If you had read my article "Grattez le Tartar, or
Who were the Parents of Ada's Kim Beauharnais" in the last two issues
of The Nabokovian, you wouldn't have asked so many questions about
Kim.
I'm not sure any more, if I included Kim in my
charadoid. It seems to me I did, and in that case I would also
have noticed that Kim = Mik. Note that the little heroes of both
Kipling's Indian novel and Gumilyov's African poem are mostly
barefooted. Now, Russian for "barefooted person" is bosyak. But this
word also means "destitute person," "pauper." The heroes of Gorky's early
stories ("Makar Chudra" and so on; Makar = karma...) that made him famous
are bosyaki, paupers. Bosyak is almost an anagram of
sobak ("of the dogs").
I didn't know that the name Kim meant "gold." Many
thanks to Victor Fet. If we move still farther East, Kim = kimono -
ono (Russian for "it;" Japanese for "axe," "hatchet"). Marina wears a
kimono in the morning of Van's final departure from Ardis (1.41).
Alexey Sklyarenko