Jansy Mello: In two former postings (Cf. ... in Ada and Colette: patches and ...patches and First Love, correction), I noted that
Marina’s operatic laughing became adverbial (“trillingly)
and that not only Marina, Ada too will create combinations of sounds and manner:
“When he grew too loud, she shushed, shushingly breathing into his mouth.”
I found other ‘manipulations’ in ADA:
Part 1,39 “The late Sumerechnikov…had taken Ada’s maternal uncle in profile with UPCHEEKED violin, a doomed youth…,
Part 1,42 “ a gong BRONZILY boomed”
Part 1,43 “the mad AVIARY and rich sun” (meaning, I surmise, a sunny morning rising with multiple bird calls and chirpings)
Nevertheless, my present objective remains concerned with Lucette’s exclusion from the Veen quartet* (she descends from Daniel Veen, Demon’s red-haired cousin). This “biological” exclusion may help to understand why permissive Van would never allow himself to make love to his over-willing and passionate cousin – but I wonder how…
When I follow the ancestralities in this “Family Chronicle,” I usually feel befuddled half-way through the links detailing stories about grandparents, brothers, wives. As, for example, when Van Veen speaks of Ada Veen’s great-grandparents on her mother’s side (Prince Zemski) - for he is also indicating his own ancestors ( so why refer them only to Ada?) Even though this scene may antecede the investigations of the attic that inform them that they are brother and sister instead of cousins, this consistency in his “Memoirs” is false: even as cousins they’d share the same great-grandparents.
The ownership of Ardis is brought up not too clearly at times: it belongs to Daniel Veen, (Marina’s husband and Lucette’s father), but it’s Dedalus (Demon’s father) who is described while teaching young Van Veen to pilot a jikker (where? Apparently, not in Ardis). A jikker is found years later in the attic: “Rolled up in its case was an old ‘jikker’ or skimmer, a blue magic rug with Arabian designs, faded but still enchanting, which Uncle Daniel’s father had used in his boyhood and later flown when drunk.” It doesn’t seem to be the same as: “Magicarpets (or ‘jikkers’) that were given a boy on his twelfth birthday in the adventurous days before the Great Reaction.” (who was that boy?)
Demon keeps an old aquarelle of Ardis ( “Van immediately recognized Ardis Hall as depicted in the two-hundred-year-old aquarelle that hung in his father’s dressing room: the mansion sat on a rise overlooking an abstract meadow with two tiny people in cocked hats conversing not far from a stylized cow. Ada,1,ch 5) I suppose that this picture is unrelated to the one of Ardis that Ada recollects with enthusiasm: “Baldy, a partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared — oh, I remember, Van! — in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast, as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare).”
The paintings hanging on the walls of a staircase in Daniel Veen’s Ardis “incongruously” include a photograph of Ivan Durmanov, his wife’s deceased brother and Ada’s and Van’s uncle (“Of the many ancestors along the wall, she pointed out her favorite, old Prince Vseslav Zemski (1699-1797), friend of Linnaeus and author of Flora Ladorica, who was portrayed in rich oil holding his barely pubescent bride and her blond doll in his satin lap. An enlarged photograph [ of Ivan Durmanov], soberly framed, hung (rather incongruously, Van thought) next to the rose-bud-lover in his embroidered coat.”)
In short, there’s a mystery related to Aqua, Marina and Ivan Durmanov’s ancestry (there’s only one reference to the General Durmanov, owner of estates in Raduga and Ladoga): “As he [Van] descended the grand staircase, General Durmanov’s father acknowledged Van with grave eyes and passed him on to old Prince Zemski and other ancestors, all as discreetly attentive as those museum guards who watch the only tourist in a dim old palace.” I’m lost: who was General Durmanov’s father? Why is he mentioned at all (although he must have owned Ardis before it passed on to a Veen)?
There’s certainly a non-explicit link between the Durmanov’s and the Veen’s, even before the two Durmanov girls married the Veen cousins. Can this hidden ancestry reveal anything about Lucette?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
* - It was a black hot humid night in mid-July, 1888, at Ardis, in Ladore county, let us not forget, let us never forget, with a family of four seated around an oval dinner table, bright with flowers and crystal — not a scene in a play, as might have seemed — nay, must have seemed — to a spectator (with a camera or a program) placed in the velvet pit of the garden.
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