Stalking Nabokov (67 page)

Blanche is central to the myths of Van and Ada’s love at Ardis that saturate the Ladore countryside and
Ada
itself. But she also qualifies the myths she propagates. Sexually active with multiple partners on the Ardis staff—the butler, Bouteillan; his bastard son, the footman Bout; the nightwatchman, Sore; and the coachman, Fartukov—she represents the idea of sexual multiplicity so dominant in the central panel of Bosch’s triptych and in the gardens of Ardis.

There are several ways in which Blanche’s multiple sexual experiences comment on Van and Ada’s. First, she sees
their
lovemaking on the way to her own trysts, and by gossiping about their ardor, she helps build the “sacred secret and creed” that exalts Ardis into a romantic and sexual paradise. Second, in 1888 she witnesses or learns from other servants and witnesses of Ada’s affairs with Philip Rack and Percy de Prey, and she passes the news on to Van, which in effect expels him forever from an Ardis that he suddenly sees as hellish. Third, her protestations of sexual innocence are ironically undercut by her experience, indeed by her venereal disease, just as Trofim Fartukov’s protestations that he would not touch her even through a leathern apron are undercut by his marrying her, and as Ardis’s myths of Venus are cruelly undercut by the consequences Blanche’s venereal disease has on their child, born blind as if in mocking replay of Venus’s blind child, Cupid. Fourth, Blanche’s combination of pretended sexual innocence and actual sexual damage, even as she offers herself to Van, contrasts so pointedly with Lucette, who is
actually
a virgin in the sense of never having made love to a man, but who has sustained sexual damage through her entanglement in the romps of Van and Ada, and who, after she offers herself one last desperate time to Van, and like Blanche is rebuffed, takes her own life.

As I have written elsewhere:

The Veens’ surname not only hints at Venus but also, less glamorously, means “peat” in Dutch; Blanche, curiously, is “Blanche de la Tourberie” (407) after her native village, Tourbière, the French for “peaty.” Since she romanticizes Van and Ada’s fervor, since her own love-making so often serves as a comic counterpoint to theirs, Blanche seems to have been positioned for some ironic comment on the myths of Ardis… . A negative Venus, lover of an inverse Eros, mother of a “hopelessly blind” Cupid, Blanche undermines completely the myths of love she has tried to disseminate.

(
NAPC
153, 155).

From her first appearance in the novel, Blanche acts as ironic variation on the sexual paradise of Ardis, and the “peat” theme that mocks the venery of the Veens also sounds at once. On his first morning at Ardis, Van wakes early and wants to wander out to the garden, and he finds, “standing at a tall window, a young chambermaid whom he had glimpsed (and promised himself to investigate) on the preceding evening” (48). With a “savage sense of opportune license,” he clasps the wrist of her raised arm. She disengages, and he asks her name:

Blanche—but Mlle Larivière called her “Cendrillon” because her stockings got so easily laddered, see, and because she broke and mislaid things, and confused flowers. His loose attire revealed his desire; this could not escape a girl’s notice, even if color-blind, and as he drew up still closer, while looking over her head for a suitable couch to take shape in some part of this magical manor—where any place, as in Casanova’s remembrances could be dream-changed into a sequestered seraglio nook—she wiggled out of his reach completely and delivered a little soliloquy in her soft Ladoran French:

“Monsieur a quinze ans, je crois, et moi, je sais, j’en ai dix-neuf. Monsieur
is a nobleman; I am a poor peat-digger’s daughter.
Monsieur a tâté, sans doute, des filles de la ville; quant à moi, je suis vierge, ou peu s’en faut. De plus
, were I to fall in love with you—I mean really in love— and I might, alas, if you possessed me
rien qu’une petite fois—
it would be, for me, only grief, and infernal fire, and despair, and even death, Monsieur.
Finalement
, I might add that I have the whites and must see
le Docteur Chronique
, I mean Crolique, on my next day off. Now we have to separate, the sparrow has disappeared, I see, and Monsieur Bouteillan has entered the next room, and can perceive us clearly in that mirror above the sofa behind that silk screen.”

Notice the “Casanova” that introduces another archetype of sexual license, and the irony of Blanche’s claiming to be almost a virgin in almost the same breath as she refers to an appointment with her gynecologist because she suspects the whites—which will turn out to be gonorrhea rather than leucorrhea. And notice that in her first direct speech Blanche identifies herself as “a poor peat-digger’s daughter.” Indeed, she will be named in full Blanche de la Tourberie: she has a surname that if translated into Dutch would become “van Veen.”

On Van’s last morning at Ardis the First, Bouteillan gives him advice:

“Monsieur should be prudent. The winds of the wilderness are indiscreet.
Tel un lis sauvage confiant au désert—”

“Quite the old comedy retainer, aren’t you?” remarked Van drily.

“Non, Monsieur,”
answered Bouteillan, holding on to his cap. “
Non. Tout simplement j’aime bien Monsieur et sa demoiselle
.”

“If,” said Van, “you’re thinking of little Blanche, then you’d better quote Delille not to me, but to your son, who’ll knock her up any day now.”

The old Frenchman glanced at Van askance,
pozheval gubami
(chewed his lips), but said nothing.

(157)

Bouteillan presumably issues his warning because he has heard about Van and Ada’s ardor and activities from Blanche. Van attempts to deflect Bouteillan’s comments about himself and Ada by questioning Blanche’s fidelity to Bouteillan, and he succeeds: the comment shuts Bouteillan up, and we can deduce, from the later evidence of Kim’s blackmail album, that Blanche’s relationship with Bout has indeed already begun. Van in this final chapter of Ardis the First is obsessed by the thought that Ada could be unfaithful to him in his absence, and although she has yet to be unfaithful, Blanche’s infidelity anticipates what will happen in Ada’s case by the time Van returns to Ardis.

On arriving at Ardis the Second, unexpectedly, Van witnesses Ada’s hand being held and kissed twice by Percy de Prey. Stung with jealousy, he tears apart the diamond necklace he has brought for Ada. But she allays his suspicions, and they make love throughout a “strenuous ‘Casanovanic’ night” (198) only to be interrupted while “still fiercely engaged” by Blanche “back from a rendezvous with old Sore the Burgundian night watchman” (191). Again, the fact that Blanche once more has a new partner serves as an omen of Ada’s own infidelities, whatever Ada may for the moment convince Van to believe.

During a Flavita (Russian Scrabble) game where Van takes notes “in the hope—not quite unfulfilled—of ‘catching sight of the lining of time’ (which, as he was later to write, is ‘the best informal definition of portents and prophecies’)” (227), Ada scores 383 points with a single word, TORFYaNUYu. Lucette objects:

“It’s a place name! One can’t use it! It’s the name of the first little station after Ladore Bridge!”

“That’s right, pet,” sang out Ada. “Oh, pet, you are so right! Yes, Torfyanaya, or as Blanche says,
La Tourbière
, is, indeed, the pretty but rather damp village where our
cendrillon’
s family lives. But,
mon petit
, in our mother’s tongue—
que dis-je
, in the tongue of a maternal grandmother we all share—a rich beautiful tongue which my pet should not neglect for the sake of a Canadian brand of French— this quite ordinary adjective means ‘peaty,’ feminine gender, accusative case.”

(228)

The portent will become clear later, when on what will be his last morning at Ardis Van discovers that it is Blanche who has slipped him a note warning him that he is being deceived by Ada. Visiting him as the night wanes, “in a wretched simulacrum of seduction,” Blanche tells Van she loves him, “he was her ‘folly and fever,’ she wished to spend a few secret moments with him” (292). This time he is too preoccupied with the warning note to be stirred, “quite aside from the fear of infection” (293). Questioned, Blanche tells him of Ada’s affair with Philip Rack. He stumbles out into the dawn, packs his bags, and confronts Ada, who, unaware that he has been referring to Rack, admits to her affair not with Rack but with Percy de Prey.

Van leaves Ardis, driven by the Russian coachman Trofim Fartukov, and drops off Blanche on the way (she has slipped him the note about Ada only because she, too, has decided to leave Ardis Hall). Offering him further vivid details about Ada’s relations with Percy, she

rambled on and on until they reached Tourbière…. Van let her out….

He kissed Cendrillon’s shy hand and resumed his seat in the carriage, clearing his throat and plucking at his trousers before crossing his legs. Vain Van Veen.

“The express does not stop at Torfyanka, does it, Trofim?”

“I’ll take you five versts across the bog,” said Trofim, “the nearest is Volosyanka.”

His vulgar Russian word for Maidenhair; a whistle stop; train probably crowded.

Maidenhair. Idiot! Percy boy might have been buried by now! Maidenhair. Thus named because of the huge spreading Chinese tree at the end of the platform. Once, vaguely, confused with the Venus’-hair fern… . Who wants Ardis Hall!

“Barin, a barin
,” said Trofim, turning his blond-bearded face to his passenger.

“Da?”

“Dazhe skvoz’ kozhanïy fartuk ne stal-bï ya trogat’ etu frantsuzskuyu devku
.”

Bárin:
master.
Dázhe skvoz’ kózhanïy fártuk:
even through a leathern apron.
Ne stal-bï ya trógat’:
I would not think of touching. É
tu:
this (that).
Frantsúzskuyu:
French (adj., accus.).
Dévku:
wench. Ú
zhas, otcháyanie:
horror, despair.
Zhálost’:
pity.
Kóncheno, zagázheno, rastérzano:
finished, fouled, torn to shreds.

(299–300)

Notice here the counterpointing of Blanche with Van’s departure from Ardis and Ada; the stress on Blanche as hailing from “Tourbière… Torfyanka… the bog”; the phrase “Vain Van Veen,” which also plays on the Dutch pronunciation of
veen
, close to English “vain”; the irony that at the very moment Van is filled with outrage at Ada’s multiple infidelities he can himself be stirred with desire for Blanche; the sounding of the virginity and Venus/venereal themes, by way of the place-name Volosyanka and thence “Maidenhair… . Once, vaguely, confused with the Venus’-hair fern”; and at the very moment Van rejects Ardis one last time (“Who wants Ardis Hall!”), Trofim’s declaration that he would not touch Blanche “even through a leathern apron.” In fact, Trofim will marry her, and they will have a damaged child, just as Van will return to Ada, and as a result another child, Lucette, will have her light put out (
NAPC
155).

Notice, too, that the unrecognized prophecy in the Scrabble game (“TORFYaNUYu… Yes, Torfyanaya, or as Blanche says,
La Tourbière
, is, indeed, the pretty but rather damp village where our
cendrillon’
s family lives. But,
mon petit
,… French—this quite ordinary adjective means ‘peaty,’ feminine gender, accusative case”)—a prophecy of the disclosure that will end Ardis the Second—returns in the reference now to Blanche’s “Tourbière… Cendrillon’s shy hand… Torfyanka…
Frantsúzskuyu:
French (adj., accus.)” (
NAPC
221). Blanche de la Tourberie’s multiple partners and her desire to have Van, too, as a partner lead her to pass him that note that alerts him to Ada Veen’s multiple partners and so turn Ardis the Second for Van from a paradise regained into a hell of infidelity and jealousy.

LUCETTE

If Blanche’s active sexual experience presents one ironic comment on the idylls of Ardis and the myths of love that she does so much to disseminate, Lucette’s innocence presents another: at first, apparently comic as Van and Ada try to evade her curious eyes, but ultimately tragic as she becomes embroiled in their amours. Blanche offers herself to Van, who is repulsed at the thought of her venereal disease. Lucette offers herself to Van, who knows how damaged she is, not from having
too many
lovers but from having had none. A witness to Van’s amours with Ada since she was eight, an eavesdropper, a spy, Lucette wants only him.

Nabokov signals the Lucette-Blanche parallel and contrast in many ways, through the Cinderella and the deflower motifs and especially, as I show in
Nabokov’s
Ada
: The Place of Consciousness
, through the ironic combination, in very different ways, of claims of virginity and signs of sexual damage (
NAPC
152–55).
¹⁴

Here I want to focus on another motif that links them and that suggests how central to Nabokov’s conception of
Ada
was the idea of complicating our response to the venereal Veens: the motif of
peat
,
bog
,
marsh
in the name of Blanche’s village and especially in the Dutch name of the Veens.

Marsh Marigold

Ada may collect “bog orchids,” but the center of the
bog-peat-marsh
theme in the Veen name is Lucette, identified with the “marsh marigold” that Wallace Fowlie carelessly omitted from his 1946 translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s “Mémoire.” Fowlie, not realizing at the time that the phrase
souci d’eau
meant “marsh marigold,” translated it word for word as “care of the water”—as Lucette, indeed, becomes the “care of the water” when she jumps to her death in the Atlantic (
Ada
63–65).
¹⁵