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| Author Vladimir Nabokov |
From “A Guide to Berlin,” part 5, “The Pub.” I just read it last night in The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov:
“There, under the mirror, the child still sits alone. But he is now looking our way. From there he can see the inside of the tavern — the green island of the billiard table, the ivory ball he is forbidden to touch, the metallic gloss of the bar, a pair of fat truckers at one table and the two of us at another. He has long since grown used to this scene and is not dismayed by its proximity. Yet there is one thing I know. Whatever happens to him in life, he will always remember the picture he saw every day of his childhood from the little room where he was fed his soup. He will remember the billiard table and the coatless evening visitor who used to draw back his sharp white elbow and hit the ball with his cue, and the blue-gray cigar smoke, and the din of voices, and my empty right sleeve and scarred face, and his father behind the bar, filling a mug for me from the tap.
“‘I can’t understand what you see down there,’” says my friend, turning back toward me.
“What indeed! How can I demonstrate to him that I have glimpsed somebody’s future recollection?”
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