Chapter 2 Chapter One

Lolita, the light of my life, the fire of my lust.My sin, my soul. Lo-Li-ta: The tip of the tongue goes up, in three steps, from the palate down to gently land on the teeth.Lori Ta. In the morning she was Lo, just plain Lo, four feet ten in one sock.In slacks, she was Lola.At school she is Dolly. She was Dolores when it was officially signed.But in my arms she will always be Lolita. Was there anyone else before her?Yes, indeed there are.In fact, there might never have been a Lolita if I hadn't fallen in love with a girl one summer.A prince's domain by the sea.at what time?It was that year, as long as Lolita was born, I was as old as I was.Don't worry, murderers can always write brilliantly.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the first piece of evidence is exactly what was envied by the misrepresented, simple, noble-winged seraph.Just look at this tangled and painful history. I was born in Paris in 1910.My father was an elegant and easy-going man, a mixed race: Swiss, French-Austrian, with a little Danube water quality in his veins.Immediately pass on to you some postcards in beautiful color, smooth blue.He owns a luxury hotel on the Riviera.His father and two grandfathers were in the wine, jewelry and silk businesses respectively.At the age of thirty he married an Englishwoman, the daughter of the mountaineer Guillaume Dane, and the granddaughter of two Dorset clergymen who taught obscure subjects—paleopedology and geology, respectively. play the piano.My very photogenic mother died in an accident (picnic, lightning strike) when I was three, so in caves and valleys of memory she has nothing but a pocket of warmth from a dark past Existence; if you can bear my style (I write under surveillance), I remember the sun of my childhood has also sunk: you all know, of course, the fragrant afterglow that hangs around lush bushes when the sun dies, or The ground is intruded and trodden by the rambler; and at the foot of the mountain, where the worm flies in the summer evening; a soft warm, golden worm.

My mother's older sister, Siebel, who had been married to a distant relation of my father's, was divorced, and came to work as an unpaid governess and housekeeper with our close relative.Someone told me later that she had always loved my father.On a rainy day, he let her take advantage of her easily, and he forgot all about it after the rain was over.I like her very, very much, even though some of her rules are too strict -- as hell.Perhaps she wanted to make the most of the moment and make me a better widower than my father; Aunt Siebel had blue eyes with pink halos and a waxy complexion.She wrote poetry, and she was superstitious about poetry.She said she knew she would die after my sixteenth birthday, and it did.Her husband, a traveling perfume salesman, spent most of his time in the United States, where he eventually built a business and acquired real estate.

I grew up as a happy, healthy kid in a bright world of picture books, pristine beaches, orange trees, friendly dogs, ocean views, and smiling faces.Around me, the ornate Hotel Mirana swirled like a private universe, a pinkish-white cosmic body embedded in a larger blue universe shimmering around it.From pot cleaners in aprons to dignitaries in flannels, everyone likes me and spoils me. The old American lady leaned on her crutches and looked at me like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.A bankrupt Russian princess who can't pay her father, buys me fancy sweets.And he, my dear baby daddy, took me boating, cycling, taught me to swim, dive and water ski, read me Don Quixote and , and I adored him, respected him, and honored him Overhearing the servant talking about his various girlfriends, those beautiful and well-meaning creatures, they used me a lot, and murmured love words and shed precious tears for my lucky loss of mother.

I went to an English school, nine miles from home, where I played racket and handball, got good marks in my studies, and had excellent relations with my classmates and teachers.The exact sex I can remember from before the age of thirteen (i.e. before meeting my little Anabelle for the first time) was a serious discussion about adolescence abnormalities with an American boy in the school rose garden. , polite, and purely theoretical, the child's mother was a popular film actor at the time, and even the little boy himself had difficulty seeing her in three-dimensional space; The pearls and shadows, the soft parting, produced an interesting response when I saw photographs in the voluminous book The Beauty of Human Nature, which I stole from a pile of Cartography books surrounded by marbles in the hotel library. Take it out.Later, my father taught me all the sexual knowledge he thought I needed with joy and ease; this was before sending me to a Lycee Lyon in the autumn of 1923 (where we would stay for three winters); but please Note, that summer he traveled to Italy with Mrs. R. and her daughter; so no one listened to my complaints, no one gave me advice.

Annabelle, like the author, is of mixed race: but her case is half English, half Dutch.Today, the memory of her character is far less vivid than it was many years ago, before I met Lolita.There are two kinds of visual memory: one is to technically create an image in your own brain laboratory with your eyes open, (I saw Anabel at that time, as the general vocabulary describes: "soft as honey skin", "thin arms", "short brown hair", "long eyelashes", "big and beautiful mouth"); the other is when you close your eyes, and in the darkened inner walls of your eyelids, you suddenly remember From that object, it was a lovely face reproduced entirely by vision, a pixie in a natural sheen (that's what I saw Lolita look like).

So let me rein in myself and describe Annabelle seriously, as a lovely child a few months older than I am.Her parents, my aunt's good friends, were as reserved and boring as she was.They rented a villa not far from the Mirana Hotel.Mr. Li, who is bald and brown-skinned, and Mrs. Li, who is obese and has thick makeup.How I loathe them!At first, Annabelle and I talked about things around us.She kept holding up a handful of fine sand, and let it flow down her fingers.We adjust the tune of our minds to those bright European children of today, and stabilize, I doubt whether some individual genius should be allocated to interests such as: our interest in the world of mortals, our interest in competitive tennis, our interest in Interest in infinite space, interest in solipsism, etc.The softness and fragility of young animals causes us equally intense pain.She wanted to be a nurse in some starving Asian country, and I wanted to be an excellent spy.

For a split second we were madly, awkwardly, shamelessly, agonizingly in love; and at the same time hopelessly, I must add; Molecules can calm down; but we can't even find companionship as easily as children in the slums.After our desperate attempt to have a tryst in her garden one night (which was much later), our clandestine activities were allowed only in the bustling part of the beach, out of hearing and within sight within.On the soft sand, a few feet away from the grown-ups, we lay on our backs all morning, touching each other with a surge of desire, taking advantage of any god-given opportunity in time and space: her hand, half buried in the sand, would Slowly moving toward me, her long brown fingers sleepwalking closer and closer; then her milky white glowing knees would begin a cautious journey; lips; this incomplete contact drove our healthy but inexperienced immature bodies into a state of rage, and even in the cold lake water, we still held each other's hands tightly, unable to break free.

Among the many lost treasures of the wandering years of adulthood is a snapshot, taken by my aunt, of Annabelle, her parents, and the prudent lame gentleman, Dr. Cooper, sitting around a table in a roadside café ; the doctor proposed to my aunt in the summer of the same year.Annabelle was not well photographed because she was captured right when she was concentrating on a piece of chocolate parfait, her bare, skinny shoulders and the parting of her hair were recognizable (the photo I remember), sunshine obscuring her obsessive cuteness; and I, sitting away from the others, projected a theatrical bulge: a sullen, sullen boy in a dark tracksuit and a pair of well-cut white shorts, Cross your legs, sit sideways, and look to the side.This photo was taken on the last day of that devastating summer, just minutes before my second and final attempt to defy fate.With a very weak excuse (it was our last chance, nothing really mattered), we escaped from the cafe, went to the beach, and found a deserted sandy place with a pile of red stones. , in its bluish-purple shade, we fondled greedily, the only witness being a lost pair of sunglasses.

I was on my knees, about to take my love, when two bearded sea bathers, the old father of the sea and his brother, came up, shouting obscene words of encouragement.She died of typhoid four months later in Corfu. Again and again I turn over these bitter memories of mine, and ask myself whether in the light of that distant summer the gap in my life had begun; show?As I strive to analyze my desires, motives, actions, and all, I indulge a retrospective fantasy that, in its many variations, cultivates a gift for analysis and, amidst my wildly complex expectations of the past, arouses Every imaginary road diverges and diverges without end.But I do believe that Lolita is the continuation of Annabelle in a certain sense of magic and destiny.

I also knew that the horror of Anabelle's death had perpetuated the frustration of that nightmarish summer, a permanent obstacle to any other romance throughout my icy youth.Our spirit and body are fused in a state of perfection and beauty, but this state cannot be understood by today's practically superficial and standardized young people.Long after she died, I still felt her thoughts floating in my soul.Long before we met, we had the same dream.We compared each other's diaries.We find strange similarities.In the same year (1919), both in June, a stray canary flew into her room and into mine, in two countries far apart.Oh Lolita, you love me so much! Regarding the end of my "Anabelle" period, I withheld the account of our first unsuccessful attempt.That night, she tricked her family's vicious surveillance. Behind the villa, among the nervous, soft-leaved mimosa bushes, we found a hidden platform on a broken wall.Through the tender trees of the night, we can see the mottled patterns on the lighted windows, which, recalled by the colored inks of sensory memory, now float before us like cards—supposing our enemies are busy playing bridge.She trembled and convulsed, and I kissed the corners of her parted lips and burning earlobes.A cluster of stars shone dimly above us among the silhouettes of slender leaves; the living sky was as naked as her body under a light smock.I saw her face in the sky, strangely clear, as if radiating its own feeble flame.Her legs, her beautiful, healthy legs, were not quite closed together, and when my hand was in the place it was looking for, there was a dreamy, eerie expression, half pleasure, half pain, showing Now two boyish faces.She sits a little higher than me and comes to kiss me every time she's ecstatic alone, her head dreamily soft and slightly bent in a movement that's almost plaintive, her bare knees clamping mine tightly. Her wrist was loose again, her trembling mouth was twisted, as if stimulated by a mysterious medicine, she leaned towards my cheek and took a breath.When she came up, she would try to rub my dry lips against mine, trying to get rid of the pain of love, and then my love would avoid it again, flicking her hair nervously, and then approaching quietly, letting my lips be full of her smile Opening my small mouth, I am ready to give her everything generously, my heart, my throat, and my internal organs. I hand over my emotional staff to her and hold it in her clumsy palm. I was reminded of the scent of some kind of powder - I'm sure she stole it from her mother's Spanish servant - a sweet, light musky scent.Mixed with the smell of cheese on her body, my senses were suddenly filled; a sudden commotion in the nearby bushes kept them from overflowing - and we parted from each other at once, noticing with an aching heart what might be a A stealing cat, and now from inside the house came her mother's voice calling to her, rising on a high note--Dr. Cooper lumbering into the garden.But that mimosa grove--the faint starlight, the sound, the flame, the dew, and the pain are always in my heart, and the little girl with the limbs stretched by the sea and the fiery tongue has haunted me ever since--until , twenty-four years later, I incarnated her in another person and broke her spell. The days of my youth, when I look back, fly away like pale recurring fragments, like a wind and snow of waste toilet paper that train passengers see in the early morning after the rear of the lookout car circling.As far as my normal relationships with women go, I'm practical, humorous, and lighthearted.As a university student, in London and Paris, hired women were enough for me.My studies were too trivial and intense, though not particularly successful.At first I planned to get a degree in psychiatry, like so many poor wits do; but I was even worse than that; I was overwhelmed, doctor, and a peculiar kind of exhaustion set in; so I turned to English literature, where many failures Every poet ends up as a schoolteacher in tweeds and pipes.Paris suits me.I talked to exiles about Soviet cinema.I sit in "Second Portrait" with the uranium scientist.I published crooked vignettes in out-of-the-way tabloids.I also create limericks that imitate other people's styles: ...Miss Von Kulp Maybe turn around, her hand on the door; I won't follow her.Nor follow Flasca. And not with that bird. A paper of mine entitled "The Proustian Theme in Keats's Letters to Benjamin Bailey" was read by half a dozen or seven scholars and giggled.I finished The History of English Poetry in Miniature for a well-known publishing company, and then proceeded to write a handbook of French literature for Anglo-American students, which took up all my time between the ages of forty and forty-nine--I was arrested The last volume is about to be published. I found a job teaching English to an adult class in Otoi.Then a boys' school hired me for two winters.Occasionally, I also take advantage of my casual acquaintances among social workers and psychologists to accompany them to visit various units, such as orphanages and reform schools; there, girls who are about to enter puberty, pale , dark eyelashes, being auspicious but not hurt, reminds me of the girl given by the dream. Now I would like to introduce such a point of view.Some virgins within the age limit of nine and fourteen can reveal their true nature, not human, but satyr-like to some enchanted traveler, though twice or even several times younger than them (that is to say, ghostly); and these selected little lives, I want to name them "sexy girls". Obviously I replaced the concept of space with the concept of time.In fact, I want readers to see "nine" and "fourteen" as boundaries - mirrored sands and rose-colored rocks - the boundaries of an enchanted island that haunts the ghosts of my nymphets , the island is inlaid in a misty ocean.Are girls in this age range nymphets?of course not.Otherwise, those of us who are familiar with this way, us lonely passers-by, us lustful people, wouldn't we have gone mad long ago.Beauty is not the norm; and vulgarity, at least as far as a particular class is concerned, does not necessarily detract from some mystical quality: maddening elegance, elusive, cunning, soul-dividing, sinister allure, these All the qualities that set nymphets apart from their contemporaries, compared to the imaginary islands of time to come -- Lolita, and girls like her playing on it -- In other words, it is incomparably dependent on the space world that exists at this time.In the same age range, the number of real nymphets is much lower than those who are temporarily plain, or just good-looking, or "petite", or even "sweet and charming", ordinary, straightforward, unrestrained, Cold-skinned, impulsive little girls with puffy bellies and pigtails who may or may not turn out to be great beauties as adults (look at those stupid pudgy women in black stockings and The white straw hat is likened to the dazzling stars on the curtain).Show a no-nonsense guy a picture of a bunch of schoolgirls or Girl Scouts and ask him to pick the prettiest one, not necessarily the nymphet.You must be an artist, a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, your desires bubbling with poisonous heat, a hypersensual flame always red in your treacherous fortitude, to recognize at once, through indescribable Features--cat-like cheeks, lithe limbs, and other marks of disappointment and shame to tender tears, which I cannot list--distinguish, among all the children, that ecstasy imp; She was never discovered by them, and she was ignorant of her magical powers. Besides, since the idea of ​​time plays a very curious part in things, the students should not be surprised to understand that there should be an age gap between men and girls, I say, in any case not less than ten years, generally Thirty or forty years, and in some special cases even up to ninety years, would place the latter among the nymphets.It is a matter of focus adjustment, of the inner eye being able to shudder beyond a certain distance.When I was a child and she was a child, Anabelle was no nymphet to me; I was her rival, a little faun in my own right, on an equally enchanted island of time; but today, September 1952, twentieth Nine years flashed by, and I thought I could recognize in her the earliest ordained genie of my life.We love each other with an immature love, with the kind of brutality that, in adults, can often destroy their lives.I was a strong boy who survived; but the poison was in the wound, the wound was always open, and I soon discovered that in a civilization that allows a man of twenty-five to propose to a girl of sixteen and not twelve. , I am mature. There is no doubt that my adult life in Europe at that time was doubly horrible, indeed.Overtly, I have so-called normal relationships with many a woman with pumpkin-shaped or pear-shaped breasts; secretly, my stubborn lust for every passing nymphet wears me down like a coward against the law , dare not approach them.The women I can use are just tools of relief.I'm almost convinced that the sensations I get from natural sex are exactly the same as normal great men get married to their normal great partners in the tuned rhythms that rock the world.The problem is that those gentlemen failed to capture a joy that was so poignant that I captured it.My dimly defiled dreams are a thousand times more radiant than anything that the most vigorously gifted writer or the most gifted impotent can imagine.My world fell apart.I know not one but two sexes, neither of which is mine; both are called female by anatomists.But for me, through the prism of my senses, "they are as different as smoke is to a ship's mast."All of this, I can now explain scientifically.In my twenties and early thirties, I didn't understand my pain so clearly.While my body knows what it's looking for, my brain rejects my body's every request.For a moment I felt shy, terrified, and blindly optimistic.Taboos bound me.Psychoanalysts flatter me with pseudo-liberalism and pseudo-instinct.For me, the only objects of erotic excitement were Annabelle's sister, her maid, a maidservant, and this fact sometimes reminded me of insanity; But it's all about attitude, and there's nothing wrong with being mesmerized by a girl.Let me remind my readers that in England, following the passage of the Youth Act in 1933, a "girl" was defined as a "girl from eight to fourteen" (later, from fourteen to seventeen, the law is defined as "youth").And in Massachusetts, a "wayward child", mechanically speaking, is "between the ages of seven and seventeen" (besides, they are always in the company of gangsters or whores).Hugh Broughton, an eloquent writer of James I's day, has proved that Rahab was a prostitute at the age of ten.It's all very interesting, and I dare say you see me frothy; but no, I don't; I just let happy thoughts jump into a little cup.Here are some more pictures.This is Virgil.He can make a nymphet sing in a tone, and probably prefer a lad's peritoneum.These are the two unmarried Nile daughters of King Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti (the royal sisters have a litter of six-year-old puppies), except for strings of shiny beads on their naked bodies Xiang Lian has nothing else, three thousand years have passed, and he is still leaning leisurely on the mattress, his soft brown body, short-cut hair and black eyes are still beautiful and undamaged.Here, ten-year-old brides are forced to sit on firewood, a symbol of the robust ivory of ancient academic palaces.Prepubertal marriage and cohabitation are still common in some parts of East India.An eighty-year-old Repcha man can have sex with an eight-year-old girl, and no one blames him.When Dante fell madly in love with his Beatrice, she was only nine years old, resplendent maidenhood, this is in Florence in 1274, at a private banquet in bright May, she put on makeup , jeweled, very cute, wearing a crimson dress.When Petrarch fell madly in love with his Laurine, she was no more than a dazzling fair-haired nymphet of twelve, running in the wind, pollen and dust, a fluttering flower like in a painting Depicted, flew from the Vaucluse mountains to the beautiful plain. Let's be serious and civilized.Humbert Humbert tried hard to be good.In fact, he did.He had all respect for the innocence and frailty of ordinary children; he would not, under any circumstances, interfere with their innocence, even if there was little danger.But how his heart beat wildly when he picked out a goblin from the innocent crowd, "charming and cunning girl," with dreamy eyes and bright lips, if you only show you To stare at her is to spend ten years in prison.Life went on like this.Humbert is so good at making love to Eve, but it is the night monster that he desires.The budding stage of breast growth occurs early (10-7 years) due to the physical changes brought about by puberty.Maturity is followed by the first appearance of discolored pubic hair (11-12 years old). My little cup is full of wild thoughts. One capsize.An atoll.Alone with the trembling child of an overboard traveler.Honey, it's just a game!What wonderful adventures I fantasized when I sat on a hard park bench and pretended to be intoxicated in a quivering book.Around the quiet scholar, the nymphets play freely, as if he were a familiar statue or the shadow of an ancient tree.Once, a dainty little beauty in a tartan skirt, in a fit of laughter, put her heavily armed, heavy feet on a bench close to me, and stretched out her soft, bare arms diagonally to fasten the rims of her roller skates. tape, I melted in the sun, my book a cover, her auburn curls fell on her bony lap, the leaf shadows I enjoyed swayed and faded on her bright limbs, my The cheeks were dimmed beside her.Another time, a redheaded schoolgirl leaned against me on a subway car, and I caught a glimpse of a little russet leaking from her armpit that stayed in my blood for weeks.I could list a long list of such wishful little romances.Some dissipated in the rich aroma of hell.For example, I happened to see a nymphet undressing in front of a mirror in a lit window across the street from my balcony.So connected, so ecstasy, there was a seductive allure to the sight that made me run full speed towards my solitary beauty.But suddenly, badly, the beautiful nudity I admired was thrown into the bare arms of a man under the lamp, in his underwear, reading a newspaper, leaning against the open window, immersed in the hot, humid, desperate summer. at night. jump rope.Hopscotch.The old woman in black, sitting beside me on the bench, on my happy rack (a nymphet was groping for a lost marble at my feet), asked if I had a stomach ache, The insolent witch.Oh, go away, and leave me alone in my springy park, in my mossy flowerbed.Let them play by my side forever, and never grow up. One thought: I often wonder what these nymphets will grow up to be?In this wrought iron world where cause and effect are intertwined, can the quiet throbbing I stole from them not affect their future?I've got her - and she'll never know.That's fine too.But can it go undetected sometime in the future?At any rate, have I not spoiled her fate by involving her image in my own Pleasure?Oh, it was, and still is, the source of that terrible doubt. However, I still know what those cute, crazy, tender-armed nymphets are going to be when they grow up.I remember walking along a bustling side street near Madeleine on a gloomy spring afternoon.A small, slender girl in high heels brushed past me briskly but hurriedly; at the same moment we both turned our heads, she stopped and I accosted her.She walked up to my chest hesitantly. She has a round face with dimples that French girls often have. I like her long eyelashes and pearl-colored tight dress, which wraps her young body. Remember—that was the echo of the nymphet: a thrill of excitement, a rush of desire—something childlike mixed with the professional writhing of her lithe little ass.I asked her the price, and she answered accurately and quickly with Youyang's silver bell-like voice (a little bird, what a little bird!) "One hundred." I wanted to bargain, but she saw me low The lonely, sad longing in the drooping eyes is only fixed on her round forehead and symbolic hat (a ribbon, a bouquet of flowers); she blinks her eyelashes: "Forget it," she said, as if to leave .It may well have been only three years ago that I saw her walking home from school!This idea settled things.She led me up the usually steep stairs, and the bell that always rings for some gentleman who probably doesn't mind bumping into other gentlemen, to the wretched hut with nothing but the bed and the bidet.As always, she wanted a small gift soon, and I followed the rules by asking her her name (Monica) and age of work (eighteen).I've always known street hookers.They all say "eighteen"--a neat bird song, the last number, and a longing deception, they have to announce it ten times a day, these poor little lives.But as far as Monica is concerned, she has added a year or two to her own age, there is no doubt about it. That's what I deduced from the many nuances of her small, clean, immature body.She undressed, unexpectedly quickly, partly wrapped in dirty thin curtains, and stood there with utter baby-like joy listening to the music of an accordionist in the evening fog-shrouded courtyard below.I looked at her little hands and drew her attention to her stained nails, and she frowned innocently and said, "Yes, that's too bad," and ran to the sink, but I said I Didn't care, didn't care at all. Her brown hair was cut short, her gray eyes glowed with luster, and her pale skin made her look very attractive.Her ass is no bigger than a squatting boy; in fact, I say without hesitation (which is indeed why I linger gratefully on the gauzy room I remember with Monica) , of the eighty or so whores I have ever used, she is the only one who has given me the pain of infinite pleasure. "He's a smart guy who invented this thing," she commented warmly, before slipping back into her clothes just as quickly. I begged to do it again later that night, with more complicated work, and she said to meet me at the corner of the coffee shop at nine o'clock, and swore she never missed an appointment.We were back in the room again, and I couldn't help saying how pretty she was, to which she replied with mock demure, "Your words are very sweet," and she too noticed that I was looking at our little Eden in the mirror -- clenched love, grinning grin that twists the corners of my mouth -- submissive little Monica (oh, she's totally a nymphet!) wondering if she should wipe it off before we go to bed Her lipstick in case I want to kiss her. Of course I will.I let loose with her more than any other girl before, and the last vision given to me that night by the long-lashed Monica called up a spirit of joy that I could hardly compare it with my disgrace. , sordid and silent love life linked to any event.She looked delighted as she strolled into the drizzle of that April night, with my fifty franc tip for Humbert.Humbert followed her slender figure.She stopped in front of a display window and exclaimed enthusiastically: "I want to buy glass silk stockings!" With longing, turn that "a" sound into a lively "0", like "Changwo". The next day at 2:15 in the afternoon, I had another date with her in my room, but it was not as successful as before. Overnight, she seemed to lose a lot of youth and become more feminine.The indifference I acquired from her prevented me from assigning a fourth homework; I am not sorry to interrupt this series of emotions and let it fade away in disappointment. Tired.So, let her be the radiant, suave Monica she was for a minute or two: a guilty nymphet shining through a real whore. The brief relationship with her inspired me a series of ideas, readers who are familiar with the inside story must understand.On a bright day, an advertisement in a pornographic magazine led me to a man named Miller.Edith's office, she came up and handed me a dirty photo album and asked me to pick out a sexually compatible soul among the pretty photos in it ("Look at me brunette !”).After I pushed the album aside and made my sinful request, she looked like she was about to tell me where the door was; people.The next day, an asthmatic woman came, poorly dressed, babbling, smelling of garlic, speaking a very funny Provence accent, with a black beard on her purple lips, and led me To her own home, evidently; suddenly kissed the tips of her pudgy, protruding, wrinkled fingers, and, to show off her beauty as a rose, she theatrically parted a curtain to reveal part of the room, I figured it was the usual sleeping place for a large crowded family.It's empty now, save for a fat, sickly yellow, disgusting girl, at least fifteen years old, with thick black braids tied with red string, sitting on a chair, caressing a bald head perfunctorily. doll.我摇摇头，刚想闪身避开这个圈套，那女人，还在急切地说着什么，就动手脱去年轻女巨怪躯干上肮脏的毛织紧身内衣；而后，看出我要走，她立刻索要她的钱。屋角的门开了，两个刚刚从厨房吃过饭的男人也参加了这场争吵。他们都有些畸形，光着脖子，黑黝黝的，其中一人还戴副墨镜。一个小男孩和一个刚学走路的罗圈腿小脏娃儿躲在他们身后。这蛮横的鸨儿，态度极为无孔，指着那个戴眼镜的男人，说他曾经在警察局干过，就是他，所以我最好听话，这真是恶梦的逻辑。我走向玛丽--那是她主演的芳名--她已把她的笨屁股挪到了餐桌前的板凳上，又继续喝她刚才喝了半截的汤，刚学走路的小孩拣起了那个洋娃娃。一种油然而车的怜悯，戏剧性地演出了一个极愚蠢的动作，我不偏不倚朝她手里塞了一张支票。她转手把这馈赠缴给了那位前侦探，我于是痛苦地离去了。