Glory (16 page)

“You’re a very sweet boy after all,” said Sonia. “We’ll write to each other, and maybe some time you’ll come to Berlin, or perhaps some day we’ll meet in Russia—won’t that be fun?”

Martin kept shaking his head and felt the tears welling. Sonia snatched her hand away. “Oh well, if you want to sulk,” she said crossly, “do by all means, to your heart’s content.”

“Ah, Sonia,” he uttered sorrowfully.

“Just exactly what is it you want from me?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “Please tell me, what is it you want from me?” Martin turned his head away and shrugged.

“Listen,” she said, “it’s time to go down, time to leave, and your moping only exasperates me. For goodness’ sake, why can’t we keep everything nice and simple?”

“You’ll get married in Berlin,” Martin mumbled hopelessly. As in a farce the maid dashed in and took the suitcase. Mrs. Zilanov, already hatted, appeared behind her,

“Time to go, time to go,” she said. “You took everything
in here? Didn’t forget anything? This is dreadful,” she addressed Martin. “We had planned on a leisurely departure tomorrow.”

She vanished, but for a while her voice in the passage went on explaining to somebody about her husband’s urgent business, and Martin felt so piercingly, so ineffably saddened by all this commotion and disorder that he actually yearned to bundle Sonia off, to get rid of her as quickly as possible, and return to Cambridge and its lazy sunshine.

Sonia smiled, took him by the shoulder, and kissed him on the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know—maybe,” she whispered, and, quickly wriggling out of Martin’s violent embrace, raised a warning finger. “
Tout beau
, doggy,” she said, and then made big eyes, for at that moment, from downstairs, came the sound of awful, impossible, house-shaking sobs. “Come on, come on,” hurried Sonia. “I can’t understand why the poor child is so unhappy about moving away. Cut it out, damn it—let me go!”

At the bottom of the stairs Irina was tossing, howling, clutching at the banister. Her mother kept coaxing her softly, “Ira, Irochka,” while Zilanov, using an oft-tested expedient, took out his handkerchief, quickly made a long-eared, fat knot, pulled the handkerchief over his hand, and maneuvered in such a way as to make a little fellow in nightshirt and cap cozily getting into bed.

At the station she burst into tears again, only more quietly and hopelessly. Martin slipped her a box of candy that had actually been intended for Sonia. Zilanov had no sooner taken his seat than he opened a newspaper. Mrs. Zilanov and Mrs. Pavlov were counting suitcases with their eyes. With a clatter the doors began closing; the train moved. Sonia thrust her head out, leaning her elbows on the lowered window, and for a few instants Martin walked alongside the car; then he fell
behind, and an already much diminished Sonia blew him a kiss, and Martin stumbled against some box on the platform.

“Well, there they go,” he sighed, and felt a certain relief. He made his way to the other station, bought the new issue of a humor magazine with a puppet, all nose, chin, and hump, on the cover, and, when he had extracted the last joke out of it, fixed his gaze on the gentle fields that were sliding past. “My darling, my darling,” he repeated several times, and, gazing through a hot tear at the green scenery, he imagined how, after many adventures, he would arrive in Berlin, look up Sonia, and, like Othello, begin to tell a story of hairbreadth escapes, of most disastrous chances. “No, it can’t go on like this,” he said, rubbing his eyelid with a finger and tensing his upper lip. “No, no. Less talk and more action.” Closing his eyes, and wedging himself comfortably into the corner, he started preparing for a dangerous expedition, studying an imaginary map. No one knew what he planned to do, Darwin alone might be informed—good-bye, good luck, the northbound train moves, and amidst these preparations he fell asleep, as he once used to fall asleep while putting on football apparel in his reveries. It was dark when he arrived in Cambridge. Darwin was still reading the same book, and yawned like a lion when Martin came in. And here Martin yielded to a little mischievous temptation, which he was subsequently to pay for. Counterfeiting a pensive smile, he stared at nothing, and Darwin, having unhurriedly completed his yawn, gave him a curious look.

“I am the happiest man in the world,” said Martin in a low voice full of feeling. “Oh, if I could only tell you everything.”

In a sense, this was no lie, for when he had dozed off on the train, he had dreamt a dream grown out of something that Sonia had said. In the dream she pressed his head to her
smooth shoulder and bent over him, tickling him with her lips, murmuring warm muffled words of tenderness, and now it was hard to separate fancy from fact.

“Well, I’m very happy for you,” said Darwin. A sudden embarrassment overcame Martin, and, whistling to himself, he went off to bed. A week later he received a postcard with a view of the Brandenburg Gate crossed by Sonia’s spidery handwriting, which he spent a long time deciphering, trying in vain to read a hidden meaning into trivial words.

And now, gliding down the river beneath low-hanging boughs in bloom, Martin went back over his last meeting with her in London, analyzing it, testing it with different acids: a pleasant, but not very fruitful labor. It was a hot day; the sun penetrated his closed eyelids with a languorous strawberry crimson; he could hear the restrained plash of water and the gentle far-off music of floating phonographs. Presently he opened his eyes and, in a flood of sunlight, there was Darwin reclining on the cushions opposite, dressed as he in white flannel pants and open-necked shirt. The pole propelling their punt was wielded by Vadim. His cracked pumps glistened with drops of water and there was an intent expression on his sharp-featured face—he was fond of navigation, and now performed a sacred rite, as it were, skillfully, rhythmically manipulating the pole, pulling it out of the water with a methodical change of hold and bearing down on it anew. The punt glided between flowery banks; the transparent green water reflected now chestnut trees, now brambles in milk-white bloom; occasionally a petal would fall, and you could see its reflection hurrying up to meet it out of the watery depths, and then both would converge. Lazily, soundlessly—if one discounted the cooing of phonographs—other punts, or now and then a canoe, glided past. Martin noticed ahead an open bright-colored parasol which rotated this way and that, but nothing was visible of the girl twirling it except
a hand, incongruously clad in a white glove. Her punt was manned by a young chap with glasses, poling very inexpertly, so that the boat followed a weaving course, and Vadim seethed with contempt, and did not know on which side to pass. At the very first bend it headed inexorably for the bank, the convex parasol showed in profile, and Martin recognized Rose.

“Look, how amusing,” he said, and Darwin, without moving the fat arms upon which his nape rested, turned his eyes in the direction of Martin’s gaze.

“You shall not say hello to her,” he observed calmly.

Martin smiled, “Oh yes, I certainly will.”

“If you do,” drawled Darwin, “I’ll knock your head off.”

There was a strange look in his eyes, and Martin felt uneasy; but for the very reason that Darwin’s threat did not sound jocular and frightened him, Martin shouted as he floated past the punt entangled in the riverside shrubbery, “Hello, hello, Rose!” And she smiled silently, her eyes sparkling and her parasol spinning, and in his exertions the bespectacled chap dropped his pole with a splash, and next moment they were concealed by the bend, and Martin again lay back and contemplated the sky.

After they had glided in silence for some minutes, Darwin greeted somebody in his turn. “John!” he roared, “paddle over here!”

John grinned and started backing water. This black-browed, crew-cut portly young man was a gifted mathematician who had recently won a prize for one of his papers. He sat low in his pirogue (Vadim’s nomenclature), moving a shiny paddle close to the boat’s side.

“I say, John,” announced Darwin, “I’ve been challenged to a fight here, and I want you as second. We’ll choose a quiet spot and land.”

“Righto,” answered John, without showing the least surprise,
and, as he paddled alongside, began a lengthy account about a student who had recently acquired a seaplane, and promptly crashed it during an attempt to take off from the narrow Cam. Martin reclined on his cushions, motionless. Here it was, the familiar tremor and weakness in the legs. Maybe Darwin was joking after all. What did he have to get so furious about?

Vadim, immersed in the mystique of navigation, had apparently heard nothing. Three or four bends later Darwin asked him to head for shore. Evening was already drawing near. The river was deserted at that point. Vadim aimed the punt at a little green tongue of land that projected from beneath a leafy canopy. They thumped gently to a stop.

Darwin jumped ashore first and helped Vadim moor the boat. Martin stretched, got up unhurriedly, and also debarked.

“Began reading Chekhov yesterday,” John said to him, wriggling his eyebrows. “Very grateful to you for the advice. Appealing, humane writer.”

“Oh, he certainly is,” said Martin, and quickly thought to himself, “Is there really going to be a fight?”

“There,” said Darwin, drawing near. “If we go through these bushes we’ll come out in a meadow, and we’ll be out of sight of the river.”

Only here did Vadim understand what was about to take place. “Mamka will kill you,” he said to Martin in Russian.

“Nonsense,” replied Martin. “I’m just as good a boxer as he is.”

“Forget about boxing,” Vadim whispered feverishly. “Give him a good kick right away!” and he specified exactly where. He was rooting for Martin solely out of patriotism.

The little meadow, ringed by hazel trees, proved velvet-smooth. Darwin rolled up his sleeves, but, on second thought, rolled them back down and took off his shirt, exposing a massive pink torso with a muscular gloss at the shoulders and a path of golden hairs down the middle of his broad chest. He tightened his belt, and suddenly broke into a smile. It’s all a joke, thought Martin joyously, but, just to be safe, he too removed his shirt. His skin was of a creamier shade, with numerous little birthmarks, common among Russians. Next to Darwin he seemed sparer, even though solidly built and broad-shouldered. He pulled his cross over his head, gathered the chain in his palm, and thrust this handful of trickling gold in his pocket. The evening sun flooded his back with warmth.

“How do you want it, with breathers?” asked John, sprawling comfortably on the grass. Darwin glanced questioningly at Martin, who stood with spread legs and folded arms.

“Makes no difference to me,” remarked Martin, while through his mind rushed the thought: “No, it’s the real thing—how ghastly——”

Vadim slouched around restlessly with his hands in his pockets, sniffling, smirking uneasily, and then sat down cross-legged beside John.

John took out his watch. “Anyway, they oughtn’t to have more than five minutes in all—agreed, Vadim?”

Vadim nodded in confusion.

“Well, you can begin,” said John.

Fists clenched, legs flexed, the two started dancing around one another. Martin still could not imagine himself hitting Darwin in the face, in that large, clean-shaven face with the soft wrinkles around the mouth; however, when Darwin’s left shot out and caught Martin on the jaw, everything changed: all anxiety vanished, he felt relaxed and radiant inside, and the ringing in his head, from the jolt it had received, sang of Sonia, over whom, in a sense, they were fighting this
duel. Dodging another lunge, he punched Darwin’s gentle face, ducked under Darwin’s retaliating right, attempted an uppercut, and received himself such a black, star-spangled blow in the eye that he staggered and only just managed to evade the most vicious of half-a-dozen swipes. He crouched, he feinted, and jabbed Darwin in the mouth so nicely that his knuckles felt the hardness of teeth through the wetness of lips, but at once was punished himself in the belly by running into what seemed the protruding end of an iron girder. They bounced away from each other and resumed circling. Darwin had a red trickle at the corner of his mouth. He spat twice and the fight went on. John, pensively puffing on his pipe, juxtaposed in his mind Darwin’s experience and Martin’s speed and decided that if he were to choose between these two heavyweights in the ring, he would be inclined to bet on the elder. Martin’s left eye was already closed and swollen, and both combatants were glossy with sweat and smeared with blood. In the meantime Vadim had got all worked up, and was shouting excitedly in Russian; John shushed him. Bang! on the ear. Martin lost his balance, and, as he was tumbling, Darwin managed to hit him a second time, whereupon Martin sat down heavily on a pebbly patch, hurting his coccyx, but instantly sprang up and returned to the fray. Despite the buzzing pain in his head, and the crimson fog in his eyes, Martin felt sure he was inflicting more injury on Darwin than Darwin on him, but John, a lover of pugilism, already saw clearly that Darwin was only now getting into his stride, and that in a few moments the younger of the two would be down for good. But Martin miraculously withstood a series of resonant hooks and even managed to slam the other again on the mouth. He was panting now, and not thinking too clearly, and what he saw before him was no longer called Darwin, and in fact had no human name at
all, but had become simply a pink, slippery, rapidly moving mass that must be punched with every last bit of strength. He succeeded in planting yet another very solid and satisfying blow somewhere—he did not see where—but immediately a multitude of fists pummeled him at length from all sides, wherever he turned; he stubbornly searched for a breach in this whirlwind, found one, hammered at a continuum of squelchy pulp, suddenly felt that his own head was flying off, slipped, and remained hanging on Darwin in a humid clinch.

“Time!” came John’s voice from remote space, and the fighters separated. Martin collapsed on the grass, and Darwin, his bloodied mouth forming a grin, plumped down beside him, tenderly put his arm around Martin’s shoulders, and both froze motionless, inclining their heads and breathing heavily.