NABOKOV Vladimir - Pale Fire

Now there is nothing a lonesome man relishes more than an impromptu birthday party,
and thinking nay, feeling certain - that my unattended telephone had been ringing all
day, I blithely dialed the Shades' number, and of course it was Sybil who answered.
"Bon soir, Sybil."
"Oh, hullo, Charles. Had a nice trip?"
"Well, to tell the truth -"
"Look, I know you want John but he is resting right now, and I'm frightfully busy.
He'll call you back later, okay?"
"Later when - tonight?"
"No, tomorrow, I guess: There goes that doorbell. Bye-bye." Strange. Why should
Sybil have to listen to doorbells when, besides the maid and the cook, two whitecoated
hired boys were around? False pride prevented me from doing what I should
have done - taken my royal gift under my arm and serenely marched over to that
inhospitable house. Who knows - I might have been rewarded at the back door with a
drop of kitchen sherry. I still hoped there had been a mistake, and Shade would
telephone. It was a bitter wait, and the only effect that the bottle of champagne I drank
all alone now at this window, now at that, had on me was a bad crapula (hangover).
From behind a drapery, from behind a box tree, through the golden veil of evening
and through the black lacery of night, I kept watching that lawn, that drive, that
fanlight, those jewel-bright windows. The sun had not yet set when, at a quarter past
seven, I heard the first guest's car. Oh, I saw them all. I saw ancient Dr. Sutton, a
snowy-headed, perfectly oval little gentleman arrive in a tottering Ford with his tall
daughter, Mrs. Starr, a war widow. I saw a couple, later identified for me as Mr. Colt,
a local lawyer, and his wife, whose blundering Cadillac half entered my driveway
before retreating in a flurry of luminous nictitation. I saw a world-famous old writer,
bent under the incubus of literary honors and his own prolific mediocrity, arrive in a
taxi out of the dim times of yore when Shade and he had been joint editors of a little
review. I saw Frank, the Shades' handyman, depart in the station wagon. I saw a
retired professor of ornithology walk up from the highway where he had illegally
parked his car. I saw, ensconced in their tiny Pulex, manned by her boy-handsome
tousle-haired girl friend, the patroness of the arts who had sponsored Aunt Maud's last
exhibition, I saw Frank return with the New Wye antiquarian, purblind Mr. Kaplun,
and his wife, a dilapidated eagle. I saw a Korean graduate student in dinner jacket
come on a bicycle, and the college president in baggy suit come on foot. I saw, in the
performance of their ceremonial duties, in light and shadow, and from window to
window, where like Martians the martinis and highballs cruised, the two white-coated
youths from the hotel school, and realized that I knew well, quite well, the slighter of
the two. And finally, at half past eight (when, I imagine, the lady of the house had
begun to crack her finger joints as was her impatient wont) a long black limousine,
officially glossy and rather funereal, glided into the aura of the drive, and while the fat
Negro chauffeur hastened to open the car door, I saw, with pity, my poet emerge from
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