Chapter 50 Section VI

When I decided to accept the professorship at Wendell College, it was agreed that I could invite anyone I wanted to teach at the Russian language department I planned to open.Having received this assurance, I wrote to Timofey Pnin, enlisting him, in the most friendly terms, to assist me in my work, in whatever manner and to what extent.His reply horrified me and broke my heart.He curtly replied that he was so tired of teaching that he didn't even want to quit before the spring term was over.Then he talked about other things.Victor (I asked him politely in my letter) was in Rome with his mother; she had divorced her third husband and married an Italian art dealer.Pnin concluded his letter by expressing his great regret that he might be leaving Wendell College two or three days before my lecture on Tuesday, February 15th.He didn't say where he was going.

On the night of Monday, the 14th, I arrived at Wyndale by the Greyhound.The Cockerells met me at the station and invited me to their house for supper, and I found that I had to stay at their house that night instead of spending the night in a hotel, as I had hoped.Gwen Cockerell was in her late forties, with her cat face and fine arms and legs, and she turned out to be a very pretty bitch.Her husband, whom I remembered once in New Haven as a rather listless, round-faced, flaxen-haired Englishman, looked exactly like the man he had been imitating for nearly a decade.I was tired and didn't expect much entertainment throughout the dinner, but I have to admit that Jack Cockerell imitated Pnin's speech and manners almost perfectly.He acted for at least two hours, showing me everything - Pnin's lecture posture, Pnin's eating, Pnin's winking at a schoolgirl, Pnin's careless placement of a fan once How Pnin later told the epic story of how a glass shelf above the tub was fanned so that its own vibration nearly sent it headfirst into the tub; Professor Wen, an ornithologist whom he barely knew, believed they were buddies, Tim and Thom—so much so that Professor Wen made a hasty conclusion that this man must be a fellow impersonating Professor Pnin.It was all interspersed with Pnin gestures and Pnin's broken English, of course, but Cockerell actually imitated other things, such as Pnin and Thayer sitting next to each other motionless in chairs in the teachers' club Thinking silently, he could learn the nuances between the two of them in silence.We also saw Puning looking up books in the library, and Puning walking on the frozen lake on the campus in winter.We hear what Pnin has to say about the succession of different rooms he rents.We also hear from Pnin how he learned to drive a car, and how he coped with the embarrassment of getting his first punctured tire on his return from the "chicken farm of one of the tsar's privy councilors" where Cockerell reckons he was going for the summer. situation.Finally, we finally talked about Pnin announcing one day that he had been "shot," which, according to the impersonator, meant "fired" for the poor fellow—(I wonder how my friend could have made such a language disorder).Clever Cockerell also told of the queer feud between Pnin and his compatriot Kaomarov—the mediocre muralist following in the footsteps of the great Langs, who continued on endlessly to the college refectory Add teacher portraits on the walls.Although Komarov and Pnin did not belong to the same political faction, the patriotic artist saw in the dismissal of Pnin by the academy that it was an anti-Russian gesture, so he began to regard the young and a bit fat (now The sullen Napoleon between the already thin) Braulenghi and the young (now shaved) Hagen was erased to make room for Pnin; thus Pnin and Dean Pohl appeared The encounter at lunch—an exasperated, spit-splashing Pnin speaking gibberish English, pointing with a trembling forefinger at a ghostly draft portrait of a Russian-era peasant on the wall, yelling Said that if his face appeared on the baggy jacket, he would go to court and sue the Academy; After the anger had subsided, he asked the people around him in general: "Is that foreign gentleman who spoke just now our teacher?" Many times, I still laughed out loud, making their old Spanish breed brown dog Sobacwitch with a tear-stained face and long ears laugh so hard that he sniffed at me.I repeat, this performance is brilliant, but it's too long.By midnight the interest had died down; I felt the smile I'd been keeping on my face start to stiffen and my lips began to twitch.In the end, the whole thing was so boring that I wondered if the Pnin anecdote, by some imaginative vengeance, had developed in Cockerell such a degree of fatal obsession that he, the taunter of Pnin, had become A true sacrificial victim of ridicule.

We drank copious amounts of whiskey, and after midnight Cockerell made a sudden decision that seemed clever and amusing in a certain degree of inebriation.He said he could guarantee that the old fox Pnin hadn't left at all yesterday, but had gone into hiding.Why not call and find out?He just dialed the phone, and although the other party's phone rang in the imaginary hallway far away, no one answered, but if Pnin had really gone away and vacated the house, this good phone might be lost. The line was cut off by the telephone company.For no apparent reason, I wanted to say a few friendly words to my old friend Timofey Barridge, so after a while I tried to get through.Suddenly there was a click from the phone, and there was an echo, a wheeze, and then a poorly disguised voice saying: "He's not home, he's gone, he's gone long ago."— As soon as he finished speaking, the other party hung up the phone; however, it was none other than my old friend, and even the person who imitated him best could not pronounce the word "at" (at) well. It is very heavy and pronounces the German word "hat", "home" is pronounced like the French "homme", and "gone" is pronounced like the initial sound of the word "Goneril".Cockerell also suggested that we simply drive to 999 Todd Street to visit the hidden tenant at night, but Mrs. Cockerell intervened and refused to do so; After a bit of a mouth-sick night, we went to bed.