J.Aisenberg: I never thought to question Ada's insertions as Van's
inventions--does that call Ronald Oranger the editor into question as well?
[...] I always took it for granted that the novel was a folie a deux;
that anti-terra was a grotesque solipsistic fantasy wherein the lovers
try to live happily ever after but can't.
Jansy Mello: My comment
was modest [We cannot be certain that Ada's
editorial scribbling is really Ada's] but J.A slightly enlarged it
to call into question editor Ronald Oranger. These are
conjectures worth entertaining, not only because they express a
familiar pattern in that (Transparent Things, Pale Fire,
... ) which might deceive us into considering it as
being "familiar."
Van often writes as if he were senile and
quite mad. Nevertheless his creativity
is mostly intact, whereas bright and precocious Ada's
contributions or presence are sedate and conventional. Could both
be writing the novel in a "folie a deux"? I shall have to read it
again to check Vaniada's suicide, Violet's mistakes, Ronald's
participation. Or the neat full circle when the couple "dies into the
book" like one of the pressed flowers or inkblots in the album they, as
kids, might have investigated in the attic.
J.Aisenberg: I
have wondered if they were really brother and sister, and whether this
simply became a fond delusion for the couple because it made them feel
like they were more alike somehow
JM: Van wrote: ‘Why do stairs creak so desperately, when
two children go upstairs,’ she thought, looking up at the balustrade along which
two left hands progressed with strikingly similar flips and glides like siblings
taking their first dancing lesson. ‘After all, we were twin sisters; everybody
knows that.’ The same slow heave, she in front, he behind, took them over the
last two steps, and the staircase was silent again. ‘Old-fashioned qualms,’ said
Marina."
Why would Van, at this point, make Marina doubt that Van
and Ada were siblings? It seems quite
preposterous.
In this sentence, though, there is no reference to
similar birthmarks, nor would Van and Ada both show them on their left
hands. Their marks formed a cross: The right instep and the back of her left
hand bore the same small not overconspicuous but indelible and sacred
birthmark, with which nature had signed his right hand and left
foot.
Other references to birthmarks, gemelarity, mirrors
and consanguinity:
1. (patting his brown blotched hand on which their shared
birthmark had got lost among the freckles of
age);
2. He discovered her
hands [...] She had on
the back of her left hand the same small brown spot that marked his
right one. She was sure, she said — either disingenuously or
giddily — it descended from a birthmark Marina had had removed surgically from
that very place years ago [...]
3.‘Old storytelling devices,’ said Van, ‘may be parodied only by
very great and inhuman artists, but only close relatives can be forgiven for
paraphrasing illustrious poems. Let me preface the effort of a cousin —
anybody’s cousin — by a snatch of Pushkin, for the sake of rhyme
—’
‘For the snake of rhyme!’ cried Ada. ‘A paraphrase, even my
paraphrase, is like the corruption of "snakeroot" into "snagrel" — all that
remains of a delicate little birthwort.’ (birthwort? wart?mark???
"snagrel"..."mongrel"?)
4....consanguineocanceroformia[...]
Don’t put your little cold hand on my paw — that could only hasten your end and
mine. On with your story.’ [...] Oh, I love her
hands, Van, because they have the same rodinka (small
birthmark), because the fingers are so long, because, in fact, they are
Van’s in a reducing mirror, in tender diminutive, v laskatel’noy
forme’ (the talk — as so often happened at emotional moments in the
Veen-Zemski branch of that strange family, the noblest in Estotiland, the
grandest on Antiterra — was speckled with Russian, an effect not too
consistently reproduced in this chapter — the readers are restless tonight).
[...]‘Yes, she started a
rather sad little affair with Johnny, a young star from Fuerteventura, c’est
dans la famille, her exact odnoletok (coeval), practically her twin
in appearance, born the same year, the same day, the same instant —’
That was a mistake
on silly Lucette’s part....