7

Their meetings, of course, continued. The poor lady began to notice with horror that her daughter and the shady Mr. Luzhin were inseparable—there were conversations between them, and glances, and emanations that she was unable to determine with exactness; this seemed to her so dangerous that she overcame her repugnance and resolved to keep Luzhin by her as much as possible, partly in order to get a thorough look at him but chiefly so that her daughter would not vanish too often. Luzhin’s profession was trivial, absurd.… The existence of such professions was explicable only in terms of these accursed modern times, by the modern urge to make senseless records (these airplanes that want to fly to the sun, marathon races, the Olympic games …). It seemed to her that in former times, in the Russia of her youth, a man occupying himself exclusively with chess would have been an unthinkable phenomenon. However, even nowadays such a man was so strange that she conceived a vague suspicion that perhaps chess was a cover, a blind, that perhaps Luzhin’s occupation was something quite different, and she felt faint at the thought of that dark, criminal—perhaps Masonic—activity which the cunning scoundrel concealed behind a predilection for an innocent pastime. Little by little, however, this suspicion dropped away. How could you expect any trickery from such an oaf? Besides, he was genuinely famous. She was staggered and somewhat irritated that a name should be familiar to many when it was completely unknown to her (unless as a chance sound in her past, connected with a distant relative who had been acquainted with a certain Luzhin, a St. Petersburg landowner). The Germans who lived in the hotel at the resort, heroically mastering the difficulty of an alien sibilant, pronounced his name with reverence. Her daughter showed her the latest number of a Berlin illustrated magazine, where in the section devoted to puzzles and crosswords they published a for some reason remarkable game that Luzhin had recently won. “But can a man really devote himself to such trifles,” she exclaimed, looking at her daughter distractedly, “throw one’s whole life away on such trifles? … Look, you had an uncle who was also good at all sorts of games—chess, cards, billiards—but at least he had a job and a career and everything.” “He has a career too,” replied the daughter, “and really he’s very well known. Nobody’s to blame that you never took an interest in chess.” “Conjurors can also be well known,” said she peevishly, but nonetheless after some thought she concluded that Luzhin’s reputation partially justified his existence. His existence, however, was oppressive. What particularly angered her was that he constantly contrived to sit with his back to her. “He even talks with his back,” she complained to her daughter. “With his back. He doesn’t talk like a human being. I tell you there’s something downright abnormal there.” Not once did Luzhin address a question to her, not once did he attempt to support a collapsing conversation. There were unforgettable walks along sun-dappled footpaths, where here and there in the pleasant shade a thoughtful genius had set out benches—unforgettable walks during which it seemed to her that Luzhin’s every step was an insult. Despite his stoutness and short wind he would suddenly develop extraordinary speed, his companions would drop back and the mother, compressing her lips, would look at the daughter and swear in a hissing whisper that if this record-breaking run continued she would immediately—immediately, you understand—return home. “Luzhin,” the girl would call, “Luzhin? Slow up or you’ll get tired.” (And the fact that her daughter called him by his surname was also unpleasant—but when she remarked upon it the other replied with a laugh: “Turgenev’s heroines did it. Am I worse than they?”) Luzhin would suddenly turn around, give a wry smile and plop down on a bench. Beside it would stand a wire basket. He would invariably rummage in his pockets, find some piece of paper or other, tear it neatly into sections and throw it into the basket, after which he would laugh jerkily. A perfect specimen of his little jokes.

Nonetheless, despite those joint walks Luzhin and her daughter used to find time to seclude themselves and after each such seclusion the angry lady would ask: “Well, have you two been kissing? Kissing? I’m convinced you kiss.” But the other only sighed and answered with assumed boredom: “Oh Mamma, how can you say such things …” “Good long kisses,” she decided, and wrote to her husband that she was unhappy and worried because their daughter was conducting an impossible flirtation—with a gloomy and dangerous character. Her husband advised her to return to Berlin or go to another resort. “He doesn’t understand a thing,” she reflected. “Ah well, it doesn’t matter. All this will soon come to an end. Our friend will leave.”

And suddenly, three days before Luzhin’s departure for Berlin, one little thing happened that did not exactly change her attitude to Luzhin but vaguely moved her. The three of them had gone out for a stroll. It was a still August evening with a magnificent sunset, like a mangled blood-orange pressed out to the very last drop. “I feel a bit chilly,” she said. “Bring me something to put on.” And the daughter nodded her head, said “uh-huh” through the stalk of grass she was sucking and left, walking fast and slightly swinging her arms as she returned to the hotel.

“I have a pretty daughter, don’t I? Nice legs.”

Luzhin bowed.

“So you’re leaving on Monday? And then, after the game, back to Paris?”

Luzhin bowed again.

“But you won’t stay in Paris long, will you? Somebody will again invite you to play somewhere?”

This is when it happened. Luzhin looked around and held out his cane.

“This footpath,” he said. “Consider this footpath. I was walking along. And just imagine whom I met. Whom did I meet? Out of the myths. Cupid. But not with an arrow—with a pebble. I was struck.”

“What do you mean?” she asked with alarm.

“No, please, please,” exclaimed Luzhin, raising a finger. “I must have audience.”

He came close to her and strangely half-opened his mouth, which caused an unusual expression of martyred tenderness to appear on his face.

“You are a kind, sensitive woman,” said Luzhin slowly. “I have the honor, the honor of begging you to give me her hand.”

He turned away as if having finished a speech on the stage and began to gouge a small pattern in the sand with his cane.

“Here’s your shawl,” said her daughter’s breathless voice from behind and a shawl settled over her shoulders.

“Oh no, I’m hot, I don’t need it, what do I want with a shawl …”

Their walk that evening was particularly silent. Through her mind ran all the words she would have to say to Luzhin—hints about the financial side—he was probably not well off, he had the cheapest room in the hotel. And a very serious talk with her daughter. An unthinkable marriage, a most idiotic venture. But despite all this she was flattered that Luzhin had so earnestly and old-fashionedly addressed himself to her first.

“It’s happened, congratulations,” she said that evening to her daughter. “Don’t look so innocent, you understand perfectly well. Our friend wishes to marry.”

“I’m sorry he told you,” replied her daughter. “It concerns only him and me.”

“To accept the first rogue you come across …” began the offended lady.

“Don’t you dare,” said her daughter calmly. “It’s none of your business.”

And what had seemed an unthinkable venture began to develop with amazing celerity. On the eve of his departure Luzhin stood on the tiny balcony of his room in his long nightshirt and looked at the moon, which was tremblingly disengaging itself from some black foliage, and while thinking of the unexpected turn taken by his defense against Turati, he listened through these chess reflections to the voice that still continued to ring in his ears, cutting across his being in long lines and occupying all the chief points. This was an echo of the conversation he had just had with her; she had again sat on his lap and promised—promised—that in two or three days she would return to Berlin, and would go alone if her mother decided to stay. And to hold her on his lap was nothing compared to the certainty that she would follow him and not disappear, like certain dreams that suddenly burst and disperse because the gleaming dome of the alarm clock has floated up through them. With one shoulder pressed against his chest she tried with a cautious finger to raise his eyelids a little higher and the slight pressure on his eyeball caused a strange black light to leap there, to leap like his black Knight which simply took the Pawn if Turati moved it out on the seventh move, as he had done at their last meeting. The Knight, of course, perished, but this loss was recompensed with a subtle attack by black and here the chances were on his side. There was, true, a certain weakness on the Queen’s flank, or rather not a weakness but a slight doubt lest it was all fantasy, fireworks, and would not hold out, nor the heart hold out, for perhaps after all the voice in his ears was deceiving him and was not going to stay with him. But the moon emerged from behind the angular black twigs, a round, full-bodied moon—a vivid confirmation of victory—and when finally Luzhin left the balcony and stepped back into his room, there on the floor lay an enormous square of moonlight, and in that light—his own shadow.