Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van criticizes Ada’s version of a poem by Coppée and compares Ada to a Russian nobleman who chucked his coachman to the wolves, and then fell out of his sleigh:

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), the merest touch of Ada’s finger or mouth produced not only a more potent but essentially different delicia than the slowest ‘winslow’ of the most sophisticated young harlot:

Offering Ada a ride in the park, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions two horses, Pardus and Peg:

‘Now let’s go out for a breath of crisp air,’ suggested Van. ‘I’ll order Pardus and Peg to be saddled.’

In "Ardis the First"  Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) uses the word horosho (good) in the sense "all right:"

Describing his dinner in ‘Ursus’ with Ada and Lucette, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Flora, a slender, hardly nubile, half-naked music-hall dancer of uncertain origin:

According to Ada, she saw the phrase "far enough, fair enough" in small violet letters before Van (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) put it into orange ones:

The children of Demon Veen and Marina Durmanov, Van and Ada (the two main characters in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) are officially maternal cousins and can marry only by special decree:

They walked through a grove and past a grotto.

Revisiting Ardis in 1888, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) meets Cordula de Prey (Ada’s schoolmate at Brownhill) wearing a yellow-blue Vass frock:

Leaving Van’s Manhattan flat, Lucette (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) pins to the pillow a note scrawled in Arlen Eyelid Green:

Describing the floramors (one hundred palatial brothels built by David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, all over the world in memory of his grandson Eric, the author of an essay entitled "Villa Venus: an Organized Dream"), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions “some nice vstryaska (shake-up) in the genetic kaleidoscope:”