He insisted in a fierce whisper — fully knowing, however, how useless it was to attempt to make her change her mind, particularly in amorous matters; but unaccountably and marvelously her dazed look melted into one of gentle glee, as if in sudden perception of new-found release. Thus a child may stare into space, with a dawning smile, upon realizing that the bad dream is over, or that a door has been left unlocked, and that one can paddle with impunity in thawed sky. Ada rid her shoulder of the collecting satchel and, under Violette’s benevolent gaze following them over Marina’s mirrored head, they strolled away and sought the comparative seclusion of the park alley where she had once demonstrated to him her sun-and-shade games. He held her, and kissed her, and kissed her again as if she had returned from a long and perilous journey. The sweetness of her smile was something quite unexpected and special. It was not the sly demon smile of remembered or promised ardor, but the exquisite human glow of happiness and helplessness. All their passionate pump-joy exertions, from Burning Barn to Burnberry Brook, were nothing in comparison to this zaychik, this ‘sun blick’ of the smiling spirit. Her black jumper and black Skirt with apron pockets lost its ‘in-mourning-for-a-lost flower’ meaning that Marina had fancifully attached to her dress (‘nemedlenno pereodet’sya, change immediately!’ she had yelped into the green-shimmering looking-glass); instead, it had acquired the charm of a Lyaskan, old-fashioned schoolgirl uniform. They stood brow to brow, brown to white, black to black, he supporting her elbows, she playing her limp light fingers over his collarbone, and how he ‘ladored,’ he said, the dark aroma of her hair blending with crushed lily stalks, Turkish cigarettes and the lassitude that comes from ‘lass.’ ‘No, no, don’t,’ she said, I must wash, quick-quick, Ada must wash; but for yet another immortal moment they stood embraced in the hushed avenue, enjoying, as they had never enjoyed before, the ‘happy-forever’ feeling at the end of never-ending fairy tales.
That’s a beautiful passage, Van. I shall cry all night (late interpolation).
As a last sunbeam struck Ada, her mouth and chin shone drenched with his poor futile kisses. She shook her head saying they must really part, and she kissed his hands as she did only in moments of supreme tenderness, and then quickly turned away, and they really parted.
One common orchid, a Lady’s Slipper, was all that wilted in the satchel which she had left on a garden table and now dragged upstairs. Marina and the mirror had gone. He peeled off his training togs and took one last dip in the pool over which the butler stood, looking meditatively into the false-blue water with his hands behind his back.
‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if I haven’t just seen a tadpole.’
The novelistic theme of written communications has now really got into its stride. When Van went up to his room he noticed, with a shock of grim premonition, a slip of paper sticking out of the heart pocket of his dinner jacket. Penciled in a large hand, with the contour of every letter deliberately whiffled and rippled, was the anonymous injunction: ‘One must not berne you.’ Only a French-speaking person would use that word for ‘dupe.’ Among the servants, fifteen at least were of French extraction — descendants of immigrants who had settled in America after England had annexed their beautiful and unfortunate country in 1815. To interview them all — torture the males, rape the females — would be, of course, absurd and degrading. With a puerile wrench he broke his best black butterfly on the wheel of his exasperation. The pain from the fang bite was now reaching his heart. He found another tie, finished dressing and went to look for Ada.
He found both girls and their governess in one of the ‘nursery parlors,’ a delightful sitting room with a balcony on which Mlle Larivière was sitting at a charmingly ornamented Pembroke table and reading with mixed feelings and furious annotations the third shooting script of Les Enfants Maudits. At a larger round table in the middle of the inner room, Lucette under Ada’s direction was trying to learn to draw flowers; several botanical atlases, large and small, were lying about. Everything appeared as it always used to be, the little nymphs and goats on the painted ceiling, the mellow light of the day ripening into evening, the remote dreamy rhythm of Blanche’s ‘linen-folding’ voice humming ‘Malbrough’ (…ne sait quand reviendra, ne sait quand reviendra) and the two lovely heads, bronze-black and copper-red, inclined over the table. Van realized that he must simmer down before consulting Ada — or indeed before telling her he wished to consult her. She looked gay and elegant; she was wearing his diamonds for the first time; she had put on a new evening dress with jet gleams, and — also for the first time — transparent silk stockings.
He sat down on a little sofa, took at random one of the open volumes and stared in disgust at a group of brilliantly pictured gross orchids whose popularity with bees depended, said the text, ‘on various attractive odors ranging from the smell of dead workers to that of a tomcat.’ Dead soldiers might smell even better.
In the meantime obstinate Lucette kept insisting that the easiest way to draw a flower was to place a sheet of transparent paper over the picture (in the present case a red-bearded pogonia, with indecent details of structure, a plant peculiar to the Ladoga bogs) and trace the outline of the thing in colored inks. Patient Ada wanted her to copy not mechanically but ‘from eye to hand and from hand to eye,’ and to use for model a live specimen of another orchid that had a brown wrinkled pouch and purple sepals; but after a while she gave in cheerfully and set aside the crystal vaselet holding the Lady’s Slipper she had picked. Casually, lightly, she went on to explain how the organs of orchids work — but all Lucette wanted to know, after her whimsical fashion, was: could k boy bee impregnate a girl flower through something, through his gaiters or woolies or whatever he wore?
‘You know,’ said Ada in a comic nasal voice, turning to Van, ‘you know, that child has the dirtiest mind imaginable and now she is going to be mad at me for saying this and sob on the Larivière bosom, and complain she has been pollinated by sitting on your knee.’
‘But I can’t speak to Belle about dirty things,’ said Lucette quite gently and reasonably.
‘What’s the matter with you, Van?’ inquired sharp-eyed Ada.
‘Why do you ask?’ inquired Van in his turn.
‘Your ears wiggle and you clear your throat.’
‘Are you through with those horrible flowers?’
‘Yes. I’m going to wash my hands. We’ll meet downstairs. Your tie is all crooked.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Van.
‘Mon page, mon beau page,
— Mironton-mironton-mirontaine —
Mon page, mon beau page…’
Downstairs, Jones was already taking down the dinner gong from its hook in the hall.
‘Well, what’s the matter?’ she asked when they met a minute later on the drawing-room terrace.
‘I found this in my jacket,’ said Van.
Rubbing her big front teeth with a nervous forefinger, Ada read and reread the note.
‘How do you know it’s meant for you?’ she asked, giving him back the bit of copybook paper.
‘Well, I’m telling you,’ he yelled.
‘Tishe (quiet!)!’ said Ada.
‘I’m telling you I found it here,’ (pointing at his heart).
‘Destroy and forget it,’ said Ada.
‘Your obedient servant,’ replied Van.
41
Pedro had not yet returned from California. Hay fever and dark glasses did not improve G.A. Vronsky’s appearance. Adorno, the star of Hate, brought his new wife, who turned out to have been one of the old (and most beloved wives) of another guest, a considerably more important comedian, who after supper bribed Bouteillan to simulate the arrival of a message necessitating his immediate departure. Grigoriy Akimovich went with him (having come with him in the same rented limousine), leaving Marina, Ada, Adorno and his ironically sniffing Marianne at a card table. They played biryuch, a variety of whist, till a Ladore taxi could be obtained, which was well after 1:00 a.m.
In the meantime Van changed back to shorts, cloaked himself in the tartan plaid and retired to his bosquet, where the bergamask lamps had not been lit at all that night which had not proved as festive as Marina had expected. He climbed into his hammock and drowsily started reviewing such French-speaking domestics as could have slipped him that ominous but according to Ada meaningless note. The first, obvious choice was hysterical and fantastic Blanche — had there not been her timidity, her fear of being ‘fired’ (he recalled a dreadful scene when she groveled, pleading for mercy, at the feet of Larivière, who accused her of ‘stealing’ a bauble that eventually turned up in one of Larivière’s own shoes). The ruddy face of Bouteillan and his son’s grin next appeared in the focus of Van’s fancy; but presently he fell asleep, and saw himself on a mountain smothered in snow, with people, trees, and a cow carried down by an avalanche.
Something roused him from that state of evil torpor. At first he thought it was the chill of the dying night, then recognized the slight creak (that had been a scream in his confused nightmare), and raising his head saw a dim light in between the shrubs where the door of the tool room was being pushed ajar from the inside. Ada had never once come there without their prudently planning every step of their
