A moment later, however, Van remarked: 'I think I'll
take an Alibi - I mean an Albany - myself.'
'Please note, everybody,' said Ada, 'how voulu
that slip was! I like a smoke when I go mushrooming, but when I'm back, this
horrid tease insists I smell of some romantic Turk or Albanian met in the
woods.' (1.38)
The romantic Turk or Albanian Ada meets in the woods is her lover
Percy de Prey. Percy is to perish soon, and it is an old Tartar who shoots
him dead:
When a couple of minutes later, Percy - still Count
Percy de Prey - regained consciousness he was no longer alone on his rough bed
of gravel and grass. A smiling old Tartar, incongruously but somehow assuagingly
wearing American blue-jeans with his beshmet, was squatting by his
side. 'Bednïy, bednïy' (you poor, poor fellow), muttered the good soul,
shaking his shaven head and clucking: 'Bol'no (it hurts)?' Percy
answered in his equally primitive Russian that he did not feel too badly
wounded: 'Karasho, karasho ne bol'no (good, good),' said the kindly old
man and, picking up the automatic pistol which Percy had dropped, he examined it
with naive pleasure and then shot him in the temple. (1.42)
Tatarin (a Tartar) is a character in Gorky's play Na dne
(At the Bottom, 1902). It is tatarin who accuses Baron of cheating in a
card game:
Татарин (кричит). А! Карта рукав совал!
Барон (конфузясь). Ну... что же мне - в нос твой
сунуть?*
rukav = kurva (rukav - sleeve; Gorky's Baron slips a card in his
sleeve; kurva - whore)
At an invisible sign of Dionysian
origin, they all plunged into the violent dance called kurva or 'ribbon
boule' in the hilarious program whose howlers almost caused [Baron Demon] Veen (tingling, and light-loined, and
with Prince N.'s rose-red banknote in his pocket) to fall from his seat.
(1.2)
The professional shuler (card-sharper), and
raisonneur, in Gorky's play is Satin. Satin +
i = istina (truth). According to the Latin saying (quoted by Blok in
Incognita), istina v vine (in wine is truth). If
the first letter in vine (prepositional case of
vino, "wine") is capitalized, the phrase (istina v Vine)
acquires a new meaning: "in Veen is truth."
*This scene is evoked by Hodasevich in his memoir essay on Gorky.
Alexey Sklyarenko