13The Sunday after the Saturday already described proved to be as brightas the weatherman had predicted. When putting the breakfast things back onthe chair outside my room for my good landlady to remove at her convenience,I gleaned the following situation by listening from the landing across whichI had softly crept to the banisters in my old bedroom slippers--the only oldthings about me. There had been another row. Mrs. Hamilton had telephoned that herdaughter "was running a temperature." Mrs. Haze informed her daughterthat the picnic would have to be postponed. Hot little Haze informed bigcold Haze that, if so, she would not go with her to church. Mother said verywell and left. I had come out on the landing straight after shaving, soapy-earlobed,still in my white pajamas with the cornflower blue (not the lilac) design onthe back; I now wiped off the soap, perfumed my hair and armpits, slipped ona purple silk dressing gown, and, humming nervously, went down the stairs inquest of Lo. I want my learned readers to participate in the scene I am about toreplay; I want them to examine its every detail and see for themselves howcareful, how chaste, the whole wine-sweet event is if viewed with what mylawyer has called, in a private talk we have had, "impartial sympathy." Solet us get started. I have a difficult job before me. Main character: Humbert the Hummer. Time: Sunday morning in June.Place: sunlit living room. Props: old, candy-striped davenport, magazines,phonograph, Mexican knickknacks (the late Mr. Harold E. Haze--God bless thegood man--had engendered my darling at the siesta hour in a blue-washedroom, on a honeymoon trip to Vera Cruz, and mementoes, among these Dolores,were all over the place). She wore that day a pretty print dress that I hadseen on her once before, ample in the skirt, tight in the bodice,short-sleeved, pink, checkered with darker pink, and, to complete the colorscheme, she had painted her lips and was holding in her hollowed hands abeautiful, banal, Eden-red apple. She was not shod, however, for church. Andher white Sunday purse lay discarded near the phonograph. My heart beat like a drum as she sat down, cool skirt ballooning,subsiding, on the sofa next to me, and played with her glossy fruit. Shetossed it up into the sun-dusted air, and caught it--it made a cuppedpolished plot. Humbert Humbert intercepted the apple. "Give it back," - she pleaded, showing the marbled flush of her palms.I produced Delicious. She grasped it and bit into it, and my heart was likesnow under thin crimson skin, and with the monkeyish nimbleness that was sotypical of that American nymphet, she snatched out of my abstract grip themagazine I had opened (pity no film had recorded the curious pattern, themonogrammic linkage of our simultaneous or overlapping moves). Rapidly,hardly hampered by the disfigured apple she held, Lo flipped violentlythrough the pages in search of something she wished Humbert to see. Found itat last. I faked interest by bringing my head so close that her hair touchedmy temple and her arm brushed my cheek as she wiped her lips with her wrist.Because of the burnished mist through which I peered at the picture, I wasslow in reacting to it, and her bare knees rubbed and knocked impatientlyagainst each other. Dimly there came into view: a surrealist painterrelaxing, supine, on a beach, and near him, likewise supine, a plasterreplica of the Venus di Milo, half-buried in sand. Picture of the Week, saidthe legend. I whisked the whole obscene thing away. Next moment, in a shameffort to retrieve it, she was all over me. Caught her by her thin knobbywrist. The magazine escaped to the floor like a flustered fowl. She twistedherself free, recoiled, and lay back in the right-hand corner of thedavenport. Then, with perfect simplicity, the impudent child extended herlegs across my lap. By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; butI also had the cunning of the insane. Sitting there, on the sofa, I managedto attune, by a series of stealthy movements, my masked lust to herguileless limbs. It was no easy matter to divert the little maiden'sattention while I performed the obscure adjustments necessary for thesuccess of the trick. Talking fast, lagging behind my own breath, catchingup with it, mimicking a sudden toothache to explain the breaks in mypatter--and all the while keeping a maniac's inner eye on my distant goldengoal, I cautiously increased the magic friction that was doing away, in anillusional, if not factual, sense, with the physically irremovable, butpsychologically very friable texture of the material divide (pajamas androbe) between the weight of two sunburnt legs, resting athwart my lap, andthe hidden tumor of an unspeakable passion. Having, in the course of mypatter, hit upon something nicely mechanical, I recited, garbling themslightly, the words of a foolish song that was then popular--O my Carmen, mylittle Carmen, something, something, those something nights, and the stars,and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen; I kept repeating this automaticstuff and holding her under its special spell (spell because of thegarbling), and all the while I was mortally afraid that some act of Godmight interrupt me, might remove the golden load in the sensation of whichall my being seemed concentrated, and this anxiety forced me to work, forthe first minute or so, more hastily than was consensual with deliberatelymodulated enjoyment. The stars that sparkled, and the cars that parkled, andthe bars, and the barmen, were presently taken over by her; her voice stoleand corrected the tune I had been mutilating. She was musical andapple-sweet. Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; Istroked them; there she lolled in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl,Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through itsjuice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in itssloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on thesofa--and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me toconceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence betweenbeast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of herdimpled body in its innocent cotton frock. Under my glancing finger tips I felt the minute hairs bristle ever soslightly along her shins. I lost myself in the pungent but healthy heatwhich like summer haze hung about little Haze. Let her stay, let her stay .. . As she strained to chuck the core of her abolished apple into thefender, her young weight, her shameless innocent shanks and round bottom,shifted in my tense, tortured, surreptitiously laboring lap; and all of asudden a mysterious change came over my senses. I entered a plane of beingwhere nothing mattered, save the infusion of joy brewed within my body. Whathad begun as a delicious distention of my innermost roots became a glowingtingle which now had reached that state of absolute security,confidence and reliance not found elsewhere in conscious life. With the deephot sweetness thus established and well on its way to the ultimateconvulsion, I felt I could slow down in order to prolong the glow. Lolitahad been safely solipsized. The implied sun pulsated in the suppliedpoplars; we were fantastically and divinely alone; I watched her, rosy,gold-dusted, beyond the veil of my controlled delight, unaware of it, aliento it, and the sun was on her lips, and her lips were apparently stillforming the words of the Carmen-barmen ditty that no longer reached myconsciousness. Everything was now ready. The nerves of pleasure had beenlaid bare. The corpuscles of Krause were entering the phase of frenzy. Theleast pressure would suffice to set all paradise loose. I had ceased to beHumbert the Hound, the sad-eyed degenerate cur clasping the boot that wouldpresently kick him away. I was above the tribulations of ridicule, beyondthe possibilities of retribution. In my self-made seraglio, I was a radiantand robust Turk, deliberately, in the full consciousness of his freedom,postponing the moment of actually enjoying the youngest and frailest of hisslaves. Suspended on the brink of that voluptuous abyss (a nicety ofphysiological equipoise comparable to certain techniques in the arts) I keptrepeating the chance words after her--barmen, alarmin', my charmin', mycarmen, ahmen, ahahamen--as one talking and laughing in his sleep while myhappy hand crept up her sunny leg as far as the shadow of decency allowed.The day before she had collided with the heavy chest in the hall and--"Look,look!"--I gasped--"look what you've done, what you've done to yourself, ah,look"; for there was, I swear, a yellowish-violet bruise on her lovelynymphet thigh which my huge hairy hand massaged and slowly enveloped--andbecause of her very perfunctory underthings, there seemed to be nothing toprevent my muscular thumb from reaching the hot hollow of her groin--just asyou might tickle and caress a giggling child--just that--and: "Oh, it'snothing at all," she cried with a sudden shrill note in her voice, and shewiggled, and squirmed, and threw her head back, and her teeth rested on herglistening underlip as she half-turned away, and my moaning mouth, gentlemenof the jury, almost reached her bare neck, while I crushed out against herleft buttock the last throb of the longest ecstasy man or monster had everknown. Immediately afterward (as if we had been struggling and now my grip hadeased) she rolled off the sofa and jumped to her feet--to her foot,rather--in order to attend to the formidably loud telephone that may havebeen ringing for ages as far as I was concerned. There she stood andblinked, cheeks aflame, hair awry, her eyes passing over me as lightly asthey did over the furniture, and as she listened or spoke (to her mother whowas telling her to come to lunch with her at the Chatfileds--neither Lo norHum knew yet what busybody Haze was plotting), she kept tapping the edge ofthe table with the slipper she held in her hand. Blessed be the Lord, shehad noticed nothing! With a handkerchief of multicolored silk, on which her listening eyesrested in passing, I wiped the sweat off my forehead, and, immersed in aeuphoria of release, rearranged my royal robes. She was still at thetelephone, haggling with her mother (wanted to be fetched by car, my littleCarmen) when, singing louder and louder, I swept up the stairs and set adeluge of steaming water roaring into the tub. At this point I may as well give the words of that song hit in full--tothe best of my recollection at least--I don't think I ever had it right.Here goes: O my Carmen, my little Carmen! Something, something those something nights, And the stars, and the cars, and the bars and the barmen-- And, O my charmin', our dreadful fights. And the something town where so gaily, arm in Arm, we went, and our final row, And the gun I killed you with, O my Carmen, The gun I am holding now. (Drew his .32 automatic, I guess, and put a bullet through his moll'seye.)14I had lunch in town--had not been so hungry for years. The house wasstill Lo-less when I strolled back. I spent the afternoon musing, scheming,blissfully digesting my experience of the morning. I felt proud of myself. I had stolen the honey of a spasm withoutimpairing the morals of a minor. Absolutely no harm done. The conjurer hadpoured milk, molasses, foaming champagne into a young lady's new whitepurse; and lo, the purse was intact. Thus had I delicately constructed myignoble, ardent, sinful dream; and still Lolita was safe--and I was safe.What I had madly possessed was not she, but my own creation, another,fanciful Lolita--perhaps, more real than Lolita; overlapping, encasing her;floating between me and her, and having no will, no consciousness--indeed,no life of her own. The child knew nothing. I had done nothing to her. And nothingprevented me from repeating a performance that affected her as little as ifshe were a photographic image rippling upon a screen and I a humblehunchback abusing myself in the dark. The afternoon drifted on and on, inripe silence, and the sappy tall trees seemed to be in the know; and desire,even stronger than before, began to afflict me again. Let her come soon, Iprayed, addressing a loan God, and while mamma is in the kitchen, let arepetition of the davenport scene be staged, please, I adore her sohorribly. No: "horribly" is the wrong word. The elation with which the vision ofnew delights filled me was not horrible but pathetic. I qualify it aspathetic. Pathetic--because despite the insatiable fire of my venerealappetite, I intended, with the most fervent force and foresight, to protectthe purity of that twelve-year-old child. And now see how I was repaid for my pains. No Lolita came home--she hadgone with the Chatfields to a movie. The table was laid with more elegancethan usual: candlelight, if you please. In this mawkish aura, Mrs. Hazegently touched the silver on both sides of her plate as if touching pianokeys, and smiled down on her empty plate (was on a diet), and said she hopedI liked the salad (recipe lifted from a woman's magazine). She hoped I likedthe cold cuts, too. It had been a perfect day. Mrs. Chatfield was a lovelyperson. Phyllis, her daughter, was going to a summer camp tomorrow. Forthree weeks. Lolita, it was decided, would go Thursday. Instead of waitingtill July, as had been initially planned. And stay there after Phyllis hadleft. Till school began. A pretty prospect, my heart. Oh, how I was taken aback--for did it not mean I was losing my darling,just when I had secretly made her mine? To explain my grim mood, I had touse the same toothache I had already simulated in the morning. Must havebeen an enormous molar, with an abscess as big as a maraschino cherry. "We have," said Haze, "an excellent dentist. Our neighbor, in fact. Dr.Quilty. Uncle or cousin, I think, of the playwright. Think it will pass?Well, just as you wish. In the fall I shall have him 'brace' her, as mymother used to say. It may curb Lo a little. I am afraid she has beenbothering you frightfully all these days. And we are in for a couple ofstormy ones before she goes. She has flatly refused to go, and I confess Ileft her with the Chatfields because I dreaded to face her alone just yet.The movie may mollify her. Phyllis is a very sweet girl, and there is noearthly reason for Lo to dislike her. Really, monsieur, I am very sorryabout that tooth of yours. It would be so much more reasonable to let mecontact Ivor Quilty first thing tomorrow morning if it still hurts. And, youknow, I think a summer camp is so much healthier, and--well, it is all somuch more reasonable as I say than to mope on a suburban lawn and usemamma's lipstick, and pursue shy studious gentlemen, and go into tantrums atthe least provocation." "Are you sure," I said at last, "that she will be happy there?" (lame,lamentably lame!) "She'd better," said Haze. "And it won't be all play either. The campis run by Shirley Holmes--you know, the woman who wrote CampfireGirl. Camp will teach Dolores Haze to grow in many things--health,knowledge, temper. And particularly in a sense of responsibility towardsother people. Shall we take these candles with us and sit for a while on thepiazza, or do you want to go to bed and nurse that tooth?" Nurse that tooth.
