Before leaving the library, he decided to look up the correct pronunciation of 'interested', and discovered that Webster, or at least the battered 1930 edition lying on a table in the Browsing Room, did not place the stress accent on the third syllable, as he did. He sought a list of errata at the back, failed to find one, and, upon closing the elephantine lexicon, realized with a pang that he had immured somewhere in it the index card with notes that he had been holding all this time. Must now search and search through 2, 500 thin pages, some torn! On hearing his interjection, suave Mr Case, a lank, pink-faced librarian with sleek white hair and a bow-tie, strolled up, took up the colossus by both ends, inverted it, and gave it a slight shake, whereupon it shed a pocket comb, a Christmas card, Pnin's notes, and a gauzy wraith of tissue paper, which descended with infinite listlessness to Pnin's feet and was replaced by Mr Case on the Great Seals of the United States and Territories.
Pnin pocketed his index card and, while doing so, recalled without any prompting what he had not been able to recall a while ago: ... plпla i pela, pela i plпla...
... she floated and she sang, she sang and floated… Of course! Ophelia's death! Hamlet! In good old Andrey Kroneberg's Russian translation, 1844--the joy of Pain's youth, and of his father's and grandfather's young days! And here, as in the Kostromskoy passage, there is, we recollect, also a willow and also wreaths. But where to check properly? Alas, 'Gamlet' Vil'yama Shekspira had not been acquired by Mr Todd, was not represented in Waindell College Library, and whenever you were reduced to look up something in the English version, you never found this or that beautiful, noble, sonorous line that you remembered all your life from Kroneberg's text in Vengerov's splendid edition. Sad!
It was getting quite dark on the sad campus. Above the distant, still sadder hills there lingered, under a cloud bank, a depth of tortoise-shell sky. The heart-rending lights of Waindellville, throbbing in a fold of those dusky hills, were putting on their usual magic, though actually, as Pnin well knew, the place, when you got there, was merely a row of brick houses, a service station, a skating rink, a supermarket. As he walked to the little tavern in Library Lane for a large portion of Virginia ham and a good bottle of beer, Pnin suddenly felt very tired. Not only had the Zol. Fond tome become even heavier after its unnecessary visit to the library, but something that Pnin had half heard in the course of the day, and had been reluctant to follow up, now bothered and oppressed him, as does, in retrospection, a blunder we have made, a piece of rudeness we have allowed ourselves, or a threat we have chosen to ignore.
7
Over an unhurried second bottle, Pnin debated with himself his next move or, rather, mediated in a debate between weary-brained Pnin, who had not been sleeping well lately, and an insatiable Pnin, who wished to continue reading at home, as always, till the 2 a. m. freight train moaned its way up the valley. It was decided at last that he would go to bed immediately after attending the programme presented by intense Christopher and Louise Starr every second Tuesday at New Hall, rather high-brow music and unusual movie offerings which President Poore, in answer to some absurd criticism last year, had termed 'probably the most inspiring and inspired venture in the entire academic community'.
ZFL was now asleep in Pnin's lap. To his left sat two Hindu students. At his right there was Professor Hagen's daughter, a hoydenish Drama major. Komarov, thank goodness, was too far behind for his scarcely interesting remarks to carry.
The first part of the programme, three ancient movie shorts, bored our friend: that cane, that bowler, that white face, those black, arched eyebrows, those twitchy nostrils meant nothing to him. Whether the incomparable comedian danced in the sun with chapleted nymphs near a waiting cactus, or was a prehistoric man (the supple cane now a supple club), or was glared at by burly Mack Swain at a hectic night-club, old-fashioned, humourless Pnin remained indifferent. 'Clown,' he snorted to himself. 'Even Glupishkin and Max Linder used to be more comical.'
The second part of the programme consisted of an impressive Soviet documentary film, made in the late forties. It was supposed to contain not a jot of propaganda, to be all sheer art, merrymaking, and the euphoria of proud toil. Handsome, unkempt girls marched in an immemorial Spring Festival with banners bearing snatches of old Russian ballads such as 'Ruki proch ot Korei,'
'Bas les mains devant la Corйe,'
'La paz vencera a la guerra,'
'Der Friede besiegt den Krieg,' A flying ambulance was shown crossing a snowy range in Tajikistan. Kirghiz actors visited a sanatorium for coalminers among palm trees and staged there a spontaneous performance. In a mountain pasture somewhere in legendary Ossetia, a herdsman reported by portable radio to the local Republic's Ministry of Agriculture on the birth of a lamb. The Moscow Mйtro shimmered, with its columns and statues, and six would-be travellers seated on three marble benches. A factory worker's family spent a quiet evening at home, all dressed up, in a parlour choked with ornamental plants, under a great silk lamp-shade. Eight thousand soccer fans watched a match between Torpedo and Dynamo. Eight thousand citizens at Moscow's Electrical Equipment Plant unanimously nominated Stalin candidate from the Stalin Election District of Moscow. The latest Zim passenger model started out with the factory worker's family and a few other people for a picnic in the country. And then-- 'I must not, I must not, oh it is idiotical,' said Pnin to himself as he felt--unaccountably, ridiculously, humiliatingly--his tear glands discharge their hot, infantine, uncontrollable fluid.
In a haze of sunshine--sunshine projecting in vaporous shafts between the white boles of birches, drenching the pendulous foliage, trembling in eyelets upon the bark, dripping on to the long grass, shining and smoking among the ghosts of racemose bird cherries in scumbled bloom--a Russian wildwood enveloped the rambler. It was traversed by an old forest road with two soft furrows and a continuous traffic of mushrooms and daisies. The rambler still followed in mind that road as he trudged back to his anachronistic lodgings; was again the youth who had walked through those woods with a fat book under his arm; the road emerged into the romantic, free, beloved radiance of a great field unmowed by time (the horses galloping away and tossing their silvery manes among the tall flowers), as drowsiness overcame Pnin, who was now fairly snug in bed with two alarm clocks alongside, one set at 7 .30, the other at 8, clicking and clucking on his night table.
Komarov, in a sky-blue shirt, bent over the guitar he was tuning. A birthday party was in progress, and calm Stalin cast with a thud his ballot in the election of governmental pall-bearers. In fight, in travel... waves or Waindell.... 'Wonderful!' said Dr Bodo von Falternfels, raising his head from his writing.
Pnin had all but lapsed into velvety oblivion when some frightful accident happened outside: groaning and clutching at its brow, a statue was making an extravagant fuss over a broken bronze wheel--and then Pnin was awake, and a caravan of lights and of shadowy humps progressed across the window shade. A car door slammed, a car drove off, a key unlocked the brittle transparent house, three vibrant voices spoke; the house, and the chink under Pnin's door, lit up with a shiver. It was a fever, it was an infection. In fear and helplessness, toothless, night-shirted Pnin heard a suitcase one-leggedly but briskly stomping upstairs, and a pair of young feet tripping up steps so familiar to them, and one could already make out the sound of eager breathing.… In fact, the automatic revival of happy homecomings from dismal summer camps would have actually had Isabel kick open--Pnin's--door, had not her mother's warning yelp stopped her in time.