In VN's novel Ada (1969) Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) learns about his children's affair by chance, thanks to Daniel Veen's odd Boschean death. On his way to Dan's lawyer Demon nearly runs into Mrs Arfour, a dentist's widow with a caterpillar dog:
They took a great many precautions — all absolutely useless, for nothing can change the end (written and filed away) of the present chapter. Only Lucette and the agency that forwarded letters to him and to Ada knew Van’s address. Through an amiable lady in waiting at Demon’s bank, Van made sure that his father would not turn up in Manhattan before March 30. They never came out or went in together, arranging a meeting place at the Library or in an emporium whence to start the day’s excursions — and it so happened that the only time they broke that rule (she having got stuck in the lift for a few panicky moments and he having blithely trotted downstairs from their common summit), they issued right into the visual field of old Mrs Arfour who happened to be passing by their front door with her tiny tan-and-gray long-silked Yorkshire terrier. The simultaneous association was immediate and complete: she had known both families for years and was now interested to learn from chattering (rather than chatting) Ada that Van had happened to be in town just when she, Ada, had happened to return from the West; that Marina was fine; that Demon was in Mexico or Oxmice; and that Lenore Colline had a similar adorable pet with a similar adorable parting along the middle of the back. That same day (February 3, 1893) Van rebribed the already gorged janitor to have him answer all questions which any visitor, and especially a dentist’s widow with a caterpillar dog, might ask about any Veens, with a brief assertion of utter ignorance. The only personage they had not reckoned with was the old scoundrel usually portrayed as a skeleton or an angel.
Van’s father had just left one Santiago to view the results of an earthquake in another, when Ladore Hospital cabled that Dan was dying. He set off at once for Manhattan, eyes blazing, wings whistling. He had not many interests in life.
At the airport of the moonlit white town we call Tent, and Tobakov’s sailors, who built it, called Palatka, in northern Florida, where owing to engine trouble he had to change planes, Demon made a long-distance call and received a full account of Dan’s death from the inordinately circumstantial Dr Nikulin (grandson of the great rodentiologist Kunikulinov — we can’t get rid of the lettuce). Daniel Veen’s life had been a mixture of the ready-made and the grotesque; but his death had shown an artistic streak because of its reflecting (as his cousin, not his doctor, instantly perceived) the man’s latterly conceived passion for the paintings, and faked paintings, associated with the name of Hieronymus Bosch.
Next day, February 5, around nine p.m., Manhattan (winter) time, on the way to Dan’s lawyer, Demon noted — just as he was about to cross Alexis Avenue, an ancient but insignificant acquaintance, Mrs Arfour, advancing toward him, with her toy terrier, along his side of the street. Unhesitatingly, Demon stepped off the curb, and having no hat to raise (hats were not worn with raincloaks and besides he had just taken a very exotic and potent pill to face the day’s ordeal on top of a sleepless journey), contented himself — quite properly — with a wave of his slim umbrella; recalled with a paint dab of delight one of the gargle girls of her late husband; and smoothly passed in front of a slow-clopping horse-drawn vegetable cart, well out of the way of Mrs R4. But precisely in regard to such a contingency, Fate had prepared an alternate continuation. As Demon rushed (or, in terms of the pill, sauntered) by the Monaco, where he had often lunched, it occurred to him that his son (whom he had been unable to ‘contact’) might still be living with dull little Cordula de Prey in the penthouse apartment of that fine building. He had never been up there — or had he? For a business consultation with Van? On a sun-hazed terrace? And a clouded drink? (He had, that’s right, but Cordula was not dull and had not been present.) (2.10)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): R4: ‘rook four’, a chess indication of position (pun on the woman’s name).
Mrs R4 ('rook four,' a chess indication of position) brings to mind "Pawn to king's fourth," the medical student's words in James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916):
Cranly gazed after him blandly and vaguely. The medical student went on in a softer voice:
—Pawn to king's fourth.—
—We had better go, Dixon—said Stephen in warning—He has gone to complain.—
Dixon folded the journal and rose with dignity, saying:
—Our men retired in good order.—
—With guns and cattle—added Stephen, pointing to the titlepage of Cranly's book on which was written Diseases of the Ox. (Chapter Five)
Diseases of the Ox on the titlepage of Cranly's book makes one think of Ada's "in Mexico or Oxmice." Lenore Colline (who has a similar adorable pet with a similar adorable parting along the middle of the back) is an Irish film actress who bears a physical resemblance to Ada. Almost all Joyce's stories and novels are set in Dublin (the capital of Ireland). The main character in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and a character in Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922), Stephen Dedalus brings to mind Dedalus Veen (Demon's father, 1799-1883). Ada's husband, Andrey Vinelander in jest calls his father-in-law 'Dementiy Labirintovich' (a legendary architect, Daedalus created the Labyrinth on Crete, in which the Minotaur was kept):
‘My upper-lip space feels indecently naked.’ (He had shaved his mustache off with howls of pain in her presence). ‘And I cannot keep sucking in my belly all the time.’
‘Oh, I like you better with that nice overweight — there’s more of you. It’s the maternal gene, I suppose, because Demon grew leaner and leaner. He looked positively Quixotic when I saw him at Mother’s funeral. It was all very strange. He wore blue mourning. D’Onsky’s son, a person with only one arm, threw his remaining one around Demon and both wept comme des fontaines. Then a robed person who looked like an extra in a technicolor incarnation of Vishnu made an incomprehensible sermon. Then she went up in smoke. He said to me, sobbing: "I will not cheat the poor grubs!" Practically a couple of hours after he broke that promise we had sudden visitors at the ranch — an incredibly graceful moppet of eight, black-veiled, and a kind of duenna, also in black, with two bodyguards. The hag demanded certain fantastic sums — which Demon, she said, had not had time to pay, for "popping the hymen" — whereupon I had one of our strongest boys throw out vsyu (the entire) kompaniyu.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Van, ‘they had been growing younger and younger — I mean the girls, not the strong silent boys. His old Rosalind had a ten-year-old niece, a primed chickabiddy. Soon he would have been poaching them from the hatching chamber.’
‘You never loved your father,’ said Ada sadly.
‘Oh, I did and do — tenderly, reverently, understandingly, because, after all, that minor poetry of the flesh is something not unfamiliar to me. But as far as we are concerned, I mean you and I, he was buried on the same day as our uncle Dan.’
‘I know, I know. It’s pitiful! And what use was it? Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you, but his visits to Agavia kept getting rarer and shorter every year. Yes, it was pitiful to hear him and Andrey talking. I mean, Andrey n’a pas le verbe facile, though he greatly appreciated — without quite understanding it — Demon’s wild flow of fancy and fantastic fact, and would often exclaim, with his Russian "tssk-tssk" and a shake of the head — complimentary and all that — "what a balagur (wag) you are!" — And then, one day, Demon warned me that he would not come any more if he heard again poor Andrey’s poor joke (Nu i balagur-zhe vï, Dementiy Labirintovich) or what Dorothy, l’impayable ("priceless for impudence and absurdity") Dorothy, thought of my camping out in the mountains with only Mayo, a cowhand, to protect me from lions.’
‘Could one hear more about that?’ asked Van.
‘Well, nobody did. All this happened at a time when I was not on speaking terms with my husband and sister-in-law, and so could not control the situation. Anyhow, Demon did not come even when he was only two hundred miles away and simply mailed instead, from some gaming house, your lovely, lovely letter about Lucette and my picture.’
‘One would also like to know some details of the actual coverture — frequence of intercourse, pet names for secret warts, favorite smells —’
‘Platok momental’no (handkerchief quick)! Your right nostril is full of damp jade,’ said Ada, and then pointed to a lawnside circular sign, rimmed with red, saying: Chiens interdits and depicting an impossible black mongrel with a white ribbon around its neck: Why, she wondered, should the Swiss magistrates forbid one to cross highland terriers with poodles? (3.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): comme etc.: shedding floods of tears.
N’a pas le verbe etc.: lacks the gift of the gab.
chiens etc.: dogs not allowed.
On the other hand, Ada's "Mexico or Oxmice" brings to mind meksikanskiy tushkan (Mexican jerboa), the fur mentioned by Ellochka Shchukin in Ilf and Petrov's novel Dvenadtsat' stuliev (“The Twelve Chairs,” 1928):
Остап сразу понял, как вести себя в светском обществе. Он закрыл глаза и сделал шаг назад.
- Прекрасный мех! - воскликнул он.
- Шутите! - сказала Эллочка нежно. - Это мексиканский тушкан.
- Быть этого не может. Вас обманули. Вам дали гораздо лучший мех. Это шанхайские барсы. Ну да! Барсы! Я узнаю их по оттенку. Видите, как мех играет на солнце!.. Изумруд! Изумруд!
Эллочка сама красила мексиканского тушкана зелёной акварелью, и потому похвала утреннего посетителя была ей особенно приятна.
Ostap knew at once how he should behave in such high society. He closed his eyes and took a step backwards. "A beautiful fur!" he exclaimed.
"You're kidding," said Ellochka tenderly. "It's Mexican jerboa."
"It can't be. They made a mistake. You were given a much better fur. It's Shanghai leopard. Yes, leopard. I recognize it by the shade. You see how it reflects the sun. Just like emerald!
Ellochka had dyed the Mexican jerboa with green water-colour herself, so the morning visitor's praise was particularly pleasing. (Chapter XXII "Ellochka the Cannibal")
Ellochka's friend Fima Sobak (a cultured girl whose vocabulary consists of 180 words and includes the word "homosexuality") brings to mind Cordula Tobak (born de Prey), Van's former mistress whom Van suspected of being a lesbian and whom Ada calls "Cordula Tobacco, alias Mme Perwitzky:"
‘She’s terribly nervous, the poor kid,’ remarked Ada stretching across Van toward the Wipex. ‘You can order that breakfast now — unless... Oh, what a good sight! Orchids. I’ve never seen a man make such a speedy recovery.’
‘Hundreds of whores and scores of cuties more experienced than the future Mrs Vinelander have told me that.’
‘I may not be as bright as I used to be,’ sadly said Ada, ‘but I know somebody who is not simply a cat, but a polecat, and that’s Cordula Tobacco alias Madame Perwitsky, I read in this morning’s paper that in France ninety percent of cats die of cancer. I don’t know what the situation is in Poland.’ (2.8).
Perwitzky is the fur of the rare tiger polecat, Foetorius sarmaticus. In Shakespeare's play The Merry Wives of Windsor "polecat" became a nickname of a promiscuous or loose-moraled woman. In "The Twelve Chairs" the vocabulary of Ellochka the Cannibal is contrasted to that of William Shakespeare:
Словарь Вильяма Шекспира, по подсчету исследователей, составляет 12000 слов. Словарь негра из людоедского племени «Мумбо-Юмбо» составляет 300 слов.
Эллочка Щукина легко и свободно обходилась тридцатью.
William Shakespeare's vocabulary has been estimated by the experts at twelve thousand words. The vocabulary of a Negro from the Mumbo Jumbo tribe amounts to three hundred words.
Ellochka Shchukin managed easily and fluently on thirty. (Chapter XXII)
In Vasyuki Ostap Bender (the main character in The Twelve Chairs and its sequel novel, The Golden Calf, 1931) plays simultaneous chess and makes the same first move - pawn to king four:
Остап скользнул взглядом по шеренгам «черных», которые окружали его со всех сторон, по закрытой двери и неустрашимо принялся за работу. Он подошел к одноглазому, сидевшему за первой доской, и передвинул королевскую пешку с клетки e2 на клетку e4.
Одноглазый сейчас же схватил свои уши руками и стал напряженно думать. По рядам любителей прошелестело:
— Гроссмейстер сыграл e2-e4. Остап не баловал своих противников разнообразием дебютов. На остальных двадцати девяти досках он проделал ту же операцию: перетащил королевскую пешку с e2 на e4. Один за другим любители хватались за волосы и погружались в лихорадочные рассуждения, Неиграющие переводили взоры за гроссмейстером. Единственный в городе фотолюбитель уже взгромоздился было на стул и собирался поджечь магний, но Остап сердито замахал руками и, прервав свое течение вдоль досок, громко закричал:
— Уберите фотографа! Он мешает моей шахматной мысли!
Ostap ran his eyes along the line of black chessmen surrounding him on three sides, looked at the door, and then began the game. He went up to the one-eyed man, who was sitting at the first board, and moved the king's pawn forward two squares.
One-eye immediately seized hold of his ears and began thinking hard.
A whisper passed along the line of players.
"The Grossmeister has played pawn to king four."
Ostap did not pamper his opponents with a variety of openings. On the remaining twenty-nine boards he made the same move - pawn to king four. One after another the enthusiasts seized their heads and launched into feverish discussions. Those who were not playing followed the Grossmeister with their eyes. The only amateur photographer in the town was about to clamber on to a chair and light his magnesium flare when Ostap waved his arms angrily and, breaking off his drift along the boards, shouted loudly:
"Remove the photographer! He is disturbing my chess thought!" (The Twelve Chairs, Chapter 34: "The Interplanetary Chess Tournament")
At one point Bender removes one-eye's rook and hides it in his pocket:
Удивленные крики раздавались в помещении клуба «Картонажник». Назревал конфликт. Остап проиграл подряд пятнадцать партий, а вскоре еще три. Оставался один одноглазый. В начале партии он от страха наделал множество ошибок и теперь с трудом вел игру к победному концу. Остап, незаметно для окружающих, украл с доски черную ладью и спрятал ее в карман.
Толпа тесно сомкнулась вокруг играющих.
— Только что на этом месте стояла моя ладья! — закричал одноглазый, осмотревшись, — а теперь ее уже нет!
— Нет, значит, и не было! — грубовато ответил Остап.
— Как же не было? Я ясно помню!
— Конечно, не было!
— Куда же она девалась? Вы ее выиграли?
— Выиграл.
— Когда? На каком ходу?
— Что вы мне морочите голову с вашей ладьей? Если сдаетесь, то так и говорите!
— Позвольте, товарищи, у меня все ходы записаны!
— Контора пишет, — сказал Остап.
— Это возмутительно! — заорал одноглазый. — Отдайте мою ладью.
— Сдавайтесь, сдавайтесь, что это за кошки-мышки такие!
— Отдайте ладью!
Cries of surprise echoed through the Cardboardworker club-room. Conflict was near. Ostap lost fifteen games in succession, and then another three. Only one-eye was left. At the beginning of the game he had made a large number of mistakes from nervousness and was only now bringing the game to a victorious conclusion. Unnoticed by those around, Ostap removed the black rook from the board and hid it in his pocket.
A crowd of people pressed tightly around the players.
"I had a rook on this square a moment ago," cried one-eye, looking round, "and now it's gone!"
"If it's not there now, it wasn't there at all," said Ostap, rather rudely.
"Of course it was. I remember it distinctly!"
"Of course it wasn't!"
"Where's it gone, then? Did you take it?"
"Yes, I took it."
"At which move?"
"Don't try to confuse me with your rook. If you want to resign, say so!"
"Wait a moment, Comrades, I have all the moves written down."
"Written down my foot!"
"This is disgraceful!" yelled one-eye. "Give me back the rook!"
"Come on, resign, and stop this fooling about."
"Give me back my rook!" (ibid.)
In April 1937 Ilya Ilf (who was born in 1897) died of tuberculosis. Five years later, Ilf's younger coauthor, Evgeniy Petrov (a war correspondent, 1902-42) perished in an airplane crash on his way back from Crimea to Moscow. In March 1905 Demon Veen perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific (Van does not realize that his father died because Ada, who could not pardon Demon his forcing Van to give her up, managed to persuade the pilot to destory his machine in midair). Seventeen years later, in 1922, Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband) dies of tuberculosis:
Van kissed her leaf-cold hand and, letting the Bellevue worry about his car, letting all Swans worry about his effects and Mme Scarlet worry about Eveline’s skin trouble, he walked some ten kilometers along soggy roads to Rennaz and thence flew to Nice, Biskra, the Cape, Nairobi, the Basset range —
And oe’r the summits of the Basset —
Would she write? Oh, she did! Oh, every old thing turned out superfine! Fancy raced fact in never-ending rivalry and girl giggles. Andrey lived only a few months longer, po pal’tzam (finger counting) one, two, three, four — say, five. Andrey was doing fine by the spring of nineteen six or seven, with a comfortably collapsed lung and a straw-colored beard (nothing like facial vegetation to keep a patient busy). Life forked and reforked. Yes, she told him. He insulted Van on the mauve-painted porch of a Douglas hotel where van was awaiting his Ada in a final version of Les Enfants Maudits. Monsieur de Tobak (an earlier cuckold) and Lord Erminin (a second-time second) witnessed the duel in the company of a few tall yuccas and short cactuses. Vinelander wore a cutaway (he would); Van, a white suit. Neither man wished to take any chances, and both fired simultaneously. Both fell. Mr Cutaway’s bullet struck the outsole of Van’s left shoe (white, black-heeled), tripping him and causing a slight fourmillement (excited ants) in his foot — that was all. Van got his adversary plunk in the underbelly — a serious wound from which he recovered in due time, if at all (here the forking swims in the mist). Actually it was all much duller.
So she did write as she had promised? Oh, yes, yes! In seventeen years he received from her around a hundred brief notes, each containing around one hundred words, making around thirty printed pages of insignificant stuff — mainly about her husband’s health and the local fauna. After helping her to nurse Andrey at Agavia Ranch through a couple of acrimonious years (she begrudged Ada every poor little hour devoted to collecting, mounting, and rearing!), and then taking exception to Ada’s choosing the famous and excellent Grotonovich Clinic (for her husband’s endless periods of treatment) instead of Princess Alashin’s select sanatorium, Dorothy Vinelander retired to a subarctic monastery town (Ilemna, now Novostabia) where eventually she married a Mr Brod or Bred, tender and passionate, dark and handsome, who traveled in eucharistials and other sacramental objects throughout the Severnïya Territorii and who subsequently was to direct, and still may be directing half a century later, archeological reconstructions at Goreloe (the ‘Lyaskan Herculanum’); what treasures he dug up in matrimony is another question.
Steadily but very slowly Andrey’s condition kept deteriorating. During his last two or three years of idle existence on various articulated couches, whose every plane could be altered in hundreds of ways, he lost the power of speech, though still able to nod or shake his head, frown in concentration, or faintly smile when inhaling the smell of food (the origin, indeed, of our first beatitudes). He died one spring night, alone in a hospital room, and that same summer (1922) his widow donated her collections to a National Park museum and traveled by air to Switzerland for an ‘exploratory interview’ with fifty-two-year-old Van Veen. (3.8)
Eveline is a short story by James Joyce included in his collection The Dubliners (1914). It tells the story of Eveline, a teenager who plans to leave Dublin for Argentina with her lover, a sailor.
Ada's 'Oxmice' also brings to mind Of Mice and Men (1937), a novella by John Steinbeck. When Van and Ada watch Kim Beauharnais's album, Ada mentions old Beckstein's Tabby:
But what about the rare radiance on those adored lips? Bright derision can easily grade, through a cline of glee, into a look of rapture:
‘Do you know, Van, what book lay there — next to Marina’s hand mirror and a pair of tweezers? I’ll tell you. One of the most tawdry and réjouissants novels that ever "made" the front page of the Manhattan Times’ Book Review. I’m sure your Cordula still had it in her cosy corner where you sat temple to temple after you jilted me.’
‘Cat,’ said Van.
‘Oh, much worse. Old Beckstein’s Tabby was a masterpiece in comparison to this — this Love under the Lindens by one Eelmann transported into English by Thomas Gladstone, who seems to belong to a firm of Packers & Porters, because on the page which Adochka, adova dochka (Hell’s daughter) happens to be relishing here, "automobile" is rendered as "wagon." And to think, to think, that little Lucette had to study Eelmann, and three terrible Toms in her Literature course at Los!’
‘You remember that trash but I remember our nonstop three-hour kiss Under the Larches immediately afterwards.’
‘See next illustration,’ said Ada grimly.
‘The scoundrel!’ cried Van; ‘He must have been creeping after us on his belly with his entire apparatus. I will have to destroy him.’
‘No more destruction, Van. Only love.’
‘But look, girl, here I’m glutting your tongue, and there I’m glued to your epiglottis, and —’
‘Intermission,’ begged Ada, ‘quick-quick.’
‘I’m ready to oblige till I’m ninety,’ said Van (the vulgarity of the peep show was catchy), ‘ninety times a month, roughly.’
‘Make it even more roughly, oh much more, say a hundred and fifty, that would mean, that would mean —’
But, in the sudden storm, calculations went to the canicular devils. (ibid.)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): réjouissants: hilarious.
Beckstein: transposed syllables.
Love under the Lindens: O’Neil, Thomas Mann, and his translator tangle in this paragraph.
In Nikolai Gogol (1944) VN mentions Eugene O’Neill’s play Mourning Becomes Electra (1931):
A bad play is more apt to be good comedy or good tragedy than the incredibly complicated creations of such men as Shakespeare or Gogol. In this sense Molière’s stuff (for what it is worth) is “comedy” i. e. something as readily assimilated as a hot dog at a football game, something of one dimension and absolutely devoid of the huge, seething, prodigiously poetic background that makes true drama. And in the same sense O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (for what that is worth) is, I suppose, a tragedy. (2.5)
One of the landowners in Gogol's Myortvye dushi ("Dead Souls," 1842), Sobakevich brings to mind Backbay Tobakovich (as Demon calls Cordula's husband):
‘I beg you, sir,’ said Van, ‘go down, and I’ll join you in the bar as soon as I’m dressed. I’m in a delicate situation.’
‘Come, come,’ retorted Demon, dropping and replacing his monocle. ‘Cordula won’t mind.’
‘It’s another, much more impressionable girl’ — (yet another awful fumble!). ‘Damn Cordula! Cordula is now Mrs Tobak.’
‘Oh, of course!’ cried Demon. ‘How stupid of me! I remember Ada’s fiancé telling me — he and young Tobak worked for a while in the same Phoenix bank. Of course. Splendid broad-shouldered, blue-eyed, blond chap. Backbay Tobakovich!’
‘I don’t care,’ said clenched Van, ‘if he looks like a crippled, crucified, albino toad. Please, Dad, I really must —’
‘Funny your saying that. I’ve dropped in only to tell you poor cousin Dan has died an odd Boschean death. He thought a fantastic rodent sort of rode him out of the house. They found him too late, he expired in Nikulin’s clinic, raving about that detail of the picture. I’m having the deuce of a time rounding up the family. The picture is now preserved in the Vienna Academy of Art.’
‘Father, I’m sorry — but I’m trying to tell you —’
‘If I could write,’ mused Demon, ‘I would describe, in too many words no doubt, how passionately, how incandescently, how incestuously — c’est le mot — art and science meet in an insect, in a thrush, in a thistle of that ducal bosquet. Ada is marrying an outdoor man, but her mind is a closed museum, and she, and dear Lucette, once drew my attention, by a creepy coincidence, to certain details of that other triptych, that tremendous garden of tongue-in-cheek delights, circa 1500, and, namely, to the butterflies in it — a Meadow Brown, female, in the center of the right panel, and a Tortoiseshell in the middle panel, placed there as if settled on a flower — mark the "as if," for here we have an example of exact knowledge on the part of those two admirable little girls, because they say that actually the wrong side of the bug is shown, it should have been the underside, if seen, as it is, in profile, but Bosch evidently found a wing or two in the corner cobweb of his casement and showed the prettier upper surface in depicting his incorrectly folded insect. I mean I don’t give a hoot for the esoteric meaning, for the myth behind the moth, for the masterpiece-baiter who makes Bosch express some bosh of his time, I’m allergic to allegory and am quite sure he was just enjoying himself by crossbreeding casual fancies just for the fun of the contour and color, and what we have to study, as I was telling your cousins, is the joy of the eye, the feel and taste of the woman-sized strawberry that you embrace with him, or the exquisite surprise of an unusual orifice — but you are not following me, you want me to go, so that you may interrupt her beauty sleep, lucky beast! A propos, I have not been able to alert Lucette, who is somewhere in Italy, but I’ve managed to trace Marina to Tsitsikar — flirting there with the Bishop of Belokonsk — she will arrive in the late afternoon, wearing, no doubt, pleureuses, very becoming, and we shall then travel à trois to Ladore, because I don’t think —’
Was he perhaps under the influence of some bright Chilean drug? That torrent was simply unstoppable, a crazy spectrum, a talking palette —
‘— no really, I don’t think we should bother Ada in her Agavia. He is — I mean, Vinelander is — the scion, s,c,i,o,n, of one of those great Varangians who had conquered the Copper Tartars or Red Mongols — or whoever they were — who had conquered some earlier Bronze Riders — before we introduced our Russian roulette and Irish loo at a lucky moment in the history of Western casinos.’
‘I am extremely, I am hideously sorry,’ said Van, ‘what with Uncle Dan’s death and your state of excitement, sir, but my girl friend’s coffee is getting cold, and I can’t very well stumble into our bedroom with all that infernal paraphernalia.’
‘I’m leaving, I’m leaving. After all we haven’t seen each other — since when, August? At any rate, I hope she’s prettier than the Cordula you had here before, volatile boy!’
Volatina, perhaps? Or dragonara? He definitely smelled of ether. Please, please, please go.
‘My gloves! Cloak! Thank you. Can I use your W.C.? No? All right. I’ll find one elsewhere. Come over as soon as you can, and we’ll meet Marina at the airport around four and then whizz to the wake, and —’
And here Ada entered. Not naked — oh no; in a pink peignoir so as not to shock Valerio — comfortably combing her hair, sweet and sleepy. She made the mistake of crying out ‘Bozhe moy!’ and darting back into the dusk of the bedroom. All was lost in that one chink of a second.
‘Or better — come at once, both of you, because I’ll cancel my appointment and go home right now.’ He spoke, or thought he spoke, with the self-control and the clarity of enunciation which so frightened and mesmerized blunderers, blusterers, a voluble broker, a guilty schoolboy. Especially so now — when everything had gone to the hell curs, k chertyam sobach’im, of Jeroen Anthniszoon van Äken and the molti aspetti affascinati of his enigmatica arte, as Dan explained with a last sigh to Dr Nikulin and to nurse Bellabestia (‘Bess’) to whom he bequeathed a trunkful of museum catalogues and his second-best catheter. (2.10)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): c’est le mot: that’s the right word.
pleureuses: widow’s weeds.
Bozhe moy: Russ., good Heavens.