Бледный огонь - Владимир Набоков

Canto Two

There was a time in my demented youthWhen somehow I suspected that the truthAbout survival after death was known170 To every human being: I aloneKnew nothing, and a great conspiracyOf books and people hid the truth from me.There was the day when I began to doubtMan's sanity: How could he live withoutKnowing for sure what dawn, what death, what doomAwaited consciousness beyond the tomb?

And finally there was the sleepless nightWhen I decided to explore and fightThe foul, the inadmissible abyss,180 Devoting all my twisted life to thisOne task. Today I'm sixty-one. WaxwingsAre berry-pecking. A cicada sings.

The little scissors I am holding areA dazzling synthesis of sun and star.I stand before the window and I pareMy fingernails and vaguely am awareOf certain flinching likenesses: the thumb,Our grocer's son; the index, lean and glumCollege astronomer Starover Blue;190 The middle fellow, a tall priest I knew;The feminine fourth finger, an old flirt;And little pinky clinging to her skirt.And I make mouths as I snip off the thinStrips of what Aunt Maud used to call «scarf-skin.»

Maud Shade was eighty when a sudden hushFell on her life. We saw the angry flushAnd torsion of paralysis assailHer noble cheek. We moved her to Pinedale,Famed for its sanitarium. There she'd sit200 In the glassed sun and watch the fly that litUpon her dress and then upon her wrist.Her mind kept fading in the growing mist.She still could speak. She paused, then groped, and foundWhat seemed at first a serviceable sound,But from adjacent cells impostors tookThe place of words she needed, and her lookSpelt imploration as she sought in vainTo reason with the monsters in her brain.

What moment in the gradual decay210 Does resurrection choose? What year? What day?Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape?Are some less lucky, or do all escape?A syllogism: other men die; but IAm not another; therefore I'll not die.Space is a swarming in the eyes; and time,A singing in the ears. In this hive I'mLocked up. Yet, if prior to life we hadBeen able to imagine life, what mad,Impossible, unutterably weird,220 Wonderful nonsense it might have appeared!

So why join in the vulgar laughter? WhyScorn a hereafter none can verify:The Turk's delight, the future lyres, the talksWith Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,The seraph with his six flamingo wings,And Flemish hells with porcupines and things?It isn't that we dream too wild a dream:The trouble is we do not make it seemSufficiently unlikely; for the most230 We can think up is a domestic ghost.

How ludicrous these efforts to translateInto one's private tongue a public fate!Instead of poetry divinely terse,Disjointed notes, Insomnia's mean verse!

Life is a message scribbled in the dark.Anonymous.             Espied on a pine's bark,As we were walking home the day she died,An empty emerald case, squat and frog-eyed,Hugging the trunk; and its companion piece,240 A gum-logged ant.                   That Englishman in Nice,A proud and happy linguist: je nourrisLes pauvres cigales — meaning that heFed the poor sea gulls!                      Lafontaine was wrong:Dead is the mandible, alive the song.

And so I pare my nails, and muse, and hearYour steps upstairs, and all is right, my dear.

Sybil, throughout our high-school days I knewYour loveliness, but fell in love with youDuring an outing of the senior class250 To New Wye Falls. We luncheoned on damp grass.Our teacher of geology discussedThe cataract. Its roar and rainbow dustMade the tame park romantic. I reclinedIn April's haze immediately behindYour slender back and watched your neat small headBend to one side. One palm with fingers spread,Between a star of trillium and a stone,Pressed on the turf. A little phalange boneKept twitching. Then you turned and offered me260 A thimbleful of bright metallic tea.

Your profile has not changed. The glistening teethBiting the careful lip; the shade beneathThe eye from the long lashes; the peach downRimming the cheekbone; the dark silky brownOf hair brushed up from temple and from nape;The very naked neck; the Persian shapeOf nose and eyebrow, you have kept it all —And on still nights we hear the waterfall.

Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed,270 My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blestMy Admirable butterfly! ExplainHow could you, in the gloam of Lilac Lane,Have let uncouth, hysterical John ShadeBlubber your face, and ear, and shoulder blade?

We have been married forty years. At leastFour thousand times your pillow has been creasedBy our two heads. Four hundred thousand timesThe tall clock with the hoarse Westminster chimesHas marked our common hour. How many more280 Free calendars shall grace the kitchen door?

I love you when you're standing on the lawnPeering at something in a tree: «It's gone.It was so small. It might come back» (all thisVoiced in a whisper softer than a kiss).I love you when you call me to admireA jet's pink trail above the sunset fire.I love you when you're humming as you packA suitcase or the farcical car sackWith round-trip zipper. And I love you most290 When with a pensive nod you greet her ghostAnd hold her first toy on your palm, or lookAt a postcard from her, found in a book.

She might have been you, me, or some quaint blend:Nature chose me so as to wrench and rendYour heart and mine. At first we'd smile and say:«All little girls are plump» or «Jim McVey(The family oculist) will cure that slightSquint in not time.» And later: «She'll be quitePretty, you know»; and trying to assuage300 The swelling torment: «That's the awkward age.»«She should take riding lessons,» you would say(Your eyes and mine not meeting). «She should playTennis, or badminton. Less starch, more fruit!She may not be a beauty, but she's cute.»

It was no use, no use. The prizes wonIn French and history, no doubt, were fun;At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubt,And one shy little guest might be left out;But let's be fair: while children of her age310 Were cast as elves and fairies on the stageThat she'd helped paint for the school pantomime,My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,A bent charwoman with a slop pail and broom,And like a fool I sobbed in the men's room.

Another winter was scrape-scooped away.The Toothwort White haunted our woods in May.Summer was power-mowed, and autumn, burned.Alas, the dingy cygnet never turnedInto a wood duck. And again your voice:320 «But this is prejudice! You should rejoiceThat she is innocent. Why overstressThe physical? She wants to look a mess.Virgins have written some resplendent books.Lovemaking is not everything. Good looksAre not that indispensable!» And stillOld Pan would call from every painted hill,And still the demons of our pity spoke:No lips would share the lipstick of her smoke;The telephone that rang before a ball330 Every two minutes in Sorosa HallFor her would never ring; and, with a greatScreeching of tires on gravel, to the gateOut of lacquered night, a white-scarfed beauWould never come for her; she'd never go,A dream of gauze and jasmine, to that dance.We sent her, though, to a château in France.

And she returned in tears, with new defeats,New miseries. On days when all the streetsOf College Town led to the game, she'd sit340 On the library steps, and read or knit;Mostly alone she'd be, or with that niceFrail roommate, now a nun; and, once or twice,With a Korean boy who took my course.She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange forceOf character — as when she spent three nightsInvestigating certain sounds and lightsIn an old barn. She twisted words: pot, top,Spider, redips. And «powder» was «red wop.»She called you a didactic katydid.350 She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,It was a sign of pain. She'd criticizeFerociously our projects, and with eyesExpressionless sit on her tumbled bedSpreading her swollen feet, scratching her headWith psoriatic fingernails, and moan,Murmuring dreadful words in monotone.

She was my darling: difficult, morose —But still my darling. You remember thoseAlmost unruffled evenings when we played360 Mah-jongg, or she tried on your furs, which madeHer almost fetching; and the mirrors smiled,The lights were merciful, the shadows mild.Sometimes I'd help her with a Latin text,Or she'd be reading in her bedroom, nextTo my fluorescent lair, and you would beIn your own study, twice removed from me,And I would hear both voices now and then:«Mother, what's grimpen?» «What is what?»                                 «Grim Pen.»Pause, and your guarded scholium. Then again:370 «Mother, what's chtonic?» That, too, you'd explain,Appending: «Would you like a tangerine?»«No. Yes. And what does sempiternal mean?»You'd hesitate. And lustily I'd roarThe answer from my desk through the closed door.

It does not matter what it was she read(some phony modern poem that was saidIn English Lit to be a document«Engazhay and compelling» — what this meantNobody cared); the point is that the three380 Chambers, then bound by you and her and me,Now form a tryptich or a three-act playIn which portrayed events forever stay.

I think she always nursed a small mad hope.

I'd finished recently my book on Pope.Jane Dean, my typist, offered her one dayTo meet Pete Dean, a cousin. Jane's fiancéWould then take all of them in his new carA score of miles to a Hawaiian bar.The boy was picked up at a quarter past390 Eight in New Wye. Sleet glazed the roads. At lastThey found the place — when suddenly Pete DeanClutching his brow exclaimed that he had cleanForgotten an appointment with a chumWho'd land in jail if he, Pete, did not come,Et cetera. She said she understood.After he'd gone the three young people stoodBefore the azure entrance for awhile.Puddles were neon-barred; and with a smileShe said she'd be de trop, she'd much prefer400 Just going home. Her friends escorted herTo the bus stop and left; but she, insteadOf riding home, got off at Lochanhead.

You scrutinized your wrist: «It's eight fifteen.[And here time forked.] I'll turn it on.» The screenIn its blank broth evolved a lifelike blur,And music welled.                    He took one look at her,And shot a death ray at well-meaning Jane.

A male hand traced from Florida to MaineThe curving arrows of Aeolian wars.410 You said that later a quartet of bores,Two writers and two critics, would debateThe Cause of Poetry on Channel 8.A nymph came pirouetting, under whiteRotating petals, in a vernal riteTo kneel before an altar in a woodWhere various articles of toilet stood.I went upstairs and read a galley proof,And heard the wind roll marbles on the roof.«See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing»420 Has unmistakably the vulgar ringOf its preposterous age. Then came your call,My tender mockingbird, up from the hall.I was in time to overhear brief fameAnd have a cup of tea with you: my nameWas mentioned twice, as usual just behind(one oozy footstep) Frost.                            «Sure you don't mind?I'll catch the Exton plane, because you knowIf I don't come by midnight with the dough —»

And then there was a kind of travelog:430 A host narrator took us through the fogOf a March night, where headlights from afarApproached and grew like a dilating star,To the green, indigo and tawny seaWhich we had visited in thirty-three,Nine months before her birth. Now it was allPepper-and-salt, and hardly could recallThat first long ramble, the relentless light,The flock of sails (one blue among the whiteClashed queerly with the sea, and two were red),440 The man in the old blazer, crumbing bread,The crowding gulls insufferably loud,And one dark pigeon waddling in the crowd.«Was that the phone?» You listened at the door.Nothing. Picked up the program from the floor.More headlights in the fog. There was no senseIn window-rubbing; only some white fenceAnd the reflector poles passed by unmasked.

«Are we quite sure she's acting right?» you asked.«It's technically a blind date, of course.450 Well, shall we try the preview of Remorse?»And we allowed, in all tranquillity,The famous film to spread its charmed marquee;The famous face flowed in, fair and inane:The parted lips, the swimming eyes, the grainOf beauty on the cheek, odd gallicism,And the soft form dissolving in the prismOf corporate desire.                      «I think,» she said,«I'll get off here.» «It's only Lochanhead.»«Yes, that's okay.» Gripping the stang, she peered460 At ghostly trees. Bus stopped. Bus disappeared.

Thunder above the Jungle. «No, not that!»Pat Pink, our guest (antiatomic chat).Eleven struck. You sighed. «Well, I'm afraidThere's nothing else of interest.» You playedNetwork roulette: the dial turned and trk'ed.Commercials were beheaded. Faces flicked.An open mouth in midsong was struck out.An imbecile with sideburns was aboutTo use his gun, but you were much too quick.470 A jovial Negro raised his trumpet. Trk.Your ruby ring made life and laid the law.Oh, switch it off! And as life snapped we sawA pinhead light dwindle and die in blackInfinity.        Out of his lakeside shackA watchman, Father Time, all gray and bent,Emerged with his uneasy dog and wentAlong the reedy bank. He came too late.

You gently yawned and stacked away your plate.We heard the wind. We heard it rush and throw480 Twigs at the windowpane. Phone ringing? No.I helped you with the dishes. The tall clockKept on demolishing young root, old rock.

«Midnight,» you said. What's midnight to the young?And suddenly a festive blaze was flungAcross five cedar trunks, snowpatches showed,And a patrol car on our bumpy roadCame to a crunching stop. Retake, retake!

People have thought she tried to cross the lakeAt Lochan Neck where zesty skaters crossed490 From Exe to Wye on days of special frost.Others supposed she might have lost her wayBy turning left from Bridgeroad; and some sayShe took her poor young life. I know. You know.

It was a night of thaw, a night of blow,With great excitement in the air. Black springStood just around the corner, shiveringIn the wet starlight and on the wet ground.The lake lay in the mist, its ice half drowned.A blurry shape stepped off the reedy bank500 Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank.

Canto Three