The Real Life of Sebastian Knight   ::   Набоков Владимир Владимирович

There was a flash in my brain and the word settled on my tongue: St Damier! I rushed out and hailed a passing taxicab. Would he take me to St Damier, wherever the place was? He leisurely unfolded a map and studied it for some time. Then he replied that it would take two hours at least to get there – seeing the condition of the road. I asked him whether he thought I had better go by train. He did not know.

'Well, try and go fast,' I said, and knocked my hat off as I plunged into the car.

We were a long time getting out of Paris. Every kind of known obstacle was put in our way, and I think I have never hated anything so much as I did a certain policeman's arm at one of the crossroads. At last we wriggled out of the traffic jam into a long dark avenue. But still we did not go fast enough. I pushed the glass open and implored the chauffeur to increase his speed. He answered that the road was far too slippery – as it was we badly skidded once or twice. After an hour's drive he stopped and asked his way of a policeman on a bicycle. They both pored at length over the policeman's map, and then the chauffeur drew his own out, and they compared both. We had taken a wrong turning somewhere and now had to go back for at least a couple of miles. I tapped again on the pane: the taxi was positively crawling. He shook his head without as much as turning round. I looked at my watch, it was nearing seven o'clock. We stopped at a filling-station and the driver had a confidential talk with the garage man. I could not guess where we were, but as the road now ran along a vast expanse of fields, I hoped that we were getting nearer my goal. Rain swept and swished against the window-panes and when I pleaded once more with the driver for a little acceleration, he lost his temper and was volubly rude. I felt helpless and numb as I sank back in my seat. Lighted windows blurredly passed by. Would I ever get to Sebastian? Would I find him alive if I did ever reach St Damier? Once or twice we were overtaken by other cars and I drew my driver's attention to their speed. He did not answer, but suddenly stopped and with a violent gesture unfolded his ridiculous map. I inquired whether he had lost his way again. He kept silent but the expression of his fat neck was vicious. We drove on. I noticed with satisfaction that he was going much faster now. We passed under a railway bridge and drew up at a station. As I was wondering whether it was St Damier at last, the driver got out of his seat and wrenched open the door. 'Well,' I asked, 'what's the matter now?'

'You shall go by train after all,' said the driver, 'I'm not willing to smash my car for your sake. This is the St Damier line, and you're lucky to have been brought here.'

I was even luckier than he thought for there was a train in a few minutes. The station guard swore I would be at St Damier by nine. That last phase of my journey was the darkest. I was alone in the carriage and a queer torpor had seized me: in spite of my impatience, I was terribly afraid lest I might fall asleep and miss the station. The train stopped often and it was every time a sickening task to find and decipher the station's name. At one stage I experienced the hideous feeling that I had just been jerked awake after dozing heavily for an unknown length of time – and when I looked at my watch it was a quarter past nine. Had I missed it? I was half inclined to use the alarm signal, but then I felt the train was slowing down, and as I leant out of the window, I espied a lighted sign floating past and stopping: St Damier.

A quarter of an hour's stumble through dark lanes and what seemed by its sough to be a pine wood, brought me to the St Damier hospital. I heard a shuffling and wheezing behind the door and a fat old man clad in a thick grey sweater instead of a coat and in worn felt slippers let me in. I entered a kind of office dimly lit by a weak bare electric lamp, which seemed coated with dust on one side. The man looked at me blinking, his bloated face glistening with the slime of sleep, and for some odd reason I spoke at first in a whisper.

'I have come,' I said, 'to see Monsieur Sebastian Knight, K, n, i, g, h, t. Knight. Night.'

He grunted and sat down heavily at a writing desk under the hanging lamp.

'Too late for visitors,' he mumbled as if talking to himself.

'I got a wire,' I said, 'my brother is very ill' – and as I spoke I felt I was trying to imply that there was not the shade of a doubt of Sebastian still being alive.

'What was the name?' he asked with a sigh.

'Knight,' I said. 'It begins with a "K". It is an English name.'

'Foreign names ought to be always replaced by numbers,' muttered the man, 'it would simplify matters. There was a patient who died last night, and he had a name….'

I was struck by the horrible thought that he might be referring to Sebastian…. Was I too late after all?

'Do you mean to say….' I began, but he shook his head and turned the pages of a ledger on his desk.

'No,' he growled, 'the English Monsieur is not dead. K, K, K….'

'K, n, i, g…' I began once again.

'C'est bon, c'est bon,' he interrupted. 'K, n, K, g… n… I'm not an idiot, you know. Number thirty-six.'

He rang the bell and sank back in his armchair with a yawn. I paced up and down the room in a tremor of uncontrollable impatience. At last a nurse entered and the night-porter pointed at me.

'Number thirty-six,' he said to the nurse.

I followed her down a white passage and up a short flight of stairs. 'How is he?' I could not help asking.

'I don't know,' she said and led me to a second nurse who was sitting at the end of another white passage, the exact copy of the first, and reading a book at a little table.

'A visitor for number thirty-six,' said my guide and slipped away.

'But the English Monsieur is asleep,' said the nurse, a round-faced young woman, with a very small and very shiny nose.

'Is he better?' I asked. 'You see, I'm his brother, and I got a telegram….'

'I think he's a little better,' said the nurse with a smile, which was to me the loveliest smile I could have ever imagined.

'He had a very, very bad heart attack yesterday morning. Now he is asleep.'

'Look here,' I said, handing her a ten or twenty franc coin. 'I'll come tomorrow again, but I'd like to go into his room and wait for a minute there.'

'Oh, but you shouldn't wake him,' she said, smiling again.

'I shan't wake him. I shall just sit near him and stay only a minute.'

'Well, I don't know,' she said. 'You might, of course, peep in here, but you must be very careful.