Describing the king’s escape from Zembla, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions the good grunter (mountain farmer) in whose house the king spent the night:
The gnarled farmer and his plump wife who, like personages in an old tedious tale offered the drenched fugitive a welcome shelter, mistook him for an eccentric camper who had got detached from his group. He was allowed to dry himself in a warm kitchen where he was given a fairy-tale meal of bread and cheese, and a bowl of mountain mead. His feelings (gratitude, exhaustion, pleasant warmth, drowsiness and so on) were too obvious to need description. A fire of larch roots crackled in the stove, and all the shadows of his lost kingdom gathered to play around his rocking chair as he dozed off between that blaze and the tremulous light of a little earthenware cresset, a beaked affair rather like a Roman lamp, hanging above a shelf where poor beady baubles and bits of nacre became microscopic soldiers swarming in desperate battle. He woke up with a crimp in the neck at the first full cowbell of dawn, found his host outside, in a damp corner consigned to the humble needs of nature, and bade the good grunter (mountain farmer) show him the shortest way to the pass. "I'll rouse lazy Garh," said the farmer.
A rude staircase led up to a loft. The farmer placed his gnarled hand on the gnarled balustrade and directed toward the upper darkness a guttural call: "Garh! Garh!" Although given to both sexes, the name is, strictly speaking, a masculine one, and the King expected to see emerge from the loft a bare-kneed mountain lad like a tawny angel. Instead there appeared a disheveled young hussy wearing only a man's shirt that came down to her pink shins and an oversized pair of brogues. A moment later, as in a transformation act, she reappeared, her yellow hair still hanging lank and loose, but the dirty shirt replaced by a dirty pullover, and her legs sheathed in corduroy pants. She was told to conduct the stranger to a spot from which he could easily reach the pass. A sleepy and sullen expression blurred whatever appeal her snub-nosed round face might have had for the local shepherds; but she complied readily enough with her father's wish. His wife was crooning an ancient song as she busied herself with pot and pan.
Before leaving, the King asked his host, whose name was Griff, to accept an old gold piece he chanced to have in his pocket, the only money he possessed. Griff vigorously refused and, still remonstrating, started the laborious business of unlocking and unbolting two or three heavy doors. The King glanced at the old woman, received a wink of approval, and put the muted ducat on the mantelpiece, next to a violet seashell against which was propped a color print representing an elegant guardsman with his bare-shouldered wife - Karl the Beloved, as he was twenty odd years before, and his young queen, an angry young virgin with coal-black hair and ice-blue eyes.
The stars had just faded. He followed the girl and a happy sheepdog up the overgrown trail that glistened with the ruby dew in the theatrical light of an alpine dawn. The very air seemed tinted and glazed. A sepulchral chill emanated from the sheer cliff along which the trail ascended; but on the opposite precipitous side, here and there between the tops of fir trees growing below, gossamer gleams of sunlight were beginning to weave patterns of warmth. At the next turning this warmth enveloped the fugitive, and a black butterfly came dancing down a pebbly rake. The path narrowed still more and gradually deteriorated amidst a jumble of boulders. The girl pointed to the slopes beyond it. He nodded. "Now go home," he said. "I shall rest here and then continue alone."
He sank down on the grass near a patch of matted elfinwood and inhaled the bright air. The panting dog lay down at his feet. Garh smiled for the first time. Zemblan mountain girls are as a rule mere mechanisms of haphazard lust, and Garh was no exception. As soon as she had settled beside him, she bent over and pulled over and off her tousled head the thick gray sweater, revealing her naked back and blancmangé breasts, and flooded her embarrassed companion with ail the acridity of ungroomed womanhood. She was about to proceed with her stripping but he stopped her with a gesture and got up. He thanked her for all her kindness. He patted the innocent dog; and without turning once, with a springy step, the King started to walk up the turfy incline. (note to Line 149)
Grunt is Russian for "soil, ground." Grunter rhymes with herunter (Germ., down) and munter (lively), a rhyming pair in the first stanza of Heinrich Heine's poem Berg' und Burgen schau'n herunter ("Mountains and fortresses look down"):
Berg' und Burgen schau'n herunter
In den spiegelhellen Rhein,
Und mein Schiffchen segelt munter,
Rings umglänzt von Sonnenschein.
Ruhig seh' ich zu dem Spiele
Goldner Wellen, kraus bewegt;
Still erwachen die Gefühle,
Die ich tief im Busen hegt'.
Freundlich grüßend und verheißend
Lockt hinab des Stromes Pracht;
Doch ich kenn' ihn, oben gleißend,
Birgt sein Innres Tod und Nacht.
Oben Lust, im Busen Tücken,
Strom, du bist der Liebsten Bild!
Die kann auch so freundlich nicken,
Lächelt auch so fromm und mild.
The golden ducat that the king puts on the mantelpiece seems to hint at Und meinen letzten Dukaten (And my last ducat), a line in Heine's poem Frau Sorge ("Lady Anxiety"):
In meines Glückes Sonnenglanz,
Da gaukelte fröhlich der Mückentanz.
Die lieben Freunde liebten mich
Und teilten mit mir brüderlich
Wohl meinen besten Braten
Und meinen letzten Dukaten.
Das Glück ist fort, der Beutel leer,
Und hab auch keine Freunde mehr;
Erloschen ist der Sonnenglanz,
Zerstoben ist der Mückentanz,
Die Freunde, so wie die Mücke,
Verschwinden mit dem Glücke.
An meinem Bett in der Winternacht
Als Wärterin die Sorge wacht.
Sie trägt eine weiße Unterjack’,
Ein schwarzes Mützchen, und schnupft Tabak.
Die Dose knarrt so gräßlich,
Die Alte nickt so häßlich.
Mir träumt manchmal, gekommen sei
Zurück das Glück und der junge Mai
Und die Freundschaft und der Mückenschwarm
Da knarrt die Dose — daß Gott erbarm,
Es platzt die Seifenblase —
Die Alte schneuzt die Nase.
The preceding line, Wohl meinen besten Braten (And my best roast beef), brings to mind zharkoe (the roast beef) served at the dinner on Tatiana's nameday party in Chapter Five (XXXII: 7) of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:
Конечно, не один Евгений
Смятенье Тани видеть мог;
Но целью взоров и суждений
В то время жирный был пирог
(К несчастию, пересоленный);
Да вот в бутылке засмоленной,
Между жарким и блан-манже,
Цимлянское несут уже;
За ним строй рюмок узких, длинных,
Подобно талии твоей,
Зизи, кристалл души моей,
Предмет стихов моих невинных,
Любви приманчивый фиал,
Ты, от кого я пьян бывал!
Of course, not only Eugene might have seen
Tanya's confusion; but the target
of looks and comments at the time
was a rich pie
(unfortunately, oversalted);
and here, in bottle sealed with pitch,
between the meat course and the blancmangér,
Tsimlyanski wine is brought already,
followed by an array of narrow, long
wineglasses, similar to your waist,
Zizí, crystal of my soul, object
of my innocent verse,
love's luring vial, you, of whom
drunken I used to be!
Mezhdu zharkim i blan-manzhe (between the meat course and the blancmangér) makes one think of Garh's blancmangé breasts. A homosexual, Kinbote is indifferent to female charms and spurns lazy Garh's advances. But he is also a confirmed vegetarian and would not care for zharkoe (the rost beef) served at the Larins.
Shade's murderer, Gdadus is a member of the Shadows (a regicidal organization). Russia in the Shadows (1921) is a series of articles by H. G. Wells written after Wells' visit to the Soviet Russia and meeting with Lenin at the Kremlin. H. G. Wells' is the author of The Invisible Man (1897). The name Griff seems to hint at Dr. Griffin, the main character in H. G. Wells' novel. In Pushkin's poem Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820) Lyudmila finds a magic cap that makes her invisible. The King's red cap makes him conspicuous, but it helps him to escape from Zembla, because some forty of his followers, who are also clad in red, impersonate him and ape his flight. Kot or ("What is the time" in Zemblan) brings to mind kot uchyonyi (the learned cat) who walks to and fro around the green oak and who told Pushkin the fairy tale about Ruslan and Lyudmila. In his Commentary Kinbote several times mentions the black cat that came with his landlord’s house:
Among various detailed notices affixed to a special board in the pantry, such as plumbing instructions, disserations on electricity, discourses on cactuses and so forth, I found the diet of the black cat that came with the house:
Mon, Wed, Fri: Liver
Tue, Thu, Sat: Fish
Sun: Ground meat
(All it got from me was milk and sardines; it was a likable little creature but after a while its movements began to grate on my nerves and I farmed it out to Mrs. Finley, the cleaning woman.) But perhaps the funniest note concerned the manipulations of the window curtains which had to be drawn in different ways at different hours to prevent the sun from getting at the upholstery. A description of the position of the sun, daily and seasonal, was given for the several windows, and if I had heeded all this I would have been kept as busy as a participant in a regatta. A footnote, however, generously suggested that instead of manning the curtains, I might prefer to shift and reshift out of sun range the more precious pieces of furniture (two embroidered armchairs and a heavy "royal console") but should do it carefully lest I scratch the wall moldings. I cannot, alas, reproduce the meticulous schedule of these transposals but seem to recall that I was supposed to castle the long way before going to bed and the short way first thing in the morning. My dear Shade roared with laughter when I led him on a tour of inspection and had him find some of those bunny eggs for himself. Thank God, his robust hilarity dissipated the atmosphere of damnum infectum in which I was supposed to dwell. On his part, he regaled me with a number of anecdotes concerning the judge's dry wit and courtroom mannerisms; most of these anecdotes were doubtless folklore exaggerations, a few were evident inventions, and all were harmless. He did not bring up, my sweet old friend never did, ridiculous stories about the terrifying shadows that Judge Goldsworth's gown threw across the underworld, or about this or that beast lying in prison and positively dying of raghdirst (thirst for revenge) - crass banalities circulated by the scurrilous and the heartless - by all those for whom romance, remoteness, sealskin-lined scarlet skies, the darkening dunes of a fabulous kingdom, simply do not exist. But enough of this. Let us turn to our poet's windows. I have no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of a novel. (note to Lines 47-48)
Garh is an anagram of ragh (Zemblan for "revenge"). Raghdirst hints at Rachedurst ("thirst of revenge" in German). In his poem Na smert' poeta ("On the Poet's Death," 1837) Lermontov says that Pushkin died s svintsom v grudi i zhazhdoy mesti (with a bullet in his breast and a thirst for revenge). According to Kinbote, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty):
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 principals: 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. (note to Line 1000)
Gut mag alkan (God makes hungry) brings to mind teni alkal (craved for shade), a phrase used by Pushkin in Podrazhaniya koranu (“Imitations of the Koran,” 1824):
И путник усталый на бога роптал:
Он жаждой томился и тени алкал.
And the tired traveler grumbled at God:
He was parched with thirst and craved for shade.