According to the hero of VN’s story That in Aleppo Once… (1943), he fell in love with his wife at first touch:
It was love at first touch rather than at first sight, for I had met her several times before without experiencing any special emotions; but one night as I was seeing her home, something quaint she had said made me stoop with a laugh and lightly kiss her on the hair - and of course we all know of that blinding blast which is caused by merely picking up a small doll from the floor of a carefully abandoned house: the soldier involved hears nothing; for him it is but an ecstatic soundless and boundless expansion of what had been during his life a pinpoint of light in the dark center of his being. And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its Boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless Alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.
In VN’s story Vesna v Fial’te (“Spring in Fialta,” 1936) the hero’s romance with Nina begins when they kiss during a ramble in the woods:
Я познакомился с Ниной очень уже давно, в тысяча девятьсот семнадцатом, должно быть, судя по тем местам, где время износилось. Было это в какой-то именинный вечер в гостях у моей тетки, в ее Лужском имении, чистой деревенской зимой (как помню первый знак приближения к нему: красный амбар посреди белого поля). Я только что кончил лицей; Нина уже обручилась: ровесница века, она, несмотря на малый рост и худобу, а может быть благодаря им, была на вид значительно старше своих лет, точно так же, как в тридцать два казалась намного моложе. Ее тогдашний жених, боевой офицер из аккуратных, красавец собой, тяжеловатый и положительный, взвешивавший всякое слово на всегда вычищенных и выверенных весах, говоривший ровным ласковым баритоном, делавшимся еще более ровным и ласковым, когда он обращался к ней; словом, один из тех людей, все мнение о которых исчерпывается ссылкой на их совершенную порядочность (прекрасный товарищ, идеал секунданта), и которые, если уже влюбляются, то не просто любят, а боготворят, успешно теперь работает инженером в какой-то очень далекой тропической стране, куда за ним она не последовала.
Зажигаются окна и ложатся, с крестом на спине, ничком на темный, толстый снег: ложится меж них и веерный просвет над парадной дверью. Не помню, почему мы все повысыпали из звонкой с колоннами залы в эту неподвижную темноту, населенную лишь елками, распухшими вдвое от снежного дородства: сторожа ли позвали поглядеть на многообещающее зарево далекого пожара, любовались ли мы на ледяного коня, изваянного около пруда швейцарцем моих двоюродных братьев; но воспоминание только тогда приходит в действие, когда мы уже возвращаемся в освещенный дом, ступая гуськом по узкой тропе среди сумрачных сугробов с тем скрип-скрип-скрипом, который, бывало, служил единственной темой зимней неразговорчивой ночи. Я шел в хвосте; передо мной в трех скользких шагах шло маленькое склоненное очертание; елки молча торговали своими голубоватыми пирогами; оступившись, я уронил и не сразу мог нащупать фонарь с мертвой батареей, который мне кто-то всучил, и тотчас привлеченная моим чертыханием, с торопящимся, оживленно тихим, смешное предвкушающим смехом, Нина проворно повернулась ко мне. Я зову ее Нина, но тогда едва ли я знал ее имя, едва ли мы с нею успели что-либо, о чем-либо... “Кто это?” — спросила она любознательно, а я уже целовал ее в шею, гладкую и совсем огненную за шиворотом, накаленную лисьим мехом, навязчиво мне мешавшим, пока она не обратила ко мне и к моим губам не приладила, с честной простотой, ей одной присущей, своих отзывчивых, исполнительных губ.
My introductory scene with Nina had been laid in Russia quite a long time ago, around 1917 I should say, judging by certain left-wing theater rumblings backstage. It was at some birthday party at my aunt’s on her country estate, near Luga, in the deepest folds of winter (how well I remember the first sign of nearing the place: a red barn in a white wilderness). I had just graduated from the Imperial Lyceum; Nina was already engaged: although she was of my age and of that of the century, she looked twenty at least, and this in spite or perhaps because of her neat slender build, whereas at thirty-two that very slightness of hers made her look younger. Her fiancé was a guardsman on leave from the front, a handsome heavy fellow, incredibly well tyred and stolid, who weighed every word on the scales of the most exact common sense and spoke in a velvety baritone, which grew even smoother when he addressed her; his decency and devotion probably got on her nerves; and he is now a successful if somewhat lonesome engineer in a most distant tropical country.
Windows light up and stretch their luminous lengths upon the dark billowy snow, making room for the reflection of the fan-shaped light above the front door between them. Each of the two side pillars is fluffily fringed with white, which rather spoils the lines of what might have been a perfect ex libris for the book of our two lives. I cannot recall why we had all wandered out of the sonorous hall into the still darkness, peopled only with firs, snow-swollen to twice their size; did the watchmen invite us to look at a sullen red glow in the sky, portent of nearing arson? Possibly. Did we go to admire an equestrian statue of ice sculptured near the pond by the Swiss tutor of my cousins? Quite as likely. My memory revives only on the way back to the brightly symmetrical mansion toward which we tramped in single file along a narrow furrow between snowbanks, with that crunch-crunch-crunch which is the only comment that a taciturn winter night makes upon humans. I walked last; three singing steps ahead of me walked a small bent shape; the firs gravely showed their burdened paws. I slipped and dropped the dead flashlight someone had forced upon me; it was devilishly hard to retrieve; and instantly attracted by my curses, with an eager, low laugh in anticipation of fun, Nina dimly veered toward me. I call her Nina, but I could hardly have known her name yet, hardly could we have had time, she and I, for any preliminary; “Who’s that?” she asked with interest—and I was already kissing her neck, smooth and quite fiery hot from the long fox fur of her coat collar, which kept getting into my way until she clasped my shoulder, and with the candor so peculiar to her gently fitted her generous, dutiful lips to mine.
At the end of the story the hero learns of Nina’s death in a car crash from a newspaper that he reads on the station platform in Milan (Mlech in the English version):
Поднявшись по лестнице, мы очутились на щербатой площадке: отсюда видна была нежно-пепельная гора св. Георгия с собранием крапинок костяной белизны на боку (какая-то деревушка); огибая подножье, бежал дымок невидимого поезда и вдруг скрылся; еще ниже виден был за разнобоем крыш единственный кипарис, издали похожий на завернутый черный кончик акварельной кисти; справа виднелось море, серое, в светлых морщинах. У ног наших валялся ржавый ключ, и на стене полуразрушенного дома, к которой площадка примыкала, остались висеть концы какой-то проволоки... я подумал о том, что некогда тут была жизнь, семья вкушала по вечерам прохладу, неумелые дети при свете лампы раскрашивали картинки. Мы стояли, как будто слушая что-то; Нина, стоявшая выше, положила руку ко мне на плечо, улыбаясь и осторожно, так чтобы не разбить улыбки, целуя меня. С невыносимой силой я пережил (или так мне кажется теперь) все, что когда-либо было между нами, начиная вот с такого же поцелуя, как этот; и я сказал, наше дешевое, официальное ты заменяя тем одухотворенным, выразительным вы, к которому кругосветный пловец возвращается, обогащенный кругом: “А что, если я вас люблю?” Нина взглянула, я повторил, я хотел добавить... но что-то, как летучая мышь, мелькнуло по ее лицу, быстрое, странное, почти некрасивое выражение, и она, которая запросто, как в раю, произносила непристойные словечки, смутилась; мне тоже стало неловко... “Я пошутил, пошутил”, — поспешил я воскликнуть, слегка обнимая ее под правую грудь. Откуда-то появился у нее в руках плотный букет темных, мелких, бескорыстно пахучих фиалок, и, прежде чем вернуться к гостинице, мы еще постояли у парапета, и все было по-прежнему безнадежно. Но камень был, как тело, теплый, и внезапно я понял то, чего, видя, не понимал дотоле, почему давеча так сверкала серебряная бумажка, почему дрожал отсвет стакана, почему мерцало море: белое небо над Фиальтой незаметно налилось солнцем, и теперь оно было солнечное сплошь, и это белое сияние ширилось, ширилось, все растворялось в нем, все исчезало, и я уже стоял на вокзале, в Милане, с газетой, из которой узнал, что желтый автомобиль, виденный мной под платанами, потерпел за Фиальтой крушение, влетев на полном ходу в фургон бродячего цирка, причем Фердинанд и его приятель, неуязвимые пройдохи, саламандры судьбы, василиски счастья, отделались местным и временным повреждением чешуи, тогда как Нина, несмотря на свое давнее, преданное подражание им, оказалась все-таки смертной.
At the top of the steps, we found ourselves on a rough kind of terrace. From here one could see the delicate outline of the dove-colored Mount St. George with a cluster of bone-white flecks (some hamlet) on one of its slopes; the smoke of an indiscernible train undulated along its rounded base—and suddenly disappeared; still lower, above the jumble of roofs, one could perceive a solitary cypress, resembling the moist-twirled black tip of a watercolor brush; to the right, one caught a glimpse of the sea, which was gray, with silver wrinkles. At our feet lay a rusty old key, and on the wall of the half-ruined house adjoining the terrace, the ends of some wire still remained hanging.… I reflected that formerly there had been life here, a family had enjoyed the coolness at nightfall, clumsy children had colored pictures by the light of a lamp.… We lingered there as if listening to something; Nina, who stood on higher ground, put a hand on my shoulder and smiled, and carefully, so as not to crumple her smile, kissed me. With an unbearable force, I relived (or so it now seems to me) all that had ever been between us beginning with a similar kiss; and I said (substituting for our cheap, formal “thou” that strangely full and expressive “you” to which the circumnavigator, enriched all around, returns), “Look here—what if I love you?” Nina glanced at me, I repeated those words, I wanted to add… but something like a bat passed swiftly across her face, a quick, queer, almost ugly expression, and she, who would utter coarse words with perfect simplicity, became embarrassed; I also felt awkward.… “Never mind, I was only joking,” I hastened to say, lightly encircling her waist. From somewhere a firm bouquet of small, dark, unselfishly smelling violets appeared in her hands, and before she returned to her husband and car, we stood for a little while longer by the stone parapet, and our romance was even more hopeless than it had ever been. But the stone was as warm as flesh, and suddenly I understood something I had been seeing without understanding—why a piece of tinfoil had sparkled so on the pavement, why the gleam of a glass had trembled on a tablecloth, why the sea was ashimmer: somehow, by imperceptible degrees, the white sky above Fialta had got saturated with sunshine, and now it was sun-pervaded throughout, and this brimming white radiance grew broader and broader, all dissolved in it, all vanished, all passed, and I stood on the station platform of Mlech with a freshly bought newspaper, which told me that the yellow car I had seen under the plane trees had suffered a crash beyond Fialta, having run at full speed into the truck of a traveling circus entering the town, a crash from which Ferdinand and his friend, those invulnerable rogues, those salamanders of fate, those basilisks of good fortune, had escaped with local and temporary injury to their scales, while Nina, in spite of her long-standing, faithful imitation of them, had turned out after all to be mortal.
“Salamanders of fate” bring to mind Gleb Alexandrovich Gekko (Gekko gecko, the tokay gecko, is a crepuscular arboreal gecko in the genus Gekko), one of the first persons whom the hero of That in Aleppo Once… saw after his arrival in America:
DEAR V. - Among other things, this is to tell you that at last I am here, in the country whither so many sunsets have led. One of the first persons I saw was our good old Gleb Alexandrovich Gekko gloomily crossing Columbus Avenue in quest of the petit café du coin which none of us three will ever visit again. He seemed to think that somehow or other you were betraying our national literature, and he gave me your address with a deprecatory shake of his gray head, as if you did not deserve the treat of hearing from me.
I have a story for you. Which reminds me - I mean putting it like this reminds me - of the days when we wrote our first udder-warm bubbling verse, and all things, a rose, a puddle, a lighted window, cried out to us: "I'm a rhyme!" Yes, this is a most useful universe. We play, we die: ig-rhyme, umi-rhyme. And the sonorous souls of Russian verbs lend a meaning to the wild gesticulation of trees or to some discarded newspaper sliding and pausing, and shuffling again, with abortive flaps and apterous jerks along an endless windswept embankment. But just now I am not a poet. I come to you like that gushing lady in Chekhov who was dying to be described.
I married, let me see, about a month after you left France, and a few weeks before the gentle Germans roared into Paris. Although I can produce documentary proofs of matrimony, I am positive now that my wife never existed. You may know her name from some other source, but that does not matter: it is the name of an illusion. Therefore, I am able to speak of her with as much detachment as I would of a character in a story (one of your stories, to be precise).
“Some discarded newspaper sliding and pausing, and shuffling again, with abortive flaps and apterous jerks along an endless windswept embankment” brings to mind the newspaper from which the hero of Spring in Fialta learns of Nina’s death. It seems that, when the hero of That in Aleppo Once… writes his letter to V., his wife and his wife’s lover are already dead. It is even possible that the hero shot them dead right in the petit café du coin which none of them three will ever visit again.
A propos de coins: in VN's novel Ada (1969) Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) uses this phrase and quotes the words of Chatski in Griboedov's play "Woe from Wit" (1824):
Naked-faced, dull-haired, wrapped up in her oldest kimono (her Pedro had suddenly left for Rio), Marina reclined on her mahogany bed under a golden-yellow quilt, drinking tea with mare’s milk, one of her fads.
‘Sit down, have a spot of chayku,’ she said. ‘The cow is in the smaller jug, I think. Yes, it is.’ And when Van, having kissed her freckled hand, lowered himself on the ivanilich (a kind of sighing old hassock upholstered in leather): ‘Van, dear, I wish to say something to you, because I know I shall never have to repeat it again. Belle, with her usual flair for the right phrase, has cited to me the cousinage-dangereux-voisinage adage — I mean "adage," I always fluff that word — and complained qu’on s’embrassait dans tous les coins. Is that true?’
Van’s mind flashed in advance of his speech. It was, Marina, a fantastic exaggeration. The crazy governess had observed it once when he carried Ada across a brook and kissed her because she had hurt her toe. I’m the well-known beggar in the saddest of all stories.
‘Erunda (nonsense),’ said Van. ‘She once saw me carrying Ada across the brook and misconstrued our stumbling huddle (spotïkayushcheesya sliyanie).’
‘I do not mean Ada, silly,’ said Marina with a slight snort, as she fussed over the teapot. ‘Azov, a Russian humorist, derives erunda from the German hier und da, which is neither here nor there. Ada is a big girl, and big girls, alas, have their own worries. Mlle Larivière meant Lucette, of course. Van, those soft games must stop. Lucette is twelve, and naive, and I know it’s all clean fun, yet (odnako) one can never behave too delikatno in regard to a budding little woman. A propos de coins: in Griboedov’s Gore ot uma, "How stupid to be so clever," a play in verse, written, I think, in Pushkin’s time, the hero reminds Sophie of their childhood games, and says:
How oft we sat together in a corner
And what harm might there be in that?
but in Russian it is a little ambiguous, have another spot, Van?’ (he shook his head, simultaneously lifting his hand, like his father), ‘because, you see, — no, there is none left anyway — the second line, i kazhetsya chto v etom, can be also construed as "And in that one, meseems," pointing with his finger at a corner of the room. Imagine — when I was rehearsing that scene with Kachalov at the Seagull Theater, in Yukonsk, Stanislavski, Konstantin Sergeevich, actually wanted him to make that cosy little gesture (uyutnen’kiy zhest).’ (1.37)
When he saw his wife and her lover in that petit café du coin, the hero of That in Aleppo Once… found himself, like Chatski and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (EO, Eight: XIII: 13-14), come "from boat to ball" (s korablya na bal).