In VN’s novel Ada (1969) poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina) imagined that she could understand the language of her namesake, water:
She developed a morbid sensitivity to the language of tap water — which echoes sometimes (much as the bloodstream does predormitarily) a fragment of human speech lingering in one’s ears while one washes one’s hands after cocktails with strangers. Upon first noticing this immediate, sustained, and in her case rather eager and mocking but really quite harmless replay of this or that recent discourse, she felt tickled at the thought that she, poor Aqua, had accidentally hit upon such a simple method of recording and transmitting speech, while technologists (the so-called Eggheads) all over the world were trying to make publicly utile and commercially rewarding the extremely elaborate and still very expensive, hydrodynamic telephones and other miserable gadgets that were to replace those that had gone k chertyam sobach’im (Russian ‘to the devil’) with the banning of an unmentionable ‘lammer.’ Soon, however, the rhythmically perfect, but verbally rather blurred volubility of faucets began to acquire too much pertinent sense. The purity of the running water’s enunciation grew in proportion to the nuisance it made of itself. It spoke soon after she had listened, or been exposed, to somebody talking — not necessarily to her — forcibly and expressively, a person with a rapid characteristic voice, and very individual or very foreign phrasal intonations, some compulsive narrator’s patter at a horrible party, or a liquid soliloquy in a tedious play, or Van’s lovely voice, or a bit of poetry heard at a lecture, my lad, my pretty, my love, take pity, but especially the more fluid and flou Italian verse, for instance that ditty recited between knee-knocking and palpebra-lifting, by a half-Russian, half-dotty old doctor, doc, toc, ditty, dotty, ballatetta, deboletta... tu, voce sbigottita... spigotty e diavoletta... de lo cor dolente... con ballatetta va... va... della strutta, destruttamente... mente... mente... stop that record, or the guide will go on demonstrating as he did this very morning in Florence a silly pillar commemorating, he said, the ‘elmo’ that broke into leaf when they carried stone-heavy-dead St Zeus by it through the gradual, gradual shade; or the Arlington harridan talking incessantly to her silent husband as the vineyards sped by, and even in the tunnel (they can’t do this to you, you tell them, Jack Black, you just tell them...). Bathwater (or shower) was too much of a Caliban to speak distinctly — or perhaps was too brutally anxious to emit the hot torrent and get rid of the infernal ardor — to bother about small talk; but the burbly flowlets grew more and more ambitious and odious, and when at her first ‘home’ she heard one of the most hateful of the visiting doctors (the Cavalcanti quoter) garrulously pour hateful instructions in Russian-lapped German into her hateful bidet, she decided to stop turning on tap water altogether.
But that phase elapsed too. Other excruciations replaced her namesake’s loquacious quells so completely that when, during a lucid interval, she happened to open with her weak little hand a lavabo cock for a drink of water, the tepid lymph replied in its own lingo, without a trace of trickery or mimicry: Finito! (1.3)
In Chekhov’s play Dyadya Vanya (“Uncle Vanya,” 1898) Astrov, as he parts with Elena Andreevna, says “Finita la comedia” and then repeats the word “Finita:”
Елена Андреевна. Какой вы смешной… Я сердита на вас, но все же… буду вспоминать о вас с удовольствием. Вы интересный, оригинальный человек. Больше мы с вами уже никогда не увидимся, а потому — зачем скрывать? Я даже увлеклась вами немножко. Ну, давайте пожмем друг другу руки и разойдемся друзьями. Не поминайте лихом.
Астров (пожал руку). Да, уезжайте… (В раздумье.) Как будто бы вы и хороший, душевный человек, но как будто бы и что-то странное во всем вашем существе. Вот вы приехали сюда с мужем, и все, которые здесь работали, копошились, создавали что-то, должны были побросать свои дела и все лето заниматься только подагрой вашего мужа и вами. Оба — он и вы — заразили всех нас вашею праздностью. Я увлекся, целый месяц ничего не делал, а в это время люди болели, в лесах моих, лесных порослях, мужики пасли свой скот… Итак, куда бы ни ступили вы и ваш муж, всюду вы вносите разрушение… Я шучу, конечно, но все же… странно, и я убежден, что если бы вы остались, то опустошение произошло бы громадное. И я бы погиб, да и вам бы… не сдобровать. Ну, уезжайте. Finita la comedia!
Елена Андреевна (берет с его стола карандаш и быстро прячет). Этот карандаш я беру себе на память.
Астров. Как-то странно… Были знакомы и вдруг почему-то… никогда уже больше не увидимся. Так и всё на свете… Пока здесь никого нет, пока дядя Ваня не вошел с букетом, позвольте мне… поцеловать вас… На прощанье… Да? (Целует ее в щеку.) Ну, вот… и прекрасно.
Елена Андреевна. Желаю вам всего хорошего. (Оглянувшись.) Куда ни шло, раз в жизни! (Обнимает его порывисто, и оба тотчас же быстро отходят друг от друга.) Надо уезжать.
Астров. Уезжайте поскорее. Если лошади поданы, то отправляйтесь.
Елена Андреевна. Сюда идут, кажется.
Оба прислушиваются.
Астров. Finita!
ELENA ANDREEVNA How amusing you are. I am angry with you, but all the same... I’ll remember you with pleasure. You’re an interesting, original man. We’ll never meet each other again, and so – why should I hide it? I was carried away by you a little bit. Well, let’s shake each other’s hands and part friends. Remember the good things.
ASTROV (Shakes her hand.) Yes, you must go... (Thoughtfully.) It’s as if you’re a good, sensitive person, but also as if there’s something strange in your entire being. You came here with your husband and everyone who worked here, beavered away, created something, they all had to throw aside their work and occupy themselves the whole summer with your husband’s gout and you. Both of you, he and you, infected us with your idleness. I was carried away. For a whole month I did nothing, and in the meantime people fell ill, In my woods the peasants set their cattle to graze on the young saplings... It seems as if wherever you and your husband set foot you bring ruin... I am joking of course, but all the same... It’s strange, but I’m convinced that if you stayed here there would be widespread devastation. I myself would perish, and you wouldn’t escape either. Well, you must set off. Finita la comedia.
ELENA ANDREEVNA (Takes a pencil from the table and quickly hides it.) I’ll take this pencil as a keepsake.
ASTROV It’s strange... We got to know each other and suddenly for some reason... we won’t ever meet again. That’s how it is on this earth... While nobody’s here, while Uncle Vanya does not come in with his bouquet, let me... have one kiss... a farewell... Yes? (He kisses her on the cheek.) Well, there you are... Excellent.
ELENA ANDREEVNA I wish you all the best. (She looks round.) Well, whatever. For once in my life! (She quickly embraces and kisses him and the two then rapidly part from each other.) I must be going.
ASTROV Leave quickly. If the horses are ready then set off straight away.
ELENA ANDREEVNA It seems they’re coming this way.
(Bothe of them listen.)
ASTROV Finita!
Chekhov’s story Zhenshchina s tochki zreniya p’yanitsy (“Woman as Seen by a Drunkard,” 1885), in which girls under sixteen are compared to aqua distillatae (distilled water), was signed Brat moego brata (My brother’s brother). Aqua’s last note was signed “My sister’s sister who teper’ iz ada (now is out of hell):”
Aujourd’hui (heute-toity!) I, this eye-rolling toy, have earned the psykitsch right to enjoy a landparty with Herr Doktor Sig, Nurse Joan the Terrible, and several ‘patients,’ in the neighboring bar (piney wood) where I noticed exactly the same skunk-like squirrels, Van, that your Darkblue ancestor imported to Ardis Park, where you will ramble one day, no doubt. The hands of a clock, even when out of order, must know and let the dumbest little watch know where they stand, otherwise neither is a dial but only a white face with a trick mustache. Similarly, chelovek (human being) must know where he stands and let others know, otherwise he is not even a klok (piece) of a chelovek, neither a he, nor she, but ‘a tit of it’ as poor Ruby, my little Van, used to say of her scanty right breast. I, poor Princesse Lointaine, très lointaine by now, do not know where I stand. Hence I must fall. So adieu, my dear, dear son, and farewell, poor Demon, I do not know the date or the season, but it is a reasonably, and no doubt seasonably, fair day, with a lot of cute little ants queuing to get at my pretty pills.
[Signed] My sister’s sister who teper’
iz ada (‘now is out of hell’) (1.3)
“Herr Doktor Sig” (as Aqua called Dr Sig Heiler) brings to mind kopchyonye sigi (smoked whitefish) mentioned by Chekhov in a letter of Oct. 4-6, 1888, to Suvorin:
Что же касается “Русской мысли,” то там сидят не литераторы, а копчёные сиги, которые столько же понимают в литературе, как свинья в апельсинах. К тому же библиографический отдел ведёт там дама. Если дикая утка, которая летит в поднебесье, может презирать свойскую, которая копается в навозе и в лужах и думает, что это хорошо, то так должны презирать художники и поэты мудрость копчёных сигов...
Chekhov says that the editors of Russkaya mysl’ (“Russian Thought,” a literary magazine, 1880-1918) are kopchyonye sigi (the smoked whitefish) who have as much taste for literature as a pig has for oranges.
Van calls Aqua’s last doctor ‘papa Fig:’
In less than a week Aqua had accumulated more than two hundred tablets of different potency. She knew most of them ― the jejune sedatives, and the ones that knocked you out from eight p.m. till midnight, and several varieties of superior soporifics that left you with limpid limbs and a leaden head after eight hours of non-being, and a drug which was in itself delightful but a little lethal if combined with a draught of the cleansing fluid commercially known as Morona; and a plump purple pill reminding her, she had to laugh, of those with which the little gypsy enchantress in the Spanish tale (dear to Ladore schoolgirls) puts to sleep all the sportsmen and all their bloodhounds at the opening of the hunting season. Lest some busybody resurrect her in the middle of the float-away process, Aqua reckoned she must procure for herself a maximum period of undisturbed stupor elsewhere than in a glass house, and the carrying out of that second part of the project was simplified and encouraged by another agent or double of the Isère Professor, a Dr Sig Heiler whom everybody venerated as a great guy and near-genius in the usual sense of near-beer. Such patients who proved by certain twitchings of the eyelids and other semiprivate parts under the control of medical students that Sig (a slightly deformed but not unhandsome old boy) was in the process of being dreamt of as a ‘papa Fig,’ spanker of girl bottoms and spunky spittoon-user, were assumed to be on the way to haleness and permitted, upon awakening, to participate in normal outdoor activities such as picnics. (1.3)
Fig (Russian figa) being a gesture of derision and contempt, “papa Fig” brings to mind kukish v karmane (make a long nose on the sly; literally: a fig in one’s pocket), a phrase used by von Koren in Chekhov’s story Duel’ (“The Duel,” 1891):
- Не знаю, что ты хочешь! - сказал Самойленко, зевая. - Бедненькой по простоте захотелось поговорить с тобой об умном, а ты уж заключение выводишь. Ты сердит на него за что-то, ну и на нее за компанию. А она прекрасная женщина!
- Э, полно! Обыкновенная содержанка, развратная и пошлая. Послушай, Александр Давидыч, когда ты встречаешь простую бабу, которая не живет с мужем, ничего не делает и то лько хи-хи да ха-ха, ты говоришь ей: ступай работать. Почему же ты тут робеешь и боишься говорить правду? Потому только, что Надежда Фёдоровна живёт на содержании не у матроса, а у чиновника?
- Что же мне с ней делать? - рассердился Самойленко. - Бить ее, что ли?
- Не льстить пороку. Мы проклинаем порок только за глаза, а это похоже на кукиш в кармане. Я зоолог, или социолог, что одно и тоже, ты - врач; общество нам верит; мы обязаны указывать ему на тот страшный вред, каким угрожает ему и будущим поколениям существование госпож вроде этой Надежды Ивановны.
- Фёдоровны. - поправил Самойленко. - А что должно делать общество?
- Оно? Это его дело. По-моему, самый прямой и верный путь, это - насилие. Manu militari ее следует отправить к мужу, а если муж не примет, то отдать ее в каторжные работы или какое-нибудь исправительное заведение.
- Уф; - вздохнул Самойленко; он помолчал и спросил тихо: - Как-то на днях ты говорил, что таких людей, как Лаевский, уничтожать надо... Скажи мне, если бы того... положим, государство или общество поручило тебе уничтожить его, то ты бы... решился?
- Рука бы не дрогнула.
"I don't know what you want," said Samoylenko, yawning; "the poor thing, in the simplicity of her heart, wanted to talk to you of scientific subjects, and you draw a conclusion from that. You're cross with him for something or other, and with her, too, to keep him company. She's a splendid woman."
"Ah, nonsense! An ordinary kept woman, depraved and vulgar. Listen, Aleksandr Davidych; when you meet a simple peasant woman, who isn't living with her husband, who does nothing but giggle, you tell her to go and work. Why are you timid in this case and afraid to tell the truth? Simply because Nadezhda Fyodorovna is kept, not by a sailor, but by an official."
"What am I to do with her?" said Samoylenko, getting angry. "Beat her or what?
"Not flatter vice. We curse vice only behind its back, and that's like making a long nose at it round a corner. I am a zoologist or a sociologist, which is the same thing; you are a doctor; society believes in us; we ought to point out the terrible harm which threatens it and the next generation from the existence of ladies like Nadezhda Ivanovna."
"Fyodorovna," Samoylenko corrected. "But what ought society to do?"
"Society? That's its affair. To my thinking the surest and most direct method is--compulsion. Manu militari she ought to be returned to her husband; and if her husband won't take her in, then she ought to be sent to penal servitude or some house of correction."
"Ouf!" sighed Samoylenko. He paused and asked quietly: "You said the other day that people like Laevsky ought to be destroyed. . . . Tell me, if you... if the State or society commissioned you to destroy him, could you . . . bring yourself to it?"
"My hand would not tremble." (chapter VIII)
Half a century later von Koren’s ideas were put into practice by the German Nazis. The name Sig Heiler hints at Sieg heil (the Nazi salute).