The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov (24 page)

Gerald Murphy met me at the bottom of the gangplank—an open-faced, unassuming fellow, hardly my notion of a rich American. (His family owned a leather goods empire.) Later I would come to admire the very few but highly original paintings he would produce before lapsing into the painterly equivalent of silence.

Fortified with a flute of champagne from the bar, I stationed myself by the railing to await Cocteau's arrival. Happily, he
was not long. And what an entourage he had brought! There stood Diaghilev, pale and bloated, with handsome factotum Boris Kochno on his left arm and shockingly beautiful Serge Lifar on his right. Behind him, Véra Nemchinova, the troupe's
prima ballerina
, was accompanied by Ernest Ansermet, under whose baton
Les Noces
had sprung so thrillingly to life the evening before.

Lifar and Nemchinova bounded aboard, but Diaghilev remained quayside. Despite the urging of Cocteau and Kochno, he balked at making his entrance.

“Please, Sergey Pavlovich, it's time to come aboard,” Kochno urged.

Diaghilev shook his huge head, on which a tiny derby balanced precariously. He adjusted his monocle, chewed his lower lip. “Why wasn't I told?” he demanded.

“It's perfectly safe,” Kochno reassured him. “I offer you my word.”

Drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, Diaghilev dabbed at the sweat on his brow. “When they said ‘restaurant'…”

“Perfectly safe,” Kochno repeated.

Diaghilev's voice grew shrill. “Why could no one be bothered to tell me? Isn't there a single soul here I can trust? Go! Summon Lifar. Can't I count on a single one of you ungrateful little bitches?”

“Honolulu,” serenely chanted Cocteau, who until now had been silent. “The most soothing word in any language. Simply repeat after me: Honolulu.”

Diaghilev ceased to pat his brow, and bestowed on Cocteau an extraordinarily charming smile. “I'm hardly assured by such foolishness, Jeanchik. Nevertheless: should today prove my appointed day, well, then, so much the worse for my creditors.” And with that, gripping his walking stick with one hand and Kochno's arm with the other, the portly figure crossed over the gangway and onto the deck.

Safely delivered, he paused to survey the crowded scene before him. I felt a tremor of anxious excitement as he recognized me. “Ah, my dear fellow exile,” he said, approaching and clasping my hand. He seemed to have forgotten entirely the inauspicious circumstances of our earlier meeting. “What news of the holy motherland? My great condolences on your father, my boy. An irreparable loss for our tragic country.” For a moment, tears seemed to glisten in his watery eyes. Then he turned to Cocteau. “My dear,” he purred, “have you made this youngster's acquaintance?”

“We've taken to one another like kittens to milk,” Cocteau affirmed. “Isn't that true,
mon cher
?”

“Quite,” I managed to stammer out.

At my side appeared Kochno bearing two flutes of champagne he held out to his elders. Sergey Pavlovich took one daintily, a bear sniffing a golden tulip.

Cocteau fluttered his lashes. “Oh my, but I detest alcohol, my pretty child. A terrible vice. Please take it away. Give me a mouthful of Negro jazz instead. Can our Gerald and Sara have neglected to hire an orchestra? What good are Americans if they can't provide music? We simply must have music. Otherwise, my dears, the evening's doomed. Forgive me. I've got to find music.”

Diaghilev watched him dash away, then remarked to us, as if it had just occurred to him, “He's found his true calling at last—as a nightclub manager!”

Left alone with Diaghilev and Kochno, I giddily gulped champagne as Kochno murmured to his master, “He's not attracted to her in the least. Have no fear.”

I looked in the direction of their stare: Lifar and Nemchinova surrounded by admirers.

“No, of course not,” Diaghilev said bitterly. “He's only attracted to himself.”

“That's not true,” Kochno assured him. “You're everything
to him—as he, in return, wishes to be to you. He confessed that happy state of affairs to me only this morning.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” muttered Diaghilev.

In an attempt to bring myself into the conversation I said, “I bear greetings from my uncle”—a sentiment true in spirit if not strictly in fact. I suspected my uncle would be alarmed to find me unchaperoned before the great man.

“Ah, yes. Dear Kostya. Our country's great debacle ruined many fine men, but none so completely, I fear, as he. Is he still smarting from the various blows to his pride as well as his pocketbook?”

“My uncle has a long memory for slights.”

Diaghilev laughed amiably. “Our Kostya has conveniently forgotten far more than most men remember. Ask any number of regimental officers! For that matter, ask two or three striplings from my own troupe. He's never forgiven me for one of them, though he'd never deign to admit it. But I can tell. I know when someone has turned against me! It's happened so often.”

Cocteau's return ended this illuminating line of talk. He had somehow managed to exchange his cream-colored summer suit for the navy-blue jacket and white trousers of a ship's captain.

More guests were arriving. First came Misia Sert. “The only female our woman-hating Serge Pavlovich can abide,” Cocteau whispered in my ear. “We all thought they'd eventually marry, but Serge is only in love with his work and Misia, it turns out, is only in love with his work as well.”

The mannish figure with the aquiline nose was Princesse Edmond de Polignac, née Winnaretta Singer, heiress to the American sewing machine fortune turned patron of the arts; it was she who had commissioned
Les Noces
. And with her? Natalia Goncharova, who designed the sets, and Bronislava Nijinska—yes, sister to you-know-who—who had done the choreography. That handsome fellow greeting Diaghilev? Oh,
that was Etienne de Beaumont, who threw the most fabulous
bals masqués
in Paris.

A small, dapper man with bulging eyes turned out to be Picasso, accompanied by his very solemn, very Russian-looking wife. Did I want to know how Picasso finally won the hand of Olga Khokhlova? Was I aware she was the only dancer in Diaghilev's entire corps de ballet who would have the cocky little Spaniard, and only after Serge told him, If you want a Russian girl, Pablito, you'll have to marry her first.

“And Picasso took his advice!” Cocteau exclaimed sotto voce. “Isn't that mad?”

The brisk jangle of a ship's bell interrupted his highly informative chatter. In American-accented French, Gerald Murphy announced that dinner was to be served below decks. The last of the evening light was so pacific we were all reluctant to forsake its balm for the dimly lit
salle à manger
. And yet, as we descended the stairs, the banquet tables, set with pale blue china and soothed by candlelight, offered another kind of beauty. In lieu of flowers, a small pyramid of toys adorned the center of each table. From the ceiling had been hung a great laurel wreath with the inscription “
Les Noces—Hommage
” in golden script.

Radiating elegance, Mrs. Murphy directed guests to their seats. At her side stood Stravinsky, every so often amending her directions in a way that made it clear he had been rearranging the place cards.

On seeing me, Mrs. Murphy looked blank, but I hardly registered her confusion, so utterly caught off guard was I by my sudden proximity to greatness. Though an exhilarated “
cher maître
” was ready to spring from my lips, Stravinsky's indifferent gaze silenced me completely.

“Last minute substitution,” he told Mrs. Murphy. “I gather Monsieur Radiguet's gone missing, so Cocteau has enlisted this myrmidon in his stead.”

The remark puzzled me, but Mrs. Murphy smiled with such
unaffected warmth that I was immediately reassured. With a gracious gesture she motioned me to the most remote of the eight tables.

“Marvelous!” Picasso exclaimed, seating himself at the first table and beginning to pick through the piled-up toys like a child opening his stocking at Christmas. He lifted each piece, then began balancing them one on top of another.

Cocteau had taken up a position at one of the barge's portholes. “We're sinking,” he announced to an inattentive crowd. “I'm afraid the
Maréchal Joffre
is doomed. I can't tell you how honored I shall feel to perish alongside such celebrated company.”

Stravinsky, meanwhile, evinced exaggerated surprise at finding himself seated between Mrs. Murphy and the Princesse de Polignac. Next to the Princesse, Diaghilev took his place, and next to him Madame Sert and then Serge Lifar and Olga Picasso and Gerald Murphy and Natalia Goncharova and finally the industrious Picasso, still putting the finishing touches on his whimsical construction, brought the circle back around to the beautiful Mrs. Murphy.

I was thrilled to see, on arriving at my own table, that Cocteau's place card was next to mine. I could also see that my new friend was still hovering rather forlornly about the main table, as if searching for the little rectangle of cardboard that would allow him to evict an overreaching guest.

“I believe you are down there,” Stravinsky told him, gesturing in my direction.

“Surely there's a mistake,” Cocteau appealed to Mrs. Murphy, who was explaining to Picasso how she had forgotten that the flower market sold toys rather than flowers on Sunday, and rather than return empty-handed…

Cocteau looked around in vain for some higher authority to whom he might appeal; there being none, he made an insouciant shrug and marched over to another porthole. “I regret to
report,” he announced, “that we continue to sink. Who knew the Seine was infested by serpents?”

It made those nearest him laugh, which seemed to mollify him a bit.

Our table was populated by Americans and other nonentities like myself.

“I'm Mrs. Cole Porter,” chirped the woman next to me. “So very pleased to meet you.” She extended a small, limp hand. She was very beautiful, and seemed to know it. The name Cole Porter meant nothing to me, though she seemed to assume it should.

“My husband”—she indicated a polished-looking fellow at the next table—“and Gerald have known each other since Yale, where they were the best of pals.”

I asked her how she liked
Les Noces
.

“Dear me, such a clatter. But so modern! Don't you think so? So very modern and yet so very Russian. Those peasants in their smocks. And four pianos! What a bold idea, don't you think? I'm going to ask Monsieur Stravinsky if he might give my husband some composition lessons. My husband writes marvelous music, to be sure, but Monsieur Stravinsky could teach him any number of things, I think, counterpoint and syncopation, all the things you have to do to be taken seriously. It's not enough these days just to carry a tune. I think my husband capable of writing the Ballets Russes a show sure to be an even bigger hit than
Hitchy-Koo of 1922
.”

She waited for my response, but since I had none, though I cast about desperately for one, she went on, a bit plaintively, “You've at least
heard
of
Hitchy-Koo
?”

I told her that I regretted that I had not.

“In America it was huge. Gilbert”—she addressed a rather staid-looking man across the table—“wasn't
Hitchy-Koo
a huge smash?”

“The hugest,” he confirmed.

“See?” she told me. “But what I'm really dying to know”—she discreetly lowered her smoky voice—“is what Monsieur Stravinsky's compatriots think of his portrait of their native land. Before this evening is out, I intend to ask one of the Russians here
exactly
what they think.”

I told Mrs. Porter the ballet had reminded me of Russia not at all.

“
You're
Russian? Why no—that can't be.” With her delicate hand she covered her mouth's surprised
o
. “Your English is so very good.”

I told her I had had English governesses and had spoken English my whole life.

“How fascinating. It would certainly be fun to travel to Russia one of these days. But we're not to call it Russia anymore, are we? The Soviet Union. How grand that sounds, and so very modern, but also rather forbidding, don't you think? My husband says—”

Waiters descended with plates of lovely food. Not having eaten since morning, I was grateful to turn my attention from the fascinating Mrs. Porter to other nourishment.

“Do you observe,” Cocteau said, “that we are the only two men in this room who have been seated together? What message is our amusing Igor trying to send?”

Ignoring his food, he glared in the direction of the head table, but after a few minutes his fury at having been demoted to the American table seemed to abate. He pushed his untouched plate away and observed that I seemed to have watched with interest Diaghilev's reluctance to board the barge.

“Rather a dramatic hiatus, no? Aren't you curious?”

“Most curious,” I admitted.

“Gentle Narcisse will reveal all. You see, when our Serge was but a boy, he suffered a most unfortunate encounter—with a woman! Now, don't be shocked. It's not what you think. Oh no: it's far worse. This woman was a gypsy. Serge was twelve,
thirteen. He has never told a soul the full story. One can only imagine how this wretched gypsy accosted our innocent lad, took him by the wrist, led him down a dark, foul-smelling alley. You're Russian, you can picture these things much better than I! With one filthy hand she held open his milk-white palm, with the other she stroked it. Cunningly, she then uttered the words, never to be forgotten:
Beware. You will die on the water.
And with that, my dear, she released him. He ran all the way home, but no matter how fast he ran, he could not outrun her words. No, he is still running from those terrible words.
You will die on the water.
And what do you know? Many successful years later, when it came time for the Ballets Russes to sail to South America, why, our Serge simply could not accompany them! The prophecy was too much for him. He stayed behind. With his great blessing—I can see him make the sign of the cross over his beloved, and bestow upon the troubled youth a medallion of Saint Anthony of Padua he has had specially struck—he sent the blessed Nijinsky forth to his doom. To Romola, that is—a Hungarian gypsy herself, who deftly seduced Nijinsky away from our poor Serge. I wonder, sometimes, whether it was not Romola's own grandmother who first uttered the prophecy, knowing full well it would one day deliver unto her granddaughter a prize at the time not yet even born.”