Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In his apologetic note to Lucette (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) written after the dinner in 'Ursus' and debauch à trois in Van's Manhattan flat Van Veen (the narrator and main character in Ada) calls Lucette "BOP (bird of paradise):"

Describing his debauch à trois with Ada and Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) after the dinner in Ursus (the best Franco-Estotian restaurant in Manhattan Major), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Ada’s red-lacquered talons:

Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth's twin planet on which VN’s novel Ada, 1969, is set), Van Veen Veen (the narrator and main character in Ada) says that our enchanters, our demons, are noble iridescent creatures with translucent talons and mightily beating wings:

Describing Ada’s hands, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the long, languid, rose-and-silver, painted and pointed, delicately stinging onyxes of Ada’s adolescent and adult years:

Describing his dinner with Ada’s family at the Bellevue Hotel in Mont Roux, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Yuzlik (the director of Don Juan’s Last Fling, a film in which Ada played the part of the gitanilla) and two agents of Lemorio, the flamboyant comedian:

At the beginning of Canto Three John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions Rabelais’s great Maybe, “the grand potato:”

At the end of his Commentary Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) quotes a Zemblan saying Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan (God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty):

When Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) asks Van if he or his poule had got into trouble with the police, Van replies ‘poule’ with the evasive taciturnity of the Roman rabbi shielding Barabbas:

After he was rejected by Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother), Daniel Veen set off in a counter-Fogg direction on a triple trip round the globe:

In a conversation with Van in “Ardis the Second” Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) tells Van that the Zemskis were terrible rakes (razvratniki):

Naked-faced, dull-haired, wrapped up in her oldest kimono (her Pedro had suddenly left for Rio), Marina reclined on her mahogany bed under a golden-yellow quilt, drinking tea with mare’s milk, one of her fads.