JК
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight :: Набоков Владимир Владимирович
Страница: 6 из 124'
'Look here, my dear fellow,' said Palchin,'no use my pretending I don't see what you are driving at. I am sorry people have been talking, but really there is no reason to lose our tempers…. It is nobody's fault that you and I were in the same boat once.'
'In that case, Sir,' said my father, 'my seconds will call on you.'
Palchin was a fool and a cad, this much at least I gathered from the story my mother told me (and which in her telling had assumed the vivid direct form I have tried to retain here). But just because Palchin was a fool and a cad, it is hard for me to understand why a man of my father's worth should have risked his life to satisfy – what? Virginia's honour? His own desire of revenge? But just as Virginia's honour had been irredeemably forfeited by the very fact of her flight, so all ideas of vengeance ought to have long lost their bitter lust in the happy years of my father's second marriage. Or was it merely the naming of a name, the seeing of a face, the sudden grotesque sight of an individual stamp upon what had been a tame faceless ghost? And taken all in all was it, this echo of a distant past (and echoes are seldom more than a bark, no matter how pure-voiced the caller), was it worth the ruin of our home and the grief of my mother?
The duel was fought in a snow-storm on the bank of a frozen brook. Two shots were exchanged before my father fell face downwards on a blue-grey army cloak spread on the snow. Palchin, his hands trembling, lit a cigarette. Captain Belov hailed the coachmen who were humbly waiting some distance away on the snow-swept road. The whole beastly affair had lasted three minutes.
In Lost Property Sebastian gives his own impressions of that lugubrious January day. 'Neither my stepmother', he writes, 'nor anyone of the household knew of the pending affair. On the eve, at dinner, my father threw bread-pellets at me across the table: I had been sulking all day because of some fiendish woollies which the doctor had insisted upon my wearing, and he was trying to cheer me up; but I frowned and blushed and turned away. After dinner we sat in his study, he sipping his coffee and listening to my stepmother's account of the noxious way Mademoiselle had of giving my small half-brother sweets after putting him to bed; and I, at the far end of the room, on the sofa, turning the pages of Chums: "Look out for the next instalment of this rattling yarn." Jokes at the bottom of the large thin pages. "The guest of honour had been shown over the School: What struck you most? – A pea from a pea-shooter." Express-trains roaring through the night.
'Look here, my dear fellow,' said Palchin,'no use my pretending I don't see what you are driving at. I am sorry people have been talking, but really there is no reason to lose our tempers…. It is nobody's fault that you and I were in the same boat once.'
'In that case, Sir,' said my father, 'my seconds will call on you.'
Palchin was a fool and a cad, this much at least I gathered from the story my mother told me (and which in her telling had assumed the vivid direct form I have tried to retain here). But just because Palchin was a fool and a cad, it is hard for me to understand why a man of my father's worth should have risked his life to satisfy – what? Virginia's honour? His own desire of revenge? But just as Virginia's honour had been irredeemably forfeited by the very fact of her flight, so all ideas of vengeance ought to have long lost their bitter lust in the happy years of my father's second marriage. Or was it merely the naming of a name, the seeing of a face, the sudden grotesque sight of an individual stamp upon what had been a tame faceless ghost? And taken all in all was it, this echo of a distant past (and echoes are seldom more than a bark, no matter how pure-voiced the caller), was it worth the ruin of our home and the grief of my mother?
The duel was fought in a snow-storm on the bank of a frozen brook. Two shots were exchanged before my father fell face downwards on a blue-grey army cloak spread on the snow. Palchin, his hands trembling, lit a cigarette. Captain Belov hailed the coachmen who were humbly waiting some distance away on the snow-swept road. The whole beastly affair had lasted three minutes.
In Lost Property Sebastian gives his own impressions of that lugubrious January day. 'Neither my stepmother', he writes, 'nor anyone of the household knew of the pending affair. On the eve, at dinner, my father threw bread-pellets at me across the table: I had been sulking all day because of some fiendish woollies which the doctor had insisted upon my wearing, and he was trying to cheer me up; but I frowned and blushed and turned away. After dinner we sat in his study, he sipping his coffee and listening to my stepmother's account of the noxious way Mademoiselle had of giving my small half-brother sweets after putting him to bed; and I, at the far end of the room, on the sofa, turning the pages of Chums: "Look out for the next instalment of this rattling yarn." Jokes at the bottom of the large thin pages. "The guest of honour had been shown over the School: What struck you most? – A pea from a pea-shooter." Express-trains roaring through the night.