Pale Fire

A line in the poem makes Kinbote think about Shade’s unathletic life. Quickly, however, he returns to the story of King Charles’s escape from Zembla; he claims that Shade would beg him to tell the story of how Charles evaded the extremists. After the early months of the Zemblan Revolution, the royalists began to lose power because a foreign country was sending money to the rebels. King Charles refused to give up his throne, so he was placed under house arrest. Odon was an actor and a friend of the king. When Odon was accused of trying to send messages to the king using a mirror, Charles was sent into a dark room in the palace. Unbeknownst to the rebels, however, Charles knew the room well. As a child, he had discovered a secret passage in it. Duke Oleg of Rahl and Charles had once ventured down the passageway, though they had never reached the end. Charles conveyed a secret message to Odon, telling him about the secret passage. Soviet professionals helped the rebels loot the palace, taking apart a painting by Eystein, the Zemblan court painter. Charles waited until night to enter the secret passage, emerging in the dressing room of the Royal Theater. He met Odon, who dressed him in cloaks and snuck him out into a waiting car.

When news of Charles’s escape spread, Odon and Charles had to navigate the tightened security at a roadblock. They went to the mountains, where they parted ways. Odon decided to act as a diversion, allowing Charles to escape. That night, Charles stayed with a family of peasants, and the following day, he came down from the mountains in his red cap. A policeman assumed that Charles was just another imposter, as many people were dressed in the red caps. Charles pretended to be a tourist from Britain, and when he gave up his red hat and sweater to the police officer, he was allowed to go. He reunited with Odon at the coast, and they headed to the Rippleson Caves together.

While paying passing attention to the poem, Kinbote continues to narrate King Charles’s story. For “almost a whole year” after the king’s escape (121), the rebels believed that he was hiding in Zembla. Only when news reached Zembla that Odon was directing a movie in Paris did they realize that if Odon was able to escape, then King Charles must also have escaped. A dedicated group of rebels named the Shadows promised to track down King Charles and kill him. Among the Shadows’ members were Nodo, Odon’s half-brother who had epilepsy and cheated at cards, and Jakob Gradus.

Kinbote hypothesizes that the Shadows selected Gradus as the assassin on July 2, right at the time when Shade was writing the first lines of “Pale Fire.” According to Kinbote, Gradus was a “clockwork man” (124). After bouncing from job to job, Gradus never distinguished himself in any way. Even as a potential regicide, Kinbote does not find Gradus to be particularly impressive and would be better suited to being an assassin’s assistant and “should not kill kings” (125).

Shade began work on Canto 2 on July 5. Various colleagues called on him that night, and again, Kinbote watched them through the window of his house. Simultaneously, Gradus arrived in Copenhagen. Kinbote, during this time, was struggling because a young friend of his had lost his driving license. The night before, Kinbote drove the young man to a party, where the friend slipped away and Kinbote was left surrounded by dull strangers. The following day, he found two strangers had had sex in his car, and he drove home alone. The car broke down, and he did not return home until six o’clock, at which time he remembered that it was Shade’s birthday.

Shade’s birthday is July 5, and Kinbote uses the poem’s reference to this day to describe Shade’s birthday party. Though several people were invited, Kinbote did not receive an invitation, even though he bought a gift for his neighbor. He suspected that he missed the phone call inviting him, so he called the Shades on the night of the party. Sybil was short on the telephone, telling Kinbote that she and her husband were busy. Kinbote watched through his window as the guests arrived at the house. Kinbote waited until the following day to deliver his gift. Sybil awkwardly told Kinbote that they chose not to invite him because they believed he found such events “tedious” (131). Kinbote handed her the gifts: a dressing gown and a copy of Bibliotheque de la Pleiade by Marcel Proust with certain passages underlined (in which one of the characters apologizes for failing to invite another character to a party). Kinbote counts the interaction as a victory for himself over Sybil.

Kinbote cites Shade’s views on several issues. He talks about interdepartmental rivalries at the university, including Professor Pnin, the head of the Russian Department, whom Kinbote says is an example of the humorlessness of Russian intellectuals, especially in contrast to the humor of Russian writers.

As Gradus traveled from Copenhagen to Paris, Kinbote learned about Hazel from Jane Provost, Shade’s secretary, since Shade did not like to talk about his dead daughter. Kinbote feels a responsibility to share some of this information, even if he believes that Shade revealed too much about his daughter instead of “richer and rarer matters” (133). Shortly after the death of Aunt Maud, Hazel demonstrated telekinetic powers. She moved paintings and a dog basket, both of which belonged to Maud, and then moved on to other household objects. Kinbote suspects that, to Shade, these incidents mirrored his childhood seizures. Shade and Sybil suspected that Hazel was moving the objects, though she never claimed responsibility. The parents talked to Dr. Sutton, an old-fashioned doctor, and the occurrences stopped when they talked out loud about moving.

Kinbote references a cut passage from an earlier draft, speculating about which writer’s name might fit the meter of the unfinished line. Perhaps, he wondered, he did not want to include a friend’s name among the list of writers who had mental health conditions. On their evening walks, Shade would often talk to Kinbote about the natural world, though Kinbote preferred talking about philosophy or literature. Kinbote quizzed Shade about how Zembla was being depicted in “Pale Fire,” but Shade batted away his questions.

In the poem, Shade refers to his wife’s footsteps reassuring him in the wake of their daughter’s death. Kinbote notes that the relationship between Shade and Sybil was not quite so serene. Kinbote does not like Sybil, though he claims to have made an effort to befriend her. He forgives her for referring to him in an insulting manner, such as when she referred to him as a “monstrous parasite of a genius” (138). A reference in the poem to a “dark Vanessa” reminds Kinbote of a conversation with Shade about Vanessa butterflies, as well as the Payn family coat of arms in Zembla. Kinbote claims that just before his death, Shade pointed at a Vanessa butterfly.

Shade married Sybil, and King Charles married Disa, the Duchess of Payn. However, King Charles was a gay man. The public was happy enough to ignore his relationships with men, but he married Disa due to public pressure on him to produce an heir. They met at a masked ball, where Disa was in “male dress.” A few years later, they married.

Kinbote claims that Gradus flew to Paris the day that Shade wrote Line 286. Gradus sought out Oswin Bretwit, a former consul in Zembla, to learn King Charles’s location. Gradus claimed to be returning a number of Bretwit’s old documents. Bretwit, hoping that the documents might contain his missing stamp collection, welcomed Gradus. Though the papers contained nothing interesting, Bretwit offered to compensate Gradus, who asked only to be put in contact with the exiled king. When Gradus failed to make the secret royalist hand gesture for “X,” however, Bretwit told him to leave.

On July 7, Shade and Sybil were buying luggage. Kinbote saw them and, concerned that they were planning on a vacation, ran over to them. Sybil tried to hurry her husband away, but Kinbote later learned through a doctor whom he shared with Shade that the couple were heading to a cabin in Cedarn, Utana. Kinbote quickly located the destination and booked himself a cabin next door. Still livid with Sybil, he kept it a secret and looked forward to Shade’s expression when they saw him in Cedarn.

Kinbote cannot summarize every reference in the poem. For some, he can only guess at their meanings. A reference to the “Old Barn” (148), Kinbote says, refers to a nearby shed where strange things happened in the months leading up to Hazel’s death. A German farmer named Paul Hentzner owned the shed. Kinbote was impressed by the man’s knowledge of nature, and Shade admired his down-to-earth personality in contrast to the academics at his university. After Hentzner lost his property in a divorce settlement, he would occasionally sleep in the barn. Later, he died, and when two youngsters visited the barn, they heard strange sounds and saw strange lights. They ran away, frightened, and their experience was written up in the local newspaper. Shade’s complaints to the authorities led to the shed being torn down.

Jane Provost told Kinbote that she and Hazel visited the shed for a school paper and stayed for a night, though a storm hindered their research. When Hazel returned alone, she noted strange sounds and lights. When she asked questions, a circle of light would move unpredictably across the floor. Through her research, Hazel concluded that the apparent ghost had “apoplexy” (151). Kinbote has tried, in a similar way, to make sense of passages in Shade’s poem.

During the night, Hazel became frightened and ran home. There, she saw a figure on the porch and shouted, though the figure was her father, up late waiting for his daughter. Hazel returned to the barn with her parents, where, Kinbote believes, she became frustrated with her parents’ skepticism. He tries to imagine this scene and presents it in the form of a play.