Excerps from the story written by Ksenia for her book 'Dacha':
The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has
entered the room and bumps against the ceiling.
Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change,
nobody will ever die.
V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory
Three Family Myths
Nabokov uses the same story for two of his books – Speak, Memory and The Gift. It is the tale of a boy (Nabokov himself) lying sick in bed and imagining his mother buying him a present. ‘Imagining’ is not exactly the right word; lying in bed, he witnesses his mother going into and later leaving a shop, greeting an acquaintance, driving home through falling snow, and entering his room – where real and imaginary time come together as his mother gives him the present he saw her buy.
Long before I read Speak, Memory, my mother, Regina, told me a similar story.
At the end of the Second World War, my mother was one of two surviving Jewish children in Pskov, a Russian town that had been occupied by the Germans. Her father, Samuel, imprisoned at the beginning of the war, was soon executed together with nine others, Jews and Communists – a prophylactic measure. I have a photograph of the execution: the men have bags over their heads; some are lying on the ground, others half hanging from the poles to which they are tied. My mother believes she knows which one her father is, but in fact we don’t know for sure.
Because Regina’s mother, Irena, was part Polish and part German, she had nothing to fear, but her child had to be hidden, even from the neighbours, who could have betrayed her. Their house stood opposite the prison where my grandfather had had his short stay. Several German officers were quartered at the house, which was conveniently near their workplace. One Austrian officer was actually stationed in my grandmother’s apartment.
My mother was confined to a walk-in closet during the day, with no lights on. This is where the first story begins.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The second family myth – more of a visualization then a story – takes place not long before my grandmother’s death.
Irena and Regina are living in a small triangular room. It’s in the attic of a wooden house.
At an exhibition of work by Bernard Eilers, a Dutch photographer who experimented with colour photography around 1912, I saw a picture of his wife reading at a table. The woman reminded me of my grandmother. The room in which the photo was taken was very much like my mental image of the attic in which my mother had lived. I have a print of this picture hanging at home – my mother said ‘Ah!’ when she saw ie saw it; the similarity impressed her. After I had seen this photograph, the attic in my head became much more colourful.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
10-15 April 2009
Amsterdam