Vera (79 page)

48
“savagely,” and “to the point”: VN to VéN, January 17, 1924, July 17, 1924, VNA.

49
Evsei Slonim's domestic arrangements: Interview with HS, July 11, 1995. Similarly, Ellendea Proffer, Michaël Massalsky.

50
“has always had”: Anna Feigin to VéN, January 20, 1966.

51
“Anna Feigin was my cousin”: VéN to G. Shapiro, January 16, 1985, VNA.

52
pleased to report: VN to his mother, probably July 1924, VNA.

53
recopying the enclosed: VN to VéN, July 17, 1924, VNA.

54
“The sharpest jealousy”: VN to his mother, probably July 1924, VNA. “We were ridiculously”: SO, 191–92.

55
“By the way”: Boyd, 1990, 239.

56
not to have been told: Gleb Struve on Nabokov, Box 50, Folder 54, Hoover.

57
“a predatory campaign”: VN to VéN, August 24, 1924, VNA.

58
embraced Véra warmly: Interview with HS, June 30, 1997.

59
“Of what religion”: Field, 1977, 78. VéN raised no marginal objection to the line.

60
“I'm sorry he told”: DEFENSE, 115. Mrs. Luzhin has no name prior to her marriage, just as Luzhin has no name and patronymic prior to his disappearing into his passion, on the last page of the novel.

61
“Marry me, or”: Interview with Vera Kliatchkine, June 16, 1995.

62
“
imariable
”: Zinaida Shakhovskoy, quoting Eugenia Cannac, October 26, 1995.

63
“idiosyncratic form”: GIFT, 185.

64
“The one who finally”: Alexander Brailow, unpublished memoirs, 88, PC.

65
“The most important”: VN to HS, undated but probably 1926, PC.

66
“the brain-bridge”: LRL, 175.

67
“Things that are precious”: VéN to DN, November 16, 1975, VNA.

68
“We think that is”: Rolf, “January,” 51, PC.

69
“understands so well,” and the farms: VN to his mother, October 13, 1925, VNA.

70
“My pet, I am”: VN to VéN, June 29, 1926, VNA.

71
attempts to commit: VN to VéN, June 7, 1926, VNA.

72
miserable, homesick: VN to his mother, July 10, 1926, VNA.

73
the Binz trip: Interview with Abraham Bromberg, June 30, 1997.

74
“a hook on the man's jaw”: Cited in Boyd, 1990, 274. See also Field, 1986, 102.

75
They appear lost and “The foreign girl”: KQK, viii, 254. Leona Toker has pointed out that the couple's appearance is briefer but more substantial in the Russian novel, in which they register as a sort of ambulatory emblem of true love. See
Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 63.

76
“Her open dress”: VN diary, October 16, 1964, VNA.

77
“VN splashed the man's”: VéN copy of Field, 1977, marginal note, 152.

78
Emma Bovary nomenclature: LL, 132.

79
union of Marian Evans: Phyllis Rose,
Parallel Lives
(New York: Vintage, 1984), 210.

80
reading an obituary: VN to VéN, January 17, 1924, VNA.

81
Valentina as typist: The detective work on Valentina is not mine but Dieter Zimmer's. See Alexandrov, ed.,
The Garland Companion
, 352.

82
watershed year: Field, 1986, 83. See also Marina Turkevich Naumann,
Blue Evenings in Berlin
.

83
“soon after my marriage”: MARY, xiii.

84
new Turgenev: Eugenia Cannac,
Russkaya Mysl
3184 (December 29, 1977). VN was not pleased by the comparison. See also Aikhenvald review,
Rul
, March 3, 1926.

85
oblivious to his lessons: VN to his mother, January 13, 1925, VNA.

86
eight-hour marathon: VN to his mother, October 30, 1927, VNA.

87
Véra contributed to this: VN to Field, October 2, 1970.

88
“He [Vladimir] never”: VéN notes on Field's 1977 ms., VNA.

89
The primer has survived: See Dieter Zimmer,
The Nabokovian
27 (Fall 1991), 37–40.

90
“After all, I'm afraid”: VN to VéN, January 24, 1924, VNA.

91
“everything connected”: October 1964, unpublished VN interview notes.

92
Telephone numbers: RLSK, 113. TT, 27.

93
Newark as in New York: VN to Zenzinov, May 28, 1944, Bakhm.

94
Auden and Aiken: VN to Edmund Wilson, February 16, 1946, NWL, 163.

95
“The obstructive behavior”: ADA, 571. He admitted to lending
Pale Fire's
John Shade his litany of loathings, SO, 18.

96
“Stupid, inimical things”: Nurit Beretzky interview,
Ma'Ariv
(Israel), January 5, 1970.

97
“the uncouth manuscript”: RLSK, 34.

98
“She presided as adviser”: Interview with Herbert Gold,
The Paris Review
, October 1967. Repr., SO, 105. Elsewhere this was, “then my wife corrects the slips of my pencil,” Gerald Clarke interview notes, September 17, 1974.

99
“still warm and wet”: Robert Robinson, “The Last Interview,” repr. in Peter Quennell, ed.,
Vladimir Nabokov
, 123.

100
shrugged off: See for example Alfred Appel to VN, October 17, 1970; VéN to Appel, October 30, 1970.

101
“was very absent-minded”: VéN to Simon Karlinsky, February 27, 1978, VNA. Cf. unpublished last chapter of SM, LOC, in which VN writes of a Mr. Nabokov who “seems to combine a good deal of absentmindedness with his pedantism.”

102
“No, my dear”: RLSK, 83.

103
“Wonderful, but I'm not” and “as a regulator”: GIFT, 204–5.

104
This would have mandated: Hessen,
Gody izgnania
, 205.

105
“Well, after that my very”: Robert Hughes interview tape, December 28, 1965.

106
“Most of my works”: SO, 191.

107
radiant, delicate, thin-wristed: Gennady Barabtarlo reminds me that a similar presence, erect and slender and white, with a “pale conflagration” of golden hair, appears in VN's spring 1924 story “Revenge.” See Barabtarlo,
Aerial View
, 6–19.

108
some of the shimmer: For a discussion of the shimmer semantically encoded in Zina's surname, see D. Barton Johnson,
Worlds in Regression
, 98ff. In 1968 VN inscribed a book, with a butterfly, to Véra. “Here's an iridescent butterfly for my iridescent darling,” he offered, using a word related to
mertsat'
.

109
“And Clare, who”: RLSK, 82.

110
“She and I are”: Hughes interview, December 28, 1965.

111
Friends felt: Stephen Jan Parker to author, November 25, 1996.

112
“To get into” and “And once inside”: G. Ivanov, cited in V. S. Yanovsky,
Elysian Fields
, 12.

113
“Reviews were considered”: Yanovsky, 11–12. I have drawn here especially on Berberova, Williams, and Yanovsky.

114
one writer calculated: Volkov,
St. Petersburg
, 227.

115
“almost idyllic isolation”: VN to Vladislav Khodasevich, July 24, 1934, Berberova papers, Yale.

116
Emily Dickinson: Rolf to Tenggren, January 15, 1961, PC.

117
essentially congratulated: VéN to Morris Bishop, May 23, 1973.

118
“The people I invite”: Nantas Salvalaggio interview,
Il Giorno
, n.d.

119
“She had imagination”: RLSK, 81.

120
erotic poems: VéN to Boyd, May 1986, VNA.

121
“Were you really”: Interview with Ellendea Proffer, May 9, 1997.

122
a Berlin champion: Boyd interview with VéN, November 11, 1982, Boyd archive.

123
assassination plot: Interview with Vladimir Sikorsky, March 5, 1997. VéN denied all involvement in such a scheme in a
Washington Times
response to Andrew Field, December 22, 1986. But her affirmations tend to outweigh that protest to a biographer with whom she had fallen out: She told Ellendea and Carl Proffer, Serge Karpovich, Boyd, and her son of the Trotsky plan (HS heard of it from her brother), and others more generally of the revolver. With a laugh she admitted to Ellendea Proffer that “she had been quite carried away” (EP to author, May 9, 1997). Nor did she cavil with Field's allusions to the assassination attempt in the margins of his 1977 and 1986 volumes, which she marked up freely.

124
“I know, with certainty” and “all these, my idle”: “Teddy,” November 1, 1923, VNA. The “seven deaths” became “seven compressed deaths” in LD, 283.

125
“Fragile, tender”: “Véra,” unpublished Aikhenvald poem, LOC.

126
“Everyone in the Russian”: Interview with Isabella Yanovsky, May 31, 1996.

127
“in the full bloom” and “the typewriter”: VN to his mother, April 4, 1928, VNA.

128
death records: I am grateful to the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin for documents relating to both Slonims' deaths.

129
“his readiness to ignore”:
Rul
, June 30, 1928.

130
clerical position: There is no indication the position was anything but. Archives of the Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Quai d'Orsay, Personnel, Berlin; Nantes, Berlin ambassade, série B, série C.

131
“How to Organize”: Helen Yakobson,
Crossing Borders
, 157.

132
“hysterical over all sorts”: VN to VéN, July 12, 1926, VNA.

133
Even he admitted: VN to Struve, January 25, 1929, Hoover.

134
claimed to have read: Hessen,
Gody izgnania
, 250.

135
“was nothing more”: VN Memoriam to I. V. Hessen.

136
“only the squirrels”: SM, 303.

137
deep orange: VN to Aikhenvald, July 15, 1927.

138
exercised with the windows: VN to mother, November 28, 1925, VNA.

139
“Personally, my husband”: VéN to Robert C. Williams, February 23, 1965, VNA.

140
VN's German: Interviews with Josef and Abraham Bromberg, May 20, 1997. Struve was convinced VN knew the language, “Vladimir Nabokov as I Knew Him and as I See Him,” 8, Hoover. Reading of DEFENSE, VéN to Ledig Rowohlt, March 8, 1960, VNA.

141
mangling it: VN to Roman Grynberg, February 18, 1967.

142
In a 1932 interview: “Meeting with V. Sirin,”
Sevodnya
(Riga), November 4, 1932.

143
long disliked: VN to VéN, July 4, 1926, and draft of SM, LOC.

144
he could read but not write: VN to Princeton University Press, March 29, 1975.

145
“Who wanted assimilation”: VéN copy of Williams,
Culture in Exile
, 282.

146
“Nansen-sical” passports: DESPAIR, 128. By LO, 27 they had become Nonsense passports. Anyone doubting the impression these sickly green papers made on the Nabokovs has only to inventory the references to them in the later work. The indignities bring to mind “the funnels and pulleys of the Holy Inquisition,” “ ‘That in Aleppo Once …',” STORIES, 561.

147
“rat-whiskered”: SM, 276–77.

148
“criminals on parole”: SM, 276. In PNIN, 46, the passport is “a kind of parolee's card.” Small wonder VN claimed to dote on his sacred blue American papers. As he told a French journalist in 1967: “J'éprouve une sensation de chaleur et d'orgeuil lorsque je montre mon passeport américain aux frontières en Europe.” Pierre Dommergues,
Le Monde
, November 22, 1967.

149
“Russian literature”: VéN to her mother-in-law, July 26, 1929, VNA.

150
relinquished the land: VéN note in Field, 1986, 155.

151
French and German stenography: VéN to Goldenweiser, March 6, 1967, Bakhm. Most of VéN's employment history has been pieced together from her protracted reparations claim. Also PW archives, vol. 18.

152
Nabokov resented: VN to VéN, from Prague, probably 1930, VNA.

153
“my morning blind”: VN to VéN, June 20, 1926, VNA.

154
employment statistics: Detlev J. K. Peukert,
The Weimar Republic
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1992) 96ff. Equally helpful as background for this chapter were Alix de Jonge,
The Weimar Chronicle
(New York: Paddington Press, 1978); Walter Laqueur,
Weimar: A Cultural History, 1918–1933
(New York: Putnam's, 1974); Otto Friedrich,
Before the Deluge
.

155
“we always had”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

156
proud assertion of 1935: VN to Ellen Rydelius, December 6, 1935.

157
“having developed his”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

158
Anna Dostoyevsky: see Anna Dostoyevsky,
Reminiscences
(New York, Liveright, 1975).

159
one of his then-admirers: Zinaida Saranna (Shakhovskoy),
Le Rouge et Le Noir
(Brussels), November 16, 1932. His detractors went further, accusing him of repackaging foreign literature in an appropriated style. See Georgy Ivanov in
Chisla
, February 1930.

160
“As a young author”: VéN to Stephen A. Canada, March 4, 1966.

161
“in a German paraphrase”: GIFT, 189.

162
On Weil, Gans: VéN told Boyd that the law firm had made the transition to fiction intact, down to the last detail, February 26, 1983, Boyd archive. Goldenweiser attested to the same, to VN, July 29, 1938, Bakhm.

163
“high adventure”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.