Glory by Vladimir Nabokov Page B

last name I thought you were American.” He regretted that he always remembered about working this into his letter only after it had been sealed; and he was too lazy to reopen it. He inadvertently made a blot in a corner of the envelope. He squinted at it for a long time, and finally made it into a black cat seen from the back. Mrs. Edelweiss preserved this envelope along with his letters. She would gather them into a batch at the end of each semester and tie them crosswise with a ribbon. Several years later she had occasion to reread them. The first-semester letters were relatively abundant. Here was Martin’s arrival in Cambridge; here was the first mention of Darwin, of Vadim, of Archibald Moon; here was a letter dated November ninth, his nameday: “This is the day,” wrote Martin, “when the goose sets foot on the ice, and the fox changes his lair”; and here was a letter with the crossed-out but distinctly legible line “My letter will be brought by the mailman.” Mrs. Edelweiss recalled with piercing clarity how she used to walk with Henry along the scintillating road between fir trees weighted down by lumps of snow, and suddenly there was the rich tinkling of multiple bells, the postal sleigh, the letter, and she hastened to take off her gloves in order to open the envelope. She recalled how, during that period, and for almost a year after, she was terribly afraid that without telling her anything, Martin might join the Northern White Army. She found some consolation in the knowledge that there, at Cambridge,a veritable angel exerted a pacifying influence on her son—excellent, sensible Archibald Moon. Yet Martin might still slip away. Her mind was completely at ease only when Martin was with her in Switzerland, on vacation. Years later, when she reread those letters with such anguish, they seemed, despite their tangibility, of a more ghostly nature than the intervals between them. Her memory packed the intervals with Martin’s living presence—Christmas, Easter, summer. Thus, for a period of three years, until Martin finished college, her life was like a series of windows. She remembered them well, those windows. There was the first winter holiday, and the skis Henry had bought him on her advice, and Martin putting them on. “I must be brave,” Mrs. Edelweiss softly said to herself. “After all, miracles do happen. One must only have faith and wait. If Henry appears once more with that black armband, I shall simply leave him.” And she smiled through the tears that streamed down her face, as with trembling hands she continued unwrapping the letters.
    That first Christmas homecoming, which remained so vividly impressed in his mother’s memory, was also a festive occasion for Martin. He had a queer sensation of having returned to Russia, so white was everything, but, being ashamed of his own sensitivity, he did not share it with his mother, thus depriving her in the future of yet another poignant recollection. His uncle’s gift pleased him; for an instant there materialized a snow-covered slope in a St. Petersburg suburb—although, of course, in those distant days the toes of Russian felt boots used to be inserted in the plain loops of light children’s skis, which, moreover, had a string (for the skier to hold on) attached to their upturned tips. Not so the new ones—real, substantial skis of flexible ash, and the boots, too, were real ski boots. Bending one knee, Martin adjusted the heel cable and bent back the stiff lever of the sidethrow. Its ice-cold metal stung his fingers. When he had put on the other ski as well, he picked up his mittens from the snow, straightened up, stamped his feet once or twice to see if everything was secure, and swung forward.
    Yes, he found himself back in Russia. Here were the splendid “rugs” of snow spreading in the Pushkin poem which Archibald Moon recited so sonorously, reveling in the scuds of its iambic tetrameter. Above the burdened firs the blue sky shone