Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Oh yes, I haven’t written you anything about Cambridge yet! We went there by car with the saintly Sav. Is. En route visited Aleksandr Blok – not the poet but a businessman (Kannegiser’s former husband). It is hard, as they say, to convey what I felt on seeing this little town I haven’t been in for fifteen years. What I preserved in my memory has lived, it turns out, its own life, has undergone, it turns out, an evolution not corresponding to any reality, and now

  ... in confrontation

  with a chatty witness – with that

  reality, lying nonchalantly,

  my poor memory was silent no matter how I tried to rouse her, taking her around familiar places. Everything now seemed smaller, greyer, simpler, everything lacked that harmonious soul that developed in it while it lived in me. I went into my former lodgings, automatically pushed a door to the right, found myself in the toilet, did a small business, and with tears in my eyes walked back into the little street (but before that I had been fingering, for a long time but with no result, a special little thing that would move in the entrance hall, a little board with the name of the tenant – at home and not at home – but the recollection was silent, my fingers could not feel the past). It was drizzling, in the side-street, right there, I met a man who once registered those having lunch in Hall, and he now recognized me at once, which somewhat shocked me. Then I plodded to the other side of the college, to the Backs. My God, how many poems I composed under these enormous elms! They have not changed

  and in their nets – a movement of crows,

  a sketch of a nest in a vellum gap;

  not croaking, – but almost a cooing

  and painted crocuses among the grass.

  I looked at ditches I once jumped over, at the muddy water of the river – and a true Pushkinian mood began to work its iambic piston. I walked down the familiar road (the whole time, crows’ cooing, and sparrows’ – also melodiously moist sounds – and the ivy, and the boxwood, and the thuyas, and the old oaks) to the soccer field, there on the dark green a foursome were kicking near the goal, and one of the balls, like a dog who’d recognized a passer-by, ran over to me a few times, but although it was heavy and muddy, like in the old days, my foot could not get out of it the ring of the past. I returned to the college, walked in on Harrison, who hadn’t changed a bit and who greeted me with no particular joy; I had tea with him, and he told me in the same expressions, with the same pause and smile, what he had told me at our first meeting in 1919 – how he was learning Bulgarian. He knows Swedish, too, – and begged me eagerly to send him the Swedish ‘Defence’ – so I’d ask you, my sweet, to do that: E. Harrison, Trinity College. This is important. From there I went to Stewart’s, awfully old, but he recognized me at once. It would be good to send a French ‘Defence’ to him: Rev. Dr Stewart, Trinity College. By the way: in view of Solomon’s unusual attentiveness to me could we ask Petropolis to send her two or three of my books, for example Despair, Defence and Glory? (There’s someone else, besides her and Grinberg, who are also touchingly thoughtful and sweet: that’s the Struve couple, all those parties – they arranged them – and took so much trouble – and he goes everywhere with my books, advertising me, and they call me every morning – charming!).

  There seemed to be less traffic on Trinity Street – but then memory was thrusting at me the whole time some sum of former impressions, while that was just a share of a regular Cambridge day. The cut of jackets (and the colour – mostly chestnut) has changed, and now fashion dictates walking around with an umbrella! I had some more tea at a pastry-shop (described in ‘Glory’) and around six, joined with Grinberg again (who had visited his college on my behalf), we drove back to London. This visit was a good lesson – the lesson of the return – and a warning: we also need not expect life, heat, a wild awakening of the past – from our other return – to Russia. As a toy sold with a key, everything is already wrapped up in memory – and without it nothing moves.

  I adore your letters, my happiness. Of course I have noticed the landscape from Bagrova’s window (tell her that I called the hotel twice but could not reach him. But in fact I won’t even call). Lyusya has not deigned to tell me from whom he got it. I haven’t thought of a title yet, but something like yours. I won’t draw a little train, since tomorrow a real one will arrive.

  Sablin is pleasant, emphatically liberal, lives in a very elegant little mansion. A photograph of a bathing heir in combination with a book I read in Paris (about little Ludovic, in Temple) touches some creative string. I would very much like to write something. Sablin is actively occupied with my soirée – on Sunday. There’s an advertisement for ink I really like: permanently please people, pens, postmen and posterity. Once sitting in La Coupole, in Paris, with Irina G., I suddenly noticed that the little cap of my pen, a present from Granny, was missing; after agonizing searches under the tables I found it in my coat pocket.

  Today I will have lunch with the dear Lees, then will meet with Zhdanov-Kortner at the Hyde Park Hotel, then to Bar. Budberg’s, then a cocktail at Lady Fletcher’s, then dinner at the Thompsons’ – and this is a comparatively easy day.

  It is not a very interesting letter, I am afraid – but I have completely forgotten how to write, and was horribly tired – am writing this page on Saturday morning, since I couldn’t finish last night for tiredness, but now I’ve had a good sleep. Nicholson has not returned from Africa yet, and I am sending a book with a letter to Baring. I can’t tell you how much I love you and am kissing you. So on April first we will go south, till the autumn. Shall I send a book to Mother?

  V.

  ____________________

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [1–2 March 1937]

  [TO: Berlin]

  Notting Hill

  52 Kensington Park Rd

  [London]

  2-III-1937

  My darling, now (8 p.m. Monday) I’m going to Paris. The soirée at Sablin’s yesterday was extremely successful. I read fifteen little things. Read from the first chapter of ‘The Gift’, and ‘Music’. Had lunch yesterday at the Liberal Club (full of the shadows of Gladstone and Disraeli, but inhabited by white-headed elders; one of them marvellously nodded off after the meal, at coffee, his grey head bent to the side) and they offered to arrange a reading there, paid. Struve and Harris will arrange for me another English reading, paid (and besides, we might repeat at Sablin’s). This will be scheduled for mid-April: I will come here again for three or four days (I’ve been invited to stay at Arnold Haskell’s) for the publication of the book – this is very important. So. I think I’ve done splendidly. Now the second thing: I’ve had a very pleasant conversation today with Pares, and while I was with him he wrote a wonderful letter to Stephen Duggan in America, where he had recently placed another Russian and thinks he’ll place me too: this is only the second time he’s doing this, so our chances are good. Finally – perhaps the biggest success – I’ve been able to arrange so that we can move to England in the autumn, since they promise to provide for me for six months here, till I find a job (and no doubt I’ll find lessons, good lessons, here to start off). So there’s the general result of my trip, and now the plan is: we won’t take any apartments in Paris, but will go south right away, on April 1st. I don’t know exactly how much time we’ll need to obtain the identité, but in any event we don’t have to bring furniture. By winter we’ll easily find an apartment here. Darling, this is final. In any case I’ll start the carte d’ident. rigmarole right away. I want to spend this summer perfectly quietly, I need to write, and you and the boy need the sun, the sea – and we won’t spend more than a hundred on such a summer. So only on April 15th I’ll come here for 3–4 days, but I want you to be settled in the south before that.

  I love you, my dearest, I am in a dreadful hurry, the train leaves in an hour, and I haven’t packed anything yet, will write to Anyuta from Paris.

  V.

  [AL, 2 PP.]

  [postmarked 4 March 1937]

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

  c/o Fondaminsky,130, av. de Versailles

  [Paris]

  My love, my dear darling,

  I spoke with Lyusya, and with another Ilya, and with some other people – and they all say that it makes absolutely no sense to bring the furniture – especially since we’ll be settling down in London. I have been to Maklakov’s about the carte d’identité. I’ll have no trouble getting it, but it will take a minimum of a month from today. And you, my darling, should immediately submit a visa application to the French consulate, addressed to Maklakov, 57, rue de l’Abbé Gruelt, and to Monsieur Eidel, Consul de France, Ministère des affaires étrangères, and with a note that your husband is here. Apply for a month or two, this does not matter, because by that time I’ll already have the carte. It would be risky to count that I’ll have it by March 25th. – Voilà.

  I’ll remain here, of course, till your arrival. 1) This won’t be inconvenient in the least for Ilya and V. M. 2) I was promised an advance of 1,000 fr. if I undertake a play, and it’s very well set up for me to write here, and I have a marvellous idea – I’ll write it in a month. And the play will work not only for the Russian Theatre, but also for Kort., and for the French (through Gabr. Marc. who has now brilliantly come out as a dramatist). 3) yesterday I began to translate my ‘Music’ for Candide – and it’s turning out very well, very engagingly; I’ll finish and submit tomorrow.

  My ‘Vrai and V-semblable’ has already come out in N. R. F. and is proving a success. I’ve written to Gallimard again, since he hasn’t yet responded to me about ‘Despair’. I have passed 100 pages in English on to L. Received a contract from Kort., signed by him.

  It seems a place in the south has been found for us. Mme Schlesinger called today while I was out: everything has been set up and full room and board – the two of us and the boy – will cost us forty fr. (? and later we will find a little house.) I’ll find out all the details tonight. I’m also keeping in mind Sasha Chorny’s widow’s pension in Le Lavandou. I want you to take the sleeper here and, after a day here, in the evening, take the evening sleeper south. Maybe I’ll go there a day or two earlier and then, probably, it makes sense to go straight through Strasbourg. Lyusya strongly recommends that Anyuta too should come south for the spring and summer, tell her that. (In an hour I’m going to meet Valéry, while my lecture in Feux croisés – about ‘women-writers’ or ‘exhibitions’ – I haven’t decided yet – is scheduled for May – I will come back here especially – in the General Franco sense, in any case, this will be a real success, with a guarantee). And here’s what I think about the London trip in the middle of April (I have already arranged to go there and back for three pounds on a mail plane): two or three readings are promised me there – and I hope they will have more fat on them than those I’ve just done. I wrote seven letters to England from here yesterday. Probably there will be a reading at Teslenko’s this month. I also must find out from Paulhan about ‘A Bad Day’. He promised me.

  It seems to me that all I have written and am writing to you is very consoling, my joy. For God’s sake do not forget spreading boards, pins and boxes (one with the treasures, the other two empty). They need to be carried on in a suitcase, with you. To go to Brussels right now would be absurd, inconvenient and very expensive – you’re wrong there, my love. I am ideally cosy here, after the horrendous London commotion. It seems I’ll be able to set up a free lamp treatment of my Greek. I sent the book to Mother (and did you send the little photos?), so that altogether, nine hundred Czech pages have been set from my ‘encyclopaedia’. I don’t really understand what you write about Prague. You must find out about the French visa in Berlin, though, i.e. from Berlin they can, for instance, give them directions there to issue it, if a permission came from here. Write – this worries me terribly – the thought of Mother. On the whole, I am holding my tongue. Today I composed, with Ilya, a new letter to P.N.: am asking for a little more. If he agrees I will immediately give the excerpt (disguised) about the triangle inscribed in a circle. I adore you. I adore the little one. I expect you in 25 days. I wish it were sooner! Let’s say, on March 20th!

  I am writing to Altagracia.

  ____________________

  [ALS, 2 PP.]

  [postmarked 7 March 1937]

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

  c/o Fondaminsky, 130, av. de Versailles

  [Paris]

  My darling, my sweetest love, my darling…

  I must admit that Kort. and Zhdanov have somewhat pressured and hurried me. But what does Heath have to do with it? Does he really have an option? Kort. has no relation to him now whatsoever. As for Grasset – I’d love to see them dare ask for anything! (Besides Grasset himself has gone mad, everything has changed, Fisné left a long time ago – and, between you and me, Camera will come out under a different title if they film it. It seems that apart from the blindness nothing of it will remain). My cold’s gone, but sometimes at night I start blowing my nose, madly and productively. I saw Lyusya, he is very cheerful. He called today asking to get him a free ticket to the Sovremennye zapiski evening at the furrier Kirkhner’s ‘salons’. We’re meeting in two hours and going there together (Bunin will be there, the idiotic trio, and more). I got an offer from Heinemann to give them ‘autob’ to read (Putnam’s reading it now). A letter from Struve with an action plan for the five or six days I’ll spend in London in the middle of April. (Among other things there will also be Cambridge, Oxford and the French society). I am expecting from Budberg a translation of ‘Fialta’ being done for ‘Hundred Russian Short Stories’. A flowery note from Tsvetaeva. I have written to Mil.

  You can congratulate me: last night I finished the French translation of Music (it has turned out, in my opinion, better than anything I’ve written in French) and tonight I’ll give it to Ida for ‘Candide’ (I will see her at K.’s). Yesterday at ‘Feux croisés’, it was full, Raisa beamed, Valéry spoke (rather wanly) on Mallarmé. If it could be just as full at my reading in May ...

  The blue-haired and very nice Kogan-Bernstein, who also lives in this building, is giving me mountain sun. I’ll start the play tomorrow. I work well here.

  My love, I am in a hurry, am kissing you, my darling, and him, my little one.

  V.

  ____________________

  [ALS, 4 PP.]

  [postmarked 10 March 1937]

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

  c/o Fondaminsky, 130, av. de Versailles

  [Paris]

  My darling, my joy,

  I have been scribbling away at the play, getting up late, going for the sun lamp every day at three: the mountain sun has already helped me, at least my little face, otherwise I looked thoroughly obscene. The itch on my neck has more or less gone – but how awfully I’ve suffered all these weeks, how my underwear looked – from the blood – I’ve never in my whole life been so utterly miserable ... This treatment costs me nothing. At the end of the sessions the doctor will also inject me with my own blood – it’s supposed to help a lot. Either because I have been writing, or because of the lilac sun, or because I will see you in three weeks I am completely cheerful today.

  I’ve been seeing actors, actresses (my leading lady, Bakhareva, is charming, yesterday we had dinner at her place with Ilyusha and V. M.), giving English lessons to Irina G. (fifteen), – there’ll be one more lesson, but in general I’m sitting at home a lot: writing the play is torture (I told you its theme, – a cheerful, sweet young lady arrives with her mother at a resort – and all of that is only an interv. luc.– and ends – inevitably, with her returning to her (‘theatrical’) insanity). But in fact I began to write something else and nothing came of it – I furiously tore up the five pages. Now it’s all right, though, rolling along – maybe I’ll even lift my little wheels off the ground and a two-winged shadow, for which alone it’s really worth writing, will start gliding across the page. Do you remember my letters from Prague, my life? T
oday I’m in the same mood again.

  ‘Sovr. zap.’ comes out in a day or two, and today Vadim Victorovich was offering his father a few hundred as an honorarium. The father will take it.

  Tomorrow I will be dictating to Raisa, for Candide, ‘Musique’, which Doussia has looked over. If they take it, I’ll interrupt writing the play for a three-day translation into French of yet another story – it’s turning out much easier and more fun than I thought.

  A very sweet letter, today, from Bourne. He has already sent advance copies to Coulson Kernahan, Harold Nicholson, Hartley, Ralph Straus, David Garnett, Maurice Baring and Gubsky. It will appear on the fifteenth of April, by my request. About Gubsky: he’s a very obliging person, but, in my opinion, rather talentless. He considers me ‘arch modern’ and himself as belonging to the line of deep and socially thoughtful Russian authors. I really enjoyed one of his phrases (in general, he is a pessimist and blasé): ‘You know, even if they were translating – well, not your books or mine, but, let’s say, “Anna Karenina”, even then it would be difficult to find a publisher …’ That’s what we call: le toupet.

  Bunin and Khmara got drunk at the Kirshner evening and swore rankly. Lyusya was in a dinner jacket and on the way there stopped several times, threw open his coat and in the gleam of the streetlight displayed himself so I could tell him if he looked good. He and I were inseparable that night. And yesterday I called him – and he swears he’s written to Anyuta (‘I have written differently now,’ he told me) not to bring the furniture. You both know my opinion (and everyone’s opinion), but you can act as you wish. But this (bringing it) is insane, and you’ll regret it!

  All in all, my puss, it’s time you got ready to join me. Have you filed the application at the consulate? Why not come a little earlier, on the twenty-fifth, say? I’m expecting a letter from Roquebrune: they say it’s a marvellous place and very quiet; some say it’s better in a pension than subsisting on our own grub, but others recommend living in a pension first so we could look around and find a cabin of the Wilson kind.