On top of that, I felt, perhaps wrongly,
that Louise was enjoying the hideous banality of a
stepmother-versus-step-daughter situation. (4.6)
The conflict between the beautiful but evil Queen and her
step-daughter is the central theme in Pushkin's Skazka o myortvoy
tsarevne i semi bogatyryakh (The Fairy Tale about the Dead Princess and
Seven Bogatyrs, 1833). In Pushkin's fairy tale the Queen's
maid gives the Princess a poisoned apple (yablochko):
И к царевне
наливное,
Молодое, золотое,
Прямо яблочко
летит...
Подождать она хотела
До обеда; не
стерпела,
В руки яблочко
взяла,
К алым губкам
поднесла,
Потихоньку
прокусила
И кусочек
проглотила...
In the years of Revolution and Civil War
Yablochko was a popular sailor's dance. When Vadim crosses
the frontier, the Red soldier challenges him:
I thought I had crossed the frontier
when a bare-headed Red Army soldier with a Mongol face who
was picking whortleberries near the trail challenged me: "And whither," he asked
picking up his cap from a stump, "may you be rolling (kotishsya),
little apple (yablochko)? Pokazyvay-ka dokumentiki (Let me see
your papers)."
I groped in my pockets, fished out
what I needed, and shot him dead, as he lunged at me; then he fell on his
face, as if sunstruck on the parade ground, at the feet of his
king. (1.2)
The surname Black, of Vadim's first wife Iris and her
brother Yvor, brings to mind Chernavka (whose name comes from chyornyi,
black), the maid who gives the Princess a poisoned apple. On the
other hand, Vetrov (the married name of Vadim's daughter Bel,
who elopes with her husband, "Karl Ivanovich Vetrov," to Soviet Russia)
reminds one of veter (the wind; the surname Vetrov comes from
veter) whom in Pushkin's fairy tale Prince Elisey asks if he, the
wind, saw his bride:
"Ветер,
ветер! Ты могуч,
Ты гоняешь стаи
туч,
Ты волнуешь сине море,
Всюду веешь на просторе,
Не боишься никого,
Кроме бога
одного.
Аль откажешь мне в
ответе?
Не видал ли где на
свете
Ты царевны
молодой?
Я жених её."
Alexey Sklyarenko