7I do not know if the pimp's album may not have been another link inthe daisy-chain; but soon after, for my own safety, I decided to marry. Itoccurred to me that regular hours, home-cooked meals, all the conventions ofmarriage, the prophylactic routine of its bedroom activities and, who knows,the eventual flowering of certain moral values, of certain spiritualsubstitutes, might help me, if not to purge myself of my degrading anddangerous desires, at least to keep them under pacific control. A littlemoney that had come my way after my father's death (nothing very grand--theMirana had been sold long before), in addition to my striking if somewhatbrutal good looks, allowed me to enter upon my quest with equanimity. Afterconsiderable deliberation, my choice fell on the daughter of a Polishdoctor: the good man happened to be treating me for spells of dizziness andtachycardia. We played chess; his daughter watched me from behind her easel,and inserted eyes or knuckles borrowed from me into the cubistic trash thataccomplished misses then painted instead of lilacs and lambs. Let me repeatwith quiet force: I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, anexceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and agloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor. Exceptional virilityoften reflects in the subject's displayable features a sullen and congestedsomething that pertains to what he has to conceal. And this was my case.Well did I know, alas, that I could obtain at the snap of my fingers anyadult female I chose; in fact, it had become quite a habit with me of notbeing too attentive to women lest they come toppling, bloodripe, into mycold lap. Had I been a franгais moyen with a taste for flashy ladies,I might have easily found, among the many crazed beauties that lashed mygrim rock, creatures far more fascinating than Valeria. My choice, however,was prompted by considerations whose essence was, as I realized too late, apiteous compromise. All of which goes to show how dreadfully stupid poorHumbert always was in matters of sex.8Although I told myself I was looking merely for a soothing presence, aglorified pot-au-feu, an animated merkin, what really attracted me toValeria was the imitation she gave of a little girl. She gave it not becauseshe had divined something about me; it was just her style--and I fell forit. Actually, she was at least in her late twenties (I never established herexact age for even her passport lied) and had mislaid her virginity undercircumstances that changed with her reminiscent moods. I, on my part, was asnaive as only a pervert can be. She looked fluffy and frolicsome, dresseda la gamine, showed a generous amount of smooth leg, knew how tostress the white of a bare instep by the black of a velvet slipper, andpouted, and dimpled, and romped, and dirndled, and shook her short curlyblond hair in the cutest and tritest fashion imaginable. After a brief ceremony at the mairie, I tool her to the newapartment I had rented and, somewhat to her surprise, had her wear, before Itouched her, a girl's plain nightshirt that I had managed to filch from thelinen closet of an orphanage. I derived some fun from that nuptial night andhad the idiot in hysterics by sunrise. But reality soon asserted itself. Thebleached curl revealed its melanic root; the down turned to prickles on ashaved shin; the mobile moist mouth, no matter how I stuffed it with love,disclosed ignominiously its resemblance to the corresponding part in atreasured portrait of her toadlike dead mama; and presently, instead of apale little gutter girl, Humbert Humbert had on his hands a large, puffy,short-legged, big-breasted and practically brainless baba. This state of affairs lasted from 1935 to 1939. Her only asset was amuted nature which did help to produce an odd sense of comfort in our smallsqualid flat: two rooms, a hazy view in one window, a brick wall in theother, a tiny kitchen, a shoe-shaped bath tub, within which I felt likeMarat but with no white-necked maiden to stab me. We had quite a few cozyevenings together, she deep in her Paris-Soir, I working at a ricketytable. We went to movies, bicycle races and boxing matches. I appealed toher stale flesh very seldom, only in cases of great urgency and despair. Thegrocer opposite had a little daughter whose shadow drove me mad; but withValeria's help I did find after all some legal outlets to my fantasticpredicament. As to cooking, we tacitly dismissed the pot-au-feu andhad most of our meals at a crowded place in rue Bonaparte where there werewine stains on the table cloth and a good deal of foreign babble. And nextdoor, an art dealer displayed in his cluttered window a splendid,flamboyant, green, red, golden and inky blue, ancient American estampe--alocomotive with a gigantic smokestack, great baroque lamps and a tremendouscowcatcher, hauling its mauve coaches through the stormy prairie night andmixing a lot of spark-studded black smoke with the furry thunder clouds. These burst. In the summer of 1939 mon oncle d'Amиrique diedbequeathing me an annual income of a few thousand dollars on condition Icame to live in the States and showed some interest in his business. Thisprospect was most welcome to me. I felt my life needed a shake-up. There wasanother thing, too: moth holes had appeared in the plush of matrimonialcomfort. During the last weeks I had kept noticing that my fat Valeria wasnot her usual self; had acquired a queer restlessness; even showed somethinglike irritation at times, which was quite out of keeping with the stockcharacter she was supposed to impersonate. When I informed her we wereshortly to sail for New York, she looked distressed and bewildered. Therewere some tedious difficulties with her papers. She had a Nansen, or bettersay Nonsense, passport which for some reason a share in her husband's solidSwiss citizenship could not easily transcend; and I decided it was thenecessity of queuing in the prиfecture, and other formalities, thathad made her so listless, despite my patiently describing to her America,the country of rosy children and great trees, where life would be such animprovement on dull dingy Paris. We were coming out of some office building one morning, with her papersalmost in order, when Valeria, as she waddled by my side, began to shake herpoodle head vigorously without saying a word. I let her go on for a whileand then asked if she thought she had something inside. She answered (Itranslate from her French which was, I imagine, a translation in its turn ofsome Slavic platitude): "There is another man in my life." Now, these are ugly words for a husband to hear. They dazed me, Iconfess. To beat her up in the street, there and then, as an honestvulgarian might have done, was not feasible. Years of secret sufferings hadtaught me superhuman self-control. So I ushered her into a taxi which hadbeen invitingly creeping along the curb for some time, and in thiscomparative privacy I quietly suggested she comment her wild talk. Amounting fury was suffocating me--not because I had any particular fondnessfor that figure of fun, Mme Humbert, but because matters of legal andillegal conjunction were for me alone to decide, and here she was, Valeria,the comedy wife, brazenly preparing to dispose in her own way of my comfortand fate. I demanded her lover's name. I repeated my question; but she keptup a burlesque babble, discoursing on her unhappiness with me and announcingplans for an immediate divorce. "Mais qui est-ce?" I shouted at last,striking her on the knee with my fist; and she, without even wincing, staredat me as if the answer were too simple for words, then gave a quick shrugand pointed at the thick neck of the taxi driver. He pulled up at a smallcafи and introduced himself. I do not remember his ridiculous name but afterall those years I still see him quite clearly--a stocky White Russianex-colonel with a bushy mustache and a crew cut; there were thousands ofthem plying that fool's trade in Paris. We sat down at a table; the Tsaristordered wine, and Valeria, after applying a wet napkin to her knee, went ontalking--into me rather than to me; she poured words into thisdignified receptacle with a volubility I had never suspected she had in her.And every now and then she would volley a burst of Slavic at her stolidlover. The situation was preposterous and became even more so when thetaxi-colonel, stopping Valeria with a possessive smile, began to unfoldhis views and plans. With an atrocious accent to his careful French,he delineated the world of love and work into which he proposed to enterhand in hand with his child-wife Valeria. She by now was preening herself,between him and me, rouging her pursed lips, tripling her chin to pick ather blouse-bosom and so forth, and he spoke of her as if she were absent,and also as if she were a kind of little ward that was in the act of beingtransferred, for her own good, from one wise guardian to another even wiserone; and although my helpless wrath may have exaggerated and disfiguredcertain impressions, I can swear that he actually consulted me on suchthings as her diet, her periods, her wardrobe and the books she had read orshould read. "I think," - he said, "She will like Jean Christophe?"Oh, he was quite a scholar, Mr. Taxovich. I put an end to this gibberish by suggesting Valeria pack up her fewbelongings immediately, upon which the platitudinous colonel gallantlyoffered to carry them into the car. Reverting to his professional state, hedrove the Humberts to their residence and all the way Valeria talked, andHumbert the Terrible deliberated with Humbert the Small whether HumbertHumbert should kill her or her lover, or both, or neither. I remember oncehandling an automatic belonging to a fellow student, in the days (I have notspoken of them, I think, but never mind) when I toyed with the idea ofenjoying his little sister, a most diaphanous nymphet with a black hair bow,and then shooting myself. I now wondered if Valechka (as the colonel calledher) was really worth shooting, or strangling, or drowning. She had veryvulnerable legs, and I decided I would limit myself to hurting her veryhorribly as soon as we were alone. But we never were. Valechka--by now shedding torrents of tears tingedwith the mess of her rainbow make-up,--started to fill anyhow a trunk, andtwo suitcases, and a bursting carton, and visions of putting on my mountainboots and taking a running kick at her rump were of course impossible to putinto execution with the cursed colonel hovering around all the time. Icannot say he behaved insolently or anything like that; on the contrary, hedisplayed, as a small sideshow in the theatricals I had been inveigled in, adiscreet old-world civility, punctuating his movements with all sorts ofmispronounced apologies (j'ai demande pardonne--excuse me--est-ceque j'ai puis--may I--and so forth), and turning away tactfully whenValechka took down with a flourish her pink panties from the clotheslineabove the tub; but he seemed to be all over the place at once, legredin, agreeing his frame with the anatomy of the flat, reading in mychair my newspaper, untying a knotted string, rolling a cigarette, countingthe teaspoons, visiting the bathroom, helping his moll to wrap up theelectric fan her father had given her, and carrying streetward her luggage.I sat with arms folded, one hip on the window sill, dying of hate andboredom. At last both were out of the quivering apartment--the vibration ofthe door I had slammed after them still rang in my every nerve, a poorsubstitute for the backhand slap with which I ought to have hit her acrossthe cheekbone according to the rules of the movies. Clumsily playing mypart, I stomped to the bathroom to check if they had taken my English toiletwater; they had not; but I noticed with a spasm of fierce disgust that theformer Counselor of the Tsar, after thoroughly easing his bladder, had notflushed the toilet. That solemn pool of alien urine with a soggy, tawnycigarette butt disintegrating in it struck me as a crowning insult, and Iwildly looked around for a weapon. Actually I daresay it was nothing butmiddle-class Russian courtesy (with an oriental tang, perhaps) that hadprompted the good colonel (Maximovich! his name suddenly taxies back to me),a very formal person as they all are, to muffle his private need in decoroussilence so as not to underscore the small size of his host's domicile withthe rush of a gross cascade on top of his own hushed trickle. But this didnot enter my mind at the moment, as groaning with rage I ransacked thekitchen for something better than a broom. Then, canceling my search, Idashed out of the house with the heroic decision of attacking himbarefisted; despite my natural vigor, I am no pugilist, while the short butbroad-shouldered Maximovich seemed made of pig iron. The void of the street,revealing nothing of my wife's departure except a rhinestone button that shehad dropped in the mud after preserving it for three unnecessary years in abroken box, may have spared me a bloody nose. But no matter. I had my littlerevenge in due time. A man from Pasadena told me one day that Mrs.Maximovich nиe Zborovski had died in childbirth around 1945; the couple hadsomehow got over to California and had been used there, for an excellentsalary, in a year-long experiment conducted by a distinguished Americanethnologist. The experiment dealt with human and racial reactions to a dietof bananas and dates in a constant position on all fours. My informant, adoctor, swore he had seen with his own eyes obese Valechka and her colonel,by then gray-haired and also quite corpulent, diligently crawling about thewell-swept floors of a brightly lit set of rooms (fruit in one, water inanother, mats in a third and so on) in the company of several other hiredquadrupeds, selected from indigent and helpless groups. I tried to find theresults of these tests in the Review of Anthropology; but they appearnot to have been published yet. These scientific products take of coursesome time to fructuate. I hope they will be illustrated with photographswhen they do get printed, although it is not very likely that a prisonlibrary will harbor such erudite works. The one to which I am restrictedthese days, despite my lawyer's favors, is a good example of the inaneeclecticism governing the selection of books in prison libraries. They havethe Bible, of course, and Dickens (an ancient set, N.Y., G.W. Dillingham,Publisher, MDCCCLXXXVII); and the Children's Encyclopedia (with somenice photographs of sunshine-haired Girl Scouts in shorts), and A MurderIs Announced by Agatha Christie; but they also have such coruscatingtrifles as A vagabond in Italy by Percy Elphinstone, author ofVenice Revisited, Boston, 1868, and a comparatively recent (1946)Who's Who in the Limelight--actors, producers, playwrights, and shotsof static scenes. In looking through the latter volume, I was treated lastnight to one of those dazzling coincidences that logicians loathe and poetslove. I transcribe most of the page: Pym, Roland. Born in Lundy, Mass., 1922. Received stage training atElsinore Playhouse, Derby, N.Y. Made debut in Sunburst. Among hismany appearances are Two Blocks from Here, The Girl in Green, ScrambledHusbands, The Strange Mushroom, Touch and Go, John Lovely, I Was Dreaming ofYou. Quilty, Clare, American dramatist. Born in Ocean City, N.J., 1911.Educated at Columbia University. Started on a commercial career but turnedto playwriting. Author of The Little Nymph, The Lady Who LovedLightning (in collaboration with Vivian Darkbloom), Dark Age, Thestrange Mushroom, Fatherly Love, and others. His many plays for childrenare notable. Little Nymph (1940) traveled 14,000 miles and played 280performances on the road during the winter before ending in New York.Hobbies: fast cars, photography, pets. Quine, Dolores. Born in 1882, in Dayton, Ohio. Studied for stage atAmerican Academy. First played in Ottawa in 1900. Made New York debut in1904 in Never Talk to Strangers. Has disappeared since in [a list ofsome thirty plays follows]. How the look of my dear love's name even affixed to some old hag of anactress, still makes me rock with helpless pain! Perhaps, she might havebeen an actress too. Born 1935. Appeared (I notice the slip of my pen in thepreceding paragraph, but please do not correct it, Clarence) in TheMurdered Playwright. Quine the Swine. Guilty of killing Quilty. Oh, myLolita, I have only words to play with!
