A REVOLVER TO CARRY AT NIGHT

This quasi-historical work views Vladimir Nabokov and his wife, Véra, at different points in their lives.

Zgustova, a Czech-born writer living in Spain, looks first at Vladimir in 1977 in Montreux, Switzerland, as his nimble mind dances among memories—boyhood in St. Petersburg, exile in Berlin—while struggling with his last novel and last illness. The third chapter focuses on a pivotal episode that is referred to throughout the book, Véra’s ultimatum in Cannes, 1937, as Vladimir’s lover, Irina Guadanini-Kokoshkin, visits the French resort to find out where she stands. Zgustova traces Véra’s thoughts and memories on a long, snowy drive to Boston in 1964 to rejoin her husband after seeing their son, Dmitri, perform with the Metropolitan Opera. The final section finds the widowed Véra in Montreux still tending to her husband’s work and thinking about how Irina got into some of his novels. The book, smoothly translated by Jones, ends with a bibliography of some 25 volumes. The meandering portrait of the couple features many real-life allusions and details that will be familiar to cognoscenti (with perhaps a few liberties taken). But it is Véra who emerges as Zgustova’s central figure, the person who often carries in her purse the gun in the title, although her main weapon is her will. Her Cannes ultimatum quashes Vladimir’s last great love, and she closely monitors her flirtatious genius thereafter. She insists on their leaving the U.S., a country he has come to love, and Dmitri says at one point that “keeping him in Montreux is her vendetta against him. She’s a Mafia boss.” Yet Stacy Schiff in the biography Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov): Portrait of a Marriage (1999) sees her shielding, controlling dominance as largely aimed at making it easier for him to write. Zgustova’s angle on Véra looks harshly black and white in areas where gray seems fairer.

A provocative take on an intriguing marriage.