Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Miss Perkins picked up a strange infection in Constantinople, her head drops to the left, so that she keeps propping it up very skilfully and unobtrusively, now with a finger, now her purse, but I noticed it right away. Today, with her, I corrected the girls’ English essays, and she accepted all my corrections (and at the same time I corrected one of her corrections). Yesterday I had dinner at the girls’ club, ‘you can imagine’ how I pranced at the table surrounded by beauties and trying not to spit through the hole in my mouth. We began with academic conversations, but I very quickly lowered the level – in a word, très bien, très beau parleur, but Miss Perkins had warned me that I should stay till half past seven, but no longer. She will be in New York and wants to meet you. Judging by some little h i n t s and the genre of their questions, I have an impression that they may invite me for the autumn – I don’t know.

  It turns out that in the previous issue of the ‘Atlantic’ (I’ve been writing it the whole time with an extra ‘n’, like incident) there were publisher’s howls that they couldn’t go on like this, that they needed real things, no matter about what, but real. La rosse rousse sera bien enfoncée (I have just had a conversation with a professor of French – it’s contagious). I wonder what to translate next (in the same way, with P., with whom it’s pleasant and easy to work), what do you think? ‘Tyrants’? ‘Breaking the News’? Or shall I write one LITTLE PIECE IN RUSSIAN – and then translate it? ‘Living at Wellesley College, among the oaks and sunsets of peaceful New England, he dreamed of changing his American fountain-pen for his own incomparable Russian feather-pen.’ (From ‘Vladimir Sirin and His Time’, 2074, Moscow). My Cambridge moods are somehow coming back to me. I kiss you, my darling, my incomparable little feather. Do write!

  V.

  ____________________

  [ALS, 3 PP]

  [20 March 1941]

  TO: 35 W 87, New York City

  WELLESLEY COLLEGE

  WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS

  20–III–41

  From that night on, my stomach has been completely fine!

  My love,

  Today, I am quietly working on my lectures and translations from Pushkin. I’m afraid that I won’t have time to write to you tomorrow: in the morning, there is a ‘talk’ in the English style and composition class (in a word, in the department of English), for half an hour or so (not part of my programme, but I agreed), and then a lecture on S o v i e t S h o r t. After that – Boston.

  I went for a walk this morning, the wind has turned towards spring, very distinctly, but it’s still cold. The paper-white, indecently slender trunks of little American birches against the background of a young blue sky. The wrapping paper of dry oak foliage. The sharply bright, red, blue frames of girls’ bikes (don’t forget two things tomorrow: bike, Stein!) leaning against fir-trees.

  I walked on my own. Seul. Solus.

  Here, for example, is this:

  [tempest nighing]

  That sea-day with a storm impending –

  how enviously did I greet

  [dying]

  the rush of tumbling billows ending

  in adoration at her feet!

  I wonder whether Miten’ka will get the point of the drawing I did for him.

  Explain to him first that skaters trace out an 8 and that Romans wore such ‘gowns’. Ich hab gedacht dass ich bekomme ein Brief von Dir heute. The local professor of German did not know who or what Kafka was.

  The very sweet Miss Kelly now sends me a plateau with a luxurious breakfast in bed, having sensed that I won’t be able to stand for long those common meals at a quarter past seven. The cook has sworn that ‘we are going to put some fat on the bones of that man’ and now leans over backward to fry up as many kinds of sweet pastries as she can, which I hate. I adore you, my kitty.

  V.

  FOR MITEN’KA

  A ROMAN EIGHT

  [ALS, 3 PP.]

  [24 March 1941]

  [TO: New York]

  WELLESLEY COLLEGE

  WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS

  5 p.m., Mon.

  My dear darling,

  I’ve received only two letters from you, the first with postscripts by H. and L. and another, just now, from Musin’ka Nabokov. But was there anything in between?

  I have just returned from the Karpoviches’, where it was as agreeable as always, but also cosy in a new way – a very bright and light house, which has not yet managed (although it’s starting to, in some corners) to blossom. The water in their tub was, as I told Tatyana, more like (warm) friendship than (hot) love. There were lots of guests yesterday – Evgeny Rabinovich (!), still as padded up and thick-legged as before, Pertsov’s brother, Lednitsky – a yellowish-swarthy Pole who, when telling about his escape, always repeats: ... ‘well, I took along the little things I needed – eau d’cologne, toothbrush’. With dead eyes and ideally ungifted. Today I had lunch with Weeks – it turned out he is also a Trinity College man! He will send the galleys to me here. I think I’ll now give him ‘Spring in F’. One of the lady readers, who was also at the lunch, told me: ‘I knew you would be distinguished, but I didn’t know you would be fun.’ Dinner-time now. I love you. I still do not know how you feel. The bike is going tomorrow to New York straight to our apartment. I have two lectures tomorrow, ‘Technique of Novel’ and a repetition of Chekhov-Gorky. Tonight, I will have to apply myself, some things still aren’t done. It is damp, rainy, everything’s runny like a watercolour that’s too wet. This is my 4th letter.

  I adore you.

  V.

  MY MUSIN’KA, THE BIKE IS RIDING TO YOU!

  THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE! Daddy.

  [ALS, 3 PP.]

  [postmarked 25 March 1941]

  TO: 35 West 87 Street, New York City

  WELLESLEY COLLEGE

  WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS

  My dear love, I’ve received that in-between (and dear) letter, which I was already mourning. I’m happy you’re feeling better. Yes, let’s put off responding to Mr Dimwitsvetov. To Chairman Sedykh I am responding that I could, but I need to know how much they pay: it’s not worth taking less than 50 for one lecture or 200 for five (and I can’t do more than five). And I will offer to read my own work. Exactly fifty years ago Sergey Volkonsky was here and left the most vulgar description of Wellesley in his ‘Wanderings’.

  It’s now midday, I have just returned from my two lectures: very successful. But I dare say that when they tell me ‘it will be a tragedy when you go away’, this is the merest American courtesy.

  Tomorrow morning – no, the day after tomorrow – I am going cap in hand before the President, whom I imagine as a queen bee or ant. Today I had my first lunch with a man here – a professor of English literature. You don’t write to me how your other little health is. Absolutely between us: I want to go home. When I feel that my lectures will last less than 50 minutes, I gain time by writing in chalk the names of Russian writers on the blackboard. I had to speak several times without notes, though – explaining or answering questions – and it was rather easy.

  Won’t I really be able to draw something for Miten’ka before lunch? I still have a wonderfully pleasant impression of the Atlantic and of Weeks. I kiss you on the clavicle, my bird.

  V.

  MITEN’KA

  CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG

  THE BIKE IS COMING

  LOVE YOU

  D.

  ____________________

  [ALS, 3 PP.]

  [postmarked 26 March 1941]

  TO: 35 West 87th Street, New York City

  WELLESLEY COLLEGE

  WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS

  Wednesday

  morning

  My love,

  I’ve just received the galleys of ‘Cloud etc’ and a very sweet letter from Weeks. Now I am leaving for lunch; I’ve been preparing in bed today’s after-dinner lecture, the most important (the final part of ‘Technique of Novel’: Vosstorg and Vdakhnovenia) and gone for a little walk: bright wind, stron
g sun, one can pump a fountain-pen straight from the lake; not a single butterfly. Yesterday I had dinner with Miss Perkins and three other sweet ruins. Brown told me – after I had complained that it was impossible to grasp the truth through the exaggerated compliments – that they really are extraordinarily pleased. The fountain spouts (or rather sputters) very audibly through the elephantine mound of ice completely covering it.

  Tatyana Nik. very opportunely came for the lecture (an open one today), then had tea in my room, and meanwhile your precious letter arrived, about the Anyuta situation. Karpovich has already received it and will do everything, but just in case I have arranged to stay with them from Saturday to Sunday (I am leaving for Ridgefield from Boston at 1 p.m. – which means on the 30th – and I think that on the 1st or 2nd I’ll already be heading off to New York). The lecture was very grand and stood me in good stead. Just one is left, on Saturday morning (the repetition of Sov. short). Now they’re taking me to a celebratory dinner, then to the theatre. I somehow did not manage to ask Weeks how much they will pay, but those in the know say that for an ordinary article of that size they pay 150 dollars. We’d better refanglicize ‘Spring’ pretty soon. Aldanov thrust a story on Pertzov, and he has agreed. I do not like it that you’re still in your little bed. I kiss my Musin’ka Nabokov and you, my tenderness. Thanks to the Antlantic, we can easily scramble out of debts and there’ll be something for a trip.

  I love you still.

  V

  MY DEAR

  MUSIN’KA NABOKOV

  I THINK IT WILL

  ARRIVE TOMORROW

  ____________________

  [ALS 5 PP.]

  [28 March 1941]

  TO: 35 W 87, New York City

  WELLESLEY COLLEGE

  WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS

  28–III–41

  My sweet love,

  I’ve received a very warm letter from Dennis and have responded definitively to him, that I am ready to write an article of 3,000 for the New Rep., ‘Art of Translating’. Yesterday, I slept and wrote. Today is March 28th. I have written to Bertrand, Schwartz, Wilson, Sedykh, Weeks, Bogoslovsky, Edgar Fisher, Lorrimer, Dennis, Aldanov, and sent off the p r o o f s. This evening, I was at a very boring concert by a certain Lilly Pons, an acrobatic soprano, tinted orange, like a sun-tan, in a white broad-skirted dress. A small dark Jewish flautist who looked like a shy satyr. There were so many in the theatre that they put a hundred or so on the stage – the elderly males and females of the New Yorker to a tee. I somehow did not think of going up to Koussevitzky. And last night there was a banquet – the entire staff of the English department and the brightest and most beautiful girls. After which they asked me to speak about Mansfield, Flaubert, Proust, and so on, and what came out was provoking and lively. It’s now eight a.m., I love you. At 11 I am going to present myself to Mrs President, a young lady I have already g l i m p s e d at the concert.

  On Sunday, April 20th, you and I will dine with Miss Perkins in the Russian Tea-room. Yesterday I suddenly realized whom she’s strangely like – with her way of keeping a finger at her temple, her slight tic, her habit of bowing a tad when something. She is very pointedly interested in you (Wellesley-rein?). As far as I understand, Bobbs-Merr. is interested in a risky film venture, how about that?

  Tomorrow after the morning lecture I’m off to the Karpoviches’. All in all, everything here was unusually successful (except for one lapsus lingui during the discussion yesterday: student: ‘but don’t you think that a reader must live with the characters?’ I: ‘no, – with the author.’) The next, my bird, will probably be only on Monday from Ridgef. Love you.

  V.

  12 p.m.

  I’m carrying on after my visit to Mrs President. I was told they were so pleased with me that they will pay 300 doll. (inst. of 250), which at least is concrete. At one I’ll lunch at her place with dear Perkins and Kelly. I’ve just received your very sweet one. Yes, tomorrow I’ll put firm pressure on M. M. I have no doubt he’ll do everything. Today the weather is blue-greyish, very warm – and the seagulls have caught all the little goldfish in the pond. After a long argument, I’ve paid 2 doll. and 60 c. for the shipment of the bike. When I left, I had 6 or 7 dollars, I don’t remember. The ticket to Darien cost a dollar. Yes, I had around five in Darien. The trip from Darien here cost more than six. I borrowed 10 from Bogoslovsky. Here almost every day they give or send a taxi cab for me, and each time it is 25 or 50 c. On top of that the bike, cigarettes and other little things. In a word, I don’t have enough to go to Ridgefield and home – if I don’t cash the cheque. Poor, poor old man H. Have you mailed my letter? They asked me: do I want a permanent job. Don’t know, don’t know – as Zyoka used to say. True, it’s charming here – but all the trees are sprayed, so there are probably not many butterflies. I’ve already written to the Russian club for 50. Yes, on Thursday I should already be home. I am going through Norwork to Chekh. – not Norfolk. My God, I must run. I adore you, my kitty.

  V.

  MY DARLING,

  SO, HAS THE LITTLE BIKE ARRIVED?

  I WILL ARRIVE SOON MYSELF.

  I KISS YOU ON MY FAVOURITE PLACE.

  IT’S UNCOUPLING!

  MY DEAR

  DID THEY CUT YOUR HAIR?

  DO YOU GO TO THE SNOWY PARK?

  LOVE YOU

  DADDY

  [ALS, 3 PP.]

  [31 March 1941]

  TO: 35 West 87th, New York City

  [Ridgefield, Conn.]

  31–III–41

  morning

  My fine love,

  Because of all the travelling about, I absolutely couldn’t fit in writing to you. The last lecture, on Saturday, seems to have been the most successful (short story Sov. – a repetition, but I revamped it). After it, I went with Miss Kelly to look at a famous butterfly collection in the private home I love you of the collector Denton – and, indeed, marvellous specimens, but with catastrophic labels and without localities. Then Tatyana arrived and we drove to their place. Poor M. M. has a boil on his head. He swore to me that on Monday, i.e. today, everything would be done. I put pressure on, said everything you had written, and I think it’ll all be done.

  Yesterday afternoon I set off for here – a six-hour ride, but now I’m already close to you. A charming hilly place rather like Vermont, crystal clusters in running streams, an absolutely lilac day, forest, thawed patches, but not a single butterfly. In the evening I had a four-hour-long conversation with Chekhov about Don Quixote, he liked my little piece a lot, and the changes he wants are simple and generally in tune. But this won’t be my thing, of course. Christian revelations and so on. We’ll work again tonight. I’ll arrive on Wednesday the 2nd. They placed me in the actors’ dorm (in the male wing I love you), much less comfortable than Wellesley (of which overall I’ve retained a simply charming and for me extremely flattering impression, – it couldn’t be better in all senses). Sun, shadows, and Zhukovsky’s paintings. Chekhov is part Lukash, plus genius. Now I am going to a rehearsal. In the afternoon I’ll see Zhdanov and his class. When I was getting out of the carriage, the handle of my suitcase broke off. I adore you, my dear one.

  V.

  MY MITYUSHEN’KA

  HOW DOES IT GO?

  MY JOY!

  D.

  ____________________

  [AN, 1 P.]

  [Undated. 1941–1942?]

  My darling, Miss Perkins is begging me to come for tea in the Faculty Room (Green Hall), so I’ll call in on Miss Kelly around 3.15 and around four will sail over with her to the Fac. Room. Come on over there.

  1942

  ____________________

  [AN 1 P.]

  [May 1942 or later]

  [Place unclear]

  Vérochka,

  Do for me in English first of all a typed list of all that Chichikov ate that day starting with breakfast (two) at Korobochka’s and ending with dinner (p. 38–115) and what Plyushkin offered Ch III–VI.

  Title this


  Chic[hi]kov’s diet during one day of 75 pages ()

  (contrasted with what he did not eat at Pl[y]ushkin’s).

  ____________________

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [3 August 1942]

  c/o Mrs Bertrand Thompson, Commander Hotel, Cambridge Mass

  West Wardsboro, Vermont

  3. VIII. 42

  My dear darling, only today did I get your little letter with the bears. I think there’s no need for you to catch that bumpy ride with Newell on Thursday (and it’s not clear whether he’s going at all); it would be better to come on Saturday with the Derricks and Natasha. Mityushen’ka’s behaving very well, and although I don’t get a single line written, it’s best to prolong this inactivity for two more days. The Karpoviches are driving to Cambridge on Wednesday, so you should call Mrs Levin to discuss the time and place of the Derricks’ departure. I’ll phone Lisbet tomorrow.

  The landlady writes that if we move our things before 15-VIII, we won’t have to pay for August. I enclose her letter and a letter from the Jewish Society. The Russian paper says today that ‘the inspection of passengers (among whom “I. Feigin” is named) who arrived in Baltimore is proceeding very slowly. 175 people have been transferred temporarily from the steamboat to Baltimore’s “Island of Tears” ’. Maybe you should phone the Brombergs (she wrote here about Anyuta’s arrival and that she had sent her a telegram to go to New York). I don’t think it worth her dragging herself for ten days to Vermont.