Chapter 3 third quarter

Some people - and I count them - don't like happy endings.We feel cheated.Injury is the norm.Doom should not be blocked.A rolling avalanche only to come to a sudden stop a few feet above a wobbly town is not only unnatural, but unreasonable.If I were reading about this gentle old man instead of writing about him, I would rather have him arrive in Cremona and find out that the date for the lecture was not this Friday but next Friday.Anyway, he did not only arrive safely, but also in time for dinner—fruit cocktails to start, mint jelly with a meat dish of unknown meat, chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream at the end.Immediately afterwards, he stuffed himself with more sweets, then put on his black coat, juggled the three reports, stuffed them together in his jacket pocket, and would have all of them out when he needed them (thus, by mathematical inevitability) thwarting any mistakes), and then he sat down in a chair by the pulpit; meanwhile Judith Clyde, an ageless blonde in aqua rayon, with large flat cheeks Putting on a layer of sweet rouge, with two sparkling blue eyes shining brightly behind a pair of rimless pince-nez, he stepped onto the podium to introduce the speaker:

"This evening," she said, "our speaker—this is our third Friday night party, by the way; To speak. Tonight we have, I am honored to say, Russian-born and a citizen, Professor Pu--ye, not so easy to pronounce--Professor Punion. I hope I read correctly. He Of course no introduction needed, we were all delighted to have him here. We're going to have a long night, a long and rewarding one, and I'm sure you'll want to have time to ask him questions after the talk. By the way, I It is said that his father was Dostoevsky's personal physician, and he himself traveled to many places inside and outside the Iron Curtain. Therefore, I don't want to take up your precious time, but just want to say a few words about our A lecture planned for next Friday. I'm sure you will be pleased to know that, to the great surprise of all of us, our next speaker will be the famous poet and essayist Lynda Lessfield Miss. Everyone knows she wrote poems, essays, and some short stories. Miss Ricefield was born in New York. Her ancestors fought in the North and South in the Revolutionary War. She wrote before she was out of college. First poem down. Many of her poems—three at least—are included in Reaction, One Hundred American Women's Love Poems. In 1922, she won a prize by—”

But Pnin was not listening.The ripples from the recent illness took away his trance-like attention.The phenomenon lasted no more than a few heartbeats—eventually, a few innocuous echoes—with a few convulsions here and there, and when the dignified hostess asked him to speak, it was in the midst of serious reality. disappeared in front of me.But at that moment, what a clear hallucination!He saw one of his Baltic aunts sitting front and center, in embroidered dresses, pearl necklaces and golden wigs, every time she went to watch the test of that great, hot actress. Dotov always dressed like this in his plays, and she admired him so much that it was almost crazy.Beside her sat one of his late lovers, smiling shyly at him, tilting her smooth black-haired head on one side, and gazing obsequiously at Pnin from under velvety eyebrows with soft brown eyes, and I am using a program to fan the wind.Besides the many new friends, like Miss Clyde, who politely took her seat in the front row, there were many, many old, murdered, forgotten, unvengeable, righteous, and immortal. Friends, scattered around this dimly lit hall.Vanya Beniashkin, who had been shot in Odessa in 1919 because his father was a liberal, sat in the back row and waved cheerfully to his old schoolmate.Dr. Pawell Pnin and his restless wife, though somewhat blurred in features, were on the whole wonderfully reemerged from their obscurity, watching from unnoticed positions. Their son, whom they both watched with the same life-consuming passion and pride in 1912 (a bespectacled boy standing alone on stage) recited a Pushkin's poems.

The fleeting hallucination faded.The elderly Miss Herring, retired professor of history and author of The Awakening of Russia (1922), leaned over the heads of one or two audience members in the middle row, and listened to Miss Clyde. Speaking, paying her respects, at the same moment another blinking old fellow raised his wrinkled hands behind the lady's back and clapped silently to catch Miss Clyde's attention.