Describing the King’s escape from Zembla, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions the King’s repeater that he pressed to find out what is the time:
A handshake, a flash of lightning. As the King waded into the damp, dark bracken, its odor, its lacy resilience, and the mixture of soft growth and steep ground reminded him of the times he had picnicked hereabouts - in another part of the forest but on the same mountainside, and higher up, as a boy, on the boulderfield where Mr. Campbell had once twisted an ankle and had to be carried down, smoking his pipe, by two husky attendants. Rather dull memories, on the whole. Wasn't there a hunting box nearby - just beyond Silfhar Falls? Good capercaillie and woodcock shooting - a sport much enjoyed by his late mother, Queen Blenda, a tweedy and horsy queen. Now as then, the rain seethed in the black trees, and if you paused you heard your heart thumping, and the distant roar of the torrent. What is the time, kot or? He pressed his repeater and, undismayed, it hissed and tinkled out ten twenty-one. (note to Line 149)
Kot is Russian for “tomcat.” In his Commentary Kinbote several times mentions the black cat that came with his landlord’s house:
Among various detailed notices affixed to a special board in the pantry, such as plumbing instructions, disserations on electricity, discourses on cactuses and so forth, I found the diet of the black cat that came with the house:
Mon, Wed, Fri: Liver
Tue, Thu, Sat: Fish
Sun: Ground meat
(All it got from me was milk and sardines; it was a likable little creature but after a while its movements began to grate on my nerves and I farmed it out to Mrs. Finley, the cleaning woman.) (note to Lines 47-48)
The Goldsworth château had many outside doors, and no matter how thoroughly I inspected them and the window shutters downstairs at bedtime, I never failed to discover next morning something unlocked, unlatched, a little loose, a little ajar, something sly and suspicious-looking. One night the black cat, which a few minutes before I had seen rippling down into the basement where I had arranged toilet facilities for it in an attractive setting, suddenly reappeared on the threshold of the music room, in the middle of my insomnia and a Wagner record, arching its back and sporting a neck bow of white silk which it could certainly never have put on all by itself. I telephoned 11111 and a few minutes later was discussing possible culprits with a policeman who relished greatly my cherry cordial, but whoever had broken in had left no trace. It is so easy for a cruel person to make the victim of his ingenuity believe that he has persecution mania, or is really being stalked by a killer, or is suffering from hallucinations. Hallucinations! Well did I know that among certain youthful instructors whose advances I had rejected there was at least one evil practical joker; I knew it ever since the time I came home from a very enjoyable and successful meeting of students and teachers (at which I had exuberantly thrown off my coat and shown several willing pupils a few of the amusing holds employed by Zemblan wrestlers) and found in my coat pocket a brutal anonymous note saying: "You have hal..... s real bad, chum," meaning evidently "hallucinations," although a malevolent critic might infer from the insufficient number of dashes that little Mr. Anon, despite teaching Freshman English, could hardly spell. (note to Line 62)
The black cat sporting a neck bow of white silk is, of course, a different animal (some neighbor's cat). In E. A. Poe’s story The Black Cat (1845) the second cat has, unlike Pluto (the first black cat), a white spot on its breast:
It was a black cat -- a very large one -- fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast.
Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase it of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it -- knew nothing of it -- had never seen it before.
In his story The Devil in the Belfry (1839) E. A. Poe mentions a fat tabby cat, with a gilt toy repeater tied to its tail:
The fireplaces are large and deep, with fierce crooked-looking fire-dogs. There is constantly a rousing fire, and a huge pot over it, full of sauer-kraut and pork, to which the good woman of the house is always busy in attending. She is a little fat old lady, with blue eyes and a red face, and wears a huge cap like a sugar-loaf, ornamented with purple and yellow ribbons. Her dress is of orange-coloured linsey-woolsey, made very full behind and very short in the waist, and indeed very short in other respects, not reaching below the middle of her leg. This is somewhat thick, and so are her ankles, but she has a fine pair of green stockings to cover them. Her shoes—of pink leather—are fastened each with a bunch of yellow ribbons puckered up in the shape of a cabbage. In her left hand she has a littlecap heavy Dutch watch; in her right she wields a ladle for the sauer-kraut and pork. By her side there stands a fat tabby cat, with a gilt toy repeater tied to its tail, which "the boys" have fastened there by way of a quiz.
The boys themselves are, all three of them, in the garden attending the pig. They are each two feet in height. They have three-cornered cocked hats, purple waistcoats reaching down to their thighs, buckskin knee-breeches, red woollen stockings, heavy shoes with big silver buckles, and long surtout coats with large buttons of mother-of-pearl. Each, too, has a pipe in his mouth, and a little dumpy watch in his right hand. He takes a puff and a look, and then a look and a puff. The pig—which is corpulent and lazy—is occupied now in picking up the stray leaves that fall from the cabbages, and now in giving a kick behind at the gilt repeater, which the urchins have also tied to his tail in order to make him look as handsome as the cat.
Poe’s story has the following epigraph: What o'clock is it? --Old Saying.
Kot or hints at kotoryi chas (“what is the time” in Russian). In Mandelshtam’s poem Net, ne luna, a svetlyi tsiferblat… (“No, not the moon, but a clock’s dial lit brightly…” 1912) mad Batyushkov to the question kotoryi chas replies vechnost’ (Eternity):
Нет, не луна, а светлый циферблат
Сияет мне, — и чем я виноват,
Что слабых звёзд я осязаю млечность?
И Батюшкова мне противна спесь:
Который час, его спросили здесь,
А он ответил любопытным: вечность!
No, not the moon, but a clock's dial lit brightly
Shines upon me; must the blame be mine to bear
If I detect the weakest stars' lacticity?
Thus, Batyushkov's airs cannot fail to rile me:
"What is the time, please, Sir?" they asked him here,
And he replied to the curious: Eternity!
(transl. Ph. Nikolayev)
Mandelshtam is the author of Valkirii (“Valkyrie,” 1916):
Летают Валкирии, поют смычки —
Громоздкая опера к концу идёт.
С тяжёлыми шубами гайдуки
На мраморных лестницах ждут господ.
Уж занавес наглухо упасть готов,
Ещё рукоплещет в райке глупец,
Извозчики пляшут вокруг костров…
«Карету такого-то!» — Разъезд. Конец.
The violins call and the valkyries fly
as the opera lumbers to a close.
On the marble stairs, the footmen mark time,
clutching their ladies’ and lords’ fur-coats.
Up in the gods, some fool claps on
as the curtain falls without a sound.
Cabmen do jigs about their bonfires.
‘So-and-so’s coach!’ They’re off. The End.
(transl. Alistair Noon)
Die Walküre (“The Valkyrie”) is the second opera from Richard Wagner’s cycle of four music dramas Der Ring des Nibelungen (“Ring of the Nibelungs,” 1876). A black cat sporting a neck bow of white silk appears in the middle of Kinbote’s insomnia and a Wagner record.
In Mandelshtam’s poem My napryazhyonnogo molchan’ya ne vynosim… (“We cannot bear strained silence,” 1913) koshmarnyi chelovek (a man out of a nightmare) who is reading E. A. Poe’s poem Ulalume (1847) is Vladimir Pyast. In a poem about his idol Edgar (quoted by G. Ivanov in his memoir essay Lunatik) Pyast mentions Poe’s teeth touched by deterioration:
Как какое-то заклинание в веренице самых разнообразных слов и образов, время от времени повторялось имя Эдгара По, вне видимой связи с содержанием. Начало аудитория слушала молча. Потом, при имени По, начинали посмеиваться. Когда доходило до строфы, которую запомнил и я:
И порчею чуть тронутые зубы ―
Но порча их сладка ―
И незакрывающиеся губы ―
Верхняя коротка ―
И сам Эдгар…
― весь зал хохотал.
Bad teeth can be a cause of halitosis (bad breath), the word meant by the anonymous joker who slipped a note in Kinbote’s coat pocket.
In Lunatik ("The Somnambulist") Pyast quotes Poe’s words “what disease is like Alcohol:”
— Как раз сегодня—шестого октября. Он ехал в Филадельфию, у него были деньги—в первый раз в жизни у него были деньги, он хотел отдохнуть, он мог отдохнуть. И вот—стакан виски, только один стакан. Какая болезнь может сравниться с тобой, алкоголь! Это он, это Эдгар сказал. Ему было только тридцать семь лет, он так хотел начать новую жизнь. Новая жизнь! Он и начал новую жизнь! Он и начал новую жизнь—его убили. Вы думаете, это они?
These words occur in Poe’s story The Black Cat:
But my disease grew upon me -- for what disease is like Alcohol! -- and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish -- even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.
According to Sybil Shade (the poet's wife), her husband is forbidden to touch alcohol:
I wanted to know if he did not mind being taken the longer way, with a stop at Community Center where I wanted to buy some chocolate-coated cookies and a little caviar. He said it was fine with him. From the inside of the supermarket, through a plate-glass window, I saw the old chap pop into a liquor store. When I returned with my purchases, he was back in the car, reading a tabloid newspaper which I had thought no poet would deign to touch. A comfortable burp told me he had a flask of brandy concealed about his warmly coated person. As we turned into the driveway of his house, we saw Sybil pulling up in front of it. I got out with courteous vivacity. She said: "Since my husband does not believe in introducing people, let us do it ourselves: You are Dr. Kinbote, aren't you? And. I am Sybil Shade." Then she addressed her husband saying he might have waited in his office another minute: she had honked and called, and walked all the way up, et cetera. I turned to go, not wishing to listen to a marital scene, but she called me back: "Have a drink with us," she said, "or rather with me, because John is forbidden to touch alcohol." I explained I could not stay long as I was about to have a kind of little seminar at home followed by some table tennis, with two charming identical twins and another boy, another boy. (Foreword)
According to Kinbote, almost the whole clan of Gradus (Shade's murderer) was in the liquor businesss.