Glory (23 page)

Gruzinov’s speech became lively and he talked faster and faster, prodding the map with the point of a safety pin which he had unbent, and in one minute he had traced half-a-dozen itineraries, and continued to spill out the names of villages, and to conjure up invisible footpaths; and the more animatedly he spoke, the clearer Martin could see that Gruzinov was making fun of him. From the garden two feminine voices called Gruzinov’s name with the first syllable accented instead of the second. He looked out. The two English girls wanted him to come and have ice cream (he was popular with young ladies, for whose benefit he assumed the character of an easygoing simpleton). “How they like to bother me,” Gruzinov said, “I never eat ice cream, anyway.” It seemed to Martin for an instant that sometime somewhere the
same words had been spoken (as in Blok’s play
Incognita
), and that then as now he was perplexed by something, was trying to explain something. “Now here’s my advice,” said Gruzinov, dexterously rolling up the map and handing it back to Martin. “Tell Nicky to stay at home and find something constructive to do. A nice fellow, I’m sure, and it would be a pity if he lost his way.” “He knows everything better than I do,” replied Martin vengefully.

They went down into the garden. Martin forced himself to keep smiling and felt hatred for Gruzinov, his cold eyes, his smooth impenetrable forehead. One thing, however, gladdened him: the talk had taken place, was now in the past; true, he had been treated like a schoolboy—never mind, to hell with Gruzzy, Martin’s conscience was now clear, he could now pack his things and leave in peace.

On the day of departure he woke up very early as he used to on Christmas morn in his childhood. Observing an English custom, his mother would have stolen into the nursery in the middle of the night to hang a stocking stuffed with presents at the foot of his bed. For the sake of complete credibility she would put on a cotton-wool beard and her husband’s bashlyk. If Martin had happened not to be sleeping, he would have seen St. Nicholas with his own eyes. Then, in the morning, with lamps switched on and glowing a dull yellow under the gloomy gaze of the wintry St. Petersburg dawn (that brown sky over the dark house across the street, those façades, those cornices traced in white by the snow), Martin would palpate his mother’s long crackling stocking tightly packed to its top with little parcels that could be distinguished through its silk; with bated breath he would thrust in his hand and begin pulling out and unwrapping tiny
toy animals, and diminutive
bonbonnières
which represented only an introduction to the full-size present—an engine with carriages and tin rails (of which huge eights could be constructed) waiting for him in the drawing room. Today also a train was waiting for him; it would be leaving Lausanne toward evening to reach Berlin next morning by nine. Mrs. Edelweiss felt quite sure that the only purpose of his trip was to see the Zilanov girl; she had noticed that no letters arrived for him from Berlin and was tormented by the thought that perhaps the Zilanov girl did not love Martin enough and would make a bad wife for him. She did her best to make his departure as cheerful as possible, concealing under a somewhat feverish animation her anxiety and sorrow. Uncle Henry, who suffered from a swollen cheek, remained morose and untalkative throughout dinner. Martin looked at the pepper caster Uncle Henry was reaching for, and it struck him that this was the last time he would see it. The pepper caster was in the shape of a fat manikin with perforations in his bald silver head. Quickly Martin transferred his gaze to his mother, taking in her slender pale-freckled hands, her delicate profile and the slightly raised eyebrow (as if she were amazed by the sight of the rich ragout), and again he told himself that this was the last time he would see those freckles, that eyebrow, that dish. Simultaneously all the furniture in the room, and the rainy view in the window, and the clock with its wooden dial over the sideboard, and the enlarged photographs of bewhiskered frock-coated worthies in their black frames, everything in short seemed to break into tragic speech demanding attention before the impending separation. “May I accompany you to Lausanne?” asked his mother. “Oh, I know you don’t care to be seen off,” she hastened to add as she saw Martin wrinkle his nose, “but I would not go just for the sake of seeing you off, I would merely like to go for a ride,
and besides I have to buy a few things.” Martin sighed. “All right, I shan’t go if you do not want me to,” said Mrs. Edelweiss with exceptional gaiety. “I stay behind when I’m not invited. But you are to wear your warm overcoat, on this I insist.”

Mother and son always spoke Russian between themselves, and this constantly irritated Uncle Henry, who knew only one word,
nichevo
, in which for some reason he perceived a symbol of Slav fatalism. That day he felt depressed, besides being bothered by the pain in his jaw, and now he sharply pushed back his chair, swept off the crumbs from his stomach with his napkin, and sucking on his tooth retired to his study. “How old he is,” thought Martin watching his gray nape. “Or is it the light—such gloomy weather.”

“Well, it’s almost time for you to get ready,” remarked Mrs. Edelweiss. “The car has probably been brought up.” She looked out of the window. “Yes, it has. Look, how amusing—nothing to be seen in the fog over there, as if there were no mountains at all. Amusing, isn’t it?” “I think I forgot my razor,” said Martin.

He went up to his room, packed his razor and slippers, and had trouble clicking shut the locks of his bag. In Riga or Rezhitsa he would buy plain coarse things—a cap, a short sheepskin coat, boots. Perhaps, a pistol? “
Proshchay, proshchay
” in rapid tempo sang out the bookcase crowned with the black figurine of a football player, which by some occult association of memories always made him think of Alla Chernosvitov.

In the roomy entrance hall downstairs stood Mrs. Edelweiss, her hands thrust into the pockets of her raincoat, and hummed as was her wont in moments of stress. “Hadn’t you better stay at home?” she said as Martin came down. “Really,
why
go away?” From the door on the right, with the antelope’s head over it, came Uncle Henry, and looking at Martin from under his brows he asked, “Are you sure you have enough money?” “Quite enough,” answered Martin, “thank you.” “Good-bye,” said Uncle Henry. “I am taking leave of you here because I avoid going out today. Had someone else ever had such a toothache, he would long ago have been in the madhouse.”

“Let’s go,” said Mrs. Edelweiss. “I’m afraid you’ll miss your train.”

Rain, wind. His mother’s hair immediately became disarranged, and she kept smoothing it over her ears. “Wait,” she said, just before reaching the garden wicket, at a spot near two firs between the trunks of which a hammock was hung in summer. “Wait, I want to kiss you.” Martin put down his valise. “Give her my greetings,” she whispered with a meaningful smile, and Martin nodded. Oh, to get going! This is unbearable.

The chauffeur obligingly opened the wicket for them. The car glistened with moisture, the rain made a tinkling sound against it. “And please do write, if only once a week,” she said, and stepped back, and waved her hand smiling, and slushing along in the mud the black car vanished beyond the fir avenue.

The night journey, in a Schnellzug sleeping car of a dark dirty-plum color, seemed to have no end: there were moments when Martin sank into sleep, then woke up with a start, then again found himself clattering down amusement-park slopes and again swung up, and
caught through the dull knock of the wheels the snores of the lower-bunk passenger, a rhythmic wheeze that sounded like part of the train’s motion.

Long before arrival, while everybody in the carriage was still asleep, Martin descended from his elevation, and taking sponge, soap, towel, shaving kit and collapsible tub proceeded to the lavatory. First of all he spread over its sickening floor layered sheets of a London
Times
he had bought in Lausanne; next he unfolded upon them his rather wobbly-rimmed but still serviceable rubber tub; he took off his pajamas and proceeded to coat with soap lather his muscular sun-tanned body. There was not much space, the car rocked violently, he was conscious of the transparent proximity of the racing rails, and of the danger of coming inadvertently in contact with filthy fixtures; but Martin could not manage without his morning bath (in the sea, in a pond, in a shower, or in this tub), which represented, he thought, a kind of heroic defense: a defense against the obstinate attack of the earth advancing by means of a film of insidious dust, as if it could not wait to take possession of a man before his time. No matter how poorly Martin might have slept, after bathing he would be permeated with a beneficent vigor. At such times the thought of death, the thought that sometime, maybe soon (who could know?), he would be compelled to surrender and go through what billions and trillions of humans had gone through before him—this thought of an inevitable death accessible to everyone troubled him but slightly. It gained strength only toward evening, and with the coming of night would sometimes swell to monstrous dimensions. The custom of performing executions at dawn seemed charitable to Martin: may the Lord permit it to happen in the morning when a man has control over himself—clears his throat, smiles, then stands straight, spreading his arms.

When he stepped out onto the platform of the Anhalter station, he inhaled with pleasure the cold, smoky morning air. Far away, in the direction from which the train had arrived, one could see through the opening of the iron-and-glass arch a pale-blue sky and a gleam of rails, and in comparison to this luminosity all was drab under the station vault. He walked past the dusky cars; past the huge hissing and sweating engine, and, having surrendered his ticket into the human hand of a control booth, descended the steps to the street. Out of attachment to the images of his childhood, he had decided to select as the starting point of his journey the Friedrich station, where, one remote day, his parents and he, after staying at the nearby Continental, had caught the Nord-Express. His valise was quite heavy, but Martin was in such an excited and restless state that he decided to walk. However, by the time he reached Potsdamerstrasse he began to feel ravenous, and upon estimating the remaining distance to the Friedrich Bahnhof, wisely took the bus. From the very start of that unusual day all his senses were on edge—it seemed to him that he was committing to memory the faces of all the passers-by, and that he absorbed with particular keenness colors, smells, and sounds. The automobile honkings that on rainy nights used to torture his hearing by their swinish moist tones now sounded somehow extramundane, melodious and doleful. As he sat in the bus he heard a ripple of Muscovite speech near him. It came from a couple, of Soviet rather than
émigré
aspect, and their two round-eyed little boys. The elder had settled close to the window, the younger kept pressing against his brother. “A restaurant,” the bigger one said ecstatically. “Look, a restaurant!” said the smaller one, pressing. “I can see for myself,” snapped his brother. “It’s a restaurant,” said the smaller one with conviction. “Shut up, idiot,” said his brother. “It’s not the Linden
yet, is it?” the mother asked worriedly. “It’s still the Post Dammer,” said the father with authority. “We’ve already passed the Post Dammer,” cried the boys, and there ensued a short argument. “What an archway, that’s class for you,” exulted the elder boy stabbing at the window with his finger. “Don’t yell like that,” remarked the father. “What’s that?” “I said don’t yell.” The boy looked hurt. “In the first place I spoke softly, and did not yell at all.” “Archway,” uttered the smaller boy with awe. The whole family became absorbed in the contemplation of the Brandenburg Gate. “Historical site,” the bigger boy said. “An ancient arch, yes,” confirmed the father. “How shall we wriggle through?” the bigger boy wondered, fearing for the sides of the bus, “it’s a squeeze!” “We did wriggle through,” the smaller boy whispered with relief. “And now this is the Unter,” cried the mother, “time to get off.” “The Unter is such a long, long street,” said the bigger boy, “I saw it on the map.” “This is President Street,” said the smaller boy dreamily. “Shut up, idiot! It’s the Unter Linden.” Then, in chorus, “Unter is long, long, long,” and a male solo voice, “It’s an endless journey.”

Here Martin got off. His childhood, he thought with strange anguish, his childish excitement had been similar, and yet utterly different. The juxtaposition lasted one instant: it sang by and subsided.

After checking his bag and buying a ticket for the evening train to Riga, he seated himself in the resonant station café where he was brought a regular sunburst of fried eggs. In the latest issue of an
émigré
weekly that he read as he ate he found a vicious review of Bubnov’s latest book
Caravella
. Having appeased his hunger, he lit a cigarette and looked around. A young girl at the nearest table sat writing, and wiping her tears. She looked at him for an instant with dim
wet eyes, pressing her pencil against her lips, and, having found the word she sought, scribbled again, holding her pencil the way children do: almost at the tip, with forefinger tensely bent. Black coat opened at neck, shabby rabbit-fur collar, amber beads, tender white neck, handkerchief crumpled in fist. He paid for his meal and, planning to follow her, began waiting for her to get up. But when she had finished writing, she leaned her elbows on the table and continued to sit there, looking up, with parted lips. She remained sitting for a long time while somewhere beyond the windowpanes trains were leaving, and Martin, who had to get to the Latvian consulate before closing time, decided to give her just five minutes more, and go. The five minutes passed. “All I would do would be to ask her to meet me for a drink in the afternoon—only that,” he pleaded mentally, imagining at the same time how he would allude to a distant perilous journey and how she would weep. Another minute passed. “All right, forget it,” said Martin, and, throwing his raincoat over his shoulder in the English manner, made for the exit.