Free King, Queen, Knave by Vladimir Nabokov Page A

turned out that Dreyer would be busy. And Dreyer was indeed very busy. He had grown so absorbed in an unexpected offer from another firm, in a series of cautious negotiations and courteous conferences that for several days he did not remember Franz; or rather he would remember him at the wrong moments—while relaxing neck-deep in warm water; while driving from office to factory; while smoking a cigarette in bed. Franz would appear gesticulating wildly at the wrong telescope end of his mind; Dreyer would mentally promise to attend to him soon, and immediately would start thinking about something else.
    To Franz that was no comfort. When the first agreeable excitement of housewarming had passed, he asked himself what he should do next. Martha had taken down his landlord’s telephone number but nothing happened after that. He did not dare to phone himself nor did he dare call on the Dreyers without warning, not trusting chance, which lasttime had so magnificently transfigured his inopportune visit. He must wait. Evidently, sooner or later, he would be summoned. But he did not relish the delay. At half past seven on the very first morning the landlord in person brought him a sticky cup of weak coffee and on a saucer two lumps of sugar, one with a brown corner, and remarked in an admonishing tone: “Now don’t be late for work. Drink this and jump into your clothes. Do not flush the toilet too hard. Take care not to be late.”
    Franz decided that he had no alternative but leave the house for the whole day in order to perform the job that the old fellow had invented for him, and stay out until five or six, and then have a bite in town before returning. Thus perforce he explored the city, or rather what seemed to him its most metropolitan section. The obligatory nature of those excursions envenomed the novelty. By evening he would be much too exhausted to carry out his plan, his old glorious plan, of sauntering along seductive streets and taking a good preliminary look at genuine harlots. But how to get there? His map seemed to be curiously misleading. One cloudless day, having strayed far enough, he found himself on a broad dreary boulevard with many steamship line offices and art shops: he glanced at the street sign and realized it was the world-famous avenue that had seemed so sublime in his dreams. Its rather skimpy lindens were shedding their leaves. The winged arch at one end was sheathed in scaffolding. He traversed wildernesses of asphalt. He walked along a canal: in one place there was a rainbow-like splotch of oil on the water, and an intoxicating aroma of honey, reminding him of childhood, wafted from a barge where pink-shirted men were unloading mountains of pears and apples; from a bridge he saw two women in glistening bathing caps, intently snorting and rhythmically striking out with their armsas they swam side by side. He spent two hours in a museum of antiquities, examining with awe statues and sarcophagi, and the revolting profiles of brown men driving chariots. He took long rests in shabby pubs and on the fairly comfortable benches of an immense park. He plunged into the depths of the subway and, perched on a red leather seat, looking at the shiny stangs, up which raced golden reflections, waited impatiently for the coaly clattering blackness to be replaced at last by paradises of luxury and sin that kept eluding him. He also wanted very much to find Dreyer’s emporium about which they used to speak with such reverence in his hometown. The fat telephone directory, however, listed only his home and office. Evidently it must have some other name. And continuing to remain unaware that the heart of the city had moved to the west, Franz dismally wandered through the central and northern streets where he thought the smartest stores and the liveliest trade must be.
    He did not dare buy anything, and this tormented him. In this short time he had already managed to spend quite a bit of money and now Dreyer had