On Wednesday I managed to waylay Lo for a few seconds: she was on the landing, in sweatshirt and green-stained white shorts, rummaging in a trunk. I said something meant to be friendly and funny but she only emitted a snort without looking at me. Desperate, dying Humbert patted her clumsily on her coccyx, and she struck him, quite painfully, with one of the late Mr. Hazes shoetrees. Doublecrosser, she said as I crawled downstairs rubbing my arm with a great show of rue. She did not condescend to have dinner with Hum and mum: washed her hair and went to bed with her ridiculous books. And on Thursday quiet Mrs. Haze drove her to Camp Q.
On Wednesday I managed to waylay Lo for a few seconds: she was on the landing, in sweatshirt and green-stained white shorts, rummaging in a trunk. I said something meant to be friendly and funny but she only emitted a snort without looking at me. Desperate, dying Humbert patted her clumsily on her coccyx, and she struck him, quite painfully, with one of the late Mr. Hazes shoetrees. Doublecrosser, she said as I crawled downstairs rubbing my arm with a great show of rue. She did not condescend to have dinner with Hum and mum: washed her hair and went to bed with her ridiculous books. And on Thursday quiet Mrs. Haze drove her to Camp Q.
As greater authors than I have put it: Let readers imagine, etc. On second thought, I may as well give those imaginations a kick in the pants. I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita for ever; but I also knew she would not be for ever Lolita. She would be thirteen on January 1. In two years or so she would cease being a nymphet and would turn into a young girl, and then, into a college girl that horror of horrors. The words for ever referred only to my own passion, to the eternal Lolita as reflected in my blood. The Lolita whose iliac crests had not yet flared, the Lolita that today I could touch and smell and hear and see, the Lolita of the strident voice and the rich brown hair of the bangs and the swirls at the sides and the curls at the back, and the sticky hot neck, and the vulgar vocabulary revolting, super, luscious, goon, drip that Lolita, my Lolita, poor Catullus[84] would lose for ever. So how could I afford not to see her for two months of summer insomnias? Two whole months out of the two years of her remaining nymphage! Should I disguise myself as a sombre old-fashioned girl, gawky Mlle Humbert, and put up my tent on the outskirts of Camp Q. in the hope that its russet nymphets would clamour: Let us adopt that deep-voiced D.P.[85], and drag the sad, shyly smiling Berthe au Grand Pied[86] to their rustic hearth. Berthe will sleep with Dolores Haze!
Idle dry dreams. Two months of beauty, two months of tenderness, would be squandered for ever, and I could do nothing about it, but nothing, mais rien[87].
One drop of rare honey, however, that Thursday did hold in its acorn cup. Haze was to drive her to the camp in the early morning. Upon sundry sounds of departure reaching me, I rolled out of bed and leaned out of the window. Under the poplars, the car was already athrob. On the sidewalk, Louise stood shading her eyes with her hand, as if the little traveller were already riding into the low morning sun. The gesture proved to be premature. Hurry up! shouted Haze. My Lolita, who was half in and about to slam the car door, wind down the glass, wave to Louise and the poplars (whom and which she was never to see again), interrupted the motion of fate: she looked up and dashed back into the house (Haze furiously calling after her). A moment later I heard my sweetheart running up the stairs. My heart expanded with such force that it almost blotted me out. I hitched up the pants of my pyjamas, flung the door open: and simultaneously Lolita arrived, in her Sunday frock, stamping, panting, and then she was in my arms, her innocent mouth melting under the ferocious pressure of dark male jaws, my palpitating darling! The next instant I heard her alive, unraped clatter downstairs. The motion of fate was resumed. The blonde leg was pulled in, the car door was slammed was re-slammed and driver Haze at the violent wheel, rubber-red lips writhing in angry, inaudible speech, swung my darling away, while unnoticed by them or Louise, old Miss Opposite, an invalid, feebly but rhythmically waved from her vined veranda.
16
The hollow of my hand was still ivory-full of Lolita full of the feel of her pre-adolescently incurved back, that ivory-smooth, sliding sensation of her skin through the thin frock that I had worked up and down while I held her. I marched into her tumbled room, threw open the door of the closet and plunged into a heap of crumpled things that had touched her. There was particularly one pink texture, sleazy, torn, with a faintly acrid odour in the seam. I wrapped in it Humberts huge engorged heart. A poignant chaos was welling within me but I had to drop those things and hurriedly regain my composure, as I became aware of the maids velvety voice calling me softly from the stairs. She had a message for me, she said; and, topping my automatic thanks with a kindly youre welcome, good Louise left an unstamped, curiously clean-looking letter in my shaking hand.
This is a confession: I love you [so the letter began; and for a distorted moment I mistook its hysterical scrawl for a schoolgirls scribble]. Last Sunday in church bad you, who refused to come to see our beautiful new windows! only last Sunday, my dear one, when I asked the Lord what to do about it, I was told to act as I am acting now. You see, there is no alternative. I have loved you from the minute I saw you. I am a passionate and lonely woman and you are the love of my life.
Now, my dearest, dearest, mon cher, cher monsieur[88], you have read this; now you know. So, will you please, at once, pack and leave. This is a landladys order. I am dismissing a lodger. I am kicking you out. Go! Scram! Departez![89] I shall be back by dinnertime, if I do eighty both ways and dont have an accident (but what would it matter?), and I do not wish to find you in the house. Please, please, leave at once, now, do not even read this absurd note to the end. Go. Adieu.[90]
The situation, chéri[91], is quite simple. Of course, I know with absolute certainty that I am nothing to you, nothing at all. Oh yes, you enjoy talking to me (and kidding poor me), you have grown fond of our friendly house, of the books I like, of my lovely garden, even of Los noisy ways but I am nothing to you. Right? Right. Nothing to you whatever. But if, after reading my confession, you decided, in your dark romantic European way, that I am attractive enough for you to take advantage of my letter and make a pass at me[92], then you would be a criminal worse than a kidnapper who rapes a child. You see, chéri. If you decided to stay, if I found you at home (which I know I wont and thats why I am able to go on like this), the fact of your remaining would only mean one thing: that you want me as much as I do you: as a lifelong mate; and that you are ready to link up your life with mine for ever and ever and be a father to my little girl.
Let me rave and ramble on for a teeny while more, my dearest, since I know this letter has been by now torn by you, and its pieces (illegible) in the vortex of the toilet. My dearest, mon très, très cher[93], what a world of love I have built up for you during this miraculous June! I know how reserved you are, how British. Your old-world reticence, your sense of decorum may be shocked by the boldness of an American girl! You who conceal your strongest feelings must think me a shameless little idiot for throwing open my poor bruised heart like this. In years gone by, many disappointments came my way. Mr. Haze was a splendid person, a sterling soul, but he happened to be twenty years my senior, and well, let us not gossip about the past. My dearest, your curiosity must be well satisfied if you have ignored my request and read this letter to the bitter end. Never mind. Destroy it and go. Do not forget to leave the key on the desk in your room. And some scrap of address so that I could refund the twelve dollars I owe you till the end of the month. Goodbye, dear one. Pray for me if you ever pray.
What I present here is what I remember of the letter, and what I remember of the letter I remember verbatim (including that awful French). It was at least twice longer. I have left out a lyrical passage which I more or less skipped at the time, concerning Lolitas brother who died at two when she was four, and how much I would have liked him. Let me see what else can I say? Yes. There is just a chance that the vortex of the toilet (where the letter did go) is my own matter-of-fact contribution. She probably begged me to make a special fire to consume it. My first movement was one of repulsion and retreat. My second was like a friends calm hand falling upon my shoulder and bidding me take my time. I did. I came out of my daze and found myself still in Los room. A full-page ad ripped out of a slick magazine was affixed to the wall above the bed, between a crooners mug and the lashes of a movie actress. It represented a dark-haired young husband with a kind of drained look in his Irish eyes. He was modelling a robe by So-and-So and holding a bridge-like tray by So-and-So, with breakfast for two. The legend, by the Rev. Thomas Morell, called him a conquering hero. The thoroughly conquered lady (not shown) was presumably propping herself up to receive her half of the tray. How her bedfellow was to get under the bridge without some messy mishap was not clear. Lo had drawn a jocose arrow to the haggard lovers face and had put, in block letters: H. H. And indeed, despite a difference of a few years, the resemblance was striking. Under this was another picture, also a coloured ad. A distinguished playwright was solemnly smoking a Drome[94]. He always smoked Dromes. The resemblance was slight. Under this was Los chaste bed, littered with comics. The enamel had come off the bedstead, leaving black, more or less rounded, marks on the white. Having convinced myself that Louise had left, I got into Los bed and re-read the letter.
17
Gentlemen of the jury! I cannot swear that certain emotions pertaining to the business in hand if I may coin an expression had not drifted across my mind before. My mind had not retained them in any logical form or in any relation to definitely recollected occasions; but I cannot swear let me repeat that I had not toyed with them (to rig up yet another expression), in my dimness of thought, in my darkness of passion. There may have been times there must have been times, if I know my Humbert when I had brought up for detached inspection the idea of marrying a mature widow (say, Charlotte Haze) with not one relative left in the wide grey world, merely in order to have my way with her child (Lo, Lola, Lolita). I am even prepared to tell my tormenters that perhaps once or twice I had cast an appraisers cold eye at Charlottes coral lips and bronze hair and dangerously low neckline, and had vaguely tried to fit her into a plausible daydream. This I confess under torture. Imaginary torture, perhaps, but all the more horrible. I wish I might digress and tell you more of the pavor nocturnus[95] that would rack me at night hideously after a chance term had struck me in the random readings of my boyhood, such as peine forte et dure[96] (what a Genius of Pain must have invented that!) or the dreadful, mysterious, insidious words trauma, traumatic event, and transom. But my tale is sufficiently incondite already. After a while I destroyed the letter and went to my room, and ruminated, and rumpled my hair, and modelled my purple robe, and moaned through clenched teeth and suddenly Suddenly, gentlemen of the jury, I felt a Dostoevskian grin dawning (through the very grimace that twisted my lips) like a distant and terrible sun. I imagined (under conditions of new and perfect visibility) all the casual caresses her mothers husband would be able to lavish on his Lolita. I would hold her against me three times a day, every day. All my troubles would be expelled, I would be a healthy man. To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee and print on thy soft cheek a parents kiss Well-read Humbert!