Бледный огонь - Владимир Набоков

Canto Three

L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:The grand potato.                   I.P.H., a layInstitute (I) of Preparation (P)For the Hereafter (H), or If, as weCalled it — big if! — engaged me for one termTo speak on death («to lecture on the Worm,»Wrote President McAber).                             You and I,And she, then a mere tot, moved from New WyeTo Yewshade, in another, higher state.510 I love great mountains. From the iron gateOf the ramshackle house we rented thereOne saw a snowy form, so far, so fair,That one could only fetch a sigh, as ifIt might assist assimilation.                              IphWas a larvorium and a violet:A grave in Reason's early spring. And yetIt missed the gist of the whole thing; it missedWhat mostly interests the preterist;For we die every day; oblivion thrives520 Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives,And our best yesterdays are now foul pilesOf crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files.I'm ready to become a floweretOr a fat fly, but never, to forget.And I'll turn down eternity unlessThe melancholy and the tendernessOf mortal life; the passion and the pain;The claret taillight of that dwindling planeOff Hesperus; your gesture of dismay530 On running out of cigarettes; the wayYou smile at dogs; the trail of silver slimeSnails leave on flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme,This index card, this slender rubber bandWhich always forms, when dropped, an ampersand,Are found in Heaven by the newlydeadStored in its strongholds through the years.                                         InsteadThe Institute assumed it might be wiseNot to expect too much of paradise:What if there's nobody to say hullo540 To the newcomer, no reception, noIndoctrination? What if you are tossedInto a boundless void, your bearings lost,Your spirit stripped and utterly alone,Your task unfinished, your despair unknown,Your body just beginning to putresce,A non-undressable in morning dress,Your widow lying prone on a dim bed,Herself a blur in your dissolving head!

While snubbing gods, including the big G,550 Iph borrowed some peripheral debrisFrom mystic visions; and it offered tips(The amber spectacles for life's eclipse) —How not to panic when you're made a ghost:Sidle and slide, choose a smooth surd, and coast,Meet solid bodies and glissade right through,Or let a person circulate through you.How to locate in blackness, with a gasp,Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp.How to keep sane in spiral types of space.560 Precautions to be taken in the caseOf freak reincarnation: what to doOn suddenly discovering that youAre now a young and vulnerable toadPlump in the middle of a busy road,Or a bear cub beneath a burning pine,Or a book mite in a revived divine.

Time means succession, and succession, change:Hence timelessness is bound to disarrangeSchedules of sentiment. We give advice570 To widower. He has been married twice:He meets his wives; both loved, both loving, bothJealous of one another. Time means growth,And growth means nothing in Elysian life.Fondling a changeless child, the flax-haired wifeGrieves on the brink of a remembered pondFull of a dreamy sky. And, also blond,But with a touch of tawny in the shade,Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone balustradeThe other sits and raises a moist gaze580 Toward the blue impenetrable haze.How to begin? Which first to kiss? What toyTo give the babe? Does that small solemn boyKnow of the head-on crash which on a wildMarch night killed both the mother and the child?And she, the second love, with instep bareIn ballerina black, why does she wearThe earrings from the other's jewel case?And why does she avert her fierce young face?

For as we know from dreams it is so hard590 To speak to our dear dead! They disregardOur apprehension, queaziness and shame —The awful sense that they're not quite the same.And our school chum killed in a distant warIs not surprised to see us at his door,And in a blend of jauntiness and gloomPoints at the puddles in his basement room.

But who can teach the thoughts we should roll-callWhen morning finds us marching to the wallUnder the stage direction of some goon600 Political, some uniformed baboon?We'll think of matters only known to us —Empires of rhyme, Indies of calculus;Listen to distant cocks crow, and discernUpon the rough gray wall a rare wall fern;And while our royal hands are being tied,Taunt our inferiors, cheerfully derideThe dedicated imbeciles, and spitInto their eyes just for the fun of it.

Nor can one help the exile, the old man610 Dying in a motel, with the loud fanRevolving in the torrid prairie nightAnd, from the outside, bits of colored lightReaching his bed like dark hands from the pastOffering gems; and death is coming fast.He suffocates and conjures in two tonguesThe nebulae dilating in his lungs.

A wrench, a rift — that's all one can foresee.Maybe one finds le grand néant; maybeAgain one spirals from the tuber's eye.

620 As you remarked the last time we went byThe Institute: «I really could not tellThe difference between this place and Hell.»

We heard cremationists guffaw and snortAt Grabermann's denouncing the RetortAs detrimental to the birth of wraiths.We all avoided criticizing faiths.The great Starover Blue reviewed the rolePlanets had played as landfalls of the soul.The fate of beasts was pondered. A Chinese630 Discanted on the etiquette at teasWith ancestors, and how far up to go.I tore apart the fantasies of Poe,And dealt with childhood memories of strangeNacreous gleams beyond the adults' range.Among our auditors were a young priestAnd an old Communist. Iph could at leastCompete with churches and the party line.

In later years it started to decline:Buddhism took root. A medium smuggled in640 Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.Fra Karamazov, mumbling his ineptAll is allowed, into some classes crept;And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb,A school of Freudians headed for the tomb.

That tasteless venture helped me in a way.I learnt what to ignore in my surveyOf death's abyss. And when we lost our childI knew there would be nothing: no self-styledSpirit would touch a keyboard of dry wood650 To rap out her pet name; no phantom wouldRise gracefully to welcome you and meIn the dark garden, near the shagbark tree.

«What is that funny creaking — do you hear?»«It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear.»

«If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light.I hate that wind! Let's play some chess.» «All right.»

«I'm sure it's not the shutter. There — again.»«It is a tendril fingering the pane.»

«What glided down the roof and made that thud?»660 «It is old winter tumbling in the mud.»

«And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned.»

Who rides so late in the night and the wind?It is the writer's grief. It is the wildMarch wind. It is the father with his child.

Later came minutes, hours, whole days at last,When she'd be absent from our thoughts, so fastDid life, the woolly caterpillar run.We went to Italy. Sprawled in the sunOn a white beach with other pink or brown670 Americans. Flew back to our small town.Found that my bunch of essays The UntamedSeahorse was «universally acclaimed»(It sold three hundred copies in one year).Again school started, and on hillsides, whereWound distant roads, one saw the steady streamOf carlights all returning to the dreamOf college education. You went onTranslating into French Marvell and Donne.It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane680 Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.Lang made your portrait. And one night I died.

The Crashaw Club had paid me to discussWhy Poetry Is Meaningful To Us.I gave my sermon, a dull thing but short.As I was leaving in some haste, to thwartThe so-called «question period» at the end,One of those peevish people who attendSuch talks only to say they disagree690 Stood up and pointed his pipe at me.

And then it happened — the attack, the trance,Or one of my old fits. There sat by chanceA doctor in the front row. At his feetPatly I fell. My heart had stopped to beat,It seems, and several moments passed beforeIt heaved and went on trudging to a moreConclusive destination. Give me nowYour full attention.                    I can't tell you howI knew — but I did know that I had crossed700 The border. Everything I loved was lostBut no aorta could report regret.A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;And blood-black nothingness began to spinA system of cells interlinked withinCells interlinked within cells interlinkedWithin one stem. And dreadfully distinctAgainst the dark, a tall white fountain played.

I realized, of course, that it was madeNot of our atoms; that the sense behind710 The scene was not our sense. In life, the mindOf any man is quick to recognizeNatural shams, and then before his eyesThe reed becomes a bird, the knobby twigAn inchworm, and the cobra head, a bigWickedly folded moth. But in the caseOf my white fountain what it did replacePerceptually was something that, I felt,Could be grasped only by whoever dweltIn the strange world where I was a mere stray.

720 And presently I saw it melt away:Though still unconscious I was back on earth.The tale I told provoked my doctor's mirth.He doubted very much that in the stateHe found me in «one could hallucinateOr dream in any sense. Later, perhaps,But not during the actual collapse.No, Mr. Shade.»                 But, Doctor, I was dead!He smiled. «Not quite: just half a shade,» he said.

However, I demurred. In mind I kept730 Replaying the whole thing. Again I steppedDown from the platform, and felt strange and hot,And saw that chap stand up, and toppled, notBecause a heckler pointed with his pipe,But probably because the time was ripeFor just that bump and wobble on the partOf a limp blimp, an old unstable heart.

My vision reeked with truth. It had the tone,The quiddity and quaintness of its ownReality. It was. As time went on.740 Its constant vertical in triumph shone.Often when troubled by the outer glareOf street and strife, inward I'd turn, and there,There in the background of my soul it stood,Old Faithful! And its presence always wouldConsole me wonderfully. Then, one day,I came across what seemed a twin display.

It was a story in a magazineAbout a Mrs. Z. whose heart had beenRubbed back to life by a prompt surgeon's hand.750 She told her interviewer of «The LandBeyond the Veil» and the account containedA hint of angels, and a glint of stainedWindows, and some soft music, and a choiceOf hymnal items, and her mother's voice;But at the end she mentioned a remoteLandscape, a hazy orchard — and I quote:«Beyond that orchard through a kind of smokeI glimpsed a tall white fountain — and awoke.»

If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt760 Sees a new animal and captures it,And if, a little later, Captain SmithBrings back a skin, that island is no myth.Our fountain was a signpost and a markObjectively enduring in the dark,Strong as a bone, substantial as tooth,And almost vulgar in its robust truth!

The article was by Jim Coates. To JimForthwith I wrote. Got her address from him.Drove west three hundred miles to talk to her.770 Arrived. Was met by an impassioned purr.Saw that blue hair, those freckled hands, that raptOrchideous air — and knew that I was trapped.

«Who'd miss an opportunity to meetA poet so distinguished?» It was sweetOf me to come! I desperately triedTo ask my questions. They were brushed aside:«Perhaps some other time.» The journalistStill had her scribblings. I should not insist.She plied me with fruit cake, turning it all780 Into an idiotic social call.«I can't believe,» she said, «that it is you!I loved your poem in the Blue Review.That one about Mon Blon. I have a nieceWho's climbed the Matterhorn. The other pieceI could not understand. I mean the sense.Because, of course, the sound — But I'm so dense!»

She was. I might have persevered. I mightHave made her tell me more about the whiteFountain we both had seen «beyond the veil»790 But if (I thought) I mentioned that detailShe'd pounce upon it as upon a fondAffinity, a sacramental bond,Uniting mystically her and me,And in a jiffy our two souls would beBrother and sister trembling on the brinkOf tender incest. «Well,» I said, «I thinkIt's getting late…»                  I also called on Coates.He was afraid he had mislaid her notes.He took his article from a steel file:800 «It's accurate. I have not changed her style.There's one misprint — not that it matters much:Mountain, not fountain. The majestic touch.»

Life Everlasting — based on a misprint!I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,And stop investigating my abyss?But all at once it dawned on me that thisWas the real point, the contrapuntal theme;Just this: not text, but texture; not the dreamBut a topsy-turvical coincidence,810 Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.Yes! It sufficed that I in life could findSome kind of link-and-bobolink, some kindOf correlated pattern in the game,Plexed artistry, and something of the samePleasure in it as they who played it found.

It did not matter who they were. No sound,No furtive light came from their involuteAbode, but there they were, aloof and mute,Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns820 To ivory unicorns and ebony fauns;Kindling a long life here, extinguishingA short one there; killing a Balkan king;Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high-Flying airplane to plummet from the skyAnd strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys,Glasses or pipe. Coordinating theseEvents and objects with remote eventsAnd vanished objects. Making ornamentsOf accidents and possibilities.

830 Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it isMy firm conviction — «Darling, shut the door.Had a nice trip?» Splendid — but what is moreI have returned convinced that I can gropeMy way to some — to some — «Yes, dear?» Faint hope.

Canto Four