9Divorce proceedings delayed my voyage, and the gloom of yet anotherWorld War had settled upon the globe when, after a winter of ennui andpneumonia in Portugal, I at last reached the States. In New York I eagerlyaccepted the soft job fate offered me: it consisted mainly of thinking upand editing perfume ads. I welcomed its desultory character andpseudoliterary aspects, attending to it whenever I had nothing better to do.On the other hand, I was urged by a war-time university in New York tocomplete my comparative history of French literature for English-speakingstudents. The first volume took me a couple of years during which I put inseldom less than fifteen hours of work daily. As I look back on those days,I see them divided tidily into ample light and narrow shade: the lightpertaining to the solace of research in palatial libraries, the shade to myexcruciating desires and insomnias of which enough has been said. Knowing meby now, the reader can easily imagine how dusty and hot I got, trying tocatch a glimpse of nymphets (alas, always remote) playing in Central Park,and how repulsed I was by the glitter of deodorized career girls that a gaydog in one of the offices kept unloading upon me. Let us skip all that. Adreadful breakdown sent me to a sanatorium for more than a year; I went backto my work--only to be hospitalized again. Robust outdoor life seemed to promise me some relief. One of myfavorite doctors, a charming cynical chap with a little brown beard, had abrother, and this brother was about to lead an expedition into arcticCanada. I was attached to it as a "recorder of psychic reactions." With twoyoung botanists and an old carpenter I shared now and then (never verysuccessfully) the favors of one of our nutritionists, a Dr. AnitaJohnson--who was soon flown back, I am glad to say. I had little notion ofwhat object the expedition was pursuing. Judging by the number ofmeteorologists upon it, we may have been tracking to its lair (somewhere onPrince of Wales' Island, I understand) the wandering and wobbly northmagnetic pole. One group, jointly with the Canadians, established a weatherstation on Pierre Point in Melville Sound. Another group, equally misguided,collected plankton. A third studied tuberculosis in the tundra. Bert, a filmphotographer--an insecure fellow with whom at one time I was made to partakein a good deal of menial work (he, too, had some psychictroubles)--maintained that the big men on our team, the real leaders wenever saw, were mainly engaged in checking the influence of climaticamelioration on the coats of the arctic fox. We lived in prefabricated timber cabins amid a Pre-Cambrian world ofgranite. We had heaps of supplies--the Reader's Digest, an ice creammixer, chemical toilets, paper caps for Christmas. My health improvedwonderfully in spite or because of all the fantastic blankness and boredom.Surrounded by such dejected vegetation as willow scrub and lichens;permeated, and, I suppose, cleansed by a whistling gale; seated on a boulderunder a completely translucent sky (through which, however, nothing ofimportance showed), I felt curiously aloof from my own self. No temptationsmaddened me. The plump, glossy little Eskimo girls with their fish smell,hideous raven hair and guinea pig faces, evoked even less desire in me thanDr. Johnson had. Nymphets do not occur in polar regions. I left my betters the task of analyzing glacial drifts, drumlins, andgremlins, and kremlins, and for a time tried to jot down what I fondlythought were "reactions" (I noticed, for instance, that dreams under themidnight sun tended to be highly colored, and this my friend thephotographer confirmed). I was also supposed to quiz my various companionson a number of important matters, such as nostalgia, fear of unknownanimals, food-fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radioprograms, changes in outlook and so forth. Everybody got so fed up with thisthat I soon dropped the project completely, and only toward the end of mytwenty months of cold labor (as one of the botanists jocosely put it)concocted a perfectly spurious and very racy report that the reader willfind published in he Annals of Adult Psychophysics for 1945 or 1946,as well as in the issue of Arctic Explorations devoted to thatparticular expedition; which, in conclusion, was not really concerned withVictoria Island copper or anything like that, as I learned later from mygenial doctor; for the nature of its real purpose was what is termed"hush-hush," and so let me add merely that whatever it was, that purpose wasadmirably achieved. The reader will regret to learn that soon after my return tocivilization I had another bout with insanity (if to melancholia and a senseof insufferable oppression that cruel term must be applied). I owe mycomplete restoration to a discovery I made while being treated at thatparticular very expensive sanatorium. I discovered there was an endlesssource of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leadingthem on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade;inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style (which makethem, the dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasingthem with fake "primal scenes"; and never allowing them the slightestglimpse of one's real sexual predicament. By bribing a nurse I won access tosome files and discovered, with glee, cards calling me "potentiallyhomosexual" and "totally impotent." The sport was so excellent, itsresults--in my case--so ruddy that I stayed on for a whole monthafter I was quite well (sleeping admirably and eating like a schoolgirl).And then I added another week just for the pleasure of taking on a powerfulnewcomer, a displaced (and, surely, deranged) celebrity, known for his knackof making patients believe they had witnessed their own conception.10Upon signing out, I cast around for some place in the New Englandcountryside or sleepy small town (elms, white church) where I could spend astudious summer subsisting on a compact boxful of notes I had accumulatedand bathing in some nearby lake. My work had begun to interest me again--Imean my scholarly exertions; the other thing, my active participation in myuncle'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 storywhere a late aunt had delicately dwelt. He said they had two littledaughters, one a baby, the other a girl of twelve, and a beautiful garden,not far from a beautiful lake, and I said it sounded perfectly perfect. I exchanged letters with these people, satisfying them I washousebroken, and spent a fantastic night on the train, imagining in allpossible detail the enigmatic nymphet I would coach in French and fondle inHumbertish. Nobody met me at the toy station where I alighted with my newexpensive bag, and nobody answered the telephone; eventually, however, adistraught McCoo in wet clothes turned up at the only hotel ofgreen-and-pink Ramsdale with the news that his house had just burneddown--possibly, owing to the synchronous conflagration that had been ragingall night in my veins. His family, he said, had fled to a farm he owned, andhad taken the car, but a friend of his wife's, a grand person, Mrs. Haze of342 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 Negro. Now, since the only reasonfor my coming at all had vanished, the aforesaid arrangement seemedpreposterous. All right, his house would have to be completely rebuilt, sowhat? Had he not insured it sufficiently? I was angry, disappointed andbored, but being a polite European, could not refuse to be sent off to LawnStreet in that funeral car, feeling that otherwise McCoo would devise aneven more elaborate means of getting rid of me. I saw him scamper away, andmy chauffeur shook his head with a soft chuckle. En route, I swore to myselfI would not dream of staying in Ramsdale under any circumstance but wouldfly that very day to the Bermudas or the Bahamas or the Blazes.Possibilities of sweetness on technicolor beaches had been trickling throughmy spine for some time before, and McCoo's cousin had, in fact, sharplydiverted that train of thought with his well-meaning but as it transpirednow absolutely inane suggestion. Speaking of sharp turns: we almost ran over a meddlesome suburban dog(one of those who like in wait for cars) as we swerved into Lawn Street. Alittle further, the Haze house, a white-frame horror, appeared, lookingdingy and old, more gray than white--the kind of place you know will have arubber tube affixable to the tub faucet in lieu of shower. I tipped thechauffeur and hoped he would immediately drive away so that I might doubleback unnoticed to my hotel and bag; but the man merely crossed to the otherside of the street where an old lady was calling to him from her porch. Whatcould I do? I pressed the bell button. A colored maid let me in--and left me standing on the mat while sherushed back to the kitchen where something was burning that ought not toburn. The front hall was graced with door chimes, a white-eyed woodenthingamabob of commercial Mexican origin, and that banal darling of the artymiddle class, van Gogh's "Arlиsienne." A door ajar to the right afforded aglimpse of a living room, with some more Mexican trash in a corner cabinetand a striped sofa along the wall. There was a staircase at the end of thehallway, and as I stood mopping my brow (only now did I realize how hot ithad been out-of-doors) and staring, to stare at something, at an old graytennis ball that lay on an oak chest, there came from the upper landing thecontralto voice of Mrs. Haze, who leaning over the banisters inquiredmelodiously, "Is that Monsieur Humbert?" A bit of cigarette ash dropped fromthere in addition. Presently, the lady herself--sandals, maroon slacks,yellow silk blouse, squarish face, in that order--came down the steps, herindex finger still tapping upon her cigarette. I think I had better describe her right away, to get it over with. Thepoor lady was in her middle thirties, she had a shiny forehead, pluckedeyebrows and quite simple but not unattractive features of a type that maybe defined as a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich. Patting her bronze-brownbun, she led me into the parlor and we talked for a minute about the McCoofire and the privilege of living in Ramsdale. Her very wide-set sea-greeneyes had a funny way of traveling all over you, carefully avoiding your owneyes. Her smile was but a quizzical jerk of one eyebrow; and uncoilingherself from the sofa as she talked, she kept making spasmodic dashes atthree 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,obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book clubor bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul;women who are completely devoid of humor; women utterly indifferent at heartto the dozen or so possible subjects of a parlor conversation, but veryparticular about the rules of such conversations, through the sunnycellophane of which not very appetizing frustrations can be readilydistinguished. I was perfectly aware that if by any wild chance I became herlodger, she would methodically proceed to do in regard to me what taking alodger probably meant to her all along, and I would again be enmeshed in oneof those tedious affairs I knew so well. But there was no question of my settling there. I could not be happy inthat type of household with bedraggled magazines on every chair and a kindof horrible hybridization between the comedy of so-called "functional modernfurniture" and the tragedy of decrepit rockers and rickety lamp tables withdead lamps. I was led upstairs, and to the left--into "my" room. I inspectedit through the mist of my utter rejection of it; but I did discern above"my" bed Renи Prinet's "Kreutzer Sonata." And she called that servant maid'sroom a "semi-studio"! Let's get out of here at once, I firmly said to myselfas I pretended to deliberate over the absurdly, and ominously, low pricethat my wistful hostess was asking for board and bed. Old-world politeness, however, obliged me to go on with the ordeal. Wecrossed the landing to the right side of the house (where "I and Lo have ourrooms"--Lo being presumably the maid), and the lodger-lover could hardlyconceal a shudder when he, a very fastidious male, was granted a preview ofthe only bathroom, a tiny oblong between the landing and "Lo's" room, withlimp wet things overhanging the dubious tub (the question mark of a hairinside); and there were the expected coils of the rubber snake, and itscomplement--a pinkish cozy, coyly covering the toilet lid. "I see you are not too favorably impressed," said the lady letting herhand rest for a moment upon my sleeve: she combined a cool forwardness--theoverflow of what I think is called "poise"--with a shyness and sadness thatcaused her detached way of selecting her words to seem as unnatural as theintonation of a professor of "speech." "This is not a neat household, Iconfess," the doomed ear continued, "but I assure you [she looked at mylips], you will be very comfortable, very comfortable, indeed. Let me showyou the garden" (the last more brightly, with a kind of winsome toss of thevoice). Reluctantly I followed her downstairs again; then through the kitchenat the end of the hall, on the right side of the house--the side where alsothe dining room and the parlor were (under "my" room, on the left, there wasnothing but a garage). In the kitchen, the Negro maid, a plump youngishwoman, said, as she took her large glossy black purse from the knob of thedoor 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 onto a small pantry and entered the dining room, parallel to the parlor we hadalready admired. I noticed a white sock on the floor. With a deprecatorygrunt, Mrs. Haze stooped without stopping and threw it into a closet next tothe pantry. We cursorily inspected a mahogany table with a fruit vase in themiddle, containing nothing but the still glistening stone of one plum. Igroped for the timetable I had in my pocket and surreptitiously fished itout 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 ofgreenery--"the piazza," sang out my leader, and then, without the leastwarning, a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart and, from a mat in a pool ofsun, half-naked, kneeling, turning about on her knees, there was my Rivieralove peering at me over dark glasses. It was the same child--the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the samesilky supple bare back, the same chestnut head of hair. A polka-dotted blackkerchief tied around her chest hid from my aging ape eyes, but not from thegaze of young memory, the juvenile breasts I had fondled one immortal day.And, as if I were the fairy-tale nurse of some little princess (lost,kidnapped, discovered in gypsy rags through which her nakedness smiled at theking and his hounds), I recognized the tiny dark-brown mole on her side.With awe and delight (the king crying for joy, the trumpets blaring, thenurse drunk) I saw again her lovely indrawn abdomen where my southboundmouth had briefly paused; and those puerile hips on which I had kissed thecrenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts--that last mad immortalday behind the "Roches Roses." The twenty-five years I had lived since then,tapered to a palpitating point, and vanished. I find it most difficult to express with adequate force that flash,that shiver, that impact of passionate recognition. In the course of thesun-shot moment that my glance slithered over the kneeling child (her eyesblinking over those stern dark spectacles--the little Herr Doktor who was tocure me of all my aches) while I passed by her in my adult disguise (a greatbig handsome hunk of movieland manhood), the vacuum of my soul managed tosuck in every detail of her bright beauty, and these I checked against thefeatures of my dead bride. A little later, of course, she, this nouvelle, this Lolita, my Lolita, was to eclipse completely herprototype. All I want to stress is that my discovery of her was a fatalconsequence of that "princedom by the sea" in my tortured past. Everythingbetween the two events was but a series of gropings and blunders, and falserudiments of joy. Everything they shared made one of them. I have no illusions, however. My judges will regard all this as a pieceof mummery on the part of a madman with a gross liking for the fruitvert. Au fond, гa m'est bien иgal. All I know is that while theHaze woman and I went down the steps into the breathless garden, my kneeswere like reflections of knees in rippling water, and my lips were likesand, and-- "That was my Lo," she said, "and these are my lilies." "Yes," I said, "yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful."
