Vladimir Nabokov. El cuento de Navidad
"One should be careful with symbols generally," glumly said No vodvortsev. "Now I have a neighbor—upstanding man, party mem ber, active militant, yet he uses expressions like 'Golgotha of the Proletariat.'..."
When his guests had left he sat down at his desk and propped an ear on his thick, white hand. By the inkstand stood something akin to a square drinking glass with three pens stuck into a caviar of blue glass pellets. The object was some ten or fifteen years old—it