The characters in VN's novel Ada (1969) include Kim Beauharnais, a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Van Veen (the narrator and main character) blinds for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada. Kim Beauharnais (whose surname clearly hints at Josephine Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife who is known on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set, as Queen Josephine) seems to be a son of Arkadiy Dolgoruki, the narrator and main character in Dostoevski's novel Podrostok ("The Adolescent," 1875) and Alphonsine (a French girl whom Arkadiy calls Alfonsinka), a character in the same novel (Lambert's mistress). Little Kim must have been stolen by the Gypsies who somehow managed to smuggle him to Antiterra. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-89) introduced in his works the well-known characters of other authors. Saltykov's collection of essays V srede umerennosti i akkuratnosti ("In an Environment of Moderation and Accuracy," 1874) is also known as Gospoda Molchaliny ("The Molchalin Family"). Alexey Ivanovich Molchalin is a character (Famusov's protégé) in Griboedov's play in verse Gore ot uma ("Woe from Wit," 1824). In a dialogue with Chatski (the main character in Griboedov's play) Molchalin says that the two virtues he values most are moderation and accuracy. In a conversation with Van in her boudoir Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) quotes Chatski's words in Griboedov's play:
'A propos de coins: in Griboedov's Gore ot uma, "How stupid to be so clever," a play in verse, written, I think, in Pushkin's time, the hero reminds Sophie of their childhood games, and says:
How oft we sat together in a corner
And what harm might there be in that?
but in Russian it is a little ambiguous, have another spot, Van?' (he shook his head, simultaneously lifting his hand, like his father), 'because, you see, - no, there is none left anyway - the second line, i kazhetsya chto v etom, can be also construed as "And in that one, meseems," pointing with his finger at a corner of the room. Imagine — when I was rehearsing that scene with Kachalov at the Seagull Theater, in Yukonsk, Stanislavski, Konstantin Sergeevich, actually wanted him to make that cosy little gesture (uyutnen’kiy zhest).' (1.37)
At the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Marina mentions Kim, the kitchen boy who takes pictures on the sly:
'Marina,' murmured Demon at the close of the first course. 'Marina,' he repeated louder. 'Far from me' (a locution he favored) 'to criticize Dan's taste in white wines or the manners de vos domestiques. You know me, I'm above all that rot, I'm...' (gesture); 'but, my dear,' he continued, switching to Russian, 'the chelovek who brought me the pirozhki - the new man, the plumpish one with the eyes (s glazami) -'
'Everybody has eyes,' remarked Marina drily.
'Well, his look as if they were about to octopus the food he serves. But that's not the point. He pants, Marina! He suffers from some kind of odïshka (shortness of breath). He should see Dr Krolik. It's depressing. It's a rhythmic pumping pant. It made my soup ripple.'
'Look, Dad,' said Van, 'Dr Krolik can't do much, because, as you know quite well, he's dead, and Marina can't tell her servants not to breathe, because, as you also know, they're alive.'
'The Veen wit, the Veen wit,' murmured Demon.
‘Exactly,’ said Marina. ‘I simply refuse to do anything about it. Besides poor Jones is not at all asthmatic, but only nervously eager to please. He’s as healthy as a bull and has rowed me from Ardisville to Ladore and back, and enjoyed it, many times this summer. You are cruel, Demon. I can’t tell him "ne pïkhtite," as I can’t tell Kim, the kitchen boy, not to take photographs on the sly — he’s a regular snap-shooting fiend, that Kim, though otherwise an adorable, gentle, honest boy; nor can I tell my little French maid to stop getting invitations, as she somehow succeeds in doing, to the most exclusive bals masqués in Ladore.’ (1.38)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): ne pïkhtite: Russ., do not wheeze
and Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) quotes Famusov's words in Griboedov's play:
By the way, Demon,’ interrupted Marina, ‘where and how can I obtain the kind of old roomy limousine with an old professional chauffeur that Praskovia, for instance, has had for years?’
‘Impossible, my dear, they are all in heaven or on Terra. But what would Ada like, what would my silent love like for her birthday? It’s next Saturday, po razschyotu po moemu (by my reckoning), isn’t it? Une rivière de diamants?’
‘Protestuyu!’ cried Marina. ‘Yes, I’m speaking seriozno. I object to your giving her kvaka sesva (quoi que ce soit), Dan and I will take care of all that.’
‘Besides you’ll forget,’ said Ada laughing, and very deftly showed the tip of her tongue to Van who had been on the lookout for her conditional reaction to ‘diamonds.’ (ibid.)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): po razschyotu po moemu: an allusion to Famusov (in Griboedov’s Gore ot uma), calculating the pregnancy of a lady friend.
protestuyu: Russ., I protest.
seriozno: Russ., seriously.
quoi que ce soit: whatever it might be.
Saltykov-Shchedrin is the author of Pompadury i Pompadurshi ("Pompadours," 1863-74), a satire on the art of government. Madame de Pompadour (1721-64) was the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to 1751, and remained influential as court favourite until her death. In the name Pompadour there is pompa (Russ., pomp). In Ilf and Petrov's novel Zolotoy telyonok ("The Golden Calf," 1931) Bender offers Koreyko (a secret Soviet millionaire who is blackmailed by Bender) to get a car but Koreyko refuses saying Ne nuzhno lishney pompy (We don't need big fanfare):
— За что же вы хотите получить деньги? Я их заработал, а вы…
— Я не только трудился. Я даже пострадал. После разговоров с Берлагой, Скумбриевичем и Полыхаевым я потерял веру в человечество. Разве это не стоит миллиона рублей, вера в человечество?
— Стоит, стоит, — успокоил Александр Иванович.
— Значит, пойдем в закрома? — спросил Остап. — Кстати, где вы держите свою наличность? Надо полагать, не в сберкассе?
— Пойдем! — ответил Корейко. — Там увидите,
— Может быть, далеко? — засуетился Остап. — Я могу машину.
Но миллионер от машины отказался и заявил, что идти недалеко и что вообще не нужно лишней помпы. Он учтиво пропустил Бендера вперед и вышел, захватив со стола небольшой пакетик, завернутый в газетную бумагу. Спускаясь с лестницы, Остап напевал: «Под небом знойной Аргентины…» (Chapter XXII: "I will Command the Parade")
As he goes down the stairs, Bender hums the song "Pod nebom znoynoy Argentiny" (Neath the sky of sultry Argentina). As Mascodagama (Van's stagename), Van dances tango on his hands to the tune (sung by Rita, a Crimean cabaret dancer) Pod znóynïm nébom Argentínï:
Neither was the sheer physical pleasure of maniambulation a negligible factor, and the peacock blotches with which the carpet stained the palms of his hands during his gloveless dance routine seemed to be the reflections of a richly colored nether world that he had been the first to discover. For the tango, which completed his number on his last tour, he was given a partner, a Crimean cabaret dancer in a very short scintillating frock cut very low on the back. She sang the tango tune in Russian:
Pod znóynïm nébom Argentínï,
Pod strástnïy góvor mandolinï
‘Neath sultry sky of Argentina,
To the hot hum of mandolina
Fragile, red-haired ‘Rita’ (he never learned her real name), a pretty Karaite from Chufut Kale, where, she nostalgically said, the Crimean cornel, kizil’, bloomed yellow among the arid rocks, bore an odd resemblance to Lucette as she was to look ten years later. During their dance, all Van saw of her were her silver slippers turning and marching nimbly in rhythm with the soles of his hands. He recouped himself at rehearsals, and one night asked her for an assignation. She indignantly refused, saying she adored her husband (the make-up fellow) and loathed England. (1.30)
Pod sladkiy lepet mandoliny (“to a mandolin's sweet murmur,” as Bender puts it) the Polish priests Kushakovski and Moroshek try to make a good Catholic of their compatriot, Adam Kozlevich (the driver of the Antelope Gnu car). One of the members of the Antelope Gnu team, Panikovski is mnimyi slepoy (a person who imitates blindness). Before he visits Koreyko and offers him to buy a folder for one million rubles, Bender sends Koreyko a telegram Gruzite apel'siny bochkakh (“Load oranges barrels”) signed Brat'ya Karamazovy (Brothers Karamazov):
К концу речи великого комбинатора Александр Иванович успокоился. Заложив руки в карманы легких брюк, он подошел к окну. Молодой день в трамвайных бубенцах уже шумел то городу. За полисадом шли осоавиахимовцы, держа винтовки вкривь и вкось, будто несли мотыги. По оцинкованному карнизу, стуча красными вербными лапками и поминутно срываясь, прогуливались голуби. Александр Иванович, приучивший себя к экономии, потушил настольную лампу и сказал:
— Так это вы посылали мне дурацкие телеграммы?
— Я, — ответил Остап. — «Грузите апельсины бочках братья Карамазовы». Разве плохо?
— Глуповато. (Chapter XXII: "I will Command the Parade")
Brothers Karamazov (1880) is Dostoevki's last novel. Glupovato ("Rather silly"), Koreyko's reply to Bender's question if he liked a joke with telegrams, brings to mind the Queenston College for Glamorous and Glupovatykh ('dumb') Girls where Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) studies:
Van spent the fall term of 1892 at Kingston University, Mayne, where there was a first-rate madhouse, as well as a famous Department of Terrapy, and where he now went back to one of his old projects, which turned on the Idea of Dimension & Dementia (‘You will "sturb," Van, with an alliteration on your lips,’ jested old Rattner, resident pessimist of genius, for whom life was only a ‘disturbance’ in the rattnerterological order of things — from ‘nertoros,’ not ‘terra’).
Van Veen [as also, in his small way, the editor of Ada] liked to change his abode at the end of a section or chapter or even paragraph, and he had almost finished a difficult bit dealing with the divorce between time and the contents of time (such as action on matter, in space, and the nature of space itself) and was contemplating moving to Manhattan (that kind of switch being a reflection of mental rubrication rather than a concession to some farcical ‘influence of environment’ endorsed by Marx père, the popular author of ‘historical’ plays), when he received an unexpected dorophone call which for a moment affected violently his entire pulmonary and systemic circulation.
Nobody, not even his father, knew that Van had recently bought Cordula’s penthouse apartment between Manhattan’s Library and Park. Besides its being the perfect place to work in, with that terrace of scholarly seclusion suspended in a celestial void, and that noisy but convenient city lapping below at the base of his mind’s invulnerable rock, it was, in fashionable parlance, a ‘bachelor’s folly’ where he could secretly entertain any girl or girls he pleased. (One of them dubbed it ‘your wing à terre’). But he was still in his rather dingy Chose-like rooms at Kingston when he consented to Lucette’s visiting him on that bright November afternoon.
He had not seen her since 1888. In the fall of 1891 she had sent him from California a rambling, indecent, crazy, almost savage declaration of love in a ten-page letter, which shall not be discussed in this memoir [See, however, a little farther. Ed.]. At present, she was studying the History of Art (‘the second-rater’s last refuge,’ she said) in nearby Queenston College for Glamorous and Glupovatïh (‘dumb’) Girls. When she rang him up and pleaded for an interview (in a new, darker voice, agonizingly resembling Ada’s), she intimated that she was bringing him an important message. He suspected it would be yet another installment of her unrequited passion, but he also felt that her visit would touch off internal fires. (2.5)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): sturb: pun on Germ. sterben, to die.
Old Van's secretary and the editor of Ada, Ronald Oranger brings to mind the oranges in a telegram that Bender sends to Koreyko. After Van’s and Ada’s death Ronald Oranger marries Violet Knox (old Van’s typist whom Ada calls Fialochka, "liitle Violet"):
Violet Knox [now Mrs Ronald Oranger. Ed.], born in 1940, came to live with us in 1957. She was (and still is — ten years later) an enchanting English blonde with doll eyes, a velvet carnation and a tweed-cupped little rump [.....]; but such designs, alas, could no longer flesh my fancy. She has been responsible for typing out this memoir — the solace of what are, no doubt, my last ten years of existence. A good daughter, an even better sister, and half-sister, she had supported for ten years her mother’s children from two marriages, besides laying aside [something]. I paid her [generously] per month, well realizing the need to ensure unembarrassed silence on the part of a puzzled and dutiful maiden. Ada called her ‘Fialochka’ and allowed herself the luxury of admiring ‘little Violet’ ‘s cameo neck, pink nostrils, and fair pony-tail. Sometimes, at dinner, lingering over the liqueurs, my Ada would consider my typist (a great lover of Koo-Ahn-Trow) with a dreamy gaze, and then, quick-quick, peck at her flushed cheek. The situation might have been considerably more complicated had it arisen twenty years earlier. (5.4)
Actually, the situation is even more complicated than Van believes it to be, because Ronald Oranger and Violet Knox seem to be Ada's grandchildren. Ada's husband, Andrey Vinelander is an Arizonian cattle-breeder:
Ardis Hall — the Ardors and Arbors of Ardis — this is the leitmotiv rippling through Ada, an ample and delightful chronicle, whose principal part is staged in a dream-bright America — for are not our childhood memories comparable to Vineland-born caravelles, indolently encircled by the white birds of dreams? The protagonist, a scion of one of our most illustrious and opulent families, is Dr Van Veen, son of Baron ‘Demon’ Veen, that memorable Manhattan and Reno figure. The end of an extraordinary epoch coincides with Van’s no less extraordinary boyhood. Nothing in world literature, save maybe Count Tolstoy’s reminiscences, can vie in pure joyousness and Arcadian innocence with the ‘Ardis’ part of the book. On the fabulous country estate of his art-collecting uncle, Daniel Veen, an ardent childhood romance develops in a series of fascinating scenes between Van and pretty Ada, a truly unusual gamine, daughter of Marina, Daniel’s stage-struck wife. That the relationship is not simply dangerous cousinage, but possesses an aspect prohibited by law, is hinted in the very first pages.
In spite of the many intricacies of plot and psychology, the story proceeds at a spanking pace. Before we can pause to take breath and quietly survey the new surroundings into which the writer’s magic carpet has, as it were, spilled us, another attractive girl, Lucette Veen, Marina’s younger daughter, has also been swept off her feet by Van, the irresistible rake. Her tragic destiny constitutes one of the highlights of this delightful book.
The rest of Van’s story turns frankly and colorfully upon his long love-affair with Ada. It is interrupted by her marriage to an Arizonian cattle-breeder whose fabulous ancestor discovered our country. After her husband’s death our lovers are reunited. They spend their old age traveling together and dwelling in the various villas, one lovelier than another, that Van has erected all over the Western Hemisphere.
Not the least adornment of the chronicle is the delicacy of pictorial detail: a latticed gallery; a painted ceiling; a pretty plaything stranded among the forget-me-nots of a brook; butterflies and butterfly orchids in the margin of the romance; a misty view descried from marble steps; a doe at gaze in the ancestral park; and much, much more. (5.6)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): gamine: lassie.
Amerikanskie skotovody ("The American Cattle-breeders") is a chapter in The Golden Calf. The characters in Ilf and Petrov's novel include nich’ya babushka (nobody’s grandmother), one of the inhabitants of “A Crow’s Nest” who is afraid of electricity and uses a kerosene lamp in her entresol apartment. At the beginning of a game of Flavita (the Russian Scrabble) Ada’s letters form the word kerosin (kerosene):
A particular nuisance was the angry or disdainful looking up of dubious words in a number of lexicons, sitting, standing and sprawling around the girls, on the floor, under Lucette’s chair upon which she knelt, on the divan, on the big round table with the board and the blocks and on an adjacent chest of drawers. The rivalry between moronic Ozhegov (a big, blue, badly bound volume, containing 52,872 words) and a small but chippy Edmundson in Dr Gerschizhevsky’s reverent version, the taciturnity of abridged brutes and the unconventional magnanimity of a four-volume Dahl (‘My darling dahlia,’ moaned Ada as she obtained an obsolete cant word from the gentle long-bearded ethnographer) — all this would have been insupportably boring to Van had he not been stung as a scientist by the curious affinity between certain aspects of Scrabble and those of the planchette. He became aware of it one August evening in 1884 on the nursery balcony, under a sunset sky the last fire of which snaked across the corner of the reservoir, stimulated the last swifts, and intensified the hue of Lucette’s copper curls. The morocco board had been unfolded on a much inkstained, monogrammed and notched deal table. Pretty Blanche, also touched, on earlobe and thumbnail, with the evening’s pink — and redolent with the perfume called Miniver Musk by handmaids — had brought a still unneeded lamp. Lots had been cast, Ada had won the right to begin, and was in the act of collecting one by one, mechanically and unthinkingly, her seven ‘luckies’ from the open case where the blocks lay face down, showing nothing but their anonymous black backs, each in its own cell of flavid velvet. She was speaking at the same time, saying casually: ‘I would much prefer the Benten lamp here but it is out of kerosin. Pet (addressing Lucette), be a good scout, call her — Good Heavens!’
The seven letters she had taken, S,R,E,N,O,K,I, and was sorting out in her spektrik (the little trough of japanned wood each player had before him) now formed in quick and, as it were, self-impulsed rearrangement the key word of the chance sentence that had attended their random assemblage. (1.36)
A French handmaid at Ardis, Blanche marries Trofim Fartukov (the Russian coachman in "Ardis the Second") and they have a blind child:
Nonchalantly, Van went back to the willows and said:
‘Every shot in the book has been snapped in 1884, except this one. I never rowed you down Ladore River in early spring. Nice to note you have not lost your wonderful ability to blush.’
‘It’s his error. He must have thrown in a fotochka taken later, maybe in 1888. We can rip it out if you like.’
‘Sweetheart,’ said Van, ‘the whole of 1888 has been ripped out. One need not bb a sleuth in a mystery story to see that at least as many pages have been removed as retained. I don’t mind — I mean I have no desire to see the Knabenkräuter and other pendants of your friends botanizing with you; but 1888 has been withheld and he’ll turn up with it when the first grand is spent.’
‘I destroyed 1888 myself,’ admitted proud Ada; ‘but I swear, I solemnly swear, that the man behind Blanche, in the perron picture, was, and has always remained, a complete stranger.’
‘Good for him,’ said Van. ‘Really it has no importance. It’s our entire past that has been spoofed and condemned. On second thoughts, I will not write that Family Chronicle. By the way, where is my poor little Blanche now?’
‘Oh, she’s all right. She’s still around. You know, she came back — after you abducted her. She married our Russian coachman, the one who replaced Bengal Ben, as the servants called him.’
‘Oh she did? That’s delicious. Madame Trofim Fartukov. I would never have thought it.’
‘They have a blind child,’ said Ada.
‘Love is blind,’ said Van. (2.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Knabenkräuter: Germ., orchids (and testicles).
perron: porch.
In their book Odnoetazhnaya Amerika ("One-storied Amerika," 1937) Ilf and Petrov describe their trip across Arizona and mention the huge land plots of local cattle-breeders:
Мы переехали границу Аризоны. Резкий и сильный свет пустыни лежал на превосходной дороге, ведущей во Флагстафф. Надоедливые рекламные плакаты почти исчезли, и только изредка из-за кактуса или пожелтевшего «перекати-поле» высовывался на палочке нахальный плакатик «Кока-кола». Газолиновые станции попадались все реже. Зато шляпы редких здесь жителей становились все шире. Мы еще никогда не видели и, вероятно, не увидим таких больших шляп, как в Аризоне, стране пустынь и кэньонов.
Едва ли можно найти на свете что-либо величественнее и прекраснее американской пустыни. Целую неделю мы мчались по ней, не уставая восхищаться. Нам повезло. Зима в пустыне – это то же светлое и чистое лето, только без удручающей жары и пыли. Край, в который мы заехали, был совершенно глух и дик, но мы не чувствовали себя оторванными от мира. Дорога и автомобиль приблизили пустыню, сдернули с нее покрывало тайны, не сделав ее менее привлекательной. Напротив того – красота, созданная природой, дополнена красотой, созданной искусными руками человека. Любуясь чистыми красками пустыни, со сложной могучей архитектурой, мы никогда не переставали любоваться широким ровным шоссе, серебристыми мостиками, аккуратно уложенными водоотводными трубами, насыпями и выемками. Даже газолиновые станции, которые надоели на Востоке и Среднем Западе, здесь, в пустыне, выглядели гордыми памятниками человеческого могущества. И автомобиль в пустыне казался вдвое красивей, чем в городе, – его обтекаемая полированная поверхность отражала солнце, а тень его, глубокая и резкая, властно лежала на девственных песках.
Дороги в пустыне – вероятно, одно из самых замечательных достижений американской техники. Они так же хороши, как и в населенных местах. Те же четкие и ясные желто-черные таблицы напоминают о поворотах, узких мостах и зигзагах. Те же белые с черной каемкой знаки указывают номера дорог, а деревянные стрелы с названиями городков – расстояние до этих городков. В пустыне есть также особые дорожные сооружения, которые встречаются довольно часто и называются «каттл гард». Огромные земельные участки скотоводов отделены друг от друга колючей проволокой, чтобы скот не переходил с участка на участок, чтобы не было тяжб и живописным ковбоям не приходилось пускать в ход свои кольты. Но как сделать, чтобы скот не переходил с участка на участок через шоссе? Ведь шоссе не перегородишь колючей проволокой! И вот некий безымянный изобретатель додумался. Проволока доходит до шоссе. Здесь на дороге лежит металлическая решетка, покрывающая канаву. Автомобилям это нисколько не мешает, а коровы боятся, что их ноги провалятся сквозь прутья, и поэтому воздерживаются от нежелательных экскурсий в чужие участки. По-американски просто! (Chapter 25, "The Desert")
The surname Molchalin comes from molchat' (to keep silent). "Ne mogu molchat'!" ("I Cannot be Silent!", 1908) is Leo Tolstoy's article against death penalty. Molchi, skryvaysya i tai (Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal) is the first line of Tyutchev's poem Silentium! (1830). Silentium is a motorcycle on which Greg Erminin comes to the picnic on Ada's sixteenth birthday. Greg Erminin has the twin sister Grace. In Saltykov-Scshedrin's novel Gospoda Golovlyovy ("The Golovlyov Family," 1880) there are the twin sisters Anninka and Lyubinka. Like Marina Durmanov and her daughter Ada, both Anninka and Lyubinka become actresses. Iudushka ("little Judas") Golovlyov (the main character in Saltykov's novel) brings to mind Khristosik ("little Christ") for whom G. A. Vronsky (the movie man) has left Marina. Aleksey Vronski is a character (Anna's lover) in Tolstoy's Anna Karenin (1875-77). The characters in Tolstoy's Voyna i mir ("War and Peace," 1869) include General Eugène de Beauharnais (Napoleon's stepson).