The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov (20 page)

“Our antiaircraft defenses are superb. The British are losing their bombers and crews at an unsustainable rate.”

“I'm glad to hear that.”

“I understand you were educated in Britain.”

“I was. I spent some lovely years there.”

“And would you say you retain fond memories?”

“I believe I was closer to God there than I have ever been, before or since.”

He looks puzzled. “Explain, please.”

“Oh,” I tell him, “there's nothing to explain, really. I went up in an aeroplane, quite high into the heavens.”

“I see. Then that is a joke you are making.”

“I suppose it is. Though it doesn't feel like a joke.”

“You are religious?”

“I'm praying even now.”

He frowns. In reality, he is not at all handsome.

“And about Russia,” he says. “Do you have fond memories of Russia as well?”

“It hardly matters. My Russia no longer exists. Rest assured, I owe absolutely nothing to Stalin and his thugs.”

“And to the Reich?”

“I've always loved Germans,” I say truthfully. “My very first love was a German boy who operated the lift in a hotel in Wiesbaden. I loved a German officer in Yalta, much to my brother's disgust. I was sent to jail for loving a citizen of the Reich. But I must tell you this, lest there be any doubt where I stand. Hitler's Reich is no more Germany than Stalin's Soviet Union is Russia. They're both murderous phantoms masquerading
as reality. Now, is there anything else I can enlighten you about?”

He writes on his pad, but does not look up at me. “That will be all for now,” he tells me when he has finished. “You will be contacted further as necessary.”

I rather wish he had said, “if necessary,” but I am under no illusions. As soon as he leaves, I swig freely from the brandy bottle, till all its false promise of relief is depleted. Then I pray some more.

 

 

 

AT CHRISTMAS, WHILE VOLODYA VACATIONED IN the Alps with Bobby, I joined my family in Berlin, where they had moved after England proved too expensive.

Though I found Berlin depressing, evenings at our flat were enlivened by a steady stream of émigré writers and artists. Miliukov was often there, irritating my father as usual; he had begun a journal in Paris,
Latest News
, as a rival to Father's
The Rudder
. Other frequent visitors included Stanislavsky, Chekhov's widow Olga Leonardovna, and Iosef Hessen,
The Rudder's
coeditor. My cousin Nicolay, a budding composer of impressive talent, was staying with us, courting my sister Elena, which
our
mother fully approved and
his
mother did not. That rift lent the whole enterprise a tragicomic tone he exploited in full, even going so far as to assert that our grandmother Nabokova should be the final arbiter of all romantic predicaments within the family.

That truculent old lady (whom my cousin Nika drolly dubbed “La Generalsha”) had recently joined us, having followed her own circuitous route out of Russia; now she and her ever-faithful Khristina commandeered a small room at the far end of the hallway. They had both aged shockingly in the last few years, but physical frailty did not in the least dim my grandmother's spirit. “Seryosha, I'm virtually held prisoner in this room,” she complained. “Your mother insists on taking the chaise longue in the parlor for her own, so what choice do I have? But it's for the best. Such squalor out there! Don't say you haven't noticed. Your poor mother always was an inept
maîtresse de maison
, but now she's become
completely
hopeless.”

I too had noticed with some consternation the apartment's general disarray: the overflowing ashtrays and unmade beds, the stacks of dirty plates and glasses in the kitchen.

“How your father can endure such chaos is beyond me,” Grandmother went on bitterly, “but then so much about your father is beyond me. He's only brought it on himself. And the food, my dear! Sauerkraut! Wurst! Klopsen! Bah! In Russia we ate beautifully, we dined like royalty, we
were
royalty. It breaks my heart!

“At least you, my dear, still make the effort to dress well. But you're so terribly thin. You look lovesick. Can this be? How's dear little Kostya, by the way? Still the starched Anglomaniac? Does he still have his soldier friends about him? Has he told you about his dalliance with a well-known officer in the Life Guard Mounted Regiment? How he scandalized his father in those days. But I intervened; I protected him. Oh, your grandfather had no power where I was concerned. I knew everything. I could have exposed him at will. One day I should set down my memoirs. Then wouldn't everyone squirm?”

 

My days passed pleasantly enough. In the mornings I often went with Father and Nika to rehearsals of the Philharmonic;
in the evenings we would stand at the back of the hall, as we could not afford seats. Sometimes, afterward, I would visit the Adonis Club in Bülowstrasse, which Nika had helpfully pointed out to me, though I was too distracted by the thought of Volodya and Bobby in Switzerland to give my full attention to any pleasures near at hand. Try as I might, I could not reach the bottom of my strange and tangled jealousy. Finally we received a postcard announcing that the pair had commenced their journey north to Berlin.

Volodya, however, arrived alone, announcing that Bobby had opted at the last minute to go to Parma to visit his mother. Thus thwarted—but what exactly had I wished for?—I had to content myself with the company of Svetlana Siewert, my brother's latest flame. One thing could certainly be said about Volodya: he had become far less secretive in his amours over the years, perhaps because one had only to open the pages of
The Rudder
to follow, in verse, the tumultuous pageant of “Sirin's” latest emotions.

I warmed to Svetlana with remarkable ease. Five years younger than my brother, she had just turned seventeen, a dark-eyed beauty full of sweet and touching vitality. Her bold laughter echoed in our parlor, her musical voice cascaded down the corridor. I have never seen a young woman wear a cloche quite so perfectly.

When the weather was rotten, as it often was, she would play Brahms on the old Becker piano; sometimes I joined her for a four-handed round of Schubert while Volodya looked on with that air of indifference he assumed whenever forced to listen to music. On days when the skies cleared, we would play doubles on the deteriorating public tennis court next door, Volodya paired with Svetlana and I with her sister Tatiana. Afterward, there were visits to the konditoreis on Kurfürstendamm, or to the Russian cafés that had sprung up in Charlottenburg.

One evening my curiosity overcame me, and I pestered Volodya with a flurry of questions. Had he enjoyed himself in
Switzerland? Had Bobby had a good time? Would they repeat their adventure?

My desperation must have caught him off guard, for he said brusquely, “Calry can be a most mercurial and melancholy fellow. Now, if you please, I'm heartily tired of this subject.”

 

For several weeks after my return to Cambridge I glimpsed Bobby scarcely at all. Then one raw evening toward sunset, as salmon clouds scudded across a sky of heart-stopping blue, our paths crossed. We looked each other over, but this time he startled me by speaking.

“I gather you're Vladimir's brother,” he said.

“Quite.”

“Well, I thought so.” He seemed at a loss as to how to continue. For once in my life I spoke without hesitation.

“I was just on my way home to a pot of tea. Would you fancy some?”

The poverty of my rooms embarrassed me, but Count Magawly-Cerati de Calry seemed not at all discomfited. Shedding his gown to reveal a canary-yellow blazer and sapphire-blue shirt, he made himself at home by collapsing into a wicker chair that received him with an arthritic crackling. While I busied myself with a pot of Darjeeling, he lit his pipe and began to inspect my bookshelf.

“Lermontov can be quite wonderful,” he said. “Still, he's completely outdone by his contemporary Leopardi. Do you know Leopardi?”

I told him I did not.

“Oh, you must read Leopardi!
Così tra questa / Immensità s'annega il pensier mio; / E il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.
For those lines alone, Italian is well worth mastering. I'd tutor you happily. I've tried to interest your brother, but he insists that all he wishes, these days, is to perfect his Russian—which already seems to me rather perfect.”

“He's deathly afraid his Russian will be corrupted,” I explained. “It's the only thing of our past that remains him.”

Bobby replaced the Lermontov. “And do you fear being corrupted?” he asked, looking up at me most charmingly.

I laughed at the impertinence of his question. “I'm fast becoming a cauldron of English habits, both bad and good.”

It was his turn to laugh.

“Never fear. You'll never be entirely English,” he said. “Nor will I. Irish, Italian, and Russian blood mingles freely in these veins, but not a drop of English. We're both gentlemen of the greater world.”

I asked him if that was different from our being worldly gentleman.

“Oh yes,” he said earnestly. “Quite a bit different. For my part, at least, I'm hopelessly unworldly. I take it that could describe you as well.”

I told him I certainly wasn't
otherworldly
.

“Oh no, no, not for an instant to think
that
.”

This was pleasant enough, if rather opaque. It was as if the delicate artifice of some long-vanished court found itself preserved in his manner. I was relieved when our tea was at last ready.

As I poured, I asked nonchalantly how he had enjoyed his winter
vacances
in the Alps.

A shadow passed over his refined face. “Has your brother spoken of it?” he asked.

“Very little. I suppose he had a perfectly fine time. My brother always manages to.”

“Perfectly fine!” Bobby exclaimed, getting up and pacing my narrow sitting room. “Perfectly fine!” he repeated, as if he found the phrase somehow offensive. “Well, yes, I suppose it
was
perfectly fine. I paid for the hotel, I paid for the meals, I lent him my skis. I showered on him my largesses. And why not? A small price! And what do you think came of it? What do you
think
could
come of it? He loves only women. But you're not the least like your brother, are you? I'd thought that might be true. He never speaks of you, but I had the sense… Do you think Fate is laughing at us right now? We really must celebrate, don't you think?”

“But what are we to celebrate?”

“Oh, I don't know,” he said with that curious resignation of his. “Everything, I suppose. Life, love, madness. Misery. Despair. Hilarity. All the things that keep one going.”

I was dumbstruck to see that he had quietly begun to shed tears. There's something vaguely clownish about him, I thought. At the same time, I found myself moved by the grandeur of his mood.

I broke a lengthening silence by asking why he had ignored me for so long.

“Fear of exposure. Guilt by association. It wouldn't have done at all for Vladimir to associate me with you. But now the game's up. He's been perfectly cool to me ever since the term began. Not rude, but I've been cut off. What more can I lose?”

We stared for a long moment into each other's eyes; tears were still seeping down his cheeks.

“Shall I complete the ruin, then?” I asked delicately.

“You
do
resemble your brother in a good many ways,” he murmured, clearly trying to convince himself of the truth of that observation. “Do you fancy a bit of supper? My valet can arrange a most soothing meal.”

His rooms in Trinity were grand indeed, and I wondered what he had made of Volodya's seedy digs. But then he had been in love with Volodya.

There was nothing much to our congress and, after some exquisitely prepared Huîtres de Whitstable and a very fine bottle of Meursault, we turned out to be comically incompatible. When, afterward, he remembered an urgent appointment with a friend, I felt more relief than disappointment. As I
dressed to leave, he pressed into my hands a slim volume he had withdrawn from his bookshelves. “In remembrance of the great never-to-be-had,” he said. “Leopardi. First edition.”

With a queer feeling of contentment I made my way back to my own wretched lodgings. I inserted the elegantly bound Leopardi between Lazhechnikov and Lermontov. I poured myself a warm bath in my beloved zinc tub, and lay there soaking for quite some time, my curiosity slaked, my vanity caressed, my infatuation abated.

AN ORDINARY FAMILY DINNER AT THE NABOKOVS' flat, Sächsischestrasse 67, Berlin-Wilmersdorf. The date: Monday, March 27, 1922. Volodya and I were down from Cambridge for the Easter vacation. Joining us at the table were Svetlana Siewert, our cousin Nika, and Iosef Hessen
.
The guest of honor was Pavel Miliukov, recently returned from a visit to the United States and scheduled, at my father's invitation, to address an audience at the Philharmonie the following evening.

Usually conversation was general at our table, but on this night my father and Miliukov engaged each other exclusively while the rest of us, conscious of a momentous duel between the old friends and rivals, remained silent and alert.

“More and more,” declared Miliukov in that pompous way of his, “I'm convinced that despite the perils, we must think seriously of returning to Russia. There are a quarter million Russians in Berlin alone. Add to that the tens of thousands in Paris, and Prague, and Constantinople. The
crème de la crème
. How is Russia ever to survive Lenin and his hooligans
without our vital lifeblood flowing through her veins?”