According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955), Gaston Godin (Humbert's friend and chess partner at Beardsley) got involved in a sale histoire, in Naples of all places:
A word about Gaston Godin. The main reason why I enjoyed - or at least tolerated with relief - his company was the spell of absolute security that his ample person cast on my secret. Not that he knew it; I had no special reason to confide in him, and he was much too self-centered and abstract to notice or suspect anything that might lead to a frank question on his part and a frank answer on mine. He spoke well of me to Beardsleyans, he was my good herald. Had he discovered mes goûts and Lolita’s status, it would have interested him only insofar as throwing some light on the simplicity of my attitude towards him, which attitude was as free of polite strain as it was of ribald allusions; for despite his colorless mind and dim memory, he was perhaps aware that I knew more about him than the burghers of Beardsley did. He was a flabby, dough-faced, melancholy bachelor tapering upward to a pair of narrow, not quite level shoulders and a conical pear-head which had sleek black hair on one side and only a few plastered wisps on the other. But the lower part of his body was enormous, and he ambulated with a curious elephantine stealth by means of phenomentally stout legs. He always wore black, even his tie was black; he seldom bathed; his English was a burlesque. And, nonetheless, everybody considered him to be a supremely lovable, lovably freakish fellow! Neighbors pampered him; he knew by name all the small boys in our vicinity (he lived a few blocks away from me)and had some of them clean his sidewalk and burn leaves in his back yard, and bring wood from his shed, and even perform simple chores about the house, and he would feed them fancy chocolates, with real liqueurs inside - in the privacy of an orientally furnished den in his basement, with amusing daggers and pistols arrayed on the moldy, rug-adorned walls among the camouflaged hot-water pipes. Upstairs he had a studiohe painted a little, the old fraud. He had decorated its sloping wall (it was really not more than a garret) with large photographs of pensive André Gide, Tchaikovsky, Norman Douglas, two other well-known English writers, Nijinsky (all thighs and fig leaves), Harold D. Doublename (a misty-eyed left-wing professor at a Midwestern university) and Marcel Proust. All these poor people seemed about to fall on you from their inclined plane. He had also an album with snapshots of all the Jackies and Dickies of the neighborhood, and when I happened to thumb through it and make some casual remark, Gaston would purse his fat lips and murmur with a wistful pout “Oui, ils sont gentils. ” His brown eyes would roam around the various sentimental and artistic bric-a-brac present, and his own banal toiles (the conventionally primitive eyes, sliced guitars, blue nipples and geometrical designs of the day), and with a vague gesture toward a painted wooden bowl or veined vase, he would say “Prenez donc une de ces poires. La bonne dame d’en face m’en offre plus que je n’en peux savourer. ” Or: “Mississe Taille Lore vient de me donner ces dahlias, belles fleurs que j’exècre .” (Somber, sad, full of world-weariness.)
For obvious reasons, I preferred my house to his for the games of chess we had two or three times weekly. He looked like some old battered idol as he sat with his pudgy hands in his lap and stared at the board as if it were a corpse. Wheezing he would mediate for ten minutes - then make a losing move. Or the good man, after even more thought, might utter: Au roi! With a slow old-dog woof that had a gargling sound at the back of it which made his jowls wabble; and then he would lift his circumflex eyebrows with a deep sigh as I pointed out to him that he was in check himself.
Sometimes, from where we sat in my cold study I could hear Lo’s bare feet practicing dance techniques in the living room downstairs; but Gaston’s outgoing senses were comfortably dulled, and he remained unaware of those naked rhythms - and-one, and-two, and-one, and-two, weight transferred on a straight right leg, leg up and out to the side, and-one, and-two, and only when she started jumping, opening her legs at the height of the jump, and flexing one leg, and extending the other, and flying, and landing on her toes - only then did my pale, pompous, morose opponent rub his head or cheek as if confusing those distant thuds with the awful stabs of my formidable Queen.
Sometimes Lola would slouch in while we pondered the board - and it was every time a treat to see Gaston, his elephant eye still fixed on his pieces, ceremoniously rise to shake hands with her, and forthwith release her limp fingers, and without looking once at her, descend again into his chair to topple into the trap I had laid for him. One day around Christmas, after I had not seen him for a fortnight or so, he asked me “Et toutes vos fillettes, elles vont bien?” from which it became evident to me that he had multiplied my unique Lolita by the number of sartorial categories his downcast moody eye had glimpsed during a whole series of her appearances: blue jeans, a skirt, shorts, a quilted robe.
I am loath to dwell so long on the poor fellow (sadly enough, a year later, during a voyage to Europe, from which he did not return, he got involved in a sale histoire, in Naples of all places!). I would have hardly alluded to him at all had not his Beardsley existence had such a queer bearing on my case. I need him for my defense. There he was devoid of any talent whatsoever, a mediocre teacher, a worthless scholar, a glum repulsive fat old invert, highly contemptuous of the American way of life, triumphantly ignorant of the English language - there he was in priggish New England, crooned over by the old and caressed by the young - oh, having a grand time and fooling everybody; and here was I. (2.6)
In a letter of January 25, 1847, from Naples to his mother in Vasilievka (Gogol's family estate in the Province of Poltava) Gogol says that, if he is still alive, it is because of his constant thoughts of death:
Завещание мое, сделанное во время болезни, мне нужно было напечатать по многим причинам в моей книге. Сверх того, что это было необходимо в объясненье самого появленья такой книги, оно нужно затем, чтобы напомнить многим о смерти, — о которой редко кто помышляет из живущих. Бог не даром дал мне почувствовать во время болезни моей, как страшно становится перед смертью, чтобы я мог передать это ощущение и другим. Если бы вы истинно и так, как следует, были наставлены в христианстве, то вы бы все до единой знали, что память смертная — это первая вещь, которую человек должен ежеминутно носить в мыслях своих. В священном писании сказано, что тот, кто помнит ежеминутно конец свой, никогда не согрешит. Кто помнит о смерти и представляет ее себе перед глазами живо, тот не пожелает смерти, потому что видит сам, как много нужно наделать добрых дел, чтоб заслужить добрую кончину и без страха предстать на суд пред господа. По тех пор, покуда человек не сроднится с мыслью о смерти и не сделает ее как бы завтра его ожидающею, он никогда не станет жить так, как следует, и всё будет откладывать от дня до дня на будущее время. Постоянная мысль о смерти воспитывает удивительным образом душу, придает силу для жизни и подвигов среди жизни. Она нечувствительно крепит нашу твердость, бодрит дух и становит нас нечувствительными ко всему тому, что возмущает людей малодушных и слабых.
Моим помышленьям о смерти я обязан тем, что живу еще на свете. Без этой мысли, при моем слабом состояньи здоровья, которое всегда было во мне болезненно, и при тех тяжелых огорченьях, которые на моем поприще предстоят человеку более, чем на всех других поприщах, я бы не перенес многого, и меня бы давно не было на свете. Но, содержа в мыслях перед собою смерть и видя перед собою неизмеримую вечность, нас ожидающую, глядишь на всё земное, как на мелочь и на малость, и не только не падаешь от всяких огорчений и бед, но еще вызываешь их на битву, зная, что только за мужественную битву с ними можно удостоиться полученья вечности и вечного блаженства. Без этой мысли о смерти и вечности я бы не перенес и нынешней моей печальной утраты, о которой, вероятно, вы уже слышали. Я лишился наилучшего моего друга, с которым я жил душа в душу, Н. М. Языкова, к которому я питал истинно родственную любовь, потому что питать истинно родственную любовь я могу только к тем, которые понимают мою душу и живут сколько-нибудь во Христе делами жизни своей. Еще за несколько лет перед сим эта смерть сокрушила бы меня, может быть, совершенно. Теперь я принял эту весть покойно и, зная, что этот человек, за небесную душу свою, удостоен небесного блаженства, стараюсь от всех сил, чтобы и меня удостоил бог быть с ним вместе, а потому молю его ежеминутно, чтобы продлил сколько возможно подолее жизнь мою, дабы я в силах был наделать много добрых дел и удостоиться, подобно ему, небесного блаженства; и чрез это у меня и бодрости больше в жизненном деле, и я гляжу светло вперед. Итак, вот что значит смерть и мысль о смерти...
Gaston Godin's surname makes one think of godina (year), an archaic word used by Pushkin in his poem Brozhu li ya vdol’ ulits shumnykh… (“Whether I wander along noisy streets,” 1829):
День каждый, каждую годину
Привык я думой провождать,
Грядущей смерти годовщину
Меж их стараясь угадать.
И где мне смерть пошлет судьбина?
В бою ли, в странствии, в волнах?
Или соседняя долина
Мой примет охладелый прах?
Each day each year
I have come to usher out in fancy,
Of my approaching death the anniversary
Intent to guess among them.
And where will fate send me death
In fight, in travel or in waves?
Or will the neighboring vale
accept my cold ashes?
Pushkin died on January 29, 1837 (OS), two days after his fatal duel with d'Anthès. The author of Dvoynik ("The Double," 1846), Fyodor Dostoevski (1821-1881) died on January 28, 1881 (OS). Une Sale Histoire is the French title of Dostoevski' story Skvernyi anekdot ("A Nasty Story," 1862). A playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital, Clare Quilty is Humbert's double. According to John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert's manuscript), Humbert Humbert had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start:
“Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male,” such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates. “Humbert Humbert,” their author, had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start. His lawyer, my good friend and relation, Clarence Choate Clark, Esq., now of the District of Columbia bar, in asking me to edit the manuscript, based his request on a clause in his client’s will which empowered my eminent cousin to use the discretion in all matters pertaining to the preparation of “Lolita” for print. Mr. Clark’s decision may have been influenced by the fact that the editor of his choice had just been awarded the Poling Prize for a modest work (“Do the Senses make Sense?”) wherein certain morbid states and perversions had been discussed.
Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581 is a painting by Ilya Repin (a Russian realist painter, 1844-1930) made between 1883 and 1885. Samosozhzhenie Gogolya ("The Self-Immolation of Gogol," 1909) is a painting by Repin executed for the hundredth anniversary of Gogol's birth. The author of Noch' pered rozhdestvom ("The Christmas Eve," 1832), Gogol was born on April 1, 1809, and died on March 4, 1852. According to John Ray, Jr., Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadows of this sorry and sordid business” should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. His daughter, “Louise,” is by now a college sophomore. “Mona Dahl” is a student in Paris. “Rita” has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. ‘Vivian Darkbloom’ has written a biography, ‘My Cue,’ to be published shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk.
But it seems that, actually, Lolita dies of ague in the Elphinstone hospital on July 4, 1949, and everything what happens after her sudden death (Lolita's escape from the hospital, Humbert's affair with Rita, Lolita's marriage and pregnancy, and the murder of Clare Quilty) was invented by Humbert Humbert (whose "real" name is John Ray, Jr.).