In his letter to Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) written before his duel with Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge, Van Veen says that his adversary may be the chap who was thrown out of one of Demon's gaming clubs for attempting oral intercourse with the washroom attendant, a toothless old cripple, veteran of the first Crimean War:
It was only nine p.m. in late summer; he would not have been surprised if told it was midnight in October. He had had an unbelievably long day. The mind could hardly grasp the fact that this very morning, at dawn, a fey character out of some Dormilona novel for servant maids had spoken to him, half-naked and shivering, in the toolroom of Ardis Hall. He wondered if the other girl still stood, arrow straight, adored and abhorred, heartless and heartbroken, against the trunk of a murmuring tree. He wondered if in view of tomorrow’s partie de plaisir he should not prepare for her a when-you-receive-this-note, flippant, cruel, as sharp as an icicle. No. Better write to Demon.
Dear Dad,
in consequence of a trivial altercation with a Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge, whom I happened to step upon in the corridor of a train, I had a pistol duel this morning in the woods near Kalugano and am now no more. Though the manner of my end can be regarded as a kind of easy suicide, the encounter and the ineffable Captain are in no way connected with the Sorrows of Young Veen. In 1884, during my first summer at Ardis, I seduced your daughter, who was then twelve. Our torrid affair lasted till my return to Riverlane; it was resumed last June, four years later. That happiness has been the greatest event in my life, and I have no regrets. Yesterday, though, I discovered she had been unfaithful to me, so we parted. Tapper, I think, may be the chap who was thrown out of one of your gaming clubs for attempting oral intercourse with the washroom attendant, a toothless old cripple, veteran of the first Crimean War. Lots of flowers, please!
Your loving son, Van
He carefully reread his letter — and carefully tore it up. The note he finally placed in his coat pocket was much briefer.
Dad,
I had a trivial quarrel with a stranger whose face I slapped and who killed me in a duel near Kalugano. Sorry!
Van (1.42)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Tapper: ‘Wild Violet’, as well as ‘Birdfoot’ (p.242), reflects the ‘pansy’ character of Van’s adversary and of the two seconds.
partie etc.: picnic.
In a conversation with his second (John Rafin, Esq.) Van mentions Tapper's "gracious anality:"
The Captain was a first-rate shot, Johnny said, and member of the Do-Re-La country club. Bloodthirsty brutishness did not come with his Britishness, but his military and academic standing demanded he defend his honor. He was an expert on maps, horses, horticulture. He was a wealthy landlord. The merest adumbration of an apology on Baron Veen’s part would clinch the matter with a token of gracious finality.
‘If,’ said Van, ‘the good Captain expects that, he can go and stick his pistol up his gracious anality.’
‘That is not a nice way of speaking,’ said Johnny, wincing. ‘My friend would not approve of it. We must remember he is a very refined person.’
Was Johnny Van’s second, or the Captain’s?
‘I’m yours,’ said Johnny with a languid look. (ibid.)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Do-Re-La: ‘Ladore’ musically jumbled.
A veteran of the first Crimean War and the Captain's gracious anality bring to mind literaturnym veteranam (for literary veterans) and ad gloriam per anum (to glory through anus) in Puti i pereput'ya ("Roads and Crossroads," 1920-21), Hodasevich's epigram on Bryusov (one of whose collections of poetry was entitled Puti i pereput'ya):
Без мыла нынче трудно жить
Литературным ветеранам –
Решился Брюсов проложить
Свой путь ad gloriam per anum.
Without soap it is difficult to live
for literary veterans these days.
Bryusov has resolved to make his way
ad gloriam per anum.
The Latin phrase in the last line is a play on the saying per aspera [ardua] ad astra (through hardships to the stars) and on Ad maiorem Dei gloriam (For the greater glory of God), the Latin motto of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), an order of the Catholic Church. Describing Demon’s sword duel with Baron d’Onsky (‘Skonky’), Van mentions smart little Vatican, a Roman spa:
Upon being questioned in Demon’s dungeon, Marina, laughing trillingly, wove a picturesque tissue of lies; then broke down, and confessed. She swore that all was over; that the Baron, a physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai, had gone to Japan forever. From a more reliable source Demon learned that the Samurai’s real destination was smart little Vatican, a Roman spa, whence he was to return to Aardvark, Massa, in a week or so. Since prudent Veen preferred killing his man in Europe (decrepit but indestructible Gamaliel was said to be doing his best to forbid duels in the Western Hemisphere — a canard or an idealistic President’s instant-coffee caprice, for nothing was to come of it after all), Demon rented the fastest petroloplane available, overtook the Baron (looking very fit) in Nice, saw him enter Gunter’s Bookshop, went in after him, and in the presence of the imperturbable and rather bored English shopkeeper, back-slapped the astonished Baron across the face with a lavender glove. The challenge was accepted; two native seconds were chosen; the Baron plumped for swords; and after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish — a kind of American ‘Gory Mary’ in barroom parlance) had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps leading backward to the walled garden in an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil and Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel, the latter gentlemen separated the panting combatants, and Skonky died, not ‘of his wounds’ (as it was viciously rumored) but of a gangrenous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly self-inflicted, a sting in the groin, which caused circulatory trouble, notwithstanding quite a few surgical interventions during two or three years of protracted stays at the Aardvark Hospital in Boston — a city where, incidentally, he married in 1869 our friend the Bohemian lady, now keeper of Glass Biota at the local museum.
Marina arrived in Nice a few days after the duel, and tracked Demon down in his villa Armina, and in the ecstasy of reconciliation neither remembered to dupe procreation, whereupon started the extremely interesnoe polozhenie (‘interesting condition’) without which, in fact, these anguished notes could not have been strung.
(Van, I trust your taste and your talent but are we quite sure we should keep reverting so zestfully to that wicked world which after all may have existed only oneirologically, Van? Marginal jotting in Ada’s 1965 hand; crossed out lightly in her latest wavering one.)
That reckless stage was not the last but the shortest — a matter of four or five days. He pardoned her. He adored her. He wished to marry her very much — on the condition she dropped her theatrical’ career’ at once. He denounced the mediocrity of her gift and the vulgarity of her entourage, and she yelled he was a brute and a fiend. By April 10 it was Aqua who was nursing him, while Marina had flown back to her rehearsals of ‘Lucile,’ yet another execrable drama heading for yet another flop at the Ladore playhouse. (1.2)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Aardvark: apparently, a university town in New England.
Gamaliel: a much more fortunate statesman than our W.G. Harding.
interesting condition: family way.
The word 'spa' is an acronym of the Latin phrase sanus per aquam (health through water). At the beginning of the chapter in which he describes his duel with Captain Tapper Van mentions Aqua (the poor mad twin sister of Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother Marina):
Aqua used to say that only a very cruel or very stupid person, or innocent infants, could be happy on Demonia, our splendid planet. Van felt that for him to survive on this terrible Antiterra, in the multicolored and evil world into which he was born, he had to destroy, or at least to maim for life, two men. He had to find them immediately; delay itself might impair his power of survival. ‘The rapture of their destruction would not mend his heart, but would certainly rinse his brain. The two men were in two different spots and neither spot represented an exact location, a definite street number, an identifiable billet. He hoped to punish them in an honorable way, if Fate helped. He was not prepared for the comically exaggerated zeal Fate was to display in leading him on and then muscling in to become an over-cooperative agent. (1.42)
Describing his meeting in a train with Cordula de Prey, Van mentions Cordula's brief bright affair with Marquis Quizz Quisana:
She was not a bright little girl. But she was a loquacious and really quite exciting little girl. He started to caress her under the table, but she gently removed his hand, whispering ‘womenses,’ as whimsically as another girl had done in some other dream. He cleared his throat loudly and ordered half-a-bottle of cognac, having the waiter open it in his presence as Demon advised. She talked on and on, and he lost the thread of her discourse, or rather it got enmeshed in the rapid landscape, which his gaze followed over her shoulder, with a sudden ravine recording what Jack said when his wife ‘phoned, or a lone tree in a clover field impersonating abandoned John, or a romantic stream running down a cliff and reflecting her brief bright affair with Marquis Quizz Quisana. (ibid.)
The Marquis's name is a play on Quisisana (“here one heals” in Italian). The Romans said mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body). Cordula's 'womenses' and Marquis's Quizz Quisana bring to mind the joke mens sana in Quisisana (a restaurant on Nevsky Avenue in St. Petersburg once popular with drug addicts, prostitutes, etc.).
The washroom attendant with whom Tapper attempted oral intercourse is a toothless old cripple. In Domik v Kolomne ("The Small Cottage in Kolomna," 1830), a mock epic in octaves, Pushkin says that Pegasus (the winged horse of inspiration) is star, zub uzh net (old, has no teeth anymore):
Что за беда? не всё ж гулять пешком
По невскому граниту иль на бале
Лощить паркет, или скакать верхом
В степи киргизской. Поплетусь-ка дале,
Со станции на станцию шажком,
Как говорят о том оригинале,
Который, не кормя, на рысаке
Приехал из Москвы к Неве-реке.
Скажу, рысак! Парнасский иноходец
Его не обогнал бы. Но Пегас
Стар, зуб уж нет. Им вырытый колодец
Иссох. Порос крапивою Парнас;
В отставке Феб живет, а хороводец
Старушек муз уж не прельщает нас.
И табор свой с классических вершинок
Перенесли мы на толкучий рынок. (VII-VIII)
After his dinner with Ada and Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) in 'Ursus' and debauch à trois in his Manhattan flat, Van invites Ada to a ride in the park and says that he will order Pardus and Peg to be saddled:
‘Now let’s go out for a breath of crisp air,’ suggested Van. ‘I’ll order Pardus and Peg to be saddled.’
‘Last night two men recognized me,’ she said. ‘Two separate Californians, but they didn’t dare bow — with that silk-tuxedoed bretteur of mine glaring around. One was Anskar, the producer, and the other, with a cocotte, Paul Whinnier, one of your father’s London pals. I sort of hoped we’d go back to bed.’
‘We shall now go for a ride in the park,’ said Van firmly, and rang, first of all, for a Sunday messenger to take the letter to Lucette’s hotel — or to the Verma resort, if she had already left.
‘I suppose you know what you’re doing?’ observed Ada.
‘Yes,’ he answered.
‘You are breaking her heart,’ said Ada.
‘Ada girl, adored girl,’ cried Van, ‘I’m a radiant void. I’m convalescing after a long and dreadful illness. You cried over my unseemly scar, but now life is going to be nothing but love and laughter, and corn in cans. I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended. You shall wear a blue veil, and I the false mustache that makes me look like Pierre Legrand, my fencing master.’
‘Au fond,’ said Ada, ‘first cousins have a perfect right to ride together. And even dance or skate, if they want. After all, first cousins are almost brother and sister. It’s a blue, icy, breathless day,’
She was soon ready, and they kissed tenderly in their hallway, between lift and stairs, before separating for a few minutes.
‘Tower,’ she murmured in reply to his questioning glance, just as she used to do on those honeyed mornings in the past, when checking up on happiness: ‘And you?’
‘A regular ziggurat.’ (2.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): bretteur: duelling bravo.
au fond: actually.