It began innocently. On the anniversary of his father-in-law’s death, Luzhin senior organized a musical evening in his apartment. He himself had little understanding of music; he nourished a secret, shameful passion for La Traviata and at concerts listened to the piano only at the beginning, after which he contented himself with watching the pianist’s hands reflected in the black varnish.
But willy-nilly he had to organize that musical evening at which works of his late father-in-law would be played: as it was the newspapers had been silent for too long—the oblivion was complete, leaden, hopeless—and his wife kept repeating with a tremulous smile that it was all intrigue, intrigue, intrigue, that even during his lifetime others had envied her father’s genius and that now they wanted to suppress his posthumous fame.
Wearing a black, open-necked dress and a superb diamond dog collar, with a permanent expression of drowsy amiability on her puffy white face, she received the guests quietly, without exclaiming, whispering to each a few rapid, soft-sounding words; but inwardly she was beset by shyness and kept looking about for her husband, who was moving back and forth with mincing steps, his starched shirtfront swelling cuirasslike out of his waistcoat—a genial, discreet gentleman in the first timid throes of literary venerability. “Stark naked again,” sighed the editor of an art magazine, taking a passing look at Phryne, who was particularly vivid as a result of the intensified light.
At this point young Luzhin cropped up under his feet and had his head stroked. The boy recoiled. “How huge he’s grown,” said a woman’s voice from behind. He hid behind someone’s tails. “No, I beg your pardon,” thundered out above his head: “Such demands must not be made on our press.” Not at all huge but on the contrary very small for his years, he wandered among the guests trying to find a quiet spot. Sometimes somebody caught him by the shoulder and asked idiotic questions. The drawing room looked especially crowded because of the gilded chairs which had been placed in rows. Someone carefully came through the door carrying a music stand.
By imperceptible stages Luzhin made his way to his father’s study, where it was dark, and settled on a divan in the corner. From the distant drawing room, through two rooms, came the tender wail of a violin.
He listened sleepily, clasping his knees and looking at a chink of lacy light between the loosely closed curtains, through which a gas-lamp from the street shone lilac-tinged white. From time to time a faint glimmer sped over the ceiling in a mysterious arc and a gleaming dot showed on the desk—he did not know what: perhaps one facet of a paperweight in the guise of a heavy crystal egg or a reflection in the glass of a desk photograph.
He had almost dozed off when suddenly he started at the ringing of a telephone on the desk, and it became immediately clear that the gleaming dot was on the telephone support. The butler came in from the dining room, turned on in passing a light which illuminated only the desk, placed the receiver to his ear, and without noticing Luzhin went out again, having carefully laid the receiver on the leather-bound blotter.
A minute later he returned accompanying a gentleman who as soon as he entered the circle of light picked up the receiver from the desk and with his other hand groped for the back of the desk chair. The servant closed the door behind him, cutting off the distant ripple of music. “Hello,” said the gentleman. Luzhin looked at him out of the darkness, fearing to move and embarrassed by the fact that a complete stranger was reclining so comfortably at his father’s desk. “No, I’ve already played,” he said looking upwards, while his white restless hand fidgeted with something on the desk.
A cab clip-clopped hollowly over the wooden pavement. “I think so,” said the gentleman. Luzhin could see his profile—an ivory nose, black hair, a bushy eyebrow. “Frankly, I don’t know why you are calling me here,” he said quietly, continuing to fiddle with something on the desk. “If it was only to check up … You silly,” he laughed and commenced to swing one foot in its patent leather shoe regularly back and forth. Then he placed the receiver very skillfully between his ear and his shoulder and replying intermittently with “yes” and “no” and “perhaps,” used both hands to pick up the object he had been playing with on the desk.
It was a polished box that had been presented to his father a few days before. Luzhin junior had still not had a chance to look inside and now he watched the gentleman’s hands with curiosity. But the latter did not open the box immediately. “Me too,” he said. “Many times, many times. Good night, little girl.” Having hung up the receiver he sighed and opened the box. However, he turned in such a way that Luzhin could see nothing from behind his black shoulder.
Luzhin moved cautiously, but a cushion slid onto the floor and the gentleman quickly looked round. “What are you doing here?” he asked, spying Luzhin in the dark corner. “My, my, how bad it is to eavesdrop!” Luzhin remained silent. “What’s your name?” asked the gentleman amiably. Luzhin slid off the divan and came closer. A number of carved figures lay closely packed in the box. “Excellent chessmen,” said the gentleman. “Does Papa play?” “I don’t know,” said Luzhin. “And do you play yourself?” Luzhin shook his head. “That’s a pity. You should learn.
At ten I was already a good player. How old are you?”
Carefully the door was opened. Luzhin senior came in—on tiptoe. He had been prepared to find the violinist still talking on the telephone and had thought to whisper very tactfully: “Continue, continue, but when you finish the audience would very much like to hear something more.” “Continue, continue,” he said mechanically and was brought up short upon seeing his son. “No, no, I’ve already finished,” replied the violinist, getting up. “Excellent chessmen. Do you play?” “Indifferently,” said Luzhin senior. (“What are you doing here? You too come and listen to the music …”) “What a game, what a game,” said the violinist, tenderly closing the box. “Combinations like melodies.
You know, I can simply hear the moves.” “In my opinion one needs great mathematical skill for chess,” said Luzhin senior. “And in that respect I … They are awaiting you, Maestro.” “I would rather have a game,” laughed the violinist, as he left the room. “The game of the gods. Infinite possibilities.” “A very ancient invention,” said Luzhin senior and looked around at his son: “What’s the matter?
Come with us!” But before reaching the drawing room Luzhin contrived to tarry in the dining room where the table was laid with refreshments. There he took a plateful of sandwiches and carried it away to his room. He ate while he undressed and then ate in bed. He had already put the light out when his mother looked in and bent over him, the diamonds around her neck glinting in the half-light. He pretended to be asleep. She went away and was a long, long time—so as not to make a noise—closing the door.
He woke up next day with a feeling of incomprehensible excitement. The April morning was bright and windy and the wooden street pavements had a violet sheen; above the street near Palace Arch an enormous red-blue-white flag swelled elastically, the sky showing through it in three different tints: mauve, indigo and pale blue.
As always on holidays he went for a walk with his father, but these were not the former walks of his childhood; the midday cannon no longer frightened him and father’s conversation was unbearable, for finding a pretext in last night’s concert, he kept hinting that it would be a good idea to take up music.
For lunch there was the remains of the paschal cream cheese (now a squat little cone with a grayish shading on its round summit) and a still untouched Easter cake. His aunt, the same sweet copper-haired aunt, second cousin to his mother, was gay in the extreme, threw cake crumbs across the table and related that for twenty-five rubles Latham was going to give her a ride in his “Antoinette” monoplane, which, by the way, was unable to leave the ground for the fifth day, while Voisin on the contrary kept circling the aerodrome like clockwork, and moreover so low that when he banked over the stands one could even see the cotton wool in the pilot’s ears. Luzhin for some reason remembered that morning and that lunch with unusual brightness, the way you remember the day preceding a long journey.
His father said it would be a good idea after lunch to drive to the Islands beyond the Neva, where the clearings were carpeted with anemones, and while he was speaking, the young aunt landed a crumb right in Father’s mouth. His mother remained silent. Suddenly after the second course she got up, trying to conceal her face twitching with restrained tears and repeating under her breath “It’s nothing, nothing, it’ll pass in a moment,” hastily left the dining room. Father threw his napkin on the table and followed her. Luzhin never discovered exactly what had happened, but passing along the corridor with his aunt he heard subdued sobs from his mother’s room and his father’s voice remonstrating and loudly repeating the phrase “imagining things.”
“Let’s go away somewhere,” whispered his aunt in an embarrassed and
