Vladimir Nabokov. Aureliana : Клуб изучающих испанский языкVladimir Nabokov. Aureliana
t fellow, he would think, may be as learned as the late Dr. Staudinger, but he has no more imagination than a stamp collector. The glass-lidded trays over which both were bending gradually took up the whole counter, and the pipe in Pilgram's sucking lips kept emitting a wistful squeak. Pensively he gazed at the serried rows of delicate insects, all alike to you or me, and now and then he tapped on the glass with a stubby forefinger, stressing some special rarity. "That's a curiously dark aberration," the learned visitor might say. "Eisner got one like that at an auction in London, but it was not so dark, and it cost him fourteen pounds." Painfully muffling with his exting