Had a grotesque governess really written a novel entitled Les Enfants Maudits? To be filmed by frivolous dummies [the movie man G. A. Vronsky, Marina and her lover Pedro, a young Latin actor], now discussing its adaptation? (Ada, 1.32)

I do not remember what Les Enfants Maudits did or said in Monparnasse's novelette - they lived in Bryant's château, I think, and it began with bats flying one by one out of a turret's oeil-de-boeuf into the sunset, but these children (whom the novelettist did not really know - a delicious point) might also have been filmed rather entertainingly had snoopy Kim, the kitchen photo-fiend, possessed the necessary apparatus. (Ibid.)

[Demon to Van:] But I can do the next proper thing, I can curse you, I can make this our last, our last -'

Van, whose finger had been gliding endlessly to and fro along the mute but soothingly smooth edge of the mahogany desk, now heard with horror the sob that shook Demon's entire frame, and then saw a deluge of tears flowing down those hollow tanned cheeks. In an amateur parody, at Van's birthday party fifteen years ago, his father had made himself up as Boris Godunov and shed strange, frightening, jet-black tears before rolling down the steps of a burlesque throne in death's total surrender to gravity.* (2.11)

In Merezhkovski's Peter and Alexey (Book Ten, "Son and Father", chapter IV) the tsar Peter I and Prince Alexey do curse each other:

Пётр зашевелился медленно, грузно, с неимоверным усилием, как будто стараясь приподняться из-под страшной тяжести; наконец, поднялся, лицо исказилось неистовой судорогой - точно лицо изваяния ожило - губы разжались, и вылетел из горла сдавленный хрип:

- Проклянешь? - крикнул царевич в исступлении, бросился к царю и поднял над ним руки.

Все замерли в ужасе. Казалось, что он ударит отца или плюнет ему в лицо.

- Проклянешь?.. Да я тебя сам... Злодей, убийца, зверь. Антихрист!.. Будь проклят! проклят! проклят!..

Пётр повалился навзничь в кресло и выставил руки вперёд, как будто защищаясь от сына.

While Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) is a namesake of Marina Mnishek, a character in Pushkin's Boris Godunov,** her lover Pedro is a namesake of the Russian tsar who cursed his son (who perished in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress). It was the tsar Ivan the Terrible who killed his son with his own hand. In her suicide note Marina's twin sister Aqua mentioned Nurse Joan the Terrible:

Aujourd'hui (heute-toity!) I, this eye-rolling toy, have earned the psykitsch right to enjoy a landparty with Herr Doktor Sig, Nurse Joan the Terrible, and several 'patients,' in the neighboring bor (piney wood) where I noticed exactly the same skunk-like squirrels, Van, that your Darkblue ancestor imported to Ardis Park, where you will ramble one day, no doubt. (1.3)

A namesake of Count Alexey Vronski (Anna's lover in Tolstoy's Anna Karenin), Grigoriy Akimovich*** Vronsky is also a namesake of Grigoriy ("Grishka") Otrep'yev, the impostor (and Marina Mnishek's lover) in Pushkin's Boris Godunov. G. A. Vronsky, "the movie man" (and Marina's ex-lover) is dvazhdy samozvanets (a doubly impostor).

*In August 1967 VN's son Dmitri fulfilled one of his opera fantasies by singing the Death of Boris [from Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov] before a packed and jubilant crowd. ("I Will Sing When You’re All Dead" by Matt Evans)

**Rightly or not, Boris Godunov was accused of the murder of Prince Dimitri (the son of Ivan the Terrible and his last wife Maria Nagoy) in Uglich. In his play Pushkin followed Karamzin (the author of The History of the Russian State) who thought that Boris was guilty.

***The critic Akim Volynski (penname of Flekser) was a lover of Merezhkovski's wife Zinaida Hippius. When Volynski published a book on Leonardo, Merezhkovski accused Phylloxera (as Chekhov nicknamed Flekser) of plagiarism.