Veranos de scrabble y juegos de Ada y Van en Ardis... y de un viaje a la patria de Nabokov...

Part 1, Chapter 15

One afternoon they were climbing the glossy-limbed shattal tree
at the bottom of the garden. Mlle Larivière and little Lucette,screened by a caprice of the coppice but just within earshot,were playing grace hoops. One glimpsed now and then, aboveor through foliage, the skimming hoop passing from one unseensending stick to another. The first cicada of the season kept trying out its instrument. A silver-and-sable skybab squirrel sat ampling a cone on the back of a bench.
Van, in blue gym suit, having worked his way up to a fork jst under his agile playmate (who naturally was better acquainted with the tree's intricate map) but not being able to see her face, betokened mute communication by taking her ankle between finger and thumb as she would have a closed butterfly.

Her bare foot slipped, and the two panting youngsters tangled ignominiously among the branches, in a shower of drupes and leaves, clutching at each other, and the next moment, as they regained a semblance of balance, his expressionless face and cropped head were between her legs and a last fruit fell with a thud—the dropped dot of an inverted exclamation point. She was wearing his wristwatch and a cotton frock.

("Remember?" "Yes, of course, I remember: you kissed me here, on the inside—" "And you started to strangle me with those devilish knees of yours—" "I was seeking some sort of support.")

That might have been true, but according to a later (considerably later!) version they were still in the tree, and still glowing, when Van removed a silk thread of larva web from his lip and remarked that such negligence of attire was a form of hysteria.

"Well," answered Ada, straddling her favorite limb, "as we all know by now, Mlle La Rivière de Diamants has nothing against a hysterical little girl's not wearing pantalets during l'ardeur de la canicule."

"I refuse to share the ardor of your little canicule with an apple tree."

"It is really the Tree of Knowledge—this specimen was imported last summer wrapped up in brocade from the Eden National Park where Dr. Krolik's son is a ranger and breeder."

"Let him range and breed by all means," said Van (her natural history had long begun to get on his nerves), "but I swear no apple trees grow in Iraq."

"Right, but that's not a true apple tree."

Texto sacado de la página: http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/, que contiene el libro íntegro


El lunes marcho a Rusia....