Luzhin came to his senses in complete darkness and for the first moment did not realize where he was or what was going on around him. An invisible creature was fidgeting and grunting close by, and suddenly the orange shade lit up again with transparent light, and a pale little boy with a shaven head was kneeling and straightening out the cord. Luzhin started and banged the board shut. His terrible little double, little Luzhin, for whom the chess pieces had been set out, crawled over the carpet on his knees.… All this had happened once before.… And again he had been caught, had not understood how exactly the repetition of a familiar theme would come out in practice.
The following instant everything regained its balance: Ivan, snuffling, clambered back onto the couch; in the slight gloom beyond the orange light floated Luzhin’s study, swaying gently; the red morocco notebook lay innocently on the carpet—but Luzhin knew that this was all a trick, the combination had still not completely developed, and soon a new, dire repetition would manifest itself.
Bending down quickly he picked up and thrust into his pocket the material symbol of what had so voluptuously and so horribly possessed his imagination again, and he wondered where would be a surer place to hide it; but just then voices were heard, his wife came in with their visitor and both swam toward him as if through cigarette smoke. “Ivan, get up, it’s time to go. Yes, yes, my dear, I still have so much to pack,” said the lady and then came up to Luzhin and began to take leave of him. “Very pleased to have made your acquaintance,” she said, and between the words managed to think what she had more than once thought before: What a dunderhead, what a queer fish! “Very pleased.
Now I can tell your aunt I’ve seen her little chess player, big now, and famous—” “You must not fail to come and see us on your way back,” interrupted Mrs. Luzhin hastily and loudly, for the first time looking with hatred at the woman’s smiling, wax-red lips and mercilessly stupid eyes. “But of course, it goes without saying.
Ivan, get up and say good-bye!” Ivan carried this out with some reluctance and they all went into the entrance hall. “There’s always a lot of fuss with letting people out here in Berlin,” she said ironically, watching Mrs. Luzhin take the keys from the pier table. “No, we have an elevator,” replied Mrs. Luzhin irrelevantly, yearning with fierce impatience for the lady’s departure, and she signed to Luzhin with her eyebrow to offer the sealskin coat.
Luzhin instead took down the child’s overcoat from the hallstand … but fortunately the maid turned up at this moment. “Good-bye, good-bye,” said Mrs. Luzhin, standing in the doorway while the departing visitors, accompanied by the maid, arranged themselves in the elevator. From behind his wife’s shoulder Luzhin saw Ivan clamber onto the little bench but then the doors closed and the elevator sank down in its iron cage.
Mrs. Luzhin ran into the study and fell face down on the couch. He sat beside her and began deep down inside him, with difficulty, to produce, glue together and sew up a smile, preparing it for the moment when his wife turned to him. His wife turned. The smile came out completely successfully. “Ouf,” sighed Mrs. Luzhin, “we’re finally rid of them,” and quickly embracing her husband, she began to kiss him—on the right eye, then the chin, then the left ear—observing a strict sequence that had once been approved by him. “Well, cheer up, cheer up,” she repeated. “That madam’s gone away now, disappeared.” “Disappeared,” said Luzhin obediently and with a sigh kissed the hand that was patting his neck. “What tenderness,” whispered his wife, “ah, what sweet tenderness …”
It was time to go to bed, she went to undress, and Luzhin walked through all three rooms, looking for a place to hide the pocket chess set. Everywhere was insecure. The most unexpected places were invaded in the mornings by the snout of that rapacious vacuum cleaner.
It is difficult, difficult to hide a thing: the other things are jealous and inhospitable, holding on firmly to their places and not allowing a homeless object, escaping pursuit, into a single cranny. Thus he did not manage to hide the morocco notebook that night, and subsequently he decided not to hide it at all but simply to get rid of it, but this also proved to be far from easy; so it remained in his lining, and only after several months, when all danger was long, long past, only then was the pocket chess set found again, and by then its origin was obscure.
Chapter 14
To herself Mrs. Luzhin admitted that the three-week visit of the lady from Russia had not passed without leaving a trace. The visitor’s opinions were false and stupid—but how prove it? She was horrified that in recent years she had taken so little interest in the science of exile, passively accepting the glossy, varnished and gold-lettered views of her parents and paying no attention to the speeches she heard at émigré political meetings, which it had once been the thing to attend. It occurred to her that Luzhin too, perhaps, would have a taste for political matters—would perhaps revel in them, the way millions of other intelligent people do. And a new occupation for Luzhin was essential.
He had become strange, the familiar sullenness had reappeared, and there often was in his eyes a kind of slippery expression, as if he were hiding something from her. She was worried that he had still not found a completely engrossing hobby and she reproached herself for the narrowness of her mental vision and her inability to find the sphere, the idea, the object which would provide work and food for Luzhin’s inactive talents. She knew she had to hurry, and that every unoccupied minute in Luzhin’s life was a loophole for phantoms. Before departing for picturesque lands it was necessary to find Luzhin an interesting game, and only afterwards to resort to the balsam of travel, that decisive factor used by romantic millionaires to cure their spleen.
She began with newspapers. She took out subscriptions to Znamya (The Banner), Rossianin (The Russian), Zarubezhny Golos (The Voice of Exile), Ob’yedinyenie (Union) and Klich (The Clarion), bought the latest numbers of émigré magazines and—for comparison—several Soviet magazines and newspapers. It was decided that every day after dinner they would read to one another aloud. Noticing that some newspapers printed a chess section, she wondered at first whether to cut out and destroy these bits, but she feared by this to insult Luzhin. Once or twice, as examples of interesting play, old games of Luzhin’s would turn up.
This was disagreeable and dangerous. She was unable to hide the issues with chess sections in them because Luzhin collected the newspapers with the aim of later binding them in the form of large books. Whenever he opened a newspaper which proved to contain a smudgy chess diagram she watched the expression on his face, but he felt her glance and merely skipped over it. And she did not know with what sinful impatience he awaited those Thursdays or Mondays when the chess section appeared, and did not know with what curiosity he looked through the printed games in her absence.
In the case of chess problems he would glance sideways at the diagram and, with this glance grasping the disposition of the pieces, would memorize the problem instantly and then solve it in his mind while his wife read the editorial aloud to him. “… The whole activity comes down to a fundamental transformation and augmentation, which are designed to insure …” read his wife in an even voice. (An interesting construction, thought Luzhin.
Black’s Queen is completely free.) “… draws a clear distinction between their vital interests, moreover it would not be superfluous to note that the Achilles heel of this punitive hand …” (Black has an obvious defense against the threat on h7, thought Luzhin, and smiled mechanically when his wife, interrupting her reading for a moment, said suddenly in a low voice: “I don’t understand what he means.”) “If in this respect,” she continued, “nothing is respected …” (Oh, splendid! exclaimed Luzhin mentally, finding the key to the problem—a bewitchingly elegant sacrifice.) “… and disaster is not far away,” his wife concluded the article, and having finished, sighed.
The thing was that the more closely she read the newspapers the more bored she grew, and a fog of words and metaphors, suppositions and arguments was used to obscure the clear truth, which she always felt but was never able to express. But when she turned to the newspapers of the other world, Soviet newspapers, her boredom then knew no bounds. From them came the chill of a sepulchral countinghouse, the boredom of flyblown offices, and they reminded her somehow of the lifeless features of a certain little official in
