala—there is a pack of cards over there in the table drawer.” “But no chess set, we have no chess set,” said Luzhin huskily and again stole a cautious look at his father. “The good ones remained in town,” said his father placidly, “but I think there are some old ones in the attic. Let’s go take a look.”
    And indeed, by the light of the lamp that his father held aloft, among all sorts of rubbish in a case Luzhin found a chessboard, and again he had the feeling that all this had happened before—that open case with a nail sticking out of its side, those dust-powdered books, that wooden chessboard with a crack down the middle. A small box with a sliding lid also came to light; it contained puny chessmen. And the whole time he was looking for the chess set and then carrying it down to the veranda, Luzhin tried to figure out whether it was by accident his father had mentioned chess or whether he had noticed something—and the most obvious explanation did not occur to him, just as sometimes in solving a problem its key turns out to be a move that seemed barred, impossible, excluded quite naturally from the range of possible moves.
    And now when the board had been placed on the illuminated table between the lamp and the raspberries, and its dust wiped off with a bit of newspaper, his father’s face was no longer mocking, and Luzhin, forgetting his fear, forgetting his secret, felt permeated all at once with proud excitement at the thought that he could, if he wanted, display his art. His father began to set out the pieces. Oneof the Pawns was replaced by an absurd purple-colored affair in the shape of a tiny bottle; in place of one Rook there was a checker; the Knights were headless and the one horse’s head that remained after the box had been emptied (leaving a small die and a red counter) turned out not to fit any of them. When everything had been set out, Luzhin suddenly made up his mind and muttered: “I already can play a little.” “Who taught you?” asked his father without lifting his head. “I learned it at school,” replied Luzhin. “Some of the boys could play.” “Oh! Fine,” said his father, and added (quoting Pushkin’s doomed duelist): “Let’s start, if you are willing.”
    He has played chess since his youth, but only seldom and sloppily, with haphazard opponents—on serene evenings aboard a Volga steamer, in the foreign sanatorium where his brother was dying years ago, here, in the country, with the village doctor, an unsociable man who periodically ceased calling on them—and all these chance games, full of oversights and sterile meditations, were for him little more than a moment of relaxation or simply a means of decently preserving silence in the company of a person with whom conversation kept petering out—brief, uncomplicated games, remarkable neither for ambition nor inspiration, which he always began in the same way, paying little attention to his adversary’s moves. Although he made no fuss about losing, he secretly considered himself to be not at all a bad player, and told himself that if ever he lost it was through absentmindedness, good nature or a desire to enliven the game with daring sallies, and he considered that with a little application it was possible, without theoretic knowledge, to refute any gambit out of the textbook.His son’s passion for chess had so astounded him, seemed so unexpected—and at the same time so fateful and inescapable—so strange and awesome was it to sit on this bright veranda amid the black summer night, across from this boy whose tensed forehead seemed to expand and swell as soon as he bent over the pieces—all this was so strange and awesome that Luzhin senior was incapable of thinking of the game, and while he feigned concentration, his attention wandered from vague recollections of his illicit day in St. Petersburg, that left a residue of shame it was better not to investigate, to the