Vladimir Nabokov: "Revenge," "Beneficence," & "Details of a Sunset"

Driving down to Myrtle Beach to see some of my in-laws, the wife and I stopped at various antique stores and pottery shops.  At one antique store I bought a 1997 Vintage International paperback edition of 1995's The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov for just a few bucks.  Last week I read three of the sixty-five stories in the volume, stories I chose because the titles were interesting and because they were short.  "Revenge" and "Beneficence" first appeared in English in this collection, translated by Nabokov's son Dimitri; "Details of a Sunset" was the title story of a 1976 collection, translated by father and son.    

"Revenge" (1924)

A big wide-shouldered biology professor is returning to England from a conference on the Continent.  He has been consumed with the suspicion that his skinny young wife is cheating on him, and now that the private eye he hired has shown him a note in his wife's hand that expresses love for some other man he has decided that his suspicions are justified and he must murder his wife.  But he has yet to determine the most appropriate way to destroy her.

The prof carries with him a suitcase with something mysterious and strange within it--when the customs inspector asks him to open it people in line gasp.  But what is in there Nabokov does not tell us 'til the end of the story.

In the second part of the story we meet the wife.  She believes in ghosts and all that sort of bunk, and we learn she is innocent of adultery--she wrote that love note to an old friend, now dead, whom she saw in a dream.  In the final portion of the story we witness the biologist's creative use of the thing he brought back from Europe to slay his poor sensitive wife.

"Beneficence" (1924)

A sculptor in Berlin narrates this story, addressing himself to his unfaithful girlfriend.  He hasn't seen her for two weeks after discovering she has been seeing some other guy, but he loves her painfully, and calls her and arranges a meeting at the Brandenburg Gate.  He waits there for a long time, sure she will not show.  As he waits he observes some small acts of kindness among ordinary people, and realizes that the world is not a terrible place after all, that the "joy" he sought within the faithless woman is all around him in the decency of people and the beauty of nature. "I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed on us and unappreciated."  He heads back to his studio, eager to get back to work.

"Details of a Sunset" (1924)

Mark works behind a counter in a store, selling ties.  He is deliriously happy--he will soon be married to the beautiful red-headed Klara!  But his mother is worried--Klara was just recently going around with some foreign adventurer.

Mom's fears are realized!  While Mark is at work, his mind full of his happiness and his love for Klara, Klara's mother comes to visit Mark's mother--that foreigner has returned and Kalra wants nothing to do any longer with Mark! 

Mark never gets to read the letter for him from Klara that her mother has brought.  Clumsily stepping off a streetcar he is hit by a bus and fatally injured.  As he dies he deliriously dreams of Klara and the happy life he expects they will have.

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These are effective stories about our favorite topic: how difficult sexual relationships are.  They also offer--perhaps horrendously costly or morally repugnant--means of escaping the unhappiness sexual relationships can cause men.

"Beneficence" and "Details of a Sunset" are characterized by vivid descriptions of quotidian details of daily life in the city--waiting on a corner or riding mass transit, observing the crowds of people--as well as descriptions of light and its behavior: sources of light, like the moon, the sun, the sparks from a cigarette thrown to the ground or the wires above a streetcar; and reflections and shadows.  I miss city life and these images struck me.  

Another thing that jumped out at me was how Nabokov doesn't bother to cultivate the illusion that the story is anything other than a story, directly talking to the reader and even consciously playing with readers' efforts to suspend disbelief.  "Revenge," for example, includes the paradoxical line "Whereupon, I regret to say, she drops out of my story" after a minor character's last piece of dialogue.