In his commentary and index to Shade's poem 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 Nitra and Indra, twin islands off Blawick:
Alfin the Vague (1873-1918; regnal dates 1900-1918, but 1900-1919 in most biographical dictionaries, a fumble due to the coincident calendar change from Old Style to New) was given his cognomen by Amphitheatricus, a not unkindly writer of fugitive poetry in the liberal gazettes (who was also responsible for dubbing my capital Uranograd!). King Alfin's absent-mindedness knew no bounds. He was a wretched linguist, having at his disposal only a few phrases of French and Danish, but every time he had to make a speech to his subjects - to a group of gaping Zemblan yokels in some remote valley where he had crash-landed - some uncontrollable switch went into action in his mind, and he reverted to those phrases, flavoring them for topical sense with a little Latin. Most of the anecdotes relating to his naïve fits of abstraction are too silly and indecent to sully these pages; but one of them that I do not think especially funny induced such guffaws from Shade (and returned to me, via the Common Room, with such obscene accretions) that I feel inclined to give it here as a sample (and as a corrective). One summer before the first world war, when the emperor of a great foreign realm (I realize how few there are to choose from) was paying an extremely unusual and flattering visit to our little hard country, my father took him and a young Zemblan interpreter (whose sex I leave open) in a newly purchased custom-built car on a jaunt in the countryside. As usual, King Alfin traveled without a vestige of escort, and this, and his brisk driving, seemed to trouble his guest. On their way back, some twenty miles from Onhava, King Alfin decided to stop for repairs. While he tinkered with the motor, the emperor and the interpreter sought the shade of some pines by the highway, and only when King Alfin was back in Onhava, did he gradually realize from a reiteration of rather frantic questions that he had left somebody behind ("What emperor?" has remained his only memorable mot). Generally speaking, in respect of any of my contributions (or what I thought to be contributions) I repeatedly enjoined my poet to record them in writing, by all means, but not to spread them in idle speech; even poets, however, are human.
King's Alfin's absent-mindedness was strangely combined with a passion for mechanical things, especially for flying apparatuses. In 1912, he managed to rise in an umbrella-like Fabre "hydroplane" and almost got drowned in the sea between Nitra and Indra. He smashed two Farmans, three Zemblan machines, and a beloved Santos Dumont Demoiselle. A very special monoplane, Blenda IV, was built for him in 1916 by his constant "aerial adjutant" Colonel Peter Gusev (later a pioneer parachutist and, at seventy, one of the greatest jumpers of all time), and this was his bird of doom. On the serene, and not too cold, December morning that the angels chose to net his mild pure soul, King Alfin was in the act of trying solo a tricky vertical loop that Prince Andrey Kachurin, the famous Russian stunter and War One hero, had shown him in Gatchina. Something went wrong, and the little Blenda was seen to go into an uncontrolled dive. Behind and above him, in a Caudron biplane, Colonel Gusev (by then Duke of Rahl) and the Queen snapped several pictures of what seemed at first a noble and graceful evolution but then turned into something else. At the last moment, King Alfin managed to straighten out his machine and was again master of gravity when, immediately afterwards, he flew smack into the scaffolding of a huge hotel which was being constructed in the middle of a coastal heath as if for the special purpose of standing in a king's way. This uncompleted and badly gutted building was ordered razed by Queen Blenda who had it replaced by a tasteless monument of granite surmounted by an improbable type of aircraft made of bronze. The glossy prints of the enlarged photographs depicting the entire catastrophe were discovered one day by eight-year-old Charles Xavier in the drawer of a secretary bookcase. In some of these ghastly pictures one could make out the shoulders and leathern casque of the strangely unconcerned aviator, and in the penultimate one of the series, just before the white-blurred shattering crash, one distinctly saw him raise one arm in triumph, and reassurance. The boy had hideous dreams after that but his mother never found out that he had seen those infernal records. (note to Line 71)
It was a lovely breezy afternoon. with a western horizon like a luminous vacuum that sucked in one's eager heart. The King, now at the most critical point of his journey, looked about him, scrutinizing the few promenaders and trying to decide which of them might be police agents in disguise, ready to pounce upon him as soon as he vaulted the parapet and made for the Rippleson Caves. Only a single sail dyed a royal red marred with some human interest the marine expanse. Nitra and Indra (meaning "inner" and "outer"), two black islets that seemed to address each other in cloaked parley, were being photographed from the parapet by a Russian tourist, thickset, many-chinned, with a general's fleshy nape. His faded wife, wrapped up floatingly in a flowery écharpe, remarked in singsong Moscovan "Every time I see that kind of frightful disfigurement I can't help thinking of Nina's boy. War is an awful thing." "War?" queried her consort. "That must have been the explosion at the Glass Works in 1951 - not war." They slowly walked past the King in the direction he had come from. On a sidewalk bench, facing the sea, a man with his crutches beside him was reading the Onhava Post which featured on the first page Odon in an Extremist uniform and Odon in the part of the Merman. Incredible as it may seem the palace guard had never realized that identity before. Now a goodly sum was offered for his capture. Rhythmically the waves lapped the shingle. The newspaper reader's face had been atrociously injured in the recently mentioned explosion, and all the art of plastic surgery had only resulted in a hideous tessellated texture with parts of pattern and parts of outline seeming to change, to fuse or to separate, like fluctuating cheeks and chins in a distortive mirror. (note to Line 149)
Nitra and Indra, twin islands off Blawick, 149. (Index)
In her Theosophical Glossary Helena Blavatsky (a Russian and American mystic, the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, born Helena von Hahn, 1831-1891) mentions Idra, Indra, Indrâni, Indriya, and Nidra (Sleep):
Idra Rabba (Heb.). “The Greater Holy Assembly” a division of the Zohar.
Idra Suta (Heb.). “The Lesser Holy Assembly”, another division of the Zohar.
Indra (Sk.). The god of the Firmament, the King of the sidereal gods. A Vedic Deity.
Indrâni (Sk.). The female aspect of Indra.
Indriya or Deha Sanyama (Sk.). The control of the senses in Yoga practice. These are the ten external agents; the five senses which are used for perception are called Jnana-indriya, and the five used for action—Karma-indriya. Pancha-indryani means literally and in its occult sense “the live roots producing life” (eternal). With the Buddhists, it is the five positive agents producing five supernal qualities.
Nidra (Sk.). Sleep. Also the female form of Brahmâ.
A fabulous mammoth-like (or unicorn-like) animal of Russian legends, Indrik-zver' is a character in Golubinaya Kniga (the Dove Book, late 15th - early 16th century). Golubinaya Kniga (1922) is a painting by Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), a Russian artist who lived and died in India. At the beginning of VN’s novel Podvig (“Glory,” 1932) the children of a St. Petersburg landowner named Indrikov are mentioned:
Эдельвейс, дед Мартына, был, как это ни смешно, швейцарец, - рослый швейцарец с пушистыми усами, воспитывавший в шестидесятых годах детей петербургского помещика Индрикова и женившийся на младшей его дочери. Мартын сперва полагал, что именно в честь деда назван бархатно-белый альпийский цветок, баловень гербариев. Вовсе отказаться от этого он и позже не мог. Деда он помнил ясно, но только в одном виде, в одном положении: старик, весь в белом, толстый, светлоусый, в панамской шляпе, в пикейном жилете, богатом брелоками (из которых самый занимательный – кинжал с ноготок), сидит на скамье перед домом, в подвижной тени липы. На этой скамье дед и умер, держа на ладони любимые золотые часы, с крышкой как золотое зеркальце. Апоплексия застала его на этом своевременном жесте, и стрелка, по семейному преданию, остановилась вместе с его сердцем.
Funny as it may seem, Martin’s grandfather Edelweiss was a Swiss—a robust Swiss with a fluffy mustache, who in the 1860’s had been tutor to the children of a St. Petersburg landowner named Indrikov, and had married his youngest daughter. Martin assumed at first that the velvety white Alpine flower, that pet of herbariums, had been named in honor of his grandfather. Even later he could not fully relinquish this notion. He remembered his grandfather distinctly, but only in one form and position: a corpulent old man, dressed completely in white, fair-whiskered, wearing a Panama hat and a piqué waistcoat rich in breloques (the most amusing of which was a dagger the size of a fingernail), sitting on a bench in front of the house in a linden’s mobile shade. It was on this very bench that his grandfather had died, holding in the palm of his hand his beloved gold watch, whose lid was like a little golden mirror. Apoplexy overtook him during this timely gesture and, according to family legend, the hands stopped at the same moment as his heart. (chapter 1)
The maiden name of Martin’s grandmother, Indrikov, comes from Indrik (a legendary animal of Russian fairy tales, unicorn). At the end of Canto Three of his poem Shade mentions ivory unicorns:
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
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.
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. (ll. 816-835)