Then came another motley of delirious dreams: The landau rolled along the quay, Hélène lapped the hot bright color from a wooden spoon, the broad Neva sparkled expansively, and Czar Peter suddenly leapt off his bronze steed, the hooves of both its forelegs having simultaneously alighted. He approached Joséphine, and, with a smile on his green-tinted, stormy face, embraced her, kissed her on one cheek, then on the other. His lips were soft and warm, and when he brushed her cheek for the third time, she palpitated, moaning with bliss, spread out her arms, and suddenly fell silent.
Early in the morning, on the sixth day of her illness, after a final crisis, Joséphine came to her senses. A white sky shimmered brightly through the window and perpendicular rain was rustling and rippling in the gutters.
A wet branch stretched across the windowpane, and at its very end a leaf kept shuddering beneath the patter of the rain. The leaf leaned forward and let a large drop fall from the tip of its green blade. The leaf shuddered again, and again a moist ray rolled downward, then a long, bright earring dangled and dropped.
And it seemed to Joséphine as if the rainy coolness were flowing through her veins. She could not take her eyes off the streaming sky, and the pulsating, enraptured rain was so pleasant, the leaf shuddered so touchingly, that she wanted to laugh; the laughter filled her, though it was still soundless, coursing through her body, tickling her palate, and was on the very point of erupting.
To her left, in the corner, something scrabbled and sighed. Aquiver with the laughter that was mounting in her, she took her eyes off the window and turned her head. The little old woman lay facedown on the floor in her black kerchief. Her short-cropped silver hair shook angrily as she fidgeted, thrusting her hand under the chest of drawers, where her ball of wool had rolled. Black yarn stretched from the chest to the chair, where her knitting needles and a half-knitted stocking still lay.
Seeing Mademoiselle Finard’s black hair, her squirming legs, her button boots, Joséphine broke out in peals of laughter, shaking as she gasped and cooed beneath her down comforter, feeling that she was resurrected, that she had returned from faraway mists of happiness, wonder, and Easter splendor.
Translated from the Russian by Dmitri Nabokov and Peter Constantine.
*The Cyrillic letters X (Kh) and B (V) stand for Khristos vorkresye, “Christ has risen.”
THE WORD
SWEPT out of the valley night by an inspired oneiric wind, I stood at the edge of a road, under a clear pure-gold sky, in an extraordinary mountainous land. Without looking, I sensed the lustre, the angles, and the facets of immense mosaic cliffs, dazzling precipices, and the mirrorlike glint of multitudinous lakes lying somewhere below, behind me. My soul was seized by a sense of heavenly iridescence, freedom, and loftiness: I knew that I was in Paradise. Yet, within this earthly soul, a single earthly thought rose like a piercing flame—and how jealously, how grimly I guarded it from the aura of gigantic beauty that surrounded me. This thought, this naked flame of suffering, was the thought of my earthly homeland. Barefoot and penniless, at the edge of a mountain road, I awaited the kind, luminous denizens of Heaven, while a wind, like the foretaste of a miracle, played in my hair, filled the gorges with a crystal hum, and ruffled the fabled silks of the trees that blossomed amid the cliffs lining the road. Tall grasses lapped at the tree trunks like tongues of fire; large flowers broke smoothly from the glittering branches and, like airborne goblets brimming with sunlight, glided through the air, puffing out their translucent convex petals. Their sweet, damp aroma reminded me of all the finest things I had experienced in my life.
Suddenly, the road on which I stood, breathless from the shimmer, was filled with a tempest of wings. Swarming out of the blinding depths came the angels I awaited, their folded wings pointing sharply upward. Their tread was ethereal; they were like colored clouds in motion, and their transparent visages were motionless except for the rapturous tremor of their radiant lashes. Among them, turquoise birds flew with peals of happy girlish laughter, and lithe orange animals loped, fantastically speckled with black. The creatures coiled through the air, silently thrusting out their satin paws to catch the airborne flowers as they circled and soared, pressing past me with flashing eyes.
Wings, wings, wings! How can I describe their convolutions and their tints? They were all-powerful and soft—tawny, purple, deep blue, velvety black, with fiery dust on the rounded tips of their bowed feathers. Like precipitous clouds they stood, imperiously poised above the angels’ luminous shoulders; now and then an angel, in a kind of marvellous transport, as if unable to restrain his bliss, suddenly, for a single instant, unfurled his winged beauty, and it was like a burst of sunlight, like the sparkling of millions of eyes.
They passed in throngs, glancing heavenward. Their eyes were like jubilant chasms, and in those eyes I saw the syncope of flight. They came with gliding step, showered with flowers. The flowers spilled their humid sheen in flight; the sleek, bright beasts played, whirling and climbing; the birds chimed with bliss, soaring and dipping. I, a blinded, quaking beggar, stood at the edge of the road, and within my beggar’s soul the selfsame thought kept prattling: Cry out to them, tell them—oh, tell them that on the most splendid of God’s stars there is a land—my land—that is dying in agonizing darkness. I had the sense that, if I could grasp with my hand but one quivering shimmer, I would bring to my country such joy that human souls would instantly be illumined, and would circle beneath the plash and crackle of resurrected springtime, to the golden thunder of reawakened temples.
Reaching out with trembling hands, striving to bar the angels’ path, I began clutching at the hems of their bright chasubles, at the undulating, torrid fringes of their curved wings, which slipped through my fingers like downy flowers. I moaned, I dashed about, I deliriously beseeched their indulgence, but the angels trod ever forward, oblivious of me, their chiselled faces turned upward. They streamed in hosts to a heavenly feast, into an unendurably resplendent glade, where roiled and breathed a divinity about which I dared not think. I saw fiery cobwebs, splashes, designs on gigantic crimson, russet, violet wings, and, above me, a downy rustling passed in waves. The rainbow-crowned turquoise birds pecked, the flowers floated off from shiny boughs. “Wait, hear me out!” I cried, trying to embrace an angel’s vaporous legs, but the feet, impalpable, unstoppable, slipped through my extended hands, and the borders of the broad wings only scorched my lips as they swept past. In the distance, a golden clearing between lush, vivid cliffs was filling with the surging storm; the angels were receding; the birds ceased their high-pitched agitated laughter; the flowers no longer flew from the trees; I grew feeble, I fell mute.…
Then a miracle occurred. One of the last angels lingered, turned, and quietly approached me. I caught sight of his cavernous, staring, diamond eyes under the imposing arches of his brows. On the ribs of his outspread wings glistened what seemed like frost. The wings themselves were gray, an ineffable tint of gray, and each feather ended in a silvery sickle. His visage, the faintly smiling outline of his lips, and his straight clear forehead reminded me of features I had seen on earth. The curves, the gleaming, the charm of all the faces I had ever loved—the features of people who had long since departed from me—seemed to merge into one wondrous countenance. All the familiar sounds that came separately into contact with my hearing now seemed to blend into a single, perfect melody.
He came up to me. He smiled. I could not look at him. But, glancing at his legs, I noticed a network of azure veins on his feet and one pale birthmark. From these veins, from that little spot, I understood that he had not yet totally abandoned earth, that he might understand my prayer.
Then, bending my head, pressing my singed palms, smeared with bright clay, to my half-blinded eyes, I began recounting my sorrows. I wanted to explain how wondrous my land was, and how horrid its black syncope, but I did not find the words I needed. Hurrying, repeating myself, I babbled about trifles, about some burned-down house where once the sunny sheen of parquet had be
en reflected in an inclined mirror. I prattled of old books and old lindens, of knickknacks, of my first poems in a cobalt schoolboy notebook, of some gray boulder, overgrown with wild raspberries, in the middle of a field filled with scabiosa and daisies—but the most important thing I simply could not express. I grew confused, I stopped short, I began anew, and again, in my helpless, rapid speech, I spoke of rooms in a cool and resonant country house, of lindens, of my first love, of bumblebees sleeping on the scabiosa. It seemed to me that any minute—any minute!—I would get to what was most important, I would explain the whole sorrow of my homeland. But for some reason I could remember only minute, quite mundane things that were unable to speak or weep those corpulent, burning, terrible tears, about which I wanted to but could not tell.…
I fell silent, raised my head. The angel smiled a quiet, attentive smile, gazed fixedly at me with his elongated diamond eyes. I felt he understood me.
“Forgive me,” I exclaimed, meekly kissing the birthmark on his light-hued foot. “Forgive that I am capable of speaking only about the ephemeral, the trivial. You understand, though, my kindhearted, my gray angel. Answer me, help me, tell me, what can save my land?”
Embracing my shoulders for an instant with his dovelike wings, the angel pronounced a single word, and in his voice I recognized all those beloved, those silenced voices. The word he spoke was so marvellous that, with a sigh, I closed my eyes and bowed my head still lower. The fragrance and the melody of the word spread through my veins, rose like a sun within my brain; the countless cavities within my consciousness caught up and repeated its lustrous edenic song. I was filled with it. Like a taut knot, it beat within my temple, its dampness trembled upon my lashes, its sweet chill fanned through my hair, and it poured heavenly warmth over my heart.
I shouted it, I revelled in its every syllable, I violently cast up my eyes, which were filled with the radiant rainbows of joyous tears.…
Oh, Lord—the winter dawn glows greenish in the window, and I remember not what word it was that I shouted.
Notes
Following are my notes to the stories previously uncollected in English, together with Vladimir Nabokov’s introductory notes to the stories collected in A Russian Beauty and Other Stories (1973), Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (1975), and Details of a Sunset and Other Stories (1976), all published by McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, and in various translations around the world.
The notes to each story are arranged here in the order in which the stories appear in this volume; Nabokov wrote no notes for the individual stories in his first major collection in America, Nabokov’s Dozen (Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1958); see, however, the appendix in this volume for his Bibliographical Note to that collection, along with his forewords to each collection published by McGraw-Hill.
I have tried, insofar as feasible, to establish a chronological order of composition. In those instances where only publication dates are available, they are used as a surrogate. My principal sources have been Nabokov’s own notes, archive materials, and the invaluable research of Brian Boyd, Dieter Zimmer, and Michael Juliar. The reader will note occasional discrepancies in dating. Where such inconsistencies occur in Nabokov’s own commentary, I have preferred not to alter the details of his texts.
Both Vladimir Nabokov and I have at times varied our systems of transliteration. The method set forth in Nabokov’s translation of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is probably the clearest and most logical of these variants. Except where accepted usage dictates a different form, or where Nabokov himself has digressed from that system, it is the one I have generally used.
Dmitri Nabokov
THE WOOD-SPRITE
“The Wood-Sprite” (Nezhit’) first appeared on January 7, 1921, in Rul’ (The Rudder), the Russian emigre newspaper in Berlin that had begun publication a little more than a month previously, and to which Nabokov would regularly contribute poems, plays, stories, translations, and chess problems. Only recently has the story been translated and published, with twelve other previously uncollected pieces, in La Vénitienne et autres nouvelles (Gallimard, 1990, trans. Bernard Kreise, ed. Gilles Barbedette), in La Veneziana (Adelphi, 1992, trans. and ed. Serena Vitale), in volurnes 13 and 14 of Vladimir Nabokov: Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works; Rowohlt, 1989, trans. and ed. Dieter Zimmer), and in a two-volume Dutch edition (De Bezige Bij, 1995, 1996)—henceforth, together with the present English versions, referred to as the “current collections.” While I translated most of the previously collected fifty-two stories under my father’s supervision, I take full responsibility for the posthumous English translations of these thirteen.
“The Wood-Sprite” is the first story Nabokov published and one of the first he wrote. It was signed “Vladimir Sirin” (sirin is a bird of Russian fable as well as the modern hawk owl), the pseudonym that, in his youth, the author used for many of his works.
Nabokov’s debut as a writer came when he was still a student at Trinity College, Cambridge (in May 1919 he had arrived in England with his family, abandoning Russia forever); he nurtured his passion for poetry, while also translating Colas Breugnon, a novella by Romain Rolland.
D.N.
RUSSIAN SPOKEN HERE
“Russian Spoken Here” (Govoryat po-russki) dates from 1923, most likely early in the year. It remained unpublished until the current collections.
The “Meyn Ried” mentioned in the story is Thomas Mayne Reid (1818–1883), author of adventure novels. “Mister Ulyanov” is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who entered history under the stage name V. I. Lenin. The GPU, originally known as the Cheka, and later designated by the acronyms NKVD, MVD, and KGB, was the Bolshevik political secret police. Among the books the “prisoner” was allowed to read were the Fables of Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (1768–1844) and Prince Serebryanïy, a popular historical novel by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817–1875).
D.N.
SOUNDS
“Sounds” (Zvuki) was written in September 1923 and was published in my English translation in The New Yorker on August 14, 1995, and now in the current collections.
Nabokov did not resume writing stories until lanuary 1923, two years after the publication of “The Wood-Sprite.” In the interim he had finished his studies at Cambridge (in the summer of 1922). He was now living in Berlin, where his family had moved in October 1920, and where his father was assassinated on March 28, 1922. At the time he was composing “Sounds,” Nabokov published two volumes of poetry and his Russian version of Alice in Wonderland. The story is, among other things, a transmuted evocation of a youthful love affair, almost certainly with his cousin Tatiana Evghenievna Segelkranz (the likely spelling of her military husband’s name, cited incorrectly elsewhere), née Rausch, who also makes an appearance in The Gift.
D.N.
WINGSTROKE
“Wingstroke” (Udar krïla), written in October 1923, was published in Russkoye Ekho (The Russian Echo), an émigré periodical in Berlin, in January 1924, and now in the current collections. Although the story is set in Zermatt, it refracts the recollection of a brief vacation Nabokov had taken in St. Moritz in December 1921, with his Cambridge friend Bobby de Calry.
We learn from a letter to his mother (who had moved to Prague late in 1923 while Nabokov remained in Berlin, where, in April 1924, he married Vera Slonim) that, in December 1924, he sent her a “continuation” of “Wingstroke,” presumably in published form. To date, no trace of this piece has been found. My English translation was published, with one differently worded sentence, under the titlle “Wing-beat” in The Yale Review, vol. 80, nos. 1 and 2, April 1992.
D.N.
GODS
Nabokov wrote “Gods” (Bogi) in October 1923. The story remained unpublished until the current collections.
Nabokov was working on what is probably his most important play, the five-act Traghediya Gospodina Morna (The Tragedy of Mr. Morn), soon to be published for the first time by Ardis Press.
D.N.
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sp; A MATTER OF CHANCE
“Sluchaynost’,” one of my earliest tales, written at the beginning of 1924, in the last afterglow of my bachelor life, was rejected by the Berlin émigré daily Rul’ (“We don’t print anecdotes about cocainists,” said the editor, in exactly the same tone of voice in which, thirty years later, Ross of The New Yorker was to say, “We don’t print acrostics,” when rejecting “The Vane Sisters”) and sent, with the assistance of a good friend, and a remarkable writer, Ivan Lukash, to the Rigan Segodnya, a more eclectic emigre organ, which published it on June 22, 1924. I would never have traced it again had it not been rediscovered by Andrew Field a few years ago.
V.N., Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories, 1975
THE SEAPORT
“The Seaport” (Port), written during the first months of 1924, appeared in Rul’ on December 24 of the same year, and now in the current collections. This story was later published, with a handful of minor changes, in Vozvrashchenie Chorba (The Return of Chorb, Slovo, Berlin, 1930), Nabokov’s first collection of short stories, which also included twenty-four poems. “The Seaport” has, in part, an autobiographical genesis: in July 1923, during a visit to Marseilles, Nabokov was fascinated by a Russian restaurant that he visited numerous times and where, among other things, two Russian sailors proposed that he embark for Indochina.