Knowing how fond his sisters were of Russian fare and Russian
	floor shows, Van took them Saturday night to "Ursus," the best
	Franco-Estonian restaurant in Manhattan Major. Both young
	ladies wore the very short and open evening gowns that Vass
410.05	"miraged" that season—in the phrase of that season: Ada, a
	gauzy black, Lucette, a lustrous cantharid green. Their mouths
	"echoed" in tone (but not tint) each other's lipstick; their eyes
	were made up in a "surprised bird-of-paradise" style that was
	as fashionable in Los as in Lute. Mixed metaphors and double-
410.10	talk became all three Veens, the children of Venus.
	The uha, the shashlik, the Ai were facile and familiar suc-
	cesses; but the old songs had a peculiar poignancy owing to the
	participation of a Lyaskan contralto and a Banff bass, renowned
	performers of Russian "romances," with a touch of heart-
410.15	wringing tsiganshchina vibrating through Grigoriev and Glinka.
	And there was Flora, a slender, hardly nubile, half-naked music-
	hall dancer of uncertain origin (Rumanian? Romany? Ram-
	seyan?) whose ravishing services Van had availed himself of
	several times in the fall of that year. As a "man of the world,"
410.20	Van glanced with bland (perhaps too bland) unconcern at her

[ 410 ]

	talented charms, but they certainly added a secret bonus to the
	state of erotic excitement tingling in him from the moment that
	his two beauties had been unfurred and placed in the colored
	blaze of the feast before him; and that thrill was somehow
411.05	augmented by his awareness (carefully profiled, diaphanely
	blinkered) of the furtive, jealous, intuitive suspicion with which
	Ada and Lucette watched, unsmilingly, his facial reactions to
	the demure look of professional recognition on the part of the
	passing and repassing blyadushka (cute whorelet), as our young
411.10	misses referred to (very expensive and altogether delightful)
	Flora with ill-feigned indifference. Presently, the long sobs of
	the violins began to affect and almost choke Van and Ada: a
	juvenile conditioning of romantic appeal, which at one moment
	forced tearful Ada to go and "powder her nose" while Van
411.15	stood up with a spasmodic sob, which he cursed but could not
	control. He went back to whatever he was eating, and cruelly
	stroked Lucette's apricot-bloomed forearm, and she said in
	Russian "I'm drunk, and all that, but I adore (obozhayu), I
	adore, I adore, I adore more than life you, you (tebya, tebya),
411.20	I ache for you unbearably (ya toskuyu po tebe nevïnosimo)
	and, please, don't let me swill (hlestat') champagne any more,
	not only because I will jump into Goodson River if I can't hope
	to have you, and not only because of the physical red thing—
	your heart was almost ripped out, my poor dushen'ka ('dar-
411.25	ling,' more than 'darling'), it looked to me at least eight inches
	long—"
	"Seven and a half," murmured modest Van, whose hearing the
	music impaired.
	"—but because you are Van, all Van, and nothing but Van,
411.30	skin and scar, the only truth of our only life, of my accursed
	life, Van, Van, Van."
	Here Van stood up again, as Ada, black fan in elegant motion,
	came back followed by a thousand eyes, while the opening bars
	of a romance (on Fet's glorious Siyala noch') started to run

[ 411 ]

	over the keys (and the bass coughed à la russe into his fist
	before starting).
	A radiant night, a moon-filled garden. Beams
	Lay at our feet. The drawing room, unlit;
412.05	Wide open, the grand piano; and our hearts
	Throbbed to your song, as throbbed the strings in it...
	Then Banoffsky launched into Glinka's great amphibrachs
	(Mihail Ivanovich had been a summer guest at Ardis when their
	uncle was still alive—a green bench existed where the composer
412.10	was said to have sat under the pseudoacacias especially often,
	mopping his ample brow):
	Subside, agitation of passion!
	Then other singers took over with sadder and sadder ballads
	—"The tender kisses are forgotten," and "The time was early
412.15	in the spring, the grass was barely sprouting," and "Many songs
	have I heard in the land of my birth: Some in sorrow were sung,
	some in gladness," and the spuriously populist
	There's a crag on the Ross, overgrown with wild moss
	On all sides, from the lowest to highest...
412.20	and a series of viatic plaints such as the more modestly
	anapestic:
	In a monotone tinkles the yoke-bell,
	And the roadway is dusting a bit...
	And that obscurely corrupted soldier dit of singular genius
412.25	Nadezhda, I shall then be back
	When the true batch outboys the riot...
	and Turgenev's only memorable lyrical poem beginning
	Morning so nebulous, morning gray-drowning,
	Reaped fields so sorrowful under snow coverings

[ 412 ]

	and naturally the celebrated pseudo-gipsy guitar piece by
	Apollon Grigoriev (another friend of Uncle Ivan's)
	O you, at least, do talk to me,
	My seven-stringed companion,
413.05	Such yearning ache invades my soul,
	Such moonlight fills the canyon!
	"I declare we are satiated with moonlight and strawberry
	soufflé—the latter, I fear, has not quite 'risen' to the occasion,"
	remarked Ada in her archest, Austen-maidenish manner. "Let's
413.10	all go to bed. You have seen our huge bed, pet? Look, our
	cavalier is yawning 'fit to declansh his masher' " (vulgar Ladore
	cant).
	"How (ascension of Mt Yawn) true," uttered Van, ceasing
	to palpate the velvet cheek of his Cupidon peach, which he had
413.15	bruised but not sampled.
	The captain, the vinocherpiy, the shashlikman, and a crew
	of waiters had been utterly entranced by the amount of
	zernistaya ikra and Ai consumed by the vaporous-looking Veens
	and were now keeping a multiple eye on the tray that had flown
413.20	back to Van with a load of gold change and bank notes.
	"Why," asked Lucette, kissing Ada's cheek as they both
	rose (making swimming gestures behind their backs in search
	of the furs locked up in the vault or somewhere), "why did the
	first song, Uzh gasli v komnatah ogni, and the 'redolent roses,'
413.25	upset you more than your favorite Fet and the other, about the
	bugler's sharp elbow?"
	"Van, too, was upset," replied Ada cryptically and grazed
	with freshly rouged lips tipsy Lucette's fanciest freckle.
	Detachedly, merely tactually, as if he had met those two
413.30	slow-moving, hip-swaying graces only that night, Van, while
	steering them through a doorway (to meet the sinchilla mantillas
	that were being rushed toward them by numerous, new, eager
	unfairly, inexplicably impecunious, humans), place one palm,

[ 413 ]

	the left, on Ada's long bare back and the other on Lucette's
	spine, quite as naked and long (had she meant the lad or the
	ladder? Lapse of the lisping lips?). Detachedly, he sifted and
	tasted this sensation, then that. His girl's ensellure was hot
414.05	ivory; Lucette's was downy and damp. He too had had just
	about his "last straw" of champagne, namely four out of half
	a dozen bottles minus a rizzom (as we said at old Chose) and
	now, as he followed their bluish furs, he inhaled like a fool his
	right hand before gloving it.
414.10	"I say, Veen," whinnied a voice near him (there were lots of
	lechers around), "you don't rally need two, d'you?"
	Van veered, ready to cuff the gross speaker—but it was only
	Flora, a frightful tease and admirable mimic. He tried to give
	her a banknote, but she fled, bracelets and breast stars flashing
414.15	a fond farewell.
	As soon as Edmund (not Edmond, who for security reasons
	—he knew Ada—had been sent back to Kingston) brought them
	home, Ada puffed out her cheeks, making big eyes, and headed
	for Van's bathroom. Hers had been turned over to the tottering
414.20	guest. Van, at a geographical point a shade nearer to the elder
	girl, stood and used in a sustained stream the amenities of a
	little vessie (Canady form of W.C.) next to his dressing room.
	He removed his dinner jacket and tie, undid the collar of his
	silk shirt and paused in virile hesitation: Ada, beyond their bed-
414.25	room and sitting room, was running her bath; to its gush a guitar
	rhythm, recently heard, kept adapting itself aquatically (the
	rare moments when he remembered her and her quite rational
	speech at her last sanatorium in Agavia).
	He licked his lips, cleared his throat and, deciding to kill
414.30	two finches with one fircone, walked to the other, southern,
	extremity of the flat through a boudery and manger hall (we
	always tend to talk Canady when haut). In the guest bedroom,
	Lucette stood with her back to him, in the process of slipping
	on her pale green nightdress over her head. Her narrow haunches

[ 414 ]

	were bare, and our wretched rake could not help being moved
	by the ideal symmetry of the exquisite twin dimples that only
	very perfect young bodies have above the buttocks in the sacral
	belt of beauty. Oh, they were even more perfect than Ada's!
415.05	Fortunately, she turned around, smoothing her tumbled red
	curls while her hem dropped to knee level.
	"My dear," said Van, "do help me. She told me about her
	Valentian estanciero but now the name escapes me and I hate
	bothering her."
415.10	"Only she never told you," said loyal Lucette, "so nothing
	could escape. Nope. I can't do that to your sweetheart and
	mine, because we know you could hit that keyhole with a pistol."
	"Please, little vixen! I'll reward you with a very special kiss."
	"Oh, Van," she said over a deep sigh. "You promise you
415.15	won't tell her I told you?"
	"I promise. No, no, no," he went on, assuming a Russian
	accent, as she, with the abandon of mindless love, was about
	to press her abdomen to his. "Nikak-s net: no lips, no philtrum,
	no nosetip, no swimming eye. Little vixen's axilla, just that—
415.20	unless"—(drawing back in mock uncertainty)—"you shave
	there."
	"I stink worse when I do," confided simple Lucette and
	obediently bared one shoulder.
	"Arm up! Point at Paradise! Terra! Venus!" commanded
415.25	Van, and for a few synchronized heartbeats, fitted his working
	mouth to the hot, humid, perilous hollow.
	She sat down with a bump on a chair, pressing one hand to
	her brow.
	"Turn off the footlights," said Van. "I want the name of
415.30	that fellow."
	"Vinelander," she answered.
	He heard Ada Vinelander's voice calling for her Glass bed
	slippers (which, as in Cordulenka's princessdom too, he found
	hard to distinguish from dance footwear), and a minute later,

[ 415 ]

	without the least interruption in the established tension, Van
	found himself, in a drunken dream, making violent love to Rose
	– no, to Ada, but in the rosacean fashion, on a kind of lowboy.
	She complained he hurt her "like a Tiger Turk." He went to
416.05	bed and was about to doze off for good when she left his side.
	Where was she going? Pet wanted to see the album.
	"I'll be back in a rubby," she said (tribadic schoolgirl slang),
	"so keep awake. From now on by the way, it's going to be
	Chère-amie-fait-morata"—(play on the generic and specific
416.10	names of the famous fly)—"until further notice."
	"But no sapphic vorschmacks," mumbled Van into his pillow.
	"Oh, Van," she said, turning to shake her head, one hand on
	the opal doorknob at the end of an endless room. "We've been
	through that so many times! You admit yourself that I am only
416.15	a pale wild girl with gipsy hair in a deathless ballad, in a
	nulliverse, in Rattner's 'menald world' where the only principle
	is random variation. You cannot demand," she continued—
	somewhere between the cheeks of his pillow (for Ada had
	long vanished with her blood-brown book)—"you cannot
416.20	deman pudicityd on the part of a delphinet! You know that I
	really love only males and, alas, only one man."
	There was always something colorfully impressionistic, but
	also infantile, about Ada's allusions to her affairs of the flesh,
	reminding one of baffle painting, or little glass labyrinths with
416.25	two peas, or the Ardis throwing-trap—you remember?—which
	tossed up clay pigeons and pine cones to be shot at, or cocka-
	maroo (Russian "biks"), played with a toy cue on the billiard
	cloth of an oblong board with holes and hoops, bells and pins
	among which the ping-pong-sized eburnean ball zigzagged with
416.30	bix-pix concussions.
	Tropes are the dreams of speech. Through the boxwood
	maze and bagatelle arches of Ardis, Van passed into sleep. When
	he reopened his eyes it was nine A.M. She lay curved away from
	him, with nothing beyond the opened parenthesis, its contents

[ 416 ]

	not yet ready to be enclosed, and the beloved, beautiful, treach-
	erous, blue-black-bronze hair smelt of Ardis, but also of Lu-
	cette's "Oh-de-grâce."
	Had she cabled him? Cancelled or Postponed? Mrs Viner—
417.05	no, Vingolfer, no, Vinelander—first Russki to taste the labruska
	grape.
	"Mne snitsa saPERnik SHCHASTLEEVOY!" (Mihail Ivan-
	ovich arcating the sand with his cane, humped on his bench
	under the creamy racemes).
417.10	"I dream of a fortunate rival!"
	In the meantime it's Dr. Hangover for me, and his strongest
	Kaffeina pill.
	Ada being at twenty a long morning sleeper, his usual prac-
	tice, ever since their new life together had started, was to
417.15	shower before she awoke and, while shaving, ring from the
	bathroom for their breakfast to be brought by Valerio, who
	would roll in the laid table out of the lift into the sitting room
	next to their bedroom. But on this particular Sunday, not know-
	ing what Lucette might like (he remembered her old craving
417.20	for cocoa) and being anxious to have an engagement with Ada
	before the day began, even if it meant intruding upon her warm
	sleep, Van sped up his ablutions, robustly dried himself, pow-
	dered his groin, and without bothering to put anything on re-
	entered the bedroom in full pride, only to find a tousled and
417.25	sulky Lucette, still in her willow green nightie, sitting on the
	far edge of the concubital bed, while fat-nippled Ada, already
	wearing, for ritual and fatidic reasons, his river of diamonds,
	was inhaling her first smoke of the day and trying to make her
	little sister decide whether she would like to try the Monaco's
417.30	pancakes with Potomac syrup, or, perhaps, their incomparable
	amber-and-ruby bacon. Upon seeing Van, who without a flinch
	in his imposing deportment proceeded to place a rightful knee
	on the near side of the tremendous bed (Mississippi Rose had
	once brought there, for progressive visual-education purposes,

[ 417 ]

	her two small toffee-brown sisters, and a doll almost their size
	but white), Lucette shrugged her shoulders and made as if to
	leave, but Ada's avid hand restrained her.
	"Pop in, pet (it all started with the little one letting wee
418.05	winds go free at table, circa 1882). And you, Garden God,
	ring up room service—three coffees, half a dozen soft-boiled
	eggs, lots of buttered toast, loads of—"
	"Oh no!" interrupted Van. "Two coffees, four eggs, et cetera.
	I refuse to let the staff know that I have two girls in my bed,
418.10	one (teste Flora) is enough for my little needs."
	"Little needs!" snorted Lucette. "Let me go, Ada. I need a
	bath, and he needs you."
	"Pet stays right here," cried audacious Ada, and with one
	graceful swoop plucked her sister's nightdress off. Involuntarily
418.15	Lucette bent her head and frail spine; then she lay back on the
	outer half of Ada's pillow in a martyr's pudibund swoon, her
	locks spreading their orange blaze against the black velvet of
	the padded headboard.
	"Uncross your arms, silly," ordered Ada and kicked off the
418.20	top sheet that partly covered six legs. Simultaneously, without
	turning her head, she slapped furtive Van away from her rear,
	and with her other hand made magic passes over the small but
	very pretty breasts, gemmed with sweat, and along the flat
	palpitating belly of a seasand nymph, down to the firebird seen
418.25	by Van once, fully fledged now, and as fascinating in its own
	way as his favorite's blue raven. Enchantress! Acrasia!
	What we have now is not so much a Casanovanic situation
	(that double-wencher had a definitely monochromatic pencil—
	in keeping with the memoirs of his dingy era) as a much earlier
418.30	canvas, of the Venetian (sensu largo) school, reproduced (in
	"Forbidden Masterpieces") expertly enough to stand the scru-
	tiny of a bordel's vue d'oiseau.
	Thus seen from above, as if reflected in the ciel mirror that

[ 418 ]

[ 419 ]

	Lucette's amber runs through the night of Ada's odor and
	ardor, and stops at the threshold of Van's lavender goat. Ten
	eager, evil, loving, long fingers belonging to two different young
	demons caress their helpless bed pet. Ada's loose black hair ac-
420.05	cidentally tickles the local curio she holds in her left fist, mag-
	nanimously demonstrating her acquisition. Unsigned and un-
	framed.
	That about summed it up (for the magical gewgaw liquefied
	all at once, and Lucette, snatching up her nightdress, escaped
420.10	to her room). It was only the sort of shop where the jeweler's
	fingertips have a tender way of enhancing the preciousness of
	a trinket by something akin to a rubbing of hindwings on the
	part of a settled lycaenid or to the frottage of a conjurer's thumb
	dissolving a coin; but just in such a shop the anonymous picture
420.15	attributed to Grillo or Obieto, caprice or purpose, ober- or
	unterart, is found by the ferreting artist.
	"She's terribly nervous, the poor kid," remarked Ada stretch-
	ing across Van toward the Wipex. "You can order that break-
	fast now—unless...Oh, what a good sight! Orchids. I've
420.20	never seen a man make such a speedy recovery."
	"Hundreds of whores and scores of cuties more experienced
	than the future Mrs Vinelander have told me that,"
	"I may not be as bright as I used to be," sadly said Ada, "but
	I know somebody who is not simply a cat, but a polecat, and
420.25	that's Cordula Tobacco alias Madame Perwitsky. I read in this
	morning's paper that in France ninety percent of cats die of
	cancer. I don't know what the situation is in Poland."
	After a while he adored [sic! Ed.] the pancakes. No Lucette,
	however, turned up, and when Ada, still wearing her diamonds
420.30	(in sign of at least one more caro Van and a Camel before her
	morning bath) looked into the guest room, she found the white
	valise and blue furs gone. A note scrawled in Arlen Eyelid
	Green was pinned to the pillow.

[ 420 ]

	Would go mad if remained one more night shall ski at
	Verma with other poor woolly worms for three weeks
	or so miserable
	Pour Elle
421.05	Van walked over to a monastic lectern that he had acquired
	for writing in the vertical position of vertebrate thought and
	wrote what follows:
	Poor L.
	We are sorry you left so soon. We are even sorrier to
421.10	have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid in a naughty
	prank. That sort of game will never be played again with
	you, darling firebird. We apollo [apologize]. Remem-
	brance, embers and membranes of beauty make artists
	and morons lose all self-control. Pilots of tremendous air-
421.15	ships and even coarse, smelly coachmen are known to
	have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a
	copper curl. We wished to admire and amuse you, BOP
	(bird of paradise). We went too far. I, Van, went too
	far. We regret that shameful, though basically innocent
421.20	scene. These are times of emotional stress and recondi-
	tioning. Destroy and forget.
	Tenderly yours A & V.
	(in alphabetic order).
	"I call this pompous, puritanical rot," said Ada upon scanning
421.25	Van's letter. "Why should we apollo for her having experienced
	a delicious spazmochka? I love her and would never allow you
	to harm her. It's curious—you know, something in the tone of
	your note makes me really jealous for the first time in my fire
	[thus in the manuscript, for 'life.' Ed.] Van, Van, somewhere,
421.30	some day, after a sunbath or dance, you will sleep with her,
	Van!"

[ 421 ]

	"Unless you run out of love potions. Do you allow me to
	send her these lines?"
	"I do, but want to add a few words."
	Her P.S. read:
422.05	The above declaration is Van's composition which I sign
	reluctantly. It is pompous and puritanical. I adore you,
	mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no
	matter how gently or madly. When you're sick of Queen,
	why not fly over to Holland or Italy?
422.10	A.
	"Now let's go out for a breath of crisp air," suggested Van.
	"I'll order Pardus and Peg to be saddled."
	"Last night two men recognized me," she said. "Two separate
	Californians, but they didn't dare bow—with that silk-tuxedoed
422.15	bretteur of mine glaring around. One was Anskar, the producer,
	and the other, with a cocotte, Paul Whinnier, one of your
	father's London pals. I sort of hoped we'd go back to bed."
	"We shall now go for a ride in the park," said Van firmly,
	and rang, first of all, for a Sunday messenger to take the letter
422.20	to Lucette's hotel – or to the Verma resort, if she had already
	left.
	"I suppose you know what you're doing?" observed Ada.
	"Yes," he answered.
	"You are breaking her heart," said Ada.
422.25	"Ada girl, adored girl," cried Van, "I'm a radiant void. I'm
	convalescing after a long and dreadful illness. You cried over
	my unseemly scar, but now life is going to be nothing but love
	and laughter, and corn in cans. I cannot brood over broken
	hearts, mine is too recently mended. You shall wear a blue veil,
422.30	and I the false mustache that makes me look like Pierre Legrand,
	my fencing master."
	"Au fond," said Ada, "first cousins have a perfect right to
	ride together. And even dance or skate, if they want. After

[ 422 ]

	all, first cousins are almost brother and sister. It's a blue, icy,
	breathless day."
	She was soon ready, and they kissed tenderly in their hall-
	way, between lift and stairs, before separating for a few
423.05	minutes.
	"Tower," she murmured in reply to his questioning glance,
	just as she used to do on those honeyed mornings in the past,
	when checking up on happiness: "And you?"
	"A regular ziggurat."

[ 423 ]