Владимир Набоков: Vladimir Nabokov Pnin

I hurried past the rear truck, and had another glimpse of my old friend, in tense profile, wearing a cap with ear-flaps and a storm coat; but next moment the light turned green, the little white dog leaning out yapped at Sobakevich, and everything surged forward--truck one, Pnin, truck two. From where I stood I watched them recede in the frame of the roadway, between the Moorish house and the Lombardy poplar. Then the little sedan boldly swung past the front truck and, free at last, spurted up the shining road, which one could make out narrowing to a thread of gold in the soft mist where hill after hill made beauty of distance, and where there was simply no saying what miracle might happen.

Cockerell, brown-robed and sandalled, let in the cocker and led me kitchenward, to a British breakfast of depressing kidney and fish.

'And now,' he said, 'I am going to tell you the story of Pnin rising to address the Cremona Women's Club and discovering he had brought the wrong lecture.'

The End