NPPF Comm3: C130 Summary

[Jasper Fidget]

"Line 130: I never bounced a ball or swung a bat" (pp 117-135)
Summary

The setting is the Royal Palace in Onhava where King Charles is kept
confined by insurgent forces.  It is a time of transition (another border
zone), the early months of the rebellion, and the Royalists and Modems
(Moderate Democrats) are losing control of the country thanks to "the
tainted gold and robot troops that a powerful police state from its vantage
ground a few sea miles away was pouring into the Zemblan Revolution" (p
119).  Soon Zembla will become "a commonplace modern tyranny" (p 119). 
  
After being accused of sending signals from his high tower with a hand
mirror, Charles is moved to "a dismal lumber room" that contains a closet
which connects to a secret passage, although Charles does not immediately
remember it (it's been three decades since he discovered it).  This had been
the dressing room of his grandfather "Thurgus the Third" who had been
carrying on an affair with an actress named Iris Acht, whose sun-faded
portrait still hung on one wall "above a whitewashed closet door"; it is "a
large photograph in a frame of black velvet" (121).  Iris, who died in 1888
(the number of yards between Thurgus' closet and her dressing room it turns
out -- see 127), is shown revealing her bare shoulders.

On p. 123 Kinbote's pacing accelerates as he warms up, at one moment
yawning, then losing sight of the card players due to his "prism of tears",
then casting a "bored glance".  "A cricket cricked" (123).  Then he sees the
"gilt key in the lock of the closet door" (123) which causes a "spark of
conflagration to spread in the prisoner's mind."  It's the key to the secret
passage he and Oleg discovered thirty years ago.

That was in May of 1928 when Charles was thirteen and had Oleg, Duke of
Rahl, for a playmate ("sleeveless jerseys, white anklesocks with black
buckle shoes, and very tight, very short shorts" (123) should convey the
idea), "a regular faunlet" (123) with whom Charles had shared a bed for the
first time a fortnight ago.  Young Charles rummages through the lumber room
closet in search of "an elaborate toy circus" (which will be the palace
itself in the future -- see p. 208) and stumbles upon the secret passage.
Charles gets flashlights and a pedometer as Oleg arrives.  Oleg carries a
tulip.  Hahahahhahahahah.  Ahem.  Together they follow the secret passage as
it winds about the palace grounds, "[adapting] itself to the various
structures which it followed" (126) until the pedometer tocks off 1,888
yards at a green door which the closet key also fits.  The boys are scared
by the "two terrible voices" (127) of a man a woman [rehearsing for a play],
and run back in panic to "lock themselves up" for "another sort of
excitement" (127).

Charles, returning from his recollection, realizes he can use the secret
passage to escape the castle.  He judges he'll need ninety seconds to "enter
the closet, lock it from the inside, remove the shelves, open the secret
door, replace the shelves, slip into the yawning darkness, close the secret
door and lock it" (128).  

After convincing his guard (Hal) to let him play the piano in the music
room, Charles is able to tell Odon (who keeps a "vigil over the shrouded
harp") of the secret tunnel and his new plan.  We learn of the ongoing quest
by the "new administration" to locate the "crown jewels" (see Index) by
hiring "a couple of foreign experts [...] to locate them" (129), two
Russians (Andronnikov and Niagarin) who have been methodically dismantling
the palace.  

Odon goes off to act in /The Merman/ at the Royal Theater, "already
bemisted, already receding into the remoteness of his Thespian world" (p.
131), after warning Charles to wait before using the tunnel.  Charles is
escorted back to his chamber by a "fat guard" and turned over to "handsome
Hal", who informs his charge that he'll be locking the lumber-room door in
order to "join his companions in the adjacent court" (132).
 
Charles, realizing his opportunity, changes into the clothes he finds in the
closet ("skiing trousers and something that felt like an old sweater" (132)
which turn out to be bright red), "[negotiates] the eighteen invisible
steps" through the closet and into the secret passage.  He lights up his
"torch" and thinks of "Oleg's ghost, the phantom of freedom" (132) (Oleg has
since died in a toboggan accident at the age of fifteen), recalling the
image of "the luminous disk probing an endless tunnel" (128).  He follows
the secret passage (now grown more squalid) to the third door, and enters
Iris Acht's dressing room in the Royal Theater.  He meets Odon there.
Together they don "cloaks from a heap of fantastic raiments" (134), pass
through a group of people smoking on the landing (a reflection of present
day New York no doubt), and are recognized by the Scenic Director, but
before he can stammer out the king's identity, they make it to Odon's
"racing car" for their getaway.

That's the surface of the note.  Next I'll start digging.

Jasper Fidget