30I have to tread carefully. I have to speak in a whisper. Oh you,veteran crime reporter, you grave old usher, you once popular policeman, nowin solitary confinement after gracing that school crossing for years, youwretched emeritus read to by a boy! It would never do, would it, to have youfellows fall madly in love with my Lolita! had I been a painter, had themanagement of The Enchanted Hunters lost its mind one summer day andcommissioned me to redecorate their dining room with murals of my ownmaking, this is what I might have thought up, let me list some fragments: There would have been a lake. There would have been an arbor inflame-flower. There would have been nature studies--a tiger pursuing a birdof paradise, a choking snake sheathing whole the flayed trunk of a shoat.There would have been a sultan, his face expressing great agony (belied, asit were, by his molding caress), helping a callypygean slave child to climba column of onyx. There would have been those luminous globules of gonadalglow that travel up the opalescent sides of juke boxes. There would havebeen all kinds of camp activities on the part of the intermediate group,Canoeing, Coranting, Combing Curls in the lakeside sun. There would havebeen poplars, apples, a suburban Sunday. There would have been a fire opaldissolving within a ripple-ringed pool, a last throb, a last dab of color,stinging red, smearing pink, a sigh, a wincing child.31I am trying to describe these things not to relive them in my presentboundless misery, but to sort out the portion of hell and the portion ofheaven in that strange, awful, maddening world--nymphet love. The beastlyand beautiful merged at one point, and it is that borderline I would like tofix, and I feel I fail to do so utterly. Why? The stipulation of the Roman law, according to which a girl may marryat twelve, was adopted by the Church, and is still preserved, rathertacitly, in some of the United States. And fifteen is lawful everywhere.There is nothing wrong, say both hemispheres, when a brute of forty, blessedby the local priest and bloated with drink, sheds his sweat-drenched fineryand thrusts himself up to the hilt into his youthful bride. "In suchstimulating temperate climates [says an old magazine in this prison library]as St. Louis, Chicago and Cincinnati, girls mature about the end of theirtwelfth year." Dolores Haze was born less than three hundred miles fromstimulating Cincinnati. I have but followed nature. I am nature's faithfulhound. Why then this horror that I cannot shake off? Did I deprive her ofher flower? Sensitive gentlewomen of the jury, I was not even her firstlover.32She told me the way she had been debauched. We ate flavorless mealybananas, bruised peaches and very palatable potato chips, and dieKleine told me everything. Her voluble but disjointed account wasaccompanied by many a droll moue. As I think I have already observed,I especially remember one wry face on an "ugh!" basis: jelly-mouth distendedsideways and eyes rolled up in a routine blend of comic disgust, resignationand tolerance for young frailty. Her astounding tale started with an introductory mention of hertent-mate of the previous summer, at another camp, a "very select" one asshe put it. That tent-mate ("quite a derelict character," "half-crazy," buta "swell kid") instructed her in various manipulations. At first, loyal Lorefused to tell me her name. "Was it Grace Angel?" I asked. She shook her head. No, it wasn't it was the daughter of a big shot.He-- "Was it perhaps Rose Carmine?" "No, of course not. Her father--" "Was it, then, Agnes Sheridan perchance?" She swallowed and shook her head--and then did a double take. "Say, how come you know all those kids?" I explained. "Well," she said. "They are pretty bad, some of that school bunch, butnot that bad. If you have to know, her name was Elizabeth Talbot, she goesnow to a swanky private school, her father is an executive." I recalled with a funny pang the frequency with which poor Charlotteused to introduce into party chat such elegant tidbits as "when my daughterwas out hiking last year with the Talbot girl." I wanted to know if either mother learned of those sapphic diversions? "Gosh no," exhaled limp Lo mimicking dread and relief, pressing afalsely fluttering hand to her chest. I was more interested, however, in heterosexual experience. She hadentered the sixth grade at eleven, soon after moving to Ramsdale from theMiddle West. What did she mean by "pretty bad"? Well, the Miranda twins had shared the same bed for years, and DonaldScott, who was the dumbest boy in the school, had done it with Hazel Smithin his uncle's garage, and Kenneth Knight--who was the brightest--used toexhibit himself wherever and whenever he had a chance, and-- "Let us switch to Camp Q," I said. And presently I got the whole story. Barbara Burke, a sturdy blond, two years older than Lo and by far thecamp's best swimmer, had a very special canoe which she shared with Lo"because I was the only other girl who could make Willow Island" (someswimming test, I imagine). Through July, every morning--mark, reader, everyblessed morning--Barbara and Lo would be helped to carry the boat to Onyx orEryx (two small lakes in the wood) by Charlie Holmes, the camp mistress'son, aged thirteen--and the only human male for a couple of miles around(excepting an old meek stone-deaf handyman, and a farmer in an old Ford whosometimes sold the campers eggs as farmers will); every morning, oh myreader, the three children would take a short cut through the beautifulinnocent forest brimming with all the emblems of youth, dew, birdsongs, andat one point, among the luxuriant undergrowth, Lo would be left as sentinel,while Barbara and the boy copulated behind a bush. At first, Lo had refused "to try what it was like," but curiosity andcamaraderie prevailed, and soon she and Barbara were doing it by turns withthe silent, coarse and surly but indefatigable Charlie, who had as much sexappeal as a raw carrot but sported a fascinating collection ofcontraceptives which he used to fish out of a third nearby lake, aconsiderably larger and more populous one, called Lake Climax, after thebooming young factory town of that name. Although conceding it was "sort offun" and "fine for the complexion," Lolita, I am glad to say, held Charlie'smind and manners in the greatest contempt. Nor had her temperament beenroused by that filthy fiend. In fact, I think he had rather stunned it,despite the "fun." By that time it was close to ten. With the ebb of lust, an ashen senseof awfulness, abetted by the realistic drabness of a gray neuralgic day,crept over me and hummed within my temples. Brown, naked, frail Lo, hernarrow white buttocks to me, her sulky face to a door mirror, stood, armsakimbo, feet (in new slippers with pussy-fur tops) wide apart, and through aforechanging lock tritely mugged at herself in the glass. From the corridorcame the cooing voices of colored maids at work, and presently there was amild attempt to open the door of our room. I had Lo go to the bathroom andtake a much-needed soap shower. The bed was a frightful mess with overtonesof potato chips. She tried on a two-piece navy wool, then a sleevelessblouse with a swirly clathrate skirt, but the first was too tight and thesecond too ample, and when I begged her to hurry up (the situation wasbeginning to frighten me), Lo viciously sent those nice presents of minehurtling into a corner, and put on yesterday's dress. When she was ready atlast, I gave her a lovely new purse of simulated calf (in which I hadslipped quite a few pennies and two mint-bright dimes) and told her to buyherself a magazine in the lobby. "I'll be down in a minute," I said. "And if I were you, my dear, Iwould not talk to strangers." Except for my poor little gifts, there was not much to pack; but I wasforced to devote a dangerous amount of time (was she up to somethingdownstairs?) to arranging the bed in such a way as to suggest the abandonednest of a restless father and his tomboy daughter, instead of anex-convict's saturnalia with a couple of fat old whores. Then I finisheddressing and had the hoary bellboy come up for the bags. Everything was fine. There, in the lobby, she sat, deep in anoverstuffed blood-red armchair, deep in a lurid movie magazine. A fellow ofmy age in tweeds (the genre of the place had changed overnight to a spuriouscountry-squire atmosphere) was staring at my Lolita over his dead cigar andstale newspaper. She wore her professional white socks and saddle oxfords,and that bright print frock with the square throat; a splash of jadedlamplight brought out the golden down on her warm brown limbs. There shesat, her legs carelessly highcrossed, and her pale eyes skimming along thelines with every now and then a blink. Bill's wife had worshipped him fromafar long before they ever met: in fact, she used to secretly admire thefamous young actor as he ate sundaes in Schwab's drugstore. Nothing couldhave been more childish than her snubbed nose, freckled face or the purplishspot on her naked neck where a fairytale vampire had feasted, or theunconscious movement of her tongue exploring a touch of rosy rash around herswollen lips; nothing could be more harmless than to read about Jill, anenergetic starlet who made her own clothes and was a student of seriousliterature; nothing could be more innocent than the part in that glossybrown hair with that silky sheen on the temple; nothing could be morenaive--But what sickening envy the lecherous fellow whoever he was--come tothink of it, he resembled a little my Swiss uncle Gustave, also a greatadmirer of le dиcouvert--would have experienced had he known thatevery nerve in me was still anointed and ringed with the feel of herbody--the body of some immortal demon disguised as a female child. Was pink pig Mr. Swoon absolutely sure my wife had not telephoned? Hewas. If she did, would he tell her we had gone on to Aunt Clare's place? Hewould, indeedie. I settled the bill and roused Lo from her chair. She readto the car. Still reading, she was driven to a so-called coffee shop a fewblocks south. Oh, she ate all right. She even laid aside her magazine toeat, but a queer dullness had replaced her usual cheerfulness. I knew littleLo could be very nasty, so I braced myself and grinned, and waited for asquall. I was unbathed, unshaven, and had had no bowel movement. My nerveswere a-jangle. I did not like the way my little mistress shrugged hershoulders and distended her nostrils when I attempted casual small talk. HadPhyllis been in the know before she joined her parents in Maine? I askedwith a smile. "Look," said Lo making a weeping grimace, "let us get off thesubject." I then tried--also unsuccessfully, no matter how I smacked mylips--to interest her in the road map. Our destination was, let me remind mypatient reader whose meek temper Lo ought to have copied, the gay town ofLepingville, somewhere near a hypothetical hospital. That destination was initself a perfectly arbitrary one (as, alas, so many were to be), and I shookin my shoes as I wondered how to keep the whole arrangement plausible, andwhat other plausible objectives to invent after we had taken in all themovies in Lepingville. More and more uncomfortable did Humbert Feel. It wassomething quite special, that feeling: an oppressive, hideous constraint asif I were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed. As she was in the act of getting back into the car, an expression ofpain flitted across Lo's face. It flitted again, more meaningfully, as shesettled down beside me. No doubt, she reproduced it that second time for mybenefit. Foolishly, I asked her what was the matter. "Nothing, you brute,"she replied. "You what?" I asked. She was silent. Leaving Briceland.Loquacious Lo was silent. Cold spiders of panic crawled down my back. Thiswas an orphan. This was a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom aheavy-limbed, foul-smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three timesthat very morning. Whether or not the realization of a lifelong dream hadsurpassed all expectation, it had, in a sense, overshot its mark--andplunged into a nightmare. I had been careless, stupid, and ignoble. And letme be quite frank: somewhere at the bottom of that dark turmoil I felt thewrithing of desire again, so monstrous was my appetite for that miserablenymphet. Mingled with the pangs of guilt was the agonizing through that hermood might prevent me from making love to her again as soon as I found anice country road where to park in peace. In other words, poor HumbertHumbert was dreadfully unhappy, and while steadily and inanely drivingtoward Lepingville, he kept racking his brains for some quip, under thebright wing of which he might dare turn to his seatmate. It was she,however, who broke the silence: "Oh, a squashed squirrel," she said. "What a shame." "Yes, isn't it?" (eager, hopeful Hum). "Let us stop at the next gas station," Lo continued. "I want to go tothe washroom." "We shall stop wherever you want," I said. And then as a lovely,lonely, supercilious grove (oaks, I thought; American trees at that stagewere beyond me) started to echo greenly the rush of our car, a red and fernyroad on our right turned its head before slanting into the woodland, and Isuggested we might perhaps-- "Drive on," my Lo cried shrilly. "Righto. Take it easy." (Down, poor beast, down.) I glanced at her. Thank God, the child was smiling. "You chump," she said, sweetly smiling at me. "You revolting creature.I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what you've done to me. I ought to callthe police and tell them you raped me. Oh, you dirty, dirty old man." Was she just joking? An ominous hysterical note rang through her sillywords. Presently, making a sizzling sound with her lips, she startedcomplaining of pains, said she could not sit, said I had torn somethinginside her. The sweat rolled down my neck, and we almost ran over somelittle animal or other that was crossing the road with tail erect, and againmy vile-tempered companion called me an ugly name. When we stopped at thefilling station, she scrambled out without a word and was a long time away.Slowly, lovingly, an elderly friend with a broken nose wiped mywindshield--they do it differently at every place, from chamois cloth tosoapy brush, this fellow used a pink sponge. She appeared at last. "Look," she said in that neutral voice that hurtme so, "give me some dimes and nickels. I want to call mother in thathospital. What's the number?" "Get in," I said. "You can't call that number." "Why?" "Get in and slam the door." She got in and slammed the door. The old garage man beamed at her. Iswung onto the highway. "Why can't I call my mother if I want to?" "Because," I answered, "your mother is dead."33In the gay town of Lepingville I bought her four books of comics, a boxof candy, a box of sanitary pads, two cokes, a manicure set, a travel clockwith a luminous dial, a ring with a real topaz, a tennis racket, rollerskates with white high shoes, field glasses, a portable radio set, chewinggum, a transparent raincoat, sunglasses, some more garments--swooners,shorts, all kinds of summer frocks. At the hotel we had separate rooms, butin the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine, and we made it upvery gently. You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.
