NABOKOV Vladimir - Pale Fire

the social functions available to me. But after the gay evening there came again the
insidious approach, the oblique shuffle, that creeping up, and that pause, and the
resumed crepitation.
The Goldsworth château had many outside doors, and no matter how thoroughly I
inspected them and the window shutters downstairs at bedtime, I never failed to
discover next morning something unlocked, unlatched, a little loose, a little ajar,
something sly and suspicious-looking. One night the black cat, which a few minutes
before I had seen rippling down into the basement where I had arranged toilet
facilities for it in an attractive setting, suddenly reappeared on the threshold of the
music room, in the middle of my insomnia and a Wagner record, arching its back and
sporting a neck bow of white silk which it could certainly never have put on all by
itself. I telephoned 11111 and a few minutes later was discussing possible culprits
with a policeman who relished greatly my cherry cordial, but whoever had broken in
had left no trace. It is so easy for a cruel person to make the victim of his ingenuity
believe that he has persecution mania, or is really being stalked by a killer, or is
suffering from hallucinations. Hallucinations! Well did I know that among certain
youthful instructors whose advances I had rejected there was at least one evil practical
joker; I knew it ever since the time I came home from a very enjoyable and successful
meeting of students and teachers (at which I had exuberantly thrown off my coat and
shown several willing pupils a few of the amusing holds employed by Zemblan
wrestlers) and found in my coat pocket a brutal anonymous note saying: "You have
hal.....s real bad, chum," meaning evidently "hallucinations," although a malevolent
critic might infer from the insufficient number of dashes that little Mr. Anon, despite
teaching Freshman English, could hardly spell.
I am happy to report that soon after Easter my fears disappeared never to return. Into
Alphina's or Betty's room another lodger moved, Balthasar, Prince of Loam, as I
dubbed him, who with elemental regularity fell asleep at nine and by six in the
morning was planting heliotropes (Heliotropium turgenevi). This is the flower whose
odor evokes with timeless intensity the dusk, and the garden bench, and a house of
painted wood in a distant northern land.
Line 70: The new TV
After this, in the draft (dated July 3), come a few unnumbered lines that may have
been intended for some later parts of. the poem. They are not actually deleted but are
accompaied by a question mark in the margin and encircled with a wavy line
encroaching upon some of the letters:
There are events, strange happenings, that strike
The mind as emblematic. They are like
Lost similes adrift without a string,
Attached to nothing. Thus that northern king,
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