Soon we were looking into the rosy deep of the stone staircase. Getting on for a month ago, in Brooklyn, while she was helping me pack, Elena remarked that my family-sized suitcase was ‘not full enough’. Well it was certainly heavy enough, by now, with its sediment of gifts and autographed novels and poetry collections and things such as Bernhardt’s portfolio in its stiff brown envelope. Humping a big load through the underground: I can do it, I thought, but I won’t like doing it. And yet once again Konrad, having tethered his bike, was quietly at our side, tall, and calm, and my bag was now swinging easily in his grip.
In the Hauptbahnhof itself the crowd was interspersed with thin streams of dark-skinned and dark-clothed refugees, their eyes hagridden but determined, their tread leaden but firm, dragging their prams and goods-laden buggies, their children. Then came a rare sight, and then an even rarer one.
First, a mother of a certain age, a grandmother probably, tall, dressed in the rigid black of the full abaya, with her half-veiled face pointed straight ahead. Then, second, a lavishly assimilated young woman with the same colouring, perhaps the granddaughter of a Turkish Gastarbeiter, in tight white jacket and tight white jeans – and she had a stupendously, an unignorably full and prominent backside. For half a minute the two women inadvertently walked in step, away from us: on the right, the black edifice gliding as smoothly as a Dalek; on the left, the hugely undulating orbs of white.
When he had pointed us to our platform Konrad took his leave, much thanked, much praised. I turned to Johanna.
‘The two women – did you see that?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well. She’s not embarrassed by it, is she. Looking so cheerful. Swinging her arms. And dressed like that? She’s not trying to hide it.’
‘No.’
‘I mean she’s not shy about it.’
‘No,’ said Johanna. ‘She likes it.’
VII
The Nabokovs were refugees, and three times over. As teenagers they independently fled the October Revolution; on her way out Véra Slonim passed through a pogrom in the Ukraine involving tens of thousands of mob murders. That was in 1919. They fled the Bolsheviks, horsemen of terror and famine, and, via the Crimea, Greece, and England, sought sanctuary – in Berlin. Then France, until the Germans followed them there; then the eleventh-hour embarcation to New York in 1940, a few weeks ahead of the Wehrmacht (on its next westbound crossing their boat, the Champlain, was torpedoed and sunk). VN’s father (also Vladimir Nabokov), the liberal statesman, was murdered by a White Russian fascist in Berlin (1922); in the same city his brother Sergei was arrested in 1943 (for homosexuality), rearrested the following year (for sedition), and died in a concentration camp near Hamburg in January 1945. That was their Europe; and they went back there, in style and for good, in 1959.
Yes, and I met Véra too. I spent most of a day with her, in 1983, in the still centre of Europe, the Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland (where they had lived since 1961), breaking only for lunch with her son, the incredibly tall Dmitri, whom I would meet again. Véra was a riveting and convivial goldenskinned beauty; on sensitive subjects she could suddenly turn very fierce, but I was never disconcerted because there was always the contingent light of humour in her eyes.
Vladimir died in 1977, aged seventy-eight. Véra died in 1991, aged eighty-nine. And Dmitri died in 2012, aged seventy-seven.
From Dmitri’s funeral address in April 1991:
On the eve of a risky hip operation two years ago, my brave and considerate mother asked that I bring her her favourite blue dress, because she might be receiving someone. I had the eerie feeling she wanted that dress for a very different reason. She survived on that occasion. Now, for her last earthly encounter, she was clad in that very dress. It was Mother’s wish that her ashes be united with those of Father’s in the urn at the Clarens Cemetery. In a curiously Nabokovian twist of things, there was some difficulty in locating that urn. My instinct was to call Mother, and ask her what to do about it. But there was no Mother to ask.
I got to Munich International with an extra half hour to spare. And there in the terminal, bathed in watery early-morning light, behind the little rampart of his luggage (a squat gunmetal trunk, a suede briefcase with numerous zips and pouches), and leering into his cell phone, stood Geoffrey Vane. I hailed him.
‘Why are you here? I thought you were going to take it easy.’
‘Who, me? Me? Nah. No rest for the wicked. Her, her fucking bungalow burnt down last night. Electrics. It’s always electrics. Burnt to a fucking crisp.’
‘Really? She wasn’t in it, was she?’
‘Ma? No, at her sister’s in Sheffield. It’s muggins here that has to go and deal with the mess. See if we got any contents insurance. Or any insurance at all.’
‘Will it be hard to get to Lanzarote?’
His face narrowed shrewdly. ‘You know what you do when something like this happens? When you’re a bit stranded? You go down under. Under here.’ And he soundlessly tapped his padded shoe on the floor. ‘That’s where the airline offices are. Under here. Ryanair, easyJet, Germania, Condor. You go down and you go around and you sniff out the best deal.
‘Well, good luck.’
‘Oh, I’ll be all right. I’m not helpless. Because I’ve got the resources. Hey,’ he said, and winked. ‘Might even hop on a package. With all the old boilers. Cheers!’
So there was time for lots of coffee and for delicious and fattening croissants in the lounge. Then the brand-new, hangar-fresh Lufthansa jumbo took off, on schedule. Soon I was gorging myself on fine foods and choice wines, before relishing Alien (Ridley Scott) and then the sequel, Aliens (James Cameron). I landed punctually…Would-be immigrants and even asylum seekers often have to wait two years, but after two hours, in the admittedly
