In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) lombernyi stol (a card table) is mentioned:
На время он нашёл мнимое успокоение в складных картинах. Это были сперва простые, детские, состоявшие из больших кусков, вырезанных по краю круглыми зубцами, как бисквиты петибер, и сцеплявшихся так крепко, что, сложив картину, можно было поднимать, не ломая, целые части её. Но в тот год английская мода изобрела складные картины для взрослых,-- "пузеля", как называли их у Пето,-- вырезанные крайне прихотливо: кусочки всех очертаний, от простого кружка (часть будущего голубого неба) до самых затейливых форм, богатых углами, мысками, перешейками, хитрыми выступами, по которым никак нельзя было разобрать, куда они приладятся,-- пополнят ли они пегую шкуру коровы, уже почти доделанной, является ли этот тёмный край на зелёном фоне тенью от посоха пастуха, чьё ухо и часть темени ясно видны на более откровенном кусочке. И когда постепенно появлялся слева круп коровы, а справа, на зелени, рука с дудкой, и повыше небесной синевой ровно застраивалась пустота, и голубой кружок ладно входил в небосвод,-- Лужин чувствовал удивительное волнение от точных сочетаний этих пёстрых кусков, образующих в последний миг отчётливую картину. Были головоломки очень дорогие, состоявшие из нескольких тысяч частей; их приносила тётя, весёлая, нежная, рыжеволосая тётя,-- и он часами склонялся над ломберным столом в зале, проверяя глазами каждый зубчик раньше, чем попробовать, подходит ли он к выемке, и стараясь, по едва заметным приметам, определить заранее сущность картины. Из соседней комнаты, где шумели гости, тетя просила: "Ради Бога, не потеряй ничего!” Иногда входил отец, смотрел на кусочки, протягивал руку к столу, говорил: "Вот это, несомненно, должно сюда лечь", и тогда Лужин, не оборачиваясь, бормотал: "Глупости, глупости, не мешайте",- и отец, осторожно прикоснувшись губами к его хохолку, уходил,- мимо позолоченных стульев, мимо обширного зеркала, мимо копии с купающейся Фрины, мимо рояля, большого безмолвного рояля, подкованного толстым стеклом и покрытого парчовой попоной.
For a while he found an illusory relief in jigsaw puzzles. At first they were simple childish ones, consisting of large pieces cut out with rounded teeth at the edges, like petit-beurre cookies, which interlocked so tenaciously that it was possible to lift whole sections of the puzzle without breaking them. But that year there came from England the fad of jigsaw puzzles invented for adults — 'poozels' as they called them at the best toyshop in Petersburg — which were cut out with extraordinary ingenuity: pieces of all shapes, from a simple disk (part of a future blue sky) to the most intricate forms, rich in corners, capes, isthmuses, cunning projections, which did not allow you to tell where they were supposed to fit — whether they were to fill up the piebald hide of a cow, already almost completed, or whether this dark border on a green background was the shadow of the crook of a shepherd whose ear and part of whose head were plainly visible on a more outspoken piece. And when a cow's haunch gradually appeared on the left, and on the right, against some foliage, a hand with a shepherd's pipe, and when the empty space above became built up with heavenly blue, and the blue disk fitted smoothly into the sky Luzhin felt wonderfully stirred by the precise combinations of these vari-colored pieces that formed at the last moment an intelligible picture. Some of these brain-twisters were very expensive and consisted of several thousand pieces; they were brought by his young aunt, a gay, tender, red-haired aunt — and he would spend hours bent over a card table in the drawing room, measuring with his eyes each projection before trying if it would fit into this or that gap and attempting to determine by scarcely perceptible signs the essence of the picture in advance. From the next room, full of the noise of guests, his aunt would plead: 'For goodness' sake, don't lose any of the pieces!' Sometimes his father would come in, look at the puzzle and stretch out a hand tableward, saying: 'Look, this undoubtedly goes in here,' and then Luzhin without looking round would mutter: 'Rubbish, rubbish, don't interfere,' and his father would cautiously apply his lips to the tufted top of his son's head and depart — past the gilded chairs, past the vast mirror, past the reproduction of Phryne Taking Her Bath, past the piano — a large silent piano shod with thick glass and caparisoned with a brocaded cloth. (Chapter Two)
Lombernyi comes from l’hombre (a card game). In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) quotes a line from Shade’s draft that mentions Ombre:
John Shade and Sybil Swallow (see note to line 247) were married in 1919, exactly three decades before King Charles wed Disa, Duchess of Payn. Since the very beginning of his reign (1936-1958) representatives of the nation, salmon fishermen, non-union glaziers, military groups, worried relatives, and especially the Bishop of Yeslove, a sanguineous and saintly old man, had been doing their utmost to persuade him to give up his copious but sterile pleasures and take a wife. It was a matter not of morality but of succession. As in the case of some of his predecessors, rough alderkings who burned for boys, the clergy blandly ignored our young bachelor's pagan habits, but wanted him to do what an earlier and even more reluctant Charles had done: take a night off and lawfully engender an heir.
He saw nineteen-year-old Disa for the first time on the festive night of July the 5th, 1947, at a masked ball in his uncle's palace. She had come in male dress, as a Tirolese boy, a little knock-kneed but brave and lovely, and afterwards he drove her and her cousins (two guardsmen disguised as flowergirls) in his divine new convertible through the streets to see the tremendous birthday illumination, and the fackeltanz in the park, and the fireworks, and the pale upturned faces. He procrastinated for almost two years but was set upon by inhumanly eloquent advisors, and finally gave in. On the eve of his wedding he prayed most of the night locked up all alone in the cold vastness of the Onhava cathedral. Smug alderkings looked at him from the ruby-and-amethyst windows. Never had he so fervently asked God for guidance and strength (see further my note to lines 433-434).
After line 274 there is a false start in the draft:
I like my name: Shade, Ombre, almost "man"
In Spanish...
One regrets that the poet did not pursue this theme--and spare his reader the embarrassing intimacies that follow. (note to Line 275)
In VN's novel Podvig ("Glory," 1932) the name of Martin's mother and of the girl with whom Martin Edelweiss is in love is Sofia. Just as Sofia Botkin (born Lastochkin) seems to be the real name of both Sybil Shade (the poet’s wife) and Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved), Vsevolod Botkin is the real name of Shade, Kinbote and Gradus (the poet's murderer, son of Martin Gradus).