2Now, in perusing what follows, the reader should bear in mind not onlythe general circuit as adumbrated above, with its many sidetrips and touristtraps, secondary circles and skittish deviations, but also the fact that farfrom being an indolent partie de plaisir, our tour was a hard,twisted, teleological growth, whose sole raison d'йtre (these Frenchclichиs are symptomatic) was to keep my companion in passable humor fromkiss to kiss. Thumbing through that battered tour book, I dimly evoke that MagnoliaGarden in a southern state which cost me four bucks and which, according tothe ad in the book, you must visit for three reasons: because JohnGalsworthy (a stone-dead writer of sorts) acclaimed it as the world'sfairest garden; because in 1900 Baedeker's Guide had marked it with a star;and finally, because . . . O, Reader, My Reader, guess! . . . becausechildren (and by Jingo was not my Lolita a child!) will "walk starry-eyedand reverently through this foretaste of Heaven, drinking in beauty that caninfluence a life." "Not mine," said grim Lo, and settled down on a benchwith the fillings of two Sunday papers in her lovely lap. We passed and re-passed through the whole gamut of American roadsiderestaurants, from the lowly Eat with its deer head (dark trace of long tearat inner canthus), "humorous" picture post cards of the posterior "Kurort"type, impaled guest checks, life savers, sunglasses, adman visions ofcelestial sundaes, one half of a chocolate cake under glass, and severalhorribly experienced flies zigzagging over the sticky sugar-pour on theignoble counter; and all the way to the expensive place with the subduedlights, preposterously poor table linen, inept waiters (ex-convicts orcollege boys), the roan back of a screen actress, the sable eyebrows of hermale of the moment, and an orchestra of zoot-suiters with trumpets. We inspected the world's largest stalagmite in a cave where threesoutheastern states have a family reunion; admission by age; adults onedollar, pubescents sixty cents. A granite obelisk commemorating the Battleof Blue Licks, with old bones and Indian pottery in the museum nearby, Lo adime, very reasonable. The present log cabin boldly simulating the past logcabin where Lincoln was born. A boulder, with a plaque, in memory of theauthor of "Trees" (by now we are in Poplar Cove, N.C., reached by what mykind, tolerant, usually so restrained tour book angrily calls "a very narrowroad, poorly maintained," to which, though no Kilmerite, I subscribe). Froma hired motor-boat operated by an elderly, but still repulsively handsomeWhite Russian, a baron they said (Lo's palms were damp, the little fool),who had known in California good old Maximovich and Valeria, we coulddistinguish the inaccessible "millionaires' colony" on an island, somewhereoff the Georgia coast. We inspected further: a collection of European hotelpicture post cards in a museum devoted to hobbies at a Mississippi resort,where with a hot wave of pride I discovered a colored photo of my father'sMirana, its striped awnings, its flag flying above the retouched palm trees."So what?" said Lo, squinting at the bronzed owner of an expensive car whohad followed us into the Hobby House. Relics of the cotton era. A forest inArkansas and, on her brown shoulder, a raised purple-pink swelling (the workof some gnat) which I eased of its beautiful transparent poison between mylong thumbnails and then sucked till I was gorged on her spicy blood.Bourbon Street (in a town named New Orleans) whose sidewalks, said the tourbook, "may [I liked the "may"] feature entertainment by pickaninnies whowill {I liked the "will" even better] tap-dance for pennies" (what fun),while "its numerous small and intimate night clubs are thronged withvisitors" (naughty). Collections of frontier lore. Ante-bellum homes withiron-trellis balconies and hand-worked stairs, the kind down which movieladies with sun-kissed shoulders run in rich Technicolor, holding up thefronts of their flounced skirts with both little hands in that special way,and the devoted Negress shaking her head on the upper landing. The MenningerFoundation, a psychiatric clinic, just for the heck of it. A patch ofbeautifully eroded clay; and yucca blossoms, so pure, so waxy, but lousywith creeping white flies. Independence, Missouri, the starting point of theOld Oregon Trail; and Abiliene, Kansas, the home of the Wild Bill SomethingRodeo. Distant mountains. Near mountains. More mountains; bluish beautiesnever attainable, or ever turning into inhabited hill after hill;south-eastern ranges, altitudinal failures as alps go; heart andsky-piercing snow-veined gray colossi of stone, relentless peaks appearingfrom nowhere at a turn of the highway; timbered enormities, with a system ofneatly overlapping dark firs, interrupted in places by pale puffs of aspen;pink and lilac formations, Pharaonic, phallic, "too prehistoric for words"(blasи Lo); buttes of black lava; early spring mountains with young-elephantlanugo along their spines; end-of-the-summer mountains, all hunched up,their heavy Egyptian limbs folded under folds of tawny moth-eaten plush;oatmeal hills, flecked with green round oaks; a last rufous mountain with arich rug of lucerne at its foot. Moreover, we inspected: Little Iceberg Lake, somewhere in Colorado, andthe snow banks, and the cushionets of tiny alpine flowers, and more snow;down which Lo in red-peaked cap tried to slide, and squealed, and wassnowballed by some youngsters, and retaliated in kind comme on dit.Skeletons of burned aspens, patches of spired blue flowers. The variousitems of a scenic drive. Hundreds of scenic drives, thousands of BearCreeks, Soda Springs, Painted Canyons. Texas, a drought-struck plain.Crystal Chamber in the longest cave in the world, children under 12 free, Loa young captive. A collection of a local lady's homemade sculptures, closedon a miserable Monday morning, dust, wind, witherland. Conception Park, in atown on the Mexican border which I dared not cross. There and elsewhere,hundreds of gray hummingbirds in the dusk, probing the throats of dimflowers. Shakespeare, a ghost town in New Mexico, where bad man Russian Billwas colorfully hanged seventy years ago. Fish hatcheries. Cliff dwellings.The mummy of a child (Florentine Bea's Indian contemporary). Our twentiethHell's Canyon. Our fiftieth Gateway to something or other fide thattour book, the cover of which had been lost by that time. A tick in mygroin. Always the same three old men, in hats and suspenders, idling awaythe summer afternoon under the trees near the public fountain. A hazy blueview beyond railings on a mountain pass, and the backs of a family enjoyingit (with Lo, in a hot, happy, wild, intense, hopeful, hopelesswhisper--"Look, the McCrystals, please, let's talk to them, please"--let'stalk to them, reader!--"please! I'll do anything you want, oh, please. .."). Indian ceremonial dances, strictly commercial. ART: AmericanRefrigerator Transit Company. Obvious Arizona, pueblo dwellings, aboriginalpictographs, a dinosaur track in a desert canyon, printed there thirtymillion years ago, when I was a child. A lanky, six-foot, pale boy with anactive Adam's apple, ogling Lo and her orange-brown bare midriff, which Ikissed five minutes later, Jack. Winter in the desert, spring in thefoothills, almonds in bloom. Reno, a dreary town in Nevada, with a nightlifesaid to be "cosmopolitan and mature." A winery in California, with a churchbuilt in the shape of a wine barrel. Death Valley. Scotty's Castle. Works ofArt collected by one Rogers over a period of years. The ugly villas ofhandsome actresses. R. L. Stevenson's footprint on an extinct volcano.Mission Dolores: good title for book. Surf-carved sandstone festoons. A manhaving a lavish epileptic fit on the ground in Russian Gulch State Park.Blue, blue Crater Lake. A fish hatchery in Idaho and the State Penitentiary.Somber Yellowstone Park and its colored hot springs, baby geysers, rainbowsof bubbling mud--symbols of my passion. A herd of antelopes in a wildliferefuge. Our hundredth cavern, adults one dollar, Lolita fifty cents. Achateau built by a French marquess in N.D. The Corn Palace in S.D.; and thehuge heads of presidents carved in towering granite. The Bearded Woman readour jingle and now she is no longer single. A zoo in Indiana where a largetroop of monkeys lived on concrete replica of Christopher Columbus'flagship. Billions of dead, or halfdead, fish-smelling May flies in everywindow of every eating place all along a dreary sandy shore. Fat gulls onbig stones as seen from the ferry City of Cheboygan, whose brownwoolly smoke arched and dipped over the green shadow it cast on theaquamarine lake. A motel whose ventilator pipe passed under the city sewer.Lincoln's home, largely spurious, with parlor books and period furniturethat most visitors reverently accepted as personal belongings. We had rows, minor and major. The biggest ones we had took place: atLacework Cabins, Virginia; on Park Avenue, Little Rock, near a school; onMilner Pass, 10,759 feet high, in Colorado; at the corner of Seventh Streetand Central Avenue in Phoenix, Arizona; on Third Street, Los Angeles,because the tickets to some studio or other were sold out; at a motel calledPoplar Shade in Utah, where six pubescent trees were scarcely taller than myLolita, and where she asked, ю propos de rien, how long did I thinkwe were going to live in stuffy cabins, doing filthy things together andnever behaving like ordinary people? On N. Broadway, Burns, Oregon, cornerof W. Washington, facing Safeway, a grocery. In some little town in the SunValley of Idaho, before a brick hotel, pale and flushed bricks nicely mixed,with, opposite, a poplar playing its liquid shadows all over the local HonorRoll. In a sage brush wilderness, between Pinedale and Farson. Somewhere inNebraska, on Main Street, near the First National Bank, established 1889,with a view of a railway crossing in the vista of the street, and beyondthat the white organ pipes of a multiple silo. And on McEwen St., corner ofWheaton Ave., in a Michigan town bearing his first name. We came to know the curious roadside species, Hitchhiking Man, Homopollex of science, with all its many sub-species and forms; the modestsoldier, spic and span, quietly waiting, quietly conscious of khaki'sviatric appeal; the schoolboy wishing to go two blocks; the killer wishingto go two thousand miles; the mysterious, nervous, elderly gent, withbrand-new suitcase and clipped mustache; a trio of optimistic Mexicans; thecollege student displaying the grime of vacational outdoor work as proudlyas the name of the famous college arching across the front of hissweatshirt; the desperate lady whose battery has just died on her; theclean-cut, glossy-haired, shifty-eyed, white-faced young beasts in loudshirts and coats, vigorously, almost priapically thrusting out tense thumbsto tempt lone women or sadsack salesmen with fancy cravings. "Let's take him," Lo would often plead, rubbing her knees together in away she had, as some particularly disgusting pollex, some man of myage and shoulder breadth, with the face ю claques of unemployedactor, walked backwards, practically in the path of our car. Oh, I had to keep a very sharp eye on Lo, little limp Lo! Owing perhapsto constant amorous exercise, she radiated, despite her very childishappearance, some special languorous glow which threw garage fellows, hotelpages, vacationists, goons in luxurious cars, maroon morons near bluedpools, into fits of concupiscence which might have tickled my pride, had itnot incensed my jealousy. For little Lo was aware of that glow of hers, andI would often catch her coulant un regard in the direction of someamiable male, some grease monkey, with a sinewy golden-brown forearm andwatch-braceleted wrist, and hardly had I turned my back to go and buy thisvery Lo a lollipop, than I would hear her and the fair mechanic burst into aperfect love song of wisecracks. When, during our longer stops, I would relax after a particularlyviolent morning in bed, and out of the goodness of my lulled heart allowher--indulgent Hum!--to visit the rose garden or children's library acrossthe street with a motor court neighbor's plain little Mary and Mary'seight-year-old brother, Lo would come back an hour late, with barefoot Marytrailing far behind, and the little boy metamorphosed into two gangling,golden-haired high school uglies, all muscles and gonorrhea. The reader maywell imagine what I answered my pet when--rather uncertainly, I admit--shewould ask me if she could go with Carl and Al here to the roller-skatingrink. I remember the first time, a dusty windy afternoon, I did let her go toone such rink. Cruelly she said it would be no fun if I accompanied her,since that time of day was reserved for teenagers. We wrangled out acompromise: I remained in the car, among other (empty) cars with their nosesto the canvas-topped open-air rink, where some fifty young people, many inpairs, were endlessly rolling round and round to mechanical music, and thewind silvered the trees. Dolly wore blue jeans and white high shoes, as mostof the other girls did. I kept counting the revolutions of the rollingcrowd--and suddenly she was missing. When she rolled past again, she wastogether with three hoodlums whom I had heard analyze a moment before thegirl skaters from the outside--and jeer at a lovely leggy young thing whohad arrived clad in red shorts instead of those jeans and slacks. At inspection stations on highways entering Arizona or California, apoliceman's cousin would peer with such intensity at us that my poor heartwobbled. "Any honey?" he would inquire, and every time my sweet foolgiggled. I still have, vibrating all along my optic nerve, visions of Lo onhorseback, a link in the chain of a guided trip along a bridle trail: Lobobbing at a walking pace, with an old woman rider in front and a lecherousred-necked dude-rancher behind; and I behind him, hating his fatflowery-shirted back even more fervently than a motorist does a slow truckon a mountain road. Or else, at a ski lodge, I would see her floating awayfrom me, celestial and solitary, in an ethereal chairlift, up and up, to aglittering summit where laughing athletes stripped to the waist were waitingfor her, for her. In whatever town we stopped I would inquire, in my polite European way,anent the whereabouts of natatoriums, museums, local schools, the number ofchildren in the nearest school and so forth; and at school bus time, smilingand twitching a little (I discovered this tic nerveux because cruelLo was the first to mimic it), I would park at a strategic point, with myvagrant schoolgirl beside me in the car, to watch the children leaveschool--always a pretty sight. This sort of thing soon began to bore my soeasily bored Lolita, and, having a childish lack of sympathy for otherpeople's whims, she would insult me and my desire to have her caress mewhile blue-eyed little brunettes in blue shorts, copperheads in greenboleros, and blurred boyish blondes in faded slacks passed by in the sun. As a sort of compromise, I freely advocated whenever and whereverpossible the use of swimming pools with other girl-children. She adoredbrilliant water and was a remarkably smart diver. Comfortably robed, I wouldsettle down in the rich post-meridian shade after my own demure dip, andthere I would sit, with a dummy book or a bag of bonbons, or both, ornothing but my tingling glands, and watch her gambol, rubber-capped,bepearled, smoothly tanned, as glad as an ad, in her trim-fitted satin pantsand shirred bra. Pubescent sweetheart! How smugly would I marvel that shewas mine, mine, mine, and revise the recent matitudinal swoon to the moan ofthe mourning doves, and devise the late afternoon one, and slitting mysun-speared eyes, compare Lolita to whatever other nymphets parsimoniouschance collected around her for my anthological delectation and judgment;and today, putting my hand on my ailing heart, I really do not think thatany of them ever surpassed her in desirability, or if they did, it was sotwo or three times at the most, in a certain light, with certain perfumesblended in the air--once in the hopeless case of a pale Spanish child, thedaughter of a heavy-jawed nobleman, and another time--mais jedivague. Naturally, I had to be always wary, fully realizing, in my lucidjealousy, the danger of those dazzling romps. I had only to turn away for amoment--to walk, say, a few steps in order to see if our cabin was at lastready after the morning change of linen--and Lo and Behold, upon returning,I would find the former, les yeux perdus, dipping and kicking herlong-toed feet in the water on the stone edge of which she lolled, while, oneither side of her, there crouched a brun adolescent whom her russetbeauty and the quicksilver in the baby folds of her stomach were sure tocause to se tordre--oh Baudelaire!--in recurrent dreams for months tocome. I tried to teach her to play tennis so we might have more amusements incommon; but although I had been a good player in my prime, I proved to behopeless as a teacher; and so, in California, I got her to take a number ofvery expensive lessons with a famous coach, a husky, wrinkled old-timer,with a harem of ball boys; he looked an awful wreck off the court, but nowand then, when, in the course of a lesson, to keep up the exchange, he wouldput out as it were an exquisite spring blossom of a stroke and twang theball back to his pupil, that divine delicacy of absolute power made merecall that, thirty years before, I had seen him in Cannes demolishthe great Gobbert! Until she began taking those lessons, I thought she wouldnever learn the game. On this or that hotel court I would drill Lo, and tryto relive the days when in a hot gale, a daze of dust, and queer lassitude,I fed ball after ball to gay, innocent, elegant Annabel (gleam of bracelet,pleated white skirt, black velvet hair band). With every word of persistentadvice I would only augment Lo's sullen fury. To our games, oddly enough,she preferred--at least, before we reached California--formless pat ballapproximations--more ball hunting than actual play--with a wispy, weak,wonderfully pretty in an ange gauche way coeval. A helpful spectator,I would go up to that other child, and inhale her faint musky fragrance as Itouched her forearm and held her knobby wrist, and push this way or that hercool thigh to show her the back-hand stance. In the meantime, Lo, bendingforward, would let her sunny-brown curls hang forward as she stuck herracket, like a cripple's stick, into the ground and emitted a tremendous ughof disgust at my intrusion. I would leave them to their game and look on,comparing their bodies in motion, a silk scarf round my throat; this was insouth Arizona, I think--and the days had a lazy lining warmth, and awkwardLo would slash at the ball and miss it, and curse, and send a simulacrum ofa serve into the net, and show the wet glistening young down of her armpitas she brandished her racket in despair, and her even more insipid partnerwould dutifully rush out after every ball, and retrieve none; but both wereenjoying themselves beautifully, and in clear ringing tones kept the exactscore of their ineptitudes all the time. One day, I remember, I offered to bring them cold drinks from thehotel, and went up the gravel path, and came back with two tall glasses ofpineapple juice, soda and ice; and then a sudden void within my chest mademe stop as I saw that the tennis court was deserted. I stooped to set downthe glasses on a bench and for some reason, with a kind of icy vividness,saw Charlotte's face in death, and I glanced around, and noticed Lo in whiteshorts receding through the speckled shadow of a garden path in the companyof a tall man who carried two tennis rackets. I sprang after them, but as Iwas crashing through the shrubbery, I saw, in an alternate vision, as iflife's course constantly branched, Lo, in slacks, and her companion, inshorts, trudging up and down a small weedy area, and beating bushes withtheir rackets in listless search for their last lost ball. I itemize these sunny nothings mainly to prove to my judges that I dideverything in my power to give my Lolita a really good time. How charming itwas to see her, a child herself, showing another child some of her fewaccomplishments, such as for example a special way of jumping rope. With herright hand holding her left arm behind her untanned back, the lessernymphet, a diaphanous darling, would be all eyes, as the pavonine sun wasall eyes on the gravel under the flowering trees, while in the midst of thatoculate paradise, my freckled and raffish lass skipped, repeating themovements of so many others I had gloated over on the sun-shot, watered,damp-smelling sidewalks and ramparts of ancient Europe. Presently, she wouldhand the rope back to her little Spanish friend, and watch in her turn therepeated lesson, and brush away the hair from her brow, and fold her arms,and step on one toe with the other, or drop her hands loosely upon her stillunflared hips, and I would satisfy myself that the damned staff had at lastfinished cleaning up our cottage; whereupon, flashing a smile to the shy,dark-haired page girl of my princess and thrusting my fatherly fingers deepinto Lo's hair from behind, and then gently but firmly clasping them aroundthe nape of her neck, I would lead my reluctant pet to our small home for aquick connection before dinner. "Whose cat has scratched poor you?" A full-blown fleshy handsome womanof the repulsive type to which I was particularly attractive might ask me atthe "lodge," during a table d'hote dinner followed by dancing promised toLo. This was one of the reasons why I tried to keep as far away from peopleas possible, while Lo, on the other hand, would do her utmost to draw asmany potential witnesses into her orbit as she could. She would be, figuratively speaking wagging her tiny tail, her wholebehind in fact as little bitches do--while some grinning stranger accostedus and began a bright conversation with a comparative study of licenseplates. "Long way from home!" Inquisitive parents, in order to pump Lo aboutme, would suggest her going to a movie with their children. We had someclose shaves. The waterfall nuisance pursued me of course in all ourcaravansaries. But I never realized how wafery their wall substance wasuntil one evening, after I had loved too loudly, a neighbor's masculinecough filled the pause as clearly as mine would have done; and next morningas I was having breakfast at the milk bar (Lo was a late sleeper, and Iliked to bring her a pot of hot coffee in bed), my neighbor of the eve, anelderly fool wearing plain glasses on his long virtuous nose and aconvention badge on his lapel, somehow managed to rig up a conversation withme, in the course of which he inquired, if my missus was like his missus arather reluctant get-upper when not on the farm; and had not the hideousdanger I was skirting almost suffocated me, I might have enjoyed the oddlook of surprise on his thin-lipped weather-beaten face when I drylyanswered, as I slithered off my stool, that I was thank God a widower. How sweet it was to bring that coffee to her, and then deny it untilshe had done her morning duty. And I was such a thoughtful friend, such apassionate father, such a good pediatrician, attending to all the wants ofmy little auburn brunette's body! My only grudge against nature was that Icould not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her youngmatrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs,her comely twin kidneys. On especially tropical afternoons, in the stickycloseness of the siesta, I liked the cool feel of armchair leather againstmy massive nakedness as I held her in my lap. There she would be, a typicalkid picking her nose while engrossed in the lighter sections of a newspaper,as indifferent to my ecstasy as if it were something she had sat upon, ashoe, a doll, the handle of a tennis racket, and was too indolent to remove.Her eyes would follow the adventures of her favorite strip characters: therewas one well-drawn sloppy bobby-soxer, with high cheekbones and angulargestures, that I was not above enjoying myself; she studied the photographicresults of head-on collisions; she never doubted the reality of place, time,and circumstance alleged to match the publicity pictures of naked-thighedbeauties; and she was curiously fascinated by the photographs of localbrides, some in full wedding apparel, holding bouquets and wearing glasses. A fly would settle and walk in the vicinity of her navel or explore hertender pale areolas. She tried to catch it in her fist (Charlotte's method)and then would turn to the column Let's Explore Your Mind. "Let's explore your mind. Would sex crimes be reduced if childrenobeyed a few don'ts? Don't play around public toilets. Don't take candy orrides from strangers. If picked up, mark down the license of the car." ". . . and the brand of the candy," I volunteered. She went on, her cheek (recedent) against mine (pursuant); and this wasa good day, mark, O reader! "If you don't have a pencil, but are old enough to read--" "We," I quip-quoted, "medieval mariners, have placed in this bottle--" "If," she repeated, "you don't have a pencil, but are old enough toread and write--this is what the guy means, isn't it, you dope--=scratch thenumber somehow on the roadside." "With your little claws, Lolita." She had entered my world, umber and black Humberland, with rashcuriosity; she surveyed it with a shrug of amused distaste; and it seemed tome now that she was ready to turn away from it with something akin to plainrepulsion. Never did she vibrate under my touch, and a strident "what d'youthink you are doing?" was all I got for my pains. To the wonderland I had tooffer, my fool preferred the corniest movies, the most cloying fudge. Tothink that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would--invariably, withicy precision--plump for the former. There is nothing more atrociously cruelthan an adored child. Did I mention the name of that milk bar I visited amoment ago? It was, of all things, The Frigid Queen. Smiling a little sadly,I dubbed her My Frigid Princess. She did not see the wistful joke. Oh, do not scowl at me, reader, I do not intend to convey the impressinthat I did not manage to be happy. Readeer must understand that in thepossession and thralldom of a nymphet the enchanted traveler stands, as itwere, beyond happiness. For there is no other bliss on earthcomparable to that of fondling a nymphet. It is hors concours, thatbliss, it belongs to another class, another plane of sensitivity. Despiteour tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made,and the vulgarity, and the danger, and the horrible hopelessness of it all,I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were thecolor of hell-flames--but still a paradise. The able psychiatrist who studies my case--and whom by now Dr. Humberthas plunged, I trust, into a state of leporine fascination--is no doubtanxious to have me take Lolita to the seaside and have me find there, atlast, the "gratification" of a lifetime urge, and release from the"subconscious" obsession of an incomplete childhood romance with the initiallittle Miss Lee.
