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 words of a Russian general's faded wife, "War is an awful thing:"
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.
The short stretch of beach between the restaurant at the beginning of the promenade and the granite rocks at its end was almost empty: far to the left three fishermen were loading a rowboat with kelp-brown nets, and directly under the sidewalk, an elderly woman wearing a polka-dotted dress and having for headgear a cocked newspaper (EX-KING SEEN -) sat knitting on the shingle with her back to the street. Her bandaged legs were stretched out on the sand; on one side of her lay a pair of carpet slippers and on the other a ball of red wool, the leading filament of which she would tug at every now and then with the immemorial elbow jerk of a Zemblan knitter to give a turn to her yarn clew and slacken the thread. Finally, on the sidewalk a little girl in a ballooning skirt was clumsily but energetically clattering about on roller skates. Could a dwarf in the police force pose as a pigtailed child?
Waiting for the Russian couple to recede, the King stopped beside the bench. The mosaic-faced man folded his newspaper, and one second before he spoke (in the neutral interval between smoke puff and detonation), the King knew it was Odon.
"All one could do at short notice," said Odon, plucking at his cheek to display how the varicolored semi-transparent film adhered to his face, altering its contours according to stress. "A polite person," he added, "does not, normally, examine too closely a poor fellow's disfigurement."
"I was looking for shpiks [plainclothesmen]" said the King. "All day," said Odon, "they have been patrolling the quay. They are dining at present."
"I'm thirsty and hungry," said the King.
"That's young Baron Mandevil - chap who had that duel last year. Let's go now."
"Couldn't we take him too?"
"Wouldn't come - got a wife and a baby. Come on, Charlie, come on, Your Majesty."
"He was my throne page on Coronation Day."
Thus chatting, they reached the Rippleson Caves. I trust the reader has enjoyed this note. (note to Line 149)
Shade's birthday, July 5 is also Kinbote's and Gradus' birthday (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). In his 1915 poem Voyna ("War") Alexey Ganin mentions "Nikto" ("Nobody") who again reigns in the world now:
Ты подумай, как страшно теперь...
Мы молиться и плакать устали.
Всюду грозные призраки встали
На путях твоих в горнюю дверь.
Каждый вечер зловещий огонь,
Вместо зорь на небесной пустыне.
В травах кровью дымящийся иней,
Смертоносная, лютая вонь.
Умерла на колосьях пчела.
Высох мёд на губах человека.
И дремавшая в камнях от века
Стальнозубая гибель пришла.
Обезумел испуганный мир,
Поклонился незримому зверю,
И с проклятьем в спасенье не веря,
Глохнет в лязге и звоне секир.
Больше нету весёлых детей,
Всюду когти железа и смерти.
И взывают к грохочущей тверди
Только трупы да горы костей.
Все проглочено пастью литой...
Рыщут ветры по мёртвым дорогам,
Стёрто имя всезрящего Бога,
Снова царствует в мире «Никто».
Тёмной ночью окутана дверь...
Где-то плачется звёздная вьюга...
Мы блуждаем средь мёртвого круга;
Ты подумай, как страшно теперь...
Sergey Esenin's best friend, Alexey Ganin (1893-1925) was executed on March 30, 1925, in Moscow. Lev Glebovich Ganin is the main character in VN's first novel Mashen'ka ("Mary," 1926). Alexey Ivanovich Alfyorov (Mashen'ka's husband, Ganin's neighbor in a Berlin boarding house) brings to mind King Alfin (the father of Charles the Beloved) and Alphina (the youngest of Judge Goldsworth's four daughters). Btw., Alfyorov and his wife also appear in VN's novel Zashchita Luzhina ("The Luzhin Defense," 1930).
Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s poem needs but one line (Line 1000, identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”). But it seems that, like some sonnets, Shade's poem also needs a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”). Dvoynik ("The Double," 1846) is a short novel by Dostoevski, a writer whom Shade lists among Russian humorists:
Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department, Prof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings (happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department, was not subordinated to that grotesque "perfectionist"): "How odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov." (note to Line 172)
The last line of Alexey Ganin's poem War, "Ty podumay, kak strashno teper'... (You just think, how terrifying it is now...)" is identical to Line 1. Nik. T-o ("Mr. Nobody") was the penname of Innokentiy Annenski (1855-1910), a poet and essayist whom Vladislav Hodasevich (a poet and memoirist, 1886-1939) compared to Ivan Ilyich Golovin, the title character of Leo Tolstoy's story Smert' Ivana Ilyicha ("The Death of Ivan Ilyich," 1886). Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name, Botkin is nikto b (none would) in reverse. In Pushkin's little tragedy "Mozart and Salieri" (1830) Mozart mentions his chyornyi chelovek (man in black) who commissioned him a Requiem and uses the phrase nikto b (none would). Chyornyi chelovek ("The Black Man," 1925) is a poem by Esenin (1895-1925).