Chapter 70 Chapter Thirty-Six

The rest is kind of bland.I drove slowly down the hill, and soon found myself driving in the opposite direction from Parkington at the same lazy pace.I left my raincoat in the parlor and my buddy in the bathroom.No, that's not the house I would want to live in.I thought leisurely, if a genius surgeon could bring Quilty under the quilt and "Claire the Nameless" back to life, I wonder if he would change his career, maybe even change the entire destiny of mankind.I don't care about that; on the whole I want to forget about all this mess--and when I do know he's dead, the only satisfaction I'll get is the relief that I don't have to go on a mental run for days. Months of a painful, nasty recovery, with all sorts of unspeakable surgeries and repeated distractions, and perhaps his visits too, to keep me on my toes Find reasons to prove that he is not a ghost.Thomas has a point.Strange to say, the sense of touch, which is far less valuable to people than sight, becomes, in a pinch, our main, if not the only, means of grasping reality.I'm covered in Quilty—the feeling of him tumbling and rolling before he bleeds.

The road was now through open country.It occurred to me—not as a protest, not as a symbol or anything of the sort, but just as a novel experience—that since I had disregarded all human laws, I might as well have disregarded the traffic rules.So I drove to the left side of the road to see how it felt, and it was pretty good.It was a pleasant diaphragm-melting sensation with a diffused tactile component to it, all reinforced by the idea that nothing comes close to deliberately driving on the wrong side of the road It's about breaking down the fundamental laws of physics.At one point, it was all a spiritual longing.I was driving slowly and dreamily along the odd side of the road where the car's rear-view mirror was located, not going faster than twenty miles an hour.There is not much traffic on the road.From time to time, a car would drive past me from the side I had given up to them, honking its horn roughly at me.The oncoming car wobbles, swerves, and finally screams in terror.Before long I found that I was approaching a residential area.Running a red light once is like sneaking a sip of wine that I was forbidden to drink as a child.At this time, complicated situations continued to emerge.I was followed and escorted.Then, in front of me, I saw two cars poised to completely block my way.I pulled the car off the road gracefully, bumped hard two or three times, and sprinted up a grassy slope, among some startled cows, where I wobbled to a stop.An inventive synthesis of Hegelian philosophy connects the two dead women.

Soon I'll be pulling out the car (Hi Melmosh, thanks, old chap) - and, indeed, I'm looking forward to having many hands grabbing me, without a little cooperative effort myself, Let them move me, carry me; I'm like a sick person, very relaxed, comfortable, slouching at their mercy, and benefiting from my lethargy and the infallible support of the police and ambulance crews. A mysterious pleasure.As I stopped on that high slope and waited for them to come running towards me, I conjured up one last strange and hopeless vision.One day, shortly after her disappearance, I was driving down an old disused mountain road, and I was stopped by a fit of unbearable nausea; Direction; It was a light blue afternoon in late summer, and the large aster flowers on the side of the mountain road were bathed in the warm air away from the hustle and bustle.I coughed violently for a while, as if I was going to cough up all my internal organs, and then I sat on a big rock to rest for a while, thinking that the fresh air might be good for me, I walked towards the road on the steep side of the road not far away. A low stone parapet walked past.The little grasshopper jumped out of the dry weeds by the roadside.A thin puffy cloud is spreading its arms and moving towards another thicker puffy cloud; this puffy cloud belongs to another cloud system that is moving slowly towards the sky.As I approached that friendly abyss, I felt a mingled harmony of sounds rising like vapor from a small mining town in the rolling valley below me.You can make out the geometric streets among the rows of red and gray roofs, the verdant trees, a meandering brook, and the garbage dump that glitters like ore; , all roads crisscross the dark and light fields like a patchwork quilt; further away, there are mountains covered with dense forests.Yet brighter than all these silent and cheery colors--these colors, these shades of light and dark mixed together, seeming to enjoy themselves--sound brighter and more elusive than they seem, It was the built-up sound that vibrated like rising steam; it didn't stop for a moment, rising to the edge of the granite stone, where I was standing, wiping my foul-smelling mouth.It didn't take long for me to realize that all these voices were of the same nature, and that there were no other voices but these coming from the streets of that transparent town where the women were at home and the men were away.reader!All I heard were the sweet voices of children at play, and that alone; and the air was so clear and clear that in this land, loud and faint, far and magically near, Candid and divinely unfathomable in a mist of voices mingled deep—now and then you could hear a brisk laugh, almost quite distinctly, the crack of a baseball bat, or the orbital clatter of a toy wagon. , all seemed to be released, but they were too far away to make out any movement of them in those blurred streets.I stood on the top of this high slope and listened to the melodious tremors, to the disconnected cries among the reserved whispers, and then I understood that the poignant, hopeless thing was not that Lolita was not with me. side, but her voice is not in that piece of harmony.

This is my story.I re-read it.There was a bit of bone marrow stuck to it, and there was blood, and there were beautiful flies that were shiny green.At one turn or another in the story, I feel like my elusive self is always eluding me, slipping into deeper, darker oceans than I'd care to probe.I've covered up everything I can so as not to hurt people.I thought up many pseudonyms for myself at random before finding one that was particularly suitable.I have "Otto Otto", "Mesmer Mesmer" and "Lambert Lambert" in my notes, but for some reason I think my choice expresses my Despicable and dirty.

Fifty-six days ago, when I started writing, first under observation in a psychiatric ward, then in this warm tomb-like isolation room, I thought I would use all these notes in my trial, not to save me, of course. life, but to save my soul.However, halfway through the writing, I realized that I couldn't expose the living Lolita.Parts of this memoir were still available to me during the closed session, but the publication date has been delayed. I oppose the death penalty for reasons more obvious than it actually appears; and I believe this attitude will be consistent with the sentencing judge.Had I stood before myself on trial, I would have sentenced Humbert to at least thirty-five years for rape and dismissed the rest of the charges.But even so, Lori Shearer will probably outlive me by many years!I have made the following decision, with the full legal force and force of a signed will: I wish this memoir to be published only when Lolita is no longer alive.

Therefore, when the reader opens this book, we are both dead.But since the blood is still running in the palm of my writing hand, you are still blessed by God as I am, and I can still speak to you in Alaska from here.Be true to your Dick.Don't let other guys touch you.Don't talk to strangers.I hope you will love your children.I wish he was a boy.I hope that husband of yours will always be good to you, or else my ghost will come to him to settle accounts, will be like black smoke, will be like a mad giant, and tear him to pieces.Don't pity Ke Quay.God had to choose between him and Heng Heng. God let Heng Heng live at least two or three months longer, so that He could keep you alive in the hearts of future generations.I think now of the bison and the angels, of the secret of the enduring paint, of the prophetic sonnet, of the sanctuary of art.This is the only immortal thing you and I can share, my Lolita.