Pale Fire: Illustrated Sports Illustrated Sports Pale Fire Journal | Page 45

To this day I don’t know if my father ever recognized me. I introduced my-
self as Kinbote and that’s what he called me, but he always had a glint in his eye
as though he saw in me the kid he lost all that time ago. On the other hand, per-
haps it was only a trick of the light about his iris.
My mother, though, took one look at me and developed a scowl. There was
no denying she identified me, probably by the eyes she used to look into with
love. It’s likely she decided not to tell my father who I really was, if he hadn’t fig-
ured it out for himself. Instead, she painted me as a madman as often as she
possibly could.
The worst part is that I can’t even blame her. The first encounters with
them after years apart made me obsessed, for lack of a better word. I remember
one day while I was having a casual chat with my father, he mentioned a bit of
writing he was working on. I used to love listening to my father’s writing, espe-
cially the tales he told me before bed. I wanted to know his work like I once did.
I began to watch him as closely as I could, getting more daring each day. I
discovered ways to look through windows, dodging the obstructions of the trees,
creeping around the house as secretly as possible. A couple times I might have
been spotted [5] , but they never called the police, never filed any reports of a stalk-
er. I have to believe they still held some shred of sympathy for me.
My father and I became close, almost as close as a father and son should
be. I gave him ideas for his writing and he promised to read it to me when it was
finished [6] . Before that, though, he wouldn’t share a word. It made me quite rest-
less.
My mother became so frozen toward me that I couldn’t help but hate her. I
worked against it, but it was just too difficult. She was too difficult. In all settings
she wore nothing but a scowl in my presence, made it clear she did not wish to
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