On the way to her parents, walking arm in arm with Luzhin along the sunny, frost-touched street, she said that within a week at the outside they should be on their way, and before this they should definitely pay a visit to the forlorn grave. Then she outlined their schedule for the week—passports, dentist, shopping, a farewell party, and—on Friday—a trip to the cemetery. It was cold in her mother’s apartment, not like it had been a month ago, but nonetheless cold, and her mother kept wrapping herself in a remarkable shawl with pictures of peonies amid verdure on it, twitching her shoulders with a shiver as she did so.
Her father arrived during dinner and asked for some vodka and rubbed his hands with a dry rustling sound. And for the first time Mrs. Luzhin noticed how sad and empty it was in these echoing rooms, and she noticed that her father’s jollity was just as forced as her mother’s smile, and that both of them were already old and very lonely and did not like poor Luzhin and were trying not to refer to the Luzhins’ impending departure. She recalled all the horrible things that had been said about her fiancé, the sinister warnings, and her mother’s cry: “He’ll cut you up into pieces, he’ll burn you in the stove …” And the net result had been something very peaceful and melancholy, and all smiled with dead smiles—the falsely swaggering peasant women in the pictures, the oval mirrors, the Berlin samovar, the four people at table.
A lull, thought Luzhin that day. A lull, but with hidden preparations. It wants to take me unawares. Attention, attention. Concentrate and keep watch.
All his thoughts lately had been of a chess nature but he was still holding on—he had forbidden himself to think again of the interrupted game with Turati and did not open the cherished numbers of the newspaper—and even so he was able to think only in chess images and his mind worked as if he were sitting at a chessboard. Sometimes in his dreams he swore to the doctor with the agate eyes that he was not playing chess—he had merely set out the pieces once on a pocket board and glanced at two or three games printed in the newspapers—simply for lack of something to do. And even these lapses had not been his fault, but represented a series of moves in the general combination that was skillfully repeating an enigmatic theme. It was difficult, extremely difficult, to foresee the next repetition in advance, but just a little more and everything would become clear and perhaps a defense could be found.…
But the next move was prepared very slowly. The lull continued for two or three days; Luzhin was photographed for his passport, and the photographer took him by the chin, turned his face slightly to one side, asked him to open his mouth wide and drilled his tooth with a tense buzzing. The buzzing ceased, the dentist looked for something on a glass shelf, found it, rubber-stamped Luzhin’s passport and wrote with lightning-quick movements of the pen. “There,” he said, handing over a document on which two rows of teeth were drawn, and two teeth bore inked-in little crosses. There was nothing suspicious in all this and the cunning lull continued until Thursday. And on Thursday, Luzhin understood everything.
Already the day before he had thought of an interesting device, a device with which he could, perhaps, foil the designs of his mysterious opponent. The device consisted in voluntarily committing some absurd unexpected act that would be outside the systematic order of life, thus confusing the sequence of moves planned by his opponent. It was an experimental defense, a defense, so to say, at random—but Luzhin, crazed with terror before the inevitability of the next move, was able to find nothing better.
So on Thursday afternoon, while accompanying his wife and mother-in-law round the stores, he suddenly stopped and exclaimed: “The dentist. I forgot the dentist.” “Nonsense, Luzhin,” said his wife. “Why, yesterday he said that everything was done.” “Uncomfortable,” said Luzhin and raised a finger. “If the filling feels uncomfortable … It was said that if it feels uncomfortable I should come punctually at four.
It feels uncomfortable. It is ten minutes to four.” “You’ve got something wrong,” smiled his wife, “but of course you must go if it hurts. And then go home. I’ll come around six.” “Have supper with us,” said her mother with an entreaty in her voice. “No, we have guests this evening,” said Mrs. Luzhin, “guests whom you don’t like.” Luzhin waved his cane in sign of farewell and climbed into a taxi, bending his back roundly. “A small maneuver,” he chuckled, and feeling hot, unbuttoned his overcoat. After the very first turn he stopped the taxi, paid, and set off home at a leisurely pace.
And here it suddenly seemed to him that he had done all this once before and he was so frightened that he turned into the first available store, deciding to outsmart his opponent with a new surprise. The store turned out to be a hairdresser’s, and a ladies’ one at that. Luzhin, looking around him, came to a halt, and a smiling woman asked him what he wanted. “To buy …” said Luzhin, continuing to look around.
At this point he caught sight of a wax bust and pointed to it with his cane (an unexpected move, a magnificent move). “That’s not for sale,” said the woman. “Twenty marks,” said Luzhin and took out his pocketbook. “You want to buy that dummy?” asked the woman unbelievingly, and somebody else came up. “Yes,” said Luzhin and began to examine the waxen face. “Careful,” he whispered to himself, “I may be tumbling into a trap!” The wax lady’s look, her pink nostrils—this also had happened before.
“A joke,” said Luzhin and hastily left the hairdresser’s. He felt disgustingly uncomfortable and quickened his step, although there was nowhere to hurry. “Home, home,” he muttered, “there I’ll combine everything properly.” As he approached the house he noticed a large, glossy-black limousine that had stopped by the entrance. A gentleman in a bowler was asking the janitor something. The janitor, seeing Luzhin, suddenly pointed and cried: “There he is!” The gentleman turned around.
A bit swarthier, which brought out the whites of his eyes, as smartly dressed as ever, wearing an overcoat with a black fur collar and a large, white silk scarf, Valentinov strode toward Luzhin with an enchanting smile, illuminating Luzhin with this searchlight, and in the light that played on Luzhin he saw Luzhin’s pale, fat face and blinking eyelids, and at the next instant this pale face lost all expression and the hand that Valentinov pressed in both of his was completely limp. “My dear boy,” said radiant Valentinov, “I’m happy to see you. They told me you were in bed, ill, dear boy.
But that was some kind of slipup …” and in stressing the “pup” Valentinov pursed his wet, red lips and tenderly narrowed his eyes. “However, we’ll postpone the compliments till later,” he said, interrupting himself, and put on his bowler with a thump. “Let’s go. It’s a matter of exceptional importance and delay would be … fatal,” he concluded, throwing open the door of the car; after which he put his arm around Luzhin’s back and seemed to lift him from the ground and carry him off and plant him down, falling down next to him onto the low, soft seat.
On the jump seat facing them a sharp-nosed yellow-faced little man sat sideways, with his overcoat collar turned up. As soon as Valentinov had settled and crossed his legs, he resumed his conversation with this little man, a conversation that had been interrupted at a comma and now gathered speed in time with the accelerating automobile. Caustically and exhaustively he continued to bawl him out, paying no attention to Luzhin, who was sitting like a statue that had been carefully leaned against something. He had completely frozen up and heard remote, muffled Valentinov’s rumbling as if through a heavy curtain.
For the fellow with the sharp nose it was not a rumbling, but a torrent of extremely biting and insulting words; force, however, was on Valentinov’s side and the one being insulted merely sighed, and looked miserable, and picked at a grease spot on his skimpy black overcoat; and now and then, at some especially trenchant word, he would raise his eyebrows and look at Valentinov, but the latter’s flashing gaze was too much for him and he immediately shut his eyes tight and gently shook his head.
The bawling out continued to the very end of the journey and when Valentinov softly nudged Luzhin out of the car and got out himself slamming the door behind him, the crushed little man continued to sit inside and the automobile immediately carried him on, and although there was lots of room now he remained dejectedly hunched up on the little jump seat.
Luzhin meanwhile fixed his motionless and expressionless gaze on an eggshell-white plaque with a black inscription, VERITAS, but Valentinov immediately swept him farther and lowered him into an armchair of the club variety that was even more tenacious and quaggy than the car seat.
At this moment someone called Valentinov in
