8I did my best, your Honor, to tackele the problem of boys. Oh, I usedeven to read in the Beardsley Star a so-called Column for Teens, to find outhow to behave! A word to fathers. Don't frighten away daughter's friend. Maybe itis a bit hard for you to realize that now the boys are finding herattractive. To you she is still a little girl. To the boys she's charmingand fun, lovely and gay. They like her. Today you clinch big deals in anexecutive's office, but yesterday you were just highschool Jim carryingJane's school books. Remember? Don't you want your daughter, now that herturn has come, to be happy in the admiration and company of boys she likes?Don't you want your daughter, now that her turn has come, to be happy in theadmiration and company of boys she likes? Don't you want them to havewholesome fun together? Wholesome fun? Good Lord! Why not treat the young fellows as guests in your house? Why notmake conversation with them? Draw them out, make them laugh and feel atease? Welcome, fellow, to this bordello. If she breaks the rules don't explode out loud in front of herpartner in crime. Let her take the brunt of your displeasure in private. Andstop making the boys feel she's the daughter of an old ogre. First of all the old ogre drew up a list under "absolutely forbidden"and another under "reluctantly allowed." Absolutely forbidden were dates,single or double or triple--the next step being of course mass orgy. Shemight visit a candy bar with her girl friends, and there giggle-chat withoccasional young males, while I waited in the car at a discreet distance;and I promised her that if her group were invited by a socially acceptablegroup in Butler's Academy for Bo[ys for their annual ball (heavilychaperoned, of course), I might consider the question whether a girl offourteen can don her first "formal" (a kind of gown that makes thin-armedteen-agers look like flamingoes). Moreover, I promised her to throw a partya t our house to which she would be allowed to invite her prettier girlfriends and the nicer boys she would have met by that time at the Butlerdance. But I was quite positive that as long as my regime lasted she wouldnever, never be permitted to go with a youngster in rut to a movie, or neckin a car, or go to boy-girl parties at the houses of schoolmates, or indulgeout of my earshot in boy-girl telephone conversations, even if "onlydiscussing his relations with a friend of mine." Lo was enraged by all this--called me a lousy crook and worse--and Iwould probably have lost my temper had I not soon discovered, to my sweetestrelief, that what really angered her was my depriving her not of a specificsatisfaction but of a general right. I was impinging, you see, on theconventional program, the stock pastimes, the "things that are done," theroutine of youth; for there is nothing more conservative than a child,especially a girl-child, be she the most auburn and russet, the mostmythopoeic nymphet in October's orchard-haze. Do not misunderstand me. I cannot be absolutely certain that in thecourse of the winter she did not manage to have, in a casual way, impropercontacts with unknown young fellows; of course, no matter how closely Icontrolled her leisure, there would constantly occur unaccounted-for timeleaks with over-elaborate explanations to stop them up in retrospect; ofcourse, my jealousy would constantly catch its jagged claw in the finefabrics of nymphet falsity; but I did definitely feel--and can now vouchsafefor the accuracy of my feeling--that there was no reason for serious alarm.I felt that way not because I never once discovered any palpable hard youngthroat to crush among the masculine mutes that flickered somewhere in thebackground; but because it was to me "overwhelmingly obvious" (a favoriteexpression with my aunt Sybil) that all varieties of high school boys--fromthe perspiring nincompoop whom "holding hands" thrills, to theself-sufficient rapist with pustules and a souped-up car--equally bored mysophisticated young mistress. "All this noise about boys gags me," she hadscrawled on the inside of a schoolbook, and underneath, in Mona's hand (Monais due any minute now), there was the sly quip: "What about Rigger?" (duetoo). Faceless, then, are the chappies I happened to see in her company.There was for instance Red Sweater who one day, the day we had the firstsnow--saw her home; from the parlor window I observed them talking near ourporch. She wre her first cloth coat with a fur collar; there was a smallbrown cap on my favorite hairdo--the fringe in front and the swirl at thesides and the natural curls at the back--and her damp-dark moccasins andwhite socks were more sloppy than ever. She pressed as usual her books toher chest while speaking or listening, and her feet gestured all the time:she would stand on her left instep with her right toe, remove it backward,cross her feet, rock slightly, sketch a few steps, and then start the seriesall over again. There was Windbreaker who talked to her in front of arestaurant one Sunday afternoon while his mother and sister attempted towalk me away for a chat; I dragged along and looked back at my only love.She had developed more than one conventional mannerism, such as the politeadolescent way of showing one is literally "doubled up" with laughter byinclining one's head, and so (as she sensed my call), still feigning helplessmerriment, she walked backward a couple of steps, and then faced about, andwalked toward me with a fading smile. On the other hand, I greatlyliked--perhaps because it reminded me of her first unforgettableconfession--her trick of sighing "oh dear!" in humorous wistful submissionto fate, or emitting a long "no-o" in a deep almost growling undertone whenthe blow of fate had actually fallen. Above all--since we are speaking ofmovement and youth--I liked to see her spinning up and down Thayer Street onher beautiful young bicycle: rising on the pedals to work on them lustily,then sinking back in a languid posture while the speed wore itself off; andthen she would stop at our mailbox and, still astride, would flip through amagazine she found there, and put it back, and press her tongue to one sideof her upper lip and push off with her foot, and again sprint through paleshade and sun. On the whole she seemed to me better adapted to her surroundings than Ihad hoped she would be when considering my spoiled slave-child and thebangles of demeanor she naоvely affected the winter before in california.Although I could never get used to the constant state of anxiety in whichthe guilty, the great, the tenderhearted live, I felt I was doing my best inthe way of mimicry. As I lay on my narrow studio bed after a session ofadoration and despair in Lolita's cold bedroom, I used to review theconcluded day by checking my own image as it prowled rather than passedbefore the mind's red eye. I watched dark-and-handsome, not un-Celtic,probably high-church, possibly very high-church, Dr. Humbert see hisdaughter off to school I watched him greet with his slow smile andpleasantly arched thick black ad-eyebrows good Mrs. Holigan, who smelled ofthe plague (and would head, I knew, for master's gin at the firstopportunity). With Mr. West, retired executioner or writer of religioustracts--who cared?--I saw neighbor what's his name, I think they are Frenchor Swiss, meditate in his frank-windowed study over a typewriter, rathergaunt-profiled, an almost Hitlerian cowlick on his pale brow. Weekends,wearing a well-tailored overcoat and brown gloves, Professor H. might beseen with his daughter strolling to Walton Inn (famous for itsviolet-ribboned china bunnies and chocolate boxes among which you sit andwait for a "table for two" still filthy with your predecessor's crumbs).Seen on weekdays, around one p.m. , saluting with dignity Argus-eyed Eastwhile maneuvering the car out of the garage and around the damnedevergreens, and down onto the slippery road. Raising a cold eye from book toclock in the positively sultry Beardsley College library, among bulky youngwomen caught and petrified in the overflow of human knowledge. Walkingacross the campus with the college clergyman, the Rev. Rigger (who alsotaught Bible in Beardsley School). "Somebody told me her mother was acelebrated actress killed in an airplane accident. Oh? My mistake, Ipresume. Is that so? I see. How sad." (Sublimating her mother, eh?) Slowlypushing my little pram through the labyrinth of the supermarket, in the wakeof Professor W., also a slow-moving and gentle widower with the eyes of agoat. Shoveling the snow in my shirt-sleeves, a voluminous black and whitemuffler around my neck. Following with no show of rapacious haste (eventaking time to wipe my feet on the mat) my school-girl daughter into thehouse. Taking Dolly to the dentist--pretty nurse beaming at her--oldmagazines--ne montrez pas vos zhambes. At dinner with Dolly in town,Mr. Edgar H. Humbert was seen eating his steak in the continentalknife-and-fork manner. Enjoying, in duplicate, a concert: two marble-faced,becalmed Frenchmen sitting side by side, with Monsieur H. H.'s musicallittle girl on her father's right, and the musical little boy of ProfessorW. (father spending a hygienic evening in Providence) on Monsieur G. G.'sleft. Opening the garage, a square of light that engulfs the car and isextinguished. Brightly pajamaed, jerking down the window shade in Dolly'sbedroom. Saturday morning, unseen, solemnly weighing the winter-bleachedlassie in the bathroom. Seen and heard Sunday morning, no churchgoer afterall, saying don't be too late, to Dolly who is bound for the covered court.Letting in a queerly observant schoolmate of Dolly's: "First time I've seena man wearing a smoking jacket, sir--except in movies, of course."9Her girlfriends, whom I looked forward to meet, proved on the wholedisappointing. There was Opal Something, and Linda Hall, and Avis Chapman,and Eva Rosen, and Mona Dahl (save one, all these names are approximations,of course). Opal was a bashful, formless, bespectacled, bepimpled creaturewho doted on Dolly who bullied her. With Linda Hall the school tennischampion, Dolly played singles at least twice a week: I suspect Linda was atrue nymphet, but for some unknown reason she did not come--was perhaps notallowed to come--to our house; so I recall her only as a flash of naturalsunshine on an indoor court. Of the rest, none had any claims to nymphetryexcept Eva Rosen. Avis ws a plump lateral child with hairy legs, while Mona,though handsome in a coarse sensual way and only a year older than my agingmistress, had obviously long ceased to be a nymphet, if she ever had beenone. Eva Rosen, a displaced little person from France, was on the other handa good example of a not strikingly beautiful child revealing to theperspicacious amateur some of the basic elements of nymphet charm, such as aperfect pubescent figure and lingering eyes and high cheekbones. Her glossycopper hair had Lolita's silkiness, and the features of her delicatemilky-white face with pink lips and silverfish eyelashes were less foxy thanthose of her likes--the great clan of intra-racial redheads; nor did shesport their green uniform but wore, as I remember her, a lot of black orcherry dark--a very smart black pullover, for instance, and high-heeledblack shoes, and garnet-red fingernail polish. I spoke French to her (muchto Lo's disgust). The child's tonalities were still admirably pure, but forschool words and play words she resorted to current American and then aslight Brooklyn accent would crop up in her speech, which was amusing in alittle Parisian who went to a select New England school with phoney Britishaspirations. Unfortunately, despite "that French kid's uncle" being "amillionaire," Lo dropped Eva for some reason before I had had time to enjoyin my modest way her fragrant presence in the Humbert open house. The readerknows what importance I attached to having a bevy of page girls, consolationprize nymphets, around my Lolita. For a while, I endeavored to interest mysenses in Mona Dahl who was a good deal around, especially during the springterm when Lo and she got so enthusiastic about dramatics. I have oftenwondered what secrets outrageously treacherous Dolores Haze had imparted toMona while blurting out to me by urgent and well-paid request various reallyincredible details concerning an affair that Mona had had with a marine atthe seaside. It was characteristic of Lo that she chose for her closest chumthat elegant, cold, lascivious, experienced young female whom I once heard(misheard, Lo swore) cheerfully say in the hallway to Lo--who had remarkedthat her (Lo's) sweater was of virgin wool: "The only thing about you thatis, kiddo . . ." She had a curiously husky voice, artificially waved dulldark hair, earrings, amber-brown prominent eyes and luscious lips. Lo saidteachers had remonstrated with her on her loading herself with so muchcostume jewelry. Her hands trembled. She was burdened with a 150 I.Q. And Ialso knew she had a tremendous chocolate-brown mole on he womanish backwhich I inspected the night Lo and she had worn low-cut pastel-colored,vaporous dresses for a dance at the Butler Academy. I am anticipating a little, but I cannot help running my memory allover the keyboard of that school year. In the meeting my attempts to findout what kind of boys Lo knew, Miss Dahl was elegantly evasive. Lo who hadgone to play tennis at Linda's country club had telephoned she might be afull half hour late, and so, would I entertain Mona who was coming topractice with her a scene from The Taming of the Shrew. Using all themodulations, all the allure of manner and voice she was capable of andstaring at me with perhaps--could I be mistaken?--a faint gleam ofcrystalline irony, beautiful Mona replied: "Well, sir, the fact is Dolly isnot much concerned with mere boys. Fact is, we are rivals. She and I have acrush on the Reverend Rigger." (This was a joke--I have already mentionedthat gloomy giant of a man, with the jaw of a horse: he was to bore me tonear murder with his impressions of Switzerland at a tea party for parentsthat I am unable to place correctly in terms of time.) How had the ball been? Oh, it had been a riot. A what? A panic.Terrific, in a word. Had Lo danced a lot? Oh, not a frightful lot, just asmuch as she could stand. What did she, languorous Mona, think of Lo? Sir?Did she think Lo was doing well at school? Gosh, she certainly was quite akid. But her general behavior was--? Oh, she was a swell kid. But still?"Oh, she's a doll," concluded Mona, and sighed abruptly, and picked up abook that happened to lie at hand, and with a change of expression, falselyfurrowing her brow, inquired: "Do tell me about Ball Zack, sir. Is he reallythat good?" She moved up so close to my chair that I made out throughlotions and creams her uninteresting skin scent. A sudden odd thoughtstabbed me: was my Lo playing the pimp? If so, she had found the wrongsubstitute. Avoiding Mona'' cool gaze, I talked literature for a minute.Then Dolly arrived--and slit her pale eyes at us. I left the two friends totheir own devices. One of the latticed squares in a small cobwebby casementwindow at the turn of the staircase was glazed with ruby, and that raw woundamong the unstained rectangles and its asymmetrical position--a night's movefrom the top--always strangely disturbed me.10Sometimes . . . Come on, how often exactly, Bert? Can you recall four,five, more such occasions? Or would no human heart have survived two orthree? Sometimes (I have nothing to say in reply to your question), whileLolita would be haphazardly preparing her homework, sucking a pencil,lolling sideways in an easy chair with both legs over its arm, I would shedall my pedagogic restraint, dismiss all our quarrels, forget all mymasculine pride--and literally crawl on my knees to your chair, my Lolita!You would give me one look--a gray furry question mark of a look: "Oh no,not again" (incredulity, exasperation); for you never deigned to believethat I could, without any specific designs, ever crave to bury my face inyour plaid skirt, my darling! The fragility of those bare arms of yours--howI longed to enfold them, all your four limpid lovely limbs, a folded colt,and take your head between my unworthy hands, and pull the temple-skin backon both sides, and kiss your chinesed eyes, and--"Pulease, leave me alone,will you," you would say, "for Christ's sake leave me alone." And I wouldget up from the floor while you looked on, your face deliberately twitchingin imitation of my tic nerveux. But never mind, never mind, I am onlya brute, never mind, let us go on with my miserable story.
