MISS MINERVA LEDWITCH CONSIDERS THE FLIBBERTIGIBBET AND OTHER METTERS —
Flibbertigibbet
Mrs Roger Buggery - although I think it high time for us to revert to her antecedent appellation - that is to say, accordingly, Ms. Gamina Dročerpyatova had been living in Mangotsfield for nearly a fortnight now. Miss Minerva Ledwitch, as after tiffin she stretched out her limbs in Charybdis, considered whether the young lady’s residence with her family had been an unalloyed success. On the one hand, it could not be pretended that the fair Gamina was possessed of the least scintilla of culture. She had clearly never ventured through the portals of the Tretyakov, never been overwhelmed by the sublimity of the Pathétique, never seen Makarova dance. "Dostoyevsky”,” Gogol” and “Akhmatova” were to her empty terms, denotationless referents, different names for the empty set. Even if she had by chance been exposed to these wonders, it was vey much to be doubted that they would have left their mark upon her, there being room inside her skull only for maquillage and feminine fripperies and the coarse plebeian badinage by means of which she had communicated with that ghastly little pandar of hers. —
Herod, Gamina Dročerpyatova-Buggery, Charybdis (Mangotsfield), Mangotsfield
“Schto! You have banya,” and had promptly stripped herself completely bare and jumped into Charybdis. That this had embarrassed Mr Don Quicksotte, forcing him to smile guiltily and redden and look away was if anything a boon, inasmuch as it afforded the companion of his years the opportunity to indulge her penchant for scolding. —
Don Quicksotte
“Nettle and burdock,” snapped his beloved spouse, “and bring two oatcakes.” —
Oatcakes
“Dear God, the fake leather!” and, shuddering, drew her feet in and sat upright upon Charybdis’s shelf, and clutched her knees to her chest. —
Charybdis’s shelf
And now she felt herself subsumed by a new horror. The image of the female face with the dark curls, the fake leather, dredged up another long-interred image, of a hatchet-faced nurse, and the image of the hatchet-faced nurse exhumed another in its turn, this time a tableau vivant: a lithe, languorous fawnish young woman, all honeyed tresses and daisy chains, reclining nude upon the sheepskin rugs flung over the battered sofa as the hairy brute with flashing black eyes and waistcoat and collarless shirt steadied his tripod. A slip of a girl, but there was fear in her doe-eyes, fear admixed with shock and hurt and sadness too, the hairy brute having just that minute let slip a spectacularly ill-judged remark about weight gain. —
The hatchet-faced nurse
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