— А то и вздумалось, что, по нынешнему времени,
совсем собственности иметь не надо! Деньги — это так! Деньги взял, положил в
карман и удрал с ними! А недвижимость эта…
— Да что ж это за время такое за особенное, что уж
и собственности иметь нельзя?
— А такое время, что вы вот газет не читаете, а я
читаю. Нынче адвокаты везде пошли — вот и понимайте. Узнает адвокат, что у тебя
собственность есть — и почнёт кружить!
— Как же он тебя кружить будет, коль скоро у тебя
праведные документы есть?
— Так и будет кружить, как кружат. Или вот
Порфишка-кровопивец: наймёт адвоката, а тот и будет тебе повестку за повесткой
присылать!
— Что ты! не бессудная, чай, земля?
Before his death Demon bought a small, perfectly round Pacific
island:
Demon had recently bought a small, perfectly round
Pacific island, with a pink house on a green bluff and a sand beach like a frill
(as seen from the air), and now wished to sell the precious little palazzo in
East Manhattan that Van did not want. Mr Sween, a greedy practitioner with
flashy rings on fat fingers, said he might buy it if some of the pictures were
thrown in. The deal did not come off. (3.7)
According to a Russian saying, a man needs only three arshins of land (one
arshin is equivalent to 28 inches). But Ivan Ivanovich
Chimsha-Gimalayski, the main character in Chekhov's story Kryzhovnik
("The Gooseberries," 1898), disagrees:
"It is a common saying that a man needs only six feet
of land. But surely a corpse wants that, not a man... A man needs, not six feet
of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature, where in full liberty he
can display all the properties and qualities of the free spirit."
When Ivan Ivanovich visits his brother, an elderly official who
settled in the country and who can eat at last the gooseberries that grows
in his own garden, the latter resembles a pig:
I went in to my brother and found him sitting on his
bed with his knees covered with a blanket; he looked old, stout, flabby; his
cheeks, nose, and lips were pendulous. I half expected him to grunt like a
pig.
Years later, when Van meets Greg Eminin in Paris, both are fat:
Van considered for a moment those red round cheeks,
that black goatee.
'Ne uznayosh' (You don't recognize
me)?'
'Greg! Grigoriy Akimovich!' cried Van tearing off his
glove.
'I grew a regular vollbart last summer. You'd
never have known me then. Beer? Wonder what you do to look so boyish,
Van.'
'Diet of champagne, not beer,' said Professor Veen,
putting on his spectacles and signaling to a waiter with the crook of his
'umber.' 'Hardly stops one adding weight, but keeps the scrotum
crisp.'
'I'm also very fat, yes?'
'What about Grace, I can't imagine her getting
fat?'
'Once twins, always twins. My wife is pretty portly,
too.'
'Tak tï zhenat (so you are married)? Didn't
know it. How long?'
'About two years.'
'To whom?'
'Maude Sween.'
'The daughter of the poet?'
'No, no, her mother is a Brougham.' (3.2)
After the picnic in Ardis the First Grace Erminin was laid up with acute indigestion:
Greg said that both Aunt Ruth and Grace were laid up
with acute indigestion - 'not because of your wonderful sandwiches,' he hastened
to add, 'but because of all those burnberries they picked in the bushes.'
(1.14)
Greg's and Grace's father, Colonel Erminin does not come to the
picnic saying in a note that his liver (Russ.,
pechen') behaves like a pecheneg (savage). (1.13)
Pecheneg ("The Savage," 1894) is a story by Chekhov. According to Van,
Greg's father (who died just before "your aunt," as Greg calls Marina)
"preferred to pass for a Chekhovian colonel" (3.2).
Van and Ada discover that Marina, not her twin sister Aqua, is Van's
mother thanks to Marina's old herbarium (1.1). But, as the proverb
says, this is only tsvetochki (little flowers), yagodki
(little berries) are to come. Describing Aqua's suicide, Van compares
her pills to berries:
Sly Aqua twitched, simulated a yawn, opened her
light-blue eyes (with those startlingly contrasty jet-black pupils that Dolly,
her mother, also had), put on yellow slacks and a black bolero, walked through a
little pinewood, thumbed a ride with a Mexican truck, found a suitable gulch in
the chaparral and there, after writing a short note, began placidly eating from
her cupped palm the multicolored contents of her handbag, like any Russian
country girl lakomyashchayasya yagodami (feasting on berries) that she
had just picked in the woods. (1.3)
Marina Durmanov is a professional actress. The characters of "The
Golovlyovs" include the twin sisters Anninka and Lyubinka, both of whom are
provincial actresses. Like Aqua, Lyubinka commits suicide by taking
poison.
Van had seen the picture [the
Holliwood film version of Four Sisters, as Chekhov's play The
Three Sisters, 1901, is known on Antiterra] and had liked it.
An Irish girl, the infinitely graceful and melancholy Lenore Colline
-
Oh! qui me rendra ma colline
Et le grand chêne and my colleen!
- harrowingly resembled Ada Ardis as photographed with
her mother in Belladonna, a movie magazine which Greg Erminin had sent
him, thinking it would delight him to see aunt and cousin, together, on a
California patio just before the film was released. (2.9)
Belladonna is a poisonous plant Atropa belladonna. On
the other hand, Belladonna is the eldest of the three Parcae. She is mentioned
by Eliot in The Waste Land:
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations. (chapter I "The
Burial of the Dead")
Marina to Demon: 'You have no idea, Demon, how I dread
meeting again, after all those years, that dislikable Norbert von Miller, who
has probably become even more arrogant and obsequious, and moreover does not
realize, I'm sure, that Dan's wife is me. He's a Baltic Russian' (turning to
Van) 'but really echt deutsch, though his mother was born Ivanov or
Romanov, or something, who owned a calico factory in Finland or Denmark. I can't
imagine how he got his barony; when I knew him twenty years ago he was plain Mr
Miller.'
'He is still that,' said Demon drily, 'because you've
got two Millers mixed up. The lawyer who works for Dan is my old friend Norman
Miller of the Fainley, Fehler and Miller law firm and physically bears a
striking resemblance to Wilfrid Laurier. Norbert, on the other hand, has, I
remember, a head like a kegelkugel, lives in Switzerland, knows
perfectly well whom you married and is an unmentionable blackguard.'
(1.38)
Fehler is German for "mistake." The girl in The Waste
Land is not a Russian at all, but comes from Lithuania being echt
deutsch:
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt
deutsch. ("The Burial of the Dead")
The execution [at the picnic in
Ardis the Second] was interrupted by the arrival of Uncle Dan. He
had a remarkably reckless way of driving, as happens so often, goodness knows
why, in the case of many dour, dreary men. Weaving rapidly between the pines, he
brought the little red runabout to an abrupt stop in front of Ada and presented
her with the perfect gift, a big box of mints, white, pink and, oh boy, green!
He had also an aerogram for her, he said, winking.
Ada tore it open - and saw it was not for her from
dismal Kalugano, as she had feared, but for her mother from Los Angeles, a much
gayer place. Marina's face gradually assumed an expression of quite indecent
youthful beatitude as she scanned the message. Triumphantly, she showed it to
Larivière-Monparnasse, who read it twice and tilted her head with a smile of
indulgent disapproval. Positively stamping her feet with joy:
'Pedro is coming again,' cried (gurgled, rippled)
Marina to calm her daughter.
'And, I suppose, he'll stay till the end of the
summer,' remarked Ada - and sat down with Greg and Lucette, for a game of Snap,
on a laprobe spread over the little ants and dry pine needles.
'Oh no, da net zhe, only for a fortnight'
(girlishly giggling). 'After that we shall go to Houssaie,
Gollivud-tozh' (Marina was really in great form) - 'yes, we shall all
go, the author, and the children, and Van - if he wishes.'
'I wish but I can't,' said Percy (sample of his humor).
(1.39)
Gollivud-tozh brings to mind "Gimalayskoe tozh," the country place
of Ivan Ivanovich's brother in "The Gooseberries." Its name comes from
Gimalai (the Himalayas).
Now Lucette demanded her mother's
attention.
'What are Jews?' she asked.
'Dissident Christians,' answered Marina.
'Why is Greg a Jew?' asked Lucette.
'Why-why!' said Marina; 'because his parents are
Jews.'
'And his grandparents? His arrière
grandparents?'
'I really wouldn't know, my dear. Were your ancestors
Jews, Greg?'
'Well, I'm not sure,' said Greg. 'Hebrews, yes - but
not Jews in quotes - I mean, not comic characters or Christian businessmen. They
came from Tartary to England five centuries ago. My mother's grandfather,
though, was a French marquis who, I know, belonged to the Roman faith and was
crazy about banks and stocks and jewels, so I imagine people may have called him
un juif.'
'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)
At the end of her life Marina confessed with an
enigmatic and rather smug smile that much as she liked the rhythmic blue puffs
of incense, and the dyakon's rich growl on the ambon, and the
oily-brown ikon coped in protective filigree to receive the worshipper's kiss,
her soul remained irrevocably consecrated, naperekor (in spite of)
Dasha Vinelander, to the ultimate wisdom of Hinduism. (3.1) It seems that
Marina is not a vegetarian, though.
It is Tolstoy, the author of Yagody ("The Berries," 1906), who was
a confirmed vegetarian. In Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs" Leo Tolstoy is
mentioned by Kolya Kalachov:
"Leo Tolstoy," said Kolya in a quavering
voice, "didn't eat meat either."
"No,"
retorted Liza, hiccupping through her tears, "the count ate
asparagus."
"Asparagus isn't meat."
"But when he was writing War and
Peace he did eat meat. He did! He did! And when he was writing
Anna Karenin he stuffed himself and stuffed himself."
"Do
shut up!"
"Stuffed himself! Stuffed himself!"
"And I suppose while he was
writing The Kreutzer Sonata he also stuffed himself?" asked Nicky
venomously.
"The Kreutzer Sonata is short. Just imagine him trying
to write War and Peace on vegetarian sausages! "
"Anyway, why do you
keep nagging me about your Tolstoy?" (chapter XVII "Have Respect for
Mattrasses, Citizens!")
In one of the next chapters, "From Seville to Granada," Vorob'yaninov
invites Liza Kalachov to a posh restaurant. The name Vorob'yaninov comes from
vorobey (sparrow). And so does vorobeynik, the Russian name of
gromwell (Lithospermum gen.). The great Grombchevski's nephew,
Mr Gromwell is Van's lawyer (2.2).
p. s. to my previous post: Iuda Apostol ("Judas the Apostle,"
1919) is a poem by Voloshin included in his book Neopalimaya kupina
("The Burning Bush").
*see in Zembla my article "The Naked Truth, or the Reader's Sentimental
Education in Ada's Quelque Chose University"