According to Ada, at the funeral of Marina (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) and d’Onsky’s son, a person with only one arm, wept comme des fontaines:
‘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.
One is reminded of Kozma Prutkov's famous aphorism: "If you have a fountain, shut it down; let even a fountain have a rest." In his poem Zhelanie byt' ispantsem ("The Desire to Be a Spaniard," 1854) Kozma Prutkov (a fictional author invented by Count A. K. Tolstoy and his cousins, the brothers Alexey, Vladimir and Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov) mentions duen'ya staraya (the old duenna):
Закурю сигару я,
Лишь взойдёт луна...
Пусть дуэнья старая
Смотрит из окна!
In his poem Pis'mo iz Korinfa ("A Letter from Corinth," 1854) Kozma Prutkov mentions pomerantsy (the orange trees):
Я недавно приехал в Коринф…
Вот ступени, а вот колоннада!
Я люблю здешних мраморных нимф
И истмийского шум водопада.
Целый день я на солнце сижу,
Трусь елеем вокруг поясницы,
Между камней паросских слежу
За извивом слепой медяницы.
Померанцы растут предо мной,
И на них в упоеньи гляжу я.
Дорог мне вожделенный покой.
«Красота, красота!» — все твержу я.
А на землю лишь спустится ночь,
Мы с рабыней совсем обомлеем…
Всех рабов высылаю я прочь
И опять натираюсь елеем.
Pomerantsy (the orange trees) on which Kozma Prutkov looks in rapture bring to mind Ronald Oranger, old Van's secretary and the editor of Ada who marries Violet Knox, old Van's typist whom Ada calls Fialochka ('little Violet') and who marries Ronald Oranger after Van's and Ada's death:
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)
Because love is blind, Van fails to see that Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband) and Ada have at least two children and that Ronald Oranger and Violet Knox are Ada's grandchildren. Fialochka (little Violet) brings to mind Ivan Dmitriev's fable Repeynik i Fialka (“The Burdock and the Violet,” 1824):
Между репейником и розовым кустом
Фиялочка себя от зависти скрывала;
Безвестною была, но горести не знала:
Тот счастлив, кто своим доволен уголком.
Between a burdock and a rose bush
the little violet hid herself from envy;
she was obscure, but knew no grief:
happy is he who is pleased with his corner.
It was parodied by Yazykov and Pushkin in Nravstvennye chetverostishiya ("Moral Quatrains") as Zakon prirody ("A Law of Nature," 1828):
Фиалка в воздухе свой аромат лила,
А волк злодействовал в пасущемся народе;
Он кровожаден был, фиалочка мила:
Всяк следует свой природе.
The Violet poured fragrance into the air,
while the Wolf did evil in the browsing tribe;
the Wolf was bloodthirsty, the little Violet fair:
everybody follows its nature.
A person with only one arm, d'Onsky's son brings to mind Captain Lebyadkin, a character in Dostoevski's novel Besy ("The Possessed," 1872) who imagines that he lost his arm in the siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War of 1853-1856. In his essay Poeziya Ignata Lebyadkina ("The Poetry of Ignat Lebyadkin," 1931) Vladislav Hodasevich contrasts Lebyadkin with Prutkov:
Г-ва, «рассказчика» «Бесов», Достоевский нарочно сделал не вполне проницательным. Его мнения — отнюдь не мнения самого Достоевского. Г-в называет Лебядкина дураком, но Лебядкин совсем не дурак. Он нелеп, невежественен, пьян, он порою валяет шута, но он не глуп. Таковы же его стихи. Их нелепая и пошлая форма находится в полном разрыве с содержанием, вовсе не нелепым и не пошлым. Поэзия Лебядкина есть искажение поэзии, но лишь в том же смысле и в той же мере, как сам он есть трагическое искажение человеческого образа. Несоответствие формы и содержания в поэзии Лебядкина по существу трагично, хотя по внешности пародийно. Однако эта пародия построена на принципе, обратном принципу Козьмы Пруткова, которого Достоевский знал и ценил. Комизм Пруткова основан на том, что у него низкое и нелепое содержание облечено в высокую поэтическую форму. Трагикомизм Лебядкина — в том, что у него высокое содержание невольно облекается в низкую форму. Прутков в совершенстве владеет формой — и мелет вздор. Лебядкин высказывает святейшее, что в нем есть, и нечто объективно-поэтическое — но чем более старается он подражать поэтическому канону и общепринятым в поэзии приемам, тем безвкуснее и нелепее у него это выходит. В послании к Лизе он вовсе теряет власть над стихом и вынужден перейти на прозу. То же и в басне о таракане, которая выходит за пределы любовного цикла и представляет собою изуродованный вариант на пушкинскую тему о равнодушной природе.