In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Demon Veen (Van’s and Ada’s father) hopes that Cordula de Prey will recompense Van for playing Blindman’s Buff all summer with the babes of Ardis Wood (Ada and Lucette):
“Marina gives me a glowing account of you and says uzhe chuvstvuetsya osen’. Which is very Russian. Your grandmother would repeat regularly that ‘already-is-to-be-felt-autumn’ remark every year, at the same time, even on the hottest day of the season at Villa Armina: Marina never realized it was an anagram of the sea, not of her. You look splendid, sïnok moy, but I can well imagine how fed up you must be with her two little girls. Therefore, I have a suggestion—”
“Oh, I liked them enormously,” purred Van. “Especially dear little Lucette.”
“My suggestion is, come with me to a cocktail party today. It is given by the excellent widow of an obscure Major de Prey—obscurely related to our late neighbor, a fine shot but the light was bad on the Common, and a meddlesome garbage collector hollered at the wrong moment. Well, that excellent and influential lady who wishes to help a friend of mine” (clearing his throat) “has, I’m told, a daughter of fifteen summers, called Cordula, who is sure to recompense you for playing Blindman’s Buff all summer with the babes of Ardis Wood.”
“We played mostly Scrabble and Snap,” said Van. “Is the needy friend also in my age group?”
“She’s a budding Duse,” replied Demon austerely, “and the party is strictly a
‘prof push.’ You’ll stick to Cordula de Prey, I, to Cordelia O’Leary.”
“D’accord,” said Van. (1.27)
In Tolstoy’s novel Voyna i mir (“War and Peace,” 1869) Prince Vasiliy says that Kutuzov is blind and that all he can do is to play zhmurki (blindman’s buff):
Вскоре после приезда государя князь Василий разговорился у Анны Павловны о делах войны, жестоко осуждая Барклая де Толли и находясь в нерешительности, кого бы назначить главнокомандующим. Один из гостей, известный под именем un homme de beaucoup de merite, рассказав о том, что он видел нынче выбранного начальником петербургского ополчения Кутузова, заседающего в казенной палате для приема ратников, позволил себе осторожно выразить предположение о том, что Кутузов был бы тот человек, который удовлетворил бы всем требованиям.
Анна Павловна грустно улыбнулась и заметила, что Кутузов, кроме неприятностей, ничего не дал государю.
-- Я говорил и говорил в Дворянском собрании, -- перебил князь Василий, -- но меня не послушали. Я говорил, что избрание его в начальники ополчения не понравится государю. Они меня не послушали.
-- Все какая-то мания фрондировать, -- продолжал он. -- И пред кем? И все оттого, что мы хотим обезьянничать глупым московским восторгам, -- сказал князь Василий, спутавшись на минуту и забыв то, что у Элен надо было подсмеиваться над московскими восторгами, а у Анны Павловны восхищаться ими. Но он тотчас же поправился. -- Ну прилично ли графу Кутузову, самому старому генералу в России, заседать в палате, et il en restera pour sa peine! Разве возможно назначить главнокомандующим человека, который не может верхом сесть, засыпает на совете, человека самых дурных нравов! Хорошо он себя зарекомендовал в Букареште! Я уже не говорю о его качествах как генерала, но разве можно в такую минуту назначать человека дряхлого и слепого, просто слепого? Хорош будет генерал слепой! Он ничего не видит. В жмурки играть... ровно ничего не видит!
Soon after the Emperor's return Prince Vasiliy in a conversation about the war at Anna Pavlovna's severely condemned Barclay de Tolly, but was undecided as to who ought to be appointed commander in chief. One of the visitors, usually spoken of as "a man of great merit," having described how he had that day seen Kutuzov, the newly chosen chief of the Petersburg militia, presiding over the enrollment of recruits at the Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest that Kutuzov would be the man to satisfy all requirements.
Anna Pavlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutuzov had done nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.
"I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility," Prince Vasiliy interrupted, "but they did not listen to me. I told them his election as chief of the militia would not please the Emperor. They did not listen to me.
"It's all this mania for opposition," he went on. "And who for? It is all because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm of those Muscovites," Prince Vasiliy continued, forgetting for a moment that though at Helene's one had to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at Anna Pavlovna's one had to be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved his mistake at once. "Now, is it suitable that Count Kutuzov, the oldest general in Russia, should preside at that tribunal? He will get nothing for his pains! How could they make a man commander in chief who cannot mount a horse, who drops asleep at a council, and has the very worst morals! A good reputation he made for himself at Bucharest! I don't speak of his capacity as a general, but at a time like this how they appoint they appoint a decrepit, blind old man, positively blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can't see anything. To play blindman's bluff? He can't see at all!" (Part Ten, chapter 6)
Describing the hasty retreat of the French army out of Russia, Tolstoy compares it to blindman’s buff:
Действия русского и французского войск во время обратной кампании от Москвы и до Немана подобны игре в жмурки, когда двум играющим завязывают глаза и один изредка звонит колокольчиком, чтобы уведомить о себе ловящего. Сначала тот, кого ловят, звонит, не боясь неприятеля, но когда ему приходится плохо, он, стараясь неслышно идти, убегает от своего врага и часто, думая убежать, идет прямо к нему в руки.
Сначала наполеоновские войска еще давали о себе знать — это было в первый период движения по Калужской дороге, но потом, выбравшись на Смоленскую дорогу, они побежали, прижимая рукой язычок колокольчика, и часто, думая, что они уходят, набегали прямо на русских.
The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign from Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian blindman's bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of them occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to escape runs straight into his opponent's arms.
At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga road, Napoleon's armies made their presence known, but later when they reached the Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell tight - and often thinking they were escaping ran right into the Russians. (Book Fourteen, chapter 17)
At the family dinner in “Ardis the Second” Demon asks Ada to pass him a diminutive cowbell of bronze:
Marina jangled a diminutive cowbell of bronze. Demon placed his palm on the back of Ada's hand and asked her to pass him the oddly evocative object. She did so in a staccato arc. Demon inserted his monocle and, muffling the tongue of memory, examined the bell; but it was not the one that had once stood on a bed-tray in a dim room of Dr Lapiner's chalet; was not even of Swiss make; was merely one of those sweet-sounding translations which reveal a paraphrast's crass counterfeit as soon as you look up the original. (1.38)
In Gorky’s novel Zhizn’ Klima Samgina (“The Life of Klim Samgin,” 1925-36) Samgin recalls his friend's aphorism "We all walk on Earth with a bell on the neck, like a Swiss cow:"
Туробоев не плохо сказал: "Каждый из нас ходит по земле с колокольчиком на шее, как швейцарская корова". (Part One, chapter IV)
Klim Samgin is a namesake of Baron Klim Avidov (anagram of Vladimir Nabokov), Marina’s former lover who gave her children a set of Flavita (Russian Scrabble):
The set our three children received in 1884 from an old friend of the family (as Marina’s former lovers were known), Baron Klim Avidov, consisted of a large folding board of saffian and a boxful of weighty rectangles of ebony inlaid with platinum letters, only one of which was a Roman one, namely the letter J on the two joker blocks (as thrilling to get as a blank check signed by Jupiter or Jurojin). It was, incidentally, the same kindly but touchy Avidov (mentioned in many racy memoirs of the time) who once catapulted with an uppercut an unfortunate English tourist into the porter’s lodge for his jokingly remarking how clever it was to drop the first letter of one’s name in order to use it as a particule, at the Gritz, in Venezia Rossa. (1.36)
“The babes of Ardis Wood” mentioned by Demon bring to mind “the flat pale parents of the future Babes, in the brown-leaf Woods, a little book in the Ardis Hall nursery” mentioned by Van at the end of his Family Chronicle:
Their recently built castle in Ex was inset in a crystal winter. In the latest Who’s Who the list of his main papers included by some bizarre mistake the title of a work he had never written, though planned to write many pains: Unconsciousness and the Unconscious. There was no pain to do it now — and it was high pain for Ada to be completed. ‘Quel livre, mon Dieu, mon Dieu,’ Dr [Professor. Ed.] Lagosse exclaimed, weighing the master copy which the flat pale parents of the future Babes, in the brown-leaf Woods, a little book in the Ardis Hall nursery, could no longer prop up in the mysterious first picture: two people in one bed.
Ardis Hall — the Ardors and Arbors of Ardis — this is the leitmotiv rippling through Ada, an ample and delightful chronicle, whose principal part is staged in a dream-bright America — for are not our childhood memories comparable to Vineland-born caravelles, indolently encircled by the white birds of dreams? The protagonist, a scion of one of our most illustrious and opulent families, is Dr Van Veen, son of Baron ‘Demon’ Veen, that memorable Manhattan and Reno figure. The end of an extraordinary epoch coincides with Van’s no less extraordinary boyhood. Nothing in world literature, save maybe Count Tolstoy’s reminiscences, can vie in pure joyousness and Arcadian innocence with the ‘Ardis’ part of the book. On the fabulous country estate of his art-collecting uncle, Daniel Veen, an ardent childhood romance develops in a series of fascinating scenes between Van and pretty Ada, a truly unusual gamine, daughter of Marina, Daniel’s stage-struck wife. That the relationship is not simply dangerous cousinage, but possesses an aspect prohibited by law, is hinted in the very first pages. (5.6)
There are in Ada three blind characters. One of them is Kim Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Ada has bribed to set the barn on fire and whom Van blinds for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada.