"А я на числах, как на качелях, всю жизнь прокачался.
Бывало, говорил жене: раз я математик, ты мать-и-мачеха..."
Горноцветов и Колин залились тонким смехом. Госпожа
Дорн вздрогнула, испуганно посмотрела на обоих.
-- Одним словом: цифра и
цветок,-- холодно сказал Ганин.
("And I all my life have
swung on numbers, as on a seesaw. I used to say to my wife: if I'm a
mathematician, then you are my mat'-i-machekha..."
..."In a word: a figure and a flower," Ganin said
coldly. Chapter II)
VN's Mary (1926) corresponds to Vadim's Tamara (1925). In
VN's autobiography Speak, Memory (1965) Tamara is the name of the
author's first love. In Drugie berega (Chapter Eleven, 1) VN
gives her псевдоним, окрашенный в цветочные тона её
настоящего имени (an alias colored in the flowery
shades of her real name). Speak, Memory: When I
first met Tamara - to give her a name concolorous her real one - she was
fifteen, and I was a year older. (Chapter Twelve, 1)
Tamara rhymes with Dagmara, the young mistress of Mstislav
Charnetski (Vadim's distant relation) who shows Vadim a fairy-tale
path winding through a great forest and gives him the revolver with which
he shoots dead the Red Army soldier:
I groped in my
pockets, fished out what I needed, and shot him dead, as he lunged at me; then
he fell on his face, as if sunstruck on the parade ground, at the feet of
his king. None of the serried tree trunks looked his way, and
I fled, still clutching Dagmara's lovely little revolver. (1.2)
Vadim had three or four wives. (1.1) Princess Dagmar Shakhovskoy (born
Lilienfeld, 1893-1967) was Balmont's fourth (and last) wife. In
his poem "Budem kak solntse..." ("Let's be like the sun..."
1902) Balmont (the author of Marevo dedicated to Marina
Tsvetaev*) writes:
Дальше, нас манит число роковое
В Вечность, где
новые вспыхнут цветы.
Further, the fatal number lures us
to Eternity where the new flowers will flash out.
One of the poems in Balmont's collection Budem kak solntse
begins:
От полюса до полюса я землю обошёл.
From Pole to Pole I went around the world.
Polyus ("The Pole," 1924) is a drama by VN about Robert
Scott's expedition to the South Pole. In LATH (6.1) Vadim says that the numeral "7" always reminded him of the flag an explorer sticks in the cranium of
the North Pole.
*Tsvetaev is a floral name (tsvety means "flowers"). Thanks
to VF (I knew about Balmont's Marevo but not about the dedication)!
Btw., Marina Tsvetaev (whom Balmont calls "my sister") is the author of
memoirs about Balmont Slovo o Bal'monte ("A Word about Balmont,"
1936).
Alexey Sklyarenko,
August 9 (VN first spoke to Tamara on 9 August 1915, ninety-eight years
ago)