Бледный огонь - Владимир Набоков

Tennis, or badminton. Less starch, more fruit!

She may not be a beauty, but she's cute.»

It was no use, no use. The prizes won

In French and history, no doubt, were fun;

At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubt,

And one shy little guest might be left out;

But let's be fair: while children of her age

[310] Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage

That she'd helped paint for the school pantomime,

My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,

A bent charwoman with a slop pail and broom,

And like a fool I sobbed in the men's room.

Another winter was scrape-scooped away.

The Toothwort White haunted our woods in May.

Summer was power-mowed, and autumn, burned.

Alas, the dingy cygnet never turned

Into a wood duck. And again your voice:

[320] «But this is prejudice! You should rejoice

That she is innocent. Why overstress

The physical? She wants to look a mess.

Virgins have written some resplendent books.

Lovemaking is not everything. Good looks

Are not that indispensable!» And still

Old Pan would call from every painted hill,

And still the demons of our pity spoke:

No lips would share the lipstick of her smoke;

The telephone that rang before a ball

[330] Every two minutes in Sorosa Hall

For her would never ring; and, with a great

Screeching of tires on gravel, to the gate

Out of lacquered night, a white-scarfed beau

Would never come for her; she'd never go,

A dream of gauze and jasmine, to that dance.

We sent her, though, to a château in France.

And she returned in tears, with new defeats,

New miseries. On days when all the streets

Of College Town led to the game, she'd sit

[340] On the library steps, and read or knit;

Mostly alone she'd be, or with that nice

Frail roommate, now a nun; and, once or twice,

With a Korean boy who took my course.

She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force

Of character — as when she spent three nights

Investigating certain sounds and lights

In an old barn. She twisted words: pot, top,

Spider, redips. And «powder» was «red wop.»

She called you a didactic katydid.

[350] She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,

It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize

Ferociously our projects, and with eyes

Expressionless sit on her tumbled bed

Spreading her swollen feet, scratching her head

With psoriatic fingernails, and moan,

Murmuring dreadful words in monotone.

She was my darling: difficult, morose —

But still my darling. You remember those

Almost unruffled evenings when we played

[360] Mah-jongg, or she tried on your furs, which made

Her almost fetching; and the mirrors smiled,

The lights were merciful, the shadows mild.

Sometimes I'd help her with a Latin text,

Or she'd be reading in her bedroom, next

To my fluorescent lair, and you would be

In your own study, twice removed from me,

And I would hear both voices now and then:

«Mother, what's grimpen?» «What is what?»

«Grim Pen.»

Pause, and your guarded scholium. Then again:

[370] «Mother, what's chtonic?» That, too, you'd explain,

Appending: «Would you like a tangerine?»

«No. Yes. And what does sempiternal mean?»

You'd hesitate. And lustily I'd roar

The answer from my desk through the closed door.

It does not matter what it was she read

(some phony modern poem that was said

In English Lit to be a document

«Engazhay and compelling» — what this meant

Nobody cared); the point is that the three

[380] Chambers, then bound by you and her and me,

Now form a tryptich or a three-act play

In which portrayed events forever stay.

I think she always nursed a small mad hope.

I'd finished recently my book on Pope.

Jane Dean, my typist, offered her one day

To meet Pete Dean, a cousin. Jane's fiancé

Would then take all of them in his new car

A score of miles to a Hawaiian bar.

The boy was picked up at a quarter past

[390] Eight in New Wye. Sleet glazed the roads. At last

They found the place — when suddenly Pete Dean

Clutching his brow exclaimed that he had clean

Forgotten an appointment with a chum

Who'd land in jail if he, Pete, did not come,

Et cetera. She said she understood.

After he'd gone the three young people stood

Before the azure entrance for awhile.

Puddles were neon-barred; and with a smile

She said she'd be de trop, she'd much prefer

[400] Just going home. Her friends escorted her

To the bus stop and left; but she, instead

Of riding home, got off at Lochanhead.

You scrutinized your wrist: «It's eight fifteen.

[And here time forked.] I'll turn it on.» The screen

In its blank broth evolved a lifelike blur,

And music welled.

He took one look at her,

And shot a death ray at well-meaning Jane.

A male hand traced from Florida to Maine