The Real Life of Sebastian Knight   ::   Набоков Владимир Владимирович

Starov would not have worded his telegram thatway, had he been sure that I would be late. The telegram had come at noon. The telegram, my God, had come at noon I Sixteen hours had already passed, and when might I reach Mar… Mat… Ram… Rat… No, not 'R' – it began with an 'M'. For a moment I saw the dim shape of the name, but it faded before I could grasp it. And there might be another setback: money. I should dash from the station to my office and get some at once. The office was quite near. The bank was farther. Did anybody of my numerous friends live near the station? No, they all lived in Passy or around the Porte St Cloud – the two Russian quarters of Paris. I squashed my third cigarette and looked for a less crowded compartment. There was, thank God, no luggage to keep me in the one I had left. But the carriage was crammed and I was much too sick in mind to go down the train. I am not even sure whether the compartment into which I groped, was another or the old one! it was just as full of knees and feet and elbows – though perhaps the air was a little less cheesy. Why had I never visited Sebastian in London? He had invited me once or twice. Why had I kept away from him so stubbornly, when he was the man I admired most of all men? Those bloody asses who sneered at his genius…. There was, in particular, one old fool whose skinny neck I longed to wring – ferociously. Ah, that bulky monster rolling on my left was a woman; eau-de-Cologne and sweat struggling for ascendancy, the former losing. Not a single soul in that carriage knew who Sebastian Knight was. That chapter out of Lost Property so poorly translated in Cadran. Or was it La Vie Littйraire? Or was I too late, too late – was Sebastian dead already, while I sat on this accursed bench with a derisive bit of thin leather padding which could not deceive my aching buttocks? Faster, please faster I Why do you think it worth stopping at this station? and why stop so long? Move, move on. So – that's better.

Very gradually the darkness faded to a greyish dimness, and a snow-covered world became faintly perceptible through the window. I felt dreadfully cold in my thin raincoat. The faces of my travelling companions became visible as if layers of webs and dust were slowly brushed away. The woman next to me had a thermos flask of coffee and she handled it with a kind of maternal love. I felt sticky all over and excruciatingly unshaven. I think that if my bristly cheek had come into contact with satin, I should have fainted. There was a flesh-coloured cloud among the drab ones, and a dull pink flushed the patches of thawing snow in the tragic loneliness of barren fields.