The Eye

Synopsis: Cautiously, awkwardly, he loaded the revolver, then turned off the light. The thought of death, which had once so frightened him, was now an intimate and simple affair. He was afraid, terribly afraid, of the monstrous pain the bullet might cause him; but to be afraid of the black, velvety sleep, of the even darkness, so much more acceptable and comprehensible than life's motley insomnia? Nonsense, how could one be afraid of that?

The place is Berlin; the time, between wars; the nameless narrator, an émigré tutor, submerged in a love affair with the voluptuous Matilda, who is frightened of her violently jealous husband. Against this background, the narrator one evening receives a telephone call and a strange voice announces that its owner is en route to see him. The stranger arrives and proceeds to cane the tutor unmercifully. Humiliated, he decides to commit suicide.

Unbuttoning his shirt, he leans forward, feels for and finds the pounding heart beneath his ribs. He braces himself and fires. There is a powerful jolt and a delightful vibrating sound rings out, immediately to be replaced by the warble of water, a throaty gushing noise. He inhales and chokes on liquidity, everything within and around him aflow and astir. He discovers he is kneeling on the floor; he puts out his hand to steady himself and then sinks to the floor as into bottomless water.

Some time later, in a timeless void, it becomes apparent to him that human thought lives on. He awakens in a hospital ward (or is this awakening, too, only imagination?). And later, released, he walks along familiar streets, suddenly realizing that a sinner's torment in an afterworld consists precisely in that the tenacious mind cannot find peace until it manages to unravel the consequences of reckless terrestrial deeds.

He visits the bookshop of Weinstock, whom he had known before his suicide. He rents a room below the apartment of the jovial fat-nosed Khrushchov, his wife, Evgenia, and her sister Vanya. He meets the cultured Dr. Marianna Nikolaevna, and Roman Bogdanovich and Mukhin, two old family friends. But it is the enigmatic Smurov who fascinates him—Smurov, swashbuckling, courageous, extremely masculine, is the opposite of the image the narrator presents. A strange tie binds the two men.

Vikentiy lvovich weinstock, for whom Smurov worked as salesman (having replaced the helpless old man), knew less about him than anyone. There was in Weinstock's nature an attractive streak of recklessness. This is probably why he hired someone he did not know well. His suspiciousness required regular nourishment. Just as there are normal and perfectly decent people who unexpectedly turn out to have a passion for collecting dragonflies or engravings, so Weinstock, a junk dealer's grandson and an antiquarian's son, staid, well-balanced Weinstock who had been in the book business all his life, had constructed a separate little world for himself. There, in the penumbra, mysterious events took place.

India aroused a mystical respect in him: he was one of those people who, at the mention of Bombay, inevitably imagine not a British civil servant, crimson from the heat, but a fakir. He believed in the jinx and the hex, in magic numbers and the Devil, in the evil eye, in the secret power of symbols and signs, and in bare-bellied bronze idols. In the evenings, he would place his hands, like a petrified pianist, upon a small, light, three-legged table. It would start to creak softly, emitting cricketlike chirps, and, having gathered strength, would rise up on one side and then awkwardly but forcefully tap a leg against the floor. Weinstock would recite the alphabet. The little table would follow attentively and tap at the proper letters. Messages came from Caesar, Mohammed, Pushkin, and a dead cousin of Weinstock's. Sometimes the table would be naughty: it would rise and remain suspended in mid-air, or else attack Weinstock and butt him in the stomach. Weinstock would good-naturedly pacify the spirit, like an animal tamer playing along with a frisky beast; he would back across the whole room, all the while keeping his fingertips on the table waddling after him. For his talks with the dead, he also employed a kind of marked saucer and some other strange contraption with a pencil protruding underneath. The conversations were recorded in special notebooks. A dialog might go thus:

Weinstock: Have you found rest?

Lenin: This is not Baden-Baden.

Weinstock: Do you wish to tell me of life beyond the grave?

Lenin (after a pause): I prefer not to.

Weinstock: Why?

Lenin: Must wait till there is a plenum.

A lot of these notebooks had accumulated, and Weinstock used to say that someday he would have the more significant conversations published. Very entertaining was a ghost called Abum, of unknown origin, silly and tasteless, who acted as intermediary, arranging interviews between Weinstock and various dead celebrities. He treated Weinstock with vulgar familiarity.

Weinstock: Who art thou, O Spirit?

Reply: Ivan Sergeyevich.

Weinstock: Which Ivan Sergeyevich?

Reply: Turgenev.

Weinstock: Do you continue to create masterpieces?

Reply: Idiot.

Weinstock: Why do you abuse me?

Reply (table convulsed): Fooled you! This is Abum.

Sometimes when Abum began his horseplay, it was impossible to get rid of him throughout the séance. "He's as bad as a monkey," Weinstock would complain.

Weinstock's partner in these games was a little pink-faced red-haired lady with plump little hands, who smelled of eucalyptus gum, and had always a cold. I learned later that they had been having an affair for a long time, but Weinstock, who in certain respects was singularly frank, never once let this slip out. They addressed each other by their names-and-patronymics and behaved as though they were merely good friends. She would often drop in at the store and, warming herself by the stove, read a theosophist journal published in Riga. She encouraged Weinstock in his experiments with the hereafter and used to tell how the furniture in her room periodically came to life, how a deck of cards would fly from one spot to another or scatter itself all over the floor, and how once her bedside lamp had hopped down from its table and begun to imitate a dog impatiently tugging at its leash; the plug had finally shot out, there was the sound of a scampering off in the dark, and the lamp was later found in the hall, right by the front door. Weinstock used to say that, alas, real "power" had not been granted him, that his nerves were as slack as old suspenders, while a medium's nerves were practically like the strings of a harp. He did not, however, believe in materialization, and it was only as a curiosity that he preserved a snapshot given him by a spiritualist that showed a pale, pudgy woman with closed eyes disgorging a flowing, cloud-like mass.

He was fond of Edgar Poe and Barbey d'Aurevilly, adventures, unmaskings, prophetic dreams, and secret societies. The presence of Masonic lodges, suicides' clubs, Black Masses, and especially Soviet agents dispatched from "over there" (and how eloquent and awesome was the intonation of that "over there"!) to shadow some poor little émigré man, transformed Weinstock's Berlin into a city of wonders amid which he felt perfectly at home. He would hint that he was a member of a large organization, supposedly dedicated to the unraveling and rending of the delicate webs spun by a certain bright-scarlet spider, which Weinstock had had reproduced on a dreadfully garish signet ring giving an exotic something to his hairy hand.

"They are everywhere," he would say with quiet significance. "Everywhere. If I come to a party where there are five, ten, perhaps twenty people, among them, you can be quite sure, oh yes, quite sure, there is at least one agent. I am talking, say, with Ivan Ivanovich, and who can swear that Ivan Ivanovich is to be trusted? Or, say, I have a man working for me in my office—any kind of office, not necessarily this bookstore (I want to keep all personalities out of this, you understand me)—well, how can I know that he is not an agent? They are everywhere, I repeat, everywhere ... It is such subtle espionage ... I come to a party, all the guests know each other, and yet there is no guarantee that this very same modest and polite Ivan Ivanovich is notactually ..." and Weinstock would nod meaningfully.

I soon began to suspect that Weinstock, albeit very guardedly, was alluding to a definite person. Generally speaking, whoever had a chat with him would come away with the impression that Weinstock's target was either Weinstock's interlocutor or a common friend. Most remarkable of all was that once—and Weinstock recalled this occasion with pride—his flair had not deceived him: a person he knew fairly well, a friendly, easygoing, "honest-as-God fellow" (Weinstock's expression), really turned out to be a venomous Soviet sneak. It is my impression that he would be less sorry to let a spy slip away than to miss the chance to hint to the spy that he, Weinstock, had found him out.

Even if Smurov did exhale a certain air of mystery, even if his past did seem rather hazy, was it possible that he...? I see him, for example, behind the counter in his neat black suit, hair combed smooth, with his clean-cut, pale face. When a customer enters, he carefully props his unconsumed cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and, rubbing his slender hands, carefully attends to the needs of the buyer. Sometimes—particularly if the latter is a lady—he smiles faintly, to express either condescension toward books in general, or perhaps raillery at himself in the role of ordinary salesman, and gives valuable advice—this is worth reading, while that is a bit too heavy; here the eternal struggle of the sexes is most entertainingly described, and this novel is not profound but very sparkling, very heady, you know, like champagne. And the lady who has bought the book, the red-lipped lady in the black fur coat, takes away with her a fascinating image: those delicate hands, a little awkwardly picking up the books, that subdued voice, that flitting smile, those admirable manners. At the Khrushchovs', however, Smurov was already beginning to make a somewhat different impression on someone.

The life of this family at 5 Peacock Street was exceptionally happy. Evgenia's and Vanya's father, who spent a large part of the year in London, sent them generous checks, and Khrushchov, too, made excellent money. This, however, was not the point: even had they been penniless, nothing would have changed. The sisters would have been enveloped in the same breeze of happiness, coming from an unknown direction but felt by even the gloomiest and thickest-skinned of visitors. It was as if they had started on a joyful journey: this top floor seemed to glide like an airship. One could not locate exactly the source of that happiness. I looked at Vanya, and began to think I had discovered the source ... Her happiness did not speak. Sometimes she would suddenly ask a brief question and, having received the answer, would immediately fall silent again, fixing you with her wonder-struck, beautiful, myopic eyes.

"Where are your parents?" she once asked Smurov.

"In a very distant churchyard," he answered, and for some reason made a little bow.

Evgenia, who was tossing a ping-pong ball in one hand, said she could remember their mother and Vanya could not. That evening there was no one besides Smurov and the inevitable Mukhin: Marianna had gone to a concert, Khrushchov was working in his room, and Roman Bogdanovich had stayed at home, as he did every Friday, to write his diary. Quiet, prim, Mukhin kept silent, occasionally adjusting the (continued on page 106)The Eye(continued from page 74) clip of the rimless pince-nez on his thin nose. He was very well dressed and smoked genuine English cigarettes.

Smurov, taking advantage of his silence, suddenly grew more talkative than on previous occasions. Addressing mainly Vanya, he started telling how he had escaped death.

"It happened in Yalta," said Smurov, "when the White Russian troops had already left. I had refused to be evacuated with the others, as I planned to organize a partisan unit and go on fighting the Reds. At first we hid in the hills. During one exchange I was wounded. The bullet passed right through me, just missing my left lung. When I came to, I was lying on my back, and the stars were swimming above me. What could I do? I was bleeding to death, alone in a mountain gorge. I decided to try to make it to Yalta—very risky, but I could not think of any other way. It demanded incredible efforts. I traveled all night, mostly crawling on hands and knees. Finally, at dawn, I got to Yalta. The streets were still fast asleep. Only from the direction of the railway station came the sound of shots. No doubt, somebody was being executed there.

"I had a good friend, a dentist. I went to his house and clapped my hands under the window. He looked out, recognized me, and let me in immediately. I lay in hiding at his place until my wound had healed. He had a young daughter who nursed me tenderly—but that's another story. Obviously, my presence exposed my saviors to dreadful danger, so I was impatient to leave. But where to go? I thought it over and decided to travel north, where it was rumored the civil war had flared up again. So one evening I embraced my kind friend farewell, he gave me some money, which, God willing, I shall repay one day, and here I was, walking once again along the familiar Yalta streets. I had a beard and glasses, and wore an old field jacket. I headed straight for the station. A Red Army soldier was standing at the platform entrance, checking papers. I had a passport bearing the name of Sokolov, army doctor. The Red guard took a look, gave me back the papers, and everything would have gone without a hitch if it hadn't been for a stupid bit of bad luck. Suddenly I heard a woman's voice say, quite calmly, 'He's a White, I know him well.' I kept my wits about me, and made as if to pass through to the platform, without looking around. But I had scarcely walked three paces when a voice, this time a man's, shouted 'Halt!' I halted. Two soldiers and a blowzy female in a military fur cap surrounded me. 'Yes, it's him,' said the woman. 'Take him.' I recognized this Communist as a maid who had formerly worked for some friends of mine. People used to joke that she had a weakness for me, but I had always found her obesity and her carnal lips extremely repulsive. There appeared three more soldiers and a commissar type in semimilitary dress. 'Get moving,' he said. I shrugged and coolly observed that there had been a mistake. 'We'll see about that afterward,' said the commissar.

"I thought they were taking me away to be interrogated. But I soon realized things were a little worse. When we reached the freight warehouse just beyond the station, I was ordered to undress and stand against the wall. I thrust my hand inside my field jacket, pretending to unbutton it, and, in the next instant, had shot down two soldiers with my Browning, and was running for my life. The rest, of course, opened fire on me. A bullet knocked my cap off. I ran around the warehouse, jumped over a fence, shot a man who came at me with a spade, ran up onto the roadbed, dashed across to the other side of the rails in front of an approaching train and, while the long procession of cars separated me from my pursuers, managed to get away."

Smurov went on to tell how, under the cover of night, he had walked to the sea, slept among some barrels and bags in the port, appropriated a tin of zwiebacks and a keg of Crimean wine, and at daybreak, in the auroral mist, set out alone in a fishing boat, to be rescued after five days of solitary sail by a Greek sloop. He spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact, even slightly monotonous voice, as if talking of trivial matters. Evgenia clucked her tongue sympathetically; Mukhin listened attentively and sagaciously, every now and then clearing his throat softly, as if he could not help being deeply stirred by the narrative and felt respect and even envy—good, healthy envy—toward a man who had fearlessly and frankly looked death in the face. As for Vanya—no, there could be no more doubt, after this she must fall for Smurov. How charmingly her lashes punctuated his speech, how delightful was their flutter of final dots when Smurov finished his tale, what a glance she cast at her sister—a moist, sidelong flash—probably to make sure that the other had not noticed her excitement.

Silence. Mukhin opened his gun-metal cigarette case. Evgenia fussily bethought herself that it was time to call her husband for tea. She turned on the threshold and said something inaudible about a cake. Vanya jumped up from the sofa and ran out too. Mukhin picked up her handkerchief from the floor and laid it carefully on the table.

"May I smoke one of yours?" asked Smurov.

"Certainly," said Mukhin.

"Oh, but you have only one left," said Smurov.

"Go ahead, take it," said Mukhin. "I have more in my overcoat."

"English cigarettes always smell of candied prunes," said Smurov.

"Or molasses," said Mukhin. "Unfortunately," he added in the same tone of voice, "Yalta does not have a railroad station."

This was unexpected and awful. The marvelous soap bubble, bluish, iridescent, with the curved reflection of the window on its glossy side, grows, expands, and suddenly is no longer there, and all that remains is a snitch of ticklish moisture that hits you in the face.

"Before the revolution," said Mukhin, breaking the intolerable silence, "I believe there was a project for a rail link between Yalta and Simferopol. I know Yalta well—been there many times. Tell me, why did you invent all that rigmarole?"

Oh, of course, Smurov could still have saved the situation, still wriggled out of it with some clever new invention, or else, as a last resort, propped up with a good-natured joke what was crumbling with such nauseating speed. Not only did Smurov lose his composure, but he did the worst thing possible. Lowering his voice, he said hoarsely, "Please, I beg you, let this remain between the two of us."

Mukhin obviously felt ashamed for the poor, fantastic fellow; he adjusted his pince-nez and started to say something but stopped short, because at that moment the sisters returned. During tea, Smurov made an agonizing effort to appear gay. But his black suit was shabby and stained, his cheap tie. usually knotted in such a way as to conceal the worn place, tonight exhibited that pitiful tear, and a pimple glowed unpleasantly through the mauve remains of talc on his chin. So that's what it is ... So it's true after all that there is no riddle to Smurov, that he is but a commonplace babbler, by now unmasked? So that's what it is...

No, the riddle remained. One evening, in another house, Smurov's image developed a new and extraordinary aspect, which had previously been only barely perceptible. It was still and dark in the room. A small lamp in the corner was shaded by a newspaper, and this made the ordinary sheet of newsprint acquire a marvelous translucent beauty. And in this penumbra, the conversation suddenly turned to Smurov.

It started with trifles. Fragmentary, vague utterances at first, then persistent allusions to political assassinations in the past, then the terrible name of a famous double agent in old Russia and (continued on page 156)The Eye(continued from page 106) such separate words as "blood ... a lot of bother ... enough ..." Gradually this autobiographical introduction grew coherent and, after a brief account of a quiet end from a perfectly respectable illness, an odd conclusion to a singularly vile life, the following was spelled out:

"Now this is a warning. Watch out for a certain man. He follows in my footsteps. He spies, he lures, he betrays. He has already been responsible for the death of many. A young émigré group is about to cross the border to organize underground work in Russia. But the nets will be set, the group will perish. He spies, lures, betrays. Be on your guard. Watch out for a small man in black. Do not be deceived by his modest appearance. I am telling the truth..."

"And who is this man?" asked Weinstock.

The answer was slow in coming.

"Please, Azef, tell us who is this man?"

Under Weinstock's limp fingers, the reversed saucer again moved all over the sheet with the alphabet, dashing hither and thither as it oriented the mark on its rim toward this or that letter. It made six such stops before freezing like a shocked tortoise. Weinstock wrote down and read aloud a familiar name.

"Do you hear?" he said, addressing someone in the darkest corner of the room. "A pretty business! Of course, I need not tell you that I don't believe this for a second. I hope you are not offended. And why should you be offended? It happens quite often at séances that spirits spout nonsense." And Weinstock feigned to laugh it off.

• • •

The situation was becoming a curious one. I could already count three versions of Smurov, while the original remained unknown. This occurs in scientific classification. Long ago, Linnaeus described a common species of butterfly, adding the laconic note "in pratis Westmanniae." Time passes, and in the laudable pursuit of accuracy, new investigators name the various southern and Alpine races of this common species, so that soon there is not a spot left in Europe where one finds the nominal race and not a local subspecies. Where is the type, the model, the original? Then, at last, a grave entomologist discusses in a detailed paper the whole complex of named races and accepts as the representative of the typical one the almost 200-year-old, faded Scandinavian specimen collected by Linnaeus; and this identification sets everything right.

In the same way I resolved to dig up the true Smurov, being already aware that his image was influenced by the climatic conditions prevailing in various souls—that within a cold soul he assumed one aspect but in a glowing one had a different coloration. I was beginning to enjoy this game. Personally, I viewed Smurov without emotion. A certain bias in his favor that had existed at the outset, had given way to simple curiosity. And yet I experienced an excitement new to me. Just as the scientist does not care whether the color of a wing is pretty or not, or whether its markings are delicate or lurid (but is interested only in its taxonomic characters), I regarded Smurov, without any aesthetic tremor; instead, I found a keen thrill in the classification of Smurovian masks that I had so casually undertaken.

The task was far from easy. For instance, I knew perfectly well that insipid Marianna saw in Smurov a brutal and brilliant officer of the White Army, "the kind that went around stringing people up right and left," as Evgenia informed me in the greatest secrecy during a confidential chat. To define this image accurately, however, I would have had to be familiar with Marianna's entire life, with all the secondary associations that came alive inside her when she looked at Smurov—other reminiscences, other chance impressions and all those lighting effects that vary from soul to soul. My conversation with Evgenia took place soon after Marianna Nikolaevna's departure; it was said she was going to Warsaw, but there were obscure implications of a still more eastwardly journey—perhaps back to the fold; and so Marianna carried away with her and, unless someone sets her right, will preserve to the end of her days, a very particular idea of Smurov.

"And how about you," I asked Evgenia, "what idea have you formed?"

"Oh, that's hard to say, all at once," she replied, a smile enhancing both her resemblance to a cute bulldog and the velvety shade of her eyes.

"Please," I insisted.

"In the first place there is his shyness," she said swiftly. "Yes, yes, a great deal of shyness. I had a cousin, a very gentle, pleasant young man, but whenever he had to confront a crowd of strangers in a fashionable drawing room, he would come in whistling to give himself an independent air—casual and tough at the same time."

"Yes, go on?"

"Let me see, what else is there ... Sensitivity, I would say, great sensitivity, and, of course, youth; and lack of experience with people..."

There was nothing more to be wheedled out of her, and the resulting eidolon was rather pale and not very attractive. It was Vanya's version of Smurov, however, that interested me most of all. I thought about this constantly. I remember how, one evening, chance seemed about to favor me with an answer. I had climbed up from my gloomy room to their sixth-floor apartment only to find both sisters with Khrushchov and Mukhin on the point of leaving for the theater. Having nothing better to do, I went out to accompany them to the taxi stand. Suddenly I noticed that I had forgotten my downstairs key.

"Oh, don't worry, we have two sets," said Evgenia, "you're lucky we live in the same house. Here, you can give them back tomorrow. Good night."

I walked homeward and on the way had a wonderful idea. I imagined a sleek movie villain reading a document he has found on someone else's desk. True, my plan was very sketchy. Smurov had once brought Vanya a yellow, dark-dappled orchid somewhat resembling a frog; now I could ascertain if perhaps Vanya had preserved the cherished remains of the flower in some secret drawer. Once he had brought her a little volume of Gumilyov, the poet of fortitude; it might be worth while checking if the pages had been cut and if the book were lying perhaps on her night table. There was also a photograph, taken with a magnesium flash, in which Smurov had come out magnificently—in semiprofile, very pale, one eyebrow raised—and beside him stood Vanya, while Mukhin skulked in the rear. And, generally speaking, there were many things to discover. Having decided that if I ran into the maid (a very pretty girl, by the way), I would explain that I had come to return the keys, I cautiously unlocked the door of the Khrushchov apartment and tiptoed into the parlor.

It is amusing to catch another's room by surprise. The furniture froze in amazement when I switched on the light. Somebody had left a letter on the table; the empty envelope lay there like an old useless mother, and the little sheet of note paper seemed to be sitting up like a robust babe. But the eagerness, the throb of excitement, the precipitous movement of my hand, all proved uncalled-for. The letter was from a person unknown to me, a certain Uncle Pasha. It contained not a single allusion to Smurov! And if it was coded, then I did not know the key. I flitted over into the dining room. Raisins and nuts in a bowl, and, next to it, spread-eagled and prone, a French novel—the adventures of Ariane, Jeune Fille Russe. In Vanya's bedroom, where I went next, it was cold from the open window. I found it so strange to look at the lace bedspread and the altarlike toilet table, where cut glass glistened mystically. The orchid was nowhere to be seen, but in recompense there was the photo propped against the bedside lamp. It had been taken by Roman Bogdanovich. It showed Vanya sitting with luminous legs crossed, behind her was the narrow face of Mukhin, and to Vanya's left, one could make out a black elbow—all that remained of lopped-off Smurov. Shattering evidence! On Vanya's lace-covered pillow there suddenly appeared a star-shaped hollow—the violent imprint of my fist, and in the next moment I was already in the dining room, devouring the raisins and still trembling. Here I remembered the escritoire in the parlor and noiselessly hurried to it. But at this moment the metallic fidgeting of a key sounded from the direction of the front door. I began to retreat hastily, switching off lights as I went, until I found myself in a satiny little boudoir next to the dining room. I fumbled about in the dark, bumped into a sofa and stretched out on it as if I had gone in to take a nap.

In the meantime voices carried from the hallway—those of the two sisters and that of Khrushchov. They were saying goodbye to Mukhin. Wouldn't he come in for a minute? No, it was late, he would not. Late? Had my disincarnate flitting from room to room really lasted three hours? Somewhere in a theater one had had time to perform a silly play I had seen many times while here a man had but walked through three rooms. Three rooms: three acts. Had I really pondered over a letter in the parlor a whole hour, and a whole hour over a book in the dining room, and an hour again over a snapshot in the strange coolness of the bedroom? ... My time and theirs had nothing in common.

Khrushchov probably went right to bed; the sisters entered the dining room alone. The door to my dark damasked lair was not shut tight. I believed that now I would learn all I wanted about Smurov.

"... But rather exhausting," said Vanya and made a soft och-ing sound conveying to me a yawn. "Give me some root beer, I don't want any tea." There was the light scrape of a chair being moved to the table.

A long silence. Then Evgenia's voice—so close that I cast an alarmed look at the slit of light. "... The main thing is, let him tell them his terms. That's the main thing. After all, he speaks English and those Germans don't. I'm not sure I like this fruit paste."

Silence again. "All right, I'll advise him to do that," said Vanya. Something tinkled and fell—a spoon, maybe—and then there was another long pause.

"Look at this," said Vanya with a laugh. "What's it made of, wood?" asked her sister.

"I don't know," said Vanya and laughed again.

After a while, Evgenia yawned, even more cosily than Vanya.

"... clock has stopped," she said.

And that was all. They sat on for quite a while; they made clinking sounds with something or other; the nutcracker would crunch and return to the tablecloth with a thump; but there was no more talk. Then the chairs moved again. "Oh, we can leave it there," drawled Evgenia languidly, and the magical slit from which I had expected so much was abruptly extinguished. Somewhere a door slammed, Vanya's faraway voice said something, by now unintelligible, and then followed silence and darkness. I lay on the sofa for a while longer and suddenly noticed that it was already dawn. Whereupon I cautiously made my way to the staircase and returned to my room.

I imagined rather vividly Vanya protruding the tip of her tongue at one side of her mouth and snipping off with her little scissors the unwanted Smurov. But maybe it was not so at all: sometimes something is cut off in order to be framed separately. And to confirm this last conjecture, a few days later Uncle Pasha quite unexpectedly arrived from Munich. He was going to London to visit his brother and stayed in Berlin only a couple of days. The old goat had not seen his nieces for a very long time and was inclined to recall how he used to place sobbing Vanya across his knee and spank her. At first sight this Uncle Pasha seemed merely three times her age but one had only to look a little closer and he deteriorated under your very eyes. In point of fact, he was not 50 but 80, and one could imagine nothing more dreadful than this mixture of youthfulness and decrepitude. A jolly corpse in a blue suit, with dandruff on his shoulders, clean-shaven, with bushy eyebrows and prodigious tufts in his nostrils, Uncle Pasha was mobile, noisy and inquisitive. At his first appearance he interrogated Evgenia in a sprayey whisper about every guest, quite openly pointing now at this person, now at that, with his index, which ended in a yellow, monstrously long nail. On the following day occurred one of those coincidences involving new arrivals that for some reason are so frequent, as if there existed some tasteless prankish Fate not unlike Weinstock's Abum who, on the very day you return home from a journey, has you meet the man who had chanced to be sitting opposite you in the railway car. For several days already I had felt a strange discomfort in my bullet-punctured chest, a sensation resembling a draft in a dark room. I went to see a Russian doctor, and there, sitting in the waiting room, was of course Uncle Pasha. While I was debating whether or not to accost him (assuming that since the previous evening he had had time to forget both my face and my name), this decrepit prattler, loath to keep hidden a single grain from the storage bins of his experience, started a conversation with an elderly lady who did not know him, but who was evidently fond of openhearted strangers. At first I did not follow their talk, but suddenly Smurov's name gave me a jolt. What I learned from Uncle Pasha's pompous and trite words was so important that when he finally disappeared behind the doctor's door, I left immediately without waiting my turn—and did so quite automatically, as if I had come to the doctor's office only to hear Uncle Pasha: now the performance was over and I could leave. "Imagine," Uncle Pasha had said, "the baby girl blossomed into a genuine rose. I'm an expert in roses and concluded at once that there must be a young man in the picture. And then her sister says to me, 'It's a great secret, Uncle, so don't tell anyone, but she's been in love with this Smurov for a long time.' Well, of course, it's none of my business. One Smurov is no worse than another. But it really gives me a kick to think that there was a time when I used to give that lassie a good spanking on her bare little buttocks, and now there she is, a bride. She simply worships him. Well, that's the way it is, my good lady, we've had our fling, now let the others have theirs..."

• • •

So—it has happened. Smurov is loved. Evidently Vanya, myopic but sensitive Vanya, had discerned something out of the ordinary in Smurov, had understood something about him, and his quietness had not deceived her. That same evening, at the Khrushchovs', Smurov was particularly quiet and humble. Now, however, when one knew what bliss had smitten him—yes, smitten (for there is bliss so strong that, with its blast, with its hurricane howl, it resembles a cataclysm)—now a certain palpitation could be discerned in his quietude, and the carnation of joy showed through his enigmatic pallor. And dear God, how he gazed at Vanya! She would lower her lashes, her nostrils would quiver, she would even bite her lips a little, hiding from all her exquisite feelings. That night it seemed that something must be resolved.

Poor Mukhin was not there: he had gone for a few days to London. Khrushchov was also absent. In compensation, however, Roman Bogdanovich (who was gathering material for the diary which with old-maidish precision he weekly sent to a friend in Tallin) was more than ever his sonorous and importunate self. The sisters sat on the sofa as always. Smurov stood leaning one elbow on the piano, ardently gazing at the smooth parting in Vanya's hair, at her dusky-red cheeks ... Evgenia several times jumped up and thrust her head out of the window—Uncle Pasha was coming to say goodbye and she wanted to be sure and be on hand to unlock the elevator for him. "I adore him," she said, laughing. "He is such a character. I bet he won't let us accompany him to the station."

"Do you play?" Roman Bogdanovich politely asked Smurov, with a meaningful look at the piano. "I used to play once," Smurov calmly replied. He opened the lid, glanced dreamily at the bared teeth of the keyboard, and brought the lid back down. "I love music," Roman Bogdanovich observed confidentially. "I recall, in my student days——"

"Music," said Smurov in a louder tone, "good music at least, expresses that which is inexpressible in words. Therein lie the meaning and the mystery of music."

"There he is," shouted Evgenia and left the room.

"And you, Varvara?" asked Roman Bogdanovich in his coarse, thick voice. "You—'with fingers lighter than a dream'—eh? Come on, anything ... Some little ritornello." Vanya shook her head and seemed about to frown but instead giggled and lowered her face. No doubt, what excited her mirth was this thickhead's inviting her to sit down at the piano when her soul was ringing and flowing with its own melody. At this moment one could have noted in Smurov's face a most violent desire that the elevator carrying Evgenia and Uncle Pasha get stuck forever, that Roman Bogdanovich tumble right into the jaws of the blue Persian lion depicted on the rug, and, most important, that I—the cold, insistent, tireless eye—disappear.

Meanwhile Uncle Pasha was already blowing his nose and chuckling in the hall; now he came in and paused on the threshold, smiling foolishly and rubbing his hands. "Evgenia," he said, "I'm afraid I don't know anybody here. Come, make the introductions."

"Oh, my goodness!" said Evgenia. "It's your own niece!"

"So it is, so it is," said Uncle Pasha and added something outrageous about cheeks and peaches.

"He probably won't recognize the others either," sighed Evgenia and began introducing us in a loud voice.

"Smurov!" exclaimed Uncle Pasha, and his eyebrows bristled. "Oh, Smurov and I are old friends. Happy, happy man," he went on mischievously, palpating Smurov's arms and shoulders. "And you think we don't know ... We know all about it ... I'll say one thing—take good care of her! She is a gift from heaven. May you be happy, my children..."

He turned to Vanya but she, pressing a crumpled handkerchief to her mouth, ran out of the room. Evgenia, emitting an odd sound, hurried off after her. Yet Uncle Pasha did not notice that his careless babbling, intolerable to a sensitive being, had driven Vanya to tears. Eyes bulging, Roman Bogdanovich peered with great curiosity at Smurov, who—whatever his feelings—maintained an impeccable composure.

"Love is a great thing," said Uncle Pasha, and Smurov smiled politely. "This girl is a treasure. And you, you're a young engineer, aren't you? Your job coming along well?"

Without going into details Smurov said he was doing all right. Roman Bogdanovich suddenly slapped his knee and grew purple.

"I'll put in a good word for you in London," Uncle Pasha said. "I have many connections. Yes, I'm off, I'm off. Right now, as a matter of fact."

And the astounding old fellow glanced at his watch and proffered us both hands. Smurov, overcome with love's bliss, unexpectedly embraced him.

"How do you like that? ... There is a queer one for you!" said Roman Bogdanovich, when the door had closed behind Uncle Pasha.

Evgenia came back into the parlor. "Where is he?" she asked with surprise: there was something magical about his disappearance.

She hastened up to Smurov. "Please, excuse my uncle," she began. "I was foolish enough to tell him about Vanya and Mukhin. He must have got the names mixed up. At first I did not realize how gaga he was——"

"And I listened and thought I was going crazy," Roman Bogdanovich put in, spreading his hands.

"Oh, come on, come on, Smurov," Evgenia went on. "What's the matter with you? You must not take it to heart like that. After all, it's no insult to you."

"I'm all right, I just did not know," Smurov said hoarsely.

"What do you mean you did not know? Everybody knows ... It's been going on for ages. Yes, of course, they adore each other. It's almost two years now. Listen, I'll tell you something amusing about Uncle Pasha: once, when he was still relatively young—no, don't you turn away, it's a very interesting story—one day, when he was relatively young he happened to be walking along Nevski Avenue——"

This is the second of a three-part serialization of "The Eye" by Vladimir Nabokov. The conclusion will appear next month.