Glory (10 page)

Archibald Moon amazed and captivated Martin. His slow Russian speech, from which it had taken him years of patience to weed out the last vestige of English velarity, was smooth, simple, and expressive. His knowledge was distinguished by freshness, precision, and depth. He would read aloud from Russian poets whose very names Martin did not know. Holding down the page with long, slightly trembling fingers, Archibald Moon poured out iambic tetrameters. The room was in penumbra, and the lamplight picked out only the page and Moon’s face, with a pale gloss on the cheekbones, fine creases on the forehead, and translucent pink ears. When he had finished he would compress his thin lips, take off his pince-nez as carefully as if it were a dragonfly, and clean the lenses with chamois cloth. Martin sat on the edge of his armchair with his square black cap on his knees.

“For Heaven’s sake take off your gown and put that cap away somewhere,” Moon would say with a pained frown. “Don’t tell me you enjoy fussing with that tassel. Away, away with it.”

He would push a glass cigarette box with the college blazon on its silver lid toward Martin, or, from a cabinet in the wall, produce a bottle of whisky, a soda siphon and two glasses.

“By the way, do you know what a grape-transporting cart is called there?” he asked with a toss of his head, and, having ascertained that Martin did not, went on with gusto: “
Mozhara, mozhara
, sir,” and it was not clear which gave him greater pleasure: that he knew the Crimea better than did Martin, or that he could pronounce the word “sir” according to its Russian pronunciation which rhymes it with “air.”
He joyfully informed Martin that the Russian “
huligan”
came from the name of a gang of Irish robbers, and that Golodai Island was named not after “
golod
” (hunger) but for an Englishman named Holliday who built a factory there. Once, when, speaking of some ignorant journalist (whom Moon had wrathfully taken to task in the
Times
), Martin said that the journalist had not replied because he probably
sdreyfil
(had funked), Moon raised his eyebrows, consulted a dictionary, and asked Martin if by chance he had ever lived in the Volga region. On another occasion, when Martin used the colloquialism
ugrobil
(“bumped off”), Moon grew angry and shouted that such a word did not and could not exist in Russian. “I’ve heard it, everybody knows it,” Martin said meekly, and was sustained by Sonia, who was sitting on the couch next to Mrs. Zilanov and watching not without curiosity Martin playing the host.

“Russian wordbuilding, the birth of neologisms,” said Moon, suddenly turning to the smiling Darwin, “ended together with Russia, that is, two years ago. Everything subsequent is
blatnaya muzïka
(thieves’ lingo).”

“I don’t understand Russian, please translate,” replied Darwin.

“Yes, we keep drifting into it,” said Mrs. Zilanov. “That’s not nice. English, please, everybody.” Meanwhile Martin lifted a metal dome from above the muffins and crumpets (which a waiter had brought from the college canteen), checked whether they had sent the right thing, and moved the platter closer to the flaming hearth. In addition to Darwin and Moon he had invited a Russian student whom everyone called simply by his first name, Vadim, and now Martin did not know whether to wait for him or go ahead with tea. This was the first time that mother and daughter Zilanov had come
to visit him, and he was in constant fear of derision from Sonia. She wore a navy-blue suit and sturdy little brown shoes, with long tongues that passed beneath the laces and then folded back on top, covering them and ending in leathern lappets. Her bobbed black, somewhat coarse-looking hair fell in an even fringe over her forehead. The dimples of her pale cheeks went singularly well with her dull-dark, slightly slanting eyes. That morning, when Martin had met her and Mrs. Zilanov at the station, and afterward, when he was showing them the ancient courts, the fountains, the avenues of gigantic, bare trees, out of which flew cawing the heavy and awkward crows, Sonia had looked moody and cross, and said she was cold. As she gazed over a stone parapet at the ripply Cam, at its mat-green banks and at the gray towers beyond, she suddenly narrowed her eyes and inquired of Martin if he were planning to join General Yudenich’s anti-Bolshevist forces in the North. Martin answered with surprise that he was not.

“And what’s that pinkish house over there?”

“That’s the library building,” Martin explained. A few minutes later, as he walked under an arcade beside Sonia and her mother, he said enigmatically, “One side is fighting for the ghost of the past and the other for the ghost of the future.”

“Yes, exactly,” Mrs. Zilanov chimed in. “This contrast keeps me from really appreciating Cambridge. I’m bothered by the fact that alongside all these marvelous old buildings there are so many cars, bicycles, sporting-goods stores, footballs——”

“They used to play football in Shakespeare’s time too,” said Sonia. “What bothers
me,”
she added, “is the platitudes some people spout.”

“Sonia, behave yourself, please,” said her mother.

“Oh, I didn’t mean you,” said Sonia with a sigh. They walked on in silence.

“I think it’s beginning to drizzle-drozzle,” said Martin, stretching out his palm.

“Why not say ‘Jupiter Pluvius’ or ‘Lord Rainsford’?” observed Sonia sarcastically, and changed step to match her mother’s. Later, at lunch in the town’s best restaurant, she cheered up. The “simian name” of Martin’s friend amused her, and she liked Darwin’s dialogue with the unbelievably cozy old waiter.

“What are you studying?” her mother asked politely.

“I? Nothing,” replied Darwin raising his head. “I just thought this fish had one more bone than it was supposed to.”

“No, no, I meant your studies, the lectures you attend.”

“Sorry, I misunderstood you,” said Darwin, “but your question catches me unawares all the same. Somehow my memory does not stretch from one lecture to the next. Only this morning I asked myself what the deuce was I reading. Mnemonics? Hardly.”

After lunch they had another walk, but a much pleasanter one, for, in the first place, the sun came out, and, in the second, Darwin took them all to a gallery where, according to him, there was an ancient, remarkably alert echo: stamp your foot, and it would bounce off a distant wall like a rubber ball. Darwin stamped, but no echo turned up, and he said some American must have bought it for his house in Massachusetts. Then they strolled over to Martin’s room, and soon Archibald Moon arrived, and Sonia asked Darwin softly why the professor’s nose was powdered. Moon started to speak in his mellow Russian, flaunting rare and rich proverbs. The girl’s conduct, thought Martin, was decidedly reprehensible. She would sit with stonelike countenance, or laugh for no
reason at all as her eyes met Darwin’s. The latter sat with crossed legs, tamping the tobacco in his pipe.

“I wonder why Vadim hasn’t shown up yet,” said Martin uneasily, and touched the teapot’s full cheek.

“Oh, go ahead and pour,” said Sonia, whereupon Martin busied himself with the teacups. They all grew silent, watching him. Moon smoked a tan-tinted cigarette belonging to the kind referred to as Russian in England.

“Does your mother write to you often?” asked Mrs. Zilanov.

“Every week,” answered Martin.

“She must miss you,” said Mrs. Zilanov, and blew on her tea.

“Well, I don’t see the national lemon,” Moon subtly observed, in Russian again. Darwin, lowering his voice, asked Sonia to translate. Moon gave him a sidelong glance and switched to English; deliberately and maliciously imitating the average Cambridge manner, he said that there had been some rain, but that now it had cleared, and most likely would not rain any more; he mentioned boat races; he gave a detailed version of the well-known joke about the student, the closet, and the girl cousin. Darwin kept smoking and murmuring, “Very good, sir, very good. That’s your authentic, sober Briton at moments of leisure.”

A pounding of feet came from the stairs, the door flew open, and Vadim appeared. Simultaneously his bicycle, which he had left in the lane with one pedal lowered and propped against the edge of the sidewalk, tumbled with a jingling noise, which easily reached the low second story. Vadim’s small hands had bitten nails, and were red from holding
the handlebars in the cold. His face, suffused with an extraordinarily delicate and uniform rosiness, bore an expression of dazed confusion, which he tried to conceal by panting as if he were out of breath and making sniffling sounds with his nose which was habitually humid inside. He had on wrinkled pale-gray flannel trousers, an excellently tailored brown jacket, and an old pair of pumps that he wore at all times and in all kinds of weather. Still sniffling and smiling a bewildered smile, he said hello to everybody and sat down beside Darwin, whom he liked very much and for some reason called
“Mamka
” (wet-nurse). Vadim had one inevitable jingle, with a limerick arrangement of Russian rhymes:
Priyátno zret’, kogdá bol’shóy medvéd’ vedyót pod rúchku málen’kuyu súchku, chtob eyó poét’
(What fun to stare when a great big bear walks home arm in arm with a tiny bitch to lay her there). His rapid, staccato manner of speaking was accompanied by all kinds of hissing, trumpeting, and squeaking sounds like the speech of a child short both of ideas and words but incapable of keeping still. When embarrassed he would grow even more disjointed and absurd, and would seem like a cross between a shy, tongue-tied adult and a whimsical infant. Otherwise, he was a nice, chummy, attractive fellow, always ready for a laugh and capable of subtle perception (once, at a much later date, out for a row on the river with Martin one spring evening, when a chance breath of air brought a vague odor of myrtle from Heaven knows where, Vadim said “Smells like the Crimea,” which was perfectly true). He was a great hit with English people. His college tutor, a fat, asthmatic old man, specialist in mollusks, pronounced his name with guttural tenderness and treated his perfect idleness with perfect indulgence. One dark night Martin and Darwin helped Vadim take the sign off a tobacco shop, and that sign had graced his room ever since. Vadim also procured a police
helmet, by means of a simple but ingenious trick: for half-a-crown that he flashed in the moonlight he asked a good-natured bobby to help him climb over a wall, and, once on top, he leaned down and snatched the helmet off the man’s head. He was also the instigator in the episode of the fiery chariot: it happened during the Guy Fawkes Day celebration; the entire city was spewing fireworks, a bonfire burned in the square, and Vadim and his pals harnessed themselves to an old landau acquired for a couple of pounds, filled it with straw and set it on fire. Dragging this landau they sped through the streets, nearly burning down the town hall. On top of everything he was a master of foul language—one of those who become attached to a ditty and repeat it endlessly and are fond of comfortable mother-oriented oaths, caressive physiological terms, and fragments of obscene poetry attributed to Lermontov. His education was undistinguished, his English very droll and endearing but barely intelligible. He had a passion for the navy, for minelayers, for the beauty of dreadnoughts in battle array. He could play for hours with toy soldiers, firing peas from a silver cannon. His quips, his pumps, his shyness and mischievousness, his delicate profile, with its outline of golden bloom—all this, combined with the splendor of his princely title, had an irresistible, heady effect on Archibald Moon, somewhat like the champagne and salted almonds which he relished formerly, a lone, pale Englishman in a bemisted pince-nez, listening to Moscow gypsies. At present, however, Moon sat by the fire with a cup in his hand, munching a muffin and listening to Mrs. Zilanov, who was telling him about the Russian newspaper her husband planned to start in Paris. Martin, meanwhile, reflected with alarm that it had been a mistake to invite Vadim, who sat silent, embarrassed by Sonia, and furtively kept shooting raisins, borrowed from the cake, at Darwin. Sonia had grown
silent too, and sat gazing pensively at the pianola. With an easy swing Darwin walked over to the fireplace, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and, turning his back to the flames, began warming himself. “Mamka,” Vadim mouthed softly and chuckled. Mrs. Zilanov kept speaking excitedly of matters that did not interest Moon in the slightest. It grew dark outside, and somewhere far off newsboys were shouting “pie-pa, pie-pa!”

It was time for the Zilanovs to catch the train back to London. Archibald Moon said good-bye at the very first corner and, with a tender smile for Vadim (who behind his back usually referred to him by an indecent noun supplemented by “on rollers”), glided away, holding himself very erect. For a while Vadim rode slowly right next to the sidewalk, with one hand on the shoulder of Darwin, who walked alongside; then he said a quick but fussy good-bye and sped off, making a sound with his lips like a broken klaxon. They reached the station, and Darwin bought platform tickets for himself and Martin. Sonia was tired, irritated, and kept slitting her eyes.

“Well, thank you for the hospitality, for the nice party,” said Mrs. Zilanov. “Give my regards to your mother when you write to her.”

But Martin did not transmit the regards: such things are seldom transmitted. As a rule, he had trouble writing letters: how to tell, for example, about that rather muddled, somehow unsuccessful and unpleasant day? He scribbled ten lines or so, recounted the anecdote about the student, the closet, and the cousin, assured his mother that he was in perfect health, ate regularly, and wore an undershirt (which was not
true). Suddenly, in his mind, he saw the mailman walking across the snow; the snow crunched slightly, and blue footprints remained on it. He described it thus: “My letter will be brought by the mailman. It is raining here.” He thought it over and crossed out the mailman, leaving only the rain. He wrote out the address in a large and careful hand remembering for the tenth time as he did so what a fellow student had once said to him: “Judging by your last name I thought you were American.” He regretted that he always remembered about working this into his letter only after it had been sealed; and he was too lazy to reopen it. He inadvertently made a blot in a corner of the envelope. He squinted at it for a long time, and finally made it into a black cat seen from the back. Mrs. Edelweiss preserved this envelope along with his letters. She would gather them into a batch at the end of each semester and tie them crosswise with a ribbon. Several years later she had occasion to reread them. The first-semester letters were relatively abundant. Here was Martin’s arrival in Cambridge; here was the first mention of Darwin, of Vadim, of Archibald Moon; here was a letter dated November ninth, his nameday: “This is the day,” wrote Martin, “when the goose sets foot on the ice, and the fox changes his lair”; and here was a letter with the crossed-out but distinctly legible line “My letter will be brought by the mailman.” Mrs. Edelweiss recalled with piercing clarity how she used to walk with Henry along the scintillating road between fir trees weighted down by lumps of snow, and suddenly there was the rich tinkling of multiple bells, the postal sleigh, the letter, and she hastened to take off her gloves in order to open the envelope. She recalled how, during that period, and for almost a year after, she was terribly afraid that without telling her anything, Martin might join the Northern White Army. She found some consolation in the knowledge that there, at Cambridge,
a veritable angel exerted a pacifying influence on her son—excellent, sensible Archibald Moon. Yet Martin might still slip away. Her mind was completely at ease only when Martin was with her in Switzerland, on vacation. Years later, when she reread those letters with such anguish, they seemed, despite their tangibility, of a more ghostly nature than the intervals between them. Her memory packed the intervals with Martin’s living presence—Christmas, Easter, summer. Thus, for a period of three years, until Martin finished college, her life was like a series of windows. She remembered them well, those windows. There was the first winter holiday, and the skis Henry had bought him on her advice, and Martin putting them on. “I must be brave,” Mrs. Edelweiss softly said to herself. “After all, miracles do happen. One must only have faith and wait. If Henry appears once more with that black armband, I shall simply leave him.” And she smiled through the tears that streamed down her face, as with trembling hands she continued unwrapping the letters.