Chapter 26 Section IX

It's still raining.The lights at Sheppard's house were all out.The water in the gutter at the back of the garden, which was usually a trickle, tonight was rushing, rolling, and vigorous, throwing last year's rotten leaves and an unwanted foliage among the two rows of beeches and spruces. The brand-new soccer ball that Pnin had thrown out the window to dispose of had just rolled off the slope of the lawn and into the water.In spite of the pain in his back, he finally fell asleep, caught in the kind of nightmare that still haunts the minds of Russian émigrés, even after fleeing the Bolsheviks for a third of a century.Pnin dreamed that he wore a strange cloak, escaped from a dream palace on a dark night when the moon was covered with clouds, waded through black puddles, and then met his late friend Ilya Isidor. Lowech Bolyansky paced up and down on the deserted beach, waiting for a small boat to suddenly come from the open sea to rescue them mysteriously.The Shepard brothers lay awake on two adjacent beds with Good Rest mattresses; the younger brother listened to the rain in the dark and wondered if they should take the roof off the house or not. The house with the thumping sound and the wet garden is sold; the man is thinking of peace, a church with a green wet yard, an old farm, the aspen tree that was struck by lightning a few years ago killed a Dumb distant cousin John Hyde.Victor fell asleep with his head under his pillow for the first time ever - a recent idea, said Dr. stool) is absolutely impossible to learn this move.About one-thirty the two Sheppards began to snore, the deaf one ending each breath with a gurgling sound, much louder than the homely, melancholy wheezing and wheezing of the other.Pnin was still pacing on the beach (his anxious friend had gone home to fetch a map), when suddenly a series of approaching footprints appeared in front of him, and he was startled awake, breathless.His back hurts.It's past four o'clock now.The rain stopped.

Puning let out a long Russian "oh-oh-oh", tossing and turning, trying to find a more comfortable sleeping position.Old man Bill Shepard went downstairs to the bathroom with a thump that shook the whole house to the point of collapsing, and then came back upstairs with a bang. Not long after, everyone fell asleep again.It's a pity that no one saw the empty scene on the street: the dawn breeze ruffled the glistening water in a large puddle, and the telephone wires reflected the blurred and zigzagging gangster road on the water surface.