In VN's novel Ada (1969) Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) dies in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific. Describing his father's death, Van Veen mentions a series of strange newspaper garbles:
Furnished Space, l’espace meublé (known to us only as furnished and full even if its contents be ‘absence of substance’ — which seats the mind, too), is mostly watery so far as this globe is concerned. In that form it destroyed Lucette. Another variety, more or less atmospheric, but no less gravitational and loathsome, destroyed Demon.
Idly, one March morning, 1905, on the terrace of Villa Armina, where he sat on a rug, surrounded by four or five lazy nudes, like a sultan, Van opened an American daily paper published in Nice. In the fourth or fifth worst airplane disaster of the young century, a gigantic flying machine had inexplicably disintegrated at fifteen thousand feet above the Pacific between Lisiansky and Laysanov Islands in the Gavaille region. A list of ‘leading figures’ dead in the explosion comprised the advertising manager of a department store, the acting foreman in the sheet-metal division of a facsimile corporation, a recording firm executive, the senior partner of a law firm, an architect with heavy aviation background (a first misprint here, impossible to straighten out), the vice president of an insurance corporation, another vice president, this time of a board of adjustment whatever that might be —
‘I’m hongree,’ said a maussade Lebanese beauty of fifteen sultry summers.
‘Use bell,’ said Van, continuing in a state of odd fascination to go through the compilation of labeled lives:
— the president of a wholesale liquor-distributing firm, the manager of a turbine equipment company, a pencil manufacturer, two professors of philosophy, two newspaper reporters (with nothing more to report), the assistant controller of a wholesome liquor distribution bank (misprinted and misplaced), the assistant controller of a trust company, a president, the secretary of a printing agency —
The names of those big shots, as well as those of some eighty other men, women, and silent children who perished in blue air, were being withheld until all relatives had been reached; but the tabulatory preview of commonplace abstractions had been thought to be too imposing not to be given at once as an appetizer; and only on the following morning did Van learn that a bank president lost in the closing garble was his father. (3.7)
Pereputannye ob'yavleniya ("Mixed-up Newspaper Ads," 1884) is a humorous story by Chekhov:
С предлагаемыми объявлениями случился на праздниках маленький скандал, не имеющий, впрочем, особенной важности и не предусмотренный законодателем: набрав их и собирая в гранки, наборщик уронил весь шрифт на пол. Гранки смешались и вышла путаница, не имеющая, впрочем, уголовного характера. Вот что получилось по тиснении:
Трехэтажный дворник ищет места гувернантки.
«Цветы и змеи» Л. И. Пальмина с прискорбием извещают родных и знакомых о кончине супруга и отца своего камер-юнкера А. К. Пустоквасова.
С дозволения начальства сбежал пудель фабрики Сиу и Ко.
Жеребец вороной масти, скаковой, специалист по женским и нервным болезням, дает уроки фехтования.
Общество пароходства «Самолет» ищет места горничной.
Редакция журнала «Нива» имеет для рожениц отдельные комнаты. Секрет и удобства. Дети и нижние чины платят половину. Просят не трогать руками.
Конкурсное правление по делам о несостоятельности купца Кричалова продает за ненадобностью рак желудка и костоеду.
По случаю ненастной погоды зубной врач Крахтер вставляет зубы. Панихиды ежедневно.
Новость! Студент-математик с золотою медалью, находясь в бедственном положении, предлагает почтеннейшей публике белье и приданое. Обеды и завтраки по разнообразнейшим меню.
С 1-го февраля будет выходить без предварительной цензуры акушерка Дылдина. Всякая подделка строго преследуется законом.
"The black stallion, racehorse, specialist in women's and nervous diseases, who gives fencing lessons" brings to mind Pierre Legrand (Van's fencing master whose name hints at Peter the Great, the Emperor of Russia):
Van walked over to a monastic lectern that he had acquired for writing in the vertical position of vertebrate thought and wrote what follows:
Poor L.
We are sorry you left so soon. We are even sorrier to have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid in a naughty prank. That sort of game will never be played again with you, darling firebird. We apollo [apologize]. Remembrance, embers and membranes of beauty make artists and morons lose all self-control. Pilots of tremendous airships and even coarse, smelly coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a copper curl. We wished to admire and amuse you, BOP (bird of paradise). We went too far. I, Van, went too far. We regret that shameful, though basically innocent scene. These are times of emotional stress and reconditioning. Destroy and forget.
Tenderly yours A & V.
(in alphabetic order).
‘I call this pompous, puritanical rot,’ said Ada upon scanning Van’s letter. ‘Why should we apollo for her having experienced a delicious spazmochka? I love her and would never allow you to harm her. It’s curious — you know, something in the tone of your note makes me really jealous for the first time in my fire [thus in the manuscript, for "life." Ed.] Van, Van, somewhere, some day, after a sunbath or dance, you will sleep with her, Van!’
‘Unless you run out of love potions. Do you allow me to send her these lines?’
‘I do, but want to add a few words.’
Her P.S. read:
The above declaration is Van’s composition which I sign reluctantly. It is pompous and puritanical. I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly. When you’re sick of Queen, why not fly over to Holland or Italy?
A.
‘Now let’s go out for a breath of crisp air,’ suggested Van. ‘I’ll order Pardus and Peg to be saddled.’
‘Last night two men recognized me,’ she said. ‘Two separate Californians, but they didn’t dare bow — with that silk-tuxedoed bretteur of mine glaring around. One was Anskar, the producer, and the other, with a cocotte, Paul Whinnier, one of your father’s London pals. I sort of hoped we’d go back to bed.’
‘We shall now go for a ride in the park,’ said Van firmly, and rang, first of all, for a Sunday messenger to take the letter to Lucette’s hotel — or to the Verma resort, if she had already left.
‘I suppose you know what you’re doing?’ observed Ada.
‘Yes,’ he answered.
‘You are breaking her heart,’ said Ada.
‘Ada girl, adored girl,’ cried Van, ‘I’m a radiant void. I’m convalescing after a long and dreadful illness. You cried over my unseemly scar, but now life is going to be nothing but love and laughter, and corn in cans. I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended. You shall wear a blue veil, and I the false mustache that makes me look like Pierre Legrand, my fencing master.’
‘Au fond,’ said Ada, ‘first cousins have a perfect right to ride together. And even dance or skate, if they want. After all, first cousins are almost brother and sister. It’s a blue, icy, breathless day,’
She was soon ready, and they kissed tenderly in their hallway, between lift and stairs, before separating for a few minutes.
‘Tower,’ she murmured in reply to his questioning glance, just as she used to do on those honeyed mornings in the past, when checking up on happiness: ‘And you?’
‘A regular ziggurat.’ (2.8)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): spazmochka: Russ., little spasm.
bretteur: duelling bravo.
au fond: actually.
and Baron d'Onsky ('Skonky'), Demon's adversary in a sword duel:
Upon being questioned in Demon’s dungeon, Marina, laughing trillingly, wove a picturesque tissue of lies; then broke down, and confessed. She swore that all was over; that the Baron, a physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai, had gone to Japan forever. From a more reliable source Demon learned that the Samurai’s real destination was smart little Vatican, a Roman spa, whence he was to return to Aardvark, Massa, in a week or so. Since prudent Veen preferred killing his man in Europe (decrepit but indestructible Gamaliel was said to be doing his best to forbid duels in the Western Hemisphere — a canard or an idealistic President’s instant-coffee caprice, for nothing was to come of it after all), Demon rented the fastest petroloplane available, overtook the Baron (looking very fit) in Nice, saw him enter Gunter’s Bookshop, went in after him, and in the presence of the imperturbable and rather bored English shopkeeper, back-slapped the astonished Baron across the face with a lavender glove. The challenge was accepted; two native seconds were chosen; the Baron plumped for swords; and after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish — a kind of American ‘Gory Mary’ in barroom parlance) had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps leading backward to the walled garden in an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil and Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel, the latter gentlemen separated the panting combatants, and Skonky died, not ‘of his wounds’ (as it was viciously rumored) but of a gangrenous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly self-inflicted, a sting in the groin, which caused circulatory trouble, notwithstanding quite a few surgical interventions during two or three years of protracted stays at the Aardvark Hospital in Boston — a city where, incidentally, he married in 1869 our friend the Bohemian lady, now keeper of Glass Biota at the local museum. (1.2)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Aardvark: apparently, a university town in New England.
Gamaliel: a much more fortunate statesman than our W.G. Harding.
Demon's adversary, Baron d'Onsky (Skonky) seems to combine Dmitri Donskoy (in September, 1380, the Russians led by Dmitri Donskoy, Prince of Moscow, defeated the Tartars led by Khan Mamay in the battle of Kulikovo) with Onegin's donskoy zherebets (Don stallion) in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Two: V: 4):
Сначала все к нему езжали;
Но так как с заднего крыльца
Обыкновенно подавали
Ему донского жеребца,
Лишь только вдоль большой дороги
Заслышат их домашни дроги, —
Поступком оскорбясь таким,
Все дружбу прекратили с ним.
«Сосед наш неуч; сумасбродит;
Он фармазон; он пьёт одно
Стаканом красное вино;
Он дамам к ручке не подходит;
Всё да да нет; не скажет да-с
Иль нет-с». Таков был общий глас.
At first they all would call on him,
but since to the back porch
habitually a Don stallion
for him was brought
as soon as one made out along the highway
the sound of their domestic runabouts —
outraged by such behavior,
they all ceased to be friends with him.
“Our neighbor is a boor; acts like a crackbrain;
he's a Freemason; he
drinks only red wine, by the tumbler;
he won't go up to kiss a lady's hand;
'tis all ‘yes,’ ‘no’ — he'll not say ‘yes, sir,’
or ‘no, sir.’ ” This was the general voice.
According to Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander), at the funeral of Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) she met d'Onsky's son, a person with only one arm:
‘My upper-lip space feels indecently naked.’ (He had shaved his mustache off with howls of pain in her presence). ‘And I cannot keep sucking in my belly all the time.’
‘Oh, I like you better with that nice overweight — there’s more of you. It’s the maternal gene, I suppose, because Demon grew leaner and leaner. He looked positively Quixotic when I saw him at Mother’s funeral. It was all very strange. He wore blue mourning. D’Onsky’s son, a person with only one arm, threw his remaining one around Demon and both wept comme des fontaines. Then a robed person who looked like an extra in a technicolor incarnation of Vishnu made an incomprehensible sermon. Then she went up in smoke. He said to me, sobbing: "I will not cheat the poor grubs!" Practically a couple of hours after he broke that promise we had sudden visitors at the ranch — an incredibly graceful moppet of eight, black-veiled, and a kind of duenna, also in black, with two bodyguards. The hag demanded certain fantastic sums — which Demon, she said, had not had time to pay, for "popping the hymen" — whereupon I had one of our strongest boys throw out vsyu (the entire) kompaniyu.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Van, ‘they had been growing younger and younger — I mean the girls, not the strong silent boys. His old Rosalind had a ten-year-old niece, a primed chickabiddy. Soon he would have been poaching them from the hatching chamber.’
‘You never loved your father,’ said Ada sadly.
‘Oh, I did and do — tenderly, reverently, understandingly, because, after all, that minor poetry of the flesh is something not unfamiliar to me. But as far as we are concerned, I mean you and I, he was buried on the same day as our uncle Dan.’
‘I know, I know. It’s pitiful! And what use was it? Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you, but his visits to Agavia kept getting rarer and shorter every year. Yes, it was pitiful to hear him and Andrey talking. I mean, Andrey n’a pas le verbe facile, though he greatly appreciated — without quite understanding it — Demon’s wild flow of fancy and fantastic fact, and would often exclaim, with his Russian "tssk-tssk" and a shake of the head — complimentary and all that — "what a balagur (wag) you are!" — And then, one day, Demon warned me that he would not come any more if he heard again poor Andrey’s poor joke (Nu i balagur-zhe vï, Dementiy Labirintovich) or what Dorothy, l’impayable ("priceless for impudence and absurdity") Dorothy, thought of my camping out in the mountains with only Mayo, a cowhand, to protect me from lions.’ (3.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): comme etc.: shedding floods of tears.
N’a pas le verbe etc.: lacks the gift of the gab.
In Chekhov’s story Osen'yu (“In Autumn,” 1883) muzhichonok (a small peasant) who enters the tavern of Uncle Tikhon okinul vzglyadom vsyu kompaniyu (looks around at all people who are there):
На дворе скрипнула телега. Послышалось «тпррр» и шлепанье по грязи… В кабак вбежал маленький мужичок в длинном тулупе и с острой бородой. Он был мокр и грязен.
— Ну-кася! — крикнул он, стуча пятаком о прилавок. — Стакан мадеры настоящей! Наливай!
И, ухарски повернувшись на одной ноге, он окинул взглядом всю компанию.
— Растаяли сахарные, тетка ваша подкурятина! Дождя испугались, ахиды! Нежные! А это что за изюмина?
Мужичонок прыгнул к прохвосту и поглядел ему в лицо.
— Вот туды! Барин! — сказал он. — Семен Сергеич! Господа наши! А? С какой такой стати вы в этом кабаке прохлаждаетесь? Нешто вам здесь место? Эх… мученик несчастный!
Барин взглянул на мужичонка и закрылся рукавом. Мужичонок вздохнул, покачал головой, отчаянно махнул обеими руками и пошел к прилавку пить водку.
A cart creaked in the yard. Splashing and flopping in the mud were heard... A little peasant in a long sheepskin coat and with a sharp beard ran into the tavern. He was wet and dirty.
"Well, come on! "he shouted, tapping his penny on the counter. "A glass of real Madeira! Pour it out!”
And, wheeling around on one leg, he looked over the whole company.
"Melted sugar, your aunt’s ass! They’re afraid of the rain, of the rain! So delicate! And what’s this raisin juice?
The little fellow rushed over to the good-for-nothing and looked him in the face.
"Hallo there Master Semyon Sergeich!" he said. “Our master! Why on earth are you hanging around in this tavern? Why, you don’t belong here! Eh... unfortunate martyr!”
The master glanced at the peasant and covered himself with his sleeve. The little man sighed, shook his head, desperately waved both hands and went to the counter to drink vodka.
In his memoir essay “A. P. Chekhov in the Moscow Art Theater” K. S. Stanislavski says that at one time Chekhov planned to have among the characters of his play Vishnyovyi sad (“The Cherry Orchard,” 1904) an one-armed billiardist:
Мне посчастливилось наблюдать со стороны за процессом создания Чеховым его пьесы «Вишневый сад». Как-то при разговоре с Антоном Павловичем о рыбной ловле наш артист А.Р. Артем изображал, как насаживают червя на крючок, как закидывают удочку донную или с поплавком. Эти и им подобные сцены передавались неподражаемым артистом с большим талантом, и Чехов искренне жалел о том, что их не увидит большая публика в театре. Вскоре после этого Чехов присутствовал при купании в реке другого нашего артиста и тут же решил:
- Послушайте, надо же, чтобы Артем удил рыбу в моей пьесе, а N купался рядом в купальне, барахтался бы там и кричал, а Артем злился бы на него за то, что он ему пугает рыбу.
Антон Павлович мысленно видел их на сцене - одного удящим около купальни, другого - купающимся в ней, то есть за сценой. Через несколько дней Антон Павлович объявил нам торжественно, что купающемуся ампутировали руку, но, несмотря на это, он страстно любит играть на бильярде своей единственной рукой. Рыболов же оказался стариком лакеем, скопившим деньжонки.
Через некоторое время в воображении Чехова стало рисоваться окно старого помещичьего дома, через которое лезли в комнату ветки деревьев. Потом они зацвели снежно-белым цветом. Затем в воображаемом Чеховым доме поселилась какая-то барыня.
- Но только у вас нет такой актрисы. Послушайте! Надо же особую старуху, - соображал Чехов. - Она же все бегает к старому лакею и занимает у него деньги...
Около старухи очутился не то ее брат, не то дядя - безрукий барин, страстный любитель игры на бильярде. Это большое дитя, которое не может жить без лакея. Как-то раз последний уехал, не приготовив барину брюк, и потому он пролежал весь день в постели...
Before the family dinner in 'Ardis the Second' Demon says that the sweetest word in the language rhymes with "billiard:"
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.’
‘You are a fantastically charming boy,’ said Demon, shedding another sweet-water tear. He pressed to his cheek Van’s strong shapely hand. Van kissed his father’s hairy fist which was already holding a not yet visible glass of liquor. Despite the manly impact of their Irishness, all Veens who had Russian blood revealed much tenderness in ritual overflows of affection while remaining somewhat inept in its verbal expression.
‘I say,’ exclaimed Demon, ‘what’s happened — your shaftment is that of a carpenter’s. Show me your other hand. Good gracious’ (muttering:) ‘Hump of Venus disfigured, Line of Life scarred but monstrously long...’ (switching to a gipsy chant:) ‘You’ll live to reach Terra, and come back a wiser and merrier man’ (reverting to his ordinary voice:) ‘What puzzles me as a palmist is the strange condition of the Sister of your Life. And the roughness!’
‘Mascodagama,’ whispered Van, raising his eyebrows.
‘Ah, of course, how blunt (dumb) of me. Now tell me — you like Ardis Hall?’
‘I adore it,’ said Van. ‘It’s for me the château que baignait la Dore. I would gladly spend all my scarred and strange life here. But that’s a hopeless fancy.’
‘Hopeless? I wonder. I know Dan wants to leave it to Lucile, but Dan is greedy, and my affairs are such that I can satisfy great greed. When I was your age I thought that the sweetest word in the language rhymes with "billiard," and now I know I was right. If you’re really keen, son, on having this property, I might try to buy it. I can exert a certain pressure upon my Marina. She sighs like a hassock when you sit upon her, so to speak. Damn it, the servants here are not Mercuries. Pull that cord again. Yes, maybe Dan could be made to sell.’ (1.38)
and Van mentions "The Cherry Orchard," a play that Ada likes:
‘I’ll want,’ said Demon, ‘a bottle of your Château Latour d’Estoc for dinner’; and when the butler, having removed en passant a crumpled little handkerchief from the piano top, had left the room with another salute: ‘How do you get along with Ada? She’s what — almost sixteen now? Very musical and romantic?’
‘We are close friends,’ said Van (who had carefully prepared his answer to a question he had expected to come in one form or another). ‘We have really more things in common than, for instance, ordinary lovers or cousins or siblings. I mean, we are really inseparable. We read a lot, she is spectacularly self-educated, thanks to her granddad’s library. She knows the names of all the flowers and finches in the neighborhood. She is altogether a very amusing girl.’
‘Van...,’ began Demon, but stopped — as he had begun and stopped a number of times before in the course of the last years. Some day it would have to be said, but this was not the right moment. He inserted his monocle and examined the bottles: ‘By the way, son, do you crave any of these aperitifs? My father allowed me Lilletovka and that Illinois Brat — awful bilge, antranou svadi, as Marina would say. I suspect your uncle has a cache behind the solanders in his study and keeps there a finer whisky than this usque ad Russkum. Well, let us have the cognac, as planned, unless you are a filius aquae?’
(No pun intended, but one gets carried away and goofs.)
‘Oh, I prefer claret. I’ll concentrate (nalyagu) on the Latour later on. No, I’m certainly no T-totaler, and besides the Ardis tap water is not recommended!’
‘I must warn Marina,’ said Demon after a gum-rinse and a slow swallow, ‘that her husband should stop swilling tittery, and stick to French and Califrench wines — after that little stroke he had. I met him in town recently, near Mad Avenue, saw him walking toward me quite normally, but then as he caught sight of me, a block away, the clockwork began slowing down and he stopped — oh, helplessly! — before he reached me. That’s hardly normal. Okay. Let our sweethearts never meet, as we used to say, up at Chose. Only Yukonians think cognac is bad for the liver, because they have nothing but vodka. Well, I’m glad you get along so well with Ada. That’s fine. A moment ago, in that gallery, I ran into a remarkably pretty soubrette. She never once raised her lashes and answered in French when I — Please, my boy, move that screen a little, that’s right, the stab of a sunset, especially from under a thunderhead, is not for my poor eyes. Or poor ventricles. Do you like the type, Van — the bowed little head, the bare neck, the high heels, the trot, the wiggle, you do, don’t you?’
‘Well, sir —’
(Tell him I’m the youngest Venutian? Does he belong, too? Show the sign? Better not. Invent.)
‘— Well, I’m resting after my torrid affair, in London, with my tango-partner whom you saw me dance with when you flew over for that last show — remember?’
‘Indeed, I do. Curious, you calling it that.’
‘I think, sir, you’ve had enough brandy.’
‘Sure, sure,’ said Demon, wrestling with a subtle question which only the ineptitude of a kindred conjecture had crowded out of Marina’s mind, granted it could have entered by some back door; for ineptitude is always synonymous with multitude, and nothing is fuller than an empty mind.
‘Naturally,’ continued Demon, ‘there is a good deal to be said for a restful summer in the country...’
‘Open-air life and all that,’ said Van.
‘It is incredible that a young boy should control his father’s liquor intake,’ remarked Demon, pouring himself a fourth shallow. ‘On the other hand,’ he went on, nursing the thin-stemmed, gold-rimmed cup, ‘open-air life may be pretty bleak without a summer romance, and not many decent girls haunt the neighborhood, I agree. There was that lovely Erminin girl, une petite juive très aristocratique, but I understand she’s engaged. By the way, the de Prey woman tells me her son has enlisted and will soon be taking part in that deplorable business abroad which our country should have ignored. I wonder if he leaves any rivals behind?’
‘Goodness no,’ replied honest Van. ‘Ada is a serious young lady. She has no beaux — except me, ça va seins durs. Now who, who, who, Dad, who said that for "sans dire"?’
‘Oh! King Wing! When I wanted to know how he liked his French wife. Well, that’s fine news about Ada. She likes horses, you say?’
‘She likes,’ said Van, ‘what all our belles like — balls, orchids, and The Cherry Orchard.’ (ibid.)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): antranou etc.: Russian mispronunciation of Fr. entre nous soit dit, between you and me.
filius aqua: ‘son of water’, bad pun on filum aquae, the middle way, ‘the thread of the stream’.
une petite juive etc.: a very aristocratic little Jewess.
ça va: it goes.
seins durs: mispronunciation of sans dire ‘without saying’.
Because love is blind, Van fails to see that his father died, because Ada (who could not pardon Demon his forcing Van to give her up) managed to persuade the pilot to destroy his machine in midair.