Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov Read Free Book Online Page A

mass of the corner chestnut.
    Presently, they started to leave. Armande reminded him of tomorrow’s excursion. Julia shook hands with him and begged him to pray for her when she would be saying to that very passionate, very prominent poet
je t’aime
in Russian which sounded in English (gargling with the phrase) “yellow blue tibia.” They parted. The two girls got into Julia’s smart little car. Hugh Person started walking back to his hotel, but then pulled up short with a curse and went back to retrieve his parcel.

14
    Friday morning. A quick Coke. A belch. A hurried shave. He put on his ordinary clothes, throwing in the turtleneck for style. Last interview with the mirror. He plucked a black hair out of a red nostril.
    The first disappointment of the day awaited him on the stroke of seven at their rendezvous (the post-office square), where he found her attended by three young athletes, Jack, Jake, and Jacques, whose copper faces he had seen grinning around her in one of the latest photographs of the fourth album. Upon noticing the sullen way his Adam’s apple kept working she gaily suggested that perhaps he did not care to join them after all “because we want to walk up to the only cable car that works in summer and that’s quite a climb if you’re not used to it.” White-toothed Jacques, half-embracing the pert maiden, remarked confidentially that
monsieur
should change into sturdier brogues, but Hugh retorted that in the States one hiked in any old pair of shoes, even sneakers. “We hoped,” said Armande, “we might induce you to learn skiing: we keep all the gear up there, with the fellow who runs the place, and he’s sure to find something for you. You’ll be making tempo turns in five lessons. Won’t you, Percy? I think you should also need a parka, it may be summer here, at two thousand feet,but you’ll find polar conditions at over nine thousand.” “The little one is right,” said Jacques with feigned admiration, patting her on the shoulder. “It’s a forty-minute saunter,” said one of the twins. “Limbers you up for the slopes.”
    It soon transpired that Hugh would not be able to keep up with them and reach the four-thousand-foot mark to catch the gondola just north of Witt. The promised “stroll” proved to be a horrible hike, worse than anything he had experienced on school picnics in Vermont or New Hampshire. The trail consisted of very steep ups and very slippery downs, and gigantic ups again, along the side of the next mountain, and was full of old ruts, rocks, and roots. He labored, hot, wretched Hugh, behind Armande’s blond bun, while she lightly followed light Jacques. The English twins made up the rear guard. Possibly, had the pace been a little more leisurely, Hugh might have managed that simple climb, but his heartless and mindless companions swung on without mercy, practically bounding up the steep bits and zestfully sliding down the declivities, which Hugh negotiated with outspread arms, in an attitude of entreaty. He refused to borrow the stick he was offered, but finally, after twenty minutes of torment, pleaded for a short breathing spell. To his dismay not Armande but Jack and Jake stayed with him as he sat on a stone, bending his head and panting, a pearl of sweat hanging from his pointed nose. They were taciturn twins and now merely exchanged silent glances as they stood a little above him on the trail, arms akimbo. He felt their sympathy ebbing and begged them to continue on their way, he would follow shortly. When they had gone he waited a little and then limped back to the village. At one spot between two forested stretches he rested again, this time on an open bluff where a bench, eyeless but eager, faced an admirable view. As he sat there smoking, he noticed his party very high abovehim, blue, gray, pink, red, waving to him from a cliff. He waved back and resumed his gloomy retreat.
    But Hugh Person refused to give up. Mightily shod, alpenstocked, munching gum,