Chapter 7 fourth quarter

The next morning the heroic Pnin entered the city on foot, swinging a cane in European manner (up and down, up and down), looking at everything around him as wisely as possible, imagining in his mind what would happen after the ordeal. He wondered how it would feel to see them again, and recall how they had made him feel.Two hours later, he turned back with plodding steps, propping himself up on a walking stick, dazed.His mouth was still numb from the hideous torture, but it was showing signs of thawing, and a warm current gradually replaced the cold and dull numbness, making him feel pain.For many days afterwards, he lamented the loss of a part of his intimate organs.He was surprised to find that he had loved his teeth so much in the past.In the past, the tongue was like a fat and slippery seal. It often jumped happily among the familiar reefs, inspected the interior of a dilapidated but safe kingdom, jumped from caves to small promontories, climbed up this sawtooth peak, and stood next to that. Notch, found a trace of sweet seaweed in that old crevice; and now all landmarks are gone, only a big black scar, an unknown area of ​​​​the gum, fear and loathing too dare to explore it.Pop those dentures in your mouth, and it's like a poor fossilized skeleton being fitted with the grinning upper and lower jaws of a total stranger.

According to the original plan, there was no class without him, and he did not invigilate the student tests that Miller prepared for him.Ten days passed—he suddenly began to admire the new thing in his mouth.It was something unexpected, a sight of a rising sun, a mouthful of American-made porcelain solid, white and smooth, effective and humane.At night, he put this treasure in a special glass filled with a special solution, and it smiled by itself inside. It was pink in color, and each pearl was like a perfect specimen of some kind of lovely deep-sea plant.For more than a decade, he had dreamed of finishing a great work on ancient Russia, a wonderful mishmash of ballads, poetry, social history and petite histoire. It can be achieved.The new, translucent plastic amphitheater in the mouth also seems to imply a stage, and a play is about to start.As soon as the spring term began, his whole class could not help noticing this remarkable change, because one student was writing "Russian for Beginners" edited by the ruddy old Professor Oliver Bradstreet Mann. Some sentences like "The boy is playing with his nanny and uncle" in English (in fact, the book was written from the beginning to the end by two incompetent hackers, John and Olga Crokey (yes, both are now dead), and there sat Professor Pnin tapping his neat, overly neat incisors and canines with the eraser end of a pencil.Another night he stopped Laurence Clements, who was hastily retreating to his study, and, stammering admiration, he showed him the beauty of the contraption, which he took out and put in. Conveniently, finally urging the astonished rather than unfriendly Laurence to hurry and have all his teeth pulled out first thing tomorrow.

"Then you'll be a new man like me," cried Pnin. It should be said that Laurence and Joan did not take long to appreciate Pnin for his unique value, not so much a lodger as a mischievous one.He had broken the new electric stove so badly that he couldn't fix it, but he just lamented that it didn't matter because spring was coming soon anyway.He liked to stand on the landing of the stairs and brush his clothes hard, the brush jingling as it hit the buttons, and he was there for at least five minutes every damn morning, which was a nuisance.He also enjoys messing with Joan's washing machine.Although he was not allowed to get close to it, he committed the crime again and again knowingly and was caught on the spot.Regardless of all decency and prudence, he would stuff what he had in his hand, a handkerchief, a kitchen rag, a pile of shorts and shirts smuggled out of his house, just to look at the little window. Looking around, it's just interesting to see that the clothes are like a few dolphins, staggering and tumbling endlessly.One Sunday, he looked around and found no one, so out of pure scientific curiosity, he couldn't resist stuffing a pair of rubber-soled espadrilles stained with mud and green leaf juice into the huge machine. and the shoes tossed and rumbled in dissonantly like an army crossing a bridge, and came out with the soles gone.Joan came out of the little parlor behind the pantry and wailed, "Timurphy, you're playing tricks again!" But she forgave him, and she liked to sit with him at the kitchen table and crack walnuts Or drink tea.Desdemona, an old nigger maid who did a part-time job, came every Friday, and for a while God talked to her every day ("'Desdemona,' God would say to me, 'that name A guy named George is not a good thing!'"), and she happened to catch a glimpse of Pnin, wearing only shorts and black glasses, lying in the mysterious lavender light of his sunlamp, with a string of Greek Orthodox churches on his broad chest. Cross chain, she has since recognized him as a saint.One day Laurence went upstairs to his study, an attic cabin artfully converted into a sacrosanct secret lair, and found softly lit, fat-necked Pnin propped up on his thin legs, Quietly browsing books and periodicals in a corner, the elegant intruder turned his head, looked at him from the higher side of his sloping shoulders, and said, "I'm sorry, I just read casually." (He English is improving at an astonishing rate) Lawrence was annoyed by it; but somehow, that very afternoon, the two happened to talk of a brilliant writer, a mutual sympathy for an idea, an adventurous Yuanhang was discovered on the horizon, which unknowingly led to a spiritual meeting between the two, and they were like-minded, and they really only felt comfortable in the warm academic circle.There are people who are steady and solid, and there are people who are irrational and confused. Clements and Pnin belong to the latter kind of people.Henceforth they met and stopped at various thresholds, in passages, on stairs (missing each other, then turning around), or in a room, as Pnin called it, which at that time was only possible for them. When pacing back and forth in the room of an espace meuble, I will chat and plan things.It didn't take long to show that Timofey was a veritable encyclopedia of Russian ways of shrugging and shaking hands. The data aspect of national, ethnic or environmental gestures can add some novelties.It was amusing to see them discussing a legend or a religion.While Timofey was speaking in a low voice, he was making fancy gestures, while Lawrence struck towards him with one hand.Lawrence even regarded Timofey's gestures as the essence of the Russian "artificial art", and made a movie based on them. Pnin was seen wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a mysterious smile on his lips, Figure out some Russian verbs related to hands, such as mahnut', vsplesnut', razvesti, etc. - mahmut' is a wave of hands down because of disgust, vsplesmut' is a dramatic clap of hands due to sadness, A razvesti is one of those dissociative gestures: the negative gesture of opening the hands to indicate that nothing can be done.In the end, Puning also used the "finger shaking" action common in the world, slowly demonstrating how to shake his wrist subtly in half a circle like a fencing, and pointed the solemn gesture of the Russian to the sky: "The Supreme Judge is staring at you! !" It changed into an image of a German pointing at the sky with a cane: "God is punishing you!"

"But," continued the objective Pnin, "the Russian ideological police can break a man's bones with alacrity." Pnin showed the film to a group of students, apologizing for his "unrefined attire" in the film—and so, Betty Bliss, who Pnin assisted Dr. Hagen in tutoring, A graduate student in comparative literature declared that Timofey Pavlovich looked exactly like the Bodhisattva in an Oriental film she had seen in the Asia department.This plump girl of twenty-nine or so, Betty Bliss, was a soft thorn in Pnin's old flesh.Ten years ago, she had pursued a lover who had dumped her like a whore, and then she had a procrastinating love affair with a cripple that was not so much Dostoev In a Skikian, or rather Chekhovian, complex and hopeless way, the cripple is now married to a humble beauty, his nurse.Poor Pnin hesitated.Marriage is not ruled out in principle.During the proud period when he had his new teeth installed, he once attended a discussion meeting. After the meeting, everyone else dispersed. They sat discussing Turgenev's prose poem "The Rose, How Beautiful and Fresh", and he unexpectedly He held her hand in his own and patted it gently.Betty couldn't finish reading the poem, sighs came out of her chest, and the hand that was held trembled slightly. "Turgenev," continued Pnin, putting his hand back on the desk, "plays charades and tableaux vivants at the behest of that ugly diva Pauline Viardo whom he adores. the idiots in the book; besides, Mrs. Pushkin said: 'Pushkin, your poems have bored me to death.'--There are people who are old--just think about it!--Giant, Giant Thors Tai's wife actually likes a red-nosed, fish (stupid) Yinyue (Le) family, far more than she likes Tuo Weng!"

Pnin could find nothing wrong with Miss Bliss.As he tried to picture himself in his calm old self, he could still quite clearly see her bring him the blanket that he wore on his lap in the car, or fill his fountain pen with ink.He liked her—but his heart belonged to another woman. As Pnin said, you can't hide a cat in your pocket.My poor friend received a telegram one night during the semester, and walked up and down his room, for at least forty minutes, in order to explain his distraught excitement. Jiner, it should be stated here: Pnin was not always alone.The Clements were playing Chinese chess by the warm stove downstairs when Puning suddenly ran down the stairs, almost like a beggar in an ancient city with many injustices. He fell to the ground, but regained his footing in an instant--just bumped the poker pins once.

"I'm here to let you know," he gasped, "or, more precisely, to ask you if a lady can come and see me on Saturday—in broad daylight, of course. She's my ex-wife, And now Dr. Lisa Wind—you may have heard her name in psychiatry."