Tuesday. Clouds again interfered with that picnic on that unattainable lake. Is it Fate scheming. Yesterday I tried on before the mirror a new pair of bathing trunks.
Wednesday. In the afternoon, Haze (common-sensical shoes, tailor-made dress), said she was driving downtown to buy a present for a friend of a friend of hers, and would I please come too because I have such a wonderful taste in textures and perfumes. Choose your favourite seduction, she purred. What could Humbert, being in the perfume business, do? She had me cornered between the front porch and her car. Hurry up, she said as I laboriously doubled up my large body in order to crawl in (still desperately devising a means of escape). She had started the engine, and was genteelly swearing at a backing and turning truck in front that had just brought old invalid Miss Opposite a brand new wheel chair, when my Lolitas sharp voice came from the parlour window: You! Where are you going? Im coming too! Wait! Ignore her, yelped Haze (killing the motor); alas for my fair driver; Lo was already pulling at the door on my side. This is intolerable, began Haze; but Lo had scrambled in, shivering with glee. Move your bottom, you, said Lo. Lo! cried Haze (sideglancing at me, hoping I would throw rude Lo out). And behold, said Lo (not for the first time), as she jerked back, as the car leapt forward. It is intolerable, said Haze, violently getting into second, that a child should be so ill-mannered. And so very persevering. When she knows she is unwanted. And needs a bath.
Tuesday. Clouds again interfered with that picnic on that unattainable lake. Is it Fate scheming. Yesterday I tried on before the mirror a new pair of bathing trunks.
Wednesday. In the afternoon, Haze (common-sensical shoes, tailor-made dress), said she was driving downtown to buy a present for a friend of a friend of hers, and would I please come too because I have such a wonderful taste in textures and perfumes. Choose your favourite seduction, she purred. What could Humbert, being in the perfume business, do? She had me cornered between the front porch and her car. Hurry up, she said as I laboriously doubled up my large body in order to crawl in (still desperately devising a means of escape). She had started the engine, and was genteelly swearing at a backing and turning truck in front that had just brought old invalid Miss Opposite a brand new wheel chair, when my Lolitas sharp voice came from the parlour window: You! Where are you going? Im coming too! Wait! Ignore her, yelped Haze (killing the motor); alas for my fair driver; Lo was already pulling at the door on my side. This is intolerable, began Haze; but Lo had scrambled in, shivering with glee. Move your bottom, you, said Lo. Lo! cried Haze (sideglancing at me, hoping I would throw rude Lo out). And behold, said Lo (not for the first time), as she jerked back, as the car leapt forward. It is intolerable, said Haze, violently getting into second, that a child should be so ill-mannered. And so very persevering. When she knows she is unwanted. And needs a bath.
My knuckles lay against the childs blue jeans. She was barefooted; her toenails showed remnants of cherry-red polish and there was a bit of adhesive tape across her big toe; and, God, what would I not have given to kiss then and there those delicate-boned, long-toed, monkeyish feet! Suddenly her hand slipped into mine and without our chaperons seeing, I held, and stroked, and squeezed that little hot paw, all the way to the store. The wings of the drivers Marlenesque[76] nose shone, having shed or burned up their ration of powder, and she kept up an elegant monologue about the local traffic, and smiled in profile, and pouted in profile, and beat her painted lashes in profile, while I prayed we would never get to that store, but we did.
I have nothing else to report, save, primo[77]: that big Haze had little Haze sit behind on our way home, and secundo[78]: that the lady decided to keep Humberts Choice for the backs of her own shapely ears.
Thursday. We are paying with hail and gale for the tropical beginning of the month. In a volume of the Young Peoples Encyclopaedia, I found a map of the States that a childs pencil had started copying out on a sheet of lightweight paper, upon the other side of which, counter to the unfinished outline of Florida and the Gulf, there was a mimeographed list of names referring, evidently, to her class at the Ramsdale school. It is a poem I know already by heart.
A poem, a poem, forsooth! So strange and sweet was it to discover this Haze, Dolores (she!) in its special bower of names, with its bodyguard of roses a fairy princess between her two maids of honour. I am trying to analyse the spine-thrill of delight it gives me, this name among all those others. What is it that excites me almost to tears (hot, opalescent, thick tears that poets and lovers shed)? What is it? The tender anonymity of this name with its formal veil (Dolores) and that abstract transposition of first name and surname, which is like a pair of new pale gloves or a mask? Is mask the keyword? Is it because there is always delight in the semi-translucent mystery, the flowing charshaf, through which the flesh and the eye you alone are elected to know smile in passing at you alone? Or is it because I can imagine so well the rest of the colourful classroom around my dolorous and hazy darling: Grace and her ripe pimples; Ginny and her lagging leg; Gordon, the haggard masturbator; Duncan, the foul-smelling clown; nail-biting Agnes; Viola, of the blackheads and the bouncing bust; pretty Rosaline; dark Mary Rose; adorable Stella, who has let strangers touch her; Ralph, who bullies and steals; Irving, for whom I am sorry. And there she is there, lost in the middle, gnawing a pencil, detested by teachers, all the boys eyes on her hair and neck, my Lolita.