In VN's novel Korol’, dama, valet (1928) Dreyer before the wedding gave Martha belka (a squirrel) that smelt badly:
Она почти не знала его, когда семь лет тому, ее родители, разорившиеся купцы, без труда уговорили ее выйти за легко и волшебно богатевшего Драйера. Он был очень веселый, пел смешным голосом, подарил ей белку, от которой дурно пахло... Только уж после свадьбы, когда муж, ради медового месяца в Норвегии, - и почему в Норвегии, неизвестно, - отказался от важной деловой поездки в Берн, только тогда кое-что выяснилось.
In King, Queen, Knave” (1967), the novel's English version (that differs from the original rather radically), a squirrel becomes a monkey:
Her mother had died when Martha was three – a not unusual arrangement. A first stepmother soon died too, and that also ran in some families. The second and final stepmother, who died only recently, was a lovely woman of quite gentle birth whom everybody adored. Papa, who had started his career as a saddler and ended it as the bankrupt owner of an artificial leather factory, was desperately eager she marry the “Hussar,” as for some reason he dubbed Dreyer, whom she barely knew when he proposed in 1920, at the same time that Hilda became engaged to the fat little purser of a second-rate Atlantic liner. Dreyer was getting rich with miraculous ease; he was fairly attractive, but bizarre and unpredictable; sang off-key silly arias and made her silly presents.
As a well-bred girl with long lashes and glowing cheeks, she said she would make up her mind the next time he came to Hamburg. Before leaving for Berlin he gave her a monkey which she loathed; fortunately, a handsome young cousin with whom she had gone rather far before he became one of Hilda’s first lovers taught it to light matches, its little jersey caught fire, and the clumsy animal had to be destroyed. When Dreyer returned a week later, she allowed him to kiss her on the cheek. Poor old Papa got so high at the party that he beat up the fiddler, which was pardonable— seeing all the hard luck he had encountered in his long life. It was only after the wedding, when her husband cancelled an important business trip in favor of a ridiculous honeymoon in Norway-why Norway of all places? - that certain doubts began to assail her; but the villa in Grunewald soon dissipated them, and so on, not very interesting recollections. (Chapter 3)
Seven years later, when Martha realizes that she needs a dead husband, she recalls zhenikh s vonyuchey belkoy v rukah (a bridegroom with the foul-smelling squirrel in his hands):
И в тот день Марта кое-что поняла. До сих пор ей казалось, что она действует так обдуманно, так рассудительно, - как действовала всю жизнь. Не деловитый расчет, а фантазия. Та фантазия, которая так всегда была ей ненавистна. Пустая трата времени. Черт знает что. Заскок. Самоуверенность новичка. Уже однажды случилось нечто подобное. Был этот жених с вонючей белкой в руках, из которого она, по молодости лет, думала сделать дюжинного, солидного, послушного мужа. Через месяц, в скучнейшем норвежском городке, она убедилась, что ничего не выйдет. Семь лет холодной борьбы. Ей нужен был тихий муж. Ей нужен был муж обмертвелый. Через семь лет она поняла, что ей просто нужен мертвый муж. Но нельзя так по-дурацки браться за это дело. Если нет опыта, то по крайней мере нужна известная трезвость, разборчивость. А вместо того...
In the English version the foul-smelling squirrel becomes the foul-smelling monkey in Dreyer’s arms:
That day Martha realized a saddening thing. Until then she had thought she was acting no less judiciously than she had acted or wanted to act all her life. Now she saw that some kind of atrocious dreamland was encroaching upon her charts. A beginner’s self-confidence might be pardonable— but that pardonable phase had come and gone. All right — she should never have accepted to marry that clown with the foul-smelling monkey in his arms; all right— she should not have been impressed by his money, she should not have hoped in her youthful naivete to make an ordinary, dignified, obedient husband out of that joker. But at least she had arranged her life the way she wished. Almost eight years of grim struggle. He wanted to take her to Ceylon or Florida, if you please, instead of buying this elegant villa. She needed a sedentary husband. A subdued and grave husband. She needed a dead husband. (Chapter 10)
In compensation, in the English version of KQK, Dreyer tells Martha and Franz that in the woods he made friends with a squirrel:
Dreyer said: “Oh, I’ll return the same way. It’s wonderful in the woods. I made friends with a squirrel. We’ll meet at the Siren Café.” (Chapter 12)
In the English version of KQK Martha dies at the Swistok hospital. Budet vam i belka, budet i svistok! (I’ll give you a squirrel, I’ll give you a whistle!) is a proverbial line from Pleshcheev’s poem Starik (“The Old Man,” 1877):
«Дедушка, голубчик, сделай мне свисток».
— «Дедушка, найди мне беленький грибок».
— «Ты хотел мне нынче сказку рассказать».
— «Посулил ты белку, дедушка, поймать».
— «Ладно, ладно, детки, дайте только срок,
Будет вам и белка, будет и свисток!»
Reading the resort’s guest list, Dreyer mentions Lister of Swistok (the Professor who fails to save Martha’s life) and Blavdak Vinomori (VN's representative in the English version of KQK):
“Professor Klister of Swister,” read Dreyer. “Sorry. Lister of Swistok.”
“If you’re finished, let’s go,” said Martha.
“Blavdak Vinomori,” read Dreyer triumphantly. (Chapter 12)
An anagram of Vladimir Nabokov, Blavdak Vinomori seems also to hint at two Latin sayings: in vino veritas and memento mori. In VN's novel Zashchita Luzhina ("The Luzhin Defense," 1930) 'Veritas' is the name of Valentinov's film company; in VN's novel Kamera Obskura ("Laughter in the Dark," 1932) the dentist in the novella that Segelkranz reads to Kretschmar is a veritable memento mori.
"Professor Klister of Swister" brings to mind Vadim's clystère de Tchékhov in VN's novel Look at the Harlequins! (1974):
Brushing all my engagements aside, I surrendered again--after quite a few years of abstinence!--to the thrill of secret investigations. Spying had
been my clystère de Tchékhov even before I married Iris Black whose later passion for working on an interminable detective tale had been sparked by this or that hint I must have dropped, like a passing bird's lustrous feather, in relation to my experience in the vast and misty field of the Service. In my little way I have been of some help to my betters. The tree, a blue-flowering ash, whose cortical wound I caught the two "diplomats," Tornikovski and Kalikakov, using for their correspondence, still stands, hardly scarred, on its hilltop above San Bernardino. But for structural economy I have omitted that entertaining strain from this story of love and prose. Its existence, however, helped me now to ward off--for a while, at least--the madness and anguish of hopeless regret. (5.1)
In Pushkin's story Pikovaya dama ("The Queen of Spades," 1834) Tomski (whose name brings to mind the Dreyers's dog Tom) points out that Casanova in his Memoirs says that Count Saint-Germain (who told Tomski's grandmother the secret of three cards) was a spy.
Pleshcheev’s younger friend, A. P. Chekhov (1860-1904) died in Badenweiler, a German resort. In a letter of Nov. 25, 1892, to Suvorin Chekhov modestly compares his story Palata No. 6 (“Ward Six,” 1892) to lemonade and complains that modern art, and literature in particular, lacks the alcohol that would intoxicate the reader/viewer:
Вас нетрудно понять, и Вы напрасно браните себя за то, что неясно выражаетесь. Вы горький пьяница, а я угостил Вас сладким лимонадом, и Вы, отдавая должное лимонаду, справедливо замечаете, что в нём нет спирта. В наших произведениях нет именно алкоголя, который бы пьянил и порабощал, и это Вы хорошо даёте понять. Отчего нет? Оставляя в стороне «Палату № 6» и меня самого, будем говорить вообще, ибо это интересней. Будем говорить об общих причинах, коли Вам не скучно, и давайте захватим целую эпоху. Скажите по совести, кто из моих сверстников, т. е. людей в возрасте 30―45 лет дал миру хотя одну каплю алкоголя? Разве Короленко, Надсон и все нынешние драматурги не лимонад? Разве картины Репина или Шишкина кружили Вам голову? Мило, талантливо, Вы восхищаетесь и в то же время никак не можете забыть, что Вам хочется курить. Наука и техника переживают теперь великое время, для нашего же брата это время рыхлое, кислое, скучное, сами мы кислы и скучны, умеем рождать только гуттаперчевых мальчиков, и не видит этого только Стасов, которому природа дала редкую способность пьянеть даже от помоев. Причины тут не в глупости нашей, не в бездарности и не в наглости, как думает Буренин, а в болезни, которая для художника хуже сифилиса и полового истощения. У нас нет «чего-то», это справедливо, и это значит, что поднимите подол нашей музе, и Вы увидите там плоское место. Вспомните, что писатели, которых мы называем вечными или просто хорошими и которые пьянят нас, имеют один общий и весьма важный признак: они куда-то идут и Вас зовут туда же, и Вы чувствуете не умом, а всем своим существом, что у них есть какая-то цель, как у тени отца Гамлета, которая недаром приходила и тревожила воображение. У одних, смотря по калибру, цели ближайшие ― крепостное право, освобождение родины, политика, красота или просто водка, как у Дениса Давыдова, у других цели отдалённые ― бог, загробная жизнь, счастье человечества и т. п. Лучшие из них реальны и пишут жизнь такою, какая она есть, но оттого, что каждая строчка пропитана, как соком, сознанием цели, Вы, кроме жизни, какая есть, чувствуете еще ту жизнь, какая должна быть, и это пленяет Вас.
It is easy to understand you, and there is no need for you to abuse yourself for obscurity of expression. You are a hard drinker, and I have regaled you with sweet lemonade, and you, after giving the lemonade its due, justly observe that there is no spirit in it. That is just what is lacking in our productions―the alcohol which could intoxicate and subjugate, and you state that very well. Why not? Putting aside "Ward No. 6" and myself, let us discuss the matter in general, for that is more interesting. Let us discuss the general causes, if that won't bore you, and let us include the whole age. Tell me honestly, who of my contemporaries―that is, men between thirty and forty-five―have given the world one single drop of alcohol? Are not Korolenko, Nadson, and all the playwrights of to-day, lemonade? Have Repin's or Shishkin's pictures turned your head? Charming, talented, you are enthusiastic; but at the same time you can't forget that you want to smoke. Science and technical knowledge are passing through a great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, and dull time. We are stale and dull ourselves, we can only beget gutta-percha boys, and the only person who does not see that is Stasov, to whom nature has given a rare faculty for getting drunk on slops. The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our insolence, as Burenin imagines, but in a disease which for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something," that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will find within an empty void. Let me remind you that the writers, who we say are for all time or are simply good, and who intoxicate us, have one common and very important characteristic; they are going towards something and are summoning you towards it, too, and you feel not with your mind, but with your whole being, that they have some object, just like the ghost of Hamlet's father, who did not come and disturb the imagination for nothing. Some have more immediate objects―the abolition of serfdom, the liberation of their country, politics, beauty, or simply vodka, like Denis Davydov; others have remote objects―God, life beyond the grave, the happiness of humanity, and so on. The best of them are realists and paint life as it is, but, through every line's being soaked in the consciousness of an object, you feel, besides life as it is, the life which ought to be, and that captivates you.
Chekhov calls Suvorin gor'kiy p'yanitsa (“a hard drinker”). 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!" The characters in VN's novel Ada (1969) include Dr Krolik, Ada’s beloved lepidopterist and teacher of natural history. In KQK Blavdak Vinomori appears with his wife and butterfly net:
The other day as they were having ice chocolate there, Martha counted at least three foreigners among the crowd. One, judging by his newspaper, was a Dane. The other two were a less easily determinable pair: the girl was trying in vain to attract the attention of the café cat, a small black animal sitting on a chair and licking one hind paw rigidly raised like a shouldered club. Her companion, a suntanned fellow, smoked and smiled. What language were they speaking? Polish? Esthonian? Leaning near them against the wall was some kind of net: a bag of pale-bluish gauze on a ring fixed to a rod of light metal.
“Shrimp catchers,” said Martha. “I want shrimps for din ner tonight.” (She clicked her front teeth.)
“No,” said Franz. “That’s not a fisherman’s net. That’s for catching mosquitoes.”
“Butterflies,” said Dreyer, lifting an index finger.
“Who wants to catch butterflies?” remarked Martha.
“Oh, it must be good sport,” said Dreyer.
“In fact, I think to have a passion for something is the greatest happiness on earth.” (Chapter 12)