-rukiy, the second part of the name
Dolgorukiy and
adjective bezrukiy, is present in
sukhorukiy (without the use of one arm; having a
withered arm). Kuz'ma Minin Sukhoruk (? - 1616) was a leader of the national
liberating struggle of Russian people against the Poland-Lithuania invaders, one
of the leaders of the second volunteer corps (1611-1612) and a national hero.
Koz'ma Zakhar'yich Minin Sukhoruk is a play (1861) by A.
Ostrovsky.
L + order
+ Minin = Lord Erminin
Children of Colonel Arkadiy Erminin (a neighbor country squire
and widower), the twins Greg and Grace (whom Demon calls une
petite juive très aristocratique:* 1.38) are the playmates of Marina's
three children at Ardis. At the picnic on her twelfth birthday (when
Van walks on his hands) Ada and Grace play anagrams (1.13). Four years
later, at the picnic on Ada's sixteenth birthday (1.39), Greg witnesses
Van's scuffle with Percy de Prey who tells Ada that "your
cousin has treated Greg and your humble servant to a most bracing exhibition of
Oriental Skrotomoff or whatever the name may be." Lucette
(who watched the scuffle from an ambush) chants:
'He screwed off a nipple,
He left him a cripple...'
Percy is to perish soon in the Crimean war. Incidentally,
Stalin (known on Antiterra as "Khan Sosso," the hero of Richard Leonard
Churchill's novel about a certain Crimean Khan: 1.39) had a withered
arm. Note that Colonel St. Alin, a scoundrel, was a second in
Demon's duel with d'Onsky (1.2). Greg ("Lord Erminin") is a second in Van's
imaginary duel with Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband): "Monsieur de Tobak and Lord Erminin (a second-time second)
witnessed the duel in the company of a few tall yuccas and short
cactuses" (3.8). S + Tobak = T + Sobak = St.
Koba (Fima Sobak is a character in Ilf & Petrov's "The 12 chairs;"
accented on the second syllable, sobak is Gen. pl. of sobaka,
"dog;" Koba is Stalin's nickname)
*unlike his brother in arms, Prince Dmitri Pozharsky, Minin
was prostolyudin (man of the common people)
Alexey Sklyarenko