Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov [48]
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 semitransparent 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. “There’s some stuff in the boat. Let those Russians vanish. The child we can ignore.” “What about that woman on the beach?” “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.
Line 162: With his pure tongue, etc.
This is a singularly roundabout way of describing a country girl’s shy kiss; but the whole passage is very baroque. My own boyhood was too happy and healthy to contain anything remotely like the fainting fits experienced by Shade. It must have been with him a mild form of epilepsy, a derailment of the nerves at the same spot, on the same curve of the tracks, every day, for several weeks, until nature repaired the damage. Who can forget the good-natured faces, glossy with sweat, of copper-chested railway workers leaning upon their spades and following with their eyes the windows of the great express cautiously gliding by?
Line 167: There was a time, etc.
The poet began Canto Two (on his fourteenth card) on July 5, his sixtieth birthday (see note to line 181, “today”). My slip—change to sixty-first.
Line 169: survival after death
See note to line 549.
Line 171: A great conspiracy
For almost a whole year after the King’s escape the Extremists remained convinced that he and Odon had not left Zembla. The mistake can be only ascribed to the streak of stupidity that fatally runs through the most competent tyranny. Airborne machines and everything connected with them cast a veritable spell over the minds of our new rulers whom kind history had suddenly given a boxful of these zipping and zooming gadgets to play with. That an important fugitive would not perform by air the act of fleeing seemed to them inconceivable. Within minutes after the King and the actor had