The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov Page A

dropped out of Luzhin’s world, which for Luzhin was a relief, that odd kind of relief you get in resolving an unhappy love affair. He had become attached to Valentinov immediately—as early as the days of his chess tours in Russia—and later he regarded him the way a son might a frivolous, coldish, elusive father to whom one could never say how much one loved him. Valentinov was interested in him only as a chess player. At times he had about him something of the trainer who hovers about an athlete establishing a definite regime with merciless severity. Thus Valentinov asserted that it was all right for a chess player to smoke (since there was in both chess and smoking a touch of the East) but not in any circumstances to drink, and during their life together in the dining rooms of large hotels, enormous hotels deserted in wartime, inchance restaurants, in Swiss inns and in Italian
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, he invariably ordered mineral water for young Luzhin. The food he chose for him was light so that his brain could function freely, but for some reason (perhaps also because of a hazy connection with “the East”) he encouraged Luzhin a great deal in his passion for sweets. Finally he had a peculiar theory that the development of Luzhin’s gift for chess was connected with the development of the sexual urge, that with him chess represented a special deflection of this urge, and fearing lest Luzhin should squander his precious power in releasing by natural means the beneficial inner tension, he kept him at a distance from women and rejoiced over his chaste moroseness. There was something degrading in all this; Luzhin, recalling that time, was surprised to note that not a single, kind, humane word had passed between him and Valentinov. Nevertheless when, three years after their final departure from Russia, that land which had grown so unpleasant, Valentinov had vanished, he experienced a feeling of emptiness, a lack of support, and then he acknowledged the inevitability of what had happened, sighed, turned around and again was lost in thought over the chessboard. After the war, tournaments began to increase. He played in Manchester, where the decrepit champion of England forced a draw after a two-day struggle; in Amsterdam, where he lost the deciding game because he exceeded the time limit and his opponent, with an excited grunt, banged down the stop of Luzhin’s clock; in Rome, where Turati triumphantly unleashed his celebrated debut; and in many other cities which for him were all identical—hotel, taxi, a hall in a café or club. These cities, these regular rows ofblurry lamps marching past and suddenly advancing and encircling a stone horse in a square, were as much a habitual and unnecessary integument as the wooden pieces and the black and white board, and he accepted this external life as something inevitable but completely uninteresting. Similarly, in his way of dressing and in the manner of his everyday life, he was prompted by extremely dim motives, stopping to think about nothing, rarely changing his linen, automatically winding his watch at night, shaving with the same safety blade until it ceased to cut altogether, and feeding haphazardly and plainly. From some kind of melancholy inertia he continued to order at dinner the same mineral water, which effervesced slightly in his sinuses and evoked a tickling sensation in the corners of his eyes, like tears for the vanished Valentinov. Only rarely did he notice his own existence, when for example lack of breath—the revenge of a heavy body—forced him to halt with open mouth on a staircase, or when he had toothache, or when at a late hour during his chess cogitations an outstretched hand shaking a matchbox failed to evoke in it the rattle of matches, and the cigarette that seemed to have been thrust unnoticed into his mouth by someone else suddenly grew and asserted itself, solid, soulless, and static, and his whole life became concentrated in the single desire to smoke,