The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov Part 41

Warm temple, cold ear.

Mr. and Mrs. Boke are ushered out. They walk swiftly-although there is no hurry, no hurry whatever, down the corridor, along its shoddy, olive-and-ochre wall, the lower olive separated from the upper ochre by a continuous brown line leading to the venerable elevators. Going up (glimpse of patriarch in wheelchair). Going back in November (Lancelin). Going down (the old Bokes). There are, in that elevator, two smiling women and, the object of their bright sympathy, a girl with a baby, besides the gray-haired, bent, sullen elevator man, who stands with his back to everybody.

EASTER RAIN.

THAT day a lonely old Swiss woman named Josephine, or Josefina Lvovna, as the Russian family she had once lived with for twelve years had dubbed her, bought half a dozen eggs, a black brush, and two b.u.t.tons of carmine watercolor. That day the apple trees were in bloom. A cinema poster on the corner was reflected upside down on the smooth surface of a puddle, and, in the morning, the mountains on the far side of Lake Leman were all veiled in silky mist, like the opaque sheets of rice paper that cover etchings in expensive books. The mist promised a fair day, but the sun barely skimmed over the roofs of the skewed little stone houses, over the wet wires of a toy tram, and then dissolved once again into the haze. The day turned out to be calm, with springtime clouds, but, toward evening, a weighty, icy wind wafted down from the mountains, and Josephine, on her way home, broke into such a fit of coughing that she lost her balance for a moment by the door, flushed crimson, and leaned on her tightly furled umbrella, thin as a black walking stick.

It was already dark in her room. When she turned on the lamp, it illuminated her hands-thin hands with tight, glossy skin, ecchymotic freckles, and white blotches on the fingernails.

Josephine laid out her purchases on the table and dropped her coat and hat on the bed. She poured some water into a gla.s.s and, putting on a black-rimmed pince-nez that made her dark gray eyes look stern beneath the thick funereal brows that grew together over the bridge of her nose, began painting the eggs. For some reason the carmine watercolor would not stick. Perhaps she should have bought some kind of chemical paint, but she did not know how to ask for it, and was too embarra.s.sed to explain. She thought about going to see a pharmacist she knew-while she was at it, she could get some aspirin. She felt so sluggish, and her eyeb.a.l.l.s ached with fever. She wanted to sit quietly, think quietly. Today was the Russian Holy Sat.u.r.day.

At one time, the peddlers on the Nevsky Prospect had sold a special kind of tongs. These tongs were very practical for fis.h.i.+ng out the eggs from the hot, dark blue or orange liquid. But there were also the wooden spoons: They would b.u.mp lightly and compactly against the thick gla.s.s of the jars from which rose the heady steam of the dye. The eggs were then dried in piles, the red with the red, the green with the green. And they used to color them another way too, by wrapping them tightly in strips of cloth with decalcomanias tucked inside that looked like samples of wallpaper. After the boiling, when the manservant brought the huge pot back from the kitchen, what fun it was to unravel the cloth and take the speckled, marbled eggs out of the warm, damp fabric, from which rose gentle steam, a whiff of one's childhood.

The old Swiss woman felt strange remembering that, when she lived in Russia, she had been homesick, and sent long, melancholy, beautifully written letters to her friends back home about how she always felt unwanted, misunderstood. Every morning after breakfast she would go for a ride in the large open landau with her charge, Helene. And next to the coachman's fat bottom, reminiscent of a gigantic blue pumpkin, was the hunched-over back of the old footman, all gold b.u.t.tons and c.o.c.kade. The only Russian words she knew were: "Coachman," "good," "fine," [kutcher, tish-tish, nichevo (coachman, hush-hush, so-so, all misp.r.o.nounced.)]

She had left Petersburg with a dim sense of relief, just as the war was beginning. She thought that now she would delight endlessly in chatty evenings with her friends and in the coziness of her native town. But the reality turned out to be quite the opposite. Her real life-in other words, the part of life when one most keenly and deeply gets used to people and things-had pa.s.sed by there, in Russia, which she had unconsciously grown to love and understand, and where G.o.d only knew what was going on now.... And tomorrow was Orthodox Easter.

Josephine sighed loudly, got up, and closed the window more firmly. She looked at her watch, black on its nickel chain. She would have to do something about those eggs. They were to be a gift for the Platonovs, an elderly Russian couple recently settled in Lausanne, a town both native and foreign to her, where it was hard to breathe, where the houses were stacked at random, in disorder, helter-skelter, along the steep, angular streets.

She grew pensive, listening to the drone in her ears. Then she shook herself out of her torpor, poured a vial of purple ink into a tin can, and carefully lowered an egg into it.

The door opened softly. Her neighbor Mademoiselle Finard entered, quiet as a mouse. She was a thin little woman, a former governess herself. Her short-cropped hair was all silver. She was draped in a black shawl, iridescent with gla.s.s beads.

Josephine, hearing her mouselike steps, awkwardly, with a newspaper, covered the can and the eggs that were drying on some blotting paper.

"What do you want? I don't like people simply coming in like that."

Mademoiselle Finard looked askance at Josephine's anxious face and said nothing, but was deeply offended, and, without a word, left the room with the same mincing steps.

By now the eggs had turned a venomous violet. On an unpainted egg, she decided to draw the two Easter initials*, as had always been customary in Russia. The first letter, "X," she drew well, but the second she could not quite remember, and finally, instead of a "B," she drew an absurd, crooked "." When the ink had dried completely she wrapped the eggs in soft toilet paper and put them in her leather handbag.

But what tormenting sluggishness.... She wanted to lie down in bed, drink some hot coffee, and stretch out her legs.... She was feverish and her eyelids p.r.i.c.kled.... When she went outside, the dry crackle of her cough began rising in her throat again. The streets were dark, damp, and deserted. The Platonovs lived nearby. They were seated, having tea, and Platonov, bald-pated, with a scanty beard, in a Russian serge s.h.i.+rt with b.u.t.tons on the side, was stuffing yellow tobacco into cigarette papers when Josephine knocked with the k.n.o.b of her umbrella and entered.

"Ah, good evening, Mademoiselle."

She sat down next to them, and tactlessly, verbosely started discussing the imminent Russian Easter. She took the violet eggs out of her bag one by one. Platonov noticed the egg with the lilac letters "X " and burst out laughing.

"Whatever made her stick on those Jewish initials?"

His wife, a plump woman with a yellow wig and sorrowful eyes, smiled fleetingly. She started thanking Josephine with indifference, drawing out her French vowels. Josephine did not understand why they were laughing. She felt hot and sad. She began talking again, but she had the feeling that what she was saying was out of place, yet she could not restrain herself.

"Yes, at this moment there is no Easter in Russia.... Poor Russia! Oh, I remember how people used to kiss each other in the streets. And my little Helene looked like an angel that day.... Oh, I often cry all night thinking of your wonderful country!"

The Platonovs always found these conversations unpleasant. They never discussed their lost homeland with outsiders, just as ruined rich men hide their poverty and become even haughtier and less approachable than before. Therefore, deep down, Josephine felt that they had no love at all for Russia. Usually when she visited the Platonovs she thought that, if she only began talking of beautiful Russia with tears in her eyes, the Platonovs would suddenly burst into sobs and begin reminiscing and recounting, and that the three of them would sit like that all night reminiscing, crying, and squeezing each other's hands.

But in reality this never happened. Platonov would nod politely and indifferently with his beard, while his wife kept trying to find out where one could get some tea or soap as cheaply as possible.

Platonov began rolling his cigarettes again. His wife placed them evenly in a cardboard box. They had both intended to take a nap until it was time to leave for the Easter Vigils at the Greek church around the corner. They wanted to sit silently, to think their own thoughts, to speak only with glances and special, seemingly absent-minded smiles about their son, who had been killed in the Crimea, about Easter odds and ends, about their neighborhood church on Pochtamskaya Street. Now this chattering, sentimental old woman with her anxious dark gray eyes had come, full of sighs, and might well stay until they left the house themselves.

Josephine fell silent, hoping avidly that she too might be asked to accompany them to church, and, afterward, to breakfast with them. She knew they had baked Russian Easter cakes the day before, and although she obviously could not eat any because she felt so feverish, still it would have been so pleasant, so warm, and so festive.

Platonov ground his teeth and, stifling a yawn, looked furtively at his wrist, at the dial under its little screen. Josephine saw they were not going to invite her. She rose.

"You need a small rest, my dear friends, but there is something I want to say to you before I leave." And, moving close to Platonov, who also got up, she exclaimed in sonorous, fractured Russian, "Hath Christs rised!"

This was her last hope of eliciting a burst of hot, sweet tears, Easter kisses, an invitation to breakfast together.... But Platonov only squared his shoulders and said with a subdued laugh, "See, Mademoiselle, you p.r.o.nounce Russian beautifully."

Once outside, she broke into sobs, and walked pressing her handkerchief to her eyes, swaying slightly, tapping her silken, canelike umbrella on the sidewalk. The sky was cavernous and troubled-the moon vague, the clouds like ruins. The angled feet of a curly-headed Chaplin were reflected in a puddle near a brightly lit cinema. And when Josephine walked beneath the noisy, weeping trees beside the lake, which seemed like a wall of mist, she saw an emerald lantern glowing faintly at the edge of a small pier and something large and white clambering onto a black boat that bobbed below. She focused through her tears. An enormous old swan puffed itself up, flapped its wings, and suddenly, clumsy as a goose, waddled heavily onto the deck. The boat rocked; green circles welled over the black, oily water that merged into fog.

Josephine pondered whether she should perhaps go to church anyway. But in Petersburg the only church she had ever gone to was the red Catholic one at the end of Morskaya Street, and she felt ashamed now to go into an Orthodox church, where she did not know when to cross herself or how one held one's fingers, and where somebody might make a comment. She felt intermittent chills. Her head filled with a confusion of rustling, of smacking trees, of black clouds, and Easter recollections: mountains of multicolored eggs, the dusky sheen of St. Isaac's. Deafened and woozy, she somehow managed to make it home and climb the stairs, banging her shoulder against the wall, and then, unsteadily, her teeth chattering, she began undressing. She felt weaker, and tumbled onto her bed with a blissful, incredulous smile.

A delirium, stormy and powerful as the surge of bells, took hold of her. Mountains of multicolored eggs scattered with rotund tapping sounds. The sun-or was it a golden-horned sheep made of creamery b.u.t.ter?-came tumbling through the window and began to grow, filling the room with torrid yellow. Meanwhile, the eggs scurried up and rolled down glossy little strips of wood, knocking against each other, their sh.e.l.ls cracking, their whites streaked with crimson.

All night she lay delirious like that, and it was only the following morning that a still-offended Mademoiselle Finard came in, gasped, and ran off in panic to call a doctor.

"Lobar pneumonia, Mademoiselle."

Through the waves of delirium twinkled wallpaper flowers, the old woman's silver hair, the doctor's placid eyes-it all twinkled and dissolved. And again an agitated drone of joy engulfed her soul. The fable-blue sky was like a gigantic painted egg, bells thundered, and someone came into the room who looked like Platonov, or maybe like Helene's father-and on entering he unfolded a newspaper, placed it on the table, and sat down nearby, glancing now at Josephine, now at the white pages with a significant, modest, slightly cunning smile. Josephine knew that in this paper there was some kind of wondrous news, but, try as she might, she could not decipher the Russian letters of the black headline. Her guest kept smiling and casting significant glances at her, and seemed on the very point of revealing the secret, to confirm the happiness that she foretasted-but the man slowly dissolved. Unconsciousness swept over her like a black cloud.

Then came another motley of delirious dreams: The landau rolled along the quay, Helene lapped the hot bright color from a wooden spoon, the broad Neva sparkled expansively, and Czar Peter suddenly leapt off his bronze steed, the hooves of both its forelegs having simultaneously alighted. He approached Josephine, and, with a smile on his green-tinted, stormy face, embraced her, kissed her on one cheek, then on the other. His lips were soft and warm, and when he brushed her cheek for the third time, she palpitated, moaning with bliss, spread out her arms, and suddenly fell silent.

Early in the morning, on the sixth day of her illness, after a final crisis, Josephine came to her senses. A white sky s.h.i.+mmered brightly through the window and perpendicular rain was rustling and rippling in the gutters.

A wet branch stretched across the windowpane, and at its very end a leaf kept shuddering beneath the patter of the rain. The leaf leaned forward and let a large drop fall from the tip of its green blade. The leaf shuddered again, and again a moist ray rolled downward, then a long, bright earring dangled and dropped.

And it seemed to Josephine as if the rainy coolness were flowing through her veins. She could not take her eyes off the streaming sky, and the pulsating, enraptured rain was so pleasant, the leaf shuddered so touchingly, that she wanted to laugh; the laughter filled her, though it was still soundless, coursing through her body, tickling her palate, and was on the very point of erupting.

To her left, in the corner, something scrabbled and sighed. Aquiver with the laughter that was mounting in her, she took her eyes off the window and turned her head. The little old woman lay facedown on the floor in her black kerchief. Her short-cropped silver hair shook angrily as she fidgeted, thrusting her hand under the chest of drawers, where her ball of wool had rolled. Black yarn stretched from the chest to the chair, where her knitting needles and a half-knitted stocking still lay.

Seeing Mademoiselle Finard's black hair, her squirming legs, her b.u.t.ton boots, Josephine broke out in peals of laughter, shaking as she gasped and cooed beneath her down comforter, feeling that she was resurrected, that she had returned from faraway mists of happiness, wonder, and Easter splendor.

Translated from the Russian by Dmitri Nabokov and Peter Constantine.

*The Cyrillic letters X (Kh) and B (V) stand for Khristos vorkresye, "Christ has risen."

THE WORD.

SWEPT out of the valley night by an inspired oneiric wind, I stood at the edge of a road, under a clear pure-gold sky, in an extraordinary mountainous land. Without looking, I sensed the l.u.s.tre, the angles, and the facets of immense mosaic cliffs, dazzling precipices, and the mirrorlike glint of mult.i.tudinous lakes lying somewhere below, behind me. My soul was seized by a sense of heavenly iridescence, freedom, and loftiness: I knew that I was in Paradise. Yet, within this earthly soul, a single earthly thought rose like a piercing flame-and how jealously, how grimly I guarded it from the aura of gigantic beauty that surrounded me. This thought, this naked flame of suffering, was the thought of my earthly homeland. Barefoot and penniless, at the edge of a mountain road, I awaited the kind, luminous denizens of Heaven, while a wind, like the foretaste of a miracle, played in my hair, filled the gorges with a crystal hum, and ruffled the fabled silks of the trees that blossomed amid the cliffs lining the road. Tall gra.s.ses lapped at the tree trunks like tongues of fire; large flowers broke smoothly from the glittering branches and, like airborne goblets br.i.m.m.i.n.g with sunlight, glided through the air, puffing out their translucent convex petals. Their sweet, damp aroma reminded me of all the finest things I had experienced in my life.

Suddenly, the road on which I stood, breathless from the s.h.i.+mmer, was filled with a tempest of wings. Swarming out of the blinding depths came the angels I awaited, their folded wings pointing sharply upward. Their tread was ethereal; they were like colored clouds in motion, and their transparent visages were motionless except for the rapturous tremor of their radiant lashes. Among them, turquoise birds flew with peals of happy girlish laughter, and lithe orange animals loped, fantastically speckled with black. The creatures coiled through the air, silently thrusting out their satin paws to catch the airborne flowers as they circled and soared, pressing past me with flas.h.i.+ng eyes.

Wings, wings, wings! How can I describe their convolutions and their tints? They were all-powerful and soft-tawny, purple, deep blue, velvety black, with fiery dust on the rounded tips of their bowed feathers. Like precipitous clouds they stood, imperiously poised above the angels' luminous shoulders; now and then an angel, in a kind of marvellous transport, as if unable to restrain his bliss, suddenly, for a single instant, unfurled his winged beauty, and it was like a burst of sunlight, like the sparkling of millions of eyes.

They pa.s.sed in throngs, glancing heavenward. Their eyes were like jubilant chasms, and in those eyes I saw the syncope of flight. They came with gliding step, showered with flowers. The flowers spilled their humid sheen in flight; the sleek, bright beasts played, whirling and climbing; the birds chimed with bliss, soaring and dipping. I, a blinded, quaking beggar, stood at the edge of the road, and within my beggar's soul the selfsame thought kept prattling: Cry out to them, tell them-oh, tell them that on the most splendid of G.o.d's stars there is a land-my land-that is dying in agonizing darkness. I had the sense that, if I could grasp with my hand but one quivering s.h.i.+mmer, I would bring to my country such joy that human souls would instantly be illumined, and would circle beneath the plash and crackle of resurrected springtime, to the golden thunder of reawakened temples.

Reaching out with trembling hands, striving to bar the angels' path, I began clutching at the hems of their bright chasubles, at the undulating, torrid fringes of their curved wings, which slipped through my fingers like downy flowers. I moaned, I dashed about, I deliriously beseeched their indulgence, but the angels trod ever forward, oblivious of me, their chiselled faces turned upward. They streamed in hosts to a heavenly feast, into an unendurably resplendent glade, where roiled and breathed a divinity about which I dared not think. I saw fiery cobwebs, splashes, designs on gigantic crimson, russet, violet wings, and, above me, a downy rustling pa.s.sed in waves. The rainbow-crowned turquoise birds pecked, the flowers floated off from s.h.i.+ny boughs. "Wait, hear me out!" I cried, trying to embrace an angel's vaporous legs, but the feet, impalpable, unstoppable, slipped through my extended hands, and the borders of the broad wings only scorched my lips as they swept past. In the distance, a golden clearing between lush, vivid cliffs was filling with the surging storm; the angels were receding; the birds ceased their high-pitched agitated laughter; the flowers no longer flew from the trees; I grew feeble, I fell mute....

Then a miracle occurred. One of the last angels lingered, turned, and quietly approached me. I caught sight of his cavernous, staring, diamond eyes under the imposing arches of his brows. On the ribs of his outspread wings glistened what seemed like frost. The wings themselves were gray, an ineffable tint of gray, and each feather ended in a silvery sickle. His visage, the faintly smiling outline of his lips, and his straight clear forehead reminded me of features I had seen on earth. The curves, the gleaming, the charm of all the faces I had ever loved-the features of people who had long since departed from me-seemed to merge into one wondrous countenance. All the familiar sounds that came separately into contact with my hearing now seemed to blend into a single, perfect melody.

He came up to me. He smiled. I could not look at him. But, glancing at his legs, I noticed a network of azure veins on his feet and one pale birthmark. From these veins, from that little spot, I understood that he had not yet totally abandoned earth, that he might understand my prayer.

Then, bending my head, pressing my singed palms, smeared with bright clay, to my half-blinded eyes, I began recounting my sorrows. I wanted to explain how wondrous my land was, and how horrid its black syncope, but I did not find the words I needed. Hurrying, repeating myself, I babbled about trifles, about some burned-down house where once the sunny sheen of parquet had been reflected in an inclined mirror. I prattled of old books and old lindens, of knickknacks, of my first poems in a cobalt schoolboy notebook, of some gray boulder, overgrown with wild raspberries, in the middle of a field filled with scabiosa and daisies-but the most important thing I simply could not express. I grew confused, I stopped short, I began anew, and again, in my helpless, rapid speech, I spoke of rooms in a cool and resonant country house, of lindens, of my first love, of b.u.mblebees sleeping on the scabiosa. It seemed to me that any minute-any minute!-I would get to what was most important, I would explain the whole sorrow of my homeland. But for some reason I could remember only minute, quite mundane things that were unable to speak or weep those corpulent, burning, terrible tears, about which I wanted to but could not tell....

I fell silent, raised my head. The angel smiled a quiet, attentive smile, gazed fixedly at me with his elongated diamond eyes. I felt he understood me.

"Forgive me," I exclaimed, meekly kissing the birthmark on his light-hued foot. "Forgive that I am capable of speaking only about the ephemeral, the trivial. You understand, though, my kindhearted, my gray angel. Answer me, help me, tell me, what can save my land?"

Embracing my shoulders for an instant with his dovelike wings, the angel p.r.o.nounced a single word, and in his voice I recognized all those beloved, those silenced voices. The word he spoke was so marvellous that, with a sigh, I closed my eyes and bowed my head still lower. The fragrance and the melody of the word spread through my veins, rose like a sun within my brain; the countless cavities within my consciousness caught up and repeated its l.u.s.trous edenic song. I was filled with it. Like a taut knot, it beat within my temple, its dampness trembled upon my lashes, its sweet chill fanned through my hair, and it poured heavenly warmth over my heart.

I shouted it, I revelled in its every syllable, I violently cast up my eyes, which were filled with the radiant rainbows of joyous tears....

Oh, Lord-the winter dawn glows greenish in the window, and I remember not what word it was that I shouted.

Notes.

Following are my notes to the stories previously uncollected in English, together with Vladimir Nabokov's introductory notes to the stories collected in A Russian Beauty and Other Stories (1973), Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (1975), and Details of a Sunset and Other Stories (1976), all published by McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, and in various translations around the world.

The notes to each story are arranged here in the order in which the stories appear in this volume; Nabokov wrote no notes for the individual stories in his first major collection in America, Nabokov's Dozen (Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1958); see, however, the appendix in this volume for his Bibliographical Note to that collection, along with his forewords to each collection published by McGraw-Hill.

I have tried, insofar as feasible, to establish a chronological order of composition. In those instances where only publication dates are available, they are used as a surrogate. My princ.i.p.al sources have been Nabokov's own notes, archive materials, and the invaluable research of Brian Boyd, Dieter Zimmer, and Michael Juliar. The reader will note occasional discrepancies in dating. Where such inconsistencies occur in Nabokov's own commentary, I have preferred not to alter the details of his texts.

Both Vladimir Nabokov and I have at times varied our systems of transliteration. The method set forth in Nabokov's translation of Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin is probably the clearest and most logical of these variants. Except where accepted usage dictates a different form, or where Nabokov himself has digressed from that system, it is the one I have generally used.

Dmitri Nabokov

THE WOOD-SPRITE.

"The Wood-Sprite" (Nezhit') first appeared on January 7, 1921, in Rul' (The Rudder), the Russian emigre newspaper in Berlin that had begun publication a little more than a month previously, and to which Nabokov would regularly contribute poems, plays, stories, translations, and chess problems. Only recently has the story been translated and published, with twelve other previously uncollected pieces, in La Venitienne et autres nouvelles (Gallimard, 1990, trans. Bernard Kreise, ed. Gilles Barbedette), in La Veneziana (Adelphi, 1992, trans. and ed. Serena Vitale), in volurnes 13 and 14 of Vladimir Nabokov: Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works; Rowohlt, 1989, trans. and ed. Dieter Zimmer), and in a two-volume Dutch edition (De Bezige Bij, 1995, 1996)-henceforth, together with the present English versions, referred to as the "current collections." While I translated most of the previously collected fifty-two stories under my father's supervision, I take full responsibility for the posthumous English translations of these thirteen.

"The Wood-Sprite" is the first story Nabokov published and one of the first he wrote. It was signed "Vladimir Sirin" (sirin is a bird of Russian fable as well as the modern hawk owl), the pseudonym that, in his youth, the author used for many of his works.

Nabokov's debut as a writer came when he was still a student at Trinity College, Cambridge (in May 1919 he had arrived in England with his family, abandoning Russia forever); he nurtured his pa.s.sion for poetry, while also translating Colas Breugnon, a novella by Romain Rolland.

D.N.

RUSSIAN SPOKEN HERE.

"Russian Spoken Here" (Govoryat po-russki) dates from 1923, most likely early in the year. It remained unpublished until the current collections.

The "Meyn Ried" mentioned in the story is Thomas Mayne Reid (18181883), author of adventure novels. "Mister Ulyanov" is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who entered history under the stage name V. I. Lenin. The GPU, originally known as the Cheka, and later designated by the acronyms NKVD, MVD, and KGB, was the Bolshevik political secret police. Among the books the "prisoner" was allowed to read were the Fables of Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (17681844) and Prince Serebryaniy, a popular historical novel by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (18171875).

D.N.

SOUNDS.

"Sounds" (Zvuki) was written in September 1923 and was published in my English translation in The New Yorker on August 14, 1995, and now in the current collections.

Nabokov did not resume writing stories until lanuary 1923, two years after the publication of "The Wood-Sprite." In the interim he had finished his studies at Cambridge (in the summer of 1922). He was now living in Berlin, where his family had moved in October 1920, and where his father was a.s.sa.s.sinated on March 28, 1922. At the time he was composing "Sounds," Nabokov published two volumes of poetry and his Russian version of Alice in Wonderland. The story is, among other things, a trans.m.u.ted evocation of a youthful love affair, almost certainly with his cousin Tatiana Evghenievna Segelkranz (the likely spelling of her military husband's name, cited incorrectly elsewhere), nee Rausch, who also makes an appearance in The Gift.

D.N.