Free Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov Page A

was intimately and securely connected with Pnin's heart. He walked past the great bronze figure of the first president of the college, Alpheus Frieze, in sports cap and knickerbockers, holding by its horns the bronze bicycle he was eternally about to mount, judging by the position of his left foot, forever glued to the left pedal. There was snow on the saddle and snow in the absurd basket that recent pranksters had attached to the handle bars. 'Huliganï' fumed Pnin, shaking his head - and slipped slightly on a flag of the path that meandered down a turfy slope among the leafless elms. Besides the big book under his right arm, he carried in his left hand his brief-case, an old, Central European-looking, black portfel', and this he swung rhythmically by its leathern grip as he marched to his books, to his scriptorium in the stacks, to his paradise of Russian lore.
    An elliptic flock of pigeons, in circular volitation, soaring grey, flapping white, and then grey again, wheeled across the limpid, pale sky, above the College Library. A train whistled afar as mournfully as in the steppes. A skimpy squirrel dashed over a patch of sunlit snow, where a tree trunk's shadow, olive-green on the turf, became greyish blue for a stretch, while the tree itself, with a brisk, scrabbly sound, ascended, naked, into the sky, where the pigeons swept by for a third and last time. The squirrel, invisible now in a crotch, chattered, scolding the delinquents who would pot him out of his tree. Pnin, on the dirty black ice of the flagged path, slipped again, threw up one arm in an abrupt convulsion, regained his balance, and, with a solitary smile, stooped to pick up Zol. Fond Lit., which lay wide open to a snapshot of a Russian. pasture with Lyov Tolstoy trudging across it toward the camera and some long-maned horses behind him, their innocent heads turned toward the photographer too.
    V boyu li, v stranstvii, v volnah? In fight, in travel, or in waves? Or on the Waindell campus? Gently champing his dentures, which retained a sticky layer of cottage cheese, Pnin went up the slippery library steps.
    Like so many ageing college people, Pnin had long ceased to notice the existence of students on the campus, in the corridors, in the library - anywhere, in brief, save in functional classroom concentrations. In the beginning, he had been much upset by the sight of some of them, their poor young heads on their forearms, fast asleep among the ruins of knowledge; but now, except for a girl's comely nape here and there, he saw nobody in the Reading Room.
    Mrs Thayer was at the circulation desk. Her mother and Mrs Clements' mother had been first cousins.
    'How are you today, Professor Pnin?'
    'I am very well, Mrs Fire.'
    'Laurence and Joan aren't back yet, are they?'
    'No. I have brought this book back because I received this card -'
    'I wonder if poor Isabel will really get divorced.'
    'I have not heard. Mrs Fire, permit me to ask -'
    'I suppose we'll have to find you another room, if they bring her back with them.'
    'Mrs Fire, permit me to ask something or other. This card which I received yesterday - could you maybe tell me who is the other reader?'
    'Let me check.'
    She checked. The other reader proved to be Timofey Pnin; Volume 18 had been requested by him the Friday before. It was also true that this Volume 18 was already charged to this Pnin, who had had it since Christmas and now stood with his hands upon it, like an ancestral picture of a magistrate.
    'It can't be!' cried Pnin. 'I requested on Friday Volume 19, year 1947, not 18, year 1940'
    'But look - you wrote Volume 18. Anyway, 19 is still being processed. Are you keeping this?'
    '18, 19,' muttered Pnin. 'There is not great difference! I put the year correctly, that is important! Yes, I still need 18 - and send to me a more effishant card when 19 available.'
    Growling a little, he took the unwieldy, abashed book to his favourite alcove and laid it down there, wrapped in his muffler.
    They can't