HERBERT GOLD
121
Yes sir, yes sir. Newly rich and famous as the father of
Lolita,
he wished
to examine me as his possible replacement when he left Academe for
Switzerland, a quieter place. I made the trip to Ithaca by train, was con–
fronted with the ritual committee martinis, digested them correctly, got
the job. Suddenly I was reborn with a new title, Visiting Professor,
standing on Nabokov's rug in Nabokov's office in Goldwyn Smith Hall.
When he departed Ithaca, he left me his annotated copy of Pasternak's
Dr. Zhillago,
which he called "Dr. Van Cliburn."
I was teaching the great man's students, which may have given me
something of an aura - son of
Lolita.
But this was not responsible for my
troubles. One day a friendly colleague stopped me in the hall with what
would be a smirk on the face of someone who was
IIOt
a friend, saying,
"Herb. With all the great grownup chicks around here - or even those
crazy Hungarian refugees - why choose
her?"
"Her who?"
"Oh , fella," he said reproachfully, and hurried to his Mallarme semi–
nar.
Busy with thoughts of Molly Bloom and her lover, Blazes Boyan,
among others, I failed to take adequate notice of this passing stab. I was
an absent-minded visiting professor.
That night I received another of the peculiar telephone calls which
had been interrupting my evenings - a soft female voice: "Yes ... I'd
love to ... it was so great, I still hurt a lot," and uttering exclamations,
whispers, sighs, headlong declarations which reminded me of Molly
Bloom's soliloquy from the large lecture class on James Joyce which I
had been perfornling those snowy weeks.
Yes, yes, yes,
she said.
She never mentioned her name.
She kept on calling, answered nothing in response to my interrup–
tions -
who are YOII? who is this?
-
and was still remarking away at a good
clip when I hung up. I heard from her only a few times a week; another
prank in the midwinter freeze. Students also threw snowballs, caroled
outside my window, invited me on ice skating expeditions, sat solemnly
debating the relative merits of
A Portrait of the Artist as a YOllllg Man
and
TI!e
Horse 's MOllth,
and listened to the voice of experience (me). Callow
as I was, I liked my new role as groovy (before this word existed -
vocabulary note) young professor who didn't always wear a tie to class.
Sometimes I left my shirt collar open under the tweed jacket from
Brooks Brothers' 346 Shop for economical post-preps. I paid some of
my
bills. I was busy. Happy days.
One morning, trudging up a hill in the muddy path between snow
banks, my green drawstring Harvard-Cornell bag filled with student pa–
pers, I met a bundle of fur coming toward me. It stopped, its eyes
