Lolita / Лолита. Книга для чтения на английском языке

в чем мать родила]’ (as John had quipped) at five o’clock in the morning last Sunday.

�The water,’ I said, �must have been quite cold.’

�That is not the point,’ said the logical doomed dear. �He is subnormal, you see. And,’ she continued (in that carefully phrased way of hers that was beginning to tell on my health), �I have a very definite feeling our Louise is in love with that moron.’

Feeling. �We feel Dolly is not doing as well’, etc.

(from an old school report).

The Humberts walked on, sandalled and robed.

�Do you know, Hum: I have one most ambitious dream,’ pronounced Lady Hum, lowering her head – shy of that dream – and communing with the tawny ground. �I would love to get hold of a real trained servant maid like that German girl the Talbots spoke of; and have her live in the house.’

�No room,’ I said.

�Come,’ she said with her quizzical smile, �surely, chéri, you underestimate the possibilities of the Humbert home.

We would put her in Lo’s room. I intended to make a guestroom of that hole anyway. It’s the coldest and meanest in the whole house.’

�What are you talking about?’ I asked, the skin of my cheekbones tensing up (this I take the trouble to note only because my daughter’s skin did the same when she felt that way: disbelief, disgust, irritation).

�Are you bothered by Romantic Associations?’ queried my wife – in allusion to her first surrender.

�Hell no,’ said I. �I just wonder where will you put your daughter when you get your guest or your maid.’

�Ah,’ said Mrs. Humbert, dreaming, smiling, drawing out the �Ah’ simultaneously with the raise of one eyebrow and a soft exhalation of breath. �Little Lo, I’m afraid, does not enter the picture at all, at all. Little Lo goes straight from camp to a good boarding school with strict discipline and some sound religious training.

And then – Beardsley College. I have it all mapped out, you need not worry.’

She went on to say that she, Mrs. Humbert, would have to overcome her habitual sloth and write to Miss Phalen’s sister who taught at St. Algebra. The dazzling lake emerged. I said I had forgotten my sunglasses in the car and would catch up with her.