Nevertheless, I have had my little revenge: public misapprehension indirectly helped me to obtain the right of publishing Pale Fire. My good gardener, when enthusiastically relating to everybody what he had seen, certainly erred in several respects--not so much perhaps in his exaggerated account of my "heroism" as in the assumption that Shade had been deliberately aimed at by the so-called Jack Grey; but Shade's widow found herself so deeply affected by the idea of my having "thrown myself" between the gunman and his target that during a scene I shall never forget, she cried out, stroking my hands: "There are things for which no recompense in this world or another is great enough." That "other world" comes in handy when misfortune befalls the infidel but I let it pass of course, and, indeed, resolved not to refute anything, saying instead: "Oh, but there is a recompense, my dear Sybil. It may seem to you a very modest request but--give me the permission, Sybil, to edit and publish John's last poem." The permission was given at once, with new cries and new hugs, and already next day her signature was under the agreement I had a quick little lawyer draw up. That moment of grateful grief you soon forgot, dear girl. But I assure you that I do not mean any harm, and that John Shade, perhaps, will not be too much annoyed by my notes, despite the intrigues and the dirt.
Because of these machinations I was confronted with nightmare problems in my endeavors to make people calmly see--without having them immediately scream and hustle me--the truth of the tragedy--a tragedy in which I had been not a "chance witness" but the protagonist, and the main, if only potential, victim. The hullabaloo ended by affecting the course of my new life, and necessitated my removal to this modest mountain cabin; but I did manage to obtain, soon after his detention, an interview, perhaps even two interviews, with the prisoner. He was now much more lucid than when he cowered bleeding on my porch step, and he told me all I wanted to know. By making him believe I could help him at his trial I forced him to confess his heinous crime--his deceiving the police and the nation by posing as Jack Grey, escapee from an asylum, who mistook Shade for the man who sent him there. A few days later, alas, he thwarted justice by slitting his throat with a safety razor blade salvaged from an unwatched garbage container. He died, not so much because having played his part in the story he saw no point in existing any longer, but because he could not live down this last crowning botch--killing the wrong person when the right one stood before him. In other words, his life ended not in a feeble splutter of the clockwork but in a gesture of humanoid despair. Enough of this. Exit Jack Grey.
I cannot recall without a shudder the lugubrious week that I spent in New Wye before leaving it, I hope, forever. I lived in constant fear that robbers would deprive me of my tender treasure. Some of my readers may laugh when they learn that I fussily removed it from my black valise to an empty steel box in my landlord's study, and a few hours later took the manuscript out again, and for several days wore it, as it were, having distributed the ninety-two index cards about my person, twenty in the right-hand pocket of my coat, as many in the left-hand one, a batch of forty against my right nipple and the twelve precious ones with variants in my innermost left-breast pocket. I blessed my royal stars for having taught myself wife work, for I now sewed up all four pockets. Thus with cautious steps, among deceived enemies, I circulated, plated with poetry, armored with rhymes, stout with another man's song, stiff with cardboard, bullet-proof at long last.
Many years ago--how many I would not care to say--I remember my Zemblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in the throes of adult insomnia: "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty). Well, folks, I guess many in this fine hall are as hungry and thirsty as me, and I'd better stop, folks, right here.
Yes, better stop. My notes and self are petering out. Gentlemen, I have suffered very much, and more than any of you can imagine. I pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my wretched countrymen. My work is finished. My poet is dead.
"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.
God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy, heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned melodrama with three principles: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out--somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door--a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus.
Index
The italicized numerals refer to the lines in the poem and the comments thereon. The capital letters G, K, S (which see) stand for the three main characters in this work.
A., Baron, Oswin Affenpin, last Baron of Aff, a puny traitor, 286.
Acht, Iris, celebrated actress, d. 1888, a passionate and powerful woman, favorite of Thurgus the Third (q.v.), 130. She died officially by her own hand; unofficially, strangled in her dressing room by a fellow actor, a jealous young Gothlander, now, at ninety, the oldest, and least important, member of the Shadows (q.v.) group.
Alfin, King, surnamed The Vague, 1873-1918, reigned from 1900; K.'s father; a kind, gentle, absent-minded monarch, mainly interested in automobiles, flying machines, motorboats and, at one time, sea shells; killed in an airplane accident, 71.
Andronnikov and Niagarin, two Soviet experts in quest of a buried treasure, 130, 681, 741; see Crown Jewels.
Arnor, Romulus, poet about town and Zemblan patriot, 1914-1958, his poem quoted, 80; executed by the Extremists.
Aros, a fine town in E. Zembla, capital of Conmal's dukedom; once the mayorship of the worthy Ferz ("chessqueen") Bretwit, a cousin of the granduncle of Oswin Bretwit (q.v.), 149, 286.
B., Baron, involuntary father-in-law of Baron A. and imaginary old friend of the Bretwit (q.v.) family, 286.
Bera, a mountain range dividing the peninsula lengthwise; described with some of its glittering peaks, mysterious passes and picturesque slopes, 149.
Blawick, Blue Cove, a pleasant seaside resort on the Western Coast of Zembla, casino, golf course, sea food, boats for hire, 149.
Blenda, Queen, the King's mother, 1878-1936, reigned from 1918, 71.
Boscobel, site of the Royal Summerhouse, a beautiful, piny and duny spot in W. Zembla, soft hollows imbued with the writer's most amorous recollections; now (1959) a "nudist colony"--whatever that is, 149, 596.
Botkin, V., American scholar of Russian descent, 894; king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic end, 247; bottekin-maker, 71; bot, plop, and boteliy, big-bellied (Russ.); botkin or bodkin, a Danish stiletto.
Bregberg. See Bera.
Bretwit, Oswin, 1914-1959, diplomat and Zemblan patriot, 286. See also under Odevalla and Aros.
Campbell, Walter, b. 1890, in Glasgow; K.'s tutor, 1922-1931, an amiable gentleman with a mellow and rich mind; dead shot and champion skater; now in Iran; 130
Charles II, Charles Xavier Vseslav, last King of Zembla, surnamed The Beloved, b. 1915, reigned 1936-1958; his crest, 1; his studies and his reign, 12; fearful fate of predecessors, 62; his supporters, 7
0; parents, 71; bedroom, 80; escape from palace, 130; and across the mountains, 149; engagement to Disa recalled, 275; parenthetical passage through Paris, 286; and through Switzerland, 408; visit to Villa Disa, 433; night in mountains recalled, 597, 662; his Russian blood, and Crown Jewels (q.v. by all means), 681; his arrival in the U.S.A., 691; letter to Disa stolen, 741; and quoted, 768; his portrait discussed, 894; his presence in library, 949; identity almost revealed, 991; Solus Rex, 1000. See also Kinbote.
Conmal, Duke of Aros, 1855-1955, K.'s uncle, the eldest half-brother of Queen Blenda (q.v.); noble paraphrast, 12; his version of Timon of Athens, 39, 130; his life and work, 962.
Crown Jewels, 130, 681; see Hiding Place.
Disa, Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone; my lovely, pale, melancholy Queen, haunting my dreams, and haunted by dreams of me, b. 1928; her album and favorite trees, 49; married 1949, 80; her letters on ethereal paper with a watermark I cannot make out, her image torturing me in my sleep, 433.
Embla, a small old town with a wooden church surrounded by sphagnum bogs at the saddest, loneliest, northmost point of the misty peninsula, 149, 433.
Emblem, meaning "blooming" in Zemblan; a beautiful bay with bluish and black, curiously striped rocks and a luxurious growth of heather on its gentle slopes, in the southmost part of W. Zembla, 433.
Falkberg, a pink cone, 71; snowhooded, 149.
Flatman, Thomas, 1637-88, English poet, scholar and miniaturist, not known to old fraud, 894.
Fleur, Countess de Fyler, an elegant lady-in-waiting, 71, 80, 433.
G, see Gradus.
Garh, a farmer's daughter, 149, 433. Also a rosy-cheeked goose-boy found in a country lane, north of Troth, in 1936, only now distinctly recalled by the writer.
Glitterntin, Mt., a splendid mountain in the Bera Range (q.v.); pity I may never climb it again, 149.
Gordon, see Krummholz.
Gradus, Jakob, 1915-1959; alias Jack Degree, de Grey, d'Argus, Vinogradus, Leningradus, etc.; a Jack of small trades and a killer, 12, 17; lynching the wrong people, 80; his approach synchronized with S's work on the poem, 120, 131; his election and past tribulations, 171; the first lap of his journey, Onhava to Copenhagen, 181, 209; to Paris, and meeting with Oswin Bretwit, 286; to Geneva, and talk with little Gordon at Joe Lavender's place near Lex, 408; calling headquarters from Geneva, 469; his name in a variant, and his wait in Geneva, 596; to Nice, and his wait there, 697; his meeting with Izumrudov in Nice and discovery of the King's address, 741; from Paris to New York, 873; in New York, 9491; his morning in New York, his journey to New Wye, to the campus, to Dulwich Rd., 9492; the crowning blunder, 1000.
Griff, old mountain farmer and Zemblan patriot, 149.
Grindelwod, a fine town in E. Zembla, 71, 149.
Hiding place, potaynik (q.v.)
Hodinski, Russian adventurer, d. 1800, also known as Hodyna, 681; resided in Zembla 1778-1800; author of a celebrated pastiche and lover of Princess (later Queen) Yaruga (q.v.), mother of Igor II, grandmother of Thurgus (q.v.).
Igor II, reigned 1800-1845, a wise and benevolent king, son of Queen Yaruga (q.v.) and father of Thurgus III (q.v.); a very private section of the picture gallery in the Palace, accessible only to the reigning monarch, but easily broken into through Bower P by an inquisitive pubescent, contained the statues of Igor's four hundred favorite catamites, in pink marble, with inset glass eyes and various touched up details, an outstanding exhibition of verisimilitude and bad art, later presented by K. to an Asiatic potentate.
K, see Charles II and Kinbote.
Kalixhaven, a colorful seaport on the western coast, a few miles north of Blawick (q.v.), 171; many pleasant memories.
Kinbote, Charles, Dr., an intimate friend of S, his literary adviser, editor and commentator; first meeting and friendship with S, Foreword; his interest in Appalachian birds, 1; his good-natured request to have S use his stories, 12; his modesty, 34; his having no library in his Timonian cave, 39; his belief in his having inspired S, 42; his house in Dulwich Road, and the windows of S's house, 47; Prof. H. contradicted and corrected, 61, 71; his anxieties and insomnias, 62; the map he made for S, 71; his sense of humor, 79, 91; his belief that the term "iridule" is S's invention, 109; his weariness, 120; his sports activities, 130; his visit to S's basement, 143; his trusting the reader enjoyed the note 149; boyhood and the Orient Express recalled, 162; his request that the reader consult a later note, 169; his quiet warning to G, 171; his remarks on critics and other sallies endorsed by S, 172; his participation in certain festivities elsewhere, his being debarred from S's birthday party upon coming home, and his sly trick next morning, 181; his hearing about Hazel's "poltergeist" phase, 230; poor who? 231; his futile attempts to have S get off the subject of natural history and report on the work in progress, 238; his recollection of the quays in Nice and Mentone, 240; his utmost courtesy towards his friend's wife, 247; his limited knowledge of lepidoptera and the sable gloom of his nature marked like a dark Vanessa with gay flashes, 270; his discovery of Mrs. S's plan to whisk S to Cedarn and his decision to go there too, 288; his attitude towards swans, 319; his affinity with Hazel, 334, 348; his walk with S to the weedy spot where the haunted barn once stood, 347; his objection to S's flippant attitude towards celebrated contemporaries, 376; his contempt for Prof. H. (not in Index), 377; his overworked memory, 384; his meeting with Jane Provost and examination of lovely lakeside snapshots, 385; his criticism of the 403-474 lines section, 403; his secret guessed, or not guessed, by S, his telling S about Disa, and S's reaction, 417; his debate on Prejudice with S, 470; his discussion of Suicide with himself, 493; his surprise at realizing that the French name of one melancholy tree is the same as the Zemblan one of another, 501; his disapproval of certain flippant passages in Canto Three, 5022; his views on sin and faith, 549; his editorial integrity and spiritual misery, 550; his remarks on a certain female student and on the number and nature of meals shared with the Shades, 579; his delight and amazement at a portentous meeting of syllables in two adjacent words, 596; his aphorism on the slayer and the slain, 597; his logcabin in Cedarn and the little angler, a honey-skinned lad, naked except for a pair of torn dungarees, one trouser leg rolled up, frequently fed with nougat and nuts, but then school started or the weather changed, 609; his appearance at the H----s, 629; his severe criticism of quotational titles, from The Tempest etc., such as "pale fire," etc., 671; his sense of humor, 680; his arrival at Mrs. O'Donnell's country house recalled, 691; his appreciation of a quodlibet and his doubts anent its purported authorship, 727; his loathing for a person who makes advances, and then betrays a noble and naive heart, telling foul stories about his victim and pursuing him with brutal practical jokes, 741; his not being able, owing to some psychological block or the fear of a second G, of traveling to a city only sixty or seventy miles distant, where he would certainly have found a good library, 747; his letter of April 2, 1959, to a lady who left it locked up among her treasures in her villa near Nice when she went that summer to Rome, 768; divine service in the morning and ramble in the evening with the poet finally speaking of his work, 802; his remarks on a lexical and linguistic miracle, 803; his borrowing a collection of F. K. Lane's letters from the motor court owner, 810; his penetrating into the bathroom where his friend sat and shaved in the tub, 887; his participation in a Common Room discussion of his resemblance to the King, and his final rupture with E. (not in the Index), 894; he and S shaking with mirth over tidbits in a college textbook by Prof. C. (not in the Index), 929; his sad gesture of weariness and gentle reproach, 937; a young lecturer in Onhava University vividly recollected, 957; his last meeting with S in the poet's arbor, etc., 991; his discovery of the scholarly gardener recalled, 998; his unsuccessful attempt to save S's life, and his success in salvaging the MS, 1000; his arranging to have it published without the help of two "experts," Foreword.
Kobaltana, a once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old barracks now a cold and desolate spot of difficult access and no importance but
still remembered in military families and forest castles, not in the text.
Kronberg, a snow-capped rocky mountain with a comfortable hotel, in the Bera Range, 70, 130, 149.
Krummholz, Gordon, b.1944, a musical prodigy and an amusing pet; son of Joseph Lavender's famous sister, Elvina Krummholz, 408.
Lane, Franklin Knight, American lawyer and statesman, 1864-1921, author of a remarkable fragment, 810.
Lass, see Mass.
Lavender, Joseph S., see O'Donnell, Sylvia.
Male, see Word Golf.
Mandevil, Baron Mirador, cousin of Radomir Mandevil (q.v.), experimentalist, madman and traitor, 171.
Mandevil, Baron Radomir, b.1925, man of fashion and Zemblan patriot; in 1936, K's throne page, 130; in 1958, disguised, 149.
Marcel, the fussy, unpleasant, and not always plausible central character, pampered by everybody in Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, 181, 691.
Marrowsky, a, a rudimentary spoonerism, from the name of a Russian diplomat of the early 19th century, Count Komarovski, famous at foreign courts for mispronouncing his own name--Makarovski, Macaronski, Skomorovski, etc.
Mass, Mars, Mare, see Male.
Multraberg, see Bera.
Niagarin and Andronnikov, two Soviet "experts" still in quest of a buried treasure, 130, 681, 741; see Crown Jewels.
Nitra and Indra, twin islands off Blawick, 149.
Nodo, Odon's half-brother, b. 1916, son of Leopold O'Donnell and of a Zemblan boy impersonator; a cardsharp and despicable traitor, 171.
Odevalla, a fine town north of Onhava in E. Zembla, once the mayorship of the worthy Zule ("chessrook") Bretwit, granduncle of Oswin Bretwit (q.v., q.v., as the crows say), 149, 286.