Lolita

movies I seem to share the services of the machina telephonica and its sudden god. This time it was an irate neighbor. The east window happened to be agape in the living room, with the blind mercifully down, however; and behind it the damp black night of a sour New England spring had been breathlessly listening to us. I had always thought that type of haddocky spinster with the obscene mind was the result of considerable literary inbreeding in modern fiction; but now I am convinced that prude and prurient Miss East—or to explode her incognito, Miss Fenton Lebone—had been probably protruding three-quarter-way from her bedroom window as she strove to catch the gist of our quarrel.
    “… This racket … lacks all sense of …” quacked the receiver, “we do not live in a tenement here. I must emphatically …”
    I apologized for my daughter’s friends being so loud. Young people, you know—and cradled the next quack and a half.
    Downstairs the screen door banged. Lo? Escaped?
    Through the casement on the stairs I saw a small impetuous ghost slip through the shrubs; a silvery dot in the dark—hub of bicycle wheel—moved, shivered, and she was gone.
    It so happened that the car was spending the night in a repair shop downtown. I had no other alternative than to pursue on foot the winged fugitive. Even now, after more than three years have heaved and elapsed, I cannot visualize that spring-night street, that already so leafy street, without a gasp of panic. Before their lighted porch Miss Lester was promenading Miss Fabian’s dropsical dackel. Mr. Hyde almost knocked it over. Walk three steps and run three. A tepid rain started to drum on the chestnut leaves. At the next corner, pressing Lolita against an iron railing, a blurred youth held and kissed—no, not her, mistake. My talons still tingling, I flew on.
    Half a mile or so east of number fourteen, Thayer Street tangles with a private lane and a cross street; the latter leads to the town proper; in front of the first drugstore, I saw—with what melody of relief!—Lolita’s fair bicycle waiting for her. I pushed instead of pulling, pulled, pushed, pulled, and entered. Look out! Some ten paces away Lolita, through the glass of a telephone booth (membranous god still with us), cupping the tube, confidentially hunched over it, slit her eyes at me, turned away with her treasure, hurriedly hung up, and walked out with a flourish.
    “Tried to reach you at home,” she said brightly. “A great decision has been made. But first buy me a drink, dad.”
    She watched the listless pale fountain girl put in the ice, pour in the coke, add the cherry syrup—and my heart was bursting with love-ache. That childish wrist. My lovely child. You have a lovely child, Mr. Humbert. We always admire her as she passes by. Mr. Pim watched Pippa suck in the concoction.
    J’ai toujours admiré l’œuvre ormonde du sublime Dublinois.
And in the meantime the rain had become a voluptuous shower.
    “Look,” she said as she rode the bike beside me, one foot scraping the darkly glistening sidewalk, “look, I’ve decided something. I want to leave school. I hate that school. I hate the play, I really do! Never go back. Find another. Leave at once. Go for a long trip again. But
this
time we’ll go wherever
I
want, won’t we?”
    I nodded. My Lolita.
    “I choose?
C’est entendu?”
she asked wobbling a little beside me. Used French only when she was a very good little girl.
    “Okay.
Entendu.
Now hop-hop-hop, Lenore, or you’ll get soaked.” (A storm of sobs was filling my chest.)
    She bared her teeth and after her adorable school-girl fashion, leaned forward, and away she sped, my bird.
    Miss Lester’s finely groomed hand held a porch-door open for a waddling old dog
qui prenait son temps.
    Lo was waiting for me near the ghostly birch tree.
    “I am drenched,” she declared at the top of her voice. “Are you glad? To hell with the play! See what I mean?”
    An invisible hag’s claw slammed down an upper-floor window.
    In our hallway, ablaze with welcoming lights, my Lolita peeled off her sweater, shook her gemmed hair, stretched towards me two bare arms, raised one knee:
    “Carry me upstairs, please. I feel sort of romantic to-night.”
    It may interest physiologists to learn, at this point, that I have the ability—a most singular case, I presume—of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest.

15
    The brakes were relined, the waterpipes unclogged, the