Alexey
Sklyarenko: ‘You look quite satanically fit, Dad.
...‘I offered myself en effet a
trip to Akapulkovo,’ answered Demon, needlessly and unwillingly recollecting
(with that special concussion of instant detail that also plagued his children)
a violet-and-black-striped fish in a bowl, a similarly striped couch, the
subtropical sun bringing out the veins of an onyx ashtray on the stone floor, a
batch of old, orange-juice-stained Povesa (playboy) magazines, the
jewels he had brought, the phonograph singing in a dreamy girl’s voice’
Petit nègre, au
champ qui fleuronne,’ and the admirable abdomen of a very expensive, and
very faithless and altogether adorable young Créole.
(1.38) Akapulkovo blends Acapulco, a seaport and resort in
SW Mexico, on the Pacific, with Pulkovo, the site of the famous observatory
and the airport near St. Petersburg. Pulkovo is mentioned in Chapter Three
of The Gift...Soon after buying an island in the Gavailles
("a small, perfectly round Pacific island"), Demon perishes in a mysterious
airplane disaster abovve the Pacific. (3.7)
The Sandwich Islands (the
former name of the Hawaiian Islands) are mentioned in The Golden Calf
(chapter XVI, "Jahrbuch fuer Psychoanalytik"):
"Miss Condor" is a play on con d'or. In The
Golden Calf (chapter II, "Thirty Sons of Lieutenant
Schmidt") Ostap Bender mentions a Charlseton said to be popular in Rio de
Janeiro, the city of Ostap's dreams: "U moey devochki est' odna
malen'kaya shtuchka" ("My Girl has One Little Thing")
Jansy Mello: Many surprises for an outsider,
like me. Charleston as a popular dance in Rioo de Janeiro, a girl's little
things and Bender's chapter XVI and the obscene pun on Miss
Condor...In Rio, and elsewhere in Brazil, there was a famous popular Carmen
Miranda song about "What does the baia native girl
("baiana") possess?"* (besides pineapples and bananas on her head) and
small bracelets charms with a small doll whose skirt could be lifted to mark
what was, really, the most prized Condor of all....
