Ada, or Ador: A Family Chronicle

‘Please go away, this is private property,’ said Van in Vulgar Latin, French, Canadian French, Russian, Yukonian Russian, very low Latin again: proprieta privata.

He stood looking at them, hardly noticed by them, hardly shade-touched by the foliage. They were ill-shaven, blue-jowled men in old Sunday suits. One or two wore no collar but had kept the thyroid stud. One had a beard and a humid squint. Patent boots, with dust in the cracks, or orange-brown shoes either very square or very pointed had been taken off and pushed under the burdocks or placed on the old tree stumps of the rather drab clearing. How odd indeed! When Van repeated his request, the intruders started to mutter among themselves in a totally incomprehensible jargon, making small flapping motions in his direction as if half-heartedly chasing away a gnat.

He asked Marina — did she want him to use force, but sweet, dear Marina said, patting her hair, one hand on her hip, no, let us ignore them — especially as they were now drawing a little deeper into the trees — look, look — some dragging à reculons the various parts of their repast upon what resembled an old bedspread, which receded like a fishing boat pulled over pebbly sand, while others politely removed the crumpled wrappings to other more distant hiding places in keeping with the general relocation: a most melancholy and meaningful picture — but meaning what, what?

Gradually their presence dissolved from Van’s mind. Everybody was now having a wonderful time. Marina threw off the pale raincoat or rather ‘dustcoat’ she had put on for the picnic (after all, with one thing and another, her domestic gray dress with the pink fichu was quite gay enough, she declared, for an old lady) and raising an empty glass she sang, with brio and very musically, the Green Grass aria: ‘Replenish, replenish the glasses with wine! Here’s a toast to love! To the rapture of love!’ With awe and pity, and no love, Van kept reverting to that poor bald patch on Traverdiata’s poor old head, to the scalp burnished by her hairdye an awful pine rust color much shinier than her dead hair. He attempted, as so many times before, to squeeze out some fondness for her but as usual failed and as usual told himself that Ada did not love her mother either, a vague and cowardly consolation.

Greg, assuming with touching simplicity that Ada would notice and approve, showered Mlle Larivière with a thousand little attentions — helping her out of her mauve jacket, pouring out for her the milk into Lucette’s mug from a thermos bottle, passing the sandwiches, replenishing, replenishing Mlle Larivière’s wineglass and listening with a rapt grin to her diatribes against the English, whom she said she disliked even more than the Tartars, or the, well, Assyrians.

‘England!’ she cried, ‘England! The country where for every poet, there are ninety-nine sales petits bourgeois, some of suspect extraction! England dares ape France! I have in that hamper there an English novel of high repute in which a lady is given a perfume — an expensive perfume! — called "Ombre Chevalier," which is really nothing but a fish — a delicious fish, true, but hardly suitable for scenting one’s handkerchief with. On the very next page, a soi-disant philosopher mentions "une acte gratuite" as if all acts were feminine, and a soi-disant Parisian hotelkeeper in the story says "je me regrette" for "je regrette"!’

‘D’accord,’ interjected Van, ‘but what about such atrocious bloomers in French translations from the English as for example —’

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, at that very moment Ada emitted a Russian exclamation of utmost annoyance as a steel-gray convertible glided into the glade. No sooner had it stopped than it was surrounded by the same group of townsmen, who now seemed to have multiplied in strange consequence of having shed coats and waistcoats. Thrusting his way through their circle, with every sign of wrath and contempt, young Percy de Prey, frilled-shifted and white-trousered, strode up to Marina’s deckchair. He was invited to join the party despite Ada’s trying to stop her silly mother with an admonishing stare and a private small shake of the head.

‘I dared not hope… Oh, I accept with great pleasure,’ answered Percy, whereupon — very much whereupon — the seemingly forgetful but in reality calculating bland bandit marched back to his car (near which a last wonderstruck admirer lingered) to fetch a bouquet of longstemmed roses stored in the boot.

‘What a shame that I should loathe roses,’ said Ada, accepting them gingerly.

The muscat wine was uncorked. Ada’s and Ida’s healths drunk. ‘The conversation became general,’ as Monparnasse liked to write.

Count Percy de Prey turned to Ivan Demianovich Veen:

‘I’m told you like abnormal positions?’

The half-question was half-mockingly put. Van looked through his raised lunel at the honeyed sun.