JК
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight :: Набоков Владимир Владимирович
Страница: 66 из 124He met Clare alone and asked her whether she thought Sebastian was all right. 'Sebastian?' said Clare with a slow dreadful smile, 'Sebastian has gone mad. Quite mad,' she repeated, widely opening her pale eyes.
'He has stopped talking to me,' she added in a small voice.
Then Sheldon saw Sebastian and asked him what was amiss.
'Is it any of your business?' inquired Sebastian with a kind of wretched coolness.
'I like Clare,' said Sheldon, 'and I want to know why she walks about like a lost soul.' (She would come to Sebastian every day and sit in odd comers where she never used to sit. She brought sweets sometimes or a tie for Sebastian. The sweets remained uneaten and the tie hung lifelessly on the back of a chair. She seemed to pass through Sebastian like a ghost. Then she would fade away as silently as she had come.)
'Well,' said Sheldon, 'out with it, man. What have you done to her?'
12
Sheldon learnt nothing from him whatsoever. What he did learn was from Clare herself; and this amounted to very little. After his return to London Sebastian had been getting letters in Russian from a woman he had met at Blauberg. She had been living at the same hotel as he. Nothing else was known.
Six weeks later (in September 1929) Sebastian left England again and was absent until January of the following year. Nobody knew where he had been. Sheldon suggested it might have been Italy 'because lovers usually go there'. He did not cling to his suggestion.
Whether Sebastian had some final explanation with Clare, or whether he left a letter for her when he departed, is not clear. She wandered away as quietly as she had come. She changed her lodgings: they were too close to Sebastian's flat. On a certain gloomy November day Miss Pratt met her in the fog on her way home from a life-insurance office where she had found work. After that, the two girls saw each other fairly often, but Sebastian's name was seldom mentioned. Five years later, Clare married.
Lost Property which Sebastian had begun at that time appears as a kind of halt in his literary journey of discovery: a summing up, a counting of the things and souls lost on the way, a setting of bearings; the clinking sound of unsaddled horses browsing in the dark; the glow of a camp fire; stars overhead. There is in it a short chapter dealing with an aeroplane crash (the pilot and all the passengers but one were killed); the survivor, an elderly Englishman, was discovered by a farmer some way from the place of the accident, sitting on a stone. He sat huddled up – the picture of misery and pain. 'Are you badly hurt?' asked the farmer.
'He has stopped talking to me,' she added in a small voice.
Then Sheldon saw Sebastian and asked him what was amiss.
'Is it any of your business?' inquired Sebastian with a kind of wretched coolness.
'I like Clare,' said Sheldon, 'and I want to know why she walks about like a lost soul.' (She would come to Sebastian every day and sit in odd comers where she never used to sit. She brought sweets sometimes or a tie for Sebastian. The sweets remained uneaten and the tie hung lifelessly on the back of a chair. She seemed to pass through Sebastian like a ghost. Then she would fade away as silently as she had come.)
'Well,' said Sheldon, 'out with it, man. What have you done to her?'
12
Sheldon learnt nothing from him whatsoever. What he did learn was from Clare herself; and this amounted to very little. After his return to London Sebastian had been getting letters in Russian from a woman he had met at Blauberg. She had been living at the same hotel as he. Nothing else was known.
Six weeks later (in September 1929) Sebastian left England again and was absent until January of the following year. Nobody knew where he had been. Sheldon suggested it might have been Italy 'because lovers usually go there'. He did not cling to his suggestion.
Whether Sebastian had some final explanation with Clare, or whether he left a letter for her when he departed, is not clear. She wandered away as quietly as she had come. She changed her lodgings: they were too close to Sebastian's flat. On a certain gloomy November day Miss Pratt met her in the fog on her way home from a life-insurance office where she had found work. After that, the two girls saw each other fairly often, but Sebastian's name was seldom mentioned. Five years later, Clare married.
Lost Property which Sebastian had begun at that time appears as a kind of halt in his literary journey of discovery: a summing up, a counting of the things and souls lost on the way, a setting of bearings; the clinking sound of unsaddled horses browsing in the dark; the glow of a camp fire; stars overhead. There is in it a short chapter dealing with an aeroplane crash (the pilot and all the passengers but one were killed); the survivor, an elderly Englishman, was discovered by a farmer some way from the place of the accident, sitting on a stone. He sat huddled up – the picture of misery and pain. 'Are you badly hurt?' asked the farmer.