Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov [65]
Hazel’s report might have been longer if—as she told Jane—a renewal of the “scrabbling” had not suddenly jarred upon her tired nerves. The roundlet of light that until now had been keeping its distance made a pugnacious dash at her feet so that she nearly fell off the wooden block serving her as a seat. She became overwhelmingly conscious that she was alone in the company of an inexplicable and perhaps very evil being, and with a shudder that all but dislocated her shoulder blades she hastened to regain the heavenly shelter of the starry night. A familiar footpath with soothing gestures and other small tokens of consolation (lone cricket, lone streetlight) led her home. She stopped and let forth a howl of terror: a system of dark and pale patches coagulating into a phantastic figure had risen from the garden bench which the porch light just reached. I have no idea what the average temperature of an October night in New Wye may be but one is surprised that a father’s anxiety should be great enough in the present case to warrant conducting a vigil in the open air in pajamas and the nondescript “bathrobe” which my birthday present was to replace (see note to line 181).
There are always “three nights” in fairy tales, and in this sad fairy tale there was a third one too. This time she wanted her parents to witness the “talking light” with her. The minutes of that third session in the barn have not been preserved but I offer the reader the following scene which I feel cannot be too far removed from the truth:
THE HAUNTED BARN
Pitch-darkness. Father, Mother and Daughter are heard breathing gently in different corners. Three minutes pass.
FATHER (to Mother)
Are you comfortable there?
MOTHER
Uh-huh. These potato sacks make a perfect—
DAUGHTER (with steam-engine force)
Sh-sh-sh!
Fifteen minutes pass in silence. The eye begins to make out here and there in the darkness bluish slits of night and one star.
MOTHER
That was Dad’s tummy, I think—not a spook.
DAUGHTER (mouthing it)
Very funny!
Another fifteen minutes elapse. Father, deep in workshop thoughts, heaves a neutral sigh.
DAUGHTER
Must we sigh all the time?
Fifteen minutes elapse.
MOTHER
If I start snoring let Spook pinch me.
DAUGHTER (overemphasizing self-control)
Mother! Please! Please, Mother!
Father clears his throat but decides not to say anything.
Twelve more minutes elapse.
MOTHER
Does anyone realize that there are still quite a few of those creampuffs in the refrigerator?
That does it.
DAUGHTER (exploding)
Why must you spoil everything? Why must you always spoil everything? Why can’t you leave people alone? Don’t touch me!
FATHER
Now look, Hazel, Mother won’t say another word, and we’ll go on with this—but we’ve been sitting an hour here and it’s getting late.
Two minutes pass. Life is hopeless, afterlife heartless. Hazel is heard quietly weeping in the dark. John Shade lights a lantern. Sybil lights a cigarette. Meeting adjourned.
The light never came back but it gleams again in a short poem “The Nature of Electricity,” which John Shade had sent to the New York magazine The Beau and the Butterfly, some time in 1958, but which appeared only after his death:
The dead, the gentle dead—who knows?—
In tungsten filaments abide,
And on my bedside table glows
Another man’s departed bride.
And maybe Shakespeare floods a whole
Town with innumerable lights,
And Shelley’s incandescent soul
Lures the pale moths of starless nights.
Streetlamps are numbered, and maybe
Number nine-hundred-ninety-nine
(So brightly beaming through a tree
So green) is an old friend of mine.
And when above the livid plain
Forked lightning plays, therein may dwell
The torments of a Tamerlane,
The roar of tyrants torn in hell.