In VN's novel Ada (1969) general Durmanov (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's maternal grandfather) wondered why his wife did not call one of her twins Tofana:
The Durmanovs’ favorite domain, however, was Raduga near the burg of that name, beyond Estotiland proper, in the Atlantic panel of the continent between elegant Kaluga, New Cheshire, U.S.A., and no less elegant Ladoga, Mayne, where they had their town house and where their three children were born: a son, who died young and famous, and a pair of difficult female twins. Dolly had inherited her mother's beauty and temper but also an older ancestral strain of whimsical, and not seldom deplorable, taste, well reflected, for instance, in the names she gave her daughters: Aqua and Marina ('Why not Tofana?' wondered the good and sur-royally antlered general with a controlled belly laugh, followed by a small closing cough of feigned detachment - he dreaded his wife's flares). (1.1)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Tofana: allusion to 'aqua tofana' (see any good dictionary).
sur-royally: fully antlered, with terminal prongs.
Aqua tofana was a strong poison that was reputedly widely used in Naples and Rome. In the early 17th century Giulia Tofana, or Tofania, an infamous lady from Palermo, made a good business for over fifty years selling her large production of aqua tofana to would-be widows. The product was sold to lady clients, accompanied by instructions for its use. In VN’s novel Korol’, dama, valet (“King, Queen, Knave,” 1928) Martha and Franz read about Tofana, a Sicilian girl who sold her 'aqua' in vials mislabelled with the innocent image of a saint:
Из энциклопедического словаря они узнали о ядах Локусты и Борджиа. Какой-то отравленный перстень недели две мучил воображение Франца. По ночам ему снилось коварное рукопожатие. Он спросонья шарахался в сторону, и замирал, приподнявшись на напряженной руке; где под ним, на простыне, только что перекатился колючий перстень, и страшно было на него ненароком лечь. Но днем, при спокойном свете Марты, все было опять так просто. Тоффана продавала свою водицу в склянках с невинным изображением святого. Словно после благодушной понюшки, почихивала жертва министра Лэстера. Марта нетерпеливо захлопывала словарь и искала в другом томе. Оказывалось, что римское право видело в венефиции сочетание убийства и предательства. "Умники..."- усмехалась Марта, резко перевертывая страницу. Но она не могла добраться до сути дела. Ироническое "смотри" отсылало ее к каким-то алкалоидам. Франц дышал, глядя через её плечо.
From a second-rate encyclopedia they learned about all sorts of dismal Lucrezias and Locustas. A hollow-diamond ring, filled with rainbow venom, tormented Franz's imagination. He would dream at night of a treacherous handshake. Half-awake, he would recoil and not dare to move: somewhere under him, on the sheet, the prickly ring had just rolled, and he was terrified it might sting him. But in the daytime, by Martha’s serene light, all was simple again. Tofana, a Sicilian girl, who dispatched 639 people, sold her “aqua” in vials mislabelled with the innocent image of a saint. The Earl of Leicester had a mellower method: his victim would blissfully sneeze after a pinch of lethal snuff. Martha would impatiently shut the P-R volume and search in another. They learned, with complete indifference, that toxemia caused anemia and that Roman law saw in deliberate toxication a blend of murder and betrayal. “Deep thinkers,” remarked Martha with a snarling laugh, sharply turning the page. Still she could not get to the heart of the matter. A sardonic “See” sent her to something called “alkaloids.” Another “See” led to the fang of a centipede, magnified, if you please. Franz, unaccustomed to big encyclopedias, breathed heavily as he looked over her shoulder. (Chapter 8)
“See any good dictionary” (Darkbloom’s parenthetic remark) in Ada seems to hint at ironicheskoe smotri (a sardonic “See”) in KQK. Venefitsiy (“deliberate toxication”) in which Roman law saw a blend of murder and betrayal brings to mind the Veen family in Ada. It seems that poor Aqua (who married Demon Veen, Van's and Ada's father) went mad because she was poisoned by her twin sister Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother). Eventually Aqua commits suicide by taking poison (1.3).
In Aldanov's novel Klyuch (“The Key,” 1929) the police believes that Fisher (a rich banker who, like Humbert Humbert, loves little girls) was poisoned with an alkaloid of the belladonna type:
- Алкaлоид родa беллaдонны, - хмурясь и морщa лоб, повторил вслух Яценко. (Part One, chapter XXXIII)
Braun questions the results of the post-mortem examination. He suggests that Fisher was poisoned with cantharidin:
"Есть яды, которые веселящимися людьми употребляются с особой целью. Тогда ваше возражение падает. Вполне возможно и правдоподобно, что, отправляясь на ту квартиру, Фишер принял одно из таких средств. Да вот кантаридин. Есть такой яд особого назначения, ангидрид кантаридиновой кислоты… Он вообще мало изучен, и немногочисленные исследователи чрезвычайно расходятся насчёт того, какова смертельная доза этого вещества. Яд этот должен был бы дать при вскрытии приблизительно те же симптомы, что и «белладонна»." (Part Two, Chapter XV)
In 'Ursus' Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) wears a lustrous cantharid green evening gown:
Knowing how fond his sisters were of Russian fare and Russian floor shows, Van took them Saturday night to ‘Ursus,’ the best Franco-Estonian restaurant in Manhattan Major. Both young ladies wore the very short and open evening gowns that Vass ‘miraged’ that season — in the phrase of that season: Ada, a gauzy black, Lucette, a lustrous cantharid green. Their mouths ‘echoed’ in tone (but not tint) each other’s lipstick; their eyes were made up in a ‘surprised bird-of-paradise’ style that was as fashionable in Los as in Lute. Mixed metaphors and double-talk became all three Veens, the children of Venus. (2.8)
Describing his debauch à trois with Ada and Lucette after their dinner in 'Ursus,' Van compares Lucette's tears to aquamarines:
A dewdrop on russet moss eventually finds a stylistic response in the aquamarine tear on her flaming cheekbone. Another trip from the port to the interior reveals the central girl's long white left thigh; we visit souvenir stalls: Ada's red-lacquered talons, which lead a man's reasonably recalcitrant, pardonably yielding wrist out of the dim east to the bright russet west, and the sparkle of her diamond necklace, which, for the nonce, is not much more valuable than the aquamarines on the other (west) side of Novelty Novel lane. (2.8)
A phrase used by Van at the end of his apologetic note to Lucette, “destroy and forget” seems to hint at oubli ou regret? ("oblivion or regret?"), in Pushkin’s story Pikovaya dama (“The Queen of Spades,” 1833) the question with which three ladies at a ball approach Tomski (who dances a mazurka with Lizaveta Ivanovna):
Подошедшие к ним три дамы с вопросами — oubli ou regret? — прервали разговор, который становился мучительно любопытен для Лизаветы Ивановны.
Дама, выбранная Томским, была сама княжна ***. Она успела с ним изъясниться, обежав лишний круг и лишний раз повертевшись перед своим стулом.
Three ladies approaching him with the question: "oubli ou regret?" interrupted the conversation, which had become so tantalizingly interesting to Lizaveta Ivanovna.
The lady chosen by Tomski was Princess Polina herself. She succeeded in effecting a reconciliation with him during the numerous turns of the dance, after which he conducted her to her chair. (chapter IV)
According to Tomski, his eighty-year-old grandmother (who sixty years ago was known in Paris as la Vénus muscovite) knows the secret of three cards. The name of the Dreyers's dog in KQK, Tom seems to hint at Tomski.
Describing Ada’s dramatic career, Van mentions Belladonna, a movie magazine which Greg Erminin had sent him:
Van had seen the picture [Four Sisters] and had liked it. An Irish girl, the infinitely graceful and melancholy Lenore Colline -
Oh! qui me rendra ma colline
Et le grand chene and my colleen!
- harrowingly resembled Ada Ardis as photographed with her mother in Belladonna, a movie magazine which Greg Erminin had sent him, thinking it would delight him to see aunt and cousin, together, on a California patio just before the film was released. (2.9)
Lenore Colline eventually marries her lover, Prince Alphonse ("Alph"), and becomes the queen of Portugal (Part Four).
Telling Van about Ada’s wedding, Lucette mentions a man from Belladonna who took pictures:
'Your father,' added Lucette, 'paid a man from Belladonna to take pictures - but of course, real fame begins only when one's name appears in that cine-magazine's crossword puzzle. We all know it will never happen, never! Do you hate me now?' (3.5)
In KQK VN mentions an indelible pencil that had rapaciously filled in most of the crossword’s blank squares:
Это был неказистый, насупленный ресторанчик на той улице, где жил Франц. Трое мужчин молча дулись в скат. Жена одного из них, бледная, как пласт остывшей телятины, сонно следила за игрой. Худенькая барышня с тиком листала в углу старый иллюстрированный журнал, в котором уже давно чей-то химический карандаш хищно заполнил пустоты крестословиц. Дама в кротовом пальто (приятно поразившем кабатчицу) и молодой человек в черепаховых очках пили вишневую наливку и глядели друг другу в глаза. Пьяный малый в картузе постукивал по толстому стеклу, за которым металлической колбасой сбились монеты,- проигрыш всех тех, кто, сунув в щель один грош, рукояткой подвигал туда-сюда жестяного жонглёрчика, пока скатывалась горошинка по извилистым желобкам. Было темновато, тихо и дымно. Рыбьим блеском отливала стойка, озябшая от пивной пены. Кабатчица, с двумя зелеными шерстяными футболами вместо грудей и со множеством розовых веснушек на лице, зевая, глядела туда, где лакей, полускрытый ширмой, пожирал рыхлую гору вареного картофеля. На стене были деревянные часы, каким-то образом вделанные в оленьи рога, и олеография - встреча Бисмарка с Наполеоном III. Картёжники шелестели всё тише.
An unprepossessing sullen little cafe, not far from where Franz lives. Three men engrossed in a silent game of skat. The wife of one of them, pregnant and veal-pale, sleepily following their game. A plain girl with a nervous tic, leafing through an old picture magazine and stopping at the messy death of a riddle: an indelible pencil had rapaciously filled in most of the crossword’s blank squares. A lady in a moleskin coat (that impressed the proprietress of the place) and a young man in tortoise shell glasses, sipping cherry brandy and gazing into each other’s eyes. A drunk in an unemployed-looking cap tapping on the thick glass behind which coins had bunched together forming a metal sausage— the losses of all those who had put a coin in the slot and had moved the handle to activate the little tin juggler while his tiny bright balls followed the winding grooves. The counter, chilled by beer foam, gives off a fish-like sheen. The proprietress has two green wool soccer balls for breasts. She yawns as she looks toward a dark nook where the waiter, half-concealed by a screen, is devouring a mountain of mashed potatoes. On the wall behind her tocks a cuckoo clock of carved wood surmounted by a pair of antlers and beside it there is an oleograph depicting the meeting of Bismarck and Napoleon III. The rustle of the card players grows softer and softer. It has now stopped altogether. (Chapter Six)
Olen’yi roga (a pair of antlers) brings to mind the good and sur-royally antlered general Durmanov. It is believed that ryen’ (the old Russian word for “September”) comes from ryov oleney (the roar of deer). According to Van, all the hundred floramors (palatial brothels built by David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, all over the world in memory of his grandson Eric) opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875:
His nephew and heir, an honest but astoundingly stuffy clothier in Ruinen (somewhere near Zwolle, I’m told), with a large family and a small trade, was not cheated out of the millions of guldens, about the apparent squandering of which he had been consulting mental specialists during the last ten years or so. All the hundred floramors opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875 (and by a delicious coincidence the old Russian word for September, ‘ryuen’,’ which might have spelled ‘ruin,’ also echoed the name of the ecstatic Neverlander’s hometown). (2.3)
The author of an essay entitled “Villa Venus: an Organized Dream,” Eric Veen brings to mind Erica, in KQK Dreyer’s former mistress who asks Dreyer if his wife is faithful to him:
Помнишь, - сказал он и пропел фальшиво, но с чувством: "меня зовут Мими..."
- О, я уже не богема,- усмехнулась она, быстро-быстро тряся головой. - А вот ты все такой же, такой... (она не сразу могла подобрать слово) ...пустяковый.
Он опять подтолкнул мальчика, сгорбившегося над рулем, хотел его мимоходом погладить по светлокудрой голове, но тот уже отъехал...
- Ты мне не ответил: ты счастлив? - спросила Эрика.- Скажи?
- Пожалуй - не совсем,- ответил он и прищурился.
- Жена тебя любит?
- Как тебе сказать...-проговорил он и опять прищурился.- ...Видишь ли, она очень холодна... - Верна тебе? Держу пари, что изменяет. Ведь ты... Он рассмеялся:
- Ах, ты ее не знаешь. Я тебе говорю, - она холодна. Я себе не представляю, как она кого-либо - даже меня - по своей бы воле поцеловала.
“Don’t you remember, Erica, you would recite it with curtseys, oh, don’t you remember?”
“I certainly don’t. But I was asking you, Kurt. Does your wife love you?”
“Well, how should I put it. You see. ... She is not what you’d call a passionate woman. She does not make love on a bench in the park, or on a balcony like a swallow.”
“Is she faithful to you, your queen?”
“ Ihr ’ blasse Lippe war rot im Kuss . . . .”
“I bet she deceives you.”
“But I’m telling you she’s cold and reasonable, and self-controlled. Lovers! She does not know the first letter of adultery.” (Chapter 9)
According to Erica, she is not Bohemian anymore. Demon Veen (Van’s and Ada’s father) learnt of Marina’s affair with Baron d’Onsky from a Bohemian lady (who married d’Onsky after his sword duel with Demon):
Next day Demon was having tea at his favorite hotel with a Bohemian lady whom he had never seen before and was never to see again (she desired his recommendation for a job in the Glass Fish-and-Flower department in a Boston museum) when she interrupted her voluble self to indicate Marina and Aqua, blankly slinking across the hall in modish sullenness and bluish furs with Dan Veen and a dackel behind, and said:
‘Curious how that appalling actress resembles "Eve on the Clepsydrophone" in Parmigianino’s famous picture.’
‘It is anything but famous,’ said Demon quietly, ‘and you can’t have seen it. I don’t envy you,’ he added; ‘the naive stranger who realizes that he or she has stepped into the mud of an alien life must experience a pretty sickening feeling. Did you get that small-talk information directly from a fellow named d’Onsky or through a friend of a friend of his?’
‘Friend of his,’ replied the hapless Bohemian lady.
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)
The name of Demon’s adversary seems to hint at Onegin’s donskoy zherebets (Don stallion) in Chapter Two (V: 4) of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin:
Сначала все к нему езжали;
Но так как с заднего крыльца
Обыкновенно подавали
Ему донского жеребца,
Лишь только вдоль большой дороги
Заслышит их домашни дроги, -
Поступком оскорбясь таким,
Все дружбу прекратили с ним.
At first they all would call on him,
but since to the back porch
there was habitually brought
a Don stallion for him
the moment that along the highway
one heard their homely shandrydans -
outraged by such behavior,
they all ceased to be friends with him.
At the end of Pushkin’s little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Salieri mentions sozdatel’ Vatikana (the Vatican's creator):
Сальери. Ты заснёшь
Надолго, Моцарт! Но ужель он прав,
И я не гений? Гений и злодейство
Две вещи несовместные. Неправда:
А Бонаротти? Или это сказка
Тупой, бессмысленной толпы — и не был
Убийцею создатель Ватикана?
Salieri. You will sleep
For long, Mozart! But what if he is right?
I am no genius? "Genius and evildoing
Are incompatibles." That is not true:
And Buonarotti?.. Or is it a legend
Of the dull-witted, senseless crowd -- while really
The Vatican's creator was no murderer? (Scene II)
After slipping poison into Mozart's glass, Salieri listens to Mozart's Requiem and mentions a suffering member that the healing knife had chopped off:
Эти слёзы
Впервые лью: и больно и приятно,
Как будто тяжкий совершил я долг,
Как будто нож целебный мне отсек
Страдавший член!
Such tears as these
I shed for the first time. It hurts, yet soothes,
As if I had fulfilled a heavy duty,
As if at last the healing knife had chopped
A suffering member off. (ibid.)
Describing Lucette’s suicide, Van compares himself to Father Sergius who chops off a wrong member in Count Tolstoy's famous anecdote:
In a series of sixty-year-old actions which now I can grind into extinction only by working on a succession of words until the rhythm is right, I, Van, retired to my bathroom, shut the door (it swung open at once, but then closed of its own accord) and using a temporary expedient less far-fetched than that hit upon by Father Sergius (who chops off the wrong member in Count Tolstoy's famous anecdote), vigorously got rid of the prurient pressure as he had done the last time seventeen years ago. (3.5)
In Tolstoy's story Father Sergius chops off his finger in order to resist the charms of a young woman who wants to seduce him. In Garshin's story Trus ("The Coward," 1879) the narrator compares himself to palets ot nogi (a toe) of some immense organism that has decided to cut him off and throw him away:
Огромному неведомому тебе организму, которого ты составляешь ничтожную часть, захотелось отрезать тебя и бросить. И что можешь сделать против такого желания ты, ...ты палец от ноги?..
Some immense organism you know not of, but of which you form an insignificant part, has decided to cut you off and throw you away. And what can you do against such a desire, you-- "a toe of the foot"?
In Shakespeare's Coriolanus Menenius compares the first citizen to a great toe:
The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members; for examine
Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly
Touching the weal o' the common, you shall find
No public benefit which you receive
But it proceeds or comes from them to you
And no way from yourselves. What do you think,
You, the great toe of this assembly?
First Citizen
I the great toe! why the great toe? (Act One, scene 1)
Like Menenius, Martha (“the Queen” in KQK), Marina and Marcel (the narrator in Proust's "In Search of Lost Time"), the thee last words of Ada (“much, much more”) begin with M. At a Mad Tea-Party the Dormouse (a character in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) tells a story about three little sisters who lived at the bottom of a well and drew everything that begins with an M (including muchness):
'They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; 'and they drew all manner of things — everything that begins with an M — '
'Why with an M?' said Alice.
'Why not?' said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: ' — that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness — you know you say things are "much of a muchness" — did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?' (chapter 7: “A Mad Tea-Party”)
“A drawing of a muchness” brings to mind sad nothings fingerpainted on wet stone by Philip Rack (Lucette’s music teacher):
The melancholy young German was in a philosophical mood shading into the suicidal. He had to return to Kalugano with his Elsie, who Doc Ecksreher thought ‘would present him with driplets in dry weeks.’ He hated Kalugano, his and her home town, where in a moment of ‘mutual aberration’ stupid Elsie had given him her all on a park bench after a wonderful office party at Muzakovski’s Organs where the oversexed pitiful oaf had a good job.
‘When are you leaving?’ asked Ada.
‘Forestday — after tomorrow.’
‘Fine. That’s fine. Adieu, Mr Rack.’
Poor Philip drooped, fingerpainting sad nothings on wet stone, shaking his heavy head, gulping visibly.
‘One feels… One feels,’ he said, ‘that one is merely playing a role and has forgotten the next speech.’
‘I’m told many feel that,’ said Ada; ‘it must be a furchtbar feeling.’
Cannot be helped? No hope any more at all? I am dying, yes?’
You are dead, Mr Rack,’ said Ada. (1.32)
Philip Rack was poisoned by his jealous wife Elsie and dies in Ward Five of the Kalugano hospital. The name of one of the three sisters in the Dormouse’s story was Elsie:
'Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; 'and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well — ' (chapter 7)
Some characters of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are the playing cards. According to Ada, she never read Palace in Wonderland:
‘Playing croquet with you,’ said Van, ‘should be rather like using flamingoes and hedgehogs.’
‘Our reading lists do not match,’ replied Ada. ‘That Palace in Wonderland was to me the kind of book everybody so often promised me I would adore, that I developed an insurmountable prejudice toward it. Have you read any of Mlle Larivière’s stories? Well, you will. She thinks that in some former Hindooish state she was a boulevardier in Paris; and writes accordingly. We can squirm from here into the front hall by a secret passage, but I think we are supposed to go and look at the grand chêne which is really an elm.’ Did he like elms? Did he know Joyce’s poem about the two washerwomen? He did, indeed. Did he like it? He did. In fact he was beginning to like very much arbors and ardors and Adas. They rhymed. Should he mention it?
‘And now,’ she said, and stopped, staring at him.
‘Yes?’ he said, ‘and now?’
‘Well, perhaps, I ought not to try to divert you — after you trampled upon those circles of mine; but I’m going to relent and show you the real marvel of Ardis Manor; my larvarium, it’s in the room next to mine’ (which he never saw, never — how odd, come to think of it!). (1.8)
Describing his visit to Ada’s larvarium, Van mentions Les Malheurs de Swann:
(At ten or earlier the child had read — as Van had — Les Malheurs de Swann, as the next sample reveals):
I think Marina would stop scolding me for my hobby ("There’s something indecent about a little girl’s keeping such revolting pets…," "Normal young ladies should loathe snakes and worms," et cetera) if I could persuade her to overcome her old-fashioned squeamishness and place simultaneously on palm and pulse (the hand alone would not be roomy enough!) the noble larva of the Cattleya Hawkmoth (mauve shades of Monsieur Proust), a seven-inch-long colossus flesh colored, with turquoise arabesques, rearing its hyacinth head in a stiff "Sphinxian" attitude.’ (ibid.)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Les malheurs de Swann: cross between Les malheurs de Sophie by Mme de Ségur (née Countess Rostopchin) and Proust’s Un amour de Swann.
In Les regrets, rêveries couleur du temps (“Regrets, Reveries the Color of Time”), the penultimate story in Les Plaisirs et les Jours (“Pleasures and Days,” 1896), Proust mentions dames, rois ou valets (queens, kings or knaves) who were the still guests at her wildest parties.
On the eve of the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time), Ada is building a castle of cards:
‘Fine,’ said Van, ‘that’s certainly fascinating; but I was thinking of the first time you might have suspected I was also a sick pig or horse. I am recalling,’ he continued, ‘the round table in the round rosy glow and you kneeling next to me on a chair. I was perched on the chair’s swelling arm and you were building a house of cards, and your every movement was magnified, of course, as in a trance, dream-slow but also tremendously vigilant, and I positively reveled in the girl odor of your bare arm and in that of your hair which now is murdered by some popular perfume. I date the event around June 10 — a rainy evening less than a week after my first arrival at Ardis.’
‘I remember the cards,’ she said, ‘and the light and the noise of the rain, and your blue cashmere pullover — but nothing else, nothing odd or improper, that came later. Besides, only in French love stories les messieurs hument young ladies.’
‘Well, I did while you went on with your delicate work. Tactile magic. Infinite patience. Fingertips stalking gravity. Badly bitten nails, my sweet. Forgive these notes, I cannot really express the discomfort of bulky, sticky desire. You see I was hoping that when your castle toppled you would make a Russian splash gesture of surrender and sit down on my hand.’
‘It was not a castle. It was a Pompeian Villa with mosaics and paintings inside, because I used only court cards from Grandpa’s old gambling packs. Did I sit down on your hot hard hand?’
‘On my open palm, darling. A pucker of paradise. You remained still for a moment, fitting my cup. Then you rearranged your limbs and reknelt.’
‘Quick, quick, quick, collecting the flat shining cards again to build again, again slowly? We were abominably depraved, weren’t we?’
‘All bright kids are depraved. I see you do recollect —’
‘Not that particular occasion, but the apple tree, and when you kissed my neck, et tout le reste. And then — zdravstvuyte: apofeoz, the Night of the Burning Barn!’ (1.18)
At the beginning of the next chapter Van mentions Les Sophismes de Sophie by Mlle Stopchin in the Bibliothèque Vieux Rose series):
A sort of hoary riddle (Les Sophismes de Sophie by Mlle Stopchin in the Bibliothèque Vieux Rose series): did the Burning Barn come before the Cockloft or the Cockloft come first. Oh, first! We had long been kissing cousins when the fire started. In fact, I was getting some Château Baignet cold cream from Ladore for my poor chapped lips. And we both were roused in our separate rooms by her crying au feu! July 28? August 4?
Who cried? Stopchin cried? Larivière cried? Larivière? Answer! Crying that the barn flambait? (1.19)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Mlle Stopchin: a representative of Mme de Ségur, née Rostopchine, author of Les Malheurs de Sophie (nomenclatorially occupied on Antiterra by Les Malheurs de Swann).
au feu!: fire!
flambait: was in flames.
It seems that, in the hope to spend the night with Van, Ada bribed Kim Beauharnais (a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis) to set the barn on fire. Kim's surname hints at Josephine Beauharnais (Napoleon's first wife who is known on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set, as Queen Josephine, 1.5). The mad gambler in Pushkin's "Queen of Spades," Hermann bears a striking resemblance to Napoleon:
Утро наступало. Лизавета Ивановна погасила догорающую свечу: бледный свет озарил её комнату. Она отёрла заплаканные глаза и подняла их на Германна: он сидел на окошке, сложа руки и грозно нахмурясь. В этом положении удивительно напоминал он портрет Наполеона. Это сходство поразило даже Лизавету Ивановну.
The day began to dawn. Lizaveta Ivanovna extinguished her candle: a pale light illumined her room. She wiped her tear-stained eyes and raised them
towards Hermann: he was sitting near the window, with his arms crossed and with a fierce frown upon his forehead. In this attitude he bore a striking
resemblance to the portrait of Napoleon. This resemblance struck even Lizaveta Ivanovna. (chapter IV)