Van glanced through the list of players and D.P.’s and noticed two amusing details: the role of Fedotik, an artillery officer (whose comedy organ consists of a constantly clicking camera), had been assigned to to a 'Kim (short for Yakim) Eskimossoff' and somebody called 'John Starling' had been cast as Skvortsov (a sekundant in the rather amateurish duel of the last act) whose name comes from skvorets, starling. (2.9)

A merchant's son Eskimosov (Ескимосов), "a parvenu and mauvais genre, swine in a skull-cup [свинья в ермолке] and mauvais ton," is a fiancé in Chekhov's story "Tapyor" (A Ballroom Pianist, 1885).

On the other hand, the name Eskimossoff brings to mind the old Eskimo nurse of the young enamored maiden whom Marina plays in a stage version of the famous Russian romance (Eugene and Lara, a pretentious and tasteless mix of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago: 1.2).

There are no eskimo people in Pushkin, but in Exegi Monumentum (1836) Pushkin mentions, among other tribes that populate Rus and one day will name him, "the now savage Tungus." The Tungus are also mentioned by Chekhov: during his long voyage to Sahalin he wrote letters to his family beginning them (see a letter of April 29, 1890, from Ekaterinburg, and the two letters which precede it): "My Tungus friends!" ("Друзья мои тунгусы!" )

In J. D. Salinger's story Just Before the War with the Eskimos, Selena's brother tells Ginnie: "We're gonna fight the Eskimos next. Know that?"

(Irène de Grandfief, la pauvre et noble enfant, closed her piano and sold her elephant when her fiancé had gone to the war: 1.38. Van and Ada resume their romance just three years after the Crimean War with the Tartars.)

The Hollywood actor Akim Tamiroff (on Antiterra, Chekhov's play Four Sisters is set in Perm (also called Permwail), in the backwoods of Akimsk Bay, North Canady: 2.9) is mentioned by Eloise, a character in Salinger's story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut: "Akim Tamiroff. He's in the movies. He always says, 'You make beeg joke - hah?' I love him..."

The name Tamiroff brings to mind Mrs Tapirov (the owner of a shop of objets d'art and more or less antique furniture in Riverlane: 1.4), a widow who was French but spoke English with a Russian accent. Her name comes from tapir (a swine-like animal), but also reminds one of tapyor ("ballroom pianist", from French tapeur). After the invention of cinema by the Lumière brothers tapyor began to mean (and nowadays means exclusively) "a silent film pianist."

In its turn, tapyor brings to mind Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge, with whom Van has a pistol duel in Calugano (1.42). Tapper is "a pansy," like Johnny (Van's second in that duel) and Johnny's bisexual namesake, John Starling (Ada's lover who played Skvortsov in the Yakima version of Chekhov's play):

When he [Van] communicated the latter observation [i. e. mentioned John Starling] to Ada, she blushed as was her Old World wont.

'Yes,' she [Ada] said, 'he was quite a lovely lad and I sort of flirted with him, but the strain and the split were too much for him - he had been, since pubescence, the puerulus of a fat ballet master, Dangleleaf, and he finally committed suicide. You see ("the blush now replaced by a matovaya pallor") I'm not hiding one stain of what rhymes with Perm.' (2.9)

From Salinger's story For Esmé - with Love and Squalor: She [Esmé] blushed - automatically conferring on me the social poise I'd been missing.

Just as Ada tries not to show her badly bitten nails when at eleven she first meets Van at Ardis (1.5), the thirteen-year-old Esmé attempts to hide her nails from the narrator: She placed her fingers flat on the table edge, like someone at a séance, then, almost instantly, closed her hands - her nails were bitten down to the quick. Ada resembles the precocious heroine of Salinger's strory in some other ways (and Ada's younger sister Lucette somewhat resembles Charles, Esmé's little brother who asks his riddle: "what did one wall say to the other wall?").