Alexey Sklyarenko: "Oriental Skrotomoff" may sound Russian but actually is
a play on Korotom. Cf. Greg's words to Ada: "Percy
started it - and was defeated in a clean match of Korotom wrestling, as used in
Teristan and Sorokat - my father, I'm sure, could tell you all about it."
...Korotom seems to hint at koro,
"a culture specific syndrom, occuring chiefly in China and southeastern Asia,
characterized by anxiety and fear of retraction of the penis or breasts and
labia into the body." King Wing (Demon's wrestling master) must have taught
Van a couple of grips
JM: Let's return to the line you quoted and to one that
precedes it: "Van, his crab claws on the ready,
contemplated him, hoping for a pretext to inflict a certain special device of
exotic torture that he had not yet had the opportunity to use in a real fight
[...]
"Your cousin has treated Greg and your humble servant to a most
bracing exhibition of Oriental Skrotomoff or whatever the name may
be.’."
Nabokov must
have had Freud's male "penis envy" in mind when he described
Percy's "ugly machine" ( "In all his life, said stolid Greg to Van, he had
never seen such an ugly engine, surgically circumcised, terrifically oversized
and high-colored, with such a phenomenal cœur de bœuf; nor had either of
the fascinated, fastidious boys ever witnessed the like of its sustained,
strongly arched, practically everlasting stream."),a scene that
came immediately before the scuffle
started.
When I
suddenly doubted that Skrotomoff was a Russian word I had no
inkling of its being a hint to "koro" (safely orientalized!), but
I envisaged the word in English ("Skrotom") with its ending
in "off"... It looked a puerile pun (right in the
mood of the boy's fight) but, if "koro" was really in Nab's mind, then its
condensation is very cleverly achieved.
btw: it's
not the first time that Nabokov mentions a "coeur de boeuf," is it? (
in Pale Fire?)