The Real Life of Sebastian Knight   ::   Набоков Владимир Владимирович

Could I try and stretch out mylegs, and put my feet up on something? I groped with my burning toes, but the night was all bone and flesh. I yearned in vain for a wooden something under my ankles and calves. Mar… Matamar… Mar…. How far was that place from Paris? Doctor Starov. Alexander Alexandrovich Starov. The train clattered over the points, repeating those x's. Some unknown station. As the train stopped voices came from the next compartment, somebody was telling an endless tale. There was also the shifting sound of doors being moved aside, and some mournful traveller drew our door open too, and saw it was hopeless. Hopeless. Йtat dйsespйrй. I must get there in time. How long that train stopped at stations! My right hand neighbour sighed and tried to wipe the window pane, but it remained misty with a faint yellowish light glimmering through. The train moved on again. My spine ached, my bones were leaden. I tried to shut my eyes and to doze, but my eyelids were lined with floating designs – and a tiny bundle of light, rather like an infusoria, swam across, starting again from the same comer. I seemed to recognize in it the shape of the station lamp which had passed by long ago. Then colours appeared, and a pink face with a large gazelle eye slowly turned towards me – and then a basket of flowers, and then Sebastian's unshaven chin. I could not stand that optical paintbox any longer, and with endless, cautious manoeuvring, resembling the steps of some ballet dancer filmed in slow motion, I got out into the corridor. It was brightly lit and cold. For a time I smoked and then staggered towards the end of the carriage, and swayed for a moment over a filthy roaring hole in the train's bottom, and staggered back, and smoked another cigarette. Never in my life had I wanted a thing as fiercely as I wanted to find Sebastian alive – to bend over him and catch the words he would say. His last book, my recent dream, the mysteriousness of his letter – all made me firmly believe that some extraordinary revelation would come from his lips. If I found them still moving. If I were not too late. There was a map on the panel between the windows, but it had nothing to do with the course of my journey. My face was darkly reflected in the window pane. Il est dangereux… E pericoloso… a soldier with red eyes brushed past me and for some seconds a horrible tingle remained in my hand, because it had touched his sleeve. I craved for a wash. I longed to wash the coarse world away and appear in a cold aura of purity before Sebastian. He had done with mortality now and I could not offend his nostrils with its reek. Oh, I would find him alive.