The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov (14 page)

“Thank God you've made it through safely,” Genia said breathlessly. “Meyerhold was shot at. Soldiers stopped Yuri and me, and weren't going to allow us through, until the captain of the guard recognized Yuri and apologized. But I'm told a man has been killed at the far end of the square. That's all I know. It happened before we arrived.”

Davide, who had laughed nervously at Genia's report, sat down on the steps and put his head in his hands.

“He's begun taking morphia,” Genia whispered in my ear. “The officers procure it from the doctors at the military hospitals.” He crouched beside our companion and put an arm around him. “It's become quite epidemic, you know.”

I hadn't known, and was about to inquire further when, much to my surprise, Majesté emerged from the theater, looking extraordinary in ostrich feathers and mink. “Ah, my dears, I've been sent to chaperone. We must proceed immediately to our seats. All is about to begin.”

As the opening night had been designated a benefit in Yurev's honor, a special box was reserved for the actor's entourage.

“All eyes are upon us,” Majesté announced rather implausibly as we entered. The others in the box rose to be introduced. Maurice Paléologue, the French ambassador, bowed gallantly, and as he did so, I was mortified to recognize in the man standing directly behind him none other than M. Tartuffe, introduced a moment later by the ambassador as his chargé d'affaires
,
M. Tristan LeJeune. This was a peril I had failed to anticipate. A glance from M. Tartuffe warned me to acknowledge nothing. Fortunately, I recognized no others from the pederast's ball, though Grand Duke Nicolay was visible in the Imperial Box, along with Grand Dukes Mikhail and Boris. Neither the Tsar nor the Tsarina was present.

Majesté, who had shed her mink to reveal a rather daring décolleté, settled herself and began to survey the theater with a pair of opera glasses she drew from between her padded bosoms. Apparently satisfied with the
haute société
she no longer traversed, Majesté whispered to us, “I've been told an ‘imperial surprise' awaits the end of the performance. Imagine that, my children. Our Yuri's sins are widely known, and especially displeasing to Her Majesty the Tsarina. It happened well before your time,
mes petits
, but let me tell you: it was no scantiness in the divine Nijinsky's costume that caused the Imperial Ballet to fire him. No, no. It was pretty Vatza's, shall we say,
unusual
relations with Diaghilev that reached the Tsarina's ears. Of our Yuri's predilections she is said to have complained, ‘Yurev is like the ocean, and mothers with sons must live in fear of oceans
.'”

The rise of the curtain interrupted Majesté's revelations. The theater lights had not been turned down. Nothing separated us from the stage: the opulent, oversized set was the space of our own homes and palaces stretched to dreamlike proportions, lit by a thousand candles and backed by mirrors that reflected the dazzling audience back to its own dazzled self. Vases and pots and tubs of the most fragrant hothouse flowers—jasmine, camellia, gardenia—bloomed everywhere on that stage, sweetly corrupting the hall with their scent.

Much has been written about the extraordinary production, at once fantastical and disquieting. Beneath the precisely scored patter of the dialogue (Meyerhold's famous “biometrics”), Glazunov's melodies slithered like black serpents beneath bloodred roses. As the murderous lover Arbenin, Yurev seemed
to have distilled into a clear and bitter cordial those elements I had earlier remarked in his character—Byronic nonchalance, a slightly sinister corpulence combined with a weightless darkness where one imagined his soul should be.

From time to time I permitted myself to glance over at Genia, who sat engrossed by the spectacle before him. What did he see as he gazed so intently at the stage that was no longer a stage, really, but our own unreal world? Of everyone in this audience, he alone had been chosen to enjoy awful intimacies with the actor who mesmerized and, truth be told, frightened us all.
Yurev is like the ocean
,
and mothers with sons must live in fear of oceans.
Wasn't drowning the most gorgeous of deaths? As I watched his delicate profile, his upturned nose and long eyelashes, I pitied Genia, I envied him, I felt the current sweep him so far out into perilous waters that no one could any longer rescue him.

Beside me, Davide had fallen asleep, or passed out, his head resting on Majesté's bared shoulder.

What I could not see, however, preoccupied me as much as what I could—namely, the presence of M. Tartuffe, whose coldly amused gaze I could feel taking liberties with the defenseless back of my neck. Once the performance was over and the applause began, how was I to escape without being accosted? At the same time, I entertained the feverish notion that should M. LeJeune speak to me afterward, I should be unable to resist, and would acquiesce in whatever wickedness he might propose.

Thus my thoughts roiled as the climactic masked ball commenced. The stage filled with Harlequin and Columbine, Pulchinello and Pierrot, a host of masked men in fezzes and turbans, a wild tribe of women in harem garb. I suddenly sensed that the entire performance was a reenactment, for my benefit alone, of the infernal pederast's ball. Indeed, I suspected in Yurev's invitation of LeJeune to his box the laying of a deplorable trap for which I began to feel almost grateful.

Scarcely had I stumbled upon that thought when, to music gone suddenly quiet and disquieted, the figure known as The Stranger strutted onstage. Clad in black domino and white mask, self-possessed and vile, he enticed the motley crowd into an increasingly lascivious orgy of pantomime. I conceived the tormenting notion that, were The Stranger to remove his mask, he would reveal himself as none other than M. Tartuffe, and it was all I could do to restrain myself from turning around in my seat to make certain that M. LeJeune had not vanished from our box and reappeared onstage. At the height of the frenzied music and miming, Davide woke with a start, letting out an alarmed little cry, further taxing my nerves. Drawing two fingers across my brow, I discovered I was sweating.

At once the music ceased. The Stranger turned, glaring at his foolish followers, freezing them instantly in their tracks. In a weirdly staccato voice he dispensed his famously ambiguous advice to Arbenin, and now his band of maskers swirled like irrepressible thoughts around the tormented husband, even so far as to hide him completely from our view.

Then the end. The anguished atonement. The church bells and somber choir. From the audience, rapturous applause, that ponderous rhythmic Russian applause I have not heard in years and never expect to hear again. Bouquets of roses handed all around. Laurel wreaths bestowed. When Yurev came out for his bow, the audience rose as one. Then the solemn announcement from a red-liveried imperial deputy: Nikolay II, Tsar of all the Russias, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Georgia, Grand Duke of Smolensk, Lithuania, Volhynia, and Finland, Prince of Samarkand, etc., etc., hereby bestowed upon his loyal and valued subject Yuri Yurievich Yurev a gold cigarette case emblazoned with a diamond-studded, double-headed imperial eagle.

“Well, my dears, now what do you think of that? Isn't there a fascinating moral here somewhere? Isn't it a perfect coda
to such a strange vision? Theater and life blend so seamlessly sometimes.” Majesté beamed at us, looking as proud as if he were Yurev's own mother. “Come, Genia,” he cooed. “I am charged with escorting you directly to Yuri's dressing room. He has his own surprise waiting for you there.”

Genia smiled at us, frail and slight, as Majesté took him tenderly by the hand.

But now I must face my own ordeal, and indeed, M. Tartuffe accosted me the first chance he saw. When I boldly met his eyes, the expression I saw there, cold and taunting, shocked me.

“I'm truly gratified to see that mademoiselle made it home the other night without incident,” he murmured.

I had expected a wolf's gleam in his eye, a kindling of warmth. His abrupt manner brought out the worst in my stutter. I stood frozen, unable to utter a word as that look of consternation he had initially exhibited toward my affliction returned, and I saw whatever confused reveries I had entertained throughout the last two hours evaporate, much as the unreal world of the stage had shortly before. With a beautifully correct about-face he left me there, and I distinctly remember the smart click of his heels as he walked away.

“Ugh!” Davide consoled me as we left the theater. “I saw you with him at the ball. What an ape. You can do much better for yourself, I should think. You must meet my officers, I've decided, and soon. You won't recognize yourself any longer, once they're through with you.”

Glimpsing Volkov standing in the crowded square beside our Benz, I offered my dear friend a lift.

“No, no,” he said. The trams were still running, and in any event he surmised a brisk walk would do him some good.

“Well then,” I told him, “till we meet again.” We gazed on each other for a long moment. He surprised me by kissing my cheek. With a pang of distressed affection I watched him cross the emptying square.

“The sooner we get you home, the better,” Volkov admonished. “I've been looking around, and I don't like the things I see.”

The bread lines I had noticed earlier had strangely disappeared, and the trams seemed to have stopped running. Davide would have a longer walk than he had planned.

Normally a cautious driver, Volkov seemed agitated, accelerating and slowing in fits and starts. In the distance I heard what sounded like a gunshot, but the sound did not repeat and so I was not certain what I had heard.

Volkov broke the silence. “Will you look at that?” he said. The unsteadiness in his voice struck me. I saw him shake his head and point, but I could see nothing. We drove through one intersection, then another before I realized what he had remarked. On rooftops overlooking each crossing, Cossacks had begun setting up machine guns.

 

 

 

ALL AFTERNOON, LEADEN SKIES HAVE OFFERED the prospect of an evening's respite from the RAF, and they do not fail to deliver. Snow begins to fall around eight and continues nearly till dawn. No one heeds the curfew; the streets of Berlin are thronged, young and old alike taking advantage of this lull. The atmosphere, despite everything, is festive. Cafés and dance halls stay open long past midnight. The coal fires burning out of control in backyard after backyard seem cheerful rather than ominous, though the loss of the city's recently delivered winter fuel supply will be grievously felt later on. But for now it scarcely matters. We are alive, we are alive. People gather around those pyres, warming themselves as they have not been warmed in their homes for weeks, singing hymns that normally would be
verboten
, and praying to
a God who has been distinctly absent of late.

I walk the night, momentarily free from fear, ravished by this ruined city's ghastly beauty as snow settles everywhere, softening the blackened debris, obscuring the mortal wounds, and suddenly I am remembering, helplessly, a late spring afternoon high in the mountains, somewhere along the flanks of the Grossvenediger, where Hermann Thieme and I are surprised in our sunny ramble by a glittering snow squall blown in from nowhere, and Hermann in a transport of sheer joy lifts his arms into the air to welcome this whim of Nature, and as he does so his shirt rides up, exposing to view an expanse of smooth stomach, and impulsively, gratefully, in pure tribute I kneel before him and kiss him there on his taut belly, grazing my lips along smooth skin, savoring that narrow furry trail that leads southward from his elegant little navel, and there has never, I think, been a more perfect moment in the history of the world.

Love of my soul. Heart of my heart. It is two years since the police escorted us from our fool's paradise in Castle Weissenstein. Two years since Hermann was sentenced to the 999th Afrika Brigade. Penal battalions are valued as “tramplers” in minefields. They are useful in spearheading suicide attacks. They make excellent decoys, and are superb at drawing enemy fire. Wehrmacht doctors are not permitted to treat the wounded. It is forbidden to bury the corpses. Those few who survive their sentence earn the right to serve as regular infantry on the Eastern Front.

I will not see Hermann again. Never, never, never, never, never.

 

 

 

 

FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS NO ONE DARED venture forth. Father spent hours in his study, conferring by telephone with Miliukov and other members of the Duma. Every now and again he would descend the stairs to announce another bit of rumor or news: the police had fired on workers; certain army units had refused to fire on those same workers, and had begun firing instead on the police; the entire Volhynian regiment had massacred its officers and gone over to the workers; scores of police stations were in flames; the Peter and Paul Fortress was under siege; the prisons had been emptied; strikers occupied the Winter Palace. General Khabolov had informed the Tsar that he could no longer maintain order in the city.

Then the final blow: the Cossacks of the Escort and the Regiment of His Majesty, the elite of the Imperial Guard,
abandoned the Tsar and joined the rebellion.

I have never been the least bit brave. I remember, as a child, how I feared carriage rides on rough roads, a swing pushed too high, Golliwog in the picture books, candles flickering in an unfamiliar bedroom. But I had never known terrors like those which surrounded us that February afternoon as sounds of gunfire from the street penetrated every part of the house.