The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov (19 page)

I did, however, lay eyes on the ever-elegant Bakst, who greeted me warmly; I reminded him of the fine portrait he had done of my mother, which to our great regret we had had to leave behind in our flight from Russia.

“But there is good news, Sergey Vladimirovich,” he told me. “Our friend Benois has had that drawing, along with some of his own works, transferred from your former house to the new State Museum where they are now perfectly safe, or at least as safe as anything in our poor Russia can be. I've been meaning to write your parents, but as you can imagine I've been terribly overworked.”

I told him how pleased they would be to hear that news, though my own emotions were unpleasantly stirred by the thought of our belongings—my father's books, my mother's
beloved prints, even my brother's carefully mounted butterflies—so duly disposed of in our absence.

“Have you said hello yet to Serge Pavlovich?” asked Bakst.

I told him we had never met.

“How can that be?”

“My uncle is under the impression I should be kept from him.”

“But your uncle is most fond of Serge, are you not, Konstantin Dmitrievich? I don't understand at all. At the risk of creating a scene, I'll take you to him immediately.”

“That won't do,” my uncle said. “Our Serge is no doubt in the green room as we speak, clutching his Saint Anthony's medallion and crossing himself like the most superstitious of old babushkas, repenting his sins and beseeching protection from all the saints and holy martyrs. I once called on him in his hotel room. When I set my hat on the bureau, he cried out, ‘No! No! Do you want me to face financial ruin?' So I set it on the bed, and he cried out, ‘Do you wish me disaster in love?' I set it on the chair—well, you can guess what ensued. So I ended up holding my hat for the entire visit.”

Bakst laughed. “Then you must come around afterward to the Savoy. There's a dinner party in his honor. All his fears will be calmed by then, and he'll be most delighted to make your acquaintance, I'm sure.”

Though I was disappointed Karsavina was no longer performing—she had recently married a diplomat who had been posted to Bulgaria, and decided to put the rigors of marriage before the demands of dance—two other favorites of mine graced the stage: Olga Spessivtseva as Aurora and the luminous Lydia Lopokova, who brought the Lilac Fairy to rich, warm life. I did not know Tchaikovsky's score, but was soon won over by its dandyish charms. Bakst's sets were superb, especially the Enchanted Palace where the princess slumbered on an enormous bed canopied with cobwebs and brooded over by
two giant, thoughtful spiders. The fairies bearing their gifts for the infant princess were ravishing: how I loved the subtle way each set of gestures was later incorporated into Aurora's repertoire
—
their gifts nothing but the gift of dance, which is to say life itself! Everything the wicked Carabosse would destroy…

Only the occasional mechanical malfunction marred the magic that first evening: at the end of the Birthday Party, when the Princess Aurora has pricked her finger and fallen into a sleep, and the Lilac Fairy conjured a thicket of roses to protect her, the roses failed to rise from the ground at her command; and in the next scene, as the gondola bearing the Prince made its way toward the sleeping princess, the descending veils of gauze meant to indicate a gathering fog caught on a protruding pipe and piled up clumsily rather than descending gracefully. But no matter. What really mattered—the dancing—was perfection. Despite all my modern prejudices, Petipa's choreography was a revelation: here was a world of noble and harmonious form, full of lucid gestures: a bold movement here contrasted with a subtle one there, a flurry of motion was answered by the most eloquent of pauses. Through everything shone such calming certainty about what is beautiful in the world that I found myself transported to a place where beauty seemed nothing less than a birthright.

For once, Uncle Kostya and I were in perfect agreement over the merits of a performance; however, we were in less perfect agreement over Bakst's intention to introduce me to Diaghilev.

“He thrives on young men,” my uncle warned me as we entered the dining room of the Savoy. “Observe his latest specimen.” He pointed out a slender youth. “His name is Boris Kochno. Seventeen years old, can you imagine? And already he's aping his mentor's mannerisms. You may always tell Diaghilev's young men by their clothes. He dresses them as he dresses himself. They all wear homburgs, and their collars high,
and tuberoses in their buttonholes. They even become hypochondriacs in honor of the master!”

Bakst, it soon became apparent, had been a bit too eager in extending his invitation. I could tell by his gesticulations to the maître d' that his spur-of-the-moment guests would not be admitted, even if he
were
the great Léon Bakst.

Bakst returned to us livid. “He presumes to tell me that only Serge Pavlovich or Madame Sert, who is bankrolling this little fête, can admit guests who do not carry an official invitation. And both of those individuals have simply
vanished!
There's really nothing I can do. I can labor like a slave, I can throw my soul into sets and costumes the Ballets Russes can barely afford, and for which I have not been paid a centime, but I can't bring my two friends to dinner.”

My uncle seemed quite relieved, assuring him there was nothing to apologize for, that it was the thought that had counted. Disappointedly, I did the same.

“Please remember me to your dear parents,” Bakst reminded me. “
Au revoir!
I must live with my great shame.”

He turned his back on us and marched into the dining room, calling out merrily to the seventeen-year-old whom Diaghilev had claimed, “Borya, how are you?”

“My liver's a bit congested, I'm afraid,” I could hear Kochno complain as waiters whisked past us platters of luscious-looking smoked salmon and caviar. “Otherwise I'm pretty well…”

“Fate has intervened,” said my uncle, wiping his face with a handkerchief. “I shall happily treat you to some claret and a nice steak-and-kidney pie at our usual haunt. Who knows? We may well meet some of the dancers there.”

We had just left the hotel when a black Hispano-Suiza pulled up to the curb. Out tumbled an absurd-looking little man whom I recognized at once as Stravinsky. He was followed by Madame Sert, a woman of striking, bird-of-prey beauty, and she by a corpulent, sweating Diaghilev.

“Kostya Dmitrievich!” He cried out in his high-pitched voice.

I could see my uncle quail. Nonetheless, he managed a cordial “Sergey Pavlovich. Greetings, my old friend.”

“What news of Russia?”

The question seemed to bewilder my uncle, but Diaghilev did not appear to notice. I saw that he had been weeping, and had only just now pulled himself together. His huge dark eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks still streaked. I felt embarrassed, as if I had stumbled upon a scene never meant for my eyes.

He peered at me through his pince-nez. “And who is your young companion?” he inquired of my flustered uncle. “Yet another recent acquisition?”

My uncle bristled. “This is my most esteemed nephew, Sergey Vladimirovich.”

“
Enchanté,
” said Diaghilev, clearly less interested than he had been a moment before. I bowed respectfully, and told him how beautiful had been the production, how much I had adored it in every respect.

“Nonsense!” he bellowed. “The fact is, I'm ruined. Pure and simple. There can be no recovery from this catastrophe. The entire enterprise is now cursed. I should never have attempted to revive the glories of a bygone age. What you've witnessed tonight is nothing less than the beginning of the end of the Ballets Russes
.
Mark my words. Within three months, you shall see me a broken man, my company scattered to the ends of the earth. Fate holds sway over us all. We're at its mercy, and it shows us no mercy, none at all.”

This rather took me aback. Stravinsky and Madame looked at me as if I were somehow to blame for precipitating this outburst.

With great tenderness Stravinsky took Diaghilev's arm. “You're exhausted, my dear friend. You're making too much of too little. By tomorrow night all shall be remedied; no one will
remember a thing of these little mishaps. Some champagne, the company of your friends and ardent admirers, you'll soon see that all isn't lost. Far from it: you've created a stupendous triumph tonight.”

Madame Sert began to soothe him as well, murmuring into his ear words I could not make out, and the three of them began to move slowly toward the entrance of the Savoy, having already forgotten who we were, or that we were ever there.

“Well,” sniffed my uncle. “He's in rare form tonight. He's the most childish of men, really. I suppose that's the price of his greatness, but it can be most dismaying. My relations with him aren't what they once were. No, not at all.”

But he would say no more, neither then nor later. My uncle, I dare say, went to his grave with many more secrets than most of us.

 

 

 

 

CERTAIN INDIVIDUALS ONE RECOGNIZES AT ONCE as Nazis. That is the case with my latest caller. He just misses being handsome; a battlefield of old acne scars desecrates his lower face. For a moment I think I know him from somewhere, but that is likely not the case. He is blunt with me.

“You are Sergey Nabokov?” he asks, showing me his warrant disk.

“I am.”

“Then I must inform you that I have questions for you.”

“As you wish.” I motion for him to be seated in the frigid semidarkness of my room. For some reason I think it wise to offer him a drink.

“Where did you get this?” he asks once I have poured. I have forgotten that brandy is only available on the black market.

“Oh,” I say, “I've had it for quite some time. I saved it for a special occasion.”

“I'm no special occasion,” he says, “but I'll take a drop anyway.”

“Special occasions seem to arrive unexpectedly these days.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” I tell him. Through his stupidity, he senses I am mocking him. I know my behavior is reckless, I know I still have many pages to write, but I cannot resist. He is all the tormentors I never sufficiently resisted in my youth. “Why have you come?”

“I've been sent to ask you a few questions.”

He sips his brandy. Then deliberately removes from the pocket of his coat a document which he carefully unfolds. He studies it with a frown and a squint.

“You are Russian?”

“Well, yes, quite obviously.”

“Nothing is obvious,” he tells me.

“You're quite right. Yes, I am a Russian émigré. I carry a Nansen passport, if you wish to see it.”

“Not necessary. You arrived in Berlin on May 18, 1942. From Prague. And before that you were in Ostmark. You had been held in the jail in Lienz. For what reason, may I ask?”

“Your documentation seems quite thorough,” I tell him. “I'm surprised you need to ask.”

“I wish to hear it in your own words.”

“I was arrested under Paragraph 129b of the Austrian Penal Code.”

“And what is Paragraph 129b?”

“It's rather like the Reich's Paragraph 175. You know, criminal sexual relations with persons of the same sex.”

“And what did you plead?”

“It really doesn't much matter, does it? I was convicted. I served out my five-month term and was released.”

“Why did you come to Berlin?”

“I sought employment. The office where I worked briefly in Prague was shut down. My cousin suggested I come here, as various ministries were seeking qualified translators.”

“And you have been employed by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda?

“Correct.”

“Is it common for the Ministry to employ Russians who are not citizens of the Reich?”

“Quite a few Russians work at the Ministry.”

“Doing what?”

“Document translation, for the most part. We're an invaluable resource. The Reich needs us for its campaign in the east.”

He frowns. “Germans are not trained to do this?”

“We were in Berlin for twenty-five years, but no one bothered to learn any Russian from us. So yes, the Reich needs us. You might say the Reich depends on us.”

“The Reich depends on the strength of the German people,” he seems compelled to say. “That is sufficient.”

“Are you questioning the wisdom of the Ministry's employment policies?”

He ignores that impertinence. We sit in the semidarkness. Seeing the papers on my desk, where I have been interrupted in my writing, he asks suspiciously, “Is this Ministry work?”

“Yes,” I tell him. I show him a page. “Hold it up to the light. See? The Ministry's watermark.” I do not tell him that I have been pilfering these precious blank pages one at a time over the past several months, the way my colleagues take toilet paper home.

“But this is neither German nor Russian.”

“English,” I tell him. “I also translate into English. My language skills are quite cosmopolitan. As you may know, the Reich is presently fighting a war on several fronts.”

“And winning on each of them, heil Hitler! Then you are still employed by the Ministry?”

“Of course,” I lie. “We've been asked to work from our lodgings, a way of dispersing our vital contribution to the war effort lest the Ministry, God forbid, is hit. So far it has been fortunate.”