JК
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight :: Набоков Владимир Владимирович
Страница: 21 из 124I had seen him once in that brown coat; I touched its sleeve, but it was limp and irresponsive to that faint call of memory. There were shoes, too, which had walked many miles and had now reached the end of their journey. Folded shirts lying on their backs. What could all these quiet things tell me of Sebastian? His bed. A small old oil-painting, a little cracked (muddy road, rainbow, beautiful puddles) on the ivory white of the wall above. The eye-spot of his awakening.
As I looked about me, all things in that bedroom seemed to have just jumped back in the nick of time as if caught unawares, and now were gradually returning my gaze, trying to see whether I had noticed their guilty start. This was particularly the case with the low, white-robed armchair near the bed; I wondered what it had stolen. Then by groping in the recesses of its reluctant folds I found something hard: it turned out to be a Brazil nut, and the armchair again folding its arms resumed its inscrutable expression (which might have been one of contemptuous dignity).
The bathroom. The glass shelf, bare save for an empty talc-powder tin with violets figured between its shoulders, standing there alone, reflected in the mirror like a coloured advertisement.
Then I examined the two main rooms. The dining-room was curiously impersonal, like all places where people eat – perhaps because food is our chief link with the common chaos of matter rolling about us. There was, it is true, a cigarette end in a glass ashtray, but it had been left there by a certain Mr McMath, house agent.
The study. From here one got a view of the back garden or park, the fading sky, a couple of elms, not oaks, in spite of the street name's promise. A leather divan sprawling at one end of the room. Bookshelves densely peopled. The writing desk. There was almost nothing on it: a red pencil, a box of paper clips – it looked sullen and distant, but the lamp on its western edge was adorable. I found its pulse and the opal globe melted into light: that magic moon had seen Sebastian's white moving hand. Now I was really getting down to business. I took the key that had been bequeathed me and unlocked the drawers.
First of all I dislodged the two bundles of letters on which Sebastian had scribbled: to be destroyed. One was folded in such a fashion that I could not get a glimpse of the writing: the notepaper was egg-shell blue with a dark-blue rim. The other packet consisted of a medley of notepaper criss-crossed in a bold feminine scrawl. I guessed whose it was. For a wild instant I struggled with the temptation to examine closer both bundles. I am sorry to say the better man won.
As I looked about me, all things in that bedroom seemed to have just jumped back in the nick of time as if caught unawares, and now were gradually returning my gaze, trying to see whether I had noticed their guilty start. This was particularly the case with the low, white-robed armchair near the bed; I wondered what it had stolen. Then by groping in the recesses of its reluctant folds I found something hard: it turned out to be a Brazil nut, and the armchair again folding its arms resumed its inscrutable expression (which might have been one of contemptuous dignity).
The bathroom. The glass shelf, bare save for an empty talc-powder tin with violets figured between its shoulders, standing there alone, reflected in the mirror like a coloured advertisement.
Then I examined the two main rooms. The dining-room was curiously impersonal, like all places where people eat – perhaps because food is our chief link with the common chaos of matter rolling about us. There was, it is true, a cigarette end in a glass ashtray, but it had been left there by a certain Mr McMath, house agent.
The study. From here one got a view of the back garden or park, the fading sky, a couple of elms, not oaks, in spite of the street name's promise. A leather divan sprawling at one end of the room. Bookshelves densely peopled. The writing desk. There was almost nothing on it: a red pencil, a box of paper clips – it looked sullen and distant, but the lamp on its western edge was adorable. I found its pulse and the opal globe melted into light: that magic moon had seen Sebastian's white moving hand. Now I was really getting down to business. I took the key that had been bequeathed me and unlocked the drawers.
First of all I dislodged the two bundles of letters on which Sebastian had scribbled: to be destroyed. One was folded in such a fashion that I could not get a glimpse of the writing: the notepaper was egg-shell blue with a dark-blue rim. The other packet consisted of a medley of notepaper criss-crossed in a bold feminine scrawl. I guessed whose it was. For a wild instant I struggled with the temptation to examine closer both bundles. I am sorry to say the better man won.