Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov [116]
She was hitting hard and flat, with her usual effortless sweep, feeding me deep skimming ballsall so rhythmically coordinated and overt as to reduce my footwork to, practically, a swinging strollcrack players will understand what I mean. My rather heavily cut serve that I had been taught by my father who had learned it from Decugis or Borman, old friends of his and great champions, would have seriously troubled my Lo, had I really tried to trouble her. But who would upset such a lucid dear? Did I ever mention that her bare arm bore the 8 of vaccination? That I loved her hopelessly? That she was only fourteen?
An inquisitive butterfly passed, dipping, between us.
Two people in tennis shorts, a red-haired fellow only about eight years my junior, and an indolent dark girl with a moody mouth and hard eyes, about two years Lolita’s senior, appeared from nowhere. As is common with dutiful tyros, their rackets were sheathed and framed, and they carried them not as if they were the natural and comfortable extensions of certain specialized muscles, but hammers or blunderbusses or whimbles, or my own dreadful cumbersome sins. Rather unceremoniously seating themselves near my precious coat, on a bench adjacent to the court, they fell to admiring very vocally a rally of some fifty exchanges that Lo innocently helped me to foster and upholduntil there occurred a syncope in the series causing her to gasp as her overhead smash went out of court, whereupon she melted into winsome merriment, my golden pet.
I felt thirsty by then, and walked to the drinking fountain; there Red approached me and in all humility suggested a mixed double. “I am Bill Mead,” he said. “And that’s Fay Page, actress. Maffy On Say”he added (pointing with his ridiculously hooded racket at polished Fay who was already talking to Dolly). I was about to reply “Sorry, but” (for I hate to have my filly involved in the chops and jabs of cheap bunglers), when a remarkably melodious cry diverted my attention: a bellboy was tripping down the steps from the hotel to our court and making me signs. I was wanted, if you please, on an urgent long distance callso urgent in fact that the line was being held for me. Certainly. I got into my coat (inside pocket heavy with pistol) and told Lo I would be back in a minute. She was picking up a ballin the continental foot-racket way which was one of the few nice things I had taught her,and smiledshe smiled at me!
An awful calm kept my heart afloat as I followed the boy up to the hotel. This, to use an American term, in which discovery, retribution, torture, death, eternity appear in the shape of a singularly repulsive nutshell, was it. I had left her in mediocre hands, but it hardly mattered now. I would fight, of course. Oh, I would fight. Better destroy everything than surrender her. Yes, quite a climb.
At the desk, dignified, Roman-nosed man, with, I suggest, a very obscure past that might reward investigation, handed me a message in his own hand. The line had not been held after all. The note said:
“Mr. Humbert. The head of Birdsley (sic!) School called. Summer residenceBirdsley 2-8282. Please call back immediately. Highly important.”
I folded myself into a booth, took a little pill, and four about twenty minutes tussled with space-spooks. A quartet of propositions gradually became audible: soprano, there was no such number in Beardsley; alto, Miss Pratt was on her way to England; tenor, Beardsley School had not telephoned; bass, they could not have done so, since nobody knew I was, that particular day, in Champion, Colo. Upon my stinging him, the Roman took the trouble to find out