In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Kurt and Karl (the German revelers) mistake Luzhin who fainted in the street after his game with Turati for their friend Pulvermacher:
Панель скользнула, поднялась под прямым углом и качнулась обратно. Он разогнулся, тяжело дыша, а его товарищ, поддерживая его и тоже качаясь, повторял: "Гюнтер, Гюнтер, попробуй же идти". Гюнтер выпрямился совсем, и после этой короткой, уже не первой остановки, они оба пошли дальше по ночной пустынной улице, которая то плавно поднималась к звездам, то уходила вниз. Гюнтер, крепкий и крупный, выпил больше товарища: тот, по имени Курт, поддерживал спутника, как мог, хотя пиво громовым дактилем звучало в голове. "Где дру... где дру...- тоскливо силился спросить Гюнтер.- Где дру... гие?" Еще так недавно они все сидели вокруг дубового стола, празднуя пятую годовщину окончания школы, хорошо так пели и с густым звоном чокались, человек тридцать, пожалуй, и все счастливые, трезвые, весь год прекрасно работавшие, а теперь, как только стали расходиться по домам, так сразу- тошнота, и темнота, и безнадежно валкая панель. "Другие там",- сказал Курт с широким жестом, который неприятно призвал к жизни ближайшую стену: она наклонилась и медленно выпрямилась опять. "Разъехались, разошлись",- грустно пояснил Курт. "А впереди нас Карл",- медленно и отчетливо произнес Гюнтер, и упругим пивным ветром обоих качнуло в сторону: они остановились, отступили на шаг и опять пошли дальше. "Я тебе говорю, что там Карл",- обиженно повторил Гюнтер. И действительно, на краю панели сидел с опущенной головой человек. Они не рассчитали шага, и их пронесло мимо. Когда же им удалось подойти, то человек зачмокал губами и медленно повернулся к ним. Да, это был Карл, но какой Карл,- лицо без выражения, большие, опустевшие глаза. "Я просто отдыхаю,- тусклым голосом сказал он.- Сейчас буду продолжать". Вдруг по пустынному асфальту медленно прокатил таксомотор с поднятым флажком. "Остановите его,- сказал Карл.- Пускай он меня отвезет". Автомобиль подъехал. Гюнтер валился на Карла, стараясь ему помочь подняться, Курт тянул чью-то ногу в сером гетре. Шофер все это поощрял добродушными словами, потом слез и тоже стал помогать. Вяло барахтавшееся тело было втиснуто в пройму дверцы, и автомобиль сразу отъехал. "А нам близко",- сказал Курт. Стоявший с ним рядом вздохнул, и Курт, посмотрев на него, увидел, что это Карл, а увезли-то, значит, Гюнтера. "Я помогу тебе,- сказал он виновато.- Пойдем". Карл, глядя перед собой пустыми. детскими глазами, склонился к нему, и оба двинулись, стали переходить на ту сторону по волнующемуся асфальту. "А вот еще",- сказал Курт. На панели, у решетки палисадника лежал согнувшись толстый человек без шляпы. "Это, вероятно, Пульвермахер,- пробормотал Курт. - Ты знаешь, он очень за эти годы изменился". "Это не Пульвермахер,- ответил Карл, садясь на панель рядом.- Пульвермахер лысый". "Все равно,- сказал Курт.- Его тоже надо отвезти". Они попытались приподнять человека за плечи и потеряли равновесие. "Не сломай решетку", - предупредил Карл. "Надо отвезти,- повторил Курт.- Это, может быть, брат Пульвермахера. Он тоже там был".
Человек, по-видимому, спал и спал крепко. Он был в черном пальто с бархатными полосками на отворотах. Полное лицо с тяжелым подбородком и выпуклыми веками лоснилось при свете уличного фонаря. "Подождем таксомотора",- сказал Курт и последовал примеру Карла, который присел на край панели. "Эта ночь кончится",- уверенно сказал он и добавил, взглянув на небо; "Как они крушатся". "Звезды",- объяснил Карл, и оба некоторое время неподвижно глядели ввысь, где в чудесной бледно-сизой бездне дугообразно текли звезды. "Пульвермахер тоже смотрит",- после молчания сказал Курт. "Нет, спит",- возразил Карл, взглянув на полное, неподвижное лицо. "Спит",- согласился Курт.
Скользнул по асфальту свет, и тот же добродушный таксомотор, отвезший Гюнтера куда-то, мягко пристал к панели. "Еще один? - засмеялся шофер.- Можно было и сразу". "Куда же?"- сонно спросил Карл у Курта. "Какой-нибудь адрес... в кармане",- туманно ответил тот. Пошатываясь и непроизвольно кивая, они нагнулись над неподвижным человеком, и то, что пальто его было расстегнуто, облегчило им дальнейшие изыскания. "Бархатный жилет,- сказал Курт.- Бедняга, бедняга..." В первом же кармане они нашли сложенную вдвое открытку, которая расползлась у них в руках, и одна половинка с адресом получателя выскользнула и бесследно пропала. На оставшейся половинке нашелся, однако, еще другой адрес, написанный поперек открытки и жирно подчеркнутый. На обороте была всего одна ровная строчка, слева прерванная, но, даже, если б и удалось приставить отвалившуюся и потерянную половинку, то вряд ли смысл этой строчки стал бы яснее. "Бак берепом",- прочел Курт по системе "реникса", что было простительно. Адрес, найденный на открытке, был сказан шоферу, и затем пришлось втаскивать безжизненное, тяжелое тело в автомобиль, и опять шофер пришел на помощь. На дверце, при свете фонаря, мелькнули крупные шахматные квадраты,- гербовые цвета таксомоторов. Наконец, плотно наполненный автомобиль двинулся.
Карл по дороге уснул. Тело его, и тело неизвестного, и тело Курта, сидевшего на полу, приходили в мягкие, безвольные соприкосновения при каждом повороте, и затем Курт оказался на сидении, а Карл и большая часть неизвестного на полу. Когда автомобиль остановился, и шофер открыл дверцу, то не мог первое время разобрать, сколько людей в автомобиле. Карл проснулся сразу, но человек без шляпы был по-прежнему неподвижен. "Интересно, что вы теперь будете делать с вашим другом",- сказал шофер. "Его, вероятно, ждут",- сказал Курт. Шофер, полагая, что свое дело он выполнил и достаточно за ночь поносил всяких тяжестей, поднял флажок и объявил сумму. "Я заплачу",- сказал Карл. "Нет, я,- сказал Курт.- Я его первый нашел". Этот довод Карла убедил. С трудом опорожненный автомобиль отъехал. Трое людей остались на панели: один из них лежал, приставленный затылком к каменной ступени.
Пошатываясь и вздыхая, Курт и Карл стали посреди мостовой и затем, обратившись к единственному освещенному в доме окну, хрипло крикнули, и тотчас, с неожиданной отзывчивостью, жалюзи, прорезанное светом, дрогнуло и взвилось. Из окна выглянула молодая дама. Не зная, как начать, Курт ухмыльнулся, потом, собравшись с силами, бодро и громко сказал: "Сударыня, мы привезли Пульвермахера". Дама ничего не ответила, и жалюзи с треском опустилось. Было видно, однако, что она осталась у окна. "Мы его нашли на улице",- неуверенно сказал Карл, обращаясь к окну. Жалюзи опять поднялось. "Бархатный жилет",- счел нужным пояснить Курт. Окно опустело, но через минуту темнота за парадной дверью распалась, сквозь стекло появилась освещенная лестница, Мраморная до первой площадки, и, не успела эта новорожденная лестница полностью окаменеть, как уже на ступенях появились быстрые женские ноги. Ключ заиграл в замке, дверь открылась. На панели, спиной к ступеням, лежал полный человек в черном.
The sidewalk skidded, reared up at a right angle and swayed back again. Gunther straightened himself up, breathing heavily, while his comrade, supporting him and also swaying, kept repeating: "Gunther, Gunther, try to walk." Gunther stood up quite straight and after this brief stop, which was not the first, both of them continued farther along the deserted night street, which alternately rose up smoothly to the stars and then sloped down again. Gunther, a big sturdy fellow, had drunk more than his comrade: the latter, Kurt by name, supported Gunther as best he could, although the beer was throbbing thunderously in his head. "Where are ... where are ..." Gunther strove to ask. "Where are the others?" A moment before they had all been sitting around an oaken table, thirty fellows or so, happy, level-headed, hard-working men celebrating the fifth anniversary of their leaving school with a good sing and the sonorous ringing of clinked glasses--whereas now, as soon as they had started to disperse to their homes, they found themselves beset by nausea, darkness, and the hopeless unsteadiness of this sidewalk. "The others are there," said Kurt with a broad gesture, which unpleasantly called into life the nearest wall: it leaned forward and slowly straightened up again. "They've gone, gone," elucidated Kurt sadly. "But Karl is in front of us," said Gunther slowly and distinctly, and a resilient, beery wind caused them both to sway to one side: they halted, took a step backwards and again went on their way. "I'm telling you Karl is there," repeated Gunther sulkily. And truly a man was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk with his head lowered. They miscalculated their impetus and were carried past. When they succeeded in approaching him the man smacked his lips and slowly turned toward them. Yes, it was Karl, but what a Karl--his face blank, his eyes glazed! "I'm just taking a rest," he said in a dull voice. "I'll continue in a minute." Suddenly a taxi with its flag up came rolling slowly over the deserted asphalt. "Stop him," said Karl. "I want him to take me." The car drew up. Gunther kept tumbling over Karl, trying to help him get up, and Kurt tugged at somebody's gray-spatted foot. From his seat the driver encouraged all this good-naturedly and then climbed out and also began to help. The limply floundering body was squeezed through the aperture of the door and the car immediately pulled away. "And we're nearly there," said Kurt. The figure standing next to him sighed and Kurt, looking at him, saw that it was Karl--which meant that the taxi had carried off Gunther instead. "I'll give you a hand," he said guiltily. "Let's go." Looking in front of him with empty, childlike eyes, Karl leaned toward him and they both moved off and started to cross to the other side of the heaving asphalt. "Here's another," said Kurt. A fat man without a hat lay all hunched up on the sidewalk, beside a garden fence. "That's probably Pulvermacher," muttered Kurt. "You know he's changed an awful lot in recent years." "That's not Pulvermacher," replied Karl, sitting down on the sidewalk beside him. "Pulvermacher's bald." "It doesn't matter," said Kurt. "He also has to be taken home." They tried to raise the man by his shoulders and lost their equilibrium. "Don't break the fence," cautioned Karl. "He has to be taken," repeated Kurt. "Perhaps it's Pulvermacher's brother. He was there, too."
The man was evidently sound asleep. He was wearing a black overcoat with strips of velvet on the lapels. His fat face with its heavy chin and convex eyelids was glossy in the light of the streetlamp. "Let's wait for a taxi," said Kurt and followed the example of Karl, who had squatted on the curbing. "This night will come to an end," he said confidently and added, looking at the sky: "How they revolve." "Stars," explained Karl and both sat still, staring upward at the wonderful, pale, nebulous abyss, where the stars flowed in an arc. "Pulvermacher's also looking," said Kurt after a silence. "No, he's sleeping," objected Karl, glancing at the fat, motionless face. "Sleeping," agreed Kurt.
A light glided over the asphalt and the same good-natured taxi that had taken Gunther away somewhere, softly pulled in alongside the sidewalk. "Another one?" laughed the driver. "They could have gone together." "But where?" Karl asked Kurt sleepily. "There must be an address of some kind--let's look in his pockets ..." the latter answered vaguely. Swaying and involuntarily nodding, they bent over the motionless man and the fact that his overcoat was unbuttoned facilitated their further explorations. "Velvet waistcoat," said Kurt. "Poor fellow, poor fellow ..." In the very first pocket they found a postcard folded in two, which parted in their hands, and one half with the receiver's address on it slipped down and vanished without trace. On the remaining half, however, they found another address that had been written across the card and thickly underlined. On the other side there was just a single level line, cut short at the left; but even if it had been possible to place it side by side with the fallen-off and lost half the meaning of this line would hardly have become any clearer. "Bac berepom," read Kurt mistaking the Russian letters for Latin ones, which was excusable. The address found on the postcard was told to the driver and then they had to thrust the heavy, lifeless body into the car, and again the driver came to their aid. On the door large chess squares--the blazon of Berlin taxis--showed in the light of the streetlamp. Finally the jam-packed motorcar moved off.
Karl fell asleep on the way. His body and the unknown's body and the body of Kurt, who was sitting on the floor, came into soft, involuntary contact at every turn and subsequently Kurt finished up on the seat and Karl and most of the unknown fellow on the floor. When the car stopped and the driver opened the door he was unable at first to make out how many people were inside. Karl woke up immediately, but the hatless man was as motionless as before. "I'm curious to know what you'll do with your friend now," said the driver. "They're probably waiting for him," said Kurt. The driver, considering he had done his job and carried enough heavyweights for the night, raised his flag and announced the fare. "I'll pay," said Karl. "No, I will," said Kurt. "I found him first." This argument convinced Karl. The car was emptied with difficulty, and departed. Three people remained on the sidewalk: one of them lying with his head resting against a stone step.
Swaying and sighing, Kurt and Karl moved to the middle of the street and then, addressing themselves to the sole lighted window in the house, shouted hoarsely, and immediately, with unexpected responsiveness, the light-slashed blind trembled and was pulled up. A young woman looked out of the window. Not knowing how to begin, Kurt smirked, then, pulling himself together, said boldly and loudly: "Miss, we've brought Pulvermacher." The woman gave no answer and the blind descended with a rattle. One could see, however, that she stayed by the window. "We found him in the street," said Karl uncertainly, addressing the window. The blind went up again. "A velvet waistcoat," Kurt considered it necessary to explain. The window emptied, but a moment later the darkness behind the front door disintegrated and through the glass appeared an illuminated staircase, marble as far as the first landing, and this newborn staircase had not had time to congeal completely before swift feminine legs appeared on the stairs. A key grated in the lock and the door opened. On the sidewalk with his back to the steps lay a stout man in black. (Chapter 9)
The Pulvermacher chain, or in full as it was sold the Pulvermacher hydro-electric chain, was a type of voltaic battery sold in the second half of the 19th century for medical applications. In Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857) Homais is enthusiastic about the hydro-electric Pulvermacher chains and wears one himself:
He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he kept well abreast of new discoveries. He followed the great movement of chocolates; he was the first to introduce "cocoa" and "revalenta" into the Seine-Inferieure. He was enthusiastic about the hydro-electric Pulvermacher chains; he wore one himself, and when at night he took off his flannel vest, Madame Homais stood quite dazzled before the golden spiral beneath which he was hidden, and felt her ardour redouble for this man more bandaged than a Scythian, and splendid as one of the Magi. (Part Three, chapter 11)
Among Dickens’s last letters (1870) was an order for I. L. Pulvermacher and Company’s “magic band.” In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen (the narrator and main character) describes his professional dreams and compares himself to the dusty-trousered Marmlad before his Marmlady in Dickens:
What are dreams? A random sequence of scenes, trivial or tragic, viatic or static, fantastic or familiar, featuring more or less plausible events patched up with grotesque details, and recasting dead people in new settings.
In reviewing the more or less memorable dreams I have had during the last nine decades I can classify them by subject matter into several categories among which two surpass the others in generic distinctiveness. There are the professional dreams and there are the erotic ones. In my twenties the first kind occurred about as frequently as the second, and both had their introductory counterparts, insomnias conditioned either by the overflow of ten hours of vocational work or by the memory of Ardis that a thorn in my day had maddeningly revived. After work I battled against the might of the mind-set: the stream of composition, the force of the phrase demanding to be formed could not be stopped for hours of darkness and discomfort, and when some result had been achieved, the current still hummed on and on behind the wall, even if I locked up my brain by an act of self-hypnosis (plain will, or pill, could no longer help) within some other image or meditation — but not Ardis, not Ada, for that would mean drowning in a cataract of worse wakefulness, with rage and regret, desire and despair sweeping me into an abyss where sheer physical extenuation stunned me at last with sleep.
In the professional dreams that especially obsessed me when I worked on my earliest fiction, and pleaded abjectly with a very frail muse (‘kneeling and wringing my hands’ like the dusty-trousered Marmlad before his Marmlady in Dickens), I might see for example that I was correcting galley proofs but that somehow (the great ‘somehow’ of dreams!) the book had already come out, had come out literally, being proffered to me by a human hand from the wastepaper basket in its perfect, and dreadfully imperfect, stage — with a typo on every page, such as the snide ‘bitterly’ instead of ‘butterfly’ and the meaningless ‘nuclear’ instead of ‘unclear.’ Or I would be hurrying to a reading I had to give — would feel exasperated by the sight of the traffic and people blocking my way, and then realize with sudden relief that all I had to do was to strike out the phrase ‘crowded street’ in my manuscript. What I might designate as ‘skyscape’ (not ‘skyscrape,’ as two-thirds of the class will probably take it down) dreams belongs to a subdivision of my vocational visions, or perhaps may represent a preface to them, for it was in my early pubescence that hardly a night would pass without some old or recent waketime impression’s establishing a soft deep link with my still-muted genius (for we are ‘van,’ rhyming with and indeed signifying ‘one’ in Marina’s double-you-less deep-voweled Russian pronunciation). The presence, or promise, of art in that kind of dream would come in the image of an overcast sky with a manifold lining of cloud, a motionless but hopeful white, a hopeless but gliding gray, showing artistic signs of clearing, and presently the glow of a pale sun grew through the leaner layer only to be recowled by the scud, for I was not yet ready. (2.4)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Marmlad in Dickens: or rather Marmeladov in Dostoevsky, whom Dickens (in translation) greatly influenced.
The professor in the sanatorium forbids Luzhin to be given anything by Dostoevski:
Путешествие Фогга и мемуары Холмса Лужин прочел в два дня и, прочитав, сказал, что это не то, что он хотел,- неполное, что ли, издание. Из других книг ему понравилась "Анна Каренина" - особенно страницы о земских выборах и обед, заказанный Облонским. Некоторое впечатление произвели на него и "Мертвые души", причем он в одном месте неожиданно узнал целый кусок, однажды в детстве долго и мучительно писанный им под диктовку. Кроме так называемых классиков, невеста ему приносила и всякие случайные книжонки легкого поведения - труды галльских новеллистов. Все, что только могло развлечь Лужина, было хорошо- даже эти сомнительные новеллы, которые он со смущением, но с интересом читал. Зато стихи (например, томик Рильке, который она купила по совету приказчика) приводили его в состояние тяжелого недоумения и печали. Соответственно с этим профессор запретил давать Лужину читать Достоевского, который, по словам профессора, производит гнетущее действие на психику современного человека, ибо, как в страшном зеркале...
"Ах, господин Лужин не задумывается над книгой,- весело сказала она.- - А стихи он плохо понимает из-за рифм, рифмы ему в тягость".
Luzhin read Fogg's journey and Holmes' memoirs in two days, and when he had read them he said they were not what he wanted--this was an incomplete edition. Of the other books, he liked Anna Karenin--particularly the pages on the zemstvo elections and the dinner ordered by Oblonski. Dead Souls also made a certain impression on him, moreover in one place he unexpectedly recognized a whole section that he had once taken down in childhood as a long and painful dictation. Besides the so-called classics his fiancée brought him all sorts of frivolous French novels. Everything that could divert Luzhin was good--even these doubtful stories, which he read, though embarrassed, with interest. Poetry, on the other hand (for instance a small volume of Rilke's that she had bought on the recommendation of a salesman) threw him into a state of severe perplexity and sorrow. Correspondingly, the professor forbade Luzhin to be given anything by Dostoevski, who, in the professor's words, had an oppressive effect on the psyche of contemporary man, for as in a terrible mirror--
"Oh, Mr. Luzhin doesn't brood over books," she said cheerfully. "And he understands poetry badly because of the rhymes, the rhymes put him off." (Chapter 10)
The action in Ada takes place on Demonia, Earth’s twin planet also known as Antiterra. After the L disaster (that seems to correspond to the mock execution of Dostoevski and the Petrashevskians on Jan. 3, 1850, in our world) in the beau milieu of the 19th century electricity was banned on Antiterra:
The details of the L disaster (and I do not mean Elevated) in the beau milieu of last century, which had the singular effect of both causing and cursing the notion of ‘Terra,’ are too well-known historically, and too obscene spiritually, to be treated at length in a book addressed to young laymen and lemans — and not to grave men or gravemen.
Of course, today, after great anti-L years of reactionary delusion have gone by (more or less!) and our sleek little machines, Faragod bless them, hum again after a fashion, as they did in the first half of the nineteenth century, the mere geographic aspect of the affair possesses its redeeming comic side, like those patterns of brass marquetry, and bric-à-Braques, and the ormolu horrors that meant ‘art’ to our humorless forefathers. For, indeed, none can deny the presence of something highly ludicrous in the very configurations that were solemnly purported to represent a varicolored map of Terra. Ved’ (‘it is, isn’t it’) sidesplitting to imagine that ‘Russia,’ instead of being a quaint synonym of Estoty, the American province extending from the Arctic no longer vicious Circle to the United States proper, was on Terra the name of a country, transferred as if by some sleight of land across the ha-ha of a doubled ocean to the opposite hemisphere where it sprawled over all of today’s Tartary, from Kurland to the Kuriles! But (even more absurdly), if, in Terrestrial spatial terms, the Amerussia of Abraham Milton was split into its components, with tangible water and ice separating the political, rather than poetical, notions of ‘America’ and ‘Russia,’ a more complicated and even more preposterous discrepancy arose in regard to time — not only because the history of each part of the amalgam did not quite match the history of each counterpart in its discrete condition, but because a gap of up to a hundred years one way or another existed between the two earths; a gap marked by a bizarre confusion of directional signs at the crossroads of passing time with not all the no-longers of one world corresponding to the not-yets of the other. It was owing, among other things, to this ‘scientifically ungraspable’ concourse of divergences that minds bien rangés (not apt to unhobble hobgoblins) rejected Terra as a fad or a fantom, and deranged minds (ready to plunge into any abyss) accepted it in support and token of their own irrationality.
As Van Veen himself was to find out, at the time of his passionate research in terrology (then a branch of psychiatry) even the deepest thinkers, the purest philosophers, Paar of Chose and Zapater of Aardvark, were emotionally divided in their attitude toward the possibility that there existed’ a distortive glass of our distorted glebe’ as a scholar who desires to remain unnamed has put it with such euphonic wit. (Hm! Kveree-kveree, as poor Mlle L. used to say to Gavronsky. In Ada’s hand.)
There were those who maintained that the discrepancies and ‘false overlappings’ between the two worlds were too numerous, and too deeply woven into the skein of successive events, not to taint with trite fancy the theory of essential sameness; and there were those who retorted that the dissimilarities only confirmed the live organic reality pertaining to the other world; that a perfect likeness would rather suggest a specular, and hence speculatory, phenomenon; and that two chess games with identical openings and identical end moves might ramify in an infinite number of variations, on one board and in two brains, at any middle stage of their irrevocably converging development.
The modest narrator has to remind the rereader of all this, because in April (my favorite month), 1869 (by no means a mirabilic year), on St George’s Day (according to Mlle Larivière’s maudlin memoirs) Demon Veen married Aqua Veen — out of spite and pity, a not unusual blend. (1.3)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): beau milieu: right in the middle.
Faragod: apparently, the god of electricity.
braques: allusion to a bric-à-brac painter.
The girl to whose house Kurt and Karl bring “Pulvermacher” marries Luzhin out of spite and pity ("I feel just one thing, she doesn't love him," her mother says).
Describing the torments of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina), Van uses the phrase “at full pulver:”
At one time Aqua believed that a stillborn male infant half a year old, a surprised little fetus, a fish of rubber that she had produced in her bath, in a lieu de naissance plainly marked X in her dreams, after skiing at full pulver into a larch stump, had somehow been saved and brought to her at the Nusshaus, with her sister’s compliments, wrapped up in blood-soaked cotton wool, but perfectly alive and healthy, to be registered as her son Ivan Veen. At other moments she felt convinced that the child was her sister’s, born out of wedlock, during an exhausting, yet highly romantic blizzard, in a mountain refuge on Sex Rouge, where a Dr Alpiner, general practitioner and gentian-lover, sat providentially waiting near a rude red stove for his boots to dry. Some confusion ensued less than two years later (September, 1871 — her proud brain still retained dozens of dates) when upon escaping from her next refuge and somehow reaching her husband’s unforgettable country house (imitate a foreigner: ‘Signor Konduktor, ay vant go Lago di Luga, hier geld’) she took advantage of his being massaged in the solarium, tiptoed into their former bedroom — and experienced a delicious shock: her talc powder in a half-full glass container marked colorfully Quelques Fleurs still stood on her bedside table; her favorite flame-colored nightgown lay rumpled on the bedrug; to her it meant that only a brief black nightmare had obliterated the radiant fact of her having slept with her husband all along — ever since Shakespeare’s birthday on a green rainy day, but for most other people, alas, it meant that Marina (after G.A. Vronsky, the movie man, had left Marina for another long-lashed Khristosik as he called all pretty starlets) had conceived, c’est bien le cas de le dire, the brilliant idea of having Demon divorce mad Aqua and marry Marina who thought (happily and correctly) she was pregnant again. Marina had spent a rukuliruyushchiy month with him at Kitezh but when she smugly divulged her intentions (just before Aqua’s arrival) he threw her out of the house. Still later, on the last short lap of a useless existence, Aqua scrapped all those ambiguous recollections and found herself reading and rereading busily, blissfully, her son’s letters in a luxurious ‘sanastoria’ at Centaur, Arizona. He invariably wrote in French calling her petite maman and describing the amusing school he would be living at after his thirteenth birthday. She heard his voice through the nightly tinnitus of her new, planful, last, last insomnias and it consoled her. He called her usually mummy, or mama, accenting the last syllable in English, the first, in Russian; somebody had said that triplets and heraldic dracunculi often occurred in trilingual families; but there was absolutely no doubt whatsoever now (except, perhaps, in hateful long-dead Marina’s hell-dwelling mind) that Van was her, her, Aqua’s, beloved son.
Being unwilling to suffer another relapse after this blessed state of perfect mental repose, but knowing it could not last, she did what another patient had done in distant France, at a much less radiant and easygoing ‘home.’ A Dr Froid, one of the administerial centaurs, who may have been an émigré brother with a passport-changed name of the Dr Froit of Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu in the Ardennes or, more likely, the same man, because they both came from Vienne, Isère, and were only sons (as her son was), evolved, or rather revived, the therapistic device, aimed at establishing a ‘group’ feeling, of having the finest patients help the staff if ‘thusly inclined.’ Aqua, in her turn, repeated exactly clever Eleonore Bonvard’s trick, namely, opting for the making of beds and the cleaning of glass shelves. The astorium in St Taurus, or whatever it was called (who cares — one forgets little things very fast, when afloat in infinite non-thingness) was, perhaps, more modem, with a more refined desertic view, than the Mondefroid bleakhouse horsepittle, but in both places a demented patient could outwit in one snap an imbecile pedant. (ibid.)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Khristosik: little Christ (Russ.).
rukuliruyushchiy: Russ., from Fr. roucoulant, cooing.
horsepittle: ‘hospital’, borrowed from a passage in Dickens’ Bleak House. Poor Joe’s pun, not a poor Joycean one.
Eleonore Bonvard seems to blend Eleanor Marx (Karl Marx’s daughter, the first English translator of Madame Bovary) with Bouvard, a character in Flaubert’s unfinished novel Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881). On Antiterra Karl Marx is known as Marx père, the popular author of ‘historical’ plays:
Van spent the fall term of 1892 at Kingston University, Mayne, where there was a first-rate madhouse, as well as a famous Department of Terrapy, and where he now went back to one of his old projects, which turned on the Idea of Dimension & Dementia (‘You will "sturb," Van, with an alliteration on your lips,’ jested old Rattner, resident pessimist of genius, for whom life was only a ‘disturbance’ in the rattnerterological order of things — from ‘nertoros,’ not ‘terra’).
Van Veen [as also, in his small way, the editor of Ada] liked to change his abode at the end of a section or chapter or even paragraph, and he had almost finished a difficult bit dealing with the divorce between time and the contents of time (such as action on matter, in space, and the nature of space itself) and was contemplating moving to Manhattan (that kind of switch being a reflection of mental rubrication rather than a concession to some farcical ‘influence of environment’ endorsed by Marx père, the popular author of ‘historical’ plays), when he received an unexpected dorophone call which for a moment affected violently his entire pulmonary and systemic circulation. (2.5)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): sturb: pun on Germ. sterben, to die.
The popular author of ‘historical’ plays, Marx père also seems to hint at Shaxpere (as Shakespeare’s name is sometimes spelled), the author of history plays. According to Marina, she used to love history:
They now had tea in a prettily furnished corner of the otherwise very austere central hall from which rose the grand staircase. They sat on chairs upholstered in silk around a pretty table. Ada’s black jacket and a pink-yellow-blue nosegay she had composed of anemones, celandines and columbines lay on a stool of oak. The dog got more bits of cake than it did ordinarily. Price, the mournful old footman who brought the cream for the strawberries, resembled Van’s teacher of history, ‘Jeejee’ Jones.
‘He resembles my teacher of history,’ said Van when the man had gone.
‘I used to love history,’ said Marina, ‘I loved to identify myself with famous women. There’s a ladybird on your plate, Ivan. Especially with famous beauties — Lincoln’s second wife or Queen Josephine.’
‘Yes, I’ve noticed — it’s beautifully done. We’ve got a similar set at home.’
‘Slivok (some cream)? I hope you speak Russian?’ Marina asked Van, as she poured him a cup of tea.
‘Neohotno no sovershenno svobodno (reluctantly but quite fluently),’ replied Van, slegka ulïbnuvshis’ (with a slight smile). ‘Yes, lots of cream and three lumps of sugar.’
‘Ada and I share your extravagant tastes. Dostoevski liked it with raspberry syrup.’
‘Pah,’ uttered Ada.
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): with a slight smile: a pet formula of Tolstoy’s denoting cool superiority, if not smugness, in a character’s manner of speech.