In an attempt to save his life Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) offers Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) to arrange for him to attend executions and tells him that the chair is painted yellow:
“Now look here, Mac,” he said. “You are drunk and I am a sick man. Let us postpone the matter. I need quiet. I have to nurse my impotence. Friends are coming in the afternoon to take me to a game. This pistol-packing farce is becoming a frightful nuisance. We are men of the world, in everything - sex, free verse, marksmanship. If you bear me a grudge, I am ready to make unusual amends. Even an old-fashioned rencontre, sword or pistol, in Rio or elsewhere - is not excluded. My memory and my eloquence are not at their best today, but really, my dear Mr. Humbert, you were not an ideal stepfather, and I did not force your little protégé to join me. It was she made me remove her to a happier home. This house is not as modern as that ranch we shared with dear friends. But it is roomy, cool in summer and winter, and in a word comfortable, so, since I intend retiring to England or Florence forever, I suggest you move in. It is yours, gratis. Under the condition you stop pointing at me that [he swore disgustingly] gun. By the way, I do not know if you care for the bizarre, but if you do, I can offer you, also gratis, as house pet, a rather exciting little freak, a young lady with three breasts, one a dandy, this is a rare and delightful marvel of nature. Now, soyons raisonnables. You will only wound me hideously and then rot in jail while I recuperate in a tropical setting. I promise you, Brewster, you will be happy here, with a magnificent cellar, and all the royalties from my next playI have not much at the bank right now but I propose to borrow - you know, as the Bard said, with that cold in his head, to borrow and to borrow and to borrow. There are other advantages. We have here a most reliable and bribable charwoman, a Mrs. Vibrissa - curious name - who comes from the village twice a week, alas not today, she has daughters, granddaughters, a thing or two I know about the chief of police makes him my slave. I am a playwright. I have been called the American Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck-Schmetterling, says I. Come on! All this is very humiliating, and I am not sure I am doing the right thing. Never use herculanita with rum. Now drop that pistol like a good fellow. I knew your dear wife slightly. You may use my wardrobe. Oh, another thingyou are going to like this. I have an absolutely unique collection of erotica upstairs. Just to mention one item: the in folio de-luxe Bagration Island by the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss, a remarkable lady, a remarkable workdrop that gunwith photographs of eight hundred and something male organs she examined and measured in 1932 on Bagration, in the Barda Sea, very illuminating graphs, plotted with love under pleasant skiesdrop that gunand moreover I can arrange for you to attend executions, not everybody knows that the chair is painted yellow - ” (2.35)
Quilty's hobbies are fast cars, photography and pets. In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN describes his life in Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s and mentions a young German whose hobby was capital punishment and who hoped some day to go to the States so as to witness a couple of electrocutions:
Somehow, during my secluded years in Germany, I never came across those gentle musicians of yore who, in Turgenev’s novels, played their rhapsodies far into the summer night; or those happy old hunters with their captures pinned to the crown of their hats, of whom the Age of Reason made such fun: La Bruyère’s gentleman who sheds tears over a parasitized caterpillar, Gay’s “philosophers more grave than wise” who, if you please, “hunt science down in butterflies,” and, less insultingly, Pope’s “curious Germans,” who “hold so rare” those “insects fair”; or simply the so-called wholesome and kindly folks that during the last war homesick soldiers from the Middle West seem to have preferred so much to the cagey French farmer and to brisk Madelon II. On the contrary, the most vivid figure I find when sorting out in memory the meager stack of my non-Russian and non-Jewish acquaintances in the years between the two wars is the image of a young German university student, well-bred, quiet, bespectacled, whose hobby was capital punishment. At our second meeting he showed me a collection of photographs among which was a purchased series (“Ein bischen retouchiert,” he said wrinkling his freckled nose) that depicted the successive stages of a routine execution in China; he commented, very expertly, on the splendor of the lethal sword and on the spirit of perfect cooperation between headsman and victim, which culminated in a veritable geyser of mist-gray blood spouting from the very clearly photographed neck of the decapitated party. Being pretty well off, this young collector could afford to travel, and travel he did, in between the humanities he studied for his Ph.D. He complained, however, of continuous ill luck and added that if he did not see something really good soon, he might not stand the strain. He had attended a few passable hangings in the Balkans and a well-advertised, although rather bleak and mechanical guillotinade (he liked to use what he thought was colloquial French) on the Boulevard Arago in Paris; but somehow he never was sufficiently close to observe everything in detail, and the highly expensive teeny-weeny camera in the sleeve of his raincoat did not work as well as he had hoped. Despite a bad cold, he had journeyed to Regensburg where beheading was violently performed with an axe; he had expected great things from that spectacle but, to his intense disappointment, the subject had apparently been drugged and had hardly reacted at all, beyond feebly flopping about on the ground while the masked executioner and his clumsy mate fell all over him. Dietrich (my acquaintance’s first name) hoped some day to go to the States so as to witness a couple of electrocutions; from this word, in his innocence, he derived the adjective “cute,” which he had learned from a cousin of his who had been to America, and with a little frown of wistful worry Dietrich wondered if it were really true that, during the performance, sensational puffs of smoke issued from the natural orifices of the body. At our third and last encounter (there still remained bits of him I wanted to file for possible use) he related to me, more in sorrow than in anger, that he had once spent a whole night patiently watching a good friend of his who had decided to shoot himself and had agreed to do so, in the roof of the mouth, facing the hobbyist in a good light, but having no ambition or sense of honor, had got hopelessly tight instead. Although I have lost track of Dietrich long ago, I can well imagine the look of calm satisfaction in his fish-blue eyes as he shows, nowadays (perhaps at the very minute I am writing this), a never-expected profusion of treasures to his thigh-clapping, guffawing co-veterans—the absolutely wunderbar pictures he took during Hitler’s reign. (Chapter Fourteen, 1)
In Drugie berega ("Other Shores," 1954), the Russian version of VN's autobiography, Dietrich's thigh-clapping, guffawing co-veterans to whom Dietrich shows the absolutely wunderbar pictures he took during Hitler’s reign exclaim "Dieser Dietrich! (this Dietrich!):"
Американские мои друзья явно не верят мне, когда я рассказываю, что за пятнадцать лет жизни в Германии я не познакомился близко ни с одним немцем, не прочел ни одной немецкой газеты или книги и никогда не чувствовал ни малейшего неудобства от незнания немецкого языка. Перебирая в памяти мои очень немногие и совершенно случайные встречи с берлинскими туземцами, я выделил в английской версии этих заметок немецкого студента, которому я кажется исправлял какие-то письма, посылавшиеся им кузине в Америку. Это был тихий, приличный, благополучный молодой человек в очках, изучавший гуманитарные науки в университете. Кто только ни измывался в Эпоху Разума над собирателями бабочек — тут и Лабрюйер в шестом издании (1691) своих «Характеров», презрительно отмечающий, что иной модник любит насекомых и рыдает над умершей гусеницей, тут и пудреные англичане Гей и Поп, небрежно упоминающие в стихах о глуповатых философах, доводящих науку до абсурда тем, что гоняются за красивыми насекомыми, которых столь ценят любознательные немцы. И вот интересно, что бы сказали эти моралисты о коньке молодого немца моего улова в 1930-ом году: он коллекционировал фотографические снимки казней. Уже при второй встрече он показал мне купленную им серию («Einbischen retouchiert»), - грустно сказал он, наморщив веснушчатый нос), изображавшую разные моменты заурядной декапитации в Китае; он с большим знанием дела указывал на красоту роковой сабли и на прекрасную атмосферу той полной кооперативности между палачом и пациентом, которая, на очень ясном снимке, заканчивалась феноменальным гейзером дымчато-серой крови. Небольшое состояние позволяло молодому собирателю довольно много разъезжать. Он жаловался, впрочем, что ему не везет. На Балканах он присутствовал при двух-трех посредственных повешениях, а на Бульваре Араго в пленительном Париже на широко рекламированной, но оказавшейся весьма убогой и механической «гильотинаде» (как он выражался, думая, что это по-французски); как-то всегда так выходило, что ему было плохо видно, пропадали детали, и не удавалось ничего интересного снять дорогим аппаратиком, спрятанным в рукаве макинтоша. Несмотря на сильнейшую простуду, он недавно ездил в Регенсбург, где казнь совершалась по старинке, при помощи топора; он ожидал многого от этого зрелища, но, к величайшему разочарованию, осужденному по-видимому дали наркотическое средство, вследствие чего дурень едва реагировал, только вяло шлепался об землю, борясь с неловкими, падающими на него, помощниками палача. Дитрих, так звали молодого любителя, надеялся когда-нибудь попасть в Америку, чтобы посмотреть электрокуцию, и, мечтательно хмурясь, спрашивал себя, неужели правда, что во время этой операции сенсационные облачки дыма выходят из природных отверстий содрогающегося тела. При третьей и к сожалению последней встрече (сколько еще было штрихов в этом Дитрихе, которые мне хотелось добрать и сохранить для писательских нужд!) он, не сердясь - хотя было на что сердиться, - а напротив, с кроткой печалью, рассказал, что недавно провел целую ночь, терпеливо наблюдая за приятелем, который решил покончить с собой и после некоторых уговоров согласился проделать это в присутствии Дитриха, но увы, приятель оказался бесчестным обманщиком и, вместо того, чтобы выстрелить себе в рот, как было обещано, грубо напился и к утру был в самом наглом настроении — хохотал и брился. Я давно потерял из виду милого Дитриха, но вполне ясно представляю себе выражение совершенного удовлетворения и облегчения («…наконец-то..,») в его светлых форелевых глазах, когда он нынче, в гемютном немецком городке, избежавшем бомбежки, в кругу других ветеранов гитлеровских походов и опытов, демонстрирует друзьям, которые с гоготом добродушного восхищения («Дизер Дитрих!») бьют себя ладонью по ляжке, те абсолютно вундербар фотографии, которые так неожиданно, и дешево, ему за те годы посчастливилось снять. (Chapter Thirteen, 2)
Dieser Dietrich! brings to mind Marlene Dietrich (a German-American movie actress, 1901-1992). Humbert describes Charlotte Haze (Lolita's mother whom Quilty knew slightly) as "a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich:"
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 herselfsandals, maroon slacks, yellow silk blouse, squarish face, in that ordercame down the steps, her index finger still tapping upon her cigarette.
I think I had better describe her right away, to get it over with. The poor lady was in her middle thirties, she had a shiny forehead, plucked eyebrows and quite simple but not unattractive features of a type that may be defined as a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich. Patting her bronze-brown bun, she led me into the parlor and we talked for a minute about the McCoo fire and the privilege of living in Ramsdale. Her very wide-set sea-green eyes had a funny way of traveling all over you, carefully avoiding your own eyes. Her smile was but a quizzical jerk of one eyebrow; and uncoiling herself from the sofa as she talked, she kept making spasmodic dashes at three ashtrays and the near fender (where lay the brown core of an apple); whereupon she would sink back again, one leg folded under her. She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul; women who are completely devoid of humor; women utterly indifferent at heart to the dozen or so possible subjects of a parlor conversation, but very particular about the rules of such conversations, through the sunny cellophane of which not very appetizing frustrations can be readily distinguished. I was perfectly aware that if by any wild chance I became her lodger, she would methodically proceed to do in regard to me what taking a lodger probably meant to her all along, and I would again be enmeshed in one of those tedious affairs I knew so well. (1.10)
In Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), a 1930 German musical comedy-drama film directed by Joseph von Sternberg, Marlene Dietrich played Lola Lola, the headliner at the cabaret called The Blue Angel. The yellow chair and the blue angel bring to mind a macaronic phrase (coined by VN) 'yellow-blue was,' a play on ya lyublyu Vas (I love you in Russian). Was is here German for "what."