Lolita (16 page)

Let me retain for a moment that scene in all its trivial and fateful detail: hag Holmes writing out a receipt, scratching her head, pulling a drawer out of her desk, pouring change into my impatient palm, then neatly spreading a banknote over it with a bright “… and five!”; photographs of girl-children; some gaudy moth or butterfly, still alive, safely pinned to the wall (“nature study”); the framed diploma of the camp’s dietitian; my trembling hands; a card produced by efficient Holmes with a report of Dolly Haze’s behavior for July (“fair to good; keen on swimming and boating”); a sound of trees and birds, and my pounding heart … I was standing with my back to the open door, and then I felt the blood rush to my head as I heard her respiration and voice behind me. She arrived dragging and bumping her heavy suitcase. “Hi!” she said, and stood still, looking at me with sly, glad eyes, her soft lips parted in a slightly foolish but wonderfully endearing smile.

She was thinner and taller, and for a second it seemed to me her face was less pretty than the mental imprint I had cherished for more than a month: her cheeks looked hollowed and too much lentigo camouflaged her rosy rustic features; and that first impression (a very narrow human interval between two tiger heartbeats) carried the clear implication that all widower Humbert had to do, wanted to do, or would do, was to give this wan-looking though sun-colored little orphan
aux yeux battus
(and even those plumbaceous umbrae under her eyes bore freckles) a sound education, a healthy and happy girlhood, a clean home, nice girl-friends of her age among whom (if the fates deigned to repay me) I might find, perhaps, a pretty little
M
ä
gdlein
for Herr Doktor Humbert alone. But “in a wink,” as the Germans say, the angelic line of conduct was erased, and I overtook my prèy (time moves ahead of our fancies!), and she was my Lolita again—in fact, more of my Lolita than ever. I let my hand rest on her warm auburn head and took up her bag. She was all rose and honey, dressed in her brightest gingham, with a pattern of little red apples, and her arms and legs were of a deep golden brown, with scratches like tiny dotted lines of coagulated rubies, and the ribbed cuffs of her white socks were turned down at the remembered level, and because of her childish gait, or because I had memorized her as always wearing heelless shoes, her saddle oxfords looked somehow too large and too high-heeled for her. Good-bye, Camp Q, merry Camp Q. Good-bye, plain unwholesome food, good-bye Charlie boy. In the hot car she settled down beside me, slapped a prompt fly on her lovely knee; then, her mouth working violently on a piece of chewing gum, she rapidly cranked down the window on her side and settled back again. We sped through the striped and speckled forest.

“How’s Mother?” she asked dutifully.

I said the doctors did not quite know yet what the trouble was. Anyway, something abdominal. Abominable? No, abdominal. We would have to hang around for a while. The hospital was in the country, near the gay town of Lepingville, where a great poet had resided in the early nineteenth century and where we would take in all the shows. She thought it a peachy idea and wondered if we could make Lepingville before nine
P.M.

“We should be at Briceland by dinner time,” I said, “and tomorrow we’ll visit Lepingville. How was the hike? Did you have a marvelous time at the camp?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sorry to leave?”

“Un-un.”

“Talk, Lo—don’t grunt. Tell me something.”

“What thing, Dad?” (she let the word expand with ironic deliberation).

“Any old thing.”

“Okay, if I call you that?” (eyes slit at the road).

“Quite.”

“It’s a sketch, you know. When did you fall for my mummy?”

“Some day, Lo, you will understand many emotions and situations, such as for example the harmony, the beauty of spiritual relationship.”

“Bah!” said the cynical nymphet.

Shallow lull in the dialogue, filled with some landscape.

“Look, Lo, at all those cows on that hillside.”

“I think I’ll vomit if I look at a cow again.”

“You know, I missed you terribly, Lo.”

“
I
did not. Fact I’ve been revoltingly unfaithful to you, but it does not matter one bit, because you’ve stopped caring for me, anyway. You drive much faster than my mummy, mister.”

I slowed down from a blind seventy to a purblind fifty.

“Why do you think I have ceased caring for you, Lo?”

“Well, you haven’t kissed me yet, have you?”

Inly dying, inly moaning, I glimpsed a reasonably wide shoulder of road ahead, and bumped and wobbled into the weeds. Remember she is only a child, remember she is only—

Hardly had the car come to a standstill than Lolita positively flowed into my arms. Not daring, not daring let myself go—not even daring let myself realize that
this
(sweet wetness and trembling fire) was the beginning of the ineffable life which, ably assisted by fate, I had finally willed into being—not daring really kiss her, I touched her hot, opening lips with the utmost piety, tiny sips, nothing salacious; but she, with an impatient wriggle, pressed her mouth to mine so hard that I felt her big front teeth and shared in the peppermint taste of her saliva. I knew, of course, it was but an innocent game on her part, a bit of backfisch foolery in imitation of some simulacrum of fake romance, and since (as the psychotherapist, as well as the rapist, will tell you) the limits and rules of such girlish games are fluid, or at least too childishly subtle for the senior partner to grasp—I was dreadfully afraid I might go too far and cause her to start back in revulsion and terror. And, as above all I was agonizingly anxious to smuggle her into the hermetic seclusion of The Enchanted Hunters, and we had still eighty miles to go, blessed intuition broke our embrace—a split second before a highway patrol car drew up alongside.

Florid and beetle-browed, its driver stared at me:

“Happen to see a blue sedan, same make as yours, pass you before the junction?”

“Why, no.”

“We didn’t,” said Lo, eagerly leaning across me, her innocent hand on my legs, “but are you sure it was blue, because—”

The cop (what shadow of us was he after?) gave the little colleen his best smile and went into a U-turn.

We drove on.

“The fruithead!” remarked Lo. “He should have nabbed
you.
”

“Why me for heaven’s sake?”

“Well, the speed in this bum state is fifty, and—No, don’t slow down, you, dull bulb. He’s gone now.”

“We have still quite a stretch,” I said, “and I want to get there before dark. So be a good girl.”

“Bad, bad girl,” said Lo comfortably. “Juvenile delickwent, but frank and fetching. That light was red. I’ve never seen such driving.”

We rolled silently through a silent townlet.

“Say, wouldn’t Mother be absolutely mad if she found out we were lovers?”

“Good Lord, Lo, let us not talk that way.”

“But we
are
lovers, aren’t we?”

“Not that I know of. I think we are going to have some more rain. Don’t you want to tell me of those little pranks of yours in camp?”

“You talk like a book,
Dad.”

“What have you been up to? I insist you tell me.”

“Are you easily shocked?”

“No. Go on.”

“Let us turn into a secluded lane and I’ll tell you.”

“Lo, I must seriously ask you not to play the fool. Well?”

“Well—I joined in all the activities that were offered.”

“Ensuite?”

“Ansooit, I was taught to live happily and richly with others and to develop a wholesome personality. Be a cake, in fact.”

“Yes. I saw something of the sort in the booklet.”

“We loved the sings around the fire in the big stone fireplace or under the darned stars, where every girl merged her own spirit of happiness with the voice of the group.”

“Your memory is excellent, Lo, but I must trouble you to leave out the swear words. Anything else?”

“The Girl Scout’s motto,” said Lo rhapsodically, “is also mine. I fill my life with worthwhile deeds such as—well, never mind what. My duty is—to be useful. I am a friend to male animals. I obey orders. I am cheerful. That was another police car. I am thrifty and I am absolutely filthy in thought, word and deed.”

“Now I do hope that’s all, you witty child.”

“Yep. That’s all. No—wait a sec. We baked in a reflector oven. Isn’t that terrific?”

“Well, that’s better.”

“We washed zillions of dishes. ‘Zillions’ you know is schoolmarm’s slang for many-many-many-many. Oh yes, last but not least, as Mother says—Now let me see—what was it? I know: We made shadowgraphs. Gee, what fun.”

“C’est bien tout?”

“
C’est.
Except for one little thing, something I simply can’t tell you without blushing all over.”

“Will you tell it me later?”

“If we sit in the dark and you let me whisper, I will. Do you sleep in your old room or in a heap with Mother?”

“Old room. Your mother may have to undergo a very serious operation, Lo.”

“Stop at that candy bar, will you,” said Lo.

Sitting on a high stool, a band of sunlight crossing her bare brown forearm, Lolita was served an elaborate ice-cream concoction topped with synthetic syrup. It was erected and brought her by a pimply brute of a boy in a greasy bow-tie who eyed my fragile child in her thin cotton frock with carnal deliberation. My impatience to reach Briceland and The Enchanted Hunters was becoming more than I could endure. Fortunately she dispatched the stuff with her usual alacrity.

“How much cash do you have?” I asked.

“Not a cent,” she said sadly, lifting her eyebrows, showing me the empty inside of her money purse.

“This is a matter that will be mended in due time,” I rejoined archly. “Are you coming?”

“Say, I wonder if they have a washroom.”

“You are not going there,” I said firmly. “It is sure to be a vile place. Do come on.”

She was on the whole an obedient little girl and I kissed her in the neck when we got back into the car.

“Don’t
do that,” she said looking at me with unfeigned surprise. “Don’t drool on me. You dirty man.”

She rubbed the spot against her raised shoulder.

“Sorry,” I murmured. “I’m rather fond of you, that’s all.”

We drove under a gloomy sky, up a winding road, then down again.

“Well, I’m also sort of fond of you,” said Lolita in a delayed soft voice, with a sort of sigh, and sort of settled closer to me.

(Oh, my Lolita, we shall never get there!)

Dusk was beginning to saturate pretty little Briceland, its phony colonial architecture, curiosity shops and imported shade trees, when we drove through the weakly lighted streets in search of the Enchanted Hunters. The air, despite a steady drizzle beading it, was warm and green, and a queue of people, mainly children and old men, had already formed before the box office of a movie house, dripping with jewel-fires.

“Oh, I want to see that picture. Let’s go right after dinner. Oh, let’s!”

“We might,” chanted Humbert—knowing perfectly well, the sly tumescent devil, that by nine, when
his
show began, she would be dead in his arms.

“Easy!” cried Lo, lurching forward, as an accursed truck in front of us, its backside carbuncles pulsating, stopped at a crossing.

If we did not get to the hotel soon, immediately, miraculously, in the very next block, I felt I would lose all control over the Haze jalopy with its ineffectual wipers and whimsical brakes; but the passers-by I applied to for directions were either strangers themselves or asked with a frown “Enchanted what?” as if I were a madman; or else they went into such complicated explanations, with geometrical gestures, geographical generalities and strictly local clues (… then bear south after you hit the courthouse …) that I could not help losing my way in the maze of their well-meaning gibberish. Lo, whose lovely prismatic entrails had already digested the sweetmeat, was looking forward to a big meal and had begun to fidget. As to me, although I had long become used to a kind of secondary fate (McFate’s inept secretary, so to speak) pettily interfering with the boss’s generous magnificent plan—to grind and grope through the avenues of Briceland was perhaps the most exasperating ordeal I had yet faced. In later months I could laugh at my inexperience when recalling the obstinate boyish way in which I had concentrated upon that particular inn with its fancy name; for all along our route countless motor courts proclaimed their vacancy in neon lights, ready to accommodate salesmen, escaped convicts, impotents, family groups, as well as the most corrupt and vigorous couples. Ah, gentle drivers gliding through summer’s black nights, what frolics, what twists of lust, you might see from your impeccable highways if Kumfy Kabins were suddenly drained of their pigments and became as transparent as boxes of glass!

The miracle I hankered for did happen after all. A man and a girl, more or less conjoined in a dark car under dripping trees, told us we were in the heart of The Park, but had only to turn left at the next traffic light and there we would be. We did not see any next traffic light—in fact, The Park was as black as the sins it concealed—but soon after falling under the smooth spell of a nicely graded curve, the travelers became aware of a diamond glow through the mist, then a gleam of lakewater appeared—and there it was, marvelously and inexorably, under spectral trees, at the top of a graveled drive—the pale palace of The Enchanted Hunters.

A row of parked cars, like pigs at a trough, seemed at first sight to forbid access; but then, by magic, a formidable convertible, resplendent, rubious in the lighted rain, came into motion—was energetically backed out by a broad-shouldered driver—and we gratefully slipped into the gap it had left. I immediately regretted my haste for I noticed that my predecessor had now taken advantage of a garage-like shelter nearby where there was ample space for another car; but I was too impatient to follow his example.

“Wow! Looks swank,” remarked my vulgar darling squinting at the stucco as she crept out into the audible drizzle and with a childish hand tweaked loose the frock-fold that had stuck in the peach-cleft—to quote Robert Browning. Under the arclights enlarged replicas of chestnut leaves plunged and played on white pillars. I unlocked the trunk compartment. A hunchbacked and hoary Negro in a uniform of sorts took our bags and wheeled them slowly into the lobby. It was full of old ladies and clergymen. Lolita sank down on her haunches to caress a pale-faced, blue-freckled, black-eared cocker spaniel swooning on the floral carpet under her hand—as who would not, my heart—while I cleared my throat through the throng to the desk. There a bald porcine old man—everybody was old in that old hotel—examined my features with a polite smile, then leisurely produced my (garbled) telegram, wrestled with some dark doubts, turned his head to look at the clock, and finally said he was very sorry, he had held the room with the twin beds till half past six, and now it was gone. A religious convention, he said, had clashed with a flower show in Briceland, and—“The name,” I said coldly, “is not Humberg and not Humbug, but Herbert, I mean Humbert, and any room will do, just put in a cot for my little daughter. She is ten and very tired.”