Vera (77 page)

24
Shaped his work: See Boyd, 1990, 283–85; Boyd, 1991, 627–31.

25
“It would be difficult”: Interview with Saul Steinberg, January 4, 1996.

1
“I don't remember”: Interview with Alfred Appel, April 19, 1995.

2
“Who are you”: Interview with Ellendea Proffer, May 31, 1995.

3
“No,” shot back: See Boyd,
The Nabokovian
27 (Fall 1991), 23.

4
“I met my”: SO, 127.

5
“All this is rot”: VéN copy of Field, 1977, 179, VNA.

6
“While there he”: William Vesterman, “Nabokov's Second Fiancée Identified,”
American Notes and Queries
, September/October 1985. VéN to Vesterman, April 20, 1984, VNA. VéN amended Vesterman's title (“Nabokov's Second Fiancée Identified”) to “Nabokov's Third Fiancée Identified.” In a second set of marginal remonstrations, she quibbled with the following of Field's statements in
VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov
, VNA: VN did not write “one postcard” to VéN. The two did not meet at a charity ball. They did not meet for the first time at her father's office. They did not meet because her future husband played chess with her father. While acknowledging that her husband correctly recalled the date of their first meeting, she rejected as well Boyd's description of the charity ball encounter, which she swore she would deny if ever she was asked, protesting that the account “is very unlike the truth” (VéN to BB, October 14, 1987, VNA). She doubted moreover that her husband would have been in the mood to attend a ball in May of 1923, VéN to BB, May 1986, VNA. As for the three “untruths” in Vesterman's line, VN wrote VéN more than once during the summer weeks he was away. And it is possible that he did not leave Berlin immediately after meeting her; the two met on either May 8 or May 9, and the first letter dates from several weeks later. Which leaves as a third potential untruth—VN was incontrovertibly in the south of France, and the girl was incontrovertibly named Véra Slonim—only the charity ball.

7
“ ‘reminiscence' ”: VéN cited in Boyd, 1990, 202.

8
“organized by society”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

9
“But without these”: LECTURES ON DON QUIXOTE, 1.

10
confide in a visiting: Interview with Beverly Loo, October 24, 1996.

11
“many of whom were”: Alexander Brailow to Boyd, October 20, 1983, Boyd archive.

12
“tender lips”: “The Encounter,” May 1923.

13
“He was, as a young”: VéN interview with Martin Amis,
Visiting Mrs. Nabokov
, 118. VéN to Amis, September 11, 1981, VNA.

14
one to pursue Nabokov: Interview with Svetlana Andrault de Langeron, January 28, 1997. Also HS, interviews of July 11, 1995, January 15, 1997; Vera Kliatchkine, interview of June 16, 1995; Boyd interview with Rene and Evgenia Cannac, March 11, 1983, Boyd archive.

15
“certain unusual refinement”: Field, 1977, 181.

16
“I suppose one could”: Ellendea Proffer to author, May 9, 1997.

17
“I know practically”: VéN to Stephen Jan Parker, January 22, 1981, VNA. The claim that she had followed his career for some time went undisputed in VéN's copy of Field, 1986, 97, VNA. “a dear, dear mask”: VN to VéN, July 6, 1926, VNA.

18
“linked in my memory” to “settle there forever”: VN to Svetlana Siewert, May 25, 1923. Transcribed copy, Shakhovsky papers, Amherst. VN's sister felt he was near-suicidal at the time of the broken engagement, interview with HS, February 26, 1995.

20
“I won't hide it” and “I desperately: VN to VéN, May 27, 1923, VNA.

21
“He was a poet” to the removal of the rings: Interview with Svetlana Andrault de Langeron, January 28, 1997.

22
“a youth of energetic”: Boyd, 1990, 4.

23
“a rejected suitor's”: EO, III, 200.

24
allowed that it had: VéN to Vesterman, June 15, 1981, VNA.

25
“But sorrow not”: Nabokov, “The Encounter.”

26
“rickety” soul: Untitled poem, “You entered airborne.”

27
“My happiness”: VN to VéN, January 8, 1924, VNA.

28
“And night flowed” to “are to be my fate”: Nabokov, “The Encounter.” A draft of the poem, more vulnerable-sounding in an early version, bears the dedication “To Véra Slonim.”

29
On her Bulgarian: VéN to Natalya Tolstoy, December 18, 1985, VNA. The
Rul
translations appeared between June 6 and September 16, 1923.

30
“Is there a place”: Iosef Hessen, unpublished memoir, chapter 16, page11, Hoover.

31
“Song”: “Pesnia,” composed July 19, 1923 in Toulon.

32
“witches' sabbath”: Stefan Zweig,
The World of Yesterday
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), 311.

33
two Russian soccer teams: Otto Friedrich,
Before the Deluge
(New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 86. For the most comprehensive portrait of Russian Berlin, see Robert C. Williams,
Culture in Exile
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972). I have drawn as well on John Glad, ed.,
Conversations
in Exile: Russian Writers Abroad
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1993); Simon Karlinsky,
Marina Tsvetaeva: The Woman, Her World and Her Poetry
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Fritz Mierau, ed.,
Russen in Berlin
, 1918–33 (Leipzig, Reclam-Verlag, 1991); Nicolas Nabokov,
Bagazh
(New York: Atheneum, 1975); Marc Vishniak,
“Sovremennye Zapiski”: Vospominaniya redaktora
. (Bloomington: Indiana University, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 1957).

34
horseback riding: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

35
“All of us sleepless”: Nina Berberova,
Italics Are Mine
, 165.

36
“clinging couples”: Khodasevich, cited in Ilya Ehrenburg,
Memoirs, 1921–1941
, 22.

37
surprised with the precipitate: Interview with HS, February 26, 1995.

38
“Divining, you notice”: STIKHI, 115–16, dated September 25, 1923. In the original the poem is signed “Nabokoff,” not “Sirin.”

39
“amazingly” and “inept endearment”: VN to VéN, November 8, 1923, VNA.

40
“With her for a reader”: Filippa Rolf, “January,” 70, PC.

41
“You came into my”: VN to VéN, November 8, 1923, VNA.

42
“Have you ever”: VN to VéN, December 3, 1923, VNA.

43
“entered his life”: RLSK, 79–80.

44
“They became lovers”: RLSK ms., LOC.

45
“Despite the complexity”: GIFT, 185.

46
“They're all Picassos”: James Lord,
Picasso and Dora: A Personal Memoir
(New York: Fromm International, 1994), 123.

47
“What was it about”: GIFT, 177.

48
“You and I are”: VN to VéN, July 15, 1924, VNA.

49
autobiographical results: GIFT, 364. VN was not quite so easily swayed as his hero. After a portion of the book appeared he wrote Mark Aldanov unapologetically (February 3, 1938, Bakhm) defending himself against charges of having appropriated characteristics of various recognizable individuals: “Smile, Mark Alexandrovich! You say that
The Gift
can count on a very long life. If so, then it is all the more polite on my part to have taken along on this journey for free the images of certain of my contemporaries who would otherwise remain at home forever.” VN applauded this practice in the Master, noting: “There is something very pleasing in Pushkin's device of having his best friends entertain his favorite characters” (EO, iii, 120).

50
the amorous conversations: HS to VN, August 28, 1956, PC.

51
“as if gliding” and “airborne”: “You,” dated November 25, 1923, and untitled, November 1923, VNA.

52
“Is ‘mask' ” and “delight in the semitranslucent”: LO, 53.

53
“a little obscurity”: VN to Katharine White, undated note, “Gardens and Parks,” LOC.

54
“My sweet, today”: VN to VéN, July 4, 1926, VNA.

55
“the little silk mask”: Cited in Alden Whitman's obituary of VN,
The New York Times
, July 5, 1977.

56
“You are
my
mask”: VN to VéN, January 8, 1924, VNA.

57
VéN's birthdate: Old style, December 23, 1901. She shared a birthday with Ada's Demon and Daniel Veen, Aqua and Marina. Marina and Demon begin their affair on January 5 as well. See Boyd in
The Nabokovian
31 (Fall 1993), 13.

58
The late marriage: The average ages among Jewish businessmen and intellectuals marrying in 1899 was twenty-nine for men, twenty-three for women.

59
Slonim background: Much of the information on Evsei Slonim comes from the archives of the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, synagogue archives, and the lists of barristers of the St. Petersburg Judicial Chamber, Central State Historical Archive of the City of St. Petersburg; the Russian State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg (RGIA); and from the Russian National Library (RNB). I am hugely indebted to Prince Michaël Massalsky as well, for sharing materials from his family archive. For a sense of the Feigin family, I am grateful to Abraham and Josef Bromberg, interviews of May 20, 1997. Home addresses are from
All St. Petersburg
, 1894–1913,
All Petrograd
, 1917, or from RGIA. Birth certificate, RGIA, Fond 14, opis 3, delo 24224, document 2.

60
For a sense of the Furstadtskaya neighborhood, see Mikhail Beizer,
The Jews of Saint Petersburg
(New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1989). Furstadtskaya is today Petra Lavrova Street, and the address of the American Consulate in Petersburg.

62
“the little boy”: GIFT, 213.

63
the precocious newspaper reading: Brian Boyd very generously shared the text of his talks with VéN. VéN to Boyd, February 25, 1982. Boyd interview with VéN, August 29, 1982, Boyd archive. See also Boyd, 1990, 213.

64
“completely disregarding: Berberova,
Italics Are Mine
, 14.

65
educational statistics: I. A. Kurganoff,
Women in the USSR
(London [Ontario]: S.B.O.N.R. Publishing, 1971).

66
On the texture of life in prerevolutionary Petersburg: E. M. Almedingen,
My St. Petersburg
(New York: Norton, 1970); James H. Billington,
The Icon and the Axe
(New York: Knopf, 1966); William Barnes Steveni,
Petrograd Past and Present
(London: Grant Richards, 1915); Zinaida Shakhovskoy,
La vie quotidienne à Saint-Petersbourg a l'époque romantique
(Paris: Hachette, 1967). And generally on Petersburg: Katerina Clark,
Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), and Solomon Volkov,
St. Petersburg: A Cultural History
(New York: Free Press, 1995).

67
VéN and her German: VéN to Boyd, May 1986, VNA. On the girls' linguistic education, interviews with Massalsky, February 17, 1996, and June 16, 1997.

68
telepathy: DN to author, May 16, 1997.

69
VéN's Obolensky record: VNA.

70
special permission: VéN to Alexis Goldenweiser, June 8, 1957, Bakhm.

71
“When you are married”: Field, 1977, 179.

72
Dickens, Byron: Interviews with Massalsky, September 21, 1996, and June 16, 1997.

73
walkways at Terioki: Filippa Rolf, “January,” 57, PC. For a similar childhood see Osip Mandelstam, The Noise of Time.

74
relative later reminded: Anna Feigin to VéN, October 6, 1962, Berg.

75
Evsei Lazarevich raised: Interviews with Massalsky, February 17, 1996, and November 14, 1997.

76
splendid stage set: For a sense of the city, see James H. Bater,
St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change
(London: Edward Arnold, 1976); Marshall Berman,
All That Is Solid Melts into Air
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982); Volkov,
St. Petersburg
.

77
scratch-scratch: Boyd interview with VéN, February 25, 1982, Boyd archive.

78
“One cannon shot”: VéN to Boyd, June 6, 1987, VNA. See also DEFENSE, 21.

79
the words “Russian” and “Jew”: The summary is Benjamin Ira Nathans's, from his doctoral dissertation, “Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Russia, 1840–1900,” UCLA, Berkeley, 1995, 290. “Beyond the Pale” proved a singularly valuable source of information on the Jews of Petersburg. Equally indispensable was Robert Melvin Seltzer's “Simon Dubnow: A Critical Biography of His Early Years,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1970. The following histories of Jewish life and its restrictions in prerevolutionary times have proved especially helpful, Dubnow perhaps most of all: Salo W. Baron,
The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets
(New York: Macmillan, 1976); Mikhail Beizer,
Jews of St. Petersburg;
S. M. Dubnow,
History of the Jews in Russia and Poland
, vols. II and III (Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1918); Leo Errera,
The Russian Jews: Extermination or Emancipation
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975, repr. of 1894 edition); Harold Frederic,
The New Exodus
(New York: Arno Press, 1970, repr. of 1892 edition); Jacob Frumkin et al., eds.,
Russian Jewry (1860–1917
) (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1966); Louis Greenberg,
The Jews in Russia
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965); Avrahm Yarmolinsky,
The Jews and Other Minor Nationalities under the Soviets
(New York: Vanguard Press, 1928).