The characters in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) include Mariette, the Krugs' housemaid who was sent by Paduk to spy on Adam Krug and his son David:
He got rid of her furs, of all her photographs, of her huge English sponge and supply of lavender soap, of her umbrella, of her napkin ring, of the little porcelain owl she had bought for Ember and never given him — but she refused to be forgotten. When (some fifteen years before) both his parents had been killed in a railway accident, he had managed to alleviate the pain and the panic by writing Chapter III (Chapter IV in later editions) of his 'Mirokonzepsia' wherein he looked straight into the eyesockets of death and called him a dog and an abomination. With one strong shrug of his burly shoulders he shook off the burden of sanctity enveloping the monster, and as with a thump and a great explosion of dust the thick old mats and carpets and things fell, he had experienced a kind of hideous relief. But could he do it again?
Her dresses and stockings and hats and shoes mercifully disappeared together with Claudina when the latter, soon after Hedron's arrest, was bullied by police agents into leaving. The agencies he called, in an attempt to find a trained nurse to replace her, could not help him; but a couple of days after Claudina had gone, the bell rang and there, on the landing, was a very young girl with a suitcase offering her services. 'I answer,' she amusingly said, 'to the name of Mariette'; she had been employed as maid and model in the household of the well-known artist who had lived in apartment 30, right above Krug; but now he was obliged to depart with his wife and two other painters for a much less comfortable prison camp in a remote province. Mariette brought down a second suitcase and quietly moved into the room near the nursery. She had good references from the Department of Public Health, graceful legs and a pale, delicately shaped, not particularly pretty, but attractively childish face with parched-looking lips, always parted, and strange lustreless dark eyes; the pupil almost merged in tint with the iris, which was placed somewhat higher than is usual and was obliquely shaded by sooty lashes. No paint or powder touched her singularly bloodless, evenly translucid cheeks. She wore her hair long. Krug had a confused feeling that he had seen her before, probably on the stairs. Cinderella, the little slattern, moving and dusting in a dream, always ivory pale and unspeakably tired after last night's ball. On the whole, there was something rather irritating about her, and her wavy brown hair had a strong chestnutty smell; but David liked her, so she might do after all. (Chapter 10)
In his story Skarabei ("The Scarabs," 1924) Bunin describes his visit to the Bulaq Museum in Cairo and mentions Auguste Mariette (1821-81), a French scholar, archaeologist and Egyptologist, the founder of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities:
Вижу себя в Каире, в Булакском музее.
Когда входил во двор, пара буйволов медленно влекла к подъезду длинные дроги, на которых высился громадный саркофаг. Усмехнувшись, подумал:
- Еще один великий царь...
Разноцветные гранитные саркофаги, гробы из золотистого лакированного дерева загромождали вестибюль. Пряно, сухо и топко пахло - священный аромат мумий, как бы сама душа сказочной египетской древности. Но буднично и деловито перекликались, что-то спрашивали друг у друга, что-то кому-то громко приказывали быстро проходившие по звонким коридорам и сбегавшие с главной лестницы чиновники, принимавшие новую партию тысячелетних покойников.
А пройдя между гробами в вестибюле, я вступил в залы, блистающие мертвенной чистотой и полные других гробов. И здесь оно, это тонкое и сухое благовоние, древнее, священное! Долго ходил и опять долго смотрел на маленькие черные мощи Рамзеса Великого в его стеклянном ящике. Да, да, подумать только: вот я возле самого Великого Рамзеса, его подлинного тела, пусть иссохшего, почерневшего, превратившегося в одни кости, но все же его, его!
А рядом - скарабеи Мариетта. Мариетт поместил в особой витрине, разложил в хронологическом порядке все собранные им царские скарабеи, - триста чудесных жучков из ляпис-лазури и серпентина. На этих жучках писали имена усопших царей, их клали на грудь царских мумий, как символ рождающейся из земли и вечно возрождающейся, бессмертной жизни. Мариетт собрал их - и выставил на удивление всему человечеству:
- Вот вся история Египта, вся жизнь его за целых пять тысяч лет.
Да, пять тысяч лет жизни и славы, а в итоге - игрушечная коллекция камешков! И камешки эти - символ вечной жизни, символ воскресения! Горько усмехаться или радоваться?
Все-таки радоваться. Все-таки быть в том вовеки неистребимом и самом дивном, что до сих пор кровно связывает мое сердце с сердцем, остывшим несколько тысячелетий тому назад, с сердцем, на коем тысячелетия покоился этот воистину божественный кусочек ляпис-лазури, - с человеческим сердцем, которое в те легендарные дни так же твердо, как и в наши, отказывалось верить в смерть, а верило только в жизнь. Все пройдет - не пройдет только эта вера!
The mummy of Ramesses II mentioned by Bunin makes one think of Lenin's mausoleum (Lenin died in January 1924 and shortly after his death his body was embalmed and preserved for public display). Padukgrad hints at Leningrad (VN's home city, St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd in 1914, soon after World War I broke out, and ten years later, a few days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad).
According to VN, das ungeheuere Ungeziefer (a gigantic insect) into which Gregor Samsa turns in Kafka's story Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, 1915) is a scarab. In Krug's study there is Gregoire, a huge stag beetle wrought of pig iron:
Krug heaved horribly, could not finish—crushed down the receiver. His study was unusually cold. All of them so blind and sooty, and hung up so high above the bookshelves, that he could hardly make out the cracked complexion of an upturned face under a rudimentary halo or the jigsaw indentures of a martyr’s parchmentlike robe dissolving into grimy blackness. A deal table in one corner supported loads of unbound volumes of the Revue de Psychologie bought secondhand, crabbed 1879 turning into plump 1880, their dead-leaf covers frayed or crumpled at the edges and almost cut through by the crisscross string eating its way into their dusty bulk. Results of the pact never to dust, never to unmake the room. A comfortable hideous bronze stand lamp with a thick glass shade of lumpy garnet and amethyst portions set in asymmetrical interspaces between bronze veins had grown to a great height, like some enormous weed, from the old blue carpet beside the striped sofa where Krug will lie tonight. The spontaneous generation of unanswered letters, reprints, university bulletins, disembowelled envelopes, paper clips, pencils in various stages of development littered the desk. Gregoire, a huge stag beetle wrought of pig iron which had been used by his grandfather to pull off by the heel (hungrily gripped by these burnished mandibles) first one riding boot, then the other, peered, unloved, from under the leathern fringe of a leathern armchair. The only pure thing in the room was a copy of Chardin’s “House of Cards,” which she had once placed over the mantelpiece (to ozonize your dreadful lair, she had said)—the conspicuous cards, the flushed faces, the lovely brown background. (Chapter 3)
Krug's housemaid Mariette has two sisters: Miss Linda Bachofen and Doktor Amalia von Wytwyl. Tri sestry ("The Three Sisters," 1901) is a play by Chekhov. The maiden name of the Bachofen sisters seems to hint at Jacques Offenbach (1819-80), a German-born French composer. In VN’s story Poseshchenie muzeya (“The Visit to the Museum,” 1938) the portrait of a Russian Nobleman bears a likeness to Offenbach:
Сразу заприметив мужской портрет между двумя гнусными пейзажами (с коровами и настроением), я подошел ближе и был несколько потрясен, найдя то самое, существование чего дотоле казалось мне попутной выдумкой блуждающего рассудка. Весьма дурно написанный маслом мужчина в сюртуке, с бакенбардами, в крупном пенсне на шнурке, смахивал на Оффенбаха, но, несмотря на подлую условность работы, можно было, пожалуй, разглядеть в его чертах как бы горизонт сходства с моим приятелем. В уголке по черному фону была кармином выведена подпись "Леруа",-- такая же бездарная, как само произведение.
At once my eye was caught by the portrait of a man between two abominable landscapes (with cattle and "atmosphere"). I moved closer and, to my considerable amazement, found the very object whose existence had hitherto seemed to me but the figment of an unstable mind. The man, depicted in wretched oils, wore a frock coat, whiskers, and a large pince-nez on a cord; he bore a likeness to Offenbach, but, in spite of the work's vile conventionality, I had the feeling one could make out in his features the horizon of a resemblance, as it were, to my friend. In one corner, meticulously traced in carmine against a black background, was the signature Leroy in a hand as commonplace as the work itself.
In VN's story the narrator describes his visit to the Montisert Museum where he gets lost and eventully finds himself in Leningrad.
Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aïda, first performed in 1871, goes back to a scenario suggested in 1865 by Auguste Mariette. In VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937) Shchyogolev calls his step-daughter, Zina Mertz, "Zinka" and "Aida."
In Chekhov's humorous story O zhenshchinakh ("On Women," 1886) the eloquent misogynist mentions La Belle Hélène (the heroine of an operetta by Offenbach, Menelaus's wife whose abduction by Paris was the cause of the Troyan war) and the Amalias (prostitutes) on whom the clerks squander their salary:
Она порочна и безнравственна. От нее идет начало всех зол. В одной старинной книге сказано: «Mulier est malleus, per quem diabolus mollit et malleat universum mundum». Когда диаволу приходит охота учинить какую-нибудь пакость или каверзу, то он всегда норовит действовать через женщин. Вспомните, что из-за Бель Элен вспыхнула Троянская война, Мессалина совратила с пути истины не одного паиньку... Гоголь говорит, что чиновники берут взятки только потому, что на это толкают их жены. Это совершенно верно. Пропивают, в винт проигрывают и на Амалий тратят чиновники только жалованье... Имущества антрепренеров, казенных подрядчиков и секретарей теплых учреждений всегда записаны на имя жены. Распущена женщина донельзя. Каждая богатая барыня всегда окружена десятками молодых людей, жаждущих попасть к ней в альфонсы. Бедные молодые люди!
Like Anton Chekhov, Amalia von Wytwyl is a doctor. The surname Wytwyl seems to hint at vulvit, Russian for vulvitis (vulvar itching, inflammation of the female genitalia).