The Luzhin Defense Read Free Page B

descended with a candle at night to the drawing room where a
Wünderkind
, dressed in a white nightshirt that came down to his heels, would be playing on an enormous, black piano.
    It seemed to him that everybody ought to see how exceptional his son was; it seemed to him that strangers, perhaps, could make better sense of it than he himself. The school he had selected for his son was particularly famous for the attention it paid to the so-called “inner” life of its pupils, and for its humaneness, thoughtfulness, and friendly insight. Tradition had it that during the early part of its existence the teachers had played with the boys during the long recess: the physics master, looking over his shoulder, would squeeze a lump of snow into a ball; the mathematics master would get a hard little ball in the ribs as he made a run in
lapta
(Russian baseball); and even the headmaster himself would be there, cheering the game on with jolly ejaculations. Such games in common no longer took place, but the idyllic fame had remained. His son’s class master was the Russian literature teacher, a good acquaintance of Luzhin the writer and incidentally not a bad lyric poet who had put out a collection of imitations of Anacreon. “Drop in,” he had said on the day when Luzhin first brought his son to school. “Any Thursday around twelve.” Luzhin dropped in. The stairs were deserted and quiet. Passing through the hall to the staff room he heard a muffled, multivocal roar of laughter coming from Class Two. In the ensuing silence, his steps rang out with a stressed sonority on the yellow parquetry of the long hall. In the staff room, at a large table covered with baize (which reminded one of examinations), the teacher sat writing a letter.
    Since the time of his son’s entrance to the school he had not spoken to the teacher and now, visiting him a month later, he was full of titillating expectation, of a certainanxiety and timidity—of all those feelings he had once experienced as a youth in his university uniform when he went to see the editor of a literary review to whom he had shortly before sent his first story. And now, just as then, instead of the words of delighted amazement he had vaguely expected (as when you wake up in a strange town, expecting, with your eyes still shut, an extraordinary, blazing morning), instead of all those words which he himself would so willingly have provided, had it not been for the hope that nonetheless they would eventually come—he heard chilly and dull phrases that proved the teacher understood his son even less than he did. On the subject of any kind of hidden talent not a single word was uttered. Inclining his pale bearded face with two pink grooves on either side of the nose, from which he carefully removed his tenacious pince-nez, and rubbing his eyes with his palm, the teacher began to speak first, saying that the boy might do better than he did, that the boy seemed not to get on with his companions, that the boy did not run about much during the recess period.… “The boy undoubtedly has ability,” said the teacher, concluding his eye-rubbing, “but we notice a certain listlessness.” At this moment a bell was generated somewhere downstairs, and then bounded upstairs and passed unbearably shrilly throughout the whole building. After this there were two or three seconds of the most complete silence—and suddenly everything came to life and burst into noise; desk lids banged and the hall filled with talking and the stamp of feet. “The long recess,” said the teacher. “If you like we’ll go down to the yard, and you can watch the boys at play.”
    These descended the stone stairs swiftly, hugging thebalustrade and sliding the soles of their sandals over the step rims well polished by use. Downstairs amid the crowded darkness of coat racks they changed their shoes; some of them sat on the broad windowsills, grunting as they hastily tied their shoelaces. Suddenly he caught sight of his