The Real Life of Sebastian Knight   ::   Набоков Владимир Владимирович

The pure chimes of tower-clocks, now hanging over the town, now overlapping and echoing afar, in some odd, deeply familiar way blendedwith the piping cries of the newspaper vendors. And as he entered the stately gloom of Great Court with gowned shadows passing in the mist and the porter's bowler hat bobbing in front of him, Sebastian felt that he somehow recognized every sensation, the wholesome reek of damp turf, the ancient sonority of stone slabs under heel, the blurred outlines of dark walls overhead – everything. That special feeling of elation probably endured for quite a long time, but there was something else intermingled with it, and later on predominant. Sebastian in spite of himself realized with perhaps a kind of helpless amazement (for he had expected more from England than she could do for him) that no matter how wisely and sweetly his new surroundings played up to his old dreams, he himself, or rather still the most precious part of himself, would remain as hopelessly alone as it had always been. The keynote of Sebastian's life was solitude and the kindlier fate tried to make him feel at home by counterfeiting admirably the things he thought he wanted, the more he was aware of his inability to fit into the picture – into any kind of picture. When at last he thoroughly understood this and grimly started to cultivate self-consciousness as if it had been some rare talent or passion, only then did Sebastian derive satisfaction from its rich and monstrous growth, ceasing to worry about his awkward uncongeniality – but that was much later.

Apparently, at first he was frantically afraid of not doing the right thing or, worse still, of doing it clumsily. Someone told him that the hard cornered part of the academical cap ought to be broken, or even removed altogether, leaving only the limp black cloth. No sooner had he done so, than he found out that he had lapsed into the worst 'undergrad' vulgarity and that perfect taste consisted in ignoring the cap and gown one wore, thus granting them the faultless appearance of insignificant things which otherwise would have dared to matter. Again, whatever the weather, hats and umbrellas were tabooed, and Sebastian piously got wet and caught colds until a certain day when he came to know one D. W. Gorget, a delightful, flippant, lazy, easy-going fellow, famed for his rowdiness, elegance, and wit: and Gorget coolly went about in a town-hat plus umbrella. Fifteen years later, when I visited Cambridge and was told by Sebastian's best college friend (now a prominent scholar) of all these things, I remarked that everybody seemed to be carrying – 'Exactly,' said he, 'Gorget's umbrella has bred.'

'And tell me,' I asked, 'what about games? Was Sebastian good at games?'

My informant smiled.