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.
“I had a dream tonight. Afterward I was unable to sleep,” Nina answered me when I asked her why she was so restless. We were walking along the rue de Vaugirard toward the Luxembourg Garden. It was raining a little. We sat down in one of those wooden art deco cafes. I ordered two coffees, then lit Nina’s cigarette and my own. It began to rain heavily. Contrary to her usual habit, Nina’s hair was a little untidy that day.
“In my dream I found myself in the train station at Saint Petersburg, or rather Leningrad,” she continued. “I was waiting for the Paris train. It was a goods train that was bringing the coffins of the dead from exile back home. I ran along the platform past the endless rows of cars that were gradually entering the station building. On the first car, inscribed in chalk, were the names of Rachmaninov, Liliukov, Chaliapin. On the second, Zamyatin, Lunacharski, Diaguilev. I asked in which car they were bringing Khodasevich. With a wave, they indicated a point a long way away, toward the end. Then the car passed with the names of Remizov and Shestov. I ran on. I discovered Vadislav’s coffin in the last car. The door to the car opened with a loud noise and ten railway workers came running, each of them was pushing a trolley. ‘Unload! Unload!’ I heard behind me. At that moment I woke up.”
I offered her another cigarette; she took it from the packet with her long fingers. I held up a lit match for her.
“What does this dream mean, Igor?”
The waiter, wearing an apron that was long and as white as milk, brought us two little cups of coffee.
“What does it mean?” Nina insisted.
“I don’t know. I have to think about it. I don’t believe in premonitions.”
“When I thought that I’d lost him, I desired so, so much to have him back with me again.”
Nina had to go back to the office of the newspaper where she sometimes worked as assistant editor. I stayed in the cafe to read the latest issues of Poslednie novosti, which Nina had taken out of her briefcase and placed on my table before she left. I read one issue and was about to pick up the next one when I realized that the folded newspaper contained inside it a sheet of paper. A letter. Creased, clearly read many times. You shouldn’t do it, you mustn’t do it, I told myself, but my eyes were already passing from one line to the next.
Nina,
I will be staying a few weeks more here in the south of France.
I have found out something about you, or rather about you and Milyoti. I ask you in earnest not to have any more dealings with him. I don’t mean that you should have it out with him. But I beg of you, most insistently, that after all that has been said of him, after