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Fwd: Pastrouil and cow-pox vaccination
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 15:44:32 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Reply-To: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Subject: Pastrouil and cow-pox vaccination
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Dear Don,
It is impossible to advance in ADA without turning back again and again, now
because of the return of two words: Pastrouil and varicolored, plus a
bespattered milk-maid.
While reading about Van´s adventures in Villa Veen and still thinking about
Fartingben or Fartukoff´s warning about a dangerous contamination ( a venereal
disease, I assumed ), I came across the word "milkman", soon after a
description of a catamite´s distressing dysentery, "defaced by varicolored
imprints of bestial claws...".
"Their joint efforts failed, however, to arouse the pretty catamite, who had
been exhausted by too many recent engagements. His girlish crupper proved sadly
defaced by the varicolored imprints of bestial clawings and flesh-twistings; but
worst of all, the little fellow could not disguise a state of acute indigestion,
marked by unappetizing dysenteric symptoms that coated his lover's shaft with
mustard and blood, the result, no doubt, of eating too many green apples.
Eventually, he had to be destroyed or given away (...) In 1905 a glancing blow
was dealt Villa Venus from another quarter. The personage we have called Ritcov
or Vrotic had been induced by the ailings of age to withdraw his patronage.
However, one night he suddenly arrived, looking again as ruddy as the
proverbial fiddle; but after the entire staff of his favorite floramor near
Bath had worked in vain on him till an ironic Hesperus rose in a milkman's
humdrum sky, the wretched sovereign of one-half of the globe called for the
Shell Pink Book..."
"Milkman": a "cowboy", perhaps. But then I remembered the "accidental milkmaid"
who was as bespattered by blood as both seconds, "Mr. de Pastrouil and Colonel
St Alin".
"had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps
leading backward to the walled garden in an amusing Douglas d'Artagnan
arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of
both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil and Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel,
the latter gentlemen separated the panting combatants, and Skonky died, not 'of
his wounds' (as it was viciously rumored) but of a gangrenous afterthought on
the part of the least of them, possibly self-inflicted, a sting in the groin,
which caused circulatory trouble..."
In B.Boyd´s Ada Online I found: charming Monsieur de Pastrouil: Signficance
unknown.
Colonel St. Alin, a scoundrel: a play on the name of Soviet dictator Joseph
Stalin (1879-1953), whose name does not usually suggest saintliness. Whether or
not Stalin exists on Antiterra is a moot point: see 582.19-20.
Milkmaids brought to my mind two names: Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), the first
scientist to admit that small-pox was caused by microorganisms and the British
doctor Edward Jenner ( 1796) who discovered a "vaccination" ( a new word that
refers to "cow" - in French, "vache", in Portuguese, " vaca" ) by observing a
milkmaid´s immunity to small-pox after contagion with "cow-pox".
Pastrouil could be the scientist Louis Pasteur? And small-pox, or "varíola",
could it be also have been indicated by a word such as "varicolored" (
multicolored), plus all the symptoms of fever, pain and intestinal problems
that come before the rash and the pustules?
But then, why not Pastrouil and Nerjen, for example, as the seconds, instead of
St. Alin? Is there another kind of contamination ( such as the spread of
"varicolored lands") that arises not by an organic, tesselated or biological
kind, but in reference to Antiterra´s political affairs? What was Fartukoff´s
real warning?
Jansy
----- End forwarded message -----
EDNOTE. And also, for the benefit of younger readers who may not know that
once-upon-a-time the "milkman" actually came and delivered bottled milk at the
doorstep early in the AM.