Champion

Champion, Colorado, a mountain resort town nestled in the Rockies, serves as the setting for a pivotal sequence in Humbert Humbert's cross-country odyssey with Dolores Haze. It is here, in the pure air and under the clear sky of this elevated landscape, that Humbert's paranoid pursuit by Clare Quilty reaches a terrifying crescendo, and where he catches a final, heartbreaking glimpse of Lolita's innocent athletic grace before his physical and psychological collapse. The town's name, suggesting victory, becomes bitterly ironic, as it marks the site of Humbert's most profound defeat.

The Tennis Court and a Vision of Grace

At the foot of steep stone stairs leading up to the Champion Hotel, there was an admirable tennis court. It was here that Humbert watched Lolita play, and for him, the experience was a respite from the nightmare of unknown betrayals. He saw her hitting hard and flat with her usual effortless sweep, feeding him deep skimming balls that were so rhythmically coordinated that his footwork was reduced to a swinging stroll. Her form was an absolutely perfect imitation of top-notch tennis, though it lacked any utilitarian results. Humbert was drenched with an almost painful convulsion of beauty assimilation as he watched her serve: the way she raised her bent left knee at the start of the service cycle, creating a vital web of balance between toed foot, pristine armpit, burnished arm, and far back-flung racket, while she smiled up with gleaming teeth at the small globe suspended high in the zenith of the powerful and graceful cosmos she had created. He noted that her bare arm bore the mark of a vaccination, and that she was only fourteen. This moment of pure aesthetic appreciation was shattered by the arrival of two strangers: a red-haired fellow named Bill Mead and an indolent dark girl named Fay Page, who sat down to admire the rally.

The Fake Telephone Call and the Intruder

While Humbert was at the drinking fountain, Bill Mead approached him to suggest a mixed double. At that moment, a bellboy from the hotel summoned Humbert for an urgent long-distance call. He followed the boy up to the hotel, his heart afloat with an awful calm, certain that discovery and retribution were at hand. At the desk, a dignified, Roman-nosed man handed him a note stating that the head of Beardsley School had called and that he should call back immediately. After a twenty-minute struggle with the telephone, Humbert deduced that there was no such number in Beardsley, that Miss Pratt was on her way to England, that the school had not telephoned, and that they could not have done so because nobody knew he was in Champion that day. The call was a fake, a local setup. After a stiff drink at the bar, he started his return march. From the first terrace, he saw far below on the tennis court, golden Lolita playing in a double. One of her partners, a man with a remarkably round head wearing incongruous brown trousers, jocosely slapped her on her behind with his racket. Seeing Humbert, the man threw away his racket and scuttled up the slope, waving his wrists and elbows in a comical imitation of rudimentary wings, before climbing to the street where his gray car awaited him. When Humbert came down, the remaining trio were collecting balls, and Bill Mead and Fay Page, looking very solemn, shook their heads when asked who the person was. The absurd intruder had butted in to make up a double.

The Swimming Pool and Physical Collapse

Later, Humbert found Lolita on a trim turfed terrace, playing with a terrier. She was wearing Aztec Red bathing briefs and bra, and there was an ecstasy, a madness about her frolics that struck him as too much of a glad thing. He saw a bather who had left the pool, standing half-concealed by the peacocked shade of trees, following Lolita with his amber eyes. The man had a round head, a little mustache, and a symmetrical trophy of chest hair. As Humbert looked at his oval nut-brown face, he realized he had recognized him by the reflection of his daughter's countenance—the same beatitude and grimace but made hideous by his maleness. He knew that the child, his child, knew he was looking and was putting on a show of gambol and glee. As she fell on her back, her obscene young legs madly pedaling in the air, Humbert saw the man close his eyes and bare his small teeth as he leaned against a tree. Then, as if the sun had gone out of the game, Lolita slackened and slowly got up. Humbert started to say something, then sat down on the grass with a quite monstrous pain in his chest and vomited a torrent of browns and greens. He saw Lolita's eyes, which seemed more calculating than frightened, and heard her telling a kind lady that her father was having a fit. For a long time afterward, he lay in a lounge chair swallowing pony upon pony of gin. The next morning, he felt strong enough to drive on, a feat that in later years no doctor would believe.