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.
Thanks to the countess’s influence, Merezhkovsky was given permission to give a lecture in a public hall. The audience was small, and included several German officers who were clearly there in an official capacity. Merezhkovsky spoke so softly that I could barely hear him, even though I was in the front row. I told him as much during the break.
He took offence. “It doesn’t matter. I refuse to speak more loudly. It’ll spoil my modulations. My modulations are superb. I’ve taken great pains over them.”
In the second half he simply whispered. The Germans got up and left. Recently the countess had grown somewhat less interested in Merezhkovsky. She had more important business to attend to. She was elaborating a plan to save France. It was not the first time she had done this. There had been an earlier occasion when, as she liked to tell us, she had balanced the state budget. How? By arranging greyhound races that had brought the government billions of francs in revenue.
Under the countess’s influence, Merezhkovsky had become more gracious towards the Germans (the devils opposing the Bolsheviks). He had even come to see Hitler as a kind of Napoleon.
“Zinaida Nikolaevna! What is it? What’s got into him?” I asked.
“He’s a sycophant. He’s the son of a minor palace official. That’s why he grovels. First before Piłsudski, then before Mussolini. Pure sycophantism.”
Harsh, but all too true, I fear.
Merezhkovsky’s appearance was most peculiar. Small and thin, and in his last years bent completely out of shape. What was remarkable, however, was his face. It was deathly pale, with bright red lips—and when he spoke you saw that his gums were the same bright red. There was something frightening about this. Vampire-like.
He never laughed. Neither of them had the least sense of humour. There was something perverse about Merezhkovsky’s refusal to understand a joke. Sometimes you would deliberately tell them a very funny story just to see their reaction. Utter bewilderment.
“But his answer’s quite wrong,” they would say.
“Yes, and that’s the point of the story. If his answer had been right, I wouldn’t be telling you all this.”
“All right, but why did he answer like that?”
“Because he didn’t understand.”
“Then he’s simply a fool. What’s so interesting about that?”
Nevertheless Zinaida Nikolaevna did appreciate a few lines from a poem by the genuinely witty and talented Don-Aminado.
she would declaim.
Merezhkovsky did not approve.
Zlobin defended Merezhkovsky: “No, he does have a sense of humour. Once he even came up with a play on words.”
More than twenty years of close acquaintance—and a single play on words. Evidently a joker who hid his wit under a bushel.
Zinaida Nikolaevna looked on me with curiosity. To her I was a member of some strange species. She would say, “I absolutely must write about you one day. No one has described you properly yet.”
“It’s too late,” I replied. “I won’t be able to act on your suggestions now, and there’s no changing the opinions of readers. They all made up their minds about me long ago.”
But then a copy of my Witch[6] somehow found its way into their hands—and for some reason they both liked it.
“In this volume you’re conspiring with eternity,” said Zinaida Nikolaevna.
“What language!” said Merezhkovsky. “I’m lapping it up, lapping it up!”
Then he added, “You’re nothing like your work. Zina is like her work, but you aren’t. This book is a delight.”
“Heavens!” I exclaimed. “You’re trying to tell me that I’m an abomination. How awful. But I don’t think there’s much we can do about it now.”
“But why do you give so much space in your work to the comical? I don’t much care for the comical,” Merezhkovsky once said to me.
Not “humour”, but “the comical”. Probably his way of showing contempt.
6