3

Only in April, during the Easter holidays, did that inevitable day come for Luzhin when the whole world suddenly went dark, as if someone had thrown a switch, and in the darkness only one thing remained brilliantly lit, a newborn wonder, a dazzling islet on which his whole life was destined to be concentrated. The happiness onto which he fastened came to stay; that April day froze forever, while somewhere else the movement of seasons, the city spring, the country summer, continued in a different plane—dim currents which barely affected him.

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 nervous manner, and they entered the study where a band of sunbeams, in which spun tiny particles of dust, was focused on an overstuffed armchair. She lit a cigarette and folds of smoke started to sway, soft and transparent, in the sunbeams. This was the only person in whose presence he did not feel constrained, and now it was especially pleasant: a strange silence in the house and a kind of expectation of something. “Well, let’s play some game,” said his aunt hurriedly and took him by the neck from behind. “What a thin little neck you have, one can clasp it with one hand.…” “Do you know how to play chess?” asked Luzhin stealthily, and freeing his head he rubbed his cheek against the delightful bright blue silk of her sleeve. “A game of Snap would be better,” she said absentmindedly. A door banged somewhere. She winced and turned her face in the direction of the noise, listening. “No, I want to play chess,” said Luzhin. “It’s complicated, my dear, you can’t learn it in an instant.” He went to the desk and found the box, which was standing behind a desk photograph. His aunt got up to take an ashtray, ruminatively crooning in conclusion of some thought of hers: “That would be terrible, that would be terrible …” “Here,” said Luzhin and put the box down on a low, inlaid Turkish table. “You need the board as well,” she said. “And you know, it would be better for me to teach you checkers, it’s simpler.” “No, chess,” said Luzhin and unrolled an oilcloth board.

“First let’s place the pieces correctly,” began his aunt with a sigh. “White here, black over there. King and Queen next to each other. These here are the Officers. These are the Horses. And these, at each corner, are the Cannons. Now …” Suddenly she froze, holding a piece in mid-air and looking at the door. “Wait,” she said anxiously. “I think I left my handkerchief in the dining room. I’ll be right back.” She opened the door but returned immediately. “Let it go,” she said and again sat down. “No, don’t set them out without me, you’ll do it the wrong way. This is called a Pawn. Now watch how they all move. The Horse gallops, of course.” Luzhin sat on the carpet with his shoulder against her knee and watched her hand with its thin platinum bracelet picking up the chessmen and putting them down. “The Queen is the most mobile,” he said with satisfaction and adjusted the piece with his finger, since it was standing not quite in the center of the square. “And this is how one piece eats another,” said his aunt. “As if pushing it out and taking its place. The Pawns do this obliquely. When you can take the King but he can move out of the way, it’s called check; and when he’s got nowhere to go it’s mate. So your object is to take my King and I have to take yours. You see how long it all takes to explain. Perhaps we can play another time, eh?” “No, now,” said Luzhin and suddenly kissed her hand. “That was sweet of you,” said his aunt softly, “I never expected such tenderness … You are a nice little boy after all.” “Please let’s play,” said Luzhin, and moving in a kneeling position on the carpet, reached the low table. But at that moment she got up from her seat so abruptly that she brushed the board with her skirt and knocked off several pieces. In the doorway stood his father.

“Go to your room,” he said, glancing briefly at his son. Luzhin, who was being sent out of a room for the first time in his life, remained as he was on his knees out of sheer astonishment. “Did you hear?” said his father. Luzhin flushed and began to look for the fallen pieces on the carpet. “Hurry up,” said his father in a thunderous voice such as he had never used before. His aunt hastily began to put the pieces any which way into their box. Her hands trembled. One Pawn just would not go in. “Now take it, take it,” she said. He slowly rolled up the oilcloth board and, his face darkened by a sense of deep injury, took the box. He was unable to close the door behind him since both hands were full. His father took a swift stride and slammed the door so hard that Luzhin dropped the board, which immediately unfolded; he had to put the box down and roll up the thing again. Behind the door of the study there was at first silence, then the creak of an armchair under his father’s weight, and then his aunt’s breathless interrogative whisper. Luzhin reflected disgustedly that today everyone had gone mad and went to his room. There he immediately set out the pieces as his aunt had shown him and considered them for a long time, trying to figure something out; after which he put them away very neatly in their box. From that day the chess set remained with him and it was a long time before his father noticed its absence. From that day there was in his room a fascinating and mysterious toy, the use of which he had still not learned. From that day his aunt never again came to visit them.

A week or so later, an empty gap occurred between the first and third lesson: the geography teacher had caught a cold. When five minutes had passed after the bell and still no one had come in, there ensued such a premonition of happiness that it seemed the heart would not hold out should the glass door nonetheless now open and the geography teacher, as was his habit, come dashing almost at a run into the room. Only Luzhin was indifferent. Bent low over his desk, he was sharpening a pencil, trying to make the point as sharp as a pin. An excited din swelled around him. Our bliss, it seemed, was bound to be realized. Sometimes however there were unbearable disappointments: in place of the sick teacher the predatory little mathematics teacher would come creeping into the room, and, having closed the door soundlessly, would begin to select pieces of chalk from the ledge beneath the blackboard with an evil smile on his face. But a full ten minutes elapsed and no one appeared. The din grew louder. From an excess of happiness somebody banged a desk lid. The class tutor sprang up out of nowhere. “Absolute quiet,” he said. “I want absolute quiet. Valentin Ivanovich is sick. Occupy yourselves with something. But there must be absolute quiet.” He went away. Large fluffy clouds shone outside the window; something gurgled and dripped; sparrows chirped. Blissful hour, bewitching hour. Luzhin apathetically began to sharpen yet another pencil. Gromov was telling some story in a hoarse voice, pronouncing strange obscene words with gusto. Petrishchev begged everyone to explain to him how we know that they are equal to two right-angled ones. And suddenly, behind him, Luzhin distinctly heard a special sound, wooden and rattly, that caused him to grow hot and his heart to skip a beat. Cautiously he turned around. Krebs and the only quiet boy in the class were nimbly setting out light little chessmen on a six-inch board. The board was on the desk bench between them. They sat extremely uncomfortably, sideways. Luzhin, forgetting to finish sharpening his pencil, went up to them. The players took no notice of him. The quiet boy, when trying many years later to remember his schoolmate Luzhin, never recalled that casual chess game, played during an empty hour. Mixing up dates he extracted from the past a vague impression of Luzhin’s once winning a school match, something itched in his memory, but he could not get at it.

“There goes the Tower,” said Krebs. Luzhin followed his hand, thinking with a tremor of momentary panic that his aunt had not told him the names of all the pieces. But “tower” turned out to be a synonym for “cannon.” “I didn’t see you could take, that’s all,” said the other. “All right, take your move back,” said Krebs.

With gnawing envy and irritating frustration Luzhin watched the game, striving to perceive those harmonious patterns the musician had spoken of and feeling vaguely that in some way or other he understood the game better than these two, although he was completely ignorant of how it should be conducted, why this was good and that bad, and what one should do to penetrate the opposite King’s camp without losses. And there was one kind of move that pleased him very much, amusing in its sleekness: Krebs’s King slid up to the piece he called a Tower, and the Tower jumped over the King. Then he saw the other King come out from behind its Pawns (one had been knocked out, like a tooth) and begin to step distractedly back and forth. “Check,” said Krebs, “check” (and the stung King leaped to one side); “you can’t go here and you can’t go here either. Check, I’m taking your Queen, check.” At this point he lost a piece himself and began insisting he should replay his move. The class bully filliped Luzhin on the back of the head and simultaneously with his other hand knocked the board onto the floor. For the second time in his life Luzhin noticed how unstable a thing chess was.

And the following morning, while still lying in bed, he made an unprecedented decision. He usually went to school in a cab and always made a careful study of the cab’s number, dividing it up in a special way in order the better to store it away in his memory and extract it thence whole should he require it. But today he did not go as far as school and forgot in his excitement to memorize the number; fearfully glancing around he got out at Karavannaya Street and by a circular route, avoiding the region of the school, reached Sergievskaya Street. On the way he happened to run into the geography teacher, who with enormous strides, a briefcase under his arm, was rushing in the direction of school, blowing his nose and expectorating phlegm as he went. Luzhin turned aside so abruptly that a mysterious object rattled heavily in his satchel. Only when the teacher, like a blind wind, had swept past him did Luzhin become aware that he was standing before a hairdresser’s window and that the frizzled heads of three waxen ladies with pink nostrils were staring directly at him. He took a deep breath and swiftly walked along the wet sidewalk, unconsciously trying to adjust his steps so that his heel always landed on a join between two paving slabs. But the slabs were all of different widths and this hampered his walk. Then he stepped down onto the pavement in order to escape temptation and sloshed on in the mud along the edge of the sidewalk. Finally he caught sight of the house he wanted, plum-colored, with naked old men straining to hold up a balcony, and stained glass in the front door. He turned in at the gate past a spurstone showing the white marks of pigeons, stole across an inner court where two individuals with rolled-up sleeves were washing a dazzling carriage, went up a staircase and rang the bell. “She’s still asleep,” said the maid, looking at him with surprise. “Wait here, won’t you? I’ll let Madam know in a while.” Luzhin shrugged off his satchel in businesslike fashion and laid it beside him on the table, which also bore a porcelain inkwell, a blotting case embroidered with beads, and an unfamiliar picture of his father (a book in one hand, a finger of the other pressed to his temple), and from nothing better to do he commenced to count the different hues in the carpet. He had been in this room only once before, last Christmas—when, on his father’s advice, he had taken his aunt a large box of chocolates, half of which he had himself eaten and the remainder of which he had rearranged so that it would not be noticed. Up until just recently his aunt had been at their place every day, but now she had stopped coming and there was something in the air, some elusive interdiction, that prevented him from asking about it at home. Having counted up to nine different shades he shifted his gaze to a silk screen embroidered with rushes and storks. He had just begun to wonder whether similar storks were on the other side as well when at last his aunt came—her hair not yet done and wearing a kind of flowery kimono with sleeves like wings. “Where did you spring from?” she exclaimed. “And what about school? Oh what a funny boy you are.…”

Two hours later he again emerged onto the street. His satchel, now empty, was so light that it bounced on his shoulder blades. He had to pass time somehow until the usual hour of return. He wandered into Tavricheski Park, and the emptiness in his satchel gradually began to annoy him. In the first place the thing he had left as a precaution with his aunt might somehow get lost before next time, and in the second place it would have come in handy at home during the evenings. He resolved to act differently in future.

“Family circumstances,” he replied the next day when the teacher casually inquired why he had not been in school. On Thursday he left school early and missed three days in a row, explaining afterwards that he had had a sore throat. On Wednesday he had a relapse. On Saturday he was late for the first lesson even though he had left home earlier than usual. On Sunday he amazed his mother by announcing that he had been invited to a friend’s house—and he was away five hours. On Wednesday school broke up early (it was one of those wonderful blue dusty days at the very end of April when the end of the school term is already imminent and such indolence overcomes one), but he did not get home until much later than usual. And then there was a whole week of absence—a rapturous intoxicating week. The teacher telephoned his home to find out what was the matter with him. His father answered the phone.

When Luzhin returned home around four o’clock in the afternoon his father’s face was gray, his eyes bulging, while his mother gasped as if deprived of her tongue and then began to laugh unnaturally and hysterically, with wails and cries. After a moment’s confusion Father led him without a word into his study and there, with arms folded across his chest, requested an explanation. Luzhin, holding the heavy and precious satchel under his arm, stared at the floor, wondering whether his aunt was capable of betrayal. “Kindly give me an explanation,” repeated his father. She was incapable of betrayal and in any case how could she know he had been caught? “You refuse?” asked his father. Besides, she somehow seemed even to like his truancy. “Now listen,” said his father conciliatorily, “let’s talk as friends.” Luzhin sighed and sat on the arm of a chair, continuing to look at the floor. “As friends,” repeated his father still more soothingly. “So now it turns out you have missed school several times. So now I would like to know where you have been and what you have been doing. I can even understand that, for instance, the weather is fine and one gets the urge to go for walks.” “Yes, I get the urge,” said Luzhin indifferently, growing bored. His father wanted to know where exactly he had gone for a walk and whether his need of walks was long-standing. Then he reminded him that every man has his duty as citizen, as family man, as soldier, and also as schoolboy. Luzhin yawned. “Go to your room!” said his father hopelessly and when his son had left he stood for a long time in the middle of his study and looked at the door in blank horror. His wife, who had been listening from the next room, came in, sat on the edge of the divan and again burst into tears. “He cheats,” she kept repeating, “just as you cheat. I’m surrounded by cheats.” He merely shrugged his shoulders and thought how sad life was, how difficult to do one’s duty, not to meet anymore, not to telephone, not to go where he was irresistibly drawn … and now this trouble with his son … this oddity, this stubbornness … A sad state of affairs, a very sad state.…