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.