Glory (26 page)

The voice vanished. Darwin resoundingly put down the receiver and for a while kept scratching his cheek. Then he walked to the lift and rode down. There he asked for the timetable. Yes, correct. What the devil——

That night he did not go anywhere. He kept waiting for something, some sort of further development. When he sat down to write a letter to his fiancée he found nothing to write about. Several days passed. On Wednesday he received a fat envelope from Riga and found inside four picture postcards with Berlin views addressed to Mrs. Edelweiss in Switzerland. On one of them, inserted in the Russian text, Darwin discovered a sentence in English “I often go to music halls with Darwin.” It gave him an eerie shock. On Thursday morning, with the dreadful feeling that he was taking part in some evil affair, he gingerly inserted the card with the earliest date into the blue mailbox next to the hotel entrance. A week passed; he posted the second card. After that he could not stand it any longer and traveled to Riga, where he visited the British consul, the Swiss consul, the General Registry, the police, but obtained no information whatever. Martin seemed to have dissolved in the air. Darwin returned to Berlin and reluctantly mailed the third postcard. On Friday, a huge man, obviously a foreigner, called at Zilanov’s new publishing house (Russian calendars and political pamphlets); upon taking a closer look, Zilanov recognized in him the young Englishman who had courted his daughter in London. Speaking German (which Zilanov understood somewhat better
than English) Darwin calmly related his conversation with Martin. “But wait,” said Zilanov. “There is something not logical here. He said to my daughter he would work in a factory near Berlin. You are sure he went away? What a strange history!” “At first I thought he was joking,” said Darwin, “but now I don’t know what to think. If he has really——” “What a crazy fellow,” exclaimed Zilanov. “Who would have supposed! The young man produced an effect of good sense, of solidity. It’s simply hard to believe, you know, looks like some kind of provocation.
Gut
. The first thing to do is to find if my daughter knows anything about this. Let’s go to my quarters.”

When Sonia saw her father coming in with Darwin and noticed the odd, solemn expression of their faces, she thought for one hundredth part of an instant that Darwin had come to make, this time officially, an offer of marriage (such momentary nightmares are known to occur). “Hello, hello, Sonia,” cried out Darwin with very artificial offhandedness. Zilanov, fixing his dull dark eyes on his daughter and “preparing her,” begged her not to be frightened, and told her practically the whole story right there, in the hallway. Sonia turned white as a sheet and sank down on one of the vestibule chairs. “But that’s awful,” she said softly. After a little pause, she slapped her knees and repeated in a still smaller voice: “That’s awful.” “Did he tell you anything? Do you have any information?” Zilanov kept asking her in Russian and German. Darwin stood rubbing his cheek, trying not to look at Sonia. He felt the most appalling thing a man of his race and set can feel: the urge to break into tears. “Of course, I know all about it,” said Sonia in a thin crescendo. Mrs. Zilanov appeared in the background, and her husband signaled to her not to disturb them. “Just what do you know? Come, out with it,” said Zilanov, and touched Sonia on the shoulder. She
suddenly doubled over and began to sob loudly, burying her face in her hands. Then she unbent, emitted a great gasp as if she were choking, swallowed, and began to scream between sobs, “They’ll kill him, oh God, they’ll kill him.” “Control yourself,” said Zilanov. “Don’t scream. I demand that you explain quietly and clearly what it was that he told you. Olya” (addressing his wife), “take this gentleman somewhere——Yes, to the drawing room,
ach
, never mind the electrician. Sonia, stop screaming! You’ll frighten Irina. Stop, I demand it.”

He spent a long time comforting and questioning her. Darwin sat gravely in the drawing room. An electrician was also there, busy mending a socket and plug, looking up and down again as the light went on and off.

“The child is obviously right in demanding that immediate measures be taken,” said Zilanov when he and Darwin had regained the street. “But what can one do? Besides, I don’t think there is as much romance of adventure here as seems to her. She tends to see things that way. Very high-strung nature. I simply refuse to believe that a young man, pretty much removed from Russian political problems and more of a foreign cut I’d say, could prove capable of—well, of a high deed, if you like. Naturally, I shall get in touch with certain people, and I may have to go to Latvia, but the matter is fairly hopeless, if he has really tried to steal across the border. By the way, it is so strange, but I was the one, yes, I, who years ago informed Frau Edelweiss of the death of her first husband.”

A few more days passed. The only point to become clear was that one had to be patient and wait. Not Zilanov, but Darwin went to Switzerland to inform Mrs. Edelweiss. In Lausanne everything looked gray, a fine rain was falling. Higher up in the mountains there was an odor of damp snow, and water dripped from the trees because of the sudden thaw
that had followed the first frosts. The car he had hired brought him quickly to the village, skidded on a curve and overturned in the ditch. The only damage was the chauffeur’s bruised arm. Darwin scrambled out, shook the wet snow off his overcoat and asked a villager how far it was to Henry Edelweiss’s place. He was shown the shortest way—a footpath through a fir forest. Once out of the woods, he crossed a dirt road, went up an avenue, and saw the ornate greenish-brown house. The rubber soles of his sturdy shoes left patterned impressions on the dark soil in front of the wicket. These footprints slowly filled with muddy water, and a little later the wicket he had not closed properly creaked in a gust of damp wind and violently swung open. Then a titmouse alighted on it, uttered a
tsi-tsi-tsi
and an
incha-incha
, and flew over to the branch of a fir. Everything was very wet and dim. An hour elapsed. Darwin emerged from the brown depths of the melancholy garden, closed the wicket behind him (it promptly opened again), and started back along the path through the woods. There he paused to light his pipe. His ample camelhair coat was unbuttoned, the ends of his striped scarf dangled at his chest. It was quiet in the woods, all one could hear was a faint gurgle: water was running somewhere under the wet gray snow. Darwin listened and for no perceptible reason shook his head. His pipe, which had gone out, emitted a helpless sucking sound. He said something under his breath, rubbed his cheek pensively, and walked on. The air was dingy, here and there tree roots traversed the trail, black fir needles now and then brushed against his shoulder, the dark path passed between the tree trunks in picturesque and mysterious windings.

BOOKS BY
V
LADIMIR
N
ABOKOV

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BEND SINISTER

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Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72727-9

DESPAIR

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Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72343-1

THE ENCHANTER

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Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72886-3

THE EYE

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Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72723-1

THE GIFT

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Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72725-5

GLORY

Glory
is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a young Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him. Hoping to impress his love, he embarks on a “perilous, daredevil” project to illegally reenter the Soviet Union.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72724-8

INVITATION TO A BEHEADING

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embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world; in an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for “gnostical turpitude.”

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72531-2

KING, QUEEN, KNAVE

Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men’s clothing store, is ruddy, self-satisfied, and masculine, but repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72340-0

LOLITA

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, Vladimir Nabokov’s most famous and controversial novel, tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72316-5

LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS!

Nabokov’s last novel is an ironic play on the Janus-like relationship between fiction and reality. It is the autobiography of the eminent Russian-American author Vadim Vadimovich N. (b. 1899). Focusing on the central figures of his life, the book leads us to suspect that the fictions Vadim has created as an author have crossed the line between his life’s work and his life itself.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72728-6

THE LUZHIN DEFENSE

As a young boy, Luzhin is unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen—an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge, and rises to the rank of grandmaster, but at a cost: in Luzhin’s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants reality.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72722-4

PALE FIRE

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Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72342-4

PNIN

Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot master. Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty party to end all faculty parties forever.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72341-7

THE REAL LIFE OF SEBASTIAN KNIGHT

Many knew of Sebastian Knight, distinguished novelist, but few knew of the two love affairs that so profoundly influenced his career. After Knight’s death, his half brother sets out to penetrate the enigma of his life, starting with clues found in the novelist’s private papers.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72726-2

SPEAK, MEMORY

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is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works.

Autobiography/Literature/978-0-679-72339-4

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VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
www.randomhouse.com