She [Cordula] talked on and on, and he [Van] lost the thread of her discourse, or rather it
got enmeshed in the rapid landscape, which his gaze followed over her shoulder,
with a sudden ravine recording what Jack said when his wife ‘phoned, or a lone
tree in a clover field impersonating abandoned John, or a romantic stream
running down a cliff and reflecting her brief bright affair with Marquis Quizz
Quisana. (1.42)
The rattling sound of quizisans (cheap self-service
dining-rooms) is mentioned by Pasternak in Vozvrashchenie ("The
Return"), a poem included in Sestra moya zhizn' ("My Sister
Life"):
Чтоб полдень осязал
Сквозь сон: в обед
трясутся
По звону квизисан
Столы в пустых присутствиях...
This is immediately preceded by a quatrain in which
thunderclouds in cucumbers (tuchi v ogurtsakh) have pistol
duels/commit suicides out of despair:
Чтоб щёлкали с кольца
Клесты по
канцеляриям
И тучи в огурцах
С отчаянья стрелялись.
Van to Cordula: 'Tell me something to
distract me, though you distract me as it is, un petit topinambour as
the Teuton said in the story.’ (1.42)
Vivian Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): topinambour: tuber of the girasole; pun on 'pun'
('calembour').
In Kalugano Van out of despair has a pistol duel with Captain
Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge.
Alexey Sklyarenko