Надежда Лохвицкая - Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me - The Best of Teffi

“A walk is the light of day; a day with no walk—pitch darkness,” he liked to say.

His spine was completely bent. My impression was that he found even standing difficult unless he had something to lean on or a wall to rest against. And so Zinaida Nikolaevna always had to lead him determinedly along, supporting nearly all his weight on her arm. This was something she was so accustomed to that when she and I went out together, she always asked me to take her arm and give her more of my weight.

Very gradually the Merezhkovskys began to allow the Germans into their lives. There were young Germans, students, who wanted to pay their respects to a writer whose work they had read in translation. They would ask in reverent tones for his autograph. Merezhkovsky would never engage in conversation with them. Occasionally, however, he would shout in Russian: “Tell them to bring some cigarettes with them!” or “Tell them we need eggs!” Zinaida Nikolaevna would talk to them now and again, though she never said anything very nice to them.

“You’re all like machines. The bosses command—and you obey.”

“But of course we do, we’re soldiers. We have our discipline. What do you expect us to do?”

“Nevertheless, you’re machines.”

I would needle her.

“I suppose you’d like them to form a Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies? Under a banner with the slogan ‘To Hell with all Officers!’”

“Nevertheless, they’re machines.”

She was not easily diverted.

The Germans’ conduct in Biarritz was not exactly exemplary. Towards those who fawned over them, they were extremely polite and obliging. The rest of us they simply ignored, as if we were transparent. They would look through us and see a house, a crowd, a landscape. It feels strange to be so very transparent.

There was one especially important German. He wore a military uniform, but it seemed that before the war he had been a banker. I can no longer remember his exact political or military position, but, judging by the number of people eager to ingratiate themselves with him, it must have been something important. He had only to walk into a café and Biarritz’s lady aristocrats—the Duchesse de , the Contesse de and even some ladies with more than one de —would spring to their feet and rush towards him. Their faces were ecstatic and adoring; there were tears in their eyes. I should mention that this German official, a man of mature years, was remarkably ugly. Created along the lines of Gogol’s Sobakyevich [5] Sobakyevich, an unscrupulous serf owner in Gogol’s Dead Souls , who, despite his name ( sobaka is the Russian for “dog”), resembles a bear. —whom nature had not given much thought to but had simply hewed out with an axe and decided to leave it at that—this gallant appeared to have been carved, or rather hacked, from tough, resistant wood, and carelessly into the bargain: one nostril was higher, the other lower, one eye was round, the other long. Nor did his appearance seem to matter very much to him. But it was obvious that the inordinate admiration of the Biarritz ladies was starting to go to his head. The old Countess G., the organizer of Merezhkovsky’s birthday celebration, said that she had been truly stunned by this German’s remarkable looks. “Like the knight in the engraving by Dürer!” she had kept exclaiming.

The ladies corrupted the poor German to such a degree that he began acting precious and coy. He was once seen playing with a little dog on the town square, offering it a lump of sugar. He would smile and bend down, then pull his hand away to tease the dog. He was like a spoilt, capricious ballet-dancer whose impresario is infatuated with him.

At some point during the winter his wife appeared. She had heard that a French countess, a lady who moved in the highest society, was rather taken with her husband.

“Is it true she’s no longer young?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” replied the German. “She must be over sixty.”

“Very true,” said a Frenchman who was also party to this conversation. “She certainly is over sixty. She’s eighty-seven.”

This positively frightened the German. He blinked several times and asked for this number to be translated for him. The number was duly translated. After many shakes of the head, he said, “This could only happen in France.”

The countess certainly knew how to bewilder. She would flash her dark eyes, wag a warning finger, or impatiently tap her little foot. This little foot, with its flat sole and its gnarled and hooked elderly toes, resembled nothing so much as a rake, but the countess decked it out in the most youthful manner. She felt she was young and enchanting. If she heard someone speak admiringly of a young woman from her circle, she would feel deeply upset. Her lady companion all but wept: “All night long she kept waking me up and shouting, ‘How could he find her beautiful in my presence. In my presence?’”

I asked Zinaida Nikolaevna, “What do you think? Is she a witch?”

“Of course she’s a witch.”

“Do you think she flies out through the chimney at night?”

“Of course she does.”

“On a broomstick?”

“How else?”

Among the other astonishing characters flitting around Biarritz there was a very amusing Belgian woman who had something to do with the Red Cross. That at least is what she told us—and perched on her mighty bosom, on the stained grey wool into which it had been squeezed, was some kind of badge. This lady drank immoderately and wrote love letters to the elderly countess, imploring her for material assistance. The letters began with the words: “ Votre Beauté! ”

The countess did not deny the woman the help she asked for, but to her friends she said, “I must admit I am quite afraid to be left alone with her. She gives me such passionate looks.”

This remarkable countess had also taken Dmitry Sergeyevich under her wing—though she took no interest in Zinaida Nikolaevna, whom she merely tolerated as a writer’s wife. As a rule, she disliked women. Women were rivals: well-bred gentlemen are unfailingly courteous to women, and the countess wished to reign supreme. She introduced the Merezhkovskys to the German who resembled the engraving by Dürer, organized breakfast parties and made plans for all kinds of unusual lectures, talks and outings. It was around this time that the Nazi–Soviet pact broke down. Merezhkovsky then boldly affirmed what was to become his motto: “If the Devil is against the Bolsheviks, you should ally yourself with the Devil.” The Germans, of course, were the Devil.

The countess’s plans were indeed brilliant, but money was still very tight.

I remember once going to a café. Seated at a small table by the window were the Merezhkovskys. Not noticing me, they carried on with their conversation. Zinaida Nikolaevna had very poor hearing and Merezhkovsky’s voice filled the room: “They’ve cut off our electricity. Vladimir has been all over the town looking for candles, but there are none anywhere. We’re going to end up sitting in the dark.”

He was very agitated. His teaspoon was trembling in his hand and rattling against his cup. There were red blotches on his pale cheeks. And I knew that there were indeed no candles to be found anywhere in Biarritz.

They were always irritated, astonished, even sincerely outraged by the need to pay bills. Zinaida Nikolaevna told me indignantly about how they had just had a visit from the man who hired out bed linen.

“The scoundrel just won’t leave us alone. Yesterday he was told that we were out, so he sat in the garden and waited for us. Thanks to that scoundrel we couldn’t even go for a walk.”

There was such childlike naivety in Zinaida Nikolaevna’s irritation that one’s sympathy always went to her rather than to the man whose bill had not been paid.