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 shpiks [plainclothesmen]:
The King walked on; the top of his blue pajamas tucked into his skiing pants might easily pass for a fancy shirt. There was a pebble in his left shoe but he was too fagged out to do anything about it.
He recognized the seashore restaurant where many years earlier he had lunched incognito with two amusing, very amusing, sailors. Several heavily armed Extremists were drinking beer on the geranium-lined veranda, among the routine vacationists, some of whom were busy writing to distant friends. Through the geraniums, a gloved hand gave the King a picture postcard on which he found scribbled: Proceed to R. C. Bon voyage! Feigning a casual stroll, he reached the end of the embankment.
It was a lovely breezy afternoon with a western horizon like a luminous vacuum that sucked in one's eager heart. The King, now at the most critical point of his journey, looked about him, scrutinizing the few promenaders and trying to decide which of them might be police agents in disguise, ready to pounce upon him as soon as he vaulted the parapet and made for the Rippleson Caves. Only a single sail dyed a royal red marred with some human interest the marine expanse. Nitra and Indra (meaning "inner" and "outer"), two black islets that seemed to address each other in cloaked parley, were being photographed from the parapet by a Russian tourist, thickset, many-chinned, with a general's fleshy nape. His faded wife, wrapped up floatingly in a flowery écharpe, remarked in singsong Moscovan "Every time I see that kind of frightful disfigurement I can't help thinking of Nina's boy. War is an awful thing."
"War?" queried her consort. "That must have been the explosion at the Glass Works in 1951 – not war." They slowly walked past the King in the direction he had come from. On a sidewalk bench, facing the sea, a man with his crutches beside him was reading the Onhava Post which featured on the first page Odon in an Extremist uniform and Odon in the part of the Merman. Incredible as it may seem the palace guard had never realized that identity before. Now a goodly sum was offered for his capture. Rhythmically the waves lapped the shingle. The newspaper reader's face had been atrociously injured in the recently mentioned explosion, and all the art of plastic surgery had only resulted in a hideous tessellated texture with parts of pattern and parts of outline seeming to change, to fuse or to separate, like fluctuating cheeks and chins in a distortive mirror.
The short stretch of beach between the restaurant at the beginning of the promenade and the granite rocks at its end was almost empty: far to the left three fishermen were loading a rowboat with kelp-brown nets, and directly under the sidewalk, an elderly woman wearing a polka-dotted dress and having for headgear a cocked newspaper (EX-KING SEEN -) sat knitting on the shingle with her back to the street. Her bandaged legs were stretched out on the sand; on one side of her lay a pair of carpet slippers and on the other a ball of red wool, the leading filament of which she would tug at every now and then with the immemorial elbow jerk of a Zemblan knitter to give a turn to her yarn clew and slacken the thread. Finally, on the sidewalk a little girl in a ballooning skirt was clumsily but energetically clattering about on roller skates. Could a dwarf in the police force pose as a pigtailed child?
Waiting for the Russian couple to recede, the King stopped beside the bench. The mosaic-faced man folded his newspaper, and one second before he spoke (in the neutral interval between smoke puff and detonation), the King knew it was Odon.
"All one could do at short notice," said Odon, plucking at his cheek to display how the varicolored semi-transparent film adhered to his face, altering its contours according to stress. "A polite person," he added, "does not, normally, examine too closely a poor fellow's disfigurement."
Waiting for the Russian couple to recede, the King stopped beside the bench. The mosaic-faced man folded his newspaper, and one second before he spoke (in the neutral interval between smoke puff and detonation), the King knew it was Odon. "All one could do at short notice," said Odon, plucking at his cheek to display how the varicolored semitransparent transparent film adhered to his face, altering its contours according to stress. "A polite person," he added, "does not, normally, examine too closely a poor fellow's disfigurement."
"I was looking for shpiks [plainclothesmen]" said the King.
"All day," said Odon, "they have been patrolling the quay. They are dining at present."
"I'm thirsty and hungry," said the King.
"There's some stuff in the boat. Let those Russians vanish. The child we can ignore."
"What about that woman on the beach?"
"That's young Baron Mandevil--chap who had that duel last year. Let's go now."
"Couldn't we take him too?"
"Wouldn't come--got a wife and a baby. Come on, Charlie, come on, Your Majesty."
"He was my throne page on Coronation Day."
Thus chatting, they reached the Rippleson Caves. I trust the reader has enjoyed this note. (note to Line 149)
In his memoir book Shum vremeni ("The Noise of Time," 1925) Osip Mandelshtam mentions shpiki (the plainclothesmen):
О, мрачный авторитет Сергея Иваныча, о, нелегальная его глубина, кавалерийская его куртка и штаны жандармского сукна! Его походка напоминала походку человека, которого только что схватили и ведут за плечо перед лицо грозного сатрапа, а он старается делать равнодушный вид. Ходить с ним по улице было одно удовольствие, потому что он показывал гороховых шпиков и нисколько их не боялся.
Я думаю, что он сам был похож на шпика, - от постоянных ли размышлений об этом предмете, по закону ли мимикрии, коим птицы и бабочки получают от скалы свой цвет и оперенье. Да, в Сергее Ивановиче было нечто жандармское. Он был брезглив, он был брюзга, рассказывал, хрипя, генеральские анекдоты, со вкусом и отвращением выговаривал гражданские и военные звания первых пяти степеней. Невыспавшееся и помятое, как студенческий блин, лицо Сергея Иваныча выражало чисто жандармскую брюзгливость. Ткнуть лицом в грязь генерала или действительного статского советника было для него высшим счастьем, - полагаю счастье математическим, несколько отвлеченным пределом. (Chapter 9 "Sergey Ivanych")
According to Mandelshtam, to walk with Sergey Ivanych [Mandelshtam's tutor] in the street was odno udovol'stvie (pure pleasure), because he pointed out to his pupil gorokhovykh shpikov (the plainclothesmen in pea-colored overcoats) of whom he was not in the least afraid. Neut. of odin (one), odno = Odon (the stage name of Donald O'Donnell, a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the king to escape from Zembla) = Nodo (Odon's epileptic half-brother, a cardsharp and despicable traitor).
Gorokhovykh shpikov brings to mind pustili gorokhovoe pal'to (insulted a workman by calling him "a plainclothesman"), a phrase used by Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev in Zhizn' Chernyshevskogo ("The Life of Chernyshevski"), Chapter Four of VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937):
На панихиде по нём в Петербурге приведённые для парада друзьями покойного несколько рабочих в партикулярном платье были приняты студентами за сыщиков, одному даже пустили гороховое пальто, что восстановило некое равновесие: не отцы ли этих рабочих ругали коленопреклоненного Чернышевского через забор?
At the requiem held for him in St. Petersburg the workmen in town clothes, whom the dead man's friends had brought for the sake of atmosphere, were taken by a group of students for plainclothesmen and insulted which restored a certain equilibrium: was it not the fathers of these workmen who had abused the kneeling Chernyshevski from over the fence?
Gorokhovoe pal'to (a plainclothesman's pea-colored overcoat) makes one think of a peashooter that Gradus should not aim at people even in dreams:
Such things rankle - but what can Gradus do? The huddled fates engage in a great conspiracy against Gradus. One notes with pardonable glee that his likes are never granted the ultimate thrill of dispatching their victim themselves. Oh, surely, Gradus is active, capable, helpful, often indispensable. At the foot of the scaffold, on a raw and gray morning, it is Gradus who sweeps the night's powder snow off the narrow steps; but his long leathery face will not be the last one that the man who must mount those steps is to see in this world. It is Gradus who buys the cheap fiber valise that a luckier guy will plant, with a time bomb inside, under the bed of a former henchman. Nobody knows better than Gradus how to set a trap by means of a fake advertisement, but the rich old widow whom it hooks is courted and slain by another. When the fallen tyrant is tied, naked and howling, to a plank in the public square and killed piecemeal by the people who cut slices out, and eat them, and distribute his living body among themselves (as I read when young in a story about an Italian despot, which made of me a vegetarian for life), Gradus does not take part in the infernal sacrament: he points out the right instrument and directs the carving.
All this is as it should be; the world needs Gradus. But Gradus should not kill kings. Vinogradus should never, never provoke God. Leningradus should not aim his peashooter at people even in dreams, because if he does, a pair of colossally thick, abnormally hairy arms will hug him from behind and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. (note to Line 171)
Leningradus (as Kinbote mockingly calls the poet's murderer) seems to hint at Mandelshtam's poem Leningrad (1930):
Я вернулся в мой город, знакомый до слёз,
До прожилок, до детских припухлых желёз.
Ты вернулся сюда, так глотай же скорей
Рыбий жир ленинградских речных фонарей,
Узнавай же скорее декабрьский денёк,
Где к зловещему дёгтю подмешан желток.
Петербург! Я ещё не хочу умирать!
У тебя телефонов моих номера.
Петербург! У меня ещё есть адреса́,
По которым найду мертвецов голоса́.
Я на лестнице чёрной живу, и в висок
Ударяет мне вырванный с мясом звонок,
И всю ночь напролёт жду гостей дорогих,
Шевеля кандалами цепочек дверных.
I‘ve returned to my city, it’s familiar in truth
To the tears, to the veins, swollen glands of my youth.
You are here once again, — quickly gulp in a trance
The fish oil of Leningrad’s riverside lamps.
Recognize this December day spreading far,
Where an egg yolk is mixed with the sinister tar.
I’m not willing yet, Petersburg, to perish in slumber:
It is you who retains all my telephone numbers.
I have plenty of addresses, Petersburg, yet,
Where I’m certain to find the voice of the dead.
In the dark of the staircase, my temple is threshed
By the knocker ripped out along with the flesh.
All night long, I await my dear guests like before
As I shuffle the shackles of the chains on the door.
(tr. A. Kneller)
At the end of his commentary Kinbote says that, history permitting, he may sail back to his recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain:
"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)
It seems that, like Pushkin's Onegin and VN, Botkin (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name) was born upon the Neva's banks. This means that St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd in 1914 and Leningrad in 1924) is Botkin's home city.
Btw., the Rippleson Caves (where the powerful motorboat is prepared for the King) bring to mind sobach'ya peshchera (the Cave of Dogs, Grotta del Cane, a cave near Naples, Italy) in the physics textbook mentioned by Mandelshtam when he describes Sergey Ivanych's lodgings:
Об эту пору мы с ним делали большую и величаво бесплодную работу: писали реферат о причинах падения римской империи. Сергей Иваныч залпами в одну неделю надиктовал мне сто тридцать пять страниц убористой тетрадки. Он не задумывался, не справлялся с источниками, он выпрядал как паук - из дымка папиросы, что ли - липкую пряжу научной фразеологии, раскидывая периоды и завязывая узелки социальных и экономических моментов. Он был клиентом нашего дома, как и многих других. Не так ли римляне нанимали рабов греков, чтобы блеснуть за ужином дощечкой с ученым трактатом? В разгаре означенной работы Сергей Иваныч привел меня к себе. Он проживал в сотых номерах Невского, за Николаевским вокзалом, где, откинув всякое щегольство, все дома, как кошки, серы. Я содрогнулся от густого и едкого запаха жилища Сергея Иваныча. Комната, надышанная и накуренная годами, вмещала в себе уже не воздух, а какое-то новое неизвестное вещество, с другим удельным весом и химическими свойствами. И невольно пришла мне на память неаполитанская собачья пещера из физики. За все время, что он здесь жил, хозяин, очевидно, ничего не поднял и не переставил, как истинный дервиш относясь к расположению вещей, сбрасывая на пол навеки то, что ему казалось ненужным. Дома Сергей Иваныч признавал лишь лежачее положение. Покуда Сергей Иваныч диктовал, я косился на каменоугольное его белье; как же я удивился, когда Сергей Иваныч объявил перерыв и сварил два стакана великолепнейшего густого и ароматного шоколада. Оказалось, у него страсть к шоколаду. Варил он его мастерски и гораздо крепче, чем это принято. Какой отсюда вывод? Был ли Сергей Иваныч сибарит или шоколадный бес завелся при нем, прилепившись к аскету и нигилисту? О, мрачный авторитет Сергея Иваныча, о, нелегальная его глубина, кавалерийская его куртка и штаны жандармского сукна! Его походка напоминала походку человека, которого только что схватили и ведут за плечо перед лицо грозного сатрапа, а он старается делать равнодушный вид. Ходить с ним по улице было одно удовольствие, потому что он показывал гороховых шпиков и нисколько их не боялся.
Sergey Ivanych helped Mandelshtam to write a paper on the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. Kinbote's landlord, Judge Goldsworth is an authority on Roman Law. At the end of the chapter in "The Noise of Time" Mandelshtam says that, after the Revolution, Sergey Ivanych found a job at the Pulkovo observatory:
Мне довелось его встретить много позже девятьсот пятого года: он вылинял окончательно, на нем не было лица, до того стерлись и обесцветились его черты. Слабая тень прежней брезгливости и авторитета. Оказалось, он устроился и служит ассистентом на Пулковской вышке в астрономической обсерватории.
Если бы Сергей Иваныч превратился в чистый логарифм звездных скоростей или функцию пространства, я бы не удивился: он должен был уйти из жизни, до того он был химера.
In Chapter Three of The Gift Fyodor mentions the star that sheds on Pulkovo its beam:
Люби лишь то, что редкостно и мнимо, что крадется окраинами сна, что злит глупцов, что смердами казнимо; как родине, будь вымыслу верна. Наш час настал. Собаки и калеки одни не спят. Ночь летняя легка. Автомобиль, проехавший, навеки последнего увез ростовщика. Близ фонаря, с оттенком маскарада, лист жилками зелеными сквозит. У тех ворот – кривая тень Багдада, а та звезда над Пулковом висит. О, поклянись что…
Love only what is fanciful and rare; what from the distance of a dream steals through; what knaves condemn to death and fools can't bear. To fiction be as to your country true. Now is our time. Stray dogs and cripples are alone awake. Mild is the summer night. A car speeds by: Forever that last car has taken the last banker out of sight. Near that streetlight veined lime-leaves masquerade in chrysoprase with a translucent gleam. Beyond that gate lies Baghdad's crooked shade, and yon star sheds on Pulkovo its beam. Oh, swear to me-
In Canto Two of his poem Shade describes paring his fingernails and compares his index finger to the lean and glum college astronomer Starover Blue:
The little scissors I am holding are
A dazzling synthesis of sun and star.
I stand before the window and I pare
My fingernails and vaguely am aware
Of certain flinching likenesses: the thumb,
Our grocer's son; the index, lean and glum
College astronomer Starover Blue;
The middle fellow, a tall priest I knew;
The feminine fourth finger, an old flirt;
And little pinky clinging to her skirt.
And I make mouths as I snip off the thin
Strips of what Aunt Maud used to call "scarf-skin." (ll. 183-194)
In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions the great Starover Blue who reviewed the role planets had played as landfalls of the soul:
We heard cremationists guffaw and snort
At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort
As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.
We all avoided criticizing faiths.
The great Starover Blue reviewed the role
Planets had played as landfalls of the soul.
The fate of beasts was pondered. A Chinese
Discanted on the etiquette at teas
With ancestors, and how far up to go.
I tore apart the fantasies of Poe,
And dealt with childhood memories of strange
Nacreous gleams beyond the adults' range. (ll. 623-634)
Starover is Russian for "Old Believer." In his article Sotsial-demokraticheskaya dushechka (“The Social-Democratic Darling,” 1905) Lenin (after whom VN's home city was renamed) compares Comrade Starover (the pen name of Alexander Potresov, 1869-1934, one of the leaders of the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party) to the heroine of Chekhov’s story Dushechka (“The Darling,” 1899):
«Тов. Старовер очень похож на героиню чеховского рассказа „Душечка“. Душечка жила сначала с антрепренёром и говорила: мы с Ванечкой ставим серьёзные пьесы. Потом жила она с торговцем лесом и говорила: мы с Васечкой возмущены высоким тарифом на лес. Наконец, жила с ветеринаром и говорила: мы с Колечкой лечим лошадей. Так и тов. Старовер. „Мы с Лениным“ ругали Мартынова. „Мы с Мартыновым“ ругаем Ленина. Милая социал-демократическая душечка! в чьих-то объятиях очутишься ты завтра?»
Like Mandelshtam before him, VN finished the St. Petersburg Tenishev School. In the last chapter of "The Noise of Time," V ne po chinu barstvennoy shube ("In a Fur Coat above One's Station"), Mandelshtam describes Vladimir Vasilievich Gippius (1876-1941), a poet who was Mandelshtam's and VN's teacher of literature at the Tenishev School.