Vera (80 page)

164
his happiest work, Field, 1977, 158.

165
a third of what she had been earning: On his April 10, 1935, declaration of income, VN reported RM 1156 as compared to VéN's 3300 of the previous years, LOC.

166
she flatly denied: VéN to Robert MacGregor, New Directions, July 29, 1960.

167
one visitor's opinion: Rolf, “January,” 26. VéN was responding to Helen Lawrenson's “The Man Who Scandalized the World,”
Esquire
, August 1960, 70–74.

168
answered that they could not: Brailow, unpublished memoir, 88, PC.

169
“When are you fleeing”: Mikhail Osorgin to VN, April 28, 1933; A. Kaun to VN, December 24, 1936, LOC.

170
“in somewhat of a”: VN to Anna Shakhovskoy, November 22, 1932, LOC.

171
“I'm Jewish”: See the accounts of Zinaida Shakhovskoy, Amherst.

172
“lives in two rooms”: Galina Kuznetsova, diary entry of March 19, 1931, reprinted in
Novyj zhurnal
, 76 (1964).

173
On VN as houseguest: See VN, in memory of Amalia Osipovna Fondaminsky, Bakhm. Also Zenzinov correspondence, LOC.

174
crossing the streets: VN to VéN, October 17, 1932, VNA.

175
“I said to Aldanov”: VN to VéN, October 24, 1932, VNA. Others did not joke about VéN's assistance. Asked later if she had felt professional envy for Khodasevich, Berberova protested, “There was nothing to envy there.” She then added forcefully, with a near-tragic frown, “Now Sirin was really envied by all. Because he had such a wife.” Omry Ronen to author, September 19, 1998.

176
survive otherwise: VN to VéN, November 5, 1932, VNA.

177
Jewish emigration: See Saul Friedländer,
Nazi Germany and the Jews
, vol. I, 62. For a sense of the last Russians in Berlin, I have leaned as well on Brailow, unpublished memoir; on Zinaida Shakhovskoy,
Une maniere de vivre
(Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1965); and on Williams,
Culture in Exile
.

178
“I said, ‘they won't' ”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

179
she got the job: VéN to Goldenweiser, May 22, 1958, Bakhm.

180
they were said to resemble: Christopher Isherwood,
Goodbye to Berlin
(London: Folio Society, 1975), 252.

181
their bonfire: Boyd interview with VéN, November 19, 1982, Boyd archive.

182
miserable dead end: VN to VéN, August 24, 1924, VNA.

183
provincial outpost: VN to VéN, July 4, 1926, VNA.

184
“He did not have enough”: VéN interviewed by D. Barton Johnson and Ellendea Proffer,
Russian Literature Triquarterly
24 (January 1991), 79.

185
“thrice-damned Germany”: VN to Magda Nachman-Achariya, December 16, 1937.

186
Véra had admired: Field, 1977, 198.

187
“On the map of Europe”: Berberova,
Italics Are Mine
, 223.

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.

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.