Sergey Sakun:   It’s a coincidence again*. About the possible origin of this legend I also wrote in my LJ half a year ago.http://gippodemos.livejournal.com/10710.html. This legend, probably, was taken by Nabokov from a P. N. Krasnov’s essay "Cinema" [1913]… “ Many, many years ago, says the Kyrgyz tradition[…]Tamerlane occurred to count his men again, and he ordered his soldiers to throw stones again beside the old pile of stones - and they are only sketched 1/3 stones. 2/3 were killed during the great Mongol conquests..."/ ( Translated using Google.  Correct, if it necessary, please.) “Thus in a pile of stones Tamerlane foresaw a monument”. And monuments are look much more majestic in the Krasnov’s version of this legend. (1 + 1/3 instead of only 1/3) .

Jansy Mello: There’s a Nabokovian quality about certain coincidences (a theme that has been explored in the latest issue of “The Nabokovian”) that makes me feel, for a little while, as if he’s managed to go on playing games with his readers (with us!), just like it happens in “The Vane Sisters”.
It was very interesting to read about the second pile of stones with an outcome that Tamerlane didn’t foresee.

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*- Former posting [… ] Sergei Sakun: This scene from “The Gift” [  “Pattern of Elysian hues! Once in Ordos my father, climbing a hill after a storm, inadvertently entered the base of a rainbow – the rarest occurrence! – and found himself in colored air, in a play of light as if in paradise. He took one more step – and left paradise.” ] recalls the following passage from Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, Baker Farm [… ] This passage also refers to Nabokov’s “iridule” in “Pale Fire”[…] It coincidence. About it I was already wrote in the last month in my Live Journal. http://gippodemos.livejournal.com/