Ada, or Ador: A Family Chronicle

And, by the way, Grace — yes, Grace — was Vanda’s real favorite, pas petite moi and my little crest. She (Ada) had, hadn’t she, a way of always smoothing out the folds of the past — making the flutist practically impotent (except with his wife) and allowing the gentleman farmer only one embrace, with a premature eyakulyatsiya, one of those hideous Russian loanwords? Yes, wasn’t it hideous, but she’d love to play Scrabble again when they’d settled down for good. But where, how? Wouldn’t Mr and Mrs Ivan Veen do quite nicely anywhere? What about the ‘single’ in each passport? They’d go to the nearest Consulate and with roars of indignation and/or a fabulous bribe have it corrected to married, for ever and ever.

‘I’m a good, good girl. Here are her special pencils. It was very considerate and altogether charming of you to invite her next weekend. I think she’s even more madly in love with you than with me, the poor pet. Demon got them in Strassburg. After all she’s a demi-vierge now’ (‘I hear you and Dad —’ began Van, but the introduction of a new subject was swamped) ‘and we shan’t be afraid of her witnessing our ébats’ (pronouncing on purpose, with triumphant hooliganism, for which my prose, too, is praised, the first vowel à la Russe).

‘You do the puma,’ he said, ‘but she does — to perfection! — my favorite viola sardina. She’s a wonderful imitatrix, by the way, and if you are even better —’

‘We’ll speak about my talents and tricks some other time,’ said Ada. ‘It’s a painful subject. Now let’s look at these snapshots.’

7

During her dreary stay at Ardis, a considerably changed and enlarged Kim Beauharnais called upon her. He carried under his arm an album bound in orange-brown cloth, a dirty hue she had hated all her life. In the last two or three years she had not seen him, the light-footed, lean lad with the sallow complexion had become a dusky colossus, vaguely resembling a janizary in some exotic opera, stomping in to announce an invasion or an execution. Uncle Dan, who just then was being wheeled out by his handsome and haughty nurse into the garden where coppery and blood-red leaves were falling, clamored to be given the big book, but Kim said ‘Perhaps later,’ and joined Ada in the reception corner of the hall.

He had brought her a present, a collection of photographs he had taken in the good old days. He had been hoping the good old days would resume their course, but since he understood that mossio votre cossin (he spoke a thick Creole thinking that its use in solemn circumstances would be more proper than his everyday Ladore English) was not expected to revisit the castle soon — and thus help bring the album up to date — the best procedure pour tous les cernés (‘the shadowed ones,’ the ‘encircled’ rather than ‘concerned’) might be for her to keep (or destroy and forget, so as not to hurt anybody) the illustrated document now in her pretty hands. Wincing angrily at the jolies, Ada opened the album at one of its maroon markers meaningly inserted here and there, glanced once, reclicked the clasp, handed the grinning blackmailer a thousand-dollar note that she happened to have in her bag, summoned Bouteillan and told him to throw Kim out. The mud-colored scrapbook remained on a chair, under her Spanish shawl. With a shuffling kick the old retainer expelled a swamp-tulip leaf swept in by the draft and closed the front door again.

‘Mademoiselle n’aurait jamais dû recevoir ce gredin,’ he grumbled on his way back through the hall.

‘That’s just what I was on the point of observing,’ said Van when Ada had finished relating the nasty incident. ‘Were the photos pretty filthy?’

‘Ach!’ exhaled Ada.

‘That money might have furthered a worthier cause — Home for Blind Colts or Aging Ashettes.’

‘Odd, your saying that.’

‘Why?’

‘Never mind. Anyway, the beastly thing is now safe. I had to pay for it, lest he show poor Marina pictures of Van seducing his little cousin Ada — which would have been bad enough; actually, as a hawk of genius, he may have suspected the whole truth.’

‘So you really think that because you bought his album for a paltry thousand all evidence has been disposed of and everything is in order?’

‘Why, yes. Do you think the sum was too mean? I might send him more. I know where to reach him. He lectures, if you please, on the Art of Shooting Life at the School of Photography in Kalugano.’

‘Good place for shooting,’ said Van. ‘So you are quite sure you own the "beastly thing"?’

‘Of course, I do. It’s with me, at the bottom of that trunk; I’ll show it to you in a moment.’

‘Tell me, my love, what was your so-called I.Q. when we first met?’

‘Two hundred and something. A sensational figure.’

‘Well, by now it has shrunk rather badly. Peeking Kim has kept all the negatives plus lots of pictures he will paste or post later.’

‘Would you say it has dropped to Cordula’s level?’