Performed by Karime Saad, Mariela Sarinana,
Nicole Eberle, and Kaydee Reese.
IFor the fourth time in as
many years they were confronted
with the problem of what birthday
present to bring a young man who
was incurably deranged in his mind.
He had no desires. Man-made
objects were to him either hives
of evil, vibrant with a malignant
activity that he alone could
perceive,or gross comforts for
which no use could be found
in his abstract world.
After eliminating a number of
articles that might offend him
or frighten him (anything in
the gadget line for instance was
taboo), his parents chose a
dainty and innocent trifle:
a basket with ten different fruit
jellies in ten little jars.
At the time of his birth they
had been married already for a
long time; a score of years had
elapsed, and now they were quite
old. Her drab gray hair was done
anyhow. She wore cheap black
dresses. Unlike other women of
her age (such as Mrs. Sol,
their next-door neighbor, whose
face was all pink and mauve
with paint and whose hat was
a cluster of brookside flowers),
she presented a naked white
countenance to the fault- finding
light of spring days. Her husband,
who in the old country had been a
fairly successful businessman,
was now wholly dependent on his
brother Isaac, a real American of
almost forty years standing. They
seldom saw him and had nicknamed
him "the Prince."
That Friday everything went wrong.
The underground train lost its
life current between two stations,
and for a quarter of an hour one
could hear nothing but the dutiful
beating of one's heart and the
rustling of newspapers. The bus
they had to take next kept them
waiting for ages; and when it did
come, it was crammed with garrulous
high-school children. It was raining
hard as they walked up the brown path
leading to the sanitarium. There
they waited again; and instead of
their boy shuffling into the room as
he usually did (his poor face
blotched with acne,ill-shaven,
sullen, and confused), a nurse they
knew, and did not care for, appeared
at last and brightly explained that
he had again attempted to take his
life. He was all right, she said,
but a visit might disturb
him. The place was so miserably
understaffed, and things got
mislaid or mixed up so easily,
that they decided not to leave
their present in the office but to
bring it to him next time they came.
She waited for her husband to open
his umbrella and then took his arm.
He kept clearing his throat in a
special resonant way he had when he
was upset. They reached the bus-stop
shelter on the other side of the
street and he closed his umbrella.
A few feet away, under a swaying
and dripping tree, a tiny
half-dead unfledged bird was
helplessly twitching in a puddle.
During the long ride to the subway
station, she and her husband did not
exchange a word; and every time she
glanced at his old hands (swollen
veins, brown-spotted skin), clasped
and twitching upon the handle of his
umbrella, she felt the mounting
pressure of tears. As she looked
around trying to hook her mind onto
something, it gave her a kind of
soft shock,a mixture of compassion
and wonder, to notice that one of
the passengers,a girl with dark
hair and grubby red toenails, was
weeping on the shoulder of an older
woman. Whom did that woman
resemble? She resembled Rebecca
Borisovna, whose daughter had
married one of the Soloveichik
- in Minsk,years ago.
The last time he had tried to do it,
his method had been, in the doctor's
words, a masterpiece of inventiveness;
he would have succeeded, had not an
envious fellow patient thought he
was learning to fly - and stopped him.
What he really wanted to do was to
tear a hole in his world and escape.
The system of his delusions had
been the subject of an elaborate
paper in a scientific monthly,
but long before that she and her
husband had puzzled it out for
themselves. "Referential mania,"
Herman Brink had called it. In
these very rare cases the
patient imagines that everything
happening around him is a veiled
reference to his personality and
existence. He excludes real people
from the conspiracy - because he
considers himself to be so much more
intelligent than other men.
Phenomenal nature shadows him
wherever he goes. Clouds in the
staring sky transmit to one
another, by means of slow signs,
incredibly detailed information
regarding him. His inmost thoughts
are discussed at nightfall, in
manual alphabet, by darkly
gesticulating trees. Pebbles or
stains or sun flecks form
patterns representing in some awful
way messages which he must
intercept.Everything is a cipher
and of everything he is the theme.
Some of the spies are detached
observers, such are glass surfaces
and still pools;others, such as
coats in store windows, are
prejudiced witnesses, lynchers
at heart; others again
(running water, storms) are
hysterical to the point
of insanity, have a distorted
opinion of him and grotesquely
misinterpret his actions. He must
be always on his guard and devote
every minute and module of life
to the decoding of the undulation
of things. The very air
he exhales is indexed and filed
away. If only the interest he
provokes were limited to his
immediate surroundings - but
alas it is not! With distance
the to rents of wild scandal
increase in volume and volubility.
The silhouettes of his blood
corpuscles, magnified a
million times, flit
over vast plains; and still
farther, great mountains
of unbearable solidity and
height sum up in terms of granite
and groaning firs the
ultimate truth of his being.
II
When they emerged from the
thunder and foul air of the
subway,the last dregs of
the day were mixed with the
street lights. She wanted
to buy some fish for supper,
so she handed him the basket
of jelly jars, telling him
to go home. He walked up to
the third landing and then
remembered he had given her his
keys earlier in the day.
In silence he sat down on the
steps and in silence rose when
some ten minutes later she came,
heavily trudging upstairs, wanly
smiling, shaking her head in
deprecation of her silliness.
They entered their two-room
flat and he at once went to
the mirror.Straining the
corners of his mouth
apart by means of his thumbs,
with a horrible masklike
grimace,he removed his new
hopelessly uncomfortable dental
plate and severed the long
tusks of saliva connecting him
to it. He read his
Russian-language newspaper
while she laid the table.
Still reading, he ate the
pale victuals that needed
no teeth. She knew his
moods ands was also
silent.
When he had gone to bed,
she remained in the
living room with her pack
of soiled cards and her
old albums. Across the narrow
yard where the rain tinkled
in the dark against some
battered ash cans, windows
were blandly alight and in
one of them a blacktrousered
man with his bare elbows
raised could be seen
lying supine on a untidy bed.
She pulled the blind
down and examined the
photographs. As a baby he
looked more surprised than
most babies. From a fold in
the album, a German maid they
had had in Leipzig and her
fat-faced fiance fell out.
Minsk, the Revolution, Leipzig,
Berlin, Leipzig, a slanting
house front badly out of
focus. Four years old, in a
park: moodily, shyly, with
puckered forehead, looking
away from an eager squirrel
as he would from any other
stranger. Aunt Rosa, a
fussy, angular, wild-eyed
old lady, who had lived in
a tremulous world of
bad news, bankruptcies,
train accidents, cancerous
growths--until the
Germans put her to death,
together with all the
people she had worried
about. Age six - that was
when he drew wonderful birds
with human hands and feet,
and suffered from insomnia
like a grown-up man. His
cousin, now a famous chess
player. He again, aged
about eight, already
difficult to understand,
afraid of the wallpaper
in the passage, afraid
of a certain picture in
a book which merely showed
an idyllic landscape with
rocks on a hillside and
an old cart wheel hanging
from the branch of a
leafless tree. Aged ten: the
year they left Europe. The
shame, the pity, the
humiliating difficulties,
the ugly, vicious, backward
children he was with in that
special school. And then
came a time in his life,
coinciding with a long
convalescence after pneumonia,
when those little phobias of
his which his parents had
stubbornly regarded as the
eccentricities of a prodigiously
gifted child hardened as it
were into a dense tangle of
logically interacting illusions,
making him totally inaccessible
to normal minds.
This, and much more, she
accepted - for after all
living did mean accepting
the loss of one joy after
another, not even joys
in her case - mere
possibilities of improvement.
She thought of the endless
waves of pain that for some
reason or other she and her
husband had to endure; of
the invisible giants hurting
her boy in some unimaginable
fashion; of the incalculable
amount of tenderness
contained in the world; of
the fate of this tenderness,
which is either crushed, or
wasted, or transformed into
madness; of neglected
children humming to
themselves in unswept
corners;of beautiful weeds
that cannot hide from
the farmer and helplessly
have to watch the shadow
of his simian stoop leave
mangled flowers in its wake,
as the monstrous darkness
approaches.
III
It was past midnight when from
the living room she heard her
husband moan;and presently he
staggered in, wearing over his
nightgown the old overcoat
with astrakhan collar which
he much preferred to the nice
blue bathrobe he had.
"I can't sleep," he cried.
"Why," she asked, "why can't
you sleep? You were tired."
"I can't sleep because I
am dying," he said and lay
down on the couch.
"Is it your stomach? Do you
want me to call Dr. Solov?"
"No doctors, no doctors," he
moaned, "To the devil with
doctors! We must get him out
of there quick. Otherwise we'll
be responsible. Responsible!"
he repeated and hurled himself
into a sitting position, both
feet on the floor, thumping his
forehead with his clenched fist.
"All right," she said quietly,
"we shall bring him home tomorrow
morning."
"I would like some tea," said her
husband and retired to the bathroom.
Bending with difficulty, she
retrieved some playing cards and
a photograph or two that had
shipped from the couch to the
floor: knave of hearts, nine
of spades, ace of spades, Elsa
and her bestial beau. He
returned in high spirits,
saying in a loud voice:
"I have it all figured out.
We will give him the bedroom.
Each of us will spend part
of the night near him and
the other part on this couch.
By turns. We will have the
doctor see him at least
twice a week. It does not
matter what the Prince says.
He won't have to say much
anyway because it
will come out cheaper."
The telephone rang. It was
an unusual hour for their
telephone to ring.
His left slipper had come
off and he groped for it
with his heel and toe
as he stood in the middle
of the room, and childishly,
toothlessly, gaped
at his wife. Having more
English than he did, it was
she who attended to
calls. "Can I speak
to Charlie," said a girl's
dull little voice.
"What number you want? No.
That is not the right number."
The receiver was gently
cradled. Her hand went to
her old tired heart.
He smiled a quick smile and
immediately resumed his
excited monologue.They would
fetch him as soon as it was
day. Knives would have to
be kept in a locked drawer.
Even at his worst he
presented no danger to other
people.
The telephone rang a second
time. The same toneless
anxious young voice asked
for Charlie.
"You have the incorrect
number. I will tell you
what you are doing: you are
turning the letter O
instead of the zero."
They sat down to their unexpected
festive midnight tea. The
birthday present stood on the
table. He sipped noisily; his
face was flushed; every now and
then he imparted a circular motion
to his raised glass so as to
make the sugar dissolve more
thoroughly . The vein on the side
of his bald head where there was
a large birthmark stood out
conspicuously and,although he had
shaved that morning, a silvery
bristle showed on his chin.
While she poured him another
glass of tea, he put on his
spectacles and re-examined with
pleasure the luminous yellow,
green, red little jars.His clumsy
moist lips spelled out their
eloquent labels: apricot, grape,
beech plum, quince. He had
got to crab apple, when the
telephone rang again.
text from: http://www.angelynngrant.com/nabokov.html
Sound tracks:
"Arms of an Angel" by Sarah McLachlan
"Fallen" by Sarah McLachlan
No comments:
Post a Comment