Nabokov’s Inkblot

I stood in the arrivals terminal of the Zurich International Airport, holding a sign with the name Kovalev and feeling happy.

Our son wasn’t even a year old and my wife was at home with him. Meanwhile, I couldn’t seem to find a steady job. Life was hard in those days and we had to scrimp on everything. It was sufficiently demeaning that I couldn’t earn enough money for my family, and on top of that we had two birthdays coming up—first my son’s, then my wife’s. I desperately needed money for gifts. I wanted to buy my loved ones something wonderful and special, or maybe whisk them away on vacation somewhere; do something, in short, to make them happy. But there wasn’t even enough money to pay the rent. And then luck struck: I got a call from the interpreter agency. They needed me to meet a client at the airport, drive him to the hotel, then the bank, then to Montreux. So that’s how I ended up standing in the airport, enjoying life. Aside from the promise of good pay, I was especially excited that the trip would take me to an extremely important place for me—to Nabokov. The client had reserved the very same room at the Montreux Palace where the writer had lived, so even the lowly interpreter would have a chance to visit that sacred place, the dream of any Russian reader. I waited for the delayed flight with my sign and daydreamed about how I would sit at his desk, open the drawer, and finally see the famous inkblot that I’d read so much about. Nabokov’s inkblot! I’d be able to touch it with my fingers! Joy!

Then I saw Kovalev. I recognized him immediately. And he, of course, did not recognize me. I hadn’t even thought that this could be the same Kovalev. Of all the Kovalevs in the world!

My first crazy thought was to thrust the sign into his hands, turn around, and leave.

But his wife and daughter were with him. The girl was around five years old; she smiled at me and handed me a penguin, the stuffed toy she carried with her on the plane. I didn’t know what to do with it, but it turned out that I was only supposed to make his acquaintance. The penguin’s name was Pinga.

So instead of leaving, I shook hands with Kovalev and started saying everything that’s expected in such a situation, things like “Welcome to Zurich! How was your flight?” and so on.

We drove to the Baur-Au-Lac, the hotel where they were staying.

In the taxi, Kovalev kept trying to work out some sort of urgent problems on two cell phones at once and in his short breaks engaged me in conversation.

He had emphatic opinions on every subject.

“Swissair has really let itself go! The flight was late and service was horrendous!”

Or, “Those Alps are nothing. You should see our Altai Mountains!”

Or, “The Swiss are so good-natured only because nobody’s kicked their ass in two hundred years!”

As the lowly accompanying interpreter, I didn’t argue. They paid me by the hour.

I remembered Kovalev as a skinny blond kid wearing a Komsomol pin that nobody else bothered to wear, and that he, too, took off when he left the Institute each day. But now, here he was, a “New Russian” in an expensive suit, complete with a stately paunch and premature bald spot.

At one point we were students together at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, I in the German department and he in the English department, two grades above me. He was a Komsomol official and gave speeches at faculty meetings and school assemblies. They loved Kovalev in the administration because he announced the decisions of the Party congress in a pleasant voice, as if they were joyful revelations, and we hated him for it. After finishing at the Institute, he stayed on the Komsomol line in...