went there to remind the editors that they owed her money. One day I found her there and I noticed immediately that she didn’t look too well. Instead of the usual coffee that day she asked for a glass of wine, which helped her open up a little more than usual in conversation. Hearing one detail after detail of her situation, I got a good idea of her life with Vladislav.
“I’ve managed to get tickets to the Russian ballet for tomorrow,” I told her. “Would you like to come with me, Nina Nikolayevna?”
“But he won’t want to come . . .”
“Come on your own.”
“I can’t do that to him. What’s more, I’m afraid that . . . “
“Perhaps Vladislav doesn’t feel so well?”
“He suffers from something I call Russianitis. He can’t stop saying that without Russia he is unable to write.”
“So he doesn’t write.”
“But without writing he can’t live, which is to say, he can’t live without Russia.”
“But he’s got Polish and Jewish blood, not one drop of Russian.”
“Blood is surely not the most important factor. The important thing is where one has been brought up. We Russians are not like the English, who think nothing of travelling thousands and thousands of miles away from home, as if it were nothing. We Russians lose our balance after a thousand miles, and then we can never get it back.”
“Are you one of those who cannot live without writing, Nina?”
“Me?” For the first time that day she laughed openly, and I also beamed, as if mirroring her. “I write with great pleasure, but I would not exchange one single minute of life for the written word, my balance for the manuscript of a novel, or a tempest raging inside me for a poem. I love life too much.”
The next day, before the performance, I went to see them. The first thing I caught sight of was a man’s head, with black hair, caught in the sheets of the bed. Nina was resplendent in an evening dress, and was getting ready to leave for the theater.
“Are you not coming with us, Vladya? We’ve got tickets for the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and you can’t tell me you’re going to miss that.”
His defeated head didn’t move.
At the theater, I stopped to observe Nina among the mirrors in the foyer: a dark blue, sleeveless dress, which flowed from the Chinese collar down to her knees without marking the waist; large black eyes full of curiosity; slim arms, thin along her body. I had never seen her naked arms before and their fragility moved me more than all her desperation and misery.
I took her by the elbow to lead her to the seats. It was a performance of Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring.
I see they have artichokes. I’ll order two or three. What do artichokes remind me of? Where was it? Yes, in Paris, one day Nina and I were having a coffee at La Rotonde as usual. She was thinking with her cup up close to her lips, and I watched her eyes as they wandered in circles. As if she had read my thoughts, she said, “What is love for you?”
I went red as a beet. But she wasn’t expecting an answer. Without noticing anything, she went on, “Love is sharing an artichoke leaf. Knowing how to do it, wanting to do it, and being able to do it. There are very few people who are prepared to do this.”
I murmured something. I wasn’t ready to talk about this subject; I hadn’t thought enough about it. “Waiter, bring me two or three baked artichokes. Yes, warmed up. Thank you.”
Nina shared an artichoke leaf with Vladislav.
Then she told me how one day the first wife of Georges Annenkov—who danced in the evenings at La Chauve-Souris—went to see them and left a piece of cloth that needed embroidering on Nina’s knees.
“It has to be ready by tomorrow.”
And she left.
Nina started to embroider. “If I manage it,” she said to herself, “I can earn up to seventy centimes an hour.” She spent the entire night embroidering; in the morning only a few stitches had yet to be done. That night, unusually, Vladislav slept like a log. In the morning he woke up and said, “The poor little thing is doing needlework! She’s spent the whole night working by candlelight until her eyesight has gone poor. Oh, that’s been described by Dickens and Chernyshevski. Who does that interest today?”
“Thank you. The artichokes smell wonderful. And a glass of red wine,