Bicycles, Trains, & Cars

In the same way butterflies have wings, bikes, trains, and cars have wheels, and with them, they move. Freedom of movement is a significant motif in "Speak, Memory," and Vladimir's obsession with anything wheeled is an obvious one.

Two Wheels Good: Bicycles

For many kids, riding your bike if your first taste of freedom. Vladimir is no different, and he recognizes his bicycle as a sign of the beginning of his coming of age.

• With his bicycle, Vladimir is able to cover more ground, looking for butterfly specimens.

• Vlad and his father both love riding, and do so together, throughout childhood. It's a time to adventure and bond. In mourning his father, he thinks of their trips: "he would grip the handlebars, place his left foot on a metallic peg jutting at the rear end of the frame, push off with his right foot on the other side of the hind wheel and after three or four such propelments (with the bicycle now set in motion), leisurely translate his right leg into pedal position, move up his left, and settle down on the saddle." (9.5.8)

• That poor school friend whom Vladimir escaped every morning of his visit, to find butterflies? He biked miles and miles alone, just to be at Vyra: a fact that Nabokov uses to make it extra clear how controlled he was by his hobby.

• One Nabokov family tutor, a Polish medical student, uses his bike to meet up with his married mistress: "he slipped out and made for the shrubbery where a bicycle with all accessories—thumb bell, pump, tool case of brown leather, and even trouser clips—had been secretly prepared for him by an ally, my father's Polish valet." (8.4.2) An extra fancy bike for an extra covert romantic mission.

Bicycles become all the more important once we learn that bicycles mean more than merely wheeled freedom, when Osip, Vladimir's father's valet, is shot for using the family bicycles rather than turning them over the government. (7.1.3) In "Speak, Memory," even bicycles get politicized.

Four Wheels Even Better: Cars

In turn-of-the-century Russia, cars are only for the richest of families, so it means something that the Nabokovs have not one, but two.

Early on, Vladimir understands the cruelty of Colette's parents, once he finds out they've driven to their yellow-and-blue limo to the seaside from Paris, having forced Colette and the governess and the dog to travel by train. (7.3.3)

When Vladimir begins to go to school (rather than being exclusively tutored at home) he can tell what kind of day it will be, based on whether he gets to ride in the limo or the sedan. The school administrators, however, worry that he's showing off, and ask if he can get dropped off a couple of blocks away. To them, a car is too ostentatious, and in a country moving toward Communism, that's no good. (9.3.1)

Even though one Nabokov servant takes apart the limo and buries its pieces to be recovered later, the family understands: cars are one of the trappings of wealth that the Nabokovs must leave behind in their exile.

All Aboard!

If you needed to get anywhere in early-twentieth Russia, trains were going to be your go-to. The wealthy reserved sleeping cars while those less fortunate squeezed into coach. Throughout Vladimir's life, trains take him everywhere from to the beach for family vacations, to Germany to get his teeth fixed. Here are some instances where trains play a big role:

• The train is one place an insomniac little kid can sleep: Nabokov explains that he was able to fall asleep by pretending he's the train conductor, resting after a job well done: "A sense of drowsy well-being invaded my veins as soon as I had everything nicely arranged—the carefree passengers in their rooms enjoying the ride I was giving them…" (7.1.7)

• Vladimir and Sergey travel to Yalta, the first of their family to leave St. Petersburg for good (though they don't know it yet.) The two brothers make a game of hiding out in their sleeping car, shutting the door from deserting soldiers.

• Trains even take a role in the naming of a family pet: "Sometime in 1904 my father bought at a dog show in Munich a pup which grew into the bad-tempered but wonderfully handsome Trainy (as I named him because of his being as long and as brown as a sleeping car)." (2.4.4)

• Finally, trains help Vladimir's drawing tutor teach him about dimension: "I watched his pencil ably evolve the cowcatcher and elaborate headlights of a locomotive that looked as if it had been acquired secondhand for the Trans-Siberian line after it had done duty at Promontory Point, Utah, in the sixties. Then came five disappointingly plain carriages. When he had quite finished them, he carefully shaded the ample smoke coming from the huge funnel, cocked his head, and, after a moment of pleased contemplation, handed me the drawing." (4.5.6)

For Vladimir, trains aren't just a mode of travel: they're a refuge, full of secret compartments that hold secrets. A train isn't good or bad in and of itself, whether it's bringing you home or taking you away from it.