Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov [107]
Blawick, Blue Cove, a pleasant seaside resort on the Western Coast of Zembla, casino, golf course, sea food, boats for hire, 149.
Blenda, Queen, the King’s mother, 1878–1936, reigned from 1918, 71.
Boscobel, site of the Royal Summerhouse, a beautiful, piny and duny spot in W. Zembla, soft hollows imbued with the writer’s most amorous recollections; now (1959) a “nudist colony”—whatever that is, 149, 596.
Botkin, V., American scholar of Russian descent, 894; king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic end, 247; bottekin-maker, 71; bot, plop, and botelïy, big-bellied (Russ.); botkin or bodkin, a Danish stiletto.
Bregberg. See Bera.
Bretwit, Oswin, 1914–1959, diplomat and Zemblan patriot, 286. See also under Odevalla and Aros.
Campbell, Walter, b. 1890, in Glasgow; K.’s tutor, 1922-1931, an amiable gentleman with a mellow and rich mind; dead shot and champion skater; now in Iran; 130
Charles II, Charles Xavier Vseslav, last King of Zembla, surnamed The Beloved, b. 1915, reigned 1936-1958; his crest, 1; his studies and his reign, 12; fearful fate of predecessors, 62; his supporters, 70; parents, 71; bedroom, 80; escape from palace, 130; and across the mountains, 149; engagement to Disa recalled, 275; parenthetical passage through Paris, 286; and through Switzerland, 408; visit to Villa Disa, 433; night in mountains recalled, 597, 662; his Russian blood, and Crown Jewels (q.v. by all means), 681; his arrival in the U.S.A., 691; letter to Disa stolen, 741; and quoted, 768; his portrait discussed, 894; his presence in library, 949; identity almost revealed, 991; Solus Rex, 1000. See also Kinbote.
Conmal, Duke of Aros, 1855-1955, K.’s uncle, the eldest half-brother of Queen Blenda (q.v.); noble paraphrast, 12; his version of Timon of Athens, 39, 130; his life and work, 962.
Crown Jewels, 130, 681; see Hiding Place.
Disa, Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone; my lovely, pale, melancholy Queen, haunting my dreams, and haunted by dreams of me, b. 1928; her album and favorite trees, 49; married 1949, 80; her letters on ethereal paper with a watermark I cannot make out, her image torturing me in my sleep, 433.
Embla, a small old town with a wooden church surrounded by sphagnum bogs at the saddest, loneliest, northmost point of the misty peninsula, 149, 433.
Emblem, meaning “blooming” in Zemblan; a beautiful bay with bluish and black, curiously striped rocks and a luxurious growth of heather on its gentle slopes, in the southmost part of W. Zembla, 433.
Falkberg, a pink cone, 71; snowhooded, 149.
Flatman, Thomas, 1637–88, English poet, scholar and miniaturist, not known to old fraud, 894.
Fleur, Countess de Fyler, an elegant lady-in-waiting, 71, 80, 433.
G, see Gradus.
Garh, a farmer’s daughter, 149, 433. Also a rosy-cheeked goose-boy found in a country lane, north of Troth, in 1936, only now distinctly recalled by the writer.
Glitterntin, Mt., a splendid mountain in the Bera Range (q.v.); pity I may never climb it again, 149.
Gordon, see Krummholz.
Gradus, Jakob, 1915-1959; alias Jack Degree, de Grey, d’Argus, Vinogradus, Leningradus, etc.; a Jack of small trades and a killer, 12, 17; lynching the wrong people, 80; his approach synchronized with S’s work on the poem, 120, 131; his election and past tribulations, 171; the first lap of his journey, Onhava to Copenhagen, 181, 209; to Paris, and meeting with Oswin Bretwit, 286; to Geneva, and talk with little Gordon at Joe Lavender’s place near Lex, 408; calling headquarters from Geneva, 469; his name in a variant, and his wait in Geneva, 596; to Nice, and his wait there, 697; his meeting with Izumrudov in Nice and discovery of the King’s address, 741; from Paris to New York, 873; in New York, 9491; his morning in New York, his journey to New Wye, to the campus, to Dulwich Rd., 9492; the crowning blunder, 1000.
Griff, old mountain farmer and Zemblan patriot, 149.
Grindelwod, a fine town in E. Zembla, 71, 149.
Hiding place, potaynik (q.v.)
Hodinski, Russian adventurer, d. 1800, also known as