Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov [85]
My dear, you are absurd. I do not give you, and will not give you or anybody, my home address not because I fear you might look me up, as you are pleased to conjecture: all my mail goes to my office address. The suburban houses here have open letter boxes out in the street, and anybody can cram them with advertisements or purloin letters addressed to me (not out of mere curiosity, mind you, but from other, more sinister, motives). I send this by air and urgently repeat the address Sylvia gave you: Dr. C. Kinbote, KINBOTE (not “Charles X. Kingbot, Esq.,” as you, or Sylvia, wrote; please, be more careful—and more intelligent), Wordsmith University, New Wye, Appalachia, USA.
I am not cross with you but I have all sorts of worries, and my nerves are on edge. I believed—believed deeply and candidly—in the affection of a person who lived here, under my roof, but have been hurt and betrayed, as never happened in the days of my forefathers, who could have the offender tortured, though of course I do not wish to have anybody tortured.
It has been dreadfully cold here, but thank God now a regular northern winter has turned into a southern spring.
Do not try to explain to me what your lawyer tells you but have him explain it to my lawyer, and he will explain it to me.
My work at the university is pleasant, and I have a most charming neighbor—now do not sigh and raise your eyebrows, my dear—he is a very old gentleman—the old gentleman in fact who was responsible for that bit about the ginkgo tree in your green album (see again—I mean the reader should see again—the note to line 49).
It might be safer if you did not write me too often, my dear.
Line 782: your poem
An image of Mont Blanc’s “blue-shaded buttresses and sun-creamed domes” is fleetingly glimpsed through the cloud of that particular poem which I wish I could quote but do not have at hand. The “white mountain” of the lady’s dream, caused by a misprint to tally with Shade’s “white fountain,” makes a thematic appearance here, blurred as it were by the lady’s grotesque pronunciation.
Line 802: mountain
The passage 797 (second part of line)-809, on the poet’s sixty-fifth card, was composed between the sunset of July 18 and the dawn of July 19. That morning I had prayed in two different churches (on either side, as it were, of my Zemblan denomination, not represented in New Wye) and had strolled home in an elevated state of mind. There was no cloud in the wistful sky, and the very earth seemed to be sighing after our Lord Jesus Christ. On such sunny, sad mornings I always feel in my bones that there is a chance yet of my not being excluded from Heaven, and that salvation may be granted to me despite the frozen mud and horror in my heart. As I was ascending with bowed head the gravel path to my poor rented house, I heard with absolute distinction, as if he were standing at my shoulder and speaking loudly, as to a slightly deaf man, Shade’s voice say: “Come tonight, Charlie.” I looked around me in awe and wonder: I was quite alone. I at once telephoned. The Shades were out, said the cheeky ancillula, an obnoxious little fan who came to cook for them on Sundays and no doubt dreamt of getting the old poet to cuddle her some wifeless day. I retelephoned two hours later; got, as usual, Sybil; insisted on talking to my friend (my “messages” were never transmitted), obtained him, and asked him as calmly as possible what he had been doing around noon when I had heard him like a big bird in my garden. He could not quite remember, said wait a minute, he had been playing golf with Paul (whoever that was), or at least watching Paul play with another colleague. I cried that I must see him in the evening and all at once, with no reason at all, burst into tears, flooding the telephone and gasping for breath, a paroxysm which had not happened to me since Bob left me on March 30. There was a flurry of confabulation between the Shades, and then John said: “Charles, listen. Let’s go for a good ramble tonight, I’ll meet you at eight.” It was my second good ramble since July 6 (that unsatisfactory nature talk); the third one, on July 21, was to be exceedingly brief.