The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov

Author:Vladimir Nabokov [Nabokov, Vladimir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78777-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Alas! In vain historians pry and probe:

The same wind blows, and in the same live robe

Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise;

And with a woman’s smile and a child’s care

Examines something she is holding there

Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.

A SONNET, apparently barring the way, but perhaps, on the contrary, providing a secret link which would explain everything—if only man’s mind could withstand that explanation. The soul sinks into a momentary dream—and now, with the peculiar theatrical vividness of those risen from the dead they come out to meet us: Father Gavriil, a long staff in his hand, wearing a silk, garnet-red chasuble, with an embroidered sash across his big stomach; and with him, already illuminated by the sun, an extremely attractive little boy—pink, awkward, delicate. They draw near. Take off your hat, Nikolya. Hair with a russet glint, freckles on his little forehead, and in his eyes the angelic clarity characteristic of nearsighted children. Afterwards (in the quiet of their poor and distant parishes) priests with names derived from Cypress, Paradise, and Golden Fleece recalled his bashful beauty with some surprise: the cherub, alas, proved to be pasted on tough gingerbread which was too hard for many to bite into.

Having greeted us, Nikolya again dons his hat, a gray, downy top hat, and quietly withdraws, very sweet in his homemade little coat and nankeen breeches, while his father, a kindly cleric who dabbles in horticulture, entertains us with talk of Saratov cherries, plums and pears. A whirl of torrid dust veils the picture.

As is invariably noted at the beginning of positively all literary biographies, the little boy was a glutton for books. He excelled in his studies. For his first writing exercise he painstakingly reproduced: “Obey your sovereign, honor him and submit to his laws,” and the compressed ball of his index finger thus remained ink-stained forever. Now the thirties are over and the forties have begun.

At the age of sixteen he had a sufficient grasp of languages to read Byron, Eugène Sue and Goethe (being ashamed to the end of his days of his barbarous pronunciation) and already had a command of seminary Latin, owing to his father’s being an educated man. Besides this he took Polish with a certain Sokolovski, while a local orange merchant taught him Persian—and also tempted him with the use of tobacco.

Upon entering the Saratov seminary, he showed himself there to be a meek pupil and was never once flogged. He was nicknamed “the little toff,” although in fact he was not averse to general fun and games. In the summer he played dibs and took pleasure in bathing; never did he learn to swim, however, nor to fashion sparrows out of clay, nor to make nets for catching tiddlers: the holes came out uneven and the threads got tangled—fish are harder to catch than human souls (but even the souls later escaped through the rents). In winter, in the snowy darkness, a rowdy gang used to tear downhill

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