Vera (58 page)

Vladimir's search for a special butterfly took all three Nabokovs to
Champex, in southern Switzerland, from which Véra twice drove her husband up the majestic road clinging to the edge of the mountainside, to the Simplon Pass, to continue his hunting. She was less enamored even of the Lepontine Alps than of the work on her desk; she was deep in the Proust, but dearly hoping that Vladimir would capture all of the specimens he needed quickly so that they could move on, to some place both less desolate and touristed, to a more comfortable hotel, or at least one with hot water in the bathrooms. In Simplon-Kulm she prepared letters of recommendation for Filippa Rolf, addressed to Harvard and Cornell, which went out over Vladimir's signature. In August she was able to warm up on the shores of Lake Léman, where the Nabokovs settled in at a Montreux hotel, renting a furnished apartment at the Montreux Palace for the six months beginning October 1. From her balcony, Véra wrote Elena Levin, sounding relaxed and happy: “
In front of me is a lake of silk, and there is a small flock of sparrows scrambling about my feet, which we feed breakfast, and which have become wholly domesticated and impudent.” (She also warned Elena that the brilliant Rolf—whom she had recommended in sparkling terms, and who matriculated at Harvard in the fall—was not “indifferent to girls.”) Her childhood memories had guided them to this mild resort town on the shore of Lake Léman, as she happily told reporters. She did not add that when she had visited the area at the age of twelve her family had stayed at the nearby Hotel Excelsior. The Montreux Palace was
considered nouveau riche.

The Palace has been called an Edwardian heap so many times it seems churlish to insult it further; it is a stately old dean of hotels, a confection of mile-long hallways, glittering chandeliers, and gilded salons. Its position on the lake is glorious, allowing for a fairy-tale view of the snow-capped mountains beyond; the air in Montreux is clear, the light silvery-soft, the sunsets spectacular. The Nabokovs' immediate plans remained fluid—they were hoping to be summoned to London momentarily for a preview of Kubrick's work—but they had begun to toy with the idea of establishing permanent residency in Switzerland, an idea Véra grew more fond of as the fall wore on. She offered up the Montreux address at first as an interim one, and then only at the urging of the Geneva post office, which by September had exhausted itself forwarding the couple's mail in a multitude of directions.
She could not resist disclosing that their wanderings had very much hindered Vladimir's work, but had all been his idea. By the end of the year Montreux had begun to make sense for all kinds of reasons. The suit against Girodias continued, and the Nabokovs liked the idea of being near the French courts, which were expected to render a decision in February or March. Vladimir hoped to attend—and his publishers very much hoped he might attend—the European
premieres of Kubrick's film. Montreux was close to Dmitri, and to Elena Sikorski; as an additional lure, the Nabokovs discovered that establishing residency in a Swiss canton would save tax dollars. It was haunted by the right ghosts: Tolstoy and Chekhov had visited;
Dead Souls
was begun nearby. But the primary reason remained the one that had dictated nearly every one of the couple's moves since 1925. Montreux was the first place they had found where noise did not interfere with Vladimir's work. “
In the 4 months we spent here he has been able to complete a portion of his new book it would have taken him double the time elsewhere,” Véra noted approvingly. In mid-November the couple applied for residency permits. To the lawyer arranging the papers Véra submitted her husband's résumé, drafting an explanation for the Swiss stay that proved an accomplished fiction in itself: He would like to settle in Montreux as he intended to work less and less, and establish a peaceful retirement.

She was not as forthcoming about the nature of the new work itself. “It … is not like anything either he or anyone else has ever written before. It is absolutely fascinating. I wish I were permitted to say more about it” was the description she offered the Bishops. She was no less cryptic with Elena Levin, or with Filippa Rolf, who had already heard the first two cantos. (For his part, Vladimir told reporters little beyond the fact that the word “shadow” figured in the title.) The sprint to the finish of
Pale Fire
was, as friends were well aware, a strain. Véra acknowledged that Vladimir was less available than ever, apologizing to various correspondents that their questions would have to wait until she could claim his full attention. It was impossible for him to “switch channels.” For the first time she was not typing the new opus; the director of the Palace had put the couple in touch with Jacqueline Callier, a cheerful bilingual secretary in her early fifties, who transcribed the novel from Nabokov's cards on her machine at home. This left Véra free to tend to a thousand other matters. Could Minton mail them the June
Playboy
, in which Vladimir's riposte to Girodias—the feud was now being fought in the American press as much as in the French courts—had appeared? Could Doussia Ergaz send on a few good novels? She would return them after reading.

Mostly she was preoccupied by the financial details of their life, especially as the Nabokovs expected the income of the
Lolita
years to prove an anomaly. There was some disagreement over the Harris and Kubrick arrangements, which were baroque, and which became more so. Nor was Véra convinced that the Paul, Weiss lawyering was sufficiently imaginative. She asked Minton to hint—it was important to her that he not reveal the source of the query, which says a great deal about a great number of questions
asked of a great number of other publishers over the years—to Iseman that very real and very legal methods of minimizing U.S. taxes
did
exist. Doubtless she had in mind a strategy she had heard Robert Graves had adopted. “
Would you know, by any chance, or could you find out who is Robert Graves' lawyer who turned him into a Liechtenstein corporation?” she queried Weidenfeld that fall.
^*
She looked upon the creative interpretation of the U.S. tax code as a kind of magic, to which she applied herself energetically, with various advisers. (Iseman, who was extremely fond of Véra, marveled over her intuition and grasp of detail. He was also well acquainted with her very active concerns. “
There never was an emotional tie between Véra and me which would transcend a tax benefit,” he commented later.) That brand of sorcery took up a great deal of her time, while in the next room Vladimir fabricated an intricate, nonlinear code of his own. On November 20 Véra predicted that her husband would “
reach the blessed shore” in another two weeks, after which he would need only two additional weeks to put the finishing touches on the manuscript. Vladimir surprised even his wife;
Pale Fire
went to Putnam's on December 6.

“
Don't work too much, both of you,” Filippa Rolf cautioned the Nabokovs a week before Christmas, sounding herself under more end-of-semester strain than was healthy. Véra responded to a flurry of mail—six letters from Rolf in the space of three weeks—a month later. She advised Filippa (still “Miss Rolf” as far as Mrs. Nabokov was concerned) that she must not allow overwork to do her in. That said, she had herself found the pressure of work twice as great in the preceding months. She was well aware of the gift
Lolita
had bestowed: “
For me one result of his [Vladimir's] fame is that I can never stop answering his business and fan mail which consumes most of my time.” She could say as much, but disagreed heartily when a friend suggested she needed a rest. “
V. is the one who works very hard (I do write an enormous number of letters, also an occasional contract, and I read proofs and translations, but this is nothing compared to his work),” she demurred, backpedaling from all prior declarations. There was ample proof in that fall and winter's correspondence—with Lisbet Thompson, with Filippa Rolf, with Dmitri—that self-command was her middle name. Lisbet had just received her chilling medical diagnosis; Véra now shared the philosophy that had helped her through the Taos cancer scare. Most essential was that Lisbet not indulge her worst fears. As for Rolf, she hoped that in Cambridge she might
fully realize her tremendous talent. “
Don't let anything upset you, just go your own way and write,” Véra exhorted, acutely sensitive to but not saddled with the artistic temperament. She was sorry to have to say so, but she could not countenance Rolf's Swedish housemate visiting her in America. It is unclear if she disapproved because she assumed the relationship to be homosexual, or because she assumed it would not be beneficial to the work. She suggested to the young opera singer in Milan that he work eight-and-a-half-hour days, as both she and his father did. By definition an artistic career entailed steps forward and back; Dmitri must take the injustices
in his stride. No artist saw his own work clearly, particularly at close range. His father had been no different.

She could perhaps be faulted for having held the rest of the world to the measure of her husband, who had written eight novels under less than idyllic circumstances in Berlin. Much about those years still remained at the forefront of her mind. In February 1962, she
began to feel sheepish about her reparations claim. Her husband's books were being translated into German and enjoying a huge success there. At the end of the year, she learned that she was to receive a modest monthly pension for her loss of income, as well as a onetime sum for loss of property. She was pleased with the results, though Goldenweiser felt he could press the case further, and proceeded to do so. Véra returned one of her last affidavits in November 1965, along with a note: “
I am unable honestly to bear witness to the loss of my ability to work: never in my life have I worked as much as I do now.” Fortune and misfortune met; as she feared the Palace Hotel address might sound too lavish to the Germans, she directed her monthly checks to a borrowed address.

In March 1961 Nabokov had attempted to interest
Esquire
in an excerpt of
Pale Fire
. “
It is a narrative poem of 999 lines in four cantos supposed to be written by an American poet and scholar, one of the characters in my new novel, where it will be reproduced and annotated by a madman,” he had written from Nice.
^*
He warned that the work was “rather racy and tricky, and unpleasant, and bizarre” but hoped
Esquire
might take it. The honor fell to
Harper's
, who ran the novel's foreword in their May 1962 issue, on American newsstands just as full-page ads announcing Kubrick's
Lolita
appeared in the papers. Vladimir had said he would travel to Antarctica if necessary to see the film; he had only to sail to New York, which much to Minton's delight, the Nabokovs prepared to do. Véra funneled some of her anxiety about the return into her wardrobe; her seamstress, from whom she had ordered a new coat and dress, took the brunt of it. Explaining that Vladimir had squawked when she tried on the new traveling clothes—“
But they're horrible! I would never let you wear that. Send them back”—she did so, regretfully:

Madame Cherix admitted that the garments seemed jinxed. All apologies, she made some minor adjustments to an old gray skirt and two black dresses. Véra was distracted from the fashion fiasco by proof pages of
Onegin
and
Pale Fire
, the French translation of
Pnin
, and the English translation of
The Gift
.

The Nabokovs set sail on the
Queen Elizabeth
on the evening of May 31, 1961, Vladimir correcting
Onegin
proofs throughout the crossing. Six journalists met them on the gangway of the ship in New York; a barrage of interviews coincided with the stay, at the St. Regis. Véra was thrilled to see her husband positively “lionized”—photographed, sought after, recognized on the street and in stores. (The exception was the Nabokovs' arrival at Loews for the June 13 premiere of
Lolita
. As they emerged from their limousine, the photographers lowered their cameras, failing to recognize the man who had begun all the commotion.) To his immense relief Vladimir found the Kubrick film extremely good,
in no way offensive, vulgar, or unartistic. While he was happy to defend the film publicly, he had no illusions about what had become of his screenplay.
It had been almost entirely revised, replaced in large parts by a pre-existing script, again reworked in Kubrick's London attic days before shooting began. Véra was more candid on this point than Vladimir, allowing that “
in general the picture would have been much more brilliant” had the producers followed her husband's script more closely. For all the obvious reasons Nabokov received sole credit for the screenplay,
the result of which was an Academy Award nomination for an adaptation he had not written.
^*
Proudly he showed off the Hollywood citation to visitors.
Only in 1969 did he at last admit that he resented that his script had not been used.