NABOKOV Vladimir - Pale Fire

general atmosphere of a subtropical Oriental park. In fact, a good Zemblan Christian
is taught that True faith is not there to supply pictures or maps, but that it should
quietly content itself with a warm haze of pleasurable anticipation. To take a homely
example: little Christopher's family is about to migrate to a distant colony where his
father has been assigned to a lifetime post. Little Christopher, a frail lad of nine or ten,
relies completely (so completely, in fact, as to blot out the very awareness of this
reliance) on his elders' arranging all the details of departure, passage and arrival. He
cannot imagine, nor does he try to imagine, the particular aspects of the new place
awaiting him but he is dimly and comfortably convinced that it will be even better
than his homestead, with the big oak, and the mountain, and his pony, and the park,
and the stable, and Grimm, the old groom, who has a way of fondling him whenever
nobody is around.
Something of this simple trust we too should have. With this divine mist of utter
dependence permeating one's being, no wonder one is tempted, no wonder one weighs
on one's palm with a dreamy smile the compact firearm in its case of suede leather
hardly bigger than a castlegate key or a boy's seamed purse, no wonder one peers over
the parapet into an inviting abyss.
I am choosing these images rather casually. There are purists who maintain that a
gentleman should use a brace of pistols, one for each temple, or a bare botkin (note
the correct spelling), and that ladies should either swallow a lethal dose or drown with
clumsy Ophelia. Humbler humans have preferred sundry forms of suffocation, and
minor poets have even tried such fancy releases as vein tapping in the quadruped tub
of a drafty boardinghouse bathroom. All this is uncertain and messy. Of the not very
many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme
method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt
yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you
cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought
not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the
luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business center hotel browing the star
dust, and pull up the window, and gently - not fall, not jump - but roll out as you
should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your
own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might
be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below
where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. Another popular take-off is a
mountaintop with a sheer drop of say 500 meters but you must find it, because you
will be surprised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and have some
hidden projection, some fool of a crag, rush forth to catch you, causing you to bounce
off it into the brush, thwarted, mangled and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is
from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute
shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off - farewell, shootka (little chute)! Down you go, but
all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a
somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily
turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded
life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, and the voluptuous
crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then
your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord. If I were a poet I would
certainly make an ode to the sweet urge to close one's eyes and surrender utterly unto
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