I
could say what I do not remember having been moved to say in years, namely: My
happiness was complete. As I walked, I read those cards [the
manuscript of Vadim's Ardis] with you, at your pace,
your diaphanous index at my rough peeling temple, my wrinkled finger at your
turquoise temple-vein. I caressed the facets of the Blackwing
pencil you kept gently twirling, I felt against my raised knees the
fifty-year-old folded chessboard, Nikifor Starov's gift (most of the noblemen
were badly chipped in their baize-lined mahogany box!), propped on your skirt
with its pattern of irises. (6.2)
Vadim's old chessmen bring to mind those of VN:
My Staunton chessmen (a twenty-year-old
set given to me by my father's Englished brother, Konstantin), splendidly
massive pieces, of tawny or black wood, up to four and a quarter inches tall,
displayed their shiny contours as if conscious of the part they played.
(Speak, Memory, Chapter Fourteen, 3)
Shakhmaty is Russian for "chess" and "chessmen."
Shakhmatovo was Blok's family estate in the Province of Moscow (Mendeleev being
the owner of nearby Babolovo, his daughter Lyubov' Dmitrievna was Blok's
neighbor).
In Ada Ardis is the fabulous country estate of
Daniel Veen, Van's and Ada's art-collecting uncle (5.6). Van and Ada are brother
and sister and life-long lovers.
In The Gift (Chapter Five) Shirin and
Shakhmatov are Fyodor's fellow writers. They bring to mind Prince
Shirinski-Shikhmatov (1783-1837), the talentless poet, target of many
epigrams by Pushkin and his friends. For the last time Pushkin mentions
Shikhmatov in The Little Cottage in Kolomna (1830):
Так писывал Шихматов богомольный;
По большей части так и я пишу.
So [without verb rhymes] used to write pious
Shikhmatov;
I too write for the most part so. (II, 5-6)
Speaking of chess and Blok: in Blok's Vozmezdie
(Retribution, 1910-21) the authorities hasten to turn all those
who ceased to be a pawn into rooks or knights:
И власть торопится скорей
Всех тех, кто
перестал быть пешкой,
В тур превращать, или в коней...
А нам,
читатель, не пристало
Считать коней и тур никак...
But it doesn't befit us, reader,
to count knights and rooks... (Chapter One)
Alexey Sklyarenko