Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov

  V.

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [27 January 1936]

  TO: 22, Nestor Str., Berlin – Halensee, Allemagne

  4, rue Washington

  [Brussels]

  27–I–36

  My dear love, I got your letter with the whirlwind trace of his little paw, and Mother’s one too: I’ve already written to her about everything, by the way. I’m starting to miss you madly. The French evening went ‘brilliantly’, but there wasn’t a big crowd – although all the ‘elite’ were there. That same evening Maurois was speaking and there was the premiere of a film about Anna Pavlova! Hellens (who calls me every day – and tomorrow I’m having lunch at his place) reckons I should give ‘Mlle O’ to Paulhan (N. R. F.), but I think that a newspaper would pay more. I’ll bring a report about the evening (in general, there are lots of little notices and articles, – I collect what I can, but you know how reluctantly I do this) – they compare me to Rilke who is now very much in fashion. The reading went well, because they listened marvellously. And yesterday was the Russian evening, lots of people, – and the room was charming, and ‘everything got to them’. I went through the poetry first, then ‘Lips to Lips’ … think he must be asleep now – my little sweetheart – or is purposefully throwing the ballast overboard – and the pillow’s already lying on the floor, with the pacifier nearby, while he’s standing upright and mumbling something … anyway, they laughed a lot in the right places; in the second half I read the last three chapters of ‘Invitation’ (the night before, Zina had a tea-party, where I read the intermediate chapters, so now she knows the whole thing), and the result was such that I will now, of course, read these chapters in Paris too. After that there was supper at a restaurant. Now about Eleonora: she was at my French reading, and was very successfully introduced there to Zina (who gets kinder and kinder all the time) and the next day (Saturday, that is) was invited by Zina to tea, and arrived first with a bunch of tulips. She and Zina have become beautifully close – they’ve already been walking with their arms around each other, for Zina faisait de son mieux, and after tea there was the reading itself – of the intermediate chapters – after which the guests (Auerbach and his wife, Mme Bazilevsky, Ilyashenko and someone else) left, but Eleonora (and Kirill) were kept back for supper (i.e., their dinner), after which we all went together to the cinema. And that’s not all: when the rather poor film was over, we went to a little cellar pub (you know the usual vulgar dimness-tightness-cosiness, with a Spaniard playing the guitar, the haze of tobacco and pictures portraying headless dancers, collapsing houses, blood, freaks, bulls), and it was around half past one when we took Eleonora to her hotel; yesterday too she was there, but left in the evening (with a terrible mixture of ‘Lips to Lips’ and ‘Invitation’ in her head). As for Kaplan, he called on Zina twice, while I happily lunched at the Shcherbatovs’, and then with his wife and car turned up at my reading at the Club, and although I tried hard to avoid this, slipped with wife and car into the restaurant where we were having supper, and he and Zina were making plans (till I stepped on her foot) about how to organize my reading in Eindhoven. I love you, my love, my dear darling – you’re probably terribly tired, I think all the time about you and the teeny-weeny one. Sergey and the Shcherbatovs fuss touchingly over Kirill, who both sleeps and dines there; – and Sergey too has a little boy, a five-year-old, wonderful – it was so strange to lift him up off the floor. He has greatly changed for the better, Kirill, in every sense, Zina is very fond of him. During this time he managed to 1) fall off the marble stairs at the Maison d’Art; 2) trip over on the pavement in front of the restaurant where we dined yesterday. I have so far gathered only seven hundred Semyonlyudvigoviches. I am leaving for Antwerp tonight, but I just had lunch in the home of an absolutely charming publisher Masui who is married to … Margarita. I got a letter from Mme Tatarinov with an invitation to a (French) soirée at her place on the 29th, so I’ll leave here on Wednesday around one p.m. Sergey showed me marvellous engravings and portraits of Graun and other genealogical titbits. I did not know, for example, that we are relatives of the Shakhovskoys, and at the Shcherbatovs’ they served a gigantic kulebyaka since there were fourteen at table and an atmosphere out of ‘War and Peace’. On a beaucoup admiré my little boy and you. Très svietski.

  And why hasn’t ‘Despair’ come out? Greetings to Anyuta – please read to her about Eleonora, etc. I did my best – and both liked each other very much. Write to me again, my darling. The weather’s warm here, at the end of the boulevard there’s a little square with a black candelabra of araucarias, and the younger ones are thoroughly covered with pine – conifer camouflage. Kulisher divides all people into those from and those not from Kiev. Regina turned out to be a charming, youngish, somewhat greying lady, talented au dire de Zina. Zina’s husband is an unusually forthright person and told me 1) he could not stand me because he thought I was a snob, like Nika 2) whom he can’t stand because of his insincerity. Kirill’s rather afraid of him. So, my joy, I have to write two postcards to Paris now, and then it’ll be time to head for Antwerp. I love you very much. I kiss you very much. And this is for him:

  V.

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [30 January 1936]

  TO: Nestor Str. 22, Berlin – Halensee, Allemagne

  130 av. de Versailles

  [Paris]

  What is Long’s address?

  30–I–36

  My love, my joy, my precious creature, I’ve been so whirled around that I haven’t written to you for two days. I think I stopped at the Antwerp reading. Yes. So, I went there and gave the reading, read two hundred and fifty Belgian pages, which, together with the earlier ones, amounts to nine hundred plus. Pumpyansky is unusually like an old parrot. It was rather boring. I read not ‘Invitation’ but ‘The Aurelian’. During the intermission, and after the reading, and before the reading, a lethally tedious big black lady looked after me, while another of the organizers performed a magic trick – lighting paper without fire. I returned to Brussels around one a.m. and of course could not manage the lock, so poor Zinochka in her little grey robe had to … Next day I had lunch at Hellens’. He’s married to a Russian Jewess from Rostov-on-Don, three very sweet children speaking Russian better than French, a family atmosphere. They propose that we spend the summer where they do too, a first-class pension in the country, twenty francs a day, and for the three of us they’d make an even better price. It was very pleasant there. Bags under his eyes, aquiline nose, long teeth, a monocle. Both promised in general to consider ‘my fate’ thoroughly: he, as the foremost writer in Belgium, wields a lot of influence. In the afternoon Zina and I were at the Fierenses’. They will be in Paris in a week and will arrange a meeting for me with Jaloux – not that I want it. I also got on very well with them, and discussed my fate with them too. Hellens proposed writing to Paulhan about Mlle O, to place it in the journal: they pay three hundred French francs per page there. And here in Paris, au dire de Mme Tatarinov, Marcel and Ergaz and du Boz are all interested in it, so there’ll most likely be a reading here, too. From the Fierenses’ we went to a meeting of ‘Thyrse’, ageing Belgian men of letters greeted me with ‘words of welcome’. A writer sitting next to me, his nose a net of purple veins, is famous, because as a youth he snacked on human flesh: his father was a railroad employee; some worker got run over; while they rushed for help, he, hurrying desperately, ate a piece of the half-severed leg – he wanted to try it: une occasion comme celle-ci ne se présentera jamais plus – the worker later filed a suit against him, although the leg got amputated anyway. A poet, he told me, should experience everything. That evening we visited the sculptor Le plaa. I’ve collected a small library of autographed books – most of them I’ve left at Zina’s, since I’ll stop for three days in Brussels on the way back, because the Club is counting on arranging another evening: in the first half I will read ‘Mlle O’ (qui commence à m’agacer). The Shcherbatovs came up with a farcical project of my doing a reading with … V. V. Ba
ryatinsky (the uncle). Yesterday Zina saw me off at the station. From the Gare du Nord I went to av. de Versailles by metro, so that I arrived totally exhausted, with my gradually more and more stone-like and gloomy suitcases. All the tickets have sold already. In their announcements P. N. absolutely outrageously print me in big letters, and Khodasevich in small. A thousand five hundred each is already guaranteed. And other possibilities are popping up too. Here they’ve given me a very charming room in a beautiful apartment. Ilyusha and Zenzinov rival Zina as far as the tenderest kindness goes. Zenzinov told me in detail the whole story of A. O.’s illness. My heart constricts when I look at the cat, which has got darker and kindlier. As soon as I began to unpack – it was around half past seven – Bunin showed up, with his nasal voice, and, in spite of my fierce resistance, ‘dragged’ me to dinner at Korniloff’s – there is such a restaurant. At first our conversation went absolutely nowhere – mainly, it seems, because of me – I was tired and angry – everything irritated me, his manner of ordering grouse, his every intonation, his little obscene jokes, and the exaggerated subservience of the lackeys, so that he later complained to Aldanov that I was thinking about something else the whole time. I was angrier (that I’d gone to dinner with him) than I had been for a long time, but towards the end, and then when we came out on to the street, suddenly sparkles of mutuality began to flash here and there, and when we reached Café Murat, where fat Aldanov was waiting for us, we had a great time. There too for a moment I saw Khodasevich, who’s got very yellow; Bunin hates him, and he says about Fondaminsky: ‘So! Ilyusha couldn’t care less, but Zenzinov loved her (A. O.) for thirty years. Thirty years!’ (and he raises a finger). Aldanov said that when Bunin and I talk with each other and look at each other, it feels as if two movie cameras are rolling non-stop. Iv. Al. recounted for me superbly how he was married in Odessa, how his six-year-old son died. He claims that the (figurative) features of ‘Mitya Shakhovskoy’ (Father Ioann) gave him the prompt to write Mitya’s Love. He claims that – well, I’d better tell you in person. After the café the three of us had supper at the Aldanovs’, so that I got to bed late, and slept poorly – because of the wine. My darling. How is my adorable little boy? A thousand things to do and I don’t know where to start. Tell me, why is Despair still not out?

  I will do with Long as you say. I love you, I love you.

  V.

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [postmarked 2 February 1936]

  TO: 22, Nestor Str.,

  Berlin – Halensee, Allemagne

  130 av. de Versailles

  [Paris]

  My sweet darling, my love,

  you’re silent; please, write; from time to time – on the street or in the midst of a conversation, a thought about you and our little boy pierces me right through (usually, when I think about him, there’s a kind of heavenly melting inside my soul): write, my joy. I’m annoyed I forgot to write down Long’s address, but I think I’ll get it from you tomorrow and then will write to him right away, it’s turned out awfully foolish. You know what, send me a copy of ‘Mlle O!’ Vlad. Mikh.’s radio in the next room is playing ‘yo, heave ho’. I received two ‘Despairs’ from you – it’s come out not too badly – like a three-coloured banner. Will they send me more copies? And how about giving some to people we know? Whom shall we give them to? A list? I received a letter from Zina – she says they’re taking the most active measures to settle us there. I have already seen tons of people. Two days ago (Thursday) I felt so disgusting that I thought I had flu, I could barely move; but then I had a really good sleep and yesterday and today I’ve been seething with activity. Dastakiyan turns out to be very likeable, blond hair and glasses, middle-aged and rather shortish; everybody loves him, he runs the Kyandzhuntsevs’ cinema. They’re the same as ever, as carefree and welcoming, I had dinner at their place and then went to that cinema of theirs, where Saba acted very much the boss, while Irina is as charming as she was (and she fell completely in love with the little boy’s portrait). Behind us there sat (he – thinner, older, she – with a blind fox-terrier on her lap) … Kalashnikov and his wife. I will have to see them (Ira immediately sold him two tickets). After the film the Kyandzhuntsevs left in their limousine, but Dastakiyan and I went to Café Murat to talk. We discussed things on the way, but met Aldanov and Kerensky in the café, so the business conversation did not happen. Kerensky was horrified that I am so apolitical. Today Dastakiyan came to see me, and I described my film (Hôtel Magique) to him in detail, he very much approved of it and in a few days will introduce me to Shifrin and someone else, we’ll see (I’m trying very hard). Yesterday afternoon I was in the editorial office and told them about the disgrace I’m enclosing here, they promised me they’d come to their senses. I passed Matusevich’s story on to Igor and refused the interview. Sherman, Vishnyak and Fedotov came to see me. The first interprets ‘Invitation’ beautifully and on Monday will give a talk about me. (Has Despair been sent to PN, it’s important!). He also spits and holds his hand over his mouth. I will visit the Zeldoviches on Monday afternoon – I got a letter from her and phoned her. I wrote to Supervielle and D. Roche. What shall I do with the Dahls? The thing is, Girshfeld shares the bookstore with Neskin – this is why I am not very keen to go there (or shall I phone him?). Shall I send something to Mother? I am writing to Zyoka – I visited the old man today, Sarah has become much prettier. My dear darling, I even found time to work on ‘Mlle O’and visit Montparnasse, where after Poplavsky’s death the poets wander around with the faces of meek martyrs. The Tenishev old boys have roused themselves. Spoke on the phone with Berberova. Tomorrow I am at Khodasevich’s. Today there’s a talk by Milyukov, to which I of course won’t go. I live in the most marvellous conditions (the bathroom is better than ours) and I’m gradually feeling like myself again, I can’t tell you how I felt in the first two days. My dear love, I’m writing this letter in great haste, somehow can’t concentrate. In the métro it stinks like between the toes and it’s just as cramped. But I like the slamming of the iron turnstiles, the flourishes (‘merde’) on the wall, the dyed brunettes, the men smelling of wine, the lifelessly sonorous names of the stations. You know, I’m thinking with pleasure about reworking ‘It is me’. Have you sent Despair yet? I love you and send lots of kisses for you and my boy.

  Will write to Anyutochka in a day or two.

  V.

  ____________________

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [postmarked 3 February 1936]

  TO: 22, Nestor str., Berlin–Halensee, Allemagne

  [Paris]

  My dear happiness, I’m not arranging any kind of readings in Holland, that’s the most utter nonsense. In Brussels there will probably be a French-Russian evening, on the 18th or 19th, after which I’ll return to Berlin. I don’t want to hear again about Kaplan’s idiotic undertaking (actually it was Zina who prompted him out of kindness). What nonsense.

  Don’t forget to send me a copy of Mlle O (how could I give away my only copy to Hellens?). The evening (last Wednesday) at Raisa’s fell through because her husband and daughter came down with the flu – they’re better now and she’ll have the same crowd again. I gave Zina two orchids, but, of course, she wouldn’t take a dédommagement. Tell ‘Petropolis’ – we need ‘Despair’ to appear here in some quantity, they’ll have to send it to both newspapers (personally – to both critics), because it’ll sell well now in connection with my evening. Life is absolutely unbearable here for me without you and our little boy. Just now wet snow has been falling, the Seine is yellow, the dampness immediately takes the shape of one’s feet, as soon as one goes out. So you say that he, my little one, dreams about me? My little darling. Good Lord, I visited the Kalashnikovs – and won’t set foot there again, ever (they live right around the corner – but they don’t know that), the talk was exclusively about Corsica, Felix, and Bobby (whom I wrote from here, it turns out that he asked our mutual friends several times how he could get the books of mine he’d read about in the N.Y. Times, – C
ountess Grabbe told me this – I knew her when she was Beloselsky), Kalashnikov belched, talked a lot about his and others’ sexual organs, about wealth (Tatyana has become wealthy), about a trepanation of the skull, which he’s undergone twice, and advised me to read Claude Farrère. I lunched – yesterday – at the Kyandzhuntsevs’, from there went to Khodasevich’s: his fingers are bandaged – furuncles, and his face is yellow, like the Seine today, and his thin red lip curves poisonously (while his clean tight little dark suit is so glossy it hurts your eyes); his wife with beautiful, loving eyes and in general, to her waist (from the top down), quite pretty, but then all of a sudden her hips begin to burgeon; she guiltily hides them in the shifting planes of her gait, like a package of dirty laundry. Vladislav poured venom on all our colleagues the way they spray saplings against phylloxera, the Zaytsevs turn blue with terror when he approaches. He spoke rather wittily about ‘Invitation’ and his small nose moved between the lenses of his large glasses and the bandaged fingers bristled. Felsen was there, too, watching me with devoted eyes. In the evening I discussed with Sherman and Il. Is. what I should read and settled on the following: I’ll read three short stories, all the same length: 1) Russian Beauty 2) A Slice of Life 3) Breaking the News.

  I’ve set myself two tasks – to place Mlle O and ‘Despair’. Will meet Shifrin about my film on Wednesday at three. Expecting calls from Supervielle and Denis. Will see Ergaz and Marcel on Wednesday. Tickets for the Khodasevich evening are selling unusually well, actually they sold out completely a long time ago, and now the reserve of extra chairs keeps growing. Tonight is Sherman’s ‘lecture’ (he’s in great form all round). Ilyusha is trying very movingly to ‘influence’ me in a religious way, for instance starting a conversation from afar – there are some outstanding priests around, wouldn’t I want to hear just one short little sermon, and so on. A certain Mother Maria finds me somewhat ‘starched’. Appreciate the tone and the implication. My happiness, write to me, I reread your last pale dear letter many times – my sweet, I can feel how tired you get, it’s terrible; when I come back I’ll look after our little one all day, you can rest. Awful draughts in this house, can’t imagine how poor A.O. lived here, and there’s never any sun, but the apartment itself is charmingly comfortable. I madly crave a smoke, but I think I’ll preserve my virginity nonetheless. I wrote to Zyoka – have been to Vava’s, saw the old man, there they’re filming all those nudes, the whole apartment is covered with the hair of a shedding (and very lively) fox terrier. My love!