Pnin

I didn't make law review. Some idiots succeeded where I failed. I haven't exercised in months and I'm steadily getting fat. I've been dumped. I watched an old video of myself today and realized that the ex ball and chain loved me for being that girl, the one no one knows I used to be. He called me La Traviesa. I've gotten so old; I'm racing to the grave.

She put her bag and parcels down on the sideboard in the kitchen and asked in the direction of the pantry: "What are you looking for, Timofey?"

He came out of there, darkly flushed, wild-eyed, and she was shocked to see that his face was a mess of unwiped tears.

"I search, John, for the viscous and sawdust," he said tragically.

"I'm afraid there is no soda," she answered with her lucid Anglo-Saxon restraint. "But there is plenty of whiskey in the dining-room cabinet. However, I suggest we both have some nice hot tea instead."

He made the Russian "relinquishing" gesture.

"No, I don't want anything at all," he said, and sat down at the kitchen table with an awful sigh.

She sat down next to him and opened one of the magazines she had bought.

"We are going to look at some pictures, Timofey."

"I do not want, John. You know I do not understand what is advertisement and what is not advertisement."

"You just relax, Timofey, and I'll do the explaining. Oh look - I like this one. We have here a combination of two ideas - the Desert Island and the Girl in the Puff. Now, look, Timofey, please" - he reluctantly put on his reading glasses - "this is a desert island with a lone palm, and this is a bit of broken raft, and this is a shipwrecked mariner, and this is the ship's cat he saved, and this here, on that rock -"

"Impossible," said Pnin. "So small island, moreover with palm, cannot exist in such big sea."

"Well, it exists here."

"Impossible isolation," said Pnin.

"Yes, but - Really, you are not playing fair, Timofey. You know perfectly well you agree with Lore that the world of the mind is based on a compromise with logic."

"I have reservations," said Pnin. "First of all, logic herself -"

"All right, I'm afraid we are wandering away from our little joke. Now, you look at the picture. So this is the mariner, and this is the pussy, and this is a rather wistful mermaid hanging around, and now look at the puffs right above the sailor and the pussy."

"Atomic bomb explosion," said Pnin sadly.

"No, not at all. It is something much funnier. You see, these round puffs are supposed to be the projections of their thoughts. And now at last we are getting to the amusing part. The sailor imagines the mermaid as having a pair of legs, and the cat imagines her as all fish."

"Lermontov," said Pnin, lifting two fingers, "has expressed everything about mermaids in only two poems. I cannot understand American humor even when I am happy, and I must say -" He removed his glasses with trembling hands, elbowed the magazine aside, and, resting his head on his arm, broke into muffled sobs.

...

"Doesn't she want to come back?" asked Joan softly.

Pnin, his head on his arm, started to beat the table with his loosely clenched fist.

"I haf nofing," wailed Pnin between loud, damp sniffs, "I haf nofing left, nofing, nofing!"