The Luzhin Defense (21 page)

The weather got worse and Luzhin, remembering that depressing waste patch and the cemetery wind, begged for their trip to be postponed to the following week. The frost, incidentally, was extraordinary. They closed the ice-rink, which was always unlucky: last winter it had been thaw after thaw and a pool in place of ice, and now such a cold spell that not even schoolboys were up to skating. In the parks little, high-breasted birds lay on the snow with feet in the air. The helpless mercury, under the influence of its surroundings, fell ever lower and lower. And even the polar bears in the zoo found that the management had overdone it.

The Luzhin apartment turned out to be one of those fortunate flats with heroic central heating, where one did not have to sit around in fur coats and blankets. His wife’s parents, driven insane by the cold, were remarkably willing guests of the central heating. Luzhin, wearing the old
jacket that had been saved from destruction, sat at his desk, assiduously drawing a white cube standing before him. His father-in-law walked about the study telling long, perfectly proper anecdotes or else sat on the sofa with a newspaper, from time to time breathing deep and then clearing his throat. His mother-in-law and wife stayed by the tea table and from the study, across the dark drawing room, one could see the bright yellow lampshade in the dining room, his wife’s illuminated profile on the brown background of the sideboard and her bare arms, which, with her elbows a long way in front of her on the table, she bent back to one shoulder, her fingers interlaced, or suddenly she would smoothly stretch an arm out and touch some gleaming object on the tablecloth. Luzhin put the cube aside, took a clean sheet of paper, prepared a tin box with buttons of watercolor in it and hastened to draw this vista, but while he was painstakingly tracing out the lines of perspective with the aid of a ruler, something changed at the far end, his wife disappeared from the vivid rectangle of the dining room and the light went out and came on again closer, in the drawing room, and no perspective existed any longer. In general he rarely got to the colors, and, indeed, preferred pencil. The dampness of watercolors made the paper buckle unpleasantly and the wet colors would run together; on occasion it would be impossible to get rid of some extraordinarily tenacious Prussian blue—no sooner would you get a small bit of it on the very tip of your brush than it would already be running all over the enamel inside of the box, devouring the shade you had prepared and turning the water in the glass a poisonous blue. There were thick tubes with India ink and
ceruse, but the caps invariably got lost, the necks would dry up, and when he pressed too hard the tube would burst at the bottom and thence would come crawling and writhing a fat worm of goo. His daubings were fruitless and even the simplest things—a vase with flowers or a sunset copied from a travel folder of the Riviera—came out spotty, sickly, horrible. But drawing was nice. He drew his mother-in-law, and she was offended; he drew his wife in profile, and she said that if she looked like that there was no reason to marry her; on the other hand his father-in-law’s high, starched collar came out very well. Luzhin took great pleasure in sharpening pencils and in measuring things before him, screwing up one eye and raising his pencil with his thumb pressed against it, and he would move his eraser over the paper with care, pressing with his palm on the sheet, for he knew from experience that otherwise there would come a loud crack and the sheet would crease. And he would blow off the particles of rubber very delicately, fearing to smudge the drawing by touching it with his hand. Most of all he liked what his wife had advised him to begin with and what he constantly returned to—white cubes, pyramids, cylinders, and a fragment of plaster ornament that reminded him of drawing lessons at school—the sole, acceptable subject. He was soothed by the thin lines that he drew and redrew a hundred times, achieving a maximum of sharpness, accuracy and purity. And it was remarkably nice to shade, tenderly and evenly, not pressing too hard, in regularly applied strokes.

“Finished,” he said, holding the paper away from him and looking at the completed cube through his eyelashes. His father-in-law put on his pince-nez and looked at it for
a long time, nodding his head. His mother-in-law and wife came from the drawing room and also looked. “It even casts a tiny shadow,” said his wife. “A very, very handsome cube.” “Well done, you’re a real cubist,” said his mother-in-law. Luzhin, smiling on one side of his mouth, took the drawing and looked round the walls of his study. By the door one of his productions was already hanging: a train on a bridge spanning an abyss. There was also something in the drawing room: a skull on a telephone directory. In the dining room there were some extremely round oranges which everyone for some reason took for tomatoes. And the bedroom was adorned by a bas-relief done in charcoal and a confidential conversation between a cone and a pyramid. He went out of the study, his eyes roving over the walls, and his wife said with a sigh: “I wonder where dear Luzhin will hang this one.”

“You haven’t yet deigned to inform me,” began her mother, pointing with her chin to a heap of gaudy travel folders lying on the desk. “But I don’t know myself,” said Mrs. Luzhin. “It’s very difficult to decide, everywhere’s beautiful. I think we’ll go to Nice first.” “I would advise the Italian lakes,” said her father, and, folding up the newspaper and removing his pince-nez, he began to relate how beautiful the lakes were. “I’m afraid he has grown rather tired of the talk about our journey,” said Mrs. Luzhin. “One fine day we’ll simply get in the train and go.” “Not before April,” said her mother imploringly. “You promised me, you know.…”

Luzhin returned to the study. “I had a box of thumbtacks somewhere,” he said, looking at the desk and slapping his pockets (whereupon he again, for the third or fourth
time, had a feeling there was something in his left pocket—but not the box—and there was not time to investigate). The tacks were found on the desk. Luzhin took them and hastily went out.

“Oh, I quite forgot to tell you. Just imagine, yesterday morning …” and she began to tell her daughter that she had been called by a woman who had unexpectedly arrived from Russia. This woman had often visited them as a young girl in St. Petersburg. It turned out that several years ago she had married a Soviet businessman or official—it had been impossible to understand exactly—and on her way to a spa, where her husband was going to gather new strength, she had stopped off for a week or two in Berlin. “I feel a bit awkward, you know, about a Soviet citizen coming to our place, but she’s so persistent. I’m amazed she’s not afraid to telephone. Why, if they learn in Sovietia that she rang me up …” “Oh, Mamma, she’s probably a very unhappy woman—she’s broken out temporarily to freedom and she feels like seeing somebody.” “Well then, I’ll pass her on to you,” said her mother with relief, “especially as it’s warmer at your place.”

And several days afterward, at midday, the lady appeared. Luzhin was still slumbering, since he had slept badly the night before. Twice he woke up with choking cries, suffocated by a nightmare, and now Mrs. Luzhin somehow did not feel up to guests. The visitor turned out to be a slim, animated, nicely made-up, nicely bobbed lady who was dressed, like Mrs. Luzhin, with expensive simplicity. Loudly, interrupting one another, and assuring one another that neither had changed a bit, except perhaps to grow prettier, they went through to the study, which
was cozier than the drawing room. The newcomer remarked to herself that Mrs. Luzhin ten to twelve years ago had been a rather graceful, lively little girl and now had grown plumper, paler and quieter, while Mrs. Luzhin found that the modest, silent young lady who used to visit them and was in love with a student, later shot by the Reds, had turned into a very interesting, confident lady. “So this is your Berlin … thank you kindly. I almost died with cold. At home in Leningrad it’s warmer, really warmer.” “How is it, St. Petersburg? It must have changed a lot?” asked Mrs. Luzhin. “Of course it’s changed,” replied the newcomer jauntily. “And a terribly difficult life,” said Mrs. Luzhin, nodding thoughtfully. “Oh, what nonsense! Nothing of the sort. They’re working at home, building. Even my boy—what, you didn’t know I had a little boy?—well, I have, I have, a cute little squirt—well, even he says that at home in Leningrad ‘they wuk, while in Bellin the boulzois don’t do anything.’ And in general he finds Berlin far worse than home and doesn’t even want to look at anything. He’s so observant, you know, and sensitive.… No, speaking seriously, the child’s right. I myself feel how we’ve outstripped Europe. Take our theater. Why, you in Europe don’t have a theater, it just doesn’t exist. I’m not in the least, you understand, not in the least praising the communists. But you have to admit one thing: they look ahead, they build. Intensive construction.” “I don’t understand politics,” said Mrs. Luzhin slowly and plaintively. “But it just seems to me …” “I’m only saying that one has to be broad-minded,” continued the visitor hastily. “Take this, for instance. As soon as I arrived I bought an émigré paper. Of course my husband said, joking, you
know—‘Why do you waste money, my girl, on such filth?’ He expressed himself worse than that, but let’s call it that for the sake of decency—but me: ‘No,’ I said, ‘you have to look at everything, find out everything absolutely impartially.’ And imagine—I opened the paper and began to read, and there was such slander printed there, such lies, and everything so crude.” “I rarely see the Russian newspapers,” said Mrs. Luzhin. “Mamma, for instance, gets a Russian newspaper from Serbia, I believe—” “It is a conspiracy,” continued the lady. “Nothing but abuse, and nobody dares to utter a peep in our favor.” “Really, let’s talk about something else,” said Mrs. Luzhin distractedly. “I can’t express it, I’m very poor at speaking about these matters, but I feel you’re mistaken. Now if you want to talk about it with my parents some day …” (And saying this, Mrs. Luzhin imagined to herself, not without a certain pleasure, her mother’s bulging eyes and strident cries.) “Well, you’re still little.” The lady indulgently smiled. “Tell me what you are doing, what does your husband do, what is he?” “He used to play chess,” replied Mrs. Luzhin. “He was a remarkable player. But then he overstrained himself and now he is resting; and please, you mustn’t talk to him about chess.” “Yes, yes, I know he’s a chess player,” said the newcomer. “But what is he? A reactionary? A White Guardist?” “Really I don’t know.” laughed Mrs. Luzhin. “I’ve heard a thing or two about him,” continued the newcomer. “When your
maman
told me you had married a Luzhin I thought immediately that it was he. I had a good acquaintance in Leningrad and she told me—with such naïve pride, you know—how she had taught her little
nephew to play chess and how he later became a remarkable …”

At this point in the conversation a strange noise occurred in the next room, as if someone had knocked against something there and let out a cry. “One moment,” said Mrs. Luzhin, jumping up from the sofa, and was about to slide open the door to the drawing room, but changing her mind she went via the hall. In the drawing room she saw a completely unexpected Luzhin. He was in his dressing gown and bedroom slippers and holding a piece of white bread in one hand—but it was not this of course, that was surprising—the surprising thing was the trembling excitement distorting his face, the wide-open, gleaming eyes, and the forehead looking as if it had grown lumpier, the vein as if it had swollen, and catching sight of his wife he appeared to pay no attention to her at first, but continued to stand looking with open mouth in the direction of the study. An instant later it turned out his excitement was joyful. He clicked his teeth joyfully at his wife, then turned heavily in a circle, almost knocking the palm over, lost a slipper which slithered, like a live thing, into the dining room, where some cocoa was steaming, and speedily went after it.

“Nothing, nothing,” said Luzhin slyly, and like a man reveling in a secret find he slapped himself on the knees, and closing his eyes began to shake his head. “That lady is from Russia,” said his wife probingly. “She knows your aunt who—well, just an aunt of yours.” “Excellent, excellent,” said Luzhin and suddenly choked with laughter. What am I frightened of? she thought. He’s simply feeling jolly, he woke up in a good mood and wanted, perhaps … “Is it some private joke, Luzhin?” “Yes, yes,”
said Luzhin and added, finding a way out: “I wanted to introduce myself in my dressing gown.” “So then we’re feeling jolly, that’s good,” she said with a smile. “Have something to eat and then get dressed. It seems to be a little warmer this morning.” And leaving her husband in the dining room, Mrs. Luzhin quickly returned to the study. Her visitor was sitting on the couch and looking at some views of Switzerland on the pages of a travel leaflet. “Listen,” she said, catching sight of Mrs. Luzhin, “I’m going to take advantage of you. I need to buy a few things and I have absolutely no idea where the best stores are here. Yesterday I stood a solid hour in front of a store window, standing and thinking that perhaps there are stores that are even better. And then my German isn’t up to much.…”

Luzhin remained sitting in the dining room and continued from time to time to slap himself on the knees. And there was really something to celebrate. The combination he had been struggling to discern since the ball, had suddenly revealed itself to him, thanks to a chance phrase that had come flying out of the next room. During these first minutes he had still only had time to feel the keen delight of being a chess player, and pride, and relief, and that physiological sensation of harmony which is so well known to artists. He still made many more small motions before he realized the true nature of his unusual discovery—finished his cocoa, shaved, transferred his studs to a clean shirt. And suddenly the delight vanished and he was overcome by other sensations. Just as some combination, known from chess problems, can be indistinctly repeated on the board in actual play—so now the consecutive repetition of
a familiar pattern was becoming noticeable in his present life. And as soon as his initial delight in having established the actual fact of the repetition had passed, as soon as he began to go carefully over his discovery, Luzhin shuddered. With vague admiration and vague horror he observed how awesomely, how elegantly and how flexibly, move by move, the images of his childhood had been repeated (country house … town … school … aunt), but he still did not quite understand why this combinational repetition inspired his soul with such dread. He felt one thing keenly: a certain vexation that he had gone so long without noticing the cunning sequence of moves; and now, recalling some trifle—and there had been so many of them, and at times so skillfully presented, that the repetition was almost concealed—Luzhin was indignant with himself for not having reflected, for not taking the initiative, but with trustful blindness letting the combination unfold. But now he resolved to be more circumspect, to keep an eye on the further development of these moves, if there was to be one—and of course, of course, to maintain his discovery in impenetrable secret, to be merry, extraordinarily merry. But from that day on there was no rest for him—he had, if possible, to contrive a defense against this perfidious combination, to free himself of it, and for this he had to foresee its ultimate aim, its dire direction, but this did not yet appear feasible. And the thought that the repetition would probably continue was so frightening that he was tempted to stop the clock of life, to suspend the game for good, to freeze, and at the same time he noticed that he continued to exist, that some kind of preparation was going on, a
creeping development, and that he had no power to halt this movement.