30

137 1 0
                                    

I have to tread carefully. I have to speak in a whisper. Oh you,veteran crime reporter,  you  grave old  usher,  you once popularpoliceman, now in  solitary confinement after gracing that  schoolcrossing for years, you wretched emeritus read to by a boy! It wouldnever do, would it,  to  have you  fellows  fall  madly in  love  with  myLolita! had I been a painter, had the management of The EnchantedHunters lost  its  mind one  summer day  and  commissioned me  toredecorate their dining room with murals of my own making, this iswhat I might have thought up, let me list some fragments:There would have been a lake. There would have been an arborin  flame-flower.  There would have been nature studiesa tigerpursuing a bird of paradise, a choking snake sheathing whole theflayed trunk of a shoat. There would have been a sultan, his faceexpressing great agony (belied, as it were, by his molding caress),helping a callypygean slave child to climb a column of onyx. Therewould have been those luminous globules of gonadal glow that travelup the opalescent sides of juke boxes. There would have been allkinds of  camp activities on  the  part of  the  intermediate group,Canoeing, Coranting, Combing Curls in  the  lakeside sun. Therewould have been poplars, apples, a suburban Sunday. There wouldhave been a fire opal dissolving within a ripple-ringed pool, a lastthrob, a  last  dab  of  color, stinging red,  smearing pink, a  sigh, awincing child.

Lolita by Vladimir NabokovWhere stories live. Discover now