Pnin suggested leaving the luggage and walking one block--if Victor was not afraid of the rain (it was pouring hard, and the asphalt glistened in the darkness, tarnlike, under large, noisy trees). It would be, Pnin conjectured, a treat for the boy to have a late meal in a diner.
'You arrived well? You had no disagreeable adventures?'
'None, sir.'
'You are very hungry?'
'No, sir. Not particularly.'
'My name is Timofey,' said Pnin, as they made themselves comfortable at a window table in the shabby old diner, 'Second syllable pronounced as "muff", ahksent on last syllable, "ey" as in "prey" but a little more protracted. "Timofey Pavlovich Pnin ", which means "Timothy the son of Paul. " The pahtronymic has the ahksent on the first syllable and the rest is sloored--Timofey Pahlch. I have a long time debated with myself--let us wipe these knives and forks--and have concluded that you must call me simply Mr Tim or, even shorter, Tim, as do some of my extremely sympathetic colleagues. It is--what do you want to eat? Veal cutlet? O. K., I will also eat veal cutlet--it is naturally a concession to America, my new country, wonderful America which sometimes surprises me but always provokes respect. In the beginning I was greatly embarrassed--'
In the beginning Pnin was greatly embarrassed by the ease with which first names were bandied about in America: after a single party, with an iceberg in a drop of whisky to start and with a lot of whisky in a little tap water to finish, you were supposed to call a grey-templed stranger 'Jim', while he called you' Tim' for ever and ever. If you forgot and called him next morning Professor Everett (his real name to you) it was (for him) a horrible insult. In reviewing his Russian friends throughout Europe and the United States, Timofey Pahlch could easily count at least sixty dear people whom he had intimately known since, say, 1920, and whom he never called anything but Vadim Vadimich, Ivan Hristoforovich, or Samuil Izrailevich, as the case might be, and who called him by his name and patronymic with the same effusive sympathy, over a strong warm handshake, whenever they met: 'Ah, Timofey Pahlch! Nu kak? (Well how?) A vп, baten'ka, zdorovo postareli (Well, well, old boy, you certainly don't look any younger)!'
Pnin talked. His talk did not amaze Victor, who had heard many Russians speak English, and he was not bothered by the fact that Pnin pronounced the word 'family' as if the first syllable were the French for 'woman'.
'I speak in French with much more facility than in English,' said Pnin, 'but you--vous comprenez le franзais? Bien? Assez bien? Un peu?'
'Trиs un peu,' said Victor.
'Regrettable, but nothing to be done. I will now speak to you about sport. The first description of box in Russian literature we find in a poem by Mihail Lermontov, born 1814, killed 1841--easy to remember. The first description of tennis, on the other hand, is found in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy's novel, and is related to year 1875. In youth one day, in the Russian countryside, latitude of Labrador, a racket was given to me to play with the family of the Orientalist Gotovtsev, perhaps you have heard, It was, I recollect, a splendid summer day and we played, played, played until all the twelve balls were lost. You also will recollect the past with interest when old.
'Another game,' continued Pnin, lavishly sugaring his coffee, 'was naturally kroket. I was a champion of kroket. However, the favourite national recreation was so-called gorodki, which means "little towns". One remembers a place in the garden and the wonderful atmosphere of youth: I was strong, I wore an embroidered Russian shirt, nobody plays now such healthy games.'
He finished his cutlet and proceeded with the subject: 'One drew,' said Pnin, 'a big square on the ground, one placed there, like columns, cylindrical pieces of wood, you know, and then from some distance one threw at them a thick stick, very hard, like a boomerang, with a wide, wide development of the arm--excuse me--fortunately it is sugar, not salt.'
'I still hear,' said Pnin, picking up the sprinkler and shaking his head a little at the surprising persistence of memory, 'I still hear the trakh! the crack when one hit the wooden pieces and they jumped in the air. Will you not finish the meat? You do not like it?'
'It's awfully good,' said Victor, 'but I am not very hungry.'
'Oh, you must eat more, much more if you want to be a footballist.'
'I'm afraid I don't care much for football, In fact, I hate football. I'm not very good at any game, really,'
'You are not a lover of football?' said Pnin, and a look of dismay crept over his large expressive face. He pursed his lips, He opened them--but said nothing. In silence he ate his vanilla ice-cream, which contained no vanilla and was not made of cream.
'We will now take your luggage and a taxi,' said Pnin.
As soon as they reached the Sheppard House, Pnin ushered Victor into the parlour and rapidly introduced him to his landlord, old Bill Sheppard, formerly superintendent of the college grounds (who was totally deaf and wore a white button in one ear), and to his brother, Bob Sheppard, who had recently come from Buffalo to live with Bill after the latter's wife died. Leaving Victor with them for a minute, Pnin hastily stomped upstairs. The house was a vulnerable construction, and objects in the rooms downstairs reacted with various vibrations to the vigorous footsteps on the upper landing and to the sudden rasp of a window sash in the guest room.
'Now that picture there,' deaf Mr Sheppard was saying, pointing with a didactic finger at a large muddy water colour on the wall, 'represents the farm where my brother and I used to spend summers fifty years ago. It was painted by my mother's schoolmate, Grace Wells: her son, Charlie Wells, owns that hotel in Waindellville--I am sure Dr Neen has met him--a very, very fine man. My late wife was an artist too. I shall show you some works of hers in a moment. Well, that tree there, behind that barn--you can just make it out-- A terrible clatter and crash came from the stairs: Pnin, on his way down, had lost his footing.
'In the spring of 1905,' said Mr Sheppard, wagging his index at the picture, 'under that cottonwood tree--'
He noticed that his brother and Victor had hurried out of the room to the foot of the stairs. Poor Pnin had come down the last steps on his back. He lay supine for a moment, his eyes moving to and fro. He was helped to his feet. No bones were broken.
Pnin smiled and said: 'It is like the splendid story of Tolstoy--you must read one day, Victor--about Ivan Ilyich Golovin who fell and got in consequence kidney of the cancer. Victor will now come upstairs with me.'
Victor followed, with grip. There was a reproduction of Van Gogh's 'La Berceuse' on the landing and Victor, in passing, acknowledged it with a nod of ironic recognition. The guest room was full of the noise of the rain falling on fragrant branches in the framed blackness of the open window. On the desk lay a wrapped-up book and a ten-dollar bill. Victor beamed and bowed to his gruff but kindly host. 'Unwrap,' said Pain.
With courteous eagerness, Victor obeyed. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and, his auburn hair coming down in glossy lanks over his right temple, his striped tie dangling out of the front of his grey jacket, his bulky grey flannelled knees parted, zestfully opened the book. He in. tended to praise it--first, because it was a gift, and second, because he believed it to be a translation from Pnin's mother tongue. He remembered there had been at the Psychotherapeutic Institute a Dr Yakov London from Russia. Rather unfortunately, Victor lit upon a passage about Zarinska, the Yukon Indian Chief's daughter, and light-heartedly mistook her for a Russian maiden. 'Her great black eyes were fixed upon her tribesmen in fear and in defiance. So extreme the tension, she had forgotten to breathe...'