D'Onsky's son, a person with only one arm,
threw his remaining one around Demon and both wept comme des fontaines.
(3.8)
His [Demon's]
tear glands were facile in action when no real sorrow made him control
himself. (1.38) Demon is not terribly upset by Marina's
death.
Btw., one-armed d'Onsky is the son of the Bohemian lady (who
married Skonky after his duel with Demon: 1.2). Bogemskiy ("Bohemian")
was M. P. Chekhov's pen name in the magazine Children's Repose
("Detsko-Bogemskiy otdykh," as A. P. Chekhov jokingly called
it). In the last years of his life Chekhov, suffering from
tuberculosis, had to live in Yalta (not too far from Bakhchisaray) or in
Nice (where Marina died of cancer: 3.1).
Demon died in a mysterious airplane disaster (3.7). During his
visit to Ardis in 1888 he tells Van: "I offered
myself en effet a trip to Akapulkovo." (1.38) Pulkovo
is the site of the famous observatory and the airport near St. Petersburg. It is
mentioned in The Gift (Chapter Three): "and yon star sheds on Pulkovo
its beam."
Demon recalls orange-juice-stained Povesa (playboy)
magazines he saw in Mexico. (1.38) In EO (One: II: 1-3) Pushkin describes Onegin
as young povesa (scapegrace) flying with posters to his dying
uncle.
Alexey Sklyarenko