Describing the visit of an Andalusian architect to Ardis, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the Russian ‘hrip’ (Spanish flu) that Uncle Dan had caught:
When Ada refuses to leave her sick husband, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) walks some ten kilometers along soggy roads to Rennaz and thence flies to Nice, Biskra, the Cape, Nairobi, the Basset range:
On Demonia (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra) the Iron Curtain (a term used by Winston Churchill in his Fulton speech on March 5, 1946) is known as the Golden Curtain:
Describing his last evening at Ardis, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a group of brilliantly pictured gross orchids whose popularity with bees depends ‘on various attractive odors ranging from the smell of dead workers to that of a tomcat:’
Describing Victor Vitry’s film version of his juvenile novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Charlie Chose, the suave nephew of Lord Goal, the governor of Lute (as Paris is also known on Demonia, Earth’s twin planet also known as Antiterra):
Describing Marina's wedding photograph, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the commonplace sweep of a bride’s ectoplasmic veil:
Telling about the King's uncle Conmal (the Zemblan translator of Shakespeare), Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions Kipling's "The Rhyme of the Three Sealers" whose translation hundred-year-old Conmal had just completed when he fell ill and soon died:
