Pnin

more details. Yes - she never doubted that Timofey was a darling ('Nu kakoy zhe tï 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 Pnin on the path. In one sinuous tendril-like movement, the intelligent animal climbed up to the brim of a drinking fountain and, as Pnin approached, thrust its oval face toward him with a rather coarse spluttering sound, its cheeks puffed out. Pnin 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 Pnin, 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, Pnin'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.
    She put her bag and parcels down on the sideboard in the kitchen and asked in the direction of the pantry: 'What are you looking for, Timofey?'
    He came out of there, darkly flushed, wild-eyed, and she was shocked to see that his face was a mess of unwiped tears.
    'I search, John, for the viscous and sawdust,' he said tragically.
    'I am afraid there is no soda,' she answered with her lucid Anglo-Saxon restraint. 'But there is plenty of whisky in the dining-room cabinet. However, I suggest we both have some nice hot tea instead.'
    He made the Russian' relinquishing' gesture.
    'No, I don't want anything at all,' he said, and sat down at the kitchen table with an awful sigh.
    She sat down next to him and opened one of the magazines she had bought.
    'We are going to look at some pictures, Timofey.'
    'I do not want, John. You know I do not understand what is advertisement and what is not advertisement.'
    'You just relax, Timofey, and I'll do the explaining. Oh, look - I like this one. Oh, this is very clever. We have here a combination of two ideas - the Desert Island and the Girl in the Puff. Now, look, Timofey - please' - he reluctantly put on his reading glasses - 'this is a desert island with a lone palm, and this is a bit of broken raft, and this is a shipwrecked mariner, and this is the ship's cat he saved, and this here, on that rock -'
    'Impossible,' said Pnin. 'So small island, moreover with palm, cannot exist in such big sea.'
    'Well, it