Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

24

The  elms  and  the  poplars were turning their ruffled  backs to  asudden onslaught of wind, and a black thunderhead loomed aboveRamsdale's white church tower when I looked around me for the lasttime. For unknown adventures I was leaving the livid house where Ihad rented a room only  ten  weeks before. The shadesthrifty,practical bamboo shadeswere already down. On porches or in thehouse their rich textures lend modern drama. The house of heavenmust seem pretty bare after that. A raindrop fell on my knuckles. Iwent back into  the  house for  something or  other while John wasputting my bags into the car, and then a funny thing happened. I donot  know if in  these tragic notes I  have sufficiently stressed thepeculiar "sending" effect  that  the  writer's  good lookspseudo-Celtic,attractively simian, boyishly manlyhad on women of every age andenvironment. Of  course, such announcements made in  the  firstperson may sound ridiculous. But every once in a while I have toremind the  reader of  my  appearance much as  a  professionalnovelist, who has given a character of his some mannerism or a dog,has to go on producing that dog or that mannerism every time thecharacter crops up in the course of the book. There may be more toit in the present case. My gloomy good looks should be kept in themind's eye if my story is to be properly understood. Pubescent Loswooned to Humbert's charm as she did to hiccuppy music; adultLotte loved me with a mature, possessive passion that I now deploreand respect more than I care to say. Jean Farlow, who was thirty-oneand  absolutely  neurotic, had  also apparently developed a  strongliking for me. She was handsome in a carved-Indian sort of way, witha burnt sienna complexion. Her lips were like large crimson polyps,and when she emitted her special barking laugh, she showed largedull teeth and pale gums.She  was  very tall,  wore either slacks with  sandals or  billowingskirts with ballet slippers, drank any strong liquor in any amount, hadhad two miscarriages, wrote stories about animals, painted, as thereader knows, lakescapes, was already nursing the cancer that was to kill  her  at  thirty-three, and  was  hopelessly unattractive to  me.Judge then of my alarm when a few seconds before I left (she and Istood in the hallway) Jean, with her always trembling fingers, tookme by the temples, and, tears in her  bright blue eyes, attempted,unsuccessfully, to glue herself to my lips."Take care of yourself," she said, "kiss your daughter for me."A  clap  of  thunder  reverberated  throughout the  house, and  sheadded:"Perhaps, somewhere, some day,  at  a  less miserable time, wemay see each other again" (Jean, whatever, wherever you are, inminus time-space or plus soul-time, forgive me all this, parenthesisincluded).And presently I was shaking hands with both of them in the street,the sloping street, and everything was whirling and flying before theapproaching white deluge, and a  truck with a  mattress fromPhiladelphia was  confidently rolling down to  an  empty house, anddust was running and writhing over the exact slab of stone whereCharlotte, when they lifted the laprobe for me, had been revealed,curled up, her eyes intact, their black lashes still wet, matted, likeyours, Lolita.