Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

After the patio party in "Ardis the Second" Ada promises to Van to be more careful from now on and not let lousy Pedro come near:

Describing the beginning of Demon's affair with Marina, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions the artificial tropical moonlight:

Marina’s affair with Demon Veen started on his, her, and Daniel Veen’s birthday, January 5, 1868, when she was twenty-four and both Veens thirty.

In his Foreword and Commentary to Shade's poem 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) mentions a distinguished Zemblan scholar Oscar Nattochdag:

The main character in VN's play Izobretenie Val'sa ("The Waltz Invention," 1938), Salvator Waltz is General Berg's protégé. Entering the room of the Minister of War, General Berg laughs loudly: "grakh, grakh, grakh." The Minister asks the general not to thunder like that:

Describing the family dinner in "Ardis the Second," Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions the British writer Richard Leonard Churchill:

A cardsharp with whom Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) plays poker at Chose (Van's English University), Dick C. frankly admits that if his people keep refusing to pay his huge debt, he will have to move to Australia to make new ones there and forge a few checks on the way:

When Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) asks Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) if Greg Erminin's wife is un peu snob, Lucette replies that everybody is un peu snob:

She wanted fish, he stuck to cold cuts and salad.

‘You know whom I ran into this morning? Good old Greg Erminin. It was he who told me you were around. His wife est un peu snob, what?’

Describing his final reunion with Ada (whose husband, Andrey Vinelander, died a few months before) in 1922, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Scotch veterinaries who had had to saw off the antlers of Cordula de Prey's first husband, Ivan G. Tobak:

Young Van smiled back at young Ada. Oddly, that little exchange at the next table acted as a kind of delicious release.

Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the deepest thinkers, the purest philosophers, Paar of Chose and Zapater of Aardvark:

According to Lucette (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's half-sister), Cordula Tobak (Van's former mistress whom Van immediately met and possessed after parting with Greg Erminin) cannot forgive Shura Tobak, the violinist, for being her husband’s neighbor in the telephone book:

'Po-russki,’ said Van, noticing that an English couple had ordered drinks and settled down to some quiet auditing.