Half a mile or so east of number fourteen, Thayer Street tangles with a private lane and a cross street; the latter leads to the town proper; in front of the first drugstore, I sawwith what melody of relief!Lolita’s fair bicycle waiting for her. I pushed instead of pulling, pulled, pushed, pulled, and entered. Look out! some ten paces away Lolita, though the glass of a telephone booth (membranous god still with us), cupping the tube, confidentially hunched over it, slit her eyes at me, turned away with her treasure, hurriedly hung up, and walked out with a flourish.
“Tried to reach you at home,” she said brightly. “A great decision has been made. But first buy me a drink, dad.”
She watched the listless pale fountain girl put in the ice, pour in the coke, add the cherry syrupand my heart was bursting with love-ache. That childish wrist. My lovely child. You have a lovely child, Mr. Humbert. We always admire her as she passes by. Mr. Pim watched Pippa suck in the concoction.
J’ai toujours admir l’aeuvre du sublime dublinois. And in the meantime the rain had become a voluptuous shower.
“Look,” she said as she rode the bike beside me, one foot scraping the darkly glistening sidewalk, “look, I’ve decided something. I want to leave school I hate that school I hate the play, I really do! Never go back. Find another. Leave at once. Go for a long trip again. But this time we’ll go wherever I want, won’t we?”
I nodded. My Lolita.
“I choose? C’est entendu?” she asked wobbling a little beside me. Used French only when she was a very good little girl.
“Okay. Entendu. Now hop-hop-hop, Lenore, or you’ll get soaked.” (A storm of sobs was filling my chest.)
She bared her teeth and after her adorable school-girl fashioned, leaned forward, and away she sped, my bird.
Miss Lester’s finely groomed hand held a porch-door open for a waddling old dog qui prenait son temps.
Lo was waiting for me near the ghostly birch tree.
“I am drenched,” she declared at the top of her voice. “Are you glad? To hell with the play! See what I mean?”
An invisible hag’s claw slammed down an upper-floor window.
In our hallway, ablaze with welcoming lights, my Lolita peeled off her sweater, shook her gemmed hair, stretched towards me two bare arms, raised one knee:
“Carry me upstairs, please. I feel sort of romantic tonight.”
It may interest physiologists to learn, at this point, that I have the abilitya most singular case, I presumeof shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest.
15
The brakes were relined, the waterpipes unclogged, the valves ground, and a number of other repairs and improvements were paid for by not very mechanically-minded but prudent papa Humbert, so that the late Mrs. Humbert’s car was in respectable shape when ready to undertake a new journey.
We had promised Beardsley School, good old Beardsley School, that we would be back as soon as my Hollywood engagement came to an end (inventive Humbert was to be, I hinted, chief consultant in the production of a film dealing with “existentialism,” still a hot thing at the time). Actually I was toying with the idea of gently trickling across the Mexican borderI was braver now than last yearand there deciding what to do with my little concubine who was now sixty inches tall and weighed ninety pounds. We had dug out our tour books and maps. She had traced our route with immense zest. Was it thanks to those theatricals that she had now outgrown her juvenile jaded airs and was so adorably keen to explore rich reality? I experienced the queer lightness of dreams that pale but warm Sunday morning when we abandoned Professor Chem’s puzzled house and sped along Main Street toward the four-lane highway. My Love’s striped, black-and-white cotton frock, jauntry blue with the large beautifully cut aquamarine on a silver chainlet, which gemmed her throat: a spring rain gift from me. We passed the New Hotel, and she laughed. “A penny for your thoughts,” I said and she stretched out her palm at once, but at that moment I had to apply the breaks rather abruptly at a red light. As we pulled up, another car came to a gliding stop alongside, and a very striking looking, athletically lean young woman (where had I seen her?) with a high complexion and shoulder-length brilliant bronze hair, greeted Lo with a ringing “Hi!”and then, addressing me, effusively, edusively (placed!), stressing certain words, said: “What a shame to was to tear Dolly away from the playyou should have heard the author raving about her after that rehearsal” “Green light, you dope,” said Lo under her breath, and simultaneously, waving in bright adieu a bangled arm, Joan of Arc (in a performance we saw at the local theatre) violently outdistanced us to swerve into Campus Avenue.
“Who was it exactly? Vermont or Rumpelmeyer?”
“NoEdusa Goldthe gal who coaches us.”
“I was not referring to her. Who exactly concocted that play?”
“Oh! Yes, of course. Some old woman, Clare Something, I guess. There was quite a crowd of them there.”
“So she complimented you?”
“Complimented my eyeshe kissed me on my pure brow”and my darling emitted that new yelp of merriment whichperhaps in connection with her theatrical mannerismsshe had lately begun to affect.
“You are a funny creature, Lolita,” I saidor some such words. “Naturally, I am overjoyed you gave up that absurd stage business. But what is curious is that you dropped the whole thing only a week before its natural climax. Oh, Lolita, you should be careful of those surrenders of yours. I remember you gave up Ramsdale for camp, and camp for a joyride, and I could list other abrupt changes in your disposition. You must be careful. There are things that should never be given up. You must persevere. You should try to be a little nicer to me, Lolita. You should also watch your diet. The tour of your thigh, you know, should not exceed seventeen and a half inches. More might be fatal (I was kidding, of course). We are now setting out on a long happy journey. I remember…”
16
I remember as a child in Europe gloating over a map of North America that had “Appalachian Mountains” boldly running from Alabama up to New Brunswick, so that the whole region they spannedTennessee, the Virginias, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, appeared to my imagination as a gigantic Switzerland or even Tibet, all mountain, glorious diamond peak upon peak, giant conifers, le montagnard migr in his bear skin glory, and Felis tigris goldsmithi, and Red Indians under the catalpas. That it all boiled down to a measly suburban lawn and a smoking garbage incinerator, was appalling. Farewell, Appalachia! Leaving it, we crossed Ohio, the three states beginning with “I,” and Nebraskaah, that first whiff of the West! We traveled very leisurely, having more than a week to reach Wace, Continental Divide, where she passionately desired to see he Ceremonial Dances marking the seasonal opening of Magic Cave, and at least three weeks to reach Elphinstone, gem of a western State where she yearned to climb Red Rock from which a mature screen star had recently jumped to her death after a drunken row with her gigolo.
Again we were welcomed to wary motels by means of inscriptions that read:
“We wish you feel at home while here. All equipment was carefully checked upon your arrival. Your license number is on record here. Use hot water sparingly. We reserve the right to eject without notice any objectionable person. Do not throw waste material of any kind in the toilet bowl. Thank you. Call again. The Management. P.S. We consider our guests the Finest People of the World.”