JК
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight :: Набоков Владимир Владимирович
Страница: 27 из 124He had lunched at the Pitt (which, I understood, was a kind of club, probably with horsey pictures onthe walls and very old waiters asking their eternal riddle: thick or clear?). He had played fives (whatever that may be) or some other tame game, and then had had tea with two or three friends; the talk had hobbled along between crumpet and pipe, carefully avoiding anything that had not been said by others. There may have been another lecture or two before dinner, and then again Hall, a very fine place which I was duly shown. It was being swept at the moment, and the fat white calves of Henry the Eighth looked as if they might get tickled.
'And where did Sebastian sit?'
'Down there, against the wall.'
'But how did one get there? The tables seem miles long.'
'He used to step up 'on the outer bench and walk across the table. One trod on a plate now and then, but it was the usual method. '
Then, after dinner, he would go back to his rooms, or perhaps make his way with some silent companion to the little cinema on the market place where a Wild West film would be shown, or Charlie Chaplin stiffly trotting away from the big wicked man and skidding on the street corner.
Then, after three or four terms of this sort of thing a curious change came over Sebastian. He stopped enjoying what he thought he ought to enjoy and serenely turned to what really concerned him. Outwardly, this change resulted in his dropping out of the rhythm of college life. He saw no one except my informant, who remained perhaps the only man in his life with whom he had been perfectly frank and natural – it was a handsome friendship and I quite understood Sebastian, for that quiet scholar struck me as being the finest and gentlest soul imaginable. They were both interested in English literature, and Sebastian's friend was already then planning that first work of his, The Laws of Literary Imagination, which, two or three years later, won for him the Montgomery Prize.
'I must confess,' said he as he stroked a soft blue cat with celadon eyes which had appeared from nowhere and now made itself comfortable in his lap, 'I must confess that Sebastian rather pained me at that particular period of our friendship. Missing him in the lecture hall, I would go to his rooms and find him still in bed, curled up like a sleeping child, but gloomily smoking, with cigarette ash all over his crumpled pillow and inkstains on the sheet which hung loosely to the floor.
'And where did Sebastian sit?'
'Down there, against the wall.'
'But how did one get there? The tables seem miles long.'
'He used to step up 'on the outer bench and walk across the table. One trod on a plate now and then, but it was the usual method. '
Then, after dinner, he would go back to his rooms, or perhaps make his way with some silent companion to the little cinema on the market place where a Wild West film would be shown, or Charlie Chaplin stiffly trotting away from the big wicked man and skidding on the street corner.
Then, after three or four terms of this sort of thing a curious change came over Sebastian. He stopped enjoying what he thought he ought to enjoy and serenely turned to what really concerned him. Outwardly, this change resulted in his dropping out of the rhythm of college life. He saw no one except my informant, who remained perhaps the only man in his life with whom he had been perfectly frank and natural – it was a handsome friendship and I quite understood Sebastian, for that quiet scholar struck me as being the finest and gentlest soul imaginable. They were both interested in English literature, and Sebastian's friend was already then planning that first work of his, The Laws of Literary Imagination, which, two or three years later, won for him the Montgomery Prize.
'I must confess,' said he as he stroked a soft blue cat with celadon eyes which had appeared from nowhere and now made itself comfortable in his lap, 'I must confess that Sebastian rather pained me at that particular period of our friendship. Missing him in the lecture hall, I would go to his rooms and find him still in bed, curled up like a sleeping child, but gloomily smoking, with cigarette ash all over his crumpled pillow and inkstains on the sheet which hung loosely to the floor.