please.”
I will finish reading her letter.
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:
I penetrate alien lives
and suddenly I recognize with repulsion,
beheaded and without life,
my head in the night.
“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