Describing the suicide of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother Marina), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions the Dr Froit of Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu in the Ardennes and a Dr Sig Heiler:
Being unwilling to suffer another relapse after this blessed state of perfect mental repose, but knowing it could not last, she did what another patient had done in distant France, at a much less radiant and easygoing ‘home.’ A Dr Froid, one of the administerial centaurs, who may have been an émigré brother with a passport-changed name of the Dr Froit of Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu in the Ardennes or, more likely, the same man, because they both came from Vienne, Isère, and were only sons (as her son was), evolved, or rather revived, the therapistic device, aimed at establishing a ‘group’ feeling, of having the finest patients help the staff if ‘thusly inclined.’ Aqua, in her turn, repeated exactly clever Eleonore Bonvard’s trick, namely, opting for the making of beds and the cleaning of glass shelves. The astorium in St Taurus, or whatever it was called (who cares — one forgets little things very fast, when afloat in infinite non-thingness) was, perhaps, more modem, with a more refined desertic view, than the Mondefroid bleakhouse horsepittle, but in both places a demented patient could outwit in one snap an imbecile pedant.
In less than a week Aqua had accumulated more than two hundred tablets of different potency. She knew most of them — the jejune sedatives, and the ones that knocked you out from eight p.m. till midnight, and several varieties of superior soporifics that left you with limpid limbs and a leaden head after eight hours of non-being, and a drug which was in itself delightful but a little lethal if combined with a draught of the cleansing fluid commercially known as Morona; and a plump purple pill reminding her, she had to laugh, of those with which the little gypsy enchantress in the Spanish tale (dear to Ladore schoolgirls) puts to sleep all the sportsmen and all their bloodhounds at the opening of the hunting season. Lest some busybody resurrect her in the middle of the float-away process, Aqua reckoned she must procure for herself a maximum period of undisturbed stupor elsewhere than in a glass house, and the carrying out of that second part of the project was simplified and encouraged by another agent or double of the Isère Professor, a Dr Sig Heiler whom everybody venerated as a great guy and near-genius in the usual sense of near-beer. Such patients who proved by certain twitchings of the eyelids and other semiprivate parts under the control of medical students that Sig (a slightly deformed but not unhandsome old boy) was in the process of being dreamt of as a ‘papa Fig,’ spanker of girl bottoms and spunky spittoon-user, were assumed to be on the way to haleness and permitted, upon awakening, to participate in normal outdoor activities such as picnics. Sly Aqua twitched, simulated a yawn, opened her light-blue eyes (with those startlingly contrasty jet-black pupils that Dolly, her mother, also had), put on yellow slacks and a black bolero, walked through a little pinewood, thumbed a ride with a Mexican truck, found a suitable gulch in the chaparral and there, after writing a short note, began placidly eating from her cupped palm the multicolored contents of her handbag, like any Russian country girl lakomyashchayasya yagodami (feasting on berries) that she had just picked in the woods. She smiled, dreamily enjoying the thought (rather ‘Kareninian’ in tone) that her extinction would affect people about ‘as deeply as the abrupt, mysterious, never explained demise of a comic strip in a Sunday paper one had been taking for years. It was her last smile. She was discovered much sooner, but had also died much faster than expected, and the observant Siggy, still in his baggy khaki shorts, reported that Sister Aqua (as for some reason they all called her) lay, as if buried prehistorically, in a fetus-in-utero position, a comment that seemed relevant to his students, as it may be to mine. (1.3)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): horsepittle: ‘hospital’, borrowed from a passage in Dickens’ Bleak House. Poor Joe’s pun, not a poor Joycean one.
At the end of his series of essays Po Evrope na avtomobile ("Across Europe by an Automobile," 1933-34) G. Ivanov describes the Ardennes and says: i vdrug, posle ada, ray (and suddenly, after hell, paradise):
И вдруг, после ада, рай. Поворот дороги — каменоломни раздвигаются, небо становится ясным. Широкий Маас тихо катит спокойные зеленоватые волны, и над ним вырисовываются острые вершины Арденн.
Чем дальше, тем все красивее. Арденны, если и сравнивать с Альпами или Пиренеями, совсем небольшие горы, чуть ли не холмы. Но они так живописны, полны такой романтической прелести, что и Альпам и Пиренеям приходится им в чем-то уступить. В том, как очертания Арденн чередуются с поворотами реки, деревьями, колокольнями, острыми крышами домов, есть какая-то «непогрешимость замысла», словно не случайная игра стихии, а творческая воля художника размещала и комбинировала все это. Долина Мааса в окрестностях Намюра — место, где погиб король Альберт, — действует на душу, как произведение искусства: не только восхищаешься этим удивительным пейзажем, но и чему-то учишься у него. (VIII)
By hell G. Ivanov means Hitler's Germany. Describing his stay in Göttingen (an old University city from which Pushkin's Lenski brings the fruits of learning), G. Ivanov mentions the students who cry out "Heil!" in the beer cellar:
Геттинген. Нельзя не остановиться хотя на полчаса в городе, откуда
...поэт Владимир Ленский
С душою чисто геттингенской
явился в усадьбу Лариных, откуда он привез в русскую глушь «вольнолюбивые мечты».
Большой, нарядный город. Смесь умеренного, не берлинского модерна с тщательно охраняемой стариной. Вот и знаменитый университет. А вот сводчатая, огромная, как манеж, подвальная пивная, где испокон веков, еще задолго до Ленского, заседали студенты.
Заседают они и теперь. Еще спускаясь в подвал, слышишь нестройный шум голосов. В дальнем углу пивной, под портретом фюрера, развалилась на диванах компания человек в тридцать в спортивных костюмах и пестрых корпорантских шапочках. Очень молодые, развязные, крикливые, дымят сигарами и беспрестанно чокаются пивом. Через несколько минут на пороге, в противоположном конце пивной, появляются еще несколько таких же точно юношей. Заметив своих, они поднимают руку и кричат «гейль». «Гейль!» — нестройно, но оглушительно отвечает компания под портретом. Вновь пришедшие, выстроившись шеренгой, направляются к ним в угол. Они не просто идут, а медленно маршируют, сильно притоптывая каблуками: и при этом хором скандируют: Deutschland fur Deutschen—Nieder mit Juden.
В углу радостно сияют, глядя на своих дорогих друзей, придумавших такую веселую выходку. Обе стороны от души наслаждаются. Кельнеры и посетители тоже смотрят на это зрелище, сочувственно улыбаясь: «Славная, славная молодежь», — явно чувствуется в их взглядах.
Когда шеренга вплотную приблизилась к сидящим, те, как по команде, вскакивают и так зычно подхватывают: «Nieder mit Juden!» — что кружки дребезжат на столиках. Потом все рассаживаются и начинается усердное, непрерывное чоканье. В 1934 году, чтобы быть «с душою чисто геттингенской», очевидно, надо вести себя именно так. (VIII)
The name of Aqua's last doctor, Sig Heiler hints at the Nazi salute "Sieg heil!" In her last note Aqua promises to Van that one day he will visit Ardis (Daniel Veen's family estate whose name hints at paradise):
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 bor (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.
Suicide is a major theme in G. Ivanov's poetry. In his poem Idu - i dumayu o raznom ("I walk and think about different things") G. Ivanov says that he is uzhe ne chelovek (not a human being any more):
Иду — и думаю о разном,
Плету на гроб себе венок,
И в этом мире безобразном
Благообразно одинок.
Но слышу вдруг: война, идея,
Последний бой, двадцатый век.
И вспоминаю, холодея,
Что я уже не человек,
А судорога идиота,
Природой созданная зря —
«Урра!» из пасти патриота,
«Долой!» из глотки бунтаря.
In G. Ivanov's story Aurora (1934) the heroine commits suicide by taking poison (veronalum). On Admiral Tobakoff (the ship on which they cross the Atlantic) Van compares Lucette to rising Aurora:
Two half-naked children in shrill glee came running toward the pool. A Negro nurse brandished their diminutive bras in angry pursuit. Out of the water a bald head emerged by spontaneous generation and snorted. The swimming coach appeared from the dressing room. Simultaneously, a tall splendid creature with trim ankles and repulsively fleshy thighs, stalked past the Veens, all but treading on Lucette’s emerald-studded cigarette case. Except for a golden ribbon and a bleached mane, her long, ripply, beige back was bare all the way down to the tops of her slowly and lusciously rolling buttocks, which divulged, in alternate motion, their nether bulges from under the lamé loincloth. Just before disappearing behind a rounded white corner, the Titianesque Titaness half-turned her brown face and greeted Van with a loud ‘hullo!’
Lucette wanted to know: kto siya pava? (who’s that stately dame?)
‘I thought she addressed you,’ answered Van, ‘I did not distinguish her face and do not remember that bottom.’
‘She gave you a big jungle smile,’ said Lucette, readjusting her green helmet, with touchingly graceful movements of her raised wings, and touchingly flashing the russet feathering of her armpits.
‘Come with me, hm?’ she suggested, rising from the mat.
He shook his head, looking up at her: ‘You rise,’ he said, ‘like Aurora.’
‘His first compliment,’ observed Lucette with a little cock of her head as if speaking to an invisible confidant. (3.5)
Van's mistress Cordula de Prey (who offers Lucette her Tobakoff cabin) marries Ivan G. Tobak, the ship owner. When Lucette visits him at Kingston (Van's American University), Van mentions Tobakoff's épée duel with Jean Nicot:
‘I want to see you again soon,’ said Van, biting his thumb, brooding, cursing the pause, yearning for the contents of the blue envelope. ‘You must come and stay with me at a flat I now have on Alex Avenue. I have furnished the guest room with bergères and torchères and rocking chairs; it looks like your mother’s boudoir.’
Lucette curtseyed with the wicks of her sad mouth, à l’Américaine.
‘Will you come for a few days? I promise to behave properly. All right?’
‘My notion of propriety may not be the same as yours. And what about Cordula de Prey? She won’t mind?’
‘The apartment is mine,’ said Van, ‘and besides, Cordula is now Mrs Ivan G. Tobak. They are making follies in Florence. Here’s her last postcard. Portrait of Vladimir Christian of Denmark, who, she claims, is the dead spit of her Ivan Giovanovich. Have a look.’
‘Who cares for Sustermans,’ observed Lucette, with something of her uterine sister’s knight move of specious response, or a Latin footballer’s rovesciata.
No, it’s an elm. Half a millennium ago.
‘His ancestor,’ Van pattered on, ‘was the famous or fameux Russian admiral who had an épée duel with Jean Nicot and after whom the Tobago Islands, or the Tobakoff Islands, are named, I forget which, it was so long ago, half a millennium.’
‘I mentioned her only because an old sweetheart is easily annoyed by the wrong conclusions she jumps at like a cat not quite making a fence and then running off without trying again, and stopping to look back.’
‘Who told you about that lewd cordelude — I mean, interlude?’
‘Your father, mon cher — we saw a lot of him in the West. Ada supposed, at first, that Tapper was an invented name — that you fought your duel with another person — but that was before anybody heard of the other person’s death in Kalugano. Demon said you should have simply cudgeled him.’
‘I could not,’ said Van, ‘the rat was rotting away in a hospital bed.’
‘I meant the real Tapper,’ cried Lucette (who was making a complete mess of her visit), ‘not my poor, betrayed, poisoned, innocent teacher of music, whom not even Ada, unless she fibs, could cure of his impotence.’
‘Driblets,’ said Van.
‘Not necessarily his,’ said Lucette. ‘His wife’s lover played the triple viol. Look, I’ll borrow a book’ (scanning on the nearest bookshelf The Gitanilla, Clichy Clichés, Mertvago Forever, The Ugly New Englander) ‘and curl up, komondi, in the next room for a few minutes, while you — Oh, I adore The Slat Sign.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ said Van. (2.5)
making follies: Fr. ‘faire des folies’, living it up.
komondi: Russian French: ‘comme on dit’, as they say.
At the end of "Across Europe by an Automobile" G. Ivanov mentions a French customs officer who asked him and his fellow travelers "Avez-vous du tabac:"
Усатый жандарм. Трехцветный флаг — Avez-vous du tabac? — французская граница. Ночевка в отеле, единственном в городке и таком грязном, что после Германии не веришь, что такие еще могут существовать. Но удовольствие, вернее, наслаждение при мысли, что это Франция, — с лихвой покрывает дрянной дорогой обед, скверную кровать и отвратительный утренний кафе-крем. В семь утра мы уже выкатываем машину, набираем бензин и катим дальше. До Парижа три с половиной — четыре часа езды.
Путешествие кончается. И опять, как в самом начале его, под Митавой, мелькают по сторонам дороги стены сожженных ферм, кресты братских кладбищ, леса, исковерканные орудийным огнем. За 19 лет усилия людей и природы все еще не стерли зловещих следов войны. Зато подросла молодежь. Ей так нравится военная музыка, блеск оружия, распущенные знамена, патриотические фразы... И когда ей кричат: «Стыдно умирать в постели», — она верит, что стыдно.
In his essay The Texture of Time (1922) Van describes his automobile trip across Switzerland and reunion with Ada who mentions the absolutely medieval new droits de douane (custom-house dues):
‘When I was a kid,’ said Van, ‘and stayed for the first — or rather, second — time in Switzerland, I thought that "Verglas" on roadway signs stood for some magical town, always around the corner, at the bottom of every snowy slope, never seen, but biding its time. I got your cable in the Engadine where there are real magical places, such as Alraun or Alruna — which means a tiny Arabian demon in a German wizard’s mirror. By the way, we have the old apartment upstairs with an additional bedroom, number five-zero-eight.’
‘Oh dear. I’m afraid you must cancel poor 508. If I stayed for the night, 510 would do for both of us, but I’ve got bad news for you. I can’t stay. I must go back to Geneva directly after dinner to retrieve my things and maids, whom the authorities have apparently put in a Home for Stray Females because they could not pay the absolutely medieval new droits de douane — isn’t Switzerland in Washington State, sort of, après tout? Look, don’t scowl’ — (patting his brown blotched hand on which their shared birthmark had got lost among the freckles of age, like a babe in autumn woods, on peut les suivre en reconnaissant only Mascodagama’s disfigured thumb and the beautiful almond-shaped nails) — ‘I promise to get in touch with you in a day or two, and then we’ll go on a cruise to Greece with the Baynards — they have a yacht and three adorable daughters who still swim in the tan, okay?’
‘I don’t know what I loathe more,’ he replied, ‘yachts or Baynards; but can I help you in Geneva?’
He could not. Baynard had married his Cordula, after a sensational divorce — Scotch veterinaries had had to saw off her husband’s antlers (last call for that joke). (Part Four)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): droits etc.: custom-house dues.
après tout: after all.
on peut etc.: see p.194.
Alraun or Alruna seem to hint at Alraune (1911), a novel by H. H. Ewers. In "Across Europe by an Automobile" G. Ivanov mentions Hanns Heinz Ewers, the author of "ghastly novellas:"
В цветочном магазине горшки азалий уставлены в виде свастики. В игрушечном — амуниция для крошечных гитлеровцев с красной повязкой на рукавах. В витринах книжных лавок Гитлер, Геринг, Геббельс и рядом с ними старый знакомый по «Ниве» Ганс Гейнс Эверс, автор «страшных новелл». Теперь Ганс Гейнс Эверс написал патриотический роман из жизни Хорста Весселя. Роман, очевидно, высоко ценимый, нет такого киоска в Германии, где бы не маячила его обложка: шесть оплывающих красных свечей на угольно-черном фоне. (II)
Scotch veterinaries who had had to saw off the antlers of Cordula's first husband (Ivan Giovannovich Tobak) bring to mind G. Ivanov's poems about Scotland:
Шотландия, туманный берег твой
И пастбища с зеленою травой,
Где тучные покоятся стада,
Так горестно покинуть навсегда!
Ужель на все гляжу в последний раз,
Что там вдали скрывается от глаз,
И холм отца меж ивовых ветвей,
И мирный кров возлюбленной моей…
Прощай, прощай! О, вереск, о, туман…
Тускнеет даль, и ропщет океан,
И наш корабль уносит, как ладью…
Храни, Господь, Шотландию мою!
Теперь я знаю — все воображенье,
Моя Шотландия, моя тоска!
Соленых волн свободное движенье,
Рога охот и песня рыбака.
Осенний ветер беспокойно трубит
И в берег бьет холодная вода.
Изгнанник ваш, он никого не любит,
Он не вернется больше никогда!
И покидая этот мир печальный,
Что так ревниво в памяти берег,
Не обернется он, услышав дальний
«Прости, поэт» пророкотавший рог.
Полутона рябины и малины,
В Шотландии рассыпанные втуне,
В меланхоличном имени Алины,
В голубоватом золоте латуни.
Сияет жизнь улыбкой изумлённой,
Растит цветы, расстреливает пленных,
И входит гость в Коринф многоколонный,
Чтоб изнемочь в объятьях вожделенных!
В упряжке скифской трепетные лани -
Мелодия, элегия, эвлега...
Скрипящая в трансцендентальном плане,
Немазанная катится телега.
На Грузию ложится тьма ночная,
В Афинах полночь, в Пятигорске грозы.
...И лучше умереть, не вспоминая,
Как хороши, как свежи были розы.