Vladimir Nabokov: from Lance / dead carp don't talk

     Terrestrial space loves concealment. The most it yields to
the eye is a  panoramic  view.  The  horizon  closes upon  the
receding  traveler  like  a trap door in slow motion. For those
who remain, any town a day's journey from  here  is invisible,
whereas  you  can  easily  see  such transcendencies as, say, a
lunar amphitheater and the shadow cast by its  circular  ridge.
The  conjuror  who  displays  the  firmament  has rolled up his
sleeves and performs in full view  of  the  little  spectators.
Planets  may  dip out of sight (just as objects are obliterated
by the blurry curve of one's own cheekbone); but they are back
when  the  earth  turns its head. The nakedness of the night is
appalling. Lance has left; the fragility  of  his  young  limbs
grows  in  direct  ratio  to the distance he covers. From their
balcony, the old Bokes look at the  infinitely  perilous  night
sky and wildly envy the lot of fishermen's wives.
     If  Boke's  sources  are  accurate, the name "Lanceloz del
Lac"  occurs  for  the  first  time  in  Verse  3676   of   the
twelfth-century  Roman de la Charrette. Lance, Lancelin,
Lancelotik -- diminutives murmured at the brimming, salty, moist
stars. Young knights in their teens learning to harp, hawk, and
hunt; the Forest Dangerous and the Dolorous  Tower;  Aldebaran,
Betelgeuse -- the  thunder  of  Saracenic  war cries. Marvelous
deeds of arms, marvelous warriors, sparkling within the  awfill
constellations  above the Bokes' balcony: Sir Percard the Black
Knight, and Sir Perimones the Red Knight, and Sir Pertolepe the
Green Knight, and Sir Persant the Indigo Knight, and that bluff
old party Sir Grummore Grummurslim,  muttering  northern oaths
under  his  breath. The field glass is not much good, the chart
is all crumpled and damp, and: "You do not hold the  flashlight
properly" -- this to Mrs. Boke.
     Draw a deep breath. Look again.
     Lancelot  is gone; the hope of seeing him in life is about
equal to the hope  of  seeing  him  in  eternity.  Lancelot  is
banished  from the country of L'Eau Grise (as we might call the
Great Lakes) and now rides up in the  dust  of  the  night  sky
almost  as  far as our local universe (with the balcony and the
pitch-black,  optically  spotted  garden)  speeds  toward  King
Arthur's  Harp,  where  Vega burns and beckons -- one of the few
objects that can be  identified  by  the  aid  of  this  goddam
diagram.  The  sidereal  haze  makes  the  Bokes  dizzy -- gray
incense, insanity,  infinity-sickness.  But  they  cannot  tear
themselves  away from the nightmare of space, cannot go back to
the lighted bedroom, a corner of which shows in the glass door.
And presently the planet rises, like a tiny bonfire.

Paradise Lost [Arnhem]: photo by Robert van der Kroft, 27 March 2015

Paradise Lost [Arnhem]: photo by Robert van der Kroft, 27 March 2015

Paradise Lost [Arnhem]: photo by Robert van der Kroft, 27 March 2015

    There, to the right, is the Bridge of the Sword leading to
the Otherworld  ("dont  nus  estranges   ne   retorne").
Lancelot  crawls  over  it in great pain, in ineffable anguish.
"Thou shalt not pass a pass that is called the Pass  Perilous."
But  another  enchanter  commands:  "You  shall. You shall even
acquire a sense of humor that will tide  you  over  the  trying
spots."  The  brave  old Bokes think they can distinguish Lance
scaling, on crampons, the verglased rock of the sky or silently
breaking trail through  the  soft  snows  of  nebulae.  Bootes,
somewhere  between Camp X and XI, is a great glacier all rubble
and icefall. We try to make out the serpentine route of ascent;
seem to distinguish the  light  leanness  of  Lance  among  the
several  roped  silhouettes.  Gone! Was it he or Denny (a young
biologist. Lance's best friend)? Waiting in the dark valley  at
the foot of the vertical sky, we recall (Mrs. Boke more clearly
than  her husband) those special names for crevasses and Gothic
structures  of  ice  that  Lance  used  to  mouth   with   such
professional  gusto  in  his  alpine  boyhood  (he  is  several
light-years  older  by  now);   the   sиracs   and   the
schrunds,  the avalanche and its thud; French echoes and
Germanic magic hobnailnobbing up there as they do  in  medieval
romances.
     Ah,  there  he  is again! Crossing through a notch between
two stars; then, very slowly, attempting a traverse on a  cliff
face  so  sheer,  and  with  such  delicate holds that the mere
evocation of those groping fingertips and scraping boots  fills
one with acrophobic nausea. And through streaming tears the old
Bokes  see  Lance  now  marooned  on  a  shelf of stone and now
climbing again and now, dreadfully safe, with his ice  axe  and
pack,  on  a  peak  above  peaks, his eager profile rimmed with
light.
     Or is he already on his way down? I assume  that  no  news
comes  from  the  explorers  and  that  the Bokes prolong their
pathetic vigils. As they wait for  their  son  to  return,  his
every  avenue  of  descent  seems  to run into the precipice of
their despair. But perhaps he has swung over those  high-angled
wet  slabs  that  fall  away  vertically  into  the  abyss, has
mastered the overhang, and is now  blissfully  glissading  down
steep celestial snows?
     As,  however,  the  Bokes'  doorbell  does not ring at the
logical culmination of an  imagined  series  of  footfalls  (no
matter  how  patiently  we  space  them as they come nearer and
nearer in our mind), we have to thrust him back  and  have  him
start  his ascent all over again, and then put him even farther
back, so that he is still at headquarters (where the tents are,
and the open latrines, and the begging, black-footed  children)
long  after we had pictured him bending under the tulip tree to
walk up the lawn to the door and the doorbell. As if  tired  by
the  many  appearances he has made in his parents' minds, Lance
now plows wearily through mud puddles, then up a  hillside,  in
the haggard landscape of a distant war, slipping and scrambling
up the dead grass of the slope. There is some routine rock work
ahead,  and  then  the summit. The ridge is won. Our losses are
heavy. How is one notified? By wire? By registered letter?  And
who  is  the  executioner -- a special messenger or the regular
plodding, florid-nosed postman, always a little  high  (he  has
troubles  of  his own)? Sign here. Big thumb. Small cross. Weak
pencil.  Its  dull-violet  wood.  Return  it.   The   illegible
signature of teetering disaster.
     But  nothing comes. A month passes. Chin and Chilla are in
fine shape and seem very fond of each other -- sleep together in
the nest box, cuddled up in a fluffy ball.  After  many  tries,
Lance  had discovered a sound with definite chinchillan appeal,
produced by pursing the lips and emitting in  rapid  succession
several  soft,  moist  surpths, as if taking sips from a
straw when most of one's drink is finished and only  its  dregs
are  drained.  But his parents cannot produce it -- the pitch is
wrong or something. And there is such an intolerable silence in
Lance's room, with its battered books,  and  the  spotty  white
shelves,  and  the  old  shoes,  and  the relatively new tennis
racquet in its preposterously secure press, and a penny on  the
closet  floor -- and  all  this  begins  to undergo a prismatic
dissolution, but then you tighten the screw and  everything  is
again  in  focus.  And  presently  the  Bokes  return  to their
balcony. Has he reached his goal -- and if so, does he see us?

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977): from Lance (1952), in Nabokov's Dozen (1958)

Seaside Resort Impressions 49/63 [Yalta, Crimea]: photo by Pierre Gély-Fort, 24 August 2016

Seaside Resort Impressions 49/63 [Yalta, Crimea]: photo by Pierre Gély-Fort, 24 August 2016

Seaside Resort Impressions 49/63 [Yalta, Crimea]: photo by Pierre Gély-Fort, 24 August 2016