Владимир Набоков - The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

'I was', writes Sebastian in Lost Property, 'so shy that I always managed somehow to commit the fault I was most anxious to avoid. In my disastrous attempt to match the colour of my surroundings I could only be compared to a colour-blind chameleon. My shyness would have been easier to bear – for me and for others – had it been of the normal dammy-and-pimply kind: many a young fellow passes through this stage and nobody really minds. But with me it assumed a morbid secret form which had nothing to do with the throes of puberty. Among the most hackneyed inventions of the torture house there is one consisting of denying the prisoner sleep. Most people live through the day with this or that part of their mind in a happy state of somnolence: a hungry man eating a steak is interested in his food and not, say, in the memory of a dream about angels wearing top-hats which he happened to see seven years ago; but in my case all the shutters and lids and doors of the mind would be open at once at all times of the-day. Most brains have their Sundays, mine was even refused a half-holiday. This state of constant wakefulness was extremely painful not only in itself, but in its direct results. Every ordinary act which, as a matter of course, I had to perform, took on such a complicated appearance, provoked such a multitude of associative ideas in my mind, and these associations were so tricky and obscure, so utterly useless for practical application, that I would either shirk the business at hand or else make a mess of it out of sheer nervousness. When one morning I went to see the editor of a review who, I thought, might print some of my Cambridge poems, a particular stammer he had, blending with a certain combination of angles in the pattern of roofs and chimneys, all slightly distorted owing to a flaw in the glass of the window-pane – this and a queer musty smell in the room (of roses rotting in the waste-paper basket?) sent my thoughts on such long and intricate errands that, instead of saying what I had meant to say, I suddenly started telling this man whom I was seeing for the first time, about the literary plans of a mutual friend, who, I remembered too late, had asked me to keep them secret….

"…Knowing, as I did, the dangerous vagrancies of my consciousness I was afraid of meeting people, of hurting their feelings or making myself ridiculous in their eyes. But this same quality or defect which tormented me so, when confronted with what is called the practical side of life (though, between you and me, bookkeeping or bookselling looks singularly unreal in the starlight), became an instrument of exquisite pleasure whenever I yielded to my loneliness. I was deeply in love with the country which was my home (as far .as my nature could afford the notion of home); I had my Kipling moods, and my Rupert Brooke moods, and my Housman moods. The blind man's dog near Harrods or a pavement-artist's coloured Chalks; brown leaves in a New Forest ride or a tin bath hanging outside on the black brick wall of a slum; a picture in Punch or a purple passage in Hamlet, all went to form a definite harmony, where I, too, had the shadow of a place. My memory of the London of my youth is the memory of endless vague wanderings, of a sun-dazzled window suddenly piercing the blue morning mist or of beautiful black wires with suspended raindrops running along them. I seem to pass with intangible steps across ghostly lawns and through dancing-halls full of the whine of Hawaiian music and down dear drab little streets with pretty names, until I come to a certain warm hollow where something very like the selfest of my own self sits huddled up in the darkness….'

It is a pity Mr Goodman had not the leisure to peruse this passage, though it is doubtful whether he would have grasped its inner meaning.

He was kind enough to send me a copy of his work. In the letter accompanying it he explained in heavily bantering tones, with what was epistolarily meant to be a good-natured wink, that if he had not mentioned the book in the course of our interview, it was because he wanted it to be a splendid surprise. His tone, his guffaws, his pompous wit – all this suggested an old gruff friend of the family turning up with a precious gift for the youngest. But Mr Goodman is not a very good actor. Not for a moment did he really think that I would be delighted either with the book he wrote or with the mere fact that he had gone out of his way to advertise the name of a member of my family. He knew all along that his book was rubbish, and he knew that neither its binding, nor its jacket, nor the blurb on the jacket, nor indeed any of the reviews and notices in the Press would deceive me. Why he had considered it wiser to keep me in the dark is not quite evident. Perhaps he thought I might wickedly sit down and dash off my own volume, just in time to have it collide with his.

But he not only sent me his book. He also produced the account he had promised me. This is not the place to discuss these matters. I have handed them over to my solicitor who has already acquainted me with his conclusions. Here I may only say that Sebastian's candour in practical affairs was taken advantage of in the coarsest fashion. Mr Goodman has never been a regular literary agent. He has only bet on books. He does not rightfully belong to that intelligent, honest and hard-working profession. We will leave it at that; but I have not yet done with The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight or rather – The Farce of Mr Goodman.

Two years had elapsed after my mother's death before I saw Sebastian again. One picture postcard was all I had had from him during that time, except the cheques he insisted on sending me. On a dull grey afternoon in November or December 1924, as I was walking up the Champs-Йlysйes towards the Йtoile I suddenly caught sight of Sebastian through the glass front of a popular cafй. I remember my first impulse was to continue on my way, so pained was I by the sudden revelation that having arrived in Paris he had not communicated with me. Then on second thought I entered. I saw the back of Sebastian's glossy dark head and the downcast bespectacled face of the girl sitting opposite him. She was reading a letter which, as I approached, she handed back to him with a faint smile and took off her horn-rimmed glasses.

'Isn't it rich?' asked Sebastian, and at the same moment I laid my hand on his thin shoulder.

'Oh, hullo, V,' he said, looking up. .'This is my brother, Miss Bishop. Sit down and make yourself comfortable.' She was pretty in a quiet sort of way with a pale faintly freckled complexion, slightly hollowed cheeks, blue-grey near-sighted eyes, a thin mouth. She wore a grey tailor-made with a blue scarf and a small three-cornered hat. I believe her hair was bobbed.

'I was just going to ring you up,' said Sebastian, not very truthfully I am afraid. 'You see I am only here for the day and going back to London tomorrow. What will you have?'

They were drinking coffee. Clare Bishop, her lashes beating, rummaged in her bag, found her handkerchief, and dabbed first one pink nostril and then the other. 'Cold getting worse,' she said and clicked her bag.

'Oh, splendidly,' said Sebastian, in reply to an obvious question. 'As a matter a fact I have just finished writing a novel, and the publisher I've chosen seems to like it, judging by his encouraging letter. He even seems to approve of the title Cock Robin Hits Back, though Clare doesn't.'

'I think it sounds silly,' said Clare, 'and besides, a bird can't hit.'

'It alludes to a well-known nursery-rhyme,' said Sebastian, for my benefit.

'A silly allusion,' said Clare; 'your first title was much better.'

I don't know…. The prism…. The prismatic edge' murmured Sebastian, 'that's not quite what I want…. Pity Cock Robin is so unpopular….'

'A title,' said Clare, 'must convey the colour of the book, not its subject.'