24The elms and the poplars were turning their ruffled backs to a suddenonslaught of wind, and a black thunderhead loomed above Ramsdale's whitechurch tower when I looked around me for the last time. For unknownadventures I was leaving the livid house where I had rented a room only tenweeks before. The shades--thrifty, practical bamboo shades--were alreadydown. On porches or in the house their rich textures lend modern drama. Thehouse of heaven must seem pretty bare after that. A raindrop fell on myknuckles. I went back into the house for something or other while John wasputting my bags into the car, and then a funny thing happened. I do not knowif in these tragic notes I have sufficiently stressed the peculiar "sending"effect that the writer's good looks--pseudo-Celtic, attractively simian,boyishly manly--had on women of every age and environment. Of course, suchannouncements made in the first person may sound ridiculous. But every oncein a while I have to remind the reader of my appearance much as aprofessional novelist, who has given a character of his some mannerism or adog, 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 to it in thepresent case. My gloomy good looks should be kept in the mind's eye if mystory is to be properly understood. Pubescent Lo swooned to Humbert's charmas she did to hiccuppy music; adult Lotte loved me with a mature, possessivepassion that I now deplore and respect more than I care to say. Jean Farlow,who was thirty-one and absolutely neurotic, had also apparently developed astrong liking for me. She was handsome in a carved-Indian sort of way, witha burnt sienna complexion. Her lips were like large crimson polyps, and whenshe emitted her special barking laugh, she showed large dull teeth and palegums. She was very tall, wore either slacks with sandals or billowing skirtswith ballet slippers, drank any strong liquor in any amount, had had twomiscarriages, wrote stories about animals, painted, as the reader knows,lakescapes, was already nursing the cancer that was to kill her atthirty-three, and was hopelessly unattractive to me. Judge then of my alarmwhen a few seconds before I left (she and I stood in the hallway) Jean, withher always trembling fingers, took me by the temples, and, tears in herbright 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 she added: "Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may seeeach other again" (Jean, whatever, wherever you are, in minus time-space orplus soul-time, forgive me all this, parenthesis included). And presently I was shaking hands with both of them in the street, thesloping street, and everything was whirling and flying before theapproaching white deluge, and a truck with a mattress from Philadelphia wasconfidently rolling down to an empty house, and dust was running andwrithing over the exact slab of stone where Charlotte, when they lifted thelaprobe for me, had been revealed, curled up, her eyes intact, their blacklashes still wet, matted, like yours, Lolita.25One might suppose that with all blocks removed and a prospect ofdelirious and unlimited delights before me, I would have mentally sunk back,heaving a sigh of delicious relief. Eh bien, pas du tout! Instead ofbasking in the beams of smiling Chance, I was obsessed by all sorts ofpurely ethical doubts and fears. For instance: might it not surprise peoplethat Lo was so consistently debarred from attending festive and funeralfunctions in her immediate family? You remember--we had not had her at ourwedding. Or another thing: granted it was the long hairy arm of Coincidencethat had reached out to remove an innocent woman, might Coincidence notignore in a heathen moment what its twin lamb had done and hand Lo apremature note of commiseration? True, the accident had been reported onlyby the Ramsdale Journal--not by the Parkington Recorder or theClimax Herald, Camp Q being in another state, and local deaths havingno federal news interest; but I could not help fancying that somehow DollyHaze had been informed already, and that at the very time I was on my way tofetch her, she was being driven to Ramsdale by friends unknown to me. Stillmore disquieting than all these conjectures and worries, was the fact thatHumbert Humbert, a brand-new American citizen of obscure European origin,had taken no steps toward becoming the legal guardian of his dead wife'sdaughter (twelve years and seven months old). Would I ever dare take thosesteps? I could not repress a shiver whenever I imagined my nudity hemmed inby mysterious statutes in the merciless glare of the Common Law. My scheme was a marvel of primitive art: I would whizz over to Camp Q,tell Lolita her mother was about to undergo a major operation at an inventedhospital, and then keep moving with my sleepy nymphet from inn to inn whileher mother got better and better and finally died. But as I traveledcampward my anxiety grew. I could not bear to think I might not find Lolitathere--or find, instead, another, scared, Lolita clamoring for some familyfriend: not the Farlows, thank God--she hardly knew them--but might therenot be other people I had not reckoned with? Finally, I decided to make thelong-distance call I had simulated so well a few days before. It was raininghard when I pulled up in a muddy suburb of Parkington, just before the Fork,one prong of which bypassed the city and led to the highway which crossedthe hills to Lake Climax and Camp Q. I flipped off the ignition and forquite a minute sat in the car bracing myself for that telephone call, andstaring at the rain, at the inundated sidewalk, at a hydrant: a hideousthing, really, painted a thick silver and red, extending the red stumps ofits arms to be varnished by the rain which like stylized blood dripped uponits argent chains. No wonder that stopping beside those nightmare cripplesis taboo. I drove up to a gasoline station. A surprise awaited me when atlast the coins had satisfactorily clanked down and a voice was allowed toanswer mine. Holmes, the camp mistress, informed me that Dolly had gone Monday (thiswas Wednesday) on a hike in the hills with her group and was expected toreturn rather late today. Would I care to come tomorrow, and what wasexactly--Without going into details, I said that her mother washospitalized, that the situation was grave, that the child should not betold it was grave and that she should be ready to leave with me tomorrowafternoon. The two voices parted in an explosion of warmth and good will,and through some freak mechanical flaw all my coins came tumbling back to mewith a hitting-the-jackpot clatter that almost made me laugh despite thedisappointment at having to postpone bliss. One wonders if this suddendischarge, this spasmodic refund, was not correlated somehow, in the mind ofMcFate, with my having invented that little expedition before ever learningof it as I did now. What next? I proceeded to the business center of Parkington and devotedthe whole afternoon (the weather had cleared, the wet town was likesilver-and-glass) to buying beautiful things for Lo. Goodness, what crazypurchases were prompted by the poignant predilection Humbert had in thosedays for check weaves, bright cottons, frills, puffed-out short sleeves,soft pleats, snug-fitting bodices and generously full skirts! Oh Lolita, youare my girl, as Vee was Poe's and Bea Dante's, and what little girl wouldnot like to whirl in a circular skirt and scanties? Did I have somethingspecial in mind? coaxing voices asked me. Swimming suits? We have them inall shades. Dream pink, frosted aqua, glans mauve, tulip red, oolala black.What about playsuits? Slips? No slips. Lo and I loathed slips. One of my guides in these matters was an anthropometric entry made byher mother on Lo's twelfth birthday (the reader remembers thatKnow-Your-Child book). I had the feeling that Charlotte, moved by obscuremotives of envy and dislike, had added an inch here, a pound there; butsince the nymphet had no doubt grown somewhat in the last seven months, Ithought I could safely accept most of those January measurements: hip girth,twenty-nine inches; thigh girth (just below the gluteal sulcus), seventeen;calf girth and neck circumference, eleven; chest circumference,twenty-seven; upper arm girth, eight; waist, twenty-three; stature,fifty-seven inches; weight, seventy-eight pounds; figure, linear;intelligence quotient, 121; vermiform appendix present, thank God. Apart from measurements, I could of course visualize Lolita withhallucinational lucidity; and nursing as I did a tingle on my breastbone atthe exact spot her silky top had come level once or twice with my heart; andfeeling as I did her warm weight in my lap (so that, in a sense, I wasalways "with Lolita" as a woman is "with child"), I was not surprised todiscover later that my computation had been more or less correct. Havingmoreover studied a midsummer sale book, it was with a very knowing air thatI examined various pretty articles, sport shoes, sneakers, pumps of crushedkid for crushed kids. The painted girl in black who attended to all thesepoignant needs of mine turned parental scholarship and precise descriptioninto commercial euphemisms, such as "petite." Another, much olderwoman, in a white dress, with a pancake make-up, seemed to be oddlyimpressed by my knowledge of junior fashions; perhaps I had a midget formistress; so, when shown a skirt with "cute" pockets in front, Iintentionally put a naive male question and was rewarded by a smilingdemonstration of the way the zipper worked in the back of the skirt. I hadnext great fun with all kinds of shorts and briefs--phantom little Lolitasdancing, falling, daisying all over the counter. We rounded up the deal withsome prim cotton pajamas in popular butcher-boy style. Humbert, the popularbutcher. There is a touch of the mythological and the enchanted in those largestores where according to ads a career girl can get a complete desk-to-datewardrobe, and where little sister can dream of the day when her wool jerseywill make the boys in the back row of the classroom drool. Life-size plasticfigures of snubbed-nosed children with dun-colored, greenish, brown-dotted,faunish faces floated around me. I realized I was the only shopper in thatrather eerie place where I moved about fishlike, in a glaucous aquarium. Isensed strange thoughts form in the minds of the languid ladies thatescorted me from counter to counter, from rock ledge to seaweed, and thebelts and the bracelets I chose seemed to fall from siren hands intotransparent water. I bought an elegant valise, had my purchases put into it,and repaired to the nearest hotel, well pleased with my day. Somehow, in connection with that quiet poetical afternoon of fastidiousshopping, I recalled the hotel or inn with the seductive name of TheEnchanted Hunters with Charlotte had happened to mention shortly before myliberation. With the help of a guidebook I located it in the secluded townof Briceland, a four-hour drive from Lo's camp. I could have telephoned butfearing my voice might go out of control and lapse into coy croaks of brokenEnglish, I decided to send a wire ordering a room with twin beds for thenext night. What a comic, clumsy, wavering Prince Charming I was! How someof my readers will laugh at me when I tell them the trouble I had with thewording of my telegram! What should I put: Humbert and daughter? Humberg andsmall daughter? Homberg and immature girl? Homburg and child? The drollmistake--the "g" at the end--which eventually came through may have been atelepathic echo of these hesitations of mine. And then, in the velvet of a summer night, my broodings over the philerI had with me! Oh miserly Hamburg! Was he not a very Enchanted Hunter as hedeliberated with himself over his boxful of magic ammunition? To rout themonster of insomnia should he try himself one of those amethyst capsules?There were forty of them, all told--forty nights with a frail little sleeperat my throbbing side; could I rob myself of one such night in order tosleep? Certainly not: much too precious was each tiny plum, each microscopicplanetarium with its live stardust. Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! Iam so tired of being cynical.26This daily headache in the opaque air of this tombal jail isdisturbing, but I must persevere. Have written more than a hundred pages andnot got anywhere yet. My calendar is getting confused. That must have beenaround August 15, 1947. Don't think I can go on. Heart, head--everything.Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita,Lolita. Repeat till the page is full, printer.
