Chapter 44 Section Thirteen

Pnin carried the used china and silverware from the dining room table and sideboard to the kitchen sink.He put the rest of the dishes in the freezer lit by the northern lights.The ham and spaghetti were gone, and there was nothing left of the sausage; but the cold salad was not very popular, and there was enough caviar and mince pies for a meal or two to-morrow.He passed the china cabinet and it went "crack-crack-clack" again.He surveyed the living room and began to tidy up.The five-flavored wine mixed with Puning still had some leftovers, glistening in the beautiful big glass bowl.Joan extinguished a lipstick-stained cigarette butt in her saucer; Betty left no trace, and took all the glasses to the kitchen.Mrs Thayer had left a pretty box of colored matches on her plate, along with some marzipan.Mr. Thayer twisted about half a dozen napkins into various shapes; Hagen extinguished a dirty cigar in a small bunch of uneaten grapes.

Pnin was in the kitchen getting ready to wash the dishes.He took off the silk dress, the tie, and the dentures.He put on a patterned apron of the sort worn by the maids in comedies so as not to stain the shirtfront and dress trousers.He scraped the scraps of his dishes into a brown paper bag and saved them for a little mangy white dog with a pink spot on his back that came to him some afternoons—no reason for one man's misfortunes to affect one. Puppy fun. He had prepared sudsy, sudsy water in the sink for the china, glasses, and silverware, and carefully lowered the greenish-blue glass bowl into the lukewarm soapy water.It sank slowly, with a muffled resonant softness of the flint-glass.He rinsed the silverware and the amber wine glasses under the tap first, then put them too in the soapy water.Then he took out the knife, fork and spoon, rinsed them and dried them.He worked with the dazed, absent-mindedness of a man whose work is not very organized.He collected the wiped spoons together, put them in a jug that had been washed but not dried, and then took them out one by one, and wiped them all over again.He groped again around the goblet in the soapy water and under the great-sounding glass bowl to see if there was any missing silverware—and he found another nutcracker.The dainty Pnin rinsed it and was drying it when the slender thing somehow slipped out of the towel like a man who has fallen off a roof.He almost caught it—fingers did touch it in mid-air, but this one knocked it into the soapy water where the treasure was hidden in the sink, with a plop followed by a distressing thud The sound of glass breaking.

Pnin threw the towel into a corner, turned his face away, and stood there for a moment, staring at the darkness outside the open back door.A small, silent, lacy-winged green bug circled above Pnin's smooth, bald head under a blinding bright lamp without a shade.His toothless mouth was half-open, and his dazed, unblinking eyes were dulled by a thin film of tears, and he looked terribly old.Knowing painfully that something had been smashed, he sighed, and went back to the sink, forced himself to work, dipped his hand into the soapy water, and a piece of glass pierced him.He gently lifted a broken glass from the water.Fortunately, the beautiful bowl was unharmed.He pulled out a fresh dish towel and went on with his chores.

Everything was washed and dried, and the great bowl stood alone and stately on the safest shelf in the cupboard.Then, the little lighted house was securely locked in the dark, and Pnin sat down at the kitchen table, took out a piece of yellow scratch paper from a drawer, opened the fountain pen, and began to draft a letter. : "Dear Hagen," he wrote in clear, vigorous handwriting, "permit me to recap (strike out) our conversation today. I must admit it surprised me a bit. If I Honored to understand you correctly, you mean—"