Бледный огонь
вернуться

Набоков Владимир
Шрифт:

Canto Three

L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais: The grand potato. I.P.H., a lay Institute (I) of Preparation (P) For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we Called it — big if! — engaged me for one term To speak on death («to lecture on the Worm,» Wrote President McAber). You and I, And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye To Yewshade, in another, higher state. 510  I love great mountains. From the iron gate Of the ramshackle house we rented there One saw a snowy form, so far, so fair, That one could only fetch a sigh, as if It might assist assimilation. Iph Was a larvorium and a violet: A grave in Reason's early spring. And yet It missed the gist of the whole thing; it missed What mostly interests the preterist; For we die every day; oblivion thrives 520  Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives, And our best yesterdays are now foul piles Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files. I'm ready to become a floweret Or a fat fly, but never, to forget. And I'll turn down eternity unless The melancholy and the tenderness Of mortal life; the passion and the pain; The claret taillight of that dwindling plane Off Hesperus; your gesture of dismay 530  On running out of cigarettes; the way You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime Snails leave on flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme, This index card, this slender rubber band Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand, Are found in Heaven by the newlydead Stored in its strongholds through the years. Instead The Institute assumed it might be wise Not to expect too much of paradise: What if there's nobody to say hullo 540  To the newcomer, no reception, no Indoctrination? What if you are tossed Into 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 debris From 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 case Of freak reincarnation: what to do On suddenly discovering that you Are now a young and vulnerable toad Plump 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 disarrange Schedules of sentiment. We give advice 570  To widower. He has been married twice: He meets his wives; both loved, both loving, both Jealous of one another. Time means growth, And growth means nothing in Elysian life. Fondling a changeless child, the flax-haired wife Grieves on the brink of a remembered pond Full of a dreamy sky. And, also blond, But with a touch of tawny in the shade, Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone balustrade The other sits and raises a moist gaze 580  Toward the blue impenetrable haze. How to begin? Which first to kiss? What toy To give the babe? Does that small solemn boy Know of the head-on crash which on a wild March night killed both the mother and the child? And she, the second love, with instep bare In ballerina black, why does she wear The 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 hard 590  To speak to our dear dead! They disregard Our apprehension, queaziness and shame — The awful sense that they're not quite the same. And our school chum killed in a distant war Is not surprised to see us at his door, And in a blend of jauntiness and gloom Points at the puddles in his basement room. But who can teach the thoughts we should roll-call When morning finds us marching to the wall Under the stage direction of some goon 600  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 discern Upon the rough gray wall a rare wall fern; And while our royal hands are being tied, Taunt our inferiors, cheerfully deride The dedicated imbeciles, and spit Into their eyes just for the fun of it. Nor can one help the exile, the old man 610  Dying in a motel, with the loud fan Revolving in the torrid prairie night And, from the outside, bits of colored light Reaching his bed like dark hands from the past Offering gems; and death is coming fast. He suffocates and conjures in two tongues The nebulae dilating in his lungs. A wrench, a rift — that's all one can foresee. Maybe one finds le grand n'eant; maybe Again one spirals from the tuber's eye. 620  As you remarked the last time we went by The Institute: «I really could not tell The difference between this place and Hell.» We heard cremationists guffaw and snort At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort As detrimental to the birth of wraiths. We all avoided criticizing faiths. The great Starover Blue reviewed the role Planets had played as landfalls of the soul. The fate of beasts was pondered. A Chinese 630  Discanted on the etiquette at teas With ancestors, and how far up to go. I tore apart the fantasies of Poe, And dealt with childhood memories of strange Nacreous gleams beyond the adults' range. Among our auditors were a young priest And an old Communist. Iph could at least Compete with churches and the party line. In later years it started to decline: Buddhism took root. A medium smuggled in 640  Pale jellies and a floating mandolin. Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept All 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 survey Of death's abyss. And when we lost our child I knew there would be nothing: no self-styled Spirit would touch a keyboard of dry wood 650  To rap out her pet name; no phantom would Rise gracefully to welcome you and me In 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 wild March 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 fast Did life, the woolly caterpillar run. We went to Italy. Sprawled in the sun On a white beach with other pink or brown 670  Americans. Flew back to our small town. Found that my bunch of essays The Untamed Seahorse was «universally acclaimed» (It sold three hundred copies in one year). Again school started, and on hillsides, where Wound distant roads, one saw the steady stream Of carlights all returning to the dream Of college education. You went on Translating into French Marvell and Donne. It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane 680  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 discuss Why Poetry Is Meaningful To Us. I gave my sermon, a dull thing but short. As I was leaving in some haste, to thwart The so-called «question period» at the end, One of those peevish people who attend Such talks only to say they disagree 690  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 chance A doctor in the front row. At his feet Patly I fell. My heart had stopped to beat, It seems, and several moments passed before It heaved and went on trudging to a more Conclusive destination. Give me now Your full attention. I can't tell you how I knew — but I did know that I had crossed 700  The border. Everything I loved was lost But no aorta could report regret. A sun of rubber was convulsed and set; And blood-black nothingness began to spin A system of cells interlinked within Cells interlinked within cells interlinked Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct Against the dark, a tall white fountain played. I realized, of course, that it was made Not of our atoms; that the sense behind 710  The scene was not our sense. In life, the mind Of any man is quick to recognize Natural shams, and then before his eyes The reed becomes a bird, the knobby twig An inchworm, and the cobra head, a big Wickedly folded moth. But in the case Of my white fountain what it did replace Perceptually was something that, I felt, Could be grasped only by whoever dwelt In 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 state He found me in «one could hallucinate Or 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 kept 730  Replaying the whole thing. Again I stepped Down from the platform, and felt strange and hot, And saw that chap stand up, and toppled, not Because a heckler pointed with his pipe, But probably because the time was ripe For just that bump and wobble on the part Of a limp blimp, an old unstable heart. My vision reeked with truth. It had the tone, The quiddity and quaintness of its own Reality. It was. As time went on. 740  Its constant vertical in triumph shone. Often when troubled by the outer glare Of street and strife, inward I'd turn, and there, There in the background of my soul it stood, Old Faithful! And its presence always would Console me wonderfully. Then, one day, I came across what seemed a twin display. It was a story in a magazine About a Mrs. Z. whose heart had been Rubbed back to life by a prompt surgeon's hand. 750  She told her interviewer of «The Land Beyond the Veil» and the account contained A hint of angels, and a glint of stained Windows, and some soft music, and a choice Of hymnal items, and her mother's voice; But at the end she mentioned a remote Landscape, a hazy orchard — and I quote: «Beyond that orchard through a kind of smoke I glimpsed a tall white fountain — and awoke.» If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt 760  Sees a new animal and captures it, And if, a little later, Captain Smith Brings back a skin, that island is no myth. Our fountain was a signpost and a mark Objectively 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 Jim Forthwith 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 rapt Orchideous air — and knew that I was trapped. «Who'd miss an opportunity to meet A poet so distinguished?» It was sweet Of me to come! I desperately tried To ask my questions. They were brushed aside: «Perhaps some other time.» The journalist Still had her scribblings. I should not insist. She plied me with fruit cake, turning it all 780  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 niece Who's climbed the Matterhorn. The other piece I could not understand. I mean the sense. Because, of course, the sound — But I'm so dense!» She was. I might have persevered. I might Have made her tell me more about the white Fountain we both had seen «beyond the veil» 790  But if (I thought) I mentioned that detail She'd pounce upon it as upon a fond Affinity, a sacramental bond, Uniting mystically her and me, And in a jiffy our two souls would be Brother and sister trembling on the brink Of tender incest. «Well,» I said, «I think It'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 this Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme; Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream But a topsy-turvical coincidence, 810  Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense. Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind Of correlated pattern in the game, Plexed artistry, and something of the same Pleasure in it as they who played it found. It did not matter who they were. No sound, No furtive light came from their involute Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute, Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns 820  To ivory unicorns and ebony fauns; Kindling a long life here, extinguishing A short one there; killing a Balkan king; Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high- Flying airplane to plummet from the sky And strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys, Glasses or pipe. Coordinating these Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities. 830  Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it is My firm conviction — «Darling, shut the door. Had a nice trip?» Splendid — but what is more I have returned convinced that I can grope My way to some — to some — «Yes, dear?» Faint hope.

Canto Four

Now I shall spy on beauty as none has Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as None has cried out. Now I shall try what none Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done. And speaking of this wonderful machine: 840  I'm puzzled by the difference between Two methods of composing: A, the kind Which goes on solely in the poet's mind, A testing of performing words, while he Is soaping a third time one leg, and B, The other kind, much more decorous, when He's in his study writing with a pen. In method В the hand supports the thought, The abstract battle is concretely fought. The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar 850  A canceled sunset or restore a star, And thus it physically guides the phrase Toward faint daylight through the inky maze. But method A is agony! The brain Is soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain. A muse in overalls directs the drill Which grinds and which no effort of the will Can interrupt, while the automaton Is taking off what he has just put on Or walking briskly to the corner store 860  To buy the paper he has read before. Why is it so? Is it, perhaps, because In penless work there is no pen-poised pause And one must use three hands at the same time, Having to choose the necessary rhyme, Hold the completed line before one's eyes, And keep in mind all the preceding tries? Or is the process deeper with no desk To prop the false and hoist the poetesque? For there are those mysterious moments when 870  Too weary to delete, I drop my pen; I ambulate — and by some mute command The right word flutes and perches on my hand. My best time is the morning; my preferred Season, midsummer. I once overheard Myself awakening while half of me Still slept in bed. I tore my spirit free, And caught up with myself — upon the lawn Where clover leaves cupped the topaz of the dawn, And where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe. 880  And then I realized that this half too Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke Safe in my bed as day its eggshell broke, And robins walked and stopped, and on the damp Gemmed turf a brown shoe lay! My secret stamp, The Shade impress, the mystery inborn. Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn. Since my biographer may be too staid Or know too little to affirm that Shade Shaved in his bath, here goes: «He'd fixed a sort 890  Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support Running across the tub to hold in place The shaving mirror right before his face And with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'd Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed.» The more I weigh, the less secure my skin; In places it's ridiculously thin; Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick And my grimace, invites the wicked nick. Or this dewlap: some day I must set free 900  The Newport Frill inveterate in me. My Adam's apple is a prickly pear: Now I shall speak of evil and despair As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight, Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate Through strawberry-and-cream the gory mess And find unchanged that patch of prickliness. I have my doubts about the one-armed bloke Who in commercials with one gliding stroke Clears a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin, 910  Then wipes his face and fondly tries his skin. I'm in the class of fussy bimanists. As a discreet ephebe in tights assists A female in an acrobatic dance, My left hand helps, and holds, and shifts its stance. Now I shall speak… Better than any soap Is the sensation for which poets hope When inspiration and its icy blaze, The sudden image, the immediate phrase Over the skin a triple ripple send 920  Making the little hairs all stand on end As in the enlarged animated scheme Of whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream. Now I shall speak of evil as none has Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz; The white-hosed moron torturing a black Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac; Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools; Music in supermarkets; swimming pools; Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx, 930  Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks. And while the safety blade with scrape and screak Travels across the country of my cheek, Cars on the highway pass, and up the steep Incline big trucks around my jawbone creep, And now a silent liner docks, and now Sunglassers tour Beirut, and now I plough Old Zembla's fields where my gray stubble grows, And slaves make hay between my mouth and nose. Man's life as commentary to abstruse 940  Unfinished poem. Note for further use. Dressing in all the rooms, I rhyme and roam Throughout the house with, in my fist, a comb Or a shoehorn, which turns into the spoon I eat my egg with. In the afternoon You drive me to the library. We dine At half past six. And that odd muse of mine, My versipel, is with me everywhere, In carrel and in car, and in my chair. And all the time, and all the time, my love, 950  You too are there, beneath the word, above The syllable, to underscore and stress The vital rhythm. One heard a woman's dress Rustle in days of yore. I've often caught The sound and sense of your approaching thought. And all in you is youth, and you make new, By quoting them, old things I made for you. Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote Came next; then Hebe's Cup, my final float In that damp carnival, for now I term 960  Everything «Poems,» and no longer squirm. (But this transparent thingum does require Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.) Gently the day has passed in a sustained Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained And a brown ament, and the noun I meant To use but did not, dry on the cement. Maybe my sensual love for the consonne D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon A feeling of fantastically planned, 970  Richly rhymed life. I feel I understand Existence, or at least a minute part Of my existence, only through my art, In terms of combinational delight; And if my private universe scans right, So does the verse of galaxies divine Which I suspect is an iambic line. I'm reasonably sure that we survive And that my darling somewhere is alive, As I am reasonably sure that I 980  Shall wake at six tomorrow, on July The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine, And that the day will probably be fine; So this alarm clock let me set myself, Yawn, and put back Shade's «Poems» on their shelf. But it's not bedtime yet. The sun attains Old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes. The man must be — what? Eighty? Eighty-two? Was twice my age the year I married you. Where are you? In the garden. I can see 990  Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree. Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click, Clunk. (Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk.) A dark Vanessa with crimson band Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand And shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white. And through the flowing shade and ebbing light A man, unheedful of the butterfly — Some neighbor's gardener, I guess — goes by Trundling an empty barrow up the lane. 1000  […]