As I said earlier (responding to the query put forward by
Marie Bouchet), the name Lucette (or Lucy, or Lucinda) does not exist in
Russian. However, several froms of this name do occur in
Russian literature.
In Ilf and Petrov's Zolotoy telyonok ("The Golden
Calf," chapter XIII: "Vasisualiy Lokhankin and his Role in the Russian
Revolution"), Lucia Frantsevna Pferd is one of the restless inhabitants of
Voron'ya slobodka ("the Crow's Nest") that burns down one night as the
'baronial barn' does in Ada (1.19). Pferd is, of
course, German for "horse" and belongs to the "equine" theme in Ada
(according to Lucette's mother Marina, "the Zemskis were terrible
rakes (razvratniki), one of them loved small girls, and
another raffolait d'une de ses juments and had her tied up in a special
way... when he dated her in her stall:" 1.37).
In A. N. Tolstoy's story Drevniy put' ("The Ancient
Way," 1927), Lucie is a cousin and bride of the hero, a French officer
who returns from Odessa (Chernomorsk in the Ilf and Petrov novel) to
Marseilles. It is his last sea journey. Among Paul Taurin's fellow
travellers are Russian refugees (the time is 1919). Mt. Ida (cf. Ida
Larivière, Lucette's governess) is mentioned in the story. Btw., taurin
means in French "of bull" (cf. Daniel Veen's mother was a
Trumbell, and he was prone to explain at great length - unless side-tracked by a
bore-baiter - how in the course of American history an English 'bull' had become
a New England 'bell': 1.1; Daniel Veen is Lucette's father). A. N.
Tolstoy's mother was a Turgenev. When rearranged, the four closing letters
of her name form Veen.
The first part of A. N. Tolstoy's trilogy Khozhdenie po
mukam ("The Road to Calvary," 1921-40) is entitled
Syostry ("The Sisters"). Bulavin, the maiden name of the sisters
Katya and Dasha, ends in vin. Ivan Ilyich Telegin (the novel's
protagonist) is a namesake of Ivan Ilyich Golovin (the hero of Tolstoy's
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich"). The name Telegin comes from telega, "cart,
waggon." Cf. in Ada (1.19): "The entire domestic
staff seemed to be taken off to enjoy the fire (an infrequent event in our
damp windless region), using every contraption available or imaginable:
telegas, teleseats, roadboats, tandem bycicles and even the clockwork
luggage carts with which the stationmaster supplied the family in memory of
Erasmus Veen, their inventor." The characters of "The
Sisters" include the poet Aleksei Alekseevich Bessonov (read: Aleksandr
Aleksandrovich Blok, the poet whose noble looks seemed to have served as a model
for Van Veen).
Thanks to Ivan Turgenev, Smert' Lyusi Pelegren
("La fin de Lucie Pellegrin" by Paul Alexis) first appeared in Russian
(in the magazine Slovo, 1880) and only then in French. Van's
flat in Manhattan (his "wing à terre") is on Alexis
Avenue.
As I pointed out earlier, Lucette + fire =
Lucifer + tête (tête - Fr., head)
Alexey Sklyarenko