Glory (7 page)

“Now, don’t you get upset like that, it’ll turn up,” said Alla, but she, too, was visibly disturbed.

“Here it is, thank heavens!” cried Chernosvitov, and scanned the paper he had found, while his jaw hung loose with concentration.

“Don’t forget to mention the postponement,” Alla reminded him.

“Righto,” said Chernosvitov and hurried out of the room.

This business conversation left Martin somewhat perplexed.
Neither husband nor wife had pretended: they had really quite forgotten that he was present, absorbed as they were by their problems. Alla, however, immediately resumed her previous mood, joked about the inefficiency of Greek door locks that opened all by themselves, and shrugged off Martin’s alarmed question, “Oh, don’t worry, he didn’t notice anything.” That night Martin could not get to sleep for a long time, and, with the same perplexity, kept listening to the complacent snoring. When, three days later, he sailed with his mother for Marseille, the Chernosvitovs came to see them off at Piraeus; they stood on the pier, arm in arm, and Alla was smiling and waving a mimosa branch. The day before, though, she had shed a tear or two.

Upon her, upon that frontispiece, which, after the removal of the gauze paper, had proved to be a little coarse, a little too gaudy, Martin replaced the haze and through it the colors reassumed their mysterious charm.

Then, on the big transatlantic liner, where everything was clean, polished, and spacious, which had a store selling toilet articles, a picture gallery, and a barber shop, and whose passengers danced the two-step and the fox-trot at night on the deck, he thought with rapt nostalgia about that amiable woman, with the touchingly hollow chest and the clear eyes, and about the way her fragile frame crunched in his embrace, causing her to say softly, “Ouch, you’ll break me.” Meanwhile Africa drew close, the purple strip of Sicily passed by on the northern horizon, then the ship glided between Corsica and Sardinia, and all these patterns of torrid land that existed somewhere around, somewhere near, but passed by unseen, captivated Martin with their disembodied presence. During the night journey from Marseille to Switzerland he
thought he recognized his beloved lights among the hills, and, even though it was no longer a
train de luxe
but a plain express, jolty, dark, grimy with coal dust, the magic was strong as ever: those lights, those wails in the night. From Lausanne they drove by car to the chalet situated about a thousand meters higher in the mountains and Martin, who was sitting beside the chauffeur, every now and then would look back smiling at his mother and uncle, who both wore large motoring goggles and both held their hands in their laps clasped the same way. Henry Edelweiss had remained a bachelor, wore a bushy mustache, and certain intonations of his, and his way of fiddling with a toothpick or a nail file, reminded Martin of his father. On greeting Sofia at the Lausanne station Uncle Henry broke into tears, covering his face with his hand, but later, in the restaurant, he calmed down and, in his somewhat pompous French, began talking about Russia and his trips there in the past. “How fortunate,” he said to Sofia, “how very fortunate that your parents did not live to see that terrible revolution. I remember perfectly the old princess, with her white hair. How fond she was of poor, poor Serge,” and, at the recollection of his cousin, azure tears again welled in Henry’s eyes.

“Yes, my mother was fond of him, it’s true,” said Sofia, “but then she was fond of everybody and everything. But tell me, how do you find Martin,” she hastily continued, trying to take Henry’s mind off melancholy subjects, which, in his soft-mustached mouth, took on a shade of unbearable sentimentality.

“Yes, yes, he looks like him,” nodded Henry. “The same forehead, the same fine——”

“But hasn’t he grown up?” quickly interrupted Sofia. “And, you know, he has already been in love, passionately——”

Uncle Henry passed on to political matters. “That revolution,”
he asked rhetorically, “how long can it last? Yes, nobody knows. Poor, beautiful Russia is perishing. Perhaps the firm hand of a dictator will put an end to the excesses. But many beautiful things—your lands, your devastated lands, your country mansion, burned down by the rascally mob—to all that you can bid adieu.”

“How much does a pair of skis cost here?” asked Martin.

“I don’t know,” replied Uncle Henry with a sigh. “I have never indulged in that English sport. By the way, you speak French with a British accent. That is bad. We’ll have to change all that.”

“He’s forgotten a lot,” Sofia interceded for her son. “The last few years Mlle. Planche no longer gave him lessons.”

“Dead,” said Uncle Henry with feeling. “One more death.”

“No, no,” smiled Sofia. “Whatever gave you that idea? She married a Finn and is living peacefully in Vyborg.”

“In any case this is all very sad,” said Uncle Henry. “I wanted so much for Serge to come here with you one day. But one never obtains what one longs for, and God alone knows what is to come. If you have assuaged your hunger and are sure you don’t want anything more, we can start.”

The road was brightly sunlit and had many turns; a wall of rock with thorny bushes blooming in its cracks rose on the right, while on the left there was a precipice and a valley where water in crescents of foam ran down over ledges; then came dark conifers clustering in close ranks now on one side, now on the other; mountains loomed all around, imperceptibly changing position; they were greenish with streaks of snow; grayer ones looked out from behind their shoulders, and far beyond there were giants of an opaque violet whiteness, and these never moved, and the sky above them seemed faded in comparison with the bright-blue patches between the tops of the black firs under which the
car passed. Suddenly, with a sensation still new to him, Martin remembered the dense fir fringe of their park in Russia as seen through a lozenge of blue glass on the veranda. And when, stretching his slightly vibrating legs and feeling a transparent humming in his head, he got out of the car, he was struck by the fresh rough smell of earth and melting snow, and by the rustic beauty of his uncle’s house. It stood by itself half a kilometer from the nearest hamlet, and the top balcony offered one of those marvelous views that are even frightening in their airy perfection. The same Russian vernal blue sky looked into the window of the neat little WC, with its odor of wood and resin. All around, in the garden with its bare, black platbands and white apple bloom, and in the fir forest right behind the orchard, and on the dirt road leading to the village, there was a cool, happy silence, a silence that
knew
something, and Martin felt a little dizzy, perhaps from this silence, perhaps from the smells, or perhaps from the newfound blissful immobility after the three-hour drive.

In this chalet Martin lived until late fall. It was presumed that he would enter the University of Geneva that very winter; however, after a lively exchange of letters with friends in England, Sofia sent him to Cambridge. Uncle Henry did not immediately reconcile himself to this: he disliked the English, whom he considered a cold, perfidious nation. On the other hand the thought of the expenses the famous university required not only did not sadden him, but, on the contrary, was tempting. Fond as he was of economizing on trifles, clenching a penny in his left hand, he willingly wrote large checks with the right, especially when the expense was an honorable one. Sometimes, rather touchingly, he would feign eccentric pigheadedness, slapping the table with his palm, puffing out his mustache, and shouting, “If I do it, I
do it because it gives me pleasure!” With a sigh Sofia would slip the bracelet watch from Geneva on her wrist, while moist-eyed Henry would dig in his pocket for a voluminous handkerchief, trumpet once, twice, and then smooth his mustache to the right and to the left.

With the onset of summer the cross-marked sheep were herded higher into the mountains. A babbling metallic tinkling, of unknown origin and from an unknown direction, would gradually become audible. Floating nearer, it enveloped the listener, giving him an odd tickling sensation in the mouth. Then, in a cloud of dust, came flowing a gray, curly, tightly packed mass of sheep rubbing against each other, and the moist, hollow tinkle of the bells, which delighted all of one’s senses, mounted, swelled so mysteriously that the dust itself seemed to be ringing as it billowed above the moving backs of the sheep. From time to time one of them would get separated from the rest and trot past, whereupon a shaggy dog would drive it back into the flock; and behind, gently treading, walked the shepherd. Then the tintinnabulation would change timbre, and once more grow hollower and softer, but for a long time it would hang in the air together with the dust. “Nice, nice!” murmured Martin to himself, hearing the tinkle out to the end, and continued on his favorite walk, which began with a country lane and forest trails. The fir grove abruptly thinned out, lush green meadows appeared, and the stony path sloped down between hawthorn hedges. Occasionally a cow with wet pink nose would stop on its way up in front of him, twitch its tail and with a lurch of the head move on. Behind the cow came a spry little old woman with a stick, who glanced malevolently at Martin. Further down, surrounded by poplars and maples, stood a large white hotel, whose owner was a distant relative of Henry Edelweiss.

In the course of that summer Martin grew still sturdier, his shoulders broadened, and his voice acquired an even, deep tone. At the same time he was in a state of inner confusion, and feelings he did not quite understand were evoked by such things as the country coolness of the rooms, so keenly perceptible after the outdoor heat; a fat bumblebee knocking against the ceiling with a chagrined droning; the paws of the fir trees against the blue of the sky; or the firm brown bolete found at the edge of the forest. The imminent journey to England excited and gladdened him. His memory of Alla Chernosvitov had reached its ultimate perfection, and he would say to himself that he had not sufficiently appreciated the happy days in Greece. The thirst she had quenched, only to intensify it, so tormented him during that alpine summer that at night he could not go to sleep for a long time, imagining, among numerous adventures, all the girls awaiting him in the dawning cities, and occasionally he would repeat aloud some feminine name—Isabella, Nina, Margarita—a name still cold and untenanted, a vacant, echoing house, whose mistress was slow to take up residence; and he would try to guess which of these names would suddenly come alive, becoming so alive and familiar that he would never again be able to pronounce it as mysteriously as now.

In the mornings, Marie, the niece of the old chambermaid, would come to help with the household chores. She was seventeen, very quiet and comely with cheeks of a dark-pink hue and yellow pigtails tightly wound about her head. Sometimes, while Martin would be in the garden, she would throw open an upstairs window, shake out her dustcloth, and remain motionless, gazing, perhaps, at the bright clouds, at their oval shadows gliding along the mountain slopes, then pass the back of her hand across her temple, and slowly turn away. Martin would go up to the bedrooms, determine from
the drafts where the cleaning was going on, and would find Marie kneeling in meditation amidst the gloss of wet floorboards; he would see her from behind, with her black wool stockings and her green polka-dot dress. She never looked at Martin, except once—and what an event that was!—when, passing by with an empty pail, she smiled uncertainly, tenderly—not at him, though, but at the chicks. He resolutely vowed to start a conversation with her, and to give her a furtive hug. Once, however, after she had left, Sofia sniffed the air, made a face, and hurriedly opened all the windows, and Martin was filled with dismay and aversion toward Marie, and only very gradually, in the course of her subsequent appearances in the distance—framed in a casement, or glimpsed through the foliage near the well—he began again to succumb to that enchantment; only now he was afraid to come closer. Thus something happy and languorous lured him from afar, but was not addressed to him. Once, when he had scrambled far up the mountainside he squatted on a big round-browed rock, and below a herd passed along the winding trail, with a melodious, melancholy jingling and, behind it, a gay, ragged shepherd and a smiling girl who was knitting a stocking as she walked. They went by without a glance at Martin, as if he were incorporeal, and he watched them for a long time. Without breaking step, the man put his arm around his companion’s shoulders, and from her nape you could tell that she kept knitting on and on as they walked into another valley. Or else, bare-armed young ladies in white frocks, yelling and chasing off the horseflies with their rackets, would appear by the tennis court in front of the hotel, but, as soon as they started playing, how clumsy and helpless they became, particularly since Martin himself was an excellent player, beating to shreds any young Argentine from the hotel: at an early age he had assimilated the concord essential for the enjoyment of all the properties of the sphere,
a coordination of all the elements participating in the stroke dealt to the white ball, so that the momentum begun with an arching swing still continues after the loud twang of taut strings, passing as it does through the muscles of the arm all the way to the shoulder, as if closing the smooth circle out of which, just as smoothly, the next one is born. One hot August day Bob Kitson, a professional from Nice, turned up at the court, and invited Martin to play. Martin felt that familiar, stupid tremor, the vengeance of too vivid an imagination. Nevertheless he started well, now volleying at the net, now driving powerfully from the baseline to the furthest corner. Spectators gathered around the court, and this pleased him. His face was aflame, he felt a maddening thirst. Serving, crashing down on the ball, and transforming at once the incline of his body into a dash netward, Martin was about to win the set. But the professional, a lanky, coolheaded youth with glasses, whose game until then had resembled a lazy stroll, suddenly came awake and with five lightning shots evened the score. Martin began to feel weary and worried. He had the sun in his eyes. His shirt kept coming out from under his belt. If his opponent took this point that
was
the end of it. Kitson hit a lob from an uncomfortable corner position, and Martin, retreating in a kind of cakewalk, got ready to smash the ball. As he brought down his racket he had a fleeting vision of defeat and the malicious rejoicing of his habitual partners. Alas, the ball plumped limply into the net. “Bad luck,” said Kitson jauntily, and Martin grinned back, heroically controlling his disappointment.