I reminded him of Gogol’s words about humour.
“Listen: ‘Laughter is deeper and more significant than people think. At its bottom lies an eternally pulsating spring which lends greater depth to any subject. Even he who fears nothing else on earth fears mockery. Yet there are some who are unaware of laughter’s remarkable power. Many say that humour is base; only when something is pronounced in stern, laboured tones do they acknowledge it as sublime.’”[7]
Merezhkovsky was terribly offended: “My tones aren’t in the least laboured.”
“Of course they aren’t. Everyone knows about your modulations. This wasn’t written about you.”
Zinaida Nikolaevna often quoted from her own poems. Merezhkovsky did not like her recent work.
“Zina, these are not poems.”
“Yes, they are,” she insisted.
“No, they’re not,” he shouted.
I intervened: “I think I can reconcile you. Of course they’re poems. They have metre and rhyme—all the formal elements of verse. But they’re verse rather than poetry, prose thoughts in verse form.”
They both accepted this. Now that they had read Witch, I was no longer she but Teffi.
I remember falling ill and spending nearly a month in bed. The Merezhkovskys visited regularly, and once, to the astonishment of everyone in the room, Dmitry Sergeyevich brought a paper cornet of cherries. He had bought them along the way. We all exchanged glances, our faces all saying the same thing: “And there we were, thinking he has no heart.”
Merezhkovsky asked sternly for a dish and said the cherries should be washed.
“Dmitry Sergeyevich,” I said sweetly. “It’s all right, I’m not frightened. There’s no cholera now.”
“I know,” he said grimly. “But I’m still frightened.”
He sat in the corner and, noisily spitting out the stones, ate every last cherry. It was so funny that those present were afraid to look at one another lest they burst out laughing.
I was preoccupied by this strange man for a long time. I kept looking for something in him and not finding it. I remembered “Sakya Muni”, Merezhkovsky’s poem about how the Buddha, the Sage of the Shakhya clan,[8] moved by the suffering of a lowly thief who had said to him “Lord of the World, you are wrong”, had bowed his crowned head to the ground. This hymn to humility—from the pen of Merezhkovsky!
And then, one day not long before his death, after they had returned to Paris disappointed by their German patrons and with no money at all—they had even had to sell a gold pen some Italian writers had presented to them during Merezhkovsky’s Mussolini period[9]—the three of us were sitting together and Zinaida Nikolaevna remarked of someone, “Yes, people really do love him.”
“Nonsense!” interrupted Merezhkovsky. “Absolute nonsense! No one loves. No one is loved.”
There was something desperate behind this. These were not idle words. Merezhkovsky’s whole face had darkened. Dear God! What torments this man must have been going through in the black pit he inhabited… I felt fear for him, and pain.
“Dmitry Sergeyevich! What makes you say that? It’s just that you don’t see people. You don’t really notice them.”
“Nonsense. I do notice people.”
I may be wrong, but in his words I had heard both longing and despair. I thought of his most recent poem, “O Loneliness, O Poverty”. And I thought of Gogol’s Khoma Brut. The dead sorceress’s coffin flying just above his head. It was terrifying.
“Dmitry Sergeyevich! You truly don’t notice people. I know I’m always laughing at you, but really I love you.”
It was as if, with these words, I were making the sign of the cross over myself.
For a moment he seemed at a loss; then he recovered himself: “I think it’s my works you love—not me.”
“No, Dmitry Sergeyevich, I love you, as a human being.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he turned and went slowly to his room. He came back and handed me a photograph of himself, with an affectionate inscription.
I have this photograph still.
ILYA REPIN
I did not see Repin often. He lived in Finland and came only seldom to Petersburg.
But one day Kaplan, from the publishing house “Dog Rose”,[1] came round with a letter from Repin. Repin very much liked my story “The Top”.[2] “It moved me to tears,” he wrote. And this had made him want to paint my portrait.
This, of course, was a great honour for me. We agreed on a date and time, and Kaplan took me along in his car.
It was winter. Cold. Snowstorms. All very miserable. With its squat dachas deep in snow, Kuokkala was not welcoming. The sky was also very low, even darker than the earth and breathing out cold. After Petersburg, with its loud voices, with its whistles and car horns, the village seemed very quiet. The snow lay in deep drifts and there could have been a bear beneath every one of them, fast asleep, sucking its paw.
Repin greeted us warmly. He took us into his studio and showed us his latest work. Then we sat down for a late breakfast at his famous round table. The table had two levels. On the top level, which revolved, were all kinds of dishes; you moved it round and helped yourself to whatever you fancied. On the lower level were containers for the dirty plates and bowls. It was all very convenient, and fun—like having a picnic. The food was vegetarian, and there was a lot of variety. Some of our more serious eaters, though, would complain after a visit that they’d been given nothing but hay. In the railway station on the way back home, they’d go to the buffet and fill up on meat rissoles, which would by then have grown cold.
After breakfast—work.
Repin seated me on a little dais and then sat down below me. He was looking up at me, which seemed very strange. I’ve sat for a number of artists—Alexandr Yakovlev, Savely Sorin, Boris Grigoryev, Savely Schleifer[3] and many who are less well known—but no one has ever gone about it so strangely.
He was using coloured pencils, which he didn’t do often. “It’ll be Paris style,” he said with a smile.
He asked someone else who was there to read aloud “The Top”, the story of mine that had made such an impression on him. This made me think of Boris Kustodiev’s account of how, while he was painting his portrait of Nicholas II, the Tsar had read aloud one of my stories of village life. He had read well—and then he had asked if it was really true that the author was a lady.
Repin’s finished portrait of me was something magically tender, unexpected, not at all like his usual, more forceful work.
He promised to give it to me. But I never received it. It was sent to an exhibition in America and, in Repin’s words, “it got stuck in customs”.
I didn’t like to question him too insistently. “He simply doesn’t want to admit that he sold it,” people kept telling me.
It would, in any case, have disappeared during the Revolution, as did all the other portraits of me, as did many beloved things without which I’d thought life would be hardly worth living.
Years later, in Paris, I republished “The Top” in The Book of June, dedicating the story to Repin. I sent a copy of the book to the address I still had for him in Finland. He replied warmly, asking me to send him a few amateur photographs, just as they were, without any retouching. With these to prompt him, he’d be able to recreate the portrait from memory. At the bottom of the letter was a postscript from his daughter, saying that her father was very weak, hardly able to move about at all.
7
From Gogol’s “A Theatrical Journey” (“
8
Teffi is referring to Merezhkovsky’s early poem “Sakya Muni” (1885), in which a poor thief berates the Buddha for preventing him from stealing one of the Buddha’s gems: the Buddha is immortal and has no need of gems—so why should he deny a mortal thief a way to earn his crust of bread?
9
Throughout his émigré years Merezhkovsky had been hoping to find a strong ruler who could save Europe from Bolshevism. At one time he had placed his hopes in Mussolini, who had sponsored his book about Dante (1939). Merezhkovsky met Mussolini several times. In one of his letters to him he wrote, “The best, the truest and the liveliest document on Dante is—your personality. […] Visualize Mussolini in contemplation, and it’s Dante. Imagine Dante in action, and it’s Mussolini” (Vadim Polonsky, “Merezhkovsky, Dmitry Sergeyevich”, www.krugosvet.ru.; retrieved 2nd February 2010).
1
In 1910 this publishing house (Shipovnik) had published Teffi’s first two books—a collection of poems and a collection of stories.
2
First published in December 1915—a story about an exceptionally fatuous man whose repeated expressions of wonder at life’s everyday miracles bore and exasperate not only his wife but also his small children.
3
All four artists emigrated after the Revolution. Teffi’s