The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

by Vladimir Nabokov

  It would be unfair of me if I let it seem that this first chapter of The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight consists exclusively of a thick flow of philosophical treacle. Word-pictures and anecdotes which form the body of the book (that is, when Mr Goodman arrives at the stage of Sebastian's life when he met him personally) appear here too, as rock cakes dotting the syrup. Mr Goodman was no Boswell; still, no doubt, he kept a notebook where he jotted down certain remarks of his employer – and apparently some of these related to his employer's past. In other words, we must imagine that Sebastian in between work would say: Do you know, my dear Goodman, this reminds me of a day in my life, some years ago, when… Here would come the story. Half a dozen of these seem to Mr Goodman sufficient to fill out what is to him a blank – Sebastian's youth in England.

  The first of these stories (which Mr Goodman considers to be extremely typical of 'post-war undergraduate life} depicts Sebastian showing a girl friend from London the sights of Cambridge. 'And this is the Dean's window,' he said; then smashing the pane with a stone, he added: 'And this is the Dean.' Needless to say that Sebastian has been pulling Mr Goodman's leg: the story is as old as the University itself.

  Let us look at the second one. During a short vacation trip to Germany (1921? 1922?) Sebastian, one night, being annoyed by the caterwauls in the street, started to pelt the offenders with miscellaneous objects including an egg. Presently, a policeman knocked at his door, bringing back all these objects minus the egg.

  This is from an old (or, as Mr Goodman would say, pre-war') Jerome K. Jerome book. Leg-pulling again.

  Third story: Sebastian speaking of his very first novel (unpublished and destroyed) explained that it was about a fat young student who travels home to find his mother married to his uncle; this uncle, an ear-specialist, had murdered the student's father.

  Mr Goodman misses the joke.

  Fourth: Sebastian in the summer of 1922 had overworked himself and, suffering from hallucinations, used to see a kind of optical ghost – a black-robed monk moving swiftly towards him from the sky.

  This is a little harder: a short story by Chekhov.

  Fifth:

  But I think we had better stop, or else Mr Goodman might be in danger of becoming a centipede. Let us have him remain quadrupedal. I am sorry for him, but it cannot be helped. And if only he had not padded and commented these 'curious incidents and fancies' so ponderously, with such a rich crop of deductions! Churlish, capricious, mad Sebastian, struggling in a naughty world of Juggernauts, and aeronauts, and naughts, and what-nots…. Well, well, there may be something in all that.

  I want to be scientifically precise. I should hate being baulked of the tiniest particle of truth only because at a certain point of my search I was blindly enraged by a trashy concoction…. Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight? His former secretary. Were they ever friends? No – as we shall see later. Is there anything real or possible in the contrast between a frail eager Sebastian and a wicked tired world? Not a thing. Was there perhaps some oilier kind of chasm, breach, fissure? There was.

  It is enough to turn to the first thirty pages or so of Lost Property to see how blandly Mr Goodman (who incidentally never quotes anything that may clash with the main idea of his fallacious work) misunderstands Sebastian's inner attitude in regard to the outer world. Time for Sebastian was never 1914 or 1920 or 1936 – it was always year 1. Newspaper headlines, political theories, fashionable ideas meant to him no more than the loquacious printed notice (in three languages, with mistakes in at least two) on the wrapper of some soap or toothpaste. The lather might be thick and the notice convincing – but that was an end of it. He could perfectly well understand sensitive and intelligent thinkers not being able to sleep because of an earthquake in China; but being what he was, he could not understand why these same people did not feel exactly the same spasm of rebellious grief when thinking of some similar calamity that had happened as many years ago as there were miles to China. Time and space were to him measures of the same eternity, so that the very idea of his reacting in any special 'modem' way to what Mr Goodman calls 'the atmosphere of post-war Europe' is utterly preposterous. He was intermittently happy and uncomfortable in the world into which he came, just as a traveller may be exhilarated by visions of his voyage and be almost simultaneously sea-sick. Whatever age Sebastian might have been born in, he would have been equally amused and unhappy, joyful and apprehensive, as a child at a pantomine now and then thinking of tomorrow's dentist. And the reason of his discomfort was not that he was moral in an immoral age, or immoral in a moral one, neither was it the cramped feeling of his youth not blowing naturally enough in a world which was too rapid a succession of funerals and fireworks; it was simply his becoming aware that the rhythm of his inner being was so much richer than that of other souls. Even then, just at the close of his Cambridge period, and perhaps earlier too, he knew that his slightest thought or sensation had always at least one more dimension than those of his neighbours. He might have boasted of this had there been anything lurid in his nature. As there was not, it only remained for him to feel the awkwardness of being a crystal among glass, a sphere among circles (but all this was nothing when compared to what he experienced as he finally settled down to his literary task).

  '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.

  8

  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.'

  It was the first time and also the last that I ever heard Sebastian discuss literary matters in my presence. Rarely, too, had I seen him in such a light-hearted mood. He appeared well groomed and fit. His finely-shaped white face with that slight shading on the cheeks – he was one of those unfortunate men who have to shave twice a day when dining out – did not show a trace of that dull unhealthy tinge it so often had. His rather large slightly pointed ears were aflame as they were when he was pleasurably excited. I, for my part, was tongue-tied and stiff. Somehow, I felt that I had barged in.

  'Shall we go to a cinema or something,' asked Sebastian diving into his waistcoat pocket, with two fingers.

  'Just as you like,' said Clare.

  'Gah-song,' said Sebastian. I had noticed before that he tried to pronounce French as a real healthy Britisher would.

  For some time we searched under the table and under the plush seats for one of Clare's gloves. She used a nice cool perfume. At last I retrieved it, a grey suйde glove with a white lining and a fringed gauntlet. She put them on leisurely as we pushed through the revolving door. Rather tall, very straight-backed, good ankles, flat-heeled shoes.

  'Look here,' I said, 'I don't think I can go with you to the pictures. I'm dreadfully sorry, but I have got some things to attend to. Perhaps…. But when exactly are you leaving?'

  'Oh, tonight,' replied Sebastian, 'but I'll soon be over again…. Stupid of me not to have let you know earlier. At any rate we can walk with you a little way….'

  'Do you know Paris well?' I asked of Clare….

  'My parcel,' she said stopping short.

  'Oh, all right, I'll fetch it,' said Sebastian and went back to the cafй.

  We two proceeded very slowly up the wide sidewalk. I lamely repeated my question.

  'Yes, fairly,' she said. 'I've got friends here – I'm staying with them until Christmas.'

  'Sebastian looks remarkably well,' I said.

  'Yes, I suppose he does,' said Clare looking over her shoulder and then blinking at me. 'When I first met him he C looked a doomed man.'

  'When was that?' I probably asked, for now I remember her answer: 'This spring in London at a dreadful party, but then he always looks doomed at parties.'

  'Here are your bongs-bongs,' said Sebastian's voice behind us. I told them I was going to the Йtoile underground station and we skirted the place from the left. As we were about to cross the Avenue Klйber, Clare nearly got knocked down by a bicycle.

  'You little fool,' said Sebastian, gripping her by elbow.

  'Far too many pigeons,' she said, as we reached the kerb.

  'Yes, and they smell,' added Sebastian.

  'What kind of smell? My nose is stuffed up,' she asked sniffing and peering at the dense crowd of fat birds strutting about our feet.

  'Iris and rubber,' said Sebastian.

  The groan of a motor-lorry in the act of avoiding a furniture van sent the birds wheeling across the sky. They settled among the pearl-grey and black frieze of the Arc de Triomphe and when some of them fluttered off again it seemed as if bits of the carved entablature were turned into flaky life. A few years later I found that picture, 'that stone melting into wing', in Sebastian's third book.

  We crossed more avenues and then came to the white banisters of the underground station. Here we parted, quite cheerfully…. I remember Sebastian's receding raincoat and Clare's blue
-grey figure. She took his arm and altered her step to fall in with his swinging stride.

  Now, I learnt from Miss Pratt a number of things which made me wish to learn a good deal more. Her object in applying to me was to find out whether any of Clare Bishop's letters to Sebastian had remained among his things. She stressed the point that it was not Clare Bishop's commission; that in fact Clare Bishop knew nothing of our interview. She had been married now for three or four years and was much too proud to speak of the past. Miss Pratt had seen her a week or so after Sebastian's death had got into the papers, but although the two women were very old friends (that is, knew more about each other than each of them thought the other knew) Clare did not dwell upon the event.

  'I hope he was not too unhappy,' she said quietly and then added, 'I wonder if he kept my letters?'

  The way she said this, the narrowing of her eyes, the quick sigh she gave before changing the subject, convinced her friend that it would be a great relief for her to know the letters had been destroyed. I asked Miss Pratt whether I could get in touch with Clare; whether Clare might be coaxed into talking to me about Sebastian. Miss Pratt answered that knowing Clare she would not even dare to transmit my request. 'Hopeless,' was what she said. For a moment I was basely tempted to hint that I had the letters in my keeping and would hand them over to Clare provided she granted me a personal interview, so passionate was my longing to meet her, just to see and to watch the shadow of the name I would mention flit across her face. But no – I could not blackmail Sebastian's past. That was out of the question.