Lucette
Van shed his pants under a willow and retrieved the fugitive. Ada, after considering the situation for a moment, shut her book and said to Lucette, whom usually it was not hard to enchant, that she, Ada, felt she was quickly turning into a dragon, that the scales had begun to turn green, that now she was a dragon and that Lucette must be tied to a tree with the skipping rope so that Van might save her just in time. For some reason, Lucette balked at the notion but physical strength prevailed. Van and Ada left the angry captive firmly attached to a willow trunk, and, "prancing" to feign swift escape and pursuit, dis-appeared for a few precious minutes in the dark grove of conifers. Writhing Lucette had somehow torn off one of the red knobbed grips of the rope and seemed to have almost disentangled herself when dragon and knight, prancing, returned.
She complained to her governess who, completely misconstruing the whole matter (which could also be said of her new composition), summoned Van and from her screened bed, through a reek of embrocation and sweat, told him to refrain from turning Lucette's head by making of her a fairy-tale damsel in distress.
On the following day Ada informed her mother that Lucette badly needed a bath and that she would give it to her, whether her governess liked it or not. "Horosho," said Marina (while getting ready to receive a neighbor and his protégé, a young actor, in her best Dame Marina style), "but the temperature should be kept at exactly twenty-eight (as it had been since the eighteenth century) and don't let her stay in it longer than ten or twelve minutes."
"Beautiful idea," said Van as he helped Ada to heat the tank, fill the old battered bath and warm a couple of towels.
Despite her being only in her ninth year and rather underdeveloped, Lucette had not escaped the delusive pubescence of red-haired little girls. Her armpits showed a slight stipple of bright floss and her bump was dusted with copper. The liquid prison was now ready and an alarm clock given a full quarter of an hour to live.
"Let her soak first, you'll soap her afterwards," said Van feverishly.
"Yes, yes, yes," cried Ada.
"I'm Van," said Lucette, standing in the tub with the mulberry soap between her legs and protruding her shiny tummy.
"You'll turn into a boy if you do that," said Ada sternly, "and that won't be very amusing."
Warily, the little girl started to sink her buttocks in the water.
"Too hot," she said, "much too horribly hot!"
"It'll cool," said Ada, "plop down and relax. Here's your doll."
"Come on, Ada, for goodness' sake, let her soak," repeated Van.
"And remember," said Ada, "don't you dare get out of this nice warm water until the bell rings or you'll die, because that's what Krolik said. I'll be back to lather you, but don't call me; we have to count the linen and sort out Van's hankies."
The two elder children, having locked the door of the L-shaped bathroom from the inside, now retired to the seclusion of its lateral part, in a corner between a chest of drawers and an old unused mangle, which the sea-green eye of the bathroom looking-glass could not reach; but barely had they finished their violent and uncomfortable exertions in that hidden nook, with an empty medicine bottle idiotically beating time on a shelf, when Lucette was already calling resonantly from the tub and the maid knocking on the door: Mlle Larivière wanted some hot water too.
They tried all sorts of other tricks.
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From the 144th and 145th pages of Ada.
You and I know very well how she got her dear little name; our limp, long little Luce, with her little copper flecks and her nagging insistence that we hold on to her always and with loving hands. And we will, and she won't drown.
You and I know very well how she got her dear little name; our limp, long little Luce, with her little copper flecks and her nagging insistence that we hold on to her always and with loving hands. And we will, and she won't drown.
