Summary: Chapter 28
Humbert eagerly anticipates caressing the unconscious
Lolita. He claims that he hadn’t planned on taking Lolita’s innocence
or purity but merely wanted to fondle her while she slept. He admits
that it should have been clear to him then that Lolita and Annabel
were not the same, and that if he had known what pain and trouble
would follow, he would have done things differently. Downstairs,
Humbert wanders through the hotel’s public rooms. On the terrace,
he encounters a man who insinuatingly accuses him of behaving inappropriately
with Lolita. Each time Humbert asks the man to repeat himself, however,
the man feigns innocence and pretends to make idle chit-chat about
the weather. The man, who remains half-hidden in the shadows, invites
Humbert and Lolita to lunch the following day, but Humbert plans
to be gone with Lolita by then.
Summary: Chapter 29
Humbert returns to the hotel room to find Lolita half
awake. He climbs into bed with her but doesn’t make any advances.
Anxious and excited, Humbert stays awake all night. In the morning,
Lolita wakes up and nuzzles him as he feigns sleep. She asks him
if he ever had sex as a youth. When Humbert says no, Lolita has
sex with him. Humbert states that, for her, sex was just another
activity between children, unconnected to what adults do behind
closed doors.
Summary: Chapter 30
Humbert launches into a dreamy description of how he would repaint
the Enchanted Hunters hotel in order to make the setting of his
first encounter with Lolita a more natural, romantic one.
Summary: Chapter 31
Humbert once again defends his actions as natural, using
history as evidence. He notes that according to an old magazine
in the prison library, a girl from the more temperate climates of
America becomes mature in her twelfth year. He further reminds the
reader, whom he calls his jury, that he wasn’t even Lolita’s first
lover.
Summary: Chapter 32
Lolita recounts her first sexual experiences. Astonished
by Humbert’s naïveté, she tells him that many of her friends have
already experimented sexually with one another. At summer camp,
she used to stand guard while her friend Barbara and Charlie, the
camp-mistress’s son, copulated in the bushes. Soon, Lolita’s curiosity
led her to have sex with Charlie as well, and she and Barbara began
taking turns with the boy. Lolita says it was fun but expresses
contempt for Charlie’s manners and intelligence. Humbert gives Lolita
the various presents he bought for her, and they prepare to leave
the hotel. He warns Lolita not to talk to strangers. He later notices
a man, about his age, staring at Lolita while she reads a movie
magazine in an armchair. Humbert thinks the man resembles his Swiss
uncle Gustave.
Humbert becomes upset by Lolita’s shifting moods and her
seeming disinterest in him, and he worries about how to keep their
new arrangement a secret. As they drive off, he tries to uncover
what Lolita’s friends know about her sexuality, but Lolita is in
a bad mood and irritated by Humbert’s touches. Humbert feels guilty
but still desires her, and she remains confused and unhappy. Even
as he tries to cheer her up, Lolita says that she was only an innocent
girl and that she should tell the police that Humbert raped her.
Humbert can’t tell if she’s joking or not. Lolita complains of pains
and accuses Humbert of tearing something inside her. Lolita becomes
angry and upset and demands to call her mother. Humbert tells her
that her mother is dead.
