It seems to me that, when speaking about ADA's
Walter C. Keyway, Esq. (the English tourist who is said to
have been knocked out by Baron Klim Avidov for his inappropriate
jocular remark) in my posting to Nabokv-l of a year ago or so and in
my recent Russian article on Good and Evil (Dobro s kulakami), I
somehow forgot to mention Lucette whom Van and Ada lock up in a closet and
who watches their love-making through the closet's keyhole
(1.34) and, on the other hand, Mme Gritsatsuev ("the sultry
woman, a poet's dream," aka "the diamond widow") whom her husband Ostap Bender
locks up in a stair-case landing in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs"
(chapter XXVIII: "The Pullet and her Pacific Cock"). Herewith I correct this
strange lapse.
Alexey Sklyarenko