Describing Demon’s visit to Ardis in the summer of 1888, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions dead Demon’s ‘crimes’ about which Marina used to ramble on in the late Eighteen-Nineties:
In mid-July Uncle Dan took Lucette to Kaluga where she was to stay, with Belle and French, for five days. The Lyaskan Ballet and a German circus were in town, and no child would want to miss the schoolgirls’ field-hockey and swimming matches which old Dan, a child at heart, attended religiously at that time of the year; moreover she had to undergo a series of ‘tests’ at the Tarus Hospital to settle what caused her weight and temperature to fluctuate so abnormally despite her eating so heartily and feeling so well.
On the Friday afternoon when her father planned to return with her, he also expected to bring a Kaluga lawyer to Ardis where Demon was to come too, an unusual occurrence. The business to be discussed was the sale of some ‘blue’ (peat-bog) land which belonged to both cousins and which both, for different reasons, were anxious to get rid of. As usually happened with Dan’s most carefully worked-out plans, something misfired, the lawyer could not promise to come till late in the evening, and just before Demon arrived, his cousin aerogrammed a message asking Marina to ‘dine Demon’ without waiting for Dan and Miller.
That kontretan (Marina’s humorous term for a not necessarily nasty surprise) greatly pleased Van. He had seen little of his father that year. He loved him with light-hearted devotion, had worshipped him in boyhood, and respected him staunchly now in his tolerant but better informed youth. Still later a tinge of repulsion (the same he felt in regard to his own immorality) became admixed to the love and the esteem; but, on the other hand, the older he grew the more firmly he felt that he would give his life for his father, at a moment’s notice, with pride and pleasure, in any circumstance imaginable. When Marina, in the late Eighteen-Nineties, in her miserable dotage, used to ramble on, with embarrassing and disgusting details, about dead Demon’s ‘crimes,’ he felt pity for him and her, but his indifference to Marina and his adoration for his father remained unchanged — to endure thus even now, in the chronologically hardly believable Nineteen-Sixties. No accursed generalizer, with a half-penny mind and dry-fig heart, would be able to explain (and this is my sweetest revenge for all the detractions my lifework has met with) the individual vagaries evolved in those and similar matters. No art and no genius would exist without such vagaries, and this is a final pronouncement, damning all clowns and clods. (1.38)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Russian mispronunciation of contretemps.
In Konstantin Leontiev’s short novel (written in diary form) Ispoved’ muzha (“Confessions of a Husband,” 1867) the diarist mentions Herr Silchmiller (a neighbor’s steward) who advised him to read Alexandre Dumas’s Les crimes célèbres:
А мне на милую и возможную идиллию было бы отраднее смотреть, чем на других моих соседей. Например, хер Зильхмиллер — управитель г. Ш-ва, румянится, носит то розовый, то голубой галстух; красит усы; женат на зубатой англичанке; бьет дворовых, читает Дюма и Поля Феваля и мне советует прочесть «Les crimes célèbres».
— Вы, — говорит, — увидите всю человеческую черноту.
— Я, — говорю, — и без этого ее вижу.
He says: “You’ll see all human blackness.”
I say: “I can see it anyway [without reading this book].” (the entry of Nov. 10, 1853)
Herr Silchmiller and chelovecheskaya chernota (human blackness) bring to mind the Black Miller mentioned by Demon when he asks Van to stop his ignoble affair with Ada:
A longish pause not unlike a fellow actor’s dry-up, came in response to his well-rehearsed speech.
Finally, Demon: ‘The second fact may horrify you even more than the first. I know it caused me much deeper worry — moral of course, not monetary — than Ada’s case — of which eventually her mother informed Cousin Dan, so that, in a sense —’
Pause, with an underground trickle.
‘Some other time I’ll tell you about the Black Miller; not now; too trivial.’
Dr Lapiner’s wife, born Countess Alp, not only left him, in 1871, to live with Norbert von Miller, amateur poet, Russian translator at the Italian Consulate in Geneva, and professional smuggler of neonegrine — found only in the Valais — but had imparted to her lover the melodramatic details of the subterfuge which the kindhearted physician had considered would prove a boon to one lady and a blessing to the other. Versatile Norbert spoke English with an extravagant accent, hugely admired wealthy people and, when name-dropping, always qualified such a person as ‘enawmously rich’ with awed amorous gusto, throwing himself back in his chair and spreading tensely curved arms to enfold an invisible fortune. He had a round head as bare as a knee, a corpse’s button nose, and very white, very limp, very damp hands adorned with rutilant gems. His mistress soon left him. Dr Lapiner died in 1872. About the same time, the Baron married an innkeeper’s innocent daughter and began to blackmail Demon Veen; this went on for almost twenty years, when aging Miller was shot dead by an Italian policeman on a little-known border trail, which had seemed to get steeper and muddier every year. Out of sheer kindness, or habit, Demon bade his lawyer continue to send Miller’s widow — who mistook it naively for insurance money — the trimestrial sum which had been swelling with each pregnancy of the robust Swissess. Demon used to say that he would publish one day’ Black Miller’s’ quatrains which adorned his letters with the jingle of verselets on calendarial leaves:
My spouse is thicker, I am leaner.
Again it comes, a new bambino.
You must be good like I am good.
Her stove is big and wants more wood. (2.11)
At the family dinner in “Ardis the Second” Marina confuses Dan’s lawyer with Norbert von Miller:
The real profitrol’ (very soft ‘l’) of the Russians, as first made by their cooks in Gavana before 1700, consists of larger puffs coated with creamier chocolate than the dark and puny ‘profit rolls’ served in European restaurants. Our friends had finished that rich sweetmeat flooded with chocolat-au-lait sauce, and were ready for some fruit, when Bout followed by his father and floundering Jones made a sensational entry.
All the toilets and waterpipes in the house had been suddenly seized with borborygmic convulsions. This always signified, and introduced a long-distance call. Marina, who had been awaiting for several days a certain message from California in response to a torrid letter, could now hardly contain her passionate impatience and had been on the point of running to the dorophone in the hall at the first bubbling spasm, when young Bout hurried in dragging the long green cord (visibly palpitating in a series of swells and contractions rather like a serpent ingesting a field mouse) of the ornate, brass-and-nacre receiver, which Marina with a wild ‘A l’eau!’ pressed to her ear. It was, however, only fussy old Dan ringing her up to inform everybody that Miller could not make it that night after all and would accompany him to Ardis bright and early on the following morning.
‘Early but hardly bright,’ observed Demon, who was now glutted with family joys and slightly annoyed he had missed the first half of a gambling night in Ladore for the sake of all that well-meant but not quite first-rate food.
‘We’ll have coffee in the yellow drawing room,’ said Marina as sadly as if she were evoking a place of dreary exile. ‘Jones, please, don’t walk on that phonecord. You have no idea, Demon, how I dread meeting again, after all those years, that dislikable Norbert von Miller, who has probably become even more arrogant and obsequious, and moreover does not realize, I’m sure, that Dan’s wife is me. He’s a Baltic Russian’ (turning to Van) ‘but really echt deutsch, though his mother was born Ivanov or Romanov, or something, who owned a calico factory in Finland or Denmark. I can’t imagine how he got his barony; when I knew him twenty years ago he was plain Mr Miller.’
‘He is still that,’ said Demon drily, ‘because you’ve got two Millers mixed up. The lawyer who works for Dan is my old friend Norman Miller of the Fainley, Fehler and Miller law firm and physically bears a striking resemblance to Wilfrid Laurier. Norbert, on the other hand, has, I remember, a head like a kegelkugel, lives in Switzerland, knows perfectly well whom you married and is an unmentionable blackguard.’ (1.38)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): echt etc.: Germ., a genuine German.
Kegelkugel: Germ., skittle-ball.
Describing the family dinner, Van mentions Price, a , a typical, too typical, old retainer whom Marina (and G.A. Vronsky, during their brief romance) had dubbed, for unknown reasons, ‘Grib:’
Another Price, a typical, too typical, old retainer whom Marina (and G.A. Vronsky, during their brief romance) had dubbed, for unknown reasons, ‘Grib,’ placed an onyx ashtray at the head of the table for Demon, who liked to smoke between courses — a puff of Russian ancestry. A side table supported, also in the Russian fashion, a collection of red, black, gray, beige hors-d’oeuvres, with the serviette caviar (salfetochnaya ikra) separated from the pot of Graybead (ikra svezhaya) by the succulent pomp of preserved boletes, ‘white,’ and ‘subbetuline,’ while the pink of smoked salmon vied with the incarnadine of Westphalian ham. The variously flavored vodochki glittered, on a separate tray. The French cuisine had contributed its chaudfroids and foie gras. A window was open, and the crickets were stridulating at an ominous speed in the black motionless foliage. (ibid.)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): grib: Russ., mushroom.
vodochki: Russ., pl. of vodochka, diminutive of vodka.
‘Grib’ seems to hint at Griboedov, the author of Gore ot uma (“Woe from Wit,” 1824). At the family dinner Demon asks Ada what she would like for her birthday and quotes the words of Famusov (Sofia’s father) in Griboedov’s play:
By the way, Demon,’ interrupted Marina, ‘where and how can I obtain the kind of old roomy limousine with an old professional chauffeur that Praskovia, for instance, has had for years?’
‘Impossible, my dear, they are all in heaven or on Terra. But what would Ada like, what would my silent love like for her birthday? It’s next Saturday, po razschyotu po moemu (by my reckoning), isn’t it? Une rivière de diamants?’
‘Protestuyu!’ cried Marina. ‘Yes, I’m speaking seriozno. I object to your giving her kvaka sesva (quoi que ce soit), Dan and I will take care of all that.’
‘Besides you’ll forget,’ said Ada laughing, and very deftly showed the tip of her tongue to Van who had been on the lookout for her conditional reaction to ‘diamonds.’ (ibid.)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): po razschyotu po moemu: an allusion to Famusov (in Griboedov’s Gore ot uma), calculating the pregnancy of a lady friend.
protestuyu: Russ., I protest.
seriozno: Russ., seriously.
quoi que ce soit: whatever it might be.
The characters in Leontiev’s “Confessions of a Husband” include Marinaki, the diarist’s rival who writes fiction and who published in Kharkov his novel Glukhoe gore (“The Deaf Grief”):
Мне было очень досадно, когда я давича вышел в гостиную и застал у дам Маринаки. Он опять стал чаще ездить!
Сначала (не с самого начала, когда я никого не хотел видеть, а на второй год) я немного сблизился с ним. Странно! Склад его ума и род его образования не внушают доверия, а характера он хорошего и, кажется, честного. Я тогда мало знал Крым. Когда он мне говорил, что на северном склоне Таврического хребта, тенистом и прохладном, были колонии готов и что в Мангун-Кале жил их герцог, побежденный и убитый турками, приводил, не помню как, по этому поводу «Слово о полку Игореве» и половцев — все мне казалось, что он выдумывает. С удивлением узнал я потом, что в его словах было много правды; конечно, он не учен, не археолог и мог ошибиться в частностях, но ведь и ученые оспоривают друг друга и обличают друг друга в ошибках. Одним словом, он оказался гораздо правдивее, чем я ожидал. Но что бы вы подумали о человеке, который никогда из своей губернии не выезжал, который и говорит тихо, и глядит томно; тихо и томно волочится за женщинами, носит щегольское платье и стриженые бакенбарды, страдает всегда грудью и спинным хребтом, проводит дни за французскими романами в большом кресле, пишет сам, наконец, и говорит: «У меня написано во всяких родах столько, чтобы запрудить на два года все периодические издания; но редакторы хитры, я боюсь их; они ценят имя автора, а не достоинство вещи». Напечатал на свой счет в Харькове роман под заглавием «Глухое горе» и раздает его даром кому угодно. Я прочел. Изысканный язык и ничего живого. «Этот нравственный эмбрион»; «пошлая кратность светских отношений». Множество французских, татарских и греческих слов без нужды. (the entry of Jan. 6, 1854)
The action in Leontiev’s novel takes place in the Crimea, on the coast of the Black Sea. Describing the family dinner, Van mentions Mlle Larivière's novel about a certain Crimean Khan:
Ada returned to her seat. Van picked up her napkin from under her chair and in the course of his brief plunge and ascent brushed the side of her knee with his temple.
‘Might I have another helping of Peterson’s Grouse, Tetrastes bonasia windriverensis?’ asked Ada loftily.
Marina jangled a diminutive cowbell of bronze. Demon placed his palm on the back of Ada’s hand and asked her to pass him the oddly evocative object. She did so in a staccato arc. Demon inserted his monocle and, muffling the tongue of memory, examined the bell; but it was not the one that had once stood on a bed-tray in a dim room of Dr Lapiner’s chalet; was not even of Swiss make; was merely one of those sweet-sounding translations which reveal a paraphrast’s crass counterfeit as soon as you look up the original.
Alas, the bird had not survived ‘the honor one had made to it,’ and after a brief consultation with Bouteillan a somewhat incongruous but highly palatable bit of saucisson d’Arles added itself to the young lady’s fare of asperges en branches that everybody was now enjoying. It almost awed one to see the pleasure with which she and Demon distorted their shiny-lipped mouths in exactly the same way to introduce orally from some heavenly height the voluptuous ally of the prim lily of the valley, holding the shaft with an identical bunching of the fingers, not unlike the reformed ‘sign of the cross’ for protesting against which (a ridiculous little schism measuring an inch or so from thumb to index) so many Russians had been burnt by other Russians only two centuries earlier on the banks of the Great Lake of Slaves. Van remembered that his tutor’s great friend, the learned but prudish Semyon Afanasievich Vengerov, then a young associate professor but already a celebrated Pushkinist (1855-1954), used to say that the only vulgar passage in his author’s work was the cannibal joy of young gourmets tearing ‘plump and live’ oysters out of their ‘cloisters’ in an unfinished canto of Eugene Onegin. But then ‘everyone has his own taste,’ as the British writer Richard Leonard Churchill mistranslates a trite French phrase (chacun à son gout) twice in the course of his novel about a certain Crimean Khan once popular with reporters and politicians, ‘A Great Good Man’ — according, of course, to the cattish and prejudiced Guillaume Monparnasse about whose new celebrity Ada, while dipping the reversed corolla of one hand in a bowl, was now telling Demon, who was performing the same rite in the same graceful fashion. (1.38)
Tetrastes etc.: Latin name of the imaginary ‘Peterson’s Grouse’ from Wind River Range, Wyo.
Great good man: a phrase that Winston Churchill, the British politician, enthusiastically applied to Stalin.
In the surname Marinaki there is Marina. Leontiev’s diarist asks Marinaki if the verse Marinaki poel vse raki (Marinaki has eaten up all crayfish) was written about him:
Я всю дорогу был задумчив. Я никогда не умел хорошо скрывать своих чувств, а на южном берегу отвык от всяких усилий над собой. И не всё ли равно? Скрытность имеет свои выгоды, откровенность свои. А самолюбие ещё не умерло… Слава Богу, думал я, что сделали шоссе; можно троим рядом ехать. Я ехал с ними и молчал. Пожалел, что не умею холодно язвить. Этим, как известно, старым средством умеют иные ронять других при женщинах. А я не умею; рассердиться и рассердясь нагрубить, — это я понимаю. Но как-то всё жалко трогать спокойно самолюбие другого. Хотел для пользы Лизы попробовать подтрунить над Маринаки, и вышло неудачно. Я у него спросил:
— А что, это про вас написали стихи:
Маринаки
Поел все раки и т. д.
А он отвечал без гнева и смущения:
– Нет, это про Манираки. Вы видите, и рифма лучше:
Манираки
Поел все раки. (the entry of Jan. 9, 1854)
Marinaki replies that this verse was written not about him but about Maniraki (“you see, even the rhyme is better: Maniraki poel vse raki”). Raki is plural of rak, which also means “cancer.” Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina dies of cancer:
Numbers and rows and series — the nightmare and malediction harrowing pure thought and pure time — seemed bent on mechanizing his mind. Three elements, fire, water, and air, destroyed, in that sequence, Marina, Lucette, and Demon. Terra waited.
For seven years, after she had dismissed her life with her husband, a successfully achieved corpse, as irrelevant, and retired to her still dazzling, still magically well-staffed Côte d’Azur villa (the one Demon had once given her), Van’s mother had been suffering from various ‘obscure’ illnesses, which everybody thought she made up, or talentedly simulated, and which she contended could be, and partly were, cured by willpower. Van visited her less often than dutiful Lucette, whom he glimpsed there on two or three occasions; and once, in 1899, he saw, as he entered the arbutus-and-laurel garden of Villa Armina, a bearded old priest of the Greek persuasion, clad in neutral black, leaving on a motor bicycle for his Nice parish near the tennis courts. Marina spoke to Van about religion, and Terra, and the Theater, but never about Ada, and just as he did not suspect she knew everything about the horror and ardor of Ardis, none suspected what pain in her bleeding bowels she was trying to allay by incantations, and ‘self-focusing’ or its opposite device, ‘self-dissolving.’ She confessed with an enigmatic and rather smug smile that much as she liked the rhythmic blue puffs of incense, and the dyakon’s rich growl on the ambon, and the oily-brown ikon coped in protective filigree to receive the worshipper’s kiss, her soul remained irrevocably consecrated, naperekor (in spite of) Dasha Vinelander, to the ultimate wisdom of Hinduism. (3.1)
Early in 1900, a few days before he saw Marina, for the last time, at the clinic in Nice (where he learned for the first time the name of her illness), Van had a ‘verbal’ nightmare, caused, maybe, by the musky smell in the Miramas (Bouches Rouges-du-Rhône) Villa Venus. Two formless fat transparent creatures were engaged in some discussion, one repeating ‘I can’t!’ (meaning ‘can’t die’ — a difficult procedure to carry out voluntarily, without the help of the dagger, the ball, or the bowl), and the other affirming ‘You can, sir!’ She died a fortnight later, and her body was burnt, according to her instructions. (3.1)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): dyakon: deacon.
On the other hand, Rak is Rack in the Russian spelling. Lucette’s music teacher Philip Rack (one of Ada’s lovers whom Van calls “Herr Rack”) was poisoned by his jealous wife Elsie and dies in Ward Five (where hopeless cases are kept) of the Kalugano hospital (where Van recovers from the wound received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge). Another lover of Ada, Count Percy de Prey, goes to the Crimean War and dies on the second day of the invasion:
Panting, Cordula said:
‘My mother rang me up from Malorukino’ (their country estate at Malbrook, Mayne): ‘the local papers said you had fought a duel. You look a tower of health, I’m so glad. I knew something nasty must have happened because little Russel, Dr Platonov’s grandson — remember? — saw you from his side of the train beating up an officer on the station platform. But, first of all, Van, net, pozhaluysta, on nas vidit (no, please, he sees us), I have some very bad news for you. Young Fraser, who has just been flown back from Yalta, saw Percy killed on the second day of the invasion, less than a week after they had left Goodson airport. He will tell you the whole story himself, it accumulates more and more dreadful details with every telling, Fraser does not seem to have shined in the confusion, that’s why, I suppose, he keeps straightening things out.’
(Bill Fraser, the son of Judge Fraser, of Wellington, witnessed Lieutenant de Prey’s end from a blessed ditch overgrown with cornel and medlar, but, of course, could do nothing to help the leader of his platoon and this for a number of reasons which he conscientiously listed in his report but which it would be much too tedious and embarrassing to itemize here. Percy had been shot in the thigh during a skirmish with Khazar guerillas in a ravine near Chew-Foot-Calais, as the American troops pronounced ‘Chufutkale,’ the name of a fortified rock. He had, immediately assured himself, with the odd relief of the doomed, that he had got away with a flesh wound. Loss of blood caused him to faint, as we fainted, too, as soon as he started to crawl or rather squirm toward the shelter of the oak scrub and spiny bushes, where another casualty was resting comfortably. When a couple of minutes later, Percy — still Count Percy de Prey — regained consciousness he was no longer alone on his rough bed of gravel and grass. A smiling old Tartar, incongruously but somehow assuagingly wearing American blue-jeans with his beshmet, was squatting by his side. ‘Bednïy, bednïy’ (you poor, poor fellow), muttered the good soul, shaking his shaven head and clucking: ‘Bol’no (it hurts)?’ Percy answered in his equally primitive Russian that he did not feel too badly wounded: ‘Karasho, karasho ne bol’no (good, good),’ said the kindly old man and, picking up the automatic pistol which Percy had dropped, he examined it with naive pleasure and then shot him in the temple. (One wonders, one always wonders, what had been the executed individual’s brief, rapid series of impressions, as preserved somewhere, somehow, in some vast library of microfilmed last thoughts, between two moments: between, in the present case, our friend’s becoming aware of those nice, quasi-Red Indian little wrinkles beaming at him out of a serene sky not much different from Ladore’s, and then feeling the mouth of steel violently push through tender skin and exploding bone. One supposes it might have been a kind of suite for flute, a series of ‘movements’ such as, say: I’m alive — who’s that? — civilian — sympathy — thirsty — daughter with pitcher — that’s my damned gun — don’t... et cetera or rather no cetera... while Broken-Arm Bill prayed his Roman deity in a frenzy of fear for the Tartar to finish his job and go. But, of course, an invaluable detail in that strip of thought would have been — perhaps, next to the pitcher peri — a glint, a shadow, a stab of Ardis.)
‘How strange, how strange,’ murmured Van when Cordula had finished her much less elaborate version of the report Van later got from Bill Fraser. (1.42)
Bednyi, bednyi (the old Tartar’s words) brings to mind Slava Bogu, ya ne beden! (Thank God, I’m not poor!), the first sentence in Leontiev’s “Confessions of a Husband:”
Слава Богу, я не беден! Морской ветерок веет в моем саду; кипарисы мои печальны и безжизненны вблизи, но прекрасны между другой зеленью. По морю тихо идут корабли к пустынным берегам Азовского моря... Паруса белеют вдали. Я с утра слежу за ними. Они выходят из-за последних скал громады, которая отделила нас от Балаклавы; а к обеду они уже скрылись за мысок, где растет столько мелкого дуба и где я один гуляю по вечерам. Чего я хочу? я покоен. Никто не возьмет моих кипарисов, моего дома, обвитого виноградом; никто не мешает мне прививать новые прививы и ездить верхом до самого Аю-Дага и дальше... Да! я покоен. Здесь хорошо; зимы нет, рабства нашего нет. Татары веселы, не бедны, живописны и независимы. Общества здесь нет — и слава Богу! Я не люблю общества, на что оно мне? Успехи? они у меня были; но жизнь так создана, что в ту минуту, когда жаждешь успеха, он не приходит, а пришел, — его почти не чувствуешь. (the entry of May, 1850)
In the entry of Nov. 10, 1853, Leontiev’s diarist (who praises local Tartars) mentions Salisburia Adiantifolia or Gincko biloba, a coniferous tree from Japan (sic):
Но есть совсем, совсем другой мир, о котором и не думают, благодаря стеклам. Например, у управителя в Сегилисе есть сын. Он вольноотпущенный, обучался садоводству в казенном саду, неглуп, пишет с небольшими ошибками, знает кое-что из ботаники, красив — настоящая русская кровь с молоком, 21 год, ловкий, глаза синие, сердце хорошее. Я его знаю: не раз вместе ездили верхом на Яйлу и в нагорные сосновые леса. Он наблюдателен и делает очень приятные замечания. «Видите, здесь наверху только теперь пион расцвел, а внизу давно отцвели. Много ли проехали, а климат другой». От него я узнал, что большие розовые цветы, которые здесь летом в таком множестве распускаются по необработанным холмам, называются Cistus taurica; «это, говорит, с чорными кисточками — Melia Azederach, а это дерево хвойное из Японии: Salisburia Adiantifolia или Gincko biloba; сразу совсем и не похоже на хвойное, а оно хвойное».
Leaving Ardis forever, Van recalls Ada’s favorite tree, Ginkgo biloba:
‘The express does not stop at Torfyanka, does it, Trofim?’
‘I’ll take you five versts across the bog,’ said Trofim, ‘the nearest is Volosyanka.’
His vulgar Russian word for Maidenhair; a whistle stop; train probably crowded.
Maidenhair. Idiot! Percy boy might have been buried by now! Maidenhair. Thus named because of the huge spreading Chinese tree at the end of the platform. Once, vaguely, confused with the Venus’-hair fern. She walked to the end of the platform in Tolstoy’s novel. First exponent of the inner monologue, later exploited by the French and the Irish. N’est vert, n’est vert, n’est vert. L’arbre aux quarante écus d’or, at least in the fall. Never, never shall I hear again her ‘botanical’ voice fall at biloba, ‘sorry, my Latin is showing.’ Ginkgo, gingko, ink, inkog. Known also as Salisbury’s adiantofolia, Ada’s infolio, poor Salisburia: sunk; poor Stream of Consciousness, marée noire by now. Who wants Ardis Hall!
‘Barin, a barin,’ said Trofim, turning his blond-bearded face to his passenger.
‘Da?’
‘Dazhe skvoz’ kozhanïy fartuk ne stal-bï ya trogat’ etu frantsuzskuyu devku.’
Barin: master. Dázhe skvoz’ kózhanïy fártuk: even through a leathern apron. Ne stal-bï ya trógat’: I would not think of touching. Étu: this (that). Frantsúzskuyu: French (adj., accus.). Dévku: wench. Úzhas, otcháyanie: horror, despair. Zhálost’: pity, Kóncheno, zagázheno, rastérzano: finished, fouled, torn to shreds. (1.41)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): marais noir: black tide.
Alexandre Dumas’s Les crimes célèbres (a book recommended by Marinaki to the diarist in Leontiev's novel) begins as follows:
On the 8th of April, 1492, in a bedroom of the Carneggi Palace, about three miles from Florence, were three men grouped about a bed whereon a fourth lay dying. (The Borgias. Prologue)
Columbus left Castile in August 1492 with three ships and made landfall in the Americas on 12 October. In his conversation with Demon before the family dinner Van uses a slang phrase he had learned from his tender young nurse, Ruby Black:
‘I say,’ exclaimed Demon, ‘what’s happened — your shaftment is that of a carpenter’s. Show me your other hand. Good gracious’ (muttering:) ‘Hump of Venus disfigured, Line of Life scarred but monstrously long...’ (switching to a gipsy chant:) ‘You’ll live to reach Terra, and come back a wiser and merrier man’ (reverting to his ordinary voice:) ‘What puzzles me as a palmist is the strange condition of the Sister of your Life. And the roughness!’
‘Mascodagama,’ whispered Van, raising his eyebrows.
‘Ah, of course, how blunt (dumb) of me. Now tell me — you like Ardis Hall?’
‘I adore it,’ said Van. ‘It’s for me the château que baignait la Dore. I would gladly spend all my scarred and strange life here. But that’s a hopeless fancy.’
‘Hopeless? I wonder. I know Dan wants to leave it to Lucile, but Dan is greedy, and my affairs are such that I can satisfy great greed. When I was your age I thought that the sweetest word in the language rhymes with "billiard," and now I know I was right. If you’re really keen, son, on having this property, I might try to buy it. I can exert a certain pressure upon my Marina. She sighs like a hassock when you sit upon her, so to speak. Damn it, the servants here are not Mercuries. Pull that cord again. Yes, maybe Dan could be made to sell.’
‘That’s very black of you, Dad,’ said pleased Van, using a slang phrase he had learned from his tender young nurse, Ruby, who was born in the Mississippi region where most magistrates, public benefactors, high priests of various so-called’ denominations,’ and other honorable and generous men, had the dark or darkish skin of their West-African ancestors, who had been the first navigators to reach the Gulf of Mexico. (1.38)
Describing his childhood travels, Van mentions his Russian tutor Aksakov who explained to a Negro lad with whom Van had scrapped that Pushkin and Dumas had African blood:
In 1880, Van, aged ten, had traveled in silver trains with showerbaths, accompanied by his father, his father’s beautiful secretary, the secretary’s eighteen-year-old white-gloved sister (with a bit part as Van’s English governess and milkmaid), and his chaste, angelic Russian tutor, Andrey Andreevich Aksakov (‘AAA’), to gay resorts in Louisiana and Nevada. AAA explained, he remembered, to a Negro lad with whom Van had scrapped, that Pushkin and Dumas had African blood, upon which the lad showed AAA his tongue, a new interesting trick which Van emulated at the earliest occasion and was slapped by the younger of the Misses Fortune, put it back in your face, sir, she said. He also recalled hearing a cummerbunded Dutchman in the hotel hall telling another that Van’s father, who had just passed whistling one of his three tunes, was a famous ‘camler’ (camel driver — shamoes having been imported recently? No, ‘gambler’). (1.24)
Chelovecheskaya chernota (human blackness) also makes one think of the solid black mentioned by Van when he describes the torments of Demon's wife Aqua (Marina's poor mad twin sister):
Actually, Aqua was less pretty, and far more dotty, than Marina. During her fourteen years of miserable marriage she spent a broken series of steadily increasing sojourns in sanatoriums. A small map of the European part of the British Commonwealth — say, from Scoto-Scandinavia to the Riviera, Altar and Palermontovia — as well as most of the U.S.A., from Estoty and Canady to Argentina, might be quite thickly prickled with enameled red-cross-flag pins, marking, in her War of the Worlds, Aqua’s bivouacs. She had plans at one time to seek a modicum of health (‘just a little grayishness, please, instead of the solid black’) in such Anglo-American protectorates as the Balkans and Indias, and might even have tried the two Southern Continents that thrive under our joint dominion. Of course, Tartary, an independent inferno, which at the time spread from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean, was touristically unavailable, though Yalta and Altyn Tagh sounded strangely attractive... But her real destination was Terra the Fair and thither she trusted she would fly on libellula long wings when she died. Her poor little letters from the homes of madness to her husband were sometimes signed: Madame Shchemyashchikh-Zvukov (‘Heart rending-Sounds’). (1.3)
In her last note Aqua mentioned chelovek (human being):
Aujourd’hui (heute-toity!) I, this eye-rolling toy, have earned the psykitsch right to enjoy a landparty with Herr Doktor Sig, Nurse Joan the Terrible, and several ‘patients,’ in the neighboring bar (piney wood) where I noticed exactly the same skunk-like squirrels, Van, that your Darkblue ancestor imported to Ardis Park, where you will ramble one day, no doubt. The hands of a clock, even when out of order, must know and let the dumbest little watch know where they stand, otherwise neither is a dial but only a white face with a trick mustache. Similarly, chelovek (human being) must know where he stands and let others know, otherwise he is not even a klok (piece) of a chelovek, neither a he, nor she, but ‘a tit of it’ as poor Ruby, my little Van, used to say of her scanty right breast. I, poor Princesse Lointaine, très lointaine by now, do not know where I stand. Hence I must fall. So adieu, my dear, dear son, and farewell, poor Demon, I do not know the date or the season, but it is a reasonably, and no doubt seasonably, fair day, with a lot of cute little ants queuing to get at my pretty pills.
[Signed] My sister’s sister who teper’
iz ada (‘now is out of hell’) (1.3)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): aujourd’hui, heute: to-day (Fr., Germ.).
Princesse Lointaine: Distant Princess, title of a French play.
In Dumas's novel The Three Musketeers (1844) Athos tells Milady that she does not belong to the human species but is a demon escaped from hell:
On the bank of the river the executioner approached Milady, and bound her hands and feet.
Then she broke the silence to cry out, "You are cowards, miserable assassins--ten men combined to murder one woman. Beware! If I am not saved I shall be avenged."
"You are not a woman," said Athos, coldly and sternly. "You do not belong to the human species; you are a demon escaped from hell, whither we send you back again."
"Ah, you virtuous men!" said Milady; "please to remember that he who shall touch a hair of my head is himself an assassin."
"The executioner may kill, without being on that account an assassin," said the man in the red cloak, rapping upon his immense sword. "This is the last judge; that is all. NACHRICHTER, as say our neighbors, the Germans."
And as he bound her while saying these words, Milady uttered two or three savage cries, which produced a strange and melancholy effect in flying away into the night, and losing themselves in the depths of the woods.
"If I am guilty, if I have committed the crimes you accuse me of," shrieked Milady, "take me before a tribunal. You are not judges! You cannot condemn me!"
"I offered you Tyburn," said Lord de Winter. "Why did you not accept it?"
"Because I am not willing to die!" cried Milady, struggling. "Because I am too young to die!"
"The woman you poisoned at Bethune was still younger than you, madame, and yet she is dead," said d'Artagnan.
"I will enter a cloister; I will become a nun," said Milady.
"You were in a cloister," said the executioner, "and you left it to ruin my brother."
Milady uttered a cry of terror and sank upon her knees. The executioner took her up in his arms and was carrying her toward the boat.
"Oh, my God!" cried she, "my God! are you going to drown me?"
These cries had something so heartrending in them that M. d'Artagnan, who had been at first the most eager in pursuit of Milady, sat down on the stump of a tree and hung his head, covering his ears with the palms of his hands; and yet, notwithstanding, he could still hear her cry and threaten.
D'Artagnan was the youngest of all these men. His heart failed him.
"Oh, I cannot behold this frightful spectacle!" said he. "I cannot consent that this woman should die thus!"
Milady heard these few words and caught at a shadow of hope.
"d'Artagnan, d'Artagnan!" cried she; "remember that I loved you!"
The young man rose and took a step toward her.
But Athos rose likewise, drew his sword, and placed himself in the way.
"If you take one step farther, d'Artagnan," said he, "we shall cross swords together." (Chapter 66: "Execution")
Describing Demon's sword duel with Baron d'Onsky (Skonky), Van mentions an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement:
Upon being questioned in Demon’s dungeon, Marina, laughing trillingly, wove a picturesque tissue of lies; then broke down, and confessed. She swore that all was over; that the Baron, a physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai, had gone to Japan forever. From a more reliable source Demon learned that the Samurai’s real destination was smart little Vatican, a Roman spa, whence he was to return to Aardvark, Massa, in a week or so. Since prudent Veen preferred killing his man in Europe (decrepit but indestructible Gamaliel was said to be doing his best to forbid duels in the Western Hemisphere — a canard or an idealistic President’s instant-coffee caprice, for nothing was to come of it after all), Demon rented the fastest petroloplane available, overtook the Baron (looking very fit) in Nice, saw him enter Gunter’s Bookshop, went in after him, and in the presence of the imperturbable and rather bored English shopkeeper, back-slapped the astonished Baron across the face with a lavender glove. The challenge was accepted; two native seconds were chosen; the Baron plumped for swords; and after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish — a kind of American ‘Gory Mary’ in barroom parlance) 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, notwithstanding quite a few surgical interventions during two or three years of protracted stays at the Aardvark Hospital in Boston — a city where, incidentally, he married in 1869 our friend the Bohemian lady, now keeper of Glass Biota at the local museum. (1.2)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Aardvark: apparently, a university town in New England.
Gamaliel: a much more fortunate statesman than our W.G. Harding.
Silch (cf. Silchmiller, the man who advises the diarist in Leontiev's novel to read Les crimes célèbres) is German for "silk." For the flight to France Demon wears a silk hat and scarlet-silk-lined black cape:
At the Goodson Airport, in one of the gilt-framed mirrors of its old-fashioned waiting room, Van glimpsed the silk hat of his father who sat awaiting him in an armchair of imitation marblewood, behind a newspaper that said in reversed characters: ‘Crimea Capitulates.’ At the same moment a raincoated man with a pleasant, somewhat porcine, pink face accosted Van. He represented a famous international agency, known as the VPL, which handled Very Private Letters. After a first flash of surprise, Van reflected that Ada Veen, a recent mistress of his, could not have chosen a smarter (in all senses of the word) way of conveying to him a message whose fantastically priced, and prized, process of transmission insured an absoluteness of secrecy which neither torture nor mesmerism had been able to break down in the evil days of 1859. It was rumored that even Gamaliel on his (no longer frequent, alas) trips to Paris, and King Victor during his still fairly regular visits to Cuba or Hecuba, and, of course, robust Lord Goal, Viceroy of France, when enjoying his randonnies all over Canady, preferred the phenomenally discreet, and in fact rather creepy, infallibility of the VPL organization to such official facilities as sexually starved potentates have at their disposal for deceiving their wives. The present messenger called himself James Jones, a formula whose complete lack of connotation made an ideal pseudonym despite its happening to be his real name. A flurry and flapping had started in the mirror but Van declined to act hastily. In order to gain time (for, on being shown Ada’s crest on a separate card, he felt he had to decide whether or not to accept her letter), he closely examined the badge resembling an ace of hearts which J.J. displayed with pardonable pride. He requested Van to open the letter, satisfy himself of its authenticity, and sign the card that then went back into some secret pit or pouch within the young detective’s attire or anatomy. Cries of welcome and impatience from Van’s father (wearing for the flight to France a scarlet-silk-lined black cape) finally caused Van to interrupt his colloquy with James and pocket the letter (which he read a few minutes later in the lavatory before boarding the airliner). (2.1)
In March, 1905, Demon Veen perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific (3.7). Van does not realize that his father died because Ada (who could not pardon Demon his forcing Van to give her up) managed to persuade the pilot to destroy his machine in midair. In The Three Musketeers Milady de Winter persuades John Felton, a Puritan, to kill Duke of Buckingham. In K. Leontiev's novel Egipetskiy golub' ("The Egyptian Dove," 1881) the narrator mentions Duke of Buckingham:
Но я не хотел уже останавливаться.
— Я не только не шучу, я не нахожу слов от обилия мыслей, доказательств и примеров... Я затрудняюсь в выборе... Я понимаю величие вот как: когда Бёкингам представлялся Лудовику XIII и жемчуг нарочно был пришит слегка, но во множестве к его бархатной мантии... и при каждом шаге и поклоне его сыпался на пол, и французские дворяне подбирали его... Или когда польское посольство, не помню при каком султане, въезжало в Константинополь на лошадях, которые все были так слабо подкованы серебром, что эти подковы спадали с копыт... Это величие!.. (chapter 5)
"Dead Demon's crimes" bring to mind Dostoevski's novels Zapiski iz myortvogo doma ("The House of the Dead," 1861) and Prestuplenie i nakazanie ("Crime and Punishment," 1866). In a letter of June 18, 1879, to Vsevolod Solovyov (the philosopher's brother), K. Leonriev praises these novels:
Насчет "Мертвого дома" и "Преступления и наказания" вполне согласен. Это в своем роде превосходно.