Pnin

the incomparable comedian danced in the sun with chapleted nymphs near a waiting cactus, or was a prehistoric man (the supple cane now a supple club), or was glared at by burly Mack Swain at a hectic night-club, old-fashioned, humourless Pnin remained indifferent. 'Clown,' he snorted to himself. 'Even Glupishkin and Max Linder used to be more comical.'
    The second part of the programme consisted of an impressive Soviet documentary film, made in the late forties. It was supposed to contain not a jot of propaganda, to be all sheer art, merrymaking, and the euphoria of proud toil. Handsome, unkempt girls marched in an immemorial Spring Festival with banners bearing snatches of old Russian ballads such as 'Ruki proch ot Korei,' 'Bas les mains devant la Corée,' 'La paz vencera a la guerra,' 'Der Friede besiegt den Krieg,' A flying ambulance was shown crossing a snowy range in Tajikistan. Kirghiz actors visited a sanatorium for coalminers among palm trees and staged there a spontaneous performance. In a mountain pasture somewhere in legendary Ossetia, a herdsman reported by portable radio to the local Republic's Ministry of Agriculture on the birth of a lamb. The Moscow Métro shimmered, with its columns and statues, and six would-be travellers seated on three marble benches. A factory worker's family spent a quiet evening at home, all dressed up, in a parlour choked with ornamental plants, under a great silk lamp-shade. Eight thousand soccer fans watched a match between Torpedo and Dynamo. Eight thousand citizens at Moscow's Electrical Equipment Plant unanimously nominated Stalin candidate from the Stalin Election District of Moscow. The latest Zim passenger model started out with the factory worker's family and a few other people for a picnic in the country. And then -
    'I must not, I must not, oh it is idiotical,' said Pnin to himself as he felt - unaccountably, ridiculously, humiliatingly - his tear glands discharge their hot, infantine, uncontrollable fluid.
    In a haze of sunshine - sunshine projecting in vaporous shafts between the white boles of birches, drenching the pendulous foliage, trembling in eyelets upon the bark, dripping on to the long grass, shining and smoking among the ghosts of racemose bird cherries in scumbled bloom - a Russian wildwood enveloped the rambler. It was traversed by an old forest road with two soft furrows and a continuous traffic of mushrooms and daisies. The rambler still followed in mind that road as he trudged back to his anachronistic lodgings; was again the youth who had walked through those woods with a fat book under his arm; the road emerged into the romantic, free, beloved radiance of a great field unmowed by time (the horses galloping away and tossing their silvery manes among the tall flowers), as drowsiness overcame Pnin, who was now fairly snug in bed with two alarm clocks alongside, one set at 7.30, the other at 8, clicking and clucking on his night table.
    Komarov, in a sky-blue shirt, bent over the guitar he was tuning. A birthday party was in progress, and calm Stalin cast with a thud his ballot in the election of governmental pall-bearers. In fight, in travel... waves or Waindell.... 'Wonderful!' said Dr Bodo von Falternfels, raising his head from his writing.
    Pnin had all but lapsed into velvety oblivion when some frightful accident happened outside: groaning and clutching at its brow, a statue was making an extravagant fuss over a broken bronze wheel - and then Pnin was awake, and a caravan of lights and of shadowy humps progressed across the window shade. A car door slammed, a car drove off, a key unlocked the brittle transparent house, three vibrant voices spoke; the house, and the chink under Pnin's door, lit up with a shiver. It was a fever, it was an infection. In fear and helplessness, toothless, night-shirted Pnin heard a suitcase one-leggedly but briskly stomping upstairs, and a pair of young feet tripping up steps so familiar to them, and one could already make out the sound of eager breathing.... In fact, the automatic revival of happy homecomings from dismal summer camps would have actually had Isabel kick open - Pnin's - door, had not her mother's warning yelp stopped her in time.

Chapter Four
1
    The King, his father, wearing a very white sports shirt open at the throat and a very black blazer, sat at a spacious desk whose highly polished surface twinned his upper half in reverse, making of him a kind of court card. Ancestral portraits darkened the