The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov Read online

“That’s beautiful, Volodyushka,” Yuri told him. “But you know poetry’s beyond a simple soldier like me. These days I know only duty, fearlessness, honor.”

  How unaccountable that Yuri and my brother could be friends! And yet they shared an affinity I could only envy. When I thought of Davide and Genia, they all at once seemed grotesquely insubstantial compared to this young man of the wider world.

  I cheered myself up by mentally enumerating the qualities Yuri and I shared. We were both squeamish about insects. We both loved music, though Yuri’s love was limited to tzigane melodies and martial flourishes. We were both indifferent chess players. All that distinguished us from Volodya. If those two were as different as night and day, weren’t we as similar as dusk and dawn? Why should not Yuri and Sergey be friends, rather than Yuri and Volodya?

  His ongoing talk quelled my idle thoughts. “Duty, fearlessness, honor, those three abide, but of those honor is the greatest. Without honor one does not live, one merely exists.”

  “Some might say the same about love,” Volodya observed.

  “No.” Yuri was adamant. “Honor above all else. Honor above all in loyalty to the Tsar, to Holy Mother Russia, to the Russian Orthodox Church and its seven blessed mysteria.”

  “Please.” Volodya popped a cherry into his mouth. “You’re speaking platitudes. I, on the other hand, only wish to live in the details. When I write a poem, I don’t write about Love with a capital L; no, I attempt to describe the very particular love I feel for a very particular girl, or for a landscape, or a memory—whatever it is I’m writing about. I strive to do so with the same precision with which a lepidopterist might describe a hitherto unknown butterfly he has nabbed on the wing in some obscure Kazakh or New England meadow. Not just any butterfly, mind you; one particular butterfly.”

  “But what about classification?” asked Yuri. “Aren’t there species, not just individuals? Besides, there’s so much in our lives that’s simply indescribable. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Nothing’s indescribable. To hold that the world’s indescribable—well, there lies futility, despair, defeat, all those things I refuse to have anything to do with. The universe is most certainly describable—its designer would have it no other way. And I think it’s our duty to engage that intricate task of description—but then we’re intricate creatures ourselves, don’t you think? Or at least some of us are. I don’t mean the common idiot in the street, the man who thinks that giving bread to everyone and flying red banners and turning the factories over to the workers and that sort of rot will solve anything. I mean those of us blessed with the ability to puzzle out the puzzle, so to speak: those of us grateful for that gift, and honor-bound—here’s your true honor, Yuri—to make use of it.”

  “That’s very well put,” Yuri conceded. “I agree with all you’ve said. And yet, we who defend with our swords and bayonets your ability to puzzle out the puzzle in peace, aren’t we to be valued as well? The Tsar may be of no interest to you whatsoever, but it’s his Empire that allows you the freedom to nab your butterflies and compose your poems and solve your infernal chess problems, and, I daresay, fall in love with that particular girl. I fear all that will go by the wayside should Bolshevik instability ever prevail.”

  “The poet travels lightly,” returned Volodya. “He’ll always manage to go on doing what he does.”

  How grown up we sounded, as we ate cherries, sipped tea from the samovar whose magical warmth the servants kept renewing. What did they think of our talk? Did they think anything, or only long for bed? Where were my muzhiks from the scythed field of last summer? Had they been sent off to war? Were they giving each other miserable comfort in a gore-splattered trench somewhere? Were they lying dead and unburied in some muddy field? Or were they among the throngs of deserters who filled Petrograd, and on whom the Bolsheviks were said to prey? It grieved me not to know such simple, human things about the world I lived in. The puzzle had far too many pieces; whenever I attempted to focus my thoughts on the whole, it dispersed before my eyes.

  Yuri turned to me. “And what do you believe, O silent one?”

  In the light of the spirit lamp his gray eyes met my own and held there—as if, after long hiatus, he had mysteriously elected to kiss me once more on the lips.

  “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I only know what I value. Friendship and beauty. I value those far more than honor itself. The love of a friend for a f—” I stalled humiliatingly on that final “friend.”

  Yuri laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “That was rude of me. One mustn’t make fun of someone’s impediment.”

  “The sound of an argument running aground,” murmured Volodya. “Seryosha’s usually silent for a reason.”

  My stutter had once again made comical the most serious of moments. Nonetheless I forged on, much to my brother’s eye-rolling impatience.

  “There’s fearlessness of all sorts in the world,” I said. “Soldiers have it, and explorers, and poets, no doubt, but especially lovers. There. That’s what I believe. I’d die for my friend.”

  “Who’s this friend?” Yuri asked—whether tenderly or mockingly I could not tell. “And is he a friend or a lover? You seem to confuse the two terms, which in my book are quite distinct.”

  “I’ve not yet met him,” I said, ignoring for the moment his quibble, which really seemed beside the point, but all the while, to my surprise, sustaining his gaze. How lustrous his eyes were, how grave and thoughtful his expression.

  Volodya stirred restlessly. “I think we’ve had enough of this philosophizing. I’m exhausted. In fact, I think it’s time for bed. Yurasha, are you coming? Or do you wish to indulge further my brother’s maunderings?”

  Yuri continued to look at me for a very long moment; then, disappointingly, he said, “Sure, Volodya. I’m coming. Goodnight, Sergey Vladimirovich.”

  Two days later Yuri left for Warsaw. That same afternoon, Mother received via telegram the news that her brother Vassily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov, my beloved and unattainable Uncle Ruka, had died of heart failure at the Clinique Ste.-Maude near Paris.

  “You were fond of him, I know,” she said, caressing my hair. “Rest assured, he’s finally at peace.”

  I found Volodya out by the swings, pushing our sister Elena in aggressive arcs. Soaring, she squealed with delight. His brow was furrowed. He ignored my arrival.

  “Do you know what this means?” I asked him.

  “I suppose it means I’m free,” he said, giving the swing a rough shove.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Free from what?”

  But he only bit his lip, and shook his head, and looked away, and would not answer even when I repeated my innocuous question.

  11

  BERLIN,

  NOVEMBER 27, 1943

  AS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF FRAU SCHLEGEL’S turnip soups and margarined radishes, bless her black-marketeer’s heart, I find myself looking forward to my lunch with Felix Silber. Though I am filled with irresolvable questions about his motives, and am half expecting that he has laid some sort of trap (but why go to all that trouble?), I am at the same time hungry for this bit of honest human contact. Perhaps he is as well. Perhaps it is all as simple as that.

  But then, just as I have half convinced myself that is the case, I remember with a shudder the prankster-executioner from V. Sirin’s Invitation to a Beheading, that novel which has so unnervingly predicted my present predicament. I must confess that I wonder, from time to time, whether I have somehow unwittingly fallen into one of Sirin’s narratives, just as the poor chess master falls into an abyss of chess squares at the end of Luzhin’s Defense. Was I being warned all those times I sensed an uncanny echo of my own shadow life in his novels? Have I turned out to be what V. Sirin, aka V. Nabokov, despises most—the Careless Reader?

  In any event, I dress in dark if threadbare flannels and a crimson bowtie. My shoes have been repaired till there is nothing left to repair, but I can do little about that unfortunate situation. I reinforce th
e practically nonexistent soles with several pages torn at random from one of the encyclopedia volumes in my room (Dementia, Demon, Demosthenes).

  Few trams run any longer, and those that do are windowless and terribly cold. I prefer walking, anyway. Thanks to the battalions of Russian and Italian POWs, the streets are cleared remarkably quickly, and there is a kind of melancholy grandeur to the ruins of this once beautiful city.

  The Propaganda Ministry has been busy in my absence. From fire-scorched walls have sprouted a new crop of posters to inspire us, red-and-black placards urging, TO VICTORY WITH OUR LEADER! But other messages are more practical, such as the one that reminds us, RESCUE CREWS HAVE LISTENING DEVICES! Or another, white skull and crossbones on a black field: ATTENTION PLUNDERERS: THE PUNISHMENT IS DEATH!

  One sees, as well, more personal pleas chalked in German, in Russian, in Polish, in French: “Reinhart family: I am staying at Elsie’s.” “Vasla: contact Frieda in Potsdam.” “Where are you, my angel? I’ve looked everywhere. I’m sick with worry. Franz.” And on the sole remaining wall of a devastated house: “Everyone here survived.”

  There is an odor of gas and decay everywhere.

  When I get to Budapesterstrasse my heart sinks: as far as I can see along the block there are nothing but gutted buildings, or in some instances merely piles of rubble. But I press on, and to my surprise I find the Hotel Eden standing virtually intact and open for business, though there are few customers in the restaurant and all the windows are shattered. Heavy drapes do not entirely keep out the cold. Bundled, Felix is waiting for me at a table set for two in the far corner.

  “You’ve chosen a rather public place for a private meeting,” I note.

  “I’ve always found it best to hide in plain sight.”

  “Look,” I tell him, “before we venture any further I wish to know: how did you discover my address?”

  “Oh,” he says, “It’s quite simple. I followed you home that day. Quite frankly, I was concerned about your mental state. I was afraid you might do away with yourself. I trailed you till I saw you enter your building. I thought of knocking, but then I lost my nerve.”

  “And then you regained your nerve two days later.”

  “Yes,” he says—quite carefully, as if it matters that we both understand this—“Two days later I regained my nerve.”

  There is something a bit maddening about him, I decide, and am about to excuse myself when our waiter arrives, a crisp linen towel folded over his forearm. He bows quite formally. In a city where few young men are left, he is a very beautiful young man, sixteen or seventeen. A daring lock of hair hanging down over one eye identifies him as a “swing boy,” that much-reviled and mostly eradicated reproach to the stern norms of the Reich. I always used to imagine that in a bombed-out city there must be fantastical license. What my fantasy never took into account was that only the aged and the infirm, the women and children would be left, that young healthy attractive men would all be either dead or away at the front.

  “Since I happen to know what’s available and what’s not, I’ll take the liberty of ordering for both of us,” Felix says, not bothering to glance at the miracle of our waiter. “Lobster,” he says briskly. “Champagne. I trust that will suit you? It’s one of this war’s smaller ironies, don’t you think, that beer and sausage are in such scant supply while occupied France continues to provide us with her unrationed luxuries.”

  Our food arrives quickly, on elegant plates, and I could easily be back in Michaud’s in Paris, or Coutant’s in St. Petersburg, were it not for the ghastly odor that seeps even into the restaurant at the Hotel Eden. We both eat with conspicuous appetite. My years of fastidious vegetarianism are yet another casualty of war. That this meal will be expensive I have no doubt; I am by no means well-off, but my time will run out long before my reichsmarks do.

  “My house was destroyed two nights ago,” Felix remarks, as if mentioning a recent birthday.

  “My God,” I tell him. “Is everyone…”

  He waves his hand dismissively. “I appreciate your concern. My wife and daughter are perfectly safe, staying with her parents in Dresden, which I am told presents no military or industrial targets whatsoever for the RAF. So on that score I rest easy. As for my house…” He shrugs. “I had a simple life. I cherished a modest collection of Meissenware which I had put together over the years. I had recently purchased a very fine Biedermeier escritoire. Given the magnitude of the ruin about us, I shouldn’t even think twice about those meager material losses, but I do. I somehow think it my duty to grieve them. Every night that passes takes with it something else of our heritage. What will be left, I wonder? Whoever wins this war will have won it at such cost…. Well, that thought leads me farther into darkness than I wish to proceed. Have some more champagne. It would be a pity to go undrunk today only to be pulverized by a bomb tonight. So here, to our Führer’s health.” Halfheartedly he raises his glass. “Long may his wisdom guide us.” Then he leans forward and says, sotto voce, “Have you heard the latest clever jingle to make the rounds?

  ‘No butter with our eats

  Our pants have no seats

  Not even paper in the loo

  Yet, Führer—we follow you!’”

  For a moment I think he has gone utterly mad. Does he consider himself to have some immunity from treasonous utterances? Is he a Volksschädling, one of those doubt sowers we are warned against by the very Propaganda Ministry that employs us? All I know is that it is a strange relief to be having this conversation. No one in the apartment building speaks with honesty or intimacy. We are essentially a group of strangers thrown together nightly in a cellar while the world burns around us.

  The bill, when it comes, is indeed expensive. We share it, another test he passes easily enough.

  Later we walk along the Spree. All the bridges are out, though makeshift ferries ply the befouled waters. Berliners are about in droves, some obviously sporting their finest clothes in a spectral parody of a Sunday afternoon stroll. On an improbably surviving park bench, an elderly couple kisses with unembarrassed urgency. Only a month ago the sight would have been grotesque; now it stirs the heart.

  “Did you hear they hit the Zoo? Many of the animals were killed outright, but some escaped. A tiger was found dead in the ruins of the Café Josty on Kurfürstendamm. Apparently he ate one too many Black Forest cakes. And it’s said that crocodiles have been seen in the Spree. Personally I doubt it, but who knows?”

  We gaze in silence at the debris-clogged waters. Several bodies, hideously mangled, are caught against a pier. I wonder if the crocodiles are dining as well today as we managed to do.

  “I have nothing to report, unfortunately, about your friend,” Felix says, “though I have been in contact with a colleague in Hamburg whose ability to negotiate the most Byzantine bureaucratic labyrinths is legendary. We shall see what he can discover. Tell me more, if you would, about this Hugh Bagley.”

  Once again I am wary. What exactly am I being asked to confide? Still, I tell him, “We knew each other at Christ’s College, Cambridge. He was an amusing sort, very bright, from a distinguished family down in Somerset. For whatever reason, we’ve remained in touch through the years. I’ve met his wife, his children—all very charming in that English sort of way. He was always an enthusiastic amateur pilot. He wrote me at the beginning of the war to say he’d joined the RAF. That was the last I heard from him. It was a great shock to hear his voice on the radio.”

  “I’m told those broadcasts are quite effective in attracting a British audience who might not otherwise endure the risible rants of Lord Haw Haw, or the pathetic stylings of Charlie and His Swing Orchestra. Have you heard ‘Winston Churchill’s Lament’?” To the tune of “Stormy Weather” he begins to croon softly, “Since my ships and German planes came together, I’m beaten all the time. As if that’s going to convince the British to surrender! I’ve never been to England. It would have been lovely to go there one day.”

  I want to ask h
im, apropos of Charlie and His Swing Orchestra, if he noticed that our waiter was a “swing boy,” but I do not. Still, it’s rather hard to believe anything is lost on Herr Silber. So I ask instead, “Is it true that swing hasn’t yet been banned in Occupied France or the Scandinavian countries?”

  He chuckles. “I suspect the Reich couldn’t afford to stamp out the revolt that would provoke.”

  12

  ST. PETERSBURG

  “BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW GRAND DUKE NICOLAY?” Genia asked in amazement.

  Davide tossed a lock of hair out of his eye. “I’d thought you were done with underestimating my cleverness, dear fellow. If you both swear yourselves to absolute secrecy, I can guarantee the Abyssinians an invitation to the most stupendous fancy-dress ball infernal Petrograd has ever witnessed.”

  As Davide was our leader, absolute secrecy it was.

  “Then prepare to be astonished,” Davide told us.

  It was the Grand Duke’s conceit that boys of a certain age should appear at the event as demoiselles d’honneur. To this end Davide took Genia and me to visit one of his more mysterious older friends, a once famous but now reclusive actor to whom he referred only as Majesté. We spent several giddy afternoons in the old actor’s cramped rooms in Theatre Street, as he rummaged through boxes of ancient costumes, fitting us each according to his considerable whimsy. He was bald and fat, with twinkling blue eyes and a mobile smile. A fire roared in the hearth. In his stained yellow-and-black kimono he padded barefoot about the room, humming mildly, holding between pursed lips an array of pins with which he made adjustments to our dress. On occasion he would break his silence with a stageworthy outburst:

  “Now I ask you, what is our Petersburg but a poor stage set, a splendid illusion of grandeur? Tsar Peter and his sublime troupe of architects, foreigners all, merely duped us. The rest of the world looks on and laughs, but what can they expect of us? We’re phantoms in a cleverly managed pantomime of Empire. That mad muzhik Rasputin, who’s hypnotized the Tsarina, who in turn has hypnotized her docile husband—what’s all that but the fantastical stuff of mystical farce playing itself out against the barbaric backdrop of the Slavic soul?”