The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov Read online

  I hadn’t the heart to convey to him, so shiningly brave did he seem, my father’s sense that the war was already going very badly for Russia.

  Our grand luncheon at an end, my new friend suggested a movie might suit the remainder of the afternoon. Only a day before, I told myself, this happiness would have been unthinkable.

  Of that all-too-brief movie claiming the final stretch of an all-too-brief afternoon, I have no real memory. What I instead remember, even to this day, is Oleg’s occasional hearty chuckle at the antics onscreen, the palpable warmth of his body next to mine, its drowsy odor of biscuits and champagne, the steady sound of his breathing. Across his profile I could see the play of light and shadow as the projected beam of the movie was reflected off the screen and back onto him. The orb of his entranced eye was luminous and moist, and I could not help but remember how once, when Volodya had got a speck of cinder in his eye, Uncle Ruka told him that the Egyptians, who were well acquainted with sandstorms, would volunteer the tip of a tongue to remove the offending mote.

  Cautiously I slid my arm across the armrest till it touched Oleg’s. The slight pressure I exerted was returned. For several exciting minutes we sent furtive tactile signals back and forth. But what did they mean? Did I dare expand upon my presumption, however slight? Was Oleg conscious of intent, or was it all simply reflexive playfulness on his part, like good-natured jostling in the courtyard?

  Soon enough I had my answer. He laid his hand on my thigh. Heavy and opulent, for a long moment it merely rested there, as if its placement were entirely accidental. But then gradually it came to life, massaging my thigh with increasing vigor and expanding, exploratory zeal. In the space of a skipped heartbeat I had reciprocated, and with my inveterate, incurable left hand palpated through cumbersome woolen trousers his own firm loins.

  How extraordinary! Nearly thirty years have passed, and I can hardly convey the utter calm beneath the nervous excitement, the sense of having arrived somewhere unexpected yet foreordained. As the cinematic ghosts before us enacted their infinitely repeatable destinies, we two madcap lads stroked and petted and caressed—not so much with sexual urgency as with indolent contentment, more the way one might fondle a cat one cradles than a lover one intends to arouse. It was all, after its fashion, entirely innocent.

  “Well,” said my companion when the final silver hallucination had faded from the screen. “I must say, life seems a most peculiar thing, don’t you think?”

  We are always taking leave—of a person, an emotion, a landscape, a way of life. Music and dance, the arts I have loved the most: what are they if not an enhanced enactment of continuous leave-taking, the passing note or the daring leap vanishing before one’s eyes but living on in the heart? On the wind-bitten corner of Morskaya and Voznesensky streets, by the bleak little square with its statue of Nikolay I, Steerforth held out his ungloved hand. Copperfield returned the gesture by gratefully sheathing Steerforth’s in both of his. Whether Copperfield drew Steerforth into the briefest of embraces or whether Oleg was inclined that way without my urging I cannot say, but the bright tear glistening in his eye when we broke apart could hardly, I think, have been caused by the stinging wind alone.

  “For a pair of outlaws we’ve been brilliant,” he observed.

  Not trusting myself to speak, I could only nod mutely. Oleg bestowed on me, one last time, that unforgettable smile.

  I watched his figure disappear down the darkening street. He did not look back.

  Our front door’s stained-glass tulip glowed from the light within. As Ustin removed my overcoat, he warned me sotto voce that the household had been in an uproar ever since Volkov had returned midafternoon with Vladimir and no Sergey, and the shocking news that the well-behaved son had been sent down.

  Upon seeing me, my mother cried out, “Seryosha, are you ill? Are you starved and frostbitten? Come here, come here.”

  Father intervened. “Let us go into the study.”

  “But he must be famished,” my mother implored.

  “No supper for this one,” Father said. “He knows full well what he’s been up to.”

  But did I? As I followed him up the stairs, it occurred to me how deliriously unconscious I had been of any consequences that might come my way. For half a day I had floated free of the world. Now nothing remained but to give an account of myself, which I did freely, omitting little save my enchanting indiscretions as I sat next to Oleg Danchenko in the cinema.

  “What a peculiar stunt to have pulled,” Father said when I had finished. He toyed with an ivory paper knife he had picked up from his desk. “May I ask if any of this is related to your difficulties at your previous school? I had hoped a change of venue and regimen might act as a curative to those childish foibles. We can’t have you endlessly shuffled about from school to school. You must learn to live in the world as it is, however difficult that may be for you.”

  “I understand,” I said, though I must say I did not.

  I would very much like to report that, upon returning to school two weeks later, my reunion with Oleg went swimmingly, that I loved and was loved, but this was not to be. Several days passed before I saw Oleg again. Perhaps his suspension had lasted longer than mine; perhaps his Ukrainian outspokenness had prevented him from penning an apology as obsequiously effective as mine had been. I never knew. When I did see him at last, he was standing with his friends in the courtyard and smoking a cigarette in an uncanny replay of that fateful moment two weeks before. He did not notice me, engaged as he was in entertaining his pals with some amusing anecdote. As I approached, my heart trembling with joy, I caught his words. What a fright they gave me! Indeed, for a long terrible instant I refused to believe what I heard.

  Oleg was stuttering. His exaggerated attempt to fight his way past a consonant’s obstacle met with great hilarity all around. Finally, with an explosion of relief, he managed to utter the troublesome word: “T-t-tyranny!”

  Then, in a perfectly normal voice, his own, he announced, “And now, this is Nabokov tipsy on champagne and trying to eat a piroshki.”

  Ilya, whom I always thought a decent sort, had by then noticed my approach and was attempting, by frantic gesticulations, to alert Oleg, who would not be interrupted. Finally, eyes bulging in desperation, Ilya called out, “Sergey ahoy.”

  Oleg turned to face me.

  Affection, sadness, apology, shame, disdain: how I tried to understand what I saw in those treacherous, gold-flecked eyes.

  5

  “I AM FIERCELY IN LOVE WITH OLEG’S SOUL,” Father read aloud in a scornful voice. “How I love its harmonious proportions, the joy it has in living. My blood throbs, I melt like a schoolgirl, and he knows this and I have become repulsive to him and he does not conceal his disgust. Oh, this is just as fruitless as falling in love with the moon!”

  Father put down the diary. “Remarkably silly stuff, wouldn’t you agree?” he said.

  It was my brother who had discovered my furtive pages—quite by accident. Having read my inflamed words, he showed the diary to our tutor, who immediately conveyed it to Father.

  “I don’t suppose it’s particularly well written,” I admitted.

  “Style is hardly the point here, Seryosha. There are sentiments so deplorable that no beautiful words can redeem them. So you fancy yourself in love with this fellow Oleg?”

  “I’m writing a novel in the style of Bely. These are notes I was assembling.”

  Father slammed his fist against the pages lying open on his desk. “Don’t play me for a fool, Seryosha.”

  “I can be a most convincing liar,” I said.

  Father pierced me with a disdainful look.

  “All right. I intended these words for no one but myself. But even had I never written them, I would have felt the emotions all the same.”

  Father’s look of disdain softened. “I’ve long known,” he said, and now his tone was melancholy, “of an inclination, in both your mother’s bloodline and my own, toward this defect. I’d ho
ped my offspring might escape, but that is apparently not to be.”

  “I fail to understand the defect to which you refer,” I told him stubbornly. That my most cherished emotions might constitute a defect had never occurred to me.

  Father cleared his throat, hesitated, and then said, in a pained tone, “I am speaking of your uncle Ruka.”

  “But there’s nothing wrong with Uncle Ruka,” I protested.

  “Seryosha. Your Uncle Ruka may be charming—indeed, in his way, very charismatic—but I am afraid he is au fond a lonely and pitiable soul. His ridiculous conversion to Roman Catholicism represents, I fear, but his latest attempt to expiate the depraved pleasures to which his flesh must occasionally yield. I would not wish anyone to go through life enduring such torment as your uncle has. Or my brother Konstantin, for that matter. To see souls condemned to such a life is almost enough to make one doubt the existence of a benign deity. Were I to allow this tendency to go unchecked in my own son, I would be as criminally negligent in the execution of my love for him as I would were I to ignore in him the life-threatening symptoms of typhus or tuberculosis.

  “How does Pushkin so bitterly put it? ‘To joke with love is Satan’s way.’ By no means should you accept this evil jest visited upon you. The human will is capable of mounting a defense against any number of humiliations. To that end I’ve retained the services of my trusted friend Dr. Bekhetev, who, having availed himself of the latest scientific knowledge, will attempt—nay, let us say effect—a cure. I would ask you, as a man of honor, as my dearly beloved son, to accept his help. If not for my sake, then for your dear mother’s. In the meantime, I’d prefer to keep these pages in my possession. I hope you’ll have no occasion in the future to repeat this error. Do you have any questions?”

  “I’ve none,” I told him.

  He flipped through my pages one last time before depositing the violated diary in the desk drawer where he also, according to prying Volodya, kept a loaded Browning revolver. Did he realize that in confiscating those paltry confessions he was acting like a man who, upon waking to find his bed on fire, tosses the culprit cigarette out the nearest window? In retrospect, I think we both knew perfectly well the futility of his gesture.

  Squeamish readers may wish to skip the following brief passage; I would not include it at all were it not for the voice of Jean Cocteau, the great and wise friend of my Parisian years, whispering in my ear, “You must tell them everything, mon cher! You must leave nothing out!”

  Dr. Bekhetev was late. Father stood at the study window watching for him in the street below as I anxiously paged through a folio of sumptuous Botticelli reproductions Uncle Ruka had brought back from Florence. After half an hour, Ustin ushered the doctor in.

  A florid man with a no-longer-fashionable imperial sprouting from his chin, he began by apologizing. An urgent case had detained him; a young woman suffering the loss of her child had threatened to do herself harm. “Sad, sad,” he muttered.

  “Begin, please,” Father told him without turning from his vigil at the window, as if ordinarily dull Morskaya Street were this afternoon filled with fascinating pageantry it would be a shame to miss.

  We sat in leather armchairs facing each other. Dr. Bekhetev asked me a few questions: Had I always hated my mother? When had the onset of my contrary sexual feelings occurred? When the onset of onanism? With what frequency did I practice that vice? Then he surprised me—as I suppose was his purpose—by commanding me to stand and lower my trousers. Flushing scarlet, I looked toward my father—or rather, toward his inexpressive back. What choice had I but to comply? With cold fingers the doctor prodded and assessed my parts. I shrank from his touch. He ordered me to kneel on the old Turkish carpet. “Raise your buttocks,” he commanded. “Keep your knees apart. There, like so. Relax. Do not clench.”

  A probing finger elicited an involuntary moan, as well as shame, outrage—what a nightmare my young life had suddenly become!

  “You haven’t yet habituated yourself to the vicious practice, I see,” mused Dr. Bekhetev. “That bodes well. You may dress now.”

  When I dared look his way, I saw he was carefully wiping his finger on a white cloth.

  The doctor spoke not to me but to my father’s back. “His would appear to be a classic case: morbid anxieties concerning the masculine principle combined with a neurotic propensity toward hysterical inversion. This is not unrelated to the spastic coordination neurosis he exhibits in speech. That said, there are a wealth of treatments. I myself have employed several. This particular case, at least as it stands now, warrants neither faradization nor trepanning nor cauterization. I shall prescribe bromide for onanism. A strict diet: no oysters, no berries of any kind, no chocolate. But for the main cure, I think we shall best proceed with hypnosis. Don’t fear, Vladimir Dmitrievich. Your son is in very good hands.”

  Of all my respectable family, it was my grandmother Nabokova who seemed unfazed by the news of my “attitude.” Perhaps her own amours had accustomed her to human foible. Born Maria Ferdinandovna, Baroness von Korff, she had been married off at fifteen to my grandfather, Dmitri Nikolaevich Nabokov, in order to provide cover for the affair he was having with her mother. Only a handful of her ten offspring could reliably be attributed to that “ape with cold feet,” as she called him, who attempted to bed both mother and daughter on alternating nights. Indeed, my father’s paternity was in some doubt, and rumor persistently linked my grandmother to no less a figure than Alexander II—“dear Sasha”—whose photograph she kept by her bed and a lock of whose hair reputedly nestled in the gold locket she never removed from around her neck. People said she had never fully recovered from the shock of his assassination.

  I had always feared my grandmother’s imperious presence, in part because I sensed that she and my mother were on less than easy terms with each other. Summers, when she was ensconced at Batovo and my family across the Oredezh at Vyra, were usually peaceful enough, but her winter visits to our house in St. Petersburg were a source of prolonged domestic tension.

  She would keep to her bedchamber for most of the day, lying on her chaise longue, eating sweets and drinking coffee, all the while gossiping fiercely with her maid Khristina, a muzhik who had been given to her as a playmate for her tenth birthday, and who, even after Alexander II freed the serfs, had remained faithfully in attendance.

  Dressed in black, Khristina sat erect in a straight-backed chair and worked petit point. My grandmother sized me up with new appreciation. “So he’s our little tyotka. Well, well. I’ve raised a couple myself, you know. They’re no worse than any of the others—rather nicer, in fact—though when I noticed that one of my older sons had begun to take an unseemly interest in one of his younger brothers, well, I’m afraid I had to draw the line.” She laughed mirthlessly. “I told him what I shall tell you, my Seryosha—not that you take any unseemly interest in that sleek cad of a brother you’ve been saddled with, who’s so like his father but without any of the civic virtues. I’ve never seen a child so ill-mannered, so self-absorbed. And those filthy insects he insists on keeping in the house…”

  I had begun to wonder what advice she intended for me when she paused and beckoned for me to lean close. “Remember,” she said in a stage whisper, as if her words were not meant for Khristina’s chaste ears. “When the sweet itch strikes, as it will—there are always servants.”

  Khristina neither deigned to glance up from her work nor indicated that she had heard. I longed to tell my grandmother that times had changed: such seignorial license was unthinkable these days, at least in our household.

  “You’re a Nabokov,” she went on. “Nabokovs have always taken what they want. That’s why I worry about your father, dear man that he is. When he married for money, did I have qualms? Not at all. I wished for him fabulous wealth to go with fabulous blood. But these days he seldom seems to have his best interests at heart. I fear he’s fallen in with a very low crowd of do-gooders, and it will all end badly. Mark my word! But you, young
man: I must say I envy you. Never having to worry where your pipiska goes. Never having to regret inadvertently filling some girl! Yes, my dear, I envy you.”

  How I desired Oleg! Never mind that awkward moment I had chanced upon in the courtyard. It could easily be explained away—exuberance, a naturally mocking manner, a desire to keep the true nature of his relations with me private. We had not spoken since I returned to school, but even that could be explained away as shyness, caution, a reluctance to repeat what had been so marvelous an experience. How I loved the straight slope of nose, his pale lips, his auburn hair. How I longed to kiss that thick neck rising from the collar of his black school uniform. How I wished to massage so much more than that muscular thigh.

  I made plans. I would accost my secret friend one afternoon after school, a scheme more difficult to devise than it might seem, as Volkov was there every afternoon to ferry me home. He would have to be bribed. And I would have to wait for a day when Volodya was ill and unable to attend school.

  My brother’s health that winter was particularly robust. But finally there came a mild day in April when he woke with a fever, and I heard our mother say the thrilling words, “I’m afraid you won’t be going to school today. It’s back to bed for you, Volodyushka.”

  From our well-stocked cellars I helped myself to a dusty bottle of Tokay; I had already purchased a flask of vodka and a rasher of salted cucumbers with which to quiet Volkov. I surreptitiously stashed my hoard under the seat of the Benz for retrieval later that afternoon.