Speaking of Alexander Screepatch, perhaps I
should have pointed out that skripach is Russian for "violinist,
fiddler". It comes from skripka, "violin, fiddle." Because Shura Tobak
seems to be Jewish, one also remembers (apart from the Jewish fiddler Sashka in
Kuprin's "Gambrinus") Mandelshtam's poem "Zhil Aleksandr
Gertsovich, evreyskiy musykant..." ("There lived Alexander
Gertsovich, a Jewish musician..." 1931) and Chekhov's wonderful story "Skripka Rotshil'da" ("Rothschild's Violin",
1894). The title character has nothing to do with the famous family of
bankers. As to the story's hero, the coffin-maker Yakov Ivanov, his
nickname Bronza can indeed remind one of Van's words in
Ada: "who cares about all those stale myths, what
does it matter - Jove or Jehovah, spire or cupola, mosques in Moscow, or
bronzes and bonzes, and clerics, and relics, and deserts with bleached
camel ribs?" (1.14)
Alexey Sklyarenko