The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov (23 page)

The candles shed their unsteady light. “Spooky chords, please,” Svetlana commanded, and I obliged by vamping a few, minor-key. Then I joined the rest of the group at the table, taking my place between Mother and Willi.

As instructed, we held hands and closed our eyes. Silence followed. Beyond the windows, we could hear the occasional racket of a tram, a barking dog, the passage along our street of an automobile.

The first spirit to arrive, via Tatiana, was a Bavarian farmer who had died of the plague. He was concerned about a goat that had gone missing. When Svetlana asked our spirit to tell us his name, he replied “Pigeon.”

Our collective giggle must have frightened him off; he was replaced by a character speaking in a high treble who proclaimed that she was Almaden of Peru. Had we all heard of Lady Almaden of Peru?

We had not. She seemed miffed, and began to recite her considerable but highly improbable accomplishments—social, political, sexual. When we asked her which century she hailed from she replied, ‘Why, the twenty-first, my dears!'

And so the merriment continued, as we asked questions of the spirit and the spirit, through Tatiana, responded. There was
Matilda, a lace-maker in Bruges who went through five husbands in fifty-five years, and Boris, a young rake in Novgorod who had met his end on a burning bridge on Christmas Day while pissed as an owl. I had never credited my partner in doubles with such an inventive imagination—for surely this was all a product of her imagination. It was a pity she had never been at our table when Father had unleashed his game of questions: how splendidly she might have answered the nonsense queries.

But then, just as I was admiring her talents, and regretting that poor Willi must sit through all this without comprehending a word, something truly strange happened. As she was in the midst of regaling us about the court of Catherine the Great, as seen through the eyes of a scullery maid, a second voice interrupted the breathless chatter—casting aside the poor scullery maid and holding forth in sepulchral tones that to this day I have difficulty believing Tatiana's vocal chords were even capable of producing.

“Someone is coming,” announced that voice. “Clear the stage. Someone has arrived. Someone wishes to speak.”

We waited, breathless and thrilled. Tatiana was a genius of improvisation; there was no doubt of that. Just when the game had become a bit routine, she had chosen to liven things up. Even Willi, I gathered from the way he squeezed my hand, was impressed.

The silence lengthened. Someone among us cleared his throat. Outside, it had begun to rain, a cold windswept rain tapping against the windowpanes. We waited.

I am not certain, even to this day, what got into me. All I know is that I began to speak. And what everyone there attests is this: I spoke with no stutter at all.

“How nice of you finally to call on me. I've been waiting. But don't worry, I've not been bored. I realize you're all very busy. I've been quite busy myself. You see, things are rather different over here. We have our own interests.”

Mother released my hand and began to sob. Afterward she swore I had mimicked Father's voice with uncanny perfection.

“Seryosha, stop it,” Volodya commanded. But I could no more stop speaking than I could stop my heart from beating. My pulse raced; I broke out in a cold sweat; my face burned.

My grandmother was unperturbed by her son's appearance. “What interests?” she asked me—or was it Father she asked?

“You can't begin to imagine. Once you become an adult, try as you might, you can no longer be fascinated by rubber balls or jackstraws. Still, there are times when Lody interests all of us here very much. His remarkable investigations. My colleagues and I—”

Volodya silenced me by springing up from the table. “Have you no decency?” he asked, leaning across as if he meant to cuff me.

Wherever the words had come from, they ceased as abruptly as they had commenced. Emptied, I looked around in a daze. I had never in my life called Volodya “Lody.” Only Father ever called him that.

“Sergey.” Willi touched my upper lip. “
Kuchmal. Du hast Nasenbluten. Was geschieht?
”

What had happened, indeed?

“It's the work of the devil,” Khristina muttered as I applied my handkerchief to the crimson flow of blood that issued from my left nostril. “Demons enjoy masquerading as the souls of the departed. There was a time when everyone knew that. Now people have forgotten.” She shook her head sadly.

 

Not long after, other developments sent further shocks through our household's precarious balance. My grandmother announced that, as she was unappreciated, she had decided to move to Dresden in order to be near an old flame of hers, a former senator from one of the Baltic provinces. Then came far worse news: in January, Svetlana's parents summoned Volodya
to a conference regarding their daughter's engagement. He returned home in a rage. Though he did not tell me the details himself, Mother reported that Roman Siewert had informed Volodya that, as his prospective son-in-law had no serious prospects before him, he could no longer sanction the marriage. Svetlana herself was present at the interview and, despite her fiancé's appeals, raised no objections to her father's pronouncement. “Volodya is as furious with her as he is with her father,” Mother reported. “And I must say, I'm surprised as well. I thought she was a girl of far more spirit than that.”

In March, Olga became precipitately engaged to the penniless Prince Sergey Sergeevich Shakhovsky, a mad and charmless young man perfectly suited to my equally mad and charmless sister. By April, outraged by the light sentences meted out to Father's murderers, Mother had begun to talk of moving the rest of the family to Prague, where the Czech government was offering pensions to émigrés.

When, a month later, I received from Paris an offer to join the staff of Miliukov's
Latest News
, the time seemed ripe to bid Berlin
auf Wiedersehn
and set out on my own.

 

 

 

THE HOUR WAS MIDNIGHT. JEAN COCTEAU'S notorious nightclub, Le Boeuf sur le Toit, throbbed with its formidable menagerie of poets, painters, and pederasts. Courtesy of an ebony-hued saxophonist and his ivory-pallored pianist, an ebullient tide of jazz washed over the bar. I felt immediately at home. It was the end of May 1923.

From the sleepy-eyed bartender I ordered a glass of champagne, and as I waited, my gaze attached itself to the painting above the bar—an enigmatic, staring eyeball surround by a storm of graffiti. Above it, crude letters spelled out “
L'Oeil cacodylate
.”

“Picabia,” the bartender told me.

“‘The arsenic eye'?”

“It's Dada. They say arsenic cures syphilis.” He shrugged. “Perhaps you should ask Picabia himself. You may find him right over there, having cocktails with Tristan Tzara.”

I told him that sounded like something of a dare, and he smiled. “You're perhaps American? The Americans adore presenting themselves to famous strangers.”

“English. As for myself,” I confessed, “I'm here for Monsieur Cocteau.”

The bartender gestured toward the musicians. Looking like a spindly seahorse plucked from its aquarium and set on a piano stool, Cocteau stroked the piano keys with long, bony fingers. He had folded his cuffs back from his slender wrists. Eyes closed, he threw back his head in feigned ecstasy, exposing a prominent Adam's apple on his stalk of a neck. He wore pale face powder and darkish lipstick.

Abruptly, though, he relinquished the piano, and was replaced by a plain little woman in an even plainer dress who proceeded to launch herself into a mad pastiche of tangos, waltzes, and ragtime.

Cocteau made a quick tour of the crowded room, ending at the table occupied by Picabia and Tzara. When he was done with them, he slid in beside me at the bar and observed, “Have you noticed how immensely superior jazz is to alcohol? Alcohol befuddles the brain while jazz intoxicates the soul. My musical talent is nothing compared to Madame Meyer's”—he gestured in the direction of the confoundingly inventive pianist—“but it's as important to me that I play jazz as well as I draw. They're the same thing, really, but with one glorious exception: when you play jazz you become the god of noise himself. That's why I adore it so.”

He took my arm with thrilling familiarity. “And you? Are you musical as well?”

I told him I feared my musical skills were purely classical.

“You're British, I imagine.”

Correcting his flattering presumption, I introduced myself properly.

He scrutinized me. “But you are dressed
à l'anglaise
, no?”

“Old Cambridge habits die hard,” I allowed, unwilling to confess how severely my present funds limited the scope of my wardrobe.

Leaning in close, he murmured, “Are you here alone? Shall I abduct you for a bit?”

I stuttered that nothing would be more welcome.

He waved away my attempt to pay the bar bill. “Please,” he said. “If I'm no longer to be taken seriously as a poet because, as my enemies like to say, I've found my true calling as a nightclub manager, then at least allow me the occasional benefit of my degradation. Of course,” he continued as we emerged into the pleasant air of late spring, “it was precisely
because
I was afraid of being taken too seriously in the first place that I undertook this little venture. Always remember: to be taken seriously is the beginning of death.

“But now I'm in no danger
whatsoever
of being taken seriously!” He beamed like a child, though he was some twenty years older than I.

Our stroll took us down through the Place de la Concorde; as if to make good on his promise of abduction, he nudged me into the leafy shadows of the Tuileries, murmuring, “A park in the city's like a patch of pure sleep in the midst of dreaming, don't you think?”

We walked along graveled paths intermittently illuminated by circles of lamplight. A gap in the chestnut allée revealed the Tour Eiffel shining like a beacon on the far side of the Seine.

“Ah!” Cocteau exclaimed, “I'm afraid our poor Eiffel is past her prime. Once she was the Queen of Machines, Notre Dame of the Left Bank. Now she's nothing but an Art Nouveau artifact blemishing the skyline. She should be retired at once. Imagine a Brancusi Tower in her place! How the future would remember us then!”

Gripping my arm tightly, he brought us to a stop and stood perfectly still.

“I must ask you. Do you worship at the altar of the Terrible God? I scarcely know you, my child, but I believe you very well may.”

“The Terrible God,” I repeated uncertainly.

He laughed. “Usually my young men come to me much more egregiously. Some of them even send me their photos. Sometimes in the nude! Can you imagine? How much more do I admire your frank and straightforward approach. For what have you done but made a
pilgrimage!
So very tasteful, but then all the Russians I have known, and I have known quite a few, have exhibited an exquisite—might I say Oriental?—sense of decorum. Even that oaf Nijinsky was God's
dazzling
oaf. But speaking of Russians—Stravinsky's latest marvel opens at the Gaieté-Lyrique tomorrow, followed the next evening by a party thrown by my American friends the Murphys. You must grace us with your presence. Though I do not yet know your considerable talents, I suspect I shall discover them very soon. Do you write? Do you paint? Or do you make sublime music? Speak to me of your own life. I beg you.”

After such a cascade, how was I to begin? I stammered out that I had adored
Parade
in London, that meeting its maker was a great honor, that I had recently fled Berlin and only yesterday acquired lodgings in Paris, and that I was sorry my impediment had made the preceding exposition so torturous.

“Not at all.” Cocteau patted my hand fondly. “You speak like a reluctant angel. But how reluctant are you? Come. Let's dispense with merely carnal distractions as soon as possible, shall we?”

So that was the Terrible God. Seldom in my life have I been so swiftly taken in hand. Nearby shrubberies abetted us.

“Moderately endowed,” Cocteau appraised. “Generally I prefer them larger, but an artist works with whatever he has at his disposal. At least it's eager enough. Yes, it's marvelously responsive, almost too much so. Oh dear! Are we done
already? Never mind. You needn't attempt to pleasure me, my dear. You've already given me all the pleasure I require of an evening.”

Thus we soon reemerged onto the graveled path.

“Dear me,” he observed, taking advantage of the nearest streetlamp to consult his pocket watch. “My flock will think I've abandoned them. Paris isn't too strange for you, I hope. You can find your way home from here?”

As I would have many occasions to witness, everything about Cocteau seemed to take place at five times the speed of life. My various senses were still spinning when he bade me, “Goodnight, my tender Hyacinth. Do come to the concert and party. Where do you live? I shall have an invitation sent first thing tomorrow.”

WITH GREAT ANTICIPATION I BOARDED THE
Maréchal Joffre
, a barge turned restaurant that our rich American hosts had rented for the evening. I wore the better of my two battered suits, shiny at the elbows, its silk lining in tatters; a neat stiff collar with a crimson tie; smart dove-gray spats. I had toned down my rosy flush with lavender powder. My lips bloomed, in contrast, with a touch of geranium rouge (Helena Rubenstein!). I had adjusted a lock of hair to fall just so over my left eye. At least, I thought, if I was not to be the handsomest devil at the soiree, I would nonetheless prove one of the most debonair.