JК
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight :: Набоков Владимир Владимирович
Страница: 60 из 124"A ridiculous profession," said William, "a pick-pocket gone mad, a matter of patter. The pennies in a beggar's cap and the omelette in your top hat. Absurdly the same." "We are used to insult," said the conjuror. He calmly put out the light and William groped his way out. The books on the bed in his room seemed reluctant to move. As he undressed he imagined the forbidden bliss of a sunlit laundry: blue water and scarlet wrists. Might he beg Anne to wash his shirt? Had he really annoyed her again? Did she really believe they would be married some day? The pale little freckles on the glistening skin under her innocent eyes. The right front-tooth that protruded a little. Her soft warm neck. He felt again the pressure of tears. Would she go the way of May, Judy, Juliette, Augusta, and all the rest of his love-embers? He heard the dancing-girl in the next room locking the door, washing, bumping down a jug, wistfully clearing her throat. Something dropped with a tinkle. The conjuror began to snore.'
11
I am fast approaching the crucial point of Sebastian's sentimental life and as I consider the work already done in the pale light of the task still before me I feel singularly ill at ease. Have I given as fair an idea of Sebastian's life up to now as I had hoped, and as I now hope to do, in regard to its final period? The dreary tussle with a foreign idiom and a complete lack of literary experience do not predispose one to feeling over-confident. But badly as I may have blundered over my task in the course of the preceding chapters I am determined to persevere and in this I am sustained by the secret knowledge that in some unobtrusive way Sebastian's shade is trying to be helpful.
I have received less abstract help too. P. G. Sheldon, the poet, who saw a great deal of Clare and Sebastian between 1927 and 1930 was kindly willing to tell me anything he might know, when I called upon him very soon after my strange half-meeting with Clare. And it is he again who a couple of months later (when I had already begun upon this book) informed me of poor Clare's fate. She had seemed to be such a normal and healthy young woman, how was it that she bled to death next to an empty cradle? He told me of her delight when Success lived up to its title. For it was a success this time. Why it is so, why this excellent book should flop and that other, as excellent, receive its due, will always remain something of a mystery. As had been the case, too, with his first novel, Sebastian had not moved a finger, not pulled the least string in order to have Success brightly heralded and warmly acclaimed.
11
I am fast approaching the crucial point of Sebastian's sentimental life and as I consider the work already done in the pale light of the task still before me I feel singularly ill at ease. Have I given as fair an idea of Sebastian's life up to now as I had hoped, and as I now hope to do, in regard to its final period? The dreary tussle with a foreign idiom and a complete lack of literary experience do not predispose one to feeling over-confident. But badly as I may have blundered over my task in the course of the preceding chapters I am determined to persevere and in this I am sustained by the secret knowledge that in some unobtrusive way Sebastian's shade is trying to be helpful.
I have received less abstract help too. P. G. Sheldon, the poet, who saw a great deal of Clare and Sebastian between 1927 and 1930 was kindly willing to tell me anything he might know, when I called upon him very soon after my strange half-meeting with Clare. And it is he again who a couple of months later (when I had already begun upon this book) informed me of poor Clare's fate. She had seemed to be such a normal and healthy young woman, how was it that she bled to death next to an empty cradle? He told me of her delight when Success lived up to its title. For it was a success this time. Why it is so, why this excellent book should flop and that other, as excellent, receive its due, will always remain something of a mystery. As had been the case, too, with his first novel, Sebastian had not moved a finger, not pulled the least string in order to have Success brightly heralded and warmly acclaimed.