The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov (25 page)

Leaping to his feet, Cocteau said, “But do you believe such a ridiculous tale?” He made for the nearest porthole. Peering through a pantomimed spyglass, he reported, “Still sinking,” though no one save me looked his way.

With a theatrical shrug, he returned quietly to his seat, where he resumed his scabrous chatter. No one in the whole room, it seemed, escaped his keen eye.

“And what do you make of our host, Gerald? But of course you've only just met him. He's altogether sweet, but there's a loneliness in him that sings its plaintive little aria just beyond
the range of common hearing. But listen—listen to the way he talks—can you hear?”

Cocteau dropped his voice to a whisper. “It's said he had a terrible schoolboy crush on Mrs. Cole Porter's husband back in their tour of undergraduate duty at Harvard, or was it Princeton? Some ivy-infested excuse for American higher learning. Never requited, of course, though I think Mr. Porter, for all his tuneful wit and delightful marriage, may yet prove his allegiance to the lonelier realms. Mark my words. Inverts,”—and here he reverted to his normal tone of voice—“they do after all recognize each other, you know. Just as Jews do. Only sometimes, life's mean little joke, they manage to recognize everybody but themselves.”

From a piano that had hitherto lurked unremarked in the corner of the dining room came a burst of music. At the keyboard I recognized Madame Meyer from Le Boeuf.

“My own father, I believe, failed to recognize himself,” Cocteau continued. “I've often thought that had he seen through his own malaise to the occult arrow that had so grievously wounded him, the result may well have been that I myself would never have been born. Imagine that! One could build a religion on such a lovely paradox, don't you think?”

I said it sounded rather like his tale of the gypsy and her granddaughter, only somehow in reverse. But what about the Princesse de Polignac, whose mannish bearing had attracted my suspicions?

“So you do have a gift,” said Cocteau. “Our
Tante
Winnie, as she likes to call herself, has been quite mad about any number of women—and not without reciprocation. I could name names, but I doubt they'd mean much to you, my boy. In time, perhaps.”

“And Mrs. Murphy?”

“My dear Mrs. Murphy. But just look at her,
mon petit
. Those eyes the blue of cloudless prairie skies, that hair the color
of wheat fields under a summer sun. No, my dear. Mrs. Murphy is beyond reproach. In fact, as I look around this room, I might well be forced to conclude that, of all of us, Mrs. Sara Murphy is the only one entirely beyond reproach. Unless, Mrs. Porter—” He leaned past me to gaze on my companion. “I may safely assume that you, Mrs. Porter, as well are beyond reproach.”

“Quite,” she told him. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Of course not. Neither do I. I never, on strict principle, have the slightest idea of what I talk about.”

Madame Meyer having concluded her aural shape-shifting with a final, definitive chord, those last words hung in a sudden silence.

“Dear me,” Cocteau mused. “Was it something I said?” But everyone's attention was drawn not to him but to Madame Sert and Serge Lifar. As if on cue, they had risen from their seats to take up positions at the piano—Lifar, to everyone's astonishment, climbing on top of the instrument. For a very long moment the two remained motionless: Lifar reclining, eyes shut, dreaming; Misia attentive, poised, prepared. Then Lifar tilted back his head, touched his thumb to his lips as if to sip some exquisite unseen elixir, and Misia obliged with that languid melody curling into sultry chords by which Debussy so unforgettably conjures
L'Après-midi d'un Faune.
Half crouching, Lifar slowly, liquidly shed his jacket, then crept down from the piano. From Misia's neck he uncoiled her ivory-colored scarf. At the touch of his hands, her chords faded into silence. In the room's awed hush he began to dance—a sinuous, deeply mysterious communion between himself and the fortunate scarf. It was charming, it was shocking, it was very beautiful.

Applause accompanied knowing laughter. “He's certainly the bold one,” Cocteau remarked, applauding along with everyone else. “The faun is dead—or at least hidden away in a Swiss asylum. Long live the faun. I wonder how long our latest
ingenue imagines it will last. He's heir to such a distinguished lineage. Did you hear what Stravinsky said when Nijinsky first danced that prurient faun? ‘Of
course
Vaslav made love only to the nymph's scarf. What more would Diaghilev have allowed? '”

At the head table, as Sert and Lifar resumed their places, Diaghilev, the wounded, the all-powerful, the unquenchable, rose to his feet and raised his glass to propose a toast—an old-fashioned Russian toast—to the lovely and brilliant Princesse de Polignac, dear
Tante
Winnie; to our refined American friends Gerald and Sara Murphy; but most of all (he spoke hectically, stumbling over words, even leaving words out altogether), most of all (his voice rising to an almost hysterical pitch), most of all to
notre cher mâitre
Igor Stravinsky. “I have loved with all my heart
L'Oiseau de Feu
, I have loved
Petrouchka,
I have loved the holy
Sacre—
but I have never loved, as I love now, this
Les Noces,
this wedding that is so… How can I say it? How can I tell you, if you are not Russian, how…”—he seemed to search in vain for words—“how…”—he gestured futilely, as if holding in his outstretched palms the fertile soil of the motherland—“how
Russian
it is.” I saw, to my astonishment, that tears were streaming down his fat cheeks. “
Merci,
dearest Igor,” the great Diaghilev sobbed.
“Merci, merci
,
merci.
”

Stravinsky stared at the tablecloth.

Our waiter brought yet more champagne. More music poured from the piano as well, a cascade of improvisations that swung from waltz to fox-trot to polonaise and back again. Madame Meyer was in splendid form, and soon dancing got under way.

Cocteau resumed his tour of the portholes, declaring loudly, in a deadpan voice, “We're sinking, my fellow travelers. Rejoice, we're still sinking. May we continue to sink without end.”

At a table in the corner, by the flickering light of a raft of candles, Natalia Goncharova read palms.

“I detest these Russian diversions,” huffed Diaghilev, strolling among us. “She does it as a joke, but she only invites trouble.”

Memories of that disastrous Berlin séance still haunted me, but on this evening I surrendered to a bit of Russian nostalgia, and when my time came I too sat before Goncharova and allowed her to palpate my palm with her slender, bejeweled fingers.

“Nice young man from Petrograd,” she addressed me. “What I see I see clearly. You will marry a princess from an eastern kingdom. You will sire a gallant son and a beautiful daughter. You will live in a castle high in the Himalayas and become wise, you will love sweet music, you will die in great happiness at the age of one hundred and forty-five!” Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Meanwhile, beware the prancing admiral! He's an
homme fatal
for such as you, my mooncalf. You'd do best to find other company.”

With a smile, I slowly withdrew my hand from hers, though she seemed to wish to prolong her claim on me.

“I rather believe I can take care of myself,” I told her.

“Nice young man from Petrograd,” she said, smiling steadily,

“I do hope that's true. He is right about one thing. The river is full of serpents.”

A commotion at the far end of the room brought an end to our disquieting intimacy. The dishes having been cleared away, Kochno and Ansermet clambered onto the head table and began unhooking the commemorative laurel wreath from the ceiling. Giddy with champagne, they leapt down, holding their trophy between them. Stravinsky removed his shoes, and in socks whose twin holes revealed his yellowish heels, sprinted the length of the room and, executing an ungainly jeté, leapt through the proffered wreath to great applause before crashing comically into the wall.

That inspired act signaled the end. Soon everyone was
saying good-bye. One of the Americans passed around a menu, asking each of us to append our names. “I never, ever want to forget this,” he proclaimed. “I want all my friends back home to know. This truly has been the most beautiful evening of my life!”

 

 

 

I HAVE NO PARTICULAR WISH TO VENTURE OUT TO my niece's wedding. I would prefer to stay at my desk as the grains of sand slip inexorably through the neck of the hourglass, but obligations are obligations, and I am, after all, the best man, even if my gift of brandy is no more. The bride's mother is my cousin Onya, Nika's sister, who married a German career officer and thus chose loyally to remain in Berlin. Her husband, like all German husbands, is at the Front—in his case, guarding the Atlantic Wall against the threat of invasion, which Onya is certain will not happen. “The allies would be insane,” she says. “The coast is so well defended, they would be slaughtered. Even Churchill is not so mad as to order that. Mark my word—there'll be a negotiated settlement. Before you know it, we'll hear the news that the British Fleet has been handed over to the Reich.”

I do not know the groom particularly well, but I like him; a fellow exile, he is a composer of church anthems, the leader of the Black Sea Cossacks Choir, a gentle, intelligent, cultivated man, and a good quarter century older than his bride, about which Onya is not entirely pleased. A church ceremony being out of the question, the wedding is a modest, even forlorn affair held in a basement reception room in the heavily damaged Hotel Adlon.

It is difficult to watch this vestige of normal life through the eyes of a ghost, for that is what I am. I do not of course for a moment let on to that assemblage that I am a ghost. It is their happy day, after all.

The Black Sea Cossacks Choir, much reduced in number, sing several austere hymns that take me back to my childhood, and I am grateful for the excursion.

Onya confides to me that she is wearing a brand-new hat. Do I like it?

“Very much,” I tell her. “Where on earth did you find a new hat?”

“There's a lovely shop in the neighborhood I used to frequent, but for the longest time there's been nothing in the window. Then last week I went by and saw the most extraordinary collection of hats. I was too busy to stop, but the next day I went back. As I turned into the block my heart sank, for I could see buildings burning on both sides of the street. But the shop hadn't been hit, though the plate glass was shattered, and the shopkeeper was sweeping up the shards. I asked if the shop was open, and he said, ‘By all means!' So I went inside and tried on half a dozen hats—what fun! It's been such a long time since I did anything like that, and I thought I might never have the chance to do it again. And so I chose this one. It was covered in ash, but then so was I. It dusted off quite nicely, I think.”

“You look marvelous,” I tell her.

“We all look marvelous these days,” she says. “Everybody
who's still alive looks marvelous, even the most bent-over crone or hideously mutilated cripple. I mean, when you think of the alternative. On my way here I passed a downed Lancaster, I suppose from last night. It was still smoking. They'd laid the charred bodies out on the sidewalk. I pity the RAF boys still alive who fall into the hands of the locals. I don't imagine it's pretty.”

“No,” I tell her, “I don't imagine it is.”

The wedding puts me in a dismal mood; perhaps it is the sense that life will go on perfectly well without me, perhaps also the feeling that everything I do, I do for the last time. The refuge I have sought in composing this account of my past no longer seems sufficient. I have lived, certainly—my pages attest to that—but I am also still alive, and Onya's new hat makes me think there are certain things I too would like to do once more before I leave this earth.

I have heard that the Milchbar, where I used to while away some hours, continues despite everything to entertain a clientele. As the evening promises to be clouded, and the chances of another raid thus fairly slim, I determine to see for myself if this furtive oasis still flourishes in the desert the British have made of Berlin.

Though a nominal curfew is in effect, there are plenty of people on the streets: those ubiquitous crews of POWs clearing rubble, families scavenging their belongings from heaps of stone and brick, twelve-year-old boys in uniform heading to or from their antiaircraft batteries.

The city resembles the mouth of an old man—most of his remaining teeth are blackened stubs, and in between are gaps and bare ravaged gums; nonetheless, here and there, inexplicably, a single tooth, though stained, remains undecayed. Such is the Milchbar. So many churches destroyed, and yet God has left this cozy little den intact. I am, as ever, thankful for His mysterious ways. Indeed, I resist an urge to kneel and cross myself as I
step across its threshold. What have I expected to find? At most, a handful of depraved old men, those too feeble or demented to serve in defense of the Homeland. Instead I survey a dimly lit room thronged with men and boys. I hear a murmured host of languages—German, Russian, Polish, Italian. There is no music, only a libidinal hum that seems to me heavenly. In one corner two men are kissing; one has shoved the other against a pockmarked wall, and their legs intertwine as their mouths feed on each other. Men sit around tables, their arms draped over each other. Champagne from occupied France is available, but so, I see with astonishment, is wine from the Rothschild cellars. In all wars, it seems, some suffer and some live well—if only for a time. A painted boy of fifteen or sixteen moves flirtatiously from table to table, allowing himself to be fondled shamelessly.