Describing the family dinner in "Ardis the Second," Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the French cuisine that had contributed its chaudfroids and foie gras:
Another Price, a typical, too typical, old retainer whom Marina (and G.A. Vronsky, during their brief romance) had dubbed, for unknown reasons, ‘Grib,’ placed an onyx ashtray at the head of the table for Demon, who liked to smoke between courses — a puff of Russian ancestry. A side table supported, also in the Russian fashion, a collection of red, black, gray, beige hors-d’oeuvres, with the serviette caviar (salfetochnaya ikra) separated from the pot of Graybead (ikra svezhaya) by the succulent pomp of preserved boletes, ‘white,’ and ‘subbetuline,’ while the pink of smoked salmon vied with the incarnadine of Westphalian ham. The variously flavored vodochki glittered, on a separate tray. The French cuisine had contributed its chaudfroids and foie gras. A window was open, and the crickets were stridulating at an ominous speed in the black motionless foliage. (1.38)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): grib: Russ., mushroom.
vodochki: Russ., pl. of vodochka, diminutive of vodka.
The French cuisine brings to mind frantsuzskoy kukhni luchshiy tsvet (the best flower of French cookery), a line in Chapter One (XVI: 11) of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:
Уж тёмно: в санки он садится.
«Пади, пади!» — раздался крик;
Морозной пылью серебрится
Его бобровый воротник.
К Talon4 помчался: он уверен,
Что там уж ждет его Каверин.
Вошел: и пробка в потолок,
Вина кометы брызнул ток;
Пред ним roast-beef окровавленный,
И трюфли, роскошь юных лет,
Французской кухни лучший цвет,
И Страсбурга пирог нетленный
Меж сыром лимбургским живым
И ананасом золотым.
'Tis dark by now. He gets into a sleigh.
The cry “Way, way!” resounds.
With frostdust silvers
his beaver collar.
To Talon's4 he has dashed off: he is certain
that there already waits for him [Kavérin];
has entered — and the cork goes ceilingward,
the flow of comet wine spurts forth,
a bloody roast beef is before him,
and truffles, luxury of youthful years,
the best flower of French cookery,
and a decayless Strasbourg pie
between a living Limburg cheese
and a golden ananas.
4. Well-known restaurateur. (Pushkin's note)
The Strasbourg pie is a pie filled with foie gras and other ingredients. Onegin's bobrovyi vorotnik (beaver collar) brings to mind Marina's bobrovaya shuba (beaver coat) and Ada's bobry:
As if she had just escaped from a burning palace and a perishing kingdom, she wore over her rumpled nightdress a deep-brown, hoar-glossed coat of sea-otter fur, the famous kamchatstkiy bobr of ancient Estotian traders, also known as 'lutromarina' on the Lyaska coast: 'my natural fur,' as Marina used to say pleasantly of her own cape, inherited from a Zemski granddam, when, at the dispersal of a winter ball, some lady wearing vison or coypu or a lowly manteau de castor (beaver, nemetskiy bobr) would comment with a rapturous moan on the bobrovaya shuba. 'Staren'kaya (old little thing),' Marina used to add in fond deprecation (the usual counterpart of the Bostonian lady's coy 'thank you' ventriloquizing her banal mink or nutria in response to polite praise - which did not prevent her from denouncing afterwards the 'swank' of that 'stuck-up actress,' who, actually, was the least ostentatious of souls). Ada's bobry (princely plural of bobr) were a gift from Demon, who as we know, had lately seen in the Western states considerably more of her than he had in Eastern Estotiland when she was a child. (2.6)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): shuba: Russ., furcoat.
In her memoir essay Dom u starogo Pimena ("The House at Old Pimen," 1934) Marina Tsvetaev describes the last occasion on which she saw the historian Ilovayski (1832-1921), the author of the famous text-book, father of Ivan Tsvetaev's first wife, who wore (in May!) a bobrovaya shuba. Ilovayski came to ask Ivan Tsvetaev if there would be a cloakroom in the Alexander III Museum of Fine Arts (to be opened soon, now known as the Pushkin Museum) because he feared that his expensive fur coat could be stolen:
Д. И. Иловайского я в последний раз видела, точней — слышала, накануне открытия Музея Александра III, в мае 1912 года, у нас в доме, в неурочно поздний час. Не дожидаясь прислуги, живущей через двор и, наверное, уже спящей, Сережа Эфрон, за которого я только что вышла замуж, открывает. Скрип парадного, какое-то ворчание, из которого выясняются слова: «Значит, дома нет?» И, проходя в залу: «А гардероб — будет?» Молчание, затем покашливанье вопрошаемого. Вопрошающий, настойчивее: «Гардероб, говорю, будет? Под расписку, спрашиваю, сдают?» Выглянув из столовой, вижу, как Сережа, с всё ещё любезной улыбкой слегка подаётся от неуклонно, с бесстрастием Рока надвигающейся на него шубы, в которой (май!) узнаю Д. И. Иловайского. «А то (похлопывая себя по широченному, как у рясы, рукаву) она у меня небось бобровая, как бы (с желчной иронией) по случаю торжества-то — не лишиться! Тоже мода пошла, перекинет через ручку и «будьте покойны-с», с одной улыбкой-с, без всякой расписки-с... А кто его знает — служитель или грабитель переодетый? На лбу ведь не написано, а если и написано — так ложь. Нет, нумер нужен, нумер!» Спрятавшись за самовар, гляжу дальше. Пауза и, прищурившись: «А вас я что-то не припомню... В прихожей-то было за Андрюшу принял, а теперь вижу — нет: ещё выше и худощавее (и, неодобрительно) и годами будто ещё моложе...» — «Я муж зятя... то есть зять дочери — Марины... Я хотел сказать: Ивана Владимировича. Муж». Иловайский, недоверчиво: «Муж? — и уже бесстрастно: — А-а-а... Так передайте, молодой человек, Ивану Владимировичу, что приходил его тесть от Старого Пимена, про гардероб узнавал».
И, перепутав родного внука с чужим зятем — уже сказанием! уже привидением! — метя бобровой шубой дубовые половицы, темнеющей залой, за эти несколько минут совсем стемневшей — как снеговое поле, снеговым полем своей волчьей доли, скрипящим парадным, деревянными мостками, лайнувшей калиткой, мимо первых фонарей — последней зари — домой, к своему патрону — Пимену, к патрону всех летописцев — Пимену, к Старому Пимену, что на Малой Димитровке, к Малому Димитрию, к Димитрию Убиенному — в свой бездетный, смертный, мёртвый дом.
In her memoir essay Marina Tsvetaev says that she took into exile Ilovayski's book about Marina Mnishek, a Polish beauty after whom her mother (Ivan Tsvetaev's second wife) had named her:
Есть у меня на память о нём, с собой, его книга о моей соименнице, а отчасти и соплеменнице Марине, в честь которой меня и назвала мать.
The beloved of Grigoriy Otrepiev (False Dmitri I), Marina Mnishek is a character in Pushkin's Boris Godunov (1825). The characters in Pushkin's drama include the chronicler Pimen. According to Marina Tsvetaev, Pimen is patron (the patron saint) of all chroniclers. In Russian, patron also means "cartridge." Cartridge is the solution of Van's "suicidal" charade:
Down. My first is a vehicle that twists dead daisies around its spokes; my second is Oldmanhattan slang for 'money'; and my whole makes a hole. (2.11)
In patron there is tron (throne). On Van's eighth birthday (January 1, 1878) Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) made himself up as Boris Gogunov in an amateur parody and rolled down the steps of a burlesque throne:
Van, whose finger had been gliding endlessly to and fro along the mute but soothingly smooth edge of the mahogany desk, now heard with horror the sob that shook Demon's entire frame, and then saw a deluge of tears flowing down those hollow tanned cheeks. In an amateur parody, at Van's birthday party fifteen years ago, his father had made himself up as Boris Godunov and shed strange, frightening, jet-black tears before rolling down the steps of a burlesque throne in death's total surrender to gravity. (ibid.)
In February 1893 Demon finds out that his children are lovers and tells Van to stop his affair with Ada. Twelve years later, in March 1905, Demon perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific. Decribing the last occasion on which he saw Demon, Van mentions Cardinal Grishkin, a poem by Kithar Sween:
The last occasion on which Van had seen his father was at their house in the spring of 1904. Other people had been present: old Eliot, the real-estate man, two lawyers (Grombchevski and Gromwell), Dr Aix, the art expert, Rosalind Knight, Demon’s new secretary, and solemn Kithar Sween, a banker who at sixty-five had become an avant-garde author; in the course of one miraculous year he had produced The Waistline, a satire in free verse on Anglo-American feeding habits, and Cardinal Grishkin, an overtly subtle yarn extolling the Roman faith. The poem was but the twinkle in an owl’s eye; as to the novel it had already been pronounced ‘seminal’ by celebrated young critics (Norman Girsh, Louis Deer, many others) who lauded it in reverential voices pitched so high that an ordinary human ear could not make much of that treble volubility; it seemed, however, all very exciting, and after a great bang of obituary essays in 1910 (‘Kithar Sween: the man and the writer,’ ‘Sween as poet and person,’ ‘Kithar Kirman Lavehr Sween: a tentative biography’) both the satire and the romance were to be forgotten as thoroughly as that acting foreman’s control of background adjustment — or Demon’s edict. (3.7)
Grishkin is a female character in T. S. Eliot's Whispers of Immortality (1919). On the other hand, Cardinal Grishkin seems to hint at Grishka Otrepiev (False Dmitri I) and latinskie popy (the Roman Catholic priests) mentioned by Pushkin in Boris Godunov:
Latinskie popy s nim zaodno.
The Roman priests are in agreement with him [Otrepiev].
Van does not realize that his father died, because Ada (who could not pardon Demon his forcing Van to give her up) managed to persuade the pilot to destroy his machine in midair. "Revenge is a dish best served cold." Chaud (cf. chaudfroids contributed by the French cuisine) is French for "hot," and froid means "cold." Fire is the hot element that destroys Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother who dies of cancer and whose body is burned, according to her instructions), air is the cold element that destroys Demon. In his EO Commentary VN quotes Delvig's aphorism "the nearer to heaven, the colder one's verses get" (Pushkin's friend Delvig disliked mystical poetry).
In her essay "My Pushkin" (1937) Marina Tsvetaev says that there is not a shade of vindictiveness in Tatiana's lesson that she wants Onegin to hear out:
Ведь в отповеди Татьяны - ни тени мстительности. Потому и получается полнота возмездия, поэтому-то Онегин и стоит "как громом пораженный". Все козыри были у неё в руках, чтобы отмстить и свести его с ума, все козыри - чтобы унизить, втоптать в землю той скамьи, сравнять с паркетом той залы, она всё это уничтожила одной только обмолвкой: Я вас люблю (к чему лукавить?)
Marina Tsvetaev quotes Tatiana's words to Onegin Ya vas lyublyu (k chemu lukavit'), "I love you (why dissimulate?)," in Chapter Eight (XLVII: 12) of EO. In the preceding stanza (XLVI: 13-14) of Pushkin's novel in verse Tatiana mentions a cross and the shade of branches over the grave of her nurse:
«А мне, Онегин, пышность эта,
Постылой жизни мишура,
Мои успехи в вихре света,
Мой модный дом и вечера,
Что в них? Сейчас отдать я рада
Всю эту ветошь маскарада,
Весь этот блеск, и шум, и чад
За полку книг, за дикий сад,
За наше бедное жилище,
За те места, где в первый раз,
Онегин, встретила я вас,
Да за смиренное кладбище,
Где нынче крест и тень ветвей
Над бедной нянею моей…"
“But as to me, Onegin, this magnificence,
a wearisome life's tinsel, my successes
in the world's vortex,
my fashionable house and evenings,
what do I care for them?... At once I'd gladly
give all the frippery of this masquerade,
all this glitter, and noise, and fumes,
for a shelfful of books, for a wild garden,
for our poor dwelling,
for those haunts where for the first time,
Onegin, I saw you,
and for the humble churchyard where
there is a cross now and the shade
of branches over my poor nurse."
In Kim Beauharnais's album there is a photograph of the cross and the shade of boughs above the grave of Marina's dear housekeeper, Anna Pimenovna Nepraslinov (2.7). After Demon told him to stop his incestous affair, Van blinds Kim Beauharnais (a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis) for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada and burns Kim's house:
Van sealed the letter, found his Thunderbolt pistol in the place he had visualized, introduced one cartridge into the magazine and translated it into its chamber. Then, standing before a closet mirror, he put the automatic to his head, at the point of the pterion, and pressed the comfortably concaved trigger. Nothing happened — or perhaps everything happened, and his destiny simply forked at that instant, as it probably does sometimes at night, especially in a strange bed, at stages of great happiness or great desolation, when we happen to die in our sleep, but continue our normal existence, with no perceptible break in the faked serialization, on the following, neatly prepared morning, with a spurious past discreetly but firmly attached behind. Anyway, what he held in his right hand was no longer a pistol but a pocket comb which he passed through his hair at the temples. It was to gray by the time that Ada, then in her thirties, said, when they spoke of their voluntary separation:
‘I would have killed myself too, had I found Rose wailing over your corpse. "Secondes pensées sont les bonnes," as your other, white, bonne used to say in her pretty patois. As to the apron, you are quite right. And what you did not make out was that the artist had about finished a large picture of your meek little palazzo standing between its two giant guards. Perhaps for the cover of a magazine, which rejected that picture. But, you know, there’s one thing I regret,’ she added: ‘Your use of an alpenstock to release a brute’s fury — not yours, not my Van’s. I should never have told you about the Ladore policeman. You should never have taken him into your confidence, never connived with him to burn those files — and most of Kalugano’s pine forest. Eto unizitel’no (it is humiliating).’
‘Amends have been made,’ replied fat Van with a fat man’s chuckle. ‘I’m keeping Kim safe and snug in a nice Home for Disabled Professional People, where he gets from me loads of nicely brailled books on new processes in chromophotography.’
There are other possible forkings and continuations that occur to the dream-mind, but these will do. (2.11)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): secondes pensées etc.: second thoughts are the good ones.
bonne: housemaid.
Kim's apotheosis of Ardis (as Van calls the last photograph in Kim's album that shows the entire staff of Ardis Hall) brings to mind a group photograph taken in the Kremlin and described by Nikonov (a character in Aldanov's trilogy "The Key," "The Escape" and "The Cave") in his letter from Russia. In his review of Aldanov's novel Peshchera ("The Cave," 1936) in Sovremennye zapiski (Contemporary Notes) VN quotes a fragment of Nikonov's letter in which "the last Ilovayski of history" is mentioned:
Мусенька, понимаете ли вы, какие люциферовы чувства они должны испытывать к нежно любимому Ильичу: "сел, сел-таки на стул! а мы тут стой за стулом, и сейчас, и в завтрашнем журнальчике с верзилой на обложке, и до конца времен, до последнего Иловайского истории! А ведь если б в таком-то году, на таком-то съезде, голосовать не так, а иначе, да на такую-то брошюру ответить вот так, то ведь не он, а я, пожалуй, сидел бы "Давыдычем" на стуле, а он стоял бы у меня за спиной с доброй, товарищески-верноподданнической улыбкой!.." ("The Cave," Part Two, Chapter VI)
In 1940 "Davydych" (as Nikonov calls Trotsky who is standing behind Lenin who is sitting on a chair in the center of the photograph) was killed with an alpenstock by Stalin's agent. Ada deplores Van's use of an alpenstock to poke out Kim's eyes.