Lolita / Лолита. Книга для чтения на английском языке

between a crooner’s mug and the lashes of a movie actress. It represented a dark-haired young husband with a kind of drained look in his Irish eyes. He was modelling a robe by So-and-So and holding a bridge-like tray by So-and-So, with breakfast for two. The legend, by the Rev. Thomas Morell, called him a ‘conquering hero’. The thoroughly conquered lady (not shown) was presumably propping herself up to receive her half of the tray. How her bedfellow was to get under the bridge without some messy mishap was not clear. Lo had drawn a jocose arrow to the haggard lover’s face and had put, in block letters: H. H. And indeed, despite a difference of a few years, the resemblance was striking. Under this was another picture, also a coloured ad. A distinguished playwright was solemnly smoking a Drome 94 . He always smoked Dromes. The resemblance was slight. Under this was Lo’s chaste bed, littered with ‘comics’. The enamel had come off the bedstead, leaving black, more or less rounded, marks on the white. Having convinced myself that Louise had left, I got into Lo’s bed and re-read the letter.

Curious: although actually her looks had faded, I definitely realized, so hopelessly late in the day, how much she looked – had always looked – like Botticelli’s russet Venus – the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty.

rentage: half English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita

Although I do love that intoxicating brown fragrance of hers, I really think she should wash her hair once in a while.

The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snowstorms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car 12