A
few minutes later as I was about to open the window and strip in front of it (at
moments of raw widowerhood a soft black night in the spring is the most soothing
voyeuse imaginable), Berta Stepanov telephoned to say that the
oxman (what a shiver my Iris derived from Dr. Moreau's island
zoo--especially from such bits as the "screaming shape," still
half-bandaged, escaping out of the lab!) would be up till dawn in his shop,
among nightmare-inherited ledgers. (2.3)
In Dostoevski's The Village of Stepanchikovo and its
Inhabitants (1859) the house serf Falaley almost every night dreams
of a white bull. The story's characters include Mizinchikov, whose
comedy name comes from mizinets (little finger). In his letter to
Annette Blagovo Vadim compares his mental flaw to a missing pinkie:
Voilà. Sounds rather tame, doesn't it, en fait de démence, and, indeed, if I stop brooding over the thing, I
decrease it to an insignificant flaw--the missing pinkie of a freak born
with nine fingers. (2.7)
Before she starts working for Vadim, Annette Blagovo
worked as a secretary for Oksman:
Did I know Oksman, the owner of the
Russian bookshop on rue Cuvier?
"Yes, slightly. But I want to ask
you--"
"Well," she [Berta Stepanov] went on,
interrupting me, "Annette sekretarstvovala for him while his regular
typist was hospitalized, but she is now quite well again, and you
might--" (2.3)
It is "Oks" (Osip Lvovich Oksman, 1885?--1943?) who arranges
Vadim's meeting with Annette:
"She'll call you; though, to tell the
truth, I do not envy anybody having to use the services of that capricious,
absentminded young lady." (2.4)
Vadim's last Russian novel Podarok otchizne (The
Dare, 1950) includes "a concise biography and critical appraisal of Fyodor
Dostoyevski" (2.5).
On the other hand, "Oks, a tall, bony, elderly man with a
Shakespearean pate" (2.4), brings to mind the
hero of Leskov's story Ovtsebyk ("The Muskox,"
1862). Leskov is the author of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk
District (1865). His name comes from les (forest, woods).
Les (The Forest, 1871) is a play by Ostrovski, whose name
comes from ostrov (island). The Island of Doctor Moreau (cf.
"Dr. Moreau's island zoo" mentioned by Vadim) is a novel (1896) by H. G.
Wells, Iris Black's favorite writer (1.5).
The only real shock I experienced was when
I overheard her [Annette] informing some idiot
woman friend that my Dare included biographies of "Chernolyubov and
Dobroshevski"! She actually started to argue when I retorted that
only a lunatic would have chosen a pair of third-rate publicists to write
about--spoonerizing their names in addition! (2.5)
While VN's Dar (The Gift, 1952) includes
Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev's biography of Chernyshevski, Dobrolyubov (a
character in Fyodor's The Life of Chernyshevski) is the author of
Luch sveta v tyomnom tsarstve (A Ray of Light in the Dark
Kingdom), an article on Ostrovski's play Groza (The
Thunderstorm, 1859). The characters of Groza include
Kabanikha (Katerina's mother-in-law whose nickname means "a
female boar").
Fyodor's inspiration for writing his book is an article
about Chernyshevski (entitled Chernyshevski i
shakhmaty) in a Soviet chess magazine:
But a few days later he happened to come
across that same copy of 8 × 8; he leafed through it, looking for
unfinished bits, and when all the problems turned out to be solved, he ran his
eyes over the two-column extract from Chernyshevski's youthful diary; he glanced
through it, smiled, and began to read it over with interest. (The
Gift, Chapter Three)
Oksman is associated with chess:
The house [rented by Oksman for his business] was dark
except for three windows: two adjacent rectangles of light in the middle of the
upper-floor row, d8 and e8, Continental notation (where the letter denotes the
file and the number the rank of a chess square) and another light just
below at e7. Good God, had I forgotten at home the note I had
scribbled for the unknown Miss Blagovo? No, it was still there in my breast
pocket under the old, treasured, horribly hot and long Trinity College
muffler. I hesitated between a side door on my right--marked Magazin--and
the main entrance, with a chess coronet above the bell. Finally I chose the
coronet. We were playing a Blitz game: my opponent moved
at once, lighting the vestibule fan at d6. One could not help wondering if
under the house there might not exist the five lower floors which would
complete the chessboard and that somewhere, in subterranean mystery, new men
might not be working out the doom of a fouler tyranny. (2.4)
"You have glimpsed," he [Oks] added, "the parturition of a new literary review,
Prime Numbers; at least they think they are parturiating:
actually, they are boozing and gossiping. Now let me show you something."
(ibid.)
In his story Usta k ustam (Lips to Lips,
1931) VN satirizes the editors of Chisla (Numbers), a
literary review that came out in Paris. One of the story's characters,
Galatov (the editor of Arion), has beautiful ovine eyes.
Semantically, ovtsebyk (muskox, Ovibos moschatus) is a
"cross" of ovtsa (sheep) and byk (bull, ox).
After a moment of rumination and an
upward glance at the lighted windows, Oks beckoned to the night watchman
who was stroking the sad little dog of a dog-walking neighbor.
(ibid.)
In Leskov's Muskox the narrator's fierce-looking
dog has the same name as several dachshunds of the Nabokovs:
Box.
Ox is the owner of the Boyan publishing firm:
The "Boyan" publishing
firm (Morozov's and mine was the "Bronze Horseman," its main rival),
with a bookshop (selling not only émigré editions but also tractor
novels from Moscow) and a lending library, occupied a smart three-story
house of the hôtel
particulier type. (ibid.)
The legendary Russian bard Boyan is mentioned and
apostrophized at the beginning of The Song of Igor's Campaign.
Igor's brother, Wild Bull Vsevolod says to Igor: "Saddle, brother, your swift
steeds. / As to mine, they are ready, / saddled ahead, near Kursk; / as to
my Kurskers, they are famous knights / swaddled under war-horns, / nursed under
helmets, / fed from the point of the lance..." (75-81)
Kursk and its vicinity is the setting of Leskov's
Muskox.
Leskov and Dostoevski are among the writers whom Fyodor
discusses in his imaginary dialogue with Koncheyev:
'And yet... how about his [Leskov's] image of Jesus "the ghostly Galilean, cool
and gentle, in a robe the colour of ripening plum"? Or his description of a
yawning dog's mouth with "its bluish palate as if smeared with pomade"? Or that
lightening of his that at night illumines the room in detail, even to the
magnesium oxide left on silver spoon?' (The
Gift, Chapter One)
Alexey Sklyarenko