The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov (22 page)

“Seryosha, we were so worried. Where have you been? How could you have stayed out till such hours?”

“It's not all that late,” I said, though it was well past midnight, “and besides—”

Volodya, whose presence I had not till that moment registered, took me firmly by the arm. “Seryosha,” he said, “you must know immediately. Father has been shot.”

“That's not possible,” I told him, and indeed, I fully expected Father in the next instant to come leaping into the room, flicking pellets of bread, delighted at this bit of sport he had arranged at my expense.

All eyes watched me as Volodya continued to grasp my arm. “This is no dream,” he told me. “Father's dead. He's been murdered.”

The facts, the immutable, incontrovertible, to this day barely comprehensible facts: at the crowded Philharmonie that evening Father introduced Miliukov, who spoke for an hour or so on “America and the Restoration of Russia.” He had just finished his speech when a gunman rushed the stage, crying, “For the Tsar's family, and for Russia!” He fired off several rounds at Miliukov. Each missed. My quick-thinking, fearless, doomed father seized the gunman's wrist, and along with his friend Avgust Kaminka succeeded in wrestling him to the floor, whereupon a second gunman emerged from the pandemonium and fired three times, point-blank, into Father's back, piercing his spine and heart.

The gunmen, who were apprehended, were pro-monarchist thugs who had long nursed a political grudge against Miliukov. As it turned out, Peter Shabelsky-Bork and Sergey Taboritsky had no clue as to the identity of the man they actually succeeded in murdering.

I knew Father had had many enemies—his life had been in danger for many years—and yet I had convinced myself, once we had fled Russia, that the danger—the immediate, physical danger—had at last subsided.

Losing Russia was not half so hard as losing Father. Gone were the conversations we might have had, the concerts we might have attended, the friendly disagreements over Wagner and Stravinsky we might have entertained. Gone forever was the hope of regaining his respect, which I knew I had lost through my aberrant ways. My actions the evening of his death seemed shamefully frivolous. Father had given his life for Russia while I had been seeking to kiss a German in whom I was not even very interested.

SOMEHOW VOLODYA AND I MANAGED TO COMPLETE the second part of the Tripos in June, and both of us took degrees with seconds in Russian and French. After that we returned to Berlin, where our fellow exiles treated us with great tenderness, offering us various unsatisfactory jobs from which we had difficulty extricating ourselves graciously. Funds were low, my mother's store of jewels long since depleted, but Berlin was ludicrously inexpensive in those days, and we were able to subsist by doing a bit of translation work, tutoring the occasional pupil in English or French (no one wanted to learn Russian), and in Volodya's case giving the odd tennis lesson. We were, as he put it, two young gentlemen selling off the surplus of our aristocratic upbringing.

My unexpected estrangement from Volodya began with two happy announcements. We had taken a tram out to the Grunewald one bright afternoon to stroll in the pine woods. Dappled sunlight sifted through the latticework of green needles above onto the carpet of brown needles below. A butterfly
dogged us delicately, dipping around our shoulders, fluttering before our noses. Volodya can identify that butterfly, I thought to myself, and I cannot.

“Angle wing,” he said, as if reading my mind. “Our sweat attracts it.” Then: “At the aquarium, yesterday, I proposed to Svetlana, and she accepted.”

I clapped my hands together in delight, and told my brother what wonderful news that was. “Cherish her,” I admonished him. “She's beautiful, charming—above all, wise.” His confidence touched me; was it possible, after the recent shock we had endured, that our fraternal bond might be maturing into something less fraught?

“There's one condition, however, dreamed up by her impossible parents. I must find myself a proper job. As you know, I refuse to be shackled to a desk. Keats's ‘delicious diligent indolence' is what I must protect above all else if I'm to coax my ever-reluctant muse to sing.”

I laughed and told him his indolence was liable to make Svetlana jealous.

There had always been moments when I felt I had stepped across an invisible line: this was one. He looked at me with furrowed brow and narrowing eyes. “Svetlana must know where my first loyalty lies,” he said. “If she doesn't—then God help her. But that brings me to my second bit of good news.

“Gamayun has commissioned me to translate
Alice in Wonderland
. Isn't that splendid? I've always loved poor Alice's adventures. I pity her real-life counterpart in the clutches of that dull, depraved mathematician—but what glorious imaginings his dreamy and deranged mind was capable of.”

“It's perfect for you,” I told him. “How much is he paying?”

“My advance was an American five-dollar bill. I would show it to you as proof of my great wealth, but unfortunately I had to change it yesterday on the tram; I had no other money for the fare.”

“In other words, it scarcely constitutes a proper job in the Siewerts' eyes.”

“Her father's a mining engineer. It's maddening to have to deal with such cautious, unimaginative folk. How Svetlana sprang from those two I'll never know.”

He paused to look around us. On the shores of Grunewaldsee, Berliners had spread themselves—singly, in pairs, or in larger family groups—and were enjoying the fine summer afternoon.

“Speaking of vacancy—what a scene. I'm not sure which are more repulsive, those who've shed their clothes or those who've retained them. Surely the Germans must be the most repellent of God's inventions.”

There were moments when I hated my brother.

To our left, two laughing youths were cavorting in a game that seemed to involve grabbing each other's wrists. They had been in the water, and their bathing trunks clung to them tightly.

“Come,” said Volodya. “I know a lovely nook nearby.” I followed, and soon we had entered a secluded glade which retained a view of the sparkling lake. He began immediately to remove his clothing. My brother was by both inclination and avocation something of a naturist. Already his flesh had extracted from the stingy summer sun a golden hue unmarred by that band of ivory that exposes the infrequent nudist.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “The sun releases us from all those artificial obligations. Rejoice! Let the sun translate you into another language altogether!”

He was in a good mood.

Settling myself on a clean spot of sand, I declined his invitation. One or two embarrassing incidents in my youth had taught me the wisdom of remaining clothed when in the presence of other males, a caution I extended even to my brother. Was he deliberately provoking me—or was he indeed oblivious to my liabilities?

“You remind me of an old pensioner,” Volodya complained. “At least remove your jacket and shoes, for God's sake. Don't you have any capacity at all for pleasure?”

I told him I had my own pleasures, thank you, which he very well knew about. I suppose that provoked him, but then I was feeling rather bullied.

Volodya lit a cigarette without offering me one. He exhaled expressively, staring skyward, where a small biplane had appeared in the fathomless blue. “Father spoke of you his last night on earth.”

I found my own pack and lit one. This was something I had not known. I had seen very little of Volodya since Father's death.

“Just as we were going to bed. We were speaking of
Boris Godunov
, Father was recalling the scene where the Tsar, hallucinating the face of his murdered son in the clock face, cries out in guilty terror and then begs God for mercy. He said he always found that moment in the opera disturbing. Then he began to speak with bewilderment of your inclinations. I believe they weighed much on his mind.”

He turned his head to look at me. “I've never asked,” he said. “I suppose I'm curious. Where were you that night?”

“If you must know, I was at the Adonis Club. You can guess its nature by its name. I don't apologize for my inclinations, as you call them, though I do regret that I wasn't with you and Mother when Hessen telephoned with the news. But I have to tell you—even there, at the Adonis, I knew. It's as if God's shadow fell across me, as if I could feel Father's soul sweep past me. I believe his spirit paid me a final visit. Why, I don't know. But then, what is
Boris Godunov
but a tale of a father's guilt?”

Volodya responded sharply. “Father had nothing to feel guilty about. He never mistreated you in any way! If anything, he was extraordinarily lenient. Imagine what our grandfather would have done in similar circumstances.”

I asked him if he thought it no mistreatment for a parent to withhold love from his child.

“I won't hear of this,” he said. “You're impossible. You're worse than Olga!”

For several silent moments that accusation hung between us. I tried to take pleasure in the shouts that came from the two lads on the beach, but I could only feel a sadness as I realized the awful gap between what we say and what we mean to say.

“I've had a letter, by the way, from Bobby de Calry,” Volodya resumed. “He tells me he's taken a mistress in Paris—as if that somehow absolves him. I'm given to understand that you and he… Well, I can only hope it was more satisfying for you than it was for him. He confessed all at the end of term, and I forced myself to hear him out, for his sake, since he seemed so distraught. I have little to say. I don't see that you've conducted yourself honorably, but that's not my business. I'm curious, though. Why poor Bobby? Or does your kind simply take advantage whenever it sees advantage to be taken?”

I was of course quite taken aback by this latest thrust—and by Bobby's betrayal of a secret whose necessity I had sternly impressed upon him.

“Has it never occurred to you that he might've sought
me
out?”

“No, frankly, it hasn't. Bobby's a lovely, weak, pathetic soul. He's easily taken advantage of.”

“I presume you know this firsthand?”

Now, I think, it was his turn to be surprised.

“I beg your pardon?”

I pressed on. “Didn't you take advantage of his infatuation with you? You know perfectly well that Swiss vacation was financed not so much out of his pocket as out of his heart.”

Volodya had sat up. “How deeply troubled you are, Seryosha. But rest assured, I do pity you. As did Father.”

I stood up, dusted off the seat of my trousers, and told him
I must be going. I had had enough of this pointless conversation.

“As you see fit,” he said. “Now that Father is no longer with us, life will be much more difficult for everyone.”

 

The séance was Svetlana and Tatiana's idea.

Tensions in our gloomy household ran high that autumn. My mother spent her days chain-smoking on the divan, leafing through old photograph albums. My grandmother rarely left her room. “My son was the only principle of order in this madhouse,” La Generalsha would fulminate. “Now the lunatics are left to run the asylum.” Olga was becoming increasingly sullen. Kirill was doing poorly in his studies. Of all of us, only Elena exhibited a sweet and irreproachable demeanor. She even went so far as to assist our hapless
Putzfrau
with her chores—a saintly deed that earned her grandmother's scorn: “So you aspire now to be a chambermaid? Who wishes to marry a chambermaid? Can't you see that's the real reason your cousin Nika no longer comes around as often?” (To his mother's delight, Nika had begun courting Princess Natasha Shakhovsky.)

When Volodya departed in late July for Bad Rotherfelde, where Svetlana and her family were summering, I breathed a sigh of relief, hoping that our unfortunate afternoon in the Grunewald would be forgotten. But when he returned in a surly mood, my sundry attempts at a rapprochement were summarily declined.

As mysticism is most plausible when systematically practiced, the Siewert sisters had strict rules: the séance must take place at midnight; it must involve the lighting of twelve candles; it must be introduced by appropriate music. Tatiana, having had some practice in the dark art, would serve as medium: the spirits of the departed would speak through her.

At the appointed hour, we gathered around the dining table: Svetlana and Tatiana, Volodya, La Generalsha. Refusing
to participate, Khristina sat apart and observed. To my surprise, Mother wished to take part. I had brought along a fellow I had recently been seeing, an unassuming young man named Willi who worked in a flower shop near Potsdamer Platz. He spoke neither Russian, English, nor French, and I feared the bloom of our fledgling romance was already beginning to fade—though my German, of necessity, was blossoming. As I would never have dared do when Father was alive, I made a show of including Willi in family occasions whenever possible, though I knew the presence of a German, let alone an invert, was bound to rankle. Let them take umbrage. Dr. Hirschfeld's revolutionary ideas were beginning to take hold in me.