Ada, or Ardor

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Speaking as a botanist and a mad woman, she said, the most extraordinary word in the English language was “husked,” because it stood for opposite things, covered and uncovered, tightly husked but easily husked, meaning they peel off quite easily, you don’t have to tear the waistband, you brute. “Carefully husked brute,” said Van tenderly. The passage of time could only enhance his tenderness for the creature he clasped, this adored creature, whose motion was now more supple, whose haunches had grown more lyrate, whose hair-ribbon he had undone.

  As they crouched on the brink of one of the brook’s crystal shelves, where, before falling, it stopped to have its picture taken and take pictures itself, Van, at the last throb, saw the reflection of Ada’s gaze in the water flash a warning. Something of the sort had happened somewhere before: he did not have time to identify the recollection that, nonetheless, led him to identify at once the sound of the stumble behind him.

  Among the rugged rocks they found and consoled poor little Lucette, whose foot had slipped on a granite slab in a tangle of bushes. Flushed and flustered, the child rubbed her thigh in much-overdone agony. Van and Ada gaily grasped one little hand each and ran Lucette back to the glade, where she laughed, where she flopped, where she made for her favorite tarts awaiting her on one of the unfolded tables. There she husked out of her sweat shirt, hitched up her green shorts and, asquat on the russet ground, attacked the food she had collected.

  Ada had declined to invite anybody except the Erminin twins to her picnic; but she had had no intention of inviting the brother without the sister. The latter, it turned out, could not come, having gone to New Cranton to see a young drummer, her first boy friend, sail off into the sunrise with his regiment. But Greg had to be asked to come after all: on the previous day he had called on her bringing a “talisman” from his very sick father, who wanted Ada to treasure as much as his grandam had a little camel of yellow ivory carved in Kiev, five centuries ago, in the days of Timur and Nabok.

  Van did not err in believing that Ada remained unaffected by Greg’s devotion. He now met him again with pleasure—the kind of pleasure, immoral in its very purity, which adds its icy tang to the friendly feelings a successful rival bears toward a thoroughly decent fellow.

  Greg, who had left his splendid new black Silentium motorcycle in the forest ride, observed:

  “We have company.”

  “Indeed we do,” assented Van. “Kto sii (who are they)? Do you have any idea?”

  Nobody had. Raincoated, unpainted, morose, Marina came over and peered through the trees the way Van pointed.

  After reverently inspecting the Silentium, a dozen elderly townsmen, in dark clothes, shabby and uncouth, walked into the forest across the road and sat down there to a modest colazione of cheese, buns, salami, sardines and Chianti. They were quite sufficiently far from our picnickers not to bother them in any way. They had no mechanical music boxes with them. Their voices were subdued, their movements could not have been more discreet. The predominant gesture seemed to be ritually limited to this or that fist crumpling brown paper or coarse gazette paper or baker’s paper (the very lightweight and inefficient sort), and discarding the crumpled bit in quiet, abstract fashion, while other sad apostolic hands unwrapped the victuals or for some reason or other wrapped them up again, in the noble shade of the pines, in the humble shade of the false acacias.

  “How odd,” said Marina, scratching her sunlit bald patch.

  She sent a footman to investigate the situation and tell those Gipsy politicians, or Calabrian laborers, that Squire Veen would be furious if he discovered trespassers camping in his woods.

  The footman returned, shaking his head. They did not speak English. Van went over:

  “Please go away, this is private property,” said Van in Vulgar Latin, French, Canadian French, Russian, Yukonian Russian, very low Latin again: proprieta privata.

  He stood looking at them, hardly noticed by them, hardly shade-touched by the foliage. They were ill-shaven, blue-jowled men in old Sunday suits. One or two wore no collar but had kept the thyroid stud. One had a beard and a humid squint. Patent boots, with dust in the cracks, or orange-brown shoes either very square or very pointed had been taken off and pushed under the burdocks or placed on the old tree stumps of the rather drab clearing. How odd indeed! When Van repeated his request, the intruders started to mutter among themselves in a totally incomprehensible jargon, making small flapping motions in his direction as if half-heartedly chasing away a gnat.

  He asked Marina—did she want him to use force, but sweet, dear Marina said, patting her hair, one hand on her hip, no, let us ignore them—especially as they were now drawing a little deeper into the trees—look, look—some dragging à reculons the various parts of their repast upon what resembled an old bedspread, which receded like a fishing boat pulled over pebbly sand, while others politely removed the crumpled wrappings to other more distant hiding places in keeping with the general relocation: a most melancholy and meaningful picture—but meaning what, what?

  Gradually their presence dissolved from Van’s mind. Everybody was now having a wonderful time. Marina threw off the pale raincoat or rather “dustcoat” she had put on for the picnic (after all, with one thing and another, her domestic gray dress with the pink fichu was quite gay enough, she declared, for an old lady) and raising an empty glass she sang, with brio and very musically, the Green Grass aria: “Replenish, replenish the glasses with wine! Here’s a toast to love! To the rapture of love!” With awe and pity, and no love, Van kept reverting to that poor bald patch on Traverdiata’s poor old head, to the scalp burnished by her hairdye an awful pine rust color much shinier than her dead hair. He attempted, as so many times before, to squeeze out some fondness for her but as usual failed and as usual told himself that Ada did not love her mother either, a vague and cowardly consolation.

  Greg, assuming with touching simplicity that Ada would notice and approve, showered Mlle Larivière with a thousand little attentions—helping her out of her mauve jacket, pouring out for her the milk into Lucette’s mug from a thermos bottle, passing the sandwiches, replenishing, replenishing Mile Larivière’s wineglass and listening with a rapt grin to her diatribes against the English, whom she said she disliked even more than the Tartars, or the, well, Assyrians.

  “England!” she cried, “England! The country where for every poet, there are ninety-nine sales petits bourgeois, some of suspect extraction! England dares ape France! I have in that hamper there an English novel of high repute in which a lady is given a perfume—an expensive perfume!—called ‘Ombre Chevalier’, which is really nothing but a fish—a delicious fish, true, but hardly suitable for scenting one’s handkerchief with. On the very next page, a soi-disant philosopher mentions ‘une acte gratuite’ as if all acts were feminine, and a soi-disant Parisian hotel-keeper in the story says ‘je me regrette’ for ‘je regrette’!”

  “D’accord,” interjected Van, “but what about such atrocious bloomers in French translations from the English as for example—”

  Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, at that very moment Ada emitted a Russian exclamation of utmost annoyance as a steel-gray convertible glided into the glade. No sooner had it stopped than it was surrounded by the same group of townsmen, who now seemed to have multiplied in strange consequence of having shed coats and waistcoats. Thrusting his way through their circle, with every sign of wrath and contempt, young Percy de Prey, frilled-shirted and white-trousered, strode up to Marina’s deckchair. He was invited to join the party despite Ada’s trying to stop her silly mother with an admonishing stare and a private small shake of the head.

  “I dared not hope … Oh, I accept with great pleasure,” answered Percy, whereupon—very much whereupon—the seemingly forgetful but in reality calculating bland bandit marched back to his car (near which a last wonderstruck admirer lingered) to fetch a bouquet of longstemmed roses stored in the boot.

  “What a shame that I should loathe roses,” said Ada, accepting
them gingerly.

  The muscat wine was uncorked, Ada’s and Ida’s healths drunk. “The conversation became general,” as Monparnasse liked to write.

  Count Percy de Prey turned to Ivan Demianovich Veen:

  “I’m told you like abnormal positions?”

  The half-question was half-mockingly put. Van looked through his raised lunel at the honeyed sun.

  “Meaning what?” he enquired.

  “Well—that walking-on-your-hands trick. One of your aunt’s servants is the sister of one of our servants and two pretty gossips form a dangerous team” (laughing). “The legend has it that you do it all day long, in every corner, congratulations!” (bowing).

  Van replied: “The legend makes too much of my specialty. Actually, I practice it for a few minutes every other night, don’t I, Ada?” (looking around for her). “May I give you, Count, some more of the mouse-and-cat—a poor pun, but mine.”

  “Vahn dear,” said Marina, who was listening with delight to the handsome young men’s vivacious and carefree prattle, “tell him about your success in London. Zhe tampri (please)!”

  “Yes,” said Van, “it all started as a rag, you know, up at Chose, but then—”

  “Van!” called Ada shrilly. “I want to say something to you, Van, come here.”

  Dorn (flipping through a literary review, to Trigorin): “Here, a couple of months ago, a certain article was printed … a Letter from America, and I wanted to ask you, incidentally” (taking Trigorin by the waist and leading him to the front of the stage), “because I’m very much interested in that question …”

  Ada stood with her back against the trunk of a tree, like a beautiful spy who has just rejected the blindfold.

  “I wanted to ask you, incidentally, Van” (continuing in a whisper, with an angry flick of the wrist)—“stop playing the perfect idiot host; he came drunk as a welt, can’t you see?”

  The execution was interrupted by the arrival of Uncle Dan. He had a remarkably reckless way of driving, as happens so often, goodness knows why, in the case of many dour, dreary men. Weaving rapidly between the pines, he brought the little red runabout to an abrupt stop in front of Ada and presented her with the perfect gift, a big box of mints, white, pink and, oh boy, green! He had also an aerogram for her, he said, winking.

  Ada tore it open—and saw it was not for her from dismal Kalugano, as she had feared, but for her mother from Los Angeles, a much gayer place. Marina’s face gradually assumed an expression of quite indecent youthful beatitude as she scanned the message. Triumphantly, she showed it to Larivière-Mon-parnasse, who read it twice and tilted her head with a smile of indulgent disapproval. Positively stamping her feet with joy:

  “Pedro is coming again,” cried (gurgled, rippled) Marina to her calm daughter.

  “And, I suppose, he’ll stay till the end of the summer,” remarked Ada—and sat down with Greg and Lucette, for a game of Snap, on a laprobe spread over the little ants and dry pine needles.

  “Oh no, da net zhe, only for a fortnight” (girlishly giggling). “After that we shall go to Houssaie, Gollivud-tozh” (Marina was really in great form)—“yes, we shall all go, the author, and the children, and Van—if he wishes.”

  “I wish but I can’t,” said Percy (sample of his humor).

  In the meantime, Uncle Dan, very dapper in cherry-striped blazer and variety-comic straw hat, feeling considerably intrigued by the presence of the adjacent picnickers, walked over to them with his glass of Hero wine in one hand and a caviar canapé in the other.

  “The Accursed Children,” said Marina in answer to something Percy wanted to know.

  Percy, you were to die very soon—and not from that pellet in your fat leg, on the turf of a Crimean ravine, but a couple of minutes later when you opened your eyes and felt relieved and secure in the shelter of the macchie; you were to die very soon, Percy; but that July day in Ladore County, lolling under the pines, royally drunk after some earlier festivity, with lust in your heart and a sticky glass in your strong blond-haired hand, listening to a literary bore, chatting with an aging actress and ogling her sullen daughter, you reveled in the spicy situation, old sport, chin-chin, and no wonder. Burly, handsome, indolent and ferocious, a crack Rugger player, a cracker of country girls, you combined the charm of the off-duty athlete with the engaging drawl of a fashionable ass. I think what I hated most about your handsome moon face was that baby complexion, the smooth-skinned jaws of the easy shaver. I had begun to bleed every time, and was going to do so for seven decades.

  “In a birdhouse fixed to that pine trunk,” said Marina to her young admirer, “there was once a ‘telephone.’ How I’d welcome its presence right now! Ah, here he is, enfin!”

  Her husband, minus the glass and the canapé, strolled back bringing wonderful news. They were an “exquisitely polite group.” He had recognized at least a dozen Italian words. It was, he understood, a collation of shepherds. They thought, he thought, he was a shepherd too. A canvas from Cardinal Carlo de Medici’s collection, author unknown, may have been at the base of that copy. Excitedly, overexcitedly, the little man said he insisted the servants take viands and wine to his excellent new friends; he got busy himself, seizing an empty bottle and a hamper that contained knitting equipment, an English novel by Quigley and a roll of toilet paper. Marina explained, however, that professional obligations demanded she call up California without delay; and, forgetting his project, he readily consented to drive her home.

  Mists have long since hidden the links and loops of consecutive events, but—approximately while that departure took place, or soon after—Van found himself standing on the brink of the brook (which had reflected two pair of superposed eyes earlier in the afternoon) and chucking pebbles with Percy and Greg at the remnants of an old, rusty, indecipherable signboard on the other side.

  “Okh, nado (I must) passati!” exclaimed Percy in the Slavic slang he affected, blowing out his cheeks and fumbling frantically at his fly. In all his life, said stolid Greg to Van, he had never seen such an ugly engine, surgically circumcised, terrifically oversized and high-colored, with such a phenomenal coeur de boeuf; nor had either of the fascinated, fastidious boys ever witnessed the like of its sustained, strongly arched, practically everlasting stream. “Phoeh!” uttered the young man with relief, and repacked.

  How did the scuffle start? Did all three cross the brook stepping on slimy stones? Did Percy push Greg? Did Van jog Percy? Was there something—a stick? Twisted out of a fist? A wrist gripped and freed?

  “Oho,” said Percy, “you are playful, my lad!”

  Greg, one bag of his plus-fours soaked, watched them helplessly—he was fond of both—as they grappled on the brink of the brook.

  Percy was three years older, and a score of kilograms heavier than Van, but the latter had handled even burlier brutes with ease. Almost at once the Count’s bursting face was trapped in the crook of Van’s arm. The grunting Count toured the turf in a hunched-up stagger. He freed one scarlet ear, was retrapped, was tripped and collapsed under Van, who instantly put him “on his omoplates,” na lopatki, as King Wing used to say in his carpet jargon. Percy lay panting like a dying gladiator, both shoulder blades pressed to the ground by his tormentor, whose thumbs now started to manipulate horribly that heaving thorax. Percy with a sudden bellow of pain intimated he had had enough. Van requested a more articulate expression of surrender, and got it. Greg, fearing Van had not caught the muttered plea for mercy, repeated it in the third person interpretative. Van released the unfortunate Count, whereupon he sat up, spitting, palpating his throat, rearranging the rumpled shirt around his husky torso and asking Greg in a husky voice to find a missing cufflink.

  Van washed his hands in a lower shelf-pool of the brook and recognized, with amused embarrassment, the transparent, tubular thing, not unlike a sea-squirt, that had got caught in its downstream course in a fringe of forget-me-nots, good name, too.

  He had started to walk back to the picnic glade when a mountain fell
upon him from behind. With one violent heave he swung his attacker over his head. Percy crashed and lay supine for a moment or two. Van, his crab claws on the ready, contemplated him, hoping for a pretext to inflict a certain special device of exotic torture that he had not yet had the opportunity to use in a real fight.

  “You’ve broken my shoulder,” grumbled Percy, half-rising and rubbing his thick arm. “A little more self-control, young devil.”

  “Stand up!” said Van. “Come on, stand up! Would you like more of the same or shall we join the ladies? The ladies? All right. But, if you please, walk in front of me now.”

  As he and his captive drew near the glade Van cursed himself for feeling rattled by that unexpected additional round; he was secretly out of breath, his every nerve twanged, he caught himself limping and correcting the limp—while Percy de Prey, in his magically immaculate white trousers and casually ruffled shirt, marched, buoyantly exercising his arms and shoulders, and seemed quite serene and in fact rather cheerful.

  Presently Greg overtook them, bringing the cufflink—a little triumph of meticulous detection; and with a trite “Attaboy!” Percy closed his silk cuff, thus completing his insolent restoration.

  Their dutiful companion, still running, got first to the site of the finished feast; he saw Ada, facing him with two stipple-stemmed red boletes in one hand and three in the other; and, mistaking her look of surprise at the sound of his thudding hooves for one of concern, good Sir Greg hastened to cry out from afar: “He’s all right! He’s all right, Miss Veen”—blind compassion preventing the young knight from realizing that she could not possibly have known yet what a clash had occurred between the beau and the beast.

  “Indeed I am,” said the former, taking from her a couple of her toadstools, the girl’s favorite delicacy, and stroking their smooth caps. “And why shouldn’t I be? Your cousin has treated Greg and your humble servant to a most bracing exhibition of Oriental Skrotomoff or whatever the name may be.”

  He called for wine—but the remaining bottles had been given to the mysterious pastors whose patronage the adjacent clearing had already lost: they might have dispatched and buried one of their comrades, if the stiff collar and reptilian tie left hanging from a locust branch were his. Gone also was the bouquet of roses which Ada had ordered to be put back into the boot of the Count’s car—better than waste them on her, let him give them, she said, to Blanche’s lovely sister.