Images to link with "Ada": Van's hypnoid
state ending with "one hund*...red dog."
(images of luxurious travel in an "Edwardian
train")
"A sense of otiose emptiness
was all Van derived from those contacts with Literature. Even while writing his
book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while
attempting to piece together another one from jagged bits filched from deranged
brains. He decided that after completing his medical studies at Kingston (which
he found more congenial than good old Chose) he would undertake long travels in
South America, Africa, India. As a boy of fifteen (Eric Veen’s age of
florescence) he had studied with a poet’s passion the time-table of three great
American transcontinental trains that one day he would take — not alone (now
alone). From Manhattan, via Mephisto, El Paso, Meksikansk and the Panama
Chunnel, the dark-red New World Express reached Brazilia and Witch (or Viedma,
founded by a Russian admiral). There it split into two parts, the eastern one
continuing to Grant’s Horn, and the western returning north through Valparaiso
and Bogota. On alternate days the fabulous journey began in Yukonsk, a two-way
section going to the Atlantic seaboard, while another, via California and
Central America, roared into Uruguay. The dark blue African Express began in
London and reached the Cape by three different routes, through Nigero, Rodosia
or Ephiopia. Finally, the brown Orient Express joined London to Ceylon and
Sydney, via Turkey and several Chunnels. It is not clear, when you are falling
asleep, why all continents except you begin with an A.
Those three
admirable trains included at least two carriages in which a fastidious traveler
could rent a bedroom with bath and water closet, and a drawing room with a piano
or a harp. The length of the journey varied according to Van’s predormient mood
when at Eric’s age he imagined the landscapes unfolding all along his
comfortable, too comfortable, fauteuil. Through rain forests and mountain
canyons and other fascinating places (oh, name them! Can’t — falling
asleep), the room moved as slowly as fifteen miles per hour but across
desertorum or agricultural drearies it attained seventy, ninety-seven
night-nine, one hund, red dog —"
*: Hund: dog in German. Reminiscent of
C.Morgenstern's wordplay with Elf (eleven/elf )