*...Interestingly, Russian Zud sounds
like the German word for "South," minus the umlaut.** "South" is a story by
Borges that somewhat resembles Nabokov's Lik (1939), the story that
"Zud" parodies. On the other hand, Vasco da Gama, whose name is played
upon by Van in his thespionym, sailed southward, doubling
Africa, in his journey to India.
**cf. Van's words to Dick C. in Ada: "I
have often wondered why the Russian for it... is the same as the German for
"schoolboy," minus the umlaut" (1.28). The Russian word Van has in mind is, of
course, shuler ***("card-sharper"). Now, Borges' first unpublished
book, mentioned in his story "Alef," was "The Hand of a Card-Sharper." Alef is
the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and letters of several
alphabets play an important role in Ada (also, cf. "Alphabet - the
Mirror of Life," Varfolomey Korobeynikov's catalogue of requisitioned
furniture, in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs" and "Friends of the
ABC," a secret society in Hugo's "Les Miserables").
***Otherwise, the word shuler almost
automatically brings to a Russian reader's mind Satin, a character in
Gorky's play Na dne ("At the Bottom"), a card-sharpener and a
drunkard, who is made to utter phrases like "Man - this [word]
sounds proudly" and "Lie is the religion of slaves and masters, Truth is God of
a free man." The ancients believed that truth was in
wine...