Владимир Набоков: Vladimir Nabokov Pnin

'Here we are. This is my palazzo,' said jocose Pnin, who had not been able to concentrate on her rapid speech.

They entered--and he suddenly felt that this day which he had been looking forward to with such fierce longing was passing much too quickly--was going, going, would be gone in a few minutes. Perhaps, he thought, if she said right away what she wanted of him the day might slow down and be really enjoyed.

'What a gruesome place, kakoy zhutkiy dom,' she said, sitting on the chair near the telephone and taking off her galoshes--such familiar movements! 'Look at that aquarelle with the minarets. They must be terrible people.'

'No,' said Pnin, 'they are my friends.'

'My dear Timofey,' she said, as he escorted her upstairs, 'you have had some pretty awful friends in your time.'

'And here is my room,' said Pnin.

'I think I'll lie on your virgin bed, Timofey. And I'll recite you some verses in a minute. That hellish headache of mine is seeping back again. I felt so splendid all day.'

'I have some aspirin.'

'Uhn-uhn,' she said, and this acquired negative stood out strangely against her native speech.

He turned away as she started to take off her shoes, and the sound they made toppling to the floor reminded him of very old days.

She lay back, black-skirted, white-bloused, brown-haired, with one pink hand over her eyes.

'How is everything with you?' asked Pnin (have her say what she wants of me, quick!) as he sank into the white rocker near the radiator.

'Our work is very interesting,' she said, still shielding her eyes, 'but I must tell you I don't love Eric any more. Our relations have disintegrated. Incidentally, Eric dislikes his child. He says he is the land father and you, Timofey, are the water father.'

Pnin started to laugh: he rolled with laughter, the rather juvenile rocker fairly cracking under him. His eyes were like stars and quite wet.

She looked at him curiously for an instant from under her plump hand--and went on: 'Eric is one hard emotional block in his attitude toward Victor. I don't know how many times the boy must have killed him in his dreams. And, with Eric, verbalization--I have long noticed--confuses problems instead of clarifying them. He is a very difficult person. What is your salary, Timofey?'

He told her.

'Well,' she said, 'it is not grand. But I suppose you can even lay something aside--it is more than enough for your needs, for your microscopic needs, Timofey.'

Her abdomen tightly girdled under the black skirt jumped up two or three times with mute, cosy, good-natured reminiscential irony--and Pnin blew his nose, shaking his head the while, in voluptuous, rapturous mirth.

'Listen to my latest poem,' she said, her hands now along her sides as she lay perfectly straight on her back, and she sang out rhythmically, in long-drawn, deep-voiced tones: 'Ya nadela tyomnoe plat'e, I monashenki ya skromney; Iz slonovoy kosti raspyat'e Nad holodnoy postel'yu moey.

No ogni nebпvalпh orgiy

Prozhigayut moyo zabпtyo

I shepchu ya imya Georgiy--

Zolotoe imya tvoyo!

(I have put on a dark dress

And am more modest than a nun;

An ivory crucifix

Is over my cold bed.

But the lights of fabulous orgies

Burn through my oblivion,

And I whisper the name George--

Your golden name!)'

'He is a very interesting man,' she went on, without any interval. 'Practically English, in fact. He flew a bomber in the war and now he is with a firm of brokers who have no sympathy with him and do not understand him. He comes from an ancient family. His father was a dreamer, had a floating casino, you know, and all that, but was ruined by some Jewish gangsters in Florida and voluntarily went to prison for another man; it is a family of heroes.'

She paused. The silence in the little room was punctuated rather than broken by the throbbing and tinkling in those whitewashed organ pipes.

'I made Eric a complete report,' Liza continued with a sigh. 'And now he keeps assuring me he can cure me if I cooperate. Unfortunately, I am also cooperating with George.'

She pronounced George as in Russian--both g's hard, both e's longish.

'Well, c'est la vie, as Eric so originally says. How can you sleep with that string of cobweb hanging from the ceiling?' She looked at her wrist-watch. 'Goodness, I must catch the bus at four-thirty. You must call a taxi in a minute. I have something to say to you of the utmost importance.'

Here it was coming at last--so late.

She wanted Timofey to lay aside every month a little money for the boy--because she could not ask Bernard Maywood now--and she might die--and Eric did not care what happened--and somebody ought to send the lad a small sum now and then, as if coming from his mother--pocket money, you know--he would be among rich boys. She would write Timofey giving him an address and some more details. Yes--she never doubted that Timofey was a darling ('Nu kakoy zhe tп dushka'). And now where was the bathroom? And would he please telephone for the taxi?

'Incidentally,' she said, as he was helping her into her coat and as usual searching with a frown for the fugitive armhole while she pawed and groped, 'you know, Timofey, this brown suit of yours is a mistake: a gentleman does not wear brown.'

He saw her off, and walked back through the park. To hold her, to keep her--just as she was--with her cruelty, with her vulgarity, with her blinding blue eyes, with her miserable poetry, with her fat feet, with her impure, dry, sordid, infantile soul. All of a sudden he thought: If people are reunited in Heaven (I don't believe it, but suppose), then how shall I stop it from creeping upon me, over me, that shrivelled, helpless, lame thing, her soul? But this is the earth, and I am, curiously enough, alive, and there is something in me and in life-- He seemed to be quite unexpectedly (for human despair seldom leads to great truths) on the verge of a simple solution of the universe but was interrupted by an urgent request. A squirrel under a tree had seen Pain on the path. In one sinuous tendril-like movement, the intelligent animal climbed up to the brim of a drinking fountain and, as Pain approached, thrust its oval face toward him with a rather coarse spluttering sound, its cheeks puffed out. Pain understood and after some fumbling he found what had to be pressed for the necessary results. Eyeing him with contempt, the thirsty rodent forthwith began to sample the stocky sparkling pillar of water, and went on drinking for a considerable time. 'She has fever, perhaps,' thought Pain, weeping quietly and freely, and all the time politely pressing the contraption down while trying not to meet the unpleasant eye fixed upon him. Its thirst quenched, the squirrel departed without the least sign of gratitude.

The water father continued upon his way, came to the end of the path, then turned into a side street where there was a small bar of log-cabin design with garnet glass in its casement windows.

7

When Joan with a bagful of provisions, two magazines, and three parcels, came home at a quarter past five, she found in the porch mailbox a special-delivery airmail letter from her daughter. More than three weeks had elapsed since Isabel had briefly written her parents to say that, after a honeymoon in Arizona, she had safely reached her husband's home town. Juggling with her packages, Joan tore the envelope open. It was an ecstatically happy letter, and she gulped it down, everything swimming a little in the radiance of her relief. On the outside of the front door she felt, then saw with brief surprise, Pain's keys, like a bit of his fondest viscera, dangling with their leathern case from the lock; she used them to open the door, and as soon as she had entered she heard, coming from the pantry, a loud anarchistic knocking--cupboards being opened and shut one after the other.