Act Three
Beardsley School
A private school for girls at Beardsley, Idaho. It is a sunny spring day. There are catkins in all the vases. We are in the music room of the school. It is here that the drama classes are held. Several girls, including Lolita, mostly in gym suits, some barefoot, sit around, some on the floor. Miss Cormorant, a lean faded Lesbian, is discussing the play which they will stage at the Spring Festival of Arts.
MISS CORMORANT      For our Spring Festival next month, we are going to do a play by Clare Quilty. When I taught at Onyx, Mr. Cue, as we called him, would sometimes drive over from Briceland to direct a dance pantomime. The girls adored him. One day he told me that he and a famous painter, the late Lewis Ruskin, were engaged in writing a play for children. Eventually, Mr. Quilty published it under the intriguing title, The Enchanted Hunters . And this is the play we are going to do. Why are you laughing, Lolita? Did I say anything hilarious?
LOLITA      No, Miss Cormorant.
CORMORANT      The play is a charming fantasy. Several hunters are lost in a wood, and a strange girl they meet puts them into a kind of trance. They fraternize with mythical creatures. Of course, later the girl turns out to be a student at a nearby Institute for Extra-Sensorial Studies, and all ends quite plausibly. Mr. Quilty will be giving a lecture at Beardsley College at the end of this month, and I’m sure he’ll help us to rehearse.
CUT TO:
Beardsley College (A coeducational institution where Humbert Humbert teaches )
The flowers that were budding in the first scene are now opening. A shrill whirring bell rings through the corridors. Students are leaving the classroom, where Humbert is collecting his notes. Miss Shatzki, an intense unkempt young woman in a formless sweater, speaks to him.
HUMBERT      Yes, I see what you mean, Miss Shatzki.
MISS SHATZKI      I would also like to ask you about Poe’s other love affairs. Don’t you think——
CUT TO:
College Corridor with moving sunlight at the far end Humbert walks down this long passage toward the exit. At one point various publicity items are tacked onto a cork board hanging on the wall. Humbert’s glance passes across:
MISS EMMA KING, PIANO LESSONS
SPRING IS HERE—SAY IT WITH ADELE’S DAFFODILS AT THE CAMPUS FLOWER SHOP
FOUND: : A GIRL’S LEATHER BELT
FRIDAY , 8 P.M., MAIN AUDITORIUM FAMOUS PLAYWRIGHT CLARE QUILTY WILL LECTURE ON THE LOVE OF ART
CUT TO :
Campus—Humbert
walks across the turfy expanse toward the parking lot, a small group issues from the college library. An instructor of English and a couple of students have been conducting a distinguished visitor, Quilty, and his constant companion, Vivian Darkbloom, on a tour through the stacks. Vivian is a stylish, bob-haired, lanky lady in a well-tailored suit, with striking exotic features marred by a certain coarseness of epiderm. The following scene is accompanied by a strong spring wind blowing across the campus.
INSTRUCTOR      (to Quilty )
Next week the Department of Anthropology is arranging a special exhibition in the Rare Books department. It will feature some rugs, and, I think, sacred pictures, which Professor and Mrs. Brooks brought back from Moscow.
QUILTY      Fascinating.
INSTRUCTOR      (noticing Humbert, who is passing by ) Oh, Professor Humbert!
Humbert stops.
INSTRUCTOR      Mr. Quilty, this is Professor Humbert, our visiting lecturer in Comparative Literature .
QUILTY      I don’t think we have actually met—or have we? Seen you a couple of times in Ramsdale and elsewhere. Happy occasions.
He mumbles and smirks.
VIVIAN DARKBLOOM      (very distinctly )
And I am Vivian Darkbloom.
QUILTY      (his sparse hair and necktie stirring in the strong wind ) My collaborator, my evening shadow. Her name looks like an anagram. But she’s a real woman—or anyway a real person. You’re an inch taller than me, aren’t you, m’dear?
VIVIAN      (training her brilliant smile upon Humbert ) My niece Mona goes to Beardsley School with your daughter.
HUMBERT      Step.
QUILTY      (addressing the instructor and the two students ) You know the first thing people usually say when I’m introduced to them is how much they like, or simply adore, my Nymphet on TV.
HUMBERT      I do have a vague recollection …
QUILTY      Good for you. I often wonder what is technically more vague—a vague recollection or a vague premonition.
(to Vivian )
This is a philosophic question, my dear, way above your pretty head. Ghouls of the past or phantoms of the future—which do we choose ?
HUMBERT      Some of my best friends are phantoms.
QUILTY      Sense of humor, I see. What a wind! Quel vent! Lucky I’m not wearing my toopee. Have a cigarette.
Humbert declines.
QUILTY      It should have been a Drome, but it is not. It’s a very special Spanish brand made especially for me, for my urgent needs.
(Dissolves in ghoulish giggles .)
Does it always blow like this on your campus?
A photographer and a reporter, led by a lion-haired faculty member, are seen approaching across the wind-rippled lawn.
FACULTY MEMBER      Mr. Quilty, the town paper would like a picture of you.
REPORTER      How long will you be staying in Beardsley?
QUILTY      Oh, I don’t know. A week. Perhaps longer.
REPORTER      You’re on your way from the East to Arizona. Correct?
QUILTY      Yes. I share a ranch there with a few merry companions.
REPORTER      You are lecturing here on the Love of Art. How do you define “Art”?
Front of Humbert’s Rented House
in Thayer Street, Beardsley. It is a two-story brick-and-stucco affair, with an unkempt dandelion-invaded lawn which is in striking contrast to the adjacent neat garden of Miss Fenton Lebone, whose name is on the mailbox. She is inspecting the progress of certain bulbs when Humbert drives up. As he walks past her along the gravel path to his porch, the sound track registers his rapid mental supplication: Don’t let Lebone notice me, don’t have Miss Fenton Lebone talk to me, please don’t let——. But the old lady’s hawk eye has followed her neighbor’s passage, and now she greets him sternly from behind her frontier of lilacs and laurels.
MISS LEBONE      Good afternoon, Professor.
HUMBERT      Oh. Hallo. (Attempts to reach the safety of his door, but she will not be shaken off .)
MISS LEBONE      I hate to intrude but don’t you think you should do something about that jungle (denouncing the dandelions ).
HUMBERT      (trying a feeble quip ) Kindness to flowers. They are immigrants. We all are in a sense.
LEBONE      I’m certainly not. Couldn’t I lend you my mower?
HUMBERT      Yes. Thanks. Perhaps Sunday.
LEBONE      You look exhausted.
HUMBERT      Yes, lots of work.
LEBONE      Incidentally, are you sure your pretty little girl gets enough sleep? I notice the light in her bedroom off and on, off and on, at all hours of the night. That is her bedroom window, isn’t it? There’s a string dangling from your pocket.
HUMBERT      Oh, thank you. Every time I undo a parcel I put the string in my pocket. So stupid.
LEBONE      Now tell me—why doesn’t your Dolly come over to my house, any time, and curl up in a comfortable chair, and look at the loads of beautiful books my dear mother gave me when I was a child. Wouldn’t that be much more wholesome than having the radio at full blast for hours on end?
HUMBERT      Certainly. By all means. We’ll do that. (He reaches the porch .)
HUMBERT      (mental monologue ) Should have said, as we all are refugees in this world. Staircase wit. Abominable woman!
CUT TO:
The Humbert Home
There is a depressing atmosphere of disorder and neglect in every room of the house.
HUMBERT      (calling ) Lo! Lolita! Not in.
Leaning against the hallway telephone there is an empty Cola bottle with its straw. In the living room, a stool is askew, pushed away from the easy chair with a medley of magazines spilled on the floor; a plate with crumbs stands on the TV; a heap of bluebooks (ruins of a college examination) have been left by Humbert on and around the divan. On a small table there are the implements from Lolita’s manicure set: a bottle of nail polish has stuck to the varnished top of the table where it leaves a bald spot when removed; one ballet shoe sits on the piano, its mate lies sole up on the threshold to the next room. In the kitchen there is a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink; bottle caps strew the table where flies stroll around a chicken drumstick.
CUT TO:
Hallway—Lolita with her school chum, Mona Dahl
(a smartly dressed, experienced-looking, cool brunette), and two boys come in and troop into the living room, where with magic instantaneousness, as if awaiting them, music starts mewing and moaning. Humbert comes out on the upper landing from his study.
HUMBERT      (calling down ) Lolita? Who’s that?
LOLITA      (climbing the stairs ) It’s me, and Mona, and Roy, and Rex.
HUMBERT      Where have you been?
LOLITA      Oh, at the candy bar. And now I’ve come to fetch my sweater and swimsuit.
HUMBERT      What for?
LOLITA      (pulling on the sweater, which she finds on the banister ) We are going to the BB River Club.
HUMBERT      The what?
LOLITA      (laughing as she emerges Bardotesquely disheveled through the neckhole ) The Beach and Boat Club. Roy’s father’s a member .
HUMBERT      Now, first of all I don’t want that racket in the living room. And in the second place, it’s much too windy on the river today.
LOLITA      Oh, maybe we’ll just hang around——
HUMBERT      Besides, my pet, the theme of boating has not been a particularly fortunate one in your young life.
LOLITA      Okay, okay, there are other things we can do there——
HUMBERT      You are not going.
LOLITA      They have a bowling alley and table tennis——
HUMBERT      You have your homework to do. And housework!
LOLITA      Jees——
HUMBERT      You tell your friends you’re not going.
LOLITA      I’ll do nothing of the sort.
HUMBERT      Then I will.
He clears his throat and descends the stairs. From the landing Lolita sees him entering the living room. The music stops, stunned. Swearing under her breath, Lolita runs down the steps toward her friends, as they are herded into the hallway from the living room by Humbert, whose constrained nervous smile and jaunty manner cannot mask his awkward boorishness .
MONA      Really, sir, we would not stop long out there.
HUMBERT      No-no-no.
ROY      I’m sure, sir, you have nothing to worry about.
HUMBERT      I’m sorry, children, but it will be some other time.
He dismisses them and ascends the staircase repeating that rasping sound in his throat. In the hallway, Lolita talks to her friends as they file out into the sun.
LOLITA      Well, you see—this is the way it is.
MONA      I’ll call you later, Dolly. I think your sweater’s dreamy.
LOLITA      Thank you. It’s virgin wool.
MONA      The only thing about you that is, kiddo.
Mona’s husky laugh recedes as Lolita closes the door after her. Humbert from the stairs has heard that exchange. Lolita runs up past him to her room. She fumbles for the key to lock herself in. Humbert, rumbling, follows her.
CUT TO:
Lolita’s Very Untidy Bedroom
HUMBERT      I’ve removed that key long ago, my dear. There is no place in the world where you could——
LOLITA      You get out !
HUMBERT      You have no reason to be mad at me . Yes, I shall leave you to your meditations, but first I want to say something about that girl, Mona.
LOLITA      You can’t have her. She belongs to a marine.
HUMBERT      I shall ignore that idiotic remark. What I mean to say is—can it possibly be that you have betrayed me to her?
LOLITA      Very melodramatic.
(Clowns .)
You make me sick.
(in a quieter smaller voice )
Why can’t I have fun with my friends?
HUMBERT      Because, Lolita, whenever you leave me, whenever you go somewhere without me, I start imagining all sorts of things.
LOLITA      So I never can have any fun?
HUMBERT      But you do have fun. You asked for a bicycle—I gave you one. You wanted music lessons—I got you Miss Emperor, I mean, Miss King, who is the best pianist in town.
LOLITA      I want to act in the school play.
HUMBERT      My darling, we went into that before. Can’t you see, the more exposed you are to contacts, to people, the more dangerous it all becomes. You and I have to guard our secret constantly. You say you want to act in a play. You are in a play as it is. In a very difficult play where you have the part of an innocent schoolgirl. Stick to that role. It’s quite big enough for one little performer.
LOLITA      Some day … Some day you’ll be sorry.
HUMBERT      I know it’s all very simple really. You don’t love me. You never loved me. Isn’t that the main problem?
LOLITA      Will you let me act in the play?
HUMBERT      Do you love me just a little, Lolita?
She looks at him, mysterious and meretricious, pondering whether to get what she wants by granting or by refusing.
CUT TO:
Living Room
Lolita is rehearsing. Mimeos of her part litter the furniture. From the kitchen threshold, Humbert tenderly observes her. She, like a hypnotic subject or a performer in a mystic rite, touches mirages of make-believe objects with her sly, slender, girl-child hands.
LOLITA      (in romantic monotone ) Sleep, hunter. Velvet petals flutter down upon you. In this bower you will recline.
She gestures toward an invisible partner—and then, with a more normal movement, forehead puckered, searches for the rest of her part on a mimeographed sheet.
HUMBERT      (gently ) If you have finished, come and have something to eat .
LOLITA      (continuing her incantations ) I’ll recite to you, hunter, a lullaby song about the mourning dove you lost when you were young. Listen!
Gone is Livia, love is gone:
Strong wing, soft breast, bluish plume;
In the juniper tree moaning at dawn:
         doom, doom .
HUMBERT      What an ominous last line. A perfect spondee but how depressing.
LOLITA      Lay off, will you? And now sleep, hunter, sleep. Under the raining rose petals, sleep, hunter.
(to Humbert )
What do you want?
HUMBERT      A five-minute pause. I want you to forget Mr. Hunter whoever he is.
She goes on with her tactile make-believe, stroking the air before her with kneading fingers.
HUMBERT      What are you doing? Plucking a fruit?
LOLITA      Look—what does it matter to you?
HUMBERT      One would like to know.
LOLITA      Suppose I’m stroking the horn of my pet unicorn—what the heck is it to you?
HUMBERT      Okay, Hecuba.
LOLITA      Will you go, please? I’ll come in a minute .
He looks at her with dewy eyes, in an ecstasy of tenderness and adoration. She, exasperated, bangs her fist on the piano keys and falls into an easy chair, her legs sideways over the armrest.
LOLITA      You will never leave me alone, is that it?
He goes down on his knees literally crawling toward her, adumbrating an amphoric embrace, almost like a lover of yore.
LOLITA      Oh, no! Not again.
HUMBERT      My love, my mourning dove! I’m so miserable! There is something gathering around us which I cannot understand. You are not telling ro me all, you——
Doorbell
LOLITA      Get up! Get up from the floor! It’s Mona. I quite forgot. Let her in. I’ll be down in a sec.
She rushes through the kitchen, picking up the wedge of pizza on the way, and runs upstairs to her room. From the upper landing she cries down to Mona, whom Humbert has let in:
LOLITA      I’m changing and coming down!
CUT TO:
Living Room
Mona saunters in, followed by Humbert.
HUMBERT      Are you going to rehearse? She’s been at it all day .
MONA      Well, no. I’m driving Dolly to her piano lesson.
HUMBERT      But today’s Saturday? I thought Miss Emperor had changed the hour to Monday afternoon.
MONA      It’s been changed back again.
(picking up a book )
Is this novel as good as some people say?
HUMBERT      Oh, I don’t know. It’s just an old love story with a new twist. Superb artist, of course, but who cares? We live in an age when the serious middlebrow idiot craves for a literature of ideas, for the novel of social comment.
MONA      I wish I could attend your lectures at Beardsley College, sir. We young people of today are so much in need of spiritual guidance.
HUMBERT      Tell me, young person of today, how was that party at your aunt’s the other night?
MONA      Oh, it was sweet of you to allow Dolly to come.
HUMBERT      So the party was a success?
MONA      Oh, a riot, terrific.
HUMBERT      Did Dolly, as you call her, dance a lot?
MONA      Not a frightful lot. Why?
HUMBERT      I suppose all the boys are mad about her?
MONA       Well, sir, the fact is Dolly isn’t much concerned with mere boys. They bore her.
HUMBERT      What about that Roy what’s-his-name?
MONA      Oh, him.
A languorous shrug.
HUMBERT      What do you think of Dolly?
MONA      Oh, she’s a swell kid.
HUMBERT      Is she very frank with you?
MONA      Oh, she’s a doll.
HUMBERT      I mean, I suppose you and she——
Lolita runs into the room.
MONA      Dolly, your piano lesson is today. Remember? Not Monday. I came to fetch you as we agreed. Remember?
HUMBERT      Eight o’clock punctually, Lolita.
The two girls leave.
CUT TO:
The School Auditorium
A gauze curtain has just come down and the young performers are taking a last bow. Quilty’s pudgy hands are briefly seen meatily clapping, as Lolita dreamily smiles across the footlights. Vivian Darkbloom, darkly blooming, blows her a kiss. The applause gradually subsides.
CUT TO:
Backstage
An atmosphere of exuberant success. Miss King, the piano teacher, greets tuxedo-clad Humbert.
HUMBERT      Glad to see you, Miss Emperor.
MISS KING      King.
HUMBERT      Yes, of course. Miss King. A thousand excuses. I keep thinking of the piano teacher in Madame Bovary . Well, I must thank you for giving Lolita so much time.
MISS KING      So much time? Why, on the contrary, she seems to have been much too busy with rehearsals. Let me see: she must have missed at least four lessons.
Lolita emerges from the greenroom. She is glamorous. She is excited. She has not yet shed her wings.
LOLITA      (to Humbert ) You can go home now. Mona is taking me to her aunt’s place for refreshments.
HUMBERT      You’re coming with me. Home. At once.
LOLITA      I’ve promised Mona. Oh, please!
HUMBERT      No.
LOLITA      I’ll do anything if you let me go .
HUMBERT      No.
LOLITA      I love you.
HUMBERT      Love me? With that lethal hate in those painted eyes? No, my girl, you’ll come home and practice the piano.
He grasps her by the hand. A struggle would be indecorous. Exeunt.
CUT TO:
Car
It pulls up. Humbert and Lolita come out in front of their house. Lolita attempts to move away.
HUMBERT      Where are you going? Come here.
LOLITA      I want to ride my bike. I need some fresh air, you brute.
HUMBERT      You’re coming in with me.
LOLITA      For Christ’s sake——
CUT TO:
Hallway
HUMBERT      I know you are unfaithful to me. There’s a tangled web around me. But I will not surrender. You cannot torment me like that. I have a right to know, I have a right to struggle .
LOLITA      Finished?
HUMBERT      And that’s all you can answer?
LOLITA      If you’ve finished, I’ll get something to eat. You cheated me out of a luscious supper.
CUT TO:
The Kitchen
Lolita has finished her sandwich and is messily fishing out slippery peach halves from a can. Humbert, throbbing with rage, makes himself a drink. She eats, reading a comic book and scratching her calf.
HUMBERT      What a fool—what a fool, this Humbert! Giving little Lolita numberless humbertless opportunities! Dreamy bicycle rides, sunsets, lovers’ lanes, piano lessons, rehearsals, ditches, garages, coal sheds.
Lolita, having finished her meal, walks to the door.
CUT TO:
Living Room
Lolita sprawling in an overstuffed chair. She bites at a hangnail and mocks Humbert with her heartless eyes. She has placed one outstretched shoeless foot in coarse white sock on a stool which she rocks with heel and toe.
LOLITA      Well, speak, lover.
Humbert paces the room rubbing his cheek with his fist in a tremor of exasperation .
LOLITA      Because, if you don’t want to speak to me, in a couple of minutes, I’ll go tiding my bicycle.
Humbert sinks down in a chair facing her. She continues to stare at him and to rock the stool.
HUMBERT      I doubt you’ll be using your bicycle much longer now.
LOLITA      Oh, yah?
He controls himself and tries to speak calmly but in the course of his speech his voice gradually rises to a hysterical pitch. And the window is open with the lilacs listening.
HUMBERT      Dolores, this must stop right away. You are ruining our relationship and jeopardizing your own safety. I don’t know, nor wish to know, what young hoodlum, Roy or Foy, you are dating in secret. But all this must stop or else anything may happen.
LOLITA      Anything may happen, huh?
He snatches away the stool she is toe-heel rocking, and her foot falls with a thud.
LOLITA      Hey, take it easy!
Humbert grabs her by her thin wrist as she attempts to run out of the room.
HUMBERT      No, you’ll listen to me! I’ll break your wrist, but you’ll listen. Tomorrow—yes tomorrow—we’ll leave, we’ll go to Mexico, we’ll start a completely new life .
She manages to twist out of his grip and runs out of the house.
Humbert rushes out into the street and sees her pedaling townward. With one hand pressed to his palpitating heart, he makes for the corner, and then continues to the familiar drugstore. In the lamplight her bicycle, self-conscious and demure, is leaning against a post. Humbert enters the drugstore. At its far end, Lolita is revealed through the glass of a telephone booth, a little mermaid in a tank. She is still speaking. To whom? Me? Cupping the tube, confidentially hunched over it, she slits her eyes at Humbert, hangs up, and walks out of the booth.
LOLITA      (brightly ) Tried to reach you at home.
HUMBERT      You did? That’s odd. I saw you speaking, I saw your lips move.
LOLITA      Yes, I got the wrong number. Look, I don’t want you to be mad at me any more. Everything is going to be all right from now on. I’ve reached a great decision.
HUMBERT      Oh, Lolita. If only I could still believe you.
She smiles at him and straddles her bike.
Thayer Street, leading home
A glistening night. Along the damp pavement Lolita half-rides her bike, pushing against the curb with one foot, waiting for Humbert to catch up, and then propelling herself again. He walks behind, agitated, moist-eyed, jerkily trying to keep up with her. A dog strains on its leash, and its owner allows it to sniff at a lamppost. The CAMERA follows Humbert and Lolita as they approach the house. Lilacs in bloom. The neighbor’s lighted window goes out.
CUT TO:
Hallway. Lolita and Humbert enter
LOLITA      Carry me upstairs. I feel kind of romantic tonight.
He gathers her up. The telephone rings.
LOLITA      (raising her index finger ) Telephone.
HUMBERT      Oh, let it ring!
LOLITA      Put me down, put me down. Never disappoint a telephone.
HUMBERT      My aphoristic darling! All right.
On the telephone Quilty speaks in a disguised muffled croak-voice.
QUILTY      How are you, Prof?
HUMBERT      Fine. May I——
QUILTY      Sorry to disturb you at such a late hour. Are you enjoying your stay at Beardsley?
HUMBERT      Yes. May I inquire who’s calling?
QUILTY      This is the best time of the year but we might do with some rain.
HUMBERT      Sorry—who’s calling?
QUILTY      (with a pleasant laugh ) We haven’t actually met but I’ve been keeping a friendly eye on you. Could I talk to you on the phone for a minute?
HUMBERT      Are you connected with the college?
QUILTY      In a way. I am a kind of extramural student. You see, I am studying your case.
HUMBERT      What case? I don’t understand.
QUILTY      Is Dolores in bed?
HUMBERT      Oh, that’s what it is. Are you disguising your voice, Roy Walker?
QUILTY      No, no. You are mistaken.
HUMBERT      Well, all I can tell you is that neither she nor I welcomes calls from strangers.
QUILTY      (very suavely ) This is a complete misunderstanding. The group I represent is merely anxious that children should not keep late hours. You see, Mr. Humbert, I am a private member of the Public Welfare Board.
HUMBERT      What’s your name?
QUILTY      Oh, it’s an obscure unremarkable name. My department, sir, wants to check some bizarre rumors concerning the relationship between you and that pretty child. We have certain plans for her. We know an elderly gentleman, a bachelor of independent means, who would be eager to adopt her.
In the course of this speech Humbert takes a pillbox out of his waistcoat and swallows a tablet.
HUMBERT      This is ridiculous.
QUILTY      Have you adopted her? Legally, I mean?
HUMBERT      Well, I——
QUILTY      Have you filed a petition? Your stutter proclaims you have not.
HUMBERT      I assume that a stepfather is a relative and that a relative is a natural guardian.
QUILTY      Are you aware that the word “natural” has rather sinister connotations?
HUMBERT      Not in my case, no.
QUILTY      But you agree that a minor female must have a guardian?
HUMBERT      I suppose so.
QUILTY      And that she is not merely a pet?
HUMBERT      I really——
QUILTY      You moved here from Ramsdale, Professor?
HUMBERT      That’s right. But— —
In the meantime Lolita has crept into the hallway and enlaced Humbert with her bare arm.
QUILTY      Are you aware that some states prohibit a guardian from changing the ward’s residence without an order of the court?
HUMBERT      Which states?
QUILTY      For example, the state you are in: a state of morbid excitement. Have you seen your psychiatrist lately?
HUMBERT      I neither have nor need one.
QUILTY      You are classified in our files as a white widowed male. Are you prepared to give our investigator a report on your present sex life, if any?
HUMBERT      Investigator?
Humbert nervously strokes caressive Lolita’s wrist.
QUILTY      Yes. We intend our Dr. Blanche Schwarzman, a very efficient lady, to visit you at your convenience.
HUMBERT      I’m afraid I have nothing to tell her.
QUILTY      “Afraid” is Freudian lingo.
HUMBERT      I do not follow you. Give me your address and I shall write you.
QUILTY      That’s unnecessary. After tomorrow our doctor will examine you and your protégée. I now hang up .
DISSOLVE TO:
Living Room
Humbert walking about nervously.
HUMBERT      It’s a hoax. It’s a hoax. But that’s immaterial. Rumors, he said. Oh, mon Dieu!
LOLITA      We must go away.
HUMBERT      We must flee as in an old melodrama. Our safest bet is to go abroad.
LOLITA      Okay—let’s go to Mexico. I was conceived there.
HUMBERT      I’m sure I’ll find a lecturing job there. Marvelous! I know a Spanish poet in Mexico City. He is full of black bulls and symbols, and as corny as a matador. But he is influential.
LOLITA      One condition. This time I am going to trace out our route. I want to take in Arizona. I want to see the Indian dances in Elphinstone.
HUMBERT      (weeping ) I’m in your hands, your hot little hands, my love.
It is assumed that from Beardsley (which is situated in Idaho) to the Mexican border (via Arizona) the distance is at least 1,000 miles. Our fugitives start Wednesday morning. Humbert, who is eager to reach with the least delay Borderton, S. Arizona (and thence, Mexico’s West Coast Highway) intends to be there Friday morning. In a naive effort to be inconspicuous he plans to sleep two nights in the car (the first, within the parking area of a trailer court and the second, somewhere in the Arizona desert). It is further assumed that Quilty, using three or four different rented cars, so as to avoid identification and confuse his victim, pursues Humbert from Idaho, through Nevada (or Utah), to Arizona. Quilty’s plan is to have Humbert transport the minor female across two state lines down to Elphinestone, Arizona, where he will kidnap her and take her to his ranch in that vicinity. During the journey, there arises the problem how to get Lolita’s luggage out of the car. This is attempted at the stop in Waco, Thursday morning (and successfully brought off on the following Monday, with the unplanned help of Lolita’s hospitalization). The glimpses Humbert has had of Quilty before (e.g., in Briceland and Beardsley) had been too casual and brief to allow recognition. Quilty takes care to remain a fleet shadow, a ghostly predator, as he keeps up with Humbert on the road, now overtaking him, now awaiting his passage. Humbert’s anxiety and rage are increased by his not quite knowing if it is a sleuth or a suitor.
CUT TO:
Humbert’s Eyes in the Rearview Mirror
He and Lolita are driving along a canyon into the small burg of Cottonwood: three poplars and alfalfa fields.
LOLITA      We’ll crash into something if you keep looking back.
HUMBERT      What a bizarre situation!
LOLITA      You’re telling me. I’ve been riding with a nut all day .
HUMBERT      —bizarre because there’s no general way of dealing with this kind of case. That car has been following us, on and off, for the last two hundred miles. I can’t very well complain to the highway patrol.
LOLITA      (laughing ) You certainly can’t!
HUMBERT      But I can try to give him the slip.
LOLITA      Not with this jalopy.
HUMBERT      (going through a changing light in Cottonwood ) Ah, the red light will stop him.
LOLITA      You’ll get arrested if you do that.
HUMBERT      And here we’ll turn and hide for a minute. In this nice little lane.
LOLITA      It’s a one-way little lane.
HUMBERT      True.
He backs out.
LOLITA      Besides it’s illegal to play games with other cars on the road.
HUMBERT      Will you stop chattering. I almost hit that van.
LOLITA      Look. Let’s get back to the highway and just ignore the whole business.
CUT TO :
The Highway Again—evening of the same day—low blinding
sun
Lolita is eating a banana in the moving car.
CUT TO:
Service Station
Needing a pair of new sunglasses, Humbert leaves Lolita in the car and walks into the office of the station. His pursuer quietly pulls up just across the street while Humbert is selecting the glasses. He glances through a side window.
CUT TO:
Humbert’s Car
Quilty has walked up to it and Lolita is leaning out and talking to him rapidly, her hand with outspread fingers going up and down, as it does when she is very serious and emphatic. Humbert is struck by the voluble familiarity of her manner. The conversation is not heard (except, perhaps, for the word “Elphinstone”), and Quilty’s face is not seen. He bolts back to his convertible, which disappears as Humbert comes out of the office.
CUT TO:
Humbert’s Car moving up a steep grade
HUMBERT      What did that man ask you, Lo?
LOLITA      (studying a road map ) Man? Oh, that man. Oh, yes. Oh, I don’t know. He wondered if I had a map. Lost his way, I guess.
A pause .
HUMBERT      Now listen, Lo. I don’t know if you are lying or not. I don’t know if you are insane or not—but that person has been following us all day, and I think he is a cop.
LOLITA      (laughing ) If he’s really a cop the worst thing we could do would be to show that we are scared. Oh, look: all the nines are changing into the next thousand. When I was a little kid I used to think they’d stop and go back to nines if only my mother would agree to back the car.
CUT TO:
Market
HUMBERT      Let me see—we wanted——
He broods among the fruit, a rotting Priap, listening to a melon, questioning a peach, pushing his wire cart toward the lacquered strawberries. Lolita has been loitering near the window where the magazine rack is. She sees Quilty haunting the sidewalk. Satisfying herself that Humbert is engrossed in his shopping, she slips out. Presently, burdened with his cornucopian paper bag, Humbert comes out of the store looking around for Lolita. He leaves the bag in the parked car, locks it again, and then paces the sidewalk peering into various shops as he proceeds along a series of Drugs, Real Estate, Auto Parts, Café, Sporting Goods, Real Estate, Furniture, Drugs, Western Union, Cleaners, Appliances, Betty’s Beauty Parlor. As he walks back, in pain and panic, he suddenly descries her trying to retrieve her new coat and traveling case out of the car; but the doors are locked, and she can’t pull out her things through the three-quarters closed window (Quilty the shadow is ambushed in a side street, the idea being that she join him with some of her treasured possessions). She notices Humbert approaching—and, slitting her eyes, walks toward him with feigned nonchalance.
LOLITA      Oh, there you are.
For a few seconds Humbert looks at her in grim silence.
LOLITA      What’s the matter?
HUMBERT      You were gone twenty minutes. I cannot tolerate these vanishing acts. I want to know exactly where you’ve been—and with whom.
LOLITA      I ran into a girl friend.
HUMBERT      Really?
LOLITA      You calling me a liar?
HUMBERT      Her name, please.
LOLITA      Oh, just a kid I went to school with.
HUMBERT      Beardsley School?
LOLITA      Yes. Oh, yes. Beardsley.
HUMBERT      Her name?
LOLITA      Betty. Betty Parker.
HUMBERT      Perfect. Here, in this little black book, Volume 2, I have a list of your schoolmates. Let’s see. Hm. There’s a Mary Paddington, and a Julia Pierce. But no Parker. What say you ?
LOLITA      She was not in my group.
HUMBERT      That’s the entire school I have listed here.
LOLITA      She enrolled just before we left.
HUMBERT      Well, let’s try another angle. Where exactly did you meet her?
LOLITA      Oh, I saw her from the grocery. She was just loafing around like me.
HUMBERT      And what did you do next?
LOLITA      We went to a drugstore.
HUMBERT      And you had there——?
LOLITA      Couple of Cokes.
HUMBERT      Careful, my girl. We can check that, you know.
LOLITA      At least, she had. I had a glass of water.
HUMBERT      The anonymous fluid. I see. Very good. Was it that place over there?
LOLITA      Sure.
HUMBERT      Good. Come on, we’ll grill the soda jerk.
LOLITA      Wait a sec. Come to think, it might have been the other store, on the corner .
HUMBERT      Confrontation delayed. But it’s all right. We’ll try both.
LOLITA      Or perhaps in one of the side streets.
HUMBERT      We’ll find it. Here, let’s go into this telephone booth. You rather like telephone booths, don’t you? Now, let’s consult the directory. This dirty book. This chained and battered book. Dignified Funeral Service. No, we don’t need that yet. Here we are. Druggists, Retail. Hill Drug Store. Corner Drug Store. Cypress Lane Drugs. And Larkin’s Pharmacy. Well, that’s all they have around here. And we’ll check them one by one.
LOLITA      Go to hell.
HUMBERT      My dear, rudeness will get you nowhere.
LOLITA      You are not going to trap me. Okay. So we didn’t have a pop. We just talked and walked, and looked at dresses in show windows.
HUMBERT      That window, for example?
LOLITA      Yes, that window for example.
HUMBERT      Oh, Lolita! Let us look closer at it.
CUT TO:
The Show Window of a dress store .
A man, on his hands and knees, is rearranging the carpet on which a wedding group stands in a more or less dismantled state (“as if a blast had just worked havoc with them”): one wigless and armless figure is naked except for white spats. Another, a sexless little nude, stands in a smirking pose, with a posy, and would represent, when clothed, a flower girl of Lolita’s size. The taller, lavishly veiled bride is complete but lacks one arm. On the floor, where the employee crawls, there lies a cluster of three bare arms and a blond wig. Two of the arms, not necessarily a pair, happen to be twisted and seem to suggest a clasping gesture of horror and supplication. Humbert, tense and bitter, his face twitching, points out these details to sullen Lolita.
HUMBERT      Look, Lolita. Look well. Isn’t this a gruesome symbol of something or other? Doesn’t it make your delicate flesh creep a little?
CUT TO:
A Highway, low sun, Shadow of Car running and fluctuating on a rock bank—a Sign:
ELPHINSTONE 20 M .
Lolita is ill. She covers her eyes with her hand, throws her head back, moans.
HUMBERT      Tired?
She does not respond.
HUMBERT      Would you like me to stop? You might nap for an hour or two.
She shrugs her shoulders.
HUMBERT      Don’t you feel well?
LOLITA      I feel utterly rotten .
HUMBERT      Why, what’s the matter, my darling? Tummy?
LOLITA      Everything. I want to stop at Elphinstone for the night.
HUMBERT      Oh, but we’ll never make Borderton at this rate.
LOLITA      I’m dying, you dope. We’ll spend the night in Elphinstone.
HUMBERT      I wanted to avoid motels.
LOLITA      Well, this time we’ll go to the best one in Elphinstone. I underlined it in the AAA book. Dream Hacienda. Oh, I’ve never felt so awful in all my life! You’re sitting on my sweater.
HUMBERT      My poor darling! What a setback. Tsk-tsk. I know what we’ll do. At the next turnout I’ll take your temperature. I have a thermometer in my overnight bag.
CUT TO:
Turnout —a sheer cliff rising on the far side of the highway and a misty abyss melting just beyond the rim of the turnout Lolita, her head on the nape rest, eyes closed, endures the thermometer stuck in her mouth. The CAMERA gingerly inspects the litter receptacles with their cans and containers, and a small child’s sneaker forgotten on the stone parapet. Humbert consulting his wristwatch.
HUMBERT      Well, I think we can peep now .
Tenderly he removes the glass tube from her mouth. She licks her parched lips and shivers. Humbert tries to make out the level of the mercury.
HUMBERT      These tricky American thermometers are meant to conceal their information from the layman. Ah, here we are. Good God, one hundred and three. I must take you straight to a hospital.
Quilty has pulled up at the next turnout.
CUT TO:
Dream Hacienda Motel at Elphinstone, Arizona —a fine morning
Humbert is seen coming out of his unit with several books under his arm and a bunch of rather straggly wild flowers. The landlady talks to him as he goes to his car.
LANDLADY      I hope she’s much better today.
HUMBERT      Well, I’m driving over to see. The doctor said that in this kind of flu there’s a distinct drop in temperature on the fourth day, and indeed she had hardly any fever yesterday.
LANDLADY      She’ll love the flowers.
HUMBERT      I picked them in the ravine at the back of your place. Cold breeze today. Is it the elevation?
LANDLADY      Oh, it’s hot enough for me.
HUMBERT      I’m not feeling well. Guess I’ll lie down when I return .
LANDLADY      Wait a minute. I’ll remove this basket of linen so you can turn more easily.
CUT TO:
A Sunny Private Room in the Elphinstone Hospital
Lolita, looking happy and innocent, lies in her neat bed with a magazine, her lips freshly painted, her hair brilliantly brushed. There is a white telephone, a topaz ring, and one rose in a glass with bubble-gemmed stem on the bedside table. Mary Lore, a plump, comely, arrogant young nurse who is in cahoots with the nymphet, is folding very rapidly a white flannel blanket as Humbert enters with his pathetic bouquet and books.
HUMBERT      Bonjour, mon petit .
LOLITA      What gruesome funeral flowers. Thanks all the same. But do you mind cutting out the French, it annoys everybody.
Her eyes go back to her magazine.
HUMBERT      Temperature normal? Well, that’s splendid. Who gave you that rose?
LOLITA      Mary.
MARY LORE      (glancing window-ward at the yard below ) You can’t park there, Mister. You have to go around to the other end.
HUMBERT      Sorry. I was in a hurry—and I don’t feel too well .
MARY      There is a sign saying “staff only.”
HUMBERT      All right, all right.
Exit Mary with blanket.
LOLITA      Mary was trying to be helpful.
HUMBERT      Mary is arrogant and nosy. I would not wonder, my dear, if you two had swapped every kind of crummy confession. That rump of hers must make interns pant.
LOLITA      Your English is showing vahst improvement, my deah. You’ll be using delinquent lingo next.
A pause.
HUMBERT      I brought you some rather fascinating books: The History of Dancing. The Romantic Poets by my friend Professor Behr. Flowers of the Rockies, with excellent illustrations. And Carmen by Mérimée—not a very good translation, I’m afraid, but do read it, it’s a marvelous melancholy story.
Lolita emits a grunt of indifferent gratitude and continues to consume her magazine. Mary Lore bustles in again.
HUMBERT      (picking up a pair of sunglasses from the top of a chest of drawers ) Oh—whose are these? Not mine, not yours.
MARY      (after exchanging a quick glance with Lolita ) Then it’s a visitor left them .
HUMBERT      Visitor? You had a visitor, Lolita?
MARY      (pocketing the glasses ) Another patient had. I found them in the corridor and thought they might be yours.
HUMBERT      Est-ce que tu ne m’aimes plus, ma Carmen? My Carmen does not love me any more?
LOLITA      There we go again.
She flips through her magazine, finds the continuation, and reads on.
HUMBERT      The thermometer broke in the glove compartment but I took my pulse this morning and it was one hundred and ten. I shall soon leave you and go to bed. Don’t you want to look at the nice books I brought you?
Lolita emits again her neutral grunt and picks her nose as she plunges deeper into “They called me a Harlot.” Humbert lowers himself into a cretonne chair, opens the botanical work he has brought her, and attempts to identify his flowers. This proves impossible.
HUMBERT      (with a sigh ) I’ll be going away in a minute. I’m not feeling well at all. Don’t you want to talk to me?
LOLITA      What?
HUMBERT      I said don’t you want to talk to me? You’ll read your magazine when I’m gone .
LOLITA      What do you want me to tell you?
Mary Lore reenters with a vase for the flowers.
HUMBERT      I’m wondering if you should not leave the hospital tomorrow. You look the image of radiant health.
MARY      She will stay till Tuesday. Doctor’s orders. Horse mint, poison oak. And this goldenrod will give her hay fever.
HUMBERT      Oh, throw them out, throw them out.
MARY      Yes, I think I had better remove them.
She exits.
HUMBERT      Lolita! My love! Just think—Tuesday if we start early we’ll be in Mexico by noon. No mysterious agents, no ghosts, no ghouls will follow us any longer. We shall be free to live as we like, my Lolita. I’ll make you a formal proposal. An old priest will bless us, and we shall live happily forever after, in lovely Rosamorada.
Both realize that Mary Lore is again in the room.
LOLITA      He’s reciting poetry. Don’t mind him, Mary.
HUMBERT      Yes, poetry. The only reality on this earth. Well, I’ll be on my way.
LOLITA      I want all my things. The brown bag, mother’s blue one, the car sack, everything .
HUMBERT      They are still in the car. I did not take them to the motel.
LOLITA      Well, I want them right now.
HUMBERT      Couldn’t you wait till Tuesday? I mean, you don’t want all your frocks immediately.
LOLITA      That’s for me to decide. Where’s that hand mirror, Mary?
HUMBERT      I don’t feel strong enough to carry all that luggage.
MARY      Oh, we’ll have Joe do it, don’t you worry.
HUMBERT      All right. I think I’ll go now. Well, goodbye, Lolita.
LOLITA      (looking at herself in the hand mirror ) Bye-bye.
HUMBERT      Girl with a Hand Glass. Artist unknown.
He considers her, softly swinging the car keys he holds. Mary waits at the door.
CUT TO:
Motel Room
Humbert is asleep asprawl on one of the twin beds. He is in the throes of a virus infection and has been drinking freely from the bottle of gin beside him. The bedside telephone rings. It takes him some time to come out of his sick slumber .
VOICE      Hi there, Professor.
HUMBERT      Who’s calling?
VOICE      Are you all right?
HUMBERT      Not exactly.
VOICE      Not feeling too good, eh?
HUMBERT      No. Who is it?
VOICE      Not enjoying your trip? That’s too bad.
HUMBERT      What d’you want?
VOICE      I’m not sure what to call it. Cooperation? Surrender to fate?
HUMBERT      All right. If you are not a hallucination, not a mere tinnitus——
VOICE      A what?
HUMBERT      Tinnitus—a singing in the ears, because I have a high fever——
VOICE      Frankly, I’m also nursing some sort of bug. Guess, we both caught it from her.
HUMBERT      From her? What d’you mean?
VOICE      Oh, lots of things are feminine—cars, carpets, car pets, haha! I’ve even heard a fireman refer to a fire as she.
HUMBERT       If you’re not my delirium——
VOICE      Skip it. Look, Bertie, I just wanted to make sure you’re safe in bed. Good-nitus.
HUMBERT      If I’m not fancying things, then you must be the person who’s been following me.
VOICE      Well, that’s all finished now. You’re not followed any more. I’ll be leaving in a minute with my little niece. (Aside: You stay out of this.)
HUMBERT      Wait!
VOICE      Good-nitus, good-nitus. (with a laugh ) I know exactly what you’ll do as soon as I hang up.
He hangs up. Humbert frantically searches for the scrap of paper on which he has jotted down the telephone number connecting him with Lolita at the hospital. Finds it and dials. A nurse’s voice answers, but is engulfed in Quilty’s rich baritone.
VOICE      I’ll take it. It’s for me. Well, isn’t that pat. I told you I knew you would do it. Sorry I can’t talk now. She’s in my lap and quite lively.
Hangs up guffawing.
Humbert is about to dial again—but thinks better of it and in a frenzy of horror and hurry pulls on some clothes and stumbles out.
CUT TO:
The Vestibule of Elphinstone Hospital —a spacious lobby with a staircase on either side and offices at the farther end .
There are several people around. Joking Joe, a robust male nurse, is in the act of wheeling a mummylike patient out of the elevator. Nurse Mary Lore is preening herself on the first landing. Doctor Blue is coming out of the x-ray department perusing a cloudy picture, the galaxy of a lung. Two old men in a corner are playing chess, and a third old-timer is inspecting the titles of several books (Flowers of the Rockies, etc.) heaped on a chair. As Humbert rushes in and launches into his dramatic, drunken, sick, hysterical expostulations, the various people around freeze in various positions.
HUMBERT      Lolita! Lolita! Lolita!
MARY LORE      (tripping down the steps ) We don’t want a scene——
HUMBERT      Where is she?
MARY      You know perfectly well that her uncle was to come for her today.
HUMBERT      I know nothing of the sort.
DR. BLUE      Take it easy. What’s the matter, Mary?
MARY      He’s sick and doesn’t know what he’s saying. The girl’s uncle just took her away.
HUMBERT      It’s a hellish conspiracy.
MARY      She warned me her stepfather had a feud with the rest of the family.
HUMBERT      A hellish lie! Where is she? I demand an answer .
DR. BLUE      Now, now, don’t get excited.
Humbert tries to get hold of Mary Lore. He almost manages to clutch her. She gives a melodious yelp and twists free. The patient, who has been wheeled out by Joe, rises like Lazarus and joins Joe and Dr. Blue who are subduing Humbert.
CUT TO:
Psychiatrist
speaking (this is Dr. Ray who appears in the Prologue and will appear again at the very end of Act Three):
PSYCHIATRIST      As we now know from his notes, Humbert Humbert spent many a dismal month trying in vain to locate his lost Lolita and to establish the identity of her mysterious abductor. His quest merely resulted in impairing his health. At the sanatorium where he was treated for a heart condition, attention was also given to his mental state. The present speaker and two other psychiatrists endeavored to help Mr. Humbert but dissimulation had become second nature with him. My assistants and I tried to open channels of communication for the patient by providing a background of refinement and ease, soft music, amusing hobbies, and a permissive atmosphere in which he might dare express his most dangerous thoughts. However, the patient not only refused to indulge in voluptuous or vengeful fantasies, but insulted the therapist by calling him “the rapist of Psyche the Soul.” He sneered at cooperation. He was abusive, he was taciturn. And Dr. Christina Fine, a lovely lady and a very strong analyst, complained that the patient kept trying to hypnotize her and make her divulge her innermost cravings. I am happy to say she is now my wife .
By the beginning of the following year, the patient’s physical condition had improved so much that he was able to check out and join again the faculty of Beardsley College.
CUT TO:
A Neutral Place
The detective whom Humbert had hired to look for Lolita is reporting to him for the last time.
DETECTIVE      I’m afraid well have to give it up.
HUMBERT      Couldn’t you go on? You said you would investigate the New Mexico clue.
DETECTIVE      Proved a dud. Dolores Hayes, H, A, Y, E, S, is a fat old dame selling homemade Tokay to the Indians.
HUMBERT      What about Canada?
DETECTIVE      What about the wide world? She might be a model in Brazil or a dancer in Paris.
HUMBERT      But isn’t it merely a question of time? Can’t everybody be tracked down finally?
DETECTIVE      Look, mister. We don’t even have good pictures of her, she’s just a kid in them. By now she may have three babies of her own.
HUMBERT      You are sure you could not keep trying?
DETECTIVE      It would just mean taking your money .
HUMBERT      I want the photos back.
DETECTIVE      We’ll keep one or two in our files just in case. This one, in fancy dress, for instance.
He returns a number of photographs to Humbert. They should give a brief pictorial summary of Lolita’s past life with him: Kneeling, half-naked, in a patch of sun on a mat; standing beside her mother on the dappled lawn; attending a school ball in full-skirted flamingo dress; in blue jeans and T-shirt, sprawling with a comic book; in dirty shorts, getting into a canoe (Charlie handing her a paddle from the bushy bank); in the passenger seat of Humbert’s car; feeding a chipmunk; riding a pony; wearing black tights; in fancy dress on the stage.
CUT TO:
Beardsley College
Men and women students are seen streaming out into a courtyard. Humbert, with books and papers under his arm, walks to the parking lot. Mrs. Fowler, a lean, elegant, forty-year-old flirt, the wife of the Head of the Department, calls out to Humbert from inside her car.
MRS. FOWLER      Hullo, Humbert.
HUMBERT      Hullo, Diana.
MRS. FOWLER      Do you know if my husband is through with his seminar?
HUMBERT      Yes, I think I saw him going to his office.
MRS. FOWLER      He said he would finish a little earlier. We are to pick up a niece of mine at the airport. The poor kid lost her mother last year, and now her father has cancer.
HUMBERT      Oh.
MRS. FOWLER      I am so sorry for the child. We’ll take her to the Riviera in spring. When is your sabbatical, Humbert?
HUMBERT      Alas, I’ve been here only two years.
He stands leaning with his elbows on the sill of her car. She puts her hand on his.
MRS. FOWLER      You must come to see us more often. Frank will be away on a lecture tour next month, and I will be very lonesome. Would you teach me chess? I think it’s such a glamorous medieval game.
Frank Fowler comes up.
MRS. FOWLER      (to her husband ) I was telling Humbert we must get together soon.
FOWLER      Yah. What about Sunday? Come have dinner with us.
CUT TO:
The Fowlers’ Living Room
Bourgeois abstract art on the walls. They are having pre-prandial drinks with their guests. Frank Fowler gulps down the contents of a tall tumbler.
FOWLER      (to Humbert ) Another Scotch? Well, I think I shall .
MRS. FOWLER      No, Frank, that’s enough before dinner.
FOWLER      How does it feel to be a bachelor, Humbert? Must be a heavenly sensation.
HUMBERT      I was twice married.
MRS. FOWLER      Oh, were you?
HUMBERT      My second wife died four years ago. I inherited a stepdaughter.
MRS. FOWLER      But that’s fascinating, Humbert. How old is she?
HUMBERT      Oh, she must be quite old by now. More than seventeen. She’s living her own life somewhere. I’ve lost track of her.
A nymphet comes in.
MRS. FOWLER      This is Nina, my niece.
In the course of the following dialogue Humbert pays no attention to the child, and only at the last moment, as she turns away, and he sinks back into his chair with a tidbit picked from a remote plate, does he permit himself one brief, sad, ember-hot, tiger-quick glance.
MRS. FOWLER      When is Rosemary coming to fetch you?
NINA      I dunno. Soon, I guess.
MRS. FOWLER      What picture are you going to see ?
NINA      Oh, some western. I don’t care.
MRS. FOWLER      (smiling ) Okay. Run along.
Nina indolently leaves.
MRS. FOWLER      She is twelve and in her blasé period, if you please.
FOWLER      I think I’ll spank her if she perseveres in that droopy style.
MRS. FOWLER      Oh, she’ll be all right after we take her to Europe.
FOWLER      What’s your vacation going to be, Humbert, m’boy?
HUMBERT      I have no definite plans.
FOWLER      Come with us to Cap Topaz. It’s the best spot on the Riviera.
HUMBERT      I know it well. My father owned a big hotel not far from there. The Mirana. It has degenerated now into an apartment house.
MRS. FOWLER      Will you come, Humbert? We’ll gamble at the casino.
HUMBERT      I dare not gamble any more.
MRS. FOWLER      Well, Frank and I will, and you can sprawl on the plage, and build sand castles with Nina. Is that a deal? Will you come ?
HUMBERT      What again? The old pang? The perilous magic? No. I’m not coming with you. The excitement would be too much. I have a weak heart, you know.
MAID      Dinner is served.
CUT TO:
An Exchange of Good Nights
on the lighted steps of the Fowler home. Humbert walks off. His steps resound on the deserted sidewalk.
HUMBERT      I’m very lonely and I’m very drunk. The old magic. Kill Frank Fowler, marry Diana, drown Diana, inherit Nina, kill self. Oh, my Lolita, Lolita, Lolita.…
Next Day.
CUT TO:
Lecture Hall
Humbert has just finished his routine lecture and is collecting his notes. A male student comes up to the leaern.
STUDENT      I’ve been auditing your lectures, Professor. My name is Shatzki, Norbert Shatzki, you had my sister in your class three years ago, she sends you her kindest regards.
HUMBERT      Oh yes. Yes.
SHATZKI      She’s married now. I was wondering, sir, if you would also cover Edgar Poe’s other loves ?
In the meantime, another student, a girl, has entered the classroom.
GIRL      May I audit your lectures, Professor Humbert?
HUMBERT      (absentmindedly, paying little attention to either of them, still collecting his notes ) If you like. No, I’ll ignore his other romances.
GIRL      I’m taking philosophy, but I hope to enroll in your courses next year.
HUMBERT      Yes. Yes.
He is now ready to leave.
GIRL      I see you don’t recognize me at all, at all, monsieur.
HUMBERT      Good God—Mona!
MONA      It has been three years since we met. Time certainly flies.
HUMBERT      Let’s walk across the campus and have some coffee at The Den.
MONA      I’m afraid I have a class in ten minutes.
HUMBERT      Well, let’s go to my office. It’s right opposite.
CUT TO:
Humbert’s Offic e
HUMBERT      Three long years …
MONA      You don’t live on Thayer Street any more?
HUMBERT      Oh no. I’ve a room in Clemm Hall. And you—how have you been?
MONA      Oh, fine. I left Beardsley School at the same time as—as—anyway, I mean, I never finished Beardsley School.
HUMBERT      I see.
MONA      Your temples are a little gray, which is most becoming.
HUMBERT      You don’t ask me an obvious question, Mona.
MONA      Sorry. Have you remarried, sir?
HUMBERT      You haven’t changed. Evasive Mona, strange girl.
MONA      I’m not strange. I merely know life rather well. Okay: how’s Lolita?
HUMBERT      She’s attending a school, a kind of junior college in Europe.
MONA      Oh, so it’s true. That’s what one of your colleagues told me. What college exactly?
HUMBERT      You would not know it. A small college in Paris .
MONA      Oh.
A pause.
HUMBERT      Old schoolmates seldom write to each other—isn’t that so?
MONA      It depends.
HUMBERT      Naturally. Well, let’s chat—let’s reminisce, as Americans say. Why do you look at me like that?
MONA      Mr. Humbert … My parents sent me to Europe, too; I, too, went to school in Paris. It’s odd that I never ran into Dolly.
HUMBERT      She never gave you her address, did she?
MONA      Oh, I knew you were still teaching in Beardsley. I could always reach her through you, couldn’t I?
HUMBERT      But you didn’t.
MONA      Well, no.
HUMBERT      And you completely lost track of her?
MONA      Why don’t you give me her address?
HUMBERT      It’s hardly worth while: she’ll be leaving next week. As a matter of fact, she may be already in this country.
MONA      You are still very fond of your stepdaughter, sir ?
HUMBERT      Still? What do you mean—“still”?
MONA      Everybody loves a child, but the child grows up, and something fades, something diminishes.
HUMBERT      Philosophy major.
MONA      But isn’t it true? Or would you say that nothing changes?
HUMBERT      Nothing.
MONA      And you’d still be ready to forgive——?
HUMBERT      Forgive? Forgive what?
MONA      We are taking a purely abstract case. Assuming she had done something wrong——
HUMBERT      Mona, will you stop acting the impenetrable vamp?
MONA      Why, everything is crystal clear now. I’m very fond of Dolly, and it’s such a comfort to know that you always intend to be kind to her.
HUMBERT      Did she write you? Please, tell me.
MONA      Doesn’t she write to you?
HUMBERT      She’s a poor correspondent—but that’s not the point.
MONA      Oh, the point is clear, sir. I’m afraid I must be going now .
HUMBERT      She did write you? You do know where she is?
MONA      In those faraway schools we were talking about, in those schools one can be very unhappy, their lamps are dim, but one learns a good deal. I’m sure you needn’t worry about our Dolly. I’ve got a class now.
The bell violently rings announcing the beginning of the next class period.
It should now have been established that Mona has had a letter from Lolita, apparently asking her to find out if it is safe for her, Lolita, to write to Humbert.
CUT TO:
University Post Office—The time is 8:55 A.M.
Professor Fowler takes out his letters. Humbert comes up and tweaks open his pigeonhole.
PROFESSOR FOWLER      If your mail is as dull as mine, I’m sorry for you, Humbert.
HUMBERT      I never expect anything—that’s my advantage. This is a circular. This is from a Mrs. Richard Schiller—some graduate student, I presume. This is a fenestrated bill. This is a publisher’s list. And this is not for me but for Professor Humphries.
FOWLER      Not gay, as the French say.
HUMBERT      Well, I must be rushing to my exam. Room 342,
(repeats )
342 .
CUT TO:
The Door with That Number
He stares at it for a moment.
HUMBERT      How strange.
CUT TO:
A Large Classroom
The questions have been handed out by a monitor, and the examination is under way. Humbert from his lectern morosely observes the bent heads. A crew-cut footballer shoots up an arm, and then buoyantly walks up to the lectern.
FOOTBALLER      It says here, “How did Poe define the Poetic Sentiment”? Do you want us to give a general answer, or actually quote the poem?
HUMBERT      I don’t think there is any specific poem implied.
FOOTBALLER      (utterly at his wit’s end but with optimism unshattered )
I see. Thank you, sir.
He buoyantly walks back to his seat. Humbert, sitting at the lectern, takes his mail out of his pocket and scans it. The monitor turns to the blackboard to write on it “9:10.” The footballer, gratefully but mutely, receives from his neighbor a secret note which reads “Poetry is the sentiment of intellectual happiness.” The letter that Humbert has opened begins talking to him in a small, matter-of-fact, agonizingly familiar, voice :
LOLITA’S VOICE      Dear Daddy, how’s everything? I’m married. I’m Mrs. Richard Schiller. I’m going to have a baby. I guess he’s going to be a big one. I guess this is a hard letter to write. I’m going nuts because we don’t have enough to pay our debts and get out of here. Dick is promised a big job in Alaska, in his specialized corner of the mechanical field. That’s all I’m told about it but it’s really grand. Please, do send us a check, Dad. We could manage with three or four hundred, or even less. Anything is welcome. I have gone through much sadness and hardship. Your expecting Dolly (Mrs. Richard F. Schiller).
Most of the students having filled a bluebook page in the same number of minutes simultaneously turn it, which makes a brief whistling rustle.
Humbert has risen from his chair, dazed and unstable. He leaves the room followed by all eyes.
CUT TO:
Coalmont—a bleak foggy town
CUT TO:
Hunter Road—a dismal district
all dump and ditch, and wormy vegetable garden. Clapboard shacks line the wasteland. An old man is shoveling mud by the roadside. Humbert speaks to him from his car.
HUMBERT      Would you know if the Schillers live around here?
OLD MAN      (pointing ) It’s the fourth house after the junkyard.
CUT TO :
Humbert
driving up to the fourth house. Sounds of hammering and of two male voices exchanging loud but indistinct comments come from the back of the shack. Humbert turns off the motor and for a few seconds sits motionless. A shaggy dog with a muddy belly comes out and woofs. Humbert fingers his pistol, transfers it to a handier pocket, gets out of the car, slamming the door.
DOG      (perfunctorily ) Woof.
Humbert presses the bell button, keeping one hand in his pocket.
DOG      Woof, woof.
A rush and a shuffle—the door explodes—and Lolita stands on the threshold. She wears glasses. She has a new heaped-up hairdo, new bare ears. She is frankly pregnant. Her pale arms and neck are bare. But neither the maternity dress nor the sloppy felt slippers can disguise her Botticellian grace.
LOLITA      (after a pause, exhaling with all the emphasis of wonder and welcome ) We-e-ll!
HUMBERT      (in a croaking voice ) Husband home?
LOLITA      Come on in.
She lets him pass, crucifying herself against the open door.
LOLITA      (to the dog ) No, you stay here.
CUT TO :
A Small, Shabby, Meagerly Furnished Parlor with the connubial bed disguised as a couch
Lolita, emitting interrogatory “hm’s,” makes familiar Javanese gestures with her wrists, offering her guest a choice between the couch and the rocker. He chooses the latter.
LOLITA      Dick’s mending the back porch with a pal. I’ll call him.
She goes out. “Dick!” Dick and a friend come lumbering in. Humbert’s hand comes empty out of his trouser pocket. How disappointing!
LOLITA      (in a resounding violent voice ) Dick, this is my stepfather, Professor Humbert.
DICK      How do you do, Professor.
LOLITA      (to Humbert ) Dick is very deaf. Speak loud, please. Oh, and this is our kind neighbor, Bill Crest.
BILL      Glad to meet you, Prof.
LOLITA      This calls for a celebration. I’ll get some refreshments.
BILL      Let me help you, Dolly.
They go out. Humbert sits in a rocker, Dick on the edge of the couch. He wears overalls, has a shock of dark hair, a nice boyish face. He needs a shave and a hearing aid.
DICK      This is a grand surprise, Professor. Hope you’re here to stay. You’ll have this couch .
Humbert shakes his head.
DICK      No trouble. We can sleep on a spare mattress in the kitchen.
HUMBERT      I’m on a lecturing tour …
Lolita and Bill have reentered.
LOLITA      (very loud ) He’s on a lecturing tour. He chanced to visit this town. I wrote him to look us up.
DICK      (nodding sagely ) I see, I see.
There is a pause. Beer is quaffed. Nobody knows what to say. Lolita greedily crunches potato chips. Bill signals to Dick.
DICK      Well
(slapping his knees and rising )
I guess, you two have a lot to talk about. Come along, Bill. Back to work.
(to Lolita )
You just holler, sweetheart, when it’s time for K.P.
HUMBERT      That’s not the fellow I want.
LOLITA      Not who?
HUMBERT      You know very well. Where is the swine you eloped with?
LOLITA      (inclining her head to one side and shaking it in that position ) Look, you are not going to bring that up .
HUMBERT      I certainly am. Three years—during three years I’ve been trying to find him. Who is he? Where is he?
LOLITA      I should never have written you. Oh, it was a great mistake. Now you are going to spoil everything.
HUMBERT      Could your husband give me that information?
LOLITA      (blazing and bristling ) Leave out Dick! See? Leave out my poor Dick. He does not know a thing about the whole mess. He thinks I ran away from an upper-class home just to wash dishes in a diner. Why should you make things harder by raking up all that muck?
HUMBERT      Be a sensible girl—if you expect help from me. Come, his name!
LOLITA      (Half turns away, fumbling for something on a crowded table .) I thought you had guessed long ago.
(with a mischievous and melancholy smile )
It’s such a sensational name. You would never believe.… I can hardly believe it myself—and there’s no one I can brag to about it.
HUMBERT      His name, please.
LOLITA      Skip it. It does not matter now. Want a cigarette?
HUMBERT      No. His name .
LOLITA      (Lights up, shakes her head firmly ) It’s too late now to raise hell.
HUMBERT      All right. I’m afraid I must be on my way. Regards to your husband. Nice to have seen you.
LOLITA      Oh, you are so silly to insist. I really should not tell you. On the other hand—do you want to know it that badly? Well, it was——
Softly, confidentially, arching her thin eyebrows and puckering her parched lips, with a note of fastidious, not untender, mockery, she emits in a kind of muted whistle, the name:
LOLITA      —Quilty.
Humbert regards her with stupefaction.
LOLITA      Yes, Clare Quilty, the playwright. Oh, you must have seen his face lots of times in those cigarette ads! And he was staying at that cute hotel at Briceland—remember? And he wrote that play we chose for the Beardsley School show. And he came to rehearsals. And he followed our car in that absurd fashion for miles and miles. Do you know the word “cynic”? Well, that sums him up—a bold laughing cynic. Yes, that’s him all over. Clare Quilty. The only man I was ever crazy about.
HUMBERT      There is also Dick.
LOLITA      Oh, Dick is a lamb. We are very happy together. I meant something quite different.
HUMBERT      And I? I have never counted, of course ?
Lolita considers him for a moment as if trying to grasp the tedious and confusing fact that Humbert had been her lover. That poor romance is dismissed by her like a dull party, a gray picnic, a raindrop of boredom.
He manages to jerk his knee out of the range of a sketchy tap—one of her acquired gestures.
LOLITA      Don’t be dense. The past is the past. You’ve been a good stepdaddy, I guess. Watch your step, Daddy—remember that joke?
HUMBERT      No, that must have been after my time. Where can I find him?
LOLITA      Clare Quilty? Oh, what does it matter? Up in Parkington, I guess. He’s got a house there, a regular old castle.
(Gropes and rummages in
a pile of magazines on the
lower shelf of a console .)
There was a picture of it somewhere.
(Pulls out a bedraggled issue of Glance.)
Yes, here it is.
The magazine opens in her slender hands revealing a photograph of Pavor Manor as shown in the first shot of the Prologue. She says with a deep sigh:
LOLITA      This world is just one wild gag after another. If somebody wrote up my life nobody would believe it.
She directs the dart of her cigarette toward the hearth, index rapidly tapping as her mother used to do. Lolita had never smoked under Humbert the Terrible .
HUMBERT      No. I suppose not. Well, let’s recapitulate. So it was in Beardsley that you betrayed me.
LOLITA      Betrayed? No. In fact, Cue—everybody called him Cue, you know—Cue was very understanding and sympathetic toward you. You must not tell anybody but many years ago he actually was questioned once by the police about some kid who had complained. So you see you were among friends. Oh, he knew everything about you and me, and it tickled him no end.
She smiles, exhales smoke, shakes her head, darts her cigarette.
LOLITA      You know—that guy saw through everything and everybody. He was not like you or me—he was a genius. He had an Oriental philosophy of life. He believed in Life. Oh, he was—wonderful. Funny—I speak of him in the past as though we were all dead.
HUMBERT      Where exactly did he take you when you gave me the slip?
LOLITA      Yes, that was awfully mean, I must admit that. He took me to a dude ranch near Elphinstone. Duk-Duk Ranch. Silly name.
HUMBERT      Where exactly? What highway?
LOLITA      No highway—a dirt road up a small mountain. Anyway—that ranch does not exist any more. Pity, because it was really something. I mean you can’t imagine how utterly lush it was, that ranch, I mean it had everything, but everything, even an indoor waterfall. You know when Cue and I first came the others had us actually go through a coronation ceremony .
HUMBERT      The others? Who were they?
LOLITA      Oh, just a bunch of wild kids, and a couple of fat old nudists. And at first everything was just perfect. I was there like a princess, and Cue was to take me to Hollywood, and make a big star of me, and all that. But somehow nothing came of it. And, instead, I was supposed to cooperate with the others in making filthy movies while Cue was gadding about the Lord knows where. Well, when he came back I told him I wanted him and not that crowd of perverts, and we had a fight, and he kicked me out, and that’s all.
HUMBERT      You could have come back to me.
LOLITA      (smile, shrug ) Oh, well.… I suppose I was afraid you’d kill me. And anyway I was a big girl now, on my own. So—I worked in motels, cleaning up and that sort of job, and in roadside cafés. And then after a year I could not stand it any longer, and thumbed my way back to the place where the ranch should have been. But it just was not there any more, it had burned down completely. So strange.
(Smokes meditatively .)
Well, I drifted back to cheap diners, and one day on the highway Dick picked me up, and we both were lonesome, and so it began.
She closes her eyes leaning back on the cushions of the couch, her belly up, one felted foot on the floor.
“I knew all I wanted to know. I had no intention of torturing my darling. Somewhere, beyond the shack, an after-work radio had begun singing of folly and fate, and there she was with her ruined looks, and her adult rope-veined hands, there she was, my Lolita, hopelessly worn at seventeen—and I looked and looked, and knew that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen, or imagined, or hoped for.… She was only the dead-leaf echo of my nymphet—but thank God it was not that echo alone that I worshipped. I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine. ‘Changeons de vie ma Carmen, allons vivre quelque part où nous ne serons jamais séparés’ [this is a quotation from Mérimée’s novel], no matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack—even then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear worn face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita.”
HUMBERT      Lolita, this may be neither here nor there, but I have to say it Life is very short. From here to that old car there are twenty-five paces. Make them. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. Take that plate of peanuts with you. And we shall live happily ever after.
LOLITA      You mean you’ll give us some money only if? Only if I go to a motel with you? Is that what you mean?
HUMBERT      No, you got it all wrong. I want you to leave your incidental Dick, and this awful hole, and come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me, eternally.…
LOLITA      (her features working ) You’re crazy.
HUMBERT      Think it over, Lolita. I’ll wait for any length of time if you want to think. There are no strings attached—except that—well, that a life would be spared. But even if you refuse to come you shall still get your dowry.
LOLITA      No kidding?
HUMBERT      Here. Here’s three, four hundred in cash—and here’s a check for nine thousand six hundred.
Gingerly, uncertainly, Lolita takes the money, and speaks with agonized emphasis.
LOLITA      You mean you are giving us ten thousand bucks?
He covers his face and breaks into tears. They trickle through his fingers down his chin, his nose is clogged, he can’t stop. He gropes for a handkerchief. She touches his wrist. He draws back abruptly.
HUMBERT      I’ll die if you touch me. You are sure that you are not coming with me? Is there no hope of your ever coming?
LOLITA      No, honey, no.
His shoulders heave. She provides him with a paper napkin.
LOLITA      No, it’s quite out of the question. I’d sooner go back to Quilty. I mean——
HUMBERT      I know. He broke your heart. I merely broke your life.
LOLITA      Oh, but everything is so wonderful now. I think it’s so utterly grand of you to give us all that dough. It settles everything. We can pay all our debts. We can fly to Alaska tomorrow. Stop crying, please. You should understand. Let me get you some more beer. Oh, don’t cry. I’m so sorry I cheated so much—but that’s the way things are.
He wipes his face. She smiles at the money.
LOLITA      (exulting ) May I call Dick?
HUMBERT      No, no. Please don’t I don’t want to see him at all. I must leave in a moment.
LOLITA      Oh, don’t go yet.
HUMBERT      I love you and this is sheer torture. By the way—about these money matters. There’ll be more coming. I must go now.
LOLITA      It has been nice——
HUMBERT      All right, all right
(evading her hand )
Yes, good-bye, I have a piece of very important business to take care of. A ragged, raw, horrible piece.
CUT TO:
The Front Porch
A remote sound of voices and hammering comes from the back of the house. The song “Lolita, Lolita, Lolita” is repeated. Lolita and the shaggy dog see Humbert off.
LOLITA      What do you know—the same old car .
HUMBERT      One last word. Are you quite, quite sure that—well, not tomorrow of course, and not after-tomorrow, but some day, any day—you’d not come to live with me? I’ll create a brand-new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that small hope.
Lolita smiles, shakes her head in smiling negation.
HUMBERT      It would have made all the difference.
He hurries toward the car.
LOLITA      Good-bye. There’s a bad storm coming.
HUMBERT      What?
LOLITA      A storm. Take care of yourself.
Her cry and the sound of the motor attract Bill followed by Dick, as Humbert drives off, with the old shaggy dog loping heavily alongside the car, and soon giving up. We dissolve briefly to Lolita’s delirious cry of joy and to Dick’s incredulous stare at the gift she brandishes.
CUT TO:
Desolate Road—Storm brewing
Humbert drives off, but a little way down the road, stops and weeps uncontrollably, slumped over the wheel, with the windshield wipers vainly warring against a cloudburst.
A NARRATIONAL VOICE      (Dr. Ray’s) Poor Lolita died in childbed a few weeks later, giving birth to a stillborn girl, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remote Northwest. She never learned that Humbert finally tracked down Clare Quilty and killed him. Nor did Humbert know of Lolita’s death when shortly before his own dissolution he wrote in prison these last words of his tragic life’s story:
HUMBERT’S VOICE      (clear and firm ) … While the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blest matter as I am. I can still talk to you and make you live in the minds of later generations. I’m thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.
THE END
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
Summer 1960
Los Angeles
Revised December 1973
Montreux