The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov Read online

  Then he would return to his task of garbing us in illusion. So taken was I by our preparations that I decided to offer my own contribution. One evening, when my mother was out with her poker circle, I crept into her bedroom and borrowed, from the safe, a very smart diamond choker whose brilliant fire I had admired as a child. In retrospect I shudder at the foolishness of this caper, but at the time I wished a touch of the real about me as I undertook my subterfuge.

  Finally the illustrious night arrived. I donned a green tulle gown with an enormous corsage of hothouse gardenias. Heavy cabuchons hung from my ears, and around my neck I affixed my mother’s looted jewels. Grandly bewigged Genia wore a gown of lavender satin and black lace. Davide was fitted in crimson silk embroidered in gold; an aigrette of ostrich feathers nodded above his head. I have never felt quite so sublimely ridiculous, though I must admit I found the sight of my fellow Abyssinians curiously thrilling, as if their costume at once degraded and elevated them. But then, I have always adored men in uniform.

  “But what will you wear?” good Genia asked Majesté once we three had been fitted out.

  “My darlings! You can hardly expect an aged crone like me to mar such a lovely event. No, I shall remain here and knit shadows. Now go forth and shine bravely, and think of nothing but love.”

  At these words, the Grand Duke’s own chauffeur rang for us at the door. As the sleek Torpedo ferried us toward the palace in Moika Street, Davide explained that the fête was in honor of a young Finnish sailor. “I believe his name is Eska. He’s apparently quite a beauty. The Grand Duke heard about him from Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, who had him from Prince Yussupov. Hence tonight’s gala. I suppose we’ll have ample opportunity to observe for ourselves what all the fuss is about. Grand Duke Nicolay may not be the brightest light in the imperial family—they do, after all, call him Uncle Bimbo—but he’s said to exhibit remarkably good taste in his young companions. And who knows? Should the Finnish beauty disappoint, well, my Abyssinians,”—he giggled excitedly—“I’ve been told we should be prepared for anything.”

  The doorman relieved us of our accoutrements—sable cloaks, muffs, toques: Majesté had not let us venture into the cold world unprotected.

  In the first salon, beneath a Venetian chandelier, a lavish spread of refreshments had been laid out. Save for two or three bored-looking waiters, the room was empty. Beyond, however, gaily dressed gentlemen could be seen dancing with uniformed soldiers and sailors. The furniture had been pushed back against the walls; in one corner, a small string ensemble performed a sentimental waltz. Here and there among the dancers bobbed other rouged youths in ball gowns or gypsy garb, some so adept at their disguise that only the jut of an Adam’s apple gave them away.

  As if much-practiced in such things, Davide began almost immediately to flirt with a gallant-looking officer of the Imperial Guard, who soon rewarded him by caressing his cheek and asking for a dance. “Bonne chance, mes Abyssines!” Davide mouthed as he and his officer disappeared into the throng of dancers gliding across the polished floor.

  Genia and I were not left on our own for long.

  “Unchaperoned?” came a rich baritone. I felt a hand on my bare shoulder. To my astonishment I recognized our interlocutor as Yuri Yurev, the renowned actor whose stirring performances I had so often admired on the stage of the Alexandrinsky. Raven-haired and noble-browed, the very picture of virility, he was, if anything, even more charismatic at close quarters. His dark eyes fixed us with enthusiasm. “Or perhaps I should say—unshepherded?” he continued merrily. “Such lovely lambs. And bleating alone in the wilderness! But what have we here?” He feigned surprise. “Lads in lambs’ clothing! Please give my compliments to your inspired couturier.”

  “A gentleman in Theatre Street,” Genia told him. “We know him only by the curious name of Majesté.”

  “Ah,” Yurev roared. “Of course! An old and very dear friend of mine: my unforgettable mentor, in fact, at the Imperial Theatre Academy many years ago. A superb character actor in his day, so effortlessly adaptable. I suppose even actors eventually settle for one role or another, but Majesté has trumped us all and keeps sailing ever further into new personae. Indeed, I believe she has convinced herself this winter she is the force behind the Chrysanthemum Throne. One hardly knows where she will eventually end up. Perhaps as a sphinx, an ocean liner, perhaps a mountain peak of great renown.

  “In any event, she has done marvels with you two peacocks. Truly, I can’t tell whose plumage I prefer. You’re quite the lovely one there,” he said, grazing Genia’s pale cheek with his fingertips.

  That we were there for the taking seemed without question. He caressed our bare arms, our bared necks. “Why, you’re blushing,” he told me. “You’ve turned crimson, while your friend here has the most exquisite pallor. What does it all mean?”

  Thinking to defend Genia (O vanity!), I began to explain that my friend had not been well, that he had ventured out only reluctantly—but my unerring stutter soon left me in the lurch.

  Yurev frowned. “No need to exert yourself. I can see you’re the high-strung type. Perhaps some punch might make you more fit for human society. As for you, frail one”—he paused masterfully, addressing Genia—“have you never wished to be swept off your feet?”

  Genia’s usually listless eyes glistened; his nose quivered like a rabbit’s. That was all the answer the famous actor needed. He bowed deeply and offered his hand. Gentle, unwell Genia looked at me—his expression apologetic, pitying, triumphant. A polonaise replaced the waltz, and the improbably minted pair soon joined the couples stampeding up and down the floor.

  Both my fellow Abyssinians thus plucked from my side, I stood alone. Despite my blush and stutter, I felt neither anxious nor bereft. All my life I had enjoyed acting. This, I told myself, was no different. In the end, laughing breathlessly—how silly we had been! How giddy! How gay!—we would remove our costumes and return once again to our ordinary selves. But while it lasted, what a divine time we would have.

  Wandering back to the room where refreshments beckoned, I downed three or four flutes of champagne in quick succession, and soon felt a welcome sense of elation. The only other occupant of the room was a sallow, perfectly bald little man wearing a bright blue sash. He stood at the table, avidly eating quail eggs from a green bowl.

  “Well, you’re awfully young to be caught up in all this, don’t you think?” He spoke without interrupting his solitary feast. “But I suppose you haven’t much of a choice, have you? No, you’re inexorably drawn to your spirit brothers in there. And why shouldn’t you be? Why shouldn’t you expect that here you will find warmth, comradeship, sympathy, solidarity, all those things that have thus far eluded you in your accursed young life. I don’t wish to dispel fond illusions, they’re the scrumptious food of youth, but I shall tell you this one thing, lest you grow bitter before your time: among those lisping creatures in there, those giggling half-men, so fatally shallow, so incapable of any kind of seriousness, you will not find a single genuine soul. Despite their refined charms, their perfect manners and sugary endearments, their plight has made them cruel, vain, deathly cold. They spend all their solitary hours plotting and conniving. They’re as untrustworthy as Jews. But alas, it’s no doubt too late to warn you away. It’s always been too late for such a creature as you—or me, for that matter, or any of us poor souls lost in this hell.” He smacked his lips and popped another quail egg into his mouth.

  I left him without a word and reentered the room where my cruel spirit brothers were dancing. As Davide and his officer wafted past to the graceful strains of a minuet my friend sent me a look of icy amusement. I averted my eyes.

  In the last of that series of spacious rooms, seated on a gold and crimson sofa, the evening’s sacrificial guest held court. I could see at once that the Finnish sailor was indeed very beautiful: blue-eyed, with blond stubble fuzzing his close-shaved head. And what fine cheekbones, what a fetchingly upturned nose. He was already quite drunk,
his eyelids half shut, and every now and again he halfheartedly brushed aside the large paw that crept over his thigh. Soon enough he yielded, and allowed that hairy mitt to remain, which, since it belonged to Grand Duke Nicolay, was just as well. No longer young, aristocratically unhandsome, drunk as a peasant, the Grand Duke slowly slid his palm farther up the young man’s inner thigh till it at last attained its goal.

  All the while, a disheveled, heavyset man, also quite drunk, accompanied himself on the piano as he sang, or rather drawled, “Lads and lasses may be alike, but lads like me like lads like me.”

  It excited me to observe the Finnish sailor so clearly fallen into depraved hands. He seemed a likable, ordinary young man, a very far cry from the primped and teased likes of us, and I considered how the disillusioned man’s comments in the refreshment salon strangely heightened the pleasure I took in the sailor’s fall.

  Feeling someone touch the small of my back, I turned, half expecting to be embarrassed by the appearance of a merely terrestrial acquaintance in this unabashedly lunar world.

  “What’s a young beauty like you doing unescorted at a debauch such as this?” the stranger asked me in French.

  He was a gentleman in his forties, trim and correct in appearance, with a precisely managed goatee and, behind steel-rimmed spectacles, rather piercing eyes.

  I attempted a witty answer, but my stutter arrested the sentence midstride.

  “Oh!” said the stranger, unpleasantly startled. I could feel myself once again blushing.

  Only after an interminable struggle did I manage to utter, “I seem to have lost my way.”

  Now the stranger seemed charmed, as I had wished him to be. If only my charm were not barricaded by such thorns!

  “Do you have a name?” he asked.

  “Sergey Vladimirovich,” I told him.

  “No, no,” he cried. “That won’t do. I mean, do you have an enchanted name, a nom de bal, as it were?”

  I must have appeared perplexed.

  He appraised me keenly. “You’re very new to all this, aren’t you?”

  I admitted I had never been to such a ball.

  “The very first time! There’s nothing grander than one’s very first time. Any beginning is to be cherished, but such a magnificent beginning as this—oh my! I hadn’t thought to come out tonight, but as I was feeling rather bored, staring into the fire and seeing nothing there but phantoms, I ordered up my sleigh and driver, and now I must say I’m most glad I did. I shall call you ‘Svetlana’—my Shining One.”

  I wondered politely what I should call him in return.

  “Monsieur Tartuffe will do nicely,” he said with a bow. Having never before curtsied, I did my laughable best.

  The Finnish sailor, I could see, had succumbed to circumstance as well. He was messily attempting to sip champagne from a flute the Grand Duke held to his lips; the spillage darkened the front of his white frock. He barked with laughter. Caressing his shoulder, the Grand Duke leaned in to whisper a few words.

  I allowed M. Tartuffe to lead me by the hand into the dancing salon. I had danced often enough with young ladies my age, leading as they followed, but I had of course never danced the lady’s part. I did my best to follow his lead; indeed, I found it shamingly easy as we revolved across the floor to the sweet lilt of a Glazunov waltz.

  I must confess that I thought my newfound M. Tartuffe not the least bit attractive, though I found his masculine attentions comforting.

  Near us, Genia’s cheek pressed to the famous actor’s chest while Yurev swayed, head thrown back, eyes closed, in a state of exaltation. And from time to time, amid the throng, Davide and his officer would sail into view.

  When the musicians took a break, everyone followed them into the refreshment salon. Finding myself separated from my dancing partner, I held back, flushed and pleasurably out of breath, hoping perhaps that he might vanish into the crowd, or that I might happily vanish into thin air. I had had my moment: a man had chosen me; a man had held me. Nonetheless, the sight of the musician’s instruments, lying abandoned on their chairs, filled me with melancholy. Then M. Tartuffe was once again at my side, having brought me a bit of caviar on toast, which he insisted on depositing on my tongue, as a priest does the host.

  More music. More dancing. At last it was time to leave. Grand Duke Nicolay having disappeared upstairs with his Finnish prize, the rest of us were left to carry away whatever we had won as well.

  When he brought me my cloak, toque, and muff, the doorman, seeing M. Tartuffe at my side, peered gravely into my face. I was on the verge of telling M. Tartuffe, whose name rather irked me, that I wished to remain with the friends with whom I had arrived—but at that moment Yurev came over, grinning like a bear deep in honey and saying merrily, “So, my dainty, I see you’ve chosen well. Courage! You’re in good hands. When we meet again, all will be changed. Adieu, Adieu. I am afraid little Genia has drunk too much and twirled too much. I must take the dear child home and put her immediately to bed.”

  Davide and his officer had vanished entirely.

  Without asking where I might wish to go, M. Tartuffe ordered his driver to take us to Dominic’s, a posh restaurant near the Passazh. I admired the indifferent authority in his voice, though I immediately began to worry about my appearance. It was one thing to appear in Majesté’s garb at a private party, quite another to flaunt it to the world at large! When I stammered out my qualms, M. Tartuffe only laughed and said, “Oh, you’ll pass well enough, my lovely. Trust me, I know perfectly well what I’m doing.”

  The night that had descended on a slumbering St. Petersburg was frigid and absolutely clear; the moon shining down on us seemed miraculously enlarged. I began to shiver uncontrollably, though the cold was scarcely the sole cause. M. Tartuffe arranged heavy tartan blankets over us, and wrapped an arm around me and drew me close to him. I could feel the warmth of his body; each jolt of the sleigh threw us together in ways he contrived to exaggerate, and which I did not resist, so that my various jewels had been fairly well mauled by the time we arrived at Dominic’s.

  He immediately ordered a private room, into which I was bustled, followed by French champagne and an accompanying platter of iced oysters.

  “A slip like you must be famished,” he told me. “Please eat. And drink this fabulous champagne, so much better than the sweet stuff your countrymen swill. I can see you’re a young lady of refined inclinations, and will appreciate a taste of my homeland.”

  I wondered how long he intended to sustain the absurd fiction of my sex.

  He wished to hear all about my school, my classmates, my hobbies. He was most intrigued by my tales of La Karsavina, which made me regret having divulged them. Given his initial reaction, he was exceedingly patient with my stutter.

  He also told me about himself, how he had grown up in Paris, and from an early age had adored the works of Tolstoy and Turgenev. All the happier, then, when he found himself posted, after a lively stint in Teheran, as cultural attaché under the employ of Maurice Paléologue, France’s ambassador to the Imperial Court.

  Seeing he was a diplomat, or at least posing as one, I asked if he had ever known my Uncle Ruka.

  “Why, yes,” he told me. “I knew him quite well, in Bokhara. We were guests of the Emir, and once hunted antelope together in the Tien Shan mountains. And when we returned, the Emir provided for our entertainment a band of itinerant singing boys of a type quite common in the region. Bachi, I believe they were called. They wore lovely bright costumes, and groomed themselves as finely as women.”

  I was virtually certain my uncle had never been anywhere near Bokhara, as he professed a horror of our Central Asian territories; furthermore, I could scarcely imagine him hunting. But M. Tartuffe, whoever he was, spoke with such assurance that I hadn’t the heart to call his account into question.

  When we had consumed most of our bottle, and all but a few of the oysters, he instructed the waiter, “Leave us for half an hour.”

  “Now,” he
said, moving closer to me on the banquette. “Our little moment of truth. What say you to that?” Gently, with finger and thumb, he held my chin and drew close to me, and with the other hand began to disarrange Majesté’s carefully arranged folds and pleats.

  The reader will imagine that I closed my eyes and awaited the long-awaited inevitable. I did not. Suffice it to say that at the very moment M. Tartuffe brought his lips to mine I revolted. Why? Perhaps my head swirled with a surfeit of images gleaned from the evening. Perhaps the champagne began to nauseate me. Perhaps Dr. Bekhetev and his hypnotic wand made a spectral appearance, urging me to abjure such base temptation. Whatever the case, the Russian Army’s retreat from Galicia was accomplished with scarcely less haste or disarray than my own flight from that private suite at Dominic’s—to the ribald amusement, I am sure, of the patrons in the main dining room.

  13

  I HAD FONDLY IMAGINED THE A BYSSINIANS MIGHT be brought closer by our escapade, but this was not to be the case. Genia was swept so decisively into Yuri Yurev’s orbit that Davide and I seldom saw him anymore. It was as if our friend had moved to a foreign land.

  Things between the two remaining Abyssinians began to alter as well.

  At the Crystal Petal one afternoon, after many coffees and cigarettes, Davide confided, “I don’t do it for the money, you know, but for the pleasure of slaking a vicious thirst. Do you follow what I’m saying, Seryosha?”

  Strangely enough, in my still-innocent way, I did.

  “Haven’t you ever wished to peer beyond this city’s Potemkin façade? I can take you there. I can be your guide. Just the two of us, and whatever adventures we find. Say you will. Or if not, leave me. Get up this moment, walk away, and do not look back.”