Chapter 33 Chapter Thirty-Two

She told me how she lost her virginity.We ate bland, powdery bananas, bruised peaches and very good potato chips, and die Klein told me all about it.She made many funny moues on her face while speaking fluently and uncoordinated.I think I've said it, and I especially remember the grimace she made after she said "Yo!": the jelly-like mouth grinned to one side, the eyes rolled upwards, with the customary mix of ridiculous distaste and resignation. Airy, but also has a tolerance for the weak will of young people. Her startling story begins with a buddy who slept in the same tent as her the previous summer at another camp, one she said was "very difficult to attend."The buddy ("an outcast character", "kind of crazy", but a "fantastic kid") taught her various ways of masturbating.Faithful Lo refused to tell me her name at first.

"Is that Grace Angel?" I asked. She shook her head.No, no, the daughter of a great man.he-- "Perhaps Ross Carmine?" "No, of course not. Her father—" "Agnes Sheridan, presumably, then?" She swallowed, shook her head - and was startled. "Well, how do you know all these girls?" I explained. "Well," she said, "they're all bad, some of the school gang, but not so bad. If you must know, her name is Elizabeth Talbot, and now she's going to A very fine private school. Her father was an administrator." I recall, with inexplicable pain, how poor Charlotte used to tell such wonderful anecdotes in the small talk of gatherings of friends, as in "When my daughter went hiking with the Talbot girl last year" .

I wonder if either mother knows about this lesbian pastime. "Of course I don't know," the weak Luo said softly, pretending to be scared but relieved, and pressed a hand that pretended to be trembling tightly to his chest. However, I was more interested in her heterosexual experience.Shortly after moving to Ramsdale from the Midwest at age eleven, she was a sixth grader.What exactly did she mean by "very bad"? Oh, the Miranda twins slept in the same bed for years; Donald Scott, the dumbest boy in school, did that with Hazel Smith in his uncle's garage; and Kenneth Knight - the brightest student in the class - bares his naked body wherever he gets the chance, and -

"Let's talk about Camp Quay," I said.In a short while, I knew the whole situation. Barbara Burke, a stocky, fair, blond girl two years older than Low, was clearly the best swimmer in camp.She had a very peculiar little canoe, which she rowed with Lo "because I was the only girl other than her who could swim to Willow Island" (a swimming test, I think).Every morning in July—every pleasant morning, mind you, reader—Barbara and Lo, with the help of Charlie Holmes, carried the canoe to Onix or Eric (two little lakes in the woods), Charlie Holmes was thirteen, the son of the camp matron—and the only male (except for a meek, totally deaf and a farmer who drives an old Ford and sometimes sells eggs to the campers as the crop-men do).Every morning, my reader, these three children take a short cut through the beautiful and safe woods, full of every sign of youth, dew, and birdsong.In the thick undergrowth, Lo always kept a sentinel at one point, while Barbara and the boy made love behind the bushes.

At first Lo is reluctant to "try what it's like," but curiosity and mutual camaraderie prevail; and before long she and Barbara are taking turns with the taciturn, vulgar, sullen and tireless Charlie.Charley had as much sexual allure as a raw carrot, and he showed off a bewitching collection of contraceptives.He often scooped up such supplies from another nearby lake, a larger and more populated one called Lake Cremarks (after the young, burgeoning factory town). .While Lolita admits it's "a little bit of fun" and "can make people look radiant," I'm happy to say that she has a lot of contempt for Charlie's intelligence and mannerisms.Nor was her temperament excited by that obscene little villain.In fact, as "fun" as it is, I think her temperament only confuses him a little.

It was nearly ten o'clock then.As the desire subsided, I developed a pale, dreaded feeling buzzing in my temples.It was a gray, nerve-wracking day, and the dead reality of the situation contributed to my feelings.Tanned, naked, limp Lo stood with her arms akimbo, her feet (in new fur-topped slippers) spread apart, her narrow white buttocks toward me, her stern face toward the door. Looking at the mirror on the bed, she was grimacing at herself in the mirror through a lock of hair hanging on her forehead.In the corridor came the murmured voice of the black maid at work.After a while, they gently tried to open our door.I told Lo to the bathroom to take a much-needed shower with soap.The bed was a mess with crumbs of potato chips everywhere.She tried on a navy blue woolen two-piece suit, then a sleeveless shirt and a swirling plaid skirt, but the first was too tight and the second was too baggy.I begged her to hurry up (the situation was beginning to alarm me), and she threw my wonderful presents into the corner of the room viciously, and put on the clothes she was wearing yesterday.At last she was dressed, and I gave her a beautiful new purse of imitation calfskin (in which I had also slipped a few pennies and two shiny new dimes) and told her to go down to the hotel lobby to give it to her. Buy yourself a magazine.

"I'll be down right away," I said, "and if I were you, my dear, I wouldn't talk to strangers." Apart from my poor little presents, there wasn't really much to do; but I was compelled to spend a dangerously long time (was she doing something downstairs?) to make the bed so that it looked like A couch abandoned by a tossing father and his naughty daughter, not a scene of an ex-jailed convict hanging out with two or three fat old whores.Then I got dressed and called the gray-haired waiter to come up and help me with my luggage. Everything is going smooth.In the lobby of the hotel, she was sitting deeply in a blood-red armchair with thick stuffing, buried in a movie magazine with a gaudy binding.There was a guy about my age in tweed (the mood of the place had changed overnight to a fake, country-squire vibe) and was staring at my newspaper over his unextinguished cigar and outdated newspaper. lolita.She was wearing white school socks, two-tone loafers, and a brightly colored calico dress with a square neckline.A stream of greenish-yellow light illuminated the golden hair on her warm brown arms and legs.She sat there with her legs crossed high in a careless way, her pale eyes darting and blinking as they read between the lines.Bill's wife had worshiped him from a distance long before their meeting.In fact, she often secretly adored the famous young actor while he ate sundaes at Schwab's grocery store.Nothing could be more childlike than her snub nose, her freckled face, or the slightly purplish spot on her bald neck where the mythical vampire swigged her. nothing more dainty than the act of her mindless tongue licking the rosy rash on the sides of her swollen lips; nothing more innocuous than reading about Jill, a woman full of A lively starlet who makes her own clothes and loves to study serious literature; there is nothing more innocent than the soft, slick part of her lustrous brown hair at the temples; nothing more natural and unadorned Yes—but if that lascivious, whoever he is—come to think of it, he's a bit like my Swiss uncle Gustav.Gustave is also a person who admires le deouvert very much-knowing that every nerve in my body still has the feeling of being rubbed by her body-the body of the immortal demon dressed as a girl, so How disgustingly jealous he would feel.

Is Mr Sworn, rosy-cheeked and piggy, absolutely sure that my wife hasn't called?He can be sure.If my wife calls, will he tell her we've left for Aunt Clare's?Of course he will.I paid the bill and got Lo out of his chair.She got into the car without taking her eyes off the magazine.She was driven to a so-called diner a few blocks south, still reading magazines.Oh, she had a good appetite, and even put the magazines aside as she ate, but her usual cheerfulness gave way to a strange listlessness.I know Xiaoluo can be very bad-tempered sometimes, so I mustered up the courage, opened my mouth and smiled, and waited for her to yell loudly.I didn't shower, I didn't shave, I didn't go out.My nerves are tense.I don't like the way my little sweetheart shrugs her shoulders and flares her nostrils when I want to chat casually.Did Phyllis know before she went to Maine to join her parents?I asked with a smile on my face.

"Hey," Lo said with a mournful grimace, "let's not talk about it." I tried again—unsuccessfully, no matter how much I smacked my lips—to get her interested in the road map.Let me remind my patient reader that Loe should learn this meek temper of yours, and our destination was that merry town of Lepinville, near a hypothetical hospital.The destination itself was a completely random choice (alas, like so many destinations to come); What other plausible and plausible goals could later be programmed by all films.Humbert felt increasingly uncomfortable.It was a rather peculiar feeling: an oppressive, uncomfortable tension, as if I were sitting with the tiny ghost of someone I had just killed.

A pained look crossed Lo's face as he got back into the car.When she sat down next to me, the look flitted across her face, even more meaningful.No doubt she did it again to let me know.I stupidly asked her what was going on. "It's nothing, you rough bastard," she replied. "You what?" I asked.She said nothing.We left Bryceland.Luo, who likes to talk a lot on weekdays, remained silent.There seemed to be many cold, panicked spiders crawling down my back.This is a child who lost his parents.It was a lonely child, a child who was completely homeless, and a heavy-limbed, smelly adult had fucked her three times that morning with all his might.And regardless of whether the lifelong dream came true beyond expectations, in a sense it was overdone—into a nightmare.I have always been careless and mean and stupid.Let me be quite frank: somewhere in the bottom of that dark turmoil, I felt the squirm of lust again, how much I wanted this poor nymphet.Mixed with bouts of guilt was the painful thought that, once I had found a suitable stretch of country road where I could park undisturbed, her emotions might prevent me from going to the car again. She begs.In other words, poor Humbert Humbert was very unhappy, and as he drove steadily and bewilderedly toward Lepinville, he kept agonizing over for a witty remark, and luckily this astute one Under the cover of his son, he boldly turned to his seatmate.However, it was she who broke the silence later:

"Oh, a squashed little squirrel," she said, "what a pity." "Yeah, isn't it." (The eager, hopeful Heng said.) "Let's stop at the next gas station," Lo went on. "I'm going to the bathroom." "We'll park where you want," I said.Then, in a bleak, beautiful, majestic grove (probably an oak tree, I can't name it when it was the size of trees in America) began to reverberate with the sound of our car running, and to the right there was A red-dirt road overgrown with ferns turned before slanting into the woodland.So I suggested that maybe we could— "Go ahead," my Lo shrieked. "Okay. Take it easy." (Frustrated, poor beast, deflated) I glanced at her.Thankfully, the kid smiled. "You idiot," she said, smiling sweetly at me, "you are such a loathsome fellow. I was a lively girl, and look what you did to me. I should call the police Come here and tell them you raped me. Oh, you dirty, dirty old bastard." Is she just joking?There was an ominous, hysterical tone to her stupid words.Soon there was a hissing sound in her mouth and she started complaining of pain, that she couldn't sit still, that I had poked something inside her.Sweat was running down my neck as we nearly crushed a critter crossing the road with its tail up, and my grumpy companion gave me another curse.We stopped the car at a gas station and she got out without a word and didn't come back for a long time.An older guy with a broken nose wiped my windshield slowly and carefully—these guys do it differently everywhere, with everything from a chamois rag to a soap brush. Yes, and this guy uses a pink sponge. She finally showed up. "Hi," she said in that nonchalant voice that stung me deeply, "give me some silver and nickels. I want to call my mother who lives in that hospital. What's the number?" "Get in the car," I said, "you can't call that number." "why?" "Get in the car and close the door." She got into the car and slammed the door shut.The old oiler smiled at her.I drove onto the road. "If I want to call Mom, why not?" "Because," I replied, "your mother died."