Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov [111]
“As expected, poor Poet stumbled in Scene III when arriving at the bit of French nonsense. Remember? Ne manque pas de dire à ton amant, Chimène, comme le lac est beau car il faut qu’il t’y mène. Lucky beau! Qu’il t’y—What a tongue-twister! Well, be good, Lollikins. Best love from your Poet, and best regards to the Governor. Your Mona. P.S. Because of one thing and another, my correspondence happens to be rigidly controlled. So better wait till I write you from Europe.” (She never did as far as I know. The letter contained an element of mysterious nastiness that I am too tired to-day to analyze. I found it later preserved in one of the Tour Books, and give it here à titre documentaire. I read it twice.)
I looked up from the letter and was about to—There was no Lo to behold. While I was engrossed in Mona’s witchery, Lo had shrugged her shoulders and vanished. “Did you happen to see—” I asked of a hunchback sweeping the floor near the entrance. He had, the old lecherer. He guessed she had seen a friend and had hurried out. I hurried out too. I stopped—she had not. I hurried on. I stopped again. It had happened at last. She had gone for ever.
In later years I have often wondered why she did not go for ever that day. Was it the retentive quality of her new summer clothes in my locked car? Was it some unripe particle in some general plan? Was it simply because, all things considered, I might as well be used to convey her to Elphinstone—the secret terminus, anyway? I only know I was quite certain she had left me for ever. The noncommittal mauve mountains half encircling the town seemed to me to swarm with panting, scrambling, laughing, panting Lolitas who dissolved in their haze. A big W made of white stones on a steep talus in the far vista of a cross street seemed the very initial of woe.
The new and beautiful post office I had just emerged from stood between a dormant movie house and a conspiracy of poplars. The time was 9 A.M. mountain time. The street was Main Street. I paced its blue side peering at the opposite one: charming it into beauty, was one of those fragile young summer mornings with flashes of glass here and there and a general air of faltering and almost fainting at the prospect of an intolerably torrid noon. Crossing over, I loafed and leafed, as it were, through one long block: Drugs, Real Estate, Fashions, Auto Parts, Cafe, Sporting Goods, Real Estate, Furniture, Appliances, Western Union, Cleaners, Grocery. Officer, officer, my daughter has run away. In collusion with a detective; in love with a blackmailer. Took advantage of my utter helplessness. I peered into all the stores. I deliberated inly if I should talk to any of the sparse foot-passengers. I did not. I sat for a while in the parked car. I inspected the public garden on the east side. I went back to Fashions and Auto Parts. I told myself with a burst of furious sarcasm—un ricanement—that I was crazy to suspect her, that she would turn up in a minute.
She did.
I wheeled around and shook off the hand she had placed on my sleeve with a timid and imbecile smile.
“Get into the car,” I said.
She obeyed, and I went on pacing up and down, struggling with nameless thoughts, trying to plan some way of tackling her duplicity.
Presently she left the car and was at my side again. My sense of hearing gradually got tuned in to station Lo again, and I became aware she was telling me that she had met a former girl friend.
“Yes? Whom?”
“A Beardsley girl.”
“Good. I know every name in your group. Alice Adams?”
“This girl was not in my group.”
“Good. I have a complete student list with me. Her name please.”
“She was not in my school. She is just a town girl in Beardsley.”
“Good. I have the Beardsley directory with me too. We’ll look up all the Browns.”
“I only know her first name.”
“Mary or Jane?”
“No—Dolly, like me.”
“So that’s the dead end” (the mirror you break your nose against). “Good. Let us try another angle. You have been absent twenty-eight minutes. What did the two Dollys do?”
“We went to