The Eye

Synopsis: The nameless narrator, a suicide by pistol shot after having been humiliated and caned by the husband of his mistress, almost immediately begins a new, nightmarish incarnation. The scene is laid in post-World War I Berlin. It is a life peopled by émigrés from Communist Russia: the bookseller Vikentiy Lvovich Weinstock; jovial Khrushchov and his wife Evgenia; her sister Vanya; Dr. Marianna Nikolaevna; Roman Bogdanovich, an old family friend; Mukhin, the betrothed of Vanya; Vanya's Uncle Pasha; and, above all, the enigmatic Smurov.

Smurov's performance becomes increasingly puzzling. At first he is swashbuckling, courageous, extremely masculine--just the opposite of the narrator. Later, chameleonlike, he becomes a shabby liar and a coward. At this point, the narrator reveals that Smurov exists essentially in other people's psyches. Then the prattling Uncle Pasha mistakenly congratulates Smurov for his luck in being engaged to Vanya, who is, in fact, the fiancée of Mukhin.

Smurov is crestfallen when he learns the truth from Vanya's sister, Evgenia, and she, in turn, is astounded that he had not known it all along.

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

There Follows a Brief Period when I stopped watching Smurov; I grew heavy, surrendered again to the gnawing of gravity, donned anew my former flesh, as if indeed all this life around me was not the play of my imagination, but was real, and I was part of it, body and soul. If you are not loved, but do not know for sure whether a potential rival is loved or not, and, if there are several, do not know which of them is luckier than you; if you subsist on that hopeful ignorance which helps you to resolve in conjecture an otherwise intolerable agitation; then all is well, you can live. But woe when the name is at last announced, and that name is not yours! For she was so enchanting, it even brought tears to one's eyes, and, at the merest thought of her, a moaning, awful, salty night would well up within me. Her downy face, nearsighted eyes and tender unpainted lips, which grew chapped and a little swollen from the cold, and whose color seemed to run at the edges, dissolving in a feverish pink that seemed to need so badly the balm of a butterfly kiss; her short bright dresses; her big knees, which squeezed together, unbearably tight, when she played skat with us, bending her silky black head over her cards; and her hands, adolescently clammy and a little coarse, which one especially longed to touch and kiss--yes, everything about her was excruciating and somehow irremediable, and only in my dreams, drenched with tears, did I at last embrace her and feel under my lips her neck and the hollow near the clavicle. But she would always break away, and I would awaken, still throbbing. What difference did it make to me whether she were stupid or intelligent, or what her childhood had been like, or what books she read, or what she thought about the universe? I really knew nothing about her, blinded as I was by that burning loveliness which replaces everything else and justifies everything, and which, unlike a human soul (often accessible and possessable), can in no way be appropriated, just as one cannot include among one's belongings the colors of ragged sunset clouds above black houses, or a flower's smell that one inhales endlessly, with tense nostrils, to the point of intoxication, but cannot draw completely out of the corolla.

Once, at Christmas, before a ball to which they were all going without me, I glimpsed, in a strip of mirror through a door left ajar, her sister powdering Vanya's bare shoulder blades; on another occasion I noticed a flimsy bra in the bathroom. For me these were exhausting events, that had a delicious but dreadfully draining effect on my dreams, although never once in them did I go beyond a hopeless kiss (I myself do not know why I always wept so when we met in my dreams). What I needed from Vanya I could never have taken for my perpetual use and possession anyway, as one cannot possess the tint of the cloud or the scent of the flower. Only when I finally realized that my desire was bound to remain insatiable and that Vanya was wholly a creation of mine, did I calm down, and grow accustomed to my own excitement, from which I had extracted all the sweetness that a man can possibly obtain from love.

Gradually my attention returned to Smurov. Incidentally, it turned out that, in spite of his interest in Vanya, Smurov had, on the sly, set his sights on the Khrushchovs' maid, a girl of 18, whose special attraction was the sleepy cast of her eyes. She herself was anything but sleepy. It is amusing to think what depraved devices of love play this modest-looking girl--named Gretchen or Hilda, I do not remember which--would think up when the door was locked and the practically naked light bulb, suspended by a long cord, illumined the photograph of her fiancé (a sturdy fellow in a Tirolese hat) and an apple from the masters' table. These doings Smurov recounted in (continued on page 142) The Eye (continued from page 82) full detail, and not without a certain pride, to Weinstock, who abhorred in-decent stories and would emit a strong eloquent "Pfui!" upon hearing something salacious. And that is why people were especially eager to tell him things of this nature.

Smurov would reach her room by the back stairs, and stay with her a long time. Apparently, Evgenia once noticed something--a quick scuttle at the end of the corridor, or muffled laughter behind the door--for she mentioned with irritation that Hilda (or Gretchen) had taken up with some fireman. During this outburst Smurov cleared his throat complacently a few times. The maid, casting down her charming dim eyes, would pass through the dining room; slowly and carefully place a bowl of fruit and her breasts on the sideboard; sleepily pause to brush back a dim fair lock off her temple, and then somnambule back to the kitchen; and Smurov would rub his hands together as if about to deliver a speech, or smile in the wrong places during the general conversation. Weinstock would grimace and spit in disgust when Smurov dwelt on the pleasure of watching the prim servant maid at work when, such a short time ago, gently pattering with bare feet on the bare floor, he had been fox-trotting with the creamy-haunched wench in her narrow little room to the distant sound of a phonograph coming from the masters' quarters: Mister Mukhin had brought back from London some really lovely records of moan-sweet Hawaiian dance music.

"You're an adventurer," Weinstock would say, "a Don Juan, a Casanova ..." To himself, however, he undoubtedly called Smurov a double or triple agent and expected the little table with in which fidgeted the ghost of Azef to yield important new revelations. This image of Smurov, though, interested me but little now: it was doomed to gradual fading owing to the absence of supporting evidence. The mystery of Smurov's personality, of course, remained, and one could imagine Weinstock, several years hence and in another city, mentioning, in passing, a strange man who had once worked as a salesman for him, and who now was God knows where. "Yes, a very odd character," Weinstock will say pensively. "A man knit of incomplete intimations, a man with a secret hidden in him. He could ruin a girl ... Who had sent him, and whom he was trailing, it is hard to say. Though I did learn from one reliable source ... But then I don't want to say anything."

Much more entertaining was Gretchen's (or Hilda's) concept of Smurov. One day in January a new pair of silk stockings disappeared from Vanya's wardrobe, whereupon everyone remembered a multitude of other petty losses: 70 pfennigs in change left on the table and huffed like a piece in checkers; a crystal powder box that "escaped from the Nes S. S. R.," as Khrushchov punned; a silk handkerchief, much treasured for some reason ("Where on earth could I have put it?"). Then, one day, Smurov came wearing a bright-blue tie with a peacock sheen, and Khrushchov blinked and said that he used to have a tie just exactly like that; Smurov grew absurdly embarrassed, and he never wore that tie again. But, of course, it did not enter anyone's head that the silly goose had stolen the tie (she used to say, by the way, "A tie is a man's best ornament") and had given it, out of sheer mechanical habit, to her boyfriend of the moment--as Smurov bitterly informed Weinstock. Her undoing came when Evgenia happened to enter her room while she was out, and found in the dresser a collection of familiar articles resurrected from the dead. And so Gretchen (or Hilda) left for an unknown destination; Smurov tried to locate her but soon gave up and confessed to Weinstock that enough was enough. That evening Evgenia said she had learned some remarkable things from the janitor's wife. "It was not a fireman, it was not a fireman at all," said Evgenia, laughing, "but a foreign poet, isn't that delightful? ... This foreign poet had had a tragic love affair and a family estate the size of Germany, but he was forbidden to return home, really delightful, isn't it? ... It's a pity the janitor's wife didn't ask what his name was --I'm sure he was Russian, and I wouldn't even be surprised if it were someone who comes to see us ... For instance, that chap last year, you know whom I mean--the dark boy with the fatal charm, what was his name?"

"I know whom you have in mind," Vanya put in. "That baron something or other."

"Or maybe it was somebody else," Evgenia went on. "Oh, that's so delightful! A gentleman who was all soul, a 'spiritual gentleman,' says the janitor's wife. I could die laughing ..."

"I'll make a point of taking all that down," said Roman Bogdanovich in a juicy voice. "My friend in Tallin will get a most interesting letter."

"Don't you ever get tired of it?" asked Vanya. "I started keeping a diary several times but always dropped it. And when I read it over I was always ashamed of what I had put down."

"Oh, no," said Roman Bogdanovich. "If you do it thoroughly and regularly you get a good feeling, a feeling of self-preservation, so to speak--you preserve your entire life, and, in later years, rereading it, you may find it not devoid of fascination. For instance, I've done a description of you that would be the envy of any professional writer. A stroke here, a stroke there, and there it is--a complete portrait ..."

"Oh, please show me!" said Vanya.

"I can't," Roman Bogdanovich answered with a smile.

"Then show it to Evgenia," said Vanya.

"I can't. I'd like to, but I can't. My Tallin friend stores up my weekly contributions as they arrive, and I deliberately keep no copies so there will be no temptation to make changes ex post facto--to cross things out and so on. And one day, when Roman Bogdanovich is very old, Roman Bogdanovich will sit down at his desk and start rereading his life. That's who I'm writing for--for the future old man with the Santa-Claus beard. And if I find that my life has been rich and worth while, then I shall leave this memoir as a lesson for posterity."

"And if it's all nonsense?" asked Vanya.

"What is nonsense to one may have sense for another," replied Roman Bogdanovich rather sourly.

The thought of this epistolary diary had long interested and somewhat troubled me. Gradually the desire to read at least one excerpt became a violent torment, a constant preoccupation. I had no doubt that those jottings contained a description of Smurov. I knew that very often a trivial account of conversations, and country rambles and one's neighbor's tulips or parrots, and what one had for lunch that overcast day when, for example, the king was beheaded--I knew that such trivial notes often live hundreds of years, and that one reads them with pleasure, for the savor of ancientry, for the name of a dish, for the festive-looking spaciousness where now tall buildings crowd together. And, besides, it often happens that the diarist, who in his lifetime has gone unnoticed or had been ridiculed by forgotten nonentities, emerges 200 years later as first-rate writer, who knew how to immortalize, with a striggle of his old-fashioned pen, an airy landscape, the smell of a stagecoach, or the oddities of an acquaintance. At the very thought that Smurov's image might be so securely, so lastingly preserved I felt a sacred chill, I grew crazed with desire, and felt that I must at any cost interpose myself spectrally between Roman Bogdanovich and his friend in Tallin. Experience warned me, of course, that the particular image of Smurov, which was perhaps destined to live forever (to the delight of scholars), might be a shock, to me; but the urge to gain possession of this secret, to see Smurov through the eyes of future centuries, was so bedazzling that no thought of disappointment could frighten me. I feared only one thing--a lengthy and meticulous perlustration, since it was difficult to imagine that in the very first letter I intercepted, Roman Bogdanovich would start right off (like the voice, in full swing, that bursts upon your ears when you turn on the radio for a moment) with an eloquent report on Smurov.

I recall a dark street on a stormy March night. The clouds rolled across the sky, assuming various grotesque attitudes like staggering and ballooning buffoons in a hideous carnival, while, hunched up in the blow, holding onto my derby which I felt would explode like a bomb if I let go of its brim, I stood by the house where lived Roman Bogdanovich. The only witnesses to my vigil were a street light that seemed to blink because of the wind, and a sheet of wrapping paper that now scurried along the sidewalk, now attempted with odious friskiness to wrap itself around my legs, no matter how hard I tried to kick it away. Never before had I experienced such a wind or seen such a drunken, disheveled sky. And this irked me. I had come to spy on a ritual--Roman Bogdanovich, at midnight between Friday and Saturday, depositing a letter in the mailbox--and it was essential that I see it with my own eyes before I begin developing the vague plan I had conceived. I hoped that as soon as I saw Roman Bogdanovich struggling with the wind for possession of the mailbox, my bodiless plan would immediately grow alive and distinct (I was thinking of rigging up an open sack which I would somehow introduce into the mailbox, placing it in such a way that a letter dropped into the slot would fall into my net). But this wind--now humming under the dome of my headgear, now inflating my trousers, or clinging to my legs until they seemed skeletal--was in my way, preventing me from concentrating on the matter. Midnight would soon close completely the acute angle of time; I knew that Roman Bogdanovich was punctual. I looked at the house and tried to guess behind which of the three or four lighted windows there sat at this very moment a man, bent over a sheet of paper, creating an image, perhaps immortal, of Smurov. Then I would shift my gaze to the dark cube fixed to the cast-iron railing, to that dark mailbox into which presently an unthinkable letter would sink, as into eternity. I stood away from the street light; and the shadows afforded me a kind of hectic protection. Suddenly a yellow glow appeared in the glass of the front door, and in my excitement I loosened my grip on the brim of my hat. In the next instant I was gyrating on one spot, both hands raised, as if the hat just snatched from me were still flying around my head. With a light thump, the derby fell and rolled away on the sidewalk. I dashed in pursuit, trying to step on the thing to stop it--and almost collided on the run with Roman Bogdanovich, who picked up my hat with one hand, while holding with the other a sealed envelope that looked white and enormous. I think my appearance in his neighborhood at that late hour puzzled him. For a moment the wind enveloped us in its violence; I yelled a greeting, trying to outshout the din of the demented night, and then, with two fingers, lightly and neatly plucked the letter from Roman Bogdanovich's hand. "I'll mail it, I'll mail it," I shouted. "It's on my way, it's on my way ..." I had time to glimpse an expression of alarm and uncertainty on his face, but I immediately made off, running the 20 yards to the mailbox into which I pretended to thrust something, but instead squeezed the letter into my inside breast pocket. Here he overtook me. I noticed his carpet slippers. "What manners you have," he said with displeasure. "Perhaps I had no intention to post it. Here, take this hat of yours ... Ever see such a wind? ..."

"I'm in a hurry," I gasped (the swift night took my breath away). "Goodbye, goodbye!" My shadow, as it plunged into the aura of the street lamp, stretched out and passed me, but then was lost in the darkness. No sooner had I left that street, than the wind ceased; all was startlingly still, and amid the stillness a streetcar was groaning around a turn.

I hopped on it without glancing at its number, for what lured me was the festive brightness of its interior, since I had to have light immediately. I found a cozy corner seat, and with furious haste ripped open the envelope. Here someone came up to me and, with a start, I placed my hat over the letter. But it was only the conductor. Feigning a yawn, I calmly paid for my ticket, but kept the letter concealed all the time, so as to be safe from possible testimony in court--there is nothing more damning than those inconspicuous witnesses, conductors, taxi drivers, janitors. He went away and I unfolded the letter. It was ten pages long, in a round hand and without a single correction. The beginning was not very interesting. I skipped several pages and suddenly, like a familiar face amid a hazy crowd, there was Smurov's name. What amazing luck!

"I propose, my dear Fyodor Robertovich, to return briefly to that rascal. I fear it may bore you, but, in the words of the Swan of Weimar--I refer to the illustrious Goethe--(there followed a German phrase). Therefore allow me to dwell on Mr. Smurov again and treat you to a little psychological study ..."

I paused and looked up at a milk chocolate advertisement with lilac alps. This was my last chance to renounce penetrating into the secret of Smurov's immortality. What did I care if this letter would indeed travel across a remote mountain pass into the next century, whose very designation--a two and three zeros--is so fantastic as to seem absurd? What did it matter to me to what kind of portrait a long-dead author would "treat," to use his own vile expression, his unknown posterity? And anyway, was it not high time to abandon my enterprise, to call off the hunt, the watch, the insane attempt to corner Smurov? But alas, this was mental rhetoric: I knew perfectly well that no force on earth could prevent me from reading that letter.

"I have the impression, dear friend, that I have already written you of the fact that Smurov belongs to that curious class of people I once called 'sexual lefties.' Smurov's entire appearance, his frailness, his decadence, his mincing gestures, his fondness for Eau de Cologne, and, in particular, those furtive, passionate glances that he constantly directs toward your humble servant--all this has long since confirmed this conjecture of mine. It is remarkable that these sexually unfortunate individuals, while yearning physically for some handsome specimen of mature virility, often choose for object of their (perfectly platonic) admiration--a woman--a woman they know well, slightly, or not at all. And so Smurov, notwithstanding his perversion, has chosen Varvara as his ideal. This comely but rather stupid lass is engaged to a certain M. M. Mukhin, one of the youngest colonels in the White Army, so Smurov has full assurance that he will not be compelled to perform that which he is neither capable nor desirous of performing with any lady, even if she were Cleopatra herself. Furthermore, the 'sexual lefty'--I admit I find the expression exceptionally apt--frequently nurtures a tendency to break the law, which infraction is further facilitated for him by the fact that an infraction of the law of nature is already there. Here again our friend Smurov is no exception. Imagine, the other day Filip Innokentievich Khrushchov confided to me that Smurov is a thief, a thief in the ugliest sense of the word. My interlocutor, so it turned out, had handed him a silver snuffbox with occult symbols--an object of great age--and had asked him to show it to an expert. Smurov took this beautiful antique and the next day announced to Khrushchov with all the outward signs of dismay that he had lost it. I listened to Khrushchov's account and explained to him that sometimes the urge to steal is a purely pathological phenomenon, even having a scientific name--kleptomania. Khrushchov, like many pleasant but limited people, began naively denying that in the present instance we are dealing with a 'kleptomaniac' and not a criminal. I did not set forth certain arguments that would undoubtedly have convinced him. To me everything is clear as day. Instead of branding Smurov with the humiliating designation of 'thief,' I am sincerely sorry for him, paradoxical as it may seem.

"The weather has changed for the worse, or, rather, for the better, for are not this slush and wind harbingers of spring, pretty little spring, which, even in an elderly man's heart, arouses vague desires? An aphorism comes to mind that will doubtless--"

I skimmed to the end of the letter. There was nothing further of interest to me. I cleared my throat and with un-trembling hands tidely folded the sheets.

"Terminal stop, sir," a gruff voice said over me.

Night, rain, the outskirts of the city ...

• • •

Dressed in a remarkable fur coat with a feminine collar, Smurov is sitting on a step of the staircase. Suddenly, Khrushchov, also in fur, comes down and sits next to him. It is very difficult for Smurov to begin, but there is little time, and he must take the plunge. He frees a slender hand sparkling with rings--rubies, all rubies--from the ample fur sleeve and, smoothing his hair, says, "There is something of which I want to remind you, Filip Innokentievich. Please listen carefully."

Khrushchov nods. He blows his nose (he has a bad cold from constantly sitting on the stairs). He nods again, and his swollen nose twitches.

Smurov continues, "I am about to speak of a small incident that occurred recently. Please listen carefully."

"At your service," replies Khrushchov.

"It is difficult for me to begin," says Smurov. "I might betray myself by an incautious word. Listen carefully. Listen to me, please. You must understand that I return to this incident without any particular thought at the back of my mind. It would not even enter my head that you should think me a thief. You yourself must agree with me that I cannot possibly know of your thinking this --after all, I don't read other people's letters. I want you to understand that the subject has come up quite by chance ... Are you listening?"

"Go on," says Khrushchov, snuggling in his fur.

"Good. Let us think back, Filip Innokentievich. Let us recall the silver miniature. You asked me to show it to Weinstock. Listen carefully. As I left you I was holding it in my hand. No, no, please don't recite the alphabet. I can communicate with you perfectly well without the alphabet. And I swear, I swear by Vanya, I swear by all the women I have loved, I swear that every word of the person whose name I cannot utter --since otherwise you will think I read other people's mail, and am therefore capable of thievery as well--I swear that every word of his is a lie: I really did lose it. I came home, and I no longer had it, and it is not my fault. It is just that I am very absent-minded, and love her so much."

But Khrushchov does not believe Smurov; he shakes his head. In vain does Smurov swear, in vain does he wring his white, glittering hands--it is no use, words to convince Khrushchov do not exist. (Here my dream exhausted its meager supply of logic: by now the staircase on which the conversation took place was standing all by itself in open country, and below there were terraced gardens and the haze of trees in blurry bloom; the terraces stretched away into the distance, where one seemed to distinguish cascades and mountain meadows.) "Yes, yes," said Khrushchov in a hard menacing voice. "There was something inside that box, therefore it is irreplaceable. Inside it was Vanya--yes, yes, this happens sometimes to girls ... A very rare phenomenon, but it happens, it happens ..."

I awoke. It was early morning. The windowpanes were trembling from a passing truck. They had long ceased to be frosted with a mauve film, for spring was near. I paused to think how much had happened lately, how many new people I had met, and how enthralling, how hopeless was this house-to-house search, this quest of mine for the real Smurov. There is no use to dissemble--all these people I met were not live beings but only chance mirrors for Smurov; one among them, though, and for me the most important, the brightest mirror of all, still would not yield me Smurov's reflection. Hosts and guests at 5 Peacock Street move before me from light to shade, effortlessly, innocently, created merely for my amusement. Once again Mukhin, rising slightly from the sofa, stretches his hand across the table toward the ashtray, but I see neither his face, nor that hand with the cigarette; I see only his other hand, which (already unconsciously!) rests momentarily on Vanya's knee. Once again Roman Bogdanovich, bearded and with a pair of red apples for cheeks, bends his congested face to blow on the tea, and again Marianna sits clown and crosses her legs, thin legs in apricot-colored stockings. And, as a joke--it was Christmas Eve, I think--Khrushchov pulls on his wife's fur coat, assumes mannequin attitudes before the mirror, and walks about the room to general laughter, which gradually begins to grow forced, because Khrushchov always overdoes his jokes. Evgenia's lovely little hand, with its nails so glossy they seem moist, picks up a table-tennis paddle, and the little celluloid ball pings dutifully back and forth across the green net. And in the semidarkness Weinstock floats by, seated at his planchette table as if at a steering wheel; again the maid--Hilda or Gretchen--passes dreamily from one door to another, and suddenly begins to whisper and wriggle out of her dress. Whenever I wish, 1 can accelerate or retard to ridiculous slowness the motions of all these people, or distribute them in different groups, or arrange them in various patterns, lighting them now from below, now from the side ... For me, their entire existence has been merely a shimmer on a screen.

But wait, life did make one last attempt to prove to me that it was real--oppressive and tender, provoking excitement and torment, possessed of blinding possibilities for happiness, with tears, with a warm wind.

That day I climbed up to their flat at noon. I found the door unlocked, the rooms empty, the windows open. Somewhere a vacuum cleaner was putting its whole heart into an ardent whir. All at once, through the glass door leading from the parlor to the balcony, I saw Vanya's bowed head. She was sitting on the balcony with a book and--strangely enough--this was the first time I found her at home alone. Ever since I had been trying to subdue my love by telling myself that Vanya, like all the others, existed only in my imagination, and was a mere mirror, I had got into the habit of assuming a special jaunty tone with her, and now, greeting her, I said, without the least embarrassment, that she was "like a princess welcoming spring from her lofty tower." The balcony was quite small, with empty green flower boxes, and, in one corner, a broken clay pot, which I mentally compared to my heart, since it often happens that one's style of speaking to a person affects one's way of thinking in that person's presence. The day was warm, though not very sunny, with a touch of turbidity and dampness--diluted sunlight and a tipsy but meek little breeze, fresh from a visit to some public garden where the young grass was already nappy and green against the black of the loam. I took a breath of this air, and realized simultaneously that Vanya's wedding was only a week away. This thought brought back all the yearn and ache, I forgot again about Smurov, forgot that I must talk in a carefree manner. I turned away and began looking down at the street. How high we were, and so completely alone. "He will be quite a while yet," said Vanya. "They keep you waiting for hours in those offices."

"Your romantic vigil ..." I began, compelling myself to maintain that lifesaving levity, and trying to convince myself that the vernal breeze was a bit vulgar too, and that I was enjoying myself hugely.

I had not yet taken a good look at Vanya; I always needed a little time to get acclimated to her presence before looking at her. Now I saw she was wearing a black silk skirt and a white pullover with a low V neck, and that her hairdo was especially sleek. She went on looking through her lorgnette at the open book --a pogromystic novelette by a Russian lady in Belgrade or Harbin. How high we were above the street, right up in the gentle, rumpled sky ... The vacuum cleaner inside stopped its buzzing. "Uncle Pasha is dead," she said, lifting her head. "Yes, we got a telegram this morning."

What did I care if the existence of that jovial, half-witted old man had come to an end? But at the thought that, along with him, had died the happiest, the shortest-lived image of Smurov, the image of Smurov the bridegroom, I felt that I could no longer restrain the agitation that had long been welling within me. I do not know how it started--there must have been some preparatory motions--but I remember finding myself perching on the wide wicker arm of Vanya's chair, and already clutching her wrist--that long-dreamt-of, forbidden contact. She blushed violently, and her eyes suddenly began to shine with tears --how clearly I saw her dark lower eyelid fill with glistening moisture. At the same time she kept smiling--as though with unexpected generosity she wished to bestow on me all the various expressions of her beauty. "He was such an amusing old man," she said to explain the radiance on her lips, but I interrupted her:

"I can't go on like this, I can't stand it any longer," I mumbled, now snatching her wrist, which would immediately grow tense, now turning an obedient leaf in the book on her lap, "I have to tell you ... It doesn't make any difference now--I am leaving and shall never see you again. I have to tell you. After all, you don't know me ... But actually I wear a mask--I am always hidden behind a mask ..."

"Come, come," said Vanya, "I know you very well indeed, and I see everything, and understand everything. You are a good, intelligent person. Wait a moment, I'll take my handkerchief. You're sitting on it. No, it fell down. Thank you. Please let go of my hand--you mustn't touch me like that. Please, don't."

She was smiling anew, assiduously and comically raising her eyebrows, as if inviting me to smile too, but I had lost all control of myself, and some impossible hope was fluttering near me; I went on talking and gesticulating so wildly that the wicker chair arm creaked under me, and there were moments when the parting in Vanya's hair was right under my lips, whereupon she would carefully move her head away.

"More than life itself," I was saying rapidly, "more than life itself, and already for a long time, since the very first moment. And you are the first person that has ever told me that I am good ..."

"Please don't," pleaded Vanya. "You are only hurting yourself, and me. Look, why don't you let me tell you how Roman Bogdanovich made a declaration of love to me. It was hilarious ..."

"Don't you dare," I cried. "Who cares about that clown? I know, I know you would be happy with me. And, if there is anything about me that you don't like, I'll change--in any way you wish, I'll change."

"I like everything about you," said Vanya, "even your poetic imagination. Even your propensity to exaggerate at times. But above all I like your kindness--for you are very kind, and love everyone very much, and then you're always so absurd and charming. All the same, though, please stop grabbing my hand, or I shall simply get up and leave."

"So there is hope after all?" I asked.

"Absolutely none," said Vanya. "And you know it perfectly well yourself. And besides, he should be here any minute now."

"You cannot love him," I shouted. "You are deceiving yourself. He is not worthy of you. I could tell you some awful things about him."

"That will be enough," said Vanya and made as if to get up. But at this point, wishing to arrest her movement, I involuntarily and uncomfortably embraced her, and at the warm, woolly, transparent feel of her pullover a turbid, excruciating delight began to bubble within me; I was ready for anything, even for the most revolting torture, but I had to kiss her at least once.

"Why are you struggling?" I babbled. "What can it cost you? For you it's only a little act of charity--for me, it's everything."

I believe I might have consummated a shiver of oneirotic rapture had I been able to hold her a few seconds longer; but she managed to free herself and stand up. She moved away to the balcony railing, clearing her throat and narrowing her eyes at me, and somewhere in the sky there rose a long harp-like vibration--the final note. I had nothing more to lose. I blurted out everything, I shouted that Mukhin did not and could not love her, in a torrent of triteness I depicted the certainty of our happiness if she married me, and, finally, feeling that I was about to break into tears, threw down her book, which somehow I happened to be holding, and turned to go, forever leaving Vanya on her balcony, with the wind, with the hazy spring sky, and with the mysterious bass sound of an invisible airplane.

In the parlor, not far from the door, Mukhin sat smoking. He followed me with his eyes and said calmly, "I never thought you were such a scoundrel." I saluted him with a curt nod of the head and left.

I descended to my room, took my hat, and hurried out into the street. Upon entering the first flower shop I saw, I began tapping my heel and whistling, as there was no one in sight. The enchantingly fresh aroma of flowers all around me stimulated my voluptuous impatience. The street continued in the side mirror adjoining the display window, but this was but an illusionary continuation: a car that had passed from left to right would vanish abruptly, even though the street awaited it imperturbably; another car, which had been approaching from the opposite direction, would vanish as well--one of them had been only a reflection. Finally the salesgirl appeared. I selected a big bouquet of lilies of the valley; cold gems dripped from their resilient bells, and the salesgirl's fourth finger was bandaged--must have pricked herself. She went behind the counter and for a long time fussed and rustled with a lot of nasty paper. The tightly bound stems formed a thick, rigid sausage; never had I imagined that lilies of the valley could be so heavy. As I pushed the door, I noticed the reflection in the side mirror: a young man in a derby carrying a bouquet, hurried toward me. That reflection and I merged into one. I walked out into the street.

I walked in extreme haste, with mincing steps, surrounded by a cloudlet of floral moisture, trying not to think about anything, trying to believe in the marvelous healing power of the particular place toward which I hurried. Going there was the only way to avert disaster: life, hot and burdensome, full of the familiar torment, was about to bear down on me again and rudely disprove that I was a ghost. It is frightening when real life suddenly turns out to be a dream, but how much more frightening when that which one had thought a dream--fluid and irresponsible--suddenly starts to congeal into reality! I had to put a stop to this, and I knew how to do it.

Upon reaching my destination, I began to press the button of the bell, without pausing to catch my breath; I rang as if quenching an unbearable thirst--lengthily, greedily, in utter self-oblivion. "All right, all right, all right," she grumbled, opening the door. I dashed across the threshold and thrust the bouquet into her hands.

"Oh, how beautiful!" she said, and, a little bewildered, fixed me with her old, pale-blue eyes.

"Don't thank me," I shouted, impetuously raising my hand, "but do me one favor: allow me to have a look at my old room, I implore you."

"The room?" said the old lady. "I'm sorry, but unfortunately it is not free. But how beautiful, how nice of you

"You didn't quite understand me," I said, quivering with impatience. "I only want to have a look. That's all. Nothing more. For the flowers I brought you. Please. I'm sure the roomer has gone to work ..."

Deftly slipping past her, I ran along the corridor, and she came after me. "Oh dear, the room is rented," she kept repeating. "Dr. Galgen has no intention of leaving. I can't let you have it."

I yanked the door open. The furniture was somewhat differently distributed; a new pitcher stood on the washstand; and, on the wall behind it I found the hole, carefully plastered over--yes, the moment I found it I felt reassured. With my hand pressed to my heart I gazed at the secret mark of my bullet: it was my proof that I had really died; the world immediately regained its reassuring insignificance--I was strong once again, nothing could hurt me. With one sweep of my fancy I was ready to evoke the most fearsome shade from my former existence.

With a dignified bow to the old woman I left this room where, once upon a time, a man had bent over double as he released the fatal spring. In passing through the front hall, I noticed my flowers lying on the table and, feigning absent-mindedness, scooped them up, telling myself that the stupid old woman little deserved such an expensive gift. In fact, I could put it to better use--for instance, I could send it to Vanya, with a note both sad and humorous. The moist freshness of the flowers felt good; the thin paper had yielded here and there, and, squeezing with my fingers the cool green body of the stems, I recalled the gurgling and dripping that had accompanied me into nothingness. I walked leisurely along the very edge of the sidewalk and, half-closing my eyes, imagined that I was moving along the rim of a precipice, when a voice suddenly hailed me from behind.

"Gospodin Smurov," it said in a loud but hesitant tone. I turned at the sound of my name, involuntarily stepping off the sidewalk with one foot. It was Kashmarin, Matilda's husband, and he was pulling off a yellow glove, in a terrific hurry to proffer me his hand. He was without the famous cane, and had changed somehow--perhaps he had put on weight. There was an embarrassed expression on his face, and his large, lusterless teeth were simultaneously gritting at the rebellious glove and grinning at me. At last his hand, with outspread fingers, fairly gushed toward me. I felt an odd weakness; I was deeply touched; my eyes even began to smart.

"Smurov," he said, "you can't imagine how glad I am to have run into you. I've been searching for you frantically but nobody knew your address."

Here it dawned upon me that I was listening much too politely to this apparition from my former life, and, deciding to take him down a peg or two, I said, "I have nothing to discuss with you. You should be grateful I did not take you to court."

"Look, Smurov," he said plaintively, "I'm trying to apologize for my vile temper. I couldn't live at peace with myself after our--uh--heated discussion. I felt horrible about it. Allow me to confess something to you, as one gentleman to another. You see, I learned afterward that you were neither the first nor the last, and I divorced her--yes, divorced her."

"There can be no question of you and me discussing anything," I said, and took a sniff of my fat, cold bouquet.

"Oh, don't be so spiteful!" exclaimed Kashmarin. "Come on, hit me, give me a good punch, and then we'll make up. You don't want to? There, you're smiling--that's a good sign. No, don't hide behind those flowers--I can see you're smiling. So, now we can talk like friends. Allow me to ask how much money you are making."

I pouted awhile longer, and then answered him. All along I had to restrain a desire to say something nice, something to show how touched I was.

"Well, then, look," said Kashmarin. "I'll get you a job that pays three times as much. Come and see me tomorrow morning at the Hotel Monopole. I'll introduce you to a useful person. The job is a snap, and trips to the Riviera and to Italy are not to be ruled out. Automobile business. You'll stop by, then?"

He had, as they say, hit the bull's-eye. I had long been fed up with Weinstock and his books. I started sniffing at the cold flowers again, hiding in them my joy and my gratitude.

"I'll drink it over," I said, and sneezed.

"God bless you!" exclaimed Kashmarin. "Don't forget then--tomorrow. I'm so glad, so very glad I ran into you."

We parted. I ambled on slowly, my nose buried in the bouquet.

Kashmarin had borne away yet another image of Smurov. Does it make any difference which? For I do not exist; there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist. Smurov, however, will live on for a long time. The two boys, those pupils of mine, will grow old, and some image or other of me will live within them like a tenacious parasite. And then will come the day when the last person who remembers me will die. A fetus in reverse, my image, too, will dwindle and die within that last witness of the crime I committed by the mere fact of living, Perhaps a chance story about me, a simple anecdote in which I figure, will pass on from him to his son or grandson, and so my name and my ghost will appear fleetingly here and there for some time still. Then will come the end.

And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear, I swear I am happy. I have realized that the only happiness in this world is to observe, to spy, to watch, to scrutinize oneself and others, to be nothing but a big, slightly vitreous, somewhat bloodshot, unblinking eye. I swear that this is happiness. What does it matter that I am a bit cheap, a bit foul, and that no one appreciates all the remarkable things about me--my fantasy, my erudition, my literary gift ... I am happy that I can gaze at myself, for any man is absorbing--yes, really absorbing! The world, try as it may, cannot insult me. I am invulnerable. And what do I care if she marries another? Every other night I dream of her dresses and things on an endless clothesline of bliss, in a ceaseless wind of possession, and her husband shall never learn what I do to the silks and fleece of the dancing witch. This is love's supreme accomplishment. I am happy--yes, happy! What more can I do to prove it, how to proclaim that I am happy? Oh, to shout it so that all of you believe me at last, you cruel, smug people ...

This is the last installment of a three-part serialization of "The Eye" by Vladimir Nabokov.