Chapter 48 fourth quarter

Six years later, when I revisited Paris, I heard that Timofey and Lisa Bagorepov had married not long after I had left.She gave me a copy of her published poetry book Suhie Gubi (The Dry Lips), with the inscription in crimson ink on the title page: "A stranger to a stranger" (neznakomtsu ot neznakomki).I met Pnin and Lisa at a tea party given in the apartment of a well-known émigré Socialist-Revolutionary.It was an informal gathering of old-fashioned terrorists, heroic nuns, gifted hedonists, liberals, adventurous young poets, aging novelists and Artists, publishers and commentators, free-thinking philosophers and scholars, this group represented a peculiar kind of chivalry, the active and vital nucleus of a society in exile which, during a third of this century, Prosperous in time, but almost entirely foreign to American intellectuals, in whose conception, thanks to shrewd Communist propaganda, the Russian émigrés were a vague and wholly fictional group of people, including the so-called Trotskyites (whoever they were), corrupt reactionaries, traitorous or disguised Chekas, wives of noble titles, professional priests, restaurant managers, members of the White Russian Legion, Neither is culturally important.

Pnin was having a political debate with Kerensky across the table, and Lisa took the opportunity to tell me (still with her usual stark candor) that she had "confid everything to Timofey." ; but he was a "saint" and "forgave" me.Fortunately she did not often accompany him to some of the receptions in which I had the honor of sometimes sitting next to him and sometimes across from him, our close group of friends gathered on our own lonely asteroid, detached In that wicked and luxurious city, the lights shone on the skull of this or that Socrates, and a slice of lemon swirled in the glass dangling on the spoon.One night, Dr. Balaghan, Pnin, and I were sitting at Brotov's house chatting, and I happened to be talking to the psychiatrist about one of his cousins, Lyudmila, now Mrs. He had seen her in London, Athens, and London, when suddenly Pnin shouted across the table to Dr. Balaghan: "Hey, don't believe what he says, Georgie Alamowicz. He's making things up. Once he He even made up a lie that he and I were middle school classmates in Russia and that we cheated together in exams. He is a terrible liar (on uzhasniy vidumshchik).” This sudden outburst left Baraghan and I dumbfounded and confused us. The two just sat there silently, looking at each other.