Lolita / Лолита. Книга для чтения на английском языке

How different were her movements from those of my Lolita, when she used to visit me in her dear dirty blue jeans, smelling of orchards in nymphetland; awkward and fey, and dimly depraved, the lower buttons of her shirt unfastened. Let me tell you, however, something. Behind the brashness of little Haze, and the poise of big Haze, a trickle of shy life ran that tasted the same, that murmured the same. A great French doctor once told my father that in near relatives the faintest gastric gurgle has the same �voice’.

So Charlotte sauntered in. She felt all was not well between us.

I had pretended to fall asleep the night before, and the night before that, as soon as we had gone to bed, and risen at dawn.

Tenderly, she inquired if she were not �interrupting’.

�Not at the moment,’ I said, turning volume G of the Girls’ Encyclopaedia around to examine a picture printed �bottom-edge’ as printers say.

Charlotte went up to a little table of imitation mahogany with a drawer. She put her hand upon it.

The little table was ugly, no doubt, but it had done nothing to her.

�I have always wanted to ask you,’ she said (business-like, not coquettish), �why is this thing locked up? Do you want it in this room? It’s so abominably uncouth.’

�Leave it alone,’ I said. I was camping in Scandinavia.

�Is there a key?’

�Hidden.’

�Oh, Hum.’

�Locked up love letters.’

She gave me one of those wounded-doe looks that irritated me so much, and then, not quite knowing if I was serious, or how to keep up the conversation, stood for several slow pages (Campus, Canada, Candid Camera, Candy) peering at the window-pane rather than through it, drumming upon it with sharp almond-and-rose fingernails.

Presently (at Canoeing or Canvasback) she strolled up to my chair and sank down, tweedily, weightily, on its arm, inundating me with the perfume my first wife had used. �Would his lordship like to spend the fall here?’ she asked, pointing with her little finger at an autumn view in a conservative Eastern State.

�Why?’ (very distinctly and slowly). She shrugged. (Probably Harold used to take a vacation at that time. Open season. Conditional reflex on her part.)

�I think I know where that is,’ she said, still pointing. �There is a hotel I remember, Enchanted Hunters, quaint, isn’t it? And the food is a dream. And nobody bothers anybody.’

She rubbed her cheek against my temple.