NABOKOV Vladimir - Pale Fire

eleven owing to an unfortunate afterdinner distribution of available seats. My next
treat, a smaller but by no means cozier souper on Saturday, May 23, was attended by
Milton Stone (a new librarian, with whom Shade discussed till midnight the
classification of certain Wordsmithiana); good old Nattochdag (whom I continued to
see every day); and an undeodorized Frenchwoman (who gave me a complete picture
of language-teaching conditions at the University of California). The date of my third
and last meal at the Shades is not entered in my little book but I know it was one
morning in June when I brought over a beautiful plan I had drawn of the King's
Palace in Onhava with all sorts of heraldic niceties, and a touch of gold paint that I
had some trouble in obtaining, and was graciously urged to stay for an impromptu
lunch. I should add that, despite my protests, at all three meals my vegetarian
limitations of fare were not taken into account, and I was exposed to animal matter in,
or around, some of the contaminated greens I might have deigned to taste. I revanched
myself rather neatly. Of a dozen or so invitations that I extended, the Shades accepted
just three. Every one of these meals was built around some vegetable that I subjected
to as many exquisite metamorphoses as Parmentier had his pet tuber undergo. Every
time I had but one additional guest to entertain Mrs. Shade (who, if you please -
thinning my voice to a feminine pitch - was allergic to artichokes, avocado pears,
African acorns - in fact to everything beginning with an "a"). I find nothing more
conducive to the blunting of one's appetite than to have none but elderly persons
sitting around one at table, fouling their napkins with the disintegration of their makeup,
and surreptitiously trying, behind noncommittal smiles, to dislodge the red-hot
torture point of a raspberry seed from between false gum and dead gum. So I had
young people, students: the first time, the son of a padishah; the second time, my
gardener; and the third time, that girl in the black leotard, with that long white face
and eyelids painted a ghoulish green; but she came very late, and the Shades left very
early - in fact, I doubt if the confrontation lasted more than ten minutes, whereupon I
had the task of entertaining the young lady with phonograph records far into the night
when at last she rang up somebody to accompany her to a "diner" in Dulwich.
Line 584: The mother and the child
Est ist die Mutter mit ihrem Kind (see note to line 664).
Line 596: Points at the puddle in his basement room
We all know those dreams in which something Stygian soaks through and Lethe leaks
in the dreary terms of defective plumbing. Following this line, there is a false start
preserved in the draft - and I hope the reader will feel something of the chill that ran
down my long and supple spine when I discovered this variant:
Should the dead murderer try to embrace
His outraged victim whom he now must face?
Do objects have a soul? Or perish must
Alike great temples and Tanagra dust?
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