Chapter 5 second quarter

Half an hour later, Joan glanced at several pots of wilted cacti that were exposed to the sun in the window grill of the sun room, and saw a man in a raincoat and no hat standing in front of the gate of the neighbor's beautiful brick house. A man with a head as shiny as a brass ball happily rang the bell.The old Scotch terrier was beside him, looking as honest as he was.Miss Dingwall came out with a mop in her hand, called in the slow, dignified dog first, and showed Pnin where Clements lived next door. Timofey Pnin settled down in the living room, crossed his legs po amerikanski (in the American way), and began to speak of insignificant details.Simply report your resume.Born in St. Petersburg in 1898.Both parents died of typhus in 1917.Came to Kyiv in 1918.Joined the White Army for five months, first served as a "field telephone operator", and then transferred to the Military Intelligence Department.In 1919, he fled to Constantinople from Crimea, which was invaded by the Red Army.Graduated from college at...

"Well, I happened to be there that year, when I was a boy," put in the delighted Joan, "and my father took us with him on a business assignment from the government to Turkey. We might have met Mian! I still remember how water is said in Turkish. There is also a rose garden..." "Water is 'su' in Turkish," said Pnin, who must have been a linguist, and then he reported his fascinating experience: he graduated from university in Prague and had connections with various scientific institutions.Then—"Well, long story short: Lived in Paris since 1925, left France early in Hitler's war. Came here, became American citizen. Now teaching Russian and such at Wendell College. For relevant information, you can ask Director Hagen of the German Department, or you can also inquire about the dormitory for single teachers in the college.”

Does he not live comfortably there? "There are too many people," Pnin said. "There are too many people who like to inquire about other people's affairs. What I need most now is to be undisturbed and alone." He coughed into his mouth with his fist and made a strange urn sound (called Joan somehow. Thinking of a professional actor he had met named Don Cossack), he went on to state simply: "I have to be forewarned: all my teeth will have to be pulled out. A nasty operation." "Well, please go upstairs and have a look," said Joan cheerfully. Pnin inspected Isabel's pink-walled bedroom with white borders.Although the sky was pure white, it suddenly snowed, and the slowly falling snowflakes shone brightly on the unused full-length mirror.Pnin methodically reviewed Hawke's The Girl and a Cat on the bed, and Hunter's The Left Behind Child on the top shelf.Then he checked the temperature with his hand by the window.

"Is the temperature kept constant?" Joan ran towards the radiator. "Hot," she declared. "I mean—is there air circulation?" "Well, very fluid. Here's the bathroom—it's smaller, but it's all yours." "Is there no shower facility?" Puning asked while looking up. "Maybe it's better this way. My friend, Professor Shadow of Columbia University, slipped and fell in the bath and broke his leg in two places. Now I have to think about it. How much rent do you plan to charge? I ask, It’s because I don’t pay more than one dollar a day—of course not including mountain (board) fees.”

"Okay," said Joan cheerfully, with a hearty smile. That afternoon, one of Pnin's students, Charles Macbeth (Pnin used to say, "Judging by his composition, this guy must be a lunatic") enthusiastically drove a fenderless, sickly young man on the left. The purple car brought all of Pnin's belongings.Pnin had lunch ahead of time at a small, newly opened restaurant called "Eggs and Us", which was not doing well, and which he often took care of out of sheer pity for its failure, and then our friend began to take Decorate the new house in a serious and happy mood to make it Puning.The traces of Isabel's youth had gone with her, or had been eradicated by her mother, but the traces of her childhood had somehow remained.In order for Pnin to arrange his own things: a delicate sun lamp, a rather large Russian typewriter in a broken box glued with cellophane, five pairs of shoe-trees, Nice but oddly small leather shoes, a grinder-and-brew coffee pot much worse than the one that blew up last year, two alarm clocks that played the same game every night, and seventy-four mostly Wendy's He first thoughtfully exiled some of the original contents of the house, including six abandoned volumes, to a chair in the stairwell to a solidly bound volume of periodicals in the Russian language held in the library of Dill College Library. Books such as Family Birding, Happy Days in Holland, and My Beginning Dictionary (“contains more than six hundred illustrations of animals, the human body, farms, flames, and more—all scientifically selected ”), and a solitary perforated wooden rosary.

Joan, who used to use the word "poor" a little too much, when she was fond of saying that she would like to ask the poor scholar to come down and have a drink with their guests, her husband Answered that he himself was a poor scholar, and that if she had to do that, he himself would have to go out to the movies.But when Joan went upstairs to invite Pnin, he declined, saying simply that he was determined not to drink again.Around nine o'clock the three couples and Entwistle arrived, and at ten o'clock the little party reached its climax when Joan was chatting with the pretty Gwen Cockerell when she noticed Pnin in green wool She stood outside the door leading to the foot of the stairs in her shirt-sleeves, holding a tumbler aloft for her to see.She hurried over--her husband almost ran into her at the same time, because he also hurried over to tell the head of the English department, Jack Cockerell, to stop performing, and Jack, with his back to Pnin, was using his The famous act entertained Mrs. Hagen and Mrs. Braulenghi—Jack was one of the few who imitated Pnin's appearance secretly on campus.The archetypal character he was imitating was now talking to Joan: "This cup in the bathroom is not clean, and there are other things that don't go well. The floor is drafty, and the wall is drafty..." Dr. Hagen, a pleasant-looking, square-faced The old man also spotted Pnin and greeted him cheerfully.In a short time Pnin's tumbler was replaced by a whiskey-and-soda, and he was introduced to Professor Entwistle.

"Zdrastvuyte kak pozhivaete horosho spasibo." Entwistle learned a spate of Russian brilliantly—really, he was a bit like a genial colonel in civilian clothes. "I was in Paris one night," he went on, blinking, "and babbled in the same way at the cabaret 'Ugolok' to a group of merry-go-round Russians. I really thought that I was also a compatriot of them pretending to be an American, you don’t know.” "In two or three years," interjected Pnin intermittently, "I'll be taken for an American." Everyone except Professor Braulenghi laughed.

"We'll add an electric stove in the bathroom for you," Joan told Pnin privately, handing him some olives. "How about the stove?" Pnin asked suspiciously. "Wait and see. Any dissatisfaction?" "Also—sound disturbance," said Pnin. "I can hear everything downstairs clearly, but I don't think it's appropriate to discuss this issue now."