‘Good for you, Pompeianella (whom you
saw scattering her flowers in one of Uncle Dan’s picture books, but whom
I admired last summer in a Naples museum). Now don’t you think we should
resume our shorts and shirts and go down, and bury or burn this album at once,
girl. Right?'
‘Right,’ answered Ada. ‘Destroy and
forget. But we still have an hour before tea.’ (1.1)
It did not matter, it did not matter.
Destroy and forget! But a butterfly in the park, an orchid in a shop window,
would revive everything with a dazzling inward shock of despair.
(1.43)
The phrase zabyt' i ubit' (forget and kill) occurs in
the chapter Nedozvolennye semeynye radosti ("The Forbidden Family
Joys") of Saltykov-Shchedrin's Gospoda Golovlyovy ("The
Golovlyovs," 1875-80):
Увы! это слово было: «прелюбодеяние», и
обозначало такое действие, в котором Иудушка и перед самим собой сознаться не
хотел.
И вот,
когда, после тщетных попыток забыть и убить, делалось, наконец, ясным, что он
пойман, — на него нападала тоска.
Iudushka tries to "forget
and kill" the fact that he got with child one of his servant
girls.
Some
confusion ensued less than two years later (September, 1871 — her proud brain
still retained dozens of dates) when upon escaping from her next refuge
and somehow reaching her husband’s unforgettable country house (imitate a
foreigner: ‘Signor Konduktor, ay vant go Lago di Luga, hier geld’) she
took advantage of his being massaged in the solarium, tiptoed into their former
bedroom — and experienced a delicious shock: her talc powder in a
half-full glass container marked colorfully Quelques Fleurs still stood on
her bedside table; her favorite flame-colored nightgown lay
rumpled on the bedrug; to her it meant that only a brief black nightmare had
obliterated the radiant fact of her having slept with her husband all along —
ever since Shakespeare’s birthday on a green rainy day, but for most other
people, alas, it meant that Marina (after G. A. Vronsky, the movie man, had left
Marina for another long-lashed Khristosik as he called all pretty
starlets) had conceived, c’est bien le cas de le dire, the brilliant idea
of having Demon divorce mad Aqua and marry Marina who thought (happily and
correctly) she was pregnant again. Marina had spent a rukuliruyushchiy
month with him at Kitezh but when she smugly divulged her intentions (just
before Aqua’s arrival) he threw her out of the house. (1.3)
This time Marina (whose
first child was registered as Aqua's son Ivan Veen) was pregnant with
Ada. Iudushka (little Judas) is a negative of
Khristosik (little Christ). Rukuliruyushchiy
(roucoulant, cooing) comes from rukulirovat', a
quaint non-Russian verb used by Saltykov in Gospoda Tashkenttsy (“Gentlemen of
Tashkent,” 1873):
Он так мило
брал свою конфетку-maman за талию, так нежно целовал её в
щёчку, рукулировал ей на ухо de si
jolies choses, что не было даже резона дичиться его. ("Gentlemen of
Tashkent of the Prep-School")
The name of Marina's poor
mad twin sister means "water." Iudushka, who got his servant girl with
child, looks for a loophole that would allow him vyiti sukhim iz
vody (to come out unscathed; literally: "to come out dry from
the water"):
В этих
внутренних собеседованиях с самим собою, как ни запутано было их содержание,
замечалось даже что-то похожее на пробуждение совести. Но представлялся вопрос:
пойдёт ли Иудушка дальше по этому пути, или же пустомыслие и тут сослужит ему
обычную службу и представит новую лазейку, благодаря которой он, как и всегда,
успеет выйти сухим из воды? ("The Forbidden Family
Joys")
In my previous post I forgot
to mention Mira Belochkin, Pnin's sweetheart whose name comes from
belochka (little squirrel). Belka (squirrel) comes from
belyi (white). In her last note Aqua mentions the skunk-like
squirrels that Prince Temnosiniy imported to Ardis Park:
Aujourd'hui (heute-toity!) I, this eye-rolling toy, have
earned the psykitsch right to enjoy a landparty with Herr Doktor Sig, Nurse Joan
the Terrible, and several ‘patients,' in the neighboring bor (piney wood)
where I noticed exactly the same skunk-like squirrels, Van, that your Darkblue
ancestor imported to Ardis Park, where you will ramble one day, no doubt.
(1.3)
The name Blanche, of
Ada's "Cendrillon," means "white."
Alexey
Sklyarenko