Vladimir Nabokov. La Veneciana
Vladimir Nabokov. LA VENEZIANA
Simpson sat down on a bench spattered with the white traces of dried bird droppings, and hunched over, propping his sharp elbows on his knees. He sensed the onset of an auditory hallucination that had af-flicted him since childhood. When in a meadow, or, as now, in a quiet, already duskening wood, he would involuntarily begin to wonder if, through this silence, he might perhaps hear the entire, enormous world traversing space with a melodious whistle, the bustle of distant cities, the pounding of sea waves, the singing of telegraph wires above the deserts. Gradually his hearing, guided by his thoughts, began to detect those sounds in earnest. He could hear the chugging