I have not, until this week, paid much attention to the incompatibility that has been remarked between the 56 days Humbert says he has been writing Lolita and the date 25 September 1952 he implies for his murder of Quilty and the date 16 November 1952 John Ray gives for his death. But I am struck by the fact that those who write about it seem invariably to refer to a discrepancy of "three days". Presumably this is a matter of one person's miscounting and the rest's not bothering to count, but merely copying. For the discrepancy is, in fact, four days, as I shall show.

 

If Humbert died on the day he finished writing Lolita, and if his "56 days" is correct, then he started writing on 21 September, the day before 22 September, which, according to him, was the day he received Lolita's letter dated 18 September. But the earliest he could be placed in the "psychopathic ward" after his murder of Quilty is 25 September. Thus the discrepancy is four days. QED.

 

If the other data are correct, and Humbert has miscalculated, then he has miscalculated by four, not three, days. He has calculated 56 when he should have calculated 52. 

 

Appel's notes (The Annotated Lolita, Penguin Classics 2000, notes 251/14 and 251/15) to Humbert's record of the presumably fake registration numbers of his car left by Quilty -- Q 32888 and CU 88322 -- make a great deal of the fact that the two car numbers add up to 52. This is so specific and bizarre (why does it occur to Appel to add the numbers and insist that this is significant?) that this hint must surely have come from Nabokov himself. Appel (presumably prompted by Nabokov) points out that H.H., Lolita and Quilty all die in 1952, and that 52 is: the number of weeks (a year's) that Humbert is on the road with Lolita; the number of lines (13 x 4) in the poem he writes ("Wanted, wanted. Dolores Haze.") a few pages after recording the car numbers; and the number of cards in a pack of cards.

 

In note 251/14, Appel says: "There are fifty-two cards in a deck, and the author of King, Queen, Knave still has a few up his sleeve, as he demonstrates here."

I know next to nothing about card symbolism (some would say this is a failing in a psychotherapist), but perhaps some expert would like to take this up. Perhaps someone like Alexander Dolinin already has? 

 

Anthony Stadlen