The stage would be empty when the curtain went up; then, after
five heartbeats of theatrical suspense, something swept out of the wings,
enormous and black, to the accompaniment of dervish drums... A black mask
covered the upper part of his heavily bearded face. The unpleasant colossus kept
strutting up and down the stage for a while, then the strut changed to the
restless walk of a caged madman, then he whirled, and to a clash of cymbals in
the orchestra and a cry of terror (perhaps faked) in the gallery, Mascodagama
turned over in the air and stood on his head. (1.30)
In Chudo s loshad'mi ("The Miracle with Horses,"
1934) Marina Tsvetaev compares the horses running around the square, as if it
were a circus arena, to dervishi-kruzhily (the whirling
dervishes):
Кружитесь, кружитесь, деревянные лошадки! Но
лошадки не деревянные, должны бежать прямо. А эти: взбесились они, что ли,
наконец, — кружатся, как дервиши-кружилы, с занесённой на сторону шеей, метя
рыжей гривой по старым булыжникам старой площади, не щадя ни кабриолета, ни
наездницы, стоящей на одеревенелых ногах, с судорожно вытянутыми руками и
разметавшейся, пуще лошадиных, гривой.
...Поэт из Дворца Искусств восклицает: — «Адская
скачка!»
The poet watching this "hellish gallop" exclaims:
Adskaya skachka!
For the tango that Van dances on his hands he
is given a partner, a Crimean cabaret dancer:
Fragile, red-haired 'Rita' (he never learned her real name), a pretty
Karaite from Chufut Kale, where, she nostalgically said, the Crimean cornel,
kizil', bloomed yellow among the arid rocks, bore an odd
resemblance to Lucette as she was to look ten years later. During their dance,
all Van saw of her were her silver slippers turning and marching nimbly in
rhythm with the soles of his hands. He recouped himself at rehearsals, and one
night asked her for an assignation. She indignantly refused, saying she adored
her husband (the make-up fellow) and loathed England. (1.30)
According to Van, Rita's husband is a
multiple agent:
Rumors, carefully and cleverly
circulated by Mascodagama's friends, diverted speculations toward his being a
mysterious visitor from beyond the Golden Curtain, particularly since at least
half-a-dozen members of a large Good-will Circus Company that had come from
Tartary just then (i.e., on the eve of the Crimean War) - three dancing girls, a
sick old clown with his old speaking goat, and one of the dancers' husbands, a
make-up man (no doubt, a multiple agent) - had already defected between France
and England, somewhere in the newly constructed 'Chunnel.'
(ibid.)
Marina Tsvetaev's husband, Sergey Efron, was a
double agent (Speak, Memory, p. 220). She first met him in
1911, when both were the guests of Maximilian Voloshin in Koktebel, in the
Crimea. Voloshin's first wife, Margarita Sabashnikov, is a namesake of
Van's partner. Like Van's 'Rita,' Marina Tsvetaev's Nina (Barbarossa's wife who was made by her lover the minister of
circuses and who loses the control of her yellow horses) is from the
Crimea:
Под вечер Барбаросса сменял свой травяной ковёр и солнцепёк на
обыкновенный стул и единственную свечку и, сидя за столом перед бутылкой,
которая как только пустела — наполнялась, и как только наполнялась — пустела,
рассказывал всем, кто хотел его слушать, одну и ту же историю, единственную в
его жизни историю: о похищении им красавицы Нины.
— В Крыму, ты же, друг, знаешь, ночи — чёрные. Так вот, не
видать было ни капли («буль-буль» глотка). А дороги, ты же знаешь, все идут
вниз… (жидкость в бутылке тоже шла вниз)… конечно, есть и вверх, но тогда
попадаем на макушку горы, а там — ничего нет, ничего, кроме ужасной скалы,
напрочь лысой, с орлом на ней, выклёвывающим глаза. Стало быть, непременно надо
было выбирать те, что вели вниз, коли решили попасть в… Вот и не помню теперь,
куда. В общем туда, откуда можно было бы уехать, коли я её похищал. А! я
догадался: те, что идут вниз — смекаешь? — ведут к морю, а те, что вверх —
понял? — ведут в горы. А коль скоро мы решили сесть на пароход, так?— то
непременно надо было, чтобы была вода… Но шофёр был напрочь пьян… Напрочь… пьян.
А машина уносилась… С Ниной внутри… И Нина тоже уносилась, потому что ради меня
бросила отца с матерью… (Умиление, долгое «буль-буль».) Так вот, машина
уносилась, с Ниной, которая уносилась, внутри… И ты не поверишь, как она
неслась, эта машина! А ночь чёрная, и дороги убегают, а колёса не поспевают, и
шофёр пьян, пьян, как чёрная ночь!
The eagle that lives on the
top of a mountain and pecks out one's eyes brings to mind Kim
Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Van blinds with an
alpenstock (2.11). According to Barbarossa (the red-bearded poet Ivan
Rukavishnikov who likes to tell the story of Nina's abduction), the driver of
the car that carried Nina seaward was "drunk, as the black night."
Because Revolution
smashed all glasses, Barbarossa drinks straight from the
bottle:
И вот: рыжее на зелёном, пламя на изумруде — борода на траве: муж Нины —
мечтал. Мечтал и попивал прямо из бутылки — Революция перебила все стаканы, а
Реставрации, этой великой возместительницы и латальщицы, ещё не было — пил
взаправду «прямо из», совсем как младенец пьёт молоко, и столь же — даже более —
жадно. Точно борода возбуждала в нём жажду.
Butylka (Russ., bottle) brings to mind
Bouteillan, the French butler at Ardis whose name comes
from bouteille (Fr., bottle). In several scenes we see
Bouteillan drive a car:
Marina came in a red motorcar of an early 'runabout' type, operated by the
butler very warily as if it were some fancy variety of corkscrew. (1.13)
Van's black trunk and black suitcase, and black king-size dumbbells, were
heaved into the back of the family motorcar; Bouteillan put on a captain's cap,
too big for him, and grape-blue goggles; 'remouvez votre bottom, I will
drive,' said Van - and the summer of 1884 was over.
'She rolls sweetly, sir,' remarked Bouteillan in his quaint old-fashioned
English. 'Tous les pneus sont neufs, but, alas, there are many stones
on the way, and youth drives fast. Monsieur should be prudent. The
winds of the wilderness are indiscreet. Tel un lis sauvage confiant au
désert -'
'Quite the old comedy retainer, aren't you?' remarked Van drily.
'Non, Monsieur,' answered Bouteillan, holding on to his cap.
'Non. Tout simplement j'aime bien Monsieur et sa demoiselle.'
'If,' said Van, 'you're thinking of little Blanche, then you'd better quote
Delille not to me, but to your son, who'll knock her up any day now,'
The old Frenchman glanced at Van askance, pozheval gubami (chewed
his lips), but said nothing. (1.25)
Demon (whose "new car sounds wonderful") compares
Bouteillan to his native wine:
'Bonsoir, Bouteillan. You look as ruddy as your native vine - but
we are not getting any younger, as the amerlocks say, and that pretty messenger
of mine must have been waylaid by some younger and more fortunate suitor.'
'Proshu, papochka (please, Dad),' murmured Van, who always feared
that his father's recondite jests might offend a menial - while sinning himself
by being sometimes too curt.
But - to use a hoary narrational
turn - the old Frenchman knew his former master too well to be bothered by
gentlemanly humor. His hand still tingled nicely from slapping Blanche's compact
young bottom for having garbled Mr Veen's simple request and broken a flower
vase. (1.38)
When Demon asks Van if he likes the girls of Blanche's
type, Van prefers to tell a lie:
'- Well, I'm resting after my
torrid affair, in London, with my tango-partner whom you saw me dance with when
you flew over for that last show - remember?'
'Indeed, I do. Curious, you calling it
that.'
'I think, sir, you've had enough
brandy.' (ibid.)
A Torrid Afair is the title of Marina's only cinema
hit:
Somewhere, further back, much further back, safely
transformed by her screen-corrupted mind into a stale melodrama was her
three-year-long period of hectically spaced love-meetings with Demon, A
Torrid Affair (the title of her only cinema hit), passion in
palaces, the palms and larches, his Utter Devotion, his impossible
temper, separations, reconciliations, Blue Trains, tears, treachery, terror, an
insane sister's threats, helpless, no doubt, but leaving their tiger-marks on
the drapery of dreams, especially when dampness and dark affect one with
fever. (ibid.)
Marina had a brief romance with G. A. Vronsky, the movie man (who
probably directed her cinema hit). In Tolstoy's Anna Karenin Vronski is
Anna's lover. At the races with Vronski's participation Anna's husband
tells Betsy Tverskoy: Moya skachka trudnee ("My race is more
difficult"). One is reminded of adskaya skachka (the hellish
gallop) in Marina Tsvetaev's story.
Marina Tsvetaev's Barbarossa drinks vodka even more avidly than an infant
drinks moloko (milk). But then 'everyone has his
own taste,' as the British writer Richard Leonard Churchill mistranslates a
trite French phrase (chacun à son gout) twice in the course of his
novel about a certain Crimean Khan once popular with reporters and politicians,
'A Great Good Man' - according, of course, to the cattish and prejudiced
Guillaume Monparnasse about whose new celebrity Ada, while dipping the reversed
corolla of one hand in a bowl, was now telling Demon, who was performing the
same rite in the same graceful fashion. (ibid.)
moloko + Sosso + sedlo + lait = molokosos + sosed + Lolita
(Sosso - Khan Sosso, the current
ruler of the Golden Horde; sedlo -
saddle; lait - Fr., milk; molokosos greenhorn; sosed - neighbor)
Rita is also a character in VN's Lolita. Demon's aunt Kitty ("who
married the Banker Bolenski after divorcing that dreadful old wencher Lyovka
Tolstoy, the writer") had a ranch near Lolita, Texas:
You had gone to Boston to see an old aunt - a cliché,
but the truth for the nonce - and I had gone to my aunt's ranch near Lolita,
Texas. (1.2)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Lolita, Texas:
this town exists, or, rather, existed, for it has been renamed, I believe, after
the appearance of the notorious novel.
Alexey Sklyarenko