I took my time, and finishing shoved aside the emptied bowl and licked-clean spoon, with a furtive glance at the wall clock, and read more still. There is half an hour yet.
Pnin has had his teeth removed and the metaphors of the mouth, as I continue my wordy stroll, are still rolling round my mind. So clever. The tongue is indeed like 'a fat sleek seal', and the teeth 'familiar rocks' on which it used to 'flop and slide so happily'.
The seal, my own, flops amongst its own worn-down rocks, hoping to dislodge that shred of pineapple stuck in one of its usual clefts. It finally succeeds as I'm learning of a younger sparsely auburn bearded Pnin in Paris, 1925, and just moments before the instrument known as a telephone rang.
Little did I know as I picked up and spoke into its receiver I was about to have my own Pninian trial, for as I talked I surveyed the living room with indifferent eyes - its state being as it always was: tidy and functional – until they strayed to the swaying voile panels. One had attracted to itself a dancing partner. This partner, although very small in size and having more dancing legs than is customary, I knew was going to be a problem, for if that wasn't enough it had wings too and was inside.
Yes, a crane fly.
The phone call, which had started out so pleasantly, was abruptly ended. The matter of the fly must be dealt with. But how?
The gold curtain led, the crane fly clung. I delicately tapped the gold curtain on its shoulder, hoping it would release its new friend to the breeze. I had of course forgotten that this was a very sensitive creature. Naturally upset at being disturbed it crawled upwards until having reached the head of its partner it flew further into the room rather than out.
My instinct as it is with any insect that flies was to panic. It flew towards me, I ran backwards away from it having at some point picked up a magazine which I was now waving madly. My backwards run made me almost fall over Mac, my doorstop Scottish terrier, who I unceremoniously launched out the door with me, slamming it in the self-propelled face and body of the flying intruder. There, it was contained.
Seconds went by, giving my heart ample time to calm its leaping, before I cautiously peeped round the door. No sign. Anywhere. Not on an almond-white wall. Not above a hanged painting. Where was it hiding? I cautiously slunk in and examined the area it had been flying in: the kitchen. There it was splayed out on a kitchen unit. From a safe distance I prepared to whack it with the magically still clutched, still rolled-up magazine. Bam!
Vanished! Again! I hadn't even seen it move, no discernible flutter, no sudden drop to the draining board, and no, (thank god!) not alive and clinging to the magazine's back page.
I lost it for a good forty-five minutes, although realised with dread this was not the end. It was somewhere and if I wasn't careful it would surprise me. It would have very nearly got its way too had I not spotted it on the damp blue dishcloth looped over the tap. Grateful as I was to have located it, its position did pose a dilemma. I determined a quarter-full bowl of water was the best course of action. Perhaps I could with one movement slip the dishcloth into it? That didn't happen. I couldn't. Instead I slopped the bowl at it, whereby it instantly took flight and I too, with it, leapt, throwing the bowl and the water over the floor. I had however followed its path to the wall on which its original entry point the curtains hung. There I got it with a just-remembered killer spray; its crumbled body disposed of I dissolved in a fit of giggles.
Further reading: Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
Picture credit: Open Window, Carl Holsoe (source: WikiArt).
Written in lockdown, May 2020.
