1961-04-22 — Page 22

Pago. 14

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1961.

NABOKOV, BUTTERFLIES AND THE COTE D'AZUR

Cannos.

VLADIMIR NABOKOV thought twice about shaving his head despite the nice sensation it gave him and, instead, lean- ed back in his Victorian chair. Outside the rented flat in Nice, tawny-haired girls walked past along the Promenade dos: Anglais.

Nabokov looked fondly across the sitting-room to Vera, the white-haired Russian Woman who has been his wife for 33 years,

"Ah, by American Lalities,” he sighed, "I do not find yout here, my Lolite. You do not come to this Cole d'Azur.

"You here. you are post- Lolitas. You are Bardotists, not Lolitas. You are too nware. Por you, Americana and Lalliaism

cit. You are not the Lolitas 1 Invented,"

Nabokov turned inquiringly to his wife. "I never really knew any Lolitas, did 1, darling?

tin not think I have ever event talked to a schoolgirl of 12 I have a son of 28, nid all my friends have sons. But I was aware that they were ammand.

"And now motels. I have always Hyed in them. We have never really had a hang of

GWH

EVERY GIRL

By

ROSALIE MACRAE

cap,

"And it might be renting an sports and left his ski cap on apartment like this in a hideous the bed.

"Th

the muld saw yellow birthday enke Victorian ville which now fools beautiful thought he was another of the and shoved It beside the shelled, white mo- med Nabokovs, deen flats.

under his pillow. The poor boy "Here I am at ease. But mine had to go ski-ing without it." Is a different Cote d'Azur.

Nabokov dissolved into help- less glagles,

SPLENDID

"shun the world, 1 bate res- thurants and cafes. When I eat, I go to the big hotel along the road. It is quiet, dinised. and somehow splendid.

"I have come down here this time to write-about a man who Composes 909 Unes of a poem and dies before he reaches the Un thousandth line. It is after his denth, a friend tries to analyse the porns, and involved his own life in doing so."

Naboltoy banded me a cign- rette. allow myself no rest. And when I do try to give my- saf relaxing time the mute is fighting to get me started again. Engilsh "I always write in

"In my book the American girls of ce gendre met me more than halfway, Now Lolitos are everywhere. Look at St Tropez, every girl tries to look like now. To write in Russian again Lolita, my Lolita, but somehow would be like playing ordinary never succeeds,

hockey after ice hockey, I need

"And yet there is something that American twang for expert-

Perhaps it about the Riviera comes from being here when I

40

ence.

"When I knew you were con was a Httle Russian buy holiday from St Petersburg and int I decided not to share my brad. 1 will probably do it to- looking at the fat cream Riviera trains de luxe merrow,

passing by."

chaculate-

"Perhaps I come here because

"It is such a nice sensation,

Look at my special bald-headed

of the butterflies, I discovered a cap made of white linen."

new butterfly here in 1039

on the bills, and i still go it

now in

hoping to find a now one.

butterfiles "But the this region are all friends.

"I remember I wrote a poem

butter about discovering this

He walked over to a bookcase

1

in the sitting-room and took out the poem, "The Discovery."

Nabokov, salit "Yes," might be the butterflies, or the beautiful sea, or the fact that French is spoken here, and ca J'adore, and the changing pical vegetation.

tro

SMILED

Mrs Nabokov, resting on the divan, eyes half closed, smiled patienily as her husband brought a cone of white linen from its per in the hall.

"-7 am never really happy without a head covering." he said. "In bed I always wear a night cap.

The other day my son Dmitri he is an opera shiger, a won- aerful basso profundo baritone setting! off for winter

-was

Just Fancy That!

Then he said good night and went out to do a little butterBy hunting before dinner.

(ondon Express Service).

QARA

鱼食魚盛

ARTISTS

IN DUFFLE- COATS & DRAINPIPES WILL NOT BE SERVED.

NO BEATNIKS

SERVED

ONLY

GENUINE ARTIST'S

SERVED

CLEAR THE

BEATNIKS BOT OF

CORNWALLĮ.

'Sa Ives' LANDLORDS.SAY BAN ARTISTA IN FANCY:ORSIS 4 LONG-HAIRED

INTERLECTULS PROTECT THE REGLARS!

"I assure you, sir, that I am a very genuine artist."

London Expresa Šervice.

Wish you

were here!

from SALLY VINCENT

Rhodes.

ing around me.

Now these people, are the friendliest in the world, because I'd hardly had time to any no, I'm not German, I'm Engilsh before

1 was perched on the driver's seat working out the tractor-like mechanism.

I asked if I might borrow the truck:

laboriously and almost

They said yes, take him, be Then I sat on a wall the waking up and biking and kicked great city wall, so old no one smiling again. I wanted to talk gracefully, a sleepy smile on his

careful, bring him back. NETTING here was like getting anywhere else. knows who built it or when-and to them, get to know them. But face.

So I drove two moonlit kilo- G The Nual re was the sy it

When the music stopped, he

and metres to the ancient Acropolis amid creery, I took myself to a local res- sat down

of Rhodes, continued to smile. One by one, Young, dark-eyed Greek girls taurant.

the other men got up and danc It must have been about mid- swinging along together and eat-

It was a marble-floored, mar- ed. Always alone; always the ing leo cream cones. Very young

little aame slow, hopping, ritunatle night.

I got to the island of Rhodes.

I was exhausted, felt a long. lone way from home. But gat here,

I think 11. must have been! the airport that cheered me up The airport at Rhodes is n professional, toylike, and quite wonderful.

"RASPBERRY" blown to a girl by a Teddy Boy has A been cut from the West End play "Sparrers Can't

They don't have a loudspeaker Sing"-by order of the Lord Chamberlain. The play, system, but when the airplanes to leave, the pilot now at Wyndham's Theatre, was first staged eight are ready

Into the waiting for monthe

ago in the East End's Theatre Workshop.saunters There were no objections then to the "raspberry." Said and says: "OK, ready to no narrowly Stepney author Stephen Lewis: "I'm going to protest."

R

*

OBINS have built a neat inside a radio in a Fresh. water, Isle of Wight, store. The radio will not be sold until the birds move out.

Warped

Dingy

The moon was the biggest I

I wanted to dance as well. It have ever seen and when I saw wasn't the music. It was just the ruins looming up out of the that I only ever dance on my darkness I left the truck and own, and these were the first walked towards them. people I had ever met who felt

the wayside with a baby lamb There were a few workmen the same way about it.

Homesick

All alone, I stood among tho remains of the temple of Pythian Apollo and looked at the great columna of ancient Greece in shadows of the the unearthly mood.

It was very early in the morn- boys with down on their upper ble-walled place, with Ing, misty and cloudless, with lips, playing skilful football; old square tables covered in checked steps, always the big smiles.

the lavender colour women the sky

in black dresses and plastic which small boys were going painfully home, wiping down. they always put un picture post- cowls, cards and the sea a deep, deep carrying sticks of green rhubarb; blue smudged with turquoise old men drinking water int near the shore.

marble-walled coffee shops; a tiny old woman crouching by

on a string.

crouched over some tables talk- Priests in black robes and toll in abstractedly and tearing un The dusty, dry roads wo hats, dusty and worn as Bibles, hunks of the dingy Greek brend.

between strange

felt suddenly miserable It was terrifying and beauti- hedgerows of grey-green cactus standing outside a pretty church A man in baggy blue trousers

done up, was and homesick, and went out ful and completely unrost, and I plants and stunted little bushes, talking solemnly to each other; and a tight tweed jacket with

into the street to watch some know I shall never do such a And the people, full of trust starred all over with bright yes and a little, grey-faced man sit- all the buttons and admiration, get up and pnd low Rowers.

ting at the gates of the Turkish pluying a violin.

young boys Unkering with a thing again. cemetery holding a string of

I can't describe the muste hd broken down old truck. They When I got back to the truck after him.

There were deer on the hills, plump yollow beads.

made it was simply the sort of managed to start it up and my hands were dead with cold. Feeling a little more like a and lemons growing like magle

music you would choose If your bounced it up and down the Soon I must leave Rhodes.

cobblestones, cheering each other There can't be anything else. wanted to hop sadly. human being I took the trundly lanterns on dark little trees. old bus to

main city of Rhodes.

Anyway, I eat down and was on.

"TheLit

now."

POSITIVELY FINER

the

Nearer the town the housea began: made of sunny yellow

Deutsche?

...

I went into the old market greeted with the usual. rock and built square and alm- place, a narrow, cobbled street sche? American?-Aaaah, Eng- ple. like blocks of children's bricks, with warped, wooden with tumble-down, three-walled gllab!" game, and I agreed to cat

store shops selling oranges, car- whatever most people ate. rots, cabbages, sponges, Greek I drank the dry, pink, resin- our wine of Rhodes, smoked flat, Incenso-smelling cigarettes and

shutters at the windows.

Women standing outside their arms, and donkey chalas. houses, wearing cotton cowls An old man with a heavy ate dollops of beef in a sort of over their heads and faces, wash- black moustache Was sorting rice cake. Ing clothes in big shallow bowls through his produce,

and hanging them raggedly over

He looked up and saw ing,

bushes to dry. Bent old men, "Deutsche?" he said, nodding leading their thin, haunchy, flop- py-cared donkeys towards the fown.

Awesome

A harofoot peddler was de-

lighting a dozen or so pensante

and smiling.

"No," I said. "English."

Throbbing

Some

workmen

from the

He smiled and twinkled and bomb altes (they are still Jazily, nodded furiously, his hands rum contentedly sorting the stones of maging through his oranges, Becond World War damage) told

Then, "Ifer," he said, "for, me two things which are prob you."

ably worth knowing.

And he gave me an enormous with his barrow, ridiculously orangų, killi attached to

heaped with plastic toys, lolf branch pops, tin trays, and pictures of

Sophia Lozen.

On my first sight, the town

Butterflies

Industriousness isn't exactly

a local tradition. At one-thirty

"Here." they said, "a girl gets married. Her mother end her father give her everything they have their house, their money; their gost, everything.

Then, when the mather and father are old, the young people jook after them.

of Rhodos was a haphazard cal- jecilon of eastern shapes, some

"So no one is poor here." medieval, come almost new,

every day, everything closes The violin man went home doints, rectangles, archways, col down. The people sit around in and was replaced by some sad umns in every tune from yellow the cates or walk #little, or eyed men with mandolins and le white.

fet follow with an accordion, swim, or just sleep.

Thoy were joined-arut this was

I couldn't see things quickly I took a bus to a pisce called a big a surprise as the butter- enough, so I hired a bicycle --- A. Petaloudes, which in a deep val- flies by a girl with orange hair. fat-tyred diminutiva machine joy with pools and fall trees that and a white dress with requins↑ with high handlebars and a are full of butterfiles. You throw all over it They played loust. curved crosɔl/pr..

a stone into one of the trees and denteningly loud, Mirobbing, Ja-i

On my bicycle (20 drachmas the butterfles burst out, milluns xistent, lonely musto. And the for the day) I pedalled niong the of them, so suddenly and helgħit- orange-hair girl sang into a mi- cobbled freels and up to the 17 like a roman cœydis, that ll's crophone. medieval castle whore myvenome impossible to say what colour, precincts dominate the town.

I have never seen a building so obviously indestructible,

they are. I suppose they were A man in heavy boots, got up every colour I've ever seen. and with-a-baštam milit. In his Back in the town it was late hand, began to dapes and caper afternoon.ne people, were on his own. He lambered and

..

London Express Berult).

Rayia