Vera (78 page)

80
“I would rather be”: Cited in Errera,
The Russian Jews
, 108.

81
greatest historian: The historian was Simon Dubnow; the president Zalman Shazar.

82
Simon Poliakov: Greenberg,
Jews in Russia
, 173.

83
Gamshey Leizerovich: Russian State Historical Archives [TSGIA]. His name appears as such in all official correspondence until 1905.

84
admitted to the bar: Greenberg,
Jews in Russia
II, 38.

85
kitchen tile company: Russian National Library [RNB]; Merchant Directories. RGIA.

86
Véra Nabokov remembered, to “skilled peasants”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

87
Leo Peltenburg: I owe much of the information on the Peltenburg family to Alphonse Roebroek, interview of December 6, 1996.

88
On the Jewish timber trade: Frumkin et al.,
Russian Jewry
, 131–37.

89
“system wherein a second”: VN to Katharine White, March 17, 1951, SL, 117.

90
The Rodzianko work: Oleg Rodzianko kindly assisted in the untangling of the Rodzianko history, interview of June 7, 1998. RGIA files.

91
Slonim's political leanings: VéN to Boyd, December 13, 1981, VéN corrections to Field 1986, 94, VNA.

92
longest-running legal concern: State Historical Archives (RGIA), Collection 23, Collection 1330. The case is highly unusual for its longevity.

93
“specific gravity”: Field, 1977, 89.

94
Speaking for Martin: GLORY, 54, SM, 25.

95
“An average Russian”: VéN diary, VNA.

96
“Both of our sets”: Interview with Evan Harrar, August 26, 1996.

97
turn the key: Lena Massalsky to VéN, December 19, 1967.

98
“Judging by your letter”: Anna Feigin to VéN, 1964.

99
“They were raised,” the sense of noblesse oblige, and the seating arrangements: Interview with Prince Michaël Massalsky, April 6, 1997.

100
“One is always”: SM, 116.

101
“A few years”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973. Slonim was able to buy the land with two guards officers as partners.

102
“calm, but uninteresting”: Leonid Feygin,
Moya Zhizn'
(Moscow: Materik, 1993).

103
slandered in a newspaper: Boyd interview with VéN December 2, 1986, Boyd archive.

104
“As a little bit”: O. Mandelstam, 77.

105
“traced his descent”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

106
the Jewish tutor: O. Mandelstam, 78.

107
throwing down a glove: Interview with Vivian Crespi, June 20, 1997. Filippa Rolf to Estrid Tenggren, January 15, 1961, PC. Rolf, “January,” 45, PC.

108
“My father often”: O. Mandelstam, 86.

109
“since for me no”: VéN to Lena Massalsky, December 4, 1959.

110
“In your article”: VéN to
New York Post
, August 22, 1958.

111
“Yes, Russian and Jewish”: Roberto Cantini, “Nabokov tra i cigni di Montreux,” in
Epoca
, July 10, 1973.

112
“I loathe people”: VéN diary, VNA.

113
supplementary coaching: Nicolas Berdyaev,
The Russian Idea
(London: G. Bles, 1947), 27. “intellectual arrogance”: Diana Trilling,
The Beginning of the Journey
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), 20.

114
breadlines: For a sense of the Revolution and day-to-day life, see especially Iosef Hessen, unpublished memoir, Hoover; and Miriam Kochan,
The Last Days of Imperial Russia
(New York: Macmillan, 1976). For the history of the Revolution, I have drawn almost exclusively on the work of Richard Pipes:
Russia under the Old Regime, The Russian Revolution
, and
Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime
.

115
member of the intelligentsia: Interview with DN, May 23, 1997.

116
“the spirit of self-sacrifice”: VN to Edmund Wilson, February 23, 1948, NWL 194–96. “syphilis”: Pipes,
Russian Revolution
, 60.

117
could not object strenuously: Her marginal reaction to the assertion in Williams,
Culture in Exile
, is “nonsense.” Also VéN to Boyd, December 13, 1981, VNA.

118
A wrong step: Hessen, unpublished memoirs, chap. 16, p. 32, Hoover.

119
“I remember vividly”: VéN to Anastasia Rodzianko, May 9, 1984, VNA. The original is in French.

120
all the cars: Karlinsky,
Marina Tsvetaeva
, 81.

121
“not so much decided”: VéN to Boyd, May 1986, VNA. Sonia's recollections, Anna Feigin to VéN, December 7, 1964. Lena's recollections, interview with Massalsky, June 16, 1997.

122
The train ride to Odessa, through the arrival in the Crimea: I have based this account on Boyd's notes of his conversation with VéN, June 13, 1982, and December 13, 1981. Also on P. J.

124
Capelotti, ed.,
Our Man in the Crimea
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991). the rail ties: Interview with DN, May 23, 1997; interview with Massalsky, June 16, 1997.

125
She could sing: Interviews with DN, November 1, 1996, May 23, 1997.

126
“No one knew”: Ilya Ehrenburg,
People and Life, 1891–1921
(New York: Knopf, 1962), 313. Or as

127
VN described Yalta in GLORY, 2: “the town kept trying on now one regime, now another, and could not make up its finicky mind.”

128
“sailing as if by chance” and rest of Martin's departure: GLORY, 24–28. By some reports the family left Yalta in March 1920. VéN remembered the Red Army pushing past the isthmus's fortifications and reported that the family stayed as long as Wrangel held the peninsula, which would place the departure in or slightly before November 1920. Lena Slonim put the departure in 1918, presumably borrowing the date on which the family had left Petersburg.

129
filthy vessel: See VN's description, to Cécile Miauton, n.d.

130
Véra on Vienna: To HS, December 1, 1967. The bulk of this account is again via Boyd's interview notes, especially those of June 13, 1982. Also, see Slonimsky, below.

132
sight of white bread: Nicolas Slonimsky, oral history of March 15, 1977, University of California at Los Angeles, Dept. of Special Collections, No. 300/169.

133
“made much money” to the charity balls: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973. Also, Boyd interview with VéN, June 5, 1982, Boyd archive.

134
“everybody was going”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

135
She talked, and argued: Boyd interview with VéN, December 20, 1981, Boyd archive.

136
“deprived of its high” through “Scala”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

137
“welter of vodka”: Friedrich,
Before the Deluge
, 21.

138
discouraged in her plans: Boyd interview with VéN, November 11, 1982, Boyd archive. The architectural engineering degree: Filippa Rolf, “January,” 22, PC.

139
import-export firm: Goldenweiser archives, Bakhm.

140
teaching herself to type: VN to Kirill Nabokov, n.d.

141
On Orbis: VéN to Goldenweiser, March 6, 1967, Bakhm.

142
the Dostoyevsky translation: Field, 1977, 178.

143
strolled by their governesses: Interview with Alfred Appel, October 20, 1995.

144
“They could have met”: Penelope Gilliatt, “Nabokov,”
Vogue
, March 1967.

145
“directed the searchlight”: ADA, 153.

146
What would have to “as we are now”: Field, 1977, 34.

147
Fate was ill-inclined: VN to VéN, November 1923, and August 24, 1924, VNA.

148
whole catalogue: Fate finds a way from the earliest stories (“Doorbell,” 192) to the later novels (ADA, 152).

149
Nabokov at work in the background: W. W. Rowe,
Nabokov's Spectral Dimension
, 120ff.

150
Fate's devious ways: VéN to Boyd, May 1986, VNA.

151
“If you look carefully”: Interview with Matthew J. Bruccoli, April 18, 1995.

152
“Oh, I have a thousand”: GIFT, 193–94.

153
“the upper hand”: RLSK, 7

154
He was bored: VN to VéN, December 30, 1923, VNA.

155
dreaming prophetically: VN to VéN, January 12, 1924, VNA.

156
“Something has happened”: VN to VéN, January 24, 1924.

1
“Don't you think”: VéN to Boyd, May 1986, VNA.

2
“I've had many more”: VN to Field, October 2, 1970, VNA.

3
regretted, though: SM, 240. “How many there had been already of these silk rags, and how he had tried to hang them across the gaping black gap!” laments the hero of one of VN's first stories, five months after VN had met VéN. “Wingstroke,” STORIES, 28.

4
“hardly an ordinary”: VN to VéN, November 8, 1923, VNA.

5
negative side of things: Boyd, 1990, 215.

6
“tiny sharp arrows”: VN to VéN, December 3, 1923, VNA.

7
“At first I” to “sharp corners”: VN to VéN, undated, 1924, VNA.

8
“I feel pain”: Poem beginning, “Your face between palms,” VNA. The “sharp corners” were again
ostrye ugly
, as in VN's letter.

9
“You see,” he averred: VN to VéN, August 24, 1924, VNA.

10
value for posterity: Interview with DN, November 12, 1997.

11
Boyd feels: Boyd to author, June 21, 1997.

12
“Austen is a kitten”: Interview with Joanna Russ, May 6, 1996.

13
the usual preconceptions: To which he readily confessed, VN to Wilson, May 5, 1950, NWL, 240–41.

14
“family disease”: HS to VN, April 19, 1938, VNA. Selections from the Sikorski correspondence have been published, in Russian, as
Vladimir Nabokov: Perepiska s sestroi
(Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985).

15
a symptom of provincial literature: VN to Aldanov, May 6, 1942, Bakhm.

16
“stellar” communication through “many other ways”: VN to VéN, January 8, 1924, VNA.

17
synesthesia: See especially A. R. Luria,
The Mind of a Mnemonist
(New York: Basic Books, 1968), and Gladys A. Reichard, Roman Jakobson, and Elizabeth Werth's “Language and Synesthesia” in
Word
5, no. 2 (August 1949).

18
pink flannel: VN to HS, November 26, 1945, PC. Also, BBC interview with VN, November 22, 1962. Nabokov lent some features of his palette to Fyodor, GIFT, 74.

19
“She spoils everything”: Gerald Clarke, September 17, 1974, interview notes for
Esquire
profile.

20
“must convey the colour”: RLSK, 70.

21
delighted in the luminosity: VN to VéN, January 17, 1924, VNA.

22
“She has different”: Field, 1977, 179.

23
“possessed, too”: RLSK, 81. The images are again conjoined in PF, 165.

24
“Véra says that the top”: VN diary, January 15, 1951, VNA.

25
“capacity to wonder”: VN, “The Creative Writer,”
NEMLA Bulletin
, January 1942. LL, 374.

26
sitting under the dryer: Rolf, “January,” PC.

27
general strike, to “everything then seemed”: The offender was Friedrich,
Before the Deluge
, VéN copy.

28
acknowledged privately: VéN to DN, June 28, 1961, VNA.

29
coddled him: Iosef Hessen,
Gody izgnania
(Paris: YMCA Press, 1979), 94–95. Interview with HS, February 26, 1995.

30
“the smallest and oldest”: SM, 41.

31
“All Nabokovs”: Interview with HS, March 4, 1995.

32
“He loved himself”: GIFT, 190.

33
“When we were last”: VN to VéN, July 15, 1924, VNA. An unrelated character in “Terror,” STORIES, 175, does too.

34
a number of critics: Boyd, 1991, 639. See also the work of W. W. Rowe, Gennady Barabtarlo, among others. VéN on “potustoronnost”: STIKHI, 3.

35
soul is transferred: VN to VéN, May 12, 1930, VNA.

36
“I am so certain”: VN to his mother, March 27, 1925, VNA.

37
afflicted by total recall: Richard Wilbur to author, May 21, 1997. Boyd, 1990, 278.

38
space may be finite: Boyd, 1990, 253.

39
“ex-mortals”: “Lance,” STORIES, 635.

40
“serene superknowledge”: DN, in George Gibian and Stephen Jan Parker, eds.,
The Achievements of Vladimir Nabokov
, 176.

41
small miracles: VN to VéN, January 24, 1924, VNA. To one elder he did thank for his kind words, Sirin confessed: “I write much and mindlessly.” VN to Potresov (S. V. Yablonovsky), September 28, 1921.

42
“Now I truly” and “In winding ways”: VN to VéN, January 24, 1924, VNA.

43
“circumlocutions”: “THE WALTZ INvenTION,” 10.

44
“Writing is all”: VN to Svetlana Siewert, May 25, 1923, Amherst.

45
“I am prepared”: VN to VéN, January 24, 1924, VNA.

46
among the three people: VN to VéN, December 3, 1923, VNA.

47
This was the winter: VéN remembered 1924 as the year she rendered Harold Nicolson's
Some People
into Russian for her father, possibly with an eye toward an Orbis edition. The volume counted as well among VN's favorites. (Nicolson's “Miss Plimsoll” does seem to cast a spell on “Mademoiselle O,” which became the first installment of
Speak, Memory
. And which was reviewed in its British edition by Harold Nicolson.) She must have done so later, however, as Nicolson published the volume only in 1927. In a lovely interpenetration of time and generations, years later, on one of the most emotional days of her life, VéN would discuss another of her husband's favorite books, in London, with Harold Nicolson's son.