He experienced a keen sense of happiness that she had been there to see him win and he waited avidly for the chessboards and all these noisy people to disappear in order the sooner to caress her. But the chessboards did not disappear immediately, and even when the bright dining room appeared together with its huge brassy bright samovar, indistinct regular squares showed through the white tablecloth and similar squares—chocolate and cream ones—were indubitably there on the frosted cake. His fiancée’s mother met him with the same condescending, slightly ironic indulgence with which she had greeted him the night before, when her appearance had put an end to the conversation about chess—and the person with whom he had talked, her husband evidently, now started to tell him what a model country estate he had owned in Russia. “Let’s go to your room,” whispered Luzhin hoarsely to his betrothed and she bit her lip and looked surprised. “Let’s go,” he repeated.
But she adroitly placed some heavenly raspberry jam on his glass plate and this sticky, dazzlingly red sweetness, which ran over the tongue like granular fire and gummed the teeth with fragrant sugar, took immediate effect. “Merci, merci,” Luzhin bowed as he was served a second helping, and amid deathly silence smacked his lips again, licking his spoon that was still hot from the tea for fear of losing even a single drop of the entrancing syrup. And when finally he got his own way and found himself alone with her, not, it is true, in her room, but in the gaudy drawing room, he drew her to him and sat down heavily, holding her by the wrists, but she silently freed herself, circled and sat down on a hassock. “I have not at all made up my mind yet whether to marry you,” she said. “Remember that.” “Everything’s decided,” said Luzhin. “If they won’t let you, we’ll use force to make them sign.” “Sign what?” she asked with surprise. “I don’t know … But it seems we need some kind of signature or other.” “Stupid, stupid,” she repeated several times. “Impenetrable and incorrigible stupidity.
What am I to do with you, what course of action shall I take with you? … And how tired you look. I’m sure it’s bad for you to play so much.” “Ach wo,” said Luzhin, “a couple of little games.” “And at night you keep thinking. You mustn’t do it. It’s already late you know. Go home. You need sleep, that’s what.” He remained sitting on the striped sofa, however, and she thought in dismay about the kind of conversations they had—a poke here, a dab there, and disconnected words. And not once so far had he kissed her properly, all was bizarre and distorted, and when he touched her, not a single movement of his resembled a normal human embrace. But that forlorn devotion in his eyes, that mysterious light that had illumined him when he bent over the chessboard …
And the following day she again felt the urge to visit those silent premises on the second floor of a large café on a narrow, noisy street. This time Luzhin noticed her at once: he was conversing in low tones with a broad-shouldered, clean-shaven man, whose short-cropped hair seemed to have been closely fitted to his head and came down onto his forehead in a small peak; his thick lips were infolding and sucking an extinguished cigar.
An artist who had been sent by his newspaper, lifting and lowering his face like a brass doll with a movable head, was swiftly sketching the profile with the cigar. Glancing at his pad as she passed, she saw next to this rudimentary Turati an already completed Luzhin—exaggeratedly doleful nose, dark-stippled double chin, and on the temple that familiar lock, which she called a curl. Turati sat down to play with a German grandmaster and Luzhin came up to her and gloomily, with a guilty smile, said something long and clumsy.
She realized with surprise that he was asking her to leave. “I’m glad, I’m very glad post factum,” explained Luzhin pleadingly, “but for the moment … for the moment it somehow disturbs me.” He followed her with his eyes as she obediently withdrew between the rows of chess tables and after nodding briskly to himself, he made his way to the board where his new opponent was already seating himself, a grizzled Englishman who played with invariable sangfroid and invariably lost. Neither was he lucky this time and Luzhin again won a point, and the next day he achieved a draw and then again won—and by that time he no longer felt distinctly the boundary between chess and his fiancée’s home, as if movement had been speeded up, and what at first had seemed an alternation of strips was now a flicker.
He moved in step with Turati. Turati scored a point and he scored a point; Turati scored a half and he scored a half. Thus they proceeded with their separate games, as if mounting the sides of an isosceles triangle and destined at the decisive moment to meet at the apex.
The nights were somehow bumpy. He just could not manage to force himself not to think of chess, and although he felt drowsy, sleep could find no way into his brain; it searched for a loophole, but every entrance was guarded by a chess sentry and he had the agonizing feeling that sleep was just there, close by, but on the outside of his brain: the Luzhin who was wearily scattered around the room slumbered, but the Luzhin who visualized a chessboard stayed awake and was unable to merge with his happy double.
But still worse—after each session of the tournament it was with ever greater difficulty that he crawled out of the world of chess concepts, so that an unpleasant split began to appear even in daytime. After a three-hour game his head ached strangely, not all of it but in parts, in black squares of pain, and for a while he could not find the door, which was obscured by a black spot, nor could he remember the address of the cherished house: luckily his pocket still preserved that old postcard, folded in two and already tearing along the crease (“… vas vecherom—” “expecting you this evening.”). He still continued to feel joy when he entered this house filled with Russian toys, but the joy, too, was spotty.
Once, on a day with no play, he came earlier than usual when only the mother was at home. She decided to continue the conversation that had taken place at sunset in the beech coppice, and overestimating her own highly prized ability to speak her mind (for which the young men who visited their house considered her tremendously intelligent and were very much afraid of her), she swooped on Luzhin, lecturing him first of all on the cigarette butts found in all the vases and even in the jaws of the spread-eagled bear, and then suggested that there and then, this Saturday evening, he take a bath at their place after her husband had finished his own weekly ablutions. “I dare say you don’t wash often,” she said without circumlocution. “Not too often? Admit it, now.”
Luzhin gloomily shrugged his shoulders looking at the floor, where a slight movement was taking place perceptible to him alone, an evil differentiation of shadows. “And in general,” she continued, “you must pull yourself together.” And having thus put her hearer in the right mood she went on to the main subject. “Tell me,” she asked, “I imagine you’ve managed to debauch my little girl thoroughly? People like you are great lechers. But my daughter is chaste, not like today’s girls. Tell me, you’re a lecher, aren’t you?”
“No, madame,” replied Luzhin with a sigh, and then he frowned and quickly drew the sole of his shoe over the floor, obliterating a certain grouping that was already quite distinct. “Why, I don’t know you at all,” continued the swift, sonorous voice. “I shall have to make inquiries about you—yes, yes, inquiries—to see if you haven’t one of those special diseases.”
“Shortness of breath,” said Luzhin, “and also a bit of rheumatism.” “I’m not talking about that,” she interrupted crossly. “It’s a serious matter. You evidently consider yourself engaged, you come here and you spend time alone with her. But I don’t think there can be any talk of marriage for a while.” “And last year I had the piles,” said Luzhin dully. “Listen, I’m talking to you about extremely important things. You would probably like to get married today, right away.
I know you. Then she’ll be going about with a big belly, you’ll brutalize her immediately.” Having stamped out a shadow in one place, Luzhin saw with despair that far from where he was sitting a new combination was taking shape on the floor. “If you are in the least interested in my opinion then I must tell you I consider this match ridiculous. You probably think my husband will support you. Admit it: you do think that?” “I am in straitened circumstances,” said Luzhin. “I would need very little.
And a magazine has offered me to edit its chess section …” Here the nuisances on the floor became so brazen that Luzhin involuntarily put out a hand to remove shadow’s King from the threat of light’s Pawn. From that day on he avoided sitting in that drawing room, where there were too many knickknacks of polished wood that assumed very definite features if you looked at them long enough. His fiancée noticed that
