Demon to Van: 'At the races, the other
day, I was talking to a woman I preyed upon years
ago, oh long before Moses de Vere cuckolded her
husband in my absence and shot him dead in my
presence - an epigram you've heard before, no doubt from these very lips
- ' (Ada, 1.38)
'It's not a very old religion, anyway, as
religions go, is it?' said Marina (turning to Van and vaguely planning to steer
the chat to India where she had been a dancing girl long before
Moses or anybody was born in the lotus swamp).
(1.14)
Praskovia de Prey and Shakespeare are also mentioned in
this chapter:
Marina was about to jingle a bronze bell for the
footman to bring some more toast, but Greg said he was on his way to a
party at the Countess de Prey's:
'Rather soon (skorovato) she consoled
herself,' remarked Marina, alluding to the death of the Count killed in a pistol
duel on Boston Common a couple of years ago.
'She's a very jolly and handsome woman,' said
Greg.
'And ten years older than me,' said
Marina...
...'Et pourtant,' said the sound-sensitive governess, wincing, 'I read to her
twice Ségur's adaptation in fable form of Shakespeare's
play about the wicked usurer.'
'She also knows my
revised monologue of his mad king,' said Ada:
Ce beau jardin fleurit en
mai,
Mais en hiver
Jamais, jamais, jamais, jamais,
jamais
N'est vert, n'est vert, n'est vert, n'est
vert, n'est vert.
At a cocktail party given by the excellent widow of an obscure
Major de Prey ("obscurely related to our late neighbor, a
fine shot but the light was bad on the Common, and a meddlesome garbage
collector hollered at the wrong moment") Demon Veen courts a young
actress whose name hints at the youngest daughter of Shakespeare's mad
king: 'She's a budding Duse,' replied Demon austerely, 'and
the party is strictly a "prof push." You'll stick to Cordula de Prey, I, to
Cordelia O'Leary.' (1.27)
Before repeating his epigram about Moses de Vere, Demon
mentions Greg's (and his twin sister Grace's) father who suffers a
mental illness: 'You have all sorts of rather odd neighbors.
Poor Lord Erminin is practically insane.' (1.38)
Colonel Erminin failed to turn up at the picnic on Ada's
twelfth burthday (1.13), saying in an apologetic note that his liver
(pechen') was behaving like a pecheneg (savage).
According to Van (3.2), Greg's 'father preferred to pass for
a Chekhovian colonel.' Pecheneg is a story (1894) by
Chekhov.
When Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) was a little
girl, 'Mesopotamian history was taught practically
in the nursery.' (1.14) Below is the scripture lesson in
Chekhov's story Three Years (1895), chapter IX:
Meanwhile Alexey Fyodorovitch was giving Sasha and
Lida a scripture lesson below. For the last six weeks they had been living in
Moscow, and were installed with their governess in the lower storey of the
lodge. And three times a week a teacher from a school in the town, and a priest,
came to give them lessons. Sasha was going through the New Testament and Lida
was going through the Old. The time before Lida had been set the story up to
Abraham to learn by heart.
“And so Adam and Eve had two sons,” said Laptev.
“Very good. But what were they called? Try to remember them!”
Lida, still with the same severe face, gazed
dumbly at the table. She moved her lips, but without speaking; and the elder
girl, Sasha, looked into her face, frowning.
“You know it very well, only you mustn't be
nervous,” said Laptev. “Come, what were Adam's sons called?”
“Abel and Canel,” Lida whispered.
“Cain and Abel,” Laptev corrected her.
A big tear rolled down Lida's cheek and dropped on
the book. Sasha looked down and turned red, and she, too, was on the point of
tears. Laptev felt a lump in his throat, and was so sorry for them he could not
speak. He got up from the table and lighted a cigarette. At that moment Kochevoy
came down the stairs with a paper in his hand. The little girls stood up, and
without looking at him, made curtsies.
“For God's sake, Kostya, give them their lessons,”
said Laptev, turning to him. “I'm afraid I shall cry, too, and I have to go to
the warehouse before dinner.”
“All right.”
Alexey Fyodorovitch went away. Kostya, with a very
serious face, sat down to the table and drew the Scripture history towards
him.
“Well,” he said; “where have you got
to?”
“She knows about the Flood,” said
Sasha.
“The Flood? All right. Let's peg in at the Flood.
Fire away about the Flood.” Kostya skimmed through a brief description of the
Flood in the book, and said: “I must remark that there really never was a flood
such as is described here. And there was no such person as Noah. Some thousands
of years before the birth of Christ, there was an extraordinary inundation of
the earth, and that's not only mentioned in the Jewish Bible, but in the books
of other ancient peoples: the Greeks, the Chaldeans, the Hindoos. But whatever
the inundation may have been, it couldn't have covered the whole earth. It may
have flooded the plains, but the mountains must have remained. You can read this
book, of course, but don't put too much faith in it.”
Àíòèòåððà + Íîé = Àíòèíîé + Òåððà
(Àíòèòåððà - Antiterra, Íîé - Noah, Àíòèíîé -
Antinous, Òåððà - Terra)
Note the mention of Abraham (the first of the great Biblical
patriarchs, father of Isaac, and traditional founder of the ancient Hebrew
nation). On Antiterra, Abraham Milton is a founder of Amerussia. On the other
hand, Milton Abraham helped Aqua (Marina's mad twin sister) to organize a
Phree Pharmacy in Belokonsk. (1.3)
The author of Paradise Lost (1667), John Milton
was a civil servant for the Commonwealth of Englan under Oliver Cromwell.
The name of Van's lawyer (whose employee Gwen helps Van to sell his book,
Letters from Terra), Mr Gromwell, reminds one of Cromwell.
Alexey Sklyarenko