Pnin

depicting zoos, the human body, farms, fires - all scientifically chosen'), and also a lone wooden bead with a hole through the centre.
    Joan, who used the word 'pathetic' perhaps a little too often, declared she would ask that pathetic savant for a drink with their guests, to which her husband replied he was also a pathetic savant and would go to a movie if she carried out her threat. However, when Joan went up to Pnin with her offer he declined the invitation, saying, rather simply, he had resolved not to use alcohol any more. Three couples and Entwistle arrived around nine, and by ten the little party was in full swing, when suddenly Joan, while talking to pretty Gwen Cockerell, noticed Pnin, in a green sweater, standing in the doorway that led to the foot of the stairs and holding aloft, for her to see, a tumbler. She sped toward him - and simultaneously her husband almost collided with her as he trotted across the room to stop, choke, abolish Jack Cockerell, head of the English Department, who, with his back to Pnin, was entertaining Mrs Hagen and Mrs Blorenge with his famous act - he being one of the greatest, if not the greatest, mimics of Pnin on the campus. His model, in the meantime, was saying to Joan: 'This is not a clean glass in the bathroom, and there exist other troubles. It blows from the floor, and it blows from the walls -' But Dr Hagen, a pleasant, rectangular old man, had noticed Pnin, too, and was greeting him joyfully, and the next moment Pnin, his tumbler replaced by a highball, was being introduced to Professor Entwistle.
    'Zdrastvuyte kak pozhivaete horosho spasibo, Entwistle rattled off in excellent imitation of Russian speech - and indeed he rather resembled a genial Tsarist colonel in mufti. 'One night in Paris,' he went on, his eyes twinkling, 'at the Ougolok cabaret, this demonstration convinced a group of Russian revellers that I was a compatriot of theirs - posing as an American, don't you know.'
    'In two-three years,' said Pnin, missing one bus but boarding the next, 'I will also be taken for an American,' and everybody roared except Professor Blorenge.
    'We'll get you an electric heater,' Joan told Pnin confidentially, as she offered him some olives.
    'What make heater?' asked Pnin suspiciously.
    'That remains to be seen. Any other complaints?'
    'Yes - sonic disturbance,' said Pnin. 'I hear every, every sound from downstairs, but now it is not the place to discuss it, I think.'

3
    The guests started to leave. Pnin trudged upstairs, a clean glass in his hand. Entwistle and his host were the last to come out on the porch. Wet snow drifted in the black night.
    'It's such a pity,' said Professor Entwistle, 'that we cannot tempt you to come to Goldwin for good. We have Schwarz and old Crates, who are among your greatest admirers. We have a real lake. We have everything. We even have a Professor Pnin on our staff.'
    'I know, I know,' said Clements, 'but these offers I keep getting are coming too late. I plan to retire soon, and till then I prefer to remain in the musty but familiar hole. How did you like' - he lowered his voice - 'Monsieur Blorenge?'
    'Oh, he struck me as a capital fellow. In some ways, however, I must say he reminded me of that probably legendary figure, the Chairman of French, who thought Chateaubriand was a famous chef'.
    'Careful,' said Clements. 'That story was first told about Blorenge, and is true.'

4
    Next morning heroic Pnin marched to town, walking a cane in the European manner (up-down, up-down) and letting his gaze dwell upon various objects in a philosophical effort to imagine what it would be to see them again after the ordeal and then recall what it had been to perceive them through the prism of its expectation. Two hours later he was trudging back, leaning on his cane and not looking at anything. A warm flow of pain was gradually replacing the ice and wood of the anaesthetic in his thawing, still half-dead, abominably martyred mouth. After that, during a few days he was in mourning for an intimate part of himself. It surprised him to realize how fond he had been of his teeth. His tongue, a fat sleek seal, used to flop and slide so happily among the familiar rocks, checking the contours of a battered but still secure kingdom, plunging from cave to cove, climbing this jag, nuzzling that notch, finding a shred of sweet seaweed in the same old cleft; but now not a landmark remained, and all there existed was a great dark wound, a terra incognita of gums