This is from Edie. I neded to share this passage from Lolita with someone.
anonymous
June 13 2006, 15:04:53 UTC
And you are in bloody Europe, so this is what I have to do:
So downstairs I went clearing my throat and holding my heart. Lo was now in the living room, in her favorite overstuffed chair. As she sprawled there, biting at a hangnail and mocking me with her heartless vaporous eyes, and all the time rocking a stool upon which she had placed the heel of an outstretched shoeless foot, I perceived all at once with a sickening qualm how much she had changed since I first met her two years ago. Or had this happened during those last two weeks? Tendresse? Surely that was an exploded myth. She sat right in the focus of my incandescent anger. The fog of all lust had been swept away leaving nothing but this dreadful lucidity. Oh, she had changed! Her complexion was now that of any vulgar untidy highschool girl who applies shared cosmetics with grubby fingers to an unwashed face and does not mind what soiled texture, what pustulate epidermis comes in contact with her skin. Its smooth tender bloom had been so lovely in former days, so bright with tears, when I used to roll, in play, her tousled head on my knee. A coarse flush had now replaced that innocent fluorescence. What was locally known as a "rabbit cold" had painted with flaming pink the edges of her contemptuous nostrils. As in terror I lowered my gaze, it mechanically slid along the underside of her tensely stretched bare thigh--how polished and muscular her legs had grown! She kept her wide-set eyes, clouded-glass gray and slightly bloodshot, fixed upon me, and I saw the stealthy thought showing through them that perhaps after all Mona was right, and she, orphan Lo, could expose me without getting penalized herself. How wrong I was. How mad I was! Everything about her was of the same exasperating impenetrable order--the strength of her shapely legs, the dirty sole of her white sock, the thick sweater she wore despite the closeness of the room, her wenchy smell, and especially the dead end of her face with its strange flush and freshly made-up lips. Some of the red had left stains on her front teeth, and I was struck by a ghastly recollection--the evoked image not of Monique, but of another young prostitute in a bell-house, ages ago, who had been snapped up by somebody else before I had time to decide whether her mere youth warranted my risking some appalling disease, and who had just such flushed prominent pommettes and a dead maman, and big front teeth, and a bit of dingy red ribbon in her country-brown hair.
PERHAPS YOUR TIME IN THE RICHER CONTINENT WILL AWAKEN YOU TO THE DETAILS NABOKOV CAN NOTICE.
So downstairs I went clearing my throat and holding my heart. Lo was
now in the living room, in her favorite overstuffed chair. As she sprawled
there, biting at a hangnail and mocking me with her heartless vaporous eyes,
and all the time rocking a stool upon which she had placed the heel of an
outstretched shoeless foot, I perceived all at once with a sickening qualm
how much she had changed since I first met her two years ago. Or had this
happened during those last two weeks? Tendresse? Surely that was an
exploded myth. She sat right in the focus of my incandescent anger. The fog
of all lust had been swept away leaving nothing but this dreadful lucidity.
Oh, she had changed! Her complexion was now that of any vulgar untidy
highschool girl who applies shared cosmetics with grubby fingers to an
unwashed face and does not mind what soiled texture, what pustulate
epidermis comes in contact with her skin. Its smooth tender bloom had been
so lovely in former days, so bright with tears, when I used to roll, in
play, her tousled head on my knee. A coarse flush had now replaced that
innocent fluorescence. What was locally known as a "rabbit cold" had painted
with flaming pink the edges of her contemptuous nostrils. As in terror I
lowered my gaze, it mechanically slid along the underside of her tensely
stretched bare thigh--how polished and muscular her legs had grown! She kept
her wide-set eyes, clouded-glass gray and slightly bloodshot, fixed upon me,
and I saw the stealthy thought showing through them that perhaps after all
Mona was right, and she, orphan Lo, could expose me without getting
penalized herself. How wrong I was. How mad I was! Everything about her was
of the same exasperating impenetrable order--the strength of her shapely
legs, the dirty sole of her white sock, the thick sweater she wore despite
the closeness of the room, her wenchy smell, and especially the dead end of
her face with its strange flush and freshly made-up lips. Some of the red
had left stains on her front teeth, and I was struck by a ghastly
recollection--the evoked image not of Monique, but of another young
prostitute in a bell-house, ages ago, who had been snapped up by somebody
else before I had time to decide whether her mere youth warranted my risking
some appalling disease, and who had just such flushed prominent
pommettes and a dead maman, and big front teeth, and a bit of
dingy red ribbon in her country-brown hair.
PERHAPS YOUR TIME IN THE RICHER CONTINENT WILL AWAKEN YOU TO THE DETAILS NABOKOV CAN NOTICE.
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