Drei being German for “three,” the name Dreyer (of the king in VN’s novel “King, Queen, Knave,” 1928) seems to hint at troyka (the three), one of the three magic cards in Pushkin’s story Pikovaya dama (“The Queen of Spades,” 1834):
Две неподвижные идеи не могут вместе существовать в нравственной природе, так же, как два тела не могут в физическом мире занимать одно и то же место. Тройка, семёрка, туз – скоро заслонили в воображении Германна образ мёртвой старухи. Тройка, семёрка, туз – не выходили из его головы и шевелились на его губах. Увидев молодую девушку, он говорил: «Как она стройна!.. Настоящая тройка червонная». У него спрашивали: «который час», он отвечал: «без пяти минут семёрка». Всякий пузатый мужчина напоминал ему туза. Тройка, семёрка, туз – преследовали его во сне, принимая все возможные виды: тройка цвела перед ним в образе пышного грандифлора, семёрка представлялась готическими воротами, туз огромным пауком. Все мысли его слились в одну, – воспользоваться тайной, которая дорого ему стоила. Он стал думать об отставке и о путешествии. Он хотел в открытых игрецких домах Парижа вынудить клад у очарованной фортуны. Случай избавил его от хлопот.
Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world. "Three, seven, ace," soon drove out of Hermann's mind the thought of the dead Countess. "Three, seven, ace," were perpetually running through his head and continually being repeated by his lips. If he saw a young girl, he would say: "How slender she is! quite like the three of hearts." If anybody asked: "What is the time?" he would reply: "Five minutes to seven."
Every stout man that he saw reminded him of the ace. "Three, seven, ace" haunted him in his sleep, and assumed all possible shapes. The threes bloomed before him in the forms of magnificent flowers, the sevens were represented by Gothic portals, and the aces became transformed into gigantic spiders. One thought alone occupied his whole mind--to make a profitable use of the secret which he had purchased so dearly. He thought of applying for a furlough so as to travel abroad. He wanted to go to Paris and tempt fortune in some of the public gambling-houses that abounded there. Chance spared him all this trouble. (chapter VI)
Troyka chervonnaya (the three of hearts), into which Hermann’s fantasy transforms a slender young girl, brings to mind “those three court cards, all hearts” mentioned by VN in his Foreword to the English translation (1967) of Korol’, dama, valet:
Finally, the question of the title. Those three court cards, all hearts, I have retained, while discarding a small pair. The two new cards dealt me may justify the gamble, for I have always had an ivory thumb in this game. Tightly, narrowly, closely, through the smart of tobacco smoke, one edge is squeezed out. Frog’s heart – as they say in Russian Gulch. And Jingle Bells! I can only hope that my good old partners, replete with full houses and straights, will think I am bluffing.
VN’s novel ends in the death of Martha (the queen). At the end of Pushkin’s story Chekalinski tells Hermann (who produced, by a sinister blunder, the wrong card – a queen instead of the ace he thought he had taken from his deck): Dama vasha ubita (“your queen has lost”). Literally, Chekalinski’s words mean: “your lady is killed.”
In P'yanitsa (a favorite card game among Russian children) the ace of hearts is sometimes affectionately called serdechko lyagushki (frog's heart). In Alexander Blok's poem Neznakomka ("The Unknown Woman," 1906) p'yanitsy s glazami krolikov (the drunks with the eyes of rabbits) cry out: "In vino veritas!" ("In wine is truth!"). An anagram of Vladimir Nabokov, Blavdak Vinomori (the name of VN's representative in the English version of KQK) also seems to hint at Blok and at another Latin phrase, memento mori.