In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Ada’s last letter to Van (in which she tells him that she will marry another man, if he spurns her) ends in the words Tvoya, tvoya, tvoya (thine):
‘O dear Van, this is the last attempt I am making. You may call it a document in madness or the herb of repentance, but I wish to come and live with you, wherever you are, for ever and ever. If you scorn the maid at your window I will aerogram my immediate acceptance of a proposal of marriage that has been made to your poor Ada a month ago in Valentine State. He is an Arizonian Russian, decent and gentle, not overbright and not fashionable. The only thing we have in common is a keen interest in many military-looking desert plants especially various species of agave, hosts of the larvae of the most noble animals in America, the Giant Skippers (Krolik, you see, is burrowing again). He owns horses, and Cubistic pictures, and "oil wells" (whatever they are – our father in hell who has some too, does not tell me, getting away with off-color allusions as is his wont). I have told my patient Valentinian that I shall give him a definite answer after consulting the only man I have ever loved or shall ever love. Try to ring me up tonight. Something is very wrong with the Ladore line, but I am assured that the trouble will be grappled with and eliminated before rivertide. Tvoya, tvoya, tvoya (thine). A.’ (2.7)
In Turgenev’s novel Dym (“Smoke,” 1867) Irina’s letter to Litvinov also ends in the words Tvoya, tvoya, tvoya:
На другое утро Литвинов только что возвратился домой от банкира, с которым еще раз побеседовал об игривом непостоянстве нашего курса и лучшем способе высылать за границу деньги, как швейцар вручил ему письмо. Он узнал почерк Ирины и, не срывая печати, — недоброе предчувствие, бог знает почему, проснулись в нем, — ушел к себе в комнату. Вот что прочел он (письмо было написано по-французски):
«Милый мой! я всю ночь думала о твоем предложении… Я не стану с тобой лукавить. Ты был откровенен со мною, и я буду откровенна: я не могу бежать с тобою, я не в силах это сделать. Я чувствую, как я перед тобою виновата; вторая моя вина еще больше первой, — я презираю себя, свое малодушие, я осыпаю себя упреками, но я не могу себя переменить. Напрасно я доказываю самой себе, что я разрушила твое счастие, что ты теперь, точно, вправе видеть во мне одну легкомысленную кокетку, что я сама вызвалась, сама дала тебе торжественные обещания… Я ужасаюсь, я чувствую ненависть к себе, но я не могу поступать иначе, не могу, не могу. Я не хочу оправдыватъся, не стану говорить тебе, что я сама была увлечена… все это ничего не значит; но я хочу сказать тебе и повторить, и повторить еще раз: я твоя, твоя навсегда, располагай мною, как хочешь, когда хочешь, безответно и безотчетно, я твоя… Но бежать, все бросить… нет! нет! нет! Я умоляла тебя спасти меня, я сама надеялась все изгладить, сжечь все как в огне… Но, видно, мне нет спасения; видно, яд слишком глубоко проник в меня; видно, нельзя безнаказанно в течение многих лет дышать этим воздухом! Я долго колебалась, писать ли тебе это письмо, мне страшно подумать, какое ты примешь решение, я надеюсь только на любовь твою ко мне. Но я сочла, что было бы бесчестным с моей стороны не сказать тебе правды — тем более что ты, быть может, уже начал принимать первые меры к исполнению нашего замысла. Ах! он был прекрасен, но несбыточен. О мой друг, считай меня пустою, слабою женщиной, презирай меня, но не покидай меня, не покидай твоей Ирины!.. Оставить этот свет я не в силах, но и жить в нем без тебя не могу. Мы скоро вернемся в Петербург, приезжай туда, живи там, мы найдем тебе занятия, твои прошедшие труды не пропадут, ты найдешь для них полезное применение… Только живи в моей близости, только люби меня, какова я есть, со всеми моими слабостями и пороками, и знай, что ничье сердце никогда не будет так нежно тебе предано, как сердце твоей Ирины. Приходи скорее ко мне, я не буду иметь минуты спокойствия, пока я тебя не увижу. Твоя, твоя, твоя И.»
The next morning Litvinov had only just come home from seeing the banker, with whom he had had another conversation on the playful instability of our exchange, and the best means of sending money abroad, when the hotel porter handed him a letter. He recognised Irina's handwriting, and without breaking the seal—a presentiment of evil, Heaven knows why, was astir in him—he went into his room. This was what he read (the letter was in French):
'My dear one, I have been thinking all night of your plan. . . . I am not going to shuffle with you. You have been open with me, and I will be open with you; I cannot run away with you, I have not the strength to do it. I feel how I am wronging you; my second sin is greater than the first, I despise myself, my cowardice, I cover myself with reproaches, but I cannot change myself In vain I tell myself that I have destroyed your happiness, that you have the right now to regard me as a frivolous flirt, that I myself drew you on, that I have given you solemn promises. . . . I am full of horror, of hatred for myself, but I can't do otherwise, I can't, I can't. I don't want to justify myself, I won't tell you I was carried away myself . . . all that 's of no importance; but I want to tell you, and to say it again and yet again, I am yours, yours for ever, do with me as you will when you will, free from all obligation, from all responsibility! I am yours. . . . But run away, throw up everything . . . no! no! no! I besought you to save me, I hoped to wipe out everything, to burn up the past as in a fire . . . but I see there is no salvation for me; I see the poison has gone too deeply into me; I see one cannot breathe this atmosphere for years with impunity. I have long hesitated whether to write you this letter, I dread to think what decision you may come to, I trust only to your love for me. But I felt it would be dishonest on my part to hide the truth from you—especially as perhaps you have already begun to take the first steps for carrying out our project. Ah! it was lovely but impracticable. О my dear one, think me a weak, worthless woman, despise, but don't abandon me, don't abandon your Irina ! . . . To leave this life I have not the courage, but live it without you I cannot either. We soon go back to Petersburg, come there, live there, we will find occupation for you, your labours in the past shall not be thrown away, you shall find good use for them . . . only live near me, only love me; such as I am, with all my weaknesses and my vices, and believe me, no heart will ever be so tenderly devoted to you as the heart of your Irina. Come soon to me, I shall not have an instant's peace until I see you. — Yours, yours, yours, I.' (Chapter XXV)
Like Turgenev’s Irina, Pushkin’s Tatiana (who is a much more sympathetic girl than Irina or Ada) writes her letter to Onegin in French. In her letter she, too, says ya tvoya (“I am thine”):
Другой!.. Нет, никому на свете
Не отдала бы сердца я!
То в вышнем суждено совете…
То воля неба: я твоя;
Вся жизнь моя была залогом
Свиданья верного с тобой;
Я знаю, ты мне послан богом,
До гроба ты хранитель мой…
Ты в сновиденьях мне являлся,
Незримый, ты мне был уж мил,
Твой чудный взгляд меня томил,
В душе твой голос раздавался
Давно… нет, это был не сон!
Another!... No, to nobody on earth
would I have given my heart away!
That has been destined in a higher council,
that is the will of heaven: I am thine;
my entire life has been the gage
of a sure tryst with you;
I know that you are sent to me by God,
you are my guardian to the tomb....
You had appeared to me in dreams,
unseen, you were already dear to me,
your wondrous glance would trouble me,
your voice resounded in my soul
long since.... No, it was not a dream!
In the Kalugano hospital (where he recovers from the wound received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper) Van meets Tatiana, a remarkably pretty and proud young nurse who later writes him a charming and melancholy letter in red ink on pink paper:
For half a minute Van was sure that he still lay in the car, whereas actually he was in the general ward of Lakeview (Lakeview!) Hospital, between two series of variously bandaged, snoring, raving and moaning men. When he understood this, his first reaction was to demand indignantly that he be transferred to the best private palata in the place and that his suitcase and alpenstock be fetched from the Majestic. His next request was that he be told how seriously he was hurt and how long he was expected to remain incapacitated. His third action was to resume what constituted the sole reason of his having to visit Kalugano (visit Kalugano!). His new quarters, where heartbroken kings had tossed in transit, proved to be a replica in white of his hotel apartment — white furniture, white carpet, white sparver. Inset, so to speak, was Tatiana, a remarkably pretty and proud young nurse, with black hair and diaphanous skin (some of her attitudes and gestures, and that harmony between neck and eyes which is the special, scarcely yet investigated secret of feminine grace fantastically and agonizingly reminded him of Ada, and he sought escape from that image in a powerful response to the charms of Tatiana, a torturing angel in her own right. Enforced immobility forbade the chase and grab of common cartoons. He begged her to massage his legs but she tested him with one glance of her grave, dark eyes — and delegated the task to Dorofey, a beefy-handed male nurse, strong enough to lift him bodily out of bed, with the sick child clasping the massive nape. When Van managed once to twiddle her breasts, she warned him she would complain if he ever repeated what she dubbed more aptly than she thought ‘that soft dangle.’ An exhibition of his state with a humble appeal for a healing caress resulted in her drily remarking that distinguished gentlemen in public parks got quite lengthy prison terms for that sort of thing. However, much later, she wrote him a charming and melancholy letter in red ink on pink paper; but other emotions and events had intervened, and he never met her again). His suitcase promptly arrived from the hotel; the stick, however, could not be located (it must be climbing nowadays Wellington Mountain, or perhaps, helping a lady to go ‘brambling’ in Oregon); so the hospital supplied him with the Third Cane, a rather nice, knotty, cherry-dark thing with a crook and a solid black-rubber heel. Dr Fitzbishop congratulated him on having escaped with a superficial muscle wound, the bullet having lightly grooved or, if he might say so, grazed the greater serratus. Doc Fitz commented on Van’s wonderful recuperational power which was already in evidence, and promised to have him out of disinfectants and bandages in ten days or so if for the first three he remained as motionless as a felled tree-trunk. Did Van like music? Sportsmen usually did, didn’t they? Would he care to have a Sonorola by his bed? No, he disliked music, but did the doctor, being a concert-goer, know perhaps where a musician called Rack could be found? ‘Ward Five,’ answered the doctor promptly. Van misunderstood this as the title of some piece of music and repeated his question. Would he find Rack’s address at Harper’s music shop? Well, they used to rent a cottage way down Dorofey Road, near the forest, but now some other people had moved in. Ward Five was where hopeless cases were kept. The poor guy had always had a bad liver and a very indifferent heart, but on top of that a poison had seeped into his system; the local ‘lab’ could not identify it and they were now waiting for a report, on those curiously frog-green faeces, from the Luga people. If Rack had administered it to himself by his own hand, he kept ‘mum’; it was more likely the work of his wife who dabbled in Hindu-Andean voodoo stuff and had just had a complicated miscarriage in the maternity ward. Yes, triplets — how did he guess? Anyway, if Van was so eager to visit his old pal it would have to be as soon as he could be rolled to Ward Five in a wheelchair by Dorofey, so he’d better apply a bit of voodoo, ha-ha, on his own flesh and blood. (1.42)
Poor Rack was poisoned by his jealous wife Elsie. According to Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother), she would have poisoned her governess with anti-roach borax if forbidden to read Turgenev’s Smoke:
Her intimacy with her cher, trop cher René, as she sometimes called Van in gentle jest, changed the reading situation entirely — whatever decrees still remained pinned up in mid-air. Soon upon his arrival at Ardis, Van warned his former governess (who had reasons to believe in his threats) that if he were not permitted to remove from the library at any time, for any length of time, and without any trace of ‘en lecture,’ any volume, collected works, boxed pamphlets or incunabulum that he might fancy, he would have Miss Vertograd, his father’s librarian, a completely servile and infinitely accommodative spinster of Verger’s format and presumable date of publication, post to Ardis Hall trunkfuls of eighteenth century libertines, German sexologists, and a whole circus of Shastras and Nefsawis in literal translation with apocryphal addenda. Puzzled Mlle Larivière would have consulted the Master of Ardis, but she never discussed with him anything serious since the day (in January, 1876) when he had made an unexpected (and rather halfhearted, really — let us be fair) pass at her. As to dear, frivolous Marina, she only remarked, when consulted, that at Van’s age she would have poisoned her governess with anti-roach borax if forbidden to read, for example, Turgenev’s Smoke. Thereafter, anything Ada wanted or might have wanted to want was placed by Van at her disposal in various safe nooks, and the only visible consequence of Verger’s perplexities and despair was an increase in the scatter of a curious snow-white dust that he always left here and there, on the dark carpet, in this or that spot of plodding occupation — such a cruel curse on such a neat little man! (1.21)
Let me also draw your attention to the updated versions of my two latest posts, “Caroline Lukin & Queen Blenda in Pale Fire” and “Dormilona novel & chervonetz in Ada."