The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov (2 page)

As for my undoting parents, they were disappointed, as I was later told by my needlessly honest grandmother Nabokova, to find their second offspring such a pallid reprise of their first. I was an uncommonly listless child: nearsighted, clumsy, inveterately left-handed despite attempts to “cure” me, and cursed with a stutter that only grew worse as I matured.

One of my earliest memories: I must have been four. Russia was at war with Japan, and my mother, brother, and I were ensconced with our English governess, Miss Hunt, in the Hotel Oranien in Wiesbaden, having been sent abroad by my father's worries over the deteriorating political situation at home. About our German winter I remember little save for the young man who operated the hotel lift. Though he must have been no older than fifteen or sixteen, he seemed to me the epitome of manhood, dashingly handsome in his brimless gold cap, crimson blazer, and tight ink-black trousers with a single crisp stripe of gray defining the length of each long leg. Though I do not remember this myself, I am told that I had a habit of fondly clinging to his trouser leg as he worked the lift controls—rather like the little monkey that accompanied the organ grinder the hotel staff were incessantly shooing away from the sidewalk just beyond the hotel's front entrance.

It was during that winter of my innocent infatuation that my brother convinced me to escape from the hotel he for some reason considered more a prison than a palace. I no longer recall what sweets or other reward Volodya promised me, but I remember very well our ride down from the fourth floor, and how the enchanting lift boy seemed to think nothing amiss in allowing two unaccompanied children free egress into the lobby. As Volodya dashed forth I paused, placed my hand on
my heart, and bade my bemused idol a desperate “
Adieu, mon ami!
” which I had feverishly rehearsed during our descent. Then I raced to catch up with my charismatic brother, who, winding among the legs of guests, had already managed to escape the clamor of the lobby for the even more clamorous street.

The organ grinder and his bright-eyed monkey leered at us. The avenue was a maze of clattering carriages and electric trams spitting terrifying blue sparks. I had never ventured from the Oranien without my mother or Miss Hunt holding my hand; to this day I marvel that Volodya appeared to know exactly where he was going in the chaos of the street. I struggled to keep up, as he kept looking back at me over his shoulder in an exasperation I knew meant he already regretted having cajoled me to join him.

In no time I realized we were lost. I kept my eyes on Volodya's dark-blue navy jacket. The sky was dull and lifeless, the air chill and heavy, the town a uniform gray. Only my brother was a dancing point of color and energy. How long we wandered I cannot say, but eventually we neared the river, to which Miss Hunt had taken us by carriage several times so that we might stroll the promenade.

At a pier where a steamer lay docked, there was commotion as the last of the passengers boarded. Without a moment's hesitation, Volodya bounded up the gangway, only to be brought up short by a stern-looking man with a great mustache.

“Sir, our parents have already gone on board,” Volodya explained in silken English. “They will be terribly alarmed if we fail to join them.” Volodya addressed the crowd. “Please, is there an Englishman here who can help a fellow countryman?”

They all stared at this stalwart five-year-old and his cowering brother.

“Why, dear, we're Americans,” exclaimed a large lady who
held a little black dog in the crook of her arm. “By all means, board with me, my child.”

Thus folded in her protective skirts, we passed onto the boat, whereupon Volodya cried, “Mama, Papa!” and grabbing me by the hand, broke away from our temporary savior. At that moment, a quiver ran from prow to stern, a whistle shrieked, and the boat began to pull away from the pier.

I remember the calm of that leaden river as we left the city, and the houses thinned to fields and vineyards. Whenever in later years, whether in Paris or London or Berlin, I have heard those slowly rising chords that usher in Wagner's river maidens, I am back on that steamer on the Rhine, standing beside my brave, mad, thrilling brother and allowing, at last, tears of terror and homesickness to run down my wind-flushed cheeks.

“What are we to do?” I wailed.

“Everything,” he crowed. He spread his arms wide. “Seryosha, we're sailing to America. We'll shoot elephants and ride horses and meet wild Indians. Just think of it.”

At the next landing, a policeman stood waiting and scooped us up to a nearby police landau. The lift boy, having had immediate second thoughts about the wisdom of allowing us out on our own, had reported our escape, and hotel staff had traced us to the pier just as our steamer moved beyond the range of their frantic hails.

Back at the hotel, my brother took stoically whatever discipline our mother managed to mete out. Our father, when eventually informed of our adventure, laughed heartily. Everyone seemed to sense that I had been the unwilling partner. The only one to suffer any permanent harm was poor Miss Hunt, who, on account of her negligence in allowing us to slip from our rooms, found herself promptly fired—hardly the first or last of our governesses to be bested by my brother. As for the superb lift boy, I never saw him again. Now that I think of it, I suppose he may have been fired as well.

My mother's brother, Vassily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov—known to us as Uncle Ruka—was a delightful exotic. He dressed gaily. One never saw him without a carnation in his lapel, or opal rings adorning his long fingers. He favored spats and high-heeled shoes, which I found tremendously elegant, though his mincing gait provoked cruel imitation by my brother. He was vain and passionate, sallow-skinned, raccoon-eyed, dashingly mustachioed and, like the younger of his two nephews, cursed with a stutter.

We saw him mostly in summer, when he alighted at Rozhestveno, his domain which, with my mother's Vyra and my grandmother Nabokova's Batovo, made up the family estate along the Oredezh River.

In late June, up would go the flag atop his house, announcing his arrival from those wintering haunts in France or Italy or Egypt we knew only from his extravagant stories. The shuttered house would be opened, the front portico's grand columns hastily repainted, the furniture unveiled, the carpets beaten and aired. He brought us gifts, which he bestowed upon us gradually, so that the days of June were a continual revelation of colorful books and puzzles, playing cards, hand-painted lead hussars and uhlans, and once, when I was six, an enchanting little bronze bust of Napoleon that I took to bed with me every night for many weeks, till Volodya's scorn eventually caused me to forgo that comforting practice.

For two happy months our uncle would be in our midst, shedding wonder and light. He possessed a sweet, high tenor voice, and in his spare time—of which, despite his soi-disant career as a diplomat, he seemed to have endless store—he composed barcaroles and bagatelles and
chansons tristes
, which he would sing to us on summer evenings, accompanying himself on the piano. No one else seemed much impressed by his artistry, but how I envied his wistful melodies.

I once convinced him to lend me the score to one of his songs, which he did with some reluctance: “Oh, that,” he said with half a laugh. “Well, if you wish.” I scurried away with the sacred document, and spent many happy hours rehearsing in secret, imagining his surprised smile when, freed of my stutter (for I do not stutter when I sing), I would one day lovingly offer his gift back to him.

Evenings, after dinner, he would regale us, in French rather than Russian, which he spoke quite badly, with tales of the Pyramids and the Sphinx, whose nose Napoleon's troops had shot away one indolent afternoon, or crocodile-hunting expeditions on the Nile with Hamid, his servant. We sat on the verandah, amid steady oil lamps and flickering candles, while Cairo's smoky bazaars teemed with unimaginable bargains. Among the items Uncle Ruka had brought us were a number of weighty cylinders used to render wax seals with the stamp of the caliph. “And yet,”—here he would look around at us with his raccoon eyes—“amongst all those bargains and beggars, there was still the possibility”—he paused dramatically—“of being deliciously taken advantage of!”

“Basile,” my father murmured—in warning.

“But I was never,” Uncle Ruka hastily assured us, “never, ever taken advantage of!”

Immediately he was off on another adventure, this time in an aeroplane, a Voisin Hydravion, the latest miracle from those amazing French brothers. Did we know he had crashed on a beach near Bayonne, that he had very nearly been killed? And yet—he kissed two beringed fingers he raised superstitiously to his lips—he had emerged with nary a scratch. The orthodox saints Sergius and Bacchus would remain his blessed protectors to the very end.

In the midst of his gaudy patter—on the word
Bacchus
, for instance—difficulty would seize him, and only after several
fraught moments would he finally succeed in surmounting the recalcitrant consonant.

For an adoring nephew's stutter, however, he had no patience. My very presence seemed to annoy him, which only reinforced my desire to make him like me—or at least acknowledge me. Finding him in the library, where he idly leafed through a volume of floral aquarelles, I observed, “Hamid sounds like a most interesting character. What adventures you must have with him.”

“A scoundrel,” my uncle replied with surprising pique. “Don't trouble yourself about Hamid. An infamous wretch if ever there was one. But now, dear lad, please allow your uncle a moment of peace. Can't you see he's busy reading?”

 

For having penned an appeal for passive resistance to the Tsar's policies (a document known to history as the Viborg Manifesto) Father and several of his fellow Cadets spent the summer of 1908 confined to prison. The rest of the family confined ourselves to Vyra, my mother's estate, where one sultry afternoon an overloaded calèche brought a fashionable St. Petersburg photographer, his assistant, and a panoply of theatrical-looking camera equipment. Why my mother wished, in Father's absence, to undertake a series of formal portraits of herself and her children I do not know—but Volodya violently objected at the prospect of the two of us being garbed in identical short white trousers and long-sleeved blouses. Our latest governess, Mlle. Miautin, whom we simply called “Mademoiselle,” reminded her charge that good boys did not throw fits, while the photographer reassured him that the two of us did not look the least bit alike. In the end Volodya acquiesced, and in the series of formal portraits that followed, our two younger sisters, Olga and Elena, stare solemnly at the camera while my difficult brother casts a smug, devilish smile and I manage a foolish grin.

Just as our patience with the tedious process was nearly
exhausted, we heard the rapid click-click of Uncle Ruka's heels as he crossed through our foyer. “
Ah, Lyova! Mes enfants! Je suis arrivé!
” Immediately assessing the situation, Uncle Ruka persuaded the photographer to undertake yet another round of photographs. From the verandah, where Mademoiselle fed the rest of us cakes and cherry juice, I watched as my uncle posed in the garden, first with his sister, then with his sister and her firstborn, whose waist he encircled with a possessive arm. The photograph taken, Volodya squirmed free. “Not so fast,” said Uncle Ruka. “I've brought you something I think you'll fancy.”

Volodya paused mid-escape. “I was hoping to hunt butterflies,” he said. “I've wasted half the day as it is.”

Since the previous summer, that mania had consumed my brother's energies. His room was now a trove of pinned and spread specimens, much to Mademoiselle's horror.

“Ah, then butterflies you shall have.”

Volodya looked skeptical.

“Come,” coaxed our uncle, leading his nephew past us and into the house. I followed as well. Uncle Ruka pointed to an enormous book that lay open on an armchair in the sitting room. Volodya approached dutifully, then burst into a swoon.

“Oh my!” he intoned. “Oh my, oh my.” Lifting the tome, he slid onto the chair and began to page through it. “
Die Gross-Schmetterlinge Europas
. What I most wanted in all the world. How did you know?”

“Your uncle's not entirely without wit, now is he?” Gliding onto the chair beside Volodya, he drew an arm around his nephew. “I do believe I've seen one of these.” He pointed to an illustration.

“Not very likely,” Volodya said. “Unless you've been to Nova Zembla, and even there it's extremely rare.”

“Well, perhaps it was a southern cousin,” Uncle Ruka stammered. “They do all rather look alike, I fear. Family resemblances can be most confusing!” He laughed gaily, and breathed
in the scent of his nephew's hair oil. Briefly his lips grazed the crown of Volodya's head. My brother went rigid. His hazel-green gaze met mine. I turned aside, embarrassed not so much for him as for our poor uncle, who, oblivious to his nephew's disdain, soon dashed from the room, his heels click-clicking across the floor. Volodya remained seated as if nothing had happened, unhurriedly turning the pages of his volume, pointedly unaware of anything else around him, neither his departing uncle nor his younger brother, who remained standing in the doorway as Uncle Ruka, with scarcely an acknowledgement, brushed past him.