In his essay "The Texture of Time" (1922) Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions his eighth birthday and uses the word “eureka:”
Is there any mental uranium whose dream-delta decay might be used to measure the age of a recollection? The main difficulty, I hasten to explain, consists in the experimenter not being able to use the same object at different times (say, the Dutch stove with its little blue sailing boats in the nursery of Ardis Manor in 1884 and 1888) because of the two or more impressions borrowing from one another and forming a compound image in the mind; but if different objects are to be chosen (say, the faces of two memorable coachmen: Ben Wright, 1884, and Trofim Fartukov, 1888), it is impossible, insofar as my own research goes, to avoid the intrusion not only of different characteristics but of different emotional circumstances, that do not allow the two objects to be considered essentially equal before, so to speak, their being exposed to the action of Time. I am not sure, that such objects cannot be discovered. In my professional work, in the laboratories of psychology, I have devised myself many a subtle test (one of which, the method of determining female virginity without physical examination, today bears my name). Therefore we can assume that the experiment can be performed — and how tantalizing, then, the discovery of certain exact levels of decreasing saturation or deepening brilliance — so exact that the ‘something’ which I vaguely perceive in the image of a remembered but unidentifiable person, and which assigns it ‘somehow’ to my early boyhood rather than to my adolescence, can be labeled if not with a name, at least with a definite date, e.g., January 1, 1908 (eureka, the ‘e.g.’ worked — he was my father’s former house tutor, who brought me Alice in the Camera Obscura for my eighth birthday). (Part Four)
According to the family tree with which Ada is prefaced, Van Veen was born in 1870. But if Van’s eighth birthday is January 1, 1908, Van was born on Jan. 1, 1900. In VN’s story Lik (1939) Lik is in his thirties, and so is the century (in the Russian original Lik is several years younger than the century):
Трудно, впрочем, решить, обладал ли он подлинным театральным талантом, или же был человек многих невнятных призваний, из которых выбрал первое попавшееся, но мог бы с таким же успехом быть живописцем, ювелиром, крысоловом... Такого рода существа напоминают помещение со множеством разных дверей, среди которых, быть может, находится одна, которая, действительно, ведет прямо в сад, в лунную глубь чудной человеческой ночи, где душа добывает ей одной предназначенные сокровища. Но как бы то ни было, этой двери Александр Лик не отворил, а попал на актёрский путь, по которому шёл без увлечения, с рассеянным видом человека, ищущего каких-то путевых примет, которых нет, но которые, пожалуй, снились или, быть может, принадлежат другой, как бы не проявленной, местности, где ему не бывать никогда, никогда. В условном же плане земного быта, ему было за тридцать, но всё же на несколько лет меньше, чем веку, а потому память о России, которая у людей пожилых, застрявших за границей собственной жизни, превращается либо в необыкновенно сильно развитый орган, работающий постоянно и своей секрецией возмещающий все исторические убытки, либо в раковую опухоль души, мешающую дышать, спать, общаться с беспечными иностранцами,-- у него эта память оставалась в зачаточном виде, исчерпываясь туманными впечатлениями детства, вроде соснового запашка дачного новоселья или асимметричной снежинки на башлыке. Его родители умерли, жил он один, любовь и дружбы, перепадавшие ему, все были какие-то сквозные, никто к нему не писал писем просто так, потому что хочется, никто не интересовался его заботами живее его самого, и, когда недавно он узнал от двух докторов -- француза и русского,-- что у него, как у многих литературных героев, неизлечимая болезнь сердца, как-то не к кому было пойти и пожаловаться на незаслуженную шаткость его, его бытия, когда улицы так и кишат здоровенными стариками. И каким-то образом с его болезнью было связано то, что он любил хорошие, дорогие вещи, мог, например, на последние двести франков купить нашейный платок или вечное перо, но всегда, всегда случалось так, что эти вещи у него пачкались, ломались, портились, несмотря на всю его бережную, даже набожную аккуратность.
It was hard to say, though, if Lik (the word means “countenance” in Russian and Middle English) possessed genuine theatrical talent or was a man of many indistinct callings who had chosen one of them at random but could just as well have been a painter, jeweler, or ratcatcher. Such a person resembles a room with a number of different doors, among which there is perhaps one that does lead straight into some great garden, into the moonlit depths of a marvelous human night, where the soul discovers the treasure intended for it alone. But, be that as it may, Lik had failed to open that door, taking instead the Thespian path, which he followed without enthusiasm, with the absent manner of a man looking for signposts that do not exist but that perhaps have appeared to him in a dream, or can be distinguished in the undeveloped photograph of some other locality that he will never, never visit. On the conventional plane of earthly habitus, he was in his thirties, and so was the century. In elderly people stranded not only outside the border of their country but outside that of their own lives, nostalgia evolves into an extraordinarily complex organ, which functions continuously, and its secretion compensates for all that has been lost; or else it becomes a fatal tumor on the soul that makes it painful to breathe, sleep, and associate with carefree foreigners. In Lik, this memory of Russia remained in the embryonic state, confined to misty childhood recollections, such as the resinous fragrance of the first spring day in the country, or the special shape of the snowflake on the wool of his hood. His parents were dead. He lived alone. There was always something sleazy about the loves and friendships that came his way. Nobody wrote gossipy letters to him, nobody took a greater interest in his worries than he did himself, and there was no one to go and complain to about the undeserved precariousness of his very being when he learned from two doctors, a Frenchman and a Russian, that (like many protagonists) he had an incurable heart ailment—while the streets were virtually swarming with robust oldsters. There seemed to be a certain connection between this illness of his and his fondness for fine, expensive things; he might, for example, spend his last 200 francs on a scarf or a fountain pen, but it always, always happened that the scarf would soon get soiled, the pen broken, despite the meticulous, even pious, care he took of things.
Lik is an actor. Like Marina Durmanov (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother), Ada is an actress.
As he speaks to Lik, Koldunov (Lik’s cousin and schoolmate who used to be Lik's tormentor and who continues to haunt Lik's dreams) twice repeats the word “eureka” and calls Lik barin (mister):
-- У меня,-- сказал Лик,-- у меня случайно оказался... ну, я не знаю,-- небольшой сценический талант, что ли...
-- Талант? -- закричал Колдунов.-- Я тебе покажу талант! Я тебе такие таланты покажу, что ты в штанах компот варить станешь! Сволочь ты, брат. Вот твой талант. Нет, это мне даже нравится (Колдунов затрясся, будто хохоча, с очень примитивной мимикой). Значит, я, по-твоему, последняя хамская тварь, которая и должна погибнуть? Ну, прекрасно, прекрасно. Всё, значит, и объяснилось, эврика, эврика, карта бита, гвоздь вбит, хребет перебит...
-- Олег Петрович расстроен, вы, может быть, теперь пойдете,-- вдруг из угла сказала жена Колдунова с сильным эстонским произношением. В голосе её не было ни малейшего оттенка чувства, и оттого её замечание прозвучало как-то деревянно-бессмысленно. Колдунов медленно повернулся на стуле, не меняя положения руки, лежащей как мёртвая на столе, и уставился на жену восхищенным взглядом.
-- Я никого не задерживаю,-- проговорит он тихо и весело.-- Но и меня попрошу не задерживать. И не учить. Прощай, барин,-- добавил он, не глядя на Лика, который почему-то счел нужным сказать: -- Из Парижа напишу, непременно...
-- Пускай пишет, а?-- вкрадчиво произнес Колдунов, продолжая, по-видимому, обращаться к жене. Лик, сложно отделившись от стула, пошёл было по направлению к ней, но его отнесло в сторону, и он наткнулся на кровать.
Lik said, “I turned out to have—I happened to have … Oh, I don’t know … a modest dramatic talent, I suppose you could say.”
“Talent?” shouted Koldunov. “I’ll show you talent! I’ll show you such talent that you’ll start cooking applesauce in your pants! You’re a dirty rat, chum. That’s your only talent. I must say that’s a good one!” (Koldunov started shaking in very primitive mimicry of side-splitting laughter.) “So, according to you, I’m the lowest, filthiest vermin and deserve my rotten end? Splendid, simply splendid. Everything is explained—eureka, eureka! The card is trumped, the nail is in, the beast is butchered!”
“Oleg Petrovich is upset—maybe you ought to be going now,” Koldunov’s wife suddenly said from her corner, with a strong Estonian accent. There was not the least trace of emotion in her voice, causing her remark to sound wooden and senseless. Koldunov slowly turned in his chair, without altering the position of his hand, which lay as if lifeless on the table, and fixed his wife with an enraptured gaze.
“I am not detaining anyone,” he spoke softly and cheerfully. “And I’ll be thankful not to be detained by others. Or told what to do. So long, mister,” he added, not looking at Lik, who for some reason found it necessary to say: “I’ll write from Paris, without fail.…”
“So he’s going to write, is he?” said Koldunov softly, apparently still addressing his wife. With some trouble Lik extricated himself from the chair and started in her direction, but swerved and bumped into the bed.
When Van leaves Ardis forever, Trofim Fartukov (the Russian coachman in “Ardis the Second”) calls him barin and says that even through a leathern apron he would not think of touching Blanche (a French maid at Ardis whom Trofim eventually marries):
‘The express does not stop at Torfyanka, does it, Trofim?’
‘I’ll take you five versts across the bog,’ said Trofim, ‘the nearest is Volosyanka.’
His vulgar Russian word for Maidenhair; a whistle stop; train probably crowded.
Maidenhair. Idiot! Percy boy might have been buried by now! Maidenhair. Thus named because of the huge spreading Chinese tree at the end of the platform. Once, vaguely, confused with the Venus’-hair fern. She walked to the end of the platform in Tolstoy’s novel. First exponent of the inner monologue, later exploited by the French and the Irish. N’est vert, n’est vert, n’est vert. L’arbre aux quarante écus d’or, at least in the fall. Never, never shall I hear again her ‘botanical’ voice fall at biloba, ‘sorry, my Latin is showing.’ Ginkgo, gingko, ink, inkog. Known also as Salisbury’s adiantofolia, Ada’s infolio, poor Salisburia: sunk; poor Stream of Consciousness, marée noire by now. Who wants Ardis Hall!
‘Barin, a barin,’ said Trofim, turning his blond-bearded face to his passenger.
‘Da?’
‘Dazhe skvoz’ kozhanïy fartuk ne stal-bï ya trogat’ etu frantsuzskuyu devku.’
Barin: master. Dázhe skvoz’ kózhanïy fártuk: even through a leathern apron. Ne stal-bï ya trógat’: I would not think of touching. Étu: this (that). Frantsúzskuyu: French (adj., accus.). Dévku: wench. Úzhas, otcháyanie: horror, despair. Zhálost’: pity, Kóncheno, zagázheno, rastérzano: finished, fouled, torn to shreds. (1.41)
Lik promises to Koldunov that he will write him from Paris. When Ada refuses to leave her ill husband and stay with Van, she promises to write him:
There was a narrow chasm of silence broken only by the rain drumming on the eaves.
‘Stay with me, girl,’ said Van, forgetting everything — pride, rage, the convention of everyday pity.
For an instant she seemed to waver — or at least to consider wavering; but a resonant voice reached them from the drive and there stood Dorothy, gray-caped and mannish-hatted, energetically beckoning with her unfurled umbrella.
‘I can’t, I can’t, I’ll write you,’ murmured my poor love in tears.
Van kissed her leaf-cold hand and, letting the Bellevue worry about his car, letting all Swans worry about his effects and Mme Scarlet worry about Eveline’s skin trouble, he walked some ten kilometers along soggy roads to Rennaz and thence flew to Nice, Biskra, the Cape, Nairobi, the Basset range —
And oe’r the summits of the Basset —
Would she write? Oh, she did! Oh, every old thing turned out superfine! Fancy raced fact in never-ending rivalry and girl giggles. Andrey lived only a few months longer, po pal’tzam (finger counting) one, two, three, four — say, five. Andrey was doing fine by the spring of nineteen six or seven, with a comfortably collapsed lung and a straw-colored beard (nothing like facial vegetation to keep a patient busy). Life forked and reforked. Yes, she told him. He insulted Van on the mauve-painted porch of a Douglas hotel where van was awaiting his Ada in a final version of Les Enfants Maudits. Monsieur de Tobak (an earlier cuckold) and Lord Erminin (a second-time second) witnessed the duel in the company of a few tall yuccas and short cactuses. Vinelander wore a cutaway (he would); Van, a white suit. Neither man wished to take any chances, and both fired simultaneously. Both fell. Mr Cutaway’s bullet struck the outsole of Van’s left shoe (white, black-heeled), tripping him and causing a slight fourmillement (excited ants) in his foot — that was all. Van got his adversary plunk in the underbelly — a serious wound from which he recovered in due time, if at all (here the forking swims in the mist). Actually it was all much duller.
So she did write as she had promised? Oh, yes, yes! In seventeen years he received from her around a hundred brief notes, each containing around one hundred words, making around thirty printed pages of insignificant stuff — mainly about her husband’s health and the local fauna. After helping her to nurse Andrey at Agavia Ranch through a couple of acrimonious years (she begrudged Ada every poor little hour devoted to collecting, mounting, and rearing!), and then taking exception to Ada’s choosing the famous and excellent Grotonovich Clinic (for her husband’s endless periods of treatment) instead of Princess Alashin’s select sanatorium, Dorothy Vinelander retired to a subarctic monastery town (Ilemna, now Novostabia) where eventually she married a Mr Brod or Bred, tender and passionate, dark and handsome, who traveled in eucharistials and other sacramental objects throughout the Severnïya Territorii and who subsequently was to direct, and still may be directing half a century later, archeological reconstructions at Goreloe (the ‘Lyaskan Herculanum’); what treasures he dug up in matrimony is another question. (3.8)
Lik forgets at Koldunov’s the carton box containing his new shoes:
Прошло минут десять, не более. Часики шли, стараясь из деликатности на него не смотреть. Мысль о смерти необыкновенно точно совпадала с мыслью о том, что через полчаса он выйдет на освещенную сцену, скажет первые слова роли: "Je vous prie d'excuser, Madame, cette invasion nocturne" -- и эти слова, чётко и изящно выгравированные в памяти, казались гораздо более настоящими, чем шлепоток и хлебет утомленных волн или звуки двух счастливых женских голосов, доносившиеся из-за стены ближней виллы, или недавние речи Колдунова, или даже стук собственного сердца. Ему вдруг стало так панически плохо, что он встал и пошел вдоль парапета, растерянно гладя его и косясь на цветные чернила вечернего моря. "Была не была,-- сказал Лик вслух,-- нужно освежиться... как рукой... либо умру, либо снимет..." Он сполз по наклону панели и захрустел на гальке. Никого на берегу не было, кроме случайного господина в серых штанах, который навзничь лежал около скалы, раскинув широко ноги, и что-то в очертании этих ног и плеч почему-то напомнило ему фигуру Колдунова. Пошатываясь и уже наклоняясь. Лик стыдливо подошел к краю воды, хотел было зачерпнуть в ладони и обмыть голову, но вода жила, двигалась, грозила омочить ему ноги,-- может быть, хватит ловкости разуться?-- и в ту же секунду Лик вспомнил картонку с новыми туфлями: забыл их у Колдунова!
И странно: как только вспомнилось, образ оказался столь живительным, что сразу все опростилось, и это Лика спасло, как иногда положение спасает его формулировка. Надо их тотчас достать, и можно успеть достать, и как только это будет сделано, он в них выйдет на сцену — все совершенно отчетливо и логично, придраться не к чему, — и забыв про сжатие в груди, туман, тошноту, Лик поднялся опять на набережную, граммофонным голосом кликнул такси, как раз отъезжавшее порожняком от виллы напротив... Тормоза ответили раздирающим стоном. Шоферу он дал адрес из записной книжки и велел ехать как можно шибче, причем было ясно, что вся поездка — туда и оттуда в театр — займет не больше пяти минут.
К дому, где жили Колдуновы, автомобиль подъехал со стороны площади. Там собралась толпа, и только с помощью упорных трубных угроз автомобилю удалось протиснуться. Около фонтана, на стуле, сидела жена Колдунова, весь лоб и левая часть лица были в блестящей крови, слиплись волосы, она сидела совершенно прямо и неподвижно, окруженная любопытными, а рядом с ней, тоже неподвижно, стоял ее мальчик в окровавленной рубашке, прикрывая лицо кулаком, — такая, что ли, картина. Полицейский, принявший Лика за врача, провел его в комнату. Среди осколков, на полу навзничь лежал обезображенный выстрелом в рот, широко раскинув ноги в новых белых...
— Это мои, — сказал Лик по-французски.
About ten minutes passed, no more. His watch ticked on, trying tactfully not to look at him. The thought of death coincided precisely with the thought that in half an hour he would walk out onto the bright stage and say the first words of his part, “Je vous prie d’excuser, Madame, cette invasion nocturne.” And these words, clearly and elegantly engraved in his memory, seemed far more real than the lapping and splashing of the weary waves, or the sound of two gay female voices coming from behind the stone wall of a nearby villa, or the recent talk of Koldunov, or even the pounding of his own heart. His feeling of sickness suddenly reached such a panicky pitch that he got up and walked along the parapet, dazedly stroking it and peering at the colored inks of the evening sea. “In any case,” Lik said aloud, “I have to cool off.… Instant cure.… Either I’ll die or it’ll help.” He slid down the sloping edge of the sidewalk, where the parapet stopped, and crunched across the pebbly beach. There was nobody on the shore except for a shabbily dressed man, who happened to be lying supine near a boulder, his feet spread wide apart. Something about the outline of his legs and shoulders for some reason reminded Lik of Koldunov. Swaying a little and already stooping, Lik walked self-consciously to the edge of the water, and was about to scoop some up in his hands and douse his head; but the water was alive, moving, and threatening to soak his feet. Perhaps I have enough coordination left to take off my shoes and socks, he thought, and in the same instant remembered the carton box containing his new shoes. He had forgotten it at Koldunov’s!
And as soon as he remembered it, this image proved so stimulating that immediately everything was simplified, and this saved Lik, in the same way as a situation is sometimes saved by its rational formulation. He must get those shoes at once, there was just time enough to get them, and as soon as this was accomplished, he would step onstage in them. (All perfectly clear and logical.) Forgetting the pressure in his chest, the foggy feeling, the nausea, Lik climbed back up to the promenade, and in a sonorously recorded voice hailed the empty taxi that was just leaving the curb by the villa across the way. Its brakes responded with a lacerating moan. He gave the chauffeur the address from his notebook, telling him to go as fast as possible, even though the entire trip—there and from there to the theater—would not take more than five minutes.
The taxi approached Koldunov’s place from the direction of the square. A crowd had gathered, and it was only by dint of persistent threats with its horn that the driver managed to squeeze through. Koldunov’s wife was sitting on a chair by the public fountain. Her forehead and left cheek glistened with blood, her hair was matted, and she sat quite straight and motionless, surrounded by the curious, while, next to her, also motionless, stood her boy, in a bloodstained shirt, covering his face with his fist, a kind of tableau. A policeman, mistaking Lik for a doctor, escorted him into the room. The dead man lay on the floor amid broken crockery, his face blasted by a gunshot in the mouth, his widespread feet in new, white—
“Those are mine,” said Lik in French.
Leaving Ardis, Van tells himself that he should not forget shoes and forgets his wristwatch:
He took a tepid shower in the poolside shed, doing everything with comic deliberation, very slowly and cautiously, lest he break the new, unknown, brittle Van born a moment ago. He watched his thoughts revolve, dance, strut, clown a little. He found it delightful to imagine, for instance, that a cake of soap must be solid ambrosia to the ants swarming over it, and what a shock to be drowned in the midst of that orgy. The code, he reflected, did not allow to challenge a person who was not born a gentleman but exceptions might be made for artists, pianists, flutists, and if a coward refused, you could make his gums bleed with repeated slaps or, still better, thrash him with a strong cane — must not forget to choose one in the vestibule closet before leaving forever, forever. Great fun! He relished as something quite special the kind of one-legged jig a naked fellow performs when focusing on the shorts he tries to get into. He sauntered through a side gallery. He ascended the grand staircase. The house was empty, and cool, and smelled of carnations. Good morning, and good-bye, little bedroom. Van shaved, Van pared his toe-nails, Van dressed with exquisite care: gray socks, silk shirt, gray tie, dark-gray suit newly pressed — shoes, ah yes, shoes, mustn’t forget shoes, and without bothering to sort out the rest of his belongings, crammed a score of twenty-dollar gold coins into a chamois purse, distributed handkerchief, checkbook, passport, what else? nothing else, over his rigid person and pinned a note to the pillow asking to have his things packed and forwarded to his father’s address. Son killed by avalanche, no hat found, contraceptives donated to Old Guides’ Home. After the passage of about eight decades all this sounds very amusing and silly — but at the time he was a dead man going through the motions of an imagined dreamer. He bent down with a grunt, cursing his knee, to fix his skis, in the driving snow, on the brink of the slope, but the skis had vanished, the bindings were shoelaces, and the slope, a staircase.
He walked down to the mews and told a young groom, who was almost as drowsy as he, that he wished to go to the railway station in a few minutes. The groom looked perplexed, and Van swore at him.
Wristwatch! He returned to the hammock where it was strapped to the netting. On his way back to the stables, around the house, he happened to look up and saw a black-haired girl of sixteen or so, in yellow slacks and a black bolero, standing on a third-floor balcony and signaling to him. She signaled telegraphically, with expansive linear gestures, indicating the cloudless sky (what a cloudless sky!), the jacaranda summit in bloom (blue! bloom!) and her own bare foot raised high and placed on the parapet (have only to put on my sandals!). Van, to his horror and shame, saw Van wait for her to come down. (1.42)
At the end of Lik the hero dies of a heart attack at the sea side (imagining in the last moments of his life a trip in a taxi to Koldunov to fetch his shoes). An important subtext of VN’s story is Tolstoy’s story Chem lyudi zhivy (“What Men Live by,” 1881). In Tolstoy’s story Smert’ Ivana Ilyicha (“The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” 1886) Ivan Ilyich’s surname is Golovin. One wonders if Van Veen’s “real” name is Ivan Golovin and if he was born in St. Petersburg, on Jan. 1, 1900. In VN’s novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) Sebastian Knight (who dies of a heart failure in the very beginning of 1936) was born on Dec. 31, 1899.
In the Russian original of VN’s story Alexander Lik’s “real” surname seems to be Kulikov. It comes from kulik (stint; sandpiper). According to a Russian saying, kazhdyi kulik svoyo boloto khvalit (every stint praises its own swamp). The surname Veen means in Dutch what Neva (“the legendary river of the Rus” mentioned by Ada in her letter to Van) means in Finnish: “peat bog.”
See also the updated full version of my previous post, “dream-delta decay, Palace in Wonderland & Alice in the Camera Obscura in Ada.”