Pnin

florist's when the rain makes grey and green mirrors of Easter day; but it transpired that in South America Dr Wind had a wife with a tortuous mind and a phony passport, who did not wish to be bothered until certain plans of her own took shape. Meanwhile, the New World had started to beckon Pnin too: from New York a great friend of his, Professor Konstantin Chateau, offered him every assistance for a migratory voyage. Pnin informed Dr Wind of his plans and sent Liza the last issue of an émigré magazine where she was mentioned on page 202. He was half-way through the dreary hell that had been devised by European bureaucrats (to the vast amusement of the Soviets) for holders of that miserable thing, the Nansen Passport (a kind of parolee's card issued to Russian émigrés), when one damp April day in 1940 there was a vigorous ring at his door and Liza tramped in, puffing and carrying before her like a chest of drawers a seven-month pregnancy, and announced, as she tore off her hat and kicked off her shoes, that it had all been a mistake, and from now on she was again Pnin's faithful and lawful wife, ready to follow him wherever he went - even beyond the ocean if need be. Those days were probably the happiest in Pnin's life - it was a permanent glow of weighty, painful felicity - and the vernalization of the visas, and the preparations, and the medical examination, with a deaf-and-dumb doctor applying a dummy stethoscope to Pnin's jammed heart through all his clothes, and the kind Russian lady (a relative of mine) who was so helpful at the American Consulate, and the journey to Bordeaux, and the beautiful clean ship - everything had a rich fairy-tale tinge to it. He was not only ready to adopt the child when it came but was passionately eager to do so, and she listened with a satisfied, somewhat cowish expression to the pedagogical plans he unfolded, for he actually seemed to forehear the babe's vagitus, and its first word in the near future. She had always been fond of sugar-coated almonds, but now she consumed fabulous quantities of them (two pounds between Paris and Bordeaux), and ascetic Pnin contemplated her greed with shakes and shrugs of delighted awe, and something about the smooth silkiness of those dragées remained in his mind, forever mingled with the memory of her taut skin, her complexion, her flawless teeth. It was a little disappointing that as soon as she came aboard she gave one glance at the swelling sea, said: 'Nu, eto izvinite' (Nothing doing), and promptly retired into the womb of the ship, within which, for most of the crossing, she kept lying on her back in the cabin she shared with the loquacious wives of the three laconic Poles - a wrestler, a gardener, and a barber - whom Pnin got as cabin mates. On the third evening of the voyage, having remained in the lounge long after Liza had gone to sleep, he cheerfully accepted a game of chess proposed by the former editor of a Frankfurt newspaper, a melancholy baggy-eyed patriarch in a turtle-neck sweater and plus fours. Neither was a good player; both were addicted to spectacular but quite unsound sacrifices of pieces; each was over-anxious to win; and the proceedings were furthermore enlivened by Pnin's fantastic brand of German ('Wenn Sie so, dann ich so, und Pferd fliegt'). Presently another passenger came up, said entschuldigen Sie, could he watch their game? And sat down beside them. He had reddish hair cropped close and long pale eyelashes resembling fish moths, and he wore a shabby double-breasted coat, and soon he was clucking under his breath and shaking his head every time the patriarch, after much dignified meditation, lurched forward to make a wild move. Finally this helpful spectator, obviously an expert, could not resist pushing back a pawn his compatriot had just moved, and pointed with a vibrating index to a rook instead - which the old Frankfurter incontinently drove into the armpit of Pnin's defence. Our man lost, of course, and was about to leave the lounge when the expert overtook him, saying entschuldigen Sie, could he talk for a moment to Herr Pnin? ('You see, I know your name,' he remarked parenthetically, lifting his useful index) - and suggested a couple of beers at the bar. Pnin accepted, and when the tankards were placed before them the polite stranger continued thus: 'In life, as in chess, it is always better to analyse one's motives and intentions. The day we came on board I was like a playful child. Next morning,