Vladimir Nabokov Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle 14 страница

At ten minutes to five, Bout quietly came in with a lighted kerosene lamp and an invitation from Marina for a chat in her room. As Bout passed by the globe he touched it and looked with disapproval at his smudged finger. ‘The world is dusty, ’ he said. ‘Blanche should be sent back to her native village. Elle est folle et mauvaise, cette fille. ’

‘Okay, okay, ’ muttered Van, going back to his book. Bout left the room, still shaking his silly cropped head, and Van, yawning, allowed Rattner to slide down from the black divan on to the black carpet.

When he looked up again at the clock, it was gathering its strength to strike. He hastily got up from his couch recalling that Blanche had just come in to ask him to complain to Marina that Mlle Ada had again refused to give her a lift to ‘Beer Tower, ’ as local jokers called her poor village. For a few moments the brief dim dream was so closely fused with the real event that even when he recalled Bout’s putting his finger on the rhomboid peninsula where the Allies had just landed (as proclaimed by the Ladore newspaper spread-eagled on the library table), he still clearly saw Blanche wiping Crimea clean with one of Ada’s lost handkerchiefs. He swarmed up the cochlea to the nursery water-closet; heard from afar the governess and her wretched pupil recite speeches from the horrible ‘Berenice’ (a contralto croak alternating with a completely expressionless little voice); and decided that Blanche or rather Marina probably wished to know if he had been serious when he said the other day he would enlist at nineteen, the earliest volunteer age. He also gave a minute’s thought to the sad fact that (as he well knew from his studies) the confusion of two realities, one in single, the other in double, quotes, was a symptom of impending insanity.

Naked-faced, dull-haired, wrapped up in her oldest kimono (her Pedro had suddenly left for Rio), Marina reclined on her mahogany bed under a golden-yellow quilt, drinking tea with mare’s milk, one of her fads.

‘Sit down, have a spot of chayku, ’ she said. ‘The cow is in the smaller jug, I think. Yes, it is. ’ And when Van, having kissed her freckled hand, lowered himself on the ivanilich (a kind of sighing old hassock upholstered in leather): ‘Van, dear, I wish to say something to you, because I know I shall never have to repeat it again. Belle, with her usual flair for the right phrase, has cited to me the cousinage-dangereux-voisinage adage — I mean " adage, " I always fluff that word — and complained qu’on s’embrassait dans tous les coins. Is that true? ’

Van’s mind flashed in advance of his speech. It was, Marina, a fantastic exaggeration. The crazy governess had observed it once when he carried Ada across a brook and kissed her because she had hurt her toe. I’m the well-known beggar in the saddest of all stories.

‘Erunda (nonsense), ’ said Van. ‘She once saw me carrying Ada across the brook and misconstrued our stumbling huddle (spotï kayushcheesya sliyanie). ’

‘I do not mean Ada, silly, ’ said Marina with a slight snort, as she fussed over the teapot. ‘Azov, a Russian humorist, derives erunda from the German hier und da, which is neither here nor there. Ada is a big girl, and big girls, alas, have their own worries. Mlle Lariviè re meant Lucette, of course. Van, those soft games must stop. Lucette is twelve, and naive, and I know it’s all clean fun, yet (odnako) one can never behave too delikatno in regard to a budding little woman. A propos de coins: in Griboedov’s Gore ot uma, " How stupid to be so clever, " a play in verse, written, I think, in Pushkin’s time, the hero reminds Sophie of their childhood games, and says:

How oft we sat together in a corner

And what harm might there be in that?

but in Russian it is a little ambiguous, have another spot, Van? ’ (he shook his head, simultaneously lifting his hand, like his father), ‘because, you see, — no, there is none left anyway — the second line, i kazhetsya chto v etom, can be also construed as " And in that one, meseems, " pointing with his finger at a corner of the room. Imagine — when I was rehearsing that scene with Kachalov at the Seagull Theater, in Yukonsk, Stanislavski, Konstantin Sergeevich, actually wanted him to make that cosy little gesture (uyutnen’kiy zhest). ’

‘How very amusing, ’ said Van.

The dog came in, turned up a brimming brown eye Vanward, toddled up to the window, looked at the rain like a little person, and returned to his filthy cushion in the next room.

‘I could never stand that breed, ’ remarked Van. ‘Dackelophobia. ’

‘But girls — do you like girls, Van, do you have many girls? You are not a pederast, like your poor uncle, are you? We have had some dreadful perverts in our ancestry but — Why do you laugh? ’

‘Nothing, ’ said Van. ‘I just want to put on record that I adore girls. I had my first one when I was fourteen. Mais qui me rendra mon Hé lè ne? She had raven black hair and a skin like skimmed milk. I had lots of much creamier ones later. I kazhetsya chto v etom? ’

‘How strange, how sad! Sad, because I know hardly anything about your life, my darling (moy dushka). The Zemskis were terrible rakes (razvratniki), one of them loved small girls, and another raffolait d’une de ses juments and had her tied up in a special way-don’t ask me how’ (double hand gesture of horrified ignorance ‘— when he dated her in her stall. Kstati (à propos), I could never understand how heredity is transmitted by bachelors, unless genes can jump like chess knights. I almost beat you, last time we played, we must play again, not today, though — I’m too sad today. I would have liked so much to know everything, everything, about you, but now it’s too late. Recollections are always a little " stylized" (stilizovanï ), as your father used to say, an irrisistible and hateful man, and now, even if you showed me your old diaries, I could no longer whip up any real emotional reaction to them, though all actresses can shed tears, as I’m doing now. You see (rummaging for her handkerchief under her pillow), when children are still quite tiny (takie malyutki), we cannot imagine that we can go without them, for even a couple of days, and later we do, and it’s a couple of weeks, and later it’s months, gray years, black decades, and then the opé ra bouffe of the Christians’ eternity. I think even the shortest separation is a kind of training for the Elysian Games — who said that? I said that. And your costume, though very becoming, is, in a sense, traurnï y (funerary). I’m spouting drivel. Forgive me these idiotic tears... Tell me, is there anything I could do for you? Do think up something! Would you like a beautiful, practically new Peruvian scarf, which he left behind, that crazy boy? No? It’s not your style? Now go. And remember — not a word to poor Mlle Lariviè re, who means well! ’

Ada came back just before dinnertime. Worries? He met her as she climbed rather wearily the grand staircase, trailing her vanity bag by its strap up the steps behind her. Worries? She smelled of tobacco, either because (as she said) she had spent an hour in a compartment for smokers, or had smoked (she added) a cigarette or two herself in the doctor’s waiting room, or else because (and this she did not say) her unknown lover was a heavy smoker, his open red mouth full of rolling blue fog.

‘Well? Tout est bien? ’ asked Van after a sketchy kiss. ‘No worries? ’

She glared, or feigned to glare, at him.

‘Van, you should not have rung up Seitz! He does not even know my name! You promised! ’

Pause.

‘I did not, ’ answered Van quietly.

‘Tant mieux, ’ said Ada in the same false voice, as he helped her out of her coat in the corridor. ‘Qui, tout est bien. Will you stop sniffing me over, dear Van? In fact the blessed thing started on the way home. Let me pass, please. ’

Worries of her own? Of her mother’s automatic making? A casual banality? ‘We all have our troubles’?

‘Ada! ’ he cried.

She looked back, before unlocking her (always locked) door. ‘What’! ’

‘Tuzenbakh, not knowing what to say: " I have not had coffee today. Tell them to make me some. " Quickly walks away. ’

‘Very funny! ’ said Ada, and locked herself up in her room.

In mid-July Uncle Dan took Lucette to Kaluga where she was to stay, with Belle and French, for five days. The Lyaskan Ballet and a German circus were in town, and no child would want to miss the schoolgirls’ field-hockey and swimming matches which old Dan, a child at heart, attended religiously at that time of the year; moreover she had to undergo a series of ‘tests’ at the Tarus Hospital to settle what caused her weight and temperature to fluctuate so abnormally despite her eating so heartily and feeling so well.

On the Friday afternoon when her father planned to return with her, he also expected to bring a Kaluga lawyer to Ardis where Demon was to come too, an unusual occurrence. The business to be discussed was the sale of some ‘blue’ (peat-bog) land which belonged to both cousins and which both, for different reasons, were anxious to get rid of. As usually happened with Dan’s most carefully worked-out plans, something misfired, the lawyer could not promise to come till late in the evening, and just before Demon arrived, his cousin aerogrammed a message asking Marina to ‘dine Demon’ without waiting for Dan and Miller.

That kontretan (Marina’s humorous term for a not necessarily nasty surprise) greatly pleased Van. He had seen little of his father that year. He loved him with light-hearted devotion, had worshipped him in boyhood, and respected him staunchly now in his tolerant but better informed youth. Still later a tinge of repulsion (the same he felt in regard to his own immorality) became admixed to the love and the esteem; but, on the other hand, the older he grew the more firmly he felt that he would give his life for his father, at a moment’s notice, with pride and pleasure, in any circumstance imaginable. When Marina, in the late Eighteen-Nineties, in her miserable dotage, used to ramble on, with embarrassing and disgusting details, about dead Demon’s ‘crimes, ’ he felt pity for him and her, but his indifference to Marina and his adoration for his father remained unchanged — to endure thus even now, in the chronologically hardly believable Nineteen-Sixties. No accursed generalizer, with a half-penny mind and dry-fig heart, would be able to explain (and this is my sweetest revenge for all the detractions my lifework has met with) the individual vagaries evolved in those and similar matters. No art and no genius would exist without such vagaries, and this is a final pronouncement, damning all clowns and clods.

When had Demon visited Ardis in recent years? April 23, 1884 (the day Van’s first summer stay there had been suggested, planned, promised). Twice in the summer of 1885 (while Van was climbing mountains in the Western states, and the Veen girls were in Europe). A dinner in 1886, in June or July (where was Van? ). In 1887 for a few days in May (Ada was botanizing with a German woman in Estotia or California. Van was whoring in Chose).

Taking advantage of Lariviè re’s and Lucette’s absence, Van had long dallied with Ada in the comfortable nursery, and was now hanging from the wrong window, which did not give a clear view of the drive, when he heard the rich purr of his father’s motorcar. He dashed downstairs — the speed of his descent causing the heat of the banisters to burn the palm of his hand in a merry way remindful of similar occasions in his boyhood. There was nobody in the hall. Demon had entered the house from a side gallery and was now settled in the sun-dusted music room, wiping his monocle with a special zamshinka (‘shammy’) as he awaited his ‘prebrandial’ brandy (an ancient quip). His hair was dyed a raven black, his teeth were hound-white. His smooth glossy brown face with its trimly clipped black mustache and humid dark eyes beamed at his son, expressing the radiant love which Van reciprocated, and which both vainly tried to camouflage with habitual pleasantry.

‘Hullo, Dad. ’

‘Oh, hullo, Van. ’

Trè s Amé ricain. Schoolyard. There he slams the car door, there he comes through the snow. Always gloves, no overcoat ever. Want to go to the ‘bathroom, ’ Father? My land, sweet land.

‘D’you want to go to the " bathroom"? ’ asked Van, with a twinkle.

‘No thanks, I had my bath this morning. ’ (Quick sigh acknowledging the passage of time: he, too, remembered every detail of those father-and-son dinners at Riverlane, the immediate dutiful offer of the W. C., the hearty masters, the ignoble meal, creamed hash, God save America, embarrassed sons, vulgar fathers, titled Britisher and Greek grandee matching yachts, and yacs, and yoickfests in the Bahamudas. May I transfer inconspicuously this delicious pink-frosted synthesis from my plate to yours, son? ‘You don’t like it, Dad! ’ (acting horribly hurt). God save their poor little American tastebuds.

‘Your new car sounds wonderful, ’ said Van.

‘Doesn’t it? Yes. ’ (Ask Van about that gornishon — Franco-Russian slang of the meanest grade for a cute kameristochka). ‘And how is everything, my dear boy? I saw you last the day you returned from Chose. We waste life in separations! We are the fools of fate! Oh let’s spend a month together in Paris or London before the Michaelmas term! ’

Demon shed his monocle and wiped his eyes with the modish lace-frilled handkerchief that lodged in the heart pocket of his dinner jacket. His tear glands were facile in action when no real sorrow made him control himself.

‘You look quite satanically fit, Dad. Especially with that fresh oeillet in your lapel eye. I suppose you have not been much in Manhattan lately — where did you get its last syllable? ’

Homespun pun in the Veenish vein.

‘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 nè gre, au champ qui fleuronne, ’ and the admirable abdomen of a very expensive, and very faithless and altogether adorable young Cré ole.

‘Did what’s-her-name go with you? ’

‘Well, my boy, frankly, the nomenclature is getting more and more confused every year. Let us speak of plainer things. Where are the drinks? They were promised me by a passing angel. ’

(Passing angel? )

Van pulled a green bell-cord which sent a melodious message pantryward and caused the old-fashioned, bronze-framed little aquarium, with its lone convict cichlid, to bubble antiphonally in a corner of the music room (an eerie, perhaps self-aerating reaction, which only Kim Beauharnais, the kitchen boy, understood). ‘Should he ring her up after dinner, ’ wondered Demon. What time would it be there? Not much use, bad for the heart.

‘I don’t know if you know, ’ said Van, resuming his perch on the fat arm of his father’s chair. ‘Uncle Dan will be here with the lawyer and Lucette only after dinner. ’

‘Capital, ’ said Demon.

‘Marina and Ada should be down in a minute — ce sera un dî ner à quatre. ’

‘Capital, ’ he repeated. ‘You look splendid, my dear, dear fellow — and I don’t have to exaggerate compliments as some do in regard to an aging man with shoe-shined hair. Your dinner jacket is very nice — or, rather it’s very nice recognizing one’s old tailor in one’s son’s clothes — like catching oneself repeating an ancestral mannerism — for example, this (wagging his left forefinger three times at the height of his temple), which my mother did in casual, pacific denial; that gene missed you, but I’ve seen it in my hairdresser’s looking-glass when refusing to have him put Crê mlin on my bald spot; and you know who had it too — my aunt Kitty, who married the Banker Bolenski after divorcing that dreadful old wencher Lyovka Tolstoy, the writer. ’

Demon preferred Walter Scott to Dickens, and did not think highly of Russian novelists. As usual, Van considered it fit to make a corrective comment:

‘A fantastically artistic writer, Dad. ’

‘You are a fantastically charming boy, ’ said Demon, shedding another sweet-water tear. He pressed to his cheek Van’s strong shapely hand. Van kissed his father’s hairy fist which was already holding a not yet visible glass of liquor. Despite the manly impact of their Irishness, all Veens who had Russian blood revealed much tenderness in ritual overflows of affection while remaining somewhat inept in its verbal expression.

‘I say, ’ exclaimed Demon, ‘what’s happened — your shaftment is that of a carpenter’s. Show me your other hand. Good gracious’ (muttering: ) ‘Hump of Venus disfigured, Line of Life scarred but monstrously long... ’ (switching to a gipsy chant: ) ‘You’ll live to reach Terra, and come back a wiser and merrier man’ (reverting to his ordinary voice: ) ‘What puzzles me as a palmist is the strange condition of the Sister of your Life. And the roughness! ’

‘Mascodagama, ’ whispered Van, raising his eyebrows.

‘Ah, of course, how blunt (dumb) of me. Now tell me — you like Ardis Hall? ’

‘I adore it, ’ said Van. ‘It’s for me the châ teau que baignait la Dore. I would gladly spend all my scarred and strange life here. But that’s a hopeless fancy. ’

‘Hopeless? I wonder. I know Dan wants to leave it to Lucile, but Dan is greedy, and my affairs are such that I can satisfy great greed. When I was your age I thought that the sweetest word in the language rhymes with " billiard, " and now I know I was right. If you’re really keen, son, on having this property, I might try to buy it. I can exert a certain pressure upon my Marina. She sighs like a hassock when you sit upon her, so to speak. Damn it, the servants here are not Mercuries. Pull that cord again. Yes, maybe Dan could be made to sell. ’

‘That’s very black of you, Dad, ’ said pleased Van, using a slang phrase he had learned from his tender young nurse, Ruby, who was born in the Mississippi region where most magistrates, public benefactors, high priests of various so-called’ denominations, ’ and other honorable and generous men, had the dark or darkish skin of their West-African ancestors, who had been the first navigators to reach the Gulf of Mexico.

‘I wonder, ’ Demon mused. ‘It would cost hardly more than a couple of millions minus what Cousin Dan owes me, minus also the Ladore pastures, which are utterly mucked up and should be got rid of gradually, if the local squires don’t blow up that new kerosene distillery, the stï d i sram (shame) of our county. I am not particularly fond of Ardis, but I have nothing against it, though I detest its environs. Ladore Town has become very honky-tonky, and the gaming is not what it used to be. You have all sorts of rather odd neighbors. Poor Lord Erminin is practically insane. At the races, the other day, I was talking to a woman I preyed upon years ago, oh long before Moses de Vere cuckolded her husband in my absence and shot him dead in my presence — an epigram you’ve heard before, no doubt from these very lips —’

(The next thing will be ‘paternal repetitiousness. ’)

‘— but a good son should put up with a little paternal repetitiousness — Well, she tells me her boy and Ada see a lot of each other, et cetera. Is that true? ’

‘Not really, ’ said Van. ‘They meet now and then — at the usual parties. Both like horses, and races, but that’s all. There is no et cetera, that’s out of the question. ’

‘Good! Ah, the portentous footfall is approaching, I hear. Prascovie de Prey has the worst fault of a snob: overstatement. Bonsoir, Bouteillan. You look as ruddy as your native vine — but we are not getting any younger, as the amerlocks say, and that pretty messenger of mine must have been waylaid by some younger and more fortunate suitor. ’

‘Proshu, papochka (please, Dad), ’ murmured Van, who always feared that his father’s recondite jests might offend a menial — while sinning himself by being sometimes too curt.

But — to use a hoary narrational turn — the old Frenchman knew his former master too well to be bothered by gentlemanly humor. His hand still tingled nicely from slapping Blanche’s compact young bottom for having garbled Mr Veen’s simple request and broken a flower vase. After placing his tray on a low table he retreated a few steps, his fingers remaining curved in the tray-carrying position, and only then acknowledged Demon’s welcome with a fond bow. Was Monsieur’s health always good? Indeed it was.

‘I’ll want, ’ said Demon, ‘a bottle of your Châ teau Latour d’Estoc for dinner’; and when the butler, having removed en passant a crumpled little handkerchief from the piano top, had left the room with another salute: ‘How do you get along with Ada? She’s what — almost sixteen now? Very musical and romantic? ’

‘We are close friends, ’ said Van (who had carefully prepared his answer to a question he had expected to come in one form or another). ‘We have really more things in common than, for instance, ordinary lovers or cousins or siblings. I mean, we are really inseparable. We read a lot, she is spectacularly self-educated, thanks to her granddad’s library. She knows the names of all the flowers and finches in the neighborhood. She is altogether a very amusing girl. ’

‘Van..., ’ began Demon, but stopped — as he had begun and stopped a number of times before in the course of the last years. Some day it would have to be said, but this was not the right moment. He inserted his monocle and examined the bottles: ‘By the way, son, do you crave any of these aperitifs? My father allowed me Lilletovka and that Illinois Brat — awful bilge, antranou svadi, as Marina would say. I suspect your uncle has a cache behind the solanders in his study and keeps there a finer whisky than this usque ad Russkum. Well, let us have the cognac, as planned, unless you are a filius aquae? ’

(No pun intended, but one gets carried away and goofs. )

‘Oh, I prefer claret. I’ll concentrate (nalyagu) on the Latour later on. No, I’m certainly no T-totaler, and besides the Ardis tap water is not recommended! ’

‘I must warn Marina, ’ said Demon after a gum-rinse and a slow swallow, ‘that her husband should stop swilling tittery, and stick to French and Califrench wines — after that little stroke he had. I met him in town recently, near Mad Avenue, saw him walking toward me quite normally, but then as he caught sight of me, a block away, the clockwork began slowing down and he stopped — oh, helplessly! — before he reached me. That’s hardly normal. Okay. Let our sweethearts never meet, as we used to say, up at Chose. Only Yukonians think cognac is bad for the liver, because they have nothing but vodka. Well, I’m glad you get along so well with Ada. That’s fine. A moment ago, in that gallery, I ran into a remarkably pretty soubrette. She never once raised her lashes and answered in French when I — Please, my boy, move that screen a little, that’s right, the stab of a sunset, especially from under a thunderhead, is not for my poor eyes. Or poor ventricles. Do you like the type, Van — the bowed little head, the bare neck, the high heels, the trot, the wiggle, you do, don’t you? ’

‘Well, sir —’

(Tell him I’m the youngest Venutian? Does he belong, too? Show the sign? Better not. Invent. )

‘— Well, I’m resting after my torrid affair, in London, with my tango-partner whom you saw me dance with when you flew over for that last show — remember? ’

‘Indeed, I do. Curious, you calling it that. ’

‘I think, sir, you’ve had enough brandy. ’

‘Sure, sure, ’ said Demon, wrestling with a subtle question which only the ineptitude of a kindred conjecture had crowded out of Marina’s mind, granted it could have entered by some back door; for ineptitude is always synonymous with multitude, and nothing is fuller than an empty mind.

‘Naturally, ’ continued Demon, ‘there is a good deal to be said for a restful summer in the country... ’

‘Open-air life and all that, ’ said Van.

‘It is incredible that a young boy should control his father’s liquor intake, ’ remarked Demon, pouring himself a fourth shallow. ‘On the other hand, ’ he went on, nursing the thin-stemmed, gold-rimmed cup, ‘open-air life may be pretty bleak without a summer romance, and not many decent girls haunt the neighborhood, I agree. There was that lovely Erminin girl, une petite juive trè s aristocratique, but I understand she’s engaged. By the way, the de Prey woman tells me her son has enlisted and will soon be taking part in that deplorable business abroad which our country should have ignored. I wonder if he leaves any rivals behind? ’

‘Goodness no, ’ replied honest Van. ‘Ada is a serious young lady. She has no beaux — except me, ç a va seins durs. Now who, who, who, Dad, who said that for " sans dire"? ’

‘Oh! King Wing! When I wanted to know how he liked his French wife. Well, that’s fine news about Ada. She likes horses, you say? ’

‘She likes, ’ said Van, ‘what all our belles like — balls, orchids, and The Cherry Orchard. ’

Here Ada herself came running into the room. Yes-yes-yes-yes, here I come. Beaming!

Old Demon, iridescent wings humped, half rose but sank back again, enveloping Ada with one arm, holding his glass in the other hand, kissing the girl in the neck, in the hair, burrowing in her sweetness with more than an uncle’s fervor. ‘Gosh, ’ she exclaimed (with an outbreak of nursery slang that affected Van with even more umilenie, attendrissement, melting ravishment, than his father seemed to experience). ‘How lovely to see you! Clawing your way through the clouds! Swooping down on Tamara’s castle! ’

(Lermontov paraphrased by Lowden).

‘The last time I enjoyed you, ’ said Demon ‘was in April when you wore a raincoat with a white and black scarf and simply reeked of some arsenic stuff after seeing your dentist. Dr Pearlman has married his receptionist, you’ll be glad to know. Now to business, my darling. I accept your dress’ (the sleeveless black sheath), ‘I tolerate your romantic hairdo, I don’t care much for your pumps na bosu nogu (on bare feet), your Beau Masque perfume — passe encore, but, my precious, I abhor and reject your livid lipstick. It may be the fashion in good old Ladore. It is not done in Man or London. ’

‘Ladno (Okay), ’ said Ada and, baring her big teeth, rubbed fiercely her lips with a tiny handkerchief produced from her bosom.

‘That’s also provincial. You should carry a black silk purse. And now I’ll show what a diviner I am: your dream is to be a concert pianist! ’

‘It is not, ’ said Van indignantly. ‘What perfect nonsense. She can’t play a note! ’

‘Well, no matter, ’ said Demon. ‘Observation is not always the mother of deduction. However, there is nothing improper about a hanky dumped on a Bechstein. You don’t have, my love, to blush so warmly. Let me quote for comic relief

‘Lorsque son fi-ancé fut parti pour la guerre

Irè ne de Grandfief, la pauvre et noble enfant

Ferma son pi-ano... vendit son é lé phant’

‘The gobble enfant is genuine, but the elephant is mine. ’ ‘You don’t say so, ’ laughed Ada.

‘Our great Coppé e, ’ said Van, ‘is awful, of course, yet he has one very fetching little piece which Ada de Grandfief here has twisted into English several times, more or less successfully. ’

‘Oh, Van! ’ interjected Ada with unusual archness, and scooped up a handful of salted almonds.

‘Let’s hear it, let’s hear it, ’ cried Demon as he borrowed a nut from her cupped hand.

The neat interplay of harmonious motions, the candid gayety of family reunions, the never-entangling marionette strings — all this is easier described than imagined.

‘Old storytelling devices, ’ said Van, ‘may be parodied only by very great and inhuman artists, but only close relatives can be forgiven for paraphrasing illustrious poems. Let me preface the effort of a cousin — anybody’s cousin — by a snatch of Pushkin, for the sake of rhyme —’

‘For the snake of rhyme! ’ cried Ada. ‘A paraphrase, even my paraphrase, is like the corruption of " snakeroot" into " snagrel" — all that remains of a delicate little birthwort. ’

‘Which is amply sufficient, ’ said Demon, ‘for my little needs, and those of my little friends. ’

‘So here goes, ’ continued Van (ignoring what he felt was an indecent allusion, since the unfortunate plant used to be considered by the ancient inhabitants of the Ladore region not so much as a remedy for the bite of a reptile, as the token of a very young woman’s easy delivery; but no matter). ‘By chance preserved has been the poem. In fact, I have it. Here it is: Leur chute est lente and one can know ‘em... ’