Fox

by Dubravka Ugrešic

  4.

  Véra decided she’d prefer waiting with Dmitri by the car instead of risking the hike down to the canyon floor with Vladimir and Dasha. Her reason was the tedious, nagging sciatica, the result of her “migrations and anxieties,” as she put it.

  Dorothy, too, thought it best if she didn’t hike down to the canyon floor because of a foolish mistake. She’d washed her underwear the night before and left it out, before she went to bed, to dry. The garment, however, was still damp in the morning and now she had to either give up or go; anything else would require time and locating a clothing store. The day was unexpectedly brisk for June. Luckily, she’d packed long woolen stockings that reached almost up her thighs and a long, warm skirt. She donned comfortable walking shoes and a snug windbreaker . . . Without confessing, of course, to the real source of her reluctance, she urged Nabokov to go off on his own, but he answered, as expected, that there would be no giving up. She acquiesced.

  The day was marvelous, the sky a brilliant blue, the air as delicious and bracing as champagne. Leuthold and Nabokov were soon flushed from the hike and Dorothy became a little giddy. “Heavens, so much oxygen!” she said. She thought of those who say that anybody who doesn’t believe the world is God’s handiwork should see the Grand Canyon. The ruddy cliffs lent everything a vermilion cast. Even the marvelous air that went to her head like champagne had a reddish glow.

  They followed a path into the canyon. At one moment Dorothy let Nabokov walk on ahead, saying she’d catch up in a minute, and when he’d moved on she raised her skirt, crouched down, and urinated. The bite in the air chilled her thighs. So when she rose to her feet she stepped back for a moment into a little hollow and, leaning against the cliff wall, she turned to face the sun. Though the day was cold, the sun warmed her face. Slowly Dorothy lifted her skirt. The luscious sunlight bathed her crotch and she adjusted her position by tilting her hips, like a solar panel, to the source of light. She was awash in warmth and felt a powerful sensation of well-being. The icy fire licked her thighs.

  Just then Nabokov appeared. Dorothy hastened to lower her skirt but he gestured for her not to, indicating she mustn’t move. Dorothy dropped her eyes. On the bushy triangle between her legs there shivered a butterfly. It seemed to have become ensnared in her curls and now was fluttering its reddish wings helplessly.

  Nabokov froze and stared, spellbound, at Dorothy’s pubis. The black, coarse, woolen stockings pulled up almost hip-high merely accentuated the tautness and whiteness of her skin. In the middle flamed the triangle covered with silken hairs, and here, on the burning bush, fluttered a brand new species, a butterfly with its wings a warm, Renoir-like, russet hue. Nabokov had never seen the likes of it before. He knelt, holding one arm outstretched with his palm signaling to Dorothy to be still, while with the other, the one in which he held the butterfly net, he reached ruefully toward Dorothy.

  And here, against the stunning backdrop of the Grand Canyon, Dorothy saw Nabokov in crisp relief. Before her knelt this comic yet tragic figure of a boy in the body of a grown man, for whom a happy alignment of the stars—literature, butterflies, and a strong woman who with her brought him both fatherhood and fame—had conferred on him the legitimacy of an adult. Dorothy spread her legs ever so slightly. The butterfly, alarmed, fluttered yet stayed in place. Nabokov blushed crimson. Holding her skirt with one hand, Dorothy moved her other down slowly toward her crotch, which flamed with an almost surreal luster, toward the triangle, worshipped by her various boyfriends; her Miron cooed to it, calling it his “little vixen” . . . Lit by the bright sunlight, the wings of the butterfly shimmered on the ginger bush like magical flames. Dorothy caught the butterfly with her free hand, slid it tamely into her fingers, lowered her cupped fist into Nabokov’s net, and released it . . .

  He knelt before her, bowed by humility—like a comical Gabriel kneeling before the Virgin Mary—as she dropped her babe, as light as the breath of a butterfly (an angel?), into his net. He felt himself choke with boundless gratitude, and then, for a moment, he felt as if he were, himself, the glowing orange-winged babe. He knelt before Dasha just as his ancestors, the men of his class, had knelt before their buxom housemaids with names like Dasha and Masha, expecting from them quick, earthly, backstairs delights: a breast, a squeeze, some snatch . . . And he, the boy, thanked her for his prized butterfly.

  Leuthold released her skirt. It dropped with a whoosh like a theater curtain. The two of them headed back uphill toward the Pon’ka where they were awaited by Véra and Miten’ka. An air of triumph shone from Nabokov’s tanned visage; he looked like a bronze statue in the dazzling glow of the sun. From Leuthold’s face—exactly as with well-schooled spies—shone nothing at all.

  5.

  Mentions of Dorothy Leuthold can be found in Vladimir Nabokov’s letters to Véra. In a letter to Véra on March 19, 1941:

  “I have written to Miss Ward, Chekhov, Dasha, Natasha, Lisbetsha.”§

  Dasha (Dorothy Leuthold), Natasha (Nathalie Nabokov) and Lisbetsha (Elisabeth Thompson) were the students whom Nabokov tutored in the Russian language. Apparently they were also more than tutees: Elisabeth Thompson babysat for Dmitri and took him out for strolls in Central Park, while Nathalie was Nabokov’s cousin Nicolas’s exwife. He “appropriates,” “familiarizes,” adapts the “alien” environment to his own, his intimate forms of speech, the lessening of potential danger through a process of linguistic “domestication” (Why does stranger always rhyme with danger? wonders Nabokov), as a taming of the alien, foreign, strange, and unknown by collecting, amassing, naming, taxonomy, cataloguing, which also includes a kill, a pin, a dissection; these are not strategies unique to the émigré narrative. During the trip from the East Coast to the West Coast, Dorothy’s Pontiac was nicknamed the Pon’ka—the Russian diminutive for pony—for this very reason, a pony being a horse that was already given by nature a physically diminutive form. All strategies may be benevolently interpreted as a desire to fit in, embrace a new environment with amorous pretention, seduction, but they may also be camouflaged forms of a yen for power: how do we take the alien and foreign (and, therefore, hostile) and shrink it, make it inferior to us, vulnerable to subservience. By “appropriating” their names, Nabokov was pursuing the same approach with his students that he’d pursued with the butterflies he collected: impaling them on a board with a sharp pin, spreading their wings, describing them, labeling them (with a red label!**) Dasha, Natasha, Lisbetsha . . . In science as in art, one finds the same thrill and procedures for observing the world and articulating observations, a thought Nabokov shared with Stephen Jay Gould.††

  In a letter to Véra, November 9, 1942:

  “I am healthy, eating plenty, taking my vitamins, and read newspapers more than usual now that the news is getting rosier. St. Paul is a stupefyingly boring city, only owls at the hotel, a bar girl looks like Dasha; but my apartment is charming.”‡‡

  The first sentence in Nabokov’s short note sounds more like the report a son might send his mother or a concerned sister than a letter a man would send his wife: he’s healthy, eating well, taking his vitamins . . . After the dismissive observation that the city where he happened to be was boring, Nabokov seems to be claiming the right to mention the girl behind the bar who looked like Dasha. Perhaps he was thinking that Dasha, being of German descent, resembled other Minnesotan women, also German. Perhaps he simply thought the barmaid was plain like Dasha. In any case he’d written something Véra would appreciate, something requiring no further explanation for the two of them.

  Nabokov said, somewhere, that two people in love behave like Siamese twins: one sneezes when the other sniffs tobacco (V ljubvy nuzhno byt’ kak siamskie bliznecy, odin chihaet, kogda drugoj njuhaet tabak), which may sound less than romantic to many a reader, indeed such a vision for a romantic relationship might even be alarming. The perfect romantic couple is, therefore, a sort of monstrosity, and a successful romantic bond is the willing embrace of a form of invalid functionality,
with one half depending on, conjoined with, subservient to the other. In this sort of symbiotic love there must be perfect coordination for the love machine to operate. Hence it is the shortest path to the functionality of domination, i.e. the muffling of the beloved. Hence Humbert Humbert wished to sedate Lolita to gain control of her, hence Nabokov pinned the butterfly to the board and spread its wings to fully savor his victory. The hunter aspires to no fame but the glory of naming, in other words, nothing short of—God’s glory!

  I found it and I named it, being versed

  in taxonomic Latin; thus became

  godfather to an insect and its first

  describer—and I want no other fame.

  This is how our mind works, how we all conquer and adapt the world around us, in this sense we could all wear the red label “like Dasha” . . .

  In a letter to Véra on December 7, 1942:

  “Saw Dasha—took her out to a restaurant—she was awfully sweet and talkative.”§§

  He was awfully sweet and talkative. As usual, he charmed everything in reach, both the living and the non-living, including her, Dasha, the plates and silverware, the table, the tablecloth, the waitress . . . As usual he was not interested in trivialities unless they provided “nourishment.” She had learned how to gauge by his facial expression the degree to which he found something “nourishing.” She’d know it by the gleam in his eyes, by the flame blazing suddenly somewhere deep inside his pupils, by the muscles poised, somewhere in his gullet, to launch a long, thin tongue with arrow-like speed, coil it around the prey, and snap it back into his maw. The perfect hunter, much like a Madagascar chameleon, he was equipped with a long, lithe, supple tongue that unerringly nabbed its morsel.

  He didn’t ask how she was doing, what was new in her life, he was not a man for “small talk,” though he did inform her that Véra was not in town and then he commenced with his “magic” tricks. Yes, he had to be heard and revered, even when his audience was merely a mousy little librarian. She felt they were playing a game of his choosing in which he was teacher and she student, and he’d invented the rules as well, so every wrong answer brought with it a punishment, amicable enough, but a punishment nevertheless. And the questions, heavens, they were so childish!

  How far were migrating butterflies capable of flying on their gossamer wings? What was the largest span recorded for a pair of butterfly wings? How did one distinguish male butterflies from females? Why were butterflies so splendidly beautiful? Did they know of their beauty? Did they have lungs? Do they breathe? They breathe, she declared, though she wasn’t certain, but in the depths of his pupils she spotted the flame. She knew in some corner of his mind he was already toying with the Russian tongue twister . . . Dasha dyshit, Dasha-dusha, dusha dyshit, Dasha prinimaet dush . . .

  Nabokov penned Dasha’s name on the white linen napkin and by it added a small plus sign. Do butterflies have a spine? Yes, they do. Minus. How many pairs of legs do butterflies have? Four legs, two pairs. Minus. Three pairs of legs, six legs all told. Minuses . . . On the white linen napkin a childishly clumsy scrawl took shape of a butterfly sketched in pen, little numbers squiggled across the white fabric with the cocky minuses Nabokov assigned to Dasha for her wrong answers and the impish plus signs he gave her for the answers she got right. Through how many stages does a butterfly metamorphose? Two? Four. Egg, larva, pupa, and imago. Minus . . . Nabokov shook his head, feigning dismay, he sketched his butterfly and the stages of its life cycle and dealt Dasha malicious little minuses . . . Dorothy had the feeling that right there in the middle of the small restaurant, before the eyes of all the diners, she’d first roll up the white napkin and then unfurl it like a magician’s silk handkerchief, though no white dove, no butterflies would flutter out from underneath, only her, Dasha’s, minuses and the occasional plus . . .

  On what does the butterfly feed? Not steak, I trust! Indeed! Nabokov tossed her a magnanimous plus. So on what, if not steaks, does it feed? Flowers? Minus! If there are four stages in a butterfly’s life cycle, then presumably at each stage it has different nutritional requirements. It feeds on flowers, said Dasha stubbornly. A caterpillar feeds on leaves, plants, fruits. In the pupa stage it eats nothing; when the butterfly emerges from the pupa it feeds on pollen and with its proboscis it sips the nectar . . . So, a flower. What do you suppose would happen if the metamophosis proceeded the other way round, from butterfly to pupa, from caterpillar to egg, she mused aloud and then regretted her silliness . . .

  I have this friend, she said suddenly, rapping her fork on the plate on which her spaghetti was cooling, as if the gesture were demanding something definitive, that she be heard. “Oh ho,” said Nabokov, with a barely noticeable grimace of displeasure, not at what she’d said but at the interruption . . . Dasha dushitsa, he said. She ignored his ironic interjection. He’s a good poet, she said firmly. How can you tell? She looked at him. Nabokov apologized with a rueful shrug. Can you help him in some way? What’s his name? Miron Belochkin. Where’s he from? A Russian Jew, he came here from Harbin. So was it, pray tell, this Russian “squirrel” who taught you to swear? It was. And what does this Belochkin from Harbin do? He’s busking as a clown, on the street. Clowning? Literally? Literally, he’s also a trained actor. Should anything occur to me, I will let you know. She knew he wouldn’t. Ah, my Dorothy, my poor, dear Dorothy . . . She recoiled. This was the first time he’d called her Dorothy. You’re alone in the world, Dasha dushitsa. Dasha, dearest, where are your companions? My companions! The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. You don’t even have a Toto! I do, too, have companions. Whatever gave you the idea that I don’t?!

  The conversation shifted away from the slightly strained exercise in pretentious banter between the two adults and abruptly assumed a subtle tinge of bitterness, which was, obviously, Dorothy’s doing. The dinner was over. Nabokov paid the bill and they rose to their feet. Are you not going to take the napkin with you? he asked. She looked at him and spotted on his visage that spark of the future, the same gleam of sure fame in his eyes she’d seen in the Grand Canyon, a gleam like the gaze on the faces of statues, medals, coins, and even postage stamps. Dorothy felt slightly queasy. Heavens, what a boy, he’s such a boy, she repeated to herself with a sense of despair that seemed out of proportion to the situation, and she was impatient for the moment when they’d leave the restaurant and part ways.

  Whether she wanted to or not, Leuthold thought of Nabokov many more times. First when she read the poem in The New Yorker about the troubling dissection of the butterfly that he’d, apparently, named after her. And her childish prattle at the restaurant over dinner on the topic of reverse metamorphoses came back to her on April 30, 1967, two years before she died, when her birthplace, her Waseca, was devastated by a tornado that leveled almost all the homes. Who knows, perhaps on that “Black Sunday” she, Dasha, metamorphosed into Dorothy, and proceeded back to her egg.

  6.

  Dorothy Leuthold died in 1969. That year, perhaps two months before her death (on July 22, 1969), Nabokov, who had been living for five years with Véra in Switzerland, wrote a short poem in Russian, which he dedicated to Véra, of course. The poem contained only two verses, and the second, inspired by Nikolai Gumilyov, reads:

  And I will die not in a summerhouse,

  From gluttony and heat,

  But with a heavenly butterfly in my net

  On the summit of some wild hill.

  The poem was written in Russian and the words obzhorstvo (gluttony) and zhara (heat) deal the reader an almost physical blow with their powerful, harsh sounds. The butterfly, an angel (weightlessness, transparency, beauty, fragility, coolness, spirituality) is perhaps the most natural antithesis to gluttony and heat (the earthly, carnality, heaviness, paralysis, ugliness). The poet pictures himself at the moment of his death on the summit of a hill, far from ugly, corporal, crass humankind to which he, regrettably, belongs. He prefers a solitary fate, a death not bound by a bed, the space delimiting the fundam
ental human activities (to beds we are born, in them we sleep, make love, bear children, wet, bleed, die). He chooses for himself a highly aestheticized death, with an angel ticket in his pocket (a butterfly in his net!), waiting at the metaphorical airport (on the hill’s summit) to soar to eternity. This chilled, aseptic image is terrifying. The lone poetic subject at the moment of his imagined death has no need of human solace, there is no place here for the warm touch of a hand from his life-long helpmate, friend, companion (or did she, in his fantasies, predecease him?). The poetic subject here is alone with his obsession, his eternal companion, the butterfly (angel). This refusal to die in a summerhouse is perhaps merely a camouflaged acquiescence, a return to two photographs (back to the egg!) taken in 1907 at Nabokov’s grandfather’s summerhouse in Vyra. In one, Vladimir, an appealing-looking boy with long slender legs and tender knees, in light-colored shorts and white knee socks, a white shirt, a kerchief tied round his neck, sits in an armchair with a book on his lap. In the book, spread open like a giant butterfly, one can see small images of butterflies. In another, the scenography is slightly different, his mother Elena, dressed in white, is standing next to the boy. Nabokov’s grandfather deeded the boy the summerhouse after his death, but Vladimir Nabokov never saw it again. Soon he would start changing countries like “counterfeit money,” “hurrying on and afraid to look back,” “like a phantom dividing in two,” “like a candle between mirrors sailing into the sun” (verses from the poem “Fame,” 1942).

  So what is left, in that image, of the two lovers, the Siamese twins, where one is sneezing while the other sniffs tobacco? The twins seem to lack gender, but if they were gendered, then, in Nabokov’s vision, they’d be two little boys rather than two little girls. So what remains of the boy—with his elegant, slender head, his calm (angelic?) gaze, with his face that in the photograph looks like a water lily in bloom, with his frame as lanky as a tropical liana—what is left of him? Had Leuthold been able to read these lines, she would, we assume, have seen in the Russian word for butterfly—babochka—the comic sabotage of this self-flattering, melancholic (or is it merely alpinistic?) death image. But who was Leuthold to know anything about that!