The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov Read online

  I had expected a wolf’s gleam in his eye, a kindling of warmth. His abrupt manner brought out the worst in my stutter. I stood frozen, unable to utter a word as that look of consternation he had initially exhibited toward my affliction returned, and I saw whatever confused reveries I had entertained throughout the last two hours evaporate, much as the unreal world of the stage had shortly before. With a beautifully correct about-face he left me there, and I distinctly remember the smart click of his heels as he walked away.

  “Ugh!” Davide consoled me as we left the theater. “I saw you with him at the ball. What an ape. You can do much better for yourself, I should think. You must meet my officers, I’ve decided, and soon. You won’t recognize yourself any longer, once they’re through with you.”

  Glimpsing Volkov standing in the crowded square beside our Benz, I offered my dear friend a lift.

  “No, no,” he said. The trams were still running, and in any event he surmised a brisk walk would do him some good.

  “Well then,” I told him, “till we meet again.” We gazed on each other for a long moment. He surprised me by kissing my cheek. With a pang of distressed affection I watched him cross the emptying square.

  “The sooner we get you home, the better,” Volkov admonished. “I’ve been looking around, and I don’t like the things I see.”

  The bread lines I had noticed earlier had strangely disappeared, and the trams seemed to have stopped running. Davide would have a longer walk than he had planned.

  Normally a cautious driver, Volkov seemed agitated, accelerating and slowing in fits and starts. In the distance I heard what sounded like a gunshot, but the sound did not repeat and so I was not certain what I had heard.

  Volkov broke the silence. “Will you look at that?” he said. The unsteadiness in his voice struck me. I saw him shake his head and point, but I could see nothing. We drove through one intersection, then another before I realized what he had remarked. On rooftops overlooking each crossing, Cossacks had begun setting up machine guns.

  15

  BERLIN

  NOVEMBER 30, 1943

  ALL AFTERNOON, LEADEN SKIES HAVE OFFERED the prospect of an evening’s respite from the RAF, and they do not fail to deliver. Snow begins to fall around eight and continues nearly till dawn. No one heeds the curfew; the streets of Berlin are thronged, young and old alike taking advantage of this lull. The atmosphere, despite everything, is festive. Cafés and dance halls stay open long past midnight. The coal fires burning out of control in backyard after backyard seem cheerful rather than ominous, though the loss of the city’s recently delivered winter fuel supply will be grievously felt later on. But for now it scarcely matters. We are alive, we are alive. People gather around those pyres, warming themselves as they have not been warmed in their homes for weeks, singing hymns that normally would be verboten, and praying to a God who has been distinctly absent of late.

  I walk the night, momentarily free from fear, ravished by this ruined city’s ghastly beauty as snow settles everywhere, softening the blackened debris, obscuring the mortal wounds, and suddenly I am remembering, helplessly, a late spring afternoon high in the mountains, somewhere along the flanks of the Grossvenediger, where Hermann Thieme and I are surprised in our sunny ramble by a glittering snow squall blown in from nowhere, and Hermann in a transport of sheer joy lifts his arms into the air to welcome this whim of Nature, and as he does so his shirt rides up, exposing to view an expanse of smooth stomach, and impulsively, gratefully, in pure tribute I kneel before him and kiss him there on his taut belly, grazing my lips along smooth skin, savoring that narrow furry trail that leads southward from his elegant little navel, and there has never, I think, been a more perfect moment in the history of the world.

  Love of my soul. Heart of my heart. It is two years since the police escorted us from our fool’s paradise in Castle Weissenstein. Two years since Hermann was sentenced to the 999th Afrika Brigade. Penal battalions are valued as “tramplers” in minefields. They are useful in spearheading suicide attacks. They make excellent decoys, and are superb at drawing enemy fire. Wehrmacht doctors are not permitted to treat the wounded. It is forbidden to bury the corpses. Those few who survive their sentence earn the right to serve as regular infantry on the Eastern Front.

  I will not see Hermann again. Never, never, never, never, never.

  16

  ST. PETERSBURG

  FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS NO ONE DARED venture forth. Father spent hours in his study, conferring by telephone with Miliukov and other members of the Duma. Every now and again he would descend the stairs to announce another bit of rumor or news: the police had fired on workers; certain army units had refused to fire on those same workers, and had begun firing instead on the police; the entire Volhynian regiment had massacred its officers and gone over to the workers; scores of police stations were in flames; the Peter and Paul Fortress was under siege; the prisons had been emptied; strikers occupied the Winter Palace. General Khabolov had informed the Tsar that he could no longer maintain order in the city.

  Then the final blow: the Cossacks of the Escort and the Regiment of His Majesty, the elite of the Imperial Guard, abandoned the Tsar and joined the rebellion.

  I have never been the least bit brave. I remember, as a child, how I feared carriage rides on rough roads, a swing pushed too high, Golliwog in the picture books, candles flickering in an unfamiliar bedroom. But I had never known terrors like those which surrounded us that February afternoon as sounds of gunfire from the street penetrated every part of the house.

  For several hours, just outside our front door, a body lay on the pavement. I could not bear the sight, and yet somehow I could not bear the thought of that body unattended. I kept creeping up to the window and peering down, as if my intermittent vigil could offer either of us any consolation. The poor soul had lost one of his shoes in the melee, and the sight of his stockinged foot was somehow the most shocking aspect of that scene. Though I now daily walk past scores of corpses in hideous states of desecration, that image remains imprinted on my memory: I had never seen anyone dead of violence before.

  On the third day of the crisis we could hear prolonged machine gun fire from farther up the street, toward Maria Square. From the oriel in my mother’s boudoir we could see smoke and flames in the vicinity of the Astoria Hotel.

  Soon refugees from the fighting began to arrive at our door. The first was Yuri Rausch’s mother and her second husband, Admiral Kolomeytsev. While Aunt Nina wept in my mother’s arms, the imperturbable old admiral told a horrifying story: a mob had gathered in front of the Astoria, demanding that any officers within who remained loyal to the Tsar should be turned over. Their demands were met with machine gun fire. With dozens of their comrades wounded or dead, the enraged crowd stormed the hotel, seizing several officers even as they tried in vain to disguise themselves by tearing off their epaulettes. They were summarily dragged down to the square and executed, courtesy of the same machine guns that had earlier inflamed the crowd’s bloodthirst.

  Bundled in old cloaks, the admiral and his wife had made their escape by a servants’ entrance in back.

  Not long after, an English officer known to my father arrived to hand into our care a frightened Belgian family with small children, whom my mother suggested my brother and I divert as best we could. Having scarcely stirred all day from the sofa where he lay composing a poem, Volodya felt roused enough by the children, two ringleted girls and an adorable dark-eyed boy, to demonstrate some magic tricks I had not seen him perform in years. He quickly lost interest, though, and clambered back inside the impregnable shell of his poem; I remember him lying there immersed in reverie, oblivious to the occasional rattle of gunfire.

  As I have never mastered even the most rudimentary magic trick, and the children remained in dire need of attention, I fell back on a piano game, a sort of “name that tune,” which the children found highly unsatisfactory. Before long I had abandoned our refugees to their own devices in order to p
ace fretfully from room to room. In the downstairs vestibule, a blue vase held a bouquet of ivory-hued roses; throughout the day I kept revisiting those lovely flowers, and as their pale hothouse petals dropped off one by one, I would press each to my lips.

  As I passed by his sofa for the hundredth time, Volodya emerged from his Olympian preoccupation to remark, “You’re acting quite the fool, you know. We either live or die. It’s out of our hands. What matters is how we spend the time we’re given.”

  After several anxious days the turmoil in the streets subsided. Father decided the time had come to make his way to the Tauride Palace, where Miliukov and other members of the Duma were gathered.

  “I shall be perfectly fine,” he assured my mother. “I’m no general, no grand duke. No one on the street will recognize me.” He thought it best, however, to set out on foot, and alone, in order not to call attention to himself. The rare automobile that raced down Morskaya was invariably festooned with red flags. “Idiots,” Father said. “They’re fooling no one. Sooner or later they’ll be pulled from their—”

  Seeing my mother’s look of alarm, he desisted. He kissed her gravely on the forehead, then made over her the sign of the cross—a gesture which, since he so seldom performed it, filled me with dread.

  With a shameful wail I rushed to him and embraced him, butting my head into his chest as I used to do when I was a child. He took a step backward, clumsily patting me on the back, saying in his crispest English, “Now, now, old boy. Buck up.”

  With Volodya he shook hands in the best English manner.

  As I had thoroughly convinced myself I would never see Father again, I spent most of the day at the piano, playing snatches of operas he and I had attended together. Once, when we had gone to the Narodny Dom to hear Boris Godunov, I had felt him in the seat next to me shudder as the dying Tsar—his wretchedness magnificently embodied by Chaliapin—dismissed the boyars, called for a monk’s robe to be brought for him, and with an unearthly sob expired. The memory of that shudder—the palpable feeling of it—kept returning as I played through bits of Boris.

  Late in the evening Father returned, weary but with an unmistakable lightness about him. We crowded around. He spoke solemnly. “Something great and sacred has occurred,” he told us. “The Romanov dynasty is no more.”

  The Tsar had abdicated both for himself and his son in favor of his brother, whom the Duma soon persuaded to abdicate as well. Father himself had penned Grand Duke Mikhail’s abdication.

  “The Tsar seems quite relieved,” Father reported. “We’ll see what the Tsarina has to say when she discovers what’s happened. No doubt she’ll be livid. For his part, he wishes only to retire to his estate at Livadia and grow flowers.”

  After three weeks’ suspension school resumed, albeit with thinned ranks. I eagerly watched for Davide, but after several days it was clear he would not be among those returning. Thinking it likely his family had been forced to flee the city, as war profiteers had become targets of the mob’s fury, I made my way one afternoon to the headmaster’s office to inquire of Gonishev what news he might have of my friend.

  I had not stood in that book-lined room since the spatterdashes episode three years before. The portrait of the Tsar above the desk had been removed, replaced with a scrap of red bunting. Upon hearing my inquiry, Gonishev gestured for me to be seated. He removed his spectacles, rubbed his eyes, replaced his spectacles on his nose, and asked, Had Gornotsvetov and I been especially good friends?

  I affirmed that we were.

  Gonishev considered this statement. Where the Tsar’s portrait had hung, the wallpaper remained unfaded, and I could easily make out the ghostly outline of the frame. I wondered if the red bunting was meant to express genuine enthusiasm for the recent changes, or whether our headmaster simply thought it advisable. “I see,” Gonishev said after a long pause. He stood and went to the window. “I’m so very sorry to have to report this, Nabokov, but your classmate perished in the disturbances. I understand he was returning home from the theater. How inadvisable to have ventured out on that night, of all nights—but who amongst us could have known?”

  He turned to face me, and I was astonished to see his cheeks were streaked with tears. Only then did the nonsense he had just uttered seem possible.

  “Perished—but how?” I managed to stutter.

  “Pierced through the eye by a stray bullet. Absurd, really. He was very nearly home. That’s all I know. I believe his parents are no longer in Petrograd. You’ll understand, I trust, the present need for discretion. I intend to post poor Gornotsvetov’s obituary on the announcement board in due time, but that time has not yet come.

  “When you’re older,” Gonishev went on, “you’ll see that a brave future doesn’t come without grievous expenditure. Your father understands this. I hope he understands as well the danger posed to the Provisional Government by the Soviet. Kerensky, Miliukov, your father: they serve at the Bolsheviks’ pleasure. I fear the enemies of democracy bide their time. But enough. We must remember what little any of us matters, we who are in the hands of Fate. Your friend Gornotsvetov is no doubt in Paradise with the saints and martyrs. In any event, think of him that way, and pray for his soul!”

  I thanked Gonishev as best I could, and wept uncontrollably in the school lavatory for some time after, scarcely bothering to conceal my state from the occasional boy who stuck his head in and promptly fled, nonplussed by my animal wails.

  A clammy fog of grief enveloped the next several weeks. I could not very well complain to anyone I knew, since no one save Genia was even aware of my friendship with Davide—and for some reason I stayed away from my fellow Abyssinian.

  Among the many boys who no longer attended the Gymnasium was Oleg, who I supposed had returned to his father’s estate in the Ukraine. I was therefore startled one gloomy March afternoon to encounter him in the street.

  “I must say I’m very happy to see you, Nabokov. I’ve been thinking much about you.”

  A few flakes sifted down in the dim light, the beginning of what would be the last heavy snowfall of that bitter winter.

  “I imagined you’d left for home,” I said.

  “Soon. The end of the week. What a terrible mess Russia’s got herself into! Still—any day now, the British will rescue the Tsar and his family. They’ll restore the monarchy in short order—and then Bolshevik heads will roll. You’ll see.”

  He slid his arm though mine. The blizzard was intensifying rapidly, obscuring even the buildings on the other side of the avenue.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “I’ve decided to give you what you want. I’ve been terribly rude to you, and all you’ve ever been is kind to me. Mad times call for mad actions, don’t you agree?”

  I had no illusions. I knew he was a bully. I knew he cared not a whit for me. Nonetheless—perhaps the boldest thing I have ever done—I leaned in and kissed his cheek. Wrapping an arm around me, he drew me close.

  “Then let’s find suitable shelter,” he murmured. “This shouldn’t take long, and I do want to make you happy, Nabokov.”

  An archway led into an empty carriage court. He faced me against the wall, and with alacrity undid my trousers and then his own. “This is what you want, isn’t it?” he whispered roughly. “Isn’t this what you’ve been dying for? See? I’m not such a bad fellow after all, now am I?”

  It was over quickly enough. For a brief moment Davide’s death receded to a small spot of black in my soul, though it roared back as soon as we had finished.

  “Pray for me from time to time,” Oleg told me. “I’m certain we’ll meet again in a better world.”

  I started to speak, but he warned, “You’re better, Nabokov, when you’re silent.”

  And with that he left me. I stood there trembling and sore, still aroused, still astonished, full of that precious improvident life Davide would never again know.

  With some trepidation I finally called on Yurev’s apartments on the Fontanka Embankment. Though it was the midd
le of April, the afternoon was bitterly cold; the Neva, which had earlier begun to thaw, was once again encumbered by ice floes. Red banners flew from most every building. I had still not gotten used to strangers hailing one another on the street as “comrade!”

  Genia met me at the door. He wore a white peasant smock embroidered with colorful birds over black trousers and emerald slippers. A dreamy look lit his gray eyes; a drowsy smile played across his lips. His hair had been teased and tinted, and that more than anything seemed proof that he was no longer the Genia I had known.

  He told me Yurev was away at the moment, conferring with the newly formed Revolutionary Council of Actors, but would be home soon. My visit would have to be brief.

  “Are you free to leave?” was the first question I asked.

  “Perfectly free, but why should I want to? My parents have disowned me. I’ve no desire to return to that wretched school of ours. The world has quite simply broken apart. Really, I’m quite happy here in this refuge, Seryosha.”

  I asked him had he heard the terrible news about Davide?

  He had not. Sitting on a divan with one leg coquettishly drawn up under him, he seemed oddly unmoved.

  “Things were bound to end badly for our friend,” he said. “He kept many of his secrets from you, no doubt many from me as well. He feared you’d despise him were you to know everything. So I’m afraid it’s better this way.”

  He spoke with brittle certainty, and I was surprised to see how quickly he had grown into his new role. When I first knew him he was still a child, I thought. Now he had become a professional catamite—reserved, indifferent, rather cruel.

  He had his own piece of startling news.

  “You won’t have heard. It’s been kept quiet. But Majesté as well is no more. She took arsenic. No one knows why. They found her in her chambers after no one had seen her for several days. They found a note as well, which said only: I thank God for this life which I never asked for.”