Leaving the Kalugano hospital (where he recovered from the wound received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper), Van Veen repeats the word non (Fr., “no”) three times:
He strolled on the shade-streaked lawn feeling much too warm in his black pajamas and dark-red dressing gown. A brick wall separated his part of the garden from the street and a little way off an open gateway allowed an asphalt drive to curve toward the main entrance of the long hospital building. He was on the point of returning to his deckchair when a smart, pale-gray four-door sedan glided in and stopped before him. The door flew open, before the chauffeur, an elderly man in tunic and breeches, had time to hand out Cordula, who now ran like a ballerina toward Van. He hugged her in a frenzy of welcome, kissing her rosy hot face and kneading her soft catlike body through her black silk dress: what a delicious surprise!
She had come all the way from Manhattan, at a hundred kilometers an hour, fearing he might have already left, though he said it would be tomorrow.
‘Idea!’ he cried. ‘Take me back with you, right away. Yes, just as I am!’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘come and stay at my flat, there’s a beautiful guest room for you.’
She was a good sport — little Cordula de Prey. Next moment he was sitting beside her in the car, which was backing gateward. Two nurses came running and gesturing toward them, and the chauffeur asked in French if the Countess wished him to stop.
‘Non, non, non!’ cried Van in high glee and they sped away. (1.42)
In Tolstoy’s novel Voyna i mir (“War and Peace,” 1869) the little princess (Andrey Bolkonski’s wife) does not allow Anatole Kuragin to kiss her hand and repeats the word non three times:
Ввечеру, когда после ужина стали расходиться, Анатоль поцеловал руку княжны. Она сама не знала, как у ней достало смелости, но она прямо взглянула на приблизившееся к ее близоруким глазам большое, прекрасное лицо. После княжны он подошел к руке m-lle Bourienne (это было неприлично, но он делал всё так уверенно и просто) и m-lle Bourienne вспыхнула и взглянула испуганно на княжну.
«О, милая», подумала княжна, «она боится, чтобы я не подумала, что она хочет нравиться ему». Она подошла к Bourienne и крепко ее поцеловала. Когда Анатоль подошел к руке маленькой княгини, она встала и отбежала от него.
— Non, non, non! quand votre père m’écrira que vous vous conduisez bien, je vous donnerai ma main à baiser, pas avant, — и, подняв пальчик и улыбаясь, она вышла из комнаты.
In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole kissed Princess Mary's hand. She did not know how she found the courage, but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came near to her shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up and kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand. (This was not etiquette, but then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!) Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened look.
"What delicacy! " thought the princess. "Is it possible that Amelie" (Mademoiselle Bourienne) "thinks I could be jealous of her, and not value her pure affection and devotion to me?" She went up to her and kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little princess' hand.
— Non, non, non! quand votre père m’écrira que vous vous conduisez bien, je vous donnerai ma main à baiser, pas avant ["No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are behaving well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!"] she said. And smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room. (Part Three, chapter 4)
Van is furious when he sees Percy de Prey (who is to die soon in a distant war) kiss Ada's hand:
Before tubbing, Van craned out of his narrow casement to catch sight of the laurels and lilacs flanking the front porch whence came the hubbub of gay departures. He made out Ada. He noticed her running after Percy who had put on his gray topper and was walking away across a lawn which his transit at once caused to overlap in Van’s mind with the fleeting memory of the paddock where he and Van had once happened to discuss a lame horse and Riverlane. Ada overtook the young man in a patch of sudden sunlight; he stopped, and she stood speaking to him and tossing her head in a way she had when nervous or displeased. De Prey kissed her hand. That was French, but all right. He held the hand he had kissed while she spoke and then kissed it again, and that was not done, that was dreadful, that could not be endured. (1.31)
The little princess’ raised finger (in "War and Peace") brings to mind an ancestral mannerism mentioned by Demon Veen (Van’s and Ada’s father):
‘I don’t know if you know,’ said Van, resuming his perch on the fat arm of his father’s chair. ‘Uncle Dan will be here with the lawyer and Lucette only after dinner.’
‘Capital,’ said Demon.
‘Marina and Ada should be down in a minute — ce sera un dîner à quatre.’
‘Capital,’ he repeated. ‘You look splendid, my dear, dear fellow — and I don’t have to exaggerate compliments as some do in regard to an aging man with shoe-shined hair. Your dinner jacket is very nice — or, rather it’s very nice recognizing one’s old tailor in one’s son’s clothes — like catching oneself repeating an ancestral mannerism — for example, this (wagging his left forefinger three times at the height of his temple), which my mother did in casual, pacific denial; that gene missed you, but I’ve seen it in my hairdresser’s looking-glass when refusing to have him put Crêmlin on my bald spot; and you know who had it too — my aunt Kitty, who married the Banker Bolenski after divorcing that dreadful old wencher Lyovka Tolstoy, the writer.’
Demon preferred Walter Scott to Dickens, and did not think highly of Russian novelists. As usual, Van considered it fit to make a corrective comment:
‘A fantastically artistic writer, Dad.’ (1.38)
Aunt Kitty’s second husband, Banker Bolenski seems to blend Prince Andrey Bolkonski with Vladimir Lenski, a character in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. In 1852 Leo Tolstoy proposed to Aleksandra D’yakov who rejected him and married Andrey Obolenski the next year. Kitty Lyovin (born Shcherbatski) is a character in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin (1875-77).
A gene that missed Van was inherited by Ada:
Soon after that, as so often occurs with games, and toys, and vacational friendships, that seem to promise an eternal future of fun, Flavita followed the bronze and blood-red trees into the autumn mists; then the black box was mislaid, was forgotten — and accidentally rediscovered (among boxes of table silver) four years later, shortly before Lucette’s visit to town where she spent a few days with her father in mid-July, 1888. It so happened that this was to be the last game of Flavita that the three young Veens were ever to play together. Either because it happened to end in a memorable record for Ada, or because Van took some notes in the hope — not quite unfulfilled — of ‘catching sight of the lining of time’ (which, as he was later to write, is ‘the best informal definition of portents and prophecies’), but the last round of that particular game remained vividly clear in his mind.
‘Je ne peux rien faire,’ wailed Lucette, ‘mais rien — with my idiotic Buchstaben, REMNILK, LINKREM...’
‘Look,’ whispered Van, ‘c’est tout simple, shift those two syllables and you get a fortress in ancient Muscovy.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Ada, wagging her finger at the height of her temple in a way she had. ‘Oh, no. That pretty word does not exist in Russian. A Frenchman invented it. There is no second syllable.’
‘Ruth for a little child?’ interposed Van.
‘Ruthless!’ cried Ada.
‘Well,’ said Van, ‘you can always make a little cream, KREM or KREME — or even better — there’s KREMLI, which means Yukon prisons. Go through her ORHIDEYA.’
‘Through her silly orchid,’ said Lucette. (1.36)
In Tolstoy's “War and Peace” General Murat expects the news about the city fortress, le Kremlin:
В четвёртом часу пополудни войска Мюрата вступали в Москву. Впереди ехал отряд виртембергских гусар, позади верхом, с большой свитой, ехал сам неаполитанский король.
Около середины Арбата, близ Николы Явленного, Мюрат остановился, ожидая известия от передового отряда о том, в каком положении находилась городская крепость «le Kremlin».
Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Murat's troops were entering Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Würtemberg hussars and behind them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.
About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of the Miraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the advanced detachment as to the condition in which they had found the citadel, le Kremlin. (Book Eleven: 1812, chapter XXVI)
Before the family dinner in “Ardis the Second” Demon Veen tells Ada that he tolerates her romantic hairdo:
‘The last time I enjoyed you,’ said Demon ‘was in April when you wore a raincoat with a white and black scarf and simply reeked of some arsenic stuff after seeing your dentist. Dr Pearlman has married his receptionist, you’ll be glad to know. Now to business, my darling. I accept your dress’ (the sleeveless black sheath), ‘I tolerate your romantic hairdo, I don’t care much for your pumps na bosu nogu (on bare feet), your Beau Masque perfume — passe encore, but, my precious, I abhor and reject your livid lipstick. It may be the fashion in good old Ladore. It is not done in Man or London.’ (1.38)
In “War and Peace” the little Princess tells Marie that she should change her hairdo:
— Au moins changez de coiffure, — сказала маленькая княгиня. — Je vous disais, — с упреком сказала она, обращаясь к m-lle Bourienne, — Marie a une de ces figures, auxquelles ce genre de coiffure ne va pas du tout. Mais du tout, du tout. Changez de grâce.
— Laissez-moi, laissez-moi, tout ça m’est parfaitement égal, — отвечал голос, едва удерживающий слезы.
“At least, change your coiffure,” said the little princess. “Didn’t I tell you,” she went on, turning reproachfully to Mademoiselle Bourienne, “Mary’s is a face which such a coiffure does not suit in the least. Not in the least! Please change it.”
“Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same to me,” answered a voice struggling with tears. (Part Three, chapter 3)
According to Demon, he does not care much for Ada’s pumps na bosu nogu. In "War and Peace" Natasha Rostov (who is, like Ada, sixteen) wears slippers na bosu nogu (on bare feet):
Однажды вечером, когда старая графиня, вздыхая и кряхтя, в ночном чепце и кофточке, без накладных буклей и с одним бедным пучком волос, выступавшим из-под белого коленкорового чепчика, клала на коврике земные поклоны вечd ерней молитвы, ее дверь скрипнула, и в туфлях на босу ногу, тоже в кофточке и в папильотках, вбежала Наташа. Графиня оглянулась и нахмурилась. Она дочитывала свою последнюю молитву: «Неужели мне одр сей гроб будет?» Молитвенное настроение ее было уничтожено. Наташа, красная, оживленная, увидав мать на молитве, вдруг остановилась на своем бегу, присела и невольно высунула язык, грозясь самой себе. Заметив, что мать продолжала молитву, она на цыпочках подбежала к кровати, быстро скользнув одной маленькой ножкой о другую, скинула туфли и прыгнула на тот одр, за который графиня боялась, как бы он не был ее гробом. Одр этот был высокий, перинный, с пятью все уменьшающимися подушками. Наташа вскочила, утонула в перине, перевалилась к стенке и начала возиться под одеялом, укладываясь, подгибая коленки к подбородку, брыкая ногами и чуть слышно смеясь, то закрываясь с головой, то выглядывая на мать. Графиня кончила молитву и с строгим лицом подошла к постели; но, увидав, что Наташа закрыта с головой, улыбнулась своей доброй, слабой улыбкой.
One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket, without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also in a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in curlpapers, ran in. The countess - her prayerful mood dispelled - looked round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be that this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager, seeing her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down, and unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing that her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and, rapidly slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her slippers and jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might become her grave. This couch was high, with a feather bed and five pillows each smaller than the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank into the feather bed, rolled over to the wall, and began snuggling up the bedclothes as she settled down, raising her knees to her chin, kicking out and laughing almost inaudibly, now covering herself up head and all, and now peeping at her mother. The countess finished her prayers and came to the bed with a stern face, but seeing, that Natasha's head was covered, she smiled in her kind, weak way. (Book Six, chapter 13)
When Van meets Greg Erminin in Paris (also known as Lute on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set), Greg tells him that he would have consented to be beheaded by a Tartar, if in exchange he could have kissed Ada's instep:
‘I last saw you thirteen years ago, riding a black pony — no, a black Silentium. Bozhe moy!’
‘Yes — Bozhe moy, you can well say that. Those lovely, lovely agonies in lovely Ardis! Oh, I was absolyutno bezumno (madly) in love with your cousin!’
‘You mean Miss Veen? I did not know it. How long —’
‘Neither did she. I was terribly —’
‘How long are you staying —’
‘— terribly shy, because, of course, I realized that I could not compete with her numerous boy friends.’
Numerous? Two? Three? Is it possible he never heard about the main one? All the rose hedges knew, all the maids knew, in all three manors. The noble reticence of our bed makers.
‘How long will you be staying in Lute? No, Greg, I ordered it. You pay for the next bottle. Tell me —’
‘So odd to recall! It was frenzy, it was fantasy, it was reality in the x degree. I’d have consented to be beheaded by a Tartar, I declare, if in exchange I could have kissed her instep. You were her cousin, almost a brother, you can’t understand that obsession. Ah, those picnics! And Percy de Prey who boasted to me about her, and drove me crazy with envy and pity, and Dr Krolik, who, they said, also loved her, and Phil Rack, a composer of genius — dead, dead, all dead!’ (3.2)
Erminia was a nickname of Eliza Khitrovo, Kutuzov's daughter who was hopelessly in love with Pushkin.