Mary by Vladimir Nabokov Read Free Book Online Page A

was a copy of Böcklins The Isle of the Dead, and on the table a framed photograph—Lyudmilas’ face, very much retouched.
    “We’ve quarreled.” Ganin nodded toward the photograph. “Don’t ask me in if she comes to see you. It’s all over.” Klara sat down with her feet up on a couch, wrapping herself in a black shawl.
    “This is all nonsense, Klara,” he continued, sitting down beside her and leaning on his outstretched arm. “Surely you don’t really think I was stealing money, do you? Although of course I wouldn’t like Alfyorov to find out that I was poking about in his desk.”
    “But what were you doing? What else could it be?” Klara whispered. “I didn’t expect this of you, Lev Glebovich.”
    “What a funny girl you are,” said Ganin. He noticed that her big, kind, somewhat prominent eyes were just a little overbright, that her shoulders were rising and falling rather too excitedly under her black shawl.
    “Come, come.” He smiled. “All right then, let’s suppose I’m a thief, a burglar. But why should it upset you so much?”
    “Please go,” said Klara softly, turning her head away. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
    When the door had closed behind him, Klara burst into tears and wept for a long time, the big shiny tears welling up rhythmically between her eyelashes and trickling in long drops down her cheeks, aglow with sobbing.
    “Poor dear,” she muttered. “What life has brought him to! And what can I say to him?”
    There came a light tap on the wall from the dancers’ room. Klara blew her nose hard and listened. The tap was repeated, velvety-soft and feminine: it was obviously Kolin tapping. Then there was a burst of laughter, someone exclaimed, “Alec, oh Alec, stop it,” and two voices started a muffled, intimate conversation.
    Klara thought how tomorrow, as always, she would have to go to work and hammer the keys until six o’clock, watching the mauve-colored line of type as it poured onto the page with a dry, staccato rattle; or how, if there was nothing to do, she would read, propping her borrowed and shamefully tattered book on her black Remington. She made herself some tea, listlessly ate her supper, then undressed, languidly and very slowly. Lying in bed she heard voices in Podtyagin’s room. She heard somebody come in and go out, then Ganin’s voice saying something unexpectedly loudly and Podtyagin answering in a low, depressed voice. She remembered that the old man had gone again today to see about his passport, that he suffered badly from heart trouble, that life was passing: on Friday she would be twenty-six. On and on went the voices—and it seemed to Klara she dwelt in a house of glass that was on the move, swaying and floating. The noise of the trains, although particularly audible on the other side of the corridor, could also be heard in her room, and her bed seemed to rise and sway. For a moment she visualized Ganin’s back as he leaned over the desk and looked around over his shoulder, baring his bright teeth. Then she fell asleep and had a nonsensical dream: she seemed to be sitting in a tramcar next to an old woman extraordinarily like her Lodz aunt, who was talking rapidly in German; then it gradually turned out that it was not her aunt at all but the cheerful marketwoman from whom Klara bought oranges on her way to work.

five
    That evening Anton Sergeyevich had a visitor. He was an old gentleman with a sandy moustache clipped in the English fashion, very dependable-looking, very dapper in his frock coat and striped trousers. Podtyagin was regaling him with Maggi’s bouillon when Ganin entered. The air was tinged blue with cigarette smoke.
    “Mr. Ganin—Mr. Kunitsyn.” Anton Sergeyevich, breathing heavily, his pince-nez twinkling, gently pushed Ganin into an armchair.
    “This, Lev Glebovich, is my old schoolfellow who once wrote cribs for me.”
    Kunitsyn grinned. “That’s so,” he said in a deep, rounded voice. “But tell me, my