"It's a gruesome girl!" she [Cordula] cried after the melodious adieux. "Her name is Vanda Broom, and I learned only recently what I never suspected at school - she's a regular tribadka* - poor Grace Erminin tells me Vanda used to make constant passes at her and at - at another girl. (1.43)
 
In "The Baths of Lucca" (Chapter XI) Heine calls Count Platen "a male tribade": "In der Tat, er ist mehr ein Mann von Steiss, als ein Mann von Kopf, der Name Mann ueberhaupt passt nicht fuer ihn, seine Liebe hat einen passiven pythagoraeischen** Charakter, er ist in seinen Gedichten ein Pathikos,*** er ist ein Weib, und zwar ein Weib, das sich an gleich Weibischem ergoetzt, er ist gleichsam eine maennliche Tribade".
 
As to Vanda Broom, her name is covertly present in the little poem Ada wrote in under her photograph in the Brownhill graduation album:
 
In the old manor, I've parodied
Every veranda and room,
And jacarandas at Arrowhead
In supernatural bloom.
 
veranda + room + bloom + bardache = Vanda Broom + bloomer + charade
 
manor = roman = norma = Maron
 
tribadka + rival = trivial + bardak
 
bardache - Fr., passive homosexual; on January 8, 1835, Pushkin made an entry in his diary: "His [Uvarov's] minion, Dundukov (a fool and bardache) is persecuting me with his censorship committee."
bloomer - blunder; cf. Van's quip "flowers into bloomers" (1.10) in reply to Ada's criticism of Fowlie's mistranslation of Rimbaud (who had homosexual partners); women's undergarment
roman - Russ., novel; romance, love affair
norma - Russ., norm
Maron - Publius Vergilius Maro (the homosexual author of Aeneid)
bardak - Russ., brothel; mess
 
*Anglo-Russ., lesbian, female homosexual
**after Pythagoras, Nero's catamite whom Heine mentions earlier in his text
***passive homosexual
 
to Jansy Mello: There are no balloons in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, although the book cover shows one.
 
Alexey Sklyarenko 
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