JК
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight :: Набоков Владимир Владимирович
Страница: 23 из 124He was mortally afraid of missing tomorrow's event glory early train glory so whathe did was to buy and bring home in a to buy that evening and bring home not one but eight alarm clocks of different sizes and vigour of ticking nine eight eleven alarm clocks of different sizes ticking which alarm clocks nine alarm clocks as a cat has nine which he placed which made his bedroom look rather like a'
I was sorry it stopped here.
Foreign coins in a chocolate box: francs, marks, schillings, crowns – and their small change. Several fountain pens. An Oriental amethyst, unset. A rubber band. A glass tube of tablets for headache, nervous breakdown, neuralgia, insomnia, bad dreams, toothache. The toothache sounded rather dubious. An old notebook (1926) filled with dead telephone numbers. Photographs.
I thought I should find lots of girls. You know the kind – smiling in the sun, summer snapshots, continental tricks of shade, smiling in white on pavement, sand or snow – but I was mistaken. The two dozen or so of photographs I shook out of a large envelope with the laconic Mr H. written on top in Sebastian's hand, all featured one and the same person at different stages of his life: first a moonfaced urchin in a vulgarly cut sailor suit, next an ugly boy in a cricket-cap, then a pug-nosed youth, and so on till one arrived at a series of full-grown Mr H. – a rather repellent bulldog type of man, getting steadily fatter in a world of photographic backgrounds and real front gardens. I learnt who the man 'was supposed to be when I came 'across a newspaper clipping attached to one of the photographs:
'Author writing fictitious biography requires photos of gentleman, efficient appearance, plain, steady, teetotaller, bachelors preferred. Will pay for photos childhood, youth, manhood to appear in said work.'
That was a book Sebastian never wrote, but possibly he was still contemplating doing so in the last year of his life, for the last photograph of Mr H. standing happily near a brand-new car, bore the date 'March 1935' and Sebastian had died but a year later.
Suddenly I felt tired and miserable. I wanted the face of his Russian correspondent. I wanted pictures of Sebastian himself. I wanted many things…. Then, as I let my eyes roam around the room, I caught sight of a couple of framed photographs in the dim shadows above the bookshelves.
I got up and examined them. One was an enlarged snapshot of a Chinese stripped to the waist, in the act of being vigorously beheaded, the other was a banal photographic study of a curly child playing with a pup.
I was sorry it stopped here.
Foreign coins in a chocolate box: francs, marks, schillings, crowns – and their small change. Several fountain pens. An Oriental amethyst, unset. A rubber band. A glass tube of tablets for headache, nervous breakdown, neuralgia, insomnia, bad dreams, toothache. The toothache sounded rather dubious. An old notebook (1926) filled with dead telephone numbers. Photographs.
I thought I should find lots of girls. You know the kind – smiling in the sun, summer snapshots, continental tricks of shade, smiling in white on pavement, sand or snow – but I was mistaken. The two dozen or so of photographs I shook out of a large envelope with the laconic Mr H. written on top in Sebastian's hand, all featured one and the same person at different stages of his life: first a moonfaced urchin in a vulgarly cut sailor suit, next an ugly boy in a cricket-cap, then a pug-nosed youth, and so on till one arrived at a series of full-grown Mr H. – a rather repellent bulldog type of man, getting steadily fatter in a world of photographic backgrounds and real front gardens. I learnt who the man 'was supposed to be when I came 'across a newspaper clipping attached to one of the photographs:
'Author writing fictitious biography requires photos of gentleman, efficient appearance, plain, steady, teetotaller, bachelors preferred. Will pay for photos childhood, youth, manhood to appear in said work.'
That was a book Sebastian never wrote, but possibly he was still contemplating doing so in the last year of his life, for the last photograph of Mr H. standing happily near a brand-new car, bore the date 'March 1935' and Sebastian had died but a year later.
Suddenly I felt tired and miserable. I wanted the face of his Russian correspondent. I wanted pictures of Sebastian himself. I wanted many things…. Then, as I let my eyes roam around the room, I caught sight of a couple of framed photographs in the dim shadows above the bookshelves.
I got up and examined them. One was an enlarged snapshot of a Chinese stripped to the waist, in the act of being vigorously beheaded, the other was a banal photographic study of a curly child playing with a pup.