Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov

appeared the senior educator—I do not recall his name—a fat, sweaty, shaggy-chested man, who was on his way to the bathing place. While still at a distance he shouted to me, his voice amplified by the acoustics, to go into the garden; he approached quickly and flourished his towel. In my sadness, in my abstraction, unconsciously and innocently, instead of descending into the garden by the stairs (the gallery was on the third floor), not thinking what I was doing, but really acting obediently, even submissively, I stepped straight from the window sill onto the elastic air and—feeling nothing more than a half-sensation of bare-footedness (even though I had shoes on)—slowly and quite naturally strode forward, still absently sucking and examining the finger in which I had caught a splinter that morning … Suddenly, however, an extraordinary, deafening silence brought me out of my reverie, and I saw below me, like pale daisies, the upturned faces of the stupefied children, and the pedagoguette, who seemed to be falling backward; I saw also the globes of the trimmed shrubs, and the falling towel that had not yet reached the lawn; I saw myself, a pink-smocked boy, standing transfixed in mid-air; turning around, I saw, but three aerial paces from me, the window I had just left, and, his hairy arm extended in malevolent amazement, the—”
    (Here, unfortunately, the light in the cell went out—Rodion always turned it off exactly at ten.)

Nine
     

    And again the day began with a din of voices. Rodion was gloomily giving instructions, and three other attendants were assisting him. The entire family of Marthe had arrived for the interview, bringing with them all their furniture. Not thus, not thus had he imagined this long-awaited meeting … How they lumbered in! Marthels aged father, with his huge bald head, and bags under his eyes, and the rubbery tap of his black cane; Marthe’s brothers, identical twins except that one had a golden mustache and the other a pitch-black one; Marthe’s maternal grandparents, so old that one could already see through them; three vivacious female cousins, who, however, were not admitted for some reason at the last minute; Marthe’schildren—lame Diomedon and obese little Pauline; at last Marthe herself, wearing her best black dress, with a velvet ribbon around her cold white neck, and holding a hand mirror; a very proper young man with a flawless profile was constantly at her side.
    The father-in-law, leaning on his stick, seated himself in a leather armchair that had arrived with him, with an effort put a fat suede foot up on a stool and, angrily shaking his head, fixed his gaze, from beneath heavy eyelids, on Cincinnatus, who felt the familiar dull sensation at the sight of the frogs ornamenting the father-in-law’s warm jacket, the folds around his mouth that seemed to express eternal disgust, and the purple blotch of a birthmark on his corded temple, with a swelling resembling a big raisin right on the vein.
    The grandfather and grandmother (the one all shaky and shriveled, in patched trousers, the other with her white hair bobbed, and so slim that she might have encased herself in a silk umbrella sheath) settled side by side in two identical high-backed chairs; the grandfather tightly clutched in his small hirsute hands a bulky portrait, in a gilt frame, of his mother, a misty young woman, in turn holding a portrait.
    Meanwhile, furniture, household utensils, even individual sections of walls continued to arrive. There came a mirrored wardrobe, bringing with it its own private reflection (namely, a corner of the connubial bedroom with a stripe of sunlight across the floor, a dropped glove, and an open door in the distance.) A cheerless little tricycle with orthopedic attachments was rolled in. It was followed by theinlaid table which had supported a flat garnet flacon and a hairpin for the last ten years. Marthe sat down on her black couch, embroidered with roses.
    “Woe,