In March 1905 Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific. In a letter to Van (written a month before Demon’s death) Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) calls herself "a petite fille modèle practicing archery near a vase and a parapet:"
He greeted the dawn of a placid and prosperous century (more than half of which Ada and I have now seen) with the beginning of his second philosophic fable, a ‘denunciation of space’ (never to be completed, but forming in rear vision, a preface to his Texture of Time). Part of that treatise, a rather mannered affair, but nasty and sound, appeared in the first issue (January, 1904) of a now famous American monthly, The Artisan, and a comment on the excerpt is preserved in one of the tragically formal letters (all destroyed save this one) that his sister sent him by public post now and then. Somehow, after the interchange occasioned by Lucette’s death such nonclandestine correspondence had been established with the tacit sanction of Demon:
And o’er the summits of the Tacit
He, banned from Paradise, flew on:
Beneath him, like a brilliant’s facet,
Mount Peck with snows eternal shone.
It would seem indeed that continued ignorance of each other’s existence might have looked more suspicious than the following sort of note:
Agavia Ranch
February 5, 1905
I have just read Reflections in Sidra, by Ivan Veen, and I regard it as a grand piece, dear Professor. The ‘lost shafts of destiny’ and other poetical touches reminded me of the two or three times you had tea and muffins at our place in the country about twenty years ago. I was, you remember (presumptuous phrase!), a petite fille modèle practicing archery near a vase and a parapet and you were a shy schoolboy (with whom, as my mother guessed, I may have been a wee bit in love!), who dutifully picked up the arrows I lost in the lost shrubbery of the lost castle of poor Lucette’s and happy, happy Adette’s childhood, now a ‘Home for Blind Blacks’ — both my mother and L., I’m sure, would have backed Dasha’s advice to turn it over to her Sect. Dasha, my sister-in-law (you must meet her soon, yes, yes, yes, she’s dreamy and lovely, and lots more intelligent than I), who showed me your piece, asks me to add she hopes to ‘renew’ your acquaintance — maybe in Switzerland, at the Bellevue in Mont Roux, in October. I think you once met pretty Miss ‘Kim’ Blackrent, well, that’s exactly dear Dasha’s type. She is very good at perceiving and pursuing originality and all kinds of studies which I can’t even name! She finished Chose (where she read History — our Lucette used to call it ‘Sale Histoire,’ so sad and funny!). For her you’re le beau ténébreux, because once upon a time, once upon libellula wings, not long before my marriage, she attended — I mean at that time, I’m stuck in my ‘turnstyle’ — one of your public lectures on dreams, after which she went up to you with her latest little nightmare all typed out and neatly clipped together, and you scowled darkly and refused to take it. Well, she’s been after Uncle Dementiy to have him admonish le beau ténébreux to come to Mont Roux Bellevue Hotel, in October, around the seventeenth, I guess, and he only laughs and says it’s up to Dashenka and me to arrange matters.
So ‘congs’ again, dear Ivan! You are, we both think, a marvelous, inimitable artist who should also ‘only laugh,’ if cretinic critics, especially lower-upper-middle-class Englishmen, accuse his turnstyle of being ‘coy’ and ‘arch,’ much as an American farmer finds the parson ‘peculiar’ because he knows Greek.
P.S.
Dushevno klanyayus’ (‘am souledly bowing’, an incorrect and vulgar construction evoking the image of a ‘bowing soul’) nashemu zaochno dorogomu professoru (‘to our "unsight-unseen" dear professor’), o kotorom mnogo slïshal (about whom have heard much) ot dobrago Dementiya Dedalovicha i sestritsï (from good Demon and my sister).
S uvazheniem (with respect),
Andrey Vaynlender (3.7)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): And o’er the summits of the Tacit etc.: parody of four lines in Lermontov’s The Demon (see also p.115).
le beau ténébreux: wrapt in Byronic gloom.
Miss ‘Kim’ Blackrent hints at Kim Beauharnais, a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Van blinds for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada. The Blind Archer (1897) is a poem by Conan Doyle:
Little boy Love drew his bow at a chance,
Shooting down at the ballroom floor;
He hit an old chaperone watching the dance,
And oh! but he wounded her sore.
"Hey, Love, you couldn't mean that!
Hi, Love, what would you be at?"
No word would he say,
But he flew on his way,
For the little boy's busy, and how could he stay?
Little boy Love drew a shaft just for sport
At the soberest club in Pall Mall;
He winged an old veteran drinking his port,
And down that old veteran fell.
"Hey, Love, you mustn't do that!
Hi, Love, what would you be at?
This cannot be right!
It's ludicrous quite!"
But it's no use to argue, for Love's out of sight.
A sad-faced young clerk in a cell all apart
Was planning a celibate vow;
But the boy's random arrow has sunk in his heart,
And the cell is an empty one now.
"Hey, Love, you mustn't do that!
Hi, Love, what would you be at?
He is not for you,
He has duties to do."
"But I am his duty,' quoth Love as he flew.
The king sought a bride, and the nation had hoped
For a queen without rival or peer.
But the little boy shot, and the king has eloped
With Miss No-one on Nothing a year.
"Hey, Love, you couldn't mean that!
Hi, Love, what would you be at?
What an impudent thing
To make game of a king!"
"But I'm a king also," cried Love on the wing.
Little boy Love grew pettish one day;
"If you keep on complaining," he swore,
"I'll pack both my bow and my quiver away,
And so I shall plague you no more."
"Hey, Love, you mustn't do that!
Hi, Love, what would you be at?
You may ruin our ease,
You may do what you please,
But we can't do without you, you dear little tease!"
In Conan Doyle's story The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter (1893) Watson mentions Holmes' faculty of observation and his peculiar facility for deduction:
“In your own case,” said I, “from all that you have told me, it seems obvious that your faculty of observation and your peculiar facility for deduction are due to your own systematic training.”
“To some extent,” he answered, thoughtfully. “My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class. But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.”
At the end of her letter to Van Ada mentions an American farmer who finds the parson ‘peculiar’ because he knows Greek. As pointed out by Mlle Larivière (the governess of Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette), Ardis (the name of Daniel Veen's family estate) means in Greek "point of an arrow." Ardis is Sidra (the Gulf of Sidra, a body of water in the Mediterranean Sea on the northern coast of Libya; cf. Van's Reflections in Sidra) in reverse.
In his Ode to a Model (1955) VN mentions virgin practicing archery near a vase and a parapet:
I have followed you, model,
in magazine ads through all seasons,
from dead leaf on the sod
to red leaf on the breeze,
from your lily-white armpit
to the tip of your butterfly eyelash,
charming and pitiful,
silly and stylish.
Or in kneesocks and tartan
standing there like some fabulous symbol,
parted feet pointing outward
— pedal form of akimbo.
On a lawn, in a parody
Of Spring and its cherry tree,
near a vase and a parapet,
virgin practicing archery.
Ballerina, black-masked,
near a parapet of alabaster.
" Can one — somebody asked —
rhyme " star" and " disaster"? "
Can one picture a blackbird
as the negative of a small firebird?
Can a record, run backward,
turn " repaid " into " diaper " ?
Can one marry a model?
Kill your past, make you real, raise a family,
by removing you bodily
from back numbers of Sham?
Because love is blind, Van fails to see that in the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time) Ada is not a virgin. At the end of their long lives (even on the last day of their lives) Ada tells Van that he should have married Lucette, sitting feet up, in ballerina black, on the stone balustrade:
‘Oh, Van, oh Van, we did not love her enough. That’s whom you should have married, the one sitting feet up, in ballerina black, on the stone balustrade, and then everything would have been all right — I would have stayed with you both in Ardis Hall, and instead of that happiness, handed out gratis, instead of all that we teased her to death!’ (5.6)
"We teased her to death" brings to mind "you dear little tease" (the last words in Conan Doyle's poem The Blind Archer). Conan Doyle's blind archer is Cupid (the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection). In his poem Amur i Gimeney ("Amor and Hymen," 1816) Pushkin says that Amor is not blind at all:
Сегодня, добрые мужья,
Повеселю вас новой сказкой.
Знавали ль вы, мои друзья,
Слепого мальчика с повязкой?
Слепого?... вот помилуй, Феб!
Амур совсем, друзья, не слеп,
Но шалости — его забавы:
Ему хотелось — о лукавый! —
Чтоб, людям на смех и на зло,
Его Дурачество вело.
Дурачество ведет Амура;
Но скоро богу моему
Наскучила богиня дура,
Не знаю верно почему...
Amor who in Pushkin's poem is led by Durachestvo (Foolishness) brings to mind Durak Walter (as Daniel Veen is known in society) and a dove hole marked RE AMOR in his Manhattan office:
Poor Dan’s erotic life was neither complicated nor beautiful, but somehow or other (he soon forgot the exact circumstances as one forgets the measurements and price of a fondly made topcoat worn on and off for at least a couple of seasons) he fell comfortably in love with Marina, whose family he had known when they still had their Raduga place (later sold to Mr Eliot, a Jewish businessman). One afternoon in the spring of 1871, he proposed to Marina in the Up elevator of Manhattan’s first ten-floor building, was indignantly rejected at the seventh stop (Toys), came down alone and, to air his feelings, set off in a counter-Fogg direction on a triple trip round the globe, adopting, like an animated parallel, the same itinerary every time. In November 1871, as he was in the act of making his evening plans with the same smelly but nice cicerone in a café-au-lait suit whom he had hired already twice at the same Genoese hotel, an aerocable from Marina (forwarded with a whole week’s delay via his Manhattan office which had filed it away through a new girl’s oversight in a dove hole marked RE AMOR) arrived on a silver salver telling him she would marry him upon his return to America. (1.1)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Mr Eliot: we shall meet him again, on pages 361 and 396, in company of the author of ‘The Waistline’ and ‘Agonic Lines’.
Counter-Fogg: Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne’s globetrotter, travelled from West to East.
In VN's novel Zashchita Luzhina ("The Luzhin Defense," 1930) Sherlock Holmes is paired with Phileas Fogg, the hero of Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days (1872):
Были и книги. Книги, сочиненные отцом, в золото-красных, рельефных обложках, с надписью от руки на первой странице: "Горячо надеюсь, что мой сын всегда будет относиться к животным и людям так, как Антоша",- и большой восклицательный знак. Или: "Эту книгу я писал, думая о твоем будущем, мой сын". Эти надписи вызывали в нем смутный стыд за отца, а самые книжки были столь же скучны, как "Слепой музыкант" или "Фрегат Паллада". Большой том Пушкина, с портретом толстогубого курчавого мальчика, не открывался никогда. Зато были две книги - обе, подаренные ему тетей,- которые он полюбил на всю жизнь, держал в памяти, словно под увеличительным стеклом, и так страстно пережил, что через двадцать лет, снова их перечитав, он увидел в них только суховатый пересказ, сокращенное издание, как будто они отстали от того неповторимого, бессмертного образа, который они в нем оставили. Но не жажда дальних странствий заставляла его следовать по пятам Филеаса Фогга и не ребячливая склонность к таинственным приключениям влекла его в дом на Бэкер-стрит, где, впрыснув себе кокаину, мечтательно играл на скрипке долговязый сыщик с орлиным профилем. Только гораздо позже он сак себе уяснил, чем так волновали его эти две книги: правильно и безжалостно развивающийся узор,- Филеас, манекен в цилиндре, совершающий свой сложный изящный путь с оправданными жертвами, то на слоне, купленном за миллион, то на судне, которое нужно наполовину сжечь на топливо; и Шерлок, придавший логике прелесть грезы, Шерлок, составивший монографию о пепле всех видов сигар, и с этим пеплом, как с талисманом, пробирающийся сквозь хрустальный лабиринт возможных дедукций к единственному сияющему выводу. Фокусник, которого на Рождестве пригласили его родители, каким-то образом слил в себе на время Фогга и Холмса, и странное наслаждение, испытанное им в тот день, сгладило все то неприятное, что сопровождало выступление фокусника.
There were also books. Books written by his father, with red and gold embossed bindings and a handwritten inscription on the first page: I earnestly hope that my son will always treat animals and people the same way as Tony, and a big exclamation mark. Or: I wrote this book thinking of your future, my son. These inscriptions inspired in him a vague feeling of shame for his father, and the books themselves were as boring as Korolenko’s The Blind Musician or Goncharov’s The Frigate Pallas. A large volume of Pushkin with a picture of a thick-lipped, curly-haired boy on it was never opened. On the other hand there were two books, both given him by his aunt, with which he had fallen in love for his whole life, holding them in his memory as if under a magnifying glass, and experiencing them so intensely that twenty years later, when he read them over again, he saw only a dryisli paraphrase, an abridged edition, as if they had been outdistanced by the unrepeatable, immortal image that he had retained. But it was not a thirst for distant peregrinations that forced him to follow on the heels of Phileas Fogg, nor was it a boyish inclination for mysterious adventures that drew him to that house on Baker Street, where the lanky detective with the hawk profile, having given himself an injection of cocaine, would dreamily play the violin. Only much later did he clarify in his own mind what it was that had thrilled him so about these two books; it was that exact and relentlessly unfolding pattern: Phileas, the dummy in the top hat, wending his complex elegant way with its justifiable sacrifices, now on an elephant bought for a million, now on a ship of which half has to be burned for fuel; and Sherlock endowing logic with the glamour of a daydream, Sherlock composing a monograph on the ash of all known sorts of cigars and with this ash as with a talisman progressing through a crystal labyrinth of possible deductions to the one radiant conclusion. The conjuror whom his parents engaged to perform on Christmas day somehow managed to blend in himself briefly both Fogg and Holmes, and the strange pleasure which Luzhin experienced on that day obliterated all the unpleasantness that accompanied the performance. (Chapter Two)
On the eve of his suicide poor Luzhin tells his wife that he has to visit the dentist:
Но следующий ход подготовлялся очень медленно. Два-три дня продолжалось затишье; Лужин снимался для паспорта, и фотограф брал его за подбородок, поворачивал ему чуть-чуть лицо, просил открыть рот пошире и сверлил ему зуб с напряженным жужжанием. Жужжание прекращалось, дантист искал на стеклянной полочке что-то, и, найдя, ставил штемпель на паспорте, и писал, быстро-быстро двигая пером. "Пожалуйста",- говорил он, подавая бумагу, где были нарисованы зубы в два ряда, и на двух зубах стояли чернилом сделанные крестики. Во всем этом ничего подозрительного не было, и это лукавое затишье продолжалось до четверга. И в четверг Лужин все понял.
Еще накануне ему пришел в голову любопытный прием, которым, пожалуй, можно было обмануть козни таинственного противника. Прием состоял в том, чтобы по своей воле совершить какое-нибудь нелепое, но неожиданное действие, которое бы выпадало из общей планомерности жизни и таким образом путало бы дальнейшее сочетание ходов, задуманных противником. Защита была пробная, защита, так сказать наудачу,- но Лужин, шалея от ужаса перед неизбежностью следующего повторения, ничего не мог найти лучшего. В четверг днем, сопровождая жену и тещу по магазинам, он вдруг остановился и воскликнул: "Дантист. Я забыл дантиста". "Какие глупости, Лужин,- сказала жена.- Ведь вчера же он сказал, что все сделано". "Нажимать,- проговорил Лужин и поднял палец.- Если будет нажимать пломба. Говорилось, что если 6удет нажимать, чтобы я приехал пунктуально в четыре. Нажимает. Без десяти четыре". "Вы что-то спутали,- улыбнулась жена.- Но, конечно, если болит, поезжайте. А потом возвращайтесь домой, я буду дома к шести". "Поужинайте у нас",- сказала с мольбой в голосе мать. "Нет, у нас вечером гости,- гости, которых ты не любишь". Лужин махнул тростью в знак прощания и влез в таксомотор, кругло согнув спину. "Маленький маневр",- усмехнулся он и, почувствовав, что ему жарко, расстегнул пальто. После первого же поворота он остановил таксомотор, заплатил и не торопясь пошел домой. И тут ему вдруг показалось, что когда-то он все это уже раз проделал, и он так испугался, что завернул в первый попавшийся магазин, решив новой неожиданностью перехитрить противника. Магазин оказался парикмахерской, да притом дамской. Лужин, озираясь, остановился, и улыбающаяся женщина спросила у него, что ему надо. "Купить..." - сказал Лужин, продолжая озираться, Тут он увидел восковой бюст и указал на него тростью (неожиданный ход, великолепный ход). "Это не для продажи",- сказала женщина. "Двадцать марок",- сказал Лужин и вынул бумажник. "Вы хотите купить эту куклу?"- недоверчиво спросила женщина, и подошел еще кто-то. "Да",- сказал Лужин и стал разглядывать восковое лицо. "Осторожно,- шепнул он вдруг самому себе,- я, кажется, попадаюсь". Взгляд восковой дамы, ее розовые ноздри,- это тоже было когда-то. "Шутка",- сказал Лужин и поспешно вышел из парикмахерской. Ему стало отвратительно неприятно, он прибавил шагу, хотя некуда было спешить. "Домой, домой,- бормотал он,- там хорошенько все скомбинирую". Подходя к дому, он заметил, что у подъезда остановился большой, зеркально-черный автомобиль. Господин в котелке что-то спрашивал у швейцара. Швейцар, увидав Лужина, вдруг протянул палец и крикнул: "Вот он!" Господин обернулся.
..Слегка посмуглевший, отчего белки глаз казались светлее, все такой же нарядный, в пальто с котиковым воротником шалью, в большом белом шелковом кашне, Валентинов шагнул к Лужину с обаятельной улыбкой,- озарил Лужина, словно из прожектора, и при свете, которым он обдал его, увидел полное, бледное лужинское лицо, моргающие веки, и в следующий миг это бледное лицо потеряло всякое выражение, и рука, которую Валентинов сжимал в обеих ладонях, была совершенно безвольная. "Дорогой мой,- просиял словами Валентинов,- счастлив тебя увидеть. Мне говорили, что ты в постели, болен, дорогой. Но ведь это какая-то путаница"... И, при ударении на "путаница", Валентинов выпятил красные, мокрые губы и сладко сузил глаза. "Однако, нежности отложим на потом,- перебил он себя и со стуком надел котелок.- Едем, Дело исключительной важности, и промедление было бы... губительно",- докончил он, отпахнув дверцу автомобиля; после чего,, обняв Лужина за спину, как будто поднял его с земли и увлек, и усадил, упав с ним рядом на низкое, мягкое сиденье. На стульчике, спереди, сидел боком небольшой, востроносый человечек, с поднятым воротником пальто. Валентинов, как только откинулся и скрестил ноги, стал продолжать разговор с этим человеком, разговор, прерванный на запятой и теперь ускоряющийся по мере того, как расходился автомобиль. Язвительно и чрезвычайно обстоятельно он распекал его, не обращая никакого внимания на Лужина, который сидел, как бережно прислоненная к чему-то статуя, совершенно оцепеневший и слышавший, как бы сквозь тяжелую завесу, смутное, отдаленное рокотание Валентинова, Для востроносого это было не рокотание, а очень хлесткие, обидные слова,- но сила была на стороне Валентинова, и обижаемый только вздыхал да ковырял с несчастным видом сальное пятно на черном своем пальтишке, а иногда, при особенно метком словце, поднимал брови и смотрел на Валентинова, но, не выдержав этого сверкания, сразу жмурился и тихо мотал головой. Распекание продолжалось до самого конца поездки, и, когда Валентинов мягко вытолкнул Лужина на панель и захлопнул за собой дверцу, добитый человечек продолжал сидеть внутри, и автомобиль сразу повез его дальше, и, хотя места было теперь много, он остался, уныло сгорбленный, на переднем стульчике. Лужин меж тем уставился неподвижным и бессмысленным взглядом на белую, как яичная скорлупа, дощечку с черной надписью "Веритас", но Валентинов сразу увлек его дальше и опустил в кожаное кресло из породы клубных, которое было еще более цепким и вязким, чем сиденье автомобиля. В этот миг кто-то взволнованным голосом позвал Валентинова, и он, вдвинув в ограниченное поле лужинского зрения открытую коробку сигар, извинился и исчез. Звук его голоса остался дрожать в комнате, и для Лужина, медленно выходившего из оцепенения, он стал постепенно и вкрадчиво превращаться в некий обольстительный образ. При звуке этого голоса, при музыке шахматного соблазна, Лужин вспомнил с восхитительной, влажной печалью, свойственной воспоминаниям любви, тысячу партий, сыгранных им когда-то. Он не знал, какую выбрать, чтобы со слезами насладиться ею, все привлекало и ласкало воображение, и он летал от одной к другой, перебирая на миг раздирающие душу комбинации. Были комбинации чистые н стройные, где мысль всходила к победе по мраморным ступеням; были нежные содрогания в уголке доски, и страстный взрыв, и фанфара ферзя, идущего на жертвенную гибель... Все было прекрасно, все переливы любви, все излучины и таинственные тропы, избранные ею. И эта любовь была гибельна.
Ключ найден. Цель атаки ясна. Неумолимым повторением ходов она приводит опять к той же страсти, разрушающей жизненный сон. Опустошение, ужас, безумие.
But the next move was prepared very slowly. The lull continued for two or three days; Luzhin was photographed for his passport, and the photographer took him by the chin, turned his face slightly to one side, asked him to open his mouth wide and drilled his tooth with a tense buzzing. The buzzing ceased, the dentist looked for something on a glass shelf, found it, rubber-stamped Luzhin's passport and wrote with lightning-quick movements of the pen. "There," he said, handing over a document on which two rows of teeth were drawn, and two teeth bore inked-in little crosses. There was nothing suspicious in all this and the cunning lull continued until Thursday. And on Thursday, Luzhin understood everything.
Already the day before he had thought of an interesting device, a device with which he could, perhaps, foil the designs of his mysterious opponent. The device consisted in voluntarily committing some absurd unexpected act that would be outside the systematic order of life, thus confusing the sequence of moves planned by his opponent. It was an experimental defense, a defense, so to say, at random--but Luzhin, crazed with terror before the inevitability of the next move, was able to find nothing better. So on Thursday afternoon, while accompanying his wife and mother-in-law round the stores, he suddenly stopped and exclaimed: "The dentist. I forgot the dentist." "Nonsense, Luzhin," said his wife. "Why, yesterday he said that everything was done." "Uncomfortable," said Luzhin and raised a finger. "If the filling feels uncomfortable ... It was said that if it feels uncomfortable I should come punctually at four. It feels uncomfortable. It is ten minutes to four." "You've got something wrong," smiled his wife, "but of course you must go if it hurts. And then go home. I'll come around six." "Have supper with us," said her mother with an entreaty in her voice. "No, we have guests this evening," said Mrs. Luzhin, "guests whom you don't like." Luzhin waved his cane in sign of farewell and climbed into a taxi, bending his back roundly. "A small maneuver," he chuckled, and feeling hot, unbuttoned his overcoat. After the very first turn he stopped the taxi, paid, and set off home at a leisurely pace. And here it suddenly seemed to him that he had done all this once before and he was so frightened that he turned into the first available store, deciding to outsmart his opponent with a new surprise. The store turned out to be a hairdresser's, and a ladies' one at that. Luzhin, looking around him, came to a halt, and a smiling woman asked him what he wanted. "To buy..." said Luzhin, continuing to look around. At this point he caught sight of a wax bust and pointed to it with his cane (an unexpected move, a magnificent move). "That's not for sale," said the woman. "Twenty marks," said Luzhin and took out his pocketbook. "You want to buy that dummy?" asked the woman unbelievingly, and somebody else came up. "Yes," said Luzhin and began to examine the waxen face. "Careful," he whispered to himself, "I may be tumbling into a trap!" The wax lady's look, her pink nostrils--this also had happened before. "A joke," said Luzhin and hastily left the hairdresser's. He felt disgustingly uncomfortable and quickened his step, although there was nowhere to hurry. "Home, home," he muttered, "there I'll combine everything properly." As he approached the house he noticed a large, glossy-black limousine that had stopped by the entrance. A gentleman in a bowler was asking the janitor something. The janitor, seeing Luzhin, suddenly pointed and cried: "There he is!" The gentleman turned around.
A bit swarthier, which brought out the whites of his eyes, as smartly dressed as ever, wearing an overcoat with a black fur collar and a large, white silk scarf, Valentinov strode toward Luzhin with an enchanting smile, illuminating Luzhin with this searchlight, and in the light that played on Luzhin he saw Luzhin's pale, fat face and blinking eyelids, and at the next instant this pale face lost all expression and the hand that Valentinov pressed in both of his was completely limp. "My dear boy," said radiant Valentinov, "I'm happy to see you. They told me you were in bed, ill, dear boy. But that was some kind of slipup..." and in stressing the "pup" Valentinov pursed his wet, red lips and tenderly narrowed his eyes. "However, we'll postpone the compliments till later," he said, interrupting himself, and put on his bowler with a thump. "Let's go. It's a matter of exceptional importance and delay would be... fatal," he concluded, throwing open the door of the car; after which he put his arm around Luzhin's back and seemed to lift him from the ground and carry him off and plant him down, falling down next to him onto the low, soft seat. On the jump seat facing them a sharp-nosed yellow-faced little man sat sideways, with his overcoat collar turned up. As soon as Valentinov had settled and crossed his legs, he resumed his conversation with this little man, a conversation that had been interrupted at a comma and now gathered speed in time with the accelerating automobile. Caustically and exhaustively he continued to bawl him out, paying no attention to Luzhin, who was sitting like a statue that had been carefully leaned against something. He had completely frozen up and heard remote, muffled Valentinov's rumbling as if through a heavy curtain. For the fellow with the sharp nose it was not a rumbling, but a torrent of extremely biting and insulting words; force, however, was on Valentinov's side and the one being insulted merely sighed, and looked miserable, and picked at a grease spot on his skimpy black overcoat; and now and then, at some especially trenchant word, he would raise his eyebrows and look at Valentinov, but the latter's flashing gaze was too much for him and he immediately shut his eyes tight and gently shook his head. The bawling out continued to the very end of the journey and when Valentinov softly nudged Luzhin out of the car and got out himself slamming the door behind him, the crushed little man continued to sit inside and the automobile immediately carried him on, and although there was lots of room now he remained dejectedly hunched up on the little jump seat. Luzhin meanwhile fixed his motionless and expressionless gaze on an eggshell-white plaque with a black inscription, VERITAS, but Valentinov immediately swept him farther and lowered him into an armchair of the club variety that was even more tenacious and quaggy than the car seat. At this moment someone called Valentinov in an agitated voice, and after pushing an open box of cigars into Luzhin's limited field of vision he excused himself and disappeared. His voice remained vibrating in the room and for Luzhin, who was slowly emerging from his stupefaction, it gradually and surreptitiously began to be transformed into a bewitching image. To the sound of this voice, to the music of the chessboard's evil lure, Luzhin recalled, with the exquisite, moist melancholy peculiar to recollections of love, a thousand games that he had played in the past. He did not know which of them to choose so as to drink, sobbing, his fill of it: everything enticed and caressed his fancy, and he flew from one game to another, instantly running over this or that heart-rending combination. There were combinations, pure and harmonious, where thought ascended marble stairs to victory; there were tender stirrings in one corner of the board, and a passionate explosion, and the fanfare of the Queen going to its sacrificial doom.... Everything was wonderful, all the shades of love, all the convolutions and mysterious paths it had chosen. And this love was fatal.
The key was found. The aim of the attack was plain. By an implacable repetition of moves it was leading once more to that same passion which would destroy the dream of life. Devastation, horror, madness. (Chapter 14)
Describing Daniel Veen's death, Van mentions Mrs. Arfour, the dentist's widow:
They took a great many precautions — all absolutely useless, for nothing can change the end (written and filed away) of the present chapter. Only Lucette and the agency that forwarded letters to him and to Ada knew Van’s address. Through an amiable lady in waiting at Demon’s bank, Van made sure that his father would not turn up in Manhattan before March 30. They never came out or went in together, arranging a meeting place at the Library or in an emporium whence to start the day’s excursions — and it so happened that the only time they broke that rule (she having got stuck in the lift for a few panicky moments and he having blithely trotted downstairs from their common summit), they issued right into the visual field of old Mrs Arfour who happened to be passing by their front door with her tiny tan-and-gray long-silked Yorkshire terrier. The simultaneous association was immediate and complete: she had known both families for years and was now interested to learn from chattering (rather than chatting) Ada that Van had happened to be in town just when she, Ada, had happened to return from the West; that Marina was fine; that Demon was in Mexico or Oxmice; and that Lenore Colline had a similar adorable pet with a similar adorable parting along the middle of the back. That same day (February 3, 1893) Van rebribed the already gorged janitor to have him answer all questions which any visitor, and especially a dentist’s widow with a caterpillar dog, might ask about any Veens, with a brief assertion of utter ignorance. The only personage they had not reckoned with was the old scoundrel usually portrayed as a skeleton or an angel.
Van’s father had just left one Santiago to view the results of an earthquake in another, when Ladore Hospital cabled that Dan was dying. He set off at once for Manhattan, eyes blazing, wings whistling. He had not many interests in life.
At the airport of the moonlit white town we call Tent, and Tobakov’s sailors, who built it, called Palatka, in northern Florida, where owing to engine trouble he had to change planes, Demon made a long-distance call and received a full account of Dan’s death from the inordinately circumstantial Dr Nikulin (grandson of the great rodentiologist Kunikulinov — we can’t get rid of the lettuce). Daniel Veen’s life had been a mixture of the ready-made and the grotesque; but his death had shown an artistic streak because of its reflecting (as his cousin, not his doctor, instantly perceived) the man’s latterly conceived passion for the paintings, and faked paintings, associated with the name of Hieronymus Bosch.
Next day, February 5, around nine p.m., Manhattan (winter) time, on the way to Dan’s lawyer, Demon noted — just as he was about to cross Alexis Avenue, an ancient but insignificant acquaintance, Mrs Arfour, advancing toward him, with her toy terrier, along his side of the street. Unhesitatingly, Demon stepped off the curb, and having no hat to raise (hats were not worn with raincloaks and besides he had just taken a very exotic and potent pill to face the day’s ordeal on top of a sleepless journey), contented himself — quite properly — with a wave of his slim umbrella; recalled with a paint dab of delight one of the gargle girls of her late husband; and smoothly passed in front of a slow-clopping horse-drawn vegetable cart, well out of the way of Mrs R4. But precisely in regard to such a contingency, Fate had prepared an alternate continuation. As Demon rushed (or, in terms of the pill, sauntered) by the Monaco, where he had often lunched, it occurred to him that his son (whom he had been unable to ‘contact’) might still be living with dull little Cordula de Prey in the penthouse apartment of that fine building. He had never been up there — or had he? For a business consultation with Van? On a sun-hazed terrace? And a clouded drink? (He had, that’s right, but Cordula was not dull and had not been present.)
With the simple and, combinationally speaking, neat, thought that, after all, there was but one sky (white, with minute multicolored optical sparks), Demon hastened to enter the lobby and catch the lift which a ginger-haired waiter had just entered, with breakfast for two on a wiggle-wheel table and the Manhattan Times among the shining, ever so slightly scratched, silver cupolas. Was his son still living up there, automatically asked Demon, placing a piece of nobler metal among the domes. Si, conceded the grinning imbecile, he had lived there with his lady all winter.
‘Then we are fellow travelers,’ said Demon inhaling not without gourmand anticipation the smell of Monaco’s coffee, exaggerated by the shadows of tropical weeds waving in the breeze of his brain. (2.10)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): R4: ‘rook four’, a chess indication of position (pun on the woman’s name).
Demon finds out about his children's affair because of Uncle Dan's Boschean death. When they meet in Mont Roux in October 1905 (half a year after Demon's death), Van tells Ada that, as far as they are concerned, Demon was buried on the same day as their uncle Dan:
‘My upper-lip space feels indecently naked.’ (He had shaved his mustache off with howls of pain in her presence). ‘And I cannot keep sucking in my belly all the time.’
‘Oh, I like you better with that nice overweight — there’s more of you. It’s the maternal gene, I suppose, because Demon grew leaner and leaner. He looked positively Quixotic when I saw him at Mother’s funeral. It was all very strange. He wore blue mourning. D’Onsky’s son, a person with only one arm, threw his remaining one around Demon and both wept comme des jontaines. Then a robed person who looked like an extra in a technicolor incarnation of Vishnu made an incomprehensible sermon. Then she went up in smoke. He said to me, sobbing: "I will not cheat the poor grubs!" Practically a couple of hours after he broke that promise we had sudden visitors at the ranch — an incredibly graceful moppet of eight, black-veiled, and a kind of duenna, also in black, with two bodyguards. The hag demanded certain fantastic sums — which Demon, she said, had not had time to pay, for "popping the hymen" — whereupon I had one of our strongest boys throw out vsyu (the entire) kompaniyu.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Van, ‘they had been growing younger and younger — I mean the girls, not the strong silent boys. His old Rosalind had a ten-year-old niece, a primed chickabiddy. Soon he would have been poaching them from the hatching chamber.’
‘You never loved your father,’ said Ada sadly.
‘Oh, I did and do — tenderly, reverently, understandingly, because, after all, that minor poetry of the flesh is something not unfamiliar to me. But as far as we are concerned, I mean you and I, he was buried on the same day as our uncle Dan.’
‘I know, I know. It’s pitiful! And what use was it? Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you, but his visits to Agavia kept getting rarer and shorter every year. Yes, it was pitiful to hear him and Andrey talking. I mean, Andrey n’a pas le verbe facile, though he greatly appreciated — without quite understanding it — Demon’s wild flow of fancy and fantastic fact, and would often exclaim, with his Russian "tssk-tssk" and a shake of the head — complimentary and all that — "what a balagur (wag) you are!" — And then, one day, Demon warned me that he would not come any more if he heard again poor Andrey’s poor joke (Nu i balagur-zhe vï, Dementiy Labirintovich) or what Dorothy, l’impayable ("priceless for impudence and absurdity") Dorothy, thought of my camping out in the mountains with only Mayo, a cowhand, to protect me from lions.’
‘Could one hear more about that?’ asked Van.
‘Well, nobody did. All this happened at a time when I was not on speaking terms with my husband and sister-in-law, and so could not control the situation. Anyhow, Demon did not come even when he was only two hundred miles away and simply mailed instead, from some gaming house, your lovely, lovely letter about Lucette and my picture.’
‘One would also like to know some details of the actual coverture — frequence of intercourse, pet names for secret warts, favorite smells —’
‘Platok momental’no (handkerchief quick)! Your right nostril is full of damp jade,’ said Ada, and then pointed to a lawnside circular sign, rimmed with red, saying: Chiens interdits and depicting an impossible black mongrel with a white ribbon around its neck: Why, she wondered, should the Swiss magistrates forbid one to cross highland terriers with poodles? (3.8)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): D’Onsky: see p.17.
comme etc.: shedding floods of tears.
N’a pas le verbe etc.: lacks the gift of the gab.
chiens etc.: dogs not allowed.
Van does not realize that his father died, because Ada (who could not pardon Demon his forcing Van to give her up) managed to persuade the pilot to destroy his machine in midair.