In large cities the zone within one or two stops from the airport (or any so-called terminal) is often particularly dreary. As I walked, in the spastic April rain, from an old suburban U-bahn station towards a green patch marked by a cross on my map, I wondered whether I had got off at an entirely wrong end of town. No cemetery, it seemed--much less an old Russian Orthodox churchyard--could survive anywhere within or even near the concrete mess of roadways crisscrossing and overpassing each other at different levels and directions. There were no passers in sight, and I felt awkward treading where only motorcars were supposed to move; bewildered, they stopped and waited impatiently for me to cross three angled pathways at a run. From the beginning I became conscious of an odd but not unpleasant, sweet scent in the air: it was curiously familiar but I could not pin it down. It served me, however, as a guide, for just as it had intensified I spotted, to my immediate right round the corner, precisely the kind of a green oasis that I thought would be utterly impossible inside this industrial, pre-aerodrome highway tangle. The cross-tipped dome of a church proved that I was near my goal. It was around five o'clock in the afternoon. The rain suddenly switched pace to a gallop, and I had to linger in the shelter of an archway to deploy a pocket umbrella. I had exact directions that should have led me straight to V.D. Nabokov's grave, but I paced down the same paths several times and could not find it. The large brick church of SS. Constantine and Helena was closed. Many more or less well-known names of Russian émigrés or residents caught my eye, but not the one I wanted. In the far end, by the wall, there was a pompous crypt graced with a typical Soviet bombast: "To the great Russian composer M.I. Glinka, from the Chief-Commandants of the Soviet Occupation Army in Germany." There were recent burials, without the crosses but with glazed oval photographs and homespun verses impressed upon the granite. An older part of the churchyard was freed of crumbled tombstones and ready to receive newcomers, but they were evidently slow to come. On my third walk round I found myself looking at a wooden cross; its whitewash paint had peeled off almost entirely; one could however make out "Vasili Ivanovich" and even the end-date, 193...-- which fit perfectly the biographies of at least two of Nabokov's creatures, the poor hero of "Cloud, Castle, Lake" and the strange fellow of "Vasili Shishkov." On my next try I quickly found the wet black marble of Nabokov's father's tombstone. Ten days had passed after Easter Sunday, and wilted white carnations and a candle-end were the reminders. The rain stopped as I began to set up my elaborate gear. On my way back I reflected that the contrast between that lovely quiet acre and the surrounding concrete desert was so peculiarly sharp that it might have made Tegel a favourite place of rest for a lonesome Berliner with a taste for old cemeteries (and I later shared this secret with the only such resident I knew, a gentle American professor of Anglo-Greek extraction stranded in Berlin for all the wrong reasons). The quaint odour reappeared. This time I made an extra mental effort and discerned hot cocoa with vanilla remembered from the childhood days of rich egg-flip, an old Russian smoother for a sore throat. Following the scent, so to speak, I scanned the area and, sure enough, on the other side of a dead Bergmanesque intersection I spotted an enormous grey structure, adorned atop with the glowing name of a famous chocolate firm. The Pictures 1. The Overpass, West Berlin 2. The Church of SS Constantine and Helena 3. The Tomb of V.D. Nabokov 4. The Cross ("Vasilii Ivanovich") 5. "St Martin Centre funéraire," Vevey 6. Clarens, Switzerland. Nabokov's Grave Site 7. Prague. The Tomb of Elena Nabokov Zembla depends on frames for navigation. If you have been referred to this page without the surrounding frame, click here. 1: THE GRAVEYARDS | 2: PARIS | 3: CAMBRIDGE, MASS. CONTACT THE PHOTOGRAPHER