Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me

by Teffi

  The Merezhkovskys led strange lives and were so out of touch with reality that it was positively startling to hear them come out with ordinary words like “coal”, “boiled water” and “macaroni”. The word “ink” was less startling—at least it had to do with writing and ideas . . . They both lived in the world of ideas, and they were unable to see or in any way understand either people or life itself. You won’t find a single real person in any of their writings. Zinaida Gippius freely acknowledged this, saying that the actors in her stories were not people but ideas.

  Since I don’t intend to discuss their literary work but simply to describe the Merezhkovskys as they appeared to me, this peculiarity of theirs might seem irrelevant—but it did in fact play a crucial role in their whole approach to people and life.

  All around them were scarcely perceptible shades, phantoms and spectres. These shades had names and they spoke, though what they said had no meaning. As for Merezhkovsky, he never conversed. Dialogue meant nothing to him. The Merezhkovskys never knew what any particular person felt about them, nor did they have the least wish to know. They could be attentive (Merezhkovsky could even be absurdly flattering) to someone useful, but without taking any real interest in this person or why they might want to make themselves useful to him.

  As to whether they had ever felt simple human love towards someone . . . I doubt it.

  At one time they were very good friends with Dmitry Filosofov. For a long time they formed an inseparable trio.

  When a rumour went round Biarritz that Filosofov had died, I thought, “Someone is going to have to tell the Merezhkovskys.”

  That day I happened to meet them on the street.

  “Have you heard the sad news about Filosofov?”

  “What news? Has he died?” asked Merezhkovsky.

  “Yes.”

  “Do they know what from?” he asked. And without waiting for an answer, he said, “Well, we must be on our way, Zina, or we’ll be late again and all the best dishes will be gone.”

  “We’re having lunch at a restaurant today,” he explained.

  And that was that.

  In Petersburg I had only seldom come across the Merezhkovskys. We didn’t get to know one another at all well until our time in Biarritz.[3] There we saw a lot of one another and talked a great deal.

  Life did not go well for the Merezhkovskys in Biarritz. It was not easy for any of us, but it must have been especially hard for them, since they took any kind of disorder in their living arrangements as a personal affront.

  We refugees had been allocated the magnificent Maison Basque hotel. Each of us had a beautifully appointed room and bathroom for ten francs a day. But the Merezhkovskys were reluctant to pay even this. They considered it unjust. All their practical affairs were seen to by their secretary, Vladimir Zlobin, a touchingly steadfast friend. A talented poet himself, Zlobin had abandoned literature in order to fully devote himself to looking after the Merezhkovskys.

  Money, of course, was tight, and we had to be inventive. A grand fundraising celebration was arranged for Dmitry Sergeyevich’s seventy-fifth birthday.[4]

  Presided over by Countess G., the guests—some wearing German uniforms—assembled on the enormous terrace of our hotel. Merezhkovsky gave a long speech that greatly alarmed all the Russians living in the hotel. In this speech he attacked both the Bolsheviks and the Germans. He trusted that the present nightmare would soon be over, that the antichrists terrorizing Russia and the antichrists that now had France by the throat would soon be destroyed, and that the Russia of Dostoevsky would hold out a hand to the France of Pascal and Joan of Arc.

  “Now the Germans will throw us out of the hotel,” the Russians whispered fearfully.

  But the Germans seemed not to understand Merezhkovsky’s prophecies and they applauded genially along with everyone else. They did not throw us out of the hotel. Nevertheless, we were unable to stay there long. The hotel was to be made into an army barracks and we all had to find rooms in private apartments.

  The Merezhkovskys managed to install themselves in a wonderful villa, which naturally they could not afford. Dmitry Sergeyevich was ill; it was thought he had a stomach ulcer. And Zinaida Nikolaevna was nursing him dutifully.

  “I changed his hot water bottle seventeen times last night,” she said. “Then old age got the better of me and I emptied out the eighteenth onto my stomach.”

  Despite his illness, they continued to receive people on Sundays. Chatting and joking, everyone would sit in the large dining room, around an empty table. Merezhkovsky was usually at the far end of the room, reclining on a chaise longue, sullen and sulking. He would greet his guests by shouting loudly, “There’s no tea. No tea at all.”

  “Look, Madam D. has brought us some biscuits,” said Zinaida Nikolaevna.

  “Let them bring biscuits. Let them bring everything!” Merezhkovsky declared grimly.

  “But Dmitry Sergeyevich,” I said. “I thought suffering ennobled the soul.” I had heard these words from him many times.

  “Indeed it does!” he barked—and turned away. I think he found me almost unbearable. When he spoke to me he never looked at me, and when, in my presence, he spoke about me, he would refer to me simply as she. It was quite amusing, really.

  After I had packed everything in preparation for the move, I went down to the Merezhkovskys and asked Zinaida Nikolaevna if she could lend me a book for the night. They always had piles of cheap French crime novels which they read diligently every evening.

  “Zina,” said Merezhkovsky, “grab one from the second-rate pile and say she absolutely must return it tomorrow morning.”

  “No,” I said to Zinaida Nikolaevna. “She is going to choose something she likes and bring it back in her own good time. She is certainly not going to hurry.”

  He turned away angrily.

  Zinaida Nikolaevna courteously found me one of the more interesting books.

  Another time, while we were still at the hotel, I found a letter under my door. The Merezhkovskys and I were being invited to move to the Free Zone. Well-wishers had arranged visas for us and would pay our passage to America. I was to inform the Merezhkovskys at once. And so, off I went.

  Merezhkovsky was furious.

  “She must tell them to keep their distance. And she’s not to go either.”

  “Why should she be so rude to people who are only showing their concern and doing their best to help?” I asked.

  “They’re not trying to help us at all, and they’re not in the least concerned about us. They only want our names. I’d rather go to Spain. They’ve got a saint there that hardly anyone has written anything about. I’ll write a book about her and they’ll give me a visa. But she should stay here in Biarritz.”

  “More saints?” I asked. “You’re a real demon, Dmitry Sergeyevich—you can’t keep away from saints.”

  Strangely, though, despite his loathing for her (a loathing well earned, as I could never resist teasing him), they had somehow taken it into their heads that they’d like to move into an apartment with me. This plan greatly amused the rest of the Russian colony. Everyone was wondering exactly how this arrangement would work out.

  During these first months the Merezhkovskys felt a real disgust for the Germans, which they made no attempt to hide. If we were about to go out together, Zinaida Nikolaevna would begin with a quick check: were there any Germans about? If she did see a German, she would slam the gate and wait for him to pass by. And she drew caricatures of the Germans that were really not bad at all.

  The Merezhkovskys led a very ordered existence. Dmitry Sergeyevich worked throughout the morning and rested after an early lunch. Then they would always go for a walk.

  “A walk is the light of day; a day with no walk—pitch darkness,” he liked to say.

  His spine was completely bent. My impression was that he found even standing difficult unless he had something to lean on or a wall to rest against. And so Zinaida Nikolaevna always had to lead him determinedly
along, supporting nearly all his weight on her arm. This was something she was so accustomed to that when she and I went out together, she always asked me to take her arm and give her more of my weight.

  Very gradually the Merezhkovskys began to allow the Germans into their lives. There were young Germans, students, who wanted to pay their respects to a writer whose work they had read in translation. They would ask in reverent tones for his autograph. Merezhkovsky would never engage in conversation with them. Occasionally, however, he would shout in Russian: “Tell them to bring some cigarettes with them!” or “Tell them we need eggs!” Zinaida Nikolaevna would talk to them now and again, though she never said anything very nice to them.

  “You’re all like machines. The bosses command—and you obey.”

  “But of course we do, we’re soldiers. We have our discipline. What do you expect us to do?”

  “Nevertheless, you’re machines.”

  I would needle her.

  “I suppose you’d like them to form a Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies? Under a banner with the slogan ‘To Hell with all Officers!’ ”

  “Nevertheless, they’re machines.”

  She was not easily diverted.

  The Germans’ conduct in Biarritz was not exactly exemplary. Towards those who fawned over them, they were extremely polite and obliging. The rest of us they simply ignored, as if we were transparent. They would look through us and see a house, a crowd, a landscape. It feels strange to be so very transparent.

  There was one especially important German. He wore a military uniform, but it seemed that before the war he had been a banker. I can no longer remember his exact political or military position, but, judging by the number of people eager to ingratiate themselves with him, it must have been something important. He had only to walk into a café and Biarritz’s lady aristocrats—the Duchesse de, the Contesse de and even some ladies with more than one de—would spring to their feet and rush towards him. Their faces were ecstatic and adoring; there were tears in their eyes. I should mention that this German official, a man of mature years, was remarkably ugly. Created along the lines of Gogol’s Sobakyevich[5]—whom nature had not given much thought to but had simply hewed out with an axe and decided to leave it at that—this gallant appeared to have been carved, or rather hacked, from tough, resistant wood, and carelessly into the bargain: one nostril was higher, the other lower, one eye was round, the other long. Nor did his appearance seem to matter very much to him. But it was obvious that the inordinate admiration of the Biarritz ladies was starting to go to his head. The old Countess G., the organizer of Merezhkovsky’s birthday celebration, said that she had been truly stunned by this German’s remarkable looks. “Like the knight in the engraving by Dürer!” she had kept exclaiming.

  The ladies corrupted the poor German to such a degree that he began acting precious and coy. He was once seen playing with a little dog on the town square, offering it a lump of sugar. He would smile and bend down, then pull his hand away to tease the dog. He was like a spoilt, capricious ballet-dancer whose impresario is infatuated with him.

  At some point during the winter his wife appeared. She had heard that a French countess, a lady who moved in the highest society, was rather taken with her husband.

  “Is it true she’s no longer young?” she asked.

  “Oh yes,” replied the German. “She must be over sixty.”

  “Very true,” said a Frenchman who was also party to this conversation. “She certainly is over sixty. She’s eighty-seven.”

  This positively frightened the German. He blinked several times and asked for this number to be translated for him. The number was duly translated. After many shakes of the head, he said, “This could only happen in France.”

  The countess certainly knew how to bewilder. She would flash her dark eyes, wag a warning finger, or impatiently tap her little foot. This little foot, with its flat sole and its gnarled and hooked elderly toes, resembled nothing so much as a rake, but the countess decked it out in the most youthful manner. She felt she was young and enchanting. If she heard someone speak admiringly of a young woman from her circle, she would feel deeply upset. Her lady companion all but wept: “All night long she kept waking me up and shouting, ‘How could he find her beautiful in my presence. In my presence?’ ”

  I asked Zinaida Nikolaevna, “What do you think? Is she a witch?”

  “Of course she’s a witch.”

  “Do you think she flies out through the chimney at night?”

  “Of course she does.”

  “On a broomstick?”

  “How else?”

  Among the other astonishing characters flitting around Biarritz there was a very amusing Belgian woman who had something to do with the Red Cross. That at least is what she told us—and perched on her mighty bosom, on the stained grey wool into which it had been squeezed, was some kind of badge. This lady drank immoderately and wrote love letters to the elderly countess, imploring her for material assistance. The letters began with the words: “Votre Beauté!”

  The countess did not deny the woman the help she asked for, but to her friends she said, “I must admit I am quite afraid to be left alone with her. She gives me such passionate looks.”

  This remarkable countess had also taken Dmitry Sergeyevich under her wing—though she took no interest in Zinaida Nikolaevna, whom she merely tolerated as a writer’s wife. As a rule, she disliked women. Women were rivals: well-bred gentlemen are unfailingly courteous to women, and the countess wished to reign supreme. She introduced the Merezhkovskys to the German who resembled the engraving by Dürer, organized breakfast parties and made plans for all kinds of unusual lectures, talks and outings. It was around this time that the Nazi–Soviet pact broke down. Merezhkovsky then boldly affirmed what was to become his motto: “If the Devil is against the Bolsheviks, you should ally yourself with the Devil.” The Germans, of course, were the Devil.

  The countess’s plans were indeed brilliant, but money was still very tight.

  I remember once going to a café. Seated at a small table by the window were the Merezhkovskys. Not noticing me, they carried on with their conversation. Zinaida Nikolaevna had very poor hearing and Merezhkovsky’s voice filled the room: “They’ve cut off our electricity. Vladimir has been all over the town looking for candles, but there are none anywhere. We’re going to end up sitting in the dark.”

  He was very agitated. His teaspoon was trembling in his hand and rattling against his cup. There were red blotches on his pale cheeks. And I knew that there were indeed no candles to be found anywhere in Biarritz.

  They were always irritated, astonished, even sincerely outraged by the need to pay bills. Zinaida Nikolaevna told me indignantly about how they had just had a visit from the man who hired out bed linen.

  “The scoundrel just won’t leave us alone. Yesterday he was told that we were out, so he sat in the garden and waited for us. Thanks to that scoundrel we couldn’t even go for a walk.”

  There was such childlike naivety in Zinaida Nikolaevna’s irritation that one’s sympathy always went to her rather than to the man whose bill had not been paid.

  Thanks to the countess’s influence, Merezhkovsky was given permission to give a lecture in a public hall. The audience was small, and included several German officers who were clearly there in an official capacity. Merezhkovsky spoke so softly that I could barely hear him, even though I was in the front row. I told him as much during the break.

  He took offence. “It doesn’t matter. I refuse to speak more loudly. It’ll spoil my modulations. My modulations are superb. I’ve taken great pains over them.”

  In the second half he simply whispered. The Germans got up and left. Recently the countess had grown somewhat less interested in Merezhkovsky. She had more important business to attend to. She was elaborating a plan to save France. It was not the first time she had done this. There had been an earlier occasion when, as she liked to tell us, she had balanced the state budget. How? By arr
anging greyhound races that had brought the government billions of francs in revenue.

  Under the countess’s influence, Merezhkovsky had become more gracious towards the Germans (the devils opposing the Bolsheviks). He had even come to see Hitler as a kind of Napoleon.

  “Zinaida Nikolaevna! What is it? What’s got into him?” I asked.

  “He’s a sycophant. He’s the son of a minor palace official. That’s why he grovels. First before Piłsudski, then before Mussolini. Pure sycophantism.”

  Harsh, but all too true, I fear.

  •

  Merezhkovsky’s appearance was most peculiar. Small and thin, and in his last years bent completely out of shape. What was remarkable, however, was his face. It was deathly pale, with bright red lips—and when he spoke you saw that his gums were the same bright red. There was something frightening about this. Vampire-like.

  He never laughed. Neither of them had the least sense of humour. There was something perverse about Merezhkovsky’s refusal to understand a joke. Sometimes you would deliberately tell them a very funny story just to see their reaction. Utter bewilderment.

  “But his answer’s quite wrong,” they would say.

  “Yes, and that’s the point of the story. If his answer had been right, I wouldn’t be telling you all this.”

  “All right, but why did he answer like that?”

  “Because he didn’t understand.”

  “Then he’s simply a fool. What’s so interesting about that?”

  Nevertheless Zinaida Nikolaevna did appreciate a few lines from a poem by the genuinely witty and talented Don-Aminado.

  Look before you leap –

  Shoot before you speak.

  she would declaim.

  Merezhkovsky did not approve.

  Zlobin defended Merezhkovsky: “No, he does have a sense of humour. Once he even came up with a play on words.”