Vladimir Nabokov. The Assistant Producer
© 1943 Copyright by Vladimir Nabokov
1
Meaning? well, because sometimes life is merely that-- an
Assistant Producer. Tonight we shall go to the movies. Back to
the thirties, and down the twenties, and round the corner to
the old Europe Picture Palace. She was a celebrated singer. Not
opera, not even Cavalleria Rusticana, not anything like
that. "La Slavska"-- that is what the French called her. Style:
one-tenth tzigane, one-seventh Russian peasant girl (she
had been that herself originally), and five-ninths popular--
and by popular I mean a hodgepodge of artificial folklore,
military melodrama, and official patriotism. The fraction left
unfilled seems sufficient to represent the physical splendor of
her prodigious voice.
Coming from what was, geographically at least, the very
heart of Russia, it eventually reached the big cities, Moscow,
St. Petersburg, and the Tsar's milieu where that sort of style
was greatly appreciated. In Feodor Chaliapin's dressing room
there hung a photograph of her: Russian headgear with pearls,
hand propping cheek, dazzling teeth between fleshy lips, and a
great clumsy scrawl right across: "For you, Fedyusha." Stars of
snow, each revealing, before the edges melted, its complex
symmetry, would gently come to rest on the shoulders and
sleeves and mustaches and caps-- all waiting in a queue for the
box office to open. Up to her very death she treasured above
all-- or pretended to do so-- a fancy medal and a huge brooch
that had been given her by the Tsarina. They came from the firm
of jewelers which used to do such profitable business by
presenting the Imperial couple on every festive occasion with
this or that emblem (each year increasing in worth) of massive
Tsardom: some great lump of amethyst with a ruby-studded bronze
troika stranded on top like Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat, or a
sphere of crystal the size of a watermelon surmounted by a gold
eagle with square diamond eyes very much like those of Rasputin
(many years later some of the less symbolic ones were exhibited
at a World's Fair by the Soviets as samples of their own
thriving Art).
Had things gone on as they were seeming to go, she might
have been still singing tonight in a central-heated Hall of
Nobility or at Tsarskoye, and I should be turning off her
broadcast voice in some remote corner of steppe-mother Siberia.
But destiny took the wrong turning; and when the Revolution
happened, followed by the War of the Reds and the Whites, her
wily peasant soul chose the more practical party.
Ghostly multitudes of ghostly Cossacks on ghost-horseback
are seen charging through the fading name of the assistant
producer. Then dapper General Golubkov is disclosed idly
scanning the battlefield through a pair of opera glasses. When
movies and we were young, we used to be shown what the sights
divulged neatly framed in two connected circles. Not now. What
we do see next is General Golubkov, all indolence suddenly
gone, leaping into the saddle, looming sky-high for an instant
on his rearing steed, and then rocketing into a crazy attack.
But the unexpected is the infra-red in the spectrum of
Art: instead of the conditional ra-ta-ta reflex of
machine gunnery, a woman's voice is heard singing afar. Nearer,
still nearer, and finally all-pervading. A gorgeous contralto
voice expanding into whatever the musical director found in his
files in the way of Russian lilt. Who is this leading the
infra-Reds? A woman. The singing spirit of that particular,
especially well-trained battalion. Marching in front, trampling
the alfalfa, and pouring out her Volga-Volga song. Dapper and
daring djighit Golubkov (now we know what he had
descried), although wounded in several spots, manages to snatch
her up on the gallop, and, lusciously struggling, she is borne
away.
Strangely enough, that vile script was enacted in reality.
I myself have known at least two reliable witnesses of the
event; and the sentries of history have let it pass
unchallenged. Very soon we find her maddening the officers'
mess with her dark buxom beauty and wild, wild songs. She was a
Belle Dame with a good deal of Merci, and there was a punch
about her that Louise von Lenz or the Green Lady lacked. She it
was who sweetened the general retreat of the Whites, which
began shortly after her magic appearance at General Golubkov's
camp. We get a gloomy glimpse of ravens, or crows, or whatever
birds proved available, wheeling in the dusk and slowly
descending upon a plain littered with bodies somewhere in
Ventura County. A White soldier's dead hand is still clutching
a medallion with his mother's face. A Red soldier nearby has on
his shattered breast a letter from home with the same old woman
blinking through the dissolving lines.
And then, in traditional contrast, pat comes a mighty
burst of music and song with a rhythmic clapping of hands and
stamping of booted feet and we see General Golubkov's staff in
full revelry-- a lithe Georgian dancing with a dagger, the
self-conscious samovar reflecting distorted faces, the Slavska
throwing her head back with a throaty laugh, and the fat man of
the corps, horribly drunk, braided collar undone, greasy lips
pursed for a bestial kiss, leaning across the table (close-up
of an overturned glass) to hug-- nothingness, for wiry and
perfectly sober General Golubkov has deftly removed her and
now, as they both stand facing the gang, says in a cold, clear
voice: "Gentlemen, I want to present you my bride'"-- and in
the stunned silence that follows, a stray bullet from outside
chances to shatter the dawn-blue windowpane, after which a roar
of applause greets the glamorous couple.
There is little doubt that her capture had not been wholly
a fortuitous occurrence. Indeterminism is banned from the
studio. It is even less doubtful that when the great exodus
began and they, as many others, meandered via Sirkedji to
Motzstrasse and rue Vaugirard, the General and his wife already
formed one team, one song, one cipher. Quite naturally he
became an efficient member of the W.W. (White Warriors Union),
traveling about, organizing military courses for Russian boys,
arranging relief concerts, unearthing barracks for the
destitute, settling local disputes, and doing all this in a
most unobtrusive manner. I suppose it was useful in some ways,
that W.W. Unfortunately for its spiritual welfare, it was quite
incapable of cutting itself off from monarchist groups abroad
and did not feel, as the emigre intelligentsia felt, the
dreadful vulgarity, the Ur-Hitlerism of those ludicrous but
vicious organizations. When well-meaning Americans ask me
whether I know charming Colonel So-and-so or grand old Count de
Kickoffsky, I have not the heart to tell them the dismal truth.
But there was also another type of person connected with
the W.W. I am thinking of those adventurous souls who helped
the cause by crossing the frontier through some snow-muffled
fir forest, to potter about their native land in the various
disguises worked out, oddly enough, by the social
revolutionaries of yore, and quietly bring back to the little
cafe in Paris called "Esh-Bubliki," or to the little
Kneipe in Berlin that had no special name, the kind of
useful trifles which spies are supposed to bring back to their
employers. Some of those men had become abstrusely entangled
with the spying departments of other nations and would give an
amusing jump if you came from behind and tapped them on the
shoulder. A few went a-scouting for the fun of the thing. One
or two perhaps really believed that in some mystical way they
were preparing the resurrection of a sacred, if somewhat musty,
past.
2
We are now going to witness a most weirdly monotonous
series of events. The first president of the W.W. to die was
the leader of the whole White movement and by far the best man
of the lot; and certain dark symptoms attending his sudden
illness suggested a poisoner's shadow. The next president, a
huge, strong fellow with a voice of thunder and a head like a
cannonball, was kidnapped by persons unknown; and there are
reasons to believe that he died from an overdose of chloroform.
The third president-- but my reel is going too fast. Actually
it toзk seven years to remove the first two-- not because this
sort of thing cannot be done more briskly, but because there
were particular circumstances that necessitated some very
precise timing, so as to coordinate one's steady ascent with
the spacing of sudden vacancies. Let us explain.
Golubkov was not only a very versatile spy (a triple agent
to be exact); he was also an exceedingly ambitious little
fellow. Why the vision of presiding over an organization that
was but a sunset behind a cemetery happened to be so dear to
him is a conundrum only for those who have no hobbies or
passions. He wanted it very badly-- that is all. What is less
intelligible is the faith he had in being able to safeguard his
puny existence in the crush between the formidable parties
whose dangerous money and dangerous help he received. I want
all your attention now, for it would be a pity to miss the
subtleties of the situation.
The Soviets could not he much disturbed by the highly
improbable prospect of a phantom White Army ever being able to
resume war operations against their consolidated bulk; but they
could be very much irritated by the fact that scraps of
information about forts and factories, gathered by elusive W.W.
meddlers, were automatically falling into grateful German
hands. The Germans were little interested in the recondite
color variations of emigre politics, but what did annoy them
was the blunt patriotism of a W.W. president every now and then
obstructing on ethical grounds the smooth flow of friendly
collaboration.
Thus, General Golubkov was a godsend. The Soviets firmly
expected that under his rule all W.W. spies would be well known
to them-- and shrewdly supplied with false information for
eager German consumption. The Germans were equally sure that
through him they would be guaranteed a good cropping of their
own absolutely trustworthy agents distributed among the usual
W.W. ones. Neither side had any illusions concerning Golubkov's
loyalty, but each assumed that it would turn to its own profit
the fluctuations of double-crossing. The dreams of simple
Russian folk, hardworking families in remote parts of the
Russian diaspora, plying their humble but honest trades, as
they would in Saratov or Tver, bearing fragile children, and
naively believing that the W.W. was a kind of King Arthur's
Round Table that stood for all that had been, and would be,
sweet and decent and strong in fairy-tale Russia-- these dreams
may well strike the film pruners as an excrescence upon the
main theme.
When the W.W. was founded. General Golubkov's candidacy
(purely theoretical, of course, for nobody expected the leader
to die) was very far down the list-- not because his legendary
gallantry was insufficiently appreciated by his fellow
officers, but because he happened to be the youngest general in
the army. Toward the time of the next president's election
Golubkov had already disclosed such tremendous capacities as an
organizer that he felt he could safely cross out quite a few
intermediate names in the list, incidentally sparing the lives
of their; bearers. After the second general had been removed,
many of the W.W. members were convinced that General Fedchenko,
the next candidate, would surrender in favor of the younger and
more efficient man the rights that his age, reputation, and
academic distinction entitled him to enjoy. The old gentleman,
however, though doubtful oй the enjoyment, thought it cowardly
to avoid a job that had cost two men their lives. So Golubkov
set his teeth and started to dig again. '
Physically he lacked attraction. There was nothing of your
popular Russian general about him, nothing of that good, burly,
popeyed,. thick-necked sort. He was lean, frail, with sharp
features, a clipped. mustache, and the kind of haircut that is
called by Russians "hedgehog": short, wiry, upright, and
compact. There was a thin silver bracelet round his hairy
wrist, and he offered you neat homemade Russian cigarettes or
English prune-flavored "Kapstens," as he pronounced it, snugly
arranged in an old roomy cigarette case of black leather that
had accompanied him through the presumable smoke of numberless
battles. He was extremely polite and extremely inconspicuous.
Whenever the Slavska "received," which she would do at the
homes of her various Maecenases (a Baltic baron of sorts, a Dr.
Bachrach whose first wife had been a famous Carmen, or a
Russian merchant of the old school who, in inflation-mad
Berlin, was having a wonderful time buying up blocks of houses
for ten pounds sterling apiece), her silent husband would
unobtrusively thread his way among the visitors, bringing you a
sausage-and-cucumber sandwich or a tiny frosty-pale glass of
vodka; and while the Slavska sang (on those informal occasions
she used to sing seated with her fist at her cheek and her
elbow cupped in the palm of her other hand) he would stand
apart, leaning against something, or would tiptoe toward a
distant ashtray which he would gently place on the fat arm of
your chair.
I consider that, artistically, he overstressed his
effacement, unwittingly introducing a hired-lackey note-- which
now seems singularly appropriate; but he of course was trying
to base his existence upon the principle of contrast and would
get a marvelous thrill from exactly knowing by certain sweet
signs-- a bent head, a rolling eye-- that So-and-so at the far
end of the room was drawing a newcomer's attention to the
fascinating fact that such a dim, modest man was the hero of
incredible exploits in a legendary war (taking towns
single-handed and that sort of thing).
3
German film companies, which kept sprouting like poisonous
mushrooms in those days (just before the child of light learned
to talk), found cheap labor in hiring those among the Russian
emigres whose only hope and profession was their past-- that
is, a set of totally unreal people-- to represent "real"
audiences in pictures. The dovetailing of one phantasm into
another produced upon a sensitive person the impression of
living in a Hall of Mirrors, or rather a prison of mirrors, and
not even knowing which was the glass and which was yourself.
Indeed, when I recall the halls where the Slavska sang,
both in Berlin and in Paris, and the type of people one saw
there, I feel as if I were Technicoloring and sonorizing some
very ancient motion picture where life had been a gray
vibration and funerals a scamper, and where only the sea had
been tinted (a sickly blue), while some hand machine imitated
offstage the hiss of the asynchronous surf. A certain shady
character, the terror of relief organizations, a bald-headed
man with mad eyes, slowly floats across my field of vision with
his legs bent in a sitting position, like an elderly fetus, and
then miraculously fits into a back-row seat. Our friend the
Count is also here, complete with high collar and dingy spats.
A venerable but worldly priest, with his cross gently heaving
on his ample chest, sits in the front row and looks straight
ahead.
The items of these right-wing festivals that the Slavska's
name evokes in my mind were of the same unreal nature as was
her audience. A variety artist with a fake Slav name, one of
those guitar virtuosos that come as a cheap first in music hall
programs, would be most welcome here; and the flashy ornaments
on his glass-paneled instrument, and his sky-blue silk pants,
would go well with the rest of the show. Then some bearded old
rascal in a shabby cutaway coat, former member of the Holy Russ
First, would take the chair and vividly describe what the
Israel-sons and the Phreemasons (two secret Semitic tribes)
were doing to the Russian people.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have the great pleasure
and honor-- There she would stand against a dreadful background
of palms and national flags, and moisten her rich painted lips
with her pale tongue, and leisurely clasp her kid-gloved hands
on her corseted stomach, while her constant accompanist,
marble-faced Joseph Levin-sky, who had followed her, in the
shadow of her song, to the Tsar's private concert hall and to
Comrade Lunacharsky's salon, and to nondescript places in
Constantinople, produced his brief introductory series of
stepping-stone notes.
Sometimes, if the house was of the right sort, she would
sing the national anthem before launching upon her limited but
ever welcome repertoire. Inevitably there would be that
lugubrious "Old Road to Kaluga" (with a thunderstruck pine tree
at the forty-ninth verst), and the one that begins, in the
German translation printed beneath the Russian text, "Du
bist im Schnee begraben, mein Russland, " and the ancient
folklore ballad (written by a private person in the eighties)
about the robber chieftain and his lovely Persian princess,
whom he threw into the Volga when his crew accused him of going
soft.
Her artistic taste was nowhere, her technique haphazard,
her general style atrocious; but the kind of people for whom
music and sentiment are one, or who like songs to be mediums
for the spirits of circumstances under which they had been
first apprehended in an individual past, gratefully found in
the tremendous sonorities of her voice both a nostalgic solace
and a patriotic kick. She was considered especially effective
when a strain of wild recklessness rang through her song. Had
this abandon been less blatantly shammed it might still have
saved her from utter vulgarity. The small, hard thing that was
her soul stuck out of her song, and the most her temperament
could attain was but an eddy, not a free torrent. When nowadays
in some Russian household the gramophone is put on, and I hear
her canned contralto, it is with something of a shudder that I
recall the meretricious imitation she gave of reaching her
vocal climax, the anatomy of her mouth fully displayed in a
last passionate cry, her blue-black hair beautifully waved, her
crossed hands pressed to the beribboned medal on her bosom as
she acknowledged the orgy of applause, her broad dusky body
rigid even when she bowed, crammed as it was into strong silver
satin which made her look like a matron of snow or a mermaid of
honor.
4
You will see her next (if the censor does not find what
follows offensive to piety) kneeling in the honey-colored haze
of a crowded Russian church, lustily sobbing side by side with
the wife or widow (she knew exactly which) of the
general whose kidnapping had been so nicely arranged by
her husband and so deftly performed by those big, efficient,
anonymous men that the boss had sent down to Paris.
You will see her also on another day, two or three years
later, while she is singing in a certain appartement,
rue George Sand, surrounded by admiring friends-- and look, her
eyes narrow slightly, her singing smile fades, as her husband,
who had been detained by the final details of the business in
hand, now quietly slips in and with a soft gesture rebukes a
grizzled colonel's attempt to offer him his own seat; and
through the unconscious flow of a song delivered for the
ten-thousandth time she peers at him (she is slightly
nearsighted like Anna Karenin) trying to discern some definite
sign, and then, as she drowns and his painted boats sail away,
and the last telltale circular ripple on the Volga River,
Samara County, dissolves into dull eternity (for this is the
very last song that she ever will sing), her husband comes up
to her and says in a voice that no clapping of human hands can
muffle: "Masha, the tree will be felled tomorrow!"
That bit about the tree was the only dramatic treat that
Golubkov allowed himself during his dove-gray career. We shall
condone the outburst if we remember that this was the ultimate
General blocking his way and that next day's event would
automatically bring on his own election. There had been lately
some mild jesting among their friends (Russian humor being a
wee bird satisfied with a crumb) about the amusing little
quarrel that those two big children were having, she
pet-ulantly demanding the removal of the huge old poplar that
darkened her studio window at their suburban summer house, and
he contending that the sturdy old fellow was her greenest
admirer (sidesplitting, this) and so ought to be spared. Note
too the good-natured roguishness of the fat lady in the ermine
cape as she taunts the gallant General for giving in so soon,
and the Slavska's radiant smile and outstretched jelly-cold
arms.
Next day, late in the afternoon. General Golubkov escorted
his wife to her dressmaker, sat there for a while reading the
Paris-Soir, and then was sent back to fetch one of the
dresses she wanted loosened and had forgotten to bring. At
suitable intervals she gave a passable imitation of telephoning
home and volubly directing his search. The dressmaker, an
Armenian lady, and a seamstress, little Princess Tumanov, were
much entertained in the adjacent room by the variety of her
rustic oaths (which helped her not to dry up in a part that her
imagination alone could not improvise). This threadbare alibi
was not intended for the patching up of past tenses in case
anything went wrong-- for nothing could go wrong; it was merely
meant to provide a man whom none would ever dream of suspecting
with a routine account of his movements when people would want
to know who had seen General Fedchenko last. After enough
imaginary wardrobes had been ransacked Golubkov was seen to
return with the dress (which long ago, of course, had been
placed in the car). He went on reading his paper while his wife
kept trying things on.
5
The thirty-five minutes or so during which he was gone
proved quite a comfortable margin. About the time she started
fooling with that dead telephone, he had already picked up the
General at an unfrequented corner and was driving him to an
imaginary appointment the circumstances of which had been so
framed in advance as to make its secrecy natural and its
attendance a duty. A few minutes later he pulled up and they
both got out. "This is not the right street," said General
Fedchenko. "No," said General Golubkov, "but it is a convenient
one to park my car on. I should not like to leave it right in
front of the cafe. We shall take a shortcut through that lane.
It is only two minutes' walk." "Good, let us walk," said the
old man and cleared his throat.
In that particular quarter of Paris the streets are called
after various philosophers, and the lane they were following
had been named by some well-read city father rue Pierre Labime.
It gently steered you past a dark church and some scaffolding
into a vague region of shuttered private houses standing
somewhat aloof within their own grounds behind iron railings on
which moribund maple leaves would pause in their flight between
bare branch and wet pavement. Along the left side of that lane
there was a long wall with crossword puzzles of brick showing
here and there through its rough grayness; and in that wall
there was at one spot a little green door.
As they approached it. General Golubkov produced his
battle-scarred cigarette case and presently stopped to light
up. General Fedchenko, a courteous nonsmoker, stopped too.
There was a gusty wind ruffling the dusk, and the first match
went out. "I still think-- '" said General Fedchenko in
reference to some petty business they had been discussing
lately, "I still think," he said (to say something as he stood
near that little green door), "that if Father Fedor insists on
paying for all those lodgings out of his own funds, the least
we can do is to supply the fuel." The second match went out
too. The back of a passerby hazily receding in the distance at
last disappeared. General Golubkov cursed the wind at the top
of his voice, and as this was the all-clear signal the green
door opened and three pairs of hands with incredible speed and
skill whisked the old man out of sight. The door slammed.
General Golubkov lighted his cigarette and briskly walked back
the way he had come.
The old man was never seen again. The quiet foreigners who
had rented a certain quiet house for one quiet month had been
innocent Dutchmen or Danes. It was but an optical trick. There
is no green door, but only a gray one, which no human strength
can burst open. I have vainly searched through admirable
encyclopedias: there is no philosopher called Pierre Labime.
But I have seen the toad in her eyes. We have a saying in
Russian: vsevo dvoe i est; smert' da sovest'-- which may
be rendered thus: "There are only two things that really
exist-- one's death and one's conscience." The lovely thing
about humanity is that at times one may be unaware of doing
right, but one is always aware of doing wrong. A very horrible
criminal, whose wife had been even a worse one, once told me in
the days when I was a priest that what had troubled him all
through was the inner shame of being stopped by a still
deeper shame from discussing with her the puzzle: whether
perhaps in her heart of hearts she despised him or whether she
secretly wondered if perhaps in his heart of hearts he despised
her. And that is why I know perfectly well the kind of face
General Golubkov and his wife had when the two were at last
alone.
6
Not for very long, however. About ten p.m. General L., the
W.W. Secretary, was informed by General R. that Mrs. Fedchenko
was extremely worried by her husband's unaccountable absence.
Only then did General L. remember that about lunchtime the
President had told him in a rather casual way (but that was the
old gentleman's manner) that he had some business in town in
the late afternoon and that if he was not back by eight p.m.
would General L. please read a note left in the middle drawer
of the President's desk. The two generals now rushed to the
office, stopped short, rushed back for the keys General L. had
forgotten, rushed again, and finally found the note. It read:
"An odd feeling obsesses me of which later I may be ashamed.
I have an appointment at five-thirty p.m. in a cafe 45 rue
Descartes. I am to meet an informer from the other side. I
suspect a trap. The whole thing has been arranged by General
Golubkov, who is taking me there in his car."
We shall skip what General L. said and what General R.
replied-- but apparently they were slow thinkers and proceeded
to lose some more time in a muddled telephone talk with an
indignant cafe owner. It was almost midnigilt when the Slavska,
clad in a flowery dressing gown and trying to look very sleepy,
let them in. She was unwilling to disturb her husband, who, she
said, was already asleep. She wanted to know what it was all
about and had perhaps something happened to General оedchenko.
"He has vanished," said honest General L. The Slavska said,
"Akh!" and crashed in a dead swoon, almost wrecking the parlor
in the process. The stage had not lost quite so much as most of
her admirers thought.
Somehow or other the two generals managed not to impart to
General Golubkov anything about the little note, so that when
he accompanied them to the W.W. headquarters he was under the
impression that they really wanted to discuss with him whether
to ring up the police at once or first go for advice to
eighty-eight-year-old Admiral Gromoboyev, who for some obscure
reason was considered the Solomon of the W.W.
"What does this mean?" said General L., handing the fatal
note to Golubkov. "Peruse it, please."'
Golubkov perused-- and knew at once that all was lost. We
shall not bend over the abyss of his feelings. He handed the
note back with a shrug of his thin shoulders.
"If this has been really written by the General," he said,
"and I must admit it looks very similar to his hand, then all I
can say is that somebody has been impersonating me. However, I
have grounds to believe that Admiral Gromoboyev will be able to
exonerate me. I suggest we go there at once."
"Yes," said General L., "we had better go now, although it
is very late."
General Golubkov swished himself into his raincoat and
went out first. General R. helped General L. to retrieve his
muffler. It had half slipped down from one of those vestibule
chairs which are doomed to accommodate filings, not people.
General L. sighed and put on his old felt hat, using both hands
for this gentle action. He moved to the door. "One moment,
General," said General R. in a low voice. "I want to ask you
something. As one officer to another, are you absolutely sure
that . . . well, that General Golubkov is speaking the truth?"
"That's what we shall find out," answered General L., who
was one of those people who believe that so long as a sentence
is a sentence it is bound to mean something.
They delicately touched each other's elbows in the
doorway. Finally the slightly older man accepted the privilege
and made a jaunty exit. Then they both paused on the landing,
for the staircase struck them as being very still. "General!"
cried General L. in a downward direction. Then they looked at
each other. Then hurriedly, clumsily, they stomped down the
ugly steps, and emerged, and stopped under a black drizzle, and
looked this way and that, and then at each other again.
She was arrested early on the following morning. Never
once during the inquest did she depart from her attitude of
grief-stricken innocence. The French police displayed a queer
listlessness in dealing with possible clues, as if they assumed
that the disappearance of Russian generals was a kind of
curious local custom, an Oriental phenomenon, a dissolving
process which perhaps ought not to occur but which could not be
prevented. One had, however, the impression that the Sыretй
knew more about the workings of the vanishing trick than
diplomatic wisdom found fit to discuss. Newspapers abroad
treated the whole matter in a good-natured but bantering and
slightly bored manner. On the whole, "L'affaire Slavska" did
not make good headlines-- Russian йmigrйs were decidedly out of
focus. By an amusing coincidence both a German press agency and
a Soviet one laconically stated that a pair of White Russian
generals in Paris had absconded with the White Army funds.
7
The trial was strangely inconclusive and muddled,
witnesses did not shine, and the final conviction of the
Slavska on a charge of kidnapping was debatable on legal
grounds. Irrelevant trifles kept obscuring the main issue. The
wrong people remembered the right things and vice versa. There
was a bill signed by a certain Gaston Coulot, farmer, "pour
un arbre abattu. " Gйnйral L. and Gйnйral R. had a dreadful
time at the hands of a sadistic barrister. A Parisian
clochard, one of those colorful ripe-nosed unshaven
beings (an easy part, that) who keep all their earthly
belongings in their voluminous pockets and wrap their feet in
layers of bursting newspapers when the last sock is gone and
are seen comfortably seated, with widespread legs and a bottle
of wine against the crumbling wall of some building that has
never been completed, gave a lurid account of having observed
from a certain vantage point an old man being roughly handled.
Two Russian women, one of whom had been treated some time
before for acute hysteria, said they saw on the day of the
crime General Golubkov and General Fedchenko driving in the
former's car. A Russian violinist while sitting in the diner of
a German train-- but it is useless to retell all those lame
rumors.
We get a few last glimpses of the Slavska in prison.
Meekly knitting in a corner. Writing to Mrs.Fedchenko
tear-stained letters in which she said that they were sisters
now, because both their husbands had been captured by the
Bolsheviks. Begging to be allowed the use of a lipstick.
Sobbing and praying in the arms of a pale young Russian nun who
had come to tell her of a vision she had had which disclosed
the innocence of General Golubkov. Clamoring for the New
Testament which the police were keeping-- keeping mainly from
the experts who had so nicely begun deciphering certain notes
scribbled in the margin of St. John's Gospel. Some time after
the outbreak of World War II, she developed an obscure internal
trouble and when, one summer morning, three German officers
arrived at the prison hospital and desired to see her, at once
they were told she was dead-- which possibly was the truth.
One wonders if in some way or other her husband managed to
inform her of his whereabouts, or if he thought it safer to
leave her in the lurch. Where did he go, poor perdu! The
mirrors of possibility cannot replace the eyehole of knowledge.
Perhaps he found a haven in Germany and was given there some
small administrative job in the Baedecker Training School for
Young Spies. Perhaps he returned to the land where he had taken
towns single-handedly. Perhaps he did not. Perhaps he was
summoned by whoever his arch-boss was and told with that slight
foreign accent and special brand of blandness that we all know:
"I am afraid, my friend, you are not needed any more'"-- and as
X turns to go, Dr. Puppenmeister's delicate index presses a
button at the edge of his impassive writing desk and a trap
yawns under X, who plunges to his death (he who knows "too
much"), or breaks his funny bone by crashing right through into
the living room of the elderly couple below.
Anyhow, the show is over. You help your girl into her coat
and join the slow exit-bound stream of your likes. Safety doors
open into unexpected side portions of night, diverting proximal
trickles. If, like me, you prefer for reasons of orientation to
go out the way you came in, you will pass again by those
posters that seemed so attractive a couple of hours ago. The
Russian cavalryman in his half-Polish uniform bends from his
polo-pony to scoop up red-booted romance, her black hair
tumbling from under her astrakhan cap. The Arc de Triomphe rubs
shoulders with a dim-domed Kremlin. The monocled agent of a
Foreign Power is handed a bundle of secret papers by General
Golubkov. . . . Quick, children, let us get out of here into
the sober night, into the shuffling peace of familiar
sidewalks, into the solid world of good freckled boys and the
spirit of comradeship. Welcome reality! This tangible cigarette
will be very refreshing after all that trashy excitement. See,
the thin dapper man walking in front of us lights up too after
tapping a "Lookee" against his old leathern cigarette case.
