Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov [91]
“Do you mean sex play?” I asked jauntily, in despair, a cornered old rat.
“Well, I certainly welcome this civilized terminology,” said Pratt with a grin. “But this is not quite the point. Under the auspices of Beardsley School, dramatics, dances and other natural activities are not technically sex play, though girls do meet boys, if that is what you object to.”
“All right,” I said, my hassock exhaling a weary sigh. “You win. She can take part in that play. Provided male parts are taken by female parts.”
“I am always fascinated,” said Pratt, “by the admirable way foreigners—or at least naturalized Americans—use our rich language. I’m sure Miss Gold, who conducts the play group, will be overjoyed. I notice she is one of the few teachers that seem to like—I mean who seem to find Dolly manageable. This takes care of general topics, I guess; now comes a special matter. We are in trouble again.”
Pratt paused truculently, then rubbed her index finger under her nostrils with such vigor that her nose performed a kind of war dance.
“I’m a frank person,” she said, “but conventions are conventions, and I find it difficult … Let me put it this way … The Walkers, who live in what we call around here the Duke’s Manor, you know the great gray house on the hill—they send their two girls to our school, and we have the niece of President Moore with us, a really gracious child, not to speak of a number of other prominent children. Well, under the circumstances, it is rather a jolt when Dolly, who looks like a little lady, uses words which you as a foreigner probably simply do not know or do not understand. Perhaps it might be better—Would you like me to have Dolly come up here right away to discuss things? No? You see—oh well, let’s have it out. Dolly has written a most obscene four-letter word which our Dr. Cutler tells me is low-Mexican for urinal with her lipstick on some health pamphlets which Miss Redcock, who is getting married in June, distributed among the girls, and we thought she should stay after hours—another half hour at least. But if you like—”
“No,” I said, “I don’t want to interfere with rules. I shall talk to her later. I shall thrash it out.”
“Do,” said the woman rising from her chair arm. “And perhaps we can get together again soon, and if things do not improve we might have Dr. Cutler analyze her.”
Should I marry Pratt and strangle her?
“… And perhaps your family doctor might like to examine her physically—just a routine check-up. She is in Mushroom—the last classroom along that passage.”
Beardsley School, it may be explained, copied a famous girls’ school in England by having “traditional” nicknames for its various classrooms: Mushroom, Room-In 8, B-room, Room-BA and so on. Mushroom was smelly, with a sepia print of Reynolds’ “Age of Innocence” above the chalkboard, and several rows of clumsy-looking pupil desks. At one of these, my Lolita was reading the chapter on “Dialogue” in Baker’s Dramatic Technique, and all was very quiet, and there was another girl with a very naked, porcelain-white neck and wonderful platinum hair, who sat in front reading too, absolutely lost to the world and interminably winding a soft curl around one finger, and I sat beside Dolly just behind that neck and that hair, and unbuttoned my overcoat and for sixty-five cents plus the permission to participate in the school play, had Dolly put her inky, chalky, red-knuckled hand under the desk. Oh, stupid and reckless of me, no doubt, but after the torture I had been subjected to, I simply had to take advantage of a combination that I knew would never occur again.
12
Around Christmas she caught a bad chill and was examined by a friend of Miss Lester, a Dr. Ilse Tristramson (hi, Ilse, you were a dear, uninquisitive soul, and you touched my dove very gently). She diagnosed bronchitis, patted Lo on the back (all its bloom erect because of the fever) and put her to bed for a week or longer. At first she “ran a temperature” in American parlance, and I could not resist the exquisite caloricity of unexpected delights