by Paul Russell
“Oh, Valechka doesn’t mind at all. I could go to hell for all she cares.”
We lay curled on our sides on his matrimonial bed, the opium lamp between us; lazily we passed the pipe back and forth, holding it over the coal, letting the ravishing smoke drift up to our nostrils. It was stupidly dangerous, the lamp was unsteady, a sudden movement could tip the whole thing and the bed would instantly be in flames. As such, it was oddly emblematic. We would smoke in contented silence. I would feel a closeness to him I had never felt before, not even in the most physically intimate of moments.
37
BERLIN
DECEMBER 9, 1943
A DREADFUL THING HAS HAPPENED—OR PERHAPS it is the answer to my prayers.
Last night the skies were clear, a bright moon out, the waves of bombers relentless. From night to night the RAF refine their diabolical repertory, whose signatures we have learned to recognize—the sharp crack of canister explosives, the doves’ rustle of magnesium stick bombs, the wet smack of the phosphorous incendiaries spreading their inextinguishable green lava across roofs and down walls. The suction pressure is almost unbearable; it takes the air right out of our lungs.
Once more the sweep of the firestorm. Once more the benumbed relief afterward. When we emerge from our cellar at dawn, we see the most astonishing sight: the rear of our building remains; the façade is completely sheared away. One can observe the contents of the building’s various floors. There is the sofa in the parlor. There is the floor lamp. There is the kitchen, with its scrubbed pots hanging above the sink. There is Frau Schlegel’s ironing board, still upright. But of stoic Frau Schlegel who ironed her way through many a raid, there is no sign.
Her daughter is distraught. Well, we are all distraught. Theodor and I climb the precarious, mangled staircase to search the floors one by one, but she has vanished without a trace. Frau Schlegel—imperious, intrusive, opinionated, resourceful. Our lives have depended on her, and now she is gone.
We shall have to find other lodgings. And in this I detect—though I may simply have lost my mind—the hand of God scattering the chess pieces that would have led all too quickly to checkmate. Now the Gestapo will have difficulty tracking me down. I am unexpectedly afforded an extra chapter, and I will prove a fool if I do not hasten my narrative along as the clock, blessedly reset, begins once again to tick.
38
PARIS
LIKE THE PRINCESS, I HAD FALLEN INTO A DEEP slumber, watched over by spiders, protected by thorns, concealed in a fog of opium. How to convey how weeks, months, even years disappeared? Much happened, but nothing changed. My finances remained as precarious as ever, and though I found myself remembering Weldon and his American dollars with great fondness, I made no attempt to find myself a benefactor. Indeed, the effects of opium had so suppressed my libido that weeks would go by without my registering a single throb of desire. As Oleg found himself in the same foundering boat, we came to resemble, in our desultory exertions, nothing so much as two castaways seeking in each other the battered mast that might keep them afloat after the ship has disappeared beneath the waves.
My attendance at 27 rue de Fleurus began to flag, till there came the inevitable moment when Alice, at the end of an evening, took me aside and asked pointedly, “Why are you here at all?”
I told her—with an impertinence that would have been unthinkable two years before—that I had lately been wondering the same thing.
“Perhaps a young man shouldn’t any longer come to a place he wonders whether he should be.”
I bowed politely. I thanked Alice for her wisdom. On my way out I thanked Gertrude for a magical evening, as ever. That great inscrutable shameless pretender inclined her head, assessing me one final time. In her eyes I could see that I had already disappeared.
My expulsion distressed Pavlik and Allen, who were ready to campaign for my reinstatement.
“I’m no match for the ambitions of that world. I’ll be content to hear about it from afar,” I told them. What I did not say was that I would rather spend my Saturday nights smoking a few pipes in the indolent solitude of my room, and attend mass at St.-Séverin the following morning in order to repent my sins.
As it happened, Pavlik and Allen did not last much longer at Miss Stein’s salon either; in the spring of 1928, the pair was informed that their presence was no longer welcome.
Though ever on the verge of bankruptcy, the Ballets Russes thrived as never before in those years. Diaghilev scooped up talent like a giant child gorging himself on sweets: Balanchine, Lifar, Dolin, Markova; even Pavlik, who had always expressed a fear of becoming decorative, got swept into the fold, designing overwrought sets for Ode, whose pleasantly forgettable music my cousin Nika composed.
In the fall of 1928 Sirin’s second novel, King, Queen, Knave, was published. I had not seen my brother in five years, and increasingly I resigned myself to the possibility that our paths might never again cross. The novel was a brilliant performance, but very cold. That self-portrait toward the end, inserted in the manner of old Flemish painters, lingered in my mind: the girl with the delicately painted mouth and tender gray-blue eyes, her husband elegantly balding, contemptuous of everything on earth but her. Mother had said she feared Véra brought out some of Volodya’s worst traits. Unkind thoughts, courtesy of Aunt Nadezhda and Uncle Kostya, crowded around me, and the more I thought about it, the more I began to fear for my ensnared brother’s soul.
I considered sending him a letter; I sat down on several occasions to write one, but my attempts were mawkish. Who was I, after all, to lecture anyone on the state of his soul? Thus, with a dejected groan, I lit myself a pipe instead.
Then everything changed—not all at once, of course; many months were to pass before I would finally muster the courage to seize Fate’s invitation.
It all began inauspiciously enough at a reception in June 1929, given by fellow-exile Nicolas de Gunzburg at his hôtel particulier in the faubourg St.-Germain.
His Jewish father having prudently moved both family and bank accounts abroad some years before the Bolshevist debacle, the Gunzburgs’ wealth survived where sturdier fortunes had evaporated. As the adored son and heir, witty, erudite, spectacularly handsome Nicki cultivated a dizzying cast of friends and hosted extravagant costume balls that rivaled those of Étienne de Beaumont. A few years later he would star in Dreyer’s celebrated horror film Vampyr. He had a serious side as well, and was one of the Ballets Russes’ more generous patrons. It was to honor Diaghilev, in fact, that he had arranged this particular occasion.
Among those in attendance: the Princesse Anna de Noailles, Coco Chanel, Grock the clown, a young American acrobat named Barbette whose transvestite performances at the Casino de Paris had been enthralling audiences; Jean and Valentine Hugo; the painter Bébé Bérard, whose presence was certain to infuriate his rival Pavlik, who had not been invited; a fat, ebullient gossip columnist from America named Elsie Maxwell; Count Harry Kessler, a dapper German diplomat, along with an entourage of his fellow countrymen; my cousin Nika; and another composer, the sympathetic and touchingly unhandsome Henri Sauguet.
Misia Sert arrived with Serge Lifar; she could often be seen promenading him around Paris the way others might go about with a leopard on a leash. Stravinsky had been invited but declined, as he and Diaghilev were currently not on speaking terms. (Stravinsky had committed the unpardonable sin of composing a bit of music for a rival company.)
Cocteau sent his regrets from Villefranche, where he and his current enfant, Jean Desbordes, were summering.
As usual, the guest of honor arrived very late. When he finally made his entrance he was accompanied by the indispensible Boris Kochno on one arm and a feral-looking youngster named Igor Markevitch on the other. Even if one had missed the latest rumors about Markevitch’s adoption into Diaghilev’s inner circle, a quick glance at his outfit—the white tuberose in his buttonhole, the walking stick, the homburg—would have revealed all.
Though I spent much of
the evening in those gilded chambers longing to be free of that urbane crowd and shut away with three or four heavenly pipes, the reception produced three memorable encounters.
The first was with Lifar. I had never had much to do with him. He had grown as a dancer—a stunning Apollo in the 1928 season, and most recently a transcendently abject fils prodigue. Still, I had always found him unnerving offstage. There was a bored patience in his gaze that reminded me of a sleek racehorse that submits patiently to being petted.
On this evening, however, he seemed in an uncommonly communicative mood. Nodding in Diaghilev’s direction, he said, “He’s not looking well, do you notice?” The master was showing off Markevitch to the Germans. “He’s fifty-seven years old. His debts are enormous. The money’s already spent long before it comes to him. He has one suit only, and if you look closely you’ll notice how threadbare the cuffs are. Art, beauty, and youth are the only things he’s ever cared about. Thirty years of living in hotels, and being turned out of many: it’s taken a toll, even on one so resilient as he.
“And yet, what an epoch-making life he’s led. To have been even a small part of that is a very great honor for me. And it almost didn’t happen. Please, do me a favor. Let’s switch places. I’ll stand with my back to the man. I’m craving a cigarette. I can ash in the potted palm. He forbids me cigarettes, you see. He’d forbid me every pleasure not connected with dance, if he could! How I remember those early days in the company, when he showered me with such kind words—‘little flower,’ ‘little berry,’ ‘my darling boy.’ I could scarcely imagine my luck. I’d heard whispers about his unusual life, his ‘favorites’ and so forth. Could it be possible, I said to myself, that I was to be one of those favorites? I remembered the girl I’d left behind in Kiev, to whom I’d promised to be faithful. Would I remain faithful if Diaghilev were to choose me? There was only one solution. I’d abandon the Ballets Russes. I’d abandon dance, the dream for which I’d abandoned her, and become a monk.”
Lifar laughed with a sort of ghastly mirth as, discreetly, he stubbed out his cigarette. “Of course I didn’t become a monk. The very next time I saw Diaghilev he said to me, ‘You must do what you must do, my dear boy. But I’m going to Italy next month, and if you wish to accompany, you may.’ In an instant it was all settled.
“And now, in spite of his diabetes, he’s determined to tour Germany with little Markevitch, even though his doctors have warned against travel. I wish the boy well. He has no idea what he’s in for, but I wish him every happiness. It won’t be easy, but it will be worthwhile, for his life will have been changed forever. I hope he finds a tenth of the happiness Sergey Pavlovich afforded me.”
Lifar had scarcely left me before the great man himself, entrusting his “favorite” to Mme. Sert, walked over to where I stood sipping a newly refilled glass of champagne. He no longer intimidated me as he once had; I had come to see the fundamental sweetness, generosity, and civility his haughty manner and famous tantrums sometimes masked. He always inquired after my mother, always had a kind remembrance of Father, and always asked, at some point, “What news of Russia?” though it had long since become apparent that I had no news whatsoever of Russia anymore.
“I saw you talking to Lifar,” Diaghilev said. “Did he smoke a cigarette? He’s forbidden to smoke! I shall speak with him later. In any event, what on earth was he going on about? He looked quite unusually earnest. But don’t be deceived. There’s not a single thought in his beautiful head. Oh, he’s a superb beast, an athlete of the highest caliber—but you don’t go to our Lifar for any ideas!”
“He was talking of you,” I said. “Of all you did for him.”
“I’m a great fool!” he exclaimed, his large doleful eyes welling up at once with tears. “Of course he loves me. He’s always loved me. And I love him. I love all my dancers, my musicians, my artists, without whom none of this”—he gestured around the beautiful room as if to indicate how easily it might vanish into thin air—“none of this would exist.”
“But the great miracle is that it does exist,” I said.
“Ah, the great miracle.” For a moment Diaghilev seemed at a loss. We stood in silence. Then he said, with an anguish that took me aback, “The Markevitch boy is simply madness, I’m afraid. Especially at my age. What scandal! Even I know it. How people must laugh behind my back. Yes, I don’t mind if I do have another”—he plucked a petit four from a tray offered him by a servant—“and I’ll have more champagne if any can be found.” His eyelids half closed in pleasure as he bit into the sweet. “And yet there it is,” he went on, “the pure hopeless blissful reality of the situation. So very beautiful. So very talented as well. I’ve scheduled him to perform his Piano Concerto in London next month. And I’ve commissioned him to write a ballet for me. His music is the music of the future. Even Stravinsky has acknowledged that. Mark my word, without a doubt Markevitch is the next Stravinsky.”
He gazed longingly in his beloved’s direction. “My God, look at him. And he’s only sixteen!”
I did look at him; the youngster stood next to a potted palm, a glass of orangeade in hand, and chatted up the Princesse de Noailles. Clearly he was charming her. Clearly he was entirely normal, not a bit of the invert in him. And for Diaghilev—I could see this with such bittersweet clarity—there would be only heartbreak ahead. He was simply lying down on the tracks, like the heroine from one of yesteryear’s silent movies, sans villain, sans ropes, sans struggle, in order to await the arrival of the oncoming locomotive.
The final encounter of that evening occurred as I waited in the foyer for the servant to bring me my trilby and walking stick. One of the Germans whom I had seen earlier in Count Kessler’s company arrived to retrieve his items as well.
“Retiring early?” I asked.
“No earlier than you, it would appear.”
“But I’ve come alone. Your comrades…”
He ignored my stutter. “You’re mistaken. I’ve come alone as well.”
“Forgive me. I assumed you were with Count…” My affliction had never been worse.
“With the Germans?” He laughed. “No, I’m afraid I’m from the other Germany—the new, artificial one the war created. I mean Austria, of course. I’m old friends with Nicki; that’s why I was invited. I’m just up to Paris on business. I wouldn’t, by the way, have guessed you were Russian from your accent.”
“But how then did you know I was Russian?”
“Let’s just say I made a few discreet inquiries. I’m Hermann Thieme. You’re Serge Nabokov. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
He held my gaze. His eyes were rather wonderfully blue, lavender, periwinkle, lilac. I had no sense that there was any particular intent in his gaze. It is a manner some men have, and in their presence one becomes aware just how seldom one actually looks one’s interlocutor directly in the eye.
He was tall, very slender, impeccably dressed in a bespoke suit with lemon necktie. He wore ivory spats. He and Nicki would make a very handsome pair, and I wondered, idly, whether they ever had.
From the salon came the lilt of a waltz: Nika had seated himself at the piano. Hermann hesitated at the open door.
“Very nice,” he said. “Very apt. Do you recognize it?”
I did not immediately, though I told him it sounded incongruously old-fashioned and Viennese in this Parisian setting.
“Precisely,” he said. “It’s Der Rosenkavalier. It was Count Kessler who first passed on to Hoffmannsthal that wisp of an anecdote about the Marschallin who renounces her love for a younger man so that he might be free to pursue a clueless girl his own age. Of course Hofmannsthal and Strauss turned it into their masterpiece. Few know the Count’s part in it. What a lovely tribute. The Count must be very pleased.”
We emerged onto the street. A pleasant light rain was falling. Our destinations lay in opposite directions—his the Hotel Bristol on the Champs-Elysées, mine rue St.-Jacques in the Latin Quarter—but he seemed oddly unwilling to part just yet.
I, on the other hand, was dying for my first pipe.
“By the way,” he said, “I’ve been reading a novel by one of your countrymen. Not in Russian, of course—my Russian is nonexistent—but in German translation. It’s quite good. Perhaps you know it. It’s by a writer named—”
I knew the instant before Hermann named him who it would be. Mother had recently written me that Volodya had sold the German rights to King, Queen, Knave for a small but very welcome sum of money.
“Actually, I know V. Sirin quite well,” I said. “He’s my brother. Sirin’s a pseudonym, obviously.”
“Someone told me it meant ‘firebird.’”
“No,” I said, feeling a spasm of dread. “More like ‘siren,’ though the Russian siren has wings and lives in the forest rather than on the rocks of the seacoast. I thought it quite an unpleasant novel, actually. Perhaps it reads better in German.”
“Perhaps. It’s what Germans say about Shakespeare as well. What’s he like, your brother? On the basis of this piece of evidence I’d say he’s fiercely intelligent, an exemplary stylist, a coolly detached observer of the human condition, an uncompromising moralist. Am I at all on the mark? I’m fascinated by what a writer reveals about himself in his work, whether consciously or unconsciously. Is there any correspondence between the author of those bracing pages and the brother you know in real life?”
As he spoke, my anxiety had increased exponentially. My underarms went clammy, sweat dampened my brow. “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said, hearing a hardened tone come into my voice. “I haven’t seen my brother in several years. I probably wouldn’t even recognize him if I did see him. Indeed, I recognized very little of him in those heartless pages.”
My anxiety all at once swelled into full-fledged distress. I was already late for my pipes. The street started to spin, my stomach heaved, and with no warning I was bent double, spilling a noxious mess onto the sidewalk. Poor Hermann took it with gallant aplomb, touching my shoulder sympathetically, sliding his hand beneath my elbow to steady me when I straightened back up. As I wiped my befouled mouth with a handkerchief he asked gently, Did I need to sit down on the curb? Was I feeling faint?