Chapter 28 second quarter

Yar Cook is a descendant of the Old Church, the father of the self-made Moscow businessman Piotr Kuknikov, patron of literature and philanthropist - the famous Kuknikov ruled in the last Tsar Imprisoned twice in a reasonably comfortable castle for financing some social-revolutionary groups (mainly terrorists), but later in a Soviet prison under Lenin for being accused of being an "imperialist spy" After being locked up for almost a week, he was executed.His family members arrived in the United States via Harbin around 1925.The young Cook gradually rose to a reliable senior position in a large chemical company by working hard, being smart and practical, coupled with scientific training.He was stocky, friendly and quiet, with a large expressionless face and a pair of dainty pince-nez in the middle, and it was easy to see who he was—a business manager, a Masonic, A golf enthusiast, someone who is both accomplished and cautious.He spoke extremely accurate and unaffected English, with only a slight Slavic accent; When deep old Russian friends were guests at his house until late at night, Alexander Petrovich would suddenly discuss God, Lermontov, and freedom, and vent a series of reckless idealistic views passed down from his ancestors. A Marxist eavesdropping on the sidelines would also be baffled.

He married Susan Marshall, daughter of inventor Charlie G. Marshall, a charming and chatty blonde.Everyone would have imagined that Alexander and Susan would have many healthy children, so it came as a surprise to me and some other well-meaning people to learn that Susan had been permanently infertile as a result of an operation.They were still young, and loved each other with a comforting, old-fashioned purity and sincerity, and they had no children and grandchildren to congregate at their country dacha, so they recruited old Russians every summer in even-numbered years. (Like Cook's parents or uncles) come for the holidays, and in odd-numbered years invite some amerikantsi (Americans)—friends of Alexander's business circles or Susan's relatives and friends—to cool off.

This is the first time for Puning to come to Songdi, and I have been here before.One can find many Russian émigrés—liberals and intellectuals who left Russia around 1920—gathering here.You can find them in every patch of shade, sitting on rustic benches discussing writers in exile—Bunin, Ardanov, Sirin; A Sunday newspaper in Russian was draped over the face, a traditional defense against fly stings; some were drinking tea with jam on the porch; Samuel Lovewich Sporiansky, a tall gentleman of stately poise and stature, and the excitable, stuttering and short Count Fyodor Nikitich Porosin, Both were members of the democratic organizations of the heroic local governments formed in some of the Russian provinces around 1920 to resist the Bolshevik dictatorship, and they are now wandering the pine-lined lanes discussing the Free Russia Society (a group they founded in New York). Organisation) what strategy should it adopt the next time it holds a joint meeting with another, relatively late anti-communist organisation.From an arbor half shaded by acacia trees came fragments of a heated debate between Professor Brotov, who taught the history of philosophy, and Professor Schadow, who taught the philosophy of history: "Reality is constant," a voice would say , is Brotov's humming voice. "No!" another would shout. "A soap bubble is as real as a fossilized tooth!"

Both Puning and Shaduo were born in the late 1890s, relatively young.Most of the other men are over sixty years old and have experienced a long journey in life.On the other hand, Countess Porosin and Madame Brotov and several other ladies were not over fifty, and thanks to the healthy atmosphere of the New World, they not only retained their beauty, but made them look even more beautiful.Some parents brought their children - American kids of college age, healthy, tall, lazy, awkward, ignorant, no Russian, no matter what advantages their parents' backgrounds and experiences had Not interested at all.In terms of material and spiritual life, they also seem to be very different from their parents in Songdi: they occasionally switch from their own scale to ours in an instant, and make a perfunctory answer to an interesting Russian joke or a concerned piece of advice. and then run away, always with a detached demeanor (so much so that it feels like a brood of elves); The Knikovs held long and noisy feasts on the curtained porch, and the delicacies served in the Russian style were not to their liking.Porosin sometimes speaks sadly of his children (Igor and Olga, college sophomores), "My twins are just irritating. When I meet them at home at breakfast or at dinner Try to tell them the most interesting and exciting things when you go to school—for example, the election of local self-governments in the far north of Russia in the seventeenth century, or the history of the first medical schools in Russia—oh, yes Well, by the way, Chestovich published a wonderful book on the subject in 1883—they just slipped away and went to their house to play the radio." After Pnin was invited to the Song In the summer when the mansion came, the two young men came.But they never showed up; if it weren't for Olga's admirer, a college student whose last name no one seemed to be able to tell, who also came here for the weekend in a fancy car from Boston, if it weren't for Igor If Brotov's daughter Nina, a lazy and pretty girl with Egyptian eyes and dark arms and legs, went to the New York dance school, was a good match for him, Olga and Igor You must feel how dreary this remote place is.

The whole house was taken care of by Praskova, a stocky, lively woman of sixty who looked twenty years younger than she was.She's standing on the back porch with her knuckles on her hips, in a pair of baggy shorts she sewed herself, and a housekeeper's blouse with rhinestones, inspecting the chickens, and it's a sight to behold. Son.She had brought up Alexander and his younger brother as children in Harbin, and now her husband, a silent, dull old Cossack who had been fond of amateur bookbinding all his life, helped her with the housework here. Book work, no matter what old catalogs or dirty publications come across, he wants to bind it. This is not only self-study, but also a cure for books; in addition, he also likes brewing cider and hunting small animals in the woods.

Among the guests of that season, Pnin was well acquainted with Professor Schadow, a young friend of his from his time at the University of Prague in the early twenties; In 1949, he met the Brotov couple at the formal banquet hosted by the Association of Russian Scholars in Exile at the Barbizon Plaza Hotel to welcome them to the United States from France, and he also gave a welcome speech at that time.Personally I have never been very interested in Brotov and his philosophical writings, which mix the obscurity and the cliché in such a strange way; the man's achievement is like a mountain--but a mountain of clichés; but I had always been fond of Varvara, the buxom and buxom wife of the listless philosopher.She had never seen the New England countryside until she first visited the Pine Mansion in 1951.The birch and lingonberry trees there deceived her, so that she did not mentally compare Lake Unkvedo with, for example, Lake Ourid in the Balkans with which it was originally similar, but with Lake Onega in the north of Russia. In contrast, because she spent her first fifteen summers by that lake before fleeing the Bolsheviks and coming to Western Europe with her aunt Lydia Vinogradov, a prominent feminist and social activist. .So when Varvara sees a hummingbird in flight or a catalpa in full bloom, a little whimsy comes to Varvara.Those big porcupines coming to eat the musty old wood of the house with relish, or those timid little weasels stealing the milk of the kittens in the backyard, were more interesting to her than bestiaries.She was also fascinated and confused by the exotic plants and small animals that she couldn't name, and even took the little titmouse for a lost canary, and heard that she set the table on Susan's birthday. , holding a large handful of beautiful poisonous ivy leaves tightly in front of her freckled pink breasts, ran in triumphantly and panting.