Набоков Владимир - Conversation Piece, 1945
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Страницы:[1][2][3][4][5]  Shoe, with his impossible smile, "and take into account the
workings of the vivid Semitic imagination which controls the
American press. And one must remember, too, that there were
many purely sanitary measures which the orderly German troops
had to adopt in dealing with the corpses of the elderly who had
died in camp, and, in some cases, in disposing of the victims
of typhus epidemics. I am quite free from any racial prejudices
myself, and I can`t see how these age-old racial problems have
anything to do with the attitude to be adopted toward Germany
now that she has surrendered. Especially when I remember the
way the British treat natives in their colonies."
"Or how the Jewish Bolsheviks used to treat the Russian
people-- ai-ai-ai!" remarked Colonel Melnikov.
"Which is no more the case, is it?" asked Mrs. Hall.
"No, no," said the Colonel. "The great Russian people has
waked up and my country is again a great country. We had three
great leaders. We had Ivan, whom his enemies called Terrible,
then we had Peter the Great, and now we have Joseph Stalin. I
am a White Russian and have served in the Imperial Guards, but
also I am a Russian patriot and a Russian Christian. Today, in
every word that comes out of Russia, I feel the power, I feel
the splendor of old Mother Russia. She is again a country of
soldiers, religion, and true Slavs. Also, I know that when the
Red Army entered German towns, not a single hair fell from
German shoulders."
"Head," said Mrs. Hall.
"Yes," said the Colonel. "Not a single head from their
shoulders."
"We all admire your countrymen," said Mrs. Mulberry. "But
what about Communism spreading to Germany?"
"If I may be permitted to offer a suggestion," said Dr.
Shoe, "I would like to point out that if we are not careful,
there will be no Germany. The main problem which this country
will have to face is to prevent the victors from enslaving the
German nation and sending the young and hale and the lame and
old-- intellectuals and civilians-- to work like convicts in
the vast area of the East. This is against all the principles
of democracy and war. If you tell me that the Germans did the
same thing to the nations they conquered, I will remind you of
three things: first, that the German State was not a democracy
and couldn`t be expected to act like one; secondly, that most,
if not all, of the so-called slaves came of their own free
will; and in the third place-- and this is the most important
point-- that they were well fed, well clothed, and lived in
civilized surroundings which, in spite of all our natural
enthusiasm for the immense population and geography of Russia,
Germans are not likely to find in the country of the Soviets.
"Neither must we forget," continued Dr. Shoe, with a
dramatic rise in his voice, "that Nazism was really not a
German but an alien organization oppressing the German people.
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian, Lev a Jew, Rosenberg half-French,
half-Tartar. The German nation has suffered under this
non-German yoke just as much as other European countries have
suffered from the effects of the war waged on their soil. To
civilians, who not only have been crippled and lulled but whose
treasured possessions and wonderful homes have been annihilated
by bombs, it matters little whether those bombs were dropped by
a German or an Allied plane. Germans, Austrians, Italians,
Rumanians, Greeks, and all the other peoples of Europe are now
members of one tragic brotherhood, all are equal in misery and
hope, all should be treated alike, and let us leave the task of
finding and judging the guilty to future historians, to
unbiased old scholars in the immortal centers of European
culture, in the serene universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, Jena,
Leipzig, Munchen. Let the phoenix of Europe spread its eagle
wings again, and God bless America."
There was a reverent pause while Dr. Shoe tremulously
lighted a cigarette, and then Mrs. Hall, pressing the palms of
her hands together in a charming, girlish gesture, begged him
to round out the meeting with some lovely music. He sighed, got
up, trod upon my foot in passing, apologetically touched my
knee with the tips of his fingers, and, having sat down before
the piano, bowed his head and remained motionless for several
audibly silent seconds. Then, slowly and very gently, he laid
his cigarette on an ashtray, removed the ashtray from the piano
into Mrs. Hall`s helpful hands, and bent his head again. At
last he said, with a little catch in his voice, "First of all,
I will play `The Star-Spangled Banner. ` "
Feeling that this was more than I could stand-- in fact,
having reached a point where I was beginning to feel physically
sick-- 1 got up and hurriedly left the room. As I was
approaching the closet where I had seen the maid store my
things, Mrs. Hall overtook me, together with a billow of
distant music.
"Must you leave?" she said. "Must you really leave?"
I found my overcoat, dropped the hanger, and stamped into
my rubbers.
"You are either murderers or fools," I said, "or both, and
that man is a filthy German agent."
As I have already mentioned, I am afflicted with a bad
stammer at crucial moments and therefore the sentence did not
come out as smooth as it is on paper. But it worked. Before she
could gather herself to answer, I had slammed the door behind
me and was carrying my overcoat downstairs as one carries a
child out of a house on fire. I was in the street when I
noticed that the hat I was about to put on did not belong to
me.
It was a well-worn fedora, of a deeper shade of gray than
my own and with a narrower brim. The head it was meant for was
smaller than mine. The inside of the hat carried the label
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Набоков Владимир - Conversation Piece, 1945