According to 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), when Andronnikov and Niagarin (the two Soviet experts whom the new Zemblan government hired to find the crown jewels) sang beautiful sentimental military duets at eventide on the rampart, the sky turned away showing its ethereal vertebrae:
Line 681: gloomy Russians spied
There is really nothing metaphysical, or racial, about this gloom. It is merely the outward sign of congested nationalism and a provincial's sense of inferiority - that dreadful blend so typical of Zemblans under the Extremist rule and of Russians under the Soviet regime. Ideas in modern Russia are machine-cut blocks coming in solid colors; the nuance is outlawed, the interval walled up, the curve grossly stepped.
However, not all Russians are gloomy, and the two young experts from Moscow whom our new government engaged to locate the Zemblan crown jewels turned out to be positively rollicking. The Extremists were right in believing that Baron Bland, the Keeper of the Treasure, had succeeded in hiding those jewels before he jumped or fell from the North Tower; but they did not know he had had a helper and were wrong in thinking the jewels must be looked for in the palace which the gentle white-haired Bland had never left except to die. I may add, with pardonable satisfaction, that they were, and still are, cached in a totally different - and quite unexpected - corner of Zembla.
In an earlier note (to line 130) the reader has already glimpsed those two treasure hunters at work. After the King's escape and the belated discovery of the secret passage, they continued their elaborate excavations until the palace was all honeycombed and partly demolished, an entire wall of one room collapsing one night, to yield, in a niche whose presence nobody had suspected, an ancient salt cellar of bronze and King Wigbert's drinking horn; but you will never find our crown, necklace and scepter.
All this is the rule of a supernal game, all this is the immutable fable of fate, and should not be construed as reflecting on the efficiency of the two Soviet experts -who, anyway, were to be marvelously successful on a later occasion with another job (see note to line 747). Their names (probably fictitious) were Andronnikov and Niagarin. One has seldom seen, at least among waxworks, a pair of more pleasant, presentable chaps. Everybody admired their clean-shaven jaws, elementary facial expressions, wavy hair, and perfect teeth. Tall handsome Andronnikov seldom smiled but the crinkly little rays of his orbital flesh bespoke infinite humor while the twin furrows descending from the sides of his shapely nostrils evoked glamorous associations with flying aces and sagebrush heroes. Niagarin, on the other hand, was of comparatively short stature, had somewhat more rounded, albeit quite manly features, and every now and then would flash a big boyish smile remindful of scoutmasters with something to hide, or those gentlemen who cheat in television quizzes. It was delightful to watch the two splendid Sovietchiks running about in the yard and kicking a chalk-dusty, thumping-tight soccer ball (looking so large and bald in such surroundings). Andronnikov could tap-play it on his toe up and down a dozen times before punting it rocket straight into the melancholy, surprised, bleached, harmless heavens: and Niagarin could imitate to perfection the mannerisms of a certain stupendous Dynamo goalkeeper. They used to hand out to the kitchen boys Russian caramels with plums or cherries depicted on the rich luscious six-cornered wrappers that enclosed a jacket of thinner paper with the mauve mummy inside; and lustful country girls were known to creep up along the drungen (bramble-choked footpaths) to the very foot of the bulwark when the two silhouetted against the now flushed sky sang beautiful sentimental military duets at eventide on the rampart. Niagarin had a soulful tenor voice, and Andronnikov a hearty baritone, and both wore elegant jackboots of soft black leather, and the sky turned away showing its ethereal vertebrae.
Niagarin who had lived in Canada spoke English and French; Andronnikov had some German. The little Zemblan they knew was pronounced with that comical Russian accent that gives vowels a kind of didactic plenitude of sound. They were considered models of dash by the Extremist guards, and my dear Odonello once earned a harsh reprimand from the commandant by not having withstood the temptation to imitate their walk: both moved with an identical little swagger, and both were conspicuously bandy-legged.
When I was a child, Russia enjoyed quite a vogue at the court of Zembla but that was a different Russia - a Russia that hated tyrants and Philistines, injustice and cruelty, the Russia of ladies and gentlemen and liberal aspirations. We may add that Charles the Beloved could boast of some Russian blood. In medieval times two of his ancestors had married Novgorod princesses. Queen Yaruga (reigned 1799-1800) his great-great-granddam, was half Russian; and most historians believe that Yaruga's only child Igor was not the son of Uran the Last (reigned 1798-1799) but the fruit of her amours with the Russian adventurer Hodinski, her goliart (court jester) and a poet of genius, said to have forged in his spare time a famous old Russian chanson de geste generally attributed to an anonymous bard of the twelfth century.
The sky's ethereal vertebrae brings to mind "a gaseous vertebrate," as Aldous Huxley (an English writer and philosopher, 1894-1963) called God. In reply to Monfiori's question "do you believe in God?" Kern, the main character in VN's story Udar kryla ("Wingstroke," 1924), quotes Huxley's definition of God and says that he is not a believer:
- А в Бога вы верите? - спросил Монфиори с видом человека, который попадает на своего конька. - Ведь Бог-то есть. Керн фальшиво засмеялся.
- Библейский Бог. Газообразное позвоночное... Не верю.
- Это из Хукслея, - вкрадчиво заметил Монфиори. - А был библейский.
Бог... Дело в том, что Он не один; много их, библейских богов... Сонмище... Из них мой любимый... "От чихания его показывается свет; глаза у него, как ресницы зари". Вы понимаете, понимаете, что это значит? А? И дальше: "... мясистые части тела его сплочены между собою твердо, не дрогнут". Что? Что? Понимаете?
- Стойте, - крикнул Керн.
- Нет, вникайте, вникайте. "Он море претворяет в кипящую мазь; оставляет за собою светящуюся стезю: бездна кажется сединою!"
- Стойте же, наконец, - перебил Керн. - Я хочу вам сказать, что я решил покончить с собой...
"And do you believe in God?" asked Monfiori with the air of a man getting on his hobby horse. "There is God, after all."
Kern gave an artificial laugh.
"Biblical God. . . . Gaseous vertebrate. . . . I am not a believer."
"That's from Huxley," insinuatingly observed Monfiori. "There was a biblical God, though. . . . The point is that He is not alone; there are numerous biblical Gods. . . . A host. My favorite one is. . . 'He sneezes and there is light. He has eyes like the eyelashes of dawn.' Do you understand what this means? Do you? And there is more: ". . . the fleshy parts of his body are solidly interconnected, and they won't budge." Well? Well? Do you understand?" "Wait a minute," shouted Kern.
"No, no -- you must think about it. 'He transforms the sea into a seething ointment; he leaves behind a trail of radiance; the abyss is akin to a patch of gray hair! ' "
"Wait, will you," interrupted Kern. "I want to tell you that I have decided to kill myself. . . ." (2)
Monfiori tells Kern that there are numerous biblical Gods, sonmishche (a host). Describing IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) in Canto Three of his poem, Shade says that IPH snubbed gods, including the big G:
While snubbing gods, including the big G,
Iph borrowed some peripheral debris
From mystic visions; and it offered tips
(The amber spectacles for life's eclipse) -
How not to panic when you're made a ghost:
Sidle and slide, choose a smooth surd, and coast,
Meet solid bodies and glissade right through,
Or let a person circulate through you.
How to locate in blackness, with a gasp,
Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp.
How to keep sane in spiral types of space.
Precautions to be taken in the case
Of freak reincarnation: what to do
On suddenly discovering that you
Are now a young and vulnerable toad
Plump in the middle of a busy road,
Or a bear cub beneath a burning pine,
Or a book mite in a revived divine. (ll. 549-566)
A character in Wingstroke, Monfiori (fiori is Italian for 'flowers') brings to mind Fleur de Fyler (defiler of flowers), Queen Disa's favorite lady-in-waiting. The wife of Charles the Beloved, Queen Disa (Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone) makes one think of disaster, as in his last note Kern calls the suicide of his wife:
Керн, стараясь не слушать, писал размашистым почерком:
"Мой милый друг. Вот мое последнее письмо. Я никогда не мог забыть, как ты мне помог, когда на меня обрушилось несчастье. Он, вероятно, живет на вершине, где ловит горных орлов и питается их мясом..."
Trying not to listen, Kern wrote in a bold hand:
"My dear friend, this is my last letter. I could never forget how you helped me when disaster crashed down on me. He probably lives on a peak where he hunts alpine eagles and feeds on their meat. . . ."' (2)
Gradus (Shade's murderer) learns the King's new name and address, because Andronnikov and Niagarin had broken into Queen Disa's Mediterranean villa:
On the morning of July 16 (while Shade was working on the 698-746 section of his poem) dull Gradus, dreading another day of enforced inactivity in sardonically, sparkling, stimulatingly noisy Nice, decided that until hunger drove him out he would not budge from a leathern armchair in the simulacrum of a lobby among the brown smells of his dingy hotel. Unhurriedly he went through a heap of old magazines on a nearby table. There he sat, a little monument of taciturnity, sighing, puffing out his cheeks, licking his thumb before turning a page, gaping at the pictures, and moving his lips as he climbed down the columns of printed matter. Having replaced everything in a neat pile, he sank back in his chair closing and opening his gabled hands in various constructions of tedium - when a man who had occupied a seat next to him got up and walked into the outer glare leaving his paper behind. Gradus pulled it into his lap, spread it out - and froze over a strange piece of local news that caught his eye: burglars had broken into Villa Disa and ransacked a bureau, taking from a jewel box a number of valuable old medals.
Here was something to brood upon. Had this vaguely unpleasant incident some bearing on his quest? Should he do something about it? Cable headquarters? Hard to word succinctly a simple fact without having it look like a cryptogram. Airmail a clipping? He was in his room working on the newspaper with a safety razor blade when there was a bright rap-rap at the door. Gradus admitted an unexpected visitor - one of the greater Shadows, whom he had thought to be onhava-onhava ("far, far away"), in wild, misty, almost legendary Zembla! What stunning conjuring tricks our magical mechanical age plays with old mother space and old father time!
He was a merry, perhaps overmerry, fellow, in a green velvet jacket. Nobody liked him, but he certainly had a keen mind. His name, Izumrudov, sounded rather Russian but actually meant "of the Umruds," an Eskimo tribe sometimes seen paddling their umyaks (hide-lined boats) on the emerald waters of our northern shores. Grinning, he said friend Gradus must get together his travel documents, including a health certificate, and take the earliest available jet to New York. Bowing, he congratulated him on having indicated with such phenomenal acumen the right place and the right way. Yes, after a thorough perlustration of the loot that Andron and Niagarushka had obtained from the Queen's rosewood writing desk (mostly bills, and treasured snapshots, and those silly medals) a letter from the King did turn up giving his address which was of all places - Our man, who interrupted the herald of success to say he had never - was bidden not to display so much modesty. A slip of paper was now produced on which Izumrudov, shaking with laughter (death is hilarious), wrote out for Gradus their client's alias, the name of the university where he taught, and that of the town where it was situated. No, the slip was not for keeps. He could keep it only while memorizing it. This brand of paper (used by macaroon makers) was not only digestible but delicious. The gay green vision withdrew - to resume his whoring no doubt. How one hates such men! (note to Line 741)
The title of Shade's poem, Pale Fire, is borrowed from Shakespeare's play Timon of Athens. The title of Aldous Huxley's best known novel, Brave New World (1932), derives from Shakespeare's play The Tempest (Act V, Scene 1, Miranda's speech):
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in 't.
In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes his heart attack and calls 1958 "a year of Tempests:"
It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. (ll. 679-682)