Vladimir Nabokov. En memoria de L. I. Shigaev
Vladimir Nabokov. IN MEMORY OF L. I. SHIGAEV
His room was characterized by the naive neatness of poverty. He would imprint his address and telephone number on his letters with a rubber stamp (a rubber stamp!). He knew how to make botviniya, a cold soup of beet tops. He was capable of demonstrating for hours on end some little trinket he considered a work of genius, a curious cuff link or cigarette lighter sold to him by a smooth-talking hawker (note that L.I. himself did not smoke), or his pets, three diminutive turtles with hideous cronelike necks; one of them perished in my pr