Glory by Vladimir Nabokov Read Free Book Online Page B

thrill. What fired him as a rule was the remote, the forbidden, the vague—anything sufficiently indistinct to make his fantasy work at establishing details—whether a portrait of Lady Hamilton or a popeyed schoolmate’s whisperings about “houses of evil repute.” Now the mist had thinned, visibility had improved. He was too engrossed in those sensations to give due attention to Alla’s actual pronouncements: “I shall remain for you a glamorous dream,” “I am insanely voluptuous,” “You will never forget me, as one forgets ‘an old novel read long ago’ (know that song?),” “And you must never, never talk about me to your future mistresses.”
    As for Sofia she was pleased and displeased at the same time. When some acquaintance would coyly report, “We were out strolling today and we saw him, yes, we did—with the poetess on his arm—lost his head completely, that boy of yours,” Sofia replied that this was all quite natural at his age. Martin’s early revelation of manly passions made her proud, yet she could not ignore the fact that even though Alla was a sweet, affable young lady, she was perhaps a little too “fast,” as the English say, and, while excusing her son’s folly, Sofia did not excuse Alla’s attractive vulgarity. Fortunately theirstay in Greece was coming to an end: within a few days Sofia expected from Henry Edelweiss (her husband’s cousin) in Switzerland a reply to a very frank letter, written with great difficulty, about her husband’s death and the exhaustion of their means. Henry used to visit them in Russia, was good friends with her and her husband, was fond of his nephew, and always enjoyed the reputation of an honest and generous man. “Do you remember, Martin, when was the last time that Uncle Henry came to see us? In any case it was
before
, wasn’t it?” That “
before
” always lacking an object, meant before the quarrel, before the separation from her husband, and Martin also would say “before” or “after” without further qualification. “I think it was after,” he answered, recalling how Uncle Henry had arrived at their dacha, had had a long private interview with his mother, and emerged red-eyed, as he was particularly lachrymose, and even cried at the movies. “Yes, of course—how stupid of me,” Sofia said quickly, suddenly reconstructing his visit, the discussion they had about her husband, Henry’s exhortations that they make up. “And you remember him well, don’t you? Every time he came he brought you something.”
    “The last time it was a room-to-room telephone,” said Martin, making a face: installing the telephone was boring, and when somebody finally did install it, running it from the nursery to his mother’s room, it never worked well, then broke down altogether, and was abandoned, along with other previous gifts from Uncle, such as
The Swiss Family Robinson
, for instance, which was extremely dull after the real
Robinson Crusoe
, or the little tin freight cars, which had provoked secret tears of disappointment, for Martin liked only passenger trains.
    “Why are you grimacing?” asked Sofia.
    He explained, and she said with a laugh, “That’s true, that’strue,” and stopped to think for a moment about Martin’s childhood, about irretrievable, ineffable things, and there was a heartrending charm about this reverie: how quickly everything passes! … Just think—has begun to shave, has clean nails, that smart lilac necktie, that woman. “That woman is very sweet, of course,” said Sofia, “but don’t you think she’s just a little too lively? You shouldn’t get carried away like this. Tell me—no, I prefer not to ask you anything. Only they say she was a terrible flirt in St. Petersburg. And don’t tell me you really like her poetry? That female demonism? She has such an affected way of reciting verse. Is it true you’ve reached the point of—I don’t know, of holding hands, or something like that?”
    Martin