“I changed his hot water bottle seventeen times last night,” she said. “Then old age got the better of me and I emptied out the eighteenth onto my stomach.”
Despite his illness, they continued to receive people on Sundays. Chatting and joking, everyone would sit in the large dining room, around an empty table. Merezhkovsky was usually at the far end of the room, reclining on a chaise longue, sullen and sulking. He would greet his guests by shouting loudly, “There’s no tea. No tea at all.”
“Look, Madam D. has brought us some biscuits,” said Zinaida Nikolaevna.
“Let them bring biscuits. Let them bring everything!” Merezhkovsky declared grimly.
“But Dmitry Sergeyevich,” I said. “I thought suffering ennobled the soul.” I had heard these words from him many times.
“Indeed it does!” he barked—and turned away. I think he found me almost unbearable. When he spoke to me he never looked at me, and when, in my presence, he spoke about me, he would refer to me simply as she. It was quite amusing, really.
After I had packed everything in preparation for the move, I went down to the Merezhkovskys and asked Zinaida Nikolaevna if she could lend me a book for the night. They always had piles of cheap French crime novels which they read diligently every evening.
“Zina,” said Merezhkovsky, “grab one from the second-rate pile and say she absolutely must return it tomorrow morning.”
“No,” I said to Zinaida Nikolaevna. “She is going to choose something she likes and bring it back in her own good time. She is certainly not going to hurry.”
He turned away angrily.
Zinaida Nikolaevna courteously found me one of the more interesting books.
Another time, while we were still at the hotel, I found a letter under my door. The Merezhkovskys and I were being invited to move to the Free Zone. Well-wishers had arranged visas for us and would pay our passage to America. I was to inform the Merezhkovskys at once. And so, off I went.
Merezhkovsky was furious.
“She must tell them to keep their distance. And she’s not to go either.”
“Why should she be so rude to people who are only showing their concern and doing their best to help?” I asked.
“They’re not trying to help us at all, and they’re not in the least concerned about us. They only want our names. I’d rather go to Spain. They’ve got a saint there that hardly anyone has written anything about. I’ll write a book about her and they’ll give me a visa. But she should stay here in Biarritz.”
“More saints?” I asked. “You’re a real demon, Dmitry Sergeyevich—you can’t keep away from saints.”
Strangely, though, despite his loathing for her (a loathing well earned, as I could never resist teasing him), they had somehow taken it into their heads that they’d like to move into an apartment with me. This plan greatly amused the rest of the Russian colony. Everyone was wondering exactly how this arrangement would work out.
During these first months the Merezhkovskys felt a real disgust for the Germans, which they made no attempt to hide. If we were about to go out together, Zinaida Nikolaevna would begin with a quick check: were there any Germans about? If she did see a German, she would slam the gate and wait for him to pass by. And she drew caricatures of the Germans that were really not bad at all.
The Merezhkovskys led a very ordered existence. Dmitry Sergeyevich worked throughout the morning and rested after an early lunch. Then they would always go for a walk.
“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]—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.”
5
Sobakyevich, an unscrupulous serf owner in Gogol’s