were spilled all over the table at his elbow. He swept them onto the carpet with a gesture of peevish dismissal.
What then was I intending to do?
I said I’d go on with my literary dreams and nightmares. We would spend most of the year in Paris. Paris was becoming the center of
émigré
culture and destitution.
How much did I think I could earn?
Well, as N.N. knew, currencies were losing their identities in the whirlpool of inflation, but Boris Morozov, a distinguished author, whose fame had preceded his exile, had given me some illuminating “examples of existence” when I met him quite recently in Cannice where he had lectured on Baratynski at the local
literaturnyy
circle. In his case, four lines of verse would pay for a
bifsteck pommes
, while a couple of essays in the
Novosti emigratsii
assured a month’s rent for a cheap
chambre garnie
. There were also readings, in large auditoriums, at least twice a year, which might bring him each time the equivalent of, say, one hundred dollars.
My benefactor thought this over and said that as long as he lived I would receive a check for half that amount every first of the month, and that he would bequeath me a certain sum in his testament. He named the sum. Its paltriness took me aback. This was a foretaste of the disappointing advances publishers were to offer me after a long, promising, pencil-tapping pause.
We rented a two-room apartment in the 16th
arrondissement
, rue Despréaux, 23. The hallway connecting the rooms led, on the front side, to a bathroom and kitchenette. Being a solitary sleeper by principle and inclination, I relinquished the double bed to Iris, and slept on the couch in the parlor. The concierge’s daughter came to clean up and cook. Her culinary capacities were limited, so we often broke the monotony of vegetable soups and boiled meat by eating at a Russian
restoranchik
. We were to spend seven winters in that little flat.
Owing to the foresight of my dear guardian and benefactor (1850?–1927), an old-fashioned cosmopolitan witha lot of influence in the right quarters, I had become by the time of my marriage the subject of a snug foreign country and thus was spared the indignity of a
nansenskiy pasport
(a pauper’s permit, really), as well as the vulgar obsession with “documents,” which provoked such evil glee among the Bolshevist rulers, who perceived some similarity between red tape and Red rule and a certain affinity between the civil plight of a hobbled expatriate and the political immobilization of a Soviet slave. I could, therefore, take my wife to any vacational resort in the world without waiting several weeks for a visa, and then being refused, perhaps, a return visa to our accidental country of residence, in this case France, because of some flaw in our precious and despicable papers. Nowadays (1970), when my British passport has been superseded by a no less potent American one, I still treasure that 1922 photo of the mysterious young man I then was, with the mysteriously smiling eyes and the striped tie and the wavy hair. I remember spring trips to Malta and Andalusia, but every summer, around the first of July, we drove to Carnavaux and stayed there for a month or two. The parrot died in 1925, the footboy vanished in 1927. Ivor visited us twice in Paris, and I think she saw him also in London where she went at least once a year to spend a few days with “friends,” whom I did not know, but who sounded harmless—at least to a certain point.
I should have been happier. I had
planned
to be happier. My health continued patchy with ominous shapes showing through its flimsier edges. Faith in my work never wavered, but despite her touching intentions to participate in it, Iris remained on its outside, and the better it grew the more alien it became to her. She took desultory lessons in Russian, interrupting them regularly, for long periods, and finished by developing a dull habitual aversion to the language. I soon noticed that she
What then was I intending to do?
I said I’d go on with my literary dreams and nightmares. We would spend most of the year in Paris. Paris was becoming the center of
émigré
culture and destitution.
How much did I think I could earn?
Well, as N.N. knew, currencies were losing their identities in the whirlpool of inflation, but Boris Morozov, a distinguished author, whose fame had preceded his exile, had given me some illuminating “examples of existence” when I met him quite recently in Cannice where he had lectured on Baratynski at the local
literaturnyy
circle. In his case, four lines of verse would pay for a
bifsteck pommes
, while a couple of essays in the
Novosti emigratsii
assured a month’s rent for a cheap
chambre garnie
. There were also readings, in large auditoriums, at least twice a year, which might bring him each time the equivalent of, say, one hundred dollars.
My benefactor thought this over and said that as long as he lived I would receive a check for half that amount every first of the month, and that he would bequeath me a certain sum in his testament. He named the sum. Its paltriness took me aback. This was a foretaste of the disappointing advances publishers were to offer me after a long, promising, pencil-tapping pause.
We rented a two-room apartment in the 16th
arrondissement
, rue Despréaux, 23. The hallway connecting the rooms led, on the front side, to a bathroom and kitchenette. Being a solitary sleeper by principle and inclination, I relinquished the double bed to Iris, and slept on the couch in the parlor. The concierge’s daughter came to clean up and cook. Her culinary capacities were limited, so we often broke the monotony of vegetable soups and boiled meat by eating at a Russian
restoranchik
. We were to spend seven winters in that little flat.
Owing to the foresight of my dear guardian and benefactor (1850?–1927), an old-fashioned cosmopolitan witha lot of influence in the right quarters, I had become by the time of my marriage the subject of a snug foreign country and thus was spared the indignity of a
nansenskiy pasport
(a pauper’s permit, really), as well as the vulgar obsession with “documents,” which provoked such evil glee among the Bolshevist rulers, who perceived some similarity between red tape and Red rule and a certain affinity between the civil plight of a hobbled expatriate and the political immobilization of a Soviet slave. I could, therefore, take my wife to any vacational resort in the world without waiting several weeks for a visa, and then being refused, perhaps, a return visa to our accidental country of residence, in this case France, because of some flaw in our precious and despicable papers. Nowadays (1970), when my British passport has been superseded by a no less potent American one, I still treasure that 1922 photo of the mysterious young man I then was, with the mysteriously smiling eyes and the striped tie and the wavy hair. I remember spring trips to Malta and Andalusia, but every summer, around the first of July, we drove to Carnavaux and stayed there for a month or two. The parrot died in 1925, the footboy vanished in 1927. Ivor visited us twice in Paris, and I think she saw him also in London where she went at least once a year to spend a few days with “friends,” whom I did not know, but who sounded harmless—at least to a certain point.
I should have been happier. I had
planned
to be happier. My health continued patchy with ominous shapes showing through its flimsier edges. Faith in my work never wavered, but despite her touching intentions to participate in it, Iris remained on its outside, and the better it grew the more alien it became to her. She took desultory lessons in Russian, interrupting them regularly, for long periods, and finished by developing a dull habitual aversion to the language. I soon noticed that she
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