Describing his first visit to the Haze house in Ramsdale, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions an old gray tennis ball that lay on an oak chest:
The front hall was graced with door chimes, a white-eyed wooden thingamabob of commercial Mexican origin, and that banal darling of the arty middle class, van Gogh’s "Arlésienne." A door ajar to the right afforded a glimpse of a living room, with some more Mexican trash in a corner cabinet and a striped sofa along the wall. There was a staircase at the end of the hallway, and as I stood mopping my brow (only now did I realize how hot it had been out-of-doors) and staring, to stare at something, at an old gray tennis ball that lay on an oak chest, there came from the upper landing the contralto voice of Mrs. Haze, who leaning over the banisters inquired melodiously, “Is that Monsieur Humbert?” A bit of cigarette ash dropped from there in addition. Presently, the lady herself - sandals, maroon slacks, yellow silk blouse, squarish face, in that order - came down the steps, her index finger still tapping upon her cigarette. (1.10)
A German-born American actor and comedian, Brother Theodore (the pseudonym of Theodore Isidore Gottlieb, 1906-2001) said: "I foretell the future. I predict the past. I don't need a crystal ball; a football, a tennis ball, a moth ball, any old ball will do. When the power is upon me, there is no holding me back, I just let loose and prophesy all over the place.” A moth ball brings to mind "Ty, mol' belaya (You, White moth)," as in Boris Lavrenyov's novel Sorok pervyi ("The Forty-First," 1924) Commissar Evsyukov calls Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok (a White Army officer):
Вскинулись на Евсюкова поручичьи ультрамариновые шарики.
Ухмыльнулся поручик, шаркнул ножкой.
- Monsieur Евсюков?.. Оч-чень рад познакомиться! К сожалению, не имею полномочий от моего правительства на дипломатические переговоры с такой замечательной личностью.
Веснушки Евсюкова стали белее лица. При всем отряде в глаза смеялся над ним поручик.
Комиссар вытащил наган.
- Ты, моль белая! Не дури! Или выкладай, или пулю слопаешь!
Поручик повел плечом.
- Балда ты, хоть и комиссар! Убьешь - вовсе ничего не слопаешь!
Комиссар опустил револьвер и чертыхнулся.
- Я тебя гопака плясать заставлю, сучье твое мясо. Ты у меня запоешь, - буркнул он.
Поручик так же улыбался одним уголком губ.
Евсюков плюнул и отошел.
- Как, товарищ комиссар? В рай послать, что ли? - спросил красноармеец.
Комиссар почесал ногтем облупленный нос.
- Не... не годится. Это заноза здоровая. Нужно в Казалинск доставить. Там с него в штабе все дознание снимут. - Куда ж его еще, черта, таскать? Сами дойдем ли?
- Афицерей, что ль, вербовать начали?
Евсюков выпрямил грудь и цыкнул:
- Твое какое дело? Я беру - я и в ответе. Сказал!
Обернувшись, увидел Марютку.
- Во! Марютка! Препоручаю тебе их благородие.
Смотри в оба глаза. Упустишь - семь шкур с тебя сдеру!
The lieutenant turned his ultramarine orbs on Yevsukov, smiled, and snapped his heels together.
“Monsieur Yevsukov? Cha-armed. Unfortunately, I have not been commissioned by my government to carry on diplomatic negotiations with anyone in so exalted a position.”
Even Yevsukov’s freckles went white. The man was laughing at him in front of the whole detachment. The commissar snapped out his revolver.
“Look here, you White moth! None of your lip! Either you spill your information or you swallow some lead.”
The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. “If you kill me I won’t spill anything.”
The commissar lowered his gun with a curse. ‘You'll sing another tune before I’m through with you,’ he said.
The lieutenant went on smiling with one corner of his mouth.
Yevsukov spat and walked away. “Are we to send him to Heaven, Comrade Commissar?” asked one of the Red Army men.
The commissar scratched his peeling nose with a finger-nail. ‘Won't do,” said he. “He’s a big cheese, he is. We've got to deliver him to Kazalinsk. They'll get his secret out of him there all right.”
“You mean, drag him along with us? Lucky if we make it ourselves.”
“So we're recruiting White officers now!”
Yevsukov snapped erect.
"Mind your own business,” he shouted. “I’m taking him, and I answer for it. Shut up.”
As he turned round, his eyes lighted on Maryutka. “You’re the one in charge of His Highness, Maryutka. Keep your eyes peeled. I’ll skin you alive if you let him get away.” (Chapter 3 Concerning the inconvenience of travelling through the deserts of Central Asia without camels, with a reference to the sensation experienced by Columbus’ sailors)
"V ray poslat' chto li? (Are we to send him to heaven?)," a Red Army soldier's question, brings to mind V rayu my budem v myach igrat' (In heaven we shall be playing ball), a line in VN's Universitetskaya poema ("The University Poem," 1927), and John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert's manuscript). According to John Ray, Jr., Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) outlived Humbert by forty days and 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 the “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” or “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadow 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 publshed 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 on July 4, 1949, in the Elphinstone hospital. 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.).
When Humbert alludes to Lolita's comparatively recent flu, Dr. Blue (the chief physician at the Elphinstone hospital) curtly says that this is another bug, he has forty such cases on his hands:
Mrs. Hays, the brisk, briskly rouged, blue-eyed widow who ran the motor court, asked me if I were Swiss perchance, because her sister had married a Swiss ski instructor. I was, whereas my daughter happened to be half Irish. I registered, Hays gave me the key and a tinkling smile, and, still twinkling, showed me where to park the car; Lo crawled out and shivered a little: the luminous evening air was decidedly crisp. Upon entering the cabin, she sat down on a chair at a card table, buried her face in the crook of her arm and said she felt awful. Shamming, I thought, shamming, no doubt, to evade my caresses; I was passionately parched; but she began to whimper in an unusually dreary way when I attempted to fondle her. Lolita ill. Lolita dying. Her skin was scalding hot! I took her temperature, orally, then looked up a scribbled formula I fortunately had in a jotter and after laboriously reducing the, meaningless to me, degrees Fahrenheit to the intimate centigrade of my childhood, found she had 40.4, which at least made sense. Hysterical little nymphs might, I knew, run up all kinds of temperatureeven exceeding a fatal count. And I would have given her a sip of hot spiced wine, and two aspirins, and kissed the fever away, if, upon an examination of her lovely uvula, one of the gems of her body, I had not seen that it was a burning red. I undressed her. Her breath was bittersweet. Her brown rose tasted of blood. She was shaking from head to toe. She complained of a painful stiffness in the upper vertebraeand I thought of poliomyelitis as any American parent would. Giving up all hope of intercourse, I wrapped her in a laprobe and carried her into the car. Kind Mrs. Hays in the meantime had alerted the local doctor. “You are lucky it happened here,” she said; for not only was Blue the best man in the district, but the Elphinstone hospital was as modern as modern could be, despite its limited capacity. With a heterosexual Erlkönig in pursuit, thither I drove, half-blinded by a royal sunset on the lowland side and guided by a little old woman, a portable witch, perhaps his daughter, whom Mrs. Hays had lent me, and whom I was never to see again. Dr. Blue, whose learning, no doubt, was infinitely inferior to his reputation, assured me it was a virus infection, and when I alluded to her comparatively recent flu, curtly said this was another bug, he had forty such cases on his hands; all of which sounded like the “ague” of the ancients. I wondered if I should mention, with a casual chuckle, that my fifteen-year-old daughter had had a minor accident while climbing an awkward fence with her boy friend, but knowing I was drunk, I decided to withhold the information till later if necessary. To an unsmiling blond bitch of a secretary I gave my daughter’s age as “practically sixteen.” While I was not looking, my child was taken away from me! In vain I insisted I be allowed to spend the night on a “welcome” mat in a corner of their damned hospital. I ran up constructivistic flights of stairs, I tried to trace my darling so as to tell her she had better not babble, especially if she felt as lightheaded as we all did. At one point, I was rather dreadfully rude to a very young and very cheeky nurse with overdeveloped gluteal parts and blazing black eyesof Basque descent, as I learned. Her father was an imported shepherd, a trainer of sheep dogs. Finally, I returned to the car and remained in it for I do not know how many hours, hunched up in the dark, stunned by my new solitude, looking out open-mouthed now at the dimly illumined, very square and low hospital building squatting in the middle of its lawny block, now up at the wash of stars and the jagged silvery ramparts of the haute montagne where at the moment Mary’s father, lonely Joseph Lore was dreaming of Oloron, Lagore, Rolas - que sais-je! - or seducing a ewe. Such-like fragrant vagabond thoughts have been always a solace to me in times of unusual stress, and only when, despite liberal libations, I felt fairly numbed by the endless night, did I think of driving back to the motel. The old woman had disappeared, and I was not quite sure of my way. Wide gravel roads criss-crossed drowsy rectangual shadows. I made out what looked like the silhouette of gallows on what was probably a school playground; and in another wastelike black there rose in domed silence the pale temple of some local sect. I found the highway at last, and then the motel, where millions of so-called “millers,” a kind of insect, were swarming around the neon contours of “No Vacancy”; and, when, at 3 a. m., after one of those untimely hot showers which like some mordant only help to fix a man’s despair and weariness, I lay on her bed that smelled of chestnuts and roses, and peppermint, and the very delicate, very special French perfume I latterly allowed her to use, I found myself unable to assimilate the simple fact that for the first time in two years I was separated from my Lolita. All at once it occurred to me that her illness was somehow the development of a themethat it had the same taste and tone as the series of linked impressions which had puzzled and tormented me during our journey; I imagined that secret agent, or secret lover, or prankster, or hallucination, or whatever he was, prowling around the hospital - and Aurora had hardly “warmed her hands,” as the pickers of lavender way in the country of my birth, when I found myself trying to get into that dungeon again, knocking upon its green doors, breakfastless, stoolless, in despair. (2.22)
Dr. Blue's forty patients bring to mind Boris Lavrenyov's novel The Forty First. At the end of the novel Maryutka (the troop's best marksman who had already shot dead forty White Army officers) puts a bullet through the blue eye of Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok (with whom Maryutka fell in love and who becomes the forty-first man whom she has killed):
Поручик махнул руками, стоя по щиколотки в воде.
Внезапно он услыхал за спиной оглушительный, торжественный грохот гибнущей в огне и буре планеты. Не успел понять почему, прыгнул в сторону, спасаясь от катастрофы, и этот грохот гибели мира был последним земным звуком для него.
Марютка бессмысленно смотрела на упавшего, бессознательно притопывая зачем-то левой ногой.
Поручик упал головой в воду. В маслянистом стекле расходились красные струйки из раздробленного черепа.
Марютка шагнула вперед, нагнулась. С воплем рванула гимнастерку на груди, выронив винтовку.
В воде на розовой нити нерва колыхался выбитый из орбиты глаз. Синий, как море, шарик смотрел на нее недоуменно-жалостно.
Она шлепнулась коленями в воду, попыталась приподнять мертвую, изуродованную голову и вдруг упала на труп, колотясь, пачкая лицо в багровых сгустках, и завыла низким, гнетущим воем:
- Родненький мой! Что ж я наделала? Очнись, болезный мой! Синегла-азенький!
С врезавшегося в песок баркаса смотрели остолбенелые люди.
The lieutenant went on waving his arms, standing ankle-deep in the sea.
Suddenly from behind him came the deafening blast of the planet, shattered by fire and storm. Instinctively he leaped aside to escape catastrophe. The blast of the dying world was the last sound his ears ever heard.
Maryutka looked at him.
His head was lying in the water. Red streams from his shattered skull were dissolving in the liquid glass.
She ran forward and knelt beside him. Dropping her rifle, she tore at the collar of her tunic. She tugged at the limp form, tried to lift the mangled head. Suddenly she collapsed on the body.
“Oh, what have I done? Look at me, sweet! Open your dear blue eyes!”
Just then the boat ground up on the sand, and its occupants stared dumbfounded at the girl and the man. (Chapter Ten In which Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok hears the roar of the doomed planet, and the author dodges the responsibility for the denouement; transl. Margaret Wettlin)
On the other hand, "you White moth" (as in Lavrenyov's novel Commissar Evsyukov calls Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok) brings to mind "a God-damn mulberry moth" to which Rita, Humbert's constant companion after Lolita's escape from (or, rather, death in) the Elphinstone hospital, compares herself:
She was twice Lolita’s age and three quarters of mine: a very slight, dark-haired, pale-skinned adult, weighing a hundred and five pounds, with charmingly asymmetrical eyes, and angular, rapidly sketched profile, and a most appealing ensellure to her supple back - I think she had some Spanish or Babylonian blood. I picked her up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake, at a darkishly burning bar under the sign of the Tiger-moth, where she was amiably drunk: she insisted we had gone to school together, and she placed her trembling little hand on my ape paw. My senses were very slightly stirred but I decided to give her a try; I did – and adopted her as a constant companion. She was so kind, was Rita, such a good sport, that I daresay she would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion.
When I first met her she had but recently divorced her third husband – and a little more recently had been abandoned by her seventh cavalier servant – the others, the mutables, were too numerous and mobile to tabulate. Her brother was – and no doubt still is – a prominent, pasty-faced, suspenders-and-painted-tie-wearing politician, mayor and boaster of his ball-playing, Bible-reading, grain-handling home town. For the last eight years he had been paying his great little sister several hundred dollars per month under the stringent condition that she would never never enter great little Grainball City. She told me, with wails of wonder, that for some God-damn reason every new boy friend of hers would first of all take her Grainball-ward: it was a fatal attraction; and before she knew what was what, she would find herself sucked into the lunar orbit of the town, and would be following the flood-lit drive that encircled it “going round and round,” as she phrased it, “like a God-damn mulberry moth.” (2.26)