Had JM taken the trouble to understand my post before
commenting on it, she would have known that the White Corridor (see my
quote from Khodasevich) is in Kremlin.
Rukavishnikov comes from rukavitsa (mitten;
gauntlet). In Pushkin's "The Fairy Tale about Czar Saltan" (1831), the Swan
Princess compares one's wife to rukavitsa:
Но жена не рукавица,
С белой ручки не стряхнёшь
(But the wife is not a gauntlet
that one would shake off from one's fair
hand).
Белой (white) means here what krasnyi
(red) sometimes means: "fair." The final reconciliation between the
whites and the reds?
Tenderly she [Lucette] shook her juweled head... Then she walked
before him as conscious of his gaze as if she were winning a prize for 'poise.'
He [Van] could describe her dress only as struthious
(if there existed copper-curled ostriches)... (Ada:
3.5)
Pushkin, "The Fairy Tale about Czar Saltan:"
Месяц под косой блестит,
А во лбу звезда горит;
А сама-то величава,
Выступает, будто
пава
(The moon shines under her plait,
And the star burns in her forehead;
And she paces,
Stately as a peahen).
Пава (peahen) is mentioned in Ada (3.5):
Lucette wanted to know: kto siya pava? (who's that
stately dame?)
Alexey Sklyarenko