Re: [NABOKV-L] Ardis tap water

Speaking of electricity: after his wife left him for Ptiburdukov, Vasisualiy Lokhankin (one of the inhabitants of the Crows Nest in Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf) is so upset that he regularly forgets to switch off the electric light in the water closet. He is flogged for that by Gigienishvili, a former Georgian prince who suggests that the belongings of another inhabitant of the Crows Nest, the airman Sevryugov, should be thrown away to the staircase landing, k chertyam sobach'im.

Yet another inhabitant of the Crows Nest, no one's grandmother, does not trust electricity and uses a kerosene lamp in her entresol lodgings. The Crows Nest burns down because of her (which reminds one of the Burning Barn* night in Ada, 1.19, and the Flavita game played by Van, Ada and Lucette soon after it, 1.36).

*ambar (Russian for "barn") differs from "amber" only in one letter; alatyr' (obs. Russ., "amber") reminds one of Altar** and Altyn*** Tagh: A small map of the European part of the British Commonwealth - say, from Scoto-Scandinavia to the Riviera, Altar and Palermontovia - as well as most of the U.S.A., from Estoty and Canady to Argentina, might be quite thickly prickled with enameled red-cross-flag pins, marking, in her War of the Worlds, Aqua's bivouacs. She had plans at one time to seek a modicum of health ('just a little grayishness, please, instead of the solid black') in such Anglo-American protectorates as the Balkans and Indias, and might even have tried the two Southern Continents that thrive under our joint dominion. Of course, Tartary, an independent inferno, which at the time spread from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean, was touristically unavailable, though Yalta and Altyn Tagh sounded strangely attractive...(1.3)