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 good capercaillie and woodcock shooting:
A handshake, a flash of lightning. As the King waded into the damp, dark bracken, its odor, its lacy resilience, and the mixture of soft growth and steep ground reminded him of the times he had picnicked hereabouts - in another part of the forest but on the same mountainside, and higher up, as a boy, on the boulderfield where Mr. Campbell had once twisted an ankle and had to be carried down, smoking his pipe, by two husky attendants. Rather full memories, on the whole. Wasn't there a hunting box nearby - just beyond Silfhar Falls? Good capercaillie and woodcock shooting - a sport much enjoyed by his late mother, Queen Blenda, a tweedy and horsy queen. Now as then, the rain seethed in the black trees, and if you paused you heard your heart thumping, and the distant roar of the torrent. What is the time, kot or? He pressed his repeater and, undismayed, it hissed and tinkled out ten twenty-one.
Anyone who has tried to struggle up a steep slope, on a dark night, through a tangle of inimical vegetation, knows what a formidable task our mountaineer had before him. For more than two hours he kept at it, stumbling against stumps, falling into ravines, clutching at invisible bushes, fighting off an army of conifers. He lost his cloak. He wondered if he had not better curl up in the undergrowth and wait for daybreak. All at once a pinhead light gleamed ahead and presently he found himself staggering up a slippery, recently mown meadow. A dog barked. A stone rolled underfoot. He realized he was near a mountainside bore (farmhouse). He also realized that he had toppled into a deep muddy ditch.
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 blancmange 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)
The western capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus), also known as the Eurasian capercaillie, wood grouse, heather cock, cock-of-the-woods, or simply capercaillie is a heavy member of the grouse family and the largest of all extant grouse species. The capercaillie male goes temporarily deaf during the last few seconds of his song. The capercaillie's Russian name, glukhar', comes from glukhoy (deaf). In Garshin's story Khudozhniki ("Artists," 1879) Glukhar' ("Human Anvil") is a painting by Ryabinin:
Я живу в Пятнадцатой линии на Среднем проспекте и четыре раза в день прохожу по набережной, где пристают иностранные пароходы. Я люблю это место за его пестроту, оживление, толкотню и шум и за то, что оно дало мне много материала. Здесь, смотря на поденщиков, таскающих кули, вертящих ворота и лебедки, возящих тележки со всякой кладью, я научился рисовать трудящегося человека.
Я шел домой с Дедовым, пейзажистом... Добрый и невинный, как сам пейзаж, человек и страстно влюблен в свое искусство. Вот для него так уж нет никаких сомнений; пишет, что видит: увидит реку - и пишет реку, увидит болото с осокою - и пишет болото с осокою. Зачем ему эта река и это болото? - он никогда не задумывается. Он, кажется, образованный человек; по крайней мере кончил курс инженером. Службу бросил, благо явилось какое-то наследство, дающее ему возможность существовать без труда. Теперь он пишет и пишет: летом сидит с утра до вечера на поле или в лесу за этюдами, зимой без устали компонует закаты, восходы, полдни, начала и концы дождя, зимы, весны и прочее. Инженерство свое забыл и не жалеет об этом. Только когда мы проходим мимо пристани, он часто объясняет мне значение огромных чугунных и стальных масс: частей машин, котлов и разных разностей, выгруженных с парохода на берег.
- Посмотрите, какой котлище притащили, - сказал он мне вчера, ударив тростью в звонкий котел.
- Неужели у нас не умеют их делать? - спросил я.
- Делают и у нас, да мало, не хватает. Видите, какую кучу привезли. И скверная работа; придется здесь чинить: видите, шов расходится? Вот тут тоже заклепки расшатались. Знаете ли, как эта штука делается? Это, я вам скажу, адская работа. Человек садится в котел и держит заклепку изнутри клещами, что есть силы напирая на них грудью, а снаружи мастер колотит по заклепке молотом и выделывает вот такую шляпку.
Он показал мне на длинный ряд выпуклых металлических кружков, идущий по шву котла.
- Дедов, ведь это все равно, что по груди бить!
- Все равно. Я раз попробовал было забраться в котел, так после четырех заклепок еле выбрался. Совсем разбило грудь. А эти как-то ухитряются привыкать. Правда, и мрут они, как мухи: год-два вынесет, а потом если и жив, то редко куда-нибудь годен. Извольте-ка целый день выносить грудью удары здоровенного молота, да еще в котле, в духоте, согнувшись в три погибели. Зимой железо мерзнет, холод, а он сидит или лежит на железе. Вон в том котле - видите, красный, узкий - так и сидеть нельзя: лежи на боку да подставляй грудь. Трудная работа этим глухарям.
- Глухарям?
- Ну да, рабочие их так прозвали. От этого трезвона они часто глохнут. И вы думаете, много они получают за такую каторжную работу? Гроши! Потому что тут ни навыка, ни искусства не требуется, а только мясо... Сколько тяжелых впечатлений на всех этих заводах, Рябинин, если бы вы знали! Я так рад, что разделался с ними навсегда. Просто жить тяжело было сначала, смотря на эти страдания... То ли дело с природою. Она не обижает, да и ее не нужно обижать, чтобы эксплуатировать ее, как мы, художники... Поглядите-ка, поглядите, каков сероватый тон! - вдруг перебил он сам себя, показывая на уголок неба: - пониже, вон там, под облачком... прелесть! С зеленоватым оттенком. Ведь вот напиши так, ну точно так - не поверят! А ведь недурно, а?
Я выразил свое одобрение, хотя, по правде сказать, не видел никакой прелести в грязно-зеленом клочке петербургского неба, и перебил Дедова, начавшего восхищаться еще каким-то "тонком" около другого облачка.
- Скажите мне, где можно посмотреть такого глухаря?
- Поедемте вместе на завод; я вам покажу всякую штуку. Если хотите, даже завтра! Да уж не вздумалось ли вам писать этого глухаря? Бросьте, не стоит. Неужели нет ничего повеселее? А на завод, если хотите, хоть завтра.
Сегодня мы поехали на завод и осмотрели все. Видели и глухаря. Он сидел, согнувшись в комок, в углу котла и подставлял свою грудь под удары молота. Я смотрел на него полчаса; в эти полчаса молот поднялся и опустился сотни раз. Глухарь корчился. Я его напишу.
I live in the Fifteenth Line, Sredni Avenue, and four times a day I take a walk along the quayside where foreign steamships put in. I love this place for its colourfulness, its noise and bustle, and for the wealth of material it provides me with. It was here, watching the day-labourers carrying sacks, winding windlasses and winches, and driving trucks with all kinds of loads, that I learned to draw the working man.
I walked home with Dedov, the landscapist. A man as kindly and innocent as the landscape itself and passionately in love with his art. Here is one who has no doubts whatever; he paints what he sees: if he sees a river, he paints a river, if he sees a tussocky marsh he paints a tussocky marsh. What he wants that river and that marsh for, he never stops to think. He is, I believe, an educated man; at any rate he has graduated as an engineer. He gave up his post in the civil service after coming into some property or other, which enables him to exist without working. Now he paints for all he is worth: in the summer he sits sketching in a field or in the woods from morning till evening, in the winter he never tires of composing sunsets, sunrises, noons, the beginning and ending of rain, winters, springs and so forth. 'He has forgotten his engineering and does not regret it. But when we pass the wharves he often explains to me the use of the huge iron and steel masses-machine parts, boilers and other odds and ends unloaded from the steamers.
"Look at that thumping boiler they've shipped over," he said to me one evening, giving the boiler a resounding whack with his stick.
"Do you mean to say we can't make them here at home?" I said.
"They make them here, too, but not enough. See what a lot they've brought over. Pretty poor workmanship, too; they'll have to be repaired here; see the joints coming undone? The rivets have come loose here, too. Do you know how it's done? A hellish job, I tell you. A man crawls inside the boiler and grips the rivet with pincers, pressing on it with his chest as hard as he can while a workman outside hammers the rivet until he has beaten a head on it like this."
He pointed to a long row of raised metallic disks running along the boiler seam.
"But, Dedov, that's as good as hammering at his chest!"
"So it is. I tried it once inside the boiler, and crawled out after the fourth rivet more dead than alive. My chest was all bruised. But these men somehow manage to get used to it. To be sure, they die like flies; after a year or two, if the man survives at all, he is hardly fit for anything. Nor would you be if you had to take terrific blows of a hammer on your chest all day long, and hunched up in a stuffy boiler at that. In winter the iron is freezing cold, and he has to sit or lie on it. That boiler over there, now-the narrow red one, see it?-you can't even sit in that: you have to lie on your side chest up. It's hard work for those Human Anvils."
"Human Anvils?"
"Yes, that's what the workmen call them. They often grow deaf from the din. And you think they receive much for this gruelling toil? A mere pittance! Because you don't need skill or art here, but just flesh. . . . You'd be surprised, Ryabinin, how many painful impressions you get at all these factories! I am so glad to be done with them for good. Life was simply a misery at first, with all that suffering around you. Having nature to deal with is quite a different thing. She does you no harm, and you don't have to cause her any harm in order to exploit her the way we artists do. Just look at that greyish tone!" He suddenly broke off, pointing to a patch of sky. "There, just below that little cloud-isn't it lovely! It has a greenish tinge. If you were to paint it exactly as it is, no one would believe you, I am sure. It's not bad really, is it?"
I expressed my approval, although, to tell the truth, I saw nothing beautiful in that dun patch of St. Petersburg sky, and interrupted Dedov, who was about to go off into raptures over another tone refinement elsewhere.
"Tell me, where can I see one of those Human Anvils?"
"Let us go down to the factory; I'll show you all kinds of things there. We can go tomorrow if you like. You don't intend to paint that Human Anvil, do you? It's not worth it. Can't you find something more cheerful? As for the factory we can go any time-tomorrow if you like."
We went to the factory the same day and took a good look round. We saw the Human Anvil, too. He was crouching inside a boiler, receiving the blows of the hammer on his chest. I watched him for half an hour; during that half-hour the hammer rose and fell a hundred times. The man writhed. I am going to paint him. (IV Ryabinin)
Griff's daughter who shows to the King the shortest way to the pass, lazy Garh brings to mind Garshin. Zemblan for "mountain farmer," grunter may hint at “To grunt and sweat under a weary life,” a line in Hamlet’s famous soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (3.1). In the preceding line Hamlet mentions a bare bodkin. In his Index entry Botkin, V. Kinbote mentions "botkin or bodkin, a, Danish stiletto:"
Botkin, V., American scholar of Russian descent, 894; kingbot, 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.
The poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus seem to represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose "real" name is Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade’s "real" name). Nadezhda Nikolaevna (1885) is a short novel by Vsevolod Garshin (1855-88). Nadezhda means in Russian "hope." There is a hope that, when Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide (on Oct. 19, 1959, the anniversary of Pushkin's Lyceum), Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin’s epigrams, “half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.
Btw., kot or? ('what is the time?' in Zemblan) brings to mind Chekhov's story Kotoryi iz tryokh? ("Which of the Three?" 1882). According to Kinbote, Shade listed Chekhov (who dedicated to the memory of Garshin his story Pripadok, "A Nervous Breakdown," 1888) among Russian humorists:
Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department, Prof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings (happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department, was not subordinated to that grotesque "perfectionist"): "How odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov." (note to Line 172)
Grunter (Zemblan for "mountain farmer") also seems to hint at grunt, soil in Russian. On the other hand, in painting gruntovka means "primer, undercoat."