Владимир Набоков: Vladimir Nabokov Pnin

'And to think I have stamped all these,' sighed Mrs Thayer, rolling her eyes in mock dismay.

'Some stamped Mrs Miller,' said Pnin, a stickler for historical truth.

What struck the visitors most in the bedroom was a large folding screen that cut off the four-poster bed from insidious draughts, and the view from the row of small windows: a dark rock wall rising abruptly some fifty feet away, with a stretch of pale starry sky above the black growth of its crest. On the back lawn, across the reflection of a window, Laurence strolled into the shadows.

'At last you are really comfortable,' said Joan.

'And you know what I will say to you,' replied Pnin in a confidential undertone vibrating with triumph. 'Tomorrow morning, under the curtain of mysteree, I will see a gentleman who is wanting to help me to buy this house!'

They came down again. Roy handed his wife Betty's bag. Herman found his cane. Margaret's bag was sought. Laurence reappeared.

'Good-bye, good-bye, Professor Vin!' sang out Pnin, his cheeks ruddy and round in the lamplight of the porch.

(Still in the hallway, Betty and Margaret Thayer admired proud Dr Hagen's walking-stick, recently sent him from Germany, a gnarled cudgel, with a donkey's head for knob. The head could move one ear. The cane had belonged to Dr Hagen's Bavarian grandfather, a country clergyman. The mechanism of the other ear had broken down in 1914, according to a note the pastor had left. Hagen carried it, he said, in defence against a certain Alsatian in Greenlawn Lane. American dogs were not used to pedestrians. He always preferred walking to driving. The ear could not be repaired. At least, in Waindell.)

'Now I wonder why he called me that,' said T. W. Thomas, Professor of Anthropology, to Laurence and Joan Clements as they walked through blue darkness toward four cars parked under the elms on the other side of the road.

'Our friend,' answered Clements, 'employs a nomenclature all his own. His verbal vagaries add a new thrill to life. His mispronunciations are mythopeic. His slips of the tongue are oracular. He calls my wife John.'

'Still I find it a little disturbing,' said Thomas.

'He probably mistook you for somebody else,' said Cements. 'And for all I know you may be somebody else.'

Before they had crossed the street they were overtaken by Dr Hagen. Professor Thomas, still looking puzzled, took his leave.

'Well,' said Hagen.

It was a fair fall night, velvet below, steel above.

Joan asked: 'You're sure you don't want us to give you a lift?'

'It's a ten-minute walk. And a walk is a must on such a wonderful night.'

The three of them stood for a moment gazing at the stars.

'And all these are worlds,' said Hagen.

'Or else,' said Clements with a yawn, 'a frightful mess. I suspect it is really a fluorescent corpse, and we are inside it.'

From the lighted porch came Pnin's rich laughter as he finished recounting to the Thayers and Betty Bliss how he, too, had once retrieved the wrong reticule.

'Come, my fluorescent corpse, let's be moving,' said Joan. 'It was so nice to see you, Herman. Give my love to Irmgard. What a delightful party. I have never seen Timofey so happy.'

'Yes, thank you,' answered Hagen absent-mindedly.

'You should have seen his face,' said Joan, 'when he told us he was going to talk to a realestate man tomorrow about buying that dream house.'

'He did? You're sure he said that?' Hagen asked sharply.

'Quite sure,' said Joan. 'And if anybody needs a house, it is certainly Timofey.'

'Well, good night,' said Hagen. 'Glad you could come. Good night.'

He waited for them to reach their car, hesitated, and then marched back to the lighted porch, where, standing as on a stage, Pnin was shaking hands a second or third time with the Thayers and Betty.

('I would never,' said Joan, as she backed the car and worked the wheel, 'but never have allowed my child to go abroad with that old Lesbian.'

'Careful,' said Laurence, 'he may be drunk but he is not out of earshot.')

'I shall not forgive you,' said Betty to her merry host, 'for not letting me do the dishes.'

'I'll help him,' said Hagen, ascending the porch steps and thumping upon them with his cane. 'You, children, run along now.'

There was a final round of handshakes, and the Thayers and Betty left.

12

'First,' said Hagen, as he and Pnin re-entered the living-room. 'I guess I'll have a last cup of wine with you.'

'Perfect. Perfect!' cried Pnin. 'Let us finish my cruchon.'

They made themselves comfortable, and Dr Hagen said: 'You are a wonderful host, Timofey. This is a very delightful moment. My grandfather used to say that a glass of good wine should be always sipped and savoured as if it were the last one before the execution. I wonder what you put into this punch. I also wonder if, as our charming Joan affirms, you are really contemplating buying this house?'

'Not contemplating--peeping a little at possibilities,' replied Pnin with a gurgling laugh.

'I question the wisdom of it,' continued Hagen nursing his goblet.

'Naturally, I am expecting that I will get tenure at last,' said Pnin rather slyly. 'I am now Assistant Professor nine years. Years run. Soon I will be Assistant Emeritus. Hagen, why are you silent?'

'You place me in a very embarrassing position, Timofey. I hoped you would not raise this particular question.'

'I do not raise the question. I say that I only expect--oh, not next year, but example given, at hundredth anniversary of Liberation of Serfs--Waindell will make me Associate.'

'Well, you see, my dear friend, I must tell you a sad secret. It is not official yet, and you must promise not to mention it to anyone.'

'I swear,' said Pnin, raising his hand.

'You cannot but know,' continued Hagen, 'with what loving care I built our great department. I, too, am no longer young. You say, Timofey, you have been here for nine years. But I have been giving my all for twenty-nine years to this university I My modest all. As my friend, Dr Kraft, wrote me the other day: you, Herman Hagen, have done alone more for Germany in America than all our missions have done in Germany for America. And what happens now? I have nursed this Falternfels, this dragon, in my bosom, and he has now worked himself into a key position. I spare you the details of the intrigue!'

'Yes,' said Pnin with a sigh, 'intrigue is horrible, horrible. But, on the other side, honest work will always prove its advantage. You and I will give next year some splendid new courses which I have planned long ago. On Tyranny. On the Boot. On Nicholas the First. On all the precursors of modern atrocity. Hagen, when we speak of injustice, we forget Armenian massacres, tortures which Tibet invented, colonists in Africa.... The history of man is the history of pain!'

Hagen bent over to his friend and patted him on his knobby knee.

'You are a wonderful romantic, Timofey, and under happier circumstances…However, I can tell you that in the Spring Term we are going to do something unusual. We are going to stage a Dramatic Programme--scenes from Kotzebue to Hauptmann. I see it as a sort of apotheosis.... But let us not anticipate. I, too, am a romantic, Timofey, and therefore cannot work with people like Bodo, as our trustees wish me to do. Kraft is retiring at Seaboard, and it has been offered to me that I replace him, beginning next fall.'

'I congratulate you,' said Pnin warmly.

'Thanks, my friend. It is certainly a very fine and prominent position. I shall apply to a wider field of scholarship and administration the invaluable experience I have gained here. Of course, since I know Bodo will not continue you in the German Department, my first move was to suggest you come with me, but they tell me they have enough Slavists at Seaboard without you. So I spoke to Blorenge, but the French Department here is also full up. This is unfortunate, because Waindell feels that it would be too much of a financial burden to pay you for two or three Russian courses that have ceased to attract students. Political trends in America, as we all know, discourage interest in things Russian. On the other hand, you'll be glad to know that the English Department is inviting one of your most brilliant compatriots, a really fascinating lecturer--I have heard him once; I think he's an old friend of yours.'