Letters to Véra
Page 19
____________________
[VÉNAF]
[5 April 1932]
[TO: Berlin]
[Prague]
Please pass on to Bertrand my thanks for his letter. As you can see, I have already written to Thompson. To my mind, this turned out very elegantly. Don’t forget to send what I asked for. My cold is a little better. I am hearty, shaven and, in fact, I wanted to stop here, using the natural end of this little page, but then I thought that perhaps you’ve not quite understood my hints about the currants and the red-skins. Don’t you think that his connection to Leskov’s and Zamyatin’s heroines is about as approximate as a beetle’s connection to a grasshopper? Here we have solidity, slowness, even a certain stupidity, and there – light-heartedness, swiftness, elusiveness. Mother is at a lesson, Kirill was very keen to have Bertrand’s postcard, but I did not give it to him. I too have my little album. Today, I made him have a shower. I am thinking of sitting down to start a new novel.
[VÉNAF]
[6 April 1932]
[TO: Berlin]
[Prague]
You’ve chosen the excerpts well. I will send ‘Magda’s Childhood’ to Poslednie novosti, and her ‘Visit’, to Rossiya i slavyanstvo. I can’t post them today, though. I’ll do it on Monday. I have already spent about 20 crowns on myself (cigarettes, stamps). I feel quite embarrassed borrowing to post the excerpts, but I’ll have to. Perhaps you could wire me 3–4 marks? Or is this too complicated? Bobrovsky’s younger brother died because of Azef. Long before Azef was unmasked, he, the brother, had somehow discovered that Azef was an agent provocateur. This was in Karlsruhe, and he returned to Russia insane. Persecution mania. He decided that now Azef would kill him. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, he ate almost nothing, and he went skating all day long. Once he tried to kill his elder brother with an axe. Soon after that he threw himself under a train. He got terribly mutilated and died. Pyotr Semyonovich, who came to dinner, has just told me this. And now it’s near seven, and he’s still sitting here.
Olga was crying today: her husband has lost the only little job he had. I gave my mite towards buying Rostislav something to wear. The only word he can say is ‘yes’, with lots of feeling and many times in a row: ‘yes, yes, yes, yes, yes’, affirming his existence. The weather is nasty and cold. Frantic clouds are rushing across the sky. I haven’t gone out today, and my cold is almost entirely gone. I did not feel comfortable somehow today borrowing money to send things, but that’s psychological. Conversations about the Petkeviches’ situation and so on. But I’ll do it on Monday. It was a mistake to leave myself only 20 crowns. I thought this would last for ages. You know what’s funny: in the morning, Mother brings me your letters in exactly the same manner, with the same little grimace, as in Glory. By the way, write me in ink, because pencil rubs off and your little pages written in pencil look like grey moth wings with the dust falling off. Pyotr Semyonovich has promised to get me the issue of Russkaya mysl’ where my poems were printed for the first time. Sorting out my extra notebooks, I found a poem I’d totally forgotten, but not so bad, written in Beaulieu, which starts ‘Crosses, crosses …’ If you don’t know it, I will copy it out for you. I miss oranges terribly. I forgot to bring Kirill those little books of poems I’d promised him. There’s a conversation going on in the room; it’s hard to write. Here we all live in a mutual draught. I don’t like Camera. By the way, I don’t know the address of Rossiya i slavyanstvo, Kirill will find it out for me on Monday. Mother does not get it, nor Nash vek for that matter. Nash vek is boorish. I am re-reading Bovary for the hundredth time. So good, so good! Probably on Monday, I will be at Skit. There, to tell the truth, it’s mediocrity on mediocrity, but it’s curious all the same. Evgenia Konstantinovna is asking whether I want them soft-boiled or fried.
____________________
[VÉNAF]
[7 April 1932]
[TO: Berlin]
[Prague]
Today I am going with the Raevskys to look at the fresh little collection of butterflies at the museum, and from there, Mother, Kirill and I will go to Sergey Hessen’s. By the way, where did I put the money? Ah, here it is, under the couch. I have already begun to doubt the epistolary merits of my letter yesterday to Thompson, but I want to believe you’re in raptures over it, especially over the phrase about fine, rich, warm, etc. Rostislav, in a pink jacket, blue pantaloons, and purple booties, is standing in the doorway, leaning over the lintel, and now he’s set off walking, like a drunk, wanted to pick up a ball, dropped his little box, picked up the little box, dropped the ball, and smiled at me shyly. Box is awfully jealous of him; despite being deaf and blind, he starts to bark as soon as Evgenia Konstantinovna picks Rostislav up in her arms. Olga won’t talk about anything but chess. Her husband is silent by conviction and so old-fashioned in his personal style that Olga, ricochet-like, says it’s disgusting to use make-up, wear bright things, and so on. As a result she didn’t take the lipstick, and he didn’t need a safety razor, since he, of course, shaves with a regular razor. My cold has almost dried up, the weather is desperate. Icy wind, overcast. I’ve put on two pullovers. I’ll bring Flaubert back, and the soccer boots. We’ll go to Bulgaria this summer. It’s settled. Please kiss Anyuta for me. I’m afraid that the landlady, taking advantage of my absence, is dropping in on you rather often to talk, talk, talk. Buy several 20 pfennig stamps at once and write. I would like to know, for instance, how your health is.
____________________
[VÉNAF]
[8 April 1932]
[TO: Berlin]
[Prague]
I can write to you too about birds and animals. Yesterday Raevsky and I went to the museum, but since a Pushkin exhibition has opened in one of the lower halls, my impressions have got somewhat muddled. Amateur photography – the foppish Gogol with a walking stick among Russian artists in Rome and a marvellous bird, Pteridophora alberti, about which I already wrote you two years ago. On paper of the same blue colour, the original of ‘Odelia dear’, and charming geometric views of old Petersburg, and a small flat blondish rodent with a straw roof on his back, Chlamydophorus truncatus. A mantle-clad lad. My cold is better, but the weather is rotten and cold. I read Gazdanov’s story. It’s very weak. I am very unhappy about the telegram about the galleys. I certainly sent them.
We didn’t go to Sergey Hessen’s. He’s ill. We’ll go on Sunday. Yesterday Kovalevsky and I, playing together, wiped out Boris Vladimirovich at chess. Mother has told me interesting things about her spiritualist séances with the Roerich family. In general life in Prague is wretched and dirty. But by some miracle, my sisters and my brother have preserved a surprising purity of soul. And Mother is in good spirits, and Evgenia Konstantinovna hasn’t lost heart. I have just read in Poslednie novosti the stupidest and most vulgar article by Adamovich about the stupidest and most vulgar novel by Lawrence. One pederast writing about another. And now I will write to Anyuta. They’re not letting me write today, so this has come out rather a mosaic of a letter.
____________________
[VÉNAF]
[11 April 1932]
[TO: Berlin]
[Prague]
We’ve been to Sergey Hessen’s. The unbearably talkative Pletnyov and a very pleasant professor Karpovich from Harvard were there. All in all, Prague is a terribly ugly city. In its ancient monuments, in, let’s say, some black, plucked-at, five-hundred-year-old tower, there is something crow-like. Churches here bear the burden of centuries without grace, and best to say nothing about the houses, all motley, the shops, and the mugs of its citizens. Last night there was an invasion again. The weather has warmed up, but the wind’s still whirling. Dust. Soldiers playing soccer by the barracks. Sparrows hopping about the lawn in the public garden. The street traffic seems as if in a mirror for me. Know what I mean? Right seems left. At the tram stop there are large round bluish-purple street lamps, which I think I once wrote to you about. Listen:
’Twould ring the bells of heaven,
The w
ildest peals for years,
If Parson lost his senses
And people came to theirs,
And he and they together
Knelt down with angry prayers
For tamed and shabby tigers,
And dancing dogs and bears,
And wretched blind pit-ponies
And little hunted hares.
Ralph Hodgson. I tried to translate it, but so far it’s not coming out very well. A sweet poem. I will bring back some books. My finger still hurts, and it’s still pretty pregnant. I must have given it a good whack. I will also bring you the remnants of a very persistent cold. ‘Za sobak i medvedey uchyonykh,/ tigrov unizitel’no ruchnykh,/ I petlyashchikh zaychikov i v shakhtakh/ loshadey slepykh.’
Yesterday we had a visit from Sikorski and another Ukrainian, Volkonsky, who’s in torment from trying to propose. So far he hasn’t dared do it yet. He took communion yesterday, but it didn’t help. They’ve been fixing the electric doorbell. I will come back on Saturday night. At eleven, I think. I’ll find out. Prepare a big supper for me. As soon as I’m back I’ll sit down to the novel whose lines are just radiating out in my head. Write me a few words. An aquarelle’s hanging on the wall in front of me – the Tsar’s Trail between Miskhor and Yalta. Such divine smells there. There I caught Libythea celtis for the first time. And on the table, by the way, there’s a round chunk of marble we stole from the Acropolis. What do you think, maybe it would be better, ‘i slepykh loshadok-uglekopov,/ i zatravlennykh zaychikh’? Or maybe this way, ‘za zhalkikh, priruchennykh tigrov,/ sobak uchyonykh, medvedéi,/ za malenkikh presleduemykh zaitsev/ i shakhtennykh oslepshikh loshadey.’ Tell me what you like best. At 8 o’clock, Kirill and I are meeting at the museum to go to Skit.
____________________
[VÉNAF]
[12 April 1932]
[TO: Berlin]
[Prague]
Actually, I ought to be back in Berlin for the 20th: the Goethe evening, but I’ll be glad to skip it. Tomorrow I will go to the police and find out whether I am allowed to stay another 4–5 days here. I have a visa to the sixteenth, and, if it’s possible, I’ll return on the twentieth or the twenty-first, but, in any case, no later. You should have seen how Mother beamed when I told her that I’d stay a few more days. Yesterday I was at Skit. A narrow stone staircase, Golovin’s workshop. Doubtful works of sculpture along the walls, half-light, they all sit on some kind of low crates, tea, and little Bem by a small table, looking like a Tzadik. The reading was by someone called Markovich, a red-faced young man, a pretentious and feeble story. Example: ‘She strained him through her eyelashes’, ‘A waiter who looks as if he has just swallowed a metre-stick’ – and chapter titles like, for instance, ‘A Blonde on a Long Wave’ or ‘The Wind of Blue Romance’. The poor guy got a dressing-down. Then a poet, Mansvetov, long-haired, pale, eyeless, read his dim little poems with such little Pasternakian words as ‘randomly’, ‘blindly’, ‘under wraps’, ‘ovations’ and so on. After that, the poetess Alla Golovina read her graceful, toy-like poems in a tiny voice. And that was all. Khokhlov was there. He is going to Russia in the summer. The poetess Rathaus, the daughter of our best lyricist, who, by the way, has had a stroke (he’s 64), asked me with a rapturous smile what I thought of Vicki Baum. I came back alone, because Kirill went to see home his friend Zhenya Hessen. Tonight, I’ll read ‘Lips’ en famille. I’m going to the post office now to send off the excerpts. I could not get through Ivan Alekseevich’s little masterpieces in Poslednie novosti. Could you? My cold is gone. It’s cold. Windy. Now sun, now clouds. Do you know that in the days of Madame Bovary, cacti were in vogue, like now. Skulyari came to see us again yesterday. He brought us vodka, tea, a can of spiced sprats and told us how Americans had discovered a way of catching and collecting lightning. I play chess from time to time. It’s hard for me to put off my coming, but you’re right, I thought myself I’d stay (only a couple of days) extra.
____________________
[VÉNAF]
[14 April 1932]
[TO: Berlin]
[Prague]
How do you like the article in Poslednie novosti, the second one already, by the mysterious ‘Average man’? I think it’s rather nice. I’ve sent the excerpts. I read ‘Lips to Lips’ yesterday. They liked it.
I am writing to Dresden today. Mother and I are going to see Altschuler today, and tomorrow we’ll go about the visa. I should say that Sikorski, who rides a motorcycle with a sidecar, earns half as little this year as last, although he rides all night long. Normally, no one rides during the day. The weather’s gloomy and cold. I’m in two jerseys. I’m well, but my finger hurts. I’ll have Altschuler look at it. Here’s my old poem I told you about. Nothing special, but not bad, either.
Crosses, crosses, naked outlines
of graveyard crosses I saw in my dream.
No grief, no grief, but only anticipation
and the sweet wind with news of spring.
And from all over whispering sounds
were breathing, opening up like flowers,
while the crosses raised their arms slowly,
blooming trees, not crosses.
Beaulieu, 7–vi–23
You’ll have to call Hessen and tell him I’ve had to stay in Prague and that therefore I will not be able to take part in the Goethe festival. Ne précise pas la date de mon arrivée since il se peut that I’ll be back on the 20th, yes, definitely the 20th, but I do not want to dash from shore to ball.
Do this, please. And here is another old, very old little poem.
An India invisible I rule […].
[VÉNAF]
[15 April 1932]
[TO: Berlin]
[Prague]
Seven years ago we went to the Standesamt. Today, too, I was in an office. I didn’t get my visa extension. Some clerk in charge of this wasn’t there. I’ll have to go there again tomorrow morning. But in any event, a civil servant who’d refused to speak German to me on the pretext that we were, he says, both Slavs, was sceptical about the possibility of my further sojourn in his fatherland. If tomorrow too they try to put chocks in my clock wheels, I’ll simply not bother, stay here till the 20th anyway, and then come what may. Maybe I’ll have difficulties at the border because of this, but I’ll get through. I ask you, how dare they, these rats, these perfectly inedible gentlemen, cause me such trouble.
Yesterday at the Altschulers’, I got to know a charming affectionate black dachshund, belonging to his son, also a doctor. He is married to a Greek woman, with two girls. A wonderful apartment in a stylish area. His son has a huge practice. I showed the old man my sore finger. An inflamed joint. Night compress. We talked about this and that, about our Berlin acquaintances, our Crimean acquaintances. The dachshund wouldn’t leave me alone. She demanded to be stroked. After that all evening I had the sensation of her smooth silky blackness on my palm. Sikorski came over yesterday, too, and Sergey Hessen, and the Kovalevskys crawled up from their apartment, too. He is pink, round-faced, youthfully bald, in a rimless pince-nez, in pyjamas, and also unwell (stomach ulcers). She is very beautiful, speaks with a burr, flirts with her eyes. I have written to Mulman, but I am afraid this is peine perdue. I will bring you the entire correspondence, Flaubert, and Gippius’s ‘Human Countenance’. It’s a muddled poem, but it has amazing, very inspiring parts. For example, this stanza: ‘If you still don’t believe, let’s go to sea, cast a net, a teeming catch of fish will answer. And like slaves, without arguing, we threw the net into the sea swell, and rejoiced that our net was heavy and thick and black with a teeming catch.’ Don’t you think it’s good? I’ve enticed Mother with Joyce. But, unfortunately, you can’t get him here. He is simply not in the public library. Except in Czech translation. I can imagine what nonsense that is. Aside from those I mentioned, we also had Vacek, a Czech old maid who used to live at Mother’s, over yesterday, and Kirill’s heartthrob, Irochka Vergun, was also supposed to come. But didn’t show. I want to write a very harmonious, very
simple book. But so far, I only see its large rays and get a pleasantly plaintive feeling. Ugh, how I’m going to catch it for poor Camera. And it will serve me right. Good God, how I crave oranges. They don’t eat enough here, but the saddest thing is that while I am here, they eat better than usual. Evgenia Konstantinovna has now brought me a cup of coffee and a crescent roll and asks to send you her regards and says: ‘Poor darling, she feels so sad without you today.’ Mother is at her lesson now. Kirill’s at the university. The weather’s milder, but the sky’s grey. You can’t imagine how slovenly they are. If you don’t keep an eye on her, she could, for example, wash the little boy’s face in the same pot she uses for making soup and vice versa. The other day I came on this scene: Olga, on the couch, reading a disgustingly frayed volume of Herzen, while the child is on the floor, sucking dreamily on Box’s tin bowl. If they suddenly move away or out, it’s been decided that Rostislav will stay here.
[VÉNAF]
[16 April 1932]
[TO: Berlin]
[Prague]
The pupae never hang the way you’ve drawn them, and the smoke would not protrude like this from the very pleasant little house, but the young lion is very nice, as well as the bear-cubs. Of course I will be in Berlin on Saturday, so you can invite the Kozhevnikovs. I will be very happy to see Volodya.
The novel you ask about will deal with an exam. Imagine something like this. A man is preparing for a driving test on city geography. His preparation and conversations connected with it, and also, of course, his family, human environment, and so on, will be covered, in misty detail, you understand, in the first part. Then there’s an imperceptible transition to the second part. He goes, enters the exam room, but it’s not a driving test at all but, as it were, an examination of his earthly existence. He has died and they’re asking him about the streets and crossroads of his life. And all of this is without a shadow of mysticism. He talks at that exam about everything he remembers from life, i.e. about the brightest and most lasting things in his whole life. And those who examine him are long-deceased, for example, the coachman who made a sledge for him when he was little, his old grammar-school teacher, some distant relatives whom he knew only dimly in life. This is my little embryo. I think I’ve told it to you badly. But it’s hard. I have it, this novel, still at the stage of feeling rather than of thought.