Thank you for the illustrations of the Great Crested Grebes --I had wanted to ask you about the avian performance.

62.04-05: painted surfaces of steels made to resemble the mottling of the adjacent rocks!: Steel camouflage or mimicry? A rocks-in-the-mountains motif.

63.25: the humming frost: Tadashi Wakashima, my co-translator, brought my attention to "The Refrigerator Awakes." The poem seems to correspond to TT, especially to the dream-man in Ch. 16 and the other dreams and nightmares.

63.31: critic C. (the late Charles Chamar's cousin): is the most remarkable alliteration in the novel?

64.14-15: (his New York office was clamoring for his return): I think this chapter has parallels with Ch. 25, in which "the lady with the little dog" has to come home because the owner of the little dog "was reclaiming his pet with great cries." She leaves the room 313 HP wanted, which leads him to his death in the room.

64.17: their hotel looked indeed most combustible: Another parallel with Ch. 25, in which HP asks the receptionist to call the hotel in Stresa and reserve the room where he and Armande stayed eight years ago. But "One does not reply." Probably the hotel is really on fire or has burnt down. If he could leave for the Stresa hotel, he would not die in the fire at Ascot, at least.

64.29: a Chudo-Yudo pajama: Chudo-Yudo is "a marvelous monster in Russian folklore; cf. also Russian chudo ("wonder") and judo (from Brian Boyd's notes to the LoA edition). See also Dieter E.Zimmer's posting to Nabokv-L: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9603&L=nabokv-l&P=R496 . He kindly answered my question quoting a note from DN.

65.23-26: Armande decreed they regularly make love around teatime, in the living room, as upon an imaginary stage, to the steady accompaniment of casual small talk, with both performers decently clothed: reminds me of *Oh! Calcutta!* aka *Cunning Stunts* here.

66.12-14: if we recall the customs of certain Far Eastern people, virtually halfwits in many other respects: What does VN has in mind as the customs? I might be expected to figure it out as one from the Far East, but I must confess I have no idea (virtually half-witted!). "The contrast between the fictitious and the factual" is, for example, the Chinese reversals associated with death in *The Gift*?

67.02-03: her figure as trim as that of an air hostess: "Here comes the air hostess bringing bright drinks, and she is Armande. . . "(Ch. 26).