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Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Klara, and to herself, by flaunting her affair and her ability to conceal it. Klara for her part agreed to come because she knew that Ganin was planning to depart on Saturday; also she was surprised that Lyudmila seemed not to know this—or else she purposely said nothing about it and was going to leave with him.
Sitting between them, Ganin was irritated because Lyudmila, like most women of her type, talked throughout the film about other things, bending across Ganin’s knees toward her friend, every time dousing him in the chilling, unpleasantly familiar smell of her perfume. It was made worse by the fact that the film was thrilling and excellently done.
“Listen, Lyudmila Borisovna,” said Ganin, unable to restrain himself any longer, “do stop whispering. The German behind me is starting to get annoyed.”
She gave him a quick glance in the darkness, leaned back and looked at the bright screen.
“I don’t understand a thing. It’s pure rubbish.”
“No wonder you can’t understand it,” said Ganin, “when you spend all the time whispering.”
On the screen moved luminous, bluish-gray shapes. A prima donna, who had once in her life committed an involuntarymurder, suddenly remembered it while playing the role of a murderess in opera. Rolling her improbably large eyes, she collapsed supine onto the stage. The auditorium swam slowly into view, the public applauded, the boxes and stalls rose in an ecstasy of approval. Suddenly Ganin sensed that he was watching something vaguely yet horribly familiar. He recalled with alarm the roughly carpentered rows of seats, the chairs and parapets of the boxes painted a sinister violet, the lazy workmen walking easily and nonchalantly like blue-clad angels from plank to plank high up above, or aiming the blinding muzzles of klieg lights at a whole army of Russians herded together onto the huge set and acting in total ignorance of what the film was about. He remembered young men in threadbare but marvelously tailored clothes, women’s faces smeared with mauve and yellow make-up, and those innocent exiles, old men and plain girls who were banished far to the rear simply to fill in the background. On the screen that cold barn was now transformed into a comfortable auditorium, sacking became velvet, and a mob of paupers a theatre audience. Straining his eyes, with a deep shudder of shame he recognized himself among all those people clapping to order, and remembered how they had all had to look ahead at an imaginary stage where instead of a prima donna a fat, red-haired, coatless man was standing on a platform between floodlights and yelling himself to insanity through a megaphone.
Ganin’s doppelgänger also stood and clapped, over there, alongside the very striking-looking man with the black beard and the ribbon across his chest. Because of that beard and his starched shirt he had always landed in the front row; in the intervals he munched a sandwich and then, after the take, would put on a wretched old coat over his evening dress and return home to a distant part of Berlin, where he worked as a compositor in a printing plant.
And at the present moment Ganin felt not only shame butalso a sense of the fleeting evanescence of human life. There on the screen his haggard image, his sharp uplifted face and clapping hands merged into the gray kaleidoscope of other figures; a moment later, swinging like a ship, the auditorium vanished and now the scene showed an aging, world-famous actress giving a very skillful representation of a dead young woman. “We know not what we do,” Ganin thought with repulsion, unable to watch the film any longer.
Lyudmila was whispering to Klara again—something about a dressmaker and some stuff for a dress. The drama came to an end and Ganin felt mortally depressed. A few moments later as they were pushing their way toward the exit Lyudmila pressed close to him and whispered, “I’ll ring you at two tomorrow, sweetie.”
Ganin and Klara saw
Sitting between them, Ganin was irritated because Lyudmila, like most women of her type, talked throughout the film about other things, bending across Ganin’s knees toward her friend, every time dousing him in the chilling, unpleasantly familiar smell of her perfume. It was made worse by the fact that the film was thrilling and excellently done.
“Listen, Lyudmila Borisovna,” said Ganin, unable to restrain himself any longer, “do stop whispering. The German behind me is starting to get annoyed.”
She gave him a quick glance in the darkness, leaned back and looked at the bright screen.
“I don’t understand a thing. It’s pure rubbish.”
“No wonder you can’t understand it,” said Ganin, “when you spend all the time whispering.”
On the screen moved luminous, bluish-gray shapes. A prima donna, who had once in her life committed an involuntarymurder, suddenly remembered it while playing the role of a murderess in opera. Rolling her improbably large eyes, she collapsed supine onto the stage. The auditorium swam slowly into view, the public applauded, the boxes and stalls rose in an ecstasy of approval. Suddenly Ganin sensed that he was watching something vaguely yet horribly familiar. He recalled with alarm the roughly carpentered rows of seats, the chairs and parapets of the boxes painted a sinister violet, the lazy workmen walking easily and nonchalantly like blue-clad angels from plank to plank high up above, or aiming the blinding muzzles of klieg lights at a whole army of Russians herded together onto the huge set and acting in total ignorance of what the film was about. He remembered young men in threadbare but marvelously tailored clothes, women’s faces smeared with mauve and yellow make-up, and those innocent exiles, old men and plain girls who were banished far to the rear simply to fill in the background. On the screen that cold barn was now transformed into a comfortable auditorium, sacking became velvet, and a mob of paupers a theatre audience. Straining his eyes, with a deep shudder of shame he recognized himself among all those people clapping to order, and remembered how they had all had to look ahead at an imaginary stage where instead of a prima donna a fat, red-haired, coatless man was standing on a platform between floodlights and yelling himself to insanity through a megaphone.
Ganin’s doppelgänger also stood and clapped, over there, alongside the very striking-looking man with the black beard and the ribbon across his chest. Because of that beard and his starched shirt he had always landed in the front row; in the intervals he munched a sandwich and then, after the take, would put on a wretched old coat over his evening dress and return home to a distant part of Berlin, where he worked as a compositor in a printing plant.
And at the present moment Ganin felt not only shame butalso a sense of the fleeting evanescence of human life. There on the screen his haggard image, his sharp uplifted face and clapping hands merged into the gray kaleidoscope of other figures; a moment later, swinging like a ship, the auditorium vanished and now the scene showed an aging, world-famous actress giving a very skillful representation of a dead young woman. “We know not what we do,” Ganin thought with repulsion, unable to watch the film any longer.
Lyudmila was whispering to Klara again—something about a dressmaker and some stuff for a dress. The drama came to an end and Ganin felt mortally depressed. A few moments later as they were pushing their way toward the exit Lyudmila pressed close to him and whispered, “I’ll ring you at two tomorrow, sweetie.”
Ganin and Klara saw
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