71: Oblique: Perhaps because it is ambiguous whether the novel is meant to be a caricature of Nabokov himself.

71: Dementia: A chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning.

71: 1922: The year that Nabokov began writing in Berlin

71: Gravity: Allusion to Nabokov’s literary quarrel with space and time in many of his novels.

71: mid-Thirties, in black accursed Paris: Reference to the great depression’s effects abroad, impending Second World War

71: LATH: Look at the Harlequins!

72: Destitute Russian Noblewomen’s Aid Association: Emigre former-noble Russians learning to deal with poverty, like Nabokov’s family

72: Hassock: A thick, firmly padded cushion, in particular. Or a firm clump of grass or matted vegetation in marshy or boggy ground.

72: Metro: Parisian underground rail system.

73: Passy na Rousi: Russian: Passes in Russia

73: rue Cuvier: Rue Cuvier is a street in the 5th arrondissement of Paris—located in the district of Jardin des Plantes and Saint-Victor.
“Gospod’ s vami, golubchik!” —Russian: What an idea, my dear!

73: Dr. Moreaus’s island zoo: Reference to H.G. Wells’s 1896 science fiction novel, in which a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, who creates human-like beings from animals via vivisection.

74: noctambule: a night owl, one who stays up late.

74: sans tarder: French: without delay

74: the Seine: the river that runs through Paris

74: according to police statistics an average of forty foreigners and God knows how many unfortunate natives drown year between wars: Reference to the Algerian war of independence from 1954 to 1962, when Parisians were being arrested based on their appearances, or for simply being Algerian, and thrown into the Seine with their hands tied behind their backs before being left to drown.

74: Zvedoobraznost’ nebesnyh zvyozd/Vidish’ tol’ko skvoz’ slyozy . . :Russian: heavenly stars are seen as stellate only through tears”

74: a dream feeling that my life was the non-identical twin, a parody, an infererior variant of another man’s life, somewhere on this or another earth: Reference to the author’s own knack for self-allusion and doubles/dopplegangers, to the author’s theory of time and space, wherein there might be parallel worlds or dimensions, and to Dostoyevski’s The Double.