Ada is a dream. This
dream teems with words like tribadka, rubby ('I'll be back in a rubby,' Ada says to
Van as she leaves him alone in their bed in order to show to Lucette Kim
Beauharnais's album: 2.8) that seem to have been coined purposely to
insult certain type of women. Despite Van's words that had he not been a
heterosexual male, he would have been a Lesbian (2.5), neither Van, nor his
creator is really a feminist.
As we established earlier, Brown Hill, the name of
Ada's school for girls, hints at mons pubis, female
genitalia.
Aqua (poor mad wife of Demon Veen, the father of
Van and Ada, and the twin sister of Marina, the children's
mother) fancifully called it pudendron (pudendum + rhododendron): "'I
know you want to examine my pudendron, the Hairy Alpine Rose in
her [Marina's] album, collected ten
years ago' (showing her ten fingers gleefully, proudly, ten is ten!)" (1.3)
Ten fingers are also mentioned in the
debauche à trois scene: "Ten eager, evil, loving,
long fingers belonging to two different young demons [Ada
and Van] caress their helpless bed pet [Lucette]."
(2.8)
In "Дальние руки" Annensky calls fingers of a
female hand "sisters", "the tender ten", "the geishas* of streetlights" and
"five roses betrothed to a stem":
О сёстры, о нежные
десять,
Две ласково дружных
семьи,
Вас пологом ночи
завесить
Так рады желанья мои.
Вы - гейши фонарных
свечений,
Пять роз, обручённых
стеблю,
Но нет у Киприды
священней
Не сказанных вами
люблю.
Oh sisters, oh the tender ten,
two affectionately friendly families!
My desires are so happy
to curtain you off with the cover of
night.
You are the geishas of streetlights,
five roses betrothed to a stem.
But Cypris doesn't have "I love you's"
more sacred
than those you never said.
Taken together, the names Aqua and Marina hint at
aquamarine, a light-blue or greenish-blue variety of beryl, used as a
gem. Annensky nowhere mentions it, but he is the author of two poems entitled
"Аметисты" ("The Amethysts") dedicated to another mineral used as a gem.
Amethyst means "not intoxicating" in Greek (the
gem was believed to prevent drunkenness).
алмея + ты + мать = метла + я +
мы + Татьяна - Таня = Амалтея + мытьё - ё
алмея + аз = алмаз + ея = земля + Аа
= Алла + змея - л
Brown Hill + Alma Mater + Almeh
+ I = brow + nihil + Mallarmé + Hamlet
алмея - almeh
ты - you
мать - mother; мать = тьма (darkness); cf.
е.... мать, "our national Oedipean oath"; the title
of a novel by Gorky
метла - broom; cf. two mentions of brooms
(apart from Vanda Broom) in Ada: "The unmentionable
magnetic power... was used on Terra as freely as water and air, as bibles and
brooms": 1.3, and "Angels, too, have brooms - to
sweep one's soul clear of horrible images":
5.6)
я - I
мы - we
Татьяна - Tatiana
Таня - Tanya (diminutive of Tatiana; Pushkin often calls the heroine of
EO by this diminutive)
Амалтея - Amalthea (a nymph or, according to other versions, a daughter of
a Cretan King who brought up the infant Zeus on the milk of a goat, or this
goat); Amalthea is mentioned in one of Pierre Louys's "The Songs of
Bilitis"
мытьё - wash, washing; cf. не мытьём, так катаньем, "by hook
or by crook"
аз - obs., I; letter A in the old Russian
alphabet
алмаз - diamond
ея - obs., her; Ея -
a river S of Rostov on the Don that flows into the Azov sea
земля - earth (also the planet)
Аа - a river in Kurland
Алла - female given name; cf. Alla, a character
in VN's "Подвиг" (Glory) who calls
Constantinople "amethystine" in one of her poems and who
gives Martyn "The Songs of Bilitis"
змея - snake
*Japanese counterpart of Egyptian
"almehs"; cf. "Geisha with 13 lovers", a picture in Uncle Dan's collection
of Oriental Erotica (1.21)
Alexey Sklyarenko