I lзchshe nedogovoryсnnost’ Chem иta shchиl’ i иtot lзch.
Napominаyu chto vlyublyсnnost’ Ne yаv’, chto mиtiny ne tи,
Chto mсzhet-byt’ potustorсnnost’ Priotvorмlas’ v temnotи.
«Lovely,» said Iris. «Sounds like an incantation. What does it mean?» «I have it here on the back. It goes like this. We forget—or rather
tend to forget—that being in love (vlyublyonnost’) does not depend on the facial angle of the loved one, but is a bottomless spot under the nenuphars, a swimmer’s panic in the night (here the iambic tetrameter happens to be rendered—last line of the first stanza, nochnаya pаnika plovtsа). Next stanza: While the dreaming is good—in the sense of `while the going is good’—do keep appearing to us in our dreams, vlyublyonnost’, but do not torment us by waking us up or telling too much: reticence is better
than that chink and that moonbeam. Now comes the last stanza of this philosophical love poem.»
«This what?»
«Philosophical love poem. Napominаyu, I remind you, that vlyublyonnost’ is not wide-awake reality, that the markings are not the same (a moon-striped ceiling, polosatyy ot luny potolok, is, for instance, not the same kind of reality as a ceiling by day), and that, maybe, the hereafter stands slightly ajar in the dark. Voilю.»
«Your girl,» remarked Iris, «must be having a jolly good time in your company. Ah, here comes our breadwinner. Bonjour, Ives. The toast is all gone, I’m afraid. We thought you’d left hours ago.»
She fitted her palm for a moment to the cheek of the teapot. And it went into Ardis, it all went into Ardis, my poor dead love.
6
After fifty summers, or ten thousand hours, of sunbathing in various countries, on beaches, benches, roofs, rocks, decks, ledges, lawns, boards, and balconies, I might have been unable to recall my novitiate in sensory detail had not there been those old notes of mine which are such a solace to a pedantic memoirist throughout the account of his illnesses, marriages, and literary life. Enormous amounts of Shaker’s Cold Cream were rubbed by kneeling and cooing Iris into my back as I lay prone on a rough towel in the blaze of the plage. Beneath my shut eyelids pressed to my forearm swam purple photomatic shapes: «Through the prose of sun blisters came the poetry of her touch—,» thus in my pocket diary, but I can improve upon my young preciosity. Through the itch of my skin, and in fact seasoned by that itch to an exquisite degree of rather ridiculous enjoyment, the touch of her hand on my shoulder blades and along my spine resembled too closely a deliberate caress not to be deliberate mimicry, and I could not curb a hidden response to those nimble fingers when in a final gratuitous flutter they traveled down to my very coccyx, before fading away.
«There,» said Iris with exactly the same intonation as that used, at the end of a more special kind of treatment, by one of my Cambridge sweethearts, Violet McD., an experienced and compassionate virgin.
She, Iris, had had several lovers, and as I opened my eyes and turned to her, and saw her, and the dancing diamonds in the blue-green inward of every advancing, every tumbling wave, and the wet black pebbles on the sleek forebeach with dead foam waiting for live foam—and, oh, there it comes, the crested wave line, trotting again like white circus ponies abreast, I understood, as I perceived her against that backdrop, how much adulation, how many lovers had helped form and perfect my Iris, with that impeccable complexion of hers, that absence of any uncertainty in the profile of her high cheekbone, the elegance of the hollow beneath it, the accroche-coeur of a sleek little flirt.
«By the way,» said Iris as she changed from a kneeling to a half-recumbent position, her legs curled under her, «by the way, I have not apologized yet for my dismal remark about that poem. I now have reread your «Valley Blondies» (vlyublyonnost’) a hundred times, both the English for the matter and the Russian for the music. I think it’s an absolutely divine piece. Do you forgive me?»
I pursed my lips to kiss the brown iridescent knee near me but her hand, as if measuring a child’s fever, palmed my forehead and stopped its advance.
«We are watched,» she said «by a number of eyes which seem to look everywhere except in our direction. The two nice English schoolteachers on my right—say, twenty paces away—have already told me that your resemblance to the naked-neck photo of Rupert Brooke is a-houri-sang—they know a little French. If you ever try to kiss me, or my leg, again, I’ll beg you to leave. I’ve been sufficiently hurt in my life.»
A pause ensued. The iridescence came from atoms of quartz. When a girl starts to speak like a novelette, all you need is a little patience.
Had I posted the poem to that émigré paper? Not yet; my garland of sonnets had had to be sent first. The two people (lowering my voice) on my
left were fellow expatriates, judging by certain small indices. «Yes,» agreed Iris, «they practically got up to stand at attention when you started to recite that Pushkin thing about waves lying down in adoration at her feet. What other signs?»
«He kept stroking his beard very slowly from top to tip as he looked at the horizon and she smoked a cigarette with a cardboard mouthpiece.»
There was also a child of ten or so cradling a large yellow beach ball in her bare arms. She seemed to be wearing nothing but a kind of frilly harness and a very short pleated skirt revealing her trim thighs. She was what in a later era amateurs were to call a «nymphet.» As she caught my glance she gave me, over our sunny globe, a sweet lewd smile from under her auburn fringe.
«At eleven or twelve,» said Iris, «I was as pretty as that French orphan. That’s her grandmother all in black sitting on a spread Cannice-Matin with her knitting. I let smelly gentlemen fondle me. I played indecent games with Ivor—oh nothing very unusual, and anyway he now prefers dons to donnas—at least that’s what he says.»
She talked a little about her parents who by a fascinating coincidence had died on the same day, she at seven A.M. in New York, he at noon in London, only two years ago. They had separated soon after the war. She was American and horrible. You don’t speak like that of your mother but she was really horrible. Dad was Vice President of the Samuels Cement Company when he died. He came from a respectable family and had «good connections.» I asked what grudge exactly did Ivor bear to «society» and vice versa? She vaguely replied he disliked the «fox-hunting set» and the «yachting crowd.» I said those were abominable clichиs used only by Philistines. In my set, in my world, in the opulent Russia of my boyhood we stood so far above any concept of «class» that we only laughed or yawned when reading about «Japanese Barons» or «New England Patricians.»
Yet strangely enough Ivor stopped clowning and became a normal serious individual only when he straddled his old, dappled, bald hobbyhorse and started reviling the English «upper classes»—especially their pronunciation. It was, I remonstrated, a speech superior in quality to the best Parisian French, and even to a Petersburgan’s Russian; a delightfully modulated whinny, which both he and Iris were rather successfully, though no doubt unconsciously, imitating in their everyday intercourse, when not making protracted fun of a harmless foreigner’s stilted or outdated English. By the way what was the nationality of the bronzed old man with the hoary chest hair who was wading out of the low surf preceded by his bedrabbled dog—I thought I knew his face.
It was, she said, Kanner, the great pianist and butterfly hunter, his face and name were on all the Morris columns. She was getting tickets for at least two of his concerts; and there, right there, where his dog was shaking itself, the P. family (exalted old name) had basked in June when the place was practically empty, and cut Ivor, though he knew young L.P. at Trinity. They’d now moved down there. Even more select. See that orange dot? That’s their cabana. Foot of the Mirana Palace. I said nothing but I too knew young P. and disliked him.
Same day. Ran into him in the Mirana Men’s Room. Was effusively welcomed. Would I care to meet his sister, tomorrow is what? Saturday. Suggested they stroll over tomorrow afternoon to the foot of the Victoria. Sort of cove to your right. I’m there with friends. Of course you know Ivor Black. Young P. duly turned up, with lovely, long-limbed sister. Ivor—frightfully rude. Rise, Iris, you forget we are having tea with Rapallovich and Chicherini. That sort of stuff. Idiotic feuds. Lydia P. screamed with laughter.
Upon discovering the effect of that miracle cream, at my boiled-lobster stage, I switched from a conservative caleгon de bain to a briefer variety (still banned at the time in stricter paradises). The delayed change resulted in a bizarre stratification of tan. I recall sneaking into Iris’s room to contemplate myself in a full-length looking glass—the only one in the house—on a morning she had chosen for a visit to a beauty salon, which I called up to make sure she was there and not in the arms of a lover. Except for a Provenгal boy polishing the banisters, there was nobody around, thus allowing me to indulge in one of my oldest and naughtiest pleasures: circulating stark naked
