anything?” she asked still more softly. He looked at the bedside table, put a
boule-de-gomme
in his mouth and began to suck—he took a second, a third, another and another until his mouth was full of sweet-thudding and bumping balls. “Take some more, take as many as you wish,” she murmured, and stretching one hand from under the bedclothes she tried to touch him, to stroke him. “You haven’t got tanned at all this year,”she said after a pause. “But perhaps I simply can’t see, the light here is so dead, everything looks blue. Raise the Venetian blinds, please. Or no, wait, stay. Later.” Having sucked his
boules-de-gomme
to the end he inquired if he could leave. She asked him what he would do now and would he not like to drive to the station and meet his father off the seven o’clock train? “Let me go,” he said. “It smells of medicine in here.”
He tried to slide down the stairs the way they did at school—the way he himself never did it there; but the steps were too high. Beneath the staircase, in a cupboard that had still not been thoroughly explored, he looked for magazines. He dug out one and found a checkers section in it, diagrams of stupid clumsy round blobs on their boards, but there was no chess. As he rummaged on, he kept coming across a bothersome herbarium album with dried edelweiss and purple leaves in it and with inscriptions in pale violet ink, in a childish, thin-spun hand that was so different from his mother’s present handwriting:
Davos 1885; Gatchina 1886
. Wrathfully he began to tear out the leaves and flowers, sneezing from the fine dust as he squatted on his haunches amid the scattered books. Then it got so dark beneath the stairs that the pages of the magazine he was again leafing through began to merge into a gray blur and sometimes a small picture would trick him, because it looked like a chess problem in the diffuse darkness. He thrust the books back anyhow into the drawers and wandered into the drawing room, thinking listlessly that it must be well past seven o’clock since the butler was lighting the kerosene lamps. Leaning on a cane and holding on to the banisters, his mother in mauve peignoir cameheavily down the stairs, a frightened look on her face. “I don’t understand why your father isn’t here yet,” she said, and moving with difficulty she went out onto the veranda and began to peer down the road between the fir trunks that the setting sun banded with bright copper.
He came only around ten, said he had missed the train, had been extremely busy, had dined with his publisher—no, no soup, thank you. He laughed and spoke very loudly and ate noisily, and Luzhin was struck by the feeling that his father was looking at him all the time as if staggered by his presence. Dinner graded into late evening tea. Mother, her elbow propped on the table, silently slitted her eyes at her plate of raspberries, and the gayer her husband’s stories became the narrower her eyes grew. Then she got up and quietly left and it seemed to Luzhin that all this had happened once before. He remained alone on the veranda with his father and was afraid to raise his head, feeling that strange searching stare on him the whole time.
“How have you been passing the time?” asked his father suddenly. “What have you been doing?” “Nothing,” replied Luzhin. “And what are you planning to do now?” asked Luzhin senior in the same tone of forced jollity, imitating his son’s manner of using the formal plural for “you.” “Do you want to go to bed or do you want to sit here with me?” Luzhin killed a mosquito and very cautiously stole a glance upwards and sideways at his father. There was a crumb on his father’s beard and an unpleasantly mocking expression gleamed in his eyes. “Do you know what?” his father said and the crumb jumped off.“Do you know what? Let’s play some game. For instance, how about me teaching you chess?”
He saw his son slowly blush and taking
boule-de-gomme
in his mouth and began to suck—he took a second, a third, another and another until his mouth was full of sweet-thudding and bumping balls. “Take some more, take as many as you wish,” she murmured, and stretching one hand from under the bedclothes she tried to touch him, to stroke him. “You haven’t got tanned at all this year,”she said after a pause. “But perhaps I simply can’t see, the light here is so dead, everything looks blue. Raise the Venetian blinds, please. Or no, wait, stay. Later.” Having sucked his
boules-de-gomme
to the end he inquired if he could leave. She asked him what he would do now and would he not like to drive to the station and meet his father off the seven o’clock train? “Let me go,” he said. “It smells of medicine in here.”
He tried to slide down the stairs the way they did at school—the way he himself never did it there; but the steps were too high. Beneath the staircase, in a cupboard that had still not been thoroughly explored, he looked for magazines. He dug out one and found a checkers section in it, diagrams of stupid clumsy round blobs on their boards, but there was no chess. As he rummaged on, he kept coming across a bothersome herbarium album with dried edelweiss and purple leaves in it and with inscriptions in pale violet ink, in a childish, thin-spun hand that was so different from his mother’s present handwriting:
Davos 1885; Gatchina 1886
. Wrathfully he began to tear out the leaves and flowers, sneezing from the fine dust as he squatted on his haunches amid the scattered books. Then it got so dark beneath the stairs that the pages of the magazine he was again leafing through began to merge into a gray blur and sometimes a small picture would trick him, because it looked like a chess problem in the diffuse darkness. He thrust the books back anyhow into the drawers and wandered into the drawing room, thinking listlessly that it must be well past seven o’clock since the butler was lighting the kerosene lamps. Leaning on a cane and holding on to the banisters, his mother in mauve peignoir cameheavily down the stairs, a frightened look on her face. “I don’t understand why your father isn’t here yet,” she said, and moving with difficulty she went out onto the veranda and began to peer down the road between the fir trunks that the setting sun banded with bright copper.
He came only around ten, said he had missed the train, had been extremely busy, had dined with his publisher—no, no soup, thank you. He laughed and spoke very loudly and ate noisily, and Luzhin was struck by the feeling that his father was looking at him all the time as if staggered by his presence. Dinner graded into late evening tea. Mother, her elbow propped on the table, silently slitted her eyes at her plate of raspberries, and the gayer her husband’s stories became the narrower her eyes grew. Then she got up and quietly left and it seemed to Luzhin that all this had happened once before. He remained alone on the veranda with his father and was afraid to raise his head, feeling that strange searching stare on him the whole time.
“How have you been passing the time?” asked his father suddenly. “What have you been doing?” “Nothing,” replied Luzhin. “And what are you planning to do now?” asked Luzhin senior in the same tone of forced jollity, imitating his son’s manner of using the formal plural for “you.” “Do you want to go to bed or do you want to sit here with me?” Luzhin killed a mosquito and very cautiously stole a glance upwards and sideways at his father. There was a crumb on his father’s beard and an unpleasantly mocking expression gleamed in his eyes. “Do you know what?” his father said and the crumb jumped off.“Do you know what? Let’s play some game. For instance, how about me teaching you chess?”
He saw his son slowly blush and taking
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