According to Ada, Marina (Van's, Ada's and
Lucette's mother who played sister Varvara in the Holliwood film version
of Four Sisters, as Chekhov's play is known on Antiterra) rendered
beautifully the nun's singsongy devotional tone:
"Ten years and one have gone
by-abye since I left Moscow" - (Ada, now playing Varvara, copied the nun's
'singsongy devotional tone' (pevuchiy ton bogomolki, as indicated by
Chekhov and as rendered so irritatingly well by Marina). (2.9)
Fontanka comes from fontan
(fountain). At Marina's funeral 'D'Onsky's son, a person with
only one arm, threw his remaining one around Demon [Van's
and Ada's father] and both wept comme des fontaines.'
(3.8) Actually, Demon's grief was not too
deep:
‘Your new car sounds
wonderful,' said Van.
‘Doesn't it? Yes.' (Ask Van about that gornishon -
Franco-Russian slang of the meanest grade for a cute
kameristochka*). ‘And how is everything, my dear boy? I saw
you last the day you returned from Chose. We waste life in separations! We are
the fools of fate! Oh let's spend a month together in Paris or London before the
Michaelmas term!'
Demon shed his monocle and wiped his eyes with the modish
lace-frilled handkerchief that lodged in the heart pocket of his dinner jacket.
His tear glands were facile in action when no real sorrow made him control
himself. (1.38)
The Michaelmas term brings to
mind the Michaelmas Day (Sept. 29), Mikhailo Ivanovich Toptygin's nameday in
Shchedrin's fairy tale about the Bear:
Прибежал он на воеводство
ранним утром, в самый Михайлов день, и сейчас же решил: "Быть назавтра
кровопролитию". Что заставило его принять такое решение - неизвестно: ибо он,
собственно говоря, не был зол, а так, скотина. И непременно бы он свой план
выполнил, если бы лукавый его не попутал.
Дело в том, что, в ожидании
кровопролития, задумал Топтыгин именины свои отпраздновать. Купил ведро водки и
напился в одиночку пьян.
He came running on office of voevode
early in the morning, on the Mikhailov day, and decided at once:
"The next day will be bloodshed." What made him to take that decision is
not known: for, in fact, he was not malicious, merely a brute. And he
certainly would have executed his plan, if the devil had not played a
joke on him.
In expectation of bloodshed Toptygin decided to celebrate
his nameday. He bought a bucket of vodka and got tight
solo.
The Bear swallowed the Siskin accidentally, because he had got tight
on the eve.
In the debauche à trois scene (on the morning following the dinner
in Ursus), Van finds Lucette in his and Ada's bed (Loddigesia Hummingbirds
on the wall-paper remind one of Shchedrin's unfortunate bird, while the
comparison of the bed to an island brings to mind the island in the fairy tale
about Two Generals and a Peasant):
The scarred male nude on
the island's east coast is half-shaded, and, on the whole, less interesting,
though considerably more aroused than is good for him or a certain type of
tourist. The recently repapered wall immediately west of the now
louder-murmuring (et pour cause) dorocene lamp is ornamented in the
central girl's honor with Peruvian 'honeysuckle' being visited (not only for its
nectar, I'm afraid, but for the animalcules stuck in it) by marvelous Loddigesia
Hummingbirds, while the bedtable on that side bears a lowly box of matches, a
karavanchik of cigarettes, a Monaco ashtray, a copy of Voltemand's poor
thriller, and a Lurid Oncidium Orchid in an amethystine vaselet.
The companion piece on
Van's side supports a similar superstrong but unlit lamp, a dorophone, a box of
Wipex, a reading loupe, the returned Ardis album, and a separatum 'Soft music as
cause of brain tumors,' by Dr Anbury (young Rattner's waggish
pen-name). (2.8)
The uha, the
shashlyk, the Ai were facile and familiar successes; but the
old songs had a peculiar poignancy owing to the participation of a Lyaskan
contralto and a Banff bass, renowned performers of Russian 'romances,' with a
touch of heart-wringing tsiganshchina vibrating through Grigoriev and
Glinka. (ibid.)
Ai (the champagne sung by
Pushkin in Eugene Onegin) is ia (an ass's cry) backwards. In
Shchedrin's fairy tale about the Bear the Ass is a sage at the Lion's
court:
Даже до Льва об его уме слух
дошёл, и не раз он Ослу говаривал (Осёл в ту пору у него в советах за мудреца
слыл): "Хоть одним бы ухом послушал, как Чижик у меня в когтях петь
будет!"
Even the Lion heard rumors about
his wit, and he told the Ass more than once (the Ass at that time was
a sage in his councils): "I would like to listen very much how
the Siskin will sing in my claws!"
The opening line of Pushkin's EO, "My uncle
has most honest principles," is a parody of a line in Krylov's fable Osyol i
muzhik ("The Ass and the Boor," 1819), "The donkey had most honest
principles" (EO Commentary, II, p. 30). In a letter from the Kalugano hospital
to Bernard Rattner Van writes:
A third letter he addressed to
Bernard Rattner, his closest friend at Chose, the great Rattner's nephew. 'Your
uncle has most honest standards,' he wrote, in part, 'but I am going to demolish
him soon.' (1.42)
Shchedrin's fairy tale about the Bear is
prefaced with the following argument:
Злодейства крупные и
серьёзные нередко именуются блестящими и, в качестве таковых, заносятся на
скрижали Истории. Злодейства же малые и шуточные именуются срамными, и не только
Историю в заблуждение не вводят, но и от современников не получают
похвалы.
Large and serious misdeeds quite often are called brilliant
and, as those, are brought on tablets of History. Small and comic misdeeds are
called shameful, and not only do not mislead History, but also do not receive
the praises of the contemporaries.
Shchedrin is also the author of Bednyi
volk ("The Poor Wolf," 1883), Samootverzhennyi zayats ("The
Selfless Hare," 1883) and Zdravomyslennyi zayats ("The Sensible
Hare," 1885). In his poem O pravitelyakh ("On Rulers,"
1944) VN compares Hitler (known on Antiterra as "Athaulf the Future,"
2.2, and "Athaulf Hindler, also known as Mittler - from 'to mittle,'
mutilate," 5.5) to
волк в макинтоше,
в фуражке с
немецким крутым козырьком,
охрипший и весь перекошенный,
в остановившемся
автомобиле
the trench-coated wolf
in his army cap with a German steep
peak,
hoarse-voiced, his face all distorted,
speaking from immobile convertible.
In the Russian original the wolf wears
a mackintosh. As she goes to Kaluga to
consult the gynecologist Seitz, Ada wears an unmodish
macintosh:
Ada, wearing an
unfashionable belted macintosh that he disliked, with her handbag on a strap
over one shoulder, had gone to Kaluga for the whole day - officially to try on
some clothes, unofficially to consult Dr Krolik's cousin, the gynecologist Seitz
(or 'Zayats,' as she transliterated him mentally since it also
belonged, as Dr 'Rabbit' did, to the leporine group in Russian pronunciation).
(1.37)
Cordula de Prey, when Van meets her in a
bookshop, also wears a belted mackintosh ('garbotosh'):
He looked her over more
closely than he had done before. He had read somewhere (we might recall the
precise title if we tried, not Tiltil, that's in Blue Beard...) that a man can
recognize a Lesbian, young and alone (because a tailored old pair can fool no
one), by a combination of three characteristics: slightly trembling hands, a
cold-in-the-head voice, and that skidding-in-panic of the eyes if you happen to
scan with obvious appraisal such charms as the occasion might force her to show
(lovely shoulders, for instance). Nothing whatever of all that (yes -
Mytilène, petite isle,** by Louis Pierre) seemed to apply to
Cordula, who wore a 'garbotosh' (belted mackintosh) over her terribly unsmart
turtle and held both hands deep in her pockets as she challenged his
stare. (1.27)
In that bookshop Van asks Cordula, if she is
a virgin: 'How could I get in touch
with you?' he asked. 'Would you come to Riverlane? Are you a virgin?'
(ibid.)
In Kingston (where Van teaches philosophy and
where Lucette visits him) Lucette mentions the famous Van
question:
'Van,' said Lucette, 'it will make
you smile' (it did not: that prediction is seldom fulfilled), 'but if you posed
the famous Van Question, I would answer in the affirmative.'
What he had asked little
Cordula. In that bookshop behind the revolving paperbacks' stand, The
Gitanilla, Our Laddies, Clichy Clichés, Six
Pricks, The Bible Unabridged, Mertvago Forever, The
Gitanilla... He was known in the beau monde for asking that
question the very first time he met a young lady. (2.5)
Eight and a half years later, when he meets her in Paris, Van
asks Lucette if she is still half-a-virgin:
I have a fabulous Japanese
divan and lots of orchids just supplied by one of my beaux. Ach, Bozhe
moy - it has just occurred to me - I shall have to look into this - maybe
they are meant for Brigitte, who is marrying after tomorrow, at three-thirty, a
head waiter at the Alphonse Trois, in Auteuil. Anyway they are greenish, with
orange and purple blotches, some kind of delicate Oncidium, "cypress
frogs," one of those silly commercial names. I'll stretch out upon the divan
like a martyr, remember?'
'Are you still half-a-martyr - I mean
half-a-virgin?' inquired Van.
'A quarter,' answered Lucette. 'Oh,
try me, Van! My divan is black with yellow cushions.' (3.3)