The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (54 page)

Dolinin was simply “elderly”; Ilya Borisovich Tal would soon be fifty-five. Dolinin was “colossally wealthy,” without precise explanation of his source of income; Ilya Borisovich directed a company engaged in the installation of bathrooms (that year, incidentally, it had been appointed to panel with enameled tiles the cavernal walls of several underground stations) and was quite well-to-do. Dolinin lived in Russia—South Russia, probably—and first met Irina long before the Revolution. Ilya Borisovich lived in Berlin, whither he had migrated with wife and son in 1920. His literary output was of long standing, but not big: the obituary of a local merchant, famous for his liberal political views, in the
Kharkov Herald
(1910), two prose poems,
ibid
. (August 1914 and March 1917), and one book, consisting of that obituary and those two prose poems—a pretty volume that landed right in the raging middle of the civil war. Finally, upon reaching Berlin, Ilya Borisovich wrote a little étude, “Travelers by Sea and Land,” which appeared in a humble émigré daily published in Chicago; but that newspaper soon vanished like smoke, while other periodicals did not return manuscripts and never discussed rejections. Then followed two years of creative silence: his wife’s illness and death, the
Inflationszeit
, a thousand business undertakings. His son finished high school in Berlin and entered Freiburg University. And now, in 1925, at the onset of old age, this prosperous and on the whole very lonely person experienced such an attack of writer’s itch, such a longing—oh, not for fame, but simply for some warmth and heed on the part of readerdom—that he resolved to let himself go, write a novel and have it published at his own cost.

Already by the time that its protagonist, the heavy-hearted, world-weary Dolinin, hearkened to the clarion of a new life and (after that almost fatal stop at the cloakroom) escorted his young companion into the April night, the novel had acquired a title:
Lips to Lips
. Dolinin had Irina move to his flat, but nothing had happened yet in the way of lovemaking, for he desired that she come to his bed of her own accord, exclaiming:

“Take me, take my purity, take my torment. Your loneliness is my loneliness, and however long or short your love may be, I am prepared for everything, because around us spring summons us to humanness and good, because the sky and the firmament radiate divine beauty, and because I love you.”

“A powerful passage,” observed Euphratski.
“Terra firma
meant, I dare say. Very powerful.”

“And it is not boring?” asked Ilya Borisovich Tal, glancing over his horn-rimmed glasses. “Eh? Tell me frankly.”

“I suppose he’ll deflower her,” mused Euphratski.

“Mimo, chitatel’, mimol”
(“Wrong, reader, wrong!”) answered Ilya Borisovich (misinterpreting Turgenev). He smiled rather smugly, gave his manuscript a resettling shake, crossed his fat-thighed legs more comfortably, and continued his reading.

He read his novel to Euphratski bit by bit, at the rate of production. Euphratski, who had once swooped upon him on the occasion of a concert with a charitable purpose, was an émigré journalist “with a name,” or, rather, with a dozen pseudonyms. Hitherto Ilya Borisovich’s acquaintances used to come from German industrial circles; now he attended émigré meetings, lectures, amateur theatricals, and had learned to recognize some of the belles-lettres brethren. He was on especially good terms with Euphratski and valued his opinion as coming from a stylist, although Euphratski’s style belonged to the topical sort we all know. Ilya Borisovich frequently invited him, they sipped cognac and talked about Russian literature, or more exactly Ilya Borisovich did the talking, and the guest avidly collected comical scraps with which to entertain his own cronies later. True, Ilya Borisovich’s tastes were on the heavyish side. He gave Pushkin his due, of course, but knew him mainly through the medium of three or four operas, and in general found him “olympically serene and incapable of stirring the reader.” His knowledge of more recent poetry was limited to his remembering two poems, both with a political slant, “The Sea” by Veynberg (1830–1908) and the famous lines of Skitaletz (Stepan Petrov, born 1868) in which “dangled” (on the gallows) rhymes with
“entangled” (in a revolutionary plot). Did Ilya Borisovich like to make mild fun of the “Decadents”? Yes, he did, but then, one must note that he frankly admitted his incomprehension of verse. Per contra, he was fond of discussing Russian fiction: he esteemed Lugovoy (a regional mediocrity of the 1900s), appreciated Korolenko, and considered that Artsybashev debauched young readers. In regard to the novels of modern émigré writers he would say, with the “empty-handed” Russian gesture of inutility, “Dull, dull!,” which sent Euphratski into a kind of rapturous trance.

“An author should be soulful,” Ilya Borisovich would reiterate, “and compassionate, and responsive, and fair. Maybe I’m a flea, a nonentity, but I have my credo. Let at least one word of my writings impregnate a reader’s heart.” And Euphratski would fix reptilian eyes upon him, foretasting with agonizing tenderness tomorrow’s mimetic report, A’s belly laugh, Z’s ventriloquistic squeak.

At last came the day when the first draft of the novel was finished. To his friend’s suggestion that they repair to a café, Ilya Borisovich replied in a mysterious and weighty tone of voice, “Impossible. I’m polishing my phrasing.”

The polishing consisted of his launching an attack on the too frequently occurring adjective
molodaya
, “young” (feminine gender), replacing it here and there by “youthful,”
yunaya
, which he pronounced with a provincial doubling of the consonant as if it were spelled
yunnaya
.

One day later. Twilight. Café on Kurfürstendamm. Settee of red plush. Two gentlemen. To a casual eye: businessmen. One—respectable-looking, even rather majestic, a nonsmoker, with an expression of trust and kindliness on his fleshy face; the other—lean, beetle-browed, with a pair of fastidious folds descending from his triangular nostrils to the lowered corners of his mouth from which protrudes obliquely a cigarette not yet lit. The first man’s quiet voice: “I penned the end in one spurt. He dies, yes, he dies.”

Silence. The red settee is nice and soft. Beyond the picture window a transluscent tram floats by like a bright fish in an aquarium tank.

Euphratski clicked his cigarette lighter, expulsed smoke from his nostrils, and said, “Tell me, Ilya Borisovich, why not have a literary magazine run it as a serial before it comes out in book form?”

“But, look, I’ve no pull with that crowd. They publish always the same people.”

“Nonsense. I have a little plan. Let me think it over.”

“I’d be happy.…” murmured Tal dreamily.

A few days later in I. B. Tal’s room at the office. The unfolding of the little plan.

“Send your thing” (Euphratski narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice) “to
Arion.”

“Arion?
What’s that?” said I.B., nervously patting his manuscript.

“Nothing very frightening. It’s the name of the best émigré review. You don’t know it? Ay-ya-yay! The first number came out this spring, the second is expected in the fall. You should keep up with literature a bit closer, Ilya Borisovich!”

“But how to contact them? Just mail it?”

“That’s right. Straight to the editor. It’s published in Paris. Now don’t tell me you’ve never heard Galatov’s name?”

Guiltily Ilya Borisovich shrugged one fat shoulder. Euphratski, his face working wryly, explained: a writer, a master, new form of the novel, intricate construction, Galatov the Russian Joyce.

“Djoys,” meekly repeated Ilya Borisovich after him.

“First of all have it typed,” said Euphratski. “And for God’s sake acquaint yourself with the magazine.”

He acquainted himself. In one of the Russian bookshops of exile he was handed a plump pink volume. He bought it, thinking aloud, as it were: “Young venture. Must be encouraged.”

“Finished, the young venture,” said the bookseller. “One number was all that came out.”

“You are not in touch,” rejoined Ilya Borisovich with a smile. “I definitively know that the next number will be out in autumn.”

Upon coming home, he took an ivory paperknife and neatly cut the magazine’s pages. Therein he found an unintelligible piece of prose by Galatov, two or three short stories by vaguely familiar authors, a mist of poems, and an extremely capable article about German industrial problems signed Tigris.

Oh, they’ll never accept it, reflected Ilya Borisovich with anguish. They all belong to one crew.

Nevertheless he located one Madame Lubansky (“stenographer and typist”) in the advertisement columns of a Russian-language newspaper and, having summoned her to his apartment, started to dictate with tremendous feeling, boiling with agitation, raising his voice—and glancing ever and again at the lady to see her reaction to his novel. Her pencil kept flitting as she bent over her writing pad—a small, dark woman with a rash on her forehead—and Ilya Borisovich paced his study in circles, and the circles would tighten around her at the approach of this or that spectacular passage. Toward the end of the first chapter the room vibrated with his cries.

“And his entire yore seemed to him a horrible error,” roared Ilya Borisovich, and then added, in his ordinary office voice, “Type this out for tomorrow, five copies, wide margins, I shall expect you here at the same hour.”

That night, in bed, he kept thinking up what he would tell Galatov when sending the novel (“…  awaiting your stern judgment … my contributions have appeared in Russia and America.…”), and on the following morning—such is the enchanting obligingness of fate—Ilya Borisovich received this letter from Paris:

“I’m remembered, I’m wanted,” distractedly uttered Ilya Borisovich. Thereupon he rang up Euphratski, and throwing himself back in his armchair, sideways—with the uncouthness of triumph—leaning the hand that held the receiver upon his desk, while outlining an ample gesture with the other, and beaming all over, he drawled, “Well, oh-old boy, well, oh-old boy”—and suddenly the various bright objects upon the desk began to tremble and twin and dissolve in a moist mirage. He blinked, everything resumed its right place, and Euphratski’s languid voice replied, “Oh, come! Brother writers. Ordinary good turn.”

Five stacks of typed pages grew higher and higher. Dolinin, who with one thing and another had not yet possessed his fair companion, happened to discover that she was infatuated with another man, a young painter. Sometimes I.B. dictated in his office, and then the German typists in the other rooms, hearing that remote roar, wondered who on earth was being bawled out by the usually good-natured boss. Dolinin had a heart-to-heart talk with Irina, she told him she would never leave him, because she prized too highly his beautiful lonely soul, but, alas, she belonged physically to another, and Dolinin silently bowed. At last, the day came when he made a will in her favor, the day came when he shot himself (with a Mauser pistol), the day came when Ilya Borisovich, smiling blissfully, asked Madame Lubansky, who had brought the final portion of the typescript, how much he owed her, and attempted to overpay.

With ravishment he reread
Lips to Lips
and handed over one copy to Euphratski for corrections (some discreet editing had already been accomplished
by Madame Lubansky at such points where chance omissions garbled her shorthand notes). All Euphratski did was to insert in one of the first lines a temperamental comma in red pencil. Ilya Borisovich religiously transported that comma to the copy destined for
Arion
, signed his novel with a pseudonym derived from “Anna” (the name of his dead wife), fastened every chapter with a trim clip, added a lengthy letter, slipped all this into a huge solid envelope, weighed it, went to the post office himself, and sent the novel by registered mail.

With the receipt tucked away in his wallet, Ilya Borisovich braced himself for weeks and weeks of tremulous waiting. Galatov’s reply came, however, with miraculous promptness—on the fifth day.

As soon as Ilya Borisovich had somewhat recovered his composure, he walked over to the Tiergarten—instead of riding to his office—and sat there on a park bench, tracing arcs on the brown ground, thinking of his wife, and imagining how she would have rejoiced with him. After a while he went to see Euphratski. The latter lay in bed, smoking. They analyzed together every line of the letter. When they got to the last one, Ilya Borisovich meekly raised his eyes and asked, “Tell me, why do you think he put ‘would have been’ and not ‘will be’? Doesn’t he understand that I’m overjoyed to give them my novel? Or is it simply a stylistic device?”

“I’m afraid there’s another reason,” answered Euphratski. “No doubt it’s a case of concealing something out of sheer pride. In point of fact the magazine is folding up—yes, that’s what I’ve just learned. The émigré public consumes as you know all sorts of trash, and
Arion
is meant for the sophisticated reader. Well, that’s the result.”