Despair

Keeping My Eyes fixed on the ground, I shook his right hand with my left, simultaneously picked up the fallen stick, and sat down on the bench beside him.

"You are late," I said, without looking at him. He laughed. Still without looking, I unbuttoned my overcoat, removed my hat, passed my palm across my head. I felt hot all over. The wind had died in the madhouse.

"I recognized you at once," said Felix in a fawning idiotically conspirant manner.

I was looking now at the stick in my hands. It was a stout, weathered stick, with its lime wood notched in one place and the owner's name neatly branded on it: "Felix so and so," and under that the date, and then the name of his village. I put it back on the bench, with the fleeting thought that he had come on foot, the rascal.

At last, bracing myself, I turned toward him. Still, it was not at once that I glanced at his face: I started working from his feet upward, as one sees on the screen when the cameraman is trying to be tantalizing. First came big, dusty shoes, thick socks sloppy about the ankles, then shiny blue trousers (the corduroy ones having presumably rotted) and a hand holding a crust of dry bread. Then a blue coat over a dark-gray sweater. Still higher the soft collar that I knew (though now comparatively clean). There I stopped. Should I leave him headless or go on building him? Taking cover behind my hand I glanced between my fingers at his face.

For a moment I had the impression that it had all been a delusion, a hallucination--that never could he have been my double, that gump, with his raised eyebrows, expectantly leering, not quite knowing yet what countenance to assume--therefore raising those eyebrows, so as to be on the safe side. For a moment, as I say, he appeared to me as like me as any man. But then, their fright over, the sparrows returned, one of them hopping quite close, and that diverted his attention; his features fell back to their proper position, and I saw, once again, the marvel that had arrested me five months before.

He flung a handful of crumbs to the sparrows. The nearest made a flurried peck, the crumb sprang up and was nabbed by another, which immediately flew away. Felix again turned to me with his former expectant and cringing servility.

"That one got nothing," said I, pointing to a little chap standing apart and clicking his beak helplessly.

"He's young," observed Felix. "Look, he has hardly any tail yet. I like birdies," he added with a mawkish grin.

"Been in the war?" I queried; and several times running, I cleared my throat, for my voice was hoarse.

"Yes," he answered. "Two years. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. Damned afraid of getting killed, eh?"

He winked and spoke with evasive obscurity:

"Every mouse has a house, but it's not every mouse that comes out."

In German the end rhymed too; I had already noticed his fondness for insipid sayings; and it was quite useless racking one's brains trying to see the idea he really desired to express.

"That's all. There is no more for you," said he in an aside to the sparrows. "I like squirrels too" (again that wink). "It's good when a wood is full of squirrels. I like 'em because they are against the landowners. And moles."

"What about sparrows?" I asked with great gentleness. "Are they 'against' as you put it?"

"A sparrow is a beggar among birds--a real street beggar. A beggar," he repeated again and again, leaning with both hands on his stick and swaying a little. It was obvious he considered himself to be an extraordinarily astute arguer. No, he was not merely a fool, he was a fool of the melancholic type. Even his smile was glum--made one sick to look at it. And nevertheless I looked greedily. It interested me hugely to observe how our remarkable likeness got broken by the working of his face. If he were to attain old age, I reflected, his grins and grimaces would end by eroding completely our resemblance which is now so perfect when his face freezes.

Hermann (playfully): "Ah, you are a philosopher, I see."

That seemed to offend him a little. "Philosophy is the invention of the rich," he objected with deep conviction. "And all the rest of it has been invented too: religion, poetry ... oh, maiden, how I suffer, oh, my poor heart! I don't believe in love. Now, friendship--that's another matter. Friendship and music.

"I'll tell you something," he went on, laying his stick aside and addressing me with some heat. "I'd like to have a friend who'd always be ready to share his slice of bread with me and who'd bequeath to me a piece of land, a cottage. Yes, I'd like to have a real friend. I'd work for him as a gardener, and then afterward his garden would become mine, and I'd always remember my dead comrade with grateful tears. We'd fiddle together, or, say, he'd play the flute and I the mandolin. But women ... now, really, could you name a single one who did not deceive her husband?"

"All very true! Very true indeed. It's a pleasure to hear you talk. Did you ever go to school?"

"Just for a short time. What can one learn at school? Nothing. If a fellow is clever, what good are lessons to him? The chief thing is Nature. Politics, for instance, don't attract me. And generally speaking ... the world, you know, is dirt."

"A perfectly logical conclusion," said I. "Yes--your logic is faultless. Quite surprisingly so. Now, look here, clever, just hand me back that pencil of mine and be quick about it."

That made him sit up and put him into the frame of mind I required.

"You forgot it on the grass," he mumbled in a bewildered manner. "I didn't know if I'd see you again."

"Stole it and sold it!" I cried--even stamped my foot.

His reply was remarkable: first he shook his head denying the theft and then immediately nodded admitting the transaction. There was gathered in him, I believe, the whole bouquet of human stupidity.

"Confound you," I said, "be more circumspect next time. Well, anyway, let's let bygones---- Have a cigarette."

He relaxed and beamed, as he saw my wrath had passed: started to display gratitude: "Thank you, oh, thank you. Now, really, how marvelously alike we are! Mightn't one suppose my father had sinned with your mother?" And he laughed wheedlingly, very pleased with his joke.

"To business," said I, affecting a sudden bluff gravity. "I have invited you here not merely for the ethereal delights of small talk. I spoke in my letter of the help I was going to give you, of the work I had found for you. First of all, however, let me put you one question. Your answer must be candid and exact. Tell me, what do you think I am?"

Felix examined me, then turned away and shrugged his shoulders.

"It's not a riddle I'm setting you," I went on patiently. "I perfectly realize that you cannot know my identity. Let us. in any case, waive aside the possibility you so wittily mentioned. Our blood, Felix, is not the same. No, my good chap, not the same. I was born a thousand miles from your cradle and the honor of my parents--as of yours, I hope--is unstained. You are an only son: So am I. Consequently neither to me nor to you can there come that mysterious creature: a long-lost, brother once stolen by the gypsies. No ties unite us; I have no obligations toward you, mark that well, no obligations whatever; if I intend helping you, I do so of my own free will. Bear that in mind, please. Now, let me ask you again: what do you suppose I am? What is the opinion you have formed of me? For you must have formed some kind of opinion, mustn't you?"

"Maybe you're an actor," said Felix dubiously.

"If I understand you aright, friend, you mean that at our first meeting you thought: 'Ah, he is probably one of those theatrical blokes, the dashing kind, with funny fancies and fine clothes; maybe a celebrity.' Am I correct?"

Felix fixed the toe of his shoe with which he was smoothing the gravel, and his face assumed a rather strained expression.

"I didn't think anything," he said peevishly. "I simply saw--well, that you were sort of curious about me, and so on. And do you actors get well paid?"

A tiny note: the idea he gave me appeared to me subtle; the singular bend which it took brought it into contact with the main part of my plan.

"You've guessed," I exclaimed, "you've guessed. Yes, I'm an actor. A film actor, to be accurate. Yes, that's right. You put it nicely, splendidly! What else can you say about me?"

Here I noticed that somehow his spirits had fallen. My profession seemed to have disappointed him. There he sat frowning moodily with the half-smoked cigarette held between finger and thumb. Suddenly he lifted his head, blinked.

"And what kind of work do you want to offer me?" he inquired without his former ingratiating sweetness.

"Not so fast, not so fast. All in its proper time. I was asking you what else did you think of me? Come, answer me. Please."

"Oh, well ... I know you like traveling; that's about all."

In the meantime night was approaching; the sparrows had long disappeared; the monument loomed darker and seemed to have grown in size. From behind a black tree there came out noiselessly a gloomy and fleshful moon. A cloud slipped a mask over it in passing, which left visible only its chubby chin.

"Well, Felix, it's getting dark and dismal out here. I bet you are hungry. Come on, let us find something to eat and go on with our talk over a pint of ale. Does that suit you?"

"It does," said Felix in a slightly livelier voice and then added sententiously: "A hungry belly has no ears" (I translate his adages anyhow; in German they all jingled with rhymes).

We got up and advanced toward the yellow lights of the boulevard. As night fell, I was hardly aware of our resemblance. Felix slouched beside me, seemingly deep in thought and his mode of walking was as dull as himself.

I queried: "Have you ever been to Tarnitz before?"

"No," he answered. "I don't care for towns. Me and my likes find towns tiresome."

The sign of a pothouse. Standing in the window a barrel, guarded by two bearded brownies of terra cotta. As good as any other. We entered and chose a table in a far corner. As I withdrew the glove from my hand, I surveyed the place with a searching eye. There were only three people and these paid no attention to us whatever. The waiter came up, a pale little man with pince-nez (it was not the first time I had seen a pince-nez'd waiter, but I could not recall where and when I had seen one already). While awaiting our order, he looked at me, then at Felix. Naturally, owing to my mustache, our likeness did not leap to the eyes; and indeed, I had let my mustache grow with the special purpose of not attracting undue attention when appearing together with Felix. There is, I believe, somewhere in Pascal a wise thought: that two persons resembling each other do not present any interest when met singly, but create quite a stir when both appear at once. I have never read Pascal nor do I remember where I pinched that quotation. Oh, I used to thrive on such monkey tricks in my youth! Unfortunately I was not alone in making a show of this or that pickpocket maxim. In St. Petersburg once, at a party, I remarked: "There are feelings, says Turgenev, which may be expressed only by music." A few minutes later there arrived one more guest, who, in the middle of the conversation, delivered the very same phrase, lifted from the program of a concert at which I had noticed him heading for the green room. He, and not I, made an ass of himself, to be sure; still, it produced an uncomfortable feeling in me (though I derived some relief from asking him slyly how he had liked the great Viabranova), so I decided to cut out the highbrow business. All this is a digression and not an evasion--most emphatically not an evasion; for I fear nothing and will tell all. It should be admitted that I exercise an exquisite control not only over myself but over my style of writing. How many novels I wrote when young--just like that, casually, and without the least intention of publishing them. Here is another utterance: a published manuscript, says Swift, is comparable to a whore. I happened one day (in Russia) to give Lydia a manuscript of mine to read, telling her that it (continued on page 102)despair(continued from page 92) was the work of a friend; she found it boring and did not finish it. To this day my handwriting is practically unfamiliar to her. I have exactly 25 kinds of handwritings, the best (i.e., those I use the most readily) being as follows: a round diminutive one with a pleasant plumpness about its curves, so that every word looks like a newly baked fancy cake; then a fast cursive, sharp and nasty, the scribble of a hunchback in a hurry, with no dearth of abbreviations; then a suicide's hand, every letter a noose, every comma a trigger: then the one I prize most: big, legible, firm and absolutely impersonal; thus might write the abstract hand in its superhuman cuff, which one finds figured on signposts and in textbooks of physics. It was in such a hand that I began writing the book now offered to the reader; soon, however, my pen ran amuck: this book is written in all my 25 hands mixed together, so that the typesetter or some typist, unknown to me, or again the definite person I have elected, that Russian author to whom my manuscript will be forwarded when the time comes, might think that several people participated in the writing of my book: and it is also extremely probable that some rat-faced, sly little expert will discover in its cacographic orgy a sure sign of psychic abnormality. So much the better.

There ... I have mentioned you, my first reader, you, the well-known author of psychological novels. I have read them and found them very artificial, though not badly constructed. What will you feel, reader-writer, when you tackle my tale? Delight? Envy? Or even ... who knows? ... you may use my termless removal to give out my stuff for your own ... for the fruit of your own crafty ... yes, I grant you that ... crafty and experienced imagination; leaving me out in the cold. It would not be hard for me to take in advance proper measures against such impudence. Whether I shall take them, that is another question. What if I find it rather flattering that you should steal my property? Theft is the best compliment one can possibly pay a thing. And do you know the most amusing part? I assume that, having made up your mind to effect that pleasant robbery, you will suppress the compromising lines, the very lines I am writing now, and, moreover, fashion certain bits to your liking (which is a less pleasant thought) just as a motorcar thief repaints the car he has stolen. And, in this respect, I shall allow myself to relate a little story, which is certainly the funniest little story I know.

Some ten days ago, that is, about the tenth of March 1931 (half a year has suddenly gone--a fall in a dream, a run in time's stocking), a person, or persons, passing along the highway or through the wood (that, I think, will be settled in due course) espied, on its edge, and unlawfully took possession of, a small blue car of such and such a make and power (I leave out the technical details). And, as a matter of fact, that is all.

I do not claim that this story has universal appeal: its point is none too obvious. It made me scream with laughter only because I was in the know. I may add that nobody told it me, nor have I read it anywhere; what I did was, really, to deduce it by means of some close reasoning from the bare fact of the car's disappearance, a fact quite wrongly interpreted by the papers. Back again, time!

"Can you drive?" was, I remember, the question I suddenly put to Felix, when the waiter, failing to notice anything particular about us, placed before me a lemonade and before Felix a tankard of beer, into the profuse froth of which my blurred double eagerly dipped his upper lip.

"What?" he uttered, with a beatific grunt.

"I was asking if you can drive a car."

"Can't I just! I once chummed up with a chauffeur who worked at a castle near my village. One fine day we ran over a sow. Lord, how she squealed!"

The waiter brought us some sort of gravy-logged hash, a great deal of it, and mashed potatoes, also drowned in sauce. Where the deuce had I already seen a pince-nez on a waiter's nose? Ah--it comes back to me (only now, while writing this!)--at a rotten little Russian restaurant in Berlin; and that other waiter was very like this one--the same sort of sullen straw-haired little man, but of gentler birth.

"So that's that, Felix. We have eaten and drunk; now, let us talk. You have made certain suppositions concerning me and these have proved correct. Now, before going deeper into the business on hand, I want to sketch out for your benefit a general picture of my personality and life; you won't be long in understanding why it is urgent. To begin with ..."

I took a sip and resumed:

"To begin with. I was born of a rich family. We had a house and a garden--ah, what a garden, Felix! Imagine, not merely rose trees but rose thickets, roses of all kinds, each variety bearing a framed label: roses, you know, receive names as resounding as those given to race horses. Besides roses, there grew in our garden a quantity of other flowers, and when, of a morning, the whole place was brilliant with dew, the sight, Felix, was a dream. When still a child, I loved to look after our garden and well did I know my job: I had a small watering can, Felix, and a small mattock, and my parents would sit in the shade of an old cherry tree, planted by my grandfather, and look on, with tender emotion, at me, the small busybody (just imagine, imagine the picture!) engaged in removing from the roses, and squelching, caterpillars that looked like twigs. We had plenty of farmyard creatures, as, for example, rabbits, the most oval animal of all, if you know what I mean; and choleric turkeys with carbuncular caruncles (I made a gobbling sound) and darling little kids and many, many others.

"Then my parents lost all their money and died, and the lovely garden vanished; and it is only now that happiness seems to have come my way once more: I have lately managed to acquire a bit of land on the edge of a lake, and there will be a new garden still better than the old one. My sappy boyhood was perfumed through and through with all those flowers and fruits, whereas the neighboring wood, huge and thick, cast over my soul a shadow of romantic melancholy.

"I was always lonely, Felix, and I am lonely still. Women ... No need to talk of those fickle and lewd beings. I have traveled a good deal; just like you, I love to rove with a bag strapped to my shoulders, although, to be sure, there were always certain reasons (which I wholly condemn) for my wanderings to be more agreeable than yours. It is really a striking thing: have you ever pondered over the following matter?--two men, alike poor, live not alike; one, say, as you, frankly and hopelessly leading a beggar's existence, while the other, though quite as poor, living in a very different style--a carefree, well-fed fellow, moving among the gay rich ...

"Why is it so? Because, Felix, those two belong to different classes; and speaking of classes, let us imagine a man who travels fourth-class without a ticket and another who travels first, without one either: X sits on a hard bench; Mr. Y lolls on a cushioned seat: but both have empty purses--or. to be precise, Mr. Y has got a purse to show, though empty, whereas X has not even that and can show nothing but holes in the lining of his pocket.

"By speaking thus I am trying to make you grasp the difference between us: I am an actor, living generally on air, but I have always elastic hopes for the future; they may be stretched indefinitely, such hopes, without bursting. You are denied even that; and you would have always remained a pauper, had not a miracle occurred; that miracle is my meeting you.

"There is not a thing, Felix, that one could not exploit. Nay, more: there is not a thing that one could not exploit for a very long time, and very successfully. Maybe in the more fiery of your dreams you saw a number of two figures, the limit of your aspirations. Now, however, the dream does not only come true, (continued on page 145)despair(continued from page 102) but at once runs into three figures. None too easy for your fancy to comprehend, is it, for didn't you feel you were nearing a hardly thinkable infinity, when you reckoned above ten? And now we are turning the corner of that infinity, and a century beams at you, and over its shoulder--another; and who knows, Felix, maybe a fourth figure is ripening; yes, it makes the head swim, and the heart beat, and the nerves tingle, but it is true nevertheless. See here: you have grown so used to your miserable fate that I doubt whether you catch my meaning; what I say seems dark to you, and strange; what comes next will seem still darker and stranger."

I spoke a long while in that vein. He kept glancing at me with distrust; quite likely, he had gradually acquired the notion that I was making fun of him. Fellows of his kind remain good-natured up to a certain point only. As it dawns upon them that they are about to be put upon, all their goodness comes off, there appears in their eyes a vitreous glint, they work themselves heavily into a state of solid passion.

I spoke obscurely, but my object was not to infuriate him. On the contrary, I wished to curry favor with him; to perplex, but at the same time to attract; in a word, to convey to him vaguely but cogently the image of a man of his nature and inclinations. My fancy, however, ran riot and that rather disgustingly, with the weighty playfulness of an elderly but still smirking lady who has had a drop too much.

Upon my noting the impression I was making. I stopped for a minute, half sorry I had frightened him, but then, all at once, I felt how sweet it was to be able to make one's listener thoroughly uncomfortable. So I smiled and continued thus:

"You must forgive me, Felix, for all this chatter, but, you see, I seldom have occasion to take my soul for an outing. Then, too, I am in a great hurry to demonstrate myself from all sides, for I want to give you an exhaustive description of the man with whom you will have to work, the more so as the work in question will be directly concerned with our resemblance. Tell me, do you know what an understudy is?"

He shook his head, his lower lip drooped; I had long observed that he breathed preferably through his mouth--his nose being stuffed up, or something.

"If you don't, let me explain. Imagine that the manager of a film company--you have been to the cinema, haven't you?"

"Well, yes ..."

"Good. So imagine that such a manager or director ... Excuse me, friend, you seem to be wanting to say something?"

"Well, I haven't been often. When I want to spend money I find something better than pictures."

"Agreed, but there are people who think differently--if there weren't, then there wouldn't be such a profession as mine, would there? So, as I was saying, a director has offered me, for a small remuneration--something like ten thousand dollars--just a trifle, certainly, just air, but prices have dropped nowadays--to act in a film where the hero is a musician. This suits me admirably, as in real life I love music too, and can play several instruments. On summer evenings I sometimes take my violin to the nearest grove--but to get back to the point--an understudy, Felix, is a person who can, in case of emergency, replace a given actor.

"The actor plays his part, with the camera shooting him; an insignificant little scene remains to be done; the hero, say, is to drive past in his car; but he can't, he is in bed with a bad cold. There is no time to be lost, and so his double takes over and coolly sails past in the car (splendid that you can manage cars) and when at last the film is shown, not a single spectator is aware of the substitution. The better the likeness, the dearer its price. There even exist special companies whose business consists in supplying movie stars with star ghosts. And the life of the ghost is fine, seeing he gets a fixed salary but has to work only occasionally, and not much work either--just putting on exactly the same clothes as the hero, and whizzing past in a smart car, in the hero's stead, that's all! Naturally an understudy ought not to blab about his job; there would be the hell of a row if some reporter got wind of the stratagem and the public learned that a bit of its pet actor's part had been faked. You understand now why I was so delightfully excited at finding you an exact replica of myself. That has always been one of my fondest dreams. Just think how much it means to me--especially at present when the filming has started, and I, a man of delicate health, am cast for the leading part. If anything happens to me they at once call you, you arrive----"

"Nobody calls me and I arrive nowhere," interrupted Felix.

"Why do you speak like that, my dear chap?" said I, with a note of gentle rebuke.

"Because," said Felix, "it is unkind of you to pull a poor man's leg. First I believed you. I thought you'd offer me some honest work. It's been a long dreary tramp coming here. Look at the state of my soles ... and now, instead of work--no, it doesn't suit me."

"I'm afraid there is a slight misunderstanding," I said softly. "What I'm offering you is neither debasing, nor unduly complicated. We'll sign an agreement. You'll get a hundred marks per month from me. Let me repeat: the job is ridiculously easy; child's play--you know the way children dress up to represent soldiers, ghosts, aviators. Just think: you'll be getting a monthly salary of a hundred marks solely for putting on--very rarely, once a year perhaps--exactly the same clothes I am wearing at present. Now, do you know what we ought to do? Let us fix some date to meet and rehearse some little scene, just to see what it looks like ..."

"I don't know a thing about such matters, and don't care to know," objected Felix rather rudely. "But I'll tell you something; my aunt had a son who played the buffoon at fairs, he boozed and was too fond of girls, and my aunt broke her heart over him until the day when, thank God, he dashed his brains out by missing a flying swing and his wife's hands. All those picture houses and circuses----"

Did it actually go on like this? Am I faithfully following the lead of my memory, or has perchance my pen mixed the steps and wantonly danced away? There is something a shade too literary about that talk of ours, smacking of thumbscrew conversations in those stage taverns where Dostoievsky is at home; a little more of it and we should hear that sibilant whisper of false humility, that catch in the breath, those repetitions of incantatory adverbs--and then all the rest of it would come, the mystical trimming dear to that famous writer of Russian thrillers.

It even torments me in a way; that is, it does not only torment me, but quite, quite muddles my mind and, I dare say, is fatal to me--the thought that I have somehow been too cocksure about the power of my pen--do you recognize the modulations of that phrase? You do. As for me, I seem to remember that talk of ours admirably, with all its innuendoes, and vsyu podnogotnuyu, the whole subunguality," the secret under the nail (to use the jargon of the torture chamber, where fingernails were prized off, and a favorite term--enhanced by italics--with our national expert in soul ague and the aberrations of human self-respect). Yes, I remember that talk, but am unable to render it exactly, something clogs me, something hot and abhorrent and quite unbearable, which I cannot get rid of because it is as sticky as a sheet of flypaper into which one has walked naked in a pitch-dark room. And, what is more, you cannot find the light.

No, our conversation was not such as is set down here; that is, the words maybe were exactly as stated (again that little gasp). but I have not managed or not dared to render the special noises accompanying it; there occurred queer fadings or clottings of sound: and then again that muttering, that susurration, and, suddenly, a wooden voice clearly pronouncing: "Come, Felix, another drink."

The brown floral design on the wall; an inscription explaining testily that the house was not responsible for lost property; the cardboard rounds serving as bases for beer (with a hurriedly penciled sum across one of them); and the distant bar at which a man drank, legs twisted into a black scroll, and smoke encircling him; all these were commentative notes to our discourse, as meaningless, however, as those in the margins of Lydia's trashy books.

Had the trio sitting by the blood-red window curtain, far from us, had they turned and looked at us, those three quiet and morose carouses, they would have seen: the fortunate brother and the luckless brother: one with a small mustache and sleek hair, the other clean-shaven, but needing a haircut (that ghostly little mane down the scruff of his lean neck); facing each other, both sitting alike: elbows on the table and fists at the cheekbones. Thus we were reflected by the misty and. to all appearances, sick mirror, with a freakish slant, a streak of madness, a mirror that surely would have cracked at once had it chanced to reflect one single genuine human countenance.

Thus we sat and I kept up my persuasive drone; I am a bad speaker, and the oration which I seem to render word by word did not flow with the lissome glide it has on paper. Indeed, it is not really possible to set down my incoherent speech, that tumble and jumble of words, the forlornness of subordinated clauses, which have lost their masters and strayed away, and all the superfluous gibber that gives words a support or a creep hole: but my mind worked so rhythmically and pursued its quarry at such a steady pace, that the impression now left me by the trend of my own words is anything but tangled or garbled. My object. however, was still out of reach. The fellow's resistance, proper to one of limited intelligence and timorous humor, had to be broken down somehow. So seduced was I by the neat naturalness of the theme. that I overlooked the probability of its being distasteful to him and even of its frightening him off as naturally as it had appealed to my fancy.

I do not mean. by that, that I have ever had the least connection with the screen or the stage; in point of fact, the only time I performed was a score of years ago, in a little amateur affair at our squire's country seat (which my father managed). I had to speak only a few words: "The prince bade me announce that he would be here presently. Ah! here he comes," instead of which, full of exquisite delight and all aquiver with glee. I spoke thus: "The prince cannot come: he has cut his throat with a razor": and, as I spoke. the gentleman in the part of the prince was coming already, with a beaming smile on his gorgeously painted face. and there was a moment of general suspense, the whole world was held up--and to this day I remember how deeply I inhaled the divine ozone of monstrous storms and disasters. But although I have never been an actor in the strict sense of the word. I have nevertheless, in real life. always carried about with me a small folding theater and have appeared in more than one part, and my acting has always been superfine; and if you think that my prompter's name was Gain--capital G not G--then you are mightily mistaken. It is all not so simple. my dear sirs.

In the case of my talk with Felix, how ever, my performance proved to be merely a loss of time, for I suddenly realized that if I went on with that monolog about filming. he would get up and leave. returning the ten marks I had sent him: (no, on second thought I believe he would not have returned them--no. never!). The weighty German word for "money" (money in German being gold, in French, silver, in Russian, copper) was mouthed by him with extraordinary reverence, which, curiously. could turn into brutal lust. But he would have certainly gone away, with an I-shan't-be-insulted air!

To be perfectly frank. I do not quite see why everything linked with the theater or cinema seemed so utterly atrocious to him; strange, foreign--yes. but ... atrocious? Let us try to explain it by the German plebeian's backwardness. The German peasant is old-fashioned and prudish; just try. one day. to walk through a village in nothing but swimming trunks. I have tried, so I know what happens; the men stand stock-still, the women titter, hiding their faces, quite like parlormaids in Old World comedies.

I fell silent. Felix was silent too, tracing lines on the table with his finger. He had probably expected me to offer him a gardener's job or that of a chauffeur. and was now disappointed and sulky. I called the waiter and paid. Once again we were pacing the streets. It was a sharp bleak night. Among small clouds curled like astrakhan, a shiny flat moon kept sliding in and out.

"Listen. Felix. Our talk is not finished. We cannot leave it like that. I've booked a room in a hotel; come along. you'll spend the night with me."

He accepted this as his due. Slow as his wits were, he understood that I needed him. and that it was unwise to break off our relations without having arrived at something definite. We again walked past the duplicate of the Bronze Rider. Not a soul did we meet on the boulevard. Not a gleam was there in the houses: had I noticed a single lighted window. I should have supposed that somebody had hanged himself there and left the lamp burning--so unwonted and unwarranted would a light have seemed. We reached the hotel in silence. A collarless sleepwalker let us in. Upon entering the room I again had that sensation of something very familiar; but other matters engaged my mind.

"Sit down." He did so with his fists on his knees: his mouth half opened. I removed my coat and thrusting both hands into my trouser pockets and clinking small change in them, started walking to and fro. I wore, by the bye, a lilac tie flecked with black. which blew up every time I turned on my heel. For some while it continued like that: silence, my pacing, the wind of my motion.

All of a sudden Felix, as if shot dead, let his head fall and began unlacing his shoes. I glanced at his unprotected neck, at the wistful expression of his first vertebra. and it made me feel queer to think that I was about to sleep with my double in one room, under one blanket almost, for the twin beds stood side by side, quite close. Then, too, there came, with a pang, the dreadful idea that his flesh might be tainted by the scarlet blotches of a skin disease or by some crude tattooing; I demanded of his body a minimum of resemblance to mine: as to his face, there was no trouble about that.

"Yes, go on, take your things off," said I, walking and veering.

He lifted his head, a nondescript shoe in his hand.

"It is a long while since I've slept in a bed," he said with a smile (don't show your gums, fool). "In a real bed."

"Take off everything," I said impatiently. "You are surely dirty, dusty. I'll give you a shirt to sleep in. But first wash."

Grinning and grunting, perhaps a trifle shy of me, he stripped to the skin and proceeded to douche his armpits over the basin of the cupboardlike washstand. I shot glances at him, examining eagerly that stark-naked man. His back was about as muscular as mine, with a pinker coccyx and uglier buttocks. When he turned I could not help wincing at the sight of his big knobbed navel--but then mine is no beauty either. I doubt he had ever in his life washed his animal parts: they looked fairly plausible as these things go but did not invite close inspection. His toenails were much less abominable than I had expected. He was lean and white, much whiter than his face, thus making it seem that it was my face, still retaining its summer tan, that was affixed to his pale trunk. You could even discern the line round his neck where the head adhered. I derived a keen pleasure from that survey; it set my mind at ease; no special marks stigmatized him.

When, having pulled on the clean shirt I issued him from my suitcase, he went to bed, I sat down at his feet and fixed him with a frank sneer. I do not know what he thought, but that unusual cleanness had mollified him, and in a bashful gush of something, which for all its repulsive sentimentality was quite a tender gesture, he stroked my hand and said--I translate literally: "You're a good fellow."

Without unclenching my teeth I went into shivers of laughter; then, I suppose, the expression of my face struck him as odd. for his eyebrows climbed up and he cocked his head. No longer suppressing my mirth I poked a cigarette into his mouth. It fairly made him choke.

"You ass!" I exclaimed. "Haven't you really guessed that if I made you come here it was for some important, terribly important matter?" and producing a thousand-mark note from my wallet, and still shaking with merriment, I held it up before the fool's face.

"That's for me?" he asked, and dropped the lighted cigarette; it was as if his fingers had involuntarily parted, ready to snatch.

"You'll burn a hole in the sheet." I said (laughing, laughing). "Or in your precious hide! You seem moved, I see. Yes, this money will be yours, you'll even receive it in advance if you agree to the thing I am going to suggest. How was it you didn't realize that I babbled about movies only to test you, and that I am no actor whatsoever, but a shrewd. hard businessman. Briefly, here is the matter: I intend performing a certain operation and a slight chance exists of their getting at me later. All suspicions. however, will be at once allayed by the definite proof that at the exact time when the aforesaid operation was performed, I happened to be very far from the spot."

"Robbery?" asked Felix, and a look of strange satisfaction flitted across his face.

"I see you aren't as stupid as I thought," I went on, lowering my voice to a mere murmur. "Evidently you have long had an inkling that there was some thing fishy. And now you are glad that you weren't mistaken, as every man is glad when the correctness of his guess is confirmed. We both have a weakness for silver objects--that's what you thought, didn't you? Or perchance, what really pleased you was that I turned out to be not a legpuller after all, not a dreamer slightly cracked, but a man who meant business?"

"Robbery?" asked Felix again, with new life in his eyes.

"At any rate, an unlawful action. You shall learn the details in due time. First, let me explain what I want you to do. I have a car. Wearing my clothes you'll sit in that car and drive along a certain road. That's all. You'll get a thousand marks--or if you prefer, two hundred and fifty dollars--for that joyride."

"A thousand?" he repeated after me ignoring the lure of valuta. "And when will you give it me?"

"It'll happen perfectly naturally, my friend. On putting on my coat you'll find my wallet in it, and in the wallet, the cash."

"What must I do next?"

"I've told you. Go for a drive. I'll vanish; you'll be seen, taken for me; you'll return and ... well, I'll be back, too, with my purpose accomplished. Want me to be more exact? Righto. At a certain hour you will drive through a village, where my face is well known; you won't have to speak to anyone, it will all be a matter of a few minutes. But I'll pay for those few minutes handsomely, just because they'll give me the marvelous opportunity of being in two places at once."

"You'll get caught with the goods," said Felix, "and then the police will be after me; it'll all come out at the trial; you'll squeal."

I laughed: "D'you know, friend, I like the way you at once accepted the notion of my being a crook."

He rejoined, saying that he was not fond of jails: that jails sapped one's youth: and that there was nothing like freedom and the singing of birds. He spoke rather thickly and without the least enmity. After a while he became pensive with his elbow upon the pillow. The room was smelly and quiet. Only a couple of paces or one jump separated his bed from mine. I yawned and, without undressing, lay down in the Russian way upon (not under) the featherbed. A quaint little thought tickled me: during the night Felix might kill me and rob me. By straining my foot out and aside, and scraping with my shoe against the wall, I managed to reach the switch; slipped: strained still more, and with my heel kicked out the light.

"And what if it's all a lie?" came his dull voice breaking the silence. "What if I don't believe you?"

I did not stir.

"A lie," he repeated a minute later. I did not stir, and presently I began to breathe with the dispassionate rhythm of sleep.

He listened, that was certain. I listened to his listening. He listened to my listening to his listening. Something snapped. I noticed that I was not thinking at all of what I thought I was thinking; attempted to catch my consciousness tripping, but got mazed myself.

I dreamed a loathsome dream, a triple ephialtes. First there was a small dog: but not simply a small dog: a small mock dog, very small, with the minute black eyes of a beetle's larva; it was white through and through, and coldish. Flesh? No, not flesh, but rather grease or jelly, or else perhaps, the fat of a white worm, with, moreover, a kind of carved corrugated surface reminding one of a Russian paschal lamb of butter--disgusting mimicry. A cold-blooded being, which Nature had twisted into the likeness of a small dog with a tail and legs, all as it should be. It kept getting into my way, I could not avoid it; and when it touched me, I felt something like an electric shock. I woke up. On the sheet of the bed next to mine there lay curled up, like a swooned white larva, that very same dreadful little pseudo dog ... I groaned with disgust and opened my eyes. All around shadows floated: the bed next to mine was empty except for the broad burdock leaves which, owing to the damp, grow out of bedsteads. One could see, on those leaves, telltale stains of a slimy nature; I peered closer; there, glued to a fat stem it sat, small, tallowish-white, with its little black button eyes ... but then, at last, I woke up for good.

We had forgotten to pull down the blinds. My wristwatch had stopped. Might be five or half-past five. Felix slept, wrapped up in the feather bed, with his back to me; the dark crown of his head alone was visible. A weird awakening, a weird dawn. I recollected our talk, I remembered that I had not been able to convince him: and a brand-new, most attractive idea got hold of me.

Oh, reader, I felt as fresh as a child after my little snooze; my soul was rinsed clean; I was, in fact, only in my 36th year, and the generous remainder of my life might be devoted to something better than a vile will-o'-the-wisp. Really, what a fascinating thought; to take the advice of fate and, now, at once, leave that room, forever leave and forget, and spare my poor double... . And, who knows, maybe he was not the least like me after all, I could see only the crown of his head, he was fast asleep, with his back to me. Thus an adolescent, after yielding once again to a solitary and shameful vice, says to himself with inordinate force and clearness: "That's finished for good; from this time forth, life shall be pure; the rapture of purity": thus, after having voiced everything, having lived through everything in advance and had my fill of pain and pleasure, I was now superstitiously keen to turn away from temptation forever.

All seemed so simple; on that other bed slept a tramp whom I had by chance sheltered; his poor dusty shoes stood on the floor with toes turned in; his trusty stick had been carefully placed across the seat of the chair that supported his clothes folded with proletarian tidiness. What on earth was I doing in that provincial hotel room? What reason was there to loiter? And that sober and heavy smell of a stranger's sweat, that curdled sky in the window, that large black fly settled on the decanter ... all were saying to me: rise and go.

A black smear of gravelly mud on the wall near the switch reminded me of a spring day in Prague. Oh. I could scrape it off so as to leave no trace, no trace, no trace! I longed for the hot bath I would take in my beautiful home--though wryly correcting anticipation with the thought that Ardalion had probably used the tub as his kind cousin had already allowed him to do, I suspected, once or twice in my absence.

I lowered my feet onto an upturned corner of the rug; combed my hair back from the temples with a pocket comb of genuine tortoise shell--not the dirty mock turtle I had seen that bum using; with-out a sound, I slipped across the room to put on my overcoat and hat; lifted my suitcase and went out, closing the door noiselessly after me. I presume that had I even happened to cast a glance at the face of my sleeping double, I should have gone all the same; but I experienced no wish to do so, just as the above-mentioned adolescent does not, in the morning, deign to glance at the photograph he had adored in bed.

In a slight haze of dizziness I went down the stairs, polished my shoes with a towel in the lavatory, recombed my hair, paid for the room, and, followed by the night porter's sleepy stare, stepped into the street. Half an hour later I was sitting in a railway carriage; a brandy-flavored belch traveled with me, and in the corners of my mouth lingered the salty traces of a plain, but delicious omelet that I had hurriedly eaten at the station restaurant. Thus, on a low esophageal note, this vague chapter ends.

Part IIIof a novel

Synopsis: To his neighbors in Berlin, the chocolate merchant Hermann presents an enigma. Outwardly mundane, smug, priggish, he appears to be a typical bourgeois German businessman, living with his sensual wife Lydia and their maid Elsie in a comfortable flat, where frequent visitors include Lydia's strapping cousin, the roguish painter Ardalion, and the philosophical Orlovius. But within this shell observers may perhaps detect another Hermann, a narcissist who cannot pass a mirror without a backward look, an egoist consumed in self-delusion, a near bankrupt, desperate for recognition and security.

On a business trip to Prague, Hermann meets Felix, an itinerant ne'er-do-well, and is immediately struck by their astonishing resemblance. They are doubles, he concludes, although to Felix the likeness is, at best, remote. However, Felix opportunistically takes advantage of this conviction to ask Hermann to get him a job.

When Hermann returns to Berlin, he finds Lydia and Ardalion planning a picnic at the painter's wooded retreat. Without knowing quite why, Hermann is magnetically drawn to this lonely glade with its sequestered lake and marshes. And, although his business is failing, he makes time to visit it frequently and alone.

Subsequently, Hermann narrates, he writes to Felix to inform him that he has found him a job and to arrange a rendezvous for some weeks later in the town of Tarnitz. He goes there and discovers Felix seated on a bench in a park, dealing out crumbs to sparrows. Hermann and Felix are fatefully face to face once more.

This is the third installment of a major novel by Vladimir Nabokov. Part IV will appear next month.