I think it was exactly a week after our last swim that the noon mail brought a reply from the second Miss Phalen. The lady wrote she had just returned to St. Algebra from her sister's funeral. "Euphemia had never been the same after breaking that hip." As to the matter of Mrs. Humbert's daughter, she wished to report that it was too late to enroll her this year; but that she, the surviving Phalen, was practically certain that if Mr. and Mrs. Humbert brought Dolores over in January, her admittance might be arranged. The fact that Lo would have to come back to Ramsdale was a treasure of anticipation. It would be the trial period I’d intended to ask Charlotte for. When, in January, the grades were up, the home was happy, and Lo failed to conceal a crush on one of her little classmates, all would be well, and Charlotte would see no need to sick our daughter to the nuns.
For this event I wanted to be fully prepared. I had in fact begun my campaign earlier, before Charlotte made that cruel decision of hers. I had to be sure when the child arrived, that very day, and then day after day, until St. Algebra took her away from me, I would possess the means of putting her through the most rigorous academic regimen possible. Throughout most of July I had been experimenting with various textbooks, trying them out on Charlotte, a blank slate, academically speaking. The last afternoon lesson I had given her (she thought it was a game of trivia) had so thoroughly exhausted her that she slept for four solid hours, and even then I had to push her, pinch her, prod her to disturb the rhythm of her calm and powerful breathing.
Next day, after lunch, I went to see "our" doctor, a friendly fellow whose perfect bedside manner and complete reliance on a few patented drugs adequately masked his ignorance of, and indifference to, medical science. Nonetheless, I left in full health and great spirits. Steering my wife's car with one finger, I contentedly rolled homeward. Ramsdale had, after all, lots of charm. The cicadas whirred; the avenue had been freshly watered. Smoothly, almost silkily, I turned down into our steep little street. Everything was somehow so right that day. So blue and green. I knew the sun shone because my ignition key was reflected in the windshield; and I knew it was exactly half past three because the nurse who came to massage Miss Opposite every afternoon was tripping down the narrow sidewalk in her white stockings and shoes. As usual, Junk's hysterical setter attacked me as I rolled downhill, and as usual, the local paper was lying on the porch where it had just been hurled by Kenny.
The day before I had ended the regime of aloofness I had imposed upon myself, and now uttered a cheerful homecoming call as I opened the door of the living room. With her ream-white nape and bronze bun to me, wearing the yellow blouse and maroon slacks she had on when I first met her, Charlotte sat at the corner bureau writing a letter. My hand still on the doorknob, I repeated my hearty cry. Her writing hand stopped. She sat still for a moment; then she slowly turned in her chair and rested her elbow on its curved back. Her face, disfigured by her emotion, was not a pretty sight as she stared at my legs and said:
"The Haze woman, the big bitch, the old cat, the obnoxious mamma, the--the old stupid Haze is no longer your dupe. She has--she has . . ."
My fair accuser stopped, swallowing her venom and her tears. She had read the diary. Whatever Humbert Humbert said--or attempted to say--is inessential. She went on:
"You pretended to love me when you despised me. You're a detestable, abominable, fraud. Why didn’t you leave when I told you to? Why stay?"
Again, whatever H.H. murmured may be omitted, I think.
"I told you once I would kill myself if I found you didn’t believe in God,” she said. “Instead I am leaving. Tonight. This is all yours. You'll never see me or that miserable brat again. Get out of this room."
Reader, I did. I went up to the ex-semi-studio. Arms akimbo, I stood for a moment quite still and self-composed, surveying from the threshold the raped little table with its open drawer, a key hanging from the lock, four other household keys on the table top. I walked across the landing into the Humberts' bedroom, and calmly removed my diary from under her pillow into my pocket. Then I started to walk downstairs, but stopped half-way: she was talking on the telephone which happened to be plugged just outside the door of the living room. I wanted to hear what she was saying: she canceled an order for something or other, and returned to the parlor. I rearranged my respiration and went through the hallway to the kitchen. There, I opened a bottle of Scotch. She could never resist Scotch. Then I walked into the dining room and from there, through the half-open door, contemplated Charlotte's broad back.
"You are ruining my life and yours," I said quietly. "Let us be civilized people. It is all your hallucination. You are crazy, Charlotte. The notes you found were fragments of a novel. Your name and hers were put in by mere chance, or rather because they were the opposite of my true feelings. We scholars deal in opposites, doubles. I adore you so I write a book in which I despise you. Is it such a stretch?”
She neither answered nor turned, but went on writing in a scorching scrawl whatever she was writing. A third letter, presumably (two in stamped envelopes were already laid out on the desk). I went back to the kitchen.
I set out two glasses (to St. Algebra? to Lo?) and opened the refrigerator. It roared at me viciously while I removed the ice from its heart. Rewrite. Let her read it again. She will not recall details. Change, forge. Write a fragment and show it to her or leave it lying around. Why do faucets sometimes whine so horribly? A horrible situation, really. The little pillow-shaped blocks of ice emitted rasping, crackling, tortured sounds as the warm water loosened them in their cells. I bumped down the glasses side by side. I poured in the whiskey and a dram of soda. She had tabooed my pin (gin and pineapple juice, my drink, my love). Bark and bang went the icebox. Carrying the glasses, I walked through the dining room and spoke through the parlor door which was a fraction ajar, not quite space enough for my elbow.
"I have made you a drink," I said.
She did not answer and I placed the glasses on the sideboard near the telephone, which had started to ring.
"Leslie speaking. Leslie Tomson," said Leslie Tomson who favored a dip at dawn. "Mrs. Humbert, sir, has been run over and you'd better come quick."
I answered, perhaps a bit testily, that my wife was safe and sound, and still holding the receiver, I pushed open the door and said:
"There's this man saying you've been killed, Charlotte."
But there was no Charlotte in the living room.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Chapter 21
On the opposite bank, at least a thousand paces away (if one cold walk across water), I could make out the tiny figures of two men working like beavers on their stretch of shore. I knew exactly who they were: a retired policeman of Polish descent and the retired plumber who owned most of the timber on that side of the lake. And I also knew they were engaged in building, just for the dismal fun of the thing, a wharf. The knocks that reached us seemed so much bigger than what could be distinguished of those dwarfs' arms and tools, especially since the hefty crack of each diminutive blow lagged behind its visual version.
The short white-sand strip of "our" beach--from which by now we had gone a little way to reach deep water--was empty on weekday mornings. There was nobody around except those two tiny very busy figures on the opposite side, and a dark-red private plane that droned overhead, and then disappeared in the blue. The setting was really perfect for a brisk confession, “I want to be a father to Lo,” and here was the subtle point: I could not speak. I simply could not. So there was Charlotte swimming on with dutiful awkwardness (she was a mediocre mermaid), but not without a certain solemn pleasure (for was not her merman by her side?); and as I watched, with the stark lucidity of a future recollection (you know--trying to see things as you will remember having seen them), the glossy whiteness of her wet face so little tanned despite all her endeavors, and her pale lips, and her naked convex forehead, and the tight black cap, and the plump wet neck, I knew that all I had to do was to speak candidly and she would relent.
Simple, was it not? But what d'ye know, folks--I just could not make myself do it!
She swam beside me, a clumsy seal, and all the logic of passion screamed in my ear: Now is the time! And, folks, I just couldn't! In silence I turned shoreward and gravely, dutifully, she also turned, and still hell screamed its counsel, and still I could not make myself speak. And suddenly I did not want to—I simply wanted out. I wanted to find a city, bed a young strumpet taking a summer after college to adventure before starting a career. I could be that adventure. I knew in that moment that I never wanted to see Haze again.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex addicts that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a woman, are innocuous, swarthy, active, charming strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, promiscuous behavior, their private acts without society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as soldiers do. We are happy, mild gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of “moral” adults, but ready to give years of life for the love of the hunt. That’s an expression, of course. Poets never kill. I did not leave Charlotte that day or that week as it would seem I was going to. Perhaps I would have, but will never know, for I barely had the chance. Oh, my poor Charlotte, do not hate me in your eternal heaven.
We sat down on our towels in the thirsty sun. She looked around, loosened her bra, and turned over on her stomach to give her back a chance to be feasted upon. She said she loved me. She sighed deeply. She extended one arm and groped in the pocket of her robe for her cigarettes. She sat up and smoked. She examined her right shoulder. She kissed me heavily with open smoky mouth. Suddenly, down the sand bank behind us, from under the bushes and pines, a stone rolled, then another.
"Those disgusting prying kids," said Charlotte, holding up her big bra to her breast and turning prone again. "I shall have to speak about that to Peter Krestovski."
From the debouchment of the trail came a rustle, a footfall, and Jean Farlow marched down with her easel and things.
"You scared us," said Charlotte.
Jean said she had been up there, in a place of green concealment, spying on nature, trying to finish a lakescape, but it was no good, she had no talent whatever (which was true)--"And have you ever tried painting, Humbert?" Charlotte, who was a little jealous of Jean, wanted to know if John was coming. He was. He was coming home for lunch today. He had dropped her on the way to Parkington and should be picking her up any time now. It was a grand morning. She always felt a traitor to Cavall and Melampus for leaving them roped on such gorgeous days. She sat down on the white sand between Charlotte and me. She wore shorts, showing off her long brown legs. She smiled. I had never noticed how beautiful Jean was until that moment, and wondered if leaving old Charlotte wasn’t a bit rash, if maybe an alternative could be reached that would satisfy all parties.
"I almost put both of you into my lake," she said. "I even noticed something you overlooked. You [addressing me] had your wrist watch on in, yes, sir, you had."
"Waterproof," said Charlotte softly, making a fish mouth.
Jean took my wrist upon her knee and examined Charlotte's gift, then put back Humbert's hand on the sand, palm up.
"You could see anything that way," remarked Charlotte coquettishly.
Jean sighed. "I once saw," she said, "two children, male and female, at sunset, right here, making love. Their shadows were giants. And I told you about Mr. Tomson at daybreak. Next time I expect to see fat old Ivor in the ivory. He is really a freak, that man. Last time he told me a completely indecent story about his nephew. It appears--"
"Hullo there," said John's voice.
The short white-sand strip of "our" beach--from which by now we had gone a little way to reach deep water--was empty on weekday mornings. There was nobody around except those two tiny very busy figures on the opposite side, and a dark-red private plane that droned overhead, and then disappeared in the blue. The setting was really perfect for a brisk confession, “I want to be a father to Lo,” and here was the subtle point: I could not speak. I simply could not. So there was Charlotte swimming on with dutiful awkwardness (she was a mediocre mermaid), but not without a certain solemn pleasure (for was not her merman by her side?); and as I watched, with the stark lucidity of a future recollection (you know--trying to see things as you will remember having seen them), the glossy whiteness of her wet face so little tanned despite all her endeavors, and her pale lips, and her naked convex forehead, and the tight black cap, and the plump wet neck, I knew that all I had to do was to speak candidly and she would relent.
Simple, was it not? But what d'ye know, folks--I just could not make myself do it!
She swam beside me, a clumsy seal, and all the logic of passion screamed in my ear: Now is the time! And, folks, I just couldn't! In silence I turned shoreward and gravely, dutifully, she also turned, and still hell screamed its counsel, and still I could not make myself speak. And suddenly I did not want to—I simply wanted out. I wanted to find a city, bed a young strumpet taking a summer after college to adventure before starting a career. I could be that adventure. I knew in that moment that I never wanted to see Haze again.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex addicts that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a woman, are innocuous, swarthy, active, charming strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, promiscuous behavior, their private acts without society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as soldiers do. We are happy, mild gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of “moral” adults, but ready to give years of life for the love of the hunt. That’s an expression, of course. Poets never kill. I did not leave Charlotte that day or that week as it would seem I was going to. Perhaps I would have, but will never know, for I barely had the chance. Oh, my poor Charlotte, do not hate me in your eternal heaven.
We sat down on our towels in the thirsty sun. She looked around, loosened her bra, and turned over on her stomach to give her back a chance to be feasted upon. She said she loved me. She sighed deeply. She extended one arm and groped in the pocket of her robe for her cigarettes. She sat up and smoked. She examined her right shoulder. She kissed me heavily with open smoky mouth. Suddenly, down the sand bank behind us, from under the bushes and pines, a stone rolled, then another.
"Those disgusting prying kids," said Charlotte, holding up her big bra to her breast and turning prone again. "I shall have to speak about that to Peter Krestovski."
From the debouchment of the trail came a rustle, a footfall, and Jean Farlow marched down with her easel and things.
"You scared us," said Charlotte.
Jean said she had been up there, in a place of green concealment, spying on nature, trying to finish a lakescape, but it was no good, she had no talent whatever (which was true)--"And have you ever tried painting, Humbert?" Charlotte, who was a little jealous of Jean, wanted to know if John was coming. He was. He was coming home for lunch today. He had dropped her on the way to Parkington and should be picking her up any time now. It was a grand morning. She always felt a traitor to Cavall and Melampus for leaving them roped on such gorgeous days. She sat down on the white sand between Charlotte and me. She wore shorts, showing off her long brown legs. She smiled. I had never noticed how beautiful Jean was until that moment, and wondered if leaving old Charlotte wasn’t a bit rash, if maybe an alternative could be reached that would satisfy all parties.
"I almost put both of you into my lake," she said. "I even noticed something you overlooked. You [addressing me] had your wrist watch on in, yes, sir, you had."
"Waterproof," said Charlotte softly, making a fish mouth.
Jean took my wrist upon her knee and examined Charlotte's gift, then put back Humbert's hand on the sand, palm up.
"You could see anything that way," remarked Charlotte coquettishly.
Jean sighed. "I once saw," she said, "two children, male and female, at sunset, right here, making love. Their shadows were giants. And I told you about Mr. Tomson at daybreak. Next time I expect to see fat old Ivor in the ivory. He is really a freak, that man. Last time he told me a completely indecent story about his nephew. It appears--"
"Hullo there," said John's voice.
Chapter 20
There was a woodlake (Hourglass Lake--not as I had thought it was spelled) a few miles from Ramsdale, and there was one week of great heat at the end of July when we drove there daily. I am now obliged to describe in some detail our last swim there together, one tropical Tuesday morning.
We had left the car in a parking area not far from the road and were making our way down a path cut through the pine forest to the lake, when Charlotte remarked that Jean Farlow, in quest of rare light effects (Jean belonged to the old school of painting), had seen Leslie taking a dip "in the ebony" (as John had quipped) at five o'clock in the morning last Sunday.
"The water," I said, "must have been quite cold."
"That is not the point," said my logical doomed dear. "He is subnormal, you see. And," she continued (in that carefully phrased way of hers that was beginning to tell on my health), "I have a very definite feeling our Louise is in love with that moron."
I never got used to this American use of “feeling,” as in, "We feel Dolly is not doing as well" etc.
The Humberts walked on, sandaled and robed.
"Do you know, Hum: I have one most ambitious dream," pronounced Lady Hum, lowering her head--shy of that dream--and communing with the tawny ground. "I would love to get hold of a real trained servant maid like that German girl the Talbots spoke of; and have her live in the house."
"No room," I said.
"Come," she said with her quizzical smile, "surely, chèri, you underestimate the possibilities of the Humbert home. We would put her in Lo's room. I intended to make a guestroom of that hole anyway. It's the coldest and meanest in the whole house."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, the skin of my cheekbones tensing up.
"Are you bothered by Romantic Associations?" queried my wife--in allusion to her first surrender.
"Hell no," said I. "I just wonder where will you put your daughter when you get your guest or your maid."
"Ah," said Mrs. Humbert, dreaming, smiling, drawing out the "Ah" simultaneously with the raise of one eyebrow and a soft exhalation of breath. "Little Lo, I'm afraid, does not enter the picture at all, at all. Little Lo goes straight from camp to a good boarding school with strict discipline and some sound religious training. And then--Beardsley College. I have it all mapped out, you need not worry."
She went on to say that she, Mrs. Humbert, would have to overcome her habitual sloth and write to Miss Phalli's sister who taught at St. Algebra. The dazzling lake emerged. I said I had forgotten my sunglasses in the car and would catch up with her. I wringed my hands. The prospect of a permanent home without Dolores struck me as tedious, unchallenging, unthinkable.
Had Charlotte been Valeria, I would have known how to handle the situation. In my troubled first marriage, by merely glancing angrily at her, I could make her change her mind instantly; but anything of the sort in regard to Charlotte was unthinkable. Bland American Charlotte frightened me. My lighthearted dream of controlling her through her passion for me was all wrong. I dared not do anything to spoil the image of me she had set up to adore. I had toadied to her when she was the awesome duenna of my darling, and a groveling something still persisted in my attitude toward her. She had been annoyed by Lo's liking me; but my own fatherly feelings I had never made known for fear of fanning the flames of Charlotte’s bizarre jealousy.
To Valeria I might have said: "Look here. It is me who decides what is good for Dolores Humbert." To Charlotte, I could not even say (with ingratiating calm): "Excuse me, my dear, I disagree. Let us give the child one more chance. Let me be her tutor for a year or so. You once told me yourself--" In fact, I could not say anything at all. Oh, you cannot imagine (as I had never imagined) what these women of principle are! Charlotte, who did not notice the falsity of all the everyday conventions and rules of behavior, and foods, and books, and people she doted upon, would distinguish at once an intonation of disagreement with her mothering. I suspect that the quickest way incur the physical abuse of a woman is to tell her she’s a bad mother.
To break Charlotte's will, I would have to break her heart. If I broke her heart, her image of me would break too. If I said: "Either I have my way or we part at once," she would have turned as pale as a woman of clouded glass and slowly replied: "All right, whatever you add or retract, this is the end." And the end it would be.
Such, then, was the mess. I remember reaching the parking area and pumping a handful of rust-tasting water, and drinking it as avidly as if it would give me magic wisdom, youth, freedom. For a while, purple-robed, heel-dangling, I sat on the edge of one of the rude tables, under the whooshing pines. In the middle distance, two little girls came out of a sun-dappled privy marked "Women."
I walked down to Hourglass Lake. The spot from which we and a few other "nice" couples (the Farlows, the Chatfields) bathed was a kind of small cove; my Charlotte liked it because it was almost "a private beach." The main bathing facilities (or drowning facilities" as the Ramsdale Journal had had occasion to say) were in the left (eastern) part of the hourglass, and could not be seen from our covelet. To our right, the pines soon gave way to a curve of marshland which turned again into forest on the opposite side.
I sat down beside my wife so noiselessly that she started.
"Shall we go in?" she asked.
"We shall in a minute. Let me follow a train of thought."
I thought. More than a minute passed.
"All right. Come on."
"Was I on that train?"
"You certainly were."
"I hope so," said Charlotte entering the water. It soon reached the gooseflesh of her thick thighs; and then, joining her outstretched hands, shutting her mouth tight, very plain-faced in her black rubber headgear, Charlotte flung herself forward with a great splash. Slowly we swam out into the shimmer of the lake.
On the opposite bank, at least a thousand paces away (if one cold walk across water), I could make out the tiny figures of two men working like beavers on their stretch of shore. I knew exactly who they were: a retired policeman of Polish descent and the retired plumber who owned most of the timber on that side of the lake. And I also knew they were engaged in building, just for the dismal fun of the thing, a wharf. The knocks that reached us seemed so much bigger than what could be distinguished of those dwarfs' arms and tools, especially since the hefty crack of each diminutive blow lagged behind its visual version.
The short white-sand strip of "our" beach--from which by now we had gone a little way to reach deep water--was empty on weekday mornings. There was nobody around except those two tiny very busy figures on the opposite side, and a dark-red private plane that droned overhead, and then disappeared in the blue. The setting was really perfect for a brisk confession, “I want to be a father to Lo,” and here was the subtle point: I could not speak. I simply could not. So there was Charlotte swimming on with dutiful awkwardness (she was a mediocre mermaid), but not without a certain solemn pleasure (for was not her merman by her side?); and as I watched, with the stark lucidity of a future recollection (you know--trying to see things as you will remember having seen them), the glossy whiteness of her wet face so little tanned despite all her endeavors, and her pale lips, and her naked convex forehead, and the tight black cap, and the plump wet neck, I knew that all I had to do was to speak candidly and she would relent.
Simple, was it not? But what d'ye know, folks--I just could not make myself do it!
She swam beside me, a clumsy seal, and all the logic of passion screamed in my ear: Now is the time! And, folks, I just couldn't! In silence I turned shoreward and gravely, dutifully, she also turned, and still hell screamed its counsel, and still I could not make myself speak. And suddenly I did not want to—I simply wanted out. I wanted to find a city, bed a young strumpet taking a summer after college to adventure before starting a career. I could be that adventure. I knew in that moment that I never wanted to see Haze again.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex addicts that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a woman, are innocuous, swarthy, active, charming strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, promiscuous behavior, their private acts without society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as soldiers do. We are happy, mild gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of “moral” adults, but ready to give years of life for the love of the hunt. That’s an expression, of course. Poets never kill. I did not leave Charlotte that day or that week as it would seem I was going to. Perhaps I would have, but will never know, for I barely had the chance. Oh, my poor Charlotte, do not hate me in your eternal heaven.
We sat down on our towels in the thirsty sun. She looked around, loosened her bra, and turned over on her stomach to give her back a chance to be feasted upon. She said she loved me. She sighed deeply. She extended one arm and groped in the pocket of her robe for her cigarettes. She sat up and smoked. She examined her right shoulder. She kissed me heavily with open smoky mouth. Suddenly, down the sand bank behind us, from under the bushes and pines, a stone rolled, then another.
"Those disgusting prying kids," said Charlotte, holding up her big bra to her breast and turning prone again. "I shall have to speak about that to Peter Krestovski."
From the debouchment of the trail came a rustle, a footfall, and Jean Farlow marched down with her easel and things.
"You scared us," said Charlotte.
Jean said she had been up there, in a place of green concealment, spying on nature, trying to finish a lakescape, but it was no good, she had no talent whatever (which was true)--"And have you ever tried painting, Humbert?" Charlotte, who was a little jealous of Jean, wanted to know if John was coming. He was. He was coming home for lunch today. He had dropped her on the way to Parkington and should be picking her up any time now. It was a grand morning. She always felt a traitor to Cavall and Melampus for leaving them roped on such gorgeous days. She sat down on the white sand between Charlotte and me. She wore shorts, showing off her long brown legs. She smiled. I had never noticed how beautiful Jean was until that moment, and wondered if leaving old Charlotte wasn’t a bit rash, if maybe an alternative could be reached that would satisfy all parties.
"I almost put both of you into my lake," she said. "I even noticed something you overlooked. You [addressing me] had your wrist watch on in, yes, sir, you had."
"Waterproof," said Charlotte softly, making a fish mouth.
Jean took my wrist upon her knee and examined Charlotte's gift, then put back Humbert's hand on the sand, palm up.
"You could see anything that way," remarked Charlotte coquettishly.
Jean sighed. "I once saw," she said, "two children, male and female, at sunset, right here, making love. Their shadows were giants. And I told you about Mr. Tomson at daybreak. Next time I expect to see fat old Ivor in the ivory. He is really a freak, that man. Last time he told me a completely indecent story about his nephew. It appears--"
"Hullo there," said John's voice.
We had left the car in a parking area not far from the road and were making our way down a path cut through the pine forest to the lake, when Charlotte remarked that Jean Farlow, in quest of rare light effects (Jean belonged to the old school of painting), had seen Leslie taking a dip "in the ebony" (as John had quipped) at five o'clock in the morning last Sunday.
"The water," I said, "must have been quite cold."
"That is not the point," said my logical doomed dear. "He is subnormal, you see. And," she continued (in that carefully phrased way of hers that was beginning to tell on my health), "I have a very definite feeling our Louise is in love with that moron."
I never got used to this American use of “feeling,” as in, "We feel Dolly is not doing as well" etc.
The Humberts walked on, sandaled and robed.
"Do you know, Hum: I have one most ambitious dream," pronounced Lady Hum, lowering her head--shy of that dream--and communing with the tawny ground. "I would love to get hold of a real trained servant maid like that German girl the Talbots spoke of; and have her live in the house."
"No room," I said.
"Come," she said with her quizzical smile, "surely, chèri, you underestimate the possibilities of the Humbert home. We would put her in Lo's room. I intended to make a guestroom of that hole anyway. It's the coldest and meanest in the whole house."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, the skin of my cheekbones tensing up.
"Are you bothered by Romantic Associations?" queried my wife--in allusion to her first surrender.
"Hell no," said I. "I just wonder where will you put your daughter when you get your guest or your maid."
"Ah," said Mrs. Humbert, dreaming, smiling, drawing out the "Ah" simultaneously with the raise of one eyebrow and a soft exhalation of breath. "Little Lo, I'm afraid, does not enter the picture at all, at all. Little Lo goes straight from camp to a good boarding school with strict discipline and some sound religious training. And then--Beardsley College. I have it all mapped out, you need not worry."
She went on to say that she, Mrs. Humbert, would have to overcome her habitual sloth and write to Miss Phalli's sister who taught at St. Algebra. The dazzling lake emerged. I said I had forgotten my sunglasses in the car and would catch up with her. I wringed my hands. The prospect of a permanent home without Dolores struck me as tedious, unchallenging, unthinkable.
Had Charlotte been Valeria, I would have known how to handle the situation. In my troubled first marriage, by merely glancing angrily at her, I could make her change her mind instantly; but anything of the sort in regard to Charlotte was unthinkable. Bland American Charlotte frightened me. My lighthearted dream of controlling her through her passion for me was all wrong. I dared not do anything to spoil the image of me she had set up to adore. I had toadied to her when she was the awesome duenna of my darling, and a groveling something still persisted in my attitude toward her. She had been annoyed by Lo's liking me; but my own fatherly feelings I had never made known for fear of fanning the flames of Charlotte’s bizarre jealousy.
To Valeria I might have said: "Look here. It is me who decides what is good for Dolores Humbert." To Charlotte, I could not even say (with ingratiating calm): "Excuse me, my dear, I disagree. Let us give the child one more chance. Let me be her tutor for a year or so. You once told me yourself--" In fact, I could not say anything at all. Oh, you cannot imagine (as I had never imagined) what these women of principle are! Charlotte, who did not notice the falsity of all the everyday conventions and rules of behavior, and foods, and books, and people she doted upon, would distinguish at once an intonation of disagreement with her mothering. I suspect that the quickest way incur the physical abuse of a woman is to tell her she’s a bad mother.
To break Charlotte's will, I would have to break her heart. If I broke her heart, her image of me would break too. If I said: "Either I have my way or we part at once," she would have turned as pale as a woman of clouded glass and slowly replied: "All right, whatever you add or retract, this is the end." And the end it would be.
Such, then, was the mess. I remember reaching the parking area and pumping a handful of rust-tasting water, and drinking it as avidly as if it would give me magic wisdom, youth, freedom. For a while, purple-robed, heel-dangling, I sat on the edge of one of the rude tables, under the whooshing pines. In the middle distance, two little girls came out of a sun-dappled privy marked "Women."
I walked down to Hourglass Lake. The spot from which we and a few other "nice" couples (the Farlows, the Chatfields) bathed was a kind of small cove; my Charlotte liked it because it was almost "a private beach." The main bathing facilities (or drowning facilities" as the Ramsdale Journal had had occasion to say) were in the left (eastern) part of the hourglass, and could not be seen from our covelet. To our right, the pines soon gave way to a curve of marshland which turned again into forest on the opposite side.
I sat down beside my wife so noiselessly that she started.
"Shall we go in?" she asked.
"We shall in a minute. Let me follow a train of thought."
I thought. More than a minute passed.
"All right. Come on."
"Was I on that train?"
"You certainly were."
"I hope so," said Charlotte entering the water. It soon reached the gooseflesh of her thick thighs; and then, joining her outstretched hands, shutting her mouth tight, very plain-faced in her black rubber headgear, Charlotte flung herself forward with a great splash. Slowly we swam out into the shimmer of the lake.
On the opposite bank, at least a thousand paces away (if one cold walk across water), I could make out the tiny figures of two men working like beavers on their stretch of shore. I knew exactly who they were: a retired policeman of Polish descent and the retired plumber who owned most of the timber on that side of the lake. And I also knew they were engaged in building, just for the dismal fun of the thing, a wharf. The knocks that reached us seemed so much bigger than what could be distinguished of those dwarfs' arms and tools, especially since the hefty crack of each diminutive blow lagged behind its visual version.
The short white-sand strip of "our" beach--from which by now we had gone a little way to reach deep water--was empty on weekday mornings. There was nobody around except those two tiny very busy figures on the opposite side, and a dark-red private plane that droned overhead, and then disappeared in the blue. The setting was really perfect for a brisk confession, “I want to be a father to Lo,” and here was the subtle point: I could not speak. I simply could not. So there was Charlotte swimming on with dutiful awkwardness (she was a mediocre mermaid), but not without a certain solemn pleasure (for was not her merman by her side?); and as I watched, with the stark lucidity of a future recollection (you know--trying to see things as you will remember having seen them), the glossy whiteness of her wet face so little tanned despite all her endeavors, and her pale lips, and her naked convex forehead, and the tight black cap, and the plump wet neck, I knew that all I had to do was to speak candidly and she would relent.
Simple, was it not? But what d'ye know, folks--I just could not make myself do it!
She swam beside me, a clumsy seal, and all the logic of passion screamed in my ear: Now is the time! And, folks, I just couldn't! In silence I turned shoreward and gravely, dutifully, she also turned, and still hell screamed its counsel, and still I could not make myself speak. And suddenly I did not want to—I simply wanted out. I wanted to find a city, bed a young strumpet taking a summer after college to adventure before starting a career. I could be that adventure. I knew in that moment that I never wanted to see Haze again.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex addicts that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a woman, are innocuous, swarthy, active, charming strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, promiscuous behavior, their private acts without society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as soldiers do. We are happy, mild gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of “moral” adults, but ready to give years of life for the love of the hunt. That’s an expression, of course. Poets never kill. I did not leave Charlotte that day or that week as it would seem I was going to. Perhaps I would have, but will never know, for I barely had the chance. Oh, my poor Charlotte, do not hate me in your eternal heaven.
We sat down on our towels in the thirsty sun. She looked around, loosened her bra, and turned over on her stomach to give her back a chance to be feasted upon. She said she loved me. She sighed deeply. She extended one arm and groped in the pocket of her robe for her cigarettes. She sat up and smoked. She examined her right shoulder. She kissed me heavily with open smoky mouth. Suddenly, down the sand bank behind us, from under the bushes and pines, a stone rolled, then another.
"Those disgusting prying kids," said Charlotte, holding up her big bra to her breast and turning prone again. "I shall have to speak about that to Peter Krestovski."
From the debouchment of the trail came a rustle, a footfall, and Jean Farlow marched down with her easel and things.
"You scared us," said Charlotte.
Jean said she had been up there, in a place of green concealment, spying on nature, trying to finish a lakescape, but it was no good, she had no talent whatever (which was true)--"And have you ever tried painting, Humbert?" Charlotte, who was a little jealous of Jean, wanted to know if John was coming. He was. He was coming home for lunch today. He had dropped her on the way to Parkington and should be picking her up any time now. It was a grand morning. She always felt a traitor to Cavall and Melampus for leaving them roped on such gorgeous days. She sat down on the white sand between Charlotte and me. She wore shorts, showing off her long brown legs. She smiled. I had never noticed how beautiful Jean was until that moment, and wondered if leaving old Charlotte wasn’t a bit rash, if maybe an alternative could be reached that would satisfy all parties.
"I almost put both of you into my lake," she said. "I even noticed something you overlooked. You [addressing me] had your wrist watch on in, yes, sir, you had."
"Waterproof," said Charlotte softly, making a fish mouth.
Jean took my wrist upon her knee and examined Charlotte's gift, then put back Humbert's hand on the sand, palm up.
"You could see anything that way," remarked Charlotte coquettishly.
Jean sighed. "I once saw," she said, "two children, male and female, at sunset, right here, making love. Their shadows were giants. And I told you about Mr. Tomson at daybreak. Next time I expect to see fat old Ivor in the ivory. He is really a freak, that man. Last time he told me a completely indecent story about his nephew. It appears--"
"Hullo there," said John's voice.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Chapter 19
A few words more about Mrs. Humbert while the going is good (a bad accident is to happen quite soon). I had been always aware of the possessive streak in her, but I never thought she would be so crazily jealous of anything in my life that had not been she. She showed a fierce insatiable curiosity for my past. She desired me to resuscitate all my loves so that she might make me insult them, and trample upon them, and revoke them apostately and totally, thus destroying my past. She made me tell her about my marriage to Valeria, who was of course a scream; but I also had to reduce and compress my long series of mistresses for Charlotte's morbid delectation. To keep her happy, I had to present her with an illustrated catalogue of them, all nicely differentiated, according to the rules of those American ads where schoolchildren are pictured in a subtle ratio of races, with one--only one, but as cute as they make them--chocolate-colored round-eyed little lad, almost in the very middle of the front row. So I presented my women, and had them smile and sway--the languorous blond, the fiery brunette, the sensual copperhead--as if on parade in a bordello. The more popular and platitudinous I made them, the more Mrs. Humbert was pleased with the show.
Never in my life had I confessed so much or received so many confessions. The sincerity and artlessness with which she discussed her love life, from first necking to connubial catch-as-catch-can, were, ethically, in striking contrast with my glib compositions, but technically the two sets were similarly generic since both were affected by the same stuff (soap operas, psychoanalysis and cheap novelettes) upon which I drew for my characters and she for her mode of expression. I was considerably amused by certain remarkable sexual habits that the good Harold Haze had had according to Charlotte who thought my mirth improper; but otherwise her autobiography was devoid of interests. I never saw a healthier woman than she, despite thinning diets.
Of Lolita she seldom spoke--more seldom, in fact, than she did of the blurred, blond male baby whose photograph to the exclusion of all others adorned our bleak bedroom. In once of her reveries, she predicted that the dead infant's soul would return to earth in the form of the child she would bear in her present wedlock. And although I felt no special urge to supply the Humbert line with a replica of Harold's production (Lolita, I had already grown to regard as my child), I found I was not adverse to the idea. It struck me odd that we had not once discussed the matter in our too-brief courtship.
It was not only that one child was not enough for her, but that she was so horribly dissatisfied with the one she had. Sometimes it seemed that she hated her daughter. What I thought especially vicious was that she had gone out of her way to answer with great diligence the questionnaires in a fool's book she had (A Guide to Your Child's Development), published in Chicago. The rigmarole went year by year, and Mom was supposed to fill out a kind of inventory at each of her child's birthdays. On Lo's twelfth, January 1, 1947, Charlotte had underlined the following epithets, ten out of forty, under "Your Child's Personality": aggressive, boisterous, critical, distrustful, impatient, irritable, inquisitive, listless, negativistic (underlined twice) and obstinate. She had ignored the thirty remaining adjectives, among which were cheerful, co-operative, energetic, and so forth.
It was really maddening. With a brutality that otherwise never appeared in my loving wife's mild nature, she attacked and routed such of Lo's little belongings that had wandered to various parts of the house to freeze there like so many hypnotized bunnies. And then, her attitude toward her daughter’s letters!
"Dear Mummy and Hummy,
Hope you are fine. Thank you very much for the candy. I [crossed out and re-written again] I lost my new sweater in the woods. It has been cold here for the last few days. I'm having a time. Love,
Dolly."
"The dumb child," said Mrs. Humbert, "has left out a word before 'time.' That sweater was all-wool, and I wish you would not send her candy without consulting me."
Never in my life had I confessed so much or received so many confessions. The sincerity and artlessness with which she discussed her love life, from first necking to connubial catch-as-catch-can, were, ethically, in striking contrast with my glib compositions, but technically the two sets were similarly generic since both were affected by the same stuff (soap operas, psychoanalysis and cheap novelettes) upon which I drew for my characters and she for her mode of expression. I was considerably amused by certain remarkable sexual habits that the good Harold Haze had had according to Charlotte who thought my mirth improper; but otherwise her autobiography was devoid of interests. I never saw a healthier woman than she, despite thinning diets.
Of Lolita she seldom spoke--more seldom, in fact, than she did of the blurred, blond male baby whose photograph to the exclusion of all others adorned our bleak bedroom. In once of her reveries, she predicted that the dead infant's soul would return to earth in the form of the child she would bear in her present wedlock. And although I felt no special urge to supply the Humbert line with a replica of Harold's production (Lolita, I had already grown to regard as my child), I found I was not adverse to the idea. It struck me odd that we had not once discussed the matter in our too-brief courtship.
It was not only that one child was not enough for her, but that she was so horribly dissatisfied with the one she had. Sometimes it seemed that she hated her daughter. What I thought especially vicious was that she had gone out of her way to answer with great diligence the questionnaires in a fool's book she had (A Guide to Your Child's Development), published in Chicago. The rigmarole went year by year, and Mom was supposed to fill out a kind of inventory at each of her child's birthdays. On Lo's twelfth, January 1, 1947, Charlotte had underlined the following epithets, ten out of forty, under "Your Child's Personality": aggressive, boisterous, critical, distrustful, impatient, irritable, inquisitive, listless, negativistic (underlined twice) and obstinate. She had ignored the thirty remaining adjectives, among which were cheerful, co-operative, energetic, and so forth.
It was really maddening. With a brutality that otherwise never appeared in my loving wife's mild nature, she attacked and routed such of Lo's little belongings that had wandered to various parts of the house to freeze there like so many hypnotized bunnies. And then, her attitude toward her daughter’s letters!
"Dear Mummy and Hummy,
Hope you are fine. Thank you very much for the candy. I [crossed out and re-written again] I lost my new sweater in the woods. It has been cold here for the last few days. I'm having a time. Love,
Dolly."
"The dumb child," said Mrs. Humbert, "has left out a word before 'time.' That sweater was all-wool, and I wish you would not send her candy without consulting me."
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Chapter 18
When the bride is a window and the groom is a widower; when the former has lived in Our Great Little Town for hardly two years, and the latter for hardly a month; when Monsieur wants to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible, and Madame gives in with a tolerant smile; then, my reader, the wedding is generally a "quiet" affair. The bride may dispense with a tiara of orange blossoms securing her finger-tip veil, nor does she carry a white orchid in a prayer book. The bride's little daughter might have added to the ceremonies uniting H. and H. a touch of vivid vermeil; but it was not worth while tearing the child away from her beloved Camp Q.
My so-called passionate and lonely Charlotte was in everyday life matter-of-fact and gregarious. Moreover, I discovered that although she could not control her heart or her cries, she was a woman of principle. Immediately after she had become more or less my mistress (despite the stimulants, her "nervous, eager lover” had some initial trouble, for which, however, he amply compensated her by a fantastic display of old-world endearments), good Charlotte interviewed me about my relations with God. I could have answered that on that score my mind was open; I said, instead--paying my tribute to a pious platitude--that I believed in a cosmic spirit. Looking down at her fingernails, she also asked me had I not in my family a certain strange strain. I countered by inquiring whether she would still want to marry me if my father's maternal grandfather had been, say, a Turk. She said it did not matter a bit; but that, if she ever found out I did not believe in Our Christian God, she would commit suicide. She said it so solemnly that it gave me the creeps. It was then I knew she was a woman of principle.
She was very genteel: she said "excuse me" whenever a slight burp interrupted her flowing speech, called an envelope and ahnvelope, and when talking to her lady-friends referred to me as Mr. Humbert. I thought it would please her if I entered the community trailing some glamour after me. On the day of our wedding a little interview with me appeared in the Society Column of the Ramsdale Journal, with a photograph of Charlotte, one eyebrow up and a misprint in her name ("Hazer").
Despite this embarrassing slip-up, the publicity warmed the porcelain cockles of her heart and, slowly, mine. By engaging in church work as well as by getting to know the better mothers of Lo's schoolmates, Charlotte in the course of twenty months or so had managed to become if not a prominent, at least an acceptable citizen, but never before had she come under that thrilling news column, and it was I who put her there, Mr. Edgar H. Humbert (I threw in the "Edgar" just for the heck of it), "writer and explorer." McCoo's brother, when taking it down, asked me what I had written. Whatever I told him came out as "several books on Peacock, Rainbow and other poets." It was also noted that Charlotte and I had known each other for several years and that I was a distant relation of her first husband. I hinted I had had an affair with her thirteen years ago but this was not mentioned in print. To Charlotte I said that society columns should contain a shimmer of errors.
Let us go on with this curious tale. When called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover, did I experience only bitterness and distaste? No. Mr. Humbert confesses to a certain titillation of his vanity, to some tenderness, even to a pattern of looking up, evenings, from my papers at my new bride and thinking I had made a wise decision. Never had I thought that the sometimes ridiculous, through rather handsome Mrs. Haze, with her blind faith in the wisdom of her church and book club, her mannerisms of elocution, her harsh, cold, contemptuous attitude toward an adorable child of twelve, could turn into such a touching, helpless creature as soon as I laid my hands upon her.
The transformation improved her looks. Her smile that had been such a contrived thing, thenceforth became the radiance of utter adoration--a radiance having something soft about it, in which, with wonder, I recognized a resemblance to the lovely, inane, lost look that Lo had when gloating over a new kind of concoction at the soda fountain or mutely admiring my expensive, always tailor-fresh clothes. Deeply fascinated, I would watch Charlotte while she swapped parental woes with some other lady and made that national grimace of feminine resignation (eyes rolling up, mouth drooping sideways). We had highballs before turning in, and with their help, I would manage my husbandly duties with relative ease. I kept telling myself, as I wielded my brand-new large-as-life wife, that this may not be as exciting as my youthful womanizing, but it was more sane, more adult, and I took pains to get to know this strange woman to whom I had tethered myself. I had my wife unearth from under a collection of shoes (Mr. Haze had a passion for them, it appears) a thirty-year-old album, so that I might see how Lotte had looked as a child; and even though the light was wrong and the dresses graceless, I was able to make out a dim first version of Lolita's outline, legs, cheekbones, bobbed nose. For all their differences, they were kin.
I simply can't tell you how gentle, how touching my poor wife was. At breakfast, in the depressingly bright kitchen, with its chrome glitter and Hardware and Co. Calendar and cute breakfast nook, she would sit, robed in red, her elbow on the plastic-topped table, her cheek propped on her fist, and stare at me with intolerable tenderness as I consumed my ham and eggs. And when at times I felt the old Humbert appear from his curmudgeonly cage, I hid it well. My solemn exasperation was to her the silence of love. My small income added to her even smaller one impressed her as a brilliant fortune; not because the resulting sum now sufficed for most middle-class needs, but because even my money shone in her eyes with the magic of my manliness, and she saw our joint account as one of those southern boulevards at midday that have solid shade on one side and smooth sunshine on the other, all the way to the end of a prospect.
Into the fifty days of our cohabitation Charlotte crammed the activities of as many years. The poor woman busied herself with a number of things she had foregone long before or had never been much interested in, as if by my marrying the mother of a gifted child I had enabled my wife to regain an abundance of youth by proxy.
With the zest of a banal young bride, she started to "glorify the home." Knowing as I did its every cranny by heart, I had long entered into a sort of emotional relationship with it, with its very ugliness and dirt, and now I could almost feel the wretched thing cower in its reluctance to endure the putt-buff-and-snuff that Charlotte planned to give it. She never got as far as that, thank God, but she did use up a tremendous amount of energy in washing window shades, waxing the slats of Venetian blinds, purchasing new shades and new blinds, returning them to the store, replacing them by others, and so on, in a constant chiaroscuro of smiles and frowns, doubts and pouts. She dabbled in cretonnes and chintzes; she changed the colors of the sofa--the sofa where I had given Lo her unnecessary-but-diagnostic mathematics lesson. She rearranged the furniture--and was pleased when she found, in a household treatise, that "it is permissible to separate a pair of sofa commodes and their companion lamps." With the authoress of Your Home Is You, she developed a hatred for little lean chairs and spindle tables. She believed that a room having a generous expanse of glass, and lots of rich wood paneling was an example of the masculine type of room, whereas the feminine type was characterized by lighter-looking windows and frailer woodwork. The novels I had found her reading when I moved in were now replaced by illustrated catalogues and homemaking guides. From a firm located at 4640 Roosevelt Blvd., Philadelphia, she ordered for our double bed a "damask covered 312 coil mattress"--although the old one seemed to me resilient and durable enough for whatever it had to support.
A Midwesterner, as her late husband had also been, she had lived in coy Ramsdale, the gem of an eastern state, not long enough to know all the nice people. She knew slightly the jovial dentist who lived in a kind of ramshackle wooden chateau behind our lawn. She had met at a church tea the "snooty" wife of the local junk dealer who owned the "colonial" white horror at the corner of the avenue. Now and then she "visited with" old Miss Opposite; but the more patrician matrons among those she called upon, or met at lawn functions, or had telephone chats with--such dainty ladies as Mrs. Glave, Mrs. Sheridan, Mrs. McCrystal, Mrs. Knight and others, seldom seemed to call on my neglected Charlotte.
Indeed, the only couple with whom she had relations of real cordiality, devoid of any ulterior motives or practical foresight, were the Farlows who had just come back from a business trip to Chile in time to attend our wedding, with the Chatfields, McCoos, and a few others (but not Mrs. Junk or the even prouder Mrs. Talbot). John Farlow was a middle-aged, quiet, quietly athletic, quietly successful dealer in sporting goods, who had an office at Parkington, forty miles away: it was he who got me the cartridges for that Colt and showed me how to use it, during a walk in the woods one Sunday; he was also what he called with a smile a part-time lawyer and had handled some of Charlotte's affairs. Jean, his gorgeous youngish wife (finally, a looker), was a long-limbed girl in harlequin glasses with two boxer dogs, two pointed breasts and a lucious red mouth. She painted--landscapes and portraits--and vividly do I remember praising, over cocktails, the picture she had made of a mountain range with its snowy peaks and the fields below it--and John removed his pipe and said, apropos of nothing, that it was a pity Dolly and Rosaline were so critical of each other at school, but he hoped, and we all hoped, they would get on better when they returned from their respective camps.
We talked of the school. It had its drawbacks, and it had its virtues. "Of course, too many of the tradespeople here are Italians," said John, "but on the other hand we are still spared--" "I wish," interrupted Jean with a laugh, sparing us her husband’s charming xenophobia, "Dolly and Rosaline were spending the summer together." Suddenly I imagined Lo returning from camp and hoped that she would take well to the enormous adjustment to Humbert-as-father. I’d read enough sob adoption fictions—“You’re not my father,” she wailed into the night—to know it could be difficult. I never imagined I’d have to go through it alone.
My so-called passionate and lonely Charlotte was in everyday life matter-of-fact and gregarious. Moreover, I discovered that although she could not control her heart or her cries, she was a woman of principle. Immediately after she had become more or less my mistress (despite the stimulants, her "nervous, eager lover” had some initial trouble, for which, however, he amply compensated her by a fantastic display of old-world endearments), good Charlotte interviewed me about my relations with God. I could have answered that on that score my mind was open; I said, instead--paying my tribute to a pious platitude--that I believed in a cosmic spirit. Looking down at her fingernails, she also asked me had I not in my family a certain strange strain. I countered by inquiring whether she would still want to marry me if my father's maternal grandfather had been, say, a Turk. She said it did not matter a bit; but that, if she ever found out I did not believe in Our Christian God, she would commit suicide. She said it so solemnly that it gave me the creeps. It was then I knew she was a woman of principle.
She was very genteel: she said "excuse me" whenever a slight burp interrupted her flowing speech, called an envelope and ahnvelope, and when talking to her lady-friends referred to me as Mr. Humbert. I thought it would please her if I entered the community trailing some glamour after me. On the day of our wedding a little interview with me appeared in the Society Column of the Ramsdale Journal, with a photograph of Charlotte, one eyebrow up and a misprint in her name ("Hazer").
Despite this embarrassing slip-up, the publicity warmed the porcelain cockles of her heart and, slowly, mine. By engaging in church work as well as by getting to know the better mothers of Lo's schoolmates, Charlotte in the course of twenty months or so had managed to become if not a prominent, at least an acceptable citizen, but never before had she come under that thrilling news column, and it was I who put her there, Mr. Edgar H. Humbert (I threw in the "Edgar" just for the heck of it), "writer and explorer." McCoo's brother, when taking it down, asked me what I had written. Whatever I told him came out as "several books on Peacock, Rainbow and other poets." It was also noted that Charlotte and I had known each other for several years and that I was a distant relation of her first husband. I hinted I had had an affair with her thirteen years ago but this was not mentioned in print. To Charlotte I said that society columns should contain a shimmer of errors.
Let us go on with this curious tale. When called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover, did I experience only bitterness and distaste? No. Mr. Humbert confesses to a certain titillation of his vanity, to some tenderness, even to a pattern of looking up, evenings, from my papers at my new bride and thinking I had made a wise decision. Never had I thought that the sometimes ridiculous, through rather handsome Mrs. Haze, with her blind faith in the wisdom of her church and book club, her mannerisms of elocution, her harsh, cold, contemptuous attitude toward an adorable child of twelve, could turn into such a touching, helpless creature as soon as I laid my hands upon her.
The transformation improved her looks. Her smile that had been such a contrived thing, thenceforth became the radiance of utter adoration--a radiance having something soft about it, in which, with wonder, I recognized a resemblance to the lovely, inane, lost look that Lo had when gloating over a new kind of concoction at the soda fountain or mutely admiring my expensive, always tailor-fresh clothes. Deeply fascinated, I would watch Charlotte while she swapped parental woes with some other lady and made that national grimace of feminine resignation (eyes rolling up, mouth drooping sideways). We had highballs before turning in, and with their help, I would manage my husbandly duties with relative ease. I kept telling myself, as I wielded my brand-new large-as-life wife, that this may not be as exciting as my youthful womanizing, but it was more sane, more adult, and I took pains to get to know this strange woman to whom I had tethered myself. I had my wife unearth from under a collection of shoes (Mr. Haze had a passion for them, it appears) a thirty-year-old album, so that I might see how Lotte had looked as a child; and even though the light was wrong and the dresses graceless, I was able to make out a dim first version of Lolita's outline, legs, cheekbones, bobbed nose. For all their differences, they were kin.
I simply can't tell you how gentle, how touching my poor wife was. At breakfast, in the depressingly bright kitchen, with its chrome glitter and Hardware and Co. Calendar and cute breakfast nook, she would sit, robed in red, her elbow on the plastic-topped table, her cheek propped on her fist, and stare at me with intolerable tenderness as I consumed my ham and eggs. And when at times I felt the old Humbert appear from his curmudgeonly cage, I hid it well. My solemn exasperation was to her the silence of love. My small income added to her even smaller one impressed her as a brilliant fortune; not because the resulting sum now sufficed for most middle-class needs, but because even my money shone in her eyes with the magic of my manliness, and she saw our joint account as one of those southern boulevards at midday that have solid shade on one side and smooth sunshine on the other, all the way to the end of a prospect.
Into the fifty days of our cohabitation Charlotte crammed the activities of as many years. The poor woman busied herself with a number of things she had foregone long before or had never been much interested in, as if by my marrying the mother of a gifted child I had enabled my wife to regain an abundance of youth by proxy.
With the zest of a banal young bride, she started to "glorify the home." Knowing as I did its every cranny by heart, I had long entered into a sort of emotional relationship with it, with its very ugliness and dirt, and now I could almost feel the wretched thing cower in its reluctance to endure the putt-buff-and-snuff that Charlotte planned to give it. She never got as far as that, thank God, but she did use up a tremendous amount of energy in washing window shades, waxing the slats of Venetian blinds, purchasing new shades and new blinds, returning them to the store, replacing them by others, and so on, in a constant chiaroscuro of smiles and frowns, doubts and pouts. She dabbled in cretonnes and chintzes; she changed the colors of the sofa--the sofa where I had given Lo her unnecessary-but-diagnostic mathematics lesson. She rearranged the furniture--and was pleased when she found, in a household treatise, that "it is permissible to separate a pair of sofa commodes and their companion lamps." With the authoress of Your Home Is You, she developed a hatred for little lean chairs and spindle tables. She believed that a room having a generous expanse of glass, and lots of rich wood paneling was an example of the masculine type of room, whereas the feminine type was characterized by lighter-looking windows and frailer woodwork. The novels I had found her reading when I moved in were now replaced by illustrated catalogues and homemaking guides. From a firm located at 4640 Roosevelt Blvd., Philadelphia, she ordered for our double bed a "damask covered 312 coil mattress"--although the old one seemed to me resilient and durable enough for whatever it had to support.
A Midwesterner, as her late husband had also been, she had lived in coy Ramsdale, the gem of an eastern state, not long enough to know all the nice people. She knew slightly the jovial dentist who lived in a kind of ramshackle wooden chateau behind our lawn. She had met at a church tea the "snooty" wife of the local junk dealer who owned the "colonial" white horror at the corner of the avenue. Now and then she "visited with" old Miss Opposite; but the more patrician matrons among those she called upon, or met at lawn functions, or had telephone chats with--such dainty ladies as Mrs. Glave, Mrs. Sheridan, Mrs. McCrystal, Mrs. Knight and others, seldom seemed to call on my neglected Charlotte.
Indeed, the only couple with whom she had relations of real cordiality, devoid of any ulterior motives or practical foresight, were the Farlows who had just come back from a business trip to Chile in time to attend our wedding, with the Chatfields, McCoos, and a few others (but not Mrs. Junk or the even prouder Mrs. Talbot). John Farlow was a middle-aged, quiet, quietly athletic, quietly successful dealer in sporting goods, who had an office at Parkington, forty miles away: it was he who got me the cartridges for that Colt and showed me how to use it, during a walk in the woods one Sunday; he was also what he called with a smile a part-time lawyer and had handled some of Charlotte's affairs. Jean, his gorgeous youngish wife (finally, a looker), was a long-limbed girl in harlequin glasses with two boxer dogs, two pointed breasts and a lucious red mouth. She painted--landscapes and portraits--and vividly do I remember praising, over cocktails, the picture she had made of a mountain range with its snowy peaks and the fields below it--and John removed his pipe and said, apropos of nothing, that it was a pity Dolly and Rosaline were so critical of each other at school, but he hoped, and we all hoped, they would get on better when they returned from their respective camps.
We talked of the school. It had its drawbacks, and it had its virtues. "Of course, too many of the tradespeople here are Italians," said John, "but on the other hand we are still spared--" "I wish," interrupted Jean with a laugh, sparing us her husband’s charming xenophobia, "Dolly and Rosaline were spending the summer together." Suddenly I imagined Lo returning from camp and hoped that she would take well to the enormous adjustment to Humbert-as-father. I’d read enough sob adoption fictions—“You’re not my father,” she wailed into the night—to know it could be difficult. I never imagined I’d have to go through it alone.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Chapter 17
Gentlemen of the jury! I cannot swear that certain motions pertaining to the business in hand--if I may coin an expression--had not drifted across my mind before. My mind had not retained them in any logical form or in any relation to definitely recollected occasions; but I cannot swear--let me repeat--that I had not toyed with them (to rig up yet another expression), in my dimness of thought. There may have been times--there must have been times--when I had brought up for detached inspection the idea of marrying a mature widow (say, Charlotte Haze) who has already started a family (Lo), to swoop in, love and be loved, to “fix everything.” I am even prepared to tell my tormentors that perhaps once or twice I had cast an appraiser's cold eye at Charlotte's coral lips and bronze hair and dangerously low neckline, and had vaguely tried to fit her into a plausible daydream. Maybe, in a certain dim light, light, I could almost love—well—become attracted—well, hmm. But love, romance, were these even necessary? Were they productive?
After a while I destroyed the letter and went to my room, and ruminated, and rumpled my hair, and modeled my purple robe, and moaned through clenched teeth and suddenly--Suddenly, gentlemen of the jury, I felt a grin dawning (through the very grimace that twisted my lips) like a distant and terrible sun. I imagined (under conditions of new and perfect visibility) all the good her mother's husband would be able to do poor Lolita. I would instruct and edify her three times a day, every day. She would be a scholar in no time and I would be responsible. Then, with all possible caution, on mental tiptoe so to speak, I conjured up Charlotte as a possible mate. By God, I could make myself bring her that economically halved grapefruit, that sugarless breakfast. I might even grow to like it.
Humbert Humbert sweating in the fierce white light, and howled at, and trodden upon by sweating policemen, is now ready to make a further statement as he turns his conscience inside out and rips off its innermost lining. I did not plan to marry poor Charlotte for her husband’s money, but it did briefly occur to me that the subsidization of my scholarly pursuits could indeed be very good for my career. So Humbert the gold-miner schemed and dreamed--and the red sun of rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of scholars, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights. In a word, before such an Amazing Offer, before such a vastness and variety of vistas, I was as helpless as Adam in an apple orchard.
And now take down the following important remark: the artist in me has been given the upper hand over the gentleman. It is with a great effort of will that in this memoir I have managed to tune my style to the tone of the journal that I kept when Mrs. Haze was to me but an annoyance. That journal of mine is no more; but I have considered it my artistic duty to preserve its intonations no matter how false and brutal they may seem to me now. Fortunately, my story has reached a point where I can cease insulting poor Charlotte for the sake of retrospective verisimilitude.
Wishing to spare poor Charlotte two or three hours of suspense on a winding road (and avoid, perhaps, a head-on collision that would shatter our different dreams), I made a thoughtful but abortive attempt to reach her at the camp by telephone. She had left half an hour before, and getting Lo instead, I told her--trembling and brimming with my mastery over fate--that I was going to marry her mother. I had to repeat it twice because something was preventing her from giving me her attention. "Gee, that's swell," she said laughing. "When is the wedding? Hold on a sec, the pup--That pup here has got hold of my sock. Listen--" and she added she guessed she was going to have loads of fun . . . and I realized as I hung up that a couple of hours at that camp had been sufficient to blot out with new impressions the image of the horrid, tacky kumbaya of a summer that she had described in protest. But what did it matter whether she would like it? She would learn, become stronger for it, and we would get her back as soon as a decent amount of time after the wedding had elapsed.
After Louise had gone, I inspected the icebox, and finding it much too healthy, walked to town and bought the richest foods available. I also bought some good liquor and two or three kinds of vitamins. I was pretty sure that with the aid of these stimulants and my natural resources, I would avert any embarrassment that my indifference might incur when called upon to display a strong and impatient flame. Again and again resourceful Humbert evoked Charlotte as seen in the peep-show of a manly imagination. She was well groomed and shapely, this I could say for her: heavy hips, round knees, ripe bust, the coarse pink skin of her neck: a handsome woman.
The sun made its usual round of the house as the afternoon ripened into evening. I had a drink. And another. And yet another. Gin and pineapple juice, my favorite mixture, always double my energy. I decided to busy myself with our unkempt lawn. Une petite attention. It was crowded with dandelions, and a cursed dog--I loathe dogs--had defiled the flat stones where a sundial had once stood. Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons. The gin was dancing in me, and I almost fell over the folding chairs that I attempted to dislodge. Red zebras! There are some belches that sound like cheers--at least, mine did. An old fence at the back of the garden separated us from the neighbor's garbage receptacles and lilacs; but there was nothing between the front end of our lawn (where it sloped along one side of the house) and the street. Therefore I was able to watch (with the smirk of one about to perform a good action) for the return of Charlotte: that tooth should be extracted at once. As I lurched and lunged with the hand mower, bits of grass optically twittering in the low sun, I kept an eye on that section of suburban street. It curved in from under an archway of huge shade trees, then sped towards us down, down, quite sharply, past old Miss Opposite's ivied brick house and high-sloping lawn (much trimmer than ours) and disappeared behind our own front porch which I could not see from where I happily belched and labored.
The dandelions perished. A reek of sap mingled with the pineapple. Two little girls, Marion and Mabel, went toward the avenue (from which our Lawn Street cascaded), one pushing a bicycle, the other feeding from a paper bag, both talking at the top of their sunny voices. Leslie, old Miss Opposite's gardener and chauffeur, a very amiable and athletic woman, grinned at me from afar and shouted, re-shouted, commented by gesture, that I was mighty energetic today. The fool dog of the prosperous junk dealer next door ran after a blue car--not Charlotte's. The older of the two little girls ran back down the street crumpling her paper bag and was hidden from this Green Goat by the frontage of Mr. And Mrs. Humbert's residence. A station wagon popped out of the leafy shade of the avenue, dragging some of it on its roof before the shadows snapped, and swung by at an idiotic pace, the sweatshirted driver roof-holding with his left hand and the junkman's dog tearing alongside.
There was a smiling pause--and then, with a flutter in my breast, I witnessed the return of the Blue Sedan. I saw it glide downhill and disappear behind the corner of the house. I had a glimpse of her calm pale profile. It occurred to me that until she went upstairs she would not know whether I had gone or not. A minute later, with an expression of great anguish on her face, she looked down at me from the window of Lo's room. By sprinting upstairs, I managed to reach that room before she left it.
After a while I destroyed the letter and went to my room, and ruminated, and rumpled my hair, and modeled my purple robe, and moaned through clenched teeth and suddenly--Suddenly, gentlemen of the jury, I felt a grin dawning (through the very grimace that twisted my lips) like a distant and terrible sun. I imagined (under conditions of new and perfect visibility) all the good her mother's husband would be able to do poor Lolita. I would instruct and edify her three times a day, every day. She would be a scholar in no time and I would be responsible. Then, with all possible caution, on mental tiptoe so to speak, I conjured up Charlotte as a possible mate. By God, I could make myself bring her that economically halved grapefruit, that sugarless breakfast. I might even grow to like it.
Humbert Humbert sweating in the fierce white light, and howled at, and trodden upon by sweating policemen, is now ready to make a further statement as he turns his conscience inside out and rips off its innermost lining. I did not plan to marry poor Charlotte for her husband’s money, but it did briefly occur to me that the subsidization of my scholarly pursuits could indeed be very good for my career. So Humbert the gold-miner schemed and dreamed--and the red sun of rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of scholars, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights. In a word, before such an Amazing Offer, before such a vastness and variety of vistas, I was as helpless as Adam in an apple orchard.
And now take down the following important remark: the artist in me has been given the upper hand over the gentleman. It is with a great effort of will that in this memoir I have managed to tune my style to the tone of the journal that I kept when Mrs. Haze was to me but an annoyance. That journal of mine is no more; but I have considered it my artistic duty to preserve its intonations no matter how false and brutal they may seem to me now. Fortunately, my story has reached a point where I can cease insulting poor Charlotte for the sake of retrospective verisimilitude.
Wishing to spare poor Charlotte two or three hours of suspense on a winding road (and avoid, perhaps, a head-on collision that would shatter our different dreams), I made a thoughtful but abortive attempt to reach her at the camp by telephone. She had left half an hour before, and getting Lo instead, I told her--trembling and brimming with my mastery over fate--that I was going to marry her mother. I had to repeat it twice because something was preventing her from giving me her attention. "Gee, that's swell," she said laughing. "When is the wedding? Hold on a sec, the pup--That pup here has got hold of my sock. Listen--" and she added she guessed she was going to have loads of fun . . . and I realized as I hung up that a couple of hours at that camp had been sufficient to blot out with new impressions the image of the horrid, tacky kumbaya of a summer that she had described in protest. But what did it matter whether she would like it? She would learn, become stronger for it, and we would get her back as soon as a decent amount of time after the wedding had elapsed.
After Louise had gone, I inspected the icebox, and finding it much too healthy, walked to town and bought the richest foods available. I also bought some good liquor and two or three kinds of vitamins. I was pretty sure that with the aid of these stimulants and my natural resources, I would avert any embarrassment that my indifference might incur when called upon to display a strong and impatient flame. Again and again resourceful Humbert evoked Charlotte as seen in the peep-show of a manly imagination. She was well groomed and shapely, this I could say for her: heavy hips, round knees, ripe bust, the coarse pink skin of her neck: a handsome woman.
The sun made its usual round of the house as the afternoon ripened into evening. I had a drink. And another. And yet another. Gin and pineapple juice, my favorite mixture, always double my energy. I decided to busy myself with our unkempt lawn. Une petite attention. It was crowded with dandelions, and a cursed dog--I loathe dogs--had defiled the flat stones where a sundial had once stood. Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons. The gin was dancing in me, and I almost fell over the folding chairs that I attempted to dislodge. Red zebras! There are some belches that sound like cheers--at least, mine did. An old fence at the back of the garden separated us from the neighbor's garbage receptacles and lilacs; but there was nothing between the front end of our lawn (where it sloped along one side of the house) and the street. Therefore I was able to watch (with the smirk of one about to perform a good action) for the return of Charlotte: that tooth should be extracted at once. As I lurched and lunged with the hand mower, bits of grass optically twittering in the low sun, I kept an eye on that section of suburban street. It curved in from under an archway of huge shade trees, then sped towards us down, down, quite sharply, past old Miss Opposite's ivied brick house and high-sloping lawn (much trimmer than ours) and disappeared behind our own front porch which I could not see from where I happily belched and labored.
The dandelions perished. A reek of sap mingled with the pineapple. Two little girls, Marion and Mabel, went toward the avenue (from which our Lawn Street cascaded), one pushing a bicycle, the other feeding from a paper bag, both talking at the top of their sunny voices. Leslie, old Miss Opposite's gardener and chauffeur, a very amiable and athletic woman, grinned at me from afar and shouted, re-shouted, commented by gesture, that I was mighty energetic today. The fool dog of the prosperous junk dealer next door ran after a blue car--not Charlotte's. The older of the two little girls ran back down the street crumpling her paper bag and was hidden from this Green Goat by the frontage of Mr. And Mrs. Humbert's residence. A station wagon popped out of the leafy shade of the avenue, dragging some of it on its roof before the shadows snapped, and swung by at an idiotic pace, the sweatshirted driver roof-holding with his left hand and the junkman's dog tearing alongside.
There was a smiling pause--and then, with a flutter in my breast, I witnessed the return of the Blue Sedan. I saw it glide downhill and disappear behind the corner of the house. I had a glimpse of her calm pale profile. It occurred to me that until she went upstairs she would not know whether I had gone or not. A minute later, with an expression of great anguish on her face, she looked down at me from the window of Lo's room. By sprinting upstairs, I managed to reach that room before she left it.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Chapter 16
A poignant chaos was welling within me. Without Lo, the house felt silent and dull, and I knew I had to plan my own summer escape quickly, lest Haze rope me in for hot months of empty talk on the veranda. But I had to drop those things and hurriedly regain my composure, as I became aware of the maid's velvety voice calling me softly from the stairs. She had a message for me, she said; and, topping my automatic thanks with a kindly "you're welcome," good Louise left an unstamped, curiously clean-looking letter in my hand. Hardly knowing where I was going, I retreated into Lo’s room (the coolest at that time of day) and closed the door behind me.
"This is a confession. I love you [so the letter began in a hysterical scrawl]. Last Sunday in church--bad you, who refused to come to see our beautiful new windows!--only last Sunday, my dear one, when I asked the Lord what to do about it, I was told to act as I am acting now. You see, there is no alternative. I have loved you from the minute I saw you. I am a passionate and lonely woman and you are the love of my life.
Now, my dearest, dearest, mon cher, dear monsieur, you have read this; now you know. So, will you please, at once, pack and leave. This is a landlady's order. I am dismissing a lodger. I am kicking you out. Go! Scram! Departez! I shall be back by dinnertime, if I do eighty both ways and don't have an accident (but what would it matter?), and I do not wish to find you in the house. Please, please, leave at once, now, do not even read this absurd note to the end. Go. Adieu.
The situation, darling, is quite simple. Of course, I know with absolute certainty that I am nothing to you, nothing at all to you, nothing at all. Oh yes, you enjoy talking to me (and kidding poor me), you have grown fond of our friendly house, of the books I like, of my lovely garden, even of Lo's noisy ways--but I am nothing to you. Right? Right. Nothing to you whatever. But if, after reading my "confession," you decided, in your dark romantic European way, that I am attractive enough for you to take advantage of my letter and make a pass at me, then you would be a criminal--worse than a murderer. You see, chèri. If you decided to stay, if I found you at home (which I know I won't--and that's why I am able to go on like this), the fact of your remaining would only mean one thing: that you want me as much as I do you: as a lifelong mate; and that you are ready to link up your life with mine forever and ever and be a father to my little girl.
Let me rave and ramble on for a teeny while more, my dearest, since I know this letter has been by now torn by you, and its pieces (illegible) in the vortex of the toilet. My dearest, my very, very dear, what a world of love I have built up for you during this miraculous June! I know how reserved you are, how "British." Your old-world reticence, your sense of decorum may be shocked by the boldness of an American girl! You who conceal your strongest feelings must think me a shameless little idiot for throwing open my poor bruised heart like this. In years gone by, many disappointments came my way. Mr. Haze was a splendid person, a sterling soul, but he happened to be twenty years my senior, and--well, let us not gossip about the past. My dearest, your curiosity must be well satisfied if you have ignored my request and read this letter to the bitter end. Never mind. Destroy it and go. Do not forget to leave the key on the desk in your room. And some scrap of address so that I could refund the twelve dollars I owe you till the end of the month. Good-bye, dear one. Pray for me--if you ever pray.
C.H."
What I present here is what I remember of the letter, and what I remember of the letter I remember verbatim (including her limited French). It was at least twice longer. I have left out a lyrical passage too personal to include, concerning Lolita's brother who died at 2 when she was 4, and how much I would have liked him. Let me see what else can I say? Yes. There is just a chance that "the vortex of the toilet" is my own contribution. She probably begged me to make a special fire to consume it.
My first movement was one of repulsion and retreat. My second was like a friend's calm hand falling upon my shoulder and bidding me take my time. I did. I came out of my daze and found myself still in Lo’s room. A full-page ad ripped out of a slick magazine was affixed to the wall above the bed, between a crooner's mug and the lashes of a movie actress. It represented a dark-haired young husband with a kind of drained look in his Irish eyes. He was modeling a robe by So-and-So and holding a bridgelike tray by So-and-So, with breakfast for two. Was this my fate? The legend, by the Rev. Thomas Morell, called him a "conquering hero." The thoroughly conquered lady (not shown) was presumably propping herself up to receive her half of the tray. How her bed-fellow was to get under the bridge without some messy mishap was not clear. Under this was another picture, also a colored ad. A distinguished playwright I would later murder was solemnly smoking a Drome. He always smoked Dromes. The resemblance was slight. Under this was Lo's bed, littered with comics. The enamel had come off the bedstead, leaving black, more or less rounded, marks on the white. I sat on Lo’s bed reread the letter.
"This is a confession. I love you [so the letter began in a hysterical scrawl]. Last Sunday in church--bad you, who refused to come to see our beautiful new windows!--only last Sunday, my dear one, when I asked the Lord what to do about it, I was told to act as I am acting now. You see, there is no alternative. I have loved you from the minute I saw you. I am a passionate and lonely woman and you are the love of my life.
Now, my dearest, dearest, mon cher, dear monsieur, you have read this; now you know. So, will you please, at once, pack and leave. This is a landlady's order. I am dismissing a lodger. I am kicking you out. Go! Scram! Departez! I shall be back by dinnertime, if I do eighty both ways and don't have an accident (but what would it matter?), and I do not wish to find you in the house. Please, please, leave at once, now, do not even read this absurd note to the end. Go. Adieu.
The situation, darling, is quite simple. Of course, I know with absolute certainty that I am nothing to you, nothing at all to you, nothing at all. Oh yes, you enjoy talking to me (and kidding poor me), you have grown fond of our friendly house, of the books I like, of my lovely garden, even of Lo's noisy ways--but I am nothing to you. Right? Right. Nothing to you whatever. But if, after reading my "confession," you decided, in your dark romantic European way, that I am attractive enough for you to take advantage of my letter and make a pass at me, then you would be a criminal--worse than a murderer. You see, chèri. If you decided to stay, if I found you at home (which I know I won't--and that's why I am able to go on like this), the fact of your remaining would only mean one thing: that you want me as much as I do you: as a lifelong mate; and that you are ready to link up your life with mine forever and ever and be a father to my little girl.
Let me rave and ramble on for a teeny while more, my dearest, since I know this letter has been by now torn by you, and its pieces (illegible) in the vortex of the toilet. My dearest, my very, very dear, what a world of love I have built up for you during this miraculous June! I know how reserved you are, how "British." Your old-world reticence, your sense of decorum may be shocked by the boldness of an American girl! You who conceal your strongest feelings must think me a shameless little idiot for throwing open my poor bruised heart like this. In years gone by, many disappointments came my way. Mr. Haze was a splendid person, a sterling soul, but he happened to be twenty years my senior, and--well, let us not gossip about the past. My dearest, your curiosity must be well satisfied if you have ignored my request and read this letter to the bitter end. Never mind. Destroy it and go. Do not forget to leave the key on the desk in your room. And some scrap of address so that I could refund the twelve dollars I owe you till the end of the month. Good-bye, dear one. Pray for me--if you ever pray.
C.H."
What I present here is what I remember of the letter, and what I remember of the letter I remember verbatim (including her limited French). It was at least twice longer. I have left out a lyrical passage too personal to include, concerning Lolita's brother who died at 2 when she was 4, and how much I would have liked him. Let me see what else can I say? Yes. There is just a chance that "the vortex of the toilet" is my own contribution. She probably begged me to make a special fire to consume it.
My first movement was one of repulsion and retreat. My second was like a friend's calm hand falling upon my shoulder and bidding me take my time. I did. I came out of my daze and found myself still in Lo’s room. A full-page ad ripped out of a slick magazine was affixed to the wall above the bed, between a crooner's mug and the lashes of a movie actress. It represented a dark-haired young husband with a kind of drained look in his Irish eyes. He was modeling a robe by So-and-So and holding a bridgelike tray by So-and-So, with breakfast for two. Was this my fate? The legend, by the Rev. Thomas Morell, called him a "conquering hero." The thoroughly conquered lady (not shown) was presumably propping herself up to receive her half of the tray. How her bed-fellow was to get under the bridge without some messy mishap was not clear. Under this was another picture, also a colored ad. A distinguished playwright I would later murder was solemnly smoking a Drome. He always smoked Dromes. The resemblance was slight. Under this was Lo's bed, littered with comics. The enamel had come off the bedstead, leaving black, more or less rounded, marks on the white. I sat on Lo’s bed reread the letter.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Chapter 15
Next day they drove downtown to buy things needed for the camp: any wearable purchase worked wonders with Lo. She seemed her usual sarcastic self at dinner. Immediately afterwards, she went up to her room to plunge into the comic books acquired for rainy days at Camp Q (they were so thoroughly sampled by Thursday that she left them behind). I too retired to my lair, and wrote letters. My plan now was to take a seaside vacation and then, when school began, resume my existence in the Haze household. This way, I could avoid giving Haze any more ideas about my “real reason” for sending Lo away.
On Tuesday they went shopping again, and I was asked to answer the phone if the camp mistress rang up during their absence. She did; and a month or so later we had occasion to recall our pleasant chat. That Tuesday, Lo had her dinner in her room. She had been crying after a routine row with her mother and, as had happened on former occasions, had not wished me to see her swollen eyes: she had one of those frail complexions that after a good cry get all blurred and inflamed. There was, however, more to it than I thought. As we sat in the darkness of the verandah, Haze, with a dreary laugh, said she had told Lo that her beloved Humbert thoroughly approved of the whole camp idea "and now," added Haze, "the child throws a fit; pretext: you and I want to get rid of her; actual reason: I told her we would exchange tomorrow for plainer stuff some much too cute night things that she bullied me into buying for her. You see, she sees herself as a starlet; I see her as a sturdy, healthy, but decidedly homely kid. This, I guess, is at the root of our troubles."
On Wednesday I managed to intercept Lo for a few seconds: I said something meant to be friendly and funny but she only emitted a snort without looking at me. "Doublecrosser," she said. “You don’t know it yet,” I told her, “but this is to be far more educational a summer than you could hope to have with your mother and me.” She scoffed: I’d lost her at “educational.” She did not condescend to have dinner with Hum and mum: washed her hair and went to bed with her ridiculous books. And on Thursday quiet Mrs. Haze drove her to Camp Q.
Things improved a bit before Dolores left. Haze was to drive her to the camp in the early morning. Upon sundry sounds of departure reaching me, I rolled out of bed and leaned out of the window. Under the poplars, the car was already running. On the sidewalk, Louise stood shading her eyes with her hand, as if the little traveler were already riding into the low morning sun. The gesture proved to be premature. "Hurry up!" shouted Haze. Lolita, who was half in and about to slam the car door, wind down the glass, wave to Louise and the poplars (whom and which she was never to see again), interrupted the motion of fate: she looked up--and dashed back into the house (Haze furiously calling after her). A moment later I heard her running up the stairs. My heart expanded with such force that it almost blotted me out. My daughter, I though, my darling!
Lolita arrived, in her Sunday frock, stamping, and then she gave me a short, tight hug and clattered downstairs. The car door was slammed--was re-slammed--and driver Haze at the violent wheel, rubber-red lips writhing in angry, inaudible speech, swung the car away, while unnoticed by them or Louise, old Miss Opposite, an invalid, feebly but rhythmically waved from her vined verandah.
On Tuesday they went shopping again, and I was asked to answer the phone if the camp mistress rang up during their absence. She did; and a month or so later we had occasion to recall our pleasant chat. That Tuesday, Lo had her dinner in her room. She had been crying after a routine row with her mother and, as had happened on former occasions, had not wished me to see her swollen eyes: she had one of those frail complexions that after a good cry get all blurred and inflamed. There was, however, more to it than I thought. As we sat in the darkness of the verandah, Haze, with a dreary laugh, said she had told Lo that her beloved Humbert thoroughly approved of the whole camp idea "and now," added Haze, "the child throws a fit; pretext: you and I want to get rid of her; actual reason: I told her we would exchange tomorrow for plainer stuff some much too cute night things that she bullied me into buying for her. You see, she sees herself as a starlet; I see her as a sturdy, healthy, but decidedly homely kid. This, I guess, is at the root of our troubles."
On Wednesday I managed to intercept Lo for a few seconds: I said something meant to be friendly and funny but she only emitted a snort without looking at me. "Doublecrosser," she said. “You don’t know it yet,” I told her, “but this is to be far more educational a summer than you could hope to have with your mother and me.” She scoffed: I’d lost her at “educational.” She did not condescend to have dinner with Hum and mum: washed her hair and went to bed with her ridiculous books. And on Thursday quiet Mrs. Haze drove her to Camp Q.
Things improved a bit before Dolores left. Haze was to drive her to the camp in the early morning. Upon sundry sounds of departure reaching me, I rolled out of bed and leaned out of the window. Under the poplars, the car was already running. On the sidewalk, Louise stood shading her eyes with her hand, as if the little traveler were already riding into the low morning sun. The gesture proved to be premature. "Hurry up!" shouted Haze. Lolita, who was half in and about to slam the car door, wind down the glass, wave to Louise and the poplars (whom and which she was never to see again), interrupted the motion of fate: she looked up--and dashed back into the house (Haze furiously calling after her). A moment later I heard her running up the stairs. My heart expanded with such force that it almost blotted me out. My daughter, I though, my darling!
Lolita arrived, in her Sunday frock, stamping, and then she gave me a short, tight hug and clattered downstairs. The car door was slammed--was re-slammed--and driver Haze at the violent wheel, rubber-red lips writhing in angry, inaudible speech, swung the car away, while unnoticed by them or Louise, old Miss Opposite, an invalid, feebly but rhythmically waved from her vined verandah.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Chapter 14
I had lunch in town. The house was still empty when I strolled back. I spent the afternoon working.
I felt proud of myself. I had introduced myself as teacher and father figure without exasperating the girl. What I began to picture was not she, but my own creation, another, brilliant Lolita--perhaps, more real than Lolita; overlapping, encasing her. And nothing prevented me from repeating a performance. Perhaps the next lesson would be on the ancient Greeks, or an unbiased perspective on her own nation’s cheery imperialism. The afternoon drifted on and on, in ripe silence.
No Lolita came home--she had gone with the Chatfields to a movie. The table was laid with more elegance than usual: candlelight, if you please. In this mawkish aura, Mrs. Haze gently touched the silver on both sides of her plate as if touching piano keys, and smiled down on her empty plate (was on a diet), and said she hoped I liked the salad (recipe lifted from a woman's magazine). She hoped I liked the cold cuts, too. It had been a perfect day. Mrs. Chatfield was a lovely person. Phyllis, her daughter, was leaving tomorrow for a three-week summer camp.
And suddenly I had a perfect idea, far better than any lesson I could impart on the girl in tiny doses—Lo would go to camp, too. At first, Charlotte was reticent. Never having gone to a camp herself, she did not know what went on there. Neither did I, but I was positive it would be a much more revelatory experience than lying out on the veranda each day. At camp, she would learn respect, sportsmanship, perhaps even find an opportunity to showcase her voice in a talent show. I would miss the girl, to be certain, if for no other reason than the buffer she provided between myself and Haze, yet I think it was that very buffer that Charlotte considered when she relented to my idea. Lolita, it was decided, would go Thursday, stay there after Phyllis had left, until school began.
Suddenly, my toothache returned. Must have been an enormous molar, with an abscess as big as a maraschino cherry.
Charlotte visited me in my room later, trying to help. "We have," said Haze, "an excellent dentist. Our neighbor, in fact. Dr. Quilty. Uncle or cousin, I think, of the playwright. Think it will pass? Well, just as you wish. In the fall I shall have him 'brace' her, as my mother used to say. It may curb Lo a little. I am afraid she has been bothering you frightfully all these days. And we are in for a couple of stormy ones before she goes. She has flatly refused to go, and I confess I left her with the Chatfields because I dreaded to face her alone just yet. The movie may mollify her. Phyllis is a very sweet girl, and there is no earthly reason for Lo to dislike her. Really, monsieur, I am very sorry about that tooth of yours. It would be so much more reasonable to let me contact Ivor Quilty first thing tomorrow morning if it still hurts. And, as you said, a summer camp is so much healthier, and--well, it is all so much more reasonable as I say than to mope on a suburban lawn and use mamma's lipstick and go into tantrums at the least provocation. And it won't be all play either. The camp is run by Shirley Holmes--you know, the woman who wrote Campfire Girl. Camp will teach Dolores Haze to grow in many things--health, knowledge, temper. And particularly in a sense of responsibility towards other people. Shall we take these candles with us and sit for a while on the piazza, or do you want to go to bed and nurse that tooth?"
I saw what the woman was up to, already plotting for the weeks ahead with the gentleman tenant all to herself. “Nurse that tooth,” I replied.
I felt proud of myself. I had introduced myself as teacher and father figure without exasperating the girl. What I began to picture was not she, but my own creation, another, brilliant Lolita--perhaps, more real than Lolita; overlapping, encasing her. And nothing prevented me from repeating a performance. Perhaps the next lesson would be on the ancient Greeks, or an unbiased perspective on her own nation’s cheery imperialism. The afternoon drifted on and on, in ripe silence.
No Lolita came home--she had gone with the Chatfields to a movie. The table was laid with more elegance than usual: candlelight, if you please. In this mawkish aura, Mrs. Haze gently touched the silver on both sides of her plate as if touching piano keys, and smiled down on her empty plate (was on a diet), and said she hoped I liked the salad (recipe lifted from a woman's magazine). She hoped I liked the cold cuts, too. It had been a perfect day. Mrs. Chatfield was a lovely person. Phyllis, her daughter, was leaving tomorrow for a three-week summer camp.
And suddenly I had a perfect idea, far better than any lesson I could impart on the girl in tiny doses—Lo would go to camp, too. At first, Charlotte was reticent. Never having gone to a camp herself, she did not know what went on there. Neither did I, but I was positive it would be a much more revelatory experience than lying out on the veranda each day. At camp, she would learn respect, sportsmanship, perhaps even find an opportunity to showcase her voice in a talent show. I would miss the girl, to be certain, if for no other reason than the buffer she provided between myself and Haze, yet I think it was that very buffer that Charlotte considered when she relented to my idea. Lolita, it was decided, would go Thursday, stay there after Phyllis had left, until school began.
Suddenly, my toothache returned. Must have been an enormous molar, with an abscess as big as a maraschino cherry.
Charlotte visited me in my room later, trying to help. "We have," said Haze, "an excellent dentist. Our neighbor, in fact. Dr. Quilty. Uncle or cousin, I think, of the playwright. Think it will pass? Well, just as you wish. In the fall I shall have him 'brace' her, as my mother used to say. It may curb Lo a little. I am afraid she has been bothering you frightfully all these days. And we are in for a couple of stormy ones before she goes. She has flatly refused to go, and I confess I left her with the Chatfields because I dreaded to face her alone just yet. The movie may mollify her. Phyllis is a very sweet girl, and there is no earthly reason for Lo to dislike her. Really, monsieur, I am very sorry about that tooth of yours. It would be so much more reasonable to let me contact Ivor Quilty first thing tomorrow morning if it still hurts. And, as you said, a summer camp is so much healthier, and--well, it is all so much more reasonable as I say than to mope on a suburban lawn and use mamma's lipstick and go into tantrums at the least provocation. And it won't be all play either. The camp is run by Shirley Holmes--you know, the woman who wrote Campfire Girl. Camp will teach Dolores Haze to grow in many things--health, knowledge, temper. And particularly in a sense of responsibility towards other people. Shall we take these candles with us and sit for a while on the piazza, or do you want to go to bed and nurse that tooth?"
I saw what the woman was up to, already plotting for the weeks ahead with the gentleman tenant all to herself. “Nurse that tooth,” I replied.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Chapter 13
The Sunday after the Saturday already described proved to be as bright as the weatherman had predicted. When putting the breakfast things back on the chair outside my room for my good landlady to remove at her convenience, I gleaned the following situation by listening from the landing across which I had softly crept to the banisters in my old bedroom slippers--the only old things about me.
There had been another row. Mrs. Hamilton had telephoned that her daughter "was running a temperature." Mrs. Haze informed her daughter that the picnic would have to be postponed. Little Haze informed big Haze that, if so, she would not go with her to church. Mother said very well and left.
I had come out on the landing straight after shaving, soapy-earlobed, still in my white pajamas with the cornflower blue (not the lilac) design on the back; I now wiped off the soap, perfumed my hair and armpits, slipped on a purple silk dressing gown, and, humming, went down the stairs.
I want all tutors and educators to participate in the scene I am about to replay; I want them to examine its every detail and see for themselves how careful, how precise, the whole event is. So let us get started.
Educator: Humbert the Hummer. Time: Sunday morning in June. Classroom: sunlit living room. Materials: old, candy-striped davenport, magazines, phonograph, Mexican knickknacks (the late Mr. Harold E. Haze had taken his wife on a honeymoon trip to Vera Cruz, and mementoes, among these Dolores, were all over the place). Lo was not shod for church and her white Sunday purse lay discarded near the phonograph.
She sat down on the sofa next to me and played with her glossy fruit. She tossed it up into the sun-dusted air, and caught it--it made a cupped polished plot. Humbert Humbert intercepted the apple.
"Give it back," she pleaded, showing the marbled flush of her palms, but I withheld. “Lo,” I said. “If you have eleven apples and I steal five, how many apples do you have?” “Give it,” she repeated, adding, “We’re on long division now.” I admit it had not occurred to me that her dreadful country school would have taken her any further than the simplest mathematics, but I also believed it was important to stay the course when dealing with a child and to not cede power to them in these situations. “This should be easy, then,” I said. She rolled her eyes and said, “Six, geez Louise,” and I produced her apple.
She grasped it and bit into it, and with the monkeyish nimbleness that was so typical of an American child, she snatched out of my abstract grip the magazine I had opened (pity no film had recorded the curious pattern, the monogrammic linkage of our simultaneous or overlapping moves). Rapidly, hardly hampered by the disfigured apple she held, Lo flipped violently through the pages in search of something she wished Humbert to see. Found it at last. I faked interest. Dimly there came into view: a surrealist painter relaxing, supine, on a beach, and near him, likewise supine, a plaster replica of the Venus di Milo, half-buried in sand. Picture of the Week, said the legend. I whisked the whole obscene thing away and caught her by her thin knobby wrist. The magazine escaped to the floor like a flustered fowl. She twisted herself free, recoiled, and lay back in the right-hand corner of the davenport. It had been a short lesson, but useful in attaining a broad sense of the girl’s learning—not as bad as I had supposed, at least in the one discipline.
Satisfied, I returned my attention to the magazine and recited, garbling them slightly, the words of a foolish song that was then popular--O my Carmen, my little Carmen, something, something, those something nights, and the stars, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen. The stars that sparkled, and the cars that parkled, and the bars, and the barmen. Then Lo stole and corrected the tune I had been mutilating. And so without trying, I learned of her musical aptitude, and made a note to relay my discovery to her mother, who would no doubt be more jealous than happy. I soon rejoined the song, repeating the chance words after her--barmen, alarmin', my charmin', my carmen, ahmen, ahahamen--as one talking and laughing in his sleep.
Immediately afterward she rolled off the sofa and jumped to her feet--to her foot, rather--in order to attend to the formidably loud telephone that may have been ringing for ages as far as I knew. There she stood and blinked as she listened or spoke (to her mother who was telling her to come to lunch with her at the Chatfileds--neither Lo nor Hum knew yet what busybody Haze was plotting), she kept tapping the edge of the table with the slipper she held in her hand.
She was still at the telephone, haggling with her mother (wanted to be fetched by car) when, singing louder and louder, I swept up the stairs and set a deluge of steaming water roaring into the tub. At this point I may as well give the words of that song hit in full--to the best of my recollection at least--I don't think I ever had it right. Here goes:
O my Carmen, my Carmen!
Something, something those something nights,
And the stars, and the cars, and the bars and the barmen--
And, O my charmin', our dreadful fights.
And the something town where so gaily, arm in
Arm, we went, and our final row,
And the gun I killed you with, O my Carmen,
The gun I am holding now.
Something like that. Now where was I?
There had been another row. Mrs. Hamilton had telephoned that her daughter "was running a temperature." Mrs. Haze informed her daughter that the picnic would have to be postponed. Little Haze informed big Haze that, if so, she would not go with her to church. Mother said very well and left.
I had come out on the landing straight after shaving, soapy-earlobed, still in my white pajamas with the cornflower blue (not the lilac) design on the back; I now wiped off the soap, perfumed my hair and armpits, slipped on a purple silk dressing gown, and, humming, went down the stairs.
I want all tutors and educators to participate in the scene I am about to replay; I want them to examine its every detail and see for themselves how careful, how precise, the whole event is. So let us get started.
Educator: Humbert the Hummer. Time: Sunday morning in June. Classroom: sunlit living room. Materials: old, candy-striped davenport, magazines, phonograph, Mexican knickknacks (the late Mr. Harold E. Haze had taken his wife on a honeymoon trip to Vera Cruz, and mementoes, among these Dolores, were all over the place). Lo was not shod for church and her white Sunday purse lay discarded near the phonograph.
She sat down on the sofa next to me and played with her glossy fruit. She tossed it up into the sun-dusted air, and caught it--it made a cupped polished plot. Humbert Humbert intercepted the apple.
"Give it back," she pleaded, showing the marbled flush of her palms, but I withheld. “Lo,” I said. “If you have eleven apples and I steal five, how many apples do you have?” “Give it,” she repeated, adding, “We’re on long division now.” I admit it had not occurred to me that her dreadful country school would have taken her any further than the simplest mathematics, but I also believed it was important to stay the course when dealing with a child and to not cede power to them in these situations. “This should be easy, then,” I said. She rolled her eyes and said, “Six, geez Louise,” and I produced her apple.
She grasped it and bit into it, and with the monkeyish nimbleness that was so typical of an American child, she snatched out of my abstract grip the magazine I had opened (pity no film had recorded the curious pattern, the monogrammic linkage of our simultaneous or overlapping moves). Rapidly, hardly hampered by the disfigured apple she held, Lo flipped violently through the pages in search of something she wished Humbert to see. Found it at last. I faked interest. Dimly there came into view: a surrealist painter relaxing, supine, on a beach, and near him, likewise supine, a plaster replica of the Venus di Milo, half-buried in sand. Picture of the Week, said the legend. I whisked the whole obscene thing away and caught her by her thin knobby wrist. The magazine escaped to the floor like a flustered fowl. She twisted herself free, recoiled, and lay back in the right-hand corner of the davenport. It had been a short lesson, but useful in attaining a broad sense of the girl’s learning—not as bad as I had supposed, at least in the one discipline.
Satisfied, I returned my attention to the magazine and recited, garbling them slightly, the words of a foolish song that was then popular--O my Carmen, my little Carmen, something, something, those something nights, and the stars, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen. The stars that sparkled, and the cars that parkled, and the bars, and the barmen. Then Lo stole and corrected the tune I had been mutilating. And so without trying, I learned of her musical aptitude, and made a note to relay my discovery to her mother, who would no doubt be more jealous than happy. I soon rejoined the song, repeating the chance words after her--barmen, alarmin', my charmin', my carmen, ahmen, ahahamen--as one talking and laughing in his sleep.
Immediately afterward she rolled off the sofa and jumped to her feet--to her foot, rather--in order to attend to the formidably loud telephone that may have been ringing for ages as far as I knew. There she stood and blinked as she listened or spoke (to her mother who was telling her to come to lunch with her at the Chatfileds--neither Lo nor Hum knew yet what busybody Haze was plotting), she kept tapping the edge of the table with the slipper she held in her hand.
She was still at the telephone, haggling with her mother (wanted to be fetched by car) when, singing louder and louder, I swept up the stairs and set a deluge of steaming water roaring into the tub. At this point I may as well give the words of that song hit in full--to the best of my recollection at least--I don't think I ever had it right. Here goes:
O my Carmen, my Carmen!
Something, something those something nights,
And the stars, and the cars, and the bars and the barmen--
And, O my charmin', our dreadful fights.
And the something town where so gaily, arm in
Arm, we went, and our final row,
And the gun I killed you with, O my Carmen,
The gun I am holding now.
Something like that. Now where was I?
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Chapter 12
This proved to be the last of twenty entries or so. It will be seem from them that for all the chronicler’s inventiveness, the days remained daily the same. For almost three weeks I had been interrupted in all my pathetic machinations. Why at the time it never occurred to me to go to the lake by myself, I don’t know. The agent of these interruptions was usually the Haze woman, who, as the reader will mark, was more afraid of Lo's deriving some pleasure from me than of Lo growing up civilized. Despite her bacon-stealing and adolescent whining, Lo was far more interesting than her stale mother. Lo was an original.
We did go to the lake, finally. It would have been logical on the part of Aubrey McFate (as I would like to dub that devil of mine) to arrange a small treat for me on the promised beach, in the presumed forest. Actually, the promise Mrs. Haze had made was a fraudulent one: she had not told me that Mary Rose Hamilton was to come too, and that Mrs. Haze and her handsome lodger would converse sedately in the seminude, far from prying eyes.
Incidentally, eyes did pry and tongues did wag. How queer life is! We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo. Before my actual arrival, my landlady had planned to have an old spinster, a Miss Phalen, whose mother had been cook in Mrs. Haze's family, come to stay in the house with Lolita and me, while Mrs. Haze, a career girl at heart, sought some suitable job in the nearest city. Mrs. Haze had seen the whole situation very clearly: the bespectacled, round-backed Herr Humbert coming with his Central-European trunks to gather dust in his corner behind a heap of old books; the unloved ugly little daughter firmly supervised by Miss Phalen who had already once had Lo under her buzzard wing (Lo recalled that 1944 summer with an indignant shudder); and Mrs. Haze herself engaged as a receptionist in a great elegant city. But a not too complicated event interfered with that program. Miss Phalen broke her hip in Savannah, Ga., on the very day I arrived in Ramsdale, and Haze found herself unrequitedly smitten, her tenant too polite or meek to make his lack of intentions known.
We did go to the lake, finally. It would have been logical on the part of Aubrey McFate (as I would like to dub that devil of mine) to arrange a small treat for me on the promised beach, in the presumed forest. Actually, the promise Mrs. Haze had made was a fraudulent one: she had not told me that Mary Rose Hamilton was to come too, and that Mrs. Haze and her handsome lodger would converse sedately in the seminude, far from prying eyes.
Incidentally, eyes did pry and tongues did wag. How queer life is! We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo. Before my actual arrival, my landlady had planned to have an old spinster, a Miss Phalen, whose mother had been cook in Mrs. Haze's family, come to stay in the house with Lolita and me, while Mrs. Haze, a career girl at heart, sought some suitable job in the nearest city. Mrs. Haze had seen the whole situation very clearly: the bespectacled, round-backed Herr Humbert coming with his Central-European trunks to gather dust in his corner behind a heap of old books; the unloved ugly little daughter firmly supervised by Miss Phalen who had already once had Lo under her buzzard wing (Lo recalled that 1944 summer with an indignant shudder); and Mrs. Haze herself engaged as a receptionist in a great elegant city. But a not too complicated event interfered with that program. Miss Phalen broke her hip in Savannah, Ga., on the very day I arrived in Ramsdale, and Haze found herself unrequitedly smitten, her tenant too polite or meek to make his lack of intentions known.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Chapter 11.2
Saturday. For some days already I had been leaving the door ajar, as my room was the stuffiest in the house. With a good deal of additional fidgeting, shuffling, scraping--to disguise her embarrassment at visiting me without having been called--Lo came in and after pottering around, became interested in the nightmare curlicues I had penned on a sheet of paper. Oh no: they were not the outcome of a belle-lettrist's inspired pause between two paragraphs; they were the hideous hieroglyphics of my slowly-progressing book. As she bent her brown curs over the desk at which I was sitting, Humbert the Hoarse put his arm around her in an awkward imitation of blood-relationship; and still studying the piece of paper she held. I was just about to give her a rudimentary explanation of the work that I do—“You see, Lo, respectable adults earn their living”—when the house was suddenly vibrating with voluble Louise's voice telling Mrs. Haze who had just come home about a dead something she and Leslie Tomson had found in the basement, and little Lolita was not one to miss such a tale.
Sunday. House was quiet, Humbert was productive. Dolores and her mother off to the Hamiltons--a birthday party or something.
Monday. Rainy morning, gray and soft. My white pajamas have a lilac design on the back. I am like one of those inflated pale spiders you see in old gardens. Sitting in the middle of a luminous web and giving little jerks to this or that strand. My web is spread all over the house as I listen from my chair where I sit like a wily wizard. But where is my prey? Nowhere to be found, all in the city where I left them. I keep waiting for one of Haze’s friends to have a smidgen of charm with which to tempt me, but no, not one, though that does not stop them all from trying. How much more country living until they look appetizing, and on that day, shall I take one to bed or kill myself?
I satisfy with morbidity while in the kitchen Lolita is banging the refrigerator door and screeching at her detested mamma (who, I suppose, is enjoying her third, cooing and subduedly mirthful, telephone conversation of the morning). Ray-like, I glide in through to the parlor and find the radio silent (and mamma still talking to Mrs. Chatfield or Mrs. Hamilton, very softly, flushed, smiling, cupping the telephone with her free hand, denying by implication that she denies those amusing rumors, rumor, roomer, whispering intimately, as she never does, the clear-cut lady, in face to face talk). Now it is my turn to be the fly, her lover in word if never in deed. And then comes Lolita's chuckle through my half-open door "Don't tell Mother but I've eaten all your bacon." Gone when I scuttle out of my room to reprimand her. My breakfast tray, lovingly prepared by my landlady, leers at me toothlessly, ready to be taken in. Quite a pair, these two.
Tuesday. Clouds again interfered with that picnic on that unattainable lake. Is it Fate scheming? Yesterday I tried on before the mirror a new pair of bathing trunks. Look out, lakecombers.
Wednesday. In the afternoon, Haze (common-sensical shoes, tailor-made dress), said she was driving downtown to buy a present for a friend of a friend of hers, and would I please come too because I have such a wonderful taste in textures and perfumes. "Choose your favorite seduction," she purred. What could Humbert, being in the perfume business, do? She had me cornered between the front porch and her car.
"Hurry up," she said as I laboriously doubled up my large body in order to crawl in (still desperately devising a means of escape). She had started the engine, and was genteelly swearing at a backing and turning truck in front that had just brought old invalid Miss Opposite a brand new wheel chair, when Lolita's sharp voice came from the parlor window: "You! Where are you going? I'm coming too! Wait!" "Ignore her," yelped Haze (killing the motor); alas for my fair driver; Lo was already pulling at the door on my side. I stepped out—"This is intolerable," began Haze—and Lo scrambled into the backseat, shivering with glee. Haze sideglanced at me, hoping I would throw rude Lo out, forgetting that she was the one who had such powers. "And behold," said Lo (not for the first time) as the car leapt forward. "It is intolerable," said Haze, violently getting into second, "that a child should be so ill-mannered. And so very persevering. When she knows she is unwanted. And needs a bath." It was all true, but a day alone with Haze? No thank you.
The girl and I fell silent all the way to the store. The wings of the driver's Marlenesque nose shone, having shed or burned up their ration of powder, and she kept up an elegant monologue anent the local traffic, and smiled in profile, and pouted in profile, and beat her painted lashes in profile. I have nothing else to report, save that the lady decided to keep Humbert's Choice for the backs of her own shapely ears.
Thursday. We are paying with hail and gale for the tropical beginning of the month. In a volume of the Young People's Encyclopedia, I found a map of the states that a child's pencil had started copying out on a sheet of lightweight paper, upon the other side of which, counter to the unfinished outline of Florida and the Gulf, there was a mimeographed list of names referring, evidently, to her class at the Ramsdale school:
Chatfield, Phyllis
Haze, Dolores
McCoo, Virginia
Windmuller, Louise
So On
So Forth
I imagined so well the rest of the colorful classroom around Lo: Grace and her ripe pimples; Ginny and her lagging leg; Gordon, the haggard terror; Duncan, the foul-smelling clown; nail-biting Agnes; Viola, of the blackheads and the bouncing bust; pretty Rosaline; dark Mary Rose; adorable Stella; Ralph, who bullies and steals. And even as I took part in this rainy-day game, I also imagined their mothers, at least one of which I might meet at one of those insufferable parent-teacher evenings (or the teacher herself!), who would say, “So you’re the reason for Lo’s improving grades,” and would invite me to a private celebration in her bedroom. Yes, even as a tutor, Humbert the lion was on the prowl, getting ahead of himself, while Lo sat in her classroom, lost, gnawing a pencil, detested by teachers, mediocre, potential unrealized.
Friday. I long for some terrific disaster. Earthquake. Spectacular explosion. Something to break the monotony. Idle and idiotic fancies!
Same date, later, quite late. I have turned on the light to take down a dream. It had an evident antecedent. Haze at dinner had benevolently proclaimed that since the weather bureau promised a sunny weekend we would go to the lake Sunday after church. As I lay in bed, I thought of a final scheme how to profit by the picnic to come. I was aware that mother Haze hated Dolores for her being sweet on me. So I planned my lake day with a view to satisfying the mother. To her alone would I talk; but at some appropriate moment I would say I had left my wrist watch or my sunglasses in that glade yonder--and plunge with a local strumpet into the wood. Reality at this juncture withdrew, and the Quest for the Glasses turned into a quiet little orgy with a singularly knowing, cheerful, corrupt and compliant sunbather.
At 3 a.m. I swallowed a sleeping pill, and presently, a dream that was not a sequel but a parody revealed to me, with a kind of meaningful clarity, the lake I had never yet visited: it was glazed over with a sheet of emerald ice, and a pockmarked Eskimo was trying in vain to break it with a pickax, although imported mimosas and oleanders flowered on its gravelly banks. I am sure Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann would have paid me a sack of schillings for adding such a dream to her files. Unfortunately, the rest of it was frankly eclectic. Big Haze and little Haze rode on horseback around the lake, and I rode too, dutifully bobbing up and down, bowlegs astraddle although there was no horse between them, only elastic air--one of those little omissions due to the absentmindedness of the dream agent.
Saturday. After lunch I was reclining in a low chair trying to read. Suddenly two deft little hands were over my eyes: she had crept up from behind. She uttered hiccups of laughter and jerked this way and that as I stretched my arm sideways and backwards without otherwise changing my recumbent position. The book like a sleigh left my lap, and Mrs. Haze strolled up and said indulgently: "Just slap her hard if she interferes with your scholarly meditations.” As if all of a sudden this was a house of discipline. “How I love this garden [no exclamation mark in her tone]. Isn't it divine in the sun [no question mark either]." And with a sign of feigned content, the obnoxious lady sank down on the grass and looked up at the sky as she leaned back on her splayed-out hands, and presently an old gray tennis ball bounced over her, and Lo's voice came from the house haughtily: "Pardonnez, Mother. I was not aiming at you." The look Haze gave her daughter was a fierce reminder of what seemed to be the house’s only rule—don’t bother Mother. It’s anarchy, I tell you. Boring, lazy anarchy.
Sunday. House was quiet, Humbert was productive. Dolores and her mother off to the Hamiltons--a birthday party or something.
Monday. Rainy morning, gray and soft. My white pajamas have a lilac design on the back. I am like one of those inflated pale spiders you see in old gardens. Sitting in the middle of a luminous web and giving little jerks to this or that strand. My web is spread all over the house as I listen from my chair where I sit like a wily wizard. But where is my prey? Nowhere to be found, all in the city where I left them. I keep waiting for one of Haze’s friends to have a smidgen of charm with which to tempt me, but no, not one, though that does not stop them all from trying. How much more country living until they look appetizing, and on that day, shall I take one to bed or kill myself?
I satisfy with morbidity while in the kitchen Lolita is banging the refrigerator door and screeching at her detested mamma (who, I suppose, is enjoying her third, cooing and subduedly mirthful, telephone conversation of the morning). Ray-like, I glide in through to the parlor and find the radio silent (and mamma still talking to Mrs. Chatfield or Mrs. Hamilton, very softly, flushed, smiling, cupping the telephone with her free hand, denying by implication that she denies those amusing rumors, rumor, roomer, whispering intimately, as she never does, the clear-cut lady, in face to face talk). Now it is my turn to be the fly, her lover in word if never in deed. And then comes Lolita's chuckle through my half-open door "Don't tell Mother but I've eaten all your bacon." Gone when I scuttle out of my room to reprimand her. My breakfast tray, lovingly prepared by my landlady, leers at me toothlessly, ready to be taken in. Quite a pair, these two.
Tuesday. Clouds again interfered with that picnic on that unattainable lake. Is it Fate scheming? Yesterday I tried on before the mirror a new pair of bathing trunks. Look out, lakecombers.
Wednesday. In the afternoon, Haze (common-sensical shoes, tailor-made dress), said she was driving downtown to buy a present for a friend of a friend of hers, and would I please come too because I have such a wonderful taste in textures and perfumes. "Choose your favorite seduction," she purred. What could Humbert, being in the perfume business, do? She had me cornered between the front porch and her car.
"Hurry up," she said as I laboriously doubled up my large body in order to crawl in (still desperately devising a means of escape). She had started the engine, and was genteelly swearing at a backing and turning truck in front that had just brought old invalid Miss Opposite a brand new wheel chair, when Lolita's sharp voice came from the parlor window: "You! Where are you going? I'm coming too! Wait!" "Ignore her," yelped Haze (killing the motor); alas for my fair driver; Lo was already pulling at the door on my side. I stepped out—"This is intolerable," began Haze—and Lo scrambled into the backseat, shivering with glee. Haze sideglanced at me, hoping I would throw rude Lo out, forgetting that she was the one who had such powers. "And behold," said Lo (not for the first time) as the car leapt forward. "It is intolerable," said Haze, violently getting into second, "that a child should be so ill-mannered. And so very persevering. When she knows she is unwanted. And needs a bath." It was all true, but a day alone with Haze? No thank you.
The girl and I fell silent all the way to the store. The wings of the driver's Marlenesque nose shone, having shed or burned up their ration of powder, and she kept up an elegant monologue anent the local traffic, and smiled in profile, and pouted in profile, and beat her painted lashes in profile. I have nothing else to report, save that the lady decided to keep Humbert's Choice for the backs of her own shapely ears.
Thursday. We are paying with hail and gale for the tropical beginning of the month. In a volume of the Young People's Encyclopedia, I found a map of the states that a child's pencil had started copying out on a sheet of lightweight paper, upon the other side of which, counter to the unfinished outline of Florida and the Gulf, there was a mimeographed list of names referring, evidently, to her class at the Ramsdale school:
Chatfield, Phyllis
Haze, Dolores
McCoo, Virginia
Windmuller, Louise
So On
So Forth
I imagined so well the rest of the colorful classroom around Lo: Grace and her ripe pimples; Ginny and her lagging leg; Gordon, the haggard terror; Duncan, the foul-smelling clown; nail-biting Agnes; Viola, of the blackheads and the bouncing bust; pretty Rosaline; dark Mary Rose; adorable Stella; Ralph, who bullies and steals. And even as I took part in this rainy-day game, I also imagined their mothers, at least one of which I might meet at one of those insufferable parent-teacher evenings (or the teacher herself!), who would say, “So you’re the reason for Lo’s improving grades,” and would invite me to a private celebration in her bedroom. Yes, even as a tutor, Humbert the lion was on the prowl, getting ahead of himself, while Lo sat in her classroom, lost, gnawing a pencil, detested by teachers, mediocre, potential unrealized.
Friday. I long for some terrific disaster. Earthquake. Spectacular explosion. Something to break the monotony. Idle and idiotic fancies!
Same date, later, quite late. I have turned on the light to take down a dream. It had an evident antecedent. Haze at dinner had benevolently proclaimed that since the weather bureau promised a sunny weekend we would go to the lake Sunday after church. As I lay in bed, I thought of a final scheme how to profit by the picnic to come. I was aware that mother Haze hated Dolores for her being sweet on me. So I planned my lake day with a view to satisfying the mother. To her alone would I talk; but at some appropriate moment I would say I had left my wrist watch or my sunglasses in that glade yonder--and plunge with a local strumpet into the wood. Reality at this juncture withdrew, and the Quest for the Glasses turned into a quiet little orgy with a singularly knowing, cheerful, corrupt and compliant sunbather.
At 3 a.m. I swallowed a sleeping pill, and presently, a dream that was not a sequel but a parody revealed to me, with a kind of meaningful clarity, the lake I had never yet visited: it was glazed over with a sheet of emerald ice, and a pockmarked Eskimo was trying in vain to break it with a pickax, although imported mimosas and oleanders flowered on its gravelly banks. I am sure Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann would have paid me a sack of schillings for adding such a dream to her files. Unfortunately, the rest of it was frankly eclectic. Big Haze and little Haze rode on horseback around the lake, and I rode too, dutifully bobbing up and down, bowlegs astraddle although there was no horse between them, only elastic air--one of those little omissions due to the absentmindedness of the dream agent.
Saturday. After lunch I was reclining in a low chair trying to read. Suddenly two deft little hands were over my eyes: she had crept up from behind. She uttered hiccups of laughter and jerked this way and that as I stretched my arm sideways and backwards without otherwise changing my recumbent position. The book like a sleigh left my lap, and Mrs. Haze strolled up and said indulgently: "Just slap her hard if she interferes with your scholarly meditations.” As if all of a sudden this was a house of discipline. “How I love this garden [no exclamation mark in her tone]. Isn't it divine in the sun [no question mark either]." And with a sign of feigned content, the obnoxious lady sank down on the grass and looked up at the sky as she leaned back on her splayed-out hands, and presently an old gray tennis ball bounced over her, and Lo's voice came from the house haughtily: "Pardonnez, Mother. I was not aiming at you." The look Haze gave her daughter was a fierce reminder of what seemed to be the house’s only rule—don’t bother Mother. It’s anarchy, I tell you. Boring, lazy anarchy.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Chapter 11.1
Exhibit number two is a pocket diary bound in black imitation leather, with a golden year, 1947, in oblique type, in its upper left-hand corner. I speak of this neat product of the Blank Blank Co., Blankton, Mass., as if it were really before me. Actually, it was destroyed five years go and what we examine now (by courtesy of a photographic memory) is but its brief materialization, a puny unfledged phoenix.
I remember the thing so exactly because I, unlike so many others, actually read and re-read my journal entries. Of course, I’ve taken the trouble to edit out anything I deem irrelevant (all my fears, doubts, etc. regarding my scholarly work). What remains is Charlotte and Lo, in all their dueling glory:
May 30 is a Fast Day by Proclamation in New Hampshire but not in the Carolinas. That day an epidemic of "abdominal flu" (whatever that is) forced Ramsdale to close its schools for the summer. The reader may check the weather data in the Ramsdale Journal for 1947. A few days before that I moved into the Haze house, and the little diary which I now propose to reel off covers most of June.
Thursday. Very warm day. From the bathroom window saw Dolores taking things off a clothesline in the apple-green light behind the house. Strolled out. She wore a plaid shirt, blue jeans and sneakers, far too much for such a hot day. I suspect she’s using her wardrobe to irk her mother. Every movement she made in the dappled sun hinted at rebellion, a cry for boundaries. After a while she sat down next to me on the lower step of the back porch and began to pick up the pebbles between her feet--then a curled bit of milk-bottle glass resembling a snarling lip--and chuck them at a can. Ping. “I bet you can't a second time,” I said, bonding with the girl, taking an interest, “you can't hit it--oh, marvelous.”
I was baking out there, turning lobster-red before her eyes, but no matter, a trust was forming. "The McCoo girl?” she prattled on. “Ginny McCoo? Oh, she's a fright. And mean. And lame. Nearly died of polio." Ping. Out of the lawn, Mrs. Haze, complete with camera, grew up like a fakir's fake tree and after some heliotropic fussing--sad eyes up, glad eyes down--had the cheek of taking my picture as I sat blinking on the steps, Humbert the Red.
Friday. Saw Dolores going somewhere with a dark girl called Rose. I’m infinitely moved by the little one's slangy speech, by her harsh high voice. Later heard her volley crude nonsense at Rose across the fence. Twanging through me in a rising rhythm. Pause. "I must go now, kiddo."
Saturday. I know it is madness to keep this journal; only a loving wife could decipher my microscopic script, I myself cannot make heads or tails of yesterday’s entry. Today Charlotte, a friend of hers, and Dolores sun-bathed again on the piazza. Of course, I might have sat there in the rocker and pretended to read, but I my disapproval would have prevented me from making my entrance with any semblance of casualness. I’m beginning to notice a pattern in this household in which sunbathing is mistaken for a full-time job. How could these women waste their lives on piazzas when there is so much work to do? Suffice to say, my womanizing has, thus far, not become an issue in the Haze household, though I can hardly credit my own self-control.
Sunday. Heat ripple still with us; a most gentle week. This time I took up a strategic position, with obese newspaper and new pipe, in the piazza rocker before D. and C. arrived, both in two-piece bathing suits, black, as new as my pipe. I found myself disappointed that D.’s mother was always around, for I finding it harder to establish a fatherly rapport with young D. when her mother is around. C. is, it pains me to say, much denser than her daughter. Likely assuming I was in want of time alone with her mother, D. had already retreated to her mat and lay down on her stomach. Silently, the seventh-grader enjoyed her green-red-blue comics. As I looked on, I felt that my perception of her would need to be properly reflected upon so as not to assume an intelligence behind the girl’s sharp eyes that was, in fact, not there. Is this the case of the child appearing to shine brighter only in contrast to her dim mum? Time will tell.
Monday. I spend my doleful days in the dumps. We (mother Haze, Dolores and I) were to go to Our Glass Lake this afternoon, and bathe, and bask; but a nacreous morn degenerated at noon into rain, and Lo made a scene.
Tuesday. Rain. Lake of the Rains. Mamma out shopping. L., I knew, was somewhere quite near. I came across her in her mother's bedroom. Prying her left eye open to get rid of a speck of something. The girl’s mother should make her wash her hair once in a while. I might say her hair is auburn, but after a good scrub, she could be goldilocks for all I know.
Perhaps the hair serves as an apt metaphor for the girl’s twofold nature -- this mixture in Lolita of tender dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity, stemming from the snub-nosed cuteness of ads and magazine pictures. Charlotte, with the exquisite stainless tenderness seeping through her tenth cigarette of the evening, has commented on this very phenomenon.
She was spiteful, said Charlotte, at the age of one when she used to throw her toys out of her crib so that her poor mother should keep picking them up, the villainous infant! Now, at twelve, she was a regular pest, said Haze. All she wanted from life was to be one day a strutting and prancing baton twirler or a jitterbug. Her grades were poor, but she was better adjusted in her new school than in Pisky (Pisky was the Haze home town in the Middle West. The Ramsdale house was her late mother-in-law's. They had moved to Ramsdale less than two years ago). "Why was she unhappy there?" "Oh," said Haze, "poor me should know, I went through that when I was a kid: boys twisting one's arm, banging into one with loads of books, pulling one's hair, hurting one's breasts, flipping one's skirt. Of course, moodiness is a common concomitant of growing up, but Lo exaggerates. Sullen and evasive. Rude and defiant. Struck Viola, an Italian schoolmate, in the seat with a fountain pen. Know what I would like? If you, monsieur, happened to be still here in the fall, I'd ask you to help her with her homework--you seem to know everything, geography, mathematics, French." It was as if she had read my mind. "Oh, everything," answered monsieur. "That means," said Haze quickly, "you'll be here!"
I wanted to commit to stay on, but I was wary of Haze, so I just grunted and stretched my limbs nonconcomitantly (the right word) and presently went up to my room. The woman, however, was evidently not prepared to call it a day. I was already lying upon my cold bed when I heard my indefatigable landlady creeping stealthily up to my door to whisper through it--just to make sure, she said, I was through with the Glance and Gulp magazine I had borrowed the other day. From her room Lo yelled she had it. We are quite a lending library in this house.
Friday. I shall probably take ill again if I stay any longer in this house, under the strain of the temptation to throttle silly Haze for her motherly negligence. I exaggerate, but barely.
Incidentally: if I ever commit a serious murder (mark the "if"), the urge should be something more than the kind of thing that happened to me with Valeria. Only a spell of insanity could ever give me the simple energy to be a brute. Sometimes I attempt to kill in my dreams. But do you know what happens? For instance I hold a gun. For instance I aim at a bland, quietly interested enemy. Oh, I press the trigger all right, but one bullet after another feebly drops on the floor from the sheepish muzzle. In those dreams, my only thought is to conceal the fiasco from my foe, who is slowly growing annoyed.
At dinner tonight the old cat said to me with a sidelong gleam of motherly mockery directed at Lo (I had just been describing, in a flippant vein, the delightful little toothbrush mustache I had not quite decided to grow): "Better don't if somebody is not to go absolutely dotty." Instantly Lo pushed her plate of boiled fish away, all but knocking her milk over, and bounced out of the dining room. There, I could not stop myself from reprimanding Haze. “Children are confused enough at her age,” I said. “Their whims and crushes are fickle maybe, but not to be mocked. Girls often fall for their fathers”—and her eyes widened here, likely mishearing in favor of her own nuptial whims—“just before meeting their first boy and forgetting him entirely.” "Would it bore you very much," quoth Haze, "to come with us tomorrow for a swim in Our Glass Lake if Lo apologizes for her manners?"
Later, I heard a great banging of doors and other sounds coming from quaking caverns where the two rivals were having a ripping row.
She had not apologized. The lake is out. It might have been fun.
[The second part of Chapter 11 coming Monday. I'm splitting the longer chapters to keep posts from getting too long. -G.K.]
I remember the thing so exactly because I, unlike so many others, actually read and re-read my journal entries. Of course, I’ve taken the trouble to edit out anything I deem irrelevant (all my fears, doubts, etc. regarding my scholarly work). What remains is Charlotte and Lo, in all their dueling glory:
May 30 is a Fast Day by Proclamation in New Hampshire but not in the Carolinas. That day an epidemic of "abdominal flu" (whatever that is) forced Ramsdale to close its schools for the summer. The reader may check the weather data in the Ramsdale Journal for 1947. A few days before that I moved into the Haze house, and the little diary which I now propose to reel off covers most of June.
Thursday. Very warm day. From the bathroom window saw Dolores taking things off a clothesline in the apple-green light behind the house. Strolled out. She wore a plaid shirt, blue jeans and sneakers, far too much for such a hot day. I suspect she’s using her wardrobe to irk her mother. Every movement she made in the dappled sun hinted at rebellion, a cry for boundaries. After a while she sat down next to me on the lower step of the back porch and began to pick up the pebbles between her feet--then a curled bit of milk-bottle glass resembling a snarling lip--and chuck them at a can. Ping. “I bet you can't a second time,” I said, bonding with the girl, taking an interest, “you can't hit it--oh, marvelous.”
I was baking out there, turning lobster-red before her eyes, but no matter, a trust was forming. "The McCoo girl?” she prattled on. “Ginny McCoo? Oh, she's a fright. And mean. And lame. Nearly died of polio." Ping. Out of the lawn, Mrs. Haze, complete with camera, grew up like a fakir's fake tree and after some heliotropic fussing--sad eyes up, glad eyes down--had the cheek of taking my picture as I sat blinking on the steps, Humbert the Red.
Friday. Saw Dolores going somewhere with a dark girl called Rose. I’m infinitely moved by the little one's slangy speech, by her harsh high voice. Later heard her volley crude nonsense at Rose across the fence. Twanging through me in a rising rhythm. Pause. "I must go now, kiddo."
Saturday. I know it is madness to keep this journal; only a loving wife could decipher my microscopic script, I myself cannot make heads or tails of yesterday’s entry. Today Charlotte, a friend of hers, and Dolores sun-bathed again on the piazza. Of course, I might have sat there in the rocker and pretended to read, but I my disapproval would have prevented me from making my entrance with any semblance of casualness. I’m beginning to notice a pattern in this household in which sunbathing is mistaken for a full-time job. How could these women waste their lives on piazzas when there is so much work to do? Suffice to say, my womanizing has, thus far, not become an issue in the Haze household, though I can hardly credit my own self-control.
Sunday. Heat ripple still with us; a most gentle week. This time I took up a strategic position, with obese newspaper and new pipe, in the piazza rocker before D. and C. arrived, both in two-piece bathing suits, black, as new as my pipe. I found myself disappointed that D.’s mother was always around, for I finding it harder to establish a fatherly rapport with young D. when her mother is around. C. is, it pains me to say, much denser than her daughter. Likely assuming I was in want of time alone with her mother, D. had already retreated to her mat and lay down on her stomach. Silently, the seventh-grader enjoyed her green-red-blue comics. As I looked on, I felt that my perception of her would need to be properly reflected upon so as not to assume an intelligence behind the girl’s sharp eyes that was, in fact, not there. Is this the case of the child appearing to shine brighter only in contrast to her dim mum? Time will tell.
Monday. I spend my doleful days in the dumps. We (mother Haze, Dolores and I) were to go to Our Glass Lake this afternoon, and bathe, and bask; but a nacreous morn degenerated at noon into rain, and Lo made a scene.
Tuesday. Rain. Lake of the Rains. Mamma out shopping. L., I knew, was somewhere quite near. I came across her in her mother's bedroom. Prying her left eye open to get rid of a speck of something. The girl’s mother should make her wash her hair once in a while. I might say her hair is auburn, but after a good scrub, she could be goldilocks for all I know.
Perhaps the hair serves as an apt metaphor for the girl’s twofold nature -- this mixture in Lolita of tender dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity, stemming from the snub-nosed cuteness of ads and magazine pictures. Charlotte, with the exquisite stainless tenderness seeping through her tenth cigarette of the evening, has commented on this very phenomenon.
She was spiteful, said Charlotte, at the age of one when she used to throw her toys out of her crib so that her poor mother should keep picking them up, the villainous infant! Now, at twelve, she was a regular pest, said Haze. All she wanted from life was to be one day a strutting and prancing baton twirler or a jitterbug. Her grades were poor, but she was better adjusted in her new school than in Pisky (Pisky was the Haze home town in the Middle West. The Ramsdale house was her late mother-in-law's. They had moved to Ramsdale less than two years ago). "Why was she unhappy there?" "Oh," said Haze, "poor me should know, I went through that when I was a kid: boys twisting one's arm, banging into one with loads of books, pulling one's hair, hurting one's breasts, flipping one's skirt. Of course, moodiness is a common concomitant of growing up, but Lo exaggerates. Sullen and evasive. Rude and defiant. Struck Viola, an Italian schoolmate, in the seat with a fountain pen. Know what I would like? If you, monsieur, happened to be still here in the fall, I'd ask you to help her with her homework--you seem to know everything, geography, mathematics, French." It was as if she had read my mind. "Oh, everything," answered monsieur. "That means," said Haze quickly, "you'll be here!"
I wanted to commit to stay on, but I was wary of Haze, so I just grunted and stretched my limbs nonconcomitantly (the right word) and presently went up to my room. The woman, however, was evidently not prepared to call it a day. I was already lying upon my cold bed when I heard my indefatigable landlady creeping stealthily up to my door to whisper through it--just to make sure, she said, I was through with the Glance and Gulp magazine I had borrowed the other day. From her room Lo yelled she had it. We are quite a lending library in this house.
Friday. I shall probably take ill again if I stay any longer in this house, under the strain of the temptation to throttle silly Haze for her motherly negligence. I exaggerate, but barely.
Incidentally: if I ever commit a serious murder (mark the "if"), the urge should be something more than the kind of thing that happened to me with Valeria. Only a spell of insanity could ever give me the simple energy to be a brute. Sometimes I attempt to kill in my dreams. But do you know what happens? For instance I hold a gun. For instance I aim at a bland, quietly interested enemy. Oh, I press the trigger all right, but one bullet after another feebly drops on the floor from the sheepish muzzle. In those dreams, my only thought is to conceal the fiasco from my foe, who is slowly growing annoyed.
At dinner tonight the old cat said to me with a sidelong gleam of motherly mockery directed at Lo (I had just been describing, in a flippant vein, the delightful little toothbrush mustache I had not quite decided to grow): "Better don't if somebody is not to go absolutely dotty." Instantly Lo pushed her plate of boiled fish away, all but knocking her milk over, and bounced out of the dining room. There, I could not stop myself from reprimanding Haze. “Children are confused enough at her age,” I said. “Their whims and crushes are fickle maybe, but not to be mocked. Girls often fall for their fathers”—and her eyes widened here, likely mishearing in favor of her own nuptial whims—“just before meeting their first boy and forgetting him entirely.” "Would it bore you very much," quoth Haze, "to come with us tomorrow for a swim in Our Glass Lake if Lo apologizes for her manners?"
Later, I heard a great banging of doors and other sounds coming from quaking caverns where the two rivals were having a ripping row.
She had not apologized. The lake is out. It might have been fun.
[The second part of Chapter 11 coming Monday. I'm splitting the longer chapters to keep posts from getting too long. -G.K.]
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Chapter 10
Upon signing out, I cast around for some place in the New England countryside or sleepy small town (elms, white church) where I could spend a studious summer subsisting on a compact boxful of notes I had accumulated and bathing in some nearby lake. My work had begun to interest me again--I mean my scholarly exertions; the other thing, my active participation in my uncle's posthumous perfumes, had by then been cut down to a minimum. One of his former employees, the scion of a distinguished family, suggested I spend a few months in the residence of his impoverished cousins, a Mr. McCoo, retired, and his wife, who wanted to let their upper story where a late aunt had delicately dwelt. He said they had two little daughters, one a baby, the other a girl of twelve, and a beautiful garden, not far from a beautiful lake, and I said it sounded fine.
I exchanged letters with these people, satisfying them I was housebroken, and spent a fantastic night on the train, imagining in detail the child I would coach in French and the wife I would caress in Humbertish. Nobody met me at the toy station where I alighted with my new expensive bag, and nobody answered the telephone; eventually, however, a distraught McCoo in wet clothes turned up at the only hotel of green-and-pink Ramsdale with the news that his house had just burned down. His family, he said, had fled to a farm he owned, and had taken the car, but a friend of his wife's, a grand person, Mrs. Haze of 342 Lawn Street, offered to accommodate me. A lady who lived opposite Mrs. Haze's had lent McCoo her limousine, a marvelously old-fashioned, square-topped affair, manned by a cheerful chauffeur.
The aforesaid arrangement seemed preposterous. Living and working among strangers? I could live and work anywhere. I was angry, disappointed and bored, but being a polite European, could not refuse to be sent off to Lawn Street in that funeral car, feeling that otherwise McCoo would devise an even more elaborate means of getting rid of me. I saw him scamper away, and my chauffeur shook his head with a soft chuckle. En route, I swore to myself I would not dream of staying in Ramsdale under any circumstance but would fly that very day to the Bermudas or the Bahamas or the Blazes. Possibilities of romantic sweetness on technicolor beaches had been trickling through my spine for some time before, and McCoo's cousin had, in fact, sharply diverted that train of thought with his well-meaning but inane suggestion.
Speaking of sharp turns: we almost ran over a meddlesome suburban dog (one of those who lie in wait for cars) as we swerved into Lawn Street. A little further, the Haze house, a white-frame horror, appeared, looking dingy and old, more gray than white--the kind of place you know will have a rubber tube affixable to the tub faucet in lieu of shower. I tipped the chauffeur and hoped he would immediately drive away so that I might double back unnoticed to my hotel and bag; but the man merely crossed to the other side of the street where an old lady was calling to him from her porch. What could I do? I pressed the bell button.
A maid let me in--and left me standing on the mat while she rushed back to the kitchen where something was burning that ought not to burn.
The front hall was graced with door chimes, a white-eyed wooden thingamabob of commercial Mexican origin, and that banal darling of the arty middle class, van Gogh's "Arlèsienne." A door ajar to the right afforded a glimpse of a living room, with some more Mexican trash in a corner cabinet and a striped sofa along the wall. There was a staircase at the end of the hallway, and as I stood mopping my brow (only now did I realize how hot it had been outdoors) and staring, to stare at something, at an old gray tennis ball that lay on an oak chest, there came from the upper landing the contralto voice of Mrs. Haze, who leaning over the banisters inquired melodiously, "Is that Monsieur Humbert?" A bit of cigarette ash dropped from there in addition. Presently, the lady herself--sandals, maroon slacks, yellow silk blouse, squarish face, in that order--came down the steps, her index finger still tapping upon her cigarette.
The poor lady was in her middle thirties, she had a shiny forehead, plucked eyebrows and quite simple but not unattractive features of a type that may be defined as a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich. Patting her bronze-brown bun, she led me into the parlor and we talked for a minute about the McCoo fire and the privilege of living in Ramsdale. Her very wide-set sea-green eyes had a funny way of traveling all over you, carefully avoiding your own eyes. Her smile was but a quizzical jerk of one eyebrow; and uncoiling herself from the sofa as she talked, she kept making spasmodic dashes at three ashtrays and the near fender (where lay the brown core of an apple); whereupon she would sink back again, one leg folded under her. She was, it seemed to me, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul; women who are completely devoid of humor; women utterly indifferent at heart to the dozen or so possible subjects of a parlor conversation, but very particular about the rules of such conversations, through the sunny cellophane of which not very appetizing frustrations can be readily distinguished. I was perfectly aware that if by any wild chance I became her lodger, she would methodically proceed to do in regard to me what taking a lodger probably meant to her all along, and I would again be enmeshed in one of those tedious affairs I knew so well.
But there was no question of my settling there. I could not be happy in that type of household with bedraggled magazines on every chair and a kind of horrible hybridization between the comedy of so-called "functional modern furniture" and the tragedy of decrepit rockers and rickety lamp tables with dead lamps. I was led upstairs, and to the left--into "my" room. I inspected it through the mist of my utter rejection of it; but I did discern above the bed Renè Prinet's "Kreutzer Sonata." And she called that servant maid's room a "semi-studio"! Let's get out of here at once, I firmly said to myself as I pretended to deliberate over the absurdly, and ominously, low price that my wistful hostess was asking for board and bed.
Old-world politeness, however, obliged me to go on with the ordeal. We crossed the landing to the right side of the house (where "I and Lo have our rooms"--Lo being presumably the maid), and the lodger-lover could hardly conceal a shudder when he, a very fastidious male, was granted a preview of the only bathroom, a tiny oblong between the landing and "Lo's" room, with limp wet things overhanging the dubious tub (the question mark of a hair inside); and there were the expected coils of the rubber snake, and its complement--a pinkish cozy, coyly covering the toilet lid.
"I see you are not too favorably impressed," said the lady letting her hand rest for a moment upon my sleeve: she combined a cool forwardness--the overflow of what I think is called "poise"--with a shyness and sadness that caused her detached way of selecting her words to seem as unnatural as the intonation of a professor of speech. "This is not a neat household, I confess," the doomed ear continued, "but I assure you [she looked at my lips], you will be very comfortable, very comfortable, indeed. Let me show you the garden" (the last more brightly, with a kind of winsome toss of the voice).
Reluctantly I followed her downstairs again; then through the kitchen at the end of the hall, on the right side of the house--the side where also the dining room and the parlor were (under "my" room, on the left, there was nothing but a garage). In the kitchen, the maid, a plump youngish woman, said, as she took her large glossy black purse from the knob of the door leading to the back porch: "I'll go now, Mrs. Haze." "Yes, Louise," answered Mrs. Haze with a sigh. "I'll settle with you Friday."
We passed on to a small pantry and entered the dining room, parallel to the parlor we had already admired. I noticed a white sock on the floor. With a deprecatory grunt, Mrs. Haze stooped without stopping and threw it into a closet next to the pantry. We cursorily inspected a mahogany table with a fruit vase in the middle, containing nothing but the still glistening stone of one plum. I groped for the timetable I had in my pocket and surreptitiously fished it out to look as soon as possible for a train. I was still walking behind Mrs. Haze though the dining room when, beyond it, there came a sudden burst of greenery--the piazza, so lush and extraordinary, the most beautiful part of the house saved for last. I could not stop myself from musing, “On a porch like this, work would not feel like work at all.”
And then, without the least warning, a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart and, from a mat in a pool of sun, kneeling, turning about on her knees, there was my dear Lolita peering at me over dark glasses. I felt then a stab of paternal affection for the child like none I had felt before. Everything about her, from her unruly chestnut head of hair to the polka-dotted black kerchief tied around her chest to the twinkling smirk her sunglasses could not hide, pointed to a kind of transparent insolence that the only child of a single parent is bound to adopt for her own survival. I felt pity, yes, but purpose as well.
I have no illusions, however. My judges will regard all this as a piece of bad acting on the part of a madman with a thirst for murder and, really, I don’t care. All I know is that while the Haze woman and I went down the steps into the breathless garden, I felt such a surge of protective love for the child that I would have killed for her, even then, before we had met.
"That was my Lo," Charlotte said, "and these are my lilies."
"Yes," I said, "They are beautiful."
I exchanged letters with these people, satisfying them I was housebroken, and spent a fantastic night on the train, imagining in detail the child I would coach in French and the wife I would caress in Humbertish. Nobody met me at the toy station where I alighted with my new expensive bag, and nobody answered the telephone; eventually, however, a distraught McCoo in wet clothes turned up at the only hotel of green-and-pink Ramsdale with the news that his house had just burned down. His family, he said, had fled to a farm he owned, and had taken the car, but a friend of his wife's, a grand person, Mrs. Haze of 342 Lawn Street, offered to accommodate me. A lady who lived opposite Mrs. Haze's had lent McCoo her limousine, a marvelously old-fashioned, square-topped affair, manned by a cheerful chauffeur.
The aforesaid arrangement seemed preposterous. Living and working among strangers? I could live and work anywhere. I was angry, disappointed and bored, but being a polite European, could not refuse to be sent off to Lawn Street in that funeral car, feeling that otherwise McCoo would devise an even more elaborate means of getting rid of me. I saw him scamper away, and my chauffeur shook his head with a soft chuckle. En route, I swore to myself I would not dream of staying in Ramsdale under any circumstance but would fly that very day to the Bermudas or the Bahamas or the Blazes. Possibilities of romantic sweetness on technicolor beaches had been trickling through my spine for some time before, and McCoo's cousin had, in fact, sharply diverted that train of thought with his well-meaning but inane suggestion.
Speaking of sharp turns: we almost ran over a meddlesome suburban dog (one of those who lie in wait for cars) as we swerved into Lawn Street. A little further, the Haze house, a white-frame horror, appeared, looking dingy and old, more gray than white--the kind of place you know will have a rubber tube affixable to the tub faucet in lieu of shower. I tipped the chauffeur and hoped he would immediately drive away so that I might double back unnoticed to my hotel and bag; but the man merely crossed to the other side of the street where an old lady was calling to him from her porch. What could I do? I pressed the bell button.
A maid let me in--and left me standing on the mat while she rushed back to the kitchen where something was burning that ought not to burn.
The front hall was graced with door chimes, a white-eyed wooden thingamabob of commercial Mexican origin, and that banal darling of the arty middle class, van Gogh's "Arlèsienne." A door ajar to the right afforded a glimpse of a living room, with some more Mexican trash in a corner cabinet and a striped sofa along the wall. There was a staircase at the end of the hallway, and as I stood mopping my brow (only now did I realize how hot it had been outdoors) and staring, to stare at something, at an old gray tennis ball that lay on an oak chest, there came from the upper landing the contralto voice of Mrs. Haze, who leaning over the banisters inquired melodiously, "Is that Monsieur Humbert?" A bit of cigarette ash dropped from there in addition. Presently, the lady herself--sandals, maroon slacks, yellow silk blouse, squarish face, in that order--came down the steps, her index finger still tapping upon her cigarette.
The poor lady was in her middle thirties, she had a shiny forehead, plucked eyebrows and quite simple but not unattractive features of a type that may be defined as a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich. Patting her bronze-brown bun, she led me into the parlor and we talked for a minute about the McCoo fire and the privilege of living in Ramsdale. Her very wide-set sea-green eyes had a funny way of traveling all over you, carefully avoiding your own eyes. Her smile was but a quizzical jerk of one eyebrow; and uncoiling herself from the sofa as she talked, she kept making spasmodic dashes at three ashtrays and the near fender (where lay the brown core of an apple); whereupon she would sink back again, one leg folded under her. She was, it seemed to me, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul; women who are completely devoid of humor; women utterly indifferent at heart to the dozen or so possible subjects of a parlor conversation, but very particular about the rules of such conversations, through the sunny cellophane of which not very appetizing frustrations can be readily distinguished. I was perfectly aware that if by any wild chance I became her lodger, she would methodically proceed to do in regard to me what taking a lodger probably meant to her all along, and I would again be enmeshed in one of those tedious affairs I knew so well.
But there was no question of my settling there. I could not be happy in that type of household with bedraggled magazines on every chair and a kind of horrible hybridization between the comedy of so-called "functional modern furniture" and the tragedy of decrepit rockers and rickety lamp tables with dead lamps. I was led upstairs, and to the left--into "my" room. I inspected it through the mist of my utter rejection of it; but I did discern above the bed Renè Prinet's "Kreutzer Sonata." And she called that servant maid's room a "semi-studio"! Let's get out of here at once, I firmly said to myself as I pretended to deliberate over the absurdly, and ominously, low price that my wistful hostess was asking for board and bed.
Old-world politeness, however, obliged me to go on with the ordeal. We crossed the landing to the right side of the house (where "I and Lo have our rooms"--Lo being presumably the maid), and the lodger-lover could hardly conceal a shudder when he, a very fastidious male, was granted a preview of the only bathroom, a tiny oblong between the landing and "Lo's" room, with limp wet things overhanging the dubious tub (the question mark of a hair inside); and there were the expected coils of the rubber snake, and its complement--a pinkish cozy, coyly covering the toilet lid.
"I see you are not too favorably impressed," said the lady letting her hand rest for a moment upon my sleeve: she combined a cool forwardness--the overflow of what I think is called "poise"--with a shyness and sadness that caused her detached way of selecting her words to seem as unnatural as the intonation of a professor of speech. "This is not a neat household, I confess," the doomed ear continued, "but I assure you [she looked at my lips], you will be very comfortable, very comfortable, indeed. Let me show you the garden" (the last more brightly, with a kind of winsome toss of the voice).
Reluctantly I followed her downstairs again; then through the kitchen at the end of the hall, on the right side of the house--the side where also the dining room and the parlor were (under "my" room, on the left, there was nothing but a garage). In the kitchen, the maid, a plump youngish woman, said, as she took her large glossy black purse from the knob of the door leading to the back porch: "I'll go now, Mrs. Haze." "Yes, Louise," answered Mrs. Haze with a sigh. "I'll settle with you Friday."
We passed on to a small pantry and entered the dining room, parallel to the parlor we had already admired. I noticed a white sock on the floor. With a deprecatory grunt, Mrs. Haze stooped without stopping and threw it into a closet next to the pantry. We cursorily inspected a mahogany table with a fruit vase in the middle, containing nothing but the still glistening stone of one plum. I groped for the timetable I had in my pocket and surreptitiously fished it out to look as soon as possible for a train. I was still walking behind Mrs. Haze though the dining room when, beyond it, there came a sudden burst of greenery--the piazza, so lush and extraordinary, the most beautiful part of the house saved for last. I could not stop myself from musing, “On a porch like this, work would not feel like work at all.”
And then, without the least warning, a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart and, from a mat in a pool of sun, kneeling, turning about on her knees, there was my dear Lolita peering at me over dark glasses. I felt then a stab of paternal affection for the child like none I had felt before. Everything about her, from her unruly chestnut head of hair to the polka-dotted black kerchief tied around her chest to the twinkling smirk her sunglasses could not hide, pointed to a kind of transparent insolence that the only child of a single parent is bound to adopt for her own survival. I felt pity, yes, but purpose as well.
I have no illusions, however. My judges will regard all this as a piece of bad acting on the part of a madman with a thirst for murder and, really, I don’t care. All I know is that while the Haze woman and I went down the steps into the breathless garden, I felt such a surge of protective love for the child that I would have killed for her, even then, before we had met.
"That was my Lo," Charlotte said, "and these are my lilies."
"Yes," I said, "They are beautiful."
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