At the beginning of Part Five of Ada (1969) Van Veen mentions the highest forms of human thought — pure mathematics & decipherment:
I, Van Veen, salute you, life, Ada Veen, Dr Lagosse, Stepan Nootkin, Violet Knox, Ronald Oranger. Today is my ninety-seventh birthday, and I hear from my wonderful new Everyrest chair a spade scrape and footsteps in the snow-sparkling garden, and my old Russian valet, who is deafer than he thinks, pull out and push in nose-ringed drawers in the dressing room. This Part Five is not meant as an epilogue; it is the true introduction of my ninety-seven percent true, and three percent likely, Ada or Ardor, a family chronicle.
Of all their many houses, in Europe and in the Tropics, the château recently built in Ex, in the Swiss Alps, with its pillared front and crenelated turrets, became their favorite, especially in midwinter, when the famous glittering air, le cristal d’Ex, ‘matches the highest forms of human thought — pure mathematics & decipherment’ (unpublished ad).
At least twice a year our happy couple indulged in fairly long travels. Ada did not breed or collect butterflies any more, but throughout her healthy and active old age loved to film them in their natural surroundings, at the bottom of her garden or the end of the world, flapping and flitting, settling on flowers or filth, gliding over grass or granite, fighting or mating. Van accompanied her on picture-shooting journeys to Brazil, the Congo, New Guinea, but secretly preferred a long drink under a tent to a long wait under a tree for some rarity to come down to the bait and be taken in color. One would need another book to describe Ada’s adventures in Adaland. The films — and the crucified actors (Identification Mounts) — can be seen by arrangement at the Lucinda Museum, 5, Park Lane, Manhattan. (5.1)
In Chapter Four of VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), Zhizn' Chernyshevskogo ("The Life of Chernyshevski"), Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev says that Chernyshevski's son Sasha was fascinated by pure mathematics:
Из всех безумцев, рвавших в клочья жизнь Чернышевского, худшим был его сын; конечно - не младший, Михаил, который жизнь прожил смирную, с любовью занимаясь тарифными вопросами (служил по железно-дорожному делу): он то вывелся из положительной отцовской цифры и сыном был добрым, - ибо в то время, как его блудный брат (получается нравоучительная картинка) выпускал (1896--98 г. г.) свои "Рассказы-фантазии" и сборник никчемных стихов, он набожно начинал свое монументальное издание произведений Николая Гавриловича, которое почти довел до конца, когда в 1924 году, окруженный всеобщим уважением, умер - лет через десять после того, как Александр скоропостижно скончался в грешном Риме, в комнатке с каменным полом, объясняясь в нечеловеческой любви к итальянскому искусству и крича в пылу дикого вдохновения, что, еслибы люди его послушали, жизнь пошла бы иначе, иначе! Сотворенный словно из всего того, чего отец не выносил, Саша, едва выйдя из отрочества, пристрастился ко всему диковинному, сказочному, непонятному современникам, - зачитывался Гофманом и Эдгаром По, увлекался чистой математикой, а немного позже - один из первых в России - оценил французских "проклятых поэтов". Отец, прозябая в Сибири, не мог следить за развитием сына (воспитывавшегося у Пыпиных), а то, что узнавал, толковал по-своему, тем более, что от него скрывали душевную болезнь Саши. Понемногу, однако, чистота этой математики стала Чернышевского раздражать, - и можно легко себе представить с какими чувствами юноша читал длинные отцовские письма, начинающиеся с подчеркнуто-добродушной шутки, а затем (как разговоры того чеховского героя, который приступал так хорошо, - старый студент, мол, неисправимый идеалист...) завершавшиеся яростной руганью; его бесила эта математическая страсть не только как проявление неполезного: измываясь над всякой новизной, отставший от жизни Чернышевский отводил душу на всех новаторах, чудаках и неудачниках мира.
Of all the madmen who tore Chernyshevski’s life into shreds, the worst was his son; not the youngest, of course, Mihail (Misha), who lived a quiet life, lovingly working away at tariff questions (he was employed in the railroads department): he had been evolved from his father’s “positive number” and was a good son, for at the time (1896–98) when his prodigal brother (which makes a moralistic picture) was publishing his Fantastic Tales and a collection of futile poems, he was piously beginning his monumental edition of his late father’s works, which he had practically brought to conclusion when he died, in 1924, surrounded by general esteem—ten years after Alexander (Sasha) had died suddenly in sinful Rome, in a small room with a stone floor, declaring his superhuman love for Italian art and crying in the heat of wild inspiration that if people would only listen to him life would be different, different! Created apparently out of everything that his father could not stand, Sasha, hardly out of his boyhood, developed a passion for everything that was weird, chimerical, and incomprehensible to his contemporaries—he lost himself in E.T.A. Hoffmann and Edgar Poe, was fascinated by pure mathematics, and a little later he was one of the first in Russia to appreciate the French “poètes maudits.” The father, vegetating in Siberia, was unable to look after the development of his son (who was brought up by the Pypins) and what he learned he interpreted in his own way, the more so since they concealed Sasha’s mental disease from him. Gradually, however, the purity of this mathematics began to irritate Chernyshevski—and one can easily imagine with what feelings the youth used to read those long letters from his father, beginning with a deliberately debonair joke and then (like the conversations of that Chekhov character who used to begin so well—“an old alumnus, you know, an incurable idealist …”) concluding with irate abuse; this passion for mathematics enraged him not only as a manifestation of something nonutilitarian: by jeering at everything modern, Chernyshevski whom life had outdistanced would unburden himself concerning all the innovators, eccentrics and failures of this world.
The French “poètes maudits” bring to mind Les Enfants Maudits, a novel by Mlle Larivière (Lucette's governess) that Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) and G. A. Vronsky (the movie man) make into a film:
The shooting script was now ready. Marina, in dorean robe and coolie hat, reclined reading in a long-chair on the patio. Her director, G.A. Vronsky, elderly, baldheaded, with a spread of grizzled fur on his fat chest, was alternately sipping his vodka-and-tonic and feeding Marina typewritten pages from a folder. On her other side, crosslegged on a mat, sat Pedro (surname unknown, stagename forgotten), a repulsively handsome, practically naked young actor, with satyr ears, slanty eyes, and lynx nostrils, whom she had brought from Mexico and was keeping at a hotel in Ladore.
Ada, lying on the edge of the swimming pool, was doing her best to make the shy dackel face the camera in a reasonably upright and decent position, while Philip Rack, an insignificant but on the whole likable young musician who in his baggy trunks looked even more dejected and awkward than in the green velvet suit he thought fit to wear for the piano lessons he gave Lucette, was trying to take a picture of the recalcitrant chop-licking animal and of the girl’s parted breasts which her half-prone position helped to disclose in the opening of her bathing suit.
If one dollied now to another group standing a few paces away under the purple garlands of the patio arch, one might take a medium shot of the young maestro’s pregnant wife in a polka-dotted dress replenishing goblets with salted almonds, and of our distinguished lady novelist resplendent in mauve flounces, mauve hat, mauve shoes, pressing a zebra vest on Lucette, who kept rejecting it with rude remarks, learned from a maid but uttered in a tone of voice just beyond deafish Mlle Larivière’s field of hearing.
Lucette remained topless. Her tight smooth skin was the color of thick peach syrup, her little crupper in willow-green shorts rolled drolly, the sun lay sleek on her russet bob and plumpish torso: it showed but a faint circumlocation of femininity, and Van, in a scowling mood, recalled with mixed feelings how much more developed her sister had been at not quite twelve years of age.
He had spent most of the day fast asleep in his room, and a long, rambling, dreary dream had repeated, in a kind of pointless parody, his strenuous ‘Casanovanic’ night with Ada and that somehow ominous morning talk with her. Now that I am writing this, after so many hollows and heights of time, I find it not easy to separate our conversation, as set down in an inevitably stylized form, and the drone of complaints, turning on sordid betrayals that obsessed young Van in his dull nightmare. Or was he dreaming now that he had been dreaming? Had a grotesque governess really written a novel entitled Les Enfants Maudits? To be filmed by frivolous dummies, now discussing its adaptation? To be made even triter than the original Book of the Fortnight, and its gurgling blurbs? Did he detest Ada as he had in his dreams? He did. (1.32)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Les Enfants Maudits: the accursed children.
Lucette's music teacher (and one of Ada's lovers), Philip Rack is a composer of genius. In Chapter Four of The Gift Fyodor says that the authorities were fearful lest “musical notes should conceal antigovernmental writings in code” (and so commissioned well-paid experts to decode them):
В России цензурное ведомство возникло раньше литературы; всегда чувствовалось его роковое старшинство: так и подмывало по нему щелкнуть. Деятельность Чернышевского в "Современнике" превратилась в сладострастное издевательство над цензурой, представляющей собой и впрямь одно из замечательнейших отечественных учреждений наших. И вот, в то время, когда власти опасались, например, что "под музыкальными знаками могут быть скрыты злонамеренные сочинения", а посему поручали специальным лицам за хороший оклад заняться расшифровыванием нот, Чернышевский в своем журнале, под прикрытием кропотливого шутовства, делал бешеную рекламу Фейербаху. Когда в статьях о Гарибальди или Кавуре (страшно представить себе, сколько саженей мелкой печати этот неутомимый человек перевел из Таймса), в комментариях к итальянским событиям, он с долбящих упорством ставил в скобках чуть ли не после каждой второй фразы: Италия, в Италии, я говорю об Италии, - развращенный уже читатель знал, что речь о России и крестьянском вопросе. Или еще: он делал вид, что несет что попало, ради одной пустой и темной болтовни, - но в полосах и пятнах слов, в словесном камуфляже, вдруг проскакивала нужная мысль. Впоследствии для сведения третьего отделения была тщательно составлена Владиславом Костомаровым вся гамма этого "буфонства"; работа - подлая, но по существу верно передающая "специальные приемы Чернышевского".
In Russia the censorship department arose before literature; its fateful seniority has been always in evidence: and what an urge to give it a tweak! Chernyshevski’s activities on The Contemporary turned into a voluptuous mockery of the censorship, which unquestionably was one of our country’s most remarkable institutions. And right then, at a time when the authorities were fearful, for example, lest “musical notes should conceal antigovernmental writings in code” (and so commissioned well-paid experts to decode them), Chernyshevski, in his magazine, under the cover of elaborate clowning, was frenziedly promulgating Feuerbach. Whenever, in articles about Garibaldi or Cavour (one shrinks from computing the miles of small print this indefatigable man translated from the Times), in his commentaries on Italian events, he kept adding in brackets with drilling insistence after practically every other sentence: “Italy,” “in Italy,” “I am talking about Italy”—the already corrupted reader knew that he meant he was talking about Russia and the peasant question. Or else: Chernyshevski would pretend he was chattering about anything that came to mind, just for the sake of incoherent and vacant prattle—but suddenly, striped and spotted with words, dressed in verbal camouflage, the important idea he wished to convey would slip through. Subsequently the whole gamut of this “buffoonery” was carefully put together by Vladislav Kostomarov for the information of the secret police; the work was mean, but it gave essentially a true picture of “Chernyshevski’s special devices.”
Rasshifrovyvanie not (the decoding of notes) reminds one of decipherment in an unpublished ad cited by Van. In Chapter One of The Gift Fyodor mentions lakirovannye lakomki reklam (the glamorous glutton of the advertisement):
Постепенно из накопляющихся пьесок складывается образ крайне восприимчивого мальчика, жившего в обстановке крайне благоприятной. Наш поэт родился двенадцатого июля 1900 года в родовом имении Годуновых-Чердынцевых "Лешино". Мальчик еще до поступления в школу перечел немало книг из библиотеки отца. В своих интересных записках такой-то вспоминает, как маленький Федя с сестрой, старше его на два года, увлекались детским театром, и даже сами сочиняли для своих представлений... Любезный мой, это ложь. Я был всегда равнодушен к театру; но впрочем помню, были какие-то у нас картонные деревца и зубчатый дворец с окошками из малиновокисельной бумаги, просвечивавшей верещагинским полымем, когда внутри зажигалась свеча, от которой, не без нашего участия, в конце концов и сгорело все здание. О, мы с Таней были привередливы, когда дело касалось игрушек! Со стороны, от дарителей равнодушных, к нам часто поступали совершенно убогие вещи. Всё, что являло собой плоскую картонку с рисунком на крышке, предвещало недоброе. Такой одной крышке я посвятил было условленных три строфы, но стихотворение как-то не встало. За круглым столом при свете лампы семейка: мальчик в невозможной, с красным галстуком, матроске, девочка в красных зашнурованных сапожках; оба с выражением чувственного упоения нанизывают на соломинки разноцветные бусы, делая из них корзиночки, клетки, коробки; и с увлечением неменьшим в этом же занятии участвуют их полоумные родители - отец с премированной растительностью на довольном лице, мать с державным бюстом; собака тоже смотрит на стол, а на заднем плане видна в креслах завистливая бабушка. Эти именно дети ныне выросли, и я часто встречаю их на рекламах: он, с блеском на маслянисто-загорелых щеках, сладострастно затягивается папиросой или держит в богатырской руке, плотоядно осклабясь, бутерброд с чем-то красным ("ешьте больше мяса!"), она улыбается собственному чулку на ноге или с развратной радостью обливает искусственными сливками консервированный компот; и со временем они обратятся в бодрых, румяных, обжорливых стариков, - а там и черная инфернальная красота дубовых гробов среди пальм в витрине... Так развивается бок-о-бок с нами, в зловеще-веселом соответствии с нашим бытием, мир прекрасных демонов; но в прекрасном демоне есть всегда тайный изъян, стыдная бородавка на заду у подобия совершенства: лакированным лакомкам реклам, объедающимся желатином, не знать тихих отрад гастронома, а моды их (медлящие на стене, пока мы проходим мимо) всегда чуть-чуть отстают от действительных. Я еще когда-нибудь поговорю об этом возмездии, которое как раз там находит слабое место для удара, где, казалось, весь смысл и сила поражаемого существа.
From the accumulating poetical pieces in the book we gradually obtain the image of an extremely receptive boy, living in extremely favorable surroundings. Our poet was born on July 12, 1900, in the Leshino manor, which for generations had been the country estate of the Godunov-Cherdyntsevs. Even before he reached school age the boy read through a considerable number of books from his father’s library. In his interesting reminiscences so-and-so recalls how enthusiastically little Fedya and his sister Tanya, who was two years his elder, engaged in amateur theatricals, and how they would even write plays themselves for their performances…. That, my good man, may be true of other poets but in my case it is a lie. I have always been indifferent to the theater; although I remember that we did have a puppet theater with cardboard trees and a crenellated castle with celluloid windows the color of raspberry jelly through which painted flames like those on Vereshchagin’s picture of the Moscow Fire flickered when a candle was lighted inside—and it was this candle which, not without our participation, eventually caused the conflagration of the entire building. Oh, but Tanya and I were fastidious when it came to toys! From indifferent givers on the outside we would often receive quite wretched things. Anything that came in a flat carton with an illustrated cover boded ill. To one such cover I tried to devote my stipulated twelve lines, but somehow the poem did not rise. A family, seated around a circular table illuminated by a lamp: the boy is dressed in an impossible sailor suit with a red tie, the girl wears laced boots, also red; both, with expressions of sensuous delectation, are stringing beads of various colors on straw-like rods, making little baskets, birdcages and boxes; and, with similar enthusiasm, their half-witted parents take part in the same pastime—the father with a prize growth on his pleased face, the mother with her imposing bosom; the dog is also looking at the table, and envious Grandma can be seen ensconced in the background. Those same children have now grown up and I often run across them in advertisements: he, with his glossy, sleekly tanned cheeks, is puffing voluptuously on a cigarette or holding in his brawny hand, with a carnivorous grin, a sandwich containing something red (“eat more meat!”); she is smiling at a stocking she herself is wearing, or, with depraved delight, pouring artificial cream on canned fruit; and in time they will become sprightly, rosy, gormandizing oldsters—and still have ahead of them the infernal black beauty of oaken caskets in a palm-decked display window…. Thus a world of handsome demons develops side by side with us, in a cheerfully sinister relationship to our everyday existence; but in the handsome demon there is always some secret flaw, a shameful wart on the behind of this semblance of perfection: the glamorous glutton of the advertisement, gorging himself on gelatin, can never know the quiet joys of the gourmet, and his fashions (lingering on the billboard while we move onward) are always just a little behind those of real life. Some day I shall come back to a discussion of this nemesis, which finds a soft spot for its blow exactly where the whole sense and power of the creature it strikes seem to lie.
Mir prekrasnykh demonov (a world of handsome demons) that develops side by side with us makes one think of Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra on which Ada is set.
The characters in The Gift include the Chernyshevski couple, Alexander Yakovlevich and Alexandra Yakovlevna. They have the same name and patronymic as goluboy vorishka (the bashful chiseller) and his wife in Ilf and Petrov’s novel Dvenadtsat’ stulyev (“The Twelve Chairs,” 1928):
Завхоз 2-го дома Старсобеса был застенчивый ворюга. Всё существо его протестовало против краж, но не красть он не мог. Он крал, и ему было стыдно. Крал он постоянно, постоянно стыдился, и поэтому его хорошо бритые щёчки всегда горели румянцем смущения, стыдливости, застенчивости и конфуза. Завхоза звали Александром Яковлевичем, а жену его – Александрой Яковлевной. Он называл её Сашхен, она звала его Альхен. Свет не видывал ещё такого голубого воришки, как Александр Яковлевич.
The Assistant Warden of the Second Home of Stargorod Social Security Administration was a shy little thief. His whole being protested against stealing, yet it was impossible for him not to steal. He stole and was ashamed of himself. He stole constantly and was constantly ashamed of himself, which was why his smoothly shaven cheeks always burned with a blush of confusion, shame, bashfulness and embarrassment. The assistant warden's name was Alexander Yakovlevich, and his wife's name was Alexandra Yakovlevna. He used to call her Sashchen, and she used to call him Alchen. The world has never seen such a bashful chiseller as Alexander Yakovlevich. (Chapter VIII: “The Bashful Chiseller”)
In Ilf and Petrov’s novel Ostap Bender mentions chistaya matematika (pure mathematics):
Остались два ордера: один — на 10 стульев, выданный музею мебельного мастерства в Москве, другой — на один стул т. Грицацуеву, в Старгороде, по улице Плеханова, 15.
— Готовьте деньги, — сказал Остап, — возможно, в Москву придется ехать.
— Но тут ведь тоже есть стул?
— Один шанс против десяти. Чистая математика. Да и то, если гражданин Грицацуев не растапливал им буржуйку.
— Не шутите так, не нужно.
— Ничего, ничего, либер фатер Конрад Карлович Михельсон, найдем! Святое дело! Батистовые портянки будем носить, крем Марго кушать.
— Мне почему-то кажется, — заметил Ипполит Матвеевич, — что ценности должны быть именно в этом стуле.
— Ах! Вам кажется? Что вам еще кажется? Ничего? Ну, ладно. Будем работать по-марксистски. Предоставим небо птицам, а сами обратимся к стульям. Я измучен желанием поскорее увидеться с инвалидом империалистической войны, гражданином Грицацуевым, улица Плеханова, дом пятнадцать. Не отставайте, Конрад Карлович. План составим по дороге.
Two orders were left: one for ten chairs transferred to the furniture museum in Moscow, and the other for the chair given to Comrade Gritsatsuev in Plekhanov Street, Stargorod.
"Have your money ready," said Ostap. "We may have to go to Moscow."
"But there's a chair here!"
"One chance in ten. Pure mathematics. Anyway, citizen Gritsatsuev may have lit the stove with it."
"Don't joke like that!"
"Don't worry, lieber Vater Konrad Karlovich Michelson, we'll find them. It's a sacred cause!" "We'll be wearing cambric footcloths and drinking crème Margot."
"I have a hunch the jewels are in that very chair."
"Oh, you have a hunch, do you. What other hunches do you have? None? All right. Let's work the Marxist way. We'll leave the sky to the birds and deal with the chairs ourselves. I can't wait to meet the imperialist war invalid, citizen Gritsatsuyev, at 15 Plekhanov Street. Don't lag behind, Konrad Karlovich. We'll plan as we go." (Chapter XII: “A Passionate Woman is a Poet’s Dream”)
In Ilf and Petrov’s novel Zolotoy telyonok (“The Golden Calf,” 1931) Khvorobyev (the old monarchist who is tormented by Soviet dreams) does not know how to decipher the word Proletkult (a portmanteau of the Russian words proletarskaya kultura, “proletarian culture”):
Федор Никитич Хворобьев был монархистом и ненавидел советскую власть. Эта власть была ему противна. Он, когда-то попечитель учебного округа, принужден был служить заведующим методологическопедагогическим сектором местного Пролеткульта.
Это вызывало в нем отвращение.
До самого конца своей службы он не знал, как расшифровать слово "Пролеткульт", и от этого презирал его еще больше. Дрожь омерзения вызывали в нем одним своим видом члены месткома, сослуживцы и посетители методологическо-педагогического сектора. Он возненавидел слово "сектор". О, этот сектор! Никогда Федор Никитич, ценивший все изящное, а в том числе и геометрию, не предполагал, что это прекрасное математическое понятие, обозначающее часть площади криволинейной фигуры, будет так опошлено.
Fyodor Nikitich Khvorobyov was a monarchist, and he detested the Soviet regime. He found it repugnant. He, who had once served as a school district superintendent, was forced to run the Educational Methodology Sector of the local Proletkult.
That disgusted him.
Until the end of his career, he never knew what Proletkult stood for, and that made him detest it even more. He cringed with disgust at the mere sight of the members of the local union committee, his colleagues, and the visitors to the Educational Methodology Sector. He hated the word “sector.” Oh, that sector! Fyodor Nikitich had always appreciated elegant things, including geometry. Never in his worst nightmares would he imagine that this beautiful mathematical term, used to describe a portion of a circle, could be so brutally trivialized. (Chapter VIII: "The Crisis of the Genre" )
When she visits Van at Kingston (Van’s American University), Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) calls him “Dr V. V. Sector:”
She returned the balled handkerchief of many an old romance to her bag, which, however, remained unclosed. Chows, too, have blue tongues.
‘Mamma dwells in her private Samsara. Dad has had another stroke. Sis is revisiting Ardis.’
‘Sis! Cesse, Lucette! We don’t want any baby serpents around.’
‘This baby serpent does not quite know what tone to take with Dr V.V. Sector. You have not changed one bit, my pale darling, except that you look like a ghost in need of a shave without your summer Glanz.’
And summer Mädel. He noticed that the letter, in its long blue envelope, lay now on the mahogany sideboard. He stood in the middle of the parlor, rubbing his forehead, not daring, not daring, because it was Ada’s notepaper. (2.5)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): cesse: cease.
Glanz: Germ., luster.
Mädel: Germ., girl.
Lucette studies the History of Art in Queenston College for Glamorous and Glupovatïh (‘dumb’) Girls:
He had not seen her since 1888. In the fall of 1891 she had sent him from California a rambling, indecent, crazy, almost savage declaration of love in a ten-page letter, which shall not be discussed in this memoir [See, however, a little farther. Ed.]. At present, she was studying the History of Art (‘the second-rater’s last refuge,’ she said) in nearby Queenston College for Glamorous and Glupovatïh (‘dumb’) Girls. When she rang him up and pleaded for an interview (in a new, darker voice, agonizingly resembling Ada’s), she intimated that she was bringing him an important message. He suspected it would be yet another installment of her unrequited passion, but he also felt that her visit would touch off internal fires. (ibid.)
In a letter of the second half of May (not later than May 24), 1826, to Vyazemski Pushkin says that poetry should be glupovata (silly):
Твои стихи к Мнимой Красавице (ах, извини: Счастливице) слишком умны.-- А поэзия, прости господи, должна быть глуповата.
Your verses To a Would-Be Beautiful (ah, sorry, Happy) Girl are too clever. And poetry, may God forgive me, should be glupovata (silly).
Poetry should be silly, but a poet should not be a fool. "The highest forms of human thought — pure mathematics & decipherment" bring to mind pure thought and pure time mentioned by Van when he describes Marina's death:
Numbers and rows and series — the nightmare and malediction harrowing pure thought and pure time — seemed bent on mechanizing his mind. Three elements, fire, water, and air, destroyed, in that sequence, Marina, Lucette, and Demon. Terra waited.
For seven years, after she had dismissed her life with her husband, a successfully achieved corpse, as irrelevant, and retired to her still dazzling, still magically well-staffed Côte d’Azur villa (the one Demon had once given her), Van’s mother had been suffering from various ‘obscure’ illnesses, which everybody thought she made up, or talentedly simulated, and which she contended could be, and partly were, cured by willpower. Van visited her less often than dutiful Lucette, whom he glimpsed there on two or three occasions; and once, in 1899, he saw, as he entered the arbutus-and-laurel garden of Villa Armina, a bearded old priest of the Greek persuasion, clad in neutral black, leaving on a motor bicycle for his Nice parish near the tennis courts. Marina spoke to Van about religion, and Terra, and the Theater, but never about Ada, and just as he did not suspect she knew everything about the horror and ardor of Ardis, none suspected what pain in her bleeding bowels she was trying to allay by incantations, and ‘self-focusing’ or its opposite device, ‘self-dissolving.’ She confessed with an enigmatic and rather smug smile that much as she liked the rhythmic blue puffs of incense, and the dyakon’s rich growl on the ambon, and the oily-brown ikon coped in protective filigree to receive the worshipper’s kiss, her soul remained irrevocably consecrated, naperekor (in spite of) Dasha Vinelander, to the ultimate wisdom of Hinduism.
Early in 1900, a few days before he saw Marina, for the last time, at the clinic in Nice (where he learned for the first time the name of her illness), Van had a ‘verbal’ nightmare, caused, maybe, by the musky smell in the Miramas (Bouches Rouges-du-Rhône) Villa Venus. Two formless fat transparent creatures were engaged in some discussion, one repeating ‘I can’t!’ (meaning ‘can’t die’ — a difficult procedure to carry out voluntarily, without the help of the dagger, the ball, or the bowl), and the other affirming ‘You can, sir!’ She died a fortnight later, and her body was burnt, according to her instructions. (3.1)
At the end of Ada's last chapter Van recalls his last interview with Marina:
Nirvana, Nevada, Vaniada. By the way, should I not add, my Ada, that only at the very last interview with poor dummy-mummy, soon after my premature — I mean, premonitory — nightmare about, ‘You can, Sir,’ she employed mon petit nom, Vanya, Vanyusha — never had before, and it sounded so odd, so tend... (voice trailing off, radiators tinkling).
‘Dummy-mum’ — (laughing). ‘Angels, too, have brooms — to sweep one’s soul clear of horrible images. My black nurse was Swiss-laced with white whimsies.’
Sudden ice hurtling down the rain pipe: brokenhearted stalactite. (5.6)
Van's petit nom, Vanya, Vanyusha, makes one think of Ivanushka durachok (Johnny the Simpleton), the favorite hero of the old Russian folklore. In his Cornell lecture on Dostoevski VN compares Prince Myshkin (the main character in Dostoevski's novel The Idiot, 1868) to Johnny the Simpleton:
Another interesting line of inquiry lies in the examination of his characters in their historical development. Thus the favorite hero of the old Russian folklore, John the Simpleton, who is considered a weak-minded muddler by his brothers but is really as cunning as a skunk and perfectly immoral in his activities, an unpoetical and unpleasant figure, the personification of secret slyness triumphing over the big and the strong, Johnny the Simpleton, that product of a nation which has had more than one nation’s share of misery, is a curious prototype of Dostoevski’s Prince Myshkin, hero of his novel The Idiot, the positively good man, the pure innocent fool, the cream of humility, renunciation, and spiritual peace. And Prince Myshkin, in turn, had for his grandson the character recently created by the contemporary Soviet writer Mikhail Zoshchenko, the type of cheerful imbecile, muddling through a police-state totalitarian world, imbecility being the last refuge in that kind of world.
Because love is blind, Van fails to see that Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband) and Ada have at least two children and that Ronald Oranger (old Van's secretary, the editor of Ada) and Violet Knox (old Van's typist whom Ada calls Fialochka, "little Violet," and who marries Ronald Oranger after Van's and Ada's death) are Ada's grandchildren.
Nochnaya Fialka ("The Night Violet," 1906) and Dvenadtsat' ("The Twelve," 1918) are poems by Alexander Blok. In The Golden Calf Koreyko (a secret Soviet millionaire) receives a telegram from Brothers Karamazov: Gruzite apel'siny bochkami ("Load oranges in barrels"). Brothers Karamazov (1880) is a novel by Dostoevski.