Goya's Glass (27 page)

At first I didn’t know where I was.

“Wake up, Nina, we’ll have some tea together,” said Vladislav.

“What time is it?”

“Half-past two. Do you mind me having woken you?”

“On the contrary, Vladya. Aren’t you going to put on your pajamas? I had them close to my breast while I slept to keep them warm for you.”

“No, I’m not going to bed yet. I’m writing something that is half finished. Nina . . .

“What is it?”

“Yesterday evening I lied to you when I said I’d spent the day at home. I spent the afternoon going around to the offices of newspapers and magazines.”

“And?”

“I went to the Dni and they gave me eighty centimes for that long essay on Russian poetry in exile. ‘You must understand that we can’t pay you more than we do Lolo. People eat him up. Do you think the readers can’t live without an article on Russian poetry in exile, brilliant though it might be?’ An
Sovremennye listy
the secretary told me there was no
one to receive me, but she warned me that in the next issue, instead of my poem they were going to print Mrs Teffi’s story because it was unbelievably funny. I also dropped into the offices of
Poslednie novosti
. I spoke with the editor, and you know what he told me, that Milyukov of yours? Guess.”

“That you should write a novel for him that he would publish in installments.”

“All I need is for you to laugh at me too. He made it clear that he can do perfectly well without my contributions.”

“Vladya . . .”

“Wait, the story isn’t over yet. Afterward I had an appointment with Olga.”

“Don’t speak to me about it. I’ve already told you, it’s not my business, so I don’t want to know anything about it.”

“Don’t shout! I mention it for another reason. She showed me the magazine Na postu, which someone must have smuggled out of Russia. One of the major figures of Soviet literary criticism, whose name I forget, talks about me in this issue.”

“And what has this major figure written?”

“He says, ‘Vladislav Khodasevich, a typical decadent bourgeois, describes seeing his mirror image in the window of a train car
:

“
And so? The verses are good. Do you want a little more tea?”

“You know what the poem’s about, don’t you?”

“As I understand it, in the glass you saw something like the features of contemporary Russian literature. Texts that have a body, but from which the head is separated. A literature without readers.”

“More or less. Give me a little more tea to calm me down. Well, the major figure ends his article with this sentence: ‘It is high time that all these Khodasevichs and other crybabies who profess mysticism and decadence were liquidated.’”

“Vladya, listen. Do you not have an opinion of your own? There is no one as closely linked to the cultural renaissance in Russia in the first quarter of the century as you.”

“As I?”

“Yes, you. You can talk about the deaths of Tolstoy and Chekhov as events that have taken place in your lifetime. You were a friend of Blok, of Skriabin.”

“But they’ve destroyed me.”

“Not you. They’re trying to destroy something bigger. You are only one of the pillars of this grand building that will soon be reduced to rubble. And, despite everything, it will be necessary for you to live. And to write.”

“Thank you for your words, Nina, but I don’t believe you.”

“They are not just words. Come to bed.”

“Nina, I want to put an end to the whole thing. Will you come with me?”

I didn’t leave him alone. I was afraid that he would open the gas tap or throw himself out of the window. I didn’t have money for studies. I didn’t think about the Sorbonne, but about practical things: learning to use a typewriter, doing the most ordinary secretarial jobs. Vladislav was so downcast that he almost never got out of bed, saying that everything loaded him down. Vladya didn’t eat any fruit or vegetables, or fish or cheese; he only liked meat and macaroni. There was no money to buy meat, so he preferred not to eat. He sank even further. And me? I felt desperate but the more worries I had, the more I looked forward to the start of each day. I was obsessed with life, with the earthly and the day-to-day. What else could I do?

Vladislav had a chronic cough and chronic stomach pains. Doctor Golovanov visited him for free and declared that all the problems had to do with his liver. Vladislav would have to go on a strict diet. But he wasn’t able to put up with any diet, and for that reason he didn’t improve. He suffered from boils. The doctor gave him injections, but they didn’t have any effect on him. His bed had to be changed every other day, and sometimes daily.

It was a rough day, with gusts of dry, biting wind, when I walked to the offices of the periodicals that owed Vladislav money for his articles. He had visited two editors but neither of them had given him anything. I offered new articles and poems by Vladislav, but they didn’t want them. I felt that they were starting to avoid me as well. When I came out of the last office, I took the metro and got off at Glacière Station; I ended
up heading for rue Dareau. My cousin Assia wasn’t home, so I sat on a step and waited for her in the cold and darkness. After two hours she finally she appeared. I asked her if she could lend me some sheets. We sat down at her table to have a cup of tea.

At nightfall, I opened the door of the flat with my key and saw that Vladislav was dressed, leaning against the wall, and could barely keep himself upright.

“What are you doing dressed?”

“I was about to go to the police so they could look for you.”

Exhausted, I collapsed into a chair. I was dizzy. I rested my cheeks in the palms of my hands. Then I raised my eyes, in which, I imagine, shone flashes of sarcasm.

“’We French are convinced that all the inhabitants of the rest of Europe are nothing more than a poor bunch of idiots.’”

“Who said that?”

“Stendhal, and he was right.”

I made his bed. Vladislav got undressed and slid between the clean sheets. He took my hands and kissed them for a long time, and laughed out of happiness that he did not have to go and identify my corpse in the city morgue
.
I lay down beside him, observed his thick hair, and told myself that all this, his self-destructive moods and his sarcasm, all formed part of that long conversation of ours that had started one winter’s night in Saint Petersburg, in an empty square piled high with snow, dominated by the half-ruined statue of a Bolshevik.

The next day he left. At home he left me a note saying that he had gone to study historical material in the Versailles library;
he didn’t say how long he would be gone; it turned out to be a week. During those days I didn’t work. There was no way I could concentrate on anything. I couldn’t sleep. I waited for him. But nothing came, not a message, not any news, not a greeting.

I thought that Vladislav had left me without a single word or maybe that he had died; I visited our mutual friends and asked them about him. No one would give me any answer, until Mark Vishniak told me that Vladislav had come to see him to tell him that he had decided to commit suicide. The Zaitsevs confirmed this.

At the end of a week he came back as if absolutely nothing had happened, accompanied by Olga Forch. I knew her from Saint Petersburg as a writer who was a friend and admirer of Vladislav. She had just arrived from the Soviet Union to make a brief visit to her daughter, who was exiled in Paris. Her visa had nearly expired. I was shocked to see her, older, with gray hair, but I was grateful for her presence because this way I could put off the questions and reproaches that were burning on my tongue. We had tea. Olga explained the policy that the Soviet Communist Party applied to writers; she chose her words with great care, constructed her sentences cautiously. She was noticeably nervous, and became more restless as time went on. Suddenly she exploded.

“The only thing that helps us live is hope!”

“Hope of what, Olga Dmitrievna?” I asked.

“Of some kind of a world revolution which will put an end to our suffering under the Communists. Who knows!”

“It won’t take place,” said Vladislav in a low voice, calmly.

Olga fell silent for a moment. Her serious face became even more somber, the corners of her mouth turned downward, her eyes misted over.

“If that is the case, then we’re lost.”

“Who is lost?”

“All of us, those of us who are in Russia.”

She promised that she would come back the next day, but she didn’t appear either on that day or the day after. After four days had gone by, and Vladya and I had made up, we went to see her, thinking she might be ill. It was a pleasant summer twilight; the sun was flooding the windows of the place where Olga was staying, at her daughter’s home. We went in. Olga was lying on the bed, her hair a complete mess, her cheeks red. She said that the day after she had been with us she went to the Soviet embassy, where they told her that it was strictly prohibited for her to see Vladislav Khodasevich, the enemy of the Soviet people. From time to time she could see Berdyaev and Remizov, but not Khodasevich under any circumstances.

“Go,” she said, “you can’t stay here.”

We were left standing in the middle of the room as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over us.

“Go,” Olga whispered, making an effort, “and forgive me, Vladya.”

A sob shook her enormous body. We stayed for a moment behind the closed door and saw the sun playing on the dust. At the moment we both realized that our exile would be a long one, that perhaps it would last all our lives. A little later
I received a letter from my parents asking me not to write to them if I didn’t want to cause them great difficulties.