Read Online Glory by Vladimir Nabokov - Free Book Online

streaks of snow; grayer ones looked out from behind their shoulders, and far beyond there were giants of an opaque violet whiteness, and these never moved, and the sky above them seemed faded in comparison with the bright-blue patches between the tops of the black firs under which thecar passed. Suddenly, with a sensation still new to him, Martin remembered the dense fir fringe of their park in Russia as seen through a lozenge of blue glass on the veranda. And when, stretching his slightly vibrating legs and feeling a transparent humming in his head, he got out of the car, he was struck by the fresh rough smell of earth and melting snow, and by the rustic beauty of his uncle’s house. It stood by itself half a kilometer from the nearest hamlet, and the top balcony offered one of those marvelous views that are even frightening in their airy perfection. The same Russian vernal blue sky looked into the window of the neat little WC, with its odor of wood and resin. All around, in the garden with its bare, black platbands and white apple bloom, and in the fir forest right behind the orchard, and on the dirt road leading to the village, there was a cool, happy silence, a silence that
knew
something, and Martin felt a little dizzy, perhaps from this silence, perhaps from the smells, or perhaps from the newfound blissful immobility after the three-hour drive.
    In this chalet Martin lived until late fall. It was presumed that he would enter the University of Geneva that very winter; however, after a lively exchange of letters with friends in England, Sofia sent him to Cambridge. Uncle Henry did not immediately reconcile himself to this: he disliked the English, whom he considered a cold, perfidious nation. On the other hand the thought of the expenses the famous university required not only did not sadden him, but, on the contrary, was tempting. Fond as he was of economizing on trifles, clenching a penny in his left hand, he willingly wrote large checks with the right, especially when the expense was an honorable one. Sometimes, rather touchingly, he would feign eccentric pigheadedness, slapping the table with his palm, puffing out his mustache, and shouting, “If I do it, Ido it because it gives me pleasure!” With a sigh Sofia would slip the bracelet watch from Geneva on her wrist, while moist-eyed Henry would dig in his pocket for a voluminous handkerchief, trumpet once, twice, and then smooth his mustache to the right and to the left.
    With the onset of summer the cross-marked sheep were herded higher into the mountains. A babbling metallic tinkling, of unknown origin and from an unknown direction, would gradually become audible. Floating nearer, it enveloped the listener, giving him an odd tickling sensation in the mouth. Then, in a cloud of dust, came flowing a gray, curly, tightly packed mass of sheep rubbing against each other, and the moist, hollow tinkle of the bells, which delighted all of one’s senses, mounted, swelled so mysteriously that the dust itself seemed to be ringing as it billowed above the moving backs of the sheep. From time to time one of them would get separated from the rest and trot past, whereupon a shaggy dog would drive it back into the flock; and behind, gently treading, walked the shepherd. Then the tintinnabulation would change timbre, and once more grow hollower and softer, but for a long time it would hang in the air together with the dust. “Nice, nice!” murmured Martin to himself, hearing the tinkle out to the end, and continued on his favorite walk, which began with a country lane and forest trails. The fir grove abruptly thinned out, lush green meadows appeared, and the stony path sloped down between hawthorn hedges. Occasionally a cow with wet pink nose would stop on its way up in front of him, twitch its tail and with a lurch of the head move on. Behind the cow came a spry little old woman with a stick, who glanced malevolently at Martin. Further down, surrounded by poplars and maples,