Describing the picnic on Ada's sixteenth birthday, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a company of strangers who walked into the forest across the road and sat down there to a modest colazione of cheese, buns, salami, sardines and Chianti:
Ada had declined to invite anybody except the Erminin twins to her picnic; but she had had no intention of inviting the brother without the sister. The latter, it turned out, could not come, having gone to New Cranton to see a young drummer, her first boy friend, sail off into the sunrise with his regiment. But Greg had to be asked to come after all: on the previous day he had called on her bringing a ‘talisman’ from his very sick father, who wanted Ada to treasure as much as his grandam had a little camel of yellow ivory carved in Kiev, five centuries ago, in the days of Timur and Nabok.
Van did not err in believing that Ada remained unaffected by Greg’s devotion. He now met him again with pleasure — the kind of pleasure, immoral in its very purity, which adds its icy tang to the friendly feelings a successful rival bears toward a thoroughly decent fellow.
Greg, who had left his splendid new black Silentium motorcycle in the forest ride, observed:
‘We have company.’
‘Indeed we do,’ assented Van. ‘Kto sii (who are they)? Do you have any idea?’
Nobody had. Raincoated, unpainted, morose, Marina came over and peered through the trees the way Van pointed.
After reverently inspecting the Silentium, a dozen elderly townsmen, in dark clothes, shabby and uncouth, walked into the forest across the road and sat down there to a modest colazione of cheese, buns, salami, sardines and Chianti. They were quite sufficiently far from our picnickers not to bother them in any way. They had no mechanical music boxes with them. Their voices were subdued, their movements could not have been more discreet. The predominant gesture seemed to be ritually limited to this or that fist crumpling brown paper or coarse gazette paper or baker’s paper (the very lightweight and inefficient sort), and discarding the crumpled bit in quiet, abstract fashion, while other sad apostolic hands unwrapped the victuals or for some reason or other wrapped them up again, in the noble shade of the pines, in the humble shade of the false acacias.
‘How odd,’ said Marina, scratching her sunlit bald patch.
She sent a footman to investigate the situation and tell those Gipsy politicians, or Calabrian laborers, that Squire Veen would be furious if he discovered trespassers camping in his woods.
The footman returned, shaking his head. They did not speak English. Van went over:
‘Please go away, this is private property,’ said Van in Vulgar Latin, French, Canadian French, Russian, Yukonian Russian, very low Latin again: proprieta privata.
He stood looking at them, hardly noticed by them, hardly shade-touched by the foliage. They were ill-shaven, blue-jowled men in old Sunday suits. One or two wore no collar but had kept the thyroid stud. One had a beard and a humid squint. Patent boots, with dust in the cracks, or orange-brown shoes either very square or very pointed had been taken off and pushed under the burdocks or placed on the old tree stumps of the rather drab clearing. How odd indeed! When Van repeated his request, the intruders started to mutter among themselves in a totally incomprehensible jargon, making small flapping motions in his direction as if half-heartedly chasing away a gnat.
He asked Marina — did she want him to use force, but sweet, dear Marina said, patting her hair, one hand on her hip, no, let us ignore them — especially as they were now drawing a little deeper into the trees — look, look — some dragging à reculons the various parts of their repast upon what resembled an old bedspread, which receded like a fishing boat pulled over pebbly sand, while others politely removed the crumpled wrappings to other more distant hiding places in keeping with the general relocation: a most melancholy and meaningful picture — but meaning what, what? (1.39)
Colazione is Italian for "breakfast" and brings to mind Zavtrak v Sorrento ("A Breakfast in Sorrento," 1938), Hodasevich's memoir essay on Gorky. It begins as follows:
В числе моих воспоминаний, связанных с Горьким, есть довольно забавные. Вот -- одно из них, которое мне приходится озаглавить почти по-тургеневски: "Завтрак в Сорренто".
Among my recollections connected with Gorky there are rather amusing ones. Here is one of them that I am bound to entitle almost à la Turgenev: "A Breakfast in Sorrento."
Van's question Kto sii (Who are they) seems to hint at Kto sey (Who is he), a question Pavel Petrovich asks his brother in Turgenev's novel Ottsy i deti ("Fathers and Sons," 1862):
Павел Петрович вынул из кармана панталон свою красивую руку с длинными розовыми ногтями, — руку, казавшуюся еще красивей от снежной белизны рукавчика, застегнутого одиноким крупным опалом, и подал ее племяннику. Совершив предварительно европейское «shake hands», он три раза, по-русски, поцеловался с ним, то есть три раза прикоснулся своими душистыми усами до его щек, и проговорил: «Добро пожаловать». Николай Петрович представил его Базарову: Павел Петрович слегка наклонил свой гибкий стан и слегка улыбнулся, но руки не подал и даже положил ее обратно в карман.
— Я уже думал, что вы не приедете сегодня, — заговорил он приятным голосом, любезно покачиваясь, подергивая плечами и показывая прекрасные белые зубы. — Разве что на дороге случилось?
— Ничего не случилось, — отвечал Аркадий, — так, замешкались немного. Зато мы теперь голодны, как волки. Поторопи Прокофьича, папаша, а я сейчас вернусь.
— Постой, я с тобой пойду, — воскликнул Базаров, внезапно порываясь с дивана. Оба молодые человека вышли.
— Кто сей? — спросил Павел Петрович.
— Приятель Аркаши, очень, по его словам, умный человек.
— Он у нас гостить будет?
— Да.
— Этот волосатый?
— Ну да.
Павел Петрович постучал ногтями по столу.
— Я нахожу, что Аркадий s'est dégourdi — заметил он. — Я рад его возвращению.
Pavel Petrovich drew from his trouser pocket his beautiful hand with its long pink nails, a hand which looked even more beautiful against the snowy white cuff buttoned with a single large opal, and stretched it out to his nephew. After a preliminary European hand shake, he kissed him three times in the Russian style; in fact he touched his cheek three times with his perfumed mustache, and said, "Welcome!" Nikolay Petrovich introduced him to Bazarov; Pavel Petrovich responded with a slight inclination of his supple body and a slight smile, but he did not give him his hand and even put it back in his pocket.
"I began to think that you weren't coming today," he began in a pleasant voice, with an amiable swing and shrug of the shoulders; his smile showed his splendid white teeth. "Did anything go wrong on the road?"
"Nothing went wrong," answered Arkady. "Only we dawdled a bit. So now we're as hungry as wolves. Make Prokofyich hurry up, Daddy; I'll be back in a moment."
"Wait, I'm coming with you," exclaimed Bazarov, suddenly pulling himself off the sofa. Both the young men went out.
"Who is he?" asked Pavel Petrovich.
"A friend of Arkasha's; according to him a very clever young man."
"Is he going to stay with us?"
"Yes."
"That unkempt creature!"
"Well, yes."
Pavel Petrovich drummed on the table with his finger tips.
"I fancy Arkady s'est dégourdi," he observed. "I'm glad he has come back." (Chapter IV)
In his memoir essay Hodasevich mentions Gorky's nickname Duka and explains that it comes from Italian duca (duke):
Вскоре в саду под моим балконом появился Максим. Я окликнул его:
-- Кто приехал?
-- Консул,-- ответил Максим.
-- Какой консул?
-- Наш.
-- Какой наш?
-- Советский.
-- Да разве в Неаполе есть консул?
-- Недавно назначили.
-- Да зачем же он приехал?
-- А вот хочет засвидетельствовать почтение Дуке и похристосоваться с вами.
Дука -- домашнее прозвище Горького. По этому поводу позволю себе сделать небольшое отступление. В эпоху первой эмиграции, когда Горький жил не в Сорренто, а на Капри, его тогдашняя жена -- М.Ф. Андреева старалась создать легенду вокруг него. Домашней прислуге, лодочникам, рыбакам, бродячим музыкантам, мелким торговцам и тому подобной публике она рассказала, что она -- русская герцогиня, дукесса, которую свирепый царь изгнал из России за то, что она вышла замуж за простого рабочего -- Максима Горького. Эта легенда до крайности чаровала романтическое воображение каприйской и неаполитанской улицы, тем более, что Андреева разбрасывала чаевые с чисто герцогской щедростью. Таким образом, местная популярность Горького не имела ничего общего с представлением о нем, как о писателе, буревестнике, певце пролетариата и т.д. В сущности, она была даже для него компрометантна, потому что им восхищались, как ловким парнем" который сумел устроиться при богачке, да еще герцогине, да еще красавице. Все это рассказывал мне Максим, который терпеть не мог свою мачеху. Думаю, что отсюда же возникло и прозвище Дука, то есть герцог. Возможно, впрочем, что оно имело иное происхождение.
Gorky's sobriquet brings to mind "that ducal bosquet" mentioned by Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) when he tells Van about Uncle Dan's odd Boschean death:
‘Funny your saying that. I’ve dropped in only to tell you poor cousin Dan has died an odd Boschean death. He thought a fantastic rodent sort of rode him out of the house. They found him too late, he expired in Nikulin’s clinic, raving about that detail of the picture. I’m having the deuce of a time rounding up the family. The picture is now preserved in the Vienna Academy of Art.’
‘Father, I’m sorry — but I’m trying to tell you —’
‘If I could write,’ mused Demon, ‘I would describe, in too many words no doubt, how passionately, how incandescently, how incestuously — c’est le mot — art and science meet in an insect, in a thrush, in a thistle of that ducal bosquet. Ada is marrying an outdoor man, but her mind is a closed museum, and she, and dear Lucette, once drew my attention, by a creepy coincidence, to certain details of that other triptych, that tremendous garden of tongue-in-cheek delights, circa 1500, and, namely, to the butterflies in it — a Meadow Brown, female, in the center of the right panel, and a Tortoiseshell in the middle panel, placed there as if settled on a flower — mark the "as if," for here we have an example of exact knowledge on the part of those two admirable little girls, because they say that actually the wrong side of the bug is shown, it should have been the underside, if seen, as it is, in profile, but Bosch evidently found a wing or two in the corner cobweb of his casement and showed the prettier upper surface in depicting his incorrectly folded insect. I mean I don’t give a hoot for the esoteric meaning, for the myth behind the moth, for the masterpiece-baiter who makes Bosch express some bosh of his time, I’m allergic to allegory and am quite sure he was just enjoying himself by crossbreeding casual fancies just for the fun of the contour and color, and what we have to study, as I was telling your cousins, is the joy of the eye, the feel and taste of the woman-sized strawberry that you embrace with him, or the exquisite surprise of an unusual orifice — but you are not following me, you want me to go, so that you may interrupt her beauty sleep, lucky beast! A propos, I have not been able to alert Lucette, who is somewhere in Italy, but I’ve managed to trace Marina to Tsitsikar — flirting there with the Bishop of Belokonsk — she will arrive in the late afternoon, wearing, no doubt, pleureuses, very becoming, and we shall then travel à trois to Ladore, because I don’t think —’
Was he perhaps under the influence of some bright Chilean drug? That torrent was simply unstoppable, a crazy spectrum, a talking palette —
‘— no really, I don’t think we should bother Ada in her Agavia. He is — I mean, Vinelander is — the scion, s,c,i,o,n, of one of those great Varangians who had conquered the Copper Tartars or Red Mongols — or whoever they were — who had conquered some earlier Bronze Riders — before we introduced our Russian roulette and Irish loo at a lucky moment in the history of Western casinos.’
‘I am extremely, I am hideously sorry,’ said Van, ‘what with Uncle Dan’s death and your state of excitement, sir, but my girl friend’s coffee is getting cold, and I can’t very well stumble into our bedroom with all that infernal paraphernalia.’
‘I’m leaving, I’m leaving. After all we haven’t seen each other — since when, August? At any rate, I hope she’s prettier than the Cordula you had here before, volatile boy!’
Volatina, perhaps? Or dragonara? He definitely smelled of ether. Please, please, please go.
‘My gloves! Cloak! Thank you. Can I use your W.C.? No? All right. I’ll find one elsewhere. Come over as soon as you can, and we’ll meet Marina at the airport around four and then whizz to the wake, and —’
And here Ada entered. Not naked — oh no; in a pink peignoir so as not to shock Valerio — comfortably combing her hair, sweet and sleepy. She made the mistake of crying out ‘Bozhe moy!’ and darting back into the dusk of the bedroom. All was lost in that one chink of a second.
‘Or better — come at once, both of you, because I’ll cancel my appointment and go home right now.’ He spoke, or thought he spoke, with the self-control and the clarity of enunciation which so frightened and mesmerized blunderers, blusterers, a voluble broker, a guilty schoolboy. Especially so now — when everything had gone to the hell curs, k chertyam sobach’im, of Jeroen Anthniszoon van Äken and the molti aspetti affascinati of his enigmatica arte, as Dan explained with a last sigh to Dr Nikulin and to nurse Bellabestia (‘Bess’) to whom he bequeathed a trunkful of museum catalogues and his second-best catheter. (2.10)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): c’est le mot: that’s the right word.
pleureuses: widow’s weeds.
Bozhe moy: Russ., good Heavens.
In Gorky’s novel Zhizn’ Klima Samgina (“The Life of Klim Samgin,” 1925-36) Samgin is impressed by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch that he saw in the best Berlin museum:
Он встал, пошёл дальше, взволнованно повторяя стихи, остановился пред темноватым квадратом, по которому в хаотическом беспорядке разбросаны были странные фигуры фантастически смешанных форм: человеческое соединялось с птичьим и звериным, треугольник, с лицом, вписанным в него, шёл на двух ногах. Произвол художника разорвал, разъединил знакомое существующее на части и комически дерзко связал эти части в невозможное, уродливое. Самгин постоял пред картиной минуты три и вдруг почувствовал, что она внушает желание повторить работу художника, - снова разбить его фигуры на части и снова соединить их, но уже так, как захотел бы он, Самгин. Протестуя против этого желания и недоумевая, он пошел прочь, но тотчас вернулся, чтоб узнать имя автора. "Иероним Босх" - прочитал он на тусклой, медной пластинке и увидел еще две маленьких, но столь же странных. Он сел в кресло и, рассматривая работу, которая как будто не определялась понятием живописи, долго пытался догадаться: что думал художник Босх, создавая из разрозненных кусков реального этот фантастический мир? И чем более он всматривался в соединение несоединимых форм птиц, зверей, геометрических фигур, тем более требовательно возникало желание разрушить все эти фигуры, найти смысл, скрытый в их угрюмой фантастике. Имя - Иероним Босх - ничего не напоминало из истории живописи. Странно, что эта раздражающая картина нашла себе место в лучшем музее столицы немцев. (Part Four)
Bosch's triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights" brings to mind sii sady (these gardens) mentioned by Pushkin in his poem Vospominaniya v Tsarskom Sele ("Recollections at Tsarskoe Selo," 1829):
Воспоминаньями смущенный,
Исполнен сладкою тоской,
Сады прекрасные, под сумрак ваш священный
Вхожу с поникшею главой.
Так отрок Библии, безумный расточитель,
До капли истощив раскаянья фиал,
Увидев наконец родимую обитель,
Главой поник и зарыдал.
В пылу восторгов скоротечных,
В бесплодном вихре суеты,
О, много расточил сокровищ я сердечных
За недоступные мечты,
И долго я блуждал, и часто, утомленный,
Раскаяньем горя, предчувствуя беды,
Я думал о тебе, предел благословенный,
Воображал сии сады...
A. M. Peshkov's penname, Gorky means "bitter." Bitten by the mosquitoes in Yukon (in our world, in the Olenins' estate Priyutino in the Province of St. Petersburg), Pushkin exclaimed Sladko (Sweet):
The ‘pest’ appeared as suddenly as it would vanish. It settled on pretty bare arms and legs without the hint of a hum, in a kind of recueilli silence, that — by contrast — caused the sudden insertion of its absolutely hellish proboscis to resemble the brass crash of a military band. Five minutes after the attack in the crepuscule, between porch step and cricket-crazed garden, a fiery irritation would set in, which the strong and the cold ignored (confident it would last a mere hour) but which the weak, the adorable, the voluptuous took advantage of to scratch and scratch and scratch scrumptiously (canteen cant). ‘Sladko! (Sweet!)’ Pushkin used to exclaim in relation to a different species in Yukon. During the week following her birthday, Ada’s unfortunate fingernails used to stay gamet-stained and after a particularly ecstatic, lost-to-the-world session of scratching, blood literally streamed down her shins — a pity to see, mused her distressed admirer, but at the same time disgracefully fascinating — for we are visitors and investigators in a strange universe, indeed, indeed. (1.17)