Vladimir Nabokov. Russian Spoken Here
© Copyright 1923 by Vladimir Nabokov
© Copyright by Dmitry Nabokov, english translation
Martin Martinich's tobacco shop is located in a corner
building. No wonder tobacco shops have a predilection for
corners, for Martin's business is booming. The window is of
modest size, but well arranged. Small mirrors make the display
come alive. At the bottom, amid the hollows of hilly azure
velvet, nestles a motley of cigarette boxes with names couched
in the glossy international dialect that serves for hotel names
as well; higher up, rows of cigars grin in their lightweight
boxes.
In his day Martin was a well-off landowner. He is famed in
my childhood recollections for a remarkable tractor, while his
son Petya and I succumbed simultaneously to Meyn Ried and
scarlet fever, so that now, after fifteen years chock-full of
all kinds of things, I enjoyed stopping by the tobacco shop on
that lively corner where Martin sold his wares.
Since last year, moreover, we have more than reminiscences
in common. Martin has a secret, and I have been made party to
that secret. "So, everything as usual?" I ask in a whisper, and
he, glancing over his shoulder, replies just as softly, "Yes,
thank heaven, all is quiet." The secret is a quite
extraordinary one. I recall how I was leaving for Paris and
stayed at Martin's till evening the day before. A man's soul
can be compared to a department store and his eyes to twin
display windows. Judging by Martin's eyes, warm, brown tints
were in fashion. Judging by those eyes, the merchandise inside
his soul was of superb quality. And what a luxuriant beard,
fairly glistening with robust Russian gray. And his shoulders,
his stature, his mien. . . . At one time they used to say he
could slit a handkerchief with a sword--one of the exploits of
Richard Coeur de Lion. Now a fellow emigre would say with envy,
"The man did not give in!" His wife was a puffy, gentle old
woman with a mole by her left nostril. Ever since the time of
revolutionary ordeals her face had had a touching tic: she
would give quick sidewise glances skyward. Petya had the same
imposing physique as his father. I was fond of his
mild-mannered glumness and unexpected humor. He had a large,
flaccid face (about which his father used to say, "What a
mug--three days would not suffice to circumnavigate it") and
reddish-brown, permanently tousled hair. Petya owned a tiny
cinema in a sparsely populated part of town, which brought a
very modest income. And there we have the whole family.
I spent that day before my departure sitting by the
counter and watching Martin receive his customers--first he
would lean lightly, with two fingers, on the countertop, then
step to the shelves, produce a box with a flourish, and ask, as
he opened it with his thumbnail, "Einen Rauchen?"--I
remember that day for a special reason: Petya suddenly came in
from the street, disheveled and livid with rage, Martin's niece
had decided to return to her mother in Moscow, and Petya had
just been to see the diplomatic representatives. While one of
the representatives was giving him some information, another,
who was obviously involved with the government political
directorate, whispered barely audibly, "All kinds of White
Guard scum keep hanging around."
"I could have made mincemeat of him," said Petya, slamming
his fist into his palm, "but unfortunately I could not forget
about my aunt in Moscow."
"You already have a peccadillo or two on your conscience,"
good-naturedly rumbled Martin. He was alluding to a most
amusing incident. Not long ago, on his nameday, Petya had
visited the Soviet bookstore, whose presence blemishes one of
Berlin's most charming streets. They sell not only books there,
but also various handmade bric-a-brac. Petya selected a hammer
adorned with poppies and emblazoned with an inscription typical
for a Bolshevik hammer. The clerk inquired if he would like
something else. Petya said, "Yes, I would," nodding at a small
plaster bust of Mister Ulyanov. He paid fifteen marks for bust
and hammer, whereupon, without a word, right there on the
counter, he popped that bust with that hammer, and with such
force that Mister Ulyanov disintegrated.
I was fond of that story, just as I was fond, for
instance, of the dear silly sayings from unforgettable
childhood that warm the cockles of one's heart. Martin's words
made me glance with a laugh at Petya. But Petya jerked his
shoulder sullenly and scowled. Martin rummaged in the drawer
and proffered him the most expensive cigarette in the shop. But
even this did not dispel Petya's gloom.
I returned to Berlin a half-year later. One Sunday morning
I felt an urge to see Martin. On weekdays you could get through
via the shop, since his apartment--three rooms and kitchen--was
directly behind it. But of course on a Sunday morning the shop
was closed, and the window had shut its grated visor. I glanced
rapidly through the grating at the red and gold boxes, at the
swarthy cigars, at the modest inscription in a corner: "Russian
spoken here," remarked that the display had in some way grown
even gayer, and walked through the courtyard to Martin's place.
Strange thing--Martin himself appeared to me even jollier,
jauntier, more radiant than before. And Petya was downright
unrecognizable: his oily, shaggy locks were combed back, a
broad, vaguely bashful smile did not leave his lips, he kept a
kind of sated silence, and a curious, joyous preoccupation, as
if he carried a precious cargo within him, softened his every
movement. Only the mother was pale as ever, and the same
touching tic flashed across her face like faint summer
lightning. We sat in their neat parlor, and I knew that the
other two rooms--Petya's bedroom and that of his parents--were
just as cozy and clean, and I found that an agreeable thought.
I sipped tea with lemon, listened to Martin's mellifluous
speech, and I could not rid myself of the impression that
something new had appeared in their apartment, some kind of
joyous, mysterious palpitation, as happens, for instance, in a
home where there is a young mother-to-be. Once or twice Martin
glanced with a preoccupied air at his son, whereupon the other
would promptly rise, leave the room, and, on his return, nod
discreetly toward his father, as if to say everything was going
splendidly.
There was also something new and, to me, enigmatic in the
old man's conversation. We were talking about Paris and the
French, and suddenly he inquired, "Tell me, my friend, what's
the largest prison in Paris?" I replied I didn't know and
started telling him about a French revue that featured
blue-painted women.
"You think that's something!" interrupted Martin. "They
say, for example, that women scratch the plaster off the walls
in prison and use it to powder their faces, necks, or
whatever." In confirmation of his words he fetched from his
bedroom a thick tome by a German criminologist and located in
it a chapter about the routine of prison life. I tried changing
the subject, but, no matter what theme I selected, Martin
steered it with artful convolutions so that suddenly we would
find ourselves discussing the humaneness of life imprisonment
as opposed to execution, or the ingenious methods invented by
criminals to break out into the free world.
I was puzzled. Petya, who loved anything mechanical, was
picking with a penknife at the springs of his watch and
chuckling to himself. His mother worked at her needlepoint, now
and then nudging the toast or the jam toward me. Martin,
clutching his disheveled beard with all five fingers, gave me a
sidelong flash of his tawny eye, and suddenly something within
him let go. He banged the palm of his hand on the table and
turned to his son. "I can't stand it any longer, Petya--I'm
going to tell him everything before I burst. " Petya nodded
silently. Martin's wife was getting up to go to the kitchen.
"What a chatterbox you are," she said, shaking her head
indulgently. Martin placed his hand on my shoulder, gave me
such a shake that, had I been an apple tree in the garden, the
apples would literally have come tumbling off me, and glanced
into my face. "I'm warning you," he said. "I'm about to tell
you such a secret, such a secret. . . that I just don't know.
Mind you--mum's the word! Understand?"
And., leaning close to me, bathing me in the odor
of tobacco and his own pungent old-man smell, Martin told me a
truly remarkable tale.
"It happened," began Martin, "shortly after your
departure. In walked a customer. He had obviously not noticed
the sign in the window, for he addressed me in German. Let me
emphasize this: if he had noticed the sign he would not have
entered a modest emigre shop. I recognized him right off as a
Russian by his pronunciation. Had a Russian mug too. I, of
course, launched into Russian, asked him what price range, what
kind. He gave me a look of disagreeable surprise: 'What made
you think I was Russian? ' I gave him a perfectly friendly
answer, as I recall, and began counting out his cigarettes. At
that moment Petya entered. When he saw my customer he said with
utter calm, 'Now here's a pleasant encounter. ' Then my Petya
walks up close to him and bangs him on the cheek with his fist.
The other froze. As Petya explained to me later, what had
happened was not )just a. knockout with the victim crumpling to
the floor, but a special kind of knockout: it rums out Petya
had delivered a delayed-action punch, and the man went out on
his feet. And looked as if he were sleeping standing up. Then
he started slowly tilting back like a tower. Here Petya walked
around behind him and caught him under the armpits. It was all
highly unexpected. Petya. said, 'Give me a hand. Dad. ' I asked
what he thought he was doing. Petya only repeated, 'Give me a
hand. ' I know my Petya well--no point in smirking, Petya--and
know he has his feet on the ground, ponders his actions, and
does not knock people unconscious for nothing. We dragged the
unconscious one from the shop into the corridor and on to
Petya's room. Right then I heard a ring-- someone had stepped
into the shop. Good thing, of course, that it hadn't happened
earlier. Back into the shop I went, made my sale, then,
luckily, my wife arrived with the shopping, and I immediately
put her to work at the counter while I, without a word, went
lickety-split into Petya's room. The man was lying with eyes
closed on the floor, while Petya was sitting at his table,
examining in a pensive kind of way certain objects like that
large leather cigar case, half a dozen obscene postcards, a
wallet, a passport, an old but apparently efficient revolver.
He explained right away: as I'm sure you have imagined, these
items came from the man's pockets, and the man himself was none
other than the representative--you remember Petya's story--who
made the crack about the White scum, yes, yes, the very same
one! And, judging by certain papers, he was a GPU man if I ever
saw one. 'Well and good, ' I say to Petya, 'so you've punched a
guy in the mug. Whether he deserved it or not is a different
matter, but please explain to me, what do you intend to do now?
Evidently you forgot all about your aunt in Moscow. ' 'Yes, I
did, ' said Petya. 'We must think of something. '
"And we did. First we got hold of some stout rope, and
plugged his mouth with a towel. While we were working on him he
came to and opened one eye. Upon closer examination, let me
tell you, the mug turned out to be not only repulsive but
stupid as well--some kind of mange on his forehead, mustache,
bulbous nose. Leaving him lying on the floor, Petya and I
settled down comfortably nearby and started a judicial inquiry.
We debated for a good while. We were concerned not so much with
the affront itself--that was a trifle, of course--as much as
with his entire profession, so to speak, and with the deeds he
had committed in Russia. The defendant was allowed to have the
last word. When we relieved his mouth of the towel, he gave a
kind of moan, gagged, but said nothing except 'You wait, you
just wait. ...' The towel was retied, and the session resumed.
The votes were split at first. Petya demanded the death
sentence. I found that he deserved to die, but proposed
substituting life imprisonment for execution. Petya thought it
over and concurred. I added that although he had certainly
committed crimes, we were unable to ascertain this; that his
employment in itself alone constituted a crime; that our duty
was limited to rendering him harmless, nothing more. Now listen
to the rest. "We have a bathroom at the end of the corridor.
Dark, very dark little room, with an enameled iron bathtub. The
water goes on strike pretty often. There is an occasional
cockroach. The room is so dark because the window is extremely
narrow and is situated right under the ceiling, and besides,
right opposite the window, three feet away or less, there's a
good, solid brick wall. And it was here in this nook that we
decided to keep the prisoner. It was Petya's idea--yes, yes,
Petya, give Caesar his due. First of all, of course, the cell
had to be prepared. We began by dragging the prisoner into the
corridor so he would be close by while we worked. And here my
wife, who had just locked up the shop for the night and was on
her way to the kitchen, saw us. She was amazed, even indignant,
but then understood our reasoning. Docile girl. Petya began by
dismembering a stout table we had in the kitchen--knocked off
its legs and used the resulting board to hammer shut the
bathroom window. Then he unscrewed the taps, removed the
cylindrical water heater, and laid a mattress on the bathroom
floor. Of course next day we added various improvements: we
changed the lock, installed a deadbolt, reinforced the window
board with metal--and all of it, of course, without making too
much noise. As you know, we have no neighbors, but nonetheless
it behooved us to act cautiously. The result was a real prison
cell, and there we put the GPU chap. We undid the rope, untied
the towel, warned him that if he started yelling we would
reswaddle him, and for a long time; then, satisfied that he had
understood for whom the mattress had been placed in the
bathtub, we locked the door and, taking turns, stood guard all
night.
"That moment marked the beginning of a new life for us. I
was no longer simply Martin Martinich, but Martin Martinich the
head warden. At first the inmate was so stunned by what had
happened that his behavior was subdued. Soon, however, he
reverted to a normal state and, when we brought his dinner,
launched into a hurricane of foul language. I cannot repeat the
man's obscenities; I shall limit myself to saying that he
placed my dear late mother in the most curious situations. It
was decided to inculcate in him thoroughly the nature of his
legal status. I explained that he would remain imprisoned until
the end of his days; that if I died first I would transmit him
to Petya like a bequest; that my son in his turn would transmit
him to my future grandson and so forth, causing him to become a
kind of family tradition. A family jewel. I mentioned in
passing that, in the unlikely eventuality of our having to move
to a different Berlin flat, he would be tied up, placed in a
special trunk, and would make the move with us easy as pie. I
went on to explain to him that in one case only would he be
granted amnesty. Namely, he would be released the day the
Bolshevik bubble burst. Finally I promised that he would be
well fed--far better than when, in my time, I had been locked
up by the Cheka--and that, by way of special privilege, he
would receive books. And in fact, to this day I don't believe
he has once complained about the food. True, at first Petya
proposed that he be fed dried roach, but search as he might,
that Soviet fish was unavailable in Berlin. We are obliged to
give him bourgeois food. Exactly at eight every morning Petya
and I go in and place by his tub a bowl of hot soup with meat
and a loaf of gray bread. At the same time we take out the
chamber pot, a clever apparatus we acquired just for him. At
three he gets a glass of tea, at seven some more soup. This
nutritional system is modeled on the one in use in the best
European jails.
"The books were more of a problem. We held a family
council for starters, and stopped at three titles: Prince
Serebryaniy, Krylov's Fables, and Around the
World in Eighty Days. He announced that he would not read
those 'White Guard pamphlets, ' but we left him the books, and
we have every reason to believe that he read them with
pleasure.
"His mood was changeable. He grew quiet. Evidently he was
cooking up something. Maybe he hoped the police would start
looking for him. We checked the papers, but there was not a
word about the vanished Cheka agent. Most likely the other
representatives had decided the man had simply defected, and
had preferred to bury the affair. To this pensive period
belongs his attempt to slip away, or at least to get word to
the outside world. He trudged about his cell, probably reached
for the window, tried to pry the planks loose, tried pounding,
but we made some threat or other and the pounding ceased. And
once, when Petya went in there alone, the man lunged at him.
Petya grabbed him in a gentle bear hug and sat him back in the
tub. After this occurrence he underwent another change, became
very good-natured, even joked on occasion, and finally
attempted to bribe us. He offered us an enormous sum, promising
to obtain it through somebody. When this did not help either,
he started whimpering, then went back to swearing worse than
before. At the moment he is at a stage of grim submissiveness,
which. I'm afraid, bodes no good.
"We take him for a daily walk in the corridor, and twice a
week we air him out by an open window; naturally we take all
necessary precautions to prevent him from yelling. On Saturdays
he takes a bath. We ourselves have to wash in the kitchen. On
Sundays I give him short lectures and let him smoke three
cigarettes--in my presence, of course. What are these lectures
about? All sorts of things. Pushkin, for instance, or Ancient
Greece. Only one subject is omitted--politics. He is totally
deprived of politics. Just as if such a thing did not exist on
the face of the earth. And you know what? Ever since I have
kept one Soviet agent locked up, ever since I have served the
Fatherland, I am simply a different man. Jaunty and happy. And
business has looked up, so there is no great problem supporting
him either. He costs me twenty marks or so a month, counting
the electric bill: it's completely dark in there, so from eight
a.m. to eight p.m. one weak lightbulb is left on.
"You ask, what milieu is he from? Well, how shall I put
it. . . . He is twenty-four years old, he is a peasant, it is
unlikely that he finished even a village school, he was what is
called 'an honest Communist, ' studied only political literacy,
which in our book signifies trying to make blockheads out of
knuckleheads--that's all I know. Oh, if you want I'll show him
to you, only remember, mum's the word!"
Martin went into the corridor. Petya and I followed. The
old man in his cozy house jacket really did look like a prison
warden. He produced the key as he walked, and there was
something almost professional in the way he inserted it in the
lock. The lock crunched twice, and Martin threw open the door.
Far from being some ill-lit hole, it was a splendid, spacious
bathroom, of the kind one finds in comfortable German
dwellings. Electric light, bright yet pleasing to the eye,
burned behind a merry, ornate shade, A mirror glistened on the
left-hand wall. On the night table by the bathtub there were
books, a peeled orange on a lustrous plate, and an untouched
bottle of beer. In the white bathtub, on a mattress covered
with a clean sheet, with a large pillow under the back of his
head, lay a well-fed, bright-eyed fellow with a long growth of
beard, in a bathrobe (a hand-me-down from the master) and warm,
soft slippers. "Well, what do you say?" Martin asked me. I
found the scene comical and did not know what to answer.
"That's where the window used to be," Martin indicated with his
finger. Sure enough, the window was boarded up to perfection.
The prisoner yawned and turned toward the wall. We went
out. Martin fondled the bolt with a smile. "Fat chance he'll
ever escape," he said, and then added pensively, "I would be
curious to know, though, just how many years he'll spend in
there. . . ."