Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov [97]
“Shrugged my shoulders. A shabby migr.
“Let us put our two heads together, Mr. Haze. What on earth is wrong with that child?”
“She seems quite normal and happy to me,” I said (disaster coming at last? Was I found out? Had they got some hypnotist?).
“What worries me,” said Miss Pratt looking at her watch and starting to go over the whole subject again, “is that both teachers and schoolmates find Dolly antagonistic, dissatisfied, cageyand everybody wonders why you are so firly opposed to all the natural recreations of a normal child.”
“Do you mean sex play?” I asked jauntily, in despair, a cornered old rat.
“Well, I certainly welcome this civilized terminology,” said Pratt with a grin. “But this is not quite the point. Under the auspices of Beardsley School, dramatics, dances and other natural activities are not technically sex play, though girls do meet boys, if that is what you object to.”
“All right,” I said, my hassock exhaling a weary sign. “You win. She can take part in that play. Provided male parts are taken by female parts.”
“I am always fascinated,” said Pratt, “by the admirable way foreignersor at least naturalized Americansuse our rich language. I’m sure Miss Gold, who conducts the play group, will be overjoyed. I notice she is one of the few teachers that seem to likeI mean who seem to find Dolly manageable. This takes care of general topics, I guess; now comes a special matter. We are in trouble again.”
Pratt paused truculently, then rubbed her index finger under her nostrils with such vigor that her nose performed a kind of war dance.
“I’m a frank person,” she said, “but conventions are conventions, and I find it difficult... Let me put it this way... The Walkers, who live in what we call around here the Duke’s Manor, you know the great gray house on the hillthey send their two girls to our school, and we have the niece of President Moore with us, a really gracious child, not to speak of a number of other prominent children. Well, under the circumstances, it is rather a jolt when Dolly, who looks like a little lady, uses words which you as a foreigner probably simply do not know or do not understand. Perhaps it might be betterWould you like me to have Dolly come up here right away to discuss things? No? You seeoh well, let’s have it out. Dolly has written a most obscene four-letter word which our Dr. Cutler tells me is low-Mexican for urinal with her lipstick on some health pamphlets which Miss Redcock, who is getting married in June, distributed among the girls, and we thought she should stay after hoursanother half hour at least. But if you like”
“No,” I said, “I don’t want to interfere with rules. I shall talk to her later. I shall thrash it out.”
“Do,” said the woman rising from her chair arm. “And perhaps we can get together again soon, and if things do not improve we might have Dr. Cutler analyze her.”
Should I marry Pratt and strangle her?
“...And perhaps your family doctor might like to examine her physicallyjust a routine check-up. She is in Mushroomthe last classroom along that passage.”
Beardsley School, it may be explained, copied a famous girls school in England by having “traditional” nicknames for its various classrooms: Mushroom, Room-In 8, B-Room, Room-BA and so on. Mushroom was smelly, with a sepia print of Reynolds’ “Age of Innocence” above the chalkboard, and several rows of clumsy-looking pupil desks. At one of these, my Lolita was reading the chapter on “Dialogue” in Baker’s Dramatic Technique, and all was very quiet, and there was another girl with a very naked, porcelain-white neck and wonderful platinum hair, who sat in front reading too, absolutely lost to the world and interminably winding a soft curl around one finger, and I sat beside Dolly just behind that neck and that hair, and unbuttoned my overcoat and for sixty-five cents plus the permission to participate in the school play, had Dolly put her inky, chalky, red-knuckled hand under the desk. Oh, stupid and reckless of me, no doubt, but after the torture I had been