2. Another duel: Van and the Captain

the fussy Captain added to them what looked like a potato bag or something rotting in a locker, and then after rummaging again in the car trunk and muttering about the ‘bloody mess’ (quite a literal statement) decided to sacrifice the ancient and filthy macintosh on which a decrepit dear dog had once died on the way to the veterinary.

3. 0‘Good Lord!’ he exclaimed, on catching sight of the gory trophy, ‘somebody must have chopped off a thumb!’ Patting his thighs and his chair, he sought and retrieved — from under the footstool — the vestpocket wordbook and went back to his paper, but a second later had to look up ‘groote,’ which he had been groping for when disturbed.The simplicity of its meaning annoyed him.

4. And somewhere else we also find: "Blanche, who had been told to whisk Dack to her room but, as usual, had not incarcerated him properly. Both children experienced a chill of déjà-vu (a twofold déjà-vu, in fact, when contemplated in artistic retrospect).

You, Alexey, explained to us some time ago that the "gory trophy" was "apparently a tampon, snatched by Dack [the Dachshund at Ardis] before continuing with the quote when Uncle Dan exclaims about somebody's chopped off thumb while he was still looking up the word "groote". 

Your links went from Peter Rast, Tsar & Peter the Great, to the poet Blok at that time. Now you remembered TT and "bloody Ivan", too. 

I've always been very careful with passages in VN that invite a Freudian interpretation ( confusing a woman's menstrual blood, as did Uncle Dan, with a chopped-off finger would bring "castration complex" to our minds almost automatically, more so after its proximity with "pederast" and "déjá vus"...).  Probably the political allusions are a richer thread to pursue and references that mainly Russians or Russian-speaking readers will be able to understand.

Could you explain your ideas on Peter the Great and Tsars a little more?

Jansy