After this hiatus of time, after Dolore's escape, during which HH has shacked up with and abandoned another woman, he meets Dolores again, pregnant, asking him for money, she tells him who she ran off with.
"the name that the astute reader has guessed long ago"
Irritatingly, and unastutely I have no fucking idea who she or Nabakov is referring to, but then I never was much good at chess problems either. There is a reference to Jean Harlow saying that she saw, at the Hourglass Lake, and the memory of this flashes though HH's mind, so it must be a clue.
‘two children, male and female, at sunset, right here, making love'
Nabokov, Vladimir (2012-07-27). Lolita (p. 100). Penguin Classics. Kindle Edition.
Well Nabakov likes puzzles, I don't particularly. It is revealed a page or two on, Cue / Quilty, so there isn't too much suspense.
The book is in the final stages now. HH drives off, full or murderous intent toward the man who filched Dolores from him. We're back with his hopeless roamings, lost and stuck on the dirt road that connects highway X to highway Y, pulled out, stops in a small town full of neon signs that he misreads - "genuflexion lubricity" for "Gulflex Lubrication" on the garage. We're always kept aware that for all his professions of love for Dolores, these are always eclipsed by lust - well not just eclipsed, his expressions of love are false and self justification his dreaming of a world as he would like it to be, he wants a Lolita, not a Dolores. This passage bears me out I think: HH is talking about having sex with her, feeling remorseful and full of love and affection, and then:
"all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again – and ‘oh, no,’ Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure – all would be shattered."
Nabokov, Vladimir (2012-07-27). Lolita (p. 325). Penguin Classics. Kindle Edition.
They're all fake, his protestations of love.
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