Vera

by Stacy Schiff

188 She pointed out: Shakhovskoy, Une manière de vivre, 240.

  189 “occupy themselves” VN to Khodasevich, July 24, 1934.

  190 “We were always”: Field notes, PW.

  191 laziness: Segodnia (Riga), November 4, 1932.

  192 Sirin call: Albert Parry acknowledged his work in The American Mercury, July 1939. For the background to Parry’s having named VN as a Russian writer of promise—he had been counseled by editor Mencken, “Just pick two or three dark horses and ride ’em”—see Parry, “Introducing Nabokov to America,” The Texas Quarterly (Spring 1971), 16–26. In Russian, Parry, Novoe Russkoye Slovo, July 9, 1978.

  193 “the kike”: Hessen, Gody izgnania, 70.

  194 eleven A.M.: VN remembered that he had taken VéN to the hospital himself, a few hours before DN was born. As Hessen’s daughter heard a different account, and as DN was born at eleven A.M.—not before five A.M. as VN recalls in SM—I have deferred to the Hessen account. VéN appears to support that version; she quibbled with Field’s statement that VN had played chess until three A.M., “when it was time.” VéN copy of Field, 1977, 200, VNA. Interview with Natalie Barosin, August 28, 1997.

  195 “ein kleiner” and after some deliberation: Interview with DN, July 21, 1997.

  196 “I’ve been somewhat”: VN to Struve, July 30, 1934, LOC.

  197 She took some pleasure: Displaying her own grasp of logic, she challenged Field’s assertion that she was “very pregnant” in January, at the time of the Bunin festivities. (She was in her sixth month.) “Not enough for this to have been noticed by anyone,” she scrawled in Field’s margin, Field, 1986, 159, VNA.

  198 another pregnancy: VN to VéN, June 10, 1936, and June 11, 1936, VNA.

  199 emotional reserve: VéN pages on DN childhood.

  200 “postlactic all-clear”: SM, 299.

  201 “This extraordinary and”: Richard Holmes, Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (New York: Viking, 1985), 120.

  202 “That was pure Véra”: Interview with HS, February 26, 1995.

  203 “heavenly labor”: VN to his mother, September 4, 1934.

  204 husband’s silence: VéN to Grasset, June 10, 1934.

  205 exhausted Véra: VN to Vadim Rudnev, November 25, 1934, Slavic and East European Library, University of Illinois.

  210 “we heard Hitler’s”: Simon Karlinsky and Alfred Appel, eds., The Bitter Air of Exile, 249.

  3 THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

  1 “Véra was a pale” and Véra reported with pride: Alan Levy, “Understanding Vladimir Nabokov,” The New York Times Magazine, October 31, 1971, 28. See also Levy, Vladimir Nabokov: The Velvet Butterfly. The word “iridule”—defined by VN as “a mother-of-pearl cloudlet in Pale Fire”—comes to mind, but is not in the dictionary. SO, 179.

  2 as wan as she reportedly: VN to his mother, October 3, 1935, VNA.

  3 Lena Massalsky: LM to VéN, undated, probably 1948.

  4 “I wish” to “Not if they look”: Interview with Keegan, November 14, 1997.

  5 air of divinity: Interview with Saul Steinberg, January 17, 1996.

  6 one hairdresser’s amazement: Rolf to Tenggren, January 17, 1961, PC. For those who need to know, the preferred shampoo was Helena Rubinstein’s “Silvertone.”

  7 “The camera and I”: Interview with Simon Karlinsky, May 3, 1995. “People of the writing”: VN to Gleb Struve, August 17, 1931, LOC.

  8 On VN’s impenetrability: See Sevodnya, November 4, 1932. Also Aleksey Gibson, Russian Poetry and Criticism in Paris, 1920–1940 (The Hague: Leuxenhoff Publishing, 1990), 161–62; Yanovsky, 207 (from which comes “The thoughts and feelings”), and H. Jakovlev recollections, VNA.

  9 “the mirrory quality”: Draft of Conclusive Evidence, LOC.

  10 Aldanov held: VN to VéN, January 30, 1936, VNA. One can only wonder what would have happened had Christopher Isherwood—as adept as VN in slipping from the first to the third person in the course of a sentence—been added to the equation.

  11 his Russian colleagues: Diment, Pniniad, 132. VN to Grynberg, December 16, 1944, Bakhm.

  12 “who would be an experienced”: Field, 1977, 206. See also Boyd, 1990, 419.

  13 panicked every time: VéN to Boyd, June 6, 1987, VNA.

  14 “Back in Berlin”: Vera Peltenburg to VéN, May 6, 1978, VNA.

  15 “V[éra] says that”: VN diary, April 9, 1951, VNA.

  16 “their work”: Dominique Desanti, Vladimir Nabokov, 120.

  17 “My wife and I”: VN to Struve, October 26, 1930, Hoover.

  18 claimed in August: VN to Mikhail Karpovich, August 21, 1933, Bakhm.

  19 “from the moment”: VéN to Rowohlt, July 5, 1987.

  20 design to Packard: Interview with DN, November 22, 1996.

  21 “As before, Véra”: VN to his mother, December 6, 1934, VNA.

  22 her freelance efforts: VéN to Goldenweiser, May 22, 1958, Bakhm. The control of the Ruthspeicher firm was transferred to its head engineer, a Nazi.

  24 “I’m rather sick”: VN to his mother, May 1, 1935, VNA. The line is in English in the original.

  25 names of plants: VN to his mother, March 23, 1935, VNA.

  26 transfer of the pistol: Boyd interviews with VéN, November 19, 1982, January 5, 1985, Boyd archive.

  27 “The point of émigré”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

  28 “I, you understand”: VN to VéN, December 3, 1923, VNA.

  29 “our age has been”: VN to his mother, August 8, 1935, VNA.

  30 work permit was revoked: VN to Alexandra Tolstoy, August 27, 1939, TF.

  31 “I appeal”: SM, 85.

  32 mistaken in a photo: VN to VéN, January 20, 1936, VNA.

  33 “my feet hurting”: VéN pages on DN childhood.

  34 “and the fervency”: SM, 302.

  35 “He was always” to “armful of a baby”: VéN pages on DN childhood.

  36 He wrote a little: VN to VéN, June 10, 1936, VNA.

  37 “You would really”: VN to VéN, February 17, 1936, VNA.

  38 suitcase-dusting: VN to Struve, August 17, 1931, Hoover.

  39 the tussle over Despair: VN to VéN, February 4, 1936, June 11, 1936, VNA.

  40 “I am not afraid”: VN to Karpovich, May 24, 1936, Bakhm.

  41 “desperate in the extreme”: VN to Sir Bernard Pares, November 16, 1936. Similarly, to George Vernadsky, December 9, 1936, Bakhm; to Mikhail Rostovzeff, December 9, 1936.

  42 “there were decent people”: VéN to Rowohlt, July 5, 1987, VNA.

  43 “ferreting out Russian”: Field, 1977, 82–83, quoting VéN. Taboritsky had been sentenced to but did not serve a fourteen-year prison term.

  44 “We’re slowly dying”: VN to Z. Shakhovskoy, c. 1937, LOC.

  45 “my husband was abroad”: VéN to Goldenweiser, June 8, 1957, Bakhm. VéN’s concern had melted into moral indignation by 1939, when VN wrote that it had become ethically impossible for him to remain in Germany when the Biskupsky committee controlled the fate of the Russian émigrés, and the undersecretary of that committee was none other than his father’s assassin, VN to Tolstoy, August 27, 1939, TF.

  46 Biskupsky’s treachery: Lena Massalsky to VéN, February 6, 1960, Onya Fasolt to VN, December 14, 1951. Fasolt to Shakhovskoy, November 13, 1979, Amherst.

  47 all of them artists: Vozrozhdenie, January 30, 1967. Also on the reading, VN to VéN, January 25, 1937, VNA.

  48 “I will refrain from”: Aldanov, Poslednie novosti, Paris, January 28, 1937.

  49 “I’m the toast”: VN to VéN, February 4, 1937, VNA.

  50 VN and Joyce, and Gallimard visit: VN to VéN, February 12, 1937, VNA.

  51 a very un-Nabokovian: VN to VéN, February 27, 1937, VNA.

  52 “I am rather fed”: VN to VéN, February 27, 1937, VNA. In English in the original.

  53 “I have never loved”: VN to VéN, January 27, 1937, VNA. In English, in the original.

  54 felt he would burst, and “My hat”: VN to VéN, February 22, 1937, VNA.

  55
“I have been encountering”: VN to VéN, March 10, 1937, VNA.

  56 “His eyes were not”: VéN to Edward Weeks, February 27, 1978, VNA.

  57 “Tell yourself that our”: VN to VéN, February 10, 1937, VNA.

  58 “that after your letter”: VN to VéN, February 20, 1937, VNA. See also SL, 19.

  59 “The Eastern side”: VN to VéN, February 28, 1937, VNA.

  60 “helpmeet, on the”: “Véra,” unpublished Aikhenvald poem, LOC.

  61 “What is the problem” and “Without the air”: VN to VéN, April 6, 1937, VNA.

  62 tongue-wagging: VN to VéN, April 20, 1937, and May 1, 1937, VNA.

  63 Nobelist into a fit: Berberova, Italics Are Mine, 257.

  64 “Of course” to “gossip rewards me”: VN to VéN, May 11, 1937, VNA.

  65 He always told her: VN to VéN, April 20, 1937, VNA.

  66 Shakhovskoy’s visit: Boyd interview with VéN, November 16, 1982, Boyd archive.

  67 “among the rascals”: VN to VéN, April 21, 1937, VNA.

  68 “I lack the strength”: VN to VéN, April 27, 1937, VNA.

  69 commas and all: VN to VéN, May 1, 1937, VNA.

  70 sigh of relief: Boyd, 1990, 437.

  71 begged her to arrange: VN to VéN, May 14, 1937, VNA.

  72 “a series of petty”: VN to VéN, May 14, 1937, VNA.

  73 “to which we journeyed”: SM, 306.

  74 “Sunlight is good”: GIFT, 338.

  75 “delicious daze”: LL, 166–67.

  76 He could not shake: VN to Irina Guadanini, July 28, 1937, PC.

  77 “I suggested that”: VéN corrections to Field, 1977, VNA.

  78 “You should never”: Rolf, “January,” PC.

  79 wrote his mistress: Vera Kokoshkin diary entry, July 17, 1937. VN to Guadanini, July 15, 1937, PC.

  80 “She was not more”: Geoffrey Scott, The Portrait of Zélide (New York: Scribners, 1926), 1.

  81 “clear but weirdly”: SM, 288.

  82 the anonymous letter: There were a number of possible candidates for authorship, including at least one person who knew both women, and had known VéN since her childhood.

  84 “a pretty woman”: VN to Guadanini, June 21, 1937, PC.

  85 “20th century miracle”: Kokoshkin diary, PC. Madame Kokoshkin was citing Khodasevich.

  86 three times: Kokoshkin to her son, February 10, 1937, PC.

  87 Her laugh: I am indebted to Tatiana Morozoff for much of the background on Irina Guadanini.

  88 When a twenty-one-year-old to “How beautiful!”: Desanti, 34–40. For the most part I have steered clear of Desanti’s Vladimir Nabokov, billed as an “essai fantasme.” I have made an exception for these few moments, at which Desanti was actually present. The Fondaminsky report rings true for a second reason: VN wrote precisely the lines Desanti cites, earlier, in a letter to his mother.

  89 “Anna Karenin!”: Boyd interview with Elizabeth Marinel Allan, March 29, 1983, Boyd archive.

  90 With tears streaming: Kokoshkin diary, August 3, 1937, PC. Games of hangman: Guadanini diary, PC.

  91 “Were his hands”: Desanti, 35.

  92 A week later, he: VN to Guadanini, June 21, 1937, PC.

  93 beyond his strength: Guadanini diary, PC.

  94 The strain was such: VN to Guadanini, June 14, 1937, PC.

  95 a lovely ruse: VN to Guadanini, June 19, 1937, PC.

  96 “indescribable, unprecedented”: VN to Guadanini, June 22, 1937, PC.

  97 “around like a bomb”: VN to Guadanini, June 14, 1937, PC.

  98 “You always have”: VN to Guadanini, June 22, 1937, PC. tormenting her lover: Guadanini diary, June 25, 1937, PC.

  99 Adultery was a perfectly: LL, 133.

  100 “I love you more than”: Guadanini diary; also Kokoshkin to Guadanini, July 3, 1937.

  101 yearned for Irina: VN to Guadanini, July 15, 1937, PC.

  102 He promised: VN to Guadanini, July 23, 1937, PC.

  103 “Her smile kills” to “hallucination”: VN to Guadanini, July 28, 1937, PC.

  104 “bamboozle her husband”: Kokoshkin diary, July 23, 1937, PC.

  105 felt so madly sorry: VN to Guadanini, August 2, 1937, PC.

  106 promised to terminate: VéN corrections to Field, 1977, VNA.

  107 prove under oath: VéN to Boyd, June 6, 1987, VNA.

  108 powerful evidence: In Kokoshkin’s and Guadanini’s diaries. Both were replying to VN’s reports from the Riviera.

  110 The Guadanini-VN encounter: Guadanini’s diary.

  111 learned later that her rival: Boyd interview with VéN, December 5, 1986, Boyd archive.

  112 hoodwinked Vladimir: Kokoshkin to Guadanini, September 13, 1937, PC.

  113 She predicted that he would: Guadanini’s diary.

  114 “If he loves you”: Kokoshkin to Guadanini, September 13, 1937, PC.

  115 “The Tunnel” to “penetrate his letters”: Aletrus, “The Tunnel,” Sovremennik 3 (1961), 6–23.

  116 ode to fidelity: Boyd, 1990, 444.

  117 single most appealing: Defending VN against Field’s charge that the work provided few moral heroines, VéN countered with Zina and Mme. Luzhin. VéN copy of Field, 1986, 165, VNA.

  119 In June he told: VN to Guadanini, June 21, 1937, PC.

  120 Later he reported: VN to Guadanini, August 2, 1937, PC.

  121 “light, popular fiction”: undated Bobbs-Merrill report, Mariam Lyman, Lilly.

  122 series of fleeting affairs: VN to Guadanini, June 19, 1937, PC.

  123 bristled visibly: Interview with George Weidenfeld, April 21, 1997. Eva had studied chemistry under Madame Curie in Paris; she was cultured, cosmopolitan, and beautiful.

  124 ready to deny: Interview with Boyd, November 21, 1996; VéN to Boyd, June 6, 1987, VNA.

  125 hints of philandering: VN to Struve, May 26, 1930, LOC; VN to Khodasevich, April 26, 1934, Berberova papers, Yale.

  126 lent his hero: VN to Aldanov, February 3, 1938.

  127 “autobiography thinly”: Spender, The New York Times Book Review, May 26, 1963. “Please do not look for V.’s or my biography in The Gift. Apart from some absolutely external circumstances (very few even of those) there is nothing of V. in Fyodor. He gets quite vexed when people try to find it there,” VéN wrote Lisbet Thompson on October 29, 1964. It never helped that Berberova and Shakhovskoy, among those who knew VN best in the 1930s, found the novel to be closer to the truth than his autobiography. Or that VN cited The Gift as one of his three most autobiographical works, Field, 1986, 52.

  128 Vladimir’s favorites: VéN to Barley Alison, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, May 15, 1963.

  129 write off Orlando: VN to Shakhovskoy, July 25, 1933, LOC.

  131 It has been read: Boyd, 1990, 463.

  132 “hopeless desire”: GIFT, 329.

  133 ask that she return: Kokoshkin diary, December 29, 1937, PC.

  134 “fragments of a novel”: LO, 96.

  135 a long protest: VéN to Boyd, October 7, 1985, VNA.

  136 “alien, sullen” and “looked down”: GIFT, 185, 195.

  137 “Everyone lived”: Cannac, cited by Shakhovskoy; interview of October 26, 1995.

  138 The last letter: Kokoshkin diary, February 7, 1938, PC.

  139 “I want this”: Jannelli to VN, June 26, 1937.

  140 author’s questionnaire: November 1937, Bobbs-Merrill archive, Lilly.

  141 “Our situation is”: VN to Shakhovskoy, n.d., LOC.

  142 Sergei Rachmaninoff: Rachmaninoff to VN, May 28, 1938, LOC.

  143 “The smooth bits”: VéN pages on DN’s childhood.

  144 “And among the candy-like”: SM, 308.

  145 nude sunbathing: VN to Raisa Tatarinov, November 12, 1937.

  146 “and now it is my wife’s”: VN to Jannelli, January 31, 1938.

  147 She was delighted: VéN to Shakhovskoy, 1938 postcard, LOC.

  148 major French writer: Field, 1977, 141, 209. Despite what her husband said in jest, in VéN’s opinion, “his French was a
s excellent as his English.” VéN to Boyd, June 6, 1987, VNA. She recalled that VN had cast about, uncertain what language to write in. January 9, 1985, Boyd archive.

  149 article on Pushkin: “Pouchkine, ou le vrai et le vraisemblable,” NRF, March 1, 1937. “Mademoiselle O,” Mesures, 1936.

  150 “both men might have chosen”: Unpublished last chapter of SM, LOC.

  151 fantastic congealing: LL, 182–84.

  152 convoluted copyright: Jannelli to VN, April 23, 1938, Lilly.

  153 before the outbreak: VéN to Rowohlt, July 5, 1987, VNA.

  154 “dazzlingly brilliant”: A. I. Nazaroff’s report, Bobbs-Merrill ms., Lilly.

  155 “threaded on my hero’s: VN to Jannelli, July 14, 1938, Lilly.

  156 an editor’s suggestion: Putnam to VN, March 17, 1937.

  157 “I schall [sic] never”: VN to Jannelli, May 18, 1938.

  158 high cinematic hopes: It had been conceived for the screen, VN to Walter Minton, November 4, 1958.

  159 “Eiffel Tower”: VN to VéN, February 19, 1936, VNA.

  160 “because there is nowhere”: VN to Struve, December 23, 1938, LOC.

  161 “the residence of most”: VéN to Rowohlt, August 5, 1960, VNA.

  162 a lucrative market: As Newsweek had it in VN’s obituary, “He might as well have been writing in Icelandic,” July 18, 1977, 42.

  163 one reliable witness: Interview with Irina Morozova Lynch, December 6, 1996.

  164 handwriting can be found: Ms. of RLSK, LOC.

  165 “a champion figure”: VN to Roman Grynberg, January 29, 1963.

  166 “switched from” to “VN’s and my marriage”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973, VNA.

  167 suitcase balanced: VN was fond of drawing historical radii between writing desks—he was keen to say exactly where Flaubert had been in the composition of Madame Bovary when Dickens was composing Bleak House, one hundred miles away—but remained scornful of the idea that Joyce had had any influence on him. At the same time, he admitted in the early 1960s that he reread Ulysses annually. VN to Grynberg, December 11, 1950. (He had done so at least since 1931, when he told Struve he had reread the novel. Struve, “Vladimir Nabokov as I Knew and as I Saw Him,” 11, Hoover.)

  169 Boyd has located: Boyd, 1990, 496.

  170 Viennese delegation: DEFENSE, 10.

  171 “pages slipped”: RLSK, 81.

  172 poetry of Donne: VéN translated Donne, and Marvell, into French. Interview with DN, January 16, 1997. (She has this in common with Sibyl Shade, PF, 58.) The immensely astute Mary Bellino, recognizing VN’s inscription in a 1937 Chatto edition, supplied the information about Christmas 1938.