Glory (17 page)

“You ought to wash up,” said John, while Vadim approached cautiously and started examining their bruised faces.

“Can you stand?” Darwin asked solicitously. Martin nodded and, leaning on him, straightened up. They trudged toward the river, arms across each other’s shoulders. John patted them on their clammy bare backs; Vadim went on ahead to look for a secluded cove. There, Darwin helped Martin give face and frame a good wash, then Martin did the same for him, and both kept asking each other in low, solicitous tones where it hurt and if the water did not sting.

Dusk was deepening, the nightingales had begun bubbling, the dim meadows and the dark shrubs breathed dampness. The river mists engulfed John and his black canoe. Vadim, once again propelling the punt, a white,
ghostlike figure in the gloom, wordlessly and with a somnambulically smooth motion immersed his spectral pole. Martin and Darwin lay side by side on the cushions, limp, languid, swollen, staring with their three good eyes at the sky, across which a dark branch passed every now and then. And that sky, and the branch, and the barely plashing water, and the figure of Vadim, mysteriously ennobled by his love of navigation, and the colored lights of the paper lanterns on the bows of passing punts, and the thought that in a few days Cambridge would end, that perhaps the three of them were gliding for the last time along the narrow, misty river—all this merged in Martin’s mind into something wondrous and spellbinding, and the leaden pain in his head and the ache in his shoulders struck him as having an exalted, romantic quality, for thus wounded Tristram had floated alone with his harp.

One last bend, and there was the shore. The shore on which Martin landed was very fair, very bright, and full of variety. He knew, though, that for example Uncle Henry remained firmly convinced that these three years of aquatics in Cambridge had gone to waste, because Martin had indulged in a philological cruise, and not even a very distant one, instead of learning a useful profession. But Martin in all honesty did not understand why it was worse to be an expert in Russian letters than a transportation engineer or a merchant. Actually, Uncle Henry’s menagerie—and everybody has one—housed, among other creatures, a little black beast, and that
bête noire
was to him the twentieth century. Now this amazed Martin, since in his opinion one could not even imagine a better century than the one in which he lived. No other epoch had had such brilliance, such daring, such projects. Everything that had glimmered in previous ages—the passion for exploration of unknown lands, the audacious experiments, the glorious exploits of disinterested curiosity, the scientists who went
blind or were blown to bits, the heroic conspiracies, the struggle of one against many—now emerged with unprecedented force. The cool suicide of a man after his having lost millions on the stock market struck Martin’s imagination as much as, for instance, the death of a Roman general falling on his sword. An automobile advertisement, brightly beckoning in a wild, picturesque gorge from an absolutely inaccessible spot on an alpine cliff thrilled him to tears. The complaisant and affectionate nature of very complicated and very simple machines, like the tractor or the linotype, for example, induced him to reflect that the good in mankind was so contagious that it infected metal. When, at an amazing height in the blue sky above the city, a mosquito-sized airplane emitted fluffy, milk-white letters a hundred times as big as it, repeating in divine dimensions the flourish of a firm’s name, Martin was filled with a sense of marvel and awe. But Uncle Henry, as if throwing tidbits to his black beastie, spoke with horror and revulsion about the twilight of Europe, about postwar fatigue, about our practical age, about the invasion of inanimate machines; in his imagination there existed some diabolical connection between the fox-trot and skyscrapers on one side and women’s fashions and cocktails on the other. Furthermore, Uncle Henry had the impression he lived in an age of terrible haste, and it was particularly funny when he chatted about this haste, on a summer day, at the edge of a mountain road, with the local priest, while the clouds sailed serenely and the abbé’s old, pink horse, shaking off flies with a tinkle, blinking its white eyelashes, would lower its head in a movement full of ineffable charm and munch succulently on the roadside grass, with its skin twitching or a hoof shifting now and then, and, if the talk about the mad haste of our days, about the almighty dollar, about the Argentines who seduced all the girls of Switzerland, dragged on too long,
and the last tender stalk among coarser ones had been eaten at a given spot, it would move ahead a little, accompanied by the creak of the gig’s high wheels. And Martin could not take his eyes off the gentle equine lips and the blades of grass caught in the bit.

“Here, this young man, for example,” Uncle Henry would say, indicating Martin with his walking stick, “he has finished college, one of the most expensive colleges in the world, and you ask him what he has learned, what he is prepared for. I absolutely don’t know what he is going to do next. In my time young men became doctors, soldiers, notaries, while he is probably dreaming of being an aviator or a gigolo.”

Martin had no idea what exactly he served as an example of, but the abbé apparently understood Uncle Henry’s paradoxes and smiled commiseratingly. Sometimes Martin was so irritated by talk of this kind that he was ready to say something rude to his uncle—who was also, alas, his stepfather—but would stop in time, for he had noticed the look that appeared on his mother’s face whenever Henry waxed eloquent at dinner. That look contained a faint trace of friendly raillery, and a certain sadness, and a mute appeal to forgive the crank, and yet something else inexpressible but very wise. Martin would keep still, mentally answering Uncle Henry like this, for example: “It’s not true that I devoted my time to trifles at Cambridge. It’s not true that I did not learn anything. Columbus, before trying to take hold of his east ear across his west shoulder, traveled to Iceland incognito to gather certain information, knowing that the sailors there were a canny and far-ranging breed. I, too, plan to explore a distant land.”

His mother did not pester him with the tedious talk of which Uncle Henry was so fond; she did not inquire what occupation he would choose, feeling as she did that all this would somehow work out by itself. She was satisfied with the happiness at hand—of his being with her now, healthy, broad-shouldered, tanned; of his slamming away at tennis, speaking in a bass voice, shaving daily, and making young, bright-eyed Madame Guichart, a local merchant’s wife, blush as red as a poppy. Sometimes she wondered when Russia would at last snap out of the evil dream, when the striped pole of the frontier gate would rise and everyone return and resume his former place, and, goodness, how the trees have grown, how the house has shrunk, what sorrow and joy, what a smell of earth! In the mornings she would wait for the postman just as avidly as during her son’s years at Cambridge, and now, when a letter came for Martin (and it was not often), in an office envelope, addressed in a spidery hand and bearing a Berlin postmark, she felt the keenest joy and, snatching the letter, hurried to his room. Martin still lay in bed, very tousled, sucking on a cigarette with his hand at his chin. He saw in the mirror the sun-bright wound of the opening door, and that special expression on his mother’s pink, freckled face: by the fold of her lips, tightly compressed but ready to spread into a smile, he could tell there was a letter.

“Nothing for you today,” Mrs. Edelweiss would lightly say, holding one hand behind her back, but her son’s impatient fingers were already reaching out, and, beaming, she would press the envelope to her chest, and both would laugh. Then, not wishing to spoil his enjoyment, she would go to
the window, lean out on its sill, cupping her face in her hands, and gaze with a feeling of complete happiness at the mountains, and in particular at one distant, rosy peak that was visible only from this window. Martin, who had consumed the letter in one gulp, pretended to be considerably happier than he actually was, so that his mother imagined those letters from the little Zilanov girl to be full of tenderness, and would probably have felt sadly hurt if she ever got to read them. She remembered the Zilanov girl with strange clarity: a black-haired, pale little thing who was always sick with an inflamed throat or convalescing after one, her neck either bandaged or yellow from iodine. She remembered how she had once taken ten-year-old Martin to a Christmas party at the Zilanovs’ St. Petersburg flat, and little Sonia was wearing a lacy white dress with a broad silk sash around the hips. As for Martin, he did not remember this at all; there had been many Christmas parties, and they merged in his memory. Only one thing remained very vivid, for it had recurred every time: his mother saying it was time to go home, and thrusting her fingers inside the collar of his sailor suit from behind to see if he was not too sweaty after all the running, while he, with a huge gold-papered cracker, kept trying to wrench himself free, but his mother’s grip was tenacious, and presently his overpants (which reached nearly to his armpits) were being pulled on, and on went his overshoes and fur coat, with its tight-closing hook at the throat and the hideously tickly Caucasian hood, and next minute there was the streetlamps’ frosty rainbow running across the window of the close carriage. It thrilled Martin to note that the expression of his mother’s eyes was the same now as then, that now, too, she touched his neck when he came home after tennis, and that she brought Sonia’s letter with the same tenderness as she had once brought, in its long cardboard box, an air rifle ordered from England.

The rifle had turned out to be not quite as he had expected, not matching exactly its foredream, just as now the letters from Sonia were not the kind he would have liked. She wrote, as it were, in abrupt jerks, without a single mystery-breathing phrase, and he had to be content with such remarks as “I often recall good old Cambridge,” or “Best of everything, my dear little flower, give me your paw to shake.” She told him that she had an office job—typing and shorthand—that they were having a very difficult time with Irina—constant hysterics—that her father had not got anywhere with his Russian-language newspaper and was now setting up a publishing business—books by
émigré
writers—that there was never a penny in the house—which was rather sad—that they had many friends—which was lots of fun—that the streetcars in Berlin were green, and that Berliners played tennis in braces and starched collars. Martin’s endurance lasted all through summer, fall, and winter; then, in mid-April 1923, on his twenty-first birthday, he announced to Uncle Henry that he was leaving for Berlin. The latter looked dour, and said with displeasure, “To me,
mon ami
, that seems devoid of all sense. You will always have time to see Europe. In point of fact, I was going to take you and your mother to Italy next autumn. But you can’t go on loafing forever. In short, I was going to suggest that you try your youthful powers in Geneva.” (Martin knew full well what was meant: several times already this dismal subject had crept stealthily forth; it concerned some commercial firm or other belonging to the Petit brothers, with whom Uncle Henry had business relations.) “That you try
tes jeunes forces
,” Uncle Henry repeated. “In this cruel age, in this very practical age, a young man must learn to earn his bread and elbow his way through life. You have a solid knowledge of the English language. Foreign correspondence in the world of affairs is a most interesting thing. As for Berlin—— Your German has not much improved,
has it? I can’t see what you are going to do there.”

“Suppose I do nothing,” Martin said gloomily.

Uncle Henry looked at him with surprise. “That’s a bizarre answer. I don’t know what your father would have thought of an answer like that. I think he would be as astonished as I am that a young man full of sap and health despises all work. Please understand,” he hastily added, noticing that Martin had reddened unpleasantly, “I am not being stingy—
je ne suis pas mesquin
. I am rich enough, thank God, to provide for you—I make a duty and a joy of it—but it would be folly not to take a job. Europe is passing through an unbelievable crisis, and a man can lose a fortune in the twinkling of an eye. That’s the way it is, and you can’t do a thing about it.”

“I don’t need your money,” Martin said softly and rudely. Uncle Henry pretended not to hear, but tears welled in his eyes.

“Don’t you have any ambition at all? Don’t you ever think about making a career? We Edelweisses always knew how to work. Your grandfather began as a poor tutor—teaching French
à des princes russes
. When he proposed to your grandmother her parents threw him out of the house. And back he comes a year later, the director of an export company, and then, obviously, all obstacles were swept away.”

“I don’t need your money,” repeated Martin, even more softly. “And as for Grandfather, that’s nothing but a silly family legend, and you know it.”

“What’s the matter with him, what’s the matter with him?” Uncle Henry muttered in fright. “What right do you have to offend me like this? What wrong have I done you? I, who have always——”

“The short of the matter is that I’m going to Berlin,” Martin interrupted, and left the room, trembling.

That evening there was a reconciliation, embraces, noseblowing, emotional throat-clearing—but Martin stood his ground. His mother, who sensed his longing to see Sonia, proved to be an ally, and smiled bravely as he got into the car.

Hardly had the house disappeared from view when Martin changed places with the chauffeur. Holding the wheel delicately, almost tenderly, as if it were something alive and precious, and watching the powerful car gobble up the road, he experienced nearly the same sensation as when, in childhood, seated on the floor with his feet resting on the piano pedals, he would hold the stool with its round, revolving seat between his legs and handle it like a steering wheel, taking splendid curves at full speed, pushing the pedal again and again (which made the piano hum), and slitting his eyes against the imaginary wind. Then, in the German express, where, between the corridor windows, hung small maps of regions the train did not pass through, Martin relished the journey, eating chocolate, smoking, poking his cigarette butt under the metal lid of the ashtray, filled with the remains of cigar. It was night by the time he neared Berlin. Looking from the train onto the wet lighted streets he relived his childhood impression of Berlin, whose fortunate inhabitants could enjoy daily, if they wished, the sight of trains with fabulous destinations, gliding across a black bridge over a humdrum thoroughfare; in this respect Berlin differed from St. Petersburg, where railroad operations were concealed like a secret rite. A week later, though, when his eyes had got used to the city, Martin was already powerless to reconstruct that perspective from which its features had seemed familiar. It was
as when you meet someone you have not seen for years: first you recognize his figure and voice; then you look more closely, and there, before your eyes, the transformation imperceptibly wrought by time is run through in quick display. Features alter, likeness deteriorates, and you have before you a stranger, looking smug after having devoured his own young and fragile double, whom it will henceforth be hard to picture, unless chance comes to the rescue. When Martin deliberately visited in Berlin that intersection, that square, which he had seen as a child, there was nothing that gave him the least shiver of excitement, but on the other hand, a chance whiff of coal or automobile exhaust, a certain special pale hue of the sky seen through a lace curtain, or the shudder of the windowpanes awakened by a passing truck, instantly brought back the essence of city, hotel, and drab morning, part of an image that Berlin had once impressed upon him. The toy shops on the once elegant Friedrichstrasse had thinned out and lost their sparkle, and the locomotives in their windows looked smaller and shabbier. The pavement of this street had been torn up, and shirt-sleeved workmen were drilling, and digging deep smoky holes, so that you had to pick your way over planking, and sometimes even across loose sand. In the Panopticon of Waxworks on the Unter den Linden the man in a shroud, energetically climbing out of his grave, and the Iron Maiden, that instrument of strong and hard torture, had lost their ghoulish charm. Martin went to the Kurfürstendamm to look for that enormous roller-skating rink that he remembered so well, with its rumble of wheels, instructors in red uniforms, band shell, slightly salty mocha cake served in the encircling boxes, and the
pas de patineurs
that he used to dance to any kind of music, flexing now his right, now his left skate-shod leg (and what a spill he took once!), only to find a dozen years had been enough to abolish it completely.
The Kurfürstendamm itself had changed too, maturing growing longer, and somewhere—perhaps beneath a new building—lay the grave of a twenty-court tennis establishment, where Martin had been a couple of times with his mother, who would accompany her underhand service with a bright-voiced “Play!” and whose skirt would rustle as she ran. Now, without even leaving the city limits, he could reach the Grunewald, where the Zilanovs lived, to learn from Sonia that it was pointless to go to Wertheim’s for his shopping, and that it was by no means obligatory to visit the Wintergarten, under whose fabulous star-dusted black ceiling tight-corseted Prussian officers sat at lighted tables in the boxes, while on stage twelve bare-legged girls sang with brassy voices and undulated with linked arms from right to left and back again, kicking up twelve white legs, and little Martin had uttered a soft exclamation of surprise upon recognizing in them the demure, pretty English misses who, like him, went skating daily at the wooden rink.