realized that it was simply a present from the Virgin Mary, whose hair floated through the air like autumn spider-webs. The silk his wife sold off piecemeal in the nearby town, the little gilded gondola became a crib for their tightly swaddled firstborn, and the chicken was dispatched to the backyard.
Listen on.
Some time elapsed, and then one fine day, as he passed a hillock of chaff at the barn gate, the peasant heard a happy clucking. He stooped. The hen popped out of the green dust and hawked at the sun as she waddled rapidly and not without some pride. While, amid the chaff, hot and sleek, glowed four golden eggs. And no wonder. At the wind’s mercy, the hen had traversed the entire flush of the sunset, and the sun, a fiery cock with a crimson crest, had done some fluttering over her.
I don’t know if the peasant understood. For a long time he stood motionless, blinking and squinting from the brilliance and holding in his palms the still warm, whole, golden eggs. Then, his sabots rattling, he rushed across the yard with such a howl that his hired hand thought he must have lopped off a finger with his axe. . . .
Of course all this happened a long, long time ago, long before the aviator Latham, having crashed in mid-Channel, sat, if you will, on the dragonfly tail of his submerging Antoinette, smoking a yellowed cigarette in the wind, and watching as, high in the sky, in his little stubby-winged machine, his rival Bleriot flew for the first time from Calais to England’s sugary shores.
But I cannot overcome your anguish. Why have your eyes again filled with darkness? No, don’t say anything. I know everything. You mustn’t cry. He can hear my fable, there’s no doubt at all he can hear it. It is to him that it’s addressed. Words have no borders. Try to understand! You look at me so balefully and darkly. I recollect the night after the funeral. You were unable to stay home. You and I went out into the glossy slush. Lost our way. Ended up in some strange, narrow street. I did not make out its name, but could see it was inverted, mir-rorlike, in the glass of a streetlamp. The lamps were floating off into the distance. Water dripped from the roofs. The buckets lining both sides of the street, along black walls, were filling with cold mercury. Filling and overflowing. And suddenly, helplessly spreading your hands, you spoke:
«But he was so little, and so warm. …»
Forgive me if I am incapable of weeping, of simple human weeping, but instead keep singing and running somewhere, clutching at whatever wings fly past, tall, disheveled, with a wave of suntan on my forehead. Forgive me. That’s how it must be.
We walk slowly along the fences. The cemetery is already near. There it is, an islet of vernal white and green amid some dusty vacant land. Now you go on alone. I’ll wait for you here. Your eyes gave a quick, embarrassed smile. You know me well. . . . The wicket-gate squeaked, then banged shut. I sit alone on the sparse grass. A short way off there is a vegetable garden with some purple cabbage. Beyond the vacant lot, factory buildings, buoyant brick behemoths, float in the azure mist. At my feet, a squashed tin glints rustily inside a funnel of sand. Around me, silence and a kind of spring emptiness. There is no death. The wind comes tumbling upon me from behind like a limp doll and tickles my neck with its downy paw. There can be no death.
My heart, too, has soared through the dawn. You and I shall have a new, golden son, a creation of your tears and my fables. Today I understood the beauty of intersecting wires in the sky, and the hazy mosaic of factory chimneys, and this rusty tin with its inside-out, semidetached, serrated lid. The wan grass hurries, hurries somewhere along the dusty billows of the vacant lot. I raise my arms. The sunlight glides across my skin. My skin is covered with multicolored sparkles.
And I want to rise up, throw my arms open for a vast embrace, address an ample, luminous discourse to the invisible crowds. I would start like this:
«O rainbow-colored gods …»
[1] Жак Александр Сезар Шарль (12.11.1746 — 07.04.1823) — французский физик, член Парижской АН (1803), в 1816 году — президент. Родился в Божансе. Учился самостоятельно. Профессор экспериментальной физики в Консерватории искусств и ремесел в Париже.
Исследовал расширение газов, установил (1787) закон изменения давления данной массы идеального газа с изменением температуры при постоянном объеме (закон Шарля). Сразу же после братьев Монгольфье построил воздушный шар из прорезиненной ткани и первый использовал для его заполнения водород.
Осуществил полет на этом шаре в 1783 году. Изобрел ряд приборов. Шарль первый предпринял попытку получения фотографических изображений.
??1924 — 150 = 1774 г. (9 лет спишем на приблизительность), но «пожилой физик» — слегка перебор — в 1783г Шарлю было — 37 лет.???
[2] 19 июня 1909 года Латам взлетает недалеко от города Кале и берет курс к английскому берегу. Впереди него через пролив на всех парах мчится миноносец, призванный сопровождать аэроплан для подстраховки. Самолет быстро настигает его, но вдруг безотказный ранее мотор начинает капризничать и останавливается. Латам планирует и приводняется на волны Ла-Манша. Самолет тут же переворачивается на спину, но благодаря деревянной конструкции держится на плаву. Неудачника-пилота и его аппарат вылавливает подоспевший миноносец.
«Антуанетта» — легкий моноплан, похожий чем-то на стрекозу, — был, однако, очень сложным в пилотировании.
Неудачные попытки демонстрации полетов невезучего Губерта Латама упоминаются так же и в «Защите Лужина».
[3] behemoth — «огромное животное, описанное в Библии (возможно, бегемот)»; см. Книгу Иова, гл. 40, ст. 10-19) Читать полностью! Стоическая последовательность и верность ветхозаветного Иова дополнена Набоковским любовно-эстетическим приятием Божьего мира.
