VN’s story Lik appeared in the émigré review Russkiya Zapiski in February, 1939, in Paris. The stage name of its title character brings to mind Lika Mizinov (1870-1939), a friend of Chekhov’s family who died on Feb. 5, 1939, in Paris. In a letter of Dec. 11, 1894, to Elena Shavrov (another friend and admirer) Chekhov says that he wants to write about devils, about horrible, volcano-like women, pro koldunov (about sorcerers) – but, alas, the readers (and literary reviews) demand stories from the lives of Ivan Gavrilychs and their spouses:
Исполняю Ваше желание: посылаю фотографию работы Асикритова — лучшей у меня нет.
Буду теперь ждать Вашего портрета. Если пошлете его заказным письмом, то адресуйтесь в редакцию «Русской мысли».
Я совершенно здоров. В янв<арской> книжке «Русской мысли» будет моя повесть — «Три года». Замысел был один, а вышло что-то другое, довольно вялое и не шелковое, как я хотел, а батистовое. Вы экспрессионистка, Вам не понравится.
Надоело всё одно и то же, хочется про чертей писать, про страшных, вулканических женщин, про колдунов — но увы! — требуют благонамеренных повестей и рассказов из жизни Иванов Гаврилычей и их супруг.
Lik learns that Koldunov (Lik’s former schoolmate and tormentor) is still alive and that he lives in the same Mediterranean town from Gavrilyuk (a loquacious old Russian):
Как-то вечером, когда он полулежал в полотняном кресле на веранде, к нему пристал один из жителей пансиона, болтливый русский старик (уже успевший дважды ему рассказать свою биографию, сперва в одном направлении, из настоящего к прошлому, а потом в другом, против шерсти, причём получились две различные жизни, одна удачная, другая нет), -- и, удобно усевшись, теребя подбородок, сказал: "У меня тут отыскался знакомый, то есть знакомый-- c'est beaucoup dire, раза два встречал его в Брюсселе, теперь, увы, это совсем опустившийся тип. Вчера -- да, кажется, вчера,-- упоминаю вашу фамилию, а он говорит: как же, я его знаю, мы даже родственники".
-- Родственники? -- удивился Лик.-- У меня почти никогда не было родственников. Как его зовут?
-- Некто Колдунов, Олег Петрович,-- кажется, Петрович? Не знаете?
-- Не может быть! -- воскликнул Лик, закрыв лицо руками.
-- Представьте,-- сказал тот.
-- Не может быть,-- повторил Лик. -- Я, ведь, всегда думал... Это ужасно! Неужели вы сказали мой адрес?
-- Сказал. Но я вас понимаю. И противно, знаете, и жалко. Отовсюду вышибли, озлоблен, семья, всё такое.
One evening, as he was reclining in a canvas chair on the veranda, he was importuned by one of the pension guests, a loquacious old Russian (who had managed on two occasions already to recount to Lik the story of his life, first in one direction, from the present toward the past, and then in the other, against the grain, resulting in two different lives, one successful, the other not), who, settling himself comfortably and fingering his chin, said: “A friend of mine has turned up here; that is, a ‘friend,’ c’est beaucoup dire – I met him a couple of times in Brussels, that’s all. Now, alas, he’s a completely derelict character. Yesterday – yes, I think it was yesterday – I happened to mention your name, and he says, ‘Why, of course I know him –in fact, we’re even relatives.’”
“Relatives?” asked Lik with surprise. “I almost never had any relatives. What’s his name?”
“A certain Koldunov – Oleg Petrovich Koldunov. …Petrovich, isn’t it? Know him?”
“It just can’t be!” cried Lik, covering his face with his hands.
“Yes, imagine!” said the other.
“It can’t be,” repeated Lik. “You see, I always thought – This is awful! You didn’t give him my address, did you?”
“I did. I understand, though. One feels disgusted and sorry at the same time. Kicked out of everywhere, embittered, has a family, and so on.”
-- Саша, не узнаешь?-- патетически протянул Колдунов, остановившись посреди дорожки. Крупные черты его желтовато-темного лица с шершавой тенью на щеках и над губой, из-под которой щерились плохие зубы: большой наглый нос с горбинкой; исподлобья глядящие, мутные глаза,-- все это было колдуновское, несомненное, хоть и затушеванное временем, но пока Лик смотрел, это первое, несомненное сходство разошлось, беззвучно разрушилось, и перед ним стоял незнакомый проходимец с тяжелым лицом римского кесаря -- правда, сильно потрепанного кесаря.
-- Поцелуемся,-- мрачно сказал Колдунов и на мгновение приложился к детским губам Лика холодной, соленой щекой.
-- Я тебя сразу узнал,-- залепетал Лик.-- Мне вчера как раз говорил, как его, Гаврилюк...
-- Сомнительная личность,-- перебил Колдунов.-- Мэфий-туа. Хорошо... Вот это, значит, мой Саша. Отметим. Рад. Рад тебя опять встретить. Это судьба! Помнишь, Саша, как мы с тобой бычков ловили? Абсолютно ясно. Одно из лучших воспоминаний. Да.
Лик твердо знал, что с Колдуновым никогда в детстве рыбы не уживал, но растерянность, скука, застенчивость помешали ему уличить этого чужого человека в присвоении несуществующего прошлого. Он вдруг почувствовал себя вертлявым и не в меру нарядным.
“Lavrentiy, Lavrusha, don’t you recognize me?” Koldunov drawled dramatically, stopping in the middle of the path.
The large features of that sallow face with a rough shadow on its cheeks and upper lip, that glimpse of bad teeth, that large, insolent Roman nose, that bleary, questioning gaze—all of it was Koldunovian, indisputably so, even if dimmed by time. But, as Lik looked, this resemblance noiselessly disintegrated, and before him stood a disreputable stranger with the massive face of a Caesar, though a very shabby one.
“Let’s kiss like good Russians,” Koldunov said grimly, and pressed his cold, salty cheek for an instant against Lik’s childish lips.
“I recognized you immediately,” babbled Lik. “Just yesterday I heard about you from What’s-His-Name … Gavrilyuk.”
“Dubious character,” interrupted Koldunov. “Méfie-toi. Well, well—so here is my Lavrusha. Remarkable! I’m glad. Glad to meet you again. That’s fate for you! Remember, Lavrusha, how we used to catch gobies together? As clear as if it happened yesterday. One of my fondest memories. Yes.”
Lik knew perfectly well that he had never fished with Koldunov, but confusion, ennui, and timidity prevented him from accusing this stranger of appropriating a nonexistent past. He suddenly felt wiggly and overdressed.
Oleg Petrovich Koldunov has the same name and patronymic as Oleg Petrovich Gusev (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, the playmate and first lover of Charles Xavier Vseslav), the son of Colonel Peter Gusev (King Alfin's aerial adjutant) and Sylvia O'Donnell (the mother of Odon, a world famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the King to escape from Zembla). Gusev (1890) is a story by Chekhov. In the company of Oleg the young Prince discovered and explored the secret passage that leads from the palace to the theater:
Thurgus the Third, surnamed the Turgid. K 's grandfather, d .1900 at seventy-five, after a long dull reign; sponge-bag-capped, and with only one medal on his Jaegar jacket, he liked to bicycle in the park; stout and bald, his nose like a congested plum, his martial mustache bristing with obsolete passion, garbed in a dressing gown of green silk, and carrying a flambeau in his raised hand, he used to meet, every night, during a short period in the middle-Eighties, his hooded mistress, Iris Acht (q. v.) midway between palace and theater in the secret passage later to be rediscovered by his grandson, 130. (Index)
The surname of Thurgus III seems to hint at Turgenev (a specialist in rendezvous, according to Ayhenvald). The characters in Chekhov’s play Chayka (“The Seagull,” 1896) include the writer Trigorin whom critics compare to Tolstoy and Turgenev:
Нина. Позвольте, но разве вдохновение и самый процесс творчества не дают вам высоких, счастливых минут?
Тригорин. Да. Когда пишу, приятно. И корректуру читать приятно, но… едва вышло из печати, как я не выношу и вижу уже, что оно не то, ошибка, что его не следовало бы писать вовсе, и мне досадно, на душе дрянно… (Смеясь.) А публика читает: «Да, мило, талантливо… Мило, но далеко до Толстого», или: «Прекрасная вещь, но „Отцы и дети“ Тургенева лучше». И так до гробовой доски все будет только мило и талантливо, мило и талантливо — больше ничего, а как умру, знакомые, проходя мимо могилы, будут говорить: «Здесь лежит Тригорин. Хороший был писатель, но он писал хуже Тургенева».
Nina. Yes, but look – there is inspiration, the creative process. Does not that give you moments of ecstasy?
Trigorin. Yes, it's a pleasant feeling writing;... and looking over proofs is pleasant too. But as soon as the thing is published my heart sinks, and I see that it is a failure, a mistake, that I ought not to have written it at all; then I am angry with myself, and feel horrible.... [Laughing] And the public reads it and says: "How charming! How clever!... How charming, but not a patch on Tolstoy!" or "It's a delightful story, but not so good as Turgenev's 'Fathers and Sons.'" And so on, to my dying day, my writings will always be clever and charming, clever and charming, nothing more. And when I die, my friends, passing by my grave, will say: "Here lies Trigorin. He was a charming writer, but not so good as Turgenev." (Act Two)
A character in “The Seagull,” Nina Zarechnaya (cf. Nina Rechnoy, a character in VN's novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, 1941) was modeled on Lika Mizinov. At the end of Chekhov's play Treplev shoots himself. At the end of VN's story Lik dies at the seaside imagining that Koldunov has shot himself. The policeman mistakes Lik (who imagines this scene) for a doctor. It is Dr Dorn who asks Trigorin to take Arkadina away from here and tells him about Treplev's death.
Thurgus III is the son of Igor II:
Igor II, reigned 1800-1845, a wise and benevolent king, son of Queen Yaruga (q. v.) and father of Thurgus III (q. v.); a very private section of the picture gallery in the Palace, accessible, only to the reigning monarch, but easily broken into through Bower P by an inquisitive pubescent, contained the statues of Igor's four hundred favorite catamites, in pink marble, with inset glass eyes and various touched up details, an outstanding exhibition of verisimilitude and bad art, later presented by K. to an Asiatic potentate. (Index)
In Suire’s play L'Abîme (The Abyss) Lik plays a young Russian named Igor:
Есть пьеса "Бездна" (L'Abîme) известного французского писателя Suire. Она уже сошла со сцены, прямо в Малую Лету (т. е. в ту, которая обслуживает театр,-- речка, кстати сказать, не столь безнадежная, как главная, с менее крепким раствором забвения, так что режиссёрская удочка иное ещё вылавливает спустя много лет). В этой пьесе, по существу идиотской, даже идеально идиотской, иначе говоря -- идеально построенной на прочных условностях общепринятой драматургии, трактуется страстной путь пожилой женщины, доброй католички и землевладелицы, вдруг загоревшейся греховной страстью к молодому русскому, Igor, -- Игорю, случайно попавшему к ней в усадьбу и полюбившему её дочь Анжелику. Старый друг семьи,-- волевая личность, угрюмый ханжа, ходко сбитый автором из мистики и похотливости, ревнует героиню к Игорю, которого она в свой черед ревнует к Анжелике,-- словом, все весьма интересно, весьма жизненно, на каждой реплике штемпель серьезной фирмы, и уж, конечно, ни один толчок таланта не нарушает законного хода действия, нарастающего там, где ему полагается нарастать, и, где следует, прерванного лирической сценкой или бесстыдно пояснительным диалогом двух старых слуг.
There is a play of the 1920s, called L'Abîme (The Abyss), by the well-known French author Suire. It has already passed from the stage straight into the Lesser Lethe (the one, that is, that serves the theater – a stream, incidentally, not quite as hopeless as the main river, and containing a weaker solution of oblivion, so that angling producers may still fish something out many years later). This play – essentially idiotic, even ideally idiotic, or, putting it another way, ideally constructed on the solid conventions of traditional dramaturgy – deals with the torments of a middle-aged, rich, and religious French lady suddenly inflamed by a sinful passion for a young Russian named Igor, who has turned up at her château and fallen in love with her daughter Angélique. An old friend of the family, a strong-willed, sullen bigot, conveniently knocked together by the author out of mysticism and lechery, is jealous of the heroine’s interest in Igor, while she in turn is jealous of the latter’s attentions to Angélique; in a word, it is all very compelling and true to life, every speech bears the trademark of a respectable tradition, and it goes without saying that there is not a single jolt of talent to disrupt the ordered course of action, swelling where it ought to swell, and interrupted when necessary by a lyric scene or a shamelessly explanatory dialogue between two old retainers.
The name Angélique comes from “angel.” In his letter to Elena Shavrov Chekhov says that he wants to write pro chertey (about devils). The surname Suire seems to hint at the French phrase à suivre (to be continued). At the end of his Commentary to Shade’s poem Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) says that he will continue to exist:
"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.
God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy, heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned Melodrama with three principals: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out – somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door - a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus. (note to Line 1000)
In his Foreword Kinbote mentions his favorite photograph of Shade:
I have one favorite photograph of him. In this color snapshot taken by a onetime friend of mine, on a brilliant spring day, Shade is seen leaning on a sturdy cane that had belonged to his aunt Maud (see line 86). I am wearing a white windbreaker acquired in a local sports shop and a pair of lilac slacks hailing from Cannes. My left hand is half raised - not to pat Shade on the shoulder as seems to be the intention, but to remove my sunglasses which, however, it never reached in that life, the life of the picture; and the library book under my right arm is a treatise on certain Zemblan calisthenics in which I proposed to interest that young roomer of mine who snapped the picture. A week later he was to betray my trust by taking sordid advantage of my absence on a trip to Washington whence I returned to find he had been entertaining a fiery-haired whore from Exton who had left her combings and reek in all three bathrooms. Naturally we separated at once, and through a chink in the window curtains I saw bad Bob standing rather pathetically, with his crewcut, and shabby valise, and the skis I had given him, all forlorn on the roadside, waiting for a fellow student to drive him away forever. I can forgive everything save treason.
In his letter to Elena Shavrov Chekhov says that he is sending her his photograph taken by Asikritov.
Like the wife of the Nabokovs’ shveitsar (doorman) Ustin, Koldunov’s wife Katya (an allusion to Catherine I, the second wife of Peter the Great) speaks Russian with a strong Estonian accent:
-- Олег Петрович расстроен, вы, может быть, теперь пойдёте, -- вдруг из угла сказала жена Колдунова с сильным эстонским произношением. В голосе её не было ни малейшего оттенка чувства, и оттого её замечание прозвучало как-то деревянно-бессмысленно. Колдунов медленно повернулся на стуле, не меняя положения руки, лежащей как мёртвая на столе, и уставился на жену восхищенным взглядом.
“Oleg Petrovich is upset—maybe you ought to be going now,” Koldunov’s wife suddenly said from her corner, with a strong Estonian accent. There was not the least trace of emotion in her voice, causing her remark to sound wooden and senseless. Koldunov slowly turned in his chair, without altering the position of his hand, which lay as if lifeless on the table, and fixed his wife with an enraptured gaze.
In a letter of March 5, 1962, to Morris Bishop VN says that their apartment in the Montreux Palace Hotel is under that of Peter Ustinov [a famous English actor], whose tread he knows well by now. In Chapter Four (XLII: 9) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions na krasnykh lapkakh gus’ tyazhyolyi (a heavy goose with red feet):
И вот уже трещат морозы
И серебрятся средь полей...
(Читатель ждет уж рифмы розы;
На, вот возьми ее скорей!)
Опрятней модного паркета
Блистает речка, льдом одета.
Мальчишек радостный народ
Коньками звучно режет лед;
На красных лапках гусь тяжелый,
Задумав плыть по лону вод,
Ступает бережно на лед,
Скользит и падает; веселый
Мелькает, вьется первый снег,
Звездами падая на брег.
And now the frosts already crackle
and silver 'mid the fields
(the reader now expects the rhyme “froze-rose” —
here, take it quick!).
Neater than modish parquetry,
the ice-clad river shines.
The gladsome crew of boys24
cut with their skates resoundingly the ice;
A heavy goose with red feet,
planning to swim upon the bosom of the waters,
steps carefully onto the ice,
slidders, and falls. The gay
first snow flicks, swirls,
falling in stars upon the bank.
24. “This signifies,” remarks one of our critics, “that the urchins are skating.” Right. (Pushkin's note)
Oleg Gusev (1916-1931) was killed in a toboggan accident.