Immunity by Luba Vikhanski

Author:Luba Vikhanski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2016-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

33

ABSURD PREJUDICE

ONCE, WHEN LILI WAS PUNISHED for calling a schoolteacher Madame instead of Mademoiselle, Metchnikoff stormed into the school, infuriated, grabbing Lili by the hand to lead her away. He often intervened with her upbringing with the authority of a parent. His relationships with his other godchildren, including Lili’s younger brother Elie, named after him, never came close to this level of involvement. He was irate when Lili’s piano teacher said she should practice three hours a day. “I protest against this exaggeration,” he wrote. “I live and breathe anew,” he wrote to Marie after receiving a letter that Lili was fine. “I think about you every day and see you in my dreams almost every night,” he wrote to Lili herself.

A century after Metchnikoff had written these words, his yellowed letters convey an emotional intensity that does seem to expose a parental sentiment. But was Lili, who looked very much like her mother, indeed Metchnikoff’s child? Having no children with his wife, it’s not inconceivable that at fifty-eight, he might have simply developed an inordinate fascination with a goddaughter. After all, he made no attempt whatsoever to hide his adoration of Lili from Émile. Many of his doting letters about her are openly addressed to both Marie and Émile, mes bien chers amis. When addressed to Marie alone, they invariably end with “best regards” or “a friendly handshake” to “dear Émile.” As for the profuse terms of endearment he applies to Lili, they could very well have been his style, familiar from his published letters to Olga.

One letter, though, ends all doubts. For once, Metchnikoff clearly intended it for Marie’s eyes only. Using the intimate tu instead of the distant vous of other letters, he wrote to arrange for them to meet in private every day, perhaps even twice a day. Marie would walk Lili to school in the morning, Metchnikoff would follow by tram. They would get together “in the lower part of Sèvres,” evidently in a hideout familiar to both. Instead of a handshake to Émile, the letter ends with the words, “Tender kisses to my dear Marie, whom I love with all my heart.”

So even though there is no way of knowing for sure whether Lili was Metchnikoff’s biological child, one thing is certain: he had good reason to believe she was.

It is unknown when Metchnikoff’s love affair with Marie began. His first surviving letters to her date from the beginning of her marriage in 1901. At around the same time, Metchnikoff’s own marriage, by then more than a quarter of a century old, was going through a rocky stage. Ever since the immunity war had wound down, Olga felt he no longer needed her, despite his assurances to the contrary. With increasing frequency she started going away to paint in the country, spending a great deal of time in a forest retreat community known as the Colony, west of Paris. Metchnikoff tried to reassure his “beloved fugitive.” “I love you very, very deeply, you are

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