The Real Life of Sebastian Knight   ::   Набоков Владимир Владимирович

And presently he found out that he could not live without her, and presently she found out that she had had quite enough of hearing him talk ofhis dreams, and the dreams in his dreams, and the dreams in the dreams of his dreams. Mind you, I do not condemn either. Perhaps both were right and perhaps neither – but, you see, my friend was not quite the ordinary woman he thought she was – oh, she was something quite different, and she knew a bit more about life and death and people than he thought he knew. He was the kind of man, you know, who thinks all modem books are trashy, and all modern young people fools, merely because he is much too preoccupied with his own sensations and ideas to understand those of others. She says, you can't imagine his tastes and his whims, and the way he spoke of religion – it must have been appalling, I suppose. And my friend, you know, is, or rather was, very gay, trиs vive, and all that, but she felt she was getting old and sour whenever he arrived. Because he never stayed long with her, you know – he would come а l'improviste and plump down on a pouf with his hands on the knob of a cane, without taking off his gloves – and stare gloomily. She got friendly with another man soon, who worshipped her and was oh, much, much more attentive and kind and thoughtful than the man you wrongly suppose to have been your brother (don't scowl, please), but she did not much care for either and she says it was a scream to see the way they were polite to each other when they met. She liked travelling, but whenever she found some really nice place, where she could forget her troubles and everything, there he would blot out the landscape again, and sit down on the terrace at her table, and say that she was vain and cheap, and that he .could not live without her. Or else, he would make a long speech in front of her friends – you know, des jeunes gens qui aiment а rigoler – some long and obscure speech about the form of an ashtray or the colour of time – and there he would be left on that chair all alone, smiling foolishly to himself, or counting his own pulse. I'm sorry if he really turns out to be your relative because I don't think that she has retained a particularly pleasant souvenir of those days. He became quite a pest at last, she says, and she didn't even let him touch her any more, because he would have a fit or something when he got excited. One day, at last, when she knew he was going to arrive by the night train, she asked a young man who would do anything to please her, to meet him and tell him that she did not want to see him ever again, and that if he attempted to see her, he would be regarded by her friends as a troublesome stranger and dealt with accordingly.