Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, 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) says that, if anybody told him that he resembled King Charles, he would counter with something on the lines of "all Chinese look alike" and change the subject:
Pictures of the King had not infrequently appeared in America during the first months of the Zemblan Revolution. Every now and then some busybody on the campus with a retentive memory, or one of the clubwomen who were always after Shade and his eccentric friend, used to ask me with the inane meaningfulness adopted in such cases if anybody had told me how much I resembled that unfortunate monarch. I would counter with something on the lines of "all Chinese look alike" and change the subject. One day, however, in the lounge of the Faculty Club where I lolled surrounded by a number of my colleagues, I had to put up with a particularly embarrassing onset. A visiting German lecturer from Oxford kept exclaiming, aloud and under his breath, that the resemblance was "absolutely unheard of," and when I negligently observed that all bearded Zemblans resembled one another - and that, in fact, the name Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semblerland, a land of reflections, of "resemblers" - my tormentor said: "Ah, yes, but King Charles wore no beard, and yet it is his very face! I had [he added] the honor of being seated within a few yards of the royal box at a Sport Festival in Onhava which I visited with my wife, who is Swedish, in 1956. We have a photograph of him at home, and her sister knew very well the mother of one of his pages, an interesting woman. Don't you see [almost tugging at Shade's lapel] the astounding similarity of features - of the upper part of the face, and the eyes, yes, the eyes, and the nose bridge?"
"Nay, sir" [said Shade, refolding a leg and slightly rolling in his armchair as wont to do when about to deliver a pronouncement] "there is no resemblance at all. I have seen the King in newsreels, and there is no resemblance. Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences."
Good Netochka, who had been looking singularly uncomfortable during this exchange, remarked in his gentle voice how sad it was to think that such a "sympathetic ruler" had probably perished in prison.
A professor of physics now joined in. He was a so-called Pink, who believed in what so-called Pinks believe in (Progressive Education, the Integrity of anyone spying for Russia, Fall-outs occasioned solely by US-made bombs, the existence in the near past of a McCarthy Era, Soviet achievements including Dr. Zhivago, and so forth): "Your regrets are groundless" [said he]. "That sorry ruler is known to have escaped disguised as a nun; but whatever happens, or has happened to him, cannot interest the Zemblan people. History has denounced him, and that is his epitaph."
Shade: "True, sir. In due time history will have denounced everybody. The King may be dead, or he may be as much alive as you and Kinbote, but let us respect facts. I have it from him [pointing to me] that the widely circulated stuff about the nun is a vulgar pro-Extremist fabrication. The Extremists and their friends invented a lot of nonsense to conceal their discomfiture; but the truth is that the King walked out of the palace, and crossed the mountains, and left the country, not in the black garb of a pale spinster but dressed as an athlete in scarlet wool."
"Strange, strange," said the German visitor, who by some quirk of alderwood ancestry had been alone to catch the eerie note that had throbbed by and was gone.
Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die--they only disappear, eh, Charles?"
"Who said that?" asked sharply, as if coming out of a trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the English Department.
"Take my own case," continued my dear friend ignoring Mr. H. "I have been said to resemble at least four people: Samuel Johnson; the lovingly reconstructed ancestor of man in the Exton Museum; and two local characters, one being the slapdash disheveled hag who ladles out the mash in the Levin Hall cafeteria."
"The third in the witch row," I precised quaintly, and everybody laughed.
"I would rather say," remarked Mr. Pardon--American History--"that she looks like Judge Goldsworth" ("One of us," interposed Shade inclining his head), "especially when he is real mad at the whole world after a good dinner."
"I heard," hastily began Netochka, "that the Goldsworths are having a wonderful time--"
"What a pity I cannot prove my point," muttered the tenacious German visitor. "If only there was a picture here. Couldn't there be somewhere--"
"Sure," said young Emerald and left his seat.
Professor Pardon now spoke to me: "I was under the impression that you were born in Russia, and that your name was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?"
Kinbote: "You are confusing me with some refugee from Nova Zembla [sarcastically stressing the "Nova"].
"Didn't you tell me, Charles, that kinbote means regicide in your language?" asked my dear Shade.
"Yes, a king's destroyer," I said (longing to explain that a king who sinks his identity in the mirror of exile is in a sense just that).
Shade [addressing the German visitor]: "Professor Kinbote is the author of a remarkable book on surnames. I believe [to me] there exists an English translation?"
"Oxford, 1956," I replied.
"You do know Russian, though?" said Pardon. "I think I heard you, the other day, talking to--what's his name--oh, my goodness" [laboriously composing his lips].
Shade: "Sir, we all find it difficult to attack that name" [laughing].
Professor Hurley: "Think of the French word for 'tire': punoo."
Shade: "Why, sir, I am afraid you have only punctured the difficulty" [laughing uproariously].
"Flatman," quipped I. "Yes," I went on, turning to Pardon, "I certainly do speak Russian. You see, it was the fashionable language par excellence, much more so than French, among the nobles of Zembla at least, and at its court. Today, of course, all this has changed. It is now the lower classes who are forcibly taught to speak Russian."
"Aren't we, too trying to teach Russian in our schools?" said Pink.
In the meantime, at the other end of the room, young Emerald had been communing with the bookshelves. At this point he returned with the the T-Z volume of an illustrated encyclopedia.
"Well," said he, "here he is, that king. But look, he is young and handsome" ("Oh, that won't do," wailed the German visitor.) "Young, handsome, and wearing a fancy uniform," continued Emerald. "Quite the fancy pansy, in fact."
"And you," I said quietly, "are a foul-minded pup in a cheap green jacket."
"But what have I said?" the young instructor inquired of the company, spreading out his palms like a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper.
"Now, now," said Shade. "I'm sure, Charles, our young friend never intended to insult your sovereign and namesake."
"He could not, even if he had wished," I observed placidly, turning it all into a joke.
Gerald Emerald extended his hand--which at the moment of writing still remains in that position. (note to Line 894)
In VN's novel Otchayanie ("Despair," 1934) Ardalion (a cousin of Hermann's wife Lydia, the painter who draws Hermann's portrait) tells Hermann: “You’ll say next that all Chinamen [in the original "vse yapontsy, all Japanese"] are alike:"
Лида, старательно намазавшись кремом, легла навзничь, предоставляя себя в распоряжение солнца. Мы с Ардалионом расположились поблизости, под лучшей его сосной. Он вынул из печально похудевшего портфеля тетрадь ватманской бумаги, карандаши, и через минуту я заметил, что он рисует меня.
"У вас трудное лицо", – сказал он, щурясь.
"Ах, покажи", – крикнула Лида, не шевельнув ни одним членом.
"Повыше голову, – сказал Ардалион, – вот так, достаточно".
"Ах, покажи", – снова крикнула она погодя.
"Ты мне прежде покажи, куда ты запендрячила мою водку", – недовольно проговорил Ардалион.
"Дудки, – ответила Лида. – Ты при мне пить не будешь".
"Вот чудачка. Как вы думаете, она ее правда закопала? Я, собственно, хотел с вами, сэр, выпить на брудершафт".
"Ты у меня отучишься пить", – крикнула Лида, не поднимая глянцевитых век.
"Стерва", – сказал Ардалион.
Я спросил: "Почему вы говорите, что у меня трудное лицо? В чём его трудность?"
"Не знаю, – карандаш не берёт. Надобно попробовать углём или маслом".
Он стёр что-то резинкой, сбил пыль суставами пальцев, накренил голову.
"У меня, по-моему, очень обыкновенное лицо. Может быть, вы попробуете нарисовать меня в профиль?"
"Да, в профиль!" – крикнула Лида (все так же распятая на земле).
"Нет, обыкновенным его назвать нельзя. Капельку выше. Напротив, в нем есть что-то странное. У меня все ваши линии уходят из-под карандаша. Раз – и ушла".
"Такие лица, значит, встречаются редко, – вы это хотите сказать?"
"Всякое лицо – уникум", – произнёс Ардалион.
"Ох, сгораю", – простонала Лида, но не двинулась.
"Но, позвольте, при чём тут уникум? Ведь, во-первых, бывают определенные типы лиц – зоологические, например. Есть люди с обезьяньими чертами, есть крысиный тип, свиной… А затем – типы знаменитых людей, – скажем, Наполеоны среди мужчин, королевы Виктории среди женщин. Мне говорили, что я смахиваю на Амундсена. Мне приходилось не раз видеть носы а-ля Лев Толстой. Ну, еще бывает тип художественный – иконописный лик, мадоннообразный. Наконец, бытовые, профессиональные типы…"
"Вы еще скажите, что все японцы между собою схожи. Вы забываете, синьор, что художник видит именно разницу. Сходство видит профан. Вот Лида вскрикивает в кинематографе: "Мотри, как похожа на нашу горничную Катю!""
"Ардалиончик, не остри", – сказала Лида.
"Но согласитесь, – продолжал я, – что иногда важно именно сходство".
"Когда прикупаешь подсвечник", – сказал Ардалион.
Lydia dutifully besmeared herself with cold cream and lay down on her back placing herself at the disposal of the sun. A few feet away, Ardalion and I made ourselves comfortable in the shade of his best pine tree. From his sadly shrunken briefcase he produced a sketch-book, pencils; and presently I noticed that he was drawing me.
“You’ve a tricky face,” he said, screwing up his eyes.
“Oh, do show me!” cried Lydia without stirring a limb.
“Head a bit higher,” said Ardalion. “Thanks, that will do.”
“Oh, do show me,” she cried again a minute later.
“You first show me where you’ve chucked my vodka,” muttered Ardalion.
“No fear,” she replied. “I won’t have you drinking when I’m about.”
“The woman is dotty! Now, should you suppose, old man, that she has actually buried it? I intended, as a matter of fact, quaffing the cup of brotherhood with you.”
“I’ll have you stop drinking altogether,” cried Lydia, without lifting her greasy eyelids.
“Damned cheek,” said Ardalion.
“Tell me,” I asked him, “what makes you say I have a tricky face? Where is the snag?”
“Don’t know. Lead doesn’t get you. Next time I must try charcoal or oil.” He erased something; flicked away the rubber dust with the joints of his fingers; cocked his head.
“Funny, I always thought I had a most ordinary face. Try, perhaps, drawing it in profile?”
“Yes, in profile!” cried Lydia (as before: spread-eagled on the sand).
“Well, I shouldn’t exactly call it ordinary. A little higher, please. No, if you ask me, I find there is something distinctly rum about it. All your lines sort of slip from under my pencil, slip and are gone.”
“Such faces, then, occur seldom, that’s what you mean?”
“Every face is unique,” pronounced Ardalion.
“Lord, I’m roasting,” moaned Lydia, but did not move.
“Well, now, really—unique! … Isn’t that going too far? Take for instance the definite types of human faces that exist in the world; say, zoological types. There are people with the features of apes; there is also the rat type, the swine type. Then take the resemblance to celebrities—Napoleons among men, Queen Victorias among women. People have told me I reminded them of Amundsen. I have frequently come across noses à la Leo Tolstoy. Then, too, there is the type of face that makes you think of some particular picture. Ikon-like faces, madonnas! And what about the kind of resemblance due to some fashion of life or profession? …”
“You’ll say next that all Chinamen are alike. You forget, my good man, that what the artist perceives is, primarily, the difference between things. It is the vulgar who note their resemblance. Haven’t we heard Lydia exclaim at the talkies: ‘Oo! Isn’t she just like our maid?’ ”
“Ardy, dear, don’t try to be funny,” said Lydia.
“But you must concede,” I went on, “that sometimes it is the resemblance that matters.”
“When buying a second candlestick,” said Ardalion. (Chapter Two)
Lydia's cousin (and lover) Ardalion brings to mind Ardelion Veen (1800-1848), in VN's novel Ada (1969) the father of Daniel Veen (Van's and Ada's Uncle Dan, Lucette's father, 1838-1893). Uncle Dan's father died in the library of Ardis Hall (where, in the Night of the Burning Barn, Van and Ada make love for the first time):
Ada showed her shy guest the great library on the second floor, the pride of Ardis and her favorite ‘browse,’ which her mother never entered (having her own set of a Thousand-and-One Best Plays in her boudoir), and which Red Veen, a sentimentalist and a poltroon, shunned, not caring to run into the ghost of his father who had died there of a stroke, and also because he found nothing so depressing as the collected works of unrecollected authors, although he did not mind an occasional visitor’s admiring the place’s tall bookcases and short cabinets, its dark pictures and pale busts, its ten chairs of carved walnut, and two noble tables inlaid with ebony. In a slant of scholarly sunlight a botanical atlas upon a reading desk lay open on a colored plate of orchids. A kind of divan or daybed covered in black velvet, with two yellow cushions, was placed in a recess, below a plate-glass window which offered a generous view of the banal park and the man-made lake. A pair of candlesticks, mere phantoms of metal and tallow, stood, or seemed to stand, on the broad window ledge. (1.6)
The artificial rectangular lake that can be seen from the library window of Ardis Hall, Tarn brings to mind Tarnitz, a town where Hermann and Felix (a tramp whom Hermann believes to be his perfect double) dine in a tavern and spend the night in a hotel. Hermann tells Felix that he is an actor:
Я отпил пива и продолжал:
"Итак, родился я в богатой семьe. У нас был дом и сад, -- ах, какой сад, Феликс! Представь себe розовую чащобу, цeлые заросли роз, розы всeх сортов, каждый сорт с дощечкой, и на дощечкe -- название: названiя розам дают такие же звонкие, как скаковым лошадям. Кромe роз, росло в нашем саду множество других цвeтов, -- и когда по утрам все это бывало обрызгано росой, зрeлище, Феликс получалось сказочное. Мальчиком я уже любил и умeл ухаживать за нашим садом, у меня была маленькая лейка, Феликс, и маленькая мотыга, и родители мои сидeли в тeни старой черешни, посаженной еще дeдом, и глядeли с умилением, как я, маленькiй и дeловитый, -- вообрази, вообрази эту картину, -- снимаю с роз и давлю гусениц, похожих на сучки. Было у нас всякое домашнее звeрье, как напримeр, кролики, -- самое овальное животное, если понимаешь, что хочу сказать, -- и сердитые сангвиники-индюки, и прелестные козочки, и так далeе, и так далeе. Потом родители мои разорились, померли, чудный сад исчез, как сон, -- и вот только теперь счастье как будто блеснуло опять. Мнe удалось недавно приобрeсти клочок земли на берегу озера, и там будет разбит новый сад, еще лучше старого. Моя молодость вся насквозь проблагоухала тьмою цвeтовъ, окружавшей ее, а сосeдний лeсъ, густой и дремучий, наложил на мою душу тeнь романтической меланхолии. Я всегда был одинок, Феликс, одинок я и сейчас. Женщины... -- Но что говорить об этих измeнчивыхъ, развратных существах... Я много путешествовал, люблю, как и ты, бродить с котомкой, -- хотя конечно, в силу нeкоторыхъ причин, которые всецeло осуждаю, мои скитания приятнeе твоих. Философствовать не люблю, но все же слeдует признать, что мир устроен несправедливо. Удивительная вещь, -- задумывался ли ты когда-нибудь над этим? -- что двое людей, одинаково бeдныхъ, живут неодинаково, один, скажем, как ты, откровенно и безнадежно нищенствует, а другой, такой же бeднякъ, ведет совсeм иной образ жизни, -- прилично одeт, беспечен, сыт, вращается среди богатых весельчаков, -- почему это так? А потому, Феликс, что принадлежат они к разным классам, -- и если уже мы заговорили о классах, то представь себe одного человeка, который зайцем eдет в четвертом классe, и другого, который зайцем eдет в первом: одному твердо, другому мягко, а между тeмъ у обоих кошелек пуст, -- вeрнeе, у одного есть кошелек, хоть и пустой, а у другого и этого нeт, -- просто дырявая подкладка. Говорю так, чтобы ты осмыслил разницу между нами: я актер, живущiй в общем на фуфу, но у меня всегда есть резиновые надежды на будущее, которые можно без конца растягивать, -- у тебя же и этого нeт, -- ты всегда бы остался нищим, если бы не чудо, -- это чудо: наша встрeча.
I took a sip and resumed:
"To begin with, I was born of a rich family. We had a house and a garden--ah, what a garden, Felix! Imagine, not merely rose trees but rose thickets, roses of all kinds, each variety bearing a framed label: roses, you know, receive names as resounding as those given to racehorses. Besides roses, there grew in our garden a quantity of other flowers, and when, of a morning, the whole place was brilliant with dew, the sight, Felix, was a dream. When still a child, I loved to look after our garden and well did I know my job: I had a small watering can, Felix, and a small mattock, and my parents would sit in the shade of an old cherry tree, planted by my grandfather, and look on, with tender emotion, at me, the small busybody (just imagine, imagine the picture!) engaged in removing from the roses, and squelching, caterpillars that looked like twigs. We had plenty of farmyard creatures, as, for example, rabbits, the most oval animal of all, if you know what I mean; and choleric turkeys with carbuncular caruncles (I made a gobbling sound) and darling little kids and many, many others.
"Then my parents lost all their money and died, and the lovely garden vanished; and it is only now that happiness seems to have come my way once more: I have lately managed to acquire a bit of land on the edge of a lake, and there will be a new garden still better than the old one. My sappy boyhood was perfumed through and through with all those flowers and fruits, whereas the neighboring wood, huge and thick, cast over my soul a shadow of romantic melancholy.
"I was always lonely, Felix, and I am lonely still. Women... No need to talk of those fickle and lewd beings. I have traveled a good deal; just like you, I love to rove with a bag strapped to my shoulders, although, to be sure, there were always certain reasons (which I wholly condemn) for my wanderings to be more agreeable than yours. It is really a striking thing: have you ever pondered over the following matter?--two men, alike poor, live not alike; one say, as you, frankly and hopelessly leading a beggar's existence, while the other, though quite as poor, living in a very different style--a carefree, well-fed fellow, moving among the gay rich....
"Why is it so? Because, Felix, those two belong to different classes; and speaking of classes, let us imagine a man who travels fourth-class without a ticket and another who travels first, without one either: X sits on a hard bench; Mr. Y lolls on a cushioned seat; but both have empty purses--or, to be precise, Mr. Y has got a purse to show, though empty, whereas X has not even that and can show nothing but holes in the lining of his pocket.
"By speaking thus I am trying to make you grasp the difference between us: I am an actor, living generally on air, but I have always elastic hopes for the future; they may be stretched indefinitely, such hopes, without bursting. You are denied even that; and you would have always remained a pauper, had not a miracle occurred; that miracle is my meeting you. (Chapter V)
In his commentary and index to Shade's poem Kinbote mentions Odon (pseudonym of Donald O'Donnell), a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the King to escape from Zembla:
He stepped out into the gallery, and the guard, a rather handsome but incredibly stupid Extremist, immediately advanced towards him. "I have a certain urgent desire," said the King. "I want, Hal, to play the piano before going to bed." Hal (if that was his name) led the way to the music room where, as the King knew, Odon kept vigil over the shrouded harp. He was a fox-browed, burly Irishman, with a pink head now covered by the rakish cap of a Russki factory worker. The King sat down at the Bechstein and, as soon as they were left alone, explained briefly the situation while making tinkling notes with one hand: "Never heard of any passage," muttered Odon with the annoyance of a chess player who is shown how he might have saved the game he has lost. Was His Majesty absolutely sure? His Majesty was. Did he suppose it took one out of the Palace? Definitely out of the Palace.
Anyway, Odon had to leave in a few moments, being due to act that night in The Merman, a fine old melodrama which had not been performed, he said, for at least three decades. "I'm quite satisfied with my own melodrama," remarked the King. "Alas," said Odon. Furrowing his forehead, he slowly got into his leathern coat. One could do nothing tonight. If he asked the commandant to be left on duty, it would only provoke suspicion, and the least suspicion might be fatal. Tomorrow he would find some opportunity to inspect that new avenue of escape, if it was that and not a dead end. Would Charlie (His Majesty) promise not to attempt anything until then? "But they are moving closer and closer," said the King alluding to the noise of rapping and ripping that came from the Picture Gallery. "Not really," said Odon, "one inch per hour, maybe two. I must be going now," he added indicating with a twitch of the eyelid the solemn and corpulent guard who was coming to relieve him. (note to Line 130)
and Odon's half-brother Nodo, a cardsharp and despicable traitor:
The grotesque figure of Gradus, a cross between bat and crab, was not much odder than many other Shadows, such as, for example, Nodo, Odon's epileptic half brother who cheated at cards, or a mad Mandevil who had lost a leg in trying to make anti-matter. (note to Line 171)
Nodo, Odon's half-brother, b. 1916, son of Leopold O'Donnell and of a Zemblan boy impersonator; a cardsharp and despicable traitor, 171. (Index)
Odon, pseudonym of Donald O'Donnell, b. 1915, world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot; learns from K. about secret passage but has to leave for theater, 130; drives K. from theater to foot of Mt. Mandevil, 149; meets K. near sea cave and escapes with him in motorboat, ibid.; directs cinema picture in Paris, 171; stays with Lavender in Lex, 408; ought not to marry that blubber-lipped cinemactress, with untidy hair, 691; see also O'Donnell, Sylvia. (Index)
Odon = Nodo = odno (neut. of odin, one). Describing his face and its resemblance to Felix's face, Hermann exclaims: "Odno litso! (Two, but with a single face):"
Я желаю во что бы то ни стало, и я этого добьюсь, убедить всех вас, заставить вас, негодяев, убедиться, – но боюсь, что, по самой природе своей, слово не может полностью изобразить сходство двух человеческих лиц, – следовало бы написать их рядом не словами, а красками, и тогда зрителю было бы ясно, о чем идет речь. Высшая мечта автора: превратить читателя в зрителя, – достигается ли это когда-нибудь? Бледные организмы литературных героев, питаясь под руководством автора, наливаются живой читательской кровью; гений писателя состоит в том, чтобы дать им способность ожить благодаря этому питанию и жить долго. Но сейчас мне нужна не литература, а простая, грубая наглядность живописи. Вот мой нос – крупный, северного образца, с крепкой костью и почти прямоугольной мякиной. Вот его нос – точь-в-точь такой же. Вот эти две резкие бороздки по сторонам рта и тонкие, как бы слизанные губы. Вот они и у него. Вот скулы… Но это – паспортный, ничего не говорящий перечень черт, и в общем ерундовая условность. Кто-то когда-то мне сказал, что я похож на Амундсена. Вот он тоже похож на Амундсена. Но не все помнят Амундсеново лицо, я сам сейчас плохо помню. Нет, ничего не могу объяснить.
Жеманничаю. Знаю, что доказал. Все обстоит великолепно. Читатель, ты уже видишь нас. Одно лицо! Но не думай, я не стесняюсь возможных недостатков, мелких опечаток в книге природы. Присмотрись: у меня большие желтоватые зубы, у него они теснее, светлее, – но разве это важно? У меня на лбу надувается жила, как недочерченная «мысль», но когда я сплю, у меня лоб так же гладок, как у моего дупликата. А уши… изгибы его раковин очень мало изменены против моих: спрессованы тут, разглажены там. Разрез глаз одинаков, узкие глаза, подтянутые, с редкими ресницами, – но они у него цветом бледнее. Вот, кажется, и все отличительные приметы, которые в ту первую встречу я мог высмотреть. В тот вечер, в ту ночь я памятью рассудка перебирал эти незначительные погрешности, а глазной памятью видел, вопреки всему, себя, себя, в жалком образе бродяги, с неподвижным лицом, с колючей тенью – как за ночь у покойников – на подбородке и щеках… Почему я замешкал в Праге? С делами было покончено, я свободен был вернуться в Берлин. Почему? Почему на другое утро я опять отправился на окраину и пошел по знакомому шоссе? Без труда я отыскал место, где он вчера валялся. Я там нашел золотой окурок, кусок чешской газеты и еще – то жалкое, безличное, что незатейливый пешеход оставляет под кустом. Несколько изумрудных мух дополняли картину. Куда он ушел, где провел ночь? Праздные, неразрешимые вопросы. Мне стало нехорошо на душе, смутно, тягостно, словно все, что произошло, было недобрым делом. Я вернулся в гостиницу за чемоданом и поспешил на вокзал. У выхода на дебаркадер стояли в два ряда низкие, удобные, по спинному хребту выгнутые скамейки, там сидели люди, кое-кто дремал. Мне подумалось: вот сейчас увижу его, спящим, с раскрытыми руками, с последней уцелевшей фиалкой в петлице. Нас бы заметили рядом, вскочили, окружили, потащили бы в участок. Почему? Зачем я это пишу? Привычный разбег пера? Или в самом деле есть уже преступление в том, чтобы как две капли крови походить друг на друга?
How I long to convince you! And I will, I will convince you! I will force you all, you rogues, to believe ... though I am afraid that words alone, owing to their special nature, are unable to convey visually a likeness of that kind: the two faces should be pictured side by side, by means of real colors, not words, then and only then would the spectator see my point. An author's fondest dream is to turn the reader into a spectator; is this ever attained? The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that--not very appetizing--food and thrive on it, sometimes for centuries. But at the present moment it is not literary methods that I need, but the plain, crude obviousness of the painter's art.
Look, this is my nose; a big one of the northern type, with a hard bone somewhat arched and the fleshy part tipped up and almost rectangular. And that is his nose, a perfect replica of mine. Here are the two sharply drawn furrows on both sides of my mouth with lips so thin as to seem licked away. He has got them, too. Here are the cheekbones--but this is a passport list of facial features meaning nothing; an absurd convention. Somebody told me once that I looked like Amundsen, the Polar explorer. Well, Felix, too, looked like Amundsen. But it is not every person that can recall Amundsen's face. I myself recall it but faintly, nor am I sure whether there had not been some mix-up with Nansen. No, I can explain nothing.
Simpering, that is what I am. Well do I know that I have proved my point. Going on splendidly. You now see both of us, reader. Two, but with a single face. You must not suppose, however, that I am ashamed of possible slips and type errors in the book of nature. Look nearer: I possess large yellowish teeth; his are whiter and set more closely together, but is that really important? On my forehead a vein stands out like a capital M imperfectly drawn, but when I sleep my brow is as smooth as that of my double. And those ears ... the convolutions of his are but very slightly altered in comparison with mine: here more compressed, there smoothed out. We have eyes of the same shape, narrowly slit with sparse lashes, but his iris is paler than mine.
This was about all in the way of distinctive markings that I discerned at that first meeting. During the following night my rational memory did not cease examining such minute flaws, whereas with the irrational memory of my senses I kept seeing, despite everything, myself, my own self, in the sorry disguise of a tramp, his face motionless, with chin and cheeks bristle-shaded, as happens to a dead man overnight.
Why did I tarry in Prague? I had finished my business. I was free to return to Berlin. Why did I go back to those slopes next morning, to that road? I had no trouble in finding the exact spot where he had sprawled the day before. I discovered there a golden cigarette-end, a dead violet, a scrap of Czech newspaper, and--that pathetically impersonal trace which the unsophisticated wanderer is wont to leave under a bush: one large, straight, manly piece and a thinner one coiled over it. Several emerald flies completed the picture. Whither had he gone? Where had he passed the night? Empty riddles. Somehow I felt horribly uncomfortable in a vague heavy way, as if the whole experience had been an evil deed.
I returned to the hotel for my suitcase and hurried to the station. There, at the entrance to the platform, were two rows of nice low benches with backs carved and curved in perfect accordance with the human spine. Some people were sitting there; a few were dozing. It occurred to me that I should suddenly see him there, fast asleep, hands open and one last violet still in his buttonhole. People would notice us together; jump up, surround us, drag us to the police station... why? Why do I write this? Just the usual rush of my pen? Or is it indeed a crime in itself for two people to be as alike as two drops of blood? (Chapter I)
Dve kapli krovi (two drops of blood) is a play on the saying "to be as alike as dve kapli vody (two drops of water). In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN quotes the last words of his grand aunt, Praskovia Nikolaevna Tarnovski (the author of works on psychiatry, anthropology and social welfare, 1848-1910), "vsyo—voda (everything is water):"
One of my mother’s happier girlhood recollections was having traveled one summer with her aunt Praskovia to the Crimea, where her paternal grandfather had an estate near Feodosia. Her aunt and she went for a walk with him and another old gentleman, the well-known seascape painter Ayvazovski. She remembered the painter saying (as he had said no doubt many times) that in 1836, at an exhibition of pictures in St. Petersburg, he had seen Pushkin, “an ugly little fellow with a tall handsome wife.” That was more than half a century before, when Ayvazovski was an art student, and less than a year before Pushkin’s death. She also remembered the touch nature added from its own palette—the white mark a bird left on the painter’s gray top hat. The aunt Praskovia, walking beside her, was her mother’s sister, who had married the celebrated syphilologist V. M. Tarnovski (1839–1906) and who herself was a doctor, the author of works on psychiatry, anthropology and social welfare. One evening at Ayvazovski’s villa near Feodosia, Aunt Praskovia met at dinner the twenty-eight-year-old Dr. Anton Chekhov whom she somehow offended in the course of a medical conversation. She was a very learned, very kind, very elegant lady, and it is hard to imagine how exactly she could have provoked the incredibly coarse outburst Chekhov permits himself in a published letter of August 3, 1888, to his sister. Aunt Praskovia, or Aunt Pasha, as we called her, often visited us at Vyra. She had an enchanting way of greeting us, as she swept into the nursery with a sonorous “Bonjour, les enfants!” She died in 1910. My mother was at her bedside, and Aunt Pasha’s last words were: “That’s interesting. Now I understand. Everything is water, vsyo—voda.” (Chapter Three, 3)
Water is the element that destroys Lucette, Van's and Ada's half-sister who in June 1901 commits suicide by jumping from Admiral Tobakoff into the Atlantic. According to Lucette, in her Tobakoff suite there hangs a steeplechase picture of ‘Pale Fire with Tom Cox Up:’
Quite kindly he asked where she thought she was going.
To Ardis, with him — came the prompt reply — for ever and ever. Robinson’s grandfather had died in Araby at the age of one hundred and thirty-one, so Van had still a whole century before him, she would build for him, in the park, several pavilions to house his successive harems, they would gradually turn, one after the other, into homes for aged ladies, and then into mausoleums. There hung, she said, a steeplechase picture of ‘Pale Fire with Tom Cox Up’ above dear Cordula’s and Tobak’s bed, in the suite ‘wangled in one minute flat’ from them, and she wondered how it affected the Tobaks’ love life during sea voyages. Van interrupted Lucette’s nervous patter by asking her if her bath taps bore the same inscriptions as his: Hot Domestic, Cold Salt. Yes, she cried, Old Salt, Old Salzman, Ardent Chambermaid, Comatose Captain! (3.5)
Thomas Cox (c. 1665-90), known as "The Handsome Highwayman", was an English highwayman, sentenced to death and hanged at Tyburn on Sept. 12, 1690. He is a contemporary and namesake of Thomas Flatman (an English poet and miniature painter, 1635-1688) who is mentioned by Kinbote in a conversation at the Faculty Club. Kinbote's quip "Flatman" brings to mind the flat pale parents of the future Babes mentioned by Van at the end of Ada:
Their recently built castle in Ex was inset in a crystal winter. In the latest Who’s Who the list of his main papers included by some bizarre mistake the title of a work he had never written, though planned to write many pains: Unconsciousness and the Unconscious. There was no pain to do it now — and it was high pain for Ada to be completed. ‘Quel livre, mon Dieu, mon Dieu,’ Dr [Professor. Ed.] Lagosse exclaimed, weighing the master copy which the flat pale parents of the future Babes, in the brown-leaf Woods, a little book in the Ardis Hall nursery, could no longer prop up in the mysterious first picture: two people in one bed. (5.6)
Shade's Aunt Maud (1869-1950) lived to hear the next babe cry. In their old age (even on the last day of their long lives) Van and Ada translate Shade's poem into Russian:
She insisted that if there were no future, then one had the right of making up a future, and in that case one’s very own future did exist, insofar as one existed oneself. Eighty years quickly passed — a matter of changing a slide in a magic lantern. They had spent most of the morning reworking their translation of a passage (lines 569-572) in John Shade’s famous poem:
...Sovetï mï dayom
Kak bït’ vdovtsu: on poteryal dvuh zhyon;
On ih vstrechaet — lyubyashchih, lyubimïh,
Revnuyushchih ego drug k druzhke...
(...We give advice
To widower. He has been married twice:
He meets his wives, both loved, both loving, both
Jealous of one another...)
Van pointed out that here was the rub — one is free to imagine any type of hereafter, of course: the generalized paradise promised by Oriental prophets and poets, or an individual combination; but the work of fancy is handicapped — to a quite hopeless extent — by a logical ban: you cannot bring your friends along — or your enemies for that matter — to the party. The transposition of all our remembered relationships into an Elysian life inevitably turns it into a second-rate continuation of our marvelous mortality. Only a Chinaman or a retarded child can imagine being met, in that Next-Installment World, to the accompaniment of all sorts of tail-wagging and groveling of welcome, by the mosquito executed eighty years ago upon one’s bare leg, which has been amputated since then and now, in the wake of the gesticulating mosquito, comes back, stomp, stomp, stomp, here I am, stick me on.
She did not laugh; she repeated to herself the verses that had given them such trouble. The Signy brain-shrinkers would gleefully claim that the reason the three ‘boths’ had been skipped in the Russian version was not at all, oh, not at all, because cramming three cumbersome amphibrachs into the pentameter would have necessitated adding at least one more verse for carrying the luggage.
‘Oh, Van, oh Van, we did not love her enough. That’s whom you should have married, the one sitting feet up, in ballerina black, on the stone balustrade, and then everything would have been all right — I would have stayed with you both in Ardis Hall, and instead of that happiness, handed out gratis, instead of all that we teased her to death!’ (5.6)