Leaving Van’s Manhattan flat, Lucette (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) pins to the pillow a note scrawled in Arlen Eyelid Green:
After a while he adored [sic! Ed.] the pancakes. No Lucette, however, turned up, and when Ada, still wearing her diamonds (in sign of at least one more caro Van and a Camel before her morning bath) looked into the guest room, she found the white valise and blue furs gone. A note scrawled in Arlen Eyelid Green was pinned to the pillow.
Would go mad if remained one more night shall ski at Verma with other poor woolly worms for three weeks or so miserable
Pour Elle
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. (2.8)
In his essay O zhenshchine (“On Woman,” 1930) Gorki mentions Michael Arlen’s novel The Green Hat (1924):
Никто не станет отрицать, что производство предметов роскоши, потребляемых женщинами Буржуазных классов, растёт с быстротою плесени или травы на кладбище. Может быть, и не «поэтому», но всё же рядом с этим растёт и «критическое», даже враждебное отношение художественной литературы к женщине как жене и матери, как второй по её значению «главе дома». Особенно заметно это в современной английской литературе — литературе страны, которая ещё недавно гордилась «незыблемостью семейных традиций». Всё чаще появляются книги, изображающие процесс распада «семьи, опоры государства», - процесс вымирания и крушения несокрушимых Форсайтов, мастерски изображённый Джоном Голсуорси в его «Саге о Форсайтах», Гексли в его романе «Сквозь разные стёкла», в книге Майкла Арлена «Зелёная шляпа» и в ряде других книг.
When Van meets Lucette in Paris (also known as Lute on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set), she wears a picture hat:
Upon entering, he stopped for a moment to surrender his coat; but he kept his black fedora and stick-slim umbrella as he had seen his father do in that sort of bawdy, albeit smart, place which decent women did not frequent — at least, unescorted. He headed for the bar, and as he was in the act of wiping the lenses of his black-framed spectacles, made out, through the optical mist (Space’s recent revenge!), the girl whose silhouette he recalled having seen now and then (much more distinctly!) ever since his pubescence, passing alone, drinking alone, always alone, like Blok’s Incognita. It was a queer feeling — as of something replayed by mistake, part of a sentence misplaced on the proof sheet, a scene run prematurely, a repeated blemish, a wrong turn of time. He hastened to reequip his ears with the thick black bows of his glasses and went up to her in silence. For a minute he stood behind her, sideways to remembrance and reader (as she, too, was in regard to us and the bar), the crook of his silk-swathed cane lifted in profile almost up to his mouth. There she was, against the aureate backcloth of a sakarama screen next to the bar, toward which she was sliding, still upright, about to be seated, having already placed one white-gloved hand on the counter. She wore a high-necked, long-sleeved romantic black dress with an ample skirt, fitted bodice and ruffy collar, from the black soft corolla of which her long neck gracefully rose. With a rake’s morose gaze we follow the pure proud line of that throat, of that tilted chin. The glossy red lips are parted, avid and fey, offering a side gleam of large upper teeth. We know, we love that high cheekbone (with an atom of powder puff sticking to the hot pink skin), and the forward upsweep of black lashes and the painted feline eye — all this in profile, we softly repeat. From under the wavy wide brim of her floppy hat of black faille, with a great black bow surmounting it, a spiral of intentionally disarranged, expertly curled bright copper descends her flaming cheek, and the light of the bar’s ‘gem bulbs’ plays on her bouffant front hair, which, as seen laterally, convexes from beneath the extravagant brim of the picture hat right down to her long thin eyebrow. Her Irish profile sweetened by a touch of Russian softness, which adds a look of mysterious expectancy and wistful surprise to her beauty, must be seen, I hope, by the friends and admirers of my memories, as a natural masterpiece incomparably finer and younger than the portrait of the similarily postured lousy jade with her Parisian gueule de guenon on the vile poster painted by that wreck of an artist for Ovenman.
‘Hullo there, Ed,’ said Van to the barman, and she turned at the sound of his dear rasping voice.
‘I didn’t expect you to wear glasses. You almost got le paquet, which I was preparing for the man supposedly "goggling" my hat. Darling Van! Dushka moy!’
‘Your hat,’ he said, ‘is positively lautrémontesque — I mean, lautrecaquesque — no, I can’t form the adjective.’
Ed Barton served Lucette what she called a Chambéryzette.
‘Gin and bitter for me.’
‘I’m so happy and sad,’ she murmured in Russian. ‘Moyo grustnoe schastie! How long will you be in old Lute?’ (3.3)
The penname Gorki means “bitter.” Le paquet which Lucette was preparing for the man supposedly "goggling" her hat brings to mind the lines in Alexander Blok’s poem Zhenshchina (“The Woman,” 1914):
Но чувствую: он за плечами
Стоит, он подошел в упор...
Ему я гневными речами
Уже готовлюсь дать отпор...
But I feel: at my back he
Stands, he approached and froze…
Already with angry words I
Prepare to rebuff him...
The action in Blok’s poem takes place at the cemetery. In his essay “On Woman” Gorki says (see a quote above) that the production of luxury goods consumed by women of the bourgeois classes grows as rapidly as the mold or grass at cemeteries.
In Blok’s poem Neznakomka (“The Unknown Woman,” 1906) the Incognita (as Van calls her) wears shlyapa s traurnymi per’yami (a hat with funereal plumes):
И веют древними поверьями
Её упругие шелка,
И шляпа с траурными перьями,
И в кольцах узкая рука.
And an air of ancient legend
Wreaths her resilient silks,
Her hat with its funereal plumes,
And her slender ringed hand.
Describing his first tea party at Ardis, Van mentions Marina’s portrait by Tresham that shows her wearing a picture hat:
Marina’s portrait, a rather good oil by Tresham, hanging above her on the wall, showed her wearing the picture hat she had used for the rehearsal of a Hunting Scene ten years ago, romantically brimmed, with a rainbow wing and a great drooping plume of black-banded silver; and Van, as he recalled the cage in the park and his mother somewhere in a cage of her own, experienced an odd sense of mystery as if the commentators of his destiny had gone into a huddle. Marina’s face was now made up to imitate her former looks, but fashions had changed, her cotton dress was a rustic print, her auburn locks were bleached and no longer tumbled down her temples, and nothing in her attire or adornments echoed the dash of her riding crop in the picture and the regular pattern of her brilliant plumage which Tresham had rendered with ornithological skill. (1.5)
In “Ardis the Second” Marina (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) tells Van that his costume is, in a sense, traurnyi (funerary):
‘How strange, how sad! Sad, because I know hardly anything about your life, my darling (moy dushka). The Zemskis were terrible rakes (razvratniki), one of them loved small girls, and another raffolait d’une de ses juments and had her tied up in a special way-don’t ask me how’ (double hand gesture of horrified ignorance ‘— when he dated her in her stall. Kstati (à propos), I could never understand how heredity is transmitted by bachelors, unless genes can jump like chess knights. I almost beat you, last time we played, we must play again, not today, though — I’m too sad today. I would have liked so much to know everything, everything, about you, but now it’s too late. Recollections are always a little "stylized" (stilizovanï), as your father used to say, an irrisistible and hateful man, and now, even if you showed me your old diaries, I could no longer whip up any real emotional reaction to them, though all actresses can shed tears, as I’m doing now. You see (rummaging for her handkerchief under her pillow), when children are still quite tiny (takie malyutki), we cannot imagine that we can go without them, for even a couple of days, and later we do, and it’s a couple of weeks, and later it’s months, gray years, black decades, and then the opéra bouffe of the Christians’ eternity. I think even the shortest separation is a kind of training for the Elysian Games — who said that? I said that. And your costume, though very becoming, is, in a sense, traurnïy (funerary). I’m spouting drivel. Forgive me these idiotic tears… Tell me, is there anything I could do for you? Do think up something! Would you like a beautiful, practically new Peruvian scarf, which he left behind, that crazy boy? No? It’s not your style? Now go. And remember — not a word to poor Mlle Larivière, who means well!’ (1.37)
Takie malyutki brings to mind ne tak strashen chyort, kak ego malyutki (literally: “the devil is not as terrible as his babies”), the pun of the father of Luzhin’s bride in VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930):
Слова психиатра произвели дома лёгкую сенсацию. "Значит, шахматам капут? -- с удовлетворением отметила мать.-- Что же это от него останется,-- одно голое сумасшествие?" "Нет-нет,-- сказал отец.-- О сумасшествии нет никакой речи. Человек будет здоров. Не так страшен чёрт, как его малютки. Я сказал "малютки",-- Ты слышишь, душенька?"
The psychiatrist's words produced a small sensation at home. 'That means chess is kaput?' noted the mother with satisfaction. 'What will be left of him then — pure madness?' 'No, no,' said the father. 'There's no question of madness. The man will be healthy. The devil's not as black as his painters. I said "painters" — did you hear, my pet?' (chapter X)
In VN’s play Sobytie (“The Event,” 1938) the portrait painter Troshcheykin (who is mortally afraid of the killer Barbashin and who calls his wife Lyubov' "malyutka") forgets the saying “the devil is not as black as he is painted” and does not recognize the devil when he appears in disguise of the ridiculous private detective Barboshin (whom Troshcheykin hired in order to protect himself from Barbashin). Aleksey Maksimovich Troshcheykin has the same name and patronymic as Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov (Maxim Gorki’s real name). The action in “The Event” takes place on the fiftieth birthday of Antonina Pavlovna Opayashin (Troshcheykin’s mother-in-law, a lady writer whose name and patronymic hints at Chekhov). Asking Antonina Pavlovna why she invited the famous writer to her birthday party, Troshcheykin compares him to ferz’ (the chess queen) and other guests to peshki (the pawns):
Трощейкин. А вот почему вы, Антонина Павловна, пригласили нашего маститого? Всё ломаю себе голову над этим вопросом. На что он вам? И потом, нельзя так: один ферзь, а все остальные -- пешки.
Антонина Павловна. Вовсе не пешки. Мешаев, например.
Трощейкин. Мешаев? Ну, знаете...
Любовь. Мамочка, не отвечай ему, -- зачем?
Антонина Павловна. Я только хотела сказать, что Мешаев, например, обещал привести своего брата, оккультиста.
Трощейкин. У него брата нет. Это мистификация.
Антонина Павловна. Нет, есть. Но только он живёт всегда в деревне. Они даже близнецы.
Трощейкин. Вот разве что близнецы... (Act One)
According to Antonina Pavlovna, Meshaev is not a pawn at all. She adds that Meshaev promised to bring his brother, the occultist who lives in the country. It is Meshaev the Second, Antonina Pavlovna’s last guest, who at the end of the play reads Lyubov’s palm and casually says that Barbashin left the city and went abroad forever:
Барбошин (протягивает ладонь). Прошу.
Любовь. Ну, вы не много мне сказали. Я думала, что вы предскажете мне что-нибудь необыкновенное, потрясающее... например, что в жизни у меня сейчас обрыв, что меня ждёт удивительное, страшное, волшебное счастье...
Трощейкин. Тише! Мне кажется, кто-то позвонил... А?
Барбошин (суёт Мешаеву руку). Прошу.
Антонина Павловна. Нет, тебе почудилось. Бедный Алёша, бедный мой... Успокойся, милый.
Мешаев Второй (машинально беря ладонь Барбошина). Вы от меня требуете слишком многого, сударыня. Рука иногда недоговаривает. Но есть, конечно, ладони болтливые, откровенные. Лет десять тому назад я предсказал одному человеку всякие катастрофы, а сегодня, вот только что, выходя из поезда, вдруг вижу его на перроне вокзала. Вот и обнаружилось, что он несколько лет просидел в тюрьме из-за какой-то романтической драки и теперь уезжает за границу навсегда. Некто Барбашин Леонид Викторович. Странно было его встретить и тотчас опять проводить.
(Наклоняется над рукой Барбошина, который тоже сидит с опущенной головой.)
Просил кланяться общим знакомым, но вы его, вероятно, не знаете... (Act Three)
When he reads Van’s palm, Demon (Van’s and Ada’s father) seems to predict his own death:
‘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.’
‘That’s very black of you, Dad,’ said pleased Van, using a slang phrase he had learned from his tender young nurse, Ruby, who was born in the Mississippi region where most magistrates, public benefactors, high priests of various so-called’ denominations,’ and other honorable and generous men, had the dark or darkish skin of their West-African ancestors, who had been the first navigators to reach the Gulf of Mexico. (1.38)
In March 1905 (four years after Lucette’s suicide) Demon Veen perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific (3.7). In “The Three Musketeers” Milady de Winter manages to persuade John Felton, a Puritan, to kill Duke of Buckingham. It seems that Ada managed to persuade the pilot of Demon’s plane to destroy his machine in midair.
According to Van, his angelic Russian tutor explained to a Negro lad that Pushkin and Dumas (the author of “The Three Musketeers,” 1844) had African blood:
In 1880, Van, aged ten, had traveled in silver trains with showerbaths, accompanied by his father, his father’s beautiful secretary, the secretary’s eighteen-year-old white-gloved sister (with a bit part as Van’s English governess and milkmaid), and his chaste, angelic Russian tutor, Andrey Andreevich Aksakov (‘AAA’), to gay resorts in Louisiana and Nevada. AAA explained, he remembered, to a Negro lad with whom Van had scrapped, that Pushkin and Dumas had African blood, upon which the lad showed AAA his tongue, a new interesting trick which Van emulated at the earliest occasion and was slapped by the younger of the Misses Fortune, put it back in your face, sir, she said. He also recalled hearing a cummerbunded Dutchman in the hotel hall telling another that Van’s father, who had just passed whistling one of his three tunes, was a famous ‘camler’ (camel driver — shamoes having been imported recently? No, ‘gambler’). (1.24)
At the beginning of “The Event” Troshcheykin marvels his portrait of the jeweler’s son and says that there is a connection (perceived by Shakespeare in his Othello) between precious stones and the Negro blood:
Трощейкин. Видишь ли, они должны гореть, бросать на него отблеск, но сперва я хочу закрепить отблеск, а потом приняться за его источники. Надо помнить, что искусство движется всегда против солнца. Ноги, видишь, уже совсем перламутровые. Нет, мальчик мне нравится! Волосы хороши: чуть-чуть с чёрной курчавинкой. Есть какая-то связь между драгоценными камнями и негритянской кровью. Шекспир это почувствовал в своем "Отелло". (Act One)
Troshcheykin’s wife Lyubov’ calls her husband pustotsvet (a barren flower):
Любовь. А твоё искусство! Твоё искусство... Сначала я действительно думала, что ты чудный, яркий, драгоценный талант, но теперь я знаю, чего ты стоишь.
Трощейкин. Что это такое? Этого я ещё не слыхал.
Любовь. Вот услышишь. Ты ничто, ты волчок, ты пустоцвет, ты пустой орех, слегка позолоченный, и ты никогда ничего не создашь, а всегда останешься тем, что ты есть, провинциальным портретистом с мечтой о какой-то лазурной пещере. (Act Three)
In Gorki's novel Zhizn’ Klima Samgina (“The Life of Klim Samgin,” 1925-36) Klim Samgin thinks that Lidya Varavka (Klim's step-sister and lover) is a pustotsvet:
Потом, расхаживая по своей комнате, он соображал:
"В сущности, она - несчастная, вот что. Пустоцвет." (Part One)
According to Lidya Varavka, Makarov (a friend of Klim Samgin) is also a pustotsvet:
- Мне жалко Макарова, он так много обещал и - такой пустоцвет! Эта грешница Алина... Зачем она ему? (Part Two)
Eta greshnitsa Alina (this sinner Alina), as Lidya calls Alina Telepnyov (Lyutov's mistress with whom Makarov is in love) brings to mind Colonel St Alin (one of the seconds in Demon’s duel with Baron d’Onsky):
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)
Alina’s lover Lyutov (who shoots himself dead in Geneva) reminds one of “old Lute” (as Lucette calls Paris).
In “Ardis the Second” Van notices the first faint shadows of what Ada would later term 'my acarpous destiny' (pustotsvetnost'):
Her brilliance, her genius. Of course, she had changed in four years, but he, too, had changed, by concurrent stages, so that their brains and senses stayed attuned and were to stay thus always, through all separations. Neither had remained the brash Wunderkind of 1884, but in bookish knowledge both surpassed their coevals to an even more absurd extent than in childhood; and in formal terms Ada (born on July 21, 1872) had already completed her private school course while Van, her senior by two years and a half, hoped to get his master’s degree at the end of 1889. Her conversation might have lost some of its sportive glitter, and the first faint shadows of what she would later term ‘my acarpous destiny’ (pustotsvetnost’) could be made out — at least in back view; but the quality of her innate wit had deepened, strange ‘metempirical’ (as Van called them) undercurrents seemed to double internally, and thus enrich, the simplest expression of her simplest thoughts. She read as voraciously and indiscriminately as he, but each had evolved a more or less ‘pet’ subject — he the terrological part of psychiatry, she the drama (especially Russian), a ‘pet’ he found ‘pat’ in her case but hoped would be a passing vagary. Her florimania endured, alas; but after Dr Krolik died (in 1886) of a heart attack in his garden, she had placed all her live pupae in his open coffin where he lay, she said, as plump and pink as in vivo. (1.35)
Ada’s beloved teacher of natural history, Dr Krolik brings to mind p’yanitsy s glazami krolikov (the drunks with the eyes of rabbits) who cry out “In vino veritas!” in Blok’s “Unknown Woman:”
А рядом у соседних столиков
Лакеи сонные торчат,
И пьяницы с глазами кроликов
"In vino veritas!" кричат.
And drowsy lackeys lounge about
Beside the adjacent tables
While drunks with rabbit eyes cry out
"In vino veritas!"
After Demon told Van to give up Ada, she marries Andrey Andreevich Vinelander (an Arizonian cattle breeder who has the same name and patronymic as Van’s Russian tutor). According to Lucette, Ada’s marriage is a flop, just as her dramatic career is. After her husband’s death in 1922, Ada flies over to Van and they live together until their death in 1967. After Van’s and Ada’s death, Mr Ronald Oranger (old Van’s secretary) marries Violet Knox (old Van’s typist):
Violet Knox [now Mrs Ronald Oranger. Ed.], born in 1940, came to live with us in 1957. She was (and still is — ten years later) an enchanting English blonde with doll eyes, a velvet carnation and a tweed-cupped little rump […..]; but such designs, alas, could no longer flesh my fancy. She has been responsible for typing out this memoir — the solace of what are, no doubt, my last ten years of existence. A good daughter, an even better sister, and half-sister, she had supported for ten years her mother’s children from two marriages, besides laying aside [something]. I paid her [generously] per month, well realizing the need to ensure unembarrassed silence on the part of a puzzled and dutiful maiden. Ada called her ‘Fialochka’ and allowed herself the luxury of admiring ‘little Violet’ ‘s cameo neck, pink nostrils, and fair pony-tail. Sometimes, at dinner, lingering over the liqueurs, my Ada would consider my typist (a great lover of Koo-Ahn-Trow) with a dreamy gaze, and then, quick-quick, peck at her flushed cheek. The situation might have been considerably more complicated had it arisen twenty years earlier. (5.4)
Nox being Latin for “night,” the name of Van’s typist seems to hint at Blok’s poem Nochnaya Fialka (“The Night Violet,” 1906) subtitled “A Dream.” On the other hand, Ronald Knox (1888-1957) was an English Catholic priest, theologian and author of detective stories. As he talks to Samgin, Berdnikov (a character in “The Life of Klim Samgin”) mentions angliyskie popy (the English priests):
“Даже и меня в это вовлекли, но мне показалось, что попы английские, кроме портвейна, как раз ничего не понимают, а о боге говорят - по должности, приличия ради.”
“I had the impression that the English priests do not know what they are talking about, unless it is port, and speak of God only in the lines of duty, in order to keep decorum." (Part Four)
In the same conversation with Samgin Berdnikov rejects the Bénédictine and demands the Cointreau (orange-flavored liqueur, Violet’s “Koo-Ahn-Trow”):
Бердников командовал по-французски: - Уберите бенедиктин, дайте куантро... (ibid.)
After the dinner with Berdnikov and his son-in-law in the Bois de Boulogne Samgin looks at the variegated crowd of smart courtesans and rich satisfied men and recalls Bosch's paintings that he saw in Berlin:
"Нужен дважды гениальный Босх, чтоб превратить вот такую действительность в кошмарный гротеск" - подумал Самгин, споря с кем-то, кто ещё не успел сказать ничего, что требовало бы возражения.
It would take a genius twice as great as Bosch to transform such a reality into a nightmarish grotesque. (ibid.)
Demon discovers that Van and Ada are lovers, because of Uncle Dan's Boschean death:
‘My gloves! Cloak! Thank you. Can I use your W.C.? No? All right. I’ll find one elsewhere. Come over as soon as you can, and we’ll meet Marina at the airport around four and then whizz to the wake, and —’
And here Ada entered. Not naked — oh no; in a pink peignoir so as not to shock Valerio — comfortably combing her hair, sweet and sleepy. She made the mistake of crying out ‘Bozhe moy!’ and darting back into the dusk of the bedroom. All was lost in that one chink of a second.
‘Or better — come at once, both of you, because I’ll cancel my appointment and go home right now.’ He spoke, or thought he spoke, with the self-control and the clarity of enunciation which so frightened and mesmerized blunderers, blusterers, a voluble broker, a guilty schoolboy. Especially so now — when everything had gone to the hell curs, k chertyam sobach’im, of Jeroen Anthniszoon van Äken and the molti aspetti affascinati of his enigmatica arte, as Dan explained with a last sigh to Dr Nikulin and to nurse Bellabestia (‘Bess’) to whom he bequeathed a trunkful of museum catalogues and his second-best catheter. (2.10)
The phrase k chertyam sobach’im (to the devil) is repeated in Ada at least three times. In Ilf and Petrov's novel Zolotoy telyonok ("The Golden Calf," 1931) Gigienishvili (one of the inhabitants of "The Crow's Nest") suggests that the belongings of the airman Sevryugov should be thrown away to the staircase landing, k chertyam sobach’im. In Ilf and Petrov's novel Koreyko (a secret Soviet millionaire) receives a telegram (signed "Brothers Karamazov") Gruzite apel'siny bochkami ("Load oranges in barrels"). Apel’siny (oranges) are mentioned in “The Luzhin Defense:”
Снег сеять перестал, небо в одном месте бледно посветлело, и там проплыл плоский, бескровный солнечный диск. «А знаете, мы сегодня пойдём так, направо, – предложила Лужина. – Мы, кажется, ещё там не проходили». «Апельсины», – сказал Лужин, указывая тростью на лоток. «Хотите купить? – спросила жена. – Смотрите, мелом на доске: сладкие, как сахар». «Апельсины», – повторил со вкусом Лужин и вспомнил при этом, как его отец утверждал, что, когда произносишь «лимон», делаешь поневоле длинное лицо, а когда говоришь «апельсин», – широко улыбаешься. Торговка ловко расправила отверстие бумажного мешочка и насовала в него холодных, щербато-красных шаров. Лужин на ходу стал чистить апельсин, морщась в предвидении того, что сок брызнет в глаза. Корки он положил в карман, так как они выглядели бы слишком ярко на снегу, да и, пожалуй, можно сделать из них варенье.
The light snow ceased to fall, a spot of sky gleamed through palely, and the flat, bloodless disk of the sun floated out. 'You know what, let's go to the right today,' suggested Mrs. Luzhin, 'We've never been that way, I believe.' 'Look, oranges,' said Luzhin with relish and recalled how his father had asserted that when you pronounce 'leemon' (lemon) in Russian, you involuntarily pull a long face, but when you say 'apelsin' (orange) — you give a broad smile, The salesgirl deftly spread the mouth of the paper bag and rammed the cold, pocked-red globes into it. Luzhin began to peel an orange as he walked, frowning in anticipation that the juice would squirt in his eye. He put the peel in his pocket, because it would have stood out too vividly on the snow, and because, perhaps, you could make jam with it. (chapter XIII)
and in “The Event:”
Любовь. Я тебя не это спрашиваю, а что купить к чаю?
Трощейкин. Мне всё равно. Аб-со-лютно. Не хочу даже об этом думать. Купи что хочешь. Купи, скажем, земляничный торт... И побольше апельсинов, этих, знаешь, кислых, но красных: это сразу озаряет весь стол. Шампанское есть, а конфеты принесут гости.
Любовь. Интересно, где взять в августе апельсинов? Между прочим, вот всё, что у нас есть в смысле денег. В мясной должны... Марфе должны... Не вижу, как дотянем до следующей получки. (Act One)
Asked by Lyubov’ what to buy for the tea party, Troshcheykin suggests that she should buy oranges, those that are sour but red and illumine the table at once. Lyubov’ wonders where the oranges can be obtained in August. The action in “The Luzhin Defense” begins in the last days of August, when the Luzhin family is about to move from the country to the city:
Больше всего его поразило то, что с понедельника он будет Лужиным. Его отец -- настоящий Лужин, пожилой Лужин, Лужин, писавший книги,-- вышел от него, улыбаясь, потирая руки, уже смазанные на ночь прозрачным английским кремом, и своей вечерней замшевой походкой вернулся к себе в спальню. Жена лежала в постели. Она приподнялась и спросила: "Ну что, как?" Он снял свой серый халат и ответил: "Обошлось. Принял спокойно. Ух... Прямо гора с плеч". "Как хорошо...-- сказала жена, медленно натягивая на себя шёлковое одеяло.-- Слава Богу, слава Богу..."
Это было и впрямь облегчение. Всё лето -- быстрое дачное лето, состоящее в общем из трёх запахов: сирень, сенокос, сухие листья -- все лето они обсуждали вопрос, когда и как перед ним открыться, и откладывали, откладывали, дотянули до конца августа.
What struck him most was the fact that from Monday on he would be Luzhin. His father — the real Luzhin, the elderly Luzhin, the writer of books — left the nursery with a smile, rubbing his hands (already smeared for the night with transparent cold cream), and with his suede-slippered evening gait padded back to his bedroom. His wife lay in bed. She half raised herself and said: 'Well, how did it go?' He removed his gray dressing gown and replied: 'We managed. Took it calmly. Ouf... that's a real weight off my shoulders.' 'How nice...' said his wife, slowly drawing the silk blanket over her. 'Thank goodness, thank goodness...’
It was indeed a relief. The whole summer — a swift country summer consisting in the main of three smells: lilac, newmown hay, and dry leaves — the whole summer they had debated the question of when and how to tell him, and they had kept putting it off so that it dragged on until the end of August. (chapter I)
At the end of Ada Van mentions “the mysterious first picture: two people in one bed:”
Their recently built castle in Ex was inset in a crystal winter. In the latest Who’s Who the list of his main papers included by some bizarre mistake the title of a work he had never written, though planned to write many pains: Unconsciousness and the Unconscious. There was no pain to do it now — and it was high pain for Ada to be completed. ‘Quel livre, mon Dieu, mon Dieu,’ Dr [Professor. Ed.] Lagosse exclaimed, weighing the master copy which the flat pale parents of the future Babes, in the brown-leaf Woods, a little book in the Ardis Hall nursery, could no longer prop up in the mysterious first picture: two people in one bed. (5.6)
In his poem “On peut très bien, mademoiselle…” (1816) Pushkin compares Princess V. M. Volkonski (a lady-in-waiting whom the young poet mistook for a chambermaid and kissed in a dark corridor of the palace) to une vieille guenon (an old female monkey; cf. “her Parisian gueule de guenon” mentioned by Van) and uses the phrase mon Dieu:
On peut très bien, mademoiselle,
Vous prendre pour une maquerelle,
Ou pour une vieille guenon,
Mais pour une grâce, — oh, mon Dieu, non.
One may very well mistake you, mademoiselle,
for a procuress,
or for an old female monkey,
but for a grace – oh, my God, no.
Une grâce brings to mind Grace Erminin, Greg’s twin sister with whom Ada plays anagrams at the picnic on her twelfth birthday:
But whatever wrath there hung in the air, it soon subsided. Ada asked her governess for pencils and paper. Lying on his stomach, leaning his cheek on his hand, Van looked at his love’s inclined neck as she played anagrams with Grace, who had innocently suggested ‘insect.’
‘Scient,’ said Ada, writing it down.
‘Oh no!’ objected Grace.
‘Oh yes! I’m sure it exists. He is a great scient. Dr Entsic was scient in insects.’
Grace meditated, tapping her puckered brow with the eraser end of the pencil, and came up with:
‘Nicest!’
‘Incest,’ said Ada instantly.
‘I give up,’ said Grace. ‘We need a dictionary to check your little inventions.’ (1.13)
Sobranie nasekomykh (“The Insect Collection,” 1830) is a poem by Pushkin. "Na, sekomoe" ("take it, you who was flogged") is little Klim's cruel pun on nasekomoe (insect) in "The Life of Klim Samgin."
Soon after this picnic in “Ardis the First” Van and Ada become lovers and find out (thanks to Marina's old herbarium discovered in the attic of Ardis Hall) that they are brother and sister. They cannot have children, because Van is sterile. But we do not know anything about Andrey Vinelander (Ada’s husband) and are tempted to assume that Ronald Oranger and Violet Knox are Andrey's and Ada’s grandchildren.
Klim Samgin is a namesake of Baron Klim Avidov (anagram of Vladimir Nabokov), Marina’s former lover who gave her children a set of Flavita (Russian Scrabble):
The set our three children received in 1884 from an old friend of the family (as Marina’s former lovers were known), Baron Klim Avidov, consisted of a large folding board of saffian and a boxful of weighty rectangles of ebony inlaid with platinum letters, only one of which was a Roman one, namely the letter J on the two joker blocks (as thrilling to get as a blank check signed by Jupiter or Jurojin). It was, incidentally, the same kindly but touchy Avidov (mentioned in many racy memoirs of the time) who once catapulted with an uppercut an unfortunate English tourist into the porter’s lodge for his jokingly remarking how clever it was to drop the first letter of one’s name in order to use it as a particule, at the Gritz, in Venezia Rossa. (1.36)
The Gritz blends the luxurious Ritz hotels with Madame Gritsatsuev, a passionate woman, a poet's dream whom Ostap Bender (the main character in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf") marries in Stargorod. A particule (nobility particle) brings to mind d'Arlincourt, a writer in vogue mentioned by the Count in Pushkin's narrative poem Graf Nulin ("Count Null," 1825):
«А что театр?» — О! сиротеет,
C’est bien mauvais, ça fait pitié.
Тальма совсем оглох, слабеет,
И мамзель Марс — увы! стареет.
Зато Потье, le grand Potier!
Он славу прежнюю в народе
Доныне поддержал один.
«Какой писатель нынче в моде?»
— Всё d’Arlincourt и Ламартин. —
Like d'Arlincourt and Lamartine (a poet mentioned by Count Null), Michael Arlen was once a fashionable writer. In Pushkin's poem (a parody of Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece) Natalia Pavlovna gives the Count a box on the ear:
Она, открыв глаза большие,
Глядит на графа — наш герой
Ей сыплет чувства выписные
И дерзновенною рукой
Коснуться хочет одеяла,
Совсем смутив её сначала...
Но тут опомнилась она,
И, гнева гордого полна,
А впрочем, может быть, и страха,
Она Тарквинию с размаха
Дает пощёчину, да, да!
Пощёчину, да ведь какую!
According to Lucette, Van almost got le paquet which she was preparing for the man supposedly "goggling" her hat.
In Pushkin's poem Natalia Pavlovna's husband is a hunter. Tresham portrayed Marina wearing the picture hat she had used for the rehearsal of a Hunting Scene ten years ago.